Alrighty, here it is! The monospider!

The monospider is a nasty little tool roughly the size and shape of a hand grenade (because it is one). However, the monospider has spiked bumps and protrusions at regular intervals around the canister, giving it a rough appearance similar to studded leather. When detonated, the spikes within the grenade launch outward and embed themselves into nearby objects extending the curled monowire between the spikes into a lethal, razor sharp web. Meanwhile, the canister containing the spikes falls away and rapidly disintegrates. While nearly useless in open areas, the monospider is frighteningly effective in enclosed spaces where the lingering monowire strands can make the area lethal for days after its initial employment. This simple fact makes it a favorite of units that have to spend a lot of time in urban areas, where the monospider can quickly and effectively change an alleyway or a small room into a gruesome kill zone for the unwary.

Cost: 100 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
Blast radius 10 m (no chunky salsa from this one, sorry). Use standard grenade rules otherwise.

Anyone caught in the initial blast will be hit by either a monowire strand or a spike for the tune of 8 physical.
Anyone moving through the radius afterwards without clipping the monowire strands will be sliced by monowire (8 physical again) for every meter they move through.

I like it. But with a blast rad of 10 meters, i'd say that it would work in most small to med rooms. Just toss one or two in and mark that room cleared.

I'd like to point out that 10m means it doens't just cut off hallways and alleys, etc. That is roughly a 60' span it will cover. Meaning a couple of these will block off an auditorium fairly effectively. Or roughly 216,000 cubic foot room is now filled with monowire. If that is what you want, go for it, your campaign and all. However just from the fluff text 3m to 4m would be plenty to get the described effect.

I like it as well except the price seems way way too low.

Monofilament Whips cost 3,000 Nuyen for about 2 meters of monowire.
Monofilament Garrotes cost 2,000 Nuyen for about 1 meter or monowire
Monofilament Bolas cost 2,500 Nuyen, I'll have to asume 1.5 meters of monowire there.
Monowire costs 1,000 Nuyen per Meter.

Microwire only costs 50 Nuyen per 100 meters though (Shadowrun Core Rules pg. 329). It does the same 8P damage but without the -4AP.
I'll have to assume that you need to apply a bit more weight against it to make it cut you though.

...At which point, I just noticed that you don't have your Monospider grenade having any AP...

Ah ha! You've got yourself a good marketing scam going on there. If you wanted truth in advertising you'd have to call it the Microspider instead.
Then again, if you wanted truth in advertising, then you'd be the only weapon manufacturer in the world to actually do so.

- Umbra

Very cool, but needs to be pricier and have a smaller radius. Very cool tool, though.

Ah... reminds me of the monowire netgun.

hehe, the infinite uses of monowire (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Floss?

Yeah, way too cheap. Judging by the description, this device would deploy at least ten of the 'wire trailing spikes, and each 'wire would have to be at least five meters long, to get the 10m radius. Monowire costs 1,000 nuyen per meter, therefore this device would cost something like 50,000 nuyen. Making it absurdly expensive for area control compared to half a dozen grenades with motion detectors, or a reusable sentry gun.

I've seen GMs do everything from monowire webs to monowire fences, in the belief, I guess, that cost/benefit analysis has gone out of fashion in the corporate world of the future.

This comes up a lot in SR. Are Cutter nanites cool? Sure. Are they idiotically expensive for their effect, especially compared to injecting the target with a lot of arsenic, or just throwing an HE grenade at them? Yes.

Could always have the cost be a bit higher and have the grenade be re-usable... Such that the web is retractable. The spikes that go into the walls would be able to retract their claws and the micro-servo motors in the grenade body would pull the spikes back into the grenade body.

Then again, have this as a second model of the fire & forget grenade.

If you just want to instantly block a hallway, you can use microwire instead of monowire. (I think that was Umbra's point)

You really just need something that isn't _trivial_ to run through. The guards _will_ get through, even if they have to pull out the spikes with pliers. Even if they have to cut new doors with chainsaws. They will get through.

You just want that extra 30 sec to get away.

Or, you know, they could just bust out their gerber multi-tools and the wirecutters on them. Snip the ones most in the way, and step over/crawl under the others.

cold war style poisoning with a custom umbrella and rare toxin?

and, how traceable are cutter nanites?

also, arsenic have known symptoms, and the grenade have a area effect (altho i guess one could try and pass the blame on to terrorists of some sort).

i dunno, sometimes cool overrules cost/benefit.

then there is the mental statement of "we can throw vast amount of money on a problem and not care about it"...

Yeah. It probably is a bit cheap. And the radius a bit large. Bringing the radius down to about 4-5m would work as intended. And yes, good eyes with the microwire and noticing the missing -4 AP. I took that out to try to justify the lower cost, and totally forgot about the fact that I just described microwire.

You could always have two versions. Doesn't seem that difficult to make it with monowire instead of micro. I mean if you have the machines that can build them, just feed it monowire instead of microwire.

or just normal wire if some one sees one of though go of and knows what they do I think they'd slow down. Throw a few normal one then a monowire one and they'll think it didn't deploy and die plus could make for nast jungle warfear traps rig to montion sensors then pow out it pops and anchors to trees and the ground have fun getting past those.

Heck, another option could simply be normal wires with wireless transmitters attached in the spike. When someone trips the wire, it pulls of the spike and the transmitter informs the user that someone is trying to get by.

yeah these could be fun tech. In my game (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

You don't get it - it is not the difficulty of using monowire instead of microwire, it is the cost.

Microwire: 0.5 Nuyen / Meter
Monowire: 1,000 Nuyen / Meter

To function as described, this device would require at minimum eight to ten 10-meter strands of wire, meaning each such grenade, if used with monowire, will cost 80,000 Nuyen +. Use microwire, and 100 to 150 Nuyen per grenade is reasonable.


On the subject of the grenade itself, a 5m radius would be more than sufficient for at least 95% of all hallways, as well as most small rooms.

I feel that the mono one would be made reusable by charmelion coating the body of the item but microwire would be one use. If any one use monowire it will be as a portable wall not a throw and run item.

For using the wire grenades as sensors, don't forget capacitance wire that sets off a screamer when it even senses a change in it's environment.

And then, applying the same concept, you could use normal, electrified wire, and voila you've got a non-lethal, instantly deployable electric fence. The best part is if the opposition goes "Oh, it's a microwire trap, some-one hand me their sharp, metallic object that is not insulated".

People who use uninsulated hand tools deserve everything that they get, and they generally don't do it twice.

Or electified monowired! yeah thats just a bit silly. but how would you power that?

I do "get" it. *shakes head, and rolls eyes*

However just because you wouldn't want to pay for one doesn't mean someone else wouldn't. I was pointing out that it would be fairly simply to have one of these things made with monowire. So if some customer called in and wanted 10 of these things made with mono instead of micro. Well you just go out to the machine, replace the spool of micro on the machine and run 10 off. You would pass the increased cost on to the customer along with a hefty "customization" fee. How is this a loss for the company? It is shadowrun, as crazy as it would be to make one. If you built it, someone would buy it.

you seriously think someone's gonna be interested in paying 80,000 nuyen for -4 AP?

sorry, but no. the people who have that kind of money didn't get that rich by flushing their money down the toilet. and also don't need monowire grenades, because for that kind of money you can hire a bodyguard who will be far more effective than some stupid monowire grenade.