It still would provide it's bonus dice on the test, though. Given the Karma und Nuyen costs however vs. the risk of losing it... stick with them WF bow/pistol: It doesn't leave your hand, still provides bonus dice and you can use it to club spirits - the projectiles will never be magical anyway.

But I made no comment about the existence or viability of 'magic weapons', ranged or otherwise. I quite specifically limited my comment to the rules concerning Weapon Foci. My post was in direct response to your friend JonathanC's comment ...

No, it wouldn't. The Focus is only active (and therefore providing its bonus) while connected to the bonded person's Aura. It shuts down immediately upon parting with that Aura.

There are no ranged Weapon Foci in Shadowrun. There never has been, throughout all the editions.

But Dunkelzahn will pay out to anyone who can fix that. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I still don't understand why Dunkelberry's Will didn't pay out to the inventors of Stick-n-Shock.

QFT. The changeover to the new edition has been far from seamless.

as for the quiver . .
why can't you make that a weapon focus either? . .
'cause you're:
a) shooting with a bow, ?
b) shooting the Arrows instead of the quiver?
c) because weapon foci are built relative to reach?

oh and for those looking at the rules for advantages, i would allow thrown weapon foci . .
now think about how much karma and money goes into those.
as the cost is decided by range, now let's see . . i don't have the exact numbers in my head but if a reach1 weapon focus costs 10k nuyen, and the reach of your thrown weapon is a multiple of your characters strength . . then they get expansive fast . . you really wanna pay that much for a weapon that you can probably only use once ever? fine by me . .

d) a weapon focus works because it contains orichalcum, which acts as both a conductor and an amplifier for your personal magic. In other words, whatever's hitting the other guy has to connect the two of you with orichalcum alloy (remember, it alloys easily with iron).

[Edit]: Higher-Reach weapon foci are more expensive because they contain more orichalcum. It's actually a function of how big the weapon is physically. I read something once about orichalcum "threads" running along the edge of the blade and into the handle, where it comes in contact with your hand; that's probably how it's done, since a weapon made entirely of orichalcum alloy would be ludicrously expensive.

On a side note, I could make an argument based on that saying weapon foci don't work if you're wearing gloves O.o

as long as contact with the aura is maintained, it works.
and the aura goes some millimeters to centimeters out of your skin . .
but you still do not attack with the quiver, but with the bow, and you shoot arrows, not the quiver from the bow, so it won't work . .
you have to make the attack with the weapon focus itself, not with something else while in contact with the weapon focus . .

For the same reason that narcojet didn't get it. Stick 'n Shock is less lethal, not non-lethal. In the heat of battle it is pretty easy to kill a guy with stun overflow.

Good point

Like I said before, super high damage only matters because it fucks over the GM's single uber-badguy. If you're a GM who relies on a single enemy challenging runners though, then you're probably in trouble anyway. This is a world where people can get a hold of a hundred kilos of C-10, modify their grenade launcher to fire full auto, mount autocannons on their vans... No single enemy is safe against the kind of destruction that shadowrunners can marshal if they really want to. And if the shadowrunners have high level friends, the possibilities are endless, like gunships with burst-fire missile launchers and gatling laser cannons and other ridiculousness.

That's why way to challenge shadowrunners is with tactics. And that's why killing hands suck. Against a dangerous tactical situation, one distance-strike per turn is almost useless. If you're facing 6 commandos, taking down one per phase with a super distance strike is not going to save you from being chunked all over the wall. You need tactical weapons like suppressing fire, grenades, illusions... The only time distance strike is truly worthwhile is when you have a face-to-face, non tactical battle with just a few foes/targets that aren't super-charged on dodge or gymnastics.

hmm . . if an adept uses a cyberarm, especially in 4th ed, with an built in grapple-cannon in the form of his hand being shot out and tailing an wire behind itself to retract it . .
can you use killing hands with that arm over the length of the cable? O.o

No - the rules for melee still apply, so it is perfectly possible to split you dicepool to attack multiple enemies.

Add in surprise and you'll have people splattered all over the place with just the swing of a hand.

That's a point, but not a terribly strong one. Splitting dice is a huge disadvantage, you can only hit multiple people if each one of them is pretty weak and doesn't full defense. Even if you had 20 dice, splitting and hitting two people would be problematic if they were prime-runner level or above. And even then, two shots is not much better than one, tactics wise (especially at the short range of distance strike), so my point holds.



Surprise is insta-death in SR4. That's true whether you have distance strike, a silenced gun, or just about anything. So it doesn't really support the argument that distance strike is good, distance strike is as good as anything in surprise. In fact, it's actually inefficient because it delivers so much more power than you need. Two power points for the ability to chunk people when you surprise them is a rip-off when you could do it with a silenced gun at a fraction of the points cost.

@WeaverMount: Sorry, I should have been more clear. That's based on information in (official) novels iirc, but it makes the most sense of any theory of how weapon foci work in my opinion. I'm aware that the novels often break RAW.

In earlier editions, the inclusion of an amount of Orichalcum in the enchanting process was a requirement for the creation of Weapon Foci. Adding more tended to give better/easier results. I don't recall seeing anything specific on this requirement in SR4 though.

so, anyone mind answering me if the rocket punch with killing hands and elemental effect would be possible?
quite a way to get around the magic meters problem . .

It depends on how you see it as working. If it works like I said, with the orichalcum acting as a conductor for your aura, it should work... that would be FUN (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Mundane people can notice a concealed gun and thus won't be surprised when you draw, but can't notice the Distance Strike power.

Of course, if you can surprise your enemies and have enough DV to kill them with one net hit, it's suddently much more interesting to split your dicepool and take all of them out silently in a single action - as opposed to two at most with a silenced gun...

the grapple gun was, by the way, the closest we ever got to a ranged weapon focus . .
another quick question: electrical elemental effect, does that use your unarmed power, or a fixed number?
if fixed numer, replace by using shock-hand addon for example . . if unarmed damage, forget about shock hand *g*
oh, and it's nowhere NEAR impossible to pick up silenced gunshots, as they only substract . . what? 2 dice? from the pool . .

Also true, but of limited applicability. I think lots of people interpret surprise too liberally. It applies when the enemy is unaware of you as a threat, not just when they fail to anticipate the means of your attack. So in a combat situation where they're already trying to kill you, surprise is a non-factor. And weapon concealability doesn't matter either in a stealth situation where they don't even know you're there-- if you are concealed, then so is your weapon. And as for taking out a bunch of people silently, I think a spell is a lot more efficient. A mana ball takes down 3 people or 3 dozen people with equal ease, the only disadvantage being a few rounds spent erasing your signature and drain, which is easily compensated. Regardless, there's no denying that distance strike is a great tool for stealth assassination, but that only accounts for a small slice of shadowrunning.

I'm not really trying to say that distance strike is useless, only that a) it's much more limited than other options, and b) it's very expensive for what it does. I see it as more of a fluff choice than an actual tool for combat optimization, which is why I disagree with those who think it's cheesy. That's who I've been arguing against from the start-- if you agree with me that distance strike isn't broken, then we fundamentally agree with each other.

Shrug. I don't necessarily think the Power is cheesy. I just intensely dislike the whole idea of the Power.

Orichalcum makes crafting any foci easier, but it isn't required for any focus unless your GM deems that the formula for that focus requires it. You must use the components specified in the formula, one more reason to take arcana and make the formula yourself.