So in my ongoing game, one of my PCs has a vehicle with an armor value of 9, a Lone Star Black Mariah. At first I thought nothing of it, but now that we've played a few sessions, my problem with it is this: To damage it, I need an attack with a power of 20, which more or less nothing has, and even then it would get staged down to a power of 1. And if I use AV rockets and missles, which are 16D, the van gets hit for 12D damage, which is more or less guaranteed to destroy it. Essentially, using the range of weaponry available to me in the books I have, my options are doing either nothing to the vehicle, or destroying it outright. The last couple missions, they just kind of drove around in circles and he either fired the turreted LMG or ran people over, laughing from inside at all the bullets and whatnot pinging off.

Pretty much the only way I've been able to deal with it is by coming up with plot reasons to deprive him of the use of it, which as a GM I hate doing, so suggestions would be appreciated.

Magic, hacking, APDS rounds from a really big gun, just to name a few. The GM shouldn't be afraid to take toys away from the players when the players take excessive advantage of such toys and end up ruining the game. Send them on a run where they're expected, and have a sniper with a pimped out rifle and APDS rounds tear through their armor, teach them that their toy isn't so impenetrable (which goes to next GM note, never be afraid to fudge the numbers in favor of the story).

DURF. This post is about 3E. I get that now. Disregard.

Being obvious like that will not win the GM any friends, you need to be subtle.

Send them on a few runs where their vehicle cannot go (such as the sewers), simply limit the use of the vehicle and you will find you don't need to worry about it too much.

My suggestions are to either get more granular with how things like vehicle armor work, or just have someone blow it up with an AVR or a magnetic mine slapped on from a motorcycle or similar. Like this
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/eu...ack-559917.html or this http://articles.cnn.com/2003-08-27/world/r...ani?_s=PM:WORLD

He said that's the only option he's used until now, and that he doesn't like it. I'm not saying destroy the vehicle, but punch a few holes in it to make them reconsider relying on it too much. For example, have a run where the Johnson says that he wants them to steal some weapon specs from an Ares facility. In reality, it's a set up as a PR move to show how much better Knight Errant is than Lone Star at dealing with runners (or vice versa if you're playing with the new fluff that KE took over as the dominant security force in Seattle). It's the kind of shit that does sometimes happen to runners, and it has a well armed force ready and waiting for the team.

I'll have to disagree somewhat. To put it in a slightly hyperbolic way: It doesn't seem to me that turning the game into a risk-free shooting gallery for the PCs is the OP's concept of having fun as the GM. Maybe the OP and the players have a different view of SR (subtle black ops vs. pink mohawk gunslinging). IMHO that should be addressed OOC before continuing the game.

Honestly, if the PCs drive amok, machine-gunning people right and left, they'll have to face the fact that the authorities can and will bring out their big guns.

If you don't want to escalate to that level: Target parts of the vehicle with called shots. The NPCs could aim for the tires to immobilize the vehicle, for sensors to blind the driver or for the turret to keep him from shooting.

If you really want fudge a cripleing damage but let them limp away and hae to shell out to fix it up as well. If they complain about that ask if they'd rather you just blow it up with them in it? Sure it's not too nice butif its runin the game that much maybe it should be done if they don't get subtler hits. If its armoured so its nodamge or dead then they should know its like that and if they bring it out and the law get wind they'll be hit with something made to destroy it.

I'm not a sr3 player but do you have road spikes in sr3 if so something to shread the tiers might be a good alterative.

Have a spirit manifest itself inside the vehicle or use the accident power.

Have fun!

Vehicle armour - one of THE main drawbacks of SR3. We had a group with the same problem - and in our case, it was the riggers totally pimped out van that was worth 750000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

I also think you might be misreading the rule about doubling the armour, BUT it's a LONG time ago that I looked into these things. Was it really immune to base power AFTER doubling the armour? Not before?

My suggestions:

a) House-rule it. Two ways:
Make it so that effective power counts not base power. That way you can hurt him, but probably not destroy him, with a HMG etc.
OR make it so that AV rounds do NOT halve vehicle armour, rather they just avoid the doubling. And then hit him with whatever you feel like.

b) Use a mediocre shooter using a heavy pistol with AV ammunition. Yes, not a big gun, a heavy pistol. He'll be hit with 9M or 9S, his armour will be halved to four, and he'll just have to soak 5M or S with his body. Now even world-mechanic wise this makes sense - when using AV rounds, you don't need a big gun, and a HPist is pretty good on a damage/shot basis. I've momentarily forgotten whether the reduction of damage for not using a really big gun still applies - it does make sense, and you could plink up his damage in 1 box or 3 box intervals in this manner. Just make sure the shooter gets away clean and doesn't drop his AV ammo (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) . An alternative is using a sport rifle with AV. A little more damage, potentially a little less power, and it doesn't look so weird.

The story element to actually make this moderately exciting: Have a squad of professionals engage the team. Give them automatic weapons, something you wouldn't want to use AV rounds in because they are so bloody expensive. Then when they fire at the car and find out it's armoured, have them switch weapons to their HPistols, maybe even reloading them to let the PCs see that something is coming. If they don't take the cue, shoot the car up a bit. If you want to reduce the impact, give the hostiles lower pistols skill than their other weapon skills, so that you don't destroy it outright by chance, in the off case that the car can't get two hits on the soak test.

c) Use the SUPER-cheese method: Have occupants of the car be hit by blind fire from the outside, or even through the windshield. Every time one of them is hit, the car takes light damage. Works on everything, even MBTs (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) .

d) Have the bad guys simply run away. When they can't damage the car, have them withdraw. Of course, if the bad guys are defending an objective, then you need to find something for them to do - barring using options a) to c).

Yes, spike strips in Rigger 3. They shred the tires, dealing damage, and force a crash test.



By SR3 RAW (without AV ammo) the power of a weapon is halved against vehicles and damage level reduced by one. If the reduced power doesn't exceed the armor rating there's no damage. So yes, vehicles are immune against weapons whose power doesn't exceed the doubled armor rating (as long as the ammo isn't anti-vehicular).

The idea of using a sports rifle with AV ammo seems good to me (Or maybe a shotgun). For more "punch" you could use a sniper rifle with AV ammo.

(I know that they are allowed by RAW, but honestly, anti-vehicular handgun rounds seem rather weird to me.)

EDIT: double post.

Ok, thanks for clearing that up.

As to AV handgun rounds - weird, certainly. But SR3 does NOT have weapon rules even faintly aligned with real life, so it doesn't really matter. It's a game mechanic, nothing else. It saves you the trouble of having the commando team attacking your runners packing sport rifles - which looks a bit weird, now, doesn't it? Shotguns are an option, I guess, there are enough non-civvy shotguns. When the enemies switch to shotguns it should still make the runners nervous (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) .

However, I still think a house-rule is in order, here. This all-or-nothing approach to vehicle penetration might be pretty realistic, but it makes for a poor gaming experience.

Shotguns are ideal in sr because you're very flexible with your ammo-load. I believe the Remington 990 write-up in Fields of Fire specifically mentions something like that. So having a FRT or CorpSec with shotguns switch to AV-shells makes sense after their cheap-ass ammo bounces.

-EDIT-
But only provide your goons with 2-4 AV rounds. These fraggers are expensive! (and don't forget to use aim actions too).

Heavy armor is a major pain on the suspension.

"Armor-Piercing Potholes" is one way to get at something. All those high-speed chases in the Barrens will really do a number on a car.

Here's a cheap and effective way to teach the players the errors of their way if they find running over pdestrians to be funny :

have one pedestrian do something to piss the PCs off - like srpaying he windshield with buckshot. Sure it won't ge through, but the windshield will get nicely pitted - and an armored windshiled is expensive to fix.

IF they just shoot him to shreds with a burst, make sure the extra bullets do something bad (innocent bystanders, hitting somehting explosive, whatever... You know your players so pick something they won't like)

If they decide to run the guard over, have him flee into a suitably flimsy building - a shop with a glass front where he might get to the roof or somehting like that

Now if they follow though, let them find the hard way that a shop's floor isn't built to take an armored van on the move and drop them into the basement... They can get out on foot, but certainly not with the van.

If they keep doing that sort of crap, turn on the heat along with the increasing bodycount they'll score : put bounties on them, have the cops pull out the big toys to get rid of them.

One neat toy you can pull out is Runaway's air-cushion mines. The players can shoot them before they reach them, and you can taylor the damage to something that will hurt the van without too much damage to the characters.

You can give some grunts a an underbarrel grenade launcher with a few reloads of anti-vehicule grenades. I don't know if they're available in SR3, but they should ot the trick of damaging the van rather than the characters.

Alright, all good suggestions. I made the mistake of not looking closely enough at the ammunition tables, and didn't know that AV ammo was a thing. I thought there were only a few AV rockets and missiles and whatnot, so that should make my job a little easier, even though it's so prohibitively expensive that only higher-tier threats would have it.

Well, YES, it's expensive (if you really want to have it, using SR3 availability/street index rules, 1000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) a pop, IIRC), but even so, if a Gang boss or enforcer just had two or three shots, he could make those count.

That's true. And they've torqued off both the Red Hot Nukes and the Halloweeners, so I could plan some comeuppance next time they try to roll into the Barrens.

I'd suggest a house rule: APDS= AV. Why FASA didn't do this to start with I have no idea, seeing how Armor Piercing, Discarding Sabot rounds were developed specifically to punch through heavy armor. APDS in any caliber below .50 equivalent ought to be hard to get, but someone probably makes it.

Yep that is a great idea I totally agree.

An HMG with AV rounds is good middle of the road. Its base damage is 10S, but since its a machine gun you can pump up the power with auto-fire to a good midrange target number.

That said vehicles are an area of the rules that plays at extremes. 9 points of armor is nearly as much as a citymaster. AV rounds are expensive though, and really only available to heavy hitting security. if the players get there hands on some, though, they will definitely be on a power trip, able to take out any vehicle opposition.

The other counter to super-tanks of death is, well, terrain.

There's a reason most corp facilities have pretty darn hefty vehicle barriers.

I remember an experimental system in real life where they could blast pressurized air up through the soil that a vehicle was driving over, the ground changed in a second from solid to almost air, dropping the test car into a hole and partly burying it.




-k

Um, the red hot nukes are not going to use a gun loaded with anti vehicle rounds, they are going to transform his armored car (and him) into a large collection of burning wreckage with one day when he turns the key. Don't screw with a gang full of explosives experts, it's really likely to not end well.

And if they're watching their ride like paranoïds, there's alway the simple solution of taking a few potshots with a a riffle to piss them off and lead them straight into and IED ambush... An explosive-laced roadblock with gangers scattering like scared rabbits (to get out of the explosion radius...) would work like a charm. They'll feel empowered and will probably plow right into the roadblock ro hunt the 'rabbits'. Boom.

Basically offer a rope and let them hang themselves with it.