Time for the Dude where's my van Episode. Have the Van Stolen by Go Gangers. Then have them chase it all over the city as the gangers use it to perpetrate all kinds of silly crimes. (Holding a Candy Store, jacking a shipment of jock straps). Have it plastered all over the front page. Then have them fight the van to get it back. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
Just my 2 Cents.

Quite frankly, all those "Screw them over royally" suggestions aren't helping the OP in the least. He specifically said he did NOT want to destroy their ride. He wanted to hurt it, so that the PCs can't go on a rampage with it, but still keep it.

Concerning other suggestions:

Car bombs: There is no way to make an AV bomb by the rules, IIRC. (And I have a lot of reason to remember because we had a BIG fight with one of our GMs once who wouldn't let us make a hollow charge). Normal bombs will have to be VERY big to hurt this car, about 20D, as correctly specified by the OP. That's already a fairly large lump of explosives - and possibly MORE expensive than the odd AV round. Of course, if they can be lured into a tight corridor with solid enough walls to reflect the blast, then a much smaller charge could be used for similar effect. The good thing about this: Even a 30D bomb will only get the vehicle to S damage, which means the PCs will be able to limp home and then spend a metric crapton of money to get their ride repaired.

A HMG with AV rounds is a total waste of money. You don't want to shoot them on full-auto, especially if you bought them illegally. The best period AV gun for civillian armoured vehicles is a sniper rifle. However, that is likely to kill the vehicle. So we come back to the shotguns, sport rifles or Hpistols.

Alternatively he could mirror his players. They have a turreted LMG? Put some additional armor on a Nissan Patrol or one of those Lone Star patrol cars or take a GMC Bulldog security version and have the LEO's hide inside their vehicles (while they call in reinforcements, drones, projecting mages, air support).

Lets see how long it takes the players to get the hint (or waste their ammo, at which point they're going to loose economics wise)

Forgot this earlier: I don't think - names aside - it makes sense to do this. Basically, a handgun fire AV round doesn't really exist, so there is no reason to assume they use APDS technology. While it certainly doesn't make sense to use an APDS as an anti-personel round, penetrating soft and hard armour are very different things. SR uses bullshit tech all the time, so there is no reason why there shouldn't be two mechanically different rounds.

What I had previously considered doing is granting APDS arounds full effectiness against the unmodified vehicle armour value, but still decreasing damage by one step.

So you would have:
Normal: half power vs armour, no penetration if half power <= armour, damage -1
APDS: full power, no penetration if power <= armour, damage -1
AV: full power vs half armour

However, even in that line the half armour seems excessive for AV rounds. There should really be a further devision into man-portable guns and really big guns, but AFAIK there is no division like that.
So what I would divide that up into is:

Man-portable AV rounds: full power vs armour, no hardness, damage -1 (because they are still small)
Assault guns, anti-tank rockets, AV-RPGs, MBT guns, etc: full power vs half armour, full damage

That makes normal AV rounds a lot weaker, so maybe tweaking down the cost a bit is in order, especially as you can get some of the basic AV rockets fairly cheaply already.




Didn't the OP say his PCs HAD a cop car, a Lone Star Black Mariah? You can most certainly make that mirror match, except it doesn't lead anywhere at all. I would also assume his players aren't idiots, they should just withdraw, or find some other way to tackle the vehicle threat.

What's that saying again? Whatever players use, a GM can use too? The purpose is not to destroy the player van, but provide a clear signal not to abuse such tech in an obvious manner.

1) Threaten it. Send them into the Red Hot Nukes' zone. Explosions go off everywhere. The party recognizes bringing the van in risks the van. The target drives his moped over a rickety bridge over a gap.

2) Attack specific abilities. Peppering the windshield with buckshot (or just spraypaint) is a great example. Using magic, you can jam up the guns.

3) Deny it. This is a VAN. It's not a small vehicle. If someone runs into a building, or just through an alleyway or past those anti-vehicle posts, the van becomes quickly useless.

4) Disable it. Set up a situation where the van flips over. Laughs for all. It's heavy, remember that. Watch it drive through the mud.

5) Obsolete it. The target drives faster, flies, is in the matrix, etc. The van just isn't applicable.

The GM should always be afraid to take toys away from the players. The GM holds all the cards; as Voorhees correctly notes the problem is with him, and he's doing the right thing by trying to correct it instead of just resorting to orbital cows.

This goes double for the "fudge the numbers" point—by doing that you destroy the credibility of the game entirely, since you already control almost everything and now you're cheating on the last thing the players can rely on.


Is this a problem? What have your runs been like? As nezumi points out, a van is fairly restricted in the places it can go; unless your runs all happen outdoors or within line of fire of the outdoors, the van isn't going to be completing runs on its own.

Is the player a Rigger?

Another question is whether the player is aware of the vulnerability of his van—if the player is unaware of the AV rules, you've got a problem, but if the player knows the risk all you need is the possibility of a second-line response with AV weapons. Riggermobiles are supposed to be moving fortresses, but you can't linger once you've engaged because it just takes one goon to go smash the "break in case of Riggermobile" glass and pull out a Great Dragon ATGM. As noted, though, the issue is that if the player doesn't understand this you end up right back at the "destroy his toy out of nowhere" plan after a bit of shooting. If you think this is the case maybe I'll brainstorm some ways to reinforce the idea.

The most important rule I took out of studying improvisation is to avoid saying "no" to a scenario—never take a line of exploration and simply shut it down. Your job as GM is to keep things fun and interesting, which means work needs to go into how you say "yes", but no one said GMing was easy.

~J

Have a guy with bad dicepool pull out an AV rocket launcher and shoot at the vehicle.
He'll almost guaranteed miss, but the AV rocket will still explode. Maybe have it rock the van and do some damage. Maybe a piece of shrapnel from the rocket rips through the armor of the vehicle.

Maybe have a go-gang shoot a rocket launcher at the Runners, and miss and blow up a Lone Star armored pursuit vehicle. Showing them that.. their van is not necessarily safe.

+1

Its fine for the player to have the equivalent of an APC as get away vehicle, until they decide to make use of it as a mobile attack platform. If the player wants to cash in that chip, let them run roughshod over the opposition until the sec forces have time to call in reinforcements, at which point the rockets, anti-material rifles, and AV rounds come into play and make the player wish he could have insured his ride. Smart riggers just get in, get their comrades out, and try to avoid combat.

Part of learning to run games for riggers is to learn how vehicle combat is like normal combat on steroids. The equipment is bigger and more punishing, and it usually ends in a big mess. Riggers also have gads of control pool dice. Try to keep rigger fights short and sweet unless the other players all have a role. You might for example allow PCs with datajacks to jack into a vehicle with the rigger to man the Sensors/ECM, or take control of a turret so the rigger can do the driving.

And don't worry about the cost of ammo or weapons for the opposition, just try to keep it logical. You average sprawl gang would never be able to pierce that black mariah's armor, but if the PCs ended up in a run against Miitsuhama, the onsite security chief doesn't want to start accounting for bullets when the PCs are making off with a corp scientist worth millions in investment. I can see the conversation now ...

"pray tell, Major, why did you not respond to the extraction of Dr Roboto with emergency security protocol munitions?"

"Um, I got this months budget and, MAN have you seen the price tag on those things? It was AV rounds and great dragons, or we keep the cafeteria plan ..."

There's also one thing to keep in mind : even if the van takes no damage from the bullets, it will still end up with chipped paint and pockmarked windows. A fresh coat of paint isn't too expensive, but replacing the armored glass is going to cost a bundle.

If the PCs can't (or don't want) fork the bill, driving a vehicule that even a one-eyed cop can say is armored and has been involved in at least one firefight will raise a lot of eyebrows and inconvenient questions. And whoever checks up that vehicule will probably make sure he's got some heavy backup ready to show up when he comes to check the papers.

I'll concur with the need for regular maintenance.

But I don't think an armored vehicle will necessarily raise that many eyebrows (as long as it isn't visibly armed). After all the streets of the 6th world are quite a bit more dangerous than today. I guess many delivery services will operate armored vans which may regularly get bullet marks from the usual rush hour fire fight. I'd also expect most luxury cars to have some level of armor.

SR3 dose have go-gangs hiting stuff on the freeway with air suport.

From the opening post, it is armed (a turret-mounted machinegun). It's also, at least when it left the factory to it's first owner, a Lone Star paddy wagon (prisoners transport). Which means the thing will stand out, especially if it no longer has it's Lone Star paint scheme.
Of course, if the PCs stick to the barrens and other crappy security areas, the bullet marks won't stand out that much (though the machingun might). But if they venture into some decently secured zone they will definitively attract the cop's attention. Especially if it has been stolen, since these vehicules are rather rare out of law enforcement services of one stripe or another.

It's Availability 6/6 days, which is high for a van but not even into "uncommon" let alone rare.

~J

Yes, this is a good post. Much better than all the posts that want to make things un-fun for the players. So... the problem remains that they might NOT be aware of the vehicle rules. In which case you have to teach them - in a fun way, because it's a game.

But really, this is an old problem. You can't take away a player's toys or else he'll be pissed. you also can't just let him run wild with them. SR3 - in some places - strikes a very poor balance for this question. (But then most gear-heavy games do. It's the same with D&D and Rust monsters or Bebiliths. Falling behind in gear is MUCH MUCH worse than falling behind in experience or karma (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ).

I've thought that one of the problems lie in the comparative crappiness of un-optimised gear. You get standard gear, it's crap. You spend a bucketload of cash on it, it's suddenly really good, but still has that ONE glaring weakness, that now the GM cannot employ anymore, because basically the character revolves around that piece of gear. And as a player I would then just say... "sure, you've just blown up my van that's worth three quarters of my starting cash, I'll, umm... I'll make a new character, because even the 20 karma I've accumulated so far won't make up for that loss."
And all because it's a game, it's supposed to FEEL like it's realistic (in a sense), but not BE realistic, in that we can basically get royally screwed at every corner. We just want to ALMOST get royally screwed...

Although it certainly sounds distinctive. Perhaps the Distinctive Edge flaw for vehicles?

What matters more is the legality code. Its quite possible that junked Mariah's have been salvaged by people in the rats nest or some such and brought back into working order, which could explain the relatively moderate Availability number. Even Lonestar probably sufferes from bouts of needless corporate waste, causing them to dump relatively good condition chassis because they don't have room in their garage.

But its the legality code that will determine how likely a runner is going to be pulled over (although an obvious LMG pintel mount is going to be more of an issue than even that).

Edit - Aaaaaaaand rigger 3 doesn't list the legality. Awesome. Is there a general rule for vehicle legality codes somewhere?

Black Mariah availability is 12/12... in fact its listed in the errata for rigger 3

Okay, I was wondering about the huge Avail jump from 3E to 4E.

It's 18R in the SR4A book. Getting bumped up from 12 in 3E makes a little more sense.




-k

That's what I get for not digging up my copy of R3R.

~J