The bullet with your name on it., An idea for magical munitions. Options

[Pyritefoolsgold]

It feels like these should be available, though I could hardly see them being mass produced: Specialized bullets engraved with the name (or some other representation) of a single target. These bullets should go something like five thousand nuyen for just one of them, and for a single shot, they add the wielder's charisma bonus to both the dice pool of the shot, and the base damage of the weapon. They cannot be recovered after shot, and if someone else geeks your target before you get the chance to use it, you just bought a 5000 nuyen piece of lead. The same if you fire it at anyone besides your target.

How's it sound?

[Crakkerjakk]

No such thing as a magical missile weapon, chummer.

[HullBreach]

"I attack the darkness!"

Sorry. Had to do it.

[hyzmarca]

The closest thing to a magic bullet you can get is a bullet with an anchored spell attached. One Less [Person] anchored to a bullet would simulate the specific target damage increase. A limited version of Enhance Aim anchored to the gun would also give a dice bonus to the attack test.
Both cost some magician a good deal of karma, so their price would probably be more than 5000 nuyen.

[Ancient History]

Hey, you want a good one? Engrave the person's name on the bullet, and enchant it as a fetish for a fetish-dependent shattershield spell. Okay, so you've got your magic bullet, and your target, you pop the bullet into your sniper rifle-enchanted-as-a-combat-spell-focus, aim carefully at your target through the sniper scope from about half a kilometer away, and cast the spell while simultaneously pulling the trigger! The guy's protections go *poof* and the bullet hits the brainpan. There's a magic bullet.

[lorechaser]

Charisma bonus?

[Pyritefoolsgold]

[Narmio]

OK, AH wins at creative AND useful wetwork techniques, because his method doesn't rely on spending karma on individual damn bullets like all the others.

That said, it's only going to be about one box of damage more than you'd get by just firing APDS out of that rifle.

[Pyritefoolsgold]

The idea is that a bullet with your name on it should be really rare, and it should be genuinely frightening to know that one exists. I think it should be something used only by assassins and people out for revenge. NOT standard shadowrunner gear, but something extra.

[Crakkerjakk]

mmm.. thats all you man. Too uber for me, even as a plot device. A little too hong kong action movie for me.

[fistandantilus4....]

Maybe make the bullet an achored focus for a "slay [u]persons name[u/]" spell, then have the engraving be a part of the enchating process

[Zeitgeist]

I can see a lot of stuff going into one of these bullets, although I keep on seeing that scene in Constantine where they're making the Holy Shotgun Shells (cousin of the Holy Hand Grenade). Parts of the bullet might be composed of orichalum and other telesma, personal links to the target (blood, hair, tears, dead skin), and frankly the ritual would have to be pretty impressive. You're imbuing a bullet with the magical force of your hatred towards the target. I'd say that you couldn't even outsource the manufacturing of said bullet. The hate has to be your own for it to work. Now if the target has pissed a mage off as thoroughly as you (which presents a whole slew of other methods of kill-iness), you might be able to get him to craft said rounds.

And on a similar note, since reading about all the dual-natured plant life and algie and such, I just don't understand why they can't treat or make a bullet with dual-natured microbes (like a small vial of them in the center of the slug) to make anti-spirit rounds. Yeah, they're just amoebas and such, but anything can be lethal if its going fast enough.

[Crakkerjakk]

Perhaps it's because the astral plane doesn't operate with the same laws as the physical laws? Not being snarky, just positing a possibility. From what I've read, on the astral you can hurt something by either attacking it with your astral form or casting a spell. Who says small living things on the astral passing through other living things on the astral hurts them? do astral bodies take falling damage?

I don't really know the answers to these questions, but I think they may help answer the astrally aware bullet idea.

[Thane36425]

I think in SR3 they mentioned creating items like potions and such. These were anchored spells, I think, but there was a side effect to them. That was that when the spell was triggered, the creator of the device would have to resist drain as if they had just cast the spell. So technically you might be able to create such a bullet, but why when it would be just as easy to cast the spell yourself? You could give it to someone else to use and then put your life on hold waiting for the drain to kick in when it is used. That could be a reawlly unpleasant thing to have happen in the middle of a run.

To create a spell that would affect a certain person, you would have to develop and learn that particular spell, which would be a high karma cost to kill one person, since it wouldn't work on anyone else. You would also have to use that single-person affecting spell in oreder to create the special bullet being discussed here, again meaning a heavy karma cost just to kill one person.

[Pyritefoolsgold]

[Kyoto Kid]

...C.M v Weber wrote the rules for this in 1821.

They need to be specially cast on a full eclipse of the moon in an old grotto by the henchman of a demon.

The price: your soul and the life of your beloved.

[apollo124]

[TBRMInsanity]

If such bullet exists I would say it would be a anchored spell to a bullet and it would be the spell that hits the target not the bullet.

[Zeitgeist]

On the anti-spirit rounds: It was more of a though experiment than anything else. I just got the idea when I saw the rules for dual-natured, living barriers in Street Magic and went "Hey...if iddy-biddy algie can STOP an astral form, then why can't it HURT said astral form." I mean, adepts with bow foci need love too, right?

On the Magic Bullet: Considering the crap that one would need to go through to put a spell on a bullet, its kind of redundant. I totaly understand the whole hardcore symbolic meaning behinde it (that's a LOT of hate!), but regular bullets kill just as well as named bullets, and if you're going to be dumping that much karma into a single round, you could just summon a high-force spirit to gank the mofo if you're unwilling to corner him and cast toxic wave on him a few times. And just imagine if you missed your shot! And for that matter, what if they were behinde a mana barrier?

[Zolhex]

I'm not really afraid of a magic bullet with my name on it as in theory only one should be allowed to exsist at a time my fear comes from all the other bullets that say occupant lol.

[TheOOB]

In the event that you did create magical ammunition, it would stand to reason that arrows would be far more common then bullets. Bullets (especially 2070 caseless rounds) are pretty advanced pieces of tech and thus would be a pain in the butt to enchant. An arrow, on the other hand, is about as simple as a plain knife.

[Narmio]

Heh. I'm with Casazil. The most dangerous engraved appellation on a bullet is 'To whom it may concern...'

[Kyoto Kid]

...magic bullets, Pah!

I'd be more concerned about a genetic sensing programme on a "smart" projectile.

[2bit]

I just bought Tom Selleck's poop off Ebay. How much do you want for it, KK?