Stun rounds vs vehicles Options

[Tanka]

So... How 'bout them stun rounds versus vehicles?

By the by, I stand by what I said. However, it isn't the topic at hand, and it's hardly related to Shadowrun. Best we close up this portion before an admin comes and locks it up.

[Kagetenshi]

I'd personally defend all of that as Shadowrun-related, for exactly the reason it came up. Someone made an assertion about the abilities of a weapon in showing that another weapon should have its abilities altered, and another person challenged that first assertion. That argument must be resolved to continue or end that particular line of argument.

~J

[Shadow]

I understand you standing by what You said Tanka, and I don't want you to feel I was personally attacking you. One of my pet peeves is the myth that the "Samurai" sword is all powerful, when in fact it wasn't. My aim was to spread some educational-love and enlighten a few souls.

Truth be told I think they look cool as hell. My favorite tv show right now is

Samurai Jack.

Him and his magic sword so rock.

This post has been edited by Shadow: Dec 5 2003, 03:13 AM

[Austere Emancipa...]

Stun rounds vs Vehicles was pretty much wrapped up by Hero:
"I say use common sense, and common sense says gel rounds wont do much besides break glass, dent, and rip off curtain exterior attachments (mirrors, and antenna if lucky). A gel round could probably puncher the radiator, but the gel round has to be either a luck hit or aimed at that location, but either way the gel round wont do much other then that."

And just to break the windshield, the gel round would have to be fired from a seriously powerful rifle at a good angle -- just firing it at the car straight from the front just might cause windshield to crack, but it wouldn't break through. From a pistol, gel rounds would be limited to breaking off the mentioned antennae and possibly mirrors, because I refuse to believe that a pistol gel round would break something as thick as a car window.

And canon supports this, as has been mentioned. By canon, Stun attacks would never cause any Damage to a vehicle.

[Fortune]

[Tanka]

I know it wasn't a personal attack, and that katanas are not all powerful. However, IMO, they are better than most other swords.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[moosegod]

But small ones can suffer from knockback, right?

[TinkerGnome]

The katana vs. the sledgehammer. There are two cases:

Katana is used to stab. Katana is better at damaging a vehicle than the sledgehammer (particularly if it is stabbed into the engine compartment or anything with a fuel purpose).

Katana is used to hack. Sledgehammer wins. I'd wager to say (without going out and trying it) that a sledgehammer blow will be more dangerous to a vehicle (which is inside a metal or plastic shell) than a slash from a sword. There's simply a better ratio of force to area with the hammer (which probably has more force in the first place).

[Raskolnikov]

This is a simple matter, and I cannot believe you have been arguing for 8 pages about it.

Vehicles do not take stun damage. Stun damage done to a vehicle is not taken by the vehicle. This isn't open to syntax arguement. If you think it is, you're trying to be clever, but it's not working out terribly well for you.

There is a book-written way for a stun weapon to damage a vehicle. An attacker can declare to be attempting physical damage with a stun weapon (this is apart from the vicious blow manuvuer) and the attack is carried out as normal, but the power is halved. Additionally, since it is not an anti-vehicluar weapon, the damage code of the attack is reduced by one. Unfortunately for some, this only applies to melee weapons. Gel rounds cannot be made to inflict physcial damage by the attacking character, thus they cannot hurt a vehicle outside of a GM ruling (shooting at a window for instance, a situation where a character makes a called shot to target a subtarget and the GM applies a special effect).

So technically, by canon, yes, club-master Bob can indeed destroy a family sedan with a few wacks of his baseball bat which is a shame, but there you go. At least average Joe won't be able to do it, and gunmaster Frank is just out of luck.

Unrelated to this thread, katana were carried so the edge pointed the ground for two reasons. First, if it was carried the other way, when drawn the blade would be pointing at whoever was in front of you, thus turning the blade up was considered the ready position and you generally wouldn't want to walk around like that. Secondly, and more important, it was turned down to prevent the edge from touching the sheath along the length and jostling while walking, riding, etc, thus dulling it.

[Tanka]

Rask: Can you provide the page number saying where a Physical instead of Stun is done at half power? I know it's in FoF, but that's 2nd, and thus is not Canon any longer.

[Raptor1033]

found one place that sells what appears to be quality katanas here check it out if ya want

[Moonstone Spider]

As a jeweler by trade I have some passing familiarity with pattern-welded metal, although I've worked considerably more with Mokume Gane (Folded Precious Metal) than Damascus or Toledo Steel.

My family has a genuine Japenese Katana which my grandfather took off an officer during WW2 after shooting him (What can I say? Looting the bodies is a time honored tradition in most militaries). While it may or may not be on par with "magical" weapons, it most definetly cannot chop through an engine block or even a piece of rebar. I've tried.

Incidentally a few commentaries about the folding, folding too many times will actively screw up your metal, with each folding you lose some carbon into the air and your steel grows less rich. Japanese steel started with insanely high carbon levels in the 3-4% area and grew less rich with each folding until they reached a reasonable level towards the end, which was typically 10-20 folds. If you folded a sword 10,000 times you'd either have to start out folding near-pure graphite with some slight iron impurities (Which would, as mentioned, be the size of a house) or else wind up with pure iron which would be so soft from overworking Average Joe could bend it into a pretzel with his bare hands.

Lastly you cannot cheat mother nature. Katanas keep their edge wonderfully because their steel is rich with carbon and thus harder than other steels. This makes them snap rather easily. Katanas are great at cutting flesh due to the curve of the blade and micro-serration (Although even that is only possible in ladder-pattern welded steel, just any damascus doesn't do that.). This makes Katanas utterly suck against any kind of serious armor. Everything in sword making is a trade-off, make it great at one thing and you give up something else.

[Kagetenshi]

Hard on the edge, soft in the core. It's amazing work, but far from supernatural. I do believe they still haven't figured out exactly what impurities give the slightly bluish sheen on old katana, though.

~J

Edit: and some swordsmiths can do insane things like tell the carbon content of metal to within about .1% just by looking at it. That's the crazy part, not the sword itself.

[Lindt]

Wow... :noflame: What did I start? Now, after seeing a demo where someone peirced a sheet of 3/16" alum. sheathing with a wakasachi with what looked like very little effort, I MAY be convinced that a sword will do more effective damage to a car then a sledge hammer.
However, this was suposed to be stun vs vehicles, not the melee vs vehicles that Im adressing. Synopsys, stun should be able to hurt non-armored cars. But not much, and not without a pretty outstanding shot. Melee wepons, should be able to hurt non-armored cars, but again, not much.
But rember, 10 guys doing light damage can trash stuff.

[Hero]

Well put Moonstone Spider, I hope this stems all those Katana myths and what not. I believed some of those myths, but after reading that, I think I just threw those out the proverbial window.