Deep weed smoke grenades/mortars, The 4th ed mages friend? Options

[masterofm]

Ok well I was doing some thinking and since you can't actually nail someone on the astral unless the creature is dual natured, or is astrally perceiving then wouldn't a way to totally bone adepts is to hit them with a deep weed smoke grenade/mortar? One would think these types of grenades/mortars would be hot items for a mage to get their hands on. It destroys someone's perception pool, and allows spirits and mages to just wail on them from a distance. That or quickly swoop in and out, since astral movement is insane.

Everyone starts tripping, and are now totally screwed. Now besides hitting someone with a deep weed grenade wouldn't it also remove bonuses like from a smart link, and some vision mods? Are hearing mods still effective? It just makes me cringe, because it would probably make anything a mundane would normally do that much harder. Also deep weed grenades + drones at that point would also = win. So.... no astral perception skill and your defaulting on what? Yeah that roto drone eats you alive.... oh yeah and good luck trying to dodge.

[Daier Mune]

deepweed only forces Awakened characters to astrally percieve. i think mundanes would only gain the +1 Will bonus.

[WeaverMount]

First deep weed will do nothing to a drone, second if you can gas your target they are already boned.

[masterofm]

Deep weed grenades + drones. Not using them on drones. *edit* ok well then it's probably good against quite a few awakened characters then *edit*

[CircuitBoyBlue]

The problem is, rules-wise, that it would give everyone extra willpower, which is used to resist mana spells, which are what you'll be hitting someone with on the astral (which is the whole point of forcing them to go astral, after all).

The other problem is that deep weed probably isn't quick-burning enough to work in a rapid-delivery manner like that, nor is it likely to produce enough smoke to be useful. Think about how much tobacco would have to be consumed to fill a room with enough smoke to provide visibility modifiers.

[masterofm]

It would be nice to have a contact drug that forces people to perceive astrally. I guess it would make an interesting run, and you gotta know that people are working on it..... ah well...

[Blade]

If you can hit them with a deep weed smoke grenade/mortar shell then you can hit them with frag/incendiary/HE/Stun/Gas grenades which should do the trick if all you want is to kill/stun/drug them

[shuya]

The other problem is that deep weed probably isn't quick-burning enough to work in a rapid-delivery manner like that, nor is it likely to produce enough smoke to be useful. Think about how much tobacco would have to be consumed to fill a room with enough smoke to provide visibility modifiers.

not to mention it's ludicrous street price of 400 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) a dose. you'd need to buy tons to fill even a small area with smoke thick enough. it actually makes me wonder if that +1 will is even worth it for a character who can already astrally perceive. why not just drop a little bit of tin on a dime bag of the non-awakened stuff and astrally perceive as normal (IMG:style_emoticons/default/twirl.gif)

you could call the grenades "hot boxers" though, i guess. that almost makes it worth it

[masterofm]

Hey I want my baked bomb so lay off me! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

I want to throw a bomb that gets everyone baked and then mow them down.... is that too much to ask in Shadowrun??? Huh? HUH?????!!!!111!!!!one11!

[Heath Robinson]

It would be nice to have a contact drug that forces people to perceive astrally.

That, my friend, is what Chemistry and DMSO are for.

[Larme]

Per RAW, you can put one dose of any chemical into a grenade. And I guess it's not that hard to imagine some kind of rapid, microefficient electrocombustion that would generate tons of smoke... I wouldn't allow it as GM though, the idea that one whiff of a smoked drug diffused through a large space of open air can make someone suffer its full effects, a la using a weed bomb on the police in a stupid stoner movie, is bullshit.

[Cheops]

not to mention it's ludicrous street price of 400 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) a dose. you'd need to buy tons to fill even a small area with smoke thick enough. it actually makes me wonder if that +1 will is even worth it for a character who can already astrally perceive. why not just drop a little bit of tin on a dime bag of the non-awakened stuff and astrally perceive as normal (IMG:style_emoticons/default/twirl.gif)

you could call the grenades "hot boxers" though, i guess. that almost makes it worth it

You guys have obviously never smoke the ganja or lived under guys that smoked a lot of it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Several months ago I was having trouble sleeping and I was very cranky and irritable all the time. Then I opened my windows and suddenly I felt much better and had no trouble sleeping. It was because my upstairs neighbors were smoking so much weed that the smoke was filling my room and affecting me.

Weed does produce a lot of very heavy smoke. I'd say that if you put it in an airburst grenade/mortar that one dose should be enough to fill a small room (basically like hotboxing).

[Larme]

I lived with pot smoking roomates for a while, though I never felt it. Those guys above you must have be REALLY going nuts with it.

It's just a matter of chemistry though. Drugs have a varying therapeutic effect depending on the concentration in your body, usually measured in milligrams per kilogram. That concentration is going to be related to the concentration in the air. If you're in a room with little circulation and the concentration in the air gets slowly higher and higher, you can bet that eventually the concentration inside of you will be great enough that pretty soon you are high as well. But if you set off a bomb outdoors, the smoke dissipates very quickly using a process known as molecular diffusion. Smoke goes from areas of high concentrations of smoke (i.e. the bomb) to areas of low concentation (i.e. everywhere else) rapidly.

I think it would be very difficult to have a grenade that would produce enough pot smoke quickly enough to actually make anyone high before the smoke diffused. It produces a lot of heavy smoke, but it's nothing like a tear gas grenade or smoke grenade, which goes from nothing to blinding/choking you in almost no time. Smoke grenades accomplish it with a chemical reaction, and gas grenades (AFAIK) have the gas compressed under pressure and release it all very quickly. Combustion of pot is a very slow, lethargic chemical reaction compared to the reaction that happens in a smoke grenade or the release of compressed, pressurized gas. There's probably no way it can be realistically fast enough to comprise a grenade. You could invent some mega smoke maker technology to apply to Shadowrun, but looking at it from a modern point of view, it looks impossible.

[Fix-it]

I think this whole concept is a criminal waste of weed.

[Screamin Demon]

Yeah, I smoke weed pretty much all the time, and I agree. Just being in a room full of pot smoke takes a long time and zero ventilation to have much of an effect past a mild buz. Bong rips hit you pretty quickly pretty hard because you are gasping a quick lungful of pure thick smoke. If deep weed follows anything like pakalolo physics a ganja grenade would not be feasible.

However, the potency of sativa is getting stronger all the time as the plants are bred for that exclusive purpose. I could see with 70 years of genetic research any pot-like plant could be bred and chemically purified (snorting cocaine VS. chewing on a Coca leaf) to make it's effects instantaneously effective and drastically magnified.

But honestly for a lot less money you could concoct something far more mundane far more effectively.

[stormcrow]

Another option might be to make a tincture of it and use that tincture in darts. That can get pretty concentrated. If you had access to a metric crap-ton of deepweed and a facility's ventilation system, you could vaporize the deepweed (90% of the lovely volatile hydrocarbons instead of the 10% from combustion) and get everyone in the facility stoned that way. Of course, any facility that doesn't constantly scan their airflow deserves to get boned with something harder than an Awakened high.

One thing to keep in mind: You only pay street prices if you buy on the street. Grow your own! Or take a contact who does.

[CircuitBoyBlue]

But it's not 70 more years of breeding the pot plant to be more potent. It's Awakened kelp. Maybe kelp burns quickly enough and produces enough smoke for it to work, but I doubt it.

I prefer shotgunning the mage, myself. [/pun]

[Larme]

Being an awakened plant, I'm pretty sure you need more than just some heat lamps to grow deepweed...

[ornot]

Again, as an awakened drug you might find that it has to be taken in a particular way. I don't think it's unreasonable for part of the effect be as a consequence of the ritual of taking the drug, as opposed to just some active ingredient in the drug itself.

Frankly, if it was as easy to grow as weed is today, there's no call for it to cost so much. If, on the other hand, you have to brave the wild world to harvest it from some sea floor location with unpleasant background count, dodging merrow and awakened sharks, then the price is fully justified. That might make an interesting Shadowrun, messing up one cartel's supply chain to benefit another.

[crizh]

Surely Shade (Arsenal p78) suspended in DMSO and dispersed using a 'Gas' Grenade would be exactly what your looking for here.

[WearzManySkins]

Surely Shade (Arsenal p78) suspended in DMSO and dispersed using a 'Gas' Grenade would be exactly what your looking for here.

DMSO is a liquid, is better used in a squirt or spray not a gas form. A practical problem with DMSO as a solvent is its high boiling point, thus its solutions are not typically evaporated. Boiling point 189 °C (462 K) Once evaporated the DMSO does not act as a carrier for Shade and Shade may have a different boiling point than DMSO, also does Shade still retain its properties once boiled.

By the rules in Arsenal you could have Shade made into a patch.

WMS

[crizh]

I was thinking something along the lines of the Petit Brume 'Grenade' in Arsenal that dispenses a fine mist.

[JeffSz]

Better off hitting them with chemical gas that'll just kill'm.

Now, if it's personal, and the guy happens to be a magician/shaman who pisses off his spirits, or if it's someone with the spirit bane quality, a deep weed attack to force him into astral, leaving him to the mercy of the spirits... that would be fun.