Armorer time intervals Options

[Malbur]

Hey everyone, I'm new to the board and Shadowrun as a whole. Anyways, the character I'm playing now has access to an Armorer's shop and has 4 ranks of armorer. What I'm looking at doing is setting up a weapons development shop for other shadowrunners and making mad money that way. Does anyone have any idea how to implement the development and production of fire arms in this game? I understand that the threshold would depend on the weapon (Such as a light pistol probably being a 12 or something along those lines depending on factors) but what would the intervals for time be? Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

[Yerameyahu]

No. You're a shadowrunner, man! You're not a Day Jobber, except as a Negative Quality that impedes your awesome shadowrunning. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Also: no. "Technical skills do not allow a character to create a new item/device from concept alone—that requires something along the lines of an engineering background and lots of collaborative effort."

As for the intervals of *fabricating and assembling* known devices, it's 'up to the GM's discretion', which means the devs couldn't be bothered to help us out with some guidelines. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) It seems like the Complex, Intricate, and Exotic intervals could easily start going beyond 1, 4, even 8 hours, though.

All that said, people in the shadows do need people who can perform weapon and armor mod/accessory work; I'd recommend focusing on that as your side job. Because your main job is shadowrunning. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Malbur]

Good point, I definitely don't want to get bogged down in a "day job" in game but i figure being able to make those special accessories or guns that aren't traceable might be a bonus for some people in the world my GM is running (plus, then i could afford a few of the more exciting toys). Also, being able to make a grenade launcher when we can't buy one would be a plus (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) . Unfortunately though, I'm really not certain what weapons mods there are that can be done so i'm at a loss there.

[Yerameyahu]

No worries. You'll need to check out Arsenal, the book of weapons, accessories, and mods. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) In addition to Armorer, some mod *also* require skill in Hardware, Automotive/Industrial/Aeronautics Mechanic, or Artisan.

[Summerstorm]

Also maybe some background (knowledge) skills:

Metalurgy, Engineering, Plastics, Procedures of R&D... whatever you can come up with. (A good gm will reward you for extensive knowledge when you design stuff)

[Yerameyahu]

… You can't design stuff. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) The (active) skills I mentioned are used for installing mods.

That is, creation (as opposed to fabrication) of anything will require the GM to essentially invent a rules system (crunch reason), and should be effectively impossible for one shadow-level character working alone (fluff reason). It's the realm of plot device.

[Eddy Munster]

Although there are no hard rules for it, skills like those can be of assistance to getting those hard to find items... like the grenade launcher.

You do not have to be able to build one from scrath. Military surpluss and other places sell 'decomissioned' items like Bazooka's, flame throwers, grenade launchers etc. To decomission them the weapons have parts removed or holes cut in the barrels, or other ways to put them out of service, then are sold to the general public and no special licensing is needed for these collectors items. As an armorer you can repair them and possibly make them servicable again. This can be one way to get some good use of your skills.

As a real life example I helped my buddies wife get him a decomissioned bazooka and flame thrower over the years. With skills he picked up in the US Army he repaired them and they are both now functioning items. Scary... he dressed in one of his old uniforms for Halloween and we all went walking around, he brought the bazooka. Was hilarious when the police saw it and wanted to check it out and play with it.

[Malbur]

Why is it that the character can't make weapons though? I fail to understand this as it says in the description of the skill, as long as the player has access to the plans for making the object, they can make it given they have access to the plans and such. Basically, if a character has the knowledge of how weapons work and how to design them, shouldn't the character have the ability to make new weapons as long as the GM allows it? Or am I misunderstanding it...

[Yerameyahu]

You can *make* weapons. I (and the book) said that you can't *design* them. You can fabricate existing designs. It's still not easy, but it's possible. Unlike designing new things.

The GM can allow anything at all, but it's not part of the Shadowrun 4 rules. Remember that you're up against literally teams of hundreds of companies whose day job is to use the best resources in the world to improve on the the designs of weapons that have been refined over decades. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Summerstorm]

Of course you can build AND DESIGN stuff... there are just no rules for it, so your gm has to do it by ear. (And a lot of people you will find on this forum may begin arguing something about RAW/RAI/"I have no imagination blabla" or something like that.

[Yerameyahu]

As I said, the GM can do anything. However, and I'm repeating myself here, it's not like the book doesn't address this exact question:

Technical skills do not allow a character to create a new item/device from concept alone—that requires something along the lines of an engineering background and lots of collaborative effort.

It's not that the lone genius in squalor can't exist, but it's a very rare thing, don't you agree? Ever more so as technology advances. Besides, you can almost always get what you want using the mod rules anyway.

[WyldKnight]

All it takes is an appropriate knowledge skill and a threshold. Congrats, you just designed something. It's not like you need to create a whole new complicated system to do it, not to mention it doesn't take that much gear to actually make the gun. You get a computer to design it, a forge to create the parts, and then you do all the manual labor and put it together. This guy isn't looking to steal business from the mega corps, he is just trying to start a small shadow business for people who want their weapons untraceable or custom mods that would be harder to get elsewhere. Thats not a huge concept or that difficult to pull off if he is savvy enough.

[Yerameyahu]

And that's a house rule, that's all.

[WyldKnight]

Exactly. He's asking how and I'm giving him an idea. Knowledge: Firearms/Armor/etc design is essentially all you need to design it and then armorer to build it. You could probably just use the rules already in the book for repairing and what not. Just add an extra test before that for the design of the weapon.

[Yerameyahu]

It's not 'just an extra test', though. It's months of work, especially for someone working alone; then, having parts custom-made (even in the nano era) isn't insignificant, and then you can finally put it together.

Why bother? Modify existing guns, or build existing (and somehow non-proprietary) designs. Be sure to destroy every last nano-tag in the materials you used, by the way, so you're not tracked down.

He asked about Shadowrun, and that's what fits into the setting and the rules. Do whatever makes it fun for you, but be aware of the whole situation. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Malbur]

So lets say that a character does decide to design a weapon over that prolonged period of time. It would take months and have a high threshold to beat, for arguments sake lets say it'd be a 30 armorer check or something similar. What interval would you suggest for the extended test? A day? A week? A month? Again, this is speculative, but would a threshold of 20 and an interval of two weeks be reasonable? That way, you could expect about 3-4 hits per two weeks... needing to get 5 periods of two weeks, or 10 weeks to do the design and end up with a newly designed weapon in 3 months or so. Would that be outside the realm of reasonability for a character to you guys??

[Mäx]

It's not 'just an extra test', though. It's months of work, especially for someone working alone; then, having parts custom-made (even in the nano era) isn't insignificant, and then you can finally put it together.

As long is he's just designing his own model of an existing weapon type(heavy pistol,assault rifle,shotgun etc.) i dont really see the problem of allowing a player to do that with an extra test.
Designing a generic heavy pistol isn't extacty rocket science.

[capt.pantsless]

As long is he's just designing his own model of an existing weapon type(heavy pistol,assault rifle,shotgun etc.) i dont really see the problem of allowing a player to do that with an extra test.
Designing a generic heavy pistol isn't extract rocket science.

You'd be surprised how similar rocket-science is to ballistics. Both are very complicated, and need very accurate calculations. Personally, I'd at LEAST rule it as two extended tests, one to design the gun, and one to actually forge and assemble the thing, both with very high thresholds.

The big question comes down to this: Why do you want to build a custom gun? Untraceablity? Want more damage or more ammo? Turn a SS into a Burst-fire? If you are trying to make a better gun than Ares, a triple-A megacorporation with billions of Nuyen going into R&D can make, well, good luck with that one.

Again, it all comes down to what the GM of your particular game wants, but if you start allowing players to create super-weapons, you can run into some big game-balance problems. On the other hand, if your PC's find it fun to design their own gear, and you don't mind tweaking things a bit to handle it, then go for it.

[Mäx]

You'd be surprised how similar rocket-science is to ballistics. Both are very complicated, and need very accurate calculations. Personally, I'd at LEAST rule it as two extended tests, one to design the gun, and one to actually forge and assemble the thing, both with very high thresholds.

The big question comes down to this: Why do you want to build a custom gun? Untraceablity? Want more damage or more ammo? Turn a SS into a Burst-fire? If you are trying to make a better gun than Ares, a triple-A megacorporation with billions of Nuyen going into R&D can make, well, good luck with that one.

Again, it all comes down to what the GM of your particular game wants, but if you start allowing players to create super-weapons, you can run into some big game-balance problems. On the other hand, if your PC's find it fun to design their own gear, and you don't mind tweaking things a bit to handle it, then go for it.

You did see the word generic before heavy pistol in my post right.
Designing yeat an other 1911 clone really isn't the hardest think in the world, but a completdly new kind of gun ofcource is beyond a single PC:s capapilities.

[capt.pantsless]

You did see the word generic before heavy pistol in my post right.
Designing yeat an other 1911 clone really isn't the hardest think in the world, but a completdly new kind of gun ofcource is beyond a single PC:s capapilities.

True, but creating a 1911 clone isn't really doing much design-work. And you'd end-up creating a weapon that was essentially identical. A Kimber 1911 is going to have the same damage, ammo, etc, as a Springfield Armory 1911. Sure, there are differences noticeable to an experienced shooter, but none significant enough to translate to a change in game-terms.

I guess what I'm arguing is that weapon-design shouldn't be worth the effort in-game. Weapon modification, however, has a whole world of possibilities.

To the OP: Don't try and design new guns, or create existing guns from scratch. Instead, use your Armorer to provide easy access to custom-modified guns, with all the fun bells-and-whistles.

[rofltehcat]

Are you playing the weapons specialist example character? That character also has access to a few engineering, science and weapon-based knowledge skills. With those it should be possible to design something comparable to existing firearms. At least your GM should let you get existing weapon mods very cheap compared to other characters or maybe design a few weapon (mods) that aren't in the arsenal. However, that is a lot of work imo.
Personally I find that example character to be a bit flawed, I picked him as my first character. He/she is basically a sam without implants that is based on using combat drugs (addicted to stims) and on using heavily modified weapons. Yet the caracter starts out without stims or modified weapons (or even a single rocket for his goddamn rocket launcher). Also he lacks legwork potential and has low values for a sam :/

This post has been edited by rofltehcat: Sep 27 2010, 04:01 PM

[sabs]

The Sample characters /suck/ They're bad, and often times they actually aren't even street legal.

[Udoshi]

All it takes is an appropriate knowledge skill and a threshold. Congrats, you just designed something. It's not like you need to create a whole new complicated system to do it, not to mention it doesn't take that much gear to actually make the gun. You get a computer to design it, a forge to create the parts, and then you do all the manual labor and put it together. This guy isn't looking to steal business from the mega corps, he is just trying to start a small shadow business for people who want their weapons untraceable or custom mods that would be harder to get elsewhere. Thats not a huge concept or that difficult to pull off if he is savvy enough.

And that's a house rule, that's all.

Actually, its not a house rule. Rules for designing your own blueprints are in Arsenal's Modification section. They -are- Logic+Knowledge skill tests, with a variable threshold and length dependent on complexity.

[Dumori]

Actually, its not a house rule. Rules for designing your own blueprints are in Arsenal's Modification section. They -are- Logic+Knowledge skill tests, with a variable threshold and length dependent on complexity.

Yes but that is generaly for getting your hands on the weapons mod blueprints for X with out paying a shit load for just the blueprint let alone the parts. Still it's still you best bet to just mod guns. You can also argue that you also mod them to be harder to trace remove serials change the ballistics a bit ect.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

It's not 'just an extra test', though. It's months of work, especially for someone working alone; then, having parts custom-made (even in the nano era) isn't insignificant, and then you can finally put it together.

Why bother? Modify existing guns, or build existing (and somehow non-proprietary) designs. Be sure to destroy every last nano-tag in the materials you used, by the way, so you're not tracked down.

He asked about Shadowrun, and that's what fits into the setting and the rules. Do whatever makes it fun for you, but be aware of the whole situation. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Not quite True there, Yerameyahu... It does not take MONTHS of work to design something new, even working alone...

When I was younger (in 1982), I visited my Uncle, who is a Machinest, and who did custom work for Colt Firearms in his small Workshop/Facility (He was self-employed)... he had, among other things, a Programmable Industrial Milling Machine, Programmable Drill Presses, lathes, etc... as well as significant woodworking tools (Probably close to 1/2 Million USD in Equipment). One morning, because we were bored, we decided to make some custom firearms, completely from scratch... they were to be Black Powder weapons, so not all that complex to design... took us a couple hours to design the weapons, and program the machines to cut the required metal pieces...while they did that, we fashioned the wood pieces by hand, and then spent the rest of the weekend fitting the pieces, finishing the weapons and testing their functionality. They were functional firearms, and a lot of fun to build. It took all of 2 days, including desing, programming, implementation, and fitting/testing...

It is not all that hard to do the same thing in Shadowrun... Some design skills, metallurgy, and Armorer and you should be just fine... I would enforce the minimal requirement of a Facility (By Shadowrun Rules you need access to a facility to design/test) to proceed, but it should be possible to do so without too much difficulty...

And Yes... If I were to do this, I understand that it would be a House Rule... but, it is not all that difficult to do, if you have the know-how and the equipment to do so...