Are tasers and SnS overpowered?, I'm starting to think they are. Options

[ShadowDragon8685]

I've noticed something happening at my table. My players are choosing to use nonlethal force not out of any moral obligation, but because it's the tactically superior choice!

Electric stun damage halves armor, has a higher damage rating than a heavy pistol round in every application I've ever seen, hits an armor value which is typically weaker than Ballistic in most applications, and impacts a condition track which is, for most beefy enemies, going to be shorter than the physical track.

Fundamentally, this seems wrong to me. Using nonlethal force should, in my opinion, be a moral choice, not a practical or tactical choice (short of extraction targets and noncombatants, obviously.)


I don't think I'm going to unilaterally change this on my players, because that would be a pretty shitty thing to do, but I would like to come up with something to make nonlethal force much less useful against anyone who's expecting trouble, if only for future reference.

One of the primary things that annoys me is that SnS and tasers halve armor value. This seems wrong to me - a thick, padded jacket will stop a taser's darts quite readily, and most materials simply aren't conductive in any event. You're not going to significantly shock someone through a leather jacket.

I'm thinking, set stun weapon's AP to 0, and making all armor act like Hardened Armor against them. This would make absolute immunity to tasers fairly trivial to achieve (anybody with just an armored jacket!), short of taking called shots to aim for the head or somewhere not protected by armor. It would also give gel/rubber rounds for pistols a reason to exist.

[Blade]

Tasers and SnS are overpowered. Not only do they halve armor by half, but they also have extremely effective electric damages that give you -2 modifiers even if you soak the attack.
Considering all armors to be "hardened" against them is an interesting idea.

As for the "stun over physical" choice, what I do is divide the interval of the healing test by the number of hits to get the time it takes for the character to wake up. This means that the troll at the entrance might be up just a few minutes after the PC knocked him out.

[UmaroVI]

That they are better than regular ammo is the consensus, yeah. One note though is to be careful about nerfing bullets while leaving magicians untouched. In particular, spirits are vulnerable to SnS ammo (the half ap helps get past their ITNW), and if it doesn't exist they get notably nastier.

[Irion]

We had this reacently here on dumpshock. It is a general problem of stundamage beeing much, much too good.

I'm thinking, set stun weapon's AP to 0, and making all armor act like Hardened Armor against them. This would make absolute immunity to tasers fairly trivial to achieve (anybody with just an armored jacket!), short of taking called shots to aim for the head or somewhere not protected by armor. It would also give gel/rubber rounds for pistols a reason to exist.

Well, this would put them out of the game, because there is no way you may aim for the head in the rules. Thus you would need to take -armor dice on you attack roll. Thats quite an impossible stunt to pull off.

Putting the AP to 0 would be better though.
The only issue here is, that it would take out the one light weapon you may hurt spirits with. (I guess the sonic rifle would also be possible...)

The next thing able to hurt them would be a sniper rifle with AP rounds....

A quick idea on this subject:
Whenever a character takes more than 4 boxes of stun at once, exchange 2 points of stun damage for one point of physical damage.
(This would also take into account, that a fistfight may end up with a broken nose.)


Whenever a character taks physical damage, he takes half the amount as additional stun damage.

[Yerameyahu]

Hehe, oh god. OP, you've gotta search. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) This is easily one of the most-discussed issues.

Presumably, tasers are fully intended to work through (some) armor. They get 1/2 Impact because the armor doesn't really help. I could see removing that, but the Hardened thing is way overkill. Altering the 1/2 Impact wouldn't affect normal targets too much (a couple extra Resistance hits), but it would really fix the S&S-kills-spirits issue; even setting them to a fixed AP would help.

[The Jake]

I got a Force 10 Posession based free spirit to kill so I'm all ears on spirit slaying shenanigans...

- J.

[Dakka Dakka]

I got a Force 10 Posession based free spirit to kill so I'm all ears on spirit slaying shenanigans...

- J.

1. Get blender
2. Get hamsters
3. Put hamsters in blender in the presence of spirit->Spirit in Backgroundcount 1-2
4. 3-4 Net hits on SnS or a Barrett with APDS will harm the spirit.

Munchkinny enough? SCNR

Hmm what would happen if you blend a fomori?

More seriously background count and SnS is a good idea. if you can get your hands on a rail gun even better. Oh, does the vessel have to live? If so Barrett and rail gun are out.

Problem is though, you can only permanently kill a free spirit on its home metaplane.

[thorya]

Try making Nonconductivity cheaper (50 nuyen x rating maybe) and start applying it to armor regularly. Someone in world has to have noticed how widely available tasers and such are. It seems like a 4+ rating is necessary to put things back into a reasonable ballpark. You could probably even give a lot of armor a few ranks for free (the same goes for fire resistant and insulation).

[UmaroVI]

I got a Force 10 Posession based free spirit to kill so I'm all ears on spirit slaying shenanigans...

- J.

One of the best ways to gank spirits is with Mana Static. There's no real defense against it.

[Chinane]

A common approach is to not apply +DV for any net hits remaining after the dodge roll.

I.e. the worst you would have to soak against with your halved armor -2 is 6S. (um..noticed there is a Taser with 8s, so that would be maximum)

Obviously a tiny bit of nonconductivity would help, it's not that expensive and even one of the example chars has it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) .

[Dakka Dakka]

I'm not sure this nerfs SnS. Who shoots only once? 2x6S should hurt pretty good even if they do not drop the target and it mitigates the risk of killing the target. What happens if you fire SnS in BF or FA? 8S, 11S, or 15 S are bad as well and again no risk of killing the target.

[Yerameyahu]

Yes, I've seen the no-net-hits method before. Not encourage not-searching, but I think other people did things like 'S&S is only for shotguns', 'S&S does less than 6S', or just 'S&S costs more'. It honestly has been discussed a huge amount, so I'm sure there are more, better, and fleshed-out ideas in the archives. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

It certainly stops S&S beating higher Hardened armor, Dakka Dakka, and it does significantly reduce the number of boxes dealt. I think you're right that it doesn't really go far enough toward the main problem, though. And let's not forget the automatic 6 boxes (-2 penalty for Electrical) and the possibility of auto-paralyze (you never know when they'll fail that check).

[The Jopp]

Ok, so you nerf SnS and Tazers, players go to something else.

Capsule Rounds (Neurostun+DMSO) will do the same? Gonna nerf that too? Ok, you do that, they move to something else.
They get MGL-6 Grenade pistols and use a mix of stun/gas/nausea grenades and wear protective clothing...so you nerf that too.

Ok, so SnS are good, very good (Yes, I find them very nice myself) - but instead of going knee jerk make a slight modifier instead, otherwise you risk getting an in-game war of attricion between yourself and the players.

1: Let SnS use base weapon damage and keep the Armor mod. (Light and holdout will now be less of a choice as well hidden insta-stunners).

2: Limit SnS to heavy pistols and due to their design cannot be used with silencers. Small pistols and sneaky guys get to be inventive, perhaps starts to use the more limited hand crossbow with SnS bolts for quiet takedowns (Anyone remembers Deus Ex...)

2: Give your NPC's better gear. Give them a few levels of Nonconductivity. Let the area they walk on be completely nonconductive (Rubber soles on their shoes etc).

3: Give your guards the same thing the players use, fight fire with fire (yes, escalation will ensue but the players will at least try to change their tactics)

4: Spirits, yes, they have immunity so their armor is X2 but then also reduced by 1/2 so they have base armor. They might disrupt but they will not have the -2 modifier as they have no central nervous system that is affected by electricity.

5. You could even say spirits ignore non-magical elemental modifiers so they keep their X2 armor rating (Essentially making them immune to SnS).

6: Let your Full-Auto equipped guards go full auto with covering fire, sure they waste 30 rounds or so but as long as ONE player get hit they will get hit by 1 SnS and get negative modifiers themselves.

7: A low level lightning ball from a wage slave mage might also wreak havoc (F2 no biggie but gives -2 modifiers...)

Thats all I can think of at the top of my head.

[Yerameyahu]

The answer is, 'yes, keep balancing until there's balance'. If players all go to chemical (unlikely) then they'll at least be doing something harder.

[Irion]

I'm not sure this nerfs SnS. Who shoots only once? 2x6S should hurt pretty good even if they do not drop the target and it mitigates the risk of killing the target. What happens if you fire SnS in BF or FA? 8S, 11S, or 15 S are bad as well and again no risk of killing the target.

Well, shooting SnS normally would be really nerfed that way.

Shooting at a target with 4 Willpower and 10 poinst of armor. (Really low end!).
You are shooting twice.
Avarage damage(with this rule): 2x(6-((4+5)/3)=2x6=6
Avarage damage(one net hit): 2x4=8
Avarage damage(two net hits):2x5=10
Avarage damage(3 net hits):2x6=12.

So the damage in this case is only half the damage with 3 net hits.
(It gets even worse, if the guy has some better armor or nonconductivity. And there is also some ware to directly reduce damage)
As soon as your effective damage dropped to two, you might start throwing paperclips...
But true, it is easy to outsmart, if you just make a called shot or a narrow burst...

@The Jopp

1: Let SnS use base weapon damage and keep the Armor mod. (Light and holdout will now be less of a choice as well hidden insta-stunners).

This would be a great rule, if heavy weapons would have in combat drawbacks due to their size. But this is unfortunatly ignored...
The problem here is, that it would make SnS just to better AP-rounds. Making them even better in some groups.

5. You could even say spirits ignore non-magical elemental modifiers so they keep their X2 armor rating (Essentially making them immune to SnS).

Would be great, if spirits wouldn't be so easy to summon and so strong.

[Yerameyahu]

Yeah, that just makes an S&S sniper even better, though it solves the small end.

The fact that spirits are strong doesn't make it okay for S&S to be a (hard) counter to them, though.

[Dakka Dakka]

The fact that spirits are strong doesn't make it okay for S&S to be a counter to them, though.

Are you saying only magic should be effective against spirits?

[Yerameyahu]

No.

[Dakka Dakka]

Then what are you saying? Do you generally oppose the idea that mundane AP be applied to spirits? Is it only SnS?

This would be a great rule, if heavy weapons would have in combat drawbacks due to their size. But this is unfortunatly ignored...

Except for sniper rifles as of SR4A.

The problem here is, that it would make SnS just to better AP-rounds. Making them even better in some groups.

Agreed

[Belvidere]

Are you saying only magic should be effective against spirits?

I believe so. Throughout all of SR canon it has been represented that way. It's why you bring a mage. And it's why you geek the mage first. That is shadowrun. No matter how many bullets you fire there are some things you just can't kill. It's just part of the setting.

[Yerameyahu]

I'm saying that S&S shouldn't be vastly effective against spirits, if at all. Some people even say S&S counts as 'elemental' against them, so it's twice as bad (as if -1/2 wasn't enough). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Adarael]

On the whole argument of "Capsule Rounds with Neurostun+DMSO", I think that's a bit of a strawman argument, due purely to the fact that stick and shock rounds are 80 nuyen for 10, with an availability of 5R. Those capsule rounds, on the other hand, are 100 nuyen for 10, with an availability rating of 19R. So they're marginally more expensive, but radically harder to get in bulk.

[Yerameyahu]

And they may or may not work on spirits, etc.

[Blade]

Having electricity damage work particularly well on spirits is just a side-effects of the rule system.
It has never been mentionned ever before in the fluff, it has no grounding in folklore or popular culture...

I'm not against having some weapon/ammunition be particularly effective against spirit, but I don't think SnS makes much sense.

[Elfenlied]

Just use pre-Errata Ex-ex and Flechette, and 3e rules for APDS (1/2 armor). This way, the game is more lethal, and all ammo types are internally balanced.

On a side note, Mundanes pretty much need elemental damage (WP, SnS, Tasers, Flamers) or milspec AP weapons (Snipers, Gauss) to even stand a remote chance against spirits of competitive force. There's a thread on this board about a fight vs the Yama King from Ghost Cartels (a F10 free spirit) that evolved into a giant charlie foxtrott because the DM of that group ruled against SnS/Tasers etc. affecting spirits.