Gear Aquisition, How much is too much? Options

[Necro Tech]

OK, i'm trolling for opinions on this one. By cannon when you want to acquire gear, you pick an appropriate contact, roll your etiquette against availability and when the time elapses.....presto your stuff appears. Yeah its more detailed but thats basically it. So how many of said item do you get? Some stuff is damn hard to get a hold of and I would like to get multiple grenades/missles/mines/etc. at the same time. Anyone have a rule of thumb on this?

[Smiley]

I've always done it by asking for a certain number of whatever I'm buying before I roll availability. (50 rounds of APDS, 150 of AV, 2 Banshees, and so on.)

[ShadowGhost]

GM's Discretion here.... Letting a player walk away with 150 rounds of APDS is a loose cannon.. with those amounts they can go through them (and your NPC's) like candy.

... 10 or 20 is another thing... they'll ration like crazy for when they really need it.

Personally, I allow nearly unlimited amounts for anything rating/availability 8 or under (depending on the item) and the PC *has* to have etiquette for anything illegal, or over availability 8. I might tack on an extra point or two for each extra item for multiples of the same thing.

i.e. APDS Rounds 1-10 - avail. 14
... APDS Rounds 11-20 - avail 16
... APDS Rounds 21-30 - avail 18 and so on.

A really good roll and they may get 20-40 rounds.... but no way I'd let them have 150 rounds of APDS.

[Wounded Ronin]

I just don't bother and let them get anything from the book. Opposition is racheted up accordingly. It's mentally easier. Less rules.

Besides, everyone knows that you're supposed to stockpile items in great suppy during character creation. 20,000 nuyen buys you a *lot* of bullets......

[Abstruse]

But you can't get APDS at character generation. Anyway, I make them roll seperately for each "unit". 10 round box of APDS, missile, etc. If they want 50 rounds and only suceed on two rolls, there's only 20 rounds on the market right now.

The Abstruse One

[Frag-o Delux]

We do what Abstruse does. Roll per unit and leave it at that.

We also play if you pay an extra 10% (includeing street index and before negotiations to raise/lower the price at the meeting) you lower the availibility by one point but it also increases the chances someone will know you are looking for it. It has already lead to things like in the the movie The Jackle, the Bruce Willis one, were you have a nice autocannon and someone comes looking for it.

To the arguement if someone has 150 rounds of APDS they will use it. Well that is what it is for. Why buy it if you are not going to use it? Besides a smart person would still ration it out, who is to say your fixer is going to have it the next time you need it? We also play what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If we start filling everyone from street punk to elite guards with APDS our GM will start throwing back at us. So we only use APDS and other powerful gear when it is absolutely nessecery. I don't mind it it keeps the game sane. That rule came about wiht the "Great called head shot"debate. A lot fo the guys we played with wanted head shots to be instant death, they claimed more reality. Even though they were trying it in running gun battles, hanging out of speeding car windows and ever situation they could think of, which I think would not be something any person would try, in those situation I don't people would be thinking clearly enough to consider it. Those situations most people go into spray and pray mode or at least aiming for center mass just because it is easier to hit in thee choas of a fight. So the GM said if you can do it I can do it, they said fine. So far I hae seen 3 teams nearly wiped out with head shots.

[Thistledown]

For grenades and rockets and stuff, we let extra successes on the etiqutie test be additional items instead of shortening the time. So 4 successes is 4 missles or 3 missles and half the time, etc.

[Wounded Ronin]

A shot between the eyes or in the brain may very well be an instant D wound, but a "head shot" could include just blasting away someone's jaw, which might not drop them.

[Arethusa]

[Nath]

In Fields of Fire, the rules for the Barrett 121 specified you had to make a separate roll for each box of 10 bullets, implying it wasn't the case for other ammo.

Of course, it made more sense to have quantity having an impact on the difficulty to find the gear. But even if you have no roll to make when buying something from a legal source, I'm not sure you can find 100 Porshe of the last model in yellow. And game balance aside, it's probably easier to find a gunrunner ready to sell you a full box of APDS ammo rather than just 10 bullets. Those kind of guys don't have the time to do micro-retailing.

[Smiley]

150 rounds was just an example.

[Capt. Dave]

Hell, my fixer gives me a volume discount on AV. I have a frequent buyer card and everything.
Not to mention the great Memorial Day and Labor Day sales.

[Smiley]

If i get my AV Discount card punched one more time, I gets me a free crate full. :grinbig: