Melee weapons against vehicles or drones? Options

[DarkShade]

Hi, all
I have an odd situation, one of my players plays an adept, dikoted katana specialist. has strength of 9 so does 12S damage with it.
he wants to attack a drone which is directly under rigger control.
first my question is what gets rolled. he rolls is katana skill, but what does the rigger roll if anything?

second question, this particular drone has armor 6. because of this his power gets halved, ending with base damage of 6M which doesnt exceed 6 so he cannot harm the drone..
he then points out if he gets enough successes he can raise the power level +1 per 2 successes over deadly, and if he can get it to 14 he can damage the drone <find a weak spot, whatever>

could anyone pls help clarify this?

Edit: another question, this rigger then decides to have his car attempt to run over the adept.. what gets rolled? the ramming rules between 2 vehicles are clear but between a vehicle and an unwilling human? <I considered it at the time an opposed test between reaction and car skills..but am not sure if there are better rules..>

Regards,
DS

[Edward]

When attacking the drone I believe you role-egged weapon (katana). If the rigger is directly controlling the drone (as apposed to captains charring it) he may use control pool for a dodge test. As the power of the attack halved dose not exceed the drones armour there is no damage. This halving is on base damage auto fire for example would not apply so I would assume nether would eth increased power for high successes on eth armed combat test. If he increases his strength or goes up against less well armoured drones he may find the tactic more useful. You should probably add katana repair to his list of costs.

Ofcause I still don’t have my books on me so I could be wrong

I don’t know about ramming somebody in a vehicle.

Edward

[Canid13]

I think ramming with a vehicle is covered in R3R but I could be wrong.

As for the Katana, it's base damage. I might allow two handed use to increase the power, but for a non-troll I believe that to be a +1 increase in power and not a +2 so it may not work depending on whether it specifies rounding down or not.

[mfb]

i'd allow the power increase from extra successes to allow the adept to get past the armor. with firearms, hardened armor represents a mass/velocity threshold, below which shots just can't penetrate. the mass/velocity of rounds from your weapon isn't going to change, no matter how many rounds you fire, so they'll just plink off the armor because none of them are individually able to punch through. with a melee weapon, though, successes over D basically mean you're swinging the weapon faster--more velocity--meaning you have a better chance of penetrating armor.

now, okay. obviously, a guy with a sword isn't going to be able to match the velocity of a bullet, no matter how strong he is. however, the dikote on the katana means the edge of the weapon can be much, much sharper than would normally be feasible (simply because the edge will be less likely to chip and fracture when it hits, say, vehicle armor). this means that the energy of the attack can be focused in a much smaller area--basically, the same principle as SR's APDS/AV rounds.

before anybody starts in, i am well-aware that there's no way in hell a dude with a sword could stab through armor that is hard enough and durable enough to shrug off bullets, no matter how SUPAR-SHARRP DIIKOTTED it is. i just think a Str 9 adept with a diamond-edged katana has a god-given right--no, a god-given mandate to hack apart vehicles like Morpheus in Matrix Reloaded. call me stupid, call me unrealistic, call me Fred--it's cool, and i want it in my game.

[Canid13]

I think you've circumvented your own argument by making your argument. If you're saying that dikote will allow you penetrate hardened armour then I'm off to dikote my assault rifle rounds - hardened armour 9 won't stop me then *laughs evilly*

Armour's protective qualities come from durability of the metal, the angle it's applied to the surface and various other means. But armour doesn't cover everywhere. You have to have seams else it's a caste body and that's a pain to make and maintain. You also have to have seams since you have things coming in and out - like doors.

Now, I take the viewpoint that sucesses are increasing the damage code by increasing the accuracy of the attack. So, if you get to increase the power by rolling so many sucesses, well, you've obviously made a really accurate attack and should be able to bypass some armour. Maybe you found a seam in the armour or an unprotected point.

Either way, I could see a Strength 9 anyone with a dikote katana who gets to 14D or higher by sucesses from a base of 12S as deserving to at least make the vehicle/drone make a damage resistance test. Granted, you're looking at 2's as your TN, but least there's a chance.

Your velocity argument I'd use for the rule in CC which enables you to increase the power by using two hands for the attack. That's a harder and faster swing - but the blade is still no more capable of breaching the skin of the drone than it is of cleaving a piece of chobham armour in two.

[Kagetenshi]

Hey, Fred: the SUV in Matrix Reloaded appeared unarmored, and from what I remember of that scene he hacked through some decently light parts of the vehicle.

~J

[mfb]

canid, that'd work just fine, as long as you take the time beforehand to sharpen each AR round to a fine point.

it's pretty tough to determine whether a real-life vehicle is armored, just by looking at it. on the other hand, it's a moot point--Morpheus obviously used the Knockdown attack option, which ignores armor.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Tarantula]

[Lindt]

Straight up, anyone going after an armored drone/car with a melee weapon should die in a horrible fasion. Not only do it think its total bull, its just not realistic. Thats not to say I might give a sledge hammer wielding troll a chance to frag up a stationary (or very slow moving) unarmored car. I dont care how strong you are, or how sharp your sword is, there is no way, no how, you are going to do anything other then put a few surface scratches in 2" of hardened steel.
For notice, during the civil war, the CSS Virginia (aka the Merrimack) had 4" iron armor, and with stood 4 hours of blasts from the 11" guns of the USS Monitor. Its reported that only twice did the 6" wood backing on the armor crack under fire.
No troll is going to hurt a drone with 6 points of armor. Forget with a sword.

[Lantzer]

Most of the things i would say have been said, with one exception:

If he's already in melee with the drone, and he has a high Strength, why doesn't he just flip the fraggin' thing over instead of trying to damage his pricey katana? Drones are not terribly good at wrestling.

I also wouldn't use a sword on a vehicle. A sledghammer, perhaps, maybe a blowtorch, possibly a drill or powersaw, but not a sword.

[mfb]

your game isn't cool. you suck!

seriously, though, one option the adept has--if the GM ok's it--is to stretch the Stress for Attribute Dice rules. allow the adept to take a wound effect in exchange for +1 Str, which--combined with the +1 power for using a two-hand weapon in one hand--would be enough, in this case, to get a hit in on the drone. that's not actually allowed by the rules, though; normally, you can only take stress in exchange for an actual die of attribute, for use in an attribute test. as attribute tests are fairly rare in SR (except for soak tests), though, and because it seems like a logical use of the concept, i'd allow it. on the other hand, i'm advocating allowing an adept to use a sword on a heavily-armored vehicle, so you should probably take this advice with a grain of salt.

[Blaze]

Remember, however, that we're not talking a solid lump of armour-grade rolled steel- we're talking a vehicle or drone, which is going to have to have movement systems, entrance points, air intakes and so on/so forth. My advice: call a shot. If you're wielding a dikoted katana (which, if memory serves, should be S+4S- S+3M for the blade, +1 to power and damage level for the dikoting effect on an edged weapon) you're going to be close enough to find one of those aforementioned weak points and exploit it. Alternatively, dikote a wakizashi as well, buy up ambidexterity and specialise into the nito-ryu (two-bladed) style of kenjutsu. The Adept power of smashing blow may also come in handy.

-JH.

[mfb]

yeah, called shot can bypass armor completely--and since the drone doesn't get to roll a counter, that +4 TN doesn't hurt as bad as it usually would.

[mmu1]

I don't know... Assuming you're in the rare situation of being close enough to a drone to hit it with a Katana, there should at least be the possibility of hurting it with a called shot - or are the rotors, air intakes, sensor pods, etc. all armor 6?

(Oops... Mental note, kill the people who post faster than me.)

Of course, I also think most drones are small enough that they either have no business using the vehicular damage rules, or runners should be able to wear armor made of the same good shit that can make a Body 1 drone nearly impervious to non-AV rounds.

[Lindt]

Your telling me you can walk up to a Wells Fargo truck and do any sort of damage that will inhibit its operation with anything short of a .357? There is a reason that melee weapons where replaced by firearms.

[mfb]

sure can. the tires are pretty vulnerable, and a well-placed stab through the hood or grill could sever a belt or two. granted, it's hard to see damage like this eventually bringing the vehicle to D damage, but, well, SR's damage rules for vehicles are kinda hinky anyway.

edit: oops. no, i couldn't, but i don't have the strength of an olympic weightlifter.

[Lindt]

Ever check one of those suckers out? Tires are runflat, and/or self sealing. And the hood is 3/4" steel. Remember this is an armored truck we are talking about.

And totally on tangent, anyone have any rules for those little fire ports armored cars have? I just relized how stupid rolling down the window would be to get your Sammi to fire back... :|

[mfb]

oh, the armored money trucks. eh, yeah. *shrug* i'm not an adept 65191092541 edge weapons skill and as much muscle-power as a grizzly. it's like that old joke--what's a melee adept stab? anything he wants to.

ruleswise, we've discovered in the channelling thread that hardened armor does not--by the book--automatically block attacks with increases in power that come from anything except burst- and auto-fire; ergo, technically, increases from melee attacks are wholly legit.

[Tarantula]

[Tarantula]

[mfb]

i've got R3 and access to the R3R update, so lemme save you some time: neither have rules for hardened armor (that i can find). SR3 and CC do have rules for hardened armor, which i've just looked up. both say nothing about ammo type, referencing only burst- and auto-fire as being not counted when determining base power.

edit: this comes as a major shock to me, as i've always assumed that ammo type was treated the same as burst- and auto-fire. this is probably because the Immunity/Normal Weapons power mentions ammo type as not having any extra effect.

[Tarantula]

[Lindt]

Remember, this is armor, and the Immunity thing is magic. Ooooo magic. It dosent have to make much sense. Which is why I think I might give an adept with killing hands D, smashing blow, and focus strength odds over an armored drone.

*Edit* check that, focus strength and vicious blow suck for that. But remind me to look into an adept with ratann sticks and vicious blow....

This post has been edited by Lindt: Oct 7 2004, 04:48 PM

[Paco]

Off the top of my head I seem to recall the Dikoted Melee Weapons affect barrier ratings. Something about instead of doubling the barrier rating for the attack, the normal one is used. I pretty sure that what the book says but I don't haveit infront of me this second. So my thought is that if the same street sam with a 12S attack against a barrier rating of 8 getting 8 successes on the attack test (this is of course assuming that my group has been doing melee attacks against barrier ratings correctly) raising the power of the attack to 16S, since this is double the rating of the barrier I think a 1 meter hole opens up in the barrier (again not sure no book). Why can't/shouldn't the rules of Dikote Melee Weapons against a barrier be said for vehicle staging down automatically and not reduce the power of the attack by 1/2? Although I would say still reduce the damage level. If a street sam can cut through a steel door like butter why not through an armored car? :cyber: