Tips for all shadowruners. Options

[Cynic project]

I have a few tips that I do not think that most shadowrunners use.

One, burners. A burner is a prepaid cell phone that you can throw away when you either burn threw the time or think that number is hot. By doing this, you will give big brother more trouble giving you a wire tap,and still have the ability to talk across town.

Two, changing barrels and firing pins.You should change the barrel and firing pins of your gun after every run you use it.This will help you get out of big brother's radar.

Three.Use common weapons.If you use this tip with tip two, you change your "basitic" finger prints into smears. As you are using common weapons that look to be completely different guns.

A runner who use say a costume built hand canon that will kill a "tank" and don't change the firing pin and barrelling.Will both leave marks that will say that one person did,because of the rarity of the weapon and the rifling patterns/firing pin mark.

[Nikoli]

The problem with that tactic is that all barrels are registered before sale by 2064 since most are moving to that now. Buddy of mine bought a spare barrel and faced that. It's not common practice now, but in 60 years it very well may be. The trick then is to make friends with a mage that has modded the fashion spell to alter your rifling. Or use shotguns.

[Cynic project]

But in shadowrun you have underworld markets that can sell you illegal weapons. You also have data bases that do not share that of information. Would Ares tell Cross who it sell it's barrels too?

[BitBasher]

It doesn't work that way. If the UCAS says "you must provide sales records for barrels" then the companies will, or else the barrels are not legal and it's illegal to carry them around on UCAS soil. Also, if you have an unregistered barrel you go to jail anyway. Nothing gets accomplished.

[Cynic project]

Did I miss the part where if I am Ares, I am an legally speaking a country. I make my own laws,I keep track of my own records.... And then you could buy guns off the street,cause no shadowruner breaks the law....

If I get busted for illegal barrels,I am sure the punishment is not the same as if I get busted for killing 10 people. Also it is about making sure that people do not contec your runs to each other, more than it is about fallowing the law,as the last time I looked the only reason you would need to hide like this is because you were breaking the law in the first place.

[Fix-it]

Don't leave your brass behind.
use caseless ammo, or a collector.

many common SMGs (like those made by H&K, for example)
can be fitted with a brass collector (Basically a bag over the ejector port.)
The downside is it takes another action to fit a new bag whenever you change clips, but it's worth it.

and if you're using Armor-piercing discarding sabot ammo, there's no rifling marks on the projectile...

Better yet. Just don't shoot anyone. :spin:

[Mercer]

[Shockwave_IIc]

The cellphone idea is one that i've close to always been aware of ever since watching Enemy of the State.

"I want taps on there 10 most frequently called numbers, and then taps on their most frequent 10" I decided to look at my mobile and look at my last dialed list 15 long spanning 3 months...........

[GrinderTheTroll]

[DrJest]

[toturi]

Bet you that the UCAS passed all sorts of laws that allowed the government to ignore those pesky gun laws in the interest of national security.

Why would the Star arrest the purchasers? If they are selling on Ares soil, the Star is going to play with themselves, while those guys sell in broad daylight. Legal action how? Covert support? You mean there is actually going to be an increase in covert activity that will rely on the "illegal" barrels that I sold? Where do I sign up?

[mfb]

shape earth doesn't work on processed materials. for something like that, i'd require a specific spell--Forge Barrel, or somesuch. your average mage, even with a Shape Processed Metals spell, shouldn't be able to create a gun barrel, unless they have a strong mental image of what a gun barrel is and how it works--enough knowledge, basically, to forge a gun barrel out of the appropriate materials without magic.

[Puck Wildhorse, ...]

Hi. Please don’t take this as a personnel attack or the start of a flame war, but I thought I’d point out a few things.

First, I like the point about using a “burn phone” and I would expand it to include any equipment. A runner should be willing to drop any piece of equipment any time it becomes more of a liability than an asset. I doubt you’d find too many deckers who are wiling to throw away their cyberdeck or riggers who would abandon a highly modified vehicle. But your basic weapons and equipment should be replaceable and therefore ditch able at a moment’s notice..

The bit about replacing the gun barrels probably isn’t as useful as you’d imagine. When you fire any firearm with a rifled barrel, the rifling makes marks on the outer surface of the bullet. These marks are kinda like fingerprints and can be used to determine if a given gun fired a given bullet. A match found in this manner can be used as evidence to support a case in a court of law. But here’s the thing, most Shadowrunners are SINless, meaning just having a firearm makes you guilty. The police don’t have to prove anything to a court because the SINless don’t have any rights. The police can shoot an armed SINless person dead in downtown Seattle at high noon in front of 100 people and 10 cameras and they wouldn’t get in trouble. Hell they can probably get away with shooting an unarmed SINless person in the same circumstances.

But say the shooter has a SIN or has powerful connections that make a court case necessary. The police still need a whole, undamaged bullet to be of legal use. A bullet can easily be deformed by hitting body armor, bones, cybernetic implants, or any other hard surface. Special bullets such as dum-dums, hollowpoints, explosive, EX explosive, flechette, glazer, gel rounds and APDS all leave deformed or otherwise unusable bullets after firing. If a whole, undamaged bullet is recovered, the police still only have half of the information they need. They need to recover the gun and fire a test bullet. Once they have a test bullet, they can compare it to all of the other bullets they have and see if there are any matches. If there are matches, then they can say with some assurance that this gun fired this bullet which killed this guy.

Now before someone comes along and says that they don’t really need whole, undamaged bullets, let me just say that you can make a match to a partial bullet or a fragment. This kind of a match is not at all conclusive and a good defense lawyer would point out that this is not enough to convict if not get the evidence thrown out altogether. The police might use evidence from a bullet fragment as a means of refining a case; focusing in on a suspect and trying to find better evidence they can use to get a conviction. Or, they might use this evidence in addition to a lot of other evidence to build a solid case. But a bullet fragment alone isn’t worth much.

Now, the next bit you spoke of is changing the firing pins. Firing pins make distinctive marks on the ejected brass from a fired bullet. This means that the ejected brass can be matched to a firearm and this can be used as evidence. The same limitations apply to this form of evidence as to matching rifling marks except that brass usually doesn’t get deformed enough to destroy firing pin marks. However, in Shadowrun all firearms are available in versions that fire caseless ammo (BBB pg276). The only rules difference is that caseless ammo doesn’t leave spent brass behind. I would assume that the smart Shadowrunner would elect to go caseless.

Now if you’re looking for a good tip:

1) Carry a spray bottle full of a chemical degreaser or of a weak acid. Spray this on blood and you’ll probably make the blood unusable as a link for ritual sorcery or as a source of DNA.
2) Use a metal file on each of your fingertips to remove the fingerprints temporarily. The skin will grow back and look normal after a few days. In the meantime, none of your prints will match those you might have on file. You could also use a drop of superglue on your fingertips. It dries in about 10 seconds and will stay stuck to your skin for a few days, marring any prints you’d leave. Of course, you’ll be leaving small traces of cyanoacrylic at crime scenes but that can hardly be used to identify you. For a more permanent solution, try scarring or burning off your fingerprints with acid.
3) Go visit a barber shop and grab handfuls of cut hair off of the floor. Scatter this around crime scenes. Do the same thing with random carpet fibers, rope fibers, thread, dirt, rocks, etc. That way, the CSI types have to search through hundreds of different clues to find the one that you might have left behind at the scene. The old needle in the stack of needles trick.

[kevyn668]

Also be aware of what kind of game your GM runs. Sometimes you may be wasting your time coming up with clever ideas to outsmart your GM's clever ideas.

Unless there's new stuff in the books I don't have, there are no existing rules for crime scene investigation and cops keeping files on your crimes. Not trying to say that the cops of the 2060's are the "Other Game" equivalent of monsters that just sit in a dungeon and wait for the PCs to come a long and relieve them of the tedium of life but...Like I said it depends more on what kind of game your GM runs than RL comparisons.

It also depends on where you run. Barrens? Ha! You could shoot the crap out of the gang nextdoor and sign your name and the Star isn't going come looking for you. Downtown? Different story...

Happy hunting. :)

[BitBasher]

[mfb]

i dunno. say they've already got enough of other types of evidence to put you away, if they find you. they've got you linked to certain incidents through other factors, and they've got bullets fired from the same gun at all those incidents--two plus two equals that's your gun, or at least a gun used by one of your associates. a little legwork might possibly come up with names and descriptions of the runners who did those runs. from there, LS might be able to track you down and arrest you. the evidence wouldn't need to stand up in court; it'd just need to be enough for an arrest warrant. removing that one possibility from the arsenal of ways to find you that LS already has is definitely worth thinking about.

[kevyn668]

[BitBasher]

I've typed that a few times in the past, yes. ;)

[kevyn668]

I was gonna say something about the rights of the SINless but I didn't wanna steal your thunder. No offense, BTW. :)

[KarmaInferno]

[hobgoblin]

or maybe they have a mile long dossier on every one of us...

anyways, there was a news posting on slashdot not to long ago about the effect of the CSI show on jurys...

and about those SINless, yes they have rights. so gunning down a person like that on the open street may be a bad idea (unless he was openly threatening people around him and so on). still, the cops would be less then interested in a case where a sinless was found dead somewhere. they are second rate people anyways...

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Wounded Ronin]

Would it help if you only used lead non-jacketed rounds?

[Moonstone Spider]

Re: Buying Gun Barrels

It frankly isn't particularly difficult to make an entire gun, much less the barrel, if you have a halfway decent machine shop and a modicum of howto knowledge. Making a Barrel, which is one of the simplest pieces, should be a TN 3 or maybe even 2 B/R test if you have a gunshop (Kit wouldn't work, you'd need some bigger stuff than you can lug around).

[Ed Simons]

Tips for Shadowrunners?

1) You don't get experience for killing things.
2) There isn't treasure behind every door.
3) You can't take your weapons everywhere.
4) A single Ork or guard could kill you.