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> Invincible Drone?
Clipwing
post Aug 16 2003, 07:46 PM
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I was just reading a published adventure (I won't say which one to prevent spoiling) in which as a surprise a drone sweeps in on some runners in the midst of a run. I was looking over the stats for the thing, and I noticed that this unique drone was listed with armor of 8! Now here's my question: Is there anyway to take this thing out unless the characters have a) a rigger with some heavy duty combat drones of his own or b) an anti-vehicle rocket launcher?

My take:

1. Firearms, melee weapons, elemental manipulation spells, etc.: The power is reduced by half (round down), the damage level reduced by one level, and in order to do damage, the reduced power of the attack has to be greater than the armor level. That means the unaugmented power of the weapon would have to be 18! I know only three of those off the top of my head, one being a laser weapon and the other two being assualt cannons. Possibly a monowhip could count as AV since it's so sharp?

2. Magic: Force has to exceed the vehicle's armor... Anybody packing a Force 9 powerbolt? A strong spirit could stand up to it without taking damage, may be able to occupy it, but probably couldn't do any damage for the same reasons listed in 1.

So, any other ideas?
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Playing Games
post Aug 16 2003, 07:58 PM
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At one point in a game i was in i had a human with hand to hand damage in the range of 20m. But that is the the hard core sam..And the game went on for far too long.
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Lilt
post Aug 16 2003, 08:03 PM
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Not quite. Most weapons firing AV rounds could do it (even light pistols) but an AV shotgun slug is a sure thing. Rules for AV rounds are on P36/P38, Cannon Companion.

Options involving magic mostly involve spirits or the physical barrier spell:
A good force physical barrier in-front of it can cause some serious damage.
A spirit with the accident power can make it do a crash test.
A spirit using its movement power could crash the drone against a wall.
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TinkerGnome
post Aug 16 2003, 08:21 PM
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I know exactly which module you're speaking of and the only way we were able to eliminate the blasted thing was when the Troll physad (with a serious throwing weapons focus) hurled a dikoted katana at the thing. Lost the katana, of course.
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Zeel De Mort
post Aug 16 2003, 08:24 PM
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Where does it say the force has to exceed the vehicle's armour? I'm not disputing that, just wondering. I thought a Powerbolt would do it, then you'd *only* need to hit a 14 or so... :)

Or pretty much any weapon with av rounds, as mentioned, or a guy with str 12 or so and a dikoted katana, or a panther cannon, or grenades in a confined space, or run it over with your own vehicle or emm... Yeah, mostly just AV muntions I suppose.

Anyway, doesn't a Guardian have armour 12??
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Herald of Verjig...
post Aug 16 2003, 08:26 PM
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There was a debate over how to kill over-armored drones in the old forum. The best magical method is indirect magic. Not powerbolt, but maybe ice sheet (crash test), physical illusions, spirit powers, shape earth, and other things that won't have to fight against the OR of the drone. With a good trid-phantasm to confuse it, one of the mundane could see about crashing a truck into the drone, that should do something.
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TinkerGnome
post Aug 16 2003, 08:33 PM
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The Powerbolt wouldn't have to be force 9, but close. To even work on a vehicle, the spell has to be at least force = (OR + Body + 1/2 Armor) / 2. So I think for the vehicle in question it comes out to a minimum force of 7 or 8 with a TN of 8 to affect it with the spell (OR should be eight).

[edit]Changed 8) to eight) [/edit]
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Lilt
post Aug 16 2003, 08:38 PM
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Look over the crashing section of SR3 (P147). that has a number of ways for you to damage it.

Come to think of it; a very fast moving character (60M/round+, a quickness 5 dwarf with a force 6 spirit's movement power) is probably going to damage most vehicles (anything but the main battle tank from SOTA2063) if he just charges at them. OK so he's going to take a serious wound and the vehicle is going to be taking a light but that's not the issue.
:rollin: :upsidedown: :dead:
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Clipwing
post Aug 16 2003, 08:42 PM
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QUOTE (Zeel De Mort)
Where does it say the force has to exceed the vehicle's armour?  I'm not disputing that, just wondering.  I thought a Powerbolt would do it, then you'd *only* need to hit a 14 or so... :)

Zeel, that's on page 150 of SR3: "If the Armor Rating of the Vehicle is equal to or greather than the Force of the combat spell, the spell has no effect." Yeah, a TN 14 would be nice in comparison, right?
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Clipwing
post Aug 16 2003, 08:45 PM
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QUOTE (TinkerGnome)
The Powerbolt wouldn't have to be force 9, but close.  To even work on a vehicle, the spell has to be at least force = (OR + Body + 1/2 Armor) / 2.  So I think for the vehicle in question it comes out to a minimum force of 7 or 8 with a TN of 8 to affect it with the spell (OR should be eight).

I'm not sure how you're getting this info... OR+Body+ 1/2 Armor is the TN for a combat spell, but I'm not sure where you're gettig the Force has to be greater than the TN divided by two... Do you have a page reference?
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Zeel De Mort
post Aug 16 2003, 08:50 PM
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Ah, thanks for the reference Clipwing. I didn't know about that.

I think what TinkerGnome is talking about is on p182, under the "Sorcery Test" heading, 4th paragraph.

So the target number WOULD be 14 or something like that, and you'd need a force equal to half the armour, or half the (unmodified, eg 8 ) OR, whichever is higher. So force 4 should typically do it.

Edit: Oops, no, it's the modified OR, so force 7 or so. Ouch.
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Clipwing
post Aug 16 2003, 09:00 PM
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QUOTE (Zeel De Mort)
I think what TinkerGnome is talking about is on p182, under the "Sorcery Test" heading, 4th paragraph.

So the target number WOULD be 14 or something like that, and you'd need a force equal to half the armour, or half the (unmodified, eg 8 ) OR, whichever is higher. So force 4 should typically do it.

Edit: Oops, no, it's the modified OR, so force 7 or so. Ouch.

Ah, I see, I didn't know about that general inanimate object Force requirement. Wow, the rules really protect the vehicles from those dangerous mages... I think you'd still need to exceed the armor value with your Force given the rule I quoted previously. This one is just another you have to jump through, necessary, but not sufficient...
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Zeel De Mort
post Aug 16 2003, 09:05 PM
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Sorry yeah, the full armour rating... I'll get everything together in one post, first time round, one of these days.

So that's Force 9, and target number equal to 8 + bod + 1/2 armour = roughly 14, don't know the drone you're talking about specifically. That's pretty hard to do, know anyone with a Force 9 spell?!

Okay, so about that Guardian... :)
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Game2BHappy
post Aug 17 2003, 12:09 AM
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QUOTE (Clipwing)
So, any other ideas?

It might be possible with a very skilled physad?

A physad from our group took out an armored drone once with his weapon focus katana. Between his skill, physad powers, weapon focus, and combat pool he was rolling a boatload of dice against a target that wasn't counterattacking. He basically did enough successes to stage the damage from Light to Deadly and every two successes above that raised the power by one. A karma pool later the power of his attack was suddenly 9 (18/2) which took down that particular drone.
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Strobe
post Aug 17 2003, 12:13 AM
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How about rolling a grenade under the thing, that might flip it over. Like a helpless turtle it will just sit on its back. Of course I don't know the exact drone, so maybe that wouldn't work. But if it isn't to heavy then you might be able to slip sometihng under it (like the afore mentioned katana) and flip the thing over.

-Strobe
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Fygg Nuuton
post Aug 17 2003, 12:16 AM
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thats why when i played a rigger one time i built a wedge drone to flip stuff over, battlebots style!

isnt armor halved under a vehicle? toss a grenade under it
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TinkerGnome
post Aug 17 2003, 01:32 AM
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Yuck, I hate it when the rule book splits up the relevant text between two sections. Here's a summary from both page 150 and page 183.

Spell cast at a vehicle:

TN = 8 + vehicle body + .5* vehicle armor
Resitance threshold = TN / 2
Armor threshold = armor

So a spell cast at a vehicle has to be of a force equal to or greater than the resistance threshold (TN/2) and greater than the armor threshold (armor value). Additionally, it is rolled against a TN of 8 + body + half armor. So the aforementioned example does work out with the numbers everyone is bandying about ;)

TN = 8 + 2 + 4 = 14
Resistance threshold = 7
Armor threshold = 8

So the spell must be at least force 9 and face TN 14. Which is why no one casts spells directly on military grade vehicles. A Dodge Scoot is significantly easier to cast on, though ;)
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Clipwing
post Aug 17 2003, 01:45 AM
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QUOTE (Game2BHappy)
QUOTE (Clipwing)
So, any other ideas?

It might be possible with a very skilled physad?

A physad from our group took out an armored drone once with his weapon focus katana. Between his skill, physad powers, weapon focus, and combat pool he was rolling a boatload of dice against a target that wasn't counterattacking. He basically did enough successes to stage the damage from Light to Deadly and every two successes above that raised the power by one. A karma pool later the power of his attack was suddenly 9 (18/2) which took down that particular drone.

Where do you find rules for melee combat with vehicles? The only ones I could find mainly dealt with firearm damage... Using those rules, it would seem you would need a physad with a strength of 17 or so?
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BigBlacksmith
post Aug 17 2003, 02:35 AM
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Did anybody think of a good EW Rigger taking control of the fragger? I mean, I got caught off guard in a comparable situation by a rigger pc who had done his homework on the EW rules and basically took control. Granted, it wasn't a complete surprise to have a drone pop-up in the situation I put the players in, but...

I don't know how practical that solution would be in the situation you're talking about, though.
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Shockwave_IIc
post Aug 17 2003, 03:30 AM
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won't C-12 do it? assuming you can get close enough.

I was thinking about these very same topic when running Brainscan with deus's favoured toys.

Their a real pain. even more so when u think about that they have CMC lvl6!!!
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Greyfoxx
post Aug 17 2003, 07:11 AM
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QUOTE (Clipwing)
QUOTE (Game2BHappy @ Aug 17 2003, 12:09 AM)
QUOTE (Clipwing)
So, any other ideas?

It might be possible with a very skilled physad?

A physad from our group took out an armored drone once with his weapon focus katana. Between his skill, physad powers, weapon focus, and combat pool he was rolling a boatload of dice against a target that wasn't counterattacking. He basically did enough successes to stage the damage from Light to Deadly and every two successes above that raised the power by one. A karma pool later the power of his attack was suddenly 9 (18/2) which took down that particular drone.

Where do you find rules for melee combat with vehicles? The only ones I could find mainly dealt with firearm damage... Using those rules, it would seem you would need a physad with a strength of 17 or so?


If your physad has smashing blow power, he can do that (treat barriers as melee targets, meaning you get to roll UNARMED skill <only> and increase power per every two successes you make, reducing the targets barrier rating if successful), so ive no idea how that guys katana sliced through. :?
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Crusher Bob
post Aug 17 2003, 07:14 AM
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Dikote also magically cuts through armor, iirc.
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Clipwing
post Aug 17 2003, 07:16 AM
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Well, this thread has gotten quite a few interesting results... Still a little curious about how melee would be resolved, but it seems by and large that the best thing to do is have the right equipment for the job ready at hand. Please excuse me now while I go find myself a clip of AV ammo.... just in case ;)
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Greyfoxx
post Aug 17 2003, 07:22 AM
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Here's how melee could easily stop drones in their tracks (and its unarmed)

Physad with high str, smashing blow, distance strike, imp unarmed skill.

Also useful against light vehicles and redirecting incoming grenades and rockets. :)

Also works like sunder in AD&D except its ranged :D

EDIT: oh, and for those frustrating moments when you just got to hit something...
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Switchblade
post Aug 17 2003, 07:25 AM
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There's just something about beating a vehicle to death with unarmed combat that seems so... daft.
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