Invincible Drone? Options

[Clipwing]

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?

[Playing Games]

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.

[Lilt]

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.

[TinkerGnome]

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.

[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... :)

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??

[Herald of Verjig...]

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.

[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).

[edit]Changed 8) to eight) [/edit]

[Lilt]

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:

[Clipwing]

[Clipwing]

[Zeel De Mort]

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.

[Clipwing]

[Zeel De Mort]

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... :)

[Game2BHappy]

[Strobe]

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

[Fygg Nuuton]

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

[TinkerGnome]

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 ;)

[Clipwing]

[BigBlacksmith]

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.

[Shockwave_IIc]

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!!!

[Greyfoxx]

[Crusher Bob]

Dikote also magically cuts through armor, iirc.

[Clipwing]

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 ;)

[Greyfoxx]

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...

[Switchblade]

There's just something about beating a vehicle to death with unarmed combat that seems so... daft.