Ares Slivergun - Variations on a Theme, Creative players plaguing Gamemasters Options

[TheQuestionMan]

The Ares Slivergun has always been one of the more interesting Firearms in Shadowrun. Everyone visualizes it differently and interprets it in another way. I have always thought of it as a Needle Pistol. The ammunition as a block of ceramic/composite plastics that are shaved off and hurled with great velocity. Doing Flechette Damage to all Targets.

My players took this one step further and engineered and developed a few creative variations.

Chemical Rounds - Using a Frozen Ammunition with DMSO Cocktails or Frozen Holy Water or Garlic Water.

Splinter Rounds - Wooden Flechettes for those pesky HVHMM carriers.

Tracking Rounds - A Tracking Flechette Electronic/Chemical/etc...

What do you think I should do?

QM

[northern lights]

have them role their apporpriate skill to create them, such as chemical engineering.

having a contact to do that should be very difficult. they'll need to foot the r&d costs, etc.

good theory, encourage it, just make it tkae a while for it to implement in gameplay.

[Arethusa]

Just. Make it. Fucking. Stop.

[Nyxll]

if you are using frozen rounds, how are you going to keep the frozen? mega compressed nitrogen catridges? batteries?

you will need chem tests, engineering b/r, firearms b/r

if you are firing these off, remember that air friction will warm the frozen matterial, wood is much lighter, and brittle than lead

flechette trace rounds? if you wish, but your chars will have to clean the weapon religiously. you are going to need a phosphorus and firearms b/r for this as well

btw holywater and garlic do not affect vampires.

[Arethusa]

Just. Make it. Fucking. Stop.

[Fresno Bob]

[Arethusa]

Just. Make it. Fucking. Stop.

[Bearclaw]

The Myth Busters proved that the "ice bullet" doesn't work.

[ophanimx]

The Mythbusters also only spent a day on it and recieved a response from the US Goverment that all information, research, and technology relating to an "ice bullet" and other such disappearing ammo was classified and not subject to the freedom of information act because it was deemed either vital to national security or was seeing actual use.

That said, there are probably better ways to achieve a similiar result. A bullet that simply shatters while inside the body pretty much destroys the chance for forensics work, right?

[Dog]

Depends on how small the fragments. They'd have to be pretty damn small to be missed by a serious forensics team. Or are you talking about IDing the gun it came from? Easier ways to avoid that that with a disappearing bullet.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Maybe you want a dissapearing bullet to completely freak over any possible remote chance that ritual sorcerery can be used to track it back to the person who discharged it?

[Dog]

I'll bet Mythbusters never though of that! :D

[hobgoblin]

[ShadowDragon8685]

Actually, hobgoblin, it is quite possible to make a weapon with compressed air powerful enough to slay. They were doing this around the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition. I'm sure by 2060, the technology has been revived in some form or another.

[hobgoblin]

sure its possible. hell, a bb gun can kill if your within range and aim for the right place :P

question is, will it be practical compared to a normal handgun.

and most likely you will still have to be closer to the target then you need to be with a normal rifle+scope.

no way in hell if you can make a compressed gas powered weapon be effective at those ranges.

and if you need to get close to a target, there are better ways of killing then a firearm anyways.

[hyzmarca]

Actually, modern bb guns are powerful enough to slay. The problem is that the bbs are very small and they don;t deform. They'll penetrate flesh but the wound cavities they produce are so small they are unlikely to be fatal. There are, of course, cases of lucky shots that sever arteries.

[Arethusa]

Modern bb guns won't penetrate much. I'd consider two inches of soft tissue penetration exceedingly generous.

[Raygun]

Just. Make it. Fucking. Stop.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Hobgoblin, you are incorrect.

http://www.beemans.net/Lewis%20&%20Clark%20Airgun.htm

That air gun had enough power for 40 or so shots, though probably only 10 or so at full power. It was quite powerful - the report I heard was that the woman was killed, not injured. (Lewis loaned his rifle to a skeptical man who fired negligently in the vicinity of a crowd.)

Combine this with a dissapearing bullet, and you've got rather a nice little sniper's weapons. They are supposed to be quite silent, and obviously have no muzzle flash.

[toturi]

[Arethusa]

[Raygun]

What Arethusa said. A charge powerful enough to anchor deer-sized game with a .54" lead ball at, say 50 yards, is going to be pretty noticeable at that range. Perhaps not as loud as a normal black power charge for the day, but likely much louder than a pneumatic nail gun, for example. Relatively quiet. Not "quite quiet".

[ShadowDragon8685]

In a noisy city, you'll almost never hear that report, as opposed to, say, a typical sniper's minicannon.

[Raygun]

There's no way you can make a statement that absolute. Sorry. City noise will make a difference and in some cases mask loud sounds completely, but you can't just say "noisy" and "city" and "almost never hear it".

I think that in an urban environment, you'd be much more likely to hear it just fine so long as you were within a couple hundred yards of it and there wasn't much but air between your ear and the muzzle blast (and by that I mean not many coming from inside of a building while you were on the outside, or a lot of other particularly large things to reflect sound waves away from you). You'd just mistake it for something much more mundane. Much the same way you're likely to perceive a single suppressed gunshot from a conventional (subsonic) firearm.

[eidolon]

I own an airgun that fires liquid filled projectiles. Also, it's so damn quiet that the target doesn't hear anything but the "smack" of the liquid filled projectile striking them, and all the firer hears is a light "click" when the bolt slides back open and a quiet intermittant whirring sound of the loading system when firing rapidly.