Presumably, the problem with a knife and sound isn't the knife itself but rather keeping the individual who you are shanking from uttering noises.

Hand over mouth
Deep cut across the neck, severing the vocal cords and voicebox.
Special Forces have been killing people with knives quietly for centuries

He was also catching the casings in his left hand when he fired

electronic firing system
(caseless ammo)

Well, the same problem could be given for a guy being shot by a silenced weapon. No matter how silence the weapon you are using is. If the target makes a noise you are screwed anyway.

I'd say 4 or 5 threshold to hear a stab.

I think it is actually a stab through each lung. The slit throat tends to allow gasping gurgling noises and is not silent.
Harder to do but more effective is a shot to the brain stem.

Needless to say, people are inconveniently messy and noise when you try to kill them.

Monofilament wire garrote, imo. Just have to hear the head hit the ground.

In a world where people have comlinks embedded in their heads one doesn't need a voice to communicate "HELP! I'M BEING STABBED" just before they die.

I've seen videos of cows having their throats cut (halal butchers), and you can't hear that at all. I don't think humans can produce any sound either. The cut and windpipe are too big. I'd say it is the kicking of feet, knocking over furniture, that you have to worry about.

Killing someone silently with a knife is a lot harder than people would make out. You have to saw through someones neck, as you can't just make a clean cut, what with all the bone, tendons, muscles and whatnot in the way, while covering the mouth of a struggling, panicking full grown adult. You then have to keep them still, and silent, until they bleed out and fall unconscious. It would probably be easier to garrote them. Cleaner, too.

Does this matter in a game where your partners are an ork that throws fireballs and an elf with a head computer? Does reality only bend for them? I think not, and this is a hang up with many players.

I was just throwing that out there.

Still Hax makes a valid point, people always seem to want to get "realism" in all the wierdest places. If you game isn't playing like spy or action movie because your getting realism on things your doing something wrong.

Smokeskin, look at the Perception Threshold table. You can apply Perception modifiers (DP penalties) to the test, but the *threshold* certainly isn't more than 3 (4 ==subvocal speech). Threshold 4 is *silent* already.

Hell, if you want to be unnoticed, you'll probably need to avoid actually harming anyone. You think it really costs that much for a Biomonitor w/ a 'broad-cast on death' sub-routine? Hell, that's what DocWagon uses.
Depending on how good the sensors are, there's a chance they could pick up drugs or unconsciousness.

Of course, if even half the grea in the books was properly used (or used at all), shadowruns would become impossible for most players. Rule of Cool for the Fun.

Except this is a perfect example of "why did we bring that hacker guy?"

Hacker finds the commlink on the security guard and owns it. Spoofs the biomonitor to broadcast, "all is well, or perhaps to loop the last 10 minutes of 'stuff' over and over again. The B&E guy stealths up and knocks out, kills, disables, takes out of the game the guard.

If all the gear was properly used, then shadowruns would require the various archtypes to work together during the run

Admittedly my grasp of the rules is 'suck' - especially Matrix & to a lesser extent Astral - but couldn't the guards have their gear Slave'd to a node with decent protection? And/or Skinlinked?
Half the 'problem' is that there's so many different things that can be used for security and are overlooked/forgotten, the other half is that most of us lack any kind of 'security systems' knowledge.

Look at the Cyberware Scanner: Perception/Sensor + 6 to detect most any weapon and Cyberware within 15m, starting at Threshold 1. Cheap as hell, and insures that you either run with no F-ratings what-so-ever, or have Warrants matching your Biometrics and 'Ware Package.
It's one of those things I hesitate to buy, in case the GM uses it.

EDIT: Although, I could see a kind of 'Logic Houserule' that the Scanner looks for matching profiles, so a shielded compartment doesn't show up red flags.

The Biomonitor doesn't have the range to be slaved to something bigger.
That Biomonitor has by RAW either a 0 or 1 signal rating. Meaning that it has somewhere between a 3m and 40m range.
Now you could have a security node with a 4 signal covering the whole building, and slaving the biomonitors to that.. rather than the security guard's PAN. But that has it's own issues. You bring your own biomonitor, you spoof the guard's signature and access ID, and then you take his offline. The Node has a momentary blip, but that's it.


Cyberware scanners roll Device Rating, not Perception/Sensor+6.
Using EW+Spoof on them to muck up their sensors. The problem /I/ have is that.. basically in the world of 2072. Without a hacker/Techno you're fux0red. And the Techno is probably a better bet, because he's more likely to smash the opposition.

I think it's fine that you *must* have a hacker. That's the world, as you say, of 2070. Everyone should be a 'hacker', basically, just as everyone should have a gun. Yes, the gunbunny is *much* better at it, and the hacker is *much* better at his job, but everyone has a little.

I am reminded of this.

It helps if you know the actor was a member of the British Special Operations Executive during WW2...




-karma

If you are looking to kill someone with a knife, there are two good places, and they are both nerve clusters.

The first is in the kidney. Being stabbed in the kidney causes your nervous system to overload in much the same way as an electrical shock. The victim is immobilized, unable to move, or scream, but the stab itself is not necessarily fatal. The prime advantage is that it's easy, which is why it's the shank spot of choice in all our nation's finest prisons.

The second place is to stab upwards right below the xiphoid process on the sternum. Again, the CNS is overwhelmed and the person is paralyzed, but this wound is fatal. Doing this properly, you can sever the Aorta, perforate the diaphragm and do all other sorts of fatal nastiness. Best way to accomplish this one is to wrap your non-dominant arm around the target's neck, like in a choke hold while driving the knife in with your dominant hand, that way you can control them on the way to the ground.

So, if you're behind a guy with a knife, you've got two good options for taking the target down without a struggle.
Best part is, because they tense up, if they're holding anything, they won't even drop it.

Right, because shadowrun is so accurate.

I think "Taking him offline" has become my new favorite euphemism for quiet sentry removal.

Also, I think the quietness of stabbing someone to death is probably reflected in the size of your dice pool. Joe Bill with a DP of 5 is probably going to be butchering someone and none to quietly. Jill Ninja with her DP of YES will probably do a fine job putting a blade wherever it needs to go to "take someone offline" on the quiet.

That information isn't really important to playing ShadowRun. This is where my wife laughs at "nerds talking about killing/military".

(note: I like Saint Sithney, he's a great GM, but we do tend to wax poeticlly about "information not pertenant to the game, as if it's showing off e-pene length)

I'm always reminded of the bit of movie trivia where they were filming Saruman's cut death scene in lord of the rings and Peter Jackson was describing to Christopher Lee what a man stabbed from behind should breath or sound like. Christopher Lee, who was SAS(If i remember correctly) during WW2 informed him that he knew exactly what a man stabbed from behind sounded like.

/nerd off

EPIC WIN!

That is where I laugh at "people thinking everyone who games is a nerd."


It's not hard to be reminded of it, because it was linked to right here in this thread, yesterday, about four posts ago.

Man, that was so long ago. I remember those old glory days.

Man, that was so long ago. I remember those old glory days.

"Well they pass you by...glory days...in the wink of young girl's eye..."

No worries.
Good research makes for a good scene is all.

Or at least a visceral scene.

Especially when about half of the people I've played with either are or were in the military. (not that service excludes them from being nerds, but the implied "clueless about killing/military" sure doesn't fit )

Duh... I game.

What's wrong with going in above C1 and hitting the brainstem (preferably with a thinner knife)? Or just sliding in under the floating ribs and up from behind to hit the diaphragm?

Woo, double.

Because they'd loose their bowels while you're right behind them
Do you know how much it costs to launder ruthenium polymers?

Jokes aside, I was making my suggestions based around the rifle-clattering problems mentioned earlier. If you can shock the CNS, you can freeze them up, and then put them down however you like. Jacking their brain stem right off might just drop them too quickly, and the diaphragm might not drop them quickly enough. Besides, why deal with possible bone deflection by going straight to the skull and spine when you can just stick their kidney a couple of times first and spike them once they're on the ground?

The Bounty Hunter only had 1 IP? Well yeah, any character with only 1 IP is going to have a tough time being relevant in "regular" combat.

P.S. Melee is generally quite weak vs ranged weapons unless you are in a situation where you can remove the range advantage. "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight" originated long before Shadowrun. There are some fundamental reasons for this and you have to heavily distort reality to even the playfield. Shadowrun isn't "reality" but it generally isn't distorted anywhere near the extent and the way it would require to make melee and ranged weapons equally strong in situations where ranged weapons normally have an advantage.

You're talking (for a nerve cluster) about a target area smaller than a fingernail. Your spinal cord is only about the diameter of a finger at it's widest point. I'm more than willing to believe that putting a blade into either of those spots you describe is incredibly painful and/or rapidly debilitating, I just don't buy the nerve-cluster-as-target theory. Honestly, you get a knife blade into the thoracic cavity and start scrambling it around, there's nothing but bad that will happen, and that up-under-the-zyphoid shot is going to destroy pulmonary function and likely major vasculature incredibly quickly... why even worry about finding a particular nerve bundle?

Any organ damage is honorably bad but the the reason kidney are a bad place to get hit is that it is the filtration system for your blood. Blood is constantly being pushed through that organ each time the heart pumps. If you get your kidney stabbed you will die quickly if you don't get help. People joke about fighting dirty and punching someone in the kidney but you should never do it. You can kill a person that way or damage or destroy one of their kidneys. That is the kind of trouble no one wants to deal with.

I would say kidneys are the most vulnerable organs that is not protected by bone in the form of a skull, ribcage or spine. Though technically skin is an organ so I guess you could say that is the most vulnerable organ but I mean in terms of able to take damage that will end your life.

There are systems with very deadly critical hits that might destroy an organ or cripple a limb but shadowrun is not usually one of them. At the same time it is not quite like D&D "are you ok? "" I'm fine: I've see got 1 more hit point left, why do you ask?" "You have burns over 70% of your body, and have a 3 foot metal spike sticking through your gut."

Hasn't anyone here cut up a chicken before? Punching through the cartilage between any given bone is not any easy task even when the target in question is already dead, cleaned, and partly dissected so you can even see the joint you're trying to separate.

Thought that said, once you knock out a few chickens you can get pretty damn fast at it.

Reminds me of this article I ran across the other day.

This man is right. Trying to hack living, or even formerly-living tissue apart is hard due to all the connective tissue still hanging on for all its worth, not including trying to hack through bone and cartilage. And yes, the more practice you have at something the faster you get, with Martin Yan being an extreme example of this very specific example.

It's hard?

So what!

Experienced Shadowrunners (which even a starting character is supposed to be) do "hard" shit all the time. They're superhumanly strong and fast, have done whatever-this-job-is a dozen times before, have magic and cyberware on their side, and are trained professionals. "Hard." Pfft. If it wasn't hard, someone wouldn't have hired Shadowrunners to do it in the first place!

You guys are all wrong-- killing someone in ShadorRun quickly doesn't involve any of that: it involves large amounts of dice.

It's true; I was once only narrowly acquitted by downgrading my Murder charges to Involuntory Manslaughter. We were minmax'd, and they told me to roll all the dice, because I was the luckiest.
Poor Bob, we hardly knew ye.


...Or was it Bill?

It's the difference between the theory of killing people and the actual practice of it. It's okay though. The discussions are worth a chuckle.

This is absolutely correct, when your knife physad throws a bucket of dice to stab someone, I generally assume reality slows down so we can all watch in awe he or she carves someone into pieces while a booming voice announces "BRUTALITY"

Also, Martin Yan is exactly the man I had in mind when I was talking about machining chicken into its constituent parts. He is a perfect example of "What it means to have a 6+ in a skill." I like to imagine an alternative post-apocalyptic Earth in which Martin Yan became an arbiter of justice rather than a fantastic and funny chef.

While you're at it, why go for a nerve cluster when there's a neck right there? It's a surprised attack and he's going to die anyway, so you might as well ignore armour and decapitate him.
Downsides including general lack of ability to put your hand over his exposed windpipe, and the fine mist (or gory sludge) coating your armour might mess with the Chameleon functions. On the other hand, who messes with the guy who has a Spirit bound to his suit with the orders 'Remove bloodstain'?

So how many people have you killed again? With knives?