So, I'd like to ask you guys about trolls and Concealability Ratings. And no, I don't mean the TN to spot if a guy's got a troll hidden under his coat.

I'm GMing a little shadowrun game, and one of my players is playing a troll. He raised an interesting point: trolls are much bigger than other metahumans. Shouldn't they be able to hide larger weapons on their person? I mean, a troll is huge. If I could have a pistol tucked under my arm, couldn't a troll have an SMG tucked under there? If most people could fit a machine pistol under their longcoat, coudl a troll fit a carbine?

It makes sense to me, at least. So I'm wondering, what do you guys think would be an appropriate modifier? +2? +50%? I don't recall ever seeing any rules for it in any of the books, and I don't remember it ever coming up here on Dumpshock.

Yeah sure, just use the concealability modifiers table for all of the weapons. Troll weapons are large and sized for trolls if he really wants to use a smaller wepon let him but dont forget to tell him that he takes a -2 dice pool modifier when using it.

If the troll don't modify the carabine for his size, he could still use it...


... as a club or baseball bat...

I tend to avoid questions like that.
I just mention to the player, if he wants that kind of advantage, we should talk about how much easier it is to hit a big troll.
Probably unrealistic, even unfair, but works pretty well .

Well, it might not work in SR4 any more... (-2 TN is way more powerful than +2 dice).

There is the tendancy for most folks in the setting, especially sec guards, to regard trolls as heavily armed whether or not this is actually the case.


-karma

Thanks for your answers, guys. Just a couple more things I'd like to note:

-The player in question didn't play a troll to get an advantage by hiding larger weapons on himself. He played a troll because nobody in our gaming group ever had, and because we were kind of short on muscle. (The other two PCs are fragile spellcasters.)

-I'm going to operate under the assumption that troll-modded weapons are only larger in the grip and stock, rather than being scaled up overall, because otherwise the weapons stats would be changed to reflect the longer barrel and either larger ammunition or larger magazine.

-In addition to their larger size, trolls also have dermal armor in the form of bony deposits all over them. Must be hard to spot the bulge of a hidden weapon when the person is already covered in bulges.


If nobody knows of a rule in any of the books for it, or has a house rule they'd like to suggest, I'm just gonna go with a +2. It's equivalent to the bonus one gets from a concealable holster, and it's enough to make a light pistol seem like a holdout, a heavy pistol seem like a light, a machine pistol seem like a heavy pistol, or an assault rifle seem like a submachine gun.

Well, if they're hiding the weapons in sleeves/pants legs, then there should be a penalty to dexterity and possibly movement. Plus, the conceal benefit is negated in those locations by how awkward the troll is moving.

I think more along the lines of weapons strapped to the torso, but I'll keep that in mind the next time someone tries to get cute about strapping a small arsenal to their leg.

Well, they could always go for my idea on page four of the Hiding a gun topic. They just need a lot of vaseline.

Seems like too much pickiness and excessive ruling to me.
If someone brought it up in my game, I'd just say that the larger hiding area is compensated for by the fact that a troll will get more scrutiny (as previously mentioned,) and by pointing out that the concealability rating is a generalized number that represents lots of things other than size. ("Did that troll just make a 'clink' noise when he sat down?")

if i were running, and a troll wanted to hide guns on them selfs better. i would say buy a low-profile holster, and i'll give you an extra +1. (on-top of what the holster gives)
trolls already have a LOT against them if you play by the cannon.

but you just can not hide anything that's total length is more that 1/4 th of you total high.