Ok, I was thinking about the shock hands and gloves, and was wondering what would happen if you were to use it one someone you were in the middle of grappling? Would you get shocked too? Would you suffer the same amount of damage, or would it be less, as the target resisted some of the electricity for you alredy.

Off the cuff, I would say that both were shocked.
Fast and easy, no need to remember a formula or any other rule.

Sounds like great stuff to happen when you Glitch or Critical Glitch

Well, what happens today if you taser someone while he's in physical contact with someone else? I dunno, have no experience in that area.

My first though is that tazering requires an electrical circuit to be connected. Usually from one tazer contact, through the target body, and back to the other contact. How would this affect another body that's not actually in the circuit loop?


-karma

ah, but you are in the loop, if you are in contact with the target of the electrical attack, as you are "part" of the target.

I was never very good at science stuff, so I may have gotten this wrong, but wouldn't the electrical current generally travel through the shortest route possible? So, (as I understand it) it would generally travel from the shock hand straight through the body to the ground (or back to the shock hand I guess if the target isn't grounded). So a grappling person is less likely to feel the shock as strongly. But like I said, this isn't really my thing, I might have gotten it wrong along the way.

Assume that the Shock Gloves act in the same manner as a regular Taser, and are DC, therefore, never needing a ground to make the circuit. When the hands are wrapped around someone's arm, in a grappling situation for example, the current is only going from one contact in the glove, through the victim in that area, and back to the other contact in the glove.

It is the voltage of the shock and the physiology of the body that causes the paralysis and damage to the victim going through that loop. As long as you are not between the contacts and the victim, then the "user" should not ever be shocked.

I got this from a Taser course in the UK...just browsing for an answer and found it:

Damn good post.

Welcome to Dumpshock.

Very nice
I stand corrected
and the mages in my game are much relieved.

I had a character with non conduct on armor and shock gloves that loved to do Chin-na (chinese hard grappling based on damaging joints and tendons, not throws as much). He would put you into a wrist lock with a shock glove. We ruled that if they didn't fully resist the stun then they lost their unarmed counter roll. Then you would stab you or shoot you while you where incapacitated.

Of course he eventually tried that on someone with a cyberlimb and got his gun taken away from him and shot with it.

is it just me or is it kinda interesting that a person calling him/her self singe, post about the workings of tasers?

I think that there should be a set of lethal stun weapons based on knives and short swords. They cut into the person and drop their resistance from 100,000 ohms to less then 500 ohms (maybe much less depending on their electrolyte levels). This means that the effectiveness increases.

Most of the time these stun weapons are in the milliAmp range. If you take that additional energy saved from not having to overcoming the resistance and cange it over to amperage instead then you could push it in to the lethal range of 1 amp+ for defib and higher.

I don't like the fact that, according to the rules, you can't make a stun damage spell that does electrical effect damage, essentially an area effect taser spell. You can't make such a spell since it says that all elemental damage effects must be physical on the table in SM p. 163

"Elemental Effect (must be physical spell with physical damage)"

It would be nice to have the secondary effects of electrical damage in a stun spell... Oh well, one can always dream, right? Or just change that stupid rule...

I think that is a badly worded part of the book. I think that what they were trying to say was that you have to do physical, as opposed to mana, effects with elemental spells. The spell construction rules allow you to make a spell do stun damage. Just factor that in. It lowers the drain if I'm not mistaken.

Which, as has been pointed out by serbitar, is a mistake. Stun damage is just as valuable as physical damage, and the drain should be the same.

Sometimes stun is more valuable than physical, as non-magical runners tend to have lower will than body, and mages tend to take at least some stun from drain.

Plus, there's always the joy of slapping a tranq patch on someone.

Off the top of my head, I'd say that as the grappler you can use your shock gloves/hands in grappling if you want to. If the grappled character manages to turn the situation around in the contested roll, both grapplers take the attack, with the grappler with the gloves resisting half damage.

Also, if the grappler with the gloves glitches, but still retains the upperhand the same happens. If he loses the upperhand and glitches, both resist full damage. If he critically glitches, only he takes the damage, and it is full.

This represents not the current going through both bodies, but with both bodies being hit with the gloves. In a tangle, its easy enough to make contact with your own body. I wouldn't want to be grappling with shock gloves. The grappler without the gloves could even turn the gloves on his owner.

This might make an interesting situation where someone with enough boxes of damage left could grapple someone with shock gloves, and count on the other guy going down first. I'd have to think about it more, and try it out of course.

Dread Polack

This doesn't have to change the system I proposed. The character might try this, but they're not necessarily going to succeed. The same results I described would be the result of them not deactivating or not activating them too soon or too early. If the player was insistent that they're being extra careful not to shock themselves, I might insist on a higher threshold to get the shock off (a normal success would just mean a normal grapple).

If the player is being a particular munchkin about it, you could simply declare they're trying to attempt 2 actions simultaneously, and impose a penalty, or worse, force them to split their dice pool. After all, are you trying to incapacitate the opponent, or shock her? Both? Okay, good luck. Leave them on or leave them off, or take the penalties.

Dread Polack

How would you handle damage from sustained contact with a taser or shock hand? it does its standard damage every combat turn?