Give it up already. The man ceded the fight to you.

He was asking for clarification so I gave it to him.

Yeah, I asked for a clarification and I'm glad I got it. No worries, moosegod.

But seriously, I hope you don't actually believe that I didn't read your first msg through because I was already then "only wanting to win". After all, I had no idea it was going to end up as an argument between us back then.

It does prove that I don't spend enough time trying to understand text, though.

Admittedly the canon Shadowrun monowhip isn't actually a monowhip, but if it were it probably wouldn't be too difficult to stick some orichalcum inside the carbon nanotube. It depends on the configuration (and thus width) of the orichalcum.
It's possible that silver bullets are common, but I personally am going to keep that to the paranoid in my games ("the little grey men are coming to get me" paranoid, not "the corps are out to get me" paranoid). I really just don't see any of the threats you mention being common enough for even large suppliers to usually have them immediately available, though certainly by special order...
Which in turn would probably send the price through the roof, as they can then charge people who probably won't ever need the things but are certain that it's a matter of life or death, and thus will pay about anything.

~J

Actually, corps wouldn't be able to charge very large sums for such bullets because, as has been mentioned, most people could easily make their own silver bullets very cheap. If the average gun-afficionado can make a significant number of them for a very small price, then no one would ever buy them from the corps anyway, and they'd simply be sold in specialized (and sometimes slightly less legal) stores for a low price.

Of course you might simulate that with an extremely high price but an extremely low Street Index, e.g. 250 nuyen for a box of 10, SI of 0.5. [Edit]Of course, all of this is moot if you use Custom Finish the way Doctor Funkenstein suggested.[/Edit]

Just for the record making silver bullets or even silver coated bullets is pretty easy.

To add a layer of silver say, .1 mm thick, all you do is take a certain solution and dunk the bullet in it. Silver tends to coat both copper and lead since they are less chemically active and voila, bullets with a thin silver coating. Such a thin coating won't screw up your ballistics or your chambering the round (Unless you're using something with really insane tolerances such as a custom sniper rifle.) The solution would eventually get weak but you can buy it pretty cheaply from Rio Grande, I'd call it a chemistry (3) test and use a chemistry kit, ammo kits have no reason to be involved.

Also Shadowrun companion page 37 specifies that weapons with only a silver coating get the full bonus vs. shapeshifters, so reasonably they would also work against all the other nasties with a weakness to silver.

Like Fortune said, it doesn't matter. Orichalcum just has to be a part of the enchanting process; it doesn't have to be included in the "killing part" of a weapon focus. It can be in the handle or any other part.

Can you not go for the stupidly high Tn's and go without orichalcum?

Using nothing but the Enchanting rules in Magic in the Shadows, yes, it's possible. The only place it states that orichalcum has to be used in the construction of a weapon focus is the fluff description of them in the core rulebook... so a lot of GMs tend to take it to heart.

Personally I think there's more than enough incentive to include orichalcum in the construction of weapon foci that making it a requirement isn't vital, but I tend to be a lenient GM.

Fair enough; I was thinking of the carcerands when I was saying that, but thinking about it, a chunk of molecules and atoms big enough to be orichalcum as opposed to random molecules of various metals would be too large.

As for charging large amounts for the bullets: there are a lot of people out there willing to spend money on useless stuff that they could make because they don't know how and they might not realize that they could make it themselves.

~J

The doc speaks true. You could have a monowhip weapon focus with an orichalcum handle. The whip itself does not need to be made of orichalcum.

Not that it'd pe particularily easy by the focus enchanting rules. The OR would be around 8, even 10 if the GM is having a bad day. It'd take a lot of radicals and orichalcum to get that TN reasonable (from a starting 16+force)... Or you could just buy one from a store.

Discussion on dikoting bullets and weapons

The discussions across that link have a lot of discussion about dikoting ammunition buried in there.

For the dikoting flechettes, I say only if you subscribe to the "single aerodynamic dart" definition of flechette. Dikoting any sort of armor penetrating round should work out well, while using it on any round requiring expansion would probably be a poor idea. Using dikote on any round where the dikote is in direct contact with the barrel, the user should be prepared to replace the barrel due to land/groove erosion really fast.

I still say that any blade intended for a weapon wouldn't have a fine enough edge to cut glass.

~J