From the Gauss Rifle thread:



So, that's saying that the Slivergun is a good weapon?

Wait, hang on - I always thought the slivergun was one of the worst pistol-class weapons in the game?

Granted, it hits harder versus unarmoured civvies, but with any flechette weapon (especially with the errata'd +5 AP for using flechette ammo, instead of +2 AP), it just has no stopping power if you shoot at anything with armour clothing or better (and lets be fair, everyone and their dog that the team are going to be shooting at has armour clothing or better).

This is also assuming the house rule: "positive modifiers to AP, increasing the effective armour, are limited to the actual value of the armour worn". IE if I were in armour rating 1/1 then a hit from a flechette round would give me a max effective armour rating of (1+1) 2. If that house rule weren't in place, I'd be tempted to just take flechette ammo out of the book!

What am I missing?

The Slivergun gets +3 to damage (instead of +2), and is BF capable. It has double the ammo capacity of other good heavy pistols. For those who intend to kill, it has no drawbacks except armor penetration. No big deal with a 10P/+5 code.

the fact that most critters don't come in armored and so this weapon makes hamburgers out of most of those things for example . . and then there's allways shooting civvies who usually don't wear much armor either . . granted, it's a far stretch but with the called shot rules you can try to circumvent that much armor too O.o

Ah, of course - I always forget about critters and using them - I always use metahuman enemies as my core targets, and they (almost) always wear armour.

Also, yes, I can see how with a big dicepool, you could call a shot and do a hell of a lot of damage with a slivergun if you hit. Hmm, well, I need to re-evaluate my opinion of flechette ammo and sliverguns.

As long as your DV gain is bigger than 1/3 of the AP penalty, you're good.

have them be in the woods to gather some ingredients for a mage and go DING once they kill the correct number of correct critters . . let's see if they find out that they are doing an WOW style quest *g*
i had one character go into the woods once . . he did not make it out on his own troll-feet <.< . . but before he hit the grass flechette was a nice big help ^^

Nothing like getting stalked by a Bandersnatch in the woods and everyone else believing you to be imaging things because your character is the only one who does not keep failing the perception tests.

And yes, Flechette/Shot on burstfire helped a lot, although that was pre-4E.

The slivergun have gone through SEVERAL changes from SR2 to SR4.

In SR1 it was a LIGHT pistol with heavy pistol ranges

In SR2 it became a HEAVY pistol with heavy pistol ranges

In SR3 the mistake in conversion followed and it became the ubergun due to the mistake that it’s damage code went from 6M to 9M(F) and THEN people added burst fire (Which was very, very wrong).

The actual code should have been 6M(F) with 9M(F) when doing BF and light pistol ranges.

End result is that they fixed a light pistol into the weapon of DOOM doing 12M(F) and could BF twice due to simple action for BF.

The damage code in SR4 is a lot more balanced as it is devastating against unarmored targets, and it has 1 point of damage more than any other heavy pistol firing regular flechette rounds.

So, for it’s type as a flechette pistol it’s damn good and actually balanced unlike it’s earlier version.

But the armour houserule is definitely needed otherwise trolls would have 6 in armor.

nitpick, the gun would do 12S(f) damage with one burst due to ther BF Rules in SR3 adding one damage level every three power-levels/bullets . . against unarmored that is 12D damage if i am not wrong somewhere, and if you do called shot to get one more damage level you're at 12D for armoured targets too . . but they get more armor to stage down power and thus a better chance of staging down the damage . . of course, somebody with less than 8 body and no combat pool will take AT LEAST light damage with that . . but that's purely academic as everybody and their mother gets combat pool in SR3 *g*

Considering 1 hit every four dice a bod 3 person wearing an armor vest takes about 4p if hit with a heavy pistol,
(the actual math is less than that, something about 3p) .

6p (for the net hit) AP -1 vs: 3+6 dice. The resisting character rolls 8 dice vs 6p, takes 4 boxes, maybe 3...


Now the same person hit by a slivergun gets 5 more dice (to impact armor) so...

9p AP +5 vs 3+4 dice = 9p vs 12 dice, takes 6 boxes of damage, maybe 5... there is a one box damage difference favoring the Ares Viper.

Now factor in burst fire capability

and double ammo capacity

and included silencer

you start to realize it is a scary weapon, IMO it's damage value should be 7p, nor 8 and I have always guessed it was more a cut & paste carryover from past editions than a conscious, mathematically sound decision...

Still, if you consider heavier armors (say: 10) and edge re-rolls flechette ammo gets more inconvenient.

Nevertheless, overpowered and not so pricey. Of course, my first sr character had one.

Cheers,

Max

Well, as far as i remember, in SR3 burst fire indeed added +3 to the Power and +1 to the damage code. So a 6m would become 9S. Heavy pistols did 9s(remember in SR1, that 6M weapon had a different Staging Code. In SR2, when they normalized the damage codes, generally heavy pistols became 9M, but all had the same staging...ie, 2 successes to bring it down one level).

So a 9M pistol that had a burst-fire option would do 12S.

The Viper only shot fletchettes; which added 1 to the Damage Code of any weapon vs. unarmored targets; i believe vs. armor you used 2x Impact or regular Ballistic, whatever what higher, and the damage code might have stayed the same.

So a Viper, firing 9S burst(9M of a heavy pistol plus fletchettes, plus an additional 3 to power and 1 to damage code for the burst), would indeed be doing 12D vs. unarmored targets, and i don't hink this was a misprint. Remember the old Roomsweeper? It was 9M with regular slugs, and 9S with fletchettes. Yes, it really did turn any unarmored person, paracritter, or thing into ground meat. But fletchettes did that(remember the shotguns? The FA shotguns? Firing fletchettes? Talk about hamburger.)

EDIT: Ahh, i didn't remember that the Silvergun was originally a Light pistol. I could have sworn in SR2 it was a heavy pistol, but i don't have the SR2 guide in easy reach at the moment.

Also, Trolls had it ok then...but not as good. Their dermal armor(and anyone with dermal plating), didnt add to their Armor, it added to their Body for damage resistance. It DID cut fletchettes down though. So an unarmored troll facing a fletchette burst from whatever would be rolling against 12S rather than 12D, if i remember. Moderately better but not much.

Ah, yes. Would have been more balanced if they had kept it as it was intended, a LIGHT pistol with better range. Still, the SR4 heavy pistol version IS balanced.

SR3 version (as it was meant to be)
Type: Light Pistol
Damage: 6L(F)
Burst Fire: 9M(F)
Range: Heavy Pistol Ranges

SR4 version (As it should have been, but including damage bonus from SR4)
Type: Light Pistol
Damage: 5P(F)
Burst Fire: 7P(F)
Range: Heavy Pistol Ranges

i still don't see what the fuss is about . . ok, the savalette has less clip capacity, but in exchange you get a cheaper gun with built in recoil compensation and get to chose if you WANT to shoot flechette . . you can shoot flechette with savalette just fine and end up in the same kind of damage . . granted, the SR3 Sliver-Gun was one heck easier to hide than a chromed out monster like the savalette, but meh . . i still like the savalette better . . because 12S damage with Gel-Rounds does 12D Damage when checking for knockdown, even if the actual damage taken is only 10S Stun Damage . . so you can drop somebody with that thing without producing red mist ^^

Excellent point. Fletchette was good for killing, and that's it(though i guess you could scare a roomfull of unarmoreds with a BF or FA fletchette weapon). Stick some gel rounds in a BF weapon, and you have a hell of a crowd control tool that might leave some bruises, a couple of cracked ribs(if you really get a kickass roll and they suck at defending), and hurt feelings, but no one's dead.

Yeah, if you go out of your way to worry about that sort of thing.

And Toreador wondered why I went straight to the Slivergun.

Little does he realize I have an innate sense of the overpowered.

if you ain't using a troll with twinked out strrength and a bow you're far away from over-powered *g*
the only way of making the bow stronger would be APDS arrows *g*
in SR3, i usually gave each character one Savalette guardian, one Ares Viper Sliver Gun and one really bad weapon . . mostly a Dart-Gun with Gamma-Scopolamine *g*

Hmm there's an image... A metal dart, that on firing, sheds spacers to reveal... A metal dart!

unless the second metal dart is MUCH smaller and can break off when it hits the target. thereby tumbling and maybe causing more damage.

IIRC the AVS had really good concealability for a heavy pistol in SR3, as well.

It takes a Complex Action to burst fire a Savalette, in comparison with most other BF-capable weapons which only require a Simple Action.