The friendly neighberhood Assault Cannon. Solves almost every problem that jumps you in the night.

It also helps with making your tax declaration. Just shoot them greedy bastards dead.

AOE wreck gun. Stops guns cold.

Still gotta beat OR.

Also, why would you waste your action for casting an anti-gun-combat spell, if you could simply cast a mana/stun/power-ball and knock out the guys holding the guns themselves?

It means that 4-5 hits makes them useless, where as stunballs will only do it after the second or third round.

Not to mention that direct spells don't effect things you can't see. Like the pistol that will be used to shoot your ass twice the next IP.

Yeah a pistol shooting a spirit can really do some damage... Wouldn't a force 5 wreck gun spell need just one or two hits to wreck someones gun or am I crazy?

I tend to find that being shot twice with 5 hits each on a base DV of 5 -5 armor often stings. Unless I use edge, then it's more like 8 hits. You do take ONE point less than from the alpha..... And this ignores the minor detail that the action it takes to materialize tends to be the last action a spirit ever takes.

Ok a Shadow Runner can throw that many dice, but who else can even throw that many dice into pistols for an average of 5 hits? 15 dice? In pistols? And they happen to always be carrying AP rounds? Do you always carry AP rounds? Is everyone an adept in your universe? I mean does everyone have... a 7 in agility, a 6 in pistols with a +2 to the specialty of heavy pistols or something like that? Is that after they switch from their assault cannon to their pistol? What the hell are they throwing for dice with that? I'm sorry but that just makes no sense to me what so ever when dealing with a group of people (unless in the setting everyone is a shadow runner or a crazy adept.)

i realize this a few pages late, but this was a brilliant post. well said Whipstitch.

You'd have to beat the OR of the gun, which IIRC is something like 4.

My players are still doing low-budget runs. The opposition isn't too tough yet; the mercs had Agi 4, Skill3, Smartguns and Ex-Ex Ammo, but no APDS. They were packing a few longarms, shotguns and SMGs, but nothing that could penetrate the Spirit's Immunity. A cut above the average amateur ganger, but not more. They weren't elite fighters, and they were spread over an apartment, the floor outside and the stairwell leading up to the apartment, so the first two died before the others heard more than gunfire and screams.

The players are new to 4th Edition, and the characters are relatively new to the shadows. They've yet to work for or against a AAA corp, and so far they haven't met any mages, just a few phys-ads. No high-powered samurai, no elite assassins, no Red Samurai team - just gangers, goons and gunslingers. There's only one guy on the team with 3 IPs (phys-ad), one with two (weapons specialist), the shaman and the Technomancer have one each (in the flesh, of course).

Well, I did say they were almost all mages and mystic adepts. So the >10 dice of countermagic would tend to eat the spell anyhow. But yeah, typical skill of 4-5 with pistols, specialize in semi-auto. Agil of 5, smartlink. So only 14. For the ones who are not heavily optimized. They do about the same, often worse, with an alpha, but the alpha has better range, burst fire and the GL. And why not only carry APDS etc? How many shots do you shoot on an average run that you don't care about? In terms of damage, you obviously have missed my previous rants about how pistols in SR are overrated and rifles underrated.

Sure carry bigger guns, but APDS has an availability of 16 that's like trying to find a Wi last Christmas. So no, I don't assume a standard merc group of 5 or 6 has APDS loaded assault rifles.

So don't. Use normal ammunition and cheap longarms like the T-250 Defiance, Remington 990, tasers or a pistol like the Ruger Warhawk and a Take Aim action. That's the route I take far more often than not. I don't like the idea of my PCs finding APDS littered about on corpses as if you could pick up a few crates from the dollar store either. There's going to be situations where your runners ambush people and sic a Spirit on 'em and all everyone has is puny weapons, but it shouldn't be when they're facing a group of mercenaries you intended to be an actual challenge. Security Guards don't always carry rifles, but the second an alarm goes off or trouble is expected their should be guys grabbing shotguns from the armory or trunk of the squad car. People do that today against high risk threats, and I think it'll only escalate when you factor in trolls and cheap body armor. As far as a team of mercenaries go, I find it perfectly reasonable that one of the guys in the group might be designated to carry a simple Defiance T-250 and an "emergency" magazine of Explosive ammo, Ex-Ex or yes, maybe even APDS. You can have him wrap the end of the mag in friction tape as a reminder of which one has the good stuff and everything.

Far as Wiis go, I have two of 'em.

You need to keep in mind that military and police don't have availability numbers for weapons and ammo, nor does a AAA corporate security force. They don't go through a fixer and have to negotiate and wait and pay more like runners do, they send a PO to the manufacture and truck shows up the next day full of AV rockets or APDS. They carry whatever the police chief or the site manager issues them to carry, not what they can scrounge in back alleys.

You also get BIG discounts when you order ammo by the 40 foot long shipping container instead of by the 20 round box.

Yes... because the police can order anti vehicular rockets now a days... a AAA or even a AA task force would probably carry high end items like that, but the police? Remember corps are cheap bastards that try to cut whatever they can to the bone to make the most profit. I'm sorry but I just don't believe that Lone Eagle or even a military like JIS will be handing out rocket launchers like it was popcorn. The way I see corps set out is to bean count just about anything. After an engagement I can see people filling out paperwork for how much ammo they used. Should the district commander have broken out the armory and given out rocket launchers to everyone? Not everyone knew how to use them, and rockets are hundreds of per shot. Did the situation warrant that move?

It's like saying the army has tanks. Yes they do and they don't have to jump through hoops to get one, but that does not mean every single person and their mother in the army has a tank. It also means that you won't see tanks deployed in every situation. Thats the way I see the SR universe at least (could be wrong, but it feels so right.)

Another reason that regular units don't have APDS; so they aren't a threat to the elite units.

However, I think this comparison was about players, and maybe we should consider starting ones. Starting characters can't get APDS? And after that it depends on how much Santa Claus is in the GMs genes.

Yes, note that if you are in a game that involves stuff like forged end user certificates, then an order of 500,000 rounds of ammunition is a small one. Consider that a battalion (around 800 guys) on a week long training rotation and firing 100 rounds a day each runs through 560,000 rounds of ammo. A company (around 200 guys) on a more intensive week long training rotation might fire 500 rounds a day for around 700,000 rounds of ammo used up. Of course, this also reminds you how insane SR ammo prices are.

?!
Wouldn't you want the regular units of your forces to be able to at least threaten the elite forces of the other guy?


Of course, stuff like networked artillery drones are much more effective at turning irritating small units into paste when you get up to open warfare. If each infantry company is supported by, say, 3 light mortar drones, then the leading elements of a company in contact can expect some supporting fire to arrive in less than a minute. 10-20 rounds of 60mm arriving withing 5-10 meters of your position is going to be no fun at all.

Not me. I just pay them. Next nothing too. Their job is to handle regular street riff raff. I don't need them armed to turn on me. Especially not in large numbers.

As too all that other fancy jazz with arty, I can admit that arty works wonders. However last time an errant round hit another corps facility. Started an all out street fight, man that got expensive.

Not everything is a nail. Not every tool is a hammer. Most importantly, stay under budget.

Its much easier to skim part of the pot then.

Until you find out you're now 3 employees, 4 security drones and one datachip of confidential information poorer because you're too cheap to keep 4 longarms and 50 rounds of APDS locked up in the security team armory. Penny wise, dollar foolish. Seriously here, I was talking about the example in which a single Force 5 Air Spirit took out a 5 man mercenary team without taking a scratch. A couple of those guys couldn't be bothered to keep a couple of shotguns and 20 Ex-Ex rounds in the truck in case something unexpected came up while going after shadowrunners? I mean, yeah, sure, it's plausible that some guys bit it taking on a job that was out of their league. That's perfectly fine by me. But I take issue with the idea that such an event is in some way a balance problem.

A warhawk pacing APDS is both cheap and easily portable. It also gives you a penetration total of 11 (isn't it 6 (-5)?) which should deal with force 5 spirits well enough. If a force 5 spirit shows up to kick your ass, you don't want your anti-spirit solution to be in the trunk. A froce 5 spirit can kill all of you before you could get there.

Shouldn't there be single shot anti spirit weapons out on the market? Stuff like very low burn time thermal lances, very high voltage tazer type weapons, or something?

I have 2000 Facilities to run and they don't all get hit all the time. As a manager, I have to take the long view. If my competitors run cheaper lighter security, they win. Sam Walton figured it out in 1980, its about controlling costs.

Its probably cheaper for me to hire a team of runners to get the data back. Actually, compared to upgrading all of those facilities, I am positive its cheaper.

I'll have to tell the guys in HR to sell the corp life to three more desperate SINless. But the drone loss, that does suck.

As I said originally I got no problem with your end result. Yes, unless the merc team was caught with there pants down a force 5 air spirit should not beat them. I just think APDS is rare enough its entirely plausible a merc team doesn't have any on them. There is plenty of Ammo, Guns, and other things that will hurt the spirits with a smaller availability that I could see them with, so yeah they'd stomp it barring some great fluke of the dice. I'm just nit-picking your example.

Actually, you could just use the tasers that already exist. Stick and shock, taser darts and shock clubs actually are some of the most effective weapons in the game against Spirits. They're not vehicles; they've never been given a special exemption from stun damage, and once their monitor is filled they're disrupted.

As for the Spirit killing them before they got back to the truck, that's actually not so cut and dried as you'd think. It really depends on the distance involved. Spirits, even Air Spirits with their excellent agility, aren't the best attackers unless they're a Guardian Spirit with a firearm or a Man Spirit with a nasty combat spell as his optional power. The 13 dice an Air Spirit throws around is pretty impressive, especially since most of its attacks cut armor in half, but on the other hand, the base DV is equal to Force, and all their attack options take up a Complex Action, plus it only has 2 passes. So provided that it's hitting with every attack and skipping Full Defense, it's only taking out 1 guy a combat round. That's not terrible, but we are talking about a fairly nasty spirit here vs. 5 guys, so depending on the numbers here they might have some time to flex some options. That's part of the reason I actually like siccing spirits on my players. They require a change in tactics in some cases and can be quite durable, but they're more likely to disable than kill, especially if you go with somethink like an Earth Spirit, since it doesn't have the raw Agility needed to put up too big of a threat, so they're unlikely to just up and gank one of my players like a Red Samurai with an assault rifle might.

As for your last comment Shinobi, what was there to nitpick? I said people in my games generally use APDS, Stick and shock or carry better weapons than heavy pistols in the first place when going after shadowrunners or big metas like trolls and orks. We basically went through all of this so I could repeat myself, in that case.

this is not directed at you, BlueMax, but i find this line of thinking to be pretty rediculous. if its more cost effective to hire runners instead of competent gaurds, then why hire them at all?

Well you do need a continuous base level of security which is what the guard is for. He is the guy there covering the places 24/7 and 365 days a year. Anything beyond base level of security hiring shadowrunners will be cheaper. You will have a handful of elite guards for PR reasons, but most of your temporary defense and offense will be hired out to shadowrunners.

So your are going to pay HR to hire 3 more guys at the cost of several thousand (have you ever worked for a large company and seen how painful the hiring process is?), then pay them at least 500 a week for 8 weeks of training to save paying 105 (list) to each guy for a magazine of APDS? Plus your guys know that you are too cheap to give them the tools to stay alive. Noting says "corporate loyalty" like that. Ever hear of the concept of "Tourists in Blue"?

"The cops on the street have different names for it: de-policing, selective disengagement, tactical detachment. They even joke about it, calling themselves ‘tourists in blue.’"

Once that happens, Shadowruns become a joke, as the security guards actively avoid engaging and just all decide to go check out the alarm at the back gate of the facility when the runners show up at the front door.

I think this is a difference in viewpoint of the world. I can't argue against you viewpoint because its 100% valid if I change my assumptions.

1. I don't see most of that paperwork for hiring existing in the future. Most of the paperwork, that I have seen,has to deal with the government, taxes and workers rights. My assumption is that none of those three exist and that nobody cares about the workers.
2. Who said I am training them for 8 weeks? I was implying they were low level and I should have stated as such. Most of that training now, here in the US, is for liability. That is training on how to do their job without exposing the corporation to a lawsuit. I assume the corp guards in a dystopic future are free to be thugs.
3. This is another clash of concepts. I see jobs as hard to come by, massive levels of unemployment and a general lack of the care and concern we have for life today. Zero effective government social services and no government large enough to give out handouts on a massive scale. SINless from the ZZZ zones may look at the corp that just fed them their first non dumpster soy as angels.

Take my concepts, throw them out the window and turn them on their head.
1. Workers have rights. Add all the paperwork back in. (add some more, its been a while)
2. Entry level guards Guards have to do their job well. Add in 8 weeks of Formal training, 90 days of unarmed OTJ traning and continuing education, even for the low level guards.
3. Worker shortage (unemployment less than 4.5%), worker mobility ("dude you suck I am moving to Ares") all at the unskilled level. Corporations have to treat people, like , umm... people.


Its a matter of viewpoint and I don't mean to sound combative. I apologize for not considering other views sooner. When you turn my assumptions over, my ideas would sound pretty darn silly. Its great that we can all play the game with different views of the world. That add color and spice.

I think the description of Corporate Security Unit on Page 275 BBB covers how guards are equipped and what they do fairly well.
And no it neither matches nor reinforces my assumptions. Its practically splits the two sides down the middle.

It all depends on what you want. If you assume that the multi-million new R&D facility is protected by three $12/hr armed junior college students then it's not likely that they will present a much challenge to the PCs I tend to game with. Heck, they probably won't look up from their psych homework to notice the PCs.

But if the new multi-million building gets blow up with the "save the company" research project still in it it's going to kind of hard to argue that "we can just hire some shadowrunners and..." And I've played runs like that. Though we did evict the guards before we blew the building up.

"Mr Knight said he'd call you in 5 minutes and would like an GOOD explanation for this fiasco."

My stance is that there's a logical argument that could exist for any of these viewpoints because what we're talking about is an imaginary game world. So I go with the viewpoint that is as close as possible to being both logical and providing my players with a challenge. So in my game world, the setting is filled with untrustworthy people who are always looking to cover their asses. For every district manager cutting the security budget there's a security chief who's cutting backroom deals with other departments to get some extra scratch to scare up the bare minimum stuff they need to respond with, maybe paying for a few goodies himself because he needs to look good too if he wants to keep his job. For the most part though, the initial security forces you run into in my games are a fairly cheap and poorly trained workforce at most facilities, and they're more likely to have a combat drone and a longarm or two than APDS and fancy heavy weapons. But the 20 man response team (think the Red Samurai) that's responsible for providing backup to all of their parent corp's metroplex holdings in the event of a crisis? Those guys are a bunch of hard asses. And they'll be quite happy to send a 6 man squad with drone back up riding on over in a Movement power boosted Citymaster just to put a boot up the runner team's collective ass if they dawdle too long.

I agree. I am just trying to explain the corporate side of things and why Regular ammo is the standard. Does that mean I take it easy on my players? No. They are usually headed for dark deep secrets. But the guy who guards the distribution wherehouse for the stuffer shack? No, he doesn't even get a SMG.

And yes, my players have raided facilities like that before. Not at my direction, or even within my desire.
And when news of the raid hit the corporation, I am sure someone was punished for it. Which makes a wonderful new enemy for the party.

Regular ammo's always the standard. I just think there's likely to be a box of the good stuff labeled "In case of rampaging Street Samurai" laying around as well. Probably a few rounds loaded in the Predator the Security Chief keeps taped to the back of his cushy chair too.

Weapons like the Nitama Optimum are pretty good choices for Mercs in situations like that. You've got the rifle loaded with Regular or whatever it is that turns your crank 90% of the time, and the underbarrel shotgun loaded with Shock Lock (which hits non-locks like EX), APDS, or SnS for dealing with special targets like spirits, drones, etc. Force 5 spirit hit with a 8/-1 doorbreaker round is only going to need 2 net hits to find itself in serious pain, and an APDS shotgun slug rolls around 7/-6... very few things have enough armor to ignore that.

As for handguns... i've always found SR heavy pistols overpowered to the point of being ridiculous. Hell, it's nice in SR4 to have the assault rifles at least doing a LITTLE more damage on semiauto. But given the amount of body armor, etc in Shadowrun, loading APDS in a sidearm is a really, really good idea.

What was that old quote? "Oh, great, now I can flatten light ammo against body armor faster than ever before..."

Yeah, that's one thing I wish they'd patched going into SR4 (when they had the chance, by way of overhauling every weapon in the game). I can only attribute the overpowering firepower of handguns compared to long guns by virtue of "the rule of cool." In lots of action movies, handguns do all the heavy lifting, and I just figure they wanted to carry that over to the game (since day one).

For the bean counter view: Don't forget that you can save money (and even make a profit) by letting your guards buy special ammo and weapons from your company, gear they can use on duty.

I thought in SR people just don't go running around busting down doors and kacking people anyways. In the end I always thought what really kills a team is just the amount of wireless camera's and "passive" security. Why would people even bother loading up good ammo if they don't even expect a team of shadow runners to bust into their warehouse. Mercs will probably have the equipment and be trained to know how to deal with spirits, and yes rapid response deployment squads will also bring the hurt. I would think most local security would probably just hit the silent alarm and throw their gun across the floor and lie down face first on the ground with their hands where the SR team can see them. Anyways mages for the most part should have their way with most security forces in a building... but then again most of the rest of the team won't have a problem either (although they will take a lot longer to clear the building of security personnel.) I am still of the opinion that spirits are just crazy powerful and the fact that mages can bring that kind of hurt in the blink of an eye when other characters can't is somewhat lame to me.

Fuchs don't forget it's at a 30... no 20% discount. They live to give.

A samurai can clear a room or building faster than a Force 5 Spirit. Much faster. It's not even close unless you're talking about a Force 5+ Guardian Spirit equipped with a firearm and a couple Combat Skill optional powers. In a campaign where everyone quakes at the first sighting of 8 or 9 hardened armor, yeah, Spirits are godly. But I somehow doubt these jokers would fare much better against a decent samurai either. Spirits are generally limited to Force plus hits vs. half armor for DV, and they can only do that once a pass, which is rather lackluster when you consider they only have 2 passes outside of the astral. A tuned Samurai, on the other hand, will have 3 passes and can threaten something like 7P with -2 AP plus net Hits twice a round before burst modifiers. That's provided of course, that he's not just doing one attack like that per round before blasting the room with a burst-linked shot from his underbarrel grenade launcher loaded with Heavy Explosive grenades. Spirits are fun tools because they don't usually die all that easily, but in terms of sheer destructive potential they are easily trumped by Samurai unless you use specific high Force Spirits and are willing to risk a rather large amount of drain. Having their mage back them up with spells closes the gap quite a bit, but in most cases the Mage-Spirit tagteam will still struggle with drones due to OR and the sheer number of initiative passes the mechanical li'l buggers possess, which is a problem if I'm your GM. Security drones are in heavy rotation in my games.

When you start getting force >8 spirits things get kind of ugly. It's hard to get an adjusted DV of >17. But I'd just about killed a mage with a bad roll summoning a force 5 spirit, so playing with huge spirits is like juggling nitro.

Yeah, Spirits kinda break down at the really high end, but summoning them has a nasty habit of rendering you dead at inconvenient times.

Okay, let me clear up a few things:

1. The mercs didn't expect to run into shadowrunners, they were backing up their leader who'd come to rough up an informant the PCs were protecting.
2. They did have better weapons and ammo in their truck - five stories down outside in an alley. None of them made it far enough.
3. My intent wasn't to complain about the spirit being overly powerful; as has been stated, any high-powered samurai could have accomplished the same. It was merely intended to show that mages have more powerful abilities available than the Powerbolt. Yes, casters are powerful, but they're meant to be, and that's okay.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Alrighty, we're in agreement then.

It is a game balance thing. By placing HP where they are at the DV chart they are still serviceable compared to automatics. Take a simple SMG, roughly the same DV but it can up it to a +10 DV on top of that, yeah the 5DV of the HP is stylin but it isn't that stylin, heck even at the 2 short bust level the SMG is out damaging a HP.

Is it totally realistic nope, but it allows a wide range of options in a game.

Pistols are really terribly ineffective weapons. They are mighty convenient, but just are not that effective. That's why people commonly shoot people mulitple times with a pistol before convincing them to stop whatever it was that made someone shoot at them. A lot better than trying to punch someone, but nothing compared to a shotgun or rifle.

The idiocy in SR is pretty clearly shown by how heavy machine guns do a full point (oooh) more then a AR, yet the SAME bullet fired from a "sniper rifle" does two extra points of damage. I guess the bullet is impressed by the cool paint job.

Nope, it's all in how cool the name is. Call a Remington m700 a sport rifle and it does 7(-1), call it a sniper rifle and it does 8(-3).