Ok, so I'm getting back into SR after a while away and I'm asking myself all sorts of questions on how to handle various things. It seems that you can stick pretty much any kind of ammo into a good old Predator or an Ingram Smartgun X, so I was wondering what would happen if you put Stick-n-Shock into a Smartgun X and shot someone with a full auto burst of S-n-S...

I mean... I can imagine that whoever gets hit with the full auto burst is not going to feel all that well for a while, but... rule-wise... how would you handle it?

I'm going to take this opportunity to be a wise-hoop, and just point out that it's the rare full-auto/burst weapon that DOESN'T have a Semi-Auto option, and you can use that when loaded with S-n-S.

You ***can*** use it with S-n-S? Ok, but what damage does it do? Let's say I make it a narrow burst with 10 rounds. Does the damage scale? And how about the disorientation effects and secondary damage?

Rules wise, they take 6S(e) and have to resist the shock and disorientation/knockdown effects. You use up 10 rounds in the process.

That's it?!? The thing is... It doesn't really make much sense as the person would have to resist twice that damage if you shot twice in SA. So twice the damage with only 20% of the ammo.

EDIT: Hence why I'm looking for some kind of house rule to handle it.

It's really not that confusing, since stick and shock is really treated exactly as you would any burstfire attack. You take the base damage code plus net hits and compare it to armor, and then at the end you plug in any and all burstfire DV modifiers into the equation when it's time for your opponent to resist the actual damage. All stick and shock does is make the base damage code a 6(E) attack.

House rule, I'd call it +1 per shock. So, a full 10 round full auto attack would be 15S(e). For balance, I'd probably double recoil penalties due to a more massive round.

Ok, cool! Thanks a lot!

The current way I would do it this, if you wish to fire 10 rnds each is resolved separately at base damage and the effects do not apply until at the end of full burst.

Sorry my background does not allow the SnS to gain watts in power just because more than one round is fired at the same target Ohms Law is a reality to me.

Also SnS round would be "low velocity" rounds meaning the each round has just enough propellant to have the round reach the target. So in most parts they are used the "small" caliber weapons.

Since they are low velocity no recoil.

WMS

House rule? I'm pretty certain they follow the normal rules for burst and full auto damage scaling. So a burst would go from a normal shot of 6(E) to 8(E).

No reason to mess with recoil, just go by the normal rules

Well, I'd like to avoid rolling each round individually. It would take forever and the people I play with would hang me real quick.

How about the secondary damage though? Does it make any kind of difference whether you're hit with one round or with ten?

Arguably. The ammo states that it replaces the weapons DV with its own. The arguement is at what point do you do this? Full auto grants a +9DV bonus to the weapon, so, say it goes from 5P to 14P. Fantastic. Oh, but you're using sticknshock. That 14P just got replaced with 6S(e).

er, technically correct, in an isolated, theoretical fashion. except they WOULD be more powerful against a metahuman target, as you are dumping the electrical energy into them for a longer period of time.

In standard IRL tasers, they can keep shocking you, hence you will stay incapacitated longer. extended periods have even killed.

IMHO, that means damage should increase just like std rounds.

/EDIT for spelling & Grammar

Another way to implement the low velocity is to have any weapon firing them use the Light Pistol Ranges.

WMS

Well, the effect is really something like multiple Stick-n-shocks zapping slightly different areas of the body at slightly different times, which means it's more likely that one hits a really "good" spot (unarmored, or conductive, or able to get an important muscle group all spastic). While the individual rounds obviously don't "gain Watts in power" because they're fired in a group, the firer is certainly hitting the target with more capacitors, thus more energy. I think the Stun damage they inflict shouldn't be additive (that is, five rounds doing 6S(e) each) because yikes, that would be a lot of dice and a lot of damage. Since damage, including Stun damage, is something of an abstraction anyway, treating it the same way as burst fire from regular ammo makes sense to me: it's simpler, involves less die-rolling, and is consistent with other rules without being obviously impossible.

So, you can do 15S(e)/-half with a steyr TMP ?
Not in my game.

Damage stays at 6S, but the elemental effect stacks.

So for a full burst that would be 2 + net hits + 9.

Not overpowered, but still interesting if you need someone to stay down for a long time...

hehe Well, I plan on using Frank Trollman's rule that treats S-n-S as a toxin and ignores net hits when calculating the primary damage. That way, it keeps things a bit more sane. But yeah, tasers kill when you shock someone with enough hits. The guy's heart will go nuts and break. So I wanted to allow that in my game.

Then I think you should restrict s-n-s to bigger caliber weapons.

Edit: By this I mean heavy pistols (maybe SMG if you want), and everything bigger...

I don't think that's how it works. Here's the text: "The Stick-n-Shock replaces the weapon’s Damage Value with its own." That means that your DV goes from, say, 6P -1AP to 6S(e) -half AP. That becomes the weapon's new damage code. Narrow bursts do not modify the weapon's DV at all, they modify the attack's DV. For instance, "Narrow bursts increase the attack’s DV by +2." So, first you take the weapon's DV, which is replaced by the DV for stick n shock. And then when you attack, you add the modifiers to the DV of that attack only. So narrow bursts do increase the DV of stick-n-shock attacks like they do anything else.

The only way you could be correct is if narrow bursts modified the weapon's DV. No matter how you modify the weapon's damage code, it's replaced with 6S(e), you're right. But because narrow bursts do not change the weapon's damage code, but rather modify only the attack where the narrow burst is being fired, textually speaking you're dead wrong. And why shouldn't you be? I should think that getting shot with effectively 10 taser shots hurts a lot more than getting shot with 1. Certainly it shouldn't use 10x the ammo and do 1x the damage. That's not supported by common sense or RAW.

I disagree but then my background has something to do with it also. I am "calibrated" for 10,000 volts currently. Go and read Ohm's Law, watts is what hurts a living creature.

So if if I used a defibrillator on ten different areas of your chest, would there be any different real difference? no once the heart contracts any more contractions have no effect until the heart uncontracts and begins beating again. Yes if you wait for the heart to cycle yes 10 such shocks would have a drastic effect.

If your voluntary muscles are contracting from the first round of SnS, can any more shock cause the still contracting muscles to contract any more? No. The Joules stored in SnS can not burn out any neural pathways, so no nerve damage. If I shoot you with a Taser and hit you with another Taser while the first Taser is still contracting your voluntary muscles, the effects of the second Taser are not physiologically noticed, until the first Taser ceases to deliver its Joules.

Now I am speaking of the joules generated by the SnS rounds, getting "connected" to a live source of joules ie 110 volt AC is a different story.

If I fired a modded Ares Super Squirt loaded with DMSO and Narcojet would the 10S stack? on Full Auto?

WMS

Toxins are easy. Just look at an LD50 chart. Pharmacological effects, as well as lethality, increase as dosage increases. There is a point of diminishing return, but it's not an instant dropoff.

On electricity, I'm not as well schooled. But you're assuming that one stick-n-shok round delivers the maximum electricity, and that any further would do nothing. But that might not be true. Each one might not deliver the max joules, so additional rounds might add more. Even if that's nonsense, it seems like being shocked in more places would hurt you more. If you get shot in the gut, only part of your body will have the full effect. But if you get shot 3 times in the gut, once in the shoulder, once in the arm, once in the head, and four times on your nads, don't you think the physiological effect would be enhanced?

Also, each bullet might have low wattage, but it doesn't have 0 watts. Each bullet adds more wattage; even if you can't add more joules, increasing the watts would hurt you more wouldn't it?

I guess there's only one way to find out. Get one of those Taser™ wall thingies, shoot yourself with it, and tell me if it hurts more than one taser

But seriously, the RAW is the RAW, and it's on my side. Though I understand if people want to houserule it for realism, or just to nerf what is a very powerful type of ammo.

If you choose to look at it through your real life lenses, then you'd have to house rule however you wish to fit your vision of how SnS should work. However, if you choose to use SR Physics™, you simply apply the RAW and get on with the game.

Joules = Watts X Time

Each SnS delivers a payload of Joules of electric charge, designed to cause all your voluntary muscles to rapidly contract, once the contraction of voluntary muscles have ceased, is when the effects of stun can take effect.

RAW No will not go there.

Using my RL Lenses, a Taser causes all voluntary muscles in the targeted being to rapidly contract, causing seizure like muscle jerks, once the voluntary muscles are allowed to relax, ie the Taser's discharge is finished, the subject collapses to the nearest surface typically the ground. Using SR Physics allows even a Troll a chance remain standing, despite what RL Lenses have to say on the matter.

To each there own.

WMS

I went and got certified with the new tasers to be an instructor a few years ago. I can tell you that getting hit by more then one dosen't hurt anymore, or cause any further health risks.

So you can be hooked up to 3 guys tasing you and it will still blow ass as much as one guy doing it.

As far as I know, the current tasers don't normally kill people, regardless of how long they are tazed. People get hurt/killed with tazers by falling and other variables usually. Most people.

But SR tasers are different, they do actual damage, and real tasers don't really. The shock effect is pretty close to real. A quick explanation of current tasers is that they send a signal into your body that makes your muscles spams like a son of a bitch, the old ones just shocked people, caused pain compliance....

Anyways, the way we play it, is to simply treat it like any other ammo. Like I said earlier.

Well, I don't know an awful lot about electricity theory, but I've been reading about cases of tasering going bad and in almost all cases the cause is an abuse of the weapon, i.e. shooting the poor victim several times in a row (in a short period of time). Now I do not know the details of all these cases, but it seems to me that, in RL, tasers aren't as safe once you start tasering people more than once. Anyways, I guess I'll discuss it with my group to see what they think.

The easiest way to deal with Stick-n-Shock is to ... ignore its existence.

That's pretty much what I did. None of my players noticed its existence.
For stun damage, they're simply using gel rounds...

Repeated RL Lenses Tasers ie once each has discharged its charge, then firing another one, etc, does/can cause muscle tissue injuries using ones RL Lense

The SR Physics SnS causes Stun Damage due the abstract nature of the SR4 gaming system.

WMS

Except that stick and shock (and gyrojet shock rockets) are the only ammunition that has a fixed DV, instead of a modifier. Every other part of the book talks about how the ammunition modifies the weapons DV. Stick and shock replaces that DV. I understand your arguement that the book by RAW states that stick and shock replaces the weapons dv, and that burst/full auto modifies the "attack" dv.

I think that in the sake of balance, this ought to be changed, such that stick and shock explicitly is fixed at 6S(e). Hopefully that makes it into an errata, though, if it hasn't by now, I rather doubt it.

I really don't think it's a much of balance issue, especially because people can wear nonconductive armor. But w/e.

Stick-n-shock on a person (even assuming a hit on uncovered skin) is pretty different from a defibrilator (actually, do you think that a stick-n-shock round might also squirt out some of that gel? that would be neat) and (I think) very different from an ohmic conductor, what with the varying resistance of different tissue and the anisotropic conduction and the electrical sparks ow, it hurt me!

Plus you get those burns and all. I think of the incapacitating as the "secondary" effect (in that it's not straight-up Stun damage) -- your muscles seize up, you fall down and drop your stuff.


Depends on what Narcoject is, but it seems like with RL tranquilizers, sometimes you need to use more if the target is big (a dart for tranquing a baboon will merely make an elephant slightly mellower) but using too much is bad (a baboon tranqued with an elephant dart may well not wake up). For most drugs with narcotic properties, there's a dosage at which they're fun, a higher dosage where they're incapacitating, and a higher dosage where they're lethal. A really good drug has a lot of space in the sub-lethal area -- it might take a ten-fold or twenty-fold or 100-fold overdose to kill someone, but it might be two-fold (but of course drugs and electricity are different). So probably a burst (maybe even a long burst) wouldn't overflow into Physical damage, but if you kept shooting someone with it, you could really overdo it.

I just made SnS a shotgun-only round. Sure, there's full-auto shotguns, but they aren't too much of a problem, honestly.

There is nothing I am aware of that states Stick n' Shock do not follow the standard rules for burst fire and full auto. While the power of the energy does not increase, the amount does, resulting in more damage. Nothing complicated about that.

For those saying that S&S replaces the weapons base damage, and therefor is always 6S, damage from burst fire is *not* part of a weapon's base damage - it is a modifier, and so is not replaced by a fixed number.

For those saying it should be handled as a resistance test against X S&S separately - only if you are handing regular bursts the same way - resist base damage 6 times, instead of resist base damage +5. This should not be done, partially for game balance, partially to smooth out play and reduce time spent rolling dice, and partially because it simply makes sense.

In SR3, the Yamaha Pulsar had a sinusoidal discharge pattern, probably to get around the problems you are mentioning. Assuming that such a discharge pattern helped, I suspect that multiple such discharge paaterns would wreak havoc with each other, reducing effectivenees.

On the other hand, your heart isn't the only muscle that a taser is affecting. Each hit is going to affect the contraction of muscles local to area impacted which would be an argument for increasing effectiveness, particularly if opposed muscle groups are targeted (ie, back and front of a leg).

House rule I won't be using but someone else might like: SnS deals damage twice. On a successful attack (1+ net hits), it deals weapon's normal DV -2 (low velocity) + net hits + burst/FA modifiers damage and 6S(e), resisted separately.

Easy way to deal with FA SnS is use suppressive fire.

I upped the damage code as per normal bursts (ie +2 for short narrow, +5 for long narrow, +9 for Full burst) and I made it (P). Tasers have been suspected of killing suspects in some areas (although may had abnormal cardio issues such as heart disease and/or drug use.)

Linkage

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/201827_taser01.html

I don't think it makes any sense to make them do P damage, no matter what else you do... Almost anyone can take a hit from a taser, go down, and then be fine a few minutes later. Only people with heart conditions or certain other health problems get killed by them. It isn't that the taser does lethal damage, it's that the stun damage becomes lethal to certain individuals because of hidden health issues.

It's physical damage all the time? Doesn't this mean that's all your character use since it'd be handy swell to have a light pistol that automatically does assault rifle damage.

I should have been clearer... I meant that with the burst I made them (P).

Other issues haven't come up, cause once I did that since didn't stun as well as normal (killing people your being paid to stun is very bad in my games) the players looked into more traditional stun weapons.... like the Troll Shaman casting stunball or (shock, gasp) actual tasers. While I wanted to prevent them from being exploited, I dislike outright removing options from players, so I thought it was a great compliment for my games.

P.S. There are concerns that multiple taser shots could indeed induce Heart trama and malfunction.... there was a big case up here about the police being sued over the death of a mentally ill person because he was taser with 3 guns at the same time... I will look around to see if I can dig up the article about it.

Ah well I still think that it's goofy but at least it isn't insane.

Indeed.

As mentioned before, stick and shock uses the same rules as everything else when it comes to burst fire: Base damage + burst modifiers

But since we're donning out RL Goggles, allow me to add some RL experience to this discussion:

First, it's amps that make an electrical charge life threatening. It's my impression that tasers have a pretty low amp-to-volt ratio for just this reason. Even so, getting zapped does more than just make your muscles jump. Introducing electricity into the human body can mess with a number of different things, from biochemistry to nerve conduction. I have a relative who can't use vending machines anymore because they f-up when she gets near them, then work fine as soon as she walks away.

Even just looking at the muscle contractions, getting hit in more than one area means groups of muscle are contracting powerfully at the same time that might not do so naturally. If nothing else, you could get sprains and torn ligaments from the different muscle groups acting on each other.

Imagine your biceps and triceps trying to contract at the same time...

I have to agree with Larme and others. SnS changes weapon damage to 6S(e) which should then be further modified by usual means, burst, F-A etc.

Lets look at the balance parts.

Arguments vs. SnS balancing:

"Small arms become too effective"

"Drones are vulnerable to (e)"

"Halving I is too powerful"

If there are others, bring them out.

The Steyr TMP is the smallest gun able to FA. It starts with 4P. This becomes:

Normal: 4P, burst 6P, FA 13P, full B to resist
APDS: 4P, 6P, 13P, B-4 to resist, effectively halving or more in most cases.
EXEX: 5P, 7P, 14P, B-1 to resist
Gel: 6S, 8S, 15S, I+2 to resist -2Body to avoid falling
SnS: 6S(e), 8S(e), 15S(e), I/2 to resist +(e) effect

Prices:
Normal: 20 2R
APDS: 70 16F
EXEX: 100 16F
Gel: 30 4R
SnS: 80 5R

So of normal, gel and SnS, SnS is something you can get, and definately the best of the three.

But overpowered? - I do not think so, yet. Will look into the secondary effect next and try comparing common targets of this and other ammo types vs. drones, humans and spirits. (Unless someone else wants to do this and save me the time.)

EDIT: EXEX was nerfed!!

I'm not sure what you're trying to prove, but getting hit by several sources of (e) damage can kill you...
Johnny Targetpracticedummy has a body and willpower of 2, for damage tracks of 9...
Meaning that if he gets tasered 4 times, he is most likely dead or dying...

Also, I'll also agree with Larme and co, if you count every bullet hit in normal burst fire, you count every SnS hit too, but SR doesn't, for easy of play, it just adds modifiers because of the ammount of bullets, so should it be with SnS...

Go read the errata NOW.

Edit: I think s-n-s was acceptable before the errata-nerf of the other ammos.
Now it's definitely unbalanced.

PS: You forgot flechette rounds
PPS: And considering APDS as halving armor is only working when you are facing average guards. Against professional corpo or spirits or whatever it's not that effective...

Which makes me question why exactly would anyone ever use Gel? Its the only other option for stun, but uses full Impact +2 (not half like SnS).

If you stick-n-shock someone in the face (as opposed to shooting the person, say, on the torso), would it mess up the victim's brain any more than usual? Can you "Call a shot" to increase damage with S-n-S?

It's significantly cheaper? I know it's not a big deal when you care about your survival, but some people are just cheap. Seriously, a few Initiative Passes of Full Auto and you can buy pizza and beer for all your buddies with the price difference. And that counts for socially-challenged street sams.

50¥ isn't significantly cheaper at all.

So: If I send you my address you'll send me 50 bucks? Sweet!