Sorry, I meant the laser pointer style things amounted parallel to the barrel.

Logically smartlinks should apply to - currently its lasers only because both me and the guy who has the dual pistols really like the specialists.. in which you can dual wield pistols with laser sights, rather than an in depth examination of balanced. At this point it feels rather woefully underpowered, so maybe it can do with a few boosts.

I don't understand why smartlinks don't apply either to be honest.

If you're houseruling anyway, how about saying that firing both weapons at *the same target* just has a negative modifier (4 dice?), whereas firing at different targets makes you split your pool?

I agree. There are lots of pistols currently that have gas vents. Match grade pistols mostly, but the full auto versions of some more common pistols do also. I also agree that gas vents are counter-productive with a silencer/sound suppressor.

Also, I always thought that laser or smartgun, should work for the primary weapon. I used to have 2 glocks of the same frame (one 9mm and one 40 cal) and for fun I would try the IPSC course with one in each hand. It is doable, alot moreso if you are firing both at the same target, but I was always able to aim one of them and pray for the second.

As far as I can tell, the only shotgun in Arsenal with a gas-vent is the fully automatic Auto-Assault 16, which seems to be a special case. it's your game though. I was merely pointing out what canon says on the subject, in case you (or someone) hadn't noticed.

That's the key thing, really. To not suck when you have any kind of split pools, you have to look for positive dice pool modifiers that apply after the split (which is pretty much everything, minus the stuff that modifies a skill instead of a dice pool). So Specialization is one, and probably the easiest. Then, for melee weapons, you can use personalized grips. For two guns, use the metamagic Attunement (Item) and attune the two guns in question. Expensive, but it does the trick. And finally, Adept Centering to get rid of those nasty negative dice pool modifiers. The way I handle the latter is that, if centering cancels a specific negative dice pool modifier for one test, it cancels it for all your actions in that combat phase (and/or until your next action phase). So, for example, if you fire in SA twice with each gun, are Grade 3, and use Adept Centering to counter an "Adept in melee combat" modifier of -3, then that -3 does not apply to any of your 4 shooting tests in that action phase.

Specialization, plus Adept Centering, plus Attunement (Item), plus Personalized Grips, Reach, and so on, are all things that can make dice pool splitting viable. Obviously, against real tough opponents, you'll often be better off sticking with full dice pools, but when you're up against "quantity" rather than "quality", then 4 shots per phase can be quite effective.

As for smartlinks, personally, I rule that they'll apply if you don't shoot both guns at the same time (i.e. "Simple Action 1, shoot left-hand gun; Simple Action 2, shoot right-hand gun" rather than "Simple Action 1, shoot both guns; Simple Action 2, shoot both guns again"). You can attune a smartgun too. But the bonuses don't stack. Your gun doesn't count as attuned when using the smartlink. If you allow smartlinks bonuses when firing both guns at the same time (with some special hardware requirements maybe), then I'd still apply them only when using both guns against the same target. It will keep things more sane, I think. As you can probably guess from the name, I'm a two-gun dude. But I'm also the "rules dude" of my group, so I try to police myself and keep two-weapon rules as balanced as possible.

Oh! And Melee Hardening! With the Two-Weapon Style maneuver. Awesome.

I had a player with a 2 gun-fu specialist, who was devastating against mooks. Against more heavily armoured folks he swapped out for (pre-errata) exEX or APDS. If there were a lot of penalties he'd focus on one gun, gaining his smartgun bonus as well, and was able to shoot well enough to bypass armour, and still hit.

When I ran SRM01, the runners ran away from Johnny and Peng, fleeing on bikes through the alleyways after successfully executing an ingenious distraction. Johnny focused on one gun, but the range and cover penalties were such that the only shot he got off flattened itself against the runner's armour. Peng's spellcasting dicepool was reduced to the extent that he critically glitched and immolated himself with a fireball. I am renowned for begin extraordinarily unlucky with dice, so apparently only I was incensed by rolling 1's on all 4 remaining dice. My players just laughed.

Yeah I noticed the RAW of it, then scratched my head at the shotgun and said, well, if it works for that, why not others?? I still have to see what my GM says about it, but I'm sure he'll be like whatever. Without it, BF shotguns are hosed, IMO, though.

*snip*


Lot of other good stuff in there Triggerz, but I want to focus on these points right now.

Specialization
I didn't notice it was dice pool modifier... This applies to each gun separately? So if I split my 14 DP to, say, 7/7, a Specialization then raises that to 9/9? If so, that makes this much easier to stomach. It won't help Mr. NPC (no specialization), but its much less discouraging for a player wanting to play a Wu-inspired gunfighter (as opposed to teh wild west gunfighter mentioned previously).

Melee Hardening & Two-Weapon Style
Does hardening make the gun count as a melee weapon or just make it harder to damage?
I thought Two-Weapon Style only applied to melee weapons, not ranged...

And while you're here...

Take Aim
I didn't get an answer on this one (or I missed it somehow). If I'm using two guns and use a Take Aim action, does the +1 DP apply to both guns or just one of them?

I'd say you can only get it for one target. If they're both firing at the same target, you get it for both, if they're firing at different targets you can only *concentrate* on (i.e. aim at) one at a time.

I (and others, but I only really care about me) mentioned this pages ago.



Pistols already count as 'Weapons'. They are clubs, and the Improvised specialization (or even Pistols if you are so inclined) can be used. Of course Two-Weapon Style does not apply to ranged combat, but it helps when you want to club some dude while fending off an attack with another club.

About the dual-smartlinks; we had created a bit of a houserule for this in the old game that worked well. It basically involved things mentioned; Attention coprocessor, some kind of Encephalon, Math SPU, and 2 smartlinks. Ok, it was alot to get but if someone wanted to dual-wield with smartlinks bad enough-I say it balances out. The 2 extra dice for each hand is worth a bunch of nuyen and essence spent, IMO. (In SR3, the essence cost for this was a bit higher, since Smartlinks were .5 apiece, and then all the other crap.)

Just to let everyone know it can indeed work well and not throw off games. But then again, most people know here by now we go a little touch higher on the action sometimes. (Well, to put it better-we don't have that many fight scenes, surprisingly. But when we DO have fight scenes they tend to be higher on the action than the average SR game.)

Er... Yeah, I guess I did miss that then.

You know, I used to have really good reading comprehension and retention... used to.


Ah ha... I gotcha.

-paws

my group is hiring on a few extra hands to go clear out a bug hive, and one of the hired guns is packing these. i'm excited to see how it works out.

I asked about Specializations in another thread. To me, it wasn't obvious that having Pistols (Heavy) 3 (+2) should be any better than having Pistols 5 when splitting the pool, but that's how the rules are written. In a way, it's good because it makes Specializations more meaningful. Since you can only have one Specialization per skill, you have to choose whether you'll kick ass dual-wielding swords or knives, for example. Tough choices.

As for Two-Weapon Style and Melee Hardening, it is indeed intended for melee combat instead of ranged. With melee hardening, you can use your guns to parry, which can be extremely useful in some circumstances. As for Two-Weapon Style, if you Full Parry, you can still whack the guy with a melee attack on your next action, which is cool. But I would argue that, if the GM allows it, Two-Weapon Style could also allow you to Full Parry with one gun and then shoot with the other normally, provided that the character has some training in a martial art that focuses on the use of guns in melee. I'm aware that I'm stretching the maneuver a bit, but I think it's not really against the spirit of it. The logic is that, if you trained in Firefight, for example, then shooting a target within melee range is considered a sort of melee attack. Anyways, I'm just throwing that out there. I haven't play-tested it, so it might be broken, but I think it would look cool. Plus, it requires tons of BP invested in martial arts to really make it work, so I doubt it'd be game-breaking. Anyways, no need to tell me that the letter of the rule doesn't support it. I'm aware of it. I just think it sort of fits with the spirit of the Firefight martial art style.

It DEFINITELY does.

Man. Between Krav Maga and Firefight, you can reduce the "attacker in melee combat" modifier to 0, make Quick Draw, Ready Weapon and Take Aim into Free Actions, and dual-wield pistols in melee and range without penalty.

I will not forget the face of my father.

But will you slide into a completely dark room full of mooks on a door and kill everyone with just your muzzle flash to guide you?

More importantly, will you fantastically awesome doing it?

Isn't that what Blind Fighting is for?

I'd argue that's what radar/ultrasound is for but I guess that works

Bah, sams and their 'ware. Be one with your ka, and you will never miss.

What your adept doesn't own a decent set of goggles? Hasn't he seen the training video on wearing appropriate personal protective equipment: PPE and Me?

Yeah! At least not until I've pumped his Italian punk ass full of lead! The bastard!

I hope your group has REALLY good screening procedures...

DS

I already did exactly that, minus the Two-Weapon Style, as I wasn't thinking about it at the time. Sadly there was no bio/cyber or magic - Firefly campaign using the Shadowrun rules system. Currently building an adept that does this though.

Don't forget, if you are using the Arsenal advanced combat rules, you also get +2 for point-blank range.

Dark.

Might makes light!

And I feel mighty!

Groovy.

How would you determine point-blank range in melee though? I thought about linking it to reach, but I'm not sure what would be realistic? The people you are engaged in melee with are considered point-blank range only if they have a reach of 0? or if they have a reach of 0 or 1? Personally, I guess I'd go with reach 0, but I have no RL martial arts experience, so let me know what you guys think.

Oh. My. God.

I'm making this character, and I shall call him...GRAMMATON CLERIC!

Want a way to make Horizon scary...make these guys their elite security squad. I really feel the whole emotion supression thing from these guys anyways. Makes me cringe when I think of them. Hippy Corp indeed!!!

That gives me even more fun ideas to torture my players with!