Becouse you allready have the specialition and want even more dices or maybe you want some extra damage and MAs are way cheaper than two points of strengh.

That, and you get to be that guy that just stands in the middle of a combat situation, and everyone watches you because they know that when you do move, it's going to be *DAMN* cool!

Or maybe I could spend one less BP and get the whole skill, and everything this bonus die entails, up a level? Or for one more point than a super-suck MA slot I can get three dice of the same effect and be more versatile overall?

Come on, it's not that hard to realize that "+1 die to dodge melee attacks (and only melee attacks because we're trying to be extra whack here)" is mayonnaise lameness to the "Aiming is a free action" and "+1 DV to random attack freshness" Tabasco sauciness, people... And they both cost 5 BP, fer chrisakes.

"Aiming is a free action", yet another reason not to screw with Israel.

I assumed a maxed skill in my reply, of course becoming and aded i a cheaper the MA:s for exrta dice but maybe somebody doesn't want to make an adept.


In this i agree with you, put maybe somebody wants to make character who's really good at melee dodge

psychophipps, not everything is about having the most efficient possible build so you can own everyone you come in contact with. Or rather, it shouldn't be everything.

Besides, if you don't like the rules, just ignore them and move on. What's the problem?

Pro runners should be able to find many ways to bypass security and gun scanners. The players I game with are quite inventive at that.

One that comes to my mind just now was a runner group trying to kidnap an Aztechnollogy intelligence officer in Tenochtitlán. As you can imagine security was really high both at his home and at his "job". They had a very interesting plan and finally pulled it out. I even thought about writing a short story about it "Matando a Cisneros" is the working title.



Cheers.

Max

You can always use the Puzzler guns from Arsenal which dismantle into objects which don't look like gun parts.

Not the most powerfull weapon ever, but it's better than not having anything. The only problem I can see is the ammunition, which still needs sneaking in.

As for the olfactory sensors RC has some gear which makes it really /really/ easy to evade them, by shrink wrapping things in plastic and then laser (or nanite) cleaning the traces off.

You also get stuff for jamming MAD scanners too, although they're pretty expensive and have huge availability costs for the better models.

My former corp security lass uses "Easy Breakdown" on her Fichetti Executive Action, and wears it as bracelets/earrings/necklace etc. The bullets are gel rounds in a large pill bottle. She has a vibroblade with easy breakdown, and a ceramic knife with easy breakdown also.

Go Stealthy weapons!

Drones with shielded smuggling compartments would work pretty well too.

Especially something mundane like the Renraku Manservant. With a shielded and air tight smuggling section inside it can carry a fair bit of gear, plus act as additional sensors for a Tac Soft.

For added amusement characters with enough Hardware could rewire the button which shuts it down into a contact tazer. So anyone trying to hit the panic button would get zapped instead.

The only trouble is (at least from my reading of the rules) is by having a shielded smuggling compartment anyone scanning whatever you've shielded will instead see a suspicious looking shape which can't be scanned....

now i have the mental image of han solo hiding a blaster inside c-3po.

CorpSec: "Excuse me, miss. Can you please explain to the large, angry trolls with shotguns behind you why your jewelry is composed of composite materials commonly used in break-down firearms and your pill bottle has multiple sources of chemical projectile propellant in it?" *Calmly pulling out a tazer* "Oh yes. And before you do anything stupid, we do know about the two knives..."

Jeezed dude, you're not even telling us what they are using to detect the weapons. You aren't applying ANY rules, you are simply assuming that security is using something that gives them omniscient powers.

I don't normally do this, but how exactly do you actually PLAY Shadowrun with that attitude? "I'm sorry, security is too good, you die, roll new characters."

Cyberware scanners detect with a single hit. But the machine must recognize it as a weapon to begin with. This depends on it's database. A custom disguised object will NOT be on the database, unless they've encountered that specific object before. So don't get the mass-produced disguied objects, neh? Failing that, the guards themselves are going to have to make perception checks. The average guard will be rolling 6 dice (by definition, really). Good guards may have more. The disguise job can subtract up to 6 dice from that. Chemsniffers are defeated by sealing it in plastic and lasering it.

It's totally possible to sneak your guns around. Your knives too. Get the heck over it.

This is all BY RAW

Best way? Aquire weapons INSIDE the compound. Have them smuggled in early. "The Godfather" has an excellent example of how to do this. "Payback" has another where you don't even need to smuggle in your own weapons.

Doesn't matter *HOW* good a pat-down is when you got nothing on you save your fists. Which, again, are lethal weapons in the right position.

"mr. guard, may i borrow your gun?"

I wouldn't put that past a pornomancer.

Also, with a decent stealth DP you can probably manage to palm a handgun out of a holster.

Actually, a few posts above I described, in as much detail that I had available (which isn't much due to security concerns), the new imaging devices that are going into Toronto-area (IIRC) airports. These puppies are friggin' insane in that they can scan bags and not only find weapons, ammunition and dangerous chemical compounds but also tell you what weapon model it is, what caliber the ammunition is, if those two bottles can be mixed to make something nasty, and (for the really curious) what the frame of the weapon/the bottles holding the chemicals/ammunition propellant are made of. Pretty nifty stuff that just adds a whole new realm of "You're hosed, dude!" to the various no-good people out there trying anything hinky.

That said, I would find it pretty hard to believe that a serious SR-world security area (not the local mall, of course) wouldn't have similar devices but a lot smaller, a lot more accurate, and one hell of a lot cheaper. As SR is an (arguably) CP-genre game, and thus an extension of possible tomorrows fueled by the imaginations of the game developers and (to a lesser extent) ourselves, I felt that adding this info to the mix would prove helpful to my fellow SR GMs.

Sure, you can keep the cyber-detectors, the MADs. and the chem sniffers but all of that stuff is solved (in agonizing detail in various SR books) by the almighty and you don't even have to RP it. You want your players to seriously work (as in RP their friggin' little heinnies off) for the in at that corp center without simply dropping 20K and waltzing in with a snap-together arsenal. then you toss some o' these little beauties in their laps.

And yes, I'm an overbearing, opinionated wanker™.

I knew I could count on my favorite canuck!

Now comes the fun part. How to get someone to turn on their corp and how can our motley band of misfits get this done with their contacts and their wits?

*dry washes hands while grinning evilly*

That device is still only as good as the database it's hooked up to, so if your custom breakdownable gun isn't in the database that scanner doesn't regonise it as a wepoan.
It's not somekind of a magical detector, it's just a regonizition software with a good database of common weapons. That isn't anything new for shadowrun.

Regardless of what that machine can and can't do, it's not included in Shadowrun because of game balance, and more importantly, fun. If these things were so cheap like Psychopipps suggested, then they'd be everywhere. Not just airports, but on the entry points for buses, at your work, at schools and at your stuffer shack. They make shadowrunning for everyone except naked martial arts adepts and mages impossible. You can't even have bioware anymore, because this thing can pick up concentrations of unnatural chemicals and compounds in your body. It will pick up the THC in your system after that joint you smoked on the weekend.

Lots of Shadowrun technology is made redundant by what we have today, and we've already came up with things like (simple) DNI, before the timeline said so. We can't really crack modern encryptions in a few seconds using some fantastic super-algorithm. And we can't tell what Joe Runner had for dinner the night before when he walks through a checkpoint, not because it's impossible technology, but because it's game-breaking.

Psychopipps, every time you talk, a spirit of Shadowrun dies.

Miss: *sighs, before whacking him with the shock hand*

Nothing wrong with the direct approach, if you ask me.

Why be sneaky when your kung-fu hottie can just whup they asses?

Well, I do tend to force the non-linear method. To a fault? Perhaps.

First off, these items are "security only". They have all sorts of techno-doodads in them with potential nefarious uses so only fully licensed and correctly applied places can even buy them, let alone afford one. Secondly, "a lot cheaper" is relative. As a security device it's never going to be cheap enough for one to be in every mall entrance. Surefire still charged me $110 for my full-on street legal flashlight, as an example. There is no way that a constantly improved security-only item like this will be sold for under 1-2M before street index (or higher since it's your game). These are the toys of the big boys. Third, "a lot smaller" is also a relative term. The size of a walk-through metal detector at airports seems about right for me. Add a Big Sign. Mean-Looking Guards around it. Obvious to any 'runner worth a damn that they can't just waltz through with their weapons and "hidden" gear. Maybe this job is a bit bigger than they thought? Maybe we need to be really sneaky? And lastly, drug smugglers (and terrorists) have been making nasty things look like not-so-nasty, or even non-nasty, things for decades as of right this moment. You think that a plastic-wrapped something that's been washed off or otherwise sanitized (not necessarily literally but you get the point) hasn't been done before? Why do you think that security at major airports run the swab on your bag instead of just opening your bag up? Residue from drugs in the area are a lot better clue than something you can plastic wrap and sanitze to fit your needs before shipment. You think that shipments of flower pots haven't had other types of pot under, inside, around, etc. them? You think that CorpSec, which is directly linked to public opinion vie news clips about break-ins which is directly linked to shareholder confidence which is directly linked to profits and continuing operations, isn't going to think that maybe, per chance, random potential here some dink is gonna try something similar and try to get some SOTA goodies?

Yeah, you think that I'm killing the game. I'm too harsh. A big ol' dragon-breath meanie-head stomping all over these boards and making your happy gaming existence a living hell of boorish platitudes and asinine detail mongering.

Well, guess what? My players are all old skool CP and SR gamers from 1st Ed. We eat most gamers for lunch at cons. We care that 99% of SR run issues shouldn't be fixed with a certified cred stick. And we're mature enough to hack that perhaps a bit of oh...realism of the down n' dirty persuasion isn't bad thing if the group is down with it. They, and I, would rather gut through the whole deal of finding a potential mole, finding out what we can do to make them our bitch, turning them via hook or crook, and getting the deed done without, or hopefully at least minimal, muss or fuss. Yeah, right...

You play Splinter Cell. I play a whole Tom Clancy novel. Different strokes for different folks, yo?

Let the Ninja-Wannabe beat the crap out of them, take their toys. The Hacker then unlocks the Software Safety. Boom, instant armaments that the corporation thinks are supposed to be there. Even if they're "Smart" and arm their security guys with the same guns, they can't use that trick of the "Weapon Sound Detection" against the group!

And you have guns to pawn when you get done with the run, too! Beer !

Ok, that just rocks.

Now add a voice modulator with the corp employees voice plugged in case the personnel dept calls their comlink wondering why you're at work on your day off and you'll probably be in biz as long as you aren't greedy and going into some insanely secure location like top-flight R&D. This should also buy you a few minutes if security is informed a bit later that you're there and the guards are all wondering "Umm...I don't see Wilson come in a few minutes ago...WTF?"

Best part is the beer Nothing like drinking on your victim's dime...

Psychophipps:

I know about the Toronto airport scanners. You see, they work EXACTLY LIKE the cyberware scanner is described to work, combined with a Chemsniffer for good measure. They are early generation cyberware scanners. And Hey, there are rules for those. There is no need to make up omniscient ruin-your-run scanners. Cyberware scanners are frankly bad enough.

I play a mage, so the worst I have to worry about is some dangerous spirits going insane over the number of talismans and foci, which I try to encourage anyways.

As to my running companions, I've seen things as clever as containers in cyberware to hold broken down parts, a drone sent through a ventilation system with the guns strapped to it, and a troll who liked to claim he just got back from the gun range and who had a fake ID for every fraggin' corp security group in exisentence to make it more plausable (not to mention a hold out pistol concealed in the bottom of his boots, and enough metal studs and piercings to set off a MAD without a weapon).


You'll never guess where the handle goes...

Seriously though, even broken down, how the heck do you disguise a blade?

Any production weapon would be in it. Plus many others. Ever see the lists provide to LEO's of unconventional weapons? They would be in it too. Plus any hollow cylinder up to 25 mm internal diameter composed of a high strength metal, ceramic or plastic is worthy of inspection. Any nitrate (or several other similar explosive bases) is worth of further examination. Anything that is excessively strong for it's purpose Like this pen or solid plastic or ceramic items like this "letter opener" wold be worthy of further inspection.

The people doing security at important sites are not stupid or ignorant. Treating them like they are should result in bad things happening to PCs.

Guards are also held up for time. Rarely are they going to heavily inspect everything. So getting in to see the president, yes, every hollow tube will be inspected. Incidentally, making that inspection is a perception check, and the breakdown weapons and disguised weapons give a penalty to that check. So, while you are correct that the guard gets to do all that stuff, they have to roll. And they can fail. And the character can stack the deck to make their failure more likely.

The People doing security at important sites are not omniscient dieties. Treating them like they are robs the characters of valid tactics.

Also, don't forget that snap together weapons are far from impossible in SR. There would also be a scan for various high-tensile parts that can connect together to make a weapon as well. Some basic engineering fuzzy logic system should stop most attempts with that.

But in reality, the most important aspect to keep in mind is that these machines are for the real nasty high-sec sites with serious high-speed/low-drag projects in them. You won't find this in a lawyer's office, at the mall, or the entrance to the football stadium. Keep it reasonable, people.

I am guessing the blade pulls into 4 parts, the slicy parts are probably dangly earrings.

Or the blade is a high-tch memory metal that rolls up tightly when deactivated.

OK, ceramic, right...

Not even close. Same results more often than not, but they're getting the info in a completely different manner. This machine actively scans the items and/or people with artificial radiation and looks for a combination of shapes, densities, and material compositions by comparing the returns of the emitted radiation to various sensors. A chem sniffer is a passive system that counts on residues from current or previously left materials to enter the sensing area for analysis. The chem sniffer can't tell you what's in a "sanitized" bottle of what the bottle is constructed of, for example, but this little (Ok, big) badboy can tell what's in the sealed, cleaned container by it's reaction to the radiation it's being bombarded with and what the bottle is made of.
I had a fun run with breaching charges made from plasticized explosives in various plastic wrapped shampoo-type bottles. The detonators and blasting caps were in the bottle tops and the fluid in the bottles acted as a tamping effect. Certainly effective for blowing the relatively weak interior doors we had to get into, but then I'm sure that the huge sprays of shampoo and conditioner were a total bitch to clean up that night. The PCs smelled like lavender for a week after that.

It's the difference between active vs. passive, really. The fact that it also replaces a separate cyber scanner for that checkpoint is simply icing on the cake.

Do I have to be a chemist and or science geek to play in this game? I majored in Philosophy and dont know my chemistry from my astrology.

You think by placing an insurmountable machine, one that you have not even posted ratings for, but have suggested that it will detect practically anything - You're practising non-linearity? You're the game-master equivalent of every game's invisible wall or endless ocean. Go on, put up a big sign.

And cut down on the condescension. I've been to airports and had my hands, clothes, pockets and bags wiped for testing. I play this game, and I don't care what you and other gamers do in the privacy of your own conventions, it doesn't make you any better a GM than I.

The machine is a gamesmaster mary-sue. I couldn't put it better myself.

Umm...wow.

You actually place "my machine" (which actually exists today) that says, "Ok, boys and girl (we have a female player). This corp R&D lab isn't so chumptastic that you'll be able to simply drop some and walk in the front door with a bunch of super-fly, double-dong lego weapons and explosives in well sealed baggies up your/inside *insert random orifice/location here* to do the deed" in the same realm (let alone the same city limits) as "insurmountable", an "invisible wall", and an "endless ocean"?

I'm not sure what I did and/or said that drives you to distraction from my actual point, but I'm now officially sorry I said and/or did it.

Have a good one, Sir_Psycho.

Basically, the problem I have with your machine in the context of Shadowrun is that it forces players to choose something else. I personally prefer to give them the choice. Using a combination of very high rating Magnetic Anomaly Detectors, Millimeter Wave Scanners and a Chemsniffer (and I mean high rating, as in 6+), then characters have a choice.

Personally, faced with high rating gear like that, I could throw a whole lot of my shadowrunning savings on highly concealable weapons, a near bullet-proof fake SIN and the tactics and social engineering needed to tackle a checkpoint like that. But it's a long shot, and I don't like to spend that money if I don't have to. So without saying "it will detect everything you've got, no matter what you do", using high rating security measures encourages me to find a way over the wall, or through a back-door, or to use a disguise, or an inside plant, or a well orchestrated matrix exploit.

It's the line between encourages and forces that bothers me about your application of this machine. And also the assumption that making the effort to try and walk into an R&D lab like that is chumptastic. A lot goes into the legwork that facilitates such an attempt. The social engineering, networking and research that defeating that kind of obstacle is something you and your group of detail savvy players should respect, not completely disallow.

That's where the hyperbolic invisible wall metaphor comes in. The judicious application of RAW makes for a far less linear game than having a mary-sue machine that in no uncertain terms forces the players into another course of action, when given the choice, they probably would have chosen otherwise.

I apologize if I attempted to demonstrate that in an overbearing and opinionated manner.

Good points, Sir_Psycho.

I feel that the rating of this device is, well...up to the individual GM. Yeah, I described it as the "end all, be all" but we both know that money talks and certain, and certainly newer, models will work better (or worse) than others. I just wanted players and GMs to know that this stuff is out there and perhaps, with good reason IMO, the days of "I dump some cash and walk right in" are numbered or at least got a lot shorter without another aspect to the plan. Invisibility: Superior, perhaps?

(To everyone): For future reference, I won't be putting a rating on any such devices I describe in the future, either. It's not my place, or my job, to tell you how to run your stuff. We're all big boys and girls here now.

I'm actually curious. What kind of waves does this thing use? Electromagnetic? What would the Shielding modification from arsenal do to this thing? There would have to be something the wavelength can't get through.

Hell, we could stat this thing up. Make it challenging and balanced. I suppose it would just be a very expensive millimeter wave scanner, that ignores concealability bonuses that you get from hermetically sealing your clips. It makes a data search test against a threshold based on the rarity of the object/substance you're carrying?

Keep in mind that whichever company that makes the device isn't going to have every commercial weapon on file because rival corporations wouldn't let them just have the schematics for nothing.

They'd probably even hire runners to remove, change or just wreck the databases too. Because if the machines don't work right then whoever paid for them might decide to change to another brand of scanner.

Well, that's the problem. This thing is linked to potential national security issues so the realio-dealio info was pretty sparse in the show I saw it on.

It must be some sort of EM wave, or more likely a combination of waves as it also acts like a standard security x-ray machine. This is assuming, of course, that the guard can help visually ID an object that the database misses. Shielding would probably be a Hugh Jass red flag as who carries around random daily items that randomly stop EM waves what with everything being cheap plastics anymore? You'd get hauled into the Cavity Search Paradise Room for sure if you had stuff that was shielded unless you had a very good reason for it.

It's not only looking for complete compounds, btw. It's also looking for potential combinations of compounds that can be used for nefarious uses and are pre-set as red flags. You couldn't walk in with the separate components of Thermite, as an example, for a correctly set machine like this. I can easily see ladies who use a combination of beauty products that might red flag as "these combined makes bad stuff" getting the ol' turnaround at the gate if the machine picked it up. It would actually be ubiquitous enough that people would start to expect it from time to time for high-security areas.
The base factory settings might not get the truly exotic stuff but just about anything you can home brew, buy from a mil-spec supplier, use in civilian construction/demolition, is radioactive, is a known chemical weapon, or is using similar compounds will almost certainly pop up pretty damn close to 100% of the time. The main limitation here is that there are only so many ways to make things burn or explode (which is simply burning really damn fast). You get those combinations in the DB, not a hard thing to do really, and you've covered a whole mess of ground in one go.

The "new weapons"part is moot for the most part as you could just send someone to the store or supplier to buy the weapon and bring it back for scanning. Add that most corporations are more than happy to help stop terrorists (read: Shadowrunners is it's handy to label them as such), have to send in their schematics to the BATF&E for approval, send in copies to the copywrite and/or patent offices to keep people from stealing your design, etc. and this example only works with custom guns or those still in early development. Now add that there are only so many ways to efficiently put a bullet/laser/paintball/gel pack/ferrous dart down a tube to make things scream and bleed, especially if you want to do it more than once before reloading, and it's even harder to get a weapon past these things.

I just need to have it do enough false flags for the machine to be taken temporarily off-line. Pop open the soap dispencers and insert liquified semtex. Now everyone who has gone to those bathrooms will look like they handled semtex. I could even have all boarding cards treated with a false-flag substance.

To be honest the next new neat gadget does not still invalidate the same security problems we had in the late nineties. I can still walk on a plane carrying explosives, because I have laid out my journey so that my avenue into international departure lounge is through a country with low security or the use of a compatriot who enters the area with a terrorist kit. I don't actually have to get on the plane either, because of the way baggage handling is still conducted and security at airports I have numerous options to access the plane's cargo compartment, food, and passenger compartment. Scrutiny towards aspects such as security checkpoints and baggage handling actually make my job easier on the principle that which the boss checks the employee does.

One of the major problems I still remember and I believe it still holds true is that security is overly reliant on its devices and security measures doing their job and thinking for them. It is a dangerous kind of complacency. But I have to say that if security is switched on (which means proper training, supervision, and alertness levels), it is very hard for me to sneak even a butter knife past them.

The puzzler is a joke weapon. It takes a while to assemble a gun and I still can't see how you can hide a gun's slide as anything but a gun's slide, especially if it hanging off your neck in plain sight.

And Phipps, we love you!

My favourite weapon though is the V.ball grip pilot pen. Nice compact and with enough force can penetrate the windpipe or simply kidneys.

So far, my group has confirmed that Unarmed Combat is an excellent concealed weapon. Especially in the hands of the Elf Bio-Ninja.

Or the hands of our group's resident adept ork activist/bodyguard. He studied the oft-overlooked Chinese internal Taoist art of Pakua, which uses short-ranged rotating-hand palm strikes known amongst its practitioners as "reeling silk". He has cast "Shitkick I-beam", "Shitkick Car", and "Shitkick SWAT van" on a few occasions when he's not casting "shitkick someone who's pissed me off".

Good times!

hmm, snow crash glass knifes anyone?

You try carving someone up with a glass knife. Easier just going with a fiberglass knife.

-Chrysalis

Actually you're wrong about corporations wanting to help stop them. Because the corporations will only care about stopping crimes against themselves. Why would Ares make it easier for say Renraku to stop Shadowruns against them if they're also going out and funding Runner teams to go steal things? And I'm fairly sure there isn't much in the way of central copyright / patent offices anymore, at least not in any forms which have actual power.

But I do agree with the bit about just being able to buy a gun and scan it in (providing some idiot in a corps management doesn't declare you're not allowed because it's bad for your image or some similar management stupidity). And again with the limited numbers of ways to actually build weapons.

Personally I'd just combine the existing scanners from the book (including the non linear junction detecter) plus have a mage doing some detect spells and astral scanning people.

Having tough security like the system you've described is okay for some uses I guess. Providing they're not everywhere they'd be an interesting challenge for an experienced team.

They'll let you bring your weapons in if you're a cop, or have a reasonably accurate fake ID which says that you are a cop. Given the multi-jurisdictional nature of the Sixth World, you'll need a great many of these for every possible situation, but it isn't terribly difficult to get one fake SIN that identified you as Sledge Hammer: Long Star, another under the alias of Fox Mulder: FBI, and, of course, Martin Riggs: Knight Errant, John McClain: Red Samurai, and Cordell Walker: Texas Ranger.