This idea was spawned over the course of our last two gaming sessions. Last week, someone brought up the idea of using monowire-edged bullets to bypass armor. I pointed out that monofilament swords only get -1 AP, which indicates that monowire can't be backed by anything if you want the full 8P -4 AP damage code, and suggested monowire bolas instead.

Our next (last) session ended with us deep inside a Mitsuhama black research facility, with alarms going off everywhere and a milspec armored strike team on their way to enforce MCT's "Zero-Zone" policy. While discussing our need for Jabberwocky missiles to shoot down the troop transport when it arrives, I mentioned that I had found both monofilament bolas and underbarrel bola launchers in Arsenal. Our team's demolitions/weapons expert suggested replacing the bola weights with grenades, and the horror evolved from there. 24 hours later, I had finished statting this abomination with the weapon modification rules in Arsenal. If we survive, we are building it, if only to see the look on the GM's face when he bans it from the game.

Underbarrel Bola Launcher (Availability 8R) 350 nuyen
Extended Clip, 50 round Drum (Concealability +2, Slots Used 2, Availability 6R) 1,000 nuyen
Firing Selection Change, FA (Slots Used 4, Availability 12F) 2,350 nuyen
Total: 3,700 nuyen

Fragger Ammo:
Monofilament Bola (Availability 16F) 2,500 nuyen
Frag Grenades, x2 (Availability 10F) 70 nuyen
Gecko Grip, x2 (Slots Used 1, Availability 6) 200 nuyen
Internal Smartgun System, x2 (Slots Used 1, Availability 6R) 70 nuyen
Voice Activation/Response, x2 (Slots Used 1, Availability 2) 100 nuyen
Total: 2,940 nuyen per round

Fragger Jr. Ammo:
Bola (Availability 6) 75 nuyen
Frag Grenades, x2 (Availability 10F) 70 nuyen
Gecko Grip, x2 (Slots Used 1, Availability 6) 200 nuyen
Internal Smartgun System, x2 (Slots Used 1, Availability 6R) 70 nuyen
Voice Activation/Response, x2 (Slots Used 1, Availability 2) 100 nuyen
Total: 515 nuyen per round

Skull Fragger Ammo:
Monofilament Bola (Availability 16F) 2,500 nuyen
White Phosphorus Grenades, x2 (Availability 12F) 240 nuyen
Gecko Grip, x2 (Slots Used 1, Availability 6) 200 nuyen
Internal Smartgun System, x2 (Slots Used 1, Availability 6R) 70 nuyen
Voice Activation/Response, x2 (Slots Used 1, Availability 2) 100 nuyen
Total: 3,280 nuyen per round

---------------

Design points:

> Using bolas as the base weapon eliminates pesky grenade scatter. There was an issue last session where a rocket fired down a cooridor at a steel door landed behind the firer due to scatter. The GM agreed this was rediculous, and let us have a spirit hold the muzzle of the rocket launcher against the door and pull the trigger instead. If required by the GM, the heavy barrel weapon mod or somesuch could be applied to indicate the grenades had been specially modified/balanced to serve as bola weights, but he'll probably outlaw this anyway so I didn't bother. Other designs are possible, such as various explosive/detonator combos instead of actual grenades. This could actually make it a more powerful weapon, depending on how many kilos bola weights weigh.

> The weapon functions like a monofilament bola, wrapping around the target and slicing them up, with the same possibility for causing knockdown. The grenades detonate in the next pass on the attacker's inititave as normal. The gecko grip on the grenades and the monowire connecting them makes it very hard to free a target before the grenades go off. The Voice Activation/Response I added just for fun.

> Since two grenades are detonating at essentially the same point, it makes sense to apply the "blasts in a confined space" rule to combine the DV of the two shockwaves. If the blast from one grenade being reflected back at point-blank range doubles the DV, it makes sense that two grenades going off right next to each other would have a similar effect.

> The ammo drum and full-auto modifications were added specifically for allowing suppressive fire: An area attack with no penalties that can hit everyone in the area with the weapon's standard damage code? Think about it. I was planning on adding the foregrip mod and a smartgun system to make the Fragger a stand alone weapon, but the drum and firing selection change use up all six slots, and I didn't want to overmod. Besides, six slots for an underbarrel weapon is slightly pushing it anyway. An alternate (and more sane) version could drop the autofire and drum, and instead add a foregrip, integral smartgun system, and airburst link to make a more precise single shot muzzle-loading weapon. This version would benefit from being more concealable, (especially since it wouldn't be mounted on a rifle) and would probably be the same size as a heavy pistol.

So, the results of being hit by this thing are quite nasty:

First you've got the damage from the monowire (8P, -4 AP) as the bolas wrap around you. If you were moving, you've got to deal with the knockdown rules for bolas: Attacker's net hits + 3 (half the launcher's strength, rounded up) if that's equal or higher than your body, you go down. Regardless, you've now got two gecko gripped grenades stuck to you, humming merrily. Next IP, they explode. (24P +2 AP for standard Fragger and Fragger Jr. Ammo; or 16P -half AP for Skullfragger, with an additional 8P -half AP for the next 10 turns.)

A person with the minimum 6 body to be wearing heavy milspec armor without penalty (and no other modifications to his damage resistance test) has a dicepool of 22 to resist impact damage while in heavy milspec with the helmet on. (6 body + 14 heavy milspec + 2 helmet).

First, the monowire damage: 8P minus an average of 6 hits (22 dice -4 for AP divided by average 1 hit/3 dice), that's 2 boxes of physical damage. With a body of 6, our hapless trooper has a total of 11 boxes, so 9 boxes remain. Now, the grenades: 24P minus an average of 8 hits (22 dice +2 for AP divided by average 1 hit/3 dice) is 16 boxes of damage. The remaining 9 boxes, minus 16, put the target squarely at -7 boxes, which is one past his overflow limit.

Conclusion: Against a body 6 human in heavy milspec armor (with helmet), standard Fragger ammo does an average of 18 boxes of physical damage, which will kill the target in one hit. Even a body 20 augmented troll in heavy milspec armor will take 11 boxes of physical damage from the Fragger on average, requiring a total of four hits to exceed his condition modifier.

---------------

The Fragger: 3,700
50-Round Fragger Ammo Drum: 147,000
50-Round Fragger Jr. Ammo Drum: 25,750
50-Round Skull Fragger Ammo Drum: 164,000
Cheap Assault Rifle to mount it on: 500

The ability to take out a milspec-armored strike team with one burst of autofire?

Priceless.

Sounds about right for the stuff a trained Armorer could do with most weapons and Arsenal.

My personal favorite is a Ruger Super Warhawk that uses the barreled weapon, also a Warhawk, that fires both with the same trigger pull (Gm okayed that, thought it would make sense instead of a whole nother weapon and trigger build). While it cuts your weapon's ammo in half, it also cuts the time to empty the cylinder in half, and put the gasvents on them to take care of recoil. Combine with a street samurai or a gun based adept with the min-maxed four passes, you're firing all six shots in three rounds, and then reloading.

Never found something to live past the second round, so it seemed to work pretty well. Yes, the idea was from the Hellgate London Redeemer.

Just imagine what you could do with the Ares HVAR, recoil comp mods, and a drum mag. Who needs auto-cannons?

... Oh wait! Full Auto Panthers...

Arsenal, like the other supplements, are scary to say the least.

You do know that the canon modifier for firing two barrels at the same time is +1 to damage not douple or two seperate damages so Warhawk firing two barrels would be 7P.

Thats what I had told the GM, but he wanted me to roll them as separate hits. I figured if he -really- wanted to make it a run and gun campaign, who was I to tell him no? Like a Phys Adept's punches, it was alot of extra dice becoming hits.

But yes, 7P is right.

If he went with the SA firing selection mod, he'd have the rate of fire he's describing, (two bullets per complex action with a -1 recoil penalty) and each bullet would count separately for damage. Throwing in the underbarrel weapon mod seems more than a fair trade for using one attack roll instead of two separate ones. Actually, he doesn't really need the underbarrel mod for anything but flavor, firing each bullet with a separate roll gives you a better chance of hitting and missing with each one, while firing both on the same roll makes it an all or nothing proposition--both methods seem balanced with each other.

You don't actually need a gas vent to compensate for semi-auto recoil either. It's only -1, so something cheaper like a folding stock, personalized grip, or underbarrel weight would do.

As for full-auto assault cannons, the Fragger would do more damage. The best you get with full auto is a narrow full burst for +9 damage, total of 19P -5 AP with a panther cannon. The Fragger does 8P -4, then 24 +2, and it can do full auto too.

[Edit] Oh, you still have to make separate rolls and only get +1 DV? You got hosed, omae. Underbarrel weapon normally gives you half the weapon's ammo. Trading 3 bullets for single-trigger action that's less effective than SA seems like a gyp to me. Also, it's supposed to apply a +4 penalty to concealability and costs as much as the weapon attached, so at least it's cheaper than modding a warhawk to SA, if only by 50 .[/edit]

That's not exactly allowed by the RAW, becouse Bola launcher isn't a SMG nor an assaut rifle it can't get a drum mag and i would think that it can't get a firing section change either becouse of the exotict ammunition.

Double DV doesn't work either. If two grenades were thrown you wouldn't double the DV. Blast in a confined space is something else. Either do some kind of +1 DV thing or just have them resist twice.

If I was running a run and gun campaign I'd allow this. You have to take the special skill. And then if you ever glitch, oh my.

I do not see the fragger thing working that simple. First of, I do nor see the geckotape surviving the whole loading/firing process undamaged. Further it could actually be hindering the process, making jammings and misfires more likely. From your note it reads like you'd have gecko on the wire aswell... I do not see how geckotech would work with monowires. Sure, it needs grenadelauncher-type smartsystems modified to active the gecko and the grenades once fired. In short - unreliable.

I wonder, a weapon firing two grenades at once... is that a bola- or an exotic grenade-launcher? I'd rule it to be a grenade launcher and one unreliable at best.

Full Auto Option, well that doesn't sound reasonable. While this surpasses my comonsense a bit, I thing a bola-type grenadelauncher would have a hardtime achieving full auto firing rates. However it would again make such an unstable setup even more so.

Two grenades going of at more or less the same point at the same time would, under my ruling, not simply equal to nade-damagex2.

Underbarrel?... I'm not so sure about that... actually I not sure if any of this is possible point- or reason-wise.

So I do not know if I would rule the weapon as a working system that I would allow at my table, but if I did so it would bring alot of baggage and would not be as effective as the description above. First it would be risky to produce the ammo (experimental explosive weapons simply are;) ). Second I would rule the weapon as unreliable and would thereby reduce the number of 1's needed for a glitch on that weapon (even further when trying to engage fullauto). On a critical glitch, kiss your groups ass goodbye (most likely).

Better use a bolathrower with a mounted nade-lancher (or viceversa).

More or less this appears to be nonsense (IHMO).

Umm...if it's gecko-gripped grenades, how does it fire with an accuracy from the barrel, if at all (they do stick to it, after all)? If the (obvious answer) sabots are used, how do the sabots fly away after firing when they're gecko-gripped to the grenades?

Hmm...

DOH!

That's what I thought aswell, but Gecko-Tech is able to be switched on and off. You would have to reprogramm the smartsoft of the grenade launcher to activate it along with the grenades...but it still is a bit far out. The gecko will come with several problems anyways.

Ah, I knew I forgot to address a few things.

First off, I considered the concept of this thing to be pretty ridiculous from the start, so I didn't approach the design with total seriousness.

That being said, I wanted to make this goofy, ridiculous weapon in as reasonable a manner as possible, rather than just pulling it out of my ass, which was responsible for some of the decisions, as I tried to stay as conventional as possible with my application of the weapon rules.

Now:

The Gecko Grip modification: Note this is not gecko tape added to the grenades, but an actual modification of the grenade casing itself. By RAW, gecko gripped weapons can be activated or deactivated wirelessly if they posses a smartgun system, or manually by pressing two buttons at the same time. I'd be hesitant about using the mod rules on a weapon's ammo, but since the entry for voice activation/response specifically mentions giving grenades that modification (which requires a smartgun system), I decided that was close enough.

The descriptions of how normal (non-smartlinked) grenades function in the BBB mentioned they have a built in feature that prevents them from arming until they have traveled 5 meters. That indicates that even "dumb" grenades are able to detect when they have been launched/thrown and can activate some kind of timing or distance calculating mechanism when that happens. Shouldn't be too hard to rig a smartlinked grenade to activate it's gecko grip after clearing the same minimum distance, in my opinion. If need be, you can assume the "internal smartgun system" to be a stand in for a slightly different smart weapon computer, which allows the use of VA/R and gecko grip activation. The weapon mod rules require a bit of flexibility, and this whole thing is pretty much required to be an involved custom job anyway.

No prob, we've got a specialist, and Ares contacts out the rear.

As for gecko grip working with monowire: To me, it doesn't really make sense that you can attach monowire to anything, shouldn't it cut right through it's handle? Since we have things like swords edged with monowire and rappelling gloves that let you grip it, I have to assume 2070's shadowrun tech has delt with this problem. If nothing else, one could assume the gecko grip covers the grenades in patches or strips, much like a velcro catch set I used to play with as a child, allowing sufficient contact surfaces to stick while clearing room for the monowire to connect without interference. To clarify: There is no gecko grip on the monowire, there doesn't need to be. The monowire cuts your hands and possibly your knife/wire cutters if you try to remove it, so the only safe way to untangle a victim is to attempt to unwind it holding one of the grenades--which are gecko gripped to the target and therefore hard to remove. It's not entirely necessary to the design, but since the whole point of this weapon is ridiculous mean-spirited overkill, why the frag not?

Bola Launcher VS Double Grenade Launcher: I thought about going with a MGL-6 with an underbarrel grenade launcher instead, but decided it would have required too many house rules to add in the bola effect. Changing the bola weights to grenades sounds much more reasonable and less involved than building a double-barreled, twin firing grenade launcher that has no precedent in SR4, then modding the barrels to allow a monowire connection between the rounds, and somehow packaging and firing the whole thing without any snags or mishaps. Not to mention getting the actual in-flight characteristics of a bola, which would require precise timing of the grenade launches.

Personally, I envision this thing as actually having custom made grenade-weights, built from scratch for that purpose, rather than just strapping grenades on there. It's not something just anyone could cook up, but from what I've seen of my team and our contacts, I think we could pull it off. We already have a citymaster packed with homemade explosives. God forbid we ever crash it.

Likewise, I originally intended this to be a stand-alone weapon, but there is no precedent I could find for turning an underbarrel weapon into a stand alone one, so I left it as an underbarrel weapon, requiring it to be mounted on a "rifle-sized firearm", as per the description of the underbarrel bola launcher.

I think it would be closer to say it was added to the frame of an assault rifle to create a complete, assault-rifle sized weapon, which brings me to my next point:

Ammo Drum Modification: Yes, by raw you can't do this. It says SMG's and Assault Rifles only. But considering it's a muzzle-loading weapon, and actually has no clip to extend, this was the closest I could get to a rule that allowed adding one. Additional clip wouldn't work, because it depends on the size of the first clip to determine how many rounds the new one holds. With no original clip to go by, there's no way to balance how big a clip you're adding, so sticking a drum on there works better, as it specifies the number of rounds.

The thing's got fragging autofire, and is about the size of an SMG anyway, so it's not that big of a jump. This is really more a case of using a similar mod's rules to cover for one that doesn't exist, but could conceivably be performed. Also, there's a grenade launcher in arsenal that uses an ammo drum.

Double DV for grenades: First off, can you name a core circumstance in which two grenades would detonate in the same place, at the same time? Barring the use of timers or rigged boobytraps, I can't, and that's essentially what this is. The rules don't specifically address two grenade detonations simultaneously side-by side, but the rules for demolitions and the blasts in confined spaces rules both support the assumptions I've made with this weapon.

Honestly, it would be simpler to stat this thing using demolitions rules, and it would probably end up more powerful, but since I don't have numbers for the weight of the bola balls and it was originally thought of as being grenades, I figure use the grenade rules and assume this is a similarly functioning analog

Full Auto: Mainly added for the "holy fuck!" effect, with an eye towards suppressive fire possibilities. It's not really intended to be reasonable, but bear with me here:

Assuming this whole thing has to be custom-built with extensive modifications anyways, here's how I picture it working: You have your "Ride of the Valkyries" humming, exploding, monofilament bola fragger rounds packed in a light casing, probably some kind of plastic with properties similar to rappelling gloves. These casings are packed with propellant, and loaded in the ammo drum as normal drum ammunition is. Bear in mind the Enfield GL-67 provides a precedent for grenades in ammo drums. The system then loads and fires each round, either ejecting the casing or disintegrating it. A high tech plastic that resists monowire but vaporises at firing temperatures sounds well within the means of shadowrun tech, but going with an ejectable casing would keep the manufacturing difficulties down.

Considering you already have semi-automatic grenade launchers in SR, full-auto isn't that big a step.

Finally, all the "it would be unstable/unreliable" comments: Let's face it, the thing is horribly overpowered, at least on face value, and that triggers an automatic prejudice that makes people want to nerf it. I fully expect it to be banned by our GM, as I said before I listed the stats. But game balance is no reason to assume that skilled weapons designers couldn't put this thing together and make it work. It has some difficulties, but considering the shit you can build with the drone rules, this seems downright reasonable.

I consider this weapon to be much like a horribly uber-optimized character build: Interesting as an intellectual exercise, as and an example of just how far you can push the rules, but not seriously intended to be used in play.

That being said, I'll probably try to get a less-insane version built for our team, because an exploding monofilament bola launcher isn't really that much more outrageous than a panther cannon, and it's got more grit and style. It doesn't have to be gamebreaking to be fragging cool.

Personally I think with the amount of money and time it would take to make something like that why not just give it to the player? It's like firing a drone at someone for crimminies sake each time you press the trigger. Personally I think what would kill you in the end is that using a gun like this in every single run will probably get you hunted down and killed. A custom made gun like this makes all kinds of warning signals go off when you use it constantly. Yeah sure you just blew the hell out of that one guy, but a bolo being used in this way just sets off huge alarm bells. It's also just not cost effective as a gun. Just using a grenade launcher and firing two grenades with an airburst will pretty much have the same effect, and if you just want to kill a single target two sniper rifle bullets to the head solves anyones problem.

Yeah go ahead and use an insanely over the top pricey weapon... but while your at it why not just shoot them with a sparrow hawk missile, or drop an iron bomb on your target. Both tip your hand just as much, but in the end it will probably kill a lot more people.

Exactly, there's a level of escalation involved that a shadowrunner just doesn't want--but with the amazing firepower of the Fragger, isn't it nice to know that you could?

Okay, I'll stop quoting credit card commercials now.

Seriously though, I could see someone holding on to this as their "nuclear option": a weapon of last resort that you absolutely don't wanna' use unless you're absolutely fragged anyway. It'd be great for the situation my group's in now, as it could take care of that inbound Mitsuhama strike team quite handily with proper use of chokepoints and guerrilla tactics. We already did wonders with chokepoints, white phosphorus grenades, and an orgy spell on the way in.

All in all though, the "nuclear option" works better if you actually have nukes.

Then it would be good if you stayed inside the bounds of the rules, becouse as i pointed out that think isn't even allowed by the rules.

Off cource the fragger is little outside of the modding rules anyway and custom thinks don't have to adhere to those rules.

I would never allow a ML weapon base to change to drum. Period. Thus, you can't full auto it, since you can't have 10 rounds loaded.

Muzzle load is muzzle load for a reason.

The dual grenades... as they are supposed to wrap the wire around the target, they explode more or less in the same spot (at least on the same target, and that target is supposed to be mansized). They will also go off at the same time, as they are timed to arm at the same time. Having them explode seperately would mostly be of no use, as the explosion of the first will most probably do one of the following things: scatter the second grenade arcoss the area, shred it or blow it.

There may be no rules for two grenades going of at the same space and time, because they are usually not needed. However they will in no case simply add to each others damage. They will either be to seperate damage iterations, granting the the target two rolls against the damage (like with to seperate grenades) or you will simply get a small portion of the second grenades DV added to the first. That is how those things work in SR after all.

Multiple bulltes are two seperate DVs or DV+1, two fireballs are two seperate DVs and so on.

The demolition rules by the way are for things too be demolished. Logical and intelligent placement of multiple charges is a major point there. If you would take several minutes to properly apply microcharges to your target and then set them off, demolition rules may be taken into account (if insisted). For the use of your weapon, those rules do not aplly, even if they would, they'd make it even less viable, than it allready is.

The overall point is, that the SR rules do not support that waepon-build and neither does common sense. There is too much to adress there, to even further discuss it. As a ST I would have you do it again from scratch.

I love how people argue that it makes no common sense, and that the rules don't support it, while completely ignoring or dismissing the common sense rules application that I mentioned in the first post. Namely: The blasts in confined areas rules.

If my application of that doesn't make sense, I'd love to hear an actual explanation of why. Never mind all the other issues with the weapon, which I agree is ridiculous from a real-world standpoint, and at least semi-questionable within the internal logic of SR4.

A grenade goes off next to a wall, at point blank range, and doesn't destroy the barrier. In SR4, this means the shockwave rebounds, coming back onto the target from another direction, and adding it's DV to the initial blast's, before calculating it's effects on the target. Since it hasn't traveled a full meter yet, the reflected blast does the full DV of the grenade, combining with the initial blast to double the grenade's DV. If there are more rebounds, they also add their DV to the total.

Now, other than the source, what is the difference between a reflected shockwave striking the target at point-blank range, and shockwave from a second grenade overlapping in the same manner? I understand the real world physics differences, but what are the differences in shadowrun, from a game perspective? Offhand I'd say: Balance, because you can make a gun that creates that situation every time it fires, but I think some kind of shaped-charge warhead could reasonably be created that does the same thing.

Looking at the demolition rules again, I see that explosive damage is determined by rating times the square root of kilograms used. Not how I remembered it. That would provide a counter-precedent to reduce the combined damage of the two grenades.

Let's see, applying that kind of progression to grenades and assuming 1 kilo per grenade (which is probably ridiculous, especially for microgrenades, but since we don't know the rating of the explosives used or their weight it works okay as an abstract thing)...

...square root of 1 is one, so the damage code becomes the rating, square root of 2 is 1.414 and a whole lotta' decimals according to my calculator, multiplied by twelve for a frag grenade is:

Just shy of 17, certainly a lot less than the 24 you get from doubling the DV of a frag grenade, and probably a lot more reasonable from a balance perspective.

But I'd like to remind again that this weapon wasn't intended to be balanced--it was intended to be insane. It seems a lot of the complaints about common sense are really complaining about the game balance of the weapon, not it's principles or adherence to the rules. IMO, a distinction should be made between weapons that don't make sense, and weapons you would never let into your game because they are too powerful.

Moreover, this weapon was intended to be fun. I don't hear you grumbling naysayers having alot of fun with the idea of a fully automatic monofilament bola launcher using dual gecko gripped frag grenades singing Ride of the friggin' Valkyries as weights.

Me, I think it's hilarious.

The difference is that there is only one grenade for blasts in confined spaces. Not two. Even if someone threw 2 grenades, I'd resolve them individually, one right after the other. They wouldn't "blow" the other one off the person, but I'd resolve the damage as two seperate damages.

Yeah, I'm still not hearing a why, not a logical one anyway. "Because there's two" just doesn't cut it. There's effectively two blast waves interacting in both situations, the only difference is that the blasts originate from a different source, and that there's actually a slight (though almost negligible) delay with a reflected blast, while the dual blast of a fragger would hit simultaneously.

If anything, that seems like an argument for doubling the DV of fragger ammo and rolling reflected grenade blasts separately. What you've got to remember is that the two grenades are actually part of the same weapon in this case. Like lighting a bundle of dynamite, or rigging several bricks of C4 together, multiple discrete packages of explosives are combined into a single blast. More argument for using the explosive rules instead, I suppose.

I'm not opposed to restating a more sane version of the fragger for actual use, it's such a sweet concept it'd be nice to actually be able to use some version of the thing. But I'd like any nerfing to make sense. If you say: Because of game balance, then I could almost buy rolling both grenades separately, but again, there's the explosive rules and the blasts against barriers rules that counter this, and hand-wavium is a poor substitute for verisimilitude.

I think I'm going to go over the demolitions rules in Arsenal again, particularly the parts on rigging explosive traps.

If you think of fragger ammo as two charges with a monowire tripcord for a trigger, there may indeed be a core rules example.

Because, you are figuring out the damage for the grenade blast waves.

Blasts in a confined space is for 1 grenade. If you had 2 grenades, going off at the same time, in a small room, you'd do the blasts for a confined space for each grenade, because its an instant in time of when that grenade is going off. Much like how full auto isn't 10 different attack tests, as its one "hit" so, the extra bullets add to the dv (but not nearly as much as they would if taken individually). I'd say your fragger needs to either not add the full damage of the grenade (for the same reasons full auto doesn't add the full DV for each bullet) or the grenades need to be resolved seperately as if they were individual weapons.

Basepoint, I'd say go with grenade 1 + 1/2 DV of greande 2.

Indeed.

Further it makes no point to say, hey, do away with commonsense, because I want it to be insane - at least not when it comes to the different points of game balance, which commonsense is part of, while insanity is not.

But to line that up: It would not work that way, neither rule- nor commonsensewise and definatly not balance- or fun-wise. Have your fun with it, but I do not see any fun in there. We can talk again about the fun in that weapon, if the topic is another game, maybe like paranoia or a SR addon for munchkin.

No offense though, fun is highly subjective and a matter of preference.

Oh FFS.

Look, all grenades do double listed DV anyway, because Chunky Salsa applies from the floor. So there you go.

Actually, in all the text, the book only discusses walls, never floors or ceilings.

An idea on how the geko-bola-grenade would launch.

Think like a shotgun shell, or some kind of canister, with the inside coated with some material that Geko Tape and Grip don't stick to (I know there has to be something!). It fires out the launcher, and the sides pop off allowing the sticky bombs to become bolas.

I know it was mentioned that you could have a smartlink activate the geko grip after it left the launcher, and is a simple solution really. Just thought I'd give my two sense.

Just stopping by after a long sebaticle.. and wanted to comment

Back in third edition, we used to do the same thing, but with foci.. instead of just a bullet, make the bullet a foci with spells anchored and set to go off on impact. same shoot um once, get 2-3 damage tests out of it. also same prohibitive cost per round... Its just like spending thousands of nuyen on spirits to do a job that pays 500 nuyen.. I've seen it done... just because you can do stupid stuff with the rules does not mean that you should..

but the powergamer inside me giggled with glee when I saw that:)

4th edition might have enough rules to actually pick it back up and do something with it

Hmm, gone over the explosives rules in arsenal a bit more, this certainly needs some work to stay in keeping with that.

The rules for sympathetic detonation specifically mentions multiple grenades being set off on a runner's person, (+1 DV per grenade) lists the explosive rating for grenades, (which allows me to reverse-engineer their weights) and also says to treat multiple explosives as one charge if they're in physical contact, but to treat them as separate charges if there's "a gap of more than a few centimeters between them"

I'm working on a few different designs, at this point it's basically going to be just custom ammo for the regular underbarrel bola launcher. Offhand you could use the rules for making IEDs to add 1.5 kilos (based on the grenade weights I reverse-engineered) of plastic explosives per ball.

Not sure about the detonation method. Using a wireless detonator and adding a smartgun system to the bola launcher would take care of it, but I'd like to add a few more systems for redundancy. Maybe upgrade the bolagrenades all the way to drone status with smartgun system and pilot upgrade, then add a pull-release detonator linked to the monowire. The idea is to have the drone monitor the tension of the wire after it wraps around the target, and detonate if it changes.

Also toying with the notion of droning the bolaweights, filling them with binary explosives (one chemical in each weight) and adding a built-in atomizer. Bolas hit, drones starts pumping out atomized explosives, which mix automatically in the air. 1 kilo per simple action with a drone's 3 IP's means it can pump out all three kilos and still have a simple action left to detonate them with in the time it takes a thrown grenade to explode, assuming you allow them to start pumping on the IP they hit.

Binary Explosives don't have as high a rating cap as plastic explosives, so your maximum damage output isn't going to be as high, but it's got a nice psychological intimidation factor:

Do this with a regular bola instead of a monowire one, so the target's just knocked down but not killed or incapacitated, then flash the remote detonator in your hand as the explosives begin pumping out around the poor slot.

Of course, you'd have to move a ways away before you actually pressed the button. 3 kilos of rating 12 binary covering three square meters when atomized means a blast radius of thirteen meters. (square root of 3 kilos x Rating 12 rounded up = 21 DV with standard -2/meter blast = 10 meters + 3 meter ground zero from atomization)

Still, after watching The Dark Knight last night, that seems like something a sadistic bastard with access to explosives might do. Hell, the Joker'd probably keep the monowire and just count on the fact that 8p probably won't kill the target outright--just seriously mess them up.

As for the fun of my original uber-weapon design: If you can't see the fun in full auto monowire explodey goodness, you lack a visual imagination and should not be playing games that don't come with their own graphics. It's the concept, and the image of some runner taking out a milspec-armored strike team in one spectacular sweep of aurofire, voice-response ammo creating an electronic choir as it hums out "Ride of the Valkyries" and then detonates in a massive cascade explosion.

The intricacies of rules and game balance are interesting on an intellectual level, but when you lose the ability to get into the scene and have fun, you've missed the point of roleplaying, omae.

Will provide finished stats later. Probably going with the binary version, since having two bolagrenades could be interpreted as only adding +1 to the explosion's damage code.

Seriously wish there was a core stand-alone bola launcher.

Wireless will get you killed if the opposing team has a hacker. They just send an activation signal when it is inside your gun and you explode. Doesn't make too much sense, but thats the matrix for you. Also to give you some point of reference:

A grenade weighs about 19 ounces (just over a pound)

A kilogram is approximately 2.2 pounds (33.6 ounces)

The fact that you are now putting something so custom made that does not really have rules per say written for it and trying to fit it into the rules as a GM I would say no. Using a plastic explosive bomb, having it fired at high speeds out of a bolo launcher, while attached to monowire, expecting it to have a perfect detonation every time as it is rotating at high speeds just part of my brain shuts down and refuses to see it. A bolo grenade launcher at least seems to give the "Rambo effect" in that it might not be all that cost effective or even make all that much sense, but probably someone would do it for the coolness factor (stupid bow explosives.) Although I would laugh if you shot the monowire grenades and all it did was lop off someones arm and the grenades then detonated far out of range.

Anyways... by RAW you would need an airburst link not a smartlink when firing a grenade or some kind of improvised explosive to improve the effectiveness, and even then you have to take scatter rules into effect. Only if you were able to reduce the scatter to 0 would I rule that you would hit the person with the monowire. Although I would say get a smartlink anyways as the +2 is very handy.

Personally I prefer the crescendo of Tchaicovsky's 1812 Overture

As I am in the mood to let me be provoked to answer that... I drop by for another run. First off it is kind of funny to hear that from someone trying to build munchkin weaponry. My imagination, visual and otherwise, is more than ok - it helps with the job from time to time. Why I do not see the fun of that concept is, because it's a cheap try to create a mega-gun by willfully bending the rules to your advantage or simply ignoring them. Cheap does neither match my taste nor my preference for humor or fun in general. It is OK though, that this might be hard to understand for you, as you have a different perspective and your own preferences.

While rules do not matter that much for the story, they do however, matter for stats. My imagination let's me visualize scenes, that are more apealing to me, without the need for munchkin-tech™.

...ladida...

And see, that's the problem. People look at this thing and immediately go into Munchkin-Defense-Mode™.

I said right in the first post, before I even listed the stats, that it was an insane design and I expected it to be outlawed by the GM. If he didn't ban the thing, I still wouldn't use it because it doesn't fit my character. My intent is not to build munchkin weaponry, but to stat out an over the top concept weapon dreamed up while yucking it up with friends after a gaming session.

Moreover, it's not cheap. Arsenal provides much more efficient ways of pulling off superdamage. It's the crazy ramboness of the thing that I'm going for, not a low cost (nuyen or otherwise) win-button.

If I can design a more sane, rules-freindly version, I might consider bringing it into our game--but it would probably be more effective to just grab a missile launcher. Maybe we'll build one and keep it in the van, as a concept piece never intended to be used.

I stand by my statement. If you're so uptight about rules and game balance that you can't appreciate the fun of a joke uberweapon that's never intended to see play, something is wrong with you.



I went with wireless detonator + smartgun rather than smartgun + airbust (airburst requires a smartgun system) because airburst is specificly for grenade launchers, and I didn't want another round of RAW-Hammer dropping. It's a case of the same thing by a different name.

Similarly, while the original idea was to use grenades as the bola-weights, that just doesn't fly by RAW, so I had to go a different route. To be clear, this isn't a grenade launcher, it's an explosive monofilament bola launcher--or more accurately, a launcher for monifiliment bolas that explode. (Since if I use the word explosive someone will go "oh that's +1 DV +1 AP by RAW!")

Technically, only the exploding part of that description requires modding to achieve, and the IED rules cover this nicely. Before anybody accuses me of using semantics, I'd like to point out that I'm only responding to other poster's use of the same. The concept has always been a monofilament bola that launches, wraps around the target, and then goes boom. If using the word "grenades" get's people's hackles up, I'll use a different word.

I'm trying not to bring real world weapons and engineering into this--particularly because SR spits in their faces pretty consistently already. If those are listed weights for SR grenades, I'd like to know where I can find them. I calculated a 1.5 kg weight for SR handgrenades from this line in Arsenal:

"For purposes of sympathetic detonation, commercial hand grenades contain Rating 8 explosives..."

Not perfect, but it's the only core mention of wieght or explosives rating for hand grenades that I've found.

HE grenades have a DV of 10, divided by rating 8 explosives = 1.25, which is the square root of 1.5625 Since you're supposed to round up when calculating the DV of explosives, I rounded the number off to 1.5 for simplicity's sake. Run back, that's:

Square root of 1.5 kilos =
1.2247448713915890490986420373529

x Rating 8 explosives =
9.7979589711327123927891362988236

Rounded up equals = 10 DV

So I'm assuming the weight of SR hand grenades to be 1.5 kilos, or 3.306933393 pounds Sounds a bit high to me, especially as bola weights, but SR physics don't always match ours. Until I see more reasonable (or more official) core stats, that's what I'm going with.

I'm a little suprised by people's strict literal adherence to the RAW here. The rules of SR are designed to be somewhat flexible in order to cover unexpected situations, even moreso than alot of other systems, especially the rules for customizing weapons and making IEDs. Hell, the example they use for making an IED is a guy filling an empty beer can with rusty nails and foam explosives to make a frag grenade. He doesn't get any penalties on the device's performance or function because of it's jerry-rigged construction, in fact, it performs better because of the two net hits he got on his demolitions + logic test.

I'd say coring out the weights of a monofilament bola and putting in explosives and sophisticated control systems is at least a slightly more professional approach.



Ah, finally someone who get's it. You're right, that would be better--especially on full auto. Thanks for the link, omae.

[edit] Crappy internet ate half my post, fixed.[/edit]

See, one of the problems I can see with your design is that the underslung Bola Launcher would likely have the two balls offset slightly to allow them to begin spinning in flight. If we're going full-auto, we're probably talking cartriges / sabot of some sort, so I'd suggest making them 3-balled bloas, so that they can be packed in a row and still fly out into a spinning formation once launched. This has the twofold advantages of increasing the weapon's maiming potential, and reducing the chance of a malfunction, while allowing a belt- or drum-feed.

And yes, the idea of firing entangling, exploding sticky-bombs at full-auto is sheer awesomeness. My next character is totally going to get an automatic grenade launcher with gecko grenade ammo.

A friend at my table had a similarly silly idea of packing monofilament nets into a shotgun. You'd probably only get one shot (I don't imagine the gun barrel would survive the monofilament being launched out of it at speed), but you'd probably only need one shot.

Also, for a less dramatic and more scarily cartoonish mega-violence scene, replace Ride of the Valkyries / 1812 Overture with Waka Laka.

the bola could have 3 wights of 0.5kg each filled with rating 15 explosvie it should be close to 18DP. Or 1.5kg each wights for 4.5kg and a DP of 32 rounded. One is more lilly the other godly.

For an idea of what using this would feel like, play Call of Duty 4 single-player with infinite ammo turned on and use an underslung grenade launcher.

...I'd love to bring Dr Zanzibar with his PJSS Elephant rifle into this campaign 10P/-2DV base x 2 (EXEX). Talk about a spirit disrupting "boomstick".

So your gtun has a 50 round drum magazine of 3kg bola rounds, who the hell carries around something that weights over 150 kilos as a just in case weapon.
And that thing would also be huge so no way to use it as a underbarrel weapon.

CEASE YOUR PESKY LOGIC! We are not designing practical weapons to hand out to the military! We are aiming for MAXIMUM SLAUGHTER! MAXIMUM SLAUGHTER!

*ahem*

Make it vehicle mounted, and belt, rather than drum, fed, and you also eliminate those pesky recoil mods. Now if the vehicle it's on is a souped-up bike with smart tires, you can even take it indoors! Explosive sticky-bolas for all!

Or just, y'know, play a troll with softmaxed strength.

Mount it on your citymaster riot control for the masses. Watch those pesky rioters just disappear.

But I dont see the need for FA BF would be enough for most occasions. A nice 15round clip.

Like I said, it sounds a bit heavy to me. But then, the idea of a 3 pound grenade sounds like a bit much too. It's like the fantasy RPG's that list rediculously heavy weights for their swords. It may not make sense in our world, but apparently in the game world you can swing a 10lb hunk of metal effectively--with one hand.

I agree completely that this doesn't make sense as an underbarrel weapon, but that's the only kind of bola launcher I can find in SR4, and there are no official rules for converting an underbarrel weapon to a stand alone one.

Personally, I'd use the Forgrip and Trigger Removal mods as analogs for attatching a handle and installing a trigger, and then maybe add Extended Barrel to make it more rifle or SMG sized. To be clear, you wouldn't get the -1 recoil from the foregrip, the idea is that the mod is roughly equivalent to the difficulty, cost, availability, ect. of what you're actualy trying to do. The only reason I didn't do this with the original design was that adding a drum and full auto used up 6 slots, and I figured an underbarrel weapon with the full 6 slots was pushing it already--you don't want to overmod a weapon that's got the glitch rules for monowire and explosive ammo.

A monowire net gun was actually something that came up after the first session, before we got the idea to add explosives to the mix. I think the final concept was a retractable net gun that you could fire over the front-line enemies heads, let it drop on the rear-guard, and then retract it through the whole group. We abandoned it because no one liked the idea of having an invisible monofilament net retracting towards them.

I had thought about the problem of getting the bola's to spin correctly, but since it already works in game I decided it wasn't nessecary to figure out how. The issues of adapting the weapon to full autofire I took to be covered by the Firing Selection mod.

Using three-weighted bolas does make more sense, and appeals to the engineer in me, but since it already works and there's a problem of multiple explosives becoming redundant, I decided to leave that alone and preserve the visual image of the thing.

Using three wieghts with less explosives in each would also solve the heavyness problem, but again, they can't combine DV so you'd be stuck with a low damage code and a very expensive +2 DV from the other two. You could go liquid explosives + drone atomizer to get around that, but it might be even more expensive that way.

The vehicle-mounted idea I definitely like--I was already thinking this would be good as a drone weapon, especially since a critical glitch would just leave you with a fragged drone instead of a missing torso.

Thanks for the input everyone, it's much appreciated.

But I'd just say that the charges are close enough together to be treated as one bigger charge. Or treat each charge speratly the better option not a huge area of doom but less likely to live as it has a higher total DP.

I'd say they're close enough too, but arsenal says a few centimeters gap = separate charges for +1 DV each. Since we're already talking drones, I was toying with the notion of adding a mobility system to the bolas, along with the smartgun system and pilot upgrade. That way they could crawl around, link up, and go boom as one charge.

Still though, I like the binary explosives with drone atomizer concept. Technically though, if you went with the 3-bola + liquid explosives route, you could just have the bolas function as gas grenades and add a detonator to ignite the cloud. You only really need the atomizer if you're mixing binary explosives.

On that note though, it says 1kg of liquid explosives = 1 liter of fluid, which might be tough to cram into such a small volume. Dunno if that holds for binary too. Weight vs Volume, heh, this is why I try not to get too technical or bring real world science into in-game weapon design.

A gun that shoots swords if fun.


As is a Dire Tarrasque Flail.

But neither explode.

Besides, the Tarrasque is better air-dropped--preferably from orbit. That's what orbital gentech labs are for, after all.

Three words.

Rocket. Propelled. Chainsaw.

Actually, we discussed that one at the last gaming session. Thing is, it'd have to be a rocket propelled monofilament chainsaw, stuffed with rating 15 plastic explosives.

The hilarious part, I chimed in with that just after the GM made the mistake of saying: "Actually, you could make that with the rules in Arsenal..."

Evilness.