It's common wisdom that "normal" magic bullets (using Anchoring) are a waste of time and Karma. But what about the occasional "special-purpose" Magic Bullet - i.e., one or two rounds designed to take out very specific targets that otherwise will be damn near impossible to deal with?

I'm thinking of Spirits, Vampires and Shapeshifters in particular - an anchored Pattern with Detect Spirit / Slay Spirit would be a rather useful way to deal with a spirit without having to close with it toe-to-toe or bring in the magician, and silver bullets that have been "blessed" vs. the Infected or Shifters is a reasonably common trope.

Granted, you're looking at something like 10 Karma a piece for anything useful (figure a Force 1 detection spell and a Force 9 Slay spell, just to make *damn* sure whatever it is stays dead), but given that the alternative for mundanes is often being unable to take them down at all, something that can get past Immunity to Normal Weapons and Regeneration seems like a damn useful one-shot device.

What do you think, Sirs?

10 Karma is roughly 25.000 NuYen. Add the cost of obtaining the bullet in the first place and I'd rather invest in some antitank weaponry. That stuff does have an effect on big spirits and you can even shoot it more than once.

I thought that electrum hollowpoint rounds, mentioned in Feral Cities, sounded like a pretty good idea. Just have to come up with a price and availebility for those babies.

Question,

On the Vampires (I don't recall the stats off the top of my head) and the shape shifters wouldn't Capsule rounds and some heavy chems, Like ringoo (sp?) work agenst those?

Seriously, just use the cash and buy a dirty bomb. Detonating a dirty bomb will poison the area and mess with any casters and non-toxic spirits, but the radiation will be low enough to not seriously harm you for the duration of the battle.

Nuclear warfare as the first angle of attack. The term "overkill" is well and truly dead in SR. I like it.

and some FAB for those pesky spirits.

Vampires are immune to toxins.
There's Infected that aren't, however (the major "weaknes" of dzoo noo quaas).
And shifters aren't immune to toxins, either.

As far as the OP is concerned, i'd second the idea of anti-tank weaponry.

A good, old-fashioned Ares Thunderstruck (post-errata) can oneshot almost all spirits with single-digit Force.
For the stronger shifters or regenerating Infected, you'd need some more rounds, but basically, they'll drop after the first or second hit and once they're down, you just keep hitting them until they're so far in overflow damage that they cannot regenerate fast enough.

That is, if your mage doesn't geek them first.^^


Of course, you might encounter the occassional vamp or nosferatu who's a kickass initiate prepared to go to down, loaded with protective spells, high-level magic defenses, a small army of bound spirits and so on.
In that case, good luck.

The only time it is worth it is if you are going for bigger game. Like a dragon. Where even anti tank weapons just won't quite cut it.

I should be more clear. It doesn't have to be nuclear waste, just... dirty waste. Chemical polution, even just smog, as long as it creates a background count.

What we really need are wooden shotgun slugs with kryptonite cores, that way they'll be effective against vampires and Superman.

Special purpose magic ammo serves no purpose. If you shoot at something, you lose the bullet even if the spell doesn't go off. And a ranged spell with a detect (x) trigger would be set off by any (x), meaning that you'd most likely end up killing a bystander, a neutral party, or an ally.

It came to me...
does a well placed magical bullet would increase the damage as a standard damage resolution?
and if so... how you would calculate the final damage to soak?

No. The damage from the spell is determined by Force + Spellcasting Successes, both of which are set when the anchor is made. There are three separate resistance tests for an impact-triggered bullet anchor. 1) Dodge Test, if all the shooter's successes are negated the whole attack misses. 2) Damage Resistance Test, Body+Armor vs Bullet + shooter's remaining successes 3) Spell Resistance Test, (Stat) + Counterspelling vs Spellcasting Successes.

Yes but Immunity means that the vampire add twice his/hers Magic to the dice pool on resistance test, if the toxine's final power is lower than the Magic attribute the toxine doesn't do anything. It can give a good protection but doesn't mean the vampire can't be affected at all, especialy if he/she has a low Magic attribute and/or the toxine is particulary nasty.

Except that when you read FAB's rules, you realize it's totally useless as a weapon.
Strain 1 will just make the spirit glow.
Strain 2 will just slow its astral speed to 120 km/h
Strain 3 might be able to lower his force or deal stun damage... 6 hours later.

In my opinion the best thing it can be done is what was done (in the wrong way) by Winternight with their nukes.
Take their nukes and swap the pulse spell with a sluaghter insect spirit (Ares will have developed it after all this years) and you have a nuke that translates most of its radioactive fallout into a massive spell (had they had it in Chicago).
This kind of manatech would be great against certain fraggers the Azzies are in bed with, as well for other porpouses (Clean [element] for enviromental reclamation or Heal, Cure Disease, Antidote, Detox and decontamination for massive medical problems, just to cite some); this could mean that Equinox never takes place but that could be just an alternate reality. By the way PCC had captured one of the Winternights nukes, does anyone know what came out of it?

I hope this is some weird SR4 thing, because nuclear bombs don't work by "pulse spells".

Normal vampires are easy to kill without any special tooles. Other critters get a bit tricky. But I don't know any group that doesn't have at least one CQB speicalist who can light 'em up with either hands or swords.

The only time I can think of for this to be useful is a tactical nuke that acts as a spell focus being used against Lofwyr.

Winternight used magically-enhanced nuclear weapons as part of their plan to jumpstart Ragnarok (The Crash). Ares also used magical nukes in to take down the hives in Chicago.

It is never explicitly stated what magical enhancements these weapons had, however, probably because the developers know that if they did explain it some then enterprising PCs would build their own.

I thought foci don't work unless they are in actual contact with the mage they're bound to.

Then just tie the mage to it and problem solved

Tie the mage to the bullet? Now you can't shoot it. As soon as it leaves him, it deactivates.

im not so sure the ares nuke was magical, but it ended up interacting with a barrier spell of undefined force...

I think that enchanted nukes were not aviable at Bug City quarantine time (and will not become aviable any time soon).
Also there are no rules on how aquire subtactical nuke either, those things are just plot devices; yet some rules to convert high energy emanations in spells would be nifty and probably the most powerfull things that could be done could be magical granades based on the EMP ones, they would be extremely expensive (lets say they require a unit of orichalcum per point of force in order to be produced, in addition to the cost of the granade and other enchanting materials) and their force would be capped by the rating of the granade (maximum force 6), unless you overpower the orichalcum with a tremendous ammount of energy (such as nukes) allowing it to perform beyond any normal scale before being destroied; possible but too far from pratical to be used, just to taunt your player.

I had something similar for a campaign arc with my players, a few months back. Basically a small corp was making a manatech weapon that basically was a wand that used awakened 'stuff' in a canister to point a spell in a certain direction and cast it. The problem was, as the number of 'charges' used at once would bump up the force of the casting (went with no bonus damage from extra hits, since no way to boost the spell without being a spell slinger) to silly amounts of damage. The ended up ranging from a pistol sized one (force 4) to one (and only one that was made) that would have to be transported on the back of a flat bed truck (I think it was force 30 or something silly). In the end, because it was a direct spell it was just a 'wtf' to their armor scored (even the indirect spells chewed through armor).

It was led by a shedim who was trying to make a safe haven for other shedim who didn't want to be seen as simply body snatchers (with all people who joined their company willing hosts). Players ended up siding with a 'concerned citizen' (Masaru, or as they knew him, Moon-Eater) who would pay them to stop the small corp.

They enjoyed it, and afterwards many made up new characters after they blew up the Shedim/Corp's compound with similar technology (read: Mana Bomb) and made sure 'no one else' had their hands in the technology.