In 4th edition most runners use heavily modified weapons. Each of those is going leave unique ballistics on all the shots it fires. Highly modified weapons are easier to trace then off the shelf guns. If the characters have to dump their guns after every run they use them, then cheap off the shelf machine pistols start looking good.

"Jim, am I looking at this wrong or did the shooter fire through a chicken?"
"That would explain the burnt feathers...I'll run up some ballistics stats. Do we have the budget for chickens?"
"Hmm, he must have raised them himself. Our stats might be off. See if you can get some free-range chickens using the same feed we found in the shooter's apartment."

And the ligature marks?

Every gun has an unique ballistic fingerprint. Today the police can and keep in a database the ballistics of all guns used for major crimes. If a camera catches a picture of an duel clipped, tricked out Ares Alpha, it's owner has probably left a bit more of a paper trail (actual data plus the person who actually did the modding) then some random one use auto pistol.

Its a good reason to use explosive rounds.

So they did in every other edition.

So does every gun.

Not by ballistics.

Or, you know, you can re-machine the barrel and lock a bit and swap them completely after a while.

Of course, if all those expensive modifications where just upgrades to the electronics of the weapon... keep them, destroy the weapon.

But that would only work well if everyone else is using explosive rounds.

The use of explosive ammunition makes investigators take a -2 dice pool to all forensics tests to determine the specifics of the weapon used to fire it?

Or the Threshold could be increased to 4 (or by 4, if the GM is willing to make things difficult for himself).

Explosive rounds, flechette rounds, what have you.

In truth the ballistics of a gun change with use, if you don't take a hand in it yourself by replacing the barrel regularly.

As for drop weapons, I only use those in two situations:

1. When I'm trying to make the crime look like someone else did it by using a weapon common to that someone- like a streetsweeper if trying to blame a gang.

2. When I know I'm going to need to hide in plain site after the shooting and want to be able to pass an extensive weapons search- not all that often.

If you're worried about ballistics tracking you down I suggest you either stop by Polymer Heaven or go all dandelion-eater and get a bow.

In sixth world there's dozens of databases like that and they aint sharing the info with each other.


I really doupt there's much of a paper trail about the gun i got from my weapon dealer contact or bought from the crime mall, in sixth world there are multiple ways to get guns and most of those won't leave any kind of paper trail.

Polygonal rifled barrels actually don't leave consistent markings from shot to shot. They're getting more common, especially amongst European makers, as they have a much higher useful life as there's no extra metal to wear out inside the barrel. The other methods of identification via "CSI stuff" can fairly easily be circumvented by people with general knowledge of firearms and a bit of technical know-how.

Of course, the single best method is to simply dispose of the weapon in a rather violent and permanent manner after it's illegal use...

Or use a zip gun.

-Chrysalis

Zip guns are certainly an option, but not a particularly good one. Humans have this very annoying tendency not to die when you want them to so going with a reliable, multi-shot weapon that allows for the extra shot or 12 to "make sure" is a far better option than a chunk of pipe, a nail, and a strong rubber band. It just takes a bit more forward thinking on the part of the user to effectively dispose of the weapon afterward.

That's what marketing tells the customers, anyway - mass production is simply cheaper.

Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.

Good call. You've sweat on it. Probably left a print or ten that you forgot. Maybe got some blood on it. And don't forget about potential skin and hair. Once you add in SR stuff, you also get astral and other unga-bunga voodoo stuff to worry about.

Best idea ever!

Couldn't the bullets be coated into a layer that degrade after being fired?
Just think to a plastic layer with embended many small spheres of solvent, the shock of the firing and the impact of the bullet causes the spheres to break and relised solvent dissolves the layer erasing the ballistic prints.

I have no gun to leave.... where are the cannoli?

I cannoli!!!

In the original context of the quote (The Godfather), it isn't a terrible idea. The gun was probably cheap, and probably bought, already loaded an hour before use. There is a good change that the gun never touched the skin of the firer.

Most forensic evidence on the bullet comes from the magazine, bolt and barrel. All are relatively cheap, easily replaced, and easily defaced with power tools. (Run a 11mm drill bit down a 10mm barrel and it is useless for forensics,)

Just remember to wear gloves when you load your magazines, machined brass is great for preserving fingerprints. A brass collector isn't a terrible idea either. Caseless ammo solves both problems, but should make weapon and ammo more expensive.

In current Shadorun, caseless ammo is more common than cased.

Have a magician research a specific-target version of Fashion that only changes the cosmetic details (including the ballistic 'prints') of firearms. It'd be a handy enough spell...

Perhaps wax?

Or maybe you could just toss the weapon into a forge when you're done and melt it into completely unidentifiable slag rather than screwing around with hideously expensive custom ammunition and the like?

Or just buy a box of Chinese knock-off pistols. Or then just buy off the coroner. Or then buy a throw-away. Or use a machete.

If you need to get rid of a gun, take it apart and discard the pieces in the numerous dumpsters around or just throw it in a lake/swamp/toxic puddle.

Not a gun expert, but I will try to reason out some possible problems with the idea about why firing a gun won't get you instantly incarcerated.

1) Okay, assuming they can track the bullet to the gun they find (Drumroll) that it was part of a shipment stolen (read: liberated) by Vory six months ago, and you bought it on the black market. Way to go Lone Star, you found one missing gun. ho-rah.

2)They track down the gun to your fake Gun License. You have to forge a new identity. Oh noes, that is ever-so-hard.

3)They track down a gun to your REAL Criminal SIN. Now you are not just wanted for 18 Murders across the world, you are wanted for 19 murders across the world!

4)You, a fellow runner, your armorer contact, or your fixer, use a gun shop to re-drill/replace the barrel.

5)You get yourself a gun that fires caseless EX explosive ammo. Good luck tracing THAT.

6)Let's say your stupid and just use the gun and ditch it, and you are SINless. Well, now they have very good evidence of the gun (which was probably bought off of the black market), and have a nice little DNA profile of you, and they know your metatype, hair color, and whatnot. They still have no idea what your name is, how you look (scars, skin tan, cyber ware, cosmetic mods), where you live, or what your typical M.O. is (other than 'shooting people.') Yeah, good luck Lone Star.

Hell, why not fire a bullet filled with nanite cutters?

They'd obliterate the bullet as they chewed their way out, and then you get to see the target do the panic dance. Fun times.



-np

Ooh! I *like* that idea.

In Shadowrun 4, Licences are abstract - a firearms licence allows you to own any R-firearm, a concealed carry licence allows you to carry weapons.

It's not even a given that there is registration of legal firearms, nor that there is ballistic fingerprinting.

Cutters were developed to harm living tissues, they are probably hichly uneffective against dense materials such as metals; they caould be replaced by demolishers but the cost of a single bullet would go way up, making themimpractical from an economical point of view (it would also be a niche product as most of people either wouldn't need self destroying bullets or wouldn't be able to afford them, forcing the runners to make their own because they simply aren't aviable).
On the other hand some polimers with embended carcerands can be added to mass produced bullets with minimum expenses, this would allow for a much greater consumer base (and so for corps producing and commercing it on the sly); also if you replace the polimer/solvent combo with a polimer/catalyst that breakes down at molecular level you could even have Hi-C bullets that completely dissolve, leaving no bullet at all.

Or you could just live in the Shadows. It's harder to track a stolen gun firing black market ammo to someone who doesn't exist. Especially when you know you won't get anything by catching him since he's just a deniable asset.

True enough, yet even if you get nothing from catching the deniable asset you start to look bad if those black market weapon are fired too often leaving too many dead bodies around when you are supposed (and payed) to keep the city safe, so even if you know that it's meaningless to catch the street scum who fired the weapon keeping track of the ballistic of the bullets found on the crime scenes is easy and when you catch some punk that has a weapon that was used to commit several murder the news will talk about you having captured a dangerous murder instead of having houled in some random street trash; even if the two things are the same the first is much better for biz if you sell security services.
In order to avoid this street types can do three things:

- ditch the guns often

- swap barrels, bolts, whatever part needed often

- use bullets that doesn't leave ballistics

The first two ways can be used easily with cheap weapons, but when you start to use custom modded weapons you can end up with some very expensive toys, definitely not the kind of gear that you want to dispose and reworking the mods takes both time and money; at that point you might want to use bullets that leave no ballistics around.

No one liked my idea of using magic to deal with this issue? I just can't see the point in multi-hundred (or even thousand over the course of a runner's career) nuyen fixes when a simple spell is all it would take.

I don't like magic messing with my stuff, too many problems when you can't cast or dispell magic yourself.

Magic leaves its own trail as well...

And that is ignoring the fact that most teams won't have access to a custom spell like that.

You can get custom guns, but not custom spells? There are rules in the books for both. This is how spells like Sterilize came to be. Once the spell formula is made, it's pretty easy for others to learn it and it's not so custom anymore.


It's Permanent, meaning that once you've finished with the Sustaining period, there's nothing magical left - just like your mended wounds are not magical a day after the shaman heals you.


You're part of a team, right? I'm sure the mage might feel the same way about having a hacker (or technomancer) 'messing with' his commlink and other electronics, but if that's what's needed for a SR team to survive, he needs to get over it.

Just to go out on a limb here, but I'm willing to bet that there are a whole lot more games with people using custom guns then games with people using custom magic or both.

It is a good idea, it just most likely would need to be a GM introduced spell since the players in most games won't think of it.

I tend to think up a lot of customized spells, and so have a few of my players. In game, magician PCs have designed a few and have 'discovered' others (that the player had generated) through matrix searches. In the 2070s you can Google all sorts of spell formulas.

When I had a regular SR game to play in, I tended to have a few standard spells and a crapload of custom spells. I had spells that were touch, ranged LOS, and so forth. I had a ranged Healing spell for those situations where I couldn't get to the body (yeah, it cost some on drain but sometimes you had to bite the bullet for a teammate). I had specific use spells that were more powerful than a general use of the same.

My playing group *ALWAYS* expected me to play the mage and take care of our concerns. I thought outside the box and came up with creative uses for everyday items. It's amazing how quickly you can make something go from bleh to broken by creative application.

Why custom guns and not custom spells?

1) Anyone can use a gun. Only someone who knows the spell can cast it.
2) To use a gun, you pick it up and pull the trigger. To use a spell, you spend karma. A non-trivial amount of Karma, at that.

You have to find someone who can cast the spell and who's also willing to cast it for you. If that isn't someone in your team... well, good luck.

5 Karma for something that avoids a whole lot of the problems mentioned on this thread isn't too bad of a deal IMO. Of course, there are some groups that think Sterilize is a must-have and others that would never bother, so I guess it's pretty game-dependent.

Well, no, it's certainly a good investment for a runner. But it always seems like I never have enough karma for all the spells I think I need. Like, do I get the customized re-bore spell? Or do I get prophylaxis because of that time we got gassed? Or fashion, because sometimes physical mask won't cut it due to having to pass through wards?

I just don't see it being in high demand outside of professional criminal groups. A re-bore spell would be good for a team member who could afford it, though.

Of coarse by the same logic CSI magicians could develop forensic spells and techniques that help them investigate shootings...

Also any rules for ballistic forensics should only apply to certain modifications. A whole lot of weapon modifications do not alter the ballistics of the weapon or leave imprints on the projectile. No CSI investigator can look at a round and determine that the shooter was using an Alpha with double clip or special gas vents or foregrip or whatever.

And since the game defaults to PCs being members of professional criminal groups, it's got a place.

The spell can do other things too. You can disguise your Full Auto capable - and illegal as all hell - man-mangler mega-pistol for something a soccer might pack. In matte pink, if you like...

Well, yes. But I was specifically talking about hiring outside mages - who are also criminals, but may not be runners - rather than having a team member learn it.



Well, of course. What do you think the Analyze (X) and Catalogue spells were for? Or Psychometry?

Ever used Trid Phantasm in a combat situation?