Take a closer look. Immunity to 'stuff' uses the ferm 'Armor' finally.

Pardon my ignorance, but how is a loaded revolver inherantly any more safe than a loaded semi-automatic?

I know there are pistols out there that cock and fire on a single pull of the trigger, but I'd imagine that they exist in both types of gun, same for guns where you have to manually cock the hammer before you can fire.

I also like revolvers because you can put different types of ammo in there and check to see what's what. IE: You could have 3 gels and 3 ex-ex, and you could see what's what, where as with a glock, you'd have to try and remember how many you shot, how many you put in..

Yeah but its easilier to chamber a round with a semi-auto by accident then it is with a revolver.

*Edit*

Samantha that is why you buy a Smartlink and use Tags on all of your clips.

The best safety for any handgun (or long arm, for that matter) isn't built into the gun at all, but rides between the owner's ears. If you keep your booger hook off the bang switch until it's time to fire (as my grandpa said), you'll be pretty okay.

Either way, though, it's not like Shadowrun really has rules (aside from the odd critical glitch) for worrying about handgun safety, maintenance, or the differences between brands when it comes to that sort of thing.

Sure but its the only assumption that makes any sense to me, after all if the Warhawk was double-action then why does it only get one shot per IP?

Assuming that you're carrying the pistol for self-defense, keeping it unchambered is terribly foolish. But there is a reason why things like grip safeties exist.

Only idiots who don't follow the most basic safety rule (don't put your finger on the trigger until you're ready to fire) accidentally discharge their weapons. Bit, it is possible that the firing pin will be released if the weapon is jarred by an impact, such as by a fall. This is unlikely on most modern weapons, but it depends very much on the make and the model.

MFB's spot on, except for that last bit (revolver vs. semi-auto). Revolvers tend to have a heavier trigger weight unless you've cocked back the hammer manually (even a DA, where you don't have to do so, becomes much lighter in the trigger if you take the time to thumb it back yourself).

Which isn't to say you can't find semi autos that will have a trigger weight just as heavy as a DA revolver, or vice-versa. But (in my experience, at least) DA revolvers do tend to be a little heavier than most automatics.

That shouldn't really be a huge issue in how fast you can fire, though, unless you've got a pretty weak grip. It may've been a trigger reset and overcreep issue, instead. Overcreep is a trigger that you can keep squeezing well past the point that it "breaks" and the weapon has fired (which is wasted motion). Reset is how far forward you need to let the trigger go in order for it to be ready to fire next time (a longer reset means the trigger needs to be eased farther forward, but if you don't know when the trigger resets and you always let it go all the way forward, that can be wasted motion, too). These varies wildly from brand to brand and model to model, but I know in some pistols they can be pretty short and crisp. "Double taps" (IE, "controlled pairs") are much easier, for instance, in a trigger that hasn't got much overcreep and has a very short reset. You're moving the trigger less to get the same results (firing, being ready to fire again, firing, etc, etc), so it can make for much quicker (and more accurate) firing.

Now, I'm not sure if the trigger reset distance might be longer on a DA revolver (my gut tells me it would be, but I'm only guessing). That could affect rate of fire, much more than any reasonable trigger weight differences.

Or...it could've just been that your buddy with the semi-auto was blasting away, while you were aiming. Always remember, it's not shots that count, but hits!

And just as a note on a slightly different topic, one major advantage SR weapons have over current tech is that all weapons of a size/type can share ammo. Try this one at your local gun shop..

"I need ammo for a small pistol."
"Sure, mac, there ya go."

Instead the friendly gun seller is going to ask you what kind of gun specifically you have, as they all have some slight differences which affect the bullets you get. Of course, that may have changed since I last got ammo for any type of gun, like 10 years ago.

Well personally I'm not quite sure how a tag could survive being fired, but I wholely agree with the idea of using tags to keep track of your own ammo.

two points/comments

-smartlink already says it can tell you your ammo count and it wouldnt be a stretch of the imagination to think that it can tell you what kind of ammo it is so why RFID tag the bullets??

-What do you guys think of my needle ammo....
-4 DV -8AP Can be used with any type of gun as long as its not [c] it doubles the ammo rate of the weapon(cause they are so small). Needle rounds are composed of a long extremely skinny slug that can easily pass through walls, armor, or body parts with ease. The problem is they do very little damage unless something vital is hit and even then affects may not be immedeate.

Uhhh I dont remember the rules for barriers and shooting through them off hand but they should get some bonus to that also although maybe it reduces the -8AP after passing through something to -4AP or 0AP ??

ya know. all this talk about the weapons and stuff in SR and why it is like that reminds me of a quote I read once concerning battletech. and since both games where made by the same company i feel it fits still


basicly it went.

Attempting to understand and rationalize the economic and technological development of the battletech universe is akin to psychoanalyzing bugs bunny,


I feel its the same for ShadowRun as well. but thats just me

So then use the same logic that the panther uses...

My group always figured the panther had a slow firing rate because it had some massive recoil going on there... the shock was tremendous.

I say rule the warhawk is the same way... after all it does more damage than an assault rifle and is in a pistol frame.

That is the easy GM handwave.

Regardless it does come down to a handwave since we do not have any information outside of the stats given. It is more or less a game balance/flavor thing. If the warhawk had the same ROF as the other heavy pistols then unless you needed a silencer... everyone would choose the warhawk.

The problem with defining it as recoil is then you get some Troll with an eight million strength who tricks out his gun to have a billion points of recoil comp, and he wants to start shooting it twice a round because it "makes sense."

If there's a problem with "unrealistic" amounts of ammo why not just treat SR like gun-fu movies. Limitless ammo until you hit a glitch or a critical plot point. It certainly adds to the "fantasy" aspect to the game. I wouldn't recommend it if you want "gritty" however.

The argument about weapons not having enough ammo is funny to me, because a character has only had to reload during combat in my games once in the last year and a half. I guess it just doesn't seem like much of an issue to me. If anything, I'd like to see more shots miss, so that people have to reload sometimes, rather than than having combat be "SHOOTSHOOT-kill; SHOOTSHOOT-kill..." as it often is.

As far as the Warhawk is concerned, I'm cool with it being SS. It's a good enough rules model to represent it being single action (like the Blackhawk it's modelled after), and it makes combat with them flow in a way that feels right. The guy with the Predator plugs away rapidly at enemies, while the guy with the Warhawk takes one hard shot every so often. If nothing else, it just feels right for a heavy revolver.

Just as an aside from the revolver talk (I love revolvers for the style they give, however) LASERs simply are not as effective against soft targets. A bullet, if it penetrates, has a chance to fragment or ricochet and cause greater internal damage while also causing bleeding. A LASER will make a nice smoking hole that cauterizes on the way through, in addition to being greatly affected by things such as smoke, misalignment, and power issues. An effective "pulse" LASER will suffer even more in this regards while making it somewhat more effective against a soft target.

For people who want to bring up Star Wars... they used Blasters, which are actually bolts of energy caused by highly excited gas. The light that escapes with the bolt is a byproduct of the gases hitting the air. Starfighters however, did use LASERs. Yes, I am purposely capping the word because it is an acronym.