We were talking about SR weapons and Devon and his Hold Out Pistol came up. This is why he carries one.

Security Zones
-You will be more harassed by your fellow runners than the cops will.
-The Cop will Pull you over and sees your Raecor Sting and laugh at you and the only beating you will get is for wasting their time.

Concealability
-Take one put in a Concealable Holster under a Lined Coat
Hold Out Pistol [-4]
Concealable Holster [-1]
Lined Coat [-2]
-Barrel Reduction [-1] I know this makes the range 0–4/6–12 16–24 31–40, but then when was the last time you were packing pistols and fired more than 20m.
For a total of [-8]
-It would take a Female Street Sam being searched by Bill Clinton to find that Walther Palm Pistol.

Fire Power [Don’t Laugh]
-Give it a Internal Smart Link for Accuracy
-Personalized Grip [Recoil Comp-1]
-EX-Ammo: 5P AP 1, this is a Cavalier Scout, that now is a Concealability -7 Ares Predator and you can start with this.
-APDS: 4P AP-4 this actually can do more damage than Ruger Super Warhawk.

You get...the Noisy Cricket.

Yeah, but should also give him the high-ex-APDS ammo that is needed to make this thing work.^^

I think the firepower is a bit (well, a lot) overstated. 4P AM-4 won't do more dmage than a Ruger Superwarhawk, because most folks packing one of those ALSO load it with specialized ammo. Plus, you'll end up doing stun more often (due to armor)- even with APDS, you could be doing stun in some cases. Not that that is a BAD thing, but for my money you pack a taser for stun- the cops will find it, but won't get upset.
Also, consider that a super-concealable pistol might actually piss cops and security off if they DO find it, especially if its packing "cop killer" ammo. Its not the sort of thing an "honest citizen" with no serious gun training would carry. Sometimes you WANT them to find your gun, so they stop looking for other (more illegal) stuff.

What would be absolutely hilarious is packing it with AV rounds and destroying vehicles with one shot...

Of course there is always the possibility of capsule rounds with DMSO/Narcojet or other drug, and SNS.

A Laes/Slab/DMSO cocktail? Expensive bullets for the enterprising humanitarian?

Yep. Both Capsule rounds and SNS really should have a minimum "caliber", or reduced effects when used in smaller guns, but "by the book" they can make small guns quite deadly.

It's nice to see Slab gaining popularity.

For $1 I could kill a man. For $400 I can knock him unconscious and make him forget the last 6 hours of his life.

Normal bullets are actually $2 apiece, and these cocktail rounds about $383 I think. But your point is correct. It's a bit of a niche thing, too expensive for guards, but useful for abductions where you want to return the subject unharmed (with a shiny new cranial bomb).

On an earlier thread I made a fully automatic Tiffani Defender.

I prefer the Fichetti Tiffani Needler with same mods, that baby has damage code of 8P(f) AP+5, which is pretty amazing for something that concelable.
Ultimate close range killer.

Isn't the damage 6P(f)?

In any case, wouldn't a Fichetti Tiffani Self-Defender be better? Modify it to fire SA, which results in the same pistol, but it is able to use any kind of ammunition and not just flechette rounds. Costs only 150 nuyen more (350 base + 300 for the fire selection change = 650, compared to 500 for the Needler).

Errata says 8P(f)

So the answer to that would be no.

How are you giving it accessories? Arsenal says that holdout pistols can't take accessories.

This is a case where I say the errata is just plain wrong. Considering how the weapons are (somewhat) balanced in regard to one another, no hold-out should have a DV of 8P. But, whatever.

He's talking about modifications, which hold-outs can take. At least, I assume he meant the Smartgun System modification.

Ah, I see. There's an accessory version and a modification version.



You're free to houserule that, if you like, but calling the errata 'wrong' is silly. Calling it 'unbalanced' would be much more reasonable.

So, all these uber-undetectable holdouts.. can the bullets be detected by any of the various metal detector devices available?

I assume that bullets in Shadowrun are similar to today's bullets. That is to say, in general they are copper-coated lead, or just plain lead. Therefore, yes. A MAD can detect your weapon's ammunition. So, you get around that by purchasing Hi-C Plastic rounds.

Of course, this doesn't work for the Needler, since the Needler can only use flechettes.

There are bullets that are MAD-undetectable, but they're expensive and pack less punch than the ones people have been talking about in this thread. Hi-C Plastic Rounds, from Arsenal.

efb

pretty sure the only way you'll be destroying vehicles with that thing (other than possibly popping the tire on a bicycle) is if you hand it off to a troll throwing adept.

Put BF mode in it and you got a great weapon for drilling holes !

Ah.. no. BF is not added when calculating if the damage is stun and so you would need just as many hits to damage the vehicle as with SA. For destroying barriers this weapon may actually be useful - as useful as any automatic weapon that is.

Streetline Special with gecko grip, smartlink, and explosive self-destruct.

When the shit really hits the fan throw it at the bad guy and it sticks to him. Use the wireless command with the smartlink to detonate the pistol.

Awesome.

sick !

Modification ... not accessories.

You don't even need to modify it. Troll ghoul adept - base Strength of 10, +3 from being a ghoul, +4 from muscle augmentation (with the restricted gear quality), missile mastery to allow him to throw mundane objects for (Str/2) P damage, and power throw: 3 for +3 more to damage. 12 P damage.

Without Melee Hardening the pistols might actually go off when they hit, causing additional stun damage to nearby foes!

A little of topic, but I've seem some fiction that suggests that the Viper Slivergun is not firing metal flechettes but a very dense plastic designed to fragment in slivers. The plastic is loaded as a solid block in the handle like a clip and the sliver gun spins off fragments.

Of course that means that the sliver gun doesn't use gun powered and wouldn't have much in the way of ballistics. You could match up the slivers with the original block but it is likely produced in massive lots.

I bet the sound of it firing is distinctive. Likely just as load as a light pistol but not immediately recognizable as a firearm going off. Off course I bet that it would only take once on the receiving end to it memorized.

Also for a non lethal solution to your problems, there are less dense blocks of plastic which are loaded with narcojet and designed to not do serious damage. The narcoject would likely be designed to quickly lose effectiveness once fired.

In the book, it is described as firing "metal slivers" and having built-in sound suppression. The slivergun has always been a bit off - it was an attempt to recreate Molly Millions' pistol, which never quite meshed with the other firearms rules.

It was a great stealth gun in SR3. Concealability of 6 with a built-in silencer and a clip of 30 rounds, and even though flechette wasn't the best ammo, it was still starting out at the base heavy pistol damage, which was far better than the light pistols competing for the same role. All that, and burst fire as a simple action.

Flechette works well enough against the Actioneer set you're likely to be engaging with a hidden holdout pistol.

The problem isn't the gun. The problem is the new (SR4) rules for called shots, otherwise reducing the effectiveness of using any gun with flechettes. The only reason I can think of is concealability but that's far, far outweighed by the cost and ubiquity of body armour.

- J.

Ahhh shadowrun.... a game where you come up with a new angle of attack (Super concealable gun) while forgetting the usual angles of defense (the bullets are not as concealable...)

What I would do is have the hold out for intimidation test as a bonus... I believe the line goes, "it is hard to argue when you have a gun in your mouth..."

Mechanically I find it hard to give any defense dice or armor dice when you stick a gun against someone's temple or in their mouth and squeeze the trigger... 16 dice still translates into about 4P damage per shot...

If you cover her mouth she can't say no.

Wait, that's something else.

<.<

>.>

But the gun works just as well then to.

And does anyone else keep thinking of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang while reading this thread?

Adding this to my sig. because it both made me laugh and it seems like a funny way to abduct a target.

The current game all of the caracters [but the troll shaman] has started to carry holdouts in concealed holster most of the time.

Woot! I've been sigged!

A lot of people here use the argument "but it will most likely only do stun damage" when talking about combat effectiveness. Why?
Seriously, why?

1.) The Corp Guard won't wake up for a considerale time, especially considering you will most likely end up dealing excess physical damage in the process (unless he leaves earlier, which he could do in the case of physical damage just as well).
2.) The modifiers are the same for physical damage as they are for stun damage, so there is no difference in the "incapacitation" department, either.
3.) Most targets will have a higher physical damage threshold than a stun damage threshold. This is especially true in the case of Orks and/or Trolls. So arguably, doin stun damage is more usefull against those targets than physical damage.
4.) Corp Guards who got stung, but not killed or physically harmed in the process won't hold a grudge. It's the cost of doing business. The Corp won't either, since they won't have costly medical bills to pay. All in all, it is a lot better for your Runner and his long term survivabiliy, if you make a habit out of stunning people rather than butchering them.


All in all, dealing stun damage is BETTER for a Runner than dealing physical damage, unless he really needs the target dead. And in the latter case, he can still kill him with a hold-out. It just may take an extra shot or two, but luckily, unconcious targets rarely dodge, do they?

Personally, I use gel-rounds for that very reason and the aded benefit of having Impact armor as my target, rather than ballistic, as most people tend to overlook the importance of impact armor.

I have been peaching that stun is better than leathal for years, Kovu uses a Elaphant gun with Gel all the time.

Well I prefer Automatic Pistols/SMGs with SnS. D2F is right though on the point of Sun being better than Physical.

The only problem I have had with the Elaphant gun was, I had had it converted to SA , and I double tapped someone with it once; with Gel and still killed him.

Hell, I have run into that issue with just a light pistol and Narcojet Capsule ROunds... sometimes, the exceptional roll is what you really want to avoid if you can...

Keep the Faith

So does anyone want to play devils advocate and gives us the pros of Physical damage over Stun ?
Perhaps the Pirate's creed "Dead men tell no tales" or that nothing says bad ass like blowing large leaky holes in Corp sec.

Those are both somewhat legitimate reasons. Other things that dead men don't do include: hold grudges, wake up at inopportune moments, miss the cyberware you ripped out of them to sell on the black market...

Furthermore, if you really want to hurt a corp, each security guard represents an investment from a few thousand nuyen (for your basic rent-a-cop) to hundreds of millions (for a delta-cybered-out mofo). KO their guards, and they're likely to send them back. Kill them, and they might balk at dumping more money down the hole. (Of course, it might just strengthen their resolve.)

Finally, there's the obvious case of when your mission is an assassination...

(This is very much a devil's advocate thing - I prefer to avoid killing whenever possible. Even as a GM. It's much more interesting to capture a character than to just cap him.)

The fact that normal, every day, killy bullets cost way less than stick and shock rounds or whatnot? And, of course, that some folks just need killin'.

Also, this is flat-out awesome. Forget the shit hitting the fan - this gun is the shit that hits the fan.