Here are the ingredients:
1) A very heavy steel pipe, sealed at one end and reinforced there too. Hand grip welded to one side.
2) Frag grenade.
3) Troll.

The troll drops the hand grenade into the pipe, points the open end at the target, and activates it wirelessly. BOOM! That, my friends, is the troll shotgun.

"Detective Sands."
"Detective Rogers."
"So what have we got?"
"Troll male, mid 20s, a whole lot of shrapnel wounds. Looks like an IED that went wrong. We're still looking for the other half of his face."

~Umi

Here are the ingredients:

1) large steel pipe
2) one troll with no common sense
3) grenade

Boom! no fingers!

Seriously though, there's a reason the sort of high explosives used in grenades are not used for propellant. And even if your pipe contraption held together, the amount and velocity of the shrapnel flying out isn't going to be drastically bigger than if the troll had just used a 12 gauge.

There's already a troll shotgun, it's called a 4 bore.

Still going to try and sell the idea to our group's troll. He'll probably bite, then shenanigans ensue...
Should be laughing all the way to the emergency ward.

Nah, not quite. If you went with a 4 Gauge / 4 Bore it'd look like this.

For a proper Troll, I'd go with at least a 2 Gauge / 2 Bore punt gun, like this.

~Umi

To be fair, I'm totally stealing this for gangbanger usage. I have this plan of having the biggest fragging Troll the Runners have ever seen corner them in an alley with this deathtrap, make a big show of successfully firing off a "round" and shredding the alleyway to pieces, and then assuming the Runners haven't downed him by the second pass, having the contraption explode and take his head off on the second shot.

~Umi

I thought a troll shotgun was fist mounted claymore mines?



-k

See, those are at least shaped charges, but unfortunately for psycho Trolls everywhere, their casings don't stay intact during the blast, and there is substantial damage to the area behind them as well as in front.

~Umi

I'd suggest burying the bomb end of the contraption in the ground and using the 'shotgun' as a booby trap... but I'm scared that might actually work, so it's not on my list of things to do.
Style over survival!

I had a troll with a forehead mounted plate that read "FRONT TOWARDS ENEMY".

Nobody was apparantly willing to take him up on his offer to show them if it really worked.



-k

In much the same way no-one wanted to check if the nuke you have slaved to your biomonitor is a dud?

I had a troll like that too. Only in his case, it was strapped to his chest.

This was also the troll that pulled off the "Newton's Cradle" maneuver. The chunky salsa rules are predicated on the idea that a sufficiently durable object will cause explosions to bounce off of them. We realized that if a sufficiently durable troll were next to a sufficiently durable wall, a blast would pass through him, hit the wall, rebound, and pass back through him with minimal harm. That's how a Newton's Cradle works in real life, after all.

So, the maneuver that developed worked like this: The troll grappled a target, and put his back against a wall. Then, he grabbed for a grenade on his belt, and pulled the pin. The troll took some of the blast, but the target got an immediate rebound, and became instant chunky salsa.

Ahh.. I am a bit disappointed as I was expecting a weapon that would use Troll as the bullet.

Like a custom riot shotgun built for a dragon or similar.

I'll see what I can whip up.

There is so very much wrong with the physics of this. I think I need to go lie down and think about my life.

~Umi

Please! We're shadowrunners, we make physics our bitch on a daily basis!

If we're going to go with that particular analogy, I'd like to point out there's a world of difference between engaging in light bondage with physics, and shoving an entire live goat up physics' colon using a pneumatic speargun.

~Umi

Yeah, but leaving my evening's activities aside for a moment, I don't think this troll is more physically impossible than the stunts spirits and mages pull on a daily basis. If the troll is 'sufficiently hard' due to magic then I don't see why physics would have any say in the proceedings.

I just don't think you're understanding the problem of distributing the amount of energy we're talking about through the troll.

I mean, this idea could maybe be something approaching reasonable if the goal was for the energy to just be deflected outright, the way it is when it hits a "sufficiently durable" wall and bounces off - if the you somehow magically gave the troll an effective Barrior Rating (via some absurdly powerful Reinforce spell or something) to match the wall he was standing against, the explosion would simply treat the troll as just another part of the wall that's jutting out a bit from the rest.

But to pass through the troll, bounce off the wall, and then go through the troll again? That're where things get messy. (Pun intended.)

The reason that the shockwave from an explosion is deadly is that it while it travels through your body, it disrupts your tissues. Ever watch high speed footage of people getting punched in the face or the stomache?

Yeah, that Jello jiggling you see going on with the flesh in those videos? Explosions do that, but literally thousands of times worse. Which is why people end up anywhere from shredded to atomized, depending on the situation.

Now, if your flesh is somehow sturdy enough to withstand that sort of shockwave, it's not going to jiggle - it's just going to deflect the energy outright at the surface. And if your flesh isn't sturdy enough, the shockwave is going to go through your flesh and rip it apart on a molecular level. But to have all that force transfer through the space your flesh is occupying twice without causing harm, you're going to need a wormhole or something.

(...which technically isn't entirely out of the question - see the Invisibility spell bending light around things - but then we're not talking magical sturdiness anymore, but rather magical energy redirection).

~Umi

Wouldn't it just be easier and smarter (relatively speaking) for the troll to pin the target between himself and the wall, popping the grenade off then?

Blast hits troll, but with sufficient reinforcement we could have it rebound onto the target.

Blast hits target, blowing through and rebounding off wall for a second taste.

Or maybe I am misthinking this image.

A troll with maxed-out body, disgusting levels of armor, and titanium bone lacing *does* effectively have a Barrier rating. So yeah, the explosion could bounce off the troll, and rebound onto hapless victim, causing instant chunky salsa. Said troll would take damage-- or rather, need to make a soak roll-- but that's not likely to be a problem.


With his back to the wall, the troll can't suffer knockback or knockdown. Under your scenario, if the troll falls down, some of the chunky salsa effect is lost.

Technically, no they don't effectively have a Barrier Rating - both speaking in game terms, and speaking in terms of realism.

Realistically speaking, no matter how tough of a mofo you are, you aren't a solid crystalline object like a concrete wall. Flesh just isn't rigid enough to withstand an explosion and deflect it. (Except for maybe - maybe - the flesh of an Obsidiman / Granite Shell changeling.) I could maybe see individual armor plates withstanding the explosion, but the problem with a shockwave is it finds its way around obstacles like those and into the cracks between them, taking the path of least resistance right into your supple flesh.

Mechanically speaking, your Body Rating isn't a measure of your Structural Integrity, it's a measure of your resiliance and health and whatnot. A big ol' troll with maxed out body can take a lot of punishment, but their body does so by spreading the force out and absorbing it, or by having a strong enough immune system to counteract the effects of diseases or toxins, or by just being tenacious enough and having enough blood to power through minor inconveniences like a punctured aorta.

More importantly, however, only inanimate objects have Structure Ratings. If you don't have a Structure Rating, you can't deflect an explosion - it's that simple. I could see arguing for a really sturdy armored plate deflecting a portion of the blast, but that's represented by the dice you get to help you resist the damage of the shockwave. Heck, if you have fully enclosed Milspec armor, I'd say that can deflect an explosion - but that's only because it's Hardened Armor, which essentially operates like a Barrier, in that if the damage doesn't exceed the armor, nothing happens, and if it does it blows through despite the armor.

A really large Soak Pool is not the same as a Barrier Rating. If you have enough Body and Armor on you to reduce the damage you would take to zero, you don't deflect the blast, you absorb it.


Hate to say it, but that's a load of munchkiny bullshit.

Merely having your back to a wall doesn't prevent knockdown in a situation where you otherwise would be on your ass. If you take the appropriate amount of damage to be Knocked Down (or suffer the effect via any other method), then you are knocked down - end of story.

If you really need rationale as to how exactly this could happen, I can easily come up with various ways. The force of the blast lifts you up off the ground and you slam into the roof, then tumble to the floor. The blast hits you off center and knocks you off to one side, throwing you violently to the ground. The blast hits you full force and stuns and disorients you, making it impossible to keep your balance as all your muscles lock up in reflexive shock and you crumple into a heap.

Et cetera.

~Umi

They did not use a big enough target. Just sayin'

(Per explosions and physics: I am not wading into that mess)

I prefer a 2-Bore for my Troll.

I recall reading a rule in one of the editions, for using a metahuman body as a shield. You got a Barrier rating equal to their body. So, in this case, you kinda did get one, in game terms at least. Realism is different, of course.

That's actually not true. The chunky salsa rules for all editions only require that when the explosion hit something, that it not be destroyed by the blast. I don't think they even had structure ratings in SR1, when chunky salsa first came out. There's also the old trick of using a Physical barrier spell to contain an explosion on a hapless target; Barrier spells didn't get structure ratings either.


It was just a load of silliness, showing that a troll could be more heavily reinforced than a structural wall. But IIRC, you couldn't suffer knockdown unless you suffered knockback, and if you had your back to a wall you couldn't suffer knockback. So, it's technically legal, although it is very silly.

Citation, please?

Even if you're correct, I assume they're talking about a corpse in which it doesn't really matter if it gets blasted, and this also isn't any different than ducking behind any other barrier, like a door or a desk or whatnot. You yourself still don't count as a barrier.


Again, gonna need some sort of citation.

Both 4th and 5th edition specifically cite "Barriers" in the rules for "Blasts in A Confined Space", aka "chunky salsa".


Also, the Physical Barrier spell does in fact produce Barriers which possess the Barrier Ratings of "Structure" and "Armor", at least in SR4 and SR5. (I've not played earlier editions.)


So unless you can come through with a citation of a method for giving a Barrier Rating to a living being (aside from Turn to Goo / Petrify which technically changes a living target into an inanimate one temporarily), this concept doesn't hold water.


I don't remember ever reading any rule which mentions a "Knockback" effect. (Again, I've not played earlier editions than 4th and 5th.) So you know the routine by now, citation, citation, citation.

~Umi

Okay, I've been working on the troll-launching shotgun for dragons and here are my current thoughts:
Get a very tough troll. Stand troll on metal plate that just fits inside a large diameter sewer pipe. Give troll independent air supply. Cut foam casing for troll and apply to ensure a tight fit in the barrel (converted and heavily reinforced sewer pipe). Fill closed end of the pipe with gunpowder and detonator. Add troll with metal plate facing gunpowder. Ram in with ramming stick. levitate entire contrivance. Take cover. Fire!

Also, does anyone want to buy a goat and pneumatic speargun? Only slightly used!

So the casing falls away once it exits the barrel, making the world's first Discarding Sabotroll?



And you are going to wash that goat first right?

Yes and yes.
Well, kinda, we're on water restrictions at the moment so I can only wash half the goat. Which half to you want clean?

You know, if we give this troll one of the troll shotguns I suggested at the start of the thread we'll have a troll shotgun shotgun.

Why not arm the Troll with a Chuck Shot shotgun for just that additional tier of insanity?

So now you have a ChuckShot TrollShot Shotgun (or CTS)

Perfect.
Make it happen, people!

just one question... include a wireless bonus or make it a throwback model?

Although a bricked troll catching on fire may be a bonus in itself

We don't want a throwback model. Do you really really want the troll to throw stuff back?

Also, calling the troll a "throwback" is a good way to get your teeth punched out.

~Umi

Umi: I'm postng from my phone, so I can't quote anything. However, titanium bone lacing used to give characters an effective barrier rating of 10 for the purposes of trying to break it, which includes shooting through someone wth it. I believe the intent of the rule was if you tried to take a shot for someone else. I also recall a rule for diving on grenades that was similar.

Structure ratings did not exist in SR1, that came later. SR3 implied that it should be things with a barrier rating that channeled an explosion, but it left it open for any object that was durable enough to stand firm.

Well I'll wait until you have a stable means of checking books, of course. No rush.

That said, I'm pretty much dead certain that what you are remembering was never present in 4th Edition (even in splat books), and it certainly isn't in 5th. It's possible that it was in 2nd or 3rd, of course, which I've never played. So we could very well both be correct, just for differing editions.

~Umi

...just buy Enfield GL-67 for troll and use only Fragmentation grenades = Troll shotgun..

I think he's correct for 2E, can't speak for later editions.

Yeah, i think in SR3 Titan Bones had Barrier-Rating 10 as well.
And i am not sure wether or not there was a kind of cyberlimb addon armor that counted as hardened armor.
Shooting THROUGH somebody worked like this:
Substract 1st persons armor AND BODY from Power.
Everything left over continues on to hit somebody else.

Found it. It was in Shadowtech, which is technically 1st edition, although it straddled the line between 1st and 2nd. So, it's definitely a legacy rule. I believe it was carried over until 4e, which was a complete system change. Anyway, it was possible for a living being to have a barrier rating, in the past. It might not count now, but the troll playing Newton's Cradle with grenades and claymores was in the 2e-3e era anyway.

By the way: I was flipping through SR5 and found the rule on p198. You get Body in place of Structure, and their worn armor counts the same. Barrier rating appears to be gone. While the rules suggest a dead body, it does give room for using a living shield. I would personally use that when people try to take the shot for someone else.