If a character gets damaged by a ghoul's claw attack (And it causes Physical Damage) how do you determine if they become infected with HMHVV III virus?
Is there anything that can help protect a character from getting infected, besides wearing chemical seal full body armor?
Are there any antivirals that help against HMHVV III?
Any other thoughts or comments appreciated
Thanks

It is possible to interpret the rules for diseases in Augmentation in a way that the very first resistance test is the infection test: If the character succeeds, he isn't infected. (the "the disease takes no effect" part)
And quite honestly, it's the only way not to have a 100% infection ratio on all diseases.

Of course, as HMHVV has a high penetration characteristic, any protective gear worn won't help at all and pharmaceuticals are ruled flat out – only implants and nanites do help… in fact, O-Cells are pretty much your only chance.

If a character gets damaged by a ghoul's claw attack (And it causes Physical Damage) how do you determine if they become infected with HMHVV III virus?
The rules for infection are in Runner's Companion, it works like any other disease but the HMVHVV has a HUGE penetration rating (which means 99% of the people are screwed).

Is there anything that can help protect a character from getting infected, besides wearing chemical seal full body armor?
Yeah, don't get close to them...

Are there any antivirals that help against HMHVV III?
No.

Now, HMHVV are Awakened viri. Which gives some hand wavium for the GM to allow that certain times people won't be infected despite all the odds. This should be made only for the first Ghoul encounter and to drive players paranoid.

Hm. Maybe the Zeta-Interferon (Aug p135) helps? Of course only if the gm allows it, but i can cut down the power of an infection by half (Or make you imune to something if you are fast enough) and costs 900 bucks.

Also can we stack up something antiviral over 6 extra-dice so we can get over the penetration?

As i comment to the insane lethality of pretty much every disease:

I like to change the rules a bit more into a "battle" between you and the sickness:
After you tried to shake it off the remaining power of the disease doesn't get add to itself for the next round, but ROLLS itself up. That makes it possible for you to defeat the sickness after a while, if you have a consistent strong imune response and reflects the power of your body to adapt (but also shows that some diseases are powerful deadly). Some balancing may be required to account for extreme cases.

For example:
Joe Normal (Body 3) and Trollo (Body 9) both get infected by Vitas-3 (Where the hell where THEY?)
Joe: rolls 3 body after 12 hours and gets one hit: Power of vitas goes down to 5: he gets 5 stun and the sideeffects.
The disease rolls its 5 power and gets 2 hits: Next power is 7 (problems)
So joe gets to a hospital fast, gets pumped up with antivirals (rating 6) and Zeta-Inteferon. before the next test:
He now rolls 6 dice (3 body +6-3ap antivirals) against the rating 3 disease: 3 hits, no effect. He lives without problem.

Trollo rolls 9 dice and gets 4 hits: Power of Vitas goes down to 2. He gets 2 stun and the sideffects.
The Disease rolls 2 dice and gets one hit: Next time it will have strength 3.
12 hours later (Trollo just doesn't care) rolls again his body and gets the three needed hits: Vitas-3 just got owned by his natural imune system.

Overall this makes most diseases a LOT less problematic, but gets the most powerful ones (Like the HMHVV types) at least into fighting range. Someone with a high body (or expensive medical help) would have at least a nice chance to not get to live in ghoul-country ™ but still lose a bit of essence.

EDIT: Ah to not forget the balancing: To account for the metahuman going first the power of a sickness should get raised (for most entries) a bit. For example Malaria is laughably weak with this rules: Make it power 4 or 5. This will reduces by 1-2 two hits by a normal human and from there on the battle is on. A improved or very healthy human with meds still has no problems, like it should be.

No, it doesn't – it's a pharmaceutical and those don't help by definition of HMHVV.

Implants and O-Cells are your only option.

What you should be careful is if you players get ghoul hunting. After all, Running Wild says that on the CAS and UCAS, ghouls are fair game, and are worth money.

If your players get there, apply the full contagion rules. Specially spellcasters and heavily cybered individuals will be quite afraid, after all, it eats away essence as well.

Other stuff i also use in my games: Live Ghouls are 1.5k each. dead are 1k. And to be able to do it, you need to have a License for it (Bounty Hunting/Hunting Lincense), so for each ghoul up for bounty, your SIN and License will be scanned by a rating 5-6 scanner, so delivery is a risk upon itself, unless you use a fence and loose a lot of money on the process.

Yeah, i don't think shadowrun should became a shooting game about targeting ghouls. As one of my players states: "Ghouls are People Too".

The kind of people you want to see only covered in White Phospor, by RAW on HMHVV.

Well since it is only when you take physical damage, just having alot of armor will help alot against Ghouls. No penetration= no HMHVV

By RAW, it doesn't matter – HMHVV has Contact Vector.

Tag, you're it.

Na-uh. I was on base.

I thought Contact Vector still required damage to occur? I don't have the core book handy at the moment, so this is entirely from my poor memory.

even VITAS IV (which killed millions of people) is easier to fight off..), but hey, that's RAW for u..
ghoul infection power is 8, not 6, so both examples (trollo and Normal) would be in deep ***

Whoever wrote the HMHVV III rules either didn't read the disease rules beforehand or simply didn't think them through.
By RAW, ghoulism is a lot more contagious than your regular zombie movie virus outbreak and would have led to the world coming down crashing and burning quite a while ago.
It's best to change that to a more sane chance of infection.

Yup. The whole "shoot on sight, no exceptions" policy to ghouls, which is how it would have to be according to RAW, has been discussed a lot of times here on the boards. Ghouls are the zombie plague.

In addition to not reading the SR2 and SR3 material on Ghouls.

Where are these rules anyway? Couldn't find them in the SR4 book where Ghouls are listed. No clear infection rules in RC either.

But if the OP is right, and it transmits through physical damage (as opposed to mere touch), then armor clearly helps.

And if not it calls for a house rule IMO

The toxin rules might be an indication, although it says it needs contact with the skin... if the skin cannot be touched then how can it transmit?

Edit: That poison attacks can easily work on armored targets is also kinda stupid.. I mean yeah if the body soaks the damage that's one thing, but how can a poison dart unerringly strike skin while a bullet will have to face the armor? Makes no sense.

I never really understood the ghoul rights in SR anyway. Why should cannibalistic flesh-eating monsters have rights? Ok if they were able to feed on animals or some kind of synthetic flesh and could control themselves, that would be one thing. Otherwise they're just zombies.

RC has the disease specified as per Augmentation rules on diseases.

Augmentation pg. 129. Diseases, Pathogens and other conditions.

Rules for infections are in Augmentation, the stats for HMHVV are in Running Wild.


PS: And an easy way to avoid becoming a Ghoul: Reduce your essence to 1 or less, since you are only transformed after you have lost 1 point of essence to the virus and survived it...of course you will still be dead, can't please everyone

What are the odds that some shifty runners have set up a ghoul farm in the barrens where they kidnap normal families and infect them, so that they can turn them in for the bounty? It'd probably be much lower risk than hunting ghouls in the sewers because by the time they're infected and dangerous they've already got the handcuffs on.

I'd think that's less of a runner thing to set up, and more of a syndicate/gang thing to cover. Although, I'm guessing the bounties wouldn't be very high.

Also Ghouls are normally still sane. You'd have to hand them in dead as alive it will come back too bite you. On the bright side ghoulism is only infectious in first generation ghouls those born with it are perfectly safe to have a round.

Apart from "latent dracomorphosis for everyone"?

Thanks for the great comments

Just touching. Of course, if you are wearing a mil-spec armor or full body suit you are covered head to toe and just need to avoid damage. Then you just need to remember to desinfect your armor before taking it off.

Best way to prevent infection of HHMV=Sniper Rifles
If the ghouls in quistion cannot be sniped, vent in knockout quistion. If your close enough to get hit by a ghoul you are doing something VERY wrong.
If all else fails, get behind a troll with a reach wepon.
Fire works too.
If you are going up against ghouls I would alos suggest a chemical suit, or something along thoughs lines, armoured if possible. In addition to protecting you, it opens up messer means of protection like suppersive fire and explosives.

flying drone w/ attached grenade launcher and ammo bin full of White Phosporus granades
and flying drone w/ MMG and large belt full of APDS ammo..

Ghouls dont get any toxin resit do they?? If not easy way to deal with them mass gassings.

no, unless base race have it.(like dwarf) or have it by implants/adept power

Well then seeing as you in chemical suite/full body armor with internal air. Then bring some knock out gas if your being kind or a more potent gas if your not.

From a purely theoretical standpoint and all handwavium aside, couldn't the Awakened nature of the disease be used against it? Say perhaps some mundane street-sam got nicked by a ghoul. Could perhaps immediate exposure to a colony of FAB III feed off the the astral component of the virus?

Perhaps as sort of a more intense therapy, a dose of hard nanites could be injected immediately. Followed by a dose of Shade to prevent aura contamination. Then cloister the subject's physical body in a mana void in a lab tank loaded with FAB III, to force the colony to feed off the only active mana source, the virus.
It wouldn't be cheap, but then nothing in SR ever is.
Ultimately it'd be up to the GM, but I don't see anything outright wrong with such double pronged attack.

Any thoughts?

It's kind of silly how virulent they make HMHVV to be. If it were anywhere near as contagious as its presented, the entire planet would be ghoulified by now.

I know it's not the kind of answer being sought, but I find it's best to just ignore that and assume it's a more complicated procedure than that. Merely getting bitten isn't enough. You have to be killed (or completely drained of Essence for certain strains) in the process in order for the virus to do its thing. If you don't, there's still a chance you could turn, but most methods that can be used to fight off a virus would work. Iincluding your own immune system. But if you're dead/drained, the virus has little to nothing stopping it from doing what it does, and if your buddies don't burn/decapitate/etc. your body soon, you're going to wake up as a ghoul/vampire/whatever courtesy of the virus. The nice thing is that it also reinforces the whole living-dead aspect that the current rules kinda ignore, but which add a lot of flavor to the whole thing.

But yeah. I, personally, hate anything that relies on "it's magic!" to explain goofiness like this. HMHVV is a virus, albeit one that only activated with the awakening. But I don't see why that should make it nigh invulnerable and unstoppable anymore than a mage is invulnerable and unstoppable. A bullet can take down a mage just fine, so antiviral meds (especially now that there's been plenty of time to study it) should be able to take out HMHVV just fine, too. Especially with the huge strives mankind has made in biotechnology in the Sixth World.

If one gives any credence to RW rules, then ghoul bounty hunting is the job for (latent) Drakes, Free Spirits, Shapeshifters, and Nosferatu.

And Riggers and AI riggers

I agree the virulence of the disease is far in excess of what it should be. However, if you take it that only the original ghouls such as the ghoul queen in africa are virulent and the rest are merely infertile infected. This allows whole cults, rumors and superstition about super ghouls. It also explains why ghouls were originally hunted and killed on sight, but now that such transmissible infected are almost non existent that the attitudes towards them are changing.

Wear a condom.

For serious, this.

For reference and comparison, google up transmission probability statistics for some real world diseases, such as HIV or TB. (As far as TB goes check out "A Clinician's Guide To Tuberculosis" for more aggregate statistics than you can shake a N95 respirator at.)

When all else fails, burn Edge.

Nay, I'd say the best ghoul hunter is itself another ghoul. The feral ghouls won't bother it, and the more mentally intact ones might not suspect it, and may even seek to befriend it. Sure, this ghoul wouldn't make a terribly good Shadowrunner in most cases, but could be very handy anyplace other than civilization.

Or just tone down the stats for HMHVV to actually make it less infectious than VITAS ;)

Do not have a meat body in the first place...

Replace your torso, skull, arms and legs with cyber versions... or jump into a drone and go hunting...