So I'm GMing and while doing a run my runners come across a flying drone with a grenade launcher w/ an airburst link and a few Neuro-Stun grenades. While the runners are distracted by the guards the drone fires a neuro-stun grenade at one of the runners, it hits, I roll scatter, and since the launcher has an airburst link I tell them that they hear a hissing from the grenade right when it stops (Neuro-stun is odorless and colorless). The whole team is within the 10m and a couple through on gas masks when their turn comes up, but by then it's too late right? So at the end of the next combat turn I have them roll body to resist the 10 stun (no chemical resistance in the group). 2 of them promptly drop, the other 3 are 1 or 2 boxes from unconscious, which is say the least is serious trouble since -3 dice pool mod from stun and -2 dice pool mod from disoriented means their pretty much screwed. It just seems that neuro-stun grenades + airburst link = a little overpowered.

All grenades are great, and flying grenade launchers are a special nightmare.

Neurostun is supposed to be nasty. Grenades in general are a bit wonky though, but really they are meant to be extremely dangerous. My issue with the RAW is that the guy next to you is literally a liability to you if he has a weaker defense pool than you do. Basically, a Spider-Man adept with full Combat Sense will eat the grenade every time if he happens to be standing next to Prof. X when some joker tosses a grenade at the wheel chair jockey.

Keep in mind, also, that neurostun's vectors are contact and inhalation, so gas masks won't protect them unless they are completely covered in addition to the gas mask.

Gas attacks are supposed to be really effective. There's plenty of options in the game to help you out against them. It's not your fault your runners chose to ignore most if not all of them.

Universal Nantidotes are a godsend. My samurai never leave home without them.


Also, I know it's really, really paranoid, but if I could I would take a Ringu specific nantidote in a heartbeat. I've never seen a GM actually use it on players since it's so freakishly lethal and hard to control, but it still worries me. Power 20 with 4 Penetration and physical damage? No thanks.

Yeah, have to have the gas mask...

Although why tear gas is listed as a Contact is beyond me. Can't speak for the "sci-fi" gases in SR4a, but CS/tear gas Contact shouldn't apply to skin contact, just eyes/face. Wearing a gas mask is more than adequate protection.

I didn't think contact meant gaseous contact. :/ Hmm. That's too easy, who wears a chem suit?

I guess the contact vector was added because of the effect on mucous membranes, eyes, et cetera. With just a few rough options, a description can never be 100% accurate.

Chem protection built into your clothing is likely pretty common amongst the well-to-do, actually. SR4 fluff is filled with references to ridiculous amounts of pollution, nasty acid rain and a high amount of level one smog alerts even in Seattle, a city that despite its size isn't really known for IRL air pollution due in part to its geographical advantages. But in 2070s Seattle if you walk around the Barrens long enough you can literally find Blinky the 3 eyed devil rat and there's hospitals and think tanks dedicated to studying pollution induced disease. Dangerous chemicals are a daily fact of life in the sprawl, and it's one of the reasons why people cloister themselves away and telecommute if they have the cash to do so.

Plus, keep in mind that we're talking about a world where ballistic armored clothing is quite standard. Hell, Mortimer of London's Greatcoat and Ulysses lines are intended to help keep a gentleman looking dapper despite "hard rain" and have rating 2 and 4 chemical protection built in respectively. It's very, very likely that for a lot of people a two pronged attack of proofed clothing and dainty li'l filter mask stowed away in a purse (likely available in a variety of colors ) is daily wear. Never forget that the Sixth World isn't our world, and runners with water/chemical proof dusters are hardly going to be rare.

Yes, but there's chem protection and then there's a sealed suit. Unless you have a full suit with boots, gloves, and helmet, a gaseous contact vector doesn't care. :/

A gaseous contact vector does, actually. Will you be immune? No. Will you have dice added to your resistance pools thanks to limiting your exposure somewhat? Yes.

Look, this is Shadowrun. People shoot eachother in the face. Mages nuke you with their minds. Riggers shoot you in the face with an automated van while sitting in their own living rooms. Being able to easily defend yourself against an entire class of attack just isn't something you get to do in the Sixth World without paying through the nose for the privelege. That's the setting.

But look on the bright side: Gas attacks are indiscriminate and we've established that you need to be well-prepared and/or have chemical seals (which can be breached) to shrug off their effects. That indicates that situations in which people use chemical attacks are going to be fairly rare and can easily turn into a double edged sword unless you happen to be using a ton of drones. Plus, the runners can use them too. With a li'l planning it's like the samurai can cast stun ball too.

Our grand finale run on the Zero Zone was completed on Friday Night (We finally got paid) and the facility we hit had a Ringu filled access tunnel (3rd Section, 900 Meters Long, which also had Smart Demolosher nanites deployed in the environment to compromise the Chem seals on our equipment...) that was quite brutal indeed... Good thing we knew about it going in, but we all still took damage...

Only time I have ever seen it in use though...

Keep the Faith

That's just mean.

That really does sound like a zero zone yeah.

I've had this idea hanging around in the back of my head to make a runner who specializes in hazmat jobs - take all the augmentations to have a real shot at coming through unscathed and all. I haven't done the math to see if it's doable though.

Also neurostun - it's pretty cool to use as a runner too. It's not even all that expensive; when we used it the main puzzle was how to avoid accidentally using a lethal dose. Took some precision hacking of the target's car's air conditioning

If anything involving Ringu is not mean, have your GM check his numbers

And compared to real chemical agents, Ringu is still harmless...the real stuff does not disappear after ten minutes.


@Ascalaphus: My concept for a Stalker runner uses a full body suit which only left his cyberhands exposed, so he has full protection without loss of manual dexterity...I initially toyed around with the idea of a character with every chemical protection 'ware available, but unless you go for full body replacement that just doesn't work out. And who would invest millions of nuyen into something a simple chemsuit offers?

Ouch, I think that needs errata. There's a difference between say mustard gas, which causes damage as soon as it touches the skin, and a gas that only has an affect through mucous membranes. Seriously, I should be able to shrug off neuro-stun with a full-face mask and vinyl underwear. I don't consider anything that my Friday night getup can defeat a 'contact vector' gas.

Frankly, I don't know of a lot of combat gasses that only effect you if you breath them in directly. Most have serious impacts on the mucous membranes. Why not just redefine "inhalation" and be done with it.

Yeah, it was exceedingly brutal, but it was a lot of fun...

Keep the Faith

Well, I think part of the contact vector for Neurostun is that it impacts the nerves. There is a degree of respiration
that goes on through the skin. Additionally, we have thousands of micro-cuts on our skin. It is entirely likely the gas just
needs a little bit of a toe-hold to get at you. I, personally, would say that to protect against neurostun, you have to
have a gas mask/respirator to protect against the inhalation vector, and chem protection against the impact of it against
your skin. If either is lacking....BAM! Neurostun!

Mostly this only helps the opposition an not the PCs, but even "Immediate" toxins only start to work at the end of the turn of exposure. Corps Sec usually still has time to call for back up.

But if the minuscule ammounts of substance taken up via those vectors would be enough to incapacitate a human, a full lungful should be deadly...

SHHHH! You are not supposed to think about that! It is like you are not supposed to think about Ghoul
Apocalypse!

Or about teleporting grenades and weaponized Oxygenated Fluorocarbons

Yeah, the alternative is different intensities for gas attacks depending on whether you breathe or not..

You don't need to tweak the rules that much, actually. Merely allowing inhalation protection devices to to add their dice vs. inhalation+contact vector attacks makes sense, after all-- the Power ratings listed in the book are essentially the amount of harm one can expect from an "ideal" unresisted exposure from a "standard" concentration. Whatever hits you get from the 6 extra dice can thus be seen as whatever amount of damage you can expect to eliminate by not breathing much/if any in. Where it gets stupid is the fact that Internal Air Tanks and Gas Masks are treated as having no rating at all, just immunity, which under my interpretation would lead to the odd situation where a respirator which just filters is quite effective with a multi-vector inhalation attacks while the one that gives you a totally safe air supply does nothing. I just handle this by treating Air tanks and Gas Masks as Rating 6 (equivalent to the top rating respirator) for the purposes of resisting multi-vector inhalation attacks where you can no longer expect immunity. It tends to relegate respirators to being a stricty third string device, but since respirators don't really hit me as a huge and vital part of the SR experience I'm pretty OK with that.

10m radius seems pretty extreme for a gas grenade, especially a mini grenade. That's a HUGE volume of gas to pack into a tiny container. Plus, how quickly could it disperse? To spread out to fill a 10m radius in under .5 sec the gas would have to move at 20m/s, which is gonna make a lot more noise than a "hiss"... its gonna be more like a massive FWOOOSH! Gasses just don;t disperse that easily or quickly, because of turbulence and such.

If you want get an idea how this would work, take a can of air freshener and have somebody spray if while standing 30 feet away. See how long it is before you can smell it. Think you can get your gas mask on in between the time your friend starts spraying and the time you smell the stuff? What if you had augmented reflexes that let you act 3 times as fast?

That's true. In my group, we've weakened all the mini-grenades, gas or otherwise. There's just a huge difference between a 40mm and a 20mm, or less.

Well, I see it as the smaller grenades are using more powerful explosives for the same effect... they would have to, otherwise they would be less powerful...

No need to actually change their damage...

Keep the Faith

Then where are the 40mm grenades packed with the explosives used in the 20mm grenades? Seems like a sound logical arguement for weaker minigrenades as a house rule and pretty apparent design laziness led to a lack in difference between regular and microgrenades...

It's a bit like SnS ammo doing the same damage from any weapon, and I don't like that either, tbh.

Irrelevant in my opinion... The damage is as listed... it is what it is... I gave you a valid argument for why the rules would work as they are, and it does not change anything in the game at all... you are of course free to change the rules, but at that point, you have changed the rules... which changes the dynamic of the game in my opinion...

Keep the Faith

I think I said it was a house rule. We decided that minigrenades were too strong, so we altered it. Simple, no tricks, fits our table; that's all.

But, since you ask, should the minigrenades then cost more/be higher Avail, because of their super-tech explosives? And should we be able to buy the trivially-simple modification of super-tech explosive big grenades? It's not in the slightest irrelevant. Me, I don't care, because the fluff serves the rules. But the rules serve the group, so we tweaked it.

No one said it was super high tech explosives... Most modern grenades are made with Composition B... all you do is replace it with a smaller amount of Composition 4 and you now have a smaller grenade with the same explosive force, with the relative same expenditure of resources to acquire... simple and easy...

It is irreleveant in that the system does not directly offer you those things, but you CAN make them with the rules for creating explosive devices... so yes, if you wanted bigger grenades with more explosive potential, you could indeed make them, and they would indeed cost you more resources to do so... My point was that the rules make sense as they are written...

Of course, I agree that if you like the change, it is not that big of a deal, I was just commenting that you had no need of actually changing the rules that were already provided...

No worries...

Keep the Faith