Hmm, so to get back to the OP, I've always used net hits on SnS ammo just like on any other ammo.

I don't see any reason that "Replace damage code" should mean anything besides "The damage code is now 6S(e) instead of whatever it was." It says it replaces the damage code, it doesn't say "This weapon always does 6S(e) damage."

In order to determine the damage that a weapon does you take the damage code and then add net hits, so yeah, if you've replaced the damage code you just have a different damage code to add net hits too.

I figured I'd post the results of this discussion. I know this will be controversial to some people, but I figured I'd get some feedback regardless.

-----

General:

Stick and Shock rounds increase damage for all firearms smaller than an assault rifle, increase armor penetration, are soaked by an armor value that is generally inferior, automatically apply a -2 dice pool to all combat activities, have a chance to incapacitate a combatant for a minimum of 3 combat rounds, have a chance to automatically shut down a drone, and are an effective elemental attack against spirits. This comes at a cost of 8 nuyen per bullet compared to 2 nuyen per bullet for regular rounds, and an availability of 5R vs 2R for regular rounds. No special weapons, weapon modifications, or other considerations are required.

Changes:

SnS rounds are now manufactured in sets of 10, and sold in boxes of 10. These boxes are serialized; as are the individual bullets. There are no less than 3 ways these serializations could be used to attempt to trace the bullet, fired or not, back to the seller and the user. SnS availability is now increased to 10R

What this means to the player:

SnS bullets are harder to acquire in general, and this will be reflected in-game. You are now required to track SnS rounds as boxes of 10. In general, any bullets left at the scene can be traced back to the physical location of the other bullets in that box. While this is preventable, none of your characters have the means or understanding to do so at this time. Perhaps in the future, you will find ways to bypass these tracking features. I will allow you to collect used bullets off the bodies after successful combats, assuming you do not have to leave the scene in a hurried manner. Bullets that miss their target are generally assumed to be lost, barring circumstantial evidence to the contrary.

In general, if a bullet is left behind, then all bullets that are part of that box of 10 must be disposed of, unless you want Knight Errant knocking at your door in a day or two. If bullets from multiple boxes are left behind, it is in your best interest to quickly lose all the bullets associated with those boxes.

Yes, there are ways this mechanic could be exploited to frame people, or misdirect blame. I am ok with players using this mechanic in creative ways. However, continually dumping your dirty rounds in Ghoul territory will not stop detectives from tracing them.

Afterthoughts:

I really dislike implementing ammo tracking, but the other option was a significant nerf to SnS functionality. I'm not of the opinion that power level homogenization should continue past character creation. I want you guys to have special gear and special abilities that you can pull out to do incredible things, and to set you apart from the masses. I just don't want them to become the default.

If I had left SnS as it was written in RAW, it would quickly become the defacto bullet in all firearms, and nonconductive armor would become mandatory on all clothing. This is not a direction I like, since it forces a conflict between effectiveness and character freedom. "I could have 4 points of anti-laser armor mod, but wait... if I don't put those points into nonconductive, I'm as good as dead in the first IP." I believe the changes I am implementing are a fair compromise that allows SnS functionality to remain exceptional while creating a check-and-balance on a powerful piece of gear.

Sorry to bring this out again, but i would still really like to see where your basing this wild claim.
Especially as there's no reason to limit someone to light pistol, when heavy pistols exist.

I post this data with the caveat that this is by no means rigorous, does not even scratch the surface of a proper analysis, and only points out a specific case.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0At...amp;output=html

All assumptions are listed as parameters. I also admit to simplifying the model a great deal.

In the end, I know you guys are going to rip this apart, hence the hesitance to post it while it was non-rigorous. I had intended to do a full monte-carlo, but it became irrelevant, since I have no intention to house-rule the mechanic, only the availability. I'm not going to bother finishing it.

-----

The first thing you're likely to notice is that the damage balances out with an Assault Cannon using normal ammo, using the given assumptions. I'm barely ok with that, if it was purely a damage increase. It's all the extra effects, on top of the damage increase, that causes me concern. This sheet assumes 1 IP.

In the end, incapacitation is an extremely powerful effect. I'd be ok if SnS did zero damage, and just applied the -2 disorient effect, and forced an incapacitate check... although I haven't worked out a fair threshold mechanism for that yet. Or perhaps if it worked more like injection darts.. 0 damage, 2+ net hits and the target is auto incapacitated for 2 combat rounds. There are options that would allow us to separate the incapacitate from the enhanced damage. For whatever reason, the game designers decided this round needed both enhanced damage and a wide array of secondary effects, and I'm not willing to take that away from my players who have designed their characters around that combat angle.

To anyone who plays or played WoW, this is very much like rogues back around patch 1.10. It doesn't matter if you're wielding wet pillows, a stunlock is still a powerful tool.

In the end, this combat simulation isn't about the size of your dice pools, but about the difference between opposing dice pools. Stick n Shock rounds automatically reduce an opposing pool by 2 when it comes to non-soak actions, with the potential of instantly reducing their effective pool to 0 for multiple combat rounds. It's a mechanic that breaks the combat simulation by changing the rules.

I know this above monologue is not related to the DV difference question, but the fact that there is generally a DV increase in addition to the secondary effects is just salt in the wound.

Well using those same assumtion and shooting the cheaper explosive rounds changes the heavy pistol damage to 12P, that 1 target down per IP same as the 16S damage from S&S.
So S&S really isn't that amazing, the instant knocdown is rare enought to not really matter in this scenario.
And if the heavy pistol isn't allowed i go with Fichetti Tiffani Needler that bady does 16P damage per IP in that same scenario.

I'll update the sheet and see if that holds true.

Ok, updated.

Using ExEX in a heavy pistol does increase expected DV, assuming perfect dual wield, up to 13 per IP. Closer.
The Fichetti Needler actually does really well for a hold-out, and keeps step with a heavy pistol using normal ammo.

I disagree with your statement that it's 1 target down per IP with SnS. As an extreme example... you could potentially fire at 4 different targets, and incapacitate all 4 of them for 3 rounds in a single IP. That's why SnS is so powerful.

Very nice chart. So basically what I've been saying: Unless you're using a longarm or your opponent has a very weird armor setup, you're better off using SnS ammo.

Those of you not making extensive use of non-conductive armor mods are doing it wrong. SNS is fine as is if you make use of this.

By RAW, ammunition modifies the weapon's damage. For -most- ammunition types it's a +/- modifier on damage value and armor penetration. SnS behaves differently in that it entirely replaces the damage value of gun to 6S(e) while the armor penetration remains the same. Consequently, since it is S(e) damage, you treat it like electrical damage. Burst fire rules say that it adds DV to the weapon and does not differentiate between stun or physical damage.

To establish weapon damage you do the following.

1. Base Weapon DV
2. Modify DV based on ammunition type
3. Add DV from net hits
4. Add DV from called shot
5. Add DV from burst fire
(I don't recall if called shot damage is used to calculate if an attack can bypass armor or be staged down to stun, hence why I separated it)

This order doesn't matter -as- much for Stun damage as Physical, since you don't need to see if your physical damage exceeds the targets armor in order to deal physical damage, however the order is relevant to clarifying how much damage SnS does.

An assault rifle outfitted with SnS rounds that does a short burst would deal 8S(e) -1AP.
An assault rifle firing a long burst would deal 11S(e) -1AP.
An assault rifle firing a full burst would deal 15S(e) -1AP.

Net hits add to the damage. Called shots would add to the damage. In theory, before any net hits you could get 19S(e) on a full burst assuming your dice pool was high enough to pull that off.

Should those -1 AP's all be -Half Impact?

Except you can only reliably hit the first one of them as its -2 dice per addional target.
Also those grunts have 10 dice to get 3 succeses, so they will most of the time avaoid that incapasating effect .
And fichetti needler actually does more damage then S&S it has a damage code of 8P +5AP.

They should.

Max: Oh, come on. *That* depends on all the many ranged combat factors, and you also know damn well that +5AP means nothing will happen. You can certainly hit more than one target in many situations.

The point is that S&S needs only 1 net hit to impose a -2, some luck to totally incap, and hits for decent stun against weaker attributes and weaker armor.

I'm tempted to try something similar to my Friday Night Fights, with a standard 400 BP runner vs. a number of security guards from the book. The advantage of SnS are clearly evident; taking someone out of the fight (incapacitation), giving them a modifier (-2 to everything), or just normal stun damage (from the actual damage code) all add up to being advantageous to the runner if he isn't able to kill an enemy in 1 shot.

Make a female gunslinger adept; name her Nikita.

You know, I'd seen that in your sig for ages but never got around to looking at it till now. Cool idea. It would be interesting to see some kind of... I don't know, shooting gallery type contest with charging (or shooting) mooks against a guy with regular bullets (Or even EX-EX and APDS) vs the same guy (or his clone) with SnS bullets.

Well what was decided? Does SnS scale up just like normal weapons, i.e. does a Short Narrow Burst add +2 DV?

I do believe so.

Yes. Nothing in the rules in any way indicates that SnS rounds should be treated differently than any other round in regard to net hits or burst fire.

If I fire a long burst and then a short burst in the same action phase, would the recoil be -5 for the first, then -7 for the second, or -8?
Can the effects of a cyberarm gyromount stack with another cyberarm gyromount? (I'm thinking No on this one)

Once I get an answer on this, I can throw together a quick fight between some security guards and a runner with both SnS and EXEX ammo.

-DrZaius

What the hell do you mean nothing will happen, +5 to impact armor sure as hell doesn't mean the bullets wont suddently do damage.

Did you even look at the scenario and the chart he provided, 6 dice for shooting and enemy has 3 dice to dotge so that 2 hit for shooter 1 for defender, shooting a second target has a -2 penalty meaning he's unlikely to score more net hit then defender and it gets worse for additional target 2vs3 for third and the fourth target gets into longshot territory.

My reading of the RAW rules for burst recoil penalty would be as follows. There are two relevant lines in the book regarding Recoil.

"Weapons that fire more than one round in an Action Phase suffer from an escalating recoil modifier as the rounds leave the weapon."

"Burst-fire weapons receive a -2 recoil modifier for the first burst fired in that Action Phase and -3 for the second. Long bursts suffer -5 (first burst in the phase) or -6 recoil (second)."

The first line is unfortunately vague and doesn't state that the recoil modifier is cumulative, just that it escalates. That line would mean either of the following scenarios would be true.

Long: -5, Short -3
Long: -5, Short -8

The example in the book shows up like the following though...

Character has 2 recoil compensation.
First first short burst negating the recoil from the attack. Fires second burst adding a -3 recoil penalty without the recoil compensation reducing the additional -3.

RAI- Short/Short : -2/-5, recoil compensation reduces from the total recoil penalty. So if you have 2 recoil compensation you would see 0/-3, not 0/-1.
Short/Long: -2/-8. Recoil compensation of 4 would be 0/-4.
Long/Short: -5/-8. Recoil compensation of 2 would be -3/-6.
RAW- It's a toss up, there's a couple of different ways to read those rules as written.

According to arsenal you get one recoil benefit from each the below groups.

Group 1: Auto-adjusting weight, bipod, foregrip, gyromount, sling, tripod, or underbarrel weight (foregrip & sling stack with each other)
Group 2: Folding stock, hip pad, rigid stock, shock pad, or sling
Group 3: Gas-vent
Group 4: Electronic firing and personalized grip
Group 5: Heavy Barrel

That was my interpretation as well.

My understanding has always been simply that the penalty is # of bullets fired that IP -1, regardless of how you get to that number, so it would be -5 then -8. You'd be better off doing short then long though, because then it becomes -2 and -8.

Edit: Suppose it would be # of bullets fired that IP - 1 - RC

I only know it as -5/-3 when firing a long and a short burst. Never seen it different. Recoil compensation applies only once of course not per burst so you would need 8 recoil compensation to compensate everything.

I've never seen anyone play with non-cumulative recoil, yeah. It's not ambiguous.

Max: Nope, I ignored it, because that's not the only situation you'd use. And yes, +5 AP means that nothing better will happen compared to S&S:

8S DV against full Impact armor +5, versus 6S(e) DV against Half Impact armor.
That's +2 DV and, say, 11 armor, vs. +0 DV and 3 armor. I'd rather have the 8 dice. Even 4 for 1 trading means that precisely *nothing* different will happen from using the flechette, except your target won't take a -2 or roll to resist incapacitation.

It is ambiguous without the example on burst fire combat.

Saying that you get a -2 penalty on the first burst and -3 on the second can legitimately be read as -2/-3 or -2/-5. Without the example on burst combat, both interpretations are valid. Escalating just means that the penalty increases, it does not mean the penalty has to be cumulative. Even worse the rules on recoil say nothing about whether recoil compensation applies separately to each attack. That means that with 2 recoil compensation, you could interpret it as 0/-1 (from -2/-3), 0/-1 (from -2/-5), or 0/-3 (from -2/-5).

It can only be read that way if you're trying to get something for nothing, that's all. But, what I meant is that the question is not ambiguous because we *do* have the example, previous experience, FAQ, etc. Not that someone would be stupid for misinterpreting that sentence all lone.

You do realise where talking about light pistols here, beign as good as S&S is good enought.
So that leaves hold-outs and machinepistols as pretty much the only weapon classes where S&S is truly better then all other options.
And hold-outs dont have that much better range then taser, so i would seriously consider taking that 8S taser instead.

I've shown the rules to some people that have no experience with Shadowrun. Most of them come out thinking the penalty is supposed to be -2/-3 for a short/short. Then I show them the example and they start to get a little confused. The point is, the rules are not clear to someone who has no exposure to the wisdom of the masses (ie dumpshock). The fact that the clarification on how it's supposed to be is in the example is a flaw. Many people won't read examples if they feel they have a strong grasp of how things are supposed to be. The rules regarding recoil penalties and recoil compensation ARE poorly worded and do not effectively convey the intent to a new reader. If that was clear then you wouldn't see so many people asking about recoil and recoil compensation.

Light Pistols, Heavy Pistols, Machine Pistols, Sub machine guns, Assault Rifles, Holdouts. All of these are better off with SnS than any other ammo.

Shotguns and Sniper Rifles are really the only kinds of weapons that don't benefit from SnS over other potential ammo. Oh, and I suppose Heavy and maybe Medium machine guns.

Right, that's what I'm saying: it's not ambiguous *here to us*. As in, for the purposes of this discussion. If you only read that one line, it is. My last post didn't explain that clearly.

Max, you're still crazy. S&S is better for all of them (except perhaps Sniper Rifles), because it strikes weaker armor, weaker resistance stat, and always (*always*) gives a -2 (that is, 6 boxes) if it hits… *and* has a chance to incapacitate. I was demonstrating that your Needler was *not* as good as S&S. Not even close.

Sniper Rifles can definitely benefit from SnS against heavy armored opponents. If you're facing someone with 14 Impact armor, I'm pretty sure SnS would be better. 6S + Net Hits + Called Shot against 7 Impact + body damage resist instead of what is probably around 9P + net Hits + called shot against around 21 Ballistic armor + body damage resist. The former will only resist 2-4 damage on average, while the latter will resist 7-9 and you'd be staged down to stun damage with the APDS round.

All weapons benefit from SnS, it's just a matter of how high does the ballistic armor need to get for it to be beneficial.

And, of course, firing S&S from that kind of gun means you get the extreme range.

One of things about high voltage electricity (like in a shock weapon) is that it shouldn't matter where a person gets hit the electricity is still going to pass throughout the body and have the same effect. Or more to the point. electrical weapons are as effective as the quality's of the electricity and don't care about the skill of the user. So why should it stage up with more hits? If you're having a problem with the balance of electrical based attacks I would house rule that these kinds of attacks don't stage up with net hits, they only ever do their base damage which is a measure of the electricity.

Many people have pointed that out, but it would undoubtedly be a house rule to remove net hits. Possibly a common house rule, and there's nothing wrong with tweaking the game to your needs. I agree that it's a simple and effective option.

I've got the SnS example done. Do people want to see it compared to EXEX, or APDS?

-DrZaius

Ofcource S&S is better if you pull out totally absurb armor values.
"no its totally better on all guns becouse the badguy has an armor value of 28/14"

You know what i rather take the gaus rifle that has AP-half-4.

And the think is you cant take a target down with one sht of S&S and a terget that goes down on 2 most likely goes down from 2 shot of any of the better ammo types from anythink bigger then a light pistol.

Only guy to post anythink resepmling a fact about S&S beign super good only showed that its really isn't better in a sclae that matters.

He specifically said, 'S&S can even be better for a sniper rifle if the target is heavily armored'. That's called 'qualifying', and it means your objection is wrong.

The fact is, if you hit anyone with S&S, they take a -2 to everything (=6 wound boxes), and they resist with Willpower (usually lower than Body), Impact armor (usually *much* lower than Ballistic), and that Impact armor is halved, *and* they could fail their 'remain standing and conscious' check.

The stun damage is resisted by (Body + 1/2 Impact Armor). The incapacitation effect is (Body + Willpower + 1/2 Impact Armor) with a threshold of 3.

WTF
Where the hell did you get that idea, no wonder you think S&S is so good.
You always resist damage with Body, unless there are few very special cases that i dont remember right now.

And saying that S&S is better if enemy has armor rating of 28/14 isn't qualifying, thats making up absurd scenarios.

Whoops, I forgot. I was getting a crossed wire from Stunbolt! Thanks, carry on.

It actually changes nothing, because that's the least of the several edges S&S has. Which reminds me, you *are* using your Stun track (that's where Willpower shows up), and it's smaller than Physical.

You make a good point about switching targets. Yeah, the expected value for the given simulation says that switching targets would make you effectively miss those targets. As you gain more points in Pistol skill, those additional targets stop being expected misses, which implies good scaling.

The Fichetti Tiffani Needler hold-out is 6P(f) +2AP in Arsenal, p21. Was that Errata'd somewhere?

Given that 1 armor generally requires 3 hits to bypass, then changing that to an 8P +5AP would give you an extra point of damage. That's still not an Assault Cannon with incapacitate.

And that is the real discussion we're having here, I believe. SnS turns a pair of Pistols (of any size) into a 5R Assault Cannon, with secondary effects.

-----

In the end, I had at least one player throw his hands up and go WTF in response to the ruling I posted on page 3 of this thread. To preserve morale, I've retracted it, even though it was effectively only a max 72 nuyen fine every time he decided to use SnS in a firefight. (The cost to throw away the box, if you only fired one shot, so you can't be traced). I'll keep you guys posted on how the game world evolves, now that SnS reigns supreme. This should be an interesting experiment.

Yes, the +2 AP is a typo.

Regardless, Max, he specifically stated the scenario. As if it matters, because S&S is indisputably better for everything *else*.

The Arsenal errata ofcource.


Umm no, it turns them as good as an assault rifle with explosive rounds(that are cheaper) damage wise.
And as good as heavy pistols with explosive ammo, in the actual take down capasity.

Wrong again, unless you're defining 'actual takedown capacity' in some novel and interesting way.

I'm not sure I follow. Are you measuring in terms of the number of bodies that can be removed in a given IP?

Any pistol with SnS can do 16S in my above simulation (which is crude and extremely limited). Using normal ammo, nothing short of an Assault Cannon approaches this in terms of raw damage, let alone the auto-disorient. I'll leave incapacitate out for a minute.

Hrm. I've updated the sheet again, but without taking into account Burst Modes, it really understates assault rifles.

Before we go further, can you define your measuring metric, so we are talking about the same thing?

Actuall takedown capasity is enemies down per IP.

That's what I thought. S&S wins.

Let's make this a little more specific.

Enemy, for this context:

Body 3
Reaction 3
Willpower 3

Ballistic Armor 10
Impact Armor 8

Physical Condition Monitor 10
Stun Condition Monitor 10

Are these fair assumptions?

-----

Bah, I don't want to do this anymore. We're getting bogged down in details, and this simulation is going to mostly meaningless until we start varying it in multiple dimensions.

If an enemy has a body+willpower+(half impact) >= 9, then he is expected to resist the first incapacitate. He will need body+willpower+(half impact) >= 11 to resist the incapacitate from the second shot, due to disorient. These are not unreasonable numbers.

What these means is, SnS shines during low-level gameplay due to incapacitate. As the opposition gets stronger, incapacitate becomes more rare, and the other secondary effects become important... disorient is still strong, elemental damage to spirits is powerful, and the expected DV is still very good.

In short, SnS provides stable expected damage values across all power levels for all firearm categories except long range rifles and assault cannons. This obsoletes the need for different pistol categories since they should all use SnS, unless they are highly modified and specialized.