SnS are supposed to be non lethal... what I am enquiring is : how non lethal is a full narrow burst of SnS Ammo ?

The trick is that if I say that multiple hit from SnS are going to kill the target then I make them too usefull for killing.

Also something weird about SnS is that thoses ammos are supposed to be very-low velocities (or they dont really need the Stick part), I dont think that make them very adequate for standard automatic weapons.

Heck, SnS doesnt even make any sense in standard weapons... they should be restriced to needles guns or veterinarian rifle. How could a bullet be supposed to stick and shock on an unarmored people ? how are they then supposed to stick on ceramic plated military grade armor ? That require different kind of bullet altogether...

SnS is too much cumbersome for me, I will just write them off.

I fully agree SnS is way too good, and I also agree that non-lethality is its own reward.
Still, its not THAT difficult to house rule imho.

Personally I like how Gel rounds work, so I see no need for SnS to exist in that many gun classes. In my games SnS is shotgun only, BF/FA does not increase its damage (but it does increase the duration of the electrocution effect), and spirits generally laugh about stun damage.

SnS hasnt troubled our group ever since I implemented these rules, and it still keeps the usefulness of low ammo / very low range Tasers.
In melee range I do not mind the Stun batons etc. so much: its difficult enough for characters to get into melee without being shot at first, and the higher defense roll of attribute + skill vs. only attribute in ranged combat helps defenders quite a bit.

Also, in a world where Adepts with critical strike/elemental strike/killing hands and + damage from martial arts are running around it might be a bad idea anyway to try your luck in melee with a stun baton.

I touched an electric fence (meant for horses) at the young age of about 5.

Even as an adult, the full shock from it (we have one on our current property) is not pleasant; makes me jiggle a bit (its 6000 volts, which If I understand correctly, is significantly less than a tazer or shock round, I would have to check on the amperage).

And that is about as passing (short time span) as an electric shock can get: lasts as long as it takes a relay to go "click."

Voltage is irrelevant, it is the amps that determine how much something hurts.

I forgot to check the box on my way to work. I just know that electric fences are measured in volts (6000+ for horses and cattle down to like 100 for chickens). Or at least, that's the larger number on the boxes...

That's because most people think it is the volts that hurt and because that number is bigger. 0.001 amps doesn't look very impressive in big red numbers on the side of an electric fence, but 10,000 volts? That'll scare people off.

Ever played with a vandergraph generator? Those things with big metal spheres on the top? Those can generate millions of volts, but you touch them and it just makes your hair stand on end.

Electric fences are also designed to cause you to let go.

Tasers on the other hand work by locking up your muscles.

Different principles. It would be kinda bad for an electric fence to cause your muscles to lock up when you grabbed it.



-karma

KarmaInferno, references? I'm just interested. I've heard that Tazer claims special bio-interfering waveforms or whatever, but never heard much about fences. They seem like a pretty brute-force application.

It's alternating versus direct current. Direct current fences don't let you let go very easily.

Well, yes, I know the difference. "Volts Jolt, Amps Vamp." And I'm not talking about "scaring people off" as the "people" that need to be "scared off" are horses.

Random googling brought up a couple of chargers rated between 1.5 joules and 2 joules of output. No info on amps.

However, I am unable to figure out how this compares to amperage (and I do not believe that there is a relationship).



They do that by being "off" 95% of the time. A 0.25 second electric pulse followed by 1 second of nothing. You grab a hot wire and you're muscles will jerk, if the current was continuous I'm certain it'd be difficult to let go.

Having EE as a real life background, I can answer a few questions for folks.

The parts...

Voltage: measure of electromotive force (how hard it's pushing)
Amperage: measure of current flow (bigger is badder)
Power: measured in Watts. It is a summary of just how much power is flowing.
DC: direct current. It has no waveform. Think of the power coming from a battery.
AC: alternating current. It does have a waveform (typically sinusoidal, can be different).

Those terms aside, the hallmarks of DC is that once you get hit with it, it causes your muscles to freeze. In a typical action like bending your arm, you have some muscles contracting while others are relaxing (in a push/pull setup). DC will make all those muscles contract at the same time. That makes your arm lock.

DC is bad ju-ju when it comes to getting shocked, especially if it crosses your heart (like getting shocked from hand to hand). See above for why and keep in mind that your heart is a muscle.

Getting shocked by AC is bad in its own way. Ever hear the phrase "60 cycle shuffle"? It's a bad dance move performed by those getting shocked by 60 hz AC (typical household power outlet in the US). Just so happens to be a bad frequency for our bodies (our hearts don't like that frequency much). AC works just like DC... except it makes your muscles relax & contract at the frequency of the line power (60 cycle shuffle?). AC has a higher propensity to throw you than DC does in most cases but you can be thrown (across the room) by DC as well. Depending on what you are doing, you may end up hanging onto your equipment when you'd rather let go.

I can't speak for tasers but a classmate in HS Electronics (vocational school) shocked himself with 50k Volts DC at 1 microamp (0.1 milliamp). It froze his arm (to his elbow) and hand for about 10 minutes before he could start moving them again. He said it hurt like hell and that he couldn't feel his arm for the duration.

I have personally taken 440 Volts AC from elbow to wrist off a bridge rectifier in a floor TV power supply. Blew out the Bridge rectifier and the zap also threw my arm away from the tv console.

Generally if one is using electricity to incapacitate, you want to use a high enough voltage to cause conduction. Between 5k and 50k Volts is often enough (depends on desired target audience, heh). You only use enough amperage to cause the desired pain / stunning / numbness. Generally this will be a low number (less than one milliamp).

Against someone like me (100+ Meg Ohms of skin resistance aka 100,000,000+ Ohms of skin resistance), you'd want at least 10k Volts in order to generate conduction. At 10k Volts, all you'd get for current flow is 0.1 milliamps. Certainly enough to piss me off. 50k Volts would get you 0.5 milliamps which would be significantly more incapacitating. Zap it down the line with AC and you'll have me dancing & twitching.

The bad part is that a low amperage is quite capable of killing you. We had a chart on our wall that showed the effects of amps of current flow. According to the chart, 5 milliamps was enough to kill you. The bad part shown on the chart? Get to 1+ amps and you get to live while cooking (until you die).

For those that want to know, Power = Amps * Volts so... 1 Watt = 1 amp * 1 Volt.

Also, Ohm's law states that Current = Voltage / Resistance so... 1 amp = 1 volt / 1 Ohm.

In summary, electricity is serious business. It can fuck you up. It also makes for a hell of a modern convenience.

*edit for a few typos

Also, one of the most clear demonstrations that SnS ammo is beyond any shadow of a doubt better than any other kind is suppressive fire.

Take a SMG, AR or even the White Knight LMG and do a surpressive fire test with them. Trade out normal ammo for SnS. Trade out normal ammo for Ex Ex or even APDS.

Suppressive fire forces an Edge check to clear the area or take a single, unmodified hit from the weapon. Let me tell ya, I am way more interested in trying to resist down 4-6p with my 4 body and 8 armor than I am trying to resist 6(e) with 4 body and 2 or 3 armor... And even then, I will still probably be at a -2 (remember, that is six boxes of damage). And I am only worried about that -2 if I am not curled up on the floor, fetal.

In the instance of suppressive fire, you are looking for area denial or to engage huge numbers of targets. Run the math on spraying 30 rounds into a crowd of 10 or 15 gangers and see what happens.

I would wager that SnS is going to produce a helluva lot better results.

Much good stuff. Most of which I know, I just don't know where joules fit in.

Why don't we all have the absolute best of everything today?

There is a best ammo, there is a best gun, there is a best computer, a best car, a best house, a best friend forever.

Why don't I have all of those?

Stick n Shock is the msot effective ammo evah! No question, no discussion.

Why won't it be everywhere for everyone?

Why does the fact it is the best ammo for your shadowrunner mean everyone everywhere in the entire world will have it?

We are playing in a dark dystopian future of balkanized states and mega corporations run by free spirits called Buttercup and Dragons that snack on people and Immortal Elves who are too pretty to live aren't we?

Yes: it would make the meat hard.

You realize the game has stats for the availability of all these rounds and SnS is easier to get (and sometimes cheaper) than the other rounds?

It's part of the reason why people are annoyed by them, if they were expensive and scarce that would be a balancing factor for their effectiveness.

Technically availability isn't how hard it is to get them. A completely legal, but $10,000 item takes longer to get than a Forbidden $10 item.
(Because the interval went up due to the price difference, even if the threshold is lower).

So if you want SnS to be "rarer" for PCs, raise the cost by double or more.

Time is money.

Yeah, and disabling enemies faster is more money.

Actually, this is the simulationist argument. If the written rules were meant to be a complete set of rules to render a simulated universe then you would be correct about this.

I don't believe the SR4A core rule books are adequate for any simulationist approach. There's no engine for applying specific data points to render a world other then ourselves, and since we are all different, we will get differing results.

Not enough data for a good model either.

*shrug*. I'm only arguing that they are almost universally better, not saying anything about 'the game world'. If anything, such an argument only increases the imbalance, because it means most enemies won't use S&S (relative to smart runners), most enemies won't have Nonconductive, etc.

I agree SnS is superior.

Why is there a problem with SnS being superior in effect?

If there are different types of ammunition, that are mechanically different, then one of those range of ammunition is going to be optimal.

Frankly SnS being better by itself isn't a big deal. However the fact that in practice for almost all uses of direct delivery of DV and effect it is superior to other choices mechanically is something of a problem. However, that isn't the only factor that goes into whether or not SnS is used. There are many other factors, but they aren;t as easy to measure as running a set of dice rolls in a spreadsheet and running statistical models. Nevertheless they do have an impact.

In any game, the existence of a generally (that is, in all or nearly all circumstances) superior option is a problem. It's game imbalance, as you say. S&S is both generally superior and *very* superior, which is a bad combination. For runners, this may not be the only factor, but it's absolutely the biggest one, and that's why it matters.

Sigged...

Thank the forum gods for sig size limits...

Wasn't going to sig the whole thing... Just the line that made me chuckle...

Question: (yes, it is a "real world"-ish question)

Why does SnS (and other electrical weapons) halve Impact armor?

I have never been tazed. However, how does a thick coat effect the process? What about a leather jacket? (For that matter, a flak jacket or kevlar.)

There are three factors to SnS (I believe):
1. It ups the damage of smaller firearms (up to assault rifle levels)
2. It halves armor (which is generally already lower, though I generally ignore that, given the PPP system)
3. Secondary effects.

On the first issue: Why is a tazer bullet more effective than a "real" bullet?*

I've asked the second question above. "Because it's electricity" is the answer. Maybe electrical weapons shouldn't be treated the same as lightning bolts. (Maybe.)

Third, if a tazer didn't incapaciate folks, why use it (besides that it's non-lethal). I believe someone stated (on one of these threads) that most mooks have the stats to generally keep from passing out. Cinematically, it's a cool effect. Real world, neh. People (I don't believe) generally pass out from tasering. (Thank goodness this is a game.)

Regarding the -2 penalty: how badly are folks (ordinarly) disoriented after being tasered? Combat rounds are 3 seconds, so even if an individual takes 1/6th of a minute in real life to "shake off" being tasered, then the penalty might hold up.

*tosses in 2 *

It's -Half, I assume, because of the abstract nature of the hit system. You only need to connect, not hit a vital location. *shrug* No, I'm not terribly convinced either.

There was an episode of Deadliest Warrior recently where it was SWAT vs GSG. They did a live demo of a taser being used on a guy. It hit the guy, you heard the click-click-click of the Taser and the guy's arms froze in a boxing sort of pose, he hunched over (forward) and had to be helped down. He could NOT move. All the sound he made was a grunting noise. It took about 15-30 secs after the taser was turned off before the guy started actively responding to the people around him. His arms relaxed after about 10 secs or so. I believe the guy who volunteered to be tased was a LAPD SWAT member.

Having been hit by electricity before, I really don't want to try the receiving end of a taser.

I think the rationale is that Impact armor protects against low velocity impacts like clubs, knives, swords, etc. If you have more Impact armor, you have additional padding, cushioning, etc. SnS, tasers, etc are all low velocity weapons.

As such, it'll be harder to hurt someone under it with low velocity weaponry. But since Tasers, SnS, shockgloves, etc only need conductive contact, the need for 'damage' per se is reduced. The 'damage' dealt is from the electrical nature of the weapon, not the weapon's ballistic characteristics.

Much in the same vein as casting shocking hand in D&D. You needed to make an attack roll against armor class 10 (+dex/agility bonuses) rather than against their full armor value due to just needing to touch the target regardless of their armor.