As written, stun batons (and their derivatives) and Stick n' Shock weapons do absurd things to anybody hit. A taser or stun baton has become standard on all characters that I run, and generally is more effective at taking an opponent out - especially during surprise rounds if mounted on an arm slide - than any nearly gun in the game would be. Close combats have turned into 'do you have shock gloves / a stun baton?' rather than a slugfest of gore and destruction.

Body + half Impact vs damage is not too bad. Even the Body + Willpower + half impact (3) test or fall down on the ground and drool test is not that bad. Really, it is the that really gets me. That is just brutal. Mind you, you take the fall down and drool test with negative dice from the stunning hit you just took (pun!)...

I am not sure if I am going overboard, but I don't think that everybody in the 'Sprawl runs around with nonconductive armor.

I have been pondering house ruling it that staging up damage from an electrical weapon takes 2 hits to increase the DV and may not be used with the trading dice for DV rule. You can't make the shock any larger by hiting a vital area. You can shock someone in a vital nerve plexus that is more... shocking... sure. But I think that the +1 DV per 2 hits allows for plenty of staging.

And don't forget, if it's metal armor they don't get anything for armor. Though almost all armor is non-metallic in shadowrun. Aside from the chainmail shirt in arsenal. Haha

If you've got the issue of your players being abusive with it, just start using it against them. No better way to teach someone not to do something, than by hurting them with it.

I think making nonlethal damage in some cases better than lethal damage is an intentional move on the part of the 4e creators.

The downside to knocking someone out is they may come after you later. If you knock out a whole gang and then leave. The gang will be awake tomorrow and they will be pissed. Nonlethal is not as illegal.

The downside to killing someone is that more people might come after you than if you had left someone alive. If you left someone alive they might have more of an idea about who to come after.

I don't know if nonlethal shock damage is too good but there are better weapon in the game than stun batons. It is up to you if you want stun batons and such to be in the same league with more deadly things.

A bit of a fallacy in that if my response is to abuse it back, it is still too good...

That and my whole issue with this is that I don't want combat to turn into games of Tag! with electrical shock weapons.

If you want to you can just slit their throats afterwards, or change magazines and do a coup de grace if you want to waste money on the bullet.

I'm pretty sure you dont, damage resistance test aren't exactly action tests.
And -2 dice to do stuff isn't exactly a massive penalty.
ANd there are still more effective ways to damage people in melee then shock weapons.

So everyone runs around with electricity based weaponry, but you don't think anyone has non-conductive armor? Why aren't people wearing armor that protects against such a common threat? I would expect police forces to have it at a rating of at least three to prevent being shocked from the non-lethal weapons they carry and employ.

There are frequently threads about how overpowered and unbalanced shock weapons are. There is a cheap and readily available defense against them. GMs, scale your opponents. If your players shoot guards with regular ammo, you're going to put them up against guards that have ballistic armor, right? Because without it, they get mowed down without a chance. Use the same common sense when scaling challenges to your players and mix things up. Make them think twice:

1) Melee is in an inch (or foot+) of water. Shock the guy in front of you and share the buzz.
2) That ork gang lt. wears shock frills. Shock him, and you're liable to short out his and your electric weaponry.
3) Cheap security force doesn't have non-conductive threads? Well one guy got a nasty shock before, and never wants it to happen again so he put Rating 5 non-conductivity in his jacket.
4) Force coming specifically after your runners knows all the runners use shock weapons first? Put them not only in non-conductive threads, but also give them non-conductive ponchos or overcoats.
5) A runner shocks out a guard quickly and easily? Shorten his time to finish him. Then have the guard wake back up and cause problems. It's non-lethal after all.

Pro's don't shoot guards in the face for money. They find ways to accomplish their objectives while pissing off the least amount of people. Players should be encouraged to find non-lethal solutions rather than whipping out their sniper rifle and firing an APDS round through a wall and a guard's armored vest to splatter him before he even knew he was targeted. Don't hate on shockers too much.

Mesh

Which actually supports the opposite to your point. Nonlethal damage should be its own reward. Currently, players are not using stun weapons because they are nonlethal. They are using them because they are flat out better, and it just so happens that they are also nonlethal.

Indeed it is as you say. Everyone does run around with electricity based weaponry. Both corpsec and Lone Star (Rating 2 and 3 Grunts) have stun batons as part of their equipment loadouts. And they do not have the nonconductivity modification to their armors.

I think you missed the contrasting comparison. What's the combined AP from your typical sniper rifle using APDS ammo?

Mesh

-7 to -9 with at DV of 8-9

Taser weapons are pretty darn scary in SR. Mind you, they are that scary in real life too. Taser weapons are designed to disrupt your ability to move, so they should have some nasty side effects. When it comes to stun batons and actual tasers, I don't have a problem with them being that nasty. Stick-n-shock is a little more dubious to my mind, but I don't want to dredge up that old argument again. In real-life, the US military has been very hesitant about non-lethal technology because it is generally less effective than lethal weapons at stopping opponents, and also because non-lethal very often isn't. Heck, here in the US, police forces are getting in trouble because of how often tasers end up killing people.

In addition to the realism issue, there is the game balance question, and how you deal with it. I agree it can be a real problem. I like it when my team goes non-lethal, but I don't think non-lethal should be that much more combat-effective than regular weapons. A couple of options I've considered/used:
- Everybody has non-conductive enhancements to their armor. This actually makes a lot of sense to me - with SnS and tasers being around, I'd think anybody making armor would design it to protect against it. A couple of ways to reflect that: tweak the rules so that it's resisted with full impact (or ballistic) armor to reflect that it's just standard, or just have most every armor you can buy have a couple of points of non-conductive armor.
- Nerf stick-n-shock. Tasers are effective, but their range sucks, which is the primary balance on them. Stick-n-shock utterly shucks that balance. Drop the effective range (to reflect a lighter bullet), eliminate the -2 penalty or the fall-down option (to reflect the lower available electrical power), don't let it be fired from non-shotguns, don't let it stage at all. Heck, feel free to eliminate it as a silly idea that the game designers obviously didn't think through. (Seriously, why would you have tasers at all with Stick-n-Shock on the market?)
- Make non-lethal occasionally lethal. Tasers and stun batons seriously screw with the nervous system (by design). As a house rule, if somebody glitches their damage resistance test against a taser/stun baton, they flatline. Yes, it does make them more effective, but greatly increases the out-of-combat consequences, and should make the runners think twice about just unloading on people, and justifying it to themselves by saying "hey, it wasn't lethal".

My 2 cents.

Okay...why?

At some point, as a GM, I'm going to have to write for this world. There isn't enough published material for me to avoid writing some things. If I am writing, the first rule is it must be fun for everybody, including myself. I prefer logical causality in my world; if you are raiding a Matrix node working on a new generation of Black ICE, then the security had better include some cutting edge ICE. If the opposition always uses spike strips, go-gangs will either buy run-flats or be made laughingstocks.

...and as soon as the bad guys start using Electric ammo, the armor is going to get upgraded. Security knows there are electric weapons in play; they're carrying them. I should hope it doesn't take a friendly fire incident or a downed officer's stolen weapon to make it clear to them, but at some point they will realize that they need to be ready for electric damage.

Furthermore, of all the armor upgrades, Electric is by far the most valuable. Chemweapons are more rare, and generally deployed via a dart; most of the other damage types are mage gimmicks. Electric damage is something that not only can a mundane use against you, but tasers are *legal*. They should be the most common self-defense weapon among the general population, and any time Security busts down a door they have to consider that Grandma is going to try and give them half a million volts to the beanbag.

I think in the future, I am going to make it clear to my players that there are degrees of response, and somewhere between asking politely and the helicopter minigun is a wide band of electic-armed "take them alive" security policies. This might not make sense for Shadowrunners, but as has been pointed out in numerous sourcebooks, Corporations would just as soon take you alive for information. They can always kill you later, or send you to a lab to... You know, let's just leave it at "don't get taken alive".

At any rate, the bulk of police and security should be using electric ammo, and that means they should have the insulated armor upgrade. I can't come up with a good reason not to.

Having everybody geared out with nonconductive armor is the same kind of absurdity that form fitting body armor is:

If it is so good / so necessary that everyone has it or needs to have it, there is something wrong.

Stick n' Shock is busted-sauce. There really is no good way around it. I think my game will not have stick-n-shock.

Any opinions about changing the way that stun batons etc. stage damage?

A quick and dirty solution would be messing with the number of charges a stun baton can hold before it goes dead; additionally, making it ineffective for use as a melee weapon after it's dead would be another option to discourage players from using them exclusively.

-DrZaius

Instead of having it use a number of charges and then die out the nothing, another way to go at it may be a draining battery effect. Swings 1-5 are fulll DV, Then 6-10 are -2DV, THen 11-15 are -4DV, then it's just a stick.

Damm there are like half a dozen of these threads right now, all whit people claiming shock weapons are super duper good and million times better then anythink else.
But no one ever post any actuall facts showing that is the case.
Yes they are good but there are better options that do more damage for both melee and ranged combat.

The reason they are better is because you can sneak them in. Why should my light pistol be more effective at taking down a target than a LMG? The main issue I run into as a runner is getting my 'ware into places; of course I want to go into every meet with an Assault Rifle and a Katana, but that obviously isn't going to work out of the D or C zones. Electricity damage lets me take a very effective weapon into almost _everywhere_.

-DrZaius

...thought I made a pretty good case for nonconductive armor, but...

The main dealbreaker for most people is the Dazed/Incapacitated secondary effects. You could always just take them out, and make SnS just 6E with the armor penetration, still pretty sweet. You could also make the Dazed effect resistible.

Something somebody said earlier has me thinking - the reason that the military today doesn't use tasers is because they're close-range weapons, especially compared to firearms. You could explain that because of the poor flight characteristics of SnS, the range is doubled before figuring penalties, effectively halving the max range of the weapon. This makes SnS-loaded pistols only slightly better reach then standard Tasers, while long-arms firing SnS rounds are still pretty effective. It's a simple nerf, it has a good explanation, and it will dramatically reduce the combat effectiveness of SnS in some (but not all) tactical situations.

Well, let's take a look at it.

IT'S ELECTRICITY!

How many people have been electrocuted in their lifetime, even by a minute amount? Anyone? *Raises Hand*

OK, "Stick and Shock" Ammo is starting to get out there, but the idea of using Stun Batons and Tasers are a great idea for Shadowrunners infiltrating a Corporate Compound, or dealing with Lone Star. Next to no noise (As long as you catch the body, and rifle if he has one.), and, most importantly, you didn't just KILL A COP. Major No-No for a lot of reasons.

That said, "The Right Tool for the Right Job". Stunning a Gang isn't going to get you much respect, and will get the gang after you. They're not exactly the most enlightened of people in realizing that you're being nice by not killing them. They'd see it as a sign of weakness. That's when you break out the standard ammo and have a nice day painting the walls in red.

As for the more lethal forms of ammo, well, there are times when you absolutely, positively need to kill every Motherfragger in the room! And that's when you slap in your EX-EX rounds into your AK-97 and Rock and Roll!

But where is the problem with that? I mean really...

The average Joe Citizen is doing the same thing most likely. Guns are restricted, Tazers are not... The most common form of protection is thus going to be the Tazer... and just because it is legal does not mean that you can just whip it out whenever you feel like it... There will be repercussions for their use. They will likely be less severe than an otherwise armed response, but a runner whipping out a Tazer to zap someone BETTER be in a situation that his life may be in danger (and really, against the average Joe Citizen, that will be almost never), or the LEO's may want to have a little chat with him...

I'm not sure why people keep acting like S&S isn't lethal. A helpless enemy will be a dead enemy.

And then left in compromising poses.

Heh, yeah I imagine counting coup became a lot more popular once the NAN became a power.

I am more likely to effectively 'kill' a target by hitting them with my taser than with my Ares Predator loaded with standard rounds.

They get less armor, I can still aim to increase the DV and even if I don't knock them out, they may get auto incapped. On top of this, they will have a disabled effect that is the same as 6 boxes of damage on top of the damage they already took.

I simply can't understand why anybody that can read the rules can't see that they are absurdly good.

When stun weapons "replacine their damage code" is interpreted as flat damage that cannot be staged up then stun weapons become good but able to be improved on.

No one has posted the facts because they are easy to see in the book. SnS damage placed in a pistol gives it +2 damage, increases its AP by a variable but generally large amount, and gives a handy secondary effect. Oh, nearly forgot, you're also dealing with impact armor instead of ballistic, which is nearly always a couple of points lower. All this for a fairly minimal added expense, no extra illegality for the gun (And perhaps even a better argument with a cop about why you have one), and the ammo isn't hard to find. Compare with the harder to find and more expensive EX-EX ammo, which only increases damage and AP by 1. Similarly APDS ammo which is more expensive still, and far harder to find provides no bonus damage, and only 4 extra AP, which means it will do less damage than an SnS round.

Now, if you're talking about a sniper rifle or something, yeah, loading an SnS round into it isn't going to provide any real bonus. If you're looking at assault rifles, you're keeping the same damage code, and throwing on a very nice AP bonus as well as secondary effect. And of course it allows for a very "I can shoot whatever because it is non-lethal SnS rounds" attitude.

Personally I have no problem with tazers and stun batons, it is only the absurdity of SnS rounds in things like light pistols.

What likely should be done is change SnS from being a flat damage to being 1 or 2 damage less than would be normal for the weapon, and then keeping the half impact armor and stun effect. It only makes sense that a shotgun fires a more effective SnS round than a light pistol.

AFAIK, *everyone* has posted the facts, esp. for S&S.

If you were using a variable S&S size fix, I wouldn't drop the DV; 4's pretty low already. Straight 'convert to S(e), -Half Impact' would still give shotguns an edge.

But if you don't drop the damage they are generally going to be as good as or slightly better than APDS rounds, only way easier to get.

If the use of SnS ammo becomes prolific, wouldn't the opposition invest a little money in non-conductive armor? It'd probably work for a group pretty well in the first few runs, then be guarded against after a high success rate.

You're right, but that just shows that there is a problem. If everyone gets non-conductive armor because everyone has SnS rounds, then, well first off it shows that SnS rounds were too effective in the first place, and second off it leaves the question open of "Since everyone gets non-conductive, why isn't basic armor just made more effective against electricity?"

Besides, there isn't any real difference between everyone in the world having non-conductive armor and simply making electric attacks weaker. Personally it isn't electric attacks I have a problem with, it is SnS rounds, so that's why I suggest nerfing SnS rounds over making everyone walk around in rubber suits.

I mean tasers are utterly pointless in the SR universe because SnS rounds can do the same thing only far more effectively. SnS rounds were a cool idea, a means of providing the gun bunny with a non-deadly attack, but they just weren't thought through properly. They make tasers pointless, and they make all other forms of ammo in most weapons pointless. Oh, and they act as instant spirit slayers, which is just stupid. To take down a spirit you either need a high end sniper rifle, a mage... or a light pistol with SnS ammo.

I'm not sure it technically shows an issue. Escalation is pretty popular, and then when it looks like SnS rounds are not being used anymore 'because everyone has the armor against it anyways', then Megas stop spending extra money on the special armor and it starts all over again. So I think it goes in waves.

The Spirit bit is pretty much the only problem that you mentioned that I can actively see. That does seem to be a rather annoying issue. Is there a spell that could have a similar effect to non-conductive armor?

As an aside, I like the first line of your signature.

True, the problem is that you don't tend to see it go in waves. Games tend to not last long enough to see that sort of thing, and I think GMs are hesitant to start putting everyone in the game world in non-conductive armor just because of their PCs. Sure, by the rules everyone should use SnS ammo, tasers, stun batons, and shock gloves, but fluff doesn't seem to really support that. Kind of like runners have a 50% awakened population usually, despite fluff saying that only 0.1% of people are awakened, and fluff showing 'large' magical groups as having a dozen or so awakened members. Anyway, I think GMs are often hesitant to put up awakened enemies because fluff doesn't seem to support there being many of them around, and similarly GMs are hesitant to throw on non-conductive armor because fluff doesn't support everyone and their mother walking around with electric attacks.

It's really a similar problem to magic. There is a way to negate it, but it just doesn't make sense for most encounters to have that negation.

There is no similar spell that I know of, though the armor spell would increase impact armor a bit, but it isn't hardened and so doesn't really help in the case of the spirit.

And thanks, I found it while reading some huge thread that had a bunch of those motivational posters. Was on some anti-hero looking group I think.

Ah, well if we are talking one-shots or short games then yes, I fully agree with you on all counts. I would be loath to put people in specific armor unless it was a direct consequence of overuse of SnS.

I'll look through at some point and see if I can find a suitable counter for the spirits. Beyond that, one could thematically rule that the hardened armor is not bypassed in the case of spirits if it becomes a problem. The fluff is that the spirits are incredibly hard to dispose of.

Even with nonconductivity, S&S are still worth it, IIRC from last thread. It makes the 'drool' effect much rarer, though.

True, even with maxed out non-conductivity on an opponent you're better off using SnS ammo than regular ammo in a light pistol, and slightly better off than using APDS or EX-EX ammo too, though it might be a bit of a toss up if the person is using some really crappy armor with high grade non-conductivity for some reason, which says alot for SnS ammo.

Many of the typical security forces (corp sec, Lone Star) that runners face do use tasers and stun batons as standard. It does not seem to cause a proliferation of non-conductive armor in any of the people that would go up against them on a regular basis - the thugs and gangs do not seem to be wearing non-conductive armor.

Other than for the PCs and certain special groups of NPCs (like Prime Runners), I do not think that it makes economical sense for anyone to buy SnS. APDS is less expensive than SnS. SnS is about 3 times as expensive as a single round of regular ammo.

i have to admit, it confuses me that everyone is so opposed to having electric damage be more effective against spirits. makes perfect sense to me. it's like the modern version of the torch (in the pitchfork and torch combo), though usually you would want something a bit more impressive in appearance if you were making a movie (like a power line or a lightning bolt).

True, it's a huge 400% more than regular ammo.

But, it's also a tiny 6¥ more per bullet. It's a nonexistent 1¥ more than APDS, 3¥ more than Explosive, 2¥ *less* than EX-Ex… it's really not that expensive. Even firing FA, you're talking a couple hundred nuyen per clip over *regular ammo*, and barely anything over the specialty ammo you'd be using in place of the S&S.

So, it really depends on who we're talking about. Gangers? Perhaps not. Joe Self-Defense? Almost certainly, especially because he's not intending to go through clips of this.

It's not a question per se of electric damage versus spirits. It's *taser* damage.

news flash: tasers use electricity. shadowrun tasers use sufficiently damaging electricity that it will probably kill the average person in 2 hits if it's the regular taser, 3 hits if using the weaker ones. heck, the one that still trails wires is pretty likely to knock you out from stun damage, nevermind the electric effect.

(and on a side note, taser is making stick-n-shock shotgun shells *today*. in 60 years, if they haven't found a way to make those taser rounds even smaller, i will be shocked... pun intended)

Hmm, was going from memory on the costs, was thinking ADPS was high cost, must have just been assuming that the high availability meant a high cost.

I do agree that there is certainly argument for electric attacks doing well against spirits, but once again, my problem isn't that electric attacks are good and effective and such, it is that SnS ammo is both powerful in its own right and an electric attack. If you're using a light pistol, there is literally no reason not to use SnS ammo unless you are utterly broke. Same for a heavy pistol, there really isn't much reason to not use SnS ammo. For other weapons, it is maybe a bit of a toss up, but unless you're strapped for cash or using a sniper rifle, SnS ammo is generally a good idea.

So, I don't have a huge problem with a stun baton or something similar being useful against a spirit, or even a tazer, but it is the SnS ammo that turns a light pistol into a Spirit Slayer ^tm.

You do realize that APDS rounds are cheaper than SnS rounds don't you? Sorry, Of course you do...
And as for legalities... Firearms are still regulated, whereas Tazers and Stun Batons are not...

Yeah, true, there is some legality issue between a pistol with SnS and a tazer/stun baton, but in general, that shouldn't be a huge issue for a runner. That's what fake IDs are for after all.

Edit: Also, 7 nuyen each to 8 nuyen each isn't exactly going to break the bank.

It won't, of course, but the argument still stands... there are better ammunition choices out there for cheaper costs... it just depends upon what you mean by "Better"...

Right, depends on the weapon in question and the opponent in question. Unless you're talking about a longarm or a very oddly armored opponent though, you'll generally be better off with the SnS ammo.

But it is 4 times as costly as regular ammo. Which was why I was saying that unless the (N)PC was someone where cost considerations are not a primary concern, then SnS is a very good ammo. To some runners, it isn't a concern, yet to others, it may be too expensive to fire a SnS every time he gets into a shootout.

The flipside is that SnS ammo would most likely be construed as "Less Than Lethal Attempt" in a court of law. A particular concern for Non-AA/AAA Corporations that have to deal with Lone Star when they exchange rounds with thieves.

Well, ones with SINs, at least.

But for the average Joe and Jane on the street or apartment, it's very much a concern. It's hard enough keeping NutraSoy on the table and the Simsense Unit fed!

High voltages are used, but because most devices use a high frequency alternating current, the skin effect prevents a lethal amount of current from traveling into the body. The resulting 'shock' is caused by muscles twitching uncontrollably, appearing as muscle spasms.

Tasers primarily function by creating neuromuscular incapacitation, which means that it interrupts the ability of the brain to control the muscles in the body. This creates an immediate and unavoidable incapacitation that is not based on pain and cannot be overcome. Once the electricity stops flowing the subject immediately regains control of their body. Most subjects after being Tasered once will comply so as to avoid being Tasered a second time.

Some Taser models, particularly those used by police departments, also have a "Drive Stun" capability, where the Taser is held against the target without firing the projectiles, and is intended to cause pain without incapacitating the target. "Drive Stun" is "the process of using the EMD weapon [Taser] as a pain compliance technique. This is done by activating the EMD and placing it against an individual’s body. This can be done without an air cartridge in place or after an air cartridge has been deployed.

Taser International claims that Tasers are safe, but critics disagree, citing the number of deaths occurring after Taser use. Amnesty International has documented over 334 deaths that occurred after the use of Tasers between 2001 and 2008.

A study led by William Bozeman, of the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, of nearly 1,000 persons subjected to Taser use, concluded that 99.7% of the subjects had either minor injuries, such as scrapes and bruises, or none at all, while three persons suffered injuries severe enough to need hospital admission, and two other subjects died. Their autopsy reports indicated neither death was related to the use of a Taser.

Manufacturers' instructions and manuals shipped with the products state that a half-second shock duration will cause intense pain and muscle contractions, startling most people greatly. Two to three seconds will often cause the subject to become dazed and drop to the ground, and over three seconds will usually completely disorient and drop an attacker for at least several seconds. TASER International warns law enforcement agencies that “prolonged or continuous exposure(s) to the TASER device’s electrical charge” may lead to medical risks such as cumulative exhaustion and breathing impairment.

also check out the Electrified water cannon. I could see it being a riot control weapon of the future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrified_water_cannon

Also check out Picana. A cattle prod made specifically for electrical torture of humans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picana


Anyway I posted this because I thought some of you might like to learn a bit more about how tasers work and how electric weapons work. I think a bolt of lightning would be orders of magnitude larger voltage but it is instantaneous and stun guns deliver there electricity in a way that is more effective for their voltage (fast alternating current over time). Lightning is also alternating, as is wall current. You would charge a battery and run a computer off of DC with the aid of an AC to DC adapter built into the device.

Jaid, you completely missed the point. The fundamental point of contention is precisely *whether* taser weapons count as 'electricity elemental' attacks. Too busy being snarky?

Non lethal has been superior in I think every edition. 4e just keeps the trend and maybe amps it up a bit. Narcojet is super fun for example, oh and while drain was generally a beast in 1e the sleep spell had a 1 staging for both damage and drain resistance. So it was one of the easiest spells to take no drain on and at the same time was probably the most effective combat spell in the game.

I'm not saying past editions mistakes make this editions mistakes any better. But it seems to me they have decided to make a conscious effort to make the non-lethal option the more attractive option in SR. I would have preferred the opposite so you can make the hard choice to go non-lethal or take the easy choice and go lethal, instead of the current system where the easy choice is non-lethal. Its not much of a moral stand if its just a better tactic.