What if it was a gel round casing and the electrodes get forced through and activate when they hit the target?

Barring that, having a SnS round forced to use taser ranges on loading may not be a bad idea.

I think I'd be happier if SnS rounds just didn't exist. If you want non-lethal.. you carry a Taser, and gel caps filled with narcojet or (maybe)slab.

No. With a lethal round, it might not matter if you win or not. If you deliver the lethal round on target, you can still make the other party pay a premium, even if you lose. Even if the target doesn't take physical damage, you can still inflict Stun. With SnS, you inflict Stun unless you overflow. If you inflict overflow from Physical, you make dead.

The nuyen cost of the round remains a valid comparison. For something that costs you 4 times as much and is more than twice as hard to find, you should be wanting something that is many times more effective.

Well yes, so would I. SnS obliviates the need for tasers, stun batons, shock gloves, and all other types of ammunition save Ex^2 and APDS.

What about the part that if you hit someone, you have a non-trivial chance of knocking them unconcious for 2 combat rounds OR giving them a -2 penalty to everything they do.

It's an interesting thought and I commend you for at least attempting to apply science to it. The problem I see with that is that the projectile is still traveling at high velocity and imparting kinetic energy equal to its mass times velocity. And for it to work, bullet face has to be able to deform regardless of what it hits (meaning something soft and yielding like flesh or rigid and immovable like an armor plate). That's not unbelievable by itself, however, the functional portion of the round would still need to be sturdy enough to resist deformation and destruction of its important parts. Black Talons are designed to deform and create jagged edges to exacerbate wounding characteristics. It's a very simple process that still remains effective even if it doesn't deform perfectly. Black Talon's advantage is that even if it fails, it still succeeds as the round's intention is still at the basic level to penetrate human flesh and cause damage regardless of whether or not it remains intact. Stick & Shock would have to deform close to perfectly to avoid destroying the functional portion of the round, avoid puncturing human flesh, and still be able to adhere to the target and produce contact with its conductors.

Wait, what?

Functionally speaking, SnS against normal targets isn't much better than than APDS or EX-Ex. Sure you have a -chance- to incapacitate in one shot but otherwise it will take two rounds to incapacitate the target. Regular ammo would be about three rounds. There's no additional training or other costs that would make SnS more expensive to -use- than regular ammunition. It's 400% more expensive and has a 150-300% better effectiveness when using an assault rifle.

The training costs and costs of equipping the character are irrelevant to any future decisions. In a real economic sense, you can never recover the cost of training and the cost of equipment can only be recovered so much as how much it can be resold for. However the sale value of equipment is a non-issue since you've already committed to the operation. You're using these sunk costs to justify the cost/effectiveness ratio of SnS to regular ammo. None of those factors should be applied when deciding which ammo to purchase.

Instead of Stick and Shock? Why not have Rubber bullets?
I don't see those in any of the books, and yet they're a well known non-lethal™ alternative. (that is actually still lethal in some cases).

Make them just turn the gun's damage from P to S, and go against Impact armor.

Gel Rounds. -1 DV, +2 AP, deals stun damage, resisted by impact armor

Oh I thought Gel Rounds were rounds that you could put narcotics into You know, like Gel Cap rounds.

Those are capsule rounds.

Those are Capsule Rounds.

I just looked at the stats. Gel Rounds are pointless. Capsule rounds do not have to be loaded with any substance that costs nuyen, just use water filled capsule rounds.

Gel Rounds: -1 DV(stun), +2AP, Impact Armor resists, 4R 30
Capsule Rounds: -- (stun), +2AP, Impact Armor resists, 4, 30

By their description, they say they are essentially hollow Gel Rounds, unfortunately they've never been errata'd to have a +1 DV like Gel Rounds.

Just get capsule rounds filled with water. More bang for the buck, unless you want to make sure you knockdown your opponent, then Gel Rounds are good since they modify their body by -2 for that purpose. To be honest, capsule rounds from an assault rifle is -probably- going to knock down the target anyway since the gel round only has an effective +1 for the purpose of knocking down.

I think you're forgetting the side rule of the gel round. It counts as +2 against the target's body rating to determine knockdown. Capsule rounds do not get that same effect. Although I do agree they need to go back to being +/- 0DV.

As for SnS in my group, we all agreed upon the net hits not staging up the damage. This makes them a nice ammuntion for the face or the sam's sidearm while still leaving the Ex and ExEx for serious take downs.

Kruger. You already know personal attacks are against the ToS.

Also, someone disagreeing with your opinion does not make them stupid or unintelligent. That is also a form of ad hominem attack.

You're right. Computers that aren't the size of your house, being able to fly outside of Earth's atmosphere, limb reattachment, facial reconstruction, and feasible electric vehicles are all obviously garbage excuses.

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but technology seems to increase exponentially. Within the first 100 years of flight we had broken Earth's grip, and you just have to look at the advancement of cellphones to see it there again.

Except that Moore's Law was first described in 1965. So, Computers smaller than a house isn't exactly News. We knew it would happen, and we had a good guess for how long it would take.

Limb Reattachment, facial Reconstruction.. all of those can be extrapolated based on our understanding of the human body.
Tesla predicted cell phones and wireless computer communications in the freaking 1920's, based on his understanding of electromagnetism.

None of the things you've described actually break the laws of physics, or biology.

if SnS was a gelcap round with an electroshock inductor inside. That would probably work, and perhaps not break physics. But as described, they don't actually just don't conform to the laws of physics.

Taken to PM.

Your argument was made so much easier by not quoting the rest of what I said to eliminate the context huh? lol.

I was thinking that you could also go with a house rule that you need a number of net hits equal to the imapct armor of the target for the round to have any effect (as a way to nerf it). It doesn't seem to OP to me, but don't tasers need to stick into skin to work?

To take onto a different track, do contemporary tasers or those SnS experimental rounds work through body armor?

I don't remember ever seeing somone wearing a kevlar vest taking some taser darts in the vest itself. I seem to remember that the taser needs to get a flow of current through the body or across the skin to function.

I don't believe they do. The 'trodes will go through light cloth to hit the meaty filling, or I think if they hit a conductive material that'stouching same meaty filling.

did you just call us whores? lol

Its really as easy as you making the changes in character,..

subtly adding in news clips about the rampant use of SnS against police, a govt crackdown on marketers, and manufacturers,..

with a little creative GMing, you can justify upping their avail. very easily.

course u could just CHANGE it,... but thats no fun

Stick N Shock is a silly ammo type and, in my games, goes the way of the emotitoy.

That would be the way of the Dodo. Extinct, gone, not around anymore. There are so many problems with Stick N Shock before you actually get to real world physics. Plus the astounding idea that it works on spirits with hardened armor (Or anything with hardened armor for that fact) is totally ridiculous. It is much easier to ignore the stuff and act like it never existed. Doesn't affect the game at all either.

Ironically, I did not tell my PC's that Stick N Shock was not available when we made characters. Not one of them took it and actually went for Stun Batons or Tasers first. Made my job easier.

I wouldn't think it unreasonable that any level of mil-spec armor would simply be immune to the SnS by virture of preventing penetration.

This is basically the Houserule I was planning on using for SnS: you can only use SnS in shotguns.

Anyone have experience with using it? Is SnS still broken?

Thanks, -- N

A or B both work well. If you're not allowing them in smaller firearms, don't bother with rule B.

I'm not diligent enough to count up how many pages have been devoted to the stick and shock, as it happens that's as good an argument for changing it as any.

You basically have a lot of things wrong with them. The most obvious issue for me has always been if their able to design a tiny magic science stun bullet that does what stick and shock promises to do why havn't they put similar super science into making lethal bullets better. It is a lot easier from a design standpoint to design a lethal solution then a non lethal one.

Anyway some good optiosn that always get floated.

Ignore SnS. - I still think this is the best option, it gets rid of the cheese while leaving a plethera of non-lethal options ont he table. You just have to work at it.
Cap SnS damage at the damage of the weapons. - Smaller bullett, smaller charge, larger bullet, larger charge.
Don't allow SnS ammo to stage up or stack - Pretty self explanatory, the 6S damage represents the best a SnS is going to give you.


The other much less elegant option is to pretty much put non-conductive armor mods on everything. It is cheap and effective.

Also personally i've always had cognitive dissonance on SnS working on drones and vehicles.

Again, it depends on how the ammo actually works.

In shadowrun we have RFID tags that have a good chunk of memory and more processing power and wireless capabilities than the computer I'm typing this on. And a pair of contact lens has enough space for three laser range finders.
So, thinking about black talon ammo, and (depending on your age) either transformer or bakugan figures, and the taser shotgun bullet mentioned on dumpshock earlier I would like to propose the following.

When shot, the ammo's internal accelerometer triggers the internal range finder.
When the range finder reaches (as a guess) 5 meters, the casing comes apart (bakugan, transform!) with each of the "talons" breaking apart like we see in animations of multi-stage rockets going into outer space.
Each of those talons could be trailing a wire back to the center cartridge. They may also trail wires to each other.
The talons could be designed to latch onto skin and clothing much like a sandspur (check google images if you're lucky enough to have never lived near sandspurs).
The goal of such a design is to have any part of the wires or talons come in contact with flesh, with the talons latching on. Since we're playing the imagination game, this could effectively mean that the bullet becomes a small high voltage low amperage "net".

At this point someone is likely to argue that this would mean a greater chance to "hit" while others would realize that a "hit" doesn't necessarily mean it's an "effective hit". I'll side with both and say that we can imagine that it all cancels itself out. Maybe this is why it reduces the armor value so much. I don't know.

(Note. If I did build this, I'd probably put rfid tags in the sandspurs, hoping that some remain stuck to the clothes.)

I'm not saying this is how it works. I'm just imagining how I would build such a device.

Now why the heck someone doesn't build this sort of thing with lethal amounts of amperage, I don't know. I certainly would.

wow. now my brain hurts

If you REALLY want a knock-down, load a hold-out with Narcoject Capsule rounds.

Toxin Resistance Tests are done with Body + Any chem protection.

Splash is a contact vector so even with an ass-load of bio/cyberware and fairly good chemical protection, even Trolls will have a tough time handling that.

A Streetline Special costs you 100 and 6 cap rounds will run you 180 on top of the 300 for 6 doses of Narco, that's 480 nuyen worth of "drop almost anyone."

It gets even more fun when you get into automatics. Pick up an assault rifle and load it up with Narco cap rounds then use suppressive fire. All you need is a single hit to require any target to impose a "Make a TN 10 Body roll or eat concrete". If you've got a little more cash, pick up an LMG if you want a knock-out hose.

lol @ knockout hose

I love creative uses of chemicals. what else u got?

Assuming you don't mind your opponent being able to act before they become incapacitated, sure it's fine.

Only the side effect of electrosity does, vehicles ingnore stun damage.

I don't. By necessity, all those weapons are high voltage low current. That makes them less likely to jump through the chassis and be able to jump to any of the electronics.

Um. Narcoject is Injection, not Contact. So you need DMSO: Gel Rounds (3¥ ea.) + Narcoject (50¥ ea) + DMSO (10¥ ea)=630¥/10rds.

S&S are 80¥/10rds; as StealthSigma mentions, instant effect.

You can't start applying logic and science to things; where does it end?

Yeah, basically you go after them in initiative and they get to act BEFORE you or you go before them in initiative and the get to go AFTER you. Then they fall over at the end of the combat turn. Either way they still get the chance to gibb you.

If SnS work the way they say they do..

Why would anyone bother building, using, or maintaining any of the Taser weapons?

Defiance EX Shocker 8S(e) –half SS — 4 (m) — 150¥
Yamaha Pulsar 6S(e) –half SA — 4 (m) — 150¥
Steyr TMP + SnS 6S(e) –half SA/BF/FA — 30 © 8R 600¥

if I go Full Auto, Narrow I get +9DV so I'm doing 15S(e) at -half armor. Given that your stun track is only 8+(willpower/2) that's basically an auto-knock out for pretty much anyone, including trolls.

For 63¥ a 'bullet'. Sometimes, that's exactly what you need; for everything else, there Stick-n-Shock.

Indeed, sabs.

And to finish my thought....

For an electrical attack to have a reasonable chance to affect a vehicle/drone I would expect it to be high voltage high current. Such an attack would most certainly be rather lethal to a living creature and thus would be P damage. It works!

Because an enclave may find the carrying of a taser an acceptable safety measure but not allow people to carry guns.

If I could carry a taser past a checkpoint but I had to leave my SnS loaded gun there and pick it up on the way out, I'd carry a taser to work.

There were times when work would have been a lot less stressful if I had kept a taser in my desk. At one point Chuck and I both thought about hanging an armored jacket behind the white boards in our cubes.

TASER - Poor man's Stick&Shock gun.

I think my biggest beef with SnS is that as a mere accesory for a standard firearm, it is more effective in the tasering role than an actual taser. If these things are so good, then ordinary tasers would be loaded with them.

***

I always liked the tasers in the Underground RPG. A chainsaw engine attached to a generator attached to the taser-wires, so instead of a single electrical discharge into the target, you rev it up and can keep the charge flowing until the petrol runs out...

Don't forget that tasers and their ammunition can legally be bought by anyone. For any firearm you need a license. I agree though that, at least in countries with lax gun control, tasers will be quite a niche product - so what? Flintlocks have also been replaced by better trigger mechanisms.

Cyanide is a lethal alternative to Narco. It acts immediately, has many different vectors, and has a high power rating. Couple shots of that will drop even the most...determined individuals.

Gamma-S is another good combat drug, especially if you mix it with Narco. Immediate effect, high power, and causes Paralysis.

K-10 is a good choice if you're hidden or can make a getaway. Load a sniper rifle with K-10 Cap rounds and clip one guard in a cluster of other guards or in a public street to draw attention and watch the fun. K-10 does 18S unresisted and requires an Edge (1) test to not stay PERMANENTLY berserk, NO ONE stays standing after K-10 wears off.

Ringu introduced through the AC system is a nice trick, but Ringu will probably be difficult to get a hold of in quantity, being a chemical weapon and all.

Warp isnt a bad choice either, good for creating distractions and chaos. Fling a splash grenade into a line of guards and watch their ranks get a little....blurry.

Red Mescaline and Woad applied to a crowd of people on the street or an office full of drones will give cops or guards a definite distraction and cause non-permanent damage.



Injection bolt/arrows are a barrel of fun, depending how permissive your GM is. Loading one with a solution of saline and metal particles will shred arteries and veins, causing immense pain and profuse internal bleeding. Throw in a dash of anti-coagulants for extra giggles.

Large doses of insulin can induce a hypoglycemic coma within usually a minute or so depending on how massive the dose is, adrenaline can cause tachycardia and in high doses will send a heart into lethal arrhythmia and kill you fairly quickly. . There are a hundred medications that, at the right dosage, will cure you and, also at the right dosage, kill you. The only thing that separates life saving cure or lethal injection is dosage.

A simple puff of lye will burn exposed tissue and cause extreme pain, blindness if it gets in the eyes, and serious chemical pains. Adding aluminum to lye creates an exothermic reaction and hydrogen gas. A solution of lye coupled with a dual injection of a suspension of any aluminum compound would start the reaction. That reaction inside the human body would be horrifically painful and the hydrogen gas is extremely flammable.

Even something as simple as air can be fatal. An injection of a couple CC's of air can stop the heart in a few seconds if you hit an artery. If you hit a vein, not as helpful but you can cut off blood-flow to a portion of the body. Even if the air is only injected into the skin, it can cause immense pain and necrosis of the tissue, but that will be less useful during combat. Small versions of commercially available cans of compressed air can be fitted into injection bolts and arrows AND they have the added effect of their product being exceedingly cold that will damage tissue.

Chlorine gas is an option for gas grenades, but you have to be careful not to run into it yourself. Injection of the gas into the bloodstream can cause it to be pushed into the heart or lungs and either stop the heart or eat away the lungs. It's somewhat slow and horrifically painful.

FreezeFoam isn't a terrible choice. Injected into the body, you're basically introducing a mass into the body that can block bloodflow, tear through tissue, and severely damage organs. If you manage to get a dose of it into the lung, you can probably burst one lung and choke off the second or drown him in his own blood. A gut-shot will cause crippling pain and massive internal bleeding. A shot to the heart, head, or neck is virtually an instant kill. Hit a joint and you can destroy the use of that limb.

Lidocane in a splash grenade is AWESOME. Lidocane is an anesthetic, most people get it when they go to the dentist to get a tooth blasted out. Injected into the body, it quickly numbs the area of impact. That means that hits from real bullets may not hurt as much, but you wont be running very far or very fast if one leg feels like it's not there and accurate firing gets difficult when your arm is asleep.

Chemical Heaters can be used. When introduced to the veins, you can cauterize veins closed or destroy them entirely as well as quite literally boil your blood supply.

Splash grenades filled with DMSO and an anti-coagulant can help reduce the effectiveness of an opponent's attempts at First Aid on themselves.

If you've got the set up, liquid nitrogen injected into the body would, to use a medical term, suck. Flash-freezing your blood in it's veins and severely damaging tissue, possibly causing massive hemorrhaging.

Mercury introduced into the veins would disrupt the circulatory system due to the difference in density from blood.

High-concentration salt water in a splash grenade may make S&S rounds more effective or bypass Non-Conductivity.

Hell, drain cleaner, bleach, hot sauce, or lemon juice in a splash grenade will seriously wreck someone's shit. Any strong acid or base will hurt if injected or applied to skin. As a side note, bases are better corrosives than acids because bases tend to "stick" more and are harder to control. Base burns also tend to be worse than acid burns and bases are harder to just neutralize on a moment's notice.

Think about your basic home and the selection at the hardware and grocery stores. How much of it is toxic? Consider that a lot of it is still probably readily available in 2070, it's cheap, and it is a virtually untraceable purchase.


Virtually ANYTHING you can snort, snuff, chew, swallow, inject, or get on you can be poisonous. Even drinking lots of water will kill you.

WTF who said anything about burst fire!? Anyway as to the overall efficacy of S&S I refer you to...this thread.



The best thing about Gel Rounds is their \"knock you on your butt\" factor.

Anyway:

I only read Page 1, Page 4, and some of Page 2, but here is what I am currently considering.

Either

-A-

* Avail 13R, Cost 200.
* Net hits do not increase damage above 6S(e).
* Unlike all other electrical damage, Stick'n'Shock is resisted with Impact - 2.

or

-B-

* Avail 13R, Cost 200
* Stick'n'Shock rounds can only be loaded in shotguns, which take a HIT to damage rather than increasing it. (SnS is much more balanced in weapons with DV > 6.)
* AP stays the same.

And either way:

* Nonconductive armor made slightly more prevalent on high-end grunts.

Socinus: Your post is brilliant but... you scare me. A lot. I don't even want to guess if you have knowledge from something! Good post though, I am inclined to make a character who uses some of those mixtures now. Any suggestions on what knowledge skills they should have to represent their familiarity with all those drugs and the ability to deliver them via projectiles?

Kruger: I think you missed a little of my post. You don't have to apply real world physics to SR as a GM could argue it's a different world with different physics and that SnS could be magically enhanced/made or some rubbish. So I was agreeing with you in regards to this world but suggesting it's good to have suspension of disbelief if you're playing/gm-ing SR and you want to keep SnS. Just make up some fluff or go with "a wizard did it"

Reading through some of the posts - I just compared SnS with tasers and the posters are right. It's a far more effective stun mechanism. That doesn't feel right. Tasers should just shoot SnS ammo as you've said >_>

As I have been thinking about this issue I came up with this potential rule change:

SnS rounds do base 4P resisted by full Impact armor, this is affected by called shots and extra net hits and all that stuff as normal. If the round does at least 1 point of Physical damage (penetrates the armor), then the 6S electricity damage is delivered, resisted without the help of armor (since it's already through). Additionally, Spirits are never affected by the electricity, as they lack a functioning nervous system, there is nothing to "disrupt."

In my mind, this still makes SnS rounds effective, but against only what they should be effective against: lightly armored targets. The problem with SnS is that the -half AP scales with the target's Armor. Therefore, the more armored the target, the better the choice gets. The straw finally "broke" for me on SnS when Running Wild came out, and people looked at the Behemoth and said, "Pfft, SnS rounds could take him out easy." The best option for taking down the most heavily armored target should not be the round intended to do the least amount of damage.

That's one perspective. Another is that tasers/S&S are intended to incapacitate a target in possibly 1 shot. But, again, whatever house rule is fun for you; justification is secondary.

Poison is an effective weapon

The Chemistry skill would be an imperative as well as a high Logic. Knowledge skills and specializations will tailor your focus somewhat if you want to focus a bit more. Medicine and First Aid would also be necessary aid skills. For delivery, Automatics and Archery are all you'd really need for close range. Longarms would let you deliver cap rounds at long range and Thrown Weapon (Grenade) or Heavy Weapons (Launch Weapon) to use with a Grenade Launcher would work. Armorer skill would be important to filling cap rounds and your ammunition.

You may want to consider a high Body and some anti-toxin/poison bio/cyberware or magic in case you accidentally dose yourself or walk into your own toxin. Natural Immunity is a good choice if you plan to be using a specific toxin or drug a lot. If you constantly use toxins and chemicals, your GM WILL eventually clue in and do something to counter that so make sure you have back up plans and a wide variety of different toxins and delivery methods at your disposal.

Equipment would be pretty basic; a pistol crossbow (or regular crossbow for more range) and a machine pistol. Machine pistols give you the concealability of a pistol but the suppressive fire capability. It also means you have the Automatics skill which allows you to pick up something with a bigger clip later on if necessary. I wouldn't recommend going with a bow, pistol crossbow is small and simple which is all you need.

You'll need at least a Shop for working with your substances (a facility if your funds allow it) and weaponizing them. A Kit is good for in-the-field repairs and fixes. Good contacts are an asset as well, doctors are good for medical supplies (CDC doctors can get all kinds of fun stuff) and most anything else you can simply buy yourself. A top-notch fake SIN is a must.

A full-face respirator is an absolute must, especially if you're going to be using gas of any kind. A full-body suit with a Chemical Seal isnt a bad choice either.

If your focus is on damage, you'll need to work out how to get in, deliver your dose, and get away while it takes effect. With the right chemicals, you can be both support and assault so you need to choose your loadout carefully. You can even supply drugs to team members using cap rounds. Suppressive fire is your friend, laying it down on a crowd of enemies when you're loaded with Narco cap rounds can drop half the crowd in a single round.

You can go a safer route by using drones to deploy toxins, but that can have it's own problems. You open yourself up to being hacked and it's very skill-intensive.

A special trick I like to use is the Ammo Selector/Smartlink combo, but it works best if you can mentally command your weapon. Fitted to a Enfield GL-67 grenade launcher (in the case of gas or splash grenades) or to a revolver with Increased Capacity means you can carry a variety of different toxins and deploy them as necessary.

No matter what, expect to spend money. Equipment and toxin components can be EXPENSIVE, especially if you're prepping for a hardcore run. Having a good reason for buying a lot of these components can be a good idea, a good cover can keep a lot of heat off you. The entire character concept can work but requires your GM to be flexible and willing to work with you to create new substances that work in the game mechanics.

Neurosis: I'm just sayin you could modify a Ares Predator to do burst fire. Which in turn would give you more an edge using APDS then using just SnS.