So in my ongoing game, one of my PCs has a vehicle with an armor value of 9, a Lone Star Black Mariah. At first I thought nothing of it, but now that we've played a few sessions, my problem with it is this: To damage it, I need an attack with a power of 20, which more or less nothing has, and even then it would get staged down to a power of 1. And if I use AV rockets and missles, which are 16D, the van gets hit for 12D damage, which is more or less guaranteed to destroy it. Essentially, using the range of weaponry available to me in the books I have, my options are doing either nothing to the vehicle, or destroying it outright. The last couple missions, they just kind of drove around in circles and he either fired the turreted LMG or ran people over, laughing from inside at all the bullets and whatnot pinging off.

Pretty much the only way I've been able to deal with it is by coming up with plot reasons to deprive him of the use of it, which as a GM I hate doing, so suggestions would be appreciated.

Magic, hacking, APDS rounds from a really big gun, just to name a few. The GM shouldn't be afraid to take toys away from the players when the players take excessive advantage of such toys and end up ruining the game. Send them on a run where they're expected, and have a sniper with a pimped out rifle and APDS rounds tear through their armor, teach them that their toy isn't so impenetrable (which goes to next GM note, never be afraid to fudge the numbers in favor of the story).

DURF. This post is about 3E. I get that now. Disregard.

Being obvious like that will not win the GM any friends, you need to be subtle.

Send them on a few runs where their vehicle cannot go (such as the sewers), simply limit the use of the vehicle and you will find you don't need to worry about it too much.

My suggestions are to either get more granular with how things like vehicle armor work, or just have someone blow it up with an AVR or a magnetic mine slapped on from a motorcycle or similar. Like this
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/eu...ack-559917.html or this http://articles.cnn.com/2003-08-27/world/r...ani?_s=PM:WORLD

He said that's the only option he's used until now, and that he doesn't like it. I'm not saying destroy the vehicle, but punch a few holes in it to make them reconsider relying on it too much. For example, have a run where the Johnson says that he wants them to steal some weapon specs from an Ares facility. In reality, it's a set up as a PR move to show how much better Knight Errant is than Lone Star at dealing with runners (or vice versa if you're playing with the new fluff that KE took over as the dominant security force in Seattle). It's the kind of shit that does sometimes happen to runners, and it has a well armed force ready and waiting for the team.

I'll have to disagree somewhat. To put it in a slightly hyperbolic way: It doesn't seem to me that turning the game into a risk-free shooting gallery for the PCs is the OP's concept of having fun as the GM. Maybe the OP and the players have a different view of SR (subtle black ops vs. pink mohawk gunslinging). IMHO that should be addressed OOC before continuing the game.

Honestly, if the PCs drive amok, machine-gunning people right and left, they'll have to face the fact that the authorities can and will bring out their big guns.

If you don't want to escalate to that level: Target parts of the vehicle with called shots. The NPCs could aim for the tires to immobilize the vehicle, for sensors to blind the driver or for the turret to keep him from shooting.

If you really want fudge a cripleing damage but let them limp away and hae to shell out to fix it up as well. If they complain about that ask if they'd rather you just blow it up with them in it? Sure it's not too nice butif its runin the game that much maybe it should be done if they don't get subtler hits. If its armoured so its nodamge or dead then they should know its like that and if they bring it out and the law get wind they'll be hit with something made to destroy it.

I'm not a sr3 player but do you have road spikes in sr3 if so something to shread the tiers might be a good alterative.

Have a spirit manifest itself inside the vehicle or use the accident power.

Have fun!

Vehicle armour - one of THE main drawbacks of SR3. We had a group with the same problem - and in our case, it was the riggers totally pimped out van that was worth 750000

I also think you might be misreading the rule about doubling the armour, BUT it's a LONG time ago that I looked into these things. Was it really immune to base power AFTER doubling the armour? Not before?

My suggestions:

a) House-rule it. Two ways:
Make it so that effective power counts not base power. That way you can hurt him, but probably not destroy him, with a HMG etc.
OR make it so that AV rounds do NOT halve vehicle armour, rather they just avoid the doubling. And then hit him with whatever you feel like.

b) Use a mediocre shooter using a heavy pistol with AV ammunition. Yes, not a big gun, a heavy pistol. He'll be hit with 9M or 9S, his armour will be halved to four, and he'll just have to soak 5M or S with his body. Now even world-mechanic wise this makes sense - when using AV rounds, you don't need a big gun, and a HPist is pretty good on a damage/shot basis. I've momentarily forgotten whether the reduction of damage for not using a really big gun still applies - it does make sense, and you could plink up his damage in 1 box or 3 box intervals in this manner. Just make sure the shooter gets away clean and doesn't drop his AV ammo . An alternative is using a sport rifle with AV. A little more damage, potentially a little less power, and it doesn't look so weird.

The story element to actually make this moderately exciting: Have a squad of professionals engage the team. Give them automatic weapons, something you wouldn't want to use AV rounds in because they are so bloody expensive. Then when they fire at the car and find out it's armoured, have them switch weapons to their HPistols, maybe even reloading them to let the PCs see that something is coming. If they don't take the cue, shoot the car up a bit. If you want to reduce the impact, give the hostiles lower pistols skill than their other weapon skills, so that you don't destroy it outright by chance, in the off case that the car can't get two hits on the soak test.

c) Use the SUPER-cheese method: Have occupants of the car be hit by blind fire from the outside, or even through the windshield. Every time one of them is hit, the car takes light damage. Works on everything, even MBTs .

d) Have the bad guys simply run away. When they can't damage the car, have them withdraw. Of course, if the bad guys are defending an objective, then you need to find something for them to do - barring using options a) to c).

Yes, spike strips in Rigger 3. They shred the tires, dealing damage, and force a crash test.



By SR3 RAW (without AV ammo) the power of a weapon is halved against vehicles and damage level reduced by one. If the reduced power doesn't exceed the armor rating there's no damage. So yes, vehicles are immune against weapons whose power doesn't exceed the doubled armor rating (as long as the ammo isn't anti-vehicular).

The idea of using a sports rifle with AV ammo seems good to me (Or maybe a shotgun). For more "punch" you could use a sniper rifle with AV ammo.

(I know that they are allowed by RAW, but honestly, anti-vehicular handgun rounds seem rather weird to me.)

EDIT: double post.

Ok, thanks for clearing that up.

As to AV handgun rounds - weird, certainly. But SR3 does NOT have weapon rules even faintly aligned with real life, so it doesn't really matter. It's a game mechanic, nothing else. It saves you the trouble of having the commando team attacking your runners packing sport rifles - which looks a bit weird, now, doesn't it? Shotguns are an option, I guess, there are enough non-civvy shotguns. When the enemies switch to shotguns it should still make the runners nervous .

However, I still think a house-rule is in order, here. This all-or-nothing approach to vehicle penetration might be pretty realistic, but it makes for a poor gaming experience.

Shotguns are ideal in sr because you're very flexible with your ammo-load. I believe the Remington 990 write-up in Fields of Fire specifically mentions something like that. So having a FRT or CorpSec with shotguns switch to AV-shells makes sense after their cheap-ass ammo bounces.

-EDIT-
But only provide your goons with 2-4 AV rounds. These fraggers are expensive! (and don't forget to use aim actions too).

Heavy armor is a major pain on the suspension.

"Armor-Piercing Potholes" is one way to get at something. All those high-speed chases in the Barrens will really do a number on a car.

Here's a cheap and effective way to teach the players the errors of their way if they find running over pdestrians to be funny :

have one pedestrian do something to piss the PCs off - like srpaying he windshield with buckshot. Sure it won't ge through, but the windshield will get nicely pitted - and an armored windshiled is expensive to fix.

IF they just shoot him to shreds with a burst, make sure the extra bullets do something bad (innocent bystanders, hitting somehting explosive, whatever... You know your players so pick something they won't like)

If they decide to run the guard over, have him flee into a suitably flimsy building - a shop with a glass front where he might get to the roof or somehting like that

Now if they follow though, let them find the hard way that a shop's floor isn't built to take an armored van on the move and drop them into the basement... They can get out on foot, but certainly not with the van.

If they keep doing that sort of crap, turn on the heat along with the increasing bodycount they'll score : put bounties on them, have the cops pull out the big toys to get rid of them.

One neat toy you can pull out is Runaway's air-cushion mines. The players can shoot them before they reach them, and you can taylor the damage to something that will hurt the van without too much damage to the characters.

You can give some grunts a an underbarrel grenade launcher with a few reloads of anti-vehicule grenades. I don't know if they're available in SR3, but they should ot the trick of damaging the van rather than the characters.

Alright, all good suggestions. I made the mistake of not looking closely enough at the ammunition tables, and didn't know that AV ammo was a thing. I thought there were only a few AV rockets and missiles and whatnot, so that should make my job a little easier, even though it's so prohibitively expensive that only higher-tier threats would have it.

Well, YES, it's expensive (if you really want to have it, using SR3 availability/street index rules, 1000 a pop, IIRC), but even so, if a Gang boss or enforcer just had two or three shots, he could make those count.

That's true. And they've torqued off both the Red Hot Nukes and the Halloweeners, so I could plan some comeuppance next time they try to roll into the Barrens.

I'd suggest a house rule: APDS= AV. Why FASA didn't do this to start with I have no idea, seeing how Armor Piercing, Discarding Sabot rounds were developed specifically to punch through heavy armor. APDS in any caliber below .50 equivalent ought to be hard to get, but someone probably makes it.

Yep that is a great idea I totally agree.

An HMG with AV rounds is good middle of the road. Its base damage is 10S, but since its a machine gun you can pump up the power with auto-fire to a good midrange target number.

That said vehicles are an area of the rules that plays at extremes. 9 points of armor is nearly as much as a citymaster. AV rounds are expensive though, and really only available to heavy hitting security. if the players get there hands on some, though, they will definitely be on a power trip, able to take out any vehicle opposition.

The other counter to super-tanks of death is, well, terrain.

There's a reason most corp facilities have pretty darn hefty vehicle barriers.

I remember an experimental system in real life where they could blast pressurized air up through the soil that a vehicle was driving over, the ground changed in a second from solid to almost air, dropping the test car into a hole and partly burying it.




-k

Um, the red hot nukes are not going to use a gun loaded with anti vehicle rounds, they are going to transform his armored car (and him) into a large collection of burning wreckage with one day when he turns the key. Don't screw with a gang full of explosives experts, it's really likely to not end well.

And if they're watching their ride like paranoïds, there's alway the simple solution of taking a few potshots with a a riffle to piss them off and lead them straight into and IED ambush... An explosive-laced roadblock with gangers scattering like scared rabbits (to get out of the explosion radius...) would work like a charm. They'll feel empowered and will probably plow right into the roadblock ro hunt the 'rabbits'. Boom.

Basically offer a rope and let them hang themselves with it.

Time for the Dude where's my van Episode. Have the Van Stolen by Go Gangers. Then have them chase it all over the city as the gangers use it to perpetrate all kinds of silly crimes. (Holding a Candy Store, jacking a shipment of jock straps). Have it plastered all over the front page. Then have them fight the van to get it back.
Just my 2 Cents.

Quite frankly, all those "Screw them over royally" suggestions aren't helping the OP in the least. He specifically said he did NOT want to destroy their ride. He wanted to hurt it, so that the PCs can't go on a rampage with it, but still keep it.

Concerning other suggestions:

Car bombs: There is no way to make an AV bomb by the rules, IIRC. (And I have a lot of reason to remember because we had a BIG fight with one of our GMs once who wouldn't let us make a hollow charge). Normal bombs will have to be VERY big to hurt this car, about 20D, as correctly specified by the OP. That's already a fairly large lump of explosives - and possibly MORE expensive than the odd AV round. Of course, if they can be lured into a tight corridor with solid enough walls to reflect the blast, then a much smaller charge could be used for similar effect. The good thing about this: Even a 30D bomb will only get the vehicle to S damage, which means the PCs will be able to limp home and then spend a metric crapton of money to get their ride repaired.

A HMG with AV rounds is a total waste of money. You don't want to shoot them on full-auto, especially if you bought them illegally. The best period AV gun for civillian armoured vehicles is a sniper rifle. However, that is likely to kill the vehicle. So we come back to the shotguns, sport rifles or Hpistols.

Alternatively he could mirror his players. They have a turreted LMG? Put some additional armor on a Nissan Patrol or one of those Lone Star patrol cars or take a GMC Bulldog security version and have the LEO's hide inside their vehicles (while they call in reinforcements, drones, projecting mages, air support).

Lets see how long it takes the players to get the hint (or waste their ammo, at which point they're going to loose economics wise)

Forgot this earlier: I don't think - names aside - it makes sense to do this. Basically, a handgun fire AV round doesn't really exist, so there is no reason to assume they use APDS technology. While it certainly doesn't make sense to use an APDS as an anti-personel round, penetrating soft and hard armour are very different things. SR uses bullshit tech all the time, so there is no reason why there shouldn't be two mechanically different rounds.

What I had previously considered doing is granting APDS arounds full effectiness against the unmodified vehicle armour value, but still decreasing damage by one step.

So you would have:
Normal: half power vs armour, no penetration if half power <= armour, damage -1
APDS: full power, no penetration if power <= armour, damage -1
AV: full power vs half armour

However, even in that line the half armour seems excessive for AV rounds. There should really be a further devision into man-portable guns and really big guns, but AFAIK there is no division like that.
So what I would divide that up into is:

Man-portable AV rounds: full power vs armour, no hardness, damage -1 (because they are still small)
Assault guns, anti-tank rockets, AV-RPGs, MBT guns, etc: full power vs half armour, full damage

That makes normal AV rounds a lot weaker, so maybe tweaking down the cost a bit is in order, especially as you can get some of the basic AV rockets fairly cheaply already.




Didn't the OP say his PCs HAD a cop car, a Lone Star Black Mariah? You can most certainly make that mirror match, except it doesn't lead anywhere at all. I would also assume his players aren't idiots, they should just withdraw, or find some other way to tackle the vehicle threat.

What's that saying again? Whatever players use, a GM can use too? The purpose is not to destroy the player van, but provide a clear signal not to abuse such tech in an obvious manner.

1) Threaten it. Send them into the Red Hot Nukes' zone. Explosions go off everywhere. The party recognizes bringing the van in risks the van. The target drives his moped over a rickety bridge over a gap.

2) Attack specific abilities. Peppering the windshield with buckshot (or just spraypaint) is a great example. Using magic, you can jam up the guns.

3) Deny it. This is a VAN. It's not a small vehicle. If someone runs into a building, or just through an alleyway or past those anti-vehicle posts, the van becomes quickly useless.

4) Disable it. Set up a situation where the van flips over. Laughs for all. It's heavy, remember that. Watch it drive through the mud.

5) Obsolete it. The target drives faster, flies, is in the matrix, etc. The van just isn't applicable.

The GM should always be afraid to take toys away from the players. The GM holds all the cards; as Voorhees correctly notes the problem is with him, and he's doing the right thing by trying to correct it instead of just resorting to orbital cows.

This goes double for the "fudge the numbers" point—by doing that you destroy the credibility of the game entirely, since you already control almost everything and now you're cheating on the last thing the players can rely on.


Is this a problem? What have your runs been like? As nezumi points out, a van is fairly restricted in the places it can go; unless your runs all happen outdoors or within line of fire of the outdoors, the van isn't going to be completing runs on its own.

Is the player a Rigger?

Another question is whether the player is aware of the vulnerability of his van—if the player is unaware of the AV rules, you've got a problem, but if the player knows the risk all you need is the possibility of a second-line response with AV weapons. Riggermobiles are supposed to be moving fortresses, but you can't linger once you've engaged because it just takes one goon to go smash the "break in case of Riggermobile" glass and pull out a Great Dragon ATGM. As noted, though, the issue is that if the player doesn't understand this you end up right back at the "destroy his toy out of nowhere" plan after a bit of shooting. If you think this is the case maybe I'll brainstorm some ways to reinforce the idea.

The most important rule I took out of studying improvisation is to avoid saying "no" to a scenario—never take a line of exploration and simply shut it down. Your job as GM is to keep things fun and interesting, which means work needs to go into how you say "yes", but no one said GMing was easy.

~J

Have a guy with bad dicepool pull out an AV rocket launcher and shoot at the vehicle.
He'll almost guaranteed miss, but the AV rocket will still explode. Maybe have it rock the van and do some damage. Maybe a piece of shrapnel from the rocket rips through the armor of the vehicle.

Maybe have a go-gang shoot a rocket launcher at the Runners, and miss and blow up a Lone Star armored pursuit vehicle. Showing them that.. their van is not necessarily safe.

+1

Its fine for the player to have the equivalent of an APC as get away vehicle, until they decide to make use of it as a mobile attack platform. If the player wants to cash in that chip, let them run roughshod over the opposition until the sec forces have time to call in reinforcements, at which point the rockets, anti-material rifles, and AV rounds come into play and make the player wish he could have insured his ride. Smart riggers just get in, get their comrades out, and try to avoid combat.

Part of learning to run games for riggers is to learn how vehicle combat is like normal combat on steroids. The equipment is bigger and more punishing, and it usually ends in a big mess. Riggers also have gads of control pool dice. Try to keep rigger fights short and sweet unless the other players all have a role. You might for example allow PCs with datajacks to jack into a vehicle with the rigger to man the Sensors/ECM, or take control of a turret so the rigger can do the driving.

And don't worry about the cost of ammo or weapons for the opposition, just try to keep it logical. You average sprawl gang would never be able to pierce that black mariah's armor, but if the PCs ended up in a run against Miitsuhama, the onsite security chief doesn't want to start accounting for bullets when the PCs are making off with a corp scientist worth millions in investment. I can see the conversation now ...

"pray tell, Major, why did you not respond to the extraction of Dr Roboto with emergency security protocol munitions?"

"Um, I got this months budget and, MAN have you seen the price tag on those things? It was AV rounds and great dragons, or we keep the cafeteria plan ..."

There's also one thing to keep in mind : even if the van takes no damage from the bullets, it will still end up with chipped paint and pockmarked windows. A fresh coat of paint isn't too expensive, but replacing the armored glass is going to cost a bundle.

If the PCs can't (or don't want) fork the bill, driving a vehicule that even a one-eyed cop can say is armored and has been involved in at least one firefight will raise a lot of eyebrows and inconvenient questions. And whoever checks up that vehicule will probably make sure he's got some heavy backup ready to show up when he comes to check the papers.

I'll concur with the need for regular maintenance.

But I don't think an armored vehicle will necessarily raise that many eyebrows (as long as it isn't visibly armed). After all the streets of the 6th world are quite a bit more dangerous than today. I guess many delivery services will operate armored vans which may regularly get bullet marks from the usual rush hour fire fight. I'd also expect most luxury cars to have some level of armor.

SR3 dose have go-gangs hiting stuff on the freeway with air suport.

From the opening post, it is armed (a turret-mounted machinegun). It's also, at least when it left the factory to it's first owner, a Lone Star paddy wagon (prisoners transport). Which means the thing will stand out, especially if it no longer has it's Lone Star paint scheme.
Of course, if the PCs stick to the barrens and other crappy security areas, the bullet marks won't stand out that much (though the machingun might). But if they venture into some decently secured zone they will definitively attract the cop's attention. Especially if it has been stolen, since these vehicules are rather rare out of law enforcement services of one stripe or another.

It's Availability 6/6 days, which is high for a van but not even into "uncommon" let alone rare.

~J

Yes, this is a good post. Much better than all the posts that want to make things un-fun for the players. So... the problem remains that they might NOT be aware of the vehicle rules. In which case you have to teach them - in a fun way, because it's a game.

But really, this is an old problem. You can't take away a player's toys or else he'll be pissed. you also can't just let him run wild with them. SR3 - in some places - strikes a very poor balance for this question. (But then most gear-heavy games do. It's the same with D&D and Rust monsters or Bebiliths. Falling behind in gear is MUCH MUCH worse than falling behind in experience or karma ).

I've thought that one of the problems lie in the comparative crappiness of un-optimised gear. You get standard gear, it's crap. You spend a bucketload of cash on it, it's suddenly really good, but still has that ONE glaring weakness, that now the GM cannot employ anymore, because basically the character revolves around that piece of gear. And as a player I would then just say... "sure, you've just blown up my van that's worth three quarters of my starting cash, I'll, umm... I'll make a new character, because even the 20 karma I've accumulated so far won't make up for that loss."
And all because it's a game, it's supposed to FEEL like it's realistic (in a sense), but not BE realistic, in that we can basically get royally screwed at every corner. We just want to ALMOST get royally screwed...

Although it certainly sounds distinctive. Perhaps the Distinctive Edge flaw for vehicles?

What matters more is the legality code. Its quite possible that junked Mariah's have been salvaged by people in the rats nest or some such and brought back into working order, which could explain the relatively moderate Availability number. Even Lonestar probably sufferes from bouts of needless corporate waste, causing them to dump relatively good condition chassis because they don't have room in their garage.

But its the legality code that will determine how likely a runner is going to be pulled over (although an obvious LMG pintel mount is going to be more of an issue than even that).

Edit - Aaaaaaaand rigger 3 doesn't list the legality. Awesome. Is there a general rule for vehicle legality codes somewhere?

Black Mariah availability is 12/12... in fact its listed in the errata for rigger 3

Okay, I was wondering about the huge Avail jump from 3E to 4E.

It's 18R in the SR4A book. Getting bumped up from 12 in 3E makes a little more sense.




-k

That's what I get for not digging up my copy of R3R.

~J