The Scene –
A character sneaks up to an unsuspecting target with a combat knife, grabs the target to gag/muffle any noise, and with lethal accuracy stabs the target in the chest/hearth or neck/throat. Result – Silent Kill!

Illustrated Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGwKo68pCv0...feature=related

The emphasis is on the “Silent” and not the “Kill”. The goal is to prevent the target from raising the alarm even if you failed to slay him with the initial strike.

Question –
What skills and in what progression or sequence should be used?
1. Infiltration with unique specialization “Silent Kill”, exclusive to one-handed attacks?
2. Blades with unique specialization “Silent Kill”, exclusive to one-handed attacks?
3. Infiltration (to sneak up unnoticed) + Unarmed Combat (to gag/muffle the target) + Blades-Knives (to deliver the lethal blow with a “called shot”)?
4. Any other simple, yet realistic, combination of skills?

I thank anyone in advance for any feedback.

If I wanted to do it without thinking about it too much, I'd just go for

Sneak up on target using stealth or misdirection.
Stab target using combat rules. (Should be getting surprise, and going for a called shot for extra damage or zero armour, depending on targets armour)
If target is incapacitated in one hit, make a normal stealth roll (possibly with a penalty) to see how quietly you pulled it off.

I would do it like this:

Opposed stealth - perception roll (Heavy modifiers on victims side as appropiate (table perception): you need to get NEAR)

After that: suprise initiative roll. Like in rules.

Takedown: maybe start with a aimed shot (-4) (stranglehold, or throatstrike or something: silent if enough hits)

OR just use the "Finishing move" maneuvre of the arsenal for 2xdamage on a attack (for using 2 action all at the same time)

Good gm may ask for a second stealth roll to muffle/catch the dead body. done.

EDIT: holy NINJAS, Batman... damn we pretty much wrote both the same.... Well, i am with him, it seems

It counts as a surprise round.

Hope the PC scored better in initiative and can kill someone, who cannot defend himself, with a single action.

Yeah, assuming you win initiative or spend edge to go first, two rounds worth of melee attacks should be enough to kill someone before they can react, especially when the target can't dodge in the first round.

Even more so if your runner has extra initiative passes.


Alternatively, just get yourself a mono molecular garrote, I'd like to see an unaware target shout out without a head

If I were to GM the situation I'd call for a roll to sneak up on the target, and one to make sure that the knife actually connects with the target's neck. After that (unless it's a troll) I'd say the target is pretty much dead. It's like the problem of putting a gun against a sleeping person's head. If you go by RAW they might survive, but realisticly there's no way.

Let's say the guy with the pistol to another's head is a ganger with 3 Agi and 2 Pistols. The target is sleeping without armor.

5 Dice pool base
Called Shot - -4 DP / +4 DV
Point Blank - +2 DP
Total Pool: 3 DP

Using a Heavy Pistol (Standard 5P -1AP). The ganger would do an average of 10P damage but the 3 body target would absorb one damage. The 3 body target has 10 physical boxes, thus requiring two shots to the head. One requires a base pool of 8 dice in order to have a good chance of killing a sleep, unarmored target with a heavy pistol in one shot.

I would hand of god those situations and just say "he's dead jim"

Unless, of course, he's the BBEG.

Finishing Move Maneuver with a knife looks like a reasonable approach, but the book also states:
“Gamemasters are encouraged to modify these maneuvers as they see fit or to create their own.” – Arsenal (page 158).
I’d like to actually create a Silent Kill Maneuver.
Any suggestions on creating this new maneuver?

on a successful agility+melee, max net hits = infiltration rank
Target makes Body check TN = DV of weapon
Net hits = health boxes left.
no hits = silent death

I would give the sleeping target a chance to roll edge to produce something like that scene in Grosse Point Blank where his target rolls in his sleep at just the exact moment the poison goes to drip into his mouth. Also, hasn't there been IRL cases of bullets bouncing off skulls in rare instances and the person surviving be shot in the head? *shrug*

That said, I think silence in the area of infiltration and the tool used. Hmm, what about disguised sounds? Probably still considered infiltration rather than disguise, correct?

I don't have Arsenal, is there an example of what qualifies as being a frame work for limitations on a manoeuvrer to keep stuff from getting a must have over powered manoeuvrer?

Another problem is, that with only 3 dice, there is a 30% chance that you dont have a hit and miss.
Even if the ganger aimed as long as possible (one simple action) there would be still a 20% chance that he misses.
That is far too likely to be realistic.

The problem is that those rules are combat rules and not execution rules.
Of course you can use them for executions, if you don't want to create your own rules for the situation, but don't expect the results to be perfect fitting and fair.

My father is a psychoanalist/psychiatrist. One of his patients put a gun to his temple (don't know the caliber... but it was somekind of revolver) and shot. He lost one eye and teh bullet went through his brain... avoiding any of the critical areas. I met him and he was walking, talking and had no visible physical or coordination impairments.

I guess his player decided he had too much edge and opted to blow it on a suicide attempt.

We're actually talking about this same thing in another thread. I say what Garvel mentioned: there are combat rules, and then there are situations in which combat rules are not appropriate.

Oh, I agree.

I just thought to bring up an example of just how survivable can be a human being.

Now, 99% of temple shots are going to end up in death, hence its saner for a GM to assume that such are automatic kills.
But when his main villain, who he took three months to craft -because he was not made, but crafted with loving hands, and with a whole sheet including answers to questions about background the players will never ask about- is stalked and shot to the head, while sleeping, with a Barret -because, yes, players are /that/ callous- in point blank range... you'll spend Edge and burn it like crazy arguing these precedents to support the "strange case of the guys who survived the shot to the head".

If its a ganger... let him buy rural real estate for cheap and start a florist business.

While I think it's reasonable for the GM to give some chance of the target surviving (if BBEG's can burn edge in the same way players can then I think that's reasonable) I also don't think GM's should apply their ruling inconsistently.

If a player can instant kill a goon execution style, then he can instant kill anyone execution style and can be instantly killed BY anyone execution style.

To do otherwise is to start down the slippery slope of railroading your campaign and reducing your players ability to make meaningful decisions.

I don't care how long you've spent crafting your special BBEG, if your players have been resourceful enough to catch him with his pants down then they should be rewarded for that

Edge use a whole different thing, though. It explicitly allows you to avoid certain death… which is what I'm saying this should be treated as. Again, it's not like this *can* even be misused, because it's not for combat.

Yes, please see: "Small Concealed Shaped Explosives"

Anyway... Getting back to Silent Kills with a knife in combat... Please critique:

MARTIAL ARTS - Silent Kill Maneuver.
You must first successfully sneak up on the target: (Your Infiltration Hits – Opponent’s Perceptions Hits) > 0.
You must then win Surprise test: Add +3 to your Initiative.
A character with this maneuver who has succeeded in striking an opponent (whether damage is inflicted or not) will gag/muffle any noise, preventing the opponent from raising the alarm.
You may apply a Called Shot to bypass armor or increase DV, if desired.
Only applies to one-handed weapons/attacks.
Thanks

If your target has a gun in his hand, you're using one hand for your knife, that leaves your other hand to hold his mouth or disarm him. Does the maneuver allow you to do both?

What about hackers using VR to issue alarms? Mages / Adepts using spells?

The maneuver seems fine, just kicking up a few edge cases that may come up out of idle curiosity

You just opened Pandora's Box there. That's like saying "at least no one got hurt" or some other bad cliche movie line that ends up in something bad happening. Now it can and WILL be misused, just you watch.

We normally roll a "how well did it go roll". The GM has an idea of your character idea: are you a silent ninja or a berserker troll, and from the "how well did it go roll" he can adjudicate the results.

Hahaha, SleepIncarnate. I thought about that as I typed, but I still think that something that's fundamentally applicable only when it's appropriate is basically idiot-proof from the get-go. If the outcome matters, is uncertain, or otherwise shouldn't use 'dramatic autokill'… it doesn't.

Exactly. Don't forget, if the PCs are entitled to an auto-kill move, so is the opposition. I doubt most players would like situations where the GM says, "oh, by the way you're dead, unless you burn Edge. Then you are just lying around incapacitated."

Normal Stealth and Attack rolls should be fine.

If you are unsure if you can neutralize the target in one Action phase, use subdual combat. With the abstracness of the rules this will include choke holds. They should be silent enough. The victim may have mental actions though.

You could always use an offensively-modified version of the existing "Grunt" rules (where Grunts handle damage differently, don't get Edge as individuals, etc). Maybe for Stealth Kill attempts, player characters (or Prime Runners, if you want some slick assassin commando'ing a friendly group of Grunts, theoretically) count as spending an Edge point on the initial attack roll if they maintain surprise up 'till then?

The slick ninja PC will still need his slick ninja PC Infiltration abilities to get in close, but then his odds of it going to a mini-cut-scene-death-animation-one-shot-kill will go up pretty high, and he can cut a bloody swathe through Grunts. When it comes time to try it on an important NPC, though, he'll still (hypothetically) get the benefits of an ambush/surprise round, but won't be quite so certain of a near-effortless Stealth Kill.

And, as an added benefit, it's built upon pre-existing rules (for Grunts), so the "GM's call" gets simplified, when deciding what's fair.

I don't see how the Grunt rules make grunts more killable. Having only one condition monitor does not matter if there is only one attack, group Edge does not prevent a member of a group to spend a point of Edge. There just is less to go around, and this does not matter much unless you plan on assassinating dozens of the same group.

I think this is one of those cases where
a) the PC just has to be really competent, and
b) the GM should not want to dick him over.

In the case of a) all you really need is deal enough damage before the grunt gets even a free action to shout. In SR3 this was done with a simple melee attack, of whatever type, during a surprise round.
In SR4 you need to somehow up the damage on the melee, but since the target should be surprised, the simple success test should ensure that, especially with a called shot. A knife, fineblade for instance, Str/2+1, base damage 3-4P. Now apply called shot and 3-4 successes. Obviously armour makes this rather hard to pull off. Bypassing armour means the DV will be lower, whereas a simple called shot will mean more dice for the resistance roll. It's quite probably you won't be able to pull this off on a guy with a fullbody armour.
However, I would use a shock-glove in most cases. Half armour and decent base DV makes for a decent chance of success. If you live in cheat&shock land, where everyone and their mother has electric insulation mods in their armour, then you will just have to use an injector needle with Gammascop.

Which just leaves the problem of sneaking up on the target, which is the hard part of this excercise.


In the case of b) you will simply not give a grunt 10 body and 7 edge. I think using edge on the resistance roll is... fair when you are using lethal damage. If you were just subduing, I would most likely not bother with using edge.

The hardest part, finally, is suppressing or overriding their biomonitor signals with something showing that the guard is indeed fine. . The ninja of 2070 actually needs to be a hacker, too.

Situations like those are when I shoot the guy in the head with the Barret I follow up with a decapitation and put the head in the bed of the nearest mafia boss.

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"At least no one important died." (A million is a statistic)

--



I like to use my character to tell me how hard something is to pull off.

Various Weapons
Unarmed 2 (Martial Arts) - No bone lacing so Stun damage.
Blades 2 (Knives)
Pistols 4
Automatics 4
Longarms 5 (Sniper Rifles) +1 Reflex Recorder

Agility 9
Strength 6

Weapons: Damage/AP includes ammo
Unarmed Damage: 3S
Cougar Fine Longblade (Std Knife): 5P -1AP
Walter Secura (Silenced/SmartGun): 6S(e) -half (SnS)
P93 Praetor (Suppressed/SmartGun): 6P -1AP (EX-Ex)
Ares Alpha (Suppressed/SmartGun): 7P -2AP (EX-Ex)
H&K 517 (Silenced/Smartgun) [Custom Longarm Weapon for our game]: 8P -3AP (EX-Ex)
Ares Desert Strike (Silenced/SmartGun): 8P -7AP (APDS)
Barret Model 121 (Silenced/SmartGun): 9P -8AP (APDS)

Relevant Modifiers
Melee
Character has superior position(?) +2
Called Shot -4 (+4 Damage)

Ranged
Target Point Blank +2
Called Shot -4 (+4 Damage)

Defense
Defender is unaware of attack: No defense possible

Dice Pools
Unarmed: 9 Agility + 2 Unarmed + 2 Specialization + 2 Superior Position - 4 Called Shot = 11 (3 Hits)
Cougar Fine Longblade: 9 Agility + 2 Blades + 2 Specialization + 2 Superior Position - 4 Called Shot = 11 (3 Hits)
Walter Secura: 9 Agility + 4 Pistols + 2 Smartgun + 2 Point Blank - 4 Called Shot = 13 (4 Hits)
P93 Praetor: 9 Agility + 4 Automatics + 2 Smartgun + 2 Point Blank - 4 Called Shot = 13 (4 Hits)
Ares Alpha: 9 Agility + 4 Automatics + 2 Smartgun + 2 Point Blank - 4 Called Shot = 13 (4 Hits)
H&K 517: 9 Agility + 5 Longarms + 1 Reflex Recorder + 2 Smartgun + 2 Point Blank - 4 Called Shot = 15 (5 hits)
Ares Desert Strike: 9 Agility + 5 Longarms + 2 Specialization + 1 Reflex Recorder + 2 Smartgun + 2 Point Blank - 4 Called Shot = 17 (5 Hits)
Barret Model 121: 9 Agility + 5 Longarms + 2 Specialization + 1 Reflex Recorder + 2 Smartgun + 2 Point Blank - 4 Called Shot = 17 (5 Hits)

Enemy Assumptions:
3 Body & Armored Vest Body Armor (6/4). Results in 10P and 10S damage boxes.

Results:
Unarmed: 12S against 7 soak for 10S damage. Single round KO.
Cougar Fine Longblade: 14P -1AP against 6 soak for 12P damage. Single round kill.
Walter Secura: 15S(e) against 6 soak for 13S(e) damage. Single shot KO.
P93 Praetor: 15P -1AP against 8 soak for 13P damage. Single shot kill.
Ares Alpha: 16P -2AP against 7 soak for 14P damage. Single shot kill.
H&K 517: 17P -3AP against 6 soak for 15P damage. Single shot kill.
Ares Desert Strike: 19P -7AP against 2 soak for 19P damage. Single shot kill.
Barret Model 121: 20P -8AP against 1 soak for 20P damage. Single shot kill.

Note that none of these stats are unobtainable by a new character with Restricted Gear. 5 Agi + Suprathyroid + Muscle Toner III = 9 Agi. 3 Str + Suprathyroid + Muscle Augmentation II = 6 Str. (Those are the augments I use, but I didn't necessarily acquire them at chargen). The fact that I can do this with unarmed and blade attacks actually bothers another player in my group who is an unarmed specialist, though I'm constantly reminding him that I need to have certain conditions to do it. It's also the reason that I keep saying Agility is overpowered.

The point is that if you want to pull this off, it's more than doable by a new character. You just need to have invested in being able to do it. Of course, with a silenced or suppressed gun, you do get the advantage of taking two shots. I also favor taking a 3:1 conversion on silent kills for both defense and offense if you want to "cinematic" it and favor the players instead of bothering with rolling, assuming they can successfully sneak up on the target.

Also, going by the 3:1 auto conversion and letting your players know that this will be done if they successfully sneak up on the target allows their character to instinctively know if this is a stunt that they can pull off.

Sure it's silent, but it's also horribly messy - it doesn"t takes a genius of of a guard to think a big pudddle of blood where his buddy ought to be means trouble...

Even worse, the garroter is likely to have enough blood spilling on him to dribble some, leaving a nice trail behind.

I don't really see what what you're saying has to do with what I said. Where did I say grunts are more killable? I proposed a house rule that would make them more killable, that's all.

The Monofilament Garrote (using the same rating as a Monofilament Whip: DV = 8P, AP = -4) was actually a good idea. The intention is to kill the target quietly before he can raise the alarm… nothing was stated about a clean kill or hiding the corpse... which, no doubt, is another problem

The garrote is an exotic weapon and you use subduing rules for it.

Get it modified to super-heat it ... cauterizing mono-garrote. And if a garrote slicing off their head or severely cutting their throat causes a lot of blood spillage, how does a knife to the heart or chest not cause some blood to dribble?

In the case of heart or to some internal organs, the bleeding is mostly internal, and the clothing of the target can catch most of whatever bleeds out.

A severed carotid is much more "external", and there is a lot less clothing to catch and stop the spills...

That and people make really nasty noises when you cut their throats. Which is why real silent killing goes via knife to the spine or liver, IIRC.

I've never really been in a situation where you can just sneak up on THE bad guy.

I've just had to GM this for the bad guys. The players were in a situation where they were visiting faction A, and sleeping overnight. Faction B decided to launch an attack at Faction A, and sent their Ninja stealth teams with ritual magic support (three groups of three infiltration adepts) into faction A's barracks to kill sleeping troops. Faction A was on high security, and knew faction B were around.

PCs being paranoid, even though (or especially) they were friendly with Faction A, and at the heart of their stronghold had watches.

So to deal with this situation I had to decide how to deal with

• Silent kill attacks on awake npc guards by npcs
• Silent kill attacks on sleeping npcs by npcs
• Silent kill attacks on awake pc guards by npcs

The first and third case, is handled fine by the standard rules I felt:
An infiltration roll to get close.
A surprise roll modified by whether you are seen or not
Ninjas have of course the finishing move maneuver, so effectively get two un-resisted attacks
Surprised people cannot react, so I don't worry about them shouting out alarms
I then get the attackers to roll an infiltration test to see how silent it was ((I don't allow trading of die for automatic successes for this roll)

• Zero successes: dying scream
• One to three successes: grunt/sound: give nearby guards a perception roll needing three to one successes (modified by usually modifiers: range/alertness/barriers)
• With four successes it was totally silent...well done you ninja you

In the second case I felt, like an earlier part of the discussions, there is a big difference between combat rules and execution rules, so I mostly applied a "coup de grace" rule: If the target is helpless (asleep, knocked out, bound...), and you strike the target with a killing blow, its very bad for the target. I still have an (unresisted) attack roll made to see how well the attack went, but I don't bother with damage rules if you get two or more successes. I still have the infiltration roll to see how silent the attack was

Happily for faction B, they had a "hand of glory", which meant that sleeping targets stayed asleep. (Never let your PCs get one of these, but they are awesome tools for panicking PCs)

Given that quite a lot of this was npc on npc action, I handled that with a time line: if the pcs do nothing this is what happens.... As the pcs made decisions, and tried things out the time line was changed.

To summarise the above: I felt that the standard rules work really well for attacking awake guards, and an infiltration roll to see how silent it was also seems to work well. For executions of helpless people, the coup de grace rule seems to work well. With PCs and named NPCs, I would probably not use the execution rules, but that hasn't happened yet.

A bit off topic, but the point blank gun survival thing does occassionally happen. Besides the occasional freak instance of a bullet glancing off of the skull when you'd think it wouldn't, it turns out humans only need one of their two hemispheres to function. You occassionally get a person running around with spectacular damage to one lobe.

Also many if not most pieces of armor would actually get in the way of a neck shot. For example right now I'm wearing a very corpy shirt and tie. When sitting with proper posture the collar completely covers my neck from behind and gives pretty good coverage to the sides.

So I'd say it'd be fair to require some kind of roll and often require some portion of the armor bypass called shot modifier.


Heh, just imaging corp procedure saying that, in a sitatuation with hostiles, employees should pop their collars.

I now have this bizarre image of an alarm going off in a corp building and all the employees in their cubicles and offices popping up their collars, which have all been reenforced for a previously unknown reason.
It's kinda funny.

I'm totally having the collar thing happen in some run. That's just some fun flavor.

And I figure most corpers, at least once they reach low level management, have at least basic armored clothing.

Surprise! Armor collars with armor worth 24/22 armor points.

When the player call shots for the neck to avoid armor he instead encounters the heavily armor neck region and now has to deal with 22 impact armor for that knife wound.

Layered armor!

http://americanshelflife.files.wordpress.c...lar-52608-3.jpg

A called shot (bypassing impact armor) to the base of the skull, where the spine meets the brain, at an upward angle should immediately sever all the motor nerves.
The perfect silent kill!

The issue isn't an "its possible" but that in ShadowRun it happens every time.

I recall reading about David Berkowitz (Son of Sam) years ago and how he would sneak up on couples in parked cars and shoot them in the head at point blank range with a .44 Bulldog revolver. More than a few of the victims survived the attacks.

Then you have the story of Amy Fisher who shot (I think her name was) Mary Buttafucco in the face at point blank range and she survived.

While it may not exactly be common that the victim survives a point blank shot to the head, its a little hard to classify it as very rare either.

Again, reality is not important. Cinematic means that it only happens via Hand of God: the villain who just won't die, etc.

Come on.... really?

A bit of google brings to light: Not Buttafucko, but Buttafuoco. ALMOST as bad . Damn I'm immature today.

Back to topic:

I maintain that you really DO need to be competent enough at this to deal enough damage to your target that it actually dies. If you're not, you need a second shot/knife/whatever. A silent kill should also not work from one competent guy to the next, because if it did PCs would get into danger of being knifed in the dark all the time.

Which is normal? I mean: this is shadowrun... you can die at every moment. If the snipers, bomb-makers and ninja-assassins can't kill the placer-characters at all times... what would their motivation be to do it all RIGHT?

Running around drawing attention, not being paranoid enough, and being basically social-skill-less dudes shouldn't get rewarded with imunity to stupidety *g*. I NEED my GM-tools of SURPRISE-death as a reward.

I hope that was ironic. If not I really dislike death by GM Fiat. (Nearly) unavoidable death is OK, but GMs who basically go "You go to sleep. Make a new character." will not see me in their group for another session. After a failed surprise test this would be a valid death, remember you may always burn Edge to get a critical success

Agreed.

"Rocks fall, everybody dies" may be funny as a sideline comment. It's not in a game.