Ok all you rule guru's heres a tuffy.

A conversation started in another thread concerning how to handle stun vs a vehicle came up(see quotes below), so as not to hijack the other thread i am moveing this question to it's own thread .

The question is how would you handle stun waepons vs soemthing with no stun track?


Hers what has been said so far.

Already given my opinion on the other thread. If you want to break a vehicle with a stun weapon, then use the rules for vicious blow.

Just for the record, Body 0 drones have no condition monitor, if they take any damage, they're dead.

But there is a rule in the book that states vehicles completely ignore stun damage. I'm sure of it.

Then again my batting average lately for actually being right about things that I am sure of has approached a sucking of prolific proportions. So take it with a grain of salt

I think I read somewhere that anyone can choose to do physical damage with a stun weapon, by taking a +4 modifier and staging every four successes instead of two. Was that rule superceded with the vicious blow maneuvre?

Because if not, that would be your answer. Subject to usual vehicle damage rules, anyway.

But that pocket knife example is a pretty good one of a BIG hole in the rules. THere should be a section on melee weapons vs vehicles, same as there is for magic and firearms. Imagine a metal base ball bat (mainly so it won't break rather than anything else) wielded by a cybered up Troll against even a moderately armoured (say, 4 points worth) of vehicle. It should be able to smash the car to pate quite quickly - far more quickly than he could with a knife, but that's not how the rules work. Tricky...

A simple solution would be to not use the condition monitor, but instead treat the vehicle with a barrier rating. Assuming that said troll is banging on the fixer's car. Treat the part the troll is banging on with an apropriate Barrier Rating, (such as the door with a BR of 6 or if it is made of fiber glass a BR of 4), and then just apply the BR rules to it. That way the Troll dosen't have to roll for initiative, or roll to strike against the car either. This makes the sledge hammer a lot more effective, and the pocket knife not so effective.

Veracusse

Ya know, who needs hard and fast rules here? If your troll goes at that car, hes gonna do some damage to it, but its still gonne drive mostly fine. The knife is the same deal, cept flattening tires is a moderate wound (I believe that was in R3 somewhere for spike strips). Your not gonna total a car with a bat, or a knife, but your gonna do a few thousand in damage to it.
So basicly, GMs wing it.

Lets for the moment get away from stuff with armor because it confuses the issue greatly as i am the first to admit takeing a baseball bat to a car designed to deflect bullets is going to result in tennis elbow.

In fact Stun vs vehiclar armor is worth its very own discussion( for that matter does stun damage work against a barrier rating?).

So assumeing the stun is of a type a gm is willing to admit may result in damage to the drone how would we go about figureing it.


For the sake of this discussion lets take a body 2 motor cycle with no armor vs a str 4 human armed with a bo staff this is a 6m stun attack( math?)


Does the motorcycle quietly ignore the nice man? Obviously not but the interesting question would be how would we go about stageing it or reduceing the stun when converting it to real damage.

I say that the man with the bo has to stage the damage to D Stun + over to do any real damage to the bike.

I think this because "damage" isonly stuff that impedes the vehicles use, not cosmetics. so it will take a lot of whaking or a lot of skill to damage that bike to a point where it will be harder to use, and even more to destroy it.

our freindly Str 9 Troll with Sledge will have a slightly easier time (11 S Stun) 11 M Stun Vs. vehicle he would need 6 successes to damage the vehicle. since it is stationary, I would give the bike a TN 2 to hit it, so he's gonna start doing samage pretty quick (skill 6) he'll do a point of damage every 3 hit without using any cobat pool. with 6 CP added he'll do at least a point of damage 99% of the time.

our Bo Staff guy on the other hand, assuming again skill 6 and 6 CP will do 1 point of damage 96% of the time, (12 dice vs Tn 2 need 8 succeses) assuming the bike doesn't get lucky and stage it back down.

this is how I would handle it as a Gm.
-Mike R.

Actually I just noticed that you can do physical damage at half the power with a stun based wepon. So that cyber troll is gonna lay waste to that bike. But his still gonna have some trouble wrecking that car.

What about Stun Bolt?

Stun bolt is a mana spell

That's a mana spell, not physical. Mana spells cannot affect a nonliving object. period.

What if the vehicle had a living organism spliced into its control portions? Then the stun bolt would work. And remember, you never know the vehicle doesn't have a human brain plugged in until you stun bolt it.

Clarification: when I say living organism tied into vehicle, I am NOT talking about a rigger controlling the vehicle.

(edited for spelling)

Mmm, dogbrain cars...

~J

you can just take the modifier for deliberatly doing physical damage (i know you can do it with your fists against humans, described as trying to break bones/kill rather than just render unconscious/in a lot of pain). I would personally use those rules.

What about taking a taser to a drone/vehicle that a rigger has jumped into? While chances are good that you won't do much to the object, that stun should go straight into the riggers mid-brain.

This topic was covered pretty thoroughly about 3 months ago. Here's the linky:

Stun rounds vs vehicles

Enjoy.

It all depends on the type of stun. Stun spells would have not effect, because they are designed to worked against a living creatures. In regards to melee attacks I would use something akin to the barrier rules. Everyone seems to forget the BRs aren't adjusted against blunt melee attacks.

So a 11 M stun attack is the same as a 11 M pyhsical attack when attacking barriers ... why not use the same rules against vechiles?

Hmmm, wonder if a hit from a Yamaha Pulsar or similar electricity weapon would cause a bike/car/drone to blow a few circuit breakers or something like that. Since many vehicles are electrically-powered in SR, it seems like it could get even nastier than that. I can't say as I've shot any cars with tasers, but I suspect something bad would happen. Any ideas on rules (either canon or house)?

Far be it from me to pronounce myself an authority on vehicles and electrical damage but...

I do however think, as we all know, that electricity and vehicles are not good friends.

Now as far as whether or not a lightning bolt would mess with a vehicle, I point you to those electric rockets and electric strips (designed to be rolled out and presumably rolled over) as proof positive it definitely does bad things to vehicles.

Zap strips I believe they are called and zap rockets or something. One of you cannon ninjas should be able to puke out a page number by morning. =)

I'm following this thread on account of my complete uselessness against Drones and vehicles in general (ok ok, a well placed barrier 6 can ruin a riggers day) so I'm seriously pondering a force 6 lightning bolt and so.... since you'z all crunching the math and me and math haven't been friends since I stood up his sister at prom. How effective will this force 6 lightning bolt BE against drones and vehicles?

Amaze me with your l33t math sk33lz...

Kong

Depends a bit on the rigger, but generally with a lightning bolt you'll actually suffer a higher level of drain than the Rigger will ASIST feedback. This assumes it's a drone and the rigger's deck is equipped with a fairly cheap device called a Feedback Biofilter. With a Direct connection rather than a VCD the Rigger will be facing physical damage instead of stun and the code will be higher than your drain.

Wreck Vehicle might be a better bet, although given it's TN is the Object Resistance, with a vehicle that's 8 plus body plus half armor so you need some serious sorcery skills for it to do any good. For instance against a Steel Lynx, your TN would be a 14. Even against body 0 drones that can be crushed like a beer can you have a TN of 8. Magic just isn't particularly effective against vehicles under any conditions.

Accident can help if you can summon the right spirit at the right time but in games I've played in the past the Rigger's reaction was high enough that half the time the Spirit was taken out by a hail of Vehicle weaponry as it manifested, and the other half the Rigger's VCR decreased the TN so much he easily passed the crash test.

Honestly? My advice is to buy a sack of grenades. They're cheap and even with no skill at all you have an excellent chance of doing damage with them against anything less than the mini-tank (ie. Steel Lynx). If you happen to have some skill with thrown weapons that's even better.

Safe to be in a car

Cars electrical system was still running

These are just two things I found showing lighting not to be a good attack against vehicles. Through my experience as an electrician on high voltage power systems, I have learned electricity will always take the shortes route to ground and of the least resistence. Now if you hit a car with electricity chances are it will not do anything to the electrical system, it will just shoot around the body into a ground. Also if the drone is flying it will be less suseptible to lighting. Most aircraft are designed to be hit by lightening, that is why the have an antenna trailing the wings to bleed off the static build up in to the atmosphere and to give lightning a "safe" path through the air craft to avoid it hitting anything it might destroy.

All in all I think lighting has no real chance of hurting a modern day vehicle.

Tasers will not really do anything either. First off if lightening which is a hell of a lot more powerful then a taser can't destroy a car I think the taser has no chance. Second the taser will send electricity from one pole to the next acrss the skin of the car, chances are you would not even feel the electricty if you were touching the car. You would have to be wet to feel even a little bit.

I work around high voltage stuff all day and have been popped by a lot of it. Since the electricity is looking for the lease resistence and shortest path to ground I have rarely been hit hard. Same thing will happen with cars.

If you want a good spell to use try flame thrower, pretty much the same spell just fire instead, at least with it you will blind the rigger.

Also with the zapp strips, all you would need to do is under coat the vehicle with rubber and run a dedcated ground from the chassis to a feeler that rides the ground as you drive. The zap strip just acts as a ground and pumps juice directly into the engine screwing it up. If the engine is insultated being grounded by a dedicated line it won't be shorted out.


EDIT another good article on lightning striking airplanes

Fair enough but doesn't that mean that we've used our leet science skills to essentially veto the SR rules? Why would they put in Zap strips and Zap rockets if they are useless against vehicles?

Grenades? I'm a monkey shaman, I don't blow people up!

Kong

Without my books in front of me, I will speak thusly:

If your average cybered troll can batter down a Physical Barrier with her hands, your average cybered troll can beat the drek out of a car with her hands. It all comes down to Barrier Rating:

A normal cars' barrier rating is about a 5-6 (this comes from calculating the damage done by a car bomb...WhiteRabbit would remember this particular bomb). Add armour and the barrier rating goes up, depending on what kind of armour we're talking about here. AV armour goes up I think it's something like 2 barrier-points per point of AV, while it only goes up 1 point per point of Personal Armour. Thus, a tank will be nigh impossible but a car armoured against small-arms-fire (your average armoured Mitsubishi Nightsky) can get fragged up if you take enough time.

And also in this case, the car's body will be able to soak most of that damage anyway, since shooting a car automatically halves the power of the weapon, and cuts the power-level by one. So take Ms Troll: 12M becomes 6L before the barrier rating of the car becomes an issue. Your Nightsky with 4 ballistic armour (a decent amount, but not obtrusive) reduces that further to 2L; THEN the barrier comes into play. 10pt Barriers take 2 boxes on a 10 point 'condition monitor'. Unlike Physical Barriers, a car does not refresh at the end of the pass. If Ms. Troll hits the car five more times, in the same place, she'll bash a hole through it. If it's done in an important place (hood, fender, window), it can be a problem. If it's just on a door, not really much of a problem. If she were to have shot it with an Assault Rifle, she would have given it the light wound much earlier, and quicker. It is still drivable, however.

As for the taser affecting the passengers, not on your life. The rigger, however, might take a bit of stun damage from the low level of bio-feedback the taser might push through the sensor system. If it's just being datajack controlled, they're essentally a passneger. I'd still give it a 50% chance to NOT affect the rigger just because you'd probably have to hit an actual sensor to cause damage, and they're usually concealed.

Did I cover everything?

Electrical circuits need either a ground or a return.

Ground is usually easier to arrange in a hurry.

~J