So my friend is playing a wheelman and is driving a souped up SUV. He piled on 16 armor and with a 13 body I discovered, reviewing the vehicle rules, that any incoming damage would need to go through 29 dice...that's next to impossible for any weapon to penetrate. Am I reading things wrong or how can I give an NPC a chance to put the car in real danger (though obviously not a way to destroy it immidietly).

Firstly anything less than 16 DV just bounces.

That being said.

A panther assault cannon needs 2 net hits to do damage.
A heavy machine gun, shooting ADPS sits at 7P -7AP

So you need 2 net hits with a heavy machine gun to start doing damage. Add slong narrow bursts (which do not add to armor defeating) and you can be doing 16P damage.

29 dice is ~7-10 hits. so you're doing anywhere between 5 to 9 boxes of damage a round. 8+13/2=14 boxes on that SUV. 3-4 rounds and you can total that vehicle.

But sure, if you're using a 5p SMG with -2AP. You need 9 hits to do any damage at all.

Vehicles have pseudo hardened armor. If you do less damage than their armor rating, they take 0 damage.

The 29 soak dice aint really the problem, thats only around 10 damage soaked on avarage.
The problem is the need to penetrate the 16 points of armor, as vehicles are immune to stun damage.

Edit: Or what Sabs said

Depending on how souped up the SUV is, spike strip, zapper strip, EMP grenades, and the ever popular hacking. Not too familiar on the magic in this aspect, but a conjured stink cloud inside the SUV can also be a problem. On a sneaker note, a free sprite or A.I. could take up residence in the SUV. If your wheelman skimped on the restraints a rollover or other such wreck could mean for a very bad day for everyone involved.

It also depends on how discrete this SUV is with its extra armor. Local LEOs might raise an eye when they see it. That is, unless your wheelman spent the extra nuyen for concealed armor. Then there's the access ID of the SUV, as it won't matter if it's got a chameleon coating or not if the SUV's node can be identified by anyone with a commlink.

These alternatives are hard to figure considering we don't know the full specs of this SUV.

Small arms really shouldn't be able to hurt armored vehicles, so it's good that it works that way. LAW rockets are pretty cheap, or car bombs, or road blocks, or hacking…

concealed armor only goes to rating 10.

After that it's all unconcealed.
a rotating license, or spoofing the access ID of your vehicle is pretty trivial. The hardware version only costs like 300

Isn't there an optional armor degradation rule somewhere? It seems to me, being as your SUV is not in fact a tank with a meter of chobham, if a machinegun hammers on it long enough, the armor should start to degrade. Especially with some of the nastier rounds.

Or, for the poor man's solution, 2 :: of gas in a glass bottle. Molotov time. Sure, it won't "penetrate", but its a safe assumption that splashed on the hood the following will happen:

a) It'll be very hard to drive. Especially if you were using thermals.

b) If there is any grill, cracks in the hood for opening it, or generally anyplace liquid can work its way in, the fire will have a chance to spread to that place.

c) Any outsider peripherals in the area are generally going to be having a bad day.

d) The SUV on fire, or with the giant black scorch marks, its a pretty easy to identify thing. And probably causes some WTF moments for LEOs.

Here's a fast way: ram him.

Seriously. Have the opposition - especially if it's police or anyone who knows their target is an armored SUV - add a ram plate to their car, use a good rigger, and t-bone him. Especially if they can surprise him, you will probably demolish the shit out of him and/or his vehicle. Make sure beforehand you know who's wearng seat belts and who isn't, btw. If anyone is hanging out the side or the back shooting with small arms, they will probably become jelly.

Second option: drop explosives on the road in front of him, and blow them up as he drives over. Not only is that kinda thing an automatic crash test, but remember the "blast against barriers" rules. Explosives become dangerously powerful in confined spaces. Such as between a car, the road, and the retaining wall off to one side.

That said, why bother trying to penetrate his car? Unless he does something to warrant pulling out anti-tank weaponry, there's no reason to get heavy on him; he's shelled out all this money and time for an armored car, and all it's doing is being armored. If I was say, Lone Star, and I saw this car? I'd go, "Ahh, to hell with this," and just tag his ass with a GPS tracker or something. And then let the guys in the actual APC which has a turret-mounted rail gun handle it.

This is true in reverse, too: sometimes the players will attack a vehicle they can't hurt. This will piss them the hell off.

The main issue everyone in your game has to realize is that anything that can penetrate his vehicle armor will probably kill everyone in the vehicle. Either as the result of the rocket damage or the crash following.

However true this may be, it does not have the corollary, "If you drive around in a vulnerable car, you will not be attacked by something that can kill you."

Elemental effects can ruin his vehicle and not necessarily pose a terrible risk to the occupants.

Just look at the stuff that halves armor.
radiation damage - redline laser
fire damage - siawase blazer

Or, there's always the blast rules.

A grenade or charge directly under the car will count as tamped and double its damage output from blast reflection. So that 60 yen HE grenade now has a damage code of 20DV -2AP when its under the car. Though everyone in the vehicle without a rigger cocoon is going to get fried since both explosives and full auto fire are targeted at the vehicle and the passengers at the same time.

You could also just have an air or fire spirit materialize inside the vehicle. No armor penetration of any kind required.

That's debatable, Saint Sithney. Most people don't assume that any grenade use gets double damage from ground reflection. Yes, the rules are very unclear, but that's no reason to mess everything up. Still, a grenade under an armored-but-civilian vehicle should get *some* love from the GM.

[quote]You could also just have an air or fire spirit materialize inside the vehicle. No armor penetration of any kind required. ]/quote]
-For the truth, that. Since the dawn of time, riggers and elementals have hated and battled each other. And nothing says, "I hate you" than a high-force lightning bolt on a rigger-equipped vehicle.

Apart from that, it has to go somewhere, wreck road (Urban Renewal is the SR3 spell, isn't it?), Ice and Illusion (Trid fantasm, due to the sensors?) all conspire to ruin someone's day. Hell, do wreck road and then ice it for fun and games.

The Spirits get confusion (Although a rigger should have SOME decent Will) and that's hilarous for anyone following the now-swerving vehicle as the rigger screams at the spiders trying to eat his face.

Every time someone makes a better tank, 4 cheap-ass options (in combination) will ruin their day.

-Tir.

I understand that putting a big log or other large obstacle in the rigger's path and sustaining Invisibility on it can be a delightful tactic as well.

Most vehicles have radar, ultrasound, etc.

Oh, yeah, usually the ground reflection should be taken into account as part of the base damage, but we're dealing with an armored target here. So, if the grenade doesn't have enough force to penetrate the vehicle's armor, then it is reflected back down, hits the ground and is reflected upwards again. Unless the vehicle is jacked up, this wouldn't really take a full meter of travel, so the concussive blast would then be x2.

Given how messy the blast-reflection rules are to begin with, I'd probably just houserule a 'weak vehicle belly', but I see what you mean per RAW.

That's totally true. But players who haven't really played much seem to not figure out that if you flaunt your armored car part of the GMs job is to portray the NPCs who will decide to expeditiously deal with it, and the driver and other occupants will most likely not survive it being dealt with.

The spirit power accident forces the vehicle to have a crash test, and has a minus to skill of the spirits force

Yeah, a frag grenade blast in a confined space will bounce around enough to eventually bust down any level of barrier or armor. It's pretty dumb..

Target Passengers, Called Shot to avoid the Vehicle Armor.

Difficult but oh so satisfying to nail the driver with stick and shock, when his buddy cracks open a window to shoot.



-k

Exactly, Saint Sithney. I simply don't use the blast rules, because they make no sense and break parts of the game.

Laser pistol.

The laser pistol does 5P against 12 Body + 8 Armor at only SMG range. :/

You need 4 net hits to do damage. Gunslinger adept with laser pistol is going to get a lot more than that.

edit: a called shot could make this even easier for + damage or - armor.

If your jumping-off point is a custom laser pistol specialist, maybe so. Most people aren't built for laser pistols, especially losing 4 dice for Called Shots. It certainly sounds like it might work, but it doesn't seem as practical some of the other suggestions.

The OP asked for no big guns. I used the smallest one I thought would work.

Hehe, that is true. It'll take several shots but eventually...

Hm hm... small arms against heavy armor is a bad idea i guess... i agree with the laser and prepared charges. (And even the grenade... i would give it more damage, but even if it isn't enough to pierce, it should at least give a crash-test with penalties)

Magic is only a good idea in the combat-category (And for that you need to cast it very high, with lots of successes (indirect) or have to beat the OR) And if you can do that, you are not a "small magical gun" anymore.

The other thing is the accident power... but if the driver is good enough, you won't stop anyone if you can't stack the odds against him. Manifesting fire elemental inside is always fun... but i only allow safe manifestation in standing or slowly moving vehicles. If the vehicle is too fast it will splatter the elemental while appearing (yes i do apply full ramming)

Cheapest car-killer i think is looking around for a cheap car not secured and with remote controlling available; Speed the sucker up and ram the armoured vehicle. If you can get the neccessary speed (after 60 nearly every big car has enough damage potential to damage anything)... you can solve many problems.

High force barriers work well.

Not without a crapload of hits to fill the points up, i think.

A Force 12 barrier with just 3 hits is breakable like a wooden door or something.

If i have to guess what would be neccessary to at least slow down a 6-ton armored vehicle i would guess a force 10 (with 10 hits barrier= which equals a 10cm thick brick wall.)

But the rules there are a bit wonky. Let's see: say they are driving in their armored SUV (Body 13) with speed 61+. They will dish out (with ramming the barrier): 26 DV+hits with driving.
The barrier rolls double armor rating. Say 10*2=20 dice= ~7 hits. 19 damage= ~2 square meters hole = vehicle doesn't really fit. But since the magical barrier is "broken" it will collapse.

Since the armor is higher than body, the vehicle won't get damaged at all at that speeds (unless you roll a lot of ramming hits... and your gm wants to use that against you)

By using the barrier you're forcing a crash test, which if failed results in hitting the barrier. The barrier gets hit, probably breaks, may or may not damage the vehicle. What about the passengers inside? They're soaking half the DV that the vehicle did to the barrier with only half their impact armor. Now you roll another crash test, after having wounded the driver, assuming he's not dead. It's going to hurt.

Let me expand on that: Giving the Passengers damage according on the damage you DID with ramming is still a stupid rule (where i suspect they wrote it without testing that particular one). Since technically ramming a sheet of paper at 101+ speed with a Body 20 truck forces 10 damage upon the passengers (double from speed, half because you are the ramming party, half for passengers). Also, ramming something GOOD makes it WORSE.

I myself base damage only on sustained damage of the vehicle. (Only if something CAN significantly damage the vehicle, it gets to the passengers). But that has holes of itself of course.

Also: crashing tests seldom work on shadowrunners *g*

The ramming rules *are* messy. :/ I agree that it's a great way to take down a vehicle, though.

IIRC, Arsenal says that normal passenger restraints should negate (much) ramming damage?

Wow a lot of great responses! Here's the scenario in a bit more detail:

The group is doing a friendly extraction from a small warehouse with a Humanis gang (backed by some high level patrons) as the OPFOR. Since the group consists of a gunslinging adept, a stealthy melee-themed sam, a TM, and a wheelman-rigger. The plan is for the TM and the combat guys to make their splash but the bad guys delay enough to sneak the target out back to a car which our wheelman then starts chasing them down. My idea was to have a guy in the escaping vehicle shooting back at the wheelman but, as pointed out, anything short of an assault cannon or a missile launcher won't do much and those arent' things you can fire while half out of a car window that's moving at 100+ mph.

Well, he would shoot anyway... after a few rounds he will notice that the bullets don't even scratch the paint... call some friends who set up an ambush. (Maybe with two stolen dump-trucks or something, trying to ram or at least block the tank-like runner-vehicle.)

If they can't break the vehicle, but manage to lay down surpressive fire on them and stop them from leaving, they come up with molotovs and keep on throwing them until the runners boil alive in their pressure pot.

The PCs are likely to go in the back door... We always used little drones to cover the other exits, usually also to explore the building. And if it goes as planned I think you are going to have the combat guys in the warehouse and a car without firepower chasing the bad guys. I can see this not working out so well.

So you are saying no matter if the TM decides to lock down all gates and only open the back gate you are going to railroad it into a chase?
If I was the armoured van i would ram the crap out of the tiny car in front. From what you are saying is you have a scene in mind and you want to get there but your players have yet to try mess up your plans inside the warehouse. and you just want to railroad them into a chase where someone shoots at the armoured car. What if the people inside dont get a wind of the extraction? are you still going to railroad into a chase?
may as well just let your players roll perception, notice the target is being moved into a fast car and let the chase begin no need to split the group. Humanis are mixed with them bug spirits anyway arent they? so your team will need all the firepower they need anyway JUST IN CASE

OPFOR: They'll grenade-rain and fire a couple of rounds at the persuit, while calling in backup (The 2 x dumptrucks is delightfully-cinematic, btw) It's how they operate: Bait, misdirect and use overwhelming force.

BEfore the backup arrives again, they'll try and distract the driver with as much directed fire as possible, even though it's futile (Is the supression rule valid in vehicle/vehicle combat?) and then T-bone or Ram the SR Vehicle, likely with multiple vehicle impactors. I assume you'd count the constant gunfire/explosions as overwhelming any unltasound sensor package you'd get.

Frankly, the OPFOR decker/technowhatever could do that quite sneakily by doing a quick search on Municipal bus routes and redirecting one into the path of the SR's. Instant bad publicity & Lonestar's now really interested in the Runners.

Hell, even having someone's commute commit a kamakazi attack via hacked Grid-Guide will put off most riggers. Imagine having 5 coming right at you...

Tir.

Oh, I love the "Invisable barrier" thing. That's plain nasty.

Well to tell you the truth, the escape out the back door (or wherever) is to just make sure the Wheelman gets his piece of the action. After all, it's no fun for one of the players just to sit around watching the other three characters have their big fight scene. Need to give him something to do after all.

just reverse the van at the back door with a bunch of drones holding action/ambush. give order to shoot anyone coming out of the door and tell your teammates NOT to use that door without letting you know
if its a fire door and opens outwards they are either trapped by the van pushing on the door or going to eat a a face full of lead before they can say WTF!!!

Considering the situation is a rescue mission, shooting anything that goes out is not the smartest instructions to give to the drones unless you want to turn the friendly extractee and subject of the job full of holes...

Crater the road directly in front of the moving vehicle.

It ain't going anywhere if it's nose-down in a hole.




-k

From what I've read in your posts, these guys are a cut above the usual Humanis goons and have at least some preparation in place such has a getaway car. Let's assume these guys are reasonably smart and have some emergency bailout precautions in place.

First one would be to make sure you can leave. Obivous oors aren't a good option, so have your getaway car in place behind what looks lke for all intents and purpose like a boarded up vehicle door. Tampering with the boards and a little bit of explosive makes it a good, non-obvious exit.

Now about the getaway car and what it can pack : if you're prepping a getaway car, you're expecting someone to go chasing behind you. So you take some precautions.

A first step would be to have a car with a sunroof. That's the most convenient way to shoot at someone chasing you.
Then pack a few goodies. If you've explosived your exit door, you have someone who know about explosives. A few packs of C-4 with a remote command make a nice deterrent.
A jerrycan of motor oil rigged to spill it's content dumped in a curb can ruin a chaser's day.
Another good tool is a mere shotgun – windshields and camera lenses don't gives much of a view once they've been peppered with lead.

If the bad guys have access to heavier stuff, a cheap AK with an underbarrel launcher and a few AV grenades is just the right thing to trash most normal vehicles and it can even dent th PC's armorbox.
(anti-vehicle grenades aren't described, but from the stats of other AV weaponry, it should be something like 10P, -6 armor reduction on vehicles)

You don't need a huge gun, just a decent marksman with a solid rifle. A Remington 950 sport rifle isn't remotely fancy, but it has range and does 8P -1 AP. Lets say our marksman spends a little extra on his bullets for EX rounds. Now 9P -2. Called shot to the engine for +4 DV. 13P vs 14 armor requires just 2 net hits to penetrate. 15 DV versus 27 dice will average out to 6 boxes of damage.

If you want to make this a big threat in your chase, you still don't need to go to anything particularly large or complex. Give the marksman a Wildhüter Sports Rifle that's been customized with an extended clip (8 rounds), semi-automatic action, and a smartgun system. (All cheap mods that only need a shop or less. You could also chop down the barrel to make it more plausible for drive-by work.) As for the marksman himself, say he's a veteran specialist (Longarms 4 +2 Sports Rifle), and give him under 25k in cyber. An Agility 9 cyber-arm with implanted gyromount to steady his grip (negates vehicle motion), and a smartlink plus low-light and flare comp. Pop some cheap drugs to shoot faster. Like a Cram/Betameth speedball for +3 Rea, +1 IP. Don't forget to use the marksman's few points of Edge, and you should be able to make the wheelman sweat without breaking out anything particularly heavy.

That's the risk you take with a hyper-specialized character, whether it's guy who only has a vehicle and driving skills or a guy who only has heavy/launch weapons and put all his funds into his customized rocket launcher and assault cannon.

Unless the vehicle has the special armor mod against fire – a Molotov Cocktail hit.

Fire damage halves armor to 8 and at 5P base, it only takes three hits on a throw to get in. This means you don't even need anything special, just some gangers with molotov cocktails and hope one of them get's lucky.
With 21 soak dice against fire, those ~8P should be manageable and even if it's two cocktail hits, it won't destroy the vehicle immediately due to it's 15 point monitor. Of course, that damage will continue as the vehicle now will be on fire, giving the other characters a chance to do something about putting it out.

So you get the desired dramatic escape and the character will then add the special armor mod against fire. Which is ok, escaping in a burning car gets old fast.

That's pretty much it. Why build a rigger with ONLY a van? Why not give him just a few drones? A roto-drone can give a rigger PLENTY of spotlight... Or just a doberman, that scurries around back. Drones are cheap now, at least un-modified ones.

You could even just use a spider drone to scout out the place and then use information guided fire to shoot through the walls of the house - IF you have a weapon heavy enough in the van. Since it's impossible to predict that someone will shoot you through the wall, the Opfor don't get a defence roll for the first shot, which could somewhat negate the bonus they get from the wall as additional armour.

He's got a few drones, (a fly spy and an armored and armed doberman if I recall) but his specialty is being the wheelman.