longbowrocks, as I said, those stats were ridiculous. Most firearms (which certainly doesn't mean 'Longarms and up') cannot reasonably expect to hurt armor 20, even with the very expensive and extra-illegal armor piercing bullets. And assault cannons are not part of the question… they're *assault cannons*.

I think the main thing making this hypothetical archer so ludicrous is the MRSI software. Without it, and with the bow capped at 8, the damage is still high, but is not a tank-killing monstrosity that breaks the scale and logic of the game world.

I guess MRSI software is the combat equivalent of empathy software.

Ok, I've been avoiding it, but I know what you're saying. Still, you gotta admit that there are many more broken builds out there, especially any firearms build with the stats I suggested, since any fight the GM could devise (that allowed everyone else a turn in combat) would hinge on the success of this firearms expert.

Which is why we have lovely illusion spells. Your firearms expert can blast illusions all day, and not really matter if he succeeds or fails. While the rest of the party can maintain their internal power level without issues.

who would pick up a bow in that case?
Under those conditions:

• All SA or better weapons have faster fire rate.
• Most SS weapons can be upgraded to fire faster than the bow.
• There is a pistol in the core book that almost surpasses the best starting bow (one less DV, one more AP).
• Bows cannot use any of the standard ammo types, and have only 7 of their own.
• Bows cannot use any burst fire to increase damage or hit more enemies.
• People say bows are silent, but I haven't seen any negative modifiers for detecting shot source by sound on bows. firearms can get silencers.
• You need to dump points into two attributes to use a bow.
• Bows are very difficult to conceal.
• Bow ratings make it impossible to use "restricted gear" to get a good one from character creation.
• Expansions to Shadowrun generally curry to firearms. Don't expect anything new for your bow.
• Adepts can circumvent normal combat and simply snatch your arrow out of the air as a free action. Failing that, they still have their normal rolls.

In short, if the bows lose both their high max rating and MRSI, then they're inflexible (more so than they already are), a huge BP drain, and have AP capabilities similar to sport rifles (below snipers and assault cannons).


Lol.

*nods*
bows are, and allways have been, balanced like this . .
i still don't see why people are so up in arms(heh) about this.

ok, he has a chance through number of attacks though, and even has points left over to put in intuition and skills that let him notice the illusions. BowMan is tapped out from squeezing every last one of <insert half total BP> into STR and AGI, plus the other attributes he needs to not die (body and reaction).

Actually, BowMan just switchs to a crossbow and becomes an elf. Does he lose DV? Sure, but he gains a mountain of BP to actually make him a playable character. (As well as being able to use the MSRI should he be so inclined)

But then he's just another elf and not a one troll ballista . .

Such is the price of playing cool. I agree 100% that the troll ballista is more awesome. Longbowrocks however is just looking for the optimal damage code, from what it seems like. At which point he saves points by switching to an elf and using a crossbow which isn't linked to strength. Bows are suboptimal now, after the SR4A changes. Sucks for those of us who actually enjoyed being ballistas. We still have thrown weapons though....

Thrown weapons are only STR/2+x though, right?
Of course, the rules for overlapping grenade blasts would be, in combination with 6 arms, pretty evil . .

There are too many points floating around. I forgot which one was my original.
Oh well, I think we were talking about super OKOBowMan, not super NerfedBowMan, so I'll go with that.
if he uses a crossbow, he might as well switch to a grenade launcher. It's better all around. I have no idea what rules crossbows use for firing anyway. Wouldn't it be bow rules?

Oh you naughty naughty boy. does that work like MRSI? If so, that's a hilarious 6*8 = 48 base DV.
Six armed high AGI grenadier is truly the way this game is meant to be played. Lol.

The only difference between a bow and a crossbow is that the crossbow autoreloads (It has a clip of 5, iirc) which would make it easier for you to use with MSRI. Oh, and the fixed damage code which isn't linked to strength. Still uses the same skill, and action to fire.

*snickers*
i can powergame with the best of them ^^
just because Trolls, Bows and STR have been nerfed like they have, does not mean one can not make the most of them sometimes ^^

What? Your not going to wield 6 full-auto grenade launchers and get 60 grenades per IP?

No, because for that i'd have to be an elf (NEVAR!) again and not have anything from a high STR aside from some points of Recoil Compensation.

Are you proposing a limp wristed elf could even LIFT 6 grenade launchers off the ground?

*choke*
I coughed up a lung laughing at that one. Even though I don't know whether the rules will support it.

Its legal. MRSI supports grenade launchers. If you can get a character with enough recoil compensation to actually fire them all (note that for heavy weapons any uncompensated recoil is doubled) you'd be doing 8x60 = 480 DV in a single IP, 1920 DV over the course of all 4 IP's. The primary problem is that you'll run out of ammo too quickly to be able to maintain that damage for long. Not that you need too. You could level a building with damage like that. ((Keep in mind, that the printed stats for a THOR shot is only 30P.))

Yah . . why they release stuff like that even though they KNOW us people here at dumpshock still astounds me . .

Its military grade artillery software. It does exactly what its real life counterpart does. I honestly have no issues with it being in the game, but it should have a more appropriate availability rating (Really? Only 14R, WTF?) and 10,000 is chump change.

14R makes it CharGenLegal right?
At least with Restricted Gear Quality . .
Hell, do the trick where you have a Warez-Network as a 6/6 Group-Contact and one hell of a search programm, and you can get it for much less . .

And a suitcase nuke is 130 DV.
I wasn't talking about MRSI, but rather using one grenade launcher per hand. I guess you can use assault cannons in each hand, heavy weapons in general should be applicable.
Then again, MRSI only supports two rounds for adding. Are you using a different section of the rules?

We have one handed grenade-launchers that can be modded for full auto i think . .

ITS Gonryu from WAR already has FA mode. Where are the rules about damage stacking? I kind of want to try throwing 6 clusters simultaneously.

war! page 140 i think.

ty. I found the grenade stacking rules just now, which reminded me of my question. I came back here and there was the answer!

It's what we do. Well, that and squabble over technicalities of the same 50 things again and again ^^

The question is then if you can fire in full auto while using MRSI or not. Do you roll for every second grenade? Or are you limited to single-shoting 12 times for 6 MRSI attacks?

You don't NEED MRSI with the overlapping grenade blast rules . .

True.

I agree with Stahl. I guess if you really want to you could milk it for all it's worth. I would probably treat the first full auto burst as attack #1, and use the overlapping blast rules for that, the do the same for attack #2 and add the results. Then again that doesn't net you anything special since it takes 2 IPs anyway.
if you treat every pair of two shots as a MRSI attack, you can basically increase your damage by 100% since the extra grenade DVs aren't at 50% power.

Keep in Mind that the Thor Shot's Damage code is for targets outside of the Primary Blast Radius, which is a 200 Meter Radius, IIRC. Anything within the Primary Blast Radius is totally incenerated. Anything outside of the Blast radius suffers the 30p Damage code, as it reduces its effects from the PBR.

So how do grenade launchers work? Here's how it looks to me so far:

• can't use frag grenades or any of those other nifty things in the core book.
• relating to above: can only use mini grenades.
• mini grenades have DV 8 and blast radius 10m, with no fall off damage. That is to say, damage is binary depending on whether you're in the blast radius.

Am I right so far?

So . . what happens to a Target that gets hit with 1920 DV worth of grenades?
And if the blast goes down by 1 per meter, then this is a blast radius of almost 2 kilometers too . .
it is STILL more than both the nuke and the thor shot, if i am not missing something here O.o
and remember, if you use this against one building, you get CHUNKY SALSA in Capital Scale from the first building that managed to withstand the original Blast too . .

See, I would not inflate the Blast Area (Ludicrous Idea). That does not happen with Grenades all that much. Even when you have a bunch of them go off together. The Chunky Salsa effect will obviously be an issue, but not too far outside of what would have been a normal blast radius. In reality, you will get 60 Grenades going off with their own blast radius, and where they overlap, the damage will increase slightly. What you won't get is a Pocket Nuke.

>>if you use this against one building, you get CHUNKY SALSA in Capital Scale from the first building that managed to withstand the original Blast too . .
I love you guys.

Anyway, I think the blast decrement would be applied to each grenade separately, don't you?

*snickers*
still, you get chunky salsa of the grenades going off immediately too.
so if you do this in a building, you go from 0 to building flattened in seconds.
Oh, hey, wait a second. remote detonators for grenades, have them explode in the air, use the EARTH ITSELF for the chunky salsa effect.
they did that with the 2 japan nukes too.

Oh my god. if the walls are strong enough, and only one meter away from your target on either side, a frag grenade has 42 DV. Two meters total to get from the target to the wall and back = 12+10+8+6+4+2 = 42.
Let's try that with minigrenades, assuming the same -1DV/m blast radius.
per grenade: 8+6+4+2 = 20 DV
10 grenades, and all subsequent do half damage, so 20 + 9*10 = 110 DV = Pocket Nuke!
even without the chunky salsa, if everything hits spot on, it's 44 DV.

keep in mind this is once per initiative pass, and you can start from creation with the ITS Gonryu + lots of mini-grenades.

Remind me: why do people think the bow is unbalanced? More seriously, could someone remind me where the stats for mini-grenades are?

Actually, you wouldn't get Chunky Salsa with that blast. You apply the damage to the barrier, if the barrier is destroyed, the blast doesn't reflect.

So . . what . . you get the complete 1920 Damage(or whatevr) and it's all inside the 10m blast radius of the original mini grenade?
Congratulations, we have gone from Nuke to anti-matter bomb which simply annihilates ANYTHING in that 10m circle and then completely stops O.o

Ah, I was doing it per grenade, and noticed that frags wouldn't destroy any barrier under those conditions. since they stack, I guess there would be zero chunky salsa.

Yes. You have learned the secret. We can no longer allow you to walk free.

That's pretty much how it ought to be, in my opinion. Bows should be harder to use and somewhat less effective than modern firearms.

Not every option in the game should be equally optimal. For example, if someone wants to play a mundane without any augmentations, and only average Attributes and skills, then that person should expect their character to be less effective, and more of a challenge to play.

I also think options in the book should be scaled in relation to each other. I dislike empathy software partly because it is overpowered for what it purports to do. Six dice - that is the equivalent of glamour and maxed-out kinesics, combined. That's the same reason why I dislike bows that outperform assault cannons.

Heck, supply me with coke and pizza and i won't even try . . .

Ok, your call. On my end, I like the bows in this game. However, if we treated the bows realistically, they should just be removed because they would be way too underpowered.

Nothing is underpowered. Just suboptimal. Which isn't enough reason to remove it from the game. If it were, the only assault rifle we would have would be the Ares Alpha, the only sniper the Barret, ect ect. Having only 1 option to choose from is boring. Even if it is the best.

I'm not talking suboptimal, like power-gaming wise. I'm talking underpowered, like you see various firearms all over battlefields and domestic crime these days, but no one who's serious about inter-personal violence uses a bow (expect indigenous tribes in some places). It just doesn't have a place in that environment.

All in all, I wasn't looking at the stats in that case. I was effectively saying: "You guys want realistic bows? I admit those stats may be realistic, but they would be more so if we didn't have the weapon at all."

Also, does anyone know where the stats/cost for mini-grenades are? Arsenal lied to me.