According to Arsenal:

Laes has an availability of 10F and costs 500 nuyen (table on page 77).

Laes cigarettes have an availability of 12 and cost 25 nuyen (table on page 64).

So, the cigarettes have 1/20th the cost and are completely legal, but they take a little bit longer for your fixer to find on the black market compared to Laes in its native state. The only other difference is that the cigarettes don't seem to inflict 10S damage, but otherwise the cigarettes have the same effects as regular Laes. Since the target is knocked out automatically anyway, not having 10S damage is no drawback.

Is there errata for the cost and availability, or is this how it's supposed to be?

Eh... i was going to write that the cigarette has a weaker effect... but i read over it... and yeah: they are stronger.

They erase 12-(ROLL(Will+Body)-3) hours of memories, while a full dose LAES just takes 12-body.

BUT you have to smoke the cigarette for it. So i guess it has an activation-time of about 3 minutes or such. (All while i guess you could maybe taste something off in that thing). Also only works against smokers who trust you *g*.

But yeah... the price should be higher though. It seems like at least half a dose Laes is infused into the damn thing.

Might be a mistake with the times. Maybe the cigarettes are meant to have minutes.

Thanks for the repies. I think I'll go with Irion's suggestion and make the memories lost in minutes. That'll fix part of it. I'm also thinking they should be illegal. Afterall, if the base drug is illegal, why wouldn't the cigarettes be illegal?

Edit: Yeah, if something such as half a dose is in those, then the price should be at least 250 per cigarette. Maybe they forgot a 0 at the end of the price value. And yes, you're right Summerstorm that the circumstances have to be right for these to work, but that shouldn't be the mitigating factor for making them so cheap or legal. It just doesn't make sense that the cigarettes made from Laes should cost far less and be legal when Laes itself is expensive and illegal. That's just not logical.

I think the discrepancy is partly because the real drug is a secret military product of Tir, while the cigarettes are a competitor (and now, black market) knockoff.

Interesting thought. So, what would stop you from buying a pack of the cigarettes and extracting the Laes? You'd probably get more doses for a still cheaper cost.

But the active ingredient only comes from one place.

*shrug* I'm just relaying half-remembered fluff. I'm not saying the avail/prices are 'correct'.

I doubt it's easy to extract, and why bother?

Just another reason to quit the coffin nails...

There are several examples of this in the game.

A contemporary M67 Grenade contains 1/4 pound (roughly) of explosives, Arsenal lists grenades filled with Rating 8 Plastic explosives.

1 Kilo R8 Plastic Explosives is 800, however enough frag grenades to cut open for 1 kilo of explosives costs 140.

First, that's a contemporary grenade. SR grenades could contain significantly less or more.

Second, that explosive would probably be very specialised for use in a grenade and useless for demolitions (I guess, I know nothing about explosives, that's just what I'd say if someone tried it. I.e. GM fiat.)

It's possible, but contemporary grenades are all we have to go off of.


What specialized quality would explosives for grenades need to have? All they need to do is explode.

Like I say, I know nothing about explosives. Maybe it would somehow be built in the the shell so it could fragment properly.

Frag grenade design has been pretty standard since the 10th century. It's basically a core of explosives with shrapnel around it, the core explodes and throws the shrapnel around.

The design shouldnt be much different in 2070, unless you can think of a more efficient design (in which case, you should call the Army and collect your millions). All you'd need to do is strip the core out, that goes for a 2011 or 2070 grenande.

Yeah, I mean they do all sorts of improvised explosives made from other explosive weapons, neh?

WW2 had impromptu sapper charges made from vehicle mines, current day improvised mines are made from artillery shells, etc.



-k

I must be the one dumpshocker who doesn't have (para)military knowledge/experience...

Time, tools, and expertise are also money. If you're equipped to conveniently buy and strip grenades in the first place, more power to you. Not everyone is, and not everyone has the time to waste. The same goes, I guess, for the laés cigarette… but we can all agree that 25¥ is ridiculous.

So let's say I have 50 nuyen, a garden trowel and 5 minutes to blow something up?

Then you should just set the grenade on the target, cover it with packed dirt and a barrier, and detonate the grenade as-is. (Using the standard timed or remote options, of course.)

And I get to keep at least 5 for myself. Everybody wins (or dies).

Take the trowel and puncture the gas tank of a car. Buy a soda (2-3 nuyen), drink it (no more thirst!), then fill the bottle with gasoline and soak the towel in the gas. Strike the trowel on concrete to create a spark such that it lights the towel on fire. Throw. Estimated time- 3 min.

Any other questions?


No military experience here. Just a huge nerd with a good imagination.

I've got a HUGE imagination on permanent overdrive. That's why I thought grenades were full of some magical explosive that only works on grenades.

At least the Survival Knife from 3E was gone. It contained a stim patch worth 4 times the cost of the knife.

But then War! added the monofilament grenade with "hundreds of meters of monowire" in it.

DO WANT DO WANT DO WANT DO WANT DO WANT DO WANT DO WANT DO WANT DO WANT

The price differential is bad enough, but then you run into questions like, "wait, monowire has almost no mass, how does it make for any kind of good shrapnel?"

I suppose it's "Wolverine" logic. I mean, the comic book character only has normal human levels of strength, but can still push his fist-knives though a hardened titanium vault door somehow.




-k

We did the math in another thread, under very generous assuptions about the mass of each piece of monowire shrapnel and still ended up needing it to go something like 0.25c in order to get it to have the equivalent force of a truck hitting you (i.e. worthy of the 16P damage code).

@KarmaInferno

I doubt that. With normal human strengh he would be unable to walk. With all of his bones he carries easy 100-200 kg worth of metal around. All the time.
(It is always surprising how heavy steel really is)

@Monowire granade
Well, the even get those things to cut anything you would need such a big amount of explosives that everyone would be dead from the explosion, anyway.

You could conceivably do it.

It would work better if you had it set up a little more like a claymore mine with small weights attached to the end of strips of monofilament wire laid across the face of an explosive charge. That way you'd throw the monofilament wire at someone and it would have some actual mass to do damage.

It's not quite effective as a grenade, but if you REALLY had a hard on for a monofilament GRENADE, you could set it up such that the blast of the grenade was focused out a vertical slot down one side of the grenade to cut the wire and the force of the explosion would throw the cut wire outwards.

Definitely not the most practical weapon, but feasible. If you wanted to be REALLY effective, you would set up hundreds of small "nails" around a charge that had monofilament wire running length-wise down the nail such that when the explosion propelled them outwards, you'd have a good amount of mass behind the cutting power.


I've had a design for a weapon in mind for a few weeks now, the "Manwhacker", which is basically a weed-whacker design with maybe foot-long monofilament wire instead of plastic wire.

Yeah. You could also build grandes with shrapnells made out of gold, so magnetic shields would be unable to stop them.
Well, there are no magnetic shields. And there is a lot of stuff cheaper than gold. But yes you could do it.


No, it would be even less effectiv. Because it would be even more expensive to build that.
So you would even get less effect for the buck.
More effectiv would be to get some nails into it and leave it with that.

I can imagine CanRay popping up saying something like, "Back in my day, we just shot a guy in the face and called it a day".

Eh, don't blame me. All the official texts say he has the strength of a normal human that engages in "intensive regular exercise", pressing about 360-some kg. Though the same sources say the metal in his body is only about 50kg - apparently Adamantium is super-light.

Note that when they say, "normal human", they mean, "not superhuman".

He does have the advantage of never getting tired, though, tied to his regeneration.



-k

Oh! You think we had FIREARMS back in my day, did you?

NO! We had to use Hand Razors to dig into the guy's face until we hit brains, and then keep digging until they stopped screaming and writhing around! We WORKED for our back then! Not like today where you have magic recoil compensation and extensive weapon and vehicle modifications and such!

On the bright side, we had maps. But they were uphill. Both ways! Through snow and driving toxic rain mixed with ash so thick that a respirator would last maybe ten minutes if it was a good air day!

You personify badass once more, sir. Bravo.

Assuming your single-molecule-thick monowire isn't vaporized in the explosion.

@KarmaInferno
Well, I guess you should not expect too much from comics and movies. The terminator is also driving cars or motorcycles.

Titanium Alloy Battle Chassis, how much would that weigh with future tech? OK, the motor systems would weigh a bit, no matter what. Still, he should be riding pretty low on the suspension. Of course, there are some rather large people in vehicles as well. Then again yet more, Andre the Giant drove a Mini due to the hydraulic suspension it had which supported his weight. (He's also the reason that anesthesiologists are able to knock out massively obese people.).

Of course, I describe "Money" Johnson as feeling heavier than before, and moving like a bruiser despite fighting like a fencer due to his Titanium Bone Lacing. And the occasional pure titanium alloy bone.

Movie magic and "Did Not Do The Research".

@CanRay

A fucking lot. Depending how big it is.

I'm just guesstimating here, but I'm thinking it's about the size of an Arnie.

But they need to explode *specially*. What's the point of shrapnel without rainbows and butterflies to add to the experience?

See, he knows what I'm talking about. You know, MAGIC grenades. That go boom. MAGICALLY.

What 16P damage code?
AFAIK, mono-anything is 8P -4AP.
My copy of war says the same for monofilament grenades, but maybe it's in some errata somewhere.

Last but not least, a Truck overcomes resistance with blunt force, whereas monfilament works by not meeting any resistance (it cuts like a knife through vaporized butter).
Therefore, no need to give monowire relativistic mass.

I'm no comic buff, but I was under the impression that wolverine didn't get his bones replaced, but rather coated.
Also, I think they used adamantium, not steel.

But no anaesthetic.

Basically, it is what Shadowrun calls Bonelacing Titanium, but with Handwavium . . err, Adamantium . .
And they had to do it while the Metal was at about 850° celsius too.
His healing factor was the only reason for his survival. And why he was chosen. And why he did not go insame. Too much anyway.
Because, yes, his healing factors heals away traumatic memories. No, really, it's true. Look it up. Psychic Sscar Tissue. More or less.

Read the Weapon X Novel some time, it's good enough.

*crazy thought* Quickened Reinforce Spell on Titanium Bone Lacing.

Does work.
Does work on normal bones too.

What's the point? Is there anything in the game that frequently affects bones directly with physical force?

I'm not sure that's possible, in the technical sense of 'reinforcing the *bones*'. SR magic doesn't allow that kind of targeting (and SR4 combat barely does). You might be able to just do it on the whole body, though; effectively the same thing, or better (safe skin).

As for bone lacing, it depends if it's an implant or more some kind of 'treatment', because essence-paid implants have to be pre-enchanted as a unit before implantation. If bone lacing is (fluff-wise) not a single object, it might be a problem. Either way, hope you don't hit wards.

Dermal plating, then?

Possibly. There have been threads about this in the past, and it's a little murky about what's the difference between barrier stats (Armor/Structure) and character armor stats (worn armor, etc.). I'm not sure that a person is a valid target for the Reinforce spell, or whether or not a Reinforced item provides bonus character armor; I've seen it all argued either way.

Personally, I think that the spell is intended for barriers (and destructible objects), and not persons/personal armor. The difference between wearing an armor plate and taping a car door to your back are basically arbitrary, but it's a game mechanic issue.