dragons breath is not much of a flare, it is a blast of incindiary shrapnel.

That's what I said. And again, we don't have info on the effect.

What the hell? Sorry folks. I have no idea what happened there.

shotgun damage with a chance to set things on fire.

Agreed. Maybe an extra bump from the heat on the damage but then just see what's flammable on the target(s).

Apparently, Metahumans are flammable.

"That troll is Flaming!" "Who cares about his sexuality?" "No, I mean he's on fire." "So he's good at sports. Big deal." "You are trying to break my head, aren't you?" "No, I can't think over the screaming of the flammable troll over there."

And no 1/2 Impact? Because the Blazer in Arsenal is already 6P, taser range. 7P with short range (=taser), but no Elemental (=no 1/2 Impact) does seem fair-ish. That, and the weaker 'ignite' effect, instead of the 'napalm' effect.

In that case, normal choke rules? Or fixed spread?

At least physads can't catch him now.

Yeah, because that's what's going on through his head right now.

"OH GHOST IT HURTS AND BURNS AND THE SUFFERING AND... Do I smell roast ham?"

No, because ninjas can't get you if you're on fire.

Oh, I'm well aware. I'm not sure that's the biggest concern on his mind after being set on fire by a shotty.

Of course, it feels like a shotty day, as one of my nightmares put it when I pulled a SPAS-12 out of the trunk of a custom '49 Mercury Eight.

I needed to bring more gun in the end.

The balance in SR3 [other than shorter taser ranges (and a Blazer with flamethrower ranges)] was that the rounds had a one-in-six chance of rendering the weapon unusable until repaired. I didn't find them very useful for this reason, but for your one-shot last-ditch emergency flamethrower needs, I can't think of a better choice, I guess.


In SR3, they followed the standard shotgun choke and spread rules. [And were resisted with half impact armor, as you'd expect.]

I just imagine the tank who lights himself on fire pre-combat like a DnD character I had who was a grapple master. Or a bit like this. You know, like the troll who took a high powered laser to the face and commented on how sunny it was outside.

Thanks for the lookup. So it sounds like SR3 fell on the side of 'flame shells' instead of the lamer, more realistic 'spark shells', as we've been framing the distinction. In reintroducing them to SR4, we can try to be faithful to SR3, or… not. That 1-in-6 does seem prohibitive, to the point of 'I won't bother'.

Assuming we aren't changing anything else (like the Blazer), I still think the shotgun shells should be for-real flame (not sparks), but that they should be significantly shorter and weaker than any real flamer (the Blazer).

If it's flame, it really needs to be consistent with their rules (1/2 Impact), but it can be weaker in other ways. 5P (vs. Blazer's 6P) might possibly be too weak to bother with, but I feel like 7P wouldn't be fair.

Taking away the napalm effect seems like a good sacrifice, and lets real flamers have a truly unique, signature effect; the shells can still ignite things, as we mentioned above, but they lack the 'ignite *everything* regardless' bit.

I'm not sure allowing normal spread/choke rules makes sense if we're talking about actual flame, not sparks/shards. So I feel like a fixed spread effect best models the 'cone burst' we expect, without unnaturally giving the shooter control over what's essentially an 'uncontrolled' type of attack. Numbers can be tweaked, but I'd lazily just take the max wide spread from the shotgun rules, to err on the side of smaller. (I probably wouldn't use the DV reduction aspect, though.)

I feel like enough data's in, so… that's my take. *shrug* If someone wants a gamble factor (beyond the normal weapon Glitch rules), they can always add that. Hopefully less than 1/6, unless you're being extra reckless (auto-fire?).

I would just go with this:
Dragonsbreath rounds
These shells use low-explosive propellant charges to expel burning powdered zirconium out of the barrel, basically turning the shotgun into flamethrower.
When using these shells use tazer ranges and the gun can only fired in SS mode.
6P -half I 12R 140

Yeah it does same damage as blazer, but that thing is truly a real flame-thrower and it does still get the benefits of the flame-thrower rules, while the shells dont.

But… isn't that science describing the RL crappy spark-not-flame rounds? I don't see how they'd be 6P 1/2 Impact, in that case, and taser ranges are maybe even too much. I don't think your suggestion is unworkable, but it's just not exactly what I'm seeing. It's close enough not to worry about it, though, as long as no one gets cute with the SS strict requirement.

So… would you guys buy and use that? Only on Fire-Weakness critters? (Does it work on ITNW?) Does it glare up thermo vision?

That looks a lot like my houserules that i posted earlier in this thread ^^

And I still think 3m is a big plume.

Freakin' Massive, if you ask me.

Well, dropping it to 2m would fit the wikipedia description.

Still too big in my opinion. *shrug*

If you make it 1m, that's in line with the shotgun rules. I know we're just making fine adjustments here, but that's the task we're on. I'm pretty okay with the DV between 5-6, if again we're talking fire, not sparks. Taser range almost seems too long, but the alternative is requiring math during play, or just saying 'taser ranges, X meters hard max'.

Or Taser Ranges without Extreme Ranges, that would equal 15m - like wikipedia states. As for the 2m radius, the flames burn for 2-3 seconds, so you could pivot around

Yeah, drop the Extreme was what I was thinking.

That seems fair, if you refer to it as a 'sweeping fire' kind of action. Given you're using SS, you have the time, heh. Might be a DP penalty, though, because it's not really Spread, it's Walking Fire. I was thinking just use the 1m Spread for simplicity, and then you get the Dodge penalty if you like (and no sweeping option). I prefer it to be a single, brief gout of flame.

Possibly, but thats been on my extra gear file for last 3 months.
Also mine doesn't give the shells the hitting multiple targets benefit.

Just a quibble, but I would say "low-pressure cartridges" instead of "low-explosive propellant charges." Gunpowder is a low explosive by definition, unlike C-4 and TNT, which are high explosives. It has to do with the rate of burning; past a point, IIRC ~21K fps, the compound detonates and is considered a high explosive.

This may have been discussed upthread, but why the SS requirement?


Never. There are much more effective solutions available.

Have we touched on Choke and Spread yet?

Yes, we've mentioned those things.

SS is a balance, inherited edition rules, and realism thing (apparently, they keep burning for a couple seconds).

I'm of the opinion that we should use the standard Spread rules, with a fixed Choke setting (though no one responded when I asked about it).

It's not always about what's effective, but yeah.

Ah. I'm not interested in game balance, although I know it's a consideration for some people.

You mention inherited edition rules, and that makes me wonder if we're talking about the same thing: are we talking about Big D's Temper shells [or fireball shells], or some other type of ammunition?

As far as realism goes, not all pyrotechnic shotgun rounds continue producing flames after the initial burst. [YouTube to the rescue!] And they really needn't: on a serious round, made by a serious manufacturer, with the intention of being capable of fully automatic fire, in 2070, it doesn't seem like there'd be any reason it couldn't be constructed to release its entire pyrotechnic charge immediately. The biggest reason - to my knowledge - pyrotechnic shotgun shells aren't used in fully automatic weapons is because they don't produce enough recoil to operate the mechanism; this wouldn't need to be a barrier in Shadowrun.

Sorry if all this was touched on before, or if it seems I'm talking basically at you, Yerameyahu: I think I've been coming in and out of consciousness as regards this thread, and apparently happened to come to while you were walking by.


Honestly, I don't know if it should be fixed choke or whatever choke the weapon is set to. While I can be said to know a thing or two about a thing or two, shotgun choke really isn't one of those things. I suppose now I'd better go learn some stuff.

Internal balance matters, or the game world gets less believable.

*shrug* Theoretically, a 'serious manufacturer' could invent anything, but I can't see this ever being called a 'serious round'. It's a novelty at *best*. Yes, the RL no-auto is related to the physics, apparently. Presumably, we're talking about the item you mentioned; I didn't drag out the SR3 book.

My thinking was that it's just effectively a wide open 'choke', because of the nature of the expanding gout of fire. Regardless of what you shoot it out of.

SS might make sense for Semi-Automatic Shotguns due to the fact that there might not be enough propellant gasses to work the action, and you'd manually have to jack the next round into the chamber. (Low-Lethality Shotgun Shells are routinely fired from Pump-Action shotguns for just such a reason.).

Gah. I hate when it when science fiction is behind actual technology.

It depends. We don't know the DV and AP of the actual spark shells. What we do know are the stats of the Blazer.

Anyone have the number for FPSRussian? I think we got some testing to do on Zombies. I mean Ghouls.

That's exactly correct. Pyrotechnic rounds like this today don't generate enough recoil to operate the action of the weapon, but this needn't be true: the rounds could easily carry a charge specifically for that purpose, or the weapon can simply cycle itself [this being Shadowrun, and some weapons being somewhat more advanced]. A variety of such options exist. There's no logical reason for pyrotechnic shotgun rounds in Shadowrun to be limited to single-shot mode.

And it has to fully discharge more or less instantly, which the RL ones apparently don't. Again, it's true that someone could probably make rounds that behave almost any way, but we're trying to decide what they actually *did* make.

By 'logical', you mean 'technical'. If you have SA, or God forbid BF/FA, then their base damage has to be uselessly small, or there's no reason for the Forbidden, expensive Blazer/etc. to exist. They *do* exist, therefore they have a reason, so the shotgun shells can't be better.

As I said, that video posted shows some burning material a good two meters from the impact site.

That said, I think it's from splash off the targets, not from the actual cone of effect from the shotgun.





-k

Some of them do, some of them do not. They need not. The video I linked to above is nice, because it shows slow-motion at night, so it's very easy to see when the entire pyrotechnic charge has escaped the barrel.


I'm not sure what you mean by this. What who actually did make? FASA, or real-life pyrotechnic shotgun shell manufacturers?


Well, I mean "realistic," let's say.

I don't share your objection above: some things genuinely are both better and less expensive than some other things, so I don't have a problem with such things existing in Shadowrun. I'd rather have pyrotechnic shells be what makes sense for them to be, and underbarrel flamethrowers be what makes sense for them to be, and if they don't make sense in the context of each other, so be it. But that's personal preference: some people really like the game to be balanced and orderly in this way, some don't.

Yes, I'm talking about the imaginary ammo we're discussing for SR. It need not be as good as theoretically possible. God knows most of the options *aren't*.

I don't think I'm suggesting anything be nonsensical, especially given we don't have DV data on RL ones. We're making it *all* up; there's no reason the DV should be anything related to 7 ('shotgun base') in the first place. It's just arbitrary, so I'm being arbitrary. Again, it's not about game balance and being 'orderly', it's about *world* balance, and being coherent—being believable and making, as you say, sense.

What I don't really see is why these things need to be burst or FA to 'make sense'. Are they not nifty enough without that? People used shotguns long before BF/FA were serious options. They're an exotic, super-specialty shell, which seems totally in line with a minor limitation like this, especially given their intended purpose: to light things on fire, and scare people. You don't need bursts for that, and if you need bursts for something, you'd use real ammo. Shall we compromise and allow SA?

Nothing based on modern pyrotechnic shells would do anything like 7P damage over anything like the area being described. I think that may be part of the problem: we're mixing bastard ammo from the real world with something that didn't make much sense from an earlier edition. I think if I were going to take this on, I'd just start from scratch.


I absolutely agree, which is why "single-shot-only because the ammo doesn't stop burning for a few seconds" doesn't work for me: because these rounds don't do that. It'd be a little like saying you pull the trigger and daisies come out: it's not believable and it doesn't make sense. But this assumes that the person making sense of it is familiar with this type of round; still, you can bet if we pulled this out at our table, the first question would be, "Wait, why only SS?" And I'd have no answer that would be believable.


It's not really a question of that. You should use you vision, and I mine. If one of our visions informs the other, so much the better, but the nice thing about not being at the same table is that we don't have to agree in order to continue enjoying ourselves!

You're right. Lets consider uranium dragon's breath 3.5" 12ga dystopian express catridges, the souped up science fiction version. Same damage as before, but more! plus toxisity damage! Its a small fission reaction in a barrel

In 3rd ed I'd suggest 12D that reduces resistance as fire and radiation damage.

Actually, there was a Punisher Comic that had Uranium Birdshot in it. They shot corrupt corporate executives that hired a gang to force a town out of the area for the mine.

Suddenly, they had a much more... Urgent matter on their hands. Like tiny bits of Uranium stuck in their bodies.

Damned good one-shot. I'm stealing what the Punisher told the idiot that decided to just leave him to die.