I've noticed something happening at my table. My players are choosing to use nonlethal force not out of any moral obligation, but because it's the tactically superior choice!

Electric stun damage halves armor, has a higher damage rating than a heavy pistol round in every application I've ever seen, hits an armor value which is typically weaker than Ballistic in most applications, and impacts a condition track which is, for most beefy enemies, going to be shorter than the physical track.

Fundamentally, this seems wrong to me. Using nonlethal force should, in my opinion, be a moral choice, not a practical or tactical choice (short of extraction targets and noncombatants, obviously.)


I don't think I'm going to unilaterally change this on my players, because that would be a pretty shitty thing to do, but I would like to come up with something to make nonlethal force much less useful against anyone who's expecting trouble, if only for future reference.

One of the primary things that annoys me is that SnS and tasers halve armor value. This seems wrong to me - a thick, padded jacket will stop a taser's darts quite readily, and most materials simply aren't conductive in any event. You're not going to significantly shock someone through a leather jacket.

I'm thinking, set stun weapon's AP to 0, and making all armor act like Hardened Armor against them. This would make absolute immunity to tasers fairly trivial to achieve (anybody with just an armored jacket!), short of taking called shots to aim for the head or somewhere not protected by armor. It would also give gel/rubber rounds for pistols a reason to exist.

Tasers and SnS are overpowered. Not only do they halve armor by half, but they also have extremely effective electric damages that give you -2 modifiers even if you soak the attack.
Considering all armors to be "hardened" against them is an interesting idea.

As for the "stun over physical" choice, what I do is divide the interval of the healing test by the number of hits to get the time it takes for the character to wake up. This means that the troll at the entrance might be up just a few minutes after the PC knocked him out.

That they are better than regular ammo is the consensus, yeah. One note though is to be careful about nerfing bullets while leaving magicians untouched. In particular, spirits are vulnerable to SnS ammo (the half ap helps get past their ITNW), and if it doesn't exist they get notably nastier.

We had this reacently here on dumpshock. It is a general problem of stundamage beeing much, much too good.



Well, this would put them out of the game, because there is no way you may aim for the head in the rules. Thus you would need to take -armor dice on you attack roll. Thats quite an impossible stunt to pull off.

Putting the AP to 0 would be better though.
The only issue here is, that it would take out the one light weapon you may hurt spirits with. (I guess the sonic rifle would also be possible...)

The next thing able to hurt them would be a sniper rifle with AP rounds....

A quick idea on this subject:
Whenever a character takes more than 4 boxes of stun at once, exchange 2 points of stun damage for one point of physical damage.
(This would also take into account, that a fistfight may end up with a broken nose.)


Whenever a character taks physical damage, he takes half the amount as additional stun damage.

Hehe, oh god. OP, you've gotta search. This is easily one of the most-discussed issues.

Presumably, tasers are fully intended to work through (some) armor. They get 1/2 Impact because the armor doesn't really help. I could see removing that, but the Hardened thing is way overkill. Altering the 1/2 Impact wouldn't affect normal targets too much (a couple extra Resistance hits), but it would really fix the S&S-kills-spirits issue; even setting them to a fixed AP would help.

I got a Force 10 Posession based free spirit to kill so I'm all ears on spirit slaying shenanigans...

- J.

1. Get blender
2. Get hamsters
3. Put hamsters in blender in the presence of spirit->Spirit in Backgroundcount 1-2
4. 3-4 Net hits on SnS or a Barrett with APDS will harm the spirit.

Munchkinny enough? SCNR

Hmm what would happen if you blend a fomori?

More seriously background count and SnS is a good idea. if you can get your hands on a rail gun even better. Oh, does the vessel have to live? If so Barrett and rail gun are out.

Problem is though, you can only permanently kill a free spirit on its home metaplane.

Try making Nonconductivity cheaper (50 nuyen x rating maybe) and start applying it to armor regularly. Someone in world has to have noticed how widely available tasers and such are. It seems like a 4+ rating is necessary to put things back into a reasonable ballpark. You could probably even give a lot of armor a few ranks for free (the same goes for fire resistant and insulation).

One of the best ways to gank spirits is with Mana Static. There's no real defense against it.

A common approach is to not apply +DV for any net hits remaining after the dodge roll.

I.e. the worst you would have to soak against with your halved armor -2 is 6S. (um..noticed there is a Taser with 8s, so that would be maximum)

Obviously a tiny bit of nonconductivity would help, it's not that expensive and even one of the example chars has it .

I'm not sure this nerfs SnS. Who shoots only once? 2x6S should hurt pretty good even if they do not drop the target and it mitigates the risk of killing the target. What happens if you fire SnS in BF or FA? 8S, 11S, or 15 S are bad as well and again no risk of killing the target.

Yes, I've seen the no-net-hits method before. Not encourage not-searching, but I think other people did things like 'S&S is only for shotguns', 'S&S does less than 6S', or just 'S&S costs more'. It honestly has been discussed a huge amount, so I'm sure there are more, better, and fleshed-out ideas in the archives.

It certainly stops S&S beating higher Hardened armor, Dakka Dakka, and it does significantly reduce the number of boxes dealt. I think you're right that it doesn't really go far enough toward the main problem, though. And let's not forget the automatic 6 boxes (-2 penalty for Electrical) and the possibility of auto-paralyze (you never know when they'll fail that check).

Ok, so you nerf SnS and Tazers, players go to something else.

Capsule Rounds (Neurostun+DMSO) will do the same? Gonna nerf that too? Ok, you do that, they move to something else.
They get MGL-6 Grenade pistols and use a mix of stun/gas/nausea grenades and wear protective clothing...so you nerf that too.

Ok, so SnS are good, very good (Yes, I find them very nice myself) - but instead of going knee jerk make a slight modifier instead, otherwise you risk getting an in-game war of attricion between yourself and the players.

1: Let SnS use base weapon damage and keep the Armor mod. (Light and holdout will now be less of a choice as well hidden insta-stunners).

2: Limit SnS to heavy pistols and due to their design cannot be used with silencers. Small pistols and sneaky guys get to be inventive, perhaps starts to use the more limited hand crossbow with SnS bolts for quiet takedowns (Anyone remembers Deus Ex...)

2: Give your NPC's better gear. Give them a few levels of Nonconductivity. Let the area they walk on be completely nonconductive (Rubber soles on their shoes etc).

3: Give your guards the same thing the players use, fight fire with fire (yes, escalation will ensue but the players will at least try to change their tactics)

4: Spirits, yes, they have immunity so their armor is X2 but then also reduced by 1/2 so they have base armor. They might disrupt but they will not have the -2 modifier as they have no central nervous system that is affected by electricity.

5. You could even say spirits ignore non-magical elemental modifiers so they keep their X2 armor rating (Essentially making them immune to SnS).

6: Let your Full-Auto equipped guards go full auto with covering fire, sure they waste 30 rounds or so but as long as ONE player get hit they will get hit by 1 SnS and get negative modifiers themselves.

7: A low level lightning ball from a wage slave mage might also wreak havoc (F2 no biggie but gives -2 modifiers...)

Thats all I can think of at the top of my head.

The answer is, 'yes, keep balancing until there's balance'. If players all go to chemical (unlikely) then they'll at least be doing something harder.

Well, shooting SnS normally would be really nerfed that way.

Shooting at a target with 4 Willpower and 10 poinst of armor. (Really low end!).
You are shooting twice.
Avarage damage(with this rule): 2x(6-((4+5)/3)=2x6=6
Avarage damage(one net hit): 2x4=8
Avarage damage(two net hits):2x5=10
Avarage damage(3 net hits):2x6=12.

So the damage in this case is only half the damage with 3 net hits.
(It gets even worse, if the guy has some better armor or nonconductivity. And there is also some ware to directly reduce damage)
As soon as your effective damage dropped to two, you might start throwing paperclips...
But true, it is easy to outsmart, if you just make a called shot or a narrow burst...

@The Jopp

This would be a great rule, if heavy weapons would have in combat drawbacks due to their size. But this is unfortunatly ignored...
The problem here is, that it would make SnS just to better AP-rounds. Making them even better in some groups.

Would be great, if spirits wouldn't be so easy to summon and so strong.

Yeah, that just makes an S&S sniper even better, though it solves the small end.

The fact that spirits are strong doesn't make it okay for S&S to be a (hard) counter to them, though.

Are you saying only magic should be effective against spirits?

No.

Then what are you saying? Do you generally oppose the idea that mundane AP be applied to spirits? Is it only SnS?

Except for sniper rifles as of SR4A.

Agreed

I believe so. Throughout all of SR canon it has been represented that way. It's why you bring a mage. And it's why you geek the mage first. That is shadowrun. No matter how many bullets you fire there are some things you just can't kill. It's just part of the setting.

I'm saying that S&S shouldn't be vastly effective against spirits, if at all. Some people even say S&S counts as 'elemental' against them, so it's twice as bad (as if -1/2 wasn't enough).

On the whole argument of "Capsule Rounds with Neurostun+DMSO", I think that's a bit of a strawman argument, due purely to the fact that stick and shock rounds are 80 nuyen for 10, with an availability of 5R. Those capsule rounds, on the other hand, are 100 nuyen for 10, with an availability rating of 19R. So they're marginally more expensive, but radically harder to get in bulk.

And they may or may not work on spirits, etc.

Having electricity damage work particularly well on spirits is just a side-effects of the rule system.
It has never been mentionned ever before in the fluff, it has no grounding in folklore or popular culture...

I'm not against having some weapon/ammunition be particularly effective against spirit, but I don't think SnS makes much sense.

Just use pre-Errata Ex-ex and Flechette, and 3e rules for APDS (1/2 armor). This way, the game is more lethal, and all ammo types are internally balanced.

On a side note, Mundanes pretty much need elemental damage (WP, SnS, Tasers, Flamers) or milspec AP weapons (Snipers, Gauss) to even stand a remote chance against spirits of competitive force. There's a thread on this board about a fight vs the Yama King from Ghost Cartels (a F10 free spirit) that evolved into a giant charlie foxtrott because the DM of that group ruled against SnS/Tasers etc. affecting spirits.

I've never seen 'Elemental damage' really defined for damaging spirits, anyway.

F10 isn't 'competitive force', it's game-breaking.

"Competitive Force" is F6-F8 at my table. The Yama King just served as an example of how purchased module encounters can go awry if you include poorly thought house rules.

It's true, the question is more nuanced than we've said. I just don't necessarily think F10 spirits should be running around, or that S&S is the solution to that.

Ofcource electrical damage is elemental damage, but thas has no effect on how ItNW works(only magic and critter powers gets to ignore it)

I agree that it is a side effect of the streamlined rule system, but I don't think it is a bad thing. Just like flamethrowers (the mundane kind) and firebombs are effective, why shouldn't electricity be? IMHO the weird thing is that SR's SnS Tasers do something comepletely different than RL Tasers.

Kill it with fire is even a popular trope.

Whether it is a good thing that fire works against fire spirits, is a different question.

@Mäx: I agree.

It should be noted that Neurostun and other chemical attacks have a large flaw. The fastest chemicals (Immediate) doesn't take effect until the end of the combat turn. Thus your KOed man walking can totally shoot you back, sound the alarm, cast stunball, or anything else before he goes down and often can do so multiple times.

As for SnS themselves, Shadowrun is just an unfixable mess and thus it doesn't really matter that SnS rule. My only problem with them is that in the grimdark future everyone shoots tiny tasers at each other all less-than-lethal like all the time. There's little effective difference between a "kill no-one" mission and a "killing is okay" mission. Even a "kill everyone" mission doesn't look too much different (since you can just throat cut or overflow stun).

That's what I mean, Mäx.

@Elfenlied
The Yama king is a force 9 spirit with the armor of a force 7 spirit.
So lets put it frankly, he has no bases in the rules what so ever.

(Not to mention he has ESS 16, however that should work...)

The point is, there shouldn't be spirits above force 8 or 9.

Just cast Combat Sense on top of a force 9 spirit. Than have fun.
This "Thing" will have around 18 dice on reaction tests, it will attack you with a DV 9 ranged elemental/mana attack/spell and it may have magical guard and/or is concealed.

(Not to mention, that spirits of men could rulewise cast such spell on theirself and would NOT suffer sustaining penalties. )
(Force 9, spellcasting 9 would translate in about 6 hits!)

Honestly, SnS is not fixing that. This thing will just kill you before you even get the chance to engage.
Materialising, suprise test, combat starts, boom.

Now tell me, how to "compete" with such a monster!

(The only good thing is, that free spirits do not get the natural spell power...)

Yeah, a force 9 spirit trying to walk up to you and hit you in the face, thats something you can deal with.
But again only if you are very, very good. (This thing will still have around 12 dice on reaction tests)

I do not know about your table, but I am under the impression that dicepools for suprise test are mostly lower than 20 (which is around the base line for force 9 spirits).
If this thing puts an combat sense with 6 hits on top of it, you are looking at 26 dice...

This means most of the SAMs would eat one unresisted attack. With elemental or even mana damage at a DV of 9, thats more than enough to smoke them.

@Hida Tsuzua
True. The only time you are loading life ammo, is for assassination. If you need to get deep into physical overflow with one or two shots/bursts.

@Irion: Like I've pointed out above, common spirit opposition is usually F6-8 at my table, and Tasers/SnS give you a fighting chance against those. Wide, full bursts will allow you to hit them reliably, even with Combat Sense up. Spirits require a complex action to materialize/possess, and the default spirits do not have any stealth skills, nor can they stealth while they materialize. So at best, it's rolling 8-10 dice for infiltrate, while giving the players -8, so it's around 50/50 for an augmented to spot the spirit before it acts.

I do not say that such a fight is easy. It's not supposed to be. F6-8 are hard hitters, designed to go toe-to-toe with experienced Runners. Tasers/SnS give mundanes a way to contribute to such a fight without being dead weight.

But does that make *sense* is the point. Given powerful spirits, is it reasonable that S&S is *the* effective counter? Should they be? (No. ) Especially given the results on non-spirits (S&S is 99%-always better everywhere).

I'm fine with powerful spirits requiring rockets, anti-materiel, cannons.

Same, that just seems to fit the lore alot better. Magic beats magic... until you pull out the big guns.

Just to put stick n shock into perspective. I know we're talking about a F10 spirit, but the idea that a typical go ganger with maybe 6-7 dice at shooting with stick and shock rounds in a machine pistol could take out a force 3 or 4 spirit irks me a bit. A force 4 spirit should be plenty tough for most jobs and should make a go ganger wee in his synthleather racing suit.

@Elfenlied
Again materialising would call for a suprise test. Because if you would handle this differently, the defending party would always be on the winning side.
If I storm a room, I also need to spend action. If I kick in the door, I also need to spend actions. If I descent from a robe, I need to spend actions. And so on.

The spirit has (if you look at it) the best possible suprise situation. He can choose the position freely and he knows the postion of every enemy. While the enemy has no idea where he is going to pop up.

Just look what it would take for somebody to swing with a robe, shoot the window and "suprise" the enemy. A cool action in my book.
But if I force him to take one complex action to jump and the next one to shoot the glass and the last probably to land, he will get shot.
(This means the only way to open combat is to move very slowly to your target and make the last step with a non-action...


I look at this a bit different. SnS brings down everything around a force 7 spirit. Be it runner or spirit.
This kind of sucks.
The point is, there isn't any in game explanation why SnS works great agaisnt spirits and it works normally against everthing else.
It works great against spirits, because it works even better against humans.

@Belvidere
The main issue with spirits is, that they are two easy to call.
Every out of chargen mage is able to call a force 7 spirit without risking much. (The worst situation would be, that he needs to spend edge, in order to reduce drain)
This spirit will cause around 4-8 dice of drain and you will need around 12 dice to be on the safe side of getting a service.
And still, short of maxed out streetsams, it pritty much can kill everybody.
A agility 6, automatics 4(+spe+smartlink+tacnet 2) =14 dice soldier?
Give him a visibility reduction of 2 dice, some cover and he will have a hard time hitting the spirit at all.

Actually, unless you want to encourage Magicrun, concealable, mundane weaponry that can counter spirits should be available, especially since powerful spirits can be deployed where rockets, anti-materiel and cannons are not feasible (pretty much 99% of the time). I'm not fine with certain archetypes being unable to contribute in an activity that consumes the better part of playtime. So yes, it is reasonable that S&S is *the* counter to spirits, unless you introduce other counters at your table.

As for other ammo being lackluster, see my suggestions above.

As I said, the problem is with the spirits, and it's not okay for another problem (super S&S) to counter that. That's been my whole point.

The goal is to have things make sense, not for arbitrary counters to exist. It's not Starcraft.

Why is the goal not for things to make sense and for non-arbitrary counters to exist?

Honestly, though, trying to fix this one issue will quickly force you to try and fix everything else because of all the interlinked rules messes. This is probably a "save it for 5th edition" problem.

Note: I realize that the following interpretations of the rules are based more on legacy of the setting and my interpretation of the intent of the rules rather than literal interpretations of sometimes poorly-edited RAW. My players tend to be okay with this, because I try to be consistent. Your mileage may vary.

I just apply the base stun damage from the taser to the spirit like any other normal (i.e. nonmagical) weapon.

I also don't apply the armor mods. Immunity to normal weapons acts like armor mechanically, but isn't armor. Heck, some spirits are barely physical. Those certainly don't stop bullets. (This leads to shotguns being very popular to fight spirits - Our group doesn't have a problem with this. Shotguns are traditional for fighting nasty magical things.)

Tasers get good armor penetration because they don't have to perforate your liver to hurt you - just like drug delivery systems. They merely need good contact. Cloth or leather should not be a problem. Plates are a problem. This is why hard shell military armors are proof against all 0 DV physical attacks, like needles,splash pellets, or taser darts.

Tasers work by messing up your nervous system temporarily. Spirits don't have a nervous system. So I'm being kind by allowing the stun damage to work at all, simply because the user really really wants it to (remember, with spirits, wishes CAN be fishes - a good reason for a street sam to not tank his mental stats).

If tasers are a problem in your game, probably the best thing to do is to deny them the increased DV due to net hits. No matter how good of a hit you get, the same charge is getting shot across their neurons. If the shooter is worried that the resulting shot is too weak to bring someone down with 1/2 armor applied, then I'd suggest going for the called shot to bypass armor.

Here's an entertaining link from a taser manufacturer: http://www.stungunweapon.com/faq.html I find the repetitive questions about whether it'll work on bears funny. (The official answer is: "We haven't tried it, but we don't reccomend it - It might get mad.")

… Both those things are the goal, Umaro. It's the arbitrary counters that aren't the goal, especially when the consequence is that S&S is better always everywhere. Two wrongs don't make a right, etc.

As for why SnS can hurt spirits, one thing is that in older editions, elemental effects used to bypass a spirit's immunity to normal weapons. While this no longer the case now, elemental attacks are still really good against spirits due to their -1/2AP effect. SnS rounds do electricity damage which is "elemental" according to SR metaphysics so that's why SnS works so well against spirits.

@Lantzer
This was the first answer... Later on they only said the have no info but "hickers carry them"...

Honestly, the very thought to go at a grizzly with some 8 AA batteries, seems to me like suicide.
It is not that this thing is just big. Wild animals are, well wild. Meaning they are a lot thougher than you would suspect.

I guess it is possible honey badger (around 10 kg) would still be a severe thread for a human. And I would not but it past that little freak to ignore the taser and go for your throat (or your balls, as the rumor has it).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c81bcjyfn6U

I read that one. My earlier comment was based on their discussion when they tested it on a buffalo.

Animals generally have a lower tolerance for electricity though, or so I've been taught at least...

Which was that, again?

SR4 walked away from the grimdark (if it was ever that, i never really got the w40k vibe from it) style and more towards heist style professionalism.

If only you played at my table.

- J.

+2DV -2AP