Totally agree here. You can't counter: Every out of chargen mage is able to summon a Force 10 spirit with here have this ammo, which punches through even 16 points of hardend armor.

And it does not work anyway.
The lower force spirits become a joke making it even more rewarding to summon the big beasts.
And those are not only great in shrugging of damage, their attacks become also impossible to dodge or to defend against. (Short of using edge)

Spirits immunity rules should change since you mostly do all or nothing with with the tazer weapons being a rather unbalanced equalizer as you either one shot most spirits or do no damage at all with normal weapons.

Resistance to Normal Weapons [Replaces Immunity to Normal Weapons]

1: Add Force of spirit to Body and Armor vs normal weapons.

Example: F4 spirit gains a base 16D6 for resistance (Base Armor and Body is 4 and then we add +4 to both values). A heavy pistol (DV5 AP-1) modified by diceroll by player into doing DV8 AP-1 would have the spirit rolling 16D6 VS DV8 (See point 4 as AP values do not affect spirits).

2: Normal weapons with an elemental effect (Laser, Tazer, Sonic etc) reduce a spirits resistance bonus with their base damage.

Example: A F4 spirit is hit by a SnS round from a heavy pistol (6S'e' SR4 rules), the spirits has 8 Dice Body and Armor 8 vs normal weapons giving it a total of 16D6. The elemental attack reduce this to 10D6 to resist VS the SnS damage value modified by a players diceroll.

4: AP values from weapons have no effect on spirits
5: Secondary elemental effects does not affect spirits.
6: Magical Spells and Astral Combat ignores spirit immunity.

This means that you can (theoretically) always harm a spirit even with normal weapons and it also makes lesser force spirits more useful as they can defend themselves against SnS better and also get harmed by regular weapons.

This would also make F5+ spirits far more dangerous as their resistance pools can become quite large (F8 spirits with 24D6 resistance…)

To the OP: SnS doesn't exist in our game - turning your SMG into a full auto taser is very bad for game balance - which is what you're seeing in your game - its simply the best choice almost all the time. Taser's aren't too bad by themselves, more manageable because they have their own disadvantages (small magazines, tied to pistol skill, pistol range, defeated by insulation) - esp if you hand out a few points of insulation to some opponents.

The thing with me, from a realism standpoint, is that you just can't effectively deliver an electrical charge to someone if you can't get the contacts into their skin. You have to have actual flesh penetration - not a lot, but enough.

The whole thing with tasers halving armor (not to mention hitting impact armor) seems absurdly ridiculous to me. Here, take a look, this is a Youtube test wherein a fencing lamé - a garment with actual electrically-conductive material built in to it is shot with a military taser stun-gun.

The interesting thing to me, though, is that it evidently had full barb penetration. I think that might mean that this is right for the wrong reasons - the electrically-conductive layer of reinforcing metal was interfering with the taser charge.

Still, though, the idea that a taser charge can effectively go through armor - as in, real armor, intended to protect the wearer against grevious bodily harm - and deliver an effective stunning jolt is just wrong. I don't care if the dart fucking glues itself to the armor, it's just not going to do squat to the guy underneath it.

I still don't allow SnS or other taser-style weapons to work against non-biological targets in my home games.

Reason being that they operate by disrupting biological systems to do their work, not by inflicting raw elemental damage.





-k

That seems reasonable.

The cool thing about this thread is it reminds me of a quirk of my players: I've come up with all these possible rules to balance out stick and shock rounds so that they're not some kind of uber-weapon, but to date the only character who has ever used them is currently doing so in a light pistol with about 5 dice to attack. So it's utterly moot, since he's a terrible shot that never does much damage ANYWAY.

I noticed the drift towards SnS in our one home game in which I play(ed) a F6 free spirit PC. We and the opposition were using it more and more on everything. None of us believes in the "SnS is elemental so it works on spirits" argument, but all of us (including me) figured there should be something to get through the ItNW. We were playing runners who were involved in an LA gang war, and the gangers offered no real challenge to my FSPC. Before we ended things because the GM was unable to continue, we were encountering more magical opposition, which was indeed a challenge!

One of the players is taking over GM duties and we are starting an 1125 karma group. I learned a lot about playing a FSPC in the first pass, and want to try my hand at a better constructed version this time. This one will be F8, I think. I would like to offer the gang an alternative to SnS, and I guess at this level the opposition will have access to the bigger guns that do get through. Certainly the opposition will have more magic capability. And maybe the opposition will have armor that can deal with electrical damage better and the problem will melt away. I don't know.

I thought I saw somewhere that there were biofiber containing bullets that ignored ItNW and hit spirits normally, but they only contained enough nutrients that they were good for 24 hours after loading and they were fairly expensive.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Edit: Found it, turns out it was someones homebrew. I think the idea is that you have a small piece of fast moving astral barrier that would tear a hole in the spirit the same way that a fast moving piece of a wall would tear a hole in a mundane.
http://pepperonie.deviantart.com/art/Shado...-Types-41371676

That sounds interesting!

How would that work? Biofiber's not magic, just dual-natured.

As for big guns vs. spirits, treat them like drones (cuz they are drones). You can't expect to beat a high-powered combat drone with a pistol. If literal big guns are too hard to get (and they should be), grenades are crazy cheap and easy to get.

and grenades are really good in blowing up yourself or everything that is not your intended target, thanks to really stupid scatter rules - also a F6 spirit is only affected by a direct hit from a he grenade.

Not if that spirit is in a reinforced hallway (or a simple 3mx3m room). Chunky Salsa works on spirits too...

If you dont hit yourself with an unlucky scatter roll ^^

I guess... Never had that happen to me in Shadowrun (Of course, I generally use Flash Bangs, so scatter is pretty irrelevant). Saw it happen to a player in Twilight 2000 though. Shortest character in game I ever saw. 3 Minutes and done.

yeah, its more likely to happen if you use a rocket launcher from 15m to hit a house ....

Let's not rehash the scatter discussion, but it suffices to say that's it's pretty easy to direct-hit with grenades. I'm not saying it's the best choice for 'big guns', but it's certainly a choice.

yeah, one of the good things from WAR! -> the contact triggered grenade rules ^^

You can always use the "pistol sized but no drawbacks" grenade launcher (MGL-6 afaik) with Airburst to practically guarantee hits. Of course, that weapon is almost as cheesy as SnS

AFAIK, those rules effectively always existed, NiL. Esp. with airburst, etc.

nope, because with airburst you still have drain and no staging damage - unlike contact triggered grenades

Drain? From a Grenade?

I've always seen grimdark as having connotations of being so dark it's silly such as the case in Warhammer 40k (the origin of the term). That fits in pretty well with the sarcastic dark parodies of 80s culture that you commonly see in science fiction from that era. While SR has been trying to move away from that, the 80s are so embedded its DNA it's never going to be free of it. As for the problem with SnS, if they were making is that if you were making a SR4 movie, you wouldn't really need to budget in blood squids for your giant gun battles.

Honestly, things might just be better if you make APDS do -1/2AP, say "yeah they really do pwn spirits," and remove SnS. Mundanes can deal with spirits just like they need to. There would be actually a choice between being lethal or non-lethal. Vehicles get strange in that handguns blow up helicoptors sense just like older editions, but vehicles have so many issues anyways that throwing one more oddity in there doesn't matter.

...only if you throw it really really hard

Or the Grenade spell from WAR!

...only if you throw it really really hard!

Sorry but from a realism standpoint your wrong, the reason the fencing lame protects is because it was acting as a Faraday cage this YouTube explains a little
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s8x2efUY5c. With out a complete Faraday cage around you then the Electricity will pass through you on it's way to ground.

Secondly their is a thing called an Electric Arc, this can kill you and has killed many electricians over the years. Electricity can arc a long ways from less than a inch as you get with an arc wielder to many feet as this sub-station in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-UTYzfNjKM...feature=related.

Now from a game balance stand point yes tasers and sns are overpowered.

I should sleep more ... substitute drain with scatter.

While a Faraday cage will indeed protect against electrical strikes (aside from that lineman video, look for videos featuring high powered Tesla generators), that's not what is happening in that "taser vs fencing suit" video.

It's a lot simpler.

The taser fires two barbs into the target and puts an electrical charge down one line, which normally reaches one barb, arcs through the target and travels back up the other barb. This tends to disrupt neuromuscular function, which is why you see targets usually have their muscles lock up and they fall over.

The fencing outfit is covered in a metal mesh. While the barbs do clearly penetrate the outfit to lodge in the skin, they also remain in contact with the mesh. The electrical charge wants to flow the shortest path of least resistance - which is through the mesh, not the flesh the barbs are lodged in.

Either way, though, a metal mesh component to armor should provide significant protection against taser attacks, and really it is probable that it's used in some versions of the "nonconductivity" armor mods. Depending on how covered a target is, it may also provide radio and other electromagnetic wave shielding.



-k

No it is not really a simple matter and to truly understand it you would have to understand AC and DC theory. The electrical charge wants to flow the shortest path of least resistance is a false statement and sadly it is one that we teach in school and I remember being taught it, The truth is that an electrical charge flows through any and all paths that allow it to complete a circuit and because of the way things work out the amount of current flowing through the body is no longer high enough to affect it.


Could provide significant protection is a better word, as there are a few variables that would effect it, such as wither it is a one piece or a two piece, wither that two piece is electrically bonded together, and just where the barbs actually hit you at. Personally I think the way the armor works should stay the way they are on this, so things don't get overly complicated.

In physics, we use approximations all the time, to keep models and calculations as simple as possible and as accurate as necessary. If effects differ by magnitudes we frequently concentrate only on the dominant effect and ignore the subtle modification.

Using a simplified model is not 'false', it's an accepted physical method.

The main error in (school level) physics education lies in not explaining that sufficiently. Unless you luck out and have a good teacher.

I've always been of the opinion that, if players are really utilizing something so cheap and easy to acquire to such great effect, then it must surely be a common strategy. Therefore, it would follow that anyone wearing armor would likely have at least a few points in Nonconductivity. I know I take it on every single character I make personally, so if it's becoming a problem with the players, then I start giving it to the NPCs as well. Strangely I haven't had too much trouble with this problem though. I guess my players are just not crafty enough to understand that sometimes the FA machine gun with EX rounds is not the best way to take someone down....

Just because it is accepted dose not make it correct, and no approximations are not used all the time, nor are subtle modification ignored at least not by those of use who use physics out side the research lab.

@mowarty
Thats just so wrong.
When was the last time you used Raltivity to calculate the speed of you car? (I guess you used newton)?
When was the last time you considered Heisenbergs Incertainty if you calculated the path of a projectile?

So outside of theoretical research approximations are used ALL THE TIME.
Going with Newtons laws of movement IS an approximation. EINSTEIN is the guy who got it better. And even Einsteins relativity misses the impact of quatum physics.

You're not getting it. We don't 'use physics', we use models that approximate reality, so the 'physics' you are 'using' might be completely different from the physics an expert on super string theory is 'using'. Some models are more, some are less precise.

In every day applications we use extremely simplified models, because the sophisticated models are pretty damn complicated and hard to compute.

Oddly enough, you hit an acronym I don't know.

Sorry Cry Now Romeo?
Stick Candy Noodles Roughly?
Seattle's Crazy... No, Really!

Can I get a Linguasoft on this one?

sorry, could not resist

Although Sorry Could Not Resist is the official translation, this acronym now officially means "Seattle's Crazy... No, Really?" in my canon.

On the topic at hand (namely sticknshock), I'm basically regurgitating some of the talking points other people have already covered, but I'm in the "Shotguns and Pistols only" camp. Shotguns because it's a good nonlethal alternative with about the same (or less) damage output, pistols because it makes them viable from an optimization standpoint.

Huh? S&S with pistols is the poster child for S&S abuse. Most things bigger don't need it.

Sorry, should have clarified "Heavy Pistols" there.

If a player wants to be a pistol adept or something equivocally The Matrix-y, S&S is basically the only way to keep on the same tier. All it does is make heavy pistols a viable option for a primary weapon for an appropriately-themed character. Not to mention that it can be justified on an expenditures level, as for a non-automatic weapon one doesn't need to buy bulk levels of the little mini-taser bastards.

That said, I am for increasing the availability and cost of S&S.

I dig, but personally I think things shouldn't be 'allowed' to be competitive as a stylistic choice. If they want pistols, they get pistols… not pistol-shaped assault rifles.

I get your point. I think a lot of it comes down to stylistic choice, since Shadowrun, more than any game, has a mood that relies purely on the GM's characterization of the world, and I tend to go with a very "Hollywood" approach.

I was thinking that Machine Pistols were the big problem with these things.

Personally, I'd restrict them to shotguns only... it has a good feel to it, still leaves room for tasers and pistols, and doesn't start into burst mode or, worse, full auto craziness.

Yeah, I was including Machine Pistols in Pistols. It's hard to say, 'no Machine Pistols… but semiauto is fine'.

There's burst fire and full-auto shotguns, though...

Which I want to load with FRAG-12s!

They're a lot less Avail, more expensive, and hard to hide, though.

If you're using a full-auto shotgun, you're not really in a "hiding" mood.

… Right. That's why snowRaven's point about FA shotguns vs. machine pistols met with my response.

Oh, I was just remarking that there's no avoiding the BF/FA SnS-craziness with shotguns. They're less ridiculous with SnS than MPs, though.

Just my 2 cents...
It's not the mass of the SNS round doing the damage, it's the current.
Does it matter if you hit someone in the face or in the foot with sns?
I can't see why the damage isn't just set at 6e TOTAL. It's not really a bullet and it's not "punching through" anything.
We have touch attacks, right...why isn't that just a ranged - touch attack? All it needs is contact.

Why aren't SNS rounds bigger and slower than regular ammo? The core tasers only carry 4 rounds each.
Arsenal has a picture of a number of arrowheads and they're all huge. How big is an SNS round?
SNS rounds have to carry the trodes, a battery pack, AND survive the impact. Should they act like regular bullets when fired?
Can you seriously pack 16 of them into a predator?

One of the big issues with tasers is their limited range.
Once you can fire sns from a sniper rifle - or 10 in a full burst at almost any range...there is no reason to use anything else?

If I were running a game...I'd consider SNS rounds taking up twice as much room as a regular round and cutting their range in half.
I do not understand how they get all the benefits of standard bullets (in every situation) with absolutely no drawback.