Wasn't a bad FPS, totally not shadowrun though from what I've heard.

What Critias said. But in larger font, at least two colors, and italic underlined bold ...!

Teleportation and resurrection.

'Nuff said.

It would have been just fine, if they hadn't soiled the Shadowrun franchise and logo by attaching them to it.

Or to double your ammo capacity.

-D

Strongly disagree... it normally takes two shots to drop even a mook with a heavy pistol. Most of the damage comes from the base weapon DV not from the net hits anyhow. Against normal mooks with only 3 dice react pools... even tossing 8-9 dice you're still good. They end up soaking 6-8 damage twice... which is normally enough to drop them.


With dual wielding and a reasonably well built character I can drop 2 mooks per pass. Something that's hard to do even with an assault or sniper rifle. Since you need a lot of damage to drop things with single shots or bursts.

If you're assuming 8 ballistic armor, battle rifle is the category where a well built character will begin to have realistic, but low, odds to not drop a mook with a single shot. If it doesn't drop the mook then he's probably sitting at 1 hit box with a -3 wound modifier which makes the mook even more useless.

Stealth. I base that off the target having say 12-18 dice between body/armor/reaction reducing damage by 4-6.

To regularly drop a target in 1 shot you tend to need about 15 damage on a single shot. Or about 18 damage over two shots is my experience... since the second shot will have imposed an extra -1 and -wound. More gets more margin of course.


So two shots at 10/10, followed by 8/8 (secondary target)... have a good shot (pun intended) at dropping 2 mooks in a pass.

Really about the only other thing which even comes close is an ares alpha modified for hyper... first wide narrow with ~16dice... second wide narrow eating a bunch of recoil at about ~11 dice (secondary target + uncompensated recoil) oh and a business revolving line of credit from the bank for your ammo budget.

None of those are using overly optomized dice pools...

One way to make lasersights, red dots and smartlinks count when dual wielding is to allow them ONLY if the shooter uses a 'take aim' action, and then apply it either to the pool before split, or to each split pool, depending on how generous you want to be at your table.

This is to reflect that you need to actively check where you are aiming with both guns - not something you'll be able to do fully when just firing away in a fraction of a second...

Actually have a mate whom I helped with char creation who did exactly that, to get around SS Superwarhawks. He'd dual wield with ambidexterity and shoot one per action. Could split ammo, choose different targets, etc, and he'd either switch weapons when he intended to simultaneous shoot, or use the other action for something different.

Or just mod it for SA, for those who prefer the aesthetics of a single revolver.

And then there is the easily compensated routine of short burst, long burst, or if the GM is generous two long bursts. If the GM isn't, just use two high velocity SMGs (modded or stock), in case you want some extra fire power.

This is a poor house rule, the rules specifically forbid the use of these items. The rules are actually exceptionally well crafted to prevent the vast majority of +dice from creeping into the split. Which is why the dual wielding rules are some of the best done in the game. It's possible... the risk/reward payout is high... but it's not something you want to do against an opposing street sam.

In this case, instead the rules allow for simply taking one shot, then another shot with the other hand. Not trying to break the rules to allow a single bonus. (take aim is simple... and no I"m not going with krav maga's specialty as a way to get around this.)



Et Al.
Yeah I did the same thing, made a bio-sammy bodyguard with a cowboy theme for an LA based game. (bodyguard, movie extra, stuntman). Liked to walk around with two big old SS revolvers on each hip... and a concealed predator. During one particularly nasty encounter with a lot of shedim corpse cadevers, GM was surprised when I started popping off 2 shots a round with the predator, then tossing in the warhawk split for an 3rd once things got to close range and pistol-fu was called for.

Yet plenty of discussions in the last week alone have touted the gross mistakes of RAW. House rules are house rules; I don't see any reason why that wouldn't work, and any reasonably intelligent group can certainly overturn it if play-testing renders it unbalancing. As I've said, the laser-sight thing to me made zero sense.

A thing to keep in mind that tempers our groups enthusiasm for trying to system rape: any ruling by GM to clarify or change the rules is a precedent. If you do it, COUNT on the GM using it on you too.

The obsession with outright killing mooks is perplexing. I will admit this.

Let's just take a standard 7P -1AP battle rifle loaded with EX-Ex so 8P -2AP. I just took a professional security mook which has 3 body, 4 reaction, 3 dodge, and an armored vest (6 armor). I think my character is built to 19 dice with a battle rifle, possibly more. If we assume that a full defense isn't used (so the mook can actually do stuff). Then he will lower hits by 1 through reaction leave 4 net hits. That makes the damage for the attack 12P -2AP. Between body and armor the mook has 7 dice so on average he will soak 2 damage leaving 10P damage which kills. Even if that swings to 9P it's still a hugely successful attack because of the effects it will generate. If you're so worried, you can just up to to a short burst (probably mostly compensated recoil) and pretty much guarantee the kill.

A mook at -3 dice wound modifier and 1 remaining hitbox is mostly harmless unless you're dealing with top end mooks. If you're using a weapon that can reliably sit a mook at a -3 penalty and nearly dead the odds are that you aren't the most threatening target to the mooks. There's most likely at least 1 or 2 other people between you and the mooks in most cases and you putting more mooks at a -3 penalty is much more beneficial than killing 1 mook. The mooks are still, mostly human, and unless the GM is a dick will react like a human. Such a severely wounded mook is more likely to withdraw from combat than continue attacking and even if he does he gets that -3 penalty when attacking your allies that are closer to him.

Pistols on the other hand are not as likely to severely wound the mook to the point where he's going to necessarily withdraw. With pistols you're more likely to need to kill to remove the threat rather than being able to do so with just wounding.

Because a pistol is more concealable and given the vast majority of them are SA you can still pop 2 rounds into the mook per round which generally takes them down. You're also forgetting the general ease of having that high a pool just to hit them that you can call a shot to increase your DV significantly, still downing the mook in one shot many times.

It's not a house rule I use, but I'm curious...what makes you say it's a poor house rule? The only reason I find in your post is that the rules forbid it - if they didn't, it wouldn't be a house rule. And, by RAW, the rules do not forbid Red Dot sights (I do, however - which is a house rule--even if it's a logical one). Using my suggestion, you are trading one shot with full pool, or two with half, for the benefit of an extra dice or two on your next shot.

So, in your opinion, what makes that a poor rule?

The rules forbid by name all the aiming aids present in the SR4a mainbook. (lasers and smartlink). So it makes perfect sense to extend it to a red-dot as well (practically a laser sight for all intensive purposes). Similarly, another thing which a GM *MIGHT* add is tacnet.. .that's another aiming aid which shouldn't really apply (fortunately the rules are explicit the tacnet bonuses *MIGHT* apply any of these actions as the GM sees fit).

They specifically limited all the big post split positive dice modifiers. The result is it's hard to work up more than +2 post split dice. So splitting the attacks is painful and only tends to work on mooks, not on other prime runner types. Mooks mainly being the kind of thing your Gm throws a pile at once at you (like a group of gangers). Uncompensated recoil penalizes both pools.

They don't mention walking tracers into things (which only work at ranges longer than short btw). Which kind of makes sense... start firing push the tracers into the targets. With 2 guns at once you're not really using sights so much as pointing them like you would with a shotguns.

For a case of NOT doing splitting well... look at splitting dice pools for spells... there's tons of sources of bonus dice so the act of splitting isn't nearly as painful as it could be. (specializatoin, mentor, power focus, spirit aid sorcery).

Ahem.
The phrase is properly "for all intents and purposes."

They did not exclude any form of Image Magnification (Scopes or eyes/visual aids with image magnification). While they do not provide bonuses, they remove penalties that should be added after the split. With Krav Maga you could get the zoom effect on both guns and shoot them once. With the Enhance Aim spell you don't even need an action to take aim.

The other effect of aiming (dice pool bonus) is not forbidden either.

Some purposes are more intensive than others...