OK, I know there have been many discussions about this subject here. I don't know what you should do, but here's the plan for my table.

Stick and shock only fires from shotguns. There's too much stuff to fit in a smaller round.
The "half impact armor" doesn't work against hardened or vehicular armor, including immunity to normal weapons.
For drones/vehicles, they still have to resist the secondary effects. If they fail the body + armor, they reboot, which I think is 2 turns.

Any thoughts?

I just made it "-1S(e)". If you fire it from a 4P holdout, you're going to get 3S(e) ... which, depending on your target (filthy unwashed hobo trying to mug you for your StufferShack™ Taco Grande) may be entirely sufficient. If you fire it from a 9P sniper or antimateriel rifle, you're going to lay trolls on their backsides lickety-split.

I really like that... except there is no staging of the electric effect.
How about -1S(e) or 6S(e): Whichever is smaller and if less than 6, then bonus dice to the electrical resistance test equal to the reduction?

The electric effect is a really big deal. More than the damage code I think.

Agreed

Or you could change the whole Electric effect. Instead of an "always half impact", what about "AP -X vs. Impact, capped at Half Impact, where X is power" ...?

IOW, a 3S(3) would have at most AP -4-vs-I ... less, if they had 4 or lower Impact armor. 6S(e) would be AP -6-vs-I, less if they had 10 or lower Impact armor?

Or is that just too complicated?

I dunno why the electric effect would do anything to vehicles. :/ The stun doesn't, because they don't have a stun track, but I assume it would have no effect even if they did. It's a shock designed for squishy biologicals. Someone could possibly make special anti-machine electric-shock ammo. Even EMP has almost no effect on these things in 2070.

Vehicles have no ground to protect them, so it seems like a large static charge could do damage. More importantly, it's been a game thing forever. Lightning bolt will take down drones and vehicles.

Remember, it's not the volts that will kill you, it's the amps.

But it's not Lightning Bolt, Bearclaw. At all. I understand that as far as the mechanics know it's a 6S(e) attack, but *we* know that it's not Lightning Bolt.

I agree with your point, but, with a bit of nerfing, I don't mind it in my game. It keeps anything from being an automatic loss for the PCs. And gives the runners a reason to carry long arms, and therefore need the cool over-coats and dusters

Agreed on all counts: the point is how it affects people and firearms balance. It just seems weird that any taser, let alone a little bullet one, would do anything to any machine, let alone a vehicle.

I find it simple enough to just not enforce the electrical secondary effects from Stick n' Shock unless the target is (a) metahuman and (b) has absolutely no impact armor whatsoever.


Anything that grants even the tiniest modicum of impact armor, even if it won't hardly do jack against the 5S(e), will still prevent those prongs from digging in and short-circuiting your nervous system.

It also won't work on animals (real tazers often fail to work on animals for some reason,) vehicles, or spirits, none of which have metahuman nervous systems to disrupt. They just take the discharge of the capacitor as 5S(e) even if they're completely unarmored.

It takes far less than a Taser to screw up electronics...


As far as SnS mechanics go, limiting it to large bores is a good start but IMO the -half AP also has to go.

BS, Sengir. As I said, even weaponized EMP in 2070 barely does anything, and we're talking about hitting the armored shell of a vehicle here, not touching the taser against an exposed motherboard.

I like limiting SnS to shotguns, gives a reason for people (especially critter hunters) to take that Longarms skill.
Especially if SnS is limited to shotguns only, I like it affecting ITNW at half impact. Not sure where I stand on how it affects vehicles, drones and hardened armour, but as others have said, its effects seem more anti-personal than vehicle imobilizer.

Ya know, haven't thought about it much before, but is SnS the only type of ammunition that deals actual Elemental damage? I mean, are there Incendiary rounds tucked away somewhere I haven't seen that deal Fire damage?

Lasers aren't technically "Light" element, but they're pretty close in how it works, minus the glare. Explosive rounds in concept are similar to the Blast element, but in practice get none of its bonuses. Gel rounds are like a weak form of the Water or Blast elements. The Screech Rifle deals no damage, but inflicts the secondary effects of the Sonic element. Flamethrowers of course deal fire damage as normal, but they're not really akin to normal firearms. And presumably you could load a Super Squirt with liquid nitrogen or something to inflict cold damage, dependant on GM allowance.

Stick and Shock is the ONLY standard ammunition types that acts EXACTLY as a full power magical element. Everything else is either 1) substantially weaker compared to the most comparable magical element or 2) substantially more exotic and hard to acquire / use.

So the obvious solution? Rewrite SnS to follow it's own custom rules, akin to Gel Rounds adding a flat +2 to knockdown instead of a variable amount based on force. And bring their damage in line with other ammo, such that it scales with base weapon damage.

Here's my take on it, based on the above.


I keep the armor halving, because it's iconic of SnS and maintains the ammo's power against spirits. I convert the damage to scale with base weapon damage, and I reduce it by one because it already halves armor. (In fact I had considered making it -2S, but that seemed to affect low damage firearms too strongly.)

I keep the Body + Willpower test to resist being stunned, but modify the flat (3) threshold to a variable threshold lifted wholesale from the Ice Element's secondary effect of forcing a "Crash Test" for people or vehicles crossing icy surfaces. The new threshold makes it easier to resist mere glancing blows, and harder to resist well placed shots, while still maintaining the signature stunning capacity of the ammo. I reduce the duration of the Incapacitation to a single Combat Turn (which is possibly still too punishing in my mind), and I remove the negative dice pool modifier on a successful resistance test, instead transforming it into a temporary debuff which occurs after Incapacitation, representing the lingering effects of overcoming the electrical shock.

Overall, this brings SnS more in line with the other "quasi-elemental" ammunition types. Thoughts?

~Umi

You are obviously stuck with the movie version of EMP as "everything around you burns out, field day for special effects". IRL, a few flipped bits can make a device run into a BSOD.

To me the main problem with stick and shock isn't the damage code (which, let's face it, can be either matched or outstripped by almost any gun (except for light pistols, hold-outs and machine pistols) armed with explosive rounds or even cheaper hollow points), nor the half armour (which is good, but unless the foe has ridiculously high armour in the first place then an assault rifle with APDS is going to be fairly close (IE the stick and shock is only a CLEARLY superior option (on a purely damage/AP scale) if the target has both armour values above 10 (at which point they're obviously not 'mook' quality and should justifiably have at least one level of non-conductive armour... along with chem protection).

Even the "I win" button of a check to avoid being instantly disabled isn't that big an issue, as if your body+willpower+1/2 impact+non-conductive is less than the 9-10 points required to succeed on average then you're probably either a mook (in which case there are a dozen more like you waiting in the wings and it's not really that big a deal that you went down to a single shot) or else shouldn't be getting shot at in the first place (most builds have a high stat in either body or willpower, and most players throw on at least a few points of non-conductive. If not then you obviously weren't building a character who's supposed to be taking hits... and even 3 body 3 willpower 3 half impact and 3 non-conductive is enough to BUY hits for it).

No, my problem is none of these things. It's that, even if you succeed your 'don't taze me bro' check by a healthy margin you're still taking a -2 penalty to everything for the rest of the fight (barring an extremely long battle). Therefore, my proposed change is that if you take a hit from a stick and shock round the 'don't taze me bro' check is against -5 penalty to all actions for the normal duration, with the penalty reduced by the number of hits on your check. if the absolute value of the penalty after being reduced by net hits is greater than or equal to the absolute value of your willpower then you are disabled (as if you had failed the check with the current rules).

I probably didn't put that very well. If there's any confusion then sorry.

That sounds really good. If I ever get to play shadowrun again I may propose that house rule.

You have to walk the line between taser beeing too good and them beeing too bad.

A good idea is to reduce the damage value to weapon-1. Why?
One of the main issues with SnS was always, that it was independant of the weapon used. This has no effect if you play a game where trolls with assault cannons can go out in a fancy restaurant and stuff like that. But the second you pay attention to hiding weapons and the like, it get really, really good.

The threashold to resist the effect should be based on the damage taken. If you a wearing isolation armor, you shoud be better off.

Why?

It is already incluced, indirectly.

If you have more dice to resist, i.e. with Nonconductivity, you will have it easier to beat the threshold, too.


The thing I find a bit too good isn't the damage code (which is fine, at least it makes those light pistols useful), but the fact, that you automatically get that -2 penalty, regardless of how many hits you have against the secondary effect. It should be possible to remove that with a really good roll (i.e. every hit beyond the threshold of 3 should reduce that penalty by 1).

Also, a "successful attack" (i.e. what is needed to apply the secondary effect to the target) should be one that hits and damages the target.

Bye
Thanee

You could always just implement this simple fix:

If you take no damage from the round, then there is no secondary effect.

Kind of hard to be left twitching if you did not even take any damage from the round itself.

Just my kind of house rule. At least the "only fires from shotguns" bit. I'm not too keen on the "no ItNW" rule - isn't electricity damage treated as elemental?

Yes, electrical damage is elemental but that is no exclusion criterion for ItNW. The spirit gets his "armor" from ItNW which reacts just like normal armor against SnS or other electrical damage i.e. it gets halved. Now if you had electrical damage from a magical source (lightning bolt, elemental strike etc.) the spirit would get no armor against it. Removing the AP of an elemental attack would not make much sense unless removed the AP from any non-magical attack. This however would make spirits considerably more powerful. Why would a creature of mana care more about one type of mundane damage than another one?

Sengir, it doesn't matter what 'kind' of EMP. My point is that we know from the book that (whatever it is), it barely affects modern (2070) gear. If *that* has almost no effect, why would a taser designed for humans affect the armored shell of a vehicle? I'm pretty sure a taser wouldn't affect my car today, after all. It probably wouldn't even affect my TV, laptop, or even phone… but certainly not my vehicle.

Since the roll to resist is opposing the hits of the attack, it's not unreasonable to suggest that the effect is due to a particularly well-aimed or lucky hit.
also, since most car-sized or larger vehicles have such a high body+armour that anything short of a perfect hit is going to just bounce off. It's one of the few real justifications for the massive dicepools dumpshock is so famous for, as the super-marksman builds could plausibly get a stick and shock into somewhere vital.

It's certainly convenient to suggest that, though. I agree that it's pretty unlikely to happen. Like I told Bearclaw, it's more that it just seems silly.

We dumped the -2 thing forever ago. It was just too much.

Also, elemental damage doesn't bypass ItNW. That was 3rd ed. Or am I missing something?

I know its pretty much stolen from D&D (certain affects doesn't force a save it if doesn't do at least one hit point of damage, for instance), but this is how I treat these things. If someone were wearing heavy metal armor for some reason or the attacker called shot to ignore armor that'd be a different story, but overall I consider the discharge to be nothing more than a tickle if the S&S doesn't actually damage the target. This makes it useless with small caliber rounds.

Simple. Elegant. I like it!

EMP doesn't work on 2070 tech because it is mostly optical.

That's exactly my point, X-Calibur. Tasers aren't optical.

Aargh. Don't nest parenthesizes without properly closing them!

...

)))

Maybe Cpt. Metal does!?

Bye
Thanee

Doesn't arsenal still have rules for stopping a car by frying the electronics though? Or am I just losing my mind?

Yes

If you mean the Vehicle Severe Wound rule, it doesn't really say that. This is just generic 'something randomly breaks', not really 'they're vulnerable to tasers'.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that Arsenal would be wrong if it did say that, according to what we know about vehicles and 'electronics' in 2070. In theory. It just defies belief that a taser could affect a vehicle, even if it's some kind of amazing shot. If the internals were vulnerable at all, you'd have to be attack from inside their casings anyway.

Not tasers, per se, but an electrical shock not designed to arc through the car and fry the occupants, like a lightning bolt would. There must be SOME precedence for a car taking appropriate electrical stun damage and having it shut it down. Of course, said "taser" would likely be powered by something the size of a car battery.

Unless 2070's cars are made of nonmetallic frames & body alike, then, even a lightning bolt won't arc through the car. Current real-world cars direct the current along their outside, then into the ground - like faraday cages, in a sense.

Just for kicks, I'm going to do some math and see how superior stick-and-shock really is purely for damage/AP.
our shooter is a corporate citizen who's spent a bit of time at the range (agility 3, pistols 2 (revolvers +2)) fielding a Colt Coralsnake (because of its high praise by Lone Star and other security providers. I'd give him a Taurus Mark XXXI but I'm not sure which specialization it uses as it's SS not SA). He has a DP of 8 and is buying hits, and for the sake of this example all opposition he faces has a dodge pool below 8 and is buying hits. This means that he is always getting a single hit more than his opponent.

Target: Drone with 3 body and 9 armour.
Standard round (control): 5P damage against 9 hardened armour is ignored. No effect.
AV round: 5P damage against 3 hardened armour. target has 6 dice to defend and buys 1 hit, taking 4P damage.
Stick-and-Shock: Electrical effect at rating 1 verses body+armour (12) = 3 hits against threshold 1 = no effect.
Conclusion: Anti-Vehicle rounds are effective against Vehicle armour. How about that? Stick-and-Shock is ineffective, and remains so unless in the hands of an expert marksman.

Target: Human with 3 body wearing full FFBA and aces high jacket, with two points of impact armour from helmet. armour is 9/7, DP 12/10
Standard round (control): 5P damage against armour 9 = 5s reduced by DP 12 = 2s damage.
EX-EX round: 6P damage against armour 8 = 6s reduced by DP 11 = 4s damage.
Stick-and-Shock: 7s damage against half-impact (4) = 7s reduced by DP 9 = 5s damage.
Stick-and-Shock (target has rating 6 non-conductive armour): 7s damage against half-impact+nonconductive (10) = 7s reduced by 15 DP = 4s damage.
Conclusion: Stick and shock is superior [Edit] to Ex-Ex by a narrow margin, unless the target is wearing non-conductive armour in which case it is of equal efficiency to Ex-Ex rounds.

Target: human (Body 2) wearing armoured clothing with non-conductive 6 (4/0[6], DP 6/2[8])
Standard round (control) 5p damage against armour 4= 5p reduced by DP 6 = 4P damage.
Ex-Ex round: 6p damage against armour 3= 6p reduced by DP 5 = 5P damage.
Stick-and-shock: 7s damage against armour 0(6) = 7s reduced by DP 8 = 5S damage.
Conclusion: given the target's low body (and thus small physical track) the Ex-Ex round is at least equal to the stick-and-shock, possibly superior depending on target's willpower.

Target: Spirit (force 4). 8/8 hardened armour and 12/12 soak pools.
Standard round (control): 5p against hardened 8 = 0p damage.
APDS: 5p against hardened 4 = 5p reduced by DP 8 = 3P damage.
Stick-and-shock: 7s against hardened 4 = 7s reduced by DP 8 = 5s damage.
Conclusion: Stick and Shock is clearly superior [Edit] to other demonstrated ammunition in this instance.

Final conclusion: Without factoring in Elemental effects Stick-and-Shock is potent but not excessively so when loaded into a 4p weapon [Edit] when compared to other specialized ammunition appropriate to the situation. In the hands of a non-expert marksman it is unlikely (though not impossible) to have an effect on medium combat drones with a decent armour rating, while the more specialized anti-vehicle round was reliably able to damage the same target. Against Biological targets it proved about equal with Extra Explosive rounds when they were wearing non-conductive armour, though was measurably more effective against targets without such defenses. Against Spirits the Stick-and-Shock rounds were clearly superior.

Or: Damage wise Stick and shock are great against spirits, good against people, Meh against drones. They have their strengths and weaknesses just like every other type of ammunition.

Narrow margin? You call a 150% increase in net damage, a "narrow" margin ...?

Your normal-ammunition line - which should be considered the baseline - did only 2S. SnS did 5S. 5 is 250% of 2.

Even Ex-Ex isn't quite that good, dealing only 4S.

Post edited for clarity. I hadn't intended for normal ammunition to actually compete with SnS, merely for it to demonstrate exactly why SnS is so powerful for light pistols.

There was a post a long time back comparing SnS in an SMG against a Tir Ghost and the SnS was vastly superior not only because even if it failed to out damage other ammo, the secondary effect always caused at least an additional -2 and possibly takes them out for a bit. This is the key, defining bit of SnS to other ammo against a living target.

I pretty much consider that a given...

'Everything except drones' just isn't a niche, though.

It's a niche on the sliding scale of encounter types.

Everything except drones is a niche when you mostly encounter drones and very few meatbags.

When other ammunition types are just as effective at eliminating People, and even better at eliminating vehicles, though, SnS loses its classification as the optimal ammunition. I have never considered SnS to be all that special, except in the specific case of targeting Spirits.

And I don't think that's 'normally' the case, StealthSigma.

I've never seen math that supports that 'when', TJ. Even if you did something nutty like ignore the automatic -2 and the chance to 'stop and drool', and the usefulness of being nonlethal. We've been over this literally hundreds of times, so I can't imagine bothering again.

Likely has to do with game experience. I just have not had the down-right abuse in the game that many people here complain about. That likely colors my perceptions a fair bit.

SnS is nice, no doubt, but I rarely see it used in games over things like APDS or AV Ammunition. The times that I do see it used, it is almost exclusively used against Spirits. *shrug*