Are you a street sam living with the pain of bone augmentation?
Finding it hard to spar without killing your partner?
Racking up a body count with every fistfight and drunken brawl?
Well worry no more! introducing: Softliner gloves!
Lined with gel pads along the knuckles and upper fingers, softliner gloves distribute the force of your blow to deliver a less-lethal impact! try yours today!

Softliner gloves.
Damage: If the wielder's regular unarmed damage is lethal, softliner gloves deal equivalent stun damage. If the wielder's regular unarmed damage is stun, Softliner gloves deal 1/2 strength - 1 damage.
Armour penetration: +1. Softliner gloves are resisted with impact armour.
Reach: 0
Cost: 100
Availability: 2

Thoughts?

Basically the boxing gloves of yore?

These seem ok

I had a boxing match in a game a couple months ago and those are the stats I used for the boxing gloves. Worked out reasonably well.

And now the true test of balance: I challenge someone to come up with a game-breaking combo using Softliner gloves.

If it goes for 48 hours without being broken, that's a good sign.

The big question is whether you can make a weapon focus out of them

Presumably you can, just like you can with hardliner gloves... I think?

Stun gloves aren't enough?

Shock gloves are the girliest weapon ever, right next to the Slivergun

Making a guy twice your size collapse with muscle spasm is girly? I prefer effective, pride won't do much good when you're reduced to that.

But their Fingerless and OH SO '80S!!!"The advantage to being a dwarf is that I'm groin high to most people." *ZAP* "And now you see why that's an advantage to me."

Until you go up against a troll who can shrug it off and who asks you to do it again because he likes the tingling.

~Umi

my guess is that it's going to involve contact poisons (or other chemical agents) that deal stun damage stacking with the damage from the punch (so that you can fill up a single track faster, rather than using other methods of applying chemicals that often deal physical damage unless your target has sufficient armour). DMSO ftw

(and of course, bonus points if the chemical chosen also has a chance to just outright shut down the opponent in some way or another).

If there were clearer rules for onset times/power/resisting, Slab FTW. No damage, just straight unconsciousness for hours...

As Jaid said, the easiest combination I see are the same techniques that fighters use today--lacing gloves with chemicals. Double stack the stun track and they are as good as dead with the damage rollover.

To keep it simple, DMSO narcojet with chemical protection on the armor beneath the gloves to prevent accidental exposure.

One of my players is in love with Tranq patches. I had to remind her that they don't work on spirits.

They do work nicely on just about anything else. Which, considering her luck in "trying not to hurt them too bad" typically involves death, or severe dental damage...

Which begs the guestion, can tranq patches only be applied through a touch attack or can you use a regular melee attack. Such as a tranq patch stuck with an adhesive to your fist or the front of your hardliner glove. If you can use a tranq patch with a regular attack, a strength 12 troll with aluminum bone lacing and a rating 10 tranq patch is going to do 18 stun per strike with those softliner gloves. You might even be able to knock out a troll tank with that. Though, I could see most people arguing about the making contact with the skin part of a slap patch.

Thorya--if they were willing to give up the +2 dice for touch-attack only, I'd let someone do a full punch and apply the patch. The damage for the two would be soaked separately, but only one Dodge/Block/Parry test to avoid contact. (I've done it for touch spells before, so drugs aren't terribly different.)

As for unprotected skin, patch to the forehead?

Stick the patch to the toe of your boot, then play the Frantics as you kick.

my advice to her: the only truly 100% reliable way to KO someone without killing them that i'm aware of is to use blackout on someone.

slab may or may not also work, depending on how fast you rule it takes effect.

so it's time to start using the matrix to take prisoners

Jaid: Ironically, this means that a TM with that echo that lets you grab someone and force them into meatware cybercombat is the best person on the group to disable people.

From the ballancing point of view, I see no problem. Trading physical damage for stun damage and +1 AP seems fair.

Many GMs will anyway allow fighters with bone augmentations to choose to inflict stun damage instead of physical. (But of course there is a higher risk of accidently inflicting physical damage, e.g. in case of a glitch)

If your GM doesn't allow that and you have to go by RAW, you can still learn the Sweep Maneuver and use it for your (Knockdown) attacks. It does always Stun damage, even if you use a meele weapon.

((Hides from upcoming thread about using Critical Strike and/or Weapon Foci on boxing gloves))

Honestly though, there would have to be some truly amazing twinkery to make them better than shock gloves. Even if your target can succeed the check to avoid falling unconsciousness(which you can only reliably do with 9+ on your Body+Willpower), you take an unresistable -3 on your checks. That's nasty. Plus shock gloves don't need strength.

Shock gloves, making your magician not suck in melee since 2050!

True dat. If you're not hyper-specialized melee, then taking shock gloves is better than all other options. They're the stick-n-shock of the melee world.

i dunno, the melee defiance shocker is still looking pretty nice

You can do stun damage to a target in a grapple. While it may not be reliable to do to someone skilled in unarmed combat, the grappler can inflict stun damage based off their strength while subduing a target.

Though it might be easier to get a troll to grapple someone, then get the hacker to put trodes on them and force them in to the matrix. Then you can have the best of both worlds. And maybe a mage poking them with stun spells. Then you have all your bases covered.

no actual need to grapple required, particularly since stun damage can overflow. blackout will fill people's stun monitor perfectly without ever overflowing (well, maybe on a critical glitch, but if you're going with a technomancer you can have your sprites protect you from that sort of thing).

but anyways, main point, you just have to touch them and maintain contact, as i understand it, if you want to force resonance trodes. if you can find someone with a sim module, you don't even have to do that; just take control, force them into the matrix, and win.