So many of us have heard the classic question, "If I use Shock Gloves, do I get the damage of my punch plus the damage of the gloves?". And of course we've time and again responded, "Of course not, that would be silly, the Shock Gloves overwrite the damage code of the Unarmed attack."

But when recently answering a question about Touch Spells made with Kick Attacks, I got to thinking about the larger issue. At first, I was staunchly certain that, as many of us fiercely maintain, you cannot stack different damage types in a single action. However, after thinking on it for a bit, I was able to come up with several situations in the rules in which, actually you can.

The most obvious one is perhaps poisoned weapons, typically blades or projectiles like darts. If you apply a dose of a chemical to the blade of a knife, then successfully attack with that knife, you deal the damage of the melee attack and also apply the dose of the chemical, resulting in further damage shortly thereafter. There's even a piece of 'ware that operates specifically off of this function - the Weapon Reservoir Chemical Gland secrets a chemical coating onto a cyber-implant weapon that is refreshed with every retraction of the cyberweapon, allowing you to easily poison your spur blades.

I also got to thinking about things like Touch Attacks. Using a pair of Shock Gloves doesn't require a full hit to deal damage - you only need to touch the opponent, and you get a +2 DP bonus for making a Touch Attack. This is the same mechanical operation as a Touch Spell. It's not the attack that matters, but rather the physical touch - even a grazing blow will apply the "On-Hit Effect" of Shock Gloves or Touch Spells. Likewise, applying Drugs and Toxins via slap patches or chemical coatings likewise merely requires a successful Touch Attack. So if that's the case, why do these various "On-Hit Effects" not stack?

If I put on some Shock Gloves and touch someone, they get shocked. If I put on some Toxin-Coated Gloves and touch someone, they get poisoned. If I cast a Knockout spell and touch someone, they get magicked.

So what happens if I combine some of these things? If I cast a Knockout spell via Toxin-Coated Gloves and touch someone, does the Toxin dose get applied? It does if I attack them via a poisoned blade, so shouldn't it also do so in this case? And shouldn't the same thing also happen if I instead coat my Shock Gloves with the Toxin?

What about casting a Knockout Spell via Shock Gloves? Since the Shock applies at merely a touch, it should trigger separately from the spell and both types of damage should apply. Or does this concept only apply with dosing people with Toxins, because they apply their damage at the end of the Combat Turn? But why should that matter? Both applying Shock Damage and apply a toxin dose require only a touch - why should one succeed, but the other not, for no real reason?

I admit, the ramifications of this sort of stacking are obviously problematic. If someone uses Toxin-Coated Shock Gloves to cast a Knockout spell, they get three separate sources of damage from a single successful attack. But we've already got poisoned weapons applying two separate sources of damage from a single attack, so it this really that much worse?

Ultimately the ability to exploit this triple-damage capacity comes with various limitations.

Drug availability and costs are certainly a factor, but so is having your gloved hand covered in a Toxin - touching anything other than an opponent could result in wasting the chemical dose, or worse, applying it to an unintended target. It could easily be ruled that players with Toxin-coated gloves can't pick anything up or manipulate anything with their hands without transferring the Toxin to the new surface, meaning that anyone else coming into contact with that new surface would be poisoned, or possibly that the toxin gets dilluted any loses potency as it get spread out over a larger area. Moreover, if a character wearing toxic gloves had to wipe their face or scratch an itch, they'd be in trouble. Reapplication would also be tricky.

Of course, much of this problem could be alleviated by the use of Slap Patches, but then I'd argue that the touch-based application of the patch should impede other forms of contact-based damage, like connecting the electrical contacts of Shock Gloves. So you could in theory douse your Shock Gloves in a liquid Toxin if you wanted to apply both effects, but if you use a Slap Patch it blocks the electrical contacts and the Shock Gloves don't discharge and do any damage.

Touch Spells, of course, require only two auras to come in contact, and as auras extend beyond clothing and armor, they should pretty much always work. But taking the above into consideration, you still couldn't combine a Touch Spell, Slap Patch, and Shock Gloves all at once - you'd have to use a liquid or gel coating of the toxin on the electrical contacts of the gloves, rather than a contact-blocking patch, to be able to get all three sources of damage. And that has a lot of complications tied into it with the whole - "my hands are covered in K-10 and I need to scratch by nose!" issue.

~Umi

Thrown weapon attacks.
Impact detonation grenade.
Bean the guy with the grenade, then the grenade explodes.

See, that's another case I've personally argued against previously.

It's kind of odd to be coming back to it and reconsidering my stance.

~Umi

Happens to be a case I don't care much about, but the person who GMed more Shadowrun games in my group than was in, had a character that did that.
At least in so far as the rules actually allowed.

The grenade situation brought a question to mind. On a grenade launcher there is 5 meter minimum range (arming distance). However, if the grenade is wireless, is there no minimum distance? So you can shoot someone with the grenade launcher then explode the grenade (wirelessly), even if its under 5 meters. (For the extra damage of hitting him with the grenade and explosive dmg).

Trollbow + injection arrows with narcoject: 12P AP-3 + 15S (the latter resisted with Body + Willpower). Gotta deal at least 1 box of damage (physical or stun) with the arrow for the narcoject to work.

The difficulty with this is NOT killing someone with it. You can downgrade the arrow rating to decrease the damage, but it's a balancing act; go too low, and you won't penetrate to deliver the narcoject. Too high, and they're dead.

If you were really, really mad at someone, maybe you could coat the arrowhead with contact poison too, but all the contact vector toxins in the book seem to be gases or liquid sprays.

This was a bit worse under 3rd ed too.
Do a two handed attack with 2 poison coated blades.
The Poison was Narcoject. 10D STUN DAMAGE ONLY.
But then we get to Overflow Damage.
You need to do Physical Damage to apply the Poison.
So it's at least 1 box on a 10 box track filled.
Then you apply the 10D Stun resisted only by natural body or specific gear.
Which usually resulted in 10D Stun Damage right there and the Stun Tracks 10 Boxes filled.
With ONE Blade. Then the SECOND Blade gets applied. And does another 10D Stun.
But look here, the Stun Track is already filled! So, it overflows into physical Damage due to
how the Overdose Rules worked. So, 10 Stun Boxes filled, 1 physical Box filled, and then
anthother 10 stun boxes get showed into the physical remaining 9 boxes and you are now at
1 box into overflow damage. After an Attack that previously only dealt a measly 1 physical damage.
Yes, i scratched you. Yes, you die due to cardiac arrest in 10 seconds. Have a nice day!

If you're trying to deliver a measured dose of a compound without dealing damage, you don't use a Troll-sized arrow. You use a ParaShield Dart Pistol or Rifle. Or you use a Super Squirt. Or you use a Slap Patch.

~Umi

Autopsy of a dead guard.

Well we found Narcojet on the arrow sir.

And that killed him?

No, the arrow the size of a fence post that basically stapled him to the wall behind him while he bled out is what killed him. Just thought you would want to know that someone added Narcojet to it for some reason.

Sick crazy ba*****!

If any of those things used the Archery skill, perhaps I would! But when one has a bow, every problem looks like a bullseye.

Yeah, but sometimes it does not require a super-sized arrow. My Cyberlogician routinely used Capsule rounds, from a LIGHT PISTOL no less, loaded with Narcojet (he was an undercover Knight Errant Special Security Agent infiltrating the shadows to build dossiers on the various runners in Hong Kong). So, he had a vested interest in not killing anyone, as that REALLY Conflicted with his duties as a law enforcement officer. Sadly, there were many occasions couple of dozen over the characters tenure) where the attack received a stupid amount of Hits (got 11 hits on 14 dice once), inflicting stupid amounts of Stun damage, and then the Narcojet kicked in (on a character already in stun overflow to physical) to push the poor sap into toxic overflow and death. Sometimes you just cannot win.

Real life is like that too. People routinely die from "less-lethal" weaponry.

Someone gets hit with a taser, it sends them into cardiac arrest because they have a weak heart. Someone gets hit with a rubber bullet, it blows through a weak portion of their skull and scrambles their brains. Someone gets hit with CS grenade, it kicks off their asthma and they choke to death.

~Umi

Don't I know it. My dad was a cop for 20 years. He had some amazing (and very depressing) stories about that very thing.

Or consider the classic sleeper hold.

Looks cool, knocks the enemy out right? Then listen to the instructor warn you of the possible complications that can result from it, up to and including causing an embolism.

You just can't win.

If you want to nonlethally disable someone, you need some Goober Rounds. Green Mod 30 works, but Green Mod 19 is best to make sure the person you're shooting with the stuff never, ever wants to get shot with the stuff ever again.

What the heck are those? Will have to go out into the Interwebs, I guess...
Edit: Huh... Hmmmmmmm.... Not sure what to say...

*googles*

...

I want one.

~Umi

And the best part is that it's reusable! Depending on how clean, sterile, and free of particulate debris the engagement area is, the only equipment needed to reuse it is a spatula to scoop it back into the reservoir with. Dirtier engagement areas, you might need to filter it first. Though I bet at least one revision of goober rounds is self-cleaning and will eject foreign matter.

The downside is that to fire enough to restrain a troll, you either need a troll with a huge tank on his back, or a vehicle/vehicle-sized drone.

...

I want one.

~Umi