Ok, this is a bit of an interesting challenge: design a practical close-quarters weapon that cannot be parried or blocked and requires minimal training to use. Something that's hard to see coming is a nice bonus feature.

My current line of thought is some kind of forearm mounted, gas-based one-shot flamethrower. Using gas instead of liquid fuel reduces the range to almost negligible, but also assures that there is no way anyone can block that. Accepting that it's going to be a 1-shot surprise for anyone who gets in close with you means that small pressurized gas tanks are viable ammunition sources.

Weaknesses: First and foremost, you need a source of ignition. A pilot light is traditional, but it'll give you away and remove your valuable element of surprise. Therefore, an electronic spark is probably a better choice. Next, you need insulated, fire retardant gloves to avoid setting your hands on fire. Finally, having a pressurized can of gas strapped to your forearm when you're expecting to be in a fight requires a special kind of crazy.

Any suggestions? Remember, this is a world which invented the Mono-filament Bolas. No matter what you come up with, someone somewhere will make it if they think it'll give them an edge.

Fist mounted shaped-charges.



-k

Taser?

http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Ullapool_Caber

This cannot be achieved - you can still block the arm even if you can't block the weapon.

It is funny to think of blocking a monowhip whose owner's arm is likely 1.5-2 meters away from you.

Likely only in an environment where the monowhip user gets full control over relative position. Otherwise, one of the main ways to defend against it would probably be to deny the guy the room to use it (one of the things the rules don't really model is that larger weapons require more space to use effectively, and this would be especially true with something like a monowhip).

How about: Laserpointer in the left eye. The target that gets marked - gets a little surprise from your nearby sniper squad. Works very well

A cooked off grenade as you duck behind cover.

Eyedarts.

No one expects you to wink at them and shoot a projectile from your cyber.

Implanting the dart gun in your tongue is even better.

Or just a classic West Side Story ganger stand-off. Someone finally calls the attack. No surprise since everyone knows what is going on, but the guy with the fingertip compartment wireless monwhip uses a free action to ready and a complex to attack at an ideal 2 meter range. The defender still gets to block a monwhip with his arm while outside of normal unarmed range.

We all know the rules don't account for getting inside of reach, but it's an abstraction (just like blocking the arm holding a monowhip from 2 meters away). I'm fine with it, just think it is funny.

Using the oral weapon idea, but 'wrapped' in a sultry attractive female that moves in for a kiss. French with BOOM.

Have an idea building on the monowhip.

Basic premise requires a special body suit that maintains a rotating electromagnetic field that suspends a couple of Monofiliment rings, not unlike hula hoops, sort of like the rings used to hold Zod in the original superman though I would weld on a third ring to cover the head level a bit better as well as rotating much faster so as to provide an effective defense that slices anything crossing its borders.


The Field is actually repelling the hoops, but as it is evenly pushing in 360 degrees the rings will not come into contact with the suit wearer's body while powered up, there is a formula for repulsion like those used in some of the particle accelerators and plans for containing antimatter via EM rupulsion showing the rapidly increased levels of force required to even try to move them closer. Suffice it to say that it wont bounce back up on you easily.

With a high enough rotation it can provide effective defense against melee and even some limited protection from certain ranged attacks, slicing bullets up in the air, though obviously not aoe attacks. You have to keep your arms inside the field, (the rotation is centered around the torso section). I would probably set the rings diameter to around a 1.5 meter as default to allow a safe personal space and not take off one own's hand or weapon by accident. May be able to figure out a way to make the rings expandable/contractable to allow one to adjust down so as to be able to go through doorways without shredding the doorjamb, but this one is primarily designed for outdoor use. Normal parries and blocks are pretty ineffective against this as they will just end with chewed up armor (if lucky) or missing weapon & body bits. The attacker can not even really get within the field unless the field speed was set stupidly slow as they would literally be sliced into thin wafers in the attempt.

Against sufficiently hard or hardened armors where the hoops can not penetrate it will still act as a defensive barrier as they are rotating at such high speed as to make an effective 'bubble' about the target and normal metahuman reflexes are unlikely to be able to slip through the gaps before being buffeted aside by the returning ring. Still hammering out details on how much damage the hoops can take if attacked this way...

The system can connect via a cable with a smartgun as well, timing the firing to slip 'between' the rotations, not unlike when a ship fires through the 'stutters' of a force field. So you pull the trigger, but the system actually syncs up, deteriming gun position, muzzle velocity and more and takes the shot within those split seconds to let the bullet through. You would be hard pressed to even notice the tiny delay from the time the trigger is pulled.

Needless to say you can not go and pick things up while this is powered up, unless you just wanted to make a salad and have someone toss you some veggies-it slices and dices!

Power consumption is a pain, usefulness indoors for stealth runs is questionable as your leaving a swath of destruction, but if you want to wade through a close quarter battle literally in a cloud of blood and flying bits, this is the suit for you.

Thermal Detonator

Vampire AIDS bomb

Engulf

Daisy Cutters (Mostly only augmented trolls)

Claymore mines

Snappy comebacks

Witty retorts

Catty remarks

Stiffler's Mom

That's it, that is it.

Cyberhand with palm injection spikes containing Slab. Grapple a guy = instant lights out.

An electromagnetic field generator strong enough to knock away his melee weapons... Then you pull out one of those azzie obsidian-shard-tipped wooden clubswords and get paleo on his ass.

A flashpak and hit them while disoriented.

And in my opinion the effectiveness will be dubious at best - a bullet roughly 1 cm long, traveling at 500 m/s travels it's own length in 1/50 000 th of a second. You'll need a very high rotation rate to have more than negiligible chance to catch it. Though I grant you that a magnetic field rotating at several thousands RPMS will make a great EMP generator - better make sure all your electronics are shielded ot they'll be the first to fry.

On the 'insane melee weapon', I'd say a claymore mine strapped to a (very) strong chestplate could work too - you might end up KOed, but they'll be dead....

I had a razor once with strobe lights on his shoulders. Worked out pretty well.

The word you're looking for is macahuitl.

Ceramic knives also work.

Hardened armor, and a Claymore anti-personnel mine strapped to your chest. All covered by a Seadogs jersey, of course.

So you can "Give 'em a broadside?"

Aye, matey!


Alternatively, to go oldschool : Killing Hands (D) plus Distance Strike. Just throw energy blasts at 'em.

While not unblockable, I'm surprised we haven't seen something like a ballistic fist in Shadowrun yet.

Because it does not work in SR.

It sort of could... scoring at least 1 net hit on an unarmed test causes the shell to fire. It wouldn't be so different from hitting with a dart really, except they'd still get armor and body to resist the shotgun, they just couldn't dodge it at that point.

Edit - this could be aweomse with a cyber arm with an implanted shotgun.

No, they could still dodge.
And you'd have to attack using the exotic fire-arms skill.
SR has no rules for coup de gras weapons or point blank shot or so as far as i know.

Other than the shotgun spread chart.

I think the point would be that the shotgun damage and effect is an extra added to the melee attack - they don't get to dodge the shotgun blast because they already failed to dodge the fist.

Si.

So, why not add a poison injection, take a sample of their blood during the exchange for ritual sorcery later, and leave a sticky grenade on them as a part of the add-on effects?

That is awesomely pink mohawk, and well worth stealing.

Throw some speakers in and on slow days between runs can hire himself out to raves.

Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

~Umi

Too many moving parts to do all of that.

You could either inject a poison (requires at least enough hits to penetrate armor), or draw blood (the same), sticky grenade is hazardous to the user...

... OR you could simply say that successful contact triggers the shotgun shell to fire off, dealing more damage that, while soakable by armor, is not going to be dodged. It also helps you conserve ammunition (if you're just doing it to be a cheapskate.

On the plus side, for a GM, if you glitch it'd likely blow off your own hand, or break your wrist/dislocate your forearm.

My first shadowrun character had something like this. Twin handguns modified using the rules in arsenal: custom grips, skinlink, trigger removal, melee hardening, internal smartlink, and the drone system upgrade. Basically the grip was moved to the front of the gun so that you held it like a tonfa with the barrel extending back along your forearm, and the dogbrain was programmed to fire automatically if the hand holding it connected with a punch...

...optionally you could fire via a signal from your PAN, order the drone to acquire targets and fire at them on it's own, or to fire at the conclusion of a punching motion without checking for physical contact...

...basically it was just a cheat to get me out of having to invest in the firearms skill, but it worked pretty well and was completely rules-legal. Granted, these were based on light pistols and not shotguns, but they still added some "umpf" to those close-in strikes.

God I loved the 4th-ed Arsenal rulebook.

As far as I recall, a technique like this exists in CGL Battletech: a maneuver called Fist Fire, which lets a mechwarrior make a punch(normally mutually exclusive with firing weapons in that arm), and then pull the trigger as/after you connect to hit the same location.


You could replicate the feature in SR4, by using a cybershotgun upgraded with a Pilot Upgrade modification(they can't take accessories, but they can take mods, and pilot upgrade takes no slots in any case), running script that tells it to fire during punches.

Mechanically, I would replicate the feat with a targeting 4 autosoft, and having the Pilot use its action to fire when you throw punches, using the options for interrupt actions. Maybe with a situational bonus (point blank), or possibly using a called shot to bypass armor.



This is actually pretty doable in SR4. Gecko tips for weapons are cheap, and the section on grenades says all/most are wi-fi enabled, so you can use that to time/control the detonation and, essentially, turn grenades into impromptu remote explosives.

Let me put it this way...

"MUNGO LIEK NEW FACE THINGY!! MUNGO GIVE YOU BIG HUGZIEZ!!"

"What is that thing?"
"What thing?"
"There's something on your head."
"What? Is it a spider? Get it off!"
"No, it's not a spider. It's like a blue thing."
"What? Like a blue spider? Get it off!"
"It's not a spider! Calm down. It's like a fuzzy, pulsing thing."
"That doesn't sound much better than a spider."
"Does it hurt? Maybe we should try and take it off?"
"Well, someone needs to get it off, it might be dangerous*BOOM*

omg..

Worse part is I can totally see that happening....

It was a quote from red vs blue.

Red vs Blue is canon btw.

In Shadowrun?

Totally, it's a long running matrix show, Fastjack's favorite from what I hear.

In everything.

It gets a little hard to reconcile in LotR, but, well, it's Canon. What you going to do?

Oh, This is now stolen.

The rest of the party seems to be working at our Face's strip club; now my troll will get a job as a disco-ball. Craft check to glue tiny mirrors to the trolls helmet?

Why stop at the helmet when you can do THIS?

Concussion Vambraces: The inside of these titanium-steel Vambraces is lined with gel pads and shock-absorbing foam. On the outside is a reinforced steel cone with a detonator housing in the center. This cone is filled with commercial explosives, which are detonated by wireless command in order to blast a 90 degree arc with a concussive shockwave. See rules for explosives (Shaped Charges) to determine damage. Each Vambrace can be fired once before reloading.

Wireless bonus: Activates either dampener ear-ware or smart earplugs just prior to detonation, reducing hearing damage.

Fixed that for ya.