Hey all. Got a weapons question. I'm building a utility Mage (some combat, some healing, some tricky spells) and am looking for advice: what gun would be best for her to sling? This advice could apply not only my Mage but any character that wishes to keep their essence topped off by not taking any body mods. In the case of my Mage, she'll have some combat spells, so the gun is secondary to her damage output, but I'm thinking a holdout would be too small and, frankly, redundant.

Light pistol for balance? Heavy pistol for power? SMG for bangbangbang? Machine pistol for slightly less bangbangbang? What's your thinking? And if you can name a specific model and not just class, all the better.

tazers can be wonderfully effective on most targets

SMG with laser sight and tracer ammunition. Combines range, conceal ability, and rate of fire in a single package.

You know a smartlink doesn't necessarily have to be implanted, right? Unless they changed that in SR5.

Right, but with glasses, it's a +1 to accuracy, the same as a laser sight. I'm not ruling out a smartlinked weapon (an ingram smartgun smg is always a possibility), but I'm not relying on built-in smartlink as a criteria for picking a weapon.

For situations where you can afford to skimp on concealability, a shotgun loaded with flechette rounds set to medium or wide choke does wonders for the untrained with small attack pools, as it allows you to attack multiple targets per shot without splitting your dice and it reduces the dodge pools of said targets substantially.

If you want something concealable, get the short barrel variant of the Defiance T-250. Gives you the concealability of a machine pistol, the damage and range of a heavy pistol, and the spread benefits of a shotty, all cheap and easy to find. If you have the extra cash, modify it with a Chameleon Coating to drop it to -2 Concealability, on par with a light pistol, then holster it in a concealable holster and it's almost as hard to find as a holdout tucked in your pocket.

Edit: Or are we talking SR5? Whoops, I think we might be. In that case the short barrel T-250 is +4 Concealability instead of +2, but the damage is appreciably higher, and the choke settings are actually even more favourable than in SR4, especially with Narrow Spread receiving a flat upgrade. Since I don't have Run and Gun, though, I can't yet speak for weapon mods in SR5, so it might be smarter to just go with the full length version, or even splurge on the Enfield with it's Burst Fire capabilities.

~Umi

Rainforest Carbine. It's got monster accuracy so there's no reason to bother with a smartlink, hits like a freight train, and can take a nice simple sound suppressor for all your "not deafen myself as much when firing indoors" needs. When it matters, you've got semi-automatic bursts to help you hit to ensure that someone is feeling the preposterously overloaded rounds you're firing.

Also, by carrying a full frame rifle, you're less likely to stand out as "the mage", which means you make less of a target of yourself.

For close up work, get a Predator just to have and rely on your magic.

Bear in mind that Run and Gun is going to throw all of this out the window.

Hard to beat the MP5 TX once you ignore that retarded 20-round magazine capacity those idiots at FanPro slapped on it. Laser sight, recoil damping, all fire modes, low cost...pretty much the best bang-to-buck submachinegun in the game. Slap a suppressor on it (combination suppressor/silencer for my fellow 4E players and pointing out, yet again, how little the SR writers know about firearms) for 500 and you have a top-notch room broom that won't wake the neighbors for 1050 .

Actually, no. It's +2 Accuracy, period - only the Wireless Bonus is subject to change based on implant versus accessory Smartlink.

In general, though, I'd say pick up Automatics. If nothing else, suppressing fire is a really good choice of action for a lower skill character, and Automatics is highly flexible. Really, it's sort of a one-true-skill.

Yeah, I'm betting the rainforest carbine is going to get erattaed.

Ah. Gotcha. I'm a looong time away from SR (2nd edition) so my knowledge of crunch is, eh, rusty.



Yes. I'm talking 5th edition.

What are folks feelings towards the Remington Roomsweeper? Useful or too much a compromise weapon?

The Roomsweeper is essentially just a normal shotty trading Damage for Concealability. If you want the benefits of a shotty, but want to take Pistols over Longarms and want something easy to hide, it's the perfect option.

Heck, compared against other Heavy Pistols, I really don't see it as much of a compromise at all, to be honest. Load it with slugs and it's essentially an "Economy Model" Predator V. It has about half the ammo, reloads a bit slower, and lacks the default Smartgun system... but you can always take the 475 you save on the Remington and spend 200 of it on an external Smartgun system (or "splurge" on the internal version for an extra 50) and pocket the remainder.

So you trade seven shots, 1 accuracy, and speedy clip reloading for all the benefits of a full sized shotgun. just with heavy pistol range and damage.

Given that you need high weapon skill to cap out your accuracy, that's not much of a concern for your needs. And given that you want a utility weapon rather than a dedicated murder machine, you're probably not concerned with the less efficient reloading either.

All around, a pretty great deal in my book.

~Umi

Yes but until it does I suggest using the Rainforest carbine with an underslung Rainforest carbine and in case you drop it a backup Rainforest carbine.

It is the only assault rifle in the game that can do anything against milspec armour...

Not quite accurate. Load an Ares Alpha with APDS and you can get through much of the time with decent skill.

Base Damage Area Alpha (11) + 1 (Minimun Net Hit) = 12 DV.

Light Armor (15) - AP (6) = 9 Armor, beaten with 10+ DV, automatic if shot hits.
Light Armor w/helmet (18) - AP (6) = 12 Armor, beaten with 13 DV, achieved with 2 net hits.
Medium Armor (18) - AP (6) = 12 Armor, beaten with 13 DV, achieved with 2 net hits.
Medium w/helmet (21) - AP (6) = 15 Armor, beaten with 16 DV, achieved with 5 net hits.
Heavy Armor (20) - AP (6) = 14 Armor, beaten with 15 DV, achieved with 4 net hits.

Heavy Milspec w/ helmet is gonna shrug off all but the best placed assault rifle rounds, requiring 7 net hits with the Alpha. However, upgrade to a solid sniper rifle, still with APDS, and you're going to get through even the toughest Milspec on a solid hit. Switching to a Panther XXL gets you through almost everything automatically, and even full Heavy Milspec with a helmet only takes 2 net hits.

Looking through the R&G previews, though, I'm absolutely floored by how fragging CHEAP Milspec armor is! Sure, the availability is quite high, but Light Milspec is entirely within reach of any runner who wants to take the time to find it.

That's kind of bizarre, no? I mean, right in the description they say that "military-grade armor is simply too expensive and maintenance-heavy for common use or even routine security work. Aside from the most intense of fast-response teams, it resides only in elite military units deployed when absolutely necessary."

So, what? Corporations are willing to implant their people with Skillwires at 20,000 per point of rating (plus implantation fees and skillsofts), they equip their Matrix Security Spiders with cyberdecks that cost anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 depending on quality, but they won't shell out 35,000 for a suit of Heavy Milspec?

Hell, for the cost of a Steel Lynx drone, you could equip a guard with full "Light" Milspec armor. If I was a grunt on the ground and Corporate told me I could either have a Steel Lynx to back me up or a suit of military-grade body armor, I'm pretty sure I'd go for the armor. I mean, surely it's cheap enough that you could at least issue it to unit commanders and whatnot, yeah?

~Umi

Check your math again. After soak Medium with helmet is taking a measly 2 damage from 5 hits APDS from an Ares Alpha, and that goes down considerably if they have something like dermal plating or bone lacing.

Never happen. They won't even correct the base book with multiple freelancers screaming at them about it, errata on the splatbooks is only going to happen if the Germans make it happen.

Score 1 for German efficiency.

One of us is not quite understanding the other. I'm just not sure which.

You said, "It is the only assault rifle in the game that can do anything against milspec armour", which I understood to mean that you believed it was the only assault rifle that could overcome the Hardened Armor of Milspec gear and actually inflict any damage at all without it just "bouncing".

That didn't seem right to me, so I did the math and whammo - with a base DV of 11 and varying numbers of net hits, the Ares Alpha can in fact beat the Hardened Armor and inflict damage. True, it's not much damage, and I didn't factor in Damage Resistance, but I was talking about the potential to actually defeat the Hardened Armor in the firstplace - everything else is a secondary concern, since you have to actually be able to take damage from an attack to be able to soak damage.

~Umi

yeah, I wasn't clear. My bad.
I was in fact pointing out that the secondary effect of hardened armour (auto-soak half value in damage then roll) means that even when small arms fire manages to get through the armour and deal damage, that damage is going to be negligible.

I have often wondered why they didn't just add power assist and make the hardened mil-spec armor power armor...

It was an option in 4th I believe and it will probably be there in the armour mods section in 5th.

Recognizing that the errata isn't really sufficient, it's pretty ridiculous to pretend it doesn't even exist.

My vote is a shotgun of some sort.

They have always been my goto guns for utility, due to all the options they have over regular guns.

Considering most runs are in tight /urban environments the ranges are perfect. The fact you can go from slugs to shot, or even more specialized ammo (flare, door buster, gel, etc) with options that really make the shotguns a good utility weapon

There are micro-grenades already designed for them, flares, dragons breath, advanced flechette , etc... most already stated out in various supplements (4th edition, and 3rd. 5th is still starting to add them with revisions)

Only issue with shotguns is that they can't be silenced.

Actually, they can.

The shotgun rules (SR4A, p. 154) say nothing about not being able to silence them. The Shotguns section of the Gear Listing chapter (SR4A, p. 319) likewise says nothing. The silencer /suppressor rules (SR4A, p. 322) only mention that SS and SA weapons use a silencer while BF and FA weapons require a Suppressor, and that Revolvers cannot be silenced / suppressed.

I remember I used to be utterly convinced that shotguns couldn't be silenced at one point. Eventually I figured out I was mistaken somehow - probably toying with Chummer or just checking some tangentially related ruling for something.

I think I even used to think shotguns couldn't be silenced in real life, for some reason. Of course, one of the joys of being a Shadowrun nut is that it's given me an excuse to research all sorts of bizarre things, and yes, it turns out silenced shotguns are actually a thing. They aren't common, but they exist.

~Umi

Fun aside, it turns out you can get a full sized shotgun down to an effective Concealability of -3. That's equal to a light pistol in a concealed holster.

You can actually get the Defiance T-250 short barrel shotgun down to an effective Concealability of -7. That's more concealable than an RFID tag.

~Umi

i rather suspect that, even more so than usual, "silenced" is relative.

it's more quiet than an unsilenced shotgun, i'm sure, but "silent" is a *very* generous description from what i understand (tbh, i've never fired any sort of gun with a silencer, i'm just going on what others told me).

with that said, in shadowrun, there's probably no distinction between the level of noise a light pistol makes, and the level of noise a shotgun makes

If we're talking SR5, however, they can't.

SR4A or SR5?

The Concealability gambit is of course SR4A.

Something similar might be possible with SR5 once Run and Gun and maybe one or two other splat books are out. But definitely you need one major weapon mod and one vital accessory, with an optional second mod as icing on the cake, none of which are in 5E yet. The final piece of the puzzle is, but it's been in most every edition I think, so it's pretty standard.

Gonna give people a chance to figure out my recipe before spilling the beans more completely.

~Umi

I'd consider the ruger super warhawk. It can't be silenced, but you're a mage; I'm presuming if you're shooting a gun subtlety is out the window. Add a laser sight and some apds, you're going to put down what you're shooting at with decent (relatively) concealability. Plus, if it doesn't shoot you can always hit them with it.

DrZ

Technically you can modify the Warhawk for an internal silencer. It just can't take external attachments, for obvious reasons.

~Umi

I remember SR4 description specifically saying in the Warhawk description that it could not be silenced.


I prefer the Defiance Ex Shocker, Browning Ultra Power, or the Remington Roomsweeper (with laser sight) for a utility firearm.

Taser has the advantage of legality and electricity damage, at the expense of range.
Ultra Power is all around solid, but has limited ammo. With only 10 shots (presuming you're firing semi-auto bursts) you're going to run of quickly.
Roomsweeper is pretty awesome.

No, all the rules say is that revolvers in general (and consequently the Warhawk in particular, as it's the only revolver actually listed in the Corebook - you need splat books to find more) cannot accept Silencer / Suppressor accessories.

The reason is that a Silencer or Suppressor screws onto the end of the barrel, but with a Revolver that still leaves a gap between the cylinder and the barrel itself through which gases can and will escape. It's why revolvers cannot normally be silenced in the real world.

Arsenal added Weapon Mods, however, introducing Internal versions of the Silencer and Suppressor which are both not-immediately visible and which are more effective because they are a permanent component of the gun rather than a removeable barrel mount attachment.

The entry for the Silencer / Sound Suppressor mod actually specifically introduces a new option for revolvers.


These special revolver silencers take up more mod slots, have higher installation difficulty thresholds, require a more advanced level of "toolkit" to even be able to install, are more expensive, and have an increased Availability value (16F, making it unavailable at chargen without the Restricted Gear quality).

That said, there are those who might consider it worthwhile to be able to empty their Warhawk into some drekhead discretely thanks to the -6 modifiers to Perception tests to notice the weapon's use.

~Umi