You see, I used to GM a game called Cyberpunk 2020. You may have heard of it. It's kinda like early Shadowrun editions, without the magic. One major thing the setting had was Combat Borgs. These were humans so heavily augmented their sanity began to fracture, and were a pain in the ass to put down. After all, they tended to shrug off anything short of 7.62 NATO.

So what did our enterprising corporations do to solve this problem? Why, invent bigger guns, of course! In Cyberpunk 2020, 12mm slugs are the standard. These were ever so slightly heavier than .44 Magnum, and they are pretty much the minimum most PCs will pack. For people with cyberarms or augmented Body Type attributes, there's the mighty Malorian Silverhand, which hurts about 20% more than a 5.56 NATO round!

So where am I going with this, you ask? Well, I'm wondering why anti borg handguns aren't a thing in Shadowrun. In Cyberpunk 2020, all people had to deal with were human cyborgs, so what about Troll cyborgs? Or Adepts, for that matter. If two augmented/adept trolls go head to head with decent (I'm talking an Armor Jacket here) armor and their respective Bone Lace/Dermal Plate/Mystic Armor, and all they've managed to smuggle past the checkpoint are Ares Predators, which is the most ubiquitous gun in existence, they're going to be emptying clips and dealing basically no damage.

So, why do you think ginormo handguns never caught on in the Sixth world?

Because handguns inherently suck against heavy armor? So why trying to make something that's just bound to not be good at it's avowed task in the first place and simultaneously sacrifice the main advantages of a handgun over other, more powerful firearms (concealability, weight)?

They did to a degree.

What did you think the Panther Cannon was for?

or the Ares Thunderstruck Gaussrifle
The Reason that there ain't an abundance of Anti-Borg Guns is because there ain't an abundance of Borgs either
Cybercombies are extremely rare in SR, and Dragons (you could use one of these Guns for a Dragon too) have a cero Tolerance policy for Killing one of their kind....


What about him ?
Did you ever try to create a "Troll-Tank-Cyborg" ?
Do you know how F*****g expensive that is ?
Extremely cybered Metahumans are nearly extinct in SR because the cost is too huge

with an extremely expensive Dance
Medicineman

I guess you could see APDS/AV or EX-Ex as anti-borg ammo.
In my houserules, heavy pistols were created specifically to deal with orks, trolls and cybered opponents. They have a lower rate of fire (equivalent to CC) but deal higher damage (DV of 9 in SR4 scale). They also require at least a strength of 4 to be handled one-handed correctly and have a quite high encumbrance.

I also have an optional rules to extend that kind of other types of weapons.

This is a question that has always bothered me.

Trolls are around the size of a medium to large black bear, with extremely tough skins, and robust bodies in general.

Unless you hit the central nervous system, there is no handgun in the world that has noticeable stopping power against even a black bear.

I'm not joking here. I have spoken directly with multiple people who have shot bears. A couple stand out because they were face to face with the bears in question.

One shot a black bear right through the heart using a very heavily (overpressure, overweight, long barrel) loaded .44 Magnum. Cutting a long story short, the bear blinked at him and then ambled off in the other direction. Further shots smashed one of its joints, but the bear only stopped when a buddy of his showed up with a real rifle and hit it. He knows he hit it in the heart because he's a doctor, and they decided to dissect it to find out what his bullets did.

Got that? Heart shot, and if it had decided to tear him limb from limb instead of wandering off, he would have had no hope short of a spine or brain shot. With a gun so powerful that it's pretty much the maximum that most people could even hope to handle.

Another one shot a charging brown bear (both of these were in Alaska). He shot it with a typical lever action guide gun chambered in .45-70, and the bullet ploughed through the whole bear from shoulder to pelvis, diagonally across the body, and the bear did a faceplant right there, dead on the spot.

Those bullets were almost identical (very close) in size, with powder charges that weren't all that different either. The big difference was barrel length - a .45-70 is a fairly low pressure round (because of reasons, history and so on) while the .44 Magnum is comparatively high pressure, and my first friend definitely loaded it above specifications. What barrel length does for you is to convert more of the chemical energy released by the propellant into kinetic energy in the bullet, because the barrel and bullet act like a piston. A longer barrel means a longer stroke on the piston. A rifle also gives you a better grip and larger surface area behind the buttstock to soak up the recoil, and generally weighs more as well.

In Shadowrun, we have light pistols that could fit in any lady's handbag, we have heavy pistols that macho men carry - and based on the fact that any above average strength macho human can fire them with reasonable accuracy, I can conclude that their stopping power on trolls is still nearly negligible, absent central nervous system shots.

The manageability of pistols comes down to one word: recoil. Recoil is a result of pushing a bullet and gases in one direction. Simple newtonian physics tells us that the gun goes in the other direction. Felt recoil is a function of a few more things - how far off the axis of the bullet's motion is the hand gripping the gun? How heavy is the gun? How heavy is the bullet? How fast is the bullet travelling? How much energy delivery is being delayed or absorbed by the gun's action? But in the end there is a piper to pay, and that piper takes payment by beating the hand and wrist of the shooter.

Some time ago I was at the range, and a new shooter was there and I let him shoot a .44. In one chamber I put a .44 Special, in the next one I put a .44 Magnum. He fired the first, and the gun is a pussycat with that load, but he flinched because he expected a rough recoil. Consequently the bullet was about a foot off the target. I told him to relax, it's not that bad, and just keep aiming, and fire the next shot. This time he didn't flinch, and the gun hit him hard - but the bullet hit the bullseye. Still, he wasn't in a mood to shoot more magnum rounds.

The moral of the story is that I see no reason to believe that any troll was stopped in his or her tracks without a central nervous system shot from any handgun that any unaugmented human carried. Bear in mind that in the real world a 1911 in .45 is too much for many people, and about as much as most will carry. Tough guys, or experienced shooters who really know their stuff will carry something a little rougher, but even the FBI figured out that 10mm is a little harsh, so .40 calibre is what they settled on.

And just in case there's someone out there who thinks that a hot loaded .454 Casull or .500 S&W could just do it on a troll with a long barrel, recoil compensation, rubber and gel stock and whatever else, at the very least I will say that Shadowrun needs a new pistol category: handcannon.

So what do you shoot out of your handcannon? Bear in mind that bullets optimised for penetrating armour are very bad for disrupting tissue. Bullets for penetrating armour tend to have very high sectional densities and a lot of energy, and possibly even discard some mass in the interests of a penetrator making it through, while bullets optimised for stopping power on unarmoured flesh will expand fast and wide, tumble, possibly fragment, and deliver as much of their energy as possible into the target they hit. Handguns have a hard time meeting these criteria. With rifles it's a bit easier, but even so it's far from easy. You're necessarily introducing a compromise.

Well, IRL unless you hit the CNS or a main blood vessel, handguns aren't reliable stoppers against plain regular humans...

Want a Hand-Cannon in Shadowrun?
Get ExEx Ammo Slugs for your shotgun and shorten the Barrel. Done.

Furthermore: Want Trolls and other Tanks to actually be able to be a Tank?
Play SR3. Since the change in rules to SR4, tanking is not really viable anymore.
Hell, tanking was barely viable in SR3 already, because both magic and chemtech will simply ignore your tankiness.

Well, part of the problem is Shadowrun operates on a different power scale. In CP2020, shrugging off AK 47 ammo was a Big Deal (capitalized). In Shadowrun, that's what every troll can do. In CP2020, a cybered up tiger was a Major Threat. In Shadowrun, it's a slightly wiry dragon snack. Shadowrun has always played on a different power scale from CP2020. Plus, since full-body replacements that leave enough essence to actually be worth anything are so hideously expensive in SR, full-body borgs have never become the problem they ere in CP2020-ish anime like Bubblegum Girls and Battle Angel Alita.

In fact, purely going by stats, the Ares Predator series already qualifies as an anti-cyborg handgun, even moreso with SR's armor-piercing and explosive ammo. That's enough stopping power to drop most 'borgs, even borged up trolls (if you're up against some mad Shadowrun version of Donald Trump who spends several million on each of his redshirts because he can) in a few - expensive - shots. Or use a battle rifle. Or, if you feel like you really, urgently need a one-shot kill, an AMR-equipped aerial platform. Problem solved, no special weaponry needed.

I do kinda wonder why there aren't troll-optimized handguns and armor, though. Trolls make fantastic designated heavy gunners and ammo mules, after all, if you can deal with their comparatively large silouette.


Actually, that wouldn't solve the problem at all. You see, that approach actually causes more problems while not resolving any - for some examples, take the F-35's general failure at being a warplane, the MRAP debacle, or the rather mediocre cost/effect ratio of current warplanes used as on-demand firepower; also, read up on the A-29's performance in its trials in Afghanistan and why the program was abolished. Sometimes, less is more, and as a rule, precision and thought-out design wins over raw power applied without consideration.


You neglect the high-end targeting mechanisms of Shadowrun guns - something the SR5 rules also fail to acknowledge, for ridiculous and gamist reasons. But yes, most handguns have a hard tme stopping a troll in one shot. Then again, that's one detail I'm happy to suspend my disbelief over. YMMV.

I don't know about SR5, but in SR4 there were essentially handgun-shotguns firing slugs, if you wanted the largest boom in the smallest package. Just don't go expecting it to have much capacity or stealth.

Remington Roomsweeper... Still a thing...

The Room-Sweeper is, like, the EXACT opposite of a Hand-Cannon though.
Not big slugs but wide spread buck shot.

I'd actually argue it's less of a deal in Cyberpunk. Here's Mr. Min Max:

SP10 Bandana (Chrome 4)
SP16 Skinweave (Chrome 2, IIRC)
SP18 Armorjack

So all of that is encumbrance zero, and nondescript to boot (unless your GM is making you regret your Skinweave decision by having random passerby make Awareness checks) so let's go by the more conservative Armor rules found in the second printing. This means you gotta consult a table, so I'm gonna do that now. Keep in mind that if I wasn't using said errata, you'd just add things together straight. So it'd be even sillier.

Okay, here's how the above ensemble works out:
Head: SP20
Torso: SP23
Arms: SP23
Legs: SP16

So bear in mind here, an AK-47 doesn't fire 7.62 NATO, which is an actual listed caliber. It fires 7.62 Soviet Short. Best approximation I can figure is 5D6+2 damage. That's an average of 19-20 damage. So, on average, unless our man here gets hit in the leg, he's totally fine, since that means his armor has completely stopped the bullet. But let's say he gets shot in the leg. Deduct 16 damage for the armor, bringing it down to 4 damage. Now apply an Average BTM, for -2 damage. Sure, he didn't shrug off the attack completely, but he's no much worse for wear. He only took 2 damage. Cyberpunk pretends it's a gritty, death laden setting, and to unarmored mooks it is, but begin adding in even basic armor and characters begin shrugging off bullets like crazy. It's a broken set of rules, and I hope Cyberpunk 2077 brings about a new edition that isn't a broken mess.

True, up to a point. The empirically determined gold standard among handguns for one shot stops is .357 Magnum, with a success rate (too lazy to look it up) of around 40%. The best theory on why this is that I've heard from a doctor who actually spent serious time in a trauma centre was to the effect that the .357 tends to have the highest velocity rounds (with factory loads) resulting in a large temporary cavity, more shock and bruising, and thus being harder to ignore, even for drugged-up freaks, whereas the .45 that tears a nominally wider hole has a substantially heavier bullet, often round nosed, that just pushes a long hole through tissues that generally close up after the bullet has passed.

Another observation related to stopping power is what the bullet does when it hits bone. In a big, heavily built animal a slow handgun slug can actually stop or divert, while a tiny fast bullet might come apart or ricochet. Chunky hunting bullets travelling along will reliably splinter fairly heavy bone and keep doing damage in a deep wound.

On the other hand, I know a guy who shot a cape buffalo right between the eyes with a .303. The buffalo dropped like a rock, so elated with his kill he hustled over - and his heart stopped when the animal was no longer there. He tracked it down, found it, shot it with a heart/lung shot, and inspected the head to find a tiny white divot in the horn where his first bullet had hit.

Lesson learned: depending on the type of dermal deposits and bone structure your target troll has, your grandaddy's 1911 might bounce a bullet off the troll, causing a tenuous negotiating position to rapidly deteriorate. You want penetration as well as energy delivery.

If the awakening does show up, I'll be loading my bear rifle for troll and aiming at the centre of body mass. .223 will be fine for elves.

By default it's loaded with slugs (in SR4): "Remington Roomsweeper: This short-barreled 'shotgun pistol' can be loaded with shot rounds rather than slugs, in which cases it uses heavy-pistol ranges but shotgun rules"

It's listed with damage values for both slugs and shot, with shot as the secondary option.

That said, looking at it's damage rating it's not really worth a damn.

Not sure I agree with that assessment.

There've been a few guns pegged over the years as specifically for para-critter, troll, or anti-chromed-up work. That was the justification for the Ruger Thunderbolt, for instance.

As to why there's not just a general treadmill of guns with better damage codes out there, than their competitors? It's because then that's all anybody would use, unless you're to layer on additional rules that make them not the always-appealing option (Rain Forest Carbine, anyone)? Now, an argument could be made that that's exactly what Accuracy ratings could help address, but then the problem is that if you give something great damage but low enough Accuracy, you're nerfing it into oblivion (because the damage code and AP of a miss doesn't matter). So it's a tough balance to strike, I'd think.

What sort of stats do you imagine such specific anti-borg guns would/should/could have, in SR, where they'd be cool options, but not overpowered (especially not overpowered if you're then applying smartlinks or upgraded ammo)?

If you want to do more damage on the receiving end, you need a matched ammunition type (armour piercing, expanding, what-have-you), and you need more energy delivered by internal ballistics to your projectile so that it can carry it to your target.

You get more energy in, by putting more energy in. That means more recoil. Recoil means you need to be at least this tough to shoot this gun/bullet combination (strength/body limits) and it means that your recovery is that much longer between aimed shots.

One fruitful place to look might be carrying recoil penalties over between actions. And allowing for a strength reduction to recoil penalties (to reflect tougher physiology as well as more rapidly bringing your weapon back on target).

I know a thing or two about how guns work in real life, yes, but I'm specifically asking about how guns work in Shadowrun. There's no "matched ammunition," barring a handful of guns (like the Viper), any gun can use basically any ammo; it's entirely divorced from the weapon, in a really weird and disjointed way. Likewise, there's no "energy delivered by internal ballistics to your projectile" statistics, y'know? There's just a damage value stat. How do you abstract real-life firearm ballistics data down to make it work with such an otherwise simplified firearm/damage system (and do so in the middle of an otherwise very crunchy system, which I'd argue makes it tricky to add any new complexities)? And recoil is ridiculously silly in this game (with only a very, very, few exceptions; by and large a light pistol has the same recoil as a shotgun, which is the same as a sniper rifle, which is the same as a heavy pistol). There are only a handful of guns in all the SR equipment lists that have a stat minimum to use them.

That's part of what makes this sort of thing difficult to pull off (and, again, it's something that I imagine the Accuracy stat is meant to represent, at least partially). How do you make an Anti-Borg gun balanced against a light pistol, without adding layers of complexity or rewriting the recoil rules entirely?

So, yeah. That's what I'm asking. What sort of stat line, in-game, do you think an anti-borg gun should have? What do you picture an anti-borg gun looking like, mechanically, in-game?

If I was going to make an anti-borg round I would probably go with something like the High-explosive incendiary/armor-piercing ammunition (HEIAP).

Unlike a APDS, which relies on it's sabot core alone, or an explosive round using a mini shaped charged to blast a target, the HEIAP is a combo hit.
Initial impact triggers a HE charge along with a very hot burning secondary charge to burn a path through any armor clearing the path for the tungsten sabot to follow.

The triggering of the explosive charge is dependent upon the resistance of the target. If the target offers little resistance then the lack of frictional heating will prevent the incendiary from igniting and the high explosive from detonating.

Still trying to work out mechanics for the idea... basically the Damage/AP will depend on how hard the target is , with softer /lightly armored targets the round just hits as normal heavy round.

I'd just add Physical Limit (PL) minimums. That way, different relevant stats are taken into account.

So let's go by .500 S&W. It's a round not everyone can fire, right? But there are people who can. So that means unaugmented humans, which means that it's a good starting point. Physical limit is ((Strengthx2)xBodyxReaction)/3, rounded up. So let's go with a human with unaugmented, yet above average stats: Strength 4, Body 4, and Reaction 4. That's Physical Limit 6. So the baseline, low end handcannons are minimum Physical Limit 6.

But let's say some wimp tries to fire the darn thing. Well, he'll take damage equal to the amount of points in Physical Limit he's deficient by, Stun if he has more than half of the requirement, Physical if not. This damage is resisted with Body alone. So if Mr. Wimp (Physical Limit 3) fires a .500 S&W Handcannon, he takes 3P damage, resisted with his Body of 1.

But what about larger handcannons? The kind made for Orks, Trolls, Cyborgs and Adepts? Well, they have better damage and AP, at the cost of being even harder to handle. I'd imagine anything up to PL10 is made, anything higher is a custom order.

These guns would also be bulky, so I'd say they have the same concealability as SMGs, so +2.

Also, here are some potential stats:

Low end, .500 S&W (PL6) Handcannon:
Acc: 4 Dam: 10P AP:-1 Mode: SS RC:- Ammo: 5(Cy) Avail:12R Cost:2000¥

Higher end, PL8 Handcannon:
Acc: 4 Dam: 11P AP:-2 Mode: SS RC: - Ammo: 5(Cy) Avail:15R Cost:4500¥

Mail order PL10 Trollstopper:
Acc: 3 Dam: 12P AP:-3 Mode: SS RC: - Ammo: 3(CY) Avail:20R Cost: 8000¥

So these are balanced by a few factors. One, most people can't fire them. Two, They're maddeningly expensive, particularly compared with other handguns. Three, they're less concealable than regular heavy pistols. Fourth, they a very hard to get ahold of. And finally, their accuracy leaves something to be desired.

I'd say they use SMG ranges, due to similar size and thus barrel length, but that's just me. They could just as well use Heavy Pistol ranges.

3P Damage. From Recoil. Are you daft? O.o
Recoil does not work like that! Physics don't work like that either. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and all that stuff. This is also why people do NOT get thrown back when hit by bullets.
The only gun that EVER had something even REMOTELY similar to that was the good old PAC which did 9l Stun to you in SR3, if you were NOT big and strong enough to deal with the 30mm anti tank cannon in your hand!

The reason is broken fingers and suchlike. When the S&W Model 500 was being tested, the rep for S&W actually broke his fingers firing the thing. That's why they added the muzzle break. Stun damage would be a sprained wrist.

Don't care, still has no place in shadowrun in my opinion.

Unless a writer actually takes my idea, it's houserules. It doesn't need to be in your games.

To be fair, we had a GM who ran a much grittier campaign way back when and that was how my decker got his first cyberlimb after he shattered his wrist and radius from firing a weapon a bit above his weight class.

Course you should have seen the other guy.

But I do agree with Stahlseele that this kind of recoil probably doesn't really fit in well for most tables in SR.

I largely agree. I just whipped it up spur of the moment. I'm sure an actual writer could do better.

I do think I'm onto something with Physical Limit minimums, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xohy9gWz7kk

Alternately...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyAl9qK3Rlg



-k

This exactly. The 'anti borg' weapon isn't a hot loaded pistol, it's a stun bolt or mind control spell.

Everyone is ignoring the one weapon system that is small enough, light enough, and doesn't kick like a mule... laser weapons. A laser weapon cuts the enemy armor in half, has no recoil, and is quiet. May not be the best anti-troll weapon in the world, but it will cut through armor like a boss.

They're also maddeningly rare and low production. And they kinda mess with the feel of the game.

Sure they're rare, but it works.

As for it messing with the feel of the game... not to me. Hell, we've got kids messing around with 40 watt lasers on YouTube.

Now if some kid can do with with 2015 with common off the shelf components, think of what the advanced tech of the Shadowrun world and using a laser DESIGNED FROM THE GET GO to be a weapon can do.

That kid and his laser are really kinda scary. Oh wow.
Then again, I'm going to assume he had some extensive technical expertise to begin with. That gives a good chance he'll refrain from doing something dumb.


In SR4, there are two notable guns for that matter: the Eichiro Hatamoto ("Arsenal") and the Krime Stopper ("Gun Heaven 2") with shotgun slugs and a damage code of 7P. At least the Hatamoto is marketed as a "troll stopper". Drawbacks: very low ammunition and a hefty price (at least for the Hatamoto). My rigger carries a heavy pistol with a Hatamoto as an underbarrel weapon. Loaded with AV or Ex-Ex ammo, that'll dent most nasty things.

If nothing else, there's still the High-power Chambering from "War!". I know that a lot of people heavily dislike it, but it'll add some hefty power to a handgun.

So, in SR4, you can get guns that do considerably more damage than the mainstream slugthrowers. They come at a price, though, and I think that's just fine.

Maybe that kid did some dumb things, but it doesn't stop the fact that he did build a laser weapon (a VERY weak one granted) with just off the shelf components. Just think of 50 years of advancement in technology (battery, superconductors, etc), and something being designed from the get go to be a weapon... That's your anti-borg gun.

Why not simply use the real-life option for defeating armor without needing to pick up the shooter's shoulder a few hundred meters back? Shaped charges do not depend on projectile speed and therefore can even be launched from slow underbarrel launchers. A cyberlimb does not have several centimeters of reactive armor, so even such a primitive option should work just fine.


And of course, trolls exist. Troll hands would be large enough to feed revolver rounds through a pistol grip, and could probably go akimbo with an M79. And that is before the troll breaks out his bow

Actually, in SR3 at least, cyberlimbs COULD have centimeters worth of reactive armor . . At least i think that's what they meant with ablative armor.
Actually legal-ish to own as well. And Cheap as well. And kinda hard to spot i think. Somehow.
35k Nuyen(has to be bought per limb though) for +10/10 Bal/Imp Armor at level 5. Legal-Code 3-N(no idea, i never quite got the hang of how to read that)
Street Index 1. Availability is 12/3weeks.

The letter just means what classification it has (see pg 274 in SR3 BBB), like small bladed or pistol or whatever. The number was the difficulty to see whether the cops would do anything if they caught you with it. So a lower number means they are more likely to kick up a stink over the gear. 3-N means it is covered under class A cyberware (smallest penalty for unlicensed possession) and the cops need to roll a 3 or better on their Police Procedures knowledge skill to do something about it. If you get caught with it and the cops do something then you are looking at 5000 nuyen fine and/or 3 years in prison.

Not sure if this addition to the game was worth it but I always liked to pull out those tables for different cities to give the players an idea of what kind of gear they could get away with.

I always imagined that to mean something like ceramic plates, which shatter but absorb/deflect energy while doing so. Anyway, I think we can all agree that explosive reactive armor on infantry would be a rather bad idea


Different enforcement priorities in different locations were a nice idea, but IMO putting a number on everything was just too much-

I always considered handguns to benefit from the cinematic style of the game intent, rather than 'realism'. Especially when running into armored ...everything...on a regular basis, the above 'bear' example would otherwise hold true. The notion that a handgun is the thing you use until you can grab your bigger gun. But in game, unless you're really going for realism, there's going to be the dual wielding gunfighter, and single-handed pew pew. Rather than...I dunno, autofire shotguns everywhere or something.