On the story on page 118 of data trails, Tranq slaps Wolf, landing 5 patches onto the face of Wolf. What are the game mechanics for doing this in game?

Drug/Toxic damage is at the end of the Round (or at the end of next Round with Pepper Punch f.E.)
and Wolf can resist each Attack with BOD (& 'ware like Nephritic Screen f.E)
Damage is cumulative

BUT
I wonder how someone can land 5 Patches at once.
You're allowed only 1 Attack per IP and anything that causes a resistance Roll is considered an Attack.
so 5 different People could've put 5 Patches at Wolf at once, but one single Person can stick only one Patch at a Time...

JahtaHey
Medicineman

I do wonder at how one juggles keeping 5 patches on the hand well enough while in melee to apply them all in one strike.

Maybe if they had a lightly sticky glove to adhere the back of the patches just enough to not lose them as you tilt your hand but once applied to the surface the front face glue is stronger and would pull the patches off the glove maybe.

He could've taken a Pillow, double-glue-tape and stick those 5 Patches to the Pillow, then , with both hands, try to "stick" the Pillow at Wolf....
(he may even stick 9 of them on a Pillow....)

With a Pillowdance
Medicineman

This way lies trouble.

Because this way lies characters attaching patches together to get bigger patches made of 4 patches that will deal more damage.

The damage scale of Shadowrun is made so that it's very difficult to kill/incapacitate a character in a single hit. It generally takes 2 shots, 2 hits, 2 doses of poison, etc. to reach that.
In real life, guns are made to kill in one shot (or one burst) and it's not difficult to get a small dose of poison that'll kill/knock-out anyone.

It makes little sense to have stuff meant to kill/incapacitate people that are unable to do it correctly the first time they're used, but some people think that it makes for a better game. So basically, I see three possible solutions:

1. State that all attacks will always deal the same amount of damage, no matter how many doses there are, no matter how many guns you've tied together, no matter how many katanas you've put in the victim.
2. Change the scale so that one dose/bullet/hit is all it takes to kill/incapacitate someone.
3. Consider that bullets/poison/etc. are meant to kill/incapacitate normal humans, so they don't always work well on characters faced in Shadowrun. In that case, tricks to add more guns/doses/etc. should be accepted (and probably more or less commonly used).

Which is why the rules for getting hit with multiple doses of a poison mirror those for automatic fire: "If exposed to more than a single dose at a given time, increase the Power of the toxin by +1 per additional dose." (page 409 BBB)

Why not just hold the pillow there until Wolf quits moving around? Cut out the middleman.

I have sudden memories of folks in previous editions squeezing out multiple Trauma Patches into a squirtgun to spray at Awakened folks...


-k

Slapping wagemages with Trauma Patches and seeing if they lose Essence is a time honored sport!