Hello

Looking at the tasers and S&S rounds in SR5 I see they have done a wise move from SR4 to nerf them. Problem is, they nerfed them the wrong way. Now they work as simple stun-dealing weapons that can also give a slight penalty to everything and a ok one to Initative. It's not going to incapacitate anyone, unless they take enough stun damage to be knocked out cold for a long time.
Due to the -5 AP modifier it is still very effective against armor, does comparable damage to an assault rifle, and has the major benefit of being nonlethal and legal.

Proposition: Change it back to actually incapacitating people, and remove the stun damage. The weapon could work in the same way as a poison or disease that doesent deal damage: the power+net hits of the electroshock weapon is resisted as normal (body+(armor-5, min. 0). The resulting number is 1 or more, the target needs to roll a Body+Willpower+nonconductivity(3) resistance test or become stunned for 3 phases minus hits on the resistance test.
It might also be useful to add the current rule debuff (-1 dicepools, -5 initative) for one combat turn, just like in normal SR5 rules.

Why phases? Because it sucks for a player to be out of combat for a whole combat turn, or even several. This benefits high-initative characters who have more passes, but thats fine by me, tasers are meant to incapactiate civillians and grunts, not take out big strong well armored troll street samurais.

Does this make it hard to take people unconscious? Yes, it does. If you want that use a tranq patch, bludgeon people with unarmed attacks (or saps, which in my book should still be Stun, use gel rounds, poisons, called shots to convert to stun, etc. They are all weaker options, but nonlethal should be a tradeoff rather than just a bonus like in Deus Ex3.

Feedback: Is the body+willpower test too hard? I don't want runners to be routinely stunned by this, but it should be a chance for an unlucky roll, and the debuff should be quite likely.

When SR5 was being first contruscted, Tasers did, in fact, have a 'stunning' mechanic wherethe target would lose actions.

This quicklylead to "StunSammy", where a Sammy could tap someone with a taser two or three times, then lounge about and kill them whenever as the target wouldn't be going for a long, long time.

It also lead to "Stunlock", where someone could keep a target at bay forever by re-tasing them. Have a friend along to crack 'em with a bat while you made sure they didn't stop ridin' the lightning.

Kinda accurate, totally not fun.

Finding the sweet spot is *really* hard.

Interesting to see they considered it. But how does the sammy tap someone 2-3 times before the enemy can react? And since the difficulty to resist the stunning does not increase with the skill of the shooter (unlike regular damage), will not tough enemies simply ignore the secondary effect? During normal rules, a sammy can easily take down an ememy using nothing but stun damage from a taser in the current rules, how is taking enough stun damage to fall unconscious worse than being stun-locked?

I think it might have had something to do with how easy it was to stun people, and maybe using the optional 2nd edition style multiple actions that is completely OP. And I still think as it stands its too easy to use tasers and the like to take people down with stun damage. It's generally better to lose a phase or maybe two, than being knocked out cold. If it was combat turns, although more realistic it would simply be too long as the fight would be over before he could recover.

Example: 4 the security guards are trying to take down Cobra the street samurai using tasers. They all have EX shockers with wires doing with damage code 9S, and a dice pool of 8. Cobra has reaction 8 and intuition 3, 11 dice for defense. Cobra sneers at the weak fools and tries to intimidate them, yet they foolishly try to take him down anyway as he does not seem armed (fools!).
All of them takes aim and then fires, getting 9 dice and rolling 3 hits each. Cobra dodges the first and second without problem, on the third he has a bad roll with only 1 hit. Ex does 11S damage vs Cobras 12(-5) armor +2 for nonconductivity and 6 body, 15 dice total - 5 hits. Cobra would normally take 6S damage, but instead has to roll resistance vs the stun 11 dice - he gets 3 hits easily, but takes -1 on tests and loses 5 initative per normal rules.
The last shot gets 1 net hit for 10S, and Cobra would take 5S damage - normally knocking him out cold as his Stun track is only 10 boxes. Instead he takes a new resistance test without dice pool penalites and succeeds yet again.
Then it's Cobra's turn, he lost 5 initative and the -1 is pissing him off, so he whips out his spurs and starts going medieval on the hapless guards.


So am I off in this example? Of course better shooters will have better chances of hitting, causing more resistance tests vs stun to be rolled, yet these tests are never harder than the first one. In all cases, the accumulating Stun damage is sure to knock the sammie off on his back anyway, so I dont see how this is worse than simply causing stun. Now if you had both damage AND the stunning, (like in SR4) it would be too much.

Against someone less tough, say a mage with Body 3 WP 5 and no nonconductivity, the resistance test becomes much harder, and he would need to roll well to even have a chance to be unstunned, yet those are also more vulnerable when it comes to dodging, and thus would take even more Stun damage. even with 11 stun boxes that mage is going down when facing 4 sec. goons unless he has some other trick up his sleeve.

I can't recall the exact mechanics, but I *think* it was just "Hit, lose your next action", or "Lose as many as half the Taser damage code, resisted by only Body" or... man. Been a few years and it was ditched quick, but, it was a problem. For everything you see, probably eight more were tried and discarded. Fun stuff!

Me? I'm not happy with Tasers, or most gasses, doing stun damage at all. I'd rather them do penalties and leave stun damage to things like unarmed attacks and tranq darts. Knocking people out by pepperspraying them is kinda weird.

How is that different from StunDamageSammy, where a Sam can tap someone with a taser two or three times for 9S each, then lounge about and kill them whenever as the target is collapsed from a filled Stun monitor?

In the first case, they are stunned but not unconscious (and yet are potentially incapable of defending themselves due to stun effect reducing their options, which is unfun)... in the Second, the damage MUST go through the soak process, and if the target goes unconscious, well, they are Unconscious.

You will always have such issues with an unconscious victim... nothing stops terminal cleanup on an unconscious victim afterall...

I was asking the same as Sengir here. And Wakshaani, this is the exact reason why I wanted to house rule tasers anyway, I was not happy how the worked in SR4 at all, or how nonlethal was more effective than lethal in most cases, yet the costs of doing lethal were higher karma wise. For example, Killing Hands was supposed to be good because you could do lethal damage instead, but in fact the good thing about it was being able to ignore ItNW and hit astral targets. I suppose lethal is necessary for drones, but that was seldom an issue in my games.

There is very little difference between the soak process and the stun resistance test, except how armor interacts with it. In any case, it is still easier to "soak" 3 "damage" using body+willpower alone than trying to soak 10+ stun damage with body + armor-5.

I know it's hard to tell without playtesting, but do you think my house rule could work alright? Is there anything I missed that might unbalance it further or promote certain weapons and tactics that was not feasible before?
Goals:
1. Make tasers and S&S + stun batons be used for incapacitating targets nonlethal when you don't want to use lethal force, or when you want do to it more stealthily.
2. Make lethal force generally more effective than nonlethal
3. Keep Lightning bolts spells and similar at normal SR5 rules.

Tasers were nerfed for very valid reasons, namely being more effective than outright killing people in SR4.

Bringing that back is a terrible idea. Personally, I prefer a return to form by cutting Stick&Shock out of the game entirely and shunting people back to Narcoject if they want a knockout gun.

If you want to take people alive, then you'd best diversify your skillset and learn some hand to hand and melee.

Three times 9S will overwhelm the soaking capacity of most targets.

The difference I see is that a taser with the stun mechanic may already make the target (and thus the player, which sucks) incapable of doing anything after the first hit...

@FriendoftheDork: The first thing I would change is cut the AP to zero, so tasers are no longer being used as APDS rounds.

Not necessarily. It depends on how your players are going to use it.

If they use tasers and Stick 'n Shock, etc, as a way to avoid bloodshed and preserve lives whilst doing crime, then that can lead to a less-lethal game overall, which is good. Players don't want to wind up going down to SnS and being told "while you were stunned unconscious, they shot you up with a shitload of incapacitating narcotics and organlegged you, GG," any more than anybody else wants that.

It also makes "We're in real shit now, load APDS and ExEx, we're going in hot!" more meaningful.

On the other hand, if your players are just using SnS as an easier way to kill people than actual bullets, yeah, it's a problem.

Either way, I'd start by removing the AP -1/2 from tasers, SnS, etc. These weapons still require getting electricity into someone's person to be effective, and even a thick leather coat is going to stop them dead. Of course, I'd also do away with armor being rolled entirely...

Oh, how I'd love to be rid of soak rolls in general. Alas, alas.

My idea is to nerf tasers but still allowing them as an option to temporarily incapacitate the target. If you think there is a better way to do so, please let me know. And yes, I prefer too that narcoject, blunt etc be used for the old "knocking out the guard" thing, and the party will include an adept with unarmed so should not be a problem. But I like the idea for the taser as either a self-defense weapon for noncombatants or to temporarily subdue civillians.



Yeah getting one-shotted sucks, but that is still possible using plain damage - sniper rifles or shotguns will easily one-shot unarmored targets and possibly some armored ones. However, a tough PC combatant is unlikely to get stunned for more than one combat phase with my rules, and can probably avoid it with some edge use too, and suffer less damage overall.




We are thinking the same way Shadowdragon (although I do remember arguing a lot with you in the days of yore).

For the both of you, removing the -5 AP on tasers and S&S seems like a good idea, although Im half of mind to keep it for stun batons and those not requiring penetration of skin and clothing (spells). Realistically, tasers are useless vs body armor, but I thought slow moving piercing objects could penetrate kevlar etc. rather well, which is why I would use Impact armor (houserule) for these. So in effect the armor for most would be somewhat lower, but not half as bad as -5.

Thanks for the input folks, will tweak further.

Interesting. Why not just have a rule that if someone is being hit by more than one taser at a time the tasers short out or something like that? There must be a reason that police normally use one taser and not two or more at once.

Well, they do two occasionally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnOIZY78ACA
But most people only need one, so better to have the second officer cuff the suspect rather than risk heart attack or some other serious complication. Tasers are not safe, just safer than guns.

I can see a troll being tasered by multiple guys and still not going down.

Maybe run it, tasers do not stack per se, they just extend the duration of the normal secondary effect. So you can't get multiple turns of stunning. Or limit the amount of phases stunned to 3, as thats the most a single taser can do as well.

I think that is the problem Wak was getting at, that a taser hit could stun the victim for several turns, then on the last stunned turn the attacker can simply hit the victim again, chaining the stun duration for infinity...




Tasers have enough voltage to penetrate several layers of fabric. Therefore just giving them 0 AP should be fine, it does not make tasers completely useless as soon as the target wears any kind of armor, but it also puts a stop to using tasers as APDS.

If you're able to stun the victim several phases (which I assume you meant) then you might have time to cuff/restrain the person anyway, so chaining would be unnecessary. This should be hard to pull off against most shadowrunners though. It might need some playtesting to see if this can be abused by players or myself.

As for AP, tasers have been known not to penetrate heavy fabrics and rendered useless. However, more modern versions are better at this, and thus the tasers should be equally good as light pistols. The -5 probably came from the idea that armor would easily transfer the charge, and thus a simple "touch attack" would be needed rather than actual penetration as with firearms. If this is not the case however and that you either need to penetrate to the skin or through it, then the -5 makes no sense.
I think for now I will make them AP 0 and see how that works out. Thus it is possible to completely shrug off the attack with armor+body. And when non-conductive upgrade becomes available tasers will genuinely suck.

...or just shoot them for real. But I guess the concern was about there being little fun in a PC being stunlocked and unable to do anything, whereas even a severely wounded character can at least do something.


True, but I doubt the standard "soft" body armor would qualify as such. 50 kV of electricity are enough to arc over more than a centimeter of dry air and may not be too impressed by a few millimeters of polyamide.

And of course most regular clothing in SR has an Armor rating, so if tasers were useless against any kind of body armor, you could as well just strike them from the book


Another point, this should be renamed. Armor designed to defeat tasers would include a conductive liner which provides a path of far lesser resistance than the human body.

You do realize that the Non-Conductivity Upgrade for Armor is in the main book, yes?

You're probably right about it should be conductive rather than nonconductive, but since when has SR been right about terminology? We had offensive grenades in SR 2, 3 acting like defensive grenades in RL, we have flechettes being bad against armor when in RL they are made to penetrate ballistic armor.. and of course "clips" when it should be called magazines. Clips are for old mauser rifles and M1 Garands. When you say "nonconductive" upgrade people assume it helps against electricity.. and after all it makes YOU less conductive by being more conductive itself.

It's better to be able to do something yet be damaged. However, if you can be hit and affected repeatedly like that you'd be unconscious if the enemy wants anyway. Better to be stunned than to be out and overflowing damage.
Most regular clothing in SR has armor rating 0, so no. You need something like Armored clothing or at least a synthleather jacket to get any sort of armor. Armor is supposed to be ubiquitous in 2075, but in my game it won't be.



Yes. You obviously don't realize my game is set in the 40s and 50s, thus many items from the main book will be unavailable. If someone wants to test these house rules with 0 AP for tasers and S&S, please give me feedback on how that work, especially with non-conductivity available. IMO in the RAW game this upgrade is necessary to compensate for the -5AP in the first place.

There's really no good in game reason "non-conductive" wouldn't be around in the 2040s. You can pretty much make yourself immune to tasers TODAY, by wearing electrically conductive clothing.

Yes, it seems counterintuitive that an electrically conductive shirt would protect you against electricity - until you realize that electricity always wants to take the path of least resistance. Search around for people testing this wearing fencing armor or chainmail shirts. Even when the taser darts penetrate the target's skin, the electrical charge flows through the conductive clothing rather than the target's body, since the body has a higher resistance than that clothing.


-k

Must have missed that, My Mistake...

I suppose the technology could easily have existed, but then again it may be too inexpensive or too impractical, or simply not needed. I plan to introduce these later on.



NP

You might want to decide whether or not the mere appearance of something in a rulebook is a reliable guide to determining it's tech level. As has been mentioned, we've got OSHA standards today for aluminized and arc flash clothing; it's not like this is cutting-edge stuff. If you just go by rulebooks, you can wind up in some weird places where you say stuff like "slingshots aren't statted in SR1, but they are in Arsenal, so I guess that's 2060s tech!"

You're probably better off just grabbing a gear list and writing 40s / 50s / 60s / 70s in the margins to set some standards, and then going from there. That way your universe is more or less internally consistent from the get go.

If you're going for the whole SR1 vibe with an eye on the 2040s, then you can pretty easily go down the list and start relegating chunks of conceptual space in or out. Cyberware is in. Bioware is in, but it's recent. Genetech and Nanotech are out. Alpha and Beta grades are in (probably) but Beta is the new SOTA, and Delta is still years away. AR / Wireless / RFID miniaturization is out, but only because you're vibing on SR1, and that tech was generally not something that the writers of Shadowun in the 80s and 90s had on their radar. The same thing generally goes for AI and machine learning, because SR1/2's ideas of existential matrix threats was more Halberstam's Babies and less Deep Blue, at least at first.

You get the idea. But thinking critically about a gear list has always served me well when my group wants to run back-in-the-day scenarios. Blade has spoken about that as well, and I think he took a similar approach.

Yeah, a gear list does not tell the whole story, and the slingshot (or tanto, no dachi, sai, rapier) are good examples of stuff they just didnt fit in or bothered with in the first place. But items that appear to be more high tech than others should IMO be in another age category, and afaik armor upgrades did not exist (except for inserts) until 4th edition, when armor also had cool stuff like wireless functionality and such.
Do we need the armor upgrades? We will see. But it is easier to introduce them later on saying it is new tech on the street (which has probably already been used by miltech for some time), than to have them available first and then remove them.

Bioware is actually 2052 tech, which is mentioned in SR3 history part. More about that in the timeline thread.