Gyrojet gets my vote

Tazers.

Really? Why so? Pretty limited on range

Elemental damage. Nuff said

No fair Tinker. I meant a weapon you can buy. And salary wage mages don't count.

shotgun. selectable clip. sand or stone for elemental damage in shot shells. capsule rounds in the other with preferred liquid. fab III? or maybe some type of acid.

but cyber implanted tasers have destoyed my gm's plans before.

Nooo. That's the reason tasers rock

I'm a big fan of Capsule Rounds filled with something as simple as Neuro-Stun. While a lot of people talk about it 'cause chemical attacks are so effective in and of themselves, they often seem to forget that the round actually packs a double-punch, much like Stun Gloves. Not only does it deliver the chemical attack, but it does standard Gel Round damage (sans the Knockdown increase) as well.

That said, I'm often surprised at home often Hand Blades, Improved Hand Razors, and other high Power low Level melee weapons get overlooked. In my experience, a high Power has always been preferable to a high Damage Level. Sure, the latter requires more successes to completely resist, but the former insures fewer successes will be made.

Caltrops, dikoted if desired. Those invincible Body 12+ guys always take some damage.

Defiance T-250 Shotgun. It comes in both short and long barrel lengths. Use the short barrel and its concealabity of 6 for when you need something concealable (especially if you talk your GM into allowing the concealable holster for it). Use the long barrel for when you need power (10S can't be ignored) and use shot rounds/sea salt/whatever when you want it. Best of all, both use the same skill meaning one can relive the Firearms skill of 2nd Edition! Oddly it seems you can have a permit as well for the short barrel version despite being basically a sawed-off shotgun. The only problem is the 5 shot internal magazine, but if you've fired more than 5 times and time is still of the essence (i.e. combat isn't done or you have no cover), then you're in big trouble either way.

Laser weapons. *Sizzle*

Good lord, firing sea salt? Rich runners, eh?

~J

Which is why Capsule Rounds are nice. They do their (-2 Power) Stun damage right there on the spot. The chemical boost is only an extra perk for pesky opponents who don't go down with one shot.

Yep, can't argue with that too much. Well, I can since I banned capsule rounds in my game, but as they're written in the book they're pretty nice!

The Couger longblade with diakote. If memory serves thats Str+1(S) which is pretty nasty for a pigsticker.

Ares Alpha is clearly a good pick but hardly underrated, except in price.

A Blackhawk with glasers seems liek a good headshot weapon

Good point on the Defiance T-250, I'll have to try that.

For non-cybered characters, it's all about the manhunter. Now, I don't have my books with me, but integral laser sight and, iirc, edges out a pred 3 in either clip capacity, concealability, or damage. Can't remember which.

concealability 5 and 16 round clip for the manhunter. and laser sights do stack with the enhance aim spell. spend all your spell pool, buy an expendable spell focus and maybe karma the roll and you are looking at at least a base tn of 1. throw it on a sustaining focus if you're smart or quicken it if you can.

and the cougar is an excellent choice for stuffing in a boot.

There a heavy pistol in the CC thats 9m, laser sight, conceal of 7, only 550 and has an index of .5 that I think is a bit over the top.

Give me the roomsweeper anytime. Decent damage, shotgun rules, high concealability and a reasonable magazine.

Light pistols really, really suck, but there is one, the Steyr TMP, that is capable of full-auto fire. Wrap your mind around that. A dinky, lightweight pistol that you can load with EX Explosive rounds to fire a 10-round burst doing 18D damage. Get a custom grip, add a laser sight, and take a slight hit on power by mixing in some tracer rounds, and you actually have a halfway-decent chance of hitting something. Note that for full-auto weapons, the combination of vision magnification: 3, a laser sight, and tracer rounds (when you fire a 9 or 10 round burst) actually gives you a better bonus than a smartlink.

After rereading, I had the special explosive rules backwards between incendiary and explosive. I was also incorrectly recalling the additional 1's feature of incendiary. Go with explosive with that gun.

Where are you getting this? I'm looking at Explosive rounds on pg. 116 of the main book, and all it says is that they misfire if you roll all ones. Incendiary rounds (pg. 38 of CC) actually have more of a chance of misfiring - they misfire if more than half of your dice are ones.

Incendiary rounds are still very nice, though. Not only the 16D, but the same benefits as tracer rounds. And it's 20L (Power = twice the # of incendiary rounds), not 10L - and armor doesn't help, and you can't use Combat Pool to help soak it. And it's per round. Sure, the power drops by two each round, but that means you take 18L the second round, 16L the third - it can really whittle an opponent down.

The problem with the Steyr is that you have no recoil compensation, and the methods of attack that ignore recoil (Suppressive Fire) don't allow for staging. Likewise, most recoil compensation techniques take a battering on your Concealability, thus negating the entire point of using a Machine Pistol (of which the Steyr is) to begin with.

Just adding a Gas Vent IV alone drops its Conceal to 4. While not bad in its own right, you've already dropped your Concealability below what the HK MP-5 offers which comes standard with a Gas Vent and Laser Sight (technically meaning that it has a Conceal of 8 without those accessories). And you're doing a full Damage Level less damage to boot.

The Ingram Supermach is actually a pretty good weapon. Give it a Personalized Grip, an Underbarrel Weight, and use it with a Strength 6 character, and you can get a single BF burst out that does 12S damage with no recoil. It's Conceal is still better than the Steyr TMP, it has a better ammo capacity, and its Suppressive Fire capabilities are far greater than what the Steyr is capable of. The only benefit the Steyr has in comparrison is the ability to use a Concealable Holster and potential for more Recoil Compensation (at greatly reduced Conceal)... but that first benefit is only a single point higher than the Supermach's. And that's all hardly worth the fact that to match the 12S, you have to use a Complex Action while the Supermach is only using a Simple Action with no recoil.

All that said, I still like my Machine Pistols. They're just cool and are useful in most situations (6L vs. unarmed targets, 9M or higher against those in body armor or whatnot, and capable of Suppressive Fire). But for a thread like this, they pretty much suck compared to other options.

But overall, if we're just talking favorite weapons due to their stats, mine include the Colt Manhunter, the Remington Roomsweeper, and the Franchi SPAS-22... most of which have already been commented on so I won't repeat. As for the SPAS, it's is just a great weapon all around -- Smartlink-2 for free, BF capable, 10S base damage -- and it looks way cool to boot. Its only downfall is that it uses a magazine instead of a clip, so reloading is a pain. But if you need to reload in the middle of a fight while using one, you're in over your head to begin with.

For melee, gimme a pair of Stun Gloves (which mysteriously allow you to use Ambidexterity with Unarmed Combat as well as delivering a double-dose of damage with each strike) or paired Improved Hand Razors (+50% Strength in Power is nothing to sneeze at).

Don't we have magazine speedloaders now?

Only uncompensated recoil is doubled. A personalized grip is more than enough to ignore all the recoil a Roomsweeper dishes out.

I don't know if that's canon or not (I'm pretty sure it's not), but my GM allowed me to use standard BF rules with the Ruger Thunderbolt's BF mode (2 bursts per combat phase). The Savalette Guardian, another heavy pistol with BF, can only fire one burst per phase, and I'm pretty sure that this rule applies to other heavy pistols with burst fire as well, but my GM let me have fun with it nonetheless.
[Edit] I think I remember reading this in the CC (gun design section), but I don't have the book with me right now. Would be cool if someone could clarify that. [/Edit]

So now my (fully ambidextrous) character goes into battle wielding two Thunderbolts loaded with EX explosive ammo. Four times 14S damage per combat phase. Of course, this is definitely an example of "Distinctive Style", not to mention the fact that I'd be screwed if LoneStar catches me using those babies. I also know that it's not terribly efficient, but I always liked the "John Woo" flavour of this combo.

But I don't think the Thunderbolt is underrated; getting your hands on one is a royal pain in the ass, if you use it you can forget about subtlety, and getting caught with one just plain sucks. However, walking around a Z zone and displaying those guns openly sends a very strong message...

The Thunderbolt's canon rate of fire allows two bursts per combat phase, just like almost all other burst fire capable weapons. The catch is that it fires nothing but three round bursts, giving it an effective capacity of 4 (nasty) shots, the second of which is a bitch to get off. The Guardian (and I think 5-7C) are exceptions to the rule.

So you get two full Initiative Phases before you have to reload. That's not very John Wooish, especially since that means you're reloading after less than three seconds of firing each and everytime you start going John Wooish (unless you have a pathetic Initiative score, of course).

Thunderbolts suck by the very definition of the word "suck."

Heh, the Thuderbolt is not underated. Most people would say they are over used, but the combo of the BF and advanced BF rules the TB used make it unmatched in the heavy pistol group. However any GM whos players sport TBs in public should make them a bullseye for Lone Stars and BBGs.

The Puzzler and its big brother are way underrated. The fact you can get on a plane (or anywhere else) with one plus for Hi-C rounds is insane. But I guess you pay for that with concealablity and time putting it together.

Rodent: Yeah, I've had this problem a lot; you're absolutely right, the Thunderbolt's no gun for extended firefights. But my character's opinion is "Either take 'em out fast, or don't take 'em out at all."

The Walther PB-120 is a little underatted IMHO. I know its just a light pistol, but stick with me here. Its a conceal 8, and depending on how your GM rules, thats a total 15 concealment with a concealment holster and long coat. Loaded with glazers your talking about a 8S weapon on a headshot, which isn't too shabby if you can sneak it in with that 15.

Then again I'd chance a Morrissey Elite as I mentioned earlier. Thats a 11D on headshot, also great for a 13 concealment (once again depending on your GMs reading of the rules).

Also I went back and read the Defiance T-250 Shotgun. the sawed of versin has nothing on a Roomsweeper. Not sure what the point is.

I'd prefer a dikoted survival knife over the fineblades (house rules don't allow dikoted fineblades, seems to be a common house rule). -2 conceal and +3 power for the short, or +1 conceal and +2 power for the long.

The ELD-AR assualt rifle with capsuled rounds loading dmso and gammo scopalamine. Burst fire is a death sentence. Can you survive the stun damage and then 3 doses of gammo-scopalimine. Heck, you don't need gamma-scopalimine, just load neuro-stun and dmso.

Don

Splash grenades.
I find these to be incredibly versitile and just plain fun.
Freeze Foam
Need to keep a door closed? wump and it's shut with a barrier 12 mess.
Need to slow down some guards getting out of the elevator, wump, and they probably aren't moving to well.
Slip Spray
Need to slow folks down?
Need to stop a pesky biker on your tail?
Just want some fun at the skate boarding park?
Amonia
Need to darn near fubar a crime scene?

The splash grenade is just so much darned fun

ELD-AR is in Cannon Companion, I think.

It was first introduced in Corp Security (which also gave us the wonder chemical gamma-scopalimine). It's only SA/BF. Lovely weapon though, under the right circumstances.

Don

By the way, does it fire anything besides capsule rounds? Or is it as specialized a weapon as I think it is?

...Ooooh...Mount an Antioch with Splash Grenades on the Underbarrel hardpoint on an Eldar...There we go...

The original use is basically a paint gun with capsule rounds. The thing is filling those capsules with whatever you want. Heck, who gets arrested for a paint gun. You can still claim it's legal.

I think you might still be able to mount a gernade launcher.

As for the 3rd ed source, I can't remember if it's in M&M (due to chemicals) or CC. I think it's in CC in German and M&M in English, but don't quote me.

Don

The ELD-AR is on P. 115 of M&M.

That defeats the non-letahl appeal the weapon has for me. To me, a Shadowrunner is not always just a killer for hire, many can and do so without regard. I've gotten tot he point I like the 'challenge' of non-lethal combat. Last villian I used in a game was a pacifist who was in danger of losing his job, was kinda fun going through the mental anguish of "must not kill party becasue they didn't do anything wrong"

DP grenade with IR smoke and splash (slip spray or splat glue) as an escape coverer?

Not bad, kinda like slip spray and flash or super flash as well. go ahead, try and throw it back.

Flash does a better job if you're trying to stun them for an assault. IR smoke is better if you're just running away