Hi,

I hope it is okay if I use "Spoilers" in the Topic and don't use it again in my post.

I am GMing the first adventure of wotc at the moment ("the messenger" I think... In german it's "Der Bote") and I am wondering about the winternight drone. How are the players supposed to overcome it? The drones armor rating is 8... If I'm correct that means that no weapon with a power less than 18 will be able to harm ist, and such weapons are not at hand there... Nothing with aval. > 4. They don't have any anti-vehicle ammo and even if they could get their hands on some they don't expect they will be needing it. They plan to get Hausmann when he comes out of Hoff's house after the dinnerparty... But what can they do about the drone? Flee? Their car is a bit faster than the drone... But is there anything I didn't see in the rules? What about melee weapons, are there any special rules? called shots to the drones smgs? I am not exacly sure what spells the mage has at hands but is it correct that their force needs to be higher than the drones armor rating to be successful? The chars, incl. the mage are fresh and its their first adventure. And elem. manip. spells suffer the same "cut power by half" penalty as normal bullets?

Any ideas / experience? I dont want them to suffer too much wounds in this scene as I expect more drek to come

You know, it took me a minute to realize WOTC = Wake of the Comet and not Wizards of the Coast ^_^;;

IIRC, even vehical armor doesn't work that way, you're thinking of the immunity to normal weapons power. Armor just subtracts from the power of the weapon. If it's hardened armor (which I believe all vehical armor is) and the armor is greater than the power, then no damage is done. Therefore, a shotgun slug or three will still take the thing down.

Please correct me if I'm wrong before a similar situation comes up in my games

The Abstruse One

As the books say, when you shoot a normal (non-AV ammo) weapon at a vehicle, it's power (don't know what its in english, the "9" of "9M") is cut in half, rounded down. The letter-code (don't know that either *g*) will be reduced by 1. So, a 17D weapon would be reduced to 8S. If the reduced power is less than or equal the armor rating, it will have no effect. All this is AFAIK.

Btw, the Ares Guardian drone has an armor rating of 12!

That because Ares is evil and out to take over all of the known world.

The Sentinel P has so much armor because it doesn't have to move off of its track. Very convenient, that.

As for how the players are supposed to defeat it: what sort of Sensors does it have? If they're low and coupled with a low Pilot rating, they might be able to slip out with an Improved Invisibility spell or use a Trid Phantasm as a distraction.

~J

The nature spirit "Accident" power is your friend. Another personal favorite is having an earth elemental use its engulf power on the drone and then its movement power to deposit the drone a few meters underground.

Question: Unless I missed something all movement does to a vehicle is accelerate/decelerate it, that's all. And an earth elemental doesnt actually have any power that allows it to move through earth in any way. How does the "move the drone a few meters into the ground" thing work?

Ways to handle this drone:

Tazer: Ignores armor, not only damages the drone but damages the rigger attached. The Defiance Super Shock should be equipped by every discriminating Samurai. Granted you have to get close enough to fire it (15m or less) but nobody said life was easy.

I think IPE Grenades can also have enough power to work against an armor 8 vehicle, and there's always the runner's friend, 15 kilos of commerical grade explosive.

IPEs, at 15 Power, come in just under the 17 required.

~J

When we played the adventure, we didn't really get a chance to take out the drone. We snuck in and got the guy without alerting the drone somehow and then woke it up on our way out. We were barely able to avoid the blast. Of course, getting out after the explosion was pretty hard.

If you think lowering the armor a point or two will balance it with your players though, I'd just suggest doing that.

Thanks all for your comments!

The drone's stats:

Handling 4 Speed 60 Accel 6 Body 2 Armor 8 Sig 12 Pilot 3 Sensor 4 INIT 6 + 3D6
Adaption Pool 3 Autosoft (Clearsight 3, Sharpshooter 2), mini-turret armed with twin smgs [SA/BF, 7M, 28©, APDS ammo, sound suppressor, half recoil due to turret]

The only awakended in the group is a troll combat mage so nature spirits are not at hand. The mage has no elementals at hand - I know he should but it's a new player unfamiliar to the system and I thought it would be okay if he first takes his time to get familiar with the basics. Also part of the run is going from seattle to french guyana by a normal, scheduled flight (so no equipment) and buying some new equipment from a smuggler. She has nothing with avail > 4 and they bought a bow (for the martial arts char), an uzi, an ak97 and 2 ares predator. Only normal + flechette ammo. I don't think they will try to get any other equipment if I don't give them a really obvious hint to do so - and why would I *grin*.

About the mages spells - I hope I translate them correctly. He has: manabolt (5), fireball (4), acid stream (3), enhance reflexes + 2 (3), invisiblity (5), heal (4), chaos (4), control mind (5). Just in case you wonder, the last 4 are exclusive. I think the only spell that has a good chance of affecting the battle will be chaos, at a force of 4 it will give the drone a +4 modifier on everything.

Thinking about it, just driving away pretty fast will be a valid, but their only option... The van has speed 100, accel 7. The best car skill in the group is 3. They could do it.

Chaos+run away.

~J

Chaos + Thermal Smoke grenade + run away.

Now you too can be a ninja!

There's always Physical illuion, make it look as though you and the team ran into a cave/tunnel/etc.
then bamn, the drone flies into the wall/cliff/etc

Call it the Coyote Gambit

Sadly, with Sensors 4 and Pilot 3, that won't work without a few botches in your favor.

~J

It's a nice idea, though!

Sensors are automatically fooled by physical illusion, if piloted byt he drone brain.

It has a friend-or-foe-device so it won't shoot at their extraction victim. I am not sure how that affects the drones decision on shooting at the car, but it could be a chance for them... The drone is autonomous btw., no rigger included.

BitBasher: To be honest, reading the rules now, I dont know where I came up with that interpretation of Movement. OTOH, Engulf actually accomplishes what I was attributing to movement, and, since vehicles (those that lack arms anyway) can not counterattack in melee and, further, lack a Strength attribute, they are incapable of either resisting or escaping from the Engulf power. Rather handy.

Not that the players will know this but staying within 2meters (i think) will stop the drone from firing on them.

This came up on the old forum as well.

There is a rocket launcher on the arms dealer's boat, if they search it.

Are you arguing that radar is a sense?

~J

Yes, it most certainly is. It is the sensing of reflected light, thus a form of sight, and thus affected by Invisibility. Ultrasound is a sense of sound, thus affected by Silence. And so on. All are affected by Trid Phantasm if the caster can duplicate the effect in his or her imagination.

I was actually playing during that run (I never get to play) and we handled it without a problem... we ran away.

It wasn't hard. Plus you can do called shots on its sensors. It's hard to armor a lens... at least that worked for us. It may not be "by the book" but if our GM let us do it, you could let your players do it. Shoot out its primary vision and it is easily escapable.

Again, the visual sensors are far from its primary modes of detection.

~J

[oops, wrong thread]

I agree that visual sensors aren't its primary sense of detection, but if you suddenly lost your ability to hear, you would have to adjust, even though people are a primarily visual creature.

Just like a tactical computer built into a person relies on it's input, so would a drones tactical program. When you blind it to one sense, you can fool it easier.

A drone missing its camera could also be less accurate with gunfire, as it probly has an adapted version of the smart link system built into it for purposes of aiming, and smartlink uses a camera.

A GM looking to make this situation easier on his players (as the original poster was asking) could rule that the drone is less likely to hit when operating solely on sonar, or radar.

Sensor-Enhanced Gunnery doesn't involve sight. The GM can declare otherwise to try to level things out, but other than fiat it shouldn't help. It will, however, kill a lot of manual gunnery, so if any of the runners have managed a high Signature it can be nice.

~J

What about the twin MGs? Can the drone fire both with a complex action? On different targets? The picture looks a bit like they are mounted fixed onto the drone and can only fire at the same target... If they can fire at different targets with one comlex action, does it take one complex action to lock on to both targets or does it take one for each?

Just an FYI from the Official FAQ.

And is it correct that Sensors get no penalties for darkness?

Depends on the level of sensors I believe.

I'd give even less credence to the FAQ here than on the cultured bioware issue. Or would you care to convince me that a drone has more trouble seeing an invisible person two meters away with direct LOS than detecting a visible person on the other side of a large building?

Active Sensors get no darkness penalties. Passive sensors have the same mods as character vision, but low-light and thermo IIRC show up at Rating 2, so most things will have those.

~J

In response to the original question: There are only a few ways to kick ass on heavily armored vehicles/drones. Either attack it with very high-powered weaponry (not available in this case), or use attacks that ignore armor: Crashes or Falling, Called Shots.

Crashes: He could summon a spirit that could use accident power or use a spell like ice sheet to make the thing crash. (Once again, not available because in this case he's a mage and lacks the appropriate spells. Not as effective but still possible is to use an elemental's movement power to try to induce a crash (only works in limited circumstances.) The mundane option is to steal a car or something and use it to crash into the drone. This is viable, but exposes the driver to fire on the way in.

Called Shots: This is totally unrealistic but if I've read the rules and FAQ correctly, called shots give the shooter the option of negating armor. Probably simulates a shot to blind the sensors or some such. I don't remember seeing anything in the rules that specified this couldn't be done to vehicles or drones. (As a GM I would hate it though, because it's not very realistic. At most, you should allow called shot to cut the armor value in half, or maybe not even that.)

The other weaknesses of most drones are their sensors and brains. If you can't destroy the drone (which you probably can't) the smartest thing is just to blind it and/or run away. Chaos seems like it would work well for that.

AFAIK, called shots allow the shooter to target specific parts of vehicles. And unless they're micro-sized drones, I'd say this drone qualifies as a vehicle. Therefore, disarming or blinding it would probably be an option.

As a thought related to bringing down drones, could one use ice-sheet to attempt to either freeze up the rotors or wings of an aerial drone or the intakes of a drone/vehicle with jet engines? If not, is there a similar spell that could be used to that effect in MitS?

Spells with secondary elemental effects often mess with drones and other equipment.

Acid: Vehicle tires flatten. Armor can be reduced by 1. If the damage code was deadly even firearms can be corroded into junk.

Fire: Vehicle fuel may explode. Add +2 to the vehicle's OR unless the fuel is exposed to open air.

Ice: Moving vehicles must immediately make a crash test.

Lightning: Lightning can short out electrical equipment. Modify the equipment's OR by -1 against these effects. It can destroy metal firearms and touch off their ammo. Vehicle engines may short out, and their fuel may ignite. Add +2 to the vehicles OR unless the fuel is exposed to open air.

Metal: Metallic shrapnel [...] can reduce the value of armor by 1. The fragments may confuse some types of sensors and scanners.

Sand: The fine grit may jam and damage machinery or weapons that are not fully sealed against the environment.

Smoke: The thick smoke limits vision, imposing a +4modifier on visibility for the rest of the turn.

Now the down-side: From BBB pg 150:

Defensive spells can work wonders. A simple barrier spell can trap the thing and block it's shots. A levitate spell can make it point somewhere other than at the PC's. An athletic type could even jump on it and shove somthing down the gun barrel. He may lose a hand, but those can be replaced.

By canon, only one weapon system can be active at a time (for reasons of simplicity more than anything else).

~J

Then whats the point about having two? Besides double ammo and backup in case of hardware failure?

In theory, there should be a "kludge" of sorts letting you fire linked weapons a la Raiders of the lost arc (when marian is firing the machinge gun). The only way I could feasibly rule it is split up the firing pool, for lack of a better word, into Gun 1 and Gun 2 and then roll.

BTW, is this more to do with the comet or to do with Proteus (Gotterbote is their probe).

Don

The last solution I see is Electronic Warfare, taking control of the drone. With availability of 4, you can't get better than a rating-2 Protocol-Emulation, but at least even if the TN is high (and the number of turn long) it has a chance to work.