I was just reading a published adventure (I won't say which one to prevent spoiling) in which as a surprise a drone sweeps in on some runners in the midst of a run. I was looking over the stats for the thing, and I noticed that this unique drone was listed with armor of 8! Now here's my question: Is there anyway to take this thing out unless the characters have a) a rigger with some heavy duty combat drones of his own or b) an anti-vehicle rocket launcher?

My take:

1. Firearms, melee weapons, elemental manipulation spells, etc.: The power is reduced by half (round down), the damage level reduced by one level, and in order to do damage, the reduced power of the attack has to be greater than the armor level. That means the unaugmented power of the weapon would have to be 18! I know only three of those off the top of my head, one being a laser weapon and the other two being assualt cannons. Possibly a monowhip could count as AV since it's so sharp?

2. Magic: Force has to exceed the vehicle's armor... Anybody packing a Force 9 powerbolt? A strong spirit could stand up to it without taking damage, may be able to occupy it, but probably couldn't do any damage for the same reasons listed in 1.

So, any other ideas?

At one point in a game i was in i had a human with hand to hand damage in the range of 20m. But that is the the hard core sam..And the game went on for far too long.

Not quite. Most weapons firing AV rounds could do it (even light pistols) but an AV shotgun slug is a sure thing. Rules for AV rounds are on P36/P38, Cannon Companion.

Options involving magic mostly involve spirits or the physical barrier spell:
A good force physical barrier in-front of it can cause some serious damage.
A spirit with the accident power can make it do a crash test.
A spirit using its movement power could crash the drone against a wall.

I know exactly which module you're speaking of and the only way we were able to eliminate the blasted thing was when the Troll physad (with a serious throwing weapons focus) hurled a dikoted katana at the thing. Lost the katana, of course.

Where does it say the force has to exceed the vehicle's armour? I'm not disputing that, just wondering. I thought a Powerbolt would do it, then you'd *only* need to hit a 14 or so...

Or pretty much any weapon with av rounds, as mentioned, or a guy with str 12 or so and a dikoted katana, or a panther cannon, or grenades in a confined space, or run it over with your own vehicle or emm... Yeah, mostly just AV muntions I suppose.

Anyway, doesn't a Guardian have armour 12??

There was a debate over how to kill over-armored drones in the old forum. The best magical method is indirect magic. Not powerbolt, but maybe ice sheet (crash test), physical illusions, spirit powers, shape earth, and other things that won't have to fight against the OR of the drone. With a good trid-phantasm to confuse it, one of the mundane could see about crashing a truck into the drone, that should do something.

The Powerbolt wouldn't have to be force 9, but close. To even work on a vehicle, the spell has to be at least force = (OR + Body + 1/2 Armor) / 2. So I think for the vehicle in question it comes out to a minimum force of 7 or 8 with a TN of 8 to affect it with the spell (OR should be eight).

[edit]Changed to eight) [/edit]

Look over the crashing section of SR3 (P147). that has a number of ways for you to damage it.

Come to think of it; a very fast moving character (60M/round+, a quickness 5 dwarf with a force 6 spirit's movement power) is probably going to damage most vehicles (anything but the main battle tank from SOTA2063) if he just charges at them. OK so he's going to take a serious wound and the vehicle is going to be taking a light but that's not the issue.

Ah, thanks for the reference Clipwing. I didn't know about that.

I think what TinkerGnome is talking about is on p182, under the "Sorcery Test" heading, 4th paragraph.

So the target number WOULD be 14 or something like that, and you'd need a force equal to half the armour, or half the (unmodified, eg 8 ) OR, whichever is higher. So force 4 should typically do it.

Edit: Oops, no, it's the modified OR, so force 7 or so. Ouch.

Sorry yeah, the full armour rating... I'll get everything together in one post, first time round, one of these days.

So that's Force 9, and target number equal to 8 + bod + 1/2 armour = roughly 14, don't know the drone you're talking about specifically. That's pretty hard to do, know anyone with a Force 9 spell?!

Okay, so about that Guardian...

How about rolling a grenade under the thing, that might flip it over. Like a helpless turtle it will just sit on its back. Of course I don't know the exact drone, so maybe that wouldn't work. But if it isn't to heavy then you might be able to slip sometihng under it (like the afore mentioned katana) and flip the thing over.

-Strobe

thats why when i played a rigger one time i built a wedge drone to flip stuff over, battlebots style!

isnt armor halved under a vehicle? toss a grenade under it

Yuck, I hate it when the rule book splits up the relevant text between two sections. Here's a summary from both page 150 and page 183.

Spell cast at a vehicle:

TN = 8 + vehicle body + .5* vehicle armor
Resitance threshold = TN / 2
Armor threshold = armor

So a spell cast at a vehicle has to be of a force equal to or greater than the resistance threshold (TN/2) and greater than the armor threshold (armor value). Additionally, it is rolled against a TN of 8 + body + half armor. So the aforementioned example does work out with the numbers everyone is bandying about

TN = 8 + 2 + 4 = 14
Resistance threshold = 7
Armor threshold = 8

So the spell must be at least force 9 and face TN 14. Which is why no one casts spells directly on military grade vehicles. A Dodge Scoot is significantly easier to cast on, though

Did anybody think of a good EW Rigger taking control of the fragger? I mean, I got caught off guard in a comparable situation by a rigger pc who had done his homework on the EW rules and basically took control. Granted, it wasn't a complete surprise to have a drone pop-up in the situation I put the players in, but...

I don't know how practical that solution would be in the situation you're talking about, though.

won't C-12 do it? assuming you can get close enough.

I was thinking about these very same topic when running Brainscan with deus's favoured toys.

Their a real pain. even more so when u think about that they have CMC lvl6!!!

Dikote also magically cuts through armor, iirc.

Well, this thread has gotten quite a few interesting results... Still a little curious about how melee would be resolved, but it seems by and large that the best thing to do is have the right equipment for the job ready at hand. Please excuse me now while I go find myself a clip of AV ammo.... just in case

Here's how melee could easily stop drones in their tracks (and its unarmed)

Physad with high str, smashing blow, distance strike, imp unarmed skill.

Also useful against light vehicles and redirecting incoming grenades and rockets.

Also works like sunder in AD&D except its ranged

EDIT: oh, and for those frustrating moments when you just got to hit something...

There's just something about beating a vehicle to death with unarmed combat that seems so... daft.

Barrier ratings are doubled against all normal melee attacks, and bullets for that matter. However, you just use the normal rating when your weapon is dikoted.

But aye, smashing blow is the way to do it all the same.

And now for some stupidness:

Troll, quickness 5, body 11, using a force 5 spirit's movement power, wearing a rapid transit heavy jumpsuit and helmet.

His movement speed is 75m/phase

If he rams into a stationary vehicle vehicle, abstracting from the rules in SR3, it could be resolved as a vehicle-pedestrian collision with effective vehicle speed of 75m/phase.

The vehicle then resists 7M, vehicle armor dosen't work against crashes
The troll then resists 7D, reduced by impact armor

The vehicle will probably take moderate, the troll will probably take nothing.

I think they fixed this in the rigger 3 rules though.

"Aiiee! The pistol rounds bounce harmlessly away! An entire clip of submachinegun ammunition has been wasted! My expensive explosive rounds from my Ares Alpha, gone! Dead-on hits from my grenade launcher, useless! Our mage knocked himself out trying to harm it with a bolt of purest magical energy! It didn't notice the fireball from our shaman!"

"The machine has earned my wrath!"

"Spinning leap ninja crescent moon tiger kick!"

Followed by my king kong palm.

well, easiest way would be a hvy pistol with AV ammo, the drone can then soak 5m with its (probably) little body

actually i think AV ammo is pretty much overpowered...

btw, how do dikoted melee weapons fair against drones/vehicles?

How about a powerbolt targeted at the drones machine gun? If you destroy the gun then you render the drone helpless.

I've had mages use powerbolt to knock a gun out of a person's hand. I don't see my you couldn't use it to destroy a specific and less armored part of a drone. Are there any rules to prevent this?

And that's just a mage who probably knows next to nothing about drones. What about a rigger who knows what a drone sensor array looks like? He could blind the drone with a called shot.

How to blind a drone (easy way):
Ingredients:
2 gallons paint in 3 gallon can
1/2 gallon metal shavings (radar interference)
tripwire
ladder

mix shavings into paint
set paint on ladder
attach tripwire to paint can and across the path under the ladder
lead drone under paint
drone loses radar, visual, and possibly radio functionality
if the method controlling the drone is cut off, take, clean, and sell the drone

Call me crazy if you like, but are there anywhere rules for narmed melee against vehicles? There's melee against barriers, but I cant find vs vehicles. Lets face it, a baseball bat would be useful against any small to medium drone or car. Let alone a dikoted halberd

I think most people would use the rules on P149, Attacks against vehicles. Baseball bats are useful against most drones but once they have a coupple of points of armor they're just too tough to crack for most people.

Thats combat spells as far as i read it, it should be allowed with elemental manip. spells, since they are treated as a ranged combat attack.

but it is also stated that an area effect spell affects the entire vehicle, as well as passengers and cargo, so conceivably that would also mean any external weapons.

Interesting question, how do you handel area effect spells vs. vehicles? According to page 150, these spells not only affect the vehicle, but the passengers and cargo of the vehicle. What process would casting a powerball on a van (for instance) follow?

Personally i would rule that anything that is viable as a target gets hit. That includes tires, exposed passengers, exposed cargo, exposed weapons and so on. Naturally a weapon mounted on an external hard or firm point is vulnerable, but weapons mounted on internal hard or firm points would not be hit specifically since they are effectively a part of the vehicle. In my book that also means that if you have outside fuel tanks on your vehicle, you're asking for it.

You could use a water elemental to manifest inside the drone to short it out. but there are no rules for this specifically that I am aware of.

On the other hand you can Glue its tire (or tread) if its ground based, and then it will most often lose that tire/tread, and at least give it some penalties or make it go in circles.

If its a wheeled vehicle, that super-slick slipery goo from the chem section in Man and MAchine could make it crash and keep it from getting unstuck pretty well. May not destry the thing, but it stops it from following you. Man, that goo has a million uses- defiantley worth packing in some splash grenades, if not just hauling around in bulk. More fun that a bag full of ball bearings!