Of the two options you presented I like the 10 rounds per success one best although I think it should be better presented as 1 box per sucess.


Those here pointing out that it's not difficult to get ammo in bulk are in general correct, and it may be more realistic to buy/sell per case. However I think game balance suffers under such conditions.

A lot of course depends upon how you view the setting. One view is that runners are scraping for everything they get, and counting the number of APDS rounds they have left with their fingers and trying to decide if they should load them for this target is part of that worldview.

Others may have westwinds be the common ride and assault cannons the typical sidearm. Having it be exceedly difficult to get ammo in such a world would be odd I think.

Myself, I fall somewhere in the middle. One thing I did to make ammo counting a little easier was lump the standard rounds into the monthly cost of living. So I only made the characters pay for a total amount on hand, and it's considered to be replaced as a matter of course (it also allows them to practice).

High End ammo needs to be brought and tracked and is gone when used.

Not a unreasonable rule if you're going by realism.

Have your reduced the appearance of heavy armors and drones as well?

Bravo. I have gone by this for a long time. I feel AV ammo has to be either shaped-charge or one of the LONG acronym ammo types (like APFSDSDU-T for example) to be more effective than "AP" ammo. Neither is worth the time under about 12mm or so.

The smallest APDS that I'm aware of is the .50 cal Browning SLAP round. They attempted a 7.62 version, but it caused significant weapon malfunctions without a real gain in penetration.

Smallest shape charge I recall is 40mm (is there one in 37mm?). With this type of ammo the effect is a direct relationship with the diameter of the charge, which means typical firearm diameter versions would have less penetration than a solid bullet.

But I think it's common knowledge that the SR terms for APDS and AV are whacked- as far as today's technology goes. But then again, perhaps those terms don't really mean what we think they mean- they may reference a different but related technology that's 60 years ahead of us.

So while I consider it reasonable to house rule them away (or limit them to specific classes of weapons), I don't look down on anyone running them straight out the book either.

In our campaigns I redefined the ammo types to match today's with the suitable restrictions as result, i.e. no APDS unless it's .50 cal or bigger, AV is meaningless- do you want HEAT or APFSDS?, and so forth.

Actually here I'm more worried about the effect of player owned drones. If I have to arm the NPC guards with weapons to take them out, said weapons will find their way in to PC hands after the prying of warm dead fingers. And thus the orginal restriction has been dodged.

I like avoiding arm races if possible, especally since such things tend to end up with parity in type if not number in any case.

All this may just mean that one needs to watch what armor appears on drones and vehicles as much as they need to watch ammo types.

Mounted weapons help solve this problem, both on drones and fixed gun turrents controled by a security rigger. Once the gunfire starts, runners really don't have time to exercise their gun turret B/R skills.

I thought this point was a given in the rules, i.e. left up to the GM to determine based upon the nature of the contact and the requested item.


I do agree about the lotto nature of the availablity rules. For my own use, I losely tie the process to the street rep of the characters. If their rep isn't high enough, it doesn't matter what they roll.

And I've also as a house rule split the roll in two, the PCs roll to see if the contact is willing to do the sale, but the NPC rolls to see if he can get the goods at all.

So how many pizzas for a clip of AV rounds? How many cakes? Does pie figure into this at all?

We generally interpret it as "once per availability time".

Buying items, as presented, is very abstract. So abstract as to be out of line with the entire rest of the game. By the rules, you don't go to a contact and roll Etiquette, you just roll Etiquette and if you make the TN someone, somewhere along the list of people you asked, was able to get it to you.

It makes a lot more sense when approached that way, but may still not be what people are looking for.

~J

Now what would you have to roll for a case head separation? The kind that blows your rifle into pieces, as you are holding it...

Been there, done that, got the scars to prove it...

I understand this was in large part a joke, but I thought I'd point out some odds and ends anyway. I'm too serious sometimes.



Old ammo actually tends to work surprising well. Stuff made in WWII will still work today with few problems as long as the cartridge is not damaged in any way.


Dud rounds are not difficult to clear, all it takes is a racking of the slide in an semi-auto and in revolvers just keep shooting pass the dud. I'd call it a simple action in a semi-auto or auto if the PC has a few levels of skill. It would just be a missed shot in a revolver or manual action (like lever/slide) weapon.

IME having the primer detonate but not the powder charge is more common than hang fires. I've never had it happen with factory ammo personally nor heard of it happening. But I understand that it does once in a very great while. I've had this happen to me personally with handloads.

It does not take any serious work or special tools to fix. Most firearms are made to be field striped and a simple cleaning rod will knock the bullet out for you with handguns. It took less than a minute to fix mine, and nearly all that was a simple field break down. I'm not sure about rifles having never experienced it, but it shouldn't be a major problem, at worse it would require a hammer in addition to the cleaning rod.

The danger here is that one may well attempt to fire again with the bullet lodged in the barrel. While dangerous (and an excellent reason to always wear eye protection when shooting) it is far from an automatically blown off hand. The times it has happened in the gun range the only damage was to the firearm and the ceiling where various parts flew. The blast tends to go up and away, sometimes to the side.

It should be noted that a primer only detonation is normally not enough to cycle a semi-automatic or full automatic. The shooter would most likely have to cycle the weapon believing that he had a dud instead of a primer detonation. I think GM would be correct in making such a thing a skill test using the PCs firearm skill against a target number of 5 or so in combat.

I've never seen a hangfire myself. Perhaps these were more common with the old black powder weapons.

The likely result here is that the PC would just rack the slide at which point the shell would be ejected and thus would go off somewhere on the ground. Not a highly dangerous event. It could be worse in a revolver because one would likely fire pass it in combat and it could go off later- worse case as one is ejecting rounds and that could easily cause injury as well as damaging the weapon.


And of course it goes without saying that one never stares down a barrel unless the weapon has been field striped...

Just curious, was this a hand load or factory?

Factory load, Israeli military surplus. TZ-80, or one of the years close to it. I can't tell exactly what year the round was, as I never did find the case head (or my bolt carrier, for that matter).

This batch of ammo has weak brass, and has been known to split near the case head. I wasn't aware of this until after the fact, of course. I was shooting an FAL at the time, and it blew the extracter claw through the right side of the receiver, blew the barrel completely off the rifle, and I managed to get hit in the right forearm by the bolt carrier as it went into low orbit. Not a fun experience, all in all.

For anyone interested in the full story, with pictures:

The FAL Files

Never had any problems with my handloads, though. Go figure.

Ah, I see. Really bad, I'm glad you weren't more seriously injuried. Sorry about the FAL, I'd hate to lose one like that.


Going back to SR, a mean GM could drop stuff like this into the black market pipeline. Same with weapons in fact, even something simple like a poor quality knock off that works sort of, but has trouble fitting standard mags (I know someone with a universal make M1 carbine with that problem) as well as just being something of a poor shooter.

Lots of possiblities come to mind. But I think they are better handled as result of a botched buying roll rather than a result of a successful one.

The FAL's already been rebuilt. I happen to have a really good gunsmith as a contact...

As for SR, things like this also work great in a Mercenary campaign. Just seed the enemy weapons depot with booby-trapped weapons, bad ammo, and hand grenades with no time delay...

Fun.

You probably mean the one from greek myth, right ? If it´s that devious thingie from RAS, then there´s no way a Sam can accomplish such a thing without heavy GM bribing.

Here in Texas, I don't see any of the problems Snow Fox indicated.

.38 special can be found in Wal-Mart as can .380 let alone 9mm. The gun stores carry more types of course.

Basic ammo types are FMJs and various types of hollow points and soft points. AP ammo is illegal for the common man in the US although military and police can get it.

EX doesn't exist. You can't put enough filler in a bullet sized for handguns and typical rifles to make it worthwhile. As noted above, APDS doesn't exist below the .50 BMG.

Actually, they do make sabot rounds in .30 caliber.

Remington has (or used to have) a cartridge called the Accelerator in both .30-30 and .30-06 caliber. These simply used a .224 caliber bullet with a plastic sabot. Pretty impressive velocities.

Now, you could also get just the sabots, and reload them yourself, using any exotic .224 caliber bullet you like.

Imagine getting some of the new M995 AP rounds for the M249 SAW, and loading those into a .308, .30-06, or .300 Ultra Mag... (I once heard of a man loading normal .224 FMJ rounds in a .300 Win. Mag, and was getting around 5,200 fps!!!)

So, just because you don't hear about APDS in any caliber smaller than .50 BMG, that doesn't mean they doesn't exist.

On the Shadowrun side, has anybody had a character that reloaded his own ammunition?

These are not APDS ammo, they are just normal bullets with a sabot.

And of course you can make just about anything on your own if you have the equipment and material. However the military found no practical gain in their experiments with 7.62mm sized SLAP rounds- so its doubtful the home handloader would.