| From: | "I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY...IT'S BETTER TO BURNOUT THEN TO FADE |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Life, the universe, and everything...(LONG!) |
| Date: | Sat, 10 Apr 93 00:16:48 CET |
on the list lately. That one thing is: What happened with the railgun
disscusion, and would anyone be interested in more info on railguns and
their big brother, the coilgun?
That said, I will now spout out my 0.02Ÿ about phys ads, combat pool,
dikote bullets and foci, and the partrige in the pear tree.
Phys ads and their killing hands: It is my belief that KH can most
definatly be used to carve up vehicles. One thing that supports this
is the description of KH on p.126 SRII. It states that the attacks placed
by the adept can be stun or physical at the choice of the adept. It also
states that KH is effective against creatures that have immunity or magical
defenses to normal weapons.(ie manifest astral creatures, some paranormal
animals, that mage with the personal barrier spell, etc.) The other
information that leads me to believe that KH can harm 'hard' targets is
a little weak because I don't like to use stories or modules to make rules.
(mostly because of the Dreamchipper module where BTL's can give chipheads
skills that would cost players 9,037,000Ÿ in cyberware. but that is a
different story). Anyway, on page 18 of SRII in the second colum near the
middle is the following description of a strike from a physical adept with
KH (incidently Paul Hume worte this story and the Grimoire):
"She was so fast, and when she hit Nameless, her hands just ripped
through cloth, and skin, and even his armor."
Next issue is that of phys ads using shielding. I like the idea of
the phys ad being able to purchase a Shielding ability at the cost of
1 of his MR points. This still requires that the phys ad be an initiate.
I remember reading somewhere (maybe Grimoire 1) that you must have the
phys ad ability of Astral perception to become an initiate. Can anyone
verify if that still applies in second edition?
Someone posed the question "can someone use KH against an astral
opponent and what would the modifier to hit be?" or something like that.
The answer is as long as the astral opponent is not manifested they cannot
effect you and I expect the reverse to be true. You may notice the
presence of a powerful spirit/elemental as a desturbance in the air but
until it manifests it can't effect you. (Exception: spirits can use powers
that directly benifit or protect the summoner. p.140 SRII)
Someone also said that because watchers cannot manifest that they
cannot be seen in the real world. Not so. p.74 Grimoire II says:
"Watchers can see and hear the physical plane, and can even manifest
visibly and speak to physical beings. Like apparitions, however, they
cannot touch material things or affect the physical plane directly."
(it is also feasible for mages and shamans to do this but it is up to the
GM.
On to the combat pool. In SRII the combat pool should be thought of as
a combination attack/defense pool where the 'defense' part has too different
functions. The following are two (got it spelled right this time)
examples of damage resistance:
Lone Star cop pops your character with a stun baton (6S stun) he
rolled four sucesses with his combined skill and combat pool. You decide
that to use your entire combat pool (9) (concidered full defense in SRII
) and your body (6) against a modified TN of 4. (6 for the baton - 2
for your armor trench.)you get 4 sucesses (what a lame roll!). This is
concidered your damage resistance since you did not counterattack.
(note all sucesses were from your combat pool!) on p 91 the book
says that If the sucesses are equal then the weapon does base damage.
the cop with his four sucesses does 6D+ stun (remember there was no
counter attack, just a damage resistance.) You with your 4 sucesses
reduce that damage from D+ to D to S. And because you were 1 sucess short
of a 'clean miss then the +2 to TN's also comes in to play.
Damn, that is a long example. I don't think I
'll waste space with another one. I'll just paraphrase my thoughts.
Combat Pool is designed to save your butt from that joker with the
panther cannon who somehow mannaged to hit you through the wall you
were using for cover with one success or from the nasty effects of
paralizing touch, venom, narcojet round, DSMO, and all those other things
that must cleanly miss you. Because unless it is a clean miss it still
hit you. But the combat pool is also there to reduce your dammage in the
same roll.
Dikote bullets:
The Idea behind standard round is the hollow point round. Which inflicts
its massive tissue damage because it basically explodes on contact with
a target ( the air in the tip compresses and helps the metal shread into
fragments.) dikoteing the round would defeat the purpose and probably
melt the round in the coating (remember that the heat of dikoteing foregoes
the coating of _balistic_ plastics so soft lead will liquify (sp?) fast.)
So a harder material will be needed, again defeating the purpose which
is to cause massive tissue damage. The best I could see a dikote bullet
doing is cutting balistic armor in half, and starting with a damage level
of light.
One last thing: I remember reading somewhere that teleportation has
_NEVER_ been successful in the shadowrun world because _NOBODY_ has
been able to transfer real life matter into the astral world.
The only exception that I have come accross is in the module Harliquin.
(and, again, I hesitate to use it as presidence or justification of
the existance of such spells) The explanation that makes me believe
that the spells exists is that it was posesed by Harliquin and Eran
the Scribe who both are described as mages who existed when magic
last cloaked the Earth, somewhere on the order of 5,000 years ago according
to the module.
Well that is all of my rambling for now.
Consturctive critisism is welcome, flames will be deleted upon discovery.
P.S. Ÿ=(compose character)/y/=
adios]<<<<<
BurnouT
