[Solomon]

Okay so you might damage the gloves but what about the cyberware version? It is meant to last a literal lifetime of hard use and s built into the knuckles. The idea that you cant get any additions to the damage of a shock hand seems completely unrealistic to me.

[Waratah]

Came across a similar situation in one of my games and being new to the system I was a little unsure.
Same sort of situation as belting someone with a stun baton.
One of the first comments mentioned about splitting the damage which makes sense and I think that's what I did at the time.
You take the damage from the punch as is and apply one resistance test to that, but the electricity damage is a secondary damage that you do a seperate resistance test for.
If both get through through, then effectively the damage stacks.
Personnally I'd only damage or bust the gloves on a glitch or critical glitch.

[Medicineman]

its either or .Mainly out of balancing Reasons

with a balanced Dance
Medicineman

[Mason]

From the official FAQ:

If you punch someone with shock gloves, do you inflict standard punching damage (STR/2) in addition to the glove’s 6S DV? If you have gloves on both hands, can you attack with both and do 12S DV?

You can choose to punch/kick/whatever and do regular unarmed damage, or you can choose to touch and zap with the shock gloves, doing only the shock glove damage (not the unarmed damage too). Even with two gloves, the damage is still just 6S DV per glove, but each counts as a separate attack (Two Weapon Melee Combat, p.163, Arsenal).

[Chaemera]

It all boils down to what MedicineMan said: Balance. Whenever you sit down and think to yourself, "logically, it should work this way", stop a moment. Think about why it might not, not just from a RL perspective, but from a mechanics perspective. Shadowrun is not a fair game, by any stretch (it's not supposed to be, it's a dark genre), but it's not a completely unbalanced game.

Ask yourself, "Do I want the GM to start throwing Trolls that deal 6P + 6S(e) + Net Hits when they reach me?" Follow that question with "How do you resist mixed Physical and Electrical damage?" Start to understand the complex rat's nest it opens. Let it sink in that either you slow down the game by making multiple damage resistance rolls (do net hits apply to the P, the S(e), or both?), or you have to justify some wonky armor rules (half armor against physical? full armor against electrical? neither makes sense), or you lose the advantage of the punch (treat all damage as electrical, for 12S(e) + Net Hits) while making shock gloves more powerful than a sniper rifle.

Trust me, the idea of punch + shock glove is tempting, but then it either gets used against you in painfully game-ending ways, or it makes the rules painful, detracting from the game just for one little punching gimmick.

If a player insisted, I might (might) let them do Unarmed damage +1 + Net Hits (converted to S(e) damage, of course) for throwing a heavy punch with his shock gloves, but only if he were willing to risk nasty nasty things on a glitch.

[Mason]

Eh, I prefer the FAQ rules. It is JUST shock damage, and if you use two it counts as two attacks so you split the pool and off-hand modifiers apply.

[Thermo]

One way to explain it is this:

Even if the shock pads are on the knuckles and therefore would make contact during a punch, the length of contact would be very short. It's not like a static electricity shock where it's one big ZAP. It's more like grabbing a live wire and getting electrocuted. So, in an attack with shock gloves, you are actually grabbing the enemy and holding on to shock them with the gloves. A punch would throw them away from the glove, and therefore wouldn't give them much of a zap. It's like if someone were to swing a taser at you and just glance you with the arc. You might get a tingle, but nowhere near what you'd get if they held it against your skin.

If the players counter this by asking if they can use it during submission combat, I'd say let them. If they're unlucky, they'll get zapped themselves. If they're critically unlucky, they'll get zapped and 'hold the trigger down'

[Chaemera]

It's worth noting, just from an electrical perspective vice a game mechanics perspective... If you touch a live wire (and are in a position to "complete the circuit"), I don't care how short an amount of time you're in contact, you're going to get a lot more than a "tingle". Electrons move very, very quickly when they have a path to conduct along.

Electrons move faster than you.

[Shudnawz]

Okay, I've been giving this some thought (from both perspectives), and came up with this:

If you want to hit someone with both P and S in a smack, you first roll your unarmed combat + agi to hit him as a normal punch. Say that I have 12 dice in that pool, that gives me 4 net hits statistically. However, my opponent rolls reaction + dodge (say 4+4), ends up with (counted high) 3 hits. Counting backwards, I get 1 net hit. All good so far, he gets (str/2)P+1 damage to soak.

Now, I want to deliver the shock from my shock hands. Taking into account that I can normally deliver 6S(e), I set a threshold at 6 (this is to signify how hard it is to deliver that kind of shock; a smaller charge does not have as much damaging potential, and so a lower threshold for balancing purposes). Every net hit from my above strike counts down that threshold (to signify how well of a contact surface my hit actually created related to the difficulty of the shock itself). I roll the normal damage plus any net hits above as my dice pool (6+1), threshold 5 (6-1 for my one net hit above) and come up with ~2 hits, not enough to beat the threshold. No S(e) damage get through, coz I didn't hit well enough. I struck him, yes, but the resistance in the hit area was too great for the shock to be delivered.

If I had 6 net hits in the first roll, the threshold of the shock would be a normal 1, but since I still roll the shock-strike, I have the potential to get no hits, glitches or critical glitches. 6+6 gives you 4 hits statistically, and that's 6S(e)+3 you deliver as well as the (str/2)+6P.

Also, by no means should the net hits of the shock-roll be higher than the first hit; I can't deliver a bigger shock than my contact surface (the resistance of it) allows.

This way, you will need a major hit to be able to both do physical and stun damage in one hit, and also, you cannot shock your victim to a greater extent than you actually hit him. If you want to shock him properly (without risking killing him in the process), touch attack him instead.

Note:
It's about 5:30 AM here, so my logic may be flawed.
But still, what about the concept?

[Medicineman]

@ Shudnawz
I think after a good nights Sleep You'll recognize that these Rules are too complicated and its too many additional Rolls so it's only gonna lenghten the Combat needlessly
(and all for bringing even more unbalance to the Game/the Rules   )
How many Rolls would You need for a poisoned electro Vibrosword ,or for a Nartaki with 4 such Swords

with a Saturday Morning Dance
Medicineman

[Chaemera]

After thinking it through, I think the best solution, if you really feel that you need to bring this into your game (I won't be) is to split your dice pool, just like any other time you're attacking with two weapons. It just so happens that this time you're attacking with two weapons on a single arm.

I'm not going to try and justify the mechanics relative to real world physics (why should I attack twice to hit once, etc) and just say that it's the simplest, most balanced approach you can take. Other than possible modifiers, this rules solution is only cinematically different from punching the guy with both arms, one super-cyber, the other shock gloved.

To be fair, one can argue that attacking with two weapons is covered under ranged combat and melee combat only discusses attacking multiple targets, but I think melee needs all the help it can get and splitting dice pools should, frankly, be a far more general rule than it is.

[Solomon]

I totally agree that melee needs a lot of help. It is brutally underpowered in my opinion vs guns. The advantage of guns is range and ease of use, which are huge advantages but it sure feels like they get a lot more than that in Shadowrun

[Mason]

Yeh, and melee weapons need tons of help. It isn't very hard at all to make unarmed exceed most weapons, unless the weapons are foci.

Speaking of which, anyone ever try to turn their cyberarm/hand into a weapon focus? GM won't let it happen...

[Phi6891]

I have a question, what would be the rules if I mixed shock gloves and knockout spell together for an attack, seeing as they are both just touch and I wouldn't be doing any punching.

[Medicineman]

I have a question, what would be the rules if I mixed shock gloves and knockout spell together for an attack, seeing as they are both just touch and I wouldn't be doing any punching.

You would be doing two Complex Actions (#1 Spellcasting  #2 Melee Attack ) at the same Time
and thats not possible

with an impossible Dance
Medicineman