[werebear83]

So I am running a street sammi in  a game where our GM is using a lot of magic creatures.   I rely on a modded pair of war hawks and keep encountering creatures with hardened armor and it is getting annoying having to roll over 10 successes just to make a dent in these things.  So enough rambling, are there any decent options for a gillette to deal with these things? Special ammo, bigger guns, maybe a tac nuke?  I am good with my BS rolls vs the GM so any ideas I can run with.

[Mirikon]

My first thought would be to go with APDS or Stick-n-Shock ammo. AP mods come off the hardened armor before you see whether or not it makes a dent. So anything with AP -4 or AP -half is going to do good things for you.

After that, if you know you're going to be hunting a specific type of creature, do your research and find their weaknesses. If they are vampires, for instance, flechette rounds made from ash wood are a great choice. On a bug hunt? Capsule rounds full of KE IV are your bestest friend, except maybe the splash grenades full of the powerful insecticide.

Third option? Get your mage friend to sustain a spell on you. If you've got some melee skills, having the mage sustain a Fire Aura spell on you during the fight is going to make you nasty as hell.

[UmaroVI]

Mirkon's advice all works. In addition (and you can combine this with the other advice):

1) make Called Shots for +DV. -4 to hit for +4 DV is a great trade (unless you miss) and the +DV does indeed help you bypass hardened armor. You can also call to ignore armor but that can very quickly take you to 0 dice pools.

2) Use weapons with FA (or better yet, HV), and wide burst. Narrow burst DV does not help bypass hardened armor, wide burst = less defense = more nets hits = better chance of penetrating ITNW.

3) If you have Heavy Weapons, the Ares Thunderstruck Gauss Rifle is amazing against spirits; the errata changed it to AP half, then -4. With an already pretty good base damage, it cuts through ITNW pretty easily. It's also good as a ersatz sniper rifle (just as good range, no silencing, better stopping power) and as an anti-vehicular weapon, so the high price tag is well worth it, IMO.

What weapon skills do you have? I might be able to give better advice based on that.

[werebear83]

Thanks for the advice, we never know what we are gonna hit, we have gone on three runs and in the first we went to a waste land desert town near a magic rift, no comms, no tech, and lots of awakened animals.  Next was a run where me and another sammi pretended to be minor corp security so our mage could bluff her way in, and all we brought were light pistols, we ended up facing a level 9 beast spirit, yeah, Colt Manhunter was really effective. Last run well, we were just supposed to get the info for the run, but I am just being a whiny PC.  Thanks again.

[Falconer]

Umm...  you said gilette.   Gilettes used to be melee razorboys.

Your best bet is to shun the blades.   Go with a taser instead.   AP-half goes a long way towards cuting through hardened.  (defiance EX is so good it really should be an exotic weapon... but roll with what you got).

[Mara]

Umm...  you said gilette.   Gilettes used to be melee razorboys.

Your best bet is to shun the blades.   Go with a taser instead.   AP-half goes a long way towards cuting through hardened.  (defiance EX is so good it really should be an exotic weapon... but roll with what you got).

If the things he has been going up against only have Hardened Armor, as opposed to ITNW, then capsule rounds with poisons
work, as do splash and gas grenades. Then again, does ITNW work on the insides? If not..gas grenades might be a good choice,
anyway.

For guns, you can also get Anti-Vehicle rounds...

[_Pax_]

Well, I think what the OP needs is ....




...




... is to have a good face-to-face with their GM, and ask them why they're throwing such powerful opposition against the PCs, in situatiosn where they're by default NOT going to have the right gear to effectively, not-panicking-for-their-lives deal with those threats.  I mean, seriously, the two samurai have LIGHT PISTOLS, nothing more, and get thrown up against a F9 Beast Spirit ...?!?

[TheNarrator]

A Force 9 spirit would be some pretty heavy opposition for low-level runners, even if they did have their full firepower. A mundane would have to overcome an equivalent hardened armor of 18 to hurt it.

2) Use weapons with FA (or better yet, HV), and wide burst. Narrow burst DV does not help bypass hardened armor, wide burst = less defense = more nets hits = better chance of penetrating ITNW.

It should be noted that this strategy is only useful if you have sufficient recoil compensation to not have to sacrifice very many dice from the attack role. Otherwise it's a zero sum game: you'll lose just as many hits on average as the target does.

Called Shot for damage, on the other hand, is great idea, as it pays off at an average of about 3-to-1.

[Falconer]

That's not zero sum......

I have 18 dice.. you have 9 dice... no recoil comp.

-9 means I still have 9 dice, but you have no dice.

2:1 ratio is inferior to 9:0 ratio!

I agree with you that called shots generally work better... but a lot of GM's don't allow called shots with wide spread automatic fire.  (scatter so it's harder to dodge... but I'm AIMING for a specific point of sorts!).  If you have a HMG... you can't fire anything except a long or full burst anyhow (FA only), so called shot is not in the cards.  So the rule of thumb is against vehicles and spirits... unless you can hit and breach hardened with a single shot... don't narrow but wide burst.   If in doubt... wide burst unless you know exactly why you're narrow bursting.


This is the reason I hate the -dice mechanics for perception of penalizing the observer... normally the amount of perception available is small compared to the amount of stealth pool.. .so penalties to it tend to wipe it out, when if they were bonuses to the stealth pool instead they'd work practically as well without completely boning over the perception pools of all but the most extreme cases.

[_Pax_]

A wide spread is +1d per bullet, isn't it?  (I haven't looked that rule up recently.)

Every bullet after the first is -1 recoil.

So a 10-shot wide burst is +10 dice, and then (if you have no recoilcompensation) -9 dice.

All you've really done is throw away eight bullets, for nothing in return.

[Falconer]

No Pax, a wide burst is a penalty on the reaction to not get shot.

So if you have a steel lynx tossing 9 dice between +handling and response... and armor 12.

You shoot him with tripod mounted HMG firing cheap standard ball ammo.  (FA only... so you can only fire 6rd (simple) or 10rd(complex) bursts).

You fire heavy weapons + agility + Misc - uncompensated recoil (0, 8 on tripod + whatever).    He reactions with Reaction - 9 (-1 for each bullet after the first).   He can't dodge.

Base damage on the HMG is 7P AP-3... so armor is 12 vehicle... you need to at least get 3 successes to increase damage to physical and hurt the drone.

You roll your dice and get 3 successes exactly... the drone gets no dice to roll to reduce this down under 3... so it gets hit for 10P, AP-3 and gets hurt severely.


If this were a NARROW burst...   they do +1dam per bullet after the first (after the check for armor physical/stun).  If one spitwad won't hurt the tank... 10 of them won't do much better....
In the same case... you fire and get 3 successes... barely enough to hurt the drone.  If the drone fails to get any successes you'll do 19P AP-3 damage (pretty assuredly blowing it sky high).

However the drone still has 9 dice to roll to reduce your 3 hits... all it needs is 1 to take NO damage (armor 12 vs 9AP-3 damage)  which is all the difference between a glancing hit sending tracers flying everywhere as they bounce off the armor, and a dead drone.

[UmaroVI]

It's also not particularly hard to get your recoil compensation, unless you're using an off-the-shelf gun.

[_Pax_]

No Pax, a wide burst is a penalty on the reaction to not get shot.

Ah, yes that would make a difference.  Thanks for the clarification.

[Psikerlord]

Third option? Get your mage friend to sustain a spell on you. If you've got some melee skills, having the mage sustain a Fire Aura spell on you during the fight is going to make you nasty as hell.

This is a brilliant idea. EVeryone can play with spirits now!

[Lacynth40]

Meh, this is why I like to play ghouls. Yeah, you don't invite them to the fancy dinner parties, but spirits get hosed by dual-natured beasties with claws. Well, anything really can get hosed by dual-natured beasties with claws. For hardened armor, yeah, I really like Stick-n-Shock. And as mentioned in other threads, S-n-S on Full Auto is pretty much broken as hell. Your DM keeps throwing huge nasties at you, whip out the S-n-S Ares Alpha. Remember, that stun track is generally shorter than the physical track.