Shadowrun 4th Edition PDF

[Modesitt]

The Shadowrun 4E hard-back version was released at GenCon. Since then, the rest of us have been biting at the bit for our own copy. And now, we can finally have it - instantly. You too can get it at DriveThruRPG or BattleCorps for $25. If you opt for downloading it, I strongly suggest you upgrade to Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0 before doing so. Crashes have been noted to occur with older versions.

If you want a taste of what you're going to get, this forum post is very informative. There's also a number of goodies up on the official site, such as two sample chars.

Having opted for the bundle deal through BattleCorps, I'm working my way through the PDF now. This could definitely take a while to completely process. Static targets, WOO! Lower prices for cyberware, WOO! Street being the default power level, BOO!

[Username17]

OK, I've looked through it a little bit. Here's the things I have to say:

BPs and Karma: These are a good idea. While many of them are in the right ballpark, many of the costs seem to have been made up by irate monkeys or something. Skills cost too much in build points - a point in a skill group that adds to "several" agility related skills costs the same as a point in agility that adds to all agility skills. The Karma costs are even more frelled - that point of a skill group costs almost double the price of getting an attribute point that is still better in all ways.

Fix: Obviously skills are going to have to cost less build points, the current write-up is insane. Further, there's no damned reason why Karma costs for anything should be different than the build-point cost. Really, BP = Karma is the easiest thing in the whole damned world and it works better than what we were given in that PDF.

Metahumans: Metahumans are a whole lot better than they used to be. Especially Orks. See, in SR4 the racial penalties apply only to the maximum, while racial bonuses apply to the starting value as well as the maximum. So If you get +1 to one stat and -1 to another, you just gained one stat point overall. Having bonuses and penalties is just really good all around, because having a penalty no longer sets your stat starting value to zero (followed by you obligatorily buying it back to one for real character points). Humans get a bonus attribute point - but it's edge, which is a shitty stat that noone cares about. Everyone else gets at least 3 bonus attribute points. And then there's a bizzare government subsidy program in which relatively unpopular races from the previous edition pay less points and relatively popular ones pay more. This has no relation at all to the power actually wielded by the race in the new edition. So Orks get +3 Body and +2 Strength in exchange for having their Charisma and Logic maximums reduced by 1 each. This makes them cost 10 points less than Elves, who get +1 Agility and +2 Charisma with no reductions. That's crazy.

Fix: Obviously, all non-human races (except Trolls) should cost the same. I suggest that cost to be 25 (except for Trolls). Trolls should pay a bit extra for the fact that they have the most extreme stat modification (which as previously noted is an advantage), and for the fact that they have bonus armor, reach, and land movement.

Skills: As prevously noted, these bad boys cost way too damned much. A point of Escape Artist cost 4 BPs, but a positive quality that gives you +2 on all Escape Artist tests costs only 5 and comes with a free frogurt. But it's more than that, because of the crappy way that skill costs are handled, you can't use Skill Groups once you buy anything in the group individually or take any specialization. This makes people who take the long view better in later games and worse right now, and that's just sloppy. Furthermore, the things that aren't in skill groups are sometimes just plain stupid - expect noone to have Parachuting or Diving ever, because those skills have to be purchased separately.

Fix: For starters BPs has to equal Karma Cost. And once you've done that, you can just have people add their Skill Group together with dice of a single skill. And you can let people "trade-up" an individual skill into a whole group. I don't know why there isn't a pilotting group, or an X-treme Sports group, or whatever, but you should certainly let people make up their own skill groups, add a bunch of skill groups, or allow people to spend a static cost to staple an unattached skill onto a skill group that otherwise doesn't include it. Probably you should do all of those.

Money: The value of the nuyen has changed drastically. Or maybe it hasn't. The basic idea here is that people get a lot less money, and some items cost a lot less as well. This is an incentivization program to get people to have the same amount of spy gear and less missile launchers. I support he motivation - kind of - but the net effect is that Street Sams are taking it up the butt. Also, Initiation is part of the Core Rules, but Betaware is not. That screws Street Sam more.

Fix: People don't get enough money in the base rules. 1 BP = 10k is a better conversion. Of course, you don't need or want to put people on the old exponential money curve, because almost all goodies are now on linear cost scales when it comes to cyberware. The few outlying cases - like Wired Reflexes - are obviously cut-and-paste errors from earlier drafts. Clearly, Wired Reflexes should cost 11k and 1 essence per rating point in SR4. Betaware should be easily available to starting characters - x5 cost and x.6 essence. That means that Wired Reflexes should essentially cost 55k and .6 essence per rating, while synaptic accelerators cost 80k and .5 essence per rating point.

Edge: Edge Sucks. Sorry, there's no compelling reason to buy Edge unless and until you get so much Karma that you start running headlong into the SR4 hardcaps on stats and skills. It's the worst attribute. By a lot.

Fix: Don't let people buy edge. That's retarded. Edge should go up automatically as a story award at the end of a chronicle. Also, most of the uses of Edge are stupid or broken (in the old school meaning of the term "does not actually function as intended"). Probably only the failure reroll and glitch negation should be allowed.

-Username17

[Username17]

Combat:

First of all, the damage/armor comparison is an interesting mechanic, but the entire setup is shit. Not so shitty that it's unusable out of the box, just so shitty that it doesn't stand up to heavy analysis and given enough time you're eventually going to run into the basic fact that this system does not scale, at all. Attack power and armor have a race that with equal bonuses maintains parity - for the purposes of whether damage is physical or stun. But not for anything else. Every three points of armor is one less damage you take, and every one point of damage is one more. Strength and Body are similarly poorly matched - not as badly as in previous editions, but it's still pretty severe. Every 2 strength points causes 1 more damage and every 3 body prevents one. Of course, your body also gives you more damage boxes, but at the rate of one per three. So at the limit of infinite stat gains on both sides, you go down in exactly two hits.

Fix: Uhhhh.... obviously the proportional damage system of previous editions is where you want to start. The White Wolf system is bad, and while SR4 is better, it is an idea which is inherently unsalvageable. Making up a proportional system is obviously possible, but it's going to take some more time.

Wide Bursts: You get -2 to their dice, which inherently adds +2/3 of a point of damage to your attack. Or you could do a narrow burst and get +2 damage straight off. Even if your recoil is completely negated, the wide burst is a waste of your time under virtually all circumstances. The dodge penalty has to be at least -3 to make this even half-way worthwhile. Maybe Wide Bursts shouldn't even give recoil penalties until they exceed the character's strength? I'm not really sure, but like every version of spraying areas with automatic weapons fire in every game ever made, this one sucks.

More as I get a better understanding of it. I don't yet fully understand what they did to Hermetics, but as far as I can tell they are gone. This displeases me.

-Username17

[Username17]

Critters and Spirits:

The legacy of the jackhole powergamers who came up with the Bug City book with its associated idea that Ghoulishness was a contractable disease is still in force. That's still dumb, Ghouls are definately not HMHVV anything, because they don't even have an Essence Drain ability. Arrgh.

Immunity to Normal Weapons has an elegant mechanic that almost certainly doesn't do what it's supposed to. You ignore any weapon that doesn't do more damage than your immunity rating. But against a weapon that beats its rating, the immunity only counts for a die per rating point - and that means that at the upper end any weapon that can hurt you at all is going to blow you up without issue.

You don't beat spirits. They beat you. Hard. Here's the dealio: when Magister summons up a Fire Elemental, he rolls a number of dice equal to his Magic + Summoning, and he wants to get more hits than the spirit gets on a Force check. But then when he tells the Fire Elemental to rip you a new one, the Fire Elemental rolls a number of dice equal to its Agility (Force + 2) plus its Unarmed Combat (Force), and when it connects its base damage is Force + 4 and negates half your armor. So... a mage who busts loose with a spirit has a spirit that is rolling more than twice as many dice on its primary attack routine as slightly less than the mage's full dice pool. For those of you keeping track at home, that's almost certain to be an ass tonne more dice than you roll on whatever the hell it is that you do. Also, any wizard who feels like can spontaneously summon these guys on a whim (like a previous edition Shaman) and then hurl them off on a remote service assassination run (like a previous edition Hermetic). So you lose. Badly. I seriously don't see how people are supposed to defend themselves from a Fire Magic Cabal on the far side of town.

Regeneration works a lot cleaner now, you could totally imagine actually killing a Vampire. In fact, with the removal of the enhanced physical attributes power - Wendigo are complete pushovers. That's good and bad. I'm happy to see a Regeneration rule that is less binary than previous versions, but I don't like the reduction of the Wendigo and Vampire to a minor villain role.

-Username17

[Username17]

Bringing back the Voodoo:

The game leaves open the idea that additional spirit types will be introduced later, so it is an option to simply bring in additional spirits that have Possession instead of Manifestation. This is a horrible idea! Possession spirits and manifesting spirits are useful for entirely different things, so if possessing spirits are just another choice every single spellcaster is going to choose to get at least one manifesting spirit and at least one possessing spirit. Remember: PCs get to choose five spirits and most of them are pretty much interchangeable (not to mention the fact that noone gives a damn about sustaining combat spells, and noone ever has in any edition, so you even have a couple of "spare" slots out of the five that can be used for edge-case spirits that won't always be available).

No. The better idea is to allow a player to choose Manifestation or Possession as their primary way of doing things at character creation. Here's how it works:

"Unbound": An unbound summoning goes directly into your own body or that of a willing and able host. There's no period of it being on the Astral Plane at all. You (or a follower) simply become Dual Natured, get a fat stack of physical bonuses, and get relevent powers.

"Bound": A binding ritual puts the spirit into a single helpless sapient (or ex sapient). The "good guys" use dead bodies, which creates zombies or ancestor reanimation (depending upon who you are talking to), and the "bad guys" use living people captured for this purpose.

This means that Possession Magic (light side) is used by: Ancestor-Focused Animists, Bearsarkers, Houngans, Mahou Shojou, Oracles, and Super Heroes. And it means that Possession Magic (dark side) is used by: Budhist Demon Worshippers, The Dark Moon Kingdom, Petro Houngan, Satanists, The Universal Brotherhood, and Werewolves.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Hmm the way you're making it sound Frank, SR4 sounds worse than SR3, or am I getting the wrong impression?

[Username17]

I wouldn't go that far.

It's better in a lot of ways. So much of it is now linear that you can go all linear. That's good.

The steps backward are almost entirely confined to the costs of skills (which are moddable) and the damage system (which is unsalvageable).

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

How exactly does the new damage system work?

[Username17]

OK:

You roll your to-hit check. This is a skill + attribute roll with modifiers, so you almost certainly hit. Your opponent may be able to dodge (depending upon whether they are aware of you and haven't used up their dodginess already), in which case they roll a skill + attribute test with modiifers to try to stop you from hitting, in which case you may miss.

Regardless, assuming you hit, your weapon has two values: DV and AP. AP is a number which is added to your opponent's armor rating while resolving your attack (thus, good AP values are negative). Your DV is compared to your opponent's (modified) armor value, if it is bigger, your opponent is now resisting physical damage. Otherwise, they are resisting stun damage.

They roll a number of dice equal to their body plus their (modified) armor rating. Every success they score reduces the wound boxes they fill in. The base number of wound boxes they fill in is the DV of your weapon plus the net successes you scored in hitting them.

The number of boxes they have is 8 + half their body (rounded up). Every three boxes they fill in causes a wound penalty.

The problems come with scaling, of course. And while they don't appear at all in street level knife fights between normal humans, as soon as the cyber circus comes to town and starts shooting heavy weapons at things, the system collapses. So if you abide by a "no heavy weapons, no juggernauts" policy, everything is cool. If you want to do even a little bit of jungle war, you are SOL.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Interesting... sounds like they really cracked down on armor, which doesn't seem anywhere near as useful as it was in SR3. If I understand correctly all armor has become SR3 dermal plating with the added disadvantage that it can get nullified by a weapon's AP. And I can see how it wouldn't scale very well. Heavy vehicles are going to need a crap tonne of body+armor if they're going to be able to take any punishment. Though that odd scaling # of health boxes based on body seems like it'll really screw with the math, since resiliency increases on three dimensions: armor, body and health boxes.

It sounds like smaller weapons are a lot less deadly, and wound penalties seem a lot more lax. I can't see losing dice being all that bad compared to the TN increases that SR3 hit people with. It seems shoot to kill is going to be a lot more of a popular tactic in SR4.

Also, did they make any useful changes to decking or is it still the same old independent solo quest thing that it was before?

[Username17]

Well, AP is usually a flat number that's basically going to change the number of dice you roll to soak with whatever you do. There are weapons with AP of "-half" that are proportional to your armor (in which case armor is pretty screwed), but in the majority of cases your armor could scarecely give a crap about what the AP value of your enemy's weapon is. AP values for most weapons range from -5 (heavy pistol with APDS) to +2 (any of the sliverguns that fire flechette), and since there's no way in hell that you'll leave the house with less than 6 points of armor (Urban Explorer Outfit), there's really no special impact on your number of dice that AP is specifically negating armor - the penalty and extra dice might as well be applied directly to your body in almost all cases.

No, Armor is (except against monowhips and the Fichetti Pain Inducer) just like old school dermal armor with the added advantage that sometimes it changes physical damage into stun damage when you have relly a lot of it or your opponent is badly underfunded. And since the power of all attacks is essentially five, the impact of extra damage resistance dice is actually meaningful (yay!) Note: SR4 Dermal Plating is back to being armor points, so no longer it's a lot easier to explain. Of course, it's still too expensive essense wise. The new standard is .3 Essence for a whole stat point, and legacy items like Dermal and Muscle Replacement haven't been updated - so they totally suck and noone is ever going to buy them.

It sounds like smaller weapons are a lot less deadly, and wound penalties seem a lot more lax. I can't see losing dice being all that bad compared to the TN increases that SR3 hit people with. It seems shoot to kill is going to be a lot more of a popular tactic in SR4.

Basically the difference between weapons is more noticeable, because there is no longer the hard "instant death cut off" at FA SMGs. In SR4, the defender rolls more dice (the "armor jacket" is 8/6!), but the attacker gets automatic successes. The difference is wound levels being inflicted. But a good heavy pistol with APDS is going to take you down in two shots. Its chance of taking you down in one hit is much lower than it was in SR3 (the attacker rolls less dice, the defender often rolls more dice, and the attacker needs the same number of net successes - 5 - to up the DV to a single shot take-down), but its chance of taking you out in 2 hits is almost assured (since two attacks at zero net successes is going to drop you instead of leaving you with a serious wound).

As to shooting to kill - the answer is "sort-of". Most Shadowrunners are going to go for the Gel Rounds against most opponents, because normal Ammo is going to do stun damage anyway with a heavy pistol against an armor jacket, and the Gel Round is +2 DV (that's good), +2 AP (that's bad), Impact Armor opposes (that's good). So FMJ Ball out of your heavy pistol is doing 5 DV at -1 AP against Ballistic armor of 8, so they get 7 armor dice against 5 stun levels, and gel packs out of the same gun are doing 7 DV at +1 AP against an armor of only 6. So the gel packs are still being resisted by 7 armor dice and still doing stun, but the base damage is two higher. So expect almost everyone to be using Gel Rounds against almost all foes and shooting to knock-out.

---

Hacking: Hacking is completely different, and now works off the fact that everything from telephones to microwaves to peoples' cyberware are all in near constant wireless communication with everything around them. In short, the Matrix has been replaced with The Wired from Serial Experiments Lain, even to the point of the best off-the-shelf OS being called "Navi". Hacking into other peoples' "Personal Area Networks" is something that you do all the time, even to the point of vision hacking like in Ghost in the Shell 2 ("That's what you get for having shoddy equipment!").

In short, the Hacker has become the D&D Wizard - a character who has a bunch of weird utility effects outside of combat, and throws debuffs in combat. It takes three whole rounds to reboot your eyes after a Hacker has bluescreened them. The Hacking rules are a lot better, and the setup actually encourages hackers to have useful physical skills and run around doing stuff with the rest of the party until things need to be hacked.

-Username17

[Username17]

Is it just me, or is Dumpshock filled up with morons?

I post my possession idea, and it goes precisely two external responses before someone invokes the Oberoni fallacy, and it doesn't even get to the end of the first page before someone starts with the personal attacks.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1125678260[/unixtime]]
Hacking: Hacking is completely different, and now works off the fact that everything from telephones to microwaves to peoples' cyberware are all in near constant wireless communication with everything around them. In short, the Matrix has been replaced with The Wired from Serial Experiments Lain, even to the point of the best off-the-shelf OS being called "Navi". Hacking into other peoples' "Personal Area Networks" is something that you do all the time, even to the point of vision hacking like in Ghost in the Shell 2 ("That's what you get for having shoddy equipment!").

In short, the Hacker has become the D&D Wizard - a character who has a bunch of weird utility effects outside of combat, and throws debuffs in combat. It takes three whole rounds to reboot your eyes after a Hacker has bluescreened them. The Hacking rules are a lot better, and the setup actually encourages hackers to have useful physical skills and run around doing stuff with the rest of the party until things need to be hacked.

This is the best bit of news I've heard about SR4 yet. It's good to see they've moved away from making computer hacking realistic and started to worry about making it fun and playable in a game sense. That's really cool.

The gel round thing is really screwy though... It's kind of odd to imagine the stun weapon being the most effective. But I guess it'll help to curb lethality.

[Sir Neil]

Is it just me, or ...

Not just you. On the bright side, there are worse boards.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1125709235[/unixtime]]

Is it just me, or ...

Not just you. On the bright side, there are worse boards.

that's not a bright side. That's a very bad sign for humanity in general.

You know, it would be great if there were a population of large, bullet-proof predators that preyed on the stupid. The human race would be so much better if stupid people died like nature intended.

[Fwib]

"Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by
legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But
stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the penalty is death, there
is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity."
-- Robert A. Heinlein


I was just reminded if this by what you said

[RandomCasualty]

Just read that dumpshock thread... it gave me bad flashbacks to me talking to one group about how polymorph was broken in D&D. There was one guy who absolutely refused to believe it was broken and kept invoking stupid shit and the Oberoni fallacy. And I have to say it really pisses me off when someone invokes the Oberoni fallacy when you're talking about house ruling something in the first place.

It's like some people just prefer stupid stealth nerfs as opposed to clear and concise fixes, and when someone comes up with a good mechanical fix, they're against it because they're just fucking morons.

It's the worst example of purist gaming, people that are solely against changing the rules because "changing the rules is bad".

[PhoneLobster]

people that are solely against changing the rules because "changing the rules is bad".

Personally I see the people you described there more as solely being against changing the rules because "Rules is bad".

It isn't the change bit they fear, its the bit with rules.

[Neeek]

I like the part where they suggest a frighteningly more complicated version that would be much easier to screw up, and would accomplish the exact same thing as Frank's plan.

I mean, seriously...

[User3]

Ya, I read through that thread too. Wow.

I mean, I understand that diffferent games tend to inspire different additudes towards house rules, and DM caveat.
I realize that because I haven't read the latest Shadowrun core book, I have an imperfect understanding.
I know that not having played Shadowrun of any sort in 4 years may have skewed my perspective (and the last game I played was a MUSH).

But Frank's assessment seemed pretty damn' clear, and his solution was pretty damn' elegant. And almost every (with some notable exceptions) post on that thread not by Frank was completely non-constructive, and as everyone else has said, just plain stupid.

I think I understand now why 'RPG gamer geek' is considered a bad thing.

And this is even without questioning the merits of a "Cyberpunk" setting with generic "Fantasy" races tacked on by incredibly tenuous rationalizations.

P.S: Is "Skillwire" still an effective character type?

[Username17]

P.S: Is "Skillwire" still an effective character type?

Not exactly. Skills in core SR4 are massively too expensive for what you get. But even so, a starting character can have a couple of fives and some fours in relevent core skills. The maximum skillwire setup a character can begin play with is Rating 3, which means that what it's actually for is having a bunch of mediocre skills that you otherwise can't afford (and let me tell you, you otherwise can't afford them). And even then, a rating 3 Active Soft costs 3.6% of your maximum starting nuyen value by itself, and the game has 60 skills in it before even talking about special skills or language skills or knowledge skills.

The only thing you can really afford is Linguasofts, and since you don't even need a skillwire system for that, you don't really care.

Of course, once play begins the maximum rating on a skillwire system is 5. And what with skills being so overpriced after character generation, at the limit of infinite money everyone is going to become a skillwire nut - even the mages.

-Username17

[Murtak]

I like the part where they suggest a frighteningly more complicated version that would be much easier to screw up, and would accomplish the exact same thing as Frank's plan.

I am quite convinced that a large part of the human race has some faulty brain wiring that forces them to equate "complicated" with "good", "accurate" or "quality".

Seemingly without fail these same people rise to positions that enable them to overview projects, create specifications or worset of all, design solutions themselves. We should be glad for every such person we can spot on gaming message boards. The more of them annoy us in our free time the less of them are out there designing software, making government policy or approving new employee motivation plans.

[Neeek]

1125949132[/unixtime]]

I am quite convinced that a large part of the human race has some faulty brain wiring that forces them to equate "complicated" with "good", "accurate" or "quality".

Is this somehow related to the "I didn't understand that. It must be true." principle?

Also, I never cease to find it amusing when people think Frank is trolling because of his name.

Though, in their defense, you really should try keeping in mind that not only is not everyone as smart as you are, Frank, almost no one is. I'm not even close, and most people regard me as frighteningly brilliant.

[RandomCasualty]

1125894090[/unixtime]]
But Frank's assessment seemed pretty damn' clear, and his solution was pretty damn' elegant. And almost every (with some notable exceptions) post on that thread not by Frank was completely non-constructive, and as everyone else has said, just plain stupid.

The sad thing is that I couldn't even understand what their opposition to Frank's fix was beyond "lets not write a rule for it and let the DM figure it out in play."

[RandomCasualty]

Well I finally got a chance to take a look at the PDF for SR4. More or less it looks pretty cool.

Things that I liked:

The glitch system: This just has a lot of cool potential for all kinds of special uses and altogether I like the mechanic. It's a bit open ended, true, but stuff like your lightsaber getting cut in half as your rolling under the assembly line crushers happens in movies, so it's cool to have a way to have it happen in an RPG too. Also it's got a lot of potential for inserting various house rule complications, like sometimes hitting the guy in the head with gel rounds and badly hurting him instead of stunning.

Light pistols don't suck anymore: The difference between a light and heavy pistol, while it used to be huge, is now pretty small. Using a hold out or light pistol is actually an option now.

Smartlink isn't godly anymore: Due to the new modifier system, having a smartlink is no longer mandatory. It's now merely a +2 dice modifier.

Interesting Burst Fire mechanic: You can now use burst fire to increase accuracy (represented by a dodge penalty to the opponent) or to increase damage. This, along with the new dice modifiers mechanic, makes someone going full auto a lot more dangerous, as opposed to in SR3 where you just laughed at him and his target number of 10+.


Stuff I didn't like so far

Initiative System: am I alone in thinking that the new initiative system is pretty crappy? You now have to roll a ton of dice, measure hits, and then add it to your initiative score. Now, this isn't so bad for PCs, but a GM rolling for a lot of NPCs is going to take some time doing all this (especially since you've got to roll once per combat round).

Also, I was pretty disappointed that they kept in the extra actions mechanic. Wired reflexes is still a huge advantage that you just can't do without just due to those extra actions. At the very least however, the initiative boost from it has been toned down, meaning unwired people look a bit better than they did in SR3. Though you can still do some crazy things with extra actions. Namely turning yourself into a defensive whore by going full defense out of turn and burning your extra action to save yourself. This means that if you've got Wired - 1 against an unwired guy, you can elect to get a better dodge against him and still fire back. Also, defense rolls take a -1 penalty for each extra time you have to defend, also giving more benefits to people with extra actions.

Damage: The variable tracks of stun and physical damage just suck. It means that gel rounds are what you want to use on a troll every time, which is rather dumb. Also, wound modifiers have more or less become a nonfactor now. Also, like in previous editions, stun and physical damage don't add together to knock you out. This is actually more problematic now than ever because some real weapons are going to be doing stun damage (due to the new DV/AP system Frank explained above), so this means that if one guy is using a light pistol and another guy is using a shotgun, your damage may not add together in any meaningful way. This isn't different from SR3, however it becomes more pronounced due to the reduced impact of wound penalties and the variable damage types.

Using two guns still sucks: It's a different mechanic but it still sucks ass. Basically you have to split your dice pool in half when you do this and then eat an offhand penalty for your second gun of -2 unless you happened to buy ambidexterity. About the only time it's good is if you've got a huge dice pool or if you take someone by surprise. Actually if you get surprise on someone, two guns could be really devastating, since they get no defense. Aside from that, the two gun wielder just doesn't seem to have much hope.

Ammo type absurdity: Flechette ammo is supposed to be beaten by heavy armor, unfortunately this isn't really the case. Both grant +2 damage and +2 AP, which basically means that they inflict an automatic extra two damage, and give the opponent two more armor dice. However, because a 5 or better succeeds, an extra armor dice only stops 1/3 of a damage box on average. To make matters worse, they both go against impact armor, whcih is usually lower than ballistic by about 2 points, whcih cancels out the extra armor dice. The only real counter to Flechette and Gel seems to be the riot shield which offers a whole +6 impact protection.

The best ammo of SR3, APDS took a real hit and pretty much sucks now. It's not merely -4 AP, which means it takes away four dice of armor. Using the previous math, this is only 1.33 extra damage on average, and only when the other guy has armor.

On the other hand, EX explosive is really good. That's actually +2 DV and -2 AP. If your'e shooting to kill EX is definitely the way to go. Though since it is explosive one can guess it probably makes a lot of noise.

Stick-n-shock, a new ammo type, is by far the best for practical uses. It changes the base damage of your gun to 6 (regardless of what it was before), makes it automatic stun damage (like gel) and has an AP of -half, which presumably means it takes away half your opponent's armor, and it goes against impact armor. Given that 6 base damage is the average damage for assault rifles, that's pretty crazy. Put this sucker in your light pistol and you have yourself a really powerful weapon.