Stunners overpowered?

[MarkB]

Having played a few Living Traveller scenarios in which stunners featured recently, I'm a little concerned at their effectiveness under the current rules.

Provoking an Endurance check at a penalty equal to the damage inflicted, after subtracting armour value, they're an auto-knockout to anyone of average (+0) Endurance if anything over 4 points gets through, and stand a reasonable chance of success even at minimal damage.

With TL10 and TL12 stunners averaging 10 damage even before Effect is taken into account, this amounts to an auto-win against most enemies you're likely to encounter in an urban or shipboard environment.

I know there are plenty of weapons that can achieve much the same effect with lethal force, but they can be expensive, and are often illegal to carry on starships or civilised planets, whereas the stunner is a relatively cheap weapon that's legal to carry even up to high Law Levels.

The maximum range of Short is somewhat of a limiting factor, but in my experience, more combats take place at close quarters than not (i.e. bars, spaceship interiors, offices), making it fairly easy to close to Short range and fire in one turn.

Am I alone in this feeling, or have stunners been a problem in other peoples' campaigns?

I think a more reasonable design for stunners would be to abandon the damage dice, and instead have them impose an Endurance check penalised by the Effect of the attack, with higher TL models adding an extra 1 or 2 to that penalty. Armour could reduce the penalty, at a rate of, say, 1 per 5 points of protection.

 

[rust]

Am I alone in this feeling, or have stunners been a problem in other peoples' campaigns?

I do not see stunners as a problem, in fact they are very useful when
player characters pick the wrong fight and would be killed if their op-
ponents would use lethal weapons. Moreover, having stunned some-
one is much less likely to cause a law enforcement response than ha-
ving shot someone.

 

[alex_greene]

I agree with Rust. Stunners are very useful Referee devices. Stunners allow incapacitation, rather than injury and death, as an option. Characters can be taken alive, rather than get killed if they lose a fight.

Stunners and incapacitants, including chemical incapacitants such as tranq darts and tranq patches, anaesthetic gases, TL 14+ sonic stunners and TL 16+ neural weapons, permit characters to be rendered incapable of further fighting while at the same time avoiding injuries (loss of characteristic points).

For whatever reason, the agency using the stunners might want the characters alive rather than bullet-riddled. They might want them brought in for interrogation or arrest, or hold them for ransom; they might want to fit a radio tag inside their bodies, like some bizarre naturalist keeping tabs on the prey they are studying.

More horrifyingly, some ghoulish monster might want the characters knocked out because he wants them alive to take his time on them ... or simply so that he can harvest their intact organs for sale on the organlegging market.

But in order to be effective, a stunner has to deliver enough of a charge that it will knock out the average Endurance character. There's no point in having a stunner that just chips away at End, one stat point at a time.

 

[rust]

But in order to be effective, a stunner has to deliver enough of a charge that it will knock out the average Endurance character. There's no point in having a stunner that just chips away at End, one stat point at a time.

Yep, if the stunner leaves the opponent an opportunity to fight back (with
a potentially lethal weapon), there is not much sense left in using a stun-
ner.

 

[MarkB]

But in order to be effective, a stunner has to deliver enough of a charge that it will knock out the average Endurance character. There's no point in having a stunner that just chips away at End, one stat point at a time.

Yep, if the stunner leaves the opponent an opportunity to fight back (with
a potentially lethal weapon), there is not much sense left in using a stun-
ner.

The same could be said for any lethal weapon, but there are still plenty of handguns which will take at least 2 or 3 good hits to put down an opponent.

 

[rust]

The same could be said for any lethal weapon, but there are still plenty of handguns which will take at least 2 or 3 good hits to put down an opponent.

True, but this is not my point.

The basic idea of a stunner is that the opponent can be disabled without
anyone on either side being wounded or killed, and this is only possible if
the first stunner hit disables the opponent, because otherwise he will fight
back, and someone is likely to get wounded.

If a stunner cannot disable the opponent with one hit, there is no more
reason to use a stunner in order to avoid injuries, in fact it would make
the situation even worse, because then the target of the stunner would
be safe from wounds but able to inflict wounds on the one using the stun-
ner.

 

[Stainless]

If that's your term of reference, do you in fact mean the problem is more with under-powered handguns as opposed to over-powered stunners? That's arguably more like it. The challenge with stunners should be getting to hit in the first place, not in the damage they do.

 

[leprecon]

I can see peoples responses and understand them. I think MarkB was pointing out how in the Living games he has played the stunner just aced the combat for them. Why take a snub pistol when with one good shot a stunner does the job, snub does it 3 or 4 sometimes. So its not over powered for a referee but overpowered for a player. As both a referee and player I have seen this from both sides.

I only mention this as people replies seem to come from the " Stunners are very useful Referee devices." camp. Not from the players can deal with sooo much with a stunner.

I do know it is suituational but lots of time the situiation comes up.

 

[rust]

Not from the players can deal with sooo much with a stunner.

In my view there are better ways to deal with this problem than to redu-
ce the efficiency of a stunner.

For example, I introduced stunners into my water world settings long be-
fore Mongoose Traveller was published, and since they were based on
GURPS they were sonic weapons.
When we switched to Mongoose Traveller, I decided to keep them as so-
nic weapons in order to keep their worst disadvantage: They are terribly
loud, one can hear and recognize the use of a stunner for hundreds of
meters, and their is no way to silence them (think of a very big vuvuze-
la ...).

This way, they keep their main advantage and reason for existing, but
also have a distinct disadvantage that makes sure that they do not be-
come an "überweapon" for urban environments.

 

[alex_greene]

But in order to be effective, a stunner has to deliver enough of a charge that it will knock out the average Endurance character. There's no point in having a stunner that just chips away at End, one stat point at a time.

Yep, if the stunner leaves the opponent an opportunity to fight back (with
a potentially lethal weapon), there is not much sense left in using a stun-
ner.

If it distracts the perp long enough for the enforcement officer to come in and disarm / immobilise / apprehend a perp, that time is all they need. And if they shrug off the stun round, it might still have weakened them just enough for a nightstick across the back of the head to finish the job.

 

[MarkB]

I can see peoples responses and understand them. I think MarkB was pointing out how in the Living games he has played the stunner just aced the combat for them. Why take a snub pistol when with one good shot a stunner does the job, snub does it 3 or 4 sometimes. So its not over powered for a referee but overpowered for a player. As both a referee and player I have seen this from both sides.

I only mention this as people replies seem to come from the " Stunners are very useful Referee devices." camp. Not from the players can deal with sooo much with a stunner.

I do know it is suituational but lots of time the situiation comes up.

Yes, that was more my point. Most of the times I've seen stunners end fights decisively within the first round, they've been in the hands of PCs, wielded against NPCs.

Given that, in a fight within a weapons-controlled area such as a downside city, either side will usually be able to bring to bear nothing more effective than daggers or snub pistols, stunners' effectiveness as fight-enders seems disproportionate to those options. I bought one for my character last game, and even though he's at skill 0 for it, its effectiveness compared to just about anything else the other players or the opposition could bring to the fight left me embarrassed to be using it. The fact that it can do so without getting PCs into legal trouble or precluding "ask questions later" just makes it even more powerful.

I do appreciate the usefulness of such devices in reducing combat lethality on either side. I just feel that they should be able to have such utility without being an "I win" button for close-quarters combat.

 

[rust]

I just feel that they should be able to have such utility without being an "I win" button for close-quarters combat.

I see the problem, and I think it would be the referee's task to come up
with a plausible solution whenever the use of stunners would be like an
"I win" button.

For example, stunners are excellent tools for criminals. Imagine a star-
town where a pedophile has used a stunner to kidnap, rape and kill a
number of girls. No matter what the law level there may be, a suspici-
ous stranger with a stunner in his pocket could be in serious danger to
be lynched on the spot - better to leave any stunners on the ship, as
the customs officer advised ... so no stunners in this adventure.

There are many items of equipment that can be like superpowers in spe-
cific situations, so their use should be somewhat restricted, if not by the
rules than by the setting - which usually is the way I prefer, because de-
signing such restrictions also adds a bit of colour to the setting.

 

[alex_greene]

For "stunners" read "knives," "hypodermic syringes" or "packets of drugs."

Just about anything could be considered dangerous in the wrong hands.

Some people just don't like the idea of their player characters being taken alive, do they? Never seems entirely fair that they're out for deadly combat, and the next thing is the villain just pushes a button that releases a gas, or fires off a stunner.

It's entirely possible to kill someone with a blade penetrating half an inch of human flesh. It takes only a pound of pressure to break unprotected human skin. A glancing blow to the back of the head from a club could fracture the skull and cause a fatal haematoma in the brain, and even a grazing bullet wound could kill somebody through hydrostatic shock.

Deprive somebody of oxygen for as little as thirty seconds and they're unconscious. A minute, two tops, and they're dead.

My point? It's not that stunners are overpowered. It's that combat in Traveller is not nearly realistic enough. And that's meant to be, because if the player characters had the endurance of us mere mortals, even the lightest combat could leave the player characters lying dead.

 

[CosmicGamer]

How is the stunstick 'more effective' than a stunstick. What's good for the goose...

Some things to possibly consider. Based on core rulebook. Don't know if there are additional stun weapons in the equipment book.
- Stunstick is not an insignificantly sized bludgeon weapon. GM could easily decide it is a hard to conceal item.
- Don't see any word on how many 'charges' are in the stunstick.
- Don't see any word on how long it takes the stunstick to recharge.
- The stunstick is a melee weapon so someone should often be able to 1) fire a few times on the stunstick wielder before they get into range or 2) run away unless surprised (see stunstick not easy to conceal above)

- So are stun attacks now automatically successful? Does someone with a stun weapon automatically get initiative? Even when one person has the 'upper hand' due to weapon or skill it often ends up being good or poor die rolls that determine the outcome. (the result of 2d6 is 4 or less over 16% of the time!)

- In the case of

The maximum range of Short is somewhat of a limiting factor, but in my experience, more combats take place at close quarters than not (i.e. bars, spaceship interiors, offices), making it fairly easy to close to Short range and fire in one turn.

The opponent only needs to close within personal range and perform a successful grapple disarm of the stunstick.

- The shotgun is a lower tech, lower cost weapon and it does 4d6 lethal damage. Ouch. Only law level 7 allows stunners but not shotguns.

- If you use the optional knockout blow rule on page 66 then lots of other weapons, like a club, can quite possibly knock a person out.

As always, it is up to the GM to determine availability. Do people commonly have chloroform and tranquilizer darts too?

For GM's that feel the need, a simple house rule would be that stunners do not get a special exemption so that they fall under the same restrictions as other energy weapons.

 

[alex_greene]

A word, from the POV of a freelancer: The threat of minmaxing in a game is often seen as being far more dangerous than the actual incidence of minmaxers in a game.

Game balance does not mean "nobbling a weapon so it's just as nerfed as the big guns." Game balance means "every player having their turn." Game balance is about the player characters having a significant chance in the game, without arbitrarily throwing in something to nobble them so they're all just as incompetent and useless as one another.

A tiny little Swiss Army knife will never do as much damage as an FGMP. There's little point in trying to drag down the FGMP's power to match that of the Swiss Army knife just because one player's equipped with the one and the other player's equipped with the other.

If stunners seem to produce egregious amounts of "I win" in a game, don't try and nerf them with some arbitrary houseruling so they're about as harmful as a salmon sandwich in response. Some weapons are more powerful then others in some ways.

Look at the difference between a big stick and a small one, say like the difference between a quarterstaff and a foot - long billy club. The staff hurts more, but the billy club can be swung in a confined space.

Different tools, different jobs.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Agree with most of the posts, stunners seem fine, good knock out ability but very short range, useful for law enforcement, or to provide a defence for anybody (player included) who want to avoid the complications of spilling blood. Note that they are much less useful against any armoured target, which, with the very short range, makes them little use as military weapons.

If you want comparisons with real world, if used properly the "taser" type electric shock weapon usually puts the target down harmlessly.

Egil

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

Hmm, tasers seem a lot less "non-leathal" in Vancouver....

 

[rust]

Hmm, tasers seem a lot less "non-leathal" in Vancouver....

... which is why they are strictly illegal over here, only some police special
forces are permitted to have them - but even most of those decided not
to use them, the risk to kill someone is considered too high.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Well, those "tasered" seem, in most cases, to get knocked down, which is the point about "are stunners too effective". Possibly, they don't all get up again. Still think your odds are better than if the policeman shoots you with a 9mm, though I accept that a taser is not really an energy weapon in the terms of MT.

Anyway, its only a suggestion of a TL7, proto-type, fore runner of a trav stunner. I suspect the range is shorter as well.

Egil

 

[justacaveman]

They've developed a wireless projectile that you can fire with a shotgun, it has a greater range than the wired version, and you can load the shotgun full of them.

Some people seem to think being shot with a Taser is too dangerous. Which would you prefer to be shot with, a Taser, or a bullet? Personally, if I had a choice I'd go with the Taser rather than have big messy holes put in my body. But this is just a personal preference, you are certainly free to choose otherwise.