Sonic Grenades
PLEASE NO MECHANICS SPOILERS

I'm here to suggest that they're a little boring as-is. You either have countermeasures that work one hundred percent of the time, or you don't. And getting those countermeasures requires some doing and often a puppet, which for players expecting to deal with them often means just not going outside and getting into trouble until you can get a staffer to help you out.

It'd be neat if there were ways to mitigate (but never totally ignore) the effects without those countermeasures. Things like high endurance, drugs, or cyberware could allow you to eat one and not take the full effect, but still be deafened and hit with worse debuffs than that adds now. I'm talking big stamina hits, bleeding ears, drunk-walking, that kinda stuff. So that they're still a threat without the main countermeasure but it's not such a binary situation.

This'd make them more generally useful (as of now I can guess pretty accurately whether it's worth popping one or not, and if I guess correctly I will always always win) and allow people to make a decision about whether to spring for countermeasures or try to skip them and mitigate the potential damage otherwise. Anyway there's my idea.

At the current build, it's a simple gear check and waste of [REDACTED] when it could do other things like lower certain stats to the point of KO.

I'd definitely like to see them be something more too. +1

Getting sonic'd does make it so you are deafened for a period of time after.

I do agree they are kinda boring though, but it's super hard to balance something that KO's a person.

Maybe we could make them add temporary stat penalties to perception even if you have a cyberware that mitigates the effects?

I'm open to ideas on what we could do to improve them that wouldn't fuck up the balance.

I think the aggressors would be less likely to use them then as well.

Maybe something like cumulative PCP damage each round with each round also rolling against an increasingly difficult END roll to keep from passing out or something like puking from nausea and losing a round?

This way a sonic isn't an instakill, but it isn't something you want to stick around for either.

Thinking on it, one foreseeable problem with that would be ht'ing someone and "wagering a guess" they wouldn't be affected by a sonic.

There's at least still that gamble for a period after anyone dies though.

1 you can fuck up and sonic yourself if you throw it wrong.

2. stats do play a part in how long someone is out for.

3. you can potentially escape before it goes off

4. they aren't free

And I don't agree that we should not have items like this in game. They are equalizers. They keep people on their toes. They keep people honest. Just because I'm Seven Ecks doesn't mean I can walk around like 'haha no one can kill me no matter what cause i'm tooooooo goood'.

They make you -make- a choice when you get cyberware, of if you want this thing that will protect you IN CASE you are put in the situation where someone uses one, or some other offensive cyberware that you can use more often.

Yeah, this is a game, but just because your character is super bad ass doesn't mean that there aren't things that can threaten them or require that they be paying attention or examining situations before they enter them.