Taser Stun Damage

[silent_bob]

How much stun damage does a taser do?

The stun rules on page 232 for weapons designed to stun, state that you are supposed to compare the weapons damage vs the targets hit points, but this is hard to do when the rules don't list the tasers damage.

[rust]

A normal real world taser is designed to stun a slightly above average human

most of the time, more power than this would be likely to cause more deaths.

I therefore think that a success chance of 85 % against 12 hit points would

probably be about right. Looking at the resistance table, this would translate

into an average damage of 19 (19 vs. 12 = 85 %). This could be expressed,

for example, as 2d6+12, to guarantee a minimum damage of 14 (still a good

chance to stun an average human) and keep the maximum damage (24) low

enough to remain plausible and avoid an unnecessary waste of power.

Just some thoughts ...

[Guest Vile Traveller]

IIRC tasers don't stun so much as immobilize the victim while the current is flowing. Once it's switched off, he or she immediately regains control of their muscle function. In real life 2D6+12 might be a bit low, because I haven't seen any reports of anyone successfully resisting a taser (although most victims are strongly disinclined to repeat the experience). There should probably be a small chance of death.

[rust]

...because I haven't seen any reports of anyone successfully resisting a taser

There seem to be quite a number of cases where police officers used tasers re-

peatedly on the same person, but I do not know whether they did it because

the person resisted the taser, or because the police officers overreacted bad-

ly. Anyhow, repeated use increases the probability that the person is killed, and

this probability is already high enough to make tasers illegal in most of Europe,

even for the police (in Germany only some special forces units have them, but

until now never used them).

[soltakss]

I've seen a video (on one of those Police Shocker style programs) of a man in the USA who was Tazered and then carried on forward - it took 2 or 3 goes to bring him down. So, it's definitely possible to laugh off a Tazer attack.

But 2D6+12 sounds right - it has more than a 50/50 chance of immobilising an average person and a fair chance of immobilising a big person.

[sdavies2720]

Someone last night mentioned a video (friend's father, as part of police training) of a crack user being hit with a taser and basically ignoring it. So having someone be unaffected is certainly in the taser mythology if not also in fact.

[MrJealousy]

I guess the only thing to do is get a couple of the American readers here to give it a go. They can probably buy a Taser from WalMart. All in the name of research... to turn myth into fact Oh, and don't forget to video it and post it here!

[sdavies2720]

I guess the only thing to do is get a couple of the American readers here to give it a go. They can probably buy a Taser from WalMart. All in the name of research... to turn myth into fact Oh, and don't forget to video it and post it here!

LOL. And to make it scientific, we should run the test, what? maybe 10 times?