The Effectiveness of Dazzler Carbines [Ultratech]

[Flyndaran]

How many realistic less than lethal weapons don't only open a tiny window of opportunity?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

How many realistic less than lethal weapons don't only open a tiny window of opportunity?

Assuming they succeed like in the example? TASERs seem to have a generally long window of opportunity if they initially succeed.

And if we go non-TL^ TL9-TL10 stuff, sleep gas is also long-term.

[Flyndaran]

The rules seem to allow healthy individuals to only be stunned for maybe a second or two by less than lethal shock weapons.

I'm a bit dubious of any gas attack being anywhere near as "mostly" safe against the general public as TASERs. Though of course for a game, realism is always bent at least a little.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

The rules seem to allow healthy individuals to only be stunned for maybe a second or two by less than lethal shock weapons.

If you go down from a taser/shock prod hit, according to HT you stay down for the duration the power is applied, then for HT-10 turns, and then you get to roll to recover, and you still take the HT penalty (as per B432). That's a bit more than 'a second or two', and can be quite a while if a sadist is on the other end of the prod, or you got tangled up in an over-powered electric fence.

And electrolaser from UT is fairly weak, in that you can hold the power on the victim, so they get to start recovering immediately.

I'm a bit dubious of any gas attack being anywhere near as "mostly" safe against the general public as TASERs. Though of course for a game, realism is always bent at least a little.

While it might be 'safe' in a combat or adventuring sense, sleep gas from UT, and similar chemicals can be certain to have problems when used for riot control, hostage rescues, etc. - there's bound to be some innocent who is allergic to the stuff, or it kills by being so concentrated it pushes all the air out of a room or something.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Rupert

While it might be 'safe' in a combat or adventuring sense

Well, no, they're only 'safe' in an adventuring context because of cinematic rules. Chemical agents in general have problems with varying susceptibility, and gases make it very hard to control the dose, so any disabling agent safe enough to use will also fail to work on a large number of people.

[SimonAce]

Dazzler carbies of a sort exist now. The Chinese ZM-87 and there are others including street variations called bedazzlers

They seem to end up causing permanent blindness which is considered a war crime and against treaty or in the case of civilian dazzlers not be especially effective.

Might as well deploy a high lumen flashlight which has more uses

In a pure TL9 setting, common countermeasures make them mainly an anti civilian weapon for riot control or suppression duty

As such PC's who usually aren't playing riot cops or enforcer types won't get much use from them or stunners of any sort.

A lot of this is highly setting specific, in a real world TL9 developed nations a trending to very old population and heavy automation with extreme levels of surveillance.

Using Germany as an example the median age by 2050 would be 50 years old Basically the demography of a retirement colony

The US would be a bit younger but not by much , maybe later 40's so modern Florida or younger

This suggests little crime where such weapons would be useful and PC's would probably never need them.

Other settings may very quite a bit but TL;DR these are basically setting specific weapons