Homebrew Theater: Vamp Shells

Ever since the stunning revelation that renowned vampire expert Martin De Vries was, himself, a vampire a new wave of animosity against the victims of the MHVV (Metahuman Vampiric Virus) as swept the world.

Some clever vampire hunters have capitalized on this and formed a small corporation to manufacture anti-vampirics equipment. Lifeshield Arms manufactures a full array of weapons and products for both the casual and serious vampire hunter alike.

One of their first offerings was a specialized shotgun round designed to weaken/harm a variety of infected.

• Vamp Shells
  • Damage Modifier: -1
  • AP: +4
  • Avail: 7R
  • Cost: 160nu

Vamp shells use flechette rules. Rather than traditional buckshot, Vamp shells are filled with a mix of pellets of treated-hardwood, silver, aconite, horseradish and iron. The resulting mix isn’t as potent as regular flechette shells, but triggers all known vampire vulnerabilities and allergies other than sunlight and pollution.

Some of each pellet type are designed to vaporize on fire, creating an invisible cloud of particulate matter highly toxic to vampirics. MHVV creatures with non-sun allergies take the appropriate penalty after being hit with a Vamp shell, even if they soak all the damage, unless they have chemical sealed armor. Vampiric allergies are strong enough mere chemical protection isn’t enough.

An infected can wash themselves clean if they have sufficient water by taking a a combat turn to rinse themselves off. Or they can immerse themselves, which cleans them instantly.

Vamp Shells trigger infected allergies and vulnerabilities (+3DV and regeneration doesn’t heal the damage. Pg 401-402 SR5).

For easy reference here is a list of Infected types with how these shells impact them:

• Bandersnatch: No dice. Maybe try an elephant gun?
• Banshee: Raise the DV to +2 and no regeneration.
• Dzoo-Noo-Qua: No dice. Bag of Grenades?
• Fomoraig: No Dice.
• Ghoul: No Dice
• Gobin: Triggers the vulnerability, DV +2/no regen
• Loup-Garou: They take an allergy penalty of -2
• Nosferatu: No dice.
• Vampires: Take their allergy penalty
• Wendigo: Take their allergy penalty

Note: I run assuming the snarky comment from somewhere in SR4 about how science has accepted that humans are metahumans and therefore HMHVV is simply the MHVV. I can’t find the source for it, but I laughed hard enough I know it was there somewhere.