Improvised weapons and equipment

[Rockwolf66]

Now what interesting and often unreliable weapons and equipment have my fellow posters come up with over the years?


Me I've been known to come up with some strange and sometimes juvinile equipment for special occations. hence the Dildo cannon.

Now our parties resident mechanic and gadget freak had been collecting up a whole bunch of fired off baton rounds. You know the stuff used for riot control. they also collected up a half dozen pipes...to be used as barrels. They found the time to do a bit of weilding and machineing. the result was the dildo cannon. a six barrel volleygun intended to cow angry mobs into submission. the idea was that you rammed a black poweder charge down the barrels and then topped it off with a baton. The poor fool mixed up the smokeless powder with the black and when they went to fire it...their body armor saved theim from some real nasty damage as they were using riot modified ballistic armor. they got 10s for height and distance but only a 7 on the faceplant landing.

[Legbreaker]

I'd say the most imaginative use of available materials players in my experience came up with was capturing a BMP with no more than some plastic explosives, a few litres of gasoline, and a zippo.

BMP was moving slowly through a cutting lined with trees to either side. The PCs (3 of) had rigged the trees with explosives to fall across the roadway. Trees fell in front, on top (preventing turret rotation) and behind the BMP, gasoline was tossed on top and threats yelled. Crew vacated vehicle rather than get toasted (and rightly so I think!).

[Targan]

In my last campaign Major Po and the Navy SEAL PC built several underwater limpet mines that were self-forging munitions containing shaped charges. For the self forging projectiles they used copper bowls used by chefs to fluff egg whites, they molded plastic explosives into cone shaped blocks for the shaped charges, used magnets out of hi-fi stereo speakers so the mines would grip ship hulls and water proofed the packages with shrink wrap plastic and duct tape.

They used the mines to sink several of the larger vessels operated by the Vistula River pirates near Warsaw. In the ensuing mahem they captured the pirates' flagship, a Shershen-class torpedo boat. That was a vicious boarding action, up there in my top 10 gaming sessions of the campaign.

[Sanjuro]

There is always a use for superglue in an urban environment...

[WallShadow]

While not exactly a weapon, one of my players, who was a medic who spoke Polish, dressed up in a Pact uniform, moseyed up to an enemy soldier standing guard at the door of the mayor's house (which we needed to get into without a lot of notice). The character was smoking a cigarette and offered the guard one, lit it for him, then wandered off. The guard kept taking surreptitious drags on the butt, and the other players noticed that his arm was getting slower and slower as he inhaled. Soon the narcotic blend that the medic had injected into the tobacco had done its work, and the team propped him up in the doorway as they quietly went in through the front door.

Another sneaky trick was to toss a few HE or frag grenades, followed by several smoke grenades, and when the visibility was impeded, toss one more grenade. Follow this up with throwing a rock against the enemy vehicles, alternating them with a grenade every now and then. The enemy gets really paranoid and reluctant to move from cover when they don't know if the next thump is jive or if it's Semtex. This can buy you some time to extract yourself from a tight situation.

[HorseSoldier]

Never used them in a game, but dummy IEDs can be really effective to help slow pursuit -- chainsaw (or det cord) a couple trees down at a tight spot in the road and you can slow wheeled pursuit, but nothing much to tracked vehicles. Throw in a dummy AT mine or two, or something that looks a lot like an improvised charge, and you'll bring tanks to a halt. (Non-T2K someone hard nosed might be inclined to call the bluff if they were in enough of a hurry, but I can't think anyone circa 2000 would risk a tank or other AFV.)

Makes a formation stop, kick dismounted security out, send up dismounts (or maybe even call for engineer support), and so on. If you're only goal is to be hauling a$$ up the road after you put in your dummy mine/IED you should be able to open a gap fast.

For extra fun, do the same trick a couple times, then -- when the bad guys are getting sick of stopping and doing their clearance drill, and start getting sloppy and pushing their speed to make up for lost time, put in some live, well camouflaged mines to keep them honest and slow them back down . . .