In Support of Stunners

 A stunner is a remarkable weapon. It does what no other weapon does,  rendering a person unconscious or at least incompetent without causing lethal damage. Usually in an RPG this means it will put a person down without cutting through all those hit points. Cutting or shooting through hit points is usually a hassle because others are trying to do the same to you.

In Cepheus Deluxe, stunners are described as firing a precise electromagnetic pulse that disrupts the target's nervous system, putting them down safely. It has to be precise. It knows whether a function controls a trigger finger or breathing for one thing. For that matter, is it possible to cause a stunner to inflict lethal damage on a person, say paralyzing their lungs or heart? Perhaps it is a matter of timing your exposure. A .01 second pulse will numb a person. A one second exposure can kill them.

Do stunners affect the higher functions of the brain instead of the muscular-nervous system? If this is the case then stunners work on humans and possibly... dolphins? Orcas? Apes? But lower life forms could still power through to eat you. Stunning a zombie is right out. Chomp! Good news, soon stunners won't work on you either.

Stunners might affect robots. In most depictions of robots, they have brains that use electrical impulses. This might require a specially built stunner or a special setting. Using the wrong stunner or setting on a human or robot might have no effect, little effect or be very unpleasant. Read the manual.

Reflective  armor might be a special case. I personally like the idea of reflective armor being some protection against stunners. I think at TL 10 assassins will seize on laser weapons. Kill a person with no bullet to analyze for evidence. Awesome! Rich people will use reflective armor (which also can be expertly tailored to flatter). Add that, in CT at least, they provide a little protection against body pistols (another assassination weapon). 

Reflective armor and stunners are introduced at TL 10, where energy weapons begin to supersede projectile weapons. If the stunner uses a low power laser to create a charged tunnel of air the stunner's electrical impulses (or whatever) travel along we have a rationale for Reflective armor working. Bear in mind that rich people are often the targets of kidnappers. Kidnappers would likely use stunners.

Stunners should not be pleasant. If you're going to take a swing at a law man armed with a stunner and merely wake up after a short nap, you'd take that swing. The cop meanwhile nurses a broken nose. Therefore, ideally, you wake up feeling fairly rotten. Think champagne hangover. The truly fiendish may have stunners set to varying degrees of or no hangover. Or they could give a hangover without rendering you unconscious in which case they could be used for discipline or animal training.

Stunners might be the weapon of choice in boarding actions. I say huzzah! Aside from space combat, boarding an enemy ship might be the most hazardous undertaking for characters. Stunners won't damage your ship. Stunners won't damage the ship you're looking to steal. Causing a reactor meltdown does no one any good.

 As alternative or addition to the hangover effect, a stunner might cause a victim to lose control of certain bodily functions. To keep the blog polite let me just say, if you're going to a protest and police intervention and stunning is likely -wear your brown pants. This may vary in legality.

Some settings ignore stunners, they go right to the neural lash, which makes a swim in molten lead feel like a tepid bath by comparison. The stunners and neural weapons may not be as effective against people who are coked up, otherwise drugged or are emotionally disturbed. This is scary. The ED cases are the ones your want to try to treat humanely (I say try, when you're in a fight things go sideways.) If they are resistant to stun weapons then you fall back on reduced lethality weapons.

Related to the stunner I offer the Vertigo Beam (I am not sold on that name). Instead of knocking you out, it interferes with the function of a human's inner ear. You hit someone with it they go down and offer a lot less resistance. It may also result in technicolor hiccups. It would probably be best used with a stunner (over under design perhaps?) Knock down the troublemaker. Maybe get a few bystanders, no biggie. Then you hit the troublemaker, lying on the floor with a stun beam or cuff them. Causing vertigo seems safer. If you hit a little kid, they go down. They don't get an age inappropriate does of EMF or tranqs.