[Sendaz]

What? Any sensible interpretation of RAI and probably RAW is that a poison is only used as one vector at a time. But if you need any other justification...

Gas Mask protects against all Inhalation Poison
Tear Gas is Inhalation AND Contact
Therefore, Gas Mask protects against Tear Gas.

Think of it in MtG terms.
Card X deals 2 damage against all Goblins
Bob is a Goblin AND a Vampire
Therefore, Bob receives 2 damage.

Unless there's an "or" floating around somewhere I missed (possible) Tear Gas has the "Inhalation" tag. It doesn't matter what other tags it may or may not have--the Gas Mask doesn't ask about them. If there is an or that I missed, unless it is worded very carefully to the opposite, i'd say that it also supports a poison being only one thing at a time. I don't think there's any precedence for poison cycling through its various tags until it finds which one you're most vulnerable to. Now sure, does this produce some oddities? Yes. About as many as the idea that a poison is all of its tags at once and the gas mask does nothing.

I think the logic is a bit flawed though.  If a toxin is attacking you via two or more vectors you do not get to pick which one it is going to use, circumstances will dictate which are in play.

Your wearing your gas mask and normal street clothes when you walk into a cloud of Tear Gas, the mask protects your lungs and face from the burning, but if there is a contact vector the rest of the body is exposed as the gas just passes through most regular clothing. 

Some vectors it can be safe to assume they are not being shared.  If a toxin is injection and inhalation, then a gas mask would protect from the inhalation and unless you have some kind of open cut injection would not be an issue (and even then it would be pretty thin).  Contact is a bit more encompassing though and can fit well with other vectors like inhalation.

Now granted TG in real life is not that much of an irritant on the skin, but again this may be a souped up version so we will play as that for now.

In MtG terms
Card Yin/Yang deals 2 White Damage (Inhalation) and 2 Black Damage (Contact) but Damage doesn't Stack.
Bob is immune to White Damage (Gas Mask)
Therefore, Bob still receives 2 Damage from Black Damage (Contact).

[JackVII]

Using a Super-Squirt apparently turns any toxin into a Contact only attack. The Chemical Protection armor mod provides Contact-vector only protection as well, IIRC.

I think it might have helped to have had a bit more granularity with the vectors and the effects. For instance, with CS, maybe the Disorientation effect is tied to the Contact Vector and the Stun/Nausea is tied to the Inhalation.

[Palladion]

What? Any sensible interpretation of RAI and probably RAW is that a poison is only used as one vector at a time. But if you need any other justification...

SR5 408, "Vector: This shows how the toxin is delivered to the target."
SR5 408 (under CS/Tear Gas), "Vector: Contact, Inhalation"

Any sensible interpretation is that the toxin uses BOTH vectors, that is RAW and RAI. There is no "and" or "or", whatever interpretation of those two connective words is.

Example: If a target is sprayed in the chest with pepper punch, the target is affected by CONTACT. If a target inhales pepper punch, the target is affected by INHALATION. If a target wearing a gas mask is sprayed in the face and chest by pepper punch, the target is affected by CONTACT. The toxin uses BOTH vectors, not the target chooses to defend with.

Real world example: Sarin gas affects a target via inhalation. Sarin gas affects a target via contact ALSO. A gas mask does not prevent sarin gas from affecting a target because it ALSO affects via contact.

I think the logic is a bit flawed though.  If a toxin is attacking you via two or more vectors you do not get to pick which one it is going to use, circumstances will dictate which are in play.

Exactly as Sendaz said. There is no sensible interpretation that a toxin with two vectors would ignore one of them.

[Michael Chandra]

Which is why the question is: Does protection on one of the two vectors aid reduced or not at all?

Let's say you have Chemical Protection clothes rating 6 and a Respirator 6 vs a Power 10: Do you roll 12 extra dice or 6? What if you have CP6+GasMask? Do you roll 6 dice + reduce the power, roll 6 dice or use the immunity fully? I do not think the immunity on Inhalation would make you fully immune to Inhalation+Contact, but would it work partially? Would a respirator work partially? That's the confusing part.

I asked in the FAQ a month ago what a gas mask would do vs these gases, I really would like at least an official indication rather than be unable to figure out what houserule is even close to official intent.

[Palladion]

Which is why the question is: Does protection on one of the two vectors aid reduced or not at all?

Let's say you have Chemical Protection clothes rating 6 and a Respirator 6 vs a Power 10: Do you roll 12 extra dice or 6? What if you have CP6+GasMask? Do you roll 6 dice + reduce the power, roll 6 dice or use the immunity fully? I do not think the immunity on Inhalation would make you fully immune to Inhalation+Contact, but would it work partially? Would a respirator work partially? That's the confusing part.

I asked in the FAQ a month ago what a gas mask would do vs these gases, I really would like at least an official indication rather than be unable to figure out what houserule is even close to official intent.

The question becomes does EACH vector carry the FULL effect of the toxin? Or a partial or reduced effect if some of the vectors are blocked?

If the former, then it is the lowest protection rating. For example: Exposed to a tear gas attack, a gas mask and chemical protection combination would use chemical protection rating because the full effect of the toxin is carried by EACH vector. You block Inhalation (with the gas mask) but it does not matter because Contact is still in effect. It can be also be interpreted that each vector can be applied individually at full power, but damage applied only once for the toxin. For Michael's example, the respirator rolls Toxin Resistance against Inhalation, chemical protection rolls Toxin Resistance against Contact, whichever toxin has the greater effect carries (the other is ignored). (Personally, I would not make so many rolls, but I present it as an interpretation and it makes fair use of all the gear purchased.)

If the latter, then the gas mask (in the above example) blocks some of the effects, but a portion is leftover.

I would default to the first interpretation because there are no rules supporting the second, nor is there anything that describes the leftover "portion". There is nothing written saying that the Power is halved or reduced in this instance. We may not want to believe that pepper punch carries a Power 11 Stun effect plus Disorientation through Contact (which seems like what people are hung up about), but that is what is described. If someone wants to use the latter interpretation, then (at the moment) it requires a houserule.

[JackVII]

I think people are more hung up over the fact that a gas mask is worthless against everything except for Nausea Gas, Air Engulf, and  Noxious Breath. It's a bit of a corner case.

[Michael Chandra]

Correct. What use are gas masks if they only protect against a single toxin?

[Palladion]

Correct. What use are gas masks if they only protect against a single toxin?

Exactly, it gives immunity to one toxin out of only seven (counting all Neuro-Stun together). It costs 3,000 nuyen for a hazmat suit to be immune to five toxins (of seven). It costs 300 nuyen for a rating 6 antidote patch. Kind of expecting too much from a gas mask for 200 nuyen.

An autopicker costs 500 nuyen per rating level, no one is complaining that is only affects one type of door lock, and there are eight or so of those. If people are hung up about gas masks, it is for an unrealistic expectation of what a gas mask should do in game.

Gas masks are good (perfect in fact) against nausea gas. Anything else, go get a hazmat suit.

[JackVII]

If people are hung up about gas masks, it is for an unrealistic expectation of what a gas mask should do in game.

I guess I can be counted among those who have the unrealistic expectation that a gas mask would provide any protection against more than one gas toxin attack.

Honestly, if the argument is that it costs so little (200 + 40/refill), raise the price and make it actually work. If we don't want to change the way vectors work, then change a few of the gas toxins (like CS) to strictly inhalation vectors.

[SoulGambit]

@Sendez: Tear Gas does not deal X Contact damage and Y Inhalation damage. It deal Z Damage that is both Inhalation and Contact damage. I don't believe there's any text to support that it deals two seperate forms of damage but they don't stack?

To mod your logic appropriately...

In MtG terms
Card Yin/Yang deals 2 Damage classified as both White and Black
Bob is immune to White Damage (Gas Mask)
Therefore, Bob receives no Damage.

@Palladion: I... It has to be "and" or "or." That's how the english language and the joining of ideas works. The text isn't explicit, so both situations have to be accounted for. Neither situation is a closed-case towards the gas-mask being worthless. Given two... lets say equally valid interpretations, where one invalidates a section of the PHB and one shows an intuitive use, its the sensible thing to pick the latter. When you have two options, and one makes a weapon the one-true solution to absolutely everything and one creates a more balanced and fun game, it is the sensible thing to do the latter.

There is no text to support that a toxin with multiple vectors is making separate attacks along each vector rather than a single attack utilizing or even requiring all vectors.

[Xzylvador]

First of all, this isn't M:tG.
Second, your M:tG argument can be used against your case, too:
"Mild heartbreak" deals 2 damage to Vampires and Goblins.
Bob is a Goblin. (Bob is not a Vampire.)
Bob takes 2 damage.

CS deals damage to anyone breathing and anyone in contact with it.
Bob came in contact with CS. (He's not breathing it.)
Bob takes damage from CS.

I don't like it, I think it should be changed. But that's how it works by RAW.


As for the "Gasmasks work against Nausea Gas only, that's how it should be." idea. I fail to see how CS gas would be the gas most often used for crowd control, unless you also mean to tell me that all those cops are walking around in airtight hazmat suits too. That's just not the case.
Things go bad, cops put on gasmasks and whip out tear gas. They don't first put on a man-sized condom.

[sylanna]

Nausa Gas seems to be the riot control measure in the shadowrun universe. CS gas' description doesn't say anything about that.

[PeterSmith]

If we don't want to change the way vectors work, then change a few of the gas toxins (like CS) to strictly inhalation vectors.

Look up the following forms of tear gas (which is simply a descriptor for a group of chemical attacks). You might be surprised how many of them affect the skin: CN Gas (to a lesser degree), CR Gas, CS Gas, PAVA (low quantities it has medicinal uses to warm the skin for treatment of arthritis), Xylyl Bromide. Somebody did some research when they were writing their sections in SR5, and it looks like it's catching some people off guard.

[JackVII]

Well, if we're going on real world conditions, I can personally attest that CS gas has middling effects when absorbed through the skin compared to what it does when inhaled.

[Sendaz]

@Sendez: Tear Gas does not deal X Contact damage and Y Inhalation damage. It deal Z Damage that is both Inhalation and Contact damage. I don't believe there's any text to support that it deals two seperate forms of damage but they don't stack?

To mod your logic appropriately...

In MtG terms
Card Yin/Yang deals 2 Damage classified as both White and Black
Bob is immune to White Damage (Gas Mask)
Therefore, Bob receives no Damage..

I did not mean it was doing 2 types of damage, rather its two possible ways of doing damage, hence my use of the term not stacking to try and represent this.

The MtG example was probably poorly worded but I have not played that for many many years, but was trying to produce a viable example.. badly

It is not 2 different damages, but rather two ways of damage.

Think of it as shooting someone in the head versus the chest.

 If I shoot you in the head and your wearing a sufficiently tough helmet this is the same as Inhalation vs gas mask.  No effect.

But the gas also has a contact vector and if I were to shoot you in the chest and you had no armor there, you would suffer accordingly. And that would be the effect of Contact vs the body.

Same damage, two ways to inflict it.