Abnormal Ammo / Tabletop Games

• BattleTech is full of this trope, at both the personal and the mech scale. For starters, there's the Needler lineup of weaponry, which use solid blocks of plastic as ammo. They rips off bits of plastic and fire them as horrifically effective anti-personnel flechettes (utterly useless against body armor, though). There's also the Radium Rifle, a sniper rifle that fires radioactive bullets for when you'd rather assassinate someone slowly from radiation poisoning than from gunshot wounds. On the mech level side of equipment, there's all sorts of stuff: Inferno short-range missiles which use napalm-on-crack to roast the pilot alive in the cockpit and set off ammunition explosions from sheer heat, Thunder long-range-missiles which scatter mines over the target area. And those are some of the more normal examples. It gets really wild when you include things like Fluid Guns, which can spray a target with paint, oil, or acid, or the iNARC, which fires projectiles that magnetically stick to a mech and can cause such effects as acting as a homing beacon for allied missiles or a jammer that the screws up the target's sensors... Yeah, the game has a lot of options when it comes to ammo.
• Changeling: The Dreaming encourages this kind of creativity when coming up with dream weapons. Still, it is pretty common to simply find a steam powered cannon firing burning coals from its own firebox. Airsoft guns firing cold iron BBs are especially lethal.
• Chronopia has a number of odd and enchanted munitions for the various armies, but the winner are the Sons of Kronos with their Ceremony of Cursing. This lets them make a metallic shot with a piece of bone from their enemies in it. The effects of this Cursed Shot varies depending on the bone used and the enemy targeted, for example a bone of a dwarf will make the shot explode into metallic fragments for an area attack and against a dwarven unit — it can knock them down.
• Cyberpunk 2020 has its fair share of exotic ammo like flechettes and gyrojets, but perhaps the most glaring example is the ammo for the Malorian Arms Sliver Gun and the Tsunami Arms Ramjet Rifle — both from the Blackhand's Street Weapons 2020 supplement. The first weapon has a spinning flywheel in the gun to shave slivers of plastic and fire those out at high speed. The second takes the idea of the gyrojet, but exaggerates it by making the ammo an 8.5mm ramjet engine flying at hypersonic speed.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Forgotten Realms: Netheril, being a Magitek empire, devised the netherpelter (a telekinetic gun) with imprisoning, expansive (as in Enlarge), decay-inducing, fireball, water jet lashing, and whirlwind (for grounding fliers) pellets as "standard" ammo, though it propels mundane darts and pellets just as well.
    • Ravenloft: In a flavor-text encounter from a supplement, an ally of the Weathermay-Foxgrove twins scores a glancing shot on an unidentified monster with an arrow tipped with multiple needles, each of a different substance. After the skirmish, the twins re-claim the arrow and check which needle is bloodied, thus learning the creature's Kryptonite Factor.
  • Spelljammer has an accelerator, a magical breachloading cannon that sucks anything placed in the ammo cup and hurls it with enough exit speed to damage ships' hulls. Grabbing the cup in such a way that some fingers happen to be inside is not recommended. Any and all living "ammo" dies in process — even amorphous fungal mold or slime. Its way of power supply sucks, however.
  • Perhaps the most disturbing ammunition in D&D: arrows with screaming heads on them that distract spellcasters.
  • Healing arrows: These arrows are meant to be fired at your own side in combat, allowing them to keep fighting. They usually heal more than they do in damage. (They double as Depleted Phlebotinum Shells against the undead, thanks to Revive Kills Zombie.)
  • A very old joke floating around D&D circles are paradox-tipped arrows. An enclosure holds a portable hole (literally a hole that you can carry around and store stuff in) in front of a small bag of holding (a bag that's bigger on the inside) and, upon impact, the hole is inserted into the bag which causes everything within a 10-foot-radius sphere from the bag to be displaced to another plane.
• Exalted:
  • Sidereal Exalted have a charm that lets them fire anything smaller than their arm as an arrow, including shouts — the latter is used as an odd communication technique. They also have a charm that transforms arrows into various things such as wheat, life-force, glass, and boulders. In the right combo, this can allow a Sidereal to fire a barrage of flaming squirrels, or something else even more ludicrous. The game rewards this.
  • There's a shoulder-mounted cannon that fires giant pearls covered in magical napalm.
  • There's a weapon which fires solid gold bullets, and propels them towards their targets using the power of the tiny, tiny shrines inside the barrel.
  • Shards of the Exalted Dream gives Sidereal Firearms the most abnormal ammo of all: nothing. They can kill you without needing to load their gun... or even to have a gun... with Holistic Bullet Methodology.
• GURPS: There are special rules for making items that use exotic ammo. There's a joke saying a baby wearing a lobster costume in a bucket can be a PC, a weapon, or ammo. Turns out, it's not a joke.
• HoL: Human Occupied Landfill had a flaming gerbil cannon.
• Hunter: The Vigil: Task Force Valkyrie has multiple ammunitions to deal with the various supernaturals, but the Etheric Rounds are arguably their crowning achievement in engineering. These are bullets that when shot, phase through into the Spirit World, thus allowing it to harm insubstantial and intangible creatures.
• Judge Dredd: All the odd ammo that can be fitted on a Judge's Lawgiver are available in the tabletop game version.
• Magic: The Gathering is loaded (no pun — okay, okay, pun intended) with cards that shoot or throw odd things. (Most of these cards are at least partly red, the color of chaos, bloodlust, randomness, and some kinds of madness.) Aside from the Hornet Cannon, there are:
  • Acorn Catapult fires acorns.
  • Akki Coalflinger, Ember Shot, Goblin Fireslinger and Ishi-Ishi, Akki Crackshot throw fire and burning projectiles..
  • Bloodshot Cyclops (whom, the flavor text notes, goblins call "Chuck"), Brion Stoutarm, Fling, Fodder Cannon, Fodder Launch Goblin Bombardment, Mogg Cannon and Skull Catapult throw your own creatures.
  • The Catapult Master has to be shooting something that's more than a big rock; the Wrath of God doesn't kill creatures so thoroughly as he does.
  • Chainflinger throws chains.
  • Deadapult fires zombies.
  • Doom Cannon seems to shoot a laser... but the fuel for that laser is a living being.
  • Farbog Boneflinger throws bones.
  • Needleshot Gourna is a Spike Shooter.
  • Tar Pitcher throws burning tar.
• In the Mutant Chronicles universe, the Dark Legion uses things like small, rapidly-multiplying, flesh-eating maggots encased in bullet shells, or bullets treated with a highly infectious disease. The Nazgaroth heavy machinegun fires special bullets that each have a small rune branded onto them to increase their power. If a human soldier is hit with one of those, he will be influenced by the dark symmetry in one way or the other (if he survives). The Megacorporations with their Cartel, especially the elite Doom Troopers, love to use ammo filled with plasma for an explosive effect.
• An image in the free Nobilis release "The Story Of Treasure" has a desperate fellow named Mercutio attempting to weaponise an Anchor (someone tied to him with mystical bonds) with a so-called "Sleeping-Beauty-a-Pult".
• Rifts: There are special rules for making items that use exotic ammo. There's a joke saying a baby wearing a lobster costume in a bucket can be a PC, a weapon, or ammo. Turns out, it's not a joke.
• Rocket Age features Radium laced flame thrower fuel, which apparently burns hotter, more efficiently and explodes into an even larger fireball. Did we mention it's also radioactive? The Jovians also make use of plastic spitting splinter guns and cannons, to make up for their lack of metal.
• Scion has Knacks that let you pick up far more than you should, as well as Knacks that give you immense throwing ability. With Epic Strength 10, Strength 5, and the right knacks, you can throw anything in the world. The game notes that at a certain point (say, throwing the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan), damage becomes narrative rather than dice-based.
• Splicers has the Host Armor given a number of ranged weapon options including the Bore Cannon and Casting Gun. The Bore Cannon fires mutated grubs that can eat its way through solid metal and the Casting Gun option allows the Host Armor to collect the wearer's feces and removes the water then compresses it into pellets while filling it with explosive chemicals to shoot. If the Host Armor is a lithovore, then the pellets do more damage because they're so rocky from the armor's diet.
• In the Starship Troopers RPG, there are several weapons that do this, including grenades that can be filled with chemical agents and missile launchers that shoot rockets that unleash walls of fire.
• Turnip28: The Grand Bombard is able to use your own officers as extra ammunition to fire more shots in a round. Doing so is risky, since running out of officers is an automatic loss, but considering that a direct hit from the Bombard is capable of straight-up deleting a unit of Brutes, Bastards or Chaff, it can be tempting...
• Warhammer 40,000: While basic bullets, explosive bullets and laser beams are the most common kind of things you'll see flying around a battlefield, many forces have access to much wielder things:
  • Space Marine Sternguard Veterans carry special-issue ammunition for their Bolters. They can pack Hellfire bolts carrying acid that melts flesh on contact, Vengeance Rounds that use "unstable flux core technology" to take out Powered Armor users, Kraken Pattern Penetrator Rounds that have a significantly longer range than normal bolts, and Dragonfire rounds that hit enemies through cover as if it weren't even there.
  • The armory of the Adeptus Mechanicus includes things like the Galvanic Rifle and the Radium Carbine as standard infantry weapons for the Skitarii. They do use more ordinary fare like bolters and stubbers, but the majority of their arsenal fires unique ammunition.
  • The larger Titans can be equipped with some interesting weaponry. Quake cannons fire shells imbued with the death cries of shattered planets, and some Emperor Titans carry ballistic missiles that open Hell Gates where they hit. The one known Castigator Titan had a cannon that fired daemons, although that was likely due to its Chaos corruption.
  • Chaos had some nasty shit in their arsenal such as the Lord of Skulls daemon engine which had a gun that shot scalding blood that would soak through the joints of armour and boil the victim inside. Other Chaos units had weapons which shot diseased bile or magically flaming shells etc.
  • The Eldar carry rifles that fire molecular-edged shuriken and nets made of Razor Floss as basic equipment. Their more exotic gear includes guns that fire miniature black holes.
  • Dark Eldar have guns that fire screaming wires that make anyone they hit explode, guns that fire poisonous glass shards, and guns that fire the captured souls of tortured psychics.
  • Tyranids use biological guns which use muscle impulses to fire killer beetles, killer maggots, acid crystals, floating spores or exploding tumours.
  • Orks have a notoriously improvisational approach to their technology, and any impressive weapon is typically a unique custom piece; they also tend to think that weapons should be as dramatic and impressive as possible, with concepts like "efficiency" and "sanity" never even showing up. Consequently, this trope tends to crop up fairly regularly.
    • Shokk Attack Guns fire tiny goblins through hyperspace, which are driven insane by the experience and materialize in a berserk frenzy somewhere within their target's body.
    • An artillery piece fires bubbles made from unstable force fields, which produce completely random results — some will hit like a backhanded slap, some will crush steel.
    • Orks also make extensive use of squigs, carnivorous hopping fungus monsters, as live ammo for a variety of launchers and catapults. The ammo comes in bite-your-face-off, toxic and explosive varieties, because that's squigs for you; more exotic kinds include pots filled with aggressive alien bees, squigs that bellow at ear-busting volumes, and "the truly revolting — and panic-inducing — bowel-torrent squigs". Deff Skwadron used a giant plane to airdrop squigs as bombs; this also led to including a Nigh-Invulnerable cybork in the payload.
  • The Necrons use guns that strip off your armour, skin, flesh and organs layer by layer.
  • Plague Marines have the Shrunken Heads of the victims of Papa Nurgle's Plague as a type of grenade. We assume it's the nausea effect that makes them so effective.
  • One option for the Khorne worshippers, the skullhurler, is a gun shaped like a big skull that shoots smaller skulls. As in, literal skulls.
  • There are grenades that open a portal to hell, grenades that stop time, anti-magic grenades (which are made from the Emperor's waste products), EMP grenades, hallucinogenic gas grenades, and grenades which unleash a virulent virus.
• Warhammer:
  • The Doom Diver is a giant slingshot that launches Goblins, most of whom volunteer for the jon. An Orc army featured in White Dwarf also has a stone thrower rebuilt as a Squig Thrower; a squig-firing cannon would later appear in the Storm of Chaos event.
  • The halfling half-joking army list includes a soup pot catapult.
  • The Tomb Kings have the Screaming Skull Catapult, which launches, well, screaming skulls.
  • The Hellcannon, heavy artillery used by the Warriors of Chaos, loads living beings as ammunition and then fires their souls.
  • Ogres don't tend to have a lot of anything (at least, not a lot of identical things). This includes bullets and cannonballs, so they just make due with anything on hand; a few spoons, a fork or two, a rock, and that gnoblar on your shoulder. The Gnoblar Scraplauncher uses a similar mixture, launching assorted gear taken from other races which is too small for ogres and too big for gnoblars, and has the Killing Blow special rule to represent the chance of a random sword, looted off a battlefield, landing blade first.
  • The Skaven sometimes use ammo made of Warpstone — the solidified stuff of pure Chaos, which mutates anyone it touches.
  • Blood Bowl has Throw Team Mate, which allows larger players to throw small ones in place of the ball.
• In the Zombicide expansion Toxic City Mall, you can find the "Small Change" item, which means a lot of coins. They increase the damage dealt by a Sawed-Off Shotgun to 2. But after a Zombie Apocalypse, what else is money good for?

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