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Kai Tave posted:I just think it would have been neat to see Aztech finally have to deal with some fallout for all their poo poo. Like, all the megacorps are basically evil to greater or lesser degrees but Aztech is literally a corporation run by cartoon supervillains who sacrifice people in blood rituals to bring about the dark spirit apocalypse. Don't get me wrong, I think they're a neat addition to the setting and all, but they seem to benefit from a bit too much plot armor in regards to their over-the-top evilness and I think it could have been fun to see them try and deal with a backlash of bad PR and a stern eye from the Corporate Court. Imagine the rebranding efforts alone. I'm down for more megacorps that use means that would be legal in the present day and pose real puzzles with regards to how their methods of control can be deemed unethical. Like, if Horizon just used probabilistic analysis of trends to determine with 99.46% confidence that the new idea their execs want to push goes viral, that would be simultaneously creepy and cool and raise complicated questions about free will. I get that not everyone playing Shadowrun wants to explore that stuff, but at a bare minimum I'd like to see more contrast with the megacorps like Aztech which is just a mishmash of the Cthulhu Mythos and the villains from Robocop. I'm not super deep into Shadowrun lore, but the main feeling I get is that megacorps are pretty much universally autocratic and terrible. Maybe have a game as runners-turned-sararimen dedicated to supporting the lesser of two evils.
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Aug 5, 2013 00:51
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BenRGamer posted:Eh, to be honest, I see it this way. Yeah, I agree with this. Charisma 1 doesn't mean you're utterly incapable of relaying information via conversation. I would expand it to mean you're about as charming as a rock one way or another and encourage the player to explain that; Maybe they have Charisma 1 because they're a wheezing netdecker asthma monkey, or maybe they have Charisma 1 because other trolls roll their eyes at this walking troll stereotype. An attribute at 1 should be a possibility, because otherwise there's no point to having it as a mechanical possibility, but it should be as much a defining characteristic as an attribute at the racial maximum. I would probably raise an eyebrow at a player who had more than one attribute at the natural minimum.
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Aug 24, 2013 02:16
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BenRGamer posted:...there's seven stats. Eight, actually. A 3 in every stat would be Attributes C for a human.
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Aug 24, 2013 02:42
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Regarding whether Hackers should be jumping out of the woodwork: A single skill at 6 is supposed to be a professional able to make a living off of that skill, primarily. A PC who has being a decker as their main thing is going to be at professional or near-professional levels of competence in nearly every field of computer-related endeavours; This is someone who could probably make a living writing software, designing hardware, or closing security holes. The sample decker is well above the level of a trained professional in five different areas of computers and electronics and, when it comes to actually Hacking, is good enough that they're past the level of being headhunted by Megacorps to specifically hack things or protect their own networks. The idea of a trained decker coming along and messing with your poo poo is probably even more obscure than a trained hitman, not a street-level ganger, coming around to off you. I think that's probably a good standard; Would this person worry about a trained hitman coming around and putting them on ice? If not, they're probably not going to give a poo poo about putting up security measures that would keep a serious decker out. Only governments, Megacorps, and the best organized crime outfits should be prepared to respond effectively to a dedicated PC decker messing with their poo poo.
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Aug 26, 2013 21:41
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I honestly don't know a ton about Shadowrun in general, most of my knowledge coming from Jake Armitage, Shadowrun Returns, and a few abortive attempts at playing, but I feel like the Decker ought to be a character who can set a lot of this up ahead of time. Obviously, we don't want them to break the action economy, but if you can do research on your opposition and hack into things undetected prior to the run, it seems to me like you ought to be able to leave back doors that let you go directly into messing with the systems you choose rather than having to brute force something in the middle of a firefight. Not all the time, but a significant portion of the time, the team's Decker should have back doors into many of the relevant systems before everyone hops in the van and hits the pavement. Do people just not generally do this phase in runs because it's boring for someone who goes straight combat monster, or is there something in the rules prohibiting you from doing it?
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Aug 27, 2013 00:56
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WarLocke posted:Honestly I would probably ignore the enclosed area/bouncing/whatever rules and just house rule it that 'grenades do X damage out to Y distance with Z falloff' and leave the chunky salsa stuff for cinematic effect as descriptors. Something like this is what I would do. Also, there's currently no way to dodge a grenade or throw it back, which is stupid.
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Aug 28, 2013 01:37
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Yeah, if you throw a flashbag into an average-sized room, your average heavy in full body armor will be reduced to chunks of meat. Aside from being absurd and game-breaking, that actually prevents a flashbang from being a flashbang; The idea being that it's a grenade you can use during room clearing when you don't want to just kill everyone inside, as there are plenty of other ways to do that.
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Aug 28, 2013 02:45
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ProfessorCirno posted:I don't mind either way. poo poo's abstract to begin with after all. Denser bones makes your body more built up; it can soak damage better because it's just plain tougher. I would houserule it so you use whatever stat you use in addition to Willpower to resist drain. Adepts are too swole to take damage. Shamans have such a strong force of personality it's hard to overcome their soul in order to damage them. When someone tries to damage a hermetic mage in the Astral, they turn into this guy, because gently caress your real body taking damage from the Astral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw9bny88OuY
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Sep 2, 2013 05:44
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paragon1 posted:Combat axes are fun. Combat axes being wielded by an adept with strength 6 blades 6 with a specialization in axes is hilarious (he hides it in a guitar case he carries everywhere). Forgetting all of that because you're helping your street sammie buddy remove the local go-gang with the assault rifles he mounted on his scooter is the most fun I've had with P&P RPGs in a while. Katanas are also hilarious. Because they are a pointed sword, they can go through a barrier with Armor less than their combined Damage+Armor Piercing value. This means if your troll gets up to Strength 11, they can go around Iaijutsu Striking people through brick walls. If they ever hit the theoretical maximum of 15 Strength, they can do it through ten centimeters of concrete. A troll already has the thermal vision to see the warm bodies on the other side of the wall. The barrier rules also provide what might be the only use for APDS Ammo, as bullets also use the rules for penetrating weapons, so they add their Damage+Armor Piercing value together to determine what barriers they can pierce. An Ares Desert Strike, available at the start of the game, will let you trivially snipe people through a brick wall if you have some way of seeing them on the other side. With APDS Ammo, you can hit them through 10cm of concrete. Security doors, kevlar wallboard, and densiplast can all be shot directly through by an Ares Predator using APDS ammunition. This is just what you can do all the time, because net hits add to the modified damage value used in the calculation. A Ranger Arms SM-5 with APDS ammo only needs two net hits to shoot through reinforced concrete. If you Edge the roll and manage to get 10 net hits, you can shoot someone inside a blast bunker with only 1 damage subtracted from the final result, who would be subject to a 23P -9 AP attack, and the defender is by definition unaware. APDS ammo is not a trap option because it lets you kill people inside hardened bunkers with a single bullet. Edit: I feel the need to point out that if your attacker as a weapon that can pierce your cover, all cover mitigates damage equally. For example, if you are being shot at by a Shadowrunner wielding an Ares Predator with APDS ammo, it does not matter whether you are behind armored glass or regular glass. They both provide the same damage mitigation: One damage. If you have an Ares Desert Strike with APDS ammo, shooting through a metal beam is no more of a problem than shooting through a pane of glass. However, it reads like every individual barrier blocks the projectile separately, so many weak barriers dampen the projectile more than a single massive barrier. While you can snipe someone inside a hardened bunker, the appropriate number of panes of glass, sheets of drywall, or wooden panels can stop any attack. For example, the bullet which can hit the man inside the hardened bunker will not make it through twenty-five wooden panels. MiltonSlavemasta fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Sep 3, 2013 |
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Sep 3, 2013 23:36
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Doc Dee posted:Maybe it's time to start taking Gunnery on every character and giving them a vehicle big enough to mount a Desert Strike (would that be considered to take one mount or two)? You know, not something you'd use all the time, but for special situations. A Desert Strike is a Sniper Rifle. It uses Longarms. Oddly enough, Sniper Rifles are the best for penetrating barriers. Heavy Weapons (Vehicle-Mounted Machine Guns, Assault Cannons, Rocket Launchers) are better for destroying a barrier utterly, but if you want to kill someone on the other side of it right now, nothing beats a Sniper Rifle with armor-piercing ammo. Also, if your GM decides to rule that the monowhip is a penetrating weapon, it will whip right through anything less than reinforced concrete, and if you're good enough to use it without killing yourself, it's good enough to whip through anything but a hardened bunker. MiltonSlavemasta fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Sep 4, 2013 |
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Sep 4, 2013 01:29
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Nyaa posted:Ah, so multi-cast two/three F1 physical barrier is better than one F5 barrier? It depends. If you are facing off against most ordinary goons, a F7-F8 barrier will deflect all their bullets harmlessly without taking damage. However, if you are trying to protect someone from an elite sniper, 14 F1 barriers would significantly improve their chances of survival, whereas one F14 Barrier would barely do anything.
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Sep 4, 2013 04:02
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Bigass Moth posted:The stacks of paper stopping a sniper bullet is a bad analogy, but it should work for increased rows of brick, concrete, wood, etc. so you can't snipe through an underground bunker just because it is technically only one barrier. For the record, when I discovered the crazy barrier thing, I did not mean for anyone to actually use it/apply it that way in game. It was just a way of pointing out that the barrier rules were quite amusing. If you want more sensible barrier rules, the main thing is for a thicker barrier or multiple barriers to count as a better barrier rather than separate barriers. You could also have the armor of barriers just scale linearly in proportion to the thickness, which would eliminate shooting inside bunkers, because no one's bunker is going to be just 10cm of "hardened" material. Edit: Pointing out where the rules go haywire and suggest ridiculous things is nothing more than alerting players and GMs so they'll be aware that house rules or a judgement call must be necessary when such things come up. To my knowledge, nobody is actually suggesting that we should follow the rules that cause flashbangs to instantly kill entire rooms or the one that causes a series of windows to stop a bullet that would get inside a concrete bunker. If people are not aware of such rules oddities until they come up in the game, it can result in a lot of boring arguments and bullshit. (This isn't only directed at you, btw, more at the other guy who was surprised when he came into the thread.) MiltonSlavemasta fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Sep 6, 2013 |
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Sep 6, 2013 19:54
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MilkmanLuke posted:As for enchanting Foci, I'd say no on account of it being crammed full of delicately balanced magic already. Basically, a focus is already enchanted on a much more fundamental level. I don't think there are any specific rules for it, though, so that's probably one of many things that comes down to GM fiat. The rules for enchanting say you cannot enchant anything which already has "an aura." I think a focus might qualify, since it would contain an astral construct.
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Sep 7, 2013 00:39
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Leadership is really one of the most powerful skills in the game. With the Direct action, your Leadership check is effectively a teamwork test for any skill in the game, including ones your character doesn't know at all. For a dedicated Shaman or Face, it isn't at all hard to get to 14 dice, where you're sending an expected 4.5 dice and limit to a check a teammate is making so long as you aren't doing anything else that exact combat turn. I think I might have to make a Yoda-Style mystic adept who runs around using Jedi Mind Trick types of spells and giving cryptic advice to his teammates.
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Sep 9, 2013 03:24
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Bigass Moth posted:For the Direct action, I guess you just resist a TN5 since it isn't specifically laid out. I can see how this can be a bit OP outside of combat especially since it takes a Complex Action to use. At that point any time your team mate has to make any sort of test you may as well be Directing them which doesn't seem like how the skill should work ("Come on man, program that software! You can do it!"). In combat it doesn't seem unbalanced since you give up your entire turn to do it, and that's one less attacker on your side. Also, I don't see it listed anywhere in the description that you add anything to Limit, only extra die hits. The rules for Teamwork tests state each assistant who scores any hits adds one limit to the roll. It's definitely not unbalanced in combat; During combat, you'd probably want to figure out a way to Con some random guys, security, guys on the street, cops, whatever, into letting you use the Command ability of Leadership. And yeah, it would definitely be silly to allow it all the time, for every test. Probably the way to make it least absurd would be to require some familiarity with the actual skill being used, like the Instruct skill does.
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Sep 9, 2013 13:19
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Another rules oddity GMs may wish to discuss: There's no strength restriction on who can use a Krime Cannon or a Panther XXL. The Krime Cannon is a little more effective in the hands of a strong user, but there's nothing preventing it from being mounted on a tripod and letting you fire off a full clip of tank blasts before the recoil starts to penalize you. The Panther XXL, on the other hand, is completely bizarre, because as a Single Shot weapon, it has no recoil whatsoever. There's nothing, RAW, that prevents a STR 1 Elf from firing a Panther XXL as effectively as a STR 11 Troll.
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Sep 11, 2013 04:44
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The Stealth group used to contain Infiltration, Palming, and Shadowing. It now contains Sneaking, Palming, and Disguise. I believe Sneaking is meant to cover what the Infiltration skill covered in past editions in addition to more mundane sneaking around. It seems clear to me that the person writing that section of the book was not current on what the stealth skills in 5e actually consisted of.
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Sep 11, 2013 05:51
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Gobbeldygook posted:and there's nothing RAW that prevents a Str 1 Elf from firing a light machine gun almost as effectively as a Str 11 troll minus the RC advantage of the troll. Shadowrun abandoned that level of detail in SR4 when it stopped including the exact weight of every single object in the game to a precision of 0.05 kgs. If you're curious, you could carry str * 5 kgs without penalty. An assault rifle weighed 4.5 kgs, an LMG 9, a MMG 12, an HMG 15, and an assault cannon 20. There are still rules for penalization when carrying over str*5 kilograms. It's just up to the GM to eyeball your loadout instead of calculating it by hand, which seems like a good call. I only mention the Krime Cannon being mounted on a tripod as weird because the item's description says it's designed to be used as a hand weapon by trolls. RAW, though, no reason anyone can't mount it on a tripod, true. Probably the main thing you could have going on with the tripod is to point out that, when fully assembled and based on the picture you posted, those things are bulky as all hell when set up like that, so you'd probably need to carry it disassembled and put it together before the fight, which is not an option you have under every circumstance.
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Sep 11, 2013 06:40
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dirtycajun posted:I wonder how far I can make a character jump, so that I can leap from building to building with hilarious ease. Kangaroo man, float like a butterfly sting like a panther xxl. Your dice pool is Gymnastics+Agility, so you probably want to be an Elf with Agility 8 and Gymnastics 6, with a specialty in jumping. That lets you jump 4 meters standing or 8 meters running just by buying hits, or 26 feet for Americans. Normally, jumping is limited to Agilityx1.5. Your magic will end up being 4, so you could buy 4 levels of Light Body. Hydraulic Jacks only take up 6 capacity. You should get them customized to your Agility 8 and then Enhanced to Agility 11. Your maximum jump distance without Light Body tops off at 1.8*11 or about 20 meters, 65 feet. Light Body 4 increases your Agility by 4 for this calculation, so that increases it to 25 meters, or 82 feet. Your dice pool for jumping Tests will be Agility 14 + Gymnastics 8 + Hydraulic Bonus 1 + Light Body 4 for a total of 27, which only allows you to jump 12 meters or 39 feet consistently, so you need to boost this dice pool. You can afford 4 levels of Improved Ability (Gymnastics) for 4 dice, take a mentor spirit of Cat for 2 dice, and take Natural Athlete for 2 more dice, taking you up to a dice pool of 35 and a grand total of 16 meter jumps from buying hits, putting you up to 52-foot running jumps all day every day. Aptitude (Gymnastics) lets you get the final meter in for 17 meters, which I suspect is the most you can consistently jump from buying hits as a starting character. If you somehow manage to fit some Edge in here, you'll get a dice pool of 14+8+1+4+4+2+2+1 plus Edge of 6 (Let's assume you won't fit in Lucky) for 42 dice; Exploding sixes modifies the expected value of your die pool by 1.2, so on Edged rolls you would be likely to hit your limit of 25 meters, as the dice would give you an average of 16 hits, or 32 meters. If you just roll the dice for a jump without using Edge, you're looking at an average of about 24 meters, right up against your maximum limit. You'll want to put on some STR so you don't get hit by your physical limit, which can also be a limiting factor for a true jumpman. But, bottom line, you can make a character who consistently makes a running jump of 20 meters, does a Hulk-style standing leap of 10 meters. Sadly, the jumping rules limit you to only 1.5 times your standing height for a vertical leap, but with Hydraulic Jacks, you double this, and your vertical leap would be 5 meters from buying hits. Play a tall elf so you can jump that 16 1/2 feet straight up.
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Sep 11, 2013 07:21
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Gort posted:The various Shadowrun computer games managed to start you off pretty much flat broke with virtually no useful skills, and by the end you're able to punch out a dragon. (Hyperbole, but you get the idea) There's no story or fun-of-gameplay reason it wouldn't work in PnP, just mechanics. I'm inclined to agree, and I like this too. It would allow for things like a character who decides to become a decker or get his first piece of cyberware in the game, or you could even have a character awaken during the game. Mechanics-wise, I think there are really only a few issues holding the system back from allowing for this. 1. Raising attributes to high levels is so expensive that it's hard to people to accumulate enough karma to raise them after chargen. This also goes for skills you want at high levels, but to a lesser extent. I think whether we really need geometric increasing costs for better skills and attributes is worth thinking over. Trolls who want to raise Body and Strength are pointlessly shafted. 2. The suggested Karma rewards are pretty piddly, especially for PbP games or games where a run is planned and executed over the course of several sessions. On average, you'll probably get about 7 Karma per run as a new character. A growing Mage with Magic 4 saves up for 3 runs and still can't buy Magic 5. He'll probably spend some of that on useful skills, and encouraging more well-rounded characters is cool, but it sucks that he can't raise his primary stat. I almost wonder if it wouldn't make sense to do it the opposite way; Give out Karma at character generation, which encourages being well-rounded, and then award skill points and nuyen after runs, with an attribute point awarded after big runs. MiltonSlavemasta fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Sep 13, 2013 |
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Sep 13, 2013 12:36
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Well, if someone's not receiving any medical care and is just sleeping it off in their apartment, they'll be testing at -4, due to -1 for not being in a sterilized medical setting and -3 for not having medical supplies. If you apply First Aid or Medicine to yourself, you can't make the natural recovery roll. If they're cybered up or awakened (which is most characters), that's going to be another -2 for Awakened characters and likely a -2 for cybered-up characters. So, an Awakened or Cybered-up character who isn't a troll is probably going to do nothing but stay the same/deteriorate unless they get actual care. This is all without factoring in the wound penalties from the actual injury,
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Sep 15, 2013 01:18
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Future contacts cannot be bought, p.55. Basically, everything involving contacts after chargen can't be done with Karma. It makes more sense that way. There are supposed to be rules for improvised weapons, but they're not on the suggested page. Pg. 168 gives a guideline for adjudicating the accuracy of an improvised weapon, but there's no information about what skills they use or how much damage they do.
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Sep 15, 2013 03:29
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H posted:I was asking about shooting someone with a pistol that's trying to stab you. Is that -3 dice for the "Attacker in melee" rule? Yes and no. The only difference I can see would be for grenade and missile launchers, which have a listed minimum range for obvious reasons.
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Sep 15, 2013 03:36
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Doc Dee posted:I assumed Clubs because of the sidebar describing using the handle/pommel/etc of a sword to inflict stun damage and using that Skill. Found something in an obscure location. "If the character is wielding a firearm they may choose to use the weapon as a club and attack with the Club skill. This attack follows all of the normal rules for Melee Combat (see p. 184)."
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Sep 15, 2013 03:49
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I mean, I don't see why you couldn't use it for parry tests. Apparently, you can silence a Heavy Machine Gun. I would complain about this, but it owns too hard.
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Sep 15, 2013 04:42
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The book has a statline for a dog and it's going to be almost useless in combat, but actually is decent with tracking and perception type stuff. If you actually take the skills to handle/communicate with Lassie, I see no reason to not let it be covered under lifestyle. Also if your GM kills the dog to give the evil villain cred, that's pretty low and your GM might be John Wick.
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Sep 15, 2013 15:08
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Laphroaig posted:They just need to make NERPS (New Exciting Retail Products) a general thing you can buy in the book, and include everything from Glass Cutters to "DNA-Gone-Away!" brand cleaning wipes under that description. Doing something odd that it makes no sense to write up a particular tool etc for? Use your NERP. A guide to what gets handwaved at each level of lifestyle would probably be good too. Middle-class people probably won't sweat getting a taxi or a stock suit, and High probably means you don't sweat plane tickets either. Could be a good encouragement to get teams to buy Group Lifestyles (which are pretty sweet.)
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Sep 19, 2013 17:51
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ProfessorCirno posted:Was thinking of house rules. One of these is just taken directly from SR4. How do these sound? These all look really good. Monowhips are too good in comparison to other melee options as it stands, and the statistical probability of their special drawback coming into play with any PC who's serious about using them is so low you would maybe hit yourself once in an entire campaign. I would suggest that Prime Runner rules just mirror the street level rules you have right now, so you can have AACDE or nothing at E or whatever. As for cyberlimbs, you can always be a troll and have better (and more expensive!) cyberlimbs. A troll with exceptional strength can get "the arm customized up to 11" then three points of enhancement for 14 STR in one arm, then use a one-handed sword and a ballistic shield in combat. With some armor and cyberware that adds body+armor, bullets will just "tink-tink-tink" off and you'll be a modern-day knight. Be sure to take Knowledge: Chivalry.
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Oct 10, 2013 04:51
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I'm looking at trying to make a Gun Mystic Adept for a 5e game. Since I've never built a magic character in Shadowrun, I was wondering if there were any newbie traps I should be aware of. Also unsure how to prioritize all these weird magic skills; Spellcasting seems important, but other than that, not sure.
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Jun 27, 2015 23:50
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Poil posted:I'm no expert and my opinion is just from theory crafting and my experiences with 4th edition, but for a mage you want everything or at least most of it: I made a troll mystic adept who is good at resisting drain, casting spells, summoning, and fighting with guns, but currently lacks foci and lacks so many magic skills he's flying totally blind. It is pretty much the opposite of what I am typically comfortable playing. One character type that I think works really well for people new to the system is Attributes A, Skills B, Human C, Resources D, Magic E. You'll end up ignoring the most complicated parts of the system (magic, decking) and giving up on combat hyper specialization in exchange for being able to do a stupid number of things reasonably well and being absurdly lucky whenever you need to be. It also encourages you to come up with absurd low-fi ways of doing things. I
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Jun 29, 2015 05:29
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