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Whatever floats your boat! Consider making him a Warrior Adept: Power Throw, Increased Skills (Throwing Knives or Blades or both!) and various stealth powers would increase the concepts staying power enormously. E: Because I'm bored and you seem raw, I threw together a quick stabby stealth adept list of attributes, powers and skills for you, using less than the 400 BP you get so you can customize him with the contacts, knowledges, gear etc. you want, remember to include lifestyle also: 317 BP Spent. Metatype: Human Qualities: Adept (5BP) Attributes: 200 BP BOD:3 AGI:5 REA:3 STR:3 CHA:2 INT:3 LOG:2 WIL:3 Edge: 2 Iniative: 6 Magic: 5 Adept Powers: Improved Ability: Blades 2, Improved Ability: Infiltration 1, Improved Reflexes 1 (used 3 of his 5 power points.) Skills: 112 BP Blades 4 -Spec: Knives 6 Dodge 3 Locksmith 2 -Spec:Mag-Locks 4 Perception 2 -Spec: Hearing 4 Pistols 1 Thrown Weapons 4 -Spec: Throwing Knives Athletics Skill Group 2 Stealth Skill Group 3 I don't know if your group uses street magic, but if so I will highly recommend the Power Throw (adds 2 points to the characters effective strength per level taken for the purpose of determining thrown weapon damage!), Quick Draw (draw and ready any weapon as a single action!) or Cloak (adds to resist magical surveillance). Otherwise, tool him out with what you'd like him to do (Rapid Healing, Improved Attributes and Missile Parry could all be good choices for buffing or fluffing). E E: Maybe also Improved Ability (Throwing Weapons) if Power Throw doesn't make him killy enough for your tastes 
Tias fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Apr 30, 2012 |
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Apr 30, 2012 14:06
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Tias posted:Because I'm bored and you seem raw, I threw together a quick stabby stealth adept list of attributes, powers and skills for you, using less than the 400 BP you get so you can customize him with the contacts, knowledges, gear etc. you want, remember to include lifestyle also Hey thanks! I'll definitely make use of this.
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Apr 30, 2012 14:33
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You're welcome I also edited my post to include some suggestions for additional powers, depending on what additional sourcebooks your group uses.
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Apr 30, 2012 14:36
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Psst. Don't listen to him. The shamans and mystics may pretend their ways aren't obsolete, but they're fools. All you have to do is sell your humanity, and we can have you chucking knives like a goddamn knife-chucking machine. Because that's what you'll be. Attributes: 200 BP BOD:3 AGI:5[7] REA:5[6] STR:3[5] CHA:3 INT:4 LOG:2 WIL:3 Edge: 2 Initiative: 10 Magic: 0 Cyberware: Wired Reflexes I, Reflex Cluster (Thrown Weapons), Reflex Cluster (Blades), Muscle Replacement II. Total 42,000 nuyen, 1.9 essence remaining. That's 9 BP. Spend another 3000 on twenty knives with personalized handles. Skills: 112 BP Blades 4 -Spec: Knives 6 Dodge 3 Locksmith 2 -Spec:Mag-Locks 4 Perception 2 -Spec: Hearing 4 Pistols 1 Thrown Weapons 4 -Spec: Throwing Knives Athletics Skill Group 2 Stealth Skill Group 3 321 BP spent... and it has higher stats, all in exchange for some pesky humanity you weren't using anyway. Embrace transhumanism! This build spends a lot of essence of relatively little cheep 'ware. If you want to jam more awesome equipment into yourself, and why wouldn't you, replace that Muscle Replacement with Muscle Toner and Muscle Augmentation, for 20k more nuyen you'll save 1.2 essence. And for 69k more nuyen, you can turn those Wired Reflexes into Synaptic Boosters, and save 1.5 essence. And you'll save even MORE essence if you mix cyberware with bioware, because whichever kind you have less of costs half in essence. Still, no need to pay extra for the expensive 'ware if you're not going to use all that essence you just freed up on low-BP stat improving options. Check out Dermal Plating, Platelet Factories, Synthacardium (!!), Tailored Pheromones, and scads and scads of Reflex Recorders. The other splatbooks introduce more options, of course. Finally, check out earbuds and goggles, for dirt-cheep bonuses to your perception tests. Also, never take dodge, just use Gymnastics or Athletics. It's just one of those little oddities of the game system.
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Apr 30, 2012 15:52
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Been thinking of playing a Shapeshifter in Shadowrun, and how to make it not awful. I thought a shapeshifter hacker would be conceptually interesting, although you'd need deltaware. I'm just picturing a cat watching a fishtank or a dog watching TV, only with no fishtank or TV and a giant cable coming out of its neck. The other thing I was thinking of was maybe a wolf or a dog who was introduced via getting saved by the players and just sort of keeps following them around until they accept it.
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Apr 30, 2012 17:37
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Go with a cat, then you could have the team's face distract people by playing Dr. Evil and pet you threateningly while you hack everything in the room. Or chase the techomancer birds/rats. Be sure to tell them that you were declawed though. There's this weird rumor going around that you can kill a mage with a cat and you don't want them getting any ideas.
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Apr 30, 2012 18:48
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Hackers don't need 'ware anymore.
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Apr 30, 2012 19:57
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Basically the key to shifters is to completely ignore shifting, just think of them as metahumans with better stats. The way to make shapeshifters really good is to play a physical adept bear shifter and just never be a bear. You get better stats than trolls and pretty good regeneration. Also, oddly enough, seal shifters (why do these exist?) have IIRC the highest agility cap possible if you want to make a super sniper or gunbunny. Network42 fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Apr 30, 2012 |
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Apr 30, 2012 20:07
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NNNooo, gently caress you, that is such a terrible attitude. That is literally exactly why nightwatch sucked.
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Apr 30, 2012 21:55
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Network42 posted:Also, oddly enough, seal shifters (why do these exist?) have IIRC the highest agility cap possible if you want to make a super sniper or gunbunny. Navy Seal shifter snipers? Sounds about right.
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Apr 30, 2012 22:50
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BannedNewbie posted:I don't know if there any actual pictures, but every campaign I've ever played in has described it as the A-Team Van. White kidnapper van for us.
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May 1, 2012 00:27
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Network42 posted:Basically the key to shifters is to completely ignore shifting, just think of them as metahumans with better stats. The way to make shapeshifters really good is to play a physical adept bear shifter and just never be a bear. You get better stats than trolls and pretty good regeneration. This is why, despite my constant advice to optimize, I don't consider myself a min-maxing munchkin... I never suggest this. Who picks a incredibly rare sapient (not even a metahuman) and then plays them as a human? It's as bad as taking all your cyberware as second-hand alphaware. If you can't think of a use for shifting into an animal you're playing the wrong concept. Shifters generally fit in better in a closer to nature campaign, as a seal will not find much use in Seattle but will be great in a adventure set in a small, ten thousand soul town in Alaska. And turning into an eagle will find utility in any company. Also I suspect you could make a solid Technomancer shifter.
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May 1, 2012 02:19
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A few buddies of mine are grabbing books to play this. I'm thinking about playing a Troll Enforcer who specializes in melee and uses cybernetics to punch/stab/smash things even harder. A couple of questions: 1. What sort of restrictions are there typically on martial arts? I was looking through Arsenal, thinking about picking up some moderate skill in several, enough to grab one or two of the advantages, but not really mastering any in particular. As an example, I'm thinking of taking Krav Maga for the +1 Disarm and Ready Weapon as a Free Action, Wrestling for +1 Knockdown and +1 to Subduing Combat rolls, and possibly Escrima for +1 DV Blades and another +1 for Disarms. I want to get some feedback from a few DMs to see if I would be allowed to have the Disarm bonus from two different styles. I plan to use knives and clubs mostly, possibly a vibro sword as well, and also be able to switch to unarmed if I get disarmed. 2. How stupid will I be expected to play if I only use BP for physical attributes and leave everything else at 1? I am not sure how well I'll be able to dumb myself down for dialogue, although I could see it being fun if I could pull off a monosyllabic thug well. 3. From general skimming of this thread, I've noticed melee characters can have trouble reaching opponents and spend a lot of rounds moving just trying to get into range to smash things. I'd love some suggestions for skill setups or cybernetics that will help out runspeed and put me in eviscerating range ASAP.
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May 1, 2012 08:05
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Nucular Carmul posted:2. How stupid will I be expected to play if I only use BP for physical attributes and leave everything else at 1? I am not sure how well I'll be able to dumb myself down for dialogue, although I could see it being fun if I could pull off a monosyllabic thug well. Forget how dumb you're expected to play, you'll never pass a perception check and you won't be able to tell a lie to save your life. Look forward to responding to a security officer asking you what's happening by screaming in a panic and throwing him out a window. Also with that Willpower of 1 means you won't have much of a stun track--and given that you'll probably have a lot of armor on, almost all damage you take will be stun. So that physical condition track of thirteen boxes won't go far. Especially when you're using cyberware you can get a lot of attributes for really, really cheap in BP. Spend some of those savings on not being a complete moron. A functionally retarded character absolutely will be arrested within a week. That being said--how dumb you have to be depends on your GM more than anything else. I strongly, strongly suggest taking all those savings you get on BP by using cyberware and investing in some mental traits. Actually, more than that, I strongly suggest not playing a D&D berzerker in Shadowrun, a game of spies, lies, assassination, and espionage. If you must, the cyberware you want are Cyberskimmers from Augmentation, to double your land speed. Again, what would be better would be being sneaky and cunning, so combat starts with you three inches away from the enemy. Failing that, consider having throwing axes. It's not like you'll have much else to spend your points on.
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May 1, 2012 09:12
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Nucular Carmul posted:A few buddies of mine are grabbing books to play this. I'm thinking about playing a Troll Enforcer who specializes in melee and uses cybernetics to punch/stab/smash things even harder. A couple of questions: You can take as many different martial arts as you spend points on. However, the maximum amount of martial arts you can get is 4 bonuses, you couldn't get all of those you listed at once. Bonuses from different styles stack, but you can't go above +3 DV for a single thing. Mystic Mongol posted:Especially when you're using cyberware you can get a lot of attributes for really, really cheap in BP. Spend some of those savings on not being a complete moron. A functionally retarded character absolutely will be arrested within a week. This is totally true. You can get Muscle Augmentation 2, Muscle Toner 2, Reaction Enhancer 2, and Cerebral Booster 2 for 70k and 1.8 essence (in reality lower, since the halving for the lower bioware/cyberware essence loss.). That's +8 to various attributes for only 12 BP. Edit: You can even tack on a Supathyroid Gland for another +4 attributes for pretty cheap, though you do have to take a Restricted Gear quality. Piell fucked around with this message at 09:43 on May 1, 2012 |
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May 1, 2012 09:30
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Hmm, I have been slowly coming to the realization that my buddies might not be approaching this game correctly. Thanks for your advice, guys, I will probably need to bring this up with them. One guy is making a pure magic character and another is going gun focused. I was just going by what they were doing and figured they'd need a melee character 
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May 1, 2012 10:19
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No, they don't need a melee type. They need a face. Be an elf. High charisma, high reflexes, high intuition. Don't carry a gun. Do carry a tazer/stunbaton/shockglove, and two dozen plastic zip-tie handcuffs. Wear a really, really expensive suit. Have a nice lifestyle so you start play with lots of money, spend it all on gifts for NPCs. Have Tailored Pheromones and the First Impressions advantage. Make friends with everyone. Ruin adventures by going parasailing with the target location's head of security. When combat does start, shock everyone with your stacked reflexes / synthacardium / gymnastics and saunter through the firefight with a smug look on your face. Get a toxin filter, drink everyone under the table and then rob them. Make con checks, turn legitimate security guards in to the cops for crimes you committed. Set fires. Stand watching the fire while swirling a goblet of expensive wine in one hand. Send gracious invatations to parties under other people's names at their secure compound, force them to decide between offending movers and shakers and letting a few dozen people into their house. Be one of those people. Make them pay for several shrimp platters. Assassinate them. Thank their next of kin for throwing such a charming party. Be distraught when the body is discovered. Blame whoever's closest to figuring you out. Take a two week vacation in San Francisco. Repeat. I can bang together a sample build to get you started if that interests you, mundane or shaman.
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May 1, 2012 11:18
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Nucular Carmul posted:Hmm, I have been slowly coming to the realization that my buddies might not be approaching this game correctly. Thanks for your advice, guys, I will probably need to bring this up with them. One guy is making a pure magic character and another is going gun focused. I was just going by what they were doing and figured they'd need a melee character Basically, every Shadowrun character should be able to contribute in 3 common situations that occur in nearly every run 1) Planning and Pre-execution - You're gathering information/supplies/gear. Ways to contribute include - Magical detection or manipulation - Hacking/Computer skills - Talking skills - Scouting skills (Rigging drones to scout, disguising yourself, sneaking in) - Having contacts and knowing people - Having lots of useful gear or being able to create/modify your own. 2) Performing the run - actual doing the run. Ways to contribute include but are not limited to - Hacking/Computer skills - Talking skills - Stealth skills - Any specialized ability (B&E, explosives, having no noticeable ware, etc) 3) Combat - Ways to contribute include but are not limited to - Ranged Combat skills - Close Combat skills - Magical combat skills - Rigging Every character (at least, IMO) should be able to contribute at least in all three phases of a run, or risk having a boring time and not be useful to the group. A troll focused on knives has stage 3 locked down, but what's he going to do the rest of the time? From the description of your group (a gun guy and a mage), you could pick up basic hacking duties for relatively cheap. (Hacking skill w/ exploit focus, Computer, and Data Search plus a decent commlink and programs. Alternatively, skip the skills and get an Agent instead) You wouldn't be as good as a focused hacker, but you can help in a pinch
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May 1, 2012 11:25
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Mystic Mongol posted:No, they don't need a melee type. They need a face. If you're willing, I'd like one. I've mostly been drooling about weapons, vehicles and whatnot, we're still collecting materials so we won't be ready for a few days to two weeks at least.
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May 1, 2012 11:43
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Nucular Carmul posted:If you're willing, I'd like one. I've mostly been drooling about weapons, vehicles and whatnot, we're still collecting materials so we won't be ready for a few days to two weeks at least. Quite the common thing with new shadowrunner players, everyone wants to be the wared up autocannon weilding troll, no one realizes how much fun it is to be the guy who talks his way into the targets place and gets him to GIVE them the thing they are paid to steal. "I'll bring it back once I've had it apprased/restored/those three horrible wared up trolls have gone away." Rolls 20D6 "You can trust little old me."
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May 1, 2012 11:55
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Alright. Mundane or shaman?
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May 1, 2012 12:17
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Mystic Mongol posted:Alright. Mundane or shaman? Mundane!
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May 1, 2012 12:47
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Mystic Mongol posted:Also I suspect you could make a solid Technomancer shifter. I haven't read 4th e rules in a while, and never really 'got' it, but doesn't the magic stat preclude you from being a technomancer, or is it just being a mage that does? Because cat technomancer is even more attainable, chasing pretty AR overlays that aren't even really there.
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May 1, 2012 13:26
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So! Toxin Extractors are waaaay more expensive than I thought they were. You still can take a level 4 toxin extractor, maybe 6 if you take restricted gear, but it's expensive enough that I'm not going to present it as a given. The Nephritic Screen, at 10,000 Y a level, only impacts ingested toxins, but also gives a duration reduction--so a level 4 nephritic screen, for 40,000 Y, adds 4 on all rolls to resist addiction or intoxication, and cuts the time spent intoxicated by 80%. Also: Slimworm, only 1000 nuyen for a +1 body to resist toxins, plus you are cannonically slim. Paint-By-Numbers, the native american Elven Face Elf (30 BP) BOD 3 AGI 3 REA 3 (6) STR 3 CHA 8 (11) INT 3 LOG 3 WIL 3 EDG 3 Initiative 9, 2 passes Essence of 2.75 Attributes 180, Edge 20 Qualities (20 positive, -5 negative) First Impression Fame (Local) (Popular Bon-Vivant) SINner Wired Reflexes I (11,000 Y, 2 E) Reaction Enhancers II (20,000 Y, 0.6 E) Tailored Pheromones III (45,000 Y, 0.6 E) Synthacardium III (30,000 Y, 0.3 E) Enhanced Protein Exchange: Reakt (30,000 Y, .4 E) 2.6 cyberware, 1.3 bioware, total footprint of 3.25 Essence. 1 month High Lifestyle, 10,000 Y Total cost 146,000 Y, 30 BP with 4,000 Y left over. Buy shock gloves. Skills (70 BP) 4 - Influence Skillgroup (40 BP) 4 - Gymnastics (+3 from Synthacardium) (16 BP) 3 - Unarmed (Specialty: Shock Gloves at 5) (14 BP) Fun facts: Social rolls are made at 4 + 8 + 3 + 2 + 2 = 19 dice on the first meeting, 17 dice on subsequent meetings. Dodging an attack in combat (active dodge always) is 4 + 6 + 3 + 2 = 15 dice, which is really, really solid. That's 345 points spent. You can free up 30 more by picking up some negative qualities, and improve from here. Driving would be useful. Demolitions, useful, especially for a guy who can talk his way into accessing secure locations. Maybe get two levels of Muscle Toner to cheaply brush up your agility, and then pick up a few levels of Stealth, that's terribly useful to everyone, and would augment your combat stats nicely--right now your offense is anemic, although enough to force people to waste actions dodging you. Maybe train Perception, and pick up Cyber Eyes / Vision Enhancement goggles. The second is cheaper, the first doesn't get people asking why you're wearing big science goggles. Or, you know, anything else that interests you. For 50 BP you can be an expert at almost anything, or even a passable hacker, although I would NOT suggest that for a first character. Oh, and pick up a contact or two, but don't overdo it. There's a point of diminishing returns, and if played properly, a face will soon be drowning in contacts.
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May 1, 2012 13:27
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piL posted:I haven't read 4th e rules in a while, and never really 'got' it, but doesn't the magic stat preclude you from being a technomancer, or is it just being a mage that does? Because cat technomancer is even more attainable, chasing pretty AR overlays that aren't even really there. You cannot have both Magic and Resonance at once.
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May 1, 2012 13:39
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That's ok, traditional hackers are way cooler than technomancers anyway.
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May 1, 2012 16:38
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Mystic Mongol posted:
You are such a heinous min-maxer. Do you really think he doesn't need any points in guns whatsoever? Right now it looks like you've got him running at the enemy with shock gloves. You can't talk your way past EVERYONE. Sooner or later an alarm's gonna go off and you're going to want to shoot somebody. Have a gun skill and a gun for this situation. (I recommend narcoject)
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May 1, 2012 16:48
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pw pw pw posted:You are such a heinous min-maxer. Do you really think he doesn't need any points in guns whatsoever? Right now it looks like you've got him running at the enemy with shock gloves. Yes. Not having guns means that no one is scared of you. No one being scared of you means they try to arrest you. Them trying to arrest you means you can pop 'em in the nose with stun gloves. Even after you've pulled this trick a few times, you've never caused so much as broken a bone. If you want to get fancy, you can send a cookie bouquet to the security team after the run as a no-hard feelings gift. If you really need to assassinate someone, you can just stun 'em and use a plastic zip-tie to choke them to death. Guns kill people, but they also get you shot. You can totally talk your way past everyone, also its fun to do.
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May 1, 2012 17:11
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Breaking and entering gets you shot. Guns allow you to shoot back. You can NOT talk past everyone. There will be people whose only job is not to let you do that. Being a face is nice, but nowhere near the power levels of DnD Diplomancers. Learn to fire a gun, for the love of god. Mystic Mongol cares not about your well-being
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May 1, 2012 17:15
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pw pw pw posted:Breaking and entering gets you shot. Guns allow you to shoot back. Breaking and entering with a gun gets you shot. Wandering up to the security desk, confused and lost, gets you directions. Carrying a gun when you're not a street samurai or equivalent will absolutely get you killed.
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May 1, 2012 17:17
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I am totally baffled by your rationale that people will be O.K with you carrying a gun if you're obviously a street samurai. Didn't we JUST have a discussion about how melee combat is not very viable in this game, even for someone who has spent ALL his points doing it? Get a gun made of ceramics like everyone else. Hide it in one of the many many places you can hide a gun. Then shoot people with it when they are shooting at you. Mongol, if you have played a game of shadowrun that did not end with being shot at, your GM is going too easy on you.
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May 1, 2012 17:26
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Carry tazers instead. Especially the Yamaha Pulsar. Less-than-lethal not only is less likely to get you arrested or shot out of hand when covert, the way stun damage works makes just as if not more effective against un- or lightly armored opponents.
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May 1, 2012 17:26
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pw pw pw posted:I am totally baffled by your rationale that people will be O.K with you carrying a gun if you're obviously a street samurai. No, but you'll be faster, tougher, and a better shot than Paint-By-Numbers, so what other people think about your gun will matter less to you. pw pw pw posted:Mongol, if you have played a game of shadowrun that did not end with being shot at, your GM is going too easy on you. Did you not see the fifteen dice in active defense?
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May 1, 2012 17:28
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And you cannot imagine a situation in which your character is being shot at from beyond arm's reach, and has to deal with the guards in some greater capacity than by dodging bullets? Really? Come on, man, It's not like I am saying something terribly unreasonable. Buy a gun, know how to use it. You cannot throw shock gloves. It's nice that you have a hard-on for noncombat conflict resolution, but eventually you're going to get caught and shot at. Unless every run is some variation of breaking into a Chuck-E-Cheese, the old "oh i'm lost can you let me past the security desk" is eventually not going to work. Ignite Memories fucked around with this message at 17:33 on May 1, 2012 |
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May 1, 2012 17:31
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Well, let's start there. Why am I being shot?
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May 1, 2012 17:32
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You are being shot because you are playing shadowrun, and people get loving shot playing shadowrun. It's like playing monopoly, and asking why you need to keep paying people money.
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May 1, 2012 17:34
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pw pw pw posted:It's nice that you have a hard-on for noncombat conflict resolution, but eventually you're going to get caught and shot at. Unless every run is some variation of breaking into a Chuck-E-Cheese, the old "oh i'm lost can you let me past the security desk" is eventually not going to work. Yes, god forbid I have the face specialize and rely on non-combat resolution. I'm lost is mostly a solid way to buy time in a pinch. You look harmless and you have no gun, so security apprehends you instead of gunning you down like a dog. The process for infiltrating a secure location using social wiles is heavily sensationally dependent. I mentioned getting access to a private residence by throwing a party in their name and inviting yourself. In smaller corporations, a great trick is to put on an expensive suit and pretend you're from a larger corporation, and you'd like a tour of the facilities before Ares Macrotechnology even considers hiring them to do part manufacture for some proprietary technology or other. Larger corps, small branch offices just walk in off the street and do a cold call, impress the poo poo out of the director and get a job as a salesman. For a large branch office, slip the vending machine dude five hundred nuyen to take over his route for a week, because you really need to be employed for a while to get your case worker off your goddamn back. For a radical ideological group, sign the hell up and start beating the fur is murder drum. Municipal building, bribe someone just like everyone else does. A semi-public place, rent a food truck and start selling red-hots, a great way to get some surveillance in. And always, always look for a way to get in legitimately. People come and go all the goddamn time, everywhere, so find out what people come and go from your target location and the easiest way to become one of them. All of this is without relying on any of the assets the rest of your team might bring. Like astral reconizance, mind control, hacking, forged documentation, dozens of drones, spirits, criminal connections, or kidnapping of the chief of security's pet shi-tzu. Besides, it shows a lack of imagination to say the only way to infiltrate a location is to gun down the guards. You say that a GM is going easy on me if I don't regularly have to gun people down. I say a GM is going easy on YOU if you regularly gun people down and don't immediately have thirty, forty people who work in security who were friends with the people you just loving murdered to steal the designs for a purse two weeks before it hit the market. People with connections, equipment, training, and 'ware, who will absolutely hunt you down and execute you if you left the tiniest scrap of evidence that it was you who killed Timmothy, a swell guy who became a father last year and still found time to bring kettlecorn to the break room every Thursday. Go watch some Leverage, it's like Shadowrun without elves.
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May 1, 2012 17:51
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Here's what you don't seem to understand. All of that poo poo is Plan-A material. That is all well and good. I highly recommend plan A. Plan A never, ever, EVER executes successfully from beginning to end. That is what makes the game interesting. Sooner or later your decker will get iced and every alarm in the complex will go up. You will be set upon by drones with machine guns who do NOT want to talk it over. Guns AREN'T for getting in, they're for getting out.
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May 1, 2012 17:57
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Mystic Mongol posted:Yes, god forbid I have the face specialize and rely on non-combat resolution. I get your point, killing should have capital-C Consequences, especially when metamagic makes it pretty straighforward to conduct an astral trace on the sweatdrop one of the runners left behind. GM's who permit kill-craziness are poo poo, absolute utter poo poo. In this, I agree with you implicitly. Conversely, a GM who allows someone who is "just lost" or "surprise unannounced visiting from another company" to walk up to a security booth in AAA Zero Zone is similarly loving retarded in the exact inverse way. The only people who get lost in places guarding stuff worth stealing are the people there to steal it. If you want that window of nonviolent infiltration (and this is something I've done in PnP runs), it takes significant research and spoofed credentials at the very least. Until you inevitably get spotted by elementals or local riggers or the other dozen redundant security systems guarding The Big Payoff. And when that happens, if you don't have a magical solution immediately to hand you're going to be hurting to the guys who pack guns. In the year 2012 IRL you will be maced and tazed for taking longer than fifteen seconds to vacate the Warner Brothers movie lot when requested, a request that is only verbally made after your presence has been radioed to every WB security dude in a square mile. In the Sixth World, megacorporations are not so understanding. Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 18:21 on May 1, 2012 |
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May 1, 2012 18:10
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 06:02 |
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pw pw pw posted:Plan A never, ever, EVER executes successfully from beginning to end. That is what makes the game interesting. Sooner or later your decker will get iced and every alarm in the complex will go up. You will be set upon by drones with machine guns who do NOT want to talk it over. Guns AREN'T for getting in, they're for getting out. Yeah I thought this was a pretty basic tenet of drama. Like, if Plan A actually works then the story has no tension because nobody wants to hear a story about how everything went perfectly to plan and got off scott free. The complications resulting from a runner losing their head and cracking off a shot, the Sam and Shaman getting into a fight kind of like the one here where people argue over whether the violence was worth it, *WAS* the game of Shadowrun. Like, that was and is and hopefully will always be the thing that makes it a cool RP experience. I think a thing that's getting glossed over here is the fact a balance is needed between just murdering an entire corporate facility, and never harming anyone. Violence should always be on the table, but it should be a last resort after the team has exhausted every other creative option to get out scott free so when the guns come out for security/lonestar/runners/whatever everyone at the table knows poo poo Has Become Real.
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May 1, 2012 18:19
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