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I can work with his stealth a little bit, but the idea for my campaign was kind of to leave the option for no combat ever, open. And then have the consequence of combat being that they'll need to move fast or be swarmed in highly competent company security starting to take them all down. Him having so many dice and initiative passes makes me worried I'd have to have quite a few guards ready to punch a hole in him, or possibly just a mage. He spent 50BP on money, I think I can convince him to invest a few more BP into some contacts as well though.
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Mar 22, 2013 10:11
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Young Freud posted:This. If it was more realistic, then no one would carry pistols since pistols have inferior range, accuracy, and muzzle energy/stopping power than longer-barreled submachineguns (and, in earlier editions, assault rifles). But Shadowrun has always made pistols far more damaging than they should be to encourage concealable pistols than long arms. Not to get all TFR, but is this really a massive difference? 9mm muzzle velocities between a USP and MP5 are functionally the same as far as I can tell... And as far as adepts go, the idea that they are very limited in their skill set never really bothered me. I always sort of took the idea that they were a bit "rainman" in their abilities. I haven't played one since 2nd ed, but I made a guy who could roll an absurd amount of dice when attacking with a sword and the effect was basically making anything he attacked explode. Then he got disarmed and stuck in a laundromat with bad guys outside and was a lot more useless. It was interesting.
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Mar 22, 2013 15:03
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Mordaedil posted:Him having so many dice and initiative passes makes me worried I'd have to have quite a few guards ready to punch a hole in him, or possibly just a mage. For Max Payne, tell him straight up that he would be standing around and do nothing on all the non-combat situation unless he spend his edge to go for a 6 dice boost on the non-combat skill. In combat, you will either adjust the difficulties to match the weaker players so he might feel too easy and boring, or adjust it to his level so all the other players will depend on him to succeed. (Tell him to buy doc wagon if he don't want to burn edge to stay alive, just to scare him) If he agree to tone down, tell him to cut his dice in half and spend on other role's skills like... *look at attribute* ... driving and other intuition skills. Nyaa fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Mar 22, 2013 |
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Mar 22, 2013 15:14
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AlternateAccount posted:Not to get all TFR, but is this really a massive difference? 9mm muzzle velocities between a USP and MP5 are functionally the same as far as I can tell... Muzzle velocities increase with longer barrels, as well as bullets with higher pressures being used to help with cycling submachine guns (although this matters less because pistols are being built to withstand those pressures). They don't increase to infinity, so Joker-barrel guns aren't going to give you a huge muzzle velocity, but longer barrels are going to be more efficient at directing the energy behind a bullet than shorter barrels, resulting in more faster bullets. A MP5 with its 22cm barrel has an average muzzle velocity of 400m/s, while an USP with its 11cm barrel has an average muzzle velocity of 360m/s. The bullets fired from the USP are going to be slower by 40m/s. A better comparison would be the 5.7x28mm fired from the P90 and the Five-Seven. The bullet fired from the 26cm barrel of the P90 is about 715m/s, but fired from the shorter barrel of the Five-Seven is about 625m/s, about 90m/s slower than the same bullets fired from the P90. The real kicker is the civilian version P90, with it's 41cm barrel, which adds almost 100m/s on average to the muzzle velocity of the regular P90. Really, in 4th edition, for the sake of "realism", the damage codes for pistols and submachineguns should be swapped, with subguns getting the -1 AP advantage.
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Mar 22, 2013 15:46
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Mordaedil posted:I'm a bit worried my player here is a bit of a one-trick pony, especially since my campaign won't really be centered around shooting guys in the face, but doing exactly that will lead to terrible things. Mixed feelings. Personally I feel like in a full group, Shadowrun really encourages this kind of specialization. On the other hand, consider that a Runner has usually nothing but black-market 'ware and limited funds at their disposal. This is a char-gen-ready character you've got here. What are corporate security officers going to look like in a world where this guy exists? I mean, he's over-focused, but still. You will probably run into a problem where this is the only character in the part who will meangingfuly engage with the combat subsystem. How okay are you with that?
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Mar 22, 2013 15:50
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Young Freud posted:Muzzle velocities increase with longer barrels, as well as bullets with higher pressures being used to help with cycling submachine guns (although this matters less because pistols are being built to withstand those pressures). They don't increase to infinity, so Joker-barrel guns aren't going to give you a huge muzzle velocity, but longer barrels are going to be more efficient at directing the energy behind a bullet than shorter barrels, resulting in more faster bullets. The real problem is that they have no consistency between guns even within the same category. An Ares Alpha Combatgun has 2 points of natural recoil compensation through some sort of magic that no other assault rifle in the game gets, so it is default the "best" AR available. A Fichetti Security 600 has a magic 30 round magazine that doesn't impact concealability, not that it is a stat that is tracked anymore, so if you mod it to FA and effectively make it a Machine Pistol you can use the Pistols skill instead of Automatics if that suits you. Let's not forget the addons to base guns like internal smartlinks or gasvents that somehow don't increase the price of the gun at all and in many cases the gun costs less than the accessory alone.
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Mar 22, 2013 16:16
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Bigass Moth posted:The real problem is that they have no consistency between guns even within the same category. An Ares Alpha Combatgun has 2 points of natural recoil compensation through some sort of magic that no other assault rifle in the game gets, so it is default the "best" AR available. A Fichetti Security 600 has a magic 30 round magazine that doesn't impact concealability, not that it is a stat that is tracked anymore, so if you mod it to FA and effectively make it a Machine Pistol you can use the Pistols skill instead of Automatics if that suits you. This is why I'm intrigued by the Accuracy cap. I'm betting that Pistols will have a worse Accuracy cap than SMGs, which will not be as good as Rifles, which will not be as good as Sniper Rifles. As well, if you do start modifying guns, there should be little effect on the Accuracy cap unless you install longer barrels and increase the sight radius of the gun. Also, you have guns like the AK-97 Carbine and (I think) the Colt M24 Water Carbine, which should be essentially short-barreled assault rifles.
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Mar 22, 2013 16:35
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Young Freud has it right with the muzzle velocity stuff. Speaking of "not to get all TFR," I'm gonna get a little TFR for a minute. It really, really bothers my gunsperg side every time I see the word "clip" used to mean "magazine." Then there's the "High Velocity" weapon class. Apparently in the dark, Awakened future of Shadowrun, high velocity means "high rate of fire." How the gently caress do you get that one wrong? You don't even need to be a gun expert to know that velocity is not the same thing as rate of fire. You'd think at least one Shadowrun editor would have handled a gun once in his life, but apparently not. And really, I think a lot of these problems are pretty easy to solve as a GM/game group. Just adjust the rules as you feel necessary to increase realism or balance archetypes or whatever it is you want to change. When I ran a campaign I played with the more lethal combat alternate rules, upping the DV of all weapons and disallowing Dodge to defend against ranged attacks. Is it still irritating that the game is built the way it is? Yeah, but it's still a great game at its core and tweaking it isn't hard at all. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here because if we didn't all love Shadowrun we wouldn't be posting in this thread.
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Mar 22, 2013 16:40
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Martello posted:Speaking of "not to get all TFR," I'm gonna get a little TFR for a minute. It really, really bothers my gunsperg side every time I see the word "clip" used to mean "magazine." Then there's the "High Velocity" weapon class. Apparently in the dark, Awakened future of Shadowrun, high velocity means "high rate of fire." How the gently caress do you get that one wrong? 
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Mar 22, 2013 17:30
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Tippis posted:Simple: because HVAR sounds like a semi-technical name that kind of belong in the same world as HEDP and AICW and AN/PVS, whereas HROFAR sounds more like a dog being sick on the carpet. Haha, quite loving true.
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Mar 22, 2013 18:03
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Young Freud posted:Muzzle velocities increase with longer barrels, as well as bullets with higher pressures being used to help with cycling submachine guns (although this matters less because pistols are being built to withstand those pressures). They don't increase to infinity, so Joker-barrel guns aren't going to give you a huge muzzle velocity, but longer barrels are going to be more efficient at directing the energy behind a bullet than shorter barrels, resulting in more faster bullets. Interesting. I wonder what the graph of actual penetrating power vs. velocity would be for the same round with different guns vs. armor and meat looks like, to see if it scales linearly or not. On another note, who gives a poo poo about penetration? My characters often abused guns that just fired DMSO loaded pellets with various nasty payloads. Nice body armor! You should have brought a poncho.
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Mar 22, 2013 19:41
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AlternateAccount posted:On another note, who gives a poo poo about penetration? My characters often abused guns that just fired DMSO loaded pellets with various nasty payloads. Nice body armor! You should have brought a poncho. You didn't read my post in the Shadowrun Returns thread, did you? Most military and law enforcement gear today is impermeable to water, which means it's impermeable to DMSO. DMSO is a trap for overly-clever players.
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Mar 22, 2013 19:49
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Young Freud posted:You didn't read my post in the Shadowrun Returns thread, did you? No it isn't, that's now how it works in-game. You need Chemical Seal on the armor, and the only armor that can go on is Full Body Armor. Chemical Protection can help, but that just gives a bonus and there isn't any armor that has that by default. Piell fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Mar 22, 2013 |
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Mar 22, 2013 19:51
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Didn't see the post in the other thread, but yeah it can be a terribly broken thing. It's a bit silly and usually GMs will add a massive amount of randomness to it or a random time for the drug to take effect. It can be fun as long as you don't make it an insta-kill against anyone not living in a plastic bubble.
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Mar 22, 2013 20:08
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Mendrian posted:Mixed feelings. Well, they invented squirt-guns for a reason, I guess, if I need to put him in place.
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Mar 22, 2013 20:46
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AlternateAccount posted:Didn't see the post in the other thread, but yeah it can be a terribly broken thing. It's a bit silly and usually GMs will add a massive amount of randomness to it or a random time for the drug to take effect. It can be fun as long as you don't make it an insta-kill against anyone not living in a plastic bubble. Yeah, I can see if you're attacking people you're trying to one-up are gangsters, other criminals, or even lower-tier rentacops. As well, I can see if you're aiming at open locations like spraying guys in the face. But military, police, and security units are likely going to be ready for that threat just based on some of the stuff they already have to deal with on a daily basis: police and private security would have to deal with contaminated body fluids and exposure to illegal drugs during arrests, crime scenes, raids and especially riot situations, while the military always has the potential of running into contact chemical agents that are worse than DMSO, so anything that buys them time to get up to MOPP4 (or some future equivalent) is helpful. The thing about DMSO is that it's like in the '90s or so it became really popular in roleplaying games as a sidetrack around armor. I believe not only SR mentioned it, but Cyberpunk and World of Darkness made mention of it.
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Mar 22, 2013 22:25
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Mordaedil posted:Well, they invented squirt-guns for a reason, I guess, if I need to put him in place. Instead of 'putting him in his place' like a lovely DM, maybe tell him to make a character that isn't so specialized he's absolutely retarded when it comes to anything that isn't shooting people. Shooting someone means YOUR RUN FAILED. Maybe he should make a character focused on making sure the run succeeds.
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Mar 22, 2013 22:27
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Swags posted:Instead of 'putting him in his place' like a lovely DM, maybe tell him to make a character that isn't so specialized he's absolutely retarded when it comes to anything that isn't shooting people. Shooting someone means YOUR RUN FAILED. Maybe he should make a character focused on making sure the run succeeds. A target location that has all kinds of security, but put together in a slightly scattershot manner based on previous experiences and the history of the site rather than on best practices. So they have installed a massive amount of explosive-sniffer sensors and there's no chance that the runners will ever be able to bring anything remotely like a firearm without lighting up every alarm in the building… …but some deeper sleuthing will reveal that explosives is the only thing the sniffers will respond to — most other chemicals will probably pass just fine. So no legwork will provide a nasty surprise; a little legwork will turn it into a pure-stealth run; a lot of legwork opens up new fun options.
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Mar 22, 2013 22:35
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Swags posted:Instead of 'putting him in his place' like a lovely DM, maybe tell him to make a character that isn't so specialized he's absolutely retarded when it comes to anything that isn't shooting people. Shooting someone means YOUR RUN FAILED. Maybe he should make a character focused on making sure the run succeeds. Well, jeez, we're just doing the first run as a wet-test run. I think it might be a learning experience for them to take their characters back to the drawing board as well and we can keep going while scratching out the consequences of that run. And then do Food-fight while I think of the next run.
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Mar 22, 2013 22:44
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Argh... I have that affliction again. You guys know the one: that urge to run another Shadowrun pbp game, my horror at the matrix rules being overwhelmed by the awesome setting again! I thought I could hold out til 5e...
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Mar 27, 2013 00:20
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children overboard posted:Argh... I have that affliction again. You guys know the one: that urge to run another Shadowrun pbp game, my horror at the matrix rules being overwhelmed by the awesome setting again! If you run one here I'll join. So does anyone know what vision enhancements for a smartgun camera actually does in-game? I was just looking at Arsenal and saw that you can add them but what's the in-game effect? Can you use the camera to take photos in low-light? I just can't think of a whole lot of utility for it.
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Mar 27, 2013 02:02
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I usually imagine that you could put Vision Magnification onto a smartgun camera and not need it on your glasses/contacts for negating range modifiers. I remember being able to get every basic vision enhancement type if I had glasses, contacts, and put Vision Mag on the smartgun camera (something goes over 12 Availability otherwise). Of course, being a camera, you can use it for all the other things you can use cameras for: taking pictures to run through facial recognition software, feeding the stream into your Empathy Software for all its uses, etc. children overboard: It's not like anyone here is going to dissuade you. I've been reading through Unwired recently, with the goal of remaking my ultrahacker once I'm done. I could go with something else, if 'ultrahacker' makes you want to run for the hills.
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Mar 27, 2013 02:18
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children overboard posted:Argh... I have that affliction again. You guys know the one: that urge to run another Shadowrun pbp game, my horror at the matrix rules being overwhelmed by the awesome setting again! Do iiiit...
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Mar 27, 2013 05:42
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If you don't want to GM I will, but I've never GM'd a pbp before so you know, be patient with me, and help me out a bit. I've got this awesome idea from Dunk's will! Or I could also just do a sandbox thing where you guys do whatever and I just react. It seems like there's interest so I'll write up an OP. My only rule would be that if there is an issue, either mechanics wise, lore wise, ANYTHING wise. That you don't hesitate to hit me up on skype to try and fix it together, I don't like people who hold poo poo in until it's a serious issue.
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Mar 27, 2013 06:45
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Just cover the most aggregious things that make the math go rotten. Empathy software and the little bonzai buddies are the two that readily come to my mind. Oh, and establish early on just how hardcore worried people need to be about security - a group coming in with rock and roll runners and getting tagged for not collecting their casings will see some conflict. If you got IRC there's a few places you can ask about stuff too.
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Mar 27, 2013 08:20
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ProfessorCirno posted:Just cover the most aggregious things that make the math go rotten. Empathy software and the little bonzai buddies are the two that readily come to my mind. Oh, and establish early on just how hardcore worried people need to be about security - a group coming in with rock and roll runners and getting tagged for not collecting their casings will see some conflict. That's why you get caseless, sheesh. Also the more games the better!
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Mar 27, 2013 08:29
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children overboard posted:Argh... I have that affliction again. You guys know the one: that urge to run another Shadowrun pbp game, my horror at the matrix rules being overwhelmed by the awesome setting again! That game you ran was fantastic, do it again. If matrix rules make you cry, just say, "Don't play a matrix centric character and in return I won't punish you for a lack of matrix defenses." Even if that does mean I can't keep playing Johnny Vegas. Over and over again. Forever. e: I am seesawing between another mobile/facey character, except with a large revolver loaded with explosive bullets and skills in crime scene cleaning, and a good old fashioned elvish athlete with a completely vat-grown body. That means you have to run it now. Mystic Mongol fucked around with this message at 10:15 on Mar 27, 2013 |
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Mar 27, 2013 08:39
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Ah that's right... he was a fun character! I think we left Johnny on a cliffhanger (I don't remember why or who, but someone was threatening orbital kinetic bombardment on his position while he was negotiating with the Rusted Stilettos in the barrens). Anyway I think I've largely come to terms with the matrix rules. 20A helped a bit. Game wise I've done two in Seattle now so I'm thinking of branching out. Yomi Island sounds interesting. It was a former prison colony for metas, then a Huk rebellion base. I'm imagining the bulk of the Huk insurgency in the area has been suppressed and the island's been opened up as a special economic zone: companies stomping in to stake their claim and clearing ghouls out of the abandoned megaprisons, with a thriving ex-pat scene of runners sabotaging rival operations and keeping remnant Huk guerrillas at bay. I think fun could be had there. Turtlicious posted:If you don't want to GM I will, but I've never GM'd a pbp before so you know, be patient with me, and help me out a bit. I've got this awesome idea from Dunk's will! Or I could also just do a sandbox thing where you guys do whatever and I just react. It seems like there's interest so I'll write up an OP. You should also run a game so I have one to play in!
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Mar 27, 2013 10:52
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I still can't make heads or tails of the matrix rules, even though I've run 4E some times now. It just seems like the hacker is stuck rolling and playing by himself for far too long for everyone to have a good time.
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Mar 27, 2013 11:23
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children overboard posted:Ah that's right... he was a fun character! I think we left Johnny on a cliffhanger (I don't remember why or who, but someone was threatening orbital kinetic bombardment on his position while he was negotiating with the Rusted Stilettos in the barrens). Nah, he silvertongued his way out of that pretty smoothly. I'm not convinced they'd have ever actually blown up a part of a city just to publicly assassinate their most vocal critic. It wasn't even a cliffhanger you left us on... I befriended (sorta) the rust stilettos, we murdered the poo poo out of some random NPC for the crime of having something the team psycho wanted, we loaded our hobo army into vans obtained by our crypto-anarchist academic dwarf hacker squad, and then--then you had to put our game on a back burner in favor of earning a living. You animal. (What was the spirit monster we were gonna
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Mar 27, 2013 11:32
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Tias posted:I still can't make heads or tails of the matrix rules, even though I've run 4E some times now. It just seems like the hacker is stuck rolling and playing by himself for far too long for everyone to have a good time. He's still often off in his own world, but at least that world doesn't have time to fit in an entire epic dungeon-crawl in the internet between the sam ejecting the empty magazine and putting in the fresh one in his gun.
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Mar 27, 2013 14:03
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Vavrek posted:I usually imagine that you could put Vision Magnification onto a smartgun camera and not need it on your glasses/contacts for negating range modifiers. I remember being able to get every basic vision enhancement type if I had glasses, contacts, and put Vision Mag on the smartgun camera (something goes over 12 Availability otherwise). Of course, being a camera, you can use it for all the other things you can use cameras for: taking pictures to run through facial recognition software, feeding the stream into your Empathy Software for all its uses, etc. That makes sense, and it's always nice to be able to super-customize everything even if the utility is limited or would work better with another piece of equipment. Since you mentioned Empathy Software and I saw some people complaining about it being a game-breaker earlier, I looked into it. I'd never even noticed it in Arsenal before. I guess adding 6 dice to any Social skill is pretty loving ridiculous, and three grand for a Rating 6 Empathy Software isn't even that expensive. I'm assuming those Emotitoys a couple pages before the software are the "bonzai buddies" everyone's talking about. I'd probably just disallow them as a GM, or maybe just put a Rating 3 limit on the software.
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Mar 27, 2013 17:02
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The emotitoys come with level 6 of the software as well, for much less than it'd cost on its own. Without any notes about being able to pull it out and load it onto your commlink or anything like that.
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Mar 27, 2013 17:09
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children overboard posted:Argh... I have that affliction again. You guys know the one: that urge to run another Shadowrun pbp game, my horror at the matrix rules being overwhelmed by the awesome setting again! I'd be down. I haven't played in a lifetime, and never by PBP but I would give it a try.
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Mar 27, 2013 21:24
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Vavrek posted:Of course, being a camera, you can use it for all the other things you can use cameras for: taking pictures to run through facial recognition software, feeding the stream into your Empathy Software for all its uses, etc. Unless I'm not understanding you, I just want to point out that your character will then be pointing a (presumably loaded) firearm at an individual in order to take their picture and assess their current emotional state. Seems like you could accomplish that without the camera at that point.
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Mar 27, 2013 23:56
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Geekkake posted:Unless I'm not understanding you, I just want to point out that your character will then be pointing a (presumably loaded) firearm at an individual in order to take their picture and assess their current emotional state. Maybe post run analysis? To make sure the guy you shot is who you thought he was, or maybe getting sick joy out of all the fear in the guy you held up's face.
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Mar 28, 2013 00:31
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children overboard posted:Argh... I have that affliction again. You guys know the one: that urge to run another Shadowrun pbp game, my horror at the matrix rules being overwhelmed by the awesome setting again! Yes please. Vengeance was the closest I've ever come to completing a shadowrun game. Most end in planning the first encounter.
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Mar 28, 2013 00:59
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RicochetD20 posted:Maybe post run analysis? To make sure the guy you shot is who you thought he was, or maybe getting sick joy out of all the fear in the guy you held up's face. "UGH! This stupid thing never works, it only registers panic and mortal terror every time I use it! I'm returning this!"
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Mar 28, 2013 01:39
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If a player wanted to save a few hundred nuyen by putting all his vision augs on his gun, you better believe I'd introduce consequences for the PC who points his gun at everything he wants to see.
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Mar 28, 2013 06:29
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Zereth posted:Well, unlike previous editions, in 4e he operates on the same timescale as everybody else. I know, but I can't make heads or tails of the rules, which means we're back to square one.
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Mar 28, 2013 18:32
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