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Kai Tave posted:Frankly I think the conniptions people have over hackers hacking peoples' guns is ridiculous in a game where you could, for the same sort of buy-in, be a mage and melt peoples' poo poo with waves of sorcerous acid or mind-whammy them or maybe just summon a big gently caress-off spirit beforehand if you know you're going to be having a fight or any one of a dozen other crazy things you can just do without having to go through an argument over why someone would leave their gunlink's wi-fi on. Compare this to the universal and obvious answer magic can provide: “it's magic”. The only thing we have to draw on is fairy-tales where it's countered by more magic, a strong will, or maybe occasionally iron. I suppose Earthdawn somewhat got around this by adding in a bunch of restrictions on how and when magic could be used. Even magicians had to consider whether something was possible — did they have the right matrices and how corrupted was the area? quote:I think a better way to look at it rather than "direct and indirect" is "declarative and permissive." It's the problem with spellcasters and fighters in D&D...a fighter has to ask the GM "can I do this, can I do that?" and play 20 questions in order to find out whether he can do something, what it'll take him, what his penalties are, etc. Meanwhile the Wizard simply casts a spell and gets to do poo poo. Pit appears out of nowhere? Floor turns to mud? Suddenly tentacles appear everywhere? Sure, why not. Of course, from that perspective, decking becomes even worse: not only is it permissive, but you also have to pay similar penalties and costs to the ones that are supposed to keep the magician in check. Yes, once we've established that there is something you could hack, you now have to make it happen, waking up all kinds of security mechanisms in the process and getting slapped with black ice because you happened to roll an awful amount of 1:s. So, new question: what would happen — mechanically, logics-wise, and gameplay-wise — if some of those penalties were removed? Would it allow for more direct attacks (or at least direkt-like), or would it just make the rules more bearable, which would be a win in and of itself?
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Aug 26, 2013 11:33
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What's the deal with cars multiplying their speed when a rigger is driving them? As far as decking goes, I just introduced some "transmitter nanites" into my game that allowed a decker to wirelessly hack into any device within a hundred meters - even things that don't even have wireless enabled by standard. I prefer a game where the decker is basically just a wizard with machines. It just made zero sense to me that people would go into combat with the huge wireless weak-spot glaring at them.
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Aug 26, 2013 12:00
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Tippis posted:Sure, but that's just down to familiarity, isn't it? Anyone in their right mind can look at their tech toys and say from actual personal experience that, no, I don't need to open up this particular and massive security hole. Anyone in their right mind can look at the Matrix as it exists in Shadowrun and realize that it's a bunch of complete hooey. I have a hard time buying that "in the future, people make gear that has to utilize the power of The Cloud to work at 110%" is such a massive conceptual hurdle for people to leap when "in the future everyone spontaneously decided that it would make way more sense to turn the internet into a 3D virtual reality theme park that can fry your brain" is totally fine. Yes, I get that peoples' suspenders of disbelief snap at different tolerances, but "always online functionality!" is a thing that's happening right now here in the real world. How it suddenly causes a verisimilitude segfault when you bring that into the realm of cyberelfs is beyond me. Look, there have been reasons given here and in the last thread, plausible reasons, for people to leave their stuff's wireless on. 1). Not everyone is a hyper-paranoid Shadowrunner. 2). It is entirely plausible that most people in-setting know as much about computer security as most people do in real life, i.e. not that much, and thus they're content to keep their poo poo on and trust that their firewalls will keep malicious hackers out while they reap the benefits of The Cloud. 3). This one is conditional and ties into point 2: are player-character hackers supposed to be unique individuals or are people like them all over the place? If PC hackers are their own unique breed of cyber-criminal than most people might not bother walking around all the time in wireless-off mode simply because they don't run into hackers capable of messing with their stuff all the time. Like, if a PC-grade hacker is a rarity then even the Firewatch team that's coming to ruin your day might not be expecting to suddenly have someone hacking their poo poo, just like they may not be expecting that one guy to wiggle his fingers and suddenly everything is on fire. If PC-grade hackers are a dime a dozen and nothing special then sure, everyone will go around with their wi-fi turned off, in which case the game designers have handily undermined their attempts at making wireless hacking a thing that happens. 4). Some places may mandate you keep your wi-fi on as a matter of course. Not that this stops cybercriminals outside the law but in a setting full of corporations dictating peoples' lives and such it doesn't strain disbelief that the Ares home office has a standing "keep your smartlinks networked at all time" policy for all their security staff (with exceptions applying to certain paygrades of course). 5). And in 5E they actually give you a reason to keep your wi-fi on, getting bonuses/boosted functionality, which is something 4E more or less lacked entirely and helped explain why nobody in 4E really kept their poo poo networked which was that there actually wasn't any compelling reason to do so outside of whatever the GM made up, not because everyone was paranoid about hackers. It is entirely plausible to conceive of a setting with ubiquitous wireless networked everything everywhere where people don't go around expecting a hacker to pop out of nowhere like the boogeyman and start taking over all their stuff. Today, in the real world, people have lovely computer security habits...even people in positions of authority who you'd really expect better from...and corporations are constantly pushing for more and more connectivity on a regular, if not constant, basis. The idea of people leaving their wi-fi open and trusting in their lovely firewalls to keep them safe and of corporations making gear that only works best when you connect to The Cloud is by far more realistic, verisimilitudinous, whatever you want to call it than anything Shadowrun has ever done with computers, it's just that everyone approaches the issue from the perspective of prescient hyper-paranoid NPCs who live in constant fear of having their guns hacked and thus declare it unworkable. quote:Then there are the things that just makes no sense — e.g. why does the carbon-fibre mesh embedded in my bones have wifi? Why does it even have any active parts?! It's mesh embedded in bone — that's all! But then again, it works both ways: yay, you've hacked my bone lacing. Good for you. Now what? Okay, the lacing itself can't be hacked. It may, according to one fluff example, have some sort of built-in biomonitor system which can be hacked. I'll concede the point, then say that the book goes on to give an example of what you can do if you hack it. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 12:33 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 12:05
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Kai Tave posted:Anyone in their right mind can look at the Matrix as it exists in Shadowrun and realize that it's a bunch of complete hooey. I have a hard time buying that "in the future, people make gear that has to utilize the power of The Cloud to work at 110%" is such a massive conceptual hurdle for people to leap when "in the future everyone spontaneously decided that it would make way more sense to turn the internet into a 3D virtual reality theme park that can fry your brain" is totally fine. Yes, I get that peoples' suspenders of disbelief snap at different tolerances, but "always online functionality!" is a thing that's happening right now here in the real world. How it suddenly causes a verisimilitude segfault when you bring that into the realm of cyberelfs is beyond me. I actually remember hearing that in a lot of places it is expected, if not outright REQUIRED, to have your wi-fi on. Turning it off or going hidden is considered rude, if not downright suspicious. Also, you can't break someone's bones by hacking Bone Lacing, but you can trick the system into thinking their bones are broken, and automatically alert DocWagon. This is an example straight from the book, but I don't remember which page.
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Aug 26, 2013 12:14
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Doc Dee posted:Also, you can't break someone's bones by hacking Bone Lacing, but you can trick the system into thinking their bones are broken, and automatically alert DocWagon. This is an example straight from the book, but I don't remember which page. If someone has a biomonitor that's broadcasting (which comes standard as part of a DocWagon contract) then that's potentially a thing you could do, sure. Bone lacing may come with micro-sensor tags to monitor its integrity (the example you're talking about is given on page 421) but since there's no real benefit to keeping that on all the time then you probably won't and don't need to, and there's no listed bonus functionality for doing so in the listing for bone lacing which means, in practical terms, there's no reason for you to constantly need to keep those integrity sensors networked to your medkit or biomonitor. And even in the gear description itself they don't mention anything about integrity sensors again, which means the exact degree something is networked if it doesn't specifically call out what its wireless functionality does is "???????????????????" Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 12:34 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 12:20
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Kai Tave posted:If someone has a biomonitor that's broadcasting (which comes standard as part of a DocWagon contract) then that's potentially a thing you could do, sure. All I know is that if you have LOGIC 1 then obviously you believe all the corp hype and you will never turn off all your wireless capabilities. It is the ONLY functional way to play LOGIC 1 in Shadowrun.
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Aug 26, 2013 12:48
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It's not only rude, it's considered outright suspicious not to have your SIN being broadcast at all hours. A very "what is he hiding?" sort of suspicion, the kind that makes Lone Star extra antsy around you. Also the idea that everyone's cyber security is top notch is baffling. From what I've heard from who've done net work or security work for private businesses, the game that had the most realistic representation of a company's security is Deus Ex: Human Revolution. As in "there's gaping holes everywhere, people just email themselves their password or just put them on sticky notes on top of their computer, and they'll give all their personal information away at the drop of a hat if someone acts or looks official enough and asks them. The web security guy passes the time by screaming on the inside at everyone." At the school I work, at one point someone was fixing up stuff on my computer and I couldn't log in any more. I thought they changed my password. Turns out they just removed it completely. Cue my coworker exclaiming "Yes, most computers in schools and businesses don't bother with passwords to log in around here." People in the real world are precisely as lazy as they can get away with, and then a little lazier on top of that - and that includes being EXTRA lazy with cyber-security, because who checks up on that save the one net security guy who even the boss tends to snub? The way I see it, most facilities will probably have a (single, overworked, lazy, and tired) spider on premise. Not because what's on site is extremely valuable and they need top notch security - but because they need someone who actually cares about it and isn't just loving up non-stop.
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Aug 26, 2013 12:55
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dirtycajun posted:All I know is that if you have LOGIC 1 then obviously you believe all the corp hype and you will never turn off all your wireless capabilities. It is the ONLY functional way to play LOGIC 1 in Shadowrun. Man, I'm not even getting into that one again. But seriously though, having the equivalent of a biomonitor built in to take note if your titanium laced bones somehow get hosed up actually does make a certain sort of sense in the everything-is-networked future where your medkit is smarter than you are and you don't want to have to get a full X-ray workup if a troll bashes your ribs with a lamp post. I would not, admittedly, have immediately jumped to the conclusion that bone lacing has micro-integrity sensors built into it without them saying so, and sticking that gem 30-some-odd pages away from the actual description of how bone lacing works doesn't exactly help. That said, I'm now curious as to exactly how much a hacker can do even to someone who's a walking wi-fi hotspot. Like, earlier in the thread there was talk about hackers causing peoples' cybereyes to bluescreen or hijacking someone's skillwires and making them do the funky chicken and I'm kind of questioning exactly how well those things all work. Like, I haven't played a hacker in 5E yet, fair cop, but from what I understand there are really pretty much three main things you can do to a piece of hacked gear: 1). Control Device which lets you perform one of the device's inherent functions. This is how you trick a smartgun into popping its magazine. But you can only make the gear do things that it's actually physically capable of, so no hacking someone's skillwires and making them dance because skillwires don't actually work that way. Likewise, it's up in the air whether cybereyes come with a "turn off" function as opposed to, y'know, the user simply closing his eyelids. 2). Data Spike, which is basically the "gently caress it, break everything" option that lets you try and trash someone's stuff. This could potentially crash someone's cybereyes except you have to do it by matrix damaging their eyes all the way until they get bricked and I'm uncertain how simple it is to simply do that in a single action, and since turning a piece of gear's wi-fi off is pretty easy to do it seems like it's all or nothing...you either brick the piece of gear or the person on the other end notices what you're trying to do and locks you out. 3). Reboot Device, which can very, very temporarily crash someone's gear, but requires 3 marks to pull off and only lasts until the end of the following Combat Turn, so that seems like a lot of effort for not a whole lot of gain. At no point am I sure how you're supposed to hack someone's eyes to force them to see nothing but goatse or whatever. Actually gently caress it, how am I supposed to pull off the "hack a car and ram someone" trick everyone thinks is so neat? Control Device requires you to spend X marks to perform an action with a device. I'm assuming that "drive a car" is a Standard or Complex action so it would require 3 marks. Marks can be gained either through Hacking on the Fly or Brute Forcing your way into a system. This can gain you 1 to 3 marks but to get 3 in one go you need to take a -10 to your roll. Or you can get it by making two rolls at -4, or three rolls at your regular skill. And each of these is a Complex Action. That seems incredibly unlikely to be the sort of thing that you bust out on the fly when poo poo starts going down. What am I missing here? Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 13:09
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A couple things. You hack someone's bone lacing, their bones melt. It's the hacker version of Turn to Goo. You're activating the manufacturer's repo mode. It seems like what they're going for, as you'd tell the Log 1 sammie, is "I take my virtual gun and virtually shoot mans." And would making technomancers able to hack anything in sight, even with wireless off, take them from weak to overpowered? "Wireless off? Doesn't matter, techno magic, go!" Rockopolis fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 13:09
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Rockopolis posted:And would making technomancers able to hack anything in sight, even with wireless off, take them from weak to overpowered? If depends on how the GM plays it off, but I would think so. Any imaginative player who isn't quickly reigned in would use that to incredible advantage. Technomancers already receive special powers no one else can do, they don't need the ability to melt your bones or brick your throwback eyes.
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Aug 26, 2013 14:11
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Is it weird that all of the rules oddities and character creation slapfights in this thread just make me want to try out a 5e game even more? I just want to see for myself how all of this shakes out in play. (Especially the Mach 2+ Eurocar Westwind trick somebody pointed out earlier.) Unfortunately, I keep missing the recruitment threads in here. 
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Aug 26, 2013 15:17
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Emerald Rogue posted:Unfortunately, I keep missing the recruitment threads in here. There's a pretty big demand for games right now. I have a feeling more should be popping up soon--just keep checking for "recruitment" tagged threads.
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Aug 26, 2013 15:20
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Emerald Rogue posted:Is it weird that all of the rules oddities and character creation slapfights in this thread just make me want to try out a 5e game even more? I just want to see for myself how all of this shakes out in play. (Especially the Mach 2+ Eurocar Westwind trick somebody pointed out earlier.) Here's one.
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Aug 26, 2013 16:53
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Thanks for the tip, but poor PierreTheMime appears to be absolutely swamped in PCs already. I'll keep my eyes open.
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Aug 26, 2013 20:02
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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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MiltonSlavemasta posted: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. And even then, "prepared to respond" doesn't necessarily mean "goes around with all their wireless stuff disabled by default" just as being prepared to respond to the thread of violence doesn't mean everyone is going around in full hardsuit combat armor all the time. Still though, Cyclomatic's post here more or less highlights the issue that these last two editions have had to contend with as far as making the wireless hacker a thing, namely that the designers seem really, really reluctant to fully commit to that concept. Everything is wireless! But you can easily turn anything off as a free action, so if a hacker starts messing with your stuff you can just boop, turn it off  Hackers can do all kinds of crazy poo poo! Hack a car and ram someone! But it takes multiple complex actions to do any of those things, meanwhile everyone else is making multiple attacks/spells/etc. in the time it takes you to jump through the hoops necessary to do your trick.
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Aug 26, 2013 23:47
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Well, it takes you a couple rounds, but you're also contributing to combat with a skillset that is massively useful outside of combat. The street samurai can destroy people in a fight, yeah, but her 18-dice Automatics pool doesn't really have a lot of use outside of combat. Plus, it's still not that hard to get a couple of marks on a smartgun and make it eject its clip, and you can do it hunkered down behind cover. Edit: Or, have an Agent/Sprite do it while you take wild potshots at people. Cabbit fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 23:55
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Maybe there are tricks to it I'm missing, like I said I haven't actually gotten to play a 5E hacker yet, but it feels to me like hackers still have to jump through a bunch of hoops in order to do a cool thing. "It takes you a couple of rounds"...to make someone's gun eject its clip, meanwhile everyone else is shooting, grenading, and spell-blasting away. Is hacking someone's gun really considered that woah-poo poo powerful that it needs to be gated behind layers of rolls and complex actions for fear of decker supremacy? Tippis mentioned Earthdawn's magic in passing in a previous post, and upon thinking some more about it that's actually how I'd consider approaching wireless hacking. Hackers apparently have their own version of drain now in the form of Overwatch Score ticking down until some wandering government agent thumps them for causing trouble. Okay fine, so work with that then. Give hackers two approaches to hacking something; the brute force method and the low-and-slow approach. If you absolutely positively need to hack something now you can brute force it...this gets you in and gets you (limited) control in the span of a single complex action. The tradeoff is 1). it builds your Overwatch Score like woah and 2). doing so sets off every alarm inside that thing. You wouldn't be able to brute force your way through a secure datahub without alerting every piece of ICE and spider and possibly even possibly even physical security to your presence...and doing so would probably lock you out of what you were looking to do anyway...but if someone's shooting at you and you need to brick their smartgun or hijack a car and autopilot it into them then you can do it without having to find cover and get shot at for 2-4 turns. Going low-and-slow is more "conventional" hacking where you gradually work your way into a system quietly, spoofing it into believing you're a legit user or exploiting little vulnerabilities. It's quieter, you risk less Overwatch, and it grants you more control than simply reaching into something's digital guts and squeezing, but it takes time. Great if you have time or you have a plan in advance, not so great when bullets are flying and you need poo poo done right this second.
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Aug 27, 2013 00:19
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Comparing OS to drain isn't really accurate-- OS is there to make spamming hacking attempts on big name targets more dangerous, and to keep hackers from having their heads shoved in VR/AR nonstop. If you max it out, you're eating a big pile of damage on top of getting dumpshocked, but that's about as close as the similarities are to drain. But, still-- 'rounds and rounds' is a bit much. You only need a single Brute Force or Hack on the Fly net hit to get a mark on somebody's Persona (i.e. their commlink), and then you can spend subsequent rounds spoofing commands to anything you please that he owns. Detonate the dude's grenades (fun fact: you can detonate grenades wirelessly), eject the clip from his guns, turn off his cyber-eyes, etc. It's not the most powerful combat tool, but then, you didn't sink all your resources, karma, and skill points into being the combat monster. You can certainly contribute, though.
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Aug 27, 2013 00:43
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Ramming someone with a hacked car, which is this thread's go-to for cool hacker poo poo, is going to take 3 marks to pull off unless I'm not understanding something? And again, can you actually switch off someone's cybereyes? Do they even have an "off switch?"
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Aug 27, 2013 00:55
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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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Kai Tave posted:Ramming someone with a hacked car, which is this thread's go-to for cool hacker poo poo, is going to take 3 marks to pull off unless I'm not understanding something? They're a computerized system, I would have to assume they have off switches-- or, at the very least, can be rebooted. Presumably, for that matter, if you're about to have maintenance work done on them, you'd probably want to power them down.
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Aug 27, 2013 01:00
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Cabbit posted:They're a computerized system, I would have to assume they have off switches-- or, at the very least, can be rebooted. Presumably, for that matter, if you're about to have maintenance work done on them, you'd probably want to power them down. If that's the best thing you can do to a car, let someone else handle the decker son, because you are NOT READY. code:Deviant fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Aug 27, 2013 |
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Aug 27, 2013 01:49
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Deviant posted:If that's the best thing you can do to a car, let someone else handle the decker son, because you are NOT READY. Hey, man. You gotta teach them to walk before they can run. Sure, you or I might think to turn on somebody's AR and spoof a command on their commlink to invite marks from every porn site known to man, blinding them with spam, but 'turn off their eyes' is something everyone gets. Cabbit fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Aug 27, 2013 |
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Aug 27, 2013 01:58
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MiltonSlavemasta posted: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? It's also kinda boring for literally everyone who isn't the decker to wait for the GM and decker to play out remotely compromising an entire security system while they wait in the safehouse. Plus, maybe I've just never played with the good planners, but in my experience at least half the time you're improvising to deal with unexpected poo poo you couldn't have prepared for, at which point your backdoors are generally in the wrong place or just not there anymore. I mean, the job going horribly awry is an important part of the game, and deckers should be able to participate in that too.
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Aug 27, 2013 06:24
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Hacking a specific object on the fly should be no more difficult, rules-wise, than firing a bullet at them. What do you want to do, OK, roll your hacking, they roll their firewall, works or doesn't work. There's no reason doing cool stuff should be gated behind multiple actions or confusing rules just because of the archetype you're using.
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Aug 27, 2013 12:58
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On the one hand, you want to make sure that you don't wind up turning hacking into an omniskill capable of great utility as well as combat applications at the push of a button, fine. On the other hand, "an omniskill capable of great utility as well as combat applications" is basically what magic is and nobody seems eager to make mages spend multiple complex actions in order to cast a single spell. Again, it comes down to buy-in; if you want hackers to be a high-investment character type then they should probably get a bit more out of it than other less demanding focuses. And on the third hand, just how powerful are the designers judging things like "subvert someone's gun" to be when stacked up against "make someone dead" anyway? The thing about combat hacking in the "screw with someone's gear" sense, messing with smartguns or cyberware, is that as soon as you do it to one person chances are someone's going to say "oh poo poo, hacker!" and then everyone else is going to have a chance to deactivate all their wi-fi as a free action and then that's that. You've possibly deprived them of some bonuses, so go you. Then again, it's not like people can go "oh poo poo, mage!" and immunize themselves against magic so it feels like another respect in which the hurdles someone trying to hack on the fly are miscalibrated.
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Aug 27, 2013 13:37
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Gort posted:Hacking a specific object on the fly should be no more difficult, rules-wise, than firing a bullet at them. What do you want to do, OK, roll your hacking, they roll their firewall, works or doesn't work. …but on the other hand, doing it the quick and dirty way should be just as obvious to the surrounding as rattling off half a belt of ammo or conjuring up huge fireballs. So maybe that's the solution: yes, you can just directly go after something, but it will brickwall every overwatch and alarm trigger in the vincinity and now they're coming for you very quickly (unless you stick around and meticulously and virtually clean the place up, which you won't have time to do). Kai Tave posted:And on the third hand, just how powerful are the designers judging things like "subvert someone's gun" to be when stacked up against "make someone dead" anyway? Maybe it's just the age old hatred against incapacitating attacks that has come to life in a slightly new form. Everyone can kind of live with their characters being blown up, but not being allowed to do something is immensely unsatisfying and frustrating.
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Aug 27, 2013 13:47
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Tippis posted:…but on the other hand, doing it the quick and dirty way should be just as obvious to the surrounding as rattling off half a belt of ammo or conjuring up huge fireballs. So maybe that's the solution: yes, you can just directly go after something, but it will brickwall every overwatch and alarm trigger in the vincinity and now they're coming for you very quickly (unless you stick around and meticulously and virtually clean the place up, which you won't have time to do). This is what I suggested earlier; make brute-force hacking an option that exists on relative par with Reckless Spellcasting, i.e. you can do it relatively quickly but it exerts a cost. You set off alarms, accrue OS like crazy, gently caress it, maybe you even have to soak matrix damage with your 'deck as you overclock your systems to do poo poo nownownow. I mean, matrix damage is fixable with no real monetary expenditure in 5E, right? It just takes time? So there you go, there's all sorts of ways you could spin that. quote:Come to think of it, doesn't the same odd balance exist with magic as well? Frying someone with a [whatever]ball is usually hellalot easier and more efficient than trying to subvert their actions with domination or illusion spells. Combat magic has sort of varied from edition to edition and from spell to spell as supplements get added to the mix and rules change with the passage of time. Sometimes combat magic has been hells of useful, but to hear people talk combat magic in 5E's been hit with the nerf bat so  Still, pretty much any spell can be cast in a single complex action, whether it's mind-whammying someone or turning yourself invisible or conjuring forcefields or ice slicks or whatever.quote:Maybe it's just the age old hatred against incapacitating attacks that has come to life in a slightly new form. Everyone can kind of live with their characters being blown up, but not being allowed to do something is immensely unsatisfying and frustrating. It's kind of the sort of problem that's solvable though, through the not-all-that-difficult expedient of "having a backup gun." And that applies to NPCs as well, it's not like you're literally removing their ability to attack or do anything else unless that was their only weapon, in which case you should probably get to revel a bit in your amazingness.
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Aug 27, 2013 14:00
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Kai Tave posted:On the one hand, you want to make sure that you don't wind up turning hacking into an omniskill capable of great utility as well as combat applications at the push of a button, fine. The differences I see is that while "magic" is a big omniability, each mage doesn't have easy access to all the different things magic can do, so the buy-in is much higher (unless this has changed since SR4, I know previously mages got limited spells). Whereas every hacker essentially has access to the vast majority of things a hacker can do (especially now since based on my understanding, hackers get a lot more base functionality in comparison to SR4 where you'd have to buy individual attack, defense, etc programs).
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Aug 27, 2013 16:41
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Kai Tave posted:Combat magic has sort of varied from edition to edition and from spell to spell as supplements get added to the mix and rules change with the passage of time. Sometimes combat magic has been hells of useful, but to hear people talk combat magic in 5E's been hit with the nerf bat so Well, direct damage spells are pretty sure to damage, since its Magic + Spellcasting (+Edge!) vs. Body or Willpower. However, its net hits so you are going to nickle and dime them. Indirect spells are straight up magical blasts - Force = AP value and DV. Net hits you get to beat the defender add to DV(AKA its at least 1, so DV=Force+1 minimum with AP=Force). Area Spells, however, function as grenades with wireless airburst basically. You make a simple success test (3), with additional hits above that adding +1DV. However, keep in mind that if your total hits go above your magic rating, its Physical drain. Lets build ourselves a Karl Kombatmage... Magic 6, Spellcasting 6/8 (Combat), Force 4 Spellcasting Focus (Combat), Edge 7 (Human C). Willpower 5, [Logic or Charisma] 5, so 10 to resist drain (cares about DV of 4 or higher). So, we will throw out a (rather weak) Force 5 Lightning Ball (DV 4). We Edge cast the spell, and get: 14+4+7 or 25 dice. With exploding 6s, about 9.6/10 hits, so net hits of 6 to 7. That is an AP 5, 11/12 damage area attack, which is decent. Without the Edge is 18*33% or 6 hits, Limit 5, 2 net, so AP 5, 7 damage. Which is wimpy. A more buff Force 8 Lightning Ball with the same treatment is going to come in at 14/15DV with AP 8 on the Edge Cast, and probably fry someone. In fact, given that you probably want to one shot someone you might as well edge the drain and figure your pool of 17 is going to give you 6 hits, so you might as well go Force 9 (DV 8) and just take your 2 physical. 15/16DV AP 9 for 2 physical damage and 2 edge is a big trade, but in the situation where you need it, you are pulling rocket-launcher damage out of your rear end; however a real rocket launcher requires significantly less character investment. So in terms of focusing on blasting people with spells, I'd say its not really worth it. But in terms of "I can do everything a mage can do, and I have 1 combat spell for when I REALLY need it, that can hit like a rocket launcher" - thats pretty sweet. Again a lot of this is depending on Edge; but as Edge is literally the "I pull some amazing thing off that I shouldn't" ability, I think its fair to consider it the best attribute in Shadowrun 5e.
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Aug 27, 2013 16:48
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Blasting spells took a big hit post-SR4. Some spells didn't deserve it, others did - I think the OVERALL change was just to stop the ridiculousness you saw in SR4 with drainbolting wizards taking out any target they could ever go up against with a single Force 10 blast.
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Aug 27, 2013 16:59
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The only real problem with ways to do damage is how incredibly overpowered grenades are. A direct hit (i.e. 3 total, not net hits) is an instant kill on everyone but the toughest of tanks.
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Aug 27, 2013 17:44
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Piell posted:The only real problem with ways to do damage is how incredibly overpowered grenades are. A direct hit (i.e. 3 total, not net hits) is an instant kill on everyone but the toughest of tanks. Depends on the grenade - only wireless airburst function like that. Timer: Goes off on next Combat Turn @ initiative -10 in the space where it landed. Motion Sensor: Ignore the 3 total hits - it tells you to make a Ranged Attack, because you are trying to peg someone with it. If you miss, it scatters as normal but to the maximum range specified. Arms 1 second after you throw it. Airbust: Requires a DNI (trodes), anyone with a mark on the grenade and a DNI can cause it to blow up with a (free) action command. So while the safest, its a giant 'please make me explode' sign to enemy hackers. Turn your grenades to Silent Running, yo. This is the only one that works that way, but they are super dangerous weapons (to you and to your enemies). Launchers work the same way, but Motion Sensors arm 5 meters are they are launched; you can't hit anything closer.
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Aug 27, 2013 17:57
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On the other hand, there is slightly less than no subtlety involved with grenade launchers; loud, obvious, and guaranteed to bring down a ton of heat. Two slightly weird questions Were there any optional rules about picking up overwatch more slowly if you're out in the rear end end of nowhere? Like a developing country? Is German a big language for the Shadowrun community? I've been fooling around with a language learning app and I'm wondering if I should switch from French to German?
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Aug 27, 2013 19:11
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Rockopolis posted:On the other hand, there is slightly less than no subtlety involved with grenade launchers; loud, obvious, and guaranteed to bring down a ton of heat. Yeah, but you can say the same thing about a heavy machinegun, and grenades are far more lethal than that. This is a clear-cut case of bad rules that need errata.
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Aug 27, 2013 19:31
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Grenades are unlikely to be errata'd. According to the developers, they worked almost the same way in 4E. From 4E's FAQ:quote:Isn’t tossing a grenade on the ground by someone’s feet (a Success Test) easier than trying to hit them directly with a grenade (an Opposed Test)? Does everyone caught in the blast get a chance to dodge/react?
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Aug 27, 2013 20:00
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Rockopolis posted:On the other hand, there is slightly less than no subtlety involved with grenade launchers; loud, obvious, and guaranteed to bring down a ton of heat. I'm pretty sure that German is huge for Shadowrun.
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Aug 27, 2013 20:05
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alansmithee posted:The differences I see is that while "magic" is a big omniability, each mage doesn't have easy access to all the different things magic can do, so the buy-in is much higher (unless this has changed since SR4, I know previously mages got limited spells). Whereas every hacker essentially has access to the vast majority of things a hacker can do (especially now since based on my understanding, hackers get a lot more base functionality in comparison to SR4 where you'd have to buy individual attack, defense, etc programs). This is a fair point, but then again buying a new spell isn't especially onerous in terms of karma. For, I guess it's still 5 karma as of the current edition, you can decide "y'know, I'd like to learn how to turn invisible." So it's true that a mage can't literally do everything magic, but they have a lot of flexibility when it comes to shoring up whatever gaps they feel the need to fill in their list of options. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Aug 27, 2013 |
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Aug 27, 2013 22:54
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Gobbeldygook posted:Grenades are unlikely to be errata'd. According to the developers, they worked almost the same way in 4E. From 4E's FAQ: Yeah, but grenades weren't an instant kill in SR4. A frag grenade in SR4 did 12P, +5 AP, and a typical non-tank character might have body 3 and Actioneer Business Suit (ignore FFBA for this, which would make it even higher) for a total soak of 13, or a bit over 4 hits on average. 12-4=8, which is not a kill an on unwounded person. In SR5, a frag grenade does 18P, +5 AP, and a we'll go with body 3 and the heaviest typical armor, an Armor Jacket. Total soak is 22 for an average of 7.333 hits (Actioneer Business Suit would be 1 less hit). That leaves 11-12 damage, which is a kill on an unwounded person (well, near death technically, but either way you're out). It's even worse when you add in chunky salsa. SR5 frag grenades have a 50% larger radius, thanks to increased damage, which means chunky salsa comes into play more often and is more deadly when it does. Grenades are instant murder machines in SR5. Edit: Also, you literally can't miss with a thrown flashbang - their maximum scatter is smaller than their radius. Also, with a blast diamater of 20 meters that has no damage falloff it's super easy to get 20 or more stun damage. Also since there is no damage falloff, if you have a guy less than 10 meters from the wall it's a better idea to throw the grenade at the wall (and thus get chunky salsa for 20 stun damage) than to throw it directly at him (and not get chunky salsa and thus only have 10 damage). In a small room, you can easily rack up 50 or more stun damage and murder everything in it with a single flashbang. Edit2: Wait a loving minute the floor explicitly counts for chunky salsa. All grenades do double damage from what they actually say, due to bouncing off the floor. Someone standing in a normal-height room (i.e. 3 meters) takes 60S from a normal flashbang just from the blast bouncing off the floor and ceiling, not even counting the walls. And because barriers ignore stun damage, flashbangs automatically bounce off even the weakest barrier. Piell fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Aug 28, 2013 |
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Aug 27, 2013 23:28
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