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AmishSpecialForces posted:I have a question about essence loss. A character in one of the later games Racter, the half-chrome psychopath in SR: Hong Kong found a way around the typical essence loss effects. What's stopping a TT group from announcing 'We're like that guy, we can have all the chrome no problem'? The character in question was pretty interesting but could be a one-of-a-kind deal. He still had positive essence. He speculated since he wasn't suffering from the standard effects of of low (still positive) essence (loss of emotions, mental disorders, physical and mental trauma) due to his, um, condition, that he might be able to get over the essence limitation someday. In other words, it's just a theory. A theory that has yet to be proven right in SH, so probably wrong. You can say your character has that particular condition all you want, doesn't really change your ability to deal with cyberware anymore or less than a standard character, from a gameplay standpoint at least. mauman fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Aug 5, 2017 |
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Aug 5, 2017 02:35
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If you blood magic sacrifice someone with low essence, does it give you less magical bang since they're less alive to begin with?
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Aug 5, 2017 06:13
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Foxfire_ posted:If you blood magic sacrifice someone with low essence, does it give you less magical bang since they're less alive to begin with? Nope, it's based on how much you hurt them, not how much soul they had (in game terms, how many boxes of physical damage you do.) This does mean that people can be several times for different rituals, but they tend to wear out quickly.
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Aug 5, 2017 07:30
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wiegieman posted:Nope, it's based on how much you hurt them, not how much soul they had (in game terms, how many boxes of physical damage you do.) Does this mean trolls are the best sacrifices, since they have so much more to hurt?
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Aug 5, 2017 07:33
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wiegieman posted:Nope, it's based on how much you hurt them, not how much soul they had (in game terms, how many boxes of physical damage you do.) Does it have to be actual physical damage? Wouldn't it be more efficient to directly stimulate the pain center of their brain, and then keep them on high-tech life support so they don't have a heart attack or whatever? Actually letting them die seems like such a waste.
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Aug 5, 2017 07:39
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ZiegeDame posted:Does it have to be actual physical damage? Wouldn't it be more efficient to directly stimulate the pain center of their brain, and then keep them on high-tech life support so they don't have a heart attack or whatever? Actually letting them die seems like such a waste. Now you're thinkin' like an executive!
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Aug 5, 2017 08:12
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Hong Kong was the best game in the series in my opinion, but the expansion... meh, I couldn't really get into it. Especially since it seemed to place more emphasis on large-scale combats, which I don't like in turn-based games.
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Aug 5, 2017 08:50
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CommissarMega posted:Especially since it seemed to place more emphasis on large-scale combats, which I don't like in turn-based games. The fan mod Antumbra concludes with an epic confrontation between at least 3 different sides trying to control an area of California. I was actually impressed, until I measured 5 freaking minutes during which I could only watch NPCs miss each other.
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Aug 5, 2017 08:58
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ZiegeDame posted:Does it have to be actual physical damage? Wouldn't it be more efficient to directly stimulate the pain center of their brain, and then keep them on high-tech life support so they don't have a heart attack or whatever? Actually letting them die seems like such a waste. It wouldn't be real enough -- the magic knows the difference. You have to shed blood, it has to hurt, and it has to last. UnwiseTrout posted:Now you're thinkin' like an executive! Aztechnology sells blood sacrifices in lots sized for sustainable ritual rotation (mostly internal sales barring some exclusive customers with unique perspective inventory needs, of course.) Aztechnology: bringing new meaning to "human resources".
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Aug 5, 2017 09:08
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Xander77 posted:The fan mod Antumbra concludes with an epic confrontation between at least 3 different sides trying to control an area of California. I was actually impressed, until I measured 5 freaking minutes during which I could only watch NPCs miss each other. I don't mind if the big battles happen right at the end of a campaign, turn based or otherwise- it kind of adds to the feel if you take part in something like that. It's when you face massive battles in the middle, or hell, early on where everything goes to poo poo for me.
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Aug 5, 2017 09:23
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I was looking through the Street Grimoire and in the ritual chapter I saw this (page 112):quote:Blood: These rituals require the death of a sapient subject. These rituals normally are not available to any sane player character. 
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Aug 5, 2017 18:17
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Xander77 posted:Yeah. At the very least, you should have the option of skipping animations to drastically reduce the time you spend starting at the screen. I can't remember which game did it but there's some SR which added fast animations for things like casting, which helped a lot. Returns-style slow animations with a huge fight sounds more than painful.
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Aug 5, 2017 18:35
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[DERAIL TALK]Y'know, while we are talking about Psychopaths, I got a random question about Star Wars. Wouldn't a Well Socialized Psychopath be considered the Perfect Jedi? Incapable of that Dark-side leading emotion, but socialized enough to know how to act?
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Aug 5, 2017 18:40
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It depends if you mean really world psycho or media psycho. Psychopaths (or ASPD, sociopaths, same basic thing) do have emotions, very strong ones, they just tend to burn bright and fast; what's known as shallow emotional affect, so they'd be pretty poo poo jedi. A real life psychopath is more likely to stab you for spilling his drink than to be Hannibal Lecter. Someone with Schizoid Personality Disorder might be a decent jedi, the main symptoms of that are increased apathy and a lack of emotional connections, but this is getting very off topic.
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Aug 5, 2017 20:22
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Siegkrow posted:[DERAIL TALK]Y'know, while we are talking about Psychopaths, I got a random question about Star Wars. Amos in The Expanse with a lightsaber.
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Aug 6, 2017 08:44
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Out of curiousity, which kind of build would be the most overpowered in each of the three games? I played through Returns and Dragonfall as a street samurai specializing in assault rifles, and it made most non-gimmick fights fairly trivial. I just recently completed my first playthrough of Hong Kong as a rigger, which actually felt pretty balanced and not nearly as OP as people usually claim it is.
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Aug 6, 2017 11:59
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Other players swear by utility mages, and they are v. good, but I played through Dragonfall first time as a combat mage and once that gets rolling it's a hilarious carnival of artillery strikes everywhere your character can see.
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Aug 6, 2017 14:33
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It's not so much what role you chose as it is understanding that AP damage is the most powerful thing in the game due to how the action economy works; -1 ap is crippling and -2 will stun outright for most of the game. Mages have the most varied access to AP affecting abilities, but a lot of melee weapons will do it too, and there's usually a late game stun pistol that is hilariously overpowered for just shutting enemies down.
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Aug 6, 2017 14:43
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I played all three games, and melee always felt, not underpowered, but suboptimal. You have to get out of cover and burn AP running to your target, instead of planting yourself behind something solid and blasting away. Any advice for building a good melee or adept character?
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Aug 6, 2017 15:11
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Played HK as a pure punch adept and it felt risky but rewarding due to all the AP damage I could stack. So in that sense yes it was suboptimal but it was also pretty powerful and fun as gently caress. Can't really remember any good build advice though, sorry. (eta: Actually I remember one thing: prioritize anything that can increase your movement speed, although I guess that's pretty obvious.)
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Aug 6, 2017 15:13
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BurningStone posted:I played all three games, and melee always felt, not underpowered, but suboptimal. You have to get out of cover and burn AP running to your target, instead of planting yourself behind something solid and blasting away. Any advice for building a good melee or adept character? I'm playing through Hong Kong as an unarmed adept. The end-game weapon heals you, critical hits have a chance to do AP damage, and you already have a couple of skills that do AP damage. With a haste buff or some combat stims I can lock down two enemies in the first turn very easily. The lack of cover doesn't matter since adepts get two skills, one that grants you cover from magic attacks and one that gives cover for physical attacks. The fact that you are out of cover means you are hitting guys also out of cover, which means constant critical hits. If you use a support caster as a perma buff-bot for haste and +aim you will do stupid amounts of damage. If you are still concerned about survivability bump up body and dodge. With only 4 dodge most enemy attacks still miss, and those that hit have to deal with perma-cover and heavy armor. Shaman is the class that just never clicked for me through 3 games. I like their buffs, but the slot they take up always seems like it could be occupied by a more effective character.
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Aug 6, 2017 17:03
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The secret is that sword adepts are the best because QI strike always crits. I did a HK run as a cybered up katana-wielding troll adept and he was completely broken.
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Aug 6, 2017 17:29
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In HK you can pick up cyber claws which gain a hilariously overpowered attack that does two swipes with AP damage for only 1AP. Short cooldown too.
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Aug 6, 2017 17:54
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BurningStone posted:I played all three games, and melee always felt, not underpowered, but suboptimal. You have to get out of cover and burn AP running to your target, instead of planting yourself behind something solid and blasting away. Any advice for building a good melee or adept character? Think of them as a support class, they dart in and either disable the enemy for a turn with ap damage or knock them out of cover for your ranged members to mow them down. Adepts eventually get a skill that lets them act as if they are in cover at all times for when you cant share cover with your target and want a second swing at them.
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Aug 6, 2017 18:01
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Poil posted:In HK you can pick up cyber claws which gain a hilariously overpowered attack that does two swipes with AP damage for only 1AP. Short cooldown too. My main issue with that build is that melee types really need the perma cover chi casting passive to avoid getting crit into oblivion, and if you're going to put points in just for that then you might as well go all the way and use swords. Also the extra movement speed from chi is extremely good and much better than the cyberware option which gives movespeed. I never tried going high dodge on a melee character though so maybe that works instead to avoid crits. Cyberweapons aren't very karma intensive so there would be some synergy there.
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Aug 6, 2017 19:01
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I... uh... went with the adept stuff and the heal spell, they're just so good. Also it was only normal difficulty.
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Aug 7, 2017 14:36
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Of course I had to give an adept a try, and I guess it's not that they're bad, but that the way to play them feels unnatural to me. Another thing is how much karma you have to spend: Body, Quickness, Dodge, Strength, Close Combat, Unarmed (or Melee), Wisdom, and Chi Casting. Oh, and you have to carry all the conversations for the group, so Charisma doesn't hurt. That's a lot of ways to spread your xp. One of my complaints about all three of the games is about support characters. Very few of your allied NPCs are good at actually killing stuff, especially compared to a somewhat optimized PC. I suppose they didn't want an NPC putting up bigger damage numbers than you, but it means that if you want to play a support character too, your party ends up lacking punch.
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Aug 7, 2017 15:51
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I have thought for a while that Chi Casting would be a lot better for adepts if it were based on Body rather than Willpower.
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Aug 7, 2017 16:00
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Im guessing this is the half of the game where the Universal Brotherhood comes up. Shifty bastards. Unrelated, but can someone explain Chicago and how/why it became such a hellhole,
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Aug 7, 2017 16:08
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Deadmeat5150 posted:<snip> We probably don't want to talk about this right now, actually.
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Aug 7, 2017 16:16
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e: the excruciating ecstasy of waiting for the next update, am I right I think the quick answer to 'most OP' is a mage, just like every game ever It's probably less true in Returns than DF and HK, because leylines aren't plentiful in Returns. In the other two, magic is better, spell selection is better, and leylines are more plentiful. Rifle/shotgun decker or rigger are probably the strongest in Returns. There are some really fun and effective builds that might not be the ultimate hyper minmaxed, though, like melee (qi with a sword or chrome wolverine with cyberweapons in HK) or pistol street sam (how would you like to fire every bullet you have and then reload for 0 AP and do it again?) and if you build for it, "I carry around what are usually vehicle-mounted weapons for fun" characters. That's ... really satisfying if you get it in HK and then do the epilogue, for one reason. Starts with P. The games are pretty good about letting you get away with almost any build, which is nice. Try anything you think might be fun and chances are it will be. Psion fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Aug 7, 2017 |
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Aug 7, 2017 17:23
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Leylines can be bad though. I once stood on a strong spot and my area spell bounced from the enemy and back to my clustered party, with multiple bounces.
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Aug 7, 2017 17:27
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On release, the most broken build in Returns was a shotgunner. The kneecap ability let me solo a certain run before it got a cooldown.
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Aug 7, 2017 17:29
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GunnerJ posted:We probably don't want to talk about this right now, actually. The in-universe explanation verges on spoiler territory. The out-of-universe explanation we can give you, and it totally owns. The company that made Shadowrun was based out of Chicago at the time, and, well, they were making a game set in the near future. So of course Shadowrun-Chicago was full of all sorts of injokes based on each others' personal lives, places they really liked got appearances in plot books, etc, etc, it was getting to be a problem. You know how there's that old advice in writing to murder your darlings? "Nope, gently caress you, we're blowing it up, Chicago is now an apocalyptic hellscape populated only by the dying, the lost, and the damned, our office was ground zero for -The Incident-, our hypothetical future selves all died, default setting is now Seattle."
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Aug 7, 2017 17:49
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The melee focused team members in Dragonfall and Hong Kong are great for filling that niche, I didn't think I needed to double up on that. While the Hong Kong one specifically used a katana, the Dragonfall one had those hand razors that were pretty drat effective, especially with her adrenal pump going, and she just becomes a blender when upgraded. As I said before, I tended to be the assault rifle wielding chromed up Street Sam who splashes into heavy weapons when they become available. Nothing beats breaking out the mini gun or grenade launcher when you want to cut loose on a group of mooks and have the AP to do so, doubly so with the auto-reload arm you can pick up in Hong Kong for the latter removing the disadvantage of having to reload after every shot on the bloop tube, though the other arm cyberware they added in Hong Kong kinda limited that strategy if your opponent was equipped with it. Still, the melee focused guys on the team let me pop guys out of cover and hit their AP while doing damage and drawing fire, and then finish them off with ranged crits on burst fire from my rifle. Worked out pretty well too. EDIT: Chicago and the UB is a major spoiler. We'll get to it here eventually though, and I expect the effortposts from those familiar with the setting (myself included), to come not shortly after. GhostStalker fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Aug 7, 2017 |
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Aug 7, 2017 18:27
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Yeah, role coverage is very good in DF and excellent in HK. You can pick just about any role for the PC and be fine.
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Aug 7, 2017 19:36
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RabidWeasel posted:My main issue with that build is that melee types really need the perma cover chi casting passive to avoid getting crit into oblivion, and if you're going to put points in just for that then you might as well go all the way and use swords. Also the extra movement speed from chi is extremely good and much better than the cyberware option which gives movespeed. There's enough karma in HK that you should be able to do both. The funny thing about HK's cyberweapon skill is that it synergizes with everything, even if you don't take the claws. The ability to take a few choice pieces of cyberware and NOT shred your essence is pretty amazing. Though the correct plan is to completely bork your essence and cyber yourself up to oblivion AND take the adept powers.  No, seriously. The cooldown downside doesn't affect the sword abilities, and you'll be so freaking overpowered that you can take out nearly every fight before your most important ability (cover ability) runs out, and the fights that aren't over will be mostly in cleanup. Assuming you go swords you only need a few powers to completely break the system. This doesn't work as well with fists though, since the fist powers are equippable, unlike the sword abilities which are weapon abilities. It'll still be plenty powerful just maybe not OP powerful. This works well even in Dragonfall/returns. HK just made it better. Psion posted:Starts with P. Oh yeeeesssssss. mauman fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Aug 8, 2017 |
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Aug 8, 2017 02:21
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Psion posted:if you build for it, "I carry around what are usually vehicle-mounted weapons for fun" characters. That's ... really satisfying if you get it in HK and then do the epilogue, for one reason. Starts with P. One of the runners on my first team when playing the tabletop was a troll who used one of those as his main weapon. It was pretty cool, until I got literally stabbed in the back (he had a katana) by him for my own shiny heavy weapon (effectively a prototype Ares Thunderstruck Gauss Rifle) right before the conclusion of the arc my GM was setting up. Sucked that I never got to use that thing... In game, I was always more partial to the minigun as my heavy weapon of choice, but I wouldn't turn down the weapon in question if I had the nuyen for it.
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Aug 8, 2017 04:05
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Psion posted:e: the excruciating ecstasy of waiting for the next update, am I right I know right, I always figured OP was another scumbag LPer who just abandons the whole thing halfway through without a word. Never liked the guy. Nah I'm still working on it, apologies for the delay. I'm not planning on making 2+ weeks between updates a regular thing or anything. This Shadowrun chat that has happened in the meantime has been very cool and great to see though!
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Aug 8, 2017 09:10
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Kanfy posted:I know right, I always figured OP was another scumbag LPer who just abandons the whole thing halfway through without a word. Never liked the guy. The best in-between updates thing was the guy who accidentally RP'd driving a motorcycle at the speed of light.
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Aug 8, 2017 15:04
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