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I dont know posted:I'm referencing 2nd edition, with the perk/flaws rules coming from The Shadowrun Companion. You could still take perks and flaws with the priority system, you just had to balance the perks you get with flaws worth an equal or greater amount of points. Oh, incidentally so was I. I guess I just don't remember it. And I'll admit I usually stayed away from the flaws/perks since my GM was the type who firmly believed in enforcing flaws. Which made almost all of them NOT WORTH IT. I grew up on 2nd/3rd edition myself. I dont know posted:Unless you're a decker that literally never leaves the safehouse (in which case the rest of the gaming group personally hates you) you're going to want your character competent in combat in some form. Or a rigger who never leaves his van  To be fair though, you're usually still liked since you can provide metal menaces to accompany your allies, and in a way that IS a form of combat skill. Plus you're also the wheelman, which kinda makes sense for you to be outside during the mission. mauman fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Sep 28, 2017 |
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Sep 28, 2017 04:07
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I also mostly played 3rd and 4th Edition, which mostly employed point buy as well. My GM helped me build my original 3rd Ed character, and I had enough confidence to do it myself for 4th, with so,e help from Chummer if I was lazy. Haven't tried the Priority System yet, even though I think it was introduced as an alternative way to build a character in 4th. Never played 5th, even though I've read the character creation rules in the book. I usually tend to play my characters with as much of a moral compass as I can give them, which admittedly as mostly Street Sam shadowrunners (most of the time with an actual SIN and some sort of UCAS military background) isn't much. Still, I always made sure to have a mag full of stick-and-shock or gel rounds for less than lethal if the situation warrants it, if the GM let me get them. Also, a mag of (EX)-Explosive ammo for the exact opposite situations (like if Red Samurai suddenly show up), again if the GM let me find some available, which they usually did. Made for some really fun times, for certain definitions of fun.
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Sep 28, 2017 06:12
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Is there any mechanical reason to ever go Orc? I mean, Humiez seem to be best for most things thanks to that +3 karma, and Trolls are great for any build that needs a lot of strength and body. But is there any point in having an Orc rather than either of the other races? And don't talk to me about elves. Can't stand elves. The only game I was okay with playing elf was in Dragon Age, and that's because they were the downtrodden race in that universe.
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Sep 28, 2017 06:51
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painedforever posted:Is there any mechanical reason to ever go Orc? I mean, Humiez seem to be best for most things thanks to that +3 karma, and Trolls are great for any build that needs a lot of strength and body. But is there any point in having an Orc rather than either of the other races? Costs less points/priority to play Ork than other metavariants, costing the same as one of either Dwarf or Elf, I forget which, and definitely less than Troll. Gives you more points/priority slots to do other character creation stuff with. I also forget what racial advantages Orks get off the top of my head though, the ones for the other metavariants are easier to remember. GhostStalker fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Sep 28, 2017 |
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Sep 28, 2017 06:58
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Pen and paper orks get +3 body, +2 strength and -1 to maximum logic and charisma. They also receive low-light vision, same as elves. Humans are the cheapest to play, then elves (who only have benefits) and then orks and dwarves (with benefits and some drawbacks) and finally the most expensive trolls (benefits and drawbacks). But mostly you "should" pick the race that fits the best for the character you want to play. Or just what's most fun. Personally I strongly dislike the priority system, while it's probably good if you're starting out it's very inflexible and actively rewards minmaxing and punishes more balanced builds. For example if you want to start with 5 agility and 2 strength but lack 1 point you can either start with 5Agi 1Str or 4Agi 2Str which costs the exact amount of starting points. However during actual play you get karma rewards and raising stats costs 5*(new value) so raising agility to 5 for the more balanced person is 25 karma while getting strength to 2 is 10 karma and both ways started with the same points and ended with the same stats but the minmaxer has 15 karma left to spend on other stuff while the other guy has none. It's dumb. The module system is great, it uses karma which makes things way more balanced and the modules give you a lot of fluff and ideas for your character. Unless you load up on as many modules as possible you'll have plenty of karma leftover to finish your character by raising stats, skills, gear, spells, qualities and whatnot. They aren't perfect of course but you get a solid foundation (with a whole bunch of useful knowledge skills).
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Sep 28, 2017 08:45
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5e priority as written also absolutely fucks sams, deckers, and riggers due to gear costs while mages can take Resources E and laugh forever. Doubly so if you're a troll since you gotta pay an extra 50% for ware and living expenses
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Sep 28, 2017 09:13
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Poil posted:Personally I strongly dislike the priority system, while it's probably good if you're starting out it's very inflexible and actively rewards minmaxing and punishes more balanced builds. For example if you want to start with 5 agility and 2 strength but lack 1 point you can either start with 5Agi 1Str or 4Agi 2Str which costs the exact amount of starting points. However during actual play you get karma rewards and raising stats costs 5*(new value) so raising agility to 5 for the more balanced person is 25 karma while getting strength to 2 is 10 karma and both ways started with the same points and ended with the same stats but the minmaxer has 15 karma left to spend on other stuff while the other guy has none. It's dumb.  The priority system isn't designed for minmaxing because as you stated it's more inflexible then the point system. The point system is where the REAL minmaxing occurs since you have actual control over every factor. I also find it to be an utter nightmare to keep a tally of EVERY....SINGLE....POINT when I made characters using said point system. Thing is, minmaxing is not really needed in Shadowrun. As such, I find no need for the point system. Now I'm only familiar with 2nd/3rd editions so maybe things radically changed, but if there was a particular archtype you wanted to play (face, sammy, adept, mage, etc....) the priority system would work just fine, and it was FAR easier to deal with. Something that needs to be kept in mind is that making a character in Shadowrun is NOT like making a character in, oh say, D&D. In D&D you're a level 1 scrub fresh off the boat with the skills and gear to match. In Shadowrun, you're making a veteran character with contacts, gear, a history, and a power level to match. As such it's a FAR more complicated process, to the point where I've seen people take 2-3 hours to make a character via the point system when you do every little detail by hand. I'll happily churn out a similar (if slightly less optimized) character in 30 minutes, thank you very much. As for the karma bit, that's how it works even if you use the point buy system, in fact I'd argue it works that way even more so when you have complete control over your stats.......so ok? Edit - You mention a module system....this has to be new since I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about. This might just be a case of 2nd/3rd edition being superior in this regard. I heard a LOT of grumbling when 4th came out and I also heard a lot of negative things about 5th. mauman fucked around with this message at 10:54 on Sep 28, 2017 |
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Sep 28, 2017 09:29
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Skypie posted:5e priority as written also absolutely fucks sams, deckers, and riggers due to gear costs while mages can take Resources E and laugh forever. Yeah, but mages have to take Magic A, no exceptions. *Fine, physical adepts, but they aren't mages and they know it.
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Sep 28, 2017 16:48
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ulmont posted:Yeah, but mages have to take Magic A, no exceptions. That's not even strictly 100% true - a magician with Priority A gets Magic 6, two magical skills at Rating 5, and 10 spells. A magician with Priority B gets Magic 4, two magical skills at Rating 4, and 7 spells. You can still be a magician even without taking Priority A in magic. But wait, Magic 4 is lame and stupid, you say? Well, if you're a human who picks Priority D for their metatype, you get 3 bonus special attributes - one of which is Magic - allowing you to boost your Magic to 6 and still have a bonus point to put into Edge, same as if you took Priority E for your metatype. You still take Resources E because lol mages don't need money, but now instead of having priority B and C left over for attributes and skills, you have A and C. This equates to either 4 more attribute points or 10 more skill points, both of which easily cost more in karma than the 15 it would cost to buy three spells to get you back to 10.
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Sep 28, 2017 18:44
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Or you could just be an aspected mage and not care about two of the three magic groups. Your GM will thank you for limiting your gamebreaking. 
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Sep 28, 2017 19:54
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Olesh posted:That's not even strictly 100% true - a magician with Priority A gets Magic 6, two magical skills at Rating 5, and 10 spells. A magician with Priority B gets Magic 4, two magical skills at Rating 4, and 7 spells. You can still be a magician even without taking Priority A in magic. Exebit A. In which "Olesh" proves, that all shadowrun players are awful powergamers. (Sorry Olesh. Nothing personal. Your post summed just up, how my last SR group (still 4e) approached the game. 5 hours char creation alone...)
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Sep 28, 2017 19:55
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Psion posted:It works differently in DMS than in DF:DC and HK, so there are two answers. You can read all about it here, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns/posts/975556 Note that in DF:DC and HK armor is applied after you check for criticals, not before. This means that a SMG, although it might literally bounce off of a guy in cover, will ruin his face if he's in the open. Using the Ingram Supermach with Flush is a great demonstrator of that-the first hit will often be a 0.5x weak hit that gets totally blocked by armor, but because it takes them out of cover, the next two hits will do full or critical damage and be significantly more effective. I dont know posted:The table top use a weird priority system. Basically you have 5 categories (nuyen, attributes, skills, magic, and race) which you rank from A to E. The higher the rank the more resources you get in a given category to distribute how you want. You can then further fine tune your character with perks and flaws. End result, character creation takes an absurdly long time compared to other systems, but on the plus side you can really tinker with the fine bit of your character in ways that's not possible in more straightforward systems. There is very little hard limits on how you can build a character, but realistically if you don't specialize and build toward a given niche you can end up with a character that sucks at everything. Hong Kong at least tends to give you enough points that you can be good at two things, although one of them will probably be 'being the face character' because you can't use other characters for your charisma checks. I played an elf street sam specializing in SMGs with near-max Charisma at the end. I also threw six points into the Summoning skill to get the Cobra totem, because it interacts extremely well with SMGs (SMGs in Shadowrun Returns do lower damage, but can potentially hit twice per attack, three times if you get the Ingram Supermach in Shadows of Hong Kong, the Cobra totem gives you +1 damage and +5% to hit on all attacks) and meant that I could basically vaporize most enemies in a hail of murder-crits. Honestly I kind of wish HBS would do another Shadowrun Returns game and give us a party face who we could take on missions if you want to be Angry Murder Machine With All Points In Murder And Murder Alone.
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Sep 28, 2017 20:12
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Olesh posted:That's not even strictly 100% true I admit I was thinking of the rules for either 2nd or 3rd edition:  EDIT: specifically 2nd. 
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Sep 28, 2017 20:31
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OutofSight posted:Exebit A. In which "Olesh" proves, that all shadowrun players are awful powergamers. Shadowrun's mechanics really encourage that kinda stuff, though, since you really need to go all in on your specialty to be effective. Plus it also rewards system mastery and knowing what little goofy things you can do (like using a microdrone with satellite uplink to bypass the Signal 0 restriction on, say, an enemy's smartlink gun if you wanna hack it and gently caress it up) ulmont posted:I admit I was thinking of the rules for either 2nd or 3rd edition: man I still don't know what the fuckin point of Aspected Magician is
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Sep 28, 2017 20:33
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Can a microdrone really support a freaking satellite dish?
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Sep 28, 2017 20:35
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Poil posted:Can a microdrone really support a freaking satellite dish? Per the 4e rules, yes, some microdrones can be fitted with satellite uplink software. 
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Sep 28, 2017 20:37
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Skypie posted:Shadowrun's mechanics really encourage that kinda stuff, though, since you really need to go all in on your specialty to be effective. Plus it also rewards system mastery and knowing what little goofy things you can do (like using a microdrone with satellite uplink to bypass the Signal 0 restriction on, say, an enemy's smartlink gun if you wanna hack it and gently caress it up) Being a cheap specialist mage who can actually afford to live in an apartment instead of being "Hobo with a Wizard Staff".
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Sep 28, 2017 21:05
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OutofSight posted:Exebit A. In which "Olesh" proves, that all shadowrun players are awful powergamers. I've never even played pen and paper Shadowrun before; I created a character earlier this week for a campaign a friend of mine is starting. It took me all of 30 seconds to pick up on the fact that raising stats or skills with karma at character creation varies wildly in costs. It is trivially easy to create two characters with identical stats and skills but one of whom spent significantly more karma during character creation than the other for identical results. This doesn't go into advantages or disadvantages or cyberware or any of that poo poo, it's just basic character generation poo poo. When you offer multiple identical options, but some of them are arbitrarily more expensive, why would anyone knowingly choose the more expensive option? Why does the more expensive option even exist?
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Sep 28, 2017 21:46
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ulmont posted:I admit I was thinking of the rules for either 2nd or 3rd edition: I now want to play a millionaire playboy Troll.
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Sep 28, 2017 22:09
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Olesh posted:I've never even played pen and paper Shadowrun before; I created a character earlier this week for a campaign a friend of mine is starting. It took me all of 30 seconds to pick up on the fact that raising stats or skills with karma at character creation varies wildly in costs. It is trivially easy to create two characters with identical stats and skills but one of whom spent significantly more karma during character creation than the other for identical results. This doesn't go into advantages or disadvantages or cyberware or any of that poo poo, it's just basic character generation poo poo. Shadowrun is full of poor options, but it's kind of a legacy thing that grogs like because they can feel smug about newbies picking bad stuff. Like, seriously, some of the weapon supplements are just full of awful weapons that nobody would ever take but they exist anyway
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Sep 28, 2017 23:00
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Skypie posted:Shadowrun is full of poor options, but it's kind of a legacy thing that grogs like because they can feel smug about newbies picking bad stuff. Like, seriously, some of the weapon supplements are just full of awful weapons that nobody would ever take but they exist anyway "Some nerds really like fantasy-cyberpunk gun porn?" is the only explanation for some stuff in supplement books like "Arsenal 2070" i can offer you. My stance to the original powergaming discussion: Sometimes i really appreciate game systems, groups and DMs, that let me get away with underoptimized builds andd silly ideas, if i can make them shine and be fun. Really depends on the group chemistry, though. Optimization is the safer route for my and other people's enjoyment.
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Sep 28, 2017 23:25
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Skypie posted:Shadowrun is full of poor options, but it's kind of a legacy thing that grogs like because they can feel smug about newbies picking bad stuff. Like, seriously, some of the weapon supplements are just full of awful weapons that nobody would ever take but they exist anyway See, awful weapons nobody would take I understand easier, at least in an "ALL THE GUNS!" splatbook. It's the dystopian cyber-future, megacorps get into petty feuds, and the end result is that fancy government contract produces a gun more likely to kill the owner than the target. It's good to have somewhere in the pages. The obviously unbalanced character creation is quite different.
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Sep 29, 2017 00:43
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OutofSight posted:Exebit A. In which "Olesh" proves, that all shadowrun players are awful powergamers. There's a reason "Shadowrun" is used as slang for "maximum paranoia powergaming" by most tabletop groups.
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Sep 29, 2017 01:57
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citybeatnik posted:I now want to play a millionaire playboy Troll. Done it. He was the group's Face. Yes, it was not-optimized (though I'd argue a Face whom can PAWNCH faces off if negotiations go south to be a good asset), but he was a fun character. mauman fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Sep 29, 2017 |
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Sep 29, 2017 02:09
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citybeatnik posted:I now want to play a millionaire playboy Troll. Already been done; see the orange fathead. 
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Sep 29, 2017 02:45
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Troll Hugh Hefner rather than piss tape puppet.
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Sep 29, 2017 02:50
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mauman posted:Yes, it was not-optimized (though I'd argue a Face whom can PAWNCH faces off if negotiations go south to be a good asset), but he was a fun character. Well, that would be the difference between being a Powergamer and a "This Guy". We love "This Guy".
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Sep 29, 2017 07:50
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chiasaur11 posted:See, awful weapons nobody would take I understand easier, at least in an "ALL THE GUNS!" splatbook. It's the dystopian cyber-future, megacorps get into petty feuds, and the end result is that fancy government contract produces a gun more likely to kill the owner than the target. It's good to have somewhere in the pages.
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Sep 29, 2017 09:08
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Only shadowrun character I ever played was an elf necromancer possession mage who got rescued by another player's free spirit that rolled with us and had his own cult. We ended up being pretty good at kidnapping people, then the game ended after like three sessions.
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Sep 29, 2017 09:26
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Poil posted:Also the GM can use the shittier guns for opponents. Or if you are running a low power campaign, like the player group being a street gang.
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Sep 29, 2017 13:50
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Stroth posted:Generally speaking, any suit being worn by corporate security is, at the very least, made from bullet resistant fabric. And those robes are usually lined with ballistic plates.
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Oct 1, 2017 11:25
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CannonFodder posted:They can make body armor look good without making the mage look like a giant neon sign blinking "GEEK ME" Plenty of mages wear the same armored vests and lined coats that everyone else wears. Alternatively, wage mages often wear basic business suits. Shaman usually wear something more totem appropriate, but then again they much more rarely get office jobs. Coyote will not tolerate only getting an hour for lunch.
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Oct 2, 2017 03:04
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So do you ever have the opportunity to get a Panther Cannon in the game? One of my favorite P&P characters I ever had was a Giant (Scandinavian Troll, taller and lanker with no armor bonus but Reach and more strength) who happened to use a slightly modified Panther Cannor as a sniper rifle.
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Oct 2, 2017 03:35
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Deadmeat5150 posted:So do you ever have the opportunity to get a Panther Cannon in the game? One of my favorite P&P characters I ever had was a Giant (Scandinavian Troll, taller and lanker with no armor bonus but Reach and more strength) who happened to use a slightly modified Panther Cannor as a sniper rifle. I don't think so. Shadowrun Returns didn't have a lot of weapons. No snipers, pretty sure that there wasn't a minigun, certainly no cannons. There's an assortment of rifles, shotguns, pistols and SMGs. And a "special weapon", which is just a shotgun for all intents and purposes.
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Oct 2, 2017 03:51
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Deadmeat5150 posted:So do you ever have the opportunity to get a Panther Cannon in the game? One of my favorite P&P characters I ever had was a Giant (Scandinavian Troll, taller and lanker with no armor bonus but Reach and more strength) who happened to use a slightly modified Panther Cannor as a sniper rifle. Hong Kong (expansion)
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Oct 2, 2017 04:09
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painedforever posted:I don't think so. Edit: Apparently I was wrong when I tested it--thought Shotguns affected to-hit %, when it just affects critical chance. You'll still want an Really High Ranged Weapons skill though...and that's all I'll say for now. OAquinas fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Oct 3, 2017 |
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Oct 2, 2017 15:30
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Yeah, that sounds about right. I was really frustrated on my second playthrough because of that. And I don't even like shotguns. I knew I should've stuck to my guns, and gone either pistol or rifle (which I did on my third and first playthroughs respectively).
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Oct 2, 2017 17:19
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painedforever posted:The "special weapon" Which skill does it use? It doesn't use Pistols, otherwise I would have been much happier in my playthrough. (Well, as happy as a street sam who used revolvers for the higher damage and missed out on all the fun things pistols can do.)
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Oct 2, 2017 23:46
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Snorb posted:Which skill does it use? It doesn't use Pistols, otherwise I would have been much happier in my playthrough. (Well, as happy as a street sam who used revolvers for the higher damage and missed out on all the fun things pistols can do.) Shotguns.
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Oct 2, 2017 23:50
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Dunno if it's been mentioned or not, but someone ported all of Deadman's Switch into SR:HK, with a bunch of added content and updates. I've been playing it. Kinda interesting, though some of the additions thus far have been... odd. Plus, of course, brand new bugs to deal with.
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Oct 3, 2017 09:35
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