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OutofSight posted:Are "Corporate Shamans" established like corporate wage mages in the universe? Do they follow the "Sprit of Capitalism" or can the big animal totems like coyote or bear be reworked for the corporate environment? They exist, but not to the extent that Corporate Mages do. It depends on the Totem. For instance, you'd have to explain the mental gymnastics that would be required to convince me that a Dragonslayer Shaman would work for a major corp. Dog Shamans could be explained, as they embody loyalty.
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Nov 13, 2017 01:07
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"Shaman" is a general term that really doesn't apply in the later tabletop editions, but yeah, there are. Wuxing in particular has tons of magical firepower, complete with their own magical tradition/favored spirits/feng shui techniques. Wuxing corporate buildings tend to look like huge pillars of light to magical senses, because of the deliberate mage work built into them from the architectural level.
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Nov 13, 2017 01:50
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wiegieman posted:"Shaman" is a general term that really doesn't apply in the later tabletop editions, but yeah, there are. This hits on something that I've been wondering about with respect to time in the setting. When I played Shadowrun tabletop, it was 3rd edition. Most of the stuff that happens in the SRR games is set before the metaplot of 3rd edition, so the games have felt like they're... almost prequels to the "world" of SR that I know. So what the hell must these games' settings seem like to anyone who started in 4th or 5th, given how much time passed in the metaplot for those editions? (Also, why are there no shamans in later editions...?)
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Nov 13, 2017 01:57
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There are tons of shamans in the later editions. I think they're trying to say the distinction between mage and shaman doesn't matter as much mechanically. It's mostly a flavor thing.
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Nov 13, 2017 02:04
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In 5th edition, people with magic powers are classified in four ways: Both a respected Salish-Sidhe Council tribal shaman and a serious heavyweight corp mage would be Magicians. Magicians can assense, project, use sorcery, conjure up spirits, enchant, whatever. Aspected Magicians can use one of Sorcery, Conjuring, or Enchanting, and can perceive the astral but can't project into it. Adepts use their magic to increase their physical abilities and get a number of Power Points equal to their Magic stat to buy Adept Powers, which are always active and reflect their idealized self-image. Adepts can't astrally perceive without a specific power, and can never astrally project. Mystic Adepts are a cross between Adepts and full Magicians - they get both power points and spells, but they don't get PP for free like adepts do. MA's can only perceive if they buy the Adept power for it and can never astrally project, but they can summon spirits to do astral things for them so it's not the problem for them that it is for an Aspected Magician. MA's and Adepts can also get around the assensing problem by being dual-natured, which everyone infected with HMHVV is and many magical creatures like pixies are. In Returns, Shamans and Mages are separate skill trees, with Adepts being a sub-tree of the Mage tree.
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Nov 13, 2017 02:20
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wiegieman posted:In 5th edition, people with magic powers are classified in four ways: OK, I see now. That's how it is in 3rd with maybe some different terms. I thought you meant, like, in-setting something happened to make the distinction completely moot. But yeah for anyone who's never played the tabletop, the way the SRR games define shamans and mages is really weird from a TT perspective, where both used basically the same spells and both could summon spirits, although the kinds of spirits and the way they summoned them was the major mechanical difference. Like, the consumable items you can use to summon elementals is more or less how mages summon except it takes hours.
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Nov 13, 2017 02:28
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GunnerJ posted:OK, I see now. That's how it is in 3rd with maybe some different terms. I thought you meant, like, in-setting something happened to make the distinction completely moot. In 5th there is also a perk that magical characters (all 4 kinds) can take if they want called mentor spirit, or something similar to that. The mentor functions like a lite version of shaman totems in older editions, giving certain magical bonuses and penalties while also suggesting personality traits for RPing your character. wiegieman posted:In Returns, Shamans and Mages are separate skill trees, with Adepts being a sub-tree of the Mage tree. In Returns all three are seperate skill lines. Adepts and Mages are both subbed to willpower, but they are independent of each other.
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Nov 13, 2017 02:52
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I dont know posted:In Returns all three are seperate skill lines. Adepts and Mages are both subbed to willpower, but they are independent of each other. Yeah, that. Adepts aren't very good until Hong Kong.
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Nov 13, 2017 02:59
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paragon1 posted:Hogwarts, brought to you by Mitsuhama Computer TechnologiesTM! Ah Mitsuhama, the Yakuza front company and money laundering operation that was so successful and profitable that it eventually became a megacorp, and one of the heavy hitters when it comes to tech and magic, and like number 2 or 3 in the Japanocorps after Shiawase and maybe Renraku. GhostStalker fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Nov 13, 2017 |
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Nov 13, 2017 03:33
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GhostStalker posted:Ah Mitsuhama, the Yakuza front company and money laundering operation that was so successful and profitable that it eventually became a megacorp, and one of the heavy hitters when it comes to tech and magic. They really only keep the Yakuza stuff going out of inertia, and to occasionally have another way to send goons after people or do other illegal things.
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Nov 13, 2017 03:35
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GhostStalker posted:Ah Mitsuhama, the Yakuza front company and money laundering operation that was so successful and profitable that it eventually became a megacorp, and one of the heavy hitters when it comes to tech and magic, and like number 2 or 3 in the Japanocorps after Shiawase and maybe Renraku. I'm pretty sure Mitsuhama has been the largest and most powerful of the three for most of their respective histories. It certainly has been for all of 4th and 5th edition. In fact, Mitsuhama has recently in 5e has overtaken Saeder-Krupp as #1. Lofwyr is pissed.
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Nov 13, 2017 03:46
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wiegieman posted:Yeah, that. Adepts aren't very good until Hong Kong. Y'know, I've heard about that. Apparently, they've been fixing Adepts in each of the games so that they're a viable build, but apparently going samurai/rigger is better for combat in the first one, and samurai or mage is better in Dragonfall? What's the dealio with Adepts anyway?
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Nov 13, 2017 04:10
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painedforever posted:Y'know, I've heard about that. Apparently, they've been fixing Adepts in each of the games so that they're a viable build, but apparently going samurai/rigger is better for combat in the first one, and samurai or mage is better in Dragonfall? What's the dealio with Adepts anyway? The main problem is that they have an untenable skill spread. Most classes have a main attribute, splash a few points in a second or tertiary attribute, and then pick 2-3 skill lines. Adepts need high strength for melee damage, quickness for evasion, body for health (they need to spend a lot on defensive stats since they are out of cover most of the time), will for their powers set, and then the adept powers themselves. They simply don't get enough karma. Add to this that, especially in Returns, adept powers are really underwhelming, the aforementioned class design means they are out of cover, have to spend precious ap just moving around, and you have an all around lovely class. I still beat the hardest difficulty with one, since they were my favorite in the TT, but they have some problems.
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Nov 13, 2017 04:28
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painedforever posted:Y'know, I've heard about that. Apparently, they've been fixing Adepts in each of the games so that they're a viable build, but apparently going samurai/rigger is better for combat in the first one, and samurai or mage is better in Dragonfall? What's the dealio with Adepts anyway? You have to spread your points out, and the abilities you get from Chi Casting aren't worth it in the early games. In Hong Kong there are magic weapons (with cool names!) and adept powers that are both passive and active.
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Nov 13, 2017 04:46
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I felt that playing Returns as a Troll who just punched people was more effective than trying to buy Adept powers. And more fun.
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Nov 13, 2017 04:49
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wiegieman posted:You have to spread your points out, and the abilities you get from Chi Casting aren't worth it in the early games. In Hong Kong there are magic weapons (with cool names!) and adept powers that are both passive and active. I dont know posted:The main problem is that they have an untenable skill spread. Most classes have a main attribute, splash a few points in a second or tertiary attribute, and then pick 2-3 skill lines. Adepts need high strength for melee damage, quickness for evasion, body for health (they need to spend a lot on defensive stats since they are out of cover most of the time), will for their powers set, and then the adept powers themselves. They simply don't get enough karma. Add to this that, especially in Returns, adept powers are really underwhelming, the aforementioned class design means they are out of cover, have to spend precious ap just moving around, and you have an all around lovely class. So they're monks from D&D 3.5, eh? Dex for AC and to-hit (if you get Finesse), Wis for AC, Con for HP, splash of Int for skills, and ideally non-negative Str for damage. About the only thing you don't need is Cha. Sounds horrible, but they're at least fun to play, right? Aren't they? I can see why they'd be underpowered. I think you could get away with a ranged samurai with low dodge if you take rifles and just full-burst anything that tries to close on you.
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Nov 13, 2017 05:36
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wiegieman posted:Wuxing corporate buildings tend to look like huge pillars of light to magical senses, because of the deliberate mage work built into them from the architectural level. There's a great mission in Hong Kong against Wuxing that's literally just "Hey, go gently caress up their feng shui". So you have to break into a heavily secured corporate office to adjust the cubical dividers three inches to the left and poke tiny holes in the pipes in the bathroom. God drat I want to see that kind of mission played out on tabletop..
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Nov 13, 2017 07:11
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wiegieman posted:Wuxing in particular has tons of magical firepower, complete with their own magical tradition/favored spirits/feng shui techniques. Wuxing corporate buildings tend to look like huge pillars of light to magical senses, because of the deliberate mage work built into them from the architectural level. Stroth posted:There's a great mission in Hong Kong against Wuxing that's literally just "Hey, go gently caress up their feng shui". So you have to break into a heavily secured corporate office to adjust the cubical dividers three inches to the left and poke tiny holes in the pipes in the bathroom. God drat I want to see that kind of mission played out on tabletop.. You've heard of "spite houses"? Wuxing and their rivals build entire spite-skyscrapers to gently caress up each other's carefully crafted feng shui. The feng-shui-focused magic surrounding Wuxing's headquarters is so intense that the astral plane around the building sometimes becomes visible to mundane senses.
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Nov 13, 2017 09:08
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painedforever posted:So they're monks from D&D 3.5, eh? Dex for AC and to-hit (if you get Finesse), Wis for AC, Con for HP, splash of Int for skills, and ideally non-negative Str for damage. About the only thing you don't need is Cha. Oh and pen and paper has these magical traditions to pick from: Aboriginal Aztec Black Magic Buddhism Chaos Magic Christian Theurgy Druid Egyptian Hermetic Hinduism Islam Norse Path of the Wheel Psionic Qabbalism Shaman Shinto Sioux Vodou Vicca Wuxing Zoroastrianism
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Nov 13, 2017 11:49
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So the wuxing adept is basically Goku?
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Nov 13, 2017 12:46
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Coward posted:I felt that playing Returns as a Troll who just punched people was more effective than trying to buy Adept powers. And more fun. I did Dragonfall as a Troll Adept who just punched people. Admittedly having a better unarmed skill and cyberware might have gone further, mostly I think used the armour power and the fact that being punched makes someone stand up and be 'out of cover'
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Nov 13, 2017 13:46
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The "aggressively redecorate to gently caress up their feng shui" is exactly the kind of fantastically mundane thing I love in my RPGs. Also disappointed that tradition list mentions Christian and Islamic traditions but not Jewish mysticism. Want to play a Nazarite 
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Nov 13, 2017 16:20
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Soylent Pudding posted:The "aggressively redecorate to gently caress up their feng shui" is exactly the kind of fantastically mundane thing I love in my RPGs. Also disappointed that tradition list mentions Christian and Islamic traditions but not Jewish mysticism. Want to play a Nazarite ...They did. It's spelled Qabbalism.
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Nov 13, 2017 16:25
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Oops. I looked right at it and didn't grok that it was supposed to be Kabbalah.
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Nov 13, 2017 16:57
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Tylana posted:I did Dragonfall as a Troll Adept who just punched people. Admittedly having a better unarmed skill and cyberware might have gone further, mostly I think used the armour power and the fact that being punched makes someone stand up and be 'out of cover' Punching people out of cover is the best reason to have someone on your team who specializes in punching. It's extremely useful. Flanking enemies and punching them forces them to keep repositioning, usually to your ranged characters' benefit 
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Nov 13, 2017 18:13
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I had the urge to play to SR:R on the weekend and encountered some things not covered in the LP. You can get a final bit of fluff dialogue with Mrs. Kubota during "The Union" part between the Universal Brotherhood and the Telestrian run (covered in Part 23) You have to meet with Baron Samedi in the matrix and then go up to the main bar again instead of setting up the next runs in the runner basement. Mrs. Kubota stands near the entrance and talks about how the Seamstress Union might be threatened because bureaucracy wants to cut the power grid for touristville. There is a jackpoint in the "Corporate Extraction" run (part 24) before the big room with the mage. But you can only interact with it after opening the door. You get a small matrix fight section and can activate the turret on the far side of the room. Quite useful if you have to flee from a certain herd of basilisks. Kanfy posted:I did cover the second one though, we just never used it since we didn't need to. Or i just can't read. Although it is still interesting, that this point is quite "buggy" only getting active with the door open. And you can then miss out snarking at Mr. corp mage. The dialogue trigger bugs out when he tries to rush you out of his room, while you are still busy hacking. OutofSight fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Nov 13, 2017 |
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Nov 13, 2017 18:51
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OutofSight posted:I had the urge to play to SR:R on the weekend and encountered some things not covered in the LP. You're right about that first one, I must've missed that since I didn't think to run all the way back to the entrance to check with her afterwards. Good catch. I did cover the second one though, we just never used it since we didn't need to. Kanfy posted:
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Nov 13, 2017 19:05
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Soylent Pudding posted:Oops. I looked right at it and didn't grok that it was supposed to be Kabbalah. As I recall that tradition is split between actual Orthodox Jewish people and the Hollywood spiritualist cult/Oliver Crowley thing.
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Nov 13, 2017 20:03
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painedforever posted:Y'know, I've heard about that. Apparently, they've been fixing Adepts in each of the games so that they're a viable build, but apparently going samurai/rigger is better for combat in the first one, and samurai or mage is better in Dragonfall? What's the dealio with Adepts anyway? Adepts require multiple attribute pickups in a game where karma is precious, and their powers cost money to buy anyways despite being not that great compared to cyberware. Dragonfall makes them a little better by giving them passives, and then Hong Kong has Cyber-Affinity which helps because you can mitigate having to spread your karma around by taking an essence worth of bioware. Muscle Augmentation is +1 Str/+1 Quickness for all of 0.25 Essence, so you can get 2 installations of the stuff and still have more room for some bioware, giving you +2 Str/+2 QN for a relatively low cost (6 karma plus a little bit of money you can easily have by being frugal with your purchases and not upgrading too many times).
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Nov 15, 2017 01:17
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wiegieman posted:They really only keep the Yakuza stuff going out of inertia, and to occasionally have another way to send goons after people or do other illegal things. Why would you even need to pretend at that point? You've got extraterritoriality on your own property, so you do whatever you want there. And outside of that, sending a corp kill team after people is just normal business when you're AAA.
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Nov 15, 2017 02:39
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Tradition, probably.
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Nov 15, 2017 02:43
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Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:Why would you even need to pretend at that point? You've got extraterritoriality on your own property, so you do whatever you want there. And outside of that, sending a corp kill team after people is just normal business when you're AAA. this is explicitly called out. a trillion-nuyen company is under no obligation to stick its neck out for a million-nuyen crime syndicate, and doesn't. that said, the connections are there, and occasionally the son who has outgrown his parent tosses the old man some work out of pity.
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Nov 15, 2017 02:44
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PMush Perfect posted:Tradition, probably. Also, goodwill/reputation, I guess? Something really interesting about Japan is how because there are so few lawyers in Japan, the Yakuza have often acted as a 'shadow' civil dispute resolution system, i.e. the guys you go to if your neighbor is refusing to pay you back money or is playing their music real loud at midnight. If it costs little-to-nothing to keep the Yakuza and their rep around, it's pretty useful to know the word on the street (and also, have the dispute resolution system in your pocket).
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Nov 15, 2017 02:49
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don't tell anyone: this is also how literally every gang in history, in every country on the face of the planet, functions. gangs that don't watch their local PR get sold out real fast to authorities, whether that authority's legal or just the gang the next street over. taking care of Jimmy's ma while he's in lock-up does more to keep Jimmy and his ma's mouth shut about what you're up to than any amount of threats could.
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Nov 15, 2017 02:55
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Ze Pollack posted:taking care of Jimmy's ma while he's in lock-up does more to keep Jimmy and his ma's mouth shut about what you're up to than any amount of threats could. I mean, wouldn't there also be the implicit threat of "We know who your mom is and where she lives" to that situation?
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Nov 15, 2017 03:08
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Alacron posted:I mean, wouldn't there also be the implicit threat of "We know who your mom is and where she lives" to that situation? oh, absolutely! getting to be the local justice system gives you all kinds of power, both soft and hard. but you kill jimmy's mom because you're worried jimmy's gonna talk, jimmy's buddies are gonna have them crises of conscience in a hurry, you've suddenly got a bunch more people who might be willing to talk, you gotta do something about them, etc, etc, this road heads direct to the time honored going-out-of-business strategy Kill Everyone Who Has Gotten Mad About The Killing Everyone.
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Nov 15, 2017 03:16
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Am I the only person who just made up his own tradition when playing Shadowrun tabletop? In hindsight I suspect I was not supposed to get a possession tradition that summoned shadow spirits, but hey, necromancer.
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Nov 15, 2017 06:41
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paragon1 posted:I'm pretty sure Mitsuhama has been the largest and most powerful of the three for most of their respective histories. It certainly has been for all of 4th and 5th edition. Huh, that shows me how much I've been keeping track of the rankings of the Japanacorps. I always thought Shiawase and Renraku were ranked higher, but I guess that was just bias on my part and forgetting to take into account the Arcology shutdown for the latter. I always thought Mitsuhama was lower than the others, and their low rep in the Shadow community was due to their usual heavy handed tactics in resource extraction, including metahuman resources, their utter lack of ethics when it comes to R&D even more so than other megacorps, and their Zero Zone security policy. Guess I need to read Market Panic and get more info on the current goings on of the Big Ten.
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Nov 15, 2017 06:56
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Am I the only person who just made up his own tradition when playing Shadowrun tabletop?
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Nov 15, 2017 12:32
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Am I the only person who just made up his own tradition when playing Shadowrun tabletop? For the former, absolutely not, happens all the time. For the latter, your GM is a massive softy if they don't have loads of people trying to either kill your character or capture them for study.
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Nov 15, 2017 20:28
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