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I'm planning to start a Shadowrun game soon and it'll be mostly fresh players who will be surprised to see the Johnson gently caress them over instead of assuming it will happen. I've been reading some modules for inspiration on some easy early runs, starting with First Run. It's 3E, but whatever, Sshadowrun 3e is very easy to convert. The first module is the classic Food Fight module. You can't go wrong there. The second module is called Supernova. The penultimate fight involves the PCs going head to head with 10 Renraku Red Samurai and a cyberzombie. The 8 gunners are in full combat armor with assault rifles, 4d6+7 init, tricked-out cybereyes so the PCs can't pull any vision-based shenanigans, and their attribute+skill is 12 for anything they want to do. The two Magicians are of similar caliber. Then there's a loving CYBERZOMBIE. To make matters worse, they suggest for the sake of book keeping to just have each type (gunners/magicians/cyberzombie) act on the same init, so all 8 Red Samurai are just going to shred the group all at once whenever their init comes up, which could possibly be 'before the PCs'. How the gently caress is that an appropriate encounter for a group of starting-level runners? Gobbeldygook fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Dec 3, 2009 |
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Dec 3, 2009 15:35
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The setup is that they're going to a meet in an empty warehouse district. The person they're meeting's car crashes at the location because they are dead. The 8 guys with guns drop down from sneaky helicopters, then two mages and the three-armed cyberzombie show up in a van. The module explicitly notes that there's no cover from doorways although the roofs of the nearby buildings are accessible. Both side's goal is to grab a briefcase from the car and get out. I can totally think of ways to pull it off, but again, this is supposedly aimed at people who are rolling init for the second time ever. Although, it's arguable that being wiped out would be as good a lesson as any. The GM notes say that if it looks like they're getting wiped out, let it happen. Just have DocWagon show up and peel them off the pavement when it's over.
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Dec 3, 2009 16:14
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In terms of non-SR novels, Snowcrash. End. For SR novels, depends on what you think is "Shadowrun". Some people think the fantasy elements (immortal elves, dragons, The Horrors) are what sets Shadowrun apart from generic cyberpunk. Those people like the Dragonheart trilogy and Never Trust An Elf. If you're looking for something more like most Shadowrun games, you're looking for 2XS, the Secrets of Power trilogy, and Wolf and Raven.
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Dec 6, 2009 02:52
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In the standard rules, hacking a target requires both of you be capable of transmitting to each other. If your devices have a signal of 0, any hacker needs to get within 3 meters of you to hack you. Even if he does get that close, you can just have everything slaved to your commlink that is set to Hidden mode. In order to hack your cyberware, he has to first spoof your Access ID. As your node is hidden, the hacker gets to try rolling 15+ successes on an Electronic Warfare+Scan test (page 225 of core). Then even if the hacker detects the node, they have to succeed at a Matrix Perception test (3) vs the targets firewall+stealth in order to see the target. The hacker has now spent about a dozen actions within 3 meters of his target just to try and find the hidden commlink. God help him if the person is crafty enough to carry multiple commlinks set to Hidden mode. Even if the hacker finally finds your node, now he has to actually hack into your node that will automagically be defending itself. The hacker gets to make an extended hacking+exploit tests with a threshold of your (firewall) +6 because you are not retarded and will have your node setup to require Admin access to do anything. Every time he rolls his dice, you get to roll analyze+firewall. If your node accumulates successes equal to the hackers Stealth, you now know someone within 10 feet of you is trying to HACK YOUR GIBSON. You can just start shooting people OR you can have your node just restart. There also a variety of citations for being able to just tell all hackers to gently caress off. Page 223 of the core rules suggests a node can just refuse all outside connections.
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Dec 9, 2009 02:24
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Tias posted:He tracks people by spies by going astral, then materializes and fires off manabolts and stunbolts at villains like it ain't no thing. Drain is a neglible concern, and in his astral state he can ignore firearms, drones and what I can level against him. The only thing I could use against him would be spirits and mage adversaries, but I don't want to focus solely on magical threats against the group. You're not allowed to cast spells on purely physical targets when you're astrally projecting. No, not even if you're manifesting (which is not the same as materializing). You can target astrally active entities so you can kill their hellhounds and whatnot, but you absolutely cannot breach the astral barrier. Yes, the rules in 4e are less than clear on this point, but that is the authorial intent in 4e and how it has worked in every previous edition.
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Jan 4, 2010 22:32
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I disagree with the companion love. Many of the qualities are just repackages of existing qualities. e.g. Made Man is just an 8-point connection with Day Job and a bonus to fencing. All of those already exist, this just packages it for easy addition to a character. Some of them are definitely good and this is unfortunately the highlight of the book. The lifestyle customization is retarded. They've locked down the levels vs earlier editions, leaving the only real use being min/maxing for a few extra nuyen a month because your character has no furniture. The various lifestyle qualities take up far too much storytelling time relative to their cost. Many of the custom races are unplayable. For example, centaur are fundamentally unplayable because horses cannot pivot in a five-foot area. Of those that are technically playable, many of them are throwbacks to the design of earlier editions when their cost had nothing to do with play balance and everything to do with actively discouraging you from choosing metatypes. I will give them that the contacts section is interesting and innovative.
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Feb 8, 2010 15:12
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Remember that Shadowrun isn't like D&D. If you decide at chargen you want to be loving Awesome at any given task, you can be loving Awesome at that, whether it be driving cars, sniping, or sneaking around. At that one task, you will be the equal of every Prime Runner. As you get more experienced/get more nuyen/, what you actually gain is flexibility. Your sniper is now just as good at hacking maglocks, reattach arms, and kung-fu kicking people in the face as he is at sniping. So if you give people more BP/nuyen to start, all you're doing is increasing their flexibility. On that note, I recommend cutting the price of skills in half; they're really overpriced relative to attributes. Here's a list of fundamental tasks most Shadowrun groups should be expected to be able to pull off. If your PCs can't do one of them, make a mental note to introduce someone to them that can. Cast Healing Magic. Use a Medkit. Kill Things. Operate heavy machinery. Stealthfully enter restricted areas. Fast talk themselves into restricted areas. Successfully fight a force 8 spirit by themselves. Spy magically. Spy electronically. Spy optically. Control escape routes with their mind. Collect information from the Matrix. Track down restricted equipment. Bypass doors. Destroy entire installations. Triangle Button cars. Smuggle PCs into/out of various countries. I highly recommend keeping hackers as NPCs for your first game. The hacking rules are as complex as everything else in the system combined. As NPCs, you can just have them do 'hacker stuff' when the group needs someone to do 'hacker stuff' vs OH GOD SO MANY DICE SO MANY RULES HEEEEEEEEEEELP.
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Feb 18, 2010 18:30
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Fenarisk posted:Maybe I'm just spoiled by some more streamlined systems but I'd absolutely love if they ever do a new edition where a lot of the rules are simplified (and maybe they are as much as possible already, never played before 4e) and total dice pools are cut down by 25%. As it is a lot of other systems (most notably Savage Worlds) have huge conversion communities for Shadowrun. The rules are greatly simplified and streamlined from earlier editions. The hacking rules are an order of magnitude better than they used to be, yet are still a hideous abomination against God. Yes, there are more dice in SR4 than SR3, but it's much faster than it used to be. In previous editions, all the numbers mattered and 6's were rerolled until you stopped rolling 6's, so when you rolled something you'd say to the game master "Ok, I got two threes, a four, two fives, and a 9", vs now you just say "Three hits". I don't know why you'd convert Shadowrun to another system, especially a generic piece of poo poo like Savage Worlds. SR4's system is great.
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Feb 18, 2010 21:33
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lockdar posted:Has anyone ever tried running the premade missions? Haven't take a look at them but are they worth it? I haven't really looked at any of the SR4 missions, but the main issues with the older missions (they're pretty easy to convert) are: a. They almost always assume you have a decker and often a magician. This isn't a serious problem, but make sure you understand what they intended the decker to do. For example, in the module Paradise Lost it's important because there are so freaking many maglocks everywhere that you need the decker to open them all up at once through the Matrix if you don't want to die of boredom hacking them open one by one. b. The combat is often tuned for large, paranoid, and well-equipped groups. This is something you just have to learn to eyeball. Just watch out if the module suggests taking on a dozen cybered up enemies that throw around grenades loaded with nerve gas like candy. c. There are sometimes hilariously huge oversights in the design. In one I just finished reading, the run is a two parter. In part 1, the group inserts someone into a highly secure facility. In part 2, they're sent back in to extract the same target but the twist is that the target is no longer at the facility. They're actually back chilling in their apartment where they first met the target. The point of part 2 is for the group to break in and clear an empty facility room by room until they find evidence that the target is gone. Your group can skip that entire segment and an extremely lethal ambush if they come up with checking her apartment for a ritual sample. d. Sometimes the motivations for the runs only make sense to the writers. One SR4 module I read opened with a PC being raped. The intent was that the Johnson was going to kill their unborn child unless they did as she demanded. I don't know about your groups, but most of my players would say "Sure, have fun with my kid." then kill the Johnson at the earliest opportunity.
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Feb 19, 2010 19:57
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Angry Diplomat posted:What the gently caress, tell me this wasn't an officially sanctioned module It was called Zero Sum Gain and was written for an RPG version of NaNoWriMo by Ancient History aka Robert/Bobby Derie. It's here (PDF) if you're interested. He has a credit on most of the SR4 books. Personally, I find his incoherent philosophy on game balance far more offensive than that module.
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Feb 19, 2010 23:27
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Zereth posted:Tell me where I can learn more about this philosphy. The party line from him on why the metavariants in the SR Companion are mechanically a kick in the balls (they almost all cost more BP than just buying up the traits individually) is that being unique should have a cost. Yet just a few pages away are the Changeling qualities where you can get paid BP for 'flaws' like "My eyes are purple". Given that he is credited for both sections, the only explanation is that he does not read or think about anything he writes. I can just not run a bad module he writes. It doesn't need to happen or exist in my world. On the other hand, I have to deal with whatever bad mechanics he or any other logic-challenged writer comes up with because the assumption is that a GM plays with the rules as written unless he says otherwise.
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Feb 20, 2010 05:06
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Mystic Mongol posted:Aww. However, some of the stuff in arsenal is questionable e.g. form-fitting body armor made a return and it's just as retarded as in previous editions.
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Feb 24, 2010 07:53
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angrylinuxgeek posted:They're not well laid out and can be much too complex at times. Dice pools get really big for things people want to be good at, making it almost impossible to fail against even the hardest odds. If you're used to great games like 4E, SR4 is a bit of a letdown in the rules department. They really could use a lot of streamlining. If you think it is 'almost impossible to fail against even the hardest odds', you're not pushing your players enough.  The point of having giant dice pools is that you still have a chance even when the deck is horribly stacked against you, whereas lesser-skilled people can only perform those tasks under good conditions. An ok doctor can stabilize someone when you're back at his safehouse with your clinic. A Shadowrunner can try to stabilize you in the back of a jeap in the middle of a monsoon in the Thailand rain forest with no tools but his teeth and the clothes on your back. If you're that Shadowrunner doc in his clinic, just use the rules for buying successes. That's what they're there for.For me, the real offender for "WHY ARE YOU LAID OUT THIS WAY" is spirits. Why are the statblocks for spirits hidden away in the Critters section? The rules aren't particularly complex, just spirits are much, much better than you probably think they are at first glance. --- Rant time: One of my players wants to play a troll with the Augmentation Addict weakness. I fully support him in this endeavor. Obviously, no such character is complete without some cyberlimbs! The problem is that the rules for them are insane. Here's the relevant section. quote:Critical George has Body 3, Strength 4, and Agility 2. He has a cybertorso with a Body 6, Strength 5, and Agility 3, a left cyberarm with Body 3, Strength 7, Agility 3, and a left cyberleg with Body 5, Strength 3, and Agility 3. If he punches someone in the face with his left arm, he uses Agility 3 on the attack test and Strength 7 for calculating his damage. If he wants to run down a hallway—requiring careful coordination of both legs—he makes his Running + Strength Test using the lower Strength of 3. If he gets shot, however, he uses the average value of his Body attributes, rounded down—in this case, 4. Let's get this straight: Running takes a great deal of careful coordination of all your limbs, but hand to hand combat, oh no that's easy to do one handed. What the gently caress do they think a fist fight is like? Do they think it's two guys standing there like Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, extending and retracting their arms? This insanity screws over my player because he now also needs a customized cybertorso unless he wants adding cyberlimbs to actually make him mechanically worse in every way. I cannot come up with any interpretation of their rules that makes (logical or internal) sense and doesn't screw over any attempt to use cyberlimbs, so I'm leaning towards just embracing the madness: You have two cyberlegs? Awesome, you can run really fast! You have a super-strong cyber arm? Awesome, you're better at punching the poo poo out of people, maybe at a small attack penalty because you're so strongly favoring one arm. You do not need an augmented cybertorso to benefit from this.
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Feb 24, 2010 21:19
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Young Freud posted:The unarmed combat rules are ridiculously retarded. Melee combat has always been downplayed in Shadowrun. The melee rules usually take up 1-2 pages while ranged combat rules take up a shitload. The advantage to unarmed has always been that you can can bring your unarmed combat skills anywhere, whereas the gun bunny often has to check his stuff at the door. An unarmed combatant is still viable, however. There's no cap on how many times you can buy Critical Strike. You can easily afford to buy it 8+ times, allowing your adept's fist to consistently hit as hard as a sniper rifle. Melee combatants are somewhat sketchier; the monofilament whip tends to overshadow all other weapons because of its concealability and that you can use strength as a dump stat. quote:This got addressed in Augmentation, where they basically said "Cyberlimb rules are retarded; here are some better ones." Among other things, they introduced "custom" cyberlimbs, which were something like pay 500 and presto, it now has the same stats as the rest of your body so screw all this averaging nonsense (it also meant trolls no longer irrevocably cripple themselves by taking them).
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Feb 24, 2010 22:27
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Young Freud posted:CGL has released a statement: quote:However, I will state that on Monday, March 15th, I resigned from working as CGL's bookkeeper and office manager, due to a conflict involving my personal ethics. The Operations Manager resigned the week before that, for similar personal reasons. I have been told that Adam Jury, our Layout Guru and Overall Awesome Guy, resigned as well. People don't resign from jobs in a recession for ethical reasons unless they have very good reasons. The real telling point is Adam Jury resigning. Here's what he had to say on his website: quote:Shadowrun fans: thanks for years and years of fun and feistyness. Last year, when Jason Hardy took over as Shadowrun Line Developer, I told him simply: “If you kill the one thing I’ve loved my entire adult life, I will kill you.” As of today, you’re off the hook no matter what, Jase.
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Mar 17, 2010 16:33
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I just started a new SR game with three newbies, one old-hand, and one irregular old-hand. The hardest part is just getting everyone on the same page. Right now, I'm pretty liberal about asking people to make rolls in order to pass along stuff their character Ought To Know but their player doesn't yet, along with some old-fashioned leading questions. The worst example so far was when they were offered 300k to split, plus a rating 6 fake SIN with appropriate licenses for them, plus 5k nuyen attached to each SIN, plus air travel and accommodations at a five-star hotel in Hawaii, and it was indicated to one of the runners by his 6/5 contact that he would consider doing this run to be a personal favor to him. They turned it down because they were only offered 50k up front and after the face failed the negotiation roll, the Johnson pointed out they were getting 5k each from each SIN, so she cut the up-front fee down to 30k. They had some other runs available, so they ended up going for a run where the final payout would be 35k. Nothing up front, but they talked the Johnson into coughing up 10k. They ended up deciding the Johnson was a bit of a dick and target was a really nice gal, so they went to the target and asked her to match his price. She had no money, but she did have some sex drones and a rocket launcher. After some debate, they settled on giving the guy his money back, leaving, then coming back in an hour to kill him and take all his money.
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Mar 22, 2010 01:48
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The only problem with any adept powers, core or SM, is that many of them are ludicrously overpriced because no-one thought to update the prices from 3e->4e despite the value of a PP changing dramatically. In earlier editions, you got 6 PP just for writing 'adept' on your sheet whereas now you have to cough up 10 BP per PP up to 5. Spirits are kind of absurd by default for the exact same reason. Except Commanding Voice. That power's kind of awesome.
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Mar 22, 2010 16:35
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Young Freud posted:FASA/WizKids/Catalyst have no loving concept of scale. Another example is that the various races had heights and weights seemingly randomly assigned before SR4. This led to trolls actually having body mass indexes comparable to terminal anorexics. That's why they gained a shitload of weight from sr3 to sr4. Anyway, the Renraku arcology probably really is that large, but maybe in a slightly different location. After all, it's supposed to house 100k people in style.
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Apr 7, 2010 17:26
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For those not keeping up at home, here's what's going on at Catalyst: As was mentioned earlier, the owner of the company, Loren L. Coleman, was accused of stealing from the company to the tune of 650k. The former book keeper and freelancer, Jennifer Harding, says: quote:To be even more blunt, I quit when, after being informed of the request by Loren to falsify royalty reports, Randall Bills stated that Loren was the best person to carry on all negotiations with Topps, the SR/BT license holder. I found this decision even more upsetting to my personal ethics than the original request, since I had been assured by Randall that certain behaviors were going to be halted, and they were (blatantly) not. The company had just not been paying royalties to other companies at all and they were lying to Topps about it. A 'repayment plan' was being implemented by Loren, his wife Heather, the operations manager, and the book keeper. The operations manager and the bookkeeper both resigned, meaning the Coleman's are currently in charge of their own plan to pay back the 650k they stole and used to build a mansion in Snohomish, Washington. I'm sure they are doing an excellent job. Tthey now have 5 lawyers on retainer for when someone finally sues them. One of the other freelancers, Bobby Derie aka Ancient History, decided he was no longer going to deal with them and terminated his contract because they had owed him several thousand dollars. Loren hired writers from Battletech to rewrite the portions of the books Bobby wrote (Sixth World Almanac, Corporate Something (the book about the status of every corporation), and Runners Toolkit). Several others are also supposedly playing hardball with catalyst to a quieter degree, notably the book keeper who never signed an NDA because Catalyst is run by monkeys. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. In 1.5 months, they need to find the money to renew the Shadowrun license with Topps. If they don't, the company loses its license to print SR material, declares bankruptcy, and someone else snaps up the license. This exact same set of circumstances is how Fanpro died and Catalyst came to be. The new company will probably do its best to pay freelancers for the material they have already written but not published, publish that, then it'll start work on 5th edition.
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Apr 9, 2010 08:19
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Young Freud posted:I so hope whoever picks up the license doesn't release a 5th edition book. CGL simply put their name on the FanPro books, so I would like that situation. However, if it's the 20th Anniversary edition rebranded as 5th edition, I wouldn't mind that. I really don't want to rebuy the core and the Cyber, Magic, Rigger, and Weapons books again. Chances are 5th edition will be more like 3rd than 4th in terms of degree of change. 3rd edition material is so close to 2nd as to be interchangeable, whereas 4th edition material is incomprehensible gobbledygook vs 3rd. You'll probably be able to keep using the books you have with 5th as long as you remember the random gotcha changes they introduce.
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Apr 11, 2010 06:52
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404GoonNotFound posted:Honestly, apart from PC AIs being feeble to the point of being almost unplayable, I don't have any real problems with 4e. 6th world almanac is one of the books currently being partially rewritten by BattleTech writers because one of the writers of the Almanac said "gently caress you, I'm not even going to let you pretend you'll pay me some day." There's a non-trivial chance it will disappear down the same rabbit hole as Shadows of Latin America (note: That was specifically Steve Kenson's fault, not Fanpro).
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Apr 11, 2010 08:14
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Mage Ham posted:I'm legitimately curious why that should be the case re: runner's companion. Let's be clear: Runner's Companion sucks for reasons unrelated to shaking our fists at FURRRIES! It sucks because the writers suck. Let's start with the various metavariants. With one exception, every single one of them costs more BP than just buying up how that metatype is different with the SURGE rules in the companion, except you pay a premium. The explicit authorial intent is that this is a tax for being unique - except that's the exact opposite of how it works in the rest of the book. In the SURGE section, you are PAID points for having weird hair, a useless tail, etc. In the negative qualities section, there's a whole big discussion on how a 'distinctive style' is a negative downside and what that constitutes. It makes you wonder if anyone read the book before publication. So how about the other options? AI and free spirits are just completely worthless. In the case of free spirits, you contribute absolutely nothing to the group if there's already a magician who can summon spirits unless you're able to find some singular, freakishly-useful spell skill that leaves you as the ultimate one-trick pony. AI are simply non-functional in play. Dragons are not particularly good, but it's possible to take advantage of the writers' lovely, lovely design. You can buy the Latent Draconic Awakening quality for 5 BP, which magically turns into 120 karma worth of goodies at some point in the campaign. Unfortunately, you have to PAY for those goodies after you get them, so it really means you just don't get any karma for the rest of the campaign. This is great if it's fairly close to the end of the campaign since it means you get Real Ultimate Power for a while. The rest of the options are this bad or worse for PCs.
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May 5, 2010 07:49
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Nick Buntline posted:Are the options really that bad? I admit I haven't spent much time with them, but the time I did spend involved statting a Drake Adept for a friend's oneshot, and the 65BP cost certainly seemed balanced for something that gives flight, a magic breath weapon, an inherently dual-natured Assault Cannon-class physical attack, and so forth. And shapeshifters IIRC get that ridiculous super-regeneration that as far as I know isn't replicable anywhere else and so would pretty much be worth any number of BP. The bonuses aren't even that good. In drake form, you're barely equivalent to a typical street samurai in terms of 'soaking up punishment' because you can't wear standard body armor and are stuck with just the +4 impact/ballistic from Hardened Armor and optimistically +4 body if you're a Common Drake. Flying is not a big deal because almost all of your meaningful opposition will have guns that they can shoot you with while you can annoy them with your breath (or incapacitate if you smartly picked Electricity for your breath type, or maybe not breath on them at all because your breath attack takes a separate skill). You can't use it to scout because you're a drake - Half the point of scouting is ruined if you're a gigantic flying lizard that everyone points and gapes at. Being really good at punching people in the face (or clawing them, as in this case) just isn't a very big deal in a metagame where physical adept gun bunnys routinely throw around 16+ dice pools twice per turn with base DVs of 9+. As for the regeneration possessed by others, it's very much a double-edged sword. It's an awesome ability, for sure, but being completely locked out of the cyberware/bioware game until you're able to acquire and afford deltaware is harsh. It can also be very weak depending on how your GM interprets the rules regarding called shots. quote:(Even more so if you are a prick about it and just go out and get infected after creation, which takes no effort at all for some types.) Any set of rules where the only possible use in play is in abusive edge cases is useless. All it results in is people who really like the flavor being disappointed at being useless in play and a handful of people furiously masturbating over OH OH OH OH OH GOD 14 STRENGTH OH BABY.
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May 9, 2010 12:50
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PunkBoy posted:Any comments/suggestions? Also, is there anything else I should look out for? I'm not sure what's up with Catlyst these days, so I'm afraid I'm going to miss out of something for good. First, do not buy any new books for the foreseeable future. When you buy books from Catalyst, you are putting money in the pockets of thieves. None of the people with creative input on the books will ever see any of your money. Buy used. I no longer recommend trying to run any SR modules at all, or even using them as significant inspiration. Their only use is as joke books. Every single one of them I've tried to run has resulted in me cursing the name of the author. The current one I am trying to run had such massive, gaping plot holes that the only way around them has been to tell my players to simply embrace the insanity and to not think about it too much. Catalyst' most recent module release, the Midnight series of modules, is an immortal elf wankfest. Enough said. --- Their all around villainy has resulted in a bunch of authors feeling OK releasing their unreleased material for free. Ancient History released a bunch of 4E material here, including PACKS. Most of Shadows of Latin America (A 3e book) has also now been released here.
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Jul 27, 2010 01:03
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Bigass Moth posted:Technomancers are basically mages with computers, which makes yet another class (Hackers/Deckers) worthless since Technomancers can do everything in the Matrix effortlessly. quote:Runner's Companion screwed everything up
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Aug 5, 2010 17:26
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The Gate posted:Because it is much harder to steal someone's implanted ear cyberware than a set of headphones? It is also readily apparent at a glance that you have earbuds/glasses or whatever, compared to cyberware which largely requires a scanner to detect such things. It does not matter if someone can tell you have earbuds or are wearing contact lenses. What are they going to do? Demand you take out your contact lenses? Confiscate your completely legal earbuds? Even if the risk that someone might decide to jack your earbuds was a realistic one, a pair of earbuds with the only modification you actually care about (+3 to all audio perception tests and recording) is availability 2 and costs 330 nuyen. As odd as it sounds, earbuds and contact lenses really are kind of 'broken' in the sense that they call into question why most people bother with the cyberware version. The only potentially compelling reason is not theft, it's the prospect of someone hacking your wirelessly-controlled eyes or ears. edit: as for the comments about bioware replacing cyberware - What is the problem? Cyberware is cheap and essence-unfriendly. Real pros use bioware. The march of progress continues on. Some of the non-implanted gear that completely replaces 'ware entirely should be cracked down on in the next edition, I'm in agreement with that. Gobbeldygook fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Aug 5, 2010 |
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Aug 5, 2010 22:22
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Bigass Moth posted:Their stats are poorly thought out and vague as usual for Shadowrun. Possession tradition magicians are fine, learn to play. quote:4th edition has none of this balance to it with everything being straight linear instead of high target numbers increasing difficulty on a curve. --- I don't know why you guys are trying to break the setting and magician characters generally by incorporating counterspelling as a base skill. Yes, magic is supposed to be strong! It's supposed to be so strong that a bunch of Native Americans were able to shatter the United States into pieces with no threat except "we have magic, suck it pale face!" Yes, if the other side has a magician and you don't, you are going to get bent over the table and vice versa. Shadowrun PCs will almost always be outnumbered, being able to outgun the opposition is extremely important for actually being able to accomplish stuff. We Have Magic vs Other Guy Has No Magic is a good one. There are legitimate complaints about spirits being overpowered, but the most important way (immunity to normal weapons) is a relic of a lot of things around spirits getting changed from 3e to 4e without anyone thinking to update the spirits statblock. A force 6 spirit having 12 hardened armor was one thing in 3e when a sniper rifle had a Power of like 14, but now a sniper rifle has a power of 7. You can fix immunity to normal weapons by just making it equal Force instead of Force * 2, but you should probably incorporate some sort of general fix for Hardened Armor.
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Aug 13, 2010 16:25
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LGD posted:You know, sort of like how people using guns have to deal with reactions + dodge and social skills are opposed by other social skills? quote:Which means your mage is always the most important part of the team- because he's either the universal and unopposed answer to nearly all problems you have or because he is necessary to stop the rest of the team from getting skullfucked by magical opposition. quote:And also the whole "oh yeah my mage can summon the equivalent of a squad of murderous street samurai" thing. Immunity to normal weapons with high force spirits is just the poo poo icing on the cake. If you continue to have issues with spirits, try making their skills equal force divided by two rounded up. Their stats are good enough that they can still keep up, but there's no longer a risk of replacing the street sammy with a spirit. Also consider bringing back elemental weapons bypassing immunity to normal weapons. That was a very cool bit of flavor that I was sorry to see go in 4E that had the nifty side effect of letting prepared non-Awakened effectively deal with spirits.
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Aug 14, 2010 01:36
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children overboard posted:Dude, mage with stunball drops targets much faster with a pitiful risk of drain. You then go off on an irrelevant tangent about ZOMG SPIRITS. I've already acknowledged that spirits are, as written, overpowered and really need a few nerfs to fix that their statblocks were not updated for 4e. Notably, their skills and how immunity to normal weapons works. I also seriously question your claims of a typical mage only suffering 'maybe a point' of drain or discussing Force 10 spells without discussing . Spirits roll their force and inflict drain equal to their hits*2 when summoning. For a force 5 spirit, that's usually 4-6 drain before soak, but inflicting 8 drain is very possible. quote:in short, they are pretty much just plain better than hackers in terms of build points, flexibility, and proficiency at hacking, unless my friend (a huge sr fanatic) was flat wrong or just explained it badly As mentioned above, they are actually excellent riggers, but that is not how anyone wants to play a Technomancer. They want to hack gibsons like Neo.
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Aug 17, 2010 20:22
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MaliciousOnion posted:Another GM question, how do you decide on the difficulty of each mission as a story progresses? In other words, how do I know that the game will continue to be exciting and challenging from a rules perspective, while keeping it playable? Is there some rough guidelines, or is it something you can only pick up through experience? My general rules of thumb regarding difficulty: -Every run should be bigger, more dangerous, and/or more exciting than the last. This is to justify (mostly) ever-increasing pay! -Count the number of GOTCHA'S! in a run. Examples include old-school mechanical security, significant astral background count, the head of security is a cyborg, the guards are equipped with knock-out gas grenades, the on duty mage comes from a possessor tradition, the punch is spiked with LSD, etc. Most GOTCHA'S! only work once, after that the PCs buy an autopicker, buy gas masks, stop accepting drinks from strangers, and so on. -To determine the rough Combat Value of a group of grunts or players, tally up the init passes of everyone that will be participating in combat at once. I personally go with 1 init pass = 1, 2 init passes = 2, 3 init passes = 4, 4 init passes = 8. Double that if they have a way of attacking that the other hasn't prepared for (hacking, chemical warfare, magic, etc) or if it's an ambush. Remember to count drones/spirits! Only count the number that are participating at the same time. A dozen grunts in 4-man teams sweeping a facility is radically different from a dozen at once. -If you need to quickly gen up a group of grunts, assume any relevant skill or attribute equals their init passes+1 or 2. -The runners are usually fighting The Man. The Man can bring arbitrary amounts of force to bear. No matter what the PCs bust out, The Man can always step it up one level farther if sufficiently provoked. -The best way to bring things down to Earth is separate them from their stuff. While the classic example is sending them to another country in a manner that they can't bring their stuff with them, other examples include jobs that involve passing a thorough astral and milliwave search (entering an underwater arcology, a space station, a fancy dinner before poo poo goes Die Hard, etc), having to go undercover (must be disguised as members of (group), therefore must be equipped like one of them), etc. If any of your players are ex-military, they will completely understand electronics breaking down after too much time in the jungle or desert. -If most of your runs involve some violence, runs that can't be solved with direct force are a really great change of pace, like a guy with a dead hooker problem, needing to provoke a runner out of retirement, a Johnson that will dock or flat-out not pay if anyone is seriously injured or killed, babysitting someone who does not want to be babysat, an escort mission where nothing goes wrong at all, organizing a children's birthday party, etc.
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Sep 3, 2010 21:14
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Yoshimo posted:Alternatively, if you fail Negotiation, you don't lower your price, but it doesn't raise either. He just sticks to his guns and offers you the original 15k. That is how I run it. The assumption is that everyone in the business knows Shadowrunners like to hold you up by your ankles and shake you until nuyen falls out, so of course you start off lowballing them every time. I also require the face say how much nuyen they're asking for. I apply a bonus to the negotiate check if their payment demand is under what the Johnson is willing to cough up and a penalty if they go over it. Obviously, no matter how many hits they get they're not going to get more than he's willing to pay or that they're willing to ask for. People who don't deal with Shadowrunners or come from alien perspectives (AI etc) might use different negotiating approaches. My players have met Mr. 'No Negotiate Johnson' who starts off at insultingly low pay and sometimes just automatically agrees with the Face's first counter-offer without requiring a roll and Mr. Fat Johnson who simply had the amount he was willing to pay and was completely unwilling to pay anything at all up front.
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Oct 1, 2010 20:21
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Mad Fnorder posted:I'm trying to convince some friends of mine to run an upcoming game in SR4 instead of SR3. One of their big complaints about SR4 is "It's too easy to get huge dice pools, and that makes things easy." Is there a counter argument to this other than "Wait until you're bleeding and half blind and shooting into a magic windstorm, chummer and you'll need those dice"? a. Negative modifiers. b. Thresholds. c. Opposed dice pools. d. Most starting-level characters will only have one or two really big dice pools.
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Oct 23, 2010 05:37
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Beer4TheBeerGod posted:Could someone give me some general guidelines on how to make a decent drone technomancer? I'm thinking of putting together one for the game, but I'm not sure how to best approach it. advice for drone technomancer: Get a datajack and a control rig. Get the Command, Encrypt, ECCM, and Scan forms. Buy a commlink if you ever want to hack for some reason. Buy the Overclocking Submersion ASAP to get 4 IPs, then Advanced Overclocking in Unwired if availble for 5 IPs. Your basic strategy is to spend a lot of downtime summoning and Registering Machine Sprites to help pilot your recoilless automatic weapon-equipped Steel Lynxes, so do your best to make your dice pool for "making machine sprites" big. They are a fair bit more badass than computer-piloted standard drones due to having 3 IPs. Just like with mages, a Pain Editor is worth considering for summoning big sprites and not dying horribly.
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Oct 25, 2010 18:00
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FutureBoy posted:In a couple of weeks I'm going to start running a shadowrun game and I'm considering doing something with the Earthdawn stuff. I know Harlequin, the dragons and the horrors all show up in both games, was there anything else? Ancient History's website is the best resource you will find on this, by far. He's also friendly! Unless you owe him money.
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Nov 4, 2010 19:01
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The Dregs posted:2) Can anyone point me to some solutions to the initiative pass problem?
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Dec 11, 2010 17:42
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The Dregs posted:The problem with Samurai getting to act 4 times to my poor detective's 1 action. I am sure people have thought of some ways around this that are better than the hackneyed way I am going about it. Yes, there is a better way around it: If you want to be as awesome in combat as a street samurai, go buy wired reflexes, take up a drug habit, and/or beg your party's finger-waggler to cast Improved Reflexes on you. I recommend Jazz. Giving everybody 1 IP (or 2 if they buy enough reaction enhancers) nerfs the poo poo out of physical adepts and street samurais (ESPECIALLY adepts - they have to pay 0.75 power point/reaction point, street samurai pay 0.3 essence/10k nuyen/reaction), buffs the hell out of drone riggers and conjuration (because conjurers and drone riggers effectively get bonus IPs every time they add another spirit or drone to their roster), and dramatically flattens out the power curve so there's far less of a difference between a tricked-out cyberzombie and a punk with an ares predator.
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Dec 11, 2010 20:34
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I find it very hard to understand why you guys are trying implement a bizarrely niche nerf to people that use guns. In 90% of situations, a PC gun bunny will be doing a short-burst+called shot instead of a long/full burst. If someone has enough IPs that this actually inconveniences them, they'll just switch to something with a higher cyclic rate, like a micro-uzi - which they might have been using anyway! edit: Having recoil carry over between passes would be a massive nerf to anyone Not A Wizard or Drone Rigger (drones are not subject to recoil penalties). PCs with 3 or more initiative passes would probably switch to rifles so they could do damage without ridiculous recoil penalties. Gobbeldygook fucked around with this message at 10:05 on Dec 13, 2010 |
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Dec 13, 2010 09:54
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FutureBoy posted:Also the new WAR! pdf came out a week or so ago, has anyone checked it out yet? It is generally regarded as a solid contender for worst Shadowrun release ever. You may or may not agree; one of the big 'problems' people have is a sample run that boils down to going into a concentration camp, shooting the ghosts of dead Jews in the face, and looting Nazi treasures.
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Dec 26, 2010 00:53
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To me, the most offensive part about the Slow spell isn't even that it's stupidly overpowered relative to other magic. It's that there is already precedent for how magic affects movement in the form of the Movement power. When you use Movement on a troll, it works by Magic and does not actually affect damage at all. If you use Movement on a bullet, it doesn't do any more damage or have any more kinetic energy than before, it just gets there in less time. Instead of using that same idea and perhaps imposing some penalty on dodging or something like that, the author decided to bust out the crazy. Similarly, what makes the "Shoot the ghosts of victims of the holocaust in the face" really stupid is a multitude of factors. a. Wards don't keep mundanes out at all, that's just...not how they work. So the author didn't know the rules. b. The doctor whose scalpel they reference as being a potent magical artifact didn't have a treasured scalpel because he didn't normally even touch his victims. So they didn't do their research. c. There's a totally valid, non-stupid reason in Shadowrun for corporations to care about Auschwitz: The background count would make it an awesome place to build a prison for the Awakened.
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Dec 28, 2010 00:28
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 09:42 |
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Shadows of Latin America never getting released is unrelated to the recent shenanigans where Catalyst decided that payment was optional.quote:Steve Kenson's gay sex name is "Talon." That's his spirit name that he uses when trolling for heart companions to have gay sex with his warlock spells. In real life, that he apparently actually believes in. Also he goes by Talon on the interwebs and his freelance production company is "Talon Studios."
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Jan 14, 2011 15:41
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