The Gaming Den

I wish to make a guy that kills people before they can kill me. What is the best way to do this? I was thinking of dualwielding SMGs and running around with MBW.

Silent Wayfarer wrote:I wish to make a guy that kills people before they can kill me. What is the best way to do this? I was thinking of dualwielding SMGs and running around with MBW.

2nd Edition? Life in 2nd edition is actually incredibly cheap. The basic heavy pistol does brutal amounts of damage, armor only lowers Target Numbers for soak, and no one rolls enough dice to soak anything no matter what the target numbers are. Simply going first and shooting at a target with pretty much anything is enough to drop most people.

Whether SMGs in particular are worthwhile has a lot to do with whether you are using the burst rules in Rigger Black Book. How retro are you going with this?

-Username17

How long do you expect the character to live?
If you want to play him for more than one or two sessions, MBW might not be the best idea?
Can't remember how it was in SR2, but in SR3 it basically meant your character died in 6 months time.

FrankTrollman wrote:

Silent Wayfarer wrote:I wish to make a guy that kills people before they can kill me. What is the best way to do this? I was thinking of dualwielding SMGs and running around with MBW.

2nd Edition? Life in 2nd edition is actually incredibly cheap. The basic heavy pistol does brutal amounts of damage, armor only lowers Target Numbers for soak, and no one rolls enough dice to soak anything no matter what the target numbers are. Simply going first and shooting at a target with pretty much anything is enough to drop most people.

Whether SMGs in particular are worthwhile has a lot to do with whether you are using the burst rules in Rigger Black Book. How retro are you going with this?

-Username17

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "how retro", but I'm fairly certain that I can talk the MC into using those rules.

Stahlseele wrote:How long do you expect the character to live?
If you want to play him for more than one or two sessions, MBW might not be the best idea?
Can't remember how it was in SR2, but in SR3 it basically meant your character died in 6 months time.

MBW basically requires a (Body+Willpower)/2 roll every time interval. Failure means TLE-x, CCSS, or both. The Street Samurai catalog says that MBW1-3 might still be livable with, but MBW4 is a guaranteed ticket to unplayability, like you said.

It's been a while, but in my experience, unless you're dealing with outlandish sorts of opposition, Wired Reflexes II should give you more than enough initiative to throw at people to kill 'em before they can kill you. I've been tempted to try a MBW character before but always avoided it--MBW seems like a huge pain in the ass to roleplay and even more ludicrously expensive besides. (Obviously, WR3 is better, but unless you're getting betaware, the Essence hit constrains your options a whole bunch. And you are probably better off taking the money that such a thing would cost and retiring to an island where you can have fruity umbrella drinks until hell freezes over.)

MBW wasn't worth it for anyone until 4th edition. At every price point of Essence or Nuyen you'd consider, MBW was inferior to one or more of the other primary reflex enhancers (Synaptic Accelerator, Wired Reflexes, or Boosted Reflexes). The only exception was MBW 4, which of course was bigger than everything else and you could imagine wanting to go there - except the price point on that was well beyond what you could afford for a one shot and it killed your character.

In 4th edition, MBW was worth it for NPCs. Specifically it was a monetarily cheap option to get the kind of defense numbers that decked out Street Samurai posted at the cost of horrendous Essence and health costs. So it showed up on "Advanced Thug #2" and not so much on player characters. But in 2nd and 3rd edition, MBW was simply worthless at every price point.

-Username17

I remember a 2nd Edition game I played back in 1995-ish where the GM just asked us to turn up with a character made legally "any book allowed, if it's official it's fine".

A friend of mine and I went through the core book, Street Sam Catalog, Shadowtech and I think Cybertechnology and built the most lethal combat monster we could put together. This was back when Biotech didn't cost essence, so you could basically load up on a whole second suite of 'ware. I remember we crammed every reflex enhancer we could afford with Resources A in there, can't remember all the details now though. We made him an amnesiac hitman that woke up one day with no memory and a million nuyen of cyberware in his body, along with a metal briefcase full of guns with "THE PLAYER" stencilled on it. So he took that as his name and became a Shadowrunner to investigate his mysterious past.

I do remember a scene in the game where we were in a firefight and the GM made the comment "That can't be right, you've taken three actions and these guys haven't gone yet." ;D

Yeah, that's how nice playing a cybered/bioed character could be back in the day.
I think SR2 had the Bioware Limit based on the Body of the character in some way?
So, Trolls, Ork, Dorfs got an advantage there. And at least the suprathyroid Gland gave you more Body and thus more space for Bioware.
Ah, yes, it was a nice time to be silly ^^

Thanks for the input. I'm leaning toward Wired Reflexes + Reaction Enhancers now. Will I miss the quickness buff of Wired Reflexes?