The Gaming Den

It's not a matter of spirits having augment maximums, but rather the vessel-- the infamous FAQ says that living vessels are still subject to an augmented attribute cap but that inanimate vessels are not. But that doesn't override other FAQ responses saying that the spirit's Force gets added to that...

Also, the drain from Banishing is ludicrously high and really dangerous. It's basically the ability to yell "I BANISH YOU, PIKACHU" and occasionally your face melts off. Also, you can "banish" spirits just fine with Stunbolt. So, to answer your original question, being good at su...

Ancient History wrote:(except for Aaron and his fucking astral combat nonsense)

Something of a tangent, but what are you referring too, exactly?

I have now played Eclipse Phase, and the system is SO SHITTY. I do disagree with Frank about the details of how the skill and attribute system is shitty (although not the magnitude of the shittiness). So, attributes give you "free" points in skills. You do it like this: Figure out your bra...

"Fruit" is an archaic slang term for a gay man.

HERO System can do magic well, in the sense that it will do a good job of balancing magic with other abilities but will provide none of the "fluff" for you. If you have a clear idea of what you want magic to do, HERO is good at telling you how much of your character's Awesome Allotment it ...

Hey shadzar, I've got an RPG to sell you. It's called Advanced Go And Fuck Yourself.

Here are the rules, but they are just guidelines. If something isn't covered by the rules, the GM should adjudicate the situation appropriately.

If a PC is shadzar, that PC goes and fucks themselves.

I dunno, I got about as much "thumbs up" rep as "thumbs down" rep for this: http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=4098.0 on the "official" forums, but the thread on Dumpshock got closed.

Ally spirit's don't have a type. You can't make a Beast Ally Spirit; you make an Ally Spirit and then maybe give it Beast powers. Neither of your other two questions really have answers, because they deal with a Magic Tea Party area of the game. I do not understand your question about Material Link....

Maybe they could make an Emerged bear with Control Emotions (gnomes only). That would be right up the ally of the stupid shit that's already out there. I mean, fuck, they published an Echo that lets technomancers catch Pokemon. I mean feral AIs.

OK, so my personal take on how a skill system should work is that you need to break skills into 3 categories: 1) "Class feature" skills. This is things like "Stab Fucker" "Cast Spell" "Hide in Shadows" etc that are inherent parts of your classes. These need to...

Huh, that is actually interesting to know. Thanks. I stand by it being fucking retarded of course.

I recently ran an adventure (converted DNA/DOA from 1e) where the PCs broke into a gene-lab and fought berserk paracritters. Many of the adversaries were determined by trying to find the dumbest fucking monsters we could. There are some REALLY dumb paracritters. Abram's Lobsters are awesome, the adv...

I would actually go further, and meld "active" skills with either classes or ability scores. I'm OK with just folding "climb wall" and "jump pit" into strength (or maybe make climb strength or dex but whatever), and folding stuff like "hide" into classes like ...

Maybe they could release a "we unfucked the vehicle and rigging rules" book for 55 bucks?

Maybe pigs will fly. Actually, given how stupid the paracritters in general are, there probably are flying pigs already.

Can you still do a floating Megascale perk? I thought that was pretty fun. Yes, but it isn't as ridiculously good now. They realized that the "trade-off" of Megascale was not really a trade-off, because everyone just used Multipower/Naked Advantage. So they repriced Megascale +1 higher (1...

Aid is too cheap, yep. Our group came to the same conclusion, and bumped it up to 8/die. We also banned using any manuevers that apply OCV penalties with any powers that don't need to roll to hit (ie, no Rapid Attacking an Aid). This last one isn't as dumb as it sounds because many of those manuever...

In unrelated news, Possession Traditions are now banned in Shadowrun Missions. I do find it a bit curious, since they're nowhere near the biggest balance problem in SR4 unless you start abusing the magic replacement trick combined with cyberware, which I don't think anyone was.

To explain Elemental:

Sound and Smoke are good for the secondary effects (Sound in particular, bypassing armor and then nauseating).

Everything else is good only because they do P-damage against half armor and don't take OR. Right now they are for blowing up drones only.

I would suggest the following fix: Elemental spells that are NOT sound or smoke should go down to F/2 and F/2+2. Elemental spells that are sound or smoke should be F/2+1 and F/2+3. Punch/Clout/Blast should get -2 drain. Yes this makes them super cheap; a physical indirect stun spell against which fu...

Slow is actually not banned in missions. Our regular missions group has a very, very short list of "if you do this, the GM will drop rocks on you" for things that are not technically banned but are gamebreakingly fucktarded; Slow is on that short list.

Yeah, nothing would ruin my immersion in a fantasy setting like a dragon dying to a single well-placed arrow.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smaug

Yeah, it means I would take an indirect combat spell over Powerbolt - that spell is largely for fighting drones/vehicles. For direct spells, yep, that rule isn't really a nerf. Overcast, don't keep net hits for damage, and just do a shitload directly. Overcasting is +2 DV per extra drain, keeping hi...

That is very dependant on the rest of your character, and depends on how you plan to fight. There are basically two ways to go: buff yourself and shoot people (of which Possession cheese is a subtype), and Combat spells. A big consideration - you cannot get more hits (not net hits, HITS) on a spell ...

Control Action and Mob Control are both definitively worthless, because you need to spend a complex action to cast it and then a simple action to command them, and until you command them, they can act on their own. And their action will almost certainly be shooting you. Even without that, it's in ef...