shadowrun for a newbie

[Catharz]

1167525939[/unixtime]]No , not a stealth bump. These are questions that didn't get answered before.

1167525939[/unixtime]]And just why would you have a reach of zero when attacking someone across the room with this spell?

Why would you have LESS of a reach bonus when attacking someone with fists at 30 feet than attacking someone with a 10 feet reach?

Because the attack isn't coming from across the room. It's coming from some point within your line of sight, which means it's easier to dodge: just as easy as if it were actually you attacking from that point.

[Lago_AM3P]

It wouldn't be an unlimited reach bonus. The most you can get from reach is +4.

Because the attack isn't coming from across the room. It's coming from some point within your line of sight, which means it's easier to dodge: just as easy as if it were actually you attacking from that point.

Are you seriously telling me it's easier to dodge an attack coming from an arbitrary point unconnected to an attack made by invisible hands (that's what the book says, not me) than an attack anchored to a point you can see?

[Catharz]

1167538951[/unixtime]]It wouldn't be an unlimited reach bonus. The most you can get from reach is +4.

Because the attack isn't coming from across the room. It's coming from some point within your line of sight, which means it's easier to dodge: just as easy as if it were actually you attacking from that point.

Are you seriously telling me it's easier to dodge an attack coming from an arbitrary point unconnected to an attack made by invisible hands (that's what the book says, not me) than an attack anchored to a point you can see?

That's how it seems, given the RAW. Unarmed combat explicity has a base reach of zero. If you were using your magic fingers to wield a monowhip you'd get some reach.

It also doesn't explicitly say you don't gain an added reach bonus. As far as I can tell, however, nothing specifically says that being able to attack from a certain distance will give you reach. Example: a polearm and a combat axe each have a reach of 2. In my experience, "polarm" refers to something with significantly greater reach than the axe depicted.

If there is something which gives specific distances for reach, then you're probably right (and you'd get that reach of LOS = +4).

[User3]

So. Street Magic.

I'm sure there's a lot of ways to abuse or at least squeeze this book for everything its worth.

Anchoring. Is there any way to abuse this?

My eye is on ally spirits the most. They'd make an extremely powerful spirit to inhabit for you, but I don't know how to make it so they could possess you without making you an NPC. I am, however, eyeing the clause that states that you can give a spirit any power available to that of spirits of your tradition.

Does that mean that:

A) If I'm capable of invoking great form spirits I can give my ally spirit these powers? Can I make a great form spirit an ally spirit?

B) I can give my spirits the fundamental powers of astral form / possession / materialization even if my ally spirit is, say, an inhabitation spirit? If so, what's the best way to abuse these cheese loop?

PEACE, bitches.

[Username17]

Anchoring. Is there any way to abuse this?

Sure. You can go one of two routes:

1. Smuggle spells onto runs and then buff yourself to crazy town just before the shit hits the fan for no drain.
   
2. Save up a pile of attack spells and then alpha strike them off in the first combat you get into - sure manaball is no better than a hand grenade, but who's stopping at one mana ball?

It's fvcking expensive. But it pushes the limits of good taste (assuming for the moment that you are using reusable anchoring foci. Non-reusable anchoring is worthless).

My eye is on ally spirits the most

Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I asked for a price point per Force that was triangular mod 5 (that is, each Force point cost 5 more points than the one before it). Unfortunately, the developers decided to change that into a linear cost at the last minute. At least I managed to argue them out of the five points/Force point that they were talking about for a while.

Anyway, yeah, Allies at the current price point are crazy tastic if you have a decent amount of Force behind them. A Spirit of Force 7+ in Ally form is crazy-go-nuts awesome, especially if you happen to do Guardian or Task spirits. Under my original price scheme, such spirits were essentially impractical (costing as it did 30 Karma to go from Force 6 to Force 7), but now it's just a matter of keeping it in your pants until you can do something totally broken all at once.

If I'm capable of invoking great form spirits I can give my ally spirit these powers?

No.

Can I make a great form spirit an ally spirit?

Over my objections, creating an ally spirit involves making a Binding Test, so yes you can.

can give my spirits the fundamental powers of astral form / possession / materialization

Yes. Although this is completely worthless unless you are putting Possession on a Materialization Ally.

even if my ally spirit is, say, an inhabitation spirit?

Yes... but again, unless your spirit pops out True Form, this is not actually helpful. When you're already dual and inhabitting a body in Flesh Form or Hybrid Form you can't use Possession or Materialization just as you can't use MAterialization when you have already materialized.

-Username17

[User3]

FrankTrollman... I know these questions are getting annoying... but I'm going back out to ship and am being kept prisoner there for at least a month...

Daddy needs his answers... please...

First, the old ones.

1) Could a magician/mystic adept who focused on unarmed combat gain a bunch of arbitrary attacks by splitting his or her spellcasting dice pool all towards one target? Say they cast 'knockout' at force 1 with a dicepool of 5 die and attacked in a rapid flurry of attacks. They don't really care about the spell landing, they just want to go The World on foes.

2) The Shadowrun advancement system seems to be a little bit unfair. It doesn't reward much extra karma for taking on runs of a higher difficulty but the only way to make the Big Bux for stuff like deltaware is to take on higher-paying jobs. Which will be harder.

So if you wanted to make MegaMages or SuperOtaku, it seems the best thing to do, no matter how powerful you are, is to hang out in the slums and take on runs where the worst thing you'll have to worry about is maybe a stray hellhound or the occasional weak-ass shaman. Street Samurai don't have that luxury. What gives?

3) Unrelated to the above two questions, but how the fvck do I find a deltaware clinic and how do I get in on that shit without it coming back to haunt me, like the doctors turning me into corps or whatever?

And my other question is... if I did want to hulk out with unlimited services for an ally spirit on a possession tradition, what's about the twinkiest thing you could imagine on a limit of 6-7 Force and about 80 karma to burn?

Next question, aside from being a sprawl ganger (and I still wouldn't do it), is it possible in any way shape or form to get by without a decent hacker? I've read stories about people getting by without mages, riggers, or even charisma junkies but I'm finding it impossible to imagine shadowrunning, even low-level shadowrunning, without one. So despite all of the attention mages get, it seems that it's actually hackers who are the fundamental class and will automatically have a huge chunk of the spotlight. What's your take?

Finally, my last question is... say you became a badass in the vein of Fastjack but you got arrested a few times. What hoops would you have to go through to erase your criminal record, counting hacking?

[Username17]

1) Could a magician/mystic adept who focused on unarmed combat gain a bunch of arbitrary attacks by splitting his or her spellcasting dice pool all towards one target? Say they cast 'knockout' at force 1 with a dicepool of 5 die and attacked in a rapid flurry of attacks. They don't really care about the spell landing, they just want to go The World on foes.

Uh... sure. There are even times when facing non-existant counterspelling in which splitting your pool and manabolting somebody 4 times is a reasonable plan. But usually, that's a shitty plan. If the enemy has counterspelling it is almost always a shit plan.

The Shadowrun advancement system seems to be a little bit unfair. It doesn't reward much extra karma for taking on runs of a higher difficulty but the only way to make the Big Bux for stuff like deltaware is to take on higher-paying jobs. Which will be harder.

Advancement is pretty much completely in the hands of the GM. There are games where Karma and Moneys fall on you like rain, and games where one is easily available and the other is not, and ones in which both are like squeezing dehydrated milk out of a cow.

Unrelated to the above two questions, but how the fvck do I find a deltaware clinic and how do I get in on that shit without it coming back to haunt me, like the doctors turning me into corps or whatever?

Last I checked, Delta Clinics were availability 24. There's some that are truly independent, for example in Bucharest and Caracas.

And my other question is... if I did want to hulk out with unlimited services for an ally spirit on a possession tradition, what's about the twinkiest thing you could imagine on a limit of 6-7 Force and about 80 karma to burn?

The Twinkiest thing I can do with a Force 7 Ally spirit is to grab a defeated main villain (mage or Hacker preferably) and then get a Force 7 spirit to Flesh Form inhabit his monkey ass. Huge stats and whatever skills and powers a main villain had. It's not even expensive - just 56 Karma.

Next question, aside from being a sprawl ganger (and I still wouldn't do it), is it possible in any way shape or form to get by without a decent hacker?

Yes. If you spend your whole life doing mercenary work in the jungle, you're good to go.

I mean sure, you can't actually steal money out of the wallets of fallen foes without a hacker. And it's pretty hard to hide in town withou ta hacker. And it's pretty hard to physically enter a building without setting off alarms without a hacker - but if you live your life on smash and grabs and hit-and-runs, then you can get by. If you get paid for structure hits and kidnappings, then the fact that you can't actually steal anything without the RFIDs clearly indicating that it is stolen property doesn't come up.

I wouldn't do it, but it can be done.

Finally, my last question is... say you became a badass in the vein of Fastjack but you got arrested a few times. What hoops would you have to go through to erase your criminal record, counting hacking?

Option 1: Get a new identity.

• New Fingerprints and eye color is easy. Just get yourself a set of cybereyes and scramble your finger prints with some cosmetics (get some slight facial alteration as well, or just grow/shave a beard). No problem really. That will get you by on anything short of a genetic test. You can get your DNA altered, but not if you're a mage. In any case, just avoid GATACA bullshit and get a fake SIN for the new you.

Option2: Erase the SIN of the past.

• Each major law enforcement agency keeps a list of criminal SINs. They share these when asked, but only when asked. So if you move quickly, your criminal SIN may only exist in one place. Unfortunately, that one place is still a Lonestar database coupled with hard backups in Austin, CAS. You'll need to physically hit the Austin backups and hack the server or pull some Ocean's 11 bullshit that gets a worm into the backups the next time that it gets updated. You may also have to repeat the same process with Knight Errant in Detroit, Indrajit in Sri Lanka, Evo Corporate Security in Vladivostock and so on and so forth.
  You'll also have to do something similar to each municipality that has these records, which is each municipality that you were arrested in and each municipality that has run your records since you got collared.

-Username17

[User3]

Uh... sure. There are even times when facing non-existant counterspelling in which splitting your pool and manabolting somebody 4 times is a reasonable plan. But usually, that's a shitty plan. If the enemy has counterspelling it is almost always a shit plan.

When I was talking about this plan, I wasn't concerned if all of my death touches got resisted. Who cares. I was eyeing the clauses that said:


A) You deliver touch spells with an unarmed attacked.

B) You gain a +2 bonus to your dice pool if you merely want to touch the enemy as opposed to striking it.

But when I deliver the touch spell, I don't let myself get the +2 bonus for merely touching--I deliver my spells with ninja kicks and suplexes.

The point of splitting your dice pool and casting the spell at a low force is to maximize the number of lethal ninja kicks you get (while minimizing the hefty drain) in one action.

As in, you split your dice pool four times while you're running on three initiative passes. I'm asking if you can really use spellcasting this way to get 12 real, honest to god unarmed strikes in a way adepts/street samurai can't.


ON THE OTHER HAND, you mentioned if the enemy doesn't have counterspelling. What changes for you if they do?

Advancement is pretty much completely in the hands of the GM. There are games where Karma and Moneys fall on you like rain, and games where one is easily available and the other is not, and ones in which both are like squeezing dehydrated milk out of a cow.

I know what you mean. I just got this impression because I've looked high and low and except for your post on what kind of rewards to assign, I can't find anything which tells you how much money Shadowrunners should be earning for the difficulty of the job.

I mean, if my mission required me to ambush a squad of Tir Ghosts and we got 1,500 nuyen out of the deal, I'd be extremely pissed. But I don't have any precedence other than GM judgement telling me whether I'm getting screwed or not. Not even a starting point.

The karma rewards, at least, suggest a minimum value for how much you should be getting for the amount of work you put in. I know the GM can just adjust it for how he feels fit, but still. It's at least nice to have a reference that says 'hey, if you're consistently getting rewarded less than this then your GM is SCREWING you'.

The Twinkiest thing I can do with a Force 7 Ally spirit is to grab a defeated main villain (mage or Hacker preferably) and then get a Force 7 spirit to Flesh Form inhabit his monkey ass. Huge stats and whatever skills and powers a main villain had. It's not even expensive - just 56 Karma.

Oh, neat. I had no idea that you got so much power for so little karma.

Well, I guess what I should've asked is, since you obviously know my love for minimizing game tokens and hulking out, if there is some rules cajiggery you can run so that your ally spirit can possess you (as opposed to inhabiting) and if it's somehow possible to get magic guard and extended masking out of the deal?

[Username17]

Ah. You can deliver any number of touch spells with a single attack, provided that you split your dice pool accordingly on the spellcasting.

You don't actually make multiple touch attacks during an action while casting multiple spells. Every spell lands or none of them do.

-Username17