Shadowrun Min Max

[Stahlseele]

Yeah, me and my group(if i get to ply at all) are still heavily entrenched in SR3 wafare and despite all my misgivings about SR4, i'd sooner play that than 5 . .
Variable Hit-Boxes have been there since SR4 at least too.
SR3 it was a 10 box condition monitor for both stun and physical damage and then you add a variable overflow ammount to that.

[Koumei]

I imagine this is a case of taking the new edition out for a spin. I'm hardly going to demand that change to another edition which I also am unfamiliar with. Sure, it's a let-down that I'm not rolling hundreds of dice and keeping all hits, but it's okay (and honestly, in almost all cases I'm rolling below the limit on the average roll).

As a coke addict who isn't as charismatic as he thinks he is, and has the Uncanny Valley of "almost zero Essence" factoring in, he will of course get into marketing and advertising.

[Stahlseele]

i'd be VERY carefull with the addiction rules . .
they will take essence away at some point.
and you don't have enough to survive that.

[Koumei]

Not in fifth edition, but it looks like addiction spirals out of control fast. It will take four weeks of use to require two tests (threshold 2, one of them with a dice pool of 6, the other with 4), and when I fail one of them, it gets worse. At that point he has -2 to social tests, and needs to take a double-dose (and then get knocked out by Stun damage) every time. Another four weeks and it's Burnout (-3 to social tests, massive withdrawal penalties and needs to take three doses at a time). Every four weeks after hitting Burnout means Body or Willpower permanently drops by one, and the character is in a coma. It will take 20 weeks after hitting Burnout, so we're talking "about half a year" for the character to go from "now" to "coma".

I think I might drop the contact - that and the two banked karma are enough to not be addicted.

[Stahlseele]

Yeah, Addiction is pretty bad in SR.

[virgil]

In Shadowrun 4E, are there any guidelines for a group trapped in South America after having been betrayed by their Johnson and on the run from killing a number of the local militia (Lone Star equivalent)? Do they need to worry about their little assault carrying up to the parent corporation (Mitsuhama) in terms of response, or can they just get out of the local jurisdiction and be safe in their home base in D.C.?

[Whipstitch]

There's nothing as definite as a table to define what happens, and in a scenario like that I'd probably let the runners off the hook pretty clean. My rule of thumb is kinda like this: the team may very well collect enemies who work for a corp but it takes an awful lot before a megacorp adds someone to the official hitlist and allows people to go after you on company time. So, for example, if you personally embarrass some suit he may very well use corp files to find where you live and then pay out of his own pocket to have some gangers make a housecall, but unless you're stashing a big-ticket prototype or something it's unlikely that they'll be cleared to send in the corporation's Red Samurai equivalent.

[kzt]

Mitsuhama has a rep for playing rough. And as a mega they are everywhere. If the players did something seriously annoying to Mitsuhama (as opposed to the local police/military) and don't seem to have taken the kind of steps to prevent a couple of motivated hackers from tracking them then bad things might well happen. Simple low risk things, like multiple KG of plastic explosive with a motion detector attached under their car (under the drivers seat) or dumping something lethal but fast breakdown into the HVAC intake of their house. Or even something simple like invalidating their known fake IDs, adding a few warrants and then SWATing them.

[Ghremdal]

And IMO they should be at the very least on the watch list of other corps. If brother Mitsuhama wants it very badly, then that means its valuable and I/we want it too, even if we don't know why.

[virgil]

http://1nsomniac.wordpress.com/2011/02/ ... of-nature/

They stole a pair of cockatrice eggs, killed a grade 2 Initiate Parashield agent along with a couple agents in training. I think the main people who will care are Parashield itself, unless cockatrice eggs are valuable enough for Mitsuhama itself to invest in handling them. The group doesn't seem concerned about revenge, but more on getting out of Caracas; since their arrival was on Parashield's dime.

[NineInchNall]

So, getting ready for an upcoming SR5 game.

[rant]This book presents its rules rather poorly. Character creation rules should be laid out in a nice table so I can get all the fucking information I need at once without having to flip from page 65 to 103 to 69 to 101 to 256 and back just to figure out basic shit like how much a fucking skill/spell/attribute/power costs or how many points I fucking get. I should also not have to carefully scan paragraphs of text written for people who've never played RPGs in order to find that the meaning of the numbers in the metatype column is never stated.[/rant]

Anyway, the idea is summoning/face-stuff focused Mystic Adept, and I'm trying to come up with decent ways to mitigate the drain from actually using my 17 pre-Edge dice. Does, for instance, Pain Resistance apply to drain resistance? After all, the text for that power says, "Each level adds +2 dice to any test you make to withstand suffering." The ability even says that it applies against magical effects.

WTF does that mean in game terms? Like ... Suffering is a broad term.

And then there's the face power: Kinesics. I'm pretty sure that it's meant to make your own Cons and stuff more effective, but the text says, "Add +1 to resist Social Tests and tests to read your emotions like Judge Intentions, assensing, or truthfulness tests." Which is like ... It makes it easier for you to sniff out cons.

[NineInchNall]

Not in fifth edition, but it looks like addiction spirals out of control fast. It will take four weeks of use to require two tests (threshold 2, one of them with a dice pool of 6, the other with 4), and when I fail one of them, it gets worse. At that point he has -2 to social tests, and needs to take a double-dose (and then get knocked out by Stun damage) every time. Another four weeks and it's Burnout (-3 to social tests, massive withdrawal penalties and needs to take three doses at a time). Every four weeks after hitting Burnout means Body or Willpower permanently drops by one, and the character is in a coma. It will take 20 weeks after hitting Burnout, so we're talking "about half a year" for the character to go from "now" to "coma".

I think I might drop the contact - that and the two banked karma are enough to not be addicted.

I realize this is late and all, but if you switch the addiction to something like, oh, Long Haul, you never have to worry. For a moderate addiction you get cravings every other week. For every week you don't indulge your addiction, the threshold goes down by 1. The base threshold for Long Haul is 1. 0 is explicitly possible.

So let's say your last craving was the week before you start play, and you used. You don't get a craving this week, because Moderate addiction, and the Long Haul threshold drops by 1, to 0. When next week's craving comes around, you choose not to indulge and so roll your withdrawal test, which you automatically succeed at. So you don't suffer withdrawal symptoms and aren't forced to have more LH.

Ever.

Free 9 points.

[Rawbeard]

Wasn't Long Haul the drug that let's you stay awake for a week but after that you drop dead? Might be thinking of an old stand-up, though...

[Koumei]

in order to find that the meaning of the numbers in the metatype column is never stated.

Yeah, I noticed that too. They don't bother mentioning this other than to imply it in the character creation examples, but the number is the bonus points you can add to special attributes (like Edge or Magic, but presumably not Essence). So if you don't have Magic and are a Human, your starting Edge is five.

I had trouble finding the character advancement section about actually spending Karma. Then again, I typically can't find the XP costs chart in WW books too.

So far I don't mind the priority thing - it's definitely what I remembered from looking over older editions, but I was fairly sure it was full point-buy more recently (and yes, turns out I was thinking of 4E). It helps as a way of preventing people from taking all their points and just sinking it into X, and also helps you actually state "My big special thing is _____. I am definitely good at this." Because your A priority can very much define your character.

[NineInchNall]

Yeah, you can infer it from the text. but I shouldn't have to engage in exegesis just for character creation.

The priority numbers are also rather strange. If you choose Priority A for human metatype and Priority B for Magic/Res, you simply can't spend all your special attribute points.

It probably would have been better if the M/R category didn't have fixed numbers.

Wasn't Long Haul the drug that let's you stay awake for a week but after that you drop dead? Might be thinking of an old stand-up, though...

Nowadays it just makes you sleep for 8d6 hours afterward. No risk of death.

[virgil]

This question concerns Shadowrun 4E. How is stuff like armor, resisting mana spells, and toxin resistance handled for with full-body cybernetics (torso, skull, both arms & legs)?

[Stahlseele]

It doesn't matter.
You resist Mana-Spells with Willpower alone, if your Buddy-Mage(you do have one at hand i hope?) does not give you counterspelling dice . .
Armor:
All Cyber-Limb-Armor gets added to worn armor, does not count for the encumbrance.
Toxin Resistance is handled by natural body, so no dice from Limbs.

[virgil]

This is mainly for NPC, specifically a dwarven mage (ward specialist for the magical society one of the players is a member of) that got kidnapped and mind-hacked so he loves cyberware; and went whole hog.

[Stahlseele]

he still has his dorfish resistance to drugs and toxins. he still has his natural body attribute.
he is still as muleheaded as any other dorf, so slightly more resistance to manaspells . .
the only thing limbs do in terms of damage resistance is to give you more armor if it'S been installed which adds directly to all other armor, completely cumulative and does not encumber you at all.
if you take damage, you get another bonus though. you can switch off the pain and you gain +1 box of physical damage track for every limb. so you can take more damage than other people before going into overflow. doesn't help with modifiers though, they still appear at the same levels.

[virgil]

What happens to any spirits still bound to the mage after they get sufficiently cybered to lower their Magic to 0? I assume the connection is broken and the spirit is banished back into the deep astral?

[silva]

..or the spirit gets loose and try to f*ck the shaman and his party.

[Ferret]

So apparently 5th Edition Mystic Adepts were Broken-Awesome, and have now been soft-nerfed (not published errata, but sugguested errata to raise the cost of Power Points during character creation) to just be Better-Than-Magicians-Awesome.

On the one hand: Bravo for indulging my desire for Mystic Adepts to be actually viable. Shame they overdid it and had to nerf right out of the gate.

Even at the new sugguested 5-karma-per-power-point, I still feel like you could make a ridiculously tough Mystic Adept with Increased Reaction, Mystic Armor, and Combat Sense.

[name_here]

http://1nsomniac.wordpress.com/2011/02/ ... of-nature/

They stole a pair of cockatrice eggs, killed a grade 2 Initiate Parashield agent along with a couple agents in training. I think the main people who will care are Parashield itself, unless cockatrice eggs are valuable enough for Mitsuhama itself to invest in handling them. The group doesn't seem concerned about revenge, but more on getting out of Caracas; since their arrival was on Parashield's dime.

I don't think that would go too far up the chain by itself. Mostly what they'd have to worry about is failing to elude the local LoneStar equivalent types and setting off one of those killing everyone who sees you killing people chains that ends with everybody dead, the zeppelin on fire, and missing hats.

[NineInchNall]

So apparently 5th Edition Mystic Adepts were Broken-Awesome, and have now been soft-nerfed (not published errata, but sugguested errata to raise the cost of Power Points during character creation) to just be Better-Than-Magicians-Awesome.
...
Even at the new sugguested 5-karma-per-power-point, I still feel like you could make a ridiculously tough Mystic Adept with Increased Reaction, Mystic Armor, and Combat Sense.

Yeah, it ends up that you're down 30 points at chargen rather than 12, but in the long run you're still better than magicians, adepts, or aspected magicians, so whatchagonnado.

It's still on top of knowing 10 spells, which is what you're probably going to be using all the time anyway.

[Ferret]

Yeah I figured you use Adept powers to handle the Self Buffs (reaction, defense, armor), spells for utility and offense and hey presto better than anybody.