Shadowrun 4e newbie questions
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- Whipstitch
- Prince
- Posts: 3660
- Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2011 10:23 pm
I'm afraid not. Drones are a very real danger in Shadowrun, but spirit summoning, grenades, guns and teammates all proved to be popular alternatives to blowing a spell selection on unwieldy elemental spells.
Last edited by Whipstitch on Thu Jan 29, 2015 6:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
bears fall, everyone dies
Are there any other rules for lycanthropes in Shadowrun besides the loup-garou from Runner's Companion?
A repeat, don't care. I know Physical Mask can fool tech sensors, but what about wifi signals? Can it mimic/hide a PAN? Can you accept ping requests on your illusory deck?
A repeat, don't care. I know Physical Mask can fool tech sensors, but what about wifi signals? Can it mimic/hide a PAN? Can you accept ping requests on your illusory deck?
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!
Re: physical mask
There are neither explicit rules forbidding it nor permitting it.
A very solid justification for not allowing it is based on the non-sentience of spells and the non-interaction of magic and the matrix. Generating a fake wireless profile requires that you measure and respond to incoming wireless signals. One of the axioms of SR sorcery is that the spells themselves don't respond to stimuli; they just respond to the current instructions from the caster. Obviously the caster can't measure wireless signals with just his brain and can't process them at full rate without the help of a commlink/deck.
You could counter "what if I had another spell to measure and digest incident signals," but that spell is definitely not in the book and there's long precedent for magical effects being entirely unable to even perceive matrix stuff, much less interact with it.
There are neither explicit rules forbidding it nor permitting it.
A very solid justification for not allowing it is based on the non-sentience of spells and the non-interaction of magic and the matrix. Generating a fake wireless profile requires that you measure and respond to incoming wireless signals. One of the axioms of SR sorcery is that the spells themselves don't respond to stimuli; they just respond to the current instructions from the caster. Obviously the caster can't measure wireless signals with just his brain and can't process them at full rate without the help of a commlink/deck.
You could counter "what if I had another spell to measure and digest incident signals," but that spell is definitely not in the book and there's long precedent for magical effects being entirely unable to even perceive matrix stuff, much less interact with it.
How do governments maintain airspace security? A plane with a Force 10 spirit using Movement and Concealment doesn't seem like something you can counter in a reasonable time frame.
Last edited by virgil on Mon Feb 16, 2015 1:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!
I definitely meant Stunbolt, when I said manabolt. It's been too long since I played. Stunbolt, maybe stunball if you need it. I never figured out how astral combat was supposed to work, but it seemed like death touch or knockout might be good? I'm not sure what roll you need to "touch" an astral form. Logic+Astral Combat or something?
As for drones, is object resistance a big enough problem to make elementals better than powerbolt?
As for drones, is object resistance a big enough problem to make elementals better than powerbolt?
So is a ground-air missile in many cases.virgil wrote:How do governments maintain airspace security? A plane with a Force 10 spirit using Movement and Concealment doesn't seem like something you can counter in a reasonable time frame.
You don't take measures to avoid getting a plane destroyed once there's a F10 spirit out to get it. You take measures to know about such plots before they're put in motion, and to keep track of who's able (and willing) to summon a F10 spirit and likely to do it to destroy a plane.
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- Serious Badass
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I think you got that question backwards. The question was about sending planes over borders, not about blowing up airplanes.Blade wrote:So is a ground-air missile in many cases.virgil wrote:How do governments maintain airspace security? A plane with a Force 10 spirit using Movement and Concealment doesn't seem like something you can counter in a reasonable time frame.
You don't take measures to avoid getting a plane destroyed once there's a F10 spirit out to get it. You take measures to know about such plots before they're put in motion, and to keep track of who's able (and willing) to summon a F10 spirit and likely to do it to destroy a plane.
Surprisingly, this is an element of the setting that was well sketched out and considered even by the early authors in 1989. Shadowrun posits the existence of "T-Bird Smugglers" who make short hops across national borders with high speed, low altitude aircraft. At the speeds involved, a round trip can be made with cargo loaded and unloaded long before a response of any kind can be organized.
Countries attempt to stop this kind of smuggling by trying to acquire the schedules, and by laying traps on known routes in the hopes of getting lucky.
-Username17
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- Knight-Baron
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- Knight-Baron
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- Joined: Sun Jun 21, 2009 11:35 am
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- Knight-Baron
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I am actually a believer in longarms under certain circumstances. Large rifles with AP ammunition have the best profile short of military lasers to defeat high end spirit forcefields, and automatic shotguns have a comically tiny magazine but are quite impressively capable of wiping out small groups of people - they are like directional grenades. So if you are facing "high end" opposition, Longarms have a place in your life.Silent Wayfarer wrote:I heard Frank disapprove of Shadowrun 4/5E longarms way back when but I have no idea why. Why? Don't they include shotguns for close range and sniper rifles for long?
That being said, if you are intending to fight The Wild Hunt or the CalGuard with handheld weaponry, you should consider rethinking your life. Maybe you should be a magician, because high end magicians are kind of ridiculous in that game. Or perhaps you should invest in heavy weapons or murder drones, because at this point your game is really approaching the event horizon between epic and retarded.
For 99% of everything you'd ever want to do in the game, Automatics is the answer. It gives you machine pistols that are as concealable a weapon as you probably need and it gives you assault rifles that are as murderous a weapon as you probably want, and it gives you SMGs that are a decent in-between choice.
I mean, I did have a game where the players took on the Alice Springs Termite Mounds and Vasuki the Nagaraja, and obviously in that case the Street Samurai who fought with a high caliber rifle packing DU rounds was well received. But in most games that kind of opposition doesn't get seen and you might as well save your skill points.
-Username17
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- Knight-Baron
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I actually did make a conjurigger for the game I'm in. In theory, the only way I can be hurt at all is if I deign to allow people a shot at me, since I float around about 500m up on a stealth FPMV with Improved Invisiblity tied to a sustaining focus on a piercing while managing half a dozen sniper rifle and battle-rifle-and-grenade launcher equipped drones over a tacnet. And that doesn't include summoning a Servant or turning elite troops into my marionettes or controlling metal rebar to stab people hiding behind reinforced concrete.
Just that it's fun to play Neo sometimes,, and I was wondering whether it was worth diverging from all automatics (with a grenade launcher for special occasions) all the time.
Also:
Just that it's fun to play Neo sometimes,, and I was wondering whether it was worth diverging from all automatics (with a grenade launcher for special occasions) all the time.
Also:
I sense storytime.I mean, I did have a game where the players took on the Alice Springs Termite Mounds and Vasuki the Nagaraja,
Last edited by Silent Wayfarer on Tue May 12, 2015 1:08 am, edited 3 times in total.
If your religion is worth killing for, please start with yourself.
If you get a fistful of possession spirits, can you have them possess bullets to make them dual-natured and thus technically get around the rule against ranged magic weapons?
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!
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- Knight-Baron
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He had a fistful of possession spirits post for him.
Of course, now I'm imagining doing it with a boomerang.
Of course, now I'm imagining doing it with a boomerang.
virgil wrote:Lovecraft didn't later add a love triangle between Dagon, Chtulhu, & the Colour-Out-of-Space; only to have it broken up through cyber-bullying by the King in Yellow.
FrankTrollman wrote:If your enemy is fucking Gravity, are you helping or hindering it by putting things on high shelves? I don't fucking know! That's not even a thing. Your enemy can't be Gravity, because that's stupid.
- Stahlseele
- King
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- Location: Hamburg, Germany
If you want to go silly, you go full hog.
Net-Gun Net made out of Monowire.
If the spirit has 3D-Movement, that would be very effective.
Net-Gun Net made out of Monowire.
If the spirit has 3D-Movement, that would be very effective.
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Not only can that be imagined, but it comes pre-nerfed. Movement works by spatial distortion rather than energy increase. A movemented bullet will go farther but it won't hit any harder. Been that way since first edition.Silent Wayfarer wrote:Oh lord, can you imagine them casting Movement on themselves to fly at Mach 5 and destroy everything via hypersonic bow shock?
The authors were ahead of you. In 1989.
-Username17
- Stahlseele
- King
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Blood in the Board-Room.
Super Tuesday.
Mob War!
Divided Assets.
DreamChipper.
So, yes, there are some set in the more or less mundane world of finances and crime syndicates and politics . . granted, telling them apart may be a bit hard.
But Tech and Magic are basically what sets shadowrun apart from the rest more or less . .
So it kinda sorta makes sense to me to have more plot lines to do with that.
Super Tuesday.
Mob War!
Divided Assets.
DreamChipper.
So, yes, there are some set in the more or less mundane world of finances and crime syndicates and politics . . granted, telling them apart may be a bit hard.
But Tech and Magic are basically what sets shadowrun apart from the rest more or less . .
So it kinda sorta makes sense to me to have more plot lines to do with that.
Last edited by Stahlseele on Tue May 12, 2015 1:52 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
Sorry about that. For some reason, my home computer, when hooked up to my home internet, has a lot of trouble loading the Den (change either computer or connection and it's fine)...and I may have pressed refresh a couple times when the page crashed to see if it even posted. I had to give up and go to bed after a while, so I don't even know how bad it got on your end.Longes wrote:Virgil, you okay buddy?
So do voodoo bullets, aside from being able to shoot spirits, add their Force to anything when used?
How big of a nerf is it if you ban sustaining foci and cap spirit mental stats to be flat 3 or 4?
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!