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andreww
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Post by andreww »

Increasing stats to 2 costs 10 Karma.
Power points cost 5pp each for Mystic Adepts. The 2 cost was erratted.
Your initiative is pretty awful. You want to be able to hit 20+ without too much trouble to get plenty of actions. Either Increased Reflexes spell or adept power do well.
If you have the Eagle Mentor then grabbing a speciality in summoning Air spirits may be the better idea for a total of +4.
Being able to Bind spirits is very helpful, especially to get the bonus to casting rolls for a service.
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Post by Username17 »

phlapjackage wrote:Bod 1 in SR5 is gonna make you hate life. Yeah, yeah, 1 piece of armor no matter what your Bod is etc. But damage codes (esp. grenades) are much deadlier, and your Bod checks / overflow / condition monitor really really suck.
Frankly, the new damage codes are so severe that I don't think Body even matters. Their response to the two shot problem of SR4 was to limit everyone to one attack and crank up the damage codes tremendously. An Assault Rifle does 11P at -2 AP before burst fire or ammunition bonuses. If you get hit two actions in a row, you are going down. Heck, if you get hit once you are probably going down. The amount of overflow is so crazy high that you are probably going to be dying or dead if you get tagged twice. A minimal hit is 12P against the 10 dice you get from your armored jacket - it's not a good day to be you.

If they get any real hits against you, or bothering to use you're going down in one hit whether you have a Body of 1 or 7. To an even greater degree than previous editions, in SR5 the only real defenses are stealth and Reaction.

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Post by phlapjackage »

FrankTrollman wrote: Frankly, the new damage codes are so severe that I don't think Body even matters. Their response to the two shot problem of SR4 was to limit everyone to one attack and crank up the damage codes tremendously. An Assault Rifle does 11P at -2 AP before burst fire or ammunition bonuses. If you get hit two actions in a row, you are going down. Heck, if you get hit once you are probably going down. The amount of overflow is so crazy high that you are probably going to be dying or dead if you get tagged twice. A minimal hit is 12P against the 10 dice you get from your armored jacket - it's not a good day to be you.

If they get any real hits against you, or bothering to use you're going down in one hit whether you have a Body of 1 or 7. To an even greater degree than previous editions, in SR5 the only real defenses are stealth and Reaction.

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This is true. CC is also really deadly now in SR5, with dmg codes at STR instead of STR/2. My thinking about BOD was, combat is so deadly now that if you get hit, you're going to either need the extra dice for your Edge re-roll of dmg resistance or you're going to need the extra boxes on your overflow monitor so you don't bleed out or die outright.
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Post by Silent Wayfarer »

The damage mechanics haven't changed THAT much. So you can still twoshot people, but it's really hard to make two attacks in one IP (but you CAN do it, with two guns), but everyone has a lot of extra defense off the bat. Base Reaction+Intuition vs ranged attacks vs everything, and R+I+Melee skill vs melee attacks (as though melee needed to be nerfed even more!). Damage codes have gone waaaay up without factoring in the fact that rolled dice typically yield 1/3 to 1/4 their pool as successes, so BOD got devalued even more.

So like Frank said, I went for dodging and stealth. Improved Invisibility will defeat most normals, and I was planning to sustain an Increase Intuition spell on myself to improve all my defensive and awareness abilities at once. Direct combat spells are kind of a crapshoot and while the indirect ones are kinda of worth taking again in comparison, and they didn't touch the Manipulation powerhouse spells (Mob Mind: yes, kill each other for my amusement!) Intuition also improves Init, which is glorious.
phlapjackage wrote:This is true. CC is also really deadly now in SR5, with dmg codes at STR instead of STR/2. My thinking about BOD was, combat is so deadly now that if you get hit, you're going to either need the extra dice for your Edge re-roll of dmg resistance or you're going to need the extra boxes on your overflow monitor so you don't bleed out or die outright.
Thing is, CC is still a Complex action and now you get an extra stat into your defense pool against it.
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Post by phlapjackage »

Silent Wayfarer wrote:Thing is, CC is still a Complex action and now you get an extra stat into your defense pool against it.
No, I totally agree.

The thing is though, unless you get into a slap-fight with some non-CC guys for some reason, when you find yourself in CC, odds are that the guy who you're fighting has been tuned for CC. So yeah, you might have slightly better odds of not getting hit with your extra stat, but if you DO get hit, it's lights out, especially with such a low Bod.

Maybe I'm just saying this because I had a recent experience with this and learned the hard way. You REALLY want to avoid getting hit if you're not specced for it. Do everything, everything you can to stay out of combat. Characters in SR5 are even more glass-cannon-y than before, combat is more deadly than before as one hit can easily be enough to put you down for good. Whether or not that's to your taste is up to you...
Koumei: and if I wanted that, I'd take some mescaline and run into the park after watching a documentary about wasps.
PhoneLobster: DM : Mr Monkey doesn't like it. Eldritch : Mr Monkey can do what he is god damn told.
MGuy: The point is to normalize 'my' point of view. How the fuck do you think civil rights occurred? You think things got this way because people sat down and fucking waited for public opinion to change?
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Post by Heisenberg »

FrankTrollman wrote:Frankly, the new damage codes are so severe that I don't think Body even matters. Their response to the two shot problem of SR4 was to limit everyone to one attack and crank up the damage codes tremendously. An Assault Rifle does 11P at -2 AP before burst fire or ammunition bonuses. If you get hit two actions in a row, you are going down. Heck, if you get hit once you are probably going down. The amount of overflow is so crazy high that you are probably going to be dying or dead if you get tagged twice. A minimal hit is 12P against the 10 dice you get from your armored jacket - it's not a good day to be you.

If they get any real hits against you, or bothering to use you're going down in one hit whether you have a Body of 1 or 7. To an even greater degree than previous editions, in SR5 the only real defenses are stealth and Reaction.

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Yes, it's fucking fail-land 9000. If they had left all weapon stats unchanged from SR4, it would actually have been an improvement. It's ridiculous that that should be the case with a new edition, that they actually did more harm than good. Reason #1097 SR5 is a heap of unplayable drek. (IMHO it is not worth playing, let alone min-maxing, this system.)

The solution to the two-hit problem was creating the one-hit problem. And that's retarded. Like I read recently on here that Pathfinder decided to balance D&D by making casters better and mundanes worse. And that's retarded. I cannot even fathm arghlbargl raaaaaaaage
Last edited by Heisenberg on Tue Dec 10, 2013 12:27 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by rasmuswagner »

Yeah, SR 5 is a blatant end-of-the-cycle reboot, with things changed for the sake of change.
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Post by virgil »

I have been running a mid-grade SR4 campaign for the last half year or so, where the group maintains a high lifestyle in the FDC and the last two missions have been stuff like "fly to Ecuador to steal metavariant beasts from police HQ" to "extract otaku brains out of the forbidden sectors of the Renraku arcology." The group consists of two physadepts (hacker and ninja/face respectively) and a mage. We use Ends of the Matrix and Frank's houserules on the same page except for the race cost. Started at 400BP and they've earned about 45BP so far. Each are members of a magical society; a soup-kitchen style group for the mage, a university computer club for the hacker, and a spirit run ninja cell bent on directing the Yakuza to be less 'public'.

The next big thing happening is that we're about to gain three new players, which is going to upgrade the group capability by a sizable margin. At least one is looking at making a heavily cybered street sam.

I've got two questions:
  • 1. Is there a sample play writeup for EotM anywhere? Both player and I feel trepidation with the rules to this day and feel like we're missing something, especially since challenging his ~14 dice is difficult at best.
    2. What kind of missions would you suggest for this party? They are currently between major plot threads.
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Post by Stahlseele »

uhm, why would they want to make the yakuza less public?
being public is what they are and always were all about.
everybody has to know who they are, where they are and what they do for it to work o.O

1.) no idea, Frank is probably the best to answer this one
2.) depends. do you want to challenge their talents or do you want to throw them into the cold water and see how they deal with being out of their element?
furthermore, we know now about 2 of the 5 to be people what their talents are. a heavy cyber street same sounds like a combat monkey, so there's that, but he can still go different ways with this. what about the other 2?
Last edited by Stahlseele on Wed Jan 22, 2014 1:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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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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Post by virgil »

The group's leader doesn't like the idea of japanese crime being done so openly, and wants to change their structure so as to encourage more use of 'true' ninjas.

As for the preference of runs, probably erring toward challenging their talents; because the new players' first session probably shouldn't be out of their element.

Two of the five? The remaining unidentified two haven't told me what they're making, and likely won't for the next week. I suspect one will be a combat medic slash face.
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Post by Stahlseele »

Detective Work / Body-Guard sounds right about now then . .
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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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Post by Whipstitch »

How does burst fire work in SR5, anyway? The reason I ask is because I'm thinking if base damage values are adequate without narrow bursts then a mook squad using wide bursts with recoil compensated weaponry should have a marked advantage over samurai relative to previous editions. You know, because they reportedly nerfed Pass enhancers, which would make sheer numbers the easiest way to net extra attacks, and because choosing between nerfing their dodge pool or trying to one shot them with extra dv is probably not even a discussion.
Last edited by Whipstitch on Wed Jan 22, 2014 3:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Stahlseele »

goon squads in firefights now have one VERY big advantage over a single high tier target anyway.
You can only attack once per round. at least, if i understood that correctly.
so the single high tier target, if he can't do A LOT AOE Damage, gets to take a shot or burst at one of the goon squad. and then every last single one of the goon squad still standing gets to take their shot or burst at the now sweating bullets samurai.
Last edited by Stahlseele on Wed Jan 22, 2014 4:30 pm, edited 1 time 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.
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Post by Username17 »

Whipstitch wrote:How does burst fire work in SR5, anyway?
That's an excellent question, because the game doesn't make any fucking sense. The combat chapter is a mess, with a lot of really fundamental changes to SR4 and a lot of cut-and-paste from SR4 side by side so that things don't really talk to each other. Like, at all.

But the long and the short of it is that you only get one attack (unless you're using multiple weapons, which for automatics is seriously undefined), and all bursts are wide bursts. But if you want to attack two different enemies, you split your attack dice pool and just do that and there doesn't seem to be any target proximity limits. And apparently the penalties to defense pools aren't split between your multiple enemies.

So you bust out an assault rifle and do a simple action of "full auto" and split your dicepool and two enemies get to dodge at minus five. When they inevitably fail to do that, each target gets to roll their Body + Armor minus six (because you're firing armor piercing rounds because you're not a hobo) and resist 11P plus however many hits you rolled (so 12P or more). If that isn't intense enough for you, you can take a complex action firing and up everyone's defense pool penalty to minus nine.

And what the hell happens when you have a machine pistol in each hand? No one fucking knows, because the rules do not cover having burstfire or full auto weapons in each hand, even though more than half of the dual-wieldable weapons have those firing modes.

SR5 is a mess. It is half assed and pretty much none of the changes in the edition were thought out even to their primary effects. Let alone secondary or tertiary effects, which the authors probably couldn't even define.

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Post by virgil »

This is a plot idea I'm having for the SR group.

In SR4, do spirits have 'essence'? If you have a spirit possess a body (normal or empty clone, whichevs), what happens to it if you then start shoving cyberware & bioware in it?
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Post by Username17 »

virgil wrote:This is a plot idea I'm having for the SR group.

In SR4, do spirits have 'essence'? If you have a spirit possess a body (normal or empty clone, whichevs), what happens to it if you then start shoving cyberware & bioware in it?
Spirits have essence equal to their Force. When they inhabit something and flesh form it, they set the essence of the hybrid to their force, and they get to use any cyberware implanted before or after the merge, and only have to pay essence for the stuff implanted after the merge. Bug spirits on cyborgs can get pretty silly pretty fast.

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Post by virgil »

Presumably lowering the Essence of the spirit will lower its magic, but does this lower any of its other stats? If you manage to kick out the spirit from the body afterward, will it return to its original state?
Last edited by virgil on Wed Jan 22, 2014 6:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Frank's post made me run through a whole gamut of emotions before finally settling on giddiness. SR5 isn't Zybourne Clock level funny, but we're getting there.
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Post by virgil »

FrankTrollman wrote:
virgil wrote:This is a plot idea I'm having for the SR group.

In SR4, do spirits have 'essence'? If you have a spirit possess a body (normal or empty clone, whichevs), what happens to it if you then start shoving cyberware & bioware in it?
Spirits have essence equal to their Force. When they inhabit something and flesh form it, they set the essence of the hybrid to their force, and they get to use any cyberware implanted before or after the merge, and only have to pay essence for the stuff implanted after the merge. Bug spirits on cyborgs can get pretty silly pretty fast.
Inhabitation on 'wared people or even cyborgs seems to make the dangerous cyberzombie obsolete, doesn't it?
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Post by Username17 »

The inhabitation rules are not what I wanted them to be. I made a number of suggestions for the Threats chapter that included not filling it with stupid broken crap, but was rebuffed at every turn. But basically yes. Bug spirits are really quite absurdly powerful. The big drawback is supposed to be that use fo the magic is immoral. But first of all: this is Shadowrun and that's stupid. And secondly, there's actually nothing stopping you from using meta-cyber boars or hellcows for your inhabitation hosts, so there's actually no logical reason to do anything morally questionable in the first place.

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Post by virgil »

If you had your druthers, or a team of shadowrunners with a small amount of whiteout and a pen, what would your suggestions/changes have been for the Threats chapter; especially with bug spirits?
Last edited by virgil on Thu Jan 23, 2014 4:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Stahlseele »

NSC Magic only. No Player Magic. Big Bad Boo Boo. Like Blood Magic and Toxics.
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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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Post by Username17 »

virgil wrote:If you had your druthers, or a team of shadowrunners with a small amount of whiteout and a pen, what would your suggestions/changes have been for the Threats chapter; especially with bug spirits?
Toxic Spirits and Blood Spirits are easy. A Toxic Tradition should summon normal spirits, but have a "Toxic Power" that their spirits get as their first optional bonus power. So as a Radiation Mage, all your spirits get to leak radiation on people. Blood Spirits should just get regular fucking Essence Drain instead of mucking about with their fucking Force, because Essence Drain out of the core book is a powerful but essentially reasonable power while moving Force up and down is broken as fuck.

Insect Spirits are slightly more complicated, in that 90% of the things that make them overpowered bullshit are simply hard coded into SR4 spirit rules, and were right out of the basic book. Spirit numbers are simply really really high, and the only real limit on them is that drain is wildly crazy random. So getting unlimited services on a pile of spirits so you don't have to conjure them and risk incapacitating drain at any point proximal to a run is just very very powerful.

So first off, spirits in general should not have mental attributes equal to Force. Very high mental stats break the game with technical skills, so anyone who gets Task Spirits (or Worker Spirits) is going to break things when they bust out high force spirits. Mental stats should probably just be 2s across the board for unbound spirits, with 3s or 4s across the board for Bound spirits (you can kick it up to 5s for Greatform). Also, Spirits shouldn't get Edge. At all. And Spirit skills should be on the mortal level instead of the crazy level they are now - Force/2 rounded up is plenty.

Once you institute those changes, bringing spirits in general into line with drones and mercenary backup, then you only have a couple of things wonky with Bugs. First off, Essence should just be set to the lower of Host or Spirit, with Magic set to Essence. Secondly, a good merge should just get the better of the spirit's mental attributes or the host's. Then I think you're basically done.

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Post by virgil »

One 'flaw' with taking those suggestions is that I can't grab a cybered hacker who's boosted their mental stats to the racial maximum, make him flesh form with a F12 bug spirit. A corps would then use personasofts to keep him docile and give themselves an organic computer that's off the hook.

EDIT: Yes, the current goal is looking into emergent aspects of the rules for a megacorp to research between spirits and 'ware.
Last edited by virgil on Thu Jan 23, 2014 8:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by kzt »

So it's a bad thing to change the rules so that you you can't trivially break the game?
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