Shadowrun Min Max

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

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User3
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by User3 »

I can't see any prohibition in the rules against spell-stacking. The vaguest thing related against spell-stacking are the Increase Attribute spells (which already has a built-in limit).

Is there anything preventing you from having your Spirits of Man Combat Sense a lot of times to get you plenty of defense or spell-locking a bunch of Magic Fingers for a bunch of extra attacks or whatever?
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by User3 »

Also, you can split your spellcasting die pool to cast multiple spells.

Is it possible to split your die pool to cast multiple amounts of touch-range damage spells and deliver all of them through unarmed attacks for a grip of damage?
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Username17 »

Is there anything preventing you from having your Spirits of Man Combat Sense a lot of times to get you plenty of defense or spell-locking a bunch of Magic Fingers for a bunch of extra attacks or whatever?


The maximum effect that any spell can have is the Force of the spell. So once you max out the Force of the spell you don't actually get anything out of layering more copies except dispel redundancy, and every spell has to be sustained separately.

Is it possible to split your die pool to cast multiple amounts of touch-range damage spells and deliver all of them through unarmed attacks for a grip of damage?


Resistance rolls aren't split, and a resisted spell does not take effect. So if you split up a bunch of Death Touches with 1 die each, only 1/3 of them will actually require a resistance roll and chances are all of them will get cancelled - meaning that you do zero damage in that scenario.

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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by User3 »

The maximum effect that any spell can have is the Force of the spell. So once you max out the Force of the spell you don't actually get anything out of layering more copies except dispel redundancy, and every spell has to be sustained separately.


If a spell's maximum effect is limited by force but still has effects from net hits, then would casting multiple copies of the same spell with the less-than-optimum hits until you get up to Force hits work? Or casting the same spell at different strengths?

For example, you get extremely lucky and summon a spirit of Man at force 9, who then casts Combat Sense on you with his Innate Spell feature. Unfortunately, he 'only' gets 7 hits--4 from the base casting of the spell and 3 from the Edge. You then cast your own version of Combat Sense at force 3 and get two hits but you then staple this onto your sustaining focus. Do you get 7 extra dice or 9?
Also, what about Magic Fingers? Would having multiple copies of that spell do anything for you? Are you limited by the fact that you only have so many free/simple/complex actions you can do in a around or does each separate spell give you an action this turn to do something with?

Resistance rolls aren't split, and a resisted spell does not take effect. So if you split up a bunch of Death Touches with 1 die each, only 1/3 of them will actually require a resistance roll and chances are all of them will get cancelled - meaning that you do zero damage in that scenario.


Well, still, even when you split your Force Pool to punch a guy with Death Touch a lot... you deliver it through an unarmed attack. If you're already an unarmed kung fu master, could you just let your enemy make all of his resistance rolls and not care because you're already getting multiple attacks anyway?






Also, in any iteration of Shadowrun, has there ever been a version or simulacrum of Shapechange that didn't have the massive disadvantage stapled to it of being 'you are an animal'? Furthermore, what is the lower limits of what you could change into with Shapechange? Could a caster start out with a Body of 3, turn into a flea (which presumably has a Body of 1), and then start kicking the snot out of everything with non-standard attacks?
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by User3 »

While we're on the subject, between RFID tags, cyberware scanners, online security and patrols and filesharing and whatever, I have no idea how Shadowrunners are supposed to do... anything at all that's more than 5,000 nuyen a run.

Also while we're on the subject, why does character advancement seem to screw Street Samurais more than Awakened? All of the examples in the book suggest that you should get around 10,000 nuyen--MAX--per adventure. And from what I've read on other forums it's supposed to be really hard to get betaware, let alone deltaware.

So what gives?
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by User3 »

Furthermore, what's the metagame advantage at all, if you're a decker or a mage, of taking a more challenging run? It seems to me that even if you're an adept capable of taking on 10 armed gangers, you don't want to actually do anything more challenging than 'retrieve the mob boss's daughter'. You'll get almost the same amount of karma and thus advancement.

Street Samurai, however, NEED the way more dangerous (and decent-paying) jobs, otherwise they'll never really advance and the mage will leave him in the dust.

So what gives?
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Lago_AM3P »

What book are the possession rules for 3rd Ed in? I can't friggin' find it.

I found something about Loa spirits but that seems amazingly crappy and not at all what Frank was talking about.

(someone else post plz so loneleh)
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Lago_AM3P »

Okay, I have a copy of Street Magic. Or rather, the PDF.

Man, I have so many questions about this book. Mostly related to cheesing out. Mmmm, Shadowrun cheese. The kind you don't feel guilty for.

My real question, not related to this new book, regards Quickening. Specifically, I'm wondering /why/ so many people are against it. I feel that the biggest drawback is that you have the aura of the spell on you at all times. However, there's a power in this book (aura masking) that gives you the awesome ability to hide the fact that you have buffs or are even awakened. There's even additional precautions you can take to hide the fact that you have free-running buffs (edge, initiate grade, and foci).


While we're on the subject, the book(s) go into great detail and whining about how there will be nebulous in-game penalties for characters who 'abuse' spirits. Yet apparently nearly every power group described in this book routinely does things that demeans spirits and they suddenly stop caring. What the hell...

In fact, a lot of this book throws up and then hand-waves important negative things that can happen to characters. Like that spirit abuse thing. They say that GMs should start imposing additional penalties to characters who are jerks at their own discretion. They don't even bother naming example circumstances for this. I find this shit extremely cowardly and childish; they're passing the blame onto the gamemaster for being a cock when it was their idea to be a jerk in the first place. Like foci addiction. What's up with that?

While I'm whining some more, let's talk about security. Street Magic's own numbers state that like one out of every ten-thousand people can use magic good enough to pose a threat to shadowrunners. And only a handful of these people want to do things like be a wage mage. Yet extensive and impenetrable magical security seems to be a feature of any adventure. I mean, I can understand this if you're going up against the Big Boyz HQ, but if you're doing a dangerous run for a shitty payment of like 5,000 nuyen per character that's ridiculous. We could just stay at home and engage in insider trading.



But enough of that crap. Most of it's related to roleplaying and how I resent how some gaming systems try to curb powergaming by making the rules variable or muddled.

What I want to talk about is:

POSSESSION!!!!!

Holy crap, Frank. It's everything you said it would be only sweeter. I know it's not actually all that stronger than regular materialization (and in fact is in most situations weaker) but the flavor implications are badass to the MAXXX. Imagine having a possessing spirit of Man (with Innate Spell: Levitation) in a sword. Or slapping a spirit of air into your sports car. You'll be able to travel in your goddamn flying car in speeds of excess of Mach 2. Or you could slap one onto a safe and order it to open up.

It seems like they struck sort of a compromise about the whole 'the spirit is in control of your body'. Unfortunately, like they said, the way they do this is kind of crap and has bad implications for the game. It forces you to engage in micromanagement and carefully worded orders but doesn't necessarily take control out of your hands in situations that matters. And if the GM is being a cock about it, you can take that sweet metamagic that lets you have control of your own attributes and tell him to sit on it.

My only question is (when you get the book) is whether the whole 'possessing spirits add their force to the physical attributes' thing hits the augmented maximum cap. As in, a Strength 4 ork who gets possessed by a force 4 spirit gets a strength of 6 or 8. If it's 6 then that would suck donkey balls and would always make me choose materialization traditions.

Best magical idea ever. I really love it. It makes me wish D&D had something this cool.
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Username17 »

Welcome to the hilarity of writing by committee. Were it up to me, the Inhabitation spirits and the Possession spirits would have run off the same mechanic. But it wasn't, so they don't. <shrug>

As for the magic using population, yes. I am fully aware that the description of the uses magic is actually put to are not compatible with the reported magical population density. That's because there's multiple authors, plain and simple. The best I can tell you is that the description of how many people are supposed to be magical in total are in-character and thus quite plausibly incorrect.

Because yeah, there are 6.5 billion people on the planet. If only 650,000 of them have a Magic Rating above 2… then honestly Magic doesn't matter. I know lots of people wan to feel special, but seriously. What the hell? Even if every single one of them was a cop or a robber you wouldn't be able to have the kind of meaningful Shadowrunner vs. Security fights that we want to have – there are over one hundred and sixty oil companies. Not "total companies", just oil companies. We aren't talking about the total facilities, which number in the millions. So yeah, no doubt – that's many orders of magnitude off. I don't even know what to tell you.

Lago wrote: Most of it's related to roleplaying and how I resent how some gaming systems try to curb powergaming by making the rules variable or muddled.


Heh. I'm right there with you.

Imagine having a possessing spirit of Man (with Innate Spell: Levitation) in a sword. Or slapping a spirit of air into your sports car. You'll be able to travel in your goddamn flying car in speeds of excess of Mach 2. Or you could slap one onto a safe and order it to open up.


Well, you could do that with a materializing spirit too, likely as not. The movement power is usable on inanimate objects. It is pretty awesome flavor-wise I'll grant you. My wish is that it didn't get cut in editing to the point where it looks like a White Wolf product. Imagine if instead you actually had some guidelines about possessing statues and the like and could turn them into walking stone guys in a reasonably balanced fashion. That was my dream, but it didn't make it that far.

Ultimately, the "Gamemaster picks stats out of his arse" byline combined with the non-limitation that spirits can only make objects bend at joints means a big no to animating statues of the Buddha and a big yes to slapping a Guardian Spirit into a Steel Lynx with Machine Gun Turret. And I think that's a damn shame.

My only question is (when you get the book)


Check the author line at the front, I've had almost every version of the book at almost every step of the writing process. Unfortunately, it wandered into editing for a long while and then went almost straight to print, but what are you going to do?

It seems like they struck sort of a compromise about the whole 'the spirit is in control of your body'. Unfortunately, like they said, the way they do this is kind of crap and has bad implications for the game. It forces you to engage in micromanagement and carefully worded orders but doesn't necessarily take control out of your hands in situations that matters. And if the GM is being a cock about it, you can take that sweet metamagic that lets you have control of your own attributes and tell him to sit on it.


Yes, that was quite literally a compromise. I'm sure you can imagine what end of the debate of whether players should be able to control their own actions I was on. :)

is whether the whole 'possessing spirits add their force to the physical attributes' thing hits the augmented maximum cap. As in, a Strength 4 ork who gets possessed by a force 4 spirit gets a strength of 6 or 8. If it's 6 then that would suck donkey balls and would always make me choose materialization traditions.


That Ork's augmented strength cap is 12, so neither of those is out of line. So let's talk instead about a Reaction 4 Dwarf. Technically you're a spirit at that point, so you use the Spirit's augmented cap of *infinity*, so you have a Reaction of 8 rather than 7.

Best magical idea ever. I really love it. It makes me wish D&D had something this cool.


Thank you.

I wish that too. Possession and demon binding have always worked better in Shadowrun than they have in D&D. Mostly I think it's because Shadowrun's Drain system is much more conducive to simulating bargaining than is D&D's spell slot system. Once you've played a card in D&D, it's played. There are no retries, and the paradigm is that there are no further costs.

It's a problem. Writing some good possession rules into the Tome of Trees or the Tome of Virtue is a possibility, but only barely so.

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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Lago_AM3P »

Last night, when I saw Frank use a smilie emoticon, I had nightmares about it.

A man in orange camoflague driving an ambulance... smiling at me. Brrr.

Anyway, I had a couple more questions about Shadowrun in general.

Are people (not just regular metahumanity) allowed to change into metahumans with their shapechange spell? The description of dragons in the core book states that dragons often take human form (and not just Great Dragons) but they don't have anything in their stat block that would allow them to do this other than spellcasting.

Stats for metahumanity are not defined (other than some statement that '3' is the average score) so that might be a problem. Regardless, what's the official ruling on this?



Also, this is more of a design question. But if you were designing security systems for several buildings as described below while minimizing money (while keeping the riff-raff out to a reasonable extent), how would you go about doing it for:

A psychiatrist's office that has confessions from a politician about how he really hates the fsck out of poor people and how he fantasizes about being the 21st century's Vlad the Impaler. This place has a reputation for confidentiality and being a safe place for the rich and powerful.

You have an assignment to sneak into some country that your country really hates and you're tasked with blowing the fsck out out the experimental prototype power plant and getting the names of all of the scientists working on the project (so you can schedule them for an immediate execution). The target country, while poor compared to your country, is aware of the fact that people hate the power plant and want to keep it on the down-low. The target country also wants to keep the destruction on the down-low, too, so won't just shoot cruise missiles or send an invading army.

The building where the agents held Morpheus. Only the agents aren't on-site (but they can get there in less than 15 minutes).

Also, could you explain how degree of magical security you'd put in each of these buildings, on the assumption that you can find a mage to any degree of skill and specialization you want?
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Lago_AM3P »

Surely there's someone on these boards besides Frank interested in 4th Ed?

Because I was trying to design a mage/mystic adept that focused on being as stealthy and untraceable as possible. As in stapling air elementals into his body so he could move faster than he could be picked up by camera and looking completely innocent in astral space.


Going Dio Brando on foes is a plus, too. What with the slimy bio-organic powers and the unstoppable invisible guardian spirit.
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Catharz »

Is it really possible to get 35 points in negative qualities by being really incompetant at things like naval engineering? Because that seems flat-out borkn, especially when skillware is so cheap.

It also seems that orangutan-Fu doesn't work anymore because there aren't any official stats for monkies. Am I wrong?


I'm also not seeing why dodge is so bad and gymnastics is so great. When doing a full defence, a character can either 1) Use Reaction + 2*Dodge to defend against all attacks, 2) Use Reaction + 2*Melee to defend against melee attacks, or 3) Use Reaction + Dodge + Gym or Reaction + Melee + Gym to defend against either ranged or melee attacks, respectively. What am I missing?
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Username17 »

Is it really possible to get 35 points in negative qualities by being really incompetant at things like naval engineering? Because that seems flat-out borkn, especially when skillware is so cheap.


:shrug: Yeah, you can take disadvantages that will never come up. Ever. Honestly, I don't care. The negative qualities can only give you 35 points, and that's small potatoes. What you're looking at is people get almost 10% bonus points if they write a character backstory (which will, naturally enough, explain why it is that you have whatever negatives you happen to come across). Net result: powergamers write backstories. Everyone is happy.

It also seems that orangutan-Fu doesn't work anymore because there aren't any official stats for monkies. Am I wrong?


They'll be in Running Wild. And yeah, the animal stats have been scaled way down. Humans are now basically tougher than dogs and cats. It's awesome. So Orangutan Fu won't be nearly as good - but it's still broken if you allow Shapechange as written. +1 to base attributes for every hit? What the hell?

Although here's the stealth nerf du jour: interpret it as +1 divided amongst the physical attributes for every net hit - then it's just an attribute boosting spell that requires you to remove your pants and is fairly balanced overall.

I'm also not seeing why dodge is so bad and gymnastics is so great. When doing a full defence, a character can either 1) Use Reaction + 2*Dodge to defend against all attacks, 2) Use Reaction + 2*Melee to defend against melee attacks, or 3) Use Reaction + Dodge + Gym or Reaction + Melee + Gym to defend against either ranged or melee attacks, respectively. What am I missing?


The thing you're missing is that your character does have a Gymnastics skill. She needs it to be a ninja. So your choice then is to buy Unarmed Combat or Dodge in addition.

Yes, Dodge can replace Gymnastics and Unarmed Combat at the same time. But if you already have one or the other there is no reason to not get both and skip out on Dodge.

Or to put it another way:

Gymnastics can substitute for part of Dodge AND it lets you Flip Out.
Unarmed Combat can substitute for the rest of Dodge AND it lets you kick people in the face.

So if your character wants to flip out or kick people in the face, there's no reason to have Dodge when you can just bypass the whole deal while simultaneously being able to Flip Out and Kick People in the Face.

---

And finally: Gymnastics is a physical skill, not a combat skill. That means that bonuses from Adept powers are affordably priced and it's part of the Athletics Group so you can get crazy large bonuses for cheap Essence out of getting Synthacardium.

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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Catharz »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1166089749[/unixtime]]
Is it really possible to get 35 points in negative qualities by being really incompetant at things like naval engineering? Because that seems flat-out borkn, especially when skillware is so cheap.


:shrug: Yeah, you can take disadvantages that will never come up. Ever. Honestly, I don't care. The negative qualities can only give you 35 points, and that's small potatoes. What you're looking at is people get almost 10% bonus points if they write a character backstory (which will, naturally enough, explain why it is that you have whatever negatives you happen to come across). Net result: powergamers write backstories. Everyone is happy.

Are you saying this because most GMs will give out additional BPs to players who spend the time to make good characters? Or are you referring to the Karmic rewards which come from "good roleplaying"?



Also, is it just me or are skillwires almost a no-brainer, even for a hardcore mage? Just start out with level 4 Alpha Skillwires, an Alpha Datajack, a Pain Editor, and a Sleep Regulator. You end up with 5.055 Essence, which is good enough. Almost 100k Yen down the drain, but that's doable.
If you dump 50 BP (the max) into Yen, you still have 150k to play with. And then all of your nonmagic active skills cost 15% (in terms of BP) of what they normally would. You do loose the opportunity for advancement (4 max ranks).

I'm really not seeing the downside to being a no-skill character. Especially a mage.


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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Lago_AM3P »

You can't Edge skillwires and you can only have a limited amount of it, too (in both essence and the dice you can roll).

Also, you can't have a Pain Editor at character creation. What a shame.

But Shadowrun the 4th is all about milking all of your sources of power without diminishing the other piles as much as possible. I don't know any adept that hasn't gotten some bioware/cyberware. For skills that I know I'm going to NEED but don't necessarily have to have at max ranks (medicine feh), I put that in for skillwires.

But at no point do I decide that going no-skills is a good idea. That's crazy. Skills are devillishly hard to raise/
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Lago_AM3P »

Also, Frank, going back to Orangutan-Fu, does Shapechange allow you to take the form of metahumans? Why or why not? Is there a real balance or flavor issue with letting you turn into a troll or an ork?
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Username17 »

Lago_AM3P at [unixtime wrote:1166225989[/unixtime]]Also, Frank, going back to Orangutan-Fu, does Shapechange allow you to take the form of metahumans? Why or why not? Is there a real balance or flavor issue with letting you turn into a troll or an ork?


Technically a Shapechange Spell allows you to turn into a human but not an Ork or a Troll. Turning into an Ork isn't amazingly broken by comparison, but the global restriction on becoming magically augmented subspecies prevents people from turning into Cockatrices or Storm Crows, which is pretty important for game balance.

I wouldn't be phased by a "metahuman form" spell that specifically transformed you into a metavariant of your choice. But a shapechange that allowed paracritters globally would be game breaking. Paracritters do a lot of crazy crap (that still doesn't quite make up for the "no pants, no AR" limitation that they labor under in most cases, but still).

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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Catharz »

Frank Trollman wrote:...a Technomancer Rigger.


This sounds like an interesting character. I was thinking that technomancers were basically crap, but this could be very effective. You're basically an unarmed civilian with no cyberware or other restricted gear, who happens to have a bunch of robots as body guards. And hopefully you can 'turn' the security system of most buildings you enter.

You wouldn't build it like a normal technomancer though. I imagine you'd build it like a summoner. That is, you'd put 5 points in logic at most, and start with around a 5 in Charisma. You'd rely on registered sprites for most of your complex forms, learning only those which you need to use (Armor, Encrypt, Stealth, maybe Attack, any others?).

Skills would be Cracking and Electronics (group), and Perception. You'd probably buy Threading 4, Compile 6, and Decompile 1 individually.

For starting drones, it almost seems more worthwhile to convince them to 'run away,' rather than buying them. I do like the idea of a Stormcloud blimp-drone with a silenced sniper rifle (or two...).

Anyway, I'm a total Shadowrun noob. Am I doin' it right?
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Username17 »

The technomancer rigger wants scan, browse, command, analyze, edit, encrypt, armor, ECCM, Stealth, and Track. The only thing you ever do personally on the Matrix is gather information so that you know what to sick your Sprites on. THat means that you need a Logic of 5 (but you don't need more).

Decompiling is lame beyond belief. it only works on Sprites and there are better things you can do (like make your own Sprites to fight them with - the Fading is the same). You're probably going to use Registering more than any other skill since you will re-register sprites every time you have down time.

And yeah, you're a diviner and a summoner, not a combat Hacker. You should consider investing in Social Skills because you already have some Charisma focus. Eventually you will get some cybernetics - Control Rig and Sensory mods. But wait until you can get it Delta, you don't ever want to be out more than an Essence Point.

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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Catharz »

That was exactly the sort of advice I was looking for, thanks.


Some questions:

You suggested getting a Control Rig. Is that useful, given that you'll be wanting a swarm of Sprite-controlled drones which may well be more powerful than you are?

By sensory upgrades, do you mean fake eyes and ears? 'Cause I'd much rather get a cool pair of glasses and some ear buds, and save the Essence. The ocular drones are cool, but you already have drones...

If anything, I'd go with bioware only. Unless people without cybernetic implants are actually viewed with suspicion (bacause they're probably mages). Does the Pain Editor still have the same level of utility to a character whose summons don't kill him when they go uncontrolled?


Also, what's your view on broad skills?
Taking a broad skill to 4 costs 40 BP, and taking it to 6 costs another 55 karma. Taking the (sometimes) equivalent of two skills at 4 and one at 6 costs 56 BP and increasing the two to 6 costs 44 BP. I suppose 5 Karma is a small price to pay for starting with a skill at 6.
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Catharz »

I've been looking over Lago's ninja posts as well as Street Magic, and came up with a few observations...

Unarmed combat:
At first I thought Elemental Strike looked like a lame duck, but upon closer examination it was revealed to be made of Win and Awesome. That is, as long as you choose the right element. Sound is one possibility. Sound ignores all armor, and has a decent chance of deafening and (more importantly) nauseating your target. The fact that you now sound like a bad Kung Fu film is both a boon and a bane.
Smoke is also pretty cool, because it redices visability for your targets. Very 'ninja.' Smoke is probably the better choice if you are throwing low damage punches.

As a side question: Is Nerve Strike worth it? In a game like D&D, I'd say yes, but in Shadowrun characters already take significant penalties for being damaged, and 10 or so is usually enough damage to take someone out in one round. With that being the case, the amount of attribute damage seems fairly weak.
I'm not sure whether you ever want to sink in two points to get ranged unarmed strikes. You don't get to add the elemental effects, so at that point you would have been better off getting Missile Mastery and Power Throw 4.


Also, you want to pick up some rank 10 sedative patches as soon as possible. Covering someone in bandaids is pretty subtle, and those bandaids deal quite a bit of damage. I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this one yet.


Ninjutsu:
So you want Gliding & Traceless Walk (2 power points), but is Wall Running (1 pp) worth it? You're going to have an ungodly high Gymnastics due to Synthacardium 3, a Reflex Recorder, Muscle Toner, and possibly even Improved Ability. The additional ability granted by Wall Running seems unnecessary unless you can count jumping as a 'break.'

You're going to eventually want the following 'ware, just because (as Frank said earler) it's significantly cheaper in terms of Essence cost than the Adept equivalent:

Bio:
Muscle Toner 4 (0.8 Ess, 32k N¥)
Reflex Recorder-Athletics (0.2 Ess, 25k N¥)
Sleep Regulator (0.15 Ess, 10k N¥)
Synaptic Booster 3 (1.5 Ess, 240k N¥)
Synthacardium 3 (0.3 Ess, 30k N¥)
Total Cost: 2.9 Essence, 348.5k N¥.

If you go with the monowhip, you'll want:
Reflex Recorder-Exotic Melee (0.1 Ess, 10k N¥)
& Cyber:
Fingertip Compartment (0.1 Ess, 1.5k N¥)

If you go with unarmed attacks, you'll want Delta Bone Density 4 (1.2 Ess) and an Unarmed Combat reflex recorder.

Of course you want to use better than Basic bioware. I think Frank said earlier that you'd never want to loose more than 2 Essence with an Adept, and of course he's right. With the Unarmed variant you'll actually probably end up burning 3. The goal in starting out is to approach one of those numbers asymptotically, because (as Frank explains in the Dumpshock FAQ) you never regain essence, but you use your current setup to calculate the loss.

So starting out, if you can afford it, you'll want be using the following:
Muscle Toner 2 (0.4 Ess, 10R, 16k N¥)
Reflex Recorder-Athletics (0.2 Ess, 25k N¥)
Synaptic Booster 2 (1 Ess, 160k N¥)
Synthacardium 3 (0.3 Ess, 30k N¥)
For a total loss of 1.9 Essence and 231 N¥.

Of course, that's probably way too expensive for most runners. You might also want a Reflex Recorder-Infiltration.

Most everything else can be done well without burning Essence.
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Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Lake Ontario is in my backyard; Canada

Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Judging__Eagle »

Interesting material here.

Makes me wish I was playing SR again. :ohwell:
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Catharz
Knight-Baron
Posts: 893
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Catharz »

1) A summoner with Channeling can act freely when possessed.

2) A possessed character has mental & special attributes equal to the spirit's Force.

Does this mean that a summoner with a Magic of 1 can choose to suck up the drain & summon a Force X spirit into himself, and then proceed to bind it using his new Magic of X? And resist the drain with 2X?

'Cause at that point being a magical dabbler is very easy, as is being a viable near-burnout (Essence 1).

You still need a good willpower to resist mana spells (and the killer drain).

If you really want to go crazy, just start chain-binding spirits. Start with a Force 2, upgrade to 4, upgrade to 6, etc. You'll keep taking physical damage, which means you want a platelet factory, but you also keep getting more boxes. And you're limited only by your ability to deal with absurd amounts of drain. Remember that once you go to Bind something, you're using its Magic and the drain becomes Stun (e.g. Pain editor fodder).
RandomCasualty
Prince
Posts: 3506
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by RandomCasualty »

Another SR4 question:

Spirits seem pretty buff with thier immunity to normal weapons power. Now as I'm reading it, it basically means the spirit has twice its force in armor against all attacks. If the modified DV of the attack doesn't exceed this armor, then the attack automatically fails.

Now, what I'm wondering is what factors inot the modified DV. It states it factors in AP, but do modifiers for say a narrow burst, or extra successes on the attack test factor in, or is it purely just base DV and AP?

Since as I'm reading it, a force 6 spirit seem almost invulnerable to anyone not using an assault cannon. I'm basically wondering how you'd optimize someone to take out spirits, beyond the obvious of being a mage.
Lago_AM3P
Duke
Posts: 1268
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Lago_AM3P »

What combination of metamagic/spells should I pick up like the quickness if I want:

A.) Power that won't draw the attention of the authorities and is hard to take away from me.

B.) Raw power.


Building your own foci: Worth it?

What cyberware/bioware should a mage seriously consider setting fire to his/her essence for?

Also, if I'm making a possession tradition from scratch, what combination of spirits should I pick up for raw cheesy power?
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