Shadowrun Min Max

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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Username17 »

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.


Called Shot bonuses actually apply, and the bonus DV from getting net hits on the attack roll, and the AP from weapons.

So let's say that you pull a called shot from an assault rifle firing AP rounds. The base DV is 6, up by +4 for the called shot, + at least one more for hitting at all, you've got a modified DV of 11 (or more) and you are subtracting 5 from the armor at the other end. So Immunity to Normal Weapons does nothing to you if you are throwing down against a spirit of Force 7 or less. If you get a second net hit, you'll sail through a Force 8.

Then you apply the burst damage bonus after the comparison, by that's fine because you're already killing them pretty good.

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.


Masking. Extended Masking. Flexible Signature.

Building your own foci: Worth it?


Usually no. Foci are so expensive to bond that the slow trickle of foci that you find on the dead bodies of enemy spell casters is actually more than you want or need.

But your gamemaster probably doesn't throw in weapon focus monowhips or laser guns, so if you want to have a weapon focus, you'll probably have to make it yourself. Carrying around a spear is straight up chickenshit malarky.


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


Enhanced Senses and Datajacks. Seriously, you can target people you can "see", so getting vision enhancers is totally worth a Magic point.

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


Task, Guardian, Guidance, Man, Water.

Seriously, that's straight up Voodoo. It's already about as awesome as it is possible to be. You get both skill choices, you get the divination, you get the weather control, and you get the spell hand-off cheese.

There are some crazy awesome options available to people with Invoking - Regeneration and Quake are no joke. But short of that, the basic Houngan has about the best spread of unique spirit talents that it is possible to have on a possession tradition (recalling for the moment that the draw on Air and Earth spirits is largely related to their physical attributes which a Possession tradition can't even use).

But of course, what you really want to do is go Toxic and just make up five spirits that all do something awesometastic.

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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Lago_AM3P »

But of course, what you really want to do is go Toxic and just make up five spirits that all do something awesometastic.


Is it at all possible to make a Toxic shaman that's a 'good guy' in the context of the adventure he's in?

Maybe a Toxic shaman that wants humankind and human thought to eventually infest the entire solar system? Or a Toxic shaman that wants to revert society back to 'tilling-the-soil' feudalism just because?








I also believe you answered this question before, but damned if I can find the thread. The question was if there was any rules tomfoolery I could pull to make my familiar a possession spirit and be able to staple the stats on top of me? If so, how; if no, why not?
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Username17 »

Most of my objections to the Street Magic book come from the Threats chapter. And my big problem with the Toxics is that they are incoherrent.

There really isn't a solid line for what makes a Toxic magician Toxic. In a world with multiple philosophies and divergeant moral codes that agree on nothing, having a group who are "bad" doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

But yeah, many of the "Toxic" groups really don't seem that bad. Havocs and Sterilists are pretty justifiable positions which I could even see supporting. While the Care Bears would fight either one, they could just as easily be the good guys.

And the spirits are... whatever your GM says that they are. There actually aren't 5 toxic spirits available to any of the groups of Toxics. So no matter what toxic tradition you happen to follow you must make some shit up to get there. The Toxic traditions aren't really "playable" out of the box, which pissed me off to no end.

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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Lago_AM3P »

I think probably the closest thing to a truly evil Toxic would have to be one of these two and probably some combination.

Infester: Want to maximize humanity's suffering by pushing the earth's carrying capacity to its utter limits to support human beings. The perfect world for them involves a quick-breeding, miserable populace where there's no green life or animals and people are living a strict subsistence existence where most people don't even live in cardboard boxes and food is literally created from rocks and human waste. The condition of people on the world is immaterial to them, as long as metahumanity doesn't immediately implode.
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Lago_AM3P »

Illuminati: Magicians in the world of Shadowrun, although having massive advantages in their life station, still have equal social worth as the mundanes (with some notable exceptions among minority governments). This is unacceptable for these kinds of toxics. Illuminati seek to completely destroy the bonds of technology that allow mundane to compete equally with them and establish themselves as the new masters of society. An ignorant, filthy, slave population of mundanes are to be exploited for fantastic profit by these kinds of toxics (and their unwitting awakened counterparts) with any technology subject to the vast power and control of the awakened aristocracy.
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Nereas »

The Illuminati is already represented by the Illuminates Of the New Dawn (Which seem far more likely to try to Awaken mundanes than enslave them)
Plus, they never had - historically - that type of agenda (although yes, the issue of what the Illuminati actually did/do/aimed for is really screwy and hard to pin down after hundreds of years of conspiracy nuts)

Anyway, on another topic - I'm new to shadowrun so I don't have much info on bunraku/personafix tech, but I was thinking of a character who 24/7 uses an implanted sim module to record his "memory" into datachips for a virtual person program (which he may or may not project from a trid)
It'd be a pretty useful (if somewhat creepy) thing - perfect memory, a second opinion etc. Of course it being hacked or the data being stolen would be unpleasant, but would there be any special condsiderations this would bring up aside from identity issues (like in Battle Angel or the Kovacs books) or similar?

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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by MrWaeseL »

Can someone please fix the typo in the title? It's driving me nuts.
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Re: Shadowrunnfr Min Max

Post by Ramnza »

[The Associate Fence Builder Speaks]
Waesel's OCD accommodated.
[/TAFBS]
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Post by Loke »

Old thread, but rather than start a new one. Anyone got any input on making mages?

Gone Elf mage, lost 1 point of magic to cyberware, eyes, platelet factories, pain editor.

Got a suite of combat spells, and am summoning spirits of man to keep the buffs going.
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Post by Rathe »

Not sure if it will be anything you are looking for, but my most colourful and thematic mage was a "touch attacker of doom".

In short:
Go Ork
Go posession style with intuition base
Max Hand to Hand, with specialization in chi/touch/martial art attacks
Take a few spells - Deathtouch, Knockout, Shatter for combat
Take a few more - Mana Static, Trid Entertainment, Detect Life, Heal, Incr Reflexes, Invisibility, Mask & Influence so you rock at doing stuff others can't
Grab initiate level 1 - channeling
Buy a Sustaining Focus for Incr. Reflexes
...
Have fun at a non standard mage & profit

Also, check out this thread http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=50307& ... c&start=25

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Post by Username17 »

Loke wrote:Old thread, but rather than start a new one. Anyone got any input on making mages?

Gone Elf mage, lost 1 point of magic to cyberware, eyes, platelet factories, pain editor.

Got a suite of combat spells, and am summoning spirits of man to keep the buffs going.
So you're maxing drain resistance? Fair enough. Pain editors are surprisingly not that good in this edition, because damage penalties really aren't that big. Also, if you want to drop anyone with combat spells, you'll be overcasting anyway, which gives you physical damage (which the Platelets help with, but the Pain Editor does not). So really you're paying 40k for a .3 Essence piece of cultured bioware that has an availability so high you can't even start with it that gives you an intuition penalty in exchange for +1 drain resistance die. Usually not worth it.

Still, it's hard to argue with Elf Shaman as a combat mage chassis. +2 to a drain resistance stat and you don't have to be a Dwarf (Dwarves with Cerebral Boosters can have even more Drain Resistance off a Logic tradition, but you have to be short and slow). You can pretty trivially be pumping out 12-15 drain resistance dice without even spending Karma or resorting to Centering. And that's a good thing.

But consider for a moment: you are going to be dumping Combat spells at Force 9, right? Because you have a Magic of 5, and that's nearly the maximum. A Force 9 Stunbolt only has a Drain of 3P. You're pretty unlikely to take any drain at all, and your chances of having that shit do enough physical for the Platelets to even kick in are basically zero. Where they will come in handy is on the big conjurations, which could otherwise go thoroughly off script.

You will need access to First Aid. Because a medic can easily clean up the small amounts of Physical damage you will periodically inflict upon yourself, which would otherwise take you out of commission for a day or more. It doesn't have to be you doing it, it could be another party member. Or, ironically enough, a Task Spirit if you decide to Voodoo it up.

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Post by Loke »

Good point on the pain editor, I will be overcasting 24/7 so thats a waste of points.

The platelets are nice tho, and the eyes get rid of visibility mods. Got any suggestions for what to replace the PE with?

I'll come with a more lengthy post when I get home from work. H
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Post by Username17 »

In the long run, you will want a synaptic booster. Depending on the financials of the game you are playing, it may be better to just leave a slot free and upgrade later.

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Post by Loke »

Gm has house ruled Sa to *2E. So it's not so good anylonger.
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Post by Lokathor »

Ork Intuition Magician with Guardian, Guidance, Man, Air, and Task spirits. Specializations in Combat spells (Casting and Counterspelling) and Guardian Spirits (Summoning). Also 1 rank in Binding with a Spirit of Man focus, for the occasional low force buff. I've got the Sun mentor spirit with the Combat and Guardian selections. Soon going to pick up an Ally Spirit as my metamagic for my first initiation.

Current Spells:
``Physical Mask
``Control Thoughts
``Astral Armor, Limited
``Heal
``Increase Reflexes, Limited
``Detect Life, Extended
``Manabolt (for wards/focuses)
``Powerbolt (for walls/drones)
``Stunbolt (for most everything else)

Using Ends of The Matrix, I was considering a Delta Grade Internal SimRig (.25 Cyber). The +3 to Matrix Perception seems nice (I'm already at 11 dice but more doesn't hurt), and having EUE all the way to your DNI is better than a trode net when jamming does come up (which isn't super often in our games, but still). Also wanting a Normal Synaptic Booster (.5 Bio) for the obvious reasons. I spend a lot of time astrally projected and just directing a guardian spirit about, but not always. Trauma Damper is pretty awesome (.2 Bio), and stacks with a Platelet Factory (.2 Bio). One of the biowares would have to be Alpha level or higher to shove it all into 1 Essence.

In your case Loke (cool name, yo), You can skip the part about the Internal SimRig, but all the bioware I talked about pretty much applies to all mages in general as a thing they'd want to consider heavily.
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Post by Username17 »

Loke wrote:Gm has house ruled Sa to *2E. So it's not so good anylonger.
I don't know what these words mean.

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Post by Fuchs »

I thought it meant "GM Houseruled Synaptic Accelerators' essence costs to 2 times their rating".
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Post by Username17 »

Fuchs wrote:I thought it meant "GM Houseruled Synaptic Accelerators' essence costs to 2 times their rating".
I suspected that as well. But I don't know what that has to do with Synaptic Boosters or the cost of soykaf in Nagaland.

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Post by Loke »

Oops sorry, am typing this from a mobile, yeah i meant that the bioware version of wired ref, had been given twice the essence cost. From 0.5 to 1.0.

Thanks for all the input so far guys :)
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Post by Username17 »

Loke wrote:Oops sorry, am typing this from a mobile, yeah i meant that the bioware version of wired ref, had been given twice the essence cost. From 0.5 to 1.0.

Thanks for all the input so far guys :)
Ah, well that's bullshit. You'll want to rely upon Increased Reflexes from a Bound Spirit of Man. If the GM won't let you spend 80k and half an essence for an extra IP, you'll just have to spend 6k and no Essence for three extra IP.

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Post by Lokathor »

Do spirits of man become pissed at you if you just keep the same one bound and sustaining a spell for you for ages and ages? Would you be expected to release your spirit and bind a new one from time time to time (like 1/month)?
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Post by Username17 »

Lokathor wrote:Do spirits of man become pissed at you if you just keep the same one bound and sustaining a spell for you for ages and ages? Would you be expected to release your spirit and bind a new one from time time to time (like 1/month)?
It's essentially moot, because you'll need to drop the spell and reboot very time you walk through a ward.

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Post by Lokathor »

Wards, I always forget about those.
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Post by Loke »

First session played and I got one bound force 6 spirit of man who can buff me. I got 14 services out of it by using exploding dice and edge in the process.

The 6k you speak about Frank, what is that? Binding materials?
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Post by Username17 »

Loke wrote:First session played and I got one bound force 6 spirit of man who can buff me. I got 14 services out of it by using exploding dice and edge in the process.

The 6k you speak about Frank, what is that? Binding materials?
It's only 3k in binding materials, but if you blow the roll, you might have to do it twice.

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