/srg/ - Shadowrun General

Does anyone here play a technomancer?

How do I make them less overly punishing as a GM in 5th?

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bump.

how does one boost the firewall rating of a device such as a vehicle through mundane means (decker only)? I find my players are having too easy of a time hacking vehicles and such.

Somebody said last thread to slave it to a link running encryption. At best, an off the shelf link will have 7 firewall like that. What else can I do?

Also technomancers can't run programs right?

>>44764570
As far as I know, that's the best you can do for firewall unless, for whatever reason, you slave it to a deck with Firewall set higher (PLEASE DON'T DO THIS). 7 firewall is pretty good, though.

>>44764570
>Also technomancers can't run programs right?

Only if taken as Echo when they submerge.

>>44765323
>(PLEASE DON'T DO THIS)
Why shouldn't anon do that?


Also, I try to run non fashionable uncouth runners all the time for RP reasons. It makes it far funnier and enjoyable when you can interrupt non-plot important conversations with terrible puns and jokes.

Granted, this also forcibly leaves me outside any really social check dependent situation, and makes clearing security rather hard, but it adds flavor.

Tbh a 'James Bond' esque runner seems really enticing, but it's too vanilla for me even in black trenchcoat runs.

>>44765382
Slave vehicle to deck, vehicle now becomes another extremely obvious target for marks to pass up the chain. Plus, slaving it to a deck is an extremely expensive option for a whole one firewall (at best) improvement.

>>44764570
>how does one boost the firewall rating of a device such as a vehicle through mundane means?

>Increase a Matrix Attribute: You can increase a single Matrix attribute by one point, but the cost in packs of parts is equal to the new attribute rating x 2. This modification takes a lot out of the device’s other components, causing two permanent and irreparable boxes of Matrix damage to the device.

>Modify a Matrix Attribute: You can use this to increase one Matrix attribute and decrease a different Matrix attribute, each by one point. This also works on the attribute array of a cyberdeck. This requires four sets of parts.

Electronic Parts cost 250¥ per 1, or 1000¥ per 5 during chargen. Outside chargen you can scrounge with hardware tests.

>>44765439
Is that all I can do to protect my assets? I mean, it's not hard for a technomancer to brick a T-bird out of the sky with a few fault sprites. more NPC deckers on defence?

>>44765662
Oh, and;

>Unless otherwise noted, a device can only have one modification.

>>44765680
You would have to be completely retarded to not take a free action & switch off the matrix when that starts up.

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So I'm new to the game. I played the 4th edition once. Tbh I loved the setting and the feel of the game.

I want to know how much about the game and setting do I need to know so I can start running a game. Should I try 4th or 5th editions.

Is it really that hard to run?

I have some experience running D&D and playing VampireTM for a long time.

>>44765680
Military craft don't operate with active matrix connections.. Hell, military datalinks shouldn't, realistically, be matrix protocols at all.. but that would get into different communication protocols and the exsistance of strong encryption, things that would break Shadowrun.

>>44765784
The consensus on 4e is that it's easier, but I personally like 5e a lot more.

Shadowrun isn't inherently hard or easy to run, it's just a lot to know and keep in mind while DM'ing. In combat alone there's a ton of stuff to keep in mind for your PC's and NPC's namely:
-Line of Sight
-Ammo/recoil for NPC's and PC's
-Negatives and positives for shooting and doing what while doing something else eg shooting for the head (-4 small target, -2 called shot iirc)
-HTR response times
-Negative health and stun modifiers for PC's and NPC's
-Initiative passes
Even stuff like backblast damage off rocket launchers. I can't even think of half the stuff to keep in mind. There's just a lot, and a lot of mechanics.

Chargen is also pretty complicated compared to other tabletops.

My biggest complaint about the game is lack of official heavy arms and vehicles. Railguns, big cool shooty cannons, tanks and military aircraft. I mean they have a fucking luxury cruise ship in the new Rigger book (84 million Nuyen, so A LOT) but nothing about tanks. So you would have to home brew a lot of that stuff.

>>44765873
>I mean they have a fucking luxury cruise ship in the new Rigger book (84 million Nuyen, so A LOT) but nothing about tanks.

It gets even better. They HAVE tanks now! Drone tanks! The size of a bulldozer or larger!

Whose sole armaments are "40mm grenade launcher, .50 MG, or 20mm cannon", with no provisions to mount anything larger. It's bullshit.

>>44762616
What am I missing about running and playing this game?

In both 4e and 5e it feels like Magic in general is just better than everything. adepts are stronger and faster than street-sams with fewer drawbacks, technomancers are more well-rounded and more useful than most deckers, and the list goes on.

The game talks like 8-10 dice is really, really good at their job, but I've never seen a shadowrunner roll less than 17 to be considered good at their job.

Do I just run with a bunch of min-maxing fucktards, or is there someplace I should be looking around for better expectations of where to take the system?

>>44766048
You run with a bunch of minmaxing fuckta-

>technomancers are more well-rounded and more useful than most deckers

What the fuck? I need context. Storytime, anon.

>>44766032
>Whose sole armaments are "40mm grenade launcher, .50 MG, or 20mm cannon", with no provisions to mount anything larger. It's bullshit.
What do you want that's larger than that? (SR weapon names preferred)

>>44766048
>>44766061
>In both 4e and 5e it feels like Magic in general is just better than everything
You're missing background counts and we have no context as to how you're using magic.

>technomancers are more well-rounded and more useful than most deckers
... Or you just need to put down the blunt.

Okay, I just played Shadowrun Returns all the way through and I just wanted to know how similar it is, mechanically, to 5E.

A group of dudes at my local card store are getting together a game of Shadowrun with 5E rules, and I have absolutely no experience with playing it, but have been playing pathfinder for a short while. All I know is the gameplay is based around d6 mostly.

Anybody wanna give me a crash course?

>>44766048
That's because anything less than 12 dice at your primary job is, mathematically, fucking incapable of routinely actually performing that role.

Also yes, magic IS better than everything. The only exception is like right out of the gate, adepts are a little weaker than 'ware without optimization. Mages are just always 100% better.

>>44766061
>Playing competent characters
>Minmaxing
Oh fuck off already.

>>44766065
That's the problem. There are no SR weapons larger. That's what >>44765873 was getting at. If Ares' big comeback is to produce bulldozer-sized drone tanks, I'd expect them to have something better than "single-shot 20mm cannon" for armament. We've ALREADY got IFVs of the same size that mount 30mm chainguns and TOW launchers (at the same time!). The KN-Y0 series is nothing compared to that. Less armor, less armament, less speed (if you use Wakshaani's conversions to km/h), less everything. There's no actual manned tanks, either, so I can't even use those for comparison.

I don't need them in my game. But coming from my experience with other games, and what I've seen of 4th edition, there's a need for it. Especially when you have a jet bomber, a gunship, and several tanks in your game.

Hell, the MINIGUN in this game is statistically identical to other LMGs, except it needs a complex action to spin up before it's usable. No fire rate increase, no significant damage increase, nothing.

>>44765680
Don't worry, the Technomancer will just switch to Machine Sprites and Gremlin you out of the sky.

>>44766109
He's saying that his group rolls, at minimum, 17 dice for anything they want to be any good at.

Which is hardly "fucking incapable" of performing their job. I've been running my current players through test runs of their characters before they go into our actual campaign. They hover around 8-12 dice in what they're doing (the adept is a little higher but only in pistols), and at least on the combat front, they're well capable of performing, outnumbered, against Professional Rating 3+ goons. Which is good enough for fresh-from-chargen characters in my book. Technical skills, they can do their jobs well enough.

>>44766094
>I just wanted to know how similar it is, mechanically, to 5E.

Very different.

>>44766094
I should also mention I was planning on being a decker or a face, so how do those play/which one would be easier first time?

>>44766109
>>44766142
Sorry, apparently it ate an entire sentence. Corrected:

>Most of the players I've been with roll in the ~10 bracket. Which is hardly "fucking incapable" of performing their job."

>>44766115
Anything bigger than an assault rifle/a-m rifle is a joke in shadowrun.

>>44766142
You can't read terribly well, can you? Anything BELOW 12 is incapable of their job.

>>44766157
>10 dice
>average of ~3.5ish hits
>Can't even pass a threshold 4 test reliably
Yeah no for anything that you're actually specced in, you either get at LEAST 12, or you burn your fucking character sheet.

>>44766115
>Ares' big comeback
Hold up. It's not. This is testing other markets.

>We've ALREADY got IFVs of the same size that mount 30mm chainguns and TOW launchers (at the same time!).
Shadowrun is not a direct technological improvement on the real world. Down that path lies madness.

>Called Shot: Shake Up+Electrical damage is -10 to initiative
Damn, that seems like a quick way to reduce what someone can do to nothing.

>>44766159
I know. It's incredibly depressing.

Like, the most viable gun for a heavy drone is a goddamn MG42. No joke, the Krime Wave is literally an MG42 and it's the best machine gun. Assault cannons are basically irrelevant entirely.

I'm considering, for the campaign I'm running, fixing some of the damage dice.

>>44766174
>You can't read terribly well, can you? Anything BELOW 12 is incapable of their job.

Hence why I posted the correction. I'm on mobile, tiny screen = hard to read back too far, and I was tabbing in and out writing that. 17 dice is well within competent.

>you either get at LEAST 12, or you burn your fucking character sheet.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but threshold 4 is the "Hard" threshold, right? Just checking here. Anyway, in what category is 4 hits an absolute minimum to get on every single test straight out of character creation? Does your GM dump you directly into Zero Zones or something? Social skills have so many modifiers involved that they're unpredictable at best, combat in the Barrens/other areas a runner would logically start isn't up into "your enemies all have WR2 already" territory until you can get FAR better at any of your skills/attributes, technical skills vary... I could see it for a decker/technomancer, maybe, but that's about it.

>>44766032
Yeah, the drones are cool don't get me wrong, but in any pink mohawk runs a breach and clear situation with a tank is basically textbook.

>>44766115
I feel like they don't add in tanks and jets and muh cruise missiles and SAM missiles and actual top tier war machines because anything in the book is meant or is feasible for runners to get their hands on. Whereas stuff like military jets or tanks would not be, so it's just not bothered with.
>>44766159
Not really the point. It's already canon that all the 6th worlds proper militaries have this kind of stuff, but see above for a theory of why it's not in the book.

>>44766191
Unless you are based wired reflexes and your average initiative is like 20-30.

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>>44766221
>Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but threshold 4 is the "Hard" threshold, right?
Nope, you got it.

>>44766191
For the average person, it's about as effective as getting knocked unconscious / shot & going into overflow. Both of which can be done without a called shot.

>>44766238
>Unless you are based wired reflexes and your average initiative is like 20-30.
Yeah, was thinking more as a way to immobilize or nearly so a corpsec grunt if I failed to kill him, or easily deal with a mugger while using a holdout. Still gives a notable reduction when dealing with faster stuff, assuming you can still hit reliably with the -4 dice mod.

>>44766283
Yeah, but sometimes you just have a little pissy 6P pistol to work with, or a touch attack that doesn't get DV boosts from your net hits.

>>44766326

Does annoy me that 5e basically killed pistols as a primary weapon choice with the hefty buff that assault rifles got and pistols didn't.

I enjoyed pistolero characters but they don't really work any more.

>>44766361
Uh, pistols are a lot more viable in 5e than they were in 4e and its "full retard = +9P damage" rule.

>>44766307
Well a -4 dice pool isn't too bad considering if your average rolls look like 5 or 6 with a 12/14-16 dice pool. You would really only lose 1-2 hits. So if you're hitting on a 4-5, you should be fine.

Generally the best way to easily deal with corpsec grunts is stealth and beat their subpar perception, free complex action with no ability for them to dodge (iirc).

>>44766221
If you're building a character, that character has a specialization, yes?

If your character is specialized in an area, it's expected that they will routinely pull off things that are above the difficulty level that's easy for normal people to achieve, yes?

So if 4 hits is Hard, and you're specialized in an area, you should be able to routinely pull off stuff that is Hard. That means a minimum of 12 dice in that area.

The 8-10 area is acceptable for non-primary specializations, but the 12+ is REQUIRED for what your primary spec/role is. Otherwise you shouldn't be saying "I do X as my main thing", because you can't reliably DO X when it's actually important.

Some people take it higher, but 12 is what's required for legit competence.

>>44766400
Out of curiosity, how do you build Skill C-D priority characters (no one in their right mind's gonna make a Skill E character, so I won't ask about that) with 12+ dice in their entire field of specialization, if anything lower than 12 dice is "burn your character sheet"?

Like... Okay. Let's take a troll sam. You don't want to have just one edge on a sam, so you take metatype A. Either Resources B or Attributes B is gonna have to go here, or you won't be able to pull off a good enough (by your own standards!) sam. So you're topping out at skill C here.

How would you then proceed to make a fully combat-competent street sam with no less than 12 dice in any skill they're going to use in combat? Or would you instead say "well don't play a troll if you want a competent character", at which point we can safely conclude that minmaxing is the name of the game here?

>>44762616

The thread is now archvied, but I really feel like I needed to chime in regarding the danger of HTR teams. People kept saying "operators operating" but didn't give specifics. I will remedy this.

>Small Unit Tactic's combat manouvers makes all the operators act at the same time in the Intiative Pass
>Explosive Dynamic Entry with Flash-Paks gives +3 to Attack rolls and annoying glare.
>Players roll for Surprise
>First in is the Mage taking right and a machinegun drone taking left.

(Sidenote, HTR mages from sourcebooks are between initiate ranks 3 and 8. Lets say its a shit team and he's just 3 w/ MAG6. He has Masking, Spell Shaping and Centering)

>Mage is in, casts Chaotic World (let's say Mag6, Spellcasting 6, a rating 3 spell focus, and his pet Force6 spirit doing Aid Sorcery). That's 21 dice (7 hits in average, so let's say he cast at F5 and used 10 Reagents just to be safe. Lets assume he got his 7 hits). He spells shape the area immediatly around him and where is team is going to be.
>Drone does a Sensor Sweep just to make sure everyone is found and relays the info to the team's Rating3 Pi-Tac.
>Second pair goes in (There's 5 dudes in a typical HTR team, the drone is extra to make a rounded 6). This time it's the Machinegunner going left and the first Trooper going right right.
>Machine Gunner goes in doing Suppressive Fire with his Ares Alpha. Rulebook says rating5 dudes have Agi7 and Firearm9. He has +2 from his smartlink, +3 from Dynamic Entry, +2 from the Pi-Tac... So 23 dice (again 7 hits). A good fireteam would use Flechette suppression but we said they're shit... So 7 hits. Every player who succeeded the Surprise test can take cover, everyone else either spend an edge to do so as well or already start getting filled with holes.

[Shit's gonna get real next post]

>>44766487
>Trooper 1 goes Full Auto 6 rounds, Multi attack split in the two priority targets identified by the drone earlier. He has the same 23 dice pool. The flash-pak is wireless and he got glare reduction so he's unaffected by his own Pak, and 6 rounds is under his Recoil comp, he got a bright tactical flashlight attached to his gun. 12 and 11 dice for 4 and 3 hits. Assuming the targets are the player not already dead from the suppression and able to dodge... Their dodge modifiers before compensation is ...

-1 from already having dodged once (the suppression)
-7 from Chaotic World
-7 from Suppressive fire
-2 from 3 round burst fire
-1 from Dynamic Entry
>Let's assume they'resavvy sammies and have retinal flare compensation
-1 from Flash-Pak
-1 from flashlight's Blinding Glare reduced to Weak Glare (otherwise that'd be -6)
Total : -20 to the dodge pool

>There's still 4 other dudes acting before the team can react due to all happening at the same initiative score.

And this is a basic, low-grade HTR team. Yeah... No. I'll take the cyberzombies and Metal Gears anyday before I face the guys whose job is specifically to fuck up shadowrunners.

>>44766456
Well, given that I don't play 5e, I have no idea how you do a whatever the fuck in prioritygen, sorry.

And, again, I said in your specialization. If you're a combat character you have, surprise surprise, a TYPE of combat you are specced in. Are you the rifle guy? The shotgun guy? Pistolero? Bow Adept? Some other shit? You have a main combat skill. You get it to 12+. You have dodge stuff, you get that as high as reasonably possible. You get stuff like Perception to a respectable number.

>>44766495
>that I don't play 5e

There's the point of contention, all right! 5e makes lower dice pools more viable than 4e did, from what I've seen of 4e and played of 5e. I get our disconnect now, okay.

>>44766490
Oh sorry, Dynamic Entry doesn't an additional penality to dodge. Remove that extra -1.

>>44766505
Oh, my bad then. I thought it was still about the same as it was in 4e.

In 4e at least, anything less than 12 in your main role is "Just fucking kill me" tier.

>>44766456
You can take metatype B and shore up Edge with karma, you know.

And beyond that, max Agi, a couple of ranks of agi-boosting 'ware, 4-5 skillpoints, a specialization in your weapon of choice (and a smartlink) and you get your 12 dice like nothing.

>>44766518
Yeah, no no no. The troll sam with C-priority skills (that's why I gave that exact example) went 4-0 with PR3s in a quick combat test without taking any lasting damage, and their highest pool is... 10 or 11, I think? Don't have the sheet with me right now. Either way, very competent. Mage of the group's competent, definitely tops out at 11s. Adept hasn't done a test run yet, since their sheet's late, but since they're up around that 17-dice figure from earlier, I've got faith.

>>44766535
Just gets you your one (or two) weapon skills at 12, though. Whole host of supporting skills that are mandatory to have up too, from my experience. I was just making a point that "less than 12" in multiple skills on different attributes is impractical in some cases.

>>44766115
>(if you use Wakshaani's conversions to km/h
New here, what are you referring to? Is it some houserule thing that makes speed ratings make sense?

>>44766695
>The one I used is (KPH * Speed), where KPH is:
>Ground - 30 KPH, Prop 60 KPH, Jet 600 KPH, Water 15 KPH
>Gives you realistic speeds and differentiates by type. The chart should be in the drone section, but, it might have not landed there.

I know people here look down on Reddit, but the freelancers post over there a lot. Apparently a real speed conversion was planned but never showed up.

>>44766490
>>44766487
This is keeping in mind that the HTR team gets the jump, Given any passed surprise or perception check (footsteps, etc) they basically enter the the room, roll initiative, most likely lose or tie to the sammy/adept and the mage and drone get blasted immediately removing the huge negative from Chaotic word and spell shaping.

Beyond that the team enters and combat continues until the remaining 3 HTR NPC's either take out the runners or get shredded as well.

That's simply assuming the Shadow runners notice this, this isn't assuming the runners get the jump and Grenade spam and surprise the HTR team (imagine a dark room ambush scene).

HTR teams are scary if they can get the drop on you and can kill your team within the first round or two of combat, beyond that they're essentially well geared Corpsec.

> I'll take the cyberzombies and Metal Gears anyday

The opposite can be said about this, where if you DON'T get the drop on the cyberzombie(s) and kill them IMMEDIATELY, the next course of action is to run and run very far and very quickly.

>>44766712
You can find that on the official forums, too.

>>44766761
>This is keeping in mind that the HTR team gets the jump, Given any passed surprise or perception check (footsteps, etc) they basically enter the the room, roll initiative, most likely lose or tie to the sammy/adept and the mage and drone get blasted immediately removing the huge negative from Chaotic word and spell shaping.

Except that's not how it works.

If the runners is aware of the position of the HTR team, they just get +1 to their attack roll rather than +3 from dynamic entry.

Initiative is rolled prior to HTR coming in, as the runners are already in conflict with the normal corpsec that is stalling them. Small Unit Tactics' combat maneuvers bonuses applies for the entire combat turn, not just the phase. How it works is on the first Initiative Pass the Leader (alongside the teamwork of the entire team) makes their test out of sight (which means 5 dudes with at least a dice pool of 10 teamworking, for an average total of 10+([10/3]*4) 22 dice, or 7 hits. Well above the 4 required. The only way the runners can prevent this maneuver from happening is if they are BOTH...

1) Aware that the HTR team is coming in
2) Succeed their own Dynamic Entry maneuver with more hits to cockblock the HTR (out-operating the operators)

Combat Maneuvers forces the entire team to works on the same initiative.

This means that when the team DOES enter the room, they're acting on THEIR turn, so unless the players either...

A)Out-operated the operators previously
or
B)Both succeeded their Surprise test AND had spend their previous initiative turn using the SR5 equivalent of "Ready Action with trigger event" that I forgot the name from the rulebook, they can't do jackshit.

>>44767022
So what your implying is that it simply doesn't matter if the runners are fully aware of the team coming in, it's going to happen either way?

>Initiative is rolled prior to HTR coming in, as the runners are already in conflict with the normal corpsec that is stalling them.
>Assuming this is already setup for a perfect scenario
It seems this is a Nirvana postulate for the HTR team, opposed to what it might normally be: IE
The HTR team enters a given building or room and attempts to surprise the runners opposed to being used as shock troops.
Given that they are doing this it still stands that even after dynamic entry the mage is burned and the drone second, if both of these can happen at all or even one it shuts down most of the HTR teams ability to heavily counter the runner's.

Again, you're not wrong, it's just that it seems entirely like a nirvana fallacy.

>>44766761
Unless the HTR team goes in passive sensors and no coms they glow like the sun on the way in and arrive via utterly unsubtile high speed transport.

There's no perfect ambush. HTR wins because they have more dice then shadowrunners, more bodies to throw at them, and less self preservation.


Trying to get super clever gets them shredded by one well placed explosive or just wrecked by a mage team that drops thermal smoke, fires up jammers and dumps out too much noise for sonic to work.

>>44767022
Theoretically, if a perception test was passed and they are aware of the team; could a disengage be preformed so that they are no longer in combat on the turn the HTR team enters, forcing new initiative to be rolled?

Okay, I admit ahead of time, I'm a new GM with new players. That said, how do I keep the Awakened in my group (adept and mage) relevant AND not end up with them way ahead of the mundane? I'd rather not abuse backgrouns count too often, but I honestly don't know much of how SR magic works to try and balance around them.

>>44767342
Well, magic is the way to win Shadowrun.

Background counts, like Noise, are a theoretical counter that mostly serves to be annoying more then punishing. To balance things out give them challenges that focus on their magic stuff, then just give everyone else the focus in other ares. They will dominate if they want to and have the creativity to use their powers.

It's the classic Justice Liege problem. The Arrow and Booster Gold just sort of end up watching the show if Superman's working today.

>>44767169
>a nirvana fallacy

It's just ONE exemple of what they can do. Simply having both a good PiTac + heavily Initiated Mage already puts them at an advantage against most runner teams. Chaotic World is just one of the spells the fucker knows. (Bug Swarm, Detect Life, Deflection [SG p.115] and Shape[Whatever their corp's building are made of] are all other good ones).

A good, experienced team of Prime Runners definitively have a chance to defeat HTR if they're lucky, have the upper hand or burn a ton of edge to Smackdown.

The problem is that by definition the HTR are fighting on their own turf. They'll have all the information gathered so far on the botched operation that triggered their arrival in the first place, the support of all the corpsec around them, and are heavily trained in dealing in EXACTLY these kind of scenarios and usually the runners will already be somewhat bloodied from the previous encounters that were trying to contain them.

Plus, they get at least 5 Edge that is used only with the purpose of taking the runners down.

>Part2 with the technical details

>>44767169
>>44767431
>So what your implying is that it simply doesn't matter if the runners are fully aware of the team coming in, it's going to happen either way?

Barring the obvious that if they do succeed at out-operating the operators, the HTR is in deep shit. (They become out of position and they probably don't even know it, giving them a -2 to all actions against the runners while also cancelling their maneuver). The easiest to do this, is to Smackdown that test.

If they failed getting more hits, they can't outright prevent the Maneuver from happening, but they CAN take good cover and/or stay in it (forcing blind fire and getting a massive boost to their survivability assuming the cover's tough enough to block the shots), start their own suppressive fire toward the expected point of entry before it happens [this can force the maneuver to be delayed or aborted, both being good... but unless they're in place with only one possible entry point (including having walls thick enough to prevent just going through them) they can't know for sure if they failed their test, after all].

>>44767327
They can retreat or relocate, yeah. It won't "Break the initiative" but it does make the HTR waste their time. Assuming they CAN.

Retreating is always good in that situation anyway.

>>44767449
>I forgot to address the "succeeding their perception tests"

All that does, if they didn't using that knowledge to actively prevent the maneuver, is give them a big bonus on their Surprise test basically.

>>44767431
>>44767342

Not much can counter magic beside magic. But anything remotely valuable will have SOME form of magic protection.

>>44767431
I guess I should've clarified, it's the "challenges that focus on their magic stuff" I'm not sure about, mostly out of unfamiliarity. Sure, there's spirits... But the mage isn't built for astral combat at all, and I wouldn't even know where to start (plus, splitting the party up...). So it'd come down to manifested spirits at that point. Outside that, I don't know where to even begin.

>>44767491
Well, for the sake of the game magic should only be as important as suits the story.

Otherwise yeah, literally everyone should be playing a wizard. There is no reason but handicapping yourself to play anything else.

>>44767274
>HTR are unsubtle

Well, it's not like they don't have access to crazy Sleeze ratings spread across entire Pi-Tac networks, Masking metamagics and/or Ruthenium Polymers.

I mean, that'd be stupid. Corporations only make that shit to sell to shadowrunners so they can wreck them in their Hubris.

>>44767503
Look at their spell list and think of something they could solve with their magic. If nothing else they could do some countermagic to break the mind control on a friend.

>>44767503
Barriers (including the natural gaiasphere impenetrable barrier), line-of-sight blockers, dual-natured paracritters, FAB grenades, counterspelling and counterspelling foci, pollution, watchers and weak spirits harassing the mage to make it easier to hit by stacking dodging penalities, security drones.

>>44767579
Oh, and Guardian/Guidance spirits (and maybe others too, can't remember) have the Magical Guard power, which allows them to use counterspelling and other magic-protection even when immaterial.

>>44767342
Read the sections that are placed before every spell list (detection, illusion etc.). Read "Detecting magic" paragraph. Magic is not as godly as /srg/ thinks.

>>44766361
>>44766389
They're really just weak against high armor targets, and that can be circumvented to some degree with ammo and called shots. It's generally only a problem if your GM decides every enemy wears FBA with chemseal and nonconductivity.

>>44767717
Is the chemseal useful against a bow with syringe ammo under ?

Why dose Shadowrun use fixed cost for creation and multiplicative cost for advancement?

Doesn't that really encourage you to go all or nothing in creation?

>>44767822
No. Only Contact / Inhalation.

>>44767854
It encourages you to use your chargen points for the stuff you're good at, and round out the sharp edges with the 25-to-50 Karma you get.

It also makes the opportunity cost of being the best of the best very high.

Basically, the shadowrun character progress curve is as follow:

>Start adequate but specialised
>Get good overall and still well specialised
>Get good overall and, specialised in a role, and godlike in one signature skill.

>>44767822
No, it doesn't protect against "Injection" vector attacks.

Capsule rounds filled with Narcojet are a good "SHTF" emergency solver, even when fired from a hold-out.

>>44767717
Stun>>>>>>Physical by a huge margin, making the lesser armor penetration kinda moot.

>>44767896
Even more so when you're using a holdout. Damage doesn't matter with -4/+4, and the range table is always light pistol.

>>44767690
>Read detecting magic

The threshold to notice a skill 12 caster throwing a force 6 spell is 6.

So nobody is going to see someone cast Mob Mind, and afterward nobody is going to think about it because they belong to the caster now and can't even think anything the caster doesn't want. You could roll to resist with a complex action on your turn, but you won't want to, because you no longer can want anything the mage hasn't deiced you should want.

Magic = superpowers. Half of the spells, if it was the only spell that a person ever got, could be used to build a whole character around.

>>44767889
It also helps with the vital Shadowrun past time: Making trolls complete shit to play.

The problem is it discourages you, strongly, from putting 2 in anything. If you aren't specialized in something then leaving it at the lowest possible value is the best choice. Every dice pool should be LOL NO or 14+

>>44768030
>skill 12
Yeah no shit. Next you'll tell me that magic is OP because Harlequin is too strong.

How far should you invest with skill groups? It seems like 5/5 for skill groups is the best way to go, but I don't know what skill group is okay to leave at 4? A lot of the hacking stuff seems like it requires a deeper investment. At least biotech could be useful or useless depending on the situation I guess?

>>44768060
So when you're playing with a group that agrees with your sentiment ... don't play Priority or BP. Use Karma. Maybe Life Modules.

>>44768169
If you have 10 skill group points to throw around, the efficient investment is 6/4 - the karma to go from 5 to 6 is higher than 4 to 5.

Influence, Acting, Stealth, & Athletics are all generally useful, but what you go with will really depend on what your focus is.

>>44768169
Oh, and no, don't go for biotech group unless the whole medic schtick is really really your goal.

>>44768262
>Maybe Life Modules.

That's funny, but seriously no. Nobody should ever use life modules.

It's weird that starting maximum for skills is 6 in SR5, when they define 6 as the lowest level to be employable.

>>44768262
>>44768277
Stealth seems like it's a given to have that high. It was just the other skills that leaving at a 4 is generally in the semi focus pool? I'm not sure if I'm remember right, but having less than 12 or 10 dice is pretty bad, right?

>>44768359
>Rating 3: Competent
>You’re skilled at basic operations but struggle with complex operations and “tricks.”
>Rating 4: Proficient
>You’re comfortable with what you do and perform well under normal pressures. Professional level for most jobs.
>Rating 6: Professional
>You could easily sell your skills on the open market. This is the maximum skill level for starting player characters.

If we count Aptitude:
>Rating 7: Veteran
>You’ve seen a lot of what the skill can do, and what it can’t. Other people ask you how to do it.

reposting because I fail at meme arrows.

>>44768359
>define 6 as the lowest level to be employable.

No, that's 3. 6 is considered the normal level for someone who has a reliable reputation as getting shit done well and never has issues finding contracts as a freelancer.

>>44768060
>Every dice pool should be LOL NO or 14+
I lol'd. It's like teamwork tests don't exists!

>>44767854
Because that's the way it's always been, and the writers are nothing if not stuck in the past.

>>44768262
Wait, why is athletics a useful group?

>>44768447
You wanna run up that wall and don't have 8 agi?
Athletics(2)+Gymnastics(therefor 2)+agi(4 lets say) = 8 dice.

It gets even crazier if you want to go full Matrix and get Athletics 6 with TWELVE DICE to roll. At that point you don't even need Agi at all to pull Splinter Cell stuff off.

>>44768502
I don't follow.
>Athletics(2)+Gymnastics(therefor 2)+agi(4 lets say) = 8 dice.
Having the Skillgroup: Athletics at 2 means you have (among others) the Skill: Gymnastics at 2, but for using Gymnastics you still roll only AGI 4 + Gymnastics 2 = 6 dice.

>>44768533
I might be mixed up then, do you not add the skill group rating to the skill for total dice pool?

Either way, it still stands that it's fairly useful, especially with GM's that will let you use it in combat situations to do stuff like dive behind cover, through windows, etc.

>>44768502
I don't think that's how skill groups interact with skills. Also, I though twelve dice was considered to be something around the minimum about of dice to be professionally capable of doing something.
Also, why are you trying to run up the wall in the first place?

>>44768566
Who knows? But a "hard" test is considered 4 successes, so on an average roll you would beat that with 12 dice in anything.

>>44768576
Okay, so I guess that eight dice would be acceptable for the dilettante wall runner then.

>>44768565
I'm pretty sure you use the highest of the skill or the skill group. You do not add the skill group to the skill. Skill groups exist to be more cost-effective ways of getting access to a bunch of skills that you need at once. They're not a way to improve your pre-existing skills.

>>44768596
Keep in mind, it's DM discretion, but realistically anything that involves an agi test that isn't shooting or trying to hit/grapple/grab someone/something can apply something in Athletics to it (most of the time).

>>44768565
Nope, having a skill group just gives you 3 (sometimes 4) skills at a reduced Karma cost. Other than that, Athletics is - semi-useful imho. Swimming comes not often into play (in most groups); Running is meh, because in combat it takes a complex action to sprint and it adds only a few meters to your total movement; Gymnastics is decent because it covers climbing, which is useful. I usually put one group point in it in case I have one left or took skills at C (2 group points) so that I don't default.

>>44768566
>Also, I though twelve dice was considered to be something around the minimum about of dice to be professionally capable of doing something.
Allow me to point to my previous post: >>44768396
Average Joe has Attribute 3(or 4) + Skill 3(or 4), so on average he can do tasks of normal difficulty.

>>44768447
Gymnastics is Climbing, Jumping, Dodging ... and you can't get someone else to do those for you.
Swimming is your not drowning skill, and the skill you use to hold your breath when corpsec starts firing nausea gas into the room.
Running - eventually you will need to leave somewhere or something in a hurry.

>>44768642
I was talking more about the meta-game about how many dice a PC's shadowrunner should have for their core skills. Like sneaking for an infiltrator or shooting for a street sammy. I was not about what the game's descriptions say are the levels of competency. Obviously, going by that metric, 3/4 in the skill and attribute is a professional level.
If, on the other hand, you wanted to build a character around the fabled art of wall-running I think you would be a liability to your team if you only had 8 dice in regards to that roll IMHO.

>>44768690
Wall running is an actual adept power btw so you don't even need Athletics. Athletics is more geared for those big hulking cybered up Street sammies that still wanna move quickly but love their heavy-lifting and shooting and don't want to sacrifice that either.

If I took 2 free skill groups in chargen as a sammy it would probably be firearms and Athletics if I'm looking o go full run-n-gun. Otherwise it's not terribly useful as you can just build an adept with half the effort to do the same thing, except magic.

Twodee, hurry up and start up that new Shadowrun Storytime.

Is there something equivalent to a pathfinder class guide for shadowrun?

>>44766389

As opposed to just Always having less damage in general?

>>44768030
>a skill 12 caster
Your chances to ever meet a person with Spellcasting 12 are close to zero.

>>44769755
Light pistols also have higher accuracy. It is a weapon of skill and finesse.

Would the "Spirit Zapper" spell (variant of the offensive mana barrier) harm spirits who are possessing a vessel or channeled into the magicians body? Yes, I suppose?

>>44769937
Yes.

>>44762616
>butterfly knives
>handles much too short to cover the blade
>and they probably can't even close around the hump on the blade anyway

>>44770082
Fucking keebs, am I right? I swear half of them are more focused on looking pretty than doing the damn job.

Errr, so how much money should one get if they take a person alive and try to sell them to the chop shop? Because it seems like a way to some easy cash, if your sociopath of course...or they're assholes.

>>44770781
Well a modern human can go, in total parts (assuming you find the right buyer FOR EVERYTHING) about 2.2-3 million USD.

So given proper negotiation skills, you could probably get (Idk what the price is adjusted properly, but it seems Nuyen is worth a fair amount more than USD, seeing as a multi billion dollar luxury cruise ship is about 84 million) probably 100-200k.

So if you wanna go ahead and startup human trafficking and selling to chop shops finding the right buyers, you'd only need maybe 400 people to buy that luxury cruise ship.

What does /srg/ think of this as an opening thing for a campaign to get players interested?

Greetings, potential contestant!
Horizon Media Group™ (henceforth described as "Horizon") would like to extend it's congratulations on being randomly selected from a pool of millions to participate in Horizon's newest reality game show: "Shadowrun for your Life!™" (henceforth, SRfyL).
SRfyL will be a group race around north America, with you and other randomly selected contestants making your way past designated pit stops and exciting challenges*!
What, might you ask, is the prize? Well, potential contestant, the grand prize for making it all the way to the end of SRfyL is a whopping 5 million nuyen** per contestant and international stardom!
If you are interested, please sign below and a Horizon representative will contact you shortly with the details (be sure to respond quickly, spots are limited!)
I, in sound body and mind, do agree to all of the Terms and Conditions of SRfyL and will not hold Horizon Media Group™ accountable for any accidental loss of limb, life, or personal property (full Terms of Service available for viewing after signing): _____________
*challenges include but are not limited to: obstacle courses, bounty hunters, traps, assassination, and heartburn.
**or equivalent value in desired currency, conversion fees apply

>>44771027
Looks good. What sort of wacky hijinks are you going to be throwing at them? Horizon's going to try and make things interesting for viewers after all and you have a lot of material to draw from. Of course public awareness of your runners is going to be rather high by the time they get to the halfway point, a problem among Trideo stars.

>>44771113
A colourful cast of bounty hunters featuring:
>Not-terminator
>Ex-Spetsnaz
>A pair of twins who are both adepts (different types or the same, potentially)
>A group of cyberhackers with attitude, meth, and drones
>A group of hillbillies with attitude, meth, and pickup trucks
>Lonestar/KE
>Weed shamans
>A group of young wizards wanting to use the bounty money to fund their seatle startups

A few challenges I've thought up are
>All of their Horizon manufactured weapons/equipment starts to fail, and at the next pit stop they are given the location of a relatively unguarded warehouse storing weapons (belonging to some other megacorp which has it's logo blurred for legal purposes), the bounty hunters are also given this info
>In Aztlan, the party and bounty hunters discover that Horizon has hired the cartels to take both groups out, potential truces and teamups abound

Can anyone help me understand rigger initiative?

A rigger jumped into a Drone (cold VR) rolls Data Processing + INT + 3d6. A physical initiative is Reaction + INT + 1d6. Does this mean that almost always a rigger in a Drone will act much faster (and more times) than any physical runners? I've read somewhere that's a limit on the initiative, but in other places there isn't any. Thanks.

>>44771472
The limit on the number of initiative dice is +4d6 or 5d6 total. There is no limit on your base initiative.

A Rigger jumped into a drone using cold or hot-sim will beat people who have no initiative boosters. However, Wired Reflexes, Increased Reflexes and the like will even it out/surpass it.

Question, /srg/.

What's a good drone body to represent a Think Tank from Fallout OWB?

>>44771027
I would think it was really stupid until I realized it was basically steel ball run.

>>44771656
The actual inspiration was The Running Man but mixed with Wacky Races but alright

I'm going to play my first game of shadowrun in a couple of days. I'm really excited.

>>44771901
Please tell me you are not playing a decker.

>>44771905
I'm a Rigger.

>>44771924
Marginally better.
Good luck.

Somehow, I get the feeling my group will completely fuck up the opening run and all my planning will be for naught.

How bad is Shadowrun for improvising? Everyone seems to want floorplans (which are hard as hell to find), but beyond that I don't know.

>>44771935
Thanks man. Any tips?

>>44771924
Wheel man or game of drones?

>>44772266
First of all, nice Quadubs
Secondly, you can usually just bullshit some shit floorplan on a piece of paper in a few minutes, just remember to place bathrooms and broomclosets, people forget those.

>>44772266
>How bad is Shadowrun for improvising?

's okay. Depends on your players of course, but you better always have an "emergency idea" or two at hand for when your players go on a wild tangent.

>>44772283
Depends if you're going the DRIVE REALLY REALLY FAST route or "Hey guys you can take a bathroom break as all of my drones have a turn" route
Rigger 5 probably has some nice stuff

>>44772290
>>44772327
Man I got a bunch of drones, but now I kinda feel like a dick.

>>44772337
Just make up a few plans that people will recognize by name, and remember the die pools and limits for everything.

Oh, and don't forget to take breaks to aim between bursts.

>>44772337
Nah it's fine
Just have a standard MO of what your drones plan to do, and memorize all of their dice pools
Get a dice rolling app on your phone if the GM okays it
Generally just have each drone have one thing it does every time forever and things go smoothly

Now I want to make a Rigger who uses small drones with razorblades/combat chainsaws on them and have a fleet of manhacks

>>44772291
Yeah, that's likely what I'll do if need be. (Thanks for the check)

>>44772316
I'm not even sure where to start on emergency ideas, but thankfully the first session is Food Fight. You... can't really fuck up Food Fight too badly to derail it.

Should I pick up palming?

>>44772451
Use R5's Noizquitos, with mini weapon mounts. (hold-out pistol, light pistol, reach 0 melee weapons, single-shot grenade)

>>44773569
Meh... What do you want to use it for exactly?

Alright, interesting question here for anyone who knows about SR4A.

Assuming I have the following abilities, how do they interact? The Background Count from Astral Hazing is aspected to my tradition through group contacts, geomancy, some Foci to anchor it like that.

Arcane Arrester
Cost: 25 BP
When affected by a spell (including a critter’s Innate Spells),
the character—and she alone—treats Force-based effects (damage,
paralysis, etc.) at half (round down) actual strength. Note that the
actual Force of the spell is not actually reduced. For instance, a
character with Arcane Arrester targeted by a Force 5 spell would
resist it as if it were a Force 2 spell, though the spellcaster could
still add hits to improve the effect. Arcane Arrester cannot be
combined with Magic Resistance (p. 91, SR4A). This quality can
be taken by characters with a Magic attribute.

Astral Hazing
Bonus: 10 BP (for non-Awakened characters),
15 BP (for Awakened characters)
A character with this quality has expressed metagenes that
somehow catalyse and feed on the character’s darker emotions and
negative feelings, disturbing the character’s aura and any ambient
mana in her vicinity. For reasons not yet understood, the character
becomes an aspected domain in her own right and taints astral
space around her wherever she goes; a generator of tainted astral
background count (similar to a cyberzombie).
This astral haze affects all attempts to cast magic on, at, or in
the vicinity of the character. Whatever the ambient mana condi-
tions are, the character always stands at the heart of a Rating 4
background count (see p. 117, Street Magic) that extends a num-
ber of meters from her body equal to her Essence; this background
count also impairs her own actions if the character is Awakened. If
she remains in one place for long, the background count expands
by one meter in every direction every two or three hours (at the
gamemaster’s discretion).

Continued.

>>44773569
Are you going to need to steal items or hide your gear, ever?

>>44773612
>The Background Count from Astral Hazing is aspected to my tradition
Have you bought off the quality, and asked the GM for a price on the positive quality you created? (price may well be 'no', followed by 'astral hazing does not work that way')

>>44773612
Magical Guard to allow Counterspelling if someone casts a spell directly on me in addition to the normal resist roll.

As far as I can tell, Arcane Arrestor goes off first, reduces the effective force for resisting by 1/2 right off the bat, so for example a Force 9 spell goes down to Force 4.

Then, Astral Hazing comes in, counting the spell as being cast in an R4 Background Count, so anyone casting directly at me counts their Magic as 4 less than it is, adds 4 to their drain.

Then, after the -4 Magic and resulting forced Overcasting, or possibly them just not being able to put as much into it? Not sure how that works. After that, I roll Counterspelling to reduce the power, then also roll the usual resist check.

That right?

>>44773690
Oh, right. Well, guess it's time to chuck another 15BP at that potentially, assuming this actually works the way that it appears to.

>>44773691
>Then, Astral Hazing comes in, counting the spell as being cast in an R4 Background Count
>[...] -4 Magic
Only if they cast the spell within the BGC - Essence metres.

>>44773706
Also note that you would have to fix whatever situation is causing astral hazing before you could align it to your tradition.

>A character with this quality has expressed metagenes that somehow catalyse and feed on the character’s darker emotions and negative feelings, disturbing the character’s aura and any ambient mana in her vicinity.
You know a delta clinic specialising in metagenetics, right?

>>44773827
"This astral haze affects all attempts to cast magic on, at, or in
the vicinity of the character."

That's from the later paragraph in the description, so presumably that's actual mechanics of it, saying that anyone attempting to cast at it/in it/at you takes the penalties.

Honestly, seeing BC around somebody is the best reason to take aim and burst fire. Stun for best results.

>>44773880
Which is all well and grand - until you realise those are not the rules for background counts. See Street Magic for those.

Astral Hazing. Negative Quality.

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>>44773612
>SURGE
Why you gotta be that guy?

>>44774589
Specific trumps general, paying off the quality, and paying for shit to aspect the background count.

>>44774824
>Surge
>that guy

>>44747426
Oh god that's a laugh and a half. My lungs hurt.

>>44774565
BC?

>>44775114
Background Count.

>>44775135
Ah.
Thanks chummer

>>44775056
SURGE is a that guy thing, he's not wrong.

I'm the guy that made SURGen, a shitty random SURGE generation tool, am I that guy by enabling that guys?

>>44775176
>random SURGE
That guys create catboys using SURGE, its
different.

>>44775192
Somebody needs to make an Inkling, and take it the whole nine yards.

Whole Nine Yards.

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>>44775192
I mean, SURGen lets you do any class SURGE so you could make a catboy
It also has language options

What is your preferred shooting action? SA? Doubletap? Called shot?

>>44775243
Full auto.

>>44775056
>Specific trumps general
It's not an instance of a specific rule, merely a mistaken writer.

>>44775114
Background Count. Generally speaking the only things that have an aspected background count that follows them around is cyberzombies. As far as visual tells for target priority goes it puts you pretty far above every other target.
>>44775056
>Hey guys, can I combine Arcane Arrester and Astral Hazing to make a mana black hole that's aspected to my tradition because reasons
>Not that guy
>>44775176
Eh, surgen's funny to play with and make stupid characters. SURGE itself is a fucking terrible concept and should never have been included in the first place, but that's hardly your fault.
>>44775243
Double-tap is basically the perfect called shot

>>44775243
Called shot: Dirty Trick
Nothing beats shooting the chandelier and riding the rope up.

What is the worst your players have ever fucked up a simple situation, /srg/?
Or just the dumbest thing they ever did.
Once one of my players thought firing a fragmentation 20mm grenade at a wall
In a crowded restaurant
At a Johnson meet

>>44775387
thought firing a grenade was a good idea*

>>44775387
>Job in a park to hunt some runaway basilisks
>2 cut down with a sword
>Third one on it's back from a silenced sniper shot
>Party shaman pulls his Ruger and fires
>Smack dash in the middle of the city
>In the central, where the rich people live¨

This was followed by the party fatally wounding two sets of police officers and knocking the daylights out from another.

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well, I just finished Shadowrun:Returns, Shadowrun:Dragonfall, and Shadowrun:HongKong. Now what do I do?

I currently own the shadowrun 5e core rule book.... but it's poorly edited, larger than my old college textbooks, and it hides important details about the rules in weird places without referencing them in the index or ToC. I kinda feel let down, because the only value to the rule book is all of the lore and short stories littered in it. How do I learn the rules though? Reading a 500 page text book cover to cover is NOT a solution.

I've looked at the chummer program. It's helpful for character creation, but doesn't help me learn the rules. All of the stats on any character sheet it makes will be meaningless to me if I don't know the rules. (also, it's covered with recommendations that you check it's work since chummer is often wrong? How is a total noob like me going to do that?)

I have a gaming group, but none of them know the rules to shadowrun either, and they all have less interest in learning than me.

>>44775497
>How do I learn to play a tabletop game without putting in the effort expected to learn to play a tabletop game?

You don't. Reading a 500-page book is not only *a* solution, but *the* solution.

Start with the quickstart rules, it's 40 pages including a one-shot.

>>44775497
Sorry, Omae. The solution is to read the 500 page rulebook.

You should read the "Quick-Start rules" included with Food Fight for the basics of the system. From there, run Food Fight. Then you'll make a whole bunch of mistakes and learn from them.

>>44775288
But it's literally in the rules paragraph of that ability. It's a rule.

What are some newb traps for character creation? I was leaning towards being a troll rigger or ork technomancer.. are these bad ideas? I feel like troll has incredible disadvantages at being anything other than BIG AND STOMPY. Same with ork.

>>44776065
Technomancer-as-decker is a pain and a half to make, unless you're going to be a sprite-wrangler and perform teamwork tests on/with your sprites.

It can be done. For one, make sure to hide (have okay Sleaze) perhaps with an Electronic Warfare specialty in hiding, and then brute force your way into Marks and Data Spike (so you want some Cha too).

>>44776121

wait... I am confused, technomacners don't make good deckers? What do technomancers do for a party that deckers can't? I am curious to know the disadvantages of decking vs technomancing and via versa.

I think I read somewhere that a technomancers BRAIN is actually his deck so he can potentially get BTFO'd really easily?

>>44776164
Deckers beat Technomancers on straight hacking. And yes, Technomancers make bad deckers. However, Technomancers have Puppeteer, Static Veil, and Sprites.

>>44776223

What can be done with puppeteer, static veil and sprites? How do tehcnomancers help a team if they aren't really good "hackers"

>>44775619
You seem to be confused as to what 'the writer was mistaken' entails. They wrote what they thought was right, and it was not. This is not a rare occurrence, nor limited to 5e.

Were it intended to trump the base background count rules, it would be more specific. Rather than saying so incidentally and pointing you towards the correct rules in Street Magic, there would be clear statement of additional effect. It would also likely not be a negative quality.

If you want to get into messy interactions, try the bit where astral hazing from cybermancy has rules for returning any affected area to normal over time, while metagenetic astral hazing does not. This means you follow the standard rules for fading domains.

>Domains also remain permanent at least until the source of domain is removed (such as the toxic waste producing a toxic domain). Even then, many domains persist until formally cleansed, while others take decades to become neutral.

While your [essence] metres glob of astral domain moves with you, it also expands when you stay in one place for 2-3 hours. A gm may get nasty by saying the expansion remains in place (making your hideouts more obvious) or moves with you (meaning you will eventually be carrying around a city-wide chunk of astral space) ... or they may be particularly vindictive and say everywhere you go leaves a trail that leads right up to your ass.

>>44776243
The easiest way for a Techno to help a team is to be the Gearhead build that I mentioned in a paste I put up a few threads ago.

Bascially, compile and register a Machine Sprite of at least level 3 and have it use Diagnosis on the best shooter's gun. They get +1 Limit and +Successes dice until the Machine Sprite is destroyed or told to do something else by you.

Lemme go look for that pastebin, though.

>>44776164
>Puppeteer
You cast a spell on a thing, and it does what you want it to for a while.
>Static Veil
You cast a spell on yourself and your OVerwatch Score won't increase for a while, which stops you from having your head exploded by GOD.
>Sprites
You summon pokemon out of the internet and jam them inside other people's gear for dicepool bonuses. They're also generally better at hacking things than you are.

>>44776243
The Technomancer's Complex Forms don't follow the rules of the Matrix, like Deckers have to do. Their Complex Forms don't generate Overwatch Score, either.

They can compile Sprites. Sprites can be hackers, make your Street Samurai's Ares Alpha shoot better, and make someone else fuck up googling something. You want compile and register a few Machine Sprites and have them use Diagnosis on key matrix-enabled gear.

http://pastebin.com/XmWKKZ4d

I haven't really updated it with more, but this should at least give some kind of idea what you're getting into with Technomancy.

>>44776164
>I think I read somewhere that a technomancers BRAIN is actually his deck so he can potentially get BTFO'd really easily?
Prettymuch. Deckers can opt to move slower via cold sim and only take stun damage, and technomancers can only do hot sim, which means lethal damage if you get hit with biofeedback.

It's a house rule at my table that if you want to be a technomancer, you have to play a decker first. Deckers are much more adaptable with how their numbers lay out, and help you learn the rules of the matrix without too much extra baggage.

Technomancers tend to be locked in more or less after character creation, because all of their hacking abilities are based on their stats completely, which means if you didn't quite understand how the matrix works during chargen AND didn't have a clear strategy on how you wanted to hack (brute force everything? full stealth mode?), you'll end up subpar. Not only that, but you also have to learn how sprites and complex forms work, which basically uses the magic system. It's a lot more work, and a lot easier for new players to fuck up and make a character that they don't understand how to use to it's full potential.

However, good use of sprites and complex forms let them do things deckers never could, getting massive bonuses to hacking and just dominating the matrix. But you gotta walk before you can run omae.

>>44765784
I'd stick with 4e/20th Anniversary. That was the last Shadowrun in my book. 5e is pretty much some pathetic moneygrab so Catalyst can stay in business.

Seriously they were paying shills to shill it up on 4chan before the 5e release.

4e doesn't punish you with obscene costs for the necessities for being a decker or rigger, doesn't tilt the rules hugely in favor of the GM, has more options for players and GMs, and the storyline isn't a forced comforting of the damn neckbeards who wanted their Deckers and their special snowflake status back.

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>>44776331
>You summon pokemon out of the internet

>>44776349
To be more technical, Technos only have AR and hot-sim, and they still take stun in AR, as if it were cold-sim.

>>44776375
That's some grade A ranting mad, right there.

>>44776375
>doesn't tilt the rules hugely in favor of the GM
A 4e player has an adversarial relationship with his GM? Shocking.

>>44776331
This has been something I've been wondering about technomancers, and fixing the balance around them.

If Puppeteer's drain was reduced, would that be an effective stopgap measure until a real overhaul is done? Like, by everything that's written about Technomancers, Puppeteer and Resonance Veil are the two things that Technomancers are CONSTANTLY able to do. RV's F-1 drain isn't too harsh, but Puppeteer is F+4, and that's ridiculous in my book. Would bringing it down to F+1 or F+2 be too far for a quick band-aid, pending a rewrite?

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>>44776408
You're damn right I'm mad, sunshine. I've tried to like SR5. I've read it over, made characters with it, and I've made the decision 5 is just crap. Everything about it was designed like they had at least 3 or 4 different groups developing it and no one talked to each other in the process.

>>44776448
I found 4e/20 to be pretty even. The GM had power and the players had power. No one had an advantage. Whatever toys the players had the GM had and just enough to make the players sweat. Now in 5 whenever the GM has an itch the party dies.

Sorry, but I'll wait to see if 6th Edition (if it comes) will unfuck Shadowrun or finally put a nail in it's coffin.

>>44776476
I'd call Puppeteer's +4 Fading to be one of the few that's actually well priced because it's so powerful.

Okay, look at those actions that have mark: Owner. Puppeteer can make a device do that.

>>44776065
>>44776349

That being said, don't worry so much about if trolls or orks are better at hacking or smashing. Once you get equipment, the difference is negligible for mental stuff. You'll just be a hacker or rigger who happens to be able to smash faces in with the best of them. Make the character that you want to play, this isn't D&D where you fall behind if you don't follow a few narrow builds. Being a troll or ork is more expensive sure, but fuck it. Go against stereotype, and Ghost help the poor guy who bricks your deck.

>>44770903
>>44770781

SR universe has Wimps (braindead clones) and vatgrown organs for cheap which are all much, much better than stolen body pieces.

The only buyers for genuine human bits are those looking for the essence (i.e Ghouls), and they're poor as shit.

Plus, Tamanous has a monopoly on the market, so nobody in that biz wanna risk pissing them off.

TL;DR nobody wants your shit-tier organs with heat.

>>44776476
Consider lower Fading, but with a time limit equal to [Level] Combat Turns / minutes outside of combat.

>>44776476
As >>44776534 says

I have a player who's a technomancer and so far he has exploded a car with gremlins and more importantly and on topic he made the central computer of a hotel format itself and he also did the same to a decker fiddling with a bomb.

>>44776594
>>44776476
Honestly, thinking back to my own words, it'd probably be better to give a Technomancer to thread things at Resonance *3. In part that'd be a lot of lowered fading for powers, but possibly also giving them some kind of bonus beyond a higher limit.

>>44770903
Don't forget overhead costs. Storage for bodies until you find a buyer (probably a freezer), bribes, equipment for smuggling them around, guards, doctors (you can't just pull out someone's organs willy-nilly, you'll damage the stuff around it), getting cops on your payroll so they look the other way when people go missing (and Ghost help you if one of them is a real do-gooder).

You'll need more than 400 for sure.

>>44772337
Use the Swarm rigger program to speed shit up.

>>44776578
>SR universe has Wimps (braindead clones) and vatgrown organs for cheap which are all much, much better than stolen body pieces.
Not that cheap.

(half price for non-cloned)
20,000¥Hand/foot
40,000¥Half arm/leg
80,000¥ Full arm/leg

8,000¥ Penis
20,000¥ Vagina

>>44776476
That's something I was fiddling with back when I had a player wanting to be a techno; give most of their powers highly reduced fading, but prevent them from losing OS easily so it only decays like overnight or something. So they can easily force that door to open, but it's at the cost of KNOWING that GOD just got a few hours closer to finding them. Never really got very far with it, but I liked the concept.
>>44776528
>Everything about it was designed like they had at least 3 or 4 different groups developing it and no one talked to each other in the process.
I've heard a few developer comments/complaints that that's basically what happens. Someone writes rules, then someone higher up rewrites a single part of the rules that cocks the rest of it up.

>>44776796
Yeah... why I wish a more competent team just decided it'd be better to throw the rules out and create new ones. Or at least build from what 4e/20A was doing. The system for it was starting to look like a winner. But, new systems generate money, and the nostalgia fag cancer held back the development.

Didn't help the devs got embezzled from (which almost killed Catalyst at one point.)

>My players are completing their character sheets.
>We have a Sioux summoner, a stay-at-home Decker, two biosams with a focus on pistols and blades, and a Troll bow MysAd.
>The number of skill points spent on firearms other than pistols across the five players is 4 (one of the sammies owns a sniper rifle).

Is there a module with a D&D feel to it that I could run, for shits and giggles?

>>44776870
That is the problem with die-pool systems. They say you gotta have "this" many dice in a skill to be a certain grade of skill, yet with how the system works someone with 6-7 dice to roll is... someone with 6-7 dice to roll.

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>>44776923
And I mean 6-7 dice TOTAL, not 6-7 dice in one skill. Just to be clear on what I meant. Goes to show how dice pools can be done wrong.

>>44776772
Source?

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>>44776870
Is this an elaborate meta-troll?

>>44776772
>8,000¥ Penis
>20,000¥ Vagina
Does vagina come with functional womb? Because it's a complete ripoff if it doesn't.

>>44776578
>The only buyers for genuine human bits are those looking for the essence (i.e Ghouls), and they're poor as shit.
>rolling Ghoul
>working at morgue
>have rating 4 Contact with bonded Plant (Great) Spirit
living the life

>>44776952
>>44776990
Chrome Flesh, and yes, they're fully functional. If you don't need a replacement, but want yours 'customised', it's half price.

What is the best Martial Art a runner can take and why is it Firefight?

Can Knuckles be a Weapon Focus? 5e

>>44776950
>>44776923
In a normal wageslave environment, a typical work team would look like ...

>1 project coordinator
>1 senior lead
>2 juniors

The coordinator has Leadership, the lead is the skill rating 6 experienced professional (or 4+ w/ speciality), the juniors are the 1-to-4 skill bracket.

Let's say they have the following...

> Coordinator is CHA4 Leadership4
> Senior is LOG4 Skill6 (Middle aged)
> Junior 1 is LOG3 Skill3 (average young Joe). Part timer (works on two projects)
> Junior 2 is LOG4 Skill1 (the smart nephew of the boss). Part Timer (intern)

They work on the project on an extended skill test with a 1 Day interval (-1 die every test), the project is due in one week (5 work days)

The senior alone would have the following dice pools on the 5 work days:

>10,9,8,7,6
For a total of 40 dice, assuming he didn't glitch the last two days. That's 13 hits, or a moderately difficult Extended Test.

Now, if the coordinator and juniors are doing teamwork, it's going like this...

> Coordinator: 8,7,6,5,4
> Junior1 is at 6,5,4
> Junior2 is at 5,4,3
Daily total teamwork dice: 19,16,13,5,4. This totals 57 dice, or 19 hits. So a total of +19 dice to the senior's extended skill test with an increase to his limits to boot!

The Senior's skill test dice total is now a wooping 59 from 40. That's 19 hits. That's a 43% increase in efficiency.

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>>44777803
To be honest, Martial Arts are more flavor than of actual use. Firefight for Gunslingers, Something close in like Muay Thai for Melee (Can use that martial art for tight spaces. Only thing better is Systema (if that is a thing in SR))

>>44777857
Short answer, yes.

>>44777869
Not even the point.

The point is someone with high stats and low skill gets the SAME RESULT as someone with high skill and low stat.

>>44777879
Alright cool. My Crossbow Adept Sasquatch named "Lumpy" is coming along nicely.

>>44777803
No idea. Gun Kata has Kip-up,while my shockweave / shock glove user puts it at a toss up between Jeet Kune Do & Karate.

>>44777937
I was just going more with what I've seen. In tight spaces, Muay Thai doesn't need much wind-up to do most of it's damaging strikes.

Then again crunch-wise there isn't much describing how some unarmed martial arts need a lot of room and some don't.

>>44777897
Your teamwork dice bonus is capped by your skill rating, which makes high skill important for project leads.

>>44778004
I'm not talking about teamwork. Also that is something that rarely comes into play as most of the time dice are being rolled in combat, or when a character is doing something that only they themselves can do.

In that case having a die pool has no bearing on what is in said die pool as long as you have one.

>>44777869
>collecting successes over whole week
>not slacking for three days then cramming everything together overnight marathon powered by alarming amounts of coffee and energy drinks
that's not realistic at all

>>44777897
That doesn't factor in limits, and only represents situations where you roll dice.

>When you need to do something difficult or extraordinary, or when you need to avoid someone who has got you in their crosshairs, you have to roll the dice to determine a result.

>When a character is piloting a vehicle in non-combat, or everyday situations, no test is required (unless the character is Incompetent, and then hilarity ensues).

If you're not in danger, the situation isn't time critical, resources aren't limited, or the GM isn't calling the results into question, then there's no roll. You can eyeball the result of your natural range of ability combined with your actual training.

>>44778115
Are you being pedantic for a reason, Autist?
That has no bearing on my point at all.

>>44778115
Also if there is no dice being rolled, then the answer is obvious... the character just does it. If the task would be a challenge for them, then there would be a die roll... Thing is Shadowrun is very ambiguous on one fact.

If it's going to be challenging to a character then dice must be rolled, yet there is no mechanic for having more skill or just more talent (stats) in your pool.

I'm aware of caps, but those don't really mean much in the long run with a person can easily build around them.

For SR4A, can Free Spirits select ONLY from the Street Magic list of Free Spirit-Only powers, or can they take from all powers that are takeable by spirits and ALSO take from the FSO powers?

Presumably it's the second one, but, well, better to check.

More importantly, even with Adepts being a known thing, there's still going to be the concept of a 'natural'.

>>44776772
>>44776578

Soooo is selling organs of your enemies a good way to make a quick buck or a terrible way to make cash?

>>44777921
I see what you've done

>>44778748
Its for an NPC runner. My runners have been caught up in a lot of serious and difficult druggery the last couple months, so I'm hoping to lighten the mood for a little.

>>44778726
Non-bio-or-cyber-ware organs is a pretty bum deal in most cases.

But if you have a good supply of relatively intact organs, it could be less hot.

>>44778726
Generally pretty bad; the people that can afford to buy new organs will just get them vat-grown from their own tissue so as to prevent rejection, while everyone else is too poor to afford much of anything. Personally I don't consider body disposal to be a viable source of income for player characters, YMMV based on GM though.

>>44778940
Too bad there's no Tastee Ghoul franchise in SR.

That'd be a good place to sell bodies.

>>44776528
Yeah, fair enough. Noise, Wireless Bonuses and everything Cybernetics pretty much looks like it was written by 5 people, with at least two strongly of the opinion that cybernetics should be fucking trash used only by retards.

>>44778940
Most people get type-o organs. Your very own clone to part out isn't really needed, and why they exist is pretty much so you can have creepy clone banks but there's no fictional justifcation for it, in universe.

In SR 5, poor people get cybernetics. Of course in 5th edition smartlinks don't work in the rain.

>>44779036
I always wonder where that joke about 5e's comms not working in the rain comes from.

>>44778726
It's a street level plan. You can survive, but unless you get lucky with some good stuff, you won't do much more than that.

>>44779036
Type-O parts aren't cheap enough for most people to get them. That's why there's any trade in second hand.

>>44779130
It comes from people being pedantic and nitpicky over listed noise levels, and what they mean. Incidentally, (unless there's a jammer in play) most noise effects should be treated as slower speeds, extra spam, or spotty reception, rather than total blackout.

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>>44779130

Page 421, Wireless Bonuses. If you are in a Static or Noise zone higher then the device rating of your gear it loses "wireless functionality".

Heavy rain is Noise 3 (Page 231). Weapons and cybernetics are Device Rating 2. (Page 232)

A strict reading of the RAW on Wireless Bonuses on page 421 doesn't allow Noise Reduction to effect this.

These rules were written by different people and are stupid, so they should be ignored.

Honestly the only real noise that should matter for dice rolls is distance (but be reduced because fuck you can play with aussies who only have like 150ms even now) and jamming.

>>44778183
I'm
>>44777869
But not
>>44778115


Not sure what he's going for. If failure has repercussion, you gotta roll. Failure at work might not affect you much but it will affect your boss.

Anyhow, anytime outside combat, teamwork always help. My players have a lot if skill overlap, when 5 dudes work together you get stupid high net hits.... Like 9.

Combat rolls still benefit, especiallly in melee, of teamwork. Suppression is always useful too.

>>44778970
Your teamwork leader has skill 9?

>>44779584
Well it's odd. By the RAW, all wireless bonuses should be treated as flaky as fuck, as something that will fail under many common conditions.

If you do that, you get a game where many cybernetics and bits of equipment are near useless, and getting a decent call to someone with a bad comlink is a rare treat.

That isn't consistent with older editions and a lot of people would say it's not fun, but it fits with the 5th edition choice to nerf cybernetics into oblivion.

>>44779731
Well, slaving to a commlink should improve that, considering how else it lets the slave use the better device rating.

>>44779731
>If you do that, you get a game where many cybernetics and bits of equipment are near useless
Most of the time, you should be running wireless off, anyway. Running Silent or Wrapped only gives you a window of time to work in vs competent security, while not doing so paints a target on your back.

>That isn't consistent with older editions
It's consistent with the setting.

>>44779865
But that's wrong though.

Ahh shadowrun. Stuck eternally between people who want the old system to last forever and the people who want shiny new chrome plated systems.

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>>44779913
No, u.

>>44779858
Page 233. Slaving a device for a comlink improves it's defense and that is it. Wireless bonuses aren't effected.

>>44780045
But perhaps the same could be said of all systems.

>>44780045
The new system hates shiney plated chrome, and in the 4th ed days nobody was advocating for 3rd to come back because 3rd was trash.

How strong would gaining access to the Energy Drain: Karma power be as a PC?

>>44780280
What, you wouldn't call preventing loss of function a defense? :p

What sort of reagents do you use? I have Rat for a mentor so I want an idea of the kind of things I stuff my pockets with

>>44780378
What's your tradition?

>>44780349
Given that noise penalties aren't based on Device Rating or anything like that, there's nothing to support it. Mechanically speaking you'd probably be better off treating Noise as a Limit modifier than a dice pool penalty.

>>44780349
Naw, it's clearly not the RAW or intent of the rules. Wireless bonuses are supposed to require you to directly call a gird. Otherwise you'd just turn off the wireless on everything and connect it to a daisy chain of 3 rating 6 comlinks where only the last one is wireless = on.

>>44780421
I was mostly joking. But I think the bigger question would be if noise reduction should share down.

So, let's say we run through Food Fight, and one of my players has the bright idea to take Joeby's Erika MCD-1.

Is it possible for a character built for another role entirely to become a half-decent decker? Obviously, on a long enough time scale, the answer becomes "yes". But I mean in the short term. I can probably rule out the mage, but a gun adept and a street sam... Well, there's a 50/50 chance they'll get it, and knowing them, they'll just try and sell it.

>>44780572
Definitely needs specialties and a big time plan.

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>>44780572
A tricky question. A half decent decker? I'd say yes. A few activesoft, some luck, and a healthy understanding of your own limitations can go a long way to keeping you out of trouble.

>>44780670
Thought so. They'll probably either sell it or pass it off to the (NPC) decker for parts, then. At least it'll give them an opportunity for cash out of Food Fight.

Next problem: No one has a fucking car. All motorcycles.

>>44780572
Unslaved devices are pretty easy to hack, so it might pay off soon enough, but it will take time and karma, and money too, since they'd do well to get an instructor.

>>44780725
If you have an Erika MCD-1 you have it slaved to a decent comlink to keep it from exploding into fragments every time you turn it on anyway.

Well, in truth if you have an Erika MCD-1 you are a NPC in a pre-written adventure.

>>44780797
Or you are an Elf Face-Adept with enough Negotiation to turn a profit buying and selling decks.

>>44780797
I meant he can hack anything not slaved, although anything could feasibly hack him back just as easily.

>>44780725
>>44780674
>>44780861

There is a point here. There is a big difference between having no hacking ability in the group and having some crappy hacking.

Dumpshock.com is dead

Where do I get my builds and power gaming now?

>>44781133
>builds and power gaming
Right here bb

(Almost quad-dubs too, man)

>>44781133
Everywhere else.

How do I determine how many boxes an NPC has?

Reading through the book and I probably missed it?

>>44781571
Stun/Wound?

It's (Body/2)+8 for Physical, (Will/2)+8 for Stun.

Add bonuses before you calculate and round up.

>>44781571
same as pcs, or you could just assign the npcs as many boxes as you think is appropriate

>>44781632

Even on NPCs? Goddamn. Will still probably be lethal enough. Thanks

>>44780400
I'm a shaman but rat lets you use whatever reagents you want

>>44781672
I can confirm, it is definitely still lethal enough. Shadowrun fights are fucking deadly.

>>44781921

That's what I'm seeing reading over the numbers. Like, jesus, it seems like most fights would be over in ~6 seconds, at most? Protracted gunfights seem unlikely.

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Your runner has been offered a position in Public Security Section 9.

>>44781921
The best way (for a M6 mage) to stop a fight is a fetish-limited Force 12 spell.

AoE if possible.

>>44781981
That's some of the beauty of the system.

>>44782005
Sorry, but they're already semi-running for the Augmented Special Tactics Divison.

>>44782015

Am I reading this correct that cover is simply ruled as "Bad cover" and "good cover" with the barrier rules only coming into play if they try to shoot through it at someone?

>>44782198
Partial Cover and Good Cover, but yes. Partial cover is up to 50% coverage, Good Cover is higher than that, and Partial Cover includes non-solid objects like bushes.

>>44782256
or elves

>>44782588
especially Elves.

>>44782198
Both good cover (190) & barrier rules (197) provide rules for when a target is 100% behind cover. Something that may not immediately be noted on the latter - Penetration Weapon rules use modified DV vs unmodified barrier AV to judge whether any damage is done.

>>44782588
>>44782673
Not elves. They're flammable.

>>44782842
>Implying thats bad

>>44780470
No reason it shouldn't, but the only links that passively generate noise reduction aside from running scrubber are RCCs.
>>44782842
Well yes, but that's why they're only partial cover. Anything with that much glam in its hair is going to go up like a matchstick if you look at it funny.

>>44782928
I like my concealment / cover to not turn into a torch when I fire a weapon nearby.

>>44762616
SHADOWRUN IS THE SHITTIEST RPG EVER MADE!!!!!!!!!!

>>44783099
Nice dubs. Here's your (You).

>>44780339
Anyone?

>>44783430
To strong, totally unbalancing. Don't do it.

>>44783480
Why, though

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>>44780339
Depends on your GM. Generally speaking it's a power reserved for the strongest of free spirits like Buttercup, and even then is restricted to the generation of pacts. Like most of the stupid shit you can do with spirits, it's not something that works well in the hands of players and their ability to twist things into 'well the rules don't say I CAN'T' and then they've leeched thousands of karma from Lofwyr and gain access to Stands.

>>44781981
Depends on the modifiers. Basically, a shadowrun gunfight is either ended in one turn with one side running for the hills, or a quasi-eternal stalemate that requires either shitton of luck or external assistance to finish.

>>44782005
Hacker: Refuses because he feels he's not up to the task, and also because he doesn't want to leave El Paso and his wife.

Phys-Adept: Refuses because she enjoys working as an assassin instead.

Street Sammy: Refuses because she doesn't speak Japanese, nor is she a Japanese national, which would make that job a lot more difficult.

Razorgirl: Refuses because she already has a high paying job working for a Private Military Contractor.

>>44785808
Is that background what it looks like?

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>mfw trying to learn magic from CriticalGlitch Magic 101

I THOUGHT I WAS STARTING TO UNDERSTAND THIS GAME. FUCK

>>44785808
Look at these two bitches. Not a single ounce of chrome in them. I don't even see a datajack. Disgusting.

>>44785931
What's so hard to understand about magic?

>>44785925
What does it look like?

>>44785950
Not everyone goes flashy. Some pick the synthskin limbs and cyberfetish tattoos.

>>44785960

I guess it's just the amount of terms thrown at you so quickly

>>44766238

Wait for the military splatbook, you will get your fancy military weapons for your rigger when they are out in the Desert Wars.

Anyone ever tried having your group play in a game of Urban Brawl. Any ideas on how to do it properly?

>>44786495
Oh, God, another 'War!'? No!

>>44786524
While 5e hasn't had the smoothest run, it's a long cunt punt before the line devs hit War! levels of mediocrity.

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>>44785960
>>44785931

Naw, magic is kind of garbage. How Force works is confusing, how spells interact is damn confusing and how drain works is confusing.

How do mind control spells work? Your guess is literally as good as anyone's, because the RAW is incoherent.

>>44786517
A match of Urban Brawl is like 3 periods of 3 hours. It's stupid tedious.

IIRC there were rules for it in a 3E supplement, and it was awful.

It's the WWE of shadowrunning : Great to watch, tedious to be part of.

>>44770082

>Memory Alloys

>>44786727
>confusing
... It's super basic causality.

You decide X for Force, it then defines what your Drain is. Then you resist drain.

That's it.

>How does mind control work?

You cast the spell as normal. If you succeed, the amount of Net Hits you get becomes the Threshold to resist next time the victim gets to test. On the Mage's turn, he can use a Complex Action (Control Actions) to give his puppets an order that they then execute immediately or a Standard Action (Control Thoughts) on a target that they then execute on their turn. On the Victim's turn, he gets to make a Complex Action to resist the spell, regardless of he has enough actions left to do so. (in short, that's the only thing he can do his own turn on Control Actions, and it can do it alongside whatever other action he was ordered to do. Either way, on success, he's out of action).

Every hit he get on these resist tests reduces the Threshold by 1 until it reaches Zero and he breaks free.

The resist test is Logic+Willpower-Force, which means a spell cast at a Force equal or higher than the resistance dice pool of the subject, he's boned unless he

A) Use an Edge point to add his Edge rating to the test, which is hopefully enough
B) Burn an Edge to Smackdown the test and break free

Or something disrupts the spell (like a friendly mage counterspelling and thus reducing the Force, the offending Mage stops sustaining the spell or dies, etc.)

Yes, the rule is written in three pieces, each written on a different page, but they're pretty clear.

>>44786865
Forgot to add that the action done on Control Action uses the Spellcaster's skill and the victim's attributes, while Control Thought is executed by the victim as usual.

>>44786879
>>44786865

Oh, and before a victim of Control Thought can start using complex actions to resist the spell, it can be argued that he'd need to realize that he's under the spell to begin with. He'd need to notice the spell, start questioning the reasons behind his actions or have someone tell him he's under a spell... though that's entirely left to the GM as it can be read as RAI but not spelled out in RAW.

>>44786865

That's nice.

It's also very difficult to argue that's what the RAW says.

They say that the one being controlled can take this action even if they wouldn't get an action because of the spell.

It doesn't say that they can take this action as an extra Complex Action alongside normal actions, and doesn't say when you take it.

So if mind controlled, you can use a complex action at the start of your turn to resist. Then whatever the controller would have you do is sort of pointless, because you have nothing but a free action available.

>>44786898

Control Thoughts let you direct everything a target thinks. They can't possibly suspect they are being controlled or question it when it's working.

Hey, /srg/ im new to here and to shadorun in general. I was invited to the group and still reading a book (5th edition). I read about physical adepts and found them awesome and already got a character concept
Can you help me build a luchador adept (not original, i know) ?

Should Reflex Recorder add +1 to the Rating, or a +1 bonus to the dice pool of a skill? If the former, should Improved Ability adept power then recalculate the maximum bonus from this increased Rating, as well as the Recorder not contributing to the bonus?

I'm trying to figure out if chummer is doing Improved Ability correctly because with a reflex recorder and skill 6, I'm capped at 1 reflex recorder/2 improved ability.

>>44786959
>can take this action even if they wouldn't get an action because of the spell.
>and doesn't say when you take it.

In the spells themselves, it says you MUST do what your puppeteer ask you to. If taking the complex action to resist the spell first would prevent you from obeying your master, then you can't do that.

It also says you have to do the action on your own turn.

>>44786978
Could be.

>>44787275
Dice pool bonus.

So let's say the runners get their hands on intel that would invalidate the Shiawase Decision (corporate extraterritoriality) if it became public. For example information regarding a legal procedure error or evidence that someone important bribed someone else... how dead are they?
Hunted by Shiawase?
Hunted by entire corporate court?

Also I need more stuff for a intel cache that every runner without a deathwish will blow up and drink a bucket of leas afterwards. The cache is from 2004.

>>44787275
>because with a reflex recorder and skill 6, I'm capped at 1 reflex recorder/2 improved ability.

What's your Magic Rating? Your Improved Ability cap should be 3, not 2, so I'm assuming you only have Magic 2.

>>44787275
Dice pool bonus. At chargen you can get:
- 6 ranks in a skill
- a specialisation for 2 more dice
- 3 ranks of improved ability for 3 more dice
- a reflex recorder for yet another extra die.
For a total (Attribute + 12) as dicepool for a given thing. Oh yeah!

>>44787387
With Aptitude you can get Rank 7 and Rating 4 improved ability.

Some other Qualities or 'ware may increase the dice pool too depending on the skill.

>>44787321
Well, for one, it couldn't happen.

So... nothing will happen.

>>44787314
> The one being controlled can take this action even if they wouldn't get an action because of the spell.
Hmm.

>A victim of mental manipulation spell may roll to notice the magical effect according to the usual rules for Perceiving Magic (p. 280). Some of the less subtle mental spells (Control Actions) are pretty obvious, but more subtle spells (like Control Thoughts) can be pretty insidious.
There you go.

>>44787321
They might be able to make a deal involving laes. If it was a serious threat ... well, look up Art Dankwalther.

>>44787327
if I put it up to 3, chummer caps it at 3 of 4, because it thinks reflex recorder falls under the same cap as improved ability

>>44787387
ah aptitude, just what I was looking for.

>>44786727

...Is that Natalie Dormer?

>>44787497
That's a problem with chummer that yekka is aware of. Take the ranks in Im.Apt. and add the die from the bioware manually after printing your sheet until he corrects the code.

>>44787239
Priority distribution: A attributes, B magic, C skills or Meta, D Meta or skills, E cash.
Power points: Improved Reflexes 3 3.5pp, improved ability (unarmed) 3 1.5pp, Combat sense 2 1pp.
Natural athlete, distinctive style.

>>44787738
He's a Luchador, you don't want to waste your PP in Improved Reflexes, all he need is the first action of one round to grab the dude. He can just use Edge for that.

Instead, he should make sure he can throw enough dice to Subdue anything (so max out unarmed and STR as high as possible), and have Clinch+Counterstrike (both the martial art and the adept power. They do very different things) for everything else.

You want the Reflex bonuses, but don't mind the initiative too much. Once you've subdued/clinched the guy, he can't do jackshit. If he got pals, the Counterstrike Adept Power is there to redirect their strikes against each other.

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>>44787275
There are VERY few things that add to the actual rating of a skill.
That said, it sounds more like you're affected by Improved Ability not working properly, which is a known thing and I hate the way Adam did free levels. It's somewhere in the middle of getting fixed.

>>44787835
Better keep that edge instead of wasting it every combat.

>>44787314
It also says you can take a complex action to resist control even if the spell would prevent you from doing so.

Welcome to shitty writing.

>>44788364
The purpose of the thing taking a Complex Action is to guarantee that you at least lose a turn fighting it, so you don't shake it off instantly and then gun the mage on the same turn he used the spell.

It could have been clearer, but intent is obvious

So what is the easiest way for new shadowrunners to get some cash? Assuming they're not outfitted and they desperately need nuyen?

>>44788662
RAW? Find decker, kill decker, fence deck.

The subtler way is to keep your eyes and ears open while on a run, acquire any paydata you can and sell it to an information broker.

Looting gear is worth it as well, depending on the exact situation.

I've got a couple questions about my first character, a Mage with a fair amount of spirit use. My group otherwise has a dedicated rigger, techno, physadept, and a face. I'm also torn between Vodoo and Obeah, mostly because I don't fully understand the repercussions of possession spirits.

I'm not sure exactly what role that leaves for me. In my head, because I'm coming from DnD, I think support/stealth.

So what spells should I be looking at?
Is it worth it to drop 1 essence on cyberware like eyes, ears, pain editor?
If so, what other ware should I look for to fill out that essence?

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What is the general consensus on running SR games with Earthdawn background, despite the two having been pretty much cut apart from eachother? Do people hate ED? Why/why not?

I'm speaking as someone who hasn't played a tabletop game in their life, my only experience with Shadowrun being Dragonfall/Hong Kong. What little I've read about horrors seems kinda dope, and I generally like the idea of having tons of background lore from entire worlds from before the current one.

>>44788662
Low time jobs.