Shadowrun General /srg/ -Host Edition

>>43518638
I don't know what to tell you, man; there are plenty of hardcovers out there from 4e, 5e, even the 2050 book got a hard cover.

http://www.amazon.ca/Shadowrun-Core-Rulebook/dp/1936876515

They are pre-errata, unless they printed a second run, but they're there.

I want to play a melee-oriented human Street Samurai. What do I get to make sure I don't suck completely? Don't have to be optimized up the ass, but good enough to pull his own weight. No adepts, just good old chrome and biomods.

>>43518684
>special edition hardcover
>seeing a second print run
I know they exist. Point is, I don't want something with such poor editing quality, and CGL first print runs are invariably crap. Heck, I've toned it back to relying on others having a copy of books for SR, based on editing quality alone.

>>43518687
What character creation rules will you be using?

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What are the absolute essential items that no runner should be without? Like say you were making a bug-out-bag to act as a basic kit for someone who needed to spend a decent amount of time in the shadows, what would you consider to be items that every SINless outlaw should have on them and/or in their safehouse?

>>43518687
Get yourself some upgraded reflexes.
Synaptic boosters if you have unlimited cash, but you won't so they're out and you should go for wired reflexes. (Reflexes are king in Shadowrun)

Pack a non melee weapon just in case.

Adapsin and biocompatability if you want to go nuts with the chrome.

At any rate, you're pretty screwed this edition. Adepts can do everything you can do, and better, for cheaper.

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>>43518855
Spare SIN and commlink, discard-able clothes, pistol (I'd recommend a Streetline) a Rating 2 Medkit, some food and water.

Beyond that, the specifics of what you'd need depend entirely on what your character's role is, and what shadows they are working.

>>43518855
- Fake SIN (with necessary licenses)
- Credstick with Nuyen
- 2 Sets of clothes (duh)
- Cheap Comlink
- Back-up weapon with some ammo (Colt Agent Special for instance)
- Survival knife (you never know when one of those comes in handy!)
- Medkit
- Food/Water for 2 days

The rest will depend on where you plan to bug-out to and where you will lay low.

>>43518803

We can do sum to ten, priority or karma, standard Runners only.

>>43518858

It just seems that if I get Wired Reflexes, I won't be able to get anything else. I can't afford cyberlimbs and implanted weapons to go with Wires.

I afraid of that. Our group has a Gunslinger Adept who rolls like 4d6+13 to his initiative and oneshots everything. Makes me feel kinda useless with my hand razors.

Is the rigger book out yet? I never wanted to be the "game of drones" styled rigger but there is like NOTHING for drones to begin with.. Most are crap and die really easily. Its probably better to just use vehicles as your drones right?

>>43518984
No book or release date out yet, it's expected this winter sometime. Vehicles are hella expensive to get, mod, and repair; you can make a firing platform if you want, but it's not going to be great.

>>43518901
5e's idea of balancing magic types is a rule half the GMs don't apply and that makes every magic type, including NPCs, useless unless they're at a one-in-a-million power level.

>>43518901
You need better reflexes to be an effective samurai, it's not even up for discussion.

>>43519015
The rigger book has been expected to come out "Soon"(TM) since the edition started.

I'm honestly starting to think it won't happen.
Which is fine with me, honestly.

>>43519043
Background counts are such a shitty balance for adepts, because it's either irrelevant or it completely and utterly cripples them.
No middle ground.

>>43518901
If you want to go the "chromed monster" way then you can go this way:

A Resources, B Stats, C Skills, D human, E mundane.

Take the "Biocompatibility: cyberware" quality
Take the "Restricted Gear" quality

With the "Restricted Guer", you buy Adapsin treatment.

Then, with your nuyen you buy:

- Wired Reflexes 2
- Reaction Boosters 2
- Str 9/ Agi9/Armor 2 Cyberarm with Spurs.
- Used Titanium Bone Lacing
- Rating 4 Cybereyes with whatever vision enhancement you want.
- Datajack (you never know when one comes in handy and it's super cheap)

As long as you get 4 Rea and 4 Int, you'll start with 3D6+12 initiative (which isn't half bad, should get you 3 passes reliably), a Cyberarm that lets you punch and shoot with a SMG or Heavy Pistol with 9 Agi and Str (just have a lanyard for your gun and let it dangle from your neck/wrist when you go for a punch.) and 8 extra armor to deal with incoming damage.

Just make sure not to dump your physical stats too hard (to gat a decent physical limit to punch) nor your Charisma and to put some points in Etiquette/Con to at least try to fib your way past anything you don't want to punch dead and you should be golden.

>>43518901
Ask your GM if you can take a liminal centaur body, casemod it into an upright / humanoid shape, put your torso / major organs inside it, and use monkey feet for hands.

What's your favorite non-AAA corp in Shadowrun, and why is it Maersk?

>>43519232
That's a LOT of work for an extra pair of arms.

Could just take shiva arms, y'know?

>>43519249
A lot of work for a cyber body that doesn't entirely blow, really. I wouldn't expect extra arms to come out of it when you've put all your organs in a metal shell that looks like a body.

>>43519015

drones are such shit though and unreliable and easy to kill.

Also, the most FUN vehicle is the ares road master. I don't even bother with a bulldog.

New build of Chummer's up as pre-release. https://github.com/chummer5a/chummer5a/releases/tag/Nightly-v1.0.535

>>43519381
>Calculation fixes

?

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>>43519237
Universal Omnitech forever. They're always getting into a bit of everything, and they're bad in that bland corporate way that makes running for or against them so justifiable.

>>43519429
Advanced lifestyles would occasionally not discount the nuyen cost of qualities that fit within the 'allowed' categories. It was more or less an edge case, as it required a VERY specific series of qualities and lifestyle choices.

>>43519463
Yekka, I've found a bug (you might already be aware of) in Chummer:

Reflex Recorder: Skill (bioware) and Improved Ability: Same Skill (adept power) don't stack properly.

>>43519503
Yeah, that whole section of code is so broken that the other guy's spent the better part of the last month rewriting it from scratch.

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Question: Are there Arab variations of the metas?

The most that's in Run Faster is saying that Hobgoblins come from around that region (stretching into Central Asia), but no other info on any other meta frequencies or distinctive characteristics in any books I've read, including 6th World Almanac.

The Full Offense martial art action states that you're not allowed to use DEFENSIVE interrupt actions, and cites "block, parry, full defense, and parry' as examples of defensive interrupt actions.

With that being said, would anyone consider "counterstrike" to be a Defensive Interrupt?

It should be noted that both of the Martial Arts that offer the Full Offense action DO NOT have Counterstrike as an available action to learn, but I'm thinking about learning it through the One Trick Pony quality.

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>>43518672
My runners once invaded the host of the Sanitation Engineers Union Local 456 (which had been made mostly toothless by the corps, but was kept for PR purposes) and found out it was a chain of tropical islands, with large beachfront estates for each office.

I imagine that most hosts are removed from everyday life as far as is practical. There's only so much you can do if you want to keep an office-like setting, but the average person should enjoy dropping into the host; a nice break from the grey concrete and smog reality. If they're happy when they're there, it doesn't bother them so much to put in a 16 hour day.

>>43519535
Apart from hobgoblins, none that currently have rules.

Nagas stretch into the region, but aren't primarily middle eastern.

I mean what could they really make?
Djinns?
Golems?
Nephilim?
Ifrit? (Although that's really a a type of Jinn)
Daeva?

None of them really work, except possibly Nephilim.

>>43519641
Personal opinion but I'd allow it, fluffing it as slipping in the opponent's reach and getting a quick punch in before his blow fall, rather than a formal parry-riposte.

>>43519698
Drunken boxing is what my character has, and it's even self described as being hard to follow due to the erratic, drunken like stance that only feigns imbalance and poor stance. As a result, it would make sense to me that he could "punish" an opponent for striking when they thought they had an opening, when in reality they didn't

>>43519692
That makes sense. There's the nasnas, but that doesn't fit with any of the existing metas.

Did they ever stat out Rocs? Can't find them in Parazoology.

I'm thinking of making Artisan a knowledge group rather than a singular active skill, mostly to avoid the issue of "a chef is also somehow a good portrait painter". Especially since a bunch of my players picked it on karmagen as a basis for day job.

>>43519081
>not going A - resources, B - Stats, B - Skills, E - metatype, E - magic with sum-to-ten

>>43520172
Not every gm allows sum to ten exactly because it's easy to cheese and exacerbates the core issues of the linear character creation system.

Also have fun playing only humans.

>>43520172
A valid alternative, but I'd rather have the 5 Edge.

>>43520212
yeah, but this anon said he could use sum-to-ten and the suggested build had human metatype

>>43520221
idk why, but i've never made a runner who had a ton of edge, never really use it in gameplay, i don't even know all of its applications

only use it once in a while if i'm one-on-one with some troll or something and really need that headshot (i'm an infiltrator)

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>>43520212
i've found priority forces min-maxing whereas sum-to-ten allows more balanced pcs w/o forcing them to have or not have something they don't want

>>43520102
The skills don't really make sense the way they abstracted them (Knowing how to fire a rifle gives you no clue how to fire an automatic rifle, but fixing a leaky boat is the exact same skill as fixing the nuclear reactor in a submarine), but moving it to knowledge skill is hardly a fix. As by the rules a chef couldn't actually cook with his knowledge of cookery, but a chef with ranks in artisan COULD use his ability to cook to know about cookery.

What makes it make even less sense though is that theoretically the way it works in game, you could have your chef skills substitute for an art history degree.

So just... just let it go man.
You can't really fix artisan with the way they set it up without using a bunch of houserules.

>>43520312
So does Karma in general.

Also I usually find BBDE and BBCCE to be fairly nice uses of sum to 10.

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>>43520312
I find that it doesn't encourage min-maxing so much as specialization. You don't have to cheese it, but it naturally lends itself to characters who are only really exceptional in one or two ways, instead of dabbling in a bit of everything and blurring the roles. Maybe it's just me, but I find people, especially newcomers to SR, tend to build characters with a stronger central flavour with priority, while sum to 10 and karmagen leads to more mushy concepts.

>>43520381

I can second this. Building sum to 10 lets me feel like I can do more than one main focus, while priority makes it feel like "Select a job. Now, what priorities does that job have? Select them."

>>43520364
exactly my point, i love BBBDE and BBCCE

>>43520381
mushy concepts are the point, pcs shouldnt be fit into meta concepts such as street sam or face. for a good mix of rp AND mechanical success, sum-to-ten allows you to build real characters, not people who have apparently spent their entire lives around a central concept

i agree though, karmagen and sum-to-ten aren't for people's first pcs

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>>43520441
I have a different view of central concepts than you, it seems. It's not necessarily that they've devoted their lives to being a face, but that it's what they choose to do and what they're good at. Odds are good that everyone has a point or two in Con and Etiquette, even if you are using priority, but when there's a job that involves interacting with people everyone knows who gets to take the lead. You have to work with the team and share the spotlight, instead of everyone handling everything more or less competently.

The whole thing about Shadowrun is that it gives you nice separate areas (physical, astral, matrix) and multiple avenues in each area (samurai vs. adept, adept vs. mage, decker vs. technomancer) for how you choose to go about it. Odds are that you're not going to good at one and only one thing, but everyone gets to be the star of their own field without stepping on everyone else's toes. When things get hairy, the street sammy gets to slap his big dice pool on the table and be the hero, in the knowledge that he can fade to the background in the next scene and let someone else have a shot at the glory.

>>43518687
>What do I get to make sure I don't suck completely?
Your metatype-maximum Strength and Agility - the former for your much-needed base melee damage, and the latter for both your dice pools and your movement speed.

Movement speed is more important for melee warriors than any other character type. I'd strongly encourage you to look into specialized cyberlegs towards that end - cyberskates, digitigrade legs, whatever. Anything that makes you move faster.

But, again, none of that matters if your strength is so low that you're barely hitting people for Heavy Pistol damage ratings.

Of course, the fact that you can't use weapon foci means that the melee adept will almost always have more overall utility than you. You can make up for that fact by taking Bone Lacing and Striking Calluses for a concealable unarmed strike that hits with the force of a combat axe - adepts can't match, or even rival, street sams when it comes to base unarmed damage.

>>43520559
>adepts can't match, or even rival, street sams when it comes to base unarmed damage.

Unless you're playing a purist adept, an unarmed Adept is going to take Bone Lacing/Density and Striking Callouses to boost their damage output.

>>43518687
>>43520559

If you can afford it, I would also reccomend taking Biocompatibility (cyberware) and Adapsin (Chrome flesh both) during Chargen. Offers you 20% essence cost reduction to all your cyberware, stacked with your grade essence cost, rounded down to the 10th.

This means Used gear costs 1.0 essence cost (Still with 75% the nuyen cost). Standard gear costs .8 (Same as Alphaware), alphaware costs .6 (Slightly better than base Betaware), betaware is .5 (Same as Deltaware), and Deltaware is .4 (That would take your Wired Reflexes 3 from 5 essence down to 2 essence)

Really gives you your bang for your Buck, and lets you get to shove more gear into your body without dying.

Also, depending on how you snag your opening shit, you could also snag Alphaware Muscle Replacements rating 4, for 2.4 essence, or alphaware Wired Reflexes 3 for 3 essence.

Some GM's will even let you take Betaware or even Deltaware options with Restricted gear (So long as you don't bypass the 24 availability limit)

Oh, and don't forget Reaction enhancers. With wireless active, they stack with your wired reflexes. Its really nice!

>>43520695
Anon, you can only take a single "Restricted Gear" quality at chargen, and you already need it for Adapsin.

>>43520553
i see your point, and it is valid; but i like building characters with the character in mind, not the meta role they will fill.

i totally get the "players sharing the spotlight" thing. but with a narrow specialty like you suggest, then you get players only taking the spotlight in the same scenario each time and that really narrows how you play the game.

if you go with mushier concepts, you'll still have those that are better at certain things as well as those that have certain skills no one else has. but when you split up, the decker-face team won't be at a crippling disadvantage if they get fired upon.

take these movies for example:

Ocean's Eleven: everyone is specialized and everything is A-O-K as long as everything goes according to plan, but that never happens in SR

Ronin: you have a team with a general skillset so that way no one is the weak link if they're on their own while still having those with certain specialties

>>43520733

Ah shit. my bad.

Still, Adapsin is a good thing to grab

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Armachan Technology Corporation:Working for the future and you!


The Replica Soldier is the ultimate warrior: Incredibly fast, incomparably strong, impeccably trained, and utterly devoid of conscience. No history, no hang-ups, and no purpose but to serve. Unquestioning loyalty and unshakable discipline at standard PMC prices.

Variant 7 Replica soldiers accept voice-keyed verbal orders (standard soldiers recognize 12 unique voices, but 24 or 32 voice extended capacity is available) and are preconfigured to obey telepathic orders once the Harbinger Telesthetic Commander series becomes available (release date pending).

It takes a Replica soldier two years to mature and two more years to complete programming and tactical training. Within the next decade, Armacham expects to reduce this time even further with improvements in genetic imprinting and breakthroughs in direct neural data transmission.

A Replica soldier can be stored in its QuickDeploy stasis pod indefinitely provided that the pod is properly serviced and maintained. To ensure maximum soldier viability, refill nutrient dispensers and clean waste filters every 30 days. Stackable "fourpack" and "sixpack" frames are available to facilitate rapid transportation of multiple stasis pods by ship, train, or cargo plane.


Is this is viable in Shadowrun?

>>43520749
Definitely. Adapsin + Biocompatibility is a blessing for anyone going heavily into Chrome.

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>>43520745
Fair enough.

Personally, I like the situations where the decker-face team gets caught out, because then they have to work with the skills that they do have to survive, rather than just brassing their way through.

My games tend towards being more stylized and like a movie, though.

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>>43520815
There are forced-grown clones, but none of that physical quality. You can't really have brain-dead and 'impeccably skilled' without a personafix and skillwires, and that is going to have serious limitations and other mental stability problems. Frankly, the corps and nations can do better with clones, mercenaries and regular forces.

The closest you might get is a cyberzombie, but those guys are coming apart at the seams, spiritually and mentally.

>>43520904
should say they can do better with drones, not clones

>>43520815
It could probably be done. Cloning vats and accelerated growth are a thing, as are cybernetics and VR training.

The world of Shadowrun sees very few demand for such armies hence there are no such clone soldiers, but they are definitively within the realm of the possible.

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>>43519237

Naw, gotta be Monobe. I like to call them the "Blue Balls" corp.

>>43520904

you underestimate the power of DM Fiat.

They may not be straight-up powerful as regular characters, but if they're basically living drones, I don't see why they can't be used.

>>43520815
It seems pretty plausible to me, I wouldn't stat them as well as they're being "advertised" but it should work.

>>43520815
The real trouble will be preventing your players from stealing the armour and cyberware that's crammed into one of those guys.

>>43520962
Sure, the DM could fiat them in there. They could also fiat in that the clones are drakes. I'm talking about things based off the SR canon, and canonically there is no way to produce people who are totally loyal, badass soldiers without filling their heads with more metal than a Mack truck, and no way to grow them within 2 years.

>>43520988

This seems pretty good to me. Like...

E metatype, C Attributes, E Magic, C skills, and X Money (Give them whatever ware you think is appropriate)

>>43521014
who looks at someone else's cyberware and thinks, "I want that arm, I think i'll chop his arm off after i kill him?"

>>43521018

Advertising is Key. I'd say pretty much living drones is the way to go. Totally loyal because of (mostly) artificial brains, badass because of ware (That will need a separate team of non-clones to be extracted). Really, you just need average dudes with good ware, who are only good at one thing (Automatics, melee, longarms, etc.) to make an effective team that could fuck over a team if they are caught off guard.

For a 4 pack, give them two automatics (Suppressive fire), a pistolier (called shot disarms, knockdowns, etc.), and a longarms man (Heavy damage).

Deploy them at key points, even with 'meh' stats, they could do some serious damage.

>>43521018
Accelerated growth is totally a thing for wimps. They could take wimps, fill them with chrome and give them tactical training.

I don't see why that wouldn't be possible, it just wouldn't be very economical.

>>43521083

Every street level team ever? Every game I've ran will consider cyberware as part of the loot. I don't know guys who take gear and put it on themselves directly, but sell it? Sure. they're dead, and that 5/5 cyber arm will be worth quite the pretty penny.

>>43520958
Honestly Monobe is a bit too generic for me. They're just "Another Japanocorp".

>>43521110
yeah, but at this point you gotta consider it used, plus the mark down due to it being fenced, so your 60k cyberarm is like 20k-30k...

damn it, i need to start looting cyberware

>>43521084
But you can't give people mostly artificial brains without royally fucking their essence and leading to my original point of cyberzombies with persona chips being the end result of that strategy.

And if you take average dudes and give them good ware, you've got regular corpsec, who are better and more flexible than drones. It's not practical to totally strip someone's mind down to nothing but pure loyalty and battle skills, load them with quality ware, and send them out when you can get better quality soldiers inside of an hour by phoning the local merc depot.

>>43521097
IIRC, they don't grow that fast, and the wimps are only good in their tanks; you can't take them out or they'd die, because they'd no longer genetically capable of dealing with the outside world. AFAIK, there's no perfect human cloning where you could get soldier-grade physical specimens out of a tube.

>>43521178
Seriously, the game really fucked up with pricing.

On runs the biggest payday is so not going to be whatever the Johnson is offering, it's going to be stealing fucking everything.

>>43521199
Wimps aren't any good outside their tanks because they're brain dead.

If you made a non brain dead version, there's no reason they couldn't survive outside their tanks.

>>43519692
>Nephilim?
Would be a good troll metavariant.

>Djinns?
Would be a good name for, say, a magically-inclined unusually-tall dwarf metavariant with luminous skin - 'smokeless fire.' Though, truth be told, those are more just fire spirits in a Sufi Sorcery tradition.

>>43521209
However, that means that your runners are going to be murdering people and harvesting their ware (not an easy job) on the regular, and you can bet the corp that paid for that 5/5 arm is going to come and stop you, to protect their other investments and for the PR of stopping the Barrens Butchers. Not to mention the gangs coming in to stop you from cutting in on their markets.

There's a reason everyone and their mother doesn't deal in used ware.

>>43521209
The 'steal everything' strategy seems like a good way to draw a lot of unwanted attention.

>>43521266

Only if you do it wrong. Hell, Steal everything could be a very viable strategy.

Go in, kill a dude, and steal everything. It will look like the job was a burglary, and the kill was because he 'got in the way' rather than it being a wetwork job. Throws the suspicion WAY off course.

>>43521234
>>43521097
>>43521084
On the subject of living drones, from Chrome Flesh,
>Switching gears a bit, there’ve been several attempts to rig up “wimp drones” using modified versions of bio-rigging gear. You’d figure if you can rig a cat and you can rig a roach, you could rig a wimp, but no, same problem. The neuro-net just flat-out isn’t developed enough to take for a ride. You get rumors that Saeder-Krupp or Proteus has the tech (it’s always the Germans for some reason), but no one’s ever been able to find proof—and believe me, we’ve been hunting.

They talk a bit about it elsewhere, but basically cloning can't produce a fully functioning brain, and you need a fully functioning brain in order to be rigged up. It's why you hear about street people being snatched, reprogrammed, and used as assassins, but no one is making a clone army.

>>43521266
As opposed to literally everything else shadowrunners do?

>>43521263
...
But you shouldn't just steal 'wares, you should steal wares when you are killing people anyway, cars when you aren't, and decks always.

Stealing a decent deckers deck is more valuable than a lot of runs.

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>>43521308
>it will look like a burglary
thats because it IS a burglary, lol!
you're talking about breaking an entering, murdering a dude, and stealing all his shit, LMAO!

>>43521308
Yeah, if you happen to have a target who has a bunch of valuables lying around their place, and the security is so lax you can grab it all and get out with it, sure.

On the other hand, 'killing people and taking their stuff' is pretty much the oldest crime in the book. You're not breaking new ground here, anon, and you can bet the police won't be breaking new ground tracking the murderers/thieves plaguing the area.

>>43521327
There are whispers of it, he's suggesting that one company succeeded.

There's also only been whispers of successful cyberzombies and the like, and they get used all the time.

>>43521154

And that's the beauty of it. They -should- be the quintessential zaibatsu, having tried multiple times to do every evil cyberpunk zibatsu thing in the book, yet always failing and just coming off as "meh."

They're also great, because they own a lot of things runners deal with all the time. Weapons World is a Monobe subsidiary. As is Chips n Tech, which is like Shadowrun's version of Best Buy.

>>43521327
Sorta true. No one is making fast growth clone armies. Aztechnology very much started it's own IVF program for future soldiers some time around 1st / 2nd edition, who were old enough to enlist in 4th edition. Other corps are using similar techniques to create children that have no familial bonds, other than to their corporation.

How do I do unusual equipment in shadowrun? What if I wanted a stick of gum that was infused with drugs (so that it'd be more difficult to pick up on a search), or an X (watch, shoe, whatever) that explodes if you switch it in a certain way? Generally, how do I super spy?

>>43521367
No, he's suggesting that there are rumours someone succeeded, but no evidence at all, making it just a rumour. Meanwhile, there are not only whispers of cyberzombies, it's pretty well known in the shadows that corps are dabbling with this stuff quietly, and there have been several hundred cyberzombies produced between the 4 corps who can make them.

There's a difference between 'Things that are proven in the shadows', 'Things that are proven publically', and 'Things that have no proof at all but Plan 9's rants.'

>>43521376
Exactly my point. You can't have a clone army, and there are other better ways of getting loyal soldiers.

>>43521346
Let me reword it then.
You're more likely to piss off even more people, possibly including your employer, with every piece of random junk you pick up.
Of course, you could always end up cleaning out an entire warehouse and have no one care.

>>43521459
Just checking, which 4 corps are those?

>>43521493
Why the crap would the Johnson care that you removed a dude's arm, if they don't care that you murdered him in the first place?

You are literally going out of your way to invent issues that shouldn't exist.

>>43521498
S-K, EVO, Aztechnology and...
I want to say Proteus?

>>43521327

That's iffy given there's a lot of human-specific body override technology.

You simply don't *need* the brain to do anything other than govern some vital functions, and most of those can be handled by technology anyway. At worst, they could mature brains elsewhere on a longer timeframe and implant them as control units into the wimps.

But a Move-by-Wire system, for example, doesn't need to care about the brain's development at all - as it puts the body into a seizure state and selectively allows it to move - it's fully capable of being used to rig a body.

Combined with skillwires and an agent program, human clone biodrones have been possible for ages.

>>43521498
>>43521545
S-K, Aztech, MCT, and Novatech (thus NeoNET). EVO is rumoured to have some, including soldiers operating in the Yakut, but it's not confirmed.

Horizon, Shiawase, and Ares have captured and reprogammed previously created cyberzombies, but their own cybermancy divisions aren't advanced enough to make them enough.

>>43521350

Not if it was a wetwork job. then it was a wetwork job that the runners decided to get some extra cash by stealing shit.

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>>43521594
>explicitly told that wimps aren't developed enough to be biodrones, despite the fact that it seems viable from an overview

>yeah, but it's been possible for ages!

>>43520316
Our group decided to merge all the engineering skills into one skill (basically we turned the entire skillgroup into a single active skill)
So now fixing the nuclear reactor is just a ludicrously high threshold Engineering test

Also, with guns, we made all rifle+ weapons Longarms, and SMGs into Small Arms (renamed Pistols) IE grouping weapons by size rather than firing action. It didn't make sense before, since there are several 'Pistols' that have Burst Fire, and a few Longarms that have FA modes

>>43521651

And?

This is Shadowrun.

The writers haven't had a consistent or particularly nuanced understanding of the setting since mid-4E.

The technology is all there, Chrome Flesh's reasoning is spurious at best when there are clear examples of the technology required to invalidate it and have been for decades in-universe.

>>43521689
as an electrical engineering major, i don't like this, you have spat on me and everything that i do!

I'm not some uninspired mechanical engineer:

>"look at me, i can build a bridge with toothpicks!

or some mind-in-the-clouds aeronautical engineer:

>Guy: "where do you guys want to go eat?"
>Aero engr: "SPACE!"

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How would you play this?
Cybered orc rigger with customized drones and proficiency in close combat and throwing weapons?
Adept/Sammy with way too many expensive toys?

>>43521781
You know, if the aeronautic engineer had his mind underground, I'd start wondering if he didn't make an error in studies/career choice.

>>43521818
Hobgoblin metavariant with control rig, heavily modified Dalmatian drone, probably a cyberarm specc'd for throwing and a fuckload of grenades.

Also, less points in blades than you actually need to avoid critical glitches.

>>43521781
Then its a good thing you are not playing in our game, you'd not like what we've done using the Juryrigger quality

Maybe split Engineering into Mechanical, Electrical and Civil then? And make Aeronautics etc Specialisms.
I mean, I seriously doubt that an engineer with a lot of experience with car engines could not, in extremity, turn his hand to a boat engine

>>43521939
He's kidding dude.

But to get back on topic, I honestly think a lot of the skillgroups could be turned in individual skills.

I don't see enough use of individual skills in biotech, electronics, outdoors or engineering to justify their existence really.

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>>43521879
>Also, less points in blades than you actually need to avoid critical glitches.
heh

>>43521939
dont get me started on civil engineers....

im just making a joke, i dont really see the need to have engineering as a skill for shadowrunners, in what world does a person with an engineering skillset have to resort to crime to find gainful employment?

even megacorps couldn't tighten the salaries of engineers

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>>43522009
Even math geeks want to fight the power sometimes. You can't tell me there's not a terrorist group fighting to establish a neo-Euclidian state somewhere in the Sixth World.

>>43522009
I can think of a few uses, sabotaging an engine maybe, fixing a broken car as a getaway/disposable vehicle
And if you don't have a SIN, then it doesn't matter what your skill set is, getting a job is pretty difficult. Especially since any formal qualifications would be attached to your SIN
And megacorps definitely could tighten the salaries of anger, since those engineers are citizens of the corp and don't get the choice of where to work...
unless they hire some runners to extract them, obviously

>>43522009
You have a regular day job that let me use explosives all day?

>>43522202
For what I am sure are very good reasons, the engineering skills in Shadowrun do not cover the use of explosives
There is a separate skill for that

>>43522061
maybe, but my point is, what engineers would make it there business to start/join a terrorist group when a happy, prosperous, and productive life is as simple as submitting applications

>>43522109
how does someone get a college education without a sin?

getting wageslaves to sign contracts for life and suck ass salaries may not be hard, but not so for the highly skilled engineers.

my point here is that:
megacorps need engineers;
engineers are a specialized, smaller workforce;
the demand probably exceeds the supply of this labor, thus increasing pandering to and increased perks for engineers as opposed to enslaving them

maybe my view of the 6th world is incorrect

>>43522202
that job is literally a possibility for engineers

Let's say you're gonna use SURGE to make something that *isn't* furbait, but still follows a general theme.

What do?

I need to find SOME redeeming factor in SURGE.

>>43522246
>what engineers would make it there business to start/join a terrorist group when a happy, prosperous, and productive life is as simple as submitting applications

Why does anyone go into the shadows at all? Why is anyone ever a terrorist when you can have a happy, prosperous, and productive life? There are more motivations than just wanting to live a safe, picket fence life.

>...Gambetta and Hertog sketch out a particular engineering "mindset" in which the profession is "more attractive to individuals seeking cognitive ‘closure’ and clear-cut answers as opposed to more open-ended sciences — a disposition which has been empirically linked to conservative political attitudes." Engineers, the authors find, are far more conservative on the whole than members of other professions. Islamic extremism "rejects Western pluralism and argues for a unified ordered society" — a political worldview that lines up nicely with a profession averse to chaos.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/11/theres-a-good-reason-why-so-many-terrorists-are-engineers/

As well, you seem to be massively inflating the value of engineers. They're a smaller, specialized workforce, but there is no guarantee that they'll walk out of college and into a steady job, especially if they're not walking out of a corp-owned university where they were already locked into a 10-year employment contract. With a global market, more advanced computers (not to mention AI), and other pressures, it's no surprise that a lot of engineers don't end up behind a desk, but rather working wherever they can put their skills to use, even if that's running cables for a secret hideout in the middle of Redmond.

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>>43522323
Oh, good, we can sink another /srg/ with this argument.

I say stick to the lower classes (I or II), have them actually roll randomly for their drawbacks to emphasize the freakish nature and let them grab extra disadvantages if they don't roll enough pointsworth to make it fit thematically. Kick them in the dick if their description ever involves the term Anthro.

>>43522009
>even megacorps couldn't tighten the salaries of engineers
With engineers' hatred of unions and love of their own egos, engineer salaries except for the top tier ones are already going down (or at least not keeping up).

Megacorps could very easily leave engineers in the same rut as everyone else.

>>43522246
Not all SINless people were born that way. You could have gone to university, got your engineering degree, and then become SINless (via Crash 2.0, legally registered as dead, malicious hackers, or by your own choice) afterwards

>>43522246
Actually, most 'specialized' professions are fairly easy to acquire for megacorps. Not only do they represent the largest (and best, probably) employers, but they have a lot of control over their citizens lives. If they need engineers, they just take as much of the corp-youth as they need and make them train as engineers

Or just upload an engineering skillsoft into as many wageslaves as they need. Really skilled engineers (rating 6+) need to be trained, but even then doing so is much quicker and easier in 2075 than it is RL

And if they do need someone that skilled, they can just have them extracted from a rival corp, brainwashing them if required

>>43522384
I should clarify, I meant SURGE III. I and II are fine in my book.

>>43522584
Also, could've lost it through a bureaucratic fuckup when the subsidiary you worked for was purchased and dismantled.

>>43522632
I don't think you extract for a skillset like "Engineer", you extract for specialized knowledge like "Mastermind of the new Renraku OS that's being developed".

>>43518901
>>43519081

What do you guys think of this, and I hope everything is by the numbers, since I'm playing Shadowrun for the first time;

Body 5,
Agi 1
React 6
Str 1
Cha 2
Int 4
Logic 4
Willpower 5
Edge 2

Cyberlimbs x2
Custom Str and Agi 7
Spurs

Cyberlegs x2
Hydraulic Jacks 6, Custom Str 4, Custom Agi 5

Reaction Enhancers 2
Wired Reflexes 1

Adapsin, Narco, Reflex Recorder (Unarmed)

Auto-Injector with Kamikaze + Jazz

This should result in an initiative roll that's 13 + 2d6, and 15 + 6d6 when I shoot up the coctail. With Redliner quality, my strength and agility with the cyberlimbs should be at 9. Physical limit should be around 6. Stat boosts from drugs don't affect the cyberlimb scores, right, so only benefit I get besides improved initiative, +5 Phys limit and High Pain Tolerance would be +2 Body, right?

Did I miss anything?

>>43523169
>Agi 1
>Str 1

Dem limits tho

>>43523169
>Agility 1
>Strength 1
>Cyberlimbed out
Have fun with that physical limit

You can't customize your limbs above 3/3 with stats like those, only enhance them to 6/6.

>>43523208
>>43523209

Isn't the physical limit determined by the cyberlimb's score? I don't understand what you mean. Like I said, I'm not familiar with Shadowrun. Why can't I customize them above 3/3 or enhance them to 6/6?

>>43523247
Unless your GM houserules that Cyberlimb score averages into Limits, your physical Limit is going to be absolute shit.

You can't CUSTOMIZE a cyberlimb's stats above your natural stat. Because your natural stats are shit, you can't customize them above 3/3. However, you can add Strength and Agility ENHANCEMENT, to increase that limb's Strength and Agility to 6/6.

>>43523169
>Agi 1
>Str 1

No! Just NO!

Cyberlimbs can only be customized to your racial maximum. (6/6 in your case since you're human). You can after that add 3 levels of enhancements.

Havin Spurs in both is useless, you won't use both at the same time.

>Kamikaze + Jazz
Uh... Speedballing is bad for your health, bro'. And the absolute max for Init is 5d6.

>>43523282
It's racial maximum stats you cannot customize above, not the user's existing ones.

>>43523282

Okay, I see what you mean after checking the core book. But it says I can't customize them beyond the natural maximum. Shouldn't that natural maximum means 6/6? And then I can enhance them further, up to +3 for a 9/9.

Also, about limits;
"When a limit is imposed by a piece of gear, it overrides
the inherent limit, whether it is higher or lower than
that limit. For example, the Accuracy of a firearm acts as
the limit for tests that involve shooting that gun"

Shouldn't that make the cyberlimbs use their limits too instead of natural limits?

>>43523387
Nope. Physical limits use your base STR/BOD/REA and individual cyberlimbs don't affect those.

With 1 str, 5 Body and 6 Rea you have a Physical limit of 5, which is really low-ish for someone wanting to punch people dead.

>>43523492

Does Redliner Quality (+1 Str/Agi per pair of Cyberlimbs, max +2) affect that natural stat, pumping my Strenght from 1 to 3, or is it added to the Cyberlimb's rating?

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We Mad Max nao.

http://catalystgamelabs.tumblr.com/post/132742520421/shadowrun-rigger-5-art

>>43523560
>Wireless Bonus: Will actually do what it's supposed to do so long as you have your Facebook login running on open wireless

>>43523537
Only the Cyberlimbs rating AFAIK. You might want to double-check that.

>>43523560
SHINY AND CHROME!

>>43523642
Honestly I'm kind of fine with some things being moderately less chrome and shiny. Classic Barrens shit.

>>43523537
Thats... a very good question. I'd always assumed it raised the natural stat.

>>43523560
Your game has gone in an awful, awful direction if you're buying those things as-is.

Real shadowrunners modify their cars and drones to make tanks, they don't just fucking buy a pre-fab one.

>>43523695

I really, really doubt all the guns on that thing come standard, chummer.

>>43523689

The description (safeties deactivated, jacked to the max cyberlimbs) would imply it's added to the Cyberlimb's rating. So if I had Custom Str 6, Enhanced 1 for a total of 7 and had Redliner, it'd be 9 total?

I still don't get why Cyberlimbs don't use their rating as the physical limit like guns or other gear does. They're a piece of gear, right? Can someone point me to the page where this is explained, because I can't find it under Street Gear or character creation.

>>43523730
Honestly I think cyberlimbs should just add to your base attribute, but they should just be more expensive.

>>43523695
>not just rolling in an easily explained Suzuki Mirage

Also what's a reasonable excuse for something like Synaptics that's not the typical "Tir ghost/other spec forces washout"?

>>43523713
This is fucking Shadowrun anon.
The Shadowrun equivalent of the roomba has a deadly weapon.

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>>43523786
Bike Racer who got WR/SB to give themselves an edge. Any extreme sport or outdoor activity could necessitate getting initiative/reaction boosting ware.

>>43523826

>>43523869
I guess it could fit, I'm thinking of a backstory as an Ancients lieutenant's girl (still in her contacts, broke up because he preferred the D)

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Dumb Question

Does Magical Tradition mean anything for adepts beyond fluff? All their drain is Body+Willpower, and AFAIK there's no restrictions on which Traditions get which powers.

>>43523976
The type of Spirits they can('t) summon.

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>>43524009
Excellent! Troll Catholic ghostbuster is a go.

>>43524009
But they can't summon spirits at all anyway.

>>43523976
It means something for group initiation but... yeah, that's about it.

>>43524031
>Believing in witches is heresy.

>Witches are now a real thing

Catholicism is so boned by magic it's not even funny.

>>43524058
Strictly speaking, believing in witches isn't heresy, it's just practising witchcraft. In the same vein, you could argue that Catholics are open to the existence of other gods, just that they are demons or other creatures not worthy of veneration like God

>>43524058
Given how much of RCC relies on established institutional power, to a degree that makes all other churches and most branches of islam look like they're improvising their shit, I'd say the catholic church probably has the best staying power to handle that kind of huge shit without splintering to hell.

Compared to that, most churches and quite frankly all but the most formalized parts of islam are the ones that are basically down to a mess of "my preacher/imam thinks this"

>>43524083
No.
See, I thought it was practicing witchcraft that was heresy, bt believing in it is also heresy. Because if you believe in it it means you assign supernatural powers to things separate from god, which is heresy. (Even though it sort of is in the bible, but they don't believe that was actually separate from god)

The doctrine was established way back when during the witch scares in them middle ages, and it's why the church didn't actually sanction witchburnings of any kind.

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>>43524103
I think there's a reason that the big political movement in the Arab world is the Islamic Unity Movement.

>>43524103
I mean... Islam IS just "My mufti/whatever else thinks this". All those higher ranked dudes we hear about like the Ayatollahs are just people who are acknowledged by more people to be learned. There is no actual hierarchy. I mean even the caliph exists, by definition, only through his acknowledgement as such by other muslims, not through a divine hierarchy that justifies his existence (As opposed to the imam, but the imam of shia Islam is the only such position in the hierarchy), and some brands of muslims don't even think there should be an imam/caliph.

>>43524136
Where do you find that? Catechism 2116 speaks against occult practices quite strongly, but I can't find any extant rules forbidding belief in the existence of witches, or supernatural beings other than God.

>>43523976
I had forgotten that adepts even picked a tradition.

>>43524269
The council of Paderborn decreed it, and it has not been rendered invalid since, making it still doctrine.

It's good doctrine.

>>43524279
Most don't, because why bother?

>>43524260
It's not formal formal, but the university of Cairo does have the ultimate authority as far as what islamic law is for the main branch of sunni islam, and it's definitely the school the ottoman empire relied on (the fundies don't like them much because they don't really line up with them on shit like veils and whatever).

Holy fuck, /tg/. My friend just came in and asked me if my character was ready for a game today.

I completely forgot he wanted to run. We're doing 5e, if it makes a difference. I've never used Shadowrun before, and I have no idea what I'm doing.

Are there any good examples of how to build a high-edge magician? Is there a crash-course anywhere?
The character concept is someone who by all rights should have blown themselves apart years ago, but hasn't.
He's smart, bad sense of timing, unnaturally lucky, above-average magical potential that's been squandered on him.
In our party, he's the support/DPS, with magic being a combo between "Ok guys, don't fuck this up" and "Holy shit, we fucked it all up" spells- a few invisiblity, detection, and other miscellaneous spells are interspersed with explody bits, and lots of them.

Can anyone help me build this? Even with Chummer, I feel a little lost.

>>43524398
I'd say go Aspected and high meta (like B-C).

>>43524440
>>43524398
I should probably add that we're doing this point-buy style with Karma, 800 starting.

>>43524398
What Character creation method are you using?

>>43524455
Oh, then that should be significantly easier.

I'd still say Aspected just because it's cheaper, you already have that focus going (and 4-5e's version of aspects being by skill group rather than by element), and it probably falls in line with the inept but lucky mage idea.

>>43524347
All I can find about Paderborn is people talking about how they can't find anything on Paderborn.

The title keep changing from council to diet, making it unclear if it's ecumenical, and the lack of citation in later works makes be believe that it's not. It seems to be a meeting of political leaders under Charlemagne (with the standard religious overtones) than a real council of the Holy Church with an attached Edict, making it's theological standing shaky at best.

I can't even find direct quotations other than one decrying witch hunters for killing accused witches.

>>43524530
>>43524347
The most I can find on Paderborn is that it might have been a meeting of national leaders before the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, which was a legal code issued by Charly and not the Church.
(Matthias Becher, "Karl Der Grosse", 1999)

This is as close as it gets to talking about the belief in witchcraft:
>If any one deceived by the devil shall have believed, after the manner of the pagans, that any man or woman is a witch and eats men, and on this account shall have burned the person, or shall have given the person's flesh to others to eat, or shall have eaten it himself, let him be punished by a capital sentence. (Law no. 6)

It's not so much saying that believing in witches is heretical, but that anyone who kills a person because they believe they're a man-eating witch should themselves be put to death.

>>43524476
Alrighty, Aspected taken. I also nabbed Low Pain Tolerance (He's lucky, so he doesn't get hurt often. When he does, he's not used to it) and Distinctive Style (No stubbed toes orbumped elbows means this guy walks like he's falling over.)

How should I be divvying stats here?
Down the line, something like:
BOD: 2
AGI: 3
REA: 3
STR: 2
CHA: 3
INT: Highish? He goes by his gut.
LOG: Low-med?
WIL: 4
EDG: 6
MAG: Probably high?

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>>43524619
What tradition?

Your tradition is going to be either INT, LOG, or CHA-based, and you want to pump that stat to resist drain from casting spells.

>>43524369
The university of Cairo has put out a lot of scholarly work on islamic theology, but to say that they are the final authority is just... wrong.

First off there is no main branch of sunni Islam.
There just isn't.
The two most popular schools of jurisprudence are Hanafi and Shafi. Shafi has significantly more adherents than Hanafi. Yet if you're talking about the Ottoman empire, you're definitely talking Hanafi.
Which of course isn't governed entirely by that university, and even were it, Hanafi scholars have justified just as much awful shit as the most fundamentalist Hanbali

>>43524615
It actually says that no Christian mind should believe in witchcraft, and it was held by the church.

It was local, true, but that doesn't change much.

>>43524656
Flavorfully, hermetic and shamanic both don't really fit what I'm looking for. I can't see him giving too much of a shit about nature, but this guy isn't going to be a Logic repository.

I can't find anything about using INT to stop drain damage, is that in a splat or something? Or should I ask the DM if I can take hermetic's flavor and use shamanic's stat stuff? How much does it actually matter outside of resist?

>>43524788
It matter for what spirits you can summon, and if you want to help (an)other magician(s) do shit.

>>43524788
You can use the Chaos tradition from Street Magic if you don't feel like making your own.

>>43524788
Street Grimoire gives a bunch of other traditions. For example, Buddhists and Druids use WIL+INT, along with some others. It also determines what kind of spirits you can summon for what job.

>>43524788
Go Chaos.

>>43524861
He said 5e. He might be able to get that to fly, even though traditions literally haven't changed.

>>43524788
You could just do a custom one, or buddhism, or Santeria, or Sioux, or Wicca.

>>43524922
Chaos is in SG too.

>>43524922
I was thinking Street Grimoire.

>>43524950
>>43524962
True, my bad.

>>43522009
>in what world does a person with a computer sciences skillset have to resort to crime to make a living?
>in what world does a person with a thaumaturgical skillset have to resort to crime to make a living?
I don't know about you, but I'd really like if my Demolitions/Chemistry/Throwing street samurai had Mechanical Engineering with a specialty in Architecture.

>>43524788
I should point out that being a Shaman is not necessarily about nature. You could be an urban shaman, with a totem like Rat or Cat, and live for the feeling and rhythms of the city.

>>43522323
I used Surge to make a 'Sidhe troll.' I started with an ork metavariant with a bonus to charisma, then gave it things like horns and glamour. The end result was something that looked like an extra strong, extra tall, gorgeous elf with dramatic sweeping horns and pronounced fangs on top and bottom. I fluffed it as a character who goblinized as a heretofore unseen goblin metatype during the comet, something somewhere between elf and troll, with some of the strengths of both.

It was neat.

>>43525133
To be fair a computer sciences skillset is starting to be common enough that it's far from being certain employment. The main difference is that unemployment isn't quite as crazy yet as what I figure SR might have.

And more importantly, a lot of that higher skill shit seems to be much more centralized in SR.

>>43525251
Why not just play a Formorian? They're the canon Sidhe trolls.

>>43525307
I wanted to be the size of a 'normal' metahuman. Something clearly not a troll, yet somehow very troll-like.

Also, the character want Irish.

>>43521459
>You can't have a clone army
You kinda missed the point, then. You can have a clone army.

>>43524836
>>43524861
>>43524862
Alright, neat. But if I'm taking Aspected for Sorceries, I can't summon anyway, right?

>>43525163
I dunno, still doesn't feel quite right. The character seems more like someone who grew up watching old two-dees of people blowing shit up more than the pulse of life.

Chaos looks great, though. Thanks guys, y'all are awesome.

So, magic. It's a rare and powerful gift, if you're good enough to be a full magician.

Considering it's unusual to have a full spread of spellcasting ability, would the general trend be to diversify or to specialize? I put together a spell list for one of my characters with the intent of them being a 'shinto trickster mage', but I wonder now if most mages aren't going to stick to a specific portfolio, but try and do a little of everything. 'Combat Mage', 'Heal Mage', 'SFX mage' are all apparently destinctions that exist in-setting, but most shadowrun mages tend to be of the 'broadly applicable' sort.

does anyone here have the london falling campaign book? the vehicles in the book have upgrades that i have no idea how to look up... can anyone help me?

e.g Personal Armor (5), Passenger Protection (4), Rigger
Adaptation

from london falling pg. 30 referring to SAEDER-KRUPP NISSAN HOUND
(HELICOPTER)

>>43525813
It's in Milspec Tech 1, I don't think it's been converted to 5e.

>>43520559
you can get around the strength issue by using a monofilament whip of a monofilament chainsaw.

>>43521651
It's worth pointing out that 4e Cyborgs (which seem to have disappeared from 5e) could be controlled by cloned brains, so clearly they can be made it's just specifically the wimps that can not be used for this because they're anencephalic by design. You would need to get the brain to develop in tank, which you could do through a controlled VR environment

Hey, anyone willing to look at this 4e mage I've built for a game that's starting soon? 350 BP + CHA*2 for contacts.

I'm just wanting to make sure I haven't missed anything critical here.

http://pastebin.com/ZCEHfMB0

>>43525734
Yeah, that's definitely Chaos tradition

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So, Shadowrun, we all know about those Neo-Anarchists and their caring about stuff, but has anyone here played a Neo-Nihilist? (Or atleast a Neo-Nihilist minus the death part)

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>>43526839
Or a Neo-Luddite, for that matter?

Is there a list of common diseases anywhere? I'm building a sammy who's low essence has destroyed his immune system but I'm a little worried about what sorts of hazards that will expose me to.

Hey guys, I have a question about Counter strike:

Do you use your hits to still reduce damage the same as an avoidance test? Or is it that if you fail on the counterstrike test, you just take the full damage of the attack that was made on you?

Also, do you get to include other modifiers that boost your unarmed combat (being speced into a martial arts, using Full Offensive, running, etc)

>>43527845
>Full Offensive
>Counterstrike
lol no.

Counterstrike is in place of the dodge test, so you either succeed or take the damage as though you'd failed.

>>43527880

Well, the thing I'm asking is, with a Dodge test, what hits you do get reduce the damage, i.e. if they roll 7 hits on an 8p attack, and I get 6 hits on a Dodge roll, then I'm only being hit for 9p.

I'm asking, if I were to do a counterstrike attack, if I were to get 6 hits, would I be taking 9p, or 15p?

>>43527941
>In place of the standard Defense Test, the character makes an Unarmed Combat + Reaction [Physical] Test against the opponent’s standard Attack Test. If the defender achieves more hits than the attacker, the defender successfully avoided the attacker’s strike while returning and landing a strike of their own.
You're not making a Defense Test to reduce the damage, so you take the full damage.

>>43528023

Mmkay, just making sure I understood. Thanks for Clarifying

>>43527880

Not that guy, but, why would full offensive and counterstrike be a "lol no"?>>43527941

>>43528090

Whoops, bumped the wrong thing. Stupid phone. Ignore the tag at the end.

>>43525421
It's not a clone army in the sense that the original poster said, it's a bunch of stolen kids you birthed through normal means and raised to be soldiers.

They're not unthinking, utterly loyal fleshy machines programmed to respond to certain voices, and they're certainly not ready in 4 years.

>>43528090
Full Offensive prohibits you from taking defensive interrupts. Counterstrike is a defensive interrupt.

>>43528263

Is it? It kinda sounds like you're attacking and literally not defending yourself.

Kinda like you said in the very same post.

>>43528293
The purpose of a counterstrike is to interrupt an attack with one of your own. It's still a method of defense.

>>43528247
>It's not a clone army in the sense that the original poster said
It is. It's just not fast grown.

>it's a bunch of stolen kids you birthed through normal means
Not necessarily. A test tube / artificial womb is fine, too.

>and raised to be soldiers.
Or corporate citizens.

>They're not unthinking, utterly loyal fleshy machines programmed to respond to certain voices
They can be.

>and they're certainly not ready in 4 years
That's irrelevant.

So the corebook states "Hermetic mages prefer the term “mentor spirit,” while shamans use the word “totem” for the spirit that they follow."

What would a christian theurge refer to his mentor spirit as, guardian angel?.

>>43529608
patron saint might work for a catholic

>>43529608
Patron saint.

How does dual-wielding work in 5th ed?

The Multiple Attacks section on page 196 of the core rulebook states that "the attackers dice pool is calculated with all modifiers and then split as evenly as possible between all attacks, and each attack is handled separately." and that "the total number of attacks you can make in a single Action Phase is limited to one-half the attacker's Combat Skill." Is that total or per weapon? What if I'm using more than one weapon with different dice pools?

Lets say I, an ambidextrous elf, am wielding a club in one hand and a blade in the other, and that I have an agility of 6, clubs at 4 and blades at 6. Let's say I then wanted to take as many swings at a training dummy as possible. How many swings am I going to be able to take?

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>99% of Shadowrun is trying to find an actual shadowrun game

>>43530675
I'm playing with three friends new to Shadowrun at my uni, and I'm GMing for them. Food fight, bitches.

>>43530625
Currently looking at the Core to try and help you unfuck these rules.

>>43530625
>>43530717
>"the total number of attacks you can make in a single Action Phase is limited to one-half the attacker's Combat Skill."
>Average the Ratings of the Combat Skills used and that is the total number of attacks you can make in a single action phase, with all weapons.

With a Club and a Blade, with the Multiple Attacks free action, you attack a training dummy twice. Once with the club, and once with the blade.

(Agility 6 + Blades 6 + Clubs 4 +/- Modifiers)/2

>>43530036
>>43530054
what patron saint would be synonymous with the bear?

Raphael? Luke? I'm thinking the Virgin Mary, since her patronage list is huge.

>>43530965

If you're focusing on the healing aspects, then St. Luke is definitely the strongest pick. Patron of doctors, physicians, and surgeons.

>>43530874
Wait, I'd be adding both my clubs and blades to the attack roll? What's the precedence for that? If I were dual-wielding a single type of weapon - single-shot pistols for example - I'd just be at (Agility + Pistols)/2 wouldn't I?

>>43531052
it wouldn't it would be
(agility+(blades+clubs)/2+/-modifiers)/2

>>43531052
>43531052
Yeah you locked on to the problem here. RAW doesn't say jack shit about this. I might let the player get the "bonus" from using two different weapon skills, but the RAI answer is to average them together.

>>43531100
>>43531129
>>43530874

Averaging them together seems like the sensible solution. Kinda shitty there's no real rules for this, but in lue of actual rules I should be able to pitch this my GM.

Thanks guys.

>>43531047
Would Mary be good too? She has a knack for being an apparition and doing healing.

>>43531331
If you want a crazy one, Saint Corbinian is mostly famous for having his horse killed by a bear and then asking the bear to carry his shit and have the bear actually do it.

>>43531416
>I told the bear to carry my stuff and he actually did it the absolute madman

>>43530675
>my first time gming on roll20 with 4 people
>Kinda want to look for me but unsure.
I think the hardest part about this is the last 2 gms I played with ran things in different ways so I have no idea if I'm doing a ok job or not even when I ask my players along with leaving a thread so they can point out anything wrong I still get no feedback

>>43530675
I want to run a 3rd edition Shadowrun but no I am too nervous to post in the gamefinder.

Is the Nissan Hound the equivalent of a Blackhawk/Huey-class of helicopter? What helicopter is equivalent to the Little Bird?

>>43531266
>Averaging them together seems like the sensible solution.
It's also the wrong solution.

The actual rules are that you take the lowest-possible dice pool and split that one.

So, if you have Blades 6 and Clubs 4? You're using that Clubs 4 in the split action.

>>43532078
Source?

>>43531266
4e, the answer was to use your lowest skill. I'd go with that.

>>43532078
Really? I couldn't find anything like that anywhere.

>>43530675
I am not playing or running a Shadowrun game, and haven't for a few months. BECAUSE my group had 3 excellent on going games for almost 2 years, with alternating gms, we only stopped because we didn't want to burn ourselves out.

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>ctrl+f
>No Spinrad Industries is my favorite AA

What happened to you, /srg/?

Hey /tg/ I'm thinking about snagging the Astral Hazing Negative Metagenic Quality, and... Something I was wanting to know.

It states that I'm always at the heart of a rating 3 background count, and it extends as an aura for a meter per essence, more if I hang around the same place too long.

I know that if you're casting a spell in a background count, you take Dice penalties, but... My guy is a street samurai. So, on the flip side of that, would it reduce the dice of spells being cast INTO the background count that surrounds my runner, both positive spells (Healing, improved reflexes, detox, etc.), and negative ones (mana bolt, flamethrower, control thoughts), or would it only hurt casters that are pretty much hugging me (Which very well could be spellcasters using harmful magic on me to begin with, since he's a melee street sam).

>>43534814

>This astral haze affects all
attempts to cast magic on, at, or in the character’s vicinity.

Direct quote from the Astral Hazing ability.

So yeah, go hog wild with your now magically tanky street sam. good luck getting a healing spell though because with your low essence and that background count, you'll be lucky for a specialized medic mage to heal you 2 boxes.

>>43534016

We didn't start talking about AA corps, much less which is our favorite.

>>43519237
>>43535119

>>43535151
I stand corrected.

Carry on.

>>43519237
Global Sandstorm

>>43535219

Admittedly, I joined the thread kind of late for the topic, but come on. Johnny Spinrad is always topical.

>>43534016
Maersk is just better anon.
I'm sorry.

I need your help /tg/. I'm planning on making an elven paladin and in considering a background d as a royalist/low level supporter of Lugh Surehand driven into exile when the high prince was, but I can't find much info on it. I've dug through tir Tairngre and System Failure, and I gather the other princes god tired of Lughs Kim Jung il shit and kicked him out.

Another angle I might take is a former paladin who was disgusted with the regime and just left after Lugh was ousted to search for an honorable Lord elsewhere, having decided the land of promise had become too corrupt. I know I don't want to play a racist so this is probably the best way, right? And an Old School paladin is likely an adept or mage adept. Using 4e if that matters, I'll be custom fluffing Bushido as paladins code.

This probably had been asked before, but when using the point buy system to make a character, do you buy qualities at double the cost (as Run Faster implies)?

>>43536290
That's how it works in 4e anyway, karma is 2x BP

>>43536319
All right, I see. But you still get bonus karma from the negative qualities as you normally would, right?

So, we've unexpectedly lost a player before our group sets up, bringing us down to a grand total of two. I have a face/infil character that I hate the setup of, our other player is a sam who I think has a *little* dabbling in social, but not nearly enough to carry a face. I'd pretty much have to remake my face/infil from scratch if I stuck with it for me to be happy with it. Can a two-person team run with an iffy face? There's the possibility we'll bring more people to the table, but I'd like to be able to run something other than "talk a lot and occasionally break a lock".

>>43536452
Any missing "job" can be handled by contacts. Get a good fixer to act as your face.

It's not an optimal solution, and since you seem to lack both a hacker and a magic user, it'll limit the type of jobs you'll get; but it will allow you to run.

>>43536485
Yeah, I was looking into being a decker... but it's a first-time GM, and we both admitted we've got no fucking clue how the Matrix works. Definitely not something for the first time out. If we could get another player in, maybe, since we still cover everything that way. But not with two people.

So, since 'ware that costs 0.05 and even 0 essence exists, and Biocompatibility rounds the essence loss down to the nearest tenth, does that mean that I can cram my character full of 0.1 cyberware (and 0.2 deltaware) with zero essence loss?

>>43536666
According to the developers, the intent was that Biocompatibility applies to the grade, Wakshaani just can't write for shit.

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>>43536666
No.
0.05 ends up at 0.04

As yekka said, Devs are retards that can't write for shit.
At least Wakshani is making up for it by actually answering questions, unlike the rest of those terminally retarded wankers that spend more time on their selfinsert specialsnowflage gary stue Shadowtalkers than on proofreading their own shit.

Hrm. What're the weapon mod limitations in 5th? One thing per slot obviously, but what about internals?

>>43537012
As far as I understand their clusterfuck of a weapon mods/addons/..., the only one that can be "retrofitted" internallyt post-production is the smartgun system.

Anything else takes up a slot, bubba, now get back to gunsmithing!

Newbie here.

Can you hack distant things in AR mode? Or do you have to use VR? For example, if I want to hack the gun of a security guard that I can see, I can use AR. But can I use AR to hack into a bank, rummage through files and then find one I'm looking for?

Also, Matrix Initiative runs in the same flow as regular initiative, right? There's not like a second, parallel initiative count?

>>43537205
Yes to both questions.

Remember though, if you go VR, your body goes limp so you can only take Matrix actions with that nice init boost.

>>43537330
The first question is an or-or question, not a yes-no question

>>43537413
>Can you hack distant things in AR mode?
Yes.

>>43537436
What does that look like? How do I hack a lock 2 miles away in AR mode? I thought the icons "hover" around the items they represent

>>43537492
Depends on your personal iconography, but AR hacking is generally more about you looking through various ARO screen to hack the thing you want to hack. You'd effectively be bringing the node to you.

>>43520553
who is that team. I've seen that qt3.14 ork strt sam before.

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>>43538617
It's Chica, her player sometimes posts art here.

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>>43530675
>try to start a game
>4 people show up
>1 makes a character
>3 back out
>now I have 1 player who is screwed and I don't have any other players for him.
>get a second group of players
>they all get orders to deploy in a week
>ask my 2 friends if they'll play
>they agree
>before I can even get them together to introduce them to my new player they get 12 hour night shifts
>on different nights
>tfw I will never be able to run a game
such is the life of a military man

>>43536216
The book for that is Lands of Promise, it's the 4e Tir sourcebook and even has stats for Lugh's Paladins and a bunch of others as goons.

>>43538760
>day job quality.jpg

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>>43538760
>tfw I will never be able to JOIN a game because I work nights on irregular schedule so I never know when my days off will be from week to week

On a completely unrelated note, can I get some feedback on my OUTLAW BIKER Dwarf?

http://pastebin.com/uV1kFf9P

I was going for a Survivalist/Cross Country Biker/Lone wolf Bike Viking kinda thing. 4e

I will never get to use this character...

I'm thinking of houseruling initiative (4e) to be slightly less insane.

I'm thinking of two ways more or less
> Do it the 3e/5e way, Initiative Passes either allow a second initiative test, or replace the initiative passes by 1d6 per pass
The only major issue I can see is that it significantly nerfs tier 2 of most initiative boosting powers by making it a possibility for someone with INT 10+ rather than a certainty.

>Any +INIT booster is replaced by a +INT
This has the potentially weird side effect of boosting INT skills and Empathy unless I decided it doesn't apply. On the other hand, there's no other way to boost INT with ware to begin with and without something more than +REA it feels like it's not worth the massive outlay. +2 per rank to Init more or less ensures that a character with okay initiative gets to pass 2, but like with 5e, doesn't ensure that pass 3 is 100% sure to be a thing all the time whether I do an init test or +1d6.

>Play 5e
Not an option right now.

>>43539316
Just eliminate initiative passes, they're seriously more hassle than they're worth. A system where a character with a minmaxed combat dice pool is shitty at combat if he doesn't also have bullet time is just kinda fucking lame, because that weird side-requirement doesn't hold true for any other niche other than combat.

Initiative passes are dumb, and should have never been a part of the game, because it turned combat into a game of action economy, rather than character skill.

Really strange question about martial arts.

Could they be translated over to specialization in different skills?

Like... strictly speaking, about Zui Quan (Drunken Boxing), could have a specialty in that martial arts with both Unarmed combat AND Blades?

The core aspect of Zui Quan is having exceptional Balance and Acrobatics, which let's you look drunk and imbalanced, when it's quite opposite the case.

It seems like such a practice could work for both Unarmed combat (the boxing alias), but also sword play.

I would, of course, be putting in the points to specialize in them separately (I wouldn't get specialized in it for free), I just want to know if it would make sense to do so

>>43539396
Honestly that's more or less my second option is meant to do without just turning the main reflex boosters into overpriced augs nobody takes.

I'm okay with high stats giving you another action if you're just that fast, I'm a bit more iffy about it giving you another action just because.

>>43539429
>the main reflex boosters
Just remove them from the game entirely. There's no need for initiative pass augmentations if nobody gets extra initiative passes.

When you remove something from a game, some of the game's content has to go with it.

>>43539442
Except reflex improvements are kind of iconic, which is why I'm trying to houserule them rather than remove something that's been part of core since 2e.

>>43539454
>Except reflex improvements are kind of iconic
Who cares?

>something that's been part of core since 2e
>Initiative passes are dumb, and should have never been a part of the game
Just because something has legacy and tradition behind it doesn't mean that it's not shitty chaff that should be discarded.

>>43539421
What would the Blades (Zui Quan) Specialization do for you that the Unarmed (Zui Quan) Specialization wouldn't?

>>43539465
Except this also removes any chance a non-magical character has of boosting REA, which is something I'm trying to avoid (they already get enough shit they can do that wares can't)

>>43539554

Let me Honorably duel a blade wielding opponent while not forgoing a style of fighting that has been ingrained into my characters skull since he was a child?

Mechanically nothing would be different, it would just show he's branching out (and still using the same martial arts)

>>43539576
>Reaction Enhancers don't exist
Uh. What? You do realize that there are Reaction-augmenting bits of 'ware aside from things that add IPs, right?

>>43539554
Reach?

>>43539554
Weapon foci. At some point in every Awakened martial artist's life, they're forced to come to the conclusion that Unarmed is the mechanically shittiest melee skill if you're using it for anything other than grappling or never-getting-disarmed.

>>43539852
It also great in 4e for gunbunnies who didn't want Dodge but needed to have something for their melee dodge pool.

>>43539987
Unarmed is - ironically - fine for non-awakened characters since they're not going to get weapon focus bonuses anyway. So, for them, the ability to grapple and disarm someone when they're unarmed, especially if they were forced to disarm to get through a checkpoint, is extremely good.

But for adepts/mages intending to use melee as their primary combat mode? Unarmed isn't just worse than Blades/Clubs, it's hilariously worse, because weapon foci really are that fucking good.

>>43540022

Actually, my guy is a street sam, non awakened. Learning blades is gonna be a trust exercise with one of the other players (my original character died, so a new one had to be brought in). I'm already maxed out with unarmed (for chargen) so it would be a bad idea to go THAT deep into blades, but it's something that me and the party leader can do so he can trust my guy as a "mutual way of the warrior" kinda thing.

I was just curious if I could spec into Zui Quan with blades as well.

>>43540217
>I was just curious if I could spec into Zui Quan with blades as well.
By RAW, no, but your GM will almost definitely let you because it would be dumb not to.

>>43530675
>a group, get 3 runs in
>decker moves IRL, says to just replace him
>been 4 weeks since that
>found a replacement
>math midterm and fallout 4 this week, we aint playin
>replacement still hasnt even read the rules
This is gonna be a bumpy ride....

>>43540282
Fallout 4 is going to put a ton of games on hold i suspect. Most of the players i know are getting it and disappering for a week at least

>>43540375
Which is utterly insane because that game is going to be utterly unplayable until patches and fan patches fix it.

>>43540399
So, kinda the 5th edition itself.

>>43540375
I'd be somewhat surprised considering how bad Beth games run at release.

>>43540409
Honestly, considering the lack of a Rigger handbook still, and the fact that there's so many finicky new subsystems, I'm still not convinced 5e is playable so much as it's vaguely workable if you ignore the system.

I guess SR having almost 3 playable editions out of 5 isn't too bad (fact is, 1e was also unplayable raw).

>>43519043
GMs usually don't apply background counts, because runs normally don't take you into regions that HAVE a background count. If you're raiding a magical research lab, however, you absolutely should have one. One or two points won't kill your magic users anyway. If you're going into space, on the other hand, well, if you're dumb enough to cast there, the GM should come down on you, hard.

>>43519350
>drones are easy to kill

Mod them. Who cares if there's no rules for that in fifth? You have four editions to look for better ones.

>>43519692
>djinn
>ifrit
>golem

Is what towelheads call spirits and golems.

>>43521327
>cloning can't produce functional brains

Dolly would like a word with the dipshits who decided this. Fuck, this isn't even ignorance of the science (which is excusable), this is not watching the news, ever.

>>43521984
Outdoorsman is a tricky one. Electronics, biotech and engineering are standard crafting skills to make various stuff. Outdoorsman, on the other hand, is one of those skills you almost never need, but when you do need it, your life probably depends on it because you're stuck in the middle of Amazonia with only a knife and a day's rations.

>>43523169
I think you need to stop minmaxing (or rather, attempting to...) and start with a character concept. Also, your build is shit and will die like a little bitch.

>>43525736
Overspecialising as a mage generally tends to happen if you went to mage-school. If you're self-taught, or spirit taught, odds are you're a generalist. You'll find more specialist hermetics than shamans as well, because shamans tend to follow their totems, which usually have more than one thematic option.

>>43528023
Perfectly viable if you have more dice and some edge handy. Against an equally skilled opponent, however, it's inadvisable.

>>43530675
Nah, games are easy to find. Good games, on the other hand...

>>43541103
>because runs normally don't take you into regions that HAVE a background count
People don't use background counts because by raw they make life impossible for anyone below magic B incredibly easily. It takes incredibly little to hit background counts of 6 (UCLA's campus is rated at 5) and most areas would have background counts of 1-3 by raw.

So yes it's very easy to counter if you literally ignore the raw (like baseline urban noise levels effectively making wireless bonuses a pointless thing). Strict RAW 5E is still borderline unplayable as anything but mr lucky or bioware heavy.

>>43541103
The thing is, outdoorsman's individual skills rarely see much use. When you're using one you're probably using all of them.

I'd merge 'em if I were to make the rules. Along with engineering, electronics and biotech.

>>43541103
>Perfectly viable if you have more dice and some edge handy. Against an equally skilled opponent, however, it's inadvisable.

He was actually talking to me about weather or not one could One Trick Pony themselves to Counterstrike during a Full Offense.

Personally, I don't see Counterstrike as being 'defensive' as all of the cited 'defensive interrupts' in the description of "Full offense" list interrupts that augment your avoidance test (Block, Dodge, parry, and Full Defense).

My argument is that, with Counterstrike, you're literally not defending yourself. You're attacking your opponent when they create an opening (I.E. when they attack). If this results in them failing to hit you, then hurray, but in the end, you are NOT defending yourself in any way, and should you fail, you take the full damage.

The actual viability of counterstrike wasn't up for debate.

>>43541183
Use the counts from fourth. They're much better. Sprawl is 0, for example, everywhere, unless there's something special happening and that's like a count of 1-2.

>>43541244
This is sensible. I like.

>>43541263
Yeah, 's why I said it's inadvisable against anyone with a decent melee skill. It's great to gank mooks, but people who can viably hurt the shit out of you? Nope. Just nope.

>>43541244

>Biotech

That is kiiiinda saying that field medicine (First aid), Cyberware creation, repair, and augmentation (Cybertechnology), as well as Surgery, and long term medical aid (Such as someone who is bedridden and recovering from such a surgery) is all completely interchangeable.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying there, but the Biotech is a pretty diverse area that shouldn't be narrowed down to just one group.

>>43541293

That.. isn't actually answering the question.

Can you counterstrike (An interrupt action that I would argue isn't actually a 'defensive' interrupt), while using the Full Offense martial art (Can't do DEFENSIVE interrupt actions (block, parry, dodge, full defense)

>>43525926
thank you

>>43541341
IF counterstrike is an offensive action, i.e. on failure the attacker would add his full hits to damage, YES.

IF counterstrike is a defensive action, which would subtract its hits from the attacker's damage, NO.

My personal judgement would err towards "yes".

>>43541379

Alright, thank you.

>>43541304
Fixing a car and fixing a boat, as well as using a computer and building one, are also interchangable in my proposed rule change, which I'm going to go ahead and say is just as different as surgery and surgery to insert a prosthesis.

And surgery and field medicine are quite related, and are, in most newer games, treated as the same. Because this is all just an abstraction, and having the doctor not be capable of CPR sucks.

Yes we COULD split them up into more skills, the question is if we should.

>>43541510

I have a paramedic brother and he has a Surgery sister-in-law and the two of them bicker beyond constantly about the two different fields of medicine that they have. I can assure you that preforming surgery, Field medicine, and building a prosthetic are all three separate things.

>>43541541
My aunt is a mid wife, my sister is a nurse, and my mom is in psychiatry. If we're throwing people we know's credentials out there.

Of course they're separate things. They're different education. But so is PT, diagnostics, pharmacology, surgery, midwifery, performing scans, dentistry, and so on.

However we've seen fit to make all of those one skill, and no one complains.
Just as the authors made fixing a submarine and a boat the same skill.
Because this in an abstraction.

>>43541728

Alright, I see your point. I'm not arguing the other points, I was just of the mindset that "All of medicine in its entirety" shouldn't easily fit within one skill that you can ramp up to 6 and be a professional doctor of everything.

>>43541781
>"All of medicine in its entirety" shouldn't easily fit within one skill that you can ramp up to 6 and be a professional doctor of everything
It should when it's such a rare and niche skill for a shadowrunner to be using. It shouldn't cost anywhere near as many character resources for something that you frankly won't be getting much spotlight time using in a useful manner.

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I apparently posted in the wrong general:

>Absolutely never played
>LGS wants to do a Shadowrun Campaign
>Flip through the archetypes and decide on Face so I can bullshit my way though as much as possible without fully understanding the complex magic / tech / combat stuff

Gonna be 3-4 of us I think. What should I know trying to be the party voice of "reason?" Besides being good at diplomacy / talking, what should a Face do?

All I know about Shadowrun is the general setting and premise

>>43541781
Thanks for seeing my point, and In return I can say that I totally get your point too, and I'd 100% agree if I saw this as a game about being a doctor.

However In my view, a person's status a doctor in Shadowrun is only really meaningful in so far as it relates to shadowrunning.

>>43541889

1) It helps to know the players, but seeing this is a LGS campaign, that might not be helpful.

2) If you haven't seen Oceans 11 and Lucky Number Slevin, I suggest you do so. if you have, watch them again. They're great examples of how you should Face.

I also recommend Burn Notice, though thats a whole series, not something you can watch in an evening.

>>43541843
To be fair, the average running team should at most have members who know First Aid. I'd consider the Biotech group a fluffy addition you take to flesh out a character.

>>43542007
>To be fair, the average running team should at most have members who know First Aid.
Which is why the rest of the medical everything really don't deserve to each have their own skills. They should get condensed, because they're not worth the investment, no matter how flavorful they are.

So... How bad of an idea is it to have multiple SINners at one table?

>>43542042
I happen to like a system where NPCs can somewhat reliably be made by PC rules, especially considering that some players might want to roll a retired nurse or some shit.

Also I always require a fluffy skill at 2 to explain prior occupation (shit like artisan, pilot, medicine, etc).

>>43541889
Make sure you check with other players too. You might be in for some FUN if the party is all faces/ non-combat folks.

>>43542042

What about building NPC's? or players with the Day Job?

>>43542083
>I happen to like a system where NPCs can somewhat reliably be made by PC rules
Which is impaired in literally no way by condensing the skills, unless you think someone being able to pilot jet skis, row boats, and submarines all with the same skill damages your ability to make NPCs reliably via PC rules.

>>43542118
I'm not saying the skills should be gotten rid of, I'm saying they should be condensed, so they're less of a character-resources burden to purchase in the first place. Have it all just be a Medicine skill, with things like First Aid, Long Term Care, Cyberware, and so forth all just being specialties.

There's no reason for there to be four different skills for various branches of medicine, with how rarely they come up in-game, so they should be simplified into a single skill.

>>43542078
Not a bad idea at all, if they're sensible, careful folk.

>>43541889
From my experiences with our face, your goals should generally be to be able to talk with the Johnson and negotiate good terms and better pay when possible, to talk your way into and out of situations, and possibly be a leader for the team to balance out what different characters want to do, though this depends on your team dynamics. Being able to lead NPCs could also fall in this category (if you end up with an escort/extraction run or something).

Aside from face things, you'll want to be able to shoot decently and have a good amount of armor so you don't get automatically iced when things get hot. Sneaking is also a good skill to have. Disguises might help for possible social infiltration.

>>43542083
>Also I always require a fluffy skill at 2 to explain prior occupation (shit like artisan, pilot, medicine, etc).
Isn't that what Profession skills are for?

>>43542078
Having people with real SINs is, in my experience, more of a positive than a negative. I honestly don't understand what that negative quality was trying to do/be, but it failed at it.

>>43542118
...
None of that is affected.

Players having had prior careers or day jobs isn't affected by Artisan covering everything from cheese making to sculpting, why would it be that one skill now covers both CPR and surgery.

And how were your NPCs improved by them being slightly better at first aid than medicine or vice versa?

>>43542213
>And how were your NPCs improved by them being slightly better at first aid than medicine or vice versa?
Not to mention that being slightly better at First Aid than Surgery can be covered by taking a Specialty either way.

That's literally the point of Specialties - to indicate that your character's more focused in one part of the field than the whole.

>>43542078
Depends how you play. If you're likely to bleed all over important areas, maybe not a great idea. If you play it low and safer, then it's probably fine. Just make sure everyone has a justification for running instead of finding a real job, though that should be a thing for everyone anyways.

>>43542205
Profession skills don't cover a bunch of professions, unless you want all your characters to be college graduates or something.

Besides if we're using karmagen it's the least courtesy to not make a combat autist.

>>43542212
It's equivalent to Records-on-file more or less. Corporate is higher on the list because the extent of data is likely much higher, I doubt that national SIN will have a full DNA sequence instead of just fingerprints and maybe retina.

>>43541980
I appreciate it

>>43542106
Yeah GM is clearing our chars to make sure we have a somewhat balanced party

>>43542198
Thanks - I did want to know what kind of field skills I'd be expected to have

>>43542293
Pretty sure you can make up literally any profession you want as per rules on knowledge skills. No need to pick from the three or however many the sourcebook offers.

>>43542377
Except profession Doctor won't give you the skills you need to be one, neither will shit tied to the Artisan skill (which I will possibly make a knowledge skill group anyway because of how badly it's written).

>>43542293
>Corporate is higher on the list because the extent of data is likely much higher
No, Corporate is higher on the list because people in the shadows are negatively predisposed towards you if you have a corporate background - explicitly, it says so right in the quality's description.

>I doubt that national SIN will have a full DNA sequence instead of just fingerprints and maybe retina
A SIN doesn't have any of those. A SIN is just your social security number/birth certificate.

It's AFFILIATED with those things. Medical records and dental records at hospitals, fingerprints taken by the police, spending histories, and licenses are all things affiliated with your SIN, not part of the SIN itself.

>As a group, characters that possess Corporate Limited SINs are believed to either know something valuable about the inner workings of the megacorporation or have a skill set rival megacorps would want; as such they are considered valid targets for extraction, even if they are no longer active with the corporation. Characters with the Corporate Limited SIN experience prejudice and hostility from those in the shadows who are SINless. The SINless believe the corporations deliberately keep them poor and powerless so they can be exploited. The character with the Corporate Limited SIN may fid himself being personally blamed for his corporation’s actions—protesting he has no real authority and no connection with the actions in question usually does little good. To the SINless and neo-anarchists the character with the Corporate Limited SIN has sold out and chosen a corrupt and oppressive system over his own people.

On top of that, Corporate Born SINs:

>Fortunately, Corporate Born records are limited to the megacorporation that generated them. Files in the Global SIN Registry can confim she has a valid SIN, but do not contain any additional information.

Honestly, it seems more like a positive quality with drawbacks than a negative quality, at the end of the day.

>>43542321

Oh, and as a face, don't be afraid to pull shit out of your ass. One of my favorite moments was when, due to circumstances too long to describe, the party was split, and my Face wasn't actually with the muscle, as they were robbing some place. They called the face asking for help and... yeah, I had no idea what was going on. I eventually called the apartment complex, and told them that if they don't stop what they were doing, if detonate the Bomb.

Completely changed the tone of everything, and in the Mad Scramble to figure out what was actually going on, the team was able to extract itself without any issues.

>>43542457
Legal SINs are mostly timebombs: You exist in the system, and it can be used against you.

On top of that, Criminal SINs make you a prime target to get blame piled upon for things you diddn't commit, and Corp SIN tend to bring people that want you back/dead/back AND dead down on your arse.

Do clothes that you wear affect anything in any way? Their prices vary from 20 to 100,000, but the book doesn't say what does looking more impressive accomplish.

What would be a fitting price for a middle-style character?

>>43542729
>Do clothes that you wear affect anything in any way?
Situational modifiers. Wearing beat-up jeans and a leather jacket to a formal gala will ruin your ability to socialize with the socialites. By the same token, nobody's going to take you seriously at the biker bar if you show up with a white-tie tuxedo on.

They aren't formalized.

>What would be a fitting price for a middle-style character?
Your clothing is automatically included in your lifestyle. You only need to buy additional clothes if you're trying to look higher/lower class or need a specific outfit for a specific job.

>>43542729
If you check attitude, assume low lifestyle has mostly clothes in the 20Y range, a few pieces in the 50s maybe. Middle you can afford the nicer 50-100Y casual and business stuff, maybe a few nicer pieces.

It's in Runner's Companion and Run Faster's lifestyle stuff although Attitude is 4e (most of that book is complete shit but there's like one worthwhile table in it)