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Why would you ever choose Priority A for race and pick human?
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Aug 6, 2013 01:02
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Ludicrously high magic + Edge, or ludicrously high resonance + edge, of course. Edge is seriously the poo poo.
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Aug 6, 2013 01:13
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CNN Sports Ticker posted:Why would you ever choose Priority A for race and pick human? Super high edge technomancer. My buddy updated an old character of his that was a high-edge techno from a street ganger game I ran(he literally functioned off edge, a warhawk, and machine sprites), and ended up with max edge and pretty good resonance. Perfectly fit what the character did. Luck his way through everything, with a side of hacking.
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Aug 6, 2013 01:47
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So far it's been really challenging to not to go human for literally everyone. In SR4 humans were more or less the worst. Now they might be the best. Human A is of course useless for a non-magical non-techno unless you take Lucky, but I don't doubt that we might see a new rendition of Mr Lucky sooner or later.
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Aug 6, 2013 05:37
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Mystic Mongol posted:Ludicrously high magic + Edge, or ludicrously high resonance + edge, of course. I can personally attest to this. My favorite character ever was Zeep, the world's most self-destructive man and living proof that the gods look out for drunks. There is no situation that 7 Edge can't trivialize, like the time he took a sniper round to the face and wound up with a badly pierced ear. Or the time I was thrown into a run I was supposed to lose and then blew Edge to summon a Force 10 Guardian Spirit and another to soak the drain entirely. The best one was probably the time we broke the cardinal rule of Shadowrun and did a run with a dragon. To be fair, we didn't know he was a dragon at the time, we thought he was just a chill nightclub owner who wanted us to humiliate his human-supremacist business rival by catching him with meta-human hookers in his penthouse. We infiltrated via skydiving and were supposed to exfiltrate the same way, with HALO 'chutes. Unfortunately our intel was bad and instead of a few elvish ladies of the night we were facing down a room full of Yaks. So we did the only thing we could do: jump out the window. Unfortunately my 'chute got shot in the firefight so I had to just freefall and again use Edge to summon an Air spirit double quick and have him float me down to the street like a pillow stuffed with clouds which are themselves stuffed with other, softer pillows. Unfortunately the Yaks had a mage who banished the spirit while I was still eight floors up. One more Edge later and I soak ~12P without anything more than a sprained shin. I love Edge, is basically what I'm saying.
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Aug 6, 2013 06:03
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I'll have a bigger post to come later but I think I found why a lot of people in Dumpshock or the Shadowrun forums are whinging about adepts being superpowered and sammies being superweak. Namely they're loving stupid and ignore the actual rules.
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Aug 6, 2013 06:26
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ProfessorCirno posted:I'll have a bigger post to come later but I think I found why a lot of people in Dumpshock or the Shadowrun forums are whinging about adepts being superpowered and sammies being superweak. Namely they're loving stupid and ignore the actual rules. This, Sams when properly built will have HILARIOUSLY high armor and will ignore rockets to the face. Well mostly ignore anyways. The decent one I had built had 18 physical damage boxes and walking around with 31 armor and could still roll 17 dice on shooting. It is a thing of beauty.
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Aug 6, 2013 06:42
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Davin Valkri posted:Why can't Shadowrun ever be about nice people? There are plenty of nice people in Shadowrun. It's just that shadowrunners will rarely encounter them in any meaningful manner, given that shadowrunners are criminal mercenaries who are usually neck deep in the games of intrigue of vile megacorporations. But there are lots of charities and activist groups who are trying to help humanity and the world as a whole sprinkled around in the setting material. It's entirely plausible for a GM to have the players approached by a local awakened preacher whose magic healing clinic for orphans is getting leaned on by some gang and needs help driving them away. The trick is that most players aren't looking so much for street-level games and shootouts in the local stuffer shack, they want to be doing Mission Impossible poo poo in the arcology next door.
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Aug 6, 2013 07:29
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I like a balance in my games, personally. Some high-stakes corp runs one day, some street-roots jobs the next. The thing to remember is that there are more currencies that matter than cold hard cash. Making contacts and earning favors can be pretty loving valuable even if the money the jobs bring in won't pay the rent, and even if your table is full of amoral mercenaries with hearts of stone you can always point out that having a street-doc mage owe you a favor or three or networking up some new contacts (all the while earning sweet, sweet karma) and possibly getting a chance to score some swag on the side if you're sharp enough is still a pretty good deal.
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Aug 6, 2013 07:48
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Valatar posted:There are plenty of nice people in Shadowrun. It's just that shadowrunners will rarely encounter them in any meaningful manner, given that shadowrunners are criminal mercenaries who are usually neck deep in the games of intrigue of vile megacorporations. But there are lots of charities and activist groups who are trying to help humanity and the world as a whole sprinkled around in the setting material. It's entirely plausible for a GM to have the players approached by a local awakened preacher whose magic healing clinic for orphans is getting leaned on by some gang and needs help driving them away. The trick is that most players aren't looking so much for street-level games and shootouts in the local stuffer shack, they want to be doing Mission Impossible poo poo in the arcology next door. There are some good guy gunslinging organizations, too, groups that solve problems and help people and explode chumps. The Atlantean Foundation, fer example, is the world's largest producer of non-simsense electronic entertainment (movies and radio and television and such) and also full of super powerful good guy wizards. The Draco foundation uses the enormous funds left to it by president Dunklezhan to investigate all these stupid magical artifacts that are reshaping the world. Clans of technomancers (then called Otaku) were the only group besides Deus to have any real influence during Crash 2.0. Two Owls (?) and a bunch of his free spirit buddies are the only people seriously working to actually clean Chicago up, as opposed to simply killing the bugs and declaring it good enough. So there are plenty of good guys running about. The eight corporations who care the most about money and the least about things besides money are none of them.
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Aug 6, 2013 08:32
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Oh I agree, there's a lot of room for compelling games in the sprawls. The players have to be on board with it from the get-go however, as they're liable to get a bit surly about if it they expected to be in a high stakes game of political intrigue and instead wound up as neighborhood heroes.
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Aug 6, 2013 08:39
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I have never run a campaign that didn't have at least a couple of hooding job offers. Concerned neighbourhood mother group, Anarchist Black Cross, anti-racist alliance, that sort of thing. It gives the world some needed perspective, and helps players think about whether their characters would like to make a difference instead of just cred. A lot of political groups in the sixth world are more than a little shady (Genepeace in principle concerned with out-of-control genetweaks and GMO crops, but not averse to loving killing people with gene therapy to make a point. Or TerraFirst! having the noble girl of averting global climate disaster, but bombing the living gently caress out of everything remotely civilized.), and exploring the depths of political extremism can be fun, but I will usually put up at least one "these are really honest, good people getting hosed over by the corps/syndicates/other runners, and they can't really pay you nova cred, or much of anything else for that matter. Will you do it anyway?" run. ((E: Valatar, even the humblest neighbourhoods have a part to play in larger political schemes, just mix it up!)) Tias fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 10:53
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ProfessorCirno posted:I'll have a bigger post to come later but I think I found why a lot of people in Dumpshock or the Shadowrun forums are whinging about adepts being superpowered and sammies being superweak. Namely they're loving stupid and ignore the actual rules. I don't know about weak, though in long-term games Adepts should pretty much always be "more powerful" since they have no limit on their Magic Rating/power points and can install ware to do the same things that Sams can. They can also start with Improved Reflexes 3 while Sams can not have more than +2D6, they can directly raise skills (IMO the point of Adepts) in a way that Sams do not have access to, and Combat Sense is an incredibly useful power that there is no cyber version of, among many other things. The new combat rules also don't help a class of character that previously was known for taking advantage of using multiple attacks per phase as a strength. That's not to say that Sams aren't useful because they certainly are, but the increased costs for most of the useful ware kicks them in the balls in a way Adepts do not have to deal with. Now, they do have a major advantage in the sense that they can get a bunch of limbs and stuff armor into them or do other essence unfriendly tasks, but IMO the cyber in the corebook is severely lacking options that previously made Sams really good and hinder their effectiveness until the splatbooks are released. For example, it used to be a great idea to get a cyberarm and cram a bunch of useful accessories into it but there aren't a lot of cyberware in the core book that use capacity, and some things that used to have capacity ratings no longer do. Additionally, the rules are vague on how some cyber/bio interact with each other and I expect nerfs to come when the eratta and/or ware book are released. Of course my view is skewed since I prefer magical characters especially in this edition, and you can make some very good sams, but the variety just isn't there. Every sam build I've seen has some combination of multiple cyberlimbs + bone lacing which is fine but that would have been sacrilege in SR4, so I think a lot of people are just getting uses to how things work now.
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Aug 6, 2013 12:57
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Bigass Moth posted:I don't know about weak, though in long-term games Adepts should pretty much always be "more powerful" since they have no limit on their Magic Rating/power points and can install ware to do the same things that Sams can. They can also start with Improved Reflexes 3 while Sams can not have more than +2D6, they can directly raise skills (IMO the point of Adepts) in a way that Sams do not have access to, and Combat Sense is an incredibly useful power that there is no cyber version of, among many other things. The new combat rules also don't help a class of character that previously was known for taking advantage of using multiple attacks per phase as a strength. On the other hand, ware has a bunch of stuff that its much better at then adept powers - increasing stats, for example. Muscle Toner, Muscle Augmentation, Cerebral Booster, Reaction Enhancers (and in a sense Tailored Pheremones) are all either much cheaper in terms of essence/PP than their adept power equivalents or only possible through ware, for the Cerebral Boosters and pheremones. It's also much cheaper/easier to boost your toughness through ware - armor boosters like orthoskin/dermal plating, body boosters like bone lacing and bone density augmentation, extra health boxes and armor from cyberlimbs, or stuff like platelet factories and pain editors. Ware is also better at unarmed combat, either through bone lacing/bone density or through cyberimplant blades. All the stuff I mentioned is both relatively cheap and essence-light.
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Aug 6, 2013 13:04
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Been toying around a bit with chargen. What I've found: * Melee is better coming from SR4 but guns still rule the roost unless you go for ork or troll bruiser. I like my human adept, but, without methods of raising weapon damage outside of strength, 9P is only just above most heavy pistol damage, and that's after near max strength and an adept power to boost it further. This may change once combat starts, however, due to melee giving penalties to shoot people and melee having options to prevent others from getting away or doing other stuff. Additionally, once I start raising Strength, it will hit rifle levels. With care and dedication and a lot of strength additions, it can finally hit sniper levels. Guns don't need any of that they just loving shoot you in the face gently caress you. * 'Ware is still unquestionably the best path to go for raising stats. I can very easily still see many adepts being very strongly tempted by losing a point of essence for some muscle toner or similar. * What stops adept supremacy is foci addiction. If your total foci focus is greater then your Magic, you start to grow addicted. This is very loving important for balance - and indeed, I think you'll see a lot of foci addiction in SR5 as people start to give in to the desire for more power. Which, hey, mirrors the addiction itself quite nicely, I suppose. * Adepts need high Magic, sammies need high Resources. I think the uber Adepts and weako sammies is just a fad people are going through, and making these characters help fuel that thought. I think in the end it will be sammies that pull ahead, not adepts, simply because the significantly higher skill caps means sammies can (albeit slowly) build up their skills past 6 AND continue to buy 'ware, while adepts are still sorta stuck with mostly raising their initiation through karma (unless they really fancy foci addition). * Sammies, more then adepts, are sorta hurt by the lack of splats. Right now there's just not a whole lot of cool, inventive 'ware. They have the basics, sure, but adepts have a lot more "fun" stuff then sammies do. * "Attribute at A, <focus> at B, Skills at C" seems to be a thing of mine. Maybe one day I'll try an Ork or Troll. * The big thing adepts have out of chargen is speed. It is substantially easier for adepts to get initiative boosters to level three then sammies - hell, with the sammy, I ended up just taking it to 1! This is especially good for melee adepts, as they have that extra initiative to do all their melee poo poo with. * Used 'ware makes a major difference! SR5 Missions FAQ has already stated it's allowable so nyeah. You generally seem to want to mix Alpha with Used and have like nothing at Standard unless you absolutely must - Used is good for the super nuyen expensive poo poo, Alpha for the super essence expensive poo poo. I mean, most essence hungry items are ALSO nuyen hungry, but in those cases I lean towards spending less essence. * Gear remains bar none THE longest element in character creation * Cyber sammy creation is very different in SR5. In SR4, you started with all your 'ware. Maybe not at max level or whatever, but you'd start with muscle toner 2 and your pheremones and everything. In SR5 you're much more likely to start with a few things...and a list in your head of what's next to come. * Non-humans need more stuff. Because with all the other categories there are such dramatic differences between the different priorities, it becomes almost a given that you end up as a human - you can have them at E or D no problem, and STILL end up with a moderately decent amount of Edge (non-magic humans start with 5!). Non-humans in contrast simply cost too much and give too little. * I still hate how cyberlimbs work. * SPECIALIZE! Don't try to be equally good at shooting people in the face AND <another thing>. Accept that shooting people in the face is going to be a stark and perhaps even distant secondary if you want to be, say, the Face.
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Aug 6, 2013 14:05
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Also you should always buy used bioware! Having your own heart is for suckers.
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Aug 6, 2013 14:14
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Used bioware needs an eratta badly - I refuse to believe you can install someone else's Bone Density, for example, and all cultured bioware is made specifically for you so there should be no Used option.
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Aug 6, 2013 14:21
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Bigass Moth posted:Used bioware needs an eratta badly - I refuse to believe you can install someone else's Bone Density, for example, and all cultured bioware is made specifically for you so there should be no Used option. Well yeah, used cultured is impossible, but regular style bioware is totally available used. Steal the bones of your foes to make your
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Aug 6, 2013 14:25
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Bigass Moth posted:Used bioware needs an eratta badly - I refuse to believe you can install someone else's Bone Density, for example, and all cultured bioware is made specifically for you so there should be no Used option. I find it difficult to believe that "used bioware" cannot be a thing in a setting where organlegging is such a big deal. Cultured, totally, no used bioware there. But that's the whole point - cultured bioware is created explicitly for you, tailored to you personally. Non-cultured bioware, ergo, is not specifically tailored for just one person.
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Aug 6, 2013 15:02
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Bone Density makes no sense Used though, because you'd literally have to replace your entire skeleton with someone else's. I don't think I need to explain why that wouldn't work. I believe that's the point Moth was trying to make.
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Aug 6, 2013 15:06
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If kidney transplant is workable in RL, I don't see a problem.Martello posted:Bone Density makes no sense Used though, because you'd literally have to replace your entire skeleton with someone else's. I don't think I need to explain why that wouldn't work. I believe that's the point Moth was trying to make. Nyaa fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 15:09
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Nyaa posted:If kidney transplant is workable in RL, I don't see a problem. Shadowrun 420 p 345 posted:Bone Density Augmentation: In a long and painful process, the molecular matrix of the subject’s bones is altered for density and strength. The procedure also strengthens ligaments, but as a side effect increases the character’s weight. So you're saying that altering the molecular matrix of someone's bones can be "taken out" and then "injected" into somebody else. Please explain that even in handwavey layman's terms.
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Aug 6, 2013 15:19
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In fact, bone density should probably be cultured bioware. I also question how Bone Lacing can be Used grade, or how it can be removed/upgraded. It seems kind of permanent.
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Aug 6, 2013 15:28
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Martello posted:So you're saying that altering the molecular matrix of someone's bones can be "taken out" and then "injected" into somebody else. Please explain that even in handwavey layman's terms. The newly dense bones retain elements of the unobtainium that catalyzes the process. Grinding it up and extracting it is gross, and it retains bits of the original owner's dna or whatnot, so it is more foreign, eating up more essence. Untained unobtainium is more rare and expensive.
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Aug 6, 2013 15:34
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Martello posted:Please explain that even in handwavey layman's terms. Asking me how to explain real futuristic science is impossible. Anything is possible is all I can say for the future.
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Aug 6, 2013 15:37
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Slightly Lions posted:I can personally attest to this. My favorite character ever was Zeep, the world's most self-destructive man and living proof that the gods look out for drunks. There is no situation that 7 Edge can't trivialize, like the time he took a sniper round to the face and wound up with a badly pierced ear. Or the time I was thrown into a run I was supposed to lose and then blew Edge to summon a Force 10 Guardian Spirit and another to soak the drain entirely. The best one was probably the time we broke the cardinal rule of Shadowrun and did a run with a dragon. To be fair, we didn't know he was a dragon at the time, we thought he was just a chill nightclub owner who wanted us to humiliate his human-supremacist business rival by catching him with meta-human hookers in his penthouse. We infiltrated via skydiving and were supposed to exfiltrate the same way, with HALO 'chutes. Unfortunately our intel was bad and instead of a few elvish ladies of the night we were facing down a room full of Yaks. So we did the only thing we could do: jump out the window. Unfortunately my 'chute got shot in the firefight so I had to just freefall and again use Edge to summon an Air spirit double quick and have him float me down to the street like a pillow stuffed with clouds which are themselves stuffed with other, softer pillows. Unfortunately the Yaks had a mage who banished the spirit while I was still eight floors up. One more Edge later and I soak ~12P without anything more than a sprained shin. I love Edge, is basically what I'm saying. Edge seems like it has a bit of a power boost in this edition too, since spending edge before a roll removes all limits from your roll. I remember someone ran some numbers on edge use in 4E and came to a conclusion along the lines of: it's better to use edge to re-roll a large dice pool but to add to something you're character isn't as good at. I wonder if the fact that you can ignore limits while spending edge changes that advise.
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Aug 6, 2013 15:56
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Like ok fluff wise you're going to run into some issues but those issues tend to be less "bioware can't be Used" and more "this should be cultured."
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Aug 6, 2013 15:58
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ProfessorCirno posted:Like ok fluff wise you're going to run into some issues but those issues tend to be less "bioware can't be Used" and more "this should be cultured." Nobody's arguing that bioware in general shouldn't be used, just that certain types should be cultured - which of course precludes used. Bone density augmentation is one of them. As you can see in Manifest Dynasty and Nyaa's posts, any explanation of how you can get used bone augmentations is bound to be unbelieveably stupid.
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Aug 6, 2013 16:01
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Warning: Scientific Bullshit Bone density augmentation could be a used form of bioware, but it is very different than probably what you might think and if someone actually knows what I am talking about I could be in poo poo. The two cells to consider are Osteoblasts and Osteocytes. Osteoblasts are active in the formation of new bone tissue, while osteocytes are more mature osteoblasts that have become embedded in the bone and now serve a more sensory function. You could inject bone density augmented osteoblasts from another patient onto the desired surfaces of the bone and induce them to function. They will be able to produce the desired matrix (they are not immediately genetically controlled)but they cannot be allowed to become Osteocytes, since it is doubtful that the body will be able to properly support such foreign living material for the lifespan of the cell (something like 20 years). So, these cells must be programmed to die within a short time-span so as to not outpace the recipients natural osteoblasts. Thus, you get ribbons of modified bone density, rather than the whole matrix changing. This will require, however, multiple sessions of osteoblast injection and way more cells than what would be needed for the cultured procedure. The usual immunity problems also apply but I am sure they can be mitigated. Also, you have no way of repairing these ribbons in the body and could lead to complications down the road but hey, you are going to the cultured version sooner rather than later, right? It is a possibility that isn't stupid but it has its drawbacks in that in no way can it be as complete as the proper procedure. Still, propagation and silencing of existing lines is much easier than starting from scratch. Hypha fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 17:21
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'Used' quality Bone Density could also be past it's use-by date or just generally shoddy, low-quality, or counterfeit cyberware.
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Aug 6, 2013 17:59
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Ratoslov posted:'Used' quality Bone Density could also be past it's use-by date or just generally shoddy, low-quality, or counterfeit cyberware. Right. Just consider "used" to mean sub-par. ProfessorCirno posted:Been toying around a bit with chargen. What I've found: Do you view the changes as positive? As someone who has only played 4th, the priority system completely bewilders me, and the new human advantage brings back bad D&D memories.
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Aug 6, 2013 18:44
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It's kind of interesting seeing the reaction people have to the priority system. This isn't meant in an edition war-y way, it's just that 4th Edition was actually the odd one out in not using priority chargen as a default and I remember when 4E first came out that one of the immediate complaints a lot of Shadowrun peeps had was that priority wasn't in the main book, only pointbuy. I guess a lot of people got used to pointbuy since then.
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Aug 6, 2013 21:26
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I imagine it's more that you can't minmax quite as well, for better or worse. You really have to prioritize.
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Aug 6, 2013 21:31
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An entire thread full of people who have never heard of bone marrow transplants. Edit: As an aside, I'm pretty sure bone density augmentation was first introduced in the SR4 core book. Bioware was first introduced in Shadowtech, and back then every single piece of ware got a full page describing it, how it worked, and what the side effects were. For example, people with platelet factories used to have to take anticoagulants or suffer a heart attack or an embolism, orthoskin inflicted a penalty for tactile tests equal to its rating and also dramatically reduced scarring, enhanced articulation also made you immune to many arthritic conditions, etc. and they explicitly took a crap on altering the bones themselves. Shadowtech, page 11 posted:Functionally, science can do little to improve upon the structural system's performance. Muscle tissue already uses energy six times more efficiently than any combustion engine, and to breach the integrity of bone would be akin to putting deliberate cracks in a building's load-bearing frame. Gobbeldygook fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 22:36
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And yet neither bone lacing nor bone density augmentations have anything to do with bone marrow.
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Aug 6, 2013 22:46
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Yeah, people that only got in on the 4th Edition train are really, really missing out on how brutally complicated every single aspect of the system was. They don't have to worry about the Essence Index or the effects of Bioware Stress or any crazy bullshit when they think about augmentations. It's all incredibly simplified for their ease of use. How I hate them
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Aug 6, 2013 23:08
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I do wish they'd post a bit more fluff to go along with the corebook augmentations...not looking for a return to the days of biosystem overstress or potential heart attacks because your Sythecardium went haywire but it'd be nice to have a little more of that flavor, though I understand it's down to wordcount.
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Aug 6, 2013 23:22
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Just as an aside, at character creation choose high lifestyle. It's the only lifestyle where you can make money back at character creation, up to 50% more in fact!
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Aug 7, 2013 03:04
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Kai Tave posted:I do wish they'd post a bit more fluff to go along with the corebook augmentations...not looking for a return to the days of biosystem overstress or potential heart attacks because your Sythecardium went haywire but it'd be nice to have a little more of that flavor, though I understand it's down to wordcount. I am a bit surprised at how few fluff there is in the 5th Core in general, aside from the short stories and the Life in the Sixth World chapter. I've skimmed all through the 5th corebook a few times now and I still feel like most of my Shadowrun setting knowledge comes from 3rd Edition.
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Aug 7, 2013 03:11
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So did a little playing around with ware. You can get Alphaware Wired Reflexes 1, Used Reaction Enhancers 3, Used Muscle Toner 3, and Used Muscle Augmentation 3 for 217,800 nuyen (leaving 57200 if you went priority B for Resources), leaving 1.775 essence. That's +10 to attributes and +1d6 initiative for a priority B, which is a pretty good deal for a Street Sam without having to go to resources A.
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Aug 7, 2013 03:40
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