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I've not really gotten a grip on the rules yet, but is the technomacner rigger option a viable one or just a bad version of a rigger?
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Aug 4, 2013 04:14
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With Technomancers, isn't the ability to have Charisma rating of registered spirits that cost zero money to bind a factor? A lot of their abilities are supposed to be impossible, and are super not common knowledge too. Powers like Gremlins, Cookie, or Electron Storm don't cause OS. Nor do they give warnings to the user. It just happens as pure out of the blue WTF? Resonance Veil also seems pretty good, since you can Resonance Veil a spider to think that everything is normal even though you are sitting there rifling through all the files in the place. Get two hits on Puppeteer and you dumpshock someone. No OS, no notification, just dumpshocked out of nowhere. Transcendent Grid and Resonance Channel, using sprites, then Resonance Veil the spider to see another boring day at the office. Send a sprite in to Gremlin the environmental controls. Intercept the maintenance request and ride into the facility through the front doors. Do the job and leave. If they are not looking for a technomancer (and why would they? Technomancers are super rare. Even if they did suspect, odds are they don't even have a technomancer on tap to investigate), there is no evidence outside of the aura. All they've got is an electronic device that legitimately malfunctioned. It wasn't hacked or bricked, it just malfunctioned. Resonance Veil a gang's hacker, then hack them and puppeteer them into doing something illegal. Sit there and sip soykaf as you wait for the Lonestar paddy wagons to come for them, as they've got no idea they are running an OS and wouldn't think to reboot. Move on the gang after you've taken a nap and their decker is still in the pokey. Someone in a Resonance Veil getting electron stormed by a swarm of sprites seems like they would be pretty much boned too. The ability to hack without a deck also seems like it would be pretty useful. There is zero evidence that the hacker is a hacker. Nor can they stop the hacker from hacking short of putting them in a faraday cage, and who randomly does that? If Vader was standing there gloating to Leia, and she cocked her head and dumpshocked the rigger right out of the interrigation drone, hopped inside it, and gave him the business, I guess that would seem pretty good? I dunno, they sort of look like Wizards done right. Not better, and maybe a bit worse by the numbers, but they have a mystical X-Factor that a non-rear end in a top hat GM will let them use to their advantage. Especially in a game of Shadowrun where it isn't supposed to be a Home Invasion Robbery Simulator with cyberware.
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Aug 15, 2013 03:18
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If the GM is letting random mages get 5 hits on you, they are being a complete rear end in a top hat. Also, IF a corp mage gets 5 hits, the technomancer is going to kill them ASAP. So if the GM is letting them get 5 hits on you and not doing it in a circumstance that is a 'complication' then they are also being a complete rear end in a top hat. Mages also can't read Resonance Signatures, only Auras. It takes a Technomancer to find evidence of a Technomancer's activity, and Technomancers are the mages of mages. Corps just won't have one on tap for random investigations unless the GM is being an rear end in a top hat. Since they are likely a test subject instead of a mere wage slave, it is even more unlikely that they'd let the Technomancer out of their hole to investigate since that invites escape (or worse, extraction by the Shadowrunners who already have one Technomancer and have successfully breached the corp before). In a game about stealth, Technomancers are basically the hardest character to detect, giving them the most license to use their abilities. An rear end in a top hat GM can make Shadowrun unplayable for any character ever. Which isn't a system problem, but a GM problem. edit: also, mages generally don't man checkpoints in Shadowrun. They are too rare for that. You are dealing with a situation where a secure facility might have a mage and a spider somewhere on the premise, and they will come investigate IF the runners give them a reason to. If you take a plane trip, a mage isn't going to be at every metal detector in a TSA outfit. Cyclomatic fucked around with this message at 10:26 on Aug 15, 2013 |
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Aug 15, 2013 09:51
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Gobbeldygook posted:2. The book is utterly silent on how noticeable Resonance powers are except that you can spot sprites so you may want to keep them on standby (which costs a service). If it works like magic, Resonance powers are extremely noticeable and 90% of your suggested uses ("no notification") will not work at all. Things that you can notice have rules that explain how they are noticed. i.e. spell casting or matrix actions. Since it isn't an attack or sleaze action, if you just take the rules as presented, it seems pretty obvious that it is the best of both worlds from Attack and Sleaze, in that an Attack action specifically states that on success the target becomes aware that they were hacked, and on a failed sleaze they get a mark on you and alerts the owner. Either Technomancers are completely awful because everything they do is blatantly obvious which is objectively worse than matrix actions and completely inconsistent with matrix actions, or they are different but mostly equal to Deckers because they are somewhat disadvantaged by the numbers but they can be more subtle in performing those actions. I think an expanded list of Complex forms would help them separate themselves from deckers though. Resonance Veil is a game changer. Even something like Static veil is a big deal because it lets you snoop and trace someone, and then stay connected and wait for as long as you want while a normal decker would have to reboot and lose the snoop and trace. Or you can cookie someone with a sprite. They can do things that deckers just can't. It just seems like people are hell bent on declaring Technomancers as awful. If you watch an infomercial, you can see that if someone tries hard enough they can make a screwdriver seem like the most useless and impractical tool to ever exist.
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Aug 15, 2013 16:36
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Conskill posted:Why do you assume that'd make the corporations less paranoid about them? They're so easy to miss that anyone could be a Technomancer, just like in the real-life example anyone could be the terrorist. The only way to be sure is to treat everyone as a threat, hence obtrusive security measures today that would be at least mirrored, though probably greatly expanded, in the Evil Capitalist Dystopia of Tomorrow. Players might as well just shoot themselves in the head, because it is literally making it impossible for them to do anything. The technomancer isn't boned by what you describe, everyone is boned and boned harder. The Decker will get arrested because their illegal deck is found by the omnipresent oppressive searches. The Street Samurai will get arrested because of their illegal cyberware, the mage will get arrested for their illegal charms and spells, the face will get arrested because they have a pistol. Security measures good enough to easily catch a technomancer are security measures that completely gently caress players over beyond anything that is reasonable. Unless the GM is specifically persecuting technomancers, which is possible if the GM is acting like this in the first place. If everyone is being hyper vigilant, completely competent, and sparing no expense, you are not playing Shadowrun. Nor are you playing a game that has *anything* to do with human nature.
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Aug 15, 2013 16:47
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Is it just me, or are the wireless rules on 420-421 pants on the head stupid? It says that everything is wireless right down to your pants. It gives an example of hacking bone lacing cyberware (bone lacing does not have a wireless bonus). It says to use the table to assign a device rating to everything. It talks about items with a wireless bonus getting that bonus, but how they lose the bonus in a noise zone greater than the device rating of the bonus-ed item. If they stopped talking here... the rules make *perfect* sense. However, they keep talking... They then go on to say how as a free action you can just turn wireless off on any device, and the only drawback is losing any wireless bonus the item has... Which by the letter of the rule isn't contradictory... but logically cancels out everything they were talking about in the previous paragraphs about items without a wireless bonus still being hackable... even though they are not because there is literally no downside to turning them off... However, they keep talking even more... They talk about making a throwback device, and how it takes a hardware+logic extended test... to permanently do what they just got done telling you that you could do as a free action... The whole section just reads like some sort of schizoid product of a nerd fight in a rules committee where two factions are diametrically opposed on an issue and put in rules to say the other side is wrong.
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Aug 26, 2013 06:30
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ProfessorCirno posted:As I recall that is literally what actually happened. OK, well that makes things easier. Our group can just put on our big kid pants and ask the GM if he wants to use the "everything is hackable" optional rule instead of trying to reconcile one section with two sets of rules throwing poop at each other and screeching. edit: I was mostly checking to make sure there wasn't something that I was missing that made it all make cohesive sense.
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Aug 26, 2013 06:41
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WarLocke posted:Well, yeah, but this was as true back in 2E as it is now. There's no need for half these wireless rules. Wireless Matrix? Sure, technology advances. Wireless bone lacing or smartlinks or hell most cyberware or all guns? No reason at all for that. You can solve the decker-in-a-box 'problem' without all this wireless stuff, but it's really up to the GM to do it. So what is the player of the Decker character supposed to do during the hour long combat? What is the rest of the part supposed to do while the Decker and the DM play the Decker mini game?
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Aug 26, 2013 09:12
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I really hate the Running Silent rule. If you are not a decker, the rule isn't a trade-off in any way. It is just a blanket nerf to deckers with zero downside for anyone who isn't a decker. The so-called tradeoff of losing 2 dice is just double-dip decker nerf, because it is a penalty that doesn't actually matter to non-deckers. That isn't a trade-off, that is just an extra little cherry-on-the-top kick in the dick after the rule nerfed deckers action economy into the ground as well as essentially forcing them to randomly select what their character can do once they finally get to do something. If Running Silent was restricted to things with an attack/sleaze rating, it would be fine. It would mean that the only things doing it would be those things that actually cared about the penalty, and it would also mean that anything running silent that you had to spend actions to find was something that had to spend actions to find you back. I'm waiting for the Matrix splat book with baited breath. If the inter-author fighting is this bad in just one section of the core rules... I'm expecting at least one murder before an entire book on the matter makes it to print.
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Oct 10, 2013 08:49
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If I squint and look at the intent, I like the decking rules. When I read the clusterfuck that came out of the authors fighting about it and Shadowrun's bizarre aversion to optional rules... it adds up to prolonged negotiation sessions with the GM and players to play any game of Shadowrun 5E ever because you realistically have to house rule it out of the box. Especially when you consider that Running Silent and Turning It Off are actually optional rules presented in the most conflict generating way possible. They are pretty bad game design, and seem to be engineered to provide a passive aggressive backdoor to veto option to decking rules. There wouldn't be enough popcorn in the entire world if magic got the same treatment. If people could turn their auras 'low' and mages couldn't cast spells at anyone that they couldn't see the aura of and had to assense people at random until they found the person they wanted to cast a spell at... only to have the person decide to turn their aura off and become immune to spells at no penalty to anything non-magical they were doing... Although, to be fair, given the look of pure horror on the face of the chronic mage player in the last session when he failed to one-shot someone with an attack spell, I think maybe magic might be in a slightly more reasonable place in this edition.
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Oct 11, 2013 02:18
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ProfessorCirno posted:I think the big war over the decking rules more or less came down to "can they effect players?" Each layer on top of the rules was one side saying "Yes, they can" and another side saying "No, they can't." Yes, they can effect players. But players can turn them off! Well, there's bonuses for keeping them on. But players can use stealth! And etc, etc, etc. The "50 stealth tags" is just the latest layer to this. The big problem isn't players running silent. The problem is when the GM has all the enemies run silent because it is just one rule amongst a book of many rules and is likely taken at face value. You have to sit the GM down and explain that running silent is a secret "screw you" option that is supposed to be used by the players and not the GM even though it is not presented like that. It isn't that the GM is making the decision to screw the players over or not, its that they don't understand that the rule represents in terms of gameplay. The real problem is that Shadowrun as a game that is written like it is describing something real. Reality doesn't work optionally or inconsistently, but it isn't reality it is a game and a story. Their refusal to include optional rules, or non-symmetrical rules (i.e. it works for the players like this and it works for all the NPCs in this other way), just makes the system hard to use in practice. In reality play groups just have to negotiate out de facto optional and non-symmetrical rules where the GM lets the players do one thing but doesn't do it themselves. Usually after encounters and adventures were ruined by the badly written rules taken at face value manifesting at the table to the point that everyone goes "oh, yea, that is dumb and we need to house rule it". I believe that an RPG designer once said something to the effect that if people can come up with good rules that work on their own then they don't need RPG books. Books that don't present good rules that work without extensive modification out of the box are books written for people that don't need books.
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Oct 12, 2013 02:08
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QuantumNinja posted:3. Grenade RAW are broken, and there's been a lot of discussion (starting here) about it. Guns do more damage than before, and armor got buffed to match. I don't consider weapon concealability a giant part of Shadowrun (most runners will start shooting when they get seen), and weapons already get concealability penalties. Recoil is now the biggest balancer. I think grenades more or less work as written, in the context of Shadowrun the setting. Grenades are super destructive, but a grenade attack is super conspicuous. If runners use grenades it should affect their notoriety and generally attract a lot of unwanted attention. If the run goes seriously sideways to the point that they are going to lose at combat, having the option to start throwing grenades is a massive swing in the odds. It lets the players at least get out of the situation without forcing the GM to handwave them out of it, but they do so at the expense of at making a clusterfuck out of the run and the fallout is going to follow them for a bit. The story advances but the players are set back a bit, and all without the GM needing to use damaging Deus ex machina to make it happen. My understanding is that flashbangs are special and don't reflect off walls and don't use explosive damage falloff, and are just a flat 10S everywhere in their radius. i.e. they are actually meant to be used in 'normal' circumstances.
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Oct 12, 2013 02:42
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Piell posted:Grenades don't work as written - a direct hit (i.e. 3 hits on an unopposed test) with a frag grenade is an instant kill/knockout on literally every person who isn't rolling 30+ soak dice (even ignoring the chunky salsa rules), and there's literally nothing the the defending character can do to stop it. Why are security forces throwing massively property damaging explosives around? If an NPC BBEG feels threatened enough to pull out a grenade, then the players need to run away (i.e. let the NPC escape). Grenades are more or less then "I have a thermal detonator" trope. If players pull out a grenade and the security forces want to force the issue instead of letting them retreat, then the players are pretty much going to win. If the players want to force the issue and keep after a BBEG NPC that felt threatened enough to pull out a grenade, then they are likely going to pay dearly for it. No matter what happens though, the streets will be talking about it and it will reflect poorly on whoever went there. They are the nuclear option. edit: Also, if they do want to push it they can burn edge to survive it. So there isn't literally nothing they can do to survive it either. Cyclomatic fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Oct 12, 2013 |
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Oct 12, 2013 04:07
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Piell posted:If you want grenades to be the nuclear option then they probably shouldn't be dirt-cheap and available at chargen. If characters go around making noise they will be branded as maniacs and loose cannons. Street cred and notoriety are part of the same game as grenades. If you were looking to have some stealthy industrial espionage done would you hire people with a track record of throwing grenades around? God no. If you were a fixer would you return the calls of a bunch of bloody psychopaths that throw freaking grenades around? God no. You'd likely sell them out to the cops and nobody would make a peep about you being a double crosser because they are all secretly glad that those animals are off the street and no longer bringing the heat down from law enforcement on the entire community. A grenade attack would likely make national news. Even one in the barrens would make local headlines at least.
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Oct 12, 2013 04:32
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children overboard posted:And if tossing a grenade will cause your contacts to drop you and kill your career, I kinda feel that should be stipulated in the book somewhere. That is basically what the reputation section is about. Throwing grenades around is going to get you public awareness because it is attention drawing behavior. Being obnoxious, callous, or anything else that makes your character look out of control or unprofessional is going to earn you notoriety.
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Oct 12, 2013 06:22
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ProfessorCirno posted:Keep in mind I like much more "cinematic" style stuff, but for me ideally grenades should have big enough boom to take down mooks with ease, but not so much that PCs or most normal enemies are blown up by the several. As it stands grenades kill everything dead - that's too much boom. It is because they badly need optional rules to let the GM adjust the game from Pink Mohawk to Mirrorshades instead of trying to shoehorn it all into one system that is trying to chart out something real. The grenade rules as written work perfectly fine for Mirrorshades and even games somewhere between Mirrorshades and Pink Mohawks. If people want runs to be a running gun battle with automatic weapon fire being sprayed everywhere, then some alternate grenade rules might be a good idea.
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Oct 12, 2013 06:42
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Gort posted:What do you base any of this on? You have seen the cover of a Shadowrun book where mages are flinging fireballs around, the rigger has a drone with a goddamn minigun on it and there's a ninja chopping some dude in half, right? Shadowrunners use weapons. Grenades really are just another weapon, and until this particular edition's terrible rules for them, they weren't even a particularly desirable one. I base it on the reputation section in the book. I know it is printed words vs. pictures, but it really is an actual section in the rules.
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Oct 12, 2013 06:50
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QuantumNinja posted:Here's the entire list of things it suggests might lose you reputation: If runners act like a grenade is the same sort of tool as a pistol, then I think that falls under the reputation rules. The things listed are examples. The text surrounding the examples basically says that if your runners drawing attention to themselves, or generally behaving in an out of control destructive manner, then they get the points. quote:With only a few exceptions, shadowrunners Throwing grenades around willy nilly, or basically turning runs into warzones 'just because I can' is pretty obviously not in line with this. Yea, throwing a grenade or two in a high security zone on the 30th floor of a corp building because you were hard pressed by a security team isn't something that is reasonably going to get you points. It won't because it was reasonable in the context. Building your character as 'Papa Loco the zany grenade throwing adept' because grenades are obviously mechanically powerful means you really ought to be racking up points because who would hire that to take care of something quietly without drawing attention to it? Besides, why on earth is the GM using anything other than Built-in Timer grenades that players can run away from or pick up and toss back? They go off in the next combat turn at initiative minus 10.
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Oct 12, 2013 07:29
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children overboard posted:Even if you did decide grenades were worse than the usual runner tactics, an extra point of notoriety at the end of a run is a long way from your fixer turning you into Lone Star for tossing grenades around. children overboard posted:Also I don't see grenades as more attention drawing than: If they do that stuff because it was the only reasonable thing to do in the situation, and by the nature of the job that situation wasn't a sideways disaster of their own making, then that is what the equipment is for. children overboard posted:Personally I'd reserve notoriety for stuff like setting a shopping mall on fire as a distraction, something that leads to the death of innocents or is really bizarre. Or you know, it could be a loving bloodbath of grenades and full auto explosive bullets followed by a trail of ambulances and sirens. With Lonestar looking for the terrorists responsible, murder warrants everywhere, massive property destruction, and a very public embarrassment of the corp that likely caused their stock price to dip a fraction of a fraction of a percent so the corp snatch teams have a green light to perform a rendition on the runners so they can do a press release about catching the terrorists themselves.
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Oct 12, 2013 08:09
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Mystic Mongol posted:Or as it's known at my table--Monday! I think it does have an end point. The end point is whatever edition they are on when the authors stop fighting and present a set of clear optional rules that allow a GM to pick the mechanics that work for the tone of their game and the composition of the party. Be that game Mirrorshades or Pink Mohawk, and be that party missing a decker or not.
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Oct 12, 2013 08:26
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Gort posted:I'm trying to work out what any of this stream of consciousness has to do with your original point which was that the poo poo grenade rules don't suck because anyone who ever throws a grenade is thrown out of criminal society forever for their terrible reputation. I get that you're trying to make a general point about ultra-violence getting you in trouble, but nobody suggested that it doesn't or shouldn't. The grenade rules are not poo poo. Or at least not poo poo for every type of game. If they are throwing grenades with built in timers, the characters can run away or simply pick it up and throw it back. Which you can not do with a fireball. If they are using grenades with wireless links, so long as the GM isn't having them run silent, the decker can just set them off before the guy with the grenade has a chance to throw it. Which you can not do with a fireball. Grenades are ultra violent, rather illegal, and grade-AAA fodder for the PR department of a corp to spin you into being a terrorist and having your profile added to some sort of watch list. When the players get unlucky with their dice rolls, make some bad decisions, or do something that makes the run go sideways, they can pull out the extremely effective grenades and even the odds due to their devastating effect. Especially if the GM is looking for a way to give the players a break so they can survive the run. If it is an isolated incident, it will just be put down to a run that got out of control. It likely earns them some temporary heat that will blow over. If it is a pattern of behavior, then it should get them a bad reputation.
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Oct 12, 2013 08:45
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Gort posted:All tone and flavour arguments aside, this stuff does need to be fixed. There's no game style for which these rules are acceptable. You guys do realize that the description of a flashbang says that their blast is equally distributed over the 10M radius right? The reasonable interpretation of that is that they are a flat 10S always. Basically the interpretation that makes them a usable piece of gear with an legality of only 6R, and a reputation for not being bombs that blow bodies to pieces.
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Oct 12, 2013 08:58
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Gort posted:You're putting something from your own game onto everyone else. The rest of us are reading the rulebook. Man, you are super right. Chemical grenades are BULLSHIT too. They are clearly grenades because they are listed in the grenade table and their DV says "as Chemical", so if you throw a grenade containing Power 15 Neruo-Stun (the rules say that the power serves as the DV of the attack!) into a confined space the gas must reflect with non-diminishing power because a gas grenade is listed in the grenade table and that is how a high explosive grenade works! (or maybe stuff with blast values listed as -x/m is the stuff that reflects, given how only things that are actual man destroying explosives have those values, instead of things like gas grenades or flashbangs that are literally constructed to contain almost all of the blast wave inside the body of the grenade when it detonates)
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Oct 12, 2013 09:25
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Did the Splintered State adventure. It was pretty awful. The part that really blew the entire adventure up was the part where you HAD to get the file off the host with absolutely no other way to finish the adventure. The host was throwing like 14 or 15 dice, so the decker sat there rolling their 10 dice to try and see the file and couldn't get anywhere because they couldn't beat it and it was racking up absurd overwatch with its hits. Sending a single character in to solo something rolling that many dice in an adventure for new characters, where if they fail the adventure is over, is mind boggling. The crappy part was that we actually did leg work and tracked down the security spider and slipped a mild poison into his morning coffee to get some stun boxes/penalties on him so that if the decker had to fight him that they would be at an advantage... only to get brick-walled by the host itself.
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Oct 21, 2013 05:28
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My problem with the cyberware/bioware system is that like most of the nuyen based progression systems, it is blatantly obvious that the system can be gamed. I think people got so mad about the cyberware price increases because buying lower grade cyberware and then upgrading it is objectively wasteful compared to saving up and buying big. Sort of like cyberdecks. They cost too much to upgrade, you have to buy big on char gen, then save all your money and buy big one more time. Karma based advancement doesn't have this issue except for foci and to a lesser degree burnt edge (burning edge punishes the poo poo out of a high edge character, while burning edge is only a fairly minor setback to a low edge character, so if the gm will actually make you burn edge, playing a low edge character is generally the superior option in terms of resource management).
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Nov 2, 2013 20:54
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PunkBoy posted:Man, my group felt so good about ourselves when we decided to crash a van into a nightclub's foyer on our run. My favorite "smash and grab" plan was to have a cargo helicopter fly over the top of an office building, use a hook to attach a cable on the roof, and then fly off with the back door open so the wrecking ball on the wheeled pallet would slide out when the cable was fully extended. Cable length was set to have it hit the side of the armored glass building on the floor we needed into and out of. Helicopter comes around for the second pass and batman hooks the cargo and team off into the sunset before security has time to respond. Sadly, the plan was eventually rejected for being too attention drawing.
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Dec 8, 2013 04:13
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Guess we're not thinking big enough. But in all fairness, it was owned by my character's friend, and she almost killed him after she was rescued and saw the damage.
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With all the talk of the Shadowrun rules being not the best set of mechanics ever built, I have to say that I really wish someone would do a Shadowrun to Iron Kingdoms RPG rules conversion. IKRPG is a straight up minatures role playing game, but it's a bad thing if you like minatures (and it goes SOOOOO much faster than 4E combat). It felt like fantasy Shadowrun with a clean and fast rule system, but I wished it was actual Shadowrun because the Shadowrun setting is so cool. I think even the mighty, skilled, gifted and intellectual archtypes actually fit Shadowrun pretty easily. Chromed, wired, awakened, face/mastermind. A mighty trollkin that beats face is essentially a cyber troll, while a skilled elf is basically your super fast wired ballerina. Although the cyberware would really be abstracted into archetype progression (i.e. your character levels up so you get a new ability, which means your character managed to get next-gen cyberware installed). The mix-and-match "class" system really kept it from feeling like a class system. They've even got warjack rules which are basically combat drones. The only thing super duper missing would be hacking rules. The mekanika and warcaster rules would need some serious refactoring to turn it into a rigger system that had nothing to do with magic. The health and damage system really captured the feel of Shadowrun, in that players really worry about getting dropped by attacks. However it was more controlled in that while getting dropped CAN kill you, it was usually a "It hit my vest so I only got knocked on my rear end and now I hurt all over" deal. The feat points are just like a much more fluid version of edge.
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Dec 21, 2013 23:34
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Shadowrun as a setting didn't copy X-men. A megacorp did. Because idiot fanboys will pay for that. One of the character concepts I wanted to make was a awakened character that was basically a final fantasy character. Not because I'm one of those people who tries to shoehorn final fantasy characters into random settings, but because most popular culture exists in the setting (albeit as classics, although they are likely remakes upon remakes upon remakes). The character itself would be a total Final Fantasy head, and whoever owned the brand and was publishing Final Fantasy 97, most likely sells final fantasy branded spell formulas. If the character grew up on FF games as part of their childhood, when they awakened their fire spirit may very well manifest as Ifrit.
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Feb 8, 2014 19:17
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Doc Dee posted:You should expect AT LEAST the Johnson trying to screw you out of getting paid, because every nuyen he doesn't give you is another nuyen that goes right into his pocket. It may not even be him trying to kill you, it could easily be, "You made too big a mess, I'm gonna have to dock your pay to, uhh, cover it up." Seems like a good way to get sold to a black clinic for organs. If you have a reputation for not paying your runners, everyone on the street is just going to say "it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy" when they find out. The corp is unlikely to do anything, because retaliation means they are owning what they are retaliating over, and in this case they would be owning the reputation of not paying runners. No, the real plot twist is when the Johnson screws the party for no reason, and then his boss hires the party to disappear the Johnson since justifying a transfer or demotion with HR is a long drawn out headache, and hoisting him on his own petard is likely the fast and cost efficient move.
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Feb 19, 2014 03:23
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Am I missing something, or does the Control Rig cost a lot of essence and not do all that much for drones? Also, I remember something about Gunnery not being attached to Agility when used remotely, but I can't remember where I saw it. Am I crazy or does someone have the page.
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Feb 22, 2014 07:04
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SilverMike posted:Rig's great if you plan to jack in, not much point if you're commanding a drone army and don't care about combat driving. But jacking into a drone doesn't seem to add much to using the drone, outside of speed and handling, which seem to be of limited use to a drone. It doesn't help with gunnery, sensors, or stealth. The top end Control Rig costs half your essence. I just don't see how what you get can possibly be worth that much essence.
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Feb 22, 2014 08:08
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I'm a bit confused on weapon mounts. When a drone or vehicle is listed as having a weapon mount, does that mount count against their body limit, or is that weapon mount in addition to their body limit? The Ares Duelist comes with a sword weapon mount, and says the swords can be changed out, but in parentheses states that you can just install additional weapon mounts using the normal rules. It only has a body of 4 though, so the only way it could mount another weapon would be if the built in mounts don't count against the body limit.
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Feb 22, 2014 20:38
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On the Steel Lynx, does hardened mean Hardened Armor, or does it mean hardened but we really didn't mean Hardened?
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Feb 22, 2014 21:27
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Tippis posted:Yeah. At this point, I'm slowly slipping into some kind of baffled “…really? How hard can it be?” mode of thinking about the gaps in the rules and how every addition seems to either inject or expose more of them. To be honest, I've found the Shadowrun rules work best when you avoid using them where at all possible. By that, I mean we do a lot of leg work to create a plan that puts us at a large enough advantage from discretionary situational bonus dice that the GM just doesn't make us roll more than once to see if we glitch or have an epically bad roll. When we either don't plan or don't follow our plan, the total clusterfuck crapshoot that are the rules accurately models the run devolving into a total clusterfuck crapshoot.
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Feb 23, 2014 07:03
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Ghouls eat people, and they are contagious. The only civil rights parallel is the ones made by the ghouls before they eat the people stupid enough to get talked out of rounding them all up and exterminating them... because they eat people and are contagious.
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Feb 25, 2014 09:29
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Character generation would be a lot less silly if cyberware was directly upgradable. The benefit to buying big is so blatantly obvious and provides such a large long term benefit that it doesn't make any sense to do it another way. Which I think is a big part of the reason people lost their poo poo at change in the amount of cyberware you can buy at char gen. Not because people needed to start with the top of the line, but because the system punishes the ever living poo poo out of you for not buying big. Of course, magic doesn't follow this rule at all. Want to play an adept? Buy however much or however little of whatever powers you think fits your character at char gen. No need to worry about paying a "system mastery" tax to advance later.
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Feb 28, 2014 02:46
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The problem with the system isn't an adept vs a samurai. The problem is a samurai vs a samurai. If no other character type besides cyber characters existed, the problem would still be there. Pop quiz: Question 1: Samurai A has Wired Reflexes Rating 3 and Samurai B has Wired Reflexes Rating 3. Their GM has always used the listed prices for Wired Reflexes. a) Samurai A has spent the same amount of Nuyen on Wired Reflexes as Samurai B b) Samurai A has spent more Nuyen on Wired Reflexes than Samurai B c) Samurai A has spent less Nuyen on Wired Reflexes than Samurai B Question 2: Adept A has Improved Reflexes 3 and Adept B has Improved Reflexes 3. a) Adept A has spent the same number of power points on Improved Reflexes 3 as Adept B b) Adept A has spent more power points on Improved Reflexes as Adept B c) Adept A has spent less power points on Improved Reflexes as Adept B The cyberware system is a gigantic messy pile of bad game design that rewards the ever living poo poo out of system mastery. This is even without bringing lifestyle and roleplaying uses for Nuyen into it (i.e. the samurai that bought a Ferrari and the Samurai that rides the bus).
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Mar 1, 2014 03:36
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Also, total tangent, is there any reason to PLAY a Technomancer? They're neat and all but crunch wise they have the worst of every world and are public enemy number one in most areas. Technomancers can do things that are impossible for regular deckers to do, and the official line is that what deckers can do is impossible because of GOD. Their abilities are a fairy tale told by fairy tales, and in a game of corporate espionage, having sources and methods that are beyond imagining is powerful. Sprites and matrix spells don't cause overwatch, are completely undetectable, and generally just don't follow the "the rules". If you resonance spike someone and they don't know what it was, where it came from. If a registered sprite slaps a cookie into something, you can keep that cookie on them longer than a decker could bug them and stay online before their GOD score forced them off. Or a sprite can hash a file with a literally uncrackable encryption for the ultimate "I get the money and walk out of here and THEN you get the data" exchange. If the GM is going to be an rear end in a top hat and shut that aspect down and make everyone "experienced operators that know all the technomancer tricks" when they are so rare that virtually nobody should know anything about what they can do, then no, there isn't any reason to play a technomancer.
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Mar 1, 2014 06:04
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I don't think Technomancers need balancing if the GM gives them the non-crunch benefits of being a technomancer. edit: that is to say, when the party is sitting there planning a run, nobody has to ask the question: How do we smuggle the cyberdeck past security. A dice pool doesn't matter if it can't get past a security checkpoint. Cyclomatic fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Mar 2, 2014 |
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Mar 2, 2014 06:30
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Gort posted:I always wanted wireless deckers to be able to hack wired-only systems. Fluff something in about nanobots. Otherwise, everyone is either a moron, or they turn off wireless access to anything important, which sucks for decker players. Honestly, it should really require a fairly difficult skill check with computers to turn off wireless devices (i.e. it should take hacker support, at which point they can just slave to the hacker's deck). It should be like removing bloat-ware and spy-ware from your computer, only the bloat-ware and spy-ware are extremely aggressive, have manufacturer support, and removal utilities have likely been made illegal since they threaten a form of business.
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Mar 8, 2014 19:51
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