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Heir03 posted:Ok that's pretty cool. I'm guessing the reverse is true too. "Hey your ancestor bumped into me at the market and didn't apologize. Time to wipe out your entire family line!" Actually, yes. Dunkelzahn's Will posted:For a period of ten days beginning on 14 February 2057, Lars J. Matthews will cease to possess any legal status. He will be stripped of all evidence of legal existence, including SIN, credsticks, DocWagon contract, bank accounts and so on. To the individual or group who ends Lars J. Matthews’ physical existence during those ten days, I leave all of Matthews’ assets and 1 million nuyen for a job well done. If Mr. Matthews survives and can prove his identity, his legal status and all possessions will be restored to him. Haven’t you heard? Never deal with a dragon, Lars.
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Feb 13, 2018 16:43
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IMJack posted:Dragons can't really access the Matrix directly. A neural interface for a metahuman doesn't work for dragon physiology, and designing a DNI for a dragon would require someone getting a good look at a dragon's brain. Living dragons aren't gonna go for that, and they're going to make sure there aren't any dead dragons available for research. And if word gets out you're looking for dead dragons for research, well... Let's just say your fire insurance is canceled the same day and your smarter friends all suffer sudden bouts of amnesia and 'new phone who dis'. quote:Dunkelzahn leaves a bequest in his will (as of 2057) offering a prize for an efficient and effective Matrix connection for dragons and some animals with near-human intelligence. The prize is "the access codes to four Zurich-Orbital accounts and a personal visit from Lofwyr." Double-edged as only a Dragon's gift can be.
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Apr 7, 2018 00:13
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Soylent Pudding posted:As a newbie to the setting, is all the blood sacrifice the reason Aztechnology is so horrible? Given that blood magic is the rough equivalent of setting off a dirty nuke in the Astral Plane (size of nuke proportionate to the number of sacrifices, and the dirty part of the payload simultaneously has a *long* halflife and high levels of radiation throughout the period, it should drat well be enough - but then there's everything else they do on top of it. For instance, the reason the Yucatan is in revolt is because Aztech's business practices in the area have turned large swathes of former rainforest into a toxic hellpit so bad that even mundanes risk their sanity if they go in there. kaosdrachen fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Apr 25, 2018 |
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Apr 25, 2018 12:23
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mauman posted:
The fight is your slightly less painful option.
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May 2, 2018 08:37
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paragon1 posted:You can attribute any number of things to that nuke disappearing mid-flight other than nuclear physics suddenly not working (ex. The self-destruct failsafe working, mid-flight dragon intercept, etc.) Yeah, about that. Bear in mind that the reason the SAIM even existed was that the US government had resumed its land grabbing policy, invoking Eminent Domain on large chunks of reservation land and then selling exploitation rights to the big corps. The native americans protested this (naturally) and there was quite a bit of sympathy for them even despite the government's PR campaign painting them all as terrorists. But then Lone Eagle supposedly happens. Let's review, shall we?
That's a whole lot of unlikely coincidences with a suspiciously optimal outcome for the government on whose military turf it happened. Just saying...
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May 3, 2018 18:18
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Jack2142 posted:Magic Superplague killed like 1/3rd of the worlds population. On the first pass. It came around for another round a decade or so later to kill off another quarter of the remainder. VITAS was some scary, scary poo poo.
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May 3, 2018 21:03
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Poil posted:Speaking of bears, some corps use them to protect their compounds instead of guard dogs. And they're beefed up with cyberware. You do NOT want to run across one. Especially not because so far experimentation with cybered animals has the side issue that it tends to drive the animals violently psychotic. This is not universally regarded as a downside or a detriment, except by runner teams that encounter one.
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May 10, 2018 10:04
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Anticheese posted:How does a spirit acquire enough material wealth to own the majority stake in an AAA megacorp, anyway? "Creating Wealth" is literally a power that Free Spirits have.
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May 12, 2018 12:11
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paragon1 posted:If none of this convinces you that the wilderness in Shadowrun is an inhospitable place, consider the Juggernaut, an animal that exists totally naturally in the wild. It's what happens when Awakening happens to the common texas armadillo. That is to say, they become fifty feet tall, longer than a greyhound bus, and weighs eight and a half tons. They also become constantly attracted to food and lose all fear of anything human short of a very good main battle tank. They're also possessed of a temper and general hostile attitude to anything that moves and isn't another Juggernaut of the opposite gender during mating season that would make the crankiest HIppopotamus gasp and go "... Well, that's just rude." Oh, and while they're not terribly bright and generally subscribe to "out of sight, out of mind" when it comes to things smaller than them, they can also outrun aforesaid main battle tank, so the trick there is in getting out of sight. Their preferred habitat tends not to have many things obstructing view.
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May 16, 2018 07:48
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MJ12 posted:Furthermore Move By Wire is actually better than the Synaptic Booster, as the Rating 3 Synaptic Booster gives + 3 Reaction and +3d6 Initiative in 5E, but the Rating 3 Move By Wire gives +3 Reaction and +(9+1d6) Initiative while also acting as a Rating 6 skillwire. Of course, it does so by essentially putting your entire nervous system into a constant agitated state mimicking an epileptic seizure, which tends to put a crimp in your quality of life, but as you say... quote:The Synaptic Booster doesn't gently caress your social ability, but you're making a full-body murder cyborg. At this point I'm pretty sure you don't care.
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May 21, 2018 10:47
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I figure that the point of it was for a GM to put it into the killer boss battle cybermonster at the end of a lengthy subcampaign so the team has something memorable to fight at the end, as opposed to something PCs would be crazy enough to install into themselves.
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May 21, 2018 16:21
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Ze Pollack posted:like I said! manageable! with a healthy dose of prozac and biweekly therapy sessions we can keep you merely experiencing constant suicidal ideation, as opposed to actively going on a murder-suicidal rampage! Not to mention a brain implant specifically designed to detect suicidal ideations and stimulate your memory centers, because at that point it's literally possible for you to die just because you forgot you were supposed to remember you're alive.
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May 21, 2018 17:11
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Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:What's the wireless do? Automatic firmware updates.
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May 21, 2018 21:27
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Ze Pollack posted:most of the Pacific Ocean is over one tectonic plate. it has edges. those edges grind on the neighboring plates' edges, resulting in delicious, delicious world-blood gushing out. noted scabs from this ongoing process include the San Andreas Fault, Mt. St. Helens, and The Entire Nation Of Japan. the collected area is called the Ring of Fire. To be precise, one of the Chinese Great Dragons had been gradually drawing on the Ring's geomantic properties for a power boost in a bid for independence from his mentor/patron, the primary Japanese Great Dragon. Except his control slipped for about five seconds and the whole drat Ring went up like a set of firecrackers.
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May 25, 2018 18:34
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Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:Or it's just another great dragon doing it for laughs. There is, in fact, an entire adventure set centered around this. Apparently it's how the Great Dragons choose to resolve disagreements civilly - using intermediaries and other patsies to count coup against one another. There is something of a "Gentledragon's agreement" involved in that if the patsies managed to get away clean, they don't get hunted down afterwards unless they did something seriously unprofessional. (Mind, no such guarantees during the run -- you fail, you're lunch, and the dragon that ate you will cheerfully thank the dragon that sent you for the nice meal.
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May 26, 2018 21:14
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Can you actually become a teleporty Yog-Sothoth magus, or is that NPC-only? Teleportation is one of the three big no-nos for magic in Shadowrun. Flat out can't be done. (The other two are, IIRC, time travel and bringing back the dead. Cybermancy is as close to the latter as it gets and that's why, aside from all the other problems referred to above, spirits hate cyberzombies -- oh, and they're also permanently sort-of dual-natured, so spirits have options for making that displeasure known.)
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May 30, 2018 14:11
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mauman posted:Oh man, that would suuuuuuuck. I knew about the corpses, but I didn't know that could happen to live (just out for lunch so to speak) magicians. Oh, it gets worse. While they're inhabiting a corpse, they're your basic shambling zombie type deal, except that their touch drains Essence. Yes, the same stuff you lose when you put in cyberware, and that kills you when you run out. No, this drain isn't recoverable. Yes, that means that a heavily cybered street sam can not afford to get hit more than once. The good news: Regular shedim animating a corpse can not activate or utilize cyberware, so a cybered up corpse is worse than useless to them - that spiffy cyberleg won't work for them, period. The bad news: Master Shedim (like the one who possessed the aforesaid imam) can. And they can also summon More Shedim. I had one run set up where a law enforcement agency had noticed gang violence had been flaring up all across a certain bad part of town, as if everyone involved had gotten a lot more volatile all of a sudden. They didn't view this as cause for concern until a drone with IR capability spotted people removing the bodies after a recent street battle... And they were all room temperature.
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May 30, 2018 21:34
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Also, while Adolf Hitler was evidently a genius at appealing to the worst in human nature, he was also an overbearing micromanaging incompetent idiot where military strategy was concerned. On top of that, he loving hated the officer corps (mutual, btw) and tended to reassign anyone that looked too competent or popular, then refused to listen to advice that went against what he wanted. The Allies actually stopped trying to assassinate him because it became clear there was no way they could do more damage to the Nazi war effort than by leaving him in place.
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Jun 13, 2018 19:33
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habeasdorkus posted:I mean, they're not singing Deutscheland Uber Alles, but they've totally started saying "blood and soil" again and we've got reactionary/fascist ethnonationalists all over the world gaining steam. So, they're not technically Nazis but they're pretty down with Nazi iconography and racial ideology. They literally chanted "Hail Victory! Hail Trump!" Look, if it throws Nazi salutes like a nazi, argues for ethnic cleansing like a Nazi, and chants Nazi slogans like a Nazi, I'm pretty comfortable with calling them Nazis.
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Jun 15, 2018 21:47
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Fighting Trousers posted:
It's amazing how little things change. (... And let's not get into another discussion on politics that may move Kanfy to bring the hammer down)
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Jun 23, 2018 15:47
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HBS based the Humanis pamphlets on actual 1920s KKK propaganda. Just substitute "the Jew" and "the Negro" for elves and orcs.
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PMush Perfect posted:No mention of the Oceans* series? My personal fave is the team in Sneakers -- prep work, social engineering, and explaining the countermeasures to each system they're trying to work their way past.
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Jul 9, 2018 11:50
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Siegkrow posted:Did I ask this before? Neither. There has been at least one confirmed Dragon shaman (as in, a Shaman with the Dragon totem, not a dragon that's also a shaman) that popped up out of a cult worshiping Dunkelzahn after his death. Apparently he wasn't Awakened before, and until he showed up nobody thought the Dragon totem existed. A lot of people are confused as hell (and concerned), but last I read the dragons themselves have declined to weigh in either way.
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Jul 12, 2018 15:00
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By popular demand posted:Speaking of hostile spirits, how strong can a single spirit get? Could a colossus of living nuclear fire emerge from a destroyed power plant? There is no theoretical upper limit to a spirit's Force. Just practical terms in that spirits usually need to be summoned by someone, and the more powerful the spirit, the greater the risk to the summoner. Of course, if you cause enough of a ruckus that it starts affecting the Astral, you may wind up with something's attention whether you want to or not...
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Jul 25, 2018 21:37
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GhostStalker posted:
Of course, given that SK's CEO and owner is Lowfyr, that should probably be read as "people are reasonably certain SK isn't directly involved..."
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Jul 30, 2018 07:58
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GhostStalker posted:That's the exact role of the Shadowtalker Hanibelle. She's a ghoul decker of some repute, enough to get an invite to JackPoint and posting info there and on Shadowland previously before it went down. Of course, she pisses off the Hobgoblin decker Clockwork whenever she posts, but he's a massive rear end in a top hat and hates Technos too (tried to sell out Netcat and her new kid to a megacorp, mega bad idea when that kid's baby daddy is Slamm-O, one of the new admins of JackPoint and a better decker than he is). You do have to give him some credit, though: You see, the above is at this point public knowledge on Jackpoint, including the bit about attempting to sell out Netcat -- and later, her kid. He didn't technically break any rules of the site doing so, so his account is still valid, but his reputation has cratered beyond recovery, plus he's got Netcat and Slamm-O declaring personal vendetta on him, several of the other major Jackpointers have similarly expressed their desire to punch the clock... And somehow he's still alive and working. He's an absolute jackass, but apparently he's that good.
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Aug 9, 2018 21:33
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paragon1 posted:As far as I'm aware, the only things not allowed to be turned into foci is the noncoporeal and things that already hold spells (preparations and such) or spirits. It's not that you can't turn a ranged weapon into a focus; it's that you can't make a focus for ranged weapons. You can, for example, have a spell focus built into your pistol grip instead of the more traditional staff. You can't create a weapon focus that will work at range. No magic bullets - at least not that way. (A possible trick that might work would be a different type of foci entirely and enchanting the bullet to trigger a spell effect on impact, but it'd cost thousands of =Y= per bullet just in raw materials and take days to craft each one)
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Aug 17, 2018 18:16
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wedgekree posted:So it's really hard or at least expensive to make someone get magically shafted from long range. Noted. Nah. A set of optical binoculars will do /just/ fine for aiming a manabolt or fireball at someone too distant to see conventionally. Magical ranged weapons, on the other hand, are pretty much a no-no unless you get very creative. Other possibilities (Note: My expertise peaks at third edition, a lot of these tricks are of significantly more limited utility in 4th): * Turning either the pistol grip or a conveniently wearable item into a sustaining focus for the Enhance Aim spell. Downside: The spell explicitly states it does not stack with bonuses from smartlinks, so unless you pour a lot of power into it (force 6 and up) you get something that's almost as good as a 1500 =Y= smartlink which costs tens of thousands of nuyen and will set off alarms on a cursory astral scan. * Already mentioned in thread, turning your pistol or rifle into a melee weapon focus is a useful trick when you're dealing with an insect Hive. Bullets deal with the flesh forms, then when the trueform spirits materialize they get a rifle butt to the thorax... (Important to note: One definite benefit of weapon foci is that they completely bypass any weapon immunity a spirit might have, /and/ because they're foci they accompany you into the Astral Plane if you have to project. * Also mentioned: Catapults, crossbows and other ranged weapons that don't deform the payload until impact happens. The downside, of course, is that they're effectively live grenades from the moment they're enchanted and unless the enchanter was *very* good at their job the trigger spell won't know the difference between "impacted on an enemy" and "fell to the ground because the owner dropped it"
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Aug 18, 2018 11:25
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chiasaur11 posted:I'm sorry, but imagining a chicken just reminded me how loving dumb chickens are. You'd think. Until you remember that "Dumb" in the right context also means "Absolutely /fearless/ because it doesn't know to be afraid." And cockatrices aren't afraid of /anything/. Ask the Australians how their war on the Emu's went sometime.
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Oct 19, 2018 09:31
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And for a Cockatrice, the list of Things To Run Away From is very small.
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Oct 19, 2018 12:38
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The Lone Badger posted:But.... Harrow is an authority figure. At least to the members of his cult. And he's not exactly encouraging them to rebel against him. Well, yeah. "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." The Adversary - especially the more Toxic aspects of the totem - are all about rebelling against any authority except themselves. They need to be the one in charge, and everything else can burn. quote:"Toxic mages are bad news" Hoo boy. That's a breathtaking understatement, there. If you think of it as going to the Dark Side of the Force you're not actually that far off. Toxics don't always start out homicidally crazy, but they usually eventually wind up there regardless. Not only do they usually dedicate their lives to corrupting and destroying everything the 'benevolent' version of the Totem stands for, they actively draw power from the ensuing corruption. Remember all those toxic zones we've described earlier? Toxic shamans not only can survive and function there, they're more powerful there and they actively work to expand them. It's also not limited to shamans, although with Hermetics it's more commonly described as "Twisted Path", and in some ways they can be worse. A while back I ran with a campaign where we had a Twisted hermetic mage running around, although we didn't have a clue at the start that's what he was. All we knew was that someone was kidnapping homeless and children and leaving their horribly mangled bodies in various locations in one of the more decrepit parts of town, with a children's rhyme written on the walls in their blood. Turned out his goal was to use their deaths and the emotional reaction to them to deliberately twist the mana from the area towards his particular brand of malevolence -- so that the entire area would effectively act as an aspected power site for him, boosting his magic and actively hindering anyone else's...
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Oct 31, 2018 14:26
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habeasdorkus posted:
Yeah. Even the blurb in the book the totem is introduced in explicitly warns that Adversary *really* has trouble working with others, unless he's the one in charge. (about as explicit as the books usually get to saying "this totem works better for NPCs and opponents than actual PCs")
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Oct 31, 2018 14:33
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Siegkrow posted:If there are shamans of radiation, are there shamans of technology? It's not impossible. It might not even be unlikely.
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Nov 1, 2018 19:44
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wiegieman posted:There is, but it's a serious edge case and not what people really get into blood magic for (which is making other people pay for your Phenomenal Cosmic Power.) It's mostly taking damage for more efficient healing spells, but you're always going to have to get power (Blood Points, because we needed another resource to track) from the Sacrifice metamagic to make them work -- somebody's bleeding for this stuff. Yeah, and there's one of the big secrets of the setting right there - well, sort-of-secret and pretty much anyone who knows about magic can figure it out: The Great Ghost Dance was a sacrifice magic ritual. The actual count isn't precisely known, but it's estimated that close to a few hundred mages poured their life, blood and soul into it to fuel the power Daniel Howling Coyote needed to push multiple volcanoes into erupting. ... Which worries Aztech, because despite by now having pooled the blood of hundreds of thousands of "sacrificial subjects" they're not even close to matching that, and they have no idea why, so they keep on bruteforcing it...
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Nov 2, 2018 19:37
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apostateCourier posted:Yeah. Any number of sacrificial victims won't give as much bang for your buck as a few mages who are dedicated enough to a cause to die for it and also use blood magic. Bingo. And for extra credit, now try to imagine how much "bang" you'd get from a thirty thousand year old Great Dragon deliberately, freely and willingly sacrificing himself after first setting himself up as the embodiment of a nation's hope for a brighter future.
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Nov 2, 2018 21:40
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wiegieman posted:It's Dunklezhan though. He wen tout of his way to be a nice guy (reptile?) Unless you believe that it was all groundwork for The Sacrifice of the Beloved King. I'd argue that if you're willing to set up your own death so that it'll have the maximum effect in order to power a ritual intended to save the world (or at least, significantly delay the impending apocalypse) you deserve the 'good guy' accolade regardless. And yes, the bit with the car does suggest he was earnestly trying to be kind and thoughtful, not (or at least, not <i>just</i>) a public image.
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Nov 10, 2018 08:27
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And just to make things interesting, mages can get addicted to foci, which follows the same mechanics. And every time they take Magic loss from the addiction, they have to compensate for it by Geasing themselves to /need/ a focus on them to function, magically...
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Dec 20, 2018 22:44
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Siegkrow posted:...can you eat cockatrices? Do they taste better than chicken? Regardless of whether there is, I'm certain enough wealthy people believe there is that you could probably find a profitable market.
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Jan 27, 2019 17:46
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GhostStalker posted:Ah, BADs (Bioengineered Awakened Drugs, the Shadowrun line writers tend to love punchy and ironic seeming acronyms). When Novacoke isn't enough, Tempo can give you that fix you want (and give even mundane the ability to see into the Astral for a short time!). Just ignore the fact that you're feeding the cartels (what isn't these days?) and it comes from Toxic infected Awakened trees, last I checked! Side effects may include astral perception, enhanced physical strength and resilience, severely impaired judgement and/or temporary possession by the tree spirit whose bark was harvested for that batch. kaosdrachen fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Jan 29, 2019 |
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Jan 29, 2019 19:45
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CannonFodder posted:A whole field of Audrey 2 just wanting to be fed. Yeah, that fits Shadowrun (but not Aztechnology for their methods use only mundane ingredients) Yeah, Aztech is evil even by the standards of corporate bastards, but they're not morons.
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Jan 29, 2019 19:54
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Poil posted:How exactly does a cheap construction thing stop spirits? Spirits are usually pretty powerful. Maybe it just stops them from casually wandering through because they can't be bothered with the barrier since if it was that easy no building anywhere would ever need to worry about spirits, projecting mages or vampires. Vampires, and other infected like ghouls, as well as shapeshifters, centaurs and so on are all dual natured and are halted by astral barriers. The key point here isn't even that they're dual-natured, it's that they're /alive/. Astral travelers can't pass through living matter -- that's one of the reasons it's become fashionable to cover your facility's outer walls in decorative plants and vines. Those "cheap construction things" are essentially modular panel-shaped terraria for bacteria that were carefully cultivated to count as sufficiently 'alive' to be impassable, with integrated life support systems. The really posh setups have an entirely separate plumbing system connecting all the wall panels to a big algae tank in the basement where they can be nurtured and replenished indefinitely. FAB takes the concept one step further by cultivating an airborne bacteria that's <i>Awakened</i> enough to glow when an astral form pushes them aside, thereby alerting even mundane detection systems that an astral entity is present in the facility -- basically, they still can't see the astral form itself, but they /can/ see the vaguely humanoid space surrounded by a billowing glowing cloud.
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Mar 4, 2019 20:13
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