/srg/ - Shadowrun General

In every game that has elves I make characters that hate elves. Fortunately this game inspires me to make something different--characters that hate everyone.

CRAWWWWLING IIIIN MY SKIIIIIIN

also forget elves i wanna know about real fey where can a chummer go to meet the real otherwordly creatures?

>how to hate everyone without being edgy

Make characters that are WAY off the drawing board. Make a changeling that hates 'normies' (Which will probably be everyone in the party). Make an infected that hates 'normies'. Make a Racist KKK member from the 60's who was leonized and hates anyone who is either Magic, Cybered up, or not just a 'human'.

Full metagenic qualities rolled out for a full random SURGE III:

Positive metagenic qualities
Digging claws, 3 karma
Functional Tail (Thagomizer): 5 Karma
Greasy Skin: 3 karma
Vomeronasal Gland: 3 karma
Natural Venom (Injected, Mild): 3 karma
Dermal Deposits: 3 karma
Goring Horns/Larger Tusks: 5 Karma
Low Light Vision: 4 Karma

Karma total: 29

Negative Qualities:
Bioluminescense: 5
Critter Spook: 5
Cyclopean Eye: 6
Nocturnal: 4
Stubby arms: 10

Karma total: 30

I'm allowed to err on the side of 1 karma point, so... this is what we got.

Some creepy ass, stubby armed-ass, greasy one-eyed glowy fuck.

This will be fun.

Morrigan was a cool chick. She knew her way around an engine, kept a trunk full of ordinance, and shared her novacoke. She and Bastion were a good match.

So, does anyone have any idea where I can find rules on movement speeds and tunneling and shit? Or is it pretty much all GM territory?

Tir plz go.
Knife ears should be gassed.
I personally cannot understand why Elfs are so 'cheap' in shadowrun. They are a really good way to boost agi and cha without much investment of anything and without losing anything other than your dignity.

Could you link the venom to the tail and have a scorpion stinger?

Favorite elf is a huge slut who slept with a dragon, a changeling, a near-cyberzombie and a naga.

I am so jealous in and out of character.

Elves have always been way too cheap for the amount of shit they get for free. in DnD, they can get: +2 Dex, Immunity to sleep, +2 racial bonus against enchantment spells and effects, Low Light Vision, a collection of weapon proficiencies for free, +2 racial bonus on Spot, Listen, and Search, AND automatically get a search check vs. hidden doors.

All for the low low cost of -2 constitution

Sounds kinda like a venomous badger or a fucked up platipus

That's... actually a pretty creative idea.

>This powerfully muscled prehensile tail ends in an array of dermal spikes and can be used for a melee attack using the Exotic Melee Weapon (Thagomizer) skill, with the following stats: DV (STR + 3) P, Reach 1, AP –1.

I was inclined to believe 'yes' until I re-read the natural venom, where I saw this:

>Injected (Injected Vector, 0 Karma, requires Fangs quality, p. 115).

>Requires Fangs Quality

So, I'm at a loss here. Either I have this poison, and I literally can't use it, or I am not allowed to HAVE this quality, without the fangs quality.

I was initially thinking about just having the guy take a syringe to the inside of his mouth an extracting it Manually.

can you direct me to a not fucked up platypus?

Because elves are simply better humans. Human 2.0.

Chummer isn't even coming up with Mild Injected venom.

Am I literally not allowed to have the quality without Fangs? if that's the case, I'm rolling a new quality.

Correction: Chummer isn't coming up with ANY injected venom

Of course not. The quality states a requirement, and Chummer hides anything you don't have the requirements for.

There's another alternative - you have to take Fangs when you roll injection venom.

Sorry if I'm being a scrub, but I cant figure this out. can you move under your walking speed, do a complex action and then move the rest?

Okay sorry,

A /more/ fucked up platipus
I vote you fudge it & reroll those vemon sacks & be a crazy badger berserker with a combat ax & a drug problem

Do I get it for free? Because if not, I have a lot of re-rolling to do.

Honestly, the easiest thing will just be to re-roll the natural venom, since I didn't roll the ability to use that quality.

I think I'll do this, and just re-roll the natural venom.

>Do I get it for free?
Why would Patrick Goodman make this easy on anyone willing to roll dice for their SURGE? It's supposed to be difficult to the point of being unfun.

You could take out Low Light Vision, as the last rolled PMQ that wouldn't have been rolled otherwise.

>1'st reroll is Natural Venom, Injected, mild

Fuck me.

>2nd reroll is a 5, which is too many points

>3rd reroll

Magnetoception or Electrosense

Alright, THIS is something I can work with.

I really want to work with the Burrowing claws for some reason. Electroception would let me sense people while I was underground for some underground bullshit, but I still have no idea how traveling underground/burrowing works.

Well, I'm assuming that YOU are Patrick Goodman in this isntance.

If you're the original suggester of the challenge, I'll take your ruling. I was really hoping to keep Low Light Vision because that actually works well with my Bioluminescence, but I'll let it be your call.

Injected requires the Fangs quality and one of the Changeling qualities. Technically it'll show up if you untick the 'Show only qualities I can take' option, but you'll get a validation warning if you try to complete the character without it.

I really should get around to implementing that surgen equivalent in Chummer, the code's been half-done for months.
The PDF rendering should be fixed in the latest nightly. Still needs some work with formatting and I'd die happy if I could get automatic page breaks to actually work or acquire someone to maintain those godawful sheets for me, but it's betterer.

>Well, I'm assuming that YOU are Patrick Goodman in this instance.
>If you're the original suggester of the challenge
I'm neither, (un)fortunately.

Ah well. In that case, I'm just doing the re-roll and using Electroception.

So, yekka, Greasy Skin doesn't seem to be coded as a Metagenic Quality, it's costing me 3 karma when it shouldn't. (I know that I can just click the 'free' button, but it's still something to be aware of)

Okay, with the final lineup:

Surge 3:
Positive metagenic qualities
Digging claws, 3 karma
Functional Tail (Thagomizer): 5 Karma
Greasy Skin: 3 karma
Vomeronasal Gland: 3 karma
Electroception: 4 karma
Dermal Deposits: 3 karma
Goring Horns/Larger Tusks: 5 Karma
Low Light Vision: 4 Karma

Negative Qualities:
Bioluminescense: 5
Critter Spook: 5
Cyclopean Eye: 6
Nocturnal: 4
Stubby arms: 10

I'm writing up a character right now. gonna be in pastebin because I dunno how long I'm gonna make it.

Whups, missed the metagenic tag. Fixed in the next build.

It's nice to see someone do something creative with a changeling and not simply go werewolf or catgirl with it. Or be the cancer that is the player who goes drake.

I always love a good challenge.

>werewolf, catgirl, drake
To be fair, that section of players will always be a problem, no matter what they play.

So how common is SURGE-ing in the setting? Is there a part of Seattle referred to as the Pet Shop District or the Zoo?

Felt in the spirit to add my own Surged freak. Class 2 randomised everything, rolling till the values were equal

Tail (Balance)
Keen Ears
Camoflage (Dynamic)
Mood Hair
Cepholapod Head
Third Eye
Insect Features

So a fucked up cthulhu faced freak whose natural camo reacts to his mood, he's got an extra eye & is probably chitinous & has a devil tail to top it off

It actually went rather well.

Please kill it with fire

>you will never have SURGE-afflicted Tir Ghosts kill threats to the corporately-free world

Hey, wasn't there a DND race of one-eyed dinosaurian fucks with thagomizers?

Why the heck is Jake n' frenz in workshop for all the Shadowrun Returns shit, but Joshua and pals are nowhere to be found?

I think it's, like, .1% for ANY changeling (including the rating 1's), and from there, 60% surge 1, 30% surge 2, and 10% surge 3, but that's all memory, so I could be WAY wrong.

Every time I've seen a drake character sheet I always think "what a wasted opportunity" because they always just think of it as "Rawr I'm a super cool dragon."
When in truth they should be like "I gotta hide myself constantly never show what I really am and gods help me if a dragon catches my scent."

Pic related

.1% is the of global population that is a changeling. They become a lot more common in areas with a lot of magic and spirits running about.

Damn, im feeling bad for rolling up a drake now...

Is there info on that in Year of the Comet or something?

Embrace it, chummer.

Don't feel bad, make a good damn character. Make it something that won't be a wasted opportunity.

Supposing I was able to get any one of these for under $13 US (plus shipping), which ones should I go for?

Dreamchipper
Queen Euphoria
Predator and Prey
Total Eclipse
Celtic Double-Cross
Missions
Shadowtech
Eyewitness
Fields of Fire
Imago
Ivy and Chrome
Divided Assets

LADIES AND GENTLEMAN! I PRESENT TO YOU: ONE FUCKED UP TRAINWRECK OF A FULL-RANDOM SURGE III CHARACTER!!

pastebin.com/ZvJV3yvf

Naw just in the runners companion it states that a surge can occur during any exposure to a huge amount of magic. So a natural assumption is if your constantly being exposed to pure magic on daily basis would have that effect. Really it comes down to head canon and how prevalent you want changelings to be.

If your playing a drake and your not scared of dissection then your doing it wrong.
The only way you could conceivably live above the poverty line as a drake is if you also got the qualities astral chameleon AND erased. (Or had magic powers/hacking ability to do that shit yourself)

When comparing Street Samurai to Physical Adepts, would it be correct that Street Samurai come out of chagen stronger than Adepts, but Adepts have a higher upper limit due to (theoretical) infinite growth? A Sammy could be rich but their Essence only takes them so far in regards to augmentation, however an Adept can just keep Initiating.

So how is a Drake supposed to live?

IIRC, some changelings in Seattle congregate in the shittier parts of town, particularly in the Puyallup Barrens. There's loads more orks and trolls there for it to be considered "The Puyallup Zoo" or anything, though.

A slave, a lab subject, or a poor as shit runner.
If your lucky you might be a pet, but generally that spot is reserved for True Drakes.
and when I say poor as shit runner, I mean you can't actually have a lifestyle above poor otherwise you'll get dragons knocking at your door. If you have a nice GM you might get away with middle class baring you have the resources to protect you.
The only thing in SR that puts a bigger target on your back is going into Blood, Toxic, or Bug Magic.

No, quite the opposite: An Adept has the ability to come out way further ahead during character creation, because Sammies are heavily limited by money, essence, and availability.

Out of character creation, sammies can earn WAY more money than adepts can earn karma, and the street sam can start getting much better gear. They can upgrade to alpha and betaware, which gives them more essence to work with, they get better guns, and they still can use that karma for personal upgrades like skills and attributes.

Adepts on the other hand need almost no money. An adept can come out of the woodworks with more than enough skills to beat a street sam at their own game. But, after that, almost all the money that they get can't go into self improvement, since they don't get cyberwear, unless they go the burnout route.

And all the karma they get will be being spent increasing their magic/initiating (which is very expensive).

So, adepts start off stronger than sammies. Sammies quickly become better after a couple runs.

>So, adepts start off stronger than sammies. Sammies quickly become better after a couple runs.

That depends entirely on the karma/nuyen balance in your run rewards.

I also think it's reasonable for GM's to incorporate the Missions rules that let you exchange karma for nuyen and vice-versa.

While this is true, the karma rewards were designed to be pretty low for a reason. And most rules that I find that involve karma to nuyen exchanges (And vice versa) run on an 10,000 to 1 ratio.

If your average run nets you, say, 30k nuyen, and 5 karma (I dunno, I'm making stuff up right now), you can turn that into 0 nuyen and 8 karma, which... isn't that big of a deal by comparison.

Take that to a street sam, and that 30k can be put to use for upgrading his ware, as well as taking the karma to shore up some skills he's lacking in, or even picking up a quality or two.

My bottom line is that Nuyen is the much more plentiful resource, and street sams can make much more use of it than adepts can, who have to balance their karma between Magic/initiation, qualities, and skills.

Ive posted a bit before about him.
He is an blade adept, he was made by Dunkelzahn, raised by another dragon through the Draco Foundation, (Uncle Dunkel left me to them when he died, I was originally intended to be a sort of champion fighter, he has a very strong Samurai/Paladin mindset) He views himself as a dragon, masquerading as a meta. He gave the Draco Foundation funded orphanage the slip, & is running the shadows as a way to put his skills to use & help people out. He shares his sire's fasination of metahumanity. His Mentor Spirit is the Dragonslayer, he hates Lofwyr & one of Lofwyr's pet drakes, Snares-the-Sun, who has tried to aggressively recruit my character. He is only going to drake out when fighting hard fights, or if his drake form is better suited to the task, otherwise he is pretty sneaky.

Im trying to think of a good name for him, something dragony, perhaps a kenning type name

But it has to be a valid trade-off for being a Drake right? I can understand and sympathize with an NPC Drake, but a player Drake would have a lot of power correct?

That still has to suck.

The thing is, the way karma and money scales, karma gives progressively less value than money, in regards to improvements. Sams can use both karma and money to get better, but outside of foci, adepts don't have a lot to play with, and even foci cost karma.

Most GM I've played with (including myself) end up following the lines of the book rewards, and it benefits more nuyen than karma, and even if you give larger karma or convert them, it still will be diminishing returns than money due to how karma scales when you spend it.

Yay, it's extremely racist to have those poor Changelings live with dirty trogs.

Describe the Drake form's appearance and I can probably suggest some from my usual style.

>If your average run nets you, say, 30k nuyen, and 5 karma
Book gives you a base of 3k per person

>That still has to suck.

They're called "Barrens" for a reason, chummer.

>it still will be diminishing returns than money due to how karma scales when you spend it.

That's a good point.
Nuyen does has an eventual hard cap on how good you can get, though - even with deltaware. Adepts and Mages, with enough karma, can just keep raising their Magic and getting more dice.

Western drake is bestern drake

>eventual

If a game ever runs long enough for me to get a street sam to be completely tricked out with deltaware, well over 5.8 essence worth, that game has probably gone on too long.

Rewards are covered on page 367. An average run that you can survive brings in 10k or so. A 30k job is less 'average' then 'You Died', and should, if you survived, bring in at least 9 karma.

A more average run is about 10k and 5 karma, however.

Forgot to mention,
He is red mainly with blue membranes & underscaling. If you need anything more just ask

That is generic...like I've heard this story before, not only from other players but from myself.
Having Drake who is a dragons prodigal son is super common plots.

So I am gonna let you know how I spiced things up when I made my own drake. I made him a changeling surge 3. SUPER ugly motherfucker. I fluffed him as someone who survived a drake experiment that went wrong and it caught half way between transformations. So now his human form permanently looks monstrous.

Depends what the player is building the drake as. Anything magical is gonna be beneficial as a drake. But the problem with starting as a Drake is the high BP can cripple your character if your not careful.
Now if you chose latent dracomorphis, then your either trying to fuck yourself or trying to break the rules so you can have your cake and eat it too.

The party mage just OHKO'd a helicopter by putting up a physical barrier in its blades.

Most versatile spell ever?

Right. Anyone who earned that much nuyen should have retired long ago.

Sammies also have to spend months and a bunch of contacts to get cybernetic upgrades that suck now anyway.

I hear they wanted to change things up from 4th where people would start as a street sam and never go under the knife again because they already had the kit they needed, but it's pretty fucking bullshit how terrible, and expensive, cybernetics are now.

>Made a Promise to go down swinging
>Won't let himself die a cheap death
>Won't make it easy
>Keeps running, keeps going on dangerous jobs
>Keeps using the money to get better gear, because it can't be easy
>Just wants to die now.

>Dwarf street sam with a mohawk and blue paint.

How about Tharomophis Serpin or Agame Doble?

If I'm going to play a Surge, the random roll thing the other guy is doing seems like the best bet. Might make my players do something similar one day for the lulz.

My GM's handling it by letting us buy up cyberware like magic.

I don't get the reference.

Warhammer

Warhammer Fantasy Dwarven Slayers.

I believe in simple backstorys & worthwhile roleplaying. I dont like complex backgrounds, they just limit what you can bring to the table, i dont like being edgey & i dont lkike anime bullshit.

I'm going with a superman vibe, Uncle Dunkel is dead, was taught how to be human by the Foundation, then was taught my real calling by a surrogate dragon parent. It was a toss up between Dunk or Lofwyr being my sire when i made my drake, i didnt want to have a german vibe so i went with Dunk. Then i decided Lofwyr might as well be after me since he is the biggest wizwyrm around. Plus i cant be ugly cause im doubling as our Face.

Oh. I never touched Warhammer.

I like Tharomophis. Agame Doble sounds like a fancy pastry though. How do you come up with names? Me i just smash sounds i like together. Like Kortalynarus is the dragon that taught drake

I have a set naming scheme for almost all the races I have in my games. Stuff like Gryphon NPCs having names based on Falcons and other predatory birds and the like.

I took that name by messing around with the Scientific name of the California Red Garter Snake because it matched your color scheme and looks cool. Agame Doble is just a play on the Agame lizard, which also has a matching color scheme. The Doble part should be obvious that it is Spanish for Double, and the lizard's scientific name is Agame Agame.

Thats cool. Didnt catch the spanish. The Agame does have a good color palette for what i was aiming for

What are some good traits for a competing party that is both competent and really lame?
I am thinking of having them call themselves "the dragons" and have matching outfits.

Make them all elf posers

A lot of half-truth in here, to say it frankly.
After Chargen, the difference between a properly built Sam and a properly built Adept is pretty small in their main field (Shooting).
Sometimes one will be better, sometimes the other and there are a few things that are easier to build with one of them (eg Charbuilds that specialise really hard on full-auto and thus require all the RC they can get => Cyberarm Gyromount), but overall, there is very little difference when it comes to shooting.

The thing that Sams excel in, are permanet boosts to (many) attributes. Adeps usually only get a + to REA, and use temporary buffs for everything else.
Adepts, on the other hand, are the uncontested Kings when it comes to armed melee combat due to how weapon foci work.

So basically, if you want the highest cieling possible for your main Weapon Skill, go Adept.
If ~20 Dice are enough for you, and you prefer a broader possible skillset, go for Sams.
Eg, its a lot easier to be a Sam/Driver and even a Sam/Face is fairly easy to build because Pheromones are fucking cheap. You won't be as good as a dedicated Pornomancer, but you will be scary with a Gun and with a Martini.

Adepts have it easier to get more competent in their specialisation though (in practice, not in theory), because Innitiations are dirt Cheap and its easier to scrounge up the Karma for two of them than it is for a Sam to get the moniez for new Ware.
The latter point can be mitigated though, with a proper build that sets a foundation on which you can expand with Karma.

Have them not all get the memo exactly, so you have two different takes on the name.

Reminds me of a joke I can't quite find, where a comedian does a hen's night for 40 women who turned up dressed as indians. 39 feather head dresses, and one sari.

Is banning cyberdecking and technomancers a good idea? I'm the GM but I'm too lazy to deal with that.

Yes. Make them npc teammates or contacts.

You COULD make it a quick&dirty hack by using the /SRG/ houserule of making all hacking/decking attempts a simple role with threshold equal to the Firewall of the target Device.

I'd ask around in the group before you ban them, its cutting out quite a few potential playeroptions.

>KKK member
IIRC they are actually opposed to humanis, because they don't fucking care if you are a human, trog or keeb
as long as you aren't a fucking nigger

The way you phrased that amuses me