/srg/ - Shadowrun General

They're good for turning a melee character into a half assed sniper that can't manage a decent rate of fire without GM involvement, or decent armour penetration.

I think the only type of AIs that worked mechanically were some kind of cheerleader AI and some kind of shooter skillbot.
I don't actually know.

Chummer definitely doesn't have custom drugs, yeah?
R5 has the NeoNet juggernaught, page 145.

A modded pistol crossbow mounted on the wrist has always been a favorite of mine, especially with shock or incendiary bolts since neither use the bows shitty damage.

The branch that implements it is super out of date, but wouldn't need much to be finished, I'm just short on time and caught up with fixing issues.
Bows are exclusively good for style.

Thematically, bows are cool.

Mechanically, they're worthless. You require 10 Str before they even start to be remotely comparable to any normal weapon, they're one shot per turn, they require excessive actions, they have limited range, they're large and clunky, limited ammo options, bad AP, and a whole slew of other issues.

The only real legitimate use of them is as a stealth weapon, but even then it's a complete meme, and gets outdone by a fucking pistol crossbow with the shock bolts with static shafts.

The only real unique thing bows have going for them is Alchemy, but Alchemy by RAW is fucking terrible. And the pistol crossbow would do it better.

Speaking of bows, i have a question. Seeker shafts say that they make locking on a free action. How does one go about acquiring a target lock with a weapon?

Smartlink!

Wireless bonus!

I've been looking through the books for how to do that, but i can't find anything. how does it work? can i get a page number?

Sensor Attacks, 184.

Ah, I see. Do I use my own attributes for the sensor test? What determines the limit in this case?

On the subject of fixing bows, what would people suggest as a solution?

Off the top of my head, I'd say increase max rating to 15, and allow you to use a rating equal to double your strength without penalty.

Well, if we're actually being serious, it should probably be something like the rating determining the max Str, and adding the rating itself as a fraction to the damage.

Say you've got a Str 10 Troll, so his R10 bow does 10(Str)+5(Rating)P, and tweak the AP so that it's -1AP per 3 damage. So a 15P bow has an AP or -5, basically the ranged equivalent of a Highland Forge Claymore.

You're still only getting one shot per turn, but you can at least fuck someone up with that one shot probably.

The double strength thing is a bit much, but increasing the maximum rating to somewhere in the 12-16 range would help a lot. The other big thing would be reducing nock-and-fire to a simple action if you have something like Nimble Fingers or the Quickdraw Quiver. I've got rules for this written up somewhere from a few days ago, I think.

Actually no, disregard that. Seeker Shafts have their own rules. It's just a Simple Action that requires a smartlink. Can't say I'm particularly amused about that myself, but eh.
Invent gunpowder.

C G L

Ah, so they do. Guess I managed to not read that part.

I hate that I ever defend CGL, but: They were okay. Were. I think the embezzlement thing removed any dissenting voices, and now we've got this.

>Actually no, disregard that. Seeker Shafts have their own rules.
Every time CGL have created something that could follow pre-existing rules, they've managed to fuck up and not use those pre-existing rules.

The problem is that the embezzlement basically made almost every good person they had go "Well, fuck this shit" and ditch hard, and they never actually took a step back and tried to fix any of that.

There are extended rules in the Hard Targets sourcebook, but they don't do much more than differentiate between two (three) types of bows, and their capabilities.

Traditional bows get Overdraw, which snaps the bow on a critical glitch but otherwise counts the rating as 1 higher for determining damage.

Compound bows get the ability to hold the Take Aim action for the user's Body rating times 4 combat turns, and allows them to be mounted with Smartlink systems due to the fixed velocity.

Dynamic Tension bows also exist, in case you're playing an Archer Adept, or if you have a support mage who can buff your Strength. They can adapt their rating to any Strength rating between 1 and 10 as a simple action, or as a free action if wireless.

A possibly simpler solution might be to change the damage calculation to (Str)+(Rating+5)P as opposed to (Rating+2)P.

The point of the double strength thing, which in retrospect might be a touch much, is that the biggest problem of bows in my opinion is the required strength to use. The double strength for example gives an average human (STR 3) a bow shot of 8P, equivalent to a heavy pistol, while a specialized human with some STR buffs (STR 8) will be letting loose 17P, which is good for an assault cannon. Without the double strength they would be 5P and 10P, both of which are pretty shit.

Or just push the draw strength/size/etc back into fluff territory and make the calculation (STR+X) like most melee weapons, if you really want to simplify.

A normal dude with some augments putting out assault cannon powered arrows is also a bit fucking absurd.

What is a good mentality for the chaos tradition?

Can this actually be used as a player character though?

Well, yeah. And now, like I said, no dissent. So we end up with.. this. Everyone looks at things and go "Fuck, that's a good idea."

Honestly, yeah, that'd probably be good, and it stops the bullshit where fucking arrows cost thousands of nuyen.

Pick a 'general outlook' for your practitioner, but value all sources of magic. As long as they don't depend on assloads of math or symbols.

As an AI rigger, sure. You'd want to trick it the fuck out. Be borderlands 2 wilhelm.

It's funny, because literally all they need to do is run playtests on the forums and have a community manager collect feedback. Toss it up here, on Reddit, and the official forums. Congrats, free fucking editing and review, all the autistic combos will be found, and it'll get fixed, because we WANT a good game.

Like I said, straight double was a bit much in retrospect. All I was trying to illustrate in that post was the problematic nature of the rather prohibitive strength requirements.

I've been homebrewing arrow costs for months. They're rating-neutral and cost like 6 nuyen a pop.

Where do I find ruling for an AI Rigger?

Vaguely buddhist. "Oh look, it works. Great! I like it! Doesn't need 8 pages of proofs, either!"
Yeah, but I think the older freelancers might nix the things they don't like.
Uh, AI creation rules are in Data Trails, then use that as a rigger.

>
>Exclusive to toxic adepts only

Then why is plague cloud in the druid's recommended adept spell selection and says it doesn't require a toxic shaman? Is this just another prime example of writer oversight?

There's not a sort of similar adept power that I'm overlooking, is there?

Downloads are in the OP.

Check the OP. 'Cloud file storage'.

Fuck organization, fuck standardization, there's no one answer to magic. If it's magic, it's magic, and magic is magic.

They're very much the "I believe nothing, therefore I believe everything" tradition. No two unrelated Chaos casters are the same, though, since they're so far removed from the typical fuss of belief and tradition. They just do what works, and ignore what everyone says about magic. They have their own relationship with it, and their own methods, and that's all that they give a fuck about.

Thanks, I thought that was just random text inserted for flavor.

The tradition that gives no fucks about tradition. They do things however they feel comfy and anyone that says there's a correct way to magic can get fucked.

Thanks man, now my robot fantasies shall come true!

There is a level of sense to not re-using those rules if the sensor isn't as refined as a proper lock-on capable entity, but it seems like it would be easy to just go 'The arrow has a Sensor of 2; use the rules for Sensor Targeting on SR5 bla bla'. I dunno, maybe part of it's just that the freelancers are paid on wordcount.
Because druids are all terrible people that want to tear civilisation down by the roots and make us live like savages.

Hm. Maybe do away with bow ratings, increase damage to STR+4/6 (on par with a large melee weapon), and increase AP to something like (STR/2) or (STR/3)-2. Ratings are great for representing how heavy the draw weight on a bow is but it's also a pain in the ass when it comes to wielding a bow you didn't buy and tune explicitly for yourself.

A chaos mage is a lazy and impatient hermetic mage in that they still view it as a science in many ways. They still have to learn and observe, they just don't limit themselves to one path, they might have some hermetic tricks, that they use with a shamanistic ritual base with religious BS that somehow works for whatever reason.

Yekka, chummer's giving me problems with house rules. When I tick some boxes and confirm, it'll ask if I want to save as normal. Then it crashes if I tell it to restart to enumerate the new changes. And after booting it back up, the box I ticked is saved but its effects are not reflected.

Specifically, I'm trying to enable the free knowledge skill points from augmented attributes. It shows the box as ticked, but does not award me the bonus points.

How about this?

Have three tiers of bows.

You've got your Shortbows, which are somewhat concealable, short to middle range, and lower damage. Something like Str+1 damage, maybe Str x5/Str x15/Str x30 for range increments.

You've got your standard bow, which is basically the bow as it currently stands, maybe bump it up to Str+3 P and change the AP around a bit, keep the range.

And then you've got your Greatbows, sitting up at like 1.5x the normal bows range increment, Str+5P with around -5AP or so.

Add a customization system for arrows with most of the current arrowheads/shafts usable, maybe some sort of add-on for a compound bow/techbow type thing.

Change Personalized Grip to something like, additional +2 effective Str or +1 effective strength for the bow, because it's customized to you specifically?

Bloody hell, this is turning into a total conversion. I'll have to play around with some ideas and see what I come up with.

Yeah, I'm gonna tinker around with some shit on my end here and see if I can get a neatly-compiled list of all the available shit for them so it's an easy reference.

>greatbow

Don't feel too bad. I ended up doodling most of the 'notes toward the advanced magic sourcebook' in breaks between games so they could be used with the game. I may even digitise it eventually.

...

I'm running a 4e game for a few real life friends tomorrow, and I really don't have much prepped besides general ideas and I'm not confident in my mastery of the system...

What should I do?
Is there any kind of useful gamemaster screen pdf I could print out to have on me?
Any tips on setting the mood or pacing?

So far what I've got planned for my Elf Magician Cyberdoc Face and Ork Sledgehammer/Fist Adept Infiltrator is pretty much a run out to the roads in the Mojave part of the PCC to smash a truck full of a Soylent Brown so the corp can get insurance money and cause a few food scarcity issues.

>Running an IRL game tomorrow and no prep
Reschedule and start reading, friendo.

>when you're attached to your mentor spirit and feel bad disappointing her during runs because you are a bad player that doesn't think everything through.

Wise Warrior was a mistake since I'll never live up to it.

A 6 body troll attempts to chest bump a 1 body elf mage.

What kind of damage rolls am I going to have to make here?

None unless the troll is actually trying to harm the elf. In which case, roll it as an unarmed attack.

Ask your GM to wear a mask that looks like The Boss the whole time so he can sneer disapprovingly at you. You know, for roleplay purposes.

None? Maybe a few stun at most.

Might as well be The Boss since it's Joan of Arc

Ain't no way a nigga is gonna be able to reach that, especially in the dark cyber future.

Could use D&D logic. Give each class of bow a minimum Strength requirement but calculate damage with Agility. Horrible idea, but it's an idea.

Elf is knocked on his ass, everybody laughs, end scene

D&D calculates bow damage off Strength except for a few rare and typically overly expensive ways that can get you Dex to damage.

Probably just minor stun from the impact with the ground, if the elf doesn't manage to catch himself.

Arms and hands might be scraped from the impact as well.

Last time I played it, all ranged weapon damage was Dex-based. Is this a 5th ed thing?

I've been reading for a while now, and have accumulated a decent idea of what way I want to steer things story wise, it's just that I don't actually have much in the way of a full campaign written out.

We're all new to the system is the thing, and I've got basically no experience, despite having read the books and main 4e splats like thrice over.

Probably a 4e/5e thing.
All editions earlier than them, including Pathfinder, did Str for damage, Dex for your to-hit roll.

Right, I was thinking of attack rolls.

As a general rule, you'll want each player to be able to do at least 1-2 rolls each session, minimum.

Have a way to accomplish a given mission for each of your player. For example, if your group is a Mage, Street Sam, and Infiltrator, you have a little bit of Astral security/face things if he's a charisma tradition, a combat option for your street sam, and some sneaky options for infil for the other guy.

Thanks

Any way to make combat not a massive hour long drag like DnD? or will only two players and the fact that everything starts bleeding out in two bullets prevent that?

Probably. If everyone is lucky and using a lot of cover and armour it can take a bit, but if they're doing that the players are probably good enough to set ambushes and not get caught easily anyway.

It's going to be slow. Just serves as a way to encourage non-combat solutions!

All of this talk is just making me realize that running the first game any of us have played on the side of a lone road in the Mojave is probably a very very bad idea.

I'd still like that scenario at some point, but maybe when we're a bit more proficient.
What are some good quick things for me to read into to give me some more info on the Pueblo Corporate Council? Especially around Salt Lake

Forget the lone road part. The bit that should give you pause is "Mojave".

Information on the NAN has always been thin - you'll need to head back to 2 and 3e for that. The 4e books like Corporate Enclaves have a few good notes on the topic, usually as to how the PCC relates to Horizon. I think anyone can get a SIN there for 2000 nuyen or so.

If you want a stationary turret that's able to be moved around, and it's deployable to act as area denial, how do you best do that?

Can you actually upgrade a Smart Weapons Platform?

Apparently you can, but Chummer doesn't account for it.

Heeeeey, can you take a look at the Smart Weapons Platform from the CRB? Page 433. It counts as some sort of pseudo-drone thing, and you can upgrade it's stats. Would you maybe be able to add a thing where it puts it into the Drones/Vehicles section? That way it's easier to upgrade it.

>If you want a stationary turret that's able to be moved around
That's either not a stationary turret, or it's a drone with a weapon mount and tripod.

New to Shadowrun.

Would be a dumb and annoying to make a character who isn't from a city? Whose curriculum vitae mostly consists of fighting a bunch of bush wars and is unused to all the surveilance and need for sublety? Prefers a more direct and confrontational approach and expects bullets and machetes to fly earlier than usual?

The NAN has tribal folks who walk into a city, get a SIN as soon as they demonstrate they really are tribals, usually by speaking the language. There are feral sprawls. You could have him from a south american/african village, used as cannon fodder in the endless bush wars down that way by the local mercs/government forces, sure.

Plenty of places that are pirate/criminal havens, too - Macao, most of Thailand and the Fillipines.

Fully possible to do, mang. Just take the skills for it.

Generally, if you're playing at standard shadowrunner grade, then your character should be either capable enough to know the basics of surveillance and subtlety, be able to observe and follow others' leads, or be part of a team employed to be distractions / sent on suicide missions.

If your team isn't the latter, then you probably shouldn't throw them into such without clearing it by them first. Not just an offhand comment about your PC being feral before the game starts, but a full rundown and check that the team is ok with your character getting them into trouble by being ignorant.

That said, even ferals have shit to deal with, and recognise the need for good eyes and not being seen.

Why would you use 'ware over magic, from an OOC perspective?

It's expensive, easily identifiable, can't be hidden as easily, and just outright lacks a lot of what magic can do.

Its versatile, is a lot better to permanently boost stats, can give permanent boosts to mental stats, can do shit that Magic can't (hey there, Pain Editor) and gives you a far higher level of surviviability.
Try reaching 30+ soak at chargen as a Mage without becoming a one-trick pony.
Bioware is pretty hard to identify and scanning for Ware usually gives you only information that there is *ware in a specific place, not the exact type.

Alright, but if you aren't being some massively combat-focused thing made of bullshit, why would you do it?

Fresh from the draw thread. Cant wait to use this fucker for my next game and see him inevitably get shot in the face.

On the topic of the OP. Are small unit tactics actually useful? I've never seen them used.

Decently useful, not really anything that's 100% necessarily. It's a good bonus thing, the main problem is that it potentially eats actions, and combat already tends to just end in seconds anyway.

Cool, thanks. Figured I wouldn't play him like a complete retard, but just obviously out of his element, probably recognizing that himself deferring to the rest of the group when it's obviously a good idea.

Sorry but the guys are right, bows are way to bad to compare to firearms, even in the hands of an adept or samurai.

Pistol crossbow has the advantage with explosive and shock bolts, which do always the same damage, unrelated to the weapon used to fire them, even if you would use a goddamn harpoon rifle.

Or use the giantslayer sling as tool to for firing RFID chips or PP capsules at enemies.

Your GM might allow the quickdraw action for bows, which makes them suck less.
Crossbows are also a better than bows, since they don't scale on strenght and have a magazine + semi- automatic.

Most potent damage you can get out of a bow ist havin 10 str and using injection arrows filled with narco jet, since you do weapon damage, and the toxin damage at the end of the turn.

It lets you dip into utility you need post character creation. Lets say you are the decker, but you need to keep up with everyone when shit hits the fan. With some partial cyberlegs you can slap on some skimmers and not have to go all in like you would for being an adept or mage. Don't forget those great pheromone boosters!