/srg/ Shadowrun General

I'm looking for which books talk about police procedures. I looked in Vice, but it's more general information. I looked in Lone Star but it only has descriptions of the patrols and what happens if you are arrested. What happens during the actual stop?

Say the cops see an ork walking around looking like a street tough. He probably has drugs. What is the procedure?

>Jet Set Radio
>Not Summon Shotgun
Tried hitting up real life stuff?

I just realized:

Hey, yekka. How do I bypass disabled skills for AI? With the ability to re-assign the stat for them, it seems like I might be able to make this slightly less of a headache and actually put points into this I'd otherwise not be able to use.

Hoi chummers. Could I get a bit of help with Chummer 5? Specifically, how does restricted gear work and how do I apply weapon mount visibility, etc. to a specific weapon mount? I'm fiddling with it right now and it seems like it's just a flat 4k to apply "weapon mount visibility (concealed) to the vehicle, not the mount.

Sure, but the alternative is AI not working.

What I find particularly funny about it is that the AI section says to refer to the foundation table.. Which doesn't make a lot of sense, because then you're dependent on a device or emulated device for a skill check.

Someone in a reddit thread suggested using the astral attributes table instead for a houserule, which makes MUCH more sense.

What is the dumbest thing you have seen or have gotten away with in a run?

>be technomancer
>helping out gunbunny with sniper rifle
>need to make difficult shot to kill some gang leader held up in some building.
>ask my pic related machine sprite to give the rifle a diagnostics boost
>she straddles the barrel and starts rubbing her nonexistent vagina along its length complete with moaning and heart eyes
>sniper fixed to the scope doesn't/cant see the sprite acting like a turbo slut on her gun
>asks me if anything went wrong due to my initial reaction
>make up some excuse like some Nigerian prince sent spam to my brain or something.
>she buys it, makes the shot and we're out of there
>turns out my registered sprites hang out in matrix porn whenever i go to sleep.

Cyberlegs + skimmers.
My group has a sammy with those who runs faster than my van.
Assume it's like real life but worse. In the case of Lone Star, they probably just beat up random folks chicago pd style.
>playing an edgelord
Like, if the edgelord was also a waifu I'd put up with her, but still
That... would actually work really well.
>about to raid horizon prison
>need excuse to get in
>decide we're a horizon subsidized TV show, something between scooby doo and the blair witch project
>summon a spirit of man and put a bedsheet over it to function as the ghost
>HIJINKS!

Worth it?

I tried playing around with it some to see if you can attach it to specific weapon mounts, but it doesn't seem that it's able to be nested in it. Even if you do "Add location". Unfortunately, it seems it just has to be a part of the vehicle overall?

Sure, cuz it lets you summon force 7 spirits without taking physical drain. If they have engulf, they will go through mundanes like a hot knife through butter.

Guys, I need ideas.

My crew is preparing for a new mission, a bank job. Their job is to get into the facility, go into the the vault and steal the contents of a security box, and make enough of a mess on the place to make sure that nobody figures out that they were looking for that specific box.

Since I hope that one of the things to do is open as many boxes as their guts and greed allow, I need a few ideas of what is inside of them, they don't need to be worth money, simply things that are would be put behind all that security.

Check ID. Ask simple questions. Find probable cause. One pats down for weapons or drugs while the other guy stands nearby but outside of range that would get him involved in the fight. (i.e, maybe about 10 feet back. Not that he'd have his gun drawn, but if the suspect starts fighting his partner, he'd be in a better position)

In more dangerous areas it would be more cops, because someone has to watch out for the gang coming to help out a member, maybe.

Yeah, if you've invested into Summoning.

I'll keep that in mind.
Anything else I should snag as a summoner?

Things with high sentimental value or historical value. Paper documents containing sensitive data from before the digital era. Antique weaponry.

Or you could just go the payday route and have gold bars, straight cash & bonds, and jewelry. But these aren't necessarily mutually exclusive with the traits above.

We're all soldiers now. At least i am.

>That fake sin name
I love it

>Su Dohnym

I'm stealing this. It's too good.

There was a scene in the movie Sexy Beast where they drill in from a next door bath house pool undergound directly into the vault. They do this over the course of a few hours, using scuba gear and industrial equipment while the pool is closed.

The vault is flooded when they get in, but they get everything.

Precious stones/jewelry, gold, bank notes, incriminating bdsm photos for blackmail, foreign currency, important financial documents, black book lists ect.

Hey guys, I'm new to GMing Shadowrun, and I was wondering about the importance of inter-party balance, with stuff like optimization and role-overlap.

I've played Shadowrun before (5th) in a short lived campaign, but now I'm looking at running a game (also likely 5th) and I'm concerned that my lack of experience with the crunch might mean that I'll miss issues until they become a problem.

As a specific example, it seems like spirits are really strong. If someone specs that way, will that make a Street Sam useless?

Thanks for any help/advice.

Documents detailing the precise orbit of the space station Freedom (now Z-O), placed there by a downsized NASA employee who was assassinated before he could do anything with them.
an object on which a powerful free spirit has used hidden life
Maria Mercurial's sex tape
A spyglass foci that, if properly bonded to a mage, allows him to see as far as he wants in a straight line. Yes, he can cast spells through it.

A tradition with good spirits to summon.

>will that make a Street Sam useless?
In most cases UNLESS enemy mages have ranks in banishing, at which point spirits go poof.
In general, if the party mage is being too much of a dick, just throw out enemies with banishing and counterspelling, at which point the party mage becomes useless until those enemies die.

My GM wants pics for all our characters. Anyone got anything a green haired gnome with a shotty?

...

You can summon any spirit though? Tradition just dictates what spells you can stick them to?

Or am I confused again from last thread?

you are a little confused

each tradition is limited to the spirits listed as its combat/healing/whatever for summoning.

the spirit of that type is also limited to sustaining spells of its same category - so health spirits can only sustain health spells, and different traditions will have different types of spirit as their health spirit

No, you can summon any of the five spirits associated with your tradition. These spirits can then cast spells associated with their roles in said tradition. You don't get to summon spirits outside of your tradition at all as far as I know.

>You can summon any spirit though?
No. Otherwise the calling ritual to summon a specific, non-traditional spirit, would be pointless.

>be scamming some bunraku parlor operator out of the names of a bunch of corrupt cops
>team decides to send me (the hacker) into the meet with the guy, because "Hey, you look like the kind of scumbag would order a specialty meatpuppet." Thanks, chummers. You guys are faggots.
>guy leads me to his office and makes a big deal (like, the kind of "oh, I totally forgot I had this really opulent thing out" kind of big deal) out of showing off his prized meatpuppet
>it's a biosculpted teenage girl with cosmetic cyberware to look like an anime catgirl, hanging half-naked by her wrists.
>He says he uses her as a stress-relief punching bag.
>Asks if I want a turn.
>I shoot him on principle, and then shoot him three more times.

Actually finishing the run after that required a ton of extra legwork and a lot of bribes, not to mention our pay getting cut for the extra dead body. Getting the girl to someone who could look after her while we figured out who the hell she was also required burning a bridge or two (which didn't pan out anyway) and after we got her a new life with some on-the-level friends of ours, we never saw her again anyway. Looking back on it, it probably wasn't worth it in the long run. It probably wasn't even worth it at the time. But damn it, I wrote "I've got principles" on my character sheet and I fucking meant it.

Friend is getting into a SR5 game, and may be dragging me in with him. I have some experience building characters for 4, but never played more than...1.5 sessions.

What kind of dice pools should I aim for at character creation?

Is going nartaki and multi-weilding guns at all viable? I'd wager that, after splitting the dice 4 ways, you're not going to hit much, if anything.

Nah, you summon spirit types dictated by your tradition. So, for example, Hermetics summon fire spirits for when they need something set on fire.

Good on your, chummer.
Principles keep the cyber-psychosis away

Ya done good, user.
Ya done good.

Nice.

Getting shot is really his own fault for not checking a client for weapons at the door.

I am normally a huge moralfag but I made my Punching MysAd have Superhuman Psychosis because of the melee benefit

I am wondering if I fucked up or if I can twist it back to my moralfag ways

It being the right thing to do is the only reason we didn't bomb the run out of hand. That we didn't pariah ourselves from our Johnson's entire social circle or bring the wrath of the Yaks down on us is why I consider it a case of "getting away" with something.

I'll have to take a look into it, skills section was rewritten by one of the other devs and it kinda scares me at the moment.
Restricted gear is kind of lazy and may also still be broken for things with mods. If you have it, you can have one item that's over the availability cap.
I haven't looked at mount stuff in a while, it was handled as a data shim before. Lemme get back to you on that.

1/3 parameters met.

You can always buy away the quality after your runner has a moment which restores their metahumanity.

I imagine that most Johnsons wouldn't condone what that guy was doing. Johnsons are suits after all, they have daughters and wives too.

It's a social kind of thing. Like, you know the guy's carrying, the guy knows you're carrying, but neither of you want to say anything about it because then you'll have to confirm that you're both carrying and suddenly what's supposed to be a simple deal for a high-grade meat puppet in exchange for a handful of deadbeat clients turns into everyone worrying about whether or not someone's going to get shot.

Not investing in better business-casual body armor, though, was totally his fault.

Is there any way to be a Norse mage without being the Winternight kind of crazy?

Are there pagan mages?

If you have "Pilot Origins", you can jusr replace the Drone's pilot program. All tests through the drone become Depth + Skill (or autosoft rating.)

...

While Ragnarok is a prominent feature of Norse mythology, I don't think it's necessary to want to bring about the apocalypse in order to follow the tradition.
Um. Yes? A bunch. Shamans, druids, Aztecs, etc. are all fairly prominent. What sort of paganism are you even looking for?

Well, Norse, for one, but I'm also a huge Egyptaboo. Would the latter be as simple as making a Beetle or Jackal Shaman, or can I build out a whole other tradition?

I'm the guy from the other thread who still doesn't get what trafitions do.

Oh, okay. Hello!
Well, there is an Egypt tradition pre-made. It's in Shadow Spells, along with the Norse tradition. I'm assuming 5th edition, but they're both somewhere in 4th, too.
So yeah, go look at those, and then look at the mentor spirits and choose one that you feel is appropriate if you want.

...

Got a pg#?

Thank you so much!

BTW, that book doesn't seem to be in the Pastebin.

...

It is though. In the 5th edition folder of the mediafire folder. Shadow Spells, 2nd pdf down.

Cyberlegs+Skimmers, not-"Ares Screech Sonic Rifle" weapon.

Needs a little more oomph

I was looking in alphabetical order, my bad.

There are wicca mages if that is what you mean.

Pg 51 street grimoire

Also black magic and chaos magic, which are pretty neat.

On the phone right now, I'll get back to you as soon as I am behind my PC.

any advice for someone new to sr5?

So is the Shadowrun 2050 book any good?

Dicepools need to be between 10 to 15+ on your "main thing".
Splitting dicepools are not that great on this system unless you get really lucky, since most boost only apply to the total dicepool and not each individual throw. So you end up throwing down 4 dice against 5/6 on average, and at that rate you will barely hurt them.

The most simple for a newcomer is to stay away from hacking/technomancer/rigging and spirits. Adepts, "caster" magicians and sammys are easy to pick up and the first two don't require a lot of minmaxing to be effective.

Try to find out what are making the rest of the party, because it's more important you all cover eachother holes. Also, try to have a shared background with one or two players so you don't all meet up in a bar as strangers. Even "we worked before once or twice" is a big deal because gives you a bit of IC trust.

Negotiation, etiquette, perception, a melee and a ranged skill are a must no matter your role, at least a few points. Most importantly, make your character memorable in some way, give him a personality, and care a bit less on making him a murderhobo and more of someone who chose the Shadows and has a reason, even if that reason is making money to not die on the streets.

Question for those who know more about this game:

Aspected magicians, are they worth it? I read that they are the most common type of magician in-universe but seeing as they lose the astral ability and are limited otherwise so I am wondering if making one of them is worth the trouble.

For Dice pools: 6 is competent, 8 is good 10 is excellent

For Nartaki: Mechanically, every hand but one counts as and off hand, so you take a -2 for each you use a weapon with (so max -6 with 4 weapons, splitting dice 4 ways). I believe you can take ambidextrous multiple times for each hand though, 3 times max. Recoil would be a bitch though.

Skills you should always take include

Perception
A melee range combat skill:this should generally be unarmed combat or clubs
A Firearm Skill(automatics are good, pistols also covers tasers and are more concealable)
Con/Etiquette
Computers
First Aid, or someone else in the party should have it

Skills that are useful to have:

Sneaking/Stealth
Swim
Disguise
Survival
Gymnastics

Honorable mention Survival

Skill groups:

Athletics
Electronics
Stealth
Influence

honorable mention Acting

Pilot Origins doesn't do that, it gives you the benefits of a control rig while jumped into a specific category of vehicle. It's for jumping in, not being a drone rigger. You're able to use autosofts as though they're skills, but that doesn't carry over to any drones you're issuing orders to.
As far as dicepools go, I generally recommend you try for 12-16 at the thing you do best at, but ask your GM what everyone else is like. If the other combat guy is throwing 8 dice and you've got 20, you're going to throw the game balance out of whack and make the fun of the game go away.
Aspected magicians in 5th are absolutely terrible. They cost way too much for what they can do in priority, and the price gap in karmagen isn't high enough to justify not just taking Spirit Bane or a geas as a negative quality to scrape in the karma for becoming a full magician.

>beetle
No chummer, Insect shamans not allowed

They are useful for three things, low power games, very specific builds, and if when you make your first shadowrun character, to not feel tempted to spread out too thin.

The two schools you can use with it are Sorcery (Spellcasting in general) or Conjuring (Dealing with spirits). Enchanting is really good, but it's not a good PC specialization, because you end up with a lot of limits on what you can do, lose versatility mid-run (an important thing to have) and most of the enchantments are crazy expensive in drain.

They are not bad, and if you are using Priority and want to spend a few less points and get a cheaper mage they are good, just know your limits.

But, don't forget something, runners are the "best of the best" so to speak. You are the only people of doing this kind of jobs without any real backup from a corp or goverment, so the average shadowrunner decker/mage is a couple of times better than you corp slave of the same kind. After all, the only way to keep living on the shadows is to be the best.

Reminds me of one run I ran.
>Player wasn't using a fake sin, I found out.
>They did some terroist level shit, jacked an aires convoy
>Lonestar got evidence, they were sloppy.
>Lonestar took a PC's kid, turns out lonestar was taking them, and making them into pedophilic benraku puppets.

They ended up flooding the building with heating gas and being the kind of the rhumba beat.

so stat+skill+mods in double digit is solid. for guns, 5 agility +5 skill +2 spec +2 smartgun gets you to 14, and that's not capping anything

Also looking at maxing out Edge, but that seems to go against splitting pools as well. the oomph of adding 6 dice to an attack is somewhat lost when that gets spread around.

I'm thinking I'll go elf w/ maxed agility and edge, and focus on putting solid shots into whatever is downrange.

Although, I did just learn that we're not restricted on gear selection at game start. Only thing we can't get is cultured bioware, for some reason. Nartaki+4 laser pistols could be a fun combo. No recoil, and shears through armor

>Lonestar running a bunraku operation
Wut?

Corrupt cops, it wasn't on the books.
All those foster care kids got to go somewhere, might as well make some extra nuyen, ya know?

is the adept power motion sense always on? how does it work

Is it generally not a good idea to create a "hub" area of general contacts and NPCs when writing a campaign for your players?

I just finished playing SR Hong Kong and it's kind of a neat idea to articulate a space like that and populate it with wonderful, neurotic weirdos.

How bad of an idea is it to use K-10 as your go-to combat booster? What can I do to keep myself from getting addicted, while still enjoying it's benefits to the fullest?

Have they confirmed that they're done making Shadowrun videogames? I was holding out hope...

>K-10
>go-to combat booster
>go-to
Oh god what

They're doing Battletech right now. They'll go back to Shadowrun eventually.

>Maria Mercurial's sex tape
YOU DON'T SAY THAT! SHE'S A NICE LADY!

I vaguely remember hearing if they did it wouldn't be for a little while and they'd like to use a different engine

Maybe it was secretly filmed? Or it could be a fake that someone bought and placed in the vault thinking it was really valuable.

The wonderful thing about tabletop games is that you aren't limited to what you can do in a videogame.

Shadowrun Returns is nice, I guess. I just can't help but feel disappointed by each game they come out with.

One thing to note is that you can have services from any kind of spirit, but it's usually only going to be from your tradition.

To get services from another kind of spirit, you have to be present when the spirit's banished and then successfully make a Mag+Summoning roll versus their Force before they fully disappear.

So you basically need to have a plan (and probably spend edge) or have a partner.

IMHO, Dragonfall and Hong Kong are some of the best RPGs to come out in the last decade. They could certainly stand to be meatier, but they're quite good.

I want to play a Christian Theurge. Anyone have any experience with them? How do they fare on the "scale," of traditions?

For what it's worth, I'm playing a character who's also going to "back-up sam," because he doesn't want to be immediately identified as the group theurge and draw a ton of aggro. So he's going to look and act like a sam, pack heat like a sam on-mission, and try to avoid revealing his nature unless the group needs magic support.

Is it possible to get shades or other glasses that give you the same effect of advanced cybereyes?

Keep in mind that you can probably take some or any of the core totems/mentors and rename them to fit better with the Egyptian paradigm.

And while there are actual totems/mentors that are insects without being the Bugs. But lots of people would probably shoot first, so consider taking Bad Rep. You've fried enough people that you've got a bad name, but at least pretty much everyone that matters in the shadows knows that you're not a Bug.

Sure, most of the augments can be installed in your natural eyes for a small essence cost, or installed in things like shades as Vision Enhancements

Could you say which insect mentors aren't bugs? Cause the only one I know is Spider, which isn't an insect.

Glasses have much smaller capacity, so fitting every eyeware upgrade into them won't be possible, even if you combine them with contacts.

>Pilot Origins doesn't do that

Data Trails is a hot mess, but:

Data Trails pg. 152 upper right:
>Only AIs with the Pilot Origins quality may use autosofts in place of active skills, they also use their Depth in place of the Pilot rating of vehicles/ drones they are running on.

And pg 158 upper left:
They start programming on their own and make a Software + Intuition [Mental] Test; divide 12 by the number hits on the test to get the umber of days it takes to learn (the program). AIs then spend 5 Karma to learn a regular program.

Then the Pilot Origins Quality itself:
>The AI is also capable of loading, converting, and using drone autosofts as programs

And finally pg.146 under Depth:
>AIs can learn a number of programs equal to their Depth + Essence.

Conclusion: Get depth 6, enjoy your twelve skills with a rank of 6 for 3000 nuyen/5 karma apiece and a base dicepool of 12. And Rigger 5.0 conveniently gave a lot of skillset autosofts to pick from. (And if you load your virtual ass on a powerful enough chassis, you can run a couple of those on the chassis directly on top of yourself.)