/srg/ Shadowrun General - Y'All Need A Mentor Spirit Edition

>Greek MysAd

Is there even a Greek Tradition?

Drain: Willpower+Intuition

Preferred Spells
Shapechange
Orgy

My current character follows Conan as his mentor spirit.

Ever since he grew up in the barrens he was devoted to Conan. He loved Conan so much, he had all the franchise and comics he could find. "Conan is love, Conan is life" was the prayer he repeated every evening.

And Conan heard him. Now he follows him in every aspect of his life. Conan gives him the might he needs to crush his enemies. He lets him call forth and enslave the spirits of the warriors and beasts that the great Conan slaughtered.

He lives, he burns with life, he slays, he loves, and is content. All thanks to Conan the destroyer

SGL approve SJW pandering. Just make said dwarf a ts nigger.
Why the fuck do you even care, goddammit

Which interesting spirits are used in your games (like )?

That's the kind of kludge I was hoping to avoid. Duct-taping a bunch of swords together does not a shield make, especially when the 'active' shape of the sword is a straight piece of metal.

That's a good idea. I'll run it by the GM- If someone can have a rifle that automatically collapses into a convenient carrying case, a few wedges locking into a circle should be relatively simple.

How is that pandering? I don't want to do something racist in front of strangers who want to play a game with me in a public place. It's pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain or relationships with real people outside of /r9k/ why I wouldn't want to be offensive or make people uncomfortable in that situation.

I was more thinking about reprogramming them to reshape as a shield together. But see with your GM what floats his boat.

I was actually thinking of making a Greek/Mediterrean human metavariant that is physically superior to baseline humans in every way, but are emotionally stunted/volatile and had an distinct aversion to wearing clothing. Probably called hemitheoi or somesuch.

>insert joke about Greeks here

Maybe you and I are reading this differently.

>The weapon’s sheath can be formed into a piece of clothing or put in some other appropriate place to hide the weapon. If the weapon’s grip is concealed as well the Concealability modifier is –4 in order to detect the weapon. The memory blade requires a Complex Action to harden or become flexible again in addition to the Simple Action for readying or drawing the weapon.
>Changing the shape of the blade requires a Software + Logic [Mental] (8, 1 minute) Extended Test.

I'm seeing it as "When hardened, the sword is sword-shaped. When made flexible, you can have it programmed to be flexible in different ways, following the sheath."

The examples they give, from bracelets to belts to shoes, do not require that the metal be firm enough to be useful as either a weapon or a shield. I can't program a bunch of swords to be various flexible disguised elements, but then harden into a shield shape, because the hardened shape is always the same sword shape.

>Is there even a Greek Tradition?
Sketchy. The idea of a magic tradition is that it is representative of how you perceive life as a whole. It must be so intrinsic to who you are as to be second nature. To be part of a Greek magic tradition is to believe the Greek pantheon is real and relevant in your life.

>To be part of a Greek magic tradition is to believe the Greek pantheon is real and relevant in your life.

I mean, that's not out of the question. I'm sure that Olympus is some kind of astral shallow/alchera/just has a crazy high background count due to millenia of belief and it's importance in literature as a home of the gods, and people have brought back every other religion from Age of Mythology as a tradition.

But why would you willingly be party to a bunch of assholes who curse humans for making them look bad? Look what happened to Arachne: depending on the story, she either beat Athena in a weaving contest or created a weaving during the contest depicting Zeus and his debauchery. Either way, Athena got pissed off and cursed her to become the first spider. Why would you put yourself at risk like that?

Where can I find stats for a chainsaw in 5th?

A couple possible reasons

1) Greek Pride. They're not perfect gods, but they're our gods.

2) If you live in Greece, you might think it prudent. After all, those Yankees got blown up by the native gods, better to sacrifice a ram to Zeus every now and then and not get on his shitlist.

3) You think you would be a hero, in the Classical sense. You have power and a fate given to you, you have no choice in the matter.

And finally, the reason why anyone is a part of any religion.

4) You think it's true.

Run and Gun 21.

Although to be fair, Arachne was proclaiming she was the greatest weaver in the world, and Athena - who claims weaving as one of her domains - said "1v1 me irl no balls."

I don't really get the ACTUAL problem, Dwarf's a playable race

Does anyone here have these PDFs that the OP in these linked forum threads posted yet disabled from DropBox? If so, then pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease post them.

forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=14877.0
forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=40247

Why would Dwarf be a problem? That's one of the core races.

I had an Elf Bear SHaman who liked doing any drug he could get his hands on.
Bear helped him get clean. Also the withdraws kicked in my Vision Quest when I took that rank of Magic.

Check pastebin chummer.
It's packaged with the 5th edition link in the mega download section.

The Hayek sheets are already in the pastebin, user.

Because of the "big nose, loves gold, secretive and insular people" connection, anons. I can't tell if you're sheltered little babies who are actually ignorant of the long-running "are Dwarves Jews" debate, or trolling.

Anyone who knows that "Dwaves are Jews!" thing isn't going to give a shit, unless you tell them (And it sounds like you're the kind of self-sabotaging idgit who would) and everyone else aren't even going to know.
God, you sound like an asshole.

>Anansi's thing is despite supposedly being a mentor spirit, he's like, really petty and involved in the physical world. Spirit quests given by him are less "go slay a dragon" or whatever and more "I need a million nuyen by midnight or the spirit mafia will break all eight of my legs." (This is a lie, he just wanted a million nuyen but didn't want to go get it himself.)

Why would he want a million nuyen at all? I can see Anansi asking someone to get a busload of big-tittied women, or the best fresh fruit from the ACHE gardens, but why would he want cash? He's a spirit without rules, he doesn't need cash, and Anansi was never greedy for gold.

Maybe don't play them that way, then?

Because he wants to use it to buy other things

You're right, there's no way that anyone at a gaming convention would be familiar something like a long-running debate strongly influenced by the works of Tolkien. After all, nerds are famous for their ignorance about their hobbies and not taking firm positions over trivialities.

I'm not playing them, that's the point. I'm handing out character sheets at a con. "OK, here's the selection, we've got an elf razorboy, a human rigger, an orc decker, and a dwarf Jew wizard. Pick one."

But why would he want to buy things? Why involve the middle man of money, when you're a pseudo-omnipotent spirit? What possible things could he want that he needs to purchase with cash, instead of just telling the mage to go get that?

So just remove the word Jew, you fucking retard.

Possession on living targets: Good idea or no?

>Anyone who knows that "Dwaves are Jews!" thing isn't going to give a shit
You missed the first part of the sentence. Nerds intimate with out hobbies aren't exactly known for caring about this kind of crap.

Hard to pull off. Net +2 for your team if it works. (One less on the opponent's, one more temporarily on yours.)

Willing or not?

Willing, it can be pretty damn effective with the right spirit and host (Guardian spirits can have the ability to have any Combat skill, which means any Weapon skill, so you can turn a bunch of gangers into a pretty sweet flashmob of death).

Unwilling, it definitely gets you in trouble, because mind magic is a big no-no, and having a spirit possess a person and use their body to commit crimes is pretty much the same thing as Control Thoughts.

>After all, nerds are famous for their ignorance about their hobbies and not taking firm positions over trivialities.

You missed the second part of mine. Nerds intimate with the hobby are well known for having hang-ups about all kinds of things that enrage and insult them, from weird bits of fluff to rule interpretations to things like perceived racism, especially at cons where you have no idea what kind of person will join the game.

My bad, meant second bit for

And if someone's entirely an idiot because you present a dwarf and they think all dwarves are jews, that's on them, not you. It's unlikely, but if it happens, fuck them, it's not your fault, and most people wno't THINK it's your fault.

No different from any other source of magic desu

It takes balls to deal with spirits.

das nice

>Harlequin fucks up summoning an elemental and gets a magic aneurysm
There is justice in this world.

So if your mentor spirit is Athena, they would ask you to beat the fuck out of someone for shittalking her?

I was just using it as an example of material things that he wants.
Besides, he's got a spirit wife and spirit kids to feed, and like fuck he's going to grow food himself.

I can absolutely see a Greek God mentor spirit using you for petty reasons.

>Psst. Hey, Anonymage.

>Yes, Lord Poseidon?

>That chick in the green bikini is hot.

>She is indeed very beautiful, my lord.

>Levitate her into the ocean. I want me some of that.

>But my lord, that biotroll is clearly her boyfrie-

>THE SEA COMMANDS IT!

>*sigh* Yes, my lord.

>Hey. Chuck me one of them soydogs too. Extra chili.

>You want to initiate? Then your quest is to get me them titties.

>One rendition of the story is that Poseidon raped Medusa in Athena's temple
>Athena, to prevent it from happening again, turned her into the most famous gorgon
This is the rationale you have to deal with.

Can see it now as well.

Dear smiteposter; why are we not playing together?

Because I haven't played SMITE in roughly a year.

>But why would you willingly be party to a bunch of assholes who curse humans for making them look bad?
Because if you don't they'll curse you. Same reason shopkeeps pay protection money.

You're breaking my heart user

Mentor spirit Aphrodite would get you to fuck some bitch in particular.
>You know that elf runway model, the 9.5/10 who's been doing those perfume commercials?
>Yeah?
>I want you to exalt in my blessings with her, so that I may partake of her beauty.
>...You want me to bang the shit out of her?
>In so many words, yes.
>But she lives halfway across the country and is under constant protection.
>Love waits for no one.

Who the heck is Anansi? I don't recognize that mentor spirit from 5e core or street grimoire.
Willing, although unwilling sounds hella rad.
Only possession traditions can shove spirits into enemies, then?

You can also give an ally spirit multiple manifestation options, and both possession and it's big brother are in there.

Read back, it's a homebrewed Raven spirit

Reminds me of a quest in the Scion core book adventure (which assumes you're going to be playing the premade characters, including a son of Aphrodite).

>A married couple arrives in town for a weekend getaway, but they're clearly not in love anymore
>Aphrodite charges the Scion getting them to hook up with new people that they do love. Actually breaking them up first (instead of organizing double adultery) or ensuring they fall in love with actual people (the book suggests kindling a love of singing through a failed date at a concert) is optional.

Actually, all those quests would be great for ancient god mentor spirits.

Horus' quest- The Eye of Horus
>I'm going out of town for a night, stay in my palatial hotel suite and protect this artifact from the son of the Chinese Monkey King who wants to steal it. Also probably some other people are going to try to grab it, I dunno, figure it out.

Tezcatlipoca's quest- The Queen of Flowers
>That mortal looks like the Goddess I love but who won't have me. Steal her from her husband and bring her to me.

Thor's quest- Carry On, Wayward Son
>A Scion of Loki (in SR terms someone devoted to the Loki mentor spirit) is in town doing a deal. I don't know what the deal is, who it's with, or what he's selling, and I don't care; fuck up the deal and bring me whatever shit he's selling.

Susano-o's quest- Recovering the Gift
>My sister once gave me a necklace as a show of solidarity, whose pearls I turned into men. Now I'm angry at her, so I want to give the necklace back. Find out which mortals are descended from those men, and figure out some way to turn them back into pearls.

Baron Samedi's quest- Killing the Dead
>I'm too busy to do my job of laying the dead to rest, now there's some spirits wandering the Earth still in their dead bodies. Kill them properly so I can pick up the spirits.

Oh Scion. You would be great if you weren't so White Wolf.

Ally spirits are expensive as hell though. 8x karma cost? Starting out that's just a force 3 spirit, and that's if you want no other positive qualities.

Speaking of spirits, do Hermetic mages suffer issues when dealing with spirit reputation? If so, wouldn't that Shatter their illusion that spirits aren't figments of your imagination?

Ah. I thought there was another book floating around. I know Adversary exists, but I've never seen any stats for him.

Also what spirit would be best for KEKAIKU? I think spider works thematically, but none of the spirits presented feel that way. Mountain is sort of like that, but lacks flexibility.

Do you have an option to make them fall in love with each other?

Hermetic Mages by the time of 5th edition have accepted that Spirits aren't figments of the imagination, but sapient astral beings. "Mages, unsurprisingly, take a somewhat arrogant view on conjuring. The mage tends to believe that spirits are intelligent but inferior beings predestined for servitude." I tend to play out Hermetics a little more respectful to spirits at my table than what the corebook says.

>do Hermetic mages suffer issues when dealing with spirit reputation?
I would say that the Hermetic mindset of spirits as servants definitely starts all spirit relationships (and your reputation) off with some real animosity. However regardless of your mindset, long as you don't force your spirits to sustain your invisibility spells and keep them out of toxic areas, you shouldn't have too much of a problem with the astral planes.

Allyson spirits are expensive, but if you can save up, they're scary strong.

And I'm pretty sure that nobody outside of some of the oldest Psionic tradition people think that spirits are figments.

Iirc, hermetics don't think of them as innately people, but 'know' how metaplanes and beliefs work.

The quests are all very loosey-goosey. Basically it ends when Aphrodite no longer cares about mucking around with their lives, which happens when they find love/happiness, however fleeting. If you can make them fall in love with each other again, she might accept that.

Or she might smite them, because she's a jealous harpy who hates the thought that other people would be happy in marriage when she is not. Hard to tell with Greek gods which way they'll jump.

My Wise Warrior mentor spirit took a young black street tough off the streets of Lagos and taught him that life is about more than just manufacturing awakened drugs and bombs and selling them to local extremist groups, its about helping your neighbor and making new friends.
My necromancer has since turned his mastery of the darkest arts towards rebuilding the community and feeding the homeless (while still making bombs on the side for fun)

Not sure if that user who was asking about different systems is still around, but now that I've read Interface Zero 2.0 a bit more:

Cleanly written, darker and more believable/realistic universe of 2090. Mechanically though I find Savage Worlds too shallow. I have yet to find that happy medium. The search continues.

>Anansi
African trickster figure, and also one of the reasons I think most of the archetypes should be decoupled from animals cuz it is really stupid the Anansi the spider is mechanically Raven.

How would you decouple it? The animal imagery is used in the context of Western literary tradition (as are ideas like the Dragonslayer), specifically Native traditions that used to be the only ones with mentor spirits, but explicitly the title of it doesn't matter. If what you think mechanically the best expression of Anansi is happens to be called Raven in the book, it tells you to take it and make it Anansi.

You don't suffer any issues for being a hermetic, but you suffer issues for doing things hermatics do such as mistreating spirits.

Help me, /srg/, you're my only hope
My group's infiltrator seems to think I'm trying to kill him. I'm the GM, and every time the option for sneaking somewhere comes up, he specifically avoids it, instead trying to find a tall building a few blocks away so he can snipe, in an effort to avoid getting shot. Similarly, as soon as he thinks something isn't going perfectly, he shuts off all his communications (side note, that leaves the rest of the group exposed matrix-wise, as he's the head of their PAN)
I've tried bringing it up with him, and he starts talking about not wanting to go into a hostile situation alone.
How can I show him sneaking into places isn't an automatic death sentence if he won't sneak anywhere?

>How would you decouple it?
I'd call it trickster.
It's not just refluffing Raven into another trickster figure that pisses me off, it's also things like how Morrigan, who is usually represented by a raven, is most definitely not Raven, and likewise Anansi the spider bears no resemblance to Spider the mentor spirit.

Basically what I did once. Was doing a Hawaiin mage, DM and I decided Raven fluffed as Spider was the best way to go about it.

Put some pressure on the rest of the group to put pressure on him to do his goddamned job.

Also take advantage of how his fuckups leave the group open for disaster. Doesn't want to infiltrate? Take advantage of the fact that your group is going in without intel, so they're running into more resistance than they thought. Shuts off the PAN? Have the enemy spider start hacking the shit out of the team's stuff. Make it all clear that these events are his fault when they're his fault.

One or two deaths will fix his behavior. If not, then the group should (in character) kick is infiltrator out--if they don't kill him.

Well, yeah. Different cultures have different interpretations of animals in folklore, and even within certain frameworks animals can be more than one thing (ravens as symbols of death or wily bastards, and I'm sure there's a dozen more out there).

I'd say that taking all of them down to the most broad names like Trickster would be losing some of the charm. It's not much, just putting another step between the mentor spirit's mechanics and the feeling of it actually in the fluff. As it is, people playing the most common traditions (shaman and hermetic) can grab a totem and use them as is, and people who want to do something like play a Celt mage worshipping Morrigan can take a minute, look at the mentor spirits, and decide what works best.

It's always going to require a bit of flexibility, but better to have it obvious for some people and refluff for others, than be a paste that everyone has to refluff to make them interesting living totems.

If he doesn't want to infiltrate, then why is he the fucking infiltrator?

give him a small run where he has to sneak (snipe? you're in a fucking forest/ inside a facility/ somewhere else you can't really snipe) and give him some average guards.
Make it that he sees what you can do while infiltrating. Let him know that even if he is seen it's not the end of the run, as long as they can't call the other guards/ sound the alarm. Avoiding enemies/ sensors should be top priority.

Also make sure that he understands than THERE IS NO MILK RUN. Every run will go off the rails, the only thing you can do is try to make the fall less dangerous.

If after that he still doesn't care, do this Make him see, that if he doesn't change, the group will change; most likely into one without him.

>It's not much, just putting another step between the mentor spirit's mechanics and the feeling of it actually in the fluff.
See, I find the animal names to be a step between them because every tradition is capable of following a mentor spirit, yet all the mentor spirits have fluff dedicated to ONE tradition. Like, the mentor spirit fluff doesn't even make sense with Hermetics, and they're in the fucking corebook.

Hold on a bit.

A lot of you have stories where your Runners are hanging out often. Aren't Runners supposed to be a crew of random, but skilled people that the Johnson/Proxy brought together? I thought most people did a job and then blew it on murderhoboing/debts stuff.

> Milk run
The best thing to do is like, 6 or so missions in, is to give them a real, actual milk run.

Runners won't know what to do with themselves. It'll be amazing.

Varies. Runners working as a group or partners or whatever isn't exactly uncommon.

It depends. In fluff, the European style (specifically the Germans) is to do each run with a group of runners tailored specifically for that job and assembled by the fixer the Johnson got in touch with. After the run, the group disperses.

In other places, the convention is that the fixer manages one or more parties of runners that typically work together, and the Fixer tries to find a Johnson looking for that array of skills. The runners all know each other well and have at least a working relationship, though it usually includes actual friendships between at least some members.

Obviously, the latter situation is better for an RPG, because you can have some good roleplay interactions when all the characters don't think about each other as assets for this run you don't want to get close to, but as people.

So don't play up the anti-semetic negative stereotypes, make their qabbalic dedication the focus of the character and make them as you'd make any other mage.

I don't see why it'd be a problem if you just exercise an ounce of sense. As long as you're tasteful and not shit-for-brains-/pol/-bait, nobody will have a valid criticism against the character.

There are Jewish dwarfs, there will be Jewish Qabbalists, and Jewish Qabbalist Mages.

Good old 1e Corebook.

All the legends being used as example runners in mechanic explanations is always funny.

So, where do you guys go for maps for roll20? Do you all tend to make them, or just copy floor plans of places? If I were to want to make something, is there a map making tool that's good to use, or should I just ghetto one using roll20?

Use the Shadowrun Returns map editor

...

The people of the 6th world trust each other very much. Any four random strangers in a Stuffer Shack shootout can easily get together to put down money for a group vehicle, a group safehouse, and share expenses without finding it strange.

Also, you know, RPG. If the GM just ran runs where the players chose between one of four characters each for a specific job, it'd just play out like Runnerhub or something.

>The people of the 6th world trust each other very much.

>thinking he's serious

Thanks guys

They'll tear themselves apart planning for all the things that can go wrong or get themselves killed by investigating Mr Johnson because it has to be a set up.

Alternatively:
>"Do you know how much dosh I just dropped on these military drones? Do you know how many men I've cut open to get to this point?"
>"I'm not *walking* to the fragging Stuffer to *buy* a fragging two liter of soy milk."
>"But-"
>"PUT ON YOUR HELMET, ITS TIME FOR BREAKFAST"

Must agree, after shadowrunning hard, simple break, enter and steal the gadget run was quite strange case. After the job was done the feelings were quite "thats it, felt too easy". We being paranoid mofos went underground for better part of month

Is encumbrance determined by the number of extra pieces you're wearing, or the armor value of those pieces?

For example, with 2 Strength, could I wear 2 extra pieces (Ballistic mask, forearm guards, totalling +3) or can I only wear +2 armor worth of extra stuff? (Just the mask)

I've taken a shining to Rat after talking to some people who own them as pets. Turns out they fit my character really well with their sociability, sweet tooth and capacity for learning.

Are any of the martial arts good for shooting people with a pistol? 5e question