/srg/ - Shadowrun General

Would I break the game if I made melee attacks be simple actions instead of complex ones? It's retarded that you can't do stuff like stand and hit on the same turn.

You hit the nail on the head. The common person does not practice martial arts or fight regularly, so they have a skill level of 0. Similarly, normal people don't scam each other, or engage in negotiations, or lead others in their daily lives, therefore they have a skill level of 0 in all of those.

Having a skill level at all means that the person engages in the activity on a regular basis, or spends time to study it. Therefore, the baseline is 0.

It's one of the most common houserules. A thorough improvement.

>How has anybody not shot Harlequin in his smug elf face?
Believe me, If I could get away with it, I would. The asshat has so much plot armor, Batman would cringe.

>What is your favorite Shadowrun creature?
The fucking gigantic armoured armadillo from Howling shadows. Seriously, these fucking things are ridiculous.
First of all, they've got 18 hardened armour, which means any attack that doesn't pierce armour does nothing, and even if it does pierce then they automatically soak 9 damage, and then roll their full soak of 50 fucking dice (because they have 20 body, toughness 12, and 18 armour) so to even do a single point of damage to them you need a minimum DV of about 25 and even then they've got a physical condition monitor of 30.
Anti-vehicle rockets do 24P/-10AP to vehicles (I'm considering the juggernaut a vehicle fuck you) meaning the juggernaut would soak 4 automatically, then roll 40 dice and most likely soak 13-15, which means if all goes according to statistics, you need a minimum of six(6) AV rockets to take this thing down.
It's also immune to cold, fire, poisons, and toxins.
The only "reliable" way to take this thing down is high force stunbolts, and even then it has a willpower of 9 and a stun track of 13.

Moving off of it's defense, it's claws kill fucking ANYTHING because of it's absurd base strength making it's melee attacks do 42P/-4AP damage with 4 reach.
Even if you've got a vehicle with 24 body and 24 armour, this thing can still make your ride explode with a single touch.
It also rolls 10 dice to attack, so it's not like it's going to be missing all the time either.

Now imagine for a moment, a mad scientist rigger pays a mage huge amounts of nuyen to stunbolt one of these things into submission, before ripping it open and installing a rating 3 stirrup system and a TRACES system.
A stirrup system functions as a control rig interface AND move-by-wire system of equivalent rating, so the rigger can now jump into the Juggernaut, who now has a base initiative of 20+2d6.
Cont.

>* You have 1 new private message, titled 'Yo, have you heard? Some Firewatch guys are going to give a talk here'

Don't get excited. They're giving demonstrations of their shitty martial art and trying to convince you to buy into their training program.

With the TRACES system, it gets +2 to all melee attacks and +2 to all defense tests, making it's defense with the REA augmentation from stirrup to be 13 dice.

So at the end of the day, you've got a critter with the following statblock:
BOD 20 AGI 6 REA 5(8) STR 42
WIL 9 LOG 1 INT 3 CHA 1
18 hardened armour and toughness 12
A defense pool of 13 dice
A condition monitor of 30/13
Immunity to cold, fire, poisons, and toxins
An attack pool of 12 dice with a weapon that does 42P/-4AP with Reach 4
And it's 100% rigger controllable too.

TL;DR if you ever want a TPK, send a juggernaut rigger after your party.

That sounds brutal. And expensive.

I assume the rigger is also going to be feeding the thing combat drugs for an extra 3d6 init?

Well, the 'ware itself only costs ~250k nuyen, but both have an availability of 20+
Juggernauts have no actual price or availability, so you just need to go into the country and find one with a truck full of hillbilly mages shitting stunbolts everywhere, let's put the cost of that expedition at like 300k, which means the price to actually get this set up is only about half a million nuyen.
Caring for the beast is probably going to be expensive though, but most military equipment is extremely difficult to maintain anyway.

Oh, and I forgot to mention their movement code is x3/x5, with an agility of 6.
So running they can move 30m per turn, which means these things can run at 10m/s, or 36km/hr

I think their appearance in adventures would mostly consist of chasing after runners in a jeep or whatever.

Now I really want to do this as a big setpiece; the party are trying to get across Nevada when they run into a go-gang, great roaring motorcycles circling a Juggernaut with a howdah on the back.

What does Allied Mastercomputer 'look' like?

I want to fashion a big reveal of sorts and am looking up how malevelont AI's are portrayed.

Or have a crazed dictator/PMC leader/mechahitler have bought the remnants of the scrapped SACC (Stirrup Assisted Command and Control) project from the black market, after they were mothballed by the UCAS military.

...

That's master control program though. I already knew what it looked like.

>You hit the nail on the head.
I'm glad you think so, because this is the comment that illiterate retarded only read the first sentence of:
>No, that's wrong. 4e assumed you were untrained by default. 5e does not. You should assume someone has 3 ranks in any skill worse competency benefits their career (like Etiquette for a character in a social environment) and a 6 in their primary professional skill - because skills go to 12+ now, and 6 is just 'enough for it to reliably be your profession.'

>So, for example, an officer wageslave who writes software for a living? They have Computer 6 for the programming and Etiquette 3 for the office politics. A medical doctor might have Medicine 6, First Aid 6, and Leadership 3 for managing his staff and having a good bedside manner.

>Rating 0 is what someone has just from watching TV/movies. It's how well you average person is able to fight after watching a kung fu flick, or do chemistry after watching Breaking Bad. It's a thorough lack of actual skill, but enough cultural awareness to at least attempt skills which can be used untrained.

Oh no, you hit the nail on the head on that comment.

But you're still wrong, 0 is the default.

It doesn't "look" like anything. If you mean what the machine it is on looks like, it's literally too massive to describe. Deus's original computer took up several floors in an archology.AM took up an entire continent.

Things look however they want to look on the Matrix - or however you elect to reskin them.

Hal9000 is not the lens on the wall, but the lens would identify it to everyone.

Shodan is not the mass of cables and lcd screens on the wall, but if you see that arrangement of photons, it's clearly shodan.

I'm thinking AM is most identifiable with a monolith of some sort in the background of holographic text.

Oh, is that what you mean? In that case, AM is deffo that monolith from the game, the one with his angsty teenage poetry written on it.

>knows all human history
>can't come up with anything better than "I hate you a lot, dad"
Waste of potential.

...

Do you guys have pictures, or even ideas of what your deckers/technos look like on the Matrix? That's one of the thing I really like about the short stories featuring the Matrix, that each user has a visual theme that links it's persona, devices, marks and so on.

>What is your favorite Shadowrun creature?
The Pandamonium, from Howling Shadows. It's not a monster in game terms, but there is something both awesome and terrifying about an hyper-agressive panda with active camo. I joke with my player that if they piss me off too much, I'll find a way to make them fight one.

>If you could have a game anywhere in the setting, where would you want a game to take place?
An aqualogy. Running the shadows in such a confined environment has got to be interesting.

>How has anybody not shot Harlequin in his smug elf face?
People tried. Sadly, people failed

The face AI that I made with the help of /srg/ a while back was a qt cheerleader with cinnamon coloured hair, her whole schtick was that she used leadership to give people an extra 5 initiative, or +7 dice to any given action.

It's dad said the same thing.

Read Data Trails. Lacking a bit in art, but has many good ideas.

>WIL 9 LOG 1 INT 3 CHA 1

Unless I'm misreading something, Godzilla here has 10 dice to resist a control thoughts spell. With a high-force casting to make it harder to shake, you should have enough time to make him commit suicide. Probably feed him explosives or make him cut his own throat.

Could you mind control a biodrone which has a rigger jumped in though? It's mind isn't in control at that point.

>make him cut his own throat.

What, are you going to roll up a semi with a 12-foot long dikote razor blade?

I mean, it's claws do 42P but I'm not even sure if armadillos can reach their own throats with their claws.
Either way in the case of "lol kill yourself" (for mind control) I usually give the person a free resistance test before they do it because of the fact that our brains are hardwired to make killing ourselves really hard. Control actions it's fair game though.

Why would you do that when you could have him lay waste to your enemies instead?

Have you guys seen the first episode for Incorporated yet? It's a Syfy show, so I'm sure it'll end up shitty, but it seems to be set in a world of pristine corporate enclaves surrounded by lawless Barrens. The protagonists are a ladder-climbing wageslave trying to cling the corporate ladder for ulterior motives, his doctor wife who I think is there to show how domestic wageslave life feels, and a young Barrens rat showing the non-corporate side of things.

They posted the first episode of it on YouTube, and while there aren't any red flags for me yet, I definitely don't trust Syfy's track record at this point, so I'd stay skeptical.

youtu.be/RlzKH5nMr9E

SyFy's shows tend to be miles better than their movies, chummer

Maybe I just got burned by the final seasons of the Stargate franchise. I'm tentatively hopeful about Incorporated, but only tentatively.

Reading some Gibson may help. His work is chock full of AIs and people so rich/augmented that their motivations seem alien.

If 0 is the default, then your typical person has an Etiquette dice pool of 2.

0 isn't the default - it's the baseline for someone who has absolutely zero practical experience with something. Which, for common skills, is basically nobody. You can expect the typical person to have at least 1 skill point in Computer and Etiquette, for example, to give them the baseline ability to buy 1 hit in normal situations.

Oh my god, both of you faggots shut up. The rule is this:

Whatever makes sense.

Most people use Etiquette and Computers, so 1-3 points - not 0 - it's what's normal. Most people don't shoot SMGs or fight hackers - 0 is normal for cybercombat and automatics.

It varies skill by skill as to how skilled a normal civilian would be in that thing, and it follows common sense.

Now shut the fuck up, you retards.

>If 0 is the default, then your typical person has an Etiquette dice pool of 2.
Yes because they don't have to take tests, just like you don't have to make a test to navigate to a known matrix site, call someone, prepare food or, in our case, order food
Which is why Uncouth/Uneducated hurt so much: you actually HAVE to roll to see if you can prepare food or call someone or buy something

What are some good ways to make side money in a run that night not be super obvious?
One I came up with the other day was scanning unconscious guards for finger, retina, and bloid. A nice little payday for places that use biometrics.

Where do all the dead bodies corporates and shadowrunners make wind up?
Organ grinders and ghouls?

That's actually a great idea. Other than paydata and stealing corp equipment to fence it later, which should both be done carefully, I find that side-jobs during the run often draw too much of your attention away from the objective and end up causing mistakes. But someone with a shadowrunner's skills should have no problem making some money on the side: a sammie can offer protection to a small business, a decker can help set-up and defend small hosts, a mage can harvest reagents or use healing spells or summon watcher spirits, etc...

If they're SINless, yeah pretty much. Otherwise, pic related

Sim recordings of the run? Clean them up and sell them to thrillseekers, or let them ride along live a la Molly Millions. You could also solicit custom orders from other "security professionals" that need intel to plan their own jobs.

>mapping corporate interiors and security measures for a payday
that is actually pretty good.
If you combine that with taking biometric samples, you can probably get a few thousand extra every run.

If you're hitting corporate locations you could probably yoink the data off whatever devices you find and comb through them for blackmail material.

Running a bespoke legwork and planning service in the shadows is also a pretty decent campaign idea.

What are the "must have" pieces of ware for a gunbunny adept? What are the best guns?

Let's go beyond people killed during runs.
Today's mortality rate in the US is around 10/1000, meaning ten deaths per one thousand inhabitants for each year. Let's bump that by 20% because, hey, violent dystopian future.
Seattle has an estimated 4 million population 12/1000 means 48 000 deaths each year. That's 131 dead bodies to dispose of each day. I hardly think the metroplex has room to spare for graveyards. So where are those bodies going?

Ware for a gun adept? Smartlink in your eyes and the highest-rating Muscle Toner you can get. Platelet Factories and Pain Editor if you can afford the Essence.

And that's it.

Why wouldn't it have room for graveyards? There's plenty of space with a population that low filling such a large area. American cities aren't very dense, doubly so with Shadowrun's reduced population numbers.

Anyway, I'd expect over 50% to get cremated, and most of the SINless to end up in public burn piles, ghoul bellies, or getting chopped for organs.

Cyber Eyes with a smartlink. That's probably the only "must have" but you may as well pick up some other low essence cost things. It's expensive but maybe get a partial cyberskull and fill it's capacity with a rating 4 radar sensor to see through walls (remember to put a Math spu in you as well to get full advantage, at that point it becomes a videogame minimap/radar).

I thought about suggesting muscle toner, but adept already have boost attribut(agi) for that, and that's arguably more efficient.

oh and if you can swing it financially, Cerebellum booster for initiative overkill.

What do you guys think of including not-disease-based undead in the game?
I'm thinking of throwing a SUPER FUCKING CURSED guy at the players who literally cannot die unless some conditions are met.

Ehhhh. Shadowrun explicitly does not have undead, with the exception of that time you have to fight Jewish ghosts to retrieve Nazi gold. No particular reason you couldn't fluff it as a toxic spirit's Pact of Life though.

The extra initiative from INT wouldn't stack with improved reflexes, as IR cannot be improved with initiative enhancement from magical or technological means.
They'd still get the extra dodge die though.

Has the issue of not being permanent, taking time to turn on, etc
A good way to go is get muscle toner 2, then put a point into attribute boost so you've always got +2 agi, and then use attribute boost if you need it to hit your augmented max.

Well, he could be a cursed immortal.

Attribute Boost takes actions to activate, doesn't provide a reliable bonus, and causes you to take Background Count penalties.

Muscle Toner 4 is always on, is unaffected by background count, and costs less than the equivalent of 1 PP, even Used.

It's a no brainer.

Is going to a suspicious meet for a johnson and recovering the goods enough substance for a run?
I mean, it's much lighter on the legwork side, having no building to infiltrate and all that. I'm looking to make runs that I can finish in a single session.

That'd make me pretty paranoid. Depending what your players are used to, maybe have their fixer vouch for the Johnson.
"Guy shows up now and then asking for a quick job, no questions asked. Always tight lipped about the details. Never seen him throw a team more than they could bite off and chew. One of my more reliable clients if you look at it that way."

How short is a session for you, normally?

four hours at tops

Well, since these are almost universally going to end in running gunfights, a bit of paranoia would be good.

>quick job, no questions asked. Always tight lipped about the details
Last time a Johnson said something similar to my team we ended up stealing three Ares police tanks.

I'd pass on this job.

This. Runners live and die on details.

The game's catchphrase might as well be "it was supposed to be a simple job!", so if you find yourself believing that your job will be a breeze, then pinch yourself, wake up, and take a closer look.

Query.

If a troll who is at the time wearing some light ballistic armour, and then perhaps a grenade happened detonate whilst in his stomach, would the extra padding and armour make the explosion LESS lethal (absorbing some of the impact) or MORE lethal (armour + bone shrapnel) potentially speaking to those unfortunate enough to be within a certain proximity of this unfortunate gentlemen.

Say, in a elevator, for instance.

Chew your food, kids.

Chunky salsa rule dictates the shockwave rebounds back into the troll when it encounters his armor and continues to do so until the radius is reached, reducing the troll to his constituent atoms. Passengers in the elevator (but outside the trolls body) are unharmed.

>ballistic armour
ballistic armor does not protect against explosions.
It also does not necessarily work both ways.

Imo, he's a walking nail bomb.

The ballistic armor, at that point, serves to protect some of the people in the elevator from some of the damage, but causes him to suffer more from it, as it catches some of the shrapnel and keeps some of the concussive force partially contained.

Chunky salsa rule only applies if the shockwave has something to rebound against i.e. the wall isn't straight-up destroyed. Unless the troll sprung for a cevlar-and-concrete augmented stomach he's getting burst like a balloon.

And light ballistic armor is only so capable of stopping explosions. Point blank it doesn't matter which side it's on, that shit is probably getting near-vaporized

Anyone know why the Free! discount isn't working for gear et al? I'm trying to give my players a few free items starting out and it just isn't registering the discount at all.

Can't replicate it, how are you adding the items?

The INT should count because it raises the stat which is used to figure the base initiative modifier, I'm pretty sure when it talks about not stacking with initiative modifiers it's talking about the dice and things that directly add onto your initiative score like move by wire to prevent people doing retarded shit like have a burnout adept with wired reflexes 1 move by wire 1, synaptic accelerator 1 and Improved reflexes 1.

On the muscles toner, you are 100% correct

Check under Drones and Vehicles. It seems to be working for gear; I misspoke and must now commit sudoku.

Whups, fixed in the latest nightly.

Question about an enemy mage NPC. Staff with buttstock and foregrip: Yes or yes?
That sounds cool.

I'll grab tomorrow's then. Tonight's Nightly keeps crashing on me.

Beginning to think I took a Gremlins quality...

What's the error?

Same thing that was happening to I reverted to last night's and it worked fine aside from the aforementioned Drones & Vehicle snafu.

My group uses the Life Module character creation system from Run Fast and everyone loves it. Was wondering if anyone knows of any books that add more nation modules. Chrome Flesh, Data Trails and Rigger 5.0 all add more modules, but none of them add any new nationalities. As it stands, my group is stuck with UCAS, CAS, Tir or NAN as their nationalities.

How well can a two person game work? I've got two players lined up, and if I want more I'm going to have to go outside of real life friends and get internet randos.

What level a contact is someone you beat/intimidate for information once every few weeks?
Or is there a better systen for keeping track of your rogue's gallery?

Definitely Connection X/ Loyalty 1.

I'd suggest using Blackmail from Run Faster to represent that.

...

One purchased with the better to be feared than loved quality

Everyone in the elevator is dead. Small space, troll shrapnel, and whatever gear he has on ensures that.

People use computers, but most users are tech illiterate and only ever use them for kikebook/news.