/srg/ - Shadowrun General

Magnum Mosquito? Just doesn't have the same ring to it, you know?

Any other blood sucker would have one too, and I think moths do too, so....Magnum Mite? Magnum Moth?

Oh! I got it! I'll have the antennae lie flat against the side of my jaw, like the little mouth parts in the image, and have them move around as I hack.

I honestly have to question the wisdom of being a bug-themed decker in the first place when SPIDER is a term for a defensive hacker (or whatever it actually means, I still don't understand what most decker terms mean). With a name like that, you're just setting yourself up for a few bad encounters with SPIDERs.

Mantises EAT spiders. I'm setting myself up for some good encounters, hopefully.

>SPIDER is a term for a defensive hacker
Spider is a term for a building rigger
like a spider he sits in a control room and sees everything happening in the building, can control the machinery and patrol the network

Spiders are deckers, not riggers, they don't use control rigs or jump in to the building itself.
They're deckers who are usually off site and pop in with owner level access to the host and all it's subsystems.

I'm no entomologist, but it's my understanding that mantises prey on jumping spiders, which aren't very large and do not use webs to catch their prey. If I were to pit a mantis against any other sort of spider (a tarantula, a trapdoor spider, a net-casting spider or your garden variety web-weaving spider), I'd put my money on the spider, and from this description
it sounds like SPIDERs are the sort a mantis wouldn't do well against.

I want to create a tough as fuck survivor of a street samurai who was one of the Zoners that made it out of Chicago's Zone alive. I'm currently leaning towards an assault cannon (or EX-EX combat shotgun) with underbarrel monofilament chainsaw, trauma damper and platelet factories, and some kind of Used initiative ware. Someone who can take a fair amount of punishment and is good at sneaking and surviving, but who can drop the fucking hammer when shit goes loud.

What other options should I consider? Anything I should keep in mind for someone who survived an environment crawling with bug spirits, radiation, FAB, gangs, Ares death squads, and truly abject poverty?

I want to make a close quarters focused MysAd with his whole schtick basically being "no u" (counterstrike from Martial Arts, Reflect Spell metamagic, Missile Parry power).
What spells should I pick for my free spells? Was thinking Improved Invisibility, Physical Barrier, Physical Mask, Mage Hand, Levitate, Silence and/or Stunball/-bolt.

Can anyone think of a reason why Chummer won't let me increase a Skill Group to rating 5 if I have the BP necessary to do so?

He's right thought. The only reason Shadowrun works is because GMs have license to outright murder their awakened PC thanks to the fluff.

Casting restricted or forbidden several time leaves a trace and then you have a team of Magic 8 FBI mages tracking you down and blackbagging you. And that's if you're lucky and a megacorp doesn't take interest.

Abusing spirit summoning can get you a bad spirit rep and then you don't get to summon anything and spirits will actively try to murder you.

Shadowrun games function by keeping the status quo and the escalation low. If you're going to go full cheese, your GM is allowed (And really should) put you down hard using all the wonderful tools the fluff gives him.

Don't forget Background counts

>bug-themed decker
I'd be more worried about people assuming you're somehow related to bug spirits and putting so much lead in you that your remains look like some kind of modern art statue made of bullets and pesticide canisters.

I don't look too bug like outside the Matrix, just the antennae, shiny eyes and now my mouth antennae. I should be fine, right?

That's what I mean, though. There's plenty of reasons to be anything other than a mage, you just have to remember that being a good shadowrunner is about more than just having big dice pools to see them.

How close do you live to Chicago? Because there are people in-setting who absolutely will put you down with zero mercy 'just to be safe,' like this guy here:

This sounds like a man who would never let himself be separated from his trusty insecticide gun.

>I don't look too bug like outside the Matrix
>just the antennae, shiny eyes and now my mouth antennae
trogga, you fucking DO

Are there stats for those?

>turn to pgs 429 and 430 of core rulebook
>behold the Ares S-III Super Squirt
>buy that shit and some ammo for it
>load the ammo up with industrial strength insecticide
>enjoy new insecticide gun

I meant the anti-insect-spirit insecticide, actually.

So I've been reading through the 5e books, and I've come to a really sad conclusion.

I think the writers are going to try to roll back stuff like nanoware and bioware either in the later books of 5e or the early books of 6e whenever it ends up coming out.

Reason being is that they heavily suggests CFD being much more able to screw with those things than with normal cyberwared folks (who are still less susceptible than normal baseline metahumans). I think they're probably going to end up doing to nanoware and bioware what they did with the Matrix from 4e to 5e, and it really makes me sorta sad.

Like, I really do get why they switched the Matrix to the Grid system in 5e, even if I think the timeline for it was way the hell too short. Mechanically and lore wise it makes sense, but I still think it was a step in the wrong direction. Shadowrun started as this really neat cyberbunk thing about what we thought the future was gonna be like if magic was thrown into the mix, and then each edition it sorta adapted itself to the new ideas of how the future was gonna change. Like 4e really pushing the boat out on a whole bunch of technologies we were really only just imagining at the time 4e came out, and making Matrix functions and hacking and such far far more realistic (I have some friends who literally refuse to play in 5e specifically because they liked the comparative realism of 4e's matrix stuff so much, all of them computer nerds).

I'm worried the writers are getting too concerned with making future editions like the roots of the game, keeping it in stasis, rather than having fun with some of the futurism stuff that included in 4e, showing that technology advances. If they do end up stripping out Nanoware and Bioware due to the CFD stuff, then it's not really a good sign for the metaplot and franchise it'll end up being like 40k where the world never -really- changes.

>inb4 folks say 'just play in 4th edition' or 'waaaah, old edition was better than new edition'

just wanted to say that's not really my point? I like playing in both editions desu, especially after I figured out how to not be useless as a technomancer, but I'm just a little worried about any company that's done a pretty decent job about actually advancing it's plotline and world history between editions suddenly going, "eeeeehn, you know what? We need to make things more like how they USED TO BE in the game, even if it makes the world less believable and interesting to do so."

>desu
why the hell did it say desu instead of 'really'?

how long have you been away?

did you write t b h or "really"
in the first case it's the filter
in the second case: seems like you became a user at heart

I probably wrote t b h without even realizing it when I meant 'really' too much time on irc.

Insecticide capsule rounds?

And you need to have multiple spray-cans of the stuff, naturally. And spray yourself thoroughly before runs to make bugs think twice.

Flamethrowers would be a flavorful idea, though IIRC bug spirits aren't especially weak to fire. Same with lots of explosives to help handle nests.

Insect spirits have severe allergy to insecticide. The rules for allergies are in core, page 78. A bug spirit exposed to insecticide should be taking -4 to all tests, they have -3 to damage resistance tests against an insecticide-related attack, and they take a box of unresisted physical for every minute of exposure. That should include melee weapons coated with it, as well as capsule rounds.

Not sure where the prices for insecticide are, however. Personally, I would want to treat it like a contact-vector toxin instead of an allergy, but I suppose it's a lore thing: bug spirits wouldn't be as much of a problem if people had chemicals that were immediately deadly to them.

I'm not really an expert on spirits or toxins, but my understanding is that there isn't any special anti-spirit insecticide and that you don't need one either; just like a fire spirit hates it when you hit them with mundane water, a bug spirit hates it when you hit them with mundane insecticide. Now if you want stats for mundane insecticide go look the actually lethal toxins in whichever book has them (I wouldn't know which one that is) for guidelines and then talk to your GM about it.

If you're street-level you probably can't get much (if any) access to the anti-spirit insecticide, shit is expensive and controlled to the best of my knowledge.

Also, you may want to take an immunity to insecticide/a common insecticide to reflect having to breathe that shit after they crop-dusted Chicago.

So what you're saying is that no, there are neither stats for the special anti-bug-spirit insecticide, nor the unique guns that shoot it, despite its existence in the fluff.

>special anti-bug-spirit insecticide
don't know if 5e has it, but 4e had KE IV
yes, that's the name

Now that's more fucking like it. I'll talk to my GM about porting it to 5e.

is there a Shadowrun Mega trove, by any chance? I know someone interested in starting a game, and I'm looking for pdfs

CHECK THE OP

Broken skill group? Show me the file, I'll take a look at it. Actually that's something I've been meaning to do, show WHY an increase is disabled.

It's your old Chummer, not Chummer5.

Which file exactly would you want? The character, or the 'skills' file?

What are some good shadowrun cyber cults?
I am looking to play a cyber cultist.

So if I'm reading Rigger 5.0 correctly, then the prices and availability listed for vehicle modifications is assuming that I'm putting together myself. I, however, do not have 50,000 nuyen to purchase the facilities needed to work on my car, and they sure as hell don't rent those out. How much more money should I expect to spend on any given modification if I hire someone else to do it? I haven't been able to find this information in any of the books.

can't raise skill groups above 4 in chargen
think about it: at chargen you can have either 1 skill at 6 or two skills at 5
having a skill group at 5 would violate that

I thought it might be something like that, but I re-read the skills section of the corebook and didn't see any limitations like that. I see where it says no skill can go over six, but that's the only limit I see.

Oh. But now that I look at the section on chargen, not just the skills section, I see that. Nevermind.

That's one of my pet peeves with Shadowrun as I get into it. Information is too spread-out and important things only get mentioned once in passing.

Nevermind, I'm an idiot, Run Faster has hourly prices for unskilled, skilled and highly skilled labor at the back.

It is pretty obvious that when dealing with chargen you should check the section on chargen, isn't it?
Everything you need to know for chargen is in that chapter.

By that logic, shouldn't everything I need to know about skills be in the chapter titled "Skills"?

I first got these books like a week ago; it's a jarring transition from D&D.

again, think of it as a sort of entry hall
once you enter in "Creating a Shadowrunner" you have almost everything you need to create one. It gives a guideline on how to do it, including all the rules and limitations when creating one.
You can check the gear sections, look what neat tools awakened and technophiles get and build your runner that way
but if you are still creating the runner the rules from that chapter are in full effect, like that you can only get one attribute at maximum, no cyber-/bioware above alphagrade and, of course, that you can have one skill at 6 or 2 skills at 5 maximum
once you are finished these rules don't apply and you can throw them away

also pic related

Sup Veeky Forums?

Looking for a bit of GM advice for 4e. I'm fairly new to the GMing side of the equation but I've got a few sessions under my belt. Just looking for fast and loose ways to build encounters and NPCs? I've been using the vague rule of having apex dicepool +/- various values depending on how easy I want the encounter to be.

Have you guys picked up any tips/tricks to making things more difficult for your players?

Should I make my character male or female? From a gameplay and narrative perspective, which is better?

pic related
whichever you like

>look through Rigger 5.0
>no price, threshold, slots etc listed for ramplate
>check official forums for errata
>in a 21 page thread, it's mentioned exactly once and the stats for it are never posted

this is what our GM does. You don't need to build a full character, you only do full builds for characters who are meant to be recurring. Otherwise you grab the following things

1) Species base stats and averages, only physical if they aren't using magic, otherwise the whole shebang
2) Just throw in the numbers you feel right. Remember, whatever total value you give them for a roll, expect them to usually get 1/3rd of that in hits. That'll give you an idea of how strong they are compared to your player stats.
3) If you want to run games fast. Forget using Armor as they suggest, where you roll hits. Instead, 3rd the armor+body for the person hit, round down, and just straight subtract that from successes (this not only makes things run faster, but it also prevents situations like what happened with our game once where our elf mage with 2 in each of his physical stats nerd-slapped a dude in power armor and knocked off his last few points of HP because the dude critically glitched on his armor roll and had just finished tearing our troll bruiser in half so he was nearly out of it)

> Last week my DM took 4 hours to run a 4 round combat
> This week we sat down, didn't start gaming until 2 hours in, all we did that night was go to a meet before we wrapped it up
> I know my DM also runs another group

I think this is a sign that the DM is burning out. Feels bad mon

There are a couple that worship the AIs hiding out in the net right? Also tons of shit could get built up around the Resonance.

The only canon cyber cults that have actual fluff are the ones that worshipped the old mega-AIs, before Crash 2.0. There's sure to be plenty of others - Dragonfall, for example, had a less-than-canon cult consisting of people who enter into VR with each other in a way that melds them into a gestalt consciousness, and had a faith built up around the unity of that.

Fucking nothing even remotely resembling the Adeptus Mechanicus, though, because they're pretty retarded even in 40k, let alone trying to port something like that to Shadowrun.

What is it like to grow up in Evo?

/srg/, can mentor spirits interact with each other in any meaningful way? Are they like 'real' spirits, or like part of the magician's soul or something like that?

>there isn't any special anti-spirit insecticide
You'd be wrong. It's anti insect spirit, though.

A mentor spirit is more or less a free/ally spirit that the character talks to and gets advice from.
They could interact with each other, if they wanted, probably.

Look up Corporation RPG & the cult of the machine.

>/srg/, can mentor spirits interact with each other in any meaningful way?
Not with each other. Just their own followers.

>Can I have my mentor spirit be a stand

>/srg/, can mentor spirits interact with each other in any meaningful way? Are they like 'real' spirits, or like part of the magician's soul or something like that?
Mentor spirits can only interact with their mentees. They're so different from normal spirits that for a long-ass time hermetic mages thought they were fictional.

Would be neat.

I'm a little confused by cyberlimb customization. Can I bring a limb above my current number in an attribute with customization, as long as it stays under my maximum?

Post lewd pictures of shadowrunners

>infiltrate crew of luxury cruise ship as engineering staff
>sneak several submersibles onboard
>covertly turn entire ship into submersible
>mutiny and gain control of the ship
>DIVE
>hold passengers for ransom, ferrying them to surface with smaller submersibles
>once all passengers have been released, either ransom the ship itself and get the hell out of dodge in smaller submersibles or keep it as a luxurious secret underwater mobile base
Great idea for a run, or greatest idea for a run? Especially if the owner of the ship hired you to do this as a massive publicity stunt?

>>covertly turn entire ship into submersible

Like, activate secret submersible sub-routine?

Otherwise I have one way to convert the ship into a submersible. I can only it once though.

only one condition. Even if a ship cruise lasts say, 1-3 months, that can't possibly be enough time to convert it to a submersible unless the owner already prepped it and all you're doing is altering it more or less to reveal those modifications in an obvious manner when you dive... or I guess if the whole thing is a nano-construct you could reprogram it provided the nanites were prepped ahead of time for this without anybody knowing.

You also have to be super careful, something that large will be easy to target via sonar, it's just too big to be stealthy underwater, unless you got a cabal of mages working on this...

given the nature of the cruise, you'll have the megacorps all over you for retrevial cause it's their bottom line being put at risk with these employees you've likely stolen... or the governments go after you.

Either way it's a lot of risk... and your boss isn't gonna be covering your ass really is he? He's got no advantage in making sure that you don't swing in the wind once it goes down.

>Like, activate secret submersible sub-routine?
Well, of course. The other way everyone just drowns.

>Can I bring a limb above my current number in an attribute with customization, as long as it stays under my maximum?
At or under, yes.

Customization can bring a cyberlimb up to your 'unaugmented' maximum.

Enhancement further increases it above and beyond that baseline.

Customization needs to be purchased at the time of buying the limb - it's an inherent part of the limb. Enhancement can be added (or removed) later.

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user, that's batshit crazy for any number of ideas, namely that you'd have to replace most of the top decks with waterproofed paneling. You'd need all sorts of specialized submarine equipment, like a way to gauge depth, air supplies, ballast tanks, etc.

In short, perfectly shadowrun. Do it, and post results.

Are there any metaplot figures whose names begin with a B? This is important.

Bull, I think. He's a retired runner.

>only one condition. Even if a ship cruise lasts say, 1-3 months, that can't possibly be enough time to convert it to a submersible unless the owner already prepped it and all you're doing is altering it more or less to reveal those modifications in an obvious manner when you dive... or I guess if the whole thing is a nano-construct you could reprogram it provided the nanites were prepped ahead of time for this without anybody knowing.
Yeah, the more I thought about the idea the more clear it became to me that Mr.Johnson's involvement in this is pretty critical to your chances of success.

>You also have to be super careful, something that large will be easy to target via sonar, it's just too big to be stealthy underwater, unless you got a cabal of mages working on this...
Signature Masking 6 would go a long way to help there.

>given the nature of the cruise, you'll have the megacorps all over you for retrevial cause it's their bottom line being put at risk with these employees you've likely stolen... or the governments go after you.
Hm. I hadn't considered that angle.

I'll run it by my GM tomorrow evening and see what he makes of the idea. To me it sounds like a run that would take several sessions to complete, with a good chunk of the middle sessions being about shit they have to deal with as staff of a cruise liner.

Hans Brackhaus AKA Lofwyr
Governor Ken Brackhaven of Seattle (racist piece of shit)
Karl Brackhaven, uncle of Ken and Seattle Humanis leader
Holly Brighton, hostess of WyrmTalk starring the big D

That's not a goddamn steamship.

You also really need a mr. johnson who will be worried about you getting caught. Almost nothing you do doesn't make it better for him to leave you hanging in the wind to get captured, tried, and executed for a terrorist action.

If he hires you and you're caught, even if you tip to him, you'll not be able to provide sufficient proof because chances are the mr. johnson who actually hired you is separated by like, 3-5 degrees of separation from the person whose actual plan this is. And even if you find that guy, the corp he works for will have the lowest bottom line hit taken because he prepared them for it, and they'll get much much much more business for having THE submarine cruise ship that was hijacked by nefarious shadowrunner terrorist anarchists and then had valiant forces of ares or knightlight or something else rescue the good citizens of the corps.

It'll be a major attraction. You guys -losing- only makes it a BETTER attraction.

oh and if you hole a freaking submersible cruise liner after you took HOSTAGES you make it -personal- for the same reason that it's personal after you shoot the sheep inside of the corporate tower you raid.

Really, you'll generate fucktons of heat, this isn't an extraction, this is a political statement that will paint a massive target on your back.

What -would- be good is stealing the whole thing, making sure everyone onboard gets off because then the corps are busy rescuing folks rather than hunting you, and then auctioning the cruise ship off to some insane and rich mr.johnson.

Yeah, taking the passengers out of the equation does simplify things immensely. I still like the idea, though, the entire run is just one big publicity stunt. I'll have to keep thinking about it.

You also have to take into account a false 'loss' where you escape from the corps after their publicity stunt team valiantly rescues the ship. Minimal live ammo usage, nobody trying to kill anybody else, they just want to sell some of the simsense recordings from the whole event.

Thanks.

>You also have to take into account a false 'loss' where you escape from the corps after their publicity stunt team valiantly rescues the ship.
Unless they think we're already dead because we used Murder Armor when the publicity stunt team showed up.

throw in some semi-wild spirits of decay or something that you really put the hurt on right before you leave, make it look like there was some terrible horror show ritual gone wrong, throw in some cthulhu references.

And one more for the ladies.
I'll do more of these one day.

Stupid sexy elves...