/srg/ - Shadowrun General

'eh, one thing at a time i get it. I just cracked open the core rulebook and theres so much fucking cool shit in here i think im having trouble focusing. I wanna shoot shit, pilot the robots and drive the car.

In my experience, the rigger is usually the driver. No one has time to learn how to shift gears when they're at the shooting range.

Okay, good news! That doesn't need to be an attribute-intensive build, just a money pit. If you're not going o be jumping into the drones yourself, you can pretty much just get a decent RCC specced for firewall defence, upgrade the Pilot rating on your drones, and issue orders like a battalion commander.
If you're actually driving the car, your street sam's stats will dovetail nicely with your requirements.

>not learning to shoot on the job doing drivebys as a lowly ganger
Everyone, get a load of this chummer.

Piloting is linked to Reaction, and you should have a half-decent reaction score to be a street sam, so you can make it work without too much investment outside of your specialty.

The steely-eyed wheelman and vehicle empathy qualities are neat picks for anyone who will drive hard but won't be jumped in like a rigger.

I really like that idea, like my own three/four man band of me and the drones.

On the topic of all this rigger/driver stuff. Is there actually any use for someone who specializes in driving? Like a legit getaway driver who isn't a rigger.

So uh, I want to run a Shadowrun game with some friends. Here are some of the ideas I had. Input please?

Firstly, it's using 4th-edition rules, but set pretty early after the change, so the metaraces are still pretty new and there's a lot of tension.

Second, I'm cutting out all the decking stuff. Anything to do with hacking will be done offscreen by people on an internet connection half a world away. This is because the people I'm looking to play with think hacking/decking is a hot mess in every edition so I want it to come into play as little as possible past making a phone call to hacker allies and flipping a coin to see if they can make something happen.

Thirdly, instead of strictly playing Shadowrunners, the players will be playing corporate troubleshooters for a major bank and the game's missions and storyline will be based on the premise, "What if all the big modern conspiracy theories were true?"

The "Pilot anything" guy is useful for improvising a getaway, plus to actually... get away.

Also style points for being the guy with the sweet ride.

Regular driver to lose a tail or keep the vehicle steady while fighting go gangers is always usefull. Better than rigger?No. The fact that Rigging Interface both gives you bonus to almost fucking everuthing and lowers the threshold of stunts is that good.

Presumably a non rigged driver would be able to beat up the vehicle more no?

You get to channel your inner Jason Statham

But like Statham you should invest in some secondary skills so you can do more than sit in the car.

Whoops, wrong Jason Statham pic

Like the car taking more dmg? Sure. You will need it because the rigged one gets +2 to doge and speed and +4 to handling.Also can use matrix initiative for driving

Like a lot of niche roles, it depends a lot on your GM taking steps to support it. A lot of games will gloss over the escape once you get out of the actual area, largely because actual OPSec is boring.
It's more likely that a non-rigger will NEED to bust up the vehicle in order to achieve the same things as the rigger driver, due to the increased limits and reduced thresholds for stunts that a rigger receives.

Excellent. So my other question: how much money is too much money to put in your ride if you're not a rigger? I bought a 32k GMC Phoenix, dropped nearly 40k in mods into it recently (+2 Handling, +2 concealed armor, Antitheft 3, Metahuman Adjustment, Increased Seating, Spoof Chip, Morphing License Plate) and want to drop about another 40k (Luxury Accomodations, Yerzed Out 4, Heavy Weapon Mount and an HMG with Smartgun System to go in it, Ram Plate, maybe an Advanced Winch too) in it before I'm happy with it. I could buy a fucking Eurocar 3000 with that sort of money, but such is the price of customization.

Oh, and my other other question: On a scale of 1-10, how difficult would it be to acquire a SAAB Gladius 998 TI without paying for it? The very thought of having a car that's faster than anything that law enforcement has on the road gives me an erection that the sight of which would make most Asian women tremble in a combination of fear and arousal.

I am about to create my first ever shadowrun character for a campaign I am joining this weekend. I want to create a spirit exterminator based on pic related. Ideally I want to not be magical but i don't know if there is anything mundane characters can do to interact with spirits.

Is this doable? How would I go about it?

This is in 5e.

Man, it's been so long since I've seen that movie I can't even help you out.

Can I Smartlink a Bow?

What magic rating should I am for as a physAdept?

I wish there was a folder in the pastebin called, "You're not as special as you think you are" that has copies of sheets like "mundane paraexterminator".

Go buy Astral Powder, get electric weaponry and APDS for an assault rifle, have grenades.

I.. guess?
I mean it would be a camera on it and that's it
can't imagine any other use for it

also depends on what focus you want

I dunno user, your post gave me mixed feelings. On one hand I want to be an asshole and saying
>Is it called a smartGUN system or a smartRANGEDWEAPON system?
But on the other hand, when I think about it a bow would probably have more to benefit from a smartlink than a gun would, if only by realworld logic.

Too much money on your ride is an arbitrary line that depends on how much you want to street sam vs drive. It's a tradeoff at all levels. A lot of 'ware has crossover use that makes you a better driver and a better sammy (initiative boosters like wired reflexes are a big one, any reaction boosters too, and agi synergizes with gunnery). At the very least, you should have a good piece (like a Predator V, Defiance T-250, Mac X Smartgun or AK-97), a few different ammo types, some armor, a DocWagon contract, some burner commlinks, and a fake SIN with some licenses (don't forget a driver's license!)

The Gladius is a 150k nuyen car. Finding one you can boost in the first place will be difficult, and then after stealing it and having your decker reset ownership and erase the tags you still have to deal with the fact that a 150k nuyen car sticks out like a sore thumb when the cops are still on the lookout for it. It's more trouble than it's worth, probably.

If you want to get one legit, the Gladius is availability 14, so you need to take Restricted Gear to have one at chargen. Seeing as you're not a rigger, I might suggest getting a Dynamit instead if you have the need for speed. 60k cheaper, available at chargen, and just as fast.

I might recommend having a more subtle ride if your group is mirrorshades, because being able to blend in is key. See the opening of Drive for inspiration youtube.com/watch?v=vdqbdEKeJ_4

If your group is more pink mohawk, though, by all means drive the dream car.

I'm trying to make the green arrow, complete with boxing glove arrows.
>>Is it called a smartGUN system
While true, you also point out that a bow you benefit from the constantly updating data than a gun would, plus a bow is not exactly an optimal weapon.

Ignore the haters. Riggers already want Wired Reflexes and Reaction Enhancers for their Pilot skills, and that translates well into being a street samurai. Just go into it with the understanding that you'll be a functional warrior that can't operate on the sheer killy level of a dedicated street samurai and you'll be fine.

They're just big dudes with big beards and rough skin. As long as there are no objects nearby for size comparison, there's tons of shit that fits.

Being a Jojofag I am thinking about doing a character specialized in a single spirit.
How can i do this?

Hacking can't be done half a world away after crash 2.0. What I'd recommend is giving them an npc that can come with them or stay nearby and do the hacking, allowing you to hand wave a bunch of it.

I'm not sure about bank trouble shooters b/c all your hooks would have to center around the bank. I'd recommend police force, be that KE, Lone Star or some other corp enforcement. That way you have an excuse to go to a variety of places.

My players are running afoul of a necromancer, and assuming I wanted them to fight 2 guardian spirits, one mook working for the necromancer, and a bunch of really low force task spirits that happen to be in the area, how high force should the guardian spirits be? I'm thinking like, around force 4-5? Would that work, or would it end up killing them?Assault rifles/ sniper rifles is hard. Sniper rifles use the shotgun skill for some reason, so best to pair them with that.
The rigger bit can fit if you want to be a vehicle rigger, but not if you want an army of drones.
The smartlink does ballistics math for you, right? Bullshit like windage and yardage is way more important with a bow than with a gun.

This streetsam was quite thoroughly kitted out by the time he came into my hands, so I have no worries about gear money. But I'm sure I could never buy a SAAB or a Dynamit for 2 reasons
1: I'm going to dump money into it for mods after the fact
2: After spending all that money on my current ride and the money I've yet to spend on it, I don't think I could stockpile that much money and not end up buying something more sensible with it, like a house.
So basically stealing one is my only option.

You need to get an Ally Spirit. It's only available after your first Initiation, but the initiation trial for that can actually be making your spirit familiar. After that, you can spend your own karma upgrading it.

Good point about crash 2.0. We'll probably end up handwaving that shit with an npc then, thanks!

The idea is that the bank in question is a megacorp, so they, and by extension the PCs, are doing stuff for the super rich, like the .00001%. Remember that really old political cartoon with standard oil as an octopus? Same basic idea. Would it be better to just use an established megacorp from the series? That way it'd be a bit more obvious where things are going and just what they're doing, I suppose.

The idea isn't for the characters to be heroes. Although strikebreaking and false-flagging for corp enforcement could and probably will come up.

The trick would be to having each of the bank troubles pull them into an entire season's worth of complicated, interlinking plot, instead of having each problem be only a single episode of stuff. Big things that take a lot of time and energy to solve, but which can be subdivided and compartmentalized into a series of episodic missions in one greater arc.

For example, a legendary thief broke into a safety deposit box and stole some valuable shit. You need him to tell you where he sold it. To do that, you need to capture him and leverage his freedom against ratting out his employer. Which means you need to set up a trap around a heist that's easy enough to get him to the intended trap, but not easy enough to be suspicious - and that requires bait. Bait like a priceless heirloom sword that a Renraku executive is offering in exchange for freeing his daughter from shadowrunners. To get intel on where the runners are, though, you'll need to deal with a local street gang, who want...

And then once you've resolved all of that (including the mid-season twist where the Renraku brat is part of the runner team and you hire them to backstab the legendary thief by being the heist crew who leads him into the trap) you have the mid-season finale where you have to steal a bunch of documents off of sovereign corporate territory to return them to the client and save your employer hundreds of millions in reimbursement costs.

That's the trick to playing gimmicky games.

>I don't think I could stockpile that much money and not end up buying something more sensible with it, like a house.
>So basically stealing one is my only option.
Is there any mentality more Shadowrun than this?

What do you guys think of SR:Anarchy?
I like the idea of a simplified SR, but I cannot wrap my head around the whole turn-based Narration thing :/

People asking about Anarchy is one of this general's biggest pet peeves.

The general consensus is that it's not terrible, but it's also not good, and also not rules-light.

That sounds like it could be pretty cool too, yeah. I'll admit I hadn't planned that far in advance yet, but I definitely see the appeal.

>Would it be better to just use an established megacorp from the series?

The pro is that it would have established lore to draw on that anchors it in the setting. Con is that you'll be restricted by that lore too.

There aren't really any issues with just inventing one. There are a ton of AA-rated megacorps beneath the big 10 and the canon list is far from exclusive. There must be hundreds that have extraterritoriality, strong security forces, corporate citizens and all the other good stuff but have never been mentioned in any sourcebook. As long as you don't go crazy with it and make it a 'Lore Sue', it won't be a problem.

A derpfest squeezed from the septic anal glands of a gibbering reprobate. It fails to accomplish what it really set out to do. It's Dungeon World for SR, only worse because Shadowrun actually has a good setting.

is being a punchy adept good or is the cyber-up char just better?

Cyber's better for punch. You get +5 punch damage compared to a non-cyber puncher.

Adepts are for swords.

>Shoot straight
>Conserve ammo
>And always practice affirmative informed consent

>/srg/ - dumb callback edition

>Is it called a smartGUN system or a smartRANGEDWEAPON system?
You can put it in throwing knives, grenades, bows, etc - it really is SmartRangedWeapon System. Don't be that asshole.

The sole redeeming factor I like about Anarchy is that it allows for GM-less play, but in my experience groups where one person gets shackled behind the GM screen aren't the type that handle round-robin narration well so it becomes a bit of a wash. It offers basically nothing for a more traditional GMimg experience aside from removing power outliers, and it only achieves that by reducing player options to a few amps.

Also people keep bugging me to make a version of Chummer that supports it, which seems... counterintuitive to the stated design goals of the game being simple.

I'd much rather just run or play with the Blades in the Dark hack if I couldn't do Shadowrun proper.

Campaign idea:
All the players are not shadowrunners, but infact men in black, ala the style of cartoon and movies. They're keeping surge creatures and and aliens in check.

Has anyone had any experience on the tabletop with the Incomplete deprogramming and or the flashbacks qualities? Are they a recipe for disaster or could i get some quality roleplaying/at least a decent laugh out of them

So I want to make a troll fashion model character who, on her downtime, beats people to death for kicks. Think "The Russian" from Punisher but if he were a she, and she were a supermodel. Not sure if she can run face, but I'm thinking about it. Any suggestions for the character? Gear, quirks, etc?

Is a cowboy samurai viable?
What if I wanted a "gun in one hand, katana in the other" deal going on? Too much to handle?

It works in 4e, at least. Ambidexterity is a quality, Buy Melee hardening on your weapon so it's safe to use as a bludgeon, have a sword in your other hand, and then take the dual-wielding Martial Arts maneuvers from Arsenal, like Two-Weapon Style, Ripost, off-hand training, and Disarm.

Generally you don't want to multi-attack and split your dice pool ever, so don't do that: Just use your revolver or your sword only in a given turn.

Well, I'm doing 5e. Doing it one-at-a-time will do.

Quirks: Day Job, Fame, distinctive style?

I don't know 5e, so you're on your own.

I'm a bit of a newbie to the Shadowrun-verse, what do cybereyes provide in comparison to the human eye? Also how do induction datajacks work.

The cowboy martial art is good for nonlethal shooting shenanigans, however you may consider the other two shooting martial arts which focus more on combat in melee and thus give some benefit to your swordfighting as well.

At base level, it lets you see AR iconography and lets you record things you see like a living security camera.

You can trick them out with Jensen Sunglasses, laser welder eyes, popping them out so they function as little spy drones, heat vision, night vision, microscopic vision, and all kinds of crazy shit by paying a little more.

I've never used karmagen, what's the max I should be spending on skills/attributes/cash/etc?

Neato. I suppose it's worth the trade for metahuman vision then. So would the average cyber eye user see a HUD overlay?

If they wanted to. That would be part of the AR Image Link, though you'd need it to link to actually useful stuff for a useful heads-up display.

Like smartlink system stuff so that you can see targeting data from your gun, and the remaining ammo count in it. Or a tacsoft program so that you can see your allies on a 'mini map'. Or a biomonitor to see your own vitals.

Thanks for the help, chummer!

Is it even viable for face or muscle, though? I'm thinking no chrome, probably.

Can I make a custom ballistic mask work as a gas mask?

How would I go about doing that? Just toss a respirator in there, or is there anything more complex rules-wise I should look out for?

Trolls can face just fine.

Gas masks and/or Respirators can be added to a Ballistic Mask, taking up a portion of its Capacity.

Respirator consumes 2 capacity, you've still got six left. No particular reason for it to be a problem. Won't help you much without a fully sealed suit since most toxins are Contact/Inhalation though.

Gas mask is capacity [2]. It'll fit in a mask just fine

Rate my cybered up catgirl/catboi mark 2. Goal is an infiltrator, sniper, and pocket/backup sam

History involves getting limbs blown off in a previous run

Are the elves gone yet?

So I'm resurrecting one of our old feature branches since there's nothing else I super want to work on at the moment. Any opinions on stuff that would make it easier to be an rigger?

5th edition right?
priority, sum to ten, or karma?

5e, priority

I like the idea of digigrade legs on catborgs, but I would understand if you didn't want topay the extra essence. You should probably try and swing an extra initiative dice or two to give you a chance at a third pass, even if you just pick up a baggy of Cram. Also, I'd probably specialise in shotguns over the sniper rifle, as I have a fair hunch which one you'll use more, and maybe upgrade to the Mossberg, It's only 350 nuyen more,has one higher base accuracy and can fire full auto - it's otherwise identical to the SPAS.

being able to switch between viewing vehicle mods and viewing drone mods would be nice

being able to add gear to drones and vehicles (like body armor to anthroforms) would also be nice

No Chrome as in Au Naturale or do you think you might go adept?

Au Naturale. I can do a little chrome or bioware, but the body can't visibly change that much and I'd prefer not to just have well-concealed cyberlimbs. This character is supposed to be able to look good at any time and mingle with the upper crust: she's a model, after all.

Baseline Troll or a Meta Variant? (assuming 5e) Fomorians have a higher charisma but have taken the rough end of the pineapple otherwise, Giants also have higher max charisma and better natural armour at the price of reduced reaction and skin that looks like bark. But based on the art they seem to have more human-like proportions so that migh make them more suitable to being a model.

I was going to do vanilla Troll. I didn't want to do Adept, as my last character was also one, but not going hard in the chrome seems to handicap me a bit if I'm mundane.

There is a specialization for gymnastics in chummer called "rolling." Anyone know if any book describes what that's about?

Curling up into a ball and rolling. really, it's a gymnastic move.

youtube.com/watch?v=_9HxqFzHAT4

It kind of does, but the reality of the troll toll means you aren't likely to be able to afford much 'ware anyway. Is this priority?

Yeah, priority build. My character has 450k Nuyen and a solid income from national fame, though.

Okay, so A resources, so B must be metatype, C Attributes? E Magic and D skills?
That's going to leave badly under resourced in the attributes area, still if you skimp on logic and go full dumb blonde and on body as it's not as vital in 5e due to the re-scaling of armour your stat's could be -
BOD: 5
AGI: 4
REA: 3
STR: 8
CHA: 4
INT: 4
LOG: 1
WIL: 3
EDG: 1

I get why you took A resources but I think that might be a bit of a mistake (though it will allow you to acquire a limo or a luxury lifestyle), I'd swap attributes to A (or B with Metatype A) and resources C, and represent the money with a high lifestyle. Are you going to take Creature of Comfort as a negative?

Yeah, I should probably do that. And no, the negatives right now are Day Job (20hr), Addiction (Mild, Novacoke), and SINner (National, Russia)

Is there a quality or something for people who lost one eye?

Sure You only need to refluff "Cyclopean Eye" from Run Faster to 'lost one eye and didn't get it replaced' instead of 'being born with only one eye'.

What are the top 10 most essential items for any shadowrunner to own regardless of role in the party?

10 katanas

if you had to go rigger/sammy, I'd say go for support rigger style rather than combat rigger style. Set up observation drones and use sniper rifles from well away to make otherwise impossible shots. Have special drones that latch onto locations and have bullet proof armor that will bounce shots for you. Things like that. Go full Deadeye on this.

Use the roleplay to get around dice pool disadvantages.