/srg/ - Shadowrun General

>tfw want to play or run this game
>your friends are all too rpg illiterate and just want to stick to DnD

To be fair, Shadowrun is as messy and crunchy as RPGs tend to be. If I wasn't so attached to the setting I would never have bothered to learn it.

I have the same problem though, except all my friends are borderline normies to begin with.

... Can spirits knock you up? I mean, it happens in mythology all the time. Where are the demigods?

Probably, though it's more conceptual than you or I would recognize.

It's not great mechanically. It does worse damage than 8p heavy pistols, which alsk have better capacity, and the Warhawk, which does 9p. The only advantage it has over the Warhawk is being able to perform semi-auto bursts and double taps.

READ THE BOOK REEEEEEEEEEEEEE

My personal favorite is Wolf. Victory or Death.

Is 4 agility fine for an infiltration mage? I mean I have magic to back it up but it seems kind of average for an elf

Aye, that's fair. I'll stick with the Warhawk then, since I'm growing on the idea of using revolvers.

Dog(e)
t. would probably be a follower of Dog IRL and basically already followed its guidelines long before i ever had anything to do with Shadowrun.

No. Go for a Steyr TMP instead.

Don't forget to grab a Laserpointer or Smartgun System.
Also get that LeMat Revolver with a centered Shotgunbarrel from Hard Targets as a Backupgun and for increased Utility.

Doom, because Doom reigns.

I have a Doom shaman as a tertiary baddie of a campaign I'm doing currently, but he worships him as Surtr. He's a giant heavy metal vocalist who has a really low budget doomsday cult.

Whoah, easy up there, Shadow the Hedgehog. Don't you have candy to be stealing from babies or something?

Sorry, I can't replicate this bug. Could you show me a screenshot or upload your character file so I can see what's going on?

Hey, Yekka. Weird bug going on

I'm on the latest version of Nightlies, and if I try to launch Chummer when there's character sheets in the folder with it, it crashes on startup. This only happens when there's sheets there

Hm? You mean in the Chummer folder itself? That's... odd.

How fucked am I if I have 3 willpower as a combat character? I have agile defender to shore up my soak pool, at least.

Yeah. It doesn't even give me a reason why, just closes.

Thought you'd like to know. Besides that, nothing wrong happens, not that I can see

Hey guys, me and my friend are trying to figure out shadowrun, and he's having a tough time making a mage. We're doing point buy, how exactly does it work? what spells should he pick up?

>point buy
first of all: What edition?

sorry, yeah, should have said, 5e.

So I'm guessing KarmaGen?
First of all: If you haven't already done it: Get chummer5 (in the OP) cause it will simplify it immediately

On a scale of 1-10, how effective is a rotodrone with a heavy flamethrower at providing support during combat? Also, does a smartgun system even help with a flamethrower?

What skills would a magical security expert need? Someone specialized in providing magical protection, with the obvious sideline of knowing how to get around other people's magical protection. The whole enchanting set seems obvious, and counterspelling and banishing, plus whatever other magic skills you can get, but which ones and to what degree? What sort of knowledge skills would you want, and what non-magic skills would be best at backing up what you do?

for various reasons, we're not using that(mostly DM fuckery making it inconvenient to use), so does he have to buy all his spells? Does he get any through increasing his magic or base? I'm a little confused.

>(mostly DM fuckery making it inconvenient to use)
Hm? Weird house rules?
Well that's interesting. Unfortunately I can't replicate it, so I'm not super sure what's going on.

>mostly DM fuckery making it inconvenient to use
what exactly do you mean, cause if we don't know your houserules we can't really give you advice

various bonuses to different skills based on random rolls and things. Honestly my character ended up being kind of fucked because I built my Sami in twenty minutes using it, then found out he was doing that, and when I complained about having to redo the whole thing, he was like "nah just throw it on top" so I'm starting with seven ranks in blades and stealth. It's fucked.

But yeah, does he have to buy all his spells? every single one? Because at this point, between buying up magic, buying HAVING magic, and buying spells, it seems like magic is one of the only things a magic character can do, especially at reduced karmagen.

mostly irrelivent to this, he hasn't said anything about free spells or anything. It's not houserules so much as "have a bonus skill point! Enjoy it fucking with character generation!"

Well that's... fun. Um. You could get into career mode and create some custom improvements to manage the free shit, I guess. Did he say WHY he's doing this, or is your GM just whimsical?

I don't fucking know, he's also doing a custom setting for shadowrun, you tell me. Still, he's consistent and competent, so I'm not leaving over minor stupid shit.

The two main things a security mage would need to be good at are making wards (which are a ritual) and binding spirits, because the mage himself is very valuable and can contribute by doing those two things while still staying safe. Skilled and loyal mages are valuable assets corps do not want to lose needlessly.

Assensing would be needed so he could help screen visitors and identify potential threats (why does the "heater repairman" have 300k worth of combat augs?), and counterspelling would be used to assist in combating enemy mages.

Banishing would be helpful, but if you can just summon your own spirits to fight intruding spirits than it isn't wholly necessary.

Enchanting is really more for a research-oritented mage. Alchemy is intended (even if it kinda suck in practice) as a way to prepare for a known event in the future. A security mage likely does not know the facility he is guarding is going to get hit by a team of runners until it is too late for alchemy. Disenchanting targets a very small range of things, and is something you are doing instead of casting a spell, conjuring a new spirit, or throwing a grenade.

anyways yeah, with karmagen, does the mage get free spells or do they have to buy them all? 600 karma buy in seems hard to make a semi-balanced character who is also a mage in. Kind of seems like magery is basically the thing you have to focus on, really, between buying(30 karma) magic, increasing your magic stat(100 karma for 6), potentially initiating, and buying spells and bound spirits... ugh.

>But yeah, does he have to buy all his spells? every single one?
yes, at chargen you have to buy every spell you want with 5 karma each, though I don't know if they kept the Spellcasting*2 limit from 4e
in game you have to buy spells with a spell formula, costing differently for each category (500 nuyen for health and detection spells, 1000 nuyen for illusion, 1500 for manipulation and 2000 nuyen for combat spells) on top of the 5 karma to lean it

So: My question from the end of the last thread:

Related question: Why is every single splintering of a nation, and the continued existance of small territories in the face of stronger competing nations, explained as

>We had magic storms/dragons/great ghost dance / magic forests + helping magic animals ?

I mean, why does magic just completely shit over all the stablished borders, landlines, geography, power balances and nations? Why does it divide pretty much every place on earth and give massive favoritism to certain peoples and areas? Humanity did fine without magic for thousands of years and then it just comes back to take a big, fat, massive shit on everything to announce its arrival. Where has magic actually improved the lives of large numbers of folks without destroying so much more for larger numbers of other people?

And why is magic so elitist? Only the dragons, some magic animals and a few select lucky people, who happen to be born with the talent, profit from magic while everyone else is subjugated and inferior. Fight powerful magic without your own magic? Get rekt. Magic is always bound to a small number of persons or creatures and cannot be used in any worthwhile industrial capacity.

No magic plows for large automated magic farms.
No automated trains using magic to transport goods.
No widespread usage of magic for the good of the common people
Strong bias towards magically able beings with seperate power hierarchies, educations and economies

>Real food is rare and expensive because of awakened lands and animals destroying farms and blocking huge swathes of land
>Magic and magic animals come out and completely slaughter people and imbalance entire continents
>Magic phenomena and anomalies destroy and ravage while rarely giving anything positive in return

So, in my oppinion, magic is the greatest divider of metahumanity.

How could magic in shadowrun be made more widespread and 'fair'? Give me your oppinions.

I've got a strong mage in my Hospital that I was wanting to have double duty of being a Healing mage and a security mage, with much more focus on the former than the latter.

Currently I have her decked out with things like the wards, but also circle of healing/protection and the like.

She's got the spirit summoning and junk, but I want her to be limited because she's a healer first, and a protector second. And a fighter WAYYYY further down.

the limit is still in there, yes. you can also figure out formulas yourself using the arcana skill.

Its okay as long as you don't do drugs and stay away from StickNShock Ammo and Mages with Stunbolts.

>figure out formulas yourself using the arcana skill
yes, that is possible. But let's be serious: how many characters do you know that even have a single rank in arcana?

why should it be fair?
Magic and technology counteract
magic is rare, technology is common
magic breaks our physical rules, technology can't
magic is somewhat unpredictable, technology is more often than not predictable

Tie between Seductress and Wise Warrior.

Also, most of the pictures of my current character are lewd as fuck. I'm playing a (quite literal) Pornomancer.

>So, in my opinion, magic is the greatest divider of metahumanity.

On the contrary, magic is a great equalizer of metahumanity, because it's indiscriminate. It doesn't favor any particular race, class, bloodline or nation, aside from (as you say) dragons and some magic animals. No society can write off a whole class of persons any more, because anyone could suddenly up and have cool magical powers. Magic plays favorites, but it plays its own favorites.

You might imagine "magical people" as their own group, but people don't work that way. The Awakened appear in isolation, among families and friends and communities and causes that they're already invested in. They can't be raised to identify themselves solely with other people like them, which is 80% of the problem with an aristocracy or class system. No, you can't make large automated magic farms, but any farmer's son or daughter could suddenly pop out as a mage and decide to become a magic farmer.

>How could magic in shadowrun be made more widespread and 'fair'? Give me your opinions.

It's not supposed to be fair, nor should it be fair. Magic is a force of nature as much as a volcano erupting or a tornado blowing a town down. At best it can be temporarily harnessed by those select few. Also magic isn't the greatest divider. The SIN is.

3 story hospital, w/ 2 basement lab areas.

How many doctors do you think this hospital would have? 25-30?

I think you actually do get some free spells. Look at the priority table; for the magic ones it lists spells along with magic rating and stuff, like this:
Magic 6, two Rating 5 Magical Skills, 10 spells

>Priority
Chummer, read the fucking thread
we are talking KarmaGen, not Priority

Fuck, what even is KarmaGen?

Chummer, are you serious?

Look in Run Faster.

Effectively, you're given, like, 600 karma to buy literally everything A la carte. Metatypes and magic have karma costs at this point though.

He buys his spells, 5 Karma each. Its a big fucking Karma dump to pick up the 10 spells a Priority A Magician gets.

The must takes for a Spellslinger:
Heal, Increased Reflexes, Stunbolt, Improved Invisibility
Heal because its one of two ways to magically heal in Shadowrun, Increased Reflexes so you don't have to huff Jazz all the time, Improved Invisibility because you can turn your entire team invisible, Stunbolt is for the "troll with 50 armor" situation
Everything else is up to him, Electricity Spells are superior elemental damage, but people commonly defend against it because of that. I like Flamethrower and Fireball personally. Physical Barrier, Levitate, Magic Fingers, Influence Thought/Mind (I forget), are all great options as well.
Its 800 Karma, 600 is for your street level folks.

>Improved Invisibility because you can turn your entire team invisible
correct me if this was changed with 5e, but isn't the difference between Invis. and Improved Invis. that the former is a mana spell and thus only works on living beings while the second one also works on machines and cameras?

Yeah. Its why regular invisibility is hot garbage in a world covered in cameras and sensors.

To answer the first part of your question; early on in the Sixth World's timeline the original nations of Earth had effectively no defense against magic whatsoever so control over it and skill with it (however unrefined) and most especially aid by extremely powerful beings from the Fourth World who have great skill in it was basically a metaphorical Predator attack drone to the bow-and-arrows armies of the world; it was something they had no defenses against.
Imagine what you could do to a country that didn't know or even BELIEVE in "direct physicals links" to it's leaders; you could kill one by visiting a hotel him he'd been in and picking up his hairs, all without even being within ten miles of him yourself.

>And why is magic so elitist?
I dunno, why is high biological intelligence and having good genes so elitist? Technically that's not elitism, it's just random chance and luck; it's PEOPLE that decide magic has great value and use and thus Awakened are treated as valuable and useful.

>So, in my oppinion, magic is the greatest divider of metahumanity.
Your opinion is noted and even one that's there in-universe, and from an out-of-universe perspective this is deliberate; adding magic and magical races to the setting didn't make things happier or easier, it just added another layer of dystopian hell to everything and further redefined what "normal" meant in the Sixth World.

No bully user.

Probably a 3. Flamethrowers use taser ranges, so your drone has an effective range of 20m. If you're modding with drone mod rules you can't fit much else than the flamethrower, and if you're using vehicle rules you can only get the armor to 6. Rotodrones are pretty fragile, so you'll probably get swiss-cheesed before you get that close.

That said, I could see putting this on a camouflaged ground drone and that working as a gimmick. The HTR team will be shocked when the trashcan beside them pops out wheels and busts out the napalm. Basically a mobile and redeployable turret boobytrap.

Either way it's high risk, high reward. That's a lot of cash on a drone that will be so close to the people it's shooting that it could get destroyed pretty quickly. Remember that drones are fragile!

RAW flamethrowers "cannot mount any accessories except biometric safety systems (RG 59)", so they don't. Fluffwise a smartlink's camera and laser rangefinder probably can't work very well looking directly at a firestream. Also it probably doesn't have enough processing power to make the kind of fluid dynamics calculations to provide a firing solution.

so it takes two spells to get stunbolt and improved invisibility, right?

I'm confused.
They are two separate spells, so they each cost 5 Karma each. Improved Invisibility does not cost more Karma than Invisibility.

yes, stunbolt and improved invisibility are two spells chummer
this means they cost 2* 5 karma
this is as much as 10 karma
and that's okay

What I mount the flamethrower on a much sturdier Steel Lynx? How much more effective would that be?

Shark.

no I meant, it costs 10 to get either, because they're improved versions of a different spell, right?

otherwise what's the point of stunball/invisiblity? There's literally no use for them.

>they each cost 5 Karma each
user, please.
Stunball is an AoE spell, it hits everyone in the range, Stunbolt is a single target spell.

Invisibility is admittedly shitty, but it has lower drain, so its easier to cast.

nope, each spell is self sustained. you can just get powerbolt and improved invisibility for 5 karma each

but the main reason for these are as said the drain value
you may decide that you want a spell that isn't as powerful but has lower drain

OOOH. Okay, I didn't get that stunball was AOE, that explains it, thanks for clarifying.

At least it isn't the bullshit of second ed, where each different force value was a separate spell that had to be learned separately.

Now that's some bullshit.

What the fuck?

Not him, but short version; Shadowrun's rules have literally never made any consistent sense.
The thing that changes between editions is which parts that stop making any sense.

in fifth edition, the main thing was that the books don't make any sense from a design perspective.

seriously. Learning this game is a fucking chore.

Three stories, but how big are the stories? Is it one block, or multiple like a University hospital?

If you want 30 people, remember that most folks are nurses and orderlies. Maybe one in ten people are doctors in the patient floors, if that. The majority are going to be near the emergency room.

Get your people and anyone associated with you carpet bombed with VX. It frequently amazes me how often the SR writers just ignored chemical weapons.

That... Uhm... Hard to describe. Honestly, I'm kinda new to the whole GM thing.

Party is going to be robbing a Renraku VA. I know all the doctors are going to be packing heat, and even some of the patients, so I don't want to oversaturate the people. Just curious of 30 people sounded unreasonable.

Because after that, each floor will have a security team, and then there will be the patients with cyberlimbs that have guns in them... Yeah, I just want there to be a reasonable amount of doctors.

So I'm late to the thread but here's what I did for dipshit players who can't be bothered to get excited about a new game:

Make a collection of "template" characters with Amensia/Neural deletion. No magic, no deckers. Or if you do, give the person a well defined "spell list" with equations and descriptions

Dumb down systems and add in complexities. First mission has no environmental modifiers on roles, no matrix, no decking.

Second run has some simplified decking, etc.

Shadowrun is a system that really needs to be fine tuned to the group, unfortunately.

It's a matter of tactics.

Flamethrowers, including the blazer from RG has a range of 20m. The incinerator from GH3 says it uses light pistol ranges (contradicting RG implicitly) but let's give it that, so it has an effective range of 15/30m and a max range of 50m. That's close/medium range on most weapons, so anyone with an AR, shotty, or SMG can shoot at you from outside your range at medium-long range, so closing the gap is going to be difficult. The solution? Don't have a gap to begin with. Have your drone set up so that you can engage your opponents up close off the bat - ambush them, hide your drone behind a pillar, set it on a timed reboot so your drone boots up and has enemies in front of it, etc.

In general, drones are relatively fragile (especially the ones from core without armor mods). And if you have a flamethrower, you're a priority target. But due to the way drone armor works (drones don't take stun, so if damage+net hits are less than armor and the damage isn't electric, the drone ignores it) drones with heavy armor can tank well. A stray AK round could knock out your flamethrower toting rotodrone, and that's an expensive weapons system down the drain. But a Steel Lynx can take a licking and keep on ticking. And it comes with the heavy weapon mount pre-installed, so you don't have to burn Restricted Gear on a weapon mount at chargen. It'll be expensive, but if you're doing flamethrowerdrone you've got expensive tastes.

I wonder if you can take Realistic Features from R5, and use it to make your Lynx look like a trashcan. I'll workshop that a bit, I think.

Realistic Features is for making your drone look like an inferior flesh-being.
Customized is the mod to make it look like R2D2.

Post links.

I'm pretty sure a Lynx is too big to masquerade as a bin. An industrial skip maybe, though I don't think it's that big.

More like
Post pics.

I mean a large one, like residential ones you bring to the curb, large bins you can find in hallways and at restaurants, and less-common bins like pic related.

It might be the wrong dimensions, but it doesn't have to stand up to a whole lot of scrutiny. All you need is for the enemies to ignore the trashcan for a couple seconds while you turn on the pilot light - and they'll likely be in a firefight already.

'Course, once the word gets out about the killer canbot this trick won't be as effective. That's when you bring a decoy trashcan on runs, just glue a trashcan on top of a Seven or a Jardinero. We also break out the chameleon coating.

So, if I'm reading "Ward" correctly, it creates a magic barrier in a large area for a long time that works like a mana barrier spell?

Would it be a bad idea for a security mage to set up a ward around an entire building, then, that has frequent traffic in and out?

Why wouldn't they set up a mana barrier

Unless I'm reading it wrong, it is a giant barrier that would act as an impassable wall to anything magical, and if the building gets frequented by many people, it would kiiiinda suck to have to manually let people in or every time someone happens to be a magic 1 aspected mage.

I mean, yes, that is their job as a security mage, but working in Security IRL, there is an important ratio between security and convenience. You could have maximum security, but if it takes every employee 20 minutes to get through it, you're probably being too secure, no?

f-list.net/c/consort zoe/

>Full mechanical stats on ERP page

???

??????????

You don't have to let anyone through a mana barrier by default? Unless that person has manifested spells or active foci, in which case you're probably going to check them anyway

Oh. I thought it was just anyone or anything magical was prevented from passing through the mana barrier.

If not, then yeah, seems like a pretty no Brainer to set up a ward.

They're to guard against spirits and astral projection, mostly

Lewds are not mutually exclusive from mechanics. Also most of the /wst/ anons went to f-list after the purge. There is a decent following of fa/tg/uys on f-list nowadays.

Alright. But, once inside, you could, in theory, summon another spirit, correct? Just no bound spirits able to pass over/through the ward?

>Disposable Hand Wipe x50

Too Lewd