/srg/ - Shadowrun General - Dig up Nigel Findley Edition

It's an assensing test. You get the same details you would get by assensing the target directly.

>A human detective (Will Smith) and a hulking Orc (Joel Edgerton) spring into action as evil forces scrap to seize control of an all-powerful wand.

I hope it aint shit.

>Will Smith post 2003
>not shit

pick one

What happened in 2003?

Will Smith became shit.

Bad Boys II came out. 2004 was the year of I, Robot and his downward spiral.

What happened specifically in his life? I dunno. He tried some more serious roles afterwards, they didn't really land, and he realised his son was a massive disappointment but committed himself to pushing the sprog forwards in life.

What's the most contrived character concept? Mechanically and backstory wise.

It can also be used to track the person while it lasts. But that's easy enough to get around if you have a bunch of reagents and some longhaul.

And some will say that the security will then after send a spirit (for it's last service or so) after, but they one, need to remember it, and two, eventually would either have a new target or just give up.

The real bad side is that it means that they're more likely to do something next time, because then you've got a proven pattern.

I like I, Robot.

I think "I WHIP MY HAIR BACK AND FORTH" sort of sealed the deal for his daughter being even worse.

I still think he and his wife are beards for each other.

Creating my first character and I'm going for a face that's basically David Bowie. Any tips for char gen? What items and gear should I look out for that would give me bonuses for charm checks ect?Not using magic btw.

Honestly a lot of street samurai come off as really forced. It's hard to justify why you have half a million nuyen worth of 'ware in your body, all military-grade combat mods, but you are currently engaged in freelance corporate espionage and murder-for-hire (and often explaining how you got all that 'ware and the surgeries to install it despite never having a SIN).

It's basically either veteran or you don't ask questions about how the ganger got WR2.

My friend, crack 4e's 'Attitude' and convert as needed.

...

It's really not that bad as long as you don't compare it to the Asimov book (they're not at all related).

>Just got finished watching Ocean's 12

Thread Question: Have you ever introduced the concept of a Gentleman Thief into your runs? If so, how did it go?

>Off the job Shanaynays
Started a free clinic in Kowloon Walled City. Started a designer drug operation with a shitty restaurant as a front in Hong Kong.

What are some interesting designs for a Custom Ballistic Mask?

...

I might have a few for you.

Skyrim's dragon masks. Kenneth Brackhaven's face. Something like a Shadowseer's mask. What looks lik a pile of bandages covered in serial numbers.The attached picture to make people uncomfortable.

...

...

Maybe more of a helmet..

The Geisha look is always neat.

Lucha Libre!

Get a full cyberskull then wear your original skull as a mask.

And finishing with the classic Plague Doctor.

Have they bothered to release a justification for 'gamma' grade ware being a thing yet?

So, a Face? It works out just fine.

That doesn't seem physically possible.

Smash it and stickytape it to a helmet in pieces. Macaroni and glitter optional.

Or take pieces of other people's skulls and use them as your mask. Might as well go full on banana nut bonkers.

It's not a thing yet, and everyone's searching for the next breakthrough that will result in a less impactful implant.

Unless you mean the name. I'd just say that it's an outside mish-mash of different grading systems that gets spoken of as a standard, but every corp and some smaller sales places all have their own internal names.

Just nobody uses those outside of the corp or internal shop papers.

No, not the name. It's just a fucking stupid concept given what deltaware is.

>Long story short, it doesn’t exist. Somewhat longer story, there’s a whole lot of nuyen being invested to change that fact. You get some Matrix rumors that suggest that one megacorp or the other has unlocked the mysteries of gammaware, but as of yet, nothing’s been proven. If it ever gets fgured out, it’ll be the blackest of tech for a while, while the corp that manages it reaps the rewards and deals with the explosion of raids that’ll follow.

>One or two bleeding-edge prototypes might be out there, before true production can be started up, and maybe your players happen to get their hands on someone with this one-of-a-kind test system. Mmm, possibilities!

Yeah, I've seen it, thanks. I mean that Deltaware is, well, the end. Bioware that's deltaware grade is made from you, with little bits tweaked. It can't get any better. Cyberware is using the pattern of your nervous system for transmissions, the metals are tweaked and coated, the alloys shifted, to ensure minimal shock to your body. An aura examination to check for any hidden weirdness that might require the implant to be adjusted. A slow integration process, and regular holistic care of the implant during the healing process. You can't really get further than that for gammaware.

O R I C H A L C U M

The pinnacle of magitech at the moment is a bunch of gooey blobs that light up if something magical flies through them. Or happens too near them. Or if they feel like it.

Why not keep your original face alive and put it on an artificial musculature on a ballistic mask?
You know, for when it's time to dress up a little.

>It can't get any better.
It can always get better.
>MCT and Wuxing are currently working to perfect arcane foci that bind or strengthen the subject’s biological stability in order to enable enhancements beyond what the natural metahuman form could accommodate. These foci, called Essence Anchors, are designed using principles similar to the cybermantic techniques that bind a soul to a body. However, instead of binding once the body’s stability is gone, these foci reinforce that stability while the subject is still viable.

Yeah. That's not a ware grade, though. It's a bolt on derivative of cybermancy.

The specifics matter less than whether or not there's truth in the assertion that augmentation is at an end point for essence compatibility.

It's been said it is. I hold that it is not.

Ultrasound sensor and a gas mask.

Possibly new derivates of Zero are found to interact with these, these, and the other altered material mixes, and when you put that together with this currently experimental alteration to micor-electronic wire-laying, you get less impact. Some of the time. Gamma would be when they make it repeatable, because not everyone takes to the Zero variants the same, and so that's the current big problem for, say, Ares.

Meanwhile S-K is looking at radical changes in ASIST and limb anchoring that promise a lighter weight and the ability to reduce surgical impact, but it's really being plaged with bugs in the ASIST processing that mean that even a 90% reduction in essence loss wouldn't be worth it.

As for gamma bioware, perhaps it's just minimizing the non-you bits needed for most bio-ware or else figuring out better protein synthesis and integration methods for the stuff that was already mostly you.

(Part of the stuff with bio is the strange way it's worked over the editions. I only had a little knowledge of it in 3e, and none for my wholly play days of 2e.)

And even looking back for older stuff, it's Delta may be the ultimate.

No, I said that deltaware is as far as it can go. You want to play your semantics games, go ahead. But since across 4 other editions it's been set up as "Deltaware is it, the end, it doesn't get any better, at all, for augmentation grades", I'm sticking with: Gammaware is a fucking stupid concept.

...

>No, I said that deltaware is as far as it can go.
And there's a lot of corporate nuyen going into, "you're wrong, chummer."

Feel free to stick your fingers in your ears if it makes you feel better.

Dorohedoros full of neat mask ideas, especially if you don't mind looking a bit edgy.

Having looked, I know that the 3e book on 'ware just said that it currently is the final word, and may actually be.

But that's not quite the same as Is. From a little looking, Delta wasn't a thing in 1e, and some parts of 2e.

What do laser weapons count as for cyberlimb implants?

But since I decided to look, from reading, the thing I heard about allergies in 1e is not only true, but it's possible to get a non-human character that's hilarously allergic to weapons, 'ware, and armor (essentially). And the core lets you live at 0 Ess. It's when you go below that you die.

Grades also not in the 2e core, still can hit 0 without dying, and some of the essence costs are interesting. Skillwires went from .1*rating for low levels to .3*rating at high levels. Filter systems are hilarious, because the division symbol they use looked like a plus at first glance, and I figure that there had to be some kind of typo.

I forgot about potential 'ware damage from Serious and Deadly wounds, probably never used for how much it adds in dice rolling and complexity.

Only alpha and beta were in the two main resources I could find for 2e. One of them has it possible to lose ten percent of your essence during a removal/for upgrading 'ware.

>Tasers are treated as Light Pistols, Exotic Pistols are
treated as Heavy Pistols, and other guns might be modifable into cyberguns if the Gamemaster so chooses. Assault Rifles and larger weapons cannot be so modified.

One pc is pregnant and another pc got an npc pregnant.

Their offtime shenanigans are clear.

Continuing on reading on grades of ware and stuff, the only mention of death and 0 essence in the 5e core is talking about critters with Essence Loss.

4e mentions the death at 0, but in that same sentence implies that there will be later/non-basic (?) rules that allow for life at 0.

I guess that for the next time I run 5e, I'll proclaim Retro Essence Rules and let people live at 0 Essence. And I'm tempted to have some way of letting a 0 Ess character still count as emerged/awakened just so that I can see if somebody wants to try and take a -8 to mundane healing rolls.

>4e mentions the death at 0, but in that same sentence implies that there will be later/non-basic (?) rules that allow for life at 0.

That would be the rules for Cyberzombies.

How do Sprites use skills? Does Resonance/Level replace Attributes or should I reverse engineer the mental attributes from Technomancer's living persona stats?

>he didn't like Pursuit of Happiness or Seven Pounds

Shaking my head.

On the general's subject, however, I had a question come up at the table. A player is rolling a younger character and is really in love with the idea of a mentor spirit and wants one quite a bit, even is willing to pay the karma costs. Only problem is that their character is mundane.

I know in 4e you required a magic score to have a mentor spirit, but in 5e I didn't really notice any sort of requirement for mentor spirits outside of fluff. Do you think it'd be within the realms of possibility for something to act as a mentor spirit to them? He's aware he'd get no mechanical buff, technically, he just really enjoys the concept.

Yes, but the wording made it sound like you could be a normal PC at 0.

It's basically rolling Resonance*2 (as Device Rating and Skill, I suppose) for stuff, given the example. Otherwise the courier would be rolling more dice.

They could possibly get the general benefit.

Thanks, I hope the Technomancer Book will have more information on Sprites.

Let them take a contact that's a spirit that has attached itself to them via some kind of pact. The PC doesn't even need to be aware of the pact.

Street Grimoire 137 for ideas.

It can even peer pressure him. "Trust me, kid. Do novacoke off that hooker."

Yep. I'd suggest read up on Mentor Spirits, though there's about this much to chew through and then it's just game mechanics and specifics.

>Try to conjure your mentor spirit right now. Go on; I’ll wait. You can’t? No surprise. Or maybe try to banish your mentor, send it back to where it came from. Oh, you can’t? Well then. That’s because a mentor never offers to performs services, and it never owes services to anyone, so it cannot be banished.

>Many researchers doubt mentor spirits are real. They say that they are a figment of a magician’s subconscious, or that astral space is molding itself to the magician’s mind. Here’s what I have to say about that: The ocean can’t grow a mouth and tell you what its salinity or pH is. A mound of rock isn’t going to tell you whether it’s hiding gold or gems. You cannot commune with yourself and tell yourself things you do not currently know—yet mentor spirits reveal such things to magicians all the time.
>My belief is that mentor spirits are all-encompassing astral entities who have lived so long they know how to transcend the laws of astral space and appear to have abilities that no other spirit possesses.

> It can be seen and heard by those it chooses, and even physically interact with its followers. Your mentor spirit can have significant influence over you, giving you benefits when you remain true or punishing you if you go astray.
>There is no real understanding of the nature of mentor spirits, but their general goal is clear: They want to keep Awakened individuals on the path that helped introduce the mentor spirit to the Earth in the first place.

>For gamemasters, mentor spirits can be used as a tool to communicate information to the magician and enhance role-playing. The mentor spirit can provide cryptic clues, riddles, omens, and sometimes even straightforward advice.

Might also be a reasonable suggestion to look at Street Grimoire p126, for mundanes, arcana, & rituals.

In 4e, there is a positive quality designed to be taken after chargen, called "Latent Awakening" (or something like that) to represent a character becoming magical later on.

Considering you can awaken at any point in your life, it seems perfectly reasonable to have a mentor spirit prior, and that being part of the process later on.

5e, as of Run Faster, has a karma cost to attach to awakening.

Aspected or Technomancer 15 / Adept 20 / Mage 30 / Mystic 35

Why does mysad cost the most?

Probs because you get the broadest range of use out of it, but it's not worth the theoretical 50 karma cost of Adept + Mage.

Because it is the most versatile.

If you know what you're doing it's the most powerful despite the high costs.

The trouble is figuring out what you want to buy for what you want to do. Because if you don't plan well, you're going to be too spread out.

Be sure to put in trodes and a rating 6 pulse weave. Look at someone and trigger it to really fuck up their day.

Another Spire question:
How is the Sprite's Initiative computed? Data Processing + Level/Resonance?
I'm currently trying to write a Sprite Builder and I defined the Initiative through the sum of two attribute values and a modifier.

Wound gel rounds be better then Stick n' Shock rounds for a Heavy Pistol?

More or less, yes. All existing sprites adhere to that formula.
Depends on how many drones you expect to be facing.

And also what you can do with special shots. If you're good at the Shake Up called shot you can potentially knock off 10 points of initiative per shot, which is a pretty nasty thing to get hit by.

Depends on the heavy pistol, the called shots you want to make, and the physical limit of the target.

In general however, despite it being a judgement call, I would say no, personally.

Gel rounds lose .33 DV to armor, while S&S loses .33 DV from lost damage. However S&S also carries the electrical elemental damage which is extremely powerful both for its global dicepool penalty and its initiative penalty. Gel has a knockdown effect, but the utility can vary heavily with the armor of your target. If they are wearing an armored jacket you are likely looking at a 50% rate of knocking down a target with a physical limit of 5, the standard of grunts, before net hits. With heavier armor or higher limit, your chances diminish rapidly. Versus HTR you would have to reach 7 net hits on your shot to get the knockdown.

Most of your DV comes from the base weapon and ammo, and not net hits, meaning that your pistol will rarely be able to take out a target in a single shot anyway, and the loss of .33 DV is unlikely to change how fast you will kill your target. So it pretty much all comes down to how you feel about called shots and secondary effects.

And if you are accurate enough to consistently hit your target on a called shot I would say the combo of S&S and Shake Up is so crippling that it is as good as killing a target.

>trodes
Not worth the capacity, just wear 'em as an individual item.

Spent the 800 karma, still of course need to fill in all the free contacts, knowledge skills etc. and Negative Qualities (houseruled to not give instant karma, just add water).

Rate/hate my concept.

Also inb4 all the
>why don't you just use guns??
I'm trying to recreate an existing character, pic related.

Throwing is actually a rather powerful weapon skill.

I will note that cybercombat is the last specialty in the game where you want to cheap out on gear. It is the only aspect of the matrix where every single matrix stat isn't just your limit but also forms your major pools. You need firewall and attack obviously, but data processing forms your initiative as well as your limit for matrix perception, and you always run silent in matrix combat as well as a matter of course until someone lands a mark on you.

That 1 on the Aztecha means you pretty much are disqualified from participating in a serious matrix fight.

The idea with the deck is of course that instead of going a more average array (and for that price, a more averaged deck is pretty damn average) I have those two really good attributes boosted by Overclocker, and I reconfigure constantly. So the plan of attack is
>Hack on the Fly, two targets
>get as many marks as quickly as possible (Go Hard or Go Home in certain circumstances)
>then reconfigure, switch Attack up into top spot and smash that shit into next week
>keep reconfiguring if I need to grab files or do other shit
>then get the hell out of dodge, Ninja Vanish if I have to

Decking is my secondary, essentially. I plan to -just- hack, so like we run into a room with a couple cameras and I can whip out the deck and fuck those cameras up, we come across a door... You get the idea. I'm not the type of decker to sit back running comprehensive searches and supplying floor plans and shit.

Well, Go Big or Go Home and Ninja Vanish is a waste of points considering that it leaves you with a dicepool of 3 and you only have 3 edge to waste erasing marks when you fail.

You've got 8+1d6 initiative and no drugs, leaving you with a 1/3 chance to only get 1 pass per combat turn.

I haven't used Hero Lab, but you don't need to mod for sim. All decks come with that stuff as part of it.

Also don't bother with using Overclocker to raise a high on the 300, use it to raise a low. And then get a program to also raise that low. Try to fit in Perfect Timing or Quick Config. And get more programs. You've got a nice killer setup, but you'll want more programs.

You're looking very short-sighted. Go Big or Go Home is more of an investment, yes it's kinda shit right now but when I improve my dicepools it should work great with the smash 'n' grab hacking style I intend to work with.

We've also houseruled both Edge and Initiative, soo...
>3 Edge isn't all that bad since we can only use one Edge at a time, ergo I should still have Edge when I need to Vanish
>8+1D6 initiative isn't all that bad since we take off -20 instead of -10, whilst I only get one Init Pass the hyped up StreetSams only get a possible 2 anyway, so I'm not at much of a disadvantage
That Initiative houserule was intended specifically to allow those without all Initiative boosting powers/cyber to still be effective in combat.

Yeah, that's just something HL adds by default.

>use it to raise a low
I know, I can change it at any time. I just had to pick a deck attribute to make HL stop complaining.

>Quick Config
I had that but it looked like a waste. I couldn't see any particular scenario I would need to use it in, since the limitation is of course that you need to swap two different sets of attributes.

>Perfect Timing
I'll have a look at it, thanks.

I think that yekka was more meaning that unless you have a direct connection to a device rating 1 thing, you're going to be throwing 3 dice against 4.

So you're basicaly spending one edge every attempt with Go Big, either because you needed extra dice or because you failed a Sleaze Action and had to Nina Vanish and then Hide.

I'm not sure I understand at all.

>direct connection to a device rating 1
Cameras and shit are everywhere, and I have an Induction Receiver. So yes, direct connections to 1 or 2 rating devices is the idea.

>Ninja Vanishing on one failed Hack on the Fly
Not necessary at all.

What are you going to do, just stand there and duke it out with any countermeasure that show up?

No, leave. Ninja Vanish is only necessary once they start accumulating marks and I need to hang in there for a bit longer. Have you decked before? Do you know what Ninja Vanish does?

Yes, it allows you to get rid of all of your marks.

Failing a Hack on the Fly means whatever you were attempting to hack gets one free mark on you and (much more importantly) is now aware a hacker is attempting to get into the system, hence my question.

The main book mentions that people who aren't active in corporations can have a corporate limited sin - any other examples of how ID functions in 5e around?