/srg/ Shadowrun General - Hackerman

I'm pretty sure you can do that with Personafixes
Just give them one whose personality is "Group fanboy" or something similar
IIRC you don't even need to implant anything for that

>consecrated physads with monohalberds
Take my fucking money

I'm kinda sad that 5e did away with dikote by saying it's standard on everything now, because we can't give people classic cyberpunk super-blades to show how badass they are.

Street Grimoire says that Druids use Int to resist drain. Forbidden Arcana says they use Cha. Which one are they actually supposed to use?

If you don't think there are "super" melee weapons in 5e, you're not looking hard enough.

What are the advantages of melee weapons over guns? You would think that they wouldn't be all that practical considering every hobo and cranked up ganger has a gun of some sort.

For real? Not much.

Some people like to say that you never have to reload a knife. I would like to make the very real distinction that very few knives can be reloaded.

They tend to be quieter, and easier to sneak around more or less, depending on materials. Guns also aren't great in melee ranges usually, and when you're running around tight corridors, sometimes a sword or knife is best.

Also, axes don't need to reload.

Silent, don't need reloading, if you're an adept you can do some silly things with them, and that's about it, really. Loads of flavor, but not the best for practical use instead of a good gun.

Legality and ubiquity are often overlooked. A lot of places will hold firearms while you're inside, but not all of them take melee weapons, too.

GM called our session on an interesting note last week

>Fixer sets us up with a meet
>Mr. Johnson and his bodyguard have a private table for us at a some fancy sushi place
>Mr. Johnson is describing the run, sounds like a pretty standard extraction of a scientist from an MCT R&D building downtown
>While the face and Mr. Johnson's discussion is happening, street samurai gets a text message from a trusted, longtime smuggler contact
>"Hey, are you guys at a meet right now, at that new Nishiki Sushi place right now?"
>Yeah, why?
>"Is the Johnson a middle-aged looking Japanese guy, nice suit, neck tattoo, asking you to hit a Mitsuhama place?"
>Spot on. What's this about, though?
>"I can't explain myself, but tell (face) to pass on this run. I'll owe you guys my fucking life, but you gotta promise you won't ask questions."

Not sure what the right "runner etiquette" way to handle this is. We like and trust this contact, but I'd hate to cancel on a lucrative run (payout is around 12k a runner) based on so little. On the other hand, if this is something big, turning down a run hurts your rep a little while backing out of the run hurts your rep a lot,

You should be able to run it on a hotsim module and trodes. It'll look goofy as fuck, but they won't care; they're chipped.

How big is the smuggler in the scene?
Is he a small fry, keeping himself over water with easy jobs?
or is he a big wig, doing LARGE smuggling runs, who knows a lot of people and places?

Because if he is the second or close to it then he knows what kind of people can manage what kind of danger.
Since he knows you guys well he knows that this job is too much for you, especially since that kind of pay screams "Death run"

So I'd personally decline.
Let him say that you are honored to be offered such a dangerous job, but that you don't think you are ready for this job. (Especially since MCT probably means Z-Zone)

Not that there aren't better-than-average melee choices. More that you can't have a corporate samurai step out, draw his sword, have the light shine off the diamond edge, and have the player's realise they are in for a serious fight.

agreed, there's a lack of cool hi tech melee weapons.

How does he not get VITAS eating devil rats?

None, but he lives in the rough with the pixie who gives machines cancer. (She has something like -13 to computer use and imparts a penalty to a lot of decker skills due to noise)

>More that you can't have a corporate samurai step out, draw his sword, have the light shine off the diamond edge, and have the player's realise they are in for a serious fight.
Sure you can. Just not in a way that says, "I bought this from the same shop you can!"

Will + Int for druids. Will + Cha is for shamans.

Every time someone mentions something like that, I think of this cheesy Japanese movie I saw once where the big bad had a katana with a laser targeter.

Shock ram.

So what kinda hi tech melee weapons do you want?

Ogre stomach and GM caveat.

There's been a few mages posted in threads with electrified swords with cables powering them, and there's nothing like that, it's an odd omission, like the lack of incendiary ammo.

images, not mages - fuck.

How far could I get with a street sam modelled after this kind of template?

Full Body Armour, Stun Baton.

>like the lack of incendiary ammo

FLAME ON!
• Modifer: –6
• DV Limit: 1
• Effects: Light ’em Up (Ignites flammable materials)
• Available ammo types: Tracer

LIGHT ’EM UP
A flare burns, which provides potential for damage. All
you have to do is put the flame in contact with something
that can spread the burn.
• Modifer: –10
• DV Limit: 1
• Effects: Light ’em Up (Ignites flammable materials)
• Available ammo types: Flare, Gyrojet

It's probably more effective than you might think, especially if you prepare the terrain with gas grenades through a window or in the air vents. Perfect for less-lethal focused runs.

What version of CP2020 is that?

In order to have spurs in each arm, do I need to buy them twice? The book doesnt seem to give a concrete answer.

Hope the GM makes neurostun NOT retarded.

catalystgamelabs.com/

OK, which one of you decker-LARPer fraggers did this?

Versus.

it involved a lot of guns, zombies, and eventually Reincarnated Samurai. Plus an Asian chick with a special outfit guaranteed to never hold dirt nor blood (even though the damn thing was whiter than a detergent commercial).

Yes.

Likely answer is yes, it counts for a single arm.
this keeps the calculations simpler than having to divide the numbers for a single blade if the numbers are for two.

If they don't change anything, use nausea gas.

On a scale of 1 to mall ninja, how tacticool is your runner?

Think about it for a moment. Cyber weapons can use capacity. Capacity means it's installed in one arm. Why should essence do something radically different? Chrome Flesh has rules for adding +1 reach if you buy two of certain cyber melee weapons; ask the GM about transferring that to the core cyber melee weapons.

Anyone know of an easy way to get a career mode character in Chummer to obtain Mentor's Mask, or would I have to remove then readd Mentor Spirit?

Directly edit the Chum5 file?

You have to remove and re-add the quality, I'm afraid. You should be able to mark the quality as free.

Concealed Holsters in an armoured suit. So operating operationally, but not tacticool. Maybe I should get a webbing belt.

That's what I thought. Thanks for the verification.

Mall Ninja. I have 14 in Small Unit Tactics and a 12 in Leadership, use suppressed assault rifle called shots with 20 dice, have a set a full body armor with a chemsuit, Ruth-Poly, and all the vision modifications, and regularly use chemical weapons while invisible. I am so tactical that my entire team lets me do the plans almost by myself.

A note, Swap Qualities does exactly what I needed and made it easy. Thanks Yekka.

I'll bump you, baby.

probably a dumb question but im assuming sharpshooter and strive for perfection dont stake to make called shots have no penalty right?

There's nothing RAW that says they don't stack. I don't know where you're getting the no penalty thing, because it takes it down to -3.

Some people think it's cheesy, but as a GM I don't really care. Especially if someone gets their fluffy character stuff to fit around it comfortably.

oh so it reduces then halves for a -1 that make more sense thanks

Oh, I was thinking about halving to five then reducing by 2.

I guess that's another problem in RAW. What order they go in.

unless im missing something RAW says called shots are a -4

strive halves that to -2 and then sharpshooter reduces called shots by a flat 2

so either means called shots have no modifier (which seems broken) or -1 by changing how they stack (which seems more reasonable)

I just want some clarification or at least a second opinion

Hoi chummers. I recently bought all the shadowrun books. I plan to them some time in the distant future. To help myself learn the rules I made characters for each of my regular players:

>The Roleplayer
>The (terrible) Metagamer
>The lolrandom chaotic neutral guy
>The Fighter

Can you please give me advice on each of these characters and how good/not good they are?

The first is the Roleplayer's, so named because they are the one who seems to enjoy actually talking to my characters and interacting with my world the most. The character is an elvish social adept working as a model whose shadowrunning brother turns up dead in the gutter one day, and she takes to the shadows to find his killers. I'm posting this one first because its the one I'm happiest with. Priority chargen (which I prefer honestly). Let me know if there's any holes in this character, yeah?

One die isn't a huge difference ine way or another. Personally, I have always used the rule of thumb of BEDMAS when doing those sorts of calculations, to keep things consistent.

Priority is almost universally hated around here, Strongly consider going with Sum-to-10 in the future, If you're happy you're happy though.

Here's number two, belonging to the (terrible) Powergamer. So named because they try to powergame but aren't especially good at it, so I figured they'd want to play (what else?) a Pixie Mage. The idea behind this character is that they were raised and tutored in magic by their mentor Spirit, growing up in Puyallup with little to no exposure to the outside world. I know you guys hate pixies but this is what this person would play, so I'm trying to make it work. The idea is only their fellow runners know they exist - they keep themselves hidden from everyone else.

Priority is interesting but yeah I'd give sum to ten a go in the future. Skills and abilities NEED to be in the top three, which means you can chose to have money, be a mage or be a troll. Makes building good troll characters hard, which I'll mention with my next character.

Theres also Sum-To-12 for more power, or just raise the chargen avail to 14-16 for more power. If you have trouble getting something you're happy with for non mages.

There's literally no official answer on this, but mathematically, do you do addition/subtraction first, or multiplication/division?

Here's number three, the Fighter, so named because they love combat and doing cool badass shit in our games. I originally built a troll street sammie for them, but I remembered some stuff I'd read here and elsewhere about pure sammies not having much to do during runs that don't go horribly wrong, so I remade him a human rigger with cybereyes, the hand of god and an Ingram.

His character was actually born in the 5th world, but was diagnosed with a rare inoperable cancer and stuffed into a cryogenic tube until a cure was found. 80 years later a horizon intern found him in a backroom. He was defrosted, given a shot to cure the cancer and ejected onto the streets of Redmond. After an introduction to the Sixth World similar to being trapped in a garbage can full of razor blades and kicked down several flights of stairs, he wound up working as a smuggler stuffed full of second-hand wiring and high on Jazz.

Cheers, but the non-mages aspect isn't really the problem. Because abilities and skills are vital it seems like you always have to have them in the top. This seems to make playing an orc or dwarf awkward, and playing a troll downright impossible. Next time I make a character I'll definitely use sum-to-ten.

Lastly, we have the Lolrandom guy, who always picks the weirdest dumbest shit to play whenever we play anything. So I made them a gnomish BTL-addicted hacker. No explanation needed.

This was actually the one I had most trouble building, because I got to the end and found I had a shit tonne of cash left over. I added on some extra rigging - an implant, an RCC and a bunch of Fly Spies to add to the player's ability to infiltrate an area. I could ditch the hand of god and give the fly spies to Twitch, but they'd enjoy a combat-focused character more anyway.

So what do you think? Are there any large holes in these characters? Anything missing or that could be improved?

bump

Personally I think it's pretty obvious SfP and Sharpshooter were not created with compatibility in mind, and that SfP was not created with the existence of called shot penalties above 4 in mind.

Is it at all possible to bind a manifested spirit to your body in the manner of pic related/JoJo Stands?

Yeah, there's a couple of ways you do low penalty called shots that cost a ton of karma.

Channeling more or less gets you that, but it's not a permanent situation.

You could always go for possession spirits. They won't do anything nuts like JoJo, but they'll make you shoot people and run really quick.

Isn't there that spirit pact thing? I don't exactly remember what it does and iirc only a crazy GM would allow a player to do it.

that is badass

Dangit someone give me feedback on my terrible characters!

I don't have time to read them, but I'll share with you what many consider to be the basics of character generation.
>Never have an attribute at 1. This makes it impossible for a character to default on a skill. It also implies that your character isn't just below average, but may actively be impaired. No you don't have to play a retard if you take LOG 1.
>A dice pool of 12 or more is considered to be good for a skill that you want a character to focus on. 10 is decent for secondary, 8 for tertiary, anything less is considered kinda meh, but doable with edge.
>No matter your archetype, put points into a gun skill and your choice between heavy weapons or throwing weapons so you can do something in combat besides sling spells that knock yourself out and aren't defenseless when the enemy street sam runs past your drones.
>You don't want to default on any of the Athletics skill group when you need to.
>Take dice into Sneaking. Despite how much fun it can be, being the loudest man in Seattle isn't the best way to secure a long and healthy future.
>If a Mage, take Heal and Stabilize. Don't be the guy that has nothing but Combat spells out of chargen.
>Remember the following - a commlink, a gun, a micro-transceiver, an armor jacket, a helmet, a medkit, trauma/stim patches, assorted grenades. These are pretty much mandatory for any characters, even if you don't shoot. Helmets can be replaced with ballistic masks at will.
>When in Doubt - Frag Out
>Shoot Straight, Yada Yada.

I usually do 12/9/6 for skills because I have autism

Does 5e have death masks because I find them almost obligatory, free fucking gas mask yo

Cheers mate, this is good advice.

>It also implies that your character isn't just below average, but may actively be impaired.
There are qualities for active impairment, and they will make it difficult to improve or use dice pool bonuses.

>No you don't have to play a retard if you take LOG 1.
This much is true, though.

It's still bad to have so many attributes at 1, especially when you also have edge at 1 and can only bypass your abysmal limits once.

If only there wasn't a grand total of 2 chemical weapons in the game that were inhale vector only Gas Masks would be a lot more useful. I DM, and my house rule for it is if you negate half of the vectors, you take half of the damage. It only feels fair.

artstation.com/artist/robertchew
>Random thread lurker here
He did sets based on Sins/Virtues.

So are dryads still all female? 4e and 5e (Run Faster in particular) seem to imply there are males

>I recently bought all the shadowrun books
WHY DID YOU DO THAT?
SO NOT BUY SR BOOKS
DO NOT GIVE CGL MONEY
ALL BOOKS ARE IN THE OP PASTEBIN

I think it's like the case of the draenei where male dryads exist but the only people that play them make females.

We need to put "DO NOT GIVE CGL MONEY" in the OP. In short, CGL big wig embezzled money from employees to renovate his bathroom and shit, in a hilariously ironic case of corporate corruption. As a result, people quit. This is part of the reason the books are so shit in terms of formatting, editing, consistency, art quality, etc.

I run it that the listed vectors are available vectors, and the used vector is based on the deployment device.

Capsule Round / Paint Grenade = Contact
Gas Grenade = Inhalation
Injection Dart / Melee / Other = Injection

Cuts away the stupid niggling questions, like how you judge radius for inhalation from a capsule round, what immunity to one vector does to a two vector toxin (and whether respirator bonus dice still apply), etc.

you probably realized this already, making characters is a pain in the dick and reviewing a character is an even bigger pain in the dick.
so i hope you arent surprised to see no body saying anything.

anyways i did take a quick look though, seems okay but honestly this all depends how are you running your games, if you're trying to go full operator darker than black trenchcoat playstyle then you're lacking quite a bit in gear. for example ghost seems to only have 1 gear. which is a level 1 commlink
that's bad, REAL bad any decker with 2 braincells could hack into that shit and risk breaching all of your team's communcations and information.
Now if you are running pink mohawk (and I mean like fuchsia pink) then i guess that's okay and dosent really matter.

one of the best 'starting gear' guides i've seen is runnerhub's (leddit group lol) guide. neosynth.net/index.php?n=Resources.GearSuggestions

but like I said this characters work fine in a pink mohawk setting, just don't except for them to be operators operating operationally without fucking up and dying in the process.

Cheers. I know its hard reviewing characters and I appreciate it.

The theoretical campaign I'm planning is gonna start out super pink mohawk and then transition to more trenchcoat later on as the players become more professional. That way me and the players can figure out what they need as we go and I don't end up accidentally tpking them all.

Right sorry. I knew about the embezzlement but didn't know there was a boycott going on. I'll remember it in the future and pirate stuff like a good little 4channer

>doing something just because everybody else is
>not doing it based on principle

You better be baiting user. If you're not, why would you give money to CGL when you knew their business practices?

I try to buy stuff because I prefer to support creators instead of pirating it.

sounds pretty good, hope it all works out.

thanks

The road to embezzlement is paved with good intentions.

>wanting to support a company whose CEO embezzled 750k dollars and got away with it
>wanting to support a company which doesn't pay the people working in it
>where the editor writes novels instead of doing his job
>where the artists just copy the artwork multiple times in one book
>which produces a book with one of the shittiest editing, playtesting, proofreading and implementation in the market
user, do you know why we boycott CGL?
Because them going down and the SR license going somewhere else is better than it is now.
Best case? Pegasus Spiele gets it (they actually give a fuck about quality)

Meant for