/srg/ Shadowrun General - I Fink You Cybie

My GM is getting us started on a street level gang campaign. I am trying to brainstorm concepts here.

I remember a Calling ritual in Running Wild from 4e that even a trained mundane could do; it was basically the equivalent of saying Bloody Mary into the bathroom mirror until she appears. It seems like a fun poor man's mage concept, but is there a book where Calling exists in 5e?

Also toying with a couple other ideas. If we need a fighter I feel like I haven't explored combat drugs enough, and for tech I was thinking of diving back into Shadowbeat; wasn't there a way you could add BTL level input to regular old commercial simsense? That might be a cheap, simple route to basic BTL production.

What are some other good character ideas you guys have that would be too low-powered for a runner-level game?

Don't trust your GM. Optimize, because it never is gang shit. You are going to get involved with corps. It's fucking inevitable.

Would you let a player cyberskate down stairs?

Only if he bought square wheels.

I guess I would ask for a gymnastics test?

I am counting on his fiancee beating him into submission if that happens, because she's the one who's really been pushing the street level thing.

Down the banisters? Yes.
Jump off the top step and land still running? Yes.
Actually skate down the stairs themselves? No. If you have to break the laws of physics for it to happen, find an alternative instead of getting hooked on one specific way of doing things.
Players tend to get "cool ways" of doing things into their heads and won't stop until they're satisfied, so a part of a GM's job is to think up other solutions that make halfway sense but still satisfy the players.

>gm's fiancee

>GM's fiancée
Promise me, user.
Promise me that when the time comes, your retreat will be swift and honorable.
I want to say it's not always like that, but to the best of my knowledge it is - but at some point, the GM's fiancée will receive considerations and bonuses no one else can, or she'll end up trying to drag him away from the game because "he doesn't spend enough time with her".
It could also be that someone else spergs out because they're jealous of the GM and tries to "seduce" their fiancée - it happens.
What I'm trying to say is: don't try to mediate, don't try to take sides and don't waffle. Things like that end in the worst drama imaginable, and it's best for everyone involved including you if you jump ship at the first sign of trouble.

What the hell is this deep run on host shit in Data Trails, anyway? I can't make any sense of it.

You mean Foundations? Just ignore them, they were supposed to be matrix equivalents to the metaplanes, but they're really terrible and makes no sense. CGL keeps trying to draw parallels between matrix and magic for reasons that are still unclear to me.

Does anyone have the Rally Vincent one with the fridge shot?

>"low power" game
>fiancee is in play
Storytime this for us as it goes down, user
It sounds like a glorious highway pileup waiting to happen

Said fiancee is my best friend of about ten years. I'm not super worried about any of that. She's literally the best player I've ever had, desu. And as far as seduction goes, I'm the only single straight male in the group. It's two hetero couples and two women, one of whom has a boyfriend, and me. Basically a creeper free zone.

Forgot there's one gay dude in there too, GM's brother.

>What's your cool ware?
Coolest 'ware is not having any at all.
T. Mage

Fucking kill yourself, normie.

>Basically a creeper free zone.
If you can't see the creeper at the table, it's you.

I mean, while that's occurred to me, these are people I hang out with on a regular basis, and if I was that off putting I can't imagine that'd be happening. Me and the single girl hit up the local Lions bar for the game last night, for instance; if I was weirding her out she probably wouldn't have been down.

Frag off chummer not everyone's dick shoots lightning bolts just because the stars were perfectly aligned at birth or whatever

What OSTs do you use for background music? Do you use different OSTs for different scenes or runs?

Hotline Miami.
Nothing else is required.

>not varying shit based on what kind of setting your runners have found themselves in
It's like you're a pleb.

Really easy to fucking judge people when you have shit taste.

Did I say never use the Hotline soundtrack? No, I didn't you retard. I said mix it up a bit. Don't use the Hotline soundtrack for every-fucking-thing.

So since the recommendation from the last thread I will stick with my shiny new S-K grapple gun arms and the siemens cyberspine.
Shooting bad guys with harpoon heads is always fun. Bonus if you shoot drones with the wire still attached and reel them in.
Then just fry them with a tag eraser and sell them/give them to the rigger.
I also know kung-fu thanks to active hardwire.

>Then just fry them with a tag eraser

That's not enough. Just like everything else, you have to reset the drone's ownership to avoid any risks of the ex-proprietor tracking you down.

The tag eraser does a truck load of matrix damage, then the tiger can repair it and then either re-chip it org I sell it to the up and coming Merc-corp my character belongs to.

Okay, team.
How much would I have to alter wario for him to be a viable player character?

What parts of him are you trying to replicate?

fat, garlic eating, unscrupulous, physical powerhouse, extreme greed, dumb moustache.
Seems like he has a heart of gold occasionally but actually is a con for more lucre.

Alright point me out in the rules where that has to be done.

also, it would be nice if there were a better looking, more successful version of him for him to loathe, but that's more on GMs enjoying alternates.

What book is the Cyberspine in?

SotA: ADL

Can you give me the non acronym name?

Core rule book, matrix section, ownership paragraph.

Using a tag eraser and bricking the drone will just make it stop working and having to be repaired. (And that's if your GM is generous, for if you go purely by RAW a tag eraser doesn't work on most drones and a bricked one is unsalvageable.) Once it is repaired, you still need to "file the serial number off" so to speak.

State of the ADL
It's not a new pics of ware, it's a package that includes wired reflexes, reaction enhancers, plastic bone lacing and a bio monitor.
Thing is that this package is actually useful for runners.
The fluff is great and also by raw you can upgrade it without GM fiat since it comes with possible upgrades.

The basic spine is something for injured athletes to get them back on track and old man Johnson with a little to much cash/good doc wagon contract.

Shit man, why do Americans not get good shit.

Well if I use a magnet on a hard drive, I don't gotta rewrite the password or anything else. Just install new software, paint it and go.

>bricked equipment
>unsalvagable
Just reboot it, wow, so hard to fix. Or a 4 TN test.

Superior German engineering

Aw man, I have a player who had a concept for a character featuring a cybernetic spine graft, and I feel bad because I had no idea this existed

I was just gonna say that fluffwise she had the spine but it was mostly just a datajack (instead of on her head), if I knew this existed I might've suggested it to her

So did yekka put it into Chummer yet?

Just let an ad in game run "siemins brings to you the new and improved solution for accidents, old age or maybe for the time where you want to be more than just good..."Cyberspine TM""

So if I brick a guy's wired reflexes, is he now crippled? If I brick his cyberspine, is he a cripple? If I brick his bone lacing, can I explode his limbs like commlinks?

When you fucking overthink the matrix, the true creative sees a way to fuck up encounters.

So, basically, let her upgrade it into that at some point as a reward for a big run? Sounds like a solid plan. I'm already planning on potentially letting her swap out her grapple gun for an Ares Lancer laser rifle, might as well go full fucking hog. (assuming she doesn't succumb to her chip addiction or get splattered to paste on a run, of course).

Deus Ex. Shit like UNATCO is perfect for non action scenes.

Should be in there.

What version would you recommend? When is the most recent stable?

>stable
>chummer

lol, just use the latest nightly and if something's broken report it and wait for the next nightly

Eh.

To be fair, the spine is written so that they mostly add something to your old normal boring spine.

>brick his bone lacing, can I explode his limbs like commlinks

No, because bone-lacing is reinforcing the bones with carbon and other metals, not adding capacitors or batteries that can explode.

The other ideas seem to be great, if you can hack fast enough through a GOD-sanctioned firewall while in combat.

Anything that is bricked needs more than a quick reboot. Bricked is the "components are melted, time to bring the spare parts box and soldering iron out" level.

Speaking in game rules term, a bricked device just stops working. That's it. Wired Reflexes and the Spine would just stop giving their boosts without any further mishap.

Most recent stable is approximately two months old. I'd suggest you get the current nightly build and stick with it for now, as it's quite stable.

>God Hand
Heard this term thrown around a few times, what is it ? A really good bioware or something ?

All this talk of cyberspines and the mechsuits got me thinking: what if we divided cyberware into two tiers? Essentially some cyberware and cyberware features will have dependencies.

Cyberlimb Enhancement and Customization need a Cybertorso to anchor it. Wired Reflexes and Skillwires have to jack through a Cyberspine. And so on.

Make those dirty mages pay full price for the extra toys the rest of us need to get just to reach baseline.

Single full cyberlimb with Bulk Mod, Enhanced AGI, Customized AGI
Grab a machine pistol and become an on-demand bullet hose when you have nothing better to do.
Hardly puts a dent in your precious Essence, so you can go do other shit.

It's where you get a single cyberarm, load it up with agility customizations and agility enhancements and other shit, then just fire guns with that hand and pop pop pop watch motherfuckers drop without even needing good agility for the rest of your body

Making mages pay double means fuck you.

The base is a single cyberarm that is customized to your racial Agility Maximum and enhanced further with three levels of Agility Enhancement to have a more than respectable dicepool to shoot one-armed firearms with.

Further tricking out (Bulk mod, armor, smuggling compartment, gyro-stabilizer,...) all depend on personal preferences.

May as well make SR a class system and prevent Mages from taking any augs full stop

Another user here
Honestly, I would make packages the new standard since they are also great fluff wise and have the single pays mostly for reference. You could buy them singular but asks those extra surgeries and the need to make them work as stand alone makes them essence heavy. Basically they would get the used multiplier.
fuck mages

So how viable is the Vindicator actually ?

I got a problem when it comes to magic. I think I am misunderstanding it when it comes to the shatter and mob control spells.

So last night I ran a game where the mage wants to use shatter to get through a wall quietly, but I don't see anything in the magic rules that talk of how loud the spell is, so I describe how he artfully pulls a head sized hole open. Now the mob control spell, I don't seem to know if the subjects can do things like kill themselves, or things that wouldn't normally do. Is it like just total control, they're fucked if they can't resist the spell?

Couldn't you just make a custom cyberware package for it anyway? I thought Chummer had rules for that?

You're clearly stupid, fuck you, go fellate Gibson some more.

Terrible.

Boo-hoo now I would need to spend five karma to be able to breathe water.
Boo-hoo now I would need to cast improved reflexes to get more imitative.
Boo-hoo now I need need mage-sight glasses (or just a cheap soy carton periscope) to cast around corners.
mages can still do everything they want better than anybody else, making cherry picking ware harder only hurts mages and mystics.
Go fellate a spirit mage apologist

That's a tasty dwarf

Holy shit, none of those are downsides. I thought you were Goodman level, but no, your stupidity ranks at Trollman level. Great job Frank.
And Improved Reflexes is still better than cyberware, as you can max it and foci anchor it for under ten karma, while you have to spend, what...50k Nuyen? At best? Eat shit, cybernerd.

Are there horrors in shadowrun?

Yeah, elves still exist. Why?

Yes. Spider Mentor is a bro horror, though.

So there is a chance that the other mentors are also horror who just liked real space too much ?

Honestly, I can't make it the intended meaning of this text, can someone translate it to English or rephrase this?

No. Insect spirits are the harbingers of the horrors.

No to all of these unless you have a DNI connection to his ware.

If you brick his wired reflexes, he just loses the bonus, same for the cyberspine and every other ware barring cyberlimbs.

Bricking doesn't mean they explode it means the technological components are now broken. The synthetic spine is still fine, the neural pathways haven't been broken.

Goodman is a person who hates mages and the infected, and gimps them. Trollman masturbates to the matrix.
A foci is a magical item mages use to not have to sustain spells. They're cheap, and you can dispel spells off of them at will!
Reagents allow you to go past your force when you cast, and get way stronger!
Cyberware is expensive and mages get their shit for free, or negligible costs.
You're a nerd who should get fucked.
That help?

Not the user but that's the entire point his post.

Mages can do everything ware does but better and have access to a plethora of skills and abilities that surpass ware.

Having mages, adepts and mysads segregated from ware is a logical balancing issue for Shadowrun. They're already at the top of the power curve, no need to give them more boosts.

They don't get boosts. It hurts their magic. Just because they can use it, doesn't mean it helps their casting.

>What is a pain editor

Oh please, for 1 point of magic you can get one point of essence as bioware. That's literal bullshit

Anyone got some character art for some kids/young teenagers? Got a run in mind involving tracking down a kidnapping victim and the crew will probably question her friends.

>A fuckload of 'ware is explicitly mentioned as helping alleviate Drain

...

...

So are beauty standards still universal in SR and most people no matter their metatype pine for elves, or did each race develop their own standard of beauty they find more attractive, like say big tusk and large dermal deposits for trolls ?

Bit of A, bit of B; depending mostly on the local community. " Tap dat lithe elf ass" is pretty common across metatypes, but there are a lot of people who appreciate a woman with more volume where it counts across metatypes.

Orks and trolls, especially, have their own standards of beauty, evolved specifically from opposition to the corporate media basically pushing elven and human-based ideals of beauty - because guess who makes up most of corporate upper management.
The "core" norms regarding beauty are still the same - strong jaw, toned body and winning smile for men, lithe body, curves and pretty face for women. The corps don't make money on biosculpts if the norms never change and are narrow, though, so trendy hair colors, skin colors, facial features and the like change like the wind, with an impact that puts even our current media's impact on popular opinion to shame.
There's a massive and thriving Matrix subculture and cottage industry around metahuman/chromed-up/biosculpted/magic-aided porn, though, and probably sexual attractiveness is subject to much fewer norms and biases due to the fast-food approach to sex that the Sixth World has.
Orks and trolls, at least in the examples I've seen, consider attractiveness to have to do with how "orkish" or "trollish" you look - while there are still plenty of integrated trogs who admire elves and humans, one who's more proud of his metatype is likely to prefer buff women, as it shows solidarity with his race and doesn't needle him with suspicions of being a keeb-fucker.
Then again, I just conglomerated my memories of Shadowbeat, Seattle City Guide, the 3e corebook and Shadowtech.

Beauty standards aren't universal IRL so your second answer still applies to metahumanity