Shadowrun 4e newbie questions

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Jan 29, 2015 6:28 pm

I'm afraid not. Drones are a very real danger in Shadowrun, but spirit summoning, grenades, guns and teammates all proved to be popular alternatives to blowing a spell selection on unwieldy elemental spells.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Feb 05, 2015 3:37 pm

Are there any other rules for lycanthropes in Shadowrun besides the loup-garou from Runner's Companion?

A repeat, don't care. I know Physical Mask can fool tech sensors, but what about wifi signals? Can it mimic/hide a PAN? Can you accept ping requests on your illusory deck?

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu Feb 05, 2015 3:46 pm

virgil wrote:Are there any other rules for lycanthropes in Shadowrun besides the loup-garou from Runner's Companion?

Play a wolf shapeshifter, take mental disorder that works as lycanthropy.

pragma · Post by **pragma** » Thu Feb 05, 2015 3:52 pm

Re: physical mask

There are neither explicit rules forbidding it nor permitting it.

A very solid justification for not allowing it is based on the non-sentience of spells and the non-interaction of magic and the matrix. Generating a fake wireless profile requires that you measure and respond to incoming wireless signals. One of the axioms of SR sorcery is that the spells themselves don't respond to stimuli; they just respond to the current instructions from the caster. Obviously the caster can't measure wireless signals with just his brain and can't process them at full rate without the help of a commlink/deck.

You could counter "what if I had another spell to measure and digest incident signals," but that spell is definitely not in the book and there's long precedent for magical effects being entirely unable to even perceive matrix stuff, much less interact with it.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Feb 16, 2015 1:30 am

How do governments maintain airspace security? A plane with a Force 10 spirit using Movement and Concealment doesn't seem like something you can counter in a reasonable time frame.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Feb 16, 2015 5:14 am

I definitely meant Stunbolt, when I said manabolt. It's been too long since I played. Stunbolt, maybe stunball if you need it. I never figured out how astral combat was supposed to work, but it seemed like death touch or knockout might be good? I'm not sure what roll you need to "touch" an astral form. Logic+Astral Combat or something?

As for drones, is object resistance a big enough problem to make elementals better than powerbolt?

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Mon Feb 16, 2015 10:07 am

virgil wrote:How do governments maintain airspace security? A plane with a Force 10 spirit using Movement and Concealment doesn't seem like something you can counter in a reasonable time frame.

So is a ground-air missile in many cases.

You don't take measures to avoid getting a plane destroyed once there's a F10 spirit out to get it. You take measures to know about such plots before they're put in motion, and to keep track of who's able (and willing) to summon a F10 spirit and likely to do it to destroy a plane.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Feb 16, 2015 10:33 am

Blade wrote:
virgil wrote:How do governments maintain airspace security? A plane with a Force 10 spirit using Movement and Concealment doesn't seem like something you can counter in a reasonable time frame.
So is a ground-air missile in many cases.

You don't take measures to avoid getting a plane destroyed once there's a F10 spirit out to get it. You take measures to know about such plots before they're put in motion, and to keep track of who's able (and willing) to summon a F10 spirit and likely to do it to destroy a plane.

I think you got that question backwards. The question was about sending planes over borders, not about blowing up airplanes.

Surprisingly, this is an element of the setting that was well sketched out and considered even by the early authors in 1989. Shadowrun posits the existence of "T-Bird Smugglers" who make short hops across national borders with high speed, low altitude aircraft. At the speeds involved, a round trip can be made with cargo loaded and unloaded long before a response of any kind can be organized.

Countries attempt to stop this kind of smuggling by trying to acquire the schedules, and by laying traps on known routes in the hopes of getting lucky.

-Username17

Silent Wayfarer · Post by **Silent Wayfarer** » Sat May 02, 2015 5:58 pm

Can you take a geas to offset Magic loss through Essence in SR4? Street Magic doesn't say anything about it.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat May 02, 2015 6:47 pm

Silent Wayfarer wrote:Can you take a geas to offset Magic loss through Essence in SR4? Street Magic doesn't say anything about it.

As far as I know - you can't.

Silent Wayfarer · Post by **Silent Wayfarer** » Mon May 04, 2015 1:46 am

Longes wrote:
Silent Wayfarer wrote:Can you take a geas to offset Magic loss through Essence in SR4? Street Magic doesn't say anything about it.
As far as I know - you can't.

Damn nation. Thanks for the heads-up.

Silent Wayfarer · Post by **Silent Wayfarer** » Mon May 11, 2015 4:53 pm

I heard Frank disapprove of Shadowrun 4/5E longarms way back when but I have no idea why. Why? Don't they include shotguns for close range and sniper rifles for long?

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Mon May 11, 2015 6:32 pm

Silent Wayfarer wrote:I heard Frank disapprove of Shadowrun 4/5E longarms way back when but I have no idea why. Why? Don't they include shotguns for close range and sniper rifles for long?

Shotguns are bad, sniper rifles are rarely ever useful, and none of that is easily concealable.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon May 11, 2015 6:58 pm

Silent Wayfarer wrote:I heard Frank disapprove of Shadowrun 4/5E longarms way back when but I have no idea why. Why? Don't they include shotguns for close range and sniper rifles for long?

I am actually a believer in longarms under certain circumstances. Large rifles with AP ammunition have the best profile short of military lasers to defeat high end spirit forcefields, and automatic shotguns have a comically tiny magazine but are quite impressively capable of wiping out small groups of people - they are like directional grenades. So if you are facing "high end" opposition, Longarms have a place in your life.

That being said, if you are intending to fight The Wild Hunt or the CalGuard with handheld weaponry, you should consider rethinking your life. Maybe you should be a magician, because high end magicians are kind of ridiculous in that game. Or perhaps you should invest in heavy weapons or murder drones, because at this point your game is really approaching the event horizon between epic and retarded.

For 99% of everything you'd ever want to do in the game, Automatics is the answer. It gives you machine pistols that are as concealable a weapon as you probably need and it gives you assault rifles that are as murderous a weapon as you probably want, and it gives you SMGs that are a decent in-between choice.

I mean, I did have a game where the players took on the Alice Springs Termite Mounds and Vasuki the Nagaraja, and obviously in that case the Street Samurai who fought with a high caliber rifle packing DU rounds was well received. But in most games that kind of opposition doesn't get seen and you might as well save your skill points.

-Username17

Silent Wayfarer · Post by **Silent Wayfarer** » Tue May 12, 2015 1:06 am

I actually did make a conjurigger for the game I'm in. In theory, the only way I can be hurt at all is if I deign to allow people a shot at me, since I float around about 500m up on a stealth FPMV with Improved Invisiblity tied to a sustaining focus on a piercing while managing half a dozen sniper rifle and battle-rifle-and-grenade launcher equipped drones over a tacnet. And that doesn't include summoning a Servant or turning elite troops into my marionettes or controlling metal rebar to stab people hiding behind reinforced concrete.

Just that it's fun to play Neo sometimes,, and I was wondering whether it was worth diverging from all automatics (with a grenade launcher for special occasions) all the time.

Also:

I mean, I did have a game where the players took on the Alice Springs Termite Mounds and Vasuki the Nagaraja,

I sense storytime.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue May 12, 2015 7:55 am

If you get a fistful of possession spirits, can you have them possess bullets to make them dual-natured and thus technically get around the rule against ranged magic weapons?

Silent Wayfarer · Post by **Silent Wayfarer** » Tue May 12, 2015 8:04 am

Oh lord, can you imagine them casting Movement on themselves to fly at Mach 5 and destroy everything via hypersonic bow shock?

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue May 12, 2015 8:56 am

Virgil, you okay buddy?

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Tue May 12, 2015 9:09 am

He had a fistful of possession spirits post for him.

Of course, now I'm imagining doing it with a boomerang.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue May 12, 2015 11:24 am

If you want to go silly, you go full hog.
Net-Gun Net made out of Monowire.
If the spirit has 3D-Movement, that would be very effective.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue May 12, 2015 12:42 pm

Silent Wayfarer wrote:Oh lord, can you imagine them casting Movement on themselves to fly at Mach 5 and destroy everything via hypersonic bow shock?

Not only can that be imagined, but it comes pre-nerfed. Movement works by spatial distortion rather than energy increase. A movemented bullet will go farther but it won't hit any harder. Been that way since first edition.

The authors were ahead of you. In 1989.

-Username17

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue May 12, 2015 1:27 pm

Almost all big Shadowrun plotlines were about Magic, or, occasionally, magical matrix entities (AIs, Resonance). What's up with that? Even in Shadowrun mundanes are worthless?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue May 12, 2015 1:44 pm

Blood in the Board-Room.
Super Tuesday.
Mob War!
Divided Assets.
DreamChipper.

So, yes, there are some set in the more or less mundane world of finances and crime syndicates and politics . . granted, telling them apart may be a bit hard.
But Tech and Magic are basically what sets shadowrun apart from the rest more or less . .
So it kinda sorta makes sense to me to have more plot lines to do with that.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue May 12, 2015 2:45 pm

Longes wrote:Virgil, you okay buddy?

Sorry about that. For some reason, my home computer, when hooked up to my home internet, has a lot of trouble loading the Den (change either computer or connection and it's fine)...and I may have pressed refresh a couple times when the page crashed to see if it even posted. I had to give up and go to bed after a while, so I don't even know how bad it got on your end.

So do voodoo bullets, aside from being able to shoot spirits, add their Force to anything when used?

How big of a nerf is it if you ban sustaining foci and cap spirit mental stats to be flat 3 or 4?

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue May 12, 2015 3:35 pm

Sustaining foci somewhat reduces mage's effectiveness in combat - he takes -2 to everything becaue you need Improved Reflexes.

Cap spirits mental stats - giant nerf to the possession mages, big buff to the mages who have to fight spirits often. Everyone else doesn't care.