Just some things I noticed in the game.
While at character creation the game heavily discourages you against topping off stats, it also encourages you to leave any stat that you're only going to use in a tertiary or even secondary way at one. Basically because it's way cheaper to improve weak stats over the course of the game
So characters tend (or should) to have a lot of fives and ones, short of 'roleplaying' concerns.
I know Frank thinks that Edge is a dump stat. I think it's downright necessary for a really cheesy buffing mage or if you have a 'Killer' DM. I'll always spend at least 40 points on it, in the future. For non-buffer characters this wouldn't be a priority except for the fact that Edge apparently refreshes very, very fast in this game. And combat is also short and very lethal.
If you're planning to buy foci, now's the time to do it. Even though the awesomeness is inherently limited, you can get a lot more bang for your buck by blowing your load with edge. It costs a mage 45,000Y, 12 BP for the focus, and around 20-40 points for the Edge to get Improved Reflexes x 4. Which is kind of a raw deal on the Edge so you want to buy as many sustaining foci as your Logic will allow. Hellllooooo Improved Reflexes, Combat Sense, and Improved Invisibility!
You will eventually want to buy real versions of Foci, only because that's the only way to take advantage of Improved [Stat] due to the force limitations. But the end bonus will be very huge.
The game recommends that you get contacts but I think it's better for everyone if you designate some sap(s) to pay out the nose for a modestly high connection/high loyalty Fixer/Talismaner/Mafia Lawyer/Mr. Johnson.
Shadowrun's 4E's Advancement System
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Username17
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Re: Shadowrun's 4E's Advancement System
Here's the cost efficiency of various things in Karma/BP:
Attributes 5-6: 139% (18 Karma/25 BP)
Attributes 1-6: 108% (60 Karma/65 BP)
Attributes 3-6: 100% (45 Karma/45 BP)
Specializations: 100% (2 Karma/2 BP)
Skills 0-4: 73% (22 Karma/16 BP)
Spells: 60% (5 Karma/3 BP)
Skills 0-6: 55% (44 Karma/ 24 BP)
Positive Qualities: 50% (10 Karma/5 BP)
Skills 4-6: 36% (22 Karma/8 BP)
Skills 5-6: 33% (12 Karma/4 BP)
Skills 6-7: 29% (28 Karma/8 BP)
Complex Forms 0-6: 27% (22 Karma/6 BP)
OK, what does that mean? It means that if you have Aptitude you want to start with your seven, because it is totally inefficient to buy it up to seven later. It means that you want to start with as many of the positive qualities as you are going to ever want. It means that you want to start with one skill as high as it will go (I reccomend a skill that is not in a skill group like Perception) rather than multiple skills at 5. It means that an attribute should start at 5 or 1. It means that you should buy as many points of skills as you can.
Remember, skills are inefficient and expensive. However, skills are more overpriced with karma than they are with BP, so try to get as many of them as you can with BP rather than Karma.
If you are a technomancer, it is of absolute necessity that you purchase all of your Complex Forms, at Rating 6, at character generation. You'll want to have a starting Logic of 5 (or 6 if you have Exceptional Attribute), and get 10 Complex Forms at 6 (or 12 if you have Exceptional Attribute). That is a requirement if you have Karma to spend as well.
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Honestly, like any game that has a separate chargen from advancement system, the game plays better if you dump one or the other. There are systems that give characters a pile of Karma to purchase their starting characters with, and there are systems that give out BPs for characters once play begins. The game runs better if you do either one.
-Username17
Attributes 5-6: 139% (18 Karma/25 BP)
Attributes 1-6: 108% (60 Karma/65 BP)
Attributes 3-6: 100% (45 Karma/45 BP)
Specializations: 100% (2 Karma/2 BP)
Skills 0-4: 73% (22 Karma/16 BP)
Spells: 60% (5 Karma/3 BP)
Skills 0-6: 55% (44 Karma/ 24 BP)
Positive Qualities: 50% (10 Karma/5 BP)
Skills 4-6: 36% (22 Karma/8 BP)
Skills 5-6: 33% (12 Karma/4 BP)
Skills 6-7: 29% (28 Karma/8 BP)
Complex Forms 0-6: 27% (22 Karma/6 BP)
OK, what does that mean? It means that if you have Aptitude you want to start with your seven, because it is totally inefficient to buy it up to seven later. It means that you want to start with as many of the positive qualities as you are going to ever want. It means that you want to start with one skill as high as it will go (I reccomend a skill that is not in a skill group like Perception) rather than multiple skills at 5. It means that an attribute should start at 5 or 1. It means that you should buy as many points of skills as you can.
Remember, skills are inefficient and expensive. However, skills are more overpriced with karma than they are with BP, so try to get as many of them as you can with BP rather than Karma.
If you are a technomancer, it is of absolute necessity that you purchase all of your Complex Forms, at Rating 6, at character generation. You'll want to have a starting Logic of 5 (or 6 if you have Exceptional Attribute), and get 10 Complex Forms at 6 (or 12 if you have Exceptional Attribute). That is a requirement if you have Karma to spend as well.
---
Honestly, like any game that has a separate chargen from advancement system, the game plays better if you dump one or the other. There are systems that give characters a pile of Karma to purchase their starting characters with, and there are systems that give out BPs for characters once play begins. The game runs better if you do either one.
-Username17
Re: Shadowrun's 4E's Advancement System
means that you want to start with one skill as high as it will go (I reccomend a skill that is not in a skill group like Perception) rather than multiple skills at 5.
Why's this?
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Username17
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Re: Shadowrun's 4E's Advancement System
Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1138780508[/unixtime]]means that you want to start with one skill as high as it will go (I reccomend a skill that is not in a skill group like Perception) rather than multiple skills at 5.
Why's this?
Because if you start with a 6 and a 4, it costs 22 Karma to bring that up to two 6s. If you start with two fives, it costs 24 Karma to bring that up to two 6s.
You only pay crazy wads of extra BP to start with attributes at 6. Taking one skill to 6 doesn't cost any extra, it just disallows you from havin 2 fives.
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Re: Shadowrun's 4E's Advancement System
About how strong would a character (along with a more-or-less equally powerful team) have to be before they could reliably take on the evillest and most powerful figureheads in the world of Shadowrun armed with good support and informantion?
I don't mean a Dragonball Z 'fight so hard in broad daylight that the world explodes' confrontation, I mean a more Star Wars-ish surgical strike at the right place but encountering competent defense along the way and having to start their campaign from a random spot.
I don't mean a Dragonball Z 'fight so hard in broad daylight that the world explodes' confrontation, I mean a more Star Wars-ish surgical strike at the right place but encountering competent defense along the way and having to start their campaign from a random spot.
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Username17
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Re: Shadowrun's 4E's Advancement System
Well, Juan is dead, and Aztechnology's new figurehead is apparently just a figurehead, so with sufficiently good intel you could probably blow his head up with a decent sniper rifle from a long way off. The trick would be getting away afterwards, so you might want to Sat-Link a drone with the sniper rifle and have the drone self-destruct on mission completion.
But the remaining powerful and evil figureheads can be pretty tricky:
Ibn Eisa - Leader of the New Islamic Jihad No, he didn't get "resurrected", he's a high force Master Shedim possessing the body of the fallen leader of the Islamic Unity Movement. And he is a bad-ass, having enough Force behind his Aura Masking that noone has yet pierced it and lived to tell the tale. Figure that he's somewhere between Force 12 and Force 15.
As a Master Shedim, he regenerates and has immunity to normal weapons. So unless you can find his elemental vulnerability, mundane weaponry of any sort can basically go home. With him ignoring physical attacks that don't exceed his potentially 30 points of armor, and healing over 10 boxes of damage per round, there's just no way to drop him with a sniper rifle. Don't try. But as he is a Spirit, so you could bypass his immunity to normal weapons (but not his regeneration) by making an attack of will (or picking up a ghoul and swinging the unhappy guy as a living melee weapon), and you can bypass both his immunity and his regeneration by attacking with a magic wepaon. Unfortunately, he has an Unarmed combat of 12-15 and a Reaction of 14-19, so such attacks are very unlikely to land. Still, he loses a die for every single attack he blocks during the round, so with a big enough clusterfvck you could potentially take him down that way. I estimate that it would take about 20 brave dwarves with halberds, at least some of which were weapon foci backed up by characters rolling about 18 dice to have a reasonable chance of taking him out.
In short, if you can arrange a square off between Ibn Eisa alone and the Vatican Honor Guard, Ibn Eisa probably loses.
But let's say you want to gack this guy while he is surrounded by his screaming mind-controlled minions. That's more difficult, and requires a mixture of tactics. The first thing you have to realize is that he is surrounded at all times by people with AKs who are entirely willing to blow edge to go first. Some of them are also Shedim in the Force 4-8 range. That means that you need someone who can get a very high Initiative result who is also willing to spend Edge to go first, and able to clear a room full of people in one action, and probably willing to "die". This job is taken by a Rigger with a fully automatic grenade launcher. Your first action is to lay down the booms with a series of grenades that go off on contact. That'll clear the chaff for your real ace-in-the-hole: two mages with telescopes.
Eisa's powerful regenerative powers don't work against Spell Damage, but I wouldn't bet a nickle against him having Magical Guard. He may be rolling as much as 30 dice for Spell Resistance. Spell Defense is a non-action and doesn't ablate, so if you can't get over 11 hits on a direct combat spell, you can't do anything to him no matter how many of you there are. That's why you use the little-used spell "Cold Bolt" Noone expects that shit, and Ibn Eisa is running around without insulation because he's trying to pass himself off as a regular holy man in Iran. The key here is that his Spell Defense only gets rolled on damage resistance, not to cancel the spell. Also he only gets the ability to dodge with his Reaction if he's aware of you. And while he almost certainly has Divination, you've been keeping yourself spirit concealed for the last 3 weeks so his Foresight won't be able to predict the when and where of your attack.
So he has to resist the Force of your spell + your net hits on your attack, with his Body + Spell Defense + 1/2 his Impact Armor (just his worn stuff, his spirit armor doesn't count). Every hit he doesn't get is a physical wound box filled in. If you give him 18 boxes of physical damage, he probably goes unconcious. Once he drops, of course, you can coup-de-grace him with any spell, magic weapon, or naval battery you have lying around. That would require like a Force 20 spell if you were trying to do it alone, but the goal here is to do it in a pack of two, so if you both throw Force 12 Cold Bolts backed up with a Force 3 Spell Focus and the Aid Spellcasting service of a Force 6 bound Fire Elemental (or Beast Spirit, or Guardian Spirit, or whatever your tradition happens to use for Combat Spells), then if you have a Magic of 6 and a Spellcasting of 6, then you expect to do about 9 boxes of damage each, and he drops before he has a chance to use the Area Engulf that probably also has.
Verdict: Ibn Eisa can be felled by a starting shadowrunner team with enough min/maxing containing at the minimum two Magicians and a Technomancer Rigger. More realisitcally, you'd need to get to the point where your team was rolling an average of 20 dice each in their fields to take him down.
Lofwyr: CEO and Spokesdragon for the Saeder-Krupp corporation
Lofwyr is the second-largest great dragon on Earth, is possessed of several magical artifacts composed of arbitrarium, and is quite possibly the richest individual in the history of civilization. He has the second-largest collection of nuclear weapons, the third most comprehensive spell-list of the remaining immortals, and is by all accounts a world class cock - not even understanding the human concept of "friendship".
This is a tough one. He has every metamagic your gamemaster can remember, and a Magic Attribute of "about twenty". :shudder: Essentially you can assume that if he gets an attack against you, you will die. He rolls arbitrarily more dice on any action than you do. Further, he has a great and unspecified number of buff spells quickened onto himself as well as literal contingent effects that can go off to save his ass. He doesn't have an achiles heal as regards to magical weapons, as his hardened armor applies to magical attacks as well as physical ones. He's also a powerful conjurer, so he'll smack you with an "OMFG" spirit as soon as look at you, so you're back the Ibn Eisa battle if you aren't careful. Oh, and he can spend Edge to make you reroll your hits, meaning that no matter how awesome you are you need to be about 6 characters deep to get anything done.
But for all that, he's "just" a big lizard. Sure he has 20 points of hardened mystic armor, and that's difficult to penetrate. So difficult in fact, that magical attacks might as well stay home. Force 21 attack spells are simply impractical, and I'm not going to suggest that you try to arrange them. The goal, then, is to come up with an ambush by a number of separate attackers who all individually have ordnance capable of blowing up a light tank. He rolls about 60 dice to resist physical attacks, so he'd ignore attacks with a 20 DV even if he didn't have 20 points of hardened armor. But even after his substantial Combat Sense, he doesn't roll that many dice to dodge attacks, so just lay into him until he comes down in bloody chunks.
If he gets a combat action he can make your life hard in a number of ways. He can submarine pretty effectively, so you want to con him into attacking (and utterly obliterating) one something on your side and then spring the trap once he's committed. This is going to require a number of long-range anti-vehicular weapons and a mid-size group of people who roll 12+ dice when operating them.
-Username17
But the remaining powerful and evil figureheads can be pretty tricky:
Ibn Eisa - Leader of the New Islamic Jihad No, he didn't get "resurrected", he's a high force Master Shedim possessing the body of the fallen leader of the Islamic Unity Movement. And he is a bad-ass, having enough Force behind his Aura Masking that noone has yet pierced it and lived to tell the tale. Figure that he's somewhere between Force 12 and Force 15.
As a Master Shedim, he regenerates and has immunity to normal weapons. So unless you can find his elemental vulnerability, mundane weaponry of any sort can basically go home. With him ignoring physical attacks that don't exceed his potentially 30 points of armor, and healing over 10 boxes of damage per round, there's just no way to drop him with a sniper rifle. Don't try. But as he is a Spirit, so you could bypass his immunity to normal weapons (but not his regeneration) by making an attack of will (or picking up a ghoul and swinging the unhappy guy as a living melee weapon), and you can bypass both his immunity and his regeneration by attacking with a magic wepaon. Unfortunately, he has an Unarmed combat of 12-15 and a Reaction of 14-19, so such attacks are very unlikely to land. Still, he loses a die for every single attack he blocks during the round, so with a big enough clusterfvck you could potentially take him down that way. I estimate that it would take about 20 brave dwarves with halberds, at least some of which were weapon foci backed up by characters rolling about 18 dice to have a reasonable chance of taking him out.
In short, if you can arrange a square off between Ibn Eisa alone and the Vatican Honor Guard, Ibn Eisa probably loses.
But let's say you want to gack this guy while he is surrounded by his screaming mind-controlled minions. That's more difficult, and requires a mixture of tactics. The first thing you have to realize is that he is surrounded at all times by people with AKs who are entirely willing to blow edge to go first. Some of them are also Shedim in the Force 4-8 range. That means that you need someone who can get a very high Initiative result who is also willing to spend Edge to go first, and able to clear a room full of people in one action, and probably willing to "die". This job is taken by a Rigger with a fully automatic grenade launcher. Your first action is to lay down the booms with a series of grenades that go off on contact. That'll clear the chaff for your real ace-in-the-hole: two mages with telescopes.
Eisa's powerful regenerative powers don't work against Spell Damage, but I wouldn't bet a nickle against him having Magical Guard. He may be rolling as much as 30 dice for Spell Resistance. Spell Defense is a non-action and doesn't ablate, so if you can't get over 11 hits on a direct combat spell, you can't do anything to him no matter how many of you there are. That's why you use the little-used spell "Cold Bolt" Noone expects that shit, and Ibn Eisa is running around without insulation because he's trying to pass himself off as a regular holy man in Iran. The key here is that his Spell Defense only gets rolled on damage resistance, not to cancel the spell. Also he only gets the ability to dodge with his Reaction if he's aware of you. And while he almost certainly has Divination, you've been keeping yourself spirit concealed for the last 3 weeks so his Foresight won't be able to predict the when and where of your attack.
So he has to resist the Force of your spell + your net hits on your attack, with his Body + Spell Defense + 1/2 his Impact Armor (just his worn stuff, his spirit armor doesn't count). Every hit he doesn't get is a physical wound box filled in. If you give him 18 boxes of physical damage, he probably goes unconcious. Once he drops, of course, you can coup-de-grace him with any spell, magic weapon, or naval battery you have lying around. That would require like a Force 20 spell if you were trying to do it alone, but the goal here is to do it in a pack of two, so if you both throw Force 12 Cold Bolts backed up with a Force 3 Spell Focus and the Aid Spellcasting service of a Force 6 bound Fire Elemental (or Beast Spirit, or Guardian Spirit, or whatever your tradition happens to use for Combat Spells), then if you have a Magic of 6 and a Spellcasting of 6, then you expect to do about 9 boxes of damage each, and he drops before he has a chance to use the Area Engulf that probably also has.
Verdict: Ibn Eisa can be felled by a starting shadowrunner team with enough min/maxing containing at the minimum two Magicians and a Technomancer Rigger. More realisitcally, you'd need to get to the point where your team was rolling an average of 20 dice each in their fields to take him down.
Lofwyr: CEO and Spokesdragon for the Saeder-Krupp corporation
Lofwyr is the second-largest great dragon on Earth, is possessed of several magical artifacts composed of arbitrarium, and is quite possibly the richest individual in the history of civilization. He has the second-largest collection of nuclear weapons, the third most comprehensive spell-list of the remaining immortals, and is by all accounts a world class cock - not even understanding the human concept of "friendship".
This is a tough one. He has every metamagic your gamemaster can remember, and a Magic Attribute of "about twenty". :shudder: Essentially you can assume that if he gets an attack against you, you will die. He rolls arbitrarily more dice on any action than you do. Further, he has a great and unspecified number of buff spells quickened onto himself as well as literal contingent effects that can go off to save his ass. He doesn't have an achiles heal as regards to magical weapons, as his hardened armor applies to magical attacks as well as physical ones. He's also a powerful conjurer, so he'll smack you with an "OMFG" spirit as soon as look at you, so you're back the Ibn Eisa battle if you aren't careful. Oh, and he can spend Edge to make you reroll your hits, meaning that no matter how awesome you are you need to be about 6 characters deep to get anything done.
But for all that, he's "just" a big lizard. Sure he has 20 points of hardened mystic armor, and that's difficult to penetrate. So difficult in fact, that magical attacks might as well stay home. Force 21 attack spells are simply impractical, and I'm not going to suggest that you try to arrange them. The goal, then, is to come up with an ambush by a number of separate attackers who all individually have ordnance capable of blowing up a light tank. He rolls about 60 dice to resist physical attacks, so he'd ignore attacks with a 20 DV even if he didn't have 20 points of hardened armor. But even after his substantial Combat Sense, he doesn't roll that many dice to dodge attacks, so just lay into him until he comes down in bloody chunks.
If he gets a combat action he can make your life hard in a number of ways. He can submarine pretty effectively, so you want to con him into attacking (and utterly obliterating) one something on your side and then spring the trap once he's committed. This is going to require a number of long-range anti-vehicular weapons and a mid-size group of people who roll 12+ dice when operating them.
-Username17
Re: Shadowrun's 4E's Advancement System
Frank, why did Shadowrun create a bunch of NPCs unassailable except through extreme min-maxxing and having access to resources almost no one will have?
There is absolutely no reason to do this. Even the most hideous of villains live in a modern society. What people forget is that Hitler didn't engineer the Holocaust, Himmler, a relatively untalented asslicker with a 'qualified' staff did. Even if you killed those bastards, there still would've been great evil afoot. If you want it so that you don't want your band of plucky heroes to completely overturn major tragedies, then it isn't necessary to make Hitler a precognitive super-saiyan. He just needs equally sadistic replacements. Jesus.
It also breaks suspension of disbelief. These uber-badasses are relatively young. This means that in about 15-20 years of regular Shadowrunning, your mage should be at like force 15. Or more. What gives?
The only real reason I can think of is slimy, posturing fanwanking. I'm open to enlightenment, though.
There is absolutely no reason to do this. Even the most hideous of villains live in a modern society. What people forget is that Hitler didn't engineer the Holocaust, Himmler, a relatively untalented asslicker with a 'qualified' staff did. Even if you killed those bastards, there still would've been great evil afoot. If you want it so that you don't want your band of plucky heroes to completely overturn major tragedies, then it isn't necessary to make Hitler a precognitive super-saiyan. He just needs equally sadistic replacements. Jesus.
It also breaks suspension of disbelief. These uber-badasses are relatively young. This means that in about 15-20 years of regular Shadowrunning, your mage should be at like force 15. Or more. What gives?
The only real reason I can think of is slimy, posturing fanwanking. I'm open to enlightenment, though.
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Username17
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Re: Shadowrun's 4E's Advancement System
Sometimes you want to take on Lex Luthor (Damien Knight) and sometimes you want to take on Darkseid (Ibn). Both are Superman villains, but one of them is seriously just a guy.
The game needs tarrasques. In D&D it is enough that the tarrasque be big and scaly and eat things. But seriously the shadowrun world wouldn't even blink at something like that. If it doesn't have political pull and a competent staff and sattelite inteligence it doesn't even fvcking matter. That's why.
In short, the high end super sayans are in there because sometimes you want to have a climactic combat at the end of your dungeon crawl/shadowrun and if the big bads don't have real social and economic influence noone gives a shit.
So sure, we can throw in an Earthdawn Bagi to shadowrun, but it's a toss-off encounter in Shadowrun. Being big isn't enough to be the big bad evil guy.
And yeah, a lot of the major players are just guys. NeoNET, Ares, Shiawase, Mitsuhama, Renraku, Aztechnology (and probably Horizon) are run by humans with no magical power or ancient lineage or anything. Wuxing is run by "normal" human mages. Only Evo (largest shareholder is a free spirit) and S-K (largest shareholder is a dragon) fall outside that model at this time.
Which isn't to say that those corps don't have various magical bad ass bogeys working in them. Damien Knight is made out of meat, but Theresa Montgomery is pure insect spirit.
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Not particularly. Lofwyr is thousands of years old, and Buttercup and Ibn are ageless demons from another dimension. The biggest nastiest things in Shadowrun are ancient evils that are awakening from the last age of magic, "relatively young" isn't something I would choose to describe them with.
-Username17
The game needs tarrasques. In D&D it is enough that the tarrasque be big and scaly and eat things. But seriously the shadowrun world wouldn't even blink at something like that. If it doesn't have political pull and a competent staff and sattelite inteligence it doesn't even fvcking matter. That's why.
In short, the high end super sayans are in there because sometimes you want to have a climactic combat at the end of your dungeon crawl/shadowrun and if the big bads don't have real social and economic influence noone gives a shit.
So sure, we can throw in an Earthdawn Bagi to shadowrun, but it's a toss-off encounter in Shadowrun. Being big isn't enough to be the big bad evil guy.
And yeah, a lot of the major players are just guys. NeoNET, Ares, Shiawase, Mitsuhama, Renraku, Aztechnology (and probably Horizon) are run by humans with no magical power or ancient lineage or anything. Wuxing is run by "normal" human mages. Only Evo (largest shareholder is a free spirit) and S-K (largest shareholder is a dragon) fall outside that model at this time.
Which isn't to say that those corps don't have various magical bad ass bogeys working in them. Damien Knight is made out of meat, but Theresa Montgomery is pure insect spirit.
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It also breaks suspension of disbelief. These uber-badasses are relatively young.
Not particularly. Lofwyr is thousands of years old, and Buttercup and Ibn are ageless demons from another dimension. The biggest nastiest things in Shadowrun are ancient evils that are awakening from the last age of magic, "relatively young" isn't something I would choose to describe them with.
-Username17
Re: Shadowrun's 4E's Advancement System
You're talking about suspension of disbelief in a game where there are elves AND machine guns.
I don't think the designers worried too much about it. 20 years is plenty of time for anyone to get the ball rolling by the way- Hitler did it, so can Dragon dude.
I think the same deal applies to Star Wars as it does Shadowrun. I mean, it's kinda of squippy to have your players taking on Vader and the Emperor, but they're there if you want to use them. Setting NPCs aren't there for you to kill, they're there for the fanboys.
I don't think the designers worried too much about it. 20 years is plenty of time for anyone to get the ball rolling by the way- Hitler did it, so can Dragon dude.
I think the same deal applies to Star Wars as it does Shadowrun. I mean, it's kinda of squippy to have your players taking on Vader and the Emperor, but they're there if you want to use them. Setting NPCs aren't there for you to kill, they're there for the fanboys.