Say that you and your team of 4 idiots want to take down the orbital space station that the megacorps have. What's the best way to do this task and still come out alive?
Say that you wanted to make a magician that's exclusively a dragon-hunter. He for whatever dumbass reason doesn't use any weapons more technologically advanced than a crossbow. There's not really a moral reason as to why he hunts dragons, he just wants to do it. Other than that, though, he's not a sociopath or even shady. What sort of strategies should he use to accomplish his goal and how would he get away with killing all of these dragon d00ds? What kind of karma would he need? Your GM will let you use anything in the rules to do this if it helps.
In the last thread, we talked about using nuclear terrorism to convince the world to think things your way does not work. However, what about using terrorism to either force the corporations/governments to collapse or to make the people so distrustful of the current ideology that people pick up some other paragdism. For the sake of argument, how many nukes would you need to convince people to take up communism/anarchy after they decided that their current government is a crock?
What are the implications to both the game setting and metagame if PCs (and only PCs) break some of the fundamental limitations of magic/summoning, such as:
Creating spells that let them bring people back to the dead in various states of physical and mental wellness?
Creating spells that out and out let people teleport?
Creating spells that does not require the caster to maintain or create a mental or physical link but instead used some other criteria for targetting? Such as a fireball spell that automatically travels across the city to blow up a deli stand from the safety of the magician's living room?
Creating spells that create something from nothing or lets people mass-produce objects?
Creating spells that allow people to break some of the arbitrary in-game limits (like augmented stats/skills, max of 4 initiative passes, etc.)
More Shadowrun What-Ifs
Moderator: Moderators
-
Username17
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 29894
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Re: More Shadowrun What-Ifs
Say that you and your team of 4 idiots want to take down the orbital space station that the megacorps have. What's the best way to do this task and still come out alive?
- Put an explosive in space (use a spirit and a modest rocket or mass driver.
- Torque its orbit hard by blowing it up.
- Let the shrapnel hit one of their space stations.
Say that you wanted to make a magician that's exclusively a dragon-hunter. He for whatever dumbass reason doesn't use any weapons more technologically advanced than a crossbow.
I... can't suggest doing this. But I'm also going to imagine that you're up against a "normal" dragon.
- Stay physical all the time.
- Overcast the fvck out of a Stun Bolt spell.
- Hope for the best.
Yeah... that's pretty marginal. But it could work. A Force 12 Stunbolt only needs 1 net hit to drop a Western Dragon. Once he's down you can do whatever you want to it. I'd normally suggest explosives, but having a Fire Elemental Engulf him works too.
However, what about using terrorism to either force the corporations/governments to collapse or to make the people so distrustful of the current ideology that people pick up some other paragdism. For the sake of argument, how many nukes would you need to convince people to take up communism/anarchy after they decided that their current government is a crock?
Hmm... I think you're looking at enough separate attacks so that each current world power looks like a loser. Remember that if you simply gut one major power then you have in essence strengthed the others. The A-listers are:
- Ares
- Amazonia
- Aztechnology
- Evo
- Horizon
- Imperial Nippon
- India
- MCT
- NeoNET
- Renraku
- Saeder-Krupp
- Shiawase
- Wuxing
Each of them is built modularly, that's why they are A-listers. So really, you'd probably have to gut-punch each of them in at least 5 places to make each look like it was on the way out. So you're looking at what... 65 nuclear strikes, and it might not work.
Obviously, that's a non-starter. So instead, let's go for something that the entire world order needs: shipping. If trade routes can be disrupted then the arcologies starve and the world order gets rethought (maybe). So now you've got a different list of targets:
- Hong Kong
- Singapore
- Europort
- Metropaul
- Veracruz
- Los Angeles
- Seattle
- Boston
- New York
- Hamburg
- Shaghai
- Tianjin
- Qingdao
- Vladivostock
- Istanbul
- Bombay
- Chennai
- Saratov
- Tokyo
- Pyongyang
- Venice
- Alexandria
- Abu Dhabi
And you'd want to cripple some space assets like S-K's Skyforge and of course Zurich Orbital. That sounds sort-of doable, right?
Then international capitalism goes into a serious depression and you have a new shot for Communism, Anarchism, Fascism, Fundamentalism, and probably a new lease for actually discreditted ideologies like Mercantilism and Feudalism.
What are the implications to both the game setting and metagame if PCs (and only PCs) break some of the fundamental limitations of magic/summoning, such as:
Creating spells that let them bring people back to the dead in various states of physical and mental wellness?
The difference between medical technology that can return a man from a bleeding pile of "mostly dead" hamburger and a power that allows them to restore to life an "all dead" grease stain is largely semantic. But though the people you want to revive are only "all dead" if the GM says they are (similar to how such raising magic works or fails), the technique is specifically priceless. There are some very rich dudes who are, for example, dead. I would say a majority of rich dudes fit that description. Players would be entitled to virtually limitless cashola with this technique and the game would go off a cliff.
Creating spells that out and out let people teleport?
Intrusion is a major facet of the game at any level. The restrictions on where and how one can move are the core of the game.
That being said, any place where you can send a spirit astrally who can then materialize is generally speaking a place that sufficiently motivated players can simply enter without seriously being stopped. What this would do therefore, is allow players to move Hackers to any point they could send a spirit. That means that for an infiltration to be any challenge at all, the players would need to be seriously confronted with literal onion shells that were impervious to teleportation or destinations that themselves had guards in them.
Creating spells that does not require the caster to maintain or create a mental or physical link but instead used some other criteria for targetting? Such as a fireball spell that automatically travels across the city to blow up a deli stand from the safety of the magician's living room?
Sympathetic ritual Magic targetting already does this.
-Username17