Shadowrun 4e newbie questions

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Ferret
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Post by Ferret »

Frank, did you ever do a best-equipment-list in the vein of your best-spell-list?
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Post by Username17 »

Wesley Street wrote: Anyway, who is the current management? I've been freelancing for a year but with firings/resignations/reassignments some of us have no idea who's driving the boat.
That's an excellent question. Ultimately of course, you're answering to Loren Coleman, who is primarily a Battletech Author. So it was silly, but not unexpected when he put Jason Hardy (another Battletech author) at the head of Shadowrun as line developer. I think Jason is still nominally in control, and will likely be at least until the Box Set comes out.

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Orion
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Post by Orion »

Mind if I post a character for critique?

“Saturday,” Elf Houngan
B2 A2 R2 S2
C8 I4 L1 W6
Edge 3 Magic 6

Qualities: Magician (15), Mentor Spirit (Snake: +2Binding +2Detection -1Combat), Focused Concentration (10), Astral Chameleon (5), Incompetent (Banishing, Ritual Casting), Ork Poser, Geas (dancing), Gease (no magic on sundays)

Skills:
Conjuring (Man) 6 [14 dice, 16 with man]
Binding (Man) 4(6) [14 dice, 16 with Man]
Spellcasting (Detection) 4 [12 dice, 16 with Detection]
Counterspelling (Detection) 4 [+4 dice to resistance]
Assensing (Auras) 4 [8 dice]
Astral Combat (Spirits) 4 [10 die attack, 8 die defense]
Dodge 1 (Ranged) [Dodge: 2/3/5
Infiltration 4 [8 dice]
Perception 1 [5 dice]
Instruction 1
Influence [9 dice]
Etiquette 1
Con 1
Negotiation 1
Leadership 1
Spells (24)
Heal
Fix (fetish)
Physical Mask
Mana Window
Extended Detect Life (fetish)
Increase Charisma
Combat Sense
Orgy (fetish)
Knowledge
Native: English
Orz'zet 3
Spanish 3
Vodun Communities 3
Sons of Sauron 3
Ork Rokk 3
Gear:
Mojo, Power Focus 2 (50,000) [this is a bag of semiprecious stones made of red flannel]
Fake SIN 4 (4800)
Fake Licenses: Manipulation Fetish, Power Focus
Rating Fake SIN 1 (1000)
Fetishes (650)
Health Fetish: Gris-Gris (voodoo doll)
Manipulation Fetish (rosary)
Detection Fetish (my glasses)
Illusion Fetish (crusafix)
Rating 4 Glasses (Magnifying, +3 vision) (500)
Armor Clothing w/ rating 5 nonconductivity (1500)
6 High explosive Grenades (270)
ARES Alpha (1700)
Suzuki Mirage (10,000)
Low Life Style 2 months (4000)
Mage Sight Goggles (2000)
Spell Formulae: Death Touch, Powerbolt, (4000)
Spell Formulae: Increase Intuition,
Force 6 Lodge (3000)
Binding Materials: Binding Materials: 6X4, 3X5, 1X1
Contacts:
Talismonger (1/3) – Runs a goth-themed magic shop called temptations which mostly sells useless junk to corporate kids.
Mob Lieutenant (1/3) – currently bribing this guy to make sure nobody in my neighborhood hassles me—neither gangs nor the law. Also I do jobs for him when they don't offend my sensibilities.
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CatharzGodfoot
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

It might be worth getting cyber eyes. I'm pretty sure that a possessing spirit gets to use them, and you can use them for spell targeting. Mage sight goggles are fucking stupid, but probably still a decent investment.

With contacts, it's often worth putting all your eggs in one giant fucking basket.
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Orion
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Post by Orion »

Would it consume a service to have a spirit posses a vessel without using a power, just to give it passive benefits?

Example: I have an Air Spirit with Energy Aura. I want it to possess the Street Samurai's knife so that it can strike astral spirits and deal electrical damage. Does this use up a service?
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Post by Username17 »

Orion wrote:Would it consume a service to have a spirit posses a vessel without using a power, just to give it passive benefits?
Yes. Any time you want the spirit to "do" some "thing" it takes a service. So if it is for whatever reason important for a spirit to "stand there for an hour" that's a service, even though it didn't actually take any actions.

As such you're usually better off having the spirit do something like "help me break into the building" than "possess me" but you know, whatever.
Example: I have an Air Spirit with Energy Aura. I want it to possess the Street Samurai's knife so that it can strike astral spirits and deal electrical damage. Does this use up a service?
That would be a service, yes.

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Orion
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Post by Orion »

So let's say I summon a Spirit of Man and I want it to:

--possess the samurai's knife
--conceal him
--confuse guards
--warn him if anything astral approaches

Is that acceptable under the single order "help him sneak into the compound"

Or would I need to order
--Conceal him
--circumvent guards?

If a fight broke out, would THAT fall under "help him with the break-in"? Or would "Drive off security" be a second service? If so, would resuming "help with sneaking" be a THIRD service?
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Post by RandomCasualty2 »

Yeah, adjudicating what counts as a service always drove me nuts playing SR.
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Post by Lokathor »

So if I summon a Spirit of Man with Innate Spell (Increase Reflexes) or some other sustained spell, does the "Sustained" duration follow the spell rules (-2 to tests per spell) or the Critter Power rules (Sustained effects up to Magic at no cost)?
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Wesley Street
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Post by Wesley Street »

Orion wrote:So let's say I summon a Spirit of Man and I want it to:

--possess the samurai's knife
--conceal him
--confuse guards
--warn him if anything astral approaches

Is that acceptable under the single order "help him sneak into the compound"

Or would I need to order
--Conceal him
--circumvent guards?

If a fight broke out, would THAT fall under "help him with the break-in"? Or would "Drive off security" be a second service? If so, would resuming "help with sneaking" be a THIRD service?
As far as I understand how services work, via SR4A, requesting a spirit use a specific power is considered a service.

On page 187, it's stated: Spirits in physical form can also perform any physical task as a service, as appropriate to their form, of course. A fire elemental can burn through a door, for example, or a mountain spirit can move a great weight, and any spirit might use its powers against an enemy of the summoner. Asking a river spirit to put out a fire, however, might get the magician in hot water.

My interpretation of that passage would be that anything that is considered a free, simple or complex action counts as a service. Anything else would be too vague or broad. So I believe you would need to state:

- "Cast invisibility on me."
- "Cast Area Spell X on spot Y."
- "etc."

Feel free to disagree.
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Avoraciopoctules
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

So I'm working on a shaman focused on buffing and healing allies in combat, and I'm looking for a way to get some spirit homies for on-call support in combat situations when we don't have gangers or combat-focused shadowrunners to do the fightan. I want to find something vaguely equivalent to Binding, but that does not involve being a jerk and turning sentient beings into mind-slaves.

I know that glitches can result in a summoner owing services to the spirit called. Are there any existing rules for a variant of Binding where both the spirit and the mage normally owe services to one another and they each have the right to refuse any given summons or service? If not, any suggestions for how I should write them? One potential problem is that this might make it very easy for a mage to build up several dozen services on each "bound" spirit through helping them out in Astral space during downtime. It might also allow the mage to bypass spending money on extra binding rituals if renegotiation of services owed happens through in-character roleplay.

EDIT:

Also, what kind of services should the spirits want?
Last edited by Avoraciopoctules on Mon Feb 22, 2010 9:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Username17 »

Whether Binding involves you being a jerk or not depends on your tradition. Binding is required for spirits to stay in the mortal world longer than the next sunset or sunrise. So if your spirits like being in the mortal world, hanging out and doing stuff, binding them is a favor in and of itself.

It's just a roleplaying question.

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Post by Lokathor »

Lokathor wrote:So if I summon a Spirit of Man with Innate Spell (Increase Reflexes) or some other sustained spell, does the "Sustained" duration follow the spell rules (-2 to tests per spell) or the Critter Power rules (Sustained effects up to Magic at no cost)?
Care to put in a word on this Frank? You're kinda the "Shadowrun Expert".
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Post by Username17 »

Lokathor wrote:
Lokathor wrote:So if I summon a Spirit of Man with Innate Spell (Increase Reflexes) or some other sustained spell, does the "Sustained" duration follow the spell rules (-2 to tests per spell) or the Critter Power rules (Sustained effects up to Magic at no cost)?
Care to put in a word on this Frank? You're kinda the "Shadowrun Expert".
Innate Spell gives you a spell. Casting it costs Drain and can be overcast as normal, and sustaining it causes a -2 penalty.

A critter power that works as a spell does (such as the various fire shooting options), comes off at a fixed power, costs no drain, and can be sustained for free. So Engulf is pretty bad ass. And area Engulf from Great Form spirits is really bad ass.

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Avoraciopoctules
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

FrankTrollman wrote:Whether Binding involves you being a jerk or not depends on your tradition. Binding is required for spirits to stay in the mortal world longer than the next sunset or sunrise. So if your spirits like being in the mortal world, hanging out and doing stuff, binding them is a favor in and of itself.

It's just a roleplaying question.

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Thank you. That simplifies things considerably.
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The Vigilante
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Post by The Vigilante »

Frank, if I play in a game where non-magical healing is severely limited, IE takes several days / weeks instead of a few minutes, what spells should a combat mage choose ? Obviously this means that overcasting isn't a viable default option. I don't necessarily want to make a "blaster" mage, but it still should be a mage that can hold his own in combat, wether through blasting, battlefield control or self-improvement ? Or is a summoner a better option in that context ?
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Post by Username17 »

The Vigilante wrote:Frank, if I play in a game where non-magical healing is severely limited, IE takes several days / weeks instead of a few minutes, what spells should a combat mage choose ? Obviously this means that overcasting isn't a viable default option. I don't necessarily want to make a "blaster" mage, but it still should be a mage that can hold his own in combat, wether through blasting, battlefield control or self-improvement ? Or is a summoner a better option in that context ?
Overcasting stunbolts remains viable whether wounds heal or not. Because the Drain Code is minus one. So if you open up with Force 9 (minimum damage: 10 stun), you suffer half force (9->4) minus one == 3P. So you roll two stats plus centering and/or focused concentration bonuses and try to get three hits - which is totally doable on what is probably 10 dice at chargen and could easily be half again more than that down the line.

Beyond that of course, there's the old standard of casting Improved Invisibility and then rocking an automatic weapon. That works wonders.

Actually what really suffers in the context of longer lasting wounds is conjuring, because conjuration drain is super fucking random, and even with the "less fucking insane" option in Street Magic, you will seriously look down the barrel of 8 drain sometimes on a Force 6 spirit. And it won't even show up.

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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

So assume that Vasili (my Shaman) summons up some spirits that actively want to spend time in meatspace and binds them so they can stick around. He hands each a wad of several hundred nuyen in cash (maybe deducted from the ritual materials) and tells them that they are pretty much free to do what they want, but he'd prefer they didn't draw too much attention to him. So they go clubbing or whatever, and they either sustain some spells for him (usually by a Spirit of Man or something similar taking spellcasting as an optional power) or come along with him to serve as his "homies" on runs. He may pay them a regular wage, but if this comes in the form of the Rebinding rules, he will attempt to convince them to contribute the thousands of nuyen he is handing them to boosting the Lifestyle of the V-Team from Low to Middle or High. The spirits will presumably count as guests, possibly with a discount for not needing to eat.

He also spends a few BP on crates full of guns and ammo to give to the 2 gang bosses he has as contacts to make their grunts more threatening. This gives him 2 places very nice to flee to if facing moderate heat and the potential to have his mundane allies provide support on jobs. Also a source of low-pay runs that further reinforce the power of his allies.

1. Is this potentially problematic? I know the spirits can be used to track me through Astral space, but I'm not sure how bad that might be. It seems like that would take at least an hour based on the test threshold, and most spirits should be able to figure out what's going on by then.

2. Is this a good concept for a Shadowrun game that's going to be a mix of relatively open-ended sandbox play and slightly modified modules? A potential downside is the fact that it could slow down combat. A potential upside is that it may at least partially replace combat with Tactical Tea Party.
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Post by Lokathor »

FrankTrollman wrote:Overcasting stunbolts remains viable whether wounds heal or not. Because the Drain Code is minus one. So if you open up with Force 9 (minimum damage: 10 stun), you suffer half force (9->4) minus one == 3P. So you roll two stats plus centering and/or focused concentration bonuses and try to get three hits - which is totally doable on what is probably 10 dice at chargen and could easily be half again more than that down the line.
The book says:
SR4A, Pg204 wrote:Direct Combat spells involve channeling mana directly into a target as destructive and damaging energies rather than generating a damaging effect. Affecting the target’s being on this fundamental level with raw mana requires more focus and more power than producing basic effects; as a result every net hit used to increase the damage value of a Direct Combat spell also increases the Drain DV of the spell by +1.
So based on what you said, and what the book says, it seems that you don't have to accept the additional damage from your net hits if you don't want to take the extra drain. Is this correct?
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Avoraciopoctules
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Also, apparently visual magnification glasses/contacts/whatever come in optical and computerized varieties. Optical can be used for enhancing line of sight for spells, and computerized cannot, but comes with "real-time image correction" which is not referenced in any part of any of the book pdfs at our disposal.

It seems that a lot of cyber-eye functions can be replaced by wearing reasonably priced contact lenses. Also, Catalyst claims that they have fixed spell targeting in the Anniversary Edition. According to Akula, the targeting rules still don't let you cast through electronic machinery.

However, x50 zoom in a contact lense, particularly "optical" zoom that can be changed at will to anything up to x50, feels pretty techy to both of us. I am assuming that it has something to do with arbitrarily transparent nanomachines reshaping into whatever plothax lenses are necessary. Unfortunately, this is hard on some people's versimilitude.

Now, the problem of these fancy telescope contacts is easily solved by simply saying that you need something at least the size of goggles or a pistol scope, but are there any major problems with letting mages cast through things like thermographic glasses and so on?
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Post by Username17 »

Lokathor wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:Overcasting stunbolts remains viable whether wounds heal or not. Because the Drain Code is minus one. So if you open up with Force 9 (minimum damage: 10 stun), you suffer half force (9->4) minus one == 3P. So you roll two stats plus centering and/or focused concentration bonuses and try to get three hits - which is totally doable on what is probably 10 dice at chargen and could easily be half again more than that down the line.
The book says:
SR4A, Pg204 wrote:Direct Combat spells involve channeling mana directly into a target as destructive and damaging energies rather than generating a damaging effect. Affecting the target’s being on this fundamental level with raw mana requires more focus and more power than producing basic effects; as a result every net hit used to increase the damage value of a Direct Combat spell also increases the Drain DV of the spell by +1.
So based on what you said, and what the book says, it seems that you don't have to accept the additional damage from your net hits if you don't want to take the extra drain. Is this correct?
I strongly suggest not using the SR4A drain modification, because it was and is an incredibly shitty idea, that essentially makes combat spells completely useless except for overcasting Stun Bolts into "I Win" territory.
+2 DV from overcasting is 1 Drain. The SR4A want you to pay 1 for 1 drain on rolling well? The fucking fuck is that?

Yeah, there were some fucking retarded things in SR4A. This is one of them. Consider also the fact that your number of net hits isn't even a static number when using area spells, and thus the rule doesn't even make any sense.
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Post by Lokathor »

Oh, uh, "I see". Well, what's the complete list of things that SR4A changed that should be ignored? I could get the PDF, but I'd rather not hunt through two books to find all the little changes.

So far I have your matrix rules and all the houserules you also posted in that thread, and also it seems that Task Spirits are kinda overpowered (but maybe not?). I don't know much else about changes to keep in or throw out because I've never looked at the original SR4 book.

Some of my players will be new to tabletop games, and they will probably just stick to Core SR4A since that's the PDF that I handed out and the hardcopy I have. I suspect at least one player will use Arsenal for more drone options (he really perked up when I mentioned robots), and I'll probably suggest that the magic user look into Street Magic for more spell ideas (I'll also have hardcopy of that on hand). I'd rather get what's in and what's out sorted all ahead of time to not confuse them about stuff.
Last edited by Lokathor on Fri Feb 26, 2010 7:07 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Korwin »

I think the drain rule got errated to an optional rule.
(At least in the german Version its an optional one.)
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Post by Username17 »

Korwin wrote:I think the drain rule got errated to an optional rule.
(At least in the german Version its an optional one.)
Yeah. The SR4A "batshit" Object Resistance Table got errataed as well.

The Matrix rules were left in their current, essentially unplayable condition.

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Post by Lokathor »

Yeah, I saw the file that listed the proper table as 1/ 2/ 3/ 5+ for each category. Now that I look at the file again I see the tiny print that says that combat spell bonus drain is optional.

Anything else in the core book that needs to be addressed? Also, any opinions on Task Spirits? They seem to be the same as all the nearly free Skill Wires you could ever want, which seems way too good to me.
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