Shadowrun 4e newbie questions

[Username17]

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.

Task Spirits are nothing like free. You summon them and they do a thing on your behalf. It's very good. Very very good. But you're giving up an Air spirit who rolls Force * 2 + 4 on attack rolls. Or a Guidance Spirit who can see the future. Or a Water Spirit who can make it rain. The Task Spirit trick where you can summon one to perform first aid or pick a lock is incredibly cool, but most of the other spirits you are giving up have some pretty awesome tricks up their sleeves too.

It's not free. And in most of the cases where it's OMGWTFBBQ, pretty much any other spirit would be too. It's not like those things can use AR goggles. While they can "see" they don't actually have eyes, so there is nothing to project AR onto or into.

-Username17

[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.

EDIT: I should note that this question is kind of rambling [/edit]
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 skechy 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?

In addition to the above, if anyone has some suggestions for what the spirits I bind should actually want to do once they get into meatspace, I'd appreciate the ideas. I'm not sure how they'd interact with drugs, I have no idea whether they'd even want to eat, and I am assuming that most wouldn't be able to use a computer with a complex user interface or one that required direct interface with a brain. This limits their options, and the fact that they are at least part-time professional criminals probably restricts them further.

Currently, I have a few concepts for what the V-team might do, but it's all pretty tentative at the moment. One would want to lurk around in parks before lunging out at polluters from hiding, shouting "STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM!". Another would want to appreciate mortal art and such, possibly spending much of its free time surfing the web through a basic keyboard and moniter set-up. The third and last spirit agenda I have come up with involves the spirit looking to find and harass people for its own amusement. Not violently, it just finds annoying mortals to be a thoroughly satisfying experience. Possibly a Spirit of Man embodying the concept of "trolling".

[Lokathor]

Well making it rain doesn't seem helpful to a shadowrunner, unless you mean the associated visibillity loss from heavy rain, which limits enemy magicians and hackers. It still seems like a tradition with a spirit selection of "Fire, Task, Guardian, Man, and Earth" would be stronger in general than the "core" Hermetic or Shaministic traditions. I guess I'll take your word for it though.

So Core and Street Magic is mostly covered. Is there anything about Augmentation or Arsenal that I should know about before opening those books up to my players?

And about how many Nuyen and BP should players get per mission? Our GM was giving out 12 karma and about 3,000 nuyen, but those rates seem to totally hose the 'ware users who want to move up to betaware and deltaware after a while. Without trying to take "mission length" or "game time" into account (since they can vary a whole lot), is there a good ratio between BP awards and Nuyen awards? Assuming that 1 BP can also buy 5,000 Nuyen if necessary even after character creation.

[CatharzGodfoot]

And about how many Nuyen and BP should players get per mission? Our GM was giving out 12 karma and about 3,000 nuyen, but those rates seem to totally hose the 'ware users who want to move up to betaware and deltaware after a while. Without trying to take "mission length" or "game time" into account (since they can vary a whole lot), is there a good ratio between BP awards and Nuyen awards? Assuming that 1 BP can also buy 5,000 Nuyen if necessary even after character creation.

The cash should be what makes sense as payment for the mission. A good rule of thumb is, if the runners don't want bother with the mission then you're not paying them enough. BP/karma should be what is necessary for the less materialistic characters to keep up.

[Username17]

You can hand out BP at a pretty static rate. How fast you hand it out depends on how often you play. The game is going to look pretty weird when the first player hits Magic 10 and can pull up a chair at the Legion of Doom and glare down some actual dragons. That could happen about 80-100 bonus BP, so if you play every week you can expect one player to straight up conjure a Great Form Air Spirit that will break a western dragon in half around the 1 year mark with 2 BP/session.

Money is more complicated. Because the more you have, the more you need to care about getting more. Firstly because characters stop living in a dingy loft above a dance club and start staying in fancy hotels and wearing suits to work - the straight cost of living rises as characters get more wealth. But also because the cost to improve things rises. The basic shitty Wired II costs a couple dozen grand. But the improved reflexes system (Bioware Synaptic Booster III) costs 240k. And the improved version of that (Delta Synaptic Boostr III) costs almost two and half million.

Awards therefore, should be like the awards in a GTA game. The first couple missions aren't worth that much, but the later missions are worth more and more.

-Username17

[Akula]

Okay, I'm looking into building a character and I have a several questions.
First, why are activesofts so unbelievably expensive?
Second, is the Move By Wire system worth getting compared to Synaptic Boosters or Wired Reflexes?
Third, Frank mentioned in one of the other threads that when a sustaining focus gets targeted by a mana spell, that it "grounds out into reality and hits you in the nuts for full value" and the item gets destroyed, how does that work? I looked at the focus and astral combat rules in the core book and I couldn't find something suggesting that.
Fourth, why do cyberlimbs save you so much essence if you want a nanohive at any rating above 2?

[Username17]

Activesofts cost less than skills. So I don't know what you're on about there.

Move by Wire systems convert worthless losers into rough competition for Street Samurai. They are not something that a PC is ikely to be interested in.

That would be Grounding, something which I was presumably talking about in the context of earlier editions. It doesn't exist any more, and we're happier people.

Nanohive weirdness: Legacy. Talk to the authors of Man and Machine.

-Username17

[Akula]

Activesofts cost less than skills. So I don't know what you're on about there.

But activesofts cost you out of two pockets of limited resources, that is essence and money. One of which has a hard limit and the other that has a limit at character generation. And they are still shitty, for the same essence and nuyen costs to get one rating 3 Activesoft I could buy a rating three Synthcardium and get the same bonus to a larger group of skills. And as my group is halving the cost of skills, activesofts are just that much worse.

Also, how vital is it for a combat character to have more that 2 IP at chargen? Basically, can my Street Samurai get by on cram until he can afford a rating 3 Synaptic Booster?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Why are you trying to conserve essence as a street samurai? Just max out the cheapest boosts you can get; when the essence cost becomes an issue just have them ripped out and replaced with bioware.

[Akula]

Because, the other guy in the party is almost certainly going to make a shitty character. I don't want to overshadow him too much. I also read that you get a different debt for cyber and bioware, and thus if you rip out all your cyber and replace with bioware you can still seriously lose essence. Otherwise, I'm 100% with you.

[Lokathor]

Oh that reminds me: The core book says "under the basic rules a character with 0 essence dies." or something to that effect. Are there alternate rules for having 0 essence and being purely an android or something like that? I did a quick scan of Augmentation and only saw the part about being an Essence .1 brain in a jar with a robot body, or the dual-natured cyber-zombies. Nothing about being a non-biological essence 0 android.

And my other question stands: In general, how much should I trust the content of Augmentation and Arsenal?

[Username17]

I do not understand the question about skill softs. Yes, Synthacardiums re awesome. No, that doesn't have anything to do with skill wires, because they stack. Skill Wires replace skill rating, not skill bonuses. You realize that you only have to buy the skill wires once, right? Then you can slot in different skill chips for different occasions.

Oh that reminds me: The core book says "under the basic rules a character with 0 essence dies." or something to that effect. Are there alternate rules for having 0 essence and being purely an android or something like that? I did a quick scan of Augmentation and only saw the part about being an Essence .1 brain in a jar with a robot body, or the dual-natured cyber-zombies. Nothing about being a non-biological essence 0 android.

And my other question stands: In general, how much should I trust the content of Augmentation and Arsenal?

Cyberzombies can have zero or less Essence.

In general, the Power Creep in Augmentation is incredibly mild - I actually argued that it was in general too mild. There is no gear that is an upgrade to the high goods from the basic book (Synaptic Booster, Muscle Toner, Vision Enhancement, Synthacardium). The biggest baddest piece of ware from previous editions (the Move-by-Wire), came back as a cheap-and-dirty means of boosting 3rd rate thugs to being able to fight on a vaguely even level with people who actually have the top end gear from the basic book - if people can get "the good stuff" they don't even want it.

What you got is a few nanite treatments that give you some stacking dice in the +2 range and a whole bunch of neat-o cosmetic goods. Oh, there's power creep alright. But it's not "WE CAN HAZ GREATFORM NOWZ KTHNX" levels of power creep.

I also read that you get a different debt for cyber and bioware, and thus if you rip out all your cyber and replace with bioware you can still seriously lose essence.

I don't even know what this means.

You pay half for whichever costs you less Essence - Cyber or Bio. So if you switch from a mixture to all of one, your Essence can go down even if you had cheaper ware. But that's no where near as common an occurrence as you'd think.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

Because, the other guy in the party is almost certainly going to make a shitty character. I don't want to overshadow him too much. I also read that you get a different debt for cyber and bioware, and thus if you rip out all your cyber and replace with bioware you can still seriously lose essence. Otherwise, I'm 100% with you.

If you're worried about overshadowing the other guy, I really have no idea why you're trying to optimize your character. Just get the basics, and then load up of things like eye drones, a super stomach, and other hilarious crap that won't boost your overall effectiveness.

[Lokathor]

Cyberzombies can have zero or less Essence.

Oh, but are they intended to be playable characters? It seemed like it was an NPC-oriented thing for making bad ass minions with.

[Username17]

Cyberzombies can have zero or less Essence.

Oh, but are they intended to be playable characters? It seemed like it was an NPC-oriented thing for making bad ass minions with.

In previous editions they were not playable. When I got my hands on the rules, I made sure that you could play one as an advanced character.

-Username17

[Rejakor]

At one point I was going to be participating in a SR4 game, and I wanted to play a technomancer, which on a cursory read through I assumed to be 'a guy who hacks machinery with his mind', and had all kinds of cool visions of squinting really hard at a streetlight to make it go red just as the group van burns through an intersection, or opening a door with my mind, or playing fps with a security minigun all over some corporate foolios.

I was then told that in order to hack anything I had to be in a coma. At home. And then after ideas like MPD (one personality hacks, the other walks around) I suggested maybe using some kind of shunt to control my body from within the coma. Which apparently entailed all kinds of broken things like 5 actions a round and whatnot, and the GM started getting very excited about the brokenness of it and then later the game folded and I just felt relieved.

So, given that I couldn't actually be bothered reading the appropriate books myself, is that how it works? Or is there a non-cyborging way of being a technomancer who doesn't stay at home?

[Username17]

Technomancers can hack in AR just like everyone else can. Indeed, when you go unconscious to hack in full VR, you are stil projecting signal from your own body, so normally you'd have to go to the mission and then pass out in the corner - it's generally a pretty bad option.

The problem with Technomancers is not that they have to stay home or that they have to cyber themselves out - they don't have to do either o those things. The problem is that the matrix rules aren't super well written. The Ends of the Matrix is a much better full replacement for those rules and it was written by one man in his spare time over a two month period with basically no playtesting. The basic rules are just not good.

So if you use the basic rules, you pretty much have to hand wave parts of the rules, because otherwise you're going to get nut punched by Infinity Mirror and Agent Smith so fast that you won't be able to do anything. And depending upon how you handwave the rules, there's probably no reason to be a Technomancer rather than a mundane hacker or even a Hermetic Mage who happens to hack.

-Username17

[Lokathor]

Oh, this is an important question that I keep forgetting to ask:

What exactly makes up a "set of wounds"? If I get shot for 1 damage, then a guy uses First Aid to heal me to full, then I get shot again for 1 damage, is that a new set of wounds because I was healed to full? Can I use First Aid immediately? Can you just First Aid once per combat? Once per day? Same goes for the Healing spell.

Also, the First Aid action indicates that you can't First Aid someone who had the Healing spell used on them, but Healing doesn't say the reverse. Is this intentional? Should I just let players use Healing/First Aid in whatever order they like as long as it's only once for each action type "per set of wounds"?

Also, the Drain Code on that spell makes no sense. Is the drain from the Healing spell based on the total damage the target has taken, or the amount of damage that you healed?

[Username17]

A set of wounds is basically just all the wounds you suffered since the last time you got healed.

The Drain Code on Heal is based on the number of wound boxes filled in on the target before the spell is cast. So there's basically no reason to use the Heal spell before the First Aid is applied, and the rules assume you are going to do it in the "right" order.

If for some reason it came up, I'd let someone First Aid after magical healing instead of before. Maybe if you'd suffered a small amount of regular damage after having suffered a small amount of overcasting drain (that can't be healed by magic)? I could see that coming up, I guess.

-Username17

[Windjammer]

I've got a SR newbie question too, which ties in to some discussion page 1* as to which books to get. Among others, I got a (ridiculously cheap) copy of the 2006 version of Street Magic. There's errata of that book on the CGL website, and I was wondering whether these cover the entirety of what's changed in the reprint.

*Ah, not this thread exactly but the 2006 SR newbie thread. In any case, I'm feeling less threadnecromantic adding to this one.

[Username17]

I've got a SR newbie question too, which ties in to some discussion page 1* as to which books to get. Among others, I got a (ridiculously cheap) copy of the 2006 version of Street Magic. There's errata of that book on the CGL website, and I was wondering whether these cover the entirety of what's changed in the reprint.

*Ah, not this thread exactly but the 2006 SR newbie thread. In any case, I'm feeling less threadnecromantic adding to this one.

Yeah pretty much. Not many problems are actually addressed. Astral Sight is still worthless, Aspected Magicians still unplayable, Toxic Traditions are still incomplete, and Bloodzilla will still eat your fucking city.

In general, you could just ignore the errata entirely and you'd do fine. Do you honestly give a fuck what gods some dude thinks converts to what Totem? Fuck no! If you're playing the Egyptian pantheon, you'll just plug in whatever god to whatever Totem you think is cool for your character. Those lists don't matter.

-Username17

[Lokathor]

For the Adept version of Astral Perception, I also said that they'd be able to project if they had it. Fair call?

[Username17]

For the Adept version of Astral Perception, I also said that they'd be able to project if they had it. Fair call?

Totally reasonable.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

Especially seeing how there is, or at least was, a metamagic for adepts that allowed exactly that, but only for magic minutes instead of magic hours.

[Lokathor]

Well Magic Minutes sounds totally lame compared to Magic Hours.

I'm slowly drifting my way into "SR4.5" territory with EotM and other house-rules, but I think I like it that way.