Shadowrun 4e newbie questions

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Post by Wiseman »

Using the Endowment ability from Street Magic you could get a spirit to give you the materialization power.
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Post by Trill »

When you are using Levitate and have a spirit use movement on you, does it increase your flying speed?
So e.g. you are a Magician with MAG 5, a Spellcasting pool of 15 and summon a spirit with F5
is your flying speed then 5(Due to MAG 5)*4(average net hits on the Levitate test)*5(Force of the spirit)*1m? for a total of 100 meters per combat turn?

Also:
If a spirit uses movement on you, is your acceleration also multiplied?
A human or ork has a walking rate of 10 m/CT with a running rate of 25 m/CT.
They can make a sprinting test which adds 2 m per hit.
If they are boosted by a spirit with F4 that means that their rates are now 40/100. Is their sprinting now 8m per hit or still 2m per hit?
Basically: Does it matter whether they first sprint or first use movement?
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Post by virgil »

Short Answer: Yes.
Nuanced Answer: Yes, Movement applies at every stage of your displacement. The only thing it doesn't do is increase your momentum, so any damage done/received from a crash is calculated from your un-augmented speed.
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Post by Trill »

So does that mean that Sprinting and using Movement commute? That it makes no difference whether I first sprint and then use movement or first use movement and then sprint?
Mord, on Cosmic Horror wrote:Today if I say to the man on the street, "Did you know that the world you live in is a fragile veneer of normality over an uncaring universe, that we could all die at any moment at the whim of beings unknown to us for reasons having nothing to do with ourselves, and that as far as the rest of the universe is concerned, nothing anyone ever did with their life has ever mattered?" his response, if any, will be "Yes, of course; now if you'll excuse me, I need to retweet Sonic the Hedgehog." What do you even do with that?
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Post by virgil »

Trill wrote:So does that mean that Sprinting and using Movement commute? That it makes no difference whether I first sprint and then use movement or first use movement and then sprint?
Correct.
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Post by Trill »

1) Can different critters use Powers on the same target at once?
If yes:
2) Can different critters use the same Power on the same target at once?
If yes:
3) Can two critters use Movement on the same target at once? Do their multipliers add or multiply? (E.g. F5 Spirit and F4 Spirit: Is the final multiplier 9 (5+4) or 20 (5*4)? What if one slows down and one speeds up?)
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Post by Username17 »

Trill wrote:1) Can different critters use Powers on the same target at once?
If yes:
2) Can different critters use the same Power on the same target at once?
If yes:
3) Can two critters use Movement on the same target at once? Do their multipliers add or multiply? (E.g. F5 Spirit and F4 Spirit: Is the final multiplier 9 (5+4) or 20 (5*4)? What if one slows down and one speeds up?)
1. Yes.
2. Yes. Usually the largest modifier counts. So Force 4 and Force 5 Confusion don't meaningfully stack, but damage stacks and you'd have to escape powers separately.
3. Movement can't be doubled to move extra fast or extra slow. When critter powers are in direct opposition, they roll dice.

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Post by Trill »

I've been wondering:
How much should Initiating cost?
Because I've seen many times in 5e discussions that the gap between mundanes and awakened is so big because Awakened can initiate early and often, quickly outpacing mundanes with their metamagics and increased limits while mundanes can barely scrap together the money for upgrades.
And looking at the costs in 4e I can see where it could have started. Because I usually give between 6 and 9 karma per run, with runs taking a few sessions. This means that a mage could initiate almost every second run, while mundanes are fairly limited in their nuyen uptake (I give out about 6-10k per run per person)
Since I don't know what is the recommended run reward (I at least couldn't find it in the CRB) I don't know if those 6-9 karma are expected, too high or too low.

So my questions are:
What are good run rewards?
Is the initiation cost OK?
How difficult should it be to initiate?

And maybe for Frank or any other former freelancer: How was easy was initiating intended to be?
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Post by Nath »

Trill wrote:What are good run rewards?
There are no definitive answer for this. SR 4th edition rulebook, page 263 (page 269 in SR20A) set karma awards between 1 and 10 karma for an adventure.

Among other things, fulfilling 2/3 of the adventure objectives should only net characters 1 karma. But all subsequent official, published adventure ignored this and sticked to SR 1st edition "1 karma per objective"...

It depends on how long your typical adventure/run takes to be completed, what you define as "objectives", if the players have an habit in engaging into time-consuming, unplanned side jobs, and where the gamemaster sets the bar for specific award for bravery, smartness, humor or drama. By the book, you can average 2 karma per hour of play as valid reward, and 1 karma per 8 hours of play as equally valid. The guidelines are simply not precise enough to settle the debate. Most discussions I had on that issue did end on reverse calculation about how many sessions/runs it should take to raise a primary ability and acquire a secondary ability.
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Post by Iduno »

Trill wrote: And looking at the costs in 4e I can see where it could have started. Because I usually give between 6 and 9 karma per run, with runs taking a few sessions. This means that a mage could initiate almost every second run, while mundanes are fairly limited in their nuyen uptake (I give out about 6-10k per run per person)
Since I don't know what is the recommended run reward (I at least couldn't find it in the CRB) I don't know if those 6-9 karma are expected, too high or too low.

So my questions are:
What are good run rewards?
The "best" way I've found is to determine what power level you want from the characters at the end of the campaign (with help from the players, hopefully), determine the number of sessions (assuming you have some sort of pre-determined campaign skeleton), add in average lifestyle costs, and divide out the average karma and nuyen per session. It requires making some arbitrary determination of what improvements for the street sam are equivalent to the improvements the mage gets, but the math is pretty easy until the players find something else to spend money on.

The payment per point of karma comes out a bit less than double the character generation 2,500 nuyen because ware needs to be upgraded before you can get anything new, but that's pretty much expected. And the results are probably better than guessing, and certainly better than doing nothing.
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Post by Nath »

Trill wrote:I've been wondering:
How much should Initiating cost?
Because I've seen many times in 5e discussions that the gap between mundanes and awakened is so big because Awakened can initiate early and often, quickly outpacing mundanes with their metamagics and increased limits while mundanes can barely scrap together the money for upgrades.
About Initiation...

IMHO, for magicians, Initiation is just icing on the Cake of Brokenness that SR Magic is. Spirits are broken. Mental Manipulation Spells are broken. Mana Combat Spells are broken (less so in 5th edition I've been told). Initiating is just making one better at using those broken abilities (and raising Limits does very little in that regards). So does raising magical skills or the attributes to resist magical Drain. To say that Initiation allows Awakened characters to outpace mundane characters assume they started anywhere near each other.

The point would be closer to truth when comparing adepts to their mundane counterparts. Combat adepts are lagging behind Street Samurais at chargen and Initiation would allow them to catch up and then outpace them. It's even more obvious when comparing Social Adepts to other Face characters, who had zero option for progression past those Tailored Pheromones they should have acquired at chargen.

One feature (or issue, depending on who you talk to) of 4th edition was that characters could start near the top of their field, exhausting nearly all possible way to increase one particular dice pool, leaving next to zero margin for progression. The 4th initiative pass may have been costly, but otherwise, magic was the one big exception, through Initiation or just acquiring new spells.

The 5th edition raised skill maximum to 12 while restricting starting characters to 6, opening some room for progression. So at least every characters can get to progress through skills, with magicians getting an additional way to progress through Initiation. It also featured strict rules for both karma and money, and put very high costs on augmentations (and cyberdecks), practically closing up any possibility to progress through gear.

Also, the only thing that really matters regarding Initiation, especially long-term, high-level progression, is the augmentation of the Magic Attribute Maximum. Once you got Centering - and Channeling for the Possession-based traditions - you don't really care any longer about metamagic techniques. But actually increasing the Magic attribute is not that cheap. A Grade 1 Initiate is going to spend 48 Karma to reach Magic 7 (13 Karma for Initiating and 35 Karma for raising Magic). At first, it about just as great as raising Agility, Reaction or Edge and about as costly.

Then, Initiation can go on and on and piles up. A starting magician can already break most low- to mid-level game by summoning a Force 10 spirit. It's just a couple of Initiation away (and 104 Karma) from being able to summon a Force 16 spirit with the guarantee to break any game.

By grade 4 and Magic 10 (240 Karma), you can summon a Force 20 spirit and start scratching the setting on a geopolitical scale and the very concept of the game (because both aircraft carriers, nukes and shadowrunners have no purpose when astrally projecting magicians can simply lob Force 20 spirits). But that has more to do with the spirits rules than with Initiation proper. In that regards, a number of complaints are actually not aimed at PC progression, but at immortal NPC, who have an arbitrary amount of Karma.
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Post by Blade »

A common problem with run rewards is that there are two currencies: nuyens and karma, and the nuyen part can go out of hand when players start to steal and sell stuff.
That's why I like to use karma only for character advancement, nuyens are only here for fluff purchases or possibly for one-time boosts.
By following the chargen rules for karma/nuyens conversion ratio, you also ensure that you keep the "balance" that was set at chargen.
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Post by Trill »

Blade wrote:That's why I like to use karma only for character advancement, nuyens are only here for fluff purchases or possibly for one-time boosts.
How do you deal with Players that need Nuyen to advance (Street Samurai with their Augments, Hackers with their programs and commlinks, Riggers with their Vehicles and Drones)?
Because for them Karma is usually pretty worthless
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Post by Blade »

Nuyens can be bought with karma as in chargen.

The way I handle it in my games is that in-game the PC get paid (and really well paid) with nuyens, but if they want to spend these nuyens to improve their characters (by buying ware, drones, programs, etc.) then they have to spend the corresponding amount of karma.
On the upside, all gear bought this way is "insured". If the character loses his cyberlimb/drone/commlink, he will be able to get it replaced quickly and at a low cost. This also avoids the problem of the rigger who suddenly becomes useless because his expensive vehicle/drone got destroyed.
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Post by Iduno »

Blade wrote:By following the chargen rules for karma/nuyens conversion ratio, you also ensure that you keep the "balance" that was set at chargen.
The balance at chargen doesn't take into account paying lifestyle each month, or needing to replace cyberware with slightly better quality to get a small amount of essence hole so you can spend even more nuyen to get a +1 somewhere. That balance works when you've got 6 essence and a pile of nuyen to spend, but when you've got 0.1 essence, it's very expensive to upgrade.

Unless you're letting anyone who wants to become a cyberzombie (up to 6 additional essence) near the start of the game, and that has "some" downsides as well.
Last edited by Iduno on Thu Aug 31, 2017 2:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Trill »

Is there a way to salvage Mystic Adepts?
Because from what I've heard they are a trap option that leave you as a shitty Mage and shitty Adept.
Mord, on Cosmic Horror wrote:Today if I say to the man on the street, "Did you know that the world you live in is a fragile veneer of normality over an uncaring universe, that we could all die at any moment at the whim of beings unknown to us for reasons having nothing to do with ourselves, and that as far as the rest of the universe is concerned, nothing anyone ever did with their life has ever mattered?" his response, if any, will be "Yes, of course; now if you'll excuse me, I need to retweet Sonic the Hedgehog." What do you even do with that?
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Post by Aryxbez »

No doubt you'll get better answers, but I asked awhile back how to fix Mystic Adepts, and Here were the suggestions (Both Frank & Ancient History's Post)
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Post by Wiseman »

Would making mystic adepts a combination of aspected mages (franks version) and the adept work? That's what I'm using in my game right now.
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RadiantPhoenix wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:Legolas/Robin Hood are myths that have completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a bow".
The D&D wizard is a work of fiction that has a completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a book".
hyzmarca wrote:Well, Mario Mario comes from a blue collar background. He was a carpenter first, working at a construction site. Then a plumber. Then a demolitionist. Also, I'm not sure how strict Mushroom Kingdom's medical licensing requirements are. I don't think his MD is valid in New York.
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Post by Trill »

One of my players asked me recently about a bunch of things and whether I could implement them. So I want to let you look over them and say what is okay and what not:
Most of them are archery related because of his character (a bow-using Street Samurai)

Collapsible/Folding Bow: The one in Arsenal takes 5 CT to deploy and 3 CT to put away. In most cases that means that he'd be finished after the fight ends. He'd asked me about maybe making a bow that only folds together instead of being build together so that he could maybe deploy faster while still keeping it somewhat concealed. My current Ideas:
  • Make it far more expensive and/or limit the strength further but allow it to be deployed in one CT.
  • Make it fully deploy in 5 CT but allow it to deploy partially. If you only take one CT to deploy it's gonna be the weakest but quickest to be used. More CTs spent increase the damage and range up to the maximum.
  • Allow a test to reduce that time, 0 hits: 5 CT, 1 hit: 3 CT, 2 hits: 1 CT, 3 hits: Simple Action, 4+ hits: Free Action. Don't know what test to use and what thresholds.
  • Not allow this and keep bows as something you have to prepare for and keep guns for when you quickly need firepower.
Bows in cyberarms: Crossbows can be put into cyberarms. What about normal bows? If I use this it probably needs some restrictions in exchange for being easily smuggled and concealed from casual search.

Arrow dispenser in cyberarms: Exactly what it sounds like. Being able to store arrows in the arms and deploy them at will. Will probably only allow normal arrows without any special arrowheads. Would just use Limb compartment and fluff in a hole for giving out arrows. Does that sound fine?

Arrows on demand: Basically having a piece of material on hand from which arrows can be made when needed. He had in mind a roll of memory material that can be portioned into pieces that reform into hard spiral "arrows". You'd get yourself a roll and make arrows when you need any. This one I can imagine the most. We already have shape-changing materials, both in RL and in Shadowrun. The questions in this would be:
  • Costs?
    I imagine that a material that stays flexible in normal conditions but turns into a hard screw on a trigger would be a) pretty advanced and b) pretty expensive. I have said that they should expect prices in the 100 n¥/arrow range. Is this price fine? Too high? Too low?
  • Availability?
    How difficult should it be to acquire such material?
  • Aerodynamics?
    How would the shape affect aerodynamics? My gut feeling says "pretty poorly". Would different shapes be more viable?
Last edited by Trill on Sat Sep 02, 2017 12:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Longes »

Trill wrote:Bows in cyberarms: Crossbows can be put into cyberarms. What about normal bows? If I use this it probably needs some restrictions in exchange for being easily smuggled and concealed from casual search.
Uh. What? How would a bow implanted into a cyberarm work? Like, how is that even supposed to look?
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Post by Stahlseele »

Well, technically, really easy actually . .
You can make a bow shape with your arm, thanks to your ellbow.
And then you just need the sinew for the arrow to notch on to connect the outstretched finger to your shoulder.
Aim over the ellbow and pull with the other arm.
Granted, you won't have much pull because of the short distance, but it is technically trivial to do.
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Post by Trill »

Well, from what I've got from him he basically imagined something like this, inlaid into the arm and popping out and unfolding when you want to shoot
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Post by Mord »

Whatever you do, you should make sure that using this concealable bow does not constitute a definitive downgrade in effectiveness compared to using a concealed pistol. If you and your player add this cool/unique/flavorful thing to the game, you owe it to them to not make it definitively shitty as compared to the standard. Any drawbacks you choose to enforce require corresponding advantages.

Depending on the time required to unpack/reassemble/deploy the bow, you might need to make it comparable in power to something like a sniper rifle (like this guy's rifle that he assembles from a briefcase).
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Post by Stahlseele »

@Trill
But . . that is a Crossbow and not a bow and that is already in there as you said yourself . .
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Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Trill »

Stahlseele wrote:that is a Crossbow and not a bow and that is already in there as you said yourself
The difference between a crossbow and a normal bow is that a crossbow is held by a mechanism that releases the bow based on the pull of a trigger.
The implanted cross bow is just that, the string is in the arm and is released to fire a bolt. Meanwhile what I wanted to convey is that the string would be outside the arm, pulled by the other arm and fired by releasing the string from the fingers
As if you had a fixture in your arm and could extend it to mount a normal bow to it, just with the caveat that the normal bow could collapse and be stored inside the arm, basically a bow held at the wrist

WHOOPS, guess what? Apparently there is no cyberarm crossbow. Who'd have thought. At least I haven't found any.
Mord wrote:Any drawbacks you choose to enforce require corresponding advantages.
Well, what I have right now would be
PROS
Silent, needs a Threshold of 3/4 to hear it fire
Easy to hide from most scanners
Easy to hide from palming
Maybe have the bow part be removable and attachable so that you can smuggle the 2 hard parts+string in and then easily snap it back on.

CONS
Bulky
Needs arm to be free
no internal ammo
MW scanner can easily see that there's something there.
maybe make it a weaker than normal full-size bows?
Last edited by Trill on Sat Sep 02, 2017 11:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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