The Gaming Den

Stahlseele wrote:As opposed to getting together, summoning a great form force 20 earth spirit/elemental and destryoing whole continents using the quake power . .

Since when can you do group summoning?

As per your last post, appearantly the necros can?
So why summon a palewind or whatever nonsense that was instead of what ammounts to a magical weapon of mass destruction?

Stahlseele wrote:As per your last post, appearantly the necros can?
So why summon a palewind or whatever nonsense that was instead of what ammounts to a magical weapon of mass destruction?

Longes wrote:Necro summoning is actually ritual magic

They don't use Summoning. They have a ritual spell called "Necro Summoning" which summons a spirit.

Yes. So summoning it.
Does it only get that one specific spirit or can they just say:"meh, fuck it, we need somebody in that city dead, give me a force 20 great form earth spirit/elemental, walk it into the center of the city and keep using quake untill it turns into an active volcano"?

CapnTthePirateG wrote:Um,

Can anyone explain to me why the Necro Magic tradition needs new rules and can't just be a possession tradition with a darker flavor?

Anyone? Seriously, the tradition rules are stupid.

Frank had a good explanation of the context in a SR5 post a while ago that jives with what I've seen and conversations I've had with current and past SR folks. He described it as a push-pull war between a reductionist faction (folks who want to use fewer rules and re-use them more often for related mechanics) and an obscurantist faction (folks who want to write more and more rules for related mechanics).

Fancy terms notwithstanding, that's spot on, and the obscurantists have been winning for quite some time now.

Stahlseele wrote:Yes. So summoning it.
Does it only get that one specific spirit or can they just say:"meh, fuck it, we need somebody in that city dead, give me a force 20 great form earth spirit/elemental, walk it into the center of the city and keep using quake untill it turns into an active volcano"?

Because they can't summon earth spirits. Stahlseele, why do you keep arguing about the material you've never read?

I've skimmed over it a few days ago.

The real highlights of Forbidden Arcana are:
* Romani tradition, which lets you soak drain with Willpower+Willpower.
* Draconic tradition, which lets you summon any spirit (theoretically including Shadow spirits, Shedim and any other spirit not bound to a metamagic) and soak drain with Magic+Willpower. Unfortunately you have to be a drake and SR5 drakes are even less playable than AIs.
* Noble Sacrifice metamagic, which is "good" blood magic but also hot garbage.
* Arcane Bouncer quality which lets you detect people's positive/negative qualities with an Assensing test. Being in debt or having a passport are now literally imprinted on your soul.

I still had more of a laugh at the new city spirits and vehicle spirits and the retirement home for old car spirits up north in terms of bullshit . .

The obscurantist faction was pretty much out of control since before 5th edition was a thing. The reductionists wanted possession and inhabitation traditionsto be the same. There's honestly no reason why voodoo zombies and insect spirits have to use different mechanics. We have separate possession and inhabitation rules because the obscurantists threw a tantrum.

Now that they control pretty much everything, it doesn't really surprise that they are covering themselves in poop and demanding complex new mechanics for character types that are thematically interchangeable with already extant magical groups.

-Username17

Longes wrote:The real highlights of Forbidden Arcana are:
* Romani tradition, which lets you soak drain with Willpower+Willpower.
* Draconic tradition, which lets you summon any spirit (theoretically including Shadow spirits, Shedim and any other spirit not bound to a metamagic) and soak drain with Magic+Willpower. Unfortunately you have to be a drake and SR5 drakes are even less playable than AIs.

So I read what you posted, and did this.

Just.... why? That just spits in the face of game design and balance. It is clear that somebody does not give a single fuck to care about what they're doing.

And i repeat my question about cloning food via spell:
if i eat metahumans, can i clone them with that spell?

How far up the foodchain do i have to go to make the laws of thermodynamics cry?

Stahlseele wrote:And i repeat my question about cloning food via spell:
if i eat metahumans, can i clone them with that spell?

How far up the foodchain do i have to go to make the laws of thermodynamics cry?

The food duplication thing makes the laws of thermodynamics cry no matter what you do. While they have some sorta weird explanation involving time loops or some shit, the reality is that the items in question are fucking food. That means that someone is going to eat both the original and the time shadow, which means that the same one-way thermodynamic processes are being done to the same bit of potential energy twice.

-Username17

Stahlseele wrote:And i repeat my question about cloning food via spell:
if i eat metahumans, can i clone them with that spell?

How far up the foodchain do i have to go to make the laws of thermodynamics cry?

Your kung fu is weak, I eat exclusively orichalcum sandwiches with great dragon mousse.

@Longes
Yes, for example.
Imagine that dragonkiller horror getting his "hands"? on this spell!

Big Purple thread about what they'd change about Shadowrun setting. For the most part they seem to want to just play a different game that isn't Shadowrun.

I love Shadowrun, but it's not gonna seem like it by the time you're done reading this.

Thanks for reminding me why I don't go there.

Some of that stuff is actually on-topic, like the Republic of Texas alt-history, but the rest is actually mechanical changes or table preferences rather than setting lore. You want to use Spycraft for your matrix rules, great, but it's not a setting change. You don't want to deal with racism in your game (because you deal with it every day and it's not fun anymore), just say that to the alleged friends you play with.

Data Trails wrote:The crack security people of the Matrix are good at a lot of things, but seeing is perhaps their most underrated quality, because let’s face it, it’s not glamorous. But Matrix perception is about more than just having good rendering software and checking out all the icons that come into view. It’s knowing how to sort through information coming your way and find what’s truly important. There was a brief time when hackers thought they could confuse security by flooding hosts with dozens of RFID chips running silent, but once they figured out that demi- GODs knew enough to design their scans to screen for icons that were running silent and were not RFID chips, the days of that trick were numbered. That’s the part of Matrix security that too many people overlook—it’s not about just looking at reality, it’s knowing how to define reality so that what you want to see comes to the fore.

Checkmate, Frank. Nuh-uh you can't do the Infinity Mirror trick because fuck you we are not going to actually write the rules that stop Infinity Mirror.

Bullshit, that is not inifinite mirror.
Why would you run them silent if you could simply change your gun to report as a new pair of shorts for example?
OR AS ONE OF THE HUNDREDS OF OTHER IDENTICAL RFID ICONS?
The SUSPICIOUS BIT about the infinity Mirror thing is the fact that there are suddenly dozends if not hundreds of RFIDs moving where there should be none. The Mirror is not against being found, it is a shield against attack on specific items. And it still does that, if they did not change the rules so that you do not have to check every single item first before deciding if you want to attack.
As long as you can not effectively BY THE RULES filter out the dummy RFIDs, Infinity Mirror will continue working.

The fact that i of all people appear to know and understand this should make most anybody else recoil in horror at the implications . .

That is them specifically saying that they've thought of an answer to Infinity Mirror and then not actually making rules or fluff that stops Infinity Mirror. That's interesting on several levels. On the one hand it means that they are still arguing with me despite the fact that I gave up talking to them two presidential terms ago. And on the other hand it means that they haven't found a solution to a problem I told them about literally ten years ago despite the fact that they've been actually working on it the whole time.

That's both shockingly stubborn and stunningly incompetent.

-Username17

Just out of curiosity . .
Do we know who was responsible for that passage?

Also:
Want to be an ass about it?
Have RFID tags in your underoos, your bowels from food/drink and whatever else you can realistically explain away . . and then set them all to silent running and do not set your dangerous bits to silent running.
Let us see how smart people really are . .

Furthermore:
"not RFID chips" < = so . . if you can make items go dead by burning out the RFID chips according to the rules . . what, exactly, is doing the broadcast if not RFID chips?

Stahlseele wrote:if you could simply change your gun to report as a new pair of shorts for example?

Because in SR5 you can't do that. You need a hacking (i.e. illegal) program called "Wrapper" which can only run on a cyberdeck (i.e. illegal ridiculously expensive device) and which can only affect things slaved to your deck (of which you can have Device Rating * 3, realistically 6-9 items).

Wrapper wrote:Wrapper: This program overrides the Matrix’s protocols for icons. While this program is running, your icons can be anything you want them to be when you use the Change Icon action. From the lens of the Matrix, your Hammer program could look like a music file, your Ares Predator icon could look like a credstick, and your own persona could look like a Mitsubishi Nightsky. Another persona can see what the disguised icon really is with a Matrix Perception Test, but they need to at least suspect enough to check (Matrix Perception, p. 241).

If Frank could do a drunk review of Data Trails - that'd be pretty swell. Because that book is a stinker.

oh, so they changed that completely then . . uurrk . .

Data Trails wrote:But Matrix perception is about more than just having good rendering software and checking out all the icons that come into view. It’s knowing how to sort through information coming your way and find what’s truly important. There was a brief time when hackers thought they could confuse security by flooding hosts with dozens of RFID chips running silent, but once they figured out that demi- GODs knew enough to design their scans to screen for icons that were running silent and were not RFID chips, the days of that trick were numbered.

What I don't understand is how you were supposed to pull out said "trick" in the first place with Shadowrun, 5th Edition. You could flood Grid (within a 100 meters radius) with dozens of RIFD chip running silent, but not a Host. Persona may enter Hosts ; Icons of the Persona are inside the Host. But Icons of Devices stay in the Grid. They don't "follow" the Persona simply because they happen to be carried by the person controlling the Persona that entered the Host.

Nath wrote:

Data Trails wrote:But Matrix perception is about more than just having good rendering software and checking out all the icons that come into view. It’s knowing how to sort through information coming your way and find what’s truly important. There was a brief time when hackers thought they could confuse security by flooding hosts with dozens of RFID chips running silent, but once they figured out that demi- GODs knew enough to design their scans to screen for icons that were running silent and were not RFID chips, the days of that trick were numbered.

What I don't understand is how you were supposed to pull out said "trick" in the first place with Shadowrun, 5th Edition. You could flood Grid (within a 100 meters radius) with dozens of RIFD chip running silent, but not a Host. Persona may enter Hosts ; Icons of the Persona are inside the Host. But Icons of Devices stay in the Grid. They don't "follow" the Persona simply because they happen to be carried by the person controlling the Persona that entered the Host.

I certainly don't understand SR5 matrix intricacies and the writers don't either. The first fiction piece in Data Trails has the writer not understand how OS works and that you explicitly can't ever hack the Host's archive.