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Post by Harkovast on Feb 6, 2015 2:45:25 GMT
No mages? Seriously? In a game whose whole selling point is mixing magic and high technology, you have to remove the spell casters?
That's like saying that Harkovast works as long as you take out all the talking animals!
This, this right here! That sums it up better than I did in about 20 paragraphs of rant!
Much like Tolkien wanted to write about invented ancient languages and as a side effect accidentally made an exciting fantasy epic...the people who made shadowrun made a fun rpg with some exciting concepts as a completely accidental side effect of their goofy political hippy crap.
They made another game called earth dawn which is basically the same kinda whacky hippy crap but in a fantasy setting. It's meant to be okay, in the same way shadowrun is okay, as long as you ignore all the hippy crap and rewrite the rules...so I guess not okay after all.
Renard gets 20 points for summing the game up really well.
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Post by Horsie on Feb 6, 2015 3:06:50 GMT
It does sound like a neat concept, but you shouldn't have to ignore the background and rewrite the rules to make it fun, that's not how games are supposed to work.
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Post by Canuovea on Feb 6, 2015 3:10:23 GMT
Not no magic. Adepts were okay, and even mages were alright but they had to not be built in an overpowered way.
Still... yes. Good point.
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Post by Harkovast on Feb 6, 2015 5:07:30 GMT
Adepts? Pfff! I have to play a wannabe? Adepts are only good if you use power gamey stuff from source books to break it, otherwise they use magic to create substandard versions of the powers you get from cybernetics that everyone gets. They are like monks in DnD, going to lots of work to get powers everyone else can get from weapons and armour. Shadworun=ShadowBUM!
(See what I did there? That's the level of writing that makes Harkovast the legendary web comic it is today!)
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Post by Canuovea on Feb 6, 2015 5:10:03 GMT
I tried out an adept. Worked pretty well.
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Post by tiberia on Feb 6, 2015 7:37:56 GMT
Ah Hem Y'all don't know the true nightmares that lay within this game This... one of my favorite all time games of all. I love it like I love Evangellion; I recognize its flaws, and will gladly list them, but god damn do I still love it. That's true love. that's what you can build a marriage on.
moving on
my experience is with 4th ed.
Hark. magic does not always require line of sight. no. There are rituals. and that's where it gets a special sort of scary. the ritual needs a spotter yes, but that spotter can be a spirit, or someone in the astral realm, or you could just scry the motherfucker using a bit of their blood or a personal belonging. then you get your mage buddies together cast a force FUCK YOU mana bolt and literally annihilate his soul... from the other side of the planet. So that can happen
There's possession magic. Traditions like Voodoo are posession traditions.Meaning that when they summon a spirit, it possesses something. should it posses a person the spirits stats are added to the person's. A spirit's stats are qual to it's force. So a force 4 spirit will have 4 in every attribute, including magic. See where this is going yet? The higher your magic and summoning skill, the higher force a spirit you can summon with minimal risk. See it yet? Step 1- Summon force 6 spirit. have it posses you. your magic is now 12. Because of course your magic is 6 starting out. there is no reason not to have the starting max. add the 6 from the spirit, and it's 12. Step 2- Summon a force 12 spirit. have it posses you in pace of that force 6. magic of 18 step 3- Summon a force 18 spirit. have it posses you. magic 24 ad infinitum.
this super mage also has a body egual to the current spirit's force + their own score. so even if they lose initiative (they won't.) and get shot they will have enough body to buy the succeses needed to soak all the damage, ignoring it. (for every 4 dice you can roll you can buy a success instead of rolling. you can either roll the dice, or buy as many success as you can, not both.)
and the piece de resistance- Mental Manipulation spells
I cast mass control actions I roll 14 dice (6 magic + 6 spellcasting +2 for specialty) all enemies in the 30 foot radius area have to resist. they roll 2 dice. because they are on zen giving them +1 to their wil. actually lets say the GM wanted these guys to have ABNORMALLY high wil for regular non-mage people. they roll 7 dice (6 wil + 1 from zen) should the enemies get less successes then the mage who rolled twice as much as them, then they are under the mages control ... The mage says "kill yourself" dead mage casts it again for the one guy who resisted on sheer luck he fails of course "kill yourself" dead
the mage was around the corner when they did this. they used a mirror. or maybe they had so much armor on it made the troll envious because armor encumbrance doesn't penalize their spellcasting.
the runners need to interogate a guy, or convince someone to help them. Social guy steps up to the plate. Their time to shi- NOPE. Mage casts Alter memories. rolls 14 dice target rolls nothing of importance Target now remembers bullshit and does what mage wants.
Super Voodoo mage with a magic of HOLY SHIT has one of their lesser spirits, a measley force 36* weakling, spy on you. They cast GO FUCK YOURSELF at a force of FUCK YOU, and you die without being on the same continent.
More to follow. Next I'll go over why it's actually written by bioconservative asshats, not leftist bleeding heart liberals
*for context, most people refer to those as "Gods"
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Post by tiberia on Feb 6, 2015 7:55:52 GMT
This is the tale of Essence
Essence is the measure of a spirits integrity, or a measure of its connection to the body. Augmentations, reduce your essence. replace a leg. essence loss. new eyes. essence loss. in practice this is a balancing mechanic to keep the street sam from auging up too much. But it has some unfortunate implications.
If you drop to 0 essence or less. you die. Your spirit no longer recognizes your body as its own, and fucks off. Technology literally eats away your soul.
For those that may have forgotten; I am a Transhumanist. so this bullshit is bullshit.
It gets worse
it is suggested to GM's when they design rewards for a mission that they increase money pay out if the mission is morally ambiguous (this should relax your conscience), and increase Karma gain (Xp) for morally good things (Karma, get it?). this was actually codified in 5th ed actually. ... Tech characters progress mostly through new equipment and upgrades, which costs money Magic characters progress mostly through increasing skills, and 'initiations' which cost Karma.
Techies are encouraged to be evil, while magic gets to be good. a note: Technomancers are magic. fuck what the books say. they are magic.
There is no cap on magic's growth. you can initiate and increase your magic as much as you like. Techies have to buy increasingly more expensive augmentations as they sit on .01 essence. A new piece might cost more then a house, or two. and as it costs more and more you get less and less back. for spending 2.5 x more then last time you get only 10% less essence used. not enough saved to add anything new in. at least nothing of note. and you had to do a black ops suicide mission to even get the number for the people who could get you that arm. The mage has to spend increasingly more karma to progress, but the returns are steady. increased magic max, more magic, more spells, new tricks.
fuck magic
more to follow. Next Technomancers
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Post by tiberia on Feb 6, 2015 8:34:44 GMT
And So the Technomancer looked upon the earth and said unto those that dwelled upon it "look upon your works of technology. How you have created marvels unsurpassed by the past." The Technomancer laughed a laugh heard all across the world, upon every television set, and in every car. "But you creators of this world never dreamed that truly what you have made is a golden throne from whence I shall rule upon you. I shall dominate you as I dominate your Technology. Through the one I shall control them both, and Thus I am a God." -Verse 16-20 chapter 4 Book of the Technosiah
Technomancers have issues on two fronts Mechanically they are broken Fluff wise they are bullshit
Technomancers need only put all their stats and effort into one or two skills, and a couple attributes. Then they can dominate technology in all places. They also can not be counter hacked, as you can't hack their "living persona" if you have technology on or around you they can hack it with a thought, no equipment needed, and then they can turn it against you.
mechanically they are broken. never had someone play one on a game, and never played one myself, so can't say much more then that.
FLUFFWISE however. fluff for those that don't know is the description, flavor text, setting context, etc...
The Fluff for technomancers was meh until the book unwired came out. They could for lack of a better word, psychically connect to the matrix. like they had a comm-link in their head. the matrix was supposedly as natural to them as the real world was, and just as much their home. they were the descendants of the people referred to as otaku from the older editions, who could do much the same stuff. Technomancers could also access something called the resonance realms, which was a vague place. it's where weird program like things called sprites came from, and was a source of power for technomancers. their form of 'initiaition' was called immersion, and it was how immersed in the resonance they were. their 'magic' stat was called resonance as well you would think that meant that they were better the more they resonated with technology right? more on that later
Then unwired came. Most of unwired is for mundane hacking, computers, and matrix stuff. bu the last couple chapters were for technomancers. They wrote this chapter by copy and pasting from the book street magic. then did a find and replace, to replace all instances of mage with technomancer. done
Now they had traditions. Like mages Mow they had Paragon things. like mentor spirits! New varieties of Sprites! Which were now exactly like spirits, but on the internet. the described the resonance realms. It's just another magical realm. This one just opens into the matrix instead of the real world. Very lazy writing. boring writing.
now here is where we look at the mechanics and fluff together to look at the big problem I have with them. like the mission reward stuff from last post this is drawing out implications from things in the book. so this is never said in the books, but it's there.
your magic and resonance Scores can only be as high as your essence plus initiation level. You start with 6 essence. installing stuff inside you reduces your essence. So a Technomancer or mage with augs that lower their essence to 5 can only have up to 5 magic. See it?
Technomancers suffer for mixing themselves with technology. They do not resonate with technology at all. Technomancers do not work with technology, they only control it. There is a divide there. They are dominators of technology, not its kin.
this may seem like trite thing. We control our technology too. But in Shadowrun, the technology is waking up. AIs are emerging. the technology is now a thing itself. These AIs they are the true inheritors of the matrix. It IS their home. it is where they are born and where they live. AIs have no connection to the resonance realms. None at all. Technomancers are invaders to the AI homeland. They are the Normans conquering the Saxon people. They are the Europenas coming to America, or Africa, or anywhere that white people wrecked shit (the colonial period was not great). Technomancers are just mages on the matrix, and the resonance realm is just a place that opens onto the matrix, that these invaders draw power from.
Who is Kin to the AI, and technology? Street Sams, Gun Bunnies, and Good ol' Hackers. They put technology in their body, they work with it. It is a two way street. Technology is for them a bit more then just a tool, it is an integral part of who they are. These cyborgs forsake parts of their souls to meld with technology. They have more right to be on the matrix then Technomancers do.
Fuck technomancers. Technological Colonialists
more to follow. Up next wacky fun with adepts
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Post by tiberia on Feb 6, 2015 9:00:21 GMT
"Alright Jack you go stand in the doorway to block their path. unless they have something bigger then those missiles you should be fine. Cheryll, go ask the guard to fight and die for us. I know you can do that, you've done it before. While You guys do that I'll punch down the Vault Door" -Bill From accounting, leader of Team Adepts. Overheard during a mission.
Without further introduction The Wacky World of Adepts Note: all builds have 6 magic starting out, because of course they do first up
Body Adept Troll Have you ever wanted to not die? Here's how. Have a Troll adept. put as many points into body as you can. take the trait that increases your max body. max it out. for adept powers take ones that increase body. as many as you can up to the augmented limit, or until you run out of magic Buy armor. you can wear twice your body in armor value without penalty. Do that. may need to get clever as most armor doesn't stack, but some does. And that some is all you need
If you have done this correctly you should be rolling 50+ dice to soak damage. if the damage is 12 or less, maybe 13 or less, you do not need to roll. You can just buy enough successes to ignore the damage automatically. If in the rare event you do need to roll, then do not worry. On average you will be getting 17 or 18 successes from rolling. Assault cannons can't touch you. You might even be able to survive chunky salsa rules
Pornomancer I don't know much about making the pornomancer. I just know you get to roll around 50 dice on social stuff. Yes The Pornomancer was the girl. Deal with it.
The Deadliest weapon Quick, namee the highest damage weapon you can start with. Ignore the opening quote. Unless you were cheating you said the assault cannon, miniguns, or the Voodoo mage. But with the exception of the Voodoo Mage you'd be wrong. unarmed strike. With unarmed strike, You can hurt the body adept troll. Be a Troll adept. Take the trait to increase max strength. max out strength. for adept powers take critical strike which gives +1 damage to unarmed strike per rank. now spend the rest on strength increases. Now spend some build points on as much martial arts as it will let you (4 ranks). pick karate and/or boxing. for your martial arts advantages from these pick the one that increases damage by +1 for unarmed strike. You should be hitting for somewhere between 17 and 23 damage. the assault cannon does 10
done... for now.
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Post by Harkovast on Feb 6, 2015 15:17:02 GMT
Hahaha Tiberia you have the kind of pain in your descriptions that can only come when you get hurt by something you love.
I FEEL YOUR PAIN, SISTER! I FEEL IT! I WAS THERE!
I played the shit out of first edition back in the day! We played campaigns of this that went on forever. We kept wanting it to be good and it kept hurting us but we kept going back! Shadowrun is an abusive relationship I tell you! Have some harko points to ease the painful memories.
Tiberia raises an excellent point about spells that effect the mind, and king of demonstrates why mind powers are often so limited in Harkovast. When you can change what a person remembers, or change their behaviour, you can basically do whatever you want. Armour and toughest or agility become useless, as you can't dodge or block thoughts. Its basically instant kill on who ever you use it on, or worse yet instant ally. Someone hires me for a mission...I mind control him to give me all his money and then kill himself instead. This is why in later DnD edditions, loser wizards bother with fireballs and lightning bolts. Any goofy warrior can do damage. Mages just mind control bad guys to change sides. Not only is this effectively an instant kill (as it takes a bad guy out of their side immediately) it creates a new ally for us. If I described a spell that instant kills a bad guy and also summons a powerful minion to my own side, most GMs would say I should fuck off and stop power gaming. BUT THAT'S WHAT MIND CONTROL AND CHARM DO! The same goes for illusions. They sound cute, but if I can control what my enemies can see, how can they defend? I can trick them into walking into fires, off roofs, shooting each other or whatever else they want to see. Soldiers that can't trust their own senses are worse then useless, they are a liability.
This is why only monstrously powerful bad guys like the Speaker get this kind of unfettered power.
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Post by TempestFennac on Feb 6, 2015 16:33:32 GMT
To be fair, Charm is limited to just making someone treat you as a friend and Dominate does give a new Will Save whenever you try to get someone to do something they normally wouldn't do. I guess ordering the minion to not resist the spell may work, assuming they don't manage to save as a result of that command. Using spells like this in combat is also harder due to them having a penalty vs. hostile targets, unless I'm misremembering a rule. I assume Shadow Run lacks those sorts of limitations?
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Post by Harkovast on Feb 6, 2015 17:22:17 GMT
Pfft treat them as a friend is SOOO abusable!
Orcs nad gnolls and other asshole monsters kill each other for petty reasons all the time, so getting one to kill his fellow ones if he really likes you is piss easy. Even if the monsters have loyalty to each other and won't kill each other you've got one dopey orc going "No, don't hurt my friends! Can't we all get along!" who will either get in the other orcs way or stand back and be useless so we can cut his throat later. At WORST its an instant removable of an enemy, at best its also gaining and ally.
The spells all work differently so some might give save bonuses and I know most have a "no ordering suicide rule" but even just making enemies sit on their hands till the fight ends is totally abusable.
Oh no! Two giants attack! (mage takes an action) Hmm, alright one giant attacking and one sitting down waiting to be executed later.
Fight is 50% over after one spell.
Kinda makes the warriors pointy bit of mental seem a little redundant, huh?
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Post by tiberia on Feb 6, 2015 17:46:23 GMT
the number of hits you get on your resistance roles act as a penalty to your dice pool of anything the mage has you do. So let's say you rolled really well. -4 to your dice pool to shoot your buddy. Normally you roll 16 dice though. So still gonna hit most likely. and shooting yourself in the head doesn't even require a roll. As a GM I think that's an automatic hit, had rod to miss on that one. Burn some edge to live with brain damage.
One of my friends once had fun explaining how to make a wizard do anything the fighter can, but better. It requires a higher level wizard, but after a certain point there is NOTHING the wizard can't do better then the fighter, or the barbarian, or the archer.
In shadowrun they can do this from day one. there are some things the Techies might be able to do, that mages can't. There's hacking, but then technomancer can do that. And Adepts are what you do to do the really crazy stuff. Extra initiative passes (lets you go multiple times per turn)? A staple for the street sam, BUT the mage can do it with a single spell, for a fraction of the cost ($0 is a fraction of many things). And now the mage can cast multiple spells a turn.
Mages do have to worry about drain, but if built correctly, they can soak all the drain all the time, and never have to worry about it til much later after casting many many spells.
What I love the most is the cybertech. I love buying and installing new cybvertech. replace my legs. put things in my legs. put things in the things i put in my legs. It is great. It is so much fun shopping for cybertech.
Later I'll talk about another Game that's like shadowrun. Made by the same people, but different company. IT has almost the same rule, but is based on d%. Has its own left wing agenda, but not the one in this book. And it Hates bioconservatives. Like, unreasonably so.
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Post by TempestFennac on Feb 6, 2015 19:34:55 GMT
I'd probably rule that you'd break the Charm effect by ignoring the target asking you to stop hurting their other friends (admittedly I'd also never have people who are willing to kill each other for the hell of it anyway, unless they were some sort of cult dedicated to an evil god of stupidity, or inhabitants of Scarfolk).
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Post by Harkovast on Feb 6, 2015 22:13:19 GMT
Tempest orcs don't mind hurting each other, and even if they do, its the other orcs that are attacking us. We can all shout "stop! We don't want to fight you friends!" As they attack us. The charmed orc will see one group of friends trying to make peace nad being ignored (us) and another group cruelly attacking us and forcing us to defend themselves.
Hell, if you are going to be difficult I just tell the charmed one to give me his weapons immediately or run to another room to get help. Thats a first level spell to completely neutralise an enemy.
Tiberia I always found shadowrun made inniative way too important (and it sounds like later edditions did nothing to fix it). being fast not only makes you go first, it gives you more actions. If your enemy gets twice as many actions as you, your actions have to be literally twice as good to compensate. That's almost impossible to balance in game terms.
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