Shadowrun 4th Edition Campaign - [registration closed :( ]

Started by Sophina, September 29, 2010, 06:09:54 AM

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ReijiTabibito

I think I might be able to run level 4.  The Phoenix has equipped on his goggles Low-Light, Vision Magnification, Thermographic, and Smartlink.  He's got Flare Compensation, too, but I don't know it that counts.  He's also got a handheld sensor outfitted with an Atmospheric Sensor, a Laser Rangefinder, and a Motion Sensor.  One of his guns (his new primary) has an Improved Rangefinder mod attached to it, as well.  Plus, he's carrying an Emotitoy, which counts as a drone for sensor channel purposes, and it has a Sensor rating of 3...even if you discount the Improved Rangefinder mod, and his Astral Perception (Which he gets being a Magician), if everything on his goggles, his sensor package, and the Emotitoy counts, he's got 10 channels.

Hikari

Nah, pretty sure Flare Comp./Dampeners don't count.  The restriction is that it has to provide some sort of usable data--it doesn't necessarily have to be useful data (for example, 99 times out of 100 a Geiger counter is going to read negligible background radiation), but it has to be capable of providing some sort of information.

The reason I'm not sure if a Balance Augmenter counts is because I'm not sure how much information it can draw about the body's somesthetic senses, in particular the otolith organs and semicircular canals.  If it actually has full-reporting capability for information from them, it's immensely useful.  (Imagine that your AR HUD has a little 'ragdoll' 3D model of your fellow runner showing his posture and body position; you could easily tell whether or not he was crouching and aiming his weapon--and thus able to provide covering/support fire--or standing and running--and thus needing covering fire--without even being able to see him.)

You can't add Astral Perception, of course, because as far as I know there's no way to encode it as data or for non-magicians to interpret it as meaningful information.  The closest would be astral-photography, but that's extremely slow-developing stillframes only, and doesn't really have the same depth of information as Astral Perception.  I'm afraid you're still going to have to let us know about any weird auras, spirits, or other magical matters the old-fashioned way!
The wait is over,
I'm now taking over
You're no longer laughing
I'm not drowning fast enough


-The Strokes, Reptilia

Xerial

Emotitoys make baby Dunkelzahn cry.

Blank has:

- His base six (low-light) thanks to a Simrig;
- Earbud enhancement (Spatial Recognition);
- Contacts (Enhanced, Image Link, Thermo)

He's got enough, but he's only got Tacsoft of 2.

Hikari

You don't actually need the TacSoft program to run it on a centralized network.  (I wouldn't want to run a decentralized network--that would mean all those sensory channels you're providing would be open to outside hacking at all times, with only your own commlink capabilities to prevent it.  Running it centralized means they have to hack my commlink instead, and they're more than welcome to try!)
The wait is over,
I'm now taking over
You're no longer laughing
I'm not drowning fast enough


-The Strokes, Reptilia

ReijiTabibito

Yeah, I didn't think so. Fortunately, even if you discount Astral Perception, Flare Compensation, and Improved Rangefinder (although the books says Rangefinders count), he's still got 10 channels.

And Xerial, I don't think Image Link or Vision Enhancement counts in terms of channels.

And running a decentralized TacNet is expensive, since it means everyone has to have the software.  It's easier to run a centralized network off the Hacker's commlink, slave everyone else's link to the Hacker's, and let the pro defeat any attempts to hack the network.

Hikari

Vision Enhancement does count, and Improved Rangefinder should.  I don't believe Image Link counts, though it's extremely useful for receiving information from the tactical network, since it's the primary way of parsing it.  (The majority of information from other user's sensory channels is made available to you in HUD format as necessary--for example, you can get indicators for when other users are running low on ammo or overlays showing the projected arcs and blast radius of a grenade launcher shot from their smartguns, or red outlines for enemies they can see from their position that are obstructed from your view by obstacles, etc.)

But, yeah.  The decentralized network is resource-intensive and doesn't offer many advantages beyond redundancy.  So if you want to channel the nuyen you spent onto the program into other avenues, feel free!
The wait is over,
I'm now taking over
You're no longer laughing
I'm not drowning fast enough


-The Strokes, Reptilia

ReijiTabibito

Really?  I did not know that...well, if Vision Enhancement and Improved Rangefinder count, then that boosts Phoenix's channels to 12.  Which is nice.

And now I'm starting to understand why fans of Non-Adept magic are not fans of 4E...

yuna0417

Ok, I think I need to go back and spend some of my 40K now. x.x

ReijiTabibito

Quote from: yuna0417 on October 02, 2010, 11:27:25 AM
Ok, I think I need to go back and spend some of my 40K now. x.x

That would be goooood...  ^_^

*growls*  Why the hell did they nerf magic so much in 4E?

Sophina

Hmm, I'm only going to be around for about two hours today- should I post the opener and give everyone a chance to ask some questions and interact, or would everyone prefer if I wait until Reiji has posted his character so we can all start at once?

Hikari

Well, it was insanely powerful in SR3, and it remains extremely exploitable in general.  The gradual, progressive move away from "initiative monster"-driven combat has also done a lot to keep full mages in the game as things have come along.  To be honest, the thing that's shifted the balance of play more than anything is that cyber/bioware doesn't eat Essence as quickly, so cyber/bio characters tend to start play with some Essence still remaining and thus being able to continue advancing quickly for a while.  (I don't think I ever saw an SR3 sammy start with more than 0.5 Essence.)

Even so, Mages still offer the best and most unlimited curve of progression.  Adding a new spell to your grimoire is surprisingly cheap and can boast a far greater increase in versatility and power than anything another character can get for that much karma.  Foci may be slightly "out of reach" with starting resources since the Mage Quality and Magic Attribute burn up so many BP, but they offer a quick-fix of rapid power increase once you get some cred under your belt.  Initiation and Metamagic make sure the sky's the limit as far as progression goes.

Most of the old tricks still work: Stunbolts and Manabolts are insanely easy to blow unfortunate mundanes away with, even without taking Drain.  Levitate still offers incomparable mobility.  Spells like Control Thoughts and Alter Memory have wildly powerful applications that are almost impossible for any other character to replicate.  Heal is still the only game in town when it comes to effective battlefield healing...  and now some of your teammates may actually have enough Essence to benefit from it, too!

Pound for pound, the Mage is still the best all-around show in town.  They just aren't able to beat everyone at their own game, anymore.
The wait is over,
I'm now taking over
You're no longer laughing
I'm not drowning fast enough


-The Strokes, Reptilia

ReijiTabibito

#161
This, I know.  I'm just bemoaning the fact that since the system turned from a Target Number based system in 3E to whatever you'd call 4E...a Fixed Target Number, I guess...it means that magic isn't the powerhouse it used to be.  Especially since in 3E, you could vary the amount of damage you wanted to do.  Want to incap a target in one shot with a Stunbolt?  You could do that.  You'd have to resist a lot of drain, but it was possible.  The better thing to do was to break it up and do a one-two combo with twin Moderate Damage stunbolts, but still, in 4E, you can't do that anymore.

Plus, now it doesn't matter how much juice you pump into the spell - it can be Force 1 or Force 6, and the number the mook needs to hit doesn't change.

I guess I'm just remembering the glory days of when I took out a helicopter with a single Powerbolt, and seeing that you can't really do that anymore.

EDIT: Soph, I've got my character ready, I'm just down to trying to decide whether or not to make my other Combat Spell Manabolt or Boom (think Lightning Bolt or Firewater, but with the Blast Elemental Effect, which is like an explosion's shockwave).

Hikari

The main memory I had of SR3 was how easy it was to make a shaman who could throw Force 6 Manabolts at Deadly damage with casual ease.  Because of the all-or-nothing nature of resistance, characters with less than 6 Willpower had virtually no chance of escaping death from such an attack unless they were Awakened themselves or had an Initiated Mage using Shielding on them.  Even if they did have Willpower 6, it just meant the Shaman would have to shift some Spell Pool away from drain resistance to spell casting--he'd get a little burnt, sure, but it's a small price to pay for a 100% guaranteed kill shot...

You could also do some terribly, terribly min-max-y things with full magicians in SR3.  Probably the worst example was the Trauma Damper: for a reasonable price you could gain the ability to completely ignore Light Drain, meaning instead of budgeting your Spell Pool to negate Drain you only had to calculate in such a way that you would take Light Drain, giving you an extra 4 dice (on average) to throw into spellcasting.  Not to mention you still retained all the other utility of a Trauma Damper, and it left you with quite a bit of "spent" Essence out of that lost point for cybereyes or other quality-of-life 'ware.

The only thing that really gave most mages I knew trouble were vehicles...  but then, Riggers were their own entire pile of potential exploits.  (Ugh, there was nothing I hated worse than the strange juxtaposition of "this drone is completely invincible" vs. "oh you have AV rounds, now it can't even survive a lovetap".)
The wait is over,
I'm now taking over
You're no longer laughing
I'm not drowning fast enough


-The Strokes, Reptilia

ReijiTabibito

#163
*nods*  That's what I'm talking about.  Kuno knows this, but senior year of high school, I was in a campaign with four of my friends.  My friends were, in order of character concept, a Dwarf Street Sam, Elf Decker, Human Face/Infiltrator, and Elf Street Doc/Bounty Hunter.  I took up the magic end of things with a Human Fire Elementalist.  I was most definitely the newbie to the group and the system (something that became a running gag in the group), but by the end of the school year, when we were all graduating, I was capable of kicking more ass than the Street Sam and the Doc (our top two mundane combatants) combined with magic.

EDIT: Xerial, saw your character sheet over in the thread...Shock Gloves use Unarmed Combat, which I note you don't have.  Considering that you already have a Stun Baton (the AZ-150), you might be better off getting a Collapsible Baton in it's place...just a suggestion.

Sophina

Alright, that's it! Everyone has posted their sheets, so I posted the opening section-consider the game started. ^^

Sophina

Oh yes, regarding OOC let's use this thread for now- if we end up having a lot of OOC chatter I'll make a separate thread in the system threads section, and of course feel free to use PMs for anything you would traditionally use covert notes to the DM for. ^^

Kunoichi

Quote from: Xerial on October 02, 2010, 10:27:20 AM
Emotitoys make baby Dunkelzahn cry.

Perhaps, but they're quite a boon to the socially-challenged members of the group. :P It's just that a dedicated face can do terrible, terrible things with them, is all.

Quote from: Hikari on October 02, 2010, 11:45:11 AM
(I don't think I ever saw an SR3 sammy start with more than 0.5 Essence.)

Dancer's got 0.775, herself, but then she started with only 5 Essence to begin with.  Admittedly, she can get that missing point back with some rather expensive geneware...  But the fact that it's rather expensive geneware is likely to be a problem. ^^;

*will probably have her opening post up in a few hours*

Anathanasia

Quote from: Kunoichi on October 02, 2010, 04:02:44 PM
Perhaps, but they're quite a boon to the socially-challenged members of the group. :P It's just that a dedicated face can do terrible, terrible things with them, is all.

Dancer's got 0.775, herself, but then she started with only 5 Essence to begin with.  Admittedly, she can get that missing point back with some rather expensive geneware...  But the fact that it's rather expensive geneware is likely to be a problem. ^^;

*will probably have her opening post up in a few hours*

I was going to get one, then I saw the empathy software...but where did it go? I could swear I bought! Argh!
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Kunoichi

#168
Well, if you've got leftover starting nuyen, you don't carry that into the game with you, so perhaps you might have enough to get it now and just add it onto your sheet?

Edit: D'oh!  Forgot my own starting nuyen. ><;

Multiply result by 50 (3d6=7)

So, 350 nuyen in my bank account to start.

ReijiTabibito

Soph?  How did you want to handle dicerolls for this particular game?

Sophina

It might be too slow (and if it is, we can try something else) but for the moment I would like you guys to tell me when you're trying to use a specific skill or the like. I've been rolling Perception and other checks without telling anyone, but for the most part unless I'm explicitly told someone is using a skill, I'll assume your character is trying to get by on pure social engineering.

Sophina

Oh yes, and I don't mind if anyone makes their own rolls and posts them, so long as they use http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/ or some similar form of third-party verification. ^^

Kunoichi

Well, at least Rhiannon managed to talk up the price a little for the rest of us. ^^;