Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: deepomega on <01-22-14/1538:58>
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I have a troll magician who is VERY into assensing and astral projecting his way through every problem. With that, plus his offensive spells, he tends to geek everyone instantly. It's a high risk/high reward strategy, since he always ends up taking a TON of damage and almost dying, but I'm looking for something a bit more subtle to keep him from just finding all the awakened and all the cyberware-users before the fight even starts.
A few ideas I've had:
- Astral combat. Have another mage waiting for him, take the fight to astral where he's absolutely useless, lock him in the astral plane and make him hope someone comes to rescue him
- Mana barriers. I used this once, but on a rules check, the size of the barrier makes it pretty useless for acting as a "cloaking field" for any serious number of baddies.
- Move his body. Have someone kidnap his body while he's projected out, he has to find it (with the team's help?)
- Shedim. I already turned the Blackfish gogang into a secret shedim army. I know he's read up on them now, and my understanding is a shedim can just take over him when he's projected out and then... that's it. He's fucked. I'm not even clear on whether there's a way to fix this once it happens other than killing his possessed body.
Any other ideas or recommendations here?
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He probably could astrally duke it out with the Shedim, then the body would become free again and since it wouldn't be dead yet, he probably could re-enter it. Keep in mind that Spirits will easily see him since they're always seeing the astral as well.
You can also grab some toys from SR4, which either function as astral detection or astral blockers.
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And as a related question - a Shedim can possess the recently dead regardless of their physical condition, right? After their run-in with Shedim, the runners burned the body of a recently deceased friend, but I think short of completely burning to ash it could still come back, yes?
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It's technically possible for a different shedim to inhabit a body after it's been "purged." But the odds of that are pretty insurmountable. However, in the one time that my team thought shedim were inhabiting people, they started a slash-and-burn policy just to be on the safe side. I never intended to, but I think the shedim really messed with them a lot.
I'd suggest making him deal with some FAB III, which will basically kill him as soon as his dual-natured form passes through it. That's a pretty nasty thing to have to deal with.
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FAB III is perfect - I'm already gonna do some stuff with FAB I or II, and I like including in-game hints of what to worry about. (E.g. a mook with a cortex bomb presaged the big bad of last mission blowing up and almost killing them all)
Re: purging - they burned him because he was being chased be shedim, but he'd never been possessed by one. I think there'd still be a tougher dice check as per possession rules but totally doable. Especially since it'd happen during downtime. (I clued them in that their fire wasn't effective by having his burned corpse get recovered and put in a morgue, so now I'm just gonna possess him.)
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Note: FAB 3 is only really deadly VS dual natured. Mages are not dual natured...
The FAB would stick to him and drain him as long as he was astral or percieving astral, but once he stops, the FAB moves on
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Watchers can be great (and cheap) counters to astral abuse, as can relatively low-force spirits. Dual-natured paracritters can also fill in this role somewhat, at least alerting meatspace people to astral recon.
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I ran Chasin' the Wind online, and a guy went into the Control Tower astrally. The Spirit that was there immediately warned his summoner, and bam, the enemies were ready and the group decided to just go in guns blazing.
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I was actually wondering this the other day as well. I have a mage that's constantly using astral perception and projection to recon. Having the bad guys lose the element of surprise in every combat is getting a bit old :/ I might have to try some of your suggestions! :)