Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Character creation and critique => Topic started by: FST_Gemstar on <05-25-15/1226:01>
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Just wanted to throw out a little dilemma I am having in making a stealthy/social adept. While I really like the benefit of tattooed qi foci, I am feeling paranoid that having more recognizable physical features is a big liability. Would they affect impersonations/disguises? Especially ones that may have some seduction involved? Would they be problematic if caught on camera or actually caught? Am I being too paranoid here? Are there any ideas of how to scar, tattoo, etc. qi foci that are less noticable or bland?
Thanks for your help!
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1. Tattoos are incredibly prevalent. Unless you make it super distinctive with an NQ it's not really a big concern in terms of making you more memorable on a mechanical level. You could probably take Blandness even with a lot of tattoos and just look like some generic tattooed street tough. Plenty of high-population illegal groups, from gangs to organized crime, have particular tattoos. You could be a member of such a group, and hide in plain sight, or impersonate the tattoos of these members, which could be handy but also cause trouble if you have particular Triad tattoos and are in Yak or other-Triad territory, for example.
2. There is no rule that says disguising, whether mundane or magical, affects the ability to use a tattoo qi focus. So cover it up under make up and it will still work, but of course, like all foci, if active it will be visible on the astral.
3. Unlike the magic tattoos in L5R, qi focus tattoos do not need to be visible or exposed in order to give benefits.
I always do tattoos for qi foci if it's a focus I will never need to upgrade (e.g. getting Astral Perception). I wouldn't get it on something like Combat Sense 1 because you can't just upgrade it to 3 later. I find foci are best for the powers you want to have access to on occasion, or which require activation, versus ones you want on all the time (like Combat Sense or Improved Reflexes).
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The best answer is ask your GM. For those with a hardcore black trench coat approach it might be a problem. If I were running it I would not clobber you with it too much, especially if you have the disguise skill. With advanced tech I could see the typical makeup kit coming with skin emulation patches or some such, probably first developed to cover scars or burns, that would make them all but invisible if you needed to cover them up.
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I confess to disliking anything that cannot be removed with a few moments' effort. Think of it, not tech-wise, but thematically - getting tattooed is NOT a pleasant experience, and it's arguably true that tattooing a qi focus tattoo is going to be done in the most traditional manners, because a mechanical assist might screw with the mana, which would mean that it's going to take a boatload of time, and a crapload of discomfort. Then, should it be disenchanted, it has to be stripped out and re-tattooed - much, MUCH more discomfort, as well as a real possibility of disfiguring scars.
Depends on your style, but at least for women I prefer earrings.
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I confess to disliking anything that cannot be removed with a few moments' effort. Think of it, not tech-wise, but thematically - getting tattooed is NOT a pleasant experience, and it's arguably true that tattooing a qi focus tattoo is going to be done in the most traditional manners, because a mechanical assist might screw with the mana, which would mean that it's going to take a boatload of time, and a crapload of discomfort. Then, should it be disenchanted, it has to be stripped out and re-tattooed - much, MUCH more discomfort, as well as a real possibility of disfiguring scars.
Nothing says the Qi focus has to be big, and while tatooing may not be the most comfortable of experiences, people have been doing it for ages, so it's not that big a deal.
If you Qi focus gets disenchanted, it's a problem. Not (just) because of all of the re-tatooing and such, but because you have to have someone performing magic on you, while touching you (specifically the focus), for hours. If you get out of that with only a destroyed focus, I'd say you got lucky. Meanwhile, every other focus just requires the focus to be in the enemies' possession. Which is one of the big benefits of a Qi Focus - they can't be stolen, ever, because doing so would destroy the focus. People might still opt to destroy it (or you) for whatever reason, but at least you don't have to worry about people that want to steal your foci.
Hiding a tattoo is easy - put it on your back, and wear a shirt. Or put it somewhere more obscure - the soles of your feet, for example. But that brings us to the biggest drawback of foci - you can't hide them from the astral, and you can't opt not to bring them along with you. That's not that big a deal, though - any place that allows adepts probably allows (perhaps disabled) tattoo foci as well. Any place that doesn't allow adepts - well, you have to disguise that anyway (although foci do make you slightly easier to spot). If you want to hide yourself, Masking is what you need, and that allows you to hide foci as well.
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I confess to disliking anything that cannot be removed with a few moments' effort. Think of it, not tech-wise, but thematically - getting tattooed is NOT a pleasant experience, and it's arguably true that tattooing a qi focus tattoo is going to be done in the most traditional manners, because a mechanical assist might screw with the mana, which would mean that it's going to take a boatload of time, and a crapload of discomfort. Then, should it be disenchanted, it has to be stripped out and re-tattooed - much, MUCH more discomfort, as well as a real possibility of disfiguring scars.
Depends on your style, but at least for women I prefer earrings.
What kind of third world prison did you get your tattos!?!?! : )
Yes, tats that cover a lotta skin take a long time. And yes, healing time and possible infections and all that, but really get a 3" Pikachu tramp stamp. Takes a couple hours, colors and all.
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I confess to disliking anything that cannot be removed with a few moments' effort. Think of it, not tech-wise, but thematically - getting tattooed is NOT a pleasant experience, and it's arguably true that tattooing a qi focus tattoo is going to be done in the most traditional manners, because a mechanical assist might screw with the mana, which would mean that it's going to take a boatload of time, and a crapload of discomfort. Then, should it be disenchanted, it has to be stripped out and re-tattooed - much, MUCH more discomfort, as well as a real possibility of disfiguring scars.
What kind of third world prison did you get your tattos!?!?! : )
Yes, tats that cover a lotta skin take a long time. And yes, healing time and possible infections and all that, but really get a 3" Pikachu tramp stamp. Takes a couple hours, colors and all.
I have a counter-question: why do you assume that a magical tattoo can be implanted by way of modern, mechanical tattooing gear with no issue whatsoever? I'm not saying that it can't, but as I said - in bold above - it is thematically appropriate (because of the potential to screw up the magic) to return to old traditional non-mechanical techniques to implant the enchanted inks. I personally would apply a penalty to the enchanting/tattoo roll if modern methods were used.
If you Qi focus gets disenchanted, it's a problem. Not (just) because of all of the re-tatooing and such, but because you have to have someone performing magic on you, while touching you (specifically the focus), for hours.
... not for hours. For an instant.
To break a focus down into reagents and totally destroy it, a magician must have touch contact with it. Breaking down a focus requires an Opposed Disenchanting + Magic [Astral] v. target’s Force (+ owner’s Magic if bonded and if the focus isn’t yours) Test.
It's a straight opposed test - no time, no nothing except for the need to be touching the focus, in this case the tattoo. THAT would require a touch attack, which I'd personally describe as a combination of a purposeful Touch Attack (+2 dice) and whatever penalty is required for that particular area on a Specific Target called shot. The intent, of course, is to disenchant, so at the moment of contact the dice are rolled. If the attacker succeeds, your tattoo's magic goes kablooie (and, I would rule, no reagents are recovered). No 'hours' are necessary.
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If you Qi focus gets disenchanted, it's a problem. Not (just) because of all of the re-tatooing and such, but because you have to have someone performing magic on you, while touching you (specifically the focus), for hours.
... not for hours. For an instant.
To break a focus down into reagents and totally destroy it, a magician must have touch contact with it. Breaking down a focus requires an Opposed Disenchanting + Magic [Astral] v. target’s Force (+ owner’s Magic if bonded and if the focus isn’t yours) Test.
It's a straight opposed test - no time, no nothing except for the need to be touching the focus, in this case the tattoo. THAT would require a touch attack, which I'd personally describe as a combination of a purposeful Touch Attack (+2 dice) and whatever penalty is required for that particular area on a Specific Target called shot. The intent, of course, is to disenchant, so at the moment of contact the dice are rolled. If the attacker succeeds, your tattoo's magic goes kablooie (and, I would rule, no reagents are recovered). No 'hours' are necessary.
Last line of the next paragraph (still on the subject of disenchanting foci):
"This process takes a number of hours equal to the target's Force".
So yes, it takes hours. They could have written it more clearly, but still.
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I confess to disliking anything that cannot be removed with a few moments' effort. Think of it, not tech-wise, but thematically - getting tattooed is NOT a pleasant experience, and it's arguably true that tattooing a qi focus tattoo is going to be done in the most traditional manners, because a mechanical assist might screw with the mana, which would mean that it's going to take a boatload of time, and a crapload of discomfort. Then, should it be disenchanted, it has to be stripped out and re-tattooed - much, MUCH more discomfort, as well as a real possibility of disfiguring scars.
What kind of third world prison did you get your tattos!?!?! : )
Yes, tats that cover a lotta skin take a long time. And yes, healing time and possible infections and all that, but really get a 3" Pikachu tramp stamp. Takes a couple hours, colors and all.
I have a counter-question: why do you assume that a magical tattoo can be implanted by way of modern, mechanical tattooing gear with no issue whatsoever? I'm not saying that it can't, but as I said - in bold above - it is thematically appropriate (because of the potential to screw up the magic) to return to old traditional non-mechanical techniques to implant the enchanted inks. I personally would apply a penalty to the enchanting/tattoo roll if modern methods were used.
First it's not as if "old school" inking techniques are going to take infinitely longer.
Second, monofilament whip weapon foci are a canon Thing, and made with no penalty or extra expenditure of time or resources. If this isn't an issue then I see no reason why making a tattoo focus with modern tattooing needles would be an issue. What matters is the person doing the job not the tools they're using.
There's also big enough demand that this is not going to be an impossible thing to find even with the stricture. That's folded in to Availability.
But hey if you want to be needlessly punitive at your table, do what you want.
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Hm. Top Dog, I ... don't believe that applies to the actual disenchanting; I believe that applies to the channelling of the magic into creating reagents, which SHOULD take time - but I don't believe the actual disenchantment takes any time at all. YMMV, of course, and I do see where you get that from, but as that note comes after the 'you can channel yadda yadda' bit, I would expect it to apply to that step and that step only, especially since the test for the actual destruction just says 'if you succeed, it's destroyed'.
I have a counter-question: why do you assume that a magical tattoo can be implanted by way of modern, mechanical tattooing gear with no issue whatsoever? I'm not saying that it can't, but as I said - in bold above - it is thematically appropriate (because of the potential to screw up the magic) to return to old traditional non-mechanical techniques to implant the enchanted inks. I personally would apply a penalty to the enchanting/tattoo roll if modern methods were used.
First it's not as if "old school" inking techniques are going to take infinitely longer.
Second, monofilament whip weapon foci are a canon Thing, and made with no penalty or extra expenditure of time or resources. If this isn't an issue then I see no reason why making a tattoo focus with modern tattooing needles would be an issue. What matters is the person doing the job not the tools they're using.
There's also big enough demand that this is not going to be an impossible thing to find even with the stricture. That's folded in to Availability.
But hey if you want to be needlessly punitive at your table, do what you want.
First, I never said it'd take infinitely longer.
Second, here's the thing: yes, if you're playing Missions, 'poof it's done', congratulations, you got the gizmo if you can acquire it via availability, etc. That's fine. And if you play in that manner, that's fine too; that's your choice. If you're not playing Missions, and if your GM is interested in what shadowjack has been emphasizing, immersiveness, then whether or not the thing is likely to be enchanted is going to become a whole thing. See, Enchanting goes up against the Object Resistance of the item (telesma) you're enchanting. A monowhip is one of those 'highly processed objects', and so your Artificing + Magic gets opposed by your formula force + 15 (or more!!) dice, which makes it far less likely for some enchanter to just throw together an enchanted monowhip than, say, an enchanted knife or sword. So the chosen item is important, and unless you're abstracting everything and just letting them say 'I want to buy X', and rolling dice then saying, 'it takes you Y days and Z nuyen, and now you have X', then yeah, it does matter. (I'd also be interested in finding where a monofilament whip focus is found in the book - yes, you CAN make one, but I'm pretty sure nobody in either fiction or examples has. Not really the point, though - yes, you can make one. Yes, it's effing difficult. And honestly, no, I wouldn't charge only its cost for it, I would charge commesurately for that 15+ dice opposed test difficulty, but playing blandly by-the-book, hey, you can buy just such a thing. Go to.)
"But what about inks?" Hey, inks are about as low-tech as you can get, right? So that's a low Object Resistance. Yes, sure it is. And no, there are no clear rules for the time it takes to tattoo the inks into you (or even whether that's part of the enchantment itself), or whether or not using a technological method to implant them is going to do anything bad. So sure, your argument holds a complete bucket of water, and if that's how you want to treat your world, that's fine - you can stroll down to the talismonger's shop, buy some 'ink du Astral Perception Qi Focus 4', zoom over to the friendly neighborhood tattoo artist and select 'blazing skulls' as the design, and he'll just zap 'em right on.
I prefer not to do that.
I prefer immersiveness; I prefer to tell a story, even when it comes to the 'sideline things', because to me, and in my experience, that's what makes the world interesting, what makes it real to the players behind the characters. That sort of thing helps people to treat the character as a character they play, not as a sheet of technical information they game against the system. I want them to sit in the sweat lodge for days while the shaman who is preparing their tattoo lays the ink into their skin. I want them to listening to him chant as he tap-tap-taps the wood or bamboo or whatever under their skin, leaving the ink behind, weaving the network of the magic; I want them to be a PART of it. I want them to have to help the master sword-smith for the first three days of him making their sword. I want them to have to help their contact get the hard-to-get item for them, whether that's running interference with a shipment, or playing bodyguard while he negotiates.
I want them to have fun, and I want it to be interesting, so I don't want it to be a 'you talk to the fixer; you get the run; you talk to a contact; you do the run; you get paid; you buy stuff; you talk to the fixer; you get the run ...' loop. And this sort of thing is how I do it.
If that doesn't work for you, fine, but please don't imagine that it's punitive, needlessly or not, because it ain't. Don't confuse 'flavor' for 'screw you'.
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Just wanted to throw out a little dilemma I am having in making a stealthy/social adept. While I really like the benefit of tattooed qi foci, I am feeling paranoid that having more recognizable physical features is a big liability. Would they affect impersonations/disguises? Especially ones that may have some seduction involved? Would they be problematic if caught on camera or actually caught? Am I being too paranoid here? Are there any ideas of how to scar, tattoo, etc. qi foci that are less noticable or bland?
Thanks for your help!
To the OPs original point... Yes, you can gets tattoos that are easily covered and won't bother Disguise. If you are going to need to hide that you are awakened you'll need Masking Metamagic anyways which will cover Initiate Grade in Foci anyways. Deactivating a Focus takes Los which as the tattoo should be hidden means that they would have to be Astral to do it, & Disenchanting the Focus is going to take Hours... not something that can be done in Combat.
As far as a bunch of the other things that have been said... A. I have made a Monofilament Whip Weapon Focus, it's a pain in the ass but can be done (just accept the fact you need a way to stay conscious through it)
B. The Ink/Powder is the actual Telsma not what is used to tattoo you. Depending upon your Tradition or Outlook maybe you would need to have the older ways of doing it but a Chaos magician isn't going to matter either way. Just remember that the old ways only can really do big shapes, even the Yakuza where they use color & shapes instead of geometric shapes like everyone else are big pieces that takes up whole limbs. They can tattoo a koi fish just not a little koi fish... and when magic formula & rituals are online in the Matrix, kind creating a false dichotomy when saying that Magic can be incorporated with modern ways of translating it.
C. The actual rules for a full disenchantment is to break it down into reagent components is the only way to fully disenchant a Focus. It is a full on Astral Construct bound into an item with Karma. It's not something that a quick disenchant roll makes go away. Similar to the difference between dispelling a Sustained Spell as opposed to dispelling a Quickened Spell, try dispelling my Force 12 Quickened Increase Reflexes spell with 12 Karma spent to Anchor it. You'll fail and probably come close to killing yourself for trying, just like it almost killed me to cast in the first place. Anything that you spend Karma on... the game makes very hard to take away from you.
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Thanks everyone for your responses. This discussion on disenchanting is confusing me more though on the value of foci...
It looks like, just to deactivate someone else's focus you need line of sight of the focus from the physical or astral plane and roll an opposed disenchanting + magic [astral] vs focus force + owner's magic. This makes sense to me as a combat strategy and is appropriately difficult. Someone could just reactivate the focus their next pass.
To "break a focus down into reagants and totally destroy it" (SR5 core p. 307), also requires an "opposed disenchanting + magic [astral] v. target focus's Force (+ owner's Magic if bonded and if the focus isn't your)." So, this is the same test as the one just to deactivate, but requires touch, not just line of sight. As it says the next sentences "If you succeed in this test, the focus ceases to be. The telesma at the heart of it disintegrates and is unusable." You can then later do an alchemy + magic [astral] test to turn some of the released mana from this destruction into reagents. The paragraph ends with "This process takes a number of hours equal to the target's Force." As I read this, it is the harvesting of reagents that takes hours, not the destruction of the focus, as reagent harvesting does take time when doing it regular. If the test was to take hours equal to force of the focus to destroy it requiring a lot of otuch, I would think it would perhaps be written as an extended test something like a Disenchanting + Magic (Force x owner's Magic, 1 hour)
This is just feels like odd rules to me then, with the difference between just deactivating and utterly destroying a focus is just whether you are touching it or not. I guess touch is difficult in combat, and you shouldn't be letting magicians get close anyway...
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The reason I think it take Force hours to destroy a focus is because, reading the second paragraph, it starts with "If you succeed in this test, the focus ceases to be" and ends with "This process takes a number of hours equal to the target's Force". That, to me, reads like the hours duration also applies to the succeeding on a test bit, and thus on the whole process.
I do agree that it's not unambiguous - it's not unreasonable to assume that last line only applies to the harvesting part. Really, they should have had either no paragraph break, or one just before "The mana released from...."; that way it would be unambiguous.
Anyway, having two options which are both, in my opinion, reasonable interpretations of the text, the main reason I'd pick the Hours duration is balance. Utterly destroying a focus, in an instant, seems rather overpowered to me, especially since the test is no harder than deactivating the focus - both being a Disenchant + Magic v. Force + Magic test. Granted, destruction also requires touch, but that doesn't really seem like a proper counterbalance for destroying something that costs thousands of nuyen and potentially double-digit karma numbers.
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You guys do realize that SR is not inherently a 'balanced game'? That things can be destroyed much, much faster than they can be created? All you need to do to wreck a focus of any type is break the item it's made out of. You might have the world's strongest Power Focus, but if it's in the form of a fragile willow wand, it'll take a troll street samurai about a quarter second to turn it into so much kindling. What keeps that fate from most foci is that they're either very tough to get a hold of (see the 'targeted touch' suggestion above), and tough to physically destroy. What you spend karma on ... no offense, Zhoul, but the game doesn't give two pips about. If I spend 100,000 nuyen and 15 karma on your crazy monowhip weapon focus and leave it on the bus, and some damn snotnose punk wiz-ganger picks it up and happens to have 15 points of karma, I'm gonna lose my karma when he spends his to bond it. That's the way this works; the game doesn't make it any more difficult for him to bond it (and you to lose your karma) than it made it for you to bond it in the first place.
IMO, it is clear that destruction must be a hands-on thing, but it neither requires a full salvage operation (as Zhoul claims) nor an extended period of time. Since being hands on with an adept - actually getting tangled up mano a mano with him - is generally considered a bad idea, the actual risk is relatively low - and as you say, Top Dog, if they got their hands on you, they can do lots of worse things than just pulling off your ring or disenchanting your tattoo. The only sort of person who is going to try doing this solo is either a martial mage with a daredevil complex, or a mystic adept with some serious skills and/or confidence - because in order to do this, you need to be ABLE to Disenchant, and that's the province of Artificers (meaning, in general, full mages and mystic adepts). Not to mention you get kicked in the teeth by 1S per hit rolled against you, but you're basically trying something against someone dangerous, with a tough shot just to touch the thing, AND running the risk of damaging yourself whether or not you succeed. As Gemstar says, this isn't something you should be letting mages do anyhow - or, really, something mages should be crazy enough to try in the middle of combat against a frickin' adept.
But hey, there are crazy, self-confident people everywhere - and if you succeed, you should certainly consider it a victory ...
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If you're dumb enough to leave your monowhip focus on the bus, it still takes (Force) hours for the new person to bind it. Which is fine - all that time you can try to find the focus (which shouldn't be that hard, you still have a connection to it). If you can't within the hours set, tough luck. And that's what I'm saying - if someone has your force for a couple of hours to do stuff with, fine, tough luck. But it shouldn't be instant.
Nothing you pay karma for is taken away that easily in game. It's possible, sure, to loose karma-based stuff. You can get NQ's, pay PQ's, loose essence. But all of those take some time, or some really bad luck, or sustained action or inaction. Foci - at only hours - is the easiest to loose. But it shouldn't be instant - and especially not with a simple instant Magic + Skill v. Magic + Force roll. Yes, there's not too many who can attempt it, but that's besides the point; they're not hard skills to learn.
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I was looking at the text a bit more, and looking at how it's described makes it more even clear that you can't seperate the destruction from the harvesting. The whole section on focus destruction begins with "A focus can be effectively recycled, [...]. To break a focus down into reagents and totally destroy it [....]." The text treats the destruction and harvesting as the same action, not two seperate ones; you don't destroy a focus, then harvest the leftovers, but you harvest reagents from a focus, destroying it in the process.
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When I read the section I also took it to tie harvesting/destruction together. This makes a lot of sense to me - destroying a focus instantly seems 'odd'.
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I prefer immersiveness; I prefer to tell a story, even when it comes to the 'sideline things', because to me, and in my experience, that's what makes the world interesting, what makes it real to the players behind the characters.
Seems to me that you can do that within the acquisition rules already. Personally I feel the Availability rules are punitive and very immersion breaking. As a GM I largely ignore them for anything but "F" items. Honestly everything that is legal or you have a licence for you should just be able to google the nearest store and go buy it. I'm not sure why a legal, off the shelf, item takes a month of intensive searching. Cybereyes for example.
If your table likes to RP that stuff, that is great. I don't see why you would put additional mechanical barriers up though. If you're just tossing the whole section and replacing it with RP, rock on, it's what I essentially do. If you're making a PC spend a solid month of down time (no other training or anything) just tracking down a new bit of gear, then throwing a series of RP encounters and dice rolls on top of that. Erg.
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When I read the section I also took it to tie harvesting/destruction together. This makes a lot of sense to me - destroying a focus instantly seems 'odd'.
"Odd" is a polite way to put it. Allowing a focus, which a character invested both money and karma into, to be destroyed based on a second's worth of contact...that's more than odd, it's stupidly overpowered.
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When I read the section I also took it to tie harvesting/destruction together. This makes a lot of sense to me - destroying a focus instantly seems 'odd'.
"Odd" is a polite way to put it. Allowing a focus, which a character invested both money and karma into, to be destroyed based on a second's worth of contact...that's more than odd, it's stupidly overpowered.
Exactly... the same point I was making between dispelling a Sustained Spell or a Quickened Spell. One can be pulled off without to much trouble the other one has a good chance of killing you for trying... cause who is going to cast a low Force Quickened Spell & not dump the full amount of Karma possible into it???
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There's a difference between 'fast' and 'easy', which I think y'all are mixing up. It isn't easy, and in this example it's pretty frickin' dangerous and stupid to try, because you're likely to get your neck broken and your head torn off by the adept whose (one!) Qi focus you just wrecked, or are trying to wreck. I disagree with your time taken, but I guess that's because I'm a pre-4th person, where all they had to do is spend ONE karma (instantly) to begin bonding a focus, and the link was broken. Honestly, 4th dumbed down (and made easier) a hell of a lot of things, and so much of it is only slowly bouncing back in 5th.
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that's because I'm a pre-4th person, where all they had to do is spend ONE karma (instantly) to begin bonding a focus, and the link was broken.
It's for the best that most game systems have moved away from this kind of heavy-handed mindset.
I'm not of the opinion that "by grognards, for grognards" is a good way to sell a game line.
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There's a difference between 'fast' and 'easy', which I think y'all are mixing up. It isn't easy, and in this example it's pretty frickin' dangerous and stupid to try, because you're likely to get your neck broken and your head torn off by the adept whose (one!) Qi focus you just wrecked, or are trying to wreck.
Not all adepts are strong hulk monsters. In fact, I'm pretty sure most aren't. But yeah, maybe not do it to the big troll with flaming fists.
But if it works that way for Qi Foci, it works that way for Power foci, or Sustaining foci too. And with magicians, you're usually not worse off rushing them (might be better even - less likely to be fireballed).
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It's for the best that most game systems have moved away from this kind of heavy-handed mindset.
I'm not of the opinion that "by grognards, for grognards" is a good way to sell a game line.
For the first, that's a matter of opinion.
Shadowrun, like other RPGs, is not a boardgame to be won, it's a roleplaying game to be enjoyed. Getting your toys taken away - yes, even the ones you spent blood and money acquiring - can be a critical part of that. (If you don't think that cyberware you worked long and hard and spent money and favors and did things for people like water isn't blood/karma, then you have another think coming.) If it can't be taken away from you, or is impossible/very difficult to take away from you, then hell, what's the point, half the time? The only thing - the ONLY thing - that should be incapable of being taken away from you are your skills, attributes, and innate abilities, and even THEN it should be negotiable, because critical injuries can do severe damage, cause amnesia, or - yes - cause permanent damage to your aura, i.e. take away your magic.
Not taking the toys away eventually - sooner or later, and quite often that's 'sooner' - leads to very boring adventures. When you can slay virtually anything with a swipe of your blade or one shot of your gun or a backhanded delivery of a powerbolt, what's the point of continuing to play the game? But losing all your stuff resets the stuff-o-meter, and makes the character and player have an interesting time 'making do' with crappy weapons, insufficient ammo, little to no armor, and/or whatever. And it leads to great stories. You might not want it in your game, and yeah, you're free to play that way, but when I want a game with a reset button, I play a video game; when I want a game that's gonna be a fantastic story-driven adventure with consequences, I play RPGs. Well, except for 4th Edition D&D, because apparently that had the 'no consequences' button stuck permanently to 'on'.
For the second ... I'm not sure how I could possibly respond to that in a manner that would not be censored (and which I would be smacked) by the administration. 'Grow up', maybe?
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I would like to point out that the core book heavily implies that Qi Foci are created by the act of tatooing, scaring etc.
" A qi focus can be an object, like other foci, but it can also be worked into a body modification, like tattoos, ritual scarring, and piercings." (P. 319 Core)
To me, this reads like objects, such as an earing or a wand would be normally enchanted, but for tattoos and scarring the actual act of creating the tattoo or the scar is the enchantment. This would turn getting that focus into quite a chore.
Furthermore, since the OP is talking about a stealth adept, I would like to point out that at least according to missions, foci in tattoo form are always recognizable as such on the astral plane. For a person who is trying to be inconspicuous, a tattoo focus is a dead giveaway. (See Missions FAQ 1.3)
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For the first, that's a matter of opinion.
Uh, duh?
Shadowrun, like other RPGs, is not a boardgame to be won, it's a roleplaying game to be enjoyed. Getting your toys taken away - yes, even the ones you spent blood and money acquiring - can be a critical part of that. (If you don't think that cyberware you worked long and hard and spent money and favors and did things for people like water isn't blood/karma, then you have another think coming.) If it can't be taken away from you, or is impossible/very difficult to take away from you, then hell, what's the point, half the time? The only thing - the ONLY thing - that should be incapable of being taken away from you are your skills, attributes, and innate abilities, and even THEN it should be negotiable, because critical injuries can do severe damage, cause amnesia, or - yes - cause permanent damage to your aura, i.e. take away your magic.
There's a pretty big difference to me between taking away player advantages in the short term, say some projected magician turning off foci, a decker hacking your ware, or security technology negating your stealth gear, etc., and permanent loss of things you invest in, when that investment takes a chunk of resources at game start, or many sessions of play to build up to. I do consider the latter heavy-handed. If a person can't evoke the particular mood of what sounds like a very mirrorshades, black trenchcoat game without basically breaking the players' toys in order to do so, I wouldn't consider that person a very good GM.
Not taking the toys away eventually - sooner or later, and quite often that's 'sooner' - leads to very boring adventures.
As you said to me, this is a matter of opinion.
When you can slay virtually anything with a swipe of your blade or one shot of your gun or a backhanded delivery of a powerbolt, what's the point of continuing to play the game?
It sounds like you think there is one true way to play and you have the formula.
But losing all your stuff resets the stuff-o-meter, and makes the character and player have an interesting time 'making do' with crappy weapons, insufficient ammo, little to no armor, and/or whatever. And it leads to great stories.
Again, in your opinion. See how saying that over and over gets annoying?
You might not want it in your game, and yeah, you're free to play that way, but when I want a game with a reset button, I play a video game; when I want a game that's gonna be a fantastic story-driven adventure with consequences, I play RPGs. Well, except for 4th Edition D&D, because apparently that had the 'no consequences' button stuck permanently to 'on'.
There's a pretty big difference between "actions have no consequences" and "this stuff you invested finite resources in is irrevocably gone." You're the only person talking about reset buttons. If you can't have fun without being stripped of everything you invested in and what might define your character, great, you do you. There are certainly games where that premise of starting with nothing and scratching your way by can be fun. I loved Dark Heresy 1e for that reason.
I played a Dark Heresy game in which at least 2 of our missions began with us stripped of the stuff we had accumulated and dumped somewhere, needing to play to our natural strengths to survive. They were a blast. But that is part and parcel of the course when you play a game where you are depicted as a relatively disposable acolyte. If that were to happen in a game like Exalted, where that's explicitly not what your character is, I'd say it's pretty cheap drama that goes against the overall baseline tone the game strives for.
Going back to my DH example, I wouldn't say that's a good basis on which to build the rules of game revolving around playing expert criminals. The expectations are rather different. Setting up the players to be experts given chargen and then taking everything they invested away from them seems to me to be going against the grain of the themes the game tries to present. It's not at all saying actions don't have consequences or bad things can't happen to your character, it's more about the nature of those bad things happening. A decreer's deck might get messed up pretty bad during a run, but that's something you should be able to fix with some time, or a follow-up mission to seek out some badass expert repairman. And it probably happened in a more significant way than "I touched your focus for an instant, spent a karma, and broke the bond."
For the second ... I'm not sure how I could possibly respond to that in a manner that would not be censored (and which I would be smacked) by the administration. 'Grow up', maybe?
If you really get so worked up by my opinion that your immediate reactive response would get you modded, I would certainly say the same to you.
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*shrugs* Okay. Play it the way you want to play it. I think you're missing out on some key elements of both roleplaying in general and Shadowrun in particular, but hey, I'm not at your table; have fun.
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*shrugs* Okay. Play it the way you want to play it. I think you're missing out on some key elements of both roleplaying in general and Shadowrun in particular, but hey, I'm not at your table; have fun.
This attitude much like your signature is confusing. You do realize that you are operating near the bottom of the scale of spectrum of RPGers, right??? If you & your players think that resetting power levels to inherently weaken them instead of playing against increasing powerful opponents is fun... do so. But it makes you very Low Power players... I want to win!!! Every mission we complete is a successful win that sets up to play increasing difficult missions. Punishing bad moves or total screw ups is fine & has resulted in a few TPKs when I GM, cause some encounters are supposed to be fled or mistakes/unlucky rolls spiraled out of control. Which is a valuable learning lesson cause I'll just call on a mulligan afterwards while we discuss what went wrong. But to set up arbitrary player reduction is counter productive to me, what's the point of character advancement then??? Why not just restart with new characters if you only want to play at a certain power level??? Force people to play different roles & enforce some variety in play styles at least.
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So ... okay, so you win. Congratulations, you won Shadowrun. What now?
If you find my .sig confusing - I presume you mean the 'play the game, don't try to win it' - then really you and I are going to find it tough to talk to each other. I get the sense that perhaps you come to RPGs via wargames - where you win a scenario, and you heal or build up your army further, and you go into the next scenario, and the next, etc. And each one has its win conditions for each side. I've played wargames (Battletech mostly, but a little Warhammer too) so I understand where you might be coming from, but I approach RPGs from an actor's standpoint: the object isn't necessarily to achieve those 'win conditions', but to tell a great story together, and to be able to tell that great story to other people later on. That is, in fact, what I'm doing with Pananagutan (http://bit.ly/SBqoj0) - it was a great story, and I'm retelling it to people who weren't in the game.
This means, in part, that I look at an RPG scenario not from a gaming perspective (wargaming or otherwise), but from a storyteller's perspective. In stories, the heroes - those who are the PCs in a tabletop game - lose before they win. They take damage. They lose gear, or get their ass kicked because they misunderstood or underestimated their opponent. Sometimes they get captured. (Sometimes they get killed, which makes for a strange Act III.) They enter the final act outmaneuvered, outgunned, out-classed, out-something'd, making their eventual victory a triumph, instead of a foregone conclusion.
The games I play don't have a conclusion, an endgame, a big finale. Oh, adventure strings do - like mission seasons - but the games I play simply don't stop. I want my character or my players to be able to take a call and walk onto a high-speed civilian transport (HSCT, like the Concorde) if they're mages, or a suborbital or semiballistic if they're not, and go to any spot in the world and do a job with either what they can carry onto the plane, or whatever crap they can acquire there. I want them to be able to get blown out of their seats as they're riding the monorail in whatever city they happen to be in, carrying their 'sightseeing' stuff, and be able to be effective. Is it cool when you get to haul out the big guns and go to town? Sure as hell. But I and the people I play with want to tell exciting stories, and we want to be able to do that whether we have 4 karma, 40, 400, or 4000.
Contrary to Whiskyjack's accusation, no, I don't believe I have 'the One True Way'; I rarely believe in a 'one true way' in anything, much less something as self-interpretive as roleplaying. (And whatever he babbled, I said opinion once - and it was in reference to his 'It's for the best that most game systems have moved away from this kind of heavy-handed mindset.', because while it means you won't hardly ever lose anything for good, it's tough to crank up that level of 'oh crap' that a lot of story depends on.) I believe that I have a very good way, and I confess that it irritates me when people denigrate it, as the two of you have been. Play your games, enjoy your games, by all means; I am abso-fraggin'-lutely certain that you have, are, do, and will have loads of fun playing your way. But please understand that your ways aren't the only ways either, and that just because I like to be able to play a huge variety of power levels all with the same character doesn't mean I can't play your way as well.
Or did you think that for some reason a character who's been run for nearly as long as game's been around can't pull out some seriously heavy big guns when they need to, and be reasonably confident of winning via wipeout when going one-on-one against a company-strength force of mercs?
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It is possible to win in TRPGs: if you and your friends had a fun ride - you won. It is a clear and accurate formula but 'fun' part varies for everyone out there.
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Which is my point, as compared to the 'victory conditions' that are part of wargaming.
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Which is my point, as compared to the 'victory conditions' that are part of wargaming.
1. 1st & 2nd edition D&D
2. Rifts
3. 2nd edition Shadowrun
4. Battletech
5. 3rd edition Magic: The Gathering
Those are the games I grew up playing as the mainstays. The only wargaming was Battletech and that wasn't ever RPG though some scenarios can take a very long time (like fighting 2 full RCTs against each other.) But it could just be a result of my observed stereotypes... which I formed at 14 as a sophomore in HS. There was one guy who always trumped "Story over Stats"... I thought it was weird when he built a High Strength Wizard in a Planewalker campaign & knew it was stupid when he made a SDC character in a MDC Rifts campaign (anyone who ever played Rifts will understand just how useless that character truly was.) So maybe there is something to the viewpoint you have but I have met plenty of other people who hold it since and all it looks like is crappy character design that's been artificially gimped to hold some kind of Morally Superior attitude (another universal trait with these guys) that makes them Role Players & better than Roll Players. So if you are the Exception that Proves the Rule about people who have this viewpoint... Congrats!!!! But artificially gimp in your players instead of giving them more difficult adversaries as been a sign of not very good GMing to me for close to 2 decades now. There are people who like it, they are the minority out of all the people I've met in this hobby.
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... if you break up your sentences and paragraphs, and use punctuation a bit more, you'd be a bit more coherent; I can't entirely tell what you're saying here. You do seem to have the attitude that building an efficient character takes priority over story, and that people who build organically, or who feel that building to concept ('story over stats'), are somehow contemptable in feeling that creating issues for their characters makes for a better story.
Here's my issue: there's a limit. In Shadowrun especially, but in other games as well, there's a conceptual limit to the 'more difficult adversary'. After your team has taken out MET2K singlehandedly and slain Lofwyr and his five Great Dragon buddies, what can possibly be a 'more difficult adversary'? After you've slain Zeus and taken over the pantheon, what's a more difficult adversary? The problem - okay, MY problem - with 'always a more difficult adversary' is that at some point - often sooner rather than later - it violates the realism/causality of the game world. One man stands against - casually slays!! - an entire horde, or the army of the evil overlord, which has consequences. Even throwing thirty security guards at a team as though they were popcorn has to make the GM start to wonder what happens to the security officer who does this, or whether or not the corporation is simply going to spend a bit more 'making an example' out of the PC via a silenced high-caliber sniper shot.
Having your players - and being willing to play - with what you're calling 'artificial gimping' allows for the existence and continued game-play of a character who's earned over 4000 karma and who's got every item they'll ever need, and is worth a couple billion nuyen - because they 'artificially gimp' themselves, whether that's 'needing' to leave all their gear behind and going into a place where the best weapons they can by are crappy AK-97s and meat cleavers, or slipping into a high-tech facility by way of an upper-crust party, to which they cannot take their rocket launchers and super-sayyan katanas and such. Difficulty comes in doing the tough job without your best toys - or minimal toys (or any toys at all), not in having 'more difficult adversaries' - which, after a while, become 'artificially' inflated, things that just don't make sense in light of the game world.
I'm not - never have - said that bringing out the big guns and going to town on major 'more difficult' adversaries isn't fun - but it isn't the only way to have fun, and IMO it sure as hell isn't the most challenging way to have fun. I guess that makes me not the exception, in your book, but I think that also gets me to be more creative, able to do more with less. YMMV.
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Oh...... okay. I get it now, your players are no longer playing PCs!!!! Which brings up a question just out of curiosity... why are your players playing characters that are no longer PCs??? We've all been there, that beautiful bittersweet moment where you release your PC to become a God or some other functionally similar NPC that has transcended the bounds of the game and becomes part of the ongoing framework of the Campaign World!!! Then you get the joy of making a new character that is fresh & different, one who is back operating within the Rule Set. New class, new race, a whole new Story to tell.
What you are describing I've never even heard about let alone seen with my own eyes. Well I take that back... there is one example. My friends dad when I was a kid, had this 20 year old character from before it was AD&D. Him and his friends would play a game night with their old characters who had ascended to God's 15 years before for old times sake. It was part of an old guys staying banded with friends that had moved away ritual cause 2 of them would travel back to our town every year for that Saturday night game. Is that what you're doing??? Or are these players showing up every week to be functional Gods in your campaign??? I have so many questions... like I said this is a unique thing you are describing to me. Are there other people who do this and I've just never met them in 20 years of doing this hobby??? It's not even just this game but across the whole host of people I've met while playing RPG, Cards, & Tabletop. We usually do at least 2 if not all 3, but no one has ever described this to me. Why do they want to continue to do it? Don't they want to play new characters? Don't they want to be part of a new story? How many editions has this transcended or are you still using the same ruleset? See what I mean.... so many questions!!! The poorly built "Story over Stats" characters that you might be the exception from pales in comparison to this mystery. Where is the fun of playing as a functional god every week knowing that the only reason it is even mildly challenging is by accepting this artificial limits? This pretense to mortality is such a fascinating concept... I can't wait to hear your response. Thank you for showing me this unique concept that you play under though I am baffled as to why. Hopefully your answer will make it make sense.
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I've found it difficult to answer this levelly, because your post is (to me) so clearly offensive, but I'll try.
Why do you think someone with 4000 karma is no longer a PC, is a functional god, whatever? Considering that the potential difference between one character with that and a GM's NPC is ... what? Nothing. Because this is Shadowrun, and because anything that can be acquired/learned/used by one character can be acquired/learned/used by another. 13 Agility? Sure, that's just a standard elf (or Gnome, Hanuman, Menehune, Dryad, Wakyambi, Xapiri Thepe, Oni, or Falconine, Lupine, Pantherine, or Tigrine Shapeshifter, or Nosferatu, Harvester, or Banshee) with both Exceptional Attribute and Metagenetic Improvement in Agility (or Nocturna or Pixie without one of those two) who's had the attribute maxed out, plus maximum enhancement. Have a 13 skill? Hey, PCs aren't the only ones who get good, and as the man says, "There's always someone better than you." Or at least as good.
It is difficult for me to imagine being ABLE to bring all your gear on every run, whether you're at 4/40/400/4000 karma or not, whether you've earned 10,000, 100,000, 1,000,000, or more nuyen. If a character's story is not done - and until they're dead, they are always potentially unfinished - then why could you NOT return to the character and play them some more? Certainly new characters are played, whether that's because a prior one has died, you join a new group, or you just get curious about a different ability or play-style or whatever. And of course, here's the amusing thin - I am wondering, why do you restrict your real self artificially from developing a character's complete potential? Do people just stop when they hit a certain level, or do they keep trying? "Oh, I made manager, I'm done." Some, sure, but let's face it, in a non-level-based RPG you develop side skills, you get into other things which is where your XP/karma goes, you spend it to learn something you desperately need at the moment (like that language at a 1).
Likewise, what you are calling 'artificial limits' are imposed by your subscription to the universe of the game in which you're playing. If there are (as has sometimes been conceptualized) 300 street samurai / physical adepts / muscle in Seattle's 3 million, and this represents a good ratio worldwide, then what comes of the journey of the samurai who wishes to be among the top ten of those 700,000 non-aligned individual-mercenaries-for-hire when one shrugs and says after a hundred or a few hundred karma, "okay, that's enough, we're too powerful"? Until you have your weapon skills and gymnastics all maxed out, and you've encountered and fought individual conflicts by the score, and you and your GM have played your storyline through peculiarities and injuries and all sorts of things ... where's the story?
What I like about Shadowrun is the same thing I enjoyed about 1e Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying - given the most simple of circumstances, a first-day security guard (city guard in WFRP) can flat-out kill even your most advanced character. Is it likely? Hell, it's not likely for starting characters to be so slain, but no matter the amount of armor, or skill, or anything, a nervous guy with a shotgun can still Ruin Your Day. Why? Because what you continue to call 'artificial limitations' are what so many of the rest of us call 'the enforcement of reality'.
I think I would understand you better if I could understand what your 'character path' usually winds up being, start to finish, and what sort of social contract exists between you and your GM in regards to the world within which you play your characters. You start out with what, a low-end shotgun or pistol, an armored jacket, and a motorcycle, and you build yourself up until with every mission you're carrying an elite assault rifle firing high-velocity APDS/AV rounds, an under-barrel grenade launcher (with a wide variety of munitions), wearing heavy military-grade armor with all the fixin's, carrying ATGMs and C12 with a remote Thor Shot on standby ... and then what, you stop playing that character, because there are no more challenging opponents? Do you always go into every mission brining the heaviest weapons, armor, and gear that you have?
Serious question, this: what kind of game are you playing??
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Ahhhhhh..... see you back pedaled far from your original point. Which was breaking & taking Players Karma invested items away from them as being perfectly legitimate things to do as a mere matter of course. Now it's just that "you don't take all your gear with you." Two substantially different points... and I totally agree with the 2nd one. Just like you back pedaled from the "once players have slain Lowfyr & his 5 great dragon buddies what else are you supposed to do" point that you were using to try to use as a justification. You start new characters if you have slain Lowfyr!!!!! You have become a Functional God and outside the ruleset... achieving Apotheosis means YOU WON!!! So now that you are done with Hyperbole & I'm done with Mocking Credulity... maybe we can get back to the thread.
The only rules that cover Disenchanting a Focus are the ones where it takes Hours per Force. Just like they removed the rules that let you immediately spend a point of Karma to break the Bond from previous editions. So turning a Focus off is the only Combat/Quick option available.
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Here's the thing - or rather, two things: first, while I may have used some hyperbole, it's because I don't understand your games, which lack of understanding I have attempted to correct by asking you a question. The second is that I haven't backpedaled one inch; in Shadowrun, as in every single other game out there, destroying gear (karma-invested or not) is a tool for the GM, and a consequence for players. You're the one who called these perfectly legitimate tools 'artificial', and got into how I and GMs like me, who can run the same group of characters week after week for six years, are somehow bad GMs for doing this, and/or for setting up situations in which you simply can't bull through it with whatever Big Gun your character happens to be equipped with. You don't like this. There are also games in which the scenario requires you to go in with less, or nothing, and you have to deal with that. You don't like this either.
I have played - without hyperbole - the same character for a decade or more, and not just one of them. None of my characters, in any game system, have achieved a godhood apotheosis, despite becoming powerful - and despite permanently losing gear they've made themselves, with time, money, and karma/experience. You seem to think that these events makes for a bad GM; I would have to guess that you have had nothing but bad GMs, if the only way they can challenge you is by giving you something bigger and badder and tougher and more cowbell, and with never taking you from the top of the mountain back down to the bottom, penniless in the street without a gizmo / magic item to your name, with even your reputation ruined. I've had that happen more than once with some characters in Shadowrun, because no matter how powerful you get, you can never be everywhere, able to do everything, all of the time - and there's still 'office politics' to worry about.
But you've still dodged my question, Zhoul. Will you answer it? Is this the sort of game you've played - where you collect stuff, gain karma, and after a while you simply have to stop playing that character because there's nowhere left to go? At what point do you find you have to give up the character because 'they're unplayable'? I've described, repeatedly now, the sorts of games in which I play, and the kinds of scenarios I throw at my players (and which my players, when they're GMs, throw at me); I don't see any sort of description from you except that I and my players are bad GMs AND bad players for being able to play a character for years upon years.
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Okay, it think this thread is done. Everyone to their respective corners unless we want warnings to go out.