Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Character creation and critique => Topic started by: Hobbes on <12-24-15/1312:14>
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Shadowrunner team guide
Warning don't read if you don't want to trivialize any sane game content your GM may throw at you. This is intended as a thought exercise, or something hilarious to pull at a throw away Shadowrun Con game. Using this as an actual team in a real game will likely result in fairly degenerate game situations. You've been warned.
So the basic set up is Combat Decker, Elf Face Shaman, and N number of Mysad Combat mages where N = Number of Players minus 2. Sorta works for a team of 3, works really well for a team of 4, pretty sure a team of 5 will make a grown GM cry.
Chapter 1: Meet the Johnson
Before the meet the Mysad Combat mages will buff the the Face and the Decker. Increase Charisma, Increase Intuition, and whatever else. Face will do social stuffs, Cha 8, Skill 6, Spec +2 = 16 dice base, plus buffs, plus Totem, minus Background count. Decker and Face then combine to rock out the legwork phase. Mechanically the Mysad Combat Mages are fairly passive during this phase, sustaining buffs and contributing teamwork checks where they can.
Note: Mechanically Passive does not mean sit there and do nothing. They can if they want, but nothing is preventing role playing contributions.
Note on Chain Buffing: First things first, meet at an area of low to no background count. Cast your Increase Drain stat buffs on each other first. Pharma Grade Pyhce to lower sustain penalty to 1. The Increase Charisma on the Face will be physical drain. This could be a bonus because you'll be splitting your drain between two tracks : ) It goes something like this, Shaman buffs Willpower of Mysad B and possibly A. Mysad A buffs Drain stat of B. B buffs Shaman's Charisma. Mysad A and B roll out intuition buffs for the Decker and Face.
Chapter 2: The Run
To the run! Decker owns a Van or SUV, Mages pile in and begin creating Alchemical Preperations, and summoning Spirits. If necessary rest to recover fatigue unless under a serious time crunch. Again the Face should buff the Mysads Willpower for drain.
Invisibility on Decker and Combat Mysads along with whatever buffs the Mysads can sustain without penalty. Elf Face Shaman throws buffs out until penalties get too much to cast more buffs. Someone gets a spirit to conceal. Elf Shaman goes Astral, team begins run.
During the run the Astral shaman will be providing spell defense, ordering spirits and cleaning up astral signatures. All diceless actions. Mechanically passive, but not necessarily doing nothing, can still role play and interact.
The Decker's vehicle will be autopiloting around the block (or whatever), with a drone or two as cover, with the Shaman's meat body inside.
If the target doesn't have Astral security then you've got a team of elite runners that are invisible, concealed, possibly silenced. If you can't quickly achieve your objectives under these conditions I don't know what to say.
If there is significant Astral security you're pretty much “going loud” as soon as you leave the van. At least as loud as a group of invisible, concealed, ninjas get. Unless the site has some crazy levels of magic security, you're going to be able to steam roll whatever shows up. You've got two Mysads and a couple spirits. Unless the Astral Response is overwhelming (Insect Spirit Hive, Cabal of Initiates, whatever), you should be able to handle it, and then it becomes a invisible dash to the objective and extraction.
Chapter 3: WTF!!!
And here is those degenerate game conditions I spoke of. Short of an Astral Security Dragon or a Hive Queen and a host of true forms in a high background count, this team should easily handle typical magical security starting runners will see. Once the runners have initiated and picked up Masking and Extended Masking even tough magical security will be possible to beat.
Even under conditions of high background count (4 +) this team isn't crippled, they simply become a Face with 16ish dice for most social skills, a typical Decker, and a couple of guys with decent stealth, perception and gun skills. Oh, noes! FWIW a background count of 4+ for an entire run is degenerate game conditions for starting characters. So is an alert prepared Dragon or Insect Hive. If you've got a standard priority build team of runners that can handle something like that I'd love to see it.
Chapter 4: Builds!
Actually the builds are fairly “Standard”, but here are some minor optimization tweaks and basic requirements.
Coordinate your buff strategy. Make sure one of the Mysads takes increase Charisma. Increase intuition and Agility should be covered, probably by multiple casters. Improved Invisibility, Silence and the like should be taken possibly multiple times. Split Binding and Alchemy skills between characters. Everyone should at least splash Assensing. And everyone should pick up counterspelling because 18+ dice of spell defense is funny.
Coordinate your spellcasting and totem bonuses. One caster should take Health, another Illusion, another Manipulation. You know how irritating it is that Alchemical preps and Spells each take a slot to learn, even for the same spell? No worries, your team collectively has 27 spell slots to spend. (Each caster should take heal).
Decker: Resources A, Skills B or C, Stats B or C, Meta D, Magic E. Really a typical decker build. The main thing to keep in mind is that you'll have access to buffs from the mages so your augmention budget can be spent with that in mind. If the mages are packing increased Agility, you can pass on Muscle Toner, if someone can sustain an Increased Reflexes you won't need an initiative boost. See where we're headed here? You'll have some crazy amount of Nuyen and Essence to spare. I'd recommend either tanky decker or skillwire decker. YMMV.
Elf Face Shaman. Elf isn't really mandatory, but its optimal. Magic A, Skills B, Stats C, Meta D, Resources E seems about right. You can really dump physical stats hard since you will rarely be physically with the team during any kind of running. Sustain vectors are important, Focused Concentration, Spirits, and pharma grade Pyche are all your friends. You'll be able to sustain 6 spells or more. The Face Shaman should consider Increased Reflexes too, at least for the Decker. And as mentioned previously Increase Willpower. Pain Resistance and Invisibility are all good picks.
Mysads: These builds get a little tight. You're going to want lots of everything, and you can't have it. Magic A, Stats B, Skills C, Meta D, Resources E, should get you by. 6 PP, Focused Concentration 3, Mentor Spirit, Skills to max Spellcasting, Conjuring. A gun skill, Stealth, Perception, Counterspelling, and Alchemy you'll want to some degree. With an effective 10+28 skill points you can get there. The 2 group points may be fluff skills, maybe not. Intuition tradition is recommended. Max out drain stat, dump str, cha, logic. Will, Agility, Reaction as high as you can get. Either go with an organic Agility boost or Initiative boost. Astral Perception. Then Combat Reflexes to taste.
As long as you coordinate your spell and Preparation picks to cover the basics you should be able to pick 6 or more spells in your chosen area of specialization. 6 magic, 6 Spellcasting, +2 totem, +2 specialization = 16 dice spellcasting. At least one drain stat, possibly both should be buffed at all times so you're looking at 15+ dice for drain most of the time.
Note on dump stats: Dump stat = whatever your table's or your personal min stat is. If that's 1 or 2 or 3, then so be it. Shuffling a couple stat points around isn't going to matter that much.
Chaper 5: Final thoughts
The exact details of the builds are really flexible as the idea is to coordinate spell selection to cover important augment bonuses so your team doesn't need to have several identical spells and to free up the Deckers Nuyen. By having one dedicated “Buff till you drop” character it frees resources and sustain vectors on the other mages. By always being invisible and concealed your team is free to hit objectives quickly. Even if the mundanes beat the illusion tests, they still need to beat the stealth tests. Really unlikely given the likely dice pools involved.
And by having multiple mages to cover the Astral plane, the runners can likely blow through any Astral security quickly. Leaving nothing but the physical and technological defenses that can typically be overcome by the mages. And with one dedicated Astral “Clean up” character, you're not leaving a lot behind.
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This is why it's called Magicrun.
Mundane/ Cyber characters are mostly irrelevant and street sam's are a thing of the past when mystic adepts are at the table.
Sigh
It's why we ban Mystic Adepts at our table.
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No leg work? no debuffs? my shadowrun team would DESTROY this one smoke grenade jammers forboding spells stealthing marks on your teams deck and commlinks and thats just one character
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do tell....
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This is why it's called Magicrun.
Mundane/ Cyber characters are mostly irrelevant and street sam's are a thing of the past when mystic adepts are at the table.
Sigh
It's why we ban Mystic Adepts at our table.
I just limit it to "one Awakened allowed". Mage and adept can be okay, if the Adept is just taking the combat role. Under no circumstance will I allow more than one full magician and/or mystic adept. Aspected, maybe, but not if they're a summoner.
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So MysAdepts are bad but wared PhysAdeps are somehow A-OK? Weird.
If you want to 'balance' out the Awakened folk try banning sustaining foci, quickening, heightened concern, and focused concentration for them.
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No leg work? no debuffs? my shadowrun team would DESTROY this one smoke grenade jammers forboding spells stealthing marks on your teams deck and commlinks and thats just one character
I didn't post full builds as they're fairly standard builds, many examples of them can be found all over the forums.
Face would start at 18 dice for Legwork, 12 charisma + 6 skill. Decker would be 9 intuition plus 6ish Computer so 15 Dice on matrix search give or take. Legwork seems covered. As I mentioned in the OP.
And 27 spell slots, so all the debuffs as well as all the buffs and whatever flavor of combat spells needed. 27 spell slots is a lot. As I mentioned in the OP.
And, as I mentioned in the OP, it's a normal Decker so 8 Logic + 11 or 12 Sleaze. 19 or 20 dice to resist Matrix Perception, seems sufficient for anything a starting character would be expected to run into.
So, in order, Jammers do nothing because nobody cares about noise, Forboding does nothing because 18 dice spell defense plus buffed willpower, Smoke Grenade does nothing to stop Astral sight so the mages still target just fine, Decker would have to turn on Ultrasound. But first you've got to beat the illusion spell to see them, and then beat the stealth test when you're at -6ish perception and the whole team is running with 9 Agility, 5 or more stealth and possibly Chameleon suits. Small dice pool vs large dice pool and small dice pool needs to win twice to even roll initiative. Seriously, invisible, concealed, stealthy characters will walk right on by anything without Astral Perception.
Unless you've got a team of mages and spirits to beat down the mages and spirits the meat puppets don't even get to play. Which is the point. Starting runners shouldn't be facing a squadron of Spirits and Mages, but that is what is required to counter this mess. Or some other silly thing like massive background count, Astral Guard Dragon, or Hive full of true forms.
Its Rock, Paper, Scissors, where the mages are Paper, but they're a whole ream of paper so the scissors just don't cut it.
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So MysAdepts are bad but wared PhysAdeps are somehow A-OK? Weird.
If you want to 'balance' out the Awakened folk try banning sustaining foci, quickening, heightened concern, and focused concentration for them.
....and Spirits that Sustain, and Psyche, and having more than one Caster in the group, and Alchemy, and turning the Decker into a super ninja so they can just walk right up to something and direct link/hack the host/giggle to victory.
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You forgot to mention that the team now can also be an initiate group and get discounts for initiation.
Also there is no reason why the decker needs to be mundane: An adept decker with outside buffs is really scary.
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Mundane/ Cyber characters are mostly irrelevant and street sam's are a thing of the past when mystic adepts are at the table.
Yeah, THAT'S the logical extension of an admittedly contrived white room scenario. Oh please.
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My group also bans mystic adepts.
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You forgot to mention that the team now can also be an initiate group and get discounts for initiation.
Also there is no reason why the decker needs to be mundane: An adept decker with outside buffs is really scary.
Or replace the Decker with a magically buffed technomancer and have the Machine sprites buff everyone even more. Have the Face use leadership for another buff source. Giant piles of silly become possible.
Jebus a Technomancer with a horde of Sprites and three friendly buff bot mages? How did I miss that?
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same way you missed improved ability hacking and computer and neocortical and limbic nanites, obviously
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Yeah I wish I could do this but I don't feel right giving one player the choice to play a caster and and not another.
This is why it's called Magicrun.
Mundane/ Cyber characters are mostly irrelevant and street sam's are a thing of the past when mystic adepts are at the table.
Sigh
It's why we ban Mystic Adepts at our table.
I just limit it to "one Awakened allowed". Mage and adept can be okay, if the Adept is just taking the combat role. Under no circumstance will I allow more than one full magician and/or mystic adept. Aspected, maybe, but not if they're a summoner.
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No leg work? no debuffs? my shadowrun team would DESTROY this one smoke grenade jammers forboding spells stealthing marks on your teams deck and commlinks and thats just one character
I didn't post full builds as they're fairly standard builds, many examples of them can be found all over the forums.
Face would start at 18 dice for Legwork, 12 charisma + 6 skill. Decker would be 9 intuition plus 6ish Computer so 15 Dice on matrix search give or take. Legwork seems covered. As I mentioned in the OP.
And 27 spell slots, so all the debuffs as well as all the buffs and whatever flavor of combat spells needed. 27 spell slots is a lot. As I mentioned in the OP.
And, as I mentioned in the OP, it's a normal Decker so 8 Logic + 11 or 12 Sleaze. 19 or 20 dice to resist Matrix Perception, seems sufficient for anything a starting character would be expected to run into.
So, in order, Jammers do nothing because nobody cares about noise, Forboding does nothing because 18 dice spell defense plus buffed willpower, Smoke Grenade does nothing to stop Astral sight so the mages still target just fine, Decker would have to turn on Ultrasound. But first you've got to beat the illusion spell to see them, and then beat the stealth test when you're at -6ish perception and the whole team is running with 9 Agility, 5 or more stealth and possibly Chameleon suits. Small dice pool vs large dice pool and small dice pool needs to win twice to even roll initiative. Seriously, invisible, concealed, stealthy characters will walk right on by anything without Astral Perception.
Unless you've got a team of mages and spirits to beat down the mages and spirits the meat puppets don't even get to play. Which is the point. Starting runners shouldn't be facing a squadron of Spirits and Mages, but that is what is required to counter this mess. Or some other silly thing like massive background count, Astral Guard Dragon, or Hive full of true forms.
Its Rock, Paper, Scissors, where the mages are Paper, but they're a whole ream of paper so the scissors just don't cut it.
Cute team for babys first runner team btw
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Well it's my observation base upon the character my players create and the ones posted to these forums.
So not purely a reaction to this thread.
Basically unless you hit the team over the head with constant, severe background counts and/or limit the number of casters in a party to just one then mundane characters are pretty much irrelevant in modern Srun because a mage (or even better a mystic adept) can do everything they can do only better or with more secondary options.
Mundane/ Cyber characters are mostly irrelevant and street sam's are a thing of the past when mystic adepts are at the table.
Yeah, THAT'S the logical extension of an admittedly contrived white room scenario. Oh please.
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mystic adepts are bad IMHO because they can do everything any other character archetype can do, only better. Or with more secondary options.
Why be a decker when you can be mystic adept that hacks better than you can in AR?
Why be a sam when a mystic adept can eat your mundane ass for lunch using the same tools you do?
This is not true with wared physical adepts in my experience.
So MysAdepts are bad but wared PhysAdeps are somehow A-OK? Weird.
If you want to 'balance' out the Awakened folk try banning sustaining foci, quickening, heightened concern, and focused concentration for them.
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As someone playing a buffer Mysticadept, you are right it could be extremely overpowering if you have 2-3 characters like mine in a group it can go VERY bad for everyone...
Scary thing is that my characters backstory is that he was the last surviving team member of a cross trained group of MysAdepts (All mages, all deckers, all fighters)...so the group that took them out he is hunting....
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This is basically just a mental exercise. It presupposes that a group will sit down not just with the intention of ruthlessly optimizing their own characters but to synchronize the builds to work together. And when you do that you can come up with ridiculous things. But it is no more ridiculous than pornomancer builds with unbeatable social skills, gunslinger adepts with high 20's dice pools to attack, Cyber-trolls with more than 40 dice to soak damage etc etc.
Also, if you think they are unbeatable, all it takes is one guy with astral perception to drop an ARO on the tac net and several others to start firing the grenade launchers. Sure, against opposition with no magical support they are hot death on a rocket, but cyber characters against low end opposition without high end combat skills are also hot death on a rocket. Basically you are saying "we would really kick ass against opposition that is bad at countering what we are good at." Any GM worth his dice bag will have you fighting bug spirit swarms, toxic shamans with a piles of bound spirits, draco forms, shedim masters, vampire cabals, etc.
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No leg work? no debuffs? my shadowrun team would DESTROY this one smoke grenade jammers forboding spells stealthing marks on your teams deck and commlinks and thats just one character
So, in order, Jammers do nothing because nobody cares about noise, Forboding does nothing because 18 dice spell defense plus buffed willpower, Smoke Grenade does nothing to stop Astral sight so the mages still target just fine, Decker would have to turn on Ultrasound. But first you've got to beat the illusion spell to see them, and then beat the stealth test when you're at -6ish perception and the whole team is running with 9 Agility, 5 or more stealth and possibly Chameleon suits. Small dice pool vs large dice pool and small dice pool needs to win twice to even roll initiative. Seriously, invisible, concealed, stealthy characters will walk right on by anything without Astral Perception.
Unless you've got a team of mages and spirits to beat down the mages and spirits the meat puppets don't even get to play. Which is the point. Starting runners shouldn't be facing a squadron of Spirits and Mages, but that is what is required to counter this mess. Or some other silly thing like massive background count, Astral Guard Dragon, or Hive full of true forms.
Its Rock, Paper, Scissors, where the mages are Paper, but they're a whole ream of paper so the scissors just don't cut it.
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You do realize that ultrasound and radar will cut through all those buffs
Also it will be funny when the team loses 12 or more buffs to mana static.
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This is basically just a mental exercise. It presupposes that a group will sit down not just with the intention of ruthlessly optimizing their own characters but to synchronize the builds to work together. And when you do that you can come up with ridiculous things. But it is no more ridiculous than pornomancer builds with unbeatable social skills, gunslinger adepts with high 20's dice pools to attack, Cyber-trolls with more than 40 dice to soak damage etc etc.
Also, if you think they are unbeatable, all it takes is one guy with astral perception to drop an ARO on the tac net and several others to start firing the grenade launchers. Sure, against opposition with no magical support they are hot death on a rocket, but cyber characters against low end opposition without high end combat skills are also hot death on a rocket. Basically you are saying "we would really kick ass against opposition that is bad at countering what we are good at." Any GM worth his dice bag will have you fighting bug spirit swarms, toxic shamans with a piles of bound spirits, draco forms, shedim masters, vampire cabals, etc.
I would suggest to you that a GM fiat "You're Ambushed!" by a volley of explosives is a TPK for any group. Including the Super-Cyber-Soaking Troll by the time the overpressures get calculated. Pretty much the definition of Degenerate Game Situations. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RocksFallEveryoneDies
And yes basically a mental exercise, if a GM were to allow a team like this at a table I would expect draco forms, shedim masters, vampire cabals, ect. Not the sort of things you commonly see thrown at a out of the gate runner team.
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Cute team for babys first runner team btw
Thanks! Merry Christmas to you too Rooks!
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You do realize that ultrasound and radar will cut through all those buffs
Also it will be funny when the team loses 12 or more buffs to mana static.
Ultrasound, Motion Sensors and Radar are active sensors easily spotted and avoided (or hacked) if they're on a static emplacement. If they're on a Patrolling Guard or drone, you need to avoid the patrol, same as any other runner team. Also, Ultrasound, Radar, and Motion Sensors are not auto-detect. The user still needs a Perception check or Sensor Use Check. These are common security devices that any runner team can avoid, not sure why they'd present a particular difficulty to this team.
Vibration Sensors are more problematic since they're passive, but can be stealthed so are likely not a problem unless the dice bounce badly.
Mana Static is right up there with high background counts the team becomes fairly typical runners until they geek the mage. Presuming some sort of foreknowledge on the part of the security forces isn't completely out of line, the PCs did blow away whatever ward or spirit that came first. But to go from "Patrol Spirit Went down" to "They're coming through here set an ambush with the handy mage with just the right spell!" seems a tad of a stretch. If the PCs are walking into an ambush without some sort of mechanical or in game reason I would suggest that just about any runner team is going to be in bad shape.
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Well it's my observation base upon the character my players create and the ones posted to these forums.
So not purely a reaction to this thread.
Basically unless you hit the team over the head with constant, severe background counts and/or limit the number of casters in a party to just one then mundane characters are pretty much irrelevant in modern Srun because a mage (or even better a mystic adept) can do everything they can do only better or with more secondary options.
Mundane/ Cyber characters are mostly irrelevant and street sam's are a thing of the past when mystic adepts are at the table.
Yeah, THAT'S the logical extension of an admittedly contrived white room scenario. Oh please.
Yeah this is not my play experience AT ALL, in a group with 2 full casters.
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detect life and detect enemies is go to bread and butter spells but ya, magic can also be a huge liability
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As someone playing a buffer Mysticadept, you are right it could be extremely overpowering if you have 2-3 characters like mine in a group it can go VERY bad for everyone...
Scary thing is that my characters backstory is that he was the last surviving team member of a cross trained group of MysAdepts (All mages, all deckers, all fighters)...so the group that took them out he is hunting....
Pretty much. A second Mage tends to be a bigger boost to the team then a second Decker, face, or hired gun. You pretty quickly reach a broken state where the GM either slaps you all with a book, or custom builds opponents loaded down with specific counters to the PCs instead of rolling with what makes sense to actually be security for whatever you're hitting.
"Okay gang, for your first run you're hired to hit Aunt Mable's Cookie Factory and find out what makes them oh so good." and it turns out Aunt Mable is a Grade 3 Initiate Vampire with a cabal of mage followers and a small army of Ghouls and Hellhounds guarding the place. And you don't want to know what's in the cookies.
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I think most regular readers know I'm not a huge fan of MYSADs, it is possible to build them to doing things very well, and yes they have amazing potential. BUT their initial development is often low. It does come down to who's making the character. i don't doubt that the layedout team would work, basically as advertised, so long as those making them had a decent understanding of how the system interacts. But keep in mind your paying for every thing MYSAD wise, 30 karma for power points is no joke. It essentially boxes builds in many ways. For this application pretty cookie cutter build would do the job just fine though.
wared up adepts can get very specialized and it can lead to the point of problems, but the same can be said for a couple other options as well. I don't think there is anything wrong with banning MYSADs ether.
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Well it's my observation base upon the character my players create and the ones posted to these forums.
So not purely a reaction to this thread.
Basically unless you hit the team over the head with constant, severe background counts and/or limit the number of casters in a party to just one then mundane characters are pretty much irrelevant in modern Srun because a mage (or even better a mystic adept) can do everything they can do only better or with more secondary options.
Mundane/ Cyber characters are mostly irrelevant and street sam's are a thing of the past when mystic adepts are at the table.
Yeah, THAT'S the logical extension of an admittedly contrived white room scenario. Oh please.
Yeah this is not my play experience AT ALL, in a group with 2 full casters.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that any table that you're at Whiskey is likely a touch more challenging than what you'll see in a standard module. Just a suspicion. ; )
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My main issue with mysads is that they get access to everything bar projection. I'd rather see them as aspects by default, forcing either summoning or sorcery as a choice for the build. Having access to everything but only losing projection which is niche anyway, means they get too much boom without enough need imho. If they're built to a theme and ok'd by a GM, it's no bother but an optimised party of them all synced to work together is just going to lead to headaches on the table. Fun paper exercise trying to build it though :-)
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So MysAdepts are bad but wared PhysAdeps are somehow A-OK? Weird.
If you want to 'balance' out the Awakened folk try banning sustaining foci, quickening, heightened concern, and focused concentration for them.
....and Spirits that Sustain, and Psyche, and having more than one Caster in the group, and Alchemy, and turning the Decker into a super ninja so they can just walk right up to something and direct link/hack the host/giggle to victory.
Spirits are okay if they have to have LoS and have to be manifested. Everything else is fine.
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This is basically just a mental exercise. It presupposes that a group will sit down not just with the intention of ruthlessly optimizing their own characters but to synchronize the builds to work together. And when you do that you can come up with ridiculous things. But it is no more ridiculous than pornomancer builds with unbeatable social skills, gunslinger adepts with high 20's dice pools to attack, Cyber-trolls with more than 40 dice to soak damage etc etc.
Also, if you think they are unbeatable, all it takes is one guy with astral perception to drop an ARO on the tac net and several others to start firing the grenade launchers. Sure, against opposition with no magical support they are hot death on a rocket, but cyber characters against low end opposition without high end combat skills are also hot death on a rocket. Basically you are saying "we would really kick ass against opposition that is bad at countering what we are good at." Any GM worth his dice bag will have you fighting bug spirit swarms, toxic shamans with a piles of bound spirits, draco forms, shedim masters, vampire cabals, etc.
I would suggest to you that a GM fiat "You're Ambushed!" by a volley of explosives is a TPK for any group. Including the Super-Cyber-Soaking Troll by the time the overpressures get calculated. Pretty much the definition of Degenerate Game Situations. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RocksFallEveryoneDies
And yes basically a mental exercise, if a GM were to allow a team like this at a table I would expect draco forms, shedim masters, vampire cabals, ect. Not the sort of things you commonly see thrown at a out of the gate runner team.
I agree, ambush with multiple grenade launchers is going to geek just about anyone. Which was my point. A team like this can pull off some crazy stuff, but so can many other team combinations. But the moment you assume you are so bad ass you can take all comers is generally when you hit something that can drop you in two passes.
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Would you like to muzzle my mage as well with all the options your banning you might want to keep me from talking unless the sam lets me.
Personally I'd rather play a mage than a mystic adept even if the later is potentially more powerful simply because it loses me astral perception and nothing they gain offsets that to me.
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The smoke grenades would stop you, actually. You cannot target astral auras alone. Says so right on pg 281 of the main book. And while you could bring spirits out en masse, you basicly violate the gentleman's agreement not to be douches. What follows are grenades during the pass it takes your spirits to materialize.
I don't know why people think it's funny to try and ruin the game. All the GM has to do is stand up and walk away. He could also kill you all, but the easiest thing to do is drop you like you are a good tvshow on fox.
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Personally I'd rather play a mage than a mystic adept even if the later is potentially more powerful simply because it loses me astral perception and nothing they gain offsets that to me.
This. I currently play a mystic adept and it feels so... restricting. I'd rather be a magician.
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My group also bans Mystic adepts, but not because they are overpowered(its pinnacle of min-maxing in shadowrun in my opinion) but because they do feel a bit forced into shadowrun lore. It's like filling the setting with quantity but not quality.
"Hey, lets mix adepts with mages and create new totally original awakened type~"
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My main issue with mysads is that they get access to everything bar projection. I'd rather see them as aspects by default, forcing either summoning or sorcery as a choice for the build. Having access to everything but only losing projection which is niche anyway, means they get too much boom without enough need imho. If they're built to a theme and ok'd by a GM, it's no bother but an optimised party of them all synced to work together is just going to lead to headaches on the table. Fun paper exercise trying to build it though :-)
When Core first came out, I thought that MysAds where too powerful and that it should be Aspected:Sorcerer, Conjurer or Enchanter (ughhh, but someone might wish to be one, just not me). Then they increased it to 5 karma per PP and I was like, k. But the longer I play, the more I feel it should be Aspected w/2karma per PP. A MysAd could then start with his PPs and a Mentor and a Way if he wanted. If they'd reduce Ways to a more reasonable cost then PPs being 5 karma should stay.
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I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that any table that you're at Whiskey is likely a touch more challenging than what you'll see in a standard module. Just a suspicion. ; )
Ha, well, my group is playing through Ghost Cartels and I'm really the only experienced SR player among them. And it's the other caster whose philosophy is "Toxic Wave first, ask questions later." My guy intentionally doesn't kill unless he's specifically paid to kill, but he's still got a strong build, and I haven't felt like we particularly curbstomp enemies (though part of that is most of the players don't think super tactically and stand in the open a lot, hence terrible injuries).
but an optimised party of them all synced to work together is just going to lead to headaches on the table.
This is forgetting that the GM is wholly entitled to reject builds or set a cap on particular archetypes.
Not trying to play into Rule Zero here, but I feel like it's a different consideration than Rule Zero usually implicates, since we're not talking about a broken specific piece of mechanics that "the GM can fix if it's a problem," but the group the GM is allowing. Like, my GM pretty much said, "there's hacking, and I don't want to rework all this stuff to not need a decker, so someone needs to play a decker."
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I agree, ambush with multiple grenade launchers is going to geek just about anyone. Which was my point. A team like this can pull off some crazy stuff, but so can many other team combinations. But the moment you assume you are so bad ass you can take all comers is generally when you hit something that can drop you in two passes.
Pulling off crazy stuff is a good Shadowrunners bread and butter ; ) Anyway, I don't know what a Decker, a Facemage, and a couple other mages are unable to do that other teams could. Elaborate capers I suppose involving multiple Face characters?
The Meta strategy on the mostly mage team is that for early runs they're able to easily overwhelm the magic security you see on starting runs and therefore always have Mage vs Not-mages. And after a few runs, get Masking, and then Extended Masking, and then have an incredible array of options as long as the run isn't taking place in a Mana void.
But to your point, maybe my disclaimer should have included "Kids don't do this at home" to be more clear about the theory-crafting nature of the post. :D
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But to your point, maybe my disclaimer should have included "Kids don't do this at home" to be more clear about the theory-crafting nature of the post. :D
I think it makes for a better narrative story, or example of a specific NPC team, than it does a good basis for a PC team.
In part because if it's so easy, it gets pretty boring. And because it can be boring if everyone can do basically the same things.
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Wait, so your mystic adepts are a) maxed out on their spellcasting stats, b) maxed out on spellcasting and sneaking and combat skills, c) spent all their karma to increase their PP, d) Have a ton of spells each, and e) assumably had enogh nuyen to cover actually existing outside of runs and having fake SINs and whatnot as well as whatever weapons they'd be using? EVERYONE is also all sustaining multiple spells each apparently without penalty? Because they sure don't have the nuyen to buy any foci.
I would absolutely love to see those characters statted out. I imagine we're going to see a lot of 1's in attributes.
Also a single mana barrier ends the run instantly.
As does literally anything that can see astral.
Hell, just having a few guard dogs ends the run. Like they don't even have to be hellhounds or some kinda super magic dog. Just put a few german shepherds in, they'll know something suspicious is about.
How do you have a few spirits just sorta hanging out on the standby? I've noticed your team in general requires absolutely impossible amounts of pre-planning.
Psych has an addiction rating of 6 and a threshold of 2 - and you're dumping Logic in most these characters. Even if it is pharma grade, that's super risky. How are you gonna avoid addiction? Not to mention almost everyone is chowing down on 400 nuyen worth of drugs several times a run - the same people who have resources E.
What do you do on runs that aren't "go into this one specific place and grab something that is out in the open and is small enough to fit inside your jacket?"
THe lesson here isn't that magic is overpowered, it's that anything looks silly when you forget or ignore their problems.
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*Gets out the Popcorn.*
I'll start. Cirno, it was already said these are throw away character long term issue like addiction are meaningless for flash in the pan con builds.
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Rules for cons.
1. GM brings pregens because it is Shadowun not Build a Bear cyber workshop.
2. Play the F-n game.
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This is basically just a mental exercise. It presupposes that a group will sit down not just with the intention of ruthlessly optimizing their own characters but to synchronize the builds to work together. And when you do that you can come up with ridiculous things. But it is no more ridiculous than pornomancer builds with unbeatable social skills, gunslinger adepts with high 20's dice pools to attack, Cyber-trolls with more than 40 dice to soak damage etc etc.
Also, if you think they are unbeatable, all it takes is one guy with astral perception to drop an ARO on the tac net and several others to start firing the grenade launchers. Sure, against opposition with no magical support they are hot death on a rocket, but cyber characters against low end opposition without high end combat skills are also hot death on a rocket. Basically you are saying "we would really kick ass against opposition that is bad at countering what we are good at." Any GM worth his dice bag will have you fighting bug spirit swarms, toxic shamans with a piles of bound spirits, draco forms, shedim masters, vampire cabals, etc.
I would suggest to you that a GM fiat "You're Ambushed!" by a volley of explosives is a TPK for any group. Including the Super-Cyber-Soaking Troll by the time the overpressures get calculated. Pretty much the definition of Degenerate Game Situations. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RocksFallEveryoneDies
And yes basically a mental exercise, if a GM were to allow a team like this at a table I would expect draco forms, shedim masters, vampire cabals, ect. Not the sort of things you commonly see thrown at a out of the gate runner team.
I agree, ambush with multiple grenade launchers is going to geek just about anyone. Which was my point. A team like this can pull off some crazy stuff, but so can many other team combinations. But the moment you assume you are so bad ass you can take all comers is generally when you hit something that can drop you in two passes.
Except when your mage has detect enemies/detect life and the adepts have combat sense
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*Gets out the Popcorn.*
I'll start. Cirno, it was already said these are throw away character long term issue like addiction are meaningless for flash in the pan con builds.
Essentially. If you're doing something like this the players and GM are building a campaign that is heavy on magic, you're not going to be running modules or missions. At least not without adding Astral hit squads watching over several objectives. I struggle with the idea of a six pack of true forms hanging out at the Stuffer Shack, but I suppose bugs probably like slurpies. Would be sort of hilarious, I may start my next campaign in a similar way. All my players have played Stuffer Shack throughout the various editions, they'd never see it coming...
Or the players/GMs like playing on easy mode and are quite fine with stomping all over the standard runs that are out there and simply enjoy the design challenges and coordination.
Or you and a group of friends have decided to steamroll some missions at a random event for lulz.
*shrug* I don't judge how folks get their jollies. If you ever happened to play City of Heroes or other MMOs and run with a group like Buffer Overun or Repeat Offenders they do vaguely similar things. Use buffs/debuffs to blow through end game content without the standard MMO tank/heals/dps team.
To Cirno, lots of Magic A mystic adept builds out there with decent runner skills, pick your favorite, Str, Logic, Char would be at the table min, yes "dump stats", welcome to Shadowrun 5th edition. RAW addiction rules are incredibly trivial to Meta, if you run once or twice a month you can pretty much ignore them. The team can cope with any objective at least as well as any other, and very well with the runner bread and butter data steals, infiltrations, and extractions.
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LMAO, Okay, that was a good read on the first post.
Oddly, my last group was heavily awakened & it wasn't planned out that way. (Not as bad as the team above, but heavy awakened for sure)
We all created characters before the 1st game & then introduced them at game 1.
Day-1 Cast:
Human-Decker
Troll-Adept
Elf-Adept
Elf-Mystic Adept
3 Awakened Metas, none of it pre-planned.
Later we added a Human-Shaman
Guest appearances have been done by a Sniper & a couple Riggers once each. (2 Humans & a Dwarf)
The odd thing is, I don't feel we "steam roll" any more than Cyber-Sams would.
We mow down low skill Mooks easy enough but the few times we've had some Elites come at us we were hurting bad, really bad.
The 2 adepts are not uber cheese at all, both solid character concepts that are specialized but have flaws.
Pistols for the Elf & Shotguns/Axe for the Troll means they have range & accuracy issues at times against really bouncy things.
The Decker spread out in skills so he can do stuff that most of us are horribly lost at, like Demolitions & Freefall but in turn isn't overly specialized at Decking.
The Mystic does a couple things on Offense fairly well at 12-16dice, good but not amazing, & negotiates deals well.
But other than that is mostly just hard to kill/surprise/ambush as he is very very bouncy & keeps buffs up.
The Mage that came on late has probably one of the best "combat" abilities with 15 Dice at casting Fireballs.
But no one on the entire team except the pistols guy can throw a pool at someone with 18+ dice in it.
And again, its Pistols, not Automatics or LongArms. So the range & damage are really limited.
I think anything can be broken if you full optimize to 18+ dice for the majority of your key rolls.
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18+ dice isn't really that broken, considering that such dice pools are usually opposed tests, that are subject to multiple negative modifiers outside of the most optimal conditions.
Shadowrun is a game where the overall power level can vary a lot, although effectiveness is not something that always equates to combat ability. Even in the core book archetypes, there is a world of difference in the dice pools that the street samurai has, compared to those of the bounty hunter. But the street samurai can shoot things, hit things, sneak, and drive, and that's about it. The bounty hunter has a much wider skill set. He can change a flat tire, patch up a wounded comrade, pick a lock, scare someone into cooperating, and so on.
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18+ dice isn't really that broken, considering that such dice pools are usually opposed tests, that are subject to multiple negative modifiers outside of the most optimal conditions.
Let me place emphasis on what I was actually saying.
I think anything can be broken if you full optimize to 18+ dice for the majority of your key rolls.
18 dice in one skill, meh, 18 dice in a half dozen+ skills, THAT is a bigger issue.
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You don't really need dice pools in a half a dozen skills to have 18+ dice for the majority of your key roles, if you are a specialist, who has several go-to skills that are called upon most often.
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True look at drone agents and autosofts for drones you looking at 10 dice pools 6-8 maybe for agents vs 25 for PCs