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Posted by: mrcatman May 10 2006, 09:21 PM

My group has just bought SR4 and will be playing it shortly. We played 2nd and 3rd edition (some of us even 1st). We have 2 quick questions for you gurus...

1) Orthoskin cannot be combined with Dermal Plating, per both descriptions. However, there is no mention of whether or not either one can be combined with Mystic Armor, the Armor spell or Troll's natural armor. If you had a Troll Adept (1/1) with Mystic Armor 4 (4/4), and Orthoskin 3 (3/3) wearing an armor jacket (8/6), would his B/I armor really be 16/14?

2) Orthoskin, Mystic Armor, the Armor spell & the Troll's natural armor all say they stack (are cumulative) with worn armor. Dermal Plating doesn't make mention one way or the other. Does Dermal Plating stack (is cumulative) with worn armor?

Thank you for your time.

REFERENCE PAGES:
Orthoskin bioware (SR4, p.339)
Dermal Plating cyberware (SR4, p.333)
Mystic Armor adept power (SR4, p.188)
Armor spell (SR4, p.202)
Troll's natural armor (SR4, p.73)

Posted by: Butterblume May 10 2006, 09:30 PM

1) yes
2) yes

But remember, unlike as inSR3, an armor rating of 16 doesn't make you invicible.

Posted by: Big D May 10 2006, 09:33 PM

Why stop there? Theoretical Troll (assuming 5 magic and less than 1 point ess used) with full armor could hit 20/18 and pretty much soak normal rounds fired by anyone who isn't a gunbunny.

Of course, I'd really recommend a pain editor (after start), because everything short of a tank round is going to be S damage.

Posted by: Glayvin34 May 10 2006, 09:35 PM

And you'll be paying at least 30 BP for a magic of 2 to have Mystic Armor, 5 to be an Adept, 40 BP to be a Troll, and 18 to pay for the Orthoskin. That's 93 BP, or almost half of your starting BP and 90,000 nuyen, or a little less than half of your maximum starting cash.
But maybe you don't want to be versatile.

Posted by: Big D May 10 2006, 09:43 PM

Wait, isn't adept armor limited to [Magic] ranks?

You'd have to take Magic 5, then, so that you'd have 4 left over after chrome.

However, you could drop adept and just blow cash... bone density, bone lacing, and reaction enhancer are just as good as armor for reducing damage (reaction is actually better, because it increases the chance of 0 damage), and synaptic boost both does that and lets you kill people faster.

You won't be able to max everything (especially booster), but you can still munch it out.

Posted by: Glayvin34 May 10 2006, 09:49 PM

Posted by: mrcatman May 10 2006, 10:10 PM

Posted by: Glayvin34 May 10 2006, 10:17 PM

That looks close to me, except he does have to get Magic 6 that is then reduced by 2 for the essence loss. FYI, they did post some updated numbers somewhere that deal with the Sample Characters be inaccurate to the rules.
This character is going to be doing A LOT of sitting around during Matrix Actions, Astral stuff, any neogotiating or legwork, any travel, that kind of thing. But if that's what the player wants then it's not wrong.

Posted by: mdynna May 10 2006, 10:34 PM

They've released a lot of errata on those sample characters, so get them from the http://www.shadowrunrpg.com before you go basing decision based on them.

Second, you have a major oversite with this character: essence loss affects your Magic rating. Essence loss reduces the Magic that you have purchased. So, if your character is down to 4.25 Essence, they have lost 2 points. You have purchased a Magic of 4, so that should be reduced to 2. You will need to purchase a Magic of 6 in order to have an "effective" Magic of 4 with 4.25 Essence. That will chew up another 35 BP (remember 25 BP for the max of 6) for this character.

Under SR3, Dermal Plating and Orthoskin overrode the Troll's natural armor, that makes Trolls much more powerful now.

Posted by: ronin3338 May 11 2006, 12:36 AM

I think I would house rule that for SR4 too, at least for the dermal. My thinking is that we are replacing the natural dermal structures with manufactured ones.

Posted by: Lagomorph May 11 2006, 12:45 AM

Posted by: James McMurray May 11 2006, 12:46 AM

You forgot to bring your helmet and ballistic shield for (IIRC) a total of 23/18.

Posted by: Ranneko May 11 2006, 12:48 AM

Posted by: fool May 11 2006, 01:44 AM

furthermore, the attributes did all add up to under 200 if you took out, edge, magic, and resonance.
WIth my group, most characters start out with the standard issue jacket and helmet. pretty reasonable as long as they don't have to do anything like go into a posh hotel (happened in the last run, I stayed in the car)

Posted by: Glyph May 11 2006, 02:49 AM

Imp.Phy.Attr/Reaction 1 would cost 2 points, not one, since you are raising it over the racial maximum. He would be better off getting 2 points of Combat Sense instead. Although to have a magic of 4, he will need to actually buy it at 6, as others have said.

Under SR3, trolls did get to add their natural dermal armor to things like dermal plating (as looking at the archetypes will demonstrate), so I don't think SR4 would be any different.

Posted by: Shrike30 May 11 2006, 05:57 AM

And this is why the man invented APDS ammunition

Posted by: ixombie May 11 2006, 08:08 AM

The oh-so sad thing about having 9 body and 16/14 armor is that you're not invincible, at least not on the level of an SR3 tank troll. 25 dice is good, but it's not even close to good enough. Eating bullets just isn't where it's at now, the name of the game in SR4 is dodging. Case in point:

Every 3 dice amounts to an average 1 hit, so against a weapon with AP 0 you're looking at 8 hits. That's certainly enough to absorb all but the best shots from small arms, but in the case of a full narrow burst from an ExEx Ares Alpha, you're looking at 17 DV with -3 AP. You are likely to take 10 DV from that, not exactly sitting pretty. Your opponent doesn't even need to be a great shot to geek you with a full narrow burst, the only difference between a normal person and a tank is that the tank might survive and be able to limp away.

Now, a cybered adept with a little more brains can have reaction 8 utilizing boosted level 2, combat sense 3, improved dodge 3, and dodge at 6 for 22 dodge dice. You could push it even higher than that, but I'm just taking these numbers from a very well rounded and dangerous build I made. Regardless, 22 dodge dice gets you about 7 hits on average, which is actually less than the tank gets from his damage resistance right? Nope. The best (and I mean very best) attack pool you can get is 10 agility (elf modified maximum) and 12 in your skill of choice (6 skill + 3 improved ability + 1 reaction enhancer + 2 specialization), or 22. You are stasitically likely to dodge a shot from the best marksman who has or ever will live, and you haven't even maxed out your combat sense. Anything that comes your way has a very small chance of hitting you, as long as you're not surprised. The point is that no attack gets more than 22 dice (aside from situational mods) and thus no more than 7 average net hits, while a weapon's DV can be pumped to 17 with a free action by just switching the gun to full auto mode. You can twink out to where you can be assured of 7 hits every time, but not 17. Tanking is the loser's path, plain and simple.

PS If you were going to suggest that my dice pools are smaller than they could be, note that you can't actually take 6 improved ability on anything, check the errata.

Posted by: DrowVampyre May 11 2006, 08:16 AM

Actually, one of your pools is smaller - the elf modified max for Agility is 10...but if you get Exceptional Attribute (Agility), it becomes 12. And you could have Aptitude (Firearms skill of your choice) to grab another in skill. Plus, of course, smartlinks, tracers, and firing wide bursts to drop up to 9 dice off the dodger's pool, but we'll call those situational.

Posted by: UndeadPoet May 11 2006, 09:33 AM

Posted by: Kremlin KOA May 11 2006, 09:41 AM

not with that kind of success rate
you miay be able to full dodge until tey run out of ammo
o better yet if ya gort more init passes full dodge until they run out of passes then kill them

Posted by: Crusher Bob May 11 2006, 10:10 AM

Of course, dodging doe not protect you from area of effect attacks or spells.

Posted by: Kremlin KOA May 11 2006, 10:19 AM

Dodging DOES protect from grenades and similar area of effect attacks

Posted by: mfb May 11 2006, 10:19 AM

actually, i think it does, at least for grenades and elemental manips (or whatever they're called in SR4). as i recall, you get something like a -3 dice pool modifier.

Posted by: DrowVampyre May 11 2006, 10:34 AM

Lessee...if you assume a maxed Reaction character (10, with Exceptional Attribute: Reaction), with Combat Sense 10, utilizing maxed Full Dodge with a specialization against Ranged (12, with Aptitude: Dodge), you get 32 dice to dodge.

Now, say you're being shot at by a maxed Agility (12, using an elf with Exceptional Attribute: Agility), with maxed out Automatics with a specialization in Assault Rifles (9, with Aptitude: Automatics), with a smartlink (additional 2) and reflex recorder (1 more), firing tracer EX-Ex on full auto (another 3) with the wide burst option (-9 dice to your pool) from an Ares Alpha with gas vent 3 and shock pad (-3 to his pool for recoil), you end up with a pool of 23 while he's got a pool of 24.

You could, of course, both use Edge, but he'll end up slightly on the better end of that one, what with having a higher pool to begin with. Note that this isn't an adept shooting at you - he could cram in another 2 dice if he were. Now, while you're both going to be almost equal, he's still got a very slight advantage on you, and if he hits, you're taking 8P with a -3 AP modifier.

The good news is, you'll survive that. The bad news is, now he sees just how Neo-like you are, and fires the grenade launcher. The worse news is, now his buddy with the gyro-stabilized Ultimax HMG-2 is gonna open up on you too.

Posted by: mdynna May 11 2006, 04:12 PM

Wide bursts are the wonderful mechanic that was added to balance out Neo-like bullet dodgers.

Posted by: UndeadPoet May 11 2006, 04:24 PM

Posted by: Shrike30 May 11 2006, 05:41 PM

I am *so* a fan of wide bursts.

I've got a couple of dex monkeys in my game. These are guys who have been dex monkeys since the beginning of time. Guys who gleefully discard armor, hit points, or anything resembling a solid physical build in favor of simply not being where the blow is. Guys for whom the answer is always "I get out of the way." It's this... attitude, I guess, that grates and grinds and pisses me off after a while, the way it's played and presented.

They hate it when you knock 9 dice out of their die pool. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

Posted by: James McMurray May 11 2006, 06:14 PM

And of course, if they can't hit you, they'll just switch to a new target. The first guy fires, sees you catching bullets in your teeth and batting them aside like flies, then tells his buddies to shoot everyone else (and uses his second action to shoot someone else). You've just used on one bullet at the expense of your next action.

Posted by: Shrike30 May 11 2006, 06:38 PM

Or they'll vector all their fire to the guy standing in the middle of the street occasionally twitching to avoid it, rather than all the other guys hiding behind cars and poking their guns over dumpsters.

All those -1s for each incoming attack? Yeah, they're rude.

Posted by: James McMurray May 11 2006, 07:25 PM

Why would they spend time firing at someone they can't hit and who isn't firing back instead of firing at people they can hit? If he's the only target, sure, dump it all at him and watch those dice disappear. Otherwise you shoot someone that is trying to hurt you, either dropping him or making it harder for him to hurt you because he's wincing in pain.

Posted by: PBTHHHHT May 11 2006, 07:45 PM

Aye, if there's a mass amount of folks, you prioritize, take out heavy hitters of course like mages and the machine gunner, but you also go for easy to take out guys also. So you avoid wasting shots and actions on the wannabe neo and make sure to take out all his buds. Then concentrate fire on him afterwards when he's all by himself twitching in the middle of the street.

Posted by: Big D May 11 2006, 08:15 PM

Let's see.

Davy Elf with 8[12] Agi, 7[10] automatics (adept), +2 AR spec, +2 smartlink, +1 enh. art, +1 reflex recorder fires a twinked alpha at full burst, gets 25 dice.

And Neo Elf loses 9.

Put another notch on Betsy.

Or, just have the mage stunbolt Neo. How many points did hit put in Will, again?

Posted by: Shrike30 May 11 2006, 08:31 PM

From the point of view of your average squaddie shooting at targets half a block away, the dude twitching like a fiend in the middle of the street *is* the easiest target. God knows why you can't hit him, but it's either him or the yahoos hunkered down behind cars, and between your MG gunner keeping them suppressed and your grenadier dropping airburst explosives in their general direction, they're probably covered.

The point is, they don't KNOW they can't hit him. Characters don't know what the dice pools are doing, they know what they see. You give me a bunch of armed targets to shoot at, and one of them is standing in the open, he's going to be the first one I shoot at, because he seems like the easiest target. Now, one of them starts shooting fireballs out of his ass or blasting a flamethrower in my general direction, that's another thing, but when it's just a bunch of people shooting, the guy in the open is the easiest, best target.

Posted by: James McMurray May 11 2006, 09:02 PM

He's armed but he isn't a threat. He's doing cartwheels, not shooting at you. And if you see someone dodging bullets better than what you think is metahumanly possible (because he's got magic and beyond normal metahuman speed and agility) then you'll know you can't hit him. You won't know his pool, but you don't have to know the dice involved to know that somebody who is doing the lay backwards as bullets fly past Neo stuff isn't an easy target.

Meanwhile you've got people shooting guns at you.

Posted by: Shrike30 May 11 2006, 09:11 PM

I think we're envisioning the scene a little differently. Senor Twitch (or, since I've got more than one of them, maybe I should say the Brothers Twitch) get as much of their "not getting hit" stuff redlined as they can, without pulling the Full Dodge thing. High Reactions, Combat Sense... whatever they can come up with to add dice to that first check. So what you end up with is a bunch of players running for cover, then the Twitchies walking straight down the block unloading with their weapons of choice, because the character build (in their mind, at least) is unhittable. If they were Full Dodging all the time, I wouldn't care where they were standing... people probably pay more attention to muzzle flashes and tracers than they do to the couple of crazies breakdancing in the road.

By the way, BigD... enhanced articulation has narrowed the range of skills it applies to. You'd have to reread the description to determine which ones, but I know it doesn't apply to shooting anymore.

Posted by: James McMurray May 11 2006, 09:35 PM

In that situation I would shoot at them, probably with a few guys doing two wide long bursts each. Or just leave if I couldn't hit them that way.

It depends on the opposition's resources.

Posted by: ronin3338 May 11 2006, 09:47 PM

Take off and nuke'em from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Posted by: James McMurray May 11 2006, 09:52 PM

It depends on how your GM reads the dodge vs. explosives rules. You may be able to sidestep the blast.

Posted by: ronin3338 May 11 2006, 10:10 PM

D'oh!

"I acrobatic dodge so I'm clear of ground zero"

Sounds like time to call in the Drop Bears...

Posted by: hobgoblin May 11 2006, 10:37 PM

save the drop bears for later. first we try the old standby, the orbital bovine...

Posted by: James McMurray May 11 2006, 11:26 PM

Those get dodged too.

And did I mention that my character is based on the SR game, so I get to teleport?

Posted by: Kanada Ten May 11 2006, 11:53 PM

I wonder if vision penalties should apply to Reaction (is it called Dodge Pool?) in the Opposed test.

Posted by: hobgoblin May 12 2006, 12:40 AM

Posted by: Big D May 12 2006, 04:49 AM

Right, stop that, that's silly!

Posted by: Oracle May 12 2006, 12:03 PM

Posted by: ixombie May 13 2006, 03:03 AM

I'd like to point out that dodging and being tough are not mutually exclusive. A cybered adept set up to dodge can still have 6 body with 8 ballistic armor pretty easily, enough to mean that the wide full bursts which can actually hit you won't take you out of comission. My whole point was that dodging beats soaking in SR4, not that dodging is invincible. There is a finite limit to the dice an attacker can throw at you- they cap out at around 8 probable hits, which is also where a maxed out dodge pool caps out. Those are decent odds, provided you're not an idiot who stands still without taking cover while being shot at. Damage resistance, however, caps out at maybe 10 probable hits, while DVs can go as high as 17 from guns available in chargen. Soaking power is definitely good, but it seems to me that when choosing a focus for an adept, dodging ability is far superior to toughness.

Posted by: Big D May 13 2006, 03:32 AM

I have this image of a Neo elf making all these cool moves in front of a fedora-wearing PC... who then looks at Neo and blasts him with a powerbolt.

Posted by: Divine Virus May 13 2006, 04:05 AM

of course, all it would take is a force 1 drain attribute to take this character out of action. 1 hit to bring Charisma (or the other one) out of action. with the high reaction it would be tricky the hit him though.

Posted by: James McMurray May 13 2006, 06:42 AM

Force 1 anything is almost gauranteed to fail. All they need is a single hit to negate the entire spell.

Posted by: Divine Virus May 13 2006, 06:47 AM

ah, thats true, forgot about that damn resist roll. Still, one net hit will do him in.

Posted by: James McMurray May 13 2006, 06:55 AM

The force of the spell limits the number of hits (base, not net) you get. If you cast a spell at force 1 you can only get 1 hit, meaning they have to not get any for the spell to have any effect, and you'll be limited to droppping the attribute by one, which may or may not have the desired effect.

Posted by: Glyph May 13 2006, 07:15 AM

Plus, they don't have ranged Health spells yet in SR4, and a mage trying to get a hit in on a character oriented around physical combat is not always the best idea.

Direct combat spells like manabolt are still decent, even against someone with a high Willpower. The target is only resisting with a single Attribute, rather than using dodging and armor to help soak the damage. One-shot takedowns like they had in SR3 are more rare now, though, unless you overcast the spell.

Posted by: James McMurray May 13 2006, 07:18 AM

Yeah, it's pretty hard to do 9 or 10 damage in a single shot now, and those times when you do 5 or 6 you'll probably end up taking some damage yourself, making it harder to get those last few points in.

Posted by: Divine Virus May 13 2006, 07:24 AM

But with dimished attribute you can bring his charisma down to 0 with one net hit, taking him out of action, armour or no armour. thats the problem with attributes at 1

Posted by: Glyph May 13 2006, 07:49 AM

But the problems for the caster are:

1) You have to hit the target with an unarmed attack, which is dangerous to do against a tank build (they often have better initiative, and usually have better close combat skills), and even worse against a Neo build (unless you have an abnormally high - for a mage - unarmed skill, you will likely miss completely).

2) Even a successful spell only incapacitates the troll while it is being sustained - even if you don't take damage, get knocked down, etc. and drop the spell, you are taking a penalty to all of your actions to keep your victim out of action.


If you're going to use a touch spell, you would probably be better off using one like Knockout, which has such a low Drain code that it can be overcast without too much danger (I mean, if you cast it at Force: 9, you are resisting physical damage, sure, but physical damage of one, which shouldn't be a problem at all).

Posted by: Cochise May 13 2006, 06:13 PM

Posted by: Glyph May 13 2006, 08:33 PM

Actually, he is wrong. If you look at the Sprawl Ganger archetype, you will see that he gets the bonus from his dermal plating and from a troll's natural dermal armor.

Posted by: James McMurray May 13 2006, 11:39 PM

Oops. I missed that the example character had a charisma of 1. Decrease Attribute (assuming you can hit) would definitely hurt. But like others have said, hitting him is probably going to be a hard task, and you still have to contend with counterspelling dice so you can't keep the force too low.

Posted by: Big D May 14 2006, 12:43 AM

I keep coming back to the simple answer... a couple of stunbolts ruins his day.

Posted by: James McMurray May 14 2006, 12:59 AM

With a 5 willpower and 4 counterspelling dice he isn't in horrible shape against stun bolts, but they'd definitely hurt. Stun bolts aren't any more of a weakness for this guy than a normal street samurai, maybe even less if they have a 4 will power instead of 5.

The character's real weakness is that he can't really do anything except fight. If he finds himself needing to be even mildly sociable or stealthy he's screwed. With an intuition of 2 and no perception skill he'll never notice anything.

Posted by: Big D May 14 2006, 02:01 AM

Yeah, I concede the point, I was just thinking of that.

Stupid question, can a magic adept start with 0 Magic (all points assigned to PP/chrome) and pick up points later?

If you use a magic adept gunbunny (or physad) with counterspelling, heavily combat-focused, you're going to be really weak in stealth/social skills, allright... but SR4 rewards min-maxing at chargen, because it's a heck of a lot cheaper to pick up the first couple points in those skills than to advance your core skills from 4 to 6. You just have to figure out how to survive the first few runs without getting into a situation that you can't handle.

Posted by: Teulisch May 14 2006, 02:22 AM

magic adept magic loss is applied to the spellcasting magic first, and their ability to spellcast burns out when their magic for spells hits zero, regardless of how many points they have in powers.

Posted by: Big D May 14 2006, 02:25 AM

So you absolutely have to reserve a point for casting if you're ever gonna cast?

That slows down min-maxing just a touch, at least.

Posted by: Nikoli May 14 2006, 02:44 AM

It also recommends that GM's not allow the magic qualities if the player intends on abusing the system.

Posted by: James McMurray May 14 2006, 03:22 AM

That recommendation should hold for anything. SR4 was designed with the intention of having GMs be an integral part of the character creation process, rather than the players running of to create whatever they want and then tart playing.

Posted by: Edward May 14 2006, 04:41 AM

I always over cast, it is so much easier to get rid of physical drain and I rarely take much anyway, a force 8 stun bolt has drain of 3. I average taking 1.

Edward

Posted by: James McMurray May 14 2006, 04:48 AM

I really wish I knew why they took away the ineffectiveness against drain healing spells had. Overcasting was much more rare an item, and certainly not generally touted as the best choice. But now that you can first aid and Treat/Heal physical drain you're better off just taking the bloody nose instead of the splitting headache unless you know you'll have plenty of time to rest off the stun.

Posted by: Kremlin KOA May 14 2006, 04:57 AM

it is a return to 2nd edition
back then physical drain could be healed

Posted by: James McMurray May 14 2006, 05:07 AM

That doesn't explain the reason for the rollback, just that there was a prior example.

Posted by: Kremlin KOA May 14 2006, 05:08 AM

thus, precident

Posted by: James McMurray May 14 2006, 05:17 AM

Ummm... Yeah. That's what I said. "prior examples" = "precedent."

However, the mere existence of precident is not enough of a reason to change something that's been around and working great for years. There must have been some reason why they decided that magic can now fix drain.

It'd be like Texas dropping the death penalty and then 5 years later deciding to bring it back. "We did it that way before" would not be a valid explanation.

by the way, are you the Anti-James McMurray, the anti-SLJames, some conglomeration of the two (and I'd resent being lumped in with him ), or something else altogether?

Posted by: Shrike30 May 15 2006, 06:44 PM

I houseruled that you can't heal drain damage, stun or physical. Having a medic sitting there jamming shit into your mage constantly while he overcasts like a madman is not my impression of what the system was intended to make possible

Posted by: Butterblume May 15 2006, 07:05 PM

I will houserule the same way when my players start to abuse the healing rules in this manner.