Aye. Get a copy of his character sheet.

Require a GM copy of all character sheets and tell them to give you an update.

Also a roll where GM can see it policy may be a good idea.

Simple common sense would rule out the naohive-in cybereye idea : a nanohive takes two capacity point - which just happen to be the total capacity of a cyberskull. How are you supposed to fit something that's barely stackable into the spare room of a complete head into the spare room of a pair of eyes ?

Maybe if you're going for tennis-ball sized eyes or a robocop-style visor, but there's no way it would fit into regular cybereyes. Even if you ditch everything in the eyes to make them empty containers (which won't do much for your vision...)

Pretending otherwise is in my opinion pure unalloyed rules-lawyering. Whoever indulges in it shouldn't complain if an irate GM uses rules loopholes to give him a Buba-sized reaming.

I mean GOD DAMN It. A nanohive is egg sized. How may you fit several eggs in two eyes? Not, thats how.

I suggest: (1) refresh edge less frequently - maybe it doesn't refresh until the next adventure, even? (2) use the optional drain rule (3) accept that mages vs mundanes = usually mage win, (4) for "proper" fights, make sure they have magical backup, (5) drones, drone and drones. And also remember that if the worst your mage is doing is throwing manaballs around... well ... you can get the same effect from a grenade or two, but grenades don't hurt the thrower, and overcasting does. I think once you stop him always going first by curbing Edge use things will seem better.

I agree with quite a bit of your review. Being fairly new to Shdaowrun, I wasn't aware of the railroading in the final chapter. The editing is God-awful! Even before reading this, I was thinking of doing just the first chapter, then shifing into "Dawn of the Artifacts".

They're egg-shaped, the size isn't mentioned. For all we know they're pea size. Also GOD DAMN it stop making a fool of yourself, arguments in good faith are welcome but this "zomg theatrics" thing is getting tiresome.

Cybereyes accept visual or cybereye-specific enhancements. That's it.

Multiple people have pointed out rules indicating this.

There is no reasonable argument indicating otherwise.





-k

I'm actually doing that now. They just reached Caracas and got their first big payoff. They wanted to spend the money, so they arranged free airtravel with the Draco Foundation to Lagos as bodyguards. This means I skipped over much of the plot of DotA, which assumes they were only bodyguards; but it also led to some interesting roleplay, as they decided to bid on some of the items at auction.

Well, we had a session last night. Mage tires to do his thing: Overcast, first aid the physical damage. He had enough successes to pull the damage down to zero. I told him, "That is all well and good, but it will take 1 day for that to take effect. That is the rule on healing." He then goes to the rule book and we get into a debate about how in SR4A, pg 252, column 1, 6th paragraph, under "Physical Damage" is says "Make a body x 2 (1 day) extended test. The character must rest for the entire day for it to count (forced naps and unconsciousness count). Each hit heals 1 box of damage" (this was my side of the discussion).

He points my attention to pg. 252, column 2, 1st full paragraph under "Using First Aid". His point is the first sentence, "Characters using the first aid skill may IMMEDIATELY help reduce the trauma of wounds (stun or physical)".

His assertion is that "immediately" means that it, if he rolls enough hits, he takes no wound boxes (and, with his jacked up medkit and high logic attribute, he almost always rolls enough) and life goes on as normal with no time (other than what it took to do the first aid test). My assertion is that even if the wounds are reduced to zero through first aid, it still takes a day to heal them. What say you all?

Also, I did slow him down a bit. In the Ghost Cartels campaign, after they recover the corpse of the reporter (Jaina Shields), they go looking for Sinn to get her notes. They go into the bar where Sinn is just as the gang fight between the Ragers and First Nation starts. I roll crap for the initiative for the two gangs. All but one of the PC's go before the Ragers and everyone goes before the First Nations gang. My playerss are heavily grounded in the D&D tradition and need maps. As I set up the map, I have 10 Ragers, 10 FN's and 10 civilians. I have overturned tables (no LOS), people hiding behind the bar (no LOS) and the civilians mixed in (kill the civies if you want, your street cred will reflect it). He throws a (IIRC) force 6 Manaball and I just smile (the target number needed to notice if a spell is being cast is 6 - force of the spell). As soon as it's the Ragers turn in the 1st IP, one of the yells "MAGE!!!!! GEEK HIM" and almost every Rager opens up on him. He actually took damage and was burning edge left and right to not get hit. I was so proud of myself. In a later initiative pass/combat turn, he starting casting on the First Nations gang as well, so ended up with a number of them firing at him as well! Woo Hoo!

The Gun Adept's player had oral surgery not long ago and was in considerable pain. We ended up gestalt-ing it to finish quick so he could head home.

Also, one last question on movement. If a person has 2 IP's do the split thier movement over the 2 IP's or does each IP get it's own movement. For expample, Bob the Human has a movement of 10/25 and 2 IP's. If he decides to walk, over the whole Combat Turn does he get to move 10 meters or does he move 10 meters in the first pass and and 10 meters in the 2nd pass (for a grand total of 20 while walking)?

Thanks in advance for your help

<edited for clarity and spelling>

First Aid heals the damage immediately (well, after a few complex actions spent doing it), you were wrong.

You split the movement over the combat turn's IPs, so Bob the Human could move 5 in the first Ip and 5 in the second.

Movement is split by the number of passes in the whole turn. So if Bob starts walking on IP1, and there is a StreetSam with 4IP in the fight, Bob moves (10/4) 2.5m per IP. In this case I'd have Bob move 2m, 3m, 2m, 3m, but that's up to you. Bob can withold his action to act in a later pass if need be. Of course that's the RAW answer, others house rule it to make movement easier.

-D

If first aid doesn't heal the damage boxes, what does it do?



Something seems really wrong here. If a half dozen gangers unload on somebody, anybody except the Sam should be dead or knocked out. Even spending Edge (how much Edge does he have?) I have difficulty believing he has a decent enough Body and Reaction to survive that. Even one short burst getting through should be pretty serious.

Troyminator, I was wrong in my initial post. First Aid does heal damage immediately. LurkerOutThere pointed out that the rules I quoted are for Natural Healing.

Also, PoliteMan has a good point.
In addition to that, on page 159 (see Defender Has Defended Against Previous Attacks) you'll find that he has a -1 dice penalty for every dodge after the first since his last IP. Dodging the dozen or so bullets (two per IP per ganger) should have had him at around a -10 modifier to his dodge. If his Body+Reaction is that high as a Mage, something seriously fishy is IMO. Check to see if his Stats (including Edge, but not including Magic) are below the 200 point limit.

Edit: As for your question about the walking, the numbers given are for the whole round. 10/25 means they walk-10-slash-run-25 meters at some point in their turns. Personally, I play fast and loose with it. I assume that they make the move all in one IP, using the IP they need to. If it's not tactically important, I just assume it happens on the first IP. This does require a certain amount of trust on my part, since my players could abuse that, but they've given me no reason to worry. I also use maps for major combats, but I make a point to leave a grid off of them when I can. I just draw to scale and if my player needs to get across a room, I know from the dimensions of the room itself how long it will take them. YYMV.

Edit again: About the damage thing, he still did take the damage, but its in-game effects are gone. Personally, I'm going to move my group to "you can ignore the penalties for this scene with First Aid, but you're gonna need to rest this off if you want it to heal right."

only looked through the first page, but surprised I didn't see this: The best counter for mages, in my opinion, is other mages. Counterspelling with a spirit to help can be a real bitch, if the mage is good at it. If this guy is walking around murdering people, he's gonna leave a huge signature and develop a big reputation, fast. So it's not unreasonable that his enemies will begin gearing up to counter him, and spreading pictures of him around their troops, perhaps even putting out a bounty on him.

In the end though, any character can be min/maxed to hell and back, part of the thing with SR's extreme freedom in character creation is that it also assumes the player doesn't want to completely break the game. So, honestly, if this is becoming a problem for the rest of your group, you might want to consider asking him to tone it down a bit on his next character.

But ya, a fairly skilled counter-mage, say magic 5, counterspelling 4, with a spirit to help, say F5, that's 14 dice, with an NPC that could be built with 400 bp easily. Throw in some other bonuses if you want, foci, specializations, mentor bonsuses, teamwork, see how many net hits he gets then.

The low level gangers did not have BF weapons. I did, however, forget that with a SA weapon, they can shoot twice per IP (with a -1 to the pool for the second shot, IIRC). We did remember to give him an accumulative -1 for every time he had to react to an attack.

I think I found your problem.

Burst fire is, quite simply, the easiest and cheapest way to increase the lethality of an opponent in SR. Uzis are dirt cheap and few simple mods (laser designators, underbarrel weights) allow them to put serious damage on any shadowrunner. There are some guns that don't need burst fire (Sniper Rifles, Panthers) but in general SR gets much softer if the opponents aren't using burst fire.

I think your mage is taking advantage of this. There's not much danger in him overcasting and then healing if the opposition is only doing 5-6DP a shot. He can soak most of that (especially is he has the edge to burn) Overcasting should leave him hurt, which means -1 or -2 to dodge and soak. If his opponents are bursting him, there's a good chance he'll be knocked out after casting. Since they're not burst firing, he's in no danger, so he can safely overcast and then survive whatever the remaining gangers/guards throw at him. With burst, overcasting means he's likely done. With burst fire, even if he takes out 11 out of twelve gangers with a super manaball, that last one should be long or full bursting him and then he's ending the fight wounded and knocked out.

As someone ealier posted, I am not the Dick I should be, to be a Shadowrun DM. I don't want to kill the mage, just challange him. Lots of good ideas for challanging him.

FA is even better and AK98s are cheap as well.

Just have two shoot a long and a short burst (possibly wide ones) and the third a full burst. By the time the big bang hits he will be at -4 to dodge even if he dodges/soaks everything the first two throw at him. And you usually don't walk away unscathed from a minimum 15P AP-1 attack.

Why isn't the mage invisible?

Most likely because we're just learning the system

Tactics and all are fine, but be careful not to overdo swatting down the mage. If you make it incredibly difficult for his character to survive, he will never tone it down - after all, if his tough characters have it so rough, what chance does a non-optimized mage have? Personally, I would have had at least one or two of the Ragers still fire at other PCs, unless the other PCs were completely ineffective. Manaball or not, you don't want to ignore the guy spraying full auto fire or lobbing grenades at you, either.

This "immediately" is explained in the next sentence: First cannot be used more than 12 hours after trauma. It does not mean that First Aid is used as a second soak roll as your player seems to think. First Aid takes a number of Combat Turns (full turns, not actions) equal to the damage to heal. The sequence is:

1) Take X damage. Mark boxes, suffer wound modifiers, go down if exceding the monitor.
2) When the character has X Turns to spend (likely after the fight, at most 12 hours after), he can use First Aid.
3) After these X turns, make the First Aid roll. Don't forget that the character still suffers wound modifiers for this roll. Score Y hits.
4) Heal Y-2 boxes.

Unless the remaining damage is from drain:
5) Cast heal.

What he said. Using first aid in the middle of a fight pretty much prevents any other actions.

Also, don't forget that he's at a significant dice pool penalty. -2 just for being a mage, -2 (or more) for lousy conditions, and wound modifiers. And even if he has dice left, the first two successes don't count. No matter how high his first aid skill is, operating at -6 dice and +2 Threshold is going to crimp his style.

Yeah, when it comes to targeting I think it's always best to put yourself in the NPC's shoes and really visualize what is going on when picking targets. Unless we're talking about savvy hit men, or tacnet equipped response teams like the red samurai I figure that they are usually going to take the clearest shot they can rather than think about things like laying down crossfire.

This is very important. Are you enforcing the time requirement?