And when you think that an F10 should be rolling 20x edged diced...thats usually 10-11 hits. And Summoning Drain = net hits x 2. Aka, 20+ damage of drain to soak. Even had you gotten 7 successes, you would be dead.

Mages have more than raw dice to grow. Initiation gives you new powers that are not available anywhere else. The biggest one is masking. Right now, as long as Zod has is Increase Initiative spell on, he's a beacon in the astral. With his weak WIL, he should not survive any kind of magical opposition.

Refreshing edge every session was probably a bad move from the GM. Given your playstyle, it only rewards you for screwing up since you get even more edge to finish the mission.

If it's silly, don't do it? Why is it so difficult for you guys? Someone already quoted the carrying rules, your STR 1 character cannot walk with all that stuff.

Force 4 breaks the availability cap at chargen, he should only be able to get a Force 3. It also makes his mundane character vulnerable to magical defenses (wards, backrground count, assensing,...) but for that the PNCs should stop acting like depressed lemmings.

Yup, that's what mages are.

WiFi-Scan is IMO not exact enough to be used for blind fire. Not that much of a problem in a world full of radar systems, but still.
Professional criminals should have ballistic glass on their flats; or barriers behind the windows if those are blackened out anyway.
I would not permit anyone to rebuild someone elses char in absentiam!




Your players went onto that roof. Who knows what kind of alert was raised? Maybe someone saw a bunch of armed criminals enter the building, maybe a neighbor of Kaz saw the sniper on the opposite roof. Even if the gunshots triggered the alarm, first responders will be those cops already in the general area. BTW, what is the plan for escape?


Yes. I suggest to keep to the device rating table by consensus, removing any need to powergame hacking. It´s much like magic/spirits. And I hope that you own The Precious instead/on top of the original SR4 book.


You are really having some fun ahead if the proceed to kill people for being drug dealers, like Dae. If they were more enlightened, Grey-Wolf could have played along with them hitting Kaz.




At -2 per sustained spell, I hope Dawg has a bunch of sustaining foci for health. I´d still summon the spirit first. Are you aware that First Aid has a threshold and modifiers?

ZOD decides to have some action... hand it out. No reason to complain there.

An old suggestion for fixing hardened armor is treating it as "half rating auto-success, half rating rolled". Besides making things more manageable, it removes the almost binary results for better hardened armor (=if penetrated than destroyed). Agree with Gazzor on an appropiate force range for spirits anyway, as a force 9 Guardian can replace a fully armed munched Samurai. Force 6 is good, maybe 8 for high-powered games.



Rules Questions:
Can a hacker gain a User account on a node, then just decide to continue the extended test to get the 6 more hits required for Admin?
The latter. Going for Admin does not yield you lower access rights if you miss the threshold by just a few hits.

Tracing of commlinks via messages:
See Black Matrix Service Providers, Unwired p.85, and Unwired p.53-55 on Data Routing.

The action of searching a general area for hidden notes is an Extended test with a threshold of 15. So, what happens if a hidden node arrives in the area during the Extended Test?
If you are already having those dice rolled, be generous and don´t test again. May I ask what the player hopes to gain?

The Track User action lets you track anyone "whose icon is present in your node". So... if you hack someone's commlink, under what circumstances is their icon present in the commlink's node? Is it there all the time? Or only when they're in VR or interacting with the Matrix in some other way? Does an AR user ever leave their commlink's node?
The commlink provides a persona, and said persona is always on the commlink, plus on all nodes the commlink is subscribed to. In this situation (the commlink is already hacked), I´d give location data for matrix perception. If the commlink had GPS, the information would even be more accurate than ~50m.

For ZOD
Several problems have been pointed out. Agi 6(10) is available for 40 BP Agi 6, 5 BP Restricted Gear, 7 BP Muscle Toner 4, or 52 BP. In case someone needs to shave a few BPs.

Regarding efficiency, note that you can only kill a target once. Agi 10 + Firearms 4 + Smartlink is usually enough and provides more options.

Visual Perception 11 is acceptable, a dp of 6 for everything else says you won´t hear an ambush or attackers behind you.

Depending on someone else for IPs is dangerous. Read up on barriers. Also on background count before buying that sustaining focus. Still nothing compared with your inability to climb, run or swim. Limits your choices for escape. The ability to kick in doors may also come handy.

It will also be dangerous to rely on the mage for defense against spells. Keeping LOS in buildings is mostly the same as staying within a single AoE for grenades and spells.

Uncouth... calling it a trap is a nice wording. Look at the Cha-linked opposed tests on p.130 of The Precious.

You only get to spend 4 power points. Imp. Agi is 3 PP, Imp. Automatics 4 is 2PP. (Terrible waste of BP if you ask me, and not legal anyway. Reflex Recorder + Imp. Automatics 2 provides the allowed 3 extra dice.)

The smartlink requires an image link.

Yes, he's very vulnerable to ambush - if someone reasonably good at sneaking and brawling comes from behind, he's going to be toast : snatch his gun (with the rules as they are he could use the alpha to blow his opponent to bits even if engaged in melee) and use the stock to smash his face. With neither hand-to-hand skills, gymnastics or dodge there's very little he could do about it even if he's as fast as greased lighting. And if he ever try to boobytrap the way to reach his position to secure his back, with no skills an 1 logic he's going to blow his traps in his face as he's trying to set them.

Even more of an humiliation : if he's perched on a rooftop, his very low willpower means a watcher manifesting in his back and yelling 'boo' has a good chance to make him jump to his doom in surprise...

Definitevely a one-trick pony that's flatly unable to survive on it's own. With his minimal charisma, the uncouth quality and an absolute zero social skill, he'll have problems just buying the bullets to keep his skills polished...

Shouldn't we run Zod throught he character clinic?

Definitly. Someone fetch his player, we´ll need input.

I'd rather say we should run Zod's player through a Shadowrun bootcamp. With examples of how fast can we obliterate his character as GMs, using a variety of tricks (preferably by making his own party kill him, that's the most fun solution!). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

A lot of people think that "The hackers have no reason to be after me, I'm an unimportant schmuck." These people are prime targets for phishing, of course. However, successful criminals are smarter than that (specially because the FBI can institute all manner of phone taps), and treat cell phones as security hazards.

Don't store sensitive data on a wirelessly acccessible device if it's not necessary. Erase all call logs, don't keep a phone book but "remember" phone numbers instead:

Sensitive data is stored on an implant commlink in your head, which has its wifi antenna physically removed, and is accessed through a datajack instead. The cables help to make sure you don't forget to take off a trode net when leaving your inner sanctum, and make wifi hacking harder. The goal of the implant commlink is to be a computer, be an auxiliary memory, calculator etc, not a communications device. It also helps you store comm numbers in a less sensitive space. An important feature of this implant commlink is that it's immune to pickpocketing, theft or remote hacking.




I'm inclined to say yes... compare it to a movie scene where the FBI/CIA/whatever is trying to keep someone talking, keep the line open, so it can be traced. Maybe demand that there needs to be an open connection.




I'd say that it's in the spirit of the rules to be allowed to track a commlink that you're hacked into.





Here we have real-world computer stuff meeting SR again, always a tricky thing. It makes sense - the network routes stuff to a commlink based on its Access ID, and there are ways to change your Access ID. So logically you could turn off Zak's commlink and set your own Access ID to the same value, and masquerade as Zak's link. Of course, from a game balance perspective, that way lies madness...

In the real world, there's a great deal of trickery involved with spoofing your identity as an entity on the web. It's not very easy to impersonate, say, a bank - there are all sorts of third-party authentication schemes to foil that. But SR doesn't use that kind of detail. So this is vague...

Of course, the smart solution would have been to just steal Zak's commlink or hack it, and route calls through it.




Other people have pointed out that the rules for First Aid were applied incorrectly here. Read them extremely carefully, they're trickier than they appear, and if you apply them completely, less unbalanced than what happened here.

And that kind of summoning is what you get when you refresh Edge every session. It's probably best to refresh it every mission instead.



Eh. For this kind of stuff I generally use a "luck roll" - if the player rolls well, he gets the good option. This really seems like a job for random chance.



1) If Zod wasn't aware of the sniper, he wouldn't get to defend against it in the first IP the sniper attacked.
2) No smart sniper has a wireless device with him, because it compromises stealth. If you must communicate, path in a cable to some local building's landline and get a fake account.


Anyway, concerning Kaz's fate: they didn't make sure the body was really dead, from close by? Then according to everything Hollywood has taught us, he must be alive, just playing dead so they'll stop shooting and let him regenerate in peace.


Let's vivisect this abomination.
STR 1, no Climbing - this sniper is not going to be climbing to rooftops. If he tries, he'll fall off, taking some falling damage, and ruining chances at stealth.
LOG 1 - smack him with a rolled-up newspaper every time he tries to come up with a complicated plan for anything. LOG is easy to dump because there aren't all that many skills that use it, but lockpicking is one of them, and with his lack of climbing skills, how's he going to get on top of buildings?
WILL 1 - No defense against magic at all. Use Control Actions to make him walk off that building (assuming he can get up on it in the first case.) Make him dance like a monkey during combat. Shoot him with a stunbolt. Tempt him with drugs.
WILL 1, no Influence Skills, Uncouth - he has NO defense against any social roll. He doesn't even get a single die. Young schoolgirls can make him their sock puppet.
No Dodge or Gymnastics - introduce him to the wonderful world of people trying to hurt you, and you not having any way to avoid it.
No Stealth skills - this is a sniper? Make sure to make him roll those stealth skills.
No Matrix skills, non-customized commlink loadout - every hacking trick the PCs have pulled so far, you can do to him, easily.
Fake SINs: these are things you show to officials to show that you're not a criminal. With those names?


This is really one of the most absurdly munchkinized builds I've seen, but with huge glaring holes in it. This is a character who can't hide, can't talk, can't take a beating. He's a maniac with a gun.





I wouldn't let players roll Edge on tests to notice something passively. Edge is for when a character puts in extra effort. Just make the passive PErception rolls in secret; get them to give you the numbers for their dice pools so you don't have to ask them. Just roll some dice behind the GM screen now and then.










INT 1 is a big risk though; low Initiative can be deadly if surprised, and low INT means your Perception checks to spot ambushes will be rather difficult.

Anyway, you seem to be more levelheaded that whoever plays this Zak creature (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) Just remember that D&D tries to shoehorn people into balanced builds, while SR gives you a lot more freedom to minmax as you see fit. But with great power...

To be fair: a Willpower of 2-4 doesn't mean shit against magic either, since every spellcaster has Spellcasting + Attribute as his pool while the victim only has Willpower to resists against mana-based spells.

Personally, I don't think Zod is even optimized... he's got 1 IP, and utterly lacks skills or abilities that allow him to successfully get into situations where he actually gets to shoot someone.

Give him this character instead (courtesy of UmaroVI), it's a self-sufficient assassin character who's actually playable.

Honestly, with those stats it's highly unlikely he would have survived long enough in the SR world to even become a runner

Heavy Weapons? It kinda makes me ask something along the lines of "UMADBRO?". However, it can still be tweaked into a nice sniper character - instead of Heavy Weapons skill, LMG and plonker we can use Longarms at 4 and some decently kitted-out sniper rifle for something more assassin-like.
Which kinda gives me an idea to tweak my Russian para a bit. Not every soldier has to have points invested in Longarms after all. Most does well with Automatics.

Based on Gazzor's reply it looks like all their characters need to be run through it

With Zod's negative qualities, isn't he running something like notoriety 4 BEFORE he decided to be a runner and troll through Seattle in a DIY tank? At that point, I'd pretty much only be hiring a character like that for suicide runs.

Of course, feel free to tweak.

After talking it over with Suoq i'm pretty much waiting for the 10th iteration where this has been one elaborate troll. I think i'm done.

If he turns out to be one, I will definitely donate to Dumpshock. Many lulz were had in these threads, and it makes me appreciate my group of sometimes trigger-happy players a lot more.

True, but with a Will 3-5, if your party magician has Counterspelling, you've got a shot at it. With Will 1, even that is unlikely to work out.

Fair enough.

Do you happen to have this build in Chummer format? Uploaded on Omae maybe?

Unfortunately for us, this is indeed the properly chronicled misadventures of the clueless pink-mohawk gang. At least some of our problems stem from not reading the rules deeply enough (skimming != understanding), coupled with Chummer (our character generation tool of choice) not enforcing certain rules until very recently, coupled with our innate need to minmax because we're too used to hero games, where the protagonist is expected to be exceptional even when starting out.

The fact that most of the players are vicious sadistic nutjobs is, I would argue, actually a point in our favour given the setting for SR4A. At least it's not Paranoia... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Note that at no point would I put any of the blame on Hyphz; I've done my share of GMing and it can be hard enough in a system you are familiar with, never mind one you've only just started. Some of the judgement calls he's made so far have turned out to be innacurate once the rules were better explained, but we have categorically enjoyed every session so far, especially some of the WTF? moments as chronicled in earlier sessions. I fully intend to keep playing SR until we've worked through (read: mangled beyond belief) the plot options available in the sourcebook he's using. Even if it takes 5 TPKs and an endless stream of new character builds to do so (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

Regarding character clinics, I am perfectly happy to show my incompetence at creation in return for suggestions on improvement; I built Caine and Faceman for this campaign, as well as the late Mr. Happy Punch (melee troll who was ditched because he didn't roll 20+ dice) and prototyping a hacker. Would you recommend I start a seperate thread to keep the campaign trainwreck seperate from the character trainwreck? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Oh, your expected to be exceptional still. 400 BP is a pro-runner, the equivalent of a hard core professional - made that way because the other 90% are dead. But, not only are you expected to be exceptional in your field, but you need to provide utility in several others, and at least not die horribly to chipheads in everything else. Its not "Me big dumb fighter, but thats ok, becaus em need smash kobolds!" its "I'm a moron with a gun. Because I'm stupid, I don't have a chance in hell to figure out what this pay data is, whats on this link, or where that camera is likely tied to. I die horribly wondering how that drone got there."

Most of the games we've played previously have been level based though, where the expectation is that even if you max out at chargen, it's still pants compared to where you *will* get once you've scoffed enough XPs, so as a player if you want your char to be über at high level, you need to specialise right away. This is where SR4 completely derails us, as if you max shooting at chargen (and get 26 dice in automatics) that's as far as it is reasonably going to go, and you don't get defense for free.

And since players don't have a level, neither do NPCs, so we could be facing 8DP gangers who aren't that much of a challenge, or 18DP security pros who will likely kill us completely to death. As a DM you don't get the same "they are level 3, so I'll use some level 3 to level 5 monsters" and the balance happen by itself. It's doable if you start karmabuilding your NPCs and quantise by totals, but only if you minmax the builds to a similar extent; "they are 750 karma so I'll use 600 to 800 karma opponents" can still end up either being a challenge, or a walkover (going either way).

That aspect of the system is where we have completely missed the point, and ended up with massively unbalanced characters. Sure some of the guys have 20+ dice to throw around, but as pointed out by practically everyone, they are paper cannons at best.

I think I'm going to post up my hideous abominations in a new thread and see what I should have done right (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I mean, the problem is that sometimes they're *not* paper. You can be okay-good-great at… everything, if you crunch harder than everyone else, and esp. use all the 'bought the book' bonuses. So there's character-roundness as an issue, and then there's simply 'power balance' as an issue.