But that's the nature of a preview, isn't it? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

I never said "humanity" was an accurate term for what was being lost. The idea, however, is that there is an actual thing being lost that impacts the character's state of adjustment, which changes everything - potentially to the point that they're no longer capable of experience actual emotion. It's not about their self-perception (though that may well change as a consequence).

But the nature of bad PR is bad responses, isn't it? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)
They threw out something that many people seem to dislike without any kind of explanation behind the why.
Imagine what would have happened for example if they had decided to kill off Technomancers and make them into Otaku again because of the new wired matrix stuff and simply said:
"No more TM's, you go back to playing Otaku now" without anyting else.

Well, every PR is PR. It keeps people talking about the game. And what would you have released instead of a preview?

i'm guessing there's a would missing in there somewhere.

i would have expanded on stuff already known and kinda grudgingly accepted by most.
Deckers are back! Here's why, here's how, here's the difference between wired/unwired!
Here's how you can combine them to do stuff!

i'd maybe have tried to assauge fears that hackers now only need LOS like a magician, snap their fingers by rolling a simple skill check like shooting a gun and suddenly can switch off cyber-eyes or stuff like that.

Fixed.



Doesn't strike me as a much better idea, to be honest.

It's way better than:"Oh, yeah, cyberware gets another drawback again."

Your patron saint would give a negative response to everything CGL is releasing prior to SR5. I'm not saying that I agree with all concepts revealed for SR5 thus far, but constant negative response is certainly not helpful either.

my patron saint?
you would not be talking about Frank eh?
if you are? shove it.
this reaction was from me not from him.

Saint Nicholas: Patron Saint of Shadowrunners. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Never heard of him . . oh, he's that good? O.o

Not sure if serious....

what am i not getting here?

Okay guess it is serious. Sorry, can't always tell online. (Poe's law applies always).


St Nicholas is another name for Santa Claus, the fictional guy who goes around the world on Christmas night sneaking into every house in the world and dropping off presents.

Parallels to shadowrunners, while obviously not intended by the legend, are rather amusing.

Critias, you should have taken that bet. Or raised it. =i)

WAR! was two years ago, and written under like four different developers. At what point does it stop being like panning Sir Sean Connery for Zardoz? Serious answers preferred, trolls welcome.

Trolls not welcome, dude. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif)

Sure, but when Initiating and buying Magic, you get significant advances (an altogether new ability, +1 die to your main pools, +2 to the Force of the spells you can cast). When replacing an implant with a more advanced version, you get a minuscule improvement (not 1 Essence by far).

Yes, mages are overpowered, but going specifically after your player who elected to play a mage by the rules as presented is unfair. Because if you apply the rules unfavorably towards mages, why not hackers (strong encryption on everything, 1 day period) or anyone else (scanners everywhere, realistic forensics)?

Wards are stationary, easily detectable, and recasting a spell takes only a couple of seconds.

A sam can't bring a ward with him, and unless he has a mage of his own, he's all but defenceless against a mage.

Stunball, Trid Phantasm, Mob Control, Improved Invisibility. There, you're pretty much set to be better than a sam in what sams do, and can spend the rest of the spell roster on just being awesome in various ways.
Or just up Summoning.


After Professional Rating 6 street punks (in one of the Artifacts adventure books I believe), Professional Ratings are pretty meaningless.


As soon as the new books don't have APCs with Improved Suspension, dragon hordes instead of hoards, and Tadeshi Shiawase shapeshifting between that and Tadashi four times in a single page. Or at least when there's errata.

This is disingenuous. Some upgrades are minor, but others (Muscle Toner 2 > 4, WR n > MBW n+1, etc) are very substantial.

Also, the whole Saint Nicholas thing - it's also a Leverage joke, where he was brought up as the patron saint of thieves.

it stops when stuff actually improves. and looking at clutch of dragons . . no i can't really see much of an improvement, sorry.

1.) You know it is
2.) look who's talking.

Muscle Toner is significant, though already really expensive. Wired Reflexes into Move-by-Wire is in the price range that allows for a lifetime of partying on the Caribbean islands as an alternative.

Muscle toners, switching from atrificial muscle to bioware muscles, upgraded wired reflexes ... there are many implants where upgrading a level gets you a substantial reward. Essence price reduction also is substantial (getting you up to half the price "back"), but miniscule in implants that cost little essence, obviously. You're comparing apples and oranges here, though. Also initiation gets progressively more expensive, while cyberware stays the same price.


An adventure written by (what it seems) trained monkeys is no rulebooks. Let's just keep this focused on the topic (the rules), and not some bad implementation of them by people apparently not informed about how they work?

How often does your dedicated street samurai not already have most or all of his big ticket items (muscle toner, extra IPs, etc) right at character generation, or shortly afterwards?

You're not getting an upgrade from Muscle Toner 2->4. You're getting an upgrade from Muscle Toner 4 std -> Muscle Toner 4 Alpha, regaining .16 essence at the paltry cost of 32,000 nuyen, and now you have to fill that .16 essence with something else which is going to cost you more. These costs grow exponentially as well. Muscle Toner is relatively cheap. Going from Wired Reflexes 3 standard to delta is 900k nuyen, to save 2.5 essence. Upgrading from that to the Delta Synaptic Booster costs 1.4million to save another 1.75 essence. And this still isn't accounting for the cost of refilling the essence hole with something else to get an actual improvement.

Additionally, since you almost certainly went for the most important cyberware first, all this money you're dumping to improve? You're getting things that are progressively less important to you.

On the other end, the Mage is improving his initiation grade, both boosting his old metamagics and new ones. He's boosting his magic, boosting everything he does.

For sake of comparison, subtract the fencing price of the old ware from the cost of the new ware, and divide the difference by 2500. That would be approximately the Karma amount, in theory, that it represents. Then compare to the cost for a rank of initiation and new Magic point: 43, taking both a group initiation and ordeal discount into account. Hell, I'll take the math away - that would generally be equivalent to 107500 nuyen. That's getting close to enough for a character to go from no Muscle Toner to Beta Muscle Toner 4.

And generally? I don't consider Muscle Toner 4 to be worth Restricted Gear, for example. Most well-built sams, I would submit, have a lot of upgrading they could do after creation in terms of major ware; this is especially true for more rounded semi-sam characters (who I'll often only give WR1 for the sake of putting the resources elsewhere).

Can you direct me to where it says that wards have to be stationary? I got into an argument with my players about this. I said they were stationary and they said they weren't. I looked and looked and just couldn't find that piece of info to back me up. By rules that I found, a ward only needs an object to act as the centre of the ward, but it is still movable.

Thanks