Could we come back to the Topic please ?
I'll start with :

what about Laserpointer or Red Dot ?
Do they follow the same rules like Smartlink ?
like +1 Accuracy without Wireless and
+1 Acc & +1 Dice if online ?

With a curious Dance
Medicineman

I come back to Questions and answers :

What test should be done by a hacker to hack the commlink of someone else and what test should be done to resist ?

I suppose that the hacker launch Intuition+hacking skill dices (with limit based on a cyberdeck attributes), but is it now an opposed test or a treeshold test ?

Doest the commlink resist with only attributes/programs (Firewall indeed) or we take into account a skill or an attribute of the owner (for exemple, Logic+Computer with limit=Firewall) ?

I'm rather curious as to why you consider yourself qualified to decide who does or does not have business running the shadows.

Forced Evolution does that quite nicely, actually. If you cannot defend yourself then you are Meat, as was explained somewhere above. *shrug*
The Shadows will grind you up and spit you out, especially if you are incapable of actually defending yourself.

The question, though, is what counts as "you." Why does it have to be the individual character that needs to be able to defend themselves, individually? Why isn't the concern about whether or not the team can function as, well, a team? And why does it matter so much if the "forced evolution" at one game table isn't the same as the "forced evolution" at yours?

...um, what the hell happened to "What happens at my table doesn't have to be what happens at your table"?

Well that is because at your table you get fun wrong, at my table we get it right damn it.

Do spirits have the same power as in SR4 rules or powers were reworked to give more differences between two kinds of spirit (contrary to SR4 where air, water and man spirit have rather the same powers) ?

Does the drain for summoning still "2 x Success" of the spirit ?

you forgot to write *shrug* (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Everyone ends up alone from time to time, and even end up in a bad pickle with no backup, occasionally. If you cannot defend yourself, then you lose, simple as that. Now, that said, defending yourself can take many paths. There is no one way to do so, but some are far more effective than others.

As for what happens at each table, that was never a consideration, to my knowledge. It was a simple statement of the reality of the Shadowrun environment. As a runner, you will eventually be in a position where you have no backup and need to defend yourself. If you cannot do so, then you lose (in whatever way that occurs). *shrug*

Nothing at all... That still holds. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Or it might never come up. You can live in a lower class location and never, ever be in that situation. Or, you can just luck out. I've been in an armed holdup at a convenience store (is that a Shadowrun scenario, or what?) I was standing right in front of the front window, by the comic book stand, and the gunman just never saw me. He came in, he held up the place, he left, and through the entire thing he didn't see me at all. It was uncanny.

The only other time I ever had to deal with something like that, a guy threatened me and pinned me to the bus shelter. I recognized that he was a 'punk' sort of individual, and (lying) pointed out he didn't want to beat me up, there were a few 'skaters' who went by down the block a short while ago. He decided beating up skaters was more fun, set me down, and took off.

But, there are people who don't even go that far.

True, it can happen, but as a Shadowrunner, are you willing to bet your life on it, because you are. It only takes once, and if you cannot stand and deliver, you lose. Shadowrunners are not known for their sane behavior and reticence for getting into places that they should not be... places that can end in their death if caught.

And that's a choice. And I don't see a need to punish the player for that choice. She has a concept, it works, I run with it.

And I bet that you don't put the character in a situation where that "Choice" obviously works against her either. Because doing so would show the character that the choice was flawed just about the time that the character died.

Does your GM make the flaw of not tossing 20+ dice apparent?

What is a flaw in your game may not be a flaw in their game, there is no universal take on the SR universe. It is totally reasonable that in some games individuals don't get jumped often enough as long as they play it safe that the GM would not feel the need to make that "flaw “apparent.

True... But if a Flaw is never exploited, it is not a Flaw...
Our GM is good at exploiting our flaws. And he is good at not shoving them in our face all the time, too. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

It stops becoming a problem if you decide to go the angle of combat being a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of thing (which I've heard stories of people doing, and is something I'm looking into doing)

Otherwise, I see no reason to punish people for going with a concept they want to explore.

Perhaps, but I have yet to see any Shadowrun Campaign have absolutely zero combat in it. It just, to my knowledge, does not happen.

My Shadowrun games have combat about once every 7-8 sessions, sometimes going as long as 10 sessions without conflict. The characters live their lives, make contacts, work for their employers, prepare themselves, meet opposition, then rinse and repeat. The pacifist just finished getting her drones repaired (who launch fire-retardant foam as a weapon), and the group is about to protect an exploration team going into the Deep Laguna for a documentary.

I prefer my Shadowrun to be closer to Minority Report / I, Robot than Bladerunner or Robocop. Sure, there's sections of the world which absolutely SUCKS, but that isn't the defining characteristic of the setting for me unless the players want to play that level of game. For this campaign, we decided to focus on the higher strata of society.

Plus, for my current group, it's starting to become more and more apparent that combat just isn't their thing, and that they prefer to lean more towards the RP side of things.

That, and I've been stressing to them how it's very easy for your characters to get killed with one shot, and they they're better off avoiding combat whenever possible.

Point being: combat doesn't have to be the end-all-be-all for SR.

i don't recall anyone saying you had to be able to kill the thugs, or defeat them with violence.

the litmus test is "can you deal with them".

so, for example, having good enough social skills to make them go somewhere else: congratulations, you just passed the test. in fact, i would bet that the method most people will choose in the shadowrun world will not involve deciding to fight them 2 on 1.

but if you don't have *some* means at your disposal of getting out of a bad situation, on your own, then you should have died in chargen.

If the game is 'balanced' with the assumption of a given runner team having specific archetypes and roles present, it will make writing for Shadowrun Missions real interesting, since in those games you CANNOT assume anything about what players are bringing into the game.


-k

Well, consider this: If that is true, the system cannot be said to be supporting a concept if the concept cannot pass that test, There are various valid decker concepts that without some strong form of combat-relevant hacking could not pass that test. Is it your suggestion that the system should not support those concepts?

Yes, it is. Such a character may be technically skilled, but if they can't handle themselves confidently taking a walk down the street in the quieter parts of Redmond Barrens, they are a Contact archetype, not a 'Runner. They exist to do one thing and one thing only, and irregardless of whether they do that one thing well, they're just not able to honestly hack it. At best, they're a mission payload that gets dragged into a 'run to do something and then extracted by the rest of the team, but they're not really a participant.

Crippling overspecialization is for insects.