We are starting a brand new SR4A campaign in the coming weeks, and had our first character gen last night. One of the players, who started out making a sammie, ended up with a bear shapeshifter who is a physical adept. He took 6 points of Mystic Armor.

Yeah. How does one realistically challenge a character like that in combat? Assuming he has a basic Armor Jacket, he has 14 Ballistic Armor, and even if one does get a bullet through all that, he has a Body + Magic of 16 for his Regeneration tests.

I have repeatedly stressed the relative rareness of magic, though all four of my players ended up taking awakened characters... its going to be challenging enough keeping to canon without having to have a mage or silver armed security forces in every group to keep this guy interested.

Any thoughts? This is my first time GMing SR since second edition. Its been a long, long time. That said, I am a very experienced GM, who just needs some ideas on this particular situation.

Ok, so many mages... What the pc's can do/use, the npc's can equal. Give them _A_ cracked out shapeshifter phys ad as a recurring enemy. Once enemies realize[part of a corp or higher ranking ganger group], some pelt/bounty hunters.... They'd be likely to use silver bullets... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I lurves playing shifters. My DM did this to me. Also, Regen fixes physical damage. It's null and void on magics. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

OK, sorry to be an arsehat, but I did specify that I didn't want to use mages or silver bullets against him consistently, as I think that is quite a stretch from canon. Yes, he can, and will, encounter those who are hunting him specifically, but if that is a part of ever single run, it is going to get old real fast.

Look up the rules for Called Shots.

Good catch. I read that in Regeneration, but totally glossed it over. I don't think its beyond the pale at all for the leader of a particular security force to yell out "Frag it, shoot him in the head!" when they watch the bullet wounds close on his torso.

Thanks Doc!

Yeah, sorry tiger. Good call, doc.[36+hours on five hours of sleep]

Be warned though, people around these parts don't think opponents are going to notice if someone's regenerating or not. And for some, it even apparently takes a very specific and obscure Knowledge Skill to even know what this "regeneration" thing is! Parazoology? Magic Background? Paranormal Threats? Nope, none of those work at all.

According to some.

(I'm not one of them.)

Does he have magic of 6? Remember that you can only get rating equal to your magic. This might not be an issue if he does indeed have six magic, but if it is less, his armor has to be less as well.

If magic is comparatively rare in your version of SR, consider why that might be. Maybe Background count is very common. If they step into a BR of 2 or so, they lose 2 points of magic, and thus adepts will have to drop powers and mages won't be nearly as strong.

Maybe magic is less common because lots of people are resistant to it. Characters with magic resistance, arcane arrestor, and astral hazing all make for good ways to keep a magic heavy group from running rampant.

Consider throwing them into a BR 6 zone and watch as they all look at each other and go "You can do stuff without magic... right?" and everyone shakes their head.

Also, if magic is rare, and they are a group with such powerful magic, those rare other magic types are going to be very interested by the group. They might make them an offer they can't refuse.

Edit: Oh, and of course simple things like foci are going to be much harder to obtain, and likely far more expensive because you don't have many mages around gathering materials and making stuff from them. Consider disallowing them having the classic talismonger contact and make them really work for the foci form of advancement.

All excellent points Karoline. I didn't mean to imply that my magic would be less rare than the average SR campaign though, or that I would be deviating from the RAW books. I just noted a lot of spots where the designers made statements to the effect that the average person had not seen magic personally. From that, and other statements about the relative rarity of awakened people, I infer that magic should be non-ubiqutous, and relatively rare.

So while not every security force will have a mage on it, they will be out there. Just not every single time, as I think that would strain the world as its been designed a bit.

Well, keep this in mind though. The book seems to list awakened at somewhere between .1% - 1% of the population. Runner groups of course always break this number, because there is always at least 1 hanging around, and usually 25-50+% are awakened. This is because it is a special area that will have high concentrations due to the money that can be made without selling your soul to the corps.

Corps are another place that you will see a particularly high concentration of mages, because they are willing to fork out the big bucks to get awakened to work for them (Mages and Mystic Adepts in particular), they will show much higher than the 1% concentration as well. And what all these areas of high concentration mean is that the general populace sees even lower than advertised levels of magic. Runners have a magic population of about 25%, and corps can be expected to have a similar (security) population. This leaves joe on the street population decimated, and likely somewhere closer to .0001%.

This is why joe average has never seen a spell before, because mages outside the shadows or corps are rare. That and the fact that many spells aren't seen on the physical plane. They could watch a big battle between two mages as they threw stunbolts at each other and counterspelled and summoned spirits to the astral plane, and the whole time think it was just two random people looking at each other kind of funny until one of them suddenly falls unconscious.

Edit: What this means for your game is that it certainly isn't beyond belief that every single compound they break into will have at least one mage, or some spirits, or at the very least a mage on call who can pop up in astral in a minute or two if needed. Certainly not every squad should include a mage, but many should have access to counterspelling and spell support via a mage watching them through fiberoptics.

Well, assuming the current world population of 6,692,030,277; that would mean, if we were to awaken at this moment at a rate of 1%, there'd be ~66,920,302 awakened people worldwide. In the U.S., there're 304,059,724. So it wouldn't be unreasonable to say about 3.04 million people in the states would be awakened. Most living in large cities like Seattle, New York, Dallas... And with projected world population in 2070 to be assumed to peak at 9 billion, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say that there'd be about 90 million people in the world awakened. At on to that the paracritters, awakened animals[200,000 shifters alone not tallied into that figure...], and the dragons... Well, magic really wouldn't be that uncommon, seeing it in numbers, eh? Sorry. Gota little bored...

@Karoline: I like your ideas. I'll have to incorporate them in case one of my players play a shifter.

A Perception should allow them to just notice that the Shapeshifter isn't going down but not exactly why. But evidently some people think that just because the characters can see the effect they should automatically know why it is happening. No need for Knowledge skills at all. Nope, no need at all.

According to some.

(I'm not one of them.)

Even if a skill is applicable, it doesn't necessarily mean that the threshold is reachable by the character. Some general skills like Magic Background while theorectically applicable may have such a high threshold it is practically impossible for all but the most skilled and/or smart to reach.

Shot a guy 6 times in the Chest with an AR. Seen blood spray out. He's still standing. Hell yeah I'm shooting him in the head / using excessive force (a grenade should be able to at least knock him prone, HE grenade maybe do enough damage that you as GM rule he has to wait for something like an arm to regen - which as a Mundane I would notice). I don't need to know whats going on, I'm just going to lob enough ordinance at it in highly damaging locations until it stops.

Actually I'm going to run away screaming, but assuming that I can't go with option A. Then I'll shoot him in the head.

Oh and don't under-estimate the power of Knowledge Skill: B-Movie Monsters. I'm shooting it and its not dying, its a ZOMBIE! Lets shoot it in the head cos that kills zombies.

Ah but by 2060 a B-Movie Monster zombie can be killed by the chick who is a latent mage! Guns don't work, headshot or no.

Oh no! It's a vampire. Quick, someone throw me two sticks to make a cross, or some garlic, or holy water, or a mirror! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

There are so many rumors flying around about creatures like werewolves and vampires that it is unlikely that people know the real weaknesses. About the only beliefs that are accurate are stake through the heart (Though most won't realize that the wood all on its own will mess up a vampire) and sunlight (Which is less detrimental than in the movies)

Sure, magical background might be able to provide you with some truths about regeneration if you can get about 5 hits (That's like saying history class should provide information about the distance from here to the moon since history involves traveling to the moon). Parazoology might get it at 3-4 hits, as the study is going to be more concerned with the critters, their habits, diets, habitats, maybe powers. Paranormal threats would be the most likely, with somewhere around 2-3 hits to mark regeneration's weaknesses and the weaknesses of a particular regenerating creature. Even then you might pull up fake info, because there is alot of it out there, and not a heck of a lot of scientific tests to determine what is and isn't effective (And then variation vampires and shifters bring in even more difficulty). I never meant to imply that these skills couldn't do it, only that it isn't a given just by having a rank or two in the skill, as regeneration is a relatively rare power.

If you have something like Vampire/werewolf hunting, then yeah, a rank or two is plenty to know the basics of what will and won't kill that thing, or maybe Paranormal threats (vampires) would lower the threshold (Or at least be giving you more dice). My point here is that just because it shows up in the book doesn't mean it is common knowledge to joe average. Think of all the ways you've ever heard of, or 'facts' you've ever heard about vampires or werewolves. That is what joe average knows, that there are about 50 things that might take them down, but also that each of those 50 things may also do nothing at all.

Personally, outside of SR, I generally haven't run across the idea that a werewolf can't regenerate spinal damage or headshots. For the most parts it's silver, wolfsbane, or you're screwed.

My point was less that it would give you sound knowledge to go on, more that even morons can get lucky and make the right call. Especially when its not an outrageous suggestion. Shoot it in the head is a fairly standard way to deal with body armour, wild animals etc not just regen.

Except that "Shoot it in the Head to avoid that Body armor" is generally a lose proposition fo rhte attacker, as you will probably not actually hit it at all at that point... you must take a negative equal to its armor to do so, and you will never negate the inboirn armor of the creature as it is actually unavoidable... so that shifter with a Armored Jacket is now -8 to hit the "Head" and it may still have Mystic armor that you cannot negate that way...

Good Luck

Keep the Faith

Yeah, there is that. I meant from a realism POV not necessarily Mechanics.

Oh, well okay...

Sorry...

But, very few people in real life are so competent that they can consistently make called shots to the head in a running combat, despite the movies... and though it is a good idea, it is risking a complete miss to a middle body hit that MIGHT actually do something (though in the case of the Zombie, probably not)...

Keep the Faith

Good points Adrian, though I seem to recall reading somewhere, and maybe someone can point me at the actual information, that the Sixth World's population was considerably lower than would normally be expected, due to the lack of resources which predicated the resource rush, the repeated outbreaks of VITAS, and the corporation management of personel and resources.

But yes, if there are even three billion, one percent of that is still thirty million awakened individuals. One in a hundred awakended means that most of us would have had at least a mage or two in our high schools. Combine that with Karoline's points about the corps and the runners snatching up most of those, that would still leave a larger percentage of awakened folks in your average city.

Hell, even my little city of Halifax would have ~ three thousand awakened in it. Even if three quarters of those people are effectively hidden by corps and runners, that's still 750 awakended walking the streets.

I think I am going to have to revisit my "magic is that rare" point with my group. I had the wrong impression. Funny how the actual numbers can do that.

Glad to help. The specific hunter/silver bullet in every clip type thing, I still see being a stretch of reality[yes, I use that loosely].

I've always found numbers to be great, if [edit]not* infallible, eye openers.

Why would anyone think people don't know how to deal with shapeshifters? Would agree the general populous may not have much experience with them, however since there has been bounty on them for years, finding out how to kill them wouldn't be that hard am guessing. They are rare, they aren't myths like now.... Am sure there hasn't been a single sim made about them at all..... Now weather or not they have a set of silver/wood bullets on hand is another story.

Apparently few people on the forums have realized that magic was kinda-sorta proven real in the Sixth World, including all those fanciful monsters of yore. If you don't have some obscure, overly-focused Knowledge Skill, you're completely ignorant to even the most basic and simple of things.

(But only as long as it fits someone's argument, of course. If this was a "How Do Know How to Deal with Shapeshifters?" thread, I'd wager dollars to donuts that they'd be arguing the exact opposite.)

I would consider accepting that this character will be all but immune to small arms fire from standard mooks, and look at his other vulnerabilities.

Being dual-natured means that astrally projecting beings can safely lob spells at him from a distance, and that wards will be a problem (keep in mind that defeating the ward still alerts the caster - and wards, even in a magic-rare campaign, should be a fairly common security measure).

He is still vulnerable to narrow bursts, heavy weapons, gas, sonics, poison, adepts (damage from killing hands or weapon foci does not regenerate), and spells (which also do not regenerate). Other prime runner types can have dice pools high enough to hurt him even with standard small arms, and if they know he is a shapeshifter, they will be packing silver rounds and/or making called shots to the head.

There is also the fact that shapeshifters are obvious to anyone assensing them (unless they take masking) or analyzing their DNA, and that there is a bounty on them.

Considering what's on TV now wouldn't surprise me if there were not only documentaries on all types of “super naturals”. Wouldn't bet against them to being stars in their own “soap”. Anything to sell.

Just thinking about a SR sim version of "The Munsters" brings a smile to my face.