True Drakes : Armor? Stats?, Dragons of the 6th world clarifications Options

[freudqo]

Hi all,

Just preparing a SR3 run, for which I plan to introduce the PCs to a true drake.

Problem is true drakes don't have an armor statistics in Dragons of the 6th World, despite having the hardened armor power. Neither do bred drakes, but you can find they have 6 points of armor in Threats 2. So I guess true drakes have at least 6 points of armor. I'd put it to 8, since it would correspond to their essence… Does any one have any idea on it?

Second question is about which power works in which form, and which statistics is true for which form. True drakes only have one set of statistics. Shall we assume that those stats remain identical in human form, contrary to bred drakes?

Thanks!

[Cochise]

Problem is true drakes don't have an armor statistics in Dragons of the 6th World, despite having the hardened armor power. Neither do bred drakes, but you can find they have 6 points of armor in Threats 2. So I guess true drakes have at least 6 points of armor. I'd put it to 8, since it would correspond to their essence… Does any one have any idea on it?

Second question is about which power works in which form, and which statistics is true for which form. True drakes only have one set of statistics. Shall we assume that those stats remain identical in human form, contrary to bred drakes?

Well, the rules on Drakes in SR3 always left me with a rather bad impression, particularly as far as Dot6W was concerned and Errata never happened for either Threats II or Dot6W:

Some observations though:

1. Where the stats from Threats II made it clear that the bred Drake's stats were based on his normal metahuman body via the N variable. The stats in Dot6W are obviously(?) only the representation for a "human" Drake when seen in that context. When going by the idea of "newer rule" supersedes "old rule" one could however argue that all bred Drakes have those (average) stats as presented in Dot6W regardless of what metahuman body they have.
2. As you noted both the stats for true and bred Drakes lack the armor value as part of the body attribute notation.
3. Threats II stated that the (listed) powers of bred Drakes are limited to their dracoform.
4. Note that in Threats II neither the "Metahuman Form" power nor the "Magical Skills" power (NPC short description for all magic practitioners regardless of exact type) are present in those stats but both their shapechanging ability as well as them typically being aspected / full magicians or adepts (plus the associated abilities) are explicitly explained at the beginning of Drake Abilities paragraphs.
5. Additionally as per Threats II the bred Drakes with "Magical Skills" have access to Astral Perception and Astral Projection in their human shape regardless of magic type => Bred Drakes that are standard Adepts obviously get Astral Perception for free and gain access to Astral Projection, Aspected Magician Drakes gain Astral Projection while Full Magician Drakes just have those in accordance to normal PC/NPCs of that kind ... Adepts of the Magician's way Drake are the biggest winners there overall.
6. Shadowrun 4 presented bred Drakes with (Hardened) Armor of 4 whereas true Drakes had it at a value of 6

As far as your questions are concerned:

1. With the distinct lack of armor values in Dot6W you can choose pretty much any armor value you like but I see three main options there:
   
   1. Despite other attributes being higher for true Drakes you could keep it at 6 with the fundamental difference that it's actually Hardened Armor where bred drakes only have normal armor under SR3.
   2. Based on the fact that bred Drakes went from armor 6 to armor 4 in the SR3-to-SR4 transition one might follow the idea this implies a -2 modifier to the original value and thus true Drakes in SR3 would have had an armor value of 8 just as you already suggested
   3. Instead of a -2 modifier one could see the 6 vs. 4 values in SR4 as a proportional thing which in turn would mean that you also could aim for an armor value of 9 for true Drakes in SR3
   
   Personally I have no preference between a) and b) and thus would make it dependent on the general power level of your group. But I would avoid c) due to the ramifications concerning which weaponry would ultimately be able to actually harm a true Drake
   
2. That question is actually a two part question as well:
   
   1. Seeing that bred Drakes originally were supposed to have their dracoform stats derived from their metahuman shape I'm inclined to say that the true Drake stats in Dot6W are just the average values for a true Drake with human shape just as the stats in Dot6W for bred Drakes are only representative for average bred Drakes with human shape. Subsequently I'd say that average true Drakes should come with these stats:
      
      CODE
        B      Q      S    C    I    W    E    R
      N+7/X N+2(x4)  N+6  N+1  N+2  N+2   8Z  N+3
      
      X is to be replaced by the value you choose as armor and N is to be replaced by the attribute value of their physical body ... and yes a true Troll-Drake would certainly become a tough one even if you were to go with the lowest suggestion I made for X. Starting magic rating would be 6 reduced by double Essence loss values of any implants that the Drake might have in his human shape or whatever incidents of magic loss he had to endure but can of course be re-increased depending on how many levels of initiation you deem the NPC in question should have.
   2. As far as Powers are concerned I'd again go with how bred Drakes originally were supposed to work as per Threats II: Critter Powers and abilities that are directly related to the use of "magic" (adept, aspected and full magician), astral perception [projection] or changing the current shape are available in either shape. All others are strictly limited to usage in dracoform.

As always YMMV ...

[freudqo]

Thank you for all these inputs!

For something they decided to make a playable character (bred drakes I mean), I'm amazed how careless they were…

[Cochise]

For something they decided to make a playable character (bred drakes I mean), I'm amazed how careless they were…

I have this strong feeling that when bred Drakes made it into Dot6W as player characters (with their less than complete or consistent creation rules) the actual development focus already had shifted towards SR4 and thus "care" for the technically "dead" edition wasn't much of a priority.