Zatoichi, Plus what to hit? Options

[Blaze]

Everyone's tried to make the archetypal Blind Swordsman once in their shadowrunning career. Now it's my turn.
So, how to do it? Well, Adept's the 'in' way to go, so Blindness is a -2 flaw. Let's then give him the Adept Powers of Blind Fighting and Astral Sight (2.5 IIRC). As an extra, a level of Increased Reflexes (2), and fill the rest of the power points out with Quick Draw (0.5 IIRC) and a couple of levels of Improved Edged Weapons (1). So, say his stats are Q6, S5, I6 and he's wielding the old favourite dikoted katana. This means he's doing 9S at R1 in melee combat before we take into account successes from his 9 dice plus up to 7 combat pool, and can attack from the draw Iaijutsu-stylee. But what's his TN for combat against your average mundane opponent? From a base 4, we've got a +8 for fighting blind, halved to +4 for the Blind Fighting power, plus his reach bonus and, let's say, another -1 for an Aptitude in Edged Weapons to get his TN down to 6. Or would the blindness be counteracted to some degree (further or totally) by his Astral Sight?
I'll leave out the possibility of his blade being a Weapon Focus for now- that's just a little too sick. And I'm countering the Aptitude by the (horribly cliche'd) Dark Secret: Ninja Clan Member. :)

-JH.

[mfb]

you have astral sight, so there's no penalty for blindfighting. even if there were, the penalty would be +6, not +8--read the Blind flaw. however, you have a +2 TN mod for doing wholly mundane things, like sticking your sword into astrally-inactive targets.

incidentally, it's possible to make a blind weaponmaster without resorting to astral sight, which--to me--is cheating. the base TN mod is +6; the blindfighting adept power reduces that to +3 (according to the reply i recieved from the FAQ guys, the blindfighting power reduces blindness by half), the motion sense power reduces penalties by -2 if you've got a decent perception roll (select sound filter, baby!), and the blind-fighting manuever reduces penalties by another -2. penalties can't be reduced below 0, of course, so you end up melee'ing at TN 4.

[DrJest]

Blind fighting and astral perception wouldn't stack. Whilst astrally perceiving, your TN's are at +2, irrespective of your normal biological sight. I personally wouldn't allow blind fighting to affect that modifier.

[mfb]

oh, yeah. the blindfighting power won't help you while using astral perception, since using astral perception means you're, y'know, not fighting blind.

[FlakJacket]

Would the +2TN for using Astral Perception be applicable though? I thought it was more for the astral clashing with your normal perception of the world. If that is how you see things all the time, wouldn't you eventualy adapt and get used to it?

[Tarantula]

That gave me an idea. Someone dual-natured, but not percieving into astral. Blind fighting with astral entities attacking them?

[mfb]

*shrug* not according to the rules, flakjacket. an 'astral adaption' edge has been suggested before, to reduce the +2 TN.

you can't be dual-natured but not astrally percieving.

[Tarantula]

[hyzmarca]

Or, one could houserule a very nasty magical flaw "Astral Blindness" that makes a mage or dual-natured being completly unable to sense anything astral, even when they are astraly present.

[mfb]

i call it "Spirit-blind", and it's worth 2 points.

[Hasaku]

If I adopted that, I'd have to cancel out astral perception only. Astral projection would still work just fine.

[toturi]

SURGE: Dual Natured or being a Ghoul works fine for a Blind swordsman concept.

[Blaze]

So dropping the Blind Fighting, I'm still only on +2 before other modifiers? Excellent.
I thought about Dual-Natured for a bit but dropped the idea in favour of simple Astral Sight (the character has enough flaws as it is). The character will be taken by a PC in a game I'm starting up soon, and there's already one dual-natured adept in there. I find it a beautiful irony that the only character who sees what the DNA can do is the blind one...

-JH.

[JaronK]

Or, you can use an adept power to mimic Ultrasound vision... I call it Echolocation in my games. Then take blind fighting (since you still can't see) and we're talking about a +1 or +2, depending on your rounding. Now, if you allow a new martial art, Kendo, which is basically to edged weapons what other martial arts are to unarmed combat (to balance things, we said Kendo only works with swords, and you can't duel weild with it), you can then take the Blind Fighting Manuever... as well as perhaps close combat and multi-strike. Now you've got no modifier at all, and you're not vulnerable on the astral. Added bonus: visual modifiers mean nothing, so you can wear flash packs on your chest and blind everyone who looks at you. Ouchie. Suddenly, since anyone looking at you has a +6 to hit you, you can charge armed gunmen and hack them to bits, pure movie style. Lots of fun.

JaronK

[mfb]

alternative to kendo: the motion sense power from SOTA:64. make a perception roll agaisnt a TN described by the power; if it's successful, vision mods are reduced by -2.

[toturi]

[Crusher Bob]

If you wanted to you could probably do the flash pack trick with a pair of cyber eyes + flare comp. Get the flash packs to go off in sequence and have you flare comp cut in at just the right time (a sorta bullet through the propeller like effect). You could strobe the flash packs a good 20+ times a second and still see 'fine'.

[mfb]

flare compensation only reduces glare/flare modifiers by -2.

[Blaze]

One of my other players once postulated a wholly-technological way around blindness, involving far too many cybereyes. Essentially he had four pairs of cybereyes (spaced around his head for a full three-sixty view arc), all outfitted with Ultrasound vision, plus cyberears with select sound filter, dampener, High-freq hearing and a spatial recogniser and orientation system. We also decided he'd need either an encephalon or cerebral booster to process all the sensory signals accurately. The character could thus map an area by ultrasound and fight effectively within it, however the fact he's limited by the speed of sound means his performance drops off with range (not a problem for a sword-wielder unless you're being shot at with supersonic rounds). Oh, and due to his really bizarre appearance he'd be getting social modifiers through the roof.
Needless to say I talked him out of it in favour of a character that was a little less of a headache.

-JH.

[mfb]

we have a similar character, who uses sensor booms socketed in a cyberspine (a sort of limited cybertorso). he uses a piece of custom 'ware called a Sensory Processor to integrate the new senses.

[Canid13]

[DrJest]

[Zenmaxer]

Just from reading the rules though, there's no reason to believe that you couldn't just have improved sense: ultrasound. I generally don't allow it either, but I think you could make a case for an array of powers that would emulate it.

[Canid13]

DrJest, is there another 'version' or Daredevil????

Enhanced Hearing is, if I remember correctly, hearing amp. It may be a spatial recogniser too, not sure.

Echo location would work fine, but what I'm saying is that the adept power won't let you generate the energy pulse used in an active sensor system.

This means radar is out, though it would be possible to use the adept power to create a 'radar detector' or even a full on direction finder to track radio signals.

Zen, I'll agree it depends on whether you take the example cited in the book as being indicative of all senses which require the generation of something. It says you can't use it to make radio waves (hence radar not working). I'll admit ultrasound is kinda funky since bats have it (kinda) and whales and other aquatic mammals have echo location.

But the FAQ guys definately stated no sense which would require the body to generate an energy form, though a passive system which interprets what it recieves is cool. Hopefully they'll include this in the FAQ and/or errata soon.

[Critias]