The 1 percent, Magicians, Magic, and the financial issues Options

[Cthulhudreams]

Yeah, cybering the mage helps considerably, but also does drop the magic ratings of the mage, so the drones are still significantly up.

So first you need to make a perception check with a -6 modifier (drywall with bulletholes is easily 'good cover') to see the drones - what is your perception score? If you are not an intuition tradition, you are unlikely to actually pass this hurdle. What is the perception score of the typical mage? My review of the characters in 'welcome to the shadows' indicates that it is significantly less than a DP of 8, and thus they are unlikely to succeed.

Assuming you then successfully pass the test - which is highly unlikely - then your spell casting pool is reduced by 6, -4 from cover, -2 from smoke, giving you a significant dice pool penalty. Assuming you have magic 5, and spellcasting 6, with a +2 mentor or spec bonus, you're still down to 7 dice - you're only likely to get 2-3 hits, less than the 4 required to overcome the drones object resistance.

That is assuming you actually survive the LMG assault from the lynxes. You get 1 point of armour from the barrier which is not significant vs 3 or more LMGs. Wound penalties would make the perception test impossible for starting mages and make the spellcasting test very difficult.

So when you go to napalm the drones, you'd need some very considerable luck. I'd estimate that over 90% of the time you could be unable to do it.

[Mäx]

So first you need to make a perception check with a -6 modifier (drywall with bulletholes is easily 'good cover') to see the drones - what is your perception score? If you are not an intuition tradition, you are unlikely to actually pass this hurdle. What is the perception score of the typical mage? My review of the characters in 'welcome to the shadows' indicates that it is significantly less than a DP of 8, and thus they are unlikely to succeed.

Visual perception pool of 9, so shouldn't be a problem

Assuming you then successfully pass the test - which is highly unlikely - then your spell casting pool is reduced by 6, -4 from cover, -2 from smoke, giving you a significant dice pool penalty. Assuming you have magic 5, and spellcasting 6, with a +2 mentor or spec bonus, you're still down to 7 dice - you're only likely to get 2-3 hits, less than the 4 required to overcome the drones object resistance.

magic 4 + spellcasting 5 + spec 2 + mentor 2 + foci 3 = 16 - 6 = 10 dice and napalm being indirect combat spell doen't care about OR

That is assuming you actually survive the LMG assault from the lynxes. You get 1 point of armour from the barrier which is not significant vs 3 or more LMGs. Wound penalties would make the perception test impossible for starting mages and make the spellcasting test very difficult.

5 body + 10 armor + min. +2 from the wall = 17 dice to resist damage + platated factories should help in surviving.


But all of this is very theoretical as it asumes that he just walked alone in this room that was decined so that lynxes from the other room can just hose the person in the room,
it's not very good if your plan against mages is comptletly dependant of them walking alone in to your trap room. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[BullZeye]

A bunch of drones with LMGs? Simple, a force 6+ spirit to play with them. Grenade launchers on the drones, no problem really either as the spirit can float high enough and toss elemental attacks on the drones. Spirits would move fast enough to avoid most hits from GLs and the LMGs merely tickle them.

If one has to use spells, indirect combat spells with area effect don't need that much targetting. You can see the muzzle flash and aim to that as the drones can't be much moving to hit anything with the LMGs.

For the radar as visibility, those are easy to jam.

Having just some drones as guards the thing is that the drones don't think too much. Having people around who can think make a lot more sense. When things start going wrong, then it's good to have some single minded bots to do the actual fighting but to figure what's going on, people are usually better. Of course one can always trick a person but it's not quite as easy as to trick a bot especially if you know it's parameters how to behave.

As long as one knows what is there up against, there's always a way. Always. No foolproof way to protect anything, mages or no mages (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

and not to derail too much: when it comes to the 1%, as it was mentioned so many times before: it happens.

[Cthulhudreams]

The interesting part is that the number of drones protecting the facility could be ramped up almost indefinitely which oblivates any need for a specific trap room.

Remember it costs 80k plus for the most basic low level security guard (once you factor in the overheads of employment). A drone with an LMG costs 3k, and a drone with repair tools costs not much more. Assuming and overhead for main replacement and wear and tear, you can have 60 drones instead of 5 sec guards. So instead of a rather boring team of 10-12 security guards, one could five security guards and 66 drones for the same annual cost. You bring any thinking required in via riggers from external locations.

Admittedly I wouldn't run all steel lynxes, I'd go mostly for Nissan dobermans, and with about 50 hunter killer drones to disgorge themselves from the ventilation system.

And LMGs loaded with APDS rounds blow straight through even high force spirits, particularly when you consider that the drones actually have more IPs.

And this is some pretty low key security. Whatever it is is important enough to warrant sending 4-5 professional mercenaries after, so it may warrant more than 10 security guards (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

(also, why would the drones care if we walked in alone or otherwise? They are just going to try and kill whoever comes into the room via spamming through drywall. The things that make it hard for the for mage also make it hard for anyone else. Incidently, as I pointed out above, we can easily ramp up the lethality of the installation. )

Also, that mage isn't as tough you might think - you only get 1 point from the thin dry wall (per example in the book no less) And full auto narrow burst that scores one net hit loaded with APDS will have a DV 16 - with 13 dice to soak and body 5 you'll probably survive, but you won't be able to pass the perception test to see the drones anymore due to a DP of 0 on perception tests from average number of wounds.

Your chance of actually failing that test is bit less than 30% too in the uninjured case. A 30% chance of just doing nothing and picking your nose is a pretty sweet deal, especially considering that the drones will almost certainly get to fire first, so they'll have two shots 30% of the time if you don't get them.

However, the two drones with grenade launchers are likely to cause more havoc. Frag grenades through the door will hit the entire contents off the room with serious damage, and don't rely on the drones actually hitting anything. If you want to be 'serious' you could fit fully automatic launchers, which would kill any runner in the target room in one IP.

Serious ambush capability, and give the number of drones you can cost effectively deploy, is cheap and ludicrously effective. These guys would cause spirits serious problems too, though you may want some models to have sniperrifles too, as with APDS even 1 net hit will overcome the spirits immunity to natural weapons.

Overall, this looks like a reasonable effective trick against an awakened threat (or really, any threat)

[Mäx]

Also, that mage isn't as tough you might think - you only get 1 point from the thin dry wall (per example in the book no less)

Which version of the book you have, becouse my original V.1.0 only lists standart class for armor 1 so your building has pretty weak walls

Serious ambush capability, and give the number of drones you can cost effectively deploy, is cheap and ludicrously effective. These guys would cause spirits serious problems too, though you may want some models to have sniperrifles too, as with APDS even 1 net hit will overcome the spirits immunity to natural weapons.

Overall, this looks like a reasonable effective trick against an awakened threat (or really, any threat)

But your still assuming that your drones get to ambuss the runners, what if the runners gome in trought the wall behind the drones.
Security measures like this are were the legwork really pays off.

[BullZeye]

Guess gotta beef up the spirit a bit: force 7 earth spirit with armor and deflection spells on it can pretty much run through the whole drone defense and if you got 60 drones in a normal building, those APDS LMGs will make more damage to the building itself than to anything else. The spirit has 20 dice (assuming 4 on deflection) full dodge when it's passing by all those drones. And having 4 on armor spell negates the APDS so then you have to do more than 14 damage per shot, so even with the heaviest sniper rifle, you gotta get some hits. Having an assault cannon on the drone could do it, but think of the collateral damage when it misses. Not to mention the location of the drones, they can't all be standing in the line waiting for the whatever threat to come from the door and knock first. If they would use grenades indoors, it would damage the drones almost as much... not to mention the collateral of those (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Some military complex or a big, open area could be really effectively protected by an army of drones, but for indoors, I would think it few times as nothing would be more harmful for the company image if the entry lobby would be full of bullet holes and small craters from grenades/assault cannon shots.

And the spirit could carry a ballistic shield just to the fun of it, making it even more easy for the drones (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Pushing a shopping cart full of explosives and 20cm thick steel in front to the room would be fun, too (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

And as was mentioned, legwork can avoid most of the drones.

[Cthulhudreams]

Drywall is actually very weak. I'm not super awesome, and I can punch through it. I probably have strength 2 for the purposes of evaluating it. Brick walls are very tough, but they are typically only used for external walls.

As for the legwork bit, Yeah.. if you never actually get caught or noticed, then you're sweet (drones have legs and can move around, so its not helping you to know where they all are in advance, I'd presume they move) But thats not like the exclusive preserve of mages or anything and is indeed the point of shadowrun

interestingly, summoning a force 7 spirit can just arbitrarily kill the mage if he gets unlucky and forcing the other team to take lethal risks before they turn up is a good thing - and again you might actually want to protect your assets. Summoning and using a high force spirit effectively puts the runner team on a shot clock. The external lone star high threat response team including multiple sec mages and high force bound spirits will be inbound after the first 100+ rounds are discharged even if your hacker has the buildings systems totally locked down. Astral movement speeds are very high, so these guys could be here very quickly. Once they are, you have to deal with multiple sec mages, multiple spirits and the the actual SWAT team coming behind them.

Then it becomes not a matter of the drones winning, they merely have to not lose until the big guns turn up. Engaging in open combat with them is not likely to be productivity. Using a spirit to run through in full dodge doesn't actually achieve anything - what does he do at the other end when it comes time to hack the mainframe? So the mage is back to ahving to act with subtlety rather than all guns blazing total domination and napalm.

As for reputation - what, you mean that having an entire security team disappeared/murdered and all their valuable research data stolen isn't going to adversely impact their reputation? what the hell?

[Mäx]

As for reputation - what, you mean that having an entire security team disappeared/murdered and all their valuable research data stolen isn't going to adversely impact their reputation? what the hell?

Not if nobody finds out and cover ups are easier if your down town office doesn't look like a warzone

Drywall is actually very weak. I'm not super awesome, and I can punch through it. I probably have strength 2 for the purposes of evaluating it. Brick walls are very tough, but they are typically only used for external walls.

You must have very weak walls where you live becouse I'm propably strength 3 and there isn't a single wall in my home that i could punch trought.

and i ask again which version of the book you have, becouse my original V.1.0 only lists standart class for armor 1 and drywall as armor 2 in the barrier table in page 157.
Personally for a corp facility i would go with plastiboard walls and those are armor 4.

[Cthulhudreams]

Yeah you're right, I misremembered. It doesn't exactly dramatically change the outcome though. One full auto and you're still virtually dead with no DP.

Ideally of course if your office looks like a warzone, the runners are dead (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[BullZeye]

Oh, I thought to the idea was that how to beat those 60 LMG/GL drones. If you are going to go with the "then the lone star" comes, why did one buy 60 drones when 4 would have been enough and if one is destroyed the LS comes in. I think many corps prefer to keep things in own hands and not call the cops after 100 shots. Facing such guard on a run that is to steal something is not smart anyway. If you can't beat the security without raising hell on a covert run, don't do the run.

I didn't mean the spirit to run through the drones to the upstairs toilet but a single such spirit can kick the ass of all those 60 drones if need be. Yes, summoning a force 7 spirit IS risky, but on average, it's only 1 more drain than a force 6 spirit -> 2 more dice, thus max of 4 more drain but as it's calculated to be 1 success per 4 dice...

[kzt]

Drywall is actually very weak. I'm not super awesome, and I can punch through it. I probably have strength 2 for the purposes of evaluating it. Brick walls are very tough, but they are typically only used for external walls.

Shotgun wads will go though two layers of drywall with enough energy to hurt someone on the other side. Much less buckshot or bullets. A typical issue with RPGs is that you can produce a defense invulnerable to bullets with 20 layers of something worthless at stopping bullets. That's a GM issue.

Double or triple brick will stop bullets, for a while. You can cut holes large enough for a man to enter using MG fire in well under a minute For example, 250 rounds of M249 fire will breach a 12" thick cinderblock wall faced in brick.

[Heath Robinson]

Brick walls are very tough, but they are typically only used for external walls.

Of course, this varies by region, age and function. I've never been in a residence that doesn't have brick or concrete interior walls, for example.

[masterofm]

Lone Star is a corporation. It's not a government agency. No corp wants another corp snooping around on it's turf. They are not your friend, and the only reason why they will help you out is because they have a contract, which if constantly they will follow to the letter (no more no less.) Don't hold your breath and be very happy if they even give you half of what they promise on their contract. If everything is about outsourcing, and corporations have more power then any government in the 6th world, Lone Star is not your friend. If you call in another corporation they might "accidentally" cause tons of collateral damage to the facility in order to neutralize the threat to the surrounding areas... that is assuming someone is dumb enough to call to LS for help in the first place. a single A corporation might ask for LS's help, but the cure might be worse then the disease in many cases.

Corporate private security will rely on what they have on sight and if absolutely have to call for help from their parent corporation (and if it is a AAA well then they will just bring the big guns if the situation calls for it.) If they don't have a parent corporation then they are probably SOL. Even if they can call for the big guns it will take time and at least allow Shadowrunners ample time to escape. I always thought the reason why local security enforcement sucks as well, because it's looking at profit margins and the bottom line. Calling Lone Star means you go through a few layers of corporate bureaucracy, and red tape (that is unless you are willing to make a large donation to the LS 'chief of police'.) Lone Star will come out if the scuffle between a corporation and runner team spills into the streets, but I have a feeling if you are going to be attacked by drones it will be the corporations drones and not LS's drones (well... unless you do a hit on Ares then expect Lone Star to tie you up, until the hammer comes and smashes you to bits.) It's just more cost effective that way, and no one wants the government or a corporation setting foot on their facility. A stuffer shack probably, a refinery/lab/testing facility/training facility/warehouse/bank hell no.

[Jaid]

1) i think you have confused lone star with knight errant

2) actually, when it comes to private entity contracts rather than governments, i would bet lone star is a lot more thorough. governments are much more forgiving than corporations, who have many more choices for security; governments are looking at needing a security force big enough to cover their cities. that research facility just wants a strike team or 3 to show up when they call in for help, and if that strike team doesn't show up, LS doesn't get paid for their strike team showing up.

[masterofm]

Sorry I tend to get the security a little mixed up in my head sometimes.

LS is a corporation. I also thought that LS generally works more towards helping the public domain and not the private sector. Many corps wouldn't want the help of another corporation that is in no way affiliated with them. When LS says "We are impounding this vehicle for evidence and the data files recovered on the runners" I think the gist of it is that they are just going to sell off the vehicle and use the data recovered (if they can.) Hey evidence gets lost right? Um... yeah we were hit by a different Shadowrun team and all the data was stolen.... yeah... see the video thats totally not altered see you can even see the time code and I hear those are very hard to fake.

I guess it comes down to different SR universes. I view Shadowrun as a world where everyone is trying to stab everyone else in the back as subtly as they possibly can (although not always the case,) and there is some frail agreement not to smash the game board everyone is playing on.... and even then.... I view LS as mercs, not even good mercs. They are paid to protect people, and there is a lot of wiggle room when someone is resisting arrest what kind of steps need to be taken. They can be bought, bribed, and generally made to forget what they just saw if you have enough (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) . It is how I view Shadowrun in the way that I view not every mage is going to aim for a single well paying field. The problem in the end to this whole discussion is it's all relative.

[Cthulhudreams]

If you're unwilling to contract to lone star, but do provide onsite security, you obviously have your own security force that can do 'strike missions' in place of an outsourced arrangement.

[sunnyside]

You must have very weak walls where you live becouse I'm propably strength 3 and there isn't a single wall in my home that i could punch trought.

Older homes in particular didn't use drywall. Instead using something called lath and plaster. Also, especially when building for fire resistance or sound proofing, drywall can be thick or multi layered.

However most drywall is thin and trivial to break through.

As for spirits an interesting issue was raised. How does immunity stack with other forms of armor. I.e. if there is immunity armor of 14 and some other armor up to 20 and an attack hits with 16DV what happens?

Regardless the way to go with spirits is elemental attacks and other stuff that halves armor.

Also on the "60 drones" thing. Even having a dodge pool of 20 isn't going to help greatly if they're firing at once. Each drone can shoot twice in an action. and each shot reduces the pool for dodging by one. Meaning after the first 10 drones have fired the dodger is just sitting there wide open. At that point remaining shooters are free to use the +4 damage called shot option.

And at any rate reinforcements are an important and realistic part of shadowrun once your team ventures out of the barrens. Its a matter of how obvious they are, how soon, and how much death and destruction they cause that determine the magnetude of the response.

Getting caught on the way out and not doing much damage means LS may well take a pass if the runners commited the crimes on some exteterritorial corp turf that isn't in their jurisdiction anyway, and the hit corp may not have much time to respond before the runners are gone.

However give them time and cause and the corps have high grade initiatates (maybe over in Japan but what's that to a mage?), and they probably have some armed and warded banshees in the area. Also the Metroplex guard is around.

[kzt]

Also on the "60 drones" thing. Even having a dodge pool of 20 isn't going to help greatly if they're firing at once. Each drone can shoot twice in an action. and each shot reduces the pool for dodging by one. Meaning after the first 10 drones have fired the dodger is just sitting there wide open. At that point remaining shooters are free to use the +4 damage called shot option.

Remember they are drones. They don't take recoil penalties. The initial drones use full wide bursts and smartlinks with tracer. +5 dice to hit and -9 to the defenders pool. So the first one has 15 dice vs 11 dice.

[Cthulhudreams]

He might theoretically soak that much damage though without using APDS, assuming 1 net hit, the drone is only looking at 7P which the theoretical intruder will soak ~5 including platelet factories.

However, yeah, the drone can shoot again and you're going to be worse off.

Please note though that using all 60 drones to fire at any one thing is hopelessly impractical. You're rather going to have some sort of layered defense system bringing a handful to bear at a time - but as you point out breaking out called shots will turn anything into bulletholes after a while.

Fitting out 1 drone per 5 with a sniper rifle with APDS is probably the right plan - that will blow straight through immunity to normal weapons and inflict massive damage.

[sunnyside]

Remember they are drones. They don't take recoil penalties. The initial drones use full wide bursts and smartlinks with tracer. +5 dice to hit and -9 to the defenders pool. So the first one has 15 dice vs 11 dice.

Where does it say drones don't take any recoil penalties. I missed that.

Also I don't think you can combine smartlinks and the tracer modifiers.

@Cthulhudreams spirits can't have platlet factories. And while 60 is an awful lot, if a earth elemental is just barreling in I wouldn't be surprised if they couldn't arrange for a dozen to be firing at once. And yes if so inclinded the first once could be firing rounds with low penetration to herd the spirit (i.e. reduce its dodge pool) for the shots that will come a split second later that are meant to put it down.

Regardless though spirits are darn powerful, especially against goons and people who don't have an armor halving weapon.

[Em97]

Don't forget about Aspected Magicians, particularly the Spell Category type with appropriate Incompetencies. If the only spells you can cast are Combat spells, then that has to increase your chances of becoming a security mage or the like. Even if you are a kick-arse combat mage, you are basically just a glorified gun, and are performing a similar role to any other type of security. You could imagine that employers would try to swing it that these folks wouldn't get paid that much more than the regular type security guards.

I liked the old take on Aspected Magicians (a.k.a. Adepts of various types back in the day), where you did not have to take an Incompetency and even got a few more spell points using some cannon character generation methods. The new way of crunching the numbers gives the feel that there is something wrong with an aspected magician rather than them being just a more specialised variety. If out of the 1% there were lots of aspected magicians, especially of the "Incompetent" (yuck!) variety, their natural magical area(s) might not mesh well with available oportunities and/or ambitions.

Just a thought.

[Cthulhudreams]

@Cthulhudreams spirits can't have platlet factories.

I know, I was talking about the mage mentioned as an example mage earlier in the thread! sorry.

[kzt]

Where does it say drones don't take any recoil penalties. I missed that.

Arsenal P105. It's kind of evil, isn't it?

Also I don't think you can combine smartlinks and the tracer modifiers.

I don't see anywhere they prohibit it. It sort of implies it, but doesn't say they don't combine. Logic doesn't have much to do with the SR firearms rules (and reality has NOTHING to do with them), so you just have to use the crazy rules as written unless you want to go at them with a chain saw.

[BullZeye]

I think on spirits the armor is layered so that the last armor has the immunity. So if you got armor spell, first you reduct it and then if it's still not more than 2*force, it's harmless. So a good armor spell on a kickass spirit keeps the spirit nice and safe, even against those sniperdrones. And the spell if I'm not totally mistaken is always effective against bullets even when the pool would otherwise be reducted to 0. The spirit is moving all the time anyway so that alone gives it +2 for running on defence. The drones would not really have a clean line of sight on the spirit as it can materialize in the middle of the drones and let them shoot eachothers (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Smartlink and tracers don't add up as the smartlink is a guncam so it sees paraller to the barrel while a metahuman aiming has totally different view point and thus can see where those shiny stripes fly unlike the guncam. Yes, if the gun is firing to long distances, then even the guncam can see the bullets dropping but that's really unlikely in most situations and the smartlink system knows how to compensate the bullet dropping anyway.

And besides on bit of reasoning, the rulebook sayth: (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Non-smartgun users firing tracer rounds
receive a +1 dice pool modifier at all ranges beyond Short
when firing a short burst, +2 when firing a long burst and +3
when firing a full burst.

[Sir_Psycho]

I can't believe this thread has to degraded about a hypothetical "Ok so my force 7+ spirit walks into a room and there's 50 drones with machine guns and sniper rifles there"

Where's the punchline, guys?