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> Touchy-explody mage, Inspired, but no time!
Falanin
post Aug 15 2009, 03:42 PM
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With all the magic threads, i'm inspired to use a magician (possibly mystic adept) prime runner badguy whose schtick is stealth and touch-spell enhanced unarmed combat.

Unfortunately, the game is on Tuesday, and I'm WAAAAAY behind on the test prep that I need to do before then. So, anyone have an NPC or character like this I could use already made up? Alternately, anyone inspired enough to make one... just to see how much damage they can do?


...I have cake. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)
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Shinobi Killfist
post Aug 15 2009, 07:12 PM
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What kind of BP level are you talking here. How tough are the Pcs? And how challenging do you want the threat to be.
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Shinobi Killfist
post Aug 15 2009, 07:43 PM
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This is a quick example. Improve where you think is needed for the Pc level. I made him/her 400 BP so not prime I guess.

ELF
B 4
S 1
A 6
R 3
C 7
I 3
L 2
W 4
190 in attribute
Edge 3 20
Magic 5 40

Infiltration 4
Unarmed Combat (Touch Attacks) 6
Spellcasting (combat) 3
Summoning 4
Counterspelling (combat) 2
Death Touch
Knockout
Shatter
Improved Invisibility
Increase Reflexes
Magiican
restricted gear
Power Focus 4
Sustaining Focus 3
Mentor Spirit (Wise warrior or other combat spell mentor)

35ish points of disads that fit, or since its a npc who gives a crap about the math.

No contacts but its an NPC jut throw in what fits.

This gives the character.
10 dice for sneaking, with spirits that can conceal maybe a -force dice to the Pc perceptions tests. A specialization in urban environments might be useful.
9 Dice to summon
12 dice for unarmed combat 16 dice to touch with a spell.
12 dice to sling spells 16 dice for combat spells which is where you find all the touch spells.
2 dice for counterpelling but 4 for combat spell.
Has natural low light so optical range enhancement and flare comp covers most of the bases, in the long run some cyber eyes would be useful but NPCs should have some flaws to exploit.
Level 3 sustaining focus and increase reflexes= 3 initiative passes and an initiative of 8.
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knasser
post Aug 15 2009, 07:46 PM
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QUOTE (Shinobi Killfist @ Aug 15 2009, 08:12 PM) *
What kind of BP level are you talking here. How tough are the Pcs? And how challenging do you want the threat to be.


No time to stat one up, I'm afraid. But you don't need to do anything special. Decent initiative and IPs, good combat skills and drain attributes, and the three touch spells (Indirect, Direct Physical and Direct Stun). You might want to consider Mystic Adept.

K.
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McCummhail
post Aug 15 2009, 10:22 PM
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Here is a quick draft made with 400BP left 2 BP for other gear.
Tharg Elfkiller
Orc Magician

Bod 5
Agi 5
Rea 5
Str 4
Cha 2
Int 5
Log 2
Wil 5
Edg 1
Magic 5

Power foci 4
Sustaining foci 2 (Health Imp. reflexes)

Spellcasting 4 (combat)
Counterspelling 4
Summoning 4

Stealth group 2
Athletics 2
Unarmed Attacks 4 (Hsing-I)

Or'zet N
English 4
Cantonese 3

Restricted Gear (Power foci)
Braggart - He is very confident in his skill and power. He makes this no secret. Has been known to maim people who call him on his bullshit.
Prejudiced (Specific, Active) - Hates Elves with a passion. Will kill an elf in cold blood that looks at him funny. Believes Elves responsible for Veritas and HMMV outbreaks.
Distinctive Style (3) - As a Hsing-I (chinese martial art) practitioner he is very distinctive. His penchant for murdering elves and scrawling in orzet on their bodies with a blade is as well. Making heads magically explode with just a touch is also something you don't forget.

Tradition: Psionic (Digital Grimoire) -
He believes all of his magical power to be manifestations of his innate power channeled through his skills. He channels his 'chi' to harm others with a mere touch; He can deflect bullets with force of will; He can cloud minds to become invisible; and so on. The summoned psionic manifestations (spirits) are possession based. They are shards of his psyche manifest into the psychic plane.

Spells:
Death Touch (direct, touch) - usually overcasts to maximum force (Force 10 at 3 drain value)
Stunbolt (direct)
Invisibility, Improved (Realistic, Single)
Detect Enemies (Active)
Increase Reflexes - Usually bound to a sustaining foci (2) that is an 8-ways trigram medallion.
Deflection (physical)

Gear and Armor as you see fit. He would probably try and dress as chic and cool as he believes himself to be. He generally wears gloves to keep the blood off his hands, and isn't above adding brass knuckles, hard-liners, etc to augment his strikes. He doesn't bother with guns because they are beneath a super-metahuman such as himself.
He can be sneaky. He can be direct. If he possesses himself with a psionic manifestation (spirit) he feels invincible enough to wade through gunfire if need be.
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McCummhail
post Aug 15 2009, 10:31 PM
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Because you can only damage with the touch effect,
(not touch effect plus unarmed attack)
The damage will be limited by the force of the spell.
Magic at 5 allows a force 10 spell (overcast).
With Death touch that is 10P resisted by Willpower alone (mana spell). DV: (f/2)-2
With Shatter that is 10P resisted by Body alone (physical spell). DV: (f/2)-1
You can use net hits to pump the damage, but +1 DV to the attack is +1 DV to the drain.
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Falanin
post Aug 15 2009, 10:47 PM
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Thanks for the help, guys. Quick check... touch spells don't include an unarmed attack as part of the same complex action? If they do, then a mystic adept could get up to OMFGdamage... unless only one source of damage counts. Wasn't sure if I wanted to take advantage of that, or be a more versatile pain in the ass as a magician.

The team is currently sitting at 430BP+20 karma.

I need this guy tough enough or sneaky enough to NOT immediately die from minigun fire, and if he coul hurt said troll w/minigun enough for him to notice that'd be GREAT.

Original idea was for the touch-boom guy to be a wetwork target for the team. His detection spells will let him be a prepared pain in the butt, and if the team takes TOO long, the orginization will be sending their "cleanup" crew in. (he's been targeted before, and the results were messy)

I dig the personality on your guy, McC! If nothing else, I'm lifting that.
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Ancient History
post Aug 15 2009, 10:52 PM
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Rather than sustaining focus, you could go for a hardliner glove weapon focus, which would add the Force of the focus to your Unamed Combat Skill for attacks.
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Glyph
post Aug 15 2009, 11:39 PM
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QUOTE (McCummhail @ Aug 15 2009, 02:31 PM) *
You can use net hits to pump the damage, but +1 DV to the attack is +1 DV to the drain.

Remember, that is an optional rule now - he might not use that rule at his table.
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McCummhail
post Aug 16 2009, 06:40 AM
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Glad you like him.

You make the Unarmed attack as part of the touch-range spellcasting action,
but yes only one damage source counts. (for example: Stick'n'Shock bullets only do electrical stun damage even though it is a bullet)

An undetected mage using this or various other techniques could drop the troll with a mini gun in one shot.
A stunbolt or manabolt could do the same thing silently from far across the room, but where's the fun in that?

If you want to give this guy a chance to escape (to be a recurring thorn in your team's side),
using a high enough force spirit to posses himself would make him able to actually shrug off bullets as he escapes.
Possession is tricky and can be messy but trading control of your body for Immunity to Normal Weapons with a spirit of at least Force 5
will likely mean being able to deflect most mundane attacks.

I hope this works out for you.
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Knight Saber
post Aug 16 2009, 06:49 AM
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QUOTE (Falanin @ Aug 15 2009, 03:47 PM) *
Thanks for the help, guys. Quick check... touch spells don't include an unarmed attack as part of the same complex action? If they do, then a mystic adept could get up to OMFGdamage... unless only one source of damage counts. Wasn't sure if I wanted to take advantage of that, or be a more versatile pain in the ass as a magician.


A touch spell action includes the unarmed attack used to convey the touch. You get +2 dice to hit if you're just doing a touch instead of attacking for damage, so yes, you can do OMFG damage that way.
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Stahlseele
post Aug 16 2009, 07:10 AM
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Add elemental Effect Iron or Blast to your punches and have some fun. Or water, or sand. Make people wonder what the heck just hit them ^^
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McCummhail
post Aug 16 2009, 02:06 PM
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QUOTE (Knight Saber @ Aug 16 2009, 02:49 AM) *
A touch spell action includes the unarmed attack used to convey the touch. You get +2 dice to hit if you're just doing a touch instead of attacking for damage, so yes, you can do OMFG damage that way.


You do get the +2 for doing a touch attack. However, the FAQ states:

QUOTE (SR FAQ)
If you punch someone with shock gloves, do you inflict standard punching damage (STR/2) in addition to the glove's 6S DV? If you have gloves on both hands, can you attack with both and do 12S DV?

No, it's one or the other. You can choose to punch/kick/whatever and do regular unarmed damage, or you can choose to touch/punch and zap with the shock gloves, doing *only* the shock glove damage (not the unarmed damage too). Even with two gloves, the damage is still just 6S DV.


The roundabout statement being that you must choose one source of damage in an attack.
Elemental Effect does expressly state that it adds to unarmed damage, so it is the one exception (and it can be used for some REALLY impressive hits).
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Stahlseele
post Aug 16 2009, 02:21 PM
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Much more important than the +DV with elemental effect is the halving of Target-Armor. That is MUCH more usefull than adding one or two points of damage . .
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Falconer
post Aug 16 2009, 03:28 PM
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Good catch... energy aura is a nasty way to add some damage to the character. Only a handfull of ways to get it though... endowment doesn't work, guardian & task don't have it. Make character a free spirit (can have powers), Make character posdession tradition (possess w/ air, water, or fire spirit), or spirit pact w/ free spirit for use of the power.


I'm shocked no one has had any of the 'decrease attribute' spells. My favorite is 'Decrease Wil", Why? Great for interrogations, great for knockous! (rather than filling up the stun track, you just drop the wilpower to 0). Even better, it reduces the attribute which the attack is resisted with!!!


Multicasting is your friend w/ touch spells, (and the really low drain code). Though w/ the way splitting dice pools and mods are handled for multi-casting and multi-attack you'd want a good power/spellcasting focus + a good weapon focus (like hardliner gloves) to get a good bonus dice on each attack after the split.


Specialization in touch spells is something I've never really considered, but it adds dice to a wide variety of spells I commonly use.



Really, though, for fun... I'd consider going with an actual free spirit NPC w/ realistic form & materialization. If he needs to escape, he can run away to metaplane, or dematerialize to the astral (maybe dropping some cheap equipment like armor jacket and the like to the ground when he does so). You could throw the players for a real curve ball, thinking he's a normal player or even a possession mage (w/o the hassles of problem of who has control of the body and how the services work).

Drawback: no focus or other expensive equipment if you're going to be materializing/dematerializing... no physical gear of any kind except cheap stuff you don't mind losing.
Advantage: nasty ability to play cat and mouse w/ PC's... even materializing in pass 1 right next to someone... touching them, and then dematerializing if they have no way to protect themselves from astral. Lots of nifty spirit powers to make use of as well in addition to magician.

I don't know about 400BP base char though... this is supposed to be a prime runner to challenge players w/ some actual ranks under their belt.


Though possession tradition strikes me as a much more powerfull choice though. (attribute buffs... access to spirit powers, etc).
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Stahlseele
post Aug 16 2009, 04:09 PM
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Wanna be really mean?
See all those assholes out there?
Decrease Charisma. The worlds dumpstat.
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Falanin
post Aug 16 2009, 04:28 PM
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Soooo..... I don't get to stack unarmed and spell damage, but I get to multi-cast spells with extremely low drain. Since I can cast multiple touch spells with a single action, does that mean I get a free unarmed touch attack to deliver each of them? If so, do I get my full unarmed dicepool for each attack? And does that mean that my target takes penalties for having defended against previous unarmed attacks?

Can you say "Five point palm exploding heart technique"?




Edit:P.S. Also, could I inflict an elemental effect from an adept power on any of these unarmed touches, even if they cause no damage?
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Stahlseele
post Aug 16 2009, 04:35 PM
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If i understood this the right way, multi-casting touch-spells is basically a ready-weapon action, meaning your hand is now loaded up with several spells.
You do ONE unarmed attack to touch the Target, and if you do, ALL of those Spells go off simoultanously. And then the target has to defend against every single spell as if you had hit them several times with different spells. But you don't have to actually touch him several times, so that's your advantage right there. Order of their going off being the order in which you cast.
And no, Adept-powers don't work like that.
Adep-Powers give your unarmed Damage elemental Effects. No Unarmed-Damage, no Elemental Effect. Simple neh?
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Falanin
post Aug 16 2009, 04:40 PM
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Oh dear. So that means the multi-cast chain of:

Overcast(F8-12) touch-only Decrease Willpower/Death Touch/Death Touch/Death Touch... If the first one goes through, the rest can chip the target to death one hit at a time. Ewwww....
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Falanin
post Aug 16 2009, 04:43 PM
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The other question is: could you use the riposte martial arts maneuver to set something like this up? I could see this being ruled either way, but I'd want to be at least SOMEWHAT fair to my players. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)
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Stahlseele
post Aug 16 2009, 04:54 PM
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Don't see why it should not work.
It does not Change anything in this, aside from maybe giving you dice pool modifiers for your actual unarmed combat roll.
And yes, that means the Spells will go off one after the other, but the Target also gets to resist each time again and again.
If the spell is weak, chances are good he will resist all of them. If the Spell is Force 8 to 12, you usually only need a single
spell anyway, especially with the mana-spells which go against willpower and if available counter-spelling but ignore armor
and body attribute completely.
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Falconer
post Aug 16 2009, 05:30 PM
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No, touch spells aren't 'held' like in DnD. (even in DnD can't hold more than one at a time).

No you can't cast a large number of them then walk up and handshake some poor unsuspecting fool.


Each touch spell has as part of it's casting a touch attack.
"The caster must make a normal unarmed attack as part of the Complex Action of spellcasting" A tie on the Opposed Mleee Test is sufficient for the caster to touch the target"


If you're multi-casting, probably the most elegant way is to combine multi-casting w/ multi-attacking if going for multiple targets. However, I don't think this is quite correct.

Normal melee multi-attack
In melee, split your Agility + Unarmed(modified). Into multiple attacks. THEN apply the positive and negative dice pool mods to each attack (EG: specialization touch, touch attack is an instant +4, if you have a weapon focus like hardliner gloves... there's another +force).


Lets give an example... knockout. (force 4 poewr focus, force 4 weapon focus gloves. Casting pool of 12, Unarmed pool of 12 both before mods). Specialization in touch spells, and touch attacks in spellcasting and unarmed.

3 simultaneous force 5 castings.

Step one: calculate spell... /3 on each pool for simplicity. Base dice pool of 4 casting, 4 unarmed. Draon on each is (5/2)-3+3==2. Assuming Background count of 0.

Step two:
Roll 1st Touch attack: Base 4 dice, +2 touch attack, +2 touch specialization, +4 weapon focus == 12 dice +- situation mods (wound penalties, visibility, target prone, friends in melee... etc).
Defender rolls his normal defense of Reaction + relevant melee. (or full defense)... unlike normal, attacker wins ties.

IF IT HITS: Roll the spell (no point wasting time rolling spell if attack misses)
Base 4 dice, +2 (touch spells) +4 (power focus) == 10 dice (12 if menor spirit). +- situational mods (background count etc.)
Target resists against spell with Willpower (+counterspell if present) as normal against direct or indirect spells.

Step three: repeat step two, but cumulative attack penalty for defending of -1. (also wound penalty)
Step Four: repeat step two, but cululative up to -2 penalty on defense, and maybe more wound penalties

Step Five: Roll Drain.
Three times, roll your FULL DRAIN, against drain of 2 as calculated in step one. (you can probably 4:1 these off at a mere drain of 2... get up to 3 and you'll probably have to roll it).

There, you're done.


That is how I see it as straight pure RAW. If you were a true rules lawyer and twink... you might argue that the text "make a normal unarmed combat" roll in the spell, means you make the unarmed combat check normally w/o splitting the pool, but that doesn't seem quite right to me. (RAW/RAI).

There's also another alternative reading I can see... Since multi-casting is casting multiple spells as a SINGLE complex action. You're limited to a single unarmed attack roll.

EG: roll a single normal unarmed touch attack. If it hits.
Do steps 2-4 to apply touch spells in sequence.
Roll drain again at the end.

Quite frankly... that latter interpretation strikes me as correct. (one complex action, one touch attack). And lets face it the first procedure gets pretty long and drawn out to resolve becoming a bit unwieldy.

Also remember, if multi-casting there's no rule which says that all the spells cast have to be touch! (EG: you could lead off with the orgasm spell, giving him a -dice penalty... and truly lead yourself down the path of touching inappropriately).
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Stahlseele
post Aug 16 2009, 06:13 PM
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OK, maybe i was wrong.
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Knight Saber
post Aug 16 2009, 10:44 PM
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QUOTE (McCummhail @ Aug 16 2009, 07:06 AM) *
You do get the +2 for doing a touch attack. However, the FAQ states:



The roundabout statement being that you must choose one source of damage in an attack.
Elemental Effect does expressly state that it adds to unarmed damage, so it is the one exception (and it can be used for some REALLY impressive hits).


That sounds a little too roundabout to me. I can understand the ruling for Stun Gloves, since anyone with 200 nuyen can get a pair, and it'd be pretty pointless to have them if you hit someone so hard in using them that you broke their neck.

A Mystic Adept has to split his magic two ways and spend a lot more Karma than even a mage to power up. Allowing to do a full-force unarmed combat attack along with touch spellcasting would probably not unbalance the game too much.
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Falanin
post Aug 16 2009, 11:10 PM
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Well, for a counter-example, capsule rounds deal their normal damage AND apply the effects of the chemical. So the SR4 rules don't always lock you into a single source of damage for an attack.

BTW, this is great motivational stuff. I have new posts to intrigue me every food break. Thanks, guys.
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