[X] My Assistant

[suoq]

The US military at least seems to prefer officers drawn from colleges going straight to OCS.

It's more of a time in grade thing. If you join with no college education, it's reasonable to complete your degree in about 8 years of service while an officer may have 4 years paid for by the military and then serve 4 years. To the outside world, it's not much of a difference at that point. 8 years in, if an enlisted person completes their degree and decides to become an O1, they have plenty of time in Service points, but otherwise they're with all the fresh out of college O1s for time in grade. So, while promotions will come faster, due to time in service, they're already 8 years behind the bell curve and it shows. They have 12 years to get to a place that their competition is looking to get to in 20.

One thing officers learn, often slowly, is that there isn't a shortage of enlisted men with more and better degrees than the officers have in some fields. It is (or at least was) even advantageous for someone with a degree to join the military as an enlisted personnel if they wanted to work on their Masters/Doctorate and only serve 4 years. Offutt AFB (SAC/Stratcom) had no shortage of enlisted programmers with college degrees and officers who thought they had more education were often in for surprises.

[DamienKnight]

Banishing is a pretty useless skill to begin with, so it's mildly cheesy to take an Incompetence in it. But it's also fair, because the skill does have some use.

You need to use our houserule... Banishing can be used to counter spirit powers. Honestly, why should spirit powers get to bypass a Mages ability to block magic? It really injects usefulness into an otherwise lameass skill, and balances out the constant Fear spamming air spirits tend to do.

[Yerameyahu]

Ooh. That's interesting, DamienKnight.

[Cain]

That is interesting. It'd give the skill some use. You used to be able to do the Pokemon trick, but I believe that's been errata'd out. I suppose you could use for a Materialization tradition to get a Possession spirit, presuming it's of the same type, but that's still risky and questionable.

Honestly, though, as written it's pretty worthless. The last time I saw it used, it was flat-out suicidal: a Mystic Adept (effective Banishing Magic: 3) tried to banish a Force 10 master Shedim. Even with a very good roll, he not only failed, he died in the attempt and it took him burning a point of Edge to survive.

[Ryu]

You need to use our houserule... Banishing can be used to counter spirit powers. Honestly, why should spirit powers get to bypass a Mages ability to block magic? It really injects usefulness into an otherwise lameass skill, and balances out the constant Fear spamming air spirits tend to do.

That is a very nice-sounding change. I will try to convince the group.

[pbangarth]

You need to use our houserule... Banishing can be used to counter spirit powers. Honestly, why should spirit powers get to bypass a Mages ability to block magic? It really injects usefulness into an otherwise lameass skill, and balances out the constant Fear spamming air spirits tend to do.

So how does this work? Does the mage provide an umbrella of dicepool to his teammates the way Counterspelling does for spells? Do you have to use Banishing to counter the effect separately on each individual?

[LurkerOutThere]

I am intrigued by this and curious to know as well.

[Juno]

This.
Bear with me, I still sometimes forget the problem most English speakers (fun fact, I've even noticed it among locals who stayed in the US or UK for a few years) with analogies, irony, or similar devices (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)


By the way, I looked the Jigsaw Skull in Spy Games and it does not look so bad: Essence cost is higher (it's cyber, after all), Availability higher for low ratings and lower for high ratings, price is exactly the opposite. Overall a nice alternative with its own faults and merits, instead of being flatly better or worse.
What is bad on the other hand are the unclear rules: One can obviously adjust the face manually on the fly with a Disguise + Intuition (4, 3 Combat Turns) Extended Test, or more carefully in two minutes..without a test? I guess so, because it does not mention a test. What's also guesswork is the actual rules effect of the disguise ...Rating added to Disguise test maybe?

I went looking for clarification on the jigsaw skull and didn't find any on the errata thread for it on Shadowrun4.com forums. Would love to hear if anyone else came across an errata ruling for it.

It seems rather unbelievable that it isn't a restricted or forbidden type of cyberware to me (I could understand a mundane undercover detective looking to make himself a career consider getting when he has to compete with adepts on the force, but there's no way they'd be happy to let every mundane organised criminal look completely identical. The PR offensive would be as murderous as the barrens).

Also, making it cost extra so it eats up more essense and is harder to source? For the extra money, betaware or deltaware never looked more enticing. Especially so it doesn't look quite so screamingly obvious on those occasions that a shadowrunner might be trying to use a disguise to infiltrate a building with a MAD scanner security checkpoint. That 15,000 nuyen for a skull would buy 30 days of nanopaste and maybe avoid Negative Quality: Addiction to Painkillers too.

I think for an effective house rule, you'd need to make it a tailored bioware aug, with some form unique advantage that nanopaste can't offer to justify its use, beyond its >24 hour effectiveness and Scooby-Doo-moment-of-unveiling. Perhaps a defence against kinesics that justifies it having a legitimate existence to high stakes negotiators, poker players, human lie detectors, people who have to talk to human lie detectors?

Perhaps even add in a rating 1 or 2 skull into A or AA corps' profession poker, chess or chess boxing package, (or vanity boxing demographic package? Product endorsements + fame), since really you're just trying to stop spending money on nanopaste like its orichalcum coated novacoke. Or printer ink.

EDIT: Sorry trimming this a bit. This is a bit tangental/derailing, even as it stands..

[Sengir]

Recently read the entry again and figured out that probably "remodel your face in 2 minutes" and "rapidly remodel your face" mean the same thing, not one "rapid" and one "in two minutes" option. That still leaves the question of what the rules effect of this thing actually is.

[Saint Hallow]

I can see in a game which is gritty & bloody that Sensitive System makes a good choice. Because in those games, loss of organs, limbs, etc... is possible & finding a good, trustworthy street doc takes time & money. The cost of the bioware you're trying to buy is super exorbitant for a runner. So a runner is stuck with opting for a cheaper replacement... hence cyberware, which hurts their essence.

[Irion]

If you do not use cyberware it is kind of a bigger drawback than using cyberware for double essence costs...
So if you take the disadvantage of double essence costs and decide not to use, you are actually upping your drawback.
(Yes, you could use cyber and not use bio, which would be even worse. But is that really an argument here?)

Sensitiv system is a only mechanical disadvantage, so there is actually no way to get around the drawback. So I really can't see the problem...

[Borbag]

The way I see it, a character would not get any cyberware because his/her system is sensitive. So it wouldn't work like "I don't plan to use cyberware, so I'll just make my body more sensitive". However, sensitive system means the character is more difficult to heal than others, which translates to negative dice on first-aid/medicine tests, or it just takes longer to heal. Adding allergy to silicon or metal would be a nice fluff material.
Same with pacifism. You are against killing people. Light version is not against hurting people; hell he may be fine with his teammates making a bloodbath. He just doesn't "dirty" himself by taking a life. If he ever does, it will be a huge burden on his conscience. However, in cyberpunk games people tend to leave their morals at the door (including me), which makes pacifist characters rare.

Also, I don't think that runners have the habit of acquiring weapons and other gear through legal channels because of data trail. They just have to hide Forbidden equipment even better, and forbidden stuff is just harder to find or expensive to find.
So when do runners buy licenses? When they pose as "security consultants" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
Food for thought

[Irion]

Actually Shadowrun is one of the few games where pacifist is a usefull (in the way of "fun to play", making the game richer) flaw.
In some games it is just a bunch of points you are getting for free. Never hurt a living thing, does not do much in games where you mostly fight deamons or the like. (Or a spell is enough to take a human out of combat without hurting him... Of course no chance to resist)

On the other hand Games where XP are gained by killing stuff....

In Shadowrun it "just" limits your possible ways to achieve a goal. It makes you think...