[X] My Assistant

[Irion]

Which system?
BP? Karma? German-Karma? (And I guess there is also a new german Karma)

[KarmaInferno]

I'd try a Shadowrun LARP but I seriously think the police might have issues if I were to load up a van with machine guns all over it...

Fun fact: The Ohio Democratic Party hosted a dinner in Columbus on the 25th of last month. Speaking at the dinner was Joe Biden, the Vice President.

Running from 22nd to the 26th at the same convention center was the Origins Game Fair.

The Origins Shadowrun LARP was on the 24th. I will just say, thank god it was the day before. I am trying to imagine how the Secret Service would be reacting to a mass of paramilitary dressed individuals with apparent firearms being just down the hall. They looked stressed enough dealing with the rest of the weirdos running around the place.




-k

[Hida Tsuzua]

What matters is, they're all effective at what they do, and other races couldn't do noticeably better. Sure, an elf gets that Charisma bonus; but it doesn't help the mage that much, since he's Intuition based. An elf otaku would be interesting, but again, the charisma bonus wouldn't help all that much. As for the rigger, charisma doesn't really apply to him that often. Trolls and orks get higher Body and Strength, but that's not useful for a mage, otaku, or rigger. You may as well save the points and put them into other stuff, like Magic, Resonance, and gear.

If you're playing a concept that relies on a high body or strength, orks and trolls win, hands down. But when you're looking at non-physical concepts, humans become much more attractive. Seriously, think about it: how good would a troll be as a rigger? Or worse, an otaku? He'd suck at it, because of the limits on his mental stats. Humans have no advantages, but they have no penalties either. Even orks aren't any better than humans at mental stats. Elves and dwarves do get bonuses, but they're not as useful as you might think, depending on the build you're going for.

The big thing is that you save points by being an ork except for very certain cases. If you're an low edge intuition mage or a rigger, you're just plain better as a ork unless you spent less than 30 points on body and strength. And if that's the case, have fun with your 3 body. Riggers just don't care about mental stats at all. This is the era of the script kiddy after all.

For technos, the fade resist roll is the the biggest check on their power. Orks are just fine intuition technos that won't blow up if you sneeze on them. Charisma Elf technos are gods of the matrix if fragile in the meat and can easily become good face as a side effect.

Really "my group is just fine!" is a terrible argument especially when one of your cases is a melee uncouth elf mystic adept. I agree that elf is overrated as the best combat race. My money's on orks and if you allow metavarients, the fomori.

Edit- If you don't use BP gen, things might be different. I haven't really looked into those systems so I can't say.

[CanRay]

The Origins Shadowrun LARP was on the 24th. I will just say, thank god it was the day before. I am trying to imagine how the Secret Service would be reacting to a mass of paramilitary dressed individuals with apparent firearms being just down the hall. They looked stressed enough dealing with the rest of the weirdos running around the place.
-k

Probably about the same way that the Toronto Police Department dealt with LARPers at a major event...

They seized one guy's equipment and put it on the news... His chainmail was displayed with a couple of street trash pistols (Taken from drug dealers weeks before) on top with a couple of axes they took from a couple that were going camping, and one high-ranking official showed the "Safetied" arrows covered in socks and described them as "Incendiary Devices supposed to be soaked in gasoline and lit on fire before being launched at VIPs.".

None of the items in question were a threat at all to the target group, but was a major PR move to show "That the Toronto Police Department was doing all it could to keep everyone safe."

Oh, and none of the items were even close to where the delegates were when seized. Typical REMF Charlie-Foxtrot.

[Cain]

Riggers still need mental stats, since most of their skills (electronic warfare, for example) are still attribute-linked. Decker's don't, but I don't have a decker, I have an otaku, and they need mental stats for their bionode.

I could throw build after build into the fray, and we'd just end up in a war of escalating builds. This has happened before, I received a mod warning, so I will not go down that path again. I'll just stand on the fact that if you're playing a rigger or decker (or otaku), the ork bonuses won't do you any good, since you don't actually need much Body and Strength. If you're going spellcaster, then it depends slightly on what you're going for: for a charisma-based tradition, elves are very good. But for an intuition or logic-based tradition, not so much. The dwarf bonus to Willpower helps with drain, but only by 1 die; for the same 25 points, I can buy a rating 4 sustaining focus and the Increase Willpower spell.

Does having an increased Body help? Sometimes, but sometimes not. It's a question of opportunity cost: what are you giving up for that extra Body? Is it worth the tradeoff? Sometimes the answer is yes, but sometimes the answer is no.

The point is, humans aren't the best at everything. But they're competitive in many areas, even leaving Edge aside for a moment.

[UmaroVI]

I don't see this discussion going anywhere useful; I could argue that Archetype X benefits from being Metatype Y, but so long as it's some unspecified build you can always come up with some convoluted reason why they want Charisma 6 or Body 1 or whatever.

[Glyph]

Orks, humans, and elves exist on a continuum of how important non-physical stats are to your build. Just as people take a net loss of 10 build points, compared to a human, to take advantage of some of the elf's higher maximums, you will have people take a net loss of 20 build points to have the advantages to Edge and the lack of penalties to mental stats that being human can get you. It goes without saying that if you don't take advantage of an elf's bonuses, you are basically paying 10 build points for flavor. Similarly, human builds that don't exploit a human's potentially high Edge or mental Attributes is paying extra to be human. And an ork shaman, or troll hacker, are in the same situation.

Either you take advantage of metatype by picking the best one for a particular niche, or you play a bit against type, and make a human tank melee build, or a troll face. And while I do optimize my builds, mainly because of what I think a shadowrunner's role should be, I still like to play against type occasionally, and have smooth-talking orks or tough as nails elves to shake things up a bit. Shadowrun is not traditionally balanced, in the sense of every option being equally effective, but it offers, instead, multiple ways for you to optimize. But (and this is speaking as a powergamer-leaning player) you are not compelled to tweak your build for absolute mathematical efficiency. While you can certainly gimp a character, often unintentionally, the system has enough slack that a character who is less than completely min-maxed can still be effective.

[Cain]

I don't see this discussion going anywhere useful; I could argue that Archetype X benefits from being Metatype Y, but so long as it's some unspecified build you can always come up with some convoluted reason why they want Charisma 6 or Body 1 or whatever.

Like I said, I once received a mod warning over this, so I'm not going to go down that path.

That said, I can run with your example. A face with Charisma 6 and Body 1 can be very effective. Pixies in particular: they can't benefit from most 'ware, but they can still get insane social dice pools. An otaku with Charisma 6 and Body 1 will be fine, especially if he's a sprite summoner build: he can just stay back, and let the sprites do all the work for him. Mages could benefit from a higher body, since they need to be closer to the combat; but mages have other ways of avoiding being shot at.

The bottom line here is, orks are not better at everything. And humans are not underpowered. They don't have any mechanical advantages, but they can still play to their abilities.

[Whipstitch]

There's also some hilariously durable "tin man" builds out there in which you basically ignore physical attributes since you'll just be bootstrapping them up to competence via replacing your fleshy bits with armored cyberlimbs. Generally such characters lack the funds or essence to also have great IPs on top of their durability, but that's fine since you don't have to totally devote yourself to combat-- you're better than plenty of sheets and mooks just by being tough as nails anyway-- and can easily afford to take Born Rich and make the character into say, a well-connected rigger that's tougher than his cheap ride or an all-out skill monkey brimming with the niche skills that other characters can rarely afford to take. The rigger option is extra fun since with full-on cyberlimb armor madness and a dash of Edge you can actually ram things and not instantly liquefy yourself as long as your sensible with your speed and vehicle choices. The biggest drawback is that it's one of those things where your GM might try to punch you in the neck after you give them the sheet.

[UmaroVI]

Like I said, I once received a mod warning over this, so I'm not going to go down that path.

That said, I can run with your example. A face with Charisma 6 and Body 1 can be very effective. Pixies in particular: they can't benefit from most 'ware, but they can still get insane social dice pools. An otaku with Charisma 6 and Body 1 will be fine, especially if he's a sprite summoner build: he can just stay back, and let the sprites do all the work for him. Mages could benefit from a higher body, since they need to be closer to the combat; but mages have other ways of avoiding being shot at.

The bottom line here is, orks are not better at everything. And humans are not underpowered. They don't have any mechanical advantages, but they can still play to their abilities.

Perhaps part of it is that in your games, it seems to be much easier for glass-fragile PCs to always avoid getting shot at if they want to. If that's true, it does devalue Body a good deal and makes ork and troll less valuable. If you actually see 1 body mages played and not dying, I suppose humans might be a more sensible choice, but that's pretty different than everyone else's experience of shadowrun.

I think you missed my point about Schroedinger's Build. Here, let me try. You said you actually had an Intuition mage in your group who is a human, and he has sub-6 edge.

Does he have Charisma or Logic 5? Probably not; he doesn't get much of anything out of going that high, and if he does I would argue he's presumably doing so for fluff reasons, and not for effectiveness.

Does he have Body+Strength < 5? If so, he is throwing away stat points or build points. If not, well, like I said, I consider playing a 2 body, 2 strength mage to be a bit on the suicidal side but apparently your mileage varies on this.

[Cain]

Actually, the mage does have Edge 6. It's the rigger and otaku who don't, and they do just fine. The otaku also has substandard physical stats (Strength at 1, body of 3) but he never gets into it physically, so he doesn't need to worry about it. The mage also has Strength 1, and it really doesn't hurt the build any. The troll is the meat shield for the team: he goes first and takes all the fire, so everyone else can support him. The rest of the team plans their tactics to the troll gets shot at first, so they concentrate on Reaction for defense, as opposed to body and armor.

Honestly, what good is strength to a mage or otaku? If they have to get into melee, they're already dead. The mage uses spirits to keep enemies off of him, and the otaku uses drones with machine sprites. The rigger just sits in his cocoon, so his body and strength is pretty irrelevant as well.

[Traul]

Honestly, what good is strength to a mage or otaku?

For the Otaku? Running and the situational climbing. The mage can replace it with Levitate.

[suoq]

he NEVER gets into it physically, so he doesn't need to worry about it.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

The troll is the meat shield for the team: he goes first and takes ALL the fire

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

If they have to get into melee, they're already dead.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

I'm boggled, simply boggled.

[Hida Tsuzua]

Riggers still need mental stats, since most of their skills (electronic warfare, for example) are still attribute-linked. Decker's don't, but I don't have a decker, I have an otaku, and they need mental stats for their bionode.

I could throw build after build into the fray, and we'd just end up in a war of escalating builds. This has happened before, I received a mod warning, so I will not go down that path again. I'll just stand on the fact that if you're playing a rigger or decker (or otaku), the ork bonuses won't do you any good, since you don't actually need much Body and Strength.

While I think we can calm and reasonable about discussing the builds, I can understand being gun-shy about it. So I'm just going to final wrap up of my general points. Orks get a hefty bonus for very little cost. If you're body+strength is at least 5 and you aren't (soft or hard) capping edge, logic, or charisma, you should be an ork or other non-human metatype. Since that covers a lot of character archetypes and builds, in many ways ork is the default shadowrunning race. You should be asking "why aren't I an ork?" when building a character. Thankfully, every metahuman race has at least an niche so there are (some common) cases where you'll want to be a human, elf, troll, or dwarf.

A big part of the reason ork is so good is that having a 4+ body is quite important. I'm surprised how little you take stock in it. Even the techno in our group who basically lives in a suit of military armor in a rigger cocoon in a Hussar (an 18 armor drone) has been caught out in the open from time to time. I mean at 1-2 body you're in danger of being killed by a wide bursting guy with an AR in one pass. You can get around this with cyberlimb armor, but raising your body helps a lot and not everyone is okay with cyberdiabetus. I guess if everyone and their dog always attacks the tank, that's fine, but even in MMOs you have to worry about aggro and stray dudes.

The strength I'm not really going to push to hard. Honestly it's just a nice feather to put in your cap. It's weird you don't run much in Shadowrun but whatever. It's more that you get it for free. It's more useful if you use softweave, but not everyone uses War!. Being subdued sucks and really bad if you're low strength, but it's not really much you do against that cheaply.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

I'm boggled, simply boggled.

Indeed. Doesn't seem to make any sense does it? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[Yerameyahu]

Like I (and everyone else) said 2 pages ago: if you plan on going outside in SR, you'll want 3 STR and 4 BOD anyway. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[sabs]

My question isn't why aren't you an ork. it's.. Why aren't you a Dwarf.
Dwarfs are awesome, unless you intend to get a natural 5+ reaction.

They make amazingly good riggers and hackers and streetsams.
Sure the 2 body for 25 BP isn't as nice at the 4 body for 20 bp. But dwarves get to have a 7 willpower.

[Whipstitch]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

I'm boggled, simply boggled.

Indeed. Doesn't seem to make any sense does it? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Oh, come on now. The melee bit in particular isn't the least bit insane, particularly given that he was talking about the value of Strength. In melee combat strength really only has value during grapple checks and dealing damage. Frankly, the opportunity cost for dealing reliable damage--particularly in a setting in which your opponent might be a friggin' fire elemental-- is high enough that it's cheaper to literally just get your body covered in synthetic skin that electrocutes anything that grapples you. Or better yet, carry a friggin' gun. Let's be serious here: Yelling "MORTAL KOMBAT!!!" and flipping out on the other guy until one of you is unconscious isn't really a good plan for the vast majority of characters and just making your guy an ork or whatever isn't going to change that without retooling your build into something approximating the physical capabilities of a street samurai. For every 400 bp character sheet out there I guarantee you there is a scenario in which a straight up Attribute+Skill pissing match is a losing situation. If that situation is a steel cage match, then your character is actually in pretty good shape.

I mean, yeah, having some Body is great and we all love us some armor. But there ARE ways to dump Body and still be fairly tough to kill in this game so I think it's a li'l silly to act like we're all aghast at this heresy.

[Traul]

My question isn't why aren't you an ork. it's.. Why aren't you a Dwarf.
Dwarfs are awesome, unless you intend to get a natural 5+ reaction.

They make amazingly good riggers and hackers and streetsams.
Sure the 2 body for 25 BP isn't as nice at the 4 body for 20 bp. But dwarves get to have a 7 willpower.

Only if you hard-max it, and going from 5 to 6 with the soft max does not brings so much benefit since the extra stun box is at 7. That's why the +1 Body is not so nice either. The Attribute/2 derived stats induce bad threshold effects.

And it is not so much the natural 5 Reaction as the augmented 9 that matters: Move-By-Wire + Reaction Enhancers give a hefty +6, and even if you stay reasonable, Wired reflexes + Reaction enhancers is already +4, just what you need to reach 9 when soft-maxing.

[Yerameyahu]

Yeah, they screwed Dwarves hard with the 5 Reaction. They're the *riggers*, facrissake.

[Traul]

Has anyone tried to exchange with trolls' -1 AGI? It makes trolls better sammies and dwarves better drivers, so everyone should be happy.

[sabs]

But there isn't a character alive who can use the +6 to reaction. You might be right that the 7 cap might be a problem compared to the 9 cap. But that's limited, and doesn't matter for riggers and hackers.

I can buy a 3 reaction, and get move by wire 2, and be done.

Riggers use response, not reaction.

[KarmaInferno]

Unless they're AR riggers. Then Reaction matters somewhat.

It's still not worth maxing out, though.





-k

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Unless they're AR riggers. Then Reaction matters somewhat.

It's still not worth maxing out, though.


-k

Reaction is always worth maxing out, and it is trivially easy to do so. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[LurkerOutThere]

As we had in a conversation about the Street Legends book, every rigger should have a decent reaction in case your asked to drive something you can't jump into. Now personally as a rigger dwarf a 4 is a respectable reaction especially since there are lots of reaction boosts out there.