[X] My Assistant

[Grinder]

Oakforest is, Lugh, I do not know. IIRC he is a City of the Spires guy, like Erhan and Harlequin.

I've mistaken you into "Lugh is not a 4th World Immortal Elf", my bad.

[Stormdrake]

With the hints we have been getting about the new magics coming in "Atrifacts Unbound" I would say we will see new metamagics that the IE's have been keeping for themselves. Thats just a guess though. I can understand why the writers did not add any new metamagics here as a book dedicated to new magics is on its way and you don't want to step on anyones toes.

[Sephiroth]

Textual portion of chapter: Discussion of his elven immortality was omitted by design; IEs are NOT common knowledge, even to the Jackpoint crowd.

Stat block: Looks like I failed to include his Immunity to Age, Poisons, and Pathogens in his Qualities. Human error on my part. I apologize if it caused any confusion.

As for his power level, I had a few goals when statting the character:

* Make him a highly competent politician and magician. (Crizh has already pointed out how I somewhat underdid the latter, but I think the guy is still fairly beastly by any reasonable standard.)
* Create stats that would make him very powerful overall while still leaving room for at least one other metahuman magician (Harlequin) to be significantly better than him.

Everyone's opinions of what "Power Level" is vary. In my opinion, Lugh is extremely powerful as written. Your mileage may certainly vary.

In any case, I did not intend to actually change what flavor of dandelion eater he is. : )

Not including his immortality in the textual part of his chapter is completely fine and understandable. The small issue that I have regarding his whole immortality shtick is that it isn't even included in the gamemaster notes for him, so that if you didn't know anything about immortal elves as a player and you read Lugh Surehand's stats, you still would have no idea that he's been around since the last age of magic. I don't know whether the reason for that is human error, licensing issues, personal preference of the writer or line developer, or whatever, but something at least along the lines of "this guy has been around since before the fall of the Roman Empire" would be good to have for gamemasters not wholly acquainted with SR metaplot, even as unofficial errata.

Also Neurosis, as the writer for Lugh (and maybe Hestaby/Lofwyr?), you can no doubt answer this better than Patrick was able to (no offense meant to Patrick): Why exactly was Lugh not given anything unique to him in terms of his magic? Whenever IE's have come up in SR canon (like the Harlequin adventures), it's been established that they can bend the rules of magic because their magic works differently. IIRC Lugh is experienced in elementalism, nethermancy, and something else. So why exactly wasn't anything included along those lines? I mean, the multiple alternate elemental spells kind of edge into that, but only barely. I can go with the reasoning that not all of the IE's magics from the 4th world is accessible to them yet with the current mana level, but it strikes me as odd to say that all of their ED magic techniques require a higher mana level. Even if they can't use their stronger magic techniques, they should still have knowledge of some techniques that can still work in 207X and are largely unknown to the Awakened world at large (since they're all new at it). Was this a SR-ED licensing issue or something?

[Bull]

COuple notes...

ED links are... Flexible. The links are there, but they only apply inasmuch as we want them to apply. This is doubly true since ED has gone to other copmanies over the past 10 years.

Nobody said that Immortal ELves follow the same rules as normal runners. Maybe they don't earn karma at the same rate as normal humans? Maybe they don't retain info as well? Hell, the old saying "I've forgotten more than you'll ever know" may apply as well... It's been how many years? I have trouble remembering all my teachers names from Grade School now, and it's only been 25 or so years. The Immortals probably spent a LOT of the down time just... idling. DOing nothing. A few meddled in human affairs here and there, but most likely just spent 100 or 200 years doing nothing. Nowhere has it ever been stated that they have perfect recall. And half of what they did know still doesn't work due to the lower mana levels. So I can easily imagine them forgetting a LOT of stuff.

And honestly, half the problem with statting out these NPCs is the hard caps. They're a giant pain to work with, because you don't want to just give everyone straight 6's across the board, even if they deserve it.

Bull

[Nath]

Well, given how Karma works, it make perfect sense. Think about how much Karma your character earns in an ingame year, and multiply this by, say, 8000. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

During Earthdawn era, he was earning Legend Points. And then, we don't known how many game systems and editions he went through Earthdawn last and Shadowrun first, and what the conversion rules were. Lots of karma may have been wasted that way.

Maybe they don't earn karma at the same rate as normal humans?

Also, the more powerful you get, the less often are there world shattering events that would count as a challenge happening. Previous editions did not have that one point for surviving. Getting through WW2 would count as one adventure, maybe two ("First there was that time when we stopped Nazi occult force from summoning an Horror, and then we had to find Trinity Test location to clean the tainted astral there..."). Also, as I liked to point out when discussing Great Dragons and IE Karma Pool in previous editions, there was a precedent in the rules, as metahuman Karma Pool rose two time slower than humans.

Hell, the old saying "I've forgotten more than you'll ever know" may apply as well... It's been how many years? I have trouble remembering all my teachers names from Grade School now, and it's only been 25 or so years. The Immortals probably spent a LOT of the down time just... idling. DOing nothing. A few meddled in human affairs here and there, but most likely just spent 100 or 200 years doing nothing. Nowhere has it ever been stated that they have perfect recall. And half of what they did know still doesn't work due to the lower mana levels. So I can easily imagine them forgetting a LOT of stuff.

I often thought skills decay are missing in most RPG.

[hermit]

Thats just a guess though. I can understand why the writers did not add any new metamagics here as a book dedicated to new magics is on its way and you don't want to step on anyones toes.

Of course, that did not stop them from putting in other references to this book and stepping on toes.

Whenever IE's have come up in SR canon (like the Harlequin adventures), it's been established that they can bend the rules of magic because their magic works differently.

Actually, in Harlequin's Back, it is explained as working differnetly because they believe it does. Which is why Harlequin is such a sucky teacher to Frosty, whose views on Magic are primarily sixth world, not fourth world. I recon Brane Deigh has similar problems, whough she might be one of the reborn elves with loads of past life memories and hence effectively be her own Book of Harrow, too.

Nobody said that Immortal ELves follow the same rules as normal runners. Maybe they don't earn karma at the same rate as normal humans?

Still, they should be, in magic, a match for the Great Dragons. Because they kicked their asses once already.

A few meddled in human affairs here and there, but most likely just spent 100 or 200 years doing nothing.

Even if you just do drugs day in, day out, like Aina and Harlequin were wont to for centuries, you still earn 'survival' Karma. and they went through at least one full-on war with the Horrors. That's worth megatons of Karma.

And half of what they did know still doesn't work due to the lower mana levels. So I can easily imagine them forgetting a LOT of stuff.

Of course it doesn't, but a knowledge skill "4th world magic theory" at 14 (and appropriate skill pushes from Adept powers, using Critas' rules) would have been nice.

I often thought skills decay are missing in most RPG.

They are, and it's really hard to make them work as rules anyway. I always assume a game world works like the Discworld.

[Larsine]

I'm not going to throw my fellow writers/proofreaders under the bus here; suffice to say the lesson learned was that I need to rely more on my own internal editing and less on the proofing process to catch mistakes and/or omissions.

Well you should see amount of mistakes/errors we do manage to find. Sometimes the proofing document is longer than the actual text being proofed.

And we are always pressed for time.

[Neurosis]

Every time I speak up on here or elsewhere on teh internets I am a little worried I will unknowingly say something that gets me in trouble, but let me try to respond to this.

Not including his immortality in the textual part of his chapter is completely fine and understandable. The small issue that I have regarding his whole immortality shtick is that it isn't even included in the gamemaster notes for him, so that if you didn't know anything about immortal elves as a player and you read Lugh Surehand's stats, you still would have no idea that he's been around since the last age of magic. I don't know whether the reason for that is human error, licensing issues, personal preference of the writer or line developer, or whatever, but something at least along the lines of "this guy has been around since before the fall of the Roman Empire" would be good to have for gamemasters not wholly acquainted with SR metaplot, even as unofficial errata.

I think this is the result of a confluence of a few different elements. One of those is that there is no "out of character description" section in Street Legends. There is an IC description and OOC stats. So, from my perspective, there was not a good place to "put" the information that you're talking about. Secondly, well...I like IEs at least as much as the next guy, but I don't think that the most important, fascinating, or relevant thing about them necessarily is their immortality in-and-of-itself. I believe this is especially true in Surehand's case. So I suppose another factor in my decision not to play up the IE angle is that it is just not one of the things that most interested me about the character.

In an unofficial errata or 20/20 hindsight sense, I definitely wish that I had just included 'Immunity to Age' in his Qualities, which would have I think been an adequate hint to most GMs not already in the know that something was special about this guy.

Also Neurosis, as the writer for Lugh (and maybe Hestaby/Lofwyr?), you can no doubt answer this better than Patrick was able to (no offense meant to Patrick): Why exactly was Lugh not given anything unique to him in terms of his magic? Whenever IE's have come up in SR canon (like the Harlequin adventures), it's been established that they can bend the rules of magic because their magic works differently. IIRC Lugh is experienced in elementalism, nethermancy, and something else. So why exactly wasn't anything included along those lines? I mean, the multiple alternate elemental spells kind of edge into that, but only barely. I can go with the reasoning that not all of the IE's magics from the 4th world is accessible to them yet with the current mana level, but it strikes me as odd to say that all of their ED magic techniques require a higher mana level. Even if they can't use their stronger magic techniques, they should still have knowledge of some techniques that can still work in 207X and are largely unknown to the Awakened world at large (since they're all new at it). Was this a SR-ED licensing issue or something?

Let's see...first off, it was not a licensing issue that I know of. There are, unfortunately, comments I'd like to make in response to this that I cannot because of my NDA; they concern upcoming products that I am involved with.

Generally speaking, my intention was to make the character adequately powerful to defeat any given team of (reasonably built) Shadowrunners should the situation arise (although I think there are many good reasons it never would) without adding in unnecessarily 'wacky' powers (for lack of a better word) to make him even more of a special elven snowflake. At least in this kind of a sourcebook and at this point in the edition's life cycle, I would say that a general guideline is the less new rules something adds to the game, the better. And there are certain fairly hardline rules about what magic can and cannot do in SR, and bringing back the dead is one of them so Nethermancy is right out. Whereas I am fairly sure he has held onto the essence of his abilities from the Elementalist circle of ED.

Also: this may sound odd, but I did not mean the listed stats to necessarily be the be-all and end-all of everything that Surehand might potentially be capable of. Rather, I wanted it to represent the most personal power that the Sixth World might reasonably require of him. In this particular case, and I think this would be a good way of thinking about the Great Dragons too, just because I have not spelled out that the character can do something, doesn't mean he can't. Now obviously, most stat blocks should not be read that way, but I think for things like IEs and GDs it is sort of a good way to approach it.

Does that make any sense?

Nobody said that Immortal ELves follow the same rules as normal runners. Maybe they don't earn karma at the same rate as normal humans? Maybe they don't retain info as well? Hell, the old saying "I've forgotten more than you'll ever know" may apply as well... It's been how many years? I have trouble remembering all my teachers names from Grade School now, and it's only been 25 or so years. The Immortals probably spent a LOT of the down time just... idling. DOing nothing. A few meddled in human affairs here and there, but most likely just spent 100 or 200 years doing nothing. Nowhere has it ever been stated that they have perfect recall. And half of what they did know still doesn't work due to the lower mana levels. So I can easily imagine them forgetting a LOT of stuff.

Goes without saying, probably, but I completely agree. "I've forgotten more than you'll ever know" has always been very essential to my concept of IEs, since I first learned about them many a year ago.

Also, the more powerful you get, the less often are there world shattering events that would count as a challenge happening. Previous editions did not have that one point for surviving. Getting through WW2 would count as one adventure, maybe two ("First there was that time when we stopped Nazi occult force from summoning an Horror, and then we had to find Trinity Test location to clean the tainted astral there..."). Also, as I liked to point out when discussing Great Dragons and IE Karma Pool in previous editions, there was a precedent in the rules, as metahuman Karma Pool rose two time slower than humans

I think there's a lot here I agree with as well.

[Neurosis]

I did not write Hestaby or Lofwyr by the way.

[hermit]

And we are always pressed for time.

As I thought, then.

Every time I speak up on here or elsewhere on teh internets I am a little worried I will unknowingly say something that gets me in trouble, but let me try to respond to this.

Well, you shouldn't say "whew this character sucked anyway so duh" in a discussion about how upset people are that character got offed the way she was. Fanning and flames ...

Generally speaking, my intention was to make the character adequately powerful to defeat any given team of (reasonably built) Shadowrunners should the situation arise without adding in unnecessarily 'wacky' powers (for lack of a better word) to make him even more of a special elven snowflake.

He is a special snowflake just like a dragon is.

[CanRay]

Nobody said that Immortal Elves follow the same rules as normal runners. Maybe they don't earn karma at the same rate as normal humans? Maybe they don't retain info as well? Hell, the old saying "I've forgotten more than you'll ever know" may apply as well... It's been how many years? I have trouble remembering all my teachers names from Grade School now, and it's only been 25 or so years. The Immortals probably spent a LOT of the down time just... idling. DOing nothing. A few meddled in human affairs here and there, but most likely just spent 100 or 200 years doing nothing. Nowhere has it ever been stated that they have perfect recall. And half of what they did know still doesn't work due to the lower mana levels. So I can easily imagine them forgetting a LOT of stuff.

Bull

Maybe they spend all day griefing on MMOs.

[Stahlseele]

Well, Caimbeul does, at least ^^

[CanRay]

I bet they have a Guild made up of just IEs and Dragons. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Stahlseele]

I bet they have a Guild made up of just IEs and Dragons. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

wonder how often dunkie and harley griefed each other either knowingly or unknowingly . . eliohan or who that dragons with the datajack was would probably be all about that as well ^^

[CanRay]

wonder how often dunkie and harley griefed each other either knowingly or unknowingly . . eliohan or who that dragons with the datajack was would probably be all about that as well ^^

Considering how often they knowingly fought on ShadowLand.

*Pours a 40 on the curb for the Captain*

[hermit]

I bet they have a Guild made up of just IEs and Dragons. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Yup. They also have a MetaLink group for themselves. It's technically set on private but it's not at all hard to hack (much like the Champagne Room).

Considering how often they knowingly fought on ShadowLand.

What's much more interesting is that nobody at Shadowland ever called them out, or referred to them, or was annoyed by them and wrote so.

[Stahlseele]

would YOU like to try and call out the Big D for example? o.O
Basically the same reaction as going to the official boards, praising frank trollman, calling hardy an imposter, the current writers hacks and the other guy a thief . .
only much much worse . .

[CanRay]

Well, after a few posters went missing, or were found only in ashes and a single smoking boot...

[Stormdrake]

Who wrote the Giles like character? I am so going to use him, lol.

[Patrick Goodman]

Giles-like?

[hermit]

would YOU like to try and call out the Big D for example? o.O
Basically the same reaction as going to the official boards, praising frank trollman, calling hardy an imposter, the current writers hacks and the other guy a thief . .
only much much worse . .

Didn't you do that? Several times? And you are still alive, right? Also, I thought Otakusense is writing more clearly there.

Besides, I'm not saying flame them but say "oh come ON, get a backroom for your private talk or write something substantial but stop cluttering our documents with pointless omniously vacuous comments like those. Really, there are other Forums in Shadoland, ask CC and he'll set one up for you, scan?"

[Stahlseele]

*shrugs*
maybe they enjoyed it as much as we do? O.o

[hermit]

Quite possibly.

Also, all the links in your sig seem broken.

[hobgoblin]

Maybe they spend all day griefing on MMOs.

I think there is a chapter text in one of the matrix or something that has Harlequin and Ethan playing a MMO.

[Nath]

I think there is a chapter text in one of the matrix or something that has Harlequin and Ethan playing a MMO.

That's Dawn of the Artifacts: Dusk intro. They're playing on Dawn of Atlantis MMO.