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> Did I Summon a spirit or a Marshmallow?
CrystalBlue
post Jun 14 2012, 06:17 PM
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So I threw some spirits at my group the other day. I thought, hey, I'm going to show them a good time and make them scared and let that troll mage with banishing actually do something. So I summoned two force 3 fire spirits and everyone rolled initiative. The Gun Bunny goes first. I won't go into how many dice she rolls, but suffice it to say that it's over 15. She's using and specialized in semi-automatic pistols. One shot goes into the spirit. She's doing around 5P with the weapon to begin with. She rolls around 8 hits without using edge. I roll reaction and reduce it by one. Since she's using flechette and called shot, that's a +5 damage Total, she's doing about 17P before I roll damage reduction. If I remember correctly, she just had to beat double the force to punch through the hardened armor. I'm pretty sure 17 is more then 6. I roll damage reduction, +4 from the flechette, and get only around 5 hits. That's 12P that's going at a spirit. That's a dispelled spirit in one bullet. And she duel-wields, which means she's got another shot, then another simple action for two more shots if she wanted.

Did I summon this fire spirit from the Plane of Paper?
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Elfenlied
post Jun 14 2012, 06:22 PM
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As a rule of thumb, any materialization spirit below F5 gets vaporized by semi-competent handgun wielders. So yeah, a F3 spirit is quite literally made out of paper planes, since a heavy pistol with standard ammo will overcome its hardened armor automatically.

F5-6 is usually adequate for most beginner level characters. I wouldn't go past F8 unless the group runs around with heavy weapons/sniper rifles/competent initiated mages.
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snowRaven
post Jun 14 2012, 06:53 PM
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Yeah. As opposition, spirits of Force 1-3 are pretty much useless for anything but wasting PC actions, because they'll go down quick and hard, and almost any use of their powers is likely to be resisted or have insignificant effects.

At Force 4, they're a bit more lilely to affect the PCs if you target their weaknesses as far as resistance tests go, and they can be somewhat useful as support for the baddies. They'll still go down pretty easy.

At Force 5-6, they can be quite a challenge unless the PCs are magic-heavy, have heavy weapons, or are just heavy dudes.

At Force 7-8 they're tough, unless the PCs are real bad-asses.

Force 9-10 they're tough against most things a PC can hope to acquire, even if they are initiated magic users. The 'best' they can hope for is to have their own spirits of equal/higher force to keep them busy, or really massive fire power.

Above Force 10 and spirits get really really nasty.


EDIT: So, to answer your question: yes, you summoned a marshmallow...

Unless you have a very weak or very anti-spirit team of PCs, you're limited to spirit opposition between Force 5 and 8 mostly.
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almost normal
post Jun 14 2012, 06:59 PM
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QUOTE (CrystalBlue @ Jun 14 2012, 01:17 PM) *
So I threw some spirits at my group the other day. I thought, hey, I'm going to show them a good time and make them scared and let that troll mage with banishing actually do something. So I summoned two force 3 fire spirits and everyone rolled initiative. The Gun Bunny goes first. I won't go into how many dice she rolls, but suffice it to say that it's over 15. She's using and specialized in semi-automatic pistols. One shot goes into the spirit. She's doing around 5P with the weapon to begin with. She rolls around 8 hits without using edge. I roll reaction and reduce it by one. Since she's using flechette and called shot, that's a +5 damage Total, she's doing about 17P before I roll damage reduction. If I remember correctly, she just had to beat double the force to punch through the hardened armor. I'm pretty sure 17 is more then 6. I roll damage reduction, +4 from the flechette, and get only around 5 hits. That's 12P that's going at a spirit. That's a dispelled spirit in one bullet. And she duel-wields, which means she's got another shot, then another simple action for two more shots if she wanted.

Did I summon this fire spirit from the Plane of Paper?


I think you might be doing the rules wrong. Dual wield splits the pool in half. If she got 8 hits on half a pool, you should be ashamed as a GM for allowing such a character.
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snowRaven
post Jun 14 2012, 07:10 PM
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QUOTE (almost normal @ Jun 14 2012, 08:59 PM) *
I think you might be doing the rules wrong. Dual wield splits the pool in half. If she got 8 hits on half a pool, you should be ashamed as a GM for allowing such a character.


For once, I wholeheartedly agree with you! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) Good catch!
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Yerameyahu
post Jun 14 2012, 07:20 PM
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The issue is that spirits don't scale linearly, alas.
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Daddy's Litt...
post Jun 14 2012, 07:20 PM
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What did you do Ray?
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Critias
post Jun 14 2012, 07:27 PM
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At Force 3? Yeah. Marshmallow. Unfortunately, ItnW means there's not a whole lot of "sweet spot," where a spirit is a challenge, but something a team can beat without pulling out REAL big guns or specialized ammo. They tend to be creampuffs at Force 3-4, decent challenges at Force 5-6, and then they move up to "real trouble" at Force 7+, in my experience. The transition happens pretty suddenly, against your average group.
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DamienKnight
post Jun 14 2012, 07:50 PM
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QUOTE (almost normal @ Jun 14 2012, 01:59 PM) *
I think you might be doing the rules wrong. Dual wield splits the pool in half. If she got 8 hits on half a pool, you should be ashamed as a GM for allowing such a character.



And if that were the case, she would not have hurt the force 3 spirits at all!

Damage = 5P +2 DV for flechette and + 4 for skill (8 / 2 hands).

Spirits Hardened armor from Normal Weapon Immunity: force x 3 = 6 + 5 (flechette ammo adds 5 to all armor ratings) = 11.

Since the DV does not exceed the armor rating, shots are inneffective. She would be better off shooting standard ammo, or explosive ammo. Flechette sucks against hardened armor!

Your force 3 spirits are still marshmallows though. If she has 15+ dice, you have a high powered group. You need to throw force 6's at them if your going to make them sweat.

Two average joes with 3 willpower could take out a force 3 spirit most of the time. For a runner its like beating up an average guy wearing a little armor.
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CrystalBlue
post Jun 14 2012, 07:52 PM
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QUOTE (almost normal @ Jun 14 2012, 01:59 PM) *
I think you might be doing the rules wrong. Dual wield splits the pool in half. If she got 8 hits on half a pool, you should be ashamed as a GM for allowing such a character.


No, he's throwing around 15 dice per hand. Gun adept, specialized, and put a lot of points into the right skills. From what I remember from all of the rules that we had to read for this, only the base pool is split. Then, modifiers happen. He seems to have a ton of positive modifiers to his pistol skill. He's got about 7 agility, 8 pistols (10 for specialized), Improved Active Skill 3, he somehow can take aim as a free action, initiate grade 3 with adept centering, laser sights, personalized grips. The numbers do get around 24. But from what he tells me, he splits his dice into two 10 dice pools, then increases each with positive modifiers, which means he's rolling 15+ dice on each gun.

To be clear, this is a 150 Karma character that's put every last point into doing as well with pistols as she can. It's a far cry better then her Katana + SMG = Simple Melee Attack build. That pissed me off.
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CrystalBlue
post Jun 14 2012, 07:54 PM
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And I can't really throw anything more powerful at them. I have a Gun Bunny, a melee adept, a covert ops, and a troll mage. The gun bunny is, 9 times out of 9, going to solve any problem. The melee adept is the best they have for melee, but it is really hard to get him into the combat before the bunny blows something up.
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Tymeaus Jalynsfe...
post Jun 14 2012, 07:54 PM
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QUOTE (CrystalBlue @ Jun 14 2012, 11:17 AM) *
So I threw some spirits at my group the other day. I thought, hey, I'm going to show them a good time and make them scared and let that troll mage with banishing actually do something. So I summoned two force 3 fire spirits and everyone rolled initiative. The Gun Bunny goes first. I won't go into how many dice she rolls, but suffice it to say that it's over 15. She's using and specialized in semi-automatic pistols. One shot goes into the spirit. She's doing around 5P with the weapon to begin with. She rolls around 8 hits without using edge. I roll reaction and reduce it by one. Since she's using flechette and called shot, that's a +5 damage Total, she's doing about 17P before I roll damage reduction. If I remember correctly, she just had to beat double the force to punch through the hardened armor. I'm pretty sure 17 is more then 6. I roll damage reduction, +4 from the flechette, and get only around 5 hits. That's 12P that's going at a spirit. That's a dispelled spirit in one bullet. And she duel-wields, which means she's got another shot, then another simple action for two more shots if she wanted.

Did I summon this fire spirit from the Plane of Paper?


EDIT: Never Mind... Already mentioned...
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Aerospider
post Jun 14 2012, 07:58 PM
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QUOTE (Elfenlied @ Jun 14 2012, 07:22 PM) *
a F3 spirit is quite literally made out of paper planes

Shame on you!
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Mantis
post Jun 14 2012, 08:05 PM
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Well, how exactly does this adept get an 8 skill? The maximum a skill can be without the Aptitude quality is 6. Also, the adept improved skill power gets added to the base skill so it is also split the same way. It isn't a modifier but rather an addition to the skill. Laser sights can't be used while dual wielding firearms either. Personalized grips on a firearm just compensate for recoil, they don't add to your dice pool in any way.
So, from what you list it should be Agility 7 + Skill 8 (how unless that includes the specialization) + improved Pistol skill 3 = 18 pool split to 9 per gun. Without attunement for one of those pistols, nothing else gets added. So it should be a 9 pool on each weapon, though with a possible -2 if the character lacks Ambidexterity or some ability to use two weapons at once. The two weapon penalty can also b taken out by centering but no take aim as free action then since centering takes a free action. Also called shot requires a free action. No laser sight or smart link bonus allowed.
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Aerospider
post Jun 14 2012, 08:07 PM
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QUOTE (CrystalBlue @ Jun 14 2012, 08:54 PM) *
And I can't really throw anything more powerful at them.

Why on Earth not? I personally have no qualms with throwing as-good-as-unbeatable forces at my PCs (on occasion) so long as its backed up with good story - a good Shadowrun team will fight well but a great team will know when to run away. If my players were to stop fearing for the safety of their characters I will have failed.
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thorya
post Jun 14 2012, 08:10 PM
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QUOTE (CrystalBlue @ Jun 14 2012, 02:52 PM) *
No, he's throwing around 15 dice per hand. Gun adept, specialized, and put a lot of points into the right skills. From what I remember from all of the rules that we had to read for this, only the base pool is split. Then, modifiers happen. He seems to have a ton of positive modifiers to his pistol skill. He's got about 7 agility, 8 pistols (10 for specialized), Improved Active Skill 3, he somehow can take aim as a free action, initiate grade 3 with adept centering, laser sights, personalized grips. The numbers do get around 24. But from what he tells me, he splits his dice into two 10 dice pools, then increases each with positive modifiers, which means he's rolling 15+ dice on each gun.

To be clear, this is a 150 Karma character that's put every last point into doing as well with pistols as she can. It's a far cry better then her Katana + SMG = Simple Melee Attack build. That pissed me off.


I would double check some of that. 5+ modifiers seems excessive. Especially when you consider that he called shot so should be at a -4 and a lot of engagements are at more than 5 meters so should have range penalties. And I don't think you can take aim with two attacks simultaneously.

Is he applying +1 personalized grips? +1 laser sights? what else? Does he have smart links too that he's trying to count? Because none of that works.
Is he getting +4 from taking aim multiple times for free while simultaneously calling a shot? I don't think that's how it works, but I'm not sure where he's getting the free aim from.
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almost normal
post Jun 14 2012, 08:11 PM
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QUOTE (CrystalBlue @ Jun 14 2012, 02:52 PM) *
No, he's throwing around 15 dice per hand. Gun adept, specialized, and put a lot of points into the right skills. From what I remember from all of the rules that we had to read for this, only the base pool is split. Then, modifiers happen. He seems to have a ton of positive modifiers to his pistol skill. He's got about 7 agility, 8 pistols (10 for specialized), Improved Active Skill 3, he somehow can take aim as a free action, initiate grade 3 with adept centering, laser sights, personalized grips. The numbers do get around 24. But from what he tells me, he splits his dice into two 10 dice pools, then increases each with positive modifiers, which means he's rolling 15+ dice on each gun.

To be clear, this is a 150 Karma character that's put every last point into doing as well with pistols as she can. It's a far cry better then her Katana + SMG = Simple Melee Attack build. That pissed me off.



Well... A couple of things.

His base pool is going to be 20, so two pools of 10. The only modifiers are going to be the personalized grips at +1. RAW doesn't allow smartlinking while dual wielding, so RAI sure as hell isn't going to let the laser sights work either. Centering is nice to take away a negative modifier, but I've got the sneaking suspicion the 'modifier' he's centering away is the split pool itself. I could be way off on that though.

While 8 hits on 11 dice is possible, if it was a freak thing, I don't think you'd be writing to us about it. The average is going to hover at a little below 4 hits.
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almost normal
post Jun 14 2012, 08:12 PM
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QUOTE (thorya @ Jun 14 2012, 03:10 PM) *
Is he getting +4 from taking aim multiple times for free while simultaneously calling a shot? I don't think that's how it works.



Krav Maga allows you to aim as a free action. I could certainly see a player not mentioning the half dozen free aim actions he's taking.
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Tanegar
post Jun 14 2012, 08:38 PM
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QUOTE (almost normal @ Jun 14 2012, 03:12 PM) *
Krav Maga allows you to aim as a free action. I could certainly see a player not mentioning the half dozen free aim actions he's taking.

Except you only get one free action per IP. You can spend a simple action to gain another, for a maximum of three free actions per IP. I think the GM would notice if the player were only shooting every third IP.
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almost normal
post Jun 14 2012, 08:39 PM
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QUOTE (Tanegar @ Jun 14 2012, 03:38 PM) *
Except you only get one free action per IP. You can spend a simple action to gain another, for a maximum of three free actions per IP. I think the GM would notice if the player were only shooting every third IP.


Please cite where I stated the player was following the rules.
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Tanegar
post Jun 14 2012, 08:56 PM
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The impression I've gotten so far is that the player is merely committing an error, vis-a-vis the dual-wielding rules; you seem to be suggesting he is deliberately cheating.
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almost normal
post Jun 14 2012, 09:08 PM
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Flattery will get you nowhere.

I'd still like you to cite where I stated the player was following the rules, if you please, that is, unless you are no longer dead set on 'correcting' me for suggesting what a player might be doing to receive such a high result.
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Falconer
post Jun 14 2012, 09:13 PM
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Yeah force 3 is paper... HOWEVER using flechettes makes them quite formidable... they add +5 to the hardened quality so they end up nearly as tough as force 5-6 spirits until switching ammo. (really plain vanilla slugs would work better!).


CrystalBlue... he's either abusing rules or has them wrong... and he's playing off you as well because you don't understand them. Also I'm seeing people breaking things down incorrectly in the thread. So I'll start at step 1.

Determining base pool.

Shadowrun has 4 sources of dice.
Attributes
Skills
Skill Modifers (which modify/augment the SKILL to a max of 1 per 2 ranks in skill)
Then situational modifiers... anything which doesn't fall in the first 3 is a situational modifier, this includes specializations

Splitting goes you take the first 3 to determine the pool. (so no the adepts improved pistols is not post split).

So using your own example...
Attribute: Agility: 7
Skill: Pistols: 6(9)
Skill Mod: see above (9)... improved pistols skill. This is the augmented value of the skill
Situational mods: +2 specialization, no others (dual firing specifically bans the use of smartlinks, laser sights, etc.)
Unused mods: adept centering... (free action to use btw... has he told you what kind of kata he uses to activate it?!)

Aiming as a free action has nothing to do with it... he can manage a +1 maybe to one gun. If he's adept centering he's already used up his free action. Customized grips give 1 point of RC, not +1 dice (personalized grips on MELEE weapons give +1... so if he's using his pistols as melee weapons using the clubs skill... that's different but still related).

So now with the above. He has 16 dice before the split.
Split that into two pools of 8 dice... now each gets +2 for his pistol specialization.

He gets 10 dice per attack, no more... apply situational modifiers after this individually to each pool. Also remember RUNNING uses a free action (you see people using their running speed all the time in combat... point this out to them!) and also applies a -2 situational to each attack.

As others have stated... negative modifiers far outnumber positive ones after this point... (range penalties, vision modifiers, etc.). He has at least 1RC on each gun... so you don't need to worry about applying recoil penalties to both pools like firing two guns at once says.


I don't see why you're so pissed about the melee+SMG one... it's not a bad combo... sounds more like he didn't pull it off right.
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Tanegar
post Jun 14 2012, 10:02 PM
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QUOTE (almost normal @ Jun 14 2012, 04:08 PM) *
Flattery will get you nowhere.

I'd still like you to cite where I stated the player was following the rules, if you please, that is, unless you are no longer dead set on 'correcting' me for suggesting what a player might be doing to receive such a high result.

Not sure why you're trying to pick a fight, or where you get the idea that I was trying to flatter you (for the record, I wasn't), but whatever. There are three salient points:

  1. You never said the player was following the rules.
  2. I never said you said the player was following the rules.
  3. You are, as far as I can determine, the first poster in this thread to assume deliberate cheating rather than player error.


That's it.
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The Jopp
post Jun 14 2012, 10:24 PM
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Hmmm...if a 'normal spirits armor is equal to force, and then you add flechettes...

Shouldnt we make the addition of flechette bonus BEFORE we double the armor to make it hardened?
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