Help for a new GM - my players are thrashing me. Options

[Umidori]

How many hits do you think you'd need on your levitate spell to get that thing into the air?

Point. Wikipedia informs me that 150–170 metric tons is about right for a single whale's weight. That's a lot of spellcating hits. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

So we're safe. At least.... for now...

~Umi

[FuelDrop]

Also, an elephant with K-10 is an instant massacre. B 15 A 7 R 3 S 22, with tusks that deal 1/2 strength (11) + 4 (15 total) damage and have an AP of -2, along with +2 reach. While you're doping it up, throw on some Cram so it can't be sedated.

If you're ever doing a run in a zoo, THAT is what you call a distraction.

[FuelDrop]

Point. Wikipedia informs me that 150–170 metric tons is about right for a single whale's weight. That's a lot of spellcating hits. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

So we're safe. At least.... for now...

~Umi

It's the sort of thing Harliquin would do. Come on, fighting the horrors from the back of a flying enraged whale? You know he would.

[Kliko]

They made a movie about this... Sharknado!

[FuelDrop]

They made a movie about this... Sharknado!

It's an Asylum production. Why am I not surprised?

[Slide]

Opti, I hope this is helping you cope with your out of control runners (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[FuelDrop]

Opti, I hope this is helping you cope with your out of control runners (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Not to mention out of control threads (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Slide]

Also, I would like to note that I only support the shark plan if they have freaking lasers on their heads.

[FuelDrop]

Also, I would like to note that I only support the shark plan if they have freaking lasers on their heads.

Physical adept with various unarmed powers (including distance strike) + Force 12 shapechange into shark + Oxygenate + Levitate.

Shark with freaking Huduken bites flying around.

[Bull]

*blink*

Devil Rats on K-10?

*writes that down*

genius!

[Bull]

They made a movie about this... Sharknado!

you laugh, but since Gen Con falls during Shark Week this year, Tinner has vowed to use Sharknadoes in his Welcome to the 6th World events at Gen Con (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Slide]

Chummer, Sharknados are nothing to laugh at.

[Bull]

Hey, i LOVED that movie, for all it's terrible, terrible cheese. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Especially the little twist ending (Which was godawful bad, and yet awesome (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ).

[FuelDrop]

Just be glad that no player is likely to get his hand on a transport plane capable of carrying a blue whale. You fricking know they'd pull a hitchhiker's guide and push it out the back at max altitude. It wouldn't even have to hit the target, they'd do it just for the right to say "Sure, we once dropped a whale on the bad guy."

Come on, you know they would.

[Cain]

*blink*

Devil Rats on K-10?

*writes that down*

genius!

Oh, come on Bull, I know you've seen that trick before! Well, not with K-10, but you know the one involving a sack of devil rats, a few poppers of kamikaze, and a very brave troll with a good pitching arm....

Just be glad that no player is likely to get his hand on a transport plane capable of carrying a blue whale. You fricking know they'd pull a hitchhiker's guide and push it out the back at max altitude. It wouldn't even have to hit the target, they'd do it just for the right to say "Sure, we once dropped a whale on the bad guy."

Come on, you know they would.

Only if they could include a small bowl of petunias. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

[Odsh]

My shaman player continually summons a force 4 air spirit and uses engulf on everything. It uses the air engulf which bypasses armor, and does a crap-ton of stun damage. Nearly everything except boss-types fall easily within the first round since they automatically take damage again on thier action phase, and cant do anything until they escape. Are we playing this wrong, or is there something I should be doing to remedy this?

Another of my players wants to create and sell spell formula for foci and sell them to his talismonger contact. He created a force 4 power focus (it took 4 days) and now wants to sell it (according to the rules for fencing to contacts) for 18,000 (foci power (4)x 18,000 = 72,000, and sold for 5% x loyalty rating (5) = 18,000) nuyen. I went step-by-step and this seems legit, but also seems like a cheap way to get a lot of money for no real work.

Lastly, one of my players used Mob Mind in the first round of combat to make an entire street gang shoot themselves in the head, since he got 5 successes and their resist pool was only 4 dice each. Help on this stuff?

Thanks.

I don't have a solution for your player selling foci, but for the other two problems, don't forget that what the PCs can do, the NPCs can do too. Once you give them a taste of their own medicine, your players will be more inclined to discuss those issues and maybe agree on houseruling a few overpowered abilities. Or maybe they will find a way to counter them that you hadn't thought of, which you can then reuse against them.

[Lionhearted]

*Looks at thread* Fragging love DS logic sometimes (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

and yes, having magi and not using Background count or other systems meant to make them think twice is like giving the street sam a cargo load full of explosives and ignoring friendly fire

[Nal0n]

I'm totally a dog person, so I'm feeling very conflicted about wanting to add that to my List O' Tricks as well.

~Umi

Take big Cats then (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)
Black Panthers are pretty impressive...

[tete]

Lastly, one of my players used Mob Mind in the first round of combat to make an entire street gang shoot themselves in the head, since he got 5 successes and their resist pool was only 4 dice each. Help on this stuff?

Thanks.

This is a problem in SR4, you can use SR5 rule were the resistance is willpower+intuition, or allow non-magical characters to take counterspelling (a friend of mine does this), or fiddle with actual 4e rules like background count, having a mage in the street gang, and edge.


Also while Devil Rats and Kamikaze sounds cool I know per 3e RAW the Devil Rats have to high of resistance for it to feasibly work as I attempted that in plirr's game but kudos to him for siding with the rule of cool and letting it work even though when we looked it up it clearly wouldn't work the way we wanted.

[DrZaius]

Also while Devil Rats and Kamikaze sounds cool I know per 3e RAW the Devil Rats have to high of resistance for it to feasibly work as I attempted that in plirr's game but kudos to him for siding with the rule of cool and letting it work even though when we looked it up it clearly wouldn't work the way we wanted.

I statted out a cyberpooch for a Lonestar based game that never took off. The K-9000 was a force to be reckoned with... That said, the Great Cat is even more tempting. The stats on them are beastly as is; and what if you were an evil Corp who kept them in stasis in a BTL feedback loop where they were stalking shadowrunners who always got away? That would be a pretty big incentive once the trodes were removed and the cat was let out to hunt... This feels like an Atzlan move.

-DrZ

[Erik Baird]

I so wanna see big cats trained as working animals. Can you imagine a Bengal tiger doing crowd control?

[Slide]

I so wanna see big cats trained as working animals. Can you imagine a Bengal tiger doing crowd control?

Trained and cat do not belong in the same sentence. Unless it says "My cat trained me to do..."

[Umidori]

Just be glad that no player is likely to get his hand on a transport plane capable of carrying a blue whale. You fricking know they'd pull a hitchhiker's guide and push it out the back at max altitude. It wouldn't even have to hit the target, they'd do it just for the right to say "Sure, we once dropped a whale on the bad guy."

Come on, you know they would.

A blue whale is about 30 meters long, and weighs around 170 metric tonnes. The world's largest cargo plane, the Antonov An-225, has a cargo bay 43.35 meters long, and can carry 355 metric tonnes of additional weight, including fuel, of which it can hold 300 metric tonnes. Assuming half a tank of fuel, you could load a blue whale in the cargo bay and still add another 35 metric tonnes to the craft before hitting the maximum takeoff weight.

That said, it would probably be a rather tight fit. Finding sources for blue whale dimensions other than length is proving oddly difficult, but the few reliable numbers I can find seem to suggest both a rough width and height of something like 10 meters. Unfortunately, the cargo bay of the An-225 is only 6.4 meters wide and only 4.4 meters tall.

Of course, you could always strap it to the roof, but that seems structurally problematic. You'd probably need to add on a specialized reinforced external support frame to lay the whale on. With the excess weight allowance and maybe even taking out another quarter tank of fuel, this should still be entirely possible.

There's not a lot of other options, though. Cargo helicopters have physics fighting them, and it would take a team of nine Mil Mi-26 heavy transport helicopters (the largest in production) with a special harness and careful coordination to lift a blue whale. Oddly enough, this is actually not that bad, as there's only one An-225 in the world, but there have been 316 Mi-26 helicopters built.

But I digress.

So you could load a small blue whale into the back of the world's largest cargo plane and drop it from a height of almost seven miles. But there is one important thing to remember - The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy involved a sperm whale, not a blue whale! With such whales averaging a mere 16 meters and 57 metric tonnes, the An-225 (and probably numerous not-as-big cargo planes) could easily carry one aloft, and could probably take enough seawater to keep it somewhat comfortable too, unlike with the bone dry blue whale. As for the bowl of petunias, that weight and volume is negligable. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

~Umi

[Dancer]

*blink*

Devil Rats on K-10?

*writes that down*

genius!

Aren't they immune to toxins? Presumably that would block drugs like K-10 as well.

[Bull]

Aren't they immune to toxins? Presumably that would block drugs like K-10 as well.

That just gives them extra dice. And as the GM, I don;t have to roll the dice to see if they're effected!

And if necessary...

K-11. All the benefits of K-10, specially adapted for Devil Rat physiology.

There. Done.

you kids make everything so difficult these days.