Troll Combat Monster in SR5 Options

[X-Kalibur]

Well, the legality codes (and availability really) of lots of things in SR has been out of whack for a long time. If you go walking around an urban area with a composite bow and a quiver full of arrows, you're gonna get picked up by the cops.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

on a less tangential note, throwing adepts also haven't got all their special tricks yet, most of which function just fine with throwing knives (or indeed with any throwable object), but not for bows.

This is so very true. My Throwing Adept from SR4A was a beast... And very Discreet in comparison to the Panther Assault Cannon.
We will see how that plays out in SR5...

[Sponge]

There is a good article about this here: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/42236...ns-versus-bows/

Despite China having firearms before Europe, China also lagged significantly behind Europe in firearms advances from mid-millenium until about the 19th century as well (perhaps for some of the same reasons described in the article) so I suspect it was something of a self-reinforcing choice.

Getting hit with an arrow launched from a bow made from 2075 high tech composite materials powered by the muscles of a 500+ plus Troll on magical or cyberware steroids (or both) should be akin to getting impaled by a spear shot out of a cannon, or getting hit with an ancient Roman ballista. Upper limit bows should be hitting as hard as Assault Cannons, and their major drawback should be their slow rate of fire and their absurd Strength requirements.

Then they at least would still fill a niche. Do you want the legal-to-own-and-carry bow and arrow that fires silently but requires great physical strength to use? Or do you want the completely shoot-on-sight-illegal assault cannon that wakes up the entire neighborhood and is even more absurdly impossible to conceal, but which has the benefit of being useable by a total weakling?

Sorry, I misinterpreted your list of a Bow's drawbacks as things you were complaining about, rather than its damage. I agree that Bows get the shaft when compared to Throwing Knives, though I'm not sure I'd up the damage on Bows even more.

I disagree that bows are "going to stick out like a sore thumb", though, unless you're walking around with a giant bow while dressed in combat gear. If you're just "going to your weekly archery class" dressed in civvies, people may be curious, but not particularly suspicious (at least until the news story the next day about a corp exec murdered with a troll-strength arrow through his head).

[Lobo0705]

The long and short of it is that guns are easier to teach someone to use, and fire more rapidly over longer distances with less need of compensation for gravity.

Arrows and melee weapons actually impart massive amounts of kinetic energy and inflict horrific wounds, because they're so much more massive than bullets. Shot for shot, I'd rather get hit with a bullet than an arrow or a katana any day. Guns are just easier to use and allow you to make more "attacks" in a certain space of time.

So if we're talking armies, yeah, it makes sense to use weapons that require minimal training, because then you can equip and field a large force on short notice. It also makes sense to use weapons that put a lot of lead down range, because even if most of the shots miss, sheer volume can still be overwhelming and thus effective.

Getting hit with an arrow launched from a bow made from 2075 high tech composite materials powered by the muscles of a 500+ plus Troll on magical or cyberware steroids (or both) should be akin to getting impaled by a spear shot out of a cannon, or getting hit with an ancient Roman ballista. Upper limit bows should be hitting as hard as Assault Cannons, and their major drawback should be their slow rate of fire and their absurd Strength requirements.

Then they at least would still fill a niche. Do you want the legal-to-own-and-carry bow and arrow that fires silently but requires great physical strength to use? Or do you want the completely shoot-on-sight-illegal assault cannon that wakes up the entire neighborhood and is even more absurdly impossible to conceal, but which has the benefit of being useable by a total weakling?

~Umi

Real world, range is another factor - you can't hit someone with an arrow a half mile away.

In game, you'd have to be careful on capping the upper limit on AP, as I don't care how strong you are, an arrow isn't going to punch a main battle tank, while an assault cannon might.

That being said, the way they made the changes from 4e to 5e (as you said above) effectively halved the strength of arrows compared to other strength based weapons - which is too much of a nerf.

[Umidori]

If you have a Rating 10 bow, it stands out. If you saw someone walking down the street with just a modern hunting crossbow (not even a full tactical military crossbow) you'd report it. But a full longbow made of advanced polymers and allows? Yeah, you're definitely gonna be suspicious of that.

Now, in the NAN? Maybe bows fit in better. But in Seattle, or Denver, or any of the major metropolises? Carrying around a hi-tech max rating bow is going to draw bad attention. It's at least somewhat reasonable for people to overlook a troll in combat armor with a shotgun who looks like a member of a private security firm, because that's actually pretty commonplace. But the same troll walks through the street with a gleaming alloy bow the size of Texas and a quiver full of arrows that look like pieces of rebar? Yeah, that's gonna be memorable - it'd probably count as a Distinctive Style if not full on call-the-police weird.

~Umi

[Sponge]

If you have a Rating 10 bow, it stands out. If you saw someone walking down the street with just a modern hunting crossbow (not even a full tactical military crossbow) you'd report it. But a full longbow made of advanced polymers and allows? Yeah, you're definitely gonna be suspicious of that.

First, the vast majority of people can't tell at a glance the difference between "advanced polymers and alloys" and "cheap plastic and aluminum that looks badass". Second, given the gun culture in some areas that exists even today, I don't see how carrying around a "serious" bow (properly stowed) would raise any more eyebrows than carrying a hunting rifle (equally properly stowed). What idiot going to carry such a thing around in public fully deployed and uncovered, with all its attachments? Yes, that guy deserves to be stopped and questioned.

[Umidori]

How do you "properly stow" a high tech longbow? Even if you destring it - unlikely if you're using something with a draw weight heavy enough that you need 10 Strength to operate it - it's still a three or four foot frame with pulleys and runners and everything attached. SR4 introduced a collapsible bow in Arsenal, but it came with reduced damage output and a 5 Combat Turn reassembly period - and there's no guarantee it will make it into 5E in some form or another.

So you're stuck either carrying the thing openly in your hand, slinging it over your shoulder, or lugging it around in a gigantic carrying case.

And what are you talking about "with all its attachments"? Bows can't take accessories or modifications. They can't even be chameleon coated, for crying out loud. (Which is yet another way in which Longarms are superior - drop that +6 Concealability assault rifle down to a mere +2.)

As for the comparison to a hunting rifle, I think both weapons are equally out of place in an urban setting (at least short of being in a case in the back of your truck or something). Meanwhile, a security grade shotgun actually doesn't stand out that much in Seattle because it's an urban weapon - put on a convincing outfit, make a decent show of being a legitimate private soldier security officer, and everyday people will pretty much instantly assume you actually are one. (Just don't get seen by the real McCoys, neh?)

And even if someone does get suspicious, you've got plausible deniability built into the weapon. Witnesses will ever so helpfully describe "a big security looking guy in armor with a shotgun", which could be friggin' anyone. And that's assuming they don't just assume you're supposed to be there in the first place - after all, who's going to question the guy who looks like a cop or a corporate security team member? Obviously they're there on important business, neh?

Contrast that with having a witness tell you "well, he had this big fancy hunting bow and a quiver full of arrows, which struck me as being really strange - you don't see many folks using antiques like that, especially downtown - so I kept watching from a distance and when he started poking around that old Ares office, I phoned it in as a suspicious behavior, ya know?".

As I said, a bow might not stand out in the NAN, or out in the wilderness regions where people hunt regularly. But anywhere in the sprawl, it's going to stand out - just as much as an assault rifle or submachine gun is gonna stand out in the boonies.

~Umi

[Sponge]

How do you "properly stow" a high tech longbow? Even if you destring it - unlikely if you're using something with a draw weight heavy enough that you need 10 Strength to operate it - it's still a three or four foot frame with pulleys and runners and everything attached. SR4 introduced a collapsible bow in Arsenal, but it came with reduced damage output and a 5 Combat Turn reassembly period - and there's no guarantee it will make it into 5E in some form or another.

So you're stuck either carrying the thing openly in your hand, slinging it over your shoulder, or lugging it around in a gigantic carrying case.

And what are you talking about "with all its attachments"? Bows can't take accessories or modifications. They can't even be chameleon coated, for crying out loud. (Which is yet another way in which Longarms are superior - drop that +6 Concealability assault rifle down to a mere +2.)

"Properly stowed" is exactly the kind of thing you linked - or a less form-fitting case, if you prefer to be a little more inconspicuous. And by "attachments" I meant all those little knobs and protrusions you see in that picture that aren't recognizably "pieces of bow" to the layman (you even pointed them out yourself in the bit I bolded in your quote above)

[Umidori]

The problem is once you start introducing carrying cases, Concealability of an item itself largely goes out the window.

I've always considered anything that isn't somehow in physical line of sight to be immune to visual perception checks - you can see that the person is carrying a large duffel bag or a briefcase or whatever else, but unless the item inside is somehow visible (a silhouette against the side of a bag for example), the Perceiving party can merely guess or intuit the actual contents.

I admit, carrying a bow in a case is probably the way you want to go about transporting the thing, as that way people only see the case and not the contents - but even that is kind of a pain in the ass a lot of the time. If you walk down the street or into a corporate facility with a briefcase, odds are good no one looking your way cares, even if you secretly have an SMG or a sawn-off shotgun stuffed inside. A great big honking ruggedized weapon case (of any variety), however, is not going to be nearly so subtle. And even if you're willing to risk the conspicuousness of carrying around such a big unexplained container, at that point why not just stash a shotgun inside rather than a bow?

Plus, it's a nightmare to use for daily carry, as any time you want to actually, ya know, shoot someone, you have to open the case, Ready the bow into your hand, pull out the arrows, maybe even pull out a quiver to stow the arrows in before proceeding to wear the quiver, and finally Ready the bow again to knock an arrow before you can ever take a shot. In contrast, a loaded Longarm just needs to be Readied into your hand, then fired. Plus, rifles and shotguns are more compact than bows and can be more easily stowed in smaller carrying cases - not to mention all the other mechanical benefits they possess over bows.

~Umi

[Cain]

Thats moderately debatable. Dont get me wrong, they are the only ones that can start with +3 dice, and they get it without spending a single nuyen. But it is 3.5 magic for 3 dice.

Bioware can get you the same +3 dice for only 1.5 essence, less with better grades. With deltaware you could even get level 3 under one essence. Assuming you rob a bank to afford it. Even a magic user or adept with a bit of cash may well be better served by bioware in the long run.

At the book payout amounts, that would take forever. What's more, Shadowrun is an inherently front-loaded system: you get most of your big toys and special abilities at chargen, and everything afterwards tends to be a refinement on that. In all the years I've been playing Shadowrun, I only saw a sam upgrade his Wired Reflexes once, and that was because he nearly sold his soul to get the price cut down. The same's true with all the expensive items, even if you could craft them: I played a decker in a game that ran for *five years*, and he only upgraded his cyberdeck once.

Now, front-loading isn't a bad thing. Compare it to D&D, where you start off weak enough that a housecat can take you out. You improve by leveling and getting progressively more expensive magic items, until you've got so many +5 swords that you use them as backscratchers. In comparison, SR's frontloading isn't a bad thing at all. But that does mean, as an expectation of the game, that you will not improve as much from your starting point.

The exception is adepts. In SR5, they get better by adding more PP, and there's two ways of doing so. Both cost karma, but adepts can steadily increase their abilities over time, something most others can't. Mundanes eventually run into the Essence limit on augmentation, and the skill/attribute caps. Mages have theoretically unlimited progression as well, but they need to increase their skills and attributes to keep up with increasing Magic demands. But adepts improve their skills by improving their PP, so that's not a problem. They can focus their karma on just one thing, unlike mages who have to spread it around.

[Umidori]

To be fair, Adept skills do tend to have certain limitations.

Attributes cap out at racial maximums, skills bonuses are limited to half your actual Skill rating, you can only get so many ranks of certain powers, and paying to Initiate to raise your Magic just to get more Power Points really sucks when you don't get all the shiny extras Magicians do from the same Initiation. They had to introduce an entire splat book in SR4 (Way of The Adept) just to rebalance Initiations for adepts.

SR5 runs a little differently, with base level mission payment being idiotically low and prices for tech being absurdly increased pretty much across the board, essentially shafting Sammies and Deckers and anyone who relies on gear rather than Magic, with the net result that Adepts are more valuable than they've ever been - but only in contrast to those senseless nerfs.

All it would take to put Adepts right back into their old awkard situation is to restore the economy to something sane again and not gimp the gear users. Whether that will happen down the line? One can only hope. I'd rather have Adepts be slightly less efficient than Sammies like they were in 4th than have Sammies be massively less efficient than Adepts as they are in 5th.

~Umi

[Shinobi Killfist]

Yeah, cyber looks just as good as adepts to me. Sure a adept can start off with reflexes 3 and a sam is limited to 2 but a sam is more likely to have attribute augmentations, an adept gets more things to spend his karma on but the sam has two resources to grow with.

[Cain]

Yeah, cyber looks just as good as adepts to me. Sure a adept can start off with reflexes 3 and a sam is limited to 2 but a sam is more likely to have attribute augmentations, an adept gets more things to spend his karma on but the sam has two resources to grow with.

Attribute augmentations aren't as good as they could be. Muscle Replacement has a starting cap of rating 2, and is sorta pricey; Muscle Toner/Augmentation has the same cap, and if you get both, it's *really* expensive. An adept can start with the max of +4, although it is costly to do so.

Adepts also have the wonder that is Attribute Boost. For .25 PP, you can up your attribute basically for an entire combat. Yes, it's a little random; but it's not hard to get the max +4 on a regular basis. And the limits on it are negligible: it does take an action to activate, but since you can only take one attack per turn now, you've got it to spare. And Attribute Boost is one of the powers where you want to keep it low; if you only buy it once, the Drain can be ignored.

As far as nuyen goes: the reason most big-ticket items are bought at chargen is because most characters will never see that much money ever again. At the book payouts, the sam will likely *never* earn enough to upgrade his ware to the maximum. And even if he does, that means the adept has more toys to play with, too. He could be getting Qi foci, increasing his power further; or he could go the bio-adept route, and start augmenting right alongside the sam. There's no winning this race for the sam.

All it would take to put Adepts right back into their old awkard situation is to restore the economy to something sane again and not gimp the gear users. Whether that will happen down the line? One can only hope. I'd rather have Adepts be slightly less efficient than Sammies like they were in 4th than have Sammies be massively less efficient than Adepts as they are in 5th.

Here, I have to agree. Sorta. If cyber dropped in price dramatically, cyber options would be much more feasible. Unfortunately, that would just encourage cyber-adepts all over again. However, I remember back in the day, when a player complained that it was always more efficient to go sammie than adept. Back then, he was right; adepts didn't have a lot to offer that sams couldn't do better. Finding the right balance is going to be tricky, and I don't know if Catalyst can do it.

[psychophipps]

Just a quick question. Why does it always have to be a discussion about Trolls?

[Shinobi Killfist]

other than this being a troll combat monster thread?

[Umidori]

Just a quick question. Why does it always have to be a discussion about Trolls?

becuz trol iz 2 stronk

*puts on an upside down pair of shutter shades and starts beat boxing atrociously*

~Oomy

[Shinobi Killfist]

Thinking about it, Troll threads will probably come up more often in 5e as the priority system is pretty harsh to them. Its not easy making a troll in 5e. Orcs and dwarfs are in a similar boat but not as bad, elves not so much and humans are pure awesome.

[Umidori]

Trolls in 4E were inefficient buys too, with the tradeoff of getting a leg up on fulfilling the Strong and Tough character niche.

The old super-Agility elf problem does seem to have been handled somewhat by the skill rating range being doubled and tweaking weapon damage and the number of attacks per IP.

Orks were the best bang for your buck last edition, with strong bonuses for much too cheap. That seems to have been undone somewhat in 5E, but I'm still not sure to what exact extent.

Dwarves are still meh - their Willpower bonus does give them a small edge in Magical potential, but it's probably still not truly worth the cost.

And humans now get absurdly more value than they used to - the extra Edge last edition was okay, but the new Special Attribute bonus is just amazingly good.

~Umi

[Shinobi Killfist]

While trolls were not a great buy in 4e, 40 points out of 400 is much less of a hit than B priority. B is like 200 points, and while Trolls are awesome, they are no that awesome.

[Umidori]

And yet people seem to love the Priority system?

That makes no sense to me at all if your statement about Priority B metatype costing the equivalent of 200 BP is anywhere near true. In 4E, if you really wanted to you could play as a friggin' Troll based Bear shapeshifter Changeling with absurd bonuses to Body and Strength plus all the other benefits for only 150 BP.

All the Infected options are cheaper, even counting base metatype costs. So are all the Metavariants, as well as all the Sapient Critters. So are friggin' Drakes and AIs. The only thing that costs more than 200 BP is playing a Free Spirit, and they get compensated for that heavily by only having to buy up their Force rather than individual Attributes.

~Umi

[Cain]

And yet people seem to love the Priority system?

The old priority system, while it had flaws, was simple yet versatile, easy to use yet produced consistent and varied characters.

The SR5 one, I'm reserving judgement on, until I've experimented further.

[Jaid]

overexpensive 'ware is a self-correcting problem.

as soon as everyone in the missions campaigns starts making sure they have tamanous and a good fence in their contact lists, and stealing everything they can whether it's nailed down or not, to be able to afford upgrades, (and these reports make it back to CGL), i expect we'll see missions at least upping rewards to reasonable levels (assuming they aren't already ignoring those guidelines). the rest of us can already ignore them anyways.

i mean, consider for example if your group manages to take down a team of red samurai (say, 3 regular plus a lieutenant). wired reflexes 2 are ~150k each, muscle augmentation and toner are something like 60k each for rating 2, and even cybereyes aren't that cheap any more. some scrub with skillwires is worth a small fortune in spare parts. if that's too squicky for you, you can always just settle for knowing a guy who runs a chop shop and every time you steal a car for a run, selling it off afterwards (and then making sure to steal plenty of cars for any given run).

there's that pesky motto kicking in again. everything has a price, and the price of putting the gear PCs want massively out of the price range you're willing to pay is for them to find other ways of making money, and making you wish you had let them earn a decent amount of cash in the first place. people might not want to sidetrack when it's adding 2-3% onto their paycheck, but when stealing a couple of cars adds a tiny bit to the risk and doubles the cash reward, well, that's a horse of another colour.

if killing that enemy decker (so you can steal their deck) becomes more important than completing the run, i doubt it will take long for an adjustment to be made. CGL may never acknowledge it, just like they may never acknowledge the missions FAQ as basically being errata for the stuff they're too lazy to fix, but bull has to make missions such that they're not a railroad ticket, but also so that they actually ever get completed as designed. they won't acknowledge it, and CGL may sit on their hands, but bull has to actually deal with the crap they shovel his way.

[Xystophoroi]

I've been making characters for and with other people using the SR5 priority system.

It's harder to mould it into what you want, but for players who just want to play Shadowrun it works well.

I do find people really don't take the higher costing metatypes unless they really want them.

I also find people will take Human at priority E, Magic at D and spend their 1 attribute point on it, allowing them to run a high attribute, high skill, low 'ware character with 1 remaining point of magic for grabbing something fun and giving access to Qi foci.

It gives them the ability to grow on multple axes comparatively cheaply.

Another common one I have seen people take - for general characters they just want to be good is

Atts A
Skills B
Magic C
Human D
Resources E

ExAtt Magic for 7PP, loads of attributes and skills, karma for cash gives just enough to scrape by at the start of play and buying the low ticket items in play is actually practical.

I find that it allows eole to make characters. Just not necessarily the character they actually wanted.

[Cain]

as soon as everyone in the missions campaigns starts making sure they have tamanous and a good fence in their contact lists, and stealing everything they can whether it's nailed down or not, to be able to afford upgrades, (and these reports make it back to CGL), i expect we'll see missions at least upping rewards to reasonable levels (assuming they aren't already ignoring those guidelines). the rest of us can already ignore them anyways.

Couple problems with that.

First of all, stealing everything that's not nailed down isn't really playing Shadowrun, it's more like playing kenders with shotguns. The game is supposed to be about missions, not grubbing for spare change.

Second, even if you do manage to take everything, very few things have any real resale value in SR5. Most cars have no Availability rating, so they can't be fenced for more than spare change. If you take cyberware or bioware (although how you get bioware out on a run is beyond me), a creative GM might set the retail price for it as Used 'ware... which means retail is down by one fourth, and your base gain will be one-fourth of *that*. The return starts dropping significantly, especially if you have to share with a Tanamous cyberdoc for removal of ware. It'll still take forever to save up for those cyber upgrades.

And even if you get that much money, so what? The adept will have just as much money as the sam at this point; but since he's got less to spend it on, he probably has already bought a bundle of toys, like Qi foci. The sam just can't win this race. To a lesser degree, this also applies to Faces and Deckers. About the only mundane archetype that can beat out the adept is the rigger... and I'm not even sure about that, because adepts make fearsome wheelmen. And this is just pure adepts. I haven't even started with lightly augmented adepts, but theoretically they're very scary.

No, the best solution is to make augmentations cheaper and more efficient in the first place. In my experience, most characters don't cyber up significantly after chargen, so that's when you have to make augmentations more attractive. Lower prices and essence costs, and things start looking much better for the cybered folk. They'll still cap out eventually, but in the meanwhile, they should be able to keep pace with adepts.

Edit: I did kinda assume you were joking, but I gave a more serious response, just in case. I do believe that reducing the cost of augmenting, both in nuyen and essence, is necessary to keep up with adepts.

[Sengir]

Well, the legality codes (and availability really) of lots of things in SR has been out of whack for a long time. If you go walking around an urban area with a composite bow and a quiver full of arrows, you're gonna get picked up by the cops.

Only if you pad the arrows

Apart from such cases, I don't see how transporting a bow + arrows should raise suspicions by itself. Being a troll (or other minority) and carrying anything might make police suspicious, but simply carrying a bow? Nope