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> Pissing contest for Number Crunchers, Do your Duty and Twink that Booty.
CoalHeart
post May 20 2004, 08:09 PM
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I feel bored and I just felt like coming up with a number's project for all of you number mashers because some of your results are pretty damn spectacular and I have used them in my games as opposition for my runners :)

This is for a 'Big Bad Boss' of the entire plotarch.


Criteria.

Character generation : Priority rules. 5 points of flaws/perks. Surge up to 10 points pros/cons Magically inclined preffered. Physical Mage a bonus :) Also must have at least a 5 in Leadership because he is incharge of a rather dubious crew of misfits and malcontents.

Post Character generation : apply 300 Karma to be used in any way. also apply 500k yen. (total Karma of all my players added together, and no SI or Avail problems on gear bought with the 500k)


What would be great outcome is a character that could take on a full runner's team single handedly, without resorting to the easy way of Explosives or Area effect magic spells.


Thanks all I'm sure some really scary monsters will come out of this.
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A Clockwork Lime
post May 20 2004, 08:14 PM
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With 300 Karma, there's no point. Unless the character is put together incredibly horribly, he *is* going to take out an entire team of typical runners. Especially if a magician. It's pretty much a moot point to bother, especially since his Initiation Grade could easily hit the teens with tons of Karma to spare.
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TinkerGnome
post May 20 2004, 08:17 PM
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Not to mention that such a character would likely have half a dozen custom spells (Increased Reflexes +8?) and a horde of elemental bodyguards (So that's 8 force 10 fire elementals... who brought their asbestos pajamas?).

The true challenge is to design an NPC which can actually be beaten. What are the capabilities of the PCs?
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JaronK
post May 20 2004, 08:20 PM
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You know what might be a lot better? Give this guy a really nasty pair of bodyguards, and make the guy himself simply very intelligent. It's no fun making a boss that just brute forces his way through everything... plan things out, make this guy defend himself very intelligently (and offensively, if he detects someone might be a threat, he'd take them out, perhaps with snipers or plastique traps). The bodygaurds would be there to make a direct assault on him very difficult at best... you'd end up with a game where he's trying to pick off the runners one by one, getting closer to them with each passing day, while they in turn are trying to probe him for weaknessess... like a big complicated fencing match.

JaronK
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Kagetenshi
post May 20 2004, 08:23 PM
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500k yen? How do we convert yen to nuyen?

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TinkerGnome
post May 20 2004, 08:24 PM
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nuyen = (yen * 1 + 1/2 - .5) / 900 * (359 + 541)

I think.
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Nikoli
post May 20 2004, 08:24 PM
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hehe
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CoalHeart
post May 20 2004, 08:47 PM
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300 karma is the almost total karma of 4 players, they have somewhere aroudn 90 karma each. They are 1 Rigger/decker 2 Sams (one stealth one meatwall) and 1 Mage.

This is the same group that has a small army of chipped brainwashed goons and sneaky elfen chicks slaving for them.
they have 7 orks left and 5 elfs left. The orks have been since outfitted with smartlinked weapons, and bigger guns, and the elfs more weapon skills.

I know they know what they're doing, but anything that I make thats a normal run. Like sneaking into a building, kidnapping an employee and getting out, they can do. They also even do some really hard edge mercenary runs, like fighting back 300 or so Aztlan troopers to provide cover for a UCAS stealth strike. (That took a lot of dice rolling)


I use superior numbers, and planning against them, but they're crafty and clever and I try to use some realism. So they've been taking on more elite targets, this NPC is going to be the crimeboss of a Syndicate that runs 80% of the underworld in NYC with an iron fist.


he has 2 body guards, both of which are finely tuned killing machines in their own right, but as you know by the book a very lucky ganger can get lucky and kill mister UberSam in one shot.

So this guy needs to be tough but within the rules so I never have to say.

GM: You take your called shot at his face, but even with 9 successes and his combat pool gone you miss because he isn't suppose to die yet.

I so hate that when it happens to me so I don't want to do it to my players so making him tough is priority over using GM fiats. :)


thanks again. And yes I knwo with 300 karma he can be a pretty nasty mage, with many initiations but initiations don't matter they don't make you survive any more or less they just open up a few more options, and like I said I'm trying to avoid using explosives or area effect spells because I try to dissuade my players from solving problems with brute force that way. Planning and combat are more important :)
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kevyn668
post May 20 2004, 08:52 PM
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If you want him to live, give him the Teleportation Metamagic Technique.
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Phaeton
post May 20 2004, 08:54 PM
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Or an escape jet. For that matter, give him a shiny, sinister chrome helmet and have him yell "Next time, Gadget! NEXT TIIIIIIME!" whenever the PCs defeat him. :grinbig:
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CoalHeart
post May 20 2004, 08:58 PM
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kevyn668: Most assuredly if I did that the group would try to capture him alive and force the knowlege out of him, or the mage would mindfry him to get the information. These people are sadists I tell you.... frightengly so.

Their street rep is a mile long of being bloodthirsty precise and
methodical. They invis the rigger's van and ward it to prevent tracking after doign big jobs, the mage has Sterilize force 6 and casts it like it was an addicttion, then cleans his signature off. The sams wear gloves and masks, the rigger/decker operates by remote, or sends in a drone with the team to connect to the building's matrix that is kept off the net.
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Nikoli
post May 20 2004, 09:01 PM
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I'm thinking a stealth phys ad with the divination meta technique. rank 10 in the skill and the Barretta rifle. He just 'knows' where they'll be and fires.
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Kagetenshi
post May 20 2004, 09:30 PM
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I think you mean Barrett ;)

~J
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BitBasher
post May 20 2004, 10:54 PM
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QUOTE
GM: You take your called shot at his face, but even with 9 successes and his combat pool gone you miss because he isn't suppose to die yet.

I so hate that when it happens to me so I don't want to do it to my players so making him tough is priority over using GM fiats.
Rule of thumb man, If you dont want him to die, then dont put him in a position to be attacked directly. It is in fact as simple as that. Someone with that many contacts will have a metric butt ton of FoF data on any group trying to do anything against him. He simply should not, ever face them directly. When he does expect that you have to cheat to keep him alive, and if you won't (and I wouldn't) then expect him to die. End of story.

QUOTE
kevyn668: Most assuredly if I did that the group would try to capture him alive and force the knowlege out of him, or the mage would mindfry him to get the information. These people are sadists I tell you.... frightengly so.
Just like anyone that holds truly senisitive data have him use a maked anchor that casts an anchored alter memory on him so that he can not be magically interrogated with mind probe, because it will give all bad data. There are a hundred ways he could have set up in advance to have his memory restored, and it's not even necessary for him to know that's possible after a wipe. Mind rape spells are easily gotten around. Can't force knowledge that he doesn't have. Even better have the info he does have send them straight into the uber ambush of doom, set up by himself long in advance. And astrally he IS telling the truth, it's what he believes and all he remembers. Don't let mind probe be an end all be all. If you do, then it's your fault if it gets overused.

IIRC sterilize makes it so that the tissue cannot be used as a ritual sample, but it's still a perfectly good DNA sample.

Remember, if they have an "unbeatable" strategy like mind probe, and if it is that effective, that means that people will have had to come up with a means to counter it, and those means are available. Use them. That doesn't go for mind probe, it goes for anything like that. After a trick is used a limited number of times, defenses are popularized in security magazines and bulletins on how to beat the trick and screw the folks that do it. Happens in the real world that way.
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TinkerGnome
post May 20 2004, 10:58 PM
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QUOTE
IIRC sterilize makes it so that the tissue cannot be used as a ritual sample, but it's still a perfectly good DNA sample.
Well... it adds +2 to the TN to use it per success (up to force). Which isn't really "perfectly good" ;)
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BitBasher
post May 20 2004, 11:05 PM
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QUOTE (TinkerGnome)
QUOTE
IIRC sterilize makes it so that the tissue cannot be used as a ritual sample, but it's still a perfectly good DNA sample.
Well... it adds +2 to the TN to use it per success (up to force). Which isn't really "perfectly good" ;)

Aaaah mmkay, fair enough, I didn't think it was 100% effective.
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sidartha
post May 21 2004, 12:42 AM
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Does this villan have his own background we should know about or does it not matter what he was before becoming the Don of NYC.
Just try'in to help :)
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CoalHeart
post May 21 2004, 01:00 AM
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Generic Background, no name enforcer, betrayed his old boss, kacked him took over the business, erased his past and everyone that knew him. Started taking over the smaller businesses of lesser crime syndicates leading to more power and more greed and so on and so forth. Think of the King Pin from Spiderman except more brutal at times.

And yes I do have a bullseye type adept as one of his bodyguard ;)


And no Mind probe isn't all that effective in my games but the Mage/Face specializes in interrogation, has access to multitude of chemicals, big bad partners to scare/hurt people with, magic and so on. I'd almost call him a munchy, but he raised it up legitly with karma.


Sterilize also destroys blood and fingerprints from an area, as well as rendering any tissue samples very hard to use for any reason.


and I don't really plan on the players ever getting to this guy directly, but if and mostlikely when they do it'll be hell getting there.

the whole campaign is about tearing down the Don's business from the ground floor. Players were crossed once or twice by the Don's men but they didn't know, they recently found out by the Yak's informant feeding them the information. So now they're on a vendetta mission.

1 don
4 Capitans
4 lietuenants per captain
10-15 goons per lietenant.

I have this overview map of the city, with grids of each crew's area of influence, and I'm designing runs to wipe them all out. :)

I hope to gawd that these freakshows I play with don't decide to take the city over.... I'd have to come up with a whole campaign of the Yaks and or Mafia trying to take it all back.


some people say I'm a slacker, and pot smoker. They'd be right.
some people say I'm a hard core gamer and overachiever. They'd be right too.



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RedmondLarry
post May 21 2004, 01:00 AM
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Sheesh. Why make an NPCs according to the PC creation rules?

Some NPCs are weaker than PCs, some are more powerful. To make an uber NPC you just write down what you want. There is no reason to crunch numbers.

/Edit: maybe he wants an excuse to kill the characters and blame it on something else. "I just made someone who should be equal in power to the whole team, as he's got the same money and earned Karma. I didn't try to kill them.
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sidartha
post May 21 2004, 01:10 AM
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Thats the point, he's got us poor bastards doing the crunching for him.
Jerk ;)
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Vlad the Bad
post May 21 2004, 01:31 AM
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Don't do a physical mage. They aren't that great. When a character has to split his/her karma down two directions then they aren't good physads and they aren't good mages.

The nastiest thing you might do is just make him a streetsam with brains and one gun skill at 12.

Mages are powerfull but often don't raise their attributes because they are spending their karma on everything else.

hmmm ... If you want something totally messed up, how about a cyberzombie that was possessed by a magician and the poor merlin's astral form got stuck to the karmic blackhole of the cyberzombie. A GM of mine sent us against that kinda foe once, and we couldn't understand why he could take bullets with ease and still launch manaballs at us. A sustained physical mask spell could hide his deformed cyberbody (and make him look like the orginal magician's body did) until the final reveil after the geek him. How's that for f***ed-up villian?
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TinkerGnome
post May 21 2004, 01:51 AM
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A cyber skull will also do wonders to cut down on those called shots to the head, too ;)
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BitBasher
post May 21 2004, 02:58 AM
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Also, don't allow PC's to called shots on NPC's heads unless the NPC's do it to the PC's also. Fair is fair.
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The White Dwarf
post May 21 2004, 05:14 AM
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I ignored the whole thread. And Im not even going to post a response to the original question.

But I did want to say that without the opposing NPC being *EXTREMELY* powerful he will *NOT* offer any resistance to the players singlehandedly.

Why? Even with 300 karma? The answer is actions...

4 players will get more actions than the 1 bad guy even if he is running a MBW4 and hopped up on street drugs. They can act more times, they can do more things, and that alone will mean the badguy loses unless the players are really dumb.

The only NPCs that can really hold off a well played team of PCs solo are ones without stats. Like Harliquinn, Lofwyr, Dues, etcetc.

I would advise you either stack the situation with minions or surprise or something, because just finding the one guy at the end of the road and expecting a challenging fight is going to be an anticlimatic let down when he gets dusted halfway thru combat round 1. Dont rely on one super huge individual unless he really is that superhuge, in which case the players dont have a chance anyhow.

(Yes, Id argue this case even if he was a magician. When its 4 on one, not even a swarm of great form spirits will save you, at best it will buy you a few rounds)
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Joker9125
post May 21 2004, 05:38 AM
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Im not the scariest number cruncher here but ill see what i can do.

Ill probably make 3 types of characters mage, adept, and street sam because Vlad the Bad is right physical mages may be the most well rounded in the game but they are the weakest overall.

Ill begin the munchkining now.............
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