[SoA2064] SOTM:2064, State of the Munchkin Options

[mfb]

that's fine and dandy, if your GM lets you do karma-for-cash. a quick trip through the Search function will tell you how common that is. you're completely ignoring that while adetps have alllll that cash, they run ouuuut of karma really quickly. and that 'no upper barrier' thing is total crap. i can count on the fingers of my crotch the number of games i've seen that go high enough for that lack of an upper limit come into play. also, you're still hashing the same old malarky where geasa magically reduce power costs without adding any limitations. applying geasa limits powers. that's what they're for. there's also the point that adept powers are far, far more subject to loss through damage than cyberware is. sams end up with a buttload more armor to reduce damage, and a buttload more dice to resist it with, which rounds out to a buttload less worry about cybersystem damage. meanwhile, adepts have a better-than-average chance of losing magic every time they take a D wound, get hit with a stimpatch, or take medical care without the +2 TN mod. oh yeah, they also have a lesser chance of resisting attribute stress.

[Ol' Scratch]

If you want to go step-by-step with all the reprecussions of cyberware and adept powers, I'm more than game for it. In the end, the two balance out almost exactly the same. Alphaware implants cost more and reduce implants by 20%; geased powers come with a minor inconvenience on occasion and reduce power costs by 25%. Implants affect your health directly and make you more suspectable to Essence drain while adept powers require you to have a higher TN on Healing Tests (which is more than matched by a 2.01 Bio Index alone). Implants cause Social problems, adept powers do not. Implants (particularly sensory ones) are technological and in some cases have inferior modifiers compared to the modifiers for natural abilities, of which most adept powers use. Implants tend to be cheaper (Essence wise only) for what they grant when compared to adept powers. Sammies have to worry about Stress and failure of their implants, adepts have to worry about Magic loss. Defensively, samurai tend to be superior to adepts (more Body, somewhat more armor). Offensively, it's exactly the opposite (adepts have tons more dice and better TNs in several cases). etc.

And while you easily dismiss it, adepts do have the option of acquiring all the same toys a samurai does, so any significant advantage an implant provides is just as available to an adept as it is a sammy. Samurai do not have the luxury of the reverse, however. Chock up another point to an adept's versatility.

That out of the way, whether or not Karma-for-Cash is common or not amongst a small group of online nerds means nothing. It's a valid rule in the game; if you choose not to use it, that's your perogative. But dismissing it because it counters your argument is just sad. The entire point of the rule is that it allows all characters to gain the reward that they need to improve their abilities at a similar rate as other characters; riggers get to blow their Karma on buying more drones and vehicles, magicians get to blow their Cash on initiating and learning spells, and characters who fall in between get to tailor there reward to what they want or need at any given point.

An adept who's earned about 50 Karma and 250,000 nuyen (assuming an average of 5,000 nuyen in direct payment per Karma) will be in significantly better shape than a sammy with the same resources. Especially if the Karma-for-Cash rules are in play. Triplely(?) so with the advent of SOTA:2064.

And so help me if one more person says that geasa are supposed to be a constant thorn in a magician's side. To quote you from somewhere else, I'll punch them in the face. So help me.

[Critias]

Maybe part of the reason you keep squawking about how mages and adepts are too potent is somehow related to the way you keep squawking about how Geas aren't supposed to be a serious liability. I mean, if every mage or adept, ever, maximized all their powers by taking Geasa, etc, etc, and those Geasa never slowed them down or stopped them or were more than an "occasional minor inconvenience," as you put it...

Well, yeah. I mean, it would make sense for you to feel as strongly as you do about this supposed imbalance.

[Fortune]

Geas are limitations, period. Some are more drastic than others. Some come into play more often than others. Inventive use of Geasa should not be a licence for the GM to start a witch-hunt against the PC.

[Deadeye]

Er...tanka, you missed my point. I wasn't comparing cyber to magic (for a reason--yesh) I was comparing a magical "face" to a mundane one. I'd wager that not a whole lot of people play perfectly mundane folks with no cyber--though I'm sure some do, so don't jump down my throat--because they are at such a disadvantage in the 6th world. Story wise, technology closes that gap, and the two are roughly equal, though there are disparities in both.

And Dr. Funkenstein, I'm sorry buddy, but I gotta agree with Critias on this one, at least in part. Geasa really should limit the powers and be a pain. But that's the beauty of the game: if your group doesn't agree, then the geasa are less of a biggy. Have fun, play Shadowrun, and all that stuff.

Now I'll weave and dodge, using my high combat pool to make myself difficult to punch.

[Eyeless Blond]

"...adepts have a better-than-average chance of losing magic every time they take a D wound..."

Hey, now there's something that just occured to me: every time an Awakened goes under the knife he has to roll for magic loss at least once, doesn't he? First off the the D Stun that all surgical proceedures require (p. 146 M&M), then again if the doctor "forgets" to take the +2 while healing. This is of course beside the actual Essence loss/Bio Index gain. I suppose that's another reason for Awakened not to do surgery.

I'm beginning to wonder about these social adept powers though. Already any and all nonmagical noncybered characters are virtually unplayable; until now you could play a passable Face with no magic and little cyber, but I guess those days are gone. mfb and others have convinced me that adepts and Awakened in general for that matter don't necessarily trump mundanes *everywhere*, but I am still worried that in two or three SOTAs the completely nonmagical character is basically obselete at the gaming table.

If I wanted to play a game where I could either be a mage or sit in the corner and wait until the mages were done deciding who really wins, I'd be playing D&D. :P

[Ol' Scratch]

That's it. Time to get my old knuckle-dusters out of storage. I'm comin' for both of you punks...

[mfb]

jesus, funk, what are geasa for, if not imposing restrictions? if geasa aren't a hinderance, then you're not using them right. this isn't about punishing players, it's about the proper use of game mechanics.

[Critias]

There's a difference between a witch hunt and a realistic, balancing, limitation that's equal to the .25 cost break you receive.

In much the same way, there's a difference between an "inventive" usage of the Geas rules, and someone out to bend them over and not even offer up a reacharound.

All I'm saying is Funk seems to think -- and this comes out on multiple threads, multiple times -- that Geas aren't supposed to really be any sort of serious hindrance. Funk also seems to think -- same, here, it's documented pretty clearly -- that adepts and mages are just all-around broken compared to mundanes. I'm hypothesizing that perhaps these two stances are not wholly unrelated.

I mean, if (for instance) I played in a game where money fell from heaven in the form of certified credsticks gently lowered to the pavement by way of little parachutes that kept them from getting dinged up upon landing, and deckers farts smelled like strawberries, and if every other street corner had a Delta clinic, and if my GM didn't allow cash for karma, and chose to use the optional "don't cut Drain power in half" special rules? Maybe I'd think that mundanes were overpowered, y'know?

It could just be an issue stemming from the sort of games he plays in, or the sort of GMs he has, etc, etc. I'm not gonna say it's right or wrong, just that he could be a product of his environment (like everyone else is, too). Maybe his GMs go a little softer on mages and the like than some people, and maybe that's why he thinks like he does. It's not bad, it's not good, it just is.

Where I play, and where a few other posters on here play, we tend to be pretty strict with Geasa and how limiting they are. We also tend to not have any sort of lopsided power struggle between mundanes and Talented, except at the absurdly potent and experienced level (and even there, only because the only absurdly experienced characters around are both Talented, meaning they can sort of dominate the field). So maybe that's why we tend to think that the magic versus tech battle is taking place on a fairly even playing field.

[Ol' Scratch]

[Tanka]

Deadeye: In Social situations? Well, give the mundane Cultured Tailored Pheremones and he starts to even out. Give him all the Social Edges, some plastic surgery to make him look even better, et cetera...

Yes, with all these neato powers, Adepts are going to kill in the Social world.

However, why not throw in a bit of paranoia surrounding them? If they're known to be Adepts, make it tougher for them to be Social ones because of fear and paranoia. Not to mention, as it's State of the Art, it isn't exactly out and about in massive quantities yet. It's new. It's fresh. It isn't yesterday's garbage like a Predator that can be found at any gun shop (and probably quite a few regular stores).

Just because a new book comes out doesn't mean it's immediately available everywhere. You still have to hunt things down.

If it's SotA, it probably won't filter down to your Average Joe for at least six months, if not a year or more.

Edit: Real world example...

64-bit processors. When they came out, they were running over $500 USD for the chip alone. Motherboards and RAM for them were (combined) about as much as the processor alone.

Now they're... ~$300 USD (might want to double check me on that) with mobos and RAM combining for ~$400 (512MB, usually).

Even with the hot tech, programmers aren't up-to-date running 64-bit programs. There are a few, but not a lot, as most people are still using 32-bit processors like the "old" Intels and AMDs.

How about PCI Express? Pretty new, and barely used in any systems. Any systems that do have them, though, are going to cost you a pretty penny.

It's SotA, your Average Joe doesn't have it yet because it's still too expensive to really worry about.

[Critias]

Hey, is calling people twits against the TSS? Or does it not count as an insult, since he didn't specifically single out any of the twits he's forced to demean himself by arguing with? Just curious.

Anyways. That's fine, Funk. Keep just assuming that we're hobbling every Adept ever, and that your interpretation (or your GMs, whatever) is the only correct one.

Personally, I don't see how an IA: Rifles Geasa of "only when taking an Aim action" is a horrible and Adept-crippling limitation, or how "most succeed on a Willpower test with a TN based on the number of boxes of damage taken" Geas is somehow wholly inappropriate or limiting for an Adept who wants a decreased cost on Resist Pain. Both of those, by the by, are Geasa I made up for Adepts I play -- not ones my GM imposed on me, etc, etc.

Are those Geasa, to you, more or less restrictive than a Geasa should be? I'm curious. How do those ones stack up, since you're (apparently) assuming that we twits hate Adepts and want them to fail, or something?

[Dashifen]

I'll back Doc Funk up on the geasa stuff for adepts (and other awaked characters). I have to work hard as a GM and force the adepts into situations where their geas don't apply by railroading more often than not. Otherwise, the player will quickly realize that by carefull game play they can avoid or negate most limitations most of the time. Plus, to create a limitiation as a result of a geasa I often feel like one must target a specific player with opposition meant to defeat that player. But many times there's no way to do this in game without being obvious about it. Ooops! Your character with a talisman geasa was just pickpocketed and they took the sculpted whale-bone inlaid with copper necklace but left your credsticks. Weird that.

[mfb]

losing access to your magic 50% of the time is not a minor inconvenience, doc. nowhere in the rules does it say that geasa should be the minor irritant that you constantly insist they are.

[Ol' Scratch]

[Critias]

Ooh, sounds like someone's getting a little touchy.

Care to try actually answering my question, this time around, champ? I'm curious about what you -- not the book, I know what it thinks -- think about those sample Geasa I just named. They aren't explicitly covered by the book, anyways, as they're a sort of conditional/action geasa blend I've worked up, but ones that I think are appropriate.

So, what do you say? Pretend you're my GM. Thumbs up, thumbs down? What? Are those Geasa too harsh, too soft...?

[Ol' Scratch]

[Tanka]

Just a thought, Doc, but maybe you should take a breather. Go break a punching bag or something.

[mfb]

you people post too fast.

a gesture geas is a hinderance 24/7, 365 days a year. it's not a show-stopper, but it does mean that you can't cast without it being obvious. in SR, where sneakery is supposed to be king, that's a pretty big limit. same with incantations. the rest of the geasa i see are similarly limiting.

[Fortune]

[Critias]

[Ol' Scratch]

Bullshit. You're trolling. Fuck off.

[mfb]

okay, funk's being a 'tard again. time for me to find a new thread.

[Tanka]

Doc, you're doing a bit more trolling than they are.

You really should just sit back and relax for a bit. Shadowrun isn't something worth getting worked up over. Nothing in life is. (Except maybe when your favorite band quits out at a concert just two-and-a-half songs into their set. :P)

[Critias]

Boy, golly. You're right. It sure does look like *I'M* the one trolling right now.

So, anyone else? Thoughts on those Geasa I mentioned?

A sharpshooter having to slowly aim, control his breathing, etc -- too much, too little? Should I negate the actual "-1 TN" for aiming, and just consider that action the cost of using his IA? Or...what? Anyone?

The second one (Willpower test vs. damage taken, in order to ignore the pain) is one I've been thinking about for an adept who hasn't gotten any play time, yet. Sound good? Sound bad? Should the amount of damage ignored be success based, or an "all or nothing" affair? Any thoughts, anyone?

I'm trying to get an idea for what other people think Geasa are, or aren't, by sharing my own, and seeing how they stack up. Maybe that'll clear the air a little, as the argument/debate progresses.