The awakened, and the broke, Currently the rules nerf mundanes Options

[toturi]

Yes, they include those conditions listed above, but it is not limited to those conditions. The first rule states Deadly wound, of which the second rule iincludes a subset of the first. No conflict.

[SaintHax]

[Da9iel]

Toturi: Fine if you want to GM it that way. I read it that the rules under Magic Loss that MITS refers to and other parts of SR3 refer to mentions every way to test for magic loss. Even MITS doesn't add to that list. They do specify when to test for stimulant use, but that's covered on SR3 p. 160. Under the section about treating (physical--since stun can't be effectively treated) wounded magicians, they also mentioned the magic loss part but got lazy and didn't say physical. To me the main thing is the plain thing. The more specific section explains the unclear section. I pity GMs who have to deal with rules lawyers that takes quotes out of context.

Edited to address intended recipient.

[toturi]

[Kagetenshi]

[toturi]

Don't forget the otaku face insuing a warrant for your arrest and giving you a bad rep in the shadows at the same time.

[Cray74]

[Digital Heroin]

What I'm seeing here is a case of two people who just aren't willing to conceed that maybe they aren't right. One still fighting, the other having pulled a "screw you guys, I'm going home."

So, lets stick to the topic at hand, rather than the "my character's too dumb to ask someone how they might get past the invisibility spell that's talked about all the time" sub-topic.

Mundanes suck, eh?

Well let's go with my favorite mundane of them all: Jon Snow.

Snow is what I term a pure mundane. No magic, no augments. Canon fodder, right? Wrong. Not only does he have a thorough skillset, contacts and extensive gear (at initial build) which allow him to adapt to any situation, but he doesn't have to deal with the problems other charaters might face.

He doesn't trigger cyberware scanners, have an aura in need of masking, or (and here's a big one) get screwed over by mana warps, background count, null magic zones, etc. Oh, and he can go into space without that nasty little dying thing. He's the everyman who can go anywhere.

So he doesn't have a smartlink? Smartgoggles or a lasersight, or hell, the ultra-fashionable SOTA tres chic shades with smartgoggles and ultravision built into them (along with a HUD) deal with that.

Mage gonna fry him? Well with the BPs not spent on making him Awakened, I had a few points left over to buy a decent Willpower score. Oh yeah, there's also that nice little magic resistance edge.

Sure, he's not perfect, but I don't have to waste karma, essence, or money masking magic or cyber in him, and he's adaptable to any run you might throw at him.

Magic may be powerful, but it's not -all- powerful.

[Cray74]

[Bigity]

[Cray74]

[toturi]

[Bigity]

Just kind of seems to go against the grain :)

Karma is of course, the great equalizer.

[Lantzer]

Going back to the whole invisibility thing... Some of the countermeasures discussed here are needlessly exotic (from the point of view of corp security). Beaded curtains? Unprofessional from a corp-culture standpoint. Flour bombs? Jury-rigged.

Corp security just needs the following: Closed fire doors, security lock-downs, motion detectors, mundane dogs, laser-trip systems, MAD checkpoints, and the like. All these are already in use for mundane intruders. Once an intruder is detected, there are multiple ways of locating and isolating the intruder. Nothing is particularly complicated about it.

Going back to mundanes, A mundane character generally has good stats, great skills, and cool gear. It's not like those points are going to waste. The one way that a mundane tends to suffer is in the realm of initiative enhancement. And that can be dealt with, with proper planning and a cool head.

[Ved'ma]

I think Lantzer has it right. Nothing exotic is really needed to protect against the invisible. A simple guard dog with a keen sense of smell can ruin somebody's day. Even gangers might have pit bulls or other nasty surprises around.

[Botch]

I came into this a bit late, but isn't around 1 in 8 of the mundane population immune to the invisibility spells - trolls and dwarves.

Let just stick with stereotypes. Trolls are guards/bouncers/doormen, dwarves are riggers. Puts the odds up even higher that the person looking at you has thermosense and then just how many restricted areas don't require you to open a door? We haven't even spent any money on counter-measures yet. IMHO invisibility is broken simply because of how easy it is to defeat, not because of how easy it is to cast.

All meta-humans are subject racist abuse, because MAGIC changed them. How many people effected by the 17th Century slave trade are completely unaware of the situation 4 centuries later? Whether they are exposed to correct information is not really an issue, they WILL BE exposed to information.

How many of you DSF'ers never, ever, thought it would be cool to be invisible when you were a child? I think the answer is very close to zero.

[Ol' Scratch]

Invisibility affects all types of normal vision. That includes low-light and thermographic vision. Non-normal vision refers to things like utlrasound vision and astral sight in much the same way "normal weapons" doesn't include elemental attacks or weapon foci.

[John Campbell]

[Rev]

I find it really irritating that healing a sam is now harder than healing a mage in shadowrun.

Used to be that the magical charachters had an edge in magical healing, but were somewhat screwed after that and often had to just go the slow way. Now cybered/biowared charachters are even more screwed for technological healing than magicians even if you don't use stress.

[Cray74]

[Rev]

The edge and first aid are also available to magicians. The trauma dampner is another peice of healing related bioware, and a favorite of magicians.

Besides the platelet factory and trauma dampner don't help you heal they help you not get hurt in the first place. Like armor spells and invisibility.

The point is not that it is impossible to make a sam that heals pretty fast, but that the typical sam now heals much more slowly and much more expensively, while magicians heal about the same as before.

[Shockwave_IIc]

Just as a side note, has it not Errated that the likes of Platelet Factory and Symbiotes don't count towards the Bio Index for healing purpose's?

If thats the case, take a Pill form of Anti-coagulant and with the -2 to Healing from quick healer and a high body, That fatal gunshot wound puts you in bed for less then 6 hours if memory serves.

[EDIT]Ok so not the platelet Factory, but with Trauma Damper and the effect of Symbiotes to heal stun as well....

[Mercer]

The first SR character I ever made, and played for the next five years, was a total mundane. He was an ork private detective, back in 2ed. This would have been '92 I made him, I guess. From what I can remember:

Whereas all the mages I ran with blew all their karma on intitation and spells, I put it into skills and attributes. A Q and I of 7 gave me a natural 7 Reaction, which meant two actions about half the time. I had an Unarmed Combat of 8 and a Firearms of 7 and a Specialization of 9 in the Skorpion MP. Most people thought I was an Initiate Phys Ad after the first couple of years. Plus, I had tons of skills at 3 and 4. My goal was to get every skill in the book, and I came pretty close.

Whereas all the sams I ran with blew all their money on upgrading their cyber to squeeze out a few more points here and there (e.g. the last sam I played in 2ed needed something like 2mil to beta his Reaction Enhancers to get a beta'd Encephalon which would give me my last point of Reaction ever), my PI just racked up the cash. I had the best gear in the group. High lifestyle, a dozen safehouses, a warehouse with 8 or 9 vehicles; rating 8 tech on anything I planned on using (taps, scanners, jammers, white noise, transceivers, and so on). The closest thing I can relate it to would be somewhere between James Bond and Batman. I retired the character when I had enough to buy a lifetime luxury lifestyle (10 mil in those days, I think).

The downsides were plenty. I was slow. Even at 7+1d6, I was pretty much always the slowest guy in the group, never faster than the second slowest. I took a lot of free actions to fall flat. I didn't get into stand-up confrontations with sams. My stats, except for Int, were never maxed (Body and Str were 8 and 7, Willpower I think was 6, Charisma I don't think ever went above 4).

But the thing that made me the heavy in the group was the karma pool. A 43 karma pool is a significant advantage. It pretty much trumps anything else.

[Kagetenshi]

Er… the karma pool everyone else will be getting too. Faster, if they're human.

~J

[Ol' Scratch]

Not to mention that with the minimum of 840 Karma you had to earn to get that Karma Pool of 43, *everyone* should have been a god, especially the magicians.