Confused Orc Adept Needs Help - Foci, Geas..., Rather out of my depth here Options

[Dawnshadow]

[Sheffield]

You'll notice that the example I gave was "when I have a bow in my hands" not "when I have a specific bow in my hands." While I personally find your saber example to be a pretty twinky non-geas-geas, it has precedent with talisman rules as the saber is a specific item and one that could quite easily taken away, not to mention off limits in certain situations, as there are a lot of locations where the dress code is "jacket, tie, and no sharp metal." If someone asked about that geas in one of my games, I'd allow it before a tooth-talisman.

That said, "not limiting enough" is a perfectly acceptable reason for a GM to disallow a geas. I mean, christ on a crutch, a geas is intended to be a limiting factor and MitS says outright that players have to get geas cleared and that GMs can make them off limits if they aren't specific enough. For example, a "vegan" geas makes sense because it forces players to be thoughtful about what they do and it gives a GM room to sneak some kryptonite into an adventure, whereas a "no sturgeon caviar" geas is a useless hunk of crap.

[Dawnshadow]

'Not limiting enough' is not a good reason. In fact, it's a stupid reason -- a geas is a limitation on your character. That doesn't mean it's a way to make your GM chuckle while he plots ways to do things.

'It doesn't make sense in the least for your character' IS a good reason. A geas that doesn't make sense is singing hymns for improved ability (anything active). A geas that does make sense is a specific style of tools, or a specific set of tools.

And I happen to like the tooth geas. I'd fire a GM that disallowed it because it's not 'limitting enough', when the character had been shot in the side of the face and lost 4 teeth, along with taking deadly damage.. and found that his social abilities came back when he had new teeth put in. Or his 'improved ability(bite)'.

Likewise, reread.. my sabers. He doesn't just have one. He's got a set. 3 of them in fact -- two are mundane, dikoted sabers, one is a weapon focus, dikoted. Wouldn't be able to apply it to the vibrosword or daggers. The Geas makes sense and is valid by the rules of geasa -- it's an exclusive geas, perfectly justified. It's a limitation, although not a bad one. It also makes more sense then most of the 'good' geasa. Why on earth would someone develop a geas that has nothing to do with their power or the magic loss? That's just bad roleplay.

A vegan geas? Maybe if the character was already a vegetarian, that would work. Otherwise, that's so much of an extra limitation that it's a bad joke. Geasa are nasty enough as SLIGHT limitations -- they're either permanent or cost a metamagic. Making them equivalent to wearing handcuffs is adding insult and an extra injury to the first injury.

[BishopMcQ]

Geasa can be fun and exciting and offer something to the campaign. Take for example the combat mage who gets disrupted, while taking a D wound in astral space, and fails both magic loss checks.

Welcome to the gesture and chant geasa--Upraised middle finger projected clearly from his body and "F*CK YOU!". Now true, in the barrens or outside of any form of social pressure, this wouldn't be a limiting factor. But when you get known for cursing at people and having them erupt in a ball of juicy bits (Powerbolt) people start talking...

As a GM, I'm fairly flexible with players when they take a geas. This I think is mainly because without much planning on my part every single geas has come up at one point or another.

Killing hands that only work with a specific form of martial arts, some might call it munchkinesque. But if a character takes 2 forms of martial arts, one that is strongly offensive and one that they fall into for defense, it would make perfect sense for the intense focus of chi and spiritual energy to be lacking when they are protecting themselves. This is still a limitation because if the character earns more successes on the melee test, they cannot apply their killing hands when calculating damage.

Back to the original idea in this thread--as a starting character, the easiest thing to do would be to pickup an RTL Heavy jumpsuit with helmet. Program it with racing logos or somesuch for when you are on the street riding your bike. Have as a backup, the various camo patterns for any environment you would find yourself in and tack on the night camo which helps against sensors. Add 4 pts of Thermal dampening to the Armor, 2 pts in the helmet and a little chemseal because it always helps.

Now you have a sig of 12 to 14 against sensors and a +4 to stealth tests in any terrain. And it only costs a tenth of the Ruthenium price.

If you do go for the ruthenium approach, remember to apply it to your gear...there is nothing worse than a floating SMG or Katana to give away your position.

[mfb]

[Dawnshadow]

[mfb]

except that if the geas isn't limiting, why would you ever bother getting rid of it? the difficulty in removing a geas does not make a geas limiting. my head's pretty hard to get rid of, but i don't view it as a limitation.

[Dawnshadow]

Because If you don't, you're more than likely to reach a point where you can't take any more geasa?

It's most apparent when you have magician's way adepts, because their magic power dies first, they don't have all 6-8-10-whatever magic rating. They have 1,2, 5, whatever points of effective, spellcasting magic. Guess what? It's not that hard to lose much magic when you're making magic tests against TN 10 and can only fail 4-5 before you've lost all your spellcasting.

It might take a little longer for adepts and mages, but it does happen. Cost to initiate becomes higher, ease of losing magic just goes up.

So I've got magic 10.. all 10 points are geased because I keep getting shot, knifed, slashed, firebombed, blown up, or run over. Next time I take a hit, I lose magic. I can't avoid it.

Bear in mind, I'm playing in a game where my magician's way adept is really dangerous, devestating really, and he's still wound up unable to geasa away magic loss from deadly damage on his magic power.. and he's gotten really lucky with some of his magic tests. In fact, he's still at the point of 'magic loss -- can't geasa another point', so I know just how limitting geasa are by existing. 25 karma to get rid of an involuntary geasa. 2 karma for every initiation following.

[Edward]

If your using ruthenium dermal sheathing you should invest in some form of ruthenium clothing, now it becomes strip to the form fit body armour and you don’t need to worry about face masks.

It realy wouldn’t solve the cost issue as it is in all ways more expensive than a sute.

On bit of advice however, don’t just get ruthenium, also get the thermal dampening mod although it doesn’t last as long at a stretch, it is invaluable against the many targets with thermographic vision, I find the rapid transit jumpsuits a good choice for the base armour, you can include various non invisibility disguises eg currier, mechanic, jogger. The biggest disadvantage of using a ruth sute in invisibility mode is dirt, if you get dirty, (blood, dust, grease) that dirt will be visible,

As an adept you can’t use an anchoring focus yourself (unless you’re a physical mage) you could pay a spell caster to give you anchoring foci but that should attract an extra fee for the magician to bond the focus and an ongoing availability fee, it will quickly become exceedingly expensive.

Magical groups should be quite common, ones that take shadow runners les so. Every corp with a significant magical staff has group with the special goal for advancing the magical talent of that corporations magically active employees (possibly several such groups for varying traditions or sections of the corp). MIT&T should have several magical groups as will any other tertiary education facility with a large thaumaturgic department these are created buy students and faculty for research and personal advancement. Shadow runners would not likely interact with these groups directly and with the problems they bring would likely not be welcome as members. Shadow initiatory groups would also exist but they must be very careful of security and have group goal beyond the personal advancement of members so they will be hard to find and you wont interact with them on a run, all these groups would also have high fees.

As to geasa as long as the FAQ states that an item of cyber wear is a suitable talisman your just going to have to admit that it sucks or declare a house rule from the beginning. Personally I say that a talisman must be losable (but it may be easily replaced) and any other geasa must have a real chance of being difficult to fill occasionally. Low light vision only at night is fine, runners are always getting into dark places at odd times, geasa IA unarmed combat to only when using unarmed combat is not but only when using a given mauver would be. The tooth I would not normally allow but for IA bite I would. As to the sabres I would allow them as a talisman that you have several copies of provided you specify 3 traits they all share and any replicants will share, EG sabre, dicoat, real leather grip. My requirement that there be a limit is that you cant always carry sabres around.

The problem I have with the fuck you geasa is that it makes healing and other beneficial spells look strange,

Edward

[BishopMcQ]

[Edward]

[mfb]

jeez. dawnshadow, if you're having to stack on so many geasa that you're running out of room, my hat's off to you. most characters i've ever heard of don't run into that problem. i'd like to submit that, since that's the case, it's not really equitable to hold other characters to that standard. your character is trading limiting geasa for freakishly frequent magic loss checks, therefore it's fair to say your character's geasa are limiting. other characters don't have to check for magic loss nearly as often, so similar geasa would not be limiting.

[Edward]

[Dawnshadow]

Actually, MFB, it's the TN 9 magic test. Karma Pool spent trying to avoid said magic test. Only 4 points of magic power. Doesn't take much to inflict deadly damage, when you have body less than 9 (the other adept. The Sam's is higher).

Might be just that our game is a little more PC-bloody. It still strikes me that geasa don't need to be particularly limiting to be bad on the order of 'month spent with Bubba the Troll in a small cell'. Even a small limit is painful enough.

[Critias]

No one ever listens to me.

Hey, let's start arguing whether adepts or street sams are better, too, while we're all here.

[mfb]

that's only one geas, then, dawnshadow. find me a character who's taken magic loss so often that they can't geas it anymore. it just doesn't happen.

[Leviathan]

Thank you to everyone who replied on-topic.

To those of you who are discussing Geas merits/cons/limitations etc

PLEASE GET OFF MY BOARD

I think with all this confusion and having no idea what most of you are on about, I'm going to completely ignore cyberware/geasing, at least for now.


So, can anyone suggest any other ways I can improve my stealth? Or easy between-run money making schemes I could use? Because by the looks of things any increase for me is going to take craploads of :nuyen: (or karma in the case of magic points), and considering I started with resources minimum, will take a *long* time for me to save up.

[Eyeless Blond]

Well, if you're looking for something cheaper than Ruthenium, the rapid transit heavy jumper with thermal dampening 4 mentioned above is a good place to start. Total price is 6,500 Y, Availability 8/4 days, SI 3. Get some camo patterns on chip (pricing not mentioned in the books, but shouldn't be all that expensive) to bump both your Sig and your perception TN by 4. You can get chemseals on it too, but that'll bump up the price and SI even more.

[Leviathan]

What book is this mentioned in?
Or if it's a custom item can you give me a breakdown, evidently I missed it in the mess of the middle of this board.

[Critias]

It's in Cannon Companion, in the armor section.

Might be a silly question (but I'm too lazy to switch back to page 1 and check) -- have you got the standard Stealth Adept Package, for powers, here? Traceless Walk? Athletics/Stealth out the wazoo? Wall Running? Centering (Athletics/Stealth)? Masking?

Most of the stuff you can do -- short of camo clothing, be it ruthenium or otherwise -- is all karma-based, not necessarily nuyen alone. Them's the breaks, when you make a Talented.

[Leviathan]

My adept powers are:

Imp Sense: Enhanced Hearing
Imp Sense: Thermo Vision
Imp Reflexes Lvl 1
Motion Sense
Magic Sense
Traceless Walk
Imp Physical Attribute Quickness (2)
Imp Physical Skill Stealth(4)

This was my first try at making an adept, and my first try at a sneaky character.

[Critias]

*nods* Not a bad bunch, so far. You might want to start stocking up on Karma for some Initiation -- more power points and Centering are good things. Improved Athletics (esp. with Wall Running from SotA 64) can get you into places you might not otherwise be able to. And for just .25 a level, Athletics is tough to go wrong with.

[nick012000]

[Eyeless Blond]

Keep in mind though that this is a potentially dangerous way to turn a profit. First off, every single unit of orichalcum you make has your astral signature all over it, so it can always be tracked back to you. This mostly applies to people who are trying to hide, or are selling illegally or something. Second keep in mind that this a very labor0intensive process, one that requires your near constant attention for a month, so it's not a good idea unless you can be absolutely sure of more than a month's downtime. Finally the radicals involved are expensive themselves, especially the gold.

[Critias]

Also keep in mind, this has nothing at all to do with your character (from what you've told us so far). How within his personality is it to suddenly sink karma into enchanting/alchemy, settle down with a nice shop somewhere, and work like a busybody D&D gnome merchant in between jobs as an Adept infiltration expert?