I also think that the Champion of Japanese Economic Superiority could work. Maybe I'll pursue it with more vigor.

How do you visualize the runners getting involved with him? I imagine them going on a run in which they go in at night, steal the data, and leave without a trace. That means no dead barghests or guards. The run seems relatively easy until they find another runner team doing the same. The leader will be a troll with the world's most sophisticated-sounding Aztlaner accent. If the team has anyone with ANY level of social skills, they'll part on good terms. Right in the middle of the datasteal, they'll hear a gunshot; the other team was there to kill a senior partner who literally lives at work. An alarm will sound, and the team will have to make it out without encountering the guards flocking to the place of the alarm and escape before Knight Errant sets up a perimeter.

I don't know how to involve him again, though. Is it uncommon for a car to drive into the Barrens, load someone into the passenger seat, and then drive out of the Barrens? I'm seeing that as the blood mage's modus operandus. That'll be when they find out for certain that a blood mage is involved, since I'm hoping that one of the players will do the smart thing and astrally follow the car on one of its grocery runs. Which will reveal, of course, both a force 50 bajillion ward on the car and pure evil in spiritual form. Eventually, I'll have him be intrigued enough to steal one of the players away and put him/her in his human meat locker while he/she's on a daily errand. He'll even project out of the car to greet the magician cordially before encasing him/her in a manasphere for long enough to make it back to the compound without being tracked.

No, they'll meet the Spanish troll who's actually a body possessed by a hyper-sophisticated blood mage BEFORE the shooting. He'll say they want to complete a completely unrelated mission without trouble. Follow along here. Especially the part about the troll being possessed by a blood mage.

Wow that really cleared things up. It makes much more sense now.

He's a crazy blood mage who likes to possess the body of a prime runner whose soul's been ripped out and play Live Action Doom with it. What's not to understand? I mean, if you had no concern for human life, had the power to rip the soul out of a person's body and possess it, loved thrills, and lived completely above the law, this would be a very logical thing to do. The RAW gives us these insane NPC's who aren't even unique, but part of a cabal, and you don't expect me to take them as far as possible?

I haven't laughed this hard in a while. Damn I am so glad I am totally drunk at the moment.

Can I ask a question? Well several actually. I didn't see this mentioned earlier, but I could have missed it-but what sort of characters are we discussing here? I'd like to be able to look at them or a basic description of them. Am I just skimming over that? or could you point me in the right direction?

Don't get me wrong man, I give you credit for trying. Even if your effort is different from what I am used to, at least you're out there gaming man.

This is a villain who escaped from Aztechnology and is currently performing cybermancy for Universal Omnitech with little to no oversight. He possesses the body of a locally famous troll enforcer from time to time for fun and death. He also abducts people from the Barrens and drives them away in a car in order to provide fresh bodies for his blood magic.

Uhm, I get that-what I was asking was who the characters-I'm sorry let me be more specific to avoid more confusion (And given how drunk I really am at the moment, this requires a lot of discipline on my part): Who are the player characters?

The player characters are the party sent in to do the datasteal; the NPC party is the one sent in to do the assassination.

If my characters are all 450 BP and with about 50 karma, would an intiate grade 10 blood mage be too powerful?

Yeah... Force 16 physical barrier... force 16 ward... channeling a force 8 blood spirit for good measure just in case he wanted to beat down the party's troll with his bare hands... all without having to absorb drain because of all the bodies around him... I was thinking, though, of having him be cocky and not use anybody's body except one of the runners'. Like, if there was a tanking troll, which I imagine there always is, he'll knock him out with a force 12 stunbolt, levitate him towards him, and then use only the troll's body. That's good for about 2 high-powered fireballs... Okay, so maybe he IS too powerful.

You know the "Invae in a Mall" storyline? Would it be possible for Knight Errant to astrally project mages in to place bug barriers all over the place?

I was thinking of having just the Magesighted illusion of the dude be there, and have him cast all his spells through said Magesight.

Let me explain. He possesses the body of a troll because his actual body is lacking. When people see the Antonio Banderas blood mage, that's just an idealized self-image. The image'll have the works; great hair, nice suit, the Devil in corp attire. The actual mage will be in the sewers, and he'll look more like an obese Gollum. He'll have all the sophistication he projects with the troll and the holo-Antonio Banderas, but he'll have a shitty voice, a beer gut, and a 10-pound frame. Hopefully, the party magician will figure this out and send a spirit to trace the optical line. Once they find the real blood mage, he'll be easy to kill.

The story the mage gives will be all about "finding the path of darkness" and "abandoning the world of the sheep," but he'll really be an intern who got lucky. Yes, he'll be a blood mage, but he just doesn't have half the personality he pretends to have.

The thing is, though, that spirits are dual-natured, so they're always on the astral.

I'll be running it this Saturday; I'll tell you about it after we're done.

That's DnD think, SR levitate is fully 3d movement.

Yes, I've found 3 people with a fourth on the way.

I've found 2 more people.

As long as they have the same ideas about SR4, everything will run fine. But is that likely?

Bug Barrier is a mana spell, so there's no reason that you couldn't have astrally active magicians put it up on the astral plane. It wouldn't nail any purely physical bugs, but since bug spirits by definition aren't purely physical, that's completely acceptable.

In fact, since True Forms can go into pure astral form if they want, putting the barriers on the astral is a very good idea.

-Frank

What would happen if a fleshform hit an astral bug barrier?

If a dual natured critter hits an astral barrier he may as well have hit a physical one. Never ride a motorcycle astrally sensing if there's a mage nearby.

It'd be worse in a speeding car...

Yeah, but the enemy mage might not notice you astrally perceiving in the car.

As I thought.

Thanks for pointing that out, I'd missed it. For the second, I'll stick to my original response.

What do you estimate the drain code on a Bug Barrier spell to be?

The restricted target spell limitation was worth -1DL, wasn't it? So bug barrier would be mana barrier, but with lower drain, and would only effect bugs.

So would it be (F/2)+1, or -1, or what ?

No one's made a character yet, so I'm postponing the game till two weeks from now. Like Itto Ogami and Yagyu Retsudo placing their swords in the sand as a vow to fight another day, we shall wait until the promised time.

*Samurai talk off*

What if the blood mage was some dumbass who learned the sacrificing metamagic and very little else? I was imagining him being some sort of intern working for a much more powerful mage who got ahold of some formula or something. His master got killed by Aztechnology corporate security and he was deemed too unimportant to kill. When UO and the Big A split up, he stayed with UO. He's a 5-6 level initiate, so he won't crush the runners, and the reward will only be about 250,000, since everything deflated completely.

And I'm wondering; I know that in 2nd edition, what is now a 15,000 cyberarm cost 100,000. Is it the same for other expensive things, like power foci? How much did they cost under 3rd edition rules?

I'm thinking of running a Hellhound Puppies campaign in which a corporate rich kid wants to have a hellhound puppy, but is refused one by the hellhound breeder he talks to. She's a cranky middle-aged woman who turned him down on the spot because of his adolescent swagger, his car, his shades, and his brand-name clothes. Basically, he's a stock character from The O.C., except with an implanted comlink. She rather understandably thought he would be the kind of person to feed his hellhound beer at keg parties for laughs from his dumbass friends. He wants to pay you to steal one from the woman's farm.

When they go to his house to talk to him, you'll notice piles of high-quality formulated hellhound food and an entire library on hellhound care. When he opens his fridge to serve them beer, they'll notice a ton of raw meat, presumably for the puppy he was going to buy. He's obviously quite devoted to giving his puppy the best care possible.

The woman's home will be a 1-square-mile plot of land in Salish with 30 hellhounds roaming around more or less freely. Predictably, the hellhounds will surround them almost instantly, leaving them with no way out. She'll quiet them down and bring the runners inside to talk to them. She's quite open and will talk about the time she spent working for Mitsuhama security raising hellhounds. When the budget was cut and the place was turned into a puppy mill, she bailed out and stole about 10 puppies, starting her business this way. She wants the characters to free the hellhounds and incinerate the place, paying about twice what the rich kid is paying the runners.

When they do free the hellhounds, they'll also free the barghests, which are much dumber and more ferocious than the hellhounds. They'll swarm out of their cages, and when one of the barghests leaps out at the players out of the darkness, a hellhound will tackle it to the ground and drive it off with fire. Hellhounds will swarm the team's car and get in the doors when they open, whining and dipping their heads when the players attempt to force them out. They'll also surround the car and scratch the back of the car, indicating that they really, REALLY want to come in. Hopefully, the players will have made off with at least one puppy, assuming one didn't simply make it into the car on its own. They'll deliver the puppy, and possibly dump them on my character's property.

Power foci cost, erm, 105K per force, with a street index of 2, if I remember correctly, Weapon foci cost more, with an additional multiplier for reach, sustaining foci were 15,000 per force, with spell locks before them being 45K. Any sane runner, upon meeting opposition that was carrying foci would dump the run and make their primary objective retrieving the ther guys foci. So, for example, if the other guy is packing a force 4 power focus, a force 4, reach 1 weapon focus, and a force 1 sustaining focus, that around 2M Y on the street.

And cyberlimbs still suck.

So orihalcum will cost, like, 15,000 per unit?

This is a completely off the wall suggestion and it may not fly in your game because it is somewhat provacitive but instead of having the lady refuse to sell to him just because he is an O.C. clone have her refuse to sell to him because he's a heterosexual O.C. clone.

The line of though behind this is that she was breeding and training male hellounds for ladies (and gentlemen) of a certain persuasion and could see right away that the kid did not know what he was really trying to buy. This way, if the runners do try to seal one of the lady's dogs hillarity can ensue.



And barghests are far more dangerous thn hellhounds. Being hit by multiple paralyzing howls ain't fun.

The run idea is actually a good one even without veiled bestiality referances. It falls well on the believable side of Nadja Daviar's nipples.

You are an evil, evil man, and I want you dead for this.

I want this run to be somewhat touching; no fucking way. She'll have closure, the party will have, like, 50 dogs, and the corporate tool will have his well-taken-care-of puppy, the only spark of humanity in his dead life.

I would like to know why would this hellhounds suddenly 'saved by runners' be slovering all over them and want to be all taken home...

After all, you said that the second part of the mission is the free the corporate puppy-farm. Obviously you haven't seen puppy farms, animals in puppy farms are mal-nourished, mistreated, and ill cared for. I can't imagine a hungry hellhound being all happy go lucky with anyone unless that person has some food in their pocket and gives it something to eat.

Otherwise, you'll have a stinking kennel of near rabid animals that the runners have no control over... I would expect them to be eaten.

Of course, if you don't want us shooting down your ideas, you can just not post them here on the forum.

Hellhounds are like dogs, except they're dual-natured and super-intelligent on top of their supercanine durability. They're not Ein-level of intelligence, but they know that the runners saved them; they have a dog's loyalty and even more intuition than even the most intelligent dog today. Even if they're badly treated, which, if you would get your head out of your ass, is the entire point of freeing them, they still wouldn't bite the hand that frees them. They're like normal dogs; they're just stronger, smarter, and fire-breathing. In my campaign, they just KNOW people, which is probably true, even in canon, given their ability to see the astral plane and their 4 intuition.

IRL mistreated dogs are usually scared of their rescuers, but not to the point of attacking. Usually to the point of curling up into themselves the way dogs do. They come out of their shells after a few days of feeding and no abuse. But it takes weeks for them to be happy go lucky. Some breeds are faster, collies and mastiffs for example, but most are at the rate i suggested.

I know, I worked at an animal shelter. But the thing is, hellhounds are superintelligent for dogs, and they have a lot more confidence and willpower, so I'm sure that they'd know pretty quickly that the team's van is their ticket to freedom, steaks, and pats on the head.

But unlike dogs, they have astral sensing and know that the people aren't there to hurt them; they can sense these things.

superintelligent? not quite, +1 i and +1 L is more intelligent, not supergenius.

OTOH it is enough to put them in the collie/mastiff category. they would be bright enough to recognize you as in the broadcategory of 'not the guys who starve and hit us' therefore apossibly acceptable pack alpha

I'd still have it tak a day or two, unless the runners spoil the cute mutts rotten

I'll still have them crowd the van, no matter what you say.

just tryin to be helpful man