Anyone care to take a shot at what Ghostwalker's stats would be in 4th Edition?

Also how many spirits do you think he'd have under his direct control/allied with him?

Assuming that his new lair is in the old NORAD base, what defenses/protection would you think would be around there?

For extra credit, take a shot at Nicholas Whitebird's stats.

No right/wrong answers here just opinions. Just try to be "realistic". (Meaning don't worry about the power level of the campaign and such).

I think about 3 in all attributes, perhaps more for charisma and willpower, and no ghosts under control/allied. Summoning 1 or so.

Of course i refer to the time of the great ghost dance .

Take the "base" Western Dragon stats, and apply the "Great Dragon" modifiers to them.

In the end: if you have to start rolling dice for a Dragon the players are dead.

PS One of my favourite lines from the Survival of the Fittest campaign, this is right in the adventure (I'm paraphrasing a litte 'cuz I don't have the book with me): "... roll some dice just for fun and tell the players they are dead. Maybe their next characters will be smarter."

If I remember from the first Harlequin module, there was a passage that went something like "Screw the rules. Assume that Harley and Ehran are capable of doing pretty much anything they want."

Behold the power of Plot.

About the spirits under his control, that depends. Can the spirits spend Edge to resist the binding? Cause if so, he's screwed!

not with a magic of 12

Eh. Ghostwalker can be killed. Just summon a Force 12 Spirit of Man with Innate spell (Manabolt), and order it to cast it at Force 24 vs. Ghostwalker. Ghostwalker then dies horribly.

But Ghostwalker can counter by summoning a Force 24 Spirit of Man with Innate Spell (Manabolt) and cast it on you at Force 48

Edit: Oh wait, what happens when the Force 24 Spirit of Man rolls Edge to resist and dumps 50~P at Ghostwalker :0

but GW has Magic of at least 62
in DotSW it suggests he has 50 initiate grades

So he summons a force 124 spirit and has it hit with a force 248 mana bolt. Although, he'd probably be better off using sleep, since uncoscious uppity bastards are much more fun later than dead ones.

I never said you or I should let them get into a fight with a great dragon (let alone GW). I just said that if someone is running that kind of game and everyone is having fun, all is right with their world.

Personally I hate the way they stat the great dragons in SR4. Not so much that they do, but that they make them weak.

As far as the attributes, I'm cool with the stats there. I'd raise the skills by about 5, because hell, if you're going to already go and break the rules (skill cap, they have Sorc (G) - 10), might as well go all the way. Since Ghostwalker is supposed to be the greatest summoner of this age (6th and 4th actually) his conjuring (G) should be 3 or so points above that. Go ahead and use a nice high edge of say 9 (since , once again, they already broke the rules on caps, so do it 3rd ed wayand let him go to 1.5 max attribute).

Then go ahead and apply what they said about guys like Harlequin back in 2nd edition. Should be an initiate of the high double digits. So yeah, he's a (we'll be nice and say) 40th grade initiate. And since you can't have a higher intit. grade than your magic rating , he'd have over magic 40. That makes him a lot more scary.

Great Dragon's stats have always been really weak for their fluff. Just look at the threads on how to gib a Great Dragon by using an Assault Rifle loaded with APDS back in SR3.

Just assume that either A. They have really good PR people, or B. most of their reputation is because of their obsessive planning. You run into a GD who just woke up, and has no knowledge of modern technology, or what metahumans are capable of this time around, and you could gib him.

The biggest problem with summoning a force 124 spirit is that if you have it cast stun bolt at force 2 its going to kill the chunkiest meta human possible
Take willpower 10, spell defence 7 and 20 initiate grades, no cyber max magic. That’s 43 dice. So the spirit has 205 more dice, assuming below average roll (or buying sucseses at one per 4 dice) 53 boxes of stun damage. This char has 13 boxes of stun track and with a body of 12 and 6 cyber limbs (the spell defence was coming from a different character) 20 boxes of physical. So he is bleeding from his ears with 21 boxes of over flow damage.

Consider ghost walker casting stun bolt at you, without overcasting.

Dragon magic 62, spell casting 6 (his one skill at 7 would be conjuring) dice pool 68
The target. A dwarf full Borg being protected buy the chunkiest mage on the block
Willpower 7, spell defence 33 (skill 6 essence 6 21 between initiate grade and spell defence focus) dice pool 40

The dragon has a 28 dice advantage. Using success purchasing rates (he would do better if we rolled) that gives 7 net successes so without overcasting the damage is 69 stun. With 12 stun track and 20 physical track that is over kill buy a whopping 37 points of damage into overflow.


If you survive having a spell cast at you buy a great dragon its because he wanted you to

That said he could be killed buy PCs, hear is how.

Obtain anty ship missiles, you’ll need about 30, and the aircraft to carry them and fire them all in one initiative pass. When the great dragon is at a public appearance you fire all the missiles simultaneously from a range that will ensure speedy delivery (no moor than 2 KM). he wont have time to escape.

of cause I cant see any PCs getting there hands on that kind of ordinance.

Edward

Total hits (not net hits) rolled is limited by force. If you cast a force 2 spell at someone, you can at most get 2 hits on your test, even with infinite dice. Then your target needs only 2 hits to negate the spell entirely.

This was an exercise for fun, but you're all assuming a straight up fight.

In metahuman form GW is very killable. He has physical stats akin to normal metahumans.

Since it is plausible for PC's to be at a point to attack Ghostwalker when he is this vulnerable, you need stats for his dragon form in case he survives to retaliate.

Now I'm not saying that Ghostwalker runs around in metahuman form all the time.....but it's plausible that there might be a campaign based on a run to assassinate Ghostwalker while he's in metahuman form.

Bypassing his henchmen and security would be where the shadowrunners come in.

Divination is a bitch, even for great dragons.

Dragons don't like to use divination. It makes things boring.

Just find the guy who killed Ghostwalker's brother. He'll know how to take down a GD.

Dunkie suicided to power the Dragon Heart. Unless you manage to convince GW that there's something out there worth killing himself to prevent, it probably isn't going to happen.

You ruined the joke.

We could get dunkie (in his cyber zombie body) to kill ghost walker.

Edward

Why would Dunkelzahn stay in the cyberzombie body? He can always pull a Ghostwalker, go through the astral rift, then possess the complete dragon skeleton his Will left directions to complete, and be a DRACOLICH!!!`1111

I would think getting out of a cyber zombie body would be about as difficult as getting into a ghoul body. That is to day, imposable without a magic ratting and the possessing meta magic, and rather difficult unless your reasonably powerful.

As most CZs don’t have a magic rating there trapped.

Dunky being the most powerful of the great dragons has all the metamagics described (and then some) and a magic rating to make mere immortal elves weep with envy.

I think he could get out if he wanted out.

Edward

Except that he got caught up in the bindings that keeps the soul of the cyberzombie from flying away, and by the time he remembered who he was, he had fused with the body and mind of the cyberzombie (as well as the Dragon Heart). They're literally one being now.

The practical aspects of getting out of a cyberzombie are irrelevant compared to the sheer coolness of Dunkelzahn as dracolich, though.

actually it is not impossible

just really hard

you would need like a magic rating of

oh never mind Bug D could do it

EDIT: I mean Big D,, Edward ignore this post for the next campaign I run

Sorry to ask such a silly question, but are you joking about the big D being a cyberzombie now? And if not, in what book is that stuff covered? I'm in a SR mood these days so I might grab it to catch up on the important stuff that happened since 2063. (I have the SR4 BBB and Street Magic, but I assume the story of the big D - after his death - is covered in some other book.)

That was covered in the Dragonheart trilogy, a group of novels dealing with this very subject, and set in and around 2057, just after Dunkleberry was elected (and blowed up real good).

I'm gonna jump in on this conversation even though there really isn't any point, but:

The stats for Great Dragons in the book are for a basic, just in the last few seconds became a great dragon, like Masaru (I think that's the most recent Great, correct me if I'm wrong). Ghost Walker has had thousands of years to accumulate karma and spend it on not getting insta-wasted by sad mortal spells and APDS assault rifles - essentially he, and any other major Great, don't have stats bounded by the rules, just like Harley and similar characters in 3rd.

That's how I read it at least.

Two things:

One remember the stats are the base (say the equivalnt of buying metahuman package).

The rules specifically say for ANY great dragon they should be treated as a prime or even superhuman prime runner (with corresponding bonnuses to BP / karma that has been awarded) and stated manually.

ANy great dragon should be more then the number in the book, how much more vaires...


Big D was THE DRAGON.

For Big D just chose one of the following for any of his stats:

1) YES!
2) More then Enough *2
3) Heap^Load
4) infinitie minus one




Now as to dragons needind divination bahhh humbug....

Detect Enemies, Extended Force 62 (Big D's referered magic from above) a measly 20 successes cast (measly since this is important enough he would have summon a force 40-50 spirit to aid it its casting)

Ok 20 hits to detect any sentient thing intending him harm in 2.5km

Now for even more fun, as this is one of his more important defense to staying alive Big D, get Lowfyr, Hatasby, and friends together and they all help each other.

So now they each have a force 62 with 62 sucesses Detect Enemies, extended.

62 successes to overcome within 38km.

No mage is getting LOS without the Dragons being aware. Only pure machine (would be hard to say if a rigger 'jumped' in would trigger a detect enemies. so might be vunerable to a horde of riggers)

But short of it, You AINT getting the drop on the dragon.

A 'base' line great dragon very possible. But thats the same as cmoparing Fastjack to the hacker present in the pre-made characters selection.

Random hijack:

Does anyone else read Hestaby as "Hesta Baby" when they see it without meaning to? Anyone?

No?