WARNING: This post is just rambling about our campaign.

Well, I've discovered that these monstrosities we've been battling in the past 2 games are members of the Aleph Society. We've encountered a team of extremely bad-ass mofos, one's (Named: Wired) got AlphaGrade MoveByWire-4 and a couple of BetaGrade Retractable Spurs with a whopping Essence of 0.04, but despite being a Grade 1 Initiate, has a +6 Stealth, +6 Athletics (rolling 21 dice total here) Quick Strike (mixed with MBW-4), Balance Aug and Traceless Walk as well as some power that gives him bonus dice to resist the effects of the MBW negatives... The other called The Preacher (Johnny Mnemonic anyone?) is a Troll with AlphaGrade TitaniumLacing, BetaGrade MuscleReplacement-4, and AlphaGrade DermalSheathing-3 for an Essence of 0.12 and stacks that with +4 Strength, +4 Body and +4 Quickness for finishing stats of 19(23) Strength, 20 Body, and 13 Quickness.

There's also some Hermetics which aren't as essence-crazy but provide Shielding and other Defense spells that has made combating these abominations insane crazy. Anyhows, I came across a rather interesting fact at the end of the session... Watching them cross a particular treeline, the physical appearance of the duo radically changed. The "Wired" one, who has an incredibly feline look (Corrupted Adept) and the "Preacher" who looked more like a Rhino on steroids (GM's description), suddenly looked like a normal Elf/Troll, and immediately jumped back into the tree line area, regaining their 'usual' appearance. Apparently their Power Points are auto-Geasa'd to the domain of Gaf which we've determined covers about 80 square kilometers. The Gaf spirit(s) is/are only a Force 8 by our standards, giving these underling types 8 Power Points (doubled of 1/2 Spirit Energy according to the Personal Domain rules). This gives the duo 8 Power Points (0 when they leave the domain) in addition to their insane Cyber and 1 PowerPoint for initiating.

Anyhows, I just had to share the Insane-Crazy monstrosities we're having trouble with, and I think they're just the easy stuff, I'm worried silly about what kinda Mages and other Adepts are waiting for us on the otherside, though so far the Mages haven't shown any cyber-usage except for little datajack/cybereye type stuffs. Not to mention my mind going crazy over what I'd do if I could make a PC with 6- points of spent Essence and a Magic rating of 9+ to stack with it.... The GM has hinted that Dr Nickson is at least a Grade 4+ Initiate, making a Force 12 (4+8)spell quite possible. Worried Sick I tell ya.

Sphynx

A nice trip to ye old resort isle of choice sounds in order. On your way you can the a +12 Hackmaster, the cow of Vecna, and a complementary corak-in-a-box.

Aren't you the one with a character that rolls 40 some odd dice for unarmed combat?

Ah, you mean we don't play like you do? Just an FYI, you can munchkin and roleplay both at the same time, and it's really alot more fun that way.

As for the 40 dice, yeah, there's someone in our team who has the 45 dice Katana/Wakazashi combo. But that's not my character.

Sphynx

Ahh.

Um.

Yeah.

Anyone else miss the fact that dumpshock lacks the suicide smiley?

-Siege

Then a simple application of 'no domain, no spirit' seems to be in order. What's a mere 80km when the fate of the world is at stake?

Only occasionally.

ed: In reference to Seige's post...

Which way to the nuclear wessels?

To quote a favorite cartoon character (with a certain stuffed tiger):

"Whee"

Fuel-air explosives is probably a good idea. Not that it isn't always a good idea...
Regarding Preacher, he may or may not be named after the combat mage of the same name from the Shadowrun trading card game.
What all do you have in terms of funds for this? Aerial bombardment might be a good idea if you've got some drones on-hand... napalm, defoliant agents, pull an Aztlan on them. That and railguns. Lure the troll out, then hit him with 8MN damage. His signature ought to be down around, oh, -A BAZILLION, so it won't be much trouble tagging him. Admittedly you'll have to hit him a second time to exhaust his overdamage, but still...

~J

So... I hafta ask after seeing so much... distate.

Do you guys actually play the game? I mean, what are you doing when you reach 150, 200, 250 karma characters? Still hitting corp buildings with no real campaign? Facing the same threats that you did as starting characters? Retiring everytime you hit 50 karma because it's no longer fun to play such 'power' characters?

Seriously, I understand the need at time to play games at times where alot of thinking and little action is the definition of fun, but don't you guys encounter threats? Hell, every single game I've got a reason to become better, rarely getting time to spend my valuable karma on new skills or knowledges that don't give me a new edge for my next session.

You guys sound like a buncha newbie players who don't realize that characters do actually advance a bit and become more powerful thus leading to more powerful opposition (kinda the commonality amongst most RPGs actually....). I'm one of the lowest karma characters at a whopping 143 Karma with the most powerful exceeding 250. So, what do YOU end up against at 250 karma (or have you retired and made a new character by then because it's just no fun anymore, thus implying that your GM CAN'T come up with similarly powerful opposition)?

Sphynx

Could someone kindly point me to the thread where the 45 dice melee combat roll is explained? Just curious as to how that came together. Or was it just someone had a skill of 45?

--K

I believe it was a high skill adept with a weapon focus and ambidexterity. A skill of 14, a force 8 weapon focus and 8 points of improved ability would do it.

Krishcane, Character started with a Force 6 Weapon focus, skill in Edged Weapons of 6, Improved Edged Weapons of 6, and a Strength of 12 (Dwarf with 8 Strength and +4 Geasa'd Strength).

Karma:
24 Bond Katana (didn't start bonded)
18 Bond Wakazashi (Gotten later in-game)
27 Katana skill to 12
27 Off Hand Wakazashi skill to 12
12 First Initiation (+1 Edged Weapon)
10 2nd Initiation (+1 Edged Weapon)
12 3rd Initiation (+1 Edged Weapon)

Base skill is 12(skill)+6(focus)+9(Improved)=27 then the ambidex bonus: 27+13=40 (Oops, guess it IS 40), for a mere 130 Karma and he's well over 200 I believe.

Anyhows, Backgammon.... question.

You think these are insane levels for a 200ish Karma per-person game? Or just that people who are into a 2nd+ year of playing in the same game/campaign are just stuck playing at insane levels?

Sphynx

Anyway you play your game in no way affects how I play, so fundamentally I don't really care.

If you have characters powerful enough to take on dragons bare handed and stand a good chance of winning, it sets off my "realism" filter, and since I do what I can to keep the setting believable, there is no way this I'm ever going to let that happen in my games. Shadowrun is not Marvel super-heroes. Yes, admitedly shadowrun characters, with cyberwar and magic, are always superhuman in some way to me and normal people, but there is a line.

As what I think about playing 2 years and reaching 200 karma: yes, characters retire before 200 karma, or, far, far more likely, die. This makes me think you have a GM that doesn't kill characters cause the players wouldn't handle it.

Basically, you're playing in a stratosphere very few people on these boards play. So we can't relate to you. Shit, as far as I can tell, Kagetenshi actually has pretty good suggestions for killing these guys. How should I know? If he was talking about any other game, it'd be obvious he's being ridiculous. But from everything you talk about in your games, using a railgun might very well be a good plan for you guys.

Sphynx, thanks for sharing the math. I think those are insane levels for 200 karma characters, but it sounds like you're having fun, so I have no criticism.

Our game would go verrrry differently, mainly because our PCs diversify a lot more. This character looks custom-designed for maximum blade dice from the start, and then poured all his efforts into pushing that envelope even further.

I mean, he started the game with 18 dice (27 dice if you count the as-yet-unbonded focus), which is more than our group has ever seen on anything, and then spent the majority of his karma taking it higher and higher. Crazy, man!! I guess he really does one thing and does it well.

So did the player actually roll 40 dice, or did the GM just let him automatically kill whatever he swung at?

I have a new proposal: When a character gets a skill above say 10, we could apply Ship rules. You have "Naval-scale" skill that operates in multiples of 10, so now your sword guy has 4N skill in Edged Weapons. Naval-scale skill just automatically succeeds against "normal" attempts to resist it -- only other naval-scale skills can attempt to do so.

--K

I think you mistake the levels of our games. We may be weapons onto ourselves in a sense, but the most powerful ballistic weapon we've ever had the pleasure of holding has been a sniper rifle (we only have one of these bad boys, the 2nd most powerful gun in our group is an Ares Predator).

So, can't really go dropping nukes or anything else, we still have to risk life and limb and do things manually to get anything done. And there's no chance any of us can take a dragon. Just cause one of the players specialized so much that he can roll 40 dice without using Combat Pool doesn't mean we all have, hell, our favorite character has a Force 3 as his highest spell, and minimal combat skills (Eyes on my page, should anyone wonder). My PC, one of the lowest karma characters is the 2nd most powerful IMHO, because I abuse Quickening. Others like our Leader, Skillz, spends ALL his karma on nuyen, buying up skills for his extensive library and cool SOTA gadgets.

Anyhows, that aside, why do characters die so easily? It's a story and good stories don't have the characters dying off regularly. We've ALL lost a character in our 2+ years, I even posted when mine bit the dust and that wasn't but about 6 months ago it seems. We just get to start with half the karma we had on our next character so I had a 75ish karma headstart since I died right at 152 karma last time. It's not that we can't handle dying (though it does suck to die) it's that the story loses something when characters who are a central part of it are toasted, so our GM does go a bit out of the way (secret dice rolls that come up with amazing successes) to keep us alive, even if it means a month or so in a genetherapy fluid to get us back to norm.

Anyhows, not suggesting anyone is wrong/right here, I like how our game goes, and it's hard to imagine the gruesomly realistic (thus deadly) game others play, but those also seem boring to me, since it seems that most people never break out of the hit-the-corp type of game. I'm just surprised that everybody's PC in this 12+ year old game (our game has been going on for over 8 of those years) never get over 50 karma. It's like a D&D game where you never get past 5th level. Then again, I recall hearing there was a Grade-12 Adept on the board once which left me mouth-wide-open in disbelief, so I suppose I sounded like you guys back when I gawked openly at her on these boards.

Sphynx

Ack, last post was towards BG, as for KC, he rarely rolls his dice, though he always tries (rolling that many dice is one of his great joys in life ). He gets to roll vs the big-cheese types (like the Preacher and any high Force spirit), but he almost HAD to do the specialty, he was the only one who could take on some of those High Force Queens we battled in Chicago due to their Reaction scores. I mean hell, a Force 12 Queen (we fought one of those: Reaction = F*3) has 36 dice to throw, and he was only throwing 36 back then, just knowing that had him stressin on getting more dice (thus his looking into buying the 2nd Weapon Focus). How the GM runs the game is what molds the players as they play I think. Though I doubt we come across anyone with 45 dice again, though I think perhaps this Aleph Society might surprise me there.

Sphynx

jeez. my guy's about 200 karma--some of it bought--and i feel like i'm just keeping my head above water.

MFB: No freakin kiddin. My PC gets shot at so much that despite his Force 5 Armour he's constantly having to use healing magic and Biotech to stay alive. I've got my next 50+ karma planned ahead almost always. That's just "to survive", I can't imagine having to restart everytime I hit 50ish Karma.

Sphynx

Slightly back on topic, fighting the Aleph can be tough. The main canon disadvantage is that Gaf proper can't sustain all the members at once. If you can draw out the members and embroil them in a battle, it may leave Gaf in the open for a one time attack.

Have you considered infiltrating the group? Perhaps using influence to submerge the feelings of the spy with some built in condition to remove it. You might be able to make a deal with a gang (the Spiders or Nukes seem likely) to distract the group while you activate the sleeper to help you sneak inside the base of operation and snatch the Book of Gaf (it has to be the bridge or source to the Gaf power) or destroy Gaf before it can switch targets.

Good luck either way.

143 are u kidding Im at 120 somthing and our wecond to last run almost killed me. Im always thinking about what my next 200 karma is gona get me.

as for a challange, never underestimate the power of a fanatical mage with F6 Fireball spell and a belief that if he dies he will get strait to heaven.

I just have to ask.... are any of you who rarely exceed 50 karma in the same group that hounded me profusely about how wonderful Centering was despite having to learn a Centering skill and an attached Centering Skill? Sure, alot of people could start out with an attached Centering skill at char gen, sacrificing much needed munchkin points, but even a Centering skill to 6 (assuming your linked attribute is 6+) costs what? 30 Karma not to mention the minimal of 12 karma to initiate taking 42 of your huge 50 karma.... (72 if you need the attached Centering skill).

I just really find it hard to believe that people who really play the game can even imagine always restarting at 50 karma, that's just not even getting started. I wouldn't even say you've built even the smallest rep for yourself until you got to 100 karma, 250 the minimum to be 'well known'. 50?!?

Sphynx

My current PC is at 86 Karma, after a year of play. This is the highest I've ever gotten, not because my characters die or get recycled before that, but because the games usually fall apart before then (it's been hard keeping a game together since I left school... Real Life tends to interfere these days). My highest previous PC was in the 30-35 range, as I recall.

I'm considering my current PC to have just gotten started. My initial goal was to set up an enchanting shop and forge and start making magical items. I haven't yet accomplished that... even getting that going is going to take me another 100kY or so, and at least one more grade of initiation (need Anchoring, at minimum). Actually making anything is going to burn a whole lot more Karma. And this PC isn't going to retire from running any time soon... his ultimate goal in life is to die with his axe in his hand so he can get into Valhalla. He's not in any hurry to get there, though... he'd rather prefer to go out in a blaze of glory as late in life as possible. But if someone doesn't get him first, in a century or so when old age starts creeping up on him, he'll go attempt to take Ehran's head off with his axe or some similar worthy cause, and probably die in the doing.

However, despite the fact that he's a largely combat-oriented individual, I suspect you'd find him extremely weak for the degree of Karma he's earned. This is where the whole role-playing vs. roll-playing dichotomy comes in. I keep doing things with my Karma like, for example, dumping a whole buttload of it into initiating, taking Divination as my metamagic, and buying the two skills I need to actually do it... not because I think Divination is an effective metamagic - I doubt I'll ever be able to get the skills up to the level they'd need to be at to actually beat the ludicrously high threshold for success in Divination tests - but because it's in character. A Viking sorcerer should have runecasting, so I took it.

BTW, John, what did you spend 86 karma on? Initiation is only a small portion of that and I find it hard to believe that the karma expenditure for an initiation is a weak expenditure.

Sphynx

like he said--initiation, plus the divination skill, plus the linked creative skill.

Actually, (thanks to everyone for posting ideas... but we've got that covered), we're right now plotting a stealth run into where we think the spirit is at and plan to take the spirit on head-first and hope that what's left of the society is weakened enough for us to get out of there. *crosses fingers* But before we go and do that, we're making sure that they're bad guys, we haven't been able to pin anything at all on them (except for attacks on us when we investigated their area). If we feel they're just protective and not proving to be a threat to the environment, we'll probably just move on.

Sphynx

What are you talking about? Our team has never worked for a corp except for a couple of quick-hits when we were in Seattle.....

The reason we'd take these guys out is that we were given information that they are led by a Toxic shaman who uses the society to attack weaker rebel outposts. I have no idea what you're talking about at all.....

As for motivation, if you've EVER read my threads you'll know I'm a HUGE advocate (as is the rest of our group) of doing the 'right thing'. You've got me mistaken for someone else I think....

Sphynx

I'm ex LoneStar and I'm on their listsl as an "advisor". Definitely not Corp, I'm an Ex-Cop gone Merc with good ties (10 Lonestar contacts at char-gen of levels 1 and 2) to the Corp, but am not Corp at all. I was a cop to 'do good' not to earn cash.

Sphynx