I then take the Adept quality for 5 BPs, starting me at 1 Magic, which I then increase to 6, costing me 65 BPs. I raise Magic to 6 for the cap on adept abilities as well as for how it ties in later on to one of them. For the hell of it, I raise Edge to 4 for 30 BPs. Going troll already costs 40 BPs. So far I have spent 200+40+5+65+30 = 340 BPs.

For skills, I'm going to take Running at 6, which will run me another 24 BPs. Add in the Sprinting specialization, and that's 26 BPs. So we have spent a total of 340+24+2= 366 of our 400 BPs.

Now we take our adept abilities. We have 6 Magic, so we have a cap of 6 levels on any one ability. So we will take:

Missile Parry is taken mostly just to be funny, since he'll be catching alot of footballs. The first three abilities are the most important ones.

I'm sure most people can see where we're going with EndZone right now, but for the sake of scientific rigor, I will explain in detail.

The reason for going troll is two-fold. First of all, they have the highest unaugmented and augmented maximums for Strength in the game. This is important, because Running (Sprinting) is linked to Strength (SR4, page 111 for skills and linked attributes, page 73 for racial attribute maximums.) Secondly, trolls have the best movement rates in the game at 15 meters per turn walking, 35 meters per turn running (page 138.)

The stadium is packed, and the roar of the crowds is an almost deafening wall of sound pressing down on the field. The excitement and emotions run high, and being in tune with the magical energies surging within him, EndZone feeds off of the immense temporary background count being generated here. He feels the support of his fans behind him, and his heart pounds with anxious anticipation. He looks at the AR overlay in his helmet's visor, studying the play the coach has chosen for the team to carry out in order to thwart the opposition's defense. The call is made, the ball passed, and it lands in his large, capable hands. This is it. This is what he is here to do. He yells triumphantly, digs his cleats into the turf, and lets the energy from that unseen world fill him completely, giving him Strength beyond mortal comprehension. Thundering the field like a runaway bullet train, he charges towards the other end of the field...

Since one can never really know how the dice are going to fall, the best we can do is estimate the results based on probabilities. It's fairly common knowledge that SR4's d6-based system has a 1 out of 3 (or 33%) chance per die of getting a hit. For the purposes of our results, remainders will be rounded down.

EndZone has a Strength of 9(11) to start off. Before he begins his charge down into the end of the field that is his namesake, he has to use his Boosted Attribute. Boosted Attribute (page 187) is (Magic)+(Boosted Rating), with each hit generating +1 on his Attribute for a number of Combat Turns equal to twice the number of hits. EndZone would have 6 Magic and 6 in Boosted Strength for a total of 12. 12/3 = 4 hits. This brings his Strength to the troll augmented cap of 15, the highest we can possibly go.

The Running rules (pages 117-118) state that with each hit on a Running (Sprinting) test, the number of meters that the person can run increases by 2 for that Combat Turn. EndZone's pool would be thus:

Using our 1/3 ratio for hits, we can see that we'll get a mathematical average of 8.66 hits with 26 dice, which we will round down to 8 hits. This would work out to 18 dice that did not score a success.

This is where we will use our Edge. Using the Edge rules (page 67) we are allowed to spend a point to reroll the number of dice on any one test that did not get a success. So we'll roll our 18 again. 18 divides by 3 evenly to 6. Taking our previous hits and adding them to the post-Edge hits, we have 14 hits.

Using the Running rules, we have gained another 14 x 2 = 28 meters for this Combat Turn. 28 meters on top of the 35 trolls normally get is 63 meters per Combat Turn. A Combat Turn is 3 seconds long, so if we divide 63 meters by 3 seconds, EndZone is moving at 21 meters per second. For those of us who use United States measuring standards, 21 meters per seconds (according to Google calculator) is 46.9756621 mph (75.5999999 kph), or ~47 mph.

Your modern (as of 2006) football field is 100 yards, which works out to be 91.44 meters in the Metric system. 91.44 meters / 21 meters per second = 4.35428571 seconds it will take EndZone to move from one end of the field to the other. If he starts off on the 50 yard line, then half that down to 2.17714286 seconds.

However, we do have one small problem. As of SR3's Sprawl Survival Guide (page 35) the modern football field in Shadowrun is 150 meters by 60 meters (150 meters = 164.041995 yards.) Taking 150 meters and dividing it by the 21 meters per second that EndZone can run, we are looking at 7.14285714 seconds to run it from one end to the other, and half that (3.57142857 seconds) if he starts on the 75 meter line.

When EndZone completes the rush, he's going to have some problems, however. First off, when his Attribute Boost wears off, he'll have to suffer Drain from it. Page 187 in SR4 states "When the boost runs out, you must resist Drain equal to the Attribute Boost rating using Willpower + Body; each hit reduces the Drain Value by one. Attribute Boost Drain is Stun damage." This is somewhat nebulous. Does it mean the total value of the Attribute Boost ability (6) or the actual boost given by using it (4)? I'm going to assume by the capitalization (and just because I'm a dick) that it means the former, so EndZone has 6S he has to resist. Body (9) + Willpower (5) = 14 dice. 14 / 3 = 4.67, which we'll round down to 4 hits. He's gotten 2S (or 0S if we go with the actual boosted attribute).

Second, you can only Sprint for a number of turns equal to your Body plus hits on a Strength + Running (Long Distance) test (page 155). If he exceeds this, he begins to lose steam and take Stun damage. However, without rolling anything else, his Body alone gives him 9 full Combat Turns to run. This is incredibly more time than is needed for him to clear a Shadowrun football field.

An interesting side effect of the sheer SPEED at which he travels (63 meters a turn) means he might qualify for using the Ramming Damage table (SR4, page 160) when charging through the opposition. Consulting the table, 63 meters per turn falls within the 61-200 range, which gives the impacted target Body x 2 damage. Since EndZone has 9 Body, this would work out to be 18S damage (we'll assume the damage is Stun, even though the chances are it could be quite fatal.) The vehicle itself (EndZone) would have to resist half of that, or 9S with his Body + whatever Impact Armor rating his football uniform has. The target gets to use only half his Impact armor to resist, which means I anticipate many people jumping out of EndZone's way.

In any event, the idea of a troll adept football megastar that charges through the opposition makes me grin one of those big, bear-trap smiles. I have a huge soft spot for trolls and find them pretty underappreciated in Shadowrun games, so I'm happy I could, at least in theory, make one that excels at something other than killing people.

The crowd erupts as EndZone makes it into the other team's territory, and the entire stadium glows from the astral like an atomic blast. Reaching up, EndZone removes his helmet, specially cut to accomodate his enormous horns, and he drops it on the turf torn up from the spikes on the bottom of his massive cleats. He reaches up to wipe the blood and spittle from his lips, and grits his teeth to ignore the pain of injury received from those who sought to bar his way. But looking at the way he came, he sees nothing but a swath in the field that HE carved in his quest for team glory. The unconscious forms of cybered athletes lay still in the field, thrown aside when they thought to make a name for themselves by stopping him, but then realized too late that it was in vain. Howling his triumph, the volume of the pandemonium all around him doubles, and he hefts the massive two kilogram ball up into the air, and basking in the glory as his team wins yet another game.

It's really not. It's more of an arguement to houserule running speeds. Even an unaugmented mundane human with 3 str and no running skill beats all real life world records (go ahead and do the math if you don't believe me). And besides, strength is linked to NO skills other than athletics, and agility has half of them.

This is something I noticed early on, so I made the running skill a free action that doesn't stack with itself (so you can't keep boosting your speed every phase). I also put trolls down to human speed (10/25), and increased a combat turn to 6 seconds. As a side note, to balance the troll nerf I make strength help with recoil compensation.

Given the specialized nature of football, Endzone would be a running back. He wouldn't really need kicking or throwing skills. Furthermore since football is a "melee" sport, even if an enemy beats him on the initiative test that doesn't mean they instantly reach him before he starts moving. Movement amorphously takes place turning a turn unlike specific actions like ranged attacks. It would take a wickedly over complex system to determine whether the defensive team could reach Endzone before he got up to speed.

What about magic? This troll is augmented with mana, specifically with the maximum possible Strength and Running, not to mention a high-level Strength boost.

Personally, I see no reason why a bigger-than-human-sized person with a large amount of supernatural help could run at a speed that is about twice the fastest speed on record for human beings in real life, and not faster than a wildebeest.

Have you ver seen serious sprinters? All the work they do is strength work, not agility co-ordination stuff. Sprinters are pretty much all built like power lifters, big legs and arms.

I agree abot running speeds in SR4 being nuts though. They're just stupidly fast drop. I can live with trolls being really quick sprinters, there should be rules about quickly changing directions while running that are agility based. Dwarves could have a bonus for their low centre of gravity...

He's got to at least keep close because Wally "Grenades" Moon is sitting back in the pocket, with his wacked out Throw Weapon skill, and going to try get it to the reciever over him or even throw underneath and let EndZone try run it out.

P.S. Heaven help Wally if someone ever manages to get past the O-line and sack him.

A big part of the physical training I'm going through right now is running. Trust me, it's strength based, not agility based.

The rules are crazy, but a hell of alot more sane than SR3's, at least in regards to movement rates.

The fastest I ever got in SR3 (with the help of another, rules-lawyery friend of mine) was 138 mph... food for thought.

Of those 6 hits, 3 will explode as 6s and can be rolled again, giving one more hit.

I was going for mathematical advantage, not common sense or restraint. I agree with you, though. With a large pool, it's statistically more advantageous to roll the Edge after than it would be to do so up front. Also, in my opinion, rolling up front is a rip-off, because on the average it'll take three exploding sixes to net you even one more hit, and this is at a smaller percentage than 33%.

Having played a bit of Football myself I totally agree. There is a reason why you keep about 40-50 players on a roster even if only 11 are on the field at one time.

Quarterbacks do almost all the throwing, our buddy Endzone sounds more like a Running Back or being a Troll would make a legitimate Fullback (the guy usually going through the hole forst as a lead blocker for the smaller faster more nimble running back). Endzone would make a pretty good Tight End too (TE's play on the line, they block on some plays and run routes a receivers on others).

As a side note, hitting and tackling in football is probably enough of a specialized skill set that I personally would allow it as a specialization of Unarmed Combat that lacked any punches or kicks but was excellent for Grappelling and Knockdowns.

Cool. I started to do that last night, and then hit the point where I was adding enhancements to the cyberlegs. Couldn't decide if personal augmented max Strength / Agility were hard limits to the stats of individual limbs as well as to the body as a whole, and sort of ground to a halt.

But sure. Two full cyberlegs, plus a torso. Max hydro-jacks and Agility, and then as much Strength as will still fit. Reflex Recorder (Gymnastics). Synthcardium x3. Enhanced Articulation. The hydro-jacks are actually more gross than an Adept with Great Leap, because the math on the maximum distance works differently.

Greap Leap adds to Agility for the purpose of calculating max distance. An elf with Agility 10 and Great Leap 6 has a max running jump of (10 + 6) * 1.5 = 24 meters. Hydro-jacks increase max distance by 20% per level. I don't recall that they give an example, but presumably this means the same elf (now with Agility 10 cyberlegs and Rating 6 jacks) has a max distance of (10 * 1.5) + (10 * 1.5) * (6 * 0.2) = 15 + 18 = 33 meters. That assumes that you lump the percentage increases together, and Rating 6 jacks give +120%. The other alternative is that you compound the increases, but that's even more gross and probably not what they had in mind.

Let's see:
Agility 10.
Gymnastics (Jumping) 6 (8)
Reflex Recorder (Gymnatics) (+1)
Synthcardium 3 (+3)
Enhanced Articulation (+1)
Hydro-jacks 6 (+6)

If memory serves, the Synthcardium, Enhanced Articulation, and the Jacks give bonus dice, but don't actually increase skill, so they don't run into problems with the maximum augmented skill value. So, all of that should stack.

That gives the cybered jumper a total of 10+8+1+3+1+6 = 29 dice...2 more than the maxed out starting-build Adept. That's not enough to actually score an extra hit all of the time, BUT he also has a higher maximum (33 meters to the Adept's 24), and the Adept was already limited by that maximum when spending edge.

Now, the Adept can eventually Initiate, increase his Magic, and buy further levels of Great Leap. Our cyber-athlete won't be getting any better than this, because he already has the maximum rating in the useful 'wares.

To be fair... Mr. 138 MPH was not running... He was on skates. And it can get even crazier if you allow regular old inline skates to bestow the same Running Multiplier. And let's not even talk about Olympic speed skaters (on ice).

*hmm* 138 mph equals about 222 km/h ... about 62m/s or 186m per combat turn ... thus an effective quick of about 30 with the skating multiplier of 6 for "running" ...

Not good enough to beat someone who can actually run that fast (and faster) under SR3 rules as a starting character ... without a surface suitable for skating ...

That's where Acme's line of rocket skates come into play.

Which don't happen to be part of canon SR3 material, while the things that I'm refering to are canon material to the end ...

Just as EndZone ..

Nah. Maybe they've changed the rules have changed by 2060 or so, but today at least, you can't tackle a player unless they have the ball.

However, if lack of actions turns out to be a problem for him, the coach would just put him in as a running back in the I formation. He'll be up to full speed before the QB ever hands off the ball.

Since when? According to Sprawl Survival Guide, an SR3 source book I know, the only restrictions in American Football are cyberlimbs.

Probably crunchier to get bioware like augmented muscles and synthacardium for Endzone instead, and similar stuff. Haven't got my book right now, but that would be (for a starting character) +2 Strength, and +3 dice for athletic tests, at a cost of less than 9BP and one magic point (0,7 essence). Also, it frees 2 magic points...

There is more usefull stuff in the book, perhaps enhanced articulation (pricy) or a balance augmenter (earware).

the more detailed info in Shadowbeat explains that, while you can't actually fire someone for being an adept, they're unpopular among both the fans and the players (and that it's pretty easy to fire an adept for trumped-up reasons). further, adepts who get any cyberware at all--datajack, implanted radio, cyber-replacement toenail--are completely disqualified.

I can make a character that in the normal rules in 3ed go faster than the speed of sound on foot.

Idea my mage would run in the low 70ies before using movement.

not quite. it was ushered in by a QB with a rebuilt arm. ThreeGee is right; even in Shadowbeat, limb replacement was out. extreme limb modification was A-OK, but not straight replacement.

Probably not violent enough for them? A troll charging down a field would probably be more apt to choose to leave a hole in guy than just tackle him. ;P Seroisly though, violence could be an aspect, but as for trolls playing, I can see their size being a problem. They're at least what, a good foot or two over humans? So, passes are harder to intercept between two trolls for example.