Ah, since Critters is available for free (I didn't know that), it's likely okay. I'm assuming this 'free' version is a legal version?

Or a very unusual elf. If you're going to play a Nosfratu you might as well go whole hog and make the character a 400-year-old spike baby elf who just happens to have the unusual characterestics that allow an elf to become a nosfratu and just happens to be attacked by one for no apparent reason.

Perhaps more frighteningly, so does emo samurai.
(sorry I'm picking on you a lot today, emo)

Probably easier to do in a non-Shadowrun game.

I beg to differ.

We just need to adapt it to SR3.

If any GM were foolish enought to allow your sam to get infected without tearing up the character sheet, it would be easy to interpret that either:

• your essense maximum would be 2*(the max essence you had when you died)...So your .05 essence cybermonster could only drain up to .1 essence before he 'topped out', or
• the vamp's regen power causes all your expensive cyberware to be messily and painfully expelled.

I remember Bull suggested some rules for playing infected characters (linky). I never tried them out, so I have no idea if they came out balanced or not - did anybody else on the forum ever use them?

While it's a reasonable way to interpret the regen rules, nowhere is it actually stated that cyber installed pre-infection is kept, because the only PCs in any addition that had the regen power (shifters) start out that way from birth. The fact that a cyber'd vamp existed could encourage the GM to interpret the rule that way, or could just cause the GM to say "it was a freak of nature statistical anomoly that doesn't apply to you."

That said, vamps are worse off with the ware than they'd be without it. The reduction in the level of their powers would be crappier than any bonuses (boni?) that they'd get from the cyber boost, especially when using pre-SR4 powers.

I'm curious. How can the regeneration power be powerful enough to expunge enhancements from your body? I can see certain things that aren't attached to well for a character, but for things that are fused to bone and the such? If it's just accelerated healing then it makes no sense, as the body would just grow around them (assuming of course, you could overcome the regeneration power during surgery to implant them in the first place).

Quite a few critter powers aren't magical.

I'm noticing quite a bit actually that can not be healed with regeneration (looking at 4th edition here). It cannot heal brain/spinal damage, magical damage (combat spells, weapon foci, critter/adept powers) and the creature's allergy.

It also seems to only heal damage. It does not directly affect toxins/disease etc., only the damage they cause. This makes me believe that it is not perfect, and does not instantly expel anything. It is only accelerated healing by the description. Surgery would be difficult, but not impossible.

Now according to several, it will supposedly instantly reject the implant. This is why science has inhibitors (or whatever they're called), to make sure that this does not happen. They would probably be used on everyone that gets an implant to make sure that it "sticks" (although I don't really see it for too much except bioware, since the body can't really get rid of metal etc.). For a creature with regeneration, this would probably require a higher dose or a use of the creature's allergy until the body accepts it as part of itself.

I'm just saying that it should be wholly feasible to put implants in creatures with regeneration. It would just be a more expensive process.

that's an... interesting perspective, but it doesn't apply here, regardless: regeneration is very much a magic-based ability. there's no inhibitor yet invented in SR that will supress it.

<Cough>Ghouls<Cough>




-Tir

If you have a magic of 0, it still works. My interpretation of that would be that magic just enhances it. It's already there.

And for vampires, wood would surpress it. A specialized inhibitor could be made from this.

Also, digressing slightly, how could such things as bone lacing be expunged after it is already attached?

critters don't have a magic rating, they have either a force rating or an essence rating. that doesn't mean that the powers they display aren't magical in nature, it means that they're powers rather than conscious magic. witness vampires, to bring this back on topic: not all of them have a magic rating, yet all of them display powers that are clearly magical in nature.

A much easier way to kill a shifter is to have projecting mages cast mana combat spells at it while their elementals beat up its astral form using their much higher initiative (they get a +20 bonus for being purely astral) to dodge into the ground or nearby walls just before it is the shifter's action. Silver works wonders too (and gold in some cases). Since shifter chargen gimps attributes what with the having to buy each attribute twice deal, Decrease Attribute cast at a shifter has a good chance of making it paralysed (for physical attributes) or unconscious (for mental ones).

Probably the best thing about regeneration was for sorcery and conjuring tests. Summon or cast at a Force that exceeds your Magic attribute so that the drain is physical, since physical drain heals really quickly (physical drain doesn't regenerate instantly like a physical wound does, but it does heal faster than stun damage does (which in turn heals faster than a non-regenerating creature's stun heals)).

On the other hand, ghoulification consumes all bioware and purges all cyberware, requiring that new cyber be installed after the transformation (at double essence cost). This might apply to other HMHVV transformations too?

But it is bone lacing. And dikoted to boot. My albino Night One nosferatu has had his bones taken up to zero-gravity orbit, infused with cheap plastic polymer and coated with superheated diamond plasma glaze. He couldn't go himself, or as a Dual-natured being he'd die from the 14D mana warp. I mean sure - regeneration could purge peripheral cyberware such as datajacks and things but I think structural elements such as bones would be fine. I mean come on - if regeneration purged his bones he'd die! Seems hardly fair.

I belive the official word from the developers was that magic drain did not regenerate, regardless of whether it was physical or stun. It had to heal back normally, just like on the rest of us. Since I'm not doing SR3 anymore, could someone else please verify?

So? Easy GM explanation: chemical processes within your body break down the plastic/metal/aluminum in your system so that it no longer binds to your bones. Alternately, the process breaks down the pieces of your bones so that the 'damaged' portions that are attached to the lacing slough off, taking the lacing away with it. Either way, you're crapping out painful shards for the remainder of the week.

There is no option to dikote bone lacing. Dikoting requires that the object be subjected to superheated plasma, which would destroy the bones in the process. Not to mention that rest of the body that the bones would be attached to.

Please tell me this is a joke. You can't remove his bones, because you can't open wounds on him for longer than 3 secs. You wouldn't be able to get the bones back in for the same reason. If he fails his regen test, and doesn't close up his wounds, he dies anyway. If you somehow managed to remove the bones, they'd no longer be viable once they left his body. Additionally, assuming he doesn't fail his role, he'll just grow a new set of bones in 3 seconds flat.

Drain regenerates at a rate of 1 box per minute. That's better than normal magicians but it isn't fast enough to be useful in combat. If it were ever magician in the would would be loading up on Immortal Flowers. However, regeneration is very useful when combined with the sacrificing metamagic.

Right, from SRCp36 as compared to SR3p126 which is normally 60 minutes / #successes on (Body or Willpower) v TN 2+injury mods. So if you were a shapeshifter casting a spell in combat and you knew you could either cast it at a low force in which case the target would be more likely to resist it and you would need to suffer Stun penalties for 20-30 minutes or you could cast it at a high force, know the target's very unlikely to resist it and you get to shrug off the Stun penalties in 4 minutes... which would you choose?

Well, I admit it - I was just kidding. If I was going to go to the extent of dikoting his bones, I'd at least splash out and get titanium bone lacing. Sheesh.

MitS is quite good in that it clearly says nobody agrees on or understands what the metaplanes are. In our game, we debate that when on an astral quest, we are actually visiting another primary plane as a free spirit (and thus, when we encounter free spirits on our physical/astral plane, they may well be a magician, adept or mundane from another time/dimension coming on an astral quest to our plane which is to them a metaplane). If you have read C.S.Lewis's The Magician's Nephew it is like the Dweller on the Threshold is the world-between-worlds and as your group begins the astral quest, you pick which pool to jump through (which metaplane to visit). If a free spirit is 'killed' on our physical plane, it is disrupted back to its metaplane and can't return for about 3 weeks. If we are killed on a metaplane we get disrupted and have to get medical/magical healing for some weeks. The only way for us to kill a free spirit is to get its true name, go to its home metapane and defeat it in combat at the citadel. If a free spirit comes to our plane, and tracks us down and kills us in combat, we die.

Adding to this whole perspective the idea that you could catch a magical virus on a remote plane and bring it back to your home plane is just ... cool!

You're probably playing them wrong, they're great as percussion insturments.