Sorry you're mistaken. (I wish you weren't though, it would make live a lot easier)

Augmentation p 130



This clearly says that you need to make all of the minimum number of tests.
The book states 'if the pathogen's Power is not reduced to zero...' because if it is reduced to zero there is ZERO power accumulation. Thus it doesn't need to define this as such.
The writer could easily have removed the sentence.

I never claimed that you needn't make the requisite number of tests. You still do. However you have beat the test once - power is zero; therefore now at power zero, you do it the necessary number of times.

The book states 'if the pathogen's Power is not reduced to zero...' because it is necessary to differentiate between when the accumulation applies. It applies when "the power is not reduced to zero". That sentence is needed to define when the accumulation applies.

aug p 129



My take on the previous quote and this one toghether, say that even if you reduce the power of the disease to zero in one test, in the subsequent one, if still within the minimum number of tests, you test against the full power of the test.
It can be argued that net hits of the disease resistance test can carry over to the subsequent test.

No, the quote does not state that you test against the full power of the test. It only states that you need to make a test again to resist the effects; now that you have reduce the disease's power to zero, it should be easy to do so.

toturi, I understand now how you're reading the paragraph, and I must say I'd prefer it your way
But looking at the sentence structure, I don't think that sentence applies to the whole paragraph.

Besides, why would there be mandatory resistance tests against a target number of 0? Is that a test at all? How would incurable diseases (under Speed) work if you'd just have to make the resistance test once to be rid of all of the effects for good? What else is there to resist in a disease beside its effects? Why would we even have a minimum number of tests instead of tests where the pathogen's Power accumulates?

Even though it seems better from a gameplay perspective, I don't think it works from the rules point of view.

It is workable from a rules point of view. Whether there is a point to it remains debatable. In fact, there is nothing that says that a threshold has to be more than 0.

Hypothectically speaking, there is a disease of Power 6, Penetration 0, Speed 1 day(7). You have O Cells at rating 6. The power of that disease is now zero but you still have to make that roll for the next seven days.

Required protection for Ghoul fighters

Nephritic Screen (Rating 4), 0.4 essence, 40,000¥
Pathogenic Defense (Rating 6), 0.6 essence, 60,000¥
O-Cells (Rating 9), 22,500¥
Nanohive (Rating 1), 0.75 essence, 10,000¥


Total essence cost 1,75
Total cost 132,500¥


Total number of dice on disease resistance test 19

Buff with prophylacsis and cure disease spells

Now you can beat the disease

It depends. All you need might just be O Cells. O Cells reduce the Power of any viral or bacterial pathogen. If Penetration work like its Armor Penetration counterpart as described, then O Cells can presumably drop the Power to zero and still have capacity left over.

The way O Cells work, it doesn't protect you so much as it hurts the pathogen.

in other words, a ghoul can grab your uncovered arm at no risk, but pray that it never scratch you deep enough to draw blood, sounds reasonable to me.

Why get a Nanohive at rating 1 when you can just get a cyber hand/foot and get the nanohive installed for only 1/2 of the capacity. Sure it costs 5000 more, but it saves you .5 Essence and you can install a commlink or something else without using any more Essence. Hell, in the future, you can upgrade the Nanohive and still not use any Essence.

No. The point of O-Cells is that they directly reduce Power, and the Nanite classification makes them work against HMHVV at all, as well as keeping their raiting from being reduced by Penetration.

With a Nano-Biomonitor, they rate +1, BTW... and thus reduce the Power to 0 for HMHVV III and to 3 for the first to.

I think I agree with the power being zero, but still having to make a test as you could glitch and reinfect maybe?

Trevor L.

I came over from the Running Wild thread because I figured this info was relevant to my interests.

What's with trying to "win" against the folks that write our books? Why push some houserule agenda? If you think you can do anybetter, why aren't we playing your game?

Seriously folks.

I like the stuff about infectious populations thinning out, "sane" ghouls seeing to it that the rest stay responsible members of society. The Fallout comparison was a good one, and really does put things in perspective considering ghoul rights.

Of course if you didn't want to think of way that the RAW could work you could assume that things are awful and every ghoul is an insane madman who lives only to spread the disease. That the devs are all madmen who want nothing more than to drive the franchise into the group and they intend to start with an attack at your gaming table.

But I don't think that's true. For one thing I think ghouls should be run in a more thoughtful and frankly interesting way. If it feel like Left4Dead and you aren't running a Zombierun game you're doing it wrong. Reading the frankly disturbing stuff this thread opened with sounded more like the KKK rising up against Captain Planet villains than a discussion about Shadowrun rules.

As a GM I've tossed feral ghouls and NPC ghoul contacts at my players. I even ran an arc that ended with the players defending a building in the barrens from a literal truckload of hungry feral ghouls and generous helping of smoke grenades. Everyone had a blast, we ran it RAW with Runners Companion and everyone got out alive because everyone kept their head. Plus they had lucky rolls and heavy combat armor on their side, that never hurts. It wasn't all sealed hazmat suits, but then again the contact vector doesn't "tag , you're it." because that would make no sense what so ever. And it isn't going against the rules to deny a player the dice from his chemsuit after infection because he remembered to throw it on before rolling his test.

I guess what I'm saying is that it doesn't count as house rules to use common sense in game. You don't "win" by pointing out faults in the game, and you certainly don't by twisting intentions and working from suppositions in order to create those faults. It's this type of shit that makes me stop reading Dumpshock every few months, and people like Ancient History that drag me right back.

See, you'r pushing a houserule right there.

I'm a bit confused on the various disease rules. Can somebody post a die roll by die roll example of how this disease works (say using a body score of 12, if it's passed by skin to skin contact and body 12 can't resist it, the entire human race is ghouls by now).

Body 12 is Ridiculosly High
the Average Norm has 3 ,Ork 5
Make it a CON 6 with 2 additional successes from a Rating 6 Medkit adding its successes in a Team Pool (if a Team pool is possible at all)

with an interested Dance
Medicineman

Actually, it's a house rule no matter which way you rule it. In the SR4 core book, ghouls have no game-stat mechanic for spreading HMHVV, only a fluff suggestion, and even in Runner's Companion they don't have the Infection power. It's all a matter of DM fiat on what contact exposes and which doesn't.


Assuming a Body 12, the roll-by-roll goes thus:

One day after contact, you would roll your 12 body, trying to "reduce" a "Damage Value" of 8 (the disease's Power). If you have anything that helps you with rolls against that, then you subtract 6 from those dice (the disease's Penetration). For example, a dwarf with a R6 Chem Suit would only get an extra 2 dice, not the full 8 (8 - 6 = 2). If you fail to drop the Power of the disease to 0, you suffer the effects. Even if you do reduce the power to 0, you still have to make the minimal number of Disease Resistance Tests (in this case, 10) before you are free of the possibility of Infection (this time...).

If you do not reduce the Power of the Disease to 0, then you take the effects; in this case, losing 0.1 points of Essence. As noted, if your Essence drops to 0, your character dies. Failing a Disease Resistance Test is a Very Bad Thing, as the disease will escalate. This means that if you failed to fully resist the disease, you add the remaining number to the power of the next Disease Resistance Test.

In the above example, a 12 body character with no other help rolls his dice... and gets 7 successes! He drops the power of the attack to 1. Since he did not drop it to 0, he still takes 0.1 Essence damage (drain?), and the next day, when he has to test again, the modified Power of the disease will be 9.

A character will have to make 10 Disease Resistance tests total. In the above example, if the character had made an amazing roll (or Edged it) and dropped the disease's Power to 0, then he would dodge the bullet (this time). However, the following day he would have to make the exact same test, with the exact same possibilities (having to resist a Power 8 Disease Resistance Test, failure costs him 0.1 Essence, and the excess Power left over is added to the next day's Test).

And lastly, in response to why the whole world isn't HMHVV yet, the answer is simple: Machine Guns, Drones, Full Chemical Seals, and Vehicles. You don't have the risk of Infection if they can't get close enough to Contact you.


EDIT::


That wouldn't work at all, since those extra 2 dice from the medkit would be negated by the disease's Penetration. Example character is a ghoul, he just needs to realize it. For the sake of arguement, I did my above example using the suggested Body 12.

Actually my players were the ones who discovered just how nasty K-HMHVV was while reading RC and freaked out.

Comparing Ghouls in SR to Ghouls from Fallout doesn't work very well.
* Ghouls in Fallout are the result of a mutation from to many rads, are not infectious (unless you count the weird glowing ones, which will just mostly kill you from rad poisioning), do not have exceptional physical stats (in fact it gimps them), and are not required to eat people (or parts there off) to live.
* Ghouls in SR on the other hand, are the result of a highly nasty virus and are stupid crazy infectious (to the point of literally one person could infect whole cities in a couple weeks if done right), are extremely strong and tough with nasty natural attacks, and are required to eat your standard human to live.

In my game, Ghouls still have their "But they are people too!" status with the corpers and other people living in the safe areas. Most of them have never seen a wild ghoul at all and in fact the few that have met one, it was born as a ghoul. The street livers, the low lifes, and the others living outside the safe zones on the other hand are totally in the 'KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!' camp. Of course, the security forces everywhere keep a very close eye on any ghouls (as in 24/7) and are more then ready to terminate with extreme pregadus.

Okay, we can do that.

Hypothetical scenario: Pachinko Mike is kicking ghoul ass in his Mitsuhama EE suit, whose full chemical seal protects him from infection as he plows through the critters with his handy assault rifle. After all is said and done, Mike pops off the hood to smoke a cigar. One of the ghouls has a bit of life left in him and tries to sneak up on Mike, but Mike catches the movement at the last minute and pops the cannibal in the head - sending blood and brains all over him, including in his mouth.

Uh-oh Mike. The GM decides you've been infected from your contact. Time to start rolling.

Twenty-four hours after his initial exposure, Mike feels like crap. Now, because he's a burly adept, he has Magic 6, an effective Body of 9, and defensive systems Natural Immunity 6 (adept power) and Pathogenic Defense 6 (implant). HMHVV-III has a Power of 8 and Penetration -6. The Penetration reduces the bonus dice from his protective systems, so he only receives (6 + 6 - 6) 6 dice from his Natural Immunity and Pathogenic Defense. Rolling his (9 + 6) 15 dice, he rolls well and scores 7 hits - enough to reduce the Power to 1, but not to eliminate it entirely, so he suffers the effects of the disease: Pain, Nausea, and 0.1 Essence loss, which brings Mike's Essence down to 5.2.

In his second day of infection, the remaining power from the previous day (Power 1) is added to the Power of the disease, so the effective power of the disease is (8 + 1) 9. Again rolling his (9 + 6) 15 dice, Mike is again lucky as hell and rolls seven successes, reducing the Power to 2 - but again, that's not enough to eliminate it entirely, so he suffers the effects of the disease: Pain, Nausea, and 0.1 Essence loss, which brings Mike's Essence down to 5.1.

Coming on the third day of infection, Mike goes to see a shaman friend of his, who correctly diagnoses the disease and casts a Cure Disease spell. The magician takes a penalty for the Essence loss Mike has already suffered from implants and disease (-1 modifier to the spellcasting test), but she gets 5 net hits, which Mike can add to his test. The Power of the disease is now (8 + 2) 10, and Mike rolls (9 + 6 + 5) 20 dice, but only scores 6 hits, reducing its Power to 4, and he again suffers the effects of the disease: Pain, Nausea, and 0.1 Essence loss, which brings Mike's Essence down to 5.0.

Getting worried, Mike dips into his savings and buys three doses of Rock Lizard Blood from his shaman friend, a magical compound with a duration of (Essence + 6) hours that offers Immunity to Disease, which grants him (Magic x 2) extra dice on his test for today; for good measure he has the shaman cast Cure Disease on him again, this time getting 4 net hits. So when it's time for him to make his fourth test, the disease has a Power of (8 + 4) 12 and Mike is rolling (9 + 6 + 4 + 12) 31 dice. Mike gets 13 successes, reducing the Power to 0 for that test, and has twenty-four hours of relief from the effects of the virus - but it's still in his system.

On the fifth day, with no more Rock Lizard Blood, Mike again shells out for a Cure Disease spell, which this time renders 6 net hits. The Power of the disease is reset at 8, and Mike is rolling (9 + 6 + 6) 21 dice, but he doesn't roll any successes and suffers the full effects of the disease: Pain, Nausea, and 0.1 Essence loss - which drops his Essence to 4.9, and worse causes him to lose a point of Magic and a point of adept powers - in this case, 4 ranks of Natural Immunity! Things aren't looking good for Mike.

Day six after infection, Mike is desperately looking for a solution, but not coming up with much luck. The Power of the disease is (8 + 16, and Mike can't hope to beat it, so he burns a point of Edge to pass the test and buy himself a little breathing space.

Day seven after infection, Mike has called in some favors, and now his shaman friend and her friends have gathered around to ritual-cast a Cure Disease spell on him, which comes up with a whopping 12 net hits. The Power of the disease is 8, and he rolls (9 + 2 + 12) 23 dice, just getting 7 hits and reducing the Power to 1. He suffers the usual round of Pain, Nausea, and Essence loss - his Essence is now at 4.8, and he's lost 0.5 Essence to the disease.

Day eight, Mike gets a call from a street doc who hooks him up with a Nephritic screen (rating 4) on short notice. Although it costs 0.4 Essence (bringing him down to 4.4), it offers 4 additional dice to protecting against the disease. The Power of the disease is (8 + 1) 9, and Mike rolls (9 + 6) 15 dice, scoring 6 successes. More Pain, more Nausea, more Essence loss - he's now at 4.3, and he's lost 0.6 Essence to the disease.

At the start of the ninth day, Mike's street docs starts him on a treatment of o-cells (rating 3). O-cells reduce the Power of the virus, which today has a Power of (8 + 3 - 3) 8. Mike rolls (9 + 6) 15 dice, scoring 5 successes. The familiar drill of Pain, Nausea, and Essence loss - he's now at 4.2, and he's lost 0.7 Essence to the disease.

Day ten, the street doc and shaman get together to try and drive this thing from Mike's system with O-cells (rating 3) and a Cure Disease spell (5 net hits). The Power of the disease is (8 + 3 - 3) 8, and Mike is rolling (9 + 6 + 5) 20 dice; he scores seven hits. His two friends can only look on as Mike suffers more Pain, more Nausea, and Essence loss - he's now at 4.1, and he's lost 0.8 Essence to the disease.

That said, it's not all bad news for Mike. The initial period of the disease is over, he's now made the ten required tests, and the Power of the disease will no longer accumulate.

Day eleven, the street doc administers another round of O-cells (rating 3), and the shaman tries another Cure Disease spell (8 net hits - yay overcasting). The Power of the disease is (8 - 3) 5, and Mike is rolling (9 + 6 + 23 dice. Mike's GM lets the long-suffering player trade 4 dice in for a hit, and Mike easily gets more hits than he needs to reduce the disease's Power to zero. To everyone's relief, Mike sleeps quietly without the need for pain killers or anti-nausea drugs, and blood tests show the virus is gone from his system.

Of course, for his trouble Mike has lost 0.8 Essence to the disease. If he suffers another 0.2 Essence loss to HMHVV-III again, he's going to become a ghoul.

Yes, it does. That is the entire point of most house rules.

Depends on how you define 'win'. If 'winning' includes making a better game, yes, we do 'win' - many problems with the rules have been fixed because of this. However, many still remain.

that adept better be a 1 level initiate

. .and nobody thinks that HMHVV is stupid nasty by this time?
high magic and medicine brought together were NOT able to really stop it.
If the GM had not allowed the dice for hits he could still have failed again.
And even if he made it without becoming a ghoul THIS TIME around, he
lost one point of magic, one point of edge, money, and time AND KARMA.
Because he will need to get his edge up again. and get his magic up again.
maybe even more money and time to get his essence up again, if it works.
And next time a ghoul simply sneezes in his direction he can make a new
character, or am i missing something here?

just brainstorming here, but could the -6 penetration be the issue?

that is, with such a high penetration, most protection options go out the window...

THere would be one simple fix for this problem. infected are sterile and can't infect other people. only people BORN as ghouls can infect other people. that would make this problematic in a world wide view much less big. in a per character problematic it's still the 6 penetration . .

The biggest problem is with the Contact vector.

My adjustment is to be:

Vector: Injection
Power: 6
Penetration: -2


I am considering reducing the power further to 5, & the interval to 1 week.
The disease remains highly dangerous, but at least this way there is a chance, even a reasonable one for PC's, of avoiding infection without absurd investment in antiviral magic, nanites, & burned Edge.

Hmm, one thing to consider is that 1 days are more then enough time for a infected person to be isolated, and the symptoms show themselves as fast as 24 hours. If the strain had a longer time before symptoms showed, it would be really nasty, as then the person could really infect people for a long time, and they again for the same, before the powers that be catch on.

Thing is this, a smart ghoul will be careful about who he infects to not tip of his existence (unless he have gone in for sinner status, and whatever is required for that, maybe a rfid chip that broadcasts his infection to anyone in range), and fearal ghouls will be struck down by corps, gangs or lone star if they become to bold in their hunting behavior...

Yeah, injection would make this a lot less scary in most cases.

indeed, and the difference between fluff (open sores) and SR4's description of contact makes me wonder if there have been some kind of misunderstanding during the writing of RC (as RW seems to be a repeat of the details found there).

just had a bit of fun looking at the list of diseases in augmentation to see what others had contact.

the ones i found where herpes, ads and mads (the two latter being magic related ones).

so is what we got here a cross between herpes and some sort of flu?

Life is a sexually transmitted disease that's 100% lethal. Especially in the Case of Ghoul-Life.

I have to say that having read through this full thread it is my opinion that whoever wrote that particular section of RC didn't really understand the Disease mechanics.

HMHVV-III is significantly more virulent than both Vitas 3 and the Weaponised Ebola strain. Even with it limited to contact the whole sixth world would have turned into Resident Evil somewhere around 2052.

It is just not possible for 99.9% of the population to survive this infection and they are no doubt highly infectious during the initial 10 days. The infection would have been pandemic long before the first proper diagnosis came in. Not that a diagnosis would have done you any good, what with there being no treatment except for high velocity steel-jacketed lead.

On a positive note there is nothing in the Ghoul stat's to indicate that more than a tiny percentage of them have to be contagious.

They don't have Infection and once they suffer the transformation the disease halts. There is no reason not to rule that 5 to 10 days after that transformation their newly enhanced body has destroyed the virus, like it would any other virus, and is no longer contagious.

Would be another way to look at it . .

The progress halts, but the disease is still present. Otherwise, the process could be reversed, if not automatically, then through genetic treatments, which HMHVV specifically disallows because the virus is still present.

Can you direct me towards a quote for that?

Someone brought up the subject a few pages back of how much contact equaled contact. That sounds like a GM call to me, not a house rule. A brief touch of skin to skin contact does not strike me as enough to transfer the disease. If you kill a ghoul with your bare hands you most definitely got it. If a ghoul briefly grabs your arm, I don't know if that would count. Personally I would say no, that there was not enough of the virus to take hold. We have to remember that as scary as HMHVV is, individual viruses are not microscopic terrorist supermen capable of destroying a human being as an army of one. And no, applying common sense to a situation is not a house rule. The numbers are still the same, the vector is still the same but in my game I decide how things played out between the digital nature of the RAW and the analog nature of roleplayed reality.

That's not to say I don't think the rules are a bit harsh. In AH's description it wouldn't be out of place to consider the character of Mike a specialist at surviving ghouls. He had two very specific advantages going in that I would not characterize as standard gear. Regardless of my feelings on it though, I'll be running it RAW in my games. Anyone who doesn't want to risk their precious little snowflake of a character can go play somewhere else.

And for the record, Muspellsheimr, no one can win if there is no contest. Unless you're a dev yourself that sort of rules out your opinion, don't it? I don't see how bitching about it like we have will end up bringing us a better game. Someone claiming superiority because they feel that something I like and enjoy is inherently broken pisses me off. You can houserule it, if you like, but you don't have to be a dick about it.

Something to think about with AH's break down: Nano-hive+O-cells 8=Immunity to Ghouling...

So your whole bit about common sense is overruled by slavish devotion to mechanics that have been shown to be unbalanced. Shown by your hero AH even...

Whatever. You're going to my ignore list along with every other RAWdogger that fucks up good games by putting RAW over common sense.

That's generally true, but if and when a GM call goes against the rules as written, that is -- by definition -- a house rule. It's not good, it's not bad, but it's what it is.


Why not?

What is it about the text describing what is transferred via "contact" vector, in the rules as written, makes you think that brief skin on skin contact is not enough?

Although, you might get away with Restoration & Cellular Repair, as they are not technically augmentations, but I think it's pretty clear that's not how it is supposed to work.

Contact to me would be something more than a brush of the arm. A bite would be more of an injection. So somwhere in between is probably be where it is at. So it is a gm call if the contact would infect the person.

It says contact, it uses the same rules as poisons seems to me that mean infection contact should be the same thing as contact poison contact. One touch and your screwed. If I'm not mistaken in RL Ebola is contact vector, touch an infected person and you're opening yourself to infection (it managed to pop up in an area of Africa where touching the dead is part of the funeral customs, towards the end of the outbreak they where wrapping bodies in plastic and throwing them into a hole as quickly and with as little contact as possible). Simply put contact vector is horribly infectious.

I believe under current US law the CDC could quarantine any infected individuals for life.

Does previously infected with HMHVV but fought it off = Infected?


Then I would be proud to be on your ignore list then, hopefully somewhere right at the top. Pity though, I do not remember fucking up any good games yet.

As I said elsewhere, you're really reading way more into that statement than is actually there. It took the Kriegers over a decade of living with and working with ghouls 24/7/365 for them to contract the disease, and they weren't in chemsuits most of the time.

Says who? I wrote the fucking thing, and I'd still advocate shooting them on sight in a lot of cases. The bounties were added in because a developer specifically asked for them, by the way, so saying that the devs don't want you shooting ghouls or other Infected is straight-up false.

I fought to move the transformation time back to what it was in SR3, and lost. The rising mana level was what was given to me as the reason for the increased speed of transformation, and it seemed reasonable to me.

Sure. No problem. I'd do the same for anyone that thinks the (importance of RAW) > (importance of making sense), so don't feel too... special. OK, go ahead and feel special - but only if you can find a rule for it.

Asamando as a ghoul nation was around a long time before Runner's Companion. BTW.

Problem with this. Your statement is supported by the fluff (aka not rules). Our position is supported by the cruch (aka rules). We do not (most, anyways) support this interpretation, we are just clarifying that it is Rules as Written, & thus a prime candidate for errata.


Well, I fully believe the 'importance of RAW' significantly outweighs the 'importance of making sense', because RAW is what everyone sees, & common sense can vary.

I do not always agree with RAW - I have a House Errata document as large as the official one, along with an entire Technomancer re-write. The difference is, in my games, the House Errata is RAW, & the rules as written are it. No interpretation involved. If a judgement call is made, it is either added to the House Errata, or clarified that it was a one-time event due to (now clarified) unclear rules.

If they are still infectious, the virus is still there.

The technical thing is that you need a DNA sample to restore to.

So all sterile born Ghouls are OOL - there is nothing to restore to, and all infectious Ghouls are pretty much OOL to, because the genetic reset would just result in reinfection, technically. (Dumping Restoration, Cellular Repair and O-Cells in one jar with an Infected might work.)

Implants are explicitly listed in the disease resistance test, as are protective systems - so they are not protective systems. As his Adepts powers on the other hand, are neither, Penetration can suck up and go home.

So: No.

Penetration affecty only things that don't help against HMHVV at all (pharmaceuticals) or don't help in the long run (protective systems). Keeping your Chemsiut onf after infection doesn't help.