Oh, right, right, the temporal lobe thing. Because going crazy at takeoff wins big points.

Thats cyberpsychosis toots TLE-X is more like.... muscle spasms, seizures, etc..

So, you going to answer either of the women who's asked you a question now? *grin*

Just to clarify things: Dexter's like..... late 50s.... And he doesn't have that cyber penis thing from Augmentation.

I keep trying to tell Keren that.

ROFL

Nothing wrong with late 50's. He's clearly in GREAT shape. And the cyber thing isn't really all that appealing, when it comes right down to it.

Sorta like this

Edit: changed the pic

Oh, yeah, that's JUST fine.

She has an idea that you folks know nearly nothing about her, and she could use to know more about YOU. Time killed during a flight comes AFTER mission prep, and THIS is a scratch team for sure.

To set the record straight. I was actually just shitting with Dexter. Even if he failed the roll, the seizure wouldn't have happened.



Eventually. You may come to regret not adding this to the character.

Unless anyone has anythin to add to the RP, I'm personally ready to jump to our first stop.

You sure got a weird shot of him. I think I like him better with the long hair.

Edit: And nothing major, but there isn't much we can do but RP the flight until our 6th is ready to be picked up in Cairo anyway.

Going to give it a day or two for Pete to catch up and for Digital to submit a short biography/story. From there we'll progress the story to Cairo. Till then, feel free to RP.

Hoi chums and chummettes.

Time table wise - Be looking to get a sometime today in response to Dartha and Belloq's questions, and then move the story to Cairo sometime between today and Friday.

-This message has been paid for by the large Cyberzombies armed with Gauess Rifles coalition.

Excellent. I don't mind Gauess Rifles, but Gauss Rifles scare the drek out of me.

Once he and I get replies, we should be able to take RP long enough IC to get us to Cairo.

Fear not, SincereAgape, we'll drive you insane yet. You've opened Pandora's Box, and we're all running about now.

I get to be Plague... or maybe Famine.

That's pretty much a given. Managed to find time in between case visits this morning. Currently at a local library with not grammer checks so be prepared for major typos.

@DigitalOyabun. Feel free to start working on an introductory post. If you have questions, send me a private message.

@Everyone. Still doing some history on Cairo and the state of Egypt in the sixth wold. Going to try and pick Ancient Histories brain the next time I see him on IRC. I do know it's a Megacity of about 15,000 people. Might be able to get a post up sometime today, since my class ends before 6PM today.

-Expect a large metropoltian area which has expanded greatly in the past sixty-years with a large corporate influence and a few arcologies up and about in the distance.

We know that's not the computer's fault, just the tequila, but we'll agree to pretend for you if that makes you feel any better.

*smirk*


You meant to tag an extra three "0"s on the end of that, right? I mean, 15,000 isn't even a MegaTOWN much less a Meagcity.

*impudent grin*

And as to your so-called "excuses" about time - *dismissive gesture while hiding a grin* - you just need to prioritize better. A bunch of misanthropes you've never physically met in a game you're being gracious enough to run for your own pleasure OBVIOUSLY should take priority over piddly things like your so-called "real life"!

One post a day, keeps the wolves at bay . I spent some time reviewing the adventure, after thinking about the current team dynamic, I am curious to see what paths you guys take to accomplish the mission.

@Belloq. I haven't forgotten your question about the ruling of the Energy Aura. I'll get it to you soon.

Tonight, I visited a MMA gym run by Mike Massenzio. I watched him coach beginner stand-up tonight and afterwords got to meet and talk to him about the sport. He's a really humble guy, and I really enjoyed the way he walked around to work one on one with a lot of his students instead of standing on a soapbox throwing out critiques.

Moral of the story; I am planning to begin training with at the gym next week. Very excited to learn from a current UFC fighter. Hopefully I won't be a fish out of water anymore when it comes to wrestling and BBJ.

-End Rant.

Enjoy, big fella. You will be amazed how it changes you.

Try not to block attacks with your head, it scrambles your posting abilities

Anybody who thinks possession tradition is a free trip to power need only look at my post in the IC thread, #78, to see how easily it can turn into a death spiral.

SincereAgape, please look at what I did to heal the damage from Drain. I may have done something illegal by doing the second First Aid Test, in which case Hodder still has 2P damage. Let me know.

You did it semi-right. You have two wounds so you can have first aid applied twice, each application of which can only heal up to 3P damage (Because that is what each wound you took was). Your only real problem was the fact that you forgot to take out the 2 hits required to activate first aid in the first place. In other words you heal Hits-2 damage, not just Hits damage. So you'd heal 2 points with the first test, and 3 points (That 4th point goes to waste) on the second, so you'd still have 1P damage.

Of course all this is even assuming that you can use first aid on drain wounds. I've heard that you can't use 'Heal' on drain wounds, though I've not seen anything stating that particularly, so I'd imagine if that is true you wouldn't be able to use first aid either. Honestly using heal seems reasonable, but using first aid seems odd since the fluff always described the damage as internal sorts of things, and there generally isn't alot that first aid can do for internal injuries. Just my 2 nuyen, but it is all up to Agape of course.

Edit: Interestingly enough, while the rules state that you can't get magical healing and then get first aid, they don't say anything against doing it the other way around. So, if you have access to the heal spell and you can use 'heal' on drain damage, that may be a good way to get rid of that last box of damage. Otherwise you're going to need to rest for a day to get a Bod+Bod roll to try and get rid of the damage.

p. 178, SR4A: "Neither Stun nor Physical damage resulting from Drain can be healed by magical means such as sorcery or spirit powers."

Yeah, at 3 or 4 in the morning I forgot lots of things. I see I also forgot about the threshold of 2 for First Aid. Thanks. I'm a little concerned about having to keep track of separate wounds for the healing tests. That could get convoluted. Usually, I just do a First Aid and then let the mage take over. Hodder is a little embarrassed with these new teammates about his failure so early in the mission and wanted the ugliness to just go away.

Also, in a face-to-face game this might have been less of an issue, but the natural delays in PbP encourage me to try to get neat little packages done in a post.

Well, keeping track of individual wounds is kind of a pain, but the alternative is that you only get to have first aid used on you once, regardless of how many wounds you have. Otherwise you could get hit with a gauss rifle, then heal it completely by getting a few papercuts and healing them over and over until all your damage is gone. That's a bit of an extreme example, but when you have a high damage hit from something that you won't be able to heal with first aid, you'll -want- to get hit more so that those small wounds can have their healing carry over to the big wound.

I mean, it is up to Agape how he wants to handle things of course, but that is my interpretation of the rules. (I still think it is odd to heal drain with first aid though. What do you do, open your skull and bandage up your brain? )

My group always said you CAN'T heal any form of Drain in any way, whatsoever, though First Aid can temporarily negate the WOUND MODIFIERS, much like a Stim Patch for example. But that one is going to be up to SincereAgape. Thus far, he's been relatively RAW, but we'll see.

Hi guys.

Peter, I have to agree with the girls. First Aid does not heal damage sustained from draining magic. It does not make sense thematically. Thus, Hodder has suffered 6P damage. Each day of full R&R allows Hodder to make a healing test (Body + Willpower I believe)

First Aid does not work for treating seperate wounds, unless the wounds are suffered in between a reasonable period of time.

IE: Firefight one you take a pistol shot and a shot in the leg from a Ingram Smartgun burst shot.

First Aid can be used to heal the culmuliative wound total.

IE: Another firefight occurs 4 hours later. You can then use First Aid again.

-Ken

Heh! This should be fun! Running in Africa with a hangover, a black eye and a tender groin. Woohooo!

Actually, I've been pretty much in that state myself. Being in an airplane is NOT fun. The takeoff is the worst part.

OK, so I would really like to get back to an earlier question, SincereAgape. Under what circumstances is it allowed for a PC to buy success according to the size of the dice pool, rather than actually rolling?

Shouldn't they be able to purchase successes for any roll they make? Give they have enough dice after modifiers have taken place. This would represent their mastery of the skill.

OK. I'll keep that in mind the next time I see my dice nosediving. Umm.. since the First Aid rolls are not doable, may Hodder have those two services from the Task Spirit back? He paid dearly for them, and I have a feeling he may need them before the day is over.

Ah! SR4A, p. 252, Physical damage is healed with a BOD X 2 (1 day) Extended Test. So, this brings up a couple of other questions, SincereAgape.

When the Task Spirit currently possessing Hodder's body leaves at sunset, will a new summoning to put a new spirit in Hodder's body, and keep his BOD up, destroy the whole day's healing?

If so, then Hodder could call on one of his bound spirits to stay with him over the duration, but then I need to know whether Energy Aura is damaging in all cases, not just combat. And while your at it, , does Energy Aura affect the effects of extreme temperature in the environment?

Usually, activation of Energy Aura, especially for a Posession tradition, counts as a service, so you can activate it at will and extinguish it the same way... but that's a service.

As opposed to First Aid, you could have the spirit take Medicine and give you bonus dice on the healing test...

Just a thought.

*edit* Another thought: using a Posession spirit's "skills" isn't the same as using it's "Powers" so it's not a service. You DO have Chanelling Metamagic, right?

I think summoning up a new spirit will be enough to throw off the day's healing. The text seems to suggest that you basically need complete bed rest, so I'd imagine anything more stressful than walking around town and grabbing meals will likely mess up your day healing (With even the walking around town being potentially enough to throw it off, depending on how badly hurt you are maybe) A day with the care of someone with medicine might help (I can see medicine applying as they provide pain killers, some basic 'high tech healing goodness', and various other things. Also even little things like getting your food/water for you and whatnot would help out a fair bit.

Ouch starting the game with 6P talk about a handicap. Although in your defense you didn't know about the house rule til after it came up, but ouch.

Hey, I can take it. It's just a matter of whether the team will take it.

Hi Pete.





1.) No.

2.) I was reading the power over in SR4A, and the duration of the power is "Always." So yes, the aura is always on and if you are possessed by a fire spirit, etc, the item which is possessed will cause harm.

3.) The power can be turned off with a service. However, it can be turned back on without one. Hope this ruling if fair.




Summoning a spirit is a process which can take a toll on a person mentally and physically. Even being on the internet can do that. So it would throw off his healing if he tried to summon another spirit.



That's fine.

I was speaking with Bull tonight on IRC, and I asked him what the ruling was exactly on healing magical drain. He told me that in previous editions it was impossible for this to be done, but in 4th there is no ruling against it, other then an option in Street Magic.

This lead me to do more research on First Aid and Medicine. The description of Medicine in SR4A does not talk about healing magic, but there is an specialization for magical healing.

-Thus, Medicine can be used to assist in the healing process. (Which makes sense). For example if you are sick and or suffering from fatigue, it is possible to take something over the counter to help with the healing process. But, in order to do this, you'll need medicine which is specified to heal magical drain, such as bio-awakened based medications. (Hodder has a rating 6 med=kit I believe with additional items bought, so he may have those items on him.)

-Still going to negate First-Aid. I see First-Aid as Basic medication and the type of treatment which can be provided by EMTs. Forming splints, bandaging wounds, CPR, etc. Thus I don't see it really helping in this situation, unless I can be convinced.

-The way medicine works, adding to the dice pool for a healing tests, I can see how it would help a person recover from drain damage.



After thinking about this. I am seriously considering forcing a mage to have to roll to resist drain. (Not to be a dick). A magic user with a drain resist pool of 12 can potentially shrug off any drain cast to summon a force spirit of 6 (Given the spirit even gets 3 successes.)

-Allowing a mage to buy successes for drain takes away from half the fun of casting spells IMO.

I would say the physical drain from spellcasting could be seen as a high spike in heart-rate, bleeding from nose/ears/eyes due to high blood pressure, swelling in the brain, cardiac problems, even a possible mini-stroke with the degree of 'mini' depending on how high the drain actually is. A med-kit could contain a variety of drugs that would lessen the effects of those conditions. Is that how everyone else thinks of physical drain? I'm kinda curious about that now. I always assumed if it was physical you could treat it, but if it wasn't then you were out of luck and just had to wait for the head-aches to pass.



I don't think there is anything wrong with that, magic is suppoused to be magical, an art form rather than a science. People tend to get more successes without buying them anyway. I would be wary of it being both unreliable (swingy drain) and long lasting (multiple days to recover from it) at the same-time unless there is actually lots of time alloted for downtime to recover.

Wow, I'm failing my lurker test big time

Thanks SincereAgape. I appreciate the thought you've put into these questions.

I agree about taking away the fun of risk. It may not have looked like it, but last night's disaster for Hodder was fun, not the least of which was the scared scramble to try to figure a way out of the mess. Alas, some messes can't be evaded. Now I get the real fun... playing him in difficult circumstances. Anybody can take a tank and make him effective. Taking a beaten-up kid wet behind the ears and making his actions count is what hardcore, tactical RPing is about.

So, then ... when is it appropriate to buy successes? I tend to do dice rolls in my posts (No!), and I don't want to use this mechanic when it is not appropriate.

Another source of fun is using skills or powers in new ways. So, for example, in an insect-infested swamp, Energy Aura should be a handy and useful insect repellent. I'm still curious about whether appropriate versions of this power can counter environmental effects such as temperature. If the aura is always damaging, it must have enough energy to burn or freeze what it touches. That should be enough to counter at least some of the opposite kind of energy. Imagine wrapping air conditioner coils around you in July.

Heh. Not the spirits Hodder seems to be drawing. And even the statistically average 2 hits gives a DV of 4.

As for "buying hits" for Drain, it seems much more ... shall we say, interesting, to say you just can't buy for OVERCASTING.

Let me put it like this:

Dartha has a Drain Resistance Pool of 12 dice, meaning she could BUY 3 hits.

Without overcasting, that means that the best she can "buy" for free is the following:

[F ÷ 2] -3 = F13 Reduced to F5 by not overcasting
[F ÷ 2] -2 = F11 Reduced to F5 by not overcasting
[F ÷ 2] -1 = F9 Reduced to F5 by not overcasting
[F ÷ 2] = F6 Reduced to F5 by not overcasting
[F ÷ 2] +1 = F5
[F ÷ 2] +2 = F3
[F ÷ 2] +3 = F1

Essentially, that means to be able to cast a spell at her maximum non-overcasting Force of 5, only spells with [F ÷ 2] +1 or lower Drain would be "free" essentially. Unfortunately, that includes Stun Bolt, so I can see a reason for wanting us to roll, but it does mean a bunch of really silly minor stuff can be cast essentially "casually" like Magic Fingers.

At any rate, I figure I can usually roll at least as well as "buying" successes on Drain, and if I'm overcasting, it's inapropriate to "buy" hits on a Drain test IMHO anyhow. I just wanted to put it in a little perspective.

Put another way: Even if Dartha bought Centering metamagic for 15 Karma at this point, AND spend the Karma to increase both Drain stats to max (40 Karma for WILlpower and 30 Karma for CHArisma), then blew another 40 Karma on the Focused Concentration-2 Quality, she's still only be able to "buy" 4 hits when she was Centering. That still wouldn't let her cast Lightning Bolt at more than F3 without picking up dice, and most Samurai have a good chance to stage down 4P damage (Max 3 Hits on F3, average 1 Hit "resisted" by the target, 1 Net Hit to increase 3P to 4P) to nothing at all... and that's with a hell of a lot of Karma essentially dumped into Drain. Oh, and Physical Barrier at [F ÷ 2] + 5, even at a paltry F1, she could never "buy" without taking damage.

If you want us to roll for Drain 100% of the time, SincereAgape, I'm OK with that, but I wanted you to have the Crunchy Bits^TM analysis to look at. Especially given Hodder's low cap for Spellcasting and Summoning vs. Overcasting, he's going to be caught by the idea I gave above more often than me, but the things I really want to be throwing around in combat, I'm probably going to overcast at the highest "safe" level anyhow.

Sorry for the long-winded post, but I can't sleep (upset tummy).

More or less, yes. But I also don't believe that First Aid actually "heals" the damage directly - I believe it just negates the wound modifiers, regardless of what a strict reading of the rules might say. Those analgesic pills may reduce inflamation, swelling and pain, but they aren't actually mending broken blood vessels, torn tissue or broken bone. So you could use First Aid to reduce the penalties from your Drain, be it Physical or Stun, but you still have to rest naturally to get rid of the actual damage on the track. That's how we play it at our table IRL and it keeps the Magicians a LOT more honest... ok, and the pesk Technomancer too since what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Now, Medicine can help the body heal itself faster overall, so I see no reason it wouldn't help the body get rid of Drain damage faster, but that still takes the minimum requisite time(s), not a flat-out max of 30 seconds for a DemiGod Physical Adept Healer with Aptitude: First Aid and 12 hits on the test (average 36 dice) or an average of 18 seconds for a trully Cracker Jack^TM EMT who ecked out 8 hits (average 24 dice).

I agree with Keren about both the healing and half about the drain.

I also envision physical drain as being internal bleeding, blood out the nose, ruptured blood vessles, and similar things, but last time I checked, first aid holds nothing that would -heal- any of those things, even to the level that it "heals" a gunshot wound in 3 seconds. You could slap some painkillers on the person with a medkit, and thus perhaps mitigate the penelty, but there isn't anything that first aid is going to do for internal bleeding.

As I said in my earlier post though, medicine is the art of long term healing, and sometimes the simplist things such as knowing what kind of foods the person should be eating, and helping provide food and other assistance can be much more helpful than you might think. The medicine skill also suggests doing things like giving them pain killers so their body isn't reacting to the pain (Which will actually slow healing rates, because your body is diverting energy to flight type responses so that you can get somewhere safe), and of course the good old holding them down and saying "No, you can't get up, you need more bed rest."

As for the auto successes, the way I would generally handle it (Just my suggestion/advice/world views) would be that any activity that isn't stressful, you can just take auto successes. This represents your mastery of your skill, and is kind of the 'why doesn't joe professional screw up fairly often' thing. He is a professional that isn't stressed, and so he just buys 1 or 2 successes most of the time, allowing him to provide steady consistent results. So rolling for medical care you can just do auto successes unless you want to roll to try and get more because you need this moron healed now

As for drain, I think this should follow along the same lines. If your in a very low stress environment, and not overcasting, then I don't see any reason Dartha (or others) shouldn't be able to cast a 'cantrip' grade spell without worrying about hurting themselves. The spells are simple enough and have a small enough level of drain that when not using them in stressful situations, the mage should be able to 'know their limit' so to speak, knowing what they can get away with without hurting themselves. Drain from conjuring spirits I figure would always be considered stressful, because it isn't set like spells are. That force 4 spirit you just summoned could really kick your ass if your unlucky, so you should have to roll (Though you'd likely want to at this point anyway)

Anyway, just my thoughts on the subjects.

Tell me about it!

I appreciate this discussion, folks. It has helped me understand the interplay between Drain and healing of various forms. As far as Drain goes, the key issue seems to me to be stress. Under stressful conditions, one can screw up even relatively easy tasks. Let's look at what Hodder can do.

Hodder tries to keep either his WIL or his LOG up, so that his Drain Resistance is around 12-15 dice, which would buy 3 hits. In terms of the 'cantrip' grade spells Hodder has, his Increase Attribute spells all have DV of (F/2) -2. He can cast spells up to Force 4, so the maximum Drain Value from these is (4/2) - 2 = 0, and has to be raised to the minimum of 1. Even with no augmentation, Hodder's Drain Resistance pool is 8, giving him 2 'buy' hits. That seems to me to be the kind of Drain that one should be able to handle routinely. Do folks here agree?

His Stunbolt is at the same level, (F/2)-1, so the maximum DV from this is also 1. But this is in combat, so is under stress. Hs Manipulation spells, Levitate and Influence both have a maximum Drain of 3. They could be in stressful or non-stressful situations.

Spatial Sense and Increase Reflexes have a maximum DV of 4, so those two clearly require a roll at maximum Force, but at F3 or less, they fit the 'buy' range. Again, they could be stressful, or not.

At this point, Hodder probably is paranoid about summoning spirits, as even low Force spirits have caused him real pain lately. A clearly stressful situation. Only a Force 1 spirit or a watcher spirit held to 3 hours or less would be guaranteed to cause a Drain low enough to fit his 'buy' range. Would he be afraid of them? Probably he would summon a Force 1 spirit only when he wanted to avoid Drain, ie. knowing he wouldn't be hurt. Similarly with time limited watcher spirits.

Now, even the best dice pool can fail, or even get a glitch, so there is always the chance of failure. However, the milieu of the game and what has been said so far in this thread suggests there should be some range of activity that a professional should be able to do routinely. So, we could work it so that:

If the DV is equal to or below the current 'buy' level,
and the situation is non-stressful (for example not in combat, or not time limited before something bad happens),
and the activity is not capable of being over the 'buy' level no matter how badly the dice roll,
then we can just buy the necessary successes.

How does that sound?

Line 3, I presume you're referring to spirits because it's a variable number? I consider Summoning to be "stressful" so I don't believe Line 3 is needful; I'm not averse to that definition otherwise.

I put that line in because it is possible to summon spirits in a way that the Drain is guaranteed to be below a certain level, either by choosing a low enough Force or a watcher spirit of short enough time span. Assuming that Summoning is always a stressful situation is one way to deal with this issue, but that would create at least two categories of Drain, one that cannot be safe and one that can. The mechanism I suggest is one rule for all Drain, and also covers the likelihood of danger in most cases of Summoning.

I hadn't considered that side of it... though I suppose the spook COULD roll EDGe...

I can live with it then, but that's really up to SincereAgape.

Summoning and spells are already two different mechanisms for drain though. One is a flat controllable number, the other is highly variable and random.

Yes, except that the guidelines in Street Magic for a spirit using EDG suggest that a spirit would not normally use EDG in a Summoning attempt unless there were extenuating circumstances. Summoning a spirit of low enough Force to be safe is probably not an extenuating circumstance. The summoner using EDG to get a chance of success when summoning a huge Force spirit beyond his normal ability to succeed, now that's where the GM can have fun and give the spirit an EDG roll as well.

And of course, in such a case the spirit's EDG would in effect be doubled for Drain, as the Drain is equal to 2X the hits of the spirit's roll to oppose Summoning. This is why I won't have Hodder use EDG in Summoning (or, God forbid, Binding) unless there is serious shit about to happen. And there will be a lot of begging, pleading and obsequious behaviour inthe process.

That's why I set the limit at the point where even the worst roll possible by the spirit keeps the Drain within the 'buy' range.

*Tumbleweeds chase each other across the dusty carpet in the main cabin of the sleek Gulfstream jet as it soars high over the Atlantic ocean carrying its cargo of misfits to their appointment with Destiny*