I think everyone should play nothing but Magicians and Hackers. I'd like to prove that through judicious use of these archetypes you can bust any SR4A mission. Maybe one exception for the Cyber/Bio face sculpter, to show that Adepts are not needed (unless used as a hacker).

I'm serious-- the possession based Spirit-Soft-Skill task channeler, Mind Controller, and Stun bolt is easier to use than gel rounds. Shaman's make great faces, in fact, better than a lot of mundane faces I've seen. Maybe it'd send a message to the ShadowRun design team too.

Hacker Hackers or TMS?

Because a group of Mages and TMs can take over the world. They don't need anyone else.

BlueMax

Yes, but that's a problem with the system, not Missions. So you know, lets not try and break things just to break them. Because that's not fun for the other players or the GM, nor can I imagine that's fun for you either.

If it turns out that there is a running porblem with one or two players ruining a lot of other folks fun, I may have to start advocating that GMs kill these characters off and kick them out of the game ASAP

(In my experience though, this hasn't been th case, so yay. )

Bull

With great power comes great responsibility.

Bull, me advocating playing two archetypes, is hardly referencing being a killjoy. This is a "Theme" not a "Ruin". I can have fun role-playing a Magician or Hacker/TM as easily as a covert op. It'd be cool to sit down at a table and watch this happen

Tampa, FL to SFO... I think you can do that on Southwest. Just let us know when you are swinging by.

BlueMax

Every living campaign has one player or group that thinks like this, please don't be that guy, in my experience he's kind of a dick.

Every system has things that can be exploited, cheesed, minmaxed, twinked, and broken. You will not be the first to find them, you will not be the last to find them. If the development team cares they are likely already aware of them, possesion mages have been a problem as long as they've been in the game. Shamans have been good faces as long as they've been in the game. If you are sending that message it's a message long ago recieved.

That's not to say that fun can't be had playing broke characters and you can't roleplay them. Hell one of the most fun characters I ever had was one of the most twinked i've ever done and it was largely in part of the fact that I knew when push come to shove if combat came down to it I'd likely be the last man standing and could explore other avenues, on the other hand I worked very hard not to run tables or even break combats as it killed the fun factor for others and to be honest wasn't nearly as much fun. In fact in many ways combat is my least favorite part of any game session as you go from a flowing narrative to an agonizing process where every decision that happens over a three second spand seems to be scrutinized.

Single best deterent to possesion mages?
Player: Ok I order the spirit to posses me.
GM: Cool! Give me your character sheet.
Player: What why?
GM: Your now an NPC, you can still use your services to issue commands but other then that your now along for the ride, by the way no talking to the other players without spending a service. NPC's however are my domain.

Unfortunately even within that constraints possesion mages are still outstanding for turning enemies into cannon fodder.

Wow. You have been curt lately.

To respond in kind, with the "don't be that guy", I said Mages and Hackers, and you jump on the overpowered mages bandwagon. This was never mentioned, my point was thusly that these two archetypes can get everything needed done.



Not to derail this from a SRM04 theme of (all) mages and hackers to a possession mage diatribe, but then the Player gets to say, "But I have Channeling meta-magic"

Edit: also, no services are need (by RAW) to have a spirit do trivial things, such as [manifest] and deliver a message, or fetch you a cup of soy cafe. I missed the abusive "spending a service" part of the above quote when I responded.

Mea culpa I more meant at the extreme end of the scale not specifically accusing you of anything. But yes task spirits are rediculously overpower/poorly conceived, ditto channeling.

SaintHax: I'm looking at it from the extreme angle of "Lets be tools and ruin the game cause we can". If you wanted to play a theme game, and all play certain angles, that's cool. As long as you're having fun, and everyone else at the table is having fun, go for it. That's the entire point.

I think if you twinked and minmaxed just about any character "Type", you could probably completely own most of these modules, unless the GM takes care to work it against you.

Bull

All this talk of Mind Control, Possession mages and spirit wires. I am fearful of bringing my +150 Karma Voodoo mage to GenCon this year. =)

Fear not, I play with restraint and acknowledgment to the roles of other characters at the table. Even though I usually have more dice, let the dem expert be the expert - that's what I always say. Sometimes I offer to be back up with

I will confess that my Tutor Sprite compiled with "KS: Things Damien Knight did that could get him Blackmailed" did not pass GM approval in a certain module I played in. The result was the GM shaking his head and the players laughing hysterically. Best... no... ever!

I would have let you have it....

"Let me get this straight: You think that your client Damien Knight, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals shadowrunners to a pulp with his bare hands. And your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck. "

Our Face is damn good so the info in his hands would have been more artfully delivered than the idiot accountant in Batman.

Delivered sure, but the return could have been the same. Situational modifiers are the foundation of social interaction.

Blackmailing Damien Knight to any success would have to be something that could trash the entire metaplot. Considering that act is out of the question in a shared campaign, any lesser value would illicit the same response.

In the shared campaign. In a house table, do whatever you want thats fun. I liberally ignore the canonical changes of SR4 for my home table.

BlueMax

It sounds brutish but wasn't thankyouverymuch. Point fingers all you want. You weren't there.

Wow, your GM was awfully nice. I would have just had Mr. Knight have his own staff of technomancers compile their Tutor sprites with "People Damien Knight Should Have Killed."

I realize people mean a lot of things in jest, but personally I make it a point not to try and Blackmail people with ready access to Orbital strikes and NBC weaponry.

At a home game of Heroic proportion, just do it. On a shared Street or Street + campaign, your plan is excellent.

BlueMax

(laughing) That would have been AWEsome! (still laughing)

We are talking about the corp ceo who bought NASA as a toy.

Yeah, the same guy who you think is hiring a black ops team just to get him out of going to opera for the evening.

I agree. If you use your PC to effectively control the table, the GM will resent your cheese and the other players will hate you. What do I mean by "control the table"? Sure, your PC is ungodly powerful by breaking through every cheese hole in the rules, and you can effectively render any potential threat in the module inert. And sure, by doing this you allow your party of PC's to walk through the module unscathed and unhurt... but guess what.... No one else at the table will get to actually play. They will sit around watching you dominate all the action, and effectively the game.

Boring.

I have a great example experience from playing the DND living campaign. One player had a Wizard with every zone expanding feat/tool/magic item he could get his hands on. He could engulf the entire encounter in a lock-down zone effect at any time, every encounter, all game long for the entire module. The bad guys were hosed, the DM could do nothing. But what else? The other players could do nothing but watch. The other players watched while this one guy played. Lame. After the first encounter, I put an end to that as a player at the table. 2nd encounter I ignored his pleas not to "go over there" and then used the rule for the living campaign which prevents other players from casting damaging spells on you if you don't agree. He whined incessantly the entire encounter that we weren't allowing him to cast his uber powerful zone spells. Fine by me. There were other things he could do to interact with the encounter and it still allowed the other players to actually play. He started whining before the last encounter even started. I bluntly told him no at that point, that as a player I did not appreciate his attempts to dominate play. Sure, his PC is powerful, we all see that, but if we allow him to do as he pleases no one else will be able to use their characters at all, which is not fun for the rest of us. He sulked but went along.

Don't be THAT guy.

We won't be impressed with your cheese hole drives through the rules. In fact, we may loathe you for it.

That being said, enjoy the game, RP in the game, enjoy it - even if your character is "sub-optimal". Play the game with other players, not in spite of them or the GM.

<soap box mode off>

I look forward to playing the SRM04 missions with my delightfully uncheesy human British bodyguard. Oy!

Please don't be the guy that doesn't read the whole thread and replies. Some how you got "cheese and don't RP" out of "let's all play mages and hackers". In addition, you cleverly ignored my rebutt to the previous misunderstanding that you quoted. Really, someone enlighten me how if everyone plays a certain two types of character, how one person will control a table *head bang*. Don't be the guy on the 'net that posts a rant with out understanding what the subject is.

The point is-- we could all show up at a table with different versions of magicians-- b/c of how flexible they are, and how much they overlap and outshine the other archtypes. Not looking to cheese them at all-- they just are: you can even make one "sub-optimal" if you so desire. In addition, the irony being the only thing an adept can do better than other archtypes now is hack-- which was supposed to be the realm of the unawakened.

Your human body guard, for example. Can be built with a mage using a sustaing focus for detection spells. With just a body of 5, you layer armor like crazy. You can lose one or two points of E to put in cyber/bio and still be as good as what you have if not better-- b/c now you can summon spirits and have an extra set of astral eyes. It's a theme, and there are few archtypes that can pull this off.

Hax

To be fair I seem to recall the original version of one of your posts intimating that if you broke it hard enough it would send a message to the developers, something that SRM is NOT the venue for. So basically when you make a post that advocates conspiring to "Break" missions I think you can expect some level of backlash.

Point of fact missions arn't that hard to break with any archietype, many of them are not written with either mages or hackers in mind. Unfortunately as per my signature if you don't write a mission with Hackers in mind you end up with either a bored hacker or a GM that has to improvide a lot. If you write them without mages in mind you end up with the mage running roughshod over everything. You are not the first to notice this, you will not be the last. Believe it or not it is a problem thats been identified by Bull, myself, and others and we hope to fix it.

I can break any mission with any archetype. So you are right.

Any player can "break" a mission at any time by making certain decisions.

Mission are not campaigns. Close, but not the same as a campaign where the GM can spend time dealing with the entire range of possibilities.

A SR Mission is a 20+ page short scenario write up intended to be played by the first 4 to 6(or people who randomly walk up to the table at a Con or FLGS. The scenario cannot require the presence of any particular archetype, nor can it exclude any archetype. (And there is at least one mission that sucks for hackers and riggers and you should hear the complaints about that.)

With those design limitations it is going to be hard for any extreme combination to be handled by the mission write up. That's what the GM is before.

If you are claiming SR4 system itself has a flaw that mages and hackers are all that's needed to make a team, then that discussion needs to be in a different forum, not in missions. Though I will point out that shadowrun is not a class based system, so it's not unusual that the "archetypes" can play various team roles. The "awakened" have an advantage that they can perform all the roles, including the magic one that not everyone else can perform.

It's the first message, and your context is slightly off.




The point being that if you have mages and deckers, there's no need for the other unawakened archetypes was the said message. Small, but important, was that there was never a "level" (e.g. "hard enough") mentioned. The point is you can bust, break, breeze through a mod with just mages and deckers with the same ease (or greater) as a well rounded team.





I was staff for VS, SRM00, and SRM01, so I'm aware of the limitations. This is not addressing any adventure short comings.




It's not a discussion-- I'm amazed by how much I must repeat the subject of this thread: it's a theme for players to adopt if they are interested. I can only assume that the mass confusion of this clearly spelled out idea is b/c it's mistaken for satire. Everyone is spending way too much time on one word ("bust") or the one sentence instead of the whole point (clearly written in the subject).

Here it is: In SRM04, let's all play Mages or Adept Hackers. So that when you sit down at a table, you are all one of those two things. A theme and experiment to see how varied of characters can be created using just that idea; and how unhindered a group is when doing so.

Note to self, background count in every module.