Yeah, I don't understand the question. Of course you expect them to be constrained by all their stats, high and low. Are you just saying it can't be done 'soft'?

Wow. I'd've been docking him Karma every session for not playing his character as built.

I would also have been creatively re-interpreting everything the player said, in light of the character's lack of social graces. After all, I do the same (to the player's benefit) when someone is playing a character with higher attributes than the player would have. It's only right, fair, and balanced to do the same in the other direction ... right?

So if the CHA 1, Uncouth, Etiquette 0 character goes to a party, and the player tries to pull a "Bond, James Bond" suave-and-debonaire routine? I, as a GM, renarrate the scene to depict said character belching unapologetically, not dressed appropriately, unceremoniously shouldering people aside to get at the "eats an' booze", and otherwise being an absolute, unsufferable, uncivilised monster. The NPCs reactions are predicate on my version of events, not the players.

I keep the core of what the player wants his character to say and/or do ... just ... focused through a warped lens.

So ... in a PbP environment, if a player says of his character, Chumly the Ork (with aforementioned stat/skill/quality setup): "I thank the usher and tip him generously, then make my way to the buffet for a small snack and a glass of something to drink. And then spend the night making small-talk at the edge of the party."

I narrate it as Chumly slides the usher a paper ten-spot, giving him a friendly clout on the shoulder that sends the poor fellow staggering a few steps with a cheerful "Oi, don' spend that on jus' one hooker, eh?" He then shoulders his way through the crowd (remarkably gently - noone falls, and you don't hear breaking glass even once) to the side-table. Taking one entire serving tray, and piling random handfuls of other foods on it as well (using a waiter's chest as a convenient napkin), and plucking two entire bottles of champagne out of a bucket of ice and drinking straight from teh bottle, Chumly spends the night making crude passes at just about anything female and legal in the room.

Because, with Charisma 1, Uncouth, and not even a single rankof Etiquette? That's actually surprisingly good behavior, wouldn't you agree? So the player's wish to "be on best behavior and make a good impression" is honored ... but the character's actual attribute, (absence of) skill, and negative quality change what that intent means for that specific character.


Who's to stop you?

The GM. That's who.

>:)

Pax,
I love this!

-D

Spirit Bane also precludes any mages on the same team as the character being able to use that spirit.

So, Spirit Bane (Watcher) means that mages on the squad won't be able to use Watcher spirits, ever.
That sucks.

It's fairly easy to deal with someone with a low Charisma trying to roleplay as if it doesn't matter - have the NPCs react accordingly. Have them be distrustful when he is trying to convince them of something, quick to abuse their authority if they can get away with it, asking for a bribes, flinching back when he's not trying to inimidate them, and so on. Don't completely shut him down, but make him have to work for things like getting past the bouncer to an exclusive club, when that same bouncer will simply smile and wave the smooth-talking face right on in.

Low Intuition is quantifiable, as if affects initiative and perception tests. Willpower is also quantifiable, affecting numerous tests.

Logic is the toughest one. But going by the description on p. 61 of SR4, it is mainly memory and raw brainpower. Don't be afraid to call for memory tests for low-Logic characters trying to execute a complicated plan that they have come up with. Low Logic characters don't have to be imbeciles, but they are bad at multitasking and remembering things.

And a good player can roleplay that, while avoiding the constant die-rolling, by making their character obsessive list-keepers. Which shifts the "cost" of the low logic into added risk, should a hacker decide to pry into their commlink's files.

Except with their 2 dicepool they are in easy Critical Glitch territory, not to mention almost certainly needing more than one success for the Search Power.


Except Watcher Spirits can't materialize so they can move objects.


I've never seen a use for a Watcher Spirit since their abilities are so pathetically poor. I mean, literally, what can they do except see things that are plain to see? A drone would be better. I stopped using Watchers when I realized how pathetic their dicepools were. An unbound F3 water/fire spirit is better.

Lol. This reminds me of Ricky from Trailer Park Boys learning how to read by following cooking recipes on food packets. Now everything needs to be in list form or he can't read it.

A Watcher is likely to fail. Six watchers, though? At +1 die per helper, up to five ... well, a 7d die pool isn't quite so shabby anymore, is it?



Drones can't go astral, for one.

As for Fire and Water spirits? They don't have the Search power; Watchers do. Granted, with a die pool of 2, they do have limitations. But they get +5 to the die pool when searching for nonliving objects, or for places.

Also: delivering messages. Playing lookout (for stuff in plain view).

Don't forget the +3 for actively looking...

I mean, it's still pretty shabby, which was my original point. I really think the watcher rules should be tweaked a fair bit. They should be very limited, but also have specific functions that really do work, no corrective optimization.

Please note that this is a +5 Threshold modifier, not a DP mod.
(SR4A @ p. 297)

Ha, that's a big difference! They'll only need like 13 more dice… if it's within 1km, not Concealed, and not behind a mana barrier.

Oh, so it is. Bugger.

.... like maybe, allow Watchers at higher than F1 ...? And then, just make them fight at half their Force (so they don't be come the do-all Spirit type) ...?

It'd be easy to just say 'they can't fight at all' or something like that. 'They all have the minds of chihuahuas'. Etc.

Glyph and _.Pax._, in our gaming group, we do both karma docking for repeated occurrences, and believable reactions for incorrect stats short term. The BEST one I have EVER SEEN was when the players caught on to this. They were stumped, and the Logic 2 troll came up with a complicated solution that he fed to the team.

Team reacted with a collective "Huh? That would NEVER work..."-type statement, despite the fact that it would have worked well. They then ignored the out-of-game solution rather than meta-gaming it, with half the team grinding their teeth because they lost a good solution, and knew it. BONUS ROLEPLAY KARMA FOR ALL... except the troll ^^

Troll and other brawler with low logic got the hint. Now complex talk from the tactician or the hacker has some predictably funny answers from the two high-school drop-outs.

Does Spirit Bane say that it also applies to the people around the character?

I am not saying that the other PCs would want to use Watcher spirits, I am questioning whether Spirit Bane actually also specifies that it directly negatively affects other characters' interactions with Watcher spirits.

In games where I was enforcing PC stats and in-game effects, one player would suggest to another player whether the second player's character would think of that tactic. The first player was roleplaying a low Logic character and the second had a high Logic character. So the second player would then announce that his character would suggest the plan, according to the first player's idea.

My players, other than the new ones, are savvy enough to have at least one high mental Attribute in order to workaround the PC stats/in-game effects linkage. The high Logic guy reasons it out and thinks it is a good plan. The high Intuition guy instinctively feels that it is a good plan.

The text


So, may be reluctant is really non-committal language, but it specifically mentions that the presence of the person with Spirit Bane effects how spirits react to the other people who choose to be around said person.


Anyway, watchers are useful for communication and keeping tabs. They are a very versatile tool for the mage who doesn't have a stable full of bound spirits.

Teamwork Tests can only add extra dice equal to the Skill of the recipient. So that one Watcher has to get at least 1 success in order to add only 1 dice to the main Watcher.

Ahh, I assumed Teamwork Test.

Thank you, NiL. That is precisely what I was thinking of.

Also, Neraph, for regular teamwork ... being limited by Skill, does not mean you need successes to benefit.

See I would love to as a GM, see a low logic player that occasionally has "sparks of brilliance" only to have the group go, "Yeah okay Grog..." (whispered: "That sounds right but grog suggested it so... lets find another method").

Rule #12 of the evil overlord's handbook.

One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

The biggest piece of 'soft balance' I have is a gentlemans' agreement with my players on escalation of force.

To whit : 'If you use it, so will they.'

Making them think a bit before pulling out the military hardware has done wonders on the long-term for keeping my campaigns under control.

That's starting to overdo it. Outside of Logic: 1 or certain negative qualities, a character isn't really "stupid", and even a low-Logic character can come up with plans, especially if they are in the character's areas of knowledge. If a low-Logic enforcer who used to work for the mafia gives the rest of the team advice on how to approach the don, then even the hacker/face would probably be well advised to heed it.



That works if you give characters with high-powered weaponry jobs that suit their power level, or if using an assault rifle brings a much stronger police response than using a pistol does. It breaks the logic and feel of the game, though, if the entire world suddenly becomes tougher as the PCs do. I think a better way to handle such escalation is to give the PCs tougher jobs, rather than having the neighborhood gang get Ares Alphas because the team's street samurai just got one.

Actually, we do something similar, but not with hardware. Hardware and items are easy. If you have it, the GM can take it. This, alone, secures the game to a great extent.

However, we use the "if you can, I can" in terms of dice tweaking combos. If you can stack 22 dice on a sniper shot, then so can I. This is especially effective in house rulings when rules are not clear, but it applies to everything. You can also do this and keep Lone Star responses, or shows of force, on a believable level still.

I agree with this approach. Except that I do not simply give the PCs tougher jobs, my NPCs offer the PCs tougher jobs, but it is up to the PCs to accept them.

There may be a knee jerk response to the PCs' escalation, but unless there is an across the board escalation of firepower, the entire world doesn't become tougher as the PCs do. For example, there's a gang war brewing, the syndicates are bringing in heavier firepower, assault rifles are flooding the black market, then the police will then respond by increasing their firepower. But they are not going to all wear non-conductive armor just because a small group of criminals are using Stick and Shock.

No, they're already wearing it because logic.

FTFY.

They don't wear it because one group of criminals are using stick&shock, they wear it because tasers are cheap, legal, silent, good at downing people and everyone that could reasonably afford one should carry one.

The "if you can, I can" approach to game balance runs into the same problem as "If you use it, so will they." Namely, that it only makes sense for opponents who are at the same level as the PCs. So sure, a sniper who rolls 22 dice will occasionally run into NPCs who also roll 22 dice (or maybe more), but such NPCs should be comparatively rare. A 22-dice sniper is better challenged with tactical challenges (finding the right spot, getting to that spot, dealing with aerial drones and patrolling spirits, etc.), greater numbers of comparatively weaker enemies, and occasionally running into problems outside of his main specialty. Running into another master sniper could be great gaming session, but it is limited as a game balancer, because specialists with such dice pools should not be an everyday encounter.

On the other hand, someone with that level of skill -will- inevitably piss off people who can afford to hire people as good as he is and send them after him.

That being the case, the people that could be hired would have pissed off other people that are that good. In the end, you'll end up with it being the Highlander of snipers.

At least pretend to make sense if you're going to mess with my words, toturi. Given the power and prevalence of tasers, and the low price of Noncon, all the cops would have it.

If for no other reason, to protect themselves from "friendly fire".

What is this "make sense" you speak of?

You are assuming that the sec corps have Noncon as a budget item given the above reasons, I am assuming that the penny pinchers and bean counters would take it off.

It's cheap (and they probably get a huge discount). You might as well say that the guards don't have armor or guns. Avoiding failure saves vastly more money than skipping this protective item.

Actually this is a little anti-intuitive. But maybe the fuzz and rent-a-cops might NOT want non-conductive for another reason. If they're knocked out nobody can say they didn't do their job and better to be tazed unconscious than filled full of lead.

Toss in an auto-injector with slab tied to a biomonitor to put the finishing touches on the 'play dead' method of rent-a-cop survival.

... this hilariously reminds me of Robot Chicken ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jdQqjcsfC8

Hahaha, Falconer.

The corps may well have a huge discount. But do they pass the savings onto the guards? Do they instead pass the costs onto the rent-a-cops? And do these rent-a-cops and the corps that hire them want the non-conductivity? Remember the escalation from the rent-a-cops having non-conductivity may well be to use more lethal options. Are there death benefits to be paid? Will there be morale issues due to higher mortality rate? Would the higher sec guard mortality increase the insurance premiums (maybe not for the guards themselves but for the valuable researchers)? By how much does having this protective item avoid failure?

That's absurd. I know you're just having fun with any hypothetical support for your initial position, but still. You're positing that they're deliberately making their guards less effective (… why do they have guards, again?) so that shadowrunners won't get mad and switch to real bullets (because they care about dead guards when all their priceless stuff gets stolen). Falconer's reason was more believable. I'm not sure when we went to 'crappy rent-a-cops', btw, but I didn't say that; you said 'police' to begin with, so are these the same thing? Again, you might as well not give them armor and guns if you're so worried about escalation and death benefits.

Yera: Because most low life style cheap guards aren't anything more than human tripwires. Really their only purpose in life is to act as a tripwire and with something with a little more brains than a drone hopefully to pull the alarm, and then buy time for the actual professionals with real guns to show up. They're really little more than a delaying tactic and to keep things from getting too easy to break into.


Oh, rent-a-cop unit #6 just had his biomonitor go down... time to call in the real security the high threat response squad or SWAT.

Come on guys, the job ads clearly state the Corporation has the best interests and safety of its employees at heart.

I can see where you misunderstood. My statement about Stick and Shock and non-conductive armor wasn't entirely clear in the first place. The "police" statement was in response to heavier firepower. "They" however was a more general reference to the game world.

I am not worried about escalation and death benefits. I am simply suggesting reasons why non-conductive armor is not prevalent (IIRC, as seen in RAW corp sec grunt examples).

22 dice is lowballing it. A human could get 12 dice from Agility, 7 from skill, 2 from specialization, 2 from smartgun, 1 from a reflex recorder, and 1 from a tacnet if he's running drones. Then he can Take Aim 3 times for another 3 dice. There's also the +1 from synch, though that doesn't apply until after the 1st round of combat. He could get a +2 from shooting you at point blank range. Yes, I did just suggest an aimed point blank sniper shot. So that's 28 dice and 30 at point blank.

There's also an additional +3 from a Rating 4 Tacnet, but drones cannot contribute enough sensor channels to qualify for a rating 2 Tacnet so the sniper would need 5 meatbags just to provide him with sensor channels. That would raise the dice pools to 31 and 33 for a normal shot and point blank....

There's also the conditional bonuses based on target size. +1 dice for something with 8 Body or more and +2 dice for something with more than 12 Body. So that would be (with everything else considered) 32/34 for shooting a troll point blank and 33/35 for shooting a dragon point blank...





While it sounds cool to have a sniper Highlander series, it think it would just be monumentally dull.

I guess, Falconer, though that hardly seems cost-effective. Drones would be cheaper and plenty smart. Think of the death benefits! Besides, if *those* guys are expendable, the 'real guards' you mention obviously aren't… and I never agreed we were talking about 'crappy rent-a-cops' in the first place.

The rent-a-cops are nothing more than a PR stunt. They're there to make it not look like "Dose damn roberts turk mah jerb!"