Okay I have another slew of questions, this time I'll leave sniping out of it.

1. What happened to the Redirect spell? It was a favorite of mine for my baddy NPC spell-slingers.

2. Can anyone come up with an explination as to why you can't combine Elemental Strike and Distance Strike together other than the book just saying no? I can't seem to find any reason as to why it won't work in the magical theory provided. I'm thinking of allowing a player to take a version of Elemental Strike that works with Distance Strike but costs double power points. Any insight on good reasons to not let this happen, or vice versa, are appreciated.

3. I'm looking for opinions on Dykote, I'm thinking of making the SR4 translation up the damage by 1 and the AP by 2 for melee weapons, and then a +1/+1 for armor. Again, any insight on this is appreciated. As a sub question to this, I've always been curious, would Dykote on a weapon foci make it not work?

4. Translation of older ware. It seems pretty easy to translate most Cyberware from SR3 into SR4, as far as Bioware it seems that if you halve the body index in most cases and translate it to essence, that you get a good SR4 translation. Some of the light Bioware, mostly cosmetics, have a cost of .1. Would it be silly to have .05 essence cost? Or should I just keep it at the .1?

5. In SR4 players were obviously designed to not by the overpowered cybermonsters and uberomfgmysticninjas of the past. But after handing out Karma a few times, I've noticed under the new Karma suggestions I only seem to be giving out 4 or 5 Karma per adventure, and my players are really struggling to advance their characters. Has anyone else had issues with the low Karma rewards and high cost of improvement? I know this is easily solved by handing out more Karma but I don't want them to grow too powerful too quickly. Some input and opinions would really help.

6. This is more of a flavor question, since SR4 doesn't really have the source material older editions did. Do things like movie theaters and live concerts really exist anymore (live concerts as in stadiums being filled, not clubs)? I know other cultural events are attended live, but the question is geared towards those two specific events for reasons concerning the campaign I am running.

Forgot one! This is sort of spoilers so I will warn you now with a...

SPOILERS!!!
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7. Are there any SR books of any edition that make mention of the Horrors? At some point references are going to be made to them in my current campaign, but the only information I have on them is in my old core Earth Dawn book. I seem to recall reading somewhere that there are a whole bunch of them in the deepest and darkest parts of the astral plane and that they're constructing some kind of bridge to get into our side of things.

as far as number 7, the adventure harlequins back and a few of the novels use the horrors.

and of course, some critters (wraiths in particular, iirc) are considered to be minor horrors also.

1. Redirect was temporally problematic and not that useful in most circumstances. Also it was really confusing.

2. Elemental Strike and Distance Strike are both Street Fighter style powers, and the guy who wrote that section of Street Magic really hates that srrt of thing. Both powers are overcosted and they arne't usable together in order to stop people from playing Ryu or Ken - not for any game balance or Magic Physics reason.

3. Dikote would probably improve AP by a point or so. Meh. It's just diamond, monoswords are in the basic book.

4. Sure.

5. I don't even use Karma anymore, I just hand out additional Build Points. It solves a lot of problems.

6. Flat Screen Movie Theatres are a thing of the past, but holographic trid theatres deifnitely appear in Shadowrun. Like a home trid set, but huge - like an Xbox.

7. There are some horror references in Street Magic, as well as some Horror References in Runner Havens. But really, the Horror Bridge got jock hopped in a very bad book and it's not animmediate threat to the world any more. Now it's more a long the lines of "there are a few horrors loose on the Earth, and they do pointlessly wicked shit sometimes!"

-Frank

Aaron:
Would you mind explaining the "homework" that you give? I'm curious as to what you're having your players do.

Thanks.

On another thread a while back someone said dikote would be -3AP for a weapon and +1/+1 on armor. Cost would be same as SR3 (so 1000 per sq meter.)

This is the rule I use in my game. As far as availability well... that depends on the game. I would say it would add at least +4 to the item.

As far as Dikote goes, I recall it doing one thing in SR2-3 that hasn't been addressed here.

Dikoting a weapon meant a (strength)S axe (your strength was power, and Serious meant six boxes of damage if it hit) became a (str)D axe (upped the damage code one, so a Deadly hit is all boxes filled, good night Gracie). It also meant the weapon would inflict vehicle damage at its base rate. An ork Street Samurai with a strength of 9 would do 9S with a combat axe, 9D if it was dikoted, and 9S to a vehicle/hardened armor. That's to the best of my recollection, anyway.

So if you dikote a combat axe (and converting the ork's 9 str to 6 in SR4), the base damage would be 7P. Adding a negative AP works, but is that addressing the damage increase from SR3? And how does it work against vehicles? I'd probably look at reducing the -3 three AP modifier and maybe doing a +2 power, -2 ap houserule. So the dikoted SR4 combat axe in the hands of that ork would do 9P, -2 ap on top of the -1 ap the combat axe already has. So total damage 9P, -3AP. Maybe +1 power and -2 AP is enough. I still don't know how I'd rule it versus barriers or vehicle armor, etc. I do know the stuff would be really expensive and take a while to get.

If you're going to create a dikote version for SR4 it ought to just affect AP, not damage. My reasoning is that if I cut your finger off with a knife it does X damage in game terms. It's not going to make a difference if the knife was any sharper. But it would make a difference if you were wearing motorbike gloves as it would affect whether or not I did cut off your finger.

Regarding the Dikote, obviously you can houserule however you like, and I'm not trying to say otherwise. Do whatever works best for you. But if I stick a knife into your belly up to the hilt, and I do the same with one that is extra-sharp, I don't see it making any difference to how injured you are. Once the hardness of a material is exceeded, additional sharpness wont make a difference. A steel knife passed that point with the human body long before you coated it with diamond. That may not be the case with a car door, though. Which is why I think it should be an AP modifier, not a damage modifier.

Anyway, I'm done. So long as you understand my point (and I think you do), then I have no problem with disagreement.

-K.

The horror book was "Harelquins back". Though it isn't like they stated out a bloatform or anything. Novels touch on the subject more and occasionally let one slip through to our world (Worlds without end was the title I believe).

And if you look at the picture of a sprite and read the shadowtalk in whatever book SR1 had for critters it's pretty clear it's a windling.

Anyway the bottom line is if you want to add horrors to SR you'd have to stat them yourselves. I'm sure that discussion takes up pages somewhere.

Paranormal Animals of Europe is the book in question.