You could reasonably easily make up some dragon AR gloves. Or perhapse an industrial steel grade version of strange devices such as keyboards and mice. Though that would probably get you some penalties.

But yeah the tech is something most dragons would have the underlings do the heavy lifting on.

Dragon-sized holographic keyboards are certainly possible.

Or "Ride" a technomancer/otaku like Dunkie did. But that may be over-complicating things a bit.

You know... 12 million is a lot of money. A lot of money.


You simply need to bribe someone high enough in Ares Aerospace, and in at most four hours, the girders start falling.

One dead dragon, wiped out by the "orbital option" thanks to a lovely "Live fire systems test."

The dragon can bring in anyone he wants. His spirits can't reach the satellites in LEO, and because he's so backwards he dosen't have his lair wired, he completely discounts the possibility of a Thor shot.

Game, set, and match.

Right. I'm sure Ares wouldn't have any problems fireing some Thor shots into a sovergn nation, llike Azlan, or maybe Japan. Nobody would care about that. Its not like that would start a corporate war or anything. I'm sure since 12 million will get you a couple Thor shots, and every AAA corporation has billions of nuyen floating around, that Tokyo is used to the things. They're just like the weather. "Partly cloudy with a chance of Thor shots"

EDIT: Ok that was a little flamey. And I suppose there are spots, like the desert wars theater, where you could probably drop the thing. And I suppose if you could convince them it's really worth it maybe a corp/country would drop something in their own territory. Though I think they'd have a strong strong strong tendency to leave dragons that aren't causeing them problems alone.

Also I know you said it was a bribe, but I stand by my "if 12 million gets you thor shots they would come down like the weather" I'm guessing there are a number of layers of security involved, meaning it would take a whole lotta bribes, and I doubt the people involved could deny that they actually pushed the button to make the stuff happen. This isn't like an ares alpha falling of the back of the truck.

Exactly. And since the run easily pays more than 12 million nuyen to geek a hermit recluse dragon no one has ever heard of, I'm sure it's well worth fencing every piece of equipment the team owns in order to buy said Thor shots.

Please: No nukes, no Thor shots, no armies, no bunker-busting-bomb-dropping-stealth-fighter-jets...and no mecha.

Ok, for a dragon killer character... here ya go:
Chargen


Advanced with money/karma/stuff


Assuming he can walk into the dragon lair, find the dragon in a room, and then combat begins... For initiative he gets his 9 dice vs the dragons 16. Spend an edge to go first. I'll assume the bow is ready and fire. Looking at 21 dice(9 Skill + 7 agility + 3 IA + 2 SL) versus its 8 reaction. It'll get maybe 3 successes. I'll likely get 7. Use an edge to reroll my failures, And I'll probably get 4 more, total of 11 vs 3. 8 net hits. Base damage on the bow is 17P + 8 = 25P. 17P exceeds 8 hardened armor, so resolve as normal. Dragon has 16 armor (8 hardened + 8 mystic). Plus its 15 body, total of 31 dice. Average around 10 successes, dropping actual damage down to 15P. Its P track is 8 + (15/2=7) = 15blocks. 15P to 15blocks = dead dragon. Oh, and then the drug hits, 8P vs 15 body, 5 successes on average. 3 power get through, dragons at -2 for all dicepools (and as a bonus tells me the truth.

Um the dragon has edge too. It'll still go first.
And without counterspelling going first is going last if these guys are all within AOE range of each other. (again it has edge to spend on the spell)

We get a team? Thats just one guy. Give him a dedicated counterspeller, someone as a distraction so when the dragon "goes first" he doesn't take out your big gun, and someone else, maybe with a bunch of drones or something.

My contribution to a "dragon killer" team, was a troll who can almost put an arrow through a citymaster.

Mysic Armor does not "stack" with hardened armor. The Dragon gets only 8 armor dice.

-Frank

Of course if the dragon has a potent sustaining focus his actual armor will probably be higher than 14.

Whoa whoa whoa. Where did "hermit recluse dragon no one has ever heard of" come from? I'm fairly certain I did mention that the dragon did have reinforcements coming, and that he wasn't going to be out of contact.

I'm limiting the challenge to runners and dragon only, simply for simplicity. That doesn't mean that either runners or dragon are not capable of dragging in one heck of a lot of outside support.

Reading through the list now, for answering.

Uh, how are you moving an already cast mana static?

Granted mana static is effective against dragons. On the other hand if the PCs are landing hits the dragon is probalby screwed anyway. In fact if the GM decides that dragon powers don't vanish in mana static (reasonable) it might end up hurting the PCs because those dragon abilities are pretty potent, and in the balance might be better than what the PCs have afterwards.

Still nobody is arguing against the point that if six PCs at the described power level are in a straight up fight with a dragon they win.

It's all about schenanigans getting to that point.

Ah, here's what started it (sorry, sunnyside):

to my knowledge, no one has said the dragon is hard to kill if it uses it's intelligence yet. what we've all been saying is that a dragon is not hard to kill *unless* you use it's intelligence.

that being said, just hack the IRS and make it look like the dragon hasn't payed it's taxes. i hypothesize that within 24 hours, the dragon will choose suicide

Alternately, just hack the THOR launcher yourself, and do it that way.

Ok, another quick question, considering that you've only given your dragon 2 million , I'll repeat my question again, what damage code are you willing to give my 6 million worth of explosives?

Basically I'm questioning how hardened a lair that has a budget limit of 2 million is really going to be when compared to 6 million worth of resources. (Although I really like the idea of a NOVA-hot Decker team hacking their way into control of some missiles for the win.)

Well assuming that I didn't mess up my equation, I come up with 949 DV, doubled to 1898 DV for the purposes of getting past Barriers, and -1/2 AP since the explosion will be in contact with the lair. Blast Value is -2 DV per meter or -1 DV per meter for a 60 degree arc.

So exactly how much hardening can 2 million buy?


As for the NOVA-hot Deckers, well long they live afterwards all depends on how good of a job they do and the quality of their new faces, but hey, the dragon would be dead.

Well, here's my rough team proposal:

Conjurer
The dragon can undoubtedly have a large pack of high force spirits on call, this spirit pack is probably powerful enough to force a TPK (due to the overpoweredness of high force spirits in SR4). So the team will need a specialist conjurer who can summon and bind his own high force spirit pack to force a stalemate.

Hacker Adept
Pornomancer Adept
The more info the team has going in, the safer they will be, there are plenty of ways that fixed defenses could result in a quick TPK, so finding out about them before hand is a must.

Anti-mage
Focus on things like mana-static, counterspelling, etc. His main job is to shut down the dragon's magic.

Drone rigger
The dragon will also have whatever karma manipulation powers they've given dragons in SR4. As SR4 has neither nethermancers or horror-stalkers, your best best is to attack the dragon with things that don't have karma to meddle with.

Weapons specialist/Demo expert
Getting into the lair may involve blowing big holes in things or defusing bombs, the demo expert is here for this.

So, the rough plan is to negate the dragon's spirit pack with the conjurer, shut down its magical abilities with the anti-mage, and then use drones to kill it and bypass its karma manipulation abilities.

Are there any quick ways to raise background counts beyond mass suicide/mass murder?

Are there any simple ways to give the dragon penalties?
Do dragons have any radar like senses?
Thermal smoke + ultrasound?
Timed light and sound attacks automatically filtered out by the team's helmets (who have the timing keys)?

Are dragons immune to poisons in this version of SR?

What drone based weapons will do the best job against the dragon? (No wallhacker bulldozers with mechanicals arms and spurs, please).

Hmm, my numbers are less, but I see that I blew numbers on the one-ton charges in bulldogs, as they do 96 point explosions, which will take out any RAW legal obstacle.

I get 60,000 kg, square root of which is ~245, x 3 per kg.

Yeah, I get 735 DV for Commercial as well, I was running the numbers for ( Rating 15 ) Plastic/Foam.

1,500 per kilogram allow for 4,000 kilograms.

Square Root 63.245553 * 15 = 948.68329 rounded up to 949 DV before taking into account skill.

(You're really going to hate my first and primary defensive tactic )

Not being home?

*Shrugs* With ~949 DV to blow I'm sure that I could skimp a little on the explosives to afford the surgery necessary to have one or two of the team outfited with the ware and natural genius necessary to give themselves Logic 10 and I'd ask them what glaring hole I need to plug in my plan.

*Edit*

Because remember that Dragons may be smarter then I'll ever be on my own, but I don't have a problem with cutting open my brain to change that.

Does that qualify as dry irony, or sarcasm?

i'm just having a really hard time seeing how the dragon's magical abilities can be used to set up much in the way of traps.

i mean, the dragon is limited to what it can sustain, since we've been told it doesn't have access to any sort of focus (no karma to bond it) and that it doesn't have access to any metamagic (so no quickening, no anchoring).

of course, to keep things reasonable, the team shouldn't really know in advance that this particular dragon has no access to those things, but just as an example...

How about dry irony with a sprinkling of sarcasm for flavor?

Seriously though part of the problem with this little experiment is that Shadowrun is basically just a game of "Rock/Paper/Scissors" everything counters one thing only to be countered by somthing else, if you were to post the dragon's 2 million lair then everyone could bust it wide open, and the same applies with the plans that we post.

Hows this, drone rigger sends in fleet of spider bots, who scout the whole place out. Being that the dragons lair is wireless ignorant, this should work out quite well to give an exact layout of the entire place.

Ravor: you know that posting the entire lair and plans would completely take the challenge out of it.

If it helps at all, I'll tell you a RL story of my own gaming group -- who was getting utterly frustrated with my ability to neutralise their plans within a single turn or two. Okay, I told them, I'll go for a nice, hour-long walk while you plan. That way I can't possibly know what you're going to do. (I already knew what tactics I planned to use then, like I do now.)

They actually shooed me away from the planning twice, and an hour-long checking of miscellaneous used bookstores turned into two hours.

Finally I was allowed to come back. They'd worked everything out. Much mutual laughter and shushing and hush hush.

They'd marked their positions on a dry-erase board in the store's gameroom. I didn't look at the details on the board, only at the #s and distribution of people. Then I cast the barrier spell across the corner I'd planned all along, blocking off the person in the corner.

When they started cursing, I discovered just who it was I had trapped -- and that all the rest of their plans had depended on that person being free to act, on the other side of that barrier.

... and now I've given you some strong insight into the way I think. (It's more than you would get from the dragon.)

Fine, make the node that controls thor shots, I'll give my technomancer 200 karma worth, and we'll see if he can make it thor the lair. Then he'll retire with his millions.

That one I'm going to shop out, maybe to another thread. I know my limitations, and in any case the dragon wouldn't have designed it and won't be able to interfere, assuming it's a cold run without having been researched out in advance.

(That means, to whoever's designing it, that money probably is no object in building it. It doesn't have the dragon's limitations in this scenario. It should probably have several active anti-hackers active in it as well.)

If that's the route you want to go, then we need someone to develop something worthy of what's being guarded. Any volunteers?

Yeah, that's basically my point, if you post the lair then anyone could crack it, just as anyone could counter whatever plans we come up with on the forum. However I seriously doubt that you are going to get any takers to actually go through and build six 400 BP 200 Karma 1 Million runners for what amounts to a throw-away thought experiment. And even if you did the result wouldn't even remotely resemble a runner team that was organicly grown so in the end it would really be meaningless anyways.

Still with that said I have a very hard time believing that 2 million worth of hardening could defend against a -1/2 AP 1,898 (Against Barriers) DV bomb, which although completely unrealistic is well within the bounds of your wargame rules. (Personally I still like the idea of using NOVA-hot Deckers to hack a couple of missiles into the lair and spending some of that 6 million on new faces and SINs.)

Then the challenge becomes getting the 4,000 kilograms to the lair and protecting it from premature detonation from whatever spirits the dragon summons as well as whatever booby traps it has set up as a defense. Not a trival task by any means, so I'd have to settle for a slightly smaller bomb, but even so with the raw destructive power we are talking about if I get my bomb to the lair then I don't see how the dragon lives with a measly 2 million worth of defenses (After all, not all of that 2 million can really be spent on hardening if you want to cover your other bases.) and a small lair as you've stated.

Well, the first step will be determining how far out the lair's security perimeter extends and what the standard reactions are to incursions on that perimeter.

Probes would be both drone based and magical in nature. The first probes would basically be made with throw-away mini-blimps flying by in a 'just passing through' flight profile. Ground based astral perception will keep and eye on the drones to see if they are approached by spirits, hit by spells etc. If the throw away drones drones aren't bothered (fly enough throw-away flights to establish an apparent pattern) then drones with actual (expensive) surveillance equipment then fly the same flight plan. Looking for things like: are there any hot or cold spots (tunnels, air vents, generators, etc)? Are there any animals in the area (packs of hell hounds, similar beasties)? Additional EW scans look for things like active jammers, radar emissions, etc. Are there regular deliveries? (food? magazines? sacrificial victims? )

The astral probes will be done by a hired mage (since I'm not sure if the dragon is supposed to know who the runners are or not. Are they motivated by some sort of grudge? Is the dragon aware of this? Or are the runners just faceless guys hired to whack the dragon for a big pile of money?) The hired mage can be fed some line about 'learning from the magic of dragons' so that if he gets mind probed, it's not obviously a plan to whack the dragon. Ground based astral guys keep watch on the guy in the air, so that if he is hit with mind control, alter memory, or something like that the guys on the ground will spot it. So the astral mages files around at X miles from the lair watching, the ground based guys are roughly 2X miles away from the lair, watching the mage in the air.

Are there wards? active AOE spells? Patrolling spirits? Mind controlled spy squirrels? Power sites? Background counts?

The next step might be using some of the worm-like drones (see the pdf I posed above) to plant microphones and other sensors in the area. Will take some experimentation first... Can patrolling spirits spot the worms? Stuff like that.

The 'lair carved out of rock' I posed above can easily be strong enough to resist such a device detonated on the surface. Assuming your bomb is only around 4 tons of explosives. The ground penetrating munitions work because they penetrate deep into the earth before blowing up (or use several explosions to dig the hole, or whatever other neat things DARPA has though of in the past 70 years).

Of course, getting a truck full of explosives inside the lair might do the job, but a really good design might be resistant to even that. Especially since the dragon probably has enough magic not to need to breathe for a long time.

Sure, but with 400 BP and 200 Karma it's not all that hard for a mage to have learned Arcana and researched "Shape Anything" to use as a poor man's bunker buster.

Edit: to add the link to the Creating a THOR node thread.

Yes, but the mage can only effect a 6? meter (is that radius or diameter) sphere at the time, so you'd need a couple of castings to get a deep enough hole. Then you'd have to get all the explosives down the hole. Then, for maximum effect, you'd have to re-shape the rock back over the hole. So the whole operations is likely to take several minutes, at least.

Of course, 4 tons of explosives going off buried deep underground is going to be pretty impressive.

Just get a Super Face adept initiate with maxed out Kinsethics to Negotiate the dragon to come out. I mean hell how much initiation for 200 KP can you get with group bonus? Max out his magic/PP with max improved skill Negotiations and Max Kinsethics. Hell with that alone with the Social Skill RAW you can convince the dragon to step outside and go to sleep for christ's sake. Then have it lay down on the bunker buster bomb that is buried right outside, detonate bomb. No more dragon. No out of the box dragon is going to out talk an adept elven face with First Impression, Imp Neg/Con Kinsethics (sp?).

We are avoiding 'reasonable' gimmicks like hijacked planes, bunker busting bombs, and so on. This means we are avoiding unreasonable gimmicks such as wallhackers and pornomancy as well.

My Social Adept IS reasonable and completely RAW. Can I help it if I can drop some 30+ dice on negotiation/con tests vs. Dragons Willpower or Chrarisma only? Plus or minus 3-5 dice for social mods? This is reasonable. All of the hypothesis put forth are reasonable. Hell This SA could bribe anyone for anything with 12M and get away with it scott free. SO it is totally reasonale Bob. I love the social adept elven face. I can just about break any RAW Missions/Game I put it in.

As to the 'reasonable' gimmicks, why don't we get them if the dragon gets a reasonable gimmic of a bunkered lair.

You can initiate with groups and ordeals: 5 times for initiations and magic both, for a total cost of 182 karma. To go to 12 takes 229.
Initiations:
1: 13 * .6 = 7.8 = 8
2: 14 * .6 = 8.4 = 9
3: 15 * .6 = 9 = 9
4: 16 * .6 = 9.6 = 10
5: 17 * .6 = 10.2 = 11
Karma: 47
6: 18 * .6 = 10.8 = 11
Karma: 58
Magic:
7: 21
8: 24
9: 27
10: 30
11: 33
Karma: 135
12: 36
Karma: 171