There is a distinction between munchkinism and powergaming.

Here I'm obviously encouraging powergaming -- how could I not, in this scenario? I'm expecting to see much that is min-maxed to within a shadow of functionality.

toturi and ShadowDragon8685 have already been answered completely by James McMurray and knasser.

Ritual spellcasters and trolls with big bows can do nothing but slay dragons?

The infinite loops are easily fixed by saying that you have to use your own Magic rating instead of your channeled spirit's Magic rating. Call it a house rule if you like, but it would stop the problem.

1 is too vague to be useful, since what constitutes ruining the game is different for every player, and we don't even know who all the players will be.

What's a 1e6Y?

And yeah, I read the sheets. they're highly focused, but not useless outside of this single encounter. The Ritual spellcasters are useful in any situation that irtual spellcasting is useful in. The troll is useful whenever sometihng needs to be killed.

Hmm.

Yeah, I guess. I stand corrected. There is some small value in a target.

And FWIW, while I think the troll is specialized to the point of absurdity, he at least, can *try* to go kill the ghoul.

The ritual team, not so much.

I'd recommend to Talia that she use a modified 1/3 rule. When I was setting up a sample Matrix system in another thread, the chance of the hacker breaking into each node undetected was about 70%. And if I'd just stuck to the average each time, the hacker could break through an endless chain of them. But in fact, two nodes is 0.7 x 0.7. Three is 0.7 x 0.7 x 0.7. It quickly diminishes and it's important to represent that.

Really, short of reintroducing the randomness, there's no way to model it right. The variance in the dice can't be modeled deterministically like that.

Without the randomness, you're swinging the balance in favor of the players, or against. There's really no neutral ground.

Vaevictis. Yes, they can. They all have a spare 5 karma. They just go learn the Slay (Ghoul) spell, and whip up a clay ghoul. 1 hour later... theres a very messy splatter wherever that ghoul was.

Batman only needs a non-defined time to prepare himself against any enemy, be it an evil dimension-destroying deity, or a Greater Dragon that dies if you shoot him down with rockets.

The thing about the non-defined time is, it's always enough for Batman to succeed.

you don't understand. Batman does not need an non-defined amount of time to prepare himself. he is already prepared.

Ah, yes, truly, then it's set and match.

Does this mean that what we should really be doing is using these rules to create Batman then assume that he wins?

(I feel so bad for slightly derailing this conversation. I'm sorry.)

Batman doesn't need 24 hours to get ready, he only needs a quick montage.

Or, another solution to your issue Vaevictus, is they can all learn the manabolt spell instead (something they'd probably want to have started with instead of slay(dragon)). Then, project, and go pop the ghoul in astral space either with manabolts (since hes a dual natured bastard) or with astral combat and their spirits they can summon/bind.

In case anyone is curious, here's my take on munchkinism, as opposed to just powergaming.

I've been studying it, and the Channelling/Possession issue really is a nasty one. The loophole in the rules does allow infinite Magic increase even with only a single magician -- sloppy, sloppy writing -- but infinite loops wreck scenarios; and persistently trying to take advantage of them after having identified them shows a determination to win even by breaking the game (and thus at the expense of others who may have wished to test the scenario without breaking it).

For this purpose, I'll follow Buster's recommendation and have all conjuring use only the conjurer's personal Magic. Interpretation is that the magician can't use the spirit's share of Magic to use with conjuring skills. It's a change from the strict rules, yes.

I'm not making any broad-based "loop" rulings, except to specify that I'm looking to test tactics and killability, not the breakability of the rules. If you want to play this out as closely to RAW as possible, you'll not force me to make these kinds of rulings again.

There are various ways to go about this scenario: Using an unstoppable tactic, it is one of them. Why is an infinite loop not a valid solution when the very premise of this scenario is to manifestly to win? If this was a proper game with a real GM instead of a GM whose almost sole purpose is to play the antagonist, I'd agree that breaking the scenario would be defeating the purpose of gaming, but this is no ordinary scenario: This is Tal on one side playing the dragon and simultaneously playing the part of the GM that controls the rules - you control, in effect, what you would like to see defeat your dragon instead of the rules taking care of themselves, and the rest of the forums as "players". Leveraging the rules is force majuere in tactics and killability.

I have kept out of the PC creation as well as dragon creation: I have mostly commented on rulings where I feel are not to canon.

The loop, as has been stated, is not infinite. It is severely limited by drain. The statistical likelihood that a character avoids being knocked unconscious or killed by drain is reduced by every iteration until the loop ends with the magican in question dying, and possibly releasing an angry double-digit-force Free Spirit to kill his friends.

Here's an example of completely skewing the results based on a 1:3 ratio.

(This is achievable using the scenario parameters, with obnoxious amounts of minmaxing)

Take a dwarf.

Body: 6
Charisma: 6
Willpower: 7
Magic: 6

Summoning 4 (Arbitrary Spirit Type)
Binding 6 (Arbitrary Spirit Type)
Spellcasting 4
Increase Willpower (hence, given infinite tries Willpower = 10)
Increase Charisma (hence, given infinite tries Charisma = 9)
Increase Body (hence, given infinite tries, Body=10)

Focused Concentration (2)

4xInitiate (44 karma)
4xIncrease Magic (102 karma)
Binding Focus Force 5 (15 Karma)
Ally Spirit Force 1 (8 karma)
Summoning Skill Increase 2 (22 karma)

Summoning Dice Pool: Magic (10) + Summoning (6) + Specialization (2) = 18
Binding Dice Pool: Magic (10) + Binding (6) + Specialization (2) + Focus (5) = 23

Pretty much, this means you can summon any spirit up to force 17, and bind any spirit up to force 11.

Drain Resist Dice Pool: Willpower (10) + Charisma (9) + Focused Concentration (2)
Physical Damage Track: 8+Body/2=8+5=13

We can summon anything up to force 10 without drain, and survive any summoning we can accomplish (ie, up to Force 20)
We can bind anything up to force 6 without drain, and survive any binding up to force 18.

Hence, this character can start play with 6 force 11 bound spirits, with as many services as he's willing to pay for (using rebinding rules).

Now, let's assume that at least 5 other folks in the group is either a magician or mystic adept with channeling. You now have six folks running around with force 11 spirits channelled.

On the day of the run, this guy whips up an additional force 10 spirit (with no drain), it has 3 services.

Don't forget all the other mystic adepts/magicians; they'll be whipping up their own spirits, too.

With more minmaxing, you could possibly find the point on the curve where the survivable binding drain equals the max you can summon, and you could end up with slightly higher bound spirits. And I haven't even factored in edge yet.

Now, rolling dice, nobody would lightly "whip up" 6 force 11 bound spirits, and then lightly "whip up" an additional force 10 spirit on the day of the run. But with the 1:3 rule, it's no problem at all.

Incidentally, if a tactic is only possible or impossible with dice variance, then you accept that its validity depends entirely on luck.

Is anyone interested in actually running through this scenario? rather than solely crunching numbers computer-style? Only one person in the last five pages of thread has seriously considered what active and passive defenses the dragon might have up. Hardly anyone has tried to consider how the dragon might think (not character, just tactically), except to insist on what the dragon ought not to be able to do psychologically -- although the same psychology apparently doesn't apply to its attackers, even though the scenario is kill-or-be-killed -- and anyone who has tried has been quickly drowned out by the number crunchers. I need to know whether I ought to start a new thread for people who actually want to test this on a level outside a purely number-crunching pressing-the-I-WIN button.

(You'll remember what I said about chess? Even with the modern level of computer processing, a grandmaster can still beat the computer.)

Sheer curiosity: of the extreme number crunchers, how many of you have an active regular face-to-face SR game that has lasted?

My current campaign has been on break for awhile now -- GM is in the nasty part of med school -- but had been going for a couple of years prior to that. I'm GMing Werewolf instead, for the time being.

Normally, when I play, I apply the first rule I proposed: I will not do anything that would break the game for the other players. I actually had a character get to that point, at which point I retired the character.

And I'm interested in making a group. However, the parameters aren't exactly static here, so I'm trying to get them nailed down before I put a full group together.

Sure it's possible for a "standard game" to be one shot a dragon hunt, but I'd say that it isn't standard to drop the team off at the dragon lair and say that they have 24 hours to kill or be killed, BUT the dragon isn't already on active alert.

Right. There's nothing about this topic about creating a believable shadowrunning team and this just being another random run they're getting hired for.

It's a min/max thread created by Taila with the sole purpose of raping the rules to see how effective someone can be at defeating a dragon under extreme and limited circumstances, yet refuse to admit to himself or anyone else that that's exactly what the scenario is about.

If it were the former case, the desired characters would simply be standard runners who've used the bonus karma and resources to hone their personal specialties. What's being asked for, however, are one-shot characters custom designed to defeat a dragon under the alloted restrictions, usually with most if not all of the detailed plans being shot down through hand-waving.

If custom designed characters and their plans are being dismissed, there's no point in even trying to throw standard, believable characters into the mix. Unless the aforementioned hand-waving swings the other way. And in that case there still isn't any point in any of this!

So yes, despite various bouts of self-denial, this most assuredly is a min/maxing thread for specialized, munched-to-Hell-and-back characters. Nothing at all wrong with that -- it's a ton of fun -- except when you start getting all high and mighty towards the very people doing what was asked; making said munchkins and powergaming characters.

LOL

My response was aimed towards a variety of posters, particularly the ones bemoaning the highly specialized, rules-raped, munched out characters where little to no work has gone into defining their other abilities.

Hey now... I defined their other abilities. They have other skills too! Like, uhh, Survival! And... artisan! Yes! They can live in a forest and sculpt pretty statues that they sell at flea markets when they're not busy smiting dragons from their cave!

Heh, still munchy.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Oh good. I wanted to keep these questions uniquely in this thread, rather than spreading them across every other spinoff: but I didn't want to keep flogging a dead horse. Thus all following quotes are from here, which I'm trying to keep clear for addressing the core question there.

If the participants in the scenario have more than one try, then they can learn from the previous attempt and specifically plug that hole: and again that lets the runners' "side" have the advantage that Frank Trollman accuses me of taking.

Talia. How's this sound. Since I'm the one who came up with the ritual dragon killing team entirely on my own, you let me play it out through PMs, and we discuss it that way. I promise to keep my trap shut and not post about it in any threads until this thread has come to a resolution (though, you are free to post whatever information about what transpires as you like.) Sound reasonable?