Somewhere along the way, I lost the link to the original Bloodzilla writeup. So, I'm opening this thread to all the Pun-Pun's of Shadowrun. What are the infinitely disgusting combos that people have come up with?

For the record, I consider Mr. Lucky to be seriously underpowered for this thread, so the sky's the limit. Feel free to repeat the most borken concepts you can possibly deliver.

...unfortunately my worst most munched PC was from 3rd ed: Gracie the Met2000 dwarf merc with a reaction of 18 who could stand her ground going full lead hose with only a +1 TN modifier and who took out a Medusa drone with her twin dikoted Cougar Fineblades (#34).

...though there was Lady Meggan Grande (NPC) who basically rolled a 36ct cube of dice (- 1) on an opposed negotiation test. And that was without throwing in her Edge of 8.

[edit - addendum]

...of course there was reason to munch out Gracie, for one, we were encouraged to do so by the GM as he was runnng us through Brainscan.

Sigh.I wish people wouldn't call them "Pun-Puns" because Pun-Pun is actually weak cheese. Not only does it not actually work as written, all it really ends up being is a very slow growing unlimited physical attribute hack that requires the intervention of an extremely power optional NPC to start (and is thus both less interesting and less powerful than a simple Artificer Skill Dancer), but even allowing for the ludicrous interpretation of the word "a" that it relies upon, the original Pun-Pun still got overconfident and was one-shot killed by The Word.

But I digress. The original "Bloodzilla" wasn't even called that. It was in the middle of my rant to Lars "What the hell are you doing with the threats section!?" during the Street Magic writing process. It was right next to "Is it too much to ask to have just one complete playable toxic tradition in the book?" and "You can't have an Earth/Water spirit, that's the entire fucking point of having distinct spirit types." I don't think I will ever forgive him for that.

----

Basically, Bloodzilla (which is an excellent name, I wish I'd coined it myself) is an infinite power loop because the limits on Essence drain are force dependent. So with the bullshit energy drain that Lars wrote up for Blood Spirits, they get +1 Force (and thus +2 max energy drain) for every 1 point of Energy Drain. Even a Force 1 Blood Spirit can be a Force 181 Blood Spirit after you wax a kindergarten full of retarded kids. Hell, after you chupacabra some goats.

Even regular Blood Magicians can rival the power of Great Dragons with relatively little fuss. The limits on conjuration are almost entirely Drain related. With the Sacrifice metamagic and a bound hobo, you can reduce your drain by like 14 boxes if you really care - which is enough and more than enough to survive summoning Force 20 spirits. Those will, in turn, drop kick the shit out of Ghost Walker, which is just good times all around.

Are we counting Agent Smith as a character? That's a pretty easy one, as every 5k Commlink you buy or steal from a store can run two more Agents, and you can fit as many in your backpack or the boot of your car as you can convince the gamemaster is reasonable.

-Frank

Actually, I'm the one who came up with the Agent Smith army, which forced an errata on Teamwork tests. Because teamwork tests had no limit on members, you could load up on a few hundred agents and one-shot Z-O.

Even with the errata, the Burly Man Brawl is a valid (and nasty) tactic.

For the record and to avoid spreading erroneous misconceptions:

"Bloodzilla" is missing exactly six words from a power description that were mistakenly cut in editing through no fault of the writer who included it in his write up - contrary to what Frank's opinion. Those six words impose a cap on the increase to Force that can be achieved through Energy Drain and its variants. The text to be added back in has been in the Street Magic errata for over a year now, although the change of license has delayed our publication of the same.

Also contrary to Frank's belief a sample Toxic tradition (for a typical "Poisoner Toxic" ) was indeed written up and included in final drafts. It was a development decision to cut it - again, not the author's decision - based on the fact that "Toxic traditions" are in fact individual, enormously variable and highly personal. It was intended to be, and will eventually be published in a long-delayed Street Magic add-on.

As for the "fix" to Teamwork tests, sorry to break it to you Cain, but it had nothing to do with Agent Smith. It was listed for errata as far back as the initial release of SR4 - in fact, if you check, my very first response to one of your criticisms of the Teamwork rules (not the Agent Smith thread which came later) included "the fix".

well, around these parts of the web there was the troll with the . . 30 to 40 dice for climbing tests . . and on another board there was an elf with 20 to 30 dice for everything that was somehow connected to agility i think . .

You've got a nerve on you Peter, I was there. And whether it's contrary to belief or not, there aren't even five Toxic spirits with the same theme in the book, and Lars refused to make a system for creating toxic spirits for general use. You can't have a toxic magician without writing original content yourself, and there aren't even any fucking guidelines for doing it. That was a shamefully lazy move. I said it at the time, I hold to that sentiment, and I'm not retracting anything.

He didn't forget to include guidelines for creating the originl content he is insisting that every single gamem master produce. It didn't get cut at some later date through no fault of his own. He fucking straight up refused to do it, and instead wrote up some specific spirits which you can't use without writing additional original content yourself for which there are no guidelines.

It was a dick move, and you supported him doing it.

---

And I've seen at least three versions of your "6 missing words" and while they often stop infinite power, it really isn't terribly important because not one of them prevents anyone with Blood invoking from being able to kick the crap out of Lofwyr and Hestaby at the same time.

Also most of them run into flat incomprehensibility the moment they start interacting with Free Spirits and Background Counts. And it doesn't even begin to address the fact that the "weakness" of Evanescence does not affect blood spirits and never has!

-Frank

ok guys, we'll settle this like men . . Frank and Synner, Snowballs at 20m *g*

What's that Steet Magic add-on? A free add-on that will be available on the website (or possibly holostreet)?

Oh god please not HoloStreets, there would be no telling then when we will see it.

Frank, Synner... Play nice.

Also, I suspect that public message boards are not the place to be discussing behind the scenes developmental decisions.

Bull

Frank's posts here are pretty out of line and Peter would probably be better served not responding to them, in my opinion. I've gotten my hand slapped a few times for pushing the NDA discussing writing development, but man, you don't attack co-authors or their draft work during the development process on a public forum. That's unprofessional and disrespectful.

This type of drek makes me hate these boards. Let's try to get back on topic, shall we?

I've never made a really broken character, but I did make a medical adept who's rolling 22 dice on medicine tests, and 26 dice on diagnosis tests. (Could do better, but I wanted some well-roundedness as well)

And that's the sort of thing I read Dumpshock For....

One of the most horribly broken characters that I've ever seen actually played, instead of theoretically proposed on the forums, was a troll adept in SR3.
Yeah yeah, troll adept with a polearm, reach 3 brokenness, I know. The clever bit was when he realized that in one of the books (I forget which one) it actually had the TN modifiers for Trolls using large weapons in one hand. It might've been Fields of Fire, I don't remember. Anyway, it was +1TN for a Troll to use a two-handed weapon in one hand. He was using the No-Daichi, treated as a polarm but basically it's just a big katana. Well, the +1TN really just negates one of his points of reach, which you would think makes him less broken, until he uses another smaller weapon in his off hand. So now he's a troll with reach 2 dual-wielding weapon foci. Yikes.
He wasn't unstoppable, and not anywhere near Pun-Pun/Bloodzilla, but he was actually played.

I don't have any really broken characters to add to the scene. I never really got into twisting the system in such a manner. Though I have in other games.

Doing so in SR always felt wrong somehow.

Let me just say, though, that that horrible example of brokenness was also a great character with depth and personality, so it really never bothered me how good his melee ability was.

Wallhacker: SR3 maxed strength melee cybered ghoul cyclops adept junkie with dual dikoted cyberspurs. 48 Serous damage in melee, before staging. This guy could cut cars in half.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...3&hl=wallhacker

The last broken-ass character i made was back in SR2, utilizing Shadowtech, bioware, and mages. I more or less made him for fun, was never played. I still have some notes around on him, he might be fun as that ''dont make me angry with your arguing, PCs!''

When we played SR2, the entire lot of us didnt realize Bioware dampened magic...unless in SR2 bioware DIDNT dampen magic..which is how we always played it. Either the rule was REALLY hard to find in Shadowtech, or it didnt come in til SR3. Honestly, i forget, this was 10 years back. Anyway, we played it how we read/assumed; Bioware didnt cut magic, Cyber did.

Bioware back in the day ran with Body; the more body you had, the more bioware you could get. Also, recall that Force was tied to Resources.

So i took the books and picked Resources A, Magic B(sorcery adept), Attributes 2(20 and see below), skills D(21, and see below...remember all skills were in groups then.)

We used the companion with edges and flaws; i maxed the flaws for the point of the character of course, and picked up 4 attribute points and 2 skill points, for 24 and 23.

6 body, 4 quickness, 4 strength, 1 cha(of course), 4 Int, 5 Willpower.

Picked up Muscle Aug 4(3.2 BI), Suprathyroid(1.4 BI), Enhanced Articualtion(.6 BI), and a cerebral booster 1(.4 BI). BI: 5.8.

Picked up Alphaware titanium bone lacing(1.8 essence), alpha smartlink(.4 essence), and a set of pimped cybereyes(alpha, .4 ess). Essence: 3.4.


Magic was down to three. No problem, used a chunk of resources to get a Power Focus 3, bringing magic up to 6. No problem blowing 15 force, i had 35 left.

Stats were now:

Body: 6(9), Quickness: 4(9), Strength 4(9), Charisma 1, Intelligence 4(5), Willpower 5, Magic 3(6), Essence 3.4, BI: 5.8, Reaction 4(9), Init:9+1d6. Oh, Combat Pool of 9 also. Magic Pool was linked to Sorcery, so was 6. (i forget how concentrations worked here.)

Picked up a bunch of spells, many with expendable fetishes, of course, which boosted the spells in those days. Picked up a spell lock with Armor(x successes), and Increase Cybered Initative(3d6, of course). So, yep, 9-4d6 initative.

Skill-wise, just popped the 23 points to Sorcery/Spellcasting(5/7), Melee/Polearm/Scythe(4/6/, Unarmed/something(4/6), Magic Theory 2, Heavy Weapons(PAC):2/4/6. Hey, he wasn't meant to be subtle.

Dikoted said polearm. Picked up ammo. Layered a secure ultra vest under an armored jacket. Also had said armor lock.

I disremember the spells, but assume there was a fetishable Manabolt, Manaball; Power Bolt, Powerball, in addition to the buffing spells. Of course a helping of Invisibility(hey, dont need stealth with the spell), and other odds and ends. A Hellblast topped it off.

Anyway, what it was was a hard-to-kill beast who could kill you quickly physically or magically or blow you to bits with a PAC. Definately not realistic, but broken nonetheless. Of course, a set of full military body armor from Fields of Fire was onhand ''just in case''. Being a mage he could defend very well against other mages. And of course moved plenty fast in the process. I forget what the polearm damage was, but he was a human that did somewhere around the realm of 12D before staging, with a base 9 dice to roll without combat pool(articulation plus skill), adding combat pool was something around 17 dice. Unarmed he slammed skulls for 12M Stun or 8M Physical. His punch or kick was that of a gun, and could roll 12 dice to stage it with.

SR3 put a stop to his reign of terror by changing the way some of the rules worked. He weeps silently now in SR2 land.

Yeah, i mean, there was around 7 of us, who all read Shadowtech, and never. saw. the. rule.

We found it in five minutes in Man and Machine, and we put it into effect, with no complaints; we would have done it in SR2 as well had we known about it. Hell, even the guy who played since SR1, BBB and Ka-ge magazine, didn't know about it.

See the Anti-Mage. Talk about disgusting combos and broken characters!

I once played an adept with around 20p -3ap unarmed damage, with only 30 karma.

haha, man, the first page of this thread is comedy gold.

the most ridiculously overpowered character i've ever made was in SR3. it was a troll named Tons, with maximum Str cyberware and a customized HMG. he could rip out 30D 18-round bursts at something like a +2 modifier. the only time i ever got to use him was a Bug City game which only lasted for half of a scene. we got charged by something like eight bugs, and Tons opened up with suppressive fire. between that an a few well-placed bursts by an adept named Ounces, we wiped them all out in the space of one or two passes.

The rants are sad. When good creative people have differences, they need to put them behind. It hurts the game to get into that type of argument. Personally, I would delete the thread and reboot.

With broken PCs... I've had several in various games over the various editions. But each time they started we would just back it off in some way ('lose' the power foci, have the cyberware malfunction and act at a lower rating, etc.). Shadowrun, for me, has always been at its utmost fun when it feels gritty and hard. As soon as you become anything like invincible, then the setting seems to have been lost. Nothing against those that enjoy that sort of campaign; it just seems like a very different game than the one intended.

well, i suppose i could toss the theoretical TM with command CF through the roof throwing ridiculous dicepools for controlling drones...

(6 resonance ==> 6 command CF, take various piloting skills all specialised in remote control, codeslinger(control device), thread the CF to 12, have a sprite boost it to 18, analyse the vehicle for good measure with a rating 6 sprite for another 4 dice: 18 (CF) + 4 (skill) +2 (specialisation) + 2 (hotsim) + 2 (codeslinger) + 4 (average; analyse) = 32 dice for piloting a vehicle (or firing a vehicle mounted weapon with the correct type of gun). 26 of those dice also apply to passive defense afaict (good luck hitting him).

he's no Pun-Pun (who, for the record, does not just have infinite* attributes, but also infinite just about everything else conceivable. except that his dimensions were still finite, last i saw... i do believe he can literally reach anywhere though. it also doesn't require any sort of NPC intervention, just that Pun-Pun be aware of a certain type of creature. so i'm not sure what exactly Frank is talking about when he says Pun-Pun is just arbitrarily high attributes.)

* (in point of fact, Pun-Pun doesn't have infinite anything, technically, but he *can* continuously increase just about any aspect of himself without limitation. at any given time, however, his attributes *are* a defined, finite value)

someone mind pointing me in the right direction as to read up on pun-pun?

ok, it has to be said. i think this thread have done something im willing to bet is a dumpshock first...

as for the pornomancer writeup, would this be whats requested?
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...=0&#entry538217

apparently another variant:
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...=0&#entry509328

oh crap, investigating the pornomancer is anything but healthy:
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...30&#entry545898

the mental image of the pornomancer doing his thing by humping air makes me envision something like a bare chested ali-g doing dancing moves like some animated dog i found on the net

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTjIKu5PukY

and like the last post of the thread says, i cant stop laughing

The munchiest thing i can think of isn't particularly creative. It was a troll dubbed "Canopener" whose catchphrase was "Ya, ah can open 'er"

troll mystic adept with the "natural weapon" spirit pact, and whatever the 1pp "double damage to objects" power was. Don't have a book on hand or the exact original build. There was some other cheesemonkery involved, but it all ended up being 100% RAW.

Long story short, if you were in melee range, you were violated with 19P + successes damage 4 times ever 3 seconds due to nearly every instance of natural weapon doing base damage equal to strength. Double to objects like walls... cars... load bearing pylons...

I forget how, but there was a logical conclusion to this idea involving a free spirit and karma drain, with the pact of "we split it 50/50".

But broken combos, rules interpretations and bad GM choices are no match for poorly worded books. Bloodzilla is why i don't allow bloodmagic in my game past "Your talismonger contact tells you if a bloodmage is involved, you're fucked. Unless you can kill him before he summons something. And then you're probably still fucked."

BTW, while i disagree with breaking contract for payment not rendered when working freelance (as a long time freelancer in various fields), i do have to side with Frank on toxics. Giving coherent rules would have been fantastic, but a earth/water spirit should be a warning flag of "someone screwed up". Even the fluff suggests otherwise (the bit about the ice palace metaplane). Hell, i could make an Apokalypse tradition with 4 versions of man spirits and a blood spirit or something.

Shit, thats not such a bad idea...

The fatal fa wwith Pun Pun of course, is that it doesn't work.

The Sarrhuk can grant a scalykind "an extraordinary, supernatural, or spell-like ability". There are no qualifiers on that. Then it has a big block of text about "typical alterations" and gives out lists for stuff it can do. So really the Sarrhuk has the ability to grant a scalykind creature native to Toril any ability that the DM thinks is in line with the examples. And since the examples include things like "+4 bonus to spot checks" it would be a very hard sell to any DM to transfer the Manipulate Form ability, let alone any of that other crazy crap.

Pun-Pun's infinite attribute thing revolves around the specific numerical qualities of the power, which does in fact work. It's a very slow growing but nonetheless limitless version of Artificer Skill Dancing (but only for physical attributes). That's fine. Or it would be, if you could do that at all which you actually can't because in order to do so you'd have to be able to convince your DM that a Sarrhuk's form changing ability can grant the form changing ability - which is on the face of it ridiculous. There is a published set of guidelines in the power, and while they don't specifically prohibit such excesses as granting yourself the Alter Reality power of a major god - they certainly can't be read in any way that would make one think that this was in fact possible.

Basically the Sarrhuk can grant any ability that the DM says it can (samples provided to aid in that descision). The Pun-Pun fiasco comes from the a priori assumption that the DM will stamp OK on any request that he could acquiesce to - which is all of them. It is essentially the argument "Overgods don't have a Level Adjustment, therefore I could play one." - only for some reason people actually give a damn.

A Shadowrun example would be playing a Poisoner Mage, since there are only four available "poison" spirits in Street Magic you need to make a fifth. Theoretically your gamemaster could go for a fifth spirit of "Poisoned Game Balance" which had every single power and bonuses to every physical and mental stat. But passing that off as a "build" is completely inane.

Heck, Pun Pun is an even harder sell than that, because it revolves around convincing your DM that a power that is in the Sarrhuk description but not in the sample transferable powers is transferable. It's not even like "Sacrifice Man" who abuses the human sacrifice rules to get a wish that he doesn't have to pay for and uses that wish to get a Staff of Fifty Wishes (and then uses a wish off of that staff to make another one and so on). That at least is specifically legal. Pun Pun is just "It doesn't say I can't have infinite power (because it doesn't say anything either way).

-Frank

Pun-Pun is similar to Bloodzilla in that they're both "infinite loops"; eg, there's no limit to as far as they can go. Franks objections aside, Pun-Pun can still have unlimited stats, which in turn gives him unlimited Hit Points and Saving Throw/Skill bonuses. The rest of what Frank refers to is just gravy.

Beyond this, Bloodzilla is actually worse. Pun-Pun relies on a complex set of rule interactions under just the right conditions. Bloodzilla, according to Frank, was either designed to work this way or was left alone in a colossal lapse of judgement. A Bloodzilla is actually *easy* to pull off, while Pun-Pun is a tricky build.