I'll take some.

All Chemistry aside, I totally know what to order at Bar meets now.

So it could be a Dark Ale + Grain Alcohol + Beef Stock + add Flour to thicken. Bud light it ain't but for orcs, who knows.

I'm glad some people are seeing the imbalance of FFA and PPP armors. I see people talk about how 'well that's with a loaded troll or orc' but frankly orcs are highly common characters and there's usually at least 1 troll walking around most shadowrunner teams. Plus even humans/elves can get very high armors and dwarves are a bit higher. Also I see no one talking about how adept/spell armor can add to this as well and not effect encumbrance.

We've playtested these crazy armor values and orcs/trolls were able to shrug off heavy weapon fire like machine guns and assault cannons. Other meta types walked away with moderate wounding and those that used magically augmented armor (adepts/spells) were able to get up there with the orcs and trolls. And all this is with availability 12 armor/cyber against higher than availability 12 weapons. I shudder to think if a Shadowrunner ever gets their hands on Mil Grade armor with mobility modifiers which BTW is when I think characters should be able to start seeing these high armor values.

I shouldn't have to load all my foes up with AP rounds and heavy weapons, be super marksmen for headshots or run heavy on spell casters so that any layered up runner isn't laughing in the rain of fire. Especially for beginner characters. I don't want my beginning Shadowrunning teams walking around with armors that can render ineffective most of the weapons they are likely to meet at that early stage.

As a GM I will just use my suggestions earlier about FFA and PPP. The devs did not test the impact of these armor mods. They are simply too powerful for their ease of availability.

How is, like, 4 more armor value suddenly what's making people "shrug off" heavy weapons fire? Seriously? The difference between FFBA and non-FFBA is a hair over one damage level, on average. If your characters are already 4 armor value away from shrugging off assault cannons, something was wrong before Arsenal came out.

I for one go instantly for the full body suit. Now this is +6 to Ballistic, +2 Impact. That is SUBSTANTIAL. Given a high body, maybe even cybered troll, we're looking at something scary!

I think that this is well within what can and should be done, but I dont feel that this is without weakness. As far as Im aware (I have yet to play an SR4 Troll), Trolls are still slow as stink, and are thus not that threatening. Orks are what Im most worried about since initial BP efficiency favors them over every other race. Im currently playing an Ork (first ever, after a succession of Elves), and so far he hasnt even needed his armor as even just wired 1, cyberarm gyromount, and Ares Alpha with EX/EX rounds fired in full burst have been able to deal with guards before they even get a shot in.

Now this may be due to the GM being relatively new, but I dont think I have much to worry about unless I meet someone at least on my level. With Full Body FFBA, 2 Cyber Armor, Armor Jacket and Body 7, Im looking at 23/17 for Damage resistance. Now just on one roll, I got 11 successes. That is some serious shit.

The upside, I think, is that the enemy will also be wearing this. And this may do something to prolong combat (which currently is way to short with a good sammy and mage).

With stats like that and a dry cool wit, you could take on the Yakuza.

Or substantially less than all that.

Zing !!

Yes, but an augmented troll in form-fitting anything is scary.

I now have an image of a troll cyclist in one of those one-piece lycra bollock-bags. That's a -6 vision penalty (not looking at target) just to start with.

oh the mental image

One day they're going to make a sequel to The Full Monty. Imagine a troll in a Thong and a hat dancing to You Can Leave Your Hat On.

heh, now you made me think of a collectors book for a comic here in norway.

i cant find a proper image of the cover, but imagine a dwarf (in the non-tolkien sense) doing a striptease on top of a table, with only a top hat covering his privates. in the background you have the two main characters singing that song, one dresses as the guitarist of ac/dc the other as the kiss equivalent.

You set it up yourself, but that should also be a -6 for looking at the target.


@NathanRoss
Besides, I do still not get why 23/17 is a problem if 20/14 is not. Eleven hits on DR are nice, but also just compensate the DV mod of HV full bursts. You can -on average- take AR bursts. Thats good for a troll tank. SecGuards on the other hand get their armor increased from some measily 6/4 to 10/5 (Armored Clothing + FFBA 2, no encumbrance at body 4), increasing DR from 10/8 to 14/9. Thats enough to survive a few hits from smaller weapons. So I would indeed judge the effect to be positive.

Um ... trolls have by far the best movement rate among metahumans.

Given the fact that SR combat majorly favours the offense (it's a rare battle I've seen where it wasn't over in the first turn) I see no issue with raising the defense a chunk.

With the advantages of FFBA, I'd say that yes, Arsenal really did swing the offense-defense balance a bit more towards the defensive.

This means someone other than a troll can surviving getting shot at more than once. To me, this is a good thing.

YMMV, of course, but a somewhat more powerful defensive side to Shadowrun doesn't bother me at all.

We had many firefights that lasted longer in our games, especially when the opponents have cover and don't fight in bright sunlight. Combat is still fast and deadly, of course, so giving the defense a small boost (and FFBA is not more then that, especially since not everbody will wear the full suit with gloves and stuff) is cool.

Let me take a look at this so I can better understand the armor issue.

Ok you start out your career as a shadow run GM, you give the characters guidance as to how to make characters 400 bp standard characters. Then you use either downloaded adventure material or make up your own adventure, using the stuff out of the book. For example one of my encounters are to different mob grunts with 2 leaders attack the group. I use out of the book Triad grunts.


B3 A5 R4 S3 C3 I4 L3 W4 ESS6 INIT8 IP1 CM10
Skills Blades: 3 Dodge: 3 Intimidate: 3 Pistols: 3 Unarmed Combat: 3
Skills Automatics 3 (+2 Smart gun link with Sun glasses)
Gear Lined Coat (B/I): 6/4 Fichett Secutity 600 Dam:4P-SA-(1)-Ammo:30
Gear Knife: 3P
Gear Ingram submachine gun Dam: 5P-BF/FA-2(3)-Ammo:28

I upgraded them a tad by giving them an Ingram smart gun, and Sunglasses with Smartlink. So my bad ass Yakuza or Triad have 9 dice to spend with smartlink, if they decided to use burst fire (narrow) then it would be 7 dice, and the Damage code would be 7p automatically without rolling dice. With the average of success/die method then the baddies would be getting 2 extra successes so the DV would be 9p. If my pc didn’t dodge said burst fire then they would have to soak up 9p of damage using Body + Armor.

One of my characters (I have only seen one character write up so far), an ork sammy, has 5 body and took the form fitted full body armor (6/2), he then also took the armored jacket (8/6) so he had now a ballistics armor of 14, and an impact armor of 8. With his 5 body he now gets 19 dice to soak up 9p worth of damage. On average that would be 5 successes for said character, for a total STUN damage of 3 stun from one burst.

Now lets go further into this and say that the Yakuza grunt had a couple of rounds to aim his Ingram smart gun at the sammy, then it could possibly be 5 to 9 stun damage and a chance for knockdown…

Ok now by writing this up I have completely changed my mind, Shadowrun is completely deadly and any chance to change the defensive values to the good is always better. When I first saw the 19 dice to soak damage I choked on my food, but now I see your points in that it really doesn’t matter. Unconscious is still out of the fight, and the damage can get kind of deadly if you add in APDS, and or called shots and what not. So I am going to allow this in my campaign, using the encumbrance rules as well though.

One thing that I reacted to was that I can put a commlink into a GUN but not into a DRONE as a modification...

Why?

If i can fit it inside a hold-out pistol I should be able to squeeze it inside a tiny drone, or at least A drone.

its because a drone already have a "comlink", the node that the drone pilot is running on.

a normal gun have no node what so ever, a smartgun is a peripheral node (unwired, p48) while a drone is a standard node (running a somewhat unusual/specialized os).

what would be the point of putting another node into the drone?

A spirit-possessed body is limited to the movement modes normally available to the body - spirit-type free-3D movement is not possible. Possessed metahumans are thus limited to ground movement (walking, running, crawling, etc.), swimming, climbing, a bit of jumping, and falling - but not flight. If the spirit has the Movement power, it can do those very fast!

I find it wierd that Zoe Second skin line armor doesn't use the rules for FFBA, as that what it's pretty much describt as being.

because its not designed to be "underwear"

no, it's designed to be worn WITHOUT underwear and for everyone to be able to clearly see that little fact

If you want to beef up the Thunderstruck, apply the rules from the Itzcoatl Gauss cannon from the vehicle section. For the Itzcoatl, all armor (except smart armor) is reduced by half, and THEN the -10 AP modifier is applied. So the Thunderstruck would do the same thing but -4 AP.

You don't want to have panty-lines, in your form fitted armor/underwear.

go read the arsenal errata ;)

isn't that kinda what the errata tells you to do anyway? O.o
Edit: DAMNIT HOBBIE!

i don't know O.o . . a nice little string to add distraction bonus to the elf-bitch? *snickers*

Edit: Damnit, still way to slow.

Anthroform are humanoid shaped drones, how many humans have more than two legs? (and don't even try to mention the men's tird leg).

well, there was this one girl . . not functional of course . .
but how many humans have 4 or 6 arms?
that argument doesn't really stick here.
one could get surged into a centaur too, i guess.
just take the arm-stuff and replace arms with legs and you can work with that.
they had to start SOMEWHERE . . and either they are horses with human halves on the front,
or they are humans with a horse-ass . .

Wouldn't the panty's string be a distraction for the wearer? Unless the "elf-bitch" is the one dressed it would just impose a penality.

*shrugs*
who cares?
i certainly don't, as i won't be seen actually playing one of the few elven characters i built, just to show that i actually can do that.

In SR a centaur is a type of awakened horse, also while surge has Shiva Arms it has no Arachne Legs or anything like that (well, it's actualy possible but it's ususaly called being an hybrid form insect spirit).

What do you mean with "just to show that i actually can do that"? Building an elf or having him/her wear that porno-armor (which goes into the WTF category for me)?

both, actually . .
my buddies doubted my ability to build a valid and usefull elven character under SR3 Rules, after i had for more than 3 years been building ANYTHING but elves.
one of those characters was an actual female elven bitch, more or less the 3rd ed version of the pornomancer. i named her jenna, because she was built for speed.
and yes, she did have the porno-"armor" and pornolized versions of the formfitting body armor too.


And i still say:"if people can spontaneously grow 2 to 6 extra-arms, then why should they not be able to spontaneously grow 2 to 6 extra LEGS?

monkey feet and gecko grip