Did the rules for Dikote get updated for 4th edition? If so, could someone point me to the book and reference?

Thanks.

No, the Dev's have simply ignored Dikote in fourth edition, hoping it will go away.

Much like they are ignoring all the dragon PC threads now...

For which I am eternally grateful...

Not ignoring, I assure you.

Cackling maniacally?

Testing the waters. Executed brilliantly, I might add. The April's Fool's joke that isn't on April 1st and isn't a joke, or is it? Nicely done.

If they aren't ignoring. Than how about responding?

Well, most of us are pretty busy. The rest are laughing their arses off, I think.

They like to see us get all uppity about it, I suppose?

Or it's testing the water indeed.

Oh Ancient, if you're really testing the water ... have you considered the many, many new IE this rule would bring into fluff? The "nio shagging humans" rule means much to NPC dragons, but PC dragons? I kinda don't really see them giving a fuck (that's one really bad pun). Just wondering, really.

I've always reckoned that Dikote's been around long enough to be included in just about anything that would benefit from it, so there's no need for a separate purchase.

They better be busy thinking up new ways of frustrating Dikote fans. Otherwise, I'm gonna be pissed! Unless they come out with a sourcebook that says you can only use dikote in conjunction with an Ares Viper Slivergun possessed by an ally spirit that you intend to have sex with, in which case I'll be ok with them re-introducing it.

Circuitboyblue: I think I would actually allow that Dikote into my games.

I'm still reeling from the dikoted cardboard sign as warax from the 'odd weapons thread'... so my judgement may not be reliable however...

Personally, I'd like to see Dikote mentioned somewhere. Just because it's a part of the world. Something like "Dikote, now commonly used onto all kinds of stuff as a default die to rapidly falling prices" or something, that'd entirely suffice.

Honestly, if they brought back Dikote as either A. Something that added +1 to Ballistic and Impact or hard armor, and +1 DV/-1AP to Edged Weapons, with +1 DV to blunt, have it make everything more resistance to heat and breakage, i don't see it being terribly unbalanced.

You have armor enhancements for that.

Eh, true. Ok, so it helps weapons be a little resistant to heat and breakage, and gives +1 DV/-1AP. +1 DV blunt. Again, not unbalanced.

Depends. I'm not sure canon ever stated how much dikote weighed

as dikote is described as a thin layer of diamond-like substance, not too much i'd say . .
and the cardboard samurai? that is just silly, as it's clearly stated that only things which can withstand the procedure of having the dikote molten onto their surface can be dikoted at all . . there would probably be problems with the bendable weapons stuff too . .

The problem with even the +1 DV /armor value bit posted here is that it still becomes a 'must have' item that every bit of armor or weaponry (no matter how inappropriate) will 'have to have'.

+1 to the DV of bludgeoning weapons? Why? how? Then you get players agitating for it to be added to their stun batons as well.


And we're right back where we started, with an 'uber enhancement' that is added to everything, up to an including Ally Spirits and cardboard signs.

Which is why I hate it in the first place. Not because it's a bad idea, or that it makes not sense (though the very original write up made it 'megapowerful' in so many wrong ways...), but because once you put the 'ur-device' in the game, everyone has it and nobody doesn't and that's just silly.

Though I could point out that wired reflexes and the various clones of wired reflexes DID set a precedent, but that is a fight for another day....

Again, who's to say that it's not already in there?

If so, then what exactly would speak against mentioning it is?

Are you (hermit) suggesting that I'm suggesting that it shouldn't be mentioned?

Wordcount, mate. Our almighty lord is wordcount.

It was like that in the older versions if i remember correctly. I think if i dig around my SR3 books they'll have an explanation on how it worked.

I mean, it costs money, it takes time to do...but if people want to get it, they'll pay for it. There's plenty of things in the core that i see almost everyone getting these days anyway, if you cut out EVERYTHING that everyone liked to get, there would indeed be quite a few things cut out.

I guess i'm looking at it in the sense of ''eh, with the +1/-1 method, it's not breaking any games, it costs nuyen to coat each weapon, and even if the whole party has it it's not throwing anything off''. Hell, even when it was godlike in SR3 it didn't throw off our games. It just made our sword guy a little more dangerous.

And as for the stun baton...they're electrical. I would say if they had the treatment of molten diamond, they wouldn't be spitting out electricity anytime soon.

as far as i remember, you could add it to stun weapons too . . but of course, in SR3 it was either blunt-man or stun-dam so it did not help with the electrical damage in any form . . only if you used the shock-stick to club somebody to death with after the batteries are empty *g*
fun-fact: in the german rulebook it says due to an translation error Klingen (EDGED) weapons only benefit from the +1PN +1DL but not Pole-Arms and thrown weapons like shuriken and throwing-knives

What's great about that is that diamond is pretty nonconductive electrically, although if it's doped with boron or something it could be okay.

There are two aspects to this, really. The 'In game/real world' and the Metagame.

In real life, as it should be in game, there are not 'everyone must have it to compete' items, per se. Certainly not as optional add ons for twenty year old technology. When was the last time you bought a car without an airconditioner or a radio?

In real life there are powerful debates among various communities. Is the M16 a great assault rifle, is the AK a better one? There are pro's and cons to each item.

Is the Katana the worlds greatest sword? But what about...

Making 'great things' is about compromises. The Katana is wickedly sharp, but brittle and once chipped the blade can not be resharpened, and it sucks as a stabby bit (though not totally). It is not some 'superhuman' sword to embarrass all others. Steel, as a material technology was objectively better than 'iron', and as a result rapidly replaced iron in just about everything except decorations.

Dikote, if it were that great for everything would be a standard feature by now, not an option. Ares doesn't want to loose control of hte guns market because they don't offer Dikote as standard on their bullets (never mind the real world stupid of 'diamond makes everything better').


From a metagame aspect you never, or at least only judiciously, want to have 'must haves'. One of the strong reasons for the newest and shiniest edition of D&D is that magic items were 'must haves' and the optimal way of doing things was so regimented that releasing new toys was a waste of time. Consider: If you relased a new Heavy Pistol that had 8P damage, SA/Burst/FA fire modes and a 30 round clip, and was highly concealable, would your players ever consider any other gun? Of course not, they'd be foolish to do so, and accordingly, unless every other Heavy Pistol you designed ALSO had 8P and could fire bursts there would be no reason to release new guns.

IF a mod is so powerful (as Dikote is in your world, and has been in every edition of Shadowrun it's ever been in) then it becomes a universal must have. Every character has his signature dikoted items, and black marketeers are busy dikoting every bullet (because Diamond makes everythign BETTER!) just so they can move all their old stock.

So yes: Must Haves are rather foolish. And Yes, Shadowrun has more than it's share. When I have to explain to some dunderhead that simply coating his commlink in Dikote won't improve his firewall, I'll be thinking of you when I bury the body.

Bad excuse AH, you can make room if you want to.

I have always been a fan of Dikote, and while I can't come up with a suitable +Structure rating stat at the moment, I think -4AP for bladed weapons would be fair. I think base DV is more an issue of length and weight, but Dikote works perfectly as an armor piercing modification.

As for bullets and armor, I'm with Spike that if it was so necessary, the market would have already adapted. Also, bullets and firearms (hopefully) have advanced to the point of precision where you can no longer make bullets at home. This reminds me, are there rules in Arsenal for making your own ammunition? How about APDS and AV rounds?

If someone tried to dikote their COMMLINK for that, i'd be helping you dig the hole. There are limitations. No, you can't dikote your cloth armor. No, you can't dikote your your shoes. No, you can't dikote your sandwich. No, not the printer either. Want to dikote your face? Ok, that'd i'd allow, sure!

Dikote is made specifically for certain items. It said what items can and can't be dikoted. Which isn't everything.

I mean, i can understand the concern of the must-haves. But the problem is, how do you balance something to make it NOT a 'must-have?' Now, with the Enhanced Articulation, they fixed it so it only helped with certain tests. Still good? Yes! A must have? Not really.

Ex-Ex ammo. In it's old form, i'd consider it having been a must-have. Now? It's good, but people aren't crapping themselves over it anymore. Ex-Ex ammo is 1+/-1. But yet i see plenty a person not rushing out and stocking up on only ExEx(and Gel for those stun times). I see people pick up regular ammo, i see some fletchettes in there, and APDS is pretty hot, but I don't see people ALWAYS getting ExEx anymore. When it was 2/2, WOW everyone got it. But drop it to 1/1 and it really did go down in players NEEDING to have it.

Now, just an honest question: why do you think Dikote, which is more expensive and(hypothetically), gave a +1/-1 to a melee weapon, would turn into a total mustave, when we have ammo that does the same...and it's not the hottest thing on the market? Perhaps due to ammo's expendability and cost? Maybe people figure firing burst-fire or SA will make up for the fact their guns don't always need the +/-?

And trust me, im not trying to pick a fight or say my gameworld can beat up anyone elses gameworld; we have fun in it. I suppose this is due to our more fast, loose gaming style; we really only change something if it's getting in the way of fun. (And we havn't introduced Dikote in again, btw. We just havn't felt like it, that's the funny thing.)

Well, aside from the fact that dikoting a blunt weapon should have no effect at all (and really, how does one justify extra damage? In real life cutting weapons that rip and tear do damage, clean surgical cuts are far less traumatic...)

It is a mod with no downside other than a (one time) steepish cost. It makes everything (certainly melee weapons...) better.

By itself an expensive, ap only modifier might pass muster. Is it, or is it not, worth the expense. The problem now is that it's Dikote, not just some random mod. You've seen the gags, and the uses its' already gotten on dumpshock (some from real life games, like that stupid cardboard sign). While nothing is foolproof, we don't need to give the fools more ammo to keep shooing us with either.

In other word the name/concept has been horribly, irrevocably tainted by over a decade of misuse and outright abuse. Put it away, forget about it, and let the healing begin.

Oh, and since you're here, did you bring a shovel?

From graphite you came, to graphite you shall return. Requiem in terra pax, amen.







Now time for the NEW version: Buchykote! It's just like dikote, excet it doesn't require high heat to apply, nanites just bond it on for you, and it's totally like a jillion times stronger than dikote!!!11

Oh yeah, and they made too much of it, so it has an avail of --, and a negative cost, so you get paid to put it on stuff.

EDIT . . . . Like your dragon PC's skin and teeth and claws!!!!

Well, therein does lie a rub. I can tell you that during the planning of the book we felt dikote™ was more of an industrial process than a piece of chemical gear, hence the reason it wasn't included in the Chemistry chapter. Why it wasn't included in, say, the weapon mod chapter I can't say because I didn't write it. You'd really be amazed at what gets cut because of wordcount.

You mean someone...actually...

Can I Di...erm, never mind. Show me where to dig.

You've worked on a number of books then, ne?

Look, it's true that the material doesn't mention Dikote very often. But then again, it's not very forthcoming on the subject of tungsten or polytetrafluoroethylene, either. And both of those are used more often than Dikote would be. Shall we lobby for a Wolfram rating to be added to all equipment?

I say that if they do bring back dikote, that it should be retconned as to be f*** all expensive. That way you can still have it in the game, but it's unique enough that when you see it you know you're dealing with a Big Time Runner.

any chance of the cut material being maybe unofficially released some time? O.o
like that one PDF with the artillery mobile gun, the loks and the other little tinker-toys? ^^

I just tell myself dikote was so ridiculously overpowered a must-have item in SR3 that now everything comes already dikoted, in SR4. Every piece of armor, ever, is already layered in magical diamonds, but it balances out because every weapon, ever, has the same coating (so the extra armor penetration nullifies the extra armor value), etc, etc.

I think that was Eismann's decision back then, and his alone ... but yes, having cut material released as 'extra goodies' would surely also helo get Holostreets going. Should it ever, you know, so much as twitch.

i mean, the work is done . . it's just not being used . . why let it sit there and gather dust?
make it into one PDF(everything you never wanted to know about shadowrun) . . maybe even sell it online or something like that . . it would not have to be all shiney and expansive, just make a simple PDF file with everything in there . . as long as there are no gross errors in spelling, grammar, context and logic, people(yeah, me for example) will probably buy it anyway *g*

I think we should just shoot the whole idea of Holostreets right in the head, and publish stuff on the Catalyst website for free.

Well yeah, that would be the obvious chaoice ... and we should start by publishing SoLA.

Now, whom do we have to shoot? I guess it's the legwork phase, isn't it?

hmm, who get's to call the shots with the publishing stuff in catalyst?
who would he be replaced by, if something . . un fortune ate were to happen to him?

Well, maybe with the recent 'Regime Change', the new dictator can be made to see reason before it has to come to anything drastic.

else he'll probably be ancient history by the time we're done *snickers*

That would, of course, be brilliant. Best run always is the one without bloodshed and all.

if a run with a fight is a sin, i wanna be a synner ^^

Hey old timers. I've only played SR4. I could fallow the jist of this thread, but it got me wondering what the old mechanics of Dikote actually were. Could someone tell me what book I could find it in, or if you were feeling reall nice, just tell me?

in SR3 you had power niveau and damage level instead of DP and AP,
Dikote added on bladed weapons +1 Power niveau and +1 Damage Level . .
and on Armor/barriers it added +1 impact/ballistic or +1 Structure
and i think you find it in canon companion under chem tech or something like that

Yeah, back then, a sword, for example, did Str+2M damage. M was the damage code for Moderate. The first number was the number you had to roll against on the target number. You rolled your Body + Combat Pool. So, if someone with Strength 6(which was normal back then, you usually found higher), attacked with a sword, it was 8 M. Moderate meant you filled in a base 3 boxes of your damage meter, and you had 10 boxes.

So someone with 4 impact armor had to roll 4's or better to cancel out the hits of the attacker. Every 2 hits the attacker got over the defender, the damage was staged up 1 level, so sword guy with 4 net successes would do D damage, or deadly. Yeah, pretty nasty. Every 2 successes the defender got, the damage got staged down; for an M wound the defender would need 4 net successes to not take any damage.

Now, Dikoting that same sword, made it Str+3 S. Or Serious. Which meant SIX boxes were filled in on your damage meter. The guy with the dikoted sword only needed TWO net successes to stage it to Deadly.

This is why it was so sought after. And S weapons, like the Combat Axe and Polearms, became D. And if a weapon had a D damage code, things got very nasty; a defender would need EIGHT _net_successes to get rid of all the damage. That same guy with the 6 Strength and a Polearm with Dikote? Went from Str+3S to Str+4 D. Yeah, 10D to the face. It was very hard to live through this. And when you had human sams running around with a strength of 9, it got really ugly.

On top of that, if i recall, Dikote had a benefit against hardened armor. The weapon would revert to it's NORMAL damage code vs it. So you could attack a car with a dikoted weapon and it would be like attacking a person with a normal weapon. It was, indeed, very powerful.

Now again, i have nothing against Dikote; we had some fun with it in SR3, and one campaign it was a godsend(we were fighting big, nasty critters with hardened armor as the premise. Big game hunters, basically. We needed everything we could get.) It just perhaps needs a little toning down in this edition.

+1/-1 might make it a 'must-have', but as someone mentioned, maybe making it a flat -2 or -3 AP might work. It would be a nice bonus, and it wouldn't suck, but you don't _need_ it. If you have a large enough pool, called shots aren't that bad; the Sword guy(-1AP naturally) could call a shot to bypass armor and only lose a few dice to do it.

I admit-i think the reason why I think Dikote should stay is due to the ''they had it tons of years already...did they forget how to make it?'' It sorta makes sense in that way. Unless the world stopped producing Dikote or all recipes were along in the Crash, it either A. Should technically still be around or B. Something ELSE should have come along that was an actual improvement. But that's more a metagame look at it.