OK guys I need your opinion here. This is the rundown on my Street Sam in a group of 3 mages and a technomancer. I am the only person in the group who has more than a skill rating of 2 in any sort of firearm.

REVOLUTION

Race: Orc

Bod: 8 (14)
Agi: 5 (7)
Rea: 5 (7)
Str: 3
Cha: 1
Int: 3
Log: 3
Wil: 4

Pistols: 7 (revolvers) (13) after gear ect with specialty
Heavy Weapons: 4 (Machine Guns) (10) after gear and Spec
Dodge: 4 (Ranged)
Shadowing: 4 (Tailing)
Infiltration: 4 (Urban)
Armorer: 4 (Firearms)
Perception: 4

Edge: 1 (only raised through in game, per GM)

Qualities:
Aptitude: Pistols
Martial Arts: 4 (+2 to called shots, aim is free action, -1 to vision mods in combat)
Code of honor
Common/severe allergy to soy

Cyberware:
Wired Reflexes 2 (alpha)
Ceramic Bone Lacing (used)
Dermal Plating 2 (used)
Datajack

Bioware:
Bone Density 4 (used)
Muscle Toner 2 (used)
Reflex Recorder x2 (Pistols, Heavy Weapons)

Armor:
Como Suit: With Stealth Polymer coating and gel packs
Form Fitting Body Suit: With Stealth Polymer Coating
Securetech PPP system
Balistic Shield
Helmet

Weapons:
Ruger Superwarhawk: x4
APDS ammo, Smartlink, Silencer, Simiauto mod, Increased Cylinder, Custom grip

Ingroam White Knight:
High Velocity, Extended Clip, Simiauto Mod, Custom Grip, Smartlink.

Various gear for B&E gear, nad all around shadowrun gear

That comes to modified rolls and stats of:

Pistol roll: 18 dice, after aiming and martial arts : Power: 10 Armor pierce: 6

Armor: Body+Armor worn and shield(shield does not have encumberance because it is carried not worn)
Ballistic: 40
Impact: 37


We have a manipulation specialist mage, a combat mage specialist mage, and a summoning specialist mage.
I just need an opinion on where to go now. I am fine with being the gun guy. But every fight is the same:
1. Mages find target
2. Area effect force 12 manaball
3 Force 10 combat spirit kills what is left

I might get to take a shot if I roll wellwhere as the mages all have 4 IP and initiatives about 3 or so higher that me.

Needless to say it fuels my Magehate.
I need ideas guys.

EDIT : Forget what I just wrote. No matter.

You don't have skillwires. This is a mistake.

You will be the only rounded character in the team, so when someone needs to paracute out of a plane into a pond and then scuba dive to the bottom to disarm the high explosives, that someone is going to be you and you better be able to deliver on whatever stupid premise the GM has come up with this week.

Skillwires are a key asset for this sort of thing, and ontop of that they are cheaper than actually paying for skills with buildpoints.

Force 10 spirits? How do your mages just randomly not explode when the spirit does well on the drain test?

Since you have APDS ammo this must not be a beginning character.

I guessing you have someway to use those smartgun links just not listed.

Also specialization does not add to skills merely adds additional dice. (+2)

I also do not see any things that gives this pc anything more than one action, so despite being a terror with a pistol, he goes after the foes that have lesser firearms skills. That could be a fatal decision. As you have already found out, since by the time you get to fire everything is dead, why not just take alot of first aide and be the medic for the first hitters.

You must have paid a "Fortune" for that APDS ammo with a char of 1 and no skills in negotiation.

Also that modded out White Knight the recoil will give you plenty of negative mods.

Also despite all that armor one "Called Shot" means it does not exist.

If you are going to sneak you need Thermal Damping, otherwise Thermographics you stand out.

Is the mage casting the force 12 manaball over casting that spell? Same question for the force 10 spirit?

Me I would recreate a character more inline with the rest of the party. Ie something with more actions per round.

WMS

I did forget to put in that he does have a datajack.

Where our mission is, we will not be seeing any shops, so skillwires are not going to be too much use.

BTW our GM has converted Bioshock into a SR game. I have not played it but I do know the basic idea behind it.

Lets take this one at a time:

Yes this is abegining character, the only reason I have the ammo is because I spent 20 grand on a weapons shop and have a gun store.

He has contact lenses that use the smartlinks I just did not want to type all the tons of miscelanious gear.

Wired reflexes 2 gives +2 iniative passes. not sure how someone ith your experience missed that.

Specialization adds dice same as a skil point does, I just listed the end dicepool.

To make a called shot someone would have to take a -20 someodd penalty to the shot to bypass my armor, good luck getting that to work.

Yes the mages are overcasting cause drain is a joke.

A force 12 manabolt has a huge drain of 4, to a properly built combat mage.

Good call on the thermo, I will install that.

How the hell do you get "used bone density treatment"? It's a treatment, for Cthulhu's sake! Or does he have a secondhand skeleton?

If there's a way to get 40 ballistic armor it's silly. Can you really stack PPP, form fitting, AND whatever the other thing is? Oh wait, you're adding body plus armor plus helmet plus shield. Okay, so you're sneaking around in a gazillion pounds of armor plus a ballistic shield? Get rid of the stealth polymer coating on the form-fitting armor and get some for the shield.

The Ruger Super Warhawk, being a revolver, cannot take a silencer (there are some revolvers that can be suppressed, but the RSW is explicitly not one of them).

Suggestions? I guess ditch the wired-2 and get wired-3. Also get reaction enhancers -- I know they don't stack with wired reflexes, but your GM probably doesn't know that, or doesn't care. Or combat drugs, that should work too.

Try to avoid any underwater stuff like the thing mentioned above, unless there's a way to climb up out of the water, because good luck swimming to the surface with bone density 4.

Activesofts are software; you can buy software online, wireless-like.

@WMS, he has wired reflexes 2. He has 3 IP.


It sounds like you and the mages are not playing the same game.

The mages have no subtlety astral beacon and explosives approach, are throwing down force 4 sustain foci (which you cannot get at character generation and are extremely expensive), can routinely bind force 10 spirits (routinely!!) and not die or suffer meaningful drain. Additionally, they are not moving through secure enviroments with wards and stuff. Those are some hardcore dudes, and this is not a tightly controlled environment.

You are wearing stealth armour and focusing on pistols made from tin cans. Wrong play.

You need to move your character into the same game the mages are. Scrap the pistols focus, and instead deliver with real body armour and firepower targeted towards situations with minimal security.

Get:

A custom tooled fully automatic grenade launcher and as many grenades as you can carry. Force 12 manaball? I spit on it.

Upgrade to the heaviest military armour and FFBA you can wear - unless you already at that point, then stick on where you are.

Ditch the pistols, get an APDS loaded fully custom tooled Barretta sniper rifle. This does enough damage to one shot anything, and you can do it twice an IP, all day.

Get a maxed out gymnastics score with synthcardium.

Get a monofilitment whip and the exotic weapon proficiency.

Lay down the firepower in all engagements.

While all those ideas seem good there is a small problem: We are all starting characers with 400 points. the only reason I have the APDS ammo is cause I own the store that sells it.

Yes you can get a silencer for a revolver, it is in Arsenal.

He specifically only uses the Revolvers for combat, the Whight Knight is simply for destroying doors and walls.

Not to sound pessimistic but as far as the whip is concerned there is NO reason to use melee weapons in this game, they will never match a good gun.

That and you only need a force 3 sustaind foci for 4 IP.

I do need to stealthcoat both armors because they are both visable in some way but I do need to coat the shield.

Doesn't the success chart for improved reflexes only give your second IP at 2 successes, and the third at 3 and the 4th at 4?

Anyway, you have a gunshop - start with the grenade launcher and use the same logic that lets you get APDS there. It works for the sniper rifle too.

You can't use a silencer with a revolver.

But more importantly, this is a metagaming issue, there should really be a restriction on how many mages on a team, also with all the min-maxing going on, it's no wonder that the mages are slaughtering everything. The biggest problem is not the fault of your character, which is min-maxed to the teeth, it's problem for the GM to sort out. He's running a disgustingly unbalanced game, and only he's going to be able to deal with it. So before RE-min-maxing your sam, have a sit down with your GM.

A few ways he could deal with this:
-Background count. If this game is really like Bioshock, there should be a pretty solid background count.
-An enemy mage with mana static should work to level the playing field, especially against those spirits although that's almost overkill.
-Smoke grenades might work. Although I'm willing to bet that your mages have tricked out vision enhancers, so only thermal smoke would cut it, and that's still a problem for you, although you can still have a decent chance to hit using full auto with your white knight. And the summoner mage can order a spirit to "kill everything within that cloud of smoke".
-Increasing the drain. If it's a joke, then it's not enough. Drain is supposed to be the bottleneck to stop magicians from getting the sort of instagib power. If it's not working, then your GM should do something about it. I'm assuming that these mages are using drain dampening bioware and cyber? Extra attribute points in Willpower? Your GM needs to houserule some restrictions on that shit.

This game looks incredibly boring, not only for you, but even for the insta-gibbing mages. Insta-murdering opponents in the first combat turn does not make for fun combat. By the sounds of it, you couldn't pay me to play this game.

It is just my incredable obsession with shadowrun that gets me to play. Normally I am the shadowrun GM but this game is one of my VERY FEW chances to play without GMing.

You are correct I missed the Wired Reflexes.

You have a gun shop and can begin the game with Avail >12+ gear?*shudders* won it in pregame?*shudders*

I agree about the bone treatment, second hand?

FA grenade launchers will need a gyro harness to tame the recoil.

You will still need something to tame the recoil mods for the White Knight.

As for by passing the armor with a "Called Shot" search the forums here for "Mr Lucky", and you can see how easy it can be done. In fact in this game just copy Mr Lucky's stats from here, with your group you will have some fun.

WMS

Yeah, the sustaining foci for those mages are a problem: you shouldn't be able to get through a ward with a sustaining focus active. Also if starting 400 BP characters are casting force 12 spells in every fight, something's wrong. Does the GM know that you can't heal Drain damage using magic? Because you can't. And the Drain for those spirits is crazy too.

The ammo was the only thing I was able to get that was more than 12 availability, other than to midify my pistols.

I own the shop as in paid for it in character creation (Actually I paid double for a really nice one)

As for the Bone Density augmentation I know it does not make sense but neither does removing bone density one in place but it can be done in the book.

I normally hate minmaxing but I had to just to keep up. I am the only sourse of any nonmagic damage in the group.

i'm pretty sure you can buy a grenade launcher for 12F. Buy & Mod that.

here ya go, something to make the mages weep

Mr Lucky

Even a FA modded GL will need a gyro harness to tame the recoil mods.

As for keeping up, you will find that you never seem to in that game.

If the mages never have to worry about costs of drain, any non mage will be behind.

WMS

I believe that per the FAQ, Bone Lacing and Bone Density are incompatible.

The way I read the rules, a shop is a fairly limited inventory of tools. According to the BBB, it is transportable, and can be set up in a large vehicle. I interpret it as something you can set up in an apartment, garage, or other type of hide out as well. In my interpretation, no shop, no matter how extensive it is, can be substituted for a facility, which I would rule is what you would need to open up an adequate and legitimate gun store. If you were trying to set up a gun store using only a "shop" as defined in the BBB, than I would rule that it is a fairly illegal operation, that doesn't have access to the restricted gear or equipment that a fully licensed facility would have. In addition, I noticed that your character doesn't have the SINner quality, or any type of counterfeit SIN or Fake license(s) for the gun shop. So unless you were a SINNer and had the proper paperwork, you would have to run this shop out of the Barrens. Any where else, technically speaking, Lone Star could shut you down. And if you were running a gun shop out of the Barrens, then you would run into a totally different set of problems.

I would actually allow this as it does not specifically have to be second hand as in a previous owner. It could be that the treatment itself is an older variant that is more invasive or the treatment drugs are a tad out of date.

Seconded.

I think "Shop" is short for "Workshop", although I would allow that as the equivalent to a hobbyist's garage/basement. Might still be good enough to make APDS, although as far as legality goes, APDS is forbidden anyway isn't it? So if you were making it for sale you'd pretty quickly get shut down.

I'm unsure why you need 4 revolvers, since you can only use one at a time, but that's pretty irrelevant.

I'm unsure why the mages are going before you. You're rolling 10 Initiative dice already! You would probably have more luck if you had a longer range weapon (then you could fire before the mages see the enemies). Subtlety surely isn't an issue considering your armour, and the mages with their hefty sustaining foci. Pick up a heavy sniper rifle, or a gauss rifle or something insane like that.

The problem is his GM either doesn't know the rules, or is just randomly handing huge powerups to mages.



Okay right, so his mages all have 4 IPs, at character generation, which means they have avaibility breaking sustaining foci, for a start.

Lets just focus on what we know about the combat mage so I can tell you why the GM is retarded, or the mage is cheating.

He can cast force 12 manaballs at chargen, which means he A) Has no cyberware and B) has magic 6

He can sustain force 4 Increased reflexes spells, implying he is not bound by availbility limits

He can consistently stage down the damage from force 12 manaballs. These inflict F/2+2 damage, so he can soak 8P damage with no cyberware pretty much every time (Ps, what the hell is this shit?)

Time for some detective work!



Bottom line is, the mage is cheating or your GM is a retard.

Lets just check out the retardedness on this guy

He has an availibility 24, 20 and 16 item ( or just has a 24 and a 16 and spends 325 BP instead of 305. You know)

He has spent 305 BP on being able to do nothing except shoot fully sweet manaballs with his mind. Which is pretty sweet I guess, but seriously 305 BP!?! He doesn;t even have equipment yet. And he has body 2, agi 1, reaction 1, str 3, chrisma 1, inution 1 and edge 1, and his only skill is spell casting. And he should be focus addicted up the wazoo

If you can come up with a better build than me to achieve the stated goals, go for it. The best one I can think of might be blowing edge on breaking the limits on the sustaining foci to get them back into availibility limits and hoping the GM never puts in a ward in his games. Ever.

So really any rational advice is not going to help Revolution here. I can only suggest writing down completely broken shite on your character sheet and hoping you can keep up with someone who isn't constrained by constructs like the rules.

Edit: Hang on, you say it has a drain of 4? Does that mean the guy takes 4 physical drain? Doesn't that like, kill him after 3 casts? This seems like madness

This game is a little crazy. I would rather just go by the book or play shadowrun missions but I am not the guy in charge this time around. I think this is what happens when I try to play with too many hardcore D&D minmaxers. I quit D&D because of rampant mage asskissery. It is not looking like shadowrun is far behind.

Imo mages in sr4 are quite overpowered (tho mageplayers see that differently ) especially if the gm doesn't use any sort of magic countermeasures. Also restricting luck to 1 at chargen is hitting mundanes hardest, so maybe try to convince your gm to allow you to buy it to 3 or 4 so you can actually use it to go first or do other nice things with it. Oh and get rid of that bone lacing, only the better bonuses from lacing/density increase count anyways. For that you could get a synthacardium 3 and maybe a skillwire, even if you don't have access to softs midgame it saves quite a lot of bp with just the 2 you can have stored in it already. Also emphasize on heavy weapons and use the revolver as backup. The rest of your team are minmaxed battleships and you cruise around in a sloop to say so.
Sadly in the end it will boil down to you having to talk to your gm about the mage issue because against 3 mages a single mundane will allways be shafted even if the mages are somewhat reasonable builds (which your comrades don't seem to have)

At least for the crazy version of SR your GM looks like he's running. I mean, if you toss out half the rules, what the hell.

Also you can "store" as many skillsofts (bought at chargen) as you like. Memory and bandwidth are too cheap to meter, so you can have all those skills stored on your dang iPod and backed up in some online account -- you can only run two at a time (or really, some number with a maximum total rating of twice your skillwires rating).

GM's too easy on the mages I guess... there are tons of magic combat resources you have to use as well as including magic in the game (it should go both ways, now shouldn't it?) I mean: enemy mages, mana static spells, spirits, wards, background count, intelligent spirits, FAB, astral threats, focus addiction, even CZ, why not?

After long playtesting, our gaming group(s) have agreed to increase the drain for direct damage spells (ie: stunball, manabolt, etc. by +1 -or +2?-) to make elemental damage spells more palatable and add some grit to magic. Also increased the drain of certain mental manipulation spells by +2 (control thoughts comes to mind)

I dunno, I love to play and I usually can't because I GM mostly, but it does not sound much fun, does it? Go for the skillwires and add some fun to the rest of the game.


Cheers!

Max

p.s. I have heard Bioshock has some good fluff, so maybe...

The problem is not the system, the problem is the different system your GM is playing with, which is not SR4.

Well this problem was solved last night anyway, our game is officially dead. It all just got to dull when every fight was just to see who got hte best initiative and threw the manaball first. Litterally every fight in the entire arc was the same, mage goes first, manaball everything died.