Alright, we all know how in Shadowrun, Runners are hired for their skills and talent and stuff.

And some of the Sapient "Monsters" are very likely to get a position in the Runner community.

I know that the Runner's Companion is coming out eventually, but I would like to check out some of the Sapient critters other than the Big Five (Humans, Elves, etc.) and how

that they would fit in the Runner Community and as possible PCs.

P.S. I only have the BBB, so my knowledge is limited.

Ghouls can make fine Runners, provided that they keep their whole Ghoulness "in the closet" and only reveal their nature to said Runners and Mr. Johnsons that don't have a

"Ghouls must be destroyed!" mentality. And there are a lot of such people.

In short, Ghouls can work fine. Just don't have a "Ghoul Hunter" in the same group.

Merrows have to live in water, and most are uneducated about the so-called "modern society." Unless you have a game set in the ocean where you attack undersea research

labs, Merrow are limited in their usefulness.

Same can go for Nagas. They are considered by most to be dangerous animals, and most don't have an understanding of advanced technology and the wireless world. Plus,

most Lone Star cops are going to notice a Naga slithering about in the streets of Seattle.

Sasquatches are slightly better than the previous two, as they have somewhat been integrated into the entertainment industry, and are recognized as sapient species.

Unfortunately, their inability/unwillingness to speak in non-Sasquatch languages means that unless your group is a fan of pantomine or can wirelessly communicate with a

Linguasoft tailored to Sasquatch, their playability is limited.

Vampires are quite playable in most groups, and I'm sure that with the right Contacts, the Vampire can get all the blood that he needs.

Wendigos are crazy, and it is in their nature to eat the flesh of their so-called "allies." Their bad reputation pretty much prevents them from forming any contacts or alliances

with all but the most gullible / secure of people. Their ability that causes them to make their allies lose all subtlety and go into a blood frenzy hurts march more than it helps.

It is more than plausible that Spirits can work the shadows; they are infamous for forming allegiances with Magicians, and there presence usually doesn't attract unwanted

attention in the right places ("Oh, I'm just the servant of Joe Mage, sent on an errand").

And Dracoforms are quite possibly the least likely of all; not just due to their reputation, but there place in society is at the top, so most dragons are going to be "power behind

the throne" type, or sitting on said throne.

They are already at the top, so any incentive to accept deals from Mr. Johnson for crude nuyen is out of the picture.

i wonder if there will ever be . . those horse-people, i'll be damned if i can remember . . CENTAUR! Runners . .
then there's free spirits . . almost nothing a free spirit can not do . . well, he will be pathologically bad with most things virtual, but if he can possess or inhabit something usefull even that might be workable . .

No merrow or dragons or garuda, sorry.

http://wiki.dumpshock.com/index.php/Catego...tient_Creatures

Baba Yagas are solitary, lonesome creatures that are not known to the public at large, and tend to live in secluded wilderness glens instead of city streets. I don't know enough

about them to make an informed decision, other than "unlikely," if the wiki is accurate.

Bandersnatches make great hunters and spies, and they face all the same restrictions as Sasquatches, but with HMHVV.

Bean Sidhes attack all metahumans on sight, and only show up in Scotland and Tir na nOg to certain families. I can safely say that they'll never run the shadows with any efficiency.

Centaurs have plenty of incentive to run the shadows, especially in the Czech Republic. Not only do they not have crazy desires to make others suffer (Wendigos, etc.), but they

are pretty much capable of traversing into any sort of terrain, and don't have a particularly bad reputation, so a Centaur that appears as a "good, law-abiding citizen" is plausible.

Shapeshifters are the most likely of all in the wiki to run the shadows, and for obvious reasons; they can learn metahuman customs, pass off as metahumans, and can

shapeshift into an animal to access unique features not possessed by metahumanity.

imagine a cybered centaur . . he just needs the shell of an elf on his back and some internal speakers that allow him to blare the saber rider theme *g*
Kid-Stealth-Legs, Skimmer-Disc-Feet, Weapon-Mounts . . hell yes o.O
the robotic horses of that one episode of Saber Rider *g*
or the horses of the star-sherrifs . . or if you allow modularity in that grade thirty-thirty *snickers*
what about those 4-armed freaks from india? o.O
are they critters or another meta-variant?

I'm still a disappointed by that "joke." I actually wanted to see it happen. Because with only 400BP they were surprisingly limited characters. Which was, well, kinda neat.

I'm even more disappointed that I never saw anyone finish fleshing out the joke PDF into a playable set of house rules. Maybe some day I'll get the time to sit down with DOTSW and put pencil to paper.

-paws

What's a Garuda? Can't find it in the wiki.

yeah, obsidimen!

They're Meta-humans who surged while swimming in Ganges during the year of comet.

WE WANT RULES!
*nudges Aunty Ancient*

Harpy metavariant based on the Hindu Garuda bird. Shadows of Asia

harpy?
meaning meta(human) with wings? o.O
we want rules for that too!
and if it is only to shoot at them *g*

No, a harpy is like a giant bat-creature that rolls around in garbage and then tries to have sex with you.

Oreius, a professional shadowrunner and notorious renegade centaur who goes by the decidedly unimaginative streetname of Centaurman, stands before his archnemesis in a long sloping corridor. "I have you now, Barron Slecht!" he gloats as he draws his lance. "There is no escape".

But the Barron has other plans, oh yes indeed. With a maniacal laugh he presses the large red button on the wall-mounted control panel. Gears grind and engines growl as the machinery beneath the walkway begins its devious dance. " It took me years of painstaking research and cost the lives of several of my best minions, Centaurman, but I have finally discovered your one weakness. Mwahahahaha!" The smug barren exposits as the complex system of clockworks and hydraulics does its work, raising portions of the walkway to different heights, turning what was once a smooth ramp into an absurdly steep stairway. "Nothing can stop me now!"

The centaur gazes upon this diabolical defense masterminded by his greatest enemy and despairs. It is, indeed, his one on only weakness. Tears well in his eyes and his frustrated scream of "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" reverberates throughout the facility.

I disagree. Ghouls are almost always going to be less than ideal. Their biorejection flaw means they can't be anything but adepts or mages, and the hit to their essence means they'll be sub par at that too. It is very difficult to hide their nature, and not only do they have to fight against the extremism of 'ghouls must be destroyed', but the simple fact that they're seen like coyotes in the city; dangerous predators who are legal to kill and get you a bounty. Most reasonable people with a gun will shoot a ghoul on sight in most cities. With some intensive measures, he can hide the physical signs, but the astral signature can only be hidden with masking, which means initiation (again, restricting them to adepts or mages). The fact that they're dual-natured and therefore always vulnerable to astral attacks and will struggle with wards are another major strike against them, but not a deal-breaker. I had a ghoul in one of my groups. Didn't last too long. An astral-combat specialist or spell-slinger could do okay, though.



Sasquatches and the Dzo-no-qua don't work great for corporate espionage because they're so obvious. However, for other purposes, yeah, they could work.



Whether you allow for HMHVV infected is a GM decision. The rules say you can't, but I think that's mostly for balance. If you could get a sane vampire, yes, they would be fantastic runners, and tremendously dangerous.



Yeah, free spirits work well, too well for game balance purposes. Same with dragons.

Shifters work. They're limited because they're dual-natured, like ghouls, and because of bio-rejection again. I've seen them both very successful as both adepts and mages, however.

Blackberry cats seem to be intelligent enough to be, at minimum, a major asset for a runner team, if it could be induced to tag along.

I'm curious, are there any sentient races which can accept cyber? That's the big problem for me. Almost no non-major races can accept cyber without very serious penalties.

Yes, that way we can have dragonborns and half-elves and maybe more hit points and, instead of crappy social skills, kewl powers! Yes, keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewl powers!

difference to gangers of your favourite race to hate being what? *g*


that's what cyber/bio is there for . . or maybe have him be a horsey shaman with movement power *snickers* or gecko walk spell . . or an adept with jump or wall running . . or simple levitate . . and why the hell should i move my 4 legs over that terrain anyway? *extends retractable shotgun from back of torso and shoots him*
4 kid-stealth legs with grip-feet with retractable climbing claws and gecko apliance would mean that he can basically just walk up a straight wall O.o

Talking about this ?

Bolded parts are my responses.

Well for one: They are damn powerful. Vampires get lots of goodies and in case they have magic abilities working around their few flaws is pretty easy. Spirits are also pretty damn strong, once past a certain force.

So most of the resent against those two is 'game balance'. Which isn't as much of a problem as it is usually made to look like if you ask me.

But I am pretty sure, in case we get rules for Spirits as PCs in the Runners Companion, they will be severely mutilated and not look like the Free Spirits we know from Street Magic.

no, things with more limbs than a centaur, dragon or harpy/gargoyle will be ground into a chunky paste by very large things landing upon them <.<. . .
and you realize that those things have propper names?
they are called driders
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drider


probably that they would be way imba

Even with gecko feet he's still screwed by extremely uneven terrain. It doesn't take much of a genius to design walls and ceilings as uneven three-dimensional checkerboards such that it would be difficult and dangerous for an equine to attempt to move across them using a wall running technique.

More importantly, however, the probability of any stairwell having enough horizontal clearance for a centaur to walk up the wall is so low as to be dismissed outright. What kind of architect looks at his blueprints and says "I better make the stairwells wider so that centaurs can walk on the walls".

And you can forget elevators, too. Have you ever tried to fit a full-sized horse into a standard sized passenger elevator? If you're lucky, it won't fit at all. If you're unlucky he will fit but his weight will exceed the maximum load and cause the cables to snap. Somewhere between those two extremes is getting stuck. Freight elevators may work as they tend to be larger and can carry heavier loads. Car elevators certainly will; but what are the chances of running into one of those on any given Shadowrun?

The unfortunate fact is that the modern world simply isn't proportioned for sentient horses with human torsos sticking up where their heads should be.

You do realise that in many places elevators will be build to handle a couple of trolls so centaurs shouldn't have too mutch problems.

well, there ARE trolls . . size and weight is more or less in the same category . .
but yes, getting up and down in buildings would be sucky for them . . wall-running up on the outside would be the only alternative for anyone not magical . .
and no, nobody is going to make a floor that is impossible to walk for equines, just because it is a frigging pain in the ass for EVERYONE to walk that floor . .
and then it's just better to have a floor where an equine can safely traverse for those occurences in the single digit percentage probability of it happening than to have a floor where the 100% probability of someon with only 2 legs will have problems walking through the building will occour . . i can see the law-suits over people falling on those grounds or those grounds not being barrier-free so people in wheel-chairs can't work there too . .

While I have no doubt that there are some fly big-but troll chicas out there, I don't think that any of them have butts as long as a horse.

An interesting way to run a vampire is to get some-one to roll a 200-300 bp character, mundane - and then infect it pre-creation. Then you have a low-skilled, mundane (probably with latent awakening) vampire to play with.

It means that the vampire has to gain influence and skills in secret, because even with the boosted phyical attributes, they can still be wiped out by a focused effort.

You could even run that as a team game. Some normal, SINner citizens from various professions go out drinking one night, and then end up vampires, and have to carve themselves a niche in the night.

I love this forum. Always something new to learn. Where can I get info on the Ganges SURGEd? Wake of the Comet?

I would have loved to see those dragon PC rules fleshed out. Anyone doing a full write up has my full support

Mine as well. Hell, I'll even run a game weekly via OpenRPG featuring a dragon in a group of regular runners to provide a proper acid test.

I'm thinking next time a player asks me to generate a character for him, I'll make it a drop bear.

There was a nice 4th conversion for all the metavariants from 3rd not too long ago. I believe it was also posted alongside an interesting set of surged rules. By combining all of those options you could make all kinds of balanced monster runners.

They're only Driders if they're made out of Drow. There are, no doubt, other sorts of spidaurs, too.

Shadows of Asia Indian sub-continent chapter.
Year of the Comet is otherwise the book where you can find info and rules for SURGE.

Where is it, if you know?

Here: Shadowrun Companion

Awesome! Thanks!

I think the biggest problem with a monstrous shadowrunner would be the lack of anonymity involved in being a monstrous shadowrunner. So much effort would have to go into disguising the fact that you have a Yeti on your team... otherwise you become "The Team with the Yeti" and as soon as someone comes asking questions, everyone will know who you are and where you like to hang out. Bad Juju all around. Probably better to stick with anonymous metatypes than go looking for exotic, recognizable its.

I would like to see the stats for a Sasquatch for SR4. For the interesting role play of a creature with out the ability to make its own words but can mimic pretty much any sound it can hear.

Hmm Sasquatch Musical Adept or a Sasquatch Mystic Adept......Sasquatch Porno adept.

WMS

Yes. The horse didn't like it.

Perhaps a better question would be, have you ever tried to get a horse in a sports car? Because if your team wants to have a fast get-away scene, having to haul around a horse-trailer behind a pickup just... oh, ruins the mood. You know what I mean? That is, unless of course the Centaur becomes your getaway vehicle...

Hey, equip the horse trailer with a Vindicator on a pintle mount, and he'll be pretty happy.

I really need to get my website back up :/

I have/had 2nd/3rd ed rules for playing Windlings/Sprites, Vampires, Sasquatch, Wendigo, pre-Companion Ghouls, and Centaurs (Complete with a pile of varient cetaurs based on different breeds of horse that an old DS poster created).

Bull

Yes, but it wasn't because we didn't have a horse trailer.
It was just that I don't drive and the horse and I were alone there and didn't want to wait for someone to pick us up. It was a convertable so we just let the seat down and he used one front hoof for the wheel and the other for the pedals.

In the words of Snuffy Smith "Time ah wasting", what can we do to assist you in this project?

WMS

Eh, I just need to catch NeuronBasher when he has some free time so he can get my Dumpshock site reactivated.

Then *I* need to find the free time to convert the rules to 4th ed (Shouldn't be too hard)

Famous last words.....

WMS

I have to wonder what city you're from that the horse is a better driver than you are. I know you're not from DeeCee... NYC?

only qualms i would have with a centaur:"heeree comes Mr. Ed!"
Specially after the horse driving with his front hoofs O.o

I didn't say that the horse was a better driver than me. The horse was, in fact, a craptastic driver. It didn't even know what the turn signal was for. I said that I don't drive. It's a style choice. You know how MacGyver, Michael Knight, Remo Williams, and John Steed don't use guns? Well, I don't drive.

Being the team with the Yeti does have a huge advantage as a high public awareness will mean that you'll be in high demand and can, in turn, demand a high price.

Yeah and D&D designers didnt have the same linguistic decency as ancienct greece
Drider: Dr(ow)(spi)der just utterly terrible..
Centaur on the other side stems from the greek word Kéntauroi however im not quite sure of its translation i would guess that Kén implies the horse side of the hybrid while Tauroi comes from Thropos or something similiar, Man that is.. so using the classic greek word for the spider family tree, arachnids or arachne as it is originally we would end up with Arachnetauroi or more simply put, Arachtaurs

So, why is it when the Greeks take their word for horse and their word for people and smash them together it's linguistic decency, but when a modern person takes their word for spider and their word for Drow it's terrible? "Kentauroi" (to a speaker of ancient Greek) is no less corny and terrible than"Drider" is (to a modern English speaker) Centaur just seems "classy" to the modern English speaker because they don't know the ancient greek etymology to see that it's really just the equivalent of calling it a Horson, or a Humorse, or some other equally awful portmanteau.

Humorse . . that's golden ^^