So I was going through my gm's folder, as you do, and found this. It will be in some sort of warehouse, if I can understand the shorthand properly.

What the HELL do you suggest I do? Lure it onto a freeway? Or Aztech property? Somehow I think a metaplanar quest would end badly for me, but right now, not even an initiate. I have no idea when it'll be sprung on us, it was just in the section labeled character sheets.

Sargatans, The Lord of the Abyss
B A R S C I L W EDG ESS M INIT IP
18 9 9 18 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 2
Movement: 35/50
Misc: Flesh Form, free, dead original summoner, former ally, formula pact, 30 feet tall, red, wings, sword,

Skills: Dodge 10, Assensing 10, Astral Combat 10, Dodge 10, Perception 10, Unarmed Combat 10, Flight 10, Blades 10, Exotic Ranged Weapon (Fire Breath) 10, Counterspelling 10, Assensing 10, Exotic Melee Weapon (Horns) 10, Spellcasting 10, Negotiation 10, Intimidation 10

Powers: Inhabitation, Natural Weapon (Claws: DV 17P), Natural Weapon (Horns: DV 10P, Reach -2), Armor 8/8, Banishing Resistance, Sense Link, Magician, Sapience, Realistic Form, Immunity to Normal Weapons, Fear, Magical Guard, Mimicry, Spirit Pact, Enhanced Senses (Thermographic Vision, Smell), Elemental Attack (Fire Breath), Energy Aura (Flaming Aura), Shadow Cloak, Aura Masking, Guard,

Spells:
Firepike
Fireball
Flamestrike
Energy Bolt
Agony
Shield
Physical Barrier
Mana Barrier
Shattershield
Detect Life

Native Metaplane: Metaplane of Terror
Gear: Blackened Iron Greatsword (STR/2+10)P, Reach 5

Edit: Oops, sorry. Left out two of the skills.

Put it in the shredder.

R 9, I 10, INIT 10?
ESS 10?

Fail.

Also, serves you right for going through your GM's stuff.

Incidentally, I think a tricked out assault rifle should be able to take that thing down. Get an Ares Alpha, soup it up with as many recoil mods as you can, load it up with explosive ammo, and full burst the baddy right in the mug while doing a called shot for +4 DV.

I'd say you should apologize to your GM and bow out of the campaign, preferably by stepping into a busy intersection. As a GM, this kind of blatant cheating is one of the few things I'd be genuinely upset with a player over.

I'd say "Serves him right for leaving it open on in my car", but I think in this case it serves me right, because I'm pissing myself in fear. And how pleasant, Whipstitch.

I think one of the trolls has an ares alpha. Hopefully he'll reveal enough hints that he can mod it to hell and back.

Edit: I didn't stare at the campaign notes, just the character sheets. Which included this, a johnson, several page numbers and a bunch of people labelled "standard corporate grunt." A little credit, otherwise there wouldn't be much point playing.

Get the Face to deal with it.

I don't worry too much about being pleasant. It's rather freeing.


Anyway, the critter you're facing is basically one step down from a dracoform in power level. I'd quit worrying about it, tuck the folder away, and assume that you're not intended to take this thing down via normal means, if at all. If an Astral Quest is likely to be involved, this simply could be the creature that demands a Sacrifice from you before you can enter the Metaplanes (after all, the thing certainly doesn't sound nice). Maybe you'll have to enlist another being to have a chance against it. There's no way to know for sure how the situation will go down without snooping further, and where's the fun in that? The only advice you're likely to get in terms of straight up killing it is probably going to be along the lines of a snarky comment like "Nuke 'em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure."

No, I really, really don't. And if I discovered a guy in my game doing it, he wouldn't be in my game anymore.

Stand on the stone bridge and declare, "Thou Shalt not pass!" You will be reincarnated with several initiations and can deal with it properly.

Peter

rifflign through gms stuff? violate the sacred geeky bond of gm and player?! nevers! honesty is the best policy. tell him the truth, honor among men. then make him change it from a warehouse to a barely legal strip club. then fun can be had by all.

Problem is, in this case, I am the face. And healer. And the group "Tie him to the troll as added armour, we need him alive. They'll try to geek the shaman first, so let's put him right up front." person. Although that has only happened once.



Ah. Maybe. See how that goes, then. Thus far, the campaign has become slightly more mystical each session, despite originating as a Los Angeles p2.0 campaign.

Ta for the help. And yes, to those who repeat it: It wasn't ethical, but read the other posts. I won't make excuses for it - I will say exactly what I did, and given where it was left there was a good chance he did it just to screw with me. Either way, that is it.

Sounds like your GM statted out Diablo from the game of the same name, and decided to make him the head guy in an appropriate metaplane. This isn't something you're meant to defeat easily, if at all. And certainly not before your team has some experience under their belt.

Honestly, it could also be something he did for fun that he has no intention of using. In my years of SR playing, myself and my brother both made dozens of characters that would never see the light of day. Hell, for fun he put together an Asgard-themed set of characters, simulating mortal versions of the gods of the Asgard pantheon. Yeah, he was weird. (Like I'm one to talk... I created every character from mortal kombat in my youth...

why did I just admit to that?)

I'd be royally ticked if one of my players was going through my notes. I don't know if he'd get kicked out of the game, but I'm fairly certain his character would step in front of a moving semi transporting razor blades and running into a large pane of glass. And then get shot with an assault cannon at point blank range.

That said, I agree with some of the others. This isn't something for the "hit it with a rock" strategy, unless you have access to Thor Shots. This will be a critter laying down the rules for the players to accomplish something. Negotiate until there is no other choice, 'cause otherwise you're demon chow. Think of it as a metaplanar Johnson.

Modifying campaign notes to be misleading is way more fun... jot down "knife fight at 8 pm", then proceed to deliver a vehicle-based assault at that time.

If you go up against this beast, start with drones (to take down the defending pool), then add heavy weapons fire from the samurai. Full auto is good.

Yeah, don't get me wrong; the hoary ol' saying "If it's statted, it can be killed," is generally true, but at this point, I just don't think you have enough information for us to go on. Now, if you had Mana Static, a holocaust cloak and a wheel barrel, that would be something.

I'd say either

1. Man up and say you saw it. This should be done after you've agreed to pick up the tab for the pizza.

2. Play dumb and let one of the other players figure out how to beat it, if you're even supposed to. Worse comes to worse have some fun and burn some edge.

The troll, the team sam, is the best equipped of all of us. His equipment is fairly pitiful.

I'm afraid I literally have no way of defending myself aside from my mighty "1" in unarmed, and "3" in ranged combat, the only offensive spell I know is stunbolt and the rest of my abilities are tied up in face skills and healing.

I'll just have to hope that it is, in fact, a johnson, or that we don't encounter it for a long long time. Of course, given the placement of the folder, it is entirely possible that he is just mucking with me. I'd have to look at the campaign notes to find out, and I really don't want to spoil the fun in case it is real.

Catalyst's ninjas will slice you if you don't do this. RPGs are *cooperative* games.

Wait. That's a lotta detail for memory, and copying would take a while...

Did you actually physically take your GM's folder and/or that sheet? Oh you're going down.

By the way another tick in the "man up" column. You can't delete this thread, and this is one of the most popular shadowrun forums. Which means there is always the chance your GM will find out.

And then there will be a reckoning.

I'll tell him when he calls up asking.

And I didn't decide "Hey, let's steal the thing and metagame my grubby little heart out!". Since he lives no more than five minutes run from me, it is easier for us to carpool to games. He left it sitting on my car seat, as I've said.

OK, let's assume you "man up" and apologize, and take whatever lumps come your way. And even then, you end up facing this thing in battle. And you seriously expect to beat it in a head-on fight. Personally, I'd say that it's time to start burning Edge left and right. Maybe you can trick your GM into believing that a critical success on an opposed test would be enough to one-shot the thing. If not, a couple of critical successes with a rocket launcher or other heavy weapon should do the trick.

Of course, it'd be smarter to not take this thing on in the open. You're better off running away, setting up an ambush, and hitting it with all you've got. Keep this up, and you might take it down.

First, in rough agreement with others, going through GM notes (while a player) is fucking retarded.

Now, if you are supposed to defeat this, I would do exactly what I normally do for dracoforms (of which I would place this roughly halfway between Dragon & Great Dragon). Capsul Round + Ringu, or heavy magical assault from surprise.

Catalyst's ninjas are back? Quick! I have to erase all traces of my house rules!

Anyway, as everyone has already told you, tell your GM you saw this and don't think about it too much. You're not even sure that he wants to use it in your game. And even if he does, the setting can change everything.

I think you should present it to your GM as a proposal for your next character.

My GM is a little strange: She leaves her notes open where the players can see...she keeps her attempts to break the system, dead PCs, NPCs she has discarded(including 5 or 6 Main Boss level villians) and notes for the Old Wold of Darkness MU* she is the Mage wiz on. Most of the time, all we see are quick statlines and health meters. Sometimes, we see really weird stuff, like a print out of Cooleridge's poem, Xanadu, or, my personal favourite, a few cryptic notes about ravens, storms, power outages, and shadows eating people....Yeah..Our GM practically expects us to go through her notes..and as such, well..they make no sense to anyone but her!

That said: Man..you need to own up, confess you saw it..but privately to the GM..and then ask "So..um..anything I can do to help you screw the other guys over when it comes time?"

This reminds me of what my GM recently did to us. He runs the game online through skype, so between game he'll chat with some of the players. Well, he made up a three person runner team and worked on it for awhile, constantly building it up. He'd get our advice on character optimization (we like to geek out) and then he'd laugh maniacally when he started relating a few tid bits here and there. Then when the eventual confrontation with the team was inevitable, it all turned out that they were actually going to try and help us and that they were being set up to be a resource for our team who is a little light on shadow contacts. Needless to say, it was priceless.

Yes, let him know you saw it. Let him know you are scared shitless. Do so after buying him food or a few beers. Then just say you'll be happy to forget you ever saw it. Then when he pulls it, react like your character would when he saw all that is unholy in the Astral. That's really the best policy.

Start making a new character - just in case either the talk with the GM, or the talk with the devil goes sour.

Also, learn the spell "Mana Static". Cast at high force, with edge, it may just make a violent encounter with the thing survivable. Or at least slow it down enough for you to run away while it eats the rest of your group.

Above all, remember that things that nasty are usually not intended for the group to fight. Or at least, not intended for the group to survive fighting...

Yeah, mana static. Force 12 if you can. It loses all its magical powers, and takes 12DV (resisted with body+any astral armor) per turn as long as its in the area of the static. Have the samurais unload after you drop the static, cause it won't have its immunity to normal weapons either.

I few things crossed my mind:

1) Not just rooting through your GM's stuff, but also presumably your friend's stuff? Is that kind of thing cool with you and your friends?

2) Those stats could be there only in case the group _forces_ a confrontation. ("You want to throw that goblet at the demilich... Are you sure? Are you _really_ sure? Reeeally really? OK, fine. <rattle, rattle> You die.")

3) Your GM could be screwing with you. By any chance was it only 2-3 pages down in the folder?

4) The GM could have made a PC-snuff encounter for the sheer hedonistic glee of it, never intending to run it.

When/If you meet it turn on the rest of your team and offer their souls to appease your newfound Diety.

[Edit] Sorry, bumbling with inserting link to another topic. I'll be back when I get to Skill level 1.

Peter

Its a Force 10 Free Spirit, not bad but not terribly good. A chargen mage can summon something more powerful. Taht being said, actually summoning up something more powerful is sufficiently dangerous and unrewarding that I would not recommend it. Since you've got to beat 20 points of ITNW, just buy a Great Dragon ATGM and a matching launcher.

I'm sure there is a thread around here somewhere about making a sniper with 200+ dice to hit with. Your team needs to hire that guy

End result was when the rules are actually followed, its about 34 dice, with possible bonuses left from a spell (max bonus up to force cast at) and a sprite (max bonus up to rating of sprite).

Following the rules as written, I can make a sniper with over 1,000 dice to attack, without using spells, spirits, sprites, or similar. This will not, of course, be a standard starting character, seeing as it requires an Initiate Grade of 2,000+ (Attune Item Metamagic).

I'm pretty sure I did the math for an initiate grade of 1,000 a while ago... and came out to a couple million karma. So you go ahead and do the number crunch on that. I really don't care.

3,613,000 Karma spent purely in Initiation, including Group & Ordeal discounts.

Right. That could be the reason why its conjurer is dead
If the runners really have to fight against this spirit, I'd bind some F9 spirits to fight against it. Some points of Edge will help to conjure and to resist drain. If you know Mana Static, use spirits of man with Innate Spell (Mana Static, of course). Analyze Device casted on your weapon focus may help, too.

Ah yes, F9. For a possible drain of up to 18P for summoning, and up to 36P to bind.

Are you looking to increase the number of high force free spirits roaming about?

I have four magic. I am the team's sole magical asset.

And it was open on the seat beside me, with the character sheet section open to there, and this poking out slightly, thus the paranoia. I haven't looked at the rest, as I've said, and won't be, since he has the sheet now. He just shrugged when I told him that I saw that godawful thing, and nothing more was said

if it is indeed, a spirit . . the only hard part will be the 10 edge . . everything else can be done with binding/banishing and burning edge on a critical success . . problem is, that this spirit has 10 edge, so he can play the game longer than any magician can . . if cou can get two magicians and one is expandable, the first one burns edge untill the spirits edge is lower than the other mages edge and then the other mage moves in for the kill . .
as for looking through GM Stuff . . if the GM lets his stuff lieing around in my house or car, i look through it to see if it is mine or not and if i happen to come upon such stats, hell yes i will look closer . . i won't nessecarely go through anything that has to do with the run itself, but those stats need to be looked at . . i don't really want much from my GM's, i only want them to make the NPC's adhere to exactly the same rules the PC's have to watch . . no, i don't really care,if that means that the highly important NPC can die. if he is that important, he should not get into a situation where a player character can just best him like that anyway. i like the idea of Harlekin for example, but i don't like that he is just unkillable . . a headshot should take care of characters like him as it would with any other metahuman . .

... fact that it returns every 20 dam days until you go to its home metaplane and kill it there (i think)

In my opinion, this monstrosity is just him fucking about with the rules, not something he has an intention to play. If players went through my GM folders they'd find Powerful AIs, an insane cyberzombie assassin with kid stealth legs, a german accent and the "lost loved one" quality, a genetweaked amnesiac Jason Bourne-esque bio-sam, a novarich teenager obsessed with shadowrunning, manipulating runners and spending her father's fortune on her hedonistic and dangerous games, a schizofrenic street warlock who grew up with gypsy magic and circus caravans who believes that his jealous and coveting totem (the seductress) needs him to kill women for her and sinister, manipulative mystic adept face mages (It's something i've been refining for some time). Funnily enough, the teenage girl is probably the most dangerous of all of those.

But the point is that several of those things I am not planning to introduce to any games yet, if at all. If my players found Creeper (the german cyberzombie with an insane vendetta), saw his dicepools, then they'd probably shit their pants. But Creeper was just an idea I had of a successful shadowrunner who walked the blade of the spur too far, then lost his only link to the real world and turned into a monster. Given that he throws inhuman amounts of dice at things (we're talking move-by wire, reflex recorders, muscle toner 4, suprathyroid, exceptional agility), especially stealth and fire-arms and close combat he could probably eviscerate that demi-lich, but that's not the point, get me?

However, if the GM is seriously planning to use it, he's off his nut.

First of all, its just a dice pool of 18. An average PC-mage should be able to handle that. It may be a bit risky, but it should work.

Example: My elven black magician has Charisma 9 (exceptional attribute) + Willpower 5 + Edge 5. That makes 19 dices plus "6 again". That would be ~8 hits, which is more than the average 6 of the spirit - and that is just a starting character.
If youre really so unlucky to get some damage: more than 8P would be very unusual - and even a mage with a Body rating of 1 can handle that. You may heal yourself afterwards.

You may instead invoke lesser spirits. 6 spirits with F6 should be able to defeat this F10 guy, too.
And you may send some watchers to help your spirits. They can attack with only 2 dices, but an extra attack is an extra attack. Then cast 4 mana bolts per turn (Increase Reflexes with a F5 Sustaining Focus) or Analyze Device on a potent weapon focus and bash the hell out of him/her/whatever.

OK, since I was reminded of the Banishing thread, try this: Banish the thing, burn Edge for a critical success, and bam! you've got a force 10 spirit bound to you, with 4 services remaining. Order it to go away and never return before the GM thinks to burn Edge right back at you.

Hence the use of the words "up to". And please note the edit - it's up to 18 just to summon the spirit, and up to 36 to bind it.


No you can't. Drain damage can't be healed by magical healing. It needs to wait on natural means (which by RAW admittedly includes the use of first aid, which I personally have house ruled against), so you're going to be spending some time with a nasty injury.


Invoked spirits are pretty nice, but aren't really that useful here. Sure the spirits get +1 reach and possibly an extra optional power, but nothing else that's really particularly useful here. Hell, if you've got six F6 spirits bound, that's going to put a crimp in this things day however they've been bound.


The watchers are probably going to be useless here, unless your spirits are reduced in number to less than four, in which case they'll only be useful for the friends in melee bonus.

The manabolts, on the other hand, are going to be resisted with twenty dice (possibly plus edge), so you may end up taking more damage than this thing with those. Not that this isn't one of the best ways of trying to take it down, but I'm still betting against you if the GM plays this thing right.

I'm afraid the point is moot, now.

He just called me and said he's taking it out, had found something much better. I could, however, hear the cartoon "Madeline" playing in the background, possibly leading to something just as horrific.

A "ferocious beast" perhaps?