How much is a Metahuman worth? By Race, Gender, Age, Ethnicity?
(Currently working on a slaver's market / plotline for our Table group.)


Would a huge plot arc with the end result of aquiring a magical relic be overpowering to the group/game?


Can you become addicted to Magic?
(A masochist becomming addicted to the Agony spell, or a headonist to a Pleasure spell -reverse of Agony-.)


Can Someone help me design a side by side double barrel breech loaded sawed off shotgun?
( I don't have the CC )

If up were down, would left be right?


What is the maximum distance you can levitate something?


Are there any current day drug equivilents in SR?
(I can't seem to find any mention of them in any book)

Why can a troll Physad with a dikoted polearm weapon foci , close combat and a bunch of skill and armor take down a Dragon in straight physical combat?
(Was a proposed character from one of my buddies)


I'm sure I have more questiosn later but this is all I have right now.

I will use the history of north america colony slave trade as a reference.

The slaves were purchased "wholesale" from the evil ship owners that raided entire African villages. Only in this situation were slaves purchased at a set price. Men, women, and children were set at different prices.

Now after the ships sold their "cargo", the slave traders auctioned them off. <--- I feel horrible just talking about this.

Since they were auctioned-off, the prices were no longer set. Now they became individualized. The stronger and healthier the slave, usually the more money was bid for them.

So using this example, it really depends on the situation.

Trolls are crunchy. Probably best for hard labor.
Elfs are pretty. Probably best for Benraku Parlor.
Orks are beefy. Probably best for brutal labor.
Dwarfs are short. Probably best for air duct cleaning.
Humans are normal. Probably best for butlers.


Relic would be a inehaustable anchored foci Amulet that puts on Levitation force 5, Flame Aura force 5 and Armor force 5 When a little prayer is said. It'll have a nice curse in it of course. It attracts Imps like a beacon.

Thanks for the gun specs!.


Oh yes. Another random Question.

Can paracritters choose the targets that are affected by thier abilities?
Example security barghest in the middle of a room of security goons Runners barge in. Barghest howls. Does everyone get scared?

I wish I knew Drac-Fu.

I would like to state (in respone to the argument in the link) that it takes me more than 3 seconds (1 round) to bite right through a steak that is 1/20th my size, much less something with bones and stuff, like somebody's pet weasel. It would take me probably 12 seconds, minimum, to do the steaks, and probably 21, minimum, to do the weasel. That's 4 and 7 rounds. Granted, my teeth aren't as sharp as a dragons, but my jaw power is comparable for size. So, even cutting that in half, 2 to 4 rounds of bite attack seems reasonable to me.

The only thing that needs to be adressed now is SRs sense of size-to-weight. Trolls should weight a ton, easily, and dragons a significantly larger amount than they do.

I always figured that Dragons were mostly hollow, like a bird, they may have tough skin, but the inards are open.

hollow bones and all that too...

so I can see them being very light for there size/shape

-Mike R

I really don't think Trolls would get up to a full ton. I mean, a mid-sized car only weighs what, slightly over half a ton?

~J

A 7-meter crocodile can grab a 500kg cow and throw it around like a rag doll. It doesn't kill it very fast, but it once the jaws close, it's just about counting the seconds. Now take something 4 times as long, and at least ~20 times as massive, ie about 20 times the power in the jaws. Face it off with 20kg of ballistic polymers (the human or troll inside should be insignificant at that point). See who wins.

I admit that dragons certainly don't need to do more than Deadly. In some ways, just Serious might be enough. But the Power should be significantly higher, and the Body rating should be larger by a few orders of magnitude.

What is Dragon Strength again? All I remember is Western Great Dragons, which, being 50, provides a perfectly adequate Power for anything you should need up to and including some Naval-scale vessels.

~J

An average Western Dragon has a Strength of 40, Great has 50 like you said. But the Powers of their attacks are only 14 and 16, respectively. That's the problem.

It's like the old AD&D dragons that were the size of small buildings yet had really, really silly damage codes for their bite/claw/tail.

For frag's sake, if you're that big just step on the freaking troll.

-Siege

Meep, actually doing some research is showing a vast underestimation on my part. You're right, closer to a ton for relatively compact cars. Still, I really don't see a troll being anywhere near the weight of a car. Well, except a smartcar, but a troll could carry a pair of those just in case.

~J

I could see a troll getting close to a 1000Kg.
We should probably be looking at other large animals for perspective, such as horses and cows. A Big Draft horse (Belguin, Soviet heavy draft)can come close to a 1000kg, and I could see a Troll being as massive as that.

and I agree 1/4 would be more realistic than 1/10 for the dragon comment above.

-Mike R.

Just come up with a figure of how much you think the average troll would weigh if it was only 170cm tall. Then multiply that by 4.5. If the average troll weighed 1000kg, that'd mean it'd weigh over 220kg/almost 500lbs it it was 170cm tall. And that's just too much. You could justify something as high as 800kg if you think they look more like gorillas than humans (and gorillas can weigh 180kg at 170cm).

I would suggest not to try to make such comparisons at all, since there is no canon material on tissue density for either meta-race or exact body proportions (and no the most canon drawings usually do not portray average trolls, but rather imprssive ones)

Just some numbers that show what I mean:

An uprightstanding male polar bear can reach a height of up to 3 meters (2.5 meters being the average) with a weight of up to 750 kg (average 560 kg).

A male walrus' average length is about 3 meters and its average weight is about 1300 kg

A male gorilla reaches heights up to 2 meters (average being about 1,75 m) with weights up to 250 kg.

Humans of the same height usually do not weigh significally more than 130 kg (Sumo wrestlers and other sportsmen in "weight" disciplines being the exception)

Actually, a fair number of the raids were carried out by more powerful African tribes that stood to gain goods for other minor villages that weren't benefitting them in the least. In these cases the captains were just another middleman.

~J

Yes I know. It just irritates me when people twist history to their own ends.

Feuerschwinge sure benefitted a lot from that.
Yes, I know, he might not be dead, but he still didn't exactly come out of that encounter very well off.

~J

While it usually weren't the slave ship crewmen that actually went out there and made slaves out of free people (99% of the time the ship crews bought them from others, either white men working there or other tribes), I really do object to: "In these cases the captains were just another middleman." I am of the opinion that when something like slave trade goes on, being "just another middleman" isn't much of a defence. Like being a person someone hires to find and hire a hitman.

I was correcting a historical detail, not assigning weight of blame. Also, while it may be a fairly commonly-known detail, it is in my experience a rarely-remembered detail (akin to the fact that it's known that once a deck has been shuffled the order of the cards is fixed but people still think that by performing certain rituals they can increase the chance of a given card).

~J

Basically By the Troll Vs Dragon thing. Is they would be throwing down comperable amount of dice for attacking. Comperable Dice for soaking damage. Dragon would have some advantage of Armor, but the troll can do more than a 14 or 16 D damage. With close combat they would bypass that pesky reach thing.



BACK ON TOPIC!


I need estimated prices on metahumans!
Alive, dead, male, female, race, ethnicity.

Yes I sound like a bad guy. But My group has decided to take part of the slave trade (The evil bastards). They think they can get easy money, but I'm really bad at making up an entire trade market. Stuff in the book is easy, has prices and SI and availibilities.


Also can paracritters selectively choose the targets of thier abilities?

Also are fire elementals hot to the touch? Do they set off fire alarms? Do they show up on thermographic vision/cameras?

Is it possible to learn magical abilities from another tradition? AKA Hermetic mage spending a few months with a Hougan and learn how to create Zombii ?

Also On your debate with Troll's body size and all that. They actually have a very high 'Ape Index' I think it's called. Thier arm reach from fingertip to fingertip is longer then they are tall. It would also make them extremely good climbers considering thier great upper body strength. The only problem is comparitively thier arms/fingers arent strong enough to lift thier entire body weight.

Alive
Dead
male
female
Race (ork, dwarf, human, elf, troll, exotic)
Ethnic (varied)
Physical conditions (fit, attractive)

Where are they selling these poor, unfortuante souls? For what purpose(s)?

2. It depends on the ability -- some are area of effect, others have to be chosen. If the book doesn't mention it, use your own judgement. Unless, of course, you have a specific critter in mind for us to discuss.

3. Dunno.

4. I wouldn't think so, but I'm not entirely sure. A Hermetic couldn't learn to summon spirits, for example.

-Siege

I don't think paracritters can choose the targets of their power any more then a mage can target with his spells. If ht ecritter has a howl power then I would assume anyone who can hear it is effected, now if it had an innate spell power then it would have to follow the spell description.

I would say fire elementals are hot, set off alarms, burn things and can be seen on thermo.

As far as I know no, you have to stick to your tradition, though certain TT spell casters have the ability to mix Shamanism and Hermetism, and dragons can, but they are dragons, the elves are for non-PC's.

Only way i see a troll being a ton, is if he is loaded with the heaviest cyberware wossible, and caring a few hmg's.

Average troll srtength is what 7-8?

thated be a bit above the extreme human body builder. Now add in the dermal deposits.

I dont see that it would come anywhere near a ton man. I say like 500 pounds maybe, possibley more depending on body, height etc.

but it is a ficticios world. So you never know.

My 72 buick was about 2 tons, but thats old fasioned detroit rolling iron, not the tin cans they make today.

I'm going to take a stab at setting up some realistic figures for these slavery projects. I make lots of assumptions here so anybody thinkgs different numbers work, fine.

Laborer:

Skilled labor, well, that's expensive. Hiring a contact to do work tends to cost you 100Y an hour for gunsmithing according to CC page 79. Let's assume (for simplicities sake) that all skilled labor goes for the same rate. Anybody with B/R skills, Electronics, Biotech, etc. will thus be worth about that for his skills.

CC indicates 12 hours of work a day will cut into your ability to take care of your own body. A savvy slavedriver won't want that so let's say a slave works 10 hours a day. A slave for 1 day is worth 1000Y. A year of slavery is valued at 365,000Y (Hey, slaves don't get holidays).

The slave's total value will be based on how many years of service he gives. Offhand I'd say 5-10 years is probably a reasonable figure, putting a slaves value at a max of (To round things out) 3,500,000Y.

Next take off 70% of that for the black market conditions, illegality issues, and because the owner's going to want to make a profit off this highly illegal operations. Final Slave value: 1,050,000Y for a person with a high-level technical skill, or somebody easily trained for such a skill.

A hooker frankly won't be worth much. Any good pimp can pretty much control girls on the street without the kind of effort a slavery ring would take anyway. And VD will probably kill the girls pretty fast. Call it maybe 1/10 a technitian's value. 100,000Y tops, and that's for a special girl.

Actually the value of a hooker is much better than that. See, the lifespan of a hooker may be only about 10 years if you get her young, but toss in her retirement value if she is converted into a placenta factory, then you are cooking. (See Underworld Sourcebook for more details)

Immortal Elves were responsible for the slave trade!

~J

I'd like to point out that if your runners are working Seattle, Denver, or any other area in a Western nation, they are, in terms using small words they would be sure to understand, idiots for considering this. There is slavery in 2063, but there is not going to be any real slave market in a Western nation, and certainly no profitable trade. Slavery in the UCAS will be limited to very dark, underground stuff (prostitution, sweat shops, etc), and it will not be an open market, If they want to get involved in real slaving, they'll have to head to South East Asia, or somewhere similarly unpleasant.

Also, either your players are interesting roleplayers or terrible people.

And Joker, I think he was trying to say that blame rests equally on the shoulders of African tribes that sold their enemies, the slavers that bought them, and the plantation owners that used them, and no matter nice they were about and no matter how removed from the process the may have been, it is wrong, it is evil, and there is no amount of rationalization that can ever make such an act any less inhuman than it quite simply is.

Trolls are big. Basically, think Gorilla and you have a troll. Now, have bones growing all over it's body granting it dermal deposits. That's a Troll.

The lighter ones will weigh 200-300 kg, but the Bod 14 Str 12 troll cyber sammie will probably weigh 500+ Kg. Just remember that a Troll at their weakest are equal to professional body builders, the ones who are actually in shape and work at it will be frackin Huge.

I always like how people compare runners in full gear to unequipped dragons when they make their comparisons. Either give the Dragon it's gear or strip the runner of theirs, if you don't then it's an unfair comparison. So, next time you think your runner is so bad ass, think how well they would fair against a dragon, stripped of all their gear and standing in an empty field... or think how they would fair against the dragon's small army of security guards and other toys.

No, I would not allow Mages to learn from other traditions. Hermetics can't summon Spirits, Shamans can't summon Elementals, neither can summon Zombies or Thought Forms. In fact, mages of different traditions can't even tutor each other for the purpose of learning spells since their magic styles are so different

Fire Elementals when manifested would be hot and would burn things, just like how Water Elementals would get things wet, and Earth Elementals would track mud all over the carpet.

No, paracritters can chose who is affected by their abilities if their abilities are area affect. Mind you, this is why many security guards who work with barghests have sound dampners/filtration systems that allow them to phase ou the sound of their dog's paralyzing howls.

hope these random answes help.