So basically, I know it's all about the NuYen in Shadowrun, but is there a list or a place where people have unique items that runners could find?

You could always equip your unfriendly mages with foci. I'm sure your adepts and mages would be glad to have them.

There's always the sellable stuff (a crate of BTL maybe?)

Our GM recently let us make off with some prototype cyberware (basic arms, legs, torso, and skull each with a set bonus*, and because they were the base with mods to be made later they're easy to get stuff to fit into them--or something like that--sell price of only about 50,000 but our cybersam decided to replace all his cyber with the new stuff).

*The only one I recall is that the torso was magnetic: the back attracted metal (something for the intended purpose of attaching oneself to a surface) and the front repelled metal (such as bullets).

Lead isn't ferrous. [/nitpick] Cool idea though.

I didn't feel like ruining the coolness of the item with realism.

Really old melee weapons + Inhabited Spirits = Ancient, intelligent enchanted blades.

For instance:
Katana with f4 Fire Elemental inhabiting it. Burning Regret or some name like that. It ends up getting +4 DV and all dmg is fire dmg.

Enjoy.

Or technological object inhabited by Machine Sprites. The streetsamurai in the game I GM has one of these (at least that's what it looks like) in her new cyberarm. After a few days with her arm sometimes grabbing objects on its own and playing with them (it likes juggling) she started receiving messages from her arm asking for sensors...

Digital Grimoire involves the rules for unique fo ci - the example one is a neat weapon focus even usable by the mundane. A set bonus sounds lovely - it even makes sense, given that the various bits and pieces could interface together. Kinda.

Ancient History's page on artifacts is a good place to get some ideas.

On the non-magical side of things, epic loot could be some extremely hard to get gear, like a gauss rifle, milspec commlink (rating 7+), or t-bird. For truly epic loot, modify the items with some upgrades. Heck, over-mod them to your heart's content.

"So let me get this straight. This is a Warhawk with 8 shots, burst fire, custom grips, melee hardening, smartlink, ammo skip, voice recognition, bayonet mount, the 'Mad Betty' anthro-cowgirl persona, and fully ceramic components. Right?"

"Yep."

"Who the frag made this thing!?"


-paws

XD

Epic loot? As in loot that is just so beyond awesome it is epic?

- Ancient samuri swords can go for hundreds of thousands of dollars in the market today.
- Enchanting materials (like an ounce of orichalcum would be worth crazy insane.)
- Old art or antiques like the Mona Lisa.
- Three years out of date archives of a AAA corp (maybe all of the delta grade items now only count as beta.)
- A dragon corpse.
- Experimental weapons or items (like an experimental smartlink that grants +3 or +4 to shooting but costs 5k to make.)
- The key to a buried magical city and a broken compass that could show you the way if it could only be repaired.
- An item that can transport an entire party to any spirit meta plane.
- Ancient summoning guides or other various items that grant dice bonuses to various actions the party would like to do.
- Free spirit/ally spirit formulas.
- An abandoned off the books factory that the team stumbles upon that has not been looted.
- A flying sky castle or fortress that is held up by bound air spirits concealing and keeping the ship up in the air (might be a reason why it is deserted though and the air spirits could only have a few more weeks keeping it afloat.) Maybe the party ends up finding its flight path manifest.
- An orbital abandoned sat network or space station (functional or non-functional,) or maybe the operational codes to access Ares or Renraku's defensive orbital network.
- A briefcase nuke.
- A small antique clock that every hour it casts a different area of effect spell at extremely high force sometimes beneficial, sometimes not and maintains it until the clock chimes a new hour.
- Animals that have been augmented to basically be large walking bio-bombs, but can pass through checkpoints undetected. Some might release a cloud of infected HMVV blood mist, or some kind of flesh eating virus that was only contained within the animals blood stream.
- Goggles that let mundanes actively see on the astral.

Quite a few of them will be awesome, but almost impossible to fence although they can still be quite epic.

I'm really against epic loot because, as you pointed out, it is about the . Any prototype weapon/armour/magic item will have a corresponding tracking device on it (either technological, magic, or both). I'm all for SR stealing a prototype to give it to a Mr. J, but I would never let them keep the device. They get their , which they can use to buy better gear.

Epic loot can be really fun for the players. And as stated, foci or some ancient quasi-magical artifact for the magicians/adepts in the group can be easy, but for the rest of them, I'd say come up with something special that you can't find in the books. Even if it was just the plans for a piece of cyberware that provides a bigger numerical bonus than the base item listed in the rules, it'd be cool. Just something to give the players a unique bonus that they won't find elsewhere will give the players something to be proud of more than just a big nuyen haul. And hey, it could serve to be some sort of a plot hook for a later run if the GM wants too.

Personally, I'm all for Epic Loot. However, each piece should be the focus of its own story or story arc. It really shouldn't just fall into the PC's hands, they should be gunning for it on their own. If you do have it fall in their hands, then it's likely that someone else is gunning for it. Unless you have a really cool idea with really cool plot like, "I've come up with this Spellcasting Foci that can add [Insert Elemental Effect Here] to any applicable spell and I want to give it to the team's mage, but Ninjas..." then it should be the Team coming to you saying that they have an idea and are pursuing it.

A drop bear hat.

Otherwise, just whip up some nova-hot gear. I've given my runners cyberware not in the books (or in old books, like the old SR2 tactical computer), computer programs not in the books, etc. Especially worthwhile if you actually enforce the SOTA curve.

Does the hat protect you from drop bears, or is it made from the hide of a drop bear? Because frankly, either one would be wicked cool.

Yeah. Epic stuff shouldn't be about pushed up numbers, but specials. Like a widget for a Technomancer which enables him to see backdoors in firewalls without a roll.
Something along those lines.

Wow is that broken.

I've learned the hard way in the past that you shouldn't give runners epic gear as it always gets abused. It is just so much better to give the runners more and let them have the fun of finally getting that one piece of kit they always wanted.

My GM had a very nice saying and that was "The item you are trying to sell only costs as much as it costs for someone to kill you and take it away." Sometimes having something that is worth millions and millions of in your possession is not always a good thing. Even if you try to fence it for the price it is worth people will come after you. The more it is worth the more pain you can expect.

I've pulled all sorts of stuff out of CP2020 books. The Chrome Books, Blackhand's weapons and Maximum Metal all give some good ideas for epic loot.

Like the Magnum Opis Hellbringer .666 Magnum, a three shot revolver firing what is basicly a Holland and Holland magnum elephant round. Damage is something around 8P/-3, but it kicks so hard that the player has to soak 4S damage with STR+BODY. CP2020 wise, it takes a 15 Body (so ~9 STR in SR4) to fire without the kick hurting you. Fluff wise, the thing blows great big honking holes through reinforced concreate, especially with AP or HE rounds. (There is also the Hellbringer ADV [.88 magnum single shot] and the Big Government [.55 magnum, semi-auto, 12 round mag] for some other options)

Or the M-31, which would be a prototype assault rifle. It uses binary propellent, so finding reloads might be a problem. It is a compact bullpup design, with a 150(!!!) round magazine of 4.4mm rounds over a 10 shot multi-gun (fires 10g shotgun, 20mm grenades), has pretty tweaked out electronics (basicly give it Smartgun and all the Smartgun upgrades), and the ability to adjust the shot charge between "Low/Target", "Standard" and "+Power". If you want the book keeping, a full fuel load is 500 points, with the settings using 1, 2 and 5 per shot. It would also have ~2 points of by design RC. [Pretty much an advanced Ares Alpha that makes the Ares Alpha look crappy.]

It is a little work converting things over, but they got some really crazy stuff to choose from that is just kinda out there. Nothing totally insane or game breaking though, just rather unique weapons and ware. I have also used ACPA in SR3, need to redo the rules for SR4. Nothing like having a few guys in eight foot tall combat robot armor chasing your PCs through the barrans blowing the crap out of everything.

Magnum Opus "Hellbringer" .666 Magnum Revolver has been my favorite fictional gun for a long time, thanks for a conversion to SR4 it's uses the pistol skill right.

Other borg guns from Solo of Fortune 2 might also make for some pretty epic loot, like the Tsunami Arms Helix: a hex-barreled gatling shotgun

No, it's actually just a drop bear that goes on your head. In retrospect, not one of the most rewarding pieces of equipment to give to a successful PC.


Yeah, CP gear is also tres cool. I did some CP conversions I might bring out, now that you mention it... Sounds like a good way to test it.

And your point is? It's epic. It is meant to be balanced on an epic scale, not on your petty day-to-day buisness.

No. It's the functional equivalent of a single shot handgun that does 30P / -10 AP damage, which no GM in their right mind would ever give to a player.

"Here, aim this at a target, pull the trigger, the target will just die."

Thank you. I couldn't put it better myself.

Tank'y tank'y. Just remember that the "Hellbringer" doesn't come with any electronics at all so you want to at least add a laser sight or something. With only 3 shots you gotta make them count. And yes, Pistol skill.

As for the Tsunami Arms Helix, how I loved that thing. Rotary 10g shotgun FTMFW. Can't remember the name at the moment, but there is that big nasty full auto 4g shotgun in the Borg weapons section as well.

Usualy epic loot, intended as exceptionaly good gear, just feels like D&D and breakes the mood.
However sometimes some peculiar item can be trown to the players, I remember once that the GM trown to a mage of mine a comlink (custom response 3, signal 3, system 3, firewall 3) after trashing his previous comlink (custom response 4, signal 3, system 4, firewall 6), I wasn't all that happy until I noticed that my dice pools were bigger than expected, after indagating I discovered that most of the data I had put in it were gone, yet somehow they poped out of nowhere when I used the file system search rutine (and only if my character was using mental commands trought DNI), that the link's clock was much higher than it was supposed to be (around the hacker's comlink's level), that the system didn't use the programs present into the link's memory when executing rutine operations, and that the link had downloaded about 1720 hours of pornografic simsense in the first 18 hours from when I got it. When the hacker attempted to hack it to see what was going on the system fought back, and so it was discovered that the 'link's system had evolved into an AI; I teel you mechanicaly speaking the team had a somewhat untrustworthy extra hacker that acted as an IC on the team's comunication network (when dreck did hit the fan the AI was to be trusted thought), but the best parts were the AI's quirks, ever thought how would be waking up and discovering that the system interface was styled so it looked as a toilet, and when it accepted commands the flush was used as a conferm?
Another time we found ourselves with a spirit possessed dildo following us around, it was utterly useless but seeing the thing jumping toward the buts of the opposition was entertaining.
Or one of the best epic things found around had been a few sets of true cotton underwear, nothing we could make money on but cotton felt much better on the skin than sintetic fibers.

@AllTheNothing

I like those ideas. They add humour to a game session without breaking the game.

Nothing protects against the drop bear.

Try to not have a bath for long enough and eventualy your smell will cause them to drop long before you're below them; does it count as protection?

Even better give them a briefcase nuke they just can't seem to get rid of. And they can't seem to figure out how to disarm, nor what sets it off.

Have it be Inhabited by a spirit for additional hilarity.

On second thought, the players might not consider that a 'gift'.

But do it anyway.




-karma