How is using a rented aeroplane to fly into SEOUL of all places a gift?
especially if you are going to have to pay for any damages that happen to the plane.
and if you DON'T damage it too badly, you have to give it back . .
"So you can play with my toy for a bit and i want it back by next week.
and you are probably never gonna fly something like this again.
deal with it sucker, i own a plane and you do not "
And SEOUL?
I/my characters probably would not even go there unless paid obscene ammounts of money for simply loading up on weapons and food/medicals and bunkering up in a safe location . .

I'm with Chrysalis.

Talk to your GM about it. You're making a Pilot, you want to fly planes, but you can't get one at chargen.

As a GM I would figure out ways to make it work. It would be fun. Why wouldn't a Johnson hire a Pilot for a job or job needing one? If your PC is a pilot, then certainly a it makes sense for a Johnson to hire the PC to fly things? There are far more planes available then there are crazy criminally inclined pilots willing to fly into dangerous isolated territories for all sorts of strange reasons. Corp Covert drug research labs needs more supplies flown in all of a sudden. Of course they'll provide a plane to fly supplies in, but need a pilot that's not a corp employee to fly it in because of the special nature of some of the cargo. And the rest of the team is along to help protect the goods.

There are all sorts of fun and amazing scenarios that can revolve around needing a pilot, plane will be provided.

You do not need to own a plane to be a pilot.

Oh and Stahseele... just think Insurance Fraud. Nothing better for your claims then known criminals stealing your plane and trashing it.

Yes, I did run a campaign where the runners ended up in possession of a nuclear attack sub... and played in one where we offered a main battle tank... it can happen.

Squirrel Suits are awesome, but don't they just go "down"?

I'd like to see them statted...

It's the same pleasure some people get when renting out a Bugatti Veyron or a Rolls Royce. You don't have to worry about all the details just the driving - or in this case the piloting.

And sideways. I was thinking about the escape in Tomb Raider II.

Jump off a big enough building you can be miles away by the time you hit the ground.

I gotta wonder... Would you be able to spring for insurance on a black market plane you bought with a payment plan? It seems like a very bad deal to make monthly payments on something that could get very easily get shot down in a place where you couldn't recover it. If you lost it, then you'd be paying 10k per month for nothing, or risk the loan sharks hurting you.

My favorite use for an aircraft though would be a blimp for a team of air pirates. Blimps can stay up in the sky for a long time, so you could live up there, hiding in unaffiliated air space between jobs. You would also be masters of the roof caper -- lots of newbies want to scale buildings and go in through the roof because that's what they do in movies. But as air pirates, it would actually make a lot of sense. You'd need to give it lots of stealth and defense options though, because a blimp would never survive head-on combat with a jet fighter...

Up to the GM and the party you're leasing the vehicle from, I suppose.

If you're trying to lease the vehicle (semi-)legitimately, then I suppose could get insurance. That's probably required, actually. Of course, it might just be cheaper to strip the vehicle of tags, serial numbers, etc. and burn the Fake SIN you used to acquire it. (You did use a Fake SIN, right? ) That'd make it count as stolen (-20% cost)...

If you're getting it through a syndicate or similar illegal source, they'll probably just laugh at you if you ask for insurance. Though... I'm sure shadowrunners are in high enough demand that such a leaser would be willing to let you work off your debt (except the Vory - they're batshit crazy). Just make sure you don't screw up a run or give them any guff.

-paws

OK, point . . but there's still the fact that it's Se-motherfucking-oul O.o

First, Falanin - you have entertaining posts.

1. Thematically. Raise the stakes of the campaign. Governmental or Corporate Shadowrunners who represent people with lots of money to burn will travel world wide and take on missions of greater importance. Thus, a pilot aero rigger would come in handy. Like a previous poster stated, the usual urban indy runner will not find it wise to store and use a T-Bird.

2. Rent. Steal. Pillage your product. Yes. Oh yes.

*Throws 2 more cents into the cookie jar*

Sigh. Okay. The OTHER reason I wanted a character-build solution rather than a GM arbitration solution is because our group's OTHER Shadowrun GM takes a rather savage delight in "challenging" the players. I realize that evil and cunning plots are par for the course, but this guy will take any advantage he can get, including systematically denying requests for special gear, etc. Actually, if I did ask, I'd probably get a chopper/LAV... that would be guaranteed to eat a missile or hit a barrier spell at mach one the first run I took it on.

Basically, the less I ask for the fewer meals of pain I'll be forced to choke down for my presumption and show of weakness.

(Note: Once you get used to the fact that the GM is out to get you, his games are hilariously fun. Desperation leads to both genius and grand gestures.)

I think the blimp is your best bet for a starting character. I ran a game that had a pilot PC. He had a converted everglades decked out with about every stealth mod he could think of. It made a great mobile base of operations for the team. Parachute drops into facilities were great. The blimp wasn't fast but could sneak into restricted airspace so much easier than a jet or helicopter. When the team was casing a place they'd simply use the blimp as a flying billboard. The funny thing was that the advertisements were legit giving the blimp a reason to fly over Seatle.

Later they converted the semi w/ tralier into a blimp. The team lived out of it, and used it for smuggling runs. It even had a couple of drone racks making it a flying carrier.

I'd use a Hughes Stallion and kit that out if I wanted a proper aircraft at chargen.

Zeppellin works well. There's an example in Ghost Cartels of a stealthed kitted blimp that looked impressive.



I agree. Where is it?? Pretty obvious piece of gear that should be in every runner's wardrobe!

- J.

The rules for parachuting suck worse than a bunraku doll with glitchy ware as it is. Pretty much everything is left up to the GM. So if you really wanted them just house rule it. Wikipedia says a Glide ratio of 2.5:1 is common. So call it a base glide ratio of 1:1 and a base decent of 30m / Combat Turn (arbitrary number based on approx half falling speed). Hits on the Parchuting (Squirrel Suit/BASE Jumping) test can adjust this ratio by increasing the horizontal distance travelled or the rate of decent at a rate of 10m/net hit. So with each net hit you can either increase the horizontal distance travelled in that combat turn or increase or decrease the vertical distance travelled.
IE with 1 net hit you could travel 40m horizontally and 30m vertically (glide ratio 1.33:1), 30m horizontally and 20m vertically (glide ratio 1.5:1) or 30m horizontally and 40m vertically (glide ratio 1:1.33)
Or with 2 net hits you could travel 50m horizontally and 30m vertically (glide ratio 1.66:1), 30m horizontally and 10m vertically (glide ratio 3:1), 30m horizontally and 50m vertically (glide ratio 1:1.66), or 40 m horizontally and 40m vertically (glide ratio 1:1)

Note: You must travel the full horizontal and vertical distances. This is so you have sufficient air-speed to generate lift. You can however spiral downwards if you don't want to travel far. And you can alter the distance travelled by less than 10m if you so desire. (IE I get 3 net hits but want to decend 5 metres I can, but I travel 30m horizontally or with 6
net hits I have sufficient control to move whatever distance between 0m/0m and 30m/30m.)

If I haven't specified it elsewhere: every action phase the character must use a complex action to maintain the glide.

I'd tend to make any adjustment to your glide (or to enter a glide in the first place) be a Parachute(Squirrel/BASE Jumping) (2) test. This means that to increase altitude you need at least 6 hits on your test. And furthermore increasing altitude represents a critical success (at least 4 net hits).

Landing to land you must pull you chute 2 combat turns before impact and must take a Body+Parachuting+Gymnastics+1/2 Impact Armour test resisting 6P damage, if you reduce this below 1/2 Impact then it becomes Stun damage.

I'm aware that with those rules you could stay in the air indefinately if you had a large enough dice pool. To compensate for this I'd apply modifiers from the Treading Water table as appropriate. Rough seas etc would represent difficult wind conditions.

Basically those rules aren't accurate or realistic (they allow a character with sufficient hits to hover) but they're easy and they should work.

Imp

Good gods, man. Do you really want to play out three hours of detail and rolling dice for one jump? I'd say that's the whole reason that parachuting is just a skill check to begin with.

Parachuting is a just a bitchin' way to get to a job/place/location. I'd rather not have to bust out the Parachuting: The Minigame every time it comes up.

TEHO, I guess.

Well, i can't say if it's better or worse in SR4, but in SR3, even a mid to high skill in parachute had pretty good chances of making you dead on impact . .
Much less someone with little to no skill . . and let us be honest, who sinks points in a skill that might sound cool, but is basically useless? O.o
only people who call themselves true roleplayers . .

Parachuting rules have always struck me as ridiculous. So in Shadowrun, I have to roll Parachuting and succeed or my chute doesn't open? Bullshit. Pulling a ripcord is dead simple. It's more dead simple when it would be trivial to have an expert system - essentially an altimiter-triggered opening - have it happen.

I always use the successes on a parachuting roll like those for grenades: more successes reduce scatter. A second test CAN be made (at the GM's whim) to reduce or negate impact damage from actually hitting the ground, with the standard damage being 1 box of stun per 25kg of you+your gear. I.E. it's harder to land softly with a ton of junk.

That would break Trolls neatly in half.
they are supposed to weight in at 250 kilo and can carry about their weight in gear it seems . .

or those who have that in their characters background. for example i desided that the reason my Sasha has a cyber arm is that she lost her meat arm in a base jumping accident, so i got her parachuting (base jumping) 2.

which is enough skill to . . die the next time she tries something like that . .

Not sure what edition you're talking about, but in SR4 it's exactly like that.



And the only thing that's in the main book is that it's a skill as far as I can remember.

As far as using that skill? That's up to the group/GM. Want it to be as simple as "if you succeed on the roll you land where you intended?" Then the rules work. Want it to be more compex? Scatter's a great way to alter it.

But I just don't think anybody really wants to sit a the table playing out an hour long parachute jump.*


*Counting seconds before somebody comes on to say that they do.

I do!

Oh, wait, no. What I meant to say was, I'd rather perform eye removal surgery on myself with an ice cream soup that had been dipped in a mixture of salt, vinegar, and dog doo.

Yeah, I got lost in the intricacies of making gliding work before stopping to ask myself the question 'is this really necessary'.

In hindsight it'd probably be better just to run two rolls an accuracy roll (ie how close to where I was aiming do I land) and a damage roll (how well/badly do I land). The damage roll I suggested in my previous post should work though. It shouldn't kill anybody (assuming uninjured) who doesn't critical glitch, but if you roll badly you can be hurt significantly. Most of the time I'd expect people to take a couple of points of stun.

Just run a standard glide ratio of 2.5:1 (for a squirrel suit) so if your jumping off a 100m building you can pick a spot on the ground up to 250m away to land on (or the roof of a 50m tall building 125m way). With a scatter of (2D6-hits)x(Height-of-jump/20), net hits can be used to increase distance travelled (say +10m/net hit). Again numbers are abitrary. That reduces the rolls required for any jump to 3. (Scatter, Accuracy/Distance, Damage). So no more than a regular combat roll (Attack, Defence, Soak).

I'd still use a modified Treading water table precisely because it would break Trolls. Trolls should not be jumping using human sized chutes, and are probably too heavy for squirrel suits at all. If you bought a troll sized chute then obviously that would be able to carry much more weight (eliminating some of the negative modifiers).

Imp

Random Post # 12

Huh..

Oh, don't let me stop you. I'm just tossing on my 2 Renraku scrip.

I had a player in a SR3 game whose hobby was basejumping. He jumped the Space Needle with his buddies right after a run once in celebration. In my game, it didn't matter if the Needle is tall enough, how far away he landed, where he landed, etc. What mattered was that it was awesome, and he didn't fail his roll.

No, dear god, do let him stop you! Detailed parachuting rules cause my brain to calcify in an irreversible process that will render me into a deaf, dumb, blind, drooling serial killer somehow. Don't let that be on your conscience!

A bunch of things must have gone wrong if you're listening to this. Whatever happened, I know you must be real scared. I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to run for home. Maybe if I was you I'd want to make a flat out run for Hellicon Air Force Base in Greece. Right now, you're probably full of all the doubts in the world; and I'm going to tell you something, Doug, God doesn't give people things he doesn't want them to use and he gave you The Touch - it's a power you have inside of you down there where you keep your guts, boy, and it's all you need to blast your way in and get back what they took from you. Your dad is just sitting there waiting for a miracle and if you fly your heart out you can give him one; it's up to you. Don't bother putting on this tape if you're turning back.

Good. You decided, didn't you. Alright, first thing you gotta do is convince yourself that nothing can stop you. You've got to believe that plane your in is a suit of armor, like an Iron Eagle that nothing can penetrate. Now listen close, kid. I recorded some stuff to help you through each part of the mission. Remember to talk into your flight recorder so that there is a record of everything. Don't waste your time worrying about me - you start thinking that way and you'll mess up. Just pretend I'm in that cockpit with you and we're still going in to knock the shit out of them together.

What?

Please explain yourself, as I have no idea where this is coming from...

If a Novice rating (Skill 2) equates out to death on attempt... how does anyone in your games ever learn to Parachute (or do anythign else for that natter)? Beginniers start with a Skill of 0, progress to a Skill of 1 and eventually arrive at 2 (Novice) which would represent someone with at least 5 jumps to their name (which is definitely enough to pass jump school)... Must be a lot of military people IRL that should just tuck their heads between their knees and kiss their asses goodbye when they have to jump from an aircraft...

How unrealistic is that?

I think it was just a riff on a skill of 2 being low, which of course is a subjective view based on what is seen as "low" and "high" dice pools in any given group's game. Don't think it had anything to do with realism, learning, etc.

Yeah that is probably it...

I guess that I just prefer to use the "Fluff" to determine the relative competence of characters... there is a great chart in the BBB Skill section detailing exactly what each skill level represents...

I just dont think that you need 20+ dice to be competent; in fact, an average of between 8-12 dice seems to work wonderfully well...

But Hey, Every one is different I guess...

My Two Cents (Again)