OK, so...I was thinking about how we have now have all these combat drugs in Shadowrun. More then we had in previous editions, in fact. Sure, some are old "friends" come back(like Kamikaze). This got me thinking though...

Can you now, make a viable Street Sam role character with just a smartlink, and an autoinjector set-up?
If so, what drugs would you say said Samurai would need?

Yes, I know..this is a one-way trip to high grades of addiction, and, eventually, to dying because you are so hopped up on combat drugs all the time you are either going to die from the let-downs or from Lone Star...but..

I still think it could be an interesting character concept just to see what the general community can do with it...

Kind of reminds me of the "Juicers" class from the Rifts rpg. That's essentially what they are after all, just a bunch of druggies with auto injectors.

I'm gonna have to play with this now, see what happens...hehe
I suspect a lifespan of about a week...maybe less...

One player in our game does something like this. Some of the drugs are for the character, but others she'll load into bullets and use on targets.

If you're feeling really crazy, you could always mix in the genetic infusions from Augmentation along with your combat drugs.

I don't think it would work. Cyber you buy once and it works forever. Drugs are cheap, but they drain your nuyen with every dose. And the crash effects of multiple drugs are actually pretty likely to kill you, not to mention the addiction rates.

The rules are also unclear -- do drug effects stack? Can I take cram and jazz to get 3 IPs? Ostensibly yes, but I don't think the rules say one way or the other. Regardless, the cybersamurai will still beat your ass based on superior attributes. You can pump attributes a little bit with drugs, but nothing like what you get out of cyber.

However, your idea would work for a regular samurai. Drugs could give an edge that others wouldn't have. And it wouldn't take much away from a standard build just to add auto-injectors and buy chems.

Awesome! In the SR3 campaign i ran like 10 years ago this was part of the story arc of one of my players. It was a pretty gritty game, a run went bad most of the team were captured by lone star, the razorboy was picked up by the corp they were running against, he was f'ed up, bleeding from every orifice and well into his overflow boxes. They took him down to R and D for a makeover. When they gave him a shot of epi on the table to bring him around long enough to sign a release form, he agreed thinking they were going to make him some sort of super sam. The effect of the program was an autoinjector implant, and comp controller. The problem was this was first generation gear and the kinks werent worked out, so even though he was fast his hands shook so bad he couldnt shoot straight to save his life. He couldnt sleep without using tranquilizers, and the cocktail of drugs the streetdoc put together to replace the designer stuff he couldnt get from the corp he started building a tolerance to. It worked out pretty well, for my story anyway

Well....not saying that I would epect them to survive..it would definately be a character starting in a downward spiral of addiction and crashing..maybe even takign some drugs to fight the crash of others...But, I am still curious if it is actually possible for such a character, even short term....

well, it would work at least to some extent. you'd be much better off with a mix of drugs and cyber though, but you could get a very cheap version of a street sam. i expect it would be a popular set of mods on the streets, for gangers and such.

I'd be interested in corp setups that put autoinjectors on guards, with their use tied to the security office. Assuming that runs against a particular facility aren't very common, it might be more cost effective than ware. Especially considering that guards are likely to die within the first 30 seconds of an encounter with runners anyway. Certainly most of them won't live long enough for addiction to be a problem, probably not even long enough for the crash effects to take hold.

Lots of interesting things can happen if you break away from the min/maxing and the need to have the best stats and dice pools.

it is an observable fact that wired reflexes makes you a lot faster (able to perform most combat actions in half the time with no loss of accuracy) and gives you better reflexes. it is not suddenly a lack of roleplaying for someone who is intending to be a combat-oriented character to want something that gives them a massive, objectively-observable edge in combat. there's a reason you don't see any of the modern militaries equipping their soldiers with swords and platemail, and it's because they spent a lot more time thinking about what was effective than they did about what would look cool. it's not unrealistic for someone who is going to be routinely risking their life to want the best gear possible to have the best chance of staying alive.

Jaid, you're quite right, such choices are logical.

I think what Shard was saying, correct me if I'm wrong, Shard, is that if the player decides to try a character in the Shadowrun world who did not have the same opportunity for the best mix, the player can still have a lot of fun and contribute to runs.

Indeed, and it might be the fact that they're not as fast as a chromed out wired up sam that makes the character more interesting. I'm a peasant hero fan at heart, but that's just me. I just hate seeing fun ideas shot down because they're "not as viable", when they could turn out to be a blast story-wise.

playing with the concept

need some help finding a rule
how much/many of the drugs can stack?

got a half made character with a reaction of 9 with cyber/genetech and autoinjectors. depending on the stacking rule, i could have a reaction of 12 to 15 with several passes added on

I am looking at Nitro and overdrive as some of he drugs he will have stacked in his injector, with 6 doses total

i thought about infusions, but they take time to kick in and I don't that with a Juicer.

Addictions: combat drugs, the thrill & rush of extreme stuff like combat

well, the drugs can all stack with each other afaict, but they can't take you beyond your racial maximums. so while 12 might be doable, i'm not entirely clear how you're hitting 15 reaction given that it would require a racial natural maximum of 10.

ah, i wasn't sure if the drugs could push you pass the max

thank you

still, i can drop some of the cyber to balance the numbers out when maxed/ overdosed on the drugs

Some food for thought is that in a world where ( Dicepool 6-8 ) before equipment covers the average corp sec-guard and life is cheap, I'd expect drugs coupled with cheap cyber to be the sop for corps in all but the highest security zones, after all, who really cares if a guard dies from his "safe" dosage?

Screw autoinjectors, you want a Second-Hand Chemical Gland. For 15k + (50*One dose cost), you get enough drugs to keep you happy forever. All this for 0.36 essence!

You may need Restricted Gear, but the ability to use, say, K-10 whenever you freaking want is pretty cool.

Though K-10 is a sure path to death quickly, if you take a natural immunity (to whatever drug of choice, and the GM allows it), you can get all the bonuses of your chosen combat drug/drugs and none of the drawbacks with a single dose every (12-Body) Hours...

This is the path that I took for my Juicer Samurai... he came out okay... though in the end, it does lead to a spiraling path to destruction...

It seems to me that if your body were immune to a drug you wouldn't reap the benifits either.

You would think, but that is not the way it works for the quality, as you are not totally immune to the drug, you just get a pass for the detrimental side effects for a time...

You get to ignore the drawbacks of a single dose once every (12- Body) Hours... You still get the benefits... Don't ask me why, but there it is... However, because you are a character that is constantly using drugs, eventually, you will be forced to eventually exceed this limit (due to ever increasing addiction) and begin to suffer the drawbacks, more and more often, until you have spiraled out of control and overdosed yourself into oblivion... the concept is generally a very short lived cycle for the character as you are forced to abuse those very drugs more and more often until you die...

It is an interesting character concept, but generally a short lived one...

i'm inclined to agree.

See Above, We posted at same time apparently...


Also, the entire concept of the Natural Immunity is adjudicated by the GM, so this may or may not fly in any particular game... but if you are willing to allow this concept, the Natural Immunity is more a drawback in some cases thatn you might think, as it acts as an enabler for quicker addiction times, as the character is more willing to use, and abuse, the drugs which he relies upon for his abilities... Just like the Juicer in RIFTS, they would tend to have a short life expectancy...

Also... just as a side note, you could use Bioware (with some minor drugs and gene tweaks) almost exclusively to mimic the Juicer concept from Rifts...

hmmm... i note only one place where it mentions drugs, and am inclined to think that it was not intended to mean you get only the positive benefits.

nevertheless, i have to agree with you, that is what it says. i suppose if your GM agreed to it, then it's his problem. i probably wouldn't allow it, myself; you should either get the drawbacks as well as the benefits, or you get neither.

What about using nanites to repair the damage caused by drugs?

As for augmenting corp sec people... Wired Reflexes are CHEAP! I mean, come on, 11000 for Wired 1 and 32000 for Wired 2. That is REALLY cheap.

2 dose reusable autoinjector. 600
one dose each
betameth, +2 REA +1 INT, 20
K-10, +3 BOD +3 AGI +6 STR +1 WIL +3 IP pain tolerance 3, 900


Total Mods
+6 STR
+3 AGI
+3 BOD
+2 REA
+1 INT
+1 WIL
+3 IP
pain tolerance 3
bezerk when wounded
Total cost 1,520

So if you don't care about the guard surviving then you can get effects that blow wired reflexes 3 out of the water for a cost that is one twentieth that of wired reflexes 2. For a corp security guard that probably won't survive one fight with shadowrunners anyway, the drugs are much more cost effective.

Alternately, you could swap out K-10 for Kamikaze + jazz and pop the autoinjector up to 3 doses. the initiative score goes up a bit, but you lose an initiative pass, 2 BOD, 2 AGI, and 4 STR. On the upside the guard is much more likely to survive the crash afterwards if the runners don't kill him.

no, it isn't.

11,000 nuyen for something a guard is likely to use once or twice a year, if that, and gives them a permanent ability, and therefore something marketable, is not cheap. it is especially not cheap when we're talking about someone who's primary duties don't really include combat so much as they include being competent enough to get a warning out to someone else, who's job does include combat. now the HTR team, they will have wired reflexes. but the security guard? not likely, unless we're talking about a really really secure facility. for a place that's gonna get hit once or twice a year, though? 100 nuyen a year for a couple poppers of jazz, vs wired one? the wired reflexes don't even begin to look cheap unless your security guard needs to have them on all the time, and most places just don't have that kind of need. especially when a steel lynx costs 5,000 nuyen, comes with 3 IPs, probably a similar if not better dice pool for attacking and defending, and ignores the recoil on the LMG you mount on it. 5,000 nuyen for 3 IPs, now that's cheap.

But the hacker is expensive.

Also, there's a great piece of fluff somewhere that pleasantly informs us that corps tend to rip out the 'ware they put in when the employee quits. Where do you think all those black market used parts COME from, anyway?

EDIT: Just noticed this.


...Unless your Body is 12. No minimum on Natural Immunity.

Drugs whenever, wherever! Wooooo!

Damn!

Wait, so you only need body 9 & natural immunity to be able to go on day long K-10 benders, the +3 body from the drug will drop the interval down to nonexistant. you just need to get the second dose into your system before the first wears off. (oh, gee, this sounds safe )

1) you don't need a hacker
2) even if you do have a spider to operate the drone, you can farm it out to another security company who only needs 1 spider for every 10 facilities or whatever.
3) if you want to have your own, a regular security guard can just keep an eye on the drone(s) with no training required, and give orders, allowing the drones to act with their own dicepools. an agent would be a handy investment to make it harder to subvert the system, but is not necessarily required for it to function either.

4) have you looked at what you get for used cyber? it's 50% back. 5,500 nuyen is a lot of doses of jazz, quite likely far more than the guard will use in the entire time he works for you. and that assumes they can even get 50% back (likely for a mega, extremely unlikely for a company that doesn't sell cyber routinely) and there's no surgery required before or after, which makes for even cheaper costs.

On the flip side, Jazz is illegal.

no, jazz is restricted. which means that some people can get licenses for it. people in security, for example (such as lone star, the company it was made for originally). if lone star (which, ultimately, is just a security company; the security company hired as the police force in seattle, maybe, but still a security company) can use it, then so can other security companies.

Ah ,my bad. Then yeah, Jazz 'em up.

But you're not "selling" the used cyber back. Your ripping it out and implanting it in a new mook, who happens to take a bit more of an essence hit. So for your high end security guards (but still only security guards) it is affordable, since your basically paying for the initial tech, and after that only the surgeries (and heal time on your new augmented guard).

Also regarding the drugs, alot of the places Shadowrunners will be hitting are Megacorps. So restricted and illegal doesn't apply. Otherwise like some folks said, groups like Lonestar will easily be able to get the permits. Cops can use automatic weapons in the US, after all. (And other "borrowed" military equipment, from time to time.)

On the other hand, there's still the price differential between doses of Jazz and wired reflexes. It takes 147 doses of jazz to equal the price of a single set of wired reflexes (if we want to also include an auto-injector it drops to 140 doses). If we assume that during their carreer, the average security guard will see 10 encounters that merit dosing them with Jazz (Some will end up seeing more action, others will never need it, still others will manage to get themselves killed in their first major fight), that means that we need to make that set of wired reflexes last through 14 guards with 0 spent on repairs or maintenance (yes, the autoinjector will need repairs, maintenance and replacement too, but those are lesser expenses) in order for it to be as cost effective as just drugging them when they need it. (Each additional guard before the wired reflexes are replaced nets you a 750 budget for repairs and maintenance without it worsening its cost-effectiveness compared to the drugs; if you can make it to 21 people before the wired reflexes wear out, this actually frees up enough money that you can spend 250 on maintenance with each transplant.)

Note: Numbers for average number of situations a guard will run into are being pulled from nowhere, more active careers as security guards reduce the number of transplants that a set of wired reflexes need to survive being put through to break even.

I think the idea of a juiced sammi seems almost a posterchild for a cyberpunk player concept. Yeah, over the life of the PC he's going to see the shakes, the shits, the pukes, buckets of puss, and like any habitual user eventually a rather unsavory end; but It's a damned fine concept in my book. Those characters that are somewhat flawed with a rich backstory have allways seemed more enjoyable to play. With enough time, and I think about everyone here has, you can pump out a stat-rich killing machine with a lot of gear and little essence and just as little history. The concept of a low-life with an extream behavior affinity who chose (or through the progression of casual to habitual substance abbuse) gravitated to chemical enhancers is a great basis for a PC. If anything the need to stay amped and the personal desire for agressive situations would provide at least a plausible reason why a person would turn to running. The character might not be as fast and furious as your standard chromed-out-cyberfiend but the character seems more real. My praises to the character concept! It just might not work with every possible campain... but than again what character does?

of course, by the time the wired reflexes has been through 21 guards, it's probably ridiculously old tech. i mean, it's not like you retire your guard in their first month of work (unless they're dead, in which case a popper of jazz is probably cheaper than the surgery)

bio-monitor
nanonites or symbolites to heal

the drugs cannot be hacked by a hacker, unlike cyberware

and does hacker want to pump up a foe by firing the autoinjectors??

Of course the idea of a Decker hacking your cyber is largely due to a flaw in the setting and should seldom if ever happen assuming your Sixth World isn't populated by utter morons.

Amen Brother!

With a chemical gland you would NEVER be affected by the side effects. Ever. Because if you read the description carefully, you can have it set up so it keeps a constant dose of whatever the drug is in your system 24/7. So that means the drug never ends...which means that you are never affected by the side effects.

Sooo lets say you get K-10, then just get the dopadrine(SP, or whatever it is) that cancels berserk. Ta. Da.

You dont need none of this "natural immunity" crap.

Overpowered lul wut?

the steady dose wouldn't exactly work, i don't have my books handy and i'm not at all sure it's completely covered, but the designer drugs nessissary for a juiced sammi wouldn't be effective at a steady rate. All those drugs require high inital dosages to do their magic, I don't think that slowly pumping one dose of Jazz would reap the same benifits. Also, their effectiveness over time would be degraded due to their addictive properties. Although you might be able to bypass the ill effects in the short period it'd quickly catch up if your system was constantly flooded with the substance and your brain kept telling the pump to spit more out because of its dependency. You might be able to go a while without noticing the effects, esspecially in cases where the substance negates penalties to damage, but the damage would still there and getting worse.

Ghemical gland can by its description only produce naturally occuring substances, so combat drug are straight out.

I'll give you five dollars via PayPal if you can show me where it says that combat drugs are not made up of natural substances. Hint: there's nothing. Especially since many real performance enhancers, like steroids, are naturally manufactured by the body (let alone made up of natural substances).

No, I would saay that the Natural Body is what is compared... so you would need a Natural Bodyof 12 for this to work... but assuming that was the case, sure... Though I am not sure it would be allowed, as at that point you would be a raving lune, as you tend to go Permanently Beserk when you take even a little damage while on K-10...

Most, if not all, drugs have a synthetic component even in the real world... in the 2070's, I would expect this trend to contunue...
Since there are synthetic components, the Chemical Gland would not be a viable option...

the auto injectors won't raise an eyebrow if detected, unlike a chemical gland (which seems won't hold the really good drugs, anyway)

easy to explain your auto injectors are for ADD, insulin, and so on, esp. when mixed in as part of your fake ID, then why you got level 2 wired reflexes
most cops, as well as security will be looking for the cyber enhanced to cause most trouble, as in runner trouble
the junkie just needs to hauled to rehab

role playing side should be very fun, playing the highs & lows, looking for that next hit or rush

i am just wondering at what limit should the money be? the idea i have been playing with, i use the cost of the chemical gland (30,000) as the base for most of the 'warez, with some extra items to reflect the character has been doing this for awhile

good thread by the way

And that's why your other chemical glad is chock-full of dopadrine.

Something like coke might, but not physical boosters like, say, HGH.

If you try to tell me that HGH is not naturally occurring, I will assume you're severely physically deformed.

You must be a very rich man if you know somethink that naturally producess designer drugs

HGH... Human Growth Hormone?
Yes, it is a Natural Product... I see no real use for it as a combat drug however...

Almost all such types of drugs in modern day are Synthetic... I just see it as a more common occurrence in the future...
And again... Since K-10 is synthetic, you cannot use a Chemical Gland for it... so no need for a second one containing the Dopadrine...

That being said, However, there are some combinations of combat drugs that would work great for duration and useability... but they all will tend to lead to increasing dependency and tolerance, eventually leading to death... It is a great concept for a character, no doubt, but have no illusions, it is a downward spiraling path to destruction...

Not trying to antagonize anyone, Just My 2