Pg 149, Core

Aside from game balance and silliness aside, what do dumpshockers think of a build that utilize Shiva arms with a shield in each arm. With 6 arms, you could get something like +28/+28 to your resistance dice pool before armor or body is considered.

Your reaction/agility and your initiative will take a huge hit (essentially 0). Not to mention the penalty you will receive from using shields/multiple shields. You wouldn't be able to do any physical actions, but you can take hits really well. 

If you toss in magician to the build, your character could still kill with thoughts alone.




When the situation calls for a tactical retreat, have a drone carry your shields. Maybe the gm will allow you to move since your character isn't actually using the shields to protect himself and is only carrying them. Or just drop the shields, like taser shields after you set it into shocking mode; maybe someone will step on it.




Just some ideas.

The last time I saw this actually addressed in a rulebook was Hackmaster, and it works fine if you want to turtle (or, possibly, shield bash). I'm not sure about your numbers though. Six arms, Ballistic shields (+6/+4) and Riot Shields (+2/+6) are the two principal options which would give you (+36/+24) or (+12/+36) when maxing out, but I don't think (+28/+28) is possible with those numbers.

And it still won't help protect against most Combat spells.

AND it would look crazy. Not that you wouldn´t be used to it...with 6 arms...but even for your standards you would look...like AH said: a turtle. There are definitely better ways to use 6 arms. You wouldn´t have to swap weapons e.g. AND you could carry at least one or 2 shields while carrying 2-handed weapons.

let x be the number of hands holding ballistic shields
let y be the number of hands holding riot shields

(1)x + y = 6 (total number of hands)
(2)6x + 2y = 28
(3)4x + 6y = 28

hmmmm... i get 2 arms holding riot shields from 1 and 2, which means 4 arms would need to be holding ballistic shields. subbing that into (3) i get:

4(4) + 6(2) = 28
16 + 12 = 28
28=28

so that works out. double checking into (2) i get:

6(4) + 2(2) = 28
24 + 4 = 28
28=28

so it looks like it works fine to me.

Yeah man, but the style. THink about the style.^^ (just joking, didn´t want to interfere with your discussion)

28/28 was just for a nice even number. There could be other variations based on your needs as demonstrated by Jaid (Thanks).

As a side note, if you had different shields, each with a bonus against different element, would you be able to add that onto your resistance dice pool? Here's my shield of flame resistance.. here's my shield of frost resistance..




To Ancient History:


I am thinking that against magic, you could either play a mage with counterspelling or take one of the quality that help with magic defense. Or just rely on the group's mage while you attract and absorb physical attacks.

To Machiavelli:

Could you give an example of how someone can better utilize four or six arms? Since you have to split your dice pool to perform multiple attacks, there doesn't seem to be as much benefit to getting more arms. I recall that some bonuses are applied after you split the dice pool, but I don't know how the math will work out and if it's worth the effort.






I was just thinking that, normally, if you were to use a shield, you would suffer a -1 penalty to any physical tests, which I would assume to be -1 for each shield. If you have very high armor, you would also suffer penalty to reaction/agility. So the idea here is to just ignore reaction and agility and whatever balance you will need for a character that has good armor without suffering penalty. Instead, you take those penalty and just be the best tank you can be.

Here is a few builds that might work.

1) Pure Defense: You can either go for the max armor with six shields, troll, cyberware, military armor, and whatever you can to boost your armor. Your role is to attract and take hits for your team when the situation calls. If they ignore you.. well, that's why there's the character below

2) Defense + Magic: The guards ignored the crazy guy with four arms thinking that his  purpose is to draw fire away from the team mage, but it turns out you are the team mage. You don't care that you have massive penalty to physical actions, because you will be killing them with your mind. You could also pick up counterspelling to be really well protected against both physical and magica ldamage.

3) Defense + Articulated Weapon Arm/External Mount: I am not sure about this one, but maybe you can get those cyber on you and become a living bunker/turret?

Your character will be limited in usefulness if you go to the extreme. So you could just go for four arms and only adopt the turtle stance when necessary. Shields might also be easier to smuggle than military armor. A lot cheaper as well.




Alternatively, you could tone down on the shield aspect a little and play a mage. In which case you could get counterspelling or the ability to kill w






Another question, would a four armed metahuman look very out of place? I am somewhat inclined to think that they might not with all the other strange things in Shadowrun.

I have created a red-skinned troll char. with raptor legs, a long tail and bone spikes erupting from his skin. Wanna know what happened? My fellows refused to run with him. There are a lot of trolls out on the streets but alone through their horn-shaping, it should be much easier to spot or track such an character that e.g. an average human character. Just imaging how easy it would be to find the one or maybe 2 trolls with 4 or six arms in seattle? No good choice for people who want to stay in the shadows.

Regarding the most usefull use of 4 or 6 arms, i wouldn´t go so extreme than you in your examples. If you need such builds for a very specific occasion, go for it, no problem. But this ain´t the common run-situation. I also wouldn´t go for multiple attacks as long as you don´t have dice pools around 20. BUT you can carry a longarm, while carrying one or two shield(s) (and still getting no agility-penalty for stacking armor as long as you keep it in normal ranges) OR an additional weapon you can switch to, without the use of drawing it. You can also arm and ready a lot of grenades, go in melee while shooting at the same time...let your phantasy play. Basically you save a lot of actions, i think that is the big advantage.

What if he is playing on the Sub-Continent?

do they still have Hardened Armor in SR4a?

If they did, wouldn't that be more effective in the long run?

Yes and yes.

And you would be better off playing a physmage or adept martial artist with that many Shiva arms. I was able to get a physmage shapechanged into an octopus to have 8 attacks at 1 dice. You'd be much better than that with 6 attacks. Especially since you could reasonably justify ambidextrous (octopus built before RW so I don't know what changes are in there).

Actually there's a silver lining in this....

You can turn these things into your pet GM NPC fun toys.

Seriously... they can't run because they stand out too much and would be too easily identifiable. But they bring very unique skills and abilities to the corporate arsenal so long as non-attributable isn't a problem. Think of them as great GM toys and lousy player ones :).

More effective than what?

Sounds like this would make a great boss for either Mega Man or Final Fantasy.

I can see no reason why it wouldn't work. Its one of those characters that is kinda fun to think about, but I'd be embarrassed to take it to the table due to the major munchkin factor. If that wouldn't bother you, just take a bottle of wine to go with all that cheese. Mass props for the original idea tho!

Then he should be blue or golden-skinned, with a lot of arms but no thorns, tail and raptor-feet. ^^ I don´t think that he would be more accepted down there.^^

Was referring to the original poster's build which was a multi-armed Shiva surgling. Your argument was that your Troll didn't work in your setting but I was pointing out that not all freaky surglings are fails.

eg. bone spikes erupting from skin would make perfect sense in an all elven game set in Tir nA nOg, Shiva arms is very appropriate for surglings anywhere in the subcontinent and se asia, a troll with strangely colored skin may be appropriate in China and Japan, etc.

That's a good point that the Shiva arm runner would stand out. Though I don't think that's unique to a shield build. Anyone with Shiva arms would be easily identifiable.






After reading what you have written, Machiavelli, I'd like to think that I could also shift the focus away from a dedicated tank build. Instead, the ability to adopt 4-6 shields just become another option for the shiva arm runner. When appropriate, they can switch weapons without drawing them, ready a lot of grenades, or carry lots of shields. The defensive bonus you get from 4-6 shields is enough to be useful. Not to mention you don't really need to dedicate much BP if you were planning on using this as a possible trick your character can pull, all you need is to purchase the shields and possibly upgrade them if you so chooses. 

You still get penalty to physical action from using a shield alone, so your longarm would be less effective even if you kept the bonus within range. Does anyone know if the -1 dice pool modifier from multiple shields would stack? I'd imagine it would.




As it stands, I suppose having shiva arms would make you stand out. I guess a table will have to maybe overlook it or the runner has to be more discreet, otherwise shiva arms would remain a toy for gm npc. Now I just wish there's a cyber arm equivalent of shiva arms, so that when I am on a run, I pop in 2 or 4 extra arms to hold shields. When I am not on a run, i remove them and with appropriate disguise/clothes, no one would know. 

Diablo clone.


It should be noted that on multiple threads Ragewind and I have mentioned just such a character that was also wearing armor and in a vehicle with a rigger coccoon. Something like 250+ armor (ballistic and impact), easy.

However, I do have to congradulate the OP for raising this concept without getting into a flame-war like what happens with Ragewind or myself.

It should also be noted that shields and helmets stack for counting armor, but do count towards armor encumberance. IE: unless you have a Body of 14, 28 armor is going to encumber you.

Warning: lack of SR4 knowledge ahead.

Hardened armor ignores anything with a power below it's armor rating and (used to) lowers the power lvl of the attack by one. Don't know how much if reduces DP value by though.

So wouldn't it just be more effective to get a decently high armor rating (say 14-20 on security armor) and then go about Hardening the armor and you wouldn't even have to worry about most weapon attacks. As it worked in earlier editions...you could have 1 billion points of regular armor..but if a light pistol shot you, you'd still have to resist dmg.

Don't know how they worked it in SR4, but there were suits of mil-spec armor that were already counted as Hardened Armor. Not as flamboyent as 6 arms I have to say...but much more workable on a run.

BTW...a flaw in 3rd ed. rules allowed you to have 1pt of Naval Armor on a Van chassis through the vehicle design rules...according to same rules, only naval weapons could penetrate naval armor


PS: there were also ways to get hardened armor plates for you cyber too...

That would depend on how your GM chooses to define Distinctive Style. Of course, the options to build this character are found in RC, yet the problem is that "advanced character options" are AFAIK undefined.

As it stands, the character may not have the Negative Quality and thus, would not stand out too much or be too easily identifiable.

Agree and disagree Toturi.

Many surged qualities in their description outright say. Character has this distinguishing feature. That doesn't mean distinctive style, but it does go a LONG way towards narrowing the pool of suspects. Most of the abilities trigger the 'freaks' rule, and freaks tend to be memorable.


For some reason I was thinking all surged had distinctive style as an automatic drawback... but that's not quite right (glamour gives it for sure though).

That's why the goal was to be a really strong wall or a wall with magic, but they would be able to move afterwards by dropping the shield, have someone/something else carry it, or possibly carry themselves and not receive the penalty from using it.


Looked up the threads about the highest armor. They are interesting, though I'm not really trying to go that crazy




I already agreed with how this character would be very noticeable. On the other hand, it seems like if you were already playing a Shiva armed character, this is an option you have. You just have to buy a bunch of shields and carry them in your vehicle. Might not come up much, but always good to have a choice.




Now.. cyber shiva armssss 

You could always get Shiva x2 and a couple of Articulated Weapon arms. Mecha-Shiva!

Very good point: SR4 is unclear when they use the term "stacked armor" once and haven't previously defined it.

They have since removed Hardened Armor from gameplay for normal players. You have to be really clever to get it now (IE: Spirits posessing your Armor Vest, or retro-building a motorcycle into a powersuit to get the vehicle armor [read: hardened armor] from it).


What do you mean? I know exactly how armor stacks and fuctions with encumberance. What confuses you?

Or be a drake and have so little of it that it doesn't actually matter.

"Oh, you punched me. Good for you, I shrugged it off. OH GOD, THAT BUTTER KNIFE WENT CLEAN THROUGH." D: