I have a question concerning Harlequin, I'm told to use him in an adventure and it seems to assume that the characters have a chance to recognize him just by seeing him, but it really doesn't say how good of a chance or by what way they may know him via a knowledge skill. I've looked around a little but still can't think of any reason why a character may know him by face. I can't find any reference to him being in the public eye for any decent length of time and I have no idea in which spheres of influence I would place him concerning knowledge skills. Anyone have any suggestions for me?

Two bits to consider; first, how well is Harlequin known in your Shadowrun universe? If not so much or not at all then there'd be no chance for them to know the immortal elf.

If their is knowledge of immortal elves and Harlequin in particular the question becomes not of how well is he perceived but how well does he conceal? Does this Prime Runner use some of the disguise tools that are offered in SR4(a) or does he use magic? The guy's been around quite a bit so it all depends on his own motivations.

Sign--

Wacky

Unless the characters are some pretty experienced shadowrunners and have some deep contacts, or have otherwise met Harlequin before, they probably shouldn't recognize him. Harlequin has never been a public figure like Ehran, and while Harlequin has had some contact with the shadow community, I think it's safe to assume they've been discreet. If Harlequin wants to meet with the player characters for whatever reason, he'll be able to, and it's not outside of his motivation to explain who he is and what he wants them to do.

To add to what Elwood said, the best way to handle it is when Harlequin sets up the meet he makes sure that the fixers or whoever is setting up as intermediaries makes sure his reputation proceeds him. Something as simple as their fixer saying "A guy claiming to be Harlequin wants to meet with you, if he's who he says he is he's a pretty signifigant dude, do your homework and here's what I know."

Thanks, it's kind of what I thought, they wouldn't really know. I'm running knasser's Carnival, which makes use of him and seems to make the assumption that they will know who he is. He is just one of the people traveling at the carnival and the characters are suppose to wake him out of some kind of self loathing mood, and kind of help out the characters. One of the characters in the group did go through survival of the fittest as his background (as this is a fairly new campaign I'm running I didn't let him keep the karma or gear), but even then he would know about dragons, not immortal elves. I'm thinking I might let him figure out who it is, just so some one knows, he did take a while and study the strange elf and all. His character has been around long enough he could have heard or seen something. All this looking up of Harlequin got me kind of thinking about getting a copy of Harlequins Back and then modifying it for 4th edition and running it just so we get the story line. None of us has ever read it, most of my group may have never heard of it actually. I'd have to change some timeline stuff maybe, but hey, once the game starts, the campaign world is mine and all, but then again it's probably more trouble than it's worth

I really have to recommend against getting Harelquin's Back. It's got almost to do with shadowrunning, and surprisingly little to do with Harlequin. The way the rules keep changing is just frustrating to many, as well.

Ya, I probably won't bother getting it, one I'm lazy and two, I know at least one person that would be upset with that kind of run. I'm all for the non-strict shadowruning in shadowrun, but I'm just the GM, and it's kinda hard to play the game by yourself.

Thanks for all your help every one, it helped me make a decision, which is what I needed to do.

While Harlequin's back is frustrating as hell. Iirc the first Harlequin adventure wasn't bad. Atleast I don't remember wanting to shoot someone in the face afterwards. It's titled Harlequin I believe.

He he I remember the first time I ran into him I thought he was the Joker.

Haha!

I ran the original Harlequin mission as GM way back when, and it was loads of fun, but I was actually a player for Harlequins Back and hated it. We actually wanted to shoot one of the other members of our group in the face during the mission, but the GM would not let us.

the original Harlequin run itself wasn't too bad, but they had some things in it that DID make me want to kill someone - namely the railroad plot - they explicitly tell the GM at one point 'if your runners try to do anything, let them roll their dice and come oh-so-close, but FAIL'.
At another point, they say 'since there's no way they'll ever be able to assense the aura, if they do, they will learn nothing'. Going onwards, another similar quote is 'if they try to interfere with the duel, tell them that the two badasses won't appreciate it, and that they shouldn't do that, and that even if they try anything, they'll never be able to affect the guys (being Ehran and Harlequin'. Well, these are paraphrases, but you get it.
The entire module treats the PC's like shit, railroads them along, gives them little to no choice in the final act, besides to watch and wonder why the fuck they had to be there, and overall the action centers on two NPCs doing their thing, having and epic sword duel that the PC's can't interfere in. Fuck them. At least Survival of the Fittest let you make that fucking choice in the end.
Still, I suppose now that I've gotten that particular bit of bile out of my system, the rest of the run (besides the afore-mentioned last act) is reasonable. And a good GM may be able to avoid making the PC's wall hangings. So yeah. And if anyone remembers who I'm talking about, Iggy's awesome.

From an IC perspective, they have no more chance of knowing who Harlequin is than any other Joe Blow, but the real reason to drop him in an adventure is for the Players to know that they have brushed up against an example of true greatness from an OOC perspective.

Personally I'd just write the IE out of knasser's otherwise wonderful little adventure.

So yeah. And if anyone remembers who I'm talking about, Iggy's awesome.


" and the crowd goes wild!"

Still quote to this day

Trevor

Hi. It's always gratifying to know that someone is running one of my adventures (I have a couple more on the drawing board, but I don't know when I'll complete them).

Harlequin isn't integral to the adventure. You can drop him from it without affecting the plot. He's in there as much as anything because I, as GM, enjoyed putting him there. I can't think of a reason why the PCs would recognize him either - especially as he's just slumming it without his trademark make-up on. That said, if you want to keep him in there in a similar role but have no particular reason why the players would recognize him, that's fine too - just drop other hints that he's more powerful than they might expect. Another GM that ran Carnival had Rebus hire the PCs to "get rid of that damn clown". That gave them a surprisingly direct way of finding out what he was. So it's not critical that they know who he is. This can even be their first introduction to the character. I'll say that I do tend to play Harlequin somewhat darker than most of the canon interpretations. He's seen countless wars and lost innumerable people and probably even families over the millenia. I can't see him as someone that rushes about being a hero to every little group of Shadowrunners. Inspiring him to help, rather than just watch events as you or I would watch a good horror movie, could be a big dramatic moment. Or perhaps the PCs can actually think their way out of the situation on their own. It's up to them as players and you as GM to nudge them. All I'd say is layer on the atmosphere for Carnival, as the players need the clues to be prepared.

I'll add as well, that I wanted to break with the arbitrary "Harlequin can do whatever he wants" attitude in the published adventures (non-negotiable GM plot-characters annoy me), so I statted him up more realistically. However, looking back, I underpowered him a bit, so I would perhaps raise his power further.

Also, just to mention that another GM re-worked the Black Magicians with Traditional Witchcraft (also from Street Magic) which worked very well, I thought - little wicker figures, the little string of a bird's entrails drying on a tent-line. Even Rebus' sexual ambiguity ties into him perverting things so that (s)he can follow the normally exclusively female tradition

Anyway, I hope this helps and I really hope the game goes well.



Ravor - would it mollify your distaste for Immortal Elven Mary Sue's to know that Harlequin is my - extremely frightening - grand villain for my campaign?

Khadim.

Sorry, my distaste for IEs just runs too deep and too wide.

Seriously though, as far as IE writeups goes, yours has got to be my favorite, percisly because it isn't silly overpowered.

Can he be killed with propper equipment and/or planning?
If not, no cookies for you i guess O.o
But i believe to know you to be a better man than that, and because i did not read ravors post up there, yes, it seems he likes it.

Oh most definately when compared to everyone else's vision of what IEs are.

IE's should be good at magic, they should be smart, but they should still be frigging tied to racial maximum attributes for example.
Even if they are IMMORTAL Elves, they are still ELVES. They get +2 Charisma and +1 Quick, under SR3 Rules. Nothing else get's changed.
So the Racial Maximum still applies, meaning no more than 9, or with exceptional attribute, 10 Body for example. Same for the Mental Attributes <.<
Everybody and their mom seems to hate him, simply for being him, so his charisma should probably not even be on the racial unaugmented max.
If you have to, give him maxed out stats, yes, but please only maxed out enhanced attributes. You would come up with a 9 in body, strength, intelligence and willpower.
He'd get 11 Quickness, due to runding up in SR3, 12 Charisma. But that should be frigging it. a well placed explosive device going off near him should still at least severely hurt him.
Immoral Elves are anything but unkillable, they can even be wounded by such mundane things like swords. Ehran and Harley duelled once and one lost an ear if i remember correctly!
If they had used Guns, we'd probably have one less IE to account for!

Spelling mistake or intentional?

You see, I disagree because I seriously doubt that an IE's stats should be anywhere close to maxxed out, with the possible exception of Magic.

Quite Intentional

I figure being immortal means being bored, so learning and training new stuff would lead to beciming like that sooner or later i think.

Aye, but I figure that even with enternity to practice most people, IEs included simply don't have what it takes to max out their stats or skills, I see lots of stats and skills at "dabber" levels, but hardly maxxed out. "I've forgotten more than you'll ever know." comes to mind.

*shrugs*
Would work too i guess.
Even with something official.
Consider all Attributes at Raxial Maximum Minus one,
Consider all Skills at Level 3 or 4
Only Exception being Magics.

It's more of a fantasy D&D romp than a Shadowrun adventure. I love Harlequin but I have no idea how Harlequin's Back got approved for printing. It's interesting in places, but so totally whacked and off-topic that it should have been put into an Earthdawn campaign instead.

Yeah, but what kind of contingency spells will an IE like Harlequin have active on him. Plus unique and powerful foci and other such equipment. I mean sure, anything can be killed if you try hard enough, but Harlequin ought to be a little tougher to kill than just getting him to walk in front of a claymore. And on the subject of nigh-unkillable characters, it took a Thor shot to kill Art Dankwalther.

It didn't take a thor shot to kill Dankwalther. i don't know why folks get so hung up on that. But when you have an Omega order against you there no point in not using a thor shot if there's not a lot of collateral damage. A strike team could have worked just as well and was likely the follow up, the Thor shot was just the best no warning FRAG YOU fuchi had right at the moment.

Only the spells that he has been able to cast since the Mana Levels rose again, capped at whatever he thinks he can get away with using Extended Masking, glowing like a Christmas Tree on the Astral is just as fatal for IEs as it is everyone else. And the same applies for foci, sure if he's expecting battle he'll bring out the big guns that he has hidden away and rebound since the Awakening, but otherwise he'll only take what he thinks will slip under the radar.

Besides, it is cool to say I'll Thor shot the motherf***er!

I always assumed that they Thor-shotted Dankwalther because it was the closest they could come to crushing him wioth a giant stone statue of a raised middle finger.

In fact, I wouldn't be suprised if they made a special shot just for him.

In theory. I like to take risks as a GM and pit myself against the players. I might stack the deck, but I'll leave the chance for them to mess up my plots. I like to pit my wits against five people at once.

I need to revise Harlequin's stats a little as he ought to be better at magic. But I have kept to normal augmented limits so there's a natural limit to how far he can go. What does it matter if you can cast a Force 50 Fireball if the Drain will kill? I also stuck within the rules for Extended Masking, limiting how many Quickened spells and foci he could have about him.

All that said, I may have to raise his Attributes higher. Not things like Body or Strength. I gave him good ratings at these because of his background as a warrior and because these are things that I see being refined over the centuries, but not silly high ones. I think he had Body 5 and Strength 4 - basically where I could see someone with a very, very trained, but not overly large figure. However, since I wrote that version of the Clown Prince of Magic, Augmentation has been published and Runner's Companion and we've seen that it's possible to push your attributes higher than normal maximums through technology (e.g. Genetic Optimisation). If there is any magical equivalent to such technological (and I think there should be), then Harlequin would know it. The only point I broke the rules with Harlequin was in giving him two Exceptional Attribute Qualities. I don't think that's so very wrong - come on: He's HARLEQUIN!

So if he had Exceptional Attribute: Logic, and the magical equivalent of Genetic Optimisation, then that gives him a natural Logic maximum of 8, potentially magically boosted to 12. That's pretty terrifying, but it's very far from the hand-waved omniscience that the book tells you to do as GM.

But it does bring us neatly on to my own take on Harlequin which I've refined somewhat for my own campaign. How exactly does someone with that degree of intelligence relate to normal people, not merely due only to their own intelligence and power, but combined with literally having existed for thousands of years. Bear in mind this person was already an extremely gifted Hermetic magician (or close to that tradition). He'll be someone with a very focused mind. Think about that. He could set aside eighty years to study philosophy or mathematics or linguistics or microbiology. Do you not think that a mind like that, in the first couple of millenia of drifting around the planet never once, for example got curious about living cells, their composition, construction, what those funny double helix were? (What, you think Harlequin can't manage an electron microscope? He could literally spend fifty years establishing a war-like kingdom just to funnel funds and slaves to a hidden, technologically-advanced village, secluded in Tibet where he casually dedicated twenty years to raising and teaching a generation of engineers, doctors, mathematicians and chemists all of which he could teach himself, just for the purpose of making himself a new toy). And none of this is even starting on the soft sciences. How many odd cultures or beliefs might just have been H. running a social experiment?

Someone like that, with those personal powers (even suppressed during the down cycle, he's still capable of extraordinary things) and with all that time? I give about four centuries before he's clinically insane by our standards. And that's probably generous.

"Forgotten more than you'll ever know?" Yep - that's just scratching the surface of a character like Harlequin. Once I started thinking about the character, I found the canon version that I started with, getting shaded darker and darker in my imagination.

What's he like by 2070 in my campaign setting? Well first it should be made clear that he is the only IE in my campaign. Ehran the Scribe is an ironic joke in my campaign. He is a spike baby who, being one of the first people to really explore the power of magic, got a big leap ahead compared to most of the Sixth World. His Atlantean Foundation managed to unearth a lot of old materials about the Fourth World (well, "a lot" being a relative term). It's all fragmentary really, but irony of ironies, he did come across references to an immortal elf. To someone with the ego he has, that was an irresistable conceit, and he's been putting out (in a discreet "I deny all rumours" sort of way) that he is the immortal elf returned. And of course, this has reached the pointy ears of the real one. Ehran is one of the most powerful magicians in the Sixth World in my game, he pretty much runs his own nation. And he's currently terrified ever since he realised that something from the Fourth World has noticed him and is coming to find him.

I don't think my Harlequin can really relate to metahumanity anymore. At least not on the individual level. I've made him a kind of cosmic joker. The PCs recently came across a holo of a person with their face cut off. Removed, I should say, with incredible surgical precision. The victim is still alive as it happens and being kept so on life support in a Belle Vue hospital, bills paid by an anonymous benefactor. The victim was a Scatterbrain ganger who went by the name of Harlequin, known for his wild and sometimes dark sense of humour and love of practical jokes. Caimbuel, on arriving in Seattle, took his face, and his personality, as a means of interacting with normal people. When you have Logic 12 and are thousands of years old, it's probably hard to maintain a normalish persona that people can actually relate to - to be stable enough that people can actually talk to you, make deals with you, negotiate or question you. Call the severed face sympathetic magic of a kind, if you like. Caimbuel is now wearing it as his own drawing on the ganger's personality the way you or I would use a French dictionary if we were in France.

That's what Harlequin is in my game. A monster that has lived five-hundred lifetimes and needs to sustain some sort of advanced MindProbe on a hapless victim (who he keeps unconscious to minimise instability) to operate in metahuman society and belief systems. A fun-loving, anarchic criminal played by an angel.

And that's what the PCs are up against.

Now come on, all you Harlequin haters. Who doesn't like the re-written version?

K.

I'm pretty sure it was Ares that actually took the shot at him. And if I recall, they had to use a Thor shot because they had JUST been able to pin down where he was and were unable to react quickly enough to take him out otherwise. But the other option besides a Thor shot was a Firewatch team or somesuch elite unit.

It's certainly an interesting take on one of those inglorious basterds . .
And i told you more than once that i like your way of thinking, even if i find it to be too complicated for me most of the time . .
But i also said that i actually like the original H's PERSONALITY . . because he IS a Joker. Literally. Even the Big D could not tell what he would do the next second, minute, or hour most of the time.
He is one of the few to actually express other personality traits than being angry or aloof or generally being an elf.

knasser, that's a very interesting interpretation of Harlequin. And while it's true that he does have the same attribute limits as everyone else, if you do take that he's been around since the 4th World, I can't see why all of those attributes wouldn't be at their maximum. And it's generally accepted that Harlequin's a bit crazy already, but wow, you've got a whole new brand of crazy there. I do like it, but it takes a lot of liberty with stuff that's already canon material.

But IEs and great dragons should be able to break the rules somewhat, at least by magical means. If it's possible to do something with magic, they almost certainly know how to do it, and may just be waiting for the mana level to get high enough for it.

Agreed. That was one of the things that I liked about him. And it's also why as he progresses in canon and becomes less and less of an joker and more and more indulgent and reliable, I dislike how watered down he feels. So I've kept the joker part and removed the responsible, dependable, "Harlequin will save us" aspect. He's still capable of good. And still very capable of funny.

Having a sense of humour that is too-subtle for many of my friends and colleagues myself, I can only pity what it must be like for someone with Logic 12 trying to find someone who gets his sense of humour.

K.

Well I don't accept that everyone's range of abilities is the same. I'm reasonably large of frame, so I personally probably could get my Strength score quite high with endless exercise. I guess my own maximum would be a 5. I'm an easy 3 in real life. If I get back in training then I could probably hit a 4 by this time next year. I'll never hit my maximum of 5 (nor want to), but I think even if I worked out for centuries, I probably wouldn't hit a 6. I've worked out alongside some national level athletes. The level of natural ability, even aside from all the training they do, is jaw-dropping. When I'm lifting weights next to someone 6'5" tall whose shoulders are a good 2" wider than mine on either side, it's hard to conceive that I have the same potential VO₂ max or the leverage potential in my limbs that he has. I'm moderately strong by nature and presentably strong by training, but no amount of karma or time would probably get me to Strength 6 in Shadowrun terms. I tend to tie physical attributes to physical appearance (which is reasonable if you want realism) and I just don't see Harlequin as the Hulk type. Athletic, very. Muscular, yes. But a Strength 6 type - just doesn't work for me.



Yes it does. Yes it does.

The nice thing is that most of the canon material that it does take liberty with is hidden secret stuff. It's unlikely most PCs would have a reason to know any of it. So you have a legitimate reason to do what you like (not that you need one, but still). I have a player in my group who is a long-time Shadowrun player. He says that he wont use outside knowledge in the game, but I don't believe him. So it'll be interesting to see him throw himself at Harlequin asking for help or trying to play nice with the BBEG which is probably what he'll do. The player has a sense of entitlement you could float a small navy in. I'm sure he'll take it as a personal betrayal if Harlequin, who is character has no knowledge of, isn't in line with the book.



Hey - I gave Harlequin TWO Exceptional Attribute qualities. You're only supposed to have one. That's major rules-tweaking by my standards. (kidding).

Anyway, am really glad you like the take on it, even if it's not the cannon Harlequin we've been discussing.

K.

Sidepath: VO₂ max doesn't really matter with weights, or even matter that much at all. Mine hasn't moved from 47.9 in about two years and I can still run for long periods in full kit and run through a full workout without rest, assuming I space the exercises so that muscle group rather than me gets about 30 seconds worth of rest. Performance tends to actively improve, both muscular and athletic, independant of your VO₂ max.

I really wanted to run something diffrent which is what your adventure provided, the style is something I haven't really used, so I was weary at first. As it turns out I'm doing an ok job, no one is complaining yet. I'd like to see you finish your other ones.



Oh, I left him in, can't take him out, even if the PC's don't figure it all out. I gave them enough clues, they are just dense, I even had the little french fortune teller tell them, in a cryptic way, that they were going to meet him and only they could break him from this little mood swing, but as of yet they haven't figured that out. I had a similar thought concerning Rebus asking the characters to get rid of him, but it was already a bit late by the time it occurred to me. As it is they have the target unconscious and over their shoulder, they disrupted the succubus, took out the adepts and are trying to make their way out. The mage in the group is screwed, he only had magic at 5 to begin with, the troll, aptly named fuzzy bunny, is 2 boxes away from falling down, their adept is about halfway dead and their decker is buzzing around in a little fly drone. I ended on the note that no matter where they went they couldn't find their way out. I said it all dramatically like. I'm actually managing to set up the game like I think you intended, normal, normal, not so normal, and then boom, evil twisted horror show from B movie land.



I'm also not a fan of that kind of NPC, but I realize they are there in the world so I tend to keep them out of my game rather than change them, but well, I didn't want to this time so I appreciate you giving him stats and all.

All this talk about all this shadowrun lore is making me want to actually pick some of the novels some day.

It's true, pretty much all of the Harlequin information out there is stuff that wouldn't be known to PCs, so you can do whatever you want with him without screwing things up too much. Though, if I recall, doesn't Frosty figure prominently in Ghost Cartels? Having Harlequin as an antisocial psychopath could potentially screw with that adventure. I suppose Frosty could be an independent operator, because if Harlequin is as psychopathic as you have him, he certainly won't have a protege.

And the fluff doesn't support Harlequin having all of his stats maxed either, but if he wanted to flip over a car, he knows and can cast a spell that could increase his strength enough to be able to do it. And he could feasibly know some advanced techniques to lessen the drain from casting spells so he can cast quite a bit. Plus spirits and unique foci and other magic items. Sure, Harlequin can't do whatever he wants (like take over Ares), but at least in canon, he shouldn't have any problem dealing with your average group of runners. Now, if you wanted to make up a team of 800bp combat monsters, with access to restricted equipment, you'd have a chance, but aside from that I'd say that actually wanting to go toe to toe against Harlequin (or any other IE, or great dragon for that matter), is tantamount to suicide.

Don't remember Frosty in Ghost Cartel's. Or any elf for that matter... Just ran through it too.

Frosty is in Dawn of the Artifacts: Dusk.