Hee, yes, you would be.

I have the Increased Reflexes spell, far more subtle.

Molo's cybered. Just not excessively (Wired-reflexes, Reflex enhance, some muscle enhancement and some headgear).

Can't find a real person with that winning personality of his?

Oh come on, I'm sure you'll like him once you get to know him. Its just on first impression he hates half of you.

The visible half?

Children...

Okay, some situation report:

Main group: Is doing pre-action stuff prior to boarding the Zodiac and approaching the target. Main group folks, please check the thread at least once-a-day if you can, I'd like to keep things moving along.

Newbies: Undergoing first day of training. Once I have everybody's schedules confirmed and settled, I'll write capsule descriptions of what the common core classes and other selected classes are like, and you can write the first day, or maybe even the first few days. Keep an eye on the main thread, as I indicated in your thread.

And I'm still here... my dad went into the hospital just after I last posted, and was just moved out of it yesterday for rehab, since he got very weak after being in the hospital for 10 days. Will try to catch up now!

Augmentation page 64-65 (Emphasis mine)
Gecko Hands Essence 0.1 Availability 6 Cost 12,000¥
Gecko Hands: For this modification, millions of tiny hairs are grafted into the recipient’s palms. These hairs allow the character to adhere to any surface he touches. The individual bond between hair and surface is insignificant, so that the character can remove his hand from whatever he is touching by peeling it off the surface. The hairs allow the character to attach firmly to anything: glass, plastic, concrete, steel, walls, ceilings, weapons. Liquid covering the surface does not reduce the interaction strength; the character can climb a wet glass wall as easily as a dry one. Loose debris on the surface or thick slippery coatings, like sand or grease, however, nullify the effect of the gecko hands.
During everyday life, the gecko hands are typically covered with a thin layer of plastic to prevent the recipient from sticking to everything he touches. The recipient can remove the cover by gradually peeling it off. Solvents and water have no effect on the efficiency of gecko hands, nor do they help to remove objects stuck to them.
A character with gecko hands can climb across any surface as if it was broken and he was climbing with assistance, though he never counts as rappelling. Even a critical glitch will not cause him to fall. The character cannot be disarmed or forced to drop anything he is holding short of prying his hands open and peeling off the item. Dropping an item is a Simple Action for the character and requires two hands, or a Complex Action if both hands are occupied. The character receives a +2 dice pool modifier to any attempt to grapple or subdue. The treatment cannot be applied to cyberlimbs or to feet, since feet are not flexible enough to gradually remove them from the surface and undo the sticking. If the recipient somehow increases the flexibility and dexterity of his feet to the necessary level, he can apply the gecko hand treatment to his feet as well, gaining all the climbing bonuses, as well as receiving +3 dice to all tests that involve balance or being pushed over.

SR4 page 327
Gecko Tape Gloves Availability 12 Cost 250¥
Gecko Tape Gloves: These gloves are made of a special dry adhesive that incorporates millions of fine microscopic hairs that bonds to other surfaces. Individually these bonding forces are insignificant, but when combined, they are strong enough to stick a troll upside-down on a ceiling. Gecko tape gloves come as a set that includes gloves, kneepads and slip-on soles. A character using them is treated as if she were performing assisted climbing (see p. 115). These gloves are useless when wet.

Unless it has been mentioned in the errata since I grabbed my copy of Augmentation, I thought the implanted version of gecko hands worked on wet surfaces.

I'm glad to hear you father is doing alright! Take it easy; family does come before RP.

Agreed with Budoka - I'm in similar boat, KS. You've my sympathy.

ntwi: Er, oops. The point was to the nullify the gecko hands, yes. How is immaterial.

Thats fine, I just wanted to make sure they would still work when wet, otherwise they would be almost useless in a nautical setting.

Yeah, they'll still work when *wet*. However: That does not mean they will always work.

One of the things that most people forget about the sea is that a somewhat-astonishing variety of...things...collect on hulls.

But anyway!

Okay folks. Marwynn (the player behind Iago) has not responded to messages. Or emails. Or any of my attempts to contact him. According to Dumpshock, however, he's still logging in every so often.

I don't want to kill off his character - I still want him to be *able* to return if he can.

But I'm freeing up his slot. I'd like ideas on how to get his character off the ship and off-camera.
---
Conditions:

1. Nothing fatal. We're not killing the character off. My solemn promise is that I will only kill off a PC if there is no other way around it - or if the player agrees. I know how much it sucks to see a character die or be retired, especially without your consent, and I will endeavor not to inflict that upon a player if I can avoid it. I can be a tough GM...But I will endeavor not to be an asshole GM.

2. It should not be maiming - a coma is okay, people do amazing recoveries from comas. Maiming the character is not - he didn't ask for cyberware, he shouldn't get it just because his character went idle. That's no fun.

3. It should be something where he can recover and return to the crew believably if he so chooses with a minimum of fuss. The idea is just to get his character 'off-camera' and off the ship when it enters port. (Keep in mind, the UCAS Armed Forces run a top-flight system of hospitals, headed up by the Bethesda National Medical Center (what IRL is Bethesda Naval Hospital) in Maryland - I really doubt that the military medical system would be sloughed off, even in a Shadowrun dystopia. The existence of the hospitals at Everett Naval Station and Ft. Lewis in the Seattle sourcebooks indicates it hasn't been. You guys can easily be admitted as patients if the need requires it, thus. Though naturally the Navy will expect certain considerations in return for such assistance, under other OOC circumstances.)

4. It'll hit *after* the target is secured.
---

The winning idea will get 2 karma, even if I have to modify it a bit to suit.

This also means: bmcoomes and ravensoracle, if you guys are still watching this thread, we have a slot open! First one to get everything worked out with me (not just in initially, but: To have a character approved by me, gone over by SleepIncarnate and me and anyone else I choose, and ready to go) wins it. Chat with me and we can work out a way to integrate you into the newbie group.

If they aren't still watching, well, the next person who comes along gets the slot. If nobody does, it remains open.

If Marwynn returns AFTER the slot gets filled...I'm gonna need antacid.

Astral attack during the fight leaves him in a coma, his astral self separated from his body in such a weird way that he doesn't die from it, and so he has to find his way back to his body.

Remember, whenever wanting a way to explain the unexplainable, magic is a great scape goat.

So, new loadout for Simon: both his SMG and LMG have gel loaded with one spare clip of regular ammo. Anything that isn't subdued after eating a burst of gel ammo or two deserves to be turned into fine red mist, anyway.
The shudder at the end of my IC post is the Wired Reflexes kicking in, btw.

Just did a test roll to try out an interesting feature on Invisible Castle (handy mostly for mages) where you have to have multiple rolls in a row, such as summoning a spirit or casting a spell. The example I used was Yinglong trying to summon a spirit. Here's how it worked out. Test of multiple rolls at once, first roll summoning, second spirit, third drain resist (7d6.hits(5)=1, 5d6.hits(5), 9d6.hits(5)=[3, 5, 1, 3, 6], [1, 5, 5, 4, 6, 5, 5, 6, 3])

Basically, 1 hit to summon, but the spirit got 2 hits to prevent it so no spirit got summoned, but I still had to resist 2 levels of Drain, and got 6 hits there, resisting it no problem. Tried it again once I realized what I did wrong, and here's how it looks when properly formated: Test of multiple rolls at once, first roll summoning, second spirit, third drain resist (7d6.hits(5)=1, 5d6.hits(5)=2, 9d6.hits(5)=3)

Lesson learned? Make sure you use semi-colons ; instead of commas , between the commands. Here's what my dice roll commands looked like:

7d6.hits(5); 5d6.hits(5), 9d6.hits(5) for the first roll
7d6.hits(5); 5d6.hits(5); 9d6.hits(5) for the second roll

So, little forgetful of who is who. We've lost our hacker haven't we?

No, we've lost the mage you guys had with you.

Milsandre (Whizbang) was our dedicated hacker. She's out until she gets her computer back up and running. For now her orders were to be remote assistance back on the Fedallah, so it works out anyway.

Iago is the one going up in smoke.

Ah, alright. Just checking if Jane would have to try and figure out how to hack something without software

I'll can be all over it, I'll put a mage together for the team. Or I can use my Lameco Street Sam the third option is I can fill any slot the team needs.

We currently have two mages in training, and while a third would not be overlooked, I'm not sure we really lack in any area at the moment, with 2 mages, 2 riggers, a ton of street sams and phys ads..... I would say make a character you want to play and see if Penta, myself, and anyone else Penta wants to look it over all approve it. Keep in mind that dwarves, trolls, and TMs would all have a bit of a hard time in this run (dwarves and trolls for being smaller/larger than everything on the ship is built for, TMs for the severely reduced Matrix footprint).

Right talking with Penta about a Combat Medic

Not a bad idea. Jane is getting by on pure logic bonuses (though is still feathering the DP cap). Who is our second rigger? Sorry, haven't been following the newbie IC thread or anything and if we had another before hand I totally missed it.

Tried and true 'falls into a coma for some magical reason' seems like the simplest solution... could also play the simple 'sick' card like I did with Jane to explain having been off the game for a while.

Or it could be something more RP appropriate. I don't remember his backstory at all (If I even knew it) but he could get a call from some loved one or just an old friend that needs a 'favor' and so he has to back off for a while and can always come back when the crisis is resolved, or remain away indefinitely as he decides that the ship life wasn't for him or more problems come up.

This comes from my bag of lame ideas, but....

Cancer!

Yes, Iago has cancer! Potentially treatable but not on a ship, ergo byebye he goes to Bethesda Naval Hospital. If he returns? Miraculous cure!

If not? Not.

I'm hoping people come up with something between my lameness and SI's magic-rules-bending.

Because someone had mentioned the difficulty in having fun while training hard in the Newbie IC thread, Nemo decided to have some fun when he visited the range the next day.

Called Shot “Left Eye” IP 1 Short Burst, -2 for called shot
Called Shot “Right Eye” IP 1 Short Burst, -2 for called shot (recoil all compensated)
Called Shot “Nose” IP 2 Short Burst, -2 for called shot
Called Shot “Smile” IP 2 Long Burst, -4 for called shot (recoil -2)
Called Shot “Hair” IP 3 Full Auto, -4 for called shot (recoil -3)

Not bad for three seconds of work, although it must make the range crew laugh.

12d6.hits(5)=3, 12d6.hits(5)=4, 12d6.hits(5)=4, 8d6.hits(5)=3, 7d6.hits(5)=3

You're the more dedicated rigger type, Melisandre's a blending of hacker/rigger (though currently lacking in the drone department)

It wasn't the difficulty having fun, it's that the topics are already boring as is, and have you ever sat through an actual military class? Death by Power Point is what we call it.

Okay, kinda thought it might have meant her. The lack of drones is rather detrimental to a rigger though

I'll be posting tonight after work, sorry about any delay

Great, I'm working up the "Doc" then. I have some great ideas for this character.

If you are still working out the details on your "Doc", if you could throw some points into heavy weapons (machine guns and the like) that would be nice. As far as I know we are a little light on that skill (of the old hands only Simon (Ears) seems to have an affinity for that). And being able to put lead into the air when taking a boat seems more useful then I previously calculated.

If that is not in your grand scheme, no worries. Welcome aboard, also, if I didn't officially say it to SleepIncarnate, Inane Imp, ntwi, and BetaFlame, welcome to you guys too! When you finally meet Zalermo...don't be incensed by his womanizing, I swear, he knows what he's talking about.

Not even I believe that.

Yeowch, GM burn, thats twice the normal burn.

I think if Zalermo knew about Yinglong's firing range fun, he'd think twice about trying to womanize her.......

I suppose a few bullets to the crotch would modify Zalermo's actions pretty significantly.

I swear if we all start making Doctor Who references because of your character.....

I could but I don't see how that would fit with the concept at all. Thanks, I'll keep up on the threads I should have everything finished up tonight.

Status update:

I'm going through things with bmcoomes and SI over bmcoomes's character.

Original 7, I might tap one of you on the shoulder to look over everything and make sure neither me nor SI missed anything logically or mechanically. PM me if you'd like to volunteer.

2 karma goes to BetaFlame for the winning "What to do with Iago" idea: Ocean Blindness - a rare variant on Snow blindness. Caused in this case by looking at an exploding flashbang over the open ocean. Easily curable and correctable aboard ship, but he'd need outpatient treatment from an opthalmologist (and a while off) before he could return to sea. If Marwynn returns, it can easily be declared cured. If not, not.

Main thread: When everybody's checked in, decide how you're going to get on the target vessel. CD, as a result of you being around so much, I'm appointing you the guy who tells me when you're all ready...I'll then nudge SI to advise me of what to roll for everybody, and we'll go from there.

Newbie thread: Keep doing what you're doing, guys.

I've got some points in heavy weapons!

Alright, of the 6 people that we're expecting to respond, 5 have, and Knight is having some RL issues, so I've given Penta the go-ahead. I explained to him our boarding procedure, so if we all die, its probably my fault.

Did you remember life vests?!

I think a vast majority of us enjoy the use of gills or oxygen tanks...also, light discipline...bright orange vests aren't required on THIS ship ;P

I think that if you are a member of this crew and you require a life vest... you are in the wrong line of work.

Go nanites for 2.5 hours of breath holding

Not to mention over a half dozen flying drones that might be able to pull her out of the water.

Water and air spirits FTW

Oxygenate FTW, too.

Updates:

Bmcoomes has opted out of joining us, due to creative differences. We thus still have an opening.

Me and SI have completed sketching out the NPCs.

I will now proceed to write the boarding cutscene.

Just posted, will do my best to keep up.

A little grog goes a long ways.