Ruthenium Polymer (Chameleon Suits) impose a -4 to Perception to locate the creature / object. The Concealment power imposes a -Magic penalty to locate the creature or object. The Adaptive Coloration power imposes a -4/-6 penalty to locate the creature. You are correct, however, that the SURGE quality is a bonus to the Infiltration test.


No, actually. It doesn't.

Quite correct, infiltration skill never mentions anything about requiring cover, as it deals with far more than standing behind a wall in order to not be seen (That would make it quite useless after all). The GM would likely apply the +2 bonus to the spotter for something that stands out, but otherwise it is entirely possible.

Here's what I do: Sidearms (Pistols and Machine Pistols), Small Arms (Automatics (sans Machine Pistols, natch) and Longarms folded into one), and Heavy Weapons (same as per RAW) all under the Firearms Group. The reasons I made these changes are quite simple and many of you may even remember me having posted this before ages ago:

1. People can only use at most 2 weapons at any one given time and they still have to pay the nuyen/steal to own the weapons in the first place, so it doesn't really end up being overpowered, it just gives people the opportunity to bring the right tool for the right job more often, which is something I actively try to encourage in my gameworld. Enticing people to take the whole group means I'm more likely to see scoped sport rifles when the group's hunting paracritters in the NAN territories, SMGs when they're storming a gang hideout, holdouts in the middle of a night club brawl and Aztechnology Strikers when they're paid to blow up a wealthy exec's fancy new mega yacht or private jet. I think this does good things for immersion-- I guarantee you there's at least one reader nodding their head right now when I say that they've gotten used to seeing Samurai who just take 6 in Automatics and use only one or two weapons for every situation. It's also worth noting that all firearm skills are actually mildly redundant, in a sense: You roll Agility+Skill to attempt to do harm to your target. Having many ways of attempting that task doesn't actually open up as many doors for a PC as some may assume-- once you have one good way of killing a man, each subsequent investment in the same goal loses some of its luster, particularly since SR4 isn't terribly granular. "I shoot good" is inherently a rather narrow role, when it comes down to it, and no weapon will ever change that. One should take that concept seriously when determining how much someone should pay for the privilege of shooting people.

2. It divides the skills into three discreet groups that emphasize distinct advantages even if some weapons in each category operate quite differently from their peers. Sidearms are small, light, and give up raw power and range for concealment, thus making them good for characters who aren't focused on combat or those who can't afford to be seen packing, but they struggle when dealing with high amounts of hardened armor. Small arms covers most typical hunting/battlefield weapons and are cost effective and deadly but generally difficult to conceal. Heavy weapons are all about the range, raw power and specialized tasks. They're expensive, often feature impractical recoil/firing rates/ammo capacity and you can barely hide one in the back seat of a Eurocar, so the lined coat is right out. But when you need one, oh boy, do you ever need one.

3. Believe it or not, it ends up resulting in roughly the same dice pools and damage codes over all, for the most part, since people can no longer just bump Automatics up to 6 and depend on a machine pistol, palming and an Ares Alpha for everything, so you'll see less guys taking the specialized 6 in Automatics. While this does tend to make players feel "forced" to spend points on more than a single firearm skill in general, they can't complain too much because each skill is arguably better off than it was before and the lack of raw skill dice can usually be compensated for by simply bringing the right tool for the job. Further, if your character concept is narrowly trained or you simply don't want to spend much, you can still always just take a couple of points in one or two of the skills and buy the appropriate specializations, so there's really rather few drawbacks in practice.

Given that this campaign is going to occur almost entirely inside a shutdown renraku I'm not worried about being spotted while flying (fly? inside? well, ok, there is the giant park that the flying wing thing dropped spiders in, but...) and all the wetwork I plan on doing solo I plan on doing with very minimalist equipment. I've got a hefty flaw (or three) I took on as a positive build point cost because I thought it would be fun, interesting, unique, and flavorful. Very different from my usual routine of a BF weapon, high armor, decent reflexes, dodge, and staying behind cover (outlook: "let my teammates get shot if they don't know how to play: they're ultimately replaceable. Me on the other hand, there's only one of me").

Whipstich:
Not bad logic... though I'm not a big fan of having heavy weap in the skill group w/ the rest. Also, I'd lump in SMG's w/ the pistols and MP's. (they're all firing pistol rounds). Also it keeps the longarms group from being the 'new' 'automatics'... with concealable SMG's, AR's, rifles, snipers & shotguns all in a single group. As it is with your grouping, I wouldn't bother with pistols unless I needed something exceptionally small and concealable.


Muspellsheimr:
Hmm... so I did have it right in my head the first time... when i double checked the surge quality, I saw the bonus and thought I had the others backward. There's times I wonder what the writers are smoking... and if any of them gives any thought to what they're doing. (lets face it, adaptive, ruth, and surge are all mutually exclusive of each other and do the same thing... requiring the target to either be naked or wearing it as a full body suit on the outside layer).

Still doesn't seem quite right... you have 3 guards in the end zone of a football field... you are in the other endzone... sneak up on the guards... in broad daylight... oh one of the guards has thermovision... the others don't... meaning things like chameleon suit don't apply to the guy w/ thermographic vision... (you see how much of a pain this gets to the GM... if you replace the guards w/ players, and have a NPC sneaking up.. it gets even worse.... Biff you take out 3 dice... Cliff you take out 7 dice... as you now need to keep track of exactly what their vision mods are).


Also, am I the only one who finds negative penalties clunky and hard to use. The equivalent of DnD 'make a perception check'... and watch everyone go on edge OOC and get ready for a fight.

Well, if you are the same color as the football field and the guards aren't really all that actively looking for you (They're watching Urban Brawl on their commlinks) and you know what you're doing... yeah, sure, you could sneak up on them. It might be difficult (You'd need a decent infiltration skill), but you could certainly manage it.



Yeah, but at least with the 'make a perception check' any decent GM can just have them make some randomly every once in a while just so they don't automatically associate a check with danger. (I think my favorite was: You walk into the king's throne room, make a perception check/I got a natural 20!/You notice that there is a thread loose on the king's cloak.)

"Fine! You find all zero traps!"

Now if only I could find that youtube video again...it was like 8bit theater, but not 8bit theater.

Well technically it does not require anything. I think the assumption is you can infiltrate in a wide variety of ways, blending with crowds, hiding in shadows or whatever. Still if you are walking down a hallway with 0 cover in it and no other traffic, I'd say you are in the no test needed to spot you range so infiltration just wont work. Infiltration is not invisibility. Adaptive coloring and other similar things I'd say give's you a hiding in plain sight excuse so you can always make an infiltration test. You might have to hug walls or crawl, but you can hide anywhere with it.

There are a couple of options to deal with secret player checks. Have them roll randomly, roll in secret, or have them make some rolls before the game and record the results to use during the game.

Now for various skills it is the exotics that bug me the most. Exotic horns, exotic tongue, exotic gyrojets, exotic monofilament whip. I don't mind keeping them as separate skills, but to leave them out skill groups seems both overkill and a way to have weapons that might as well not be used.

Reality is secondary to the game world at my table. I consider the pistol rounds thing secondary to the fact that by the RAW a human cannot wield two SMGs at the same time. Further, the concealment factor table actually stops at +6 with Assault rifles, and SMGs are only 2 dice easier to hide, so removing just SMGs from the group won't really fix much of anything, particularly since Arsenal also introduced sawed/short barrel shotguns and chameleon coating into the game-- and I still would hold that shotguns and sniper rifles on their own aren't good enough to justify an entire skill group. Sticking with the original tables isn't much of a solution here since that just gets Automatics back into machine pistol territory, so my idea, imperfect as it may be, is really about as good a compromise as any. Only being perfect for those without Palming isn't a great niche, but at least it's there, and Pistols can fill it.

As far as Heavy Weapons go, I figure that they all share the distinction of being weapons that are used pretty much exclusively by the military or by people who have an unusual interest in firearms and/or military type gear, so that's close enough to being related for my tastes-- I doubt there's many people out there who have been put in an environment where they learn how to use a LMG but never an assault rifle. If someone wants to run a character that is familiar with some weapons but not those, they can take a couple points in the other skills along with some specializations. I find that to be far less harsh than making someone pay through the nose just to be trained in conventional weapons as well as some military grade stuff, particularly since I know guys in the military who have done just that. Maybe they aren't all related weapons, but they can all fall under the same vocations and hobbies, which hits me as pertinent since I've had more than a few Samurai type characters with military experience as part of their backgrounds. And ultimately, as I've said before, there's only so much I can feel comfortable charging people just to shoot people in ways that are (mechanically) only slightly different.

Infiltration isn't all about not being seen, but rather, not being recognized as someone who doesn't belong. There's a great scene in Ocean's Eleven (remake--I saw it a few weeks ago) where the hacker finishes up patching the group into the casino's security system and is on his way out, forgets how to get to the exit, is sweating in panic, gets spotted, panics, walks faster, the guy catches up to him and says, "Hey! You forgot this!" and hands him his PDA hacking TV thing and lets him out the door thinking it was his cell phone or something similar (asks him how he likes it).

Perfect infiltration sequence. It's not about not being seen or not being noticed, but not being out of the ordinary.

Drake + Camoflage (spell) + Dynamic Color skin = "I'm just a bird, no you don't see that bit, that's...um...a funny cloud."

If I suddenly see something larger than an eagle flying above my installation I am going to shoot it down or at least have it targetted. This includes if I detect it with radar or some other none visual means.

Agreed. Weapons with exotic skill requirements are almost just as well off not existing. There are maybe a small handful of exceptions like monofilament whip because its sheer power balances out the odd skill requirement and lack of specialization. But other weapons that require the skill don't tend to have that kind of advantage. I mean flamethrowers may do good damage, but given the minimal range, the bulk of the gear, and difficulty in acquiring it, and of course the odd skill requirement, you're better off just going for a shotgun.

Similarly the super soaker things are basically pointless when placed next to a gun with capsule rounds. Net guns are kinda cool because they can bind someone for a while, but a simple SnS round has a similar effect and is much easier to make use of.

Go for it. In the mean time someone else is sneaking in another way.

Or maybe that's a 200 toy airplane (you can get pretty big for pretty cheap--eagles aren't that large).

Like I said, its not about not being seen, its about not being paid attention to (or alternatively, direct attention somewhere else).

I already agreed with misdirection and being innocuous. Still a toy plane to me is red flagged as a UAV.

It may seem like a bother to have differnet skill for guns and I think it should not go to far, but in all honesty you do need differnet skills for different guns. I'm a better shot with a hand gun than I am with a carbine. now you don't need different handgun skills (hold out/light/heavy) becasue the differnece is ajusted by range. I know if using my airweight 38sp+ with a 2 inch barrell I'm going to have to aim high becausde of the gun's kick and short barrell and lousey iron signs. BUT my Berretta .380 is going to be right on tghe mark at the same distance and the 9mm will do even better. But that's adjusting for their range and power, I still shoot in the same stance. By comparrison my PS-90 is held in an entirely different way. With the stock hard against your shoulder you have to beeven more aware of your breathing because chest expansion can actually move the weapon itself. Now should htere be a differnece between Rifle/assault rifle/shotgun/smg, maybe not BUT b/r should be different skills.


you changed my quote from "firearm" to "crossbow." (a) don't (b) that's not right. even with a winch crossbows still need a degree of main strength that affects ability. Firearms do not. That's their other great benefit, that and they require much less maintenance than a bow. A match lock is just a tube with two holes.(muzzle and touch hole) don't let it rust, keep your match dry and you can make it work.

Even with modern bows and their pulley system there's still a need for main strength to make it work better. I mean assuming you're male, you can probably pull a heavier bow than I can, but with a gun we can both pull a trigger and deliver a .357 mag round with the same force.

All of this means that training a muskeer takes less to have optimum effect than someone with bows- cross, compound, llong or hair.

God made man, Sammuel colt made man equal.

While I understand that a pistol is held and operated differently than a rifle, a knife and an axe are both the "blades" skill.
If kinetic weapons is to broad for your character you can take a specialization. Thats what they are there for.
As an added bonus spray and energy weapons covers 90% of the exotics no one normally takes.


Are you unfamiliar with the "FIXED" meme or are you just feeling humorless today?
Any way, my point was that long before muskets existed, crossbows had replaced longbows as the main battle weapon.
This was in spite of lower rate of fire and lower power (even metal limbed crossbows are lower release weight than a good composite bow)
When firearms were invented they in turn replaced crossbows as the easy weapon, despite expense and random explosions.


Judging by my failures with a 20 pounder, I can't use any bow effectively.
Behold the out of shape American.

As a GM I want to see a lot of different weapons used. It makes the game more interesting than having players carry pistols, SMGs or assault rifles. That is my problem with exotics. Here take an exotic weapon skill for a bonespur in your elbow... Rather not punish for a concept that would be ok if they had spurs on their hands even if they are functionally as effective.

Bows required years of training and requires lot of strength. 150lbs pull is not unheard of for English Longbowman. The European powers didn't want their peasants who may rebel having this skill so did not encourage it. The crossbow while inferior did not require years of training or the same level of strength. Same with muskets/flintlocks. Even the Japanese produced and used the muskets to unify the country (then oddly enough banned them entirely). It was not until the 1800s when rifles appeared that a bow was inferior to firearms.

I can say from personal experience 40lbs recurve I do ok with, but a 50 lbs will injure my shoulder.

The thing is, the gun skills in the game are an abstraction-- they simply cover things your character knows how to do. They don't actually say anything about how your character came to be able to perform some task, they just say "these are the tasks that your character can do with a degree of expertise" not "Having this skill means you fire all weapons in the same manner because they're governed by the same skill-- even though that would be stupid." For god's sake, you can buy the ability to perform basic maintenance on hovercraft, anthroform drones, cars, trucks and motorcycles for 4 build points, and if you spend 10 bps you get to throw airplanes, heavy industrial machinery and freakin' aircraft carriers into deal as well. Now, I grant you that a lot of underlying principles and tools would be the same-- engineering disciplines do deal with a lot of the same problems in different arrangements, after all, since physics is physics-- but I would argue that the breadth of knowledge required to perform well in the whole group would be at least as tricky as learning how to fire everything from a snubby revolver to an LMG, which is why I tend to favor consolidating most firearms into one skill group as opposed to making the dream of general proficiency any harder to attain then it already is.

Agreed. Across 15 weeks of US Army Basic Training + Infantry School at Ft. Benning, I trained/qualified with the following:

Assault Rifle (M16/M4)
Launch Weapons (M203, Mk 19, & AT4)
Heavy Weapons (M249 SAW[LMG], M60[MMG], M2[HMG])
Not to mention the Bradley Weapons (25mm Cannon, M240G, and TOW missiles)

And when I got to my unit, I got to train with a handful more weapons, including the MP5/40 (SMG)

I can see someone having proficiency in ARs without knowing a think about machine guns (I did before I signed up), but it's not likely to happen the other way around.

Yeah, see, ultimately, nothing particularly scares me about a build that knows how to use a wide variety of conventional ranged weapons, and so I'm fine with using a setup that enables players to do just that. Granted, the saved points from such a setup could theoretically be used to pick up a combination of other traits that do give me pause as a GM, but I would just rather address those directly rather than keep point costs how they are and hope nobody maxes out on becoming the untouchable dodge monkey gunfu master through other means. That'd be just a shell game that I'm be bound to lose at some point.

It is when they put it into contacts and connections I worry more than if they put it into combat skills.

I thought about maybe different gun styles needing different skills but then realized it's not really so. I mena being a good gun owners I clean my pistols after any use at the range. So I can work on my pistols. When I got the PS-90 I was al ittle imtimadated by it "what if I screw this up?" but one I looked at it logically i saw how close it was to the hand guns.

That's what I liked about older skill sets, that you could use close skills, at a penalty- like car b/r could be adapted to helo b/r. since the skills were close.