So i was flipping through Running Wild again this morning and came once again upon the
infected chapter and the new HMHVV 2 infected elf variant, Harvesters...
Long story short, while looking over their powers i noticed they had 'Movement(self only)'-
Not being the walking rules encyclopedia some are, i looked up the power, curious as to how
it would effect them, and noticed an issue.
The Harvesters body is higher than its magicx2(in other words, the movement power is nixed).
What that means is the Harvester...who should be "fast"...
is not.
Anyone else notice this?
Maybe a boost to the harvesters magic is in order...?


edit: sorry for the strange writing-my brain is still sleeping.

I saw that too and assumed that the specialized Movement power employed by the harvester was also special in that it allowed for a higher body. Basically an example of the devs using an existing power and description that you would be familiar with instead of rolling an entirely new ability. I'm sure someone will come out and claim that it negates itself, QED, but it's pretty easy to see what was intended.

Nice.^^ I think it is simply a case of "errare humanum est", but because harvesters are not really dangerous or common, nobody cared about it up to now.^^

I've used them in a game, room full of cover, run by attacks. Good Times.
Ignored the body stat issue.

Haven't seen the stats etc, but I generally rule that the Movement vs Body thing is for when you target someone else.

Long story short? Patrick screwed up.

Longer version: "The Infected" started life as an SR3 article, when Running Wild was still an SR3 project at FanPro. I feel fortunate that I was asked to update it to SR4 when the project came back to life, and I dive in...and, on this one particular critter, I didn't do sufficient reading on the changes made to critter powers between editions. Movement in SR3 was based on Essence, not Magic, and the Body-vs-Magic restriction didn't exist. Had I caught it then, I would have asked the developer if he was cool with making the harvester a special exception to the Body-vs-Magic restriction.

I didn't catch it, though, and apparently neither did anybody else. I'd raise the critter's Magic to 3, and would also house-rule an exception to the Body-vs-Magic restriction. These suckers are supposed to be scary-fast, and I'm sorry that my carelessness didn't allow that to come across.

(In my defense, my wife was pregnant with our son during the writing of this project, and this caused its own distractions. I'll try to do better the next time, if there is one.)


I like this. I should have used it instead of the boring truth....


Emphasis mine.

They're not? They're sure supposed to be. Could you tell me why you think they're not, for purposes of edification and future reference?


I'm pleased you liked them.

Well, the body restriction was added at the SR4A, at the original Core Rules, there were no such restriction. You can find some problems with such changes, as many books references to the old version of the Core Rules.

Don't brother yourself. Just add it to the errata of the book, so I can get it right at the german edition of the book

I'm not the originial poster, but I agree with him: Harvesters aren't scary in the least. They roll only 7 dice in close combat (which is less than a street sam without any close combat skill has from agility only), they only do 4P damage (which is less than a light pistol with above average ammo, while taking a complex action and allowing a better test to evade), they roll only 6 dice for damage resistance (which is less than a wage slave in a duster) and they have only 2 IPs (which is less than every single shadowrunner, regardless of archetype).
They need to outnumber your regular 400 BP combat character about 15 to 1 to even register as a threat, while they can't even hurt drones or spirits at all, rendering them even weaker against all technological or magical characters.
They're the modern 28 days later zombies to the regular romero-zombies, in that they're running instead of slowly shambling about, but they aren't any more threatening and only win through numerical advantage and attrition. Scary for soccer-moms and couch-potatoes, but barely worth a thought for a team regularly duking it out with armed security guards.

This is the only thing I disagree with but those characters with IP1 have the option to use edge instead and have some other scary ability they can use...like a fireball...

Well, I assume every magician able to cast fireball is able to cast increase reflexes as well. Full magicians actually get to 4 IPs the easiest and cheapest of all archetypes...

Thank you!



At the tables I play at a 1 IP character is completely viable. If harvesters aren't a threat to the average character at your table you might want to talk to folks about min maxing. Pushing the envelope can be a fun mathematical exercise, and I always advocate for a good gimmick, but when everyone involved is acting in 4 IPs and rolling 24+ dice it just slows down the game play.

I love harvesters for the flavor they add. If you're having trouble making them a force to be reckoned with just up the stats to something your characters will fear. They could be a breed of uber harvester, a reaper. Mr. Johnson tells the players that there is only one, a mutant, and they need to capture or kill it. They head out to it's home turf and realize quickly that it's much bigger and faster than a normal harvester, and then its friends come from the side Jurassic Park style. Roll initiative.

I frequently advise combat mages to take that spell, but sometimes it makes more sense to have others depending on style. I don't expect a street kid who grew up dodging corporate wagemage recruiters to have that kind of firepower. If everyone spends all their build points on the same top end fighting resources it makes for a boring and hard to run game. Unless everyone is there to do math all night, in which case rock out.

Establishing a baseline is important in SR4, and part of that means sticking to the numbers they list in the book. I'm an old school SR2-3 player who used to run with the governor off and players that frequently had 6+ passes. IT was a blast, but at the end of the day we were spending most of our time running the math during combat that frequently didn't last more than a few seconds of game time.

Fast forward to SR4 and I find myself introducing a new group to Shadowrun. First thing I notice is the lower numbers, the caps and the lower starting resources. At first I rage, but now I get it. Our games are much more RP based, more interaction, less straight action. When we cut loose, things get cinematic without being ridiculous. When someone fires the rocket boosters on their Westwind and drives through the second floor of an office building to avoid corpsec it's epic where that type of thing used to be mundane. Personally I'm having a lot more fun and finding the system much more manageable.

Of course you have to have a group that is willing to recognize the baseline and work with it. We still have specialists and the occasional huge dice pool, but they are more a part of the character than a means to keep up with the power spiral. Players also end up with more well rounded characters that they tend to form bigger attachments to.

I too have felt harvesters were a little 'weak'-with the speed boost though, and the use of cover,
it could force someone in a face to face confrontation with one that they didn't expect.
Especially if they were using surprise attacks, waiting to intercept, etc.
In the description however, Harvesters are solitary...
I have issues seeing how they would compete with other flesh eating predators.
To Patrick, it was one of my fav chapters in Running Wild, personally love this book so far,
and the best write up on the infected i have seen...the stuff in the runners companion left much to
be desired, and i apologize because my original post was not to point out your mistake, more
of a 'wtf' moment.
(i too had to check the movement rules)

I think harvesters have frightening potential, and i plan to figure out
a way to make it work, so the player of the ork sammie stops saying,
"and elves turn into pumpkinhead"

Read this and nearly choked on my coffee. LOL

Our team ran into a mob of these in the verge, buying some second hand wares for a contact of ours. With a close combat surprise these beasts still can be effective. Plus there's always the scare of infection when dealing with the nasties. Luckily we were alerted to there presence with significant range so we hunkered down. With the range gap they were fodder. Still had us freaking a little though.

WRT the 1 IP characters... I have a Chaos Mage with Synaptic Booster level 1, and don't have the Increase Reflexes spell. I like the idea of having a continuous IP boost without having to worry about Wards and the odd mage shutting my spell down.

The good doctor has been known to be wrong before. Just because something has been observed in a certain fashion ("solitary territorial hunter," for instance) doesn't mean it's always the truth. I had an adventure planned for a local game that never quite materialized where the PCs would discover a metric assload of these things in an abandoned neighborhood where they had to go and retrieve some something or other, the nature of which I've forgotten at the moment.

Of course, I also had breeding bands of loup-garou under the streets of New York in the original "Infected" manuscript (imagine, a government-sponsored field guide like Paterson's got something wrong...), but the notion of HMHVV victims not being sterile squicked a lot of people out, and I was told, gently but firmly, to Please Remove This Bit fairly early in the development/editing process.

One thing Dr. McAllister wasn't completely wrong about was the fact that harvesters are about as intelligent as your typical household brick. In their minds, if they can bring it down, they can eat it. They compete with other flesh-eating predators by turning them into steak tartare...or dying in the process.

I didn't see it as trying to point out a mistake. In fact, I didn't have the WTF moment you did until you posted this, so it was very helpful to me in that regard.

And I'm so very pleased to know you like the piece. It makes some of the slings and arrows that I took while writing it that much easier to bear. Thanks so much for the kind words.

So very glad I wasn't drinking anything at the time....