What are appropriate player stat mods for the three new infected in running wild? The running wild book has examples of a typical infected of these types, but no table for players who want to play as one of these.

I will compare each type to another infected of the same race to get comparable stat mods. Tell me what you think.

(Edit: Note: some Attribute labels are preceded with a '.' This is simply for spacing purposes)


Goblin (Dwarf)
B A R S C I L W INIT
5 3 4 6 1 4 1 5 8

Goblin mods in Shadowrun Companion
B A R S .C I .L W
1 0 1 1 -2 0 -2 2

Gnawer (Dwarf)
B A R S C I L W INIT
5 3 4 6 3 5 3 5 9

Gnawer Derived Mods from Goblin/Gnawer comparison
B A R S C I L W
1 0 1 1 0 1 0 2

----------------------------------

Banshee (elf)
B A R S C I L W INIT
3 4 3 3 5 4 3 4 7

Banshee mods in SR Companion
B A R S C I L W
0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1

Harvester (Elf)
B A R S C I L W INIT
5 3 6 6 1 5 1 4 11

Harvester Derived Mods from Banshee/Harvester comparison
B .A R S .C I .L W
2 -1 3 3 -2 2 -2 1

-------------------------------
Grendel (Ork)
B A R S C I L W INIT
8 4 4 8 1 4 1 4 8

Baseline Ork
.B A R .S .C I .L W
+3 0 0 +2 -1 0 -1 0
6 3 3 5 2 3 2 3 5

Grendel Derived Mods Compared to a baseline of 3 + Ork + Grendel
.B .A .R .S .C .I .L .W
+2 +1 +1 +3 -1 +1 -2 +1



Also, how many BP/Karma should a character have to pay to play as one of these. Opinions?

You mean to tell me that someone actually wants to play one of these things? I can almost see it with a gnawer, but a harvester? Talk about your roleplay challenges....

I'll dig up my notes and see what I had written down. Patience is your friend in this regard, though; I've got two young kids that take up a lot of my time.

The low mental stats can be a turn off for some... but not for all.

If the specimens listed in Running Wild are based on a typical Elf or Ork that is infected, then the penalties are not so bad.

For example, an ork has -1 to logic. A grendel has an additional -1 or maybe -2, but that still allows for exceptionally smart Grendels to have 2 or 3 logic, which is very playable.

When Dzoo-Noo-Qua were first introduced in SR3, they were described as being totally wild, with only animal-like intelligence... But when Shadowrun Companion was released in 4th, it was deemed that there are enough smarter Dzoo-Noo-Qua in the 6th world that it was sensible for a player to be able to play one.

When someone turns into a Ghoul, it is possible they will go crazy and not be a playable character. You could describe it as a 10 or 15% chance of insanity. With Dzoo-Noo-Qua and other 'Wild' infected, the chance of losing all semblance of humanity may be higher, but there are still going to be those few whose sanity survives the change, and those few are the ones that Playable Infected represent.

Also, some may be playing an atypical campaign setting, where humanity is optional. I would stat the new infected out for them, even if not for the average player.

Of course there is a chance that ghouls or other infected chars. go feral, this is what happens when you start with logic 1 and become infected. Logic goes -1 and whoops....you are not human-like intelligent anymore.^^

Well, people play barbarians in fantasy-themed RPGs - why not Infected in Shadowrun?
That said, yeah, some types can be a challenge.

Shouldn't the harvester charisma penalty be -4? It went from having a 5 charisma with no bonus as a banshee to a 1 charisma as a harvester.

Damien, I'm having trouble finding my notes at the moment, but I can tell you with utmost certainty that all of the new Infected types were based on a dead-average example of the appropriate metahuman race (i.e. harvesters were based on an average elf, gnawers on an average dwarf, and grendels on an average ork). I used an average human (3s in the eight basic stats) and modified said human with the modifiers shown in the GM's screen to come up with said Joe Average Metahuman before Infecting them.

Once I find my notes (and I'm afraid I'm an abominable housekeeper, and my office is a flippin' disaster area at the moment), I'll try to be more specific with the modifiers I used, et cetera. Until then, though, I hope that this helps.

Thanks for the feedback Patrick. Knowing that you used the 'average' will make getting the stat mods easy.

The hardest question for me now is, what kind of BP cost should there be for playing as one of these infected? I dont know if you were involved at all with Runners Companion (Or the Shadowrun Companion in 3rd), but knowing what kind of formula to apply to figure out BP cost would be nice.

In the mean time, I will just ballpark it and put them into the next version of the SR4_DK sheet. When people playtest them they may have some feedback as to how powerful the race ended up being, and I can adjust future BP costs in future versions of the sheet.

Afraid I had nothing to do with the RC Qualities for playable Infected. To be honest, I was against the idea, and to a great extent I still am. Ancient History did that stuff for the RC; you might get with him to see if there was a particular formula used to calculate the BP costs.

I will do some thread necromancy here, because I just had the same thoughts.
So a Harvester gets
+6 attributes in total
1 natural armor
Movement
natural weapon
two allergies

I found that the most comparable Infected was the Fomóraig who gets
+6 attributes in total
2 natural armor
Magical guard
natural weapon
two allergies

The Fomóraig costs 45BP, I'd therefore put the Harvester to 40BP, maybe depending on how much you weigh one point of natural armor.

Edit: I added it to chummer, here's the code: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bzp44Z_WE3l...dit?usp=sharing

Why in the name of God would anyone want to play one of these things?

they don't strike me as more feral than let's say Bandersnatch, Loup-Garou or Wendigo. And they all have got stats
I'm looking at some change, diversion, something new. Alternatives to what we used to play, was hoping for sr5, but with its hundreds of flaws it's out for the time being.
The struggle to supress the urges, to fit in...it's...mhhh... challenging.