So when the elf spends a fortune in points/resources to make himself as strong as a troll, he shouldn't be able to be as strong as a troll??? Strange logic.

Then why should the Troll if he spends a fortune in points/ressources NOT be able to get a Weapon that allows him to actually do something the elf can't? Strange Logic indeed . .

Because the bow already supports a trolls str. The elf has to go out of his way to try and get to the top of the heap while the troll is already there. Do you also support stopping trolls from taking advantage of a reaction or charisma above their normal maxes? Your whole argument is weird. Why should trolls be able to do as much damage with a heavy pistol or shotgun as an elf???

Bows are already crazy powerful, trolls still have melee weapons that they can go crazy with that have no limit whatsoever, and elves will never match what a troll can do that way. That is no reason to make bows stupid like they used to be.

OH NO! Bows only being able to do STR/2+2 Physical! Capped at either Str12 or Str8, depending on how new your rules are! Clearly, broken!

it's a bit less of the punk in the cyberpunk aspect . . which is what i loathe <.<

But it is NOT Str/2+2... it is Strength +2, Capped at 1.5 Damage Potential... And why would that be broken? I mean, Really...

A Troll Missile Adept can get even crazier than that, with an Effective 21 Strength (Strength at a Maximum Augmented Attribute of 15 (without any other Augmentations that could be added) and 3 Levels of Power Throw and Missile Mastery) gives a Troll a Shuriken that STARTS at 12p, and has Range Increments of 21/42/105/147 and has no cap to damage... so it ain't no thing anyway in my opinion... lets see an Elf do that...

Even an Ork can approach that without to much difficulty (Base 11p istead of 12)

If I am correct... a Troll can get to a Base 13 Strength with Genetic Optimization, Surge Optimazition, and the Improved Attribute Quality, which would give an Augmented Max of 20, and a Power throw of 26 for a Base Damage with a Shuriken of 14p... Yes it is a specialized build, perhaps, but still doable I think

Just Sayin'

Keep the Faith

Quite a bit more specialized than just giving a strong troll a bow, yes.

Oh, without a doubt...

My Oni Ninja is sporting a 16 Strength to use Thrown Weapons, which is still pretty damn impressive, and it did not take all that much in the specialization department to accomplish... I am quite capable in several areas of interest as well...

Keep the Faith

Who is saying that trolls cant get crazy STR scores??

Right now bows are pretty balanced with other ranged weapons mostly because people always complained about how 'broken' troll archers were and are. It is ironic that now that they fixed it so that its in the same league as other weapons people are up in arms about it. And their sole reason, when it comes down to it, appears to be because they cant abuse the system and make stupid powerful troll archers. Ow I have a headache now.

... haha! what a thing to miss out on. Also, they are not capped at 1.5x - that was changed from 4a 1.0 to 4a 1.1. Of all the places for it to be, its in the 4A Changes document.

Damage isn't capped at 1.5x, but it uses the lower of the bow's or the arrow's rating for damage calculation, and the max bow possible is str 8. So...10P at most.


I think I'm okay with the current rules for them. They're about as effective as light or machine pistols with stick and shocks. DPS is definitely worse, unless you use reload tricks - they get 1.5 shots per round with martial art's 'ready weapon as a free action' - or you could use quickdrawing to draw-then-fire, but you always risk blowing your reaction+skill test for it.

I never agreed with the way they nerfed Power Throw and Kinesics and as such never implemented it as written. I had no problem whatsoever with a modestly muscled elf throwing a pencil through a kevlar vest or a plain dwarf talking their way through a security checkpoint with Kinesics. That's why it's called magic. What I did instead was rule that if you have magical augmentations and physical augmentations, then they don't stack for the purposes of Power Throw and Kinesics, since in my games it was always cybered adepts that were taking the dice pools to the silliest extremes anyway, particularly since prior to the SR4A revisions 'ware upgrades were typically far cheaper than Increase Attribute-- really, the magic was just being used to get things up over the top rather than broken in its own right. And thought exercises aside, few players are usually willing to spring for a full line of genetic optimizations and surge, so it was really the Magic AND 'ware combo that was pouring all the hurt on, particularly in the case of Kinesics+Pheromones.

Now, does making them unable to stack make any sense? I don't really care. I just thought that the current "fix" was a non-solution to something I didn't consider to be that huge of a problem to begin with. Cybered adepts still do very well by combining Muscle Augs and Power Throw or Kinesics and Tailored Pheromones together, so it's not like troll shurikens became a joke of a weapon or that Pornomancers stopped inspiring threads. Hell, many of the 400 bp builds I've seen didn't even lose a die or a point of DV when they capped kinesics & power throw because burning 1 or 2 points of essence was was already a power gaming savvy move even before they introduced their arbitrary magic rating caps. Changing it so only muscle bound characters could really push thrown weapons into truly dangerous territory simply made too many fun & unorthodox characters less viable for me to appreciate the move, particularly since trolls can still be big ol' burly murder machines anyway.


TLDR version: Bring on the 8DV-with-a-paper-clip humans! No, I don't care if they only have to be STR 3 to do it! That's why they bothered to keep ther essence high, dammit.

delete...

Except that the Change Document is not the final word on the Rules... the Actual published book is (and the Eratta that came afterwards)... The change document is for those who are still using SR4 and did not buy the revision... there are discrepencies from the Change Document to the Finished Product, as apparently the finished product went through a revision after the change document was published...

Just Sayin'

Keep the Faith

What?

That document details the changes that took place between printings, with the latest changes being the most official and up to date rules. It is errata that has made it to print.

What? No. This guy has the right of it.




Bows:
4th:(trollbow)->4a PDF(strmin 12, 1.5x) -> 4a changelog(1.5x limitremoved, arrow cost/rating added, strmin 8, damage calc on arrow rating)) -> 4a Print(no further changes)

So yes. It is -very- important to know which is the latest rules release. (and the 4a changelog IS in the errata section on the website. I'm just pissed there are apparently, two version of Anniversary edition now, with no fucking errata files between them. Good job catalyst.)

That has been my opinion as well its not power throw that was broken, but stupid stacking combos. I hate to say it but D&D figured this out a while back. Give bonuses a type or a name, bonuses of the same type don't stack. Make sure you name every stinking bonus that you don't want to get out of control. Power throw actually kind of irritated me because a throwing adept isn't that odd, but now you kind of feel like you need to abuse the rules in order to be decent, especially given that I doubt most people view there throwing adept as a wall of muscle. Lets go 5 strength, 3 points of power throw, and the throwing weapon power. 7P for shuriken 6P for improvised weapon. Sounds okay especially since once you ready a handful of weapons it is a simple action throw, but your pencil does not have AP, it is not burst fire etc. It will be at best equal to a heavy pistol and you just sank 2 power points into being as good as a random guy with a gun, totally lame IMO. Heck if they wanted a cap on power throw fine, though just making it more expensive would have limited it fine. But add in penetrating throw, elemental throw etc so it diversifies a bit, maybe add in powers that let you burst fire and full auto throw with some kind of reduced base DV.

As for the bow, instead of the silly 8 str cap they should of just changed it to be like every other muscle powered weapon, str/2+X. It would be consistent and balanced.

I really don't think Power Throw was ever intended to replace a gun, especially regarding autofire. The point is that you can throw a pencil for lethal damage; if it's *as* good as a heavy pistol, that's incredible. Penetrating Throw would probably be fine, though.

I disagree, it was supposed to replace guns. It is not a normal throwing weapon its a magic power. Too many people think gun is the all powerful tool like this is trying to simulate reality. It is a game with guns, cyber, magic, and lots more. Making something for an archetype like unarmed combat and throwing adepts and then saying hey its cool we support it but you will suck compared to most people just screws over a group of people. People should not be punished for making an obvious character type from your rule set. You just put 2 PPs into combat powers and you get stuck in the 2nd string of combatants at best. Whether you decide to focus on guns, bows, melee combat, or throwing weapons. If you focus on combat you should be able to be in the first string of combat guys, and not fall in with the face and other archetypes that don't focus much on combat.

Yeah, see, personally, I never understood the urge to use the magical powers you've been gifted with just to throw things really hard either, but if someone wants to go that route I'm fine with giving them advantages commensurate with their bp investments. Firearms still have the advantages of range, smartlinks and burst fire modes right out of the box anyway and they're rather less expensive to specialize in than most other modes of combat. Sure, they're more obvious, but that can be mitigated somewhat with things like concealed holsters and chameleon coating, neither of which are very expensive relative to buying up Strength and Magic just to pimp out your thrown damage value.

Um. The whole point is that you can do it naked. You don't need the gun, and you can't be stripped of the ability. It doesn't show up on scanners, is 100% concealed, and no one will expect it. It is not meant to be better than a 'serious' gun, because it's already better in many ways. And you chose it.

It is obvious that all forms of combat are not and should not be equal. If you decide to specialize in pistols, you can't and shouldn't have the same 'DPS' as someone with assault rifles, nor the same range. You gain concealablity and maybe dual-wielding, and your guns are likely cheaper and more available. If you specialize in heavy weapons, you shouldn't be able to be as stealthy as a bow user, and your weapons will be much more controlled.

Anyway, if your players are feeling unfairly punished by their own pre-informed choices, maybe shave the PP cost slightly. But 'fixing' things by making them stronger is rarely a good idea.

Background Count.


Just sayin'.

Well, yes. I meant physically disarmed.

No the whole point of a throwing adept is to be a bad ass with throwing weapons. Not a wuss who can be a wuss in any situation. And yes while concealability etc is an advantage overall weapons styles should balance out because it is a game and your players should be allowed to have fun. And concealability is cool, but if your super duper concealability(except it shows up as magic, you are an adept, and leaves astral signitures) brings you in line with HP damage whooppedy do, because HPs are fairly concealable and you can get ones that get past scanners. So great you spent 2 PP so you can be as cool as a guy who spent 15,000 nuyen and that guy is probably more bad ass than you in every other situation, awesome balance there.

I'm aware of the advantages. I just don't see why people get all hot and bothered about the concept of maxing out throwing weapons for any purpose other than making dumpshock thought exercises. It doesn't hit me as an interesting way to go. I mean, here you have a guy with magical powers. And he can develop these talents if he really wants to. So he chooses to get really good at throwing stuff really, really hard. I dunno. Maybe these adepts all grew up worshipping Sandy Koufax or something. I was never much into baseball, so to me it seems an odd choice.

Anyway, I never really meant to argue that throwing weapons need to be stronger, if that was the impression I gave. I'm fine with about how strong they are now. I just liked the old way where you could build a fairly high DV human in addition to building high DV trolls. Doing so required a pretty unblemished magic attribute anyway, something that was actually somewhat rare before SR4A revised the Improved Attribute line of powers. Killing off some hypothetical Troll Javelin build didn't seem important enough to me to justify having any collateral damage just to cut down on the top end damage somewhat.

Udoshi, you chose to do it, and it's not like you're throwing paper balls here (figuratively). It's the damage of a *firearm* with random crap in your pockets. That is as 'badass with throwing weapons' as it gets, and vastly more so than any normal person with throwing weapons. It's not a balance problem if you can't turn a paper clip into an assault cannon round. By your logic, my shotgun should have sniper rifle range and my motorcycle should fly, to be fair and balanced.

No one's forcing you to play an adept. You can make the same argument against Killing Hands ('just bring a knife') or other powers. It's an option, and if it's not an option you personally want, don't choose it. Playing different things *is* having fun.

Unless "different" effectively means "Not really viable at my GM's table" or "Why does the Samurai keep laughing at me?" Then "different" is less about fun and more about how the 2070s is a bad time to be a big Bruce Lee fan.


I mean, I get why fists and shuriken aren't a great thing to bring to a gun fight. But, well, Shadowrun is a table top RPG and a lot of people use these things for you know, escapism. Sometimes I don't feel like telling a guy that the Big Trouble In Little China build isn't going to fly. I fully support Adepts in their quest to occasionally beat the shit out of guys despite the presence of assault rifles.

If your GM is putting you only in (for example) medium-ranged infantry situations, it will obviously favor the sam, and it's bad GMing. The GMs job is to take the characters and fit the game to them. Different characters for different situations. Roleplaying is about finding the opportunities.

Yes, guns are great: powerful, flexible, common. However, no RPG should require you to be optimized, and, with competent GMs, they don't.

Yes, absolutely. And melee, unarmed, and throwing all *can* work if the GM lets them. Weak-ER isn't the same as weak, after all.

To be fair, i was talking about Bows vs Stick and Shocks, not Crazy-ass Marvelverse Bullseye Bic Pen skills.

I've got a Human character who's strength focused (well... Athletics focused, really, but Strength came with the territory). He pretty regularly uses AeroGrenades (shaped like those old Nerf footballs, hot pink and everything) at ranges over a hundred meters. Been thinking about picking up some knives while I'm at it, just to rock out some more on that axis (and find an excuse to not bother with a suppressed weapon anymore).

Yeah but if someone thinks bullseye is awesome I say roll with it. I mean really for 10 more CPs he could have been a full mage, change throwing skill to spellcasting and take manbolt for 5 points it kind of blows throwing adept out of the water. Does it really break things if throwing adept man could have got to a 9 base Dv even with a 3-5 strength, especially when 9DV for a gun is just a long burst away. Then again I am in favor of increase DV adept powers for melee weapons and bows, but I actually like the connection to earthdawn so go figure. But I also thought all the increase DV powers were under priced at .25, it is probably the only thing I thought was under priced for adepts.