Hullo, all!

I'm going to be GMing a game of SR4A soon, and in the course of helping one of my players set up his character, I was somewhat shocked by the apparent impact of this rule.

The player in question wanted to be Robocop, so I put together a cybersuite for him targeted at corpsec cops who were badly injured in the line of duty and had lost a limb or three. The suite has 4 cyberlimbs and a cybertorso. He has 10 B/I from Armor 2 on all the pieces. If he wears, say, a lined coat in addition, he'll be sitting at 16/14 armor. He also has like 17 boxes on his physical damage track, but it occurred to me that unless I have badguys shooting nukes at him, he will never take physical damage, only stun, so those 17 boxes aren't doing him any good.

On the face of it, the conversion to stun damage makes sense and I really liked the rule when I first read it, but this particular character makes the rule seem wonky. For those of you who have played, is it as wonky as it seems? Or do all the extra damage resistance dice from lots of armor soak up most of the damage?

I was toying around with possible house rules in my head, like merging the P & S damage tracks into one, where you track P with an 'X' and S with a '/', but sometimes I get the notion to fix things that aren't really broken, so I thought I'd see what you guys thought.

That amount of armor will soak up small arms fire easy enough when it's just mooks he's dealing with. (16 dice + body) / 3 = estimate -7 DV on average.
If he's worried about being incapacitated by Stun, he should make it a character goal to acquire a Pain editor. Those things negate all negatives of Stun Damage, from dice penalties to Unconsciousness.

That should help protect him from his real enemy, the Magician.

HugeC, like from WoD? I'd really have to playtest it, but it seems to work okay there.

stun damage can still overflow into physical tho, so with enough damage he will go down. It will just take damn long to get there...

So hordes of people shooting pistols at this guy will only be able to knock him out and not really kill him.... until the stun damage wraps into physical after repeated shots.... sounds like the armor works perfectly fine to me.

Stim patches, drugs, pain editor, or the fun adrenaline pump...

I thought the armor from cyberlimbs averaged, not totaled?

Attributes average.
Armor totals.

Unless you think that adding 2 inches of Military grade composite armor to your cyberlegs is less effective than shin guards...

WoD = World of Darkness? I don't think that's me. I have gone by HugeC for other forums on the interwebs, however I can't recall ever posting on any WoD forums.

Holy cow, Pain Editor = win! And even with the massive essence cost of the suite I made for him, he could theoretically fit one.

Thanks for the perspective guys. I'll let it ride.

Also one could always just try real cyborg. It has a bit of sketchy "ask your GM" rules... but if you allow it he could just be a part of a brain rigging a dronebody. Costs at least 250.000 nuyen and a drone, but it is totally a rigged vehicle: No stun damage, no direct magic manipulation (just the normal "destroy the drone magic"). But it invites a lot strange rules (since he is a rigger) and he needs maintainance and stuff.

Good luck with your group though, and have fun.

Er, heh. I meant, 'like the way stun/lethal/aggravated damage overlaps in WoD games'.

That makes waaaaaaay more sense than how I read it.

Hey there HugeC. I'm actually in a similar boat as you are since I'm fairly new to the SR4 system (been in love with the setting since I read the Charette books back when I was like...12) and I've been trying to learn the system as quickly as possible. Some of the things that really struck me were the following:

Human (Body 5, soft capped at chargen): 12/7 armor (With FFBA from Arsenal, could probably boost the Impact a bit more with the PPP system)
Ork (Body 8, soft capped at chargen): 17/16 armor (With FFBA, helmet, full set of the PPP gear from Arsenal)
Troll (Body 10, tank build so hardcapped at chargen): 24/23 armor (With all of the above + Ballistic Shield and natural armor)

All of this is achievable at character generation for minimal nuyen cost and about 40 BP spent on Body (except the Troll tank build of course).

All of this has no mechanical impact on the character...not even penalties to Infiltration. That includes no penalties for the Troll, in full kit toting a swat shield.

For perspective, this means someone using an Assault Rifle (6P/-1 AP) would need to get 6 net hits on their attack roll versus the human to inflict Physical damage. Versus the Ork it would be 11 and against the Troll he would need 18.

Someone using an HMG would need 3 net hits vs the human, 8 vs the Ork and 15 vs the Troll.

Panther Cannon: Any hit does Physical to the human. 3 net hits for the Ork to take physical. 10 net hits to do Physical to the Troll.

Thunderstruck Railgun: Physical damage to all, assuming it hits.

So yeah, basically you have to have NPCs running around with the railgun to really inconvenience a troll tank PC. As a consequence, every non-Troll tank that might get targetted would most likely go splat in one shot.

Soak dice pools for the above runners would be as follows:

Human: 17 B / 12 I. That's a rough average of 6 resistance hits vs Ballistic damage and 4 versus Impact damage.
Ork: 25B / 24I. Average of about 8 resistance hits versus both.
Troll: 34B / 33I. Average is about 11 resistance hits versus both.

Obviously, dice being dice, the average is rarely what is actually rolled, potentially turning a minor hit into a deadly wound or completely negating a devastating strike from an artillery piece. Especially when you start throwing Edge, various implants/powers and the Armor/Barrior spells into the mix.

Still, I do think that perhaps the armor stacking rules are actually too lenient in SR. For some reason I never really pictured gun battles as being gun bunnies battering each other to unconsciousness.

I don't mind that the Troll/Cyberzombie/Orksammy tank is such a...well...tank. But it does mean that when you start hitting those numbers, the rest of the team is in pretty deep shit if a response team arrives that's actually able to handle that level of resistance. It also brings up the point that unless you bring the railgun, you don't really have a physical counter to an optimized tank build.

Personally that strikes me as sort of unbalanced, but perhaps thats just me. Does it play out differently once the game is under way?

It is only "seems" unbalanced if your game is combat heavy. Being pretty new to SR in a similar way as you Bladehate (fell in love with the bizarre alternate reality / fantasy setting), I have noticed that even if you are a combat monster, there is a plethora of other ways that the combat monster is forced to default in that will result in glitches and critical glitches for those tests where other specialists or even just competent amateurs will be mopping the floor with them. And heck, if death in combat is the desired goal for any "tank" conventional or improvised explosives have those chunky salsa rules going for them or perhaps ramming them with a speeding vehicle or maybe some poison or pathogen delivery system or ... Well, you probably get the idea by now.

Another thing I think is interesting about the specialties of characters in SR, unlike D&D, it is actually pretty desirable to split the party off to tasks which they excel at, so if characters not competent at combat end up in combat, I would think the team failed somehow or the GM was being a dick with some deus ex machina type thing to screw them where they are weak.

Chargen allows starting 400 bp characters to rack up some pretty intense dice pools if the player spends the legwork turning pages and making gear combos.

In my opinion, the best way to handle this has always been to review your players sheets and shoot down characters that exceed a given dice pool range. I usually set a starting 400 bp character dice pool max of 14-16 on dominant skills. This is easily achievable and still has plenty of room for other skills - the kinds that make a character a character. And doesn't take mixing sourcebooks to min/max.

******

One of the things that can also be taken into consideration is to engage such a target with a large dice pool. With enhanced 7 or 8 agility, a smart link, 5 skill and specialization and some sensor targetting data, a corpsec high threat response unit can unload a narrow burst (god forbid a long or full burst) with maybe 20 dice. Drop 4 to gain 4 dv and start trading out attacking dice to reduce armor and you can get a pretty high DV in a hurry. Toss in APDS for another -4 and you can be looking at some decent hits. With 20 dice, you can drop 4 for damage and 6 more for armor reduction and you are rolling 10 dice to hit. Use mook / drone fire spam to reduce their reaction pool and voila - a hit.

A MMG with a gyro mount can slam into a target for 6 + 2(burst) + 4 (bonus from aiming) = 12p base with a total AP of -2 (base) -4 (APDS) -6 (aiming) = -12 total.

12p, - 12ap before successes. It just gets worse with a Full burst. For a long burst add a further 3 to the DV for a final of 15p, -12ap before hits. A Full Burst starts at 19p, -12ap. Yows.

That will put the hurt on (or kill) the human, wound (or nearly drop) the ork and make the troll take notice (or hurt a ton).

Now remember that you can have, say, 8 of these guys... or more... Why not!

Once you start causing wounds, the Empire shall fall.

Trouble with this is that any other character taking a 12p, -12ap hit is going to be a smear of bits on the ground.

This is why I try and cap dice pools during chargen.

Where are you getting this -6 armor mod from aiming?




The only option for reducing armor is a called shot to ignore armor, which is an all or nothing affair.



Unless you have more dice to attack then your target has to armor it isn't even an option without using edge. Using Bladehate's armor values, that would be -12 dice pool shooting at a human, -17 for the orc, and -24 for the troll.

The easiest way to deal with high armor targets is to use elemental effects. Tasers and Stick N' Shock rounds work nicely, reducing armor by 1/2. Also, mages bypass armor completely.

Right: a few bursts of S&S will handle everything.

I've found one of the most effective things to do when you have a troll tank in the party - the classic suit of armour with an LMG - is to have everyone fire at him. This will probably provoke a wailing from the troll player as all six security guards open fire on one PC, but you just shrug and say: "who looks most threatening, do you think?"

Realism is the correct solution to a lot of things that appear to be problems in Shadowrun.

Also... Stunbolt. The single cheesiest thing in the entire game of Shadowrun. A decently built mage (5 Magic, 5 Spellcasting, 5 Willpower) can cast Force 10 Stunbolts all day long and rarely take a lick of drain from it.

Likewise, things like Gammascoplomine or Nuerostun that ignore armor.

Of all the things you can do in shadowrun to "Break" a chracter, high body and armor is one of the easiest to deal with.

Bull

This. So hard.

Aye. Knasser is right there.

It is always fitting reaction to action: If some giant monster breaks into my facility, with some hardpoint on it or a gyrostabilsator and some HUGE gun, protected by some magical forceshields and counterspelling, clad in military armor or what amounts to TANKLIKE plates. The reaction will always be: "HOLY shit... send whatever we have... NO CALL all we know too. I need that DROPPED"

Sighting of something with armor over ~10-12, explosive or exotic fullautomatic weaponry or massive spirit/critter involvement will not get ONE strike team as usual but ALL available. With military loadout. APDS is standart then, drone support, and yes the good old coordinated fire: First the troll, than the magician.

One thing i find pretty funny too is the healing time of some "monster"... umm characters i mean. When i tried a bit with the system i created a Fomori-Character, 400 BP not overspecialized. Which had (without military armour) 17/21 Armour and 13 dice for damage resistance (and gets 1 less box damage and one shift to stun if the damage is physical). Ah, that isn't THAT much... but even if you hurt him, he just stands up and goes and is ready to rock in about a day or two (He throws 27 dice + medical help +/- mods). Even if one uses the rule of ONLY just body instead of double to heal is is insane. Trolls DO have regeneration in SR *g*

Back to armour and damage: Yeah the whole system doesn't really scale well, upwards OR downwards. At first i liked that you can now use more skill to fix low damage codes. But at some point the whole system totally gets weird. Especially in vehicle combat, rockets and explosions... and smartarmour. BUT i have to say: as long as all stays in the middle the system SEEMS to work fine.

Stick and shock is no good option though. Since electricity is the mostly used/and annoying effect most people have the cheap lining crap in their armour for that. You are just shooting bullets which are more expensive and have no effect on a lot of stuff and work on paramilitary/shadowrunners the same as gel ammo.

As a long time GM (not in SR though) I'm pretty familiar with the concept of "consequences" as being the absolute best way to challenge players or make them think an extra time on what is the best course of action.

I'm not a fan of splitting the party either, which has been one of my biggest gripes about SR in the past since it almost forced certain aspects of gameplay into solo adventures. SR4 does seem to combine matrix and astral combat fairly well though, and my advice to every player I've ever had is to make a character that is at least competent in combat. They don't have to be monsters, but at the least a reasonable combat skill/ability of their choice with some cheap specializations to at least give them SOMETHING to do when the bullets start flying.

My problem with the current rule sets is that it allows some incredibly silly values "straight out of the box" at chargen. Again, I don't mind the tank being a tank...but I do find it unfortunate that the only physical way to counter him is with a railgun. Someone really tanking up a troll would take the non-conductivity mod + chemical seals etc meaning an attack would have to actually breach his armor to get a poison/drug into him.

It just seems like actually making a tank necessitates a much too extreme response from the GM.

This is essentially (but not exactly) how it works in my games. I will post the details later once I have had some sleep (assuming I remember).


Except that is not the problem.
The problem is that small arms fire now knocks the character out faster than it would if it where not converted, doing Physical as normal.


Again, that is not the problem. There are numerous common methods of dealing with an "overpowered" tank, very few of which will appear to be targeting that character specifically. Often, they would be used even if the character is not a problem.

As above, the problem is that the conversion from Physical to Stun damage from the armor means the character will be taken out of the fight much faster than if the damage simply remained Physical (barring very specific exceptions allowing you to effectively disregard Stun entirely).

This problem comes from the Physical & Stun damage being tracked separately except in the case of Overflow. It generally looks good at first, and even runs fine in the game under most circumstances, but falls apart miserably in more than one situation - all of which can be solved by using a single damage track.


The method I use of combining the Damage Tracks has literally no change to Physical damage impact, reduces the threat of Stun damage, and increases the threat of Stun and Physical damage. Overall lethality remains approximately the same, while taking Physical damage is now always worse than taking Stun damage.

In my game, whenever an attack fails to penetrate armor, I halve the damage value of the attack after soak. This means that taking a few boxes of stun is almost always better.

Let us not forget that while a "Robocop" character is hard to bring down in combat, he is going to have a hard time while not on a run. He just can't take off his armor and blend in to the crowd. He is "Robocop" all the time. He is easy to track, easy to find, and hard to hide. He may need special lifestyle upgrades, to keep all those artificial limbs working in sync. And let us not forget he really can't travel very well. Hard to get that much tonnage of 'ware through checkpoints. And even if he is keeping his fake ID's up-to-date, there can't be that many full body recipients in any locale. "Hmm, his ID says he is Joe Blow. But we just had a full body augmentee run rampant downtown yesterday. Let me check this ID again..."

Corporate suits may take a dim view of his showing up for runs. "Really? They brought a fraggin' tank? We just make low grade computer parts! Who hates us this much? This is getting personal!" Remember the "North Hollywood Bank Robbery"? LOTS of police on hand for that. When the HTR teams show up to chase him, they are coming armed for bear/troll. They won't be chased just some gun bunnies, they will be trailing a piece of military hardware. They won't be letting them go easily.

He may also have troubles with hackers disabling his 'ware in combat. If he loses control of a leg for a combat round or 2, problems (and hilarity) will ensue.

Except that a simple Mage build will effectively counter that Tank, Quite nicely in fact...

Even with a Magic of 4 and a Skill of 4 with a Combat Spell Sepcialty, a Mentor Bonus in Combat Spells, and a rating 2 Power Focus... that is a very reasonable build, with a lot of room for other things... With 14 Dice he throws a Force 8 Manabolt (Drain of 4p) or even a Force 8 Stun Bolt (Drain of 3p) is going to really hurt that Troll Tank... even more reasonable spell casting in the Force 4 Range means that he can Multicast multiple times (Say 3 Spells (Stunbolt), with Dice pools of 9, 9, 8; with a Drain of 3s each) can conceivable eliminate that Troll in a single pass, especially if you use Edge on one of those rolls.

Troll Tanks are not really all that harad to actually hurt on the battlefield...

Just Sayin'

Keep the Faith

Anyone who allows their cyber to be hacked deserves what they get... easiest way to keep that from happening is to TURN OFF YOUR WIRELESS acces to the Cyberware... easy fix... Most (if not all) shadowrunners do this already, so why would the "Robocop" character not do the same?

Keep the Faith

Due to this very problem, I choose to interpret the aiming to defeat armor rules based on armor by piece.

If a target is decked out in 6 different kinds of armor totalling out to 20 some ballistic, I let a player (or NPC) aim to avoid, say, their silly shin guards or what have you. In abstract, this just means that I reject the 'all or nothing' against armor - especially since players are motivated to have so much armor, that armor is easy to get and that it is easier to cap out an attackers dice pool with passive armor and nuyen rather than any appreciable skill.... - and allow a 1 to 1 die swap so long as the swap totals out to an entire piece of armor. A player could choose 8 dice and bypass a target's armor jacket, for example.

Ends up making a lot more sense (in the above example, he shoots for the arm pit or neck or thighs or whatever) and also lets players and GM alike produce big time AP pools to counter crazy mofos in too much armor.

The core to my suggestions, however, remains having everybody, including the drones, shoot the troll. His defense dice will disappear and eventually something will wound him and then the tree goes down heavy.

Just change troll to famori though and the mages are not as much as a threat.(they still hurt but that force 10 sunbolt is now force 5) Add the "flaw" that gives you a background count and now mages aren't a threat in the slightest.

That's quite an investment now, but what a mess. Sounds like a job for applied chemistry, though.

I'm planning to go with RAW for now, but I'd be interested to hear the specifics of how you do it. I assume it becomes one track of size N + Bod/2 + WP/2, and the rest stays the same?

You can build a character to bypass an opposing Build, There is no doubt about it... But that particular character that you are talking about is very abusive, and I would not allow it at my table to start with... The power of the GM trumps ludicrous builds any day of the week and twice on Sundays...

It is an interesting thought experiment though... Though he is still not immue to such things as Gas Grenades or Toxins delivered by Darts or Touch... No Build is completely immune from damage...

Keep the Faith

Mostly immune though. Heavy Milspec armor with chemseal would be a help. That would make yuo not only immune to Gases and Contact chems (assuming they don't puncture your armor), but the Milspec makes you immune to darts and other 0 DV attacks.

A relatively underused piece of bioware is the Trauma Damper. It's basically Pain Editor lite, reducing all stun damage attacks by 1.

Tymeaus and Muspellheimer, I've enjoyed your posts here on dumpshock. Also, I fully admit that I do not have even a fraction of your hands-on experience with this system. So I'm personally glad to hear that your experience says my theory-crafting isn't cause for any major concern. Even so, I think the numbers are schewed too heavily.

In terms of possible counters to the Troll tank, I am aware that a mage build can easily counter it. Personally, I consider that a design flaw and balance issue as well. Mages should not be so much of a hard counter to a tank build that it almost mandates the Fomori (Or Gnome if you don't like a tanker) + Arcane Haze combo. Really, I mean that combo is so good (and it even scores you 5 points compared to just picking the Troll metatype alone) I almost consider it mandatory for any non-awakened runner build. As it stands right now, the game has so many extremes that it just seems like the only real way to have a good game is to mutually agree with your players to "keep it sane". And that agreement just automatically breaks down the instance someone says "I wanna play a mage".

So, let me just re-iterate. My point is not that the troll tanker has no hard counter. My point is that the troll tanker has no real physical counter. And it becomes even worse if you have an even reasonably intelligent person building the toon.

Troll/Ork tanks require an extreme physical response from the GM...or the presence of an even more overpowered hard counter: The Mage (who apparently hard counters everyone...but that's a seperate topic). Or something silly like full auto SnS/something equally "cheesy". The troll himself is not in the least threatened by the security response team with ARs and an LMG backup. True that response team would probably have mage backup, but that's where the runner team's mage/Infiltrators on overwatch with sniper rifles should take a hand. Assuming the sec mage gets geeked first (which is not just a "good idea" but more like "mandatory law" in current SR4 rules) the troll can pretty much roflstomp the rest, especially if his first implant upgrade is a Pain Editor (and why wouldn't it be with armor that high?).

As a GM am not interested in forcing Corp Sec to respond with mages/mass gunfire/drone swarms to every shadowrun that gets heavy, I was considering the following House Rule. Please let me know what you think:

Armor Stacking:

Wearing multiple layers of armor does not work very well. When wearing multiple sets of body armor, the character's Active Skill dice pools are cut in half and his movement rates are reduced to "waddle" (basically, just don't stack armor). Instead, a player may opt to utilize the armor options of FFBA and the PPP Secure System to augment their base set of armor. However, a character may never purchase any combination of armor point increases that exceeds their Body value. No armor value can exceed the second armor value by more then x1.5 (Badly worded, please see the exmaple and suggest a better way to word it if you can =)).

Example:
Janey is purchasing gear for her runner, Hexa. With a Body of 5 (She's an Ork Mage), she looks over the books and makes two armor sets for herself. The first is for low profile work and for this she chooses the Armor Vest (base values of 6/4) as her base armor set. Looking over Arsenal, she sees that she can use any combo of FFBA or PPP items to beef up her set. Since the armor set is intended for a low profile, she theorizes that she's much more likely to get in some truly nasty close ranged scraps should events turn nasty. With that in mind, she chooses to use her allowance of 5 points to boost up Ballistic armor by 2, and then places the remaining 3 points balancing out her impact armor making the final armor value of the set 8/7. For her second set, she decides that when things are going to get nasty, she would rather build a set around the Armor Jacket (base values of 8/6). Because this suit is most likely to see use in a firefight, she assigns every point possible to cap out the Jacket's ballistic protection, resulting in a final armor score of 13/6. However, because this violates the balance ratio of Ballistic to Impact, she has to re-adjust this to 11/8. For the fluff she calculates the costs of the various purchased pieces and notes the final modest nuyen spent on her character sheet. Finally she takes a moment to describe her low profile set, describing it as a street-style outfit where the extra armor bits are disguised as a semi-sporty/neo-punkish accessories. Pleased with her attention to detail, the GM allows it as a street outfit, but warns her that anyone taking a serious look at her will probably notice that the extra bits aren't just for show.

On the other hand, Lars is building his Troll tank (Body 9) Obar Bearshoulders. Once again, at chargen he does not have access to Military Combat armor (No Restricted Gear quality). Unlike Janey, he decides he doesn't give a rat's ass about a low profile. When people see his troll coming, they're going to KNOW he means business. With that in mind, he sets out to make the best set of armor he can. Checking over the book, he also uses the Armor Jacket (8/6 base values). With a Body of 9, Lars can take up to 9 points of additional armor. Deciding that a general purpose set is the way to go, he assigns 5 to Ballistic and 4 to Impact for a final armor value of 13/10 (14/11 with racial). As with Janey, he calculates the expense and moves on to buying Bearshoulders some guns!

In my mind this serves to curb extreme armor values. This also re-inforces the value of military armor, since the base armor accounts for a significantly greater percentage of the total armor value. It also enhances the value of other armor sources such as various Cyber/Bioware and spells/abilities. It also narrows the gap between tanks and everyone else to more reasonable levels. Lastly, it encourages even the troll to use cover and proper firearms tactics, rather then saying: "Cover?!? Hah!! I AM cover!". This would also make him less likely to build just a pure brawler, but devote a few skill points to Infiltration so he can actually keep a low profile until the shit hits the fan. Once the run goes south and the rounds are going downrange, the sammy can still step up and be the point man, especially with some decent 'ware upgrades.

What do you guys think of this house rule? Are there any glaring holes in it?

I would probably combine this kind of house rule with some adjustments to the rules for burst fire/automatic fire, ramping the auto fire damage down a few notches.

For a tinman, I would probably say that they start more or less at the level of a set of military armor and can get a certain number of extra points depending on what they devote their accessory slots to. Personally I find it a bit silly to let a full conversion borg also armor up afterward...even if its technically allowed by RAW. As a borg, your body is your armor after all. And while you can theoretically keep piling on the layers of neo-kevlar (or whatever SR calls it) layered armor = weight and weight would mean more of your borg body would have to be devoted to just keeping you mobile.

Anyway, enough rambling. Feedback is welcome!

Well, assuming you disallow the combination of Arcane Arrester (however you get it...SURGE or meta racial) with Astral Hazing, even one of the qualities is borderline mandatory for any mundane character build that doesn't want to be the plaything of a mage character. As an experiement, let's try the following with the current RAW.

Fomori Street Sammy: (45 points)

Qualities:
Restricted Gear (5 pts)
Magic Resistance 4 (20 pts)
Dermal Deposits (10 pts)
Astral Hazing (+10 pts)

Attributes:
Body 10 (40 pts to softcap)
Willpower 4 (30 pts)

Armor values:
24/23 (Milspec armor, FFBA Full Suit, Helmet, ballistic shield, Dermal Deposit Quality, partial PPP set to boost the numbers to their cap)

Armor modifications and gear:
Non-conductivity 5
Chemical Seal
Pain Editor Bioware
Trauma Dampener Bioware

This would make the character effectively immune to inhalation + contact vector poisons and drugs.

The character would convert anything less then a Thunderstruck cannon into stun damage, and soak a hell of a lot of damage even against full auto weapons and panther cannons. Even more so if the player doesn't have the "invincible tank" mindset and uses cover etc like every other normal gunfighter. All stun damage is also reduced by 1 point by the Trauma Dampener.

Furthermore, the character's entire Stun Track just became "free damage" before suffers any real, lasting harm or even feels the effects of combat.

Against magical attacks he would first reduce the Force of the spell by 4 (Astral Hazing) and then halve the remaining force due to AA. If a player argued that the order should be reversed (IE Force halved, then -4 for AH) I would have to shoot them down since AH is clearly a field around the character. A spell has to travel through the field before striking the character and being downgraded by AA. Finally, anytime the caster gets to resist magic, he gets to roll an additional 4 dice against the heavily reduced amounts thrown his way. Basically, even the mage would find it somewhat of a challenge to pour damage into him.

All of this is technically accomplished at character creation with RAW.

For character advancement, this character could pour some of his Nuyen into Orthoskin for even more armor that causes no encumbrance and stacks his values even higher. And I'm sure there are other options that I don't know about. The rest of his money could be spent on boosting his combat abilities (which are admittedly not maxed out...but I doubt they would suck either).

Anyway, that's a maximized tank build according to current RAW.

Oh and if you decide to get even more goofy with the tank build, you could do the following:

Attributes:
Agility 3 (20 BPs)

Skills:

Infiltration 5 (20 BPs)
Spec: Urban (2 BPs)
Heavy Weapons 5 (20 BPs)
Spec: HMG (2 BPs)

Gear purchase:
Stoner Ares HMG (w/chameleon coating)
Ruthenium Coating (Armor)
Ruthenium Coating (Shield)
Smart Link
Muscle Toner 2

Congratulations, you just spent 22 BPs and about 20,000 nuyen on Ruthenium to make yourself a stealth tank rolling 12 dice (-4 to enemy's DPs) on Infiltration checks.

A further 22 BPs and some cash has bought you a stealth tank toting an HMG that let's you roll 13 attack dice (not wowiezowie but quite respectable), with the option for full auto fire.

In fact, if you wanted to expand on RAW you could ask your GM if you could make or order a custom Ballistic Shield with some anchoring spikes similar to the Cyberware. This would essentially let you use your Ballistic Shield as a tripod bracing and mobile fortress for extra cover. I don't see how a GM could argue against that sort of modification without resorting to "No...just...no.".

How are you starting with Pain Editor and MilSpec armor?

Freeze Foam grenades. That is all physical.

That's what I had in mind when I said applied chemistry earlier. There are lots of fun toys in Shadowrun.

I fully agree. The game like pretty much any point buy char gen game needs a GM to look over all the characters being built carefully if the players are the sort to abuse a system.

Hah. Because I got a bit caught up in it all, I decided to stat out this character more thoroughly. This assumes 400 BP character gen system and that Runners Companion, Arsenal and Augmentation content is allowed for chargen.

OP MacGuffin (Fomori Samurai)

Fomori (45 pts)
-Magic Resistance 4 (20 pts)
-Dermal Deposits (10 pts)
-Restricted Gear (Pain Editor) (5 pts)
-Astral Hazing (+10 pts)

Attributes: 180 BPs
Body: 10 (40 ps)
Agility: 3 (20 pts)
Reaction: 3 (20 pts)
Strength: 8 (30 pts)
Charisma: 2 (10 pts)
Logic: 2 (10 pts)
Willpower: 4 (30 pts)
Intuition: 3 (20 pts)

Skill Points: 96 pts
Infiltration: 5 (20 pts)
-Spec: Urban (2pts)
Heavy Weapons: 5 (20 pts)
-Spec: LMG (2 pts)
Dodge: 3 (12 pts)
Perception: 3 (12 pts)
Athletics Skill Group: 2 (20 pts)
Intimidation: 2 (8 pts)

Gear + 'ware: 197,000 Nuyen spent. So throw in an extra 28k for lifestyle, ammo and anything else that's been forgotten (Like Armor Mods): 50 BPs
-Pain Editor (40k)
-Trauma Damper (40k)
-Ingram White Knight (2k)
-Armor (Armor Jacket, Helmet, etc etc) (5k approx)
-Ruthenium Polymer Coating (Armor, Shield + weapon) (20k. Should be enough to cover armor, shield and extras).
-Reflex Recorders (Heavy Weapons, Infilitration) (20k)
-Muscle Toner 2 (16k)
-Muscle Augmentation 2 (14k)
-Custom crafted Ballsistic Shield (8k, just to be generous) w/anchoring spikes.
-Wired Reflexes 1 (11k)
-Smartlink (1k)
-Reaction Enhancers 2 (20k)

Combined, that's 396 BP spent, with 4 BPs remaining for fluff.

While this might not be the most optimized damage dealer, its a pretty damn crazy tank without too much in the way of weaknesses. With very decent stealth DPs, allowing the troll to get around to some fairly unusual places that he normally wouldn't be allowed toting this level of aggression.

For character development, this character could focus on increasing his killing power (Upgrading to an HMG or Thunderstruck is pretty viable options, Strength 10 let's him tote either one around without too much of a problem and the Tripod custom shield would let him rock'n roll with an HMG) since his survivability is already sky high. Along with upgrading killing power, he could also start boosting his mobility, focusing on 'ware that gives him more options for running, jumping and especially climbing. Allowing him to move around town (or a battlefield) with even greater flexibility. Boosting his security breaking skills (lockpicking, hacking, etc) could also be an option...but mostly another specialist should be available to handle that for him.

So I'd be interested in hearing what could realistically counter this character? Taking into consideration that he's straight out of chargen, it seems like the only real danger to this character is a sane GM taking a look and going "Hell no!".

Yeah I fixed that Yerameyahu.

Well, he's not in mil-spec now, so just gas/dart/splash him.

Ok...Freeze Foam comes in rating 1-6. So assuming a max rating of 6, that means Armor and Structure of 6.

Depending on the situation, the character I posted above could either use his LMG to destroy the Barrior (Full Auto should allow the troll to destroy a goodly amount). If his arm was trapped, he could default his Unarmed and batter his way out with his Strength 10, albeit a bit more slowly.

True. Would probably just switch it around then and take Milspec armor to start and make the Pain Editor the highest priority upgrade for him after game start.

Alternatively, spend some armor mods to purchase things like chemseals.

Can you really LMG freeze foam off of your body? Hate to glitch, hehe.

Yes, there's always a counter, and a counter-counter. *shrug* In the end, it's a roleplaying game.

Well, according to the rules its used to form a cast for broken bones or sprayed out to incapacitate rioters or form barriers.

It doesn't really get too explicit talking about how the foam is actually deployed (Some kind of giant, vehicle mounted spray gun?). But assuming some kind of on-the-fly creativity it would probably be net hits from the attacker = the barrier rating splashed on the troll (up to the max of 6). That's assuming the troll let's the gunners spray him...and then there would be the trouble in determining just how much...and what parts...are covered by the foam exactly.

But sure, having 3 fire riot vans roll up with big ass sprayers on top would probably screw the troll above (Or indeed, anyone) pretty thoroughly, that's true.

Oh, and also...pretty sure this tank build isn't too concerned about taking damage from his LMG...unless the GM starts making arbitrary rule calls about armor reduction etc.

Since the GM is...well...the GM...he can of course do anything he wants (like never allowing this exercise in OP to see the light of day). I guess this was just more of an exercise in twisting RAW. Just a mildly entertaining diversion.

I'm more interested in getting opinions and feedback on the Armor house rule I'm considering. Particularly if people can see any glaring loopholes with it or imbalances I haven't taken into account.

Indeed. Honestly, I might lower the encumbrance limit, or ditch the whole PPP system entirely, etc.

Pff, this is Shadowrun, surely some other specialist can outmaneuver the tank into a position disadvantageous to that character. I don't even know what is with all the focus on combat anyways, since it is the setting which gets me off in terms of fun, so with settings comes all sorts of social, technical, magical or whatever (I look at the sections the skills are split into for inspiration) pit falls that the tank better have someone on their team who is decent at that stuff or their keister is cooked. And that goes both ways for the other specialists as well.

If a particular specialist, combat in the example, is getting more spotlight time than others, I would hold the GM mostly responsible for that since they are the setting.

For bladehate's character. I propose the screech rifle. It deals stun damage, so its not perfect. But it also bypasses all his worn armor, including the shield. Resisted with only body, and if the damage is higher then his willpower he is nauseated. Sure, he can get an extra 6 points of sound dampening armor. But the only thing that would make him immune is the hush spell. Which he is conveniently extremely resistant to.

Very cool =). Proof that everything has a counter. Where is the Screech Rifle from?