Okay I'll be nice and assume you have a white night with gyro arms with maxed agility, exceptional attribute, you are an elf, changeling with even better agility, and genetic optimization agility for a total of 15 agility, 6 in heavy weapons, specialized in the LMGs, and a smart gun link obviously. Heck you are also an adept with enhanced heavy weapons skills and your even have an aptitude in heavy weapons so kick that up to 7 base. So 29 dice to shoot, no recoil compensation. You get 9-10 hits on average and plink off the armor since you have to raise the base DV before autofire in order to penetrate it.

You get lucky and roll 13 hits so as long as the driver with reaction-handling does not get 3 hits you destroy the citymaster though if he decides to dodge he also adds in his skill.(I wont add in the resistance test even because 26+ DV is hard to resist even with 32 dice) You will never get better at this than you are now and you have to get lucky to take out the citymaster. A mage who will get better takes it out with considerably less minmaxing and no restraints on where he can carry the gun, though I guess you can compare that to background count. And the mage handles multiple targets better and has ridiculous versatility. Yeah you think they paid for it, but others would pay more for less versatility and less power. '

Yeah you could have some of the really, big guns and do base 10ish DV but 1/2 the armor of the citymaster and probably take it out in one shot. But really again how often do you have that with you, it is kind of specialized since against anything less than heavy vehicles your other weapons are a better choice and its freakin huge.

I used to think the same thing, but the recent FAQ dealing with called shots and spells seems to imply otherwise (yes, I know that FAQ != RAW). The FAQ and the rules seem to imply you need to Take Aim first.

Edit: I misread the FAQ, you can take a Called Shot without a Take Aim. So you can have 1 called shot and 1 normal shot in a round.

Maybe I'm reading a typo or something but a citymaster has 20 armor in my book. So he has to get to 17DV with APDS ammo. And an assault rifle has a base DV of 6 so 17-6=11 net hits. You reminded me about 1 thing though the AR itself has -1 AP so 10 net hits.

You know what? I find 10

DV 6 (where do you get the 7 AP -2 from? Experimental APDS Ex-Ex ammo?)
Modified armor 20 -1 from the assault rifle -4 from the APDS= 15

Net hits needed = 15-6+1 (need to be strictly higher than the armor) = 10

EDIT: beaten for the second time.

Going to stop editing since it doesn't refresh the page, heh.

Ok not counting the autofire DV bonus with regards to penetrating armor, since that apparently does not count, you would just need a HMG instead of an Assault Rifle, 7 DV -3 AP, with the APDS rounds and 7 net hits. Considering the pathetic dice pool of the vehicle (Reaction -1 Handling) and the abundance of recoil reducing accessories it's still not an "omg impossible" task, it does mean a dice pool slightly over 20, which I think is the line for "cheap character", so I'll concede that point.

Use a couple rockets or run up to it and put apply some foam explosive instead. Couple thousand nuyen cost, you still put it in a bag to conceal it.

Pre 4A scatter rockets and I'll agree with you on the rockets if they are AV rockets.

And sure Sams can take out heavy vehicles but maybe it is how we run games but the number of times you have the gear to do so is not altogether that common.

Note that 4 long bursts can only be accomplished over the course of 4 action phases. So you'd need to have Wired 3 as a street sam to get off 4 long bursts in 1 Combat turn. Rules clearly state that despite it being a simple action you are limited to 1 long burt per action phase. Thus you get 1 long and 1 short burst.

1) You are being patted down because you infiltrated a facility and then were spotted. Feeling good-natured for once instead of the usual, Comedian-style response or maybe because you have a face with you who isn't a sociopathic gun bunny, you try to bluff your way out of the problem. Hard to convince the guard you aren't up to something when you look like Rambo.

2) Fall out from a run. Cops are here to arrest you and you really don't want to go or maybe they are raiding the place while you are there. Remember, most street sams are felons just for existing and being SINless isn't as big an advantage as people think. Or it could be a corporate strike team.

In both those cases the Mage not only has Direct Combat spells but will also often have non-damaging spells that let them evade the problem. Influence, most illusions, and Shapechange all spring to mind.

EDIT: To point out that with an HMG there is no way you are concealing that and getting rid of -6 recoil can be tough. Every point you miss by is -2 dice not -1 because it is a heavy weapon. Gyromounts and bi/tripods are great for heavy weapons but also require some set up and again mess up the concealability. Unless maybe we are talking about a 2 man hmg team (1 sets up the tripod the other fires in the same action).

Whoops...yeah, I was thinking 16/16 for some reason. That's what I get for rattling off numbers from my head without checking the book again.
(Laughably, that means grenades can't hurt citymasters at all...or did I miss an exception to vehicle armor somewhere? But that would be a flaw in vehicle armor, not magic.)

still 11 hits (9, if he picked up AV rounds instead of APDS) off his 20 dice isn't much worse off than the mage's needed 5 hits from 12ish.
With the odd little bonus that getting past the armor at all is not unlikely to destroy the van in one hit. Again, flaw in vehicle armor, not magic.

*shrug*
Or replace the AR with a Barret => 9P damage, -4AP, AV-6AP = no bursts, but 1 hit to scratch, 2ish hits twice to destroy the car.
Or, one of the ever-popular assault cannons, lasers, or even a flamethrower - no problems there.

Sorry to derail slightly, but are you talking about cyberarm gyromounts?
If you have one for each cyberarm, does the recoil comp from each stack if ou are wielding a firearm two-handed?

I have no idea, but they might.(for me the one of the biggest 4e fails is they should have had solid rules on stacking and things that don't stack like 3e+D&D that everyone rails against, but then again I am not a fan of gagillion dice monsters of juggled rules and gear) Still white knight comes with 6, gyro give 3 more and there is only 9 points of recoil in a 10 shot burst.

Gyromounts do not stack in Arsenal. It does not explicitely mention the cyber ones, but it is close enough.

Ah ok. For some reason I was thinking the White Knight just had 3 points of in-built RC

I would like to pick a point here. Thats 11 *net* hits. The vehicle gets to dodge. Most Riggers have great Reactions too.

Who is covering the "easily conceable" challenge for the samurai?

BlueMax

This is the point where I radio the drone rigger to lob that high explosive rocket on his Nimrod, disguised as a malfunctioning camera drone (according to its electronic signature, anyway).

That's even easier - all it takes is a microdrone with a laser pointer and link to the sammy half a mile away with a mortar. Surprise = no dodge.

Right. That's what the mage does when he doesn't want to cast and everything is already setup.

I was looking for what the sammy does. Really, what does the Sammy do?


BlueMax

The Sam runs. He really does not have another choice if he isn't packing heavy artillery. But to be fair if you are in a heavy background count the mage runs as well. To me there is a large difference though, background counts are what the GM adds to make things more difficult or to balance the mage. Not carrying a barret sniper rifle or whatever is the norm for a Sam, he carries the artillery in unusual situations. It is almost a reverse thing, in unusual situations the mage is hit by enough background count he can't act at absurd power, in other unusual situations the Sam can carry highly obvious and illegal gear and is absurdly powerful.

And now, for comparison, a rigger.

Gunnery 6, Specialization (ballistic) +2, Command 6 Ergo 1, Comlink Optimization (Command) +1, Codeslinger (Command) +2, Hotsim +2 = 19 dice Firing remotely from a Steel Lynx armed with a (Restricted gear) GE Vanquisher Heavy Autocannon using Ex-Ex rounds for 12P -7AP. He fires a wide burst getting roughly 6 hits. The target, on full defense rolls... -14 dice, so let's just skip that part, 'k? Who wants to soak 18P with a generous (14 + 6 -7 = 13) dice?

Oh, and then, thanks to his Simsense Booster and Simsense Accelerator (Restricted gear), he continues to do this for a total of 5 IPs. Or, he takes a simple action to scratch his nose, then uses a second simple action to launch 10 Ares Heimdal missiles from a GTS Tower hovering 3 km away...

1) This requires heavy modifications on the Steel Lynx: the serial weapon mount is not reinforced.
2) I don't see Ex-Ex assault cannon ammunition in the book.
3) You are throwing away 675 Y with every burst. Will the run will cover the expenses?

1 <3 you.

BlueMax

And yet sometimes, even the best dice pools fail and you take Drain... That is a pretty undeniable fact of the game... Well desigend mages may indeed minimize drain, but you can never eliminate it all together. I do not have any issues with the Magic Rules (I play in the same games as Orcus Blackweather and Firehand). Can a MAge turn an encounter into an afterthought? Sure, but that is okay... They paid a large amount of Character Creation resources to do so... I am curious though, how often you see the Magical Powerhouse out of Character Generation... Mages in our games generally tend to start around 12 Dice for Spells and about 8-12 Dice for Drain; SO maybe our games are not as "Typical" of the Tables represented by Dumpshock Regulars. Mages in our games are competent, but do not tend to outshine any other Archtype that is played at our tables, there is plenty of combat spotlight to go around...

When the world reacts realistically to the use of magic, magic (and other illegal activities, actually) self moderates pretty fast. Not every mage is perfect every time, and they almost always leave evidence of their presence. I know that many people here fall into the Consequences are Dickery Camp. But the fact remains. If there are logical consequences to the use and abuse of mgic, then your mages will keep themselves in line. Just like a Street Samurai who probably does not resort to just shooting someone because they can... There are consequences for such actions, just as there are consequences for Using Magic at every turn. Eventually those consequences will come home to roost.

Keep the Faith

Same in mine. I don't think mages are game breakers. I just think they're better than the other archetypes by a perhaps unhealthy margin. They're like Hackers in the sense that they are practically necessary in games in which the GM throws the full breadth of the Sixth World's dangers at you. Love them or hate them, they fill niches nobody else really can. Yet they're also rather very competent outside of dealing with things like the astral and countering magical threats. And to be honest, I don't consider buying up the Magic attribute to be much of a weakness considering that with the right spells it can effectively operate as a proxy for other skills and attributes. It's actually the 10 dice guys that I take the most issue with, actually. A one trick pony build can be a real handful (and worryingly enough, with Magicians, there's no reason they must remain a one trick poney; simply collecting spells post chargen can make them flexible in a hurry), but outside of their niche they're rather unimpressive by definition. But your 10 dice utility Mage can approximate so many different tricks that the game can turn into a blur of spellcasting and summoning dice rolling around. It bogs things down because they can contribute dice to so many things and often times the Magician does an inordinate amount of the work unless you really sit there and keep track of each and every astral signature they leave laying around. I generally assume I just need to slow down the mages in games and everything else will follow as far as providing a healthy amount of difficulty goes, and more often than not I'm right.

And there's a difference between letting a few points of Stun drain slide through unresisted every now and again and taking enough drain for it to be a limiting factor. It's pretty rare in my experience that Drain has been a problem for the players. Half the time it just indicates they just got shot up a bit too much, which if anything means they probably should have casted harder. Part of the issue is the sheer power of First Aid in Shadowrun.

Yeah that is kinda low dicepool for casting, even my latest mystic adept buld who only has magic 3 for spell casting has 16 dice to cast combat spells with.

And what is your dicepool for other spells?

Probably an 8 or 9, assuming he got there via a high Skill rating, Mentor Spirit, Specialization and a Power Focus. Not great, but not bad either. You don't necessarily need gobs of dice to get some use out of Detection spells, for example, although it does help.

As a Comparison there Shinobi... I once saw a Street Samin our game generate 30p Damage with an Assault Rifle (Was admittedly a phenomenal 11 Successes on the attack roll with Edge Spent (14 Base Dice + Edge of 4 (I think)), but the vehicle had to resist 30p... even with your City Master and bought Soak (of 9) it would have still evaporated with 21p Damage... Even Average Rolls with 36 Dice is still only 12 Successes so even with average Results the Citymaster evaproates as it still has 2 points over its physical Boxes...

1 Pass...

Was it a Fluke... Indeed... But it was still a dead vehicle nonetheless, and not a whole lot different than the result with your Competent Mage example...

As for the versatility of the Mage, they pay for the privelege... Which is okay...

Keep the Faith

I'm not really convinced that they pay enough considering what magic can do. At the end of the day, everyone tallies up to 400 bps, so I would rather expect that other archetypes would match up a li'l better. Magic is expensive, but it provides a lot of value, particularly if you concentrate on things like Task spirits and take more of a backseat runner approach to things.

Anyway, I find it sort of funny that I'm arguing this since I usually play magicians and even as a GM I don't really houserule them any. Most suggestions I hear about it hit me as a touch overkill. I just think it's a li'l weird that Magicians can end up with their fingers in so many pies.

Sure, but that sam couldn't do that twice per IP.

QFT... This is definintely an issue, but unfortunately belongs in a completely seperate topic...

Keep the Faith

You are right about that... but does he really need to?

Keep the Faith

You forgot 2 critical items in this list...

Magic: Affected by background count, visibility, AND COVER (yes defenders add cover to their resistance rolls).

Firearms: Simple action to fire, 2 shots per pass... spell one per. So yes more 'dice' per bullet, but twice as many bullets.



At the end of the day, it comes down to... you get caught flatfooted by a good gunbunny or a good combat mage and you're dead. There's no problem there. SRun is a game of glass cannons... surprise can and will kill anyone.

I assumed he was listing only the differences there.

Tymaeus, I only mentioned it because a poster before you said 'the mage is killing 2 citymasters per IP'. It's still a good distinction: your sam did it once, on a fluke, while the mage does it twice per IP, consistently. That's all.

a whopping 7
But she only has combat spells, atleast currently, she isn't ready yeat.
And for intrested that 16 dice comes from Magic 3 + spelcasting 4 + spec (2)+ mentor bonus (2) + spellcasting focus 5.
That makes her quite nasty at multicasting as 9 of those are bonuses added after slitting pool.

But the mage did not do it twice per IP, he did it twice in a Turn (he had 4 IP), Big Difference... Using that same logic, The Street Sam could also do it Twice per Turn, or maybe even more... It was indeed a Fluke for the City Master, but the same works for Drones as well... Mage STILL needs 5+ Hits to beat the OR, where the Street Sam just becomes even more deadly for the target lacking that awesome Armor and Body Rating of the Citymaster...

As for Metahuman Targets, they are both equally dead, regardless of whether the Mage did it or the Street Sam Did it...

Just Sayin'

Keep the Faith

You can't multicast? Anyway, it's not my point, I was just comparing what you said to what (I assumed) you were responding directly to.

Anyone can indeed multicast (Just as Gunbunnies can take two Shots or more per pass), but the example (From Shinobi?) was not so...

No big deals though... Especially since I do not think that Spellcasting/Spells are broken...

Keep the Faith

I see a lot of argument based on the idea that a Street Sam can more or less reproduce the same amount of damage as a Mage so long as they have the right equipment. My argument is that I simply don't want the Mages in my game to be able to reproduce the equivalent firepower of a Street Sam round after round after round. I don't want Mages standing shoulder to shoulder with Street Sams hosing down the enemy with virtually limitless firepower.
This is what I call "artillery mage syndrome" and it just doesn't fit my vision for SR.

IMO the RAW make SR more like a Supers game in a vaguely cyberpunk setting. I prefer my games to be more gritty street level so I limit the power of Mages, but I also severely limit access to things like Machine Guns, Rocket Launchers, and Grenades. Most of my games take place in large cities like Seattle rather than 3rd world countries, so the use of things like Machine Guns and Rocket Launchers is likely to have every government agency with an acronym descending on any city in which they were used. Not only does this make life more difficult for the team, but for every other Shadowrunner in the city too. What is that going to do for the teams rep. Its virtually impossible to even buy that type of heavy artillery anomymously because its almost always done through a fixer or weapons dealer contact and you better hope you have a high loyalty rating with them because thats likely the first place the Feds are going to start their investigations.

Shadowrun for me is more covert-ops oriented and less run 'n gun. It has its share of combat, but the combat isn't likely to make national headlines due to how many people were killed or what buildings/vehicles were blown up. I know for a lot of people the game is more about who has the biggest gun and can cause the most damage per round. If I wanted a shoot 'em up with military grade weapons, I wouldn't be playing Shadowrun.

I assumed you were describing a Complex Action Full Auto (Narrow) from the sam, TJ. Sorry if I assumed wrong.

I actually find the 10-12 dice pool fairly normal. It is easy to work the system to get a lot more but that isn't normal to me. 5 magic+5spellcasting=10dice and to me that is normal. Add in +2 dice for a mentor spirit and maybe another 2 for specialization though I generally don't do that at char gen. In a BP system I am tempted to get focuses given the discount on binding them and coming up with the 50,000+ for a power focus in game can take a while. But I usually pass on that and just have 10 dice with 12 dice in a school of magic or two from a mentor if I have one.

But I usually have 10 spells and I have enough versatility with them and spirits to cover a huge range of situations probably more than I could ever cover via skills for the same BP expenditure.

But you can grow fast as a mage and nothing stops you from using any of the skills in the game just as well as others. My 20 dice monstrosity at chargen was also the teams Face, a 7 Chr goes a long way to helping there. He had no idea how to use a gun but with spells how often does he need one. Admittedly background count double hit him in the dice pool since it hit his magic and the power focus but even then a 6 skill gets me a lot of dice and you don't need a massive force on some spells like mind control spells.

It does not fit my vision of SR either.

At least at our table, this is not the case... Mages are Powerful, but they rarely even WANT to stand with the Street Sam and fling Spells in tandem with the Street Sams Full Auto Bursts... That is what the Street Sam is for...



Which I think tends to be the norm in most games (Limited use of Military Equipmewnt that is)... Rampant use of military equipment is generally a bad thing for business, and I would say that it is only common in Pink Mohawk Games...



Which I do think is the Norm... I have seen Way more Ice Cold Professional Level Games (Where Collatoral Damage is heavily limited) than Pink Mohawk Games (where anything goes) by a wide margin... Many of the comparisons used are Often Edge Cases to prove a point; Reality is generally somewhere in the middle for most Shadowrun games, I have found.

Keep the Faith

Artillery mage:
Only if the mage is a diehard combat mage... and tricked out to the gills to cast combat spells. In which case, more power to him... as it's not a great mage build.


And all the comments about street sam w/ right equipment ignore the fact that all these optomized mages, have 10's of thousands (plus karma binding costs) in magical equipment somehow on them as well.

Artillery mage:
Only if the mage is a diehard combat mage... and tricked out to the gills to cast combat spells. In which case, more power to him... as it's not a great mage build.


And all the comments about street sam w/ right equipment ignore the fact that all these optomized mages, have 10's of thousands (plus karma binding costs) in magical equipment somehow on them as well. As well as they're putting all their bonus (spec + mentor) into a single school of magic. (hence combat/artillery mage specialization).

I think the game should be able to support anyone's playstyle and that attacking other playstyles doesn't change the game mechanics.

BlueMax

1) Restricted gear quality #3.
2) Nowhere does it say autocannons use assault cannon rounds. It follows that any other type of normal round may be used.
3) Use Regular explosive ammo for 12P -6AP. Oh heavens! Did I just lose a whole -1AP? How will I be able to destroy millions of dollars worth of heavy armor in a singe 32P narrow burst now?

Actual artillery is still better than an artillery mage. Too bad it can't get into a building though

2) As a GM you are well within your rights to say "No" to this because of this line:



This makes me think that the physical size of this thing would likely unbalance the Steel Lynx and cause it to flip. Maybe if you modified the rail mounted drone system from a monorail to a dual track with a fairly wide gauge then a GM can't really complain -- but then it can only go as far as the rails go. For mobility you could always mount it on a big jeep, flatbed truck, or bigger.

3) On a full narrow burst you'd be 26P, -6AP not 32P. The target still gets to dodge, and any uncompensated recoil is double the penalty. -14 dice is a lot of recoil to get rid of (even if it is vehicle mounted to get rid of the double problem).

This sort of stuff is also very far beyond most games. The example of the Citymasters was one where the team was trying to bluff past a checkpoint, failed, and was confronted with 2 Citymasters. I think LS or the target corp would have noticed a Steel Lynx with a fucking ship-mounted gatling gun on it loitering nearby.

Agreed, 100%.

BlueMax

1. Yup, go for it.
2. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, an autocannon does not use cannon rounds? Sorry no, it only uses cannon rounds. Also as pointed out by cheops there is a bit of logical incongruity with a ship mounted cannon on a small steel lynx.
3. There are plenty of ways for a rigger to get to absurd damage, and hey good for them. When they also remove 6 dice from all perception checks to notice the entire party, heal the sam after being shot on top of the first aid, then I'll be impressed. Luckily for riggers there is a decent chance they also can deck so they have at least a bit of breadth.

Riggers are dead in SR4. No reason to play one anymore. A sam or a hacker can easily fill in for one and often do the job just as well. It's so cheap to be a hacker that you may as well be a sam, face, or rigger (or possibly 2-3 of those) at the same time. That's why I've fallen in love with the optional rule of dice pool modifiers affect the threshold of the test and not your dice pool. Now the control rig lets you do all sorts of crazy stuff that you might not otherwise attempt. Gives a bit more justification for a rigger class.