1) Rigger 3 says a vehicle must have at least as much body as any vehicle it tows. Tractors are designed to tow trailers. But the only Tractor has 5 Body, while 40' Trailers have 6 and 53' Trailers have 7. Am I missing something here? By RAW are only track APCs able to haul 53 foot trailers?

2) Is there anything stopping someone with a knowsoft link and a DNI linked optical chip from simply storing data from knowsoft chips on an internal chip, then passing on that chip to someone else in the party or reselling it? What about doing the same trick with Optical chips?

3) I believe Great Form Nature Spirits have Immunity to Natural Weapons... but I can't actually find that rule now. Is that actually somewhere, or did I make that one up?

4) For a spell like Forboding, does the caster have to see everyone in the area of effect for it to work? What if it's quickened, and the caster is no longer in the area?

JaronK

Don't have great answers for you, but I'll take a look and revise after looking deeper.

1) According to raw, yes. Would I use the body rule... probably not. Though the tractor can pull any number of trailers with a body equal to 5 or lower as long as the load doesn't exceed it. This looks to be directed more at trains than actual tractor trailers, so just interpret it as you will otherwise you'll end up with a train that goes around the world (pushing and pulling itself at the same time).

2) Most chips can't data can't be copied unless you hack it. That said you could pull something similiar to the autosofts where you have a shared resource with the knowsofts available and then let anyone access it on the fly.

3) I know all spirits have "Immunity" normal weapons, the rule is hidden under the "Materialization" power.

4) The back of MITS says its LOS(Area) in the breakdown of all the spells. Though its also an indirect illusion. In our games we've had characters walk around with the spell centered on themselves, usually a villain. We often rule that once you enter the area it takes effect.

edit: included some more detail to response.

It's still limited by load though, so you can't have an endless train. But okay, it's a bug, and we'll either add a special rule to tractors that they can pull higher body things or add a new Body 7 Tractor chassis



Hacking it seems a bit too easy, so we'll probably just house rule that away too.



Huh, somehow I thought it was only Greatforms. I know the Great Form powers of Loa lists Immunity to Normal Weapons, which is in addition to the normal powers. Weird.



Right, I get that it's an area spell. The question is if it's allowed to effect things the caster can't see (stunball can't for example, but Indirect Illusions don't specifically target anyone.

JaronK

Monkeyright. Right up there with Sniper Drone Wars and Watcher Attack Pack.


No; in contrast to fooball, where you target everyone in an area (and thus have to see them), you just target the area and then it goes. Going the other way has the implication that Invisibility only works on people you can see as well, which is important enough that we would expect it to be mentioned if it were the envisioned result.

~J

Not sure what you mean by "Monkeyright." Either way, our game currently includes both sniper drones (blimp drones with sniper rifles, a few of them in fact) and watcher attack packs. The latter two aren't that big of a deal... the sniper drones only really work outdoors and there haven't been that many magical enemies that the watchers could hit.



So if you researched an extended version of Forboding (10Xmagic rating area) you could just force everyone to evacuate a building? Damn, that's one heck of a way to do a run.

JaronK

Oh my, sniper drones... there is only more cheese down that road... Can't you talk sense to your players?

Really? We just haven't had much trouble with it. I mean they're strong, but most of the action happens indoors for us. People running around in the open are just asking for it anyway, either from sniping blimp drones or levitating stunball mages or ruetharium'd snipers. Where does the cheese normally happen?

JaronK

If your runners are supposed to be top-of-the-food-chain pros, then I would say it's fine. We had those in some games I played in, too. As long as they are aware that they could take a hit from an invisible sniper, too...

Oh yeah, they're top of the food chain, and they're never exposed when people know who they are. Once the run starts and people know they're threats, they stay in cover (usually with an electronic warfare rigger checking for signals from the area while the mage with Quickened Extended F5 Detect Enemies warns of enemies).

JaronK

People can't just make copies of programs or get them off the Matrix because hey look a three-headed monkey. The existence of a method can be inferred from the world and its software markets (because they would not exist otherwise), but speculating on details leads only to suffering.

As for Sniper Drone Wars, they make sense. So much sense that everyone should be using them. Games in which most confrontations begin and end with 14S+4 successes aren't very fun, so the only thing to do is simply pretend they don't exist. Sniper drones don't just work outdoors, they work anywhere with line of fire to the outdoors—and that's an awful lot of places.

Watcher Attack Pack isn't powerful because the Watchers hit things, it's powerful because Friends in Melee gives a projecting Mage or proper Spirit or Elemental an overwhelmingly huge bonus in combat when it hits things against anything other than another WAP.


You'd need to beat their resistance tests, but yeah. I didn't say that the outcome was sane, just that it was clear.

~J