That's the best part! Because the Assault Cannon is SS, it can mount a silencer!


Wards are common enough in our game that a Quickened spell on a non-mage would be a hard sell—remember, Masking can only sleaze sustained or quickened spells on the initiate's person, the caster couldn't get the Troll through. The real fix, I think, is to move the Armor cap off of Quickness and onto Strength or Body, but that's getting into more far-reaching changes and I promised I wouldn't try to move SR3R back here.


Yeah, that's the way it happens in our games as well—we play response times a bit more realistically than the canon numbers, in which Lone Star has figured out teleportation (holy crap the response times are in Initiative Passes!!! That's even more batshit insane than I'd remembered!), so there's still room for someone to make a lot of noise as long as they do it quickly and then vanish, but this also speaks to the need for Trolls to have a useful role that doesn't come with a built-in timer.

~J

Heh, the rounds are explosive though. Just because the shot is quiet doesn't mean the impact is! There'd be some use when using long range sniping...

Anyway, we have reasonable response times too, but we also have survelance drones, traffic drones, etc... it can be hard to get away when someone's actively looking for you. So we try not to make too much noise when hitting something that can dispatch troops. And who needs Assault Cannon rounds against gangers and others who can't dispatch troops like that?

JaronK

Let me guess, you ran without a dedicated Rigger a good build, low Handling, and a VCR-3 can make it not very hard at all to get away, even with someone actively looking.

But yeah, I'm definitely leaning towards some way to make Trolls viable mages in light of the shield-tank build. Just need time to playtest…

~J

Thinking about it: sure, but it's not a particularly big explosion, and probably designed to direct most of the pressure waves into nice fleshy shock-absorbing substance. This is also getting into issues that SR simply doesn't cover (with your sporting rifle, I bet that bullet isn't subsonic!).

~J

Actually, we do have a dedicated Rigger... which even further removed the need for trolls. He actually built an anthroform drone (Body 3) with serious armor packing an Assault Cannon. That was our emergency heavy hitter when things went south. It blew up when he got overly cocky and took his Vehicular armor 11 drone in to attack a demolitions expert in a fortified position. On later thought, it was decided jumping into the wine cellar to engage him was a poor choice of action. Chunky salsa rule + IPE High Explosive Grenades + underground area with nowhere for the blast to go = ouch.

After that we played a more subtle game, under the theory that no matter how tough you are, there's always something that can hurt you if it sees you coming.

The troll, of course, is still very weak to stunbolt/manabolt.

JaronK

Right, but aside from being the size of a car, the drone has the Troll's problems writ large plus reduced versatility—Trolls tend to be able to fold in all kinds of ways that drones can't to fit into places like cars, or buildings for that matter (Body 2 covers Troll-sized drones—it sounds like a generous ruling that let the Body 3 anthroform get into the building to begin with), they can do things like climb if necessary, so on and soforth. Riggers do rock pretty hard, but ground combat drones play a pretty small role in contributing to that.



Not any more than anyone non-Dwarf; they don't have any penalty to Willpower. It's Reduce Charisma that they're typically weak to, especially if the character isn't packing a big stack of 'ware.

~J

IIRC Body 3 covers anything from small to midsized cars, which is about the size of a troll anyway. So a Body 3 drone is actually about the size of a large Troll. We used the height of a troll to judge its weight (otherwise, they're all too small and skinny to survive... the world's tallest human was 8'11" and weighed around 223kg... but he was far skinnier than a troll and needed braces just to walk due to his legs being unable to support himself). Considering trolls are extremely thick and strong, they'd probably weigh around 500kg. At that size and weight, if a troll can get in, a Body 3 Anthroform can probably do the same. Remember, you have to go to Body 4 just to hit a cargo van size.

I find Trolls are generally weak to Stunbolt simply because they tend to pump strength and body (why else would you be a troll) and need Quickness too so they can wear armor and shoot stuff other than heavy weapons. This means their Willpower tends to be their weak spot. Reduce Charisma requires getting up close to the troll... which seems like a bad plan.

Anyway, I don't really think trolls need much boosting, as they're good in their element, but just specialists. It really depends on the game. But if you wanted to boost them, I'd say make them more durable, as that's their thing... perhaps give them an extra die to resist hostile spells (fantasy trolls are often magic resistant) or reduced healing times (50% faster healing, which would make them shrug off drain faster)?

For elves... yeah, it's hard. They're often seen as willful, fast, and with amazing senses, so +2 Charisma, +2 Quickness, +1 Willpower, +1 die for all perception tests, and get the Perceptive edge for free. On reflection, Thermal Vision doesn't fit, as that's reserved for more underground races. Maybe even some sort of bonus to stealth?

JaronK

Albino trolls FTW