soooo i keep thinking about houseruling in qualities that allow long term toons to be that much better, like a quality that allows you to not have to split your dice pool while dual wielding. these would be able to be chosen at something like 100+ karma intervals. it just seems to me that current bp and karma rules seem weak even over the long term. too much?

Go pick up a copy of Scion.

I like the idea. ^^

Would defintely have a place in the more cinematic setting offered, too. Or under those rules, what ever it is...

I'll provide a list for review over the course of the weekend then, IF I can squeeze sometime in between work and school. I'll also check out Scion to see what that is all about, sounds a bit like Exalted but in the modern eras.

Scion (in one line) is:

"Your the son of a god. How does that make you feel?"

It ranges from Hero (a little above ShadowRun) to Demigod (Hercules) to God (Zeus).

If we assume that the karam to exp exchange is 1:1* (its pretty close from what I remember--i.e. similar abilities costing about the same) then it takes about 300 karma go "level up" from Hero to Demigod (but that 300 gets you jack squat except allowing you to purchase Newer and Better powers).

Whole campaigns can be run in just one of the three levels (each has their own core book). Though a friend of mine did "Hero to God in 11 weeks." He was lobbing out exp in the hundreds after every session.

And yes, they blew up the earth by the end of it.

*Or it was 1:2 or 1:5 and I did some equivalence math at the time to say that "X karma is Y exp" and forgot what X and Y were.

He must have had a very generous ST then.

They spent about 3-4 weeks as Hero, then forced "you're demigods now" for free.

And yes, he was very generous with exp, that was the point.

It was one of the most epic RPGs I ever witnessed, as each of the scions was the son of a different god...from different pantheons (IIRC all the players and characters were male). So we had a son of Baron Samedi, a son of Zeus, etc. (I don't remember all of them). Our "strait man" player's character had a familiar that the GM decided was the drunkest, most violent, womanizing raven ever, just to play with the player. The party walked in on the bird eating a steak with a fork and a knife.

Also all of the players ended up fathering a child (with a titan or another god) by the end of the game.

The "strait man" ended up with Epic Manipulation at the end, so sometime before Ragnarok he used it. "If my friends end up destroying the world, I want to be the first one back when it restarts."

And yes, his friends destroyed the world. They started duking it out with God.* I forget the exact things that happened, but one Epic was countered with another and eventually they ended up taking out the entirety of existence. Aside from Epic Manipulation, someone elsed used The Way (immune to the need to travel) to "Be someplace safe" (yes, The Way can do that. You can get to universes defined only by the number 8 if you really want to) and took everyone else with until the universe restarted.

After the fireworks the players started their own pantheon and designed their heavenly realm.

*The Christian god, which the GM added to the game. He had a whole pantheon too, the "burning bush" God wasn't the same as the "Adam and Eve" creation God, etc.

so, ill have to take a look at scion, if only to get some kind of inspiration. i seem to be having trouble coming up with viable qualities.

Mind, Scion godpowers won't function right in ShadowRun. We're talking "call down lightning," "be invincible," "lift busses," "fly," and "teleport" level powers.

And using them tends to get you followers (which are an inconvenience at best).

What I was originally suggesting was that you should look into starting a Scion game, as it has that level of power creep you're looking for (if you're running as heros and someone decides that they don't like their advancement choices they can--after a while--ascend to godhood. Literally).

Unless, of course, you're running in LA. Then followers are AWESOME!

Couldn't you just adapt Street Cred, Notoriety, and Public Awareness for this? They are the most redeeming features of SR4 so why not take advantage of them.

Something like spend 2 dice of Street Cred to reduce penalties by 1. Then just refresh those pools when Edge refreshes and give the option of getting a SC/N/PA die back instead of Edge on a Critical Success.

Try looking at some of the more basic DnD feats, they could give you nice plan to work with. Epic runner qualities could be stuff like having a TM who could completely sever himself from his meat body, a gunslinger who can infuse his bullets with his emotions (would probably need to be taught this by someone) to allow ranged will attacks against spirits because when you really start getting up there they become even more of an issue, riggers are able to build their own more out there vehicles, faces gain an almost supernatural ability to blend in or stand out from a crowd.

Is this the basic idea of what you're looking for?

basically yes, reducing penalties and enhancing bonuses to make veteran runners truly spectacular. like increasing the attribute max for chromey toons, reducing hacking penalties for veteran hackers, etc.

Bear in mind, Scion has some pretty broken mechanics. Some would say a pretty broken overall system.

Just something to consider when raiding them for inspiration.

Might could look at some of the Talents from Earthdawn, too. It's been a couple years since I cracked open one of the books, but while some did rather crazy things, others not so much.

I keep wanting to take some of the talents and turn them into adepts powers. Think it would be rather neat...

Aren't high-karma characters already spectacular? Just add more karma, and start with Mystic Adept (of course).

Its one of the few games where an in-party fight can destroy the world.

PC1: "I use Epic Chaos! Take that!"

PC2: "Well, the only thing that counters an epic is another epic. I use The Way"

GM: "Now there's chaos everywhere. Good job.

Mages cannibalizing their own magic to permenantly ignore background counts and mana ebbs/voids. Cyberzombies that no longer cark it at the first sign of a background count, and have harnessed their own nasty, nasty astral hazing for a variety of terrible effects. Swords for the street samurai that use.. well, not initiate grade, but willpower, as the armour piercing value and ignore immunity to normal weapons - or he somehow gains the ability to invest that in any weapon he uses. Faces so charismatic that a bit of a chat can literally alter reality in small, subtle ways. Cyborgs without a brain case to worry about, only a chip. And a suspicious austrian accent.

Basically, anything that makes you think "AWESOME" - in all caps, of course - and sounds like it could come out of a movie, or Warhammer 40000.

That's not a cyborg, it's a Pilot.

he...he..Funny that you should mention that.....

I personally like the idea. I have never even looked at Scion so mine comes from things I wish my character could do.

How does this sound for an epic summoning ability. Give them the ability to summon spirits outside of their tradition. I was thinking of 3, which is about half again what they can do normally.

Please tell me I didn't kill this thread.

On the other hand, an epic quality for a mage could simply be a second tradition. They receive the benefit of incorporating a second tradition into their own. This includes special benefits and spirits. It also represents how a mages views on magic can grow with time.

Sounds like fun for a more epic game.

Let's just say ours has that potential. So far we have a little Stargate thrown in the mix, with a dose of Warhammer (both fantasy and 40K) and now thanks to a malfunctioning gate caught sight of earth's future. It's called RIFTS.

Overall story arch is to stop the Rifts, and prevent the horrors from invading in mass. We've got a few more years of play before we're ready for that.

In addition to Scion, Exalted is another great "God" game in a fantasy rather then modern setting. Power levels never get as wonky, but can still be pretty far out there.

Rifts, the ultimate in beer and pretzals role playing. Actually, I'm not knocking it since I've had lots of fun playing in rifts games. One of my fav all time characters was a baby great horned dragon in Rifts. He spent most of his time around normal people shapeshifted into a bunny rabit. Combat wise, think Bun Bun.

One of my friends (oh Jim, was there no RPG you didn't play and have CRAZY stories about?*) had played RIFTS (our group also owned the book, which I took a peek at). His character died when two buildings fell on him.

Well, more accurately, he opened a rift in order to try and slow his death-fall to the ground (a little upwards gravity to slow him down) and ended up doing a little too well, causing the nearest two buildings to fall inward and crush him.

Other RIFTS ideas: Time Traveling Velociraptor. An "I can't believe its not a" Transformer.

*I think he's even played the TMNT RPG and done crazy shit there too. IIRC it involved time travel (which was specifically two time periods, and every day spent in one caused a day to progress in the other, so both periods were ALWAYS exactly 100 years apart).

TMNT and Other Strangeness. Actually a pretty cool RPG, which was perfectly acceptable to use in Rifts. My friend Ron played what was basically a giant ant man for a long time.

We pulled out Rifts nearly every time we needed a break from the more serious RPGs. Nothing like hitting someone for multi thousands of points of damage (since MDC = 100 SDC, and you got weapons doing 4d6x10 MDC). The system is a little wonky since it still uses AD&D style stat bonuses, but man was it fun to just do something so totally off the wall that the GM just looked at you bug eyed and said "WHAT!?".

As per the rifts thing....(I'm the GM BTW, )

The concept of Rifts future was that the 6th world, like our own, has the ability to speed thing up to the Nth degree. Like in the old info, it should have taken centuries to get to the mana level Earth is now. At most there are decades left before the horrors can cross over. When you mix mass scale demonic invasion, nukes, and Aztechnology and bake at high temperature.....viola, Rifts.

I REFUSE to use Mega-Damage (never did when I ran it before), so everything is still using regular SR rules, though it looks like War! might help with the power curve a little.

Came up with some rules on the fly for Ley Lines (Rifts style) that worked real well for last session. Number of hits you can get per force rating while on a Ley Line is increased as the mana WANTS to ground through you (haven't hammered out the specifics, but so far it worked realy well). Yes, I know that's "Way too powerful!", but it convinced our healer to avoid them like the plague. She nearly healed one of the characters to the point of his body treating itself as cancer. There is a downside. Every hour a mage stays in a Ley Line, they roll for addiction.

Anyway, back...ish on topic, For Ley Line walker and such, they are just advanced Metamagic abilities. As an aside, it could be a whole other quality. One that does not have access to an astral form, but doesn't suffer from the addictive qualities of the Ley Line. *shrug* Not a concept for everyone, but we wanted something a little different and didn't want to change games, so....everyone is liking so far, so, whatever works for your game, right?

Now they have to figure out HOW the Rifts happened, WHERE, and WHY....try and find a rift taht can take them back to SR and figure out how to convince the powers behind the throne AND avoid becoming number 1 most wanted on all of the Big 10's list for having......interestingly advanced gear. Because you know they will try and take SOMETHING back. I'ld like to see them sneak a Glitter Boy down the back allys of Seattle.

why not just let the GM not give you those penalties after a saind number of karma point. no need to screw up things with inventing qualities and house rules.
just FORGET the penalties existed. sure NPCs still suffer penalties but only because they are mere mortals. you godlike runners with 200P damaging hand guns can ignore all rules you dont feel like applying because they are not cool or godlike.

you can even say all PC now have TN3 or TN2 instead of 5 and make it even more awesome. who needs chalenges and painfull legwork/thinking when you can destroy the world.

Mega-damage is really supposed to be "vehicles and vehicular weaponry" but RIFTS has that power creep where players can get it in hand-held and wearable units.
One of the easiest is playing a dragon ("yeah, my claws do 1d4 MDC....")

(Note: While 1 MDC = 100 SDC, 100 SDC != 1 MDC)

Shadowrun has a few things already in it that aren't normally accessible to a PC. If you make them accessible, I'd call it a legendary quality.

On the more mundane side, there's becoming a cyberzombie or a cyborg. Both of these require a fundamental transformation of the PC.

For riggers, frankly, a whole lot of money and no availability cap will grant them access to a whole lot of vehicles and drones that your average runner can only dream of. A supped up Tomino with lock on countermeasures and a missile defense system, with 2 laser turrets, sounds legendary to me. I'm sure there's plenty of stuff in WAR! that will make this tomino look like a kids toy. Any of the military helicopters or jets will give them abilities far beyond the kin of most runners.

On the more magical side, there's blood magic, twisted paths, toxic paths.

You could grant the ability to buy Spirit Powers to a Mystic Adept or Physical Adept.

Magicians could get metamagics that grant access to spirit powers, including possession and materialization. They could even go as far as leaving the fetters of a mortal body behind and become a free spirit. You could even go the D&D route and become a Lich. More D&D Metamagics: Maximize spell. Automatically get maximum hits on a spell at the cost of +4dv drain.

It occurs to me that there's some technomancer Echoes that could be translated into metamagics for a magician, for example, one that grants more IPs when you're projecting.

Giving an infection from RC without giving them a karma debt will make many characters insanely powerful.

For an epic technomancer? With enough karma they already have insane abilities. Like a mage, you could let them leave their mortal body behind and become an AI. You could grant them access to dissonance rather than resonance. I'm not sure what the crunch of this would look like, but I think it would unlock some interesting Sprites.

Well... Who can forget the MDC capable Switchblade...

I did something similar for a player of mine. I let him buy Regeneration as a Adept power. Took him 6 points (my right off the top of my head cost), but he seemed happy, and it wasn't as over-powered as I had feared.

Did it to help a first timer get a character he could "get into"...a Deadpool inspired character. Character thought was Spider-girl and Deadpool have a kid..... Wade Parker. He even got inspired enough to plot out a couple levels of initiation (on his own, thereby getting rules down ). He was planning on Wall-run, Increased Reflexes, Catfall, Great Leap, and he even convinced me to allow Setae as a Adept power.

Not a Legendary Quality or anything, but it was something normally "out of the players grasp."

However using some inspiration from d20 might not be a bad idea. Certain Feats would translate very well to Legendary Qualities.

Just a few ideas off the top of my head for legendary qualities-
Double Focus - The character is able to focus on two things at once fully. The character can use their full DP when firing two weapons at the same time, as well as take advantage of laser sights or smartgun links.

Speed Demon - The character is fast. Really fast. Faster than that. While reaction and IP doesn't increase, the character is able to physically move faster, something normal reaction enhancers don't allow. The character may move their full movement in each IP, and also gains an extra standard action in each IP.

Made of Steel - While not actually made of steel, the character either naturally or through extensive training has made their body as hard or harder than metal. When soaking damage, the character doesn't roll body as part of the test, instead the damage of the attack is automatically reduced by the character's body.

The Truth of Magic - The character understands that magic is a force that is harnessed by one's will, and that tradition is simply a means to focus one's will. The character may summon all normal spirit types, and all spirits work for all spell categories for that character. This does not include insect spirits, blood spirits, shadow spirits, etc. Though if the character otherwise has access to those spirits she may still summon them.

Strength of Spirit - The character gains 1 essence. For mundanes this means more possibilities for ware, for awakened it also means that their natural maximum magic is increased by 1.

Devil's Own Luck - Whenever a character uses edge, the character is considered to have an edge of 15 for purposes of resolving that use. Note that this does not actually increase the character's edge, nor grant extra edge for the purposes of spending or burning. Devil's Own Luck also applies whenever edge is called for as part of a roll (such as dodging suppression fire).

Resonate - Technomancer increases their matrix attributes (signal, firewall, biofeedback filter, etc) by half their resonance.

One with the Code - The technomancer has achieved a new level of connection with the code of the matrix. They gain an extra IP (allowing them to achieve 6 total IPs on the matrix) and all of their complex forms are treated as being 2 higher than they actually are. Note that this does not increase the cost of improving the complex forms, and that it also applies after threading, so the TM does not suffer physical fading sooner than they would without this quality.

Strength of Mind - For awakened, this quality allows the character to add their tradition based drain stat (intuition, logic, or charisma) a second time to their drain pool, effectively doubling the contribution from that stat. For technomancers this quality allows the character to add their stream's drain stat (intuition, logic, charisma, or willpower) a second time to their fading pool, effectively doubling the contribution from that stat.

So, just some quick ideas I threw together. Not sure if they are 'epic' enough or too epic or what.

I like them alot. They don't seem too overpowered, though I'm a little fuzzy on how the Luck one works. But I really like the magic ones.

made of steel seems kind of overpowered, otherwise i like them quite a bit

Basically when you use edge to add dice to your roll, instead of adding your edge to the roll, you add 15 to the roll. And instead of rolling your edge to avoid suppressive fire like normal, you roll 15 dice to avoid suppressive fire.


Yeah, I was considering making it hardened armor equal to body or equal to 2x body or something, but I just don't like the mechanics behind hardened armor, it is too easily made useless by things like shock weapons or AP rounds, and you require at least a good 7 points or so of it to stop a heavy pistol. The real problem comes from the wide range of bodies out there. The ability is fairly 'balanced' for a human, but exceedingly good for a troll. Perhaps change it to a flat 3-5 point damage reduction.

Mages can always use more flexibility - let them take metamagic that lets them swap their elemental effects around at will. Or maybe add keywords to their magic - like 'Hell' from Ancient History's notes, or a Shadow keyword that prevents the target from spending edge for rounds equal to the force of the spell, or knocks 1 off all success tests for the same period. Or both.

Street Samurai are a little harder to shop for, but you could allow them to really get into the wonky end of things by developing 'magical' abilities - let them take Supernatural toughness from Digital Grimoire, without needing a magic score. Several times.

so once these semi broken qualities are aquired and your character is Legendary. what then? to what end would a Shadowrunner remain active if he was that legendary?

if he could slaughter the whole HTR team of the city in a simple combat turn or two then woudlnt they just make him a honorary protector of the city pay him hefty sums of money to NOT work as a shadowrunner anymore?

Well if they are that legendary I would say they would be doing missions way out of other peoples pay grades. You know, the usual globe hopping trying to save the world from otherworldly forces kinda stuff. Most likely working for a big dog like the Draco Foundation or GOD.

Dear heart, there is always going to be a bigger fish out there. In fact the most common variety is called "Dragon" No matter how legendary you get, you're still lunch.

These qualities simply let the player's into a bigger pond, and if what I've observed from other games is any indication, most end long before anyone would qualify for them. Remember by the time you runner's earn the required 100 karma to take one.

If you would note, the thread title is for Epic abilities. These, by their very nature, invoke images of over-the-top action movies, where, I might add, routinely take out entire teams in a few rounds.

Now, if these do not fit your view of SR, fine, no problems with me. However, reading this thread title, there should be a level of understanding as to the concept and direction. If this is not your style or does not interest you, might I suggest just not posting? I don't know if you intent was to come across as snide and derogatory, but that is how it come across to me.

Some helpful commentary or criticism would be nice. If you don't think there should be such a thing, the stating it once is enough and I don't think repeated snarkiness will make this thread go away.

That being said:

Speed Demon: Alternate idea, perhaps add their Reaction attribute to all Defense tests? Or add it in all damage resistance tests that "Speed/getting out of the way" would be appropriate?

Tough as Steel: Perhaps roll Strength + Body? or Body x 2 when "Bracing" (i.e. Full Defense) for an attack?. Sorry, just the images of the "ducking head, crossed arms, and being slid back a couple of feet, but still there" image comes to mind.

Truth of Magic: On the fly, doesn't seem unreasonable.

Strength of Spirit: Dido

Devils Own Luck: ah...This one, to me, seems a bit much, even for a Legendary quality. Perhaps treat it more like you idea for your Strenght of Mind? Double the normal number of dice added?

Resonate and One With the Code: As I do not use/have any Technomancers and have not read alot on them, I am not informed enough to comment.

Strength of Mind: On the fly, doesn't seem unreasonable.

I've always hated that

"Here is my most powerful attack! Haaa!"
"Oh no, it's so powerful and amazing, how will I ever stop something like that?!?!"
*Crosses arms*
*Comes out unscathed*
"Wow, I just barely managed to block that in time."
????

So yeah, the whole 'crossed arms makes you invincible' thing has always bugged me

As for the other stuff, yeah, Devil's Own Luck could certainly just double edge for purposes of tests, and I'm thinking of changing Tough as Steel to a flat reduction. Likely 4-5 points worth, or possibly double body in the damage resistance test, which seems to be were most of my qualities are going

Speed Demon I purposefully wanted as a means to gain extra actions to represent superhuman speed as opposed to superhuman reaction which is what all ware does. But a quality that lets you double your reaction for defense tests would also work well, call it Untouchable.

Your ideas are cool, hope I get to use them at some point

Regarding Devil's Own Luck, how about choosing a skill, and that skill has exploding 6's? No edge required. Maybe this is my fondness for classic StarWars d6 showing...that wild die made for some great stories.

That simply doesn't seem strong enough compared to all the other stuff to be honest. Exploding 6s grant an average of around 1 extra hit for every 16ish dice rolled. Granted you would likely use that skill far more often than you would use edge to add to your rolls, but in comparison to adding 6ish dice to drain tests and things like that, just doesn't seem so great. Still, who says they all have to be equally good? It could certainly be another quality.

Talented - Pick any skill. Character uses the rules for exploding sixes on any roll using that skill. May be taken multiple times, each time applying to a different skill.

Ah, fond memories. The one die I have had to retire. Heroic +70 roll (108 total, 82 on the Wild Die!) ....with 5d+1. My GM said, "OK, you cleanse the fricking planet, NOW GIMME THAT DIE!" LOL.

and no, it wasn't a trick die. been tested MANY times since then. And forbidden in any game since. Which was fine by me, I mean, how could it ever live up to rolling again?

But that sounds like a very good one.

@Karoline

Talented works too.

You're right, thinking about it - not nearly as powerful. But I would think this adds a little bit of "excitement" to using a skill too. At least it always did with me


I think mine was a blaster shot that took the main bad guy in the eye - a powerful sith with a lightsaber...and my friend who had a wookie jump on a thermal detonator to save us all, but his char only lost the hair on the front of his body (wookies look like shaved chihuauas and are stick thin under all that fur, apparently )...ah, the memories...

Strangely, it seemed more "epic" stuff happened in our Star Wars game than in Earthdawn, even though both had exploding dice.

Let it work for a group of skills, like all combat, or all magic, etc....