It's not that bad. For the cost of 2 point of Improved Attributes -which I won't call "cheap" in term of points of power - you can use one mental stat to replace a physical stat, and you don't pick freely, you use the same relationship as when going astral. And you can only take the power once.

I'll ask as people have not answered.

How's the art?

And is it worth another double buy? I bought 6th WA in pdf then in hard copy when it was printed.

Do I want to do that with War or just wait for Dead tree?

I was going to ask about the usability of War! in Shadowrun Missions, but then I got a look at the Availability ratings.

Yeesh.*




-k

* - my face might have to actually wait more than two weeks to get some of that!

Eh, sparse and mixed... There's a neat piece on Page 30 showing a dragon attacking a military installation, A pretty nice pic of an azzie shaman in a firefight on page 14 though he looks a little disinterested in the whole affair and a nice pic of a merc on page 152 but nothing that pops out at me and shouts "I want my PC's to do THAT!"

The rest of it is... well, better than I can draw but that's not saying much. I definitely wouldn't be buying this one for the art value. They have a few CG pictures that just don't sit well with me. There's a terrible one of a flying car shooting at... I think they're supposed to be hang gliders in the middle of what looks like a random collection of buildings someone found on a freeware 3d modeling website. There's also another one by the same artist on page 171 showing some ork chick with glowing eyes standing in a jungle with some guy sitting in what looks like... well I don't even know what it's supposed to look like... There's a chair, and controls... and a big metal thing in front of it, but it's in the middle of the jungle... Oh, and there's a dude with fins on his head standing beside that.

Oh, Battle Rifles
I assume those use the automatics skill, even thought the books says nothing on the issue?

Nice to see that Lowthyr has a sense of humour, what with the air superiority fighter named "S-K Dunkelzahn"

Have been reading the PDF for a while now and I have to say: I'm not impressed. Not at all. It feels as if the book has been written by a bunch of people who don't have a clue about the setting (many names in the credit sections don't ring a bell). Bogota wouldn't have been my prime choice for a book dealing with military and mercenary conflicts (What about Central Arica, Sibiria, Neu-Guinea?), on top of that the city description is boring and doesn't delve too deep into the dirty secrets.
To make things worse does War! bring back the power creep we had with previous editions and starts a new round of splitting gear over several books. Not to mention the horrible unbalanced rules (i.e. the device ratings) and the shitty names for some of the new pieces.

In short: one of the worst SR-sourcebooks I've ever read.

Of course, such power creep gear is why people will buy this book. Or so goes the theory.

Given the rest of the "german" names for SK gear, he's going to need it. On the other hand, this one is most likely just to rub Ghostwalker the wrong way.

I don't have to like that theory, do I?

So, should I take this to mean that the book offers little in the way of options for base-level runners?

Maybe this means that Attitude will focus on new street-level stuff for those of us who like lower-powered games? Hmmm..

That's some crazy power creep right there. Dump Reaction, get as much Intuition as possible, and replace Reaction will probably be the standard, since pretty much everyone will want those stats (since they determine your initiative, and your Perception/Not In the Face check respectively. Oh, and Pixies rejoice at the Willpower -> Body option.

I was thinking of combining this with SoftWeave armor to make "tank" pornomancer.
Body 3 and Charisma 10 (replacing strength) would allow her to wear 16 point of armor

Edit: SoftWeave armor is one of the thinks i'm really on the fence about, on one hand it allows for even higher armor ratings(except there aren't any armor with high enought rating for a troll tank), but on the other hand it makes strength a little more usefull stat.

By RAW, you can get softweave FFBA. Also by RAW, nothing prevents you from layering multiple FFBAs. In fact, you even could add the optional rule that custom armor uses triple body.

And the Micheline Man gets a nice set of Tusks, Horns and pointy ears o.O

It looks like the power only lets you replace attributes for tests, so while the Not in the Face check (which is a brilliant term that I'll be using from now on at my table, by the way) is useful, the attribute switch wouldn't apply to the calculation of the Initiative attribute (and other derived stats) or a pixie's Condition Monitor. So my pornomancer could be quite athletic (*blink innocently*) but still can't wear lots of armor without getting custom SoftWeave with four hundred layers of FFBA like RvD suggested.

Well, if WAR! was just the military sourcebook, with all the stuff and rules for really big badass warfare, it would fit nicely with the concept of "speciality" books started by RW. Want to expand a certain aspect in your campaign, get book X and it has everything you need.

But from what I've read so far, it looks more like a list of new must-haves (sometimes nearly reflex trigger musthaveness), and then there's ANOTHER book called MilSpec Gear in progress...

And seriously guys: If you can not German, then let it out instead to embarrass you <- that's what the advice would sound like if I had written it the same way the names for S-K products are done.

Hint: "Himmelsschmiede" in Target: Wastelands was ok. "Himmelhammer" in War! – not so much.

Maybe not by RAW, but being beaten senseless by the GM kinda does

Hardcover RPG Books hurt . .

On the other hand, allowing armor layering by eye demystifies FFBA nicely.

BTW: Anyone notice how utterly useless the only new sensor in War! is? It finds explosives within a range of 1m – MADs that trigger them have a range of 3m.

I'm all for allowing stacking of all armors, still doesn't mean i wouldn't smack silly anyone saying their character is wearing multiple sets of FFBA.

Yep, first thing I looked for too...ah well, perhaps someone out there will do some and post them here (would have a go myself with more time )

Zeitstrafe...take a Zeit (German weekly) issue, roll it up and whack the offender with it

That works, then. I'll reserve the heated argument until I have enough time to finish reading the entire damn thing.

It hasn't been a good pair of weeks.

So none of new weapons/vehicles represented? Buying any kind of gear reference book I'm real big on being able to toss a pic on the table. It's so much better to say you open the crate to find 6 of "these" (Toss a pic on the table). As opposed too you open the crate to find 6 xx52's. Especially when dealing with brand new items.

Any mention or tie in with Ghost Cartels storyline?

I know I am in the minority on this but I really liked the high power games that were possible in 2nd and 3rd edition. I am glad to see some thing from Catalyst that lends itself to game settings other than street level.

Somewhat. The cartels are a player in Bogota and:

Just the core rules were not restricted on "street level", but included military gear and ratings.

Indeed.

That's... a lot saner. Let me re-evaluate.

Willpower -> Body is not a good idea, because it doesn't let you wear more armor and so you can't dump Body low enough below Willpower for this to be better than just buying Increase Physical Attribute.
Charisma -> Strength isn't a good idea because Strength isn't very useful.
Intuition -> Reaction is potentially useful, but since it doesn't boost your initiative it's a tradeoff. I can see 5 Intuition, 1 Reaction, and Mind over Matter being a debatable choice compared to using IPA to get yourself an extra 2 stats... but generally I think it's not worth it, given how important Initiative is in Shadowrun. There's also no easy way to jack your Intuition up very high, although I can see a potentially good setup as a Mystic Adept - high Intuition, base Drain on Intuition, use Increase Intuition (through a sustaining focus) and Mind over Matter.
Logic -> Agility has potential, since unlike Body and Reaction you don't ever care about your Agility except for tests. The downside is that Logic is generally a useless stat that people only take for flavor, and that it's no easier to boost Logic than it is to boost Agility. If you were going to be an Adept with high Logic, you would benefit a whole lot from dumping Agility and grabbing Mind over Matter, but normally being a high-Logic adept is a bad plan, so I don't think this is a balance problem. Also, if you just care about shooting people and not any other uses of Agility, you're better off with a cyberarm instead.

The best uses I can see:

1) Mystic Adept with an Intuition tradition, high Intuition, dump Reaction, use Increase Intuition + Mind Over Matter. This setup is basically sacrificing Initiative for defense pool, and personally I prefer initiative, but this is a really low-BP-cost way to get yourself a large defense pool.

2) A "triple threat" Adept or Mystic Adept who wants to have infiltration skills and hacking skills and also be able to fight. This lets you dump Agility for Logic, which while not needed for Hacking, is needed for Hardware, Data Search, and First Aid, which are all legitimately useful. If you are a mystic adept, this also lets you have more active Foci without having to use Increase Logic, which is good. I might try putting together such a character. EDIT: you don't need logic for Data Search, oops.

This is very good for mystic adept of logic tradition as you get to use tour drain stat for shooting guns and other fun thinks.

That's what you get for having movement speed not being stats-based.

I have to agree.

I was disappointed that there was not even silhouettes.

I don't know how it is going to shake out but I do think Mil Tech SHOULD be Oh Sh*t! scary.

And they succeeded there.

Under the Battle Rifles section, the HVBR is listed as a weapon that uses High Velocity ammunition, but is not capable of Full-Auto. This means it can't actually take advantage of the high velocity rules as written.

Should the rifle have FA or should we disregard that blurb about HV rules? I could see it going either way.

The Arsenal HV rules have nothing to do with ammo. Does WAR! introduce HV ammo? After all, there's low-velocity ammo.

They just add High-Power ammo (+2 DV, but more recoil).

That sounds like a Shadowrun version of the Guy Richie version of Sherlock Holmes.

The punchline: There is no such thing as "High Velocity ammunition" – only with the Arsenal reference you can guess that whoever wrote that meant HV weapons… and since we are guessing already, we might as well guess that said person didn't bother too much with reading the actual rules.

Bull said something about battle rifles being full auto at some point in the play test (over on SR boards). Maybe this is left over from that and missed in final edit?

Whats about the "More recoil part". Just one more recoil? 2?

Two – and it also gets one additional point AP.

Buy the book.

Does anyone else have issues with the Slow spell?
Outside of granting immunity to bullets and most other mundane weapons, I now have to keep track of objects weight?

Well, someone read The Forever War a few times too often. It's completely broken.

The Designate spell is really funny, too, when it come to what kind of marker you can produce – Magic determined by your implants, the mind boggles. Of course, it's funny that implanted UWBR now can "see" radar and maser designatore signs through the back door.

Recharge is… really clean energy. Just use really big capacitors to power cities.

y?

y not?

So the GM can ban it from the table after reading it.

This seems like a remarkably bad way to gain information to use to figure out if a book is worth buying.

~J

'cause

especially after reading this thread here . .

I don't consider specific rules from the book to be "information to use to figure out if a book is worth buying", but I was only teasing in the first place.