I have a new player coming in, and he want's to play a hundred years plus old elf. I've explained to him that the only way I know for that to happen is if he was one of the immortals. I'm looking for info on how to do that out side of a spirit-pact, and whether that is acceptable for a PC. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

tips? yeah, tell him no.
Reign him in from the start of tell the others to show up dressed in chicken suits prepared to choose between what's in the box or behind the curtain. The immortals are incredibly rare and powerful. 100 years old means he was born around the american bicentenial-well before the UGE but long after the spike babies. He'd have been a freak.

Yeah, ditto to that, honestly.

I wouldn't see a problem of playing one of the first generation elves/dwarves, when mana was returning and all that. Around 2011? So they could be in their early 60's. Think it would be fun to see, really.

*shrugs*

Just sounds like a Spike Baby to me. That's well under the known elven old age issue, there's no need for him to be an Immortal Elf about it, or have Immunity: Disease, a higher Essence, or anything else extra.

If he really wants to be able to say he was born in 1973, let him, but I'd make sure to nip it in the bud if he starts to say the "yeah, but that means I should know ______" all the time without spending the points to back it up. If he just wants to be 100 years old, let him. If he wants extra shit for it, that's when you nip it in the bud.

We've been talking about this since I posted. 500 years old does seem out of the question. 100 years old is still on the fence. Chicken suit's...Man, what kind of game to you play?

you're showing your age-or rather the lack of your's and the level of mine, most ungallant.

Ungallant is what I do. And I get the Let's Make A Deal reference. I'm just saying, it sounds like you're session table would be fun to sit at.

My player and I are currently discussing the effects of being an elf born in the wrong century, so that seems to be settled at the moment. However, I'm still not sure where to look for compressive info on the Immortals. My curiosity is peaked now, and I'd like to know what I should read to get a good grasp on the subject.

Really, the immortal elves are plot devices, not player characters. There's not a lot of information on them other than "They are very powerful."

Could he be a brand new immortal born 100 years ago? In theory, but magic levels were so low as to make the concept nigh impossible. I agree with the others: Nix it.

What I'm current talking about is an anomaly born due to an abnormal mana spike during the latter half of the 19th century. He is not an immortal. Don't worry, I'm not that thick headed.

However, I still have to plead screaming ignorance on the subject of immortals. I assumed that there is supportive material out there about them. I'm just asking, what rule book, or novel should I read to get the best understanding about immortals?

I wouldn't nix it entirely, there are hints that as 2011 got closer, the number of spike babies went up. It is also rumored that Ehran or some of the other Tir Princes were around at that time and were collecting the youngins in special boarding schools in preparation for the formation of the Tir.

Got to remember elves can live to be 300 (at least that is what science says) and they don't begin to look old until the last 100.

Also make sure if he wants to know X he puts rank in skill x.

Suggested reading is the book on the Tir. IIRC that were this info comes from.

There are mention of them in quite a few products. There aren't really "rules" for them or something, because they're not that sort of thing. As others have alluded to, the true Immortal Elves are plot devices with legs and pointy ears. They're not meant to be player characters, and they're not even really non-player characters, for the most part -- the ones that are old old are ridiculously powerful, had major NPC-scale stats back in the Earthdawn days, and are fodder for conspiracy theorists (both in and out of the Shadowrun universe).

For a novel with some info, I'd suggest Never Trust and Elf or Worlds Without End. For sourcebooks with some hints and whispers about them (the most concentrated hints and whispers, I should say, far from all of them!) check out Portfolio of a Dragon, Tir Tairngire, and some Harlequin and Harlequin's Back (of course).

Basically they're walking plot devices, that bridged the gap between the Earthdawn line of games and the Shadowrun line of games, by being survivors from the one into the other. Them mucking about in the affairs of player characters is kind of like a kid shaking his ant farm.

But -- again -- Immortal Elves don't need to have anything to do with this particular PC. He's just another "Spike Baby" in this instance (an elf that squirted out when the mana "spiked" just high enough to allow them). If you want to talk to the player and he wants to spend the points on some interesting Contacts or knowledge skills, more power to ya, but otherwise there's really no reason to treat him differently than any other player character.

See Spike Baby at the Sixth World Wiki.

If the character is from the Pacific Northwest, they probably spent time at Sean Laverty's Xavier Foundation.

Thanks to Critias. I'm sure I can quell my curiosity on Immortals now. Thanks to everyone who replied, Bombastic 451 out.

One of our players in an older campaign had a great background...

basically, as a 90 something year old man, he felt a tightness in his chest, more than ready to meet his maker, he laid down and prepared to die. But he didn't, instead he woke up and was transformed into a much younger and pointy eared version of himself.

I always figured that's how they explain the "Several hundred years" life span for elves in the SR core books.

The problem with Dumpshock (as I understand it), is that these guys will tell you NOT to do something because it might seem convoluted or contrived or just because it might require any stretch of imagination regarding the canon.


I say fuck em. Allow your player to choose the Elf metatype, paying the appropriate cost, and then assess an appropriate cost for a positive quality which emulates the Immunity(Age, Pathogens, Toxins) power. BOOM Immortal Elf.

Actually, it's when it might require wrecking the setting and balance for no good reason. And 'contrived' means 'lame'.

I fail to see how this instance requires wrecking the setting.

All known immortal elves are powerful does not necessarily mean all immortal elves are powerful, and there is nothing to support either argument.

Theres also absolutely nothing out of balance if the player payed appropriate amount of points for a quality. Age has never really been a factor in any game setting as far as I can recall.

While that's not a bad idea, Sinboy666, that's just plain not how it's been described. Elves are born elves (they don't mutate into them), and they just...stay young. They look to be about late teens, early twenties, for a long, long, time. They stay in their physical peak, they don't age and then regress and then age again, or anything like that.

I mean, it's a cool idea for a special one-off of a character concept, but it's not how it's done by canon or anything.


It's not a matter of imagination or convolution, but one of game balance. "Immortal Elf" has a certain meaning to it, just like "Ivy League" or "Luxury Sedan." A community college is not Harvard, and a Chevy Cavalier isn't a BMW or a Lexus. Words mean things, both in-game and out of it, and there is a whole lot more to being a properly capitalized Immortal Elf than just being born before 2011 and never catching cold.

To prevent confusion on that point, as such, and especially because the character hasn't actually asked to be a member of the Immortal Elf club, just "an Elf that's more than 100 years old," I really, really, think Spike Baby is the way to go. It's simple, it's canon, and it doesn't really rock the boat very much. The character gets what he wants, the GM isn't bending over backwards to explain by Lofwyr or someone hasn't prison-raped the starting character with the overpowered background, and everyone wins.

You included Pathogens and Toxins, which rather are a factor in most games. And then, as Critias explained, you said, 'Immortal Elf', which literally means 'crazy powerful half-dragon beings'.

And I was speaking in general, just as you were generalizing that all of Dumpshock is unimaginative (and anti-convoluted/-contrived, but those are compliments).

Not to get too off topic. I thought I read somewhere that all the meta types Goblinized at some point, oh well.

and I was gonna say, even if the GM allows his players to be "immortal" that doesn't give him immunity: Bullet to the face... which is the way most Shadowrunners actually leave the mortal coil.

I'd say let the kid think he's 500 years old and reveal much later in the campaign that those are PAB Unit implanted memories; he's really just some schmuck pulled of the street for a corp experiment.

The nature of the character isn't changed and it maintains game balance as well as being a pretty neat story.
Heck, I'd give him the option of reprogramming his memory to forget about finding out the truth.
Just a thought.

At the risk of generalizing on the internet this and the PC Dragon thread strike me as folks that want the story to be about them, not the characters, not a game world they participate in and influence, them.

Yes and No, Elves and Dwarfs are just born as such (there is no commenty about a fetus being seen to be human and then changing to a elf), First Gen Orks and Trolls normally changed at about puberty (variations both up and down are known).

Second Gen Orks and Trolls can be both born as their metatype or be born human and then goblinise later

Rules-wise, there's a quick and easy ways of pulling it off: Let the character purchase the Banshee positive quality from RC. It grants all the benefits associated with Immortal Elves (Immunity to Age/Disease/Pathogens) without forcing anyone to pay through the nose for it or granting any particularly unfair benefits. There's canon reference to awakened infected elves prior to 2011, so old age isn't an issue. Of course, you're free to relable it as "Immortal Elf".


Fluff-wise, if you choose to go with the "Immortal Elf" route, you could make him the offspring of one of the Immortal Elves, kinda like Frosty, except much younger. It would explain his "youth" (compared to other IEs), while also granting an excuse to explain why certain of his abilities (magic, immunities etc.) aren't fully developed yet.

Spike baby sounds doable. I'm sure there'll be mana surges during the seventies

I'd shy away from any connection to the real (capitalized) Immortal Elves. They're basically epic-level characters, on the level of the Great Dragons. As a GM I wouldn't want one directly related to the PCs because it would cast a way too large shadow over the campaign.

You should point out to your player that he should spend more on Knowledge skills that most characters if he's been around that long and seen that much. But a spike baby is pretty interesting as a concept, and not too powerful.

Indeed!

This would make the character directly related to some of the most influent beings on the planet, and an extremely valuable commodity if the thing is even simply suspected. This is not something you toss in casually...

Also why does he want to play such a character ? What does appeal to him in the concept ? If those questions are answered then maybe we can figure out something less exotic that fit the bill.

Putting that differently: invite him to become a life draining monster that has to torture people regularly or die...

With the free "enemy: rest of the world" disadvantage

Let's see: you're already in an occupation where you need to kill and torture people regularly to make a living, and you're considered a "deniable asset" at best, and a "public enemy" at worst.

So yeah, not much difference here.

Well my occupation does not require me to kill often or torture people ever. Most shadowrun published scenarios give bonus karma if you do little collateral damage, almost all the fiction is about shadow runners with a code of honour (e.g. argent, talon). Sure this means that I have to miss missions in which the the stated goal is "assassinate this innocent person", but I can live with that. I don't have much problem at killing people who start shooting at me first, but the idea of creating terror in a victim over a period of many minutes, slowly torturing them to death is I think...a little more extreme than I am happy to roleplay.

I have played quite a lot of whitewolf, and being a vampire in that world can be fun. However in that world the victims recover naturally and the relationship doesn't have to be as vile as in shadowrun.

Just because a PC wants to play something off the wall doesn't mean he wants the game to be all about him. It's perfectly natural to keep hearing about how badass these things are (immortal elves, dragons) and want to be somehow connected to that legacy of badassedness. Also, isn't the story to a certain degree about each of the players? In my mind each player is supposed to get his or her moment in spotlight and bask in the awesome that is he. The spot light jumps around from character to character and everybody gets their shining moment of cool.

The idea that you can play shapeshifters, infected, free spirits, AI's, centaurs and pixies, but that young dragons, and elves with no upper cap on their longevity are nonstarters is... well... sort of silly.

The only difference is there is a lot of canon material that talks about how wicked bad ass Immortal Elves and Great Dragons are (wich is duh, really, anything thats survived for thousands of years is going to be great at survival). This seems to somehow preclude players ever interacting with these figures on a meaningful level which is, strictly speaking, just limiting your game's horizons. Now I'm not saying that you should have the players meat Harlequin at a bar (though really, that would be pretty neat if handled appropriately) or that they should pull a job for one of the great dragons.

The fact of the matter is that playing an immortal elf doesn't need to be unbalancing in any way shape or form. The player isn't asking to play one of the great immortal elves of Canon, the player isn't asking for stats wildly above the others. Immortal elves aren't born ancient, and neither are dragons. The player could very well be a young immortal elf that was locked in some sort of magical stasis/prison at the end of the 4th age, being too young to survive in a down-cyle. Then the character wakes up in 2070 when the mana levels rise to an acceptable level.

Boom, immortal elf with some knowledge skills that probably wont apply in the modern day. Was that so hard?

Might also want to take some inquire as to what he has been doing for the last 80 years instead of shadowrunning. Your skills will be that of an average shadowrunner.

I'd have him take six ranks in Knowledge Skill: Habitat Engineering - the fancy Paranoia term for 'I'm a janitor'.

I think we're asking the wrong question.

WHY does the player want to be an immortal elf? Does he have some character development in mind that he thinks will be good? Does he have some meta plot he wants to share with the GM or does he just think it sounds really 'cool' to be like the immortal elves in the text?

If it's the former, we need more details, it might just might work if he's an expeirenced roll player. If it's latter then 'no' I mean a Type 1 hand phaser, a light saber and transporter sound really cool too but the affect on the game would be unbalancing.

The 19th century saw quite some occasions for bloodmagic-fueled manaspikes. Based on Earth Dawn, the elven lifespan's about 300 years. There's no reason, why he shouldn't get himselfe some Leónization for his 250th birthday.

and late 19th centruy is considerably older than late 20th century, he's closer to 200 than 300.

so we're back to 'why?'

Frankly, I would say that the "problem" lies not in our answers but in the questions we receive. If people want to gin up stuff that's unsupported by the books and don't care about ruffling the setting's feathers in the process they probably won't come running to us. When you start home brewing things you've usually already decided your game's needs are more important than canon or outsider opinions-- which is fine. They either trim the canon of whatever gets in the way or do what the OP of this thread did: they ask what info exists and whether it's appropriate for PCs because they're ignorant of the subject matter (which is totally reasonable when dealing with a 20+ year old franchise). In this case, the correct answers are quite simply "There really isn't any hard numbers" and "The fluff that exists seems to make them inappropriate because players typically expect to start on somewhat even footing and IEs are as powerful as all get out." Responding with no regard to the canon would have been tantamount to answering a question the OP didn't ask.

Beyond that, just ginning up stats and fluff for things is easy. I get the strong impression that if we're valued at all it's because collectively we already know entirely too much about NERPS and existing Shadowrun mechanics. We're patently unnecessary when it comes to running an interesting game, but we can tell you about Johnny Spinrad just fine.

Well what advantages do immortal elves really have over plain elves that cant be attributed to their having eons to study magic?

All I'm seeing is Immunity (Age, Pathogens, Toxins).

Id say slap on an 85 BP Quality Which gives them a stat bump to mental skills (+1 across the board?) and a stat bump to magic, along with Immunity (Age, Pathogens, Toxins).

It's tough to say. The thing with immortal elves is we know that they're different somehow since normal elves are not immune to toxins/pathogens and even the youngest IE we know about, Frosty, had the latent potential to hit Grade 8 minimum and has as-powerful-as-you-need-her-to-be levels of magical ability by the time Dawn of the Artifacts rolled around. How much of that is due to her tutor and unique experiences and how much of it is due to her lineage is tough to say. It'd just be easier to call the guy a spike baby and be done with it.

And you don't think, even an 'only' 200 years old elf build with 400BP turns out somewhat silly when even an ordinary ex-navy seal doesn't work out without heavy min-maxing?

Not really, I could see a 200 year old elf without lots of practical experience. It all depends on the character the guy is trying to play. We just know he wants to make an immortal elf, or now it seems, a spike baby.

As far as building an ex-navy seal, I dont see that. From a mechanics perspective remember that the average joe has a 0 in *skill pertinent for comparison*.

A rating of 4 in firearms for example signifies "Riot Control Cop, Combat veteran, Superior Regular Force (Marines, Airborn)."

A rating of 5 in firearms is: SWAT team, elite military (Rangers, Special Forces).

Ramaloke, personally "shapeshifters, infected, free spirits, AI's, centaurs and pixies" are just as much non-starters. They all suck.

So, you suggested 85 BP for +4 stats (40 BP, assuming no maxes) and Immunity (Age, Pathogens, Toxins), when just the Dwarf +2 against Pathogens/Toxins is worth about 20 BP, and this is orders of magnitude better?

Well, immunity to age is just so much fluff. I mean, when is your elf dying of old age going to actually come up in play. Shadowrunners go out with a bang. How likely is your game to span three centuries? You could give every player ever immunity to age and nothing would come of it unless you have rapid aging effects in place.

How much Yen does it cost to get immunity to toxins/pathogens or at least a reasonably high ability to resist them? 200,000 Yen? Cuz thats what 40 BP could get you otherwise.

So, if Age is the one that we can all agree is worthless (except for the fact that there are Spirit Pacts that grant it, so there's certainly a cost), why do people keep trying to give him Immunity to Pathogens and Toxins for free?

Because Immortal Elves have that, I mean, its one of the only relatively concrete earmarks of an immortal elf.

Immunity to Age doesn't use the normal Immunity rules, but AFAIK pathogens and toxins do. Which means they protect up to a certain rating. For critters, that rating depends on Magic...

Still, it's a pretty nice deal given how only nanoware is a remotely cost effective way of approximating immunities, and hardened armor type resistance against such attacks wouldn't count towards any nuyen cap or hurt your essence like a hive would.

There are three ways to gain immunity to contact and inhalation toxins/pathogens that cost under 5k Yen.

Chemically sealed armor, a Gas Mask or an Internal Air Tank. The only relatively unique ability is immunity to those things in injury form.

Yes, yes I realize people will say "hey isn't it sort of strange that he's wearing a face mask and breathes like darth vader?" but mechanically speaking, its not super hard to protect yourself from.

What Im getting at is Immunity to Pathogens and Toxins is not a super awesome ability. Its nice, yes, but not so nice that Id put it out of the reach of player hands.

A chemical seal requires full body armor though. So it's not just wearing a face mask and breathing like darth vader, it's also -looking- like Darth Vader given that such armor is obvious and usually styled for intimidation. It is, in fact, a pretty dang good power and you're practically throwing it in as an after thought on a metatype that is already getting a healthy amount of extra attributes for the cost.