Andrew Jackson committed genocide and ignored a Supreme Court order not to do so.
But his wife had just died, so...

EDIT: And Grant razed Vicksburg. Ah, Ulysses S. Grant. The Zap Brannigan of the Civil War.
And some nobody congressman from Missouri obliterated two whole Japanese cities.
And James K. Polk shelled Mexico City into oblivion.

Well, the players and GM need to agree on what kind of game they want to play. I kinda assumed they'd already done that.

Depends on how detailed the fortelling is. If it's detailed enough, the GD can lay a wonderful trap, which will consequently have tighter parameters for success. The more completely I am betrayed, the better my chances.
It's the difference between knowing they'll try to stop me because I will shoot someone at some point, and deciding to wear insulated clothing because they expect me to use a gun that fires icicles, and thus I expect them to use some sort of heat based countermeasure.

I actually meant personally. Like personally. As in gutting every person that got gutted. Dragons have a way of not having to command troops.

Presumably a lot before he emigrated to the states. It's why he emigrated, after all.


Shadowrun dragons are much better at multitasking than metahumans. Seriously. Lofwyr's idea of entertainment is watching every cable channel at once. I am not making this up.


No, US presidents have to order nukes dropped instead. Which has happened. Or have their soldiers massacre civilians and carpet half a country with chemical weapons, which also has happened. And that's not even getting into what badly chosen words and invasions can do for the US' reputation ...





Also he really hated the Natives.


Bullshit. All dragons have an army of henchmen (Corp troopers, national troops, hippie-esque shamans, bizarre spirits) at their disposal. Even Sirrug has. Besides, since when is gutting people personally required to make someone loathed?


Why lay a complex trap for you? This is not the 1960s Batman series. Hed just put out a bounty on you and see the Shadows eat you alive.

Yeah, I'm still saying genocide of our native peoples trumps all that.

And Zachary Tyler and U.S. Grant did personally raze cities to the ground.

And I mean like personally. Andrew Jackson personally set fire to entire villages of Seminoles in his Indian campaigns. He set the darn fires!
The man was shot approximately 18 times. In one duel, he let the other guy go first, got shot, then took his shot, killed the guy and walked off the bullet wound. He once coughed up a bullet at a state dinner he received in a duel over the honor of a New Orleans prostitute.

There is no evidence I can find that Andrew Jackson was not an Immortal Elf.

Ain't this getting dangerously close to political talk? Suffice to say, numerous leaders have done very bad things but none of them have personally pulled a Godzilla impersonation.

I'll cede that.
I just reckoned that politics of over 150 years ago was fair game.
And I do maintain that Andrew Jackson was/is an Immortal Elf. His accomplishments were matched only by his hubris and crimes against humanity. That reeks of Immortal Elf to me.

It was a dick move, but back then, genocide was a lot less of a bad word than it is today.


Yeah, he really liked the dueling. Wasn't aware he set villages on fire himself, too, though. Was it Jackson who ran a campaign claiming the other guy wants to hang everyone?


Alright, yes. However, whether someone mass-murders personally or by proxy doesn't seem all that relevant. Plus, Aden didn't raze Teheran alone, he had an army of spirits and Awakened to help him.


So Napoleon was one, too?

Not according to the Choctaw it wasn't.

I don't think that was him. Most of the vitriol in the Jackson/Adams campaign was directed at Jackson and his wife. Adams was already grossly unpopular and had made some serious missteps as president. Jackson focused mostly on disparaging him as a coward.
Adams focused mostly on the reputation of Jackson's wife. It was so bad it is said to have killed her right before Jackson took office. To say he was distraught is an understatement.

No, too short. Plus Napoleon avoided death though luck. Jackson avoided death through sheer force of will.

Detect Enemies (extended) at Force 20+ with 20+ Hits counters most of the traps there are and 10+ Bound Spirts with Force 20+ are a good backup if you ever are in trouble...

it is like the 4-5km radar for enemies that try to kill you and with this much hits the great dragon knows what you wear, do, carry, general physiology and so on...

cya
Tycho

Only works on living targets. Yeah, if you were gonna walk up with a gun that'd be be helpful but, um, I don't think anybody recommends that.

Ninja'd

If you want to kill a Great Dragon, the first thing you have to do is assume that you won't live. Trying to kill one *and* get away with it is too difficult. Just go ahead and accept you're a martyr to the greater good.

(Of course, there's also Plan B, wher eyou start handing out magic swords to farmboys and hope that oens gets lucky.)

I always assumed that was a given.

Just wait until the mana downcycle, when the dragons get sleepy.

My own plan involved a swarm of drones firing deepweed-DMSO splat rounds to start with. Yes, the dragon has a high body, and therefore a high soak against toxins. With hundreds of shots hitting him in a round, it's only a matter of time before he fails enough rolls to be out of edge AND be forced to astrally perceive, making it more difficult to defend against further drone attack.

Do that with some K10. Make the dragon go nuts and have every company feel like donating a Thor Shot against it's butt, haha.

All this discussion is, to me, just highlighting how schizophrenic the depiction of Great Dragons is in Shadowrun. Going strictly by the core rules, they are distinctly underwhelming. Powerful, yes. Mind-blowingly awesome, not so much. Going by the novels and some sourcebooks, they’re all but invincible forces of nature.

Take, for example, War! (which everyone seems to hate) p. 31, where the GD Sirrurg practically wipes out a city (or a good chunk of it) *with one spell*, somehow using his Twist Fate abilities to do this. A re-reading of the core rules (either original or SR4A) does not reveal the ability of Twist Fate to supercharge Combat spells into mega-WMD’s as far as I can see, but nonetheless this particular GD has no trouble pulling that off; Ghostwalker also handily took over Denver without any real difficulties and Aden was apparently badass enough to trash Tehran all by himself. Essentially, this seems to boil down to “SR authors make GDs as powerful as they feel like at any given time with no regard to any other published materials.”

If that’s the case, then the SR world of 2070-ish really makes no sense as presented. If GDs have those abilities, then they’re not really awesomely powerful magical creatures, they’re Physical Gods. I mean, really, at that level of power, what’s the practical difference between them and Cthulhu? And if that’s the case, why the heck do they bother becoming “grand masters of manipulation” of all the lowly mortals inhabiting the Earth? If they have this much power at their casual disposal, the entire world should been under outright dragon rule within a year or so of the GDs awakening – say by the end of 2012 at the latest. Why should Lofwyr bother with all his various machinations and corporate raiding when he can just (apparently) march into any area and say “I’m in charge now. Oh, you guys disagree? [BOOM, a city is gone.] Anyone else disagree?” Hence, I would argue they need to be scaled (heh) down a bit or they necessarily dominate every single aspect of the entire world, to the exclusion of anything else.

It's easier to break something than to build it or protect it. Also, the stats in the book are for stock great dragons, not NAMED great dragons. They also, in so many words, say, "Hey, go wild with this!" As for twist fate...

Let's say a dragon tosses a dragon-sized power ball on a city. We're looking at about 24 Force overcast max for a STOCK great dragon. Nowhere in the critter listing does it give a MAXIMUM rating for essence or stats for these guys, only what's usual. Let's say that, despite being alive for several millenia and having your very being tied intimately to the ebb and flow of magic does NOT grant the eldest great dragons any higher than 12 Essence, meaning about 24 magic hard cap including the 12 initiation levels, so 48 max overcast on the force rating of the powerball. That 48 force will affect the area, probably enough to decimate a city. Add in the artifacts the dragon has found/made to add to their magic pool, drain soak pool, anchored spell effects on anchoring foci... and this is still in the process of adding up dice. It's already ludicrous and we can justify a large metropolitan area being leveled by the spell at this point for a capped out dragon who's had time to build up more wealth and power than China, the U. S., and the U.K. on a bender combined!

Now, we have an unreasonably high potential from a Great Dragon and all their toys, you may ask "How does 'Twist Fate™' factor in?" Good question! The answer is that, with that really high spell, somebody may spend edge to survive, or possibly to counter them (another Great Dragon using Twist Fate, for instance, who likes the status quo). Well, by spending a single edge in a single turn, that great dragon can negate any one other person's spending of edge, basically telling them "I like the way things are right now." Alternately, they can Twist Fate to make the structure of the city re-roll it's soak successes and keep the result, which will no doubt be less than before.

As stated, in the rules, it says that GD`s have access to things the players will never have, up to the GM`s discretion. This can be an over powering number of things I can`t even think of all of them.

"I spend edge to modify this test." Also, as has been stated, maybe the spell required being "powered up" to have any effect, using the released life energy of the recently deceased (To me, that many dead would create a temporary BG of at least 2 or 3, which could have been aspected to Sirrurg "the Destroyer" naturally. Who knows.)
Ghostwalker had a whole host of spirits with him, several likely bound, and probably had a lot of preperation (including spirits sustaining many defensive spells on him)
Aden, yes, he burned down Tehran. Before magic was understood, and likely had at least a few protections as well.
To me, these aren't out of the scope of Great Dragon ability, but most of the awesome things they have done were prepared.

Draconic nature in most, if not all fantasy settings has them as manipulators, striving towards a future goal (Meta)humanity can likely never understand. Personally, I think it's more like a game to the dragons, and what fun is playing the game if you overpower everyone all at once?

It's not how much force the GD can achieve inside the area effect of its Combat spell - I readily concede that anything caught inside that area is pretty much dead-no-save. It's the *size* of the area in question. A Force 48 spell would be about 288' in diameter (1 meter radius * Force). Bad enough to trash a chunk of downtown, but Sirrurg should *not* have been able to affect such a large area in *one shot*, so my point about SR writers making it up as they go along stands. If they'd said that he spent the next 15 minutes firing off those shots one after another, I would concede that the city was toast, but no matter how you slice it, he should not have been able to affect such a large area at once.

I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a stock GD. I'm fairly sure every GD worth the name appeared in "Survival of the Fittest", sure a GM could uncover a new GD for their game but the idea that there are just a ton of stock GDs lying around and the named ones are somehow more powerful than those GDs simply isn't supported. I'm all for customizing the GD stats, lower stats for Masaru, higher Logic for Llofwyr, higher Summoning/Binding for Ghostwalker, but we're talking about a few points here or there.


The wealth and power they accumulated while they were...sleeping or partying on the metaplanes? The wealth and power they acquired after they awoke from a world where non-magical technology equaled iron crafting to one where the cyberspace and cyberware are springing up? The one with the giant megacorps already consuming all the worlds resources?

We accept that Llofwyr was able to buy out a founding member of the Corp Court with a pile of gold he had in his cave not because it makes sense but because Llofwyr as a scheming CEO is cool. You don't really need to stretch that any further.

If you want Great Dragons to be Super-Genius Godzillas in your game, go for it. That's not the published rules and while it can be fun to play against insanely powerful dragons, if I wanted that I'd go back to Rifts where it's built in.

48 is the unassisted overcast. With a magic rating of 24, they can utilize a Power Focus to boost their magic anywhere from 24-120; the maximum total force of all bonded foci cannot exceed magic x5, but SR4A does not say it cannot all be one focus. If we grant that the dragon will have 2-4 sustaining foci for maintaining defensive spells, then we can guess at a Force rating of 1 or 2 times their Magic rating for a Power Focus. That gives us 48 from magic + overcasting, and another 48 for a Power Focus. 96 Force spell. This is neglecting the "Dragons get better than you" fluff thus far for spells available.

Radius of 96 meters, squared times pi, gives us 28.953 sq km (rounded) for a dragon who's defending himself.

Max potential damage would be 168 force total, probably terminal levels of drain, and 88.668 sq km (rounded again) for a dragon who's just focused on making the area cease to exist at all costs. Long live the memory of President Dunkelzhan!


The lowest listed logic for a standard dracoform of any kind is 8. Great Dragons start at +5 to that (13). How is that not Super-Genius Godzillas? It IS the published rules and stats. SR4A pg 303-304
edit: also SR4 std 296-267

They can be Super-Genius Godzillas, but that doesn't mean they don't suffer from hubris.

I think you're seriously pushing the #'s here to ludicrous levels with increasingly unlikely explanations, but *if* that's the case, then my other point stands. These beings are the unquestioned, invincible, unstoppable, all-powerful *gods* of the SR world, and the campaign world as it stands should not exist - the dragons rule the world and all lesser mortals are their slaves; I see no appreciable difference between the GDs awakening and Cthulhu rising from the depths of the Pacific. Pick one. Your campaign, your choice, of course. But when I GM, sure as hell not a chance of this in my SR world. I can and will retcon Godzilla-dragon incidents down to less ridiculous levels as necessary. Unless, of course, they're rampaging through Tokyo - that would seem appropriate then.

You do realize, Rubic, that a Power Focus does not add Magic Rating Right?
As of SR4 (And SR4A) A Power Focus ONLY ADDS DICE to the Spellcasting Roll, IT NEVER ADDS MAGIC RATING...

Ah, an oversight on my part. Also, it'd require one hell of a spirit to craft that for you, as there is no other way for such a high-level focus to be crafted (crafter's magic rating is the cap).

Regardless, Dragons are exceedingly powerful, and Great Dragons even moreso. Christian Lafay is right that Great Dragons are not immune to hubris. Real life example, Bruce Lee was arguably the BEST martial artist of his day, perhaps ever. This did not prevent him from getting his back broken by an opponent; the circumstances are moot, as shadowrunners won't play fair against Dragons or Great Dragons either.

Now, Great Dragons are NOT invincible. As far as Shadowrun goes, they are as close as it gets. Frankly, I see taking down a Great Dragon as being a more realistic retirement goal for a runner than opening a bar and being forced to work for a living. YMMV

That's ok...
With Cerebral Enhancers III, it's very easy to play a Logic 8 character and both hackers and Logic-tradition mages will be hitting that regularly.
With Exception Attribute and Genetic Optimization a human can hit Logic 8 without Cerebral Enhancers, Logic 11 with them. I'd expect corps to have numerous such people employed, either as lead researchers or board members. I like to think of this as the "Damien Knight" level.
And this is focusing on pure Logic, discounting Encephelon, PuSHeD, Neural Nanites, Trance, Genetic Infusions, Psyche, and all the other wonderful ways you can boost your thinking power in one way or another.
It may be Super-Genius to us or to the Logic 2 Sam but for Cyberlogician hackers and logic-based Mages or Technos GDs are significantly smarter than them but not indecipherable. And for the corps, who actually have to worry about GDs as either threats or investors, it's a business expense to find/build someone who can out think a GD.
Edit: Llofwyr is always the exception but that's not rules, just Rule of Cool.

The Elder McNinja's showing us how to do it.

I keep seeing people say the minimum stats for an unnamed GD are the ones that are "suggested for GMs when pressed for numbers", and that named great dragons are much stronger. How does a dragon grow that powerful without being named? Additionally, the book suggests these stats while in the same breath stating that great dragons are major power players. This almost sounds as if GD's that are major power players, such as Lofwyr, may have those stats. 12 magic is nothing to be embarrassed about people, and if the dragon can't survive with 12, more probably won't help, so stop inflating numbers.

When did initiation start getting limited by essence?

Maybe. But only "maybe" in the sense that I can "maybe" roll palming against a vast field of stones, and come up with their earnings for that year. That use of twist fate is single target against a creature. The buildings in a city are neither a single target, nor a creature.

Baseline for Metahumans will typically be 6, 7 with surge, then 9 with Genetic Optimization and Exceptional Attribute. Max bonus to that would be 4, giving you a boosted 13, on par with a Great Dragon. The Great Dragon can boost themselves, most likely with a sustained magic spell, by 6, meaning an augmented 19. Dragons conceivably have access to everything you do, and magic at a higher rating and an exclusivity that metahumans cannot match. Your augmented stats can reach their baseline stats, but that doesn't mean you can reach their augmented stats. Dragons are SUPPOSED to be better than you. Great Dragons are SUPPOSED to be better than THEM. That's why we can sit around and fire our synapses over how, where, and why our feeble little intellects might overcome their massive paranoia.

Dragons get ware now? Metahuman drugs work on dragons now? The only dragon I've ever heard of getting any ware was Eliohann and that...ended poorly for him.

Edit:
Dragons are supposed to be better. Given the advance of technology, that gulf is much smaller than it used to be and getting smaller every day (edition).

I thought they just didn't get ware because they had too much to lose. Speaking of which, how does such a gigantic creature have 15 agility? Or reaction for that matter. I find it difficult to see a dragon dodging bullets.

I thought they just didn't get ware because they had too much to lose. Speaking of which, how does such a gigantic creature have 15 agility? Or reaction for that matter. I find it difficult to see a dragon dodging bullets.

Dragons don't generally get ware, as stated, because they have too much to lose. The DO get magic spells, should they so desire, with little to lose.

Increase [Attribute], SR4A pg 208, Sustained, (F/2)-2, a version exists for every physical and mental stat, and affects both the stat and derived stats while the spell is active (i.e. Increase Reaction or Intuition would increase initiative, Increase Body increases toxin resistance and damage track, etc.).

Maximum Augmented Stat Value is your Baseline Stat Value * 1.5, RAW, so there's a limit to how good your ware can make you. It's the same limit for magic spells/adept powers. And, yet again, Great Dragons can go higher and do more than you can, without even getting into Great Dragon Exclusives (of which there are [insert arbitrary value determined by GM])

They ARE Super Genius Godzillas. They are better, faster, stronger, bigger, and older than you. They have no maximum age. If you manage to back one into a corner, after all of that, he can wait indefinitely while merely risking a temporary (to him/her) addiction to mana-based sustenance while you grow tired, old, and eventually dead.

They have stats, and so they can die. They have better stats than you, and so you can die, too. It doesn't matter how much your e-peen or geek-peen hurts to see something that clearly outclasses your character in every stat-able way from cradle to grave, it IS rules-as-written and rules-as-intended.

HOWEVER, in nature, when a powerful stress enters the environment, the creatures that survive are not always the strongest; they are not always the toughest, nor the smartest, fastest, etc. The creature that survives will be the most adaptable. Forget that the dragon outclasses you in intelligence, speed, strength, fortitude, etc. Be certain that you outclass the dragon in adaptability, which has always been humanity's (and by extension, metahumanity's) greatest collective strength, and is NOT, in fact, a numerical stat. You can even call in a horror-movie standby: you don't have to be more clever than the Great Dragon, just more clever than GM Fiat.

On the statting of Great Dragons:

I am reminded of the old adage back in the day when the OD&D book Deities & Demigods came out... If you don't want me to kill the Norse god Loki, don't tell me how many hit points he has.

I'm pretty sure awakened animals can't get ware. No one has been able to implant a datajack into a dragon (with one cautionary example).


Ok, let me simplify this debate.
A metahuman can get up to Logic 12 with Surge, gene tweaks, and Exceptional Attribute.
That metahuman can then get up to +10 on all his Logic-linked skills (Nanites, Genes, ware, and BADs)
I'm sure someone else on this board can stretch it higher.
The vast majority of what I used isn't available to a dragon: ware, drugs, SURGE, etc.
Yes, the game allows silly levels of optimization. Yes, Dragons are supposed to be smarter than the runners. But the corps can bring in someone just as smart or smarter. And certain runners are gonna be bouncing around that level.


Leonization put a crimp in that strategy a while ago.


E-peen? (Huh, thanks Urban Dictionary)
Huh? There are numerous things in SR that are supposed to outclass the PCs in one way or another: dragons, cyberzombies, IEs, vampires, cyborgs, etc. Heck, that's the whole concept behind prime runners. And the game has you regularly assault megacorps with more power than the average PC will ever have a shot at. But none of them are any where near invincible or invulnerable.


I fail to see how an abstract argument about adaptability affects in any way whether a player character should be able to kill a GD. And trying to outsmart the GM never ends well, this isn't a competition between the players and the GM.

I'm honestly not sure what your position is. I'm arguing two things:
#1 Dragons and GDs are very nasty but they're not the secret masters of the world, or even the most powerful entities in it (again, Llofwyr being the exception). Besides megacorps, who generally outclass everything, GDs still have to contend with a host of other powers that threaten them: national governments, vampire conspiracies, high force spirits, IEs, AAs, the largest criminal syndicates, etc. There's good reason for this as well, if everything ultimately links back to a GD/IE/Vampire plot it gets boring. Invincible enemies also gets boring: that was my biggest complaint in the Harlequin adventures and the biggest one I've heard about DOTA. GDs are big but they're one threat amongst many.
#2 If players want to kill GDs that should be possible, unless the GM has a problem with it. It should be difficult as heck and the GD should have tons of advantages so its appropriately epic but if the GM is going to apply Schrodinger Armor or Super-Divination, he should just tell the players he doesn't want to play that kind of game. It's a waste of time for the players to play it out if the GM is just going to shut it all down with a "Super-Genius Godzilla" speech. If the players can't effect something in the game, why put it in the game at all?

I'll agree with that..



Not always. I think there's a difference in certain NPCs being "on the table" for attacking and others not. Just because you put Lofwyr in your campaign as the distant, way indirect cause of all manner of plotlines, doesn't mean you're obligated to give the PCs any fair chance to have a go at him.
It's a matter of scale; I wouldn't promise the players that they'll be able to topple an AAA either.

---

Anyway, I don't agree that making GDs so powerful would necessarily mean they'd openly subjugate humanity. I could argue that a lot of them don't want to do that. Some believe that humans are more productive and creative when they believe they're free and working for themselves. Others just aren't that interested in controlling humans, as long as they stay away from their lairs. Maybe they just discovered that an open draconic empire generates much more resistance that secret manipulation, and that secret manipulation satisfies all their actual needs.

I personally prefer to think of it as a precarious balance of power: a military could kill a dragon, but it wouldn't be a sure thing for the military, and certainly expensive. Likewise, a dragon can't really afford to defy the military too much, because they could get lucky, and the dragon has too much to lose (eternal life). So draconic rampages tend to be sudden and brief, and preferably when the military isn't quite prepared for it.
So why don't militaries pre-emptively attack dragons? Why don't they pre-emptively attack neighboring militaries? Politics - people start banding together against such an aggressor. And if you've got many potential enemies, why pick fights you don't need with one enemy if you could be needing those soldiers to defend against another enemy?

Dang. This is just itching for a joke involving a certain real-world country, but considering the audience...

Let's just say that it doesn't happen more than it does...

False assumption. No metatype can get up to Logic 12 base with Surge, gene tweaks, and Exceptional attribute. No metahuman starts with higher than a 6 baseline logic for their metatype, capping baseline boosts at 9, and augmented caps at 13.

For non-metahumans, Pixies, and Fox Shifters can cap unaugmented at 10 with those, meaning an augmented cap at 15, still 4 below dragons with their spells.

Even allowing, for the sake of argument, that dragons cannot cap their skills any higher than a metahuman, they still have spirit assistance, spells that boost the stat by +3 to an augmented cap of 12 including specialization and aptitude. Baseline 28 dice pool not including specialization and aptitude, 31 including both. Hard capped for a pixie or for a fox shifter (neither of which are metahuman, I might add), this comes up to 22 including aptitude, and 24 including skill specialization. Only the fox shifter would have access to all augmentations (requires deltaware).

Leonization would mean you had to let up your assault and put yourself in a vulnerable position for several months. It's not an instant, on-site treatment, it requires you to be put under in a vat for a while. That makes you a perfect target for the dragon and his overpowered high-force spirits.


The game never has you ASSASSINATE a megacorp, normally the best you do is take it down a notch, or divest it of investors. Cyberzombies generally WANT to die, in the metaphysical sense at least, Vampires are always problematic in any game system (more so in World of Darkness because you have to hear them moaning about how unlife is so dreadful). Immortal Elves... well, that's what's for dinner (hehe). Low-fat, free-range, perfectly-aged, goes with almost any fine wine... I could go on. It's not impossible to steal from a dragon's horde (especially if you consider S-k part of Lofwyr's horde, and extraction missions as just that).

Because the abstract is the one place you could conceivably defeat the dragon. The Gread Dragon has stats. The Great Dragon is also BORED (not a stat). The Great Dragon is also CONCEITED (not a stat). These are the areas where you can outclass and outmaneuver the Great Dragon. That's why, if you expect to defeat one, you shouldn't bother thinking inside or outside the box, because the box doesn't matter in the least. What matters is those abstract advantages and how well you the player can put them to use.

You got close with "It should be difficult as heck and the GD should have tons of advantages so its appropriately epic..."

I'm not saying that Great Dragons are invincible. I'm saying they're NOT invincible. I'm also emphasizing that they're closer to it than you or your character are, regardless of what augmentations you use. As somebody previously stated, Lofwyr watches EVERY television station for entertainment. One of my own players is notorious for the hijinks he pulls when bored; this is how I know a bored Great Dragon would be infinitely more problematic. If they ever find out about your plot (likely), then it's not simply a matter of retribution, it's also a possibility of them astrally spying on your every move just because they want a distraction and find your antics both amusing and informative.

One dragon got drunk.

Very, very drunk.

Dragon's don't get ware, but they DO get Magician quality for free, which also means access to spells that boost attributes. A default spell from SR4 Core and SR4A is Increase [Attribute]. There's nothing in Core, SR4A, or Street Magic prohibiting a spell called Increase [Skill] to cover what ware and adept powers can. You also have Analyze Device to offer bonus dice equal to net hits when operating said device. I repeat that dragons get a higher casting pool than people, and so have a higher capacity for more net hits. With or without a 2(Stat+Skill) cap, the dragon has a higher potential in a given action. Increase Reflexes spell offers additional Initiative Passes.

When you're as powerful as a dragon, you don't NEED ware.

My take on it is usually this:
It cost Thera 2 Behemoths and untold number of high level Adepts to kill 1 Dragon. And the retaliation was so bad that Ghostwalker(Ice Wing) was able to sit in the Theran capital and murder the Theran Prime Magister, and then just sit there and watch them.

Translated into the modern world. It would take multiple squadrons of combat planes to take one down. A serious division of military units. Not a few drones being run by 1 rigger.

100.
Lockheed Arachnes are cheap.

*Shrug* Metahumans can get Logic 12, don't care what terms we use, most teams have a mage for the magical stuff, and corps have access to all the legal magical goop that dragons have. Again, dragons are smart, so is everyone else.


A rigger or hacker isn't incapacitated in the least, nor would a mage who can astrally project, although a face might find VR chats a bit more difficult than face-to-face. So Sams and Adepts get hurt but they probably weren't trying to punch the dragon in the face anyway.


Huh? You accused me of being offended by something that outclasses PCs. I replied that numerous things outclass PCs and are supposed to. How does this relate to the power of creatures and corps relative to the PCs?


This is one interpretation of dragons and one interpretation of the proper way to kill them. I won't say it's wrong or uncommon (I think it goes back to Smaug) and would probably apply to Sirrush, Aden, and Hualpa. One of the great things about SR dragons, however, is that all the greats have very distinctive personalities and histories. While I'm sure they're all proud, I think it hurts the characterization of the dragons to portray all of them as old-fashioned and arrogant. Numerous dragons (Dunklezhan, Hestaby, Masaru) have shown humility and Llofwyr's appearance in "Survival of the Fittest" didn't show him as arrogant, rather very..."professional". It's a strength of the setting that you can't stereotype a dragon's personality.
And having bored dragons astrally spying on runners "out of boredom" is very poor GM behavior.



Fair enough but if you have a player, as seems to be the case here, who obviously wants to try to kill dragons there's ways to incorporate that into a campaign that can be a lot of fun. I don't see any problem with that.


I generally agree with the balance of power argument. However, the more powerful the GDs are, generally the less interesting I find them. Ghostwalker stomping on Denver is fairly boring (you might get one good session out of it). Dunklezhan running a massive network of shadowrunners for various purposes while running for the UCAS president is cool. I find it very difficult to combine the scheming Machiavelian dragon with "Super-Genius Godzilla", they just very different archetypes. For NPCs who will not be appearing in many sessions, it's much harder. I think you can have the "stompy" dragon and the "crafty" dragon, and there are examples of both in SR, but you can't really have a dragon be both and I think the "crafty" dragon is much more interesting. This may seem somewhat contradictory to what I said before, so let me clarify:
"Super-Genius Godzilla" is not RAW. Lots of people like use dragons in that way for their games, which is fine, it's their game. I personally find it less interesting than other interpretations of dragons.

I've got no dog in the "How Great Are Great Dragons" fight at the moment, and I'm not even here to argue against the possibility of hubris, but I just want to ask for any link you've got supporting the Bruce Lee bit. It's been my understanding that he hurt his back lifting weights, not in a fight.

It all depends who you ask. His wife would swear up and down it happened in a fight like the movie. Everyone else just said "....What?"