Aye. Get a copy of his character sheet.

Require a GM copy of all character sheets and tell them to give you an update.

Also a roll where GM can see it policy may be a good idea.

Simple common sense would rule out the naohive-in cybereye idea : a nanohive takes two capacity point - which just happen to be the total capacity of a cyberskull. How are you supposed to fit something that's barely stackable into the spare room of a complete head into the spare room of a pair of eyes ?

Maybe if you're going for tennis-ball sized eyes or a robocop-style visor, but there's no way it would fit into regular cybereyes. Even if you ditch everything in the eyes to make them empty containers (which won't do much for your vision...)

Pretending otherwise is in my opinion pure unalloyed rules-lawyering. Whoever indulges in it shouldn't complain if an irate GM uses rules loopholes to give him a Buba-sized reaming.

I mean GOD DAMN It. A nanohive is egg sized. How may you fit several eggs in two eyes? Not, thats how.

I suggest: (1) refresh edge less frequently - maybe it doesn't refresh until the next adventure, even? (2) use the optional drain rule (3) accept that mages vs mundanes = usually mage win, (4) for "proper" fights, make sure they have magical backup, (5) drones, drone and drones. And also remember that if the worst your mage is doing is throwing manaballs around... well ... you can get the same effect from a grenade or two, but grenades don't hurt the thrower, and overcasting does. I think once you stop him always going first by curbing Edge use things will seem better.

I agree with quite a bit of your review. Being fairly new to Shdaowrun, I wasn't aware of the railroading in the final chapter. The editing is God-awful! Even before reading this, I was thinking of doing just the first chapter, then shifing into "Dawn of the Artifacts".

They're egg-shaped, the size isn't mentioned. For all we know they're pea size. Also GOD DAMN it stop making a fool of yourself, arguments in good faith are welcome but this "zomg theatrics" thing is getting tiresome.

Cybereyes accept visual or cybereye-specific enhancements. That's it.

Multiple people have pointed out rules indicating this.

There is no reasonable argument indicating otherwise.





-k

I'm actually doing that now. They just reached Caracas and got their first big payoff. They wanted to spend the money, so they arranged free airtravel with the Draco Foundation to Lagos as bodyguards. This means I skipped over much of the plot of DotA, which assumes they were only bodyguards; but it also led to some interesting roleplay, as they decided to bid on some of the items at auction.

Well, we had a session last night. Mage tires to do his thing: Overcast, first aid the physical damage. He had enough successes to pull the damage down to zero. I told him, "That is all well and good, but it will take 1 day for that to take effect. That is the rule on healing." He then goes to the rule book and we get into a debate about how in SR4A, pg 252, column 1, 6th paragraph, under "Physical Damage" is says "Make a body x 2 (1 day) extended test. The character must rest for the entire day for it to count (forced naps and unconsciousness count). Each hit heals 1 box of damage" (this was my side of the discussion).

He points my attention to pg. 252, column 2, 1st full paragraph under "Using First Aid". His point is the first sentence, "Characters using the first aid skill may IMMEDIATELY help reduce the trauma of wounds (stun or physical)".

His assertion is that "immediately" means that it, if he rolls enough hits, he takes no wound boxes (and, with his jacked up medkit and high logic attribute, he almost always rolls enough) and life goes on as normal with no time (other than what it took to do the first aid test). My assertion is that even if the wounds are reduced to zero through first aid, it still takes a day to heal them. What say you all?

Also, I did slow him down a bit. In the Ghost Cartels campaign, after they recover the corpse of the reporter (Jaina Shields), they go looking for Sinn to get her notes. They go into the bar where Sinn is just as the gang fight between the Ragers and First Nation starts. I roll crap for the initiative for the two gangs. All but one of the PC's go before the Ragers and everyone goes before the First Nations gang. My playerss are heavily grounded in the D&D tradition and need maps. As I set up the map, I have 10 Ragers, 10 FN's and 10 civilians. I have overturned tables (no LOS), people hiding behind the bar (no LOS) and the civilians mixed in (kill the civies if you want, your street cred will reflect it). He throws a (IIRC) force 6 Manaball and I just smile (the target number needed to notice if a spell is being cast is 6 - force of the spell). As soon as it's the Ragers turn in the 1st IP, one of the yells "MAGE!!!!! GEEK HIM" and almost every Rager opens up on him. He actually took damage and was burning edge left and right to not get hit. I was so proud of myself. In a later initiative pass/combat turn, he starting casting on the First Nations gang as well, so ended up with a number of them firing at him as well! Woo Hoo!

The Gun Adept's player had oral surgery not long ago and was in considerable pain. We ended up gestalt-ing it to finish quick so he could head home.

Also, one last question on movement. If a person has 2 IP's do the split thier movement over the 2 IP's or does each IP get it's own movement. For expample, Bob the Human has a movement of 10/25 and 2 IP's. If he decides to walk, over the whole Combat Turn does he get to move 10 meters or does he move 10 meters in the first pass and and 10 meters in the 2nd pass (for a grand total of 20 while walking)?

Thanks in advance for your help

<edited for clarity and spelling>

First Aid heals the damage immediately (well, after a few complex actions spent doing it), you were wrong.

You split the movement over the combat turn's IPs, so Bob the Human could move 5 in the first Ip and 5 in the second.

Movement is split by the number of passes in the whole turn. So if Bob starts walking on IP1, and there is a StreetSam with 4IP in the fight, Bob moves (10/4) 2.5m per IP. In this case I'd have Bob move 2m, 3m, 2m, 3m, but that's up to you. Bob can withold his action to act in a later pass if need be. Of course that's the RAW answer, others house rule it to make movement easier.

-D

If first aid doesn't heal the damage boxes, what does it do?



Something seems really wrong here. If a half dozen gangers unload on somebody, anybody except the Sam should be dead or knocked out. Even spending Edge (how much Edge does he have?) I have difficulty believing he has a decent enough Body and Reaction to survive that. Even one short burst getting through should be pretty serious.

Troyminator, I was wrong in my initial post. First Aid does heal damage immediately. LurkerOutThere pointed out that the rules I quoted are for Natural Healing.

Also, PoliteMan has a good point.
In addition to that, on page 159 (see Defender Has Defended Against Previous Attacks) you'll find that he has a -1 dice penalty for every dodge after the first since his last IP. Dodging the dozen or so bullets (two per IP per ganger) should have had him at around a -10 modifier to his dodge. If his Body+Reaction is that high as a Mage, something seriously fishy is IMO. Check to see if his Stats (including Edge, but not including Magic) are below the 200 point limit.

Edit: As for your question about the walking, the numbers given are for the whole round. 10/25 means they walk-10-slash-run-25 meters at some point in their turns. Personally, I play fast and loose with it. I assume that they make the move all in one IP, using the IP they need to. If it's not tactically important, I just assume it happens on the first IP. This does require a certain amount of trust on my part, since my players could abuse that, but they've given me no reason to worry. I also use maps for major combats, but I make a point to leave a grid off of them when I can. I just draw to scale and if my player needs to get across a room, I know from the dimensions of the room itself how long it will take them. YYMV.

Edit again: About the damage thing, he still did take the damage, but its in-game effects are gone. Personally, I'm going to move my group to "you can ignore the penalties for this scene with First Aid, but you're gonna need to rest this off if you want it to heal right."

only looked through the first page, but surprised I didn't see this: The best counter for mages, in my opinion, is other mages. Counterspelling with a spirit to help can be a real bitch, if the mage is good at it. If this guy is walking around murdering people, he's gonna leave a huge signature and develop a big reputation, fast. So it's not unreasonable that his enemies will begin gearing up to counter him, and spreading pictures of him around their troops, perhaps even putting out a bounty on him.

In the end though, any character can be min/maxed to hell and back, part of the thing with SR's extreme freedom in character creation is that it also assumes the player doesn't want to completely break the game. So, honestly, if this is becoming a problem for the rest of your group, you might want to consider asking him to tone it down a bit on his next character.

But ya, a fairly skilled counter-mage, say magic 5, counterspelling 4, with a spirit to help, say F5, that's 14 dice, with an NPC that could be built with 400 bp easily. Throw in some other bonuses if you want, foci, specializations, mentor bonsuses, teamwork, see how many net hits he gets then.

The low level gangers did not have BF weapons. I did, however, forget that with a SA weapon, they can shoot twice per IP (with a -1 to the pool for the second shot, IIRC). We did remember to give him an accumulative -1 for every time he had to react to an attack.

I think I found your problem.

Burst fire is, quite simply, the easiest and cheapest way to increase the lethality of an opponent in SR. Uzis are dirt cheap and few simple mods (laser designators, underbarrel weights) allow them to put serious damage on any shadowrunner. There are some guns that don't need burst fire (Sniper Rifles, Panthers) but in general SR gets much softer if the opponents aren't using burst fire.

I think your mage is taking advantage of this. There's not much danger in him overcasting and then healing if the opposition is only doing 5-6DP a shot. He can soak most of that (especially is he has the edge to burn) Overcasting should leave him hurt, which means -1 or -2 to dodge and soak. If his opponents are bursting him, there's a good chance he'll be knocked out after casting. Since they're not burst firing, he's in no danger, so he can safely overcast and then survive whatever the remaining gangers/guards throw at him. With burst, overcasting means he's likely done. With burst fire, even if he takes out 11 out of twelve gangers with a super manaball, that last one should be long or full bursting him and then he's ending the fight wounded and knocked out.

As someone ealier posted, I am not the Dick I should be, to be a Shadowrun DM. I don't want to kill the mage, just challange him. Lots of good ideas for challanging him.

FA is even better and AK98s are cheap as well.

Just have two shoot a long and a short burst (possibly wide ones) and the third a full burst. By the time the big bang hits he will be at -4 to dodge even if he dodges/soaks everything the first two throw at him. And you usually don't walk away unscathed from a minimum 15P AP-1 attack.

Why isn't the mage invisible?

Most likely because we're just learning the system

Tactics and all are fine, but be careful not to overdo swatting down the mage. If you make it incredibly difficult for his character to survive, he will never tone it down - after all, if his tough characters have it so rough, what chance does a non-optimized mage have? Personally, I would have had at least one or two of the Ragers still fire at other PCs, unless the other PCs were completely ineffective. Manaball or not, you don't want to ignore the guy spraying full auto fire or lobbing grenades at you, either.

This "immediately" is explained in the next sentence: First cannot be used more than 12 hours after trauma. It does not mean that First Aid is used as a second soak roll as your player seems to think. First Aid takes a number of Combat Turns (full turns, not actions) equal to the damage to heal. The sequence is:

1) Take X damage. Mark boxes, suffer wound modifiers, go down if exceding the monitor.
2) When the character has X Turns to spend (likely after the fight, at most 12 hours after), he can use First Aid.
3) After these X turns, make the First Aid roll. Don't forget that the character still suffers wound modifiers for this roll. Score Y hits.
4) Heal Y-2 boxes.

Unless the remaining damage is from drain:
5) Cast heal.

What he said. Using first aid in the middle of a fight pretty much prevents any other actions.

Also, don't forget that he's at a significant dice pool penalty. -2 just for being a mage, -2 (or more) for lousy conditions, and wound modifiers. And even if he has dice left, the first two successes don't count. No matter how high his first aid skill is, operating at -6 dice and +2 Threshold is going to crimp his style.

Yeah, when it comes to targeting I think it's always best to put yourself in the NPC's shoes and really visualize what is going on when picking targets. Unless we're talking about savvy hit men, or tacnet equipped response teams like the red samurai I figure that they are usually going to take the clearest shot they can rather than think about things like laying down crossfire.

This is very important. Are you enforcing the time requirement?

As I look at the table, I realize that there's almost always going to be a Conditions penalty to the First Aid test, even a quiet indoor environment is only Average (-1), and you need a med facility to erase the Conditions modifier completely (SR4A, 253). Being a mage is -2, as people have said, and there's more if he's augmented. If he's applying First Aid to himself, remember any wound modifiers. Remember the hits have to beat the threshold of 2, so the first 2 hits on the First Aid test don't heal anything. With his reduced dice pool, he has to roll at least 3 hits to get any benefit at all.

As others point out, First Aid is not something you really want to do during combat, so he's going to be suffering from those drain boxes for the rest of the combat. It's up to the rest of the enemies to expand on that. One Combat Turn per box of healing can feel like an eternity when people have multiple Initiative Passes.

If you want to be really evil and the enemies have some prep time, have an enemy hacker hack the mage's medkit. If the mage has no First Aid skill, he might not notice it until the medkit starts making his wounds worse. If the medkit isn't subscribed to a PAN containing some real matrix defense, or otherwise locked down, its device rating is not an insurmountable obstacle to a hacker.

Sterilize does not equal "sterilized med facility". You still need a med facility. A medkit might do in a pinch if the GM is feeling generous, but there is a "medical facility" listed in Augmentation (p. 124) that is not just a medkit. You might rule that it's too far a jump in requirement for the small jump in modifier, though.

Why would you have your Medkit "Turned On" if you are not using it? I know I would not.
Why would you allow it to even KEEP a signal rating? Again, I wouldn't.
For that Matter, Why would it even NEED a Signal Rating? It is a Medkit, not a Medical Drone.

SO, if you want your NPC hacker to target a Medkit, well, that is all fine and good. Personally, I think that the NPC Hacker could be put to much greater use than that.

Personally, I dislike NPCs doing what PCs couldn't do as much as I dislike PCs trying to do things they would argue against NPCs doing.

1) In order to hack a medkit, the hacker has to be within mutual signal range. Since device rating is NOT the rating of the device and there is no need for a medkit to have a signal rating greater than zero. The hacker, player or NPC would need to get right next to the bag.
2) Once he has obtained admin access, what, exactly is he doing? Editing? Editing what? The most useful thing I can think for him to do would be to upload a new pilot program or autosoft, depending on how you think a medkit works.
3) And why, again, is he doing this, and why to the mage's character? Does this make any sense at all?

Things should make sense. If the mage is going around killing everything, then he's going to be making the news and quickly because videos of lots of people dying at the hands of a mage sells. So make that part of the campaign. Tell him he's on the news. Decide for yourself what local gangers, law enforcement, and the relatives and loved ones of his victims are going to do. Actions have consequences.

This isn't you vs. him. There's no need for the two of you to play "who can abuse the rules more"? Play the world, learn the rules, look at his character sheet, and make house rules for where you feel the rules are clearly broken or unclear. And don't forget everyone else at the table is there too.

+1

Indeed... and Suoq deserves a Cookie, as well as an additional +1...

SR4A, p. 311:


SR4A, p. 222:


These seem to imply that a medkit of rating X also has Device rating X. Even if it weren't, how secure does the average non-hacker keep his/her medkit? It's almost certainly subscribed to the user's PAN as well...if so, the hacker just has to find the weak entry point into the PAN. Is it ever totally turned off, or do people leave it on like we leave on (in standby mode) most phones, games, iPads, etc.?

I'm not saying this is something I'd ever do as a GM, and you're quite right that other things could be hacked for more decisive effects. But if, as you say, the mage is making enemies of a lot of people's relatives or friends, maybe that's one way for a message to be sent. Just a weird thought I'd had...and a bit of a wakeup as to how I need to secure the medkit on my new Missions character (a First Aid adept).

Why? You are implying that a Medkit is online and active at all times. I would disagree with that. No reason to have it active (or even on, for that matter) unless you are actively using it, and absolutely NO reason to have it hooked up to your PAN.

Yeah, unless we're talking about something like a Valkyrie Module equipped drone like an AutoDoc the chances for causing real mischief hit me as pretty minimal.

In any case, any Shadowrunner worth a damn gets all their equipment without wireless anyway, unless wireless is essential for that device to function.




-k

1) Nonsense. Mutual signal range is an utterly moot point as long as both are within mutual signal range of a device that has Matrix access and is in active or passive mode. You could hack a medkit in Hong Kong from your lawnchair on a Hawaian beach.
2) Deleting the Pilot program would disable the kit completely. Deleting whatever autosoft it runs to do its things would force it to default on its First Aid roll. Editing either would be a Software roll, which takes considerably longer than would be useful. Of course, either being possible would be houseruling, since neither is statted out.


Actually, if you turn it off completely, there's a pretty big downside: you'll have to boot it up again. This takes time. Time that adds on top of the (damage taken) number of turns it takes to apply First Aid.

Only if you allow the medkit permanent wireless connection. There is no reason to do this.

We are not talking about rebooting the medkit, but simply turning off the wireless connection - if necessary from the hardware side i.e. rip out the transmitter.

Indeed... There is absolutely no reason for a Medkit to have a wireless connection whatsoever.

Make his character inspirational to the NPC tough wannabies. Have a few low-level NPC mages start doing the same thing.


I'm pretty sure boot-up times are handwaved; however, your argument is what came to mind for me as well.

I'm confused. How does the guy in Hawaii have the access_ID of the medkit? Did I miss that part?

Why would i need to boot up the kits wireless link when i start to use it, that wireless isn't needed for using it.

Which is the point...

If you specifically power down the medkit after every use, fine. But not everyone does that, especially if they think it's going to be used again soon. Actually, I'm surprised that a "talkative" doctor-expert system can coach anyone through treating a light wound (say, 1-3 boxes) in less than 10 seconds without any additional interface.

And even if you do power it down completely when it's not in use, just the healing time (1 Combat Turn per box of healing) is an eternity in Matrix IPs.

I'd submit that the OP's mage probably left the medkit active during the entire run, since the player thought he could use it "immediately" to remove Drain damage. That could be a hard habit to break...

Leaving the Medical Expert System active is also fine... But, WHY does it need to have a wireless connection active at all? IT IS NOT REQUIRED for the medkit to function. Any sane character will have wireless disabled or removed as a matter of course.

I agree that the Mage in question is attempting to abuse the system and that he should be having a hard time healing his drain damage during a fight. Using First Aid does take a lot of time.

I believe the OP stated the mage didn’t have an actual First Aid skill and is using the First Aid Kit to supply the skill (which is allowed, though stupid). So the mage is rolling a base of 12 dice (6 Logic + 6 Med Kit). So let’s see how this pans out. 12 dice minus 2 for being a mage, minus (at least) 1 for damage modifier, minus 3 for conditions (combat), I’ll assume less than 2 points of implants so no modifier there. That leaves 12-2-1-3=6 dice for the roll. On average that’ll be 2 hits which meets but does not exceed the threshold so no damage healed. Now to make this test the mage has spent a complex action plus a number of turns equal to the amount of damage he wanted to heal (SR4 p.242) so assuming only 3 boxes of damage that’s one complex action and 3 full turns (9 seconds) and did absolutely nothing. 9 seconds in the world of Shadowrun is a very long time. Also the most the kit can heal is 6 boxes of damage at one time. I realize that shouldn’t really be an issue but I just thought I’d point it out as it is RAW.

In older editions of the game every time you used a med kit you had to roll 1d6, if it came up a 1 the kit ran out of supplies and needed to be refilled, you may want to look at adding that in as a house rule.

Now on to the med kit, all med kits come with a wireless connection (SR4 p244). We all know that the wireless of any device can be turned off or at least disabled (that’s logical and recommended). So it would make sense for the mage to have the wireless turned off except during down-time so that the autodoc can be patched and updated. So there is no reason for him to have the med kit turned off completely. I can not find a reference for boot times, though rebooting a device takes an extended System + Response (10, 1 turn) test (SR4 p221). If he is turning off the med kit (not just the wireless) I would house rule that it would require a System + Response (5, 1 turn) test to boot up. The system and response of a rating 6 med kit would be 6 each, so 12 dice. On average it would take 2 turns to boot the med kit. Although as stated turning off the kit is unnecessary.

Just my 2¥

-D

You could have a contact who /does/ have First Aid skill remotely-operate on you through the kit, for which it needs a wireless connection. Also, this might remove the 'combat' penalty from the situation, as the doc is under no stress whatsoever.
That's the only use I can think of though.


I personally would have no compunctions whatsoever about slapping the -3 for combat on top of whatever environment mod there is otherwise. Still, anyone actually using First Aid in combat would be silly to the extreme.

"The your X was hacked"-way is such a cheezy GM move, most of the time.
Medkits, plz give me a breake.

I mean if i really want to annoy your player, there is always magic. (Something the player can't do anything about it and something always reasonable to explain. The serial mind rapist NPC...)

Further: Guys, plz stop thinking in combat turns. Yes, this is much in Combat, because of the reaction enhancers. But out of combat it burn down to quite nothing.
(If I take 20 sec to heal of the drain, while the rest is searching for stuff to steal/the passcode etc. it is not really much.)

@Mardrax

Well, tell this to a field medic.


Some of the rules which I suppose is meant otherwise but only works this way.
(Simple example: If you are in the figherfight it is a bad situation. But a firefight in a steril environment should be still better than a firefight in heavy rain somewhere in the SOX.)

So yes, in combat is fast up to -5 or even -6 if the shit hits the fan. Even out of combat I guess you can easy get -3.

And don't forget vision penalties. It's hard to first aid someone when you can't find the slap pack in the dark.

A field medic generally doesn't have the benefit of knowing the battle will be over in six seconds, because every one of his mates (except for the techy) can make heads explode four times during that time.
In exactly the same way a Shadowrunner doesn't have to deal with firefights that can drag on for hours, wihtout all that many casualties.

Short of being in overflow (or perhaps anaphylatic shock, as caused by some toxic spirirts), there's no valid excuse for taking one (or worse, two) out of a fight. Not in SR4. Not that I have encountered or can think of.

If a medkit is a fully capable doctoring drone, I would be very surprised if it didn't at least have a light to illuminate its contents and the patient. Probably even an LED by every little thing inside, lighting up as the kit tells you to "take this bandage, and apply it to the patient's wound."

I think that I found your problem. A Medkit is NOT a drone, and it is not capable of doctoring anyone. A medkit is a set of tools to assist in first aiding someone (with +1 to +6 bonus dice), nothing more.