Lofwyr/Dunkie slash fic, anyone?

Draconic necrophilic homosexuality?

Why not?

The only way to take down a dragon in a direct fight, and have a chance of succeeding...

its actually kind of like a MMO raid.

Twist Fate is your biggest enemy, and great dragons need to spend edge to use it.
A team of edge 7-8 humans NEEDS to force a dragon to use edge on defense tests, instead of permaboosting an ally with it(they can lend it, and get it BACK when its spent). So you need to put him in a situation where he has to spend edge on surprise, dodging, resistances, etc.

Debuffs: Exploit dual naturedness. FAB, more fab, and background count. If this means astral hazing, so be it. If it means stealing a cyberzombie, or having your mages flood the area with multiple background counts from Mana Static.

Dealing with the adds: Great dragons have incredible on-demand support. Whether its hackers, or loads of bound ally spirits and summoned spirits and regular spirits. If you manage to get a dragon into a situation where the only backup is instant backup, you're still going to need a plan to deal with it.

The rest is stun damage. Dragons have great body, and thus huge soak and resistance pools. But terrible willpower.

As for my team? I'd probably take a pair of jarheads at least, with the +object resistance mod from War.

If my Dragonheart saga memories serve me correctly...

To take out Dunkelzhan it required no less than a team of blood mages tapped into a manaline combined with a tactical nuke... which only actually opened a rift to a metaplane that sucked him in, didnt actually kill him necessarily.

Great Dragons dont die. Dont even fantasize about it. Unless of course other dragons ganged up on them...

Are people forgetting that you'd not be fighting JUST a dragon, but a dragon with the resources of an entire multi-quadrillion-nuyen megacorp?






-k

Actually no, it doesn't.


Closest to a great dragon being killed by human means were Lofwyrs Brother Alamais, who got hit(and nearly killed) by oribital lasers and Feuerschwinge, who got shot down over the SOX by german fighter jets with rockets/missles . . and survived . . and then some years later got NAPALM-Bombed . . and probably survived again, but nothing is sure about this as of yet . .
Adult Dragons have died more often, see Haesslich and Tessien for example.

Part of which is a ketchup factory.

Another part is chocolate. Particularly the dipping kind.

Mmmm. Boston elf.

Someone loves themselves some ork fondue, I'm thinking....

I love the creamy filling.

Thats what she said...

Just send Lofwyr to Dumpshock, we'll squick him to death.

Umm, and I wonder what Lofwyr's spell list looks like. Detect [object], Detect enemies--would work too, so he'd see you comming from over a mile away. At that point the SK strike team hits the group, takes them out.

I'm sure he's got max skill in Sorcery, conjuring, banishing, too so magic is right out. His perception, dodge and other stats are through the roof as well.


OT--Assume you have a light pistol loaded with normal ammo and shoot lofwyr after a big fight in the lair. You are uninjured and all your paty memebers are dead. You use edge on the initial roll of 12 dice to hit him. He is suprised and out of edge (FOR JUST siliness). What is the percentage chance that you will kill lofwry--assuming average soak rolls by the golden snout?

Or he'll introduce what Dragons consider "Normal" fetishes and we'll be squicked to death. And the few survivors left will be exposed to what dragons consider to be deviant carnal acts...

Oh, I only have one suggestion if you get Lofwyr's attention:

DODGE!

Fixed that for you. Dumpshock isn't particularly full of squick.



This is more likely.

And then I'll be left alone, and he'll just look at me, go, "REALLY?"

And eat me to make the world a better place.

Then the Draconic Otherkins will fall in love with him. >.>

Not to mention those Dunkelzahn/Ghostwalker groupies who made them the actual head of a draconic cult, that is also (albeit barely) a magic tradition.

Those guys scare me more than Scientology!

...

OK, slightly less, but still!

Exactly. Damien Knight is probably a tough old coot, but he doesn't need to be able to shrug off orbital cows to be an apex predator in the Shadowrun universe. I would rather have a moderately tough great dragon (the basic SR4 stats, boosted a bit for "named" ones) who has a security detail, than these overblown 'toons. A great dragon should be able to take on a special ops team, with the odds favoring him, but should not even be in the same league as modern military weaponry such as panzers and fighter jets.

Ghost used an autocannon, not a minigun if I recall correctly. As for our dog-boy, he had major help from a mentor spirit & was only just lucky to not get deep-fried by flame breath.

Stahl already solved this, but I guess he forgot. All you need is the ITS Gonryu, and overlapping blast radii on a full auto burst. That is a perfect solution to any problem. Even the ones that aren't problems, or require a delicate touch. 55 DV IS a delicate touch in comparison to satellite weaponry, especially when most of the damage falls off 2.5 meters from ground zero.

Seriously? You're pitting him against one of the weakest weapon classes in the game and mook level dice? With a light pistol, he can take zeros on every roll, and you can get all hits on your roll, and you won't scratch him. He has 20 Hardened armor, so 16 DV is nothing to call home about. Try using a Sakura Fubuki light pistol loaded with capsule rounds and Ringu. Use burst fire, and everything is suddenly much easier. Oh, and having more shooting dice than his reaction would be a stellar plan. These guys aren't meant to be beat, so at least powergame a tiny bit if you want to beat one.

But a human can get 6 base + 1 metagenetic + 1 enhanced attribute + 1 genetic optimization + 3 cerebral boosters for 12 Logic, then add neocortical nanites for the 3 DP boost in non-stressful situations, 1 DP for PuSHeD, 1 DP (non-knowledge) for encephalon, 2 DP for the analytical mind quality since it seems to relate to the challenges you're talking about.
18-19 effective logic score (most of it costs essence, so dragons aren't getting it). Do GD's seem like lab mice to me now?

Bronies for life.

And delivered via a very big stick.

I don't know, but I would expect every great dragon to have a force 25 detect enemy, extended spell active all the time, so as soon as you come into the proximity of the Dragon he just knows you there to kill him...

and as soon as he knows that, the shit hits the fan for all you plans. It is not only about the stats, but the magic resources a great dragon can have, like 20 bound spirits with force 10+ and stuff are no fun to go up against.

cya
Tycho

Yeah, thats when the magic system in Shadowrun goes crazy...

I agree. I feel like having Great Dragons and immortal elves devalue the faceless corporate horror of shadowrun. You know corporations are evil, but there isn’t a single head to chop off, it’s a faceless hydra. Even if you kill the CEO, another one will show up and you really have to work to destroy all of their assets. With singular super powerful beings, it is more about having a diamond coated indestructible head than a hydra.

Force 24. Dragons are statted to only have 12 magic.

Yep, this is more of a thought excercise. Kinda of like Luke Skywalker blowing up the deathstar type shot. Up the snout, into the brain cavity, and bounce around a bit....

You know, I'd personally love to see this mirrored in the universe next year.

"Since we ran the exclusive, in-depth discussion of Lofwyr, great dragon and CEO of Saeder-Krupp for those who have been living under a rock for the past fifty years, assassination attempts against ol' Golden Snout have skyrocketed. We've counted sixteen known attempts thusfar and there are probably several more that were stopped before they ever so much as aimed a bullet at him. Today, we'll be interviewing several grieving family members of those ex-would-be-assassins and, as a special bonus, our matrix feed will include the urns that each one's ashes are kept in... a sinle click and you can buy your own!"

Thing is, SR is a dual game. It is one part fantasy, one part cyberpunk. The immortal ones allow some of us to play a different game from those that want to battle the man-made horrors that are Corporations with global reach (in a way you can not win against them, only fight them to a stalemate so that you can have a fleeting moment of tranquility. This much like battling a Lovecraftian creation).

But consider something like that will, and how many events it triggered. So even tho one off a dragon, its legacy will not just up and vanish. They are used to fighting their own kind, meaning that they may well have drawn up multiple plans that spin into action decades after their own death. So killing a dragon may well see the team fighting off other teams hired via some fund manager johnson long after the story of the dragons demise no longer get them free drinks at the bar. This besides the issue of them showing up at your nursing home bed if you did not personally torch the body decades ago.

SR allows itself to be played many ways, depending on what aspects of its rich setting is put into focus.

One can play it like James Bond, Matrix or even Resident Evil (nothing like being sent to some facility in the middle of nowhere, only to find the place crawling with something that makes Ghouls look like puppies. Oh and your ticket out is void). Hell, go crazy with the archology and you may have your old fashion dungeon crawl.

This is very true, in my opinion. And that is what makes it a fun game.

Hells, even if your PC's from one group dish out and kill Lofwyr, it may be covered up (I don't know for sure, but how many public appearances does golden snout make in a year?) To the truly enterprising GM, he could continue the world with a new group, fully unaware the dragon is dead, and have outing it be the point of a run (though, probably not an early run, that's for sure).

Or even the clever and truly mean GM that has the players do all the work to get close enough to Golden Snout to make a hit on him, and find only a skeleton awaiting them.

Whoops. Looks like someone got here first, man they really kept that hush-hush.

Yeah, but is it real or just special effects? Skeletons are comparatively easy to make....

Dragons don't leave Skeletons, do they?

Fluff says there are rumoured dragons in the fossil record. Haven't seen a definite on that, but just a rumour is enough for me in this game.

It's pixies that don't.
Dragons (likely) do. Although no one's recovered a body to make sure.

As far as i can remember, these are Dragons having been killed in pretty much mundane Ways and still . .
Big D: No Bones.
Tessien: No Bones.
Haesslich: No Bones.
Nebelherr or Nachtmeister, killed by Lofwyr: No Bones.
Feuerschwinge: No Bones.

I think it mostly depends on how they go out. Dunkie == no skeleton, for obvious reasons. His will, however, did mention dragon bones and such, so I'm inclined to say that yes, dragons do leave skeletons. Usually.

I don't dislike dragons in principle. What I don't like about them is the way that so much of the material about Great Dragons and especially Immortal Elves reads like wank-filled self insert fan-fiction. I actually think they would be much better if the fluff reflected the crunch - dragons are powerful because they are smart and immortal, not because they breathe fire. Lofwyr should be frightening because he's the CEO of a AAA Megacorp, and not because he can kung fu fight like crazy. And that's actually what the stats reflect - dragons ARE pretty tough, but they cannot singlehandedly destroy cities or crush armies and if they try to take on a well-prepared group of skilled shadowrunners solo, they aren't going to win.

Immortal Elves can just go die, though.

I can dig this, there's nothing wrong with making them very powerful, beyond what any single human could achieve.

Even Smaug got shafted by a hobbit and a human, however, and D&D is literally about killing dragons in dungeons. It seems very odd that in a dark, cyberpunk world the dragons are so powerful that no "mortal" can kill them.

Only died creating a massive magical artifact and ripped a hole in the space-time continuum. I hardly expect to find bones.



Fell into a lake/pudget sound, assumed dead, body never recovered.
Tessien I don't recall what happned.



Golden Nose probably ate the corpses.



Never heard of 'im.

Show me one PC in D&D that fit the definition of "mortal" in the sense of most myths and I'll concied the point.

Also, most D&D (WARNING CAUSES CANCER) GMs just play them as 1 dimensional monsters. In shadowrun, dragons should be feared more for their intelligence than anything else. Ghostwalker taking on Denver and the Azzies is a case in point why you don't mess with great dragons in SR---not only is he basically a fighter-bomber in the flesh, he's a master tactictioan and magician to boot.

I'll give you people Big D.
Big D writing something in his will about dragon bones i'll not even consider.
He was a master shemer who would use it to put people on a mad goose chase . .

Haesslich was shot by a Minigun in the Secrets of Power Trilogy.
Tessien was a fethered serpent killed by Haesslich in physical combat shortly before.
Nachtmeister or Nebelherr or Kaltenstein was killed in mid flight and fell to the ground.
Feuerschwinge was a female great western dragon, the mate of nachtmeister or nebelherr or kaltenstein . .
Shot down over the Sox by German Fighter Jets with missles. Later on Napalmbombed in the Sox.

Sadly I have to agree with your analysis of dragon's in D&D. I had a DM once that would not modify anything in the monster manual (3.5). This led to his dragons being very underpowered, since the 3.5 MM specifically set dragons up to be created. No definite skill list, no definite feats, just suggestion of what "most would take", and effective sorcerer abilities (as the class) without any spell lists.