What sort of decker would own a panther assault cannon?

When he can own dozens...?

(And hey, when YOU have heavily cybered up Wyverns ripping the roof off YOUR house when you're sitting on the toilet, then you can judge me for having a PAC mounted on the bathroom wall. )

Uh oh, that sounds like you just admitted combat hacking isn't useful

Adding that gotcha to my Fox News application.

Heh. DIdn't say that. Combat Decking is designed to be on par with physical combat in terms of speed and complexity. But atthe end of the day, one just messes with gear removing some of the opponents abilities or bonuses, the other leaves the target lying on the floor drooling and/or bleeding.

The same arguments can be made for the versatility and usefulness of "reduce attribute" as a spell, for example. If you can cast that, or a firebolt... *shrug*

However... If you're playing a decker who's a pacifist? Or who in incompetent with firearms? Or you just didn't have the points to give him more than Pistols 1? Well, now you have SOMETHING you can do in combat that can contribute to the overall success of the team that doesn't involve "hiding behind the Troll".

Bull

Also, just to clarify... One of the reasons I'm not going to be throwing tons of enemy deckers in is because of the rather mercurial nature of Missions table compositions. You can't guarantee that you'll have a friendly decker on your team, so that limits the groups defenses a little versus enemy hacking.

And yeah, you also can't guarantee the teams combat abilities either, well... CHances are MUCH higher you'll have a team full of combat monsters than that you'll have a team full of non-combat faces and deckers.

Bull

A likely story. I'm on to you.

You got me. I secretly hate deckers, always have!

I'm a self-hating decker!!!!

*sobs*

*patpat* there there every thing is going to be fine

pity,
Sunshine

Wow...I've got to say skimming through this thread, I'm wondering how many people have actually read the new rules? I've got them, but I'm under an embargo until July 5.

How so?

funny thing: is anyone expecting SR 5 hackers to actually have *less* options in combat because now babysitting everyone's matrix presence is no longer optional, but required?

in SR 4, when the bullets started flying, your hacker could pull out a gun and lay down some suppressing fire so that your street sam can pick people off without worrying about anyone shooting back at him. everyone could reasonably defend their personal gear, and the only stuff that was in any danger was stuff that made sense.

in SR 5, forget it. you need to keep the swarm of hackers and agents that should be descending on your team like a ravenous swarm of locusts at bay, because now everything is online and vulnerable. unless of course you want to burn all your actions shutting down your gear one by one, making each and every bonus you bothered to get cost you actions.

because quite frankly, the benefits of you applying spray and pray don't outweigh the risk that some corporate decker will manage to shut off your street sam's eyes, and there goes the whole damned run.

It was requested that folks sent review copies wait until July 5th to post them, so that all of the reviews can go up at once. I think. I'm not entirely sure how the whole review concept works.

ah. i see.
i don't understand, but i see.

It's similar to when game journalist review a game.

They usually receive a copy of the game in advance of the normal release date (not sure by how long). This allows them to play the game, take as much time as possible within their timeframe to experience every bit of it, to make their review as "complete" as possible. The actual review then goes up shortly before, or on, the release date. So that's usually why a bunch of reviews happen at the same time.

So I assume that's the the same thing with the SR5 review copies.

yeah, honestly, i wouldn't worry too much about a game unless the review restriction is not before the release date. in this case, i believe that's 6 days before SR5 is released, so we're good to go.

(if the company doesn't want reviews to come out before release, that's usually a sign that the company thinks the game sucks... and if they think it sucks, you are probably going to really hate yourself if you buy it. so please, think of the poor innocent people you're going to have anything to do with when you consider buying a game that the company won't let anyone post a review of before the release).

honestly, SR 5 looks overall fine, from what i've seen. except for a few things that really annoy me, over all i think i'm going to be happy with it. i plan on buying it. and i also plan on houseruling out the things that completely break my suspension of disbelief. heck, i even kind of like the idea of matrix bonuses, and may go through adding some matrix bonuses (and possibly bonuses that are usable with a network between your team only, no full matrix exposure required) of my own... but they're bloody well going to make sense.

I'm going to be very, very interested what happens when Missions tables start getting deckers who are perfectly willing to hold their own team hostage.

'I get the lion's share or I'm turning our Sammy off and bailing.'


Welcome to the SR5 version of the old Mexican Standoff.

Except he then gets fried by the mage.

Well, yes, but that's always a given.

Magicrun, remember.

Well, hopefully this is when the GM steps in and reminds them that they're supposed to be working as a team, and that the intention and spirit of Missions is cooperative play versus the adventure.

There are three rules that will be in the Missions FAQ:

1) No Non-Consensual PVP. This includes screwing other players over and stealing money from each other, as well as actually attacking them. (Of course, if both/all players agree they WANT to play this way, then more power to them. But at a convention game when you have less than 4 hours to complete the adventure AND everyone at the table has paid $4-$8 each top play? Yeah, fuck that noise.)

2) Your fun does not trump everyone elses fun. This goes with #1 and just in general. Just because you wrote your characters background and personality that he's an abusive, secretive, backstabbing asshole doesn't give you license to screw everyone else over.

3) Wheaton's Law: Don't Be A Dick. Which is just what it says on the package. Don;t be a dick. ANd if you're wondering if you're being one or not, just ask your fellow players and your GM, he'll be happy to tell you.

The complaints were few and far between, thankfully, but we did have these a few times over the last couple years where someone bellies up to the table and is basically a disruptive douchebag, and then tries to justify it by saying "I'm just playing my character". And while they were few and far between, when tehy did occur they really, seriously caused problems and in at least one instance led to someone telling the GM after the game they were seriously considering exchanging the rest of their Missions event tickets for the weekend in for generics and going to play something else. This did not please me.

(I know you're kinda joking, but I do have to keep this sort of behavior in mind, and I have to write guidelines and rules to govern certain types of behavior).

Bull

Jaid I think you seriously overestimating the capabilities of a defensive hacker or matrix over watch type. I won't say more because I've already harped on this and it deserves a solution vs just restating the problem. But that's beyond the scope of missions.

Edit: damn you autocorrect

As much as I dislike in-team quarrels, forbidding them seems a bit off, minding that shadowrunners are professional criminals, and in most teams don't have any reasons to trust each other or treat each other fairly.

Rules like this are vitally important in an organized play setting. The purpose of the entity is to grow the game, and new players may be turned off by interparty conflict. It is a part of shadowrun, but I agree that it should not be a part of Missions.

Seems like a recipe for people being terrible gamers without repercussions to me, but that's going to have the be the GM's problem I guess.

This is gamism vs simulationism again. Can runners be jerks to other runners without repercussions? Realistically, often enough they can (criminals aren't the nicest of people towards anyone, including other criminals).
The reasons to ban them from doing this are purely OOC.

Absolutely! The Organized play model is OOC designed to grow the hobby. Rules must be put in place to accommodate that and the organized nature of this type of program. We have a great time in our home campaign with in character strife.

Having inter-character strife is fine.

It starts to become problematic if it gets to the point where it starts to interfere with peoples' enjoyment of the game.

THEN the player needs to be called out on their dickery.

This.

Keep in mind that often at conventions you're sitting down with 5 or more complete strangers. These people don't know you, they don't know your character, and more importantly they paid actual physical money to be there (At least for most conventions).

Put yourself in the position of having shelled out $6 to play a 4 hour game session, sit down at the table, and proceed to have the game utterly ruined because one or two people decided to make assholes out of themselves. Maybe they grief you, maybe they just end up griefing other players. Or maybe they just decide to do stupid shit like mouthing off to the Mr. Johnson, killing the target you were supposed to kidnap or extract, blow up the facility with the MacGuffin you were paid to recover, etc. Or maybe they just drag the game out so that there's no way to wrap it up in under 4 hours.

And maybe, just maybe, you're ok with that.

But now imagine the guy next to you isn't. Maybe they're new to the game. Maybe they like and usually play a cooperative Shadowrun game.

Keep in mind not everyone plays the same. Not every table is full of paranoid backstabbers who never trust their teammates. Hell, I rarely play in Shadowrun games like that, because we usually just want to chill and play a game together, so it's not a style any of us care to play as.

There's a lot going on with Missions, and you have to take a LOT of variables into account when setting up an organized play structure for a Living Campaign.

That said, I note that it specifically outlines NON-consensual PvP. If you and your fellow player(s) are into that sort of thing, go for it. Have fun. Just be sure you're not trashing the game for everyone else, because then the GM will have to pull the plug in it.

The problem comes when you're in a convention situation where players don't know each other. There's a fine line between character dickery and player dickery, and it's hard to figure out where that line is, and many convention gamers don't want to or like to cause problems, so won;t call it out. Then we get complaints about behavior after the game, when it's too late to do anything about it.

Only if your decker's combat abilities and equipment are on par with the average sam's matrix gear+skills. In which case your should hand back the char sheet to the player and tell him to either pick up a gun or rewrite his back story to explain the character's total pacifism.

Shhh. It's against the Will Of The Developers to imply that deckers might want to pick up combat skills to be more effective in combat.

Hey everybody, did the news get around
About a guy named Hacker E-leet?
Oh, 1337 just flew into this town
And he's brickin' up all the sammy's sheeeeit

He's hackin' and hackin' and smacktalk-in'
He's hackin' and hackin' and smacktalk-in'
He's hackin' and hackin' and smacktalk-in'
He just hacks, smacks, brickin' that sheeit

Hadn't it been for Hack-It-All Joe,
I'd get implanted a long time ago!

Actually, deckers may not be able to AFFORD it. They're almost certainly not going to be able to afford any real combat cyberware. They don;t need agility for hacking. So your average decker, even if he picks up combat abilities as his secondary focus, is going to be sub-optimal compared to pretty much everyone else except maybe a dedicated face. ANd a dedicated Face doesn't need quite the same investment in points and money that a decker does, so they have more wiggle room to do other things besides Face.

And again, it's just about options. The more interesting and different things a character can do, the better it is.

IMagine if we told every mage and adept and rigger "Here, just pick up a gun and shoot people, your specializations can't be used in combat anymore"? (A bit of a stretch, I know, but just saying).

Bull

What for anyway, it only opens them up to a quick counter-hack. They better start out an Adept.


With regard to the rigger, that is pretty much what SR4 did. Well, it suggested hacking, but it's close.

Essence, point or nuyen?



Then again, why did you (aka the authors/devs) choose the worst possible way to improve the hackers usefulness in combat and why did you choose not to build upon the solutions already in place and accepted both in- and offgame (tacnet, online commlink, drone remote control, radio communication, nano attack vectors etc)?

SYL

No offense, but that argument is such complete crap.

Go read anything else I've wrote so far regarding hacking cyberware. Hell, you can defend yourself easier against being hacked than you can against most spells that will fuck with you, since a Rating 6 Commlink is cheap and gives you 12 resistance dice, rather than defending with just willpower.

This isn;t suddenly a magic "Off" button for all cyberware within 50 feet of a decker. It's not THAT easy to do. It's about as easy or difficult to shut down ONE piece of cyberware as it is to shoot and kill someone with a gun or tow casta spell on them or slice them up with a sword or shoot them with a drone or... You get the picture.



Why wasn;t the rigger using his drones and/or vehicle in combat?

Nuyen mostly. Cyberdecks are bloody expensive.

Hm, but is there no ware (cyberware, bioware, genetweak, nano) which are "big bang for the buck"? Muscle Toner in SR4 for example was quite cheap,

SYL

Will there be a "Fairlight Excalibur" again?

The problem isn't hostile deckers, the problem is security deckers, or demi-gods. Unlike mages, hackers can hack from the "astral". If a mage or mages wants to mindfuck you, they have to come close to you and you have a certain chance of puting lots of bullets into them before they do anything meaningful. You have no chance to defend against a hacker like this. You cannot shoot a hacker similarily. You get resist tests out of the blue, nothing more. That's not quite the same.


Oh, he sure has, but needs cybercombat and loads of IC to defend said drones against hacking. I suppose this will be aggravated in SR5, though until I see actual rules I cannot say something definite.

I'm not saying it's not possible to do. But for your average decker, it's not worth the expenditure.

Wire 1 costs 39,000. Wired 2 costs 149,000. Muscle Toner is 32,000 per rating.

Now, again, this is for a dedicated Decker, someone who's all in and specialized in it. For that character, I wouldn't take a decker lower than a Renraku Tsurugi, which costs 214,000¥. Though I'd likely end up grabbing a Sony CTY-720 for 345,000¥ instead, for a little extra flexibility and punch.

Resources A gets you 450,000¥. So there's a little wiggle room, but not a lot, espeically once you spend nuyen on lifestyles, vehicles, armor, programs, agents, other cyber, weapons, gear, etc.

I never said it couldn't be done, but your average, focused, decently pimped out decker isn't going to be a combat monster too.

Bull

Bloody hell, thats quite massive price hike from SR4, there went my dreams of Rebuilding my combat face build in SR5(She used 320K nuyen at chargen with SR4 prices)
And there's ofcource no ingame justification for this, right?

So SR5 really is magic/hacker-run as you can't even afford to build streetsam in chargen, even if you where willing to accept that you need to bend over to be matrix raped if you want to use cyberware.

Bad build. Or if in 5th a hacker CAN only become a one-trick pony, badly adjusted costs.


So drop it to 1? See above...

So, Bull . . please tell me why should a Decker be able to meddle in combat, if he ain't ready to shell out ressources for it?
Everything has it's price. You want to be able to do some combat stuff? You shell out ressources for that.

Ahh, I see the problem. It's an issue of perspective.

GOD and Security Deckers are defensive measures, primarly. I suppose a GM could be a dick and have them be offensive too, but that's not really the intention. That's on par with having a building guarded by several dozen barghests, or having every hall being able to be flooded with Gamma Scopolomien gas, or just having 100 security guards on point. If a GM wants to be a dick, he can be a dick in a million ways.

A security deckers job is to sit and prevent matrix intrusions (ANd GOD is more of a global concept that represents the matrix's overall defensive capabilities, rather than individual super-deckers who will show up to spank you). They're not all that proactive.

Plus if they're acting remotely, they're incurring Noise penalties on top over everything else. And if they're on a different grid than you, more penalties. Hell, stay on the Public Grid and you incur a -2 to anyone trying to fuck with you anyway, because the public grid sucks balls for matrix actions.

So generally, what you'll need to worry about is the decker that's on an enemy patrol team, and that's someone you can shoot. I think "Geek the mage, then geek the decker" becomes the new phrase.



Yeah, this will be a bit different in SR5. Riggers are a seperate thing once again. The COntrol Rig once again is a necessary piece of gear for a Rigger, and it makes you a god with vehicles once more.

Bull

Since I'm playing a pretty badass Street Sam in my new SR5 game (Yay, mys first real face-to-face SHadowrun game in over 2 years!!!), I'd say that's not even slightly true.

Costs are all over the place and adjusted. Some are more expenisve, some are less. SR4 Cyber prices though were largely idiotically cheap, especially when compared to prices for vehicles, lifestyles, and almost6 everything else in the game.

No different than the uber-sam that has a charimsa 1, logic 1, and no social or knowledge skills, or anything other than combat skills.

Again, see the "I'm not saying it's impossible" line. But like most other archetypes now, you can be really good at one thing, or sorta good at a couple things.

Not neccessarily, if you consider mass production for millions of enhanced soldiers, cops, black ops, runners, sports teams etc.

SYL

That not a sam, thats a wared up street thug
And personally i would never play with thrash like that, one need to keep some class on what kind of people they run with

How harsh is Noise in deckers? Because unless it is -1 per ~100 m, there's little reason why the Decker should patrol in the flesh. Which then would be the exact scenario I am worried about.


Good news for once. What are essence costs of VCRs? And how do Riggers deal with enemy hackers now? Will rigger decks come back and need plugins for cybercombat (like in 3rd for MIJI)?

So by "meddle in combat", all you think anyone should do is be able to shoot a gun, is that it?

Why should mages be able to meddle in combat if they're not willing to buy some ware and invest in firearms or melee skills?

Why should riggers be able to use their drones?

Honestly, I'm done with this. I'm not trying to argue this. If you don't see why or how it would be fun and cool and useful to have a decker actually be involved in combat in ways other than "I pull the trigger", that's fine. I've satted what is and isn't. It's up to you to have fun with it. Or not. We're just putting toys in the toybox for folks.