As an Adept, for 5 "Karma" you get +2 Con die (immensely useful skill) and 1.5PP of free powers in Voice Control 1 and Traceless Walk. Shark is great for melee users, and some of the others look really good, but Raven seems OP.

It is very good for the con man mage, but every team he runs with will have to watch their backs to avoid the pranks and general mischief that goes with it even if it’s to the disadvantage of said team, as well as the rubbing of salt in anothers wounds by stepping in to take advantage of it.

What's that? You just broke up with your hot girl friend?

Roll Charisma+Willpower (3) to NOT call her up and offer to 'console' her with dinner and dancing.

Or

Okay, guys as soon as the guards pass by we slip down the hallway.

As guards pass roll Cha+Will (3) to NOT Telekineticaly tape a KICK ME sign on the guard's back. Light enough not to draw attention when put on, but sooner or later someone will see and comment/comply.



A reason many Ravens tend to be left alone, not by their own choice but because many can not handle them around.

Just as an aside:

If you're picking up any quality that has a Composure roll to resist....90% of the time you shouldn't even be rolling, you should be performing the action anyway. It's when it's absolutely positively vital that you need to Cut It Out that dice should be picked up.

Otherwise a lot of composure rolls are useless (Cha-based mage anyone? How often do those folks fail the roll?)

That is true, was just showing how easy a situation can arise where you should be acting in your Mentor's footsteps.

If you are not willing to act in that manner, then the GM can call for rolls to encourage you and even then if you still try to not follow that path on your own , even if you are making your tests, one can expect the Mentor to withdraw their benefits sooner or later as you grow away from it.

Think of it like Tempus from Thieve's world. When he acted in the manner his 'god' approved of he had tremendous combat abilities and healing, but when he tried to be more subdued or had not slaughtered and raped recently his healing factor suffered.

I was tempted to put it in the Errata thread, that one mentor spirit gets 1.5 PP, while all the others get only 0.5 PP. But I like adepts too much

Quite.
I think it was the GURPS game that I am/was/will be in that made me arrive at the conclusion that the willpower tests aren't something that needs to be rolled all the time, but rather something that the character should be doing naturally and only when it's a Bad Idea^TM that dice are rolled.

(I say this, because I created a character who was lecherous, meaning he'd hit on every girl in the room, and I already had it in mind that he'd be doing this, so the quality fit the personality of the character I was designing and then went, "Wait, those composure rolls in Shadowrun are being used wrong!" as so many people go "feh, I can make that roll 95% of the time, meaningless downside." And I know because I've done exactly that, and it took a different perspective, one of "why would I want to resist?" that changed my mind.)

Since the other Adept Advantages clock in at around .5 power points, at best this is an "or" rather than an "and".

I too thought it looked a little awesome compared to other archetypes. It should be noted that your mentor spirit (aka the GM) can temporarily reduce your Magic if it doesn't like how you are behaving. Better RP that totem for all you're worth, chummer!

I always RP and didn't think I needed to note that in this situation. By the RAW the positives are enormous and the negatives are extremely minimal.

that was a great movie gotta find it somewhere now...

and to the OP, this should def. be put in the errata thread. No way that one mentor spirit should give 1.5 PP worth of advantages while the rest give 0.5 PP worth.

Movie?

You didn't see GURPS???

I am in the dark.

My mistake - I thought you were quoting a movie (think it was called "Lightyear" ? Gonna look this up later...). There are some characters who live "outside of time", so whenever they speak they say I was am will be going to do something.

GURPS is a roleplaying game system, if that's helpful. It's also the only system that will allow you to be a Highlander like Dunacan Macleod.

Well my statement is still accurate. The game is on hiatus, so I was playing previously, questionable if I am playing now, likely to play again in the future.
Also, the character himself has traveled in time. Although not as much as his...father in law. Actually, I think that still ends in a tie...

(The first time the GM ran the game, the players went "fuck plot, we're going to travel 1000 years into the past." So he rebooted the game--the one my character is in--as what happened as a result of the first group's meddling. Second group was put in stasis for 1000 years prior to the game's opening scene)

Sounds like a cool game Just don't get into the paradox of becoming your own father-in-law or whatever...

(found the movie: "The Light Years")

For the record, the Raven may get 1.5PP of free powers...but seriously, how often is Voice Control actually used? Even Traceless Walk is only situationally useful. Compare that to all the other totems and their bonuses, which are far more universally useful (Mystic Armor? Attribute Boost (Agility)? Enhanced Accuracy AND Danger Sense?) Honestly, I think the Seducer is closer to broken and is the only reason the Pornomancer build is still viable. +2 Con, +2 for Illusions, and a free Improved Ability in a skill from the Acting or Influence groups. THAT is far more evil IMO.

You don't get all 3 bonuses - you have to choose one of the mage or adept bonuses.

Voice control can and should be used all the time! Disguise/Mask/whatever + voice control = awesomeness. Impersonation just got a lot more powerful when you can mimic someone else's voice. I sorta agree with Traceless Walk tho'

You do if you're a Mystic Adept, which the Pornomancer build is. Unless I missed something.

Mystic Adepts are required to choose which advantage they want - they get EITHER the Mage or Adept Advantage, and cannot ever have the other.

Voice Control raises Social Limit. How is that not useful Oo

Is that the only benefit? I need to re-read that ability again. Because that would really suck. But it wouldn't be alone, because there are other powers/abiliities that only raise Limits...

The way the Reputation rules are written, pretty much EVERY runner will eventually get to more or less ignore the Social limit, if the person they're speaking to has any reason to know them.

Street Cred raises the Social Limit, you see, if your Rep is a factor. And your Street Cred increases automatically as you earn Karma, aside from direct awards for in game actions.

So other Social Limit modifiers are proportionally less valuable as a result.



-k

At least, it allows (after a while) every characters and not just faces to get something from their contacts (unlike knowledge skills, which fall under the Mental Limit).

Yeah, my MystAd from Origins isn't an especially likable guy, and after just four Missions his Social Limit is already like 12 if he gets to apply his Rep to the roll.



-k

Ooh, do you have a page number for that? I completely missed it and it's probably going to become important knowing my friends and the types of headache-inducing characters they like to build.

Page 320 of the SR5 book, Mentor Spirit Archetypes, last paragraph.

That's what I get for reading the Magic chapter after being awake 18 hours and with five martinis in me.

As a whole, I don't really see the issue.

If played 'correctly', this is a character (Raven) that long term won't HAVE true friends/companions. Raven is the addict family member that always takes advantage of your goodwill and patience. Yes they can be smooth, yes they can be charming, but this is a character that will test and break the limits of friends even if they manage to avoid taking a dump on the friends personally.

Oh he's just a prankster! No, this guy is a CON ARTIST. By nature this type of character disrupts groups. Group cohesion works (unless externally mandated via some sort of force) because groups are stronger as a whole than with their individual faults. Raven will constantly pick at those faults. Yknow, kinda a douchebag. They don't see interactions with people in the same way, if following the totem you see people as things to be manipulated to improve YOUR standing. You'll poke holes in relationships of others if you can see a personal benefit. You'll exploit the addiction qualities of your team mates, employers, contacts.

Sure, in game sense, from a player perspective, who cares right? Its just a game, so its make believe, screw with everyone. But its disadvantages are potentially as bad as a Leeeeeroy Jenkins compulsion disadvantage.

Aye, but like all the Mentor Spirits the GM has to keep an eye on the players to see are they keeping in character with their supposed traits and if not the Mentor can and should let their displeasure be known.

Ideally they should not need to make the rolls because they should just be doing the actions, but when they want to swerve away, like NOT putting the 'Lofwyr is a Tool' sign telekinetically on the back of one of those S-K guards in the patrol who just walked by, the rolls can be called for to resist, but I would still keep a tally of this discretions and players who are just beating the rolls all the time are not keeping with the Mentor's goals and may need to reconsider their path as their Mentor certainly should feel like its being ignored.

The weakness of the "Raven" mentor spirit is a tough one, but also one I would not likely want to reward.

The weaknesses of other mentors, usually present somesort of problem or danger to the subject of said weakness. With raven it is more of a group destablelizer. Where gms, may try to keep the team together and other players try to work as a group (which is not always easy), raven works directly in the opposite direction. To reward this with tripple the payoff is not the right sign.

Also it is the one sole exeption, to a system that, in all other cases, has a payoff of 0.5 powerpoints (as opposed to 1.5).

I guess who ever wrote this may be quite into corvids and did not kill their darling.

What about the disadvantages? In SR4, the seductress has a Charisma + Willpower (3) test to avoid pursuing a vice or indulgence (drugs, BTLs, sex, etc.), which I considered such a crippling disadvantage, and which also made for such a repellent character, that I wouldn't have considered that mentor spirit even for a pornomancer-type build that would work with a sexy mentor spirit.

If you're rolling the dice every time it comes up, you shouldn't have the flaw. Doesn't matter if you pass or fail, the point is, if you're invoking the dice every time an opportunity to indulge in whatever it is, you're doing it wrong.

I only figured this out by building a GURPS character. The character I already had in mind was a complete womanizer, always on the lookout for his next lay.
And I played him that way too. It never once occurred to me that I could resist carousing with the opposite sex; it wasn't in his personality to do so and I played him that way. It wasn't until I slid back into Shadowrun a little that I went "Oooooh."

The same perspective needs to be applied to "compulsion" flaws in Shadowrun (other games as well). If you're going to build a charisma based mage with a compulsion based mental flaw, you damn well better play it strait and only roll those dice when it's absolutely critical that the character Should Not Do That Thing. Probably when a teammate goes "Psst, no." quietly over the comms as the trickster gets ready to jump out in front of the guard and yell "SURPRISE!" just for the lolz.

Ah... but you see, he may have Raven for a Mentor but he is not a Raven. You are right in that he should not be rolling the dice every time the situation comes up. But do such situations only come up during runs/on the job? My take on this is that no, it does not. So in effect, he follows Raven's call in his everyday "normal" life but goes cold professional when he is on a job. So he goes stone pro in Lagos, but has a passing bird poop on Ehran the Scribe's limo/Janey's head at the airport.

This interpretation is probably okay, however even on the job the trickster needs to come out at least occasionally. As an example take someone who is normally very foul-mouthed and place them in a situation where punctuation should not begin with “f”. Count the slips, they will happen. They won’t happen as often because the person is trying hard to not let it happen, that should be the same with the Raven follower. The jabs and pranks will still happen even on the job, but just not as often as they do off of the job.

My opinion only.

Perhaps. It really depends, see, if the character is actually a pretty serious sober boring kind of fellow, but Raven has made him a kind of personal project, as a sort of obscure joke maybe. Alternatively if the job is an infiltration of some kind - stealth or social engineering, he may view it as the job being the prank and it would satisfy the Raven's urgings. It may well be that he views his runs as "serious" pranks.

Not really disagreeing with that. Seductress as written in SR4 was not something I would be interested in roleplaying, thus the "repellent character" comment. I mean, there's a seductress type of character like Fujiko Mine from Lupin III, then there's the drunk, high skank with smeared lipstick awkwardly dancing on a table.

This sounds like a niche interpretation of a niche concept. I’d probably allow it as long as the character provided some of the “prankster” while not on the job… On second though I’d allow it anyway, but if there was no actual “prankster” happening in the role play of the character, I’d dock RP karma and maybe eventually have Raven give up on the character and remove any benefits (as well as provide a nice NQ for the loss of the PQ). If a player picks a quality that requires role play to balance it and doesn’t role play that quality there needs to be repercussions.

A player can come up with anything for a background, bringing it into the game and keeping it balanced is between both the player and the GM. As long as it is all role-played and everyone (including the GM) are having fun, it’s all good.

I dunno, I don't think its appropriate to get Raven's blessing during a run (the bonus powers) if you don't follow its disadvantages during the run. No more than "Yeah, I follow Raven's teaching when I'm by myself in my apartment, but serious business bro when I'm on a run". Its not being faithful to the pro/cons of having a mentor spirit. Especially when you combine it with mentor spirits that DON'T have an

To be honest, I was recalling a description of the Navy SEALS in the book "No Easy Day". The part where they were pulling pranks on each other during their downtimes and almost immediately after ops. My memory's a little hazy but there was the part about he had a bra hanging off his radio antennae when he got off the helo back at base.

Hm in that regard I'd say its the difference between letting off steam, vs compulsion. Its like that stereotype of the responsible Japanese office worker that puts in serious business and focus during work, with the rigors of status, station and the like, and them getting drunnnnnk 'off duty'. They're not going to pull their stuff during work, whereas Raven-follower might.

While one could look at the runs as being part of a prank, the pranks don't stop there and solely claiming that the 'prank' run is enough is just trying to workaround a disadvantage so it is not really a disadvantage.

I seriously doubt you would find many Raven among the SEALS or at least not for long.

Remember a key phrase of the mentor disadvantage: exploiting someone else’s misfortune to your own advantage or to pull a clever trick or prank even if it’s to the disadvantage of your friends.. And that would be something most Special Forces just wouldn't do since they have to work in tight coordination and inner team friction is rarely good for a unit like that. Runners tend to be a bit more wild card so you kind of expect it.

This does not mean you will go out of your way to totally blow a run, but it can mean you might leave a whoopie cushion under the CEO's seat in that building you just pulled a run on. (all prints wiped of course, silly does not mean stupid) or other little things along the way.

Likewise the taking advantage of another's misfortune can range from calling up your best friend's ex since they just broke up to offering a really 'good' deal on something they need to replace instead of just giving it to them.

I recommend reading the Ravirn series starting with WebMage. A lot of the characters in the book are sort of dual natured. There is the normal self and their divine aspect and the two are not quite the same, for example Eris is both a world class hacker and the goddess of discord. While she comes to appreciate and respect Ravirn, certain aspect of her divine side still cause her to punch his buttons from time to time, even when she knows it causes him distress and she doesn't necessarily want to do it. Actually trying NOT to work with the aspect causes her headaches and other pains. Ravirn himself wrangles with the Raven aspect he has been bestowed and it does make for an interesting view of the concept of Mentor spirit, albeit in a much more personal level than what we use in SR.

Mostly because it's not a player's choice. Raven decides when to show up and demand obedience.

I agree Seductress is odd, it almost could do with being broken into two or more aspects. A seductress would be about playing with the heart strings of those around them, using them for his or her own gain. Distinctive style would be a built in disad for this one as you would not forget this persona, whether it was to daring outfit to just that predatory look. Fujiko turned heads wherever she went, for good and bad.

A hedonist would be more suited to the full on experience of food, drink and other delights. Maybe getting Iron stomach/increase resistances to better weather the consumption/exposure to the varied diet of booze, eats and pills.

Indeed, therefore you exploit someone else's misfortune to your own advantage without being compelled to do so when it is not to the disadvantage of your friends and roll the dice when it is.

Indeed, that can be fine, but it does not necessarily qualify a run as your prank either. Again it will depend on the run. Tweaking the Mega's nose that is a bit stuck on itself by stealing some new prototype to distribute to the public so everyone gets in on it may count but rescueing a kidnapped daughter of some corp exec might not really count toward the prank qualifier by itself, though you could maybe switch out the stolen girl who was destined for the slave trader's bed with a anthroform joybot with superglue selectively applied to a few spots to leave him in a bit of a Brer Rabbit situation. Tipping off the media to the scene for the 11 o'clock news is just a bonus.

Not trying to make Raven out to be unplayable, it is perfectly playable (and livable as I follow Raven myself both in and out of game), but it does take changing the mindset a bit.

The idea was that if you are using the runs as pranks, then you'd gravitate towards a certain type of runs.