“Hello, and welcome to the Fifth edition of our Friday Night Fights! I’m Joe Tessatore, and with me as Always is Teddy Atlas.”

“Hi Joe. Now, this isn’t your average street fight- these guys aren’t out to kill each other- at least not on purpose.”
“No! There are rules in Boxing, and they’re going to follow them! Of course, with this much machine and meat in the ring, people are bound to die on occasion.”
“Well, by the score may be more accurate.”
“Too true, Teddy. Well, let’s look at the tale of the tape! Up first is Sharknado!”

“Sharknado hails from right here in Seattle, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say he was pretty tough looking! His eyes are just black pools of mean spirit!”
“Well Joe, Sharknado *is* a Shark Adept; making it hard to pull him off his opponents if he gets bloodied. Plus, those tattoos are for more than just intimidation- as I’m sure his opponent is about to find out. Speaking of, here’s Brickhouse entering the ring.”

“Brickhouse is more chromed out than a new go-gang crotch rocket, and weighs three times as much.”
“He's your typical heavy bruiser, compared to the counterpunching Sharknado. It’s going to be interesting to see if Brickhouse can catch up and tag Sharknado with one of those big fists. He’s going to have a tough time keeping up with those fast twitch muscles, that’s for sure. If he can land one of those huge rights though, Sharknado is going to be in trouble.
“Now that both fighters have been introduced, let’s light this candle!”

“No surprise, Sharknado gets the first punch in, but Brickhouse manages to duck underneath it just in time!”
“He’s known for being a bruiser who can take a punch, but even Brickhouse knows it’s always better to avoid getting hit in the first place.”

“Brickhouse counters with a MASSIVE right hook, but Sharknado ducks under it easily.”
“So long as he’s able to avoid that right, I don’t see how Brickhouse is hoping to get a punch in Joe.”

“A sloppy exchange; neither fighter is able to land a decent shot; they’re trading punches, but both are pivoting and parrying attacks easily.”
“This could be a long fight if neither is able to land a punch.”


“Normally, Sharknado is much faster, but it looks like both swung at the same time there.”
“Still, neither is getting a clean shot in; mostly glancing blows and minor jabs that aren’t doing any real damage to their opponent.”

“Another exchange, and SOMEHOW Brickhouse avoids getting tagged- that was amazing! Sharknado is exposed to a counter!”

“Oh, that uppercut sent him back in time! He’s throw clear off his feet and onto his back; that would have torn off nearly anyone’s head!”
“Let’s see if he wants to continue, that punch was hard enough to make anyone question their profession”.

“Sharknado pops up like he’s got a spring in his rear, and goes after Brickhouse without any regard for his own safety!”
“The ref should stop this fight, he’s going to get himself killed!”

“Dear God! Sharknado popped up and ran right into Brickhouse’s first square. Brickhouse’s hand went straight through the back of his skull!”
“This one is going to be a highlight classic!”
“I may be sick, but I can’t turn away! Brickhouse manages to get the corpse off his arm, and it’s still flopping around like a dead fish in the ring!”
“To be honest Joe, I’m beginning to wonder if we should think about making some rules about metal fists for our little fights here.”
“That seems reasonable, given the outcome.”
“Total stats for the fight: 9 seconds, with Brickhouse out punching Sharknado 2 to 0.”
“We really need to get them some gloves, or something.”
“Thanks again for watching, good night!”

*golf clap*

Yep...clearly Street Sams are totally outclassed by adepts.

I was thinking about making a munchkin topic where we try to make the most broken characters and actually see which archetype is better. But I figured I'd wait until I finished Omae, so that it'd be easier and quicker to generate characters.

Well, I think luck played a pretty important factor. I'm not sure if I was playing less than optimally, but I think I read the rules correctly; with only 2 initiative left, Sharknado was unable to use the "Dodge" interrupt action. Dropping his dice pool from 27 to 13 was... problematic. It also didn't help that getting knocked down caused his blood to boil, forcing him to jump up to his death. Of course, if you're making a Shark Adept boxer, isn't the *point* that he goes berserk?

-DrZ

Well, dodging CAN be done when you have less than 5 Initiative (see SR5, pg 160, right above the "Changing Initiative" header), but something I'm not sure you included in the tests above is that dodging also introduces the Physical limit on the test rather than just being an additional bonus to the dice pool.

I was keeping physical limit in mind on my dodge checks.

I'm not sold on the "you can dodge with less than 5 initiative rule". That's initially what I thought, except for this line, on page. 167:

"When a character uses an Interrupt Action, such as Full Defense, he takes an action out of turn, but only if he has enough Initiative Score left in the Combat Turn to pay the price for the action."


Of course, it wouldn't be the first time there was conflicting information in a Shadowrun book..

-DrZ

I was taking those together to mean "You can use an Interrupt Action as long as you have a positive Initiative Score left", since it DOES specifically mention shortly after the bit you quoted about reducing your initiative score below zero.

But you're right, wonky wording is wonky.

EDIT:

After looking at all the Interrupt Actions, I think they may have messed up putting the section you quoted in the general Interrupt Actions paragraph. Looking over Interrupt Actions, the Full Defense action DOES specifically call out that you need to have enough Initative Score left to pay for it. None of the other Interrupt Actions do, since they're all only one-time-use adds rather than a full-turn one.

I'll need to read over those couple sections a few more times to figure out how I should interpret that, but I think my interpretation above still stands.

Let's see.

Any time you run one fight, it is a statistical anomaly.

You built a character in Sharknado where he was supposed to have lots of speed, and managed to roll under average on his first initiative and roll FOUR ones on the second initiative.

If, for example, Sharknado had rolled a 26 on his first initiative instead of a 25, you would have had a situation where he would have gone 3 times to Brickhouse's 2, and so Sharknado would have gotten a chance to roll his full 19 dice (with Edge) against Brickhouse's 10 (with Edge).


Brickhouse can only customize his limbs to his racial maximum (8 ) and then add 3 levels of Strength, which would mean he does 11P, not 12P (Not a big deal, but just a correction). I looked, but I didn't see anything that increased the strength beyond that.

Next, personally, would not allow you to gain the benefit of Bone Density 3 when you have almost no bones left in your body (basically half your body is metal). It is not compatible with augmentations to your bones, and you have no bones left in your arms or torso. Theoretically speaking, with the rules as written, you could get a cyber torso, skull, and 2 arms and 2 legs and still get Bone Density, which is absurd.

You also have 2 characters who are supposed to be "brawlers" but while for Brickhouse you've spend a very small percentage of his resources on going quickly, you've spent a LARGE portion of Sharknado's magical resources on going quickly, so they are not exactly parallel.

Try this as the powers for Sharknado:
Increase Reflexes 1 1.5PP
Critical Strike (Unarmed Combat) .5PP
Combat Sense 2 1PP
Improved Physical Attribute (Agility) 3 3PP

You've also given him a Rating 6 Qi focus for Increase Reflexes 1, a rating 4 Qi focus for Combat sense 2, and a Rating 4 Focus for Increase Unarmed Combat 2

Keep the one for Increase Unarmed 2, and the Combat Sense 2 and switch the other to:
Rating 4 Qi focus for Attribute Boost Strength 2
Rating 2 Qi focus for Pain Resistance

Lastly, if you are going to make a character who relies on being able to dodge, making him follow Shark is not really a good idea. Make him follow Wise Warrior and get the +1 bonus to Unarmed.

So now he looks like:

Body: 8
Agility: 6 (9)
Reaction: 5 (6)
Strength: 7
Willpower: 3
Logic: 1
Intuition: 5
Charisma: 1
Edge: 3
Magic: 6

Physical Limit: 11

Dice Pools:
Initiative: 11+2d6
Unarmed Combat [Physical]: 20
Evasion: 11
Dodging [Physical]: 23
Damage Resistance: 8

Physical Damage: 8S (increased by a Magic + Attribute Level roll in this case it would be 8d6, yielding at least a couple more hits, so probably looking at somewhere from 9S to 11S)
Physical Condition Monitor: 12
Stun Condition Monitor: 10

One other fairly large point, which I will let you think about going forward, since the errata is not out yet. The "official" word from the Shadowrun forums is that cyberlimbs will not affect limits. Period, full stop. So in future, Brickhouse will have a Physical limit not of 12 but of 8.

I think I have Brickhouse's limit listed as 9 (rounded up from 8.33, I think).

Really, I wasn't trying to make them exactly comparable; I was curious if being a dodger with a huge initiative would be an advantage over a guy throwing bombs.

The bone density thing I agree is cheesy. My thinking is that while his arms are all metal, a cyber torso is described as a shell. So, the places he's getting hit (his arms, body, and face) could benefit from bone density. As a GM, I'm not positive I'd let it go through, though.

I made a few decisions like that that were pretty cheesy. You'll also notice Brickhouse has a mean right, but his left is average (I basically bought him a stock cyberarm with some armor on it as a cost saving measure).

I will fix Brickhouse's strength; I knew I was messing that up somehow. Frankly, it doesn't affect the fight a whole lot.

I agree this fight is rife with statistical anomalies. I could just take the average of all tests instead of actually rolling, but part of the reason I like writing these is that I don't know how they'll turn out when I start; I basically run them straight through.


Access Control:

Re-reading it, I think I get how it works now. If you have ANY initiative left, you can make an interrupt action to try and aid your defenses. However, you need at least a positive score to do so; so if you've dodged for example and your initiative is now -2, you can't also do full defense. At least, that's how I'm reading it. I think so long as you have a positive integer for your initiative you can make that test. I don't know why they worded it the way they did. That's how I'd rule it going forward.

-DrZ

...I wonder how they're going to explain away this one. That's...pretty...yeah that would be houseruled away if it made it in. I can't make that sound sensible in my head.

If Person A, Person B, and Person C both have 7's in a stat, one due to natural, one due to augmentation, and one due to cyberlimbs(probably averaged with the rest of their body), then it's the *same*. A 7 is a 7 is a 7. I can't really see how a cyberlimb wouldn't count the limit. The ONLY way is that if they gave them Accuracy or something, but then they'd have to explain why they have Accuracy, despite being a part of the person and directly wired into their brain.

(Btw, the fight scene was entertaining. I do agree that one fight isn't often enough-luck matters-but it's fun to do; I do it every so often myself.)

I think the justification is probably due to trying to avoid balancing limits vs. "percentage" of attributes contributing to physical limits. If I have 1 arm with a strength of 11, but the rest of me is strength 1; do I average them? How? Is a limb 1/5th of your attribute? If you just say "it's the flat attribute, cyberlimbs don't count", it A) encourages players to actually fill out their stats rather than tank them and B) avoids that bookkeeping headache. That said, I could see the justification for the house rule.

btw, thanks, that's why I do 'em.

I can only shake my head in disappointment.

Edit to add: I enjoyed your post, DrZ!

Yeah, that's how I was originally interpreting it and how I think it should work based on a few re-readings.

Entertaining read before bedtime!
Thanks