This really should be changed:
1) Taking Aim is a Simple Action. Performing any other action before shooting, including 'Free Actions', breaks Aim.
2) Called Shot is a Free Action. You can't aim to perform a called shot.
3) Adept Centering is a Free Action. A physical adept cannot try to focus while lining up a shot.

Ergo - snipers (even adept snipers) always, always target center mass. This makes me wonder why a called shot is a free action, and isn't, instead, part of an actual attack action.

It's not the best wording, but Called Shot is actually taken combined with the attack action, not taken before. It can't interrupt the aim.

Well, that's good to know for Called Shot, but apparently a sniper talking to his spotter screws his aim, since talking's a Free Action. Seriously... this is sort of annoying. 'I have the target, D'OH!' And of course, forget a combat adept using a mantra to help him focus while he aims - not going to happen.

Well, just use common sense.

Call a Shot has to be taken before you start aiming, BTW.
So you first Call a Shot, then Take Aim, Take Aim, ..., Take Aim, then Fire Weapon.

Bye
Thanee

or Call, Center, Aim ... Aim, shoot

Call a Shot (p163) says



Adept Centering should probably say something similar (combined with), and there should probably be an explanation of "combined with" that explicitly allows "combined with" free actions to not interrupt multi-action sequences (such as Take Aim) so long as the free action is "combined with" the terminal action in the sequence. Sounds like errata.

SR4A p. 146



Bye
Thanee

Wrong edition.

Isn't it now ......

Forget to switch Wireless off, Call the shot, Center, Aim, Get Weapon hacked, Curse, Fire Spirit manifests atop you, Try to fight it off with Stun Baton, Baton gets hacked because that damn hacker is still around, Try to run, Get shot in the leg by enemy sniper who doesn't want you to leave so soon, Throw yourself off the rooftop into the river to lose the Fire Spirit and decker (noise for water), discover it's Flushing Friday at the AZ pyramid and the water has a lovely green glow in the evening, drag yourself back onto shore downstream and hail an autocab, halfway home cab gets jumped into by enemy rigger who sends you a joyride through the orc/troll section of the Barrens while blaring Humanis Rock, drag your beaten, burned, bleeding body back to your hole in the wall only to find the Street Sammy aiming a Warhawk at you when you enter, who then shoots you in your good leg and steps over you dropping a card atop you along the way out with just the word 'Don't' on it.

Or so I have been told...

why did he have wireless on to begin with?

Duh... So he can be hacked, giving the Hacker something to do in combat. Apparently you missed the Memo.

Evidently your Smartgun Link needs to consult NAWS (the North American Weather Service) now before it can properly help you take a shot.

Nah, it's probing the hundreds of other devices near your target to confirm wind and positioning.

Why aren't you running silent and have you smartgun system and smartlink slaved to your commlink???

Because then your Smartlink doesn't actually do anything to help you shoot, duh![/SR5"Logic"]

It lets really proficient people take more accurate shot. But yeah, being of no benefit to low-dice pool users is a little bit odd, given the history of the device.

It may have made a bit more sense, to switch the base and wirelessboni on this one.

wireless bonus: Checking the weather conditions to ensure you are more likely to hit (acc+2)

yup, sounds more appropriate.

?? Where do you get that from? You are still connected to the matrix with the smartlink, only through the commlink, and you are running silent which makes it harder to see you.

Running Silent is basically pointless for anyone who's not running a Deck. The test to detect someone who is running silent is a Computer+Intuition[DP] vs Logic+Sleaze. Since Commlinks have no Sleaze score it is a pure Logic test which means that at best, you're looking at somewhere around 10 vs 6 dice & that is assuming you have a max 6 Logic.

That's after you decide that there might be someone there and pass a matrix perception test (I know... not hard, but it is still a test that has the potential to fail). Then you have to choose which hidden icon you are going to run the above test on (presumably the entire group is running silent... at least my whole group does) because the matrix perception test only tells you that there is a/are hidden icon(s) in the node/within 100 meters of you. And presumably you, as the decker, are also running silent (otherwise the opposing decker would see you 100m away) which means that your matrix perception and the detection tests are both at -2 dice.

yes, but consider that you can get a ton of information off of a single perception test, you get 1 question for every net hit on your Perception test.

That was a humor point to allow the rest of the tale to be set up.

Funny how the rest of the pain and misery the poor sniper underwent was just taken in stride.

But it is not improbable that a sniper might not be offline and prepping for the main shot, flip on wireless long enough to center/take aim before taking the shot then go dark again. It would be a very small window of time for an enemy decker to locate and react to.

Not impossible, but would probably favour the sniper getting the shot off at least.

Myself, I would stay dark (offline) unless there was special circumstances where having the (temporary) link up would be beneficial.

I would agree, & looking at my Sniper...aside from a possible 2 dice (he already has 16 not sure if 2 more will make a difference before he grabs Karma) he doesn't need to take himself online for much of anything, unless he is breaking into somewhere for his Autopicker...then he goes on, then off in a matter of seconds.

Keep in mind that a single Matrix Perception test will alert you to all hidden icons within 100m. After that though, you need to do individual opposed Matrix Perception tests against each hidden icon to get information.

So, if you have a team of six runners all with Running Silent enabled it can take an enemy hacker quite some time (as Matrix Perception is a Complex Action) to find the right Icons to brick.

Slaving your stuff to your Decker's deck is always a good idea, but if you don't have a Decker available slaving to a high-DR commlink is a good idea. Assuming Intuition & Willpower of 3 your gear would get a defensive pool of 9 with a 5,000 commlink. Much better then the defense pool of 5 otherwise (average DR of 2.)

And if he's a proper sniper, he's not going to be within 100 metres of the target - he's going to be 500+, which means way out of them picking up on him to begin with. Actually - yeah, I don't see a reason for a sniper to 'go dark' during the shot, perhaps after when he's changing locations, but if he's in the city? That's definitely not a problem. Keep your icons hidden, and you should blend in quite well with everyone else, and your targets aren't going to have a snowball's chance in hell of figuring out who you are and where you are.

Of course, you'll turn off your sniper gear when you're done - just because it makes sense. I really think people are exaggerating the whole 'hack the gear' thing - to the point it's getting frustrating. It isn't easy, it takes time, and sure, while you can do it, you're at risk at the same time. It isn't going to be the go-to plan.

Though... to some extent, I find it cool. Your SS's are firing away, your mages are tossing spells, and your decker is filling the role of the debuffer, the person who's in back, trying to hack down opponent's best gear. I can see this. In other RPGs, that would be the curse / blind / deafen / stun character, trying to screw the opponents to give his team an edge.

I actually like it, in that context.

Indeed... Of the several characters I have made, none of them really benefit from being online... Those wireless bonuses really do suck.

which is fine considering ONLY DECKERS can effectively defend against a Matrix perception test, your Average Rigger or Commlink user hiding will have 1 hit on their total roll (assuming 3 stat average) even most runners will have maybe 2 hits to defend against & the thing is, unless the Party Rigger is constantly doing his OWN Matrix Perception tests, the Enemy rigger has no reason to worry about hurrying.

See, I find it infinitely more useful for the Hacker to be directing combat (he has access to all the data after all) than looking for some ignorant piece of equipment that might or might not actually have any relevance in the fight. And if he is not coordinating, well, shooting is a far more useful option as well (mentioned even by those who like the idea of bricking). Just me, I guess.

Slave your gear to the deck, borrow its Sleaze. Shadowbros don't let shadowbros wireless solo(bro).

I was thinking the exact same thing. Your decker is your shield. I kind of like it.

I don't think it is realistic to expect the Decker to protect an entire teams gear, the best Deck can still only protect 21 devices total, & since there is no Slaved Masters that means the Decker has to protect each piece individually.

You know what would be interesting to see in Data Trails? Attack and Sleaze modules. Take any device, add 1 Sleaze module, and it has 1 point of Sleaze per module - but, so long as that module is connected, operates at DR-1. When added this way, Sleaze/Attack cannot exceed effective DR.

I agree RHat, I think that is something that we NEED. Along with the ability to gain programs on commlinks, maybe they can go together, each module can hold one program?

I fully expect that they'll introduce a rule to allow commlinks to run Common Programs in the Matrix supplement. (Should've been in Core, imho.) They're never going to allow Commlinks to run the Hacking Programs though.

The notion of Attack & Sleaze modules is interesting. I suppose the -1DR would bring down your Data Processing & Firewall? That might work.

And while that is true, the answer to any question about hidden icons is "there are 'X' hidden icons in your vicinity." You don't know location or which one is which. That requires you to find it with the opposed test. If you pass you can then perceive it normally.

might as well ask which one has the weakest DR lol

Speaking of Sniper, anyone else pick up the Assassin PDF for Shadowrun? I liked it. It would have been interesting if they'd put a few extra gear pieces in, but I don't mind. 3 positive qualities, 1 negative quality, and a new gun.

Actually, that's not strictly accurate. In rural settings, open battlefields, 500m of distance or more are typical sniper work, but in urban areas modern police snipers rarely work at ranges much over 100m. Their skills are often used for things such as called shots on hostage takers' heads, for example. The reason for this is that built-up areas rarely offer long lines of sight unless there's one freakishly tall building overlooking a low rise area, or the target itself happens to be well elevated. So, unless the players are on a Redneck Run, there's no reason to believe that the signal would be all that distant.

I agree, even in some semi-rural areas or higher class areas you have things like trees or shrubbery that can block sight lines, so distance is not always an option. However I still believe that generally speaking keeping Dark unless you absolutely need the "extra accuracy" is best, Drop your Commlink into hidden mode, & put that bullet where you need it then get the hell out of there.

The idea here is more "bridge to deck" rather than "replaces deck", but maybe cyberprograms could be handled with something like clustering (seen in Unwired; basically, it would end up requiring multiple commlinks)?

As for cyberprograms on commlinks, I don't much expect to see that - but perhaps something like commprograms could be added?

You could have phrased that a bit better. It took me a minute to work out what it means.

Oops!

Bye
Thanee

Yes, but while you are working that out, I can be lining up my shot.

You know what's cheaper and easier than hauling a decker around?

Having a dozen or so spare cheapass devices running silent.

Honestly, I don;t see any reason to bar "Common Use" programs from Commlinks, they are meant to be COMMON use after all...here is a quandry...

only a Device may be slaved. Any use of a Device connecting to the Matrix usurps the Device & creates a Persona in its place. By that train of thought...a Commlink would not be able to be slaved to a Deck unless someone was not using it. This would include AR.

Is there anything I am missing in this?

Assassin PDF? For Shadowrun? Never heard of it... what is its Name?

He might be talking about Way of the Samurai

Ahhh... That one I have.

Nope. The Assassin's Primer.