Drivethru RPG link here.

Start grabbin' your guns and blowin' shit up!

(can't get it now; will have to get a couple of days from now)

Any word on when we can find it in meatspace?

I just took a quick look at the table of contents in the preview.

Pi-Tac is Personal Integrated Tactical Network. I was wondering about that from a preview before. I'm curious to see what it does in 5th edition.

"Gear Qualities" for Counterfeit, Defective, and Hot. I'm hoping I can apply one of those to the Ares Venture in my T-Bird build and make it cheaper. I'm not sure why they are at the end of the explosives chapter in the table of contents.

I'm not sure when I can buy the book. Anyone picking up the pdf now want to let me know what's generally up with these things? Anything really cool in the book that's unexpected?

Give people time man; it's going to be a bit before the in-depth analysis that DS is so fond of are out in the wild. And especially since skim-throughs can be taken wildly out of context.

I'm reading through right now so don't yet have answers for you BlackJaw. However I would just like to put out the first thing that caught my eye so far:

Weapon Attachement- Underbarrel Chainsaw.

Groovy.

Edit: A quick skimthrough of PI-Tac yields the answer that it is Not Meant For Starting Runners By Any Means.
Seems like it's an extremely expensive (500k - 1M) tacnet that gives set bonuses to users. It's a hardware based tacnet so no cobbling sensors etc together but the prohibitive cost and availability (starts at 18!!) seem to imply that you're not meant to have one until quite a ways into a campaign.

A note on the hotly discussed milspec armor, it now has the restrictive quality which halves the movement rate and forces fatigue rolls when running.

Additionally, though, it looks like a "buy it once for the entire team" thing. So it's expensive as all hell, but the whole team's putting the money in for it.

Also, some of these new interrupts are really cool.

Is it still absurdly, insanely cheap?

Somehow I don't think the movement speed reduction is going to matter. If you're in the market for 23 Hardened Armor, you're not really concerned with how fast you can trot. And since 5E movement is based directly on Agility, that means this limit is least effective against those who pump their Agility - who are exactly the kind of characters who will benefit most from this armor, since Agility is favored by people who want to kill stuff.

So the only real difference is that now the fragile glass cannon assassins with Body as a dump-stat can pay half the cost of the cheapest cyberdeck in the game to get themselves literally the single set of best armor in the game, shrugging off almost all man-portable weaponry better than the biggest Troll in the world ever could on their own, all while blowing away the opposition left and right. And they can even Sneak in it. (The fluff even states these suits come standard with a "modern electro-chromatic covering for best camo").

Plus, most Runners try to avoid combat if they can, and they only ever really end up running when the drek hits the fan. At that point, most people are going to prefer being bulletproof to being able to run a bit faster - after all, it's easy to escape from people who can't hurt you, and even easier once you kill them all with impunity safe inside your god armor.

~Umi

Might want to check out the Bulls-Eye Double-Tap/Burst Called Shot. Depending on how you read it, you can REALLY crank your AP, up to something like -18 or -21 (if "base AP" is factoring the benefit of APDS; given the way the math works out for a number of weapons otherwise, I'm assuming that's the case).

...and I should note that back in Arsenal, milpec armor was CHEAPER then the SR5 versions. And as far as I know, I didn't hear stories of everyone on the team buying up milpec armor "because why wouldn't you?"

Heh,

If CanRay hated tasers stunning over and over, he better hope they never implement the called shot effects on specific body parts for SRR because a mob of hobos doing this will ruin your day.

Eye Gouging, Kneecapping, Ear Clap, Monkey reaching for Peaches (hitting below the belt), Slitting Throats ... now this is good old fashioned dirty fighting.

You should also note that back in Arsenal, a full suit of Milspec armor had 5-7 fewer points of armor, had less capacity, was limited by Body x3 for Encumbrance rather than "you can wear any single 'suit' of armor without penalty", lacked a built in Holster and Gear Access, didn't give a bonus to Intimidation rolls, and you could hack with cheap commlinks instead of absurdly priced cyberdecks, so comparing the costs of the two gave you a very different ratio of cost.

Oh, yeah, and one more -tiny- detail - MilSpec wasn't HARDENED ARMOR in 4E.

*drops the keyboard and walks off stage*

~Umi

That certainly saved a 20 page thread here.

When has that ever stopped us?

Am a little surprised that all it costs for jumping up from Heavy Security Armor (not hardened) to Hardened Mil Spec costwise is just 5k and of course that harder Availability.

Wonder if they did it so we can not whack Red Samurai and hock their armor for big profits?

That was never the issue. It's whether a holdout pistol can use it, which still remains unanswered, LOL. (Tongue in cheek, of course)

P.S. The Medium and Heavy Hardened MilSpec armor looks bad ass.

Well, having glanced through it at lunchtime, this definitely doesn't look great. I mean, we've got repetition of a lot of the usual weapons and features, without much apparent care for balance or logic (mono-garotte, 18F availability, COMBAT mono-chainsaw, I repeated COMBAT-specific mono-chainsaw, availability 9R...), the face-palm-worthy armour (somehow, chainmail, which IRL is 100% incapable of stopping any kind of bullet at all, has AV8 against bullets... almost the same as armour vest! Similarly padded bloody leather is AV7... let's not even start on the hardened armor), then there's the tactics chapter, where you have to score ludicrous numbers of successes to pull of even very basic combat maneuvers that I guarantee anyone who has ever played a squad shooter can pull off (let alone someone who has ever done paintball!), then we go on to witness the majestic procession across the African plains of a gigantic herd of called shots, weird shots and inexplicable shots, each and every one with it's own rules, frequently using the same terminology to indicate different penalties and the like! Many of these shots are very poorly described, to the point where it is completely unclear what they do, and some of them have some very unclear rules associated with them!

Hopefully a deeper look finds some better stuff!

i want the meatspace version

i hope there's a write-up for the martial arts skills an such. translating the 4e rules doesn't work well. oooboy!

They do introduce techniques and such... looks fun

I'm really interested to see if there are rules for getting discounts on items or lowering availability.

The Gear Qualities (Counterfeit, Defective, Hot) or Positive Quality: Brand Loyalty?

If they do lower the price, do the rules explicitly work or not work on vehicles?

The Ares Venture in my T-Bird Build is crazy expensive and I can use all the help I can get on it.

Ugh... those repair rules. Really no point for vehicles to have such massive condition monitors considering the cost to repair and cumulative penalties.

For instance, the cost to repair a Ford Americar from an average single successful 1-net hit AK-97 attack is about 9,600 in parts. Not even counting the labor.

Sorry Blackjaw, the Gear Qualities are penalties that can be assigned to gear so that the GM can make the runner's life more difficult, not grades like used 'ware.

Brand Loyalty gives you a bonus for using one brand of gear (and a penalty for using out-of-brand). No discounts.

Discounts are available for armor (Lightly Worn) though the requirements and penalties for that one are a bit weird.

Nuts. I was hoping for something like Gremlins 2, 20% off.

Well, with no weapon modification rules and no discount tricks I can use, I'm suddenly much less interested.

Oh this is going to suck for a $400,000 Body 16 Ares Venture isn't it?

That depends, is 40,000 per box of damage a problem for you? (I would think that yes, it probably is).

Granted, you've got pretty solid armor, but if you're facing something like a lightning bolt spell or an elemental attack from a F6 spirit, you're probably going to be taking a few boxes of damage. Each one: 40,000

wait . . 9600 nuyen?
isn't that a car that only cost about 10k? O.o

The Americar costs 16K, each box of damage costs 1600 to repair (10% of the cost of the vehicle). An AK-97 is, on average, going to do 6 boxes of damage to a Ford Americar on a successful one-net hit.

Hmm... I didn't get a chance to look too closely this morning. Did they introduce costs to repair matrix damage? Hopefully it isn't the same rate. That would get rather expensive for our decker friends.

Well I'm suddenly thrilled I have a connection 1 / loyalty 5 mechanic contact. A personal rating 5 (Serious) favor costs $500 and I don't even have to negotiate to get him to do it. "Hey Moose! I bought you this bottle of high-end 20 year old Scotch with my pay from that run. Oh by the way the Valravn got kinda shot up on the run. You want take a look a that for me later?"

I'm not sure if that would supersede the parts and labor costs or not. Is that a Missions thing?

It's an interpretation of the Contact rules on page 389: "Connection Rating x 1,000¥ for goods or services rendered; they’ll probably lop off up to their Loyalty x ten percent if you’ve been nice to them. This doesn’t have to be a straight-up monetary donation—you could take them out for a nice dinner, or buy them a new commlink, put in some work at their favorite charity, get their apartment painted, or something else they’d like—but very few people are allergic to cash."

We're getting off topic a bit. I'll go start a new thread on this idea.

Which is why I am wondering if Fix and Reinforce from Street Magic (pgs 172 & 173)are going to be in the forthcoming Magic Splat books, but a Mage Mechanic may be a handy thing


Each hit on Fix can repair 1 Structural or 1 box damage for a device. OR is gonna cut into this, but every bit helps.

Each hit on Reinforce adds 1 to Structure and Armor for a device and quickening this wouldn't be too shabby with a bit of reagent juggling.

Object Resistance Table.

Yeah, we did say OR will cut into this, but a Mage can also pull in Foci (Magic Wrench foci?) and Edge for this.

Personally I always thought Fix should get a bonus against OR since it is trying to restore the object to its' original state (or pattern), but that's just me.

It's not ideal but better than a poke in the eye that the repair costs are currently alone.

Not a single vehicle or drone? Please tell me there was some major screwup in generating the TOC, which somehow replaced the entries for drones with line upon line of weird variations of "kick him in the nuts"

Nope (sorry)
Vehicles and Drones will appear in the Rigger Book (don't know what it'll be called)
You might have to convert SR4A items

HokaHow
Medicineman

honestly, even if you only manage to repair 1-2 hits with those spells, it's pretty worthwhile.

now, you can pretty much expect a 15+ dice pool opposing you, so don't try this without a pretty respectable dicepool of your own... but a chargen magician can come out with 7 magic, a rating 3 power focus, 7 skill, and a specialization if they really want (alternately, you could have a rating 4 spellcasting focus, but that's a heck of a lot less versatile for only 1 extra die). throw in an appropriate mentor spirit and you could be looking at 21 dice without seriously gimping yourself (starting with 7 skill and attribute is expensive, but not exactly an awful choice). for some situations, you can even throw in an aid sorcery task from a spirit, or potentially even use ritual spellcasting (although this requires you have friends with ritual spellcasting, and costs more reagents - but probably not several hundred nuyen worth of reagents, even if you really go crazy on reducing the drain). mix in edge as required, and there is theoretical potential your GM would approve a "special work area" for casting spells in your lifestyle (hey, feng shui is a real thing that actually works in shadowrun).

and again, such a character isn't exactly gimping themselves. neither 7 magic nor 7 spellcasting are bad things to have, a power focus is good for lots of things anyways as well, the only somewhat dubious options are the mentor (right now, manipulation spells are pretty meh unless you are focused on mind control) and the specialization (but you can have multiple specializations anyways now).

Vehicles will be in Rigger 5(or Run something or other, as the naming theme seems to go)

Run Away?

Da Red Unz Run Fasta


But seriously, what the fuck is this? It looks like a list of every secret combo from a beat 'em up and not like an RPG

Location, Location, Location. 112
Ankle 112
Ear 112
Eye 113
Foot 113
Forearm 113
Genitals 113
Gut 113
Hand 113
Hip 114
Jaw 114
Knee 114
Neck 114
Shin 114
Shoulder/Upper Arm 114
Sternum 114
Thigh 115
Vehicle 115
Ammo Whammy! 115
Bellringer 116
Bulls-Eye Double-Tap/Burst 116
Down the Gullet 116
Extreme Intimidation! 116
Finger Popper 116
Flame On! 116
Flash Blind 116
Here’s Muck in Your Eye! 116
Hit ‘em Where It Counts 116
Light ’em Up 116
More Muck, Better Duck! 117
Nasty Finger Prick 117
On Pins and Needles 117
Ricochet Shot 117
Shake, Rattle, and BOOM! 117
Shake, Rattle, and Pop! 117
Shredded Flesh 117
Spinner 117
Tag! 117
That Hit the Spot! 117
Through and Through … and Into 117
Troll Finger Popper 118
Up the Ante 118
Warning Shot 118
More actions! 119
Aimed Burst 119
Ballestra 119
Brain Blaster 119
Clinch 119
Charge Attack 120
Double-Tap 120
Escape 120
Enhanced Suppression 120
Evade 120
Finishing Move 120
Flechette Suppressive Fire 120
Flying Kick 121
Full Offense 121
Half Sword 121
Haymaker 121
Herding 121
Iaijutsu 122
Interception 122
Kip-Up 122
Playing Possum 122
Pouncing Dragon 122
Pre-emptive Block 122
Pre-emptive Dodge 122
Pre-emptive Parry 122
Push/Shove/Sacrifice Move 123
Reading the Defense 123
Subduing 123
Throw Person 123
Touch-Only Attack 124
Interrupt Actions 124
Block 124
Counterstrike 124
Dive for Cover 124
Dodge 124
Full Defense 124
Parry 124
Reversal 124
Right Back At Ya! 124
Run for Your Life/Dive on the Grenade 125
Sacrifice Throw 125
Riposte 125
Protecting the Principle 125
Shadow Block 125

??????? WTF?
You have GOT to be kidding me...

If that is WRT bodyguarding someone, I think it is supposed to be Principal

He's not kidding either. I only skimmed the book but it doesn't live up, in my mind, to Fields of Fire or Cannon Companion. Arsenal wasn't bad either. I feel like I got fleeced for $25 so far.

The listing for an interrupt action "Run for Your Life/Dive on the Grenade" seems like it might help out with the "grenades are too deadly" problem. Well half of it anyway.

Basically what it does is let you take an Interrupt Action for -5 Initiative and move away from either a Grenade or Indirect Area Effect Spell. You can use any and all available movement.

So, if you throw a grenade at someone's feet, they can spend 5 initiative points to sprint away from it. For most Shadowrunners (who are going to have at least a 3 or 4 agility, that means a minimum of 12 to 16 meters of movement (assuming they haven't already moved this turn.)

$25 for a PDF? You have got to be kidding.

Wait til Run & Gun 2 comes out, where you can get bonus for doing Combo attacks,

ie You can get a bonus if you do Location: Eye, then Groin to double them over and finish with Haymaker (now blinded and stunned they don't see it coming) to send them sailing.

Don't forget to have a team mate with Leadership yell 'FINISH HIM' for an bonus on the final attack.

No sah!

so it does not help much then?

On the contrary - it means that before, if I have a motion sensor high explosive grenade, and I put it at your feet, you take 16P, 2AP. Now, if you haven't moved, and you have the 5 initiative to spend, a human with an agility of 4 can run 16 meters away from the grenade - and even 9 meters away means that the blast damage is reduced from 16 to 0.

Also Counterstrike is back as a -7 Init Interrupt Action, otherwise looks pretty close to its original form, beat the attackers test with an Unarmed + Reaction test to avoid the attack and immediately do damage back in Bruce Lee fashion.

Flawless Victory!!!!