I think the main problem here is, that obviously "karma" at character generation is something different than "karma" earned during game play... it probably would have been smart to choose a different name for one or the other.

-CJ

And than there are of course still weapons in the book, that are manufactured by Ultimax (a SMG iirc) and Nitama (the Sporter pistol) respectively.

-CJ

Or, you know, just use the same term and apply the costs identically pre/post game. But obviously no one would do THAT.

If it's to balance MysAds then why 'punish' the Cyberware dude or the Edgetacular skill monkey by making them pay double too?

It just adds another layer of 'order of operations' to character gen which the multiplicative vs linear karma vs. character build points already makes a headache.

Why should they pay double? I advocate a removal of the double cost and pay exactly what you are paying in Chargen. It is Karma afterall...

I'll be the first to say that I have often been confused by some system's strange need to make post-creation character options more expensive than at character creation.

This would be a legitimate argument if I said that balancing Mystic Adepts was the only benefit. But in point of fact I said there were multiple benefits, of which balancing Mystic Adepts is just one. And thus this is not a legitimate argument.

Why? It serves to discourage min-maxing if done right, because if you leave a gaping flaw in your design to put points elsewhere, it will take forever to cover it with karma in-game.

But that pretty much happens on it's own, to be honest. You really want to fix the Body 1 that totally made sense at character creation, but it also takes 10 karma to bust up your skill group to get a 5 in your character's main skill and you still need 2 more karma for the specialization you "need" to really kick ass. And you know what? One extra attribute die isn't really that much difference...

Everything is a trade-off and those newly discovers holes will typically cover themselves up nice and slow all by themselves.

Karma Specialization is 7 Karma, not 2 - What the hell is THAT?
But to be fair, now you can have multiple specialties for a Skill in SR5. Not sure WHY that is, but there you go.

Sorry, examples from 4th Edition. But thanks for yet another reinforcing statement to stay away from 5th Edition.

The same is the problem with the new Hit Locations, and the effect of these.

The worst one is the effect Stunned, which has can be achieved by hitting 11 different locations, but it will have 7 different effects.

Instead of having one effect for being stunned, which players and GMs could actually remember, they now have to look up the effect, based of where the character was hit, and then make a test (Body+Willpower (1), (2), (3) or (4), or a Composure (2) test), and the apply the effect (-5 or -10 Initiative penalty).

Talk about streamlining the system

I know exactly how you feel.

Why do you then have to keep commenting on SR5? There is no chance that you will actually manage to change the game, and you have obviously decided it doesn't work for you, but yet you pop up in every SR5 thread, and spread your negative vibes.

I seriously can't follow your way of thinking. If I was you I would stay well away from anything SR5 related.

@Larsine:
Hi and welcome to dumpshock!
THIS IS WHAT WE DO OVER HERE.

I can't understand why you're surprised people are commenting on 5E in a 5E splatbook release thread.

Kind of like what a drek-load of us did with the SR4 reboot.

I am back because I am still on the fence about SR5 as a whole. I guess something I am hoping to see that has not been done yet is for those of us who aren't committed, what exactly is Run & Gun adding to SR5 really?

Snarkiness, an officiel:"yeah, we heard you don't like limits, so as an optional rule, why don't you just play without them?", a kind of sort of but not really hit location system etc.

So, the Sonic Rifle, deals 7S damage, ignores armour, resisted with Willpower, yadda yadda.

It also causes Disorientation and Nausea.

Disorientation is applied as normal.

How does Nausea work? The core says it causes 3 turns of no action if the power of the toxin is > willpower...but there's no toxin. Nausea also causes increased wound penalties. But it's that incapacitation for 3 rounds we're really after here.

How does the Sonic Rifle work in regards to nausea?

power is probably the same as damage.

although that makes the sonic rifle pretty danged scary against anyone who doesn't have a 6+ willpower. which is most people.

Sadly, I cannot. My GM has transitioned to SR5. So, I keep looking at the threads, in the vain hope that it will get better.
Besides, It is my given right to complain about something I do not like. And as long as I am not vitriolic about it, it works.
And I do get some entertaining ideas from time to time.

Wonder if anyone at Catalyst did that math.


Of course they didn't.

Ever seen a Spirit hurl out it's non existing guts?
No? Want to? This is the Gun for you!

I think it is probably supposed to be similar to the Fichetti Pain Inducer, which seems to set the modified DV as the DV to compare for effects (although with an accuracy of 6(!), it seems relatively easy to stage the DV to a point that no one would be able to avoid the effects). With many things, both weapons should have probably been based on the same general rule set rather than making them ever so slightly different.

Assuming it's the same wording as in 4th ("Targets hit by a Screech beam suffer the effects of disorientation and nausea"): If it says they suffer the effects with no ifs and buts, then obviously it tells you to apply the effects and not the bits about resisting it. Yeah, it makes the getting hit quite powerful. The session where this question came up still was the only instance somebody used the sonic rifle

The "Power" of the "Toxin" of a Sonic Rifle is indeed equal to the damage, but I always understood it to specifically be the damage taken after resistance - akin to how a lot of drugs only have a secondary effect if the Power remaining after resistance has a chance to drop the Power a bit meets a certain threshold.

The drawbacks of the Sonic Rifle are that it is very hard to conceal (+6), it uses non-standard "ammunition" to operate, it can't take the full range of accessories and modifications, and of course it operates off of a very limited Exotic Ranged Weapon skill.

~Umi

You may not use it but I'm a big fan of the non-lethal options. The glue sprayer in R+G, the nets etc. all appeal.

Plus a vomit gun? Gotta have one of those, even if only as a party trick. I need something to spend my Mage money on afterall...

Not just non-standard, but also decidedly non-legal...

It's always funny when the weapon is Restricted but its only ammo is Forbidden, LOL

To be fair, that does technically happen in the real world.

For example, in the UK you can own old WWII era tanks and even drive them on certain roads (as long as you use rubber treads), but you wannt try getting your hands on ammunition for the main gun? Good luck!

~Umi

Vehicles are different, however, as without weapons a jet still flies perfectly well. Same for a helicopter. It's more like "I can legally buy this handgun but I can't legally buy the ammo for it".

The gun has to be disabled, actually. Permanently. Then you can drive the tank - rubber threads provided - anywhere you want if you get it through whatever the UK has for traffic agency. But tanks are extremely expensive to drive - they make a Hummer look like a Prius in comparison.

It seems to exist for 2 reasons.

1 you want to play a natural talent who picked up a maneuver without training.
2. you have a hard on about getting 2 maneuvers from different martial arts at char gen.

I'd still bump it down to 5 points as coming out of your positive qualities pool is a pretty big hit in itself.

In the core, adding a hot sim to a commlink increases availability to F. All cyberdecks are availability R. All cyberdecks come with hot sim by default.

Yeah, but that's not really weird in the same way. One is an aftermarket modification, and the other is a built in feature - seems pretty reasonable that they'd be covered by different regulations.

Yup, considering one of the only uses for a hot-sim commlink is BTL. Cyberdecks, as security tools, have a theoretical performance need for it.

But again, the main point being that it makes little to no sense for a normal device to be more legal than the supplies needed to make it something other than an extremely large, extremely expensive paper weight. A good example of this done correctly would be the catalyst stick and stealth rope from the BBB, both are forbidden even though the catalyst stick presumably has no other uses than dissolving stealth rope.

it ignores armour and you can stage the damage up, as i understand it.

sure, you can stage it down... with only your willpower. so, if you have, say, 6 willpower, and are resisting an attack from someone who only scored one net hit, you have decent odds of not being incapacitated since you will, on average, roll 2 hits on your resistance (thus making the damage "only" 6).

if you have only 5, or if they scored 2 net hits on their attack roll, your chance to not be made helpless goes down considerably.

looks like a high willpower just became even more important in SR5 to me. if you don't have a 6, and you get hit once by this thing, you're pretty much out of the fight. even with a 6, you don't have good odds... better be a dwarf.

edit: not to mention, that's for getting hit *once* by this thing. if you get hit a couple of times, and aren't KO'd by the nausea, you'll probably be KO'd by the stun damage.

I wonder if you'd still be vomiting once you pass out from the Stun damage? Choking victims everywhere...

Mix in some atomised ghoul mist and you get vomiting undead for that added gross factor.

IMHO the argument that treating aftermarket mods and native features differently would be unrealistic really lacks some basic reflection. In every field of life there are things you can buy off the shelf but not manufacture yourself without some serious red tape. Most common case I can think of would be buying booze vs. distilling it yourself...

yeah, but there's 2 reasons for that:

1) the government taxes alcohol like crazy. getting alcohol that they haven't taxed is frowned on in much the same way that you not paying taxes would be.

2) and also, they can spin it so it looks like they care more about your safety, not your money.

So what makes you think the corps aren't interested in muscling out their competition in the exact same way? Instead of wanting to tax the manufacturer, they want to control the market share.

Most after-market mods are created by companies other than the manufacturer in question - if the original maker offered the options you wanted at a price you were willing to pay, why would you get the stuff after-market instead?

~Umi

out of curiosity, who exactly do you think you are buying the parts for those after-market mods from?

who do you think is selling all those very very expensive pieces of equipment that you need to make those after-market mods?

who do you think probably owns the building where the workshop is located, and collects monthly rent?

heck, more often than not, who do you think owns the store where you get those after-market mods done?

the megas aren't worried that you'll go to their competition. much like with many major brands today, they own their competition as well. except it's even worse than today, because there are no laws to prevent the megas from setting up a monopoly.

that mom and pop shop you like so much? who do you think owns their mortgage? if they were *really* not sending money to the megas in some way, the megas would crush them ruthlessly. their shop would either be destroyed, or taken over. even the *criminal* shops are pretty much still selling you megacorporate products. you're using an ares predator, and if you installed an after-market silencer, it was probably done by someone who learned at an ares school, did the job using ares parts, etc.

i assure you, the megas are not worried about the after-market modifications industry taking money from them. they have dealt with that by *being* the after-market modifications industry, as well as the pre-market modifications industry.

Apparently the Nightshade and Moonsilver lines of armor have built in fashionable lighting systems, but for some reason they cannot turn those lights on without connecting to the Matrix.

Also, Bunker Gear wireless bonus: "+1 dice pool bonus to Social Tests to calm or pacify an individual at the site of an emergency."

I mean, I can understand that a firefighter's uniform is calming, but does it really help that to be on wifi?



-k

Ahah, I also note that the Second Skin entry is immediately following the Zoé armors in R&G.

It does not help, however, that the armor names are using the same font style and size as the manufacturer names in the descriptive text. This is also inconsistent - all the Zoé armor names use the same font size, style, and underlining as the manufacturer, but the very next set of entries for the Ares Victory armors have the individual armor lines use a smaller font size and no underlining.

Hmm... The Custom Fit (Stack) rules on pg 59 could be interpreted to mean the "maker" is whoever you are getting to fit the armor onto you, not the actual manufacturer. Which would mean that you could stack it with ANY Custom Fit armor from any manufacturer, as long as you have the same armorer do all the custom fitting. This probably needs to be clarified.


-k

Are you forgetting that the megacorps compete with each other?

If Shiawase can sell DIY Aftermarket Kits for Ares product, and they offer them cheaper than the Ares equivalent, they cut into Ares' market share.

~Umi

That is because there is no battery to power them. They're being powered by the ambient radio waves from the Matrix.

Or magic, it doesn't matter. What matters is that a hacker can explode a VIP's dress while they're giving a speech during a executive ball, giving your face a chance to swoop in and "save" the ball and win some brownie points with the hostess.

sure, but in general, ares is the leader in guns and gun accessories. it's kinda their thing. ares does worry about making sure they stay on top, but they're not worried about aftermarket mods vs pre-market mods; situationally, they love that.

i mean, if you're gonna blow 10k on a shop's worth of tools to customize your gun, thus saving yourself, say, 500 nuyen in labour... they're happy to sell you the shop instead.

they do worry about other megas taking market share, but that has nothing to do with when the gun is modified; the point is that ares isn't losing money to after market modifications, because they're still perfectly able to make money on those, too.

the point brought up was that the megas wouldn't like aftermarket mods because they lose money; that is false. if the megas were regulating it, they would only want to regulate who you can buy it from (ie the mega that makes the rules would make a rule that you could only buy from that mega).

now, if the argument was that governments care about it because it's easier to regulate what specific combinations of stuff is sold when it's sold as a finished product, and therefore they restrict parts of things that could be combined to make something they consider undesirable, that would be an argument that i could see. but honestly, if there's any pressure from the megas at all, it's most likely for the politicians to make sure the local law enforcement knows to look the other way when the mega is selling the stuff you're not allowed to own through black market channels.

an alternate argument i could see being plausible is that something being illegal can drive up the sell value of something. in other words, the megas might be creating artificial supply shortages (or at least, the appearance of them) so that they can sell their stock for more money.

The more amusing thing is that if you're in a burning building or similar disaster area there is a good chance of having an increased Noise count. If the Noise count hits 3 you can't even use the Wireless anyway meaning it won't have its calming effect in major disaster areas.

Why would they assume it WASN'T hot or tagged in some way?

Standard operating procedure for all new gear should be a thorough off site examination and purge, followed by six months of wifi shielded storage with weekly sessions under an RFID burner.

I may be channeling Old Man Jones again.


-k