What build do you have in mind that can succeed in starting by himself/herself in the middle of an Ares facility after being made, with no guns, and HTR teams approaching? [Shadowrun fourth edition, all sourcebooks]

My GM joked about giving me this punishment and thinks I won't be able to accomplish it, seeing as how I am completely new to Shadowrun, and relatively new to tabletops in general (but having so much fun). So when I found this awesome forum, which has already been able to explain so much already with a quick search here and there, I thought "What a great place to ask!"

In all, I would really like to take my GM up on his offer, I think it would be funny if I were able to outsmart him (by letting you guys outsmart him, admittedly).

Thanks in advance!

P.S Oh and I asked him if I can have magic and drones, he said yes. So that's a start!

Divination. You have already foreseen this situation. You are in full control of the Ares facility and its armaments. The HTR thinks they are coming to rescue you.

TIL you can use Divination in Shadowrun. Huh.

That'll throw my GM for a loop.

How much karma do we have?
Is there a background count in this facility?
Can you burn Edge, for “Hand of God”?


The easy way would be to create a spirit character and wait for the HTR team to drop on you, at the last moment you let your spirit go back in his nativ metaplane.
Something similar could work with a KI. Just max the KI for infiltration and exploit.

And if you get enough karma, you always can build a melee mystic adept with spirit pact, possession tradition and canalization.

There is no starting build that will do what you're asking, unless the GM is a moron, or allows you to start accelerated. Sure, you could do it with a small army of drones, or a handful of powerful spirits, or... but you simply won't be powerful enough with a standard starting character (or most higher characters, really).

Sorry, forgot to say that we start with 500 BP for characters. As for background count, I'm gonna go ahead and say no. As in magic will work as normal (which is a background count of what? One?).

Edge? I don't think so, its supposed to be my punishment, so max edge for your character, and no "Hand of God" unfortunately.

mage with shapechange. Turn into a roach or something and get out as a bug. Real simple. Buff up your stealth skill while you're at it and you should be fine.

If the object is to get out a tough spot, play a Free Spirit (Runners Companion + Street Grimoire I think?).

You can drop into the astral metaplanes and just vanish from the earth, and appear safely somewhere else. It's basically the nearest thing to teleporting in Shadowrun.

The typical trouble with being a Free Spirit is getting into a place covered in magical wards, but if the described scenario starts with you already there... well that's an easy out for a Free Spirit.

Well, with 250 points in base stats and 250 more to toss around, you could make one hell of an adept. The secret in any "caged animal" scenario like this is mobility. You need to keep the teams roving around because if they fix your position, they can squish you like a bug in a slowly tightening fist. You need to be able to hit them fast, get right into the middle of those sons a bitches so they can't just open up on your character without running the risk of chopping down their homies, and scoot when it suits the situation. You give them range in tight corridors and they'll chew you into hamburger.

To be honest, if my earlier Parkour Adept had an extra 50 points in stats and 50 points in extra goodies, I could make him an absolute and complete Death Machine™.

And I would nonchalantly ask the GM, "So if the normal cap at 400 points for skill groups is 4, does this mean I can have skill groups at 5 with this guy since he's 500 points?"

i feel like a proper pornomancer build could just talk their way out.

Just be sure he's equipped with a pizza delivery outfit and an empty box with a hole in the bottom labeled "Big Sausage Pizza". Should be easy.

I was thinking Face too, even if not so extreme an execution

Pixie, Mystic Adept , with maxed Infiltration Skill, Chameleon Suit ,Summoning an Air Spirit with concealement.
Now You see him, now you don't

with an unseen Dance
Medicineman

Carpet Bombing works for Pixies, though.

generally yes (not if the Pixie is high enough up in the Air) but....

in their own facility ?
If they don't now where mr"Unseen Pixie" is ?
I doubt that

with a doubtfull Dance
Medicineman

Guy with a nuke hardwired to his EEG.

"Hay, like, you really want to just let me leave, yah?"




-k

How about saturation Bug Bombs then? Or an Ares Bug Fogger System?
I mean really, Pixies are small.

ala John Crichton. Isn't it glorious?

Depends on whether it is at the end of the fiscal year and Accounting has just told Mr. Knight he could use a writeoff or two.

Magician with good Charisma, a nice spell list, and a very solid TM connection. Shapechange has been mentioned, but you´ll want a low body stat so you can do small critters. Try an elf. Also get Physical Mask to leave looking like another employee. Your technomancer friend will be able to hack the comlink and provide verifying information if you are questioned by the HTR team. Charisma will help with talking, too. Spatial sense (the one having you know your way around) will also come in handy. Since you´ll be sustaining several spells, get a bunch of Sustaining foci so your dicepools keep being useful. Are you allowed to initiate and grab Masking/Advanced Masking/Flexible Signature?

My last Mystic Adept would be perfect for such things, though he is definitely NOT a starting Character.

Raven? Really? (Just finished reading the book.)

The free spirit is the one I'd use, though how effective it is depends on how the char gen system is interpreted. The whole char gen system in that book is horribly broken, so you either end up with superman or robin jr. depending on what the GM decided and what of the various interpretations he wants to use.

But even the least capable free spirit can just turn off materialization and leave via the astral. Then, if the FS is wimpy, tell the GM you'd like to create a real character. If he's superman, then just go with it.

Combining the Juryrigger quality and a fine sense for deadly (or, even better, incapacitating) traps could also come in handy.

In one run, the GM took away all our gear. I've been quite fond of the implanted monowhip ever since.

While I did have a build capable of stealing a gun off an enemy and shooting his way out, I think the pornomancer is your best bet. If you really want to twist the knife a bit, make a leadermancer with Commanding Voice. You can literally order people to get out of your way.

well, no, if the goal is just to escape, the free spirit is pretty much a free automatic win because of the metaplanar shortcut. it was actually my first thought, but someone already suggested it.

the pornomancer was mostly just a suggestion under the assumption that the GM is probably going to require a metahuman. but if the free spirit option is available, it's definitely the best bet. there's no dice rolling involved or anything even, so there isn't even that miniscule chance that your ~35 dice don't generate enough hits.

the free spirit may suck royally after the specific scenario, but it can definitely escape.

I guess it depends on what your goal is: simply escape? If so, a free spirit of any kind automatically succeeds just by releasing their Materialization and returning to their native Metaplane.

If a free spirit is off the table, then I'd go with MedicineMan's "Can't see me!" pixie build or any shapechange into an insect.

You can also make an AI. That would completely throw your GM for a loop, since all the HTR teams in the world are utterly useless when there's nothing to shoot. That's almost as good as a Free Spirit in terms of escapetitude. If there's no way off the local Matrix, however, then there's also no way on to it, which means you're free to take the motherfucker over with all the cheesiest building options available, secure in the knowledge that you can't be rofflestomped by the unending horde of Ares security hackers and IC pouring in from Ares Matrix Overwatch and GOD or whatever.

Then you can just hijack a vehicle connected to the local grid and vamoose, after you've used the drones to murder everybody.

Even if the free spirit gets shot down he escapes when he reforms on the astral, though you should avoid it as it is really costly.

I'm curious to know why you are being 'punished'. Aside from what this might tell me, in the following I assume the GM is fair and plays his NPCs intelligently. I also assume that he knows the rule books well enough to be confident in his ability to counter anything you throw at him.

I strongly agree with the general tendency in the answers above to avoid combat. A well played team of NPCs will always win a protracted firefight, whether magic is involved or not. You can't win that way.

Talking your way out is a better option, but I suspect this situation precludes success that way, too. A combat team won't negotiate with you, they will capture you and hold you till their pornomancer comes to pick your mind clean.

I believe evading contact is your best way to go. An AI sounds interesting, but the Matrix is my weakest sphere of SR knowledge. So I vote for the Free Spirit as well. Materialization, rather than Possession, though that could be fun, too. There are specifics, though.

The two complex action escape back to the home plane is so obvious, the GM must have a dodge around that. Now, I can't think of a guaranteed way to prevent this action, as others have said, but there could be something the GM has thought up. For example, this being Ares, they have experience in metaplanar actions. So, maybe they have your metaplane known and covered and are waiting there for you to return. Maybe there is shit going down there and you have come here to the facility that is the source of the trouble to nip things in the bud. Whatever PC you might choose to build, the GM is going to have to have a story as to why you are in this fix in the first place. That story could/should be able to deal with the easiest ways to evade the problem the GM has set for you.

So, let's assume the Free Spirit PC can't just run home. Which means he/she/it (let's go with it) needs to sneak out. So I would give it the following traits. I won't flesh the PC out completely, but just pick out the things I can think of that it needs. I also assume that though you get 500 BP, you are subject to the limits of chargen, and since you have no karma to begin, you cannot do things like Initiate.

Give it t least Force 5. Make it 6, so that potential background count of 1 is accounted for. This guarantees you 5 points of spirit powers for your PC and at least 10 points of Immunity to Normal Weapons, so the guys with the guns will have trouble hitting it, should they find it. Its Magic will equal its Force. Take Aura Masking for 3 points, Realistic Form for 0.5 points, and Mutable Form for 1 point. These are essential. The other half point could be Guard, to keep you from glitching on any rolls. If you can use the 6th point, go for something cool. Divining is 1 point, and allows the cheesiness of the Divination metamagic. It's unfortunate that you can't afford Concealment, which is 2 points.

Make sure it's Intuition is as high as possible, too. With Force 6, it is limited to 6. All this is already very expensive. 250 BP to start, with all attributes at 2. Raising Force, Edge and Intuition to 6 each costs an additional 55 BP, so you have already spent 250 + 165 = 415 BP. Add Spellcasting and Counterspelling at rating 5 which cost 40 more BP. Add four spells, Stunbolt, Stunball (if you absolutely must fight), Shattershield and Pulse. These add another 12 BP. So far you have spent 467 BP, but this is the minimum you need to evade with this PC. Go wild with the other 33 BP!

Almost certainly you are being watched by some camera somewhere in the room. Given the wording of the situation, there is no spirit present, otherwise the HTR team would not be coming, it would already be there. Use Pulse to shut off the camera(s) momentarily. This will allow you to dematerialize and rematerialize with Mutable Form as something small and mobile without high level software detecting the difference in the room as you rematerialize. I like spiders.

This is where its spirit powers really come in. With Realistic Form you look to all normal senses like a spider. With Aura Masking, Assensing has to beat Intuition + Magic + Edge = 18 dice. This is reduced to 15 dice in BGC of 1, but the Assensing entity is also hampered. A fair GM is not going to throw unlimited Assensing on everything in the building and then say, "Eventually, something sees you for what you are."

So, as you crawl through the ductwork, sooner or later a spirit or astrally projecting magician will come through and check you out, once. Then you use Edge to add dice and explode the 6s, so you are likely to get around 10 or 11 hits, or save the Edge to reroll misses and get around 13 hits. Highly unlikely the Assensor will detect you. If you absolutely must, blast anything that sees you with Stunbolt/ball and transform again if necessary.

At the perimeter, there will likely be some kind of astral barrier, likely a Ward. That's what Shattershield is for. Use edge here, too, as the Ward can actually be covered by Counterspelling. Once free of the facility, run like hell for cover, changing and morphing as often as necessary to throw the posse off your trail.

Nothing is guaranteed, but this will give your GM a run for his money.

EDIT:

Alternatively, you could materialize as a ream of photocopier paper, and wait a few weeks till the heat is off, screw with a few minds, and then get out.

Rogue AI only inhabiting a Drone-Body in the Maat-World.
As long as you have Matrix-Access, you can simply drop the Body then and there and be out of there.

Oh wow, I am getting a bunch of help from you guys. Some of you are listing things I didn't even know were possible in this game. The more I find out about this game, the more eager I am to play every week.



It was actually a joke punishment, the GM couldn't GM the other week, and I told him we would just play without him, so he said "Fine, this is what next session is going to be then!" But knowing the DM, this could very well be a real punishment later.

Nah, just be sure to bribe him well with his favourite pizza and soda when he turns up next.

It completely depends on the exact situation, but generally speaking the problem is not to have the right build, but to play it correctly.
On the top of my head:

- Physical: Close combat stealthy adept. Try to sneak your way out. If you need, isolate and kill enemies.
- Magic: A spirit with Movement and Concealment to get out quickly. A mask spell to pass off as a scared janitor/a HTR team member (better with some Matrix skills to spoof the matrix aspect as well). Influence spell "I'm not the Shadowrunner you're looking for". Or just summon a rating 12 spirit and raise havoc. Shapechange: "who brought his cat in there?"
- Social: Pretend you are a janitor, an employee, an hostage, a member of the on-site security...
- Hacking: Reroute the HTR team, give them orders 'coming from the top' to stay out of some room or to let someone through.
- Drones: You were never there to begin with, only one of your drone was
- Planning mastermind: The HTR team is here because YOU called it. It's part of the plan.

And then you've got the weird ones:
- Free spirit going back to its metaplane
- AI that's not actually there
- Centaur charging at 450 km/h, or just troll with very high Strength and Body+Armor at 90 km/h
- Character who's actually an undercover Ares agent, or the child of a high ranking Ares manager
- Blue Whale Shapeshifter: "You're surrounded!" "And you're about to get crushed by a giant blue whale!", or rat shapeshifter for a more discreet option.

Just make a Toxic shaman. You're not locked in there with them, they're locked in there with you and your spirits.

*Later on when further Ares backup forces arrive*

Whoa, what the hell happened?

Looks like a herd of elephants ran through here and why does the whole place stink like sushi?

I'd agree a Free Spirit is pretty much designed for this escape, but one could also slap on the Deep Cover Quality on to most any character concept; why pretend to be an employee, when you can actually be one?

Don't forget the small bowl of petunias.

I guess the two ways have been given:
1. Something with concealment and high stealth. So a mage or even a pixie mage.
2. A free spirit and just jump out.

I have to say I love the second option for it reminds me of a lot of strategie/RPG games I played, where teleportation is an possibility.
My most favorite there would be X3 Terran conflict. Just too cool. You took out your main target and some your shields are down to the last 10-15 % your weapons dry and you just hear "jumping".