And yet, if you design with Background Count in mind, it is generally impactful, but not a pain in the ass. And every mage in Shadowrun should be mindful of Background Counts. We have been using it for years to balance out mages and their uberness, ands it works well. I have yet to hear a player (other than those here) complain about it in any meaningful way.

Are you telling me that your Riggers are not stealing their best drones? Easiest way to acquire them, and you don't really care if they get broke.

a small side-point- in cyberpunk 2020, implants reduce one of your social attributes when you get them, but you can also buy treatment to restore that attribute. ergo, by paying twice you can get implants without any real penalty.

shadowrun, by comparison, has no such thing- lost essence is simply lost. if we were to simply add a way to keep an implant while healing essence (and there is a way technically to heal essence when implants are removed already in the system), then we would have a way for those with the cash to get a LOT of ware. as this would not really help the mages any (magic loss when essence loss) the system stays balanced. its just a question of spending even more money to get ware.

and as for riggers stealing drones- i almost never see it happen in-game. the one time i did see it happen, my decker hacked and stole a drone (and then used it to shoot the original owner in the seat of his pants with his own ammo) and the van the drone arrived in. a lot of people seem to just not think about how the system/setting really works, sadly.

Funny thing - I specifically took Astral Hazing on my most powerful mage just so I could learn to cope with BC and I knew basically no magical opposition would be prepared for me.


Carebear.


I actually used crippling BC in one of my games at a pivotal time for story reasons, and my players loved the fact that they all should have died because of it. That's what you get for taking a radiation mage on his home turf of a derelict hospital with a leaking nuclear reactor. All but two of a 6 person team were captured (because I didn't want to outright kill the players) and the remaining guys had to develop 300 BP mercs who were hired to help get their original characters back. The group LOVED it.


Due to some funny writing, Renfield from Running Wild can give you infinite Essence. Just saying.

Indeed, the rigger character I play has only one drone: a small rotodrone used to make sure he will have signal nearly everywhere. Every thing else is stolen on the fly.
But this is not the case of all players.

With my rules, if a character has invested into drones you can still use the fluff explanation that they're actually stolen drones. But players who prefer to play riggers who build their own drones can do so without being at a disadvantage. The end result will be the same, no matter the explanation behind it.

Yeah, generally in my games, once the players are familiar with how background count works, they just plan to deal with it. Same way they plan to deal with not having their full firepower in upscale settings where it would attract attention, or not everything everywhere ever being on the Matrix.

Hrm, yes. I very much like this idea, it's very congruent with what I did WRT character points/Rez invested into morphs and gear in Eclipse Phase. I'm not 100% in love with the way you worded it, but I hope you won't mind if I institute something to this effect.



I treat magic as a permanent investment. If your maximum Magic score falls below your Magic score, you don't lose that point of Magic, you just lose access to it. IE, Billy Magician has Essence 6, Magic 6, and then Shiawase goes and gives him a surprise cyberarm, reducing his Essence to 5. Now he has Essence 5, Magic 6 (5), in standard "augmented" notation - IE, for all intents and purposes his Magic score is putting out at 5, but if his maximum Magic ever goes back up (IE, by getting the surprise cyberarm removed and having essence rejuvenation therapy, or by Initiating,) he can then use the point of Magic he already has, but which was locked away.



The problem with stealing good combat drones is that it almost requires a Run in and of itself, and it tends to get a lot of unhappy people looking out for any sign of that stolen drone. Thus, it can wind up completely distracting from the main point of the game.

Greatly depends upon how good the Rigger/Hacker is, and how selective he is. I always went with a combination of Stolen Drones and Reconstructed drones, with an occasional purchased one for something specific I could not get any other way. Worked out well.

On the note to Cyberpunk vs Shadowrun for Cyberware 'cost' Shadow has the same thing in a different way. Grades of 'ware. You pay more, it costs less essence, or you can get essence holes with upgrading the quality of your cyber.

We just finished Splintered State tonight with the team getting set up and ambushed (trying to avoid spoilers). My guys loved the threat of going down in this one (especially as the Street Sam went down early) and everyone was super jumpy when it looked like the Adept and the Mage were going to drop because of the Risk of Trauma patches and the Risk of hitting Overflow (we use my houserule/conversion from 3rd). They were getting the dice ready to resist magic loss every time I aimed an NPC at them and muttering "This time I know I'm screwed" with a grin on their faces. Was brilliant.

No problem ang I'd be interested in knowing how you used/changed it.

Here is the (currently very WIP) document I'm using.

Danmit, you joined as Anonymous Nyancat, reminding me of the existence of Nyancat, and now I have to listen to Nyancat.

Link, because now all of you have been reminded of the existence of Nyancat.

The biggest difference between the rigger and the Samurai loosing gear is that they can replace it. Sure might take a little bit, but they CAN replace it. SR5 deckers and the cyberdeck... the price tag for that crap is WAY, WAY, WAY too expensive for a 'Runner to have. I still like the idea that you can get a case and put in like 5 or 6 decent commlinks and make a cyberdeck, but no CGL made the "brilliant" decision to make cyberdecks out of gold and diamonds.

Why do people keep talking about SR5 in this thread? I did remember the SR4 tag, didn't I?

Yes, yes I did.

That said, even at SR4 prices, the replacement cost for a Sammy's guns and a hacker's commlink, are literally orders of magnitude apart, especially if the hacker was a dumbshit and didn't have his programs backed up elsewhere. It's just as bad if not worse for the rigger.

A Sammy who loses his "Vera" is probably out, at most, 10K, unless his Vera was one of those apeshit redonkulous guns with high-end commlinks crammed into them for absolutely no discernible reason whatsoever, or was a Thunderstrike Gauss Rifle or something equally crazy.

He can also get himself back up to about 88% combat effectiveness by grabbing a cheap-as-fuck Colt M23 and slapping on a 300 overbarrel smartgun system. Throw in about 2-3 mags of APDS and SnS, and he's back up and running up under 2 grand.

2 grand worth of Commlink does not buy you much commlink. Maybe enough to penetrate a Stuffer Shack, if you're literally FastJack. 2 grand is even less drone, that's in the territory of "spydrones only."

2 grand worth of vehicle is generally "stolen, with the cops still looking for it."

My apologies. My position is even easier to justify then.

Sure replacing a commlink is expensive, but unless you have to have absolutely the bleeding edge of tech you can replace the commlink with a Signal6 / Response 6 custom commlink for 11,000 using off the shelf components. If you can cook your own chips, then you can spend 16,000 for a commlink with Response 6, Signal 6, Simsense Accelerator, Response Enhancer 6, Armor Case 10, and Hardening 6. Expensive as frak in the best of times, nasty in the worst, but doable.

The above does NOT apply if you're wanting a military grade commlink. My personal opinion is that a military grade commlink should be a cybercommlink and put in a cyberleg (full or lower, doesn't matter) with a armor upgrade. People don't shoot for the leg and your hand can get sliced off pretty easy. You also can put armor on top of the cyberleg to make it even harder to damage the commlink.

I've never understood why people upgrade Signal. Get a SatCom and put a fiber optic cable connecting it to your commlink - BAM! Signal 8 for 500 .

That's literally more than the Shadowrun guidelines suggest as the entire team's payment for a whole run which sees you having shoot-outs with vampires, hostile Runners, company men, and if you're really unlucky, Knight Errant.

So that's basically the entire Team writing off a whole run and dipping into the beer money fund, just to get one member of the group back in shape to do their actual job. That's mental, and that's assuming that the hacker has backups of all his high-rating programs.

And the worst part is that, in a lot of cases, the hacker having a white-hot commlink is a boolean pass/fail for your objectives. If the Sammy misses a shot, but doesn't get geeked, he can shoot again next turn, but in a lot of cases, if the hacker triggers an active alert because hi commlink isn't up to snuff (say, because he's being forced to make do with an R3 commlink,) that's it, game over, the system goes on high alert, security spiders start patrolling, the stuff he was trying to hack gets locked down/erased/removed from matrix access.

Because putting a SatCom on your Helmet looks silly.

Nowhere does it say it needs to be positioned A) somewhere where it doesn't move, or B) somewhere with clear LoS. I mean, do you really think you need this attached to a helmet for it to work?

EDIT: And I mean, if that's the way your GM really wants to run it, simply get a 1,000 Shiawase Kanmushi and put a 500 SatCom in that, then place it in your pocket turned on.

Have you actually looked at the description of what the Sat-Link Looks Like?

Includes a Portable Satellite Dish. It would not include it if it was not a requirement. Vehicles (and yes, a Drone is a Vehicle) have different constraints for such things.

Besides, why do you need the Kanmushi in your pocket? Just link to it wirelessly (which happens automatically if you are in the Mesh and it is in range of the Mesh) and you have a Satellite capable transmission. For that matter, you are almost always in the proximity of a Satellite Dish in any City you happen to be in (again, thanks to the Mesh), so it would automatically route that way anyways. You are going through a lot of effort to have world wide communications when you already have such things. The ONLY time you may need a Satellite Uplink is when you are in the middle of a no-mans land (think remote desert/wilderness area) and have need of contacting someone further than your Signal 4-6 Comlink can communicate.

I find descriptions of gear to be secondary to their function, most times - especially when we currently have superior gear with fewer restrictions.

That said: I try never to use the Mesh when at all possible. Everything is done on Hidden mode, encrypted, and direct link. Anything else is far too easy to intercept. That's why I go for signal 8, and that's why I'm directly connected to it and it is encrypted, hidden, and otherwise secure.

Being hacked: ain't nobody got time for that.

Modern Real Life makes no nevermind for Shadowrun.

You can't not use the mesh... If you interact with the Matrix at all, you are using the Mesh, in one form or another.

My Cyberlogician (SR4A) Can't even remember the last time he was actually, successfully, hacked. Happened once or twice, to be sure, but secure measures (Milspec hardware and programs) ensure that the rabble stays out.

Wrong. Or at least, not entirely accurate.

SR4A, page 218, Matrix Topology, second paragraph, first sentence:
So you can in fact have direct contact with your own devices without any interaction with the Mesh, and through encryption and using Hidden settings essentially create a miniature matrix just for your unit.

Which is what I do. Because privacy and OpSec.

Yes, you can have direct contact, however, even a Signal 8 only gives you 100km range (Reality notwithstanding), so anything you are communicating with outside that range (and face it, in Shadowrun, there are a lot of things outside that range that are routinely used, such as Data Searches) must needs be part of the mesh (whether wired or wireless) at some point. Just because you can communicate Point to Point does not mean that your signals do not propagate through the Matrix via the Mesh; you just also happen to communicate point to point as well. You can take steps to minimize that (non-standard Links, Directional Antennae, Super Advanced Encryption Schemes, etc.), but it never eliminates it - after all, even non-standard Links propagate through the Matrix as a whole, otherwise you would never be able to communicate with the Matrix through them.

Opsec is a nice dream, but is never 100% effective. As a Marine, you should understand this. Best laid plans and all that...

When you're rocking that kind of hardware, then you're worth more than the gang bangers some Johnson would hire to create a distraction. The idea that you would get less than 10,000 for a 'Run that a Johnson NEEDS people of the skill level that your characters represent is ludicrous. I mean lets take it from a BEGINNING street sammy. 400 BP (or 750 Karma) gets you someone who is rocking AT LEAST 150,000 in augmentation alone. Hell, my combat medic MAGE is rocking 170,450 in augmentation* and people are saying that someone like him is going to work for a mere 5,000 ? Are you kidding me? No, people that good are working for some serious cash.


* == to be fair, my combat medic has a a lot of cyber for a mage and that damn Synaptic Booster is expensive!

But bear in mind that Humanity Cost in CP2020 was partially random, without a way to compensate for an unlucky high roll players would probably never have dared to install anything interesting

Well, this is the problem with Shadowrun sourcebooks. It always has been and always will be, apparently. The suggested payout for missions is so hilariously low that you can literally do as good as most early missions, for a fraction of the effort and danger, by remotely hacking SUVs and cars and selling them to chop shops.

Well whoever is running the games needs to be a little more realistic about the payouts. Shadowrunners should NOT be over glorified car thieves.

I think the chargen rules have a decent precedent for payouts. The run should pay no less than 5,000 per point of karma it awards, and it should generally pay more than that. Extenuating circumstances notwithstanding, of course, such as collateral damage.

I've sat here and read all the comments and I have to say there are some good idea and some uummm.... WOW!.!. Complex ideas.
I've seen the removal of essence, the purchase of essence, nerfing mages, boosting Sammies, don't take this away, do take that away, etc. etc. etc...
Everything seemed to be about mundane sammies (scattering of decker and rigger) and mages. I seem to remember between 1st and 2nd ed hardly anyone played mages (too expensive and more likely to kill themselves before a bullet reached them), Deckers (faster and easier to hire out because the matrix rules were wack), Riggers (I'm mostly useless outside of my car).
3rd ed came along and fixed many of the problems but added a few of their own (I actually liked the rule about possible magic loss and medicine as is made them make a choice between possible loosing magic but improved chances of living or less of a chance to live but no loss of magic.). But 3rd ed also added Technomancers and for the most part since 3rd ed the technomancer rules have been similar (nearly carbon copy except with chances necessary to fit into the matrix or control drones)
Then karma is brought up and yes it is slow to raise these characters... Really really really slow... I have to have Karma to submerge/initiate then more karma to raise resonance/magic now I need more karma to get that new complex form/spell ([IIRC] oh wait technomancers can thread forms that they don't know with a high chance of fade) but mages can have focus but it costs more karma (oh and did I forget that too many focus can lead to an addiction and burnout), we can have spirits/sprites (which may cost karma). None of this includes the fact I need to up my skills (cost Karma), up stats to avoid fade/drain (cost karma), up stats to help control complex form/spell (more karma).
Oh I forgot about some other options that are available for mage category Adepts and mystic adepts.
I'll start with the mystic adept since that one will be faster. Mystic adept no astral travel but I can buy (karma) power points for phys adept qualities everything else above applies.
Now for the physical adept to gain powers I have to buy magic (karma) but I've maxed and now need to initiate (karma) but now I need more magic (karma) but like Sammies I need skills and other stats (karma).

Average run for karma award 4 to 6 with 2 to 3 extra for various RP elements if the run was rather long and/or challenging an additional extra of 2 to 4
So lets say we got allot of karma for 1 run at 15. I would initially need about 3 runs to clear the karma costs with that number going up for lesser karma awards and as the price of power increases.

Sammie: I need a new piece of chrome "Here take my " but I only have up to 6 essence. now that piece of chrome isn't cutting so let me upgrade it to alpha "Here take my " but it's nut cutting it anymore let me upgrade to beta "Here take my " oh wait I can get delta "Here take my ". I now have an essence hole to fit more chrome "Here take my ".
That nifty new alpha grade cyber arm got blown off "Here take my " now it's a Beta.

Average nuyen earned from Mr Johnson/fixer 15 - 20k I believe and up to double that (with the rare circumstance of a shit ton more) depending on what come up and players actions... I know there was a run my players went on that they told Mr. Johnson to keep the money and asked for some access to chrome because the stuff the stole was worth more than their pay would have been as each character walk away with more than 1/2 mil at fence prices and they were only make 25k ea from Mr J. Even though renegotiation is normally taboo; Mr J didn't complain as his "corp" was making money (even discounting the gear) instead of spending it. It was a triple win for them. (Job done, got it for mostly free, made money from the runners, made money due to the runs outcome

There is balance there as mundanes advance faster but can cap sooner where technomancers/mages don't have much of a cap but each point of power can seem to take a lifetime to get.

And then there is the great balancer of all things unyielding, doesn't care mage/technomancer/mundane, will strike with no prejudice, doesn't care when/how/who, called a bullet. Oh wait... Sammies tend to shoot A Lot of those and I wonder how many of them hit innocent bystanders. Mages tend to have that LOS thing going on.

Now for my last comment..... I know there are some holes in here from missing information and chunks were very much intentional as I didn't feel like posting the books. And the great thing is it cover multiple editions (I'm still working on reading up on all the 5th ed rules)

I really did like the potential magic loss rule but remember anyone running those rules need to apply them toward resonance as well.
The massive damage rules are nice too. I still use them