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CoalHeart
I feel bored and I just felt like coming up with a number's project for all of you number mashers because some of your results are pretty damn spectacular and I have used them in my games as opposition for my runners smile.gif

This is for a 'Big Bad Boss' of the entire plotarch.


Criteria.

Character generation : Priority rules. 5 points of flaws/perks. Surge up to 10 points pros/cons Magically inclined preffered. Physical Mage a bonus smile.gif Also must have at least a 5 in Leadership because he is incharge of a rather dubious crew of misfits and malcontents.

Post Character generation : apply 300 Karma to be used in any way. also apply 500k yen. (total Karma of all my players added together, and no SI or Avail problems on gear bought with the 500k)


What would be great outcome is a character that could take on a full runner's team single handedly, without resorting to the easy way of Explosives or Area effect magic spells.


Thanks all I'm sure some really scary monsters will come out of this.
A Clockwork Lime
With 300 Karma, there's no point. Unless the character is put together incredibly horribly, he *is* going to take out an entire team of typical runners. Especially if a magician. It's pretty much a moot point to bother, especially since his Initiation Grade could easily hit the teens with tons of Karma to spare.
TinkerGnome
Not to mention that such a character would likely have half a dozen custom spells (Increased Reflexes +8?) and a horde of elemental bodyguards (So that's 8 force 10 fire elementals... who brought their asbestos pajamas?).

The true challenge is to design an NPC which can actually be beaten. What are the capabilities of the PCs?
JaronK
You know what might be a lot better? Give this guy a really nasty pair of bodyguards, and make the guy himself simply very intelligent. It's no fun making a boss that just brute forces his way through everything... plan things out, make this guy defend himself very intelligently (and offensively, if he detects someone might be a threat, he'd take them out, perhaps with snipers or plastique traps). The bodygaurds would be there to make a direct assault on him very difficult at best... you'd end up with a game where he's trying to pick off the runners one by one, getting closer to them with each passing day, while they in turn are trying to probe him for weaknessess... like a big complicated fencing match.

JaronK
Kagetenshi
500k yen? How do we convert yen to nuyen?

~J
TinkerGnome
nuyen = (yen * 1 + 1/2 - .5) / 900 * (359 + 541)

I think.
Nikoli
hehe
CoalHeart
300 karma is the almost total karma of 4 players, they have somewhere aroudn 90 karma each. They are 1 Rigger/decker 2 Sams (one stealth one meatwall) and 1 Mage.

This is the same group that has a small army of chipped brainwashed goons and sneaky elfen chicks slaving for them.
they have 7 orks left and 5 elfs left. The orks have been since outfitted with smartlinked weapons, and bigger guns, and the elfs more weapon skills.

I know they know what they're doing, but anything that I make thats a normal run. Like sneaking into a building, kidnapping an employee and getting out, they can do. They also even do some really hard edge mercenary runs, like fighting back 300 or so Aztlan troopers to provide cover for a UCAS stealth strike. (That took a lot of dice rolling)


I use superior numbers, and planning against them, but they're crafty and clever and I try to use some realism. So they've been taking on more elite targets, this NPC is going to be the crimeboss of a Syndicate that runs 80% of the underworld in NYC with an iron fist.


he has 2 body guards, both of which are finely tuned killing machines in their own right, but as you know by the book a very lucky ganger can get lucky and kill mister UberSam in one shot.

So this guy needs to be tough but within the rules so I never have to say.

GM: You take your called shot at his face, but even with 9 successes and his combat pool gone you miss because he isn't suppose to die yet.

I so hate that when it happens to me so I don't want to do it to my players so making him tough is priority over using GM fiats. smile.gif


thanks again. And yes I knwo with 300 karma he can be a pretty nasty mage, with many initiations but initiations don't matter they don't make you survive any more or less they just open up a few more options, and like I said I'm trying to avoid using explosives or area effect spells because I try to dissuade my players from solving problems with brute force that way. Planning and combat are more important smile.gif
kevyn668
If you want him to live, give him the Teleportation Metamagic Technique.
Phaeton
Or an escape jet. For that matter, give him a shiny, sinister chrome helmet and have him yell "Next time, Gadget! NEXT TIIIIIIME!" whenever the PCs defeat him. grinbig.gif
CoalHeart
kevyn668: Most assuredly if I did that the group would try to capture him alive and force the knowlege out of him, or the mage would mindfry him to get the information. These people are sadists I tell you.... frightengly so.

Their street rep is a mile long of being bloodthirsty precise and
methodical. They invis the rigger's van and ward it to prevent tracking after doign big jobs, the mage has Sterilize force 6 and casts it like it was an addicttion, then cleans his signature off. The sams wear gloves and masks, the rigger/decker operates by remote, or sends in a drone with the team to connect to the building's matrix that is kept off the net.
Nikoli
I'm thinking a stealth phys ad with the divination meta technique. rank 10 in the skill and the Barretta rifle. He just 'knows' where they'll be and fires.
Kagetenshi
I think you mean Barrett wink.gif

~J
BitBasher
QUOTE
GM: You take your called shot at his face, but even with 9 successes and his combat pool gone you miss because he isn't suppose to die yet.

I so hate that when it happens to me so I don't want to do it to my players so making him tough is priority over using GM fiats.
Rule of thumb man, If you dont want him to die, then dont put him in a position to be attacked directly. It is in fact as simple as that. Someone with that many contacts will have a metric butt ton of FoF data on any group trying to do anything against him. He simply should not, ever face them directly. When he does expect that you have to cheat to keep him alive, and if you won't (and I wouldn't) then expect him to die. End of story.

QUOTE
kevyn668: Most assuredly if I did that the group would try to capture him alive and force the knowlege out of him, or the mage would mindfry him to get the information. These people are sadists I tell you.... frightengly so.
Just like anyone that holds truly senisitive data have him use a maked anchor that casts an anchored alter memory on him so that he can not be magically interrogated with mind probe, because it will give all bad data. There are a hundred ways he could have set up in advance to have his memory restored, and it's not even necessary for him to know that's possible after a wipe. Mind rape spells are easily gotten around. Can't force knowledge that he doesn't have. Even better have the info he does have send them straight into the uber ambush of doom, set up by himself long in advance. And astrally he IS telling the truth, it's what he believes and all he remembers. Don't let mind probe be an end all be all. If you do, then it's your fault if it gets overused.

IIRC sterilize makes it so that the tissue cannot be used as a ritual sample, but it's still a perfectly good DNA sample.

Remember, if they have an "unbeatable" strategy like mind probe, and if it is that effective, that means that people will have had to come up with a means to counter it, and those means are available. Use them. That doesn't go for mind probe, it goes for anything like that. After a trick is used a limited number of times, defenses are popularized in security magazines and bulletins on how to beat the trick and screw the folks that do it. Happens in the real world that way.
TinkerGnome
QUOTE
IIRC sterilize makes it so that the tissue cannot be used as a ritual sample, but it's still a perfectly good DNA sample.
Well... it adds +2 to the TN to use it per success (up to force). Which isn't really "perfectly good" wink.gif
BitBasher
QUOTE (TinkerGnome)
QUOTE
IIRC sterilize makes it so that the tissue cannot be used as a ritual sample, but it's still a perfectly good DNA sample.
Well... it adds +2 to the TN to use it per success (up to force). Which isn't really "perfectly good" wink.gif

Aaaah mmkay, fair enough, I didn't think it was 100% effective.
sidartha
Does this villan have his own background we should know about or does it not matter what he was before becoming the Don of NYC.
Just try'in to help smile.gif
CoalHeart
Generic Background, no name enforcer, betrayed his old boss, kacked him took over the business, erased his past and everyone that knew him. Started taking over the smaller businesses of lesser crime syndicates leading to more power and more greed and so on and so forth. Think of the King Pin from Spiderman except more brutal at times.

And yes I do have a bullseye type adept as one of his bodyguard wink.gif


And no Mind probe isn't all that effective in my games but the Mage/Face specializes in interrogation, has access to multitude of chemicals, big bad partners to scare/hurt people with, magic and so on. I'd almost call him a munchy, but he raised it up legitly with karma.


Sterilize also destroys blood and fingerprints from an area, as well as rendering any tissue samples very hard to use for any reason.


and I don't really plan on the players ever getting to this guy directly, but if and mostlikely when they do it'll be hell getting there.

the whole campaign is about tearing down the Don's business from the ground floor. Players were crossed once or twice by the Don's men but they didn't know, they recently found out by the Yak's informant feeding them the information. So now they're on a vendetta mission.

1 don
4 Capitans
4 lietuenants per captain
10-15 goons per lietenant.

I have this overview map of the city, with grids of each crew's area of influence, and I'm designing runs to wipe them all out. smile.gif

I hope to gawd that these freakshows I play with don't decide to take the city over.... I'd have to come up with a whole campaign of the Yaks and or Mafia trying to take it all back.


some people say I'm a slacker, and pot smoker. They'd be right.
some people say I'm a hard core gamer and overachiever. They'd be right too.



RedmondLarry
Sheesh. Why make an NPCs according to the PC creation rules?

Some NPCs are weaker than PCs, some are more powerful. To make an uber NPC you just write down what you want. There is no reason to crunch numbers.

/Edit: maybe he wants an excuse to kill the characters and blame it on something else. "I just made someone who should be equal in power to the whole team, as he's got the same money and earned Karma. I didn't try to kill them.
sidartha
Thats the point, he's got us poor bastards doing the crunching for him.
Jerk wink.gif
Vlad the Bad
Don't do a physical mage. They aren't that great. When a character has to split his/her karma down two directions then they aren't good physads and they aren't good mages.

The nastiest thing you might do is just make him a streetsam with brains and one gun skill at 12.

Mages are powerfull but often don't raise their attributes because they are spending their karma on everything else.

hmmm ... If you want something totally messed up, how about a cyberzombie that was possessed by a magician and the poor merlin's astral form got stuck to the karmic blackhole of the cyberzombie. A GM of mine sent us against that kinda foe once, and we couldn't understand why he could take bullets with ease and still launch manaballs at us. A sustained physical mask spell could hide his deformed cyberbody (and make him look like the orginal magician's body did) until the final reveil after the geek him. How's that for f***ed-up villian?
TinkerGnome
A cyber skull will also do wonders to cut down on those called shots to the head, too wink.gif
BitBasher
Also, don't allow PC's to called shots on NPC's heads unless the NPC's do it to the PC's also. Fair is fair.
The White Dwarf
I ignored the whole thread. And Im not even going to post a response to the original question.

But I did want to say that without the opposing NPC being *EXTREMELY* powerful he will *NOT* offer any resistance to the players singlehandedly.

Why? Even with 300 karma? The answer is actions...

4 players will get more actions than the 1 bad guy even if he is running a MBW4 and hopped up on street drugs. They can act more times, they can do more things, and that alone will mean the badguy loses unless the players are really dumb.

The only NPCs that can really hold off a well played team of PCs solo are ones without stats. Like Harliquinn, Lofwyr, Dues, etcetc.

I would advise you either stack the situation with minions or surprise or something, because just finding the one guy at the end of the road and expecting a challenging fight is going to be an anticlimatic let down when he gets dusted halfway thru combat round 1. Dont rely on one super huge individual unless he really is that superhuge, in which case the players dont have a chance anyhow.

(Yes, Id argue this case even if he was a magician. When its 4 on one, not even a swarm of great form spirits will save you, at best it will buy you a few rounds)
Joker9125
Im not the scariest number cruncher here but ill see what i can do.

Ill probably make 3 types of characters mage, adept, and street sam because Vlad the Bad is right physical mages may be the most well rounded in the game but they are the weakest overall.

Ill begin the munchkining now.............
Joker9125
QUOTE (The White Dwarf)
(Yes, Id argue this case even if he was a magician. When its 4 on one, not even a swarm of great form spirits will save you, at best it will buy you a few rounds) 
Joker9125 Posted: May 21 2004, 12:38 AM


Wrong..........Everything else you said was pretty much right on except that. A swarm of normal form elementals can destroy cities if their are enough of them. A single group of shadowrunners shouldnt be able to take on a npc with 5 or 6 force 10 elementals unless the GM is really dumb
RedmondLarry
Youi mean a Charisma 14 Elf, with 14 Elementals of force 10 each, would be a problem for a team of Shadowrunners? I guess so.
Exceptional Attribute Charisma.
207 Karma for raising Charisma.
140,000 for Elemental Conjuring Materials.
Throw in another 140,000 for failed conjuring attempts.
Leaves 220,000 for beer.
Leadership 5.
I like it. A Conjuring Adept for the climactic bad guy battle.
Give him a machine pistol, too.
Zazen
The PCs will just target the mage anyway. They surely know that greasing him will cause the elementals to depart.
Kagetenshi
But he has no reason to be visible.

~J
Zazen
That kinda falls into the "be elsewhere and send your minions" category. Invisibility itself won't cut it, one of the PC mages will defeat that as priority 1. That just leaves hiding, which might as well be in his office three floors down.
Kagetenshi
With a matchup like that, just being around the corner ought to make the difference.

~J
Herald of Verjigorm
I was just thinking about that charisma 14 conjuror.
Make it a shaman, with invoking and trauma damper (and whatever else).
14 force 7 great form spirits and the ability to replace one as a complex action, no worries about drain.
Joker9125
Yea youd have alot to worry about for drain. When invoking you take an extra conjuring drain test. While the normal one may be L drain the second test is made as if the spirit's for is twice its normal force minus your initiation grade but the spirits normal force determines weather or not its physical or stun. So if your a grade 2 intiate it would go like this

7X2 = 14-2 = 12 so you wouold have to resist 12M or 12Lwith the trauma dampener..................I think.................

EDIT: witht he 300 karma all i could get was 4 levels of self initation so it would be 10L with trauma dampener
The White Dwarf
Swarm of elementals means jack for a team of good runners. One AE spirit bolt will drop them all while avoiding affecting anything else. If they were nature spirits, the NPC now has to use his actions to make more. If they were elementals, odds are he doesnt have many left on retainer. In either event the PCs can go ahead and summon *their* spirits on action 2.

Case closed.
Joker9125
True but its not quite that ease any force 6 mana spell affecting the force 10 spirits will have a TN of 10 and the spirits resist it with their force vs a TN of 6. and if imnot mistaken al you have to do to completely negate the affects of mana spell is to match the successes of the caster on their resistance test.

with 25 dice your going to acheive an average of 2.4 successes

For the spirits resistance test you get an average of 2 successes

this isnt even counting the spell dice allocated to them. So a force 10 spirit would have a very good chance of surviving a force 6 spiritbolt of course a higher force spell would have a better chance at success but a higher force spirit would have an equally higher chance of resisting.

EDIT im gonna post my cheesey mage and goto bed
Joker9125
Like I said before im not the scariest number cruncher here but heres what I came up with for a mage.

His physical attributes are low so they can be increased with spells and not waste karma on them

Race Albino Dwarf

Body 4 (10 with increased body spell sustained)
Quickness 6
Strength 3
Charisma 6
Intelligence 6
Willpower 8
Essence 6.00
Run Mult. 2
Magic 13
BioIndex 0.4
Reaction 6
Init. Dice 1 (4 with spell increase INI die +3)

Edges and flaws

R:Alb:Bio-rejection 0
R:Mild Allergy Sunlight 0
Bonus Attribute Point(WIL) 2
Focused Concentration 2
Strong Will 1
Allergy Uncom & Severe->hellhound fur -4
Infirm (-1) -1

POOLS
Karma 16
Spell 9
Combat 10
Astral 10

Skills
Didnt feel like doing knowledge skills. Latin is his centering skill

Active Language
Sorcery(WIL) [8] Latin(LAN) [7]

Conjuring(WIL) [8] Latin(LAN) (RW) [3]

Centering(WIL) [7] English(LAN) [3]

Divining(WIL) [8] English(LAN) (RW) [1]

Aura Reading(INT) [6]

Leadership(CHA) [5]

Trauma Damper BI:0.40 (Geas the magic point with something like talesma)

The numbers are balistic then impact.
X:Form-fitting Full-Body 4 1
X:Secure Clothing 3 0
X:Secure Jacket 5 3


Manabolt [06]
Laser [05]
Influence [06] (use it on an enemy street sam and tell him to kill his teammates)
Levitate [04] (with touch range modifier making it free to cast)
Armor [06] (with touch range modifier so it has a base drain of L making it free to cast)
Physical Barrier [06]
Increased Attribute (B) [06] (Witht he very restricted modifier it will have a base drain of L and will be free to cast with the trauma dampener)
Incr. Reflexes +3INI DIE [01] (I suggest using the very restricted modifier to lower the drain to S and with trauma dampener itll be M)

Sustaining Focus 1->+3 INI 0
Sustaining Focus 6->Increase Body 0
Sustaining Focus 6->Armor 0

Grade 7 initiate
Self Initiation w/Ordeal:(Astral Quest) InitBenefit: Metamagic(Masking) Cost:15
Self Initiation w/Ordeal:(Meditation) InitBenefit: Metamagic(Shielding) Cost:17
Self Initiation w/Ordeal:(Deed) InitBenefit: Metamagic(Quickening) Cost:20
Self Initiation w/Ordeal:(Asceticism) InitBenefit: Metamagic(Possessing) Cost:22
Self Initiation w/Ordeal:(Geas) InitBenefit: Metamagic(Divining) Cost:25
Self Initiation w/Ordeal:(Thesis) InitBenefit: Metamagic(Invoking) Cost:27
Self Initiation w/Ordeal:(Asceticism) InitBenefit: Metamagic(Centering) Cost:30

EDIT: I forgot to add some stuff. Also i mighta messed up when i made him it is kinda late so that being said. Good night all.

EDITED AGAIN: I forgot to give the increase body spell the very restricted modifier
Vlad the Bad
Now stick that guy in cyberzombie body nyahnyah.gif *shudder*
Vlad the Bad
hmmm. I just noticed something that you mentioned you forgot. Where is his rating 13 spell? He's got a magic of 13, so I'm sure he's researched a sickeningly powerful coup'de gras. Where's the Hellblast 13? You gotta have something to put the fear of god into'em.

Well ... on second thought, maybe you don't want to zorch the players that bad, or else they'll come to expect it, and when the next villain isn't a grade 7 initiate, they might be a little dissapointed.
TinkerGnome
You missed Channeling. Invoking + channeling + force 12 great form spirit = deadly.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (The White Dwarf)
Swarm of elementals means jack for a team of good runners. One AE spirit bolt will drop them all while avoiding affecting anything else. If they were nature spirits, the NPC now has to use his actions to make more. If they were elementals, odds are he doesnt have many left on retainer. In either event the PCs can go ahead and summon *their* spirits on action 2.

Case closed.

Only if they clump. Hell, the team of runners doesn't mean anything if they stand in a very small hallway; one or two grenades'll take 'em all out! Once you discount stupidity, the swarm becomes a lot nastier.

Case reopened.

~J
Callidus
I don't know about Physmages, they probably are pretty weinie compared to a straight type but I'll put together a physmage idea I had and with 300 Karma he should be pretty badass.... i hope *8-> The key here would be a custom flame aura spell that has a few extra elemental effects..... can you say uber knockback when a martial artist physad hits you with a flame aura that does blast, flame, air, and earth effects.... (i think can't remember which he'd have going been a while and no books at work *8->) but I believe I could knock back a PC through a wall or two with it *8->... ooo even better as a Troll *8->
Apathy
QUOTE
Invoking + channeling + force 12 great form spirit = deadly

...for the conjuror. If I remember right, when channeling you resist drain with a power equal to twice the spirit's force.

Still, Invoking + Channeling + Shielding, at high initiate level = Invulnerable
TinkerGnome
Make it a force 9 great form spirit, then. Sure, it'll knock him most of the way to unconcious when it ends, but by then he's standing on top of the broken bodies of the entire team (if he can avoid other stun damage, his trauma dampner will save him from the 9D stun charisma resisted damage). +9 to all physical stats and Immunity (Normal weapons) 9 should even the scales up a good bit.
Vlad the Bad
trauma damper is the greatest piece of bioware/cyberware a mage can get. One question though (not to get too off topic here). Do any of you rule that the -2 modifier to resist painfull effects counts towards resisting drain? It makes logical sense but seems a bit of a game breaker ...
Herald of Verjigorm
QUOTE (Joker9125)
7X2 = 14-2 = 12 so you wouold have to resist 12M or 12Lwith the trauma dampener..................I think.................

You forgot the detail that even though the TN is based on a spirit of double force, it is still halved like every other drain test.
The numbers become: 3L->null followed by 5M-> 5L with 14 dice to resist 5M. You could also toss in a few other initiations to make it even easier.
A Clockwork Lime
QUOTE (Vlad the Bad)
trauma damper is the greatest piece of bioware/cyberware a mage can get. One question though (not to get too off topic here). Do any of you rule that the -2 modifier to resist painfull effects counts towards resisting drain? It makes logical sense but seems a bit of a game breaker ...

No. Mostly because it doesn't apply to "painful effects," but painful interrogation. Big difference between the two, especially since "painful effects" would count for damage resistance tests, too.
Zazen
Nah, conjuring drain isn't halved. It's a bitch.
Herald of Verjigorm
Drek, missed that detail. Conjuring is less useful than I had been playing.
Vlad the Bad
QUOTE (A Clockwork Lime)
QUOTE (Vlad the Bad @ May 21 2004, 10:02 AM)
trauma damper is the greatest piece of bioware/cyberware a mage can get.  One question though (not to get too off topic here).  Do any of you rule that the -2 modifier to resist painfull effects counts towards resisting drain?  It makes logical sense but seems a bit of a game breaker ...

No. Mostly because it doesn't apply to "painful effects," but painful interrogation. Big difference between the two, especially since "painful effects" would count for damage resistance tests, too.

Well it subtracts 2 from open tests for interrogation against the character. What I was refering to was the -2 modifier to the targets made to resist the effects of pain, I.E. Body or Willpower tests versus symptoms of painfull disease. HOWEVER you are right, if it worked against damage resistance tests that would be silly twirl.gif
Joker9125
I dont have the book that includes the rules for channeling so i didnt give it to him because i dont know the exact rules and limitations.
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