So, it's time for Tales of the Crypt. But we should be more original, so - Tales of the Psycho team.
Most of the people were not able to attend, so this time there were three main heroes:
Mr. Psycho mage, bloodthirsty guy with lots of luck. Which unexpectedly ended...
Mr. One hero/one session player, who usually changes his hero on the next session
Mr. Normally thinking guy, who... you will see.
It all started when Mr. Psycho mage inherited security firm. Unfortunately most of the people coming to work in in were low-quality thugs or other strange people. Having reputation of coming back alone from many missions do not create exactly a good reputation among shadowrunners. After some time local gang came and asked money for protection.
Mr. Psycho mage followed them and found out hideout. Lucky rolls, and troll did not know that he was being followed. Taking some NPC and one PC with them, they moved close to enemy hideout in middle of night. Normal PC was sent on top of nearby building to cover the team. But enemy's lookout saw some strange movement and went in to warn the others, so gang tried to ambush PC's. And in fact succeeded.
After a fight two NPC's were killed and gang wiped out, except shaman who went after sniper. Luckily for him Mr. One hero/session interfered and saved him, really in last second. That's because Mr. Psycho mage did not care even when hearing "enemy became visible... ahhh, my weapon is burning" things. So they returned to firm and started to think about expanding.
Mr. Psycho mage went with his best guy Mr. Normally thinking and started clearly threaten to neighbour's sweets shop owner. Who naturally called police and Mr. Psycho mage was arrested for few days "till details of event are cleared". There he suffered some major kicking and hurting, because Lonestar do not like when people try to steal their business. After getting out, Mr. Psycho came back to firm not too happy. And returning he saw that Mr. Normally thinking have put up a beer to every worker and have occupied his cabinet. Mr. Psycho fired him and with his blood spirit tried to Accident him.
But it worked even better, and Mr. Normally thinking guy went out cold from stun. And it's where Mr. Psycho luck went out - he dragged body out and put into his car (filmed by his own security cameras) and sacrificed him for his own blood spirit. After that he also sawed off Mr. Normally thinking guy's cyberarm for selling. Feeling that vendetta is not complete, he went and burned guys house too. He was pretty confused when got arrested two days later and got lifetime sentence in prison. But I must admit, he got away because no one exactly knew that he was mage. Of course, he lost everything he invested in security firm but is still back with new face.
And now to questions:
1) Does Lonestar have some standard procedure of checking if suspect is a mage (if they have no proof that he is), or it is too expensive to be a regular doing?
2) Mr. Average Joe runs from corporate team. They are running as fast as he does, but after activating combat mode they catch him in few rounds. Where there is any logic or am I missing something?
3) Mr. Rusty Sammy got some money and is upgrading his regular aluminium lacing to alpha aluminium lacing. Does he get all the essence difference back? Does he get only part of essence difference back?
4) How strong enemies you are throwing if someone have Hunted 6? Like drake at creation have such a flaw. Does that mean corporate alpha teams all the time?
5) Is there any book where are many more flaws/edges? Shadowrun companion don't have much of them? Or maybe some *sic* netbook?
Full Version: Promised story
1) Mages using astral perception and checking the auras of all people arrested would be the first step, and if there's any question, he's in a Mage Mask (black-out hood with white noise generators over his ears).
2) Movement rates are fixed whether in combat or outside of it. A character runs Quickness x Running Multiplier every Combat TURN, not Combat Phase. If both characters have a Quickness of 4 and a Running Multiplier of 3, then both of them run 12m during the combat turn, even if the PC has an initiative of 2 and the NPC has an iniative of 37.
3) Man and Machine has the rules for removing old cyber and creating an essence "hole" which can be filled. Can't remember which page, but it's one of the surgery options.
4) The Companion has rules for that. Hunted: 6 means they get 6 extra points worth of enemies. Check out the section on contacts, enemies, etc. for more info on that.
5) Not a big list, but there are a couple here and there. SURGE is considered edges and flaws in Year of the Comet, but that's very specific. True Believer is in YotC too I believe (3 point flaw, you belong to a cult, policlub, or other zealous organization). The Shadowrun Supplimental has lots of edges and flaws floating through the various issues I believe, but they're non-canon.
Questions for you...1) Why is a PC playing a blood mage? 2) How did he get a security firm? 3) Why would anyone in their right mind work with this guy, esp. the PCs?
BTW, sorry for no page numbers or links, but I'm half asleep right now.
The Abstruse One
2) Movement rates are fixed whether in combat or outside of it. A character runs Quickness x Running Multiplier every Combat TURN, not Combat Phase. If both characters have a Quickness of 4 and a Running Multiplier of 3, then both of them run 12m during the combat turn, even if the PC has an initiative of 2 and the NPC has an iniative of 37.
3) Man and Machine has the rules for removing old cyber and creating an essence "hole" which can be filled. Can't remember which page, but it's one of the surgery options.
4) The Companion has rules for that. Hunted: 6 means they get 6 extra points worth of enemies. Check out the section on contacts, enemies, etc. for more info on that.
5) Not a big list, but there are a couple here and there. SURGE is considered edges and flaws in Year of the Comet, but that's very specific. True Believer is in YotC too I believe (3 point flaw, you belong to a cult, policlub, or other zealous organization). The Shadowrun Supplimental has lots of edges and flaws floating through the various issues I believe, but they're non-canon.
Questions for you...1) Why is a PC playing a blood mage? 2) How did he get a security firm? 3) Why would anyone in their right mind work with this guy, esp. the PCs?
BTW, sorry for no page numbers or links, but I'm half asleep right now.
The Abstruse One
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| 3) Mr. Rusty Sammy got some money and is upgrading his regular aluminium lacing to alpha aluminium lacing. Does he get all the essence difference back? Does he get only part of essence difference back? |
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| 3) Man and Machine has the rules for removing old cyber and creating an essence "hole" which can be filled. Can't remember which page, but it's one of the surgery options. |
Just to clarify: no, you don't get the Essence back. At least, not in a way that would reflect your Essence score. It's still gone. You can, however, put in something else of the same or lower Essence score if you're using the rules Abstruse referred to, and you won't lose additional Essence.
3) He may get an essence hole, but won't get back the essence saved by upgrading to a better grade. In your example, he could get a piece of cyber costing .25 essence and not lose more essence.
| QUOTE |
| Questions for you...1) Why is a PC playing a blood mage? 2) How did he get a security firm? 3) Why would anyone in their right mind work with this guy, esp. the PCs? |
1) Because he's silly?
2)
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| It all started when Mr. Psycho mage inherited security firm. |
3)They don't know, but he's good at what he does? (I think I smell Dark Secret.)
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| 1) Why is a PC playing a blood mage? 2) How did he get a security firm? 3) Why would anyone in their right mind work with this guy, esp. the PCs? |
So, Lonestar mage assenses every one arrested?
Should be hella lot of work.
1) He wanted power for any price and I bought MiTS quite recently, so various initiations are just starting to appear. Besides blood magic fits him nicely;
2) He and another PC founded it. Other PC disappeared in previous run on island, and while no one could prove anything it made all the NPC's become very cautious when dealing with him. Outright bad rep.
3) He have changed his appearance and he haven't casted magic while on public. Most of those who have seen him casting are dead. In this way he have done very cleverly.
Besides other PC's will get the spotlight now, he should just try to survive.
And thanks for clarification on cyberware.
a) How often and when DNA checks are made? Should be very rare and expensive.
b) Do mages (Lonestar and Corp) patrol in richer areas, assensing auras and checking out mages who enter A class areas?
c) Does seeing one as a mage automatically grants them rights to ask for casting permission and allowed spell list?
d) There is Fire mage who is astrally projected and see that his friend Shorty Decker is attacked by hostile earth elemental who have materialised. He asks his own elemental to attack this hostile earth elemental. How many services he must pay for that? 1 for Remote + 1 for attack or differently? Or because it is out of reach of his meat body, elemental departs after helping out?
e) No one on these boards talk about "And I sliced him with my trusty uber-laser gun"? Seems like only heavy pistols and assault rifles are used. Why?
People use SMGs and rifles sometimes, but laser pistols are just too hard to find for an ordinary team.
~J
~J
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| So, Lonestar mage assenses every one arrested? Should be hella lot of work. |
Yes, and it's not a hell of a lot of work, it really takes less than three seconds. Lone Star employs an entire department to do their magical work. It's somehting necessary in the 6th world.
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| 1) He wanted power for any price and I bought MiTS quite recently, so various initiations are just starting to appear. Besides blood magic fits him nicely; |
As long as you don't mind that Blood Magic is explicitly banned for PC's to use. If you want to do it that's cool, nothing wrong with that, just pointing out the canon policy.
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| 2) He and another PC founded it. Other PC disappeared in previous run on island, and while no one could prove anything it made all the NPC's become very cautious when dealing with him. Outright bad rep. |
If he founded this company then he has a SIN, or a good enough fake SIN that he can be traced to it easily. That alone will make his life a good deal of difficult.
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| 3) He have changed his appearance and he haven't casted magic while on public. Most of those who have seen him casting are dead. In this way he have done very cleverly. |
Then he has no foci, no magical items or anchors? and he has masking metamagic? He may be able to hide it for a while, but it's going to get him sooner or later. Blood Magic is very very disctinctive, especially when theres a million nuyen bounty on the heads of every blood mage. Anyone finds out and there's a duck shoot, and he's the duck. 
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| a) How often and when DNA checks are made? Should be very rare and expensive. |
In SR DNA checks are neither rare nor expensive, nor slow. Any financial transaction for over 100k IIRC comes with an automatic DNA check, which would have happened at least once setting up that business. It definitely would have happened several times getting the permits necessary for a security company.
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| b) Do mages (Lonestar and Corp) patrol in richer areas, assensing auras and checking out mages who enter A class areas? |
Yes, there are LS astral patrols in the better parts of town. This is detailed in the Lone Star Sourcebook.
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| c) Does seeing one as a mage automatically grants them rights to ask for casting permission and allowed spell list? |
A spell list is impossible to determine, but if he sees someone cast a spell it's very likely he will ask them to produce a permit. I don't believe theres any way to know what spells a person can cast, short of a mind probe (illegal) or compel truth (illegal).
| QUOTE |
| d) There is Fire mage who is astrally projected and see that his friend Shorty Decker is attacked by hostile earth elemental who have materialised. He asks his own elemental to attack this hostile earth elemental. How many services he must pay for that? 1 for Remote + 1 for attack or differently? Or because it is out of reach of his meat body, elemental departs after helping out? |
One service. Remote service is entirely different. Remote service permanently expends all remining services on an elemental (and only elemental) so he can perform a service for up to a year and a day and outside the normal range that an elemental is limited to. This would just take a normal attack service. since the attacking elemntal is dual natured the spirit doesnt even have to manifest to attack it.
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| e) No one on these boards talk about "And I sliced him with my trusty uber-laser gun"? Seems like only heavy pistols and assault rifles are used. Why? |
Er, because lasers cost usually 100k+ and dont get you any real benefits over a real pistol. They have many, many disadvantages compared to a normal pistol. SR weapon tech is similar to today's, lasers are an oddity, and very rare and expensive with no real good reason to use one. That's kind of like asking why you don't see Lamborghinis everywhere.
They get you no recoil, no noise, high Power, and no easy way to determine the origin of the shot without a lot of dust or similar in the air. I'd call those advantages.
12M - half impact tends to beat 9M - ballistic or even 9M - half ballistic. Any laser strike has the forensic difficulties of caseless ammo and more hurdles on top. Refilling a "clip" simply requires a power socket and an hour or two.
However, there are no stun lasers in SR yet. So gel rounds in a Pred 2 provide an option a Redline can't.
Lasers also attract attention due to their cost and rarity. The laws for prosecution of laser assisted crimes would probably differ a little from pistol aided. Since there is no bullet to prove was linked to your gun, the prosecution only has to prove that you had access to such a weapon and could have made the shot then provide a convincing argument that you would want to make the shot.
Lasers are very handy (for the size) for killing things, but the drawbacks still rarely justify the massive cost and use of an entirely different skill.
However, there are no stun lasers in SR yet. So gel rounds in a Pred 2 provide an option a Redline can't.
Lasers also attract attention due to their cost and rarity. The laws for prosecution of laser assisted crimes would probably differ a little from pistol aided. Since there is no bullet to prove was linked to your gun, the prosecution only has to prove that you had access to such a weapon and could have made the shot then provide a convincing argument that you would want to make the shot.
Lasers are very handy (for the size) for killing things, but the drawbacks still rarely justify the massive cost and use of an entirely different skill.
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