I was ignoring the foci as only one player gets a look in on the value of those things (grumble grumble one player allowed to amass millions when the rest of the team dont). We nicked the MAW off that ork johnson who dumped it on the roof top when that other runner team attacked (chaotic worlded their copter while they were trying to line down). I didnt know the ballista was brought, but the rest is accurate.

Hey if your going to use it against us then we can equally grab it.

In our current game, all ganger characters, we loot when we can...we gotta eat.

In our last game, all ex-spec op characters, we never looted on mission. There wasn't any time. All our 'runs were planned out almost to the second. We would get a mission from the Johnson with, say, a 2 week time frame and we'd be back to him 2 days later with the goods...including legwork time.
Good character/team design. Good player/team dynamics. Good planning. No cowboys.

iPad, if I were going to do that then I'd have to take the gloves off and stop trying to not kill you guys. It's the only way to balance the fact that you'd be looting tens of thousands in weapons and ammo a run.

As for the foci, for the most part that character has paid the group for them. Granted, the gold bars weren't disclosed, but then again you guys need to grow backbones anyway :o)

I think I'll shut up now or my party may well self destruct :o)

Anyone had a player scavenge cyberware by petrifying the corpse and sustain the spell while his buddies pour vinegar on the limestone statue?

It should leave just the implants.

And when the spell is dropped, you have soup to sell to ghouls!

<ewwww>

thats just about the grossest thing I've ever heard

Wow. An idea that excellent should be in spoiler tags to keep it from my players.

One of my players has something close. He missed the 'turn to goo' spell, I suspect because he liked free ware. After some negotiating, I finally agreed to a spell that speeds up the decay process, taking it from years to weeks. So I guess at some point he's going to grab some cybered troll, lock him in the closet and 'rot' him until there's nothing left but dust and ware. I'm still trying to figure out if it was good or not that he needs to keep the body around for a prolonged period of time for it to work.

Couldn't you just lock the dead troll in the closet with a whole lotta ants? The normal kind, not the big kick-your-ass spirit kind.

Saves on the sustaining time.

What about flesh-eating bacteria for destroying the body while leaving the 'ware safe?

If your taking the body why not just deliver it intact and reasonably fresh to the dealer in 2nd hand cyber. Then he and you both know you didn’t frag it up. Run over him 5 times with a cyber wear scanner (a good one you looted from a reputable establishment) and he wont be able to rip you off.

Edward

So FrostyNSO did you get a satisfactory answer?

MRJ'sLBB has a Tanamous contact in the contacts section - so why not have someone like that in your campaign, or the Ghoul contact in the same section? Go along, drop off the corpses and come back in a day or so for the cyber.

Granted, anything like this relies on trust with your contact, but if he/she/they get the food they need to live I'd have thought it not a major sticking point. Afterall, any Ghoul with any semblence of their personality intact is gonna know you don't bite the hand that feeds :o)

Hey, I didn't make the character. He just wanted something that destroyed flesh. I think, in total, he has 3 different versions, all at decent levels (sterilize and two custom spells that are pretty much specialized flavors). But he seems smart enough, I'm just waiting for the other shoe to rop.

My thinking as a GM is this. My players know that if they steal cars for the point of selling cars then there will be trouble. Stealing cars to get away is fine. Geneally, where the looting is incidental (for example, steal a rocket launcher off a dead goon to blast a hole in the wall to escape) it fine - it's a plot device not an income generating stream.

The exception is things which are way too expensive to let go. Be they a focus, a cyberdeck, an obviously incredibly expensive gizmo thing or whatever, if it's hideously expensive then I let them have a go because it's there on purpose. If they are smart about it, as in make some effort to "launder" or otherwise conceal the evidence trail then it should be OK, for example paying a shaman or two to seriously ward a storage locker into which they hide the focus until the heat dies off and they can go sell it to someone. If they say "excellent, a new focus" and carry it around in their boot until someone makes a good offer, then it's the min-maxed recovery squad for them.

When it gets to the point where they'll finish a combat scene, then rip out a sack (it always seems to be a sack, not a bag, not a case) and pile credsticks, guns, ammo, grenades, armour, wristwatches, rings and interesting boots into it, then they've gone way over the line and I let them know it.

For God's sake, these people are criminals. The thinking shouldn't be "I can't loot that, it's immoral or evil" but "I could loot that, but would I get away with it, or would it be more trouble than it's worth?"

I don't see it as a morality thing its is about being a pro you do the mish and you try and get away scott free. To loot out of greed risks the team and your ass.

To take a job you don't like the looks of because you're short on cred, or to fail a job because you didn't have enough to throw at the job, also risks the team and your ass.

You're a pro. Think about what that means. It means you do it for money. That's the difference between you and an amateur.

~J

Like I said, there's smart looting and dumb looting and I listed my criteria before. Smart looting means you make more money on a run. Dumb looting gets you dead.

I don't personally loot unless I need to. The exception is when something that's just too damn good to pass up (a Fairlight Excalibur sitting on the recently-toasted corp decker's desk) comes my way.

Even so, after some years of playing my original character (and rarely actually getting around to selling the guns nicked to survive a firefight) I discovered that I had a weapons list running to some thirty entries for guns that I would actually choose to use again (my fave is the over-and-under assault rifle/narcoject rifle scavenged during a run against Transys Neuronet - brings a whole new meaning to "Freeze or die!") plus a bunch of random smeg-grade stuff that I eventually wound up donating to a wizgang in return for them protecting my crashpad.

@Ed_209a:: Do you play with geologists or something that they thought of that?

As for looting, hey it is -roleplaying- for a Racoon Shaman to snag things that fall across his path. But being choosy of what you take (doesn't interfere with mission, easy to carry, easy to fence, hard to track back to you) is smart running. I personally find the most use from identity theft, but it usually requires help from a decker to pull off as well as ensure that a given persona is safe to assume (no criminal record, no large outstanding debts, family is distant or non-existant).

Without looting typically we have a hard time maintaining our networth, muchless growing it. So it is somewhat driven by the GM.

As for the magically changing equipment, umm, that's pretty cheezy in my books. There are better ways to handle that. So what happens when the PC team assenses that Force 2 Power Focus and then proceeds to geek the mage? You lie about the focus as soon as they assense? If you lie does it still act as a Force 2 Power Focus...until the PCs get it in their possession? Or does it immediately become a mundane trinket as soon as they succeed a perception check?

The mage in my group is smart enough to not ask what force a focus is until he's got it in his possession (ie liberated from a dead mage). At that point, I'll give him the lesser value on the prep sheet I used for the run.

An OpFor mage may have a F5 Shielding Focus, but it will immediately become F2 or F3 (depending on how benevolent I'm feeling) as soon as the mage gets geeked.

It's perhaps not strictly fair or right, but it saves me from having to geek too many PC's for running around with too many do-dads :o)

BTW I didn't include numbers to those two limiting factors. In the case of the Shielding focus that respresents 20 Karma to bind. Certainly nothing to sneeze at. Since a Shielding focus needs to be up most of the time to be useful a Force 5 focus will put a serious kink in other foci use until the PC initates a few grades. Only one point for a sustaining focus? That's pretty crappy armor to keep you from getting geeked by someone taking you down the ol' fashion way with knife/gun/fist.

Kagetenshi, I've only rarely used anything but spell foci, and the mage just seems to save them up for a rainy day. I'm considering a limit on bonded foci cos there's so many of them.

Blakkie, when I say smart enough I mean in a metagaming sense. He doesn't make me lie, or explain why it changed force :o)

I've tried initiating OpFor mages, I've tried giving them better stats, I've tried giving them cover and concealment. The only thing I haven't tried is mil-spec armour or the armour spell.... and I don't like either of those.

If I remember correctly, any kind of focus can be made expendable - I may work up expendable foci. Least that way my players don't get a huge haul of foci....... and bear in mind I rarely give the opposing mages foci at all, only in specific circumstances.

I tend to use foci to make my mages more resilient or able to soak damage. However, my problem with the armour spell is that it needs a high focus to sustain it, else the mage is having difficulty casting and stuff anyway. I've rarely used mages offensively, which I guess is because I don't like magic in general because it's so damn tough to defend against. Armour is cool, but unfortunately there's nothing akin for magic.

The PC mage in my party doesn't use spell foci, those are the ones he doesn't use. Sustaining foci and shielding he does, and he's hardly ever used spirits period so a spirit foci isn't much of a biggie.

I think I'll experiment with different things with OpFor mages, like Force 7 or 8 manabolts and channeled spirits.

Spirits. Yes, that's an important one i left off the list. Be ready though, once your mage gets his butt kicked a few times by a spirit he is likely to start using them himself.

As for the Armour spell, you could just get the NPC to sustain it without a focus. Remember that, no matter the Force of the spell, with the Focused Concentration edge that's only a +1 TN penalty for a single sustained spell. Then since he's not casting on offense, have him put all his Sorcery dice on Spell Defense (or Shielding if initiated in that). That +1 TN hurts a bit, but nothing a fistful of dice can't overcome.

okay mage
high body
6/6 sec armor + helmet
sustained armor 5 spell,
sustained force 6 enhance aim spell with max successes
increase caster's reflexes +3dice spell held in sustaining focus
optimag 3 retinal mod
decent gun skill
decent gun
there no real foci to loot

there, a decent magical challenge for the PCs

That's also +4 to all of the mage's actions.

~J

Drop the security armour to form fitting 4/1 plus a secure long coat (for a total of 6/2) and you're talking. Although without the Focused Concentration the +6 TN for sustaining those 3 spells is rather, ummm, steep. That makes the Spell Defense/Shielding, conjuring, or dispell much, much tougher. At that point you might as well make him a Troll with Reflex Boost (you won't be looting that) that's pumped up on Novacoke/Kamakazie (leave a few vials of that on the NPC for the fools to loot ).

So i'm thinking:

Shaman Grade 3 (Shielding, Invoking, Remove Magic Loss Geasa)
Body 5(6)
Str 2
Qui 4
Chr 6
Will 7
Int 6
Magic 8

Reaction: 5
Initative: 5 + 2d6

Spell Pool 7

Edge:
Focused Concentration
Flaw:
Vindictive

Sorcery 8
Conjuring 6
Heavy Pistol 4

Beta Kevlar Bone Lacing (no looting)
Beta Boosted Reflexs 2 (no looting)

Sustained Armor 4

AK-97 (to wave around so people don't immediately spot you as the mage)
Eichiro Hatamoto II (because sometimes you just have to make a big freaking hole ), in a Concealing Quick Draw holster
Mortimer of London Greatcoat (4/2)
FF Armour Undies (4/1)

Effective armour rating: 11/6

Buddy has a Great Form spirit on tap that he uses for countering spirits. If no opposing spirits he uses it for Conceal to provide obscuring while in combat. He'll wave his AK-97 around and even fire it off, defaulting to Heavy Pistols at +3 TN. By using supressive fire he can help soak the opponent's Combat Pool to help his allies. The ace-up-his-sleeve is his one-shot Hatamoto. With a Skill of 4, especially if he has Combat Pool left at the time, this can sting even when used against a Troll. I'll leave his spell selection to you, but you'll want to toss in a couple fetishes to help reduce drain. Then have him put up his Shielding most of the time Now this isn't a stunning solo NPC, but he can make a group much, much stronger with a maximum of maybe 1,000:nuyen: worth of lootable stuff...assuming the armour/clothing isn't shredded by the PCs taking him down...after the PC's fixer/fence takes his cut.

sorry forgot focused conc, and the third spell is on a sustaining focus... thus +2 tn which is more than offset by the enhance aim spell, give him a clip of incendiary rounds too, so recoil is no issue

Well, firstly I've house rule'd layered armour - it don't happen. But that shaman is still 8/7 which isn't too bad :o)

I've a few ideas up my sleave, but I'm not running the next one (a player's volunteered) so I'll keep them on tap. I'm gonna start throwing a lot of spirits around. Even if there's a F3 katana weapon focus around, it's still tying up at least one party member and a bunch of great form elementals should pose a problem :o)

As for the cyber, I've never really tried that too much. Perhaps having a Grade 4 with only magic 7 - that's a lot of cyber to help protect the mage.... and could even give him/her a spur or something focus.

Thanks for the tips guys, I'll let you know how it turns out :o)

To your earlier point, having npcs with good gear means the danger level is up already pre-fudging. Not played any other game run differently.

The team I'm with loots. Considering the mission history I have with them, it's probably the only way they make money most of the time.

Drek I'm lucky. Everyone in my group dosn't loot. (With the exception of matrix data looting.) The only time my character loots is if he has to. Or if he plans using it. Ya know, "Hmm... I'm using an Ares Predator... He just died with a AK 97.... I think I'll take that." Sorta thing.

Or that one time I had them captured, stripped naked, and tortured them with self destructing weapons in the enemys hand.... Ehehehe.

Matrix data looting is exactly the same as all other sorts of looting.

~J

But it's funnier.

Deckers are the exception to the rule in my group of players who don't loot. If one of them plays a decker, the loot-o-meter explodes.

I kinda have to disagree with the data loot = loot comment. You go into the matrix to steal data. You fight to survive.

I swear, I think my players are the most honorable runners possible...given the choice between returning a bike to the Halloweeners and garnering "a favor" or selling the bike for 20K....they returned the bike.

...

Of course, being an evil GM that I am, I suppose I could start turning this against them, but I'd feel like I was kicking puppies...

Looting can effectively be described as 'taking extra, over and above what one is commisioned'. When a Shadowrunner is hired for a datasteal, it is not considered professional (or even wise in some cases) to root around the target host for juicy bits of paydata. It's no different from a Sammy scooping up a prototype weapon on the way past a lab. It attracts unnecessary attention.

Note that I'm not necessarily against looting. It just has its time and place.