The only thing cooler than being a shadowrunner, is being a shadowrunner wearing tight shades.

Hey, if you put 50,000¥ in SotA chrome eyes, might as well spend a few K protecting them, neh?

it's 'cause they're a force 6 centering focus, and he wears them on his face while people are shooting at him. though it (wearing shades at all times, not dikoting them) did actually just start out as a quirk.

The "titanium in body armor" thing might spring from the NATO CRISAT standard, consisting of a 1.6mm titanium plate and 20 layers of kevlar, which is very often quoted when discussing the armor penetrating capabilities of small arms munitions.

And looking cool in shades is pure cheese as a centering skill.

Why? Mechanically it's the same and I would imagine results in the disnctive style flaw. The skill has about as much use outside of centering as anyother typical one.

True dat, AE.

But CRISAT is helmets, not vests.

*shrug* think of it as a modernized form of meditation. it's actually less cheesey than traditional centering skills such as Zen Meditation, since it actually requires you to have a specific type of object in a specific location on your body to work.

Meditation is silent and hands free. So is controlled breathing (though arguably that's also Meditation), mental focusing, and the like. Meditation in general is a useful linked skill for centering when you don't want to scream like a berserker or dance the chicken dance every time you want an edge in a fight.

he actually has to be wearing the shades. otherwise, it'd be called Looking Good With or Without Shades, Your Choice Really.

and heck. as cool as they make him look, why wouldn't he wear them?

So it is a talisman, not a skill? Only since it is not really a talisman, there's not even 3 restrictions on it.

no, it's a skill. it just requires a certain type of item to use. same as Pistols, etcetera. he can use the skill while wearing any form of sunglasses. the question about using it with those autotinting lenses hasn't yet come up, thankfully.

Why wouldn't Looking Good be a skill? It requires effort all the time to maintain. It's works kinda like Stealth (open test to see if they think you're cool). I'd probably allow it complimentary on Intimidation tests and Etiquette test where such is beneficial.

shh! someone will make it an active skill, dammit.

Since I first read Motorfirebox suggest this for a centering skill, I have had three different GMs. They all had a good laugh when I proposed it for a centering skill. (I'm not above cheesing.) And I don't think I'd allow it, or I'd require a bit more to implementing the skill than I am guessing mfb and his GM require.

eh. depends on the GM. at a wild guess, i'd say i've used this character under 10-15 different GMs. closer to 30-40, i guess, if you add in scenes and encounters not involved in actual runs.

though i'm still unclear on why it's not okay, but Zen Meditation is.

I'm getting ready to try another character with another GM who let's you initiate at chargen. I'll see if it gets shot down again.

What do you do, beyond wearing the shades, to implement the skill?

that actually takes some 'splaining. allow me to sum up: despite being horribly badass, he's always been basically insecure about whether or not he's a 'real' runner. he's been a mafia legreaker since he was fifteen, and only left it after the mob war. and even when he was in the mob, he was always vaguely unsure of his position. so, a few years before the mob war, he started wearing shades on the assumption that wearing shades makes you look badass; he came to this conclusion because as a kid, all the real badasses on the trid wore them. by the time he left the mob (and i began playing him as a runner), he had the skill up to 3.

that was before he (and i) discovered initiation and centering. when he discovered it, in-character, it was basically involuntary. he'd taken a few classes at U-Dub on magic, and the professor there told him "your magic is heavily linked to your self-perception; if you believe you can succeed, your magic will help you." that fit hand-in-glove with his ideas about how shades made him look.

out-of-character, i was thinking something along the lines of "jesus spriggan christowitz, this initiation stuff's expensive." so i picked a skill he already had for his creative skill.

so, when he uses his Looking Good in Shades skill, he's basically trying to view the situation from an outside source--an 'audience', sorta--and determining how they'd view what he's doing. if his determination is that he needs to look cooler doing it--and failing qualifies as not looking cool--he reimagines himself and his actions with a focus on what a badass he is, and how his badassocity is enhanced by his shades. "nobody who looks as god damn sexy as i do in thes Oakleys could possibly not make this shot," in other words.

in-game, he wears the shades and gets the bonus. sometimes i play up the shades, sometimes i just mention how impossible the stunts he's pulling are, and let readers draw their own conclusions.

Eh, honestly I'm not sure if either Zen Meditation *or* mfb's unique and creative take on the same sort of thing should be allowed as a Centering skill over something like Interpretive Dance, Gregorian Chant, Abstract Impressionist Painting, or Spouting Nonsense Words Off the Top of Your Head. Unless the latter can be used without drawing special attention of any kind (eg. adding notable visual, audible, or maybe olfactory components), I don't see why the former should be allowed to either. Isn't part of the balance for Centering based on the increased conspicuousness of the user's actions, or is it just supposed to be "free" dice?

This is getting off topic but I'd like to know how exactly do you run Centering in your games. Do you roll the creative skill or the Centering skill while centering? Or both? How exactly then is Centering skill dice used as opposed to the Creative skill dice?

If you are using Centering Skill for Centering, then it is basically a free dice, since Centering is linked to a Creative skill. But it does not mean that you are required to meet any TN for the Creative skill, you can basically declare you are singing, dancing, swearing, etc to fulfill the linked skill side of centering. Looking good can be a linked skill, all the player needs to say is that his PC is Looking Good, whether he actually looks good is another matter.

Reading the Centering section in MitS (page 72), I don't see anywhere where it mentions how limiting a creative skill need be other than not having a use in combat.

there's nothing mentioned in any of the books about balance, Eyeless. Zen Meditation, as a matter of fact, is the centering skill used in the example of physad centering in MitS.

tisoz, ask your GMs--the ones you've played under that laughed at Looking Good in Shades--why they'd allow Zen Meditation (assuming they would), but not that. i seriously can't understand that.

yeah... they now use other synthetic items as the "plate in vest for body armor" But titanium is commonly used.. but either way.. i was just mentiong that KEVLAR is the cloth weave not the plate in armor.'

I just remember reading somethign about NATO about testing small ammunitions.. .and they test the pentration power on Kevlar vest with 20 layers with a titanium plate.. may be wrong.. but i am sure my memory rention is still there.. imay of said 10... But what about dikote.. ..let get back on about dikote.

Heh I remember when Dikote first came out in the sourcebooks, my next characters made a mad rush to get everything that could be worthwhile with Dikote, coated.

Nowadays, the only time my character carries a dikote weapon or whatever, is when he liberates it from someone else. Then again, otherwise, my most common dikote item would probably be some sorta non-conductive, not metal based knife.

it's still overpricing, since we're talking about rules in a book rather than an actual market system.

We still had a minimum cost per item, or batch such as shuriken.

All that nuyen and hassle for a what +1/+1 armor that isn't even vehicular? Just one more hole to throw resources into.

Yeah, 'cause +1 armor's never a good thing to have. There's no time, ever, when I wished I had a TN 5 roll intead of a TN 6 (netting twice the average successes). Or, y'know, 4 versus a 5, or 3 versus a 4, etc, etc, etc.

If you've got the money -- go for it. None of my characters have dikoted anything, ever, except one guy who sunk the cash into upgrading some edged weapons... but, hey. Just 'cause you don't like to do it doesn't mean it's stupid.

I think you could buy alternate armor cheaper.

True, but heavier armor tends to be a lot more conspicuous. I don't have the books handy, but I'm betting that armor whose base is 5/3 (Secure Jacket?) is easier to walk around town in than armor that is 6/4 (security armor?).

And there's always the "get the heaviest armor you can and then Dikote it" approach.

In my games we've discussed not even allowing Dikote. Its absense does nothing to detract from the game. All its presence does is for the GM to ramp up the opposition if the party is to be challenged.

No books handy: does dikote make armor hardened in 3rd edition?

It adds 1 to ballistic and impact, no mention of making it hardened. If added to a drone or vehicle, it adds 1 to body and armor.

That's not as bad then. Still not a fan of it increasing the damage level on weapons (I assume it still does that for edged weapons?).

OK i know you will all yell at this one.........

Dikoted bullets

go? nogo?