I would not plan on relying on other DW personel outside of your team. Also in keeping with an elite medicaltheme everyone will be able to eventually have at least some first aid knowledge to remain on the team. It is not something you'll have to have right off the bat, but it won't hurt either.

Also personal pet peeve of mine, please everyone just pretend that stick and shock doesn't exist outside of larger casing (shotgun, grenade launcher) capsules. Your enemies will be under the same stricture.

There goes my SnS holdout combat monster concept

Lurker, there has been some discussion about the limits set on Force by the Magic Attribute of a Mystic Adept. In THIS THREAD many argue that the wording of SR4A means that while the partial Magic Attribute allocated to spellcasting and summoning is used to determine dice pools, the full Magic Attribute of a Mystic Adept is used to determine maximum spell Force and Physical versus Stun Drain.

Could you please tell us how you will run this aspect of Mystics?

I will run them as separate and distinct totals because that is consistent with the previous edition materials and my reading of the original printing. While this does make them weaker then some peoples interpretation of the rules (especially in the faq) that interpretation severely overpowers them for the costs.

Gotcha.

Damn! I just got corralled for a couple of weeks. Any time I have free should be for the two games I am GMing. Sorry, Lurker and all, but I have to bow out. Maybe someone on the wait list gets a chance now. I was having so much fun building "Radar", too.

I really like the concept, Lurker. I'm sure it will be a cool campaign.

Sorry I missed this Karoline in order

Yes and I have fixed up above.


Sorry Karma build is out, as a GM i'm just way more familiar with BP and I'm playing to that while we get this running. See the compromise mentioned.

I liked the possess and make the injured walk to us idea. Could be accomplished almost as well by just having a spirit poof in next to the injured and carry him/her to us.



Very well put


You may buy up the group and then break them if you wish, you may also take a group to 5 and therefore put one over on the 2 skills at 5 rule, but will not be able to get a six or another 5. Other then that yes cap's stay in place as we're working from the (someone limited I admit) world view that 6 is a paragon in your field and 7 is one of the legendary masters.

pbangarth - Sorry to see you go man. This still gives us like 12 people factoring me forgetting Mickie from my earlier list so unfortunately no one moves up fromt he waiting list just yet.

Please continue to send your character concepts to me, you can do so via PM but for more lengthy submissions I would really appreciate you sending them to my name here on this forum at the search engine that begins with a y. Also as you start to get into the more finalized version if you really wanted to make my day if you'd put them into Damien Knight's spread sheet from over on the community page as that's likely what i'll put everyone in for my sanity.

Over the next 24 hours my priority will go towards preparing for my weekly thursday night game. I will still be on the forum and stuff but my ability to give anything a uber detailed read through will be kind of spotty. Once that's done since I have a week off from both it and class I will be focusing heavily on this game and preparing for it, assembling NPC's, locations, etc and the like so you guys have further knowledge of the setting and situation for this particular campaign. Sometime after the weekend we'll start a light roleplay based session as you guys arrive at the Code Black facility in seattle and go through meeting your team mates and superiors and getting familiar with each other in character a bit before being certified to go into hell and walk out of it. Once everyone is approved both in character and out (sometime hopefully by the end of next week) your first mission will start. I've already got some really solid ideas for this and I'm looking forward to putting things in motion.

That's the game plan, it likely won't survive contact with the enemy but there you go.

Arsenal pg.51 . last line before description of light military armor.

Following up a little on my "sammy-type" character, concept is progressing.  Current idea is that "Switch" "was" as shadowrunner who got caught on the wrong side of a nasty firefight.  Of course, in his defence, he had set up a contract with Docwagon to extract him from just those kind of situations.  However, he made a mistake in using a stolen SIN which tagged him as having a LOT more money/resources available...  The charade came to a nasty conclusion after he had been rebuilt/put back together and the corp went to collect.  Then Docwagon "team leader" had a brilliant idea - he was connected to (or had a close connection to) Code Black and "offered" Switch a deal - join the team or return the 'ware...not much of a deal.

Still working on some of the finer details, but in reality, Switch is an indentured worker, signed to Code Black for a long, long time - a fact that he constantly rails against.  An added complication is that he has actually come to like/respect his team mates - turning tail on them is not an option.  In effect, he is very committed to the team but hates the team's management.

Comments/thoughts?

AJC

My timing continues to suck Can I add myself to the waiting list please?

Should we also take the 15 point Day Job flaw? I figured I'd ask since having a job technically isn't a negative in a campaign that revolves around that job. On the other hand, I never turn down free points.

Seems like having a SIN should not be a real problem in this job, either.

Should I point out Records on File (DocWagon)?

Are you doing a DP cap? Especially on first aid? Getting to 20 dice isn't even slightly difficult with first aid thanks to the massive +6 from a medkit. I'm currently sitting on around 30 dice, and want to know if I should bring back my build slightly so as not to have a bunch of dice I won't use.

Are you taking into account negative dice pool modifiers? As an example, something like: a dice pool of 30, in the middle of a firefight in contaminated rubble at 3 in the morning, working on an Awakened subject would probably fall below the cap of 20.

Okay, I had Zeus (was "Switch" but someone beat me to it...) written up, but noted the Records on File quality, and decided to use it.

His background is like so:

Zues, as a former Tir SF communications specialist, does not know too much about medical procedures, but is whiz-bang at the tech stuff, and can work while sneaking around real quite-like, or in the middle of combat. It is what he was trained and augmented to do when in the Tir army. He mustered out about 5 years prior to joining DocWagon. Due to his training, he has worked in various security roles, and sometimes as a "deniable asset" during that time. Knowing that he is often working under same principle here, he still tries to keep a backdoor handy, and keeps in touch with his old fixer, Nigel.

Here is the Short version of Ariel Jauagahan's the former FBI ERT background:

Ariel Juagahan born on October 9th, 2052 in the Philippine city of Batac to Baccay Juagahan andd Paulinea Ayala. Ariel grew up in a loving and secure home. Paulinea Juagahan was a tribal shaman of the people of Batac. Baccay Juagahan was a tribal warrior and leader of the city defense force which in fact was part of the resistance later to be the freedom force. One of the first memories of the world around Ariel was the new of UCAS President Dunkelzahn’s assassination. This was profound because for the first time he saw that a metahuman could become come anything they chose to be. Then Halley’s Comet sticks out from the flooding of the Typhoons that hit the city. He remembers soon after he could see Halley’s Comet in the night sky. The Following year was the start of real history for Ariel. It was the start of the open revolution of his fellow people to lift the oppression of the Japanese Empire. Now with the Philippines free and allied with the UCAS again his family moved to Seattle in July of 2063. Having been schooled in Baccay city which is a major education center he finished his schooling in Seattle. After finishing school Ariel set his sights on the UCAS FBI’s ERT program. His interest in this line of work was sparked after seeing one of the ERT team operate during one of the many incidences in Seattle. He finely reached his goal at the age of 18 he was accepted into the ERT program after the academy he was assigned back to the Seattle branch. Were he spent the next two years excelling in his career. Then the unthinkable happened he crossed the line a relationship had formed with a fellow officer on his team and it started to affect his ability. The brass caught on and forced Ariel to break off the relationship or resign. With the feeling he had for Joanna Harnatsch he resigned. Ariel got wind that Docwagon was launching a new High Risk Enforcement Department in Seattle he put in his Application, Letter of Intent, and a letter of Reference (From his former Team Leader John McCabe).

Here is a quick paragraph on Kristof.

Kristof began his career as a member of a HTR unit for Knight Errant. His exemplarary service record and skill set led to him becoming an Investigator. He was what many shadowrunners would call a "Company Man", specializing in dealing with security threats. He was often called in after a violent crime had been committed to find any leads and often persued the high threat culprits to a capture. He always did what was needed of him to get the job done. He applied for his position on the Dacwagon team and was accepted. He still gets razzed by his old KE buddies since they took over for Lonestar but their is no animosity. It was only after he was accepted did he learn that KE got the contract.

Will there be a standard-issue gear pack? If so, what will it consist of?

Since we're doing basic character bios here, here's mine:

Doctor is a DocWagon vet, having worked for them since shortly before the Crash, having had her tuition at MIT&T completely covered by DW in exchange for a 6 year contract with them as a tech support specialist, though her graduation made her seriously consider throwing that to the wind. Even before the Crash, her innate understanding of electronic devices shined through, only to be unleashed in full force shortly after the Crash when the current form of the Matrix was set up, revealing her technomantic abilities, which even to this day she keeps hidden. 8 years later, she's still with DW, finding she loves the job and working with the Code Black teams, and volunteered to help set up the Seattle teams with an already experienced technical operator. She had her own motives as well, of course, but that's not something she shares with everyone. Being new in town, she has few contacts, but her natural charm ensures that will change before too long.

While we're discussing standard issue gear and the like, what about shared contacts? I'm sure we'd all have someone above all of us, as well as possible other NPC DW personnel (such as the previously mentioned driver), that would count as contacts.

Let me add up. -3 from combat, -2 uncooperative patient (Unlikely but possible), -2 awakened subject, -2 for 4+ essence lost. So in worse case scenario I'm looking at -9, which still keeps me over 20 dice. She could basically perform successful open heart surgery with a rusty sledgehammer and Elmer's glue.

So, trying to make my character using that character generator thing for excel, and can't figure out how to give myself genetic optimization.

I am unable to use that generator. My Windows 7 machine went down a couple of months ago and I haven't had the money to fix it so I am on my Windows XP machine and it does nothing but crash.

Get Open Office, it runs it just fine on my Windows XP.

That said, I really don't like the sheet very much. It is kind of handy, but it takes longer to find two items than bang out the entire sheet by hand. I've so far been unable to locate Auto-injector for my cyberleg. Been unable to locate Genetic Optimization. Been unable to assign what geneware is affected by genetic heritage. Been unable to find any nanites. Been unable to initiate. Been unable to add more than three vision enhancements to my helmet. Been overcharged for capacity on several things......

Yeah, I'll just make it by hand and turn it in and let you try and figure out how to do everything on the sheet. About the only thing I have figured out is how to get the BP back for splitting a skill group.

Ok, so while flipping through the TM chapters in SR4A and Unwired, I came across a couple side bars of optional rules and was wondering which ones we're using, if any, once we get into play. I'm asking here in the open because one of them I swear has a mage equivalent to it, and I know there's a bunch of optional mage rules in Street Magic. I'm sure most (if not all) will be shot down, considering our discussion in PM already about slaving and TMs, but never hurts to ask. Also, where the heck do you play Shadowrun locally? I not been able to find a group in almost a year.

The first one, and the one I'm sure there's a mage equivalent option as well, is the option to buy additional echoes (or metamagic) up to a total equal to your Resonance (or Magic) + Submersion(Initiation) grade for 15 karma each, and they have to be learned from a Resonance (Astral) Realm search, another TM or TM Network (again, mage groups), or from a Sprite/Spirit.

The others I'll pretty much just let you look up, as rhere's too many of them to list in one post sanely. The TM ones in Unwired are on pages 137 and 138, and the mage ones in Street Magic are on page 31 (roughly, I have the older blue cover, not the reprinted orangish color one so might be a page or two off), and page 79 for spirits aiding enchanting.

I have a write up of NPC's i'm working on and will get them out sometime in the next few days as well as the standard gear pack. If it helps you I will probly be either modifying or ripping off the Doc Wagon HTRT load out on page 90 of ghost cartels if you have that if you can't get the excel spreadsheet to work just send it to me in a .txt document.

Also figure on a 20 dice cap.

You'll have people you know as part of your time in docwagon but they are not contacts per se or at the very most they are loyalty one to you to start. If you wish to expend points to improve those contacts (especially if your coming from within Docwagon or some other sutiable justification) I have no problems with that. Likewise other contacts can be taken any way you like and like most contacts may aid you in your work.

As stated elsewhere thursday's is a slow response day for me as much of it is devoted to my weekly game.

Am I the only one that thinks taking qualities like "SINner", "Day Job" and "Records on File" in a legit game seems a bit abusive? Really in a legit game you should have a reciprocal of these, like "SINless" (using a high quality false identity), "Moonlighting" or whatever... But maybe its just me.

Anyway, I feel like the team roles are still a little muddled. I'm leaning heavily toward a combat/medic mage, since it appears that we have a preponderance of street sam type characters. A troll meat shield may still be useful, but a little redundant. Does anyone think such a character (the troll) would be useful or really want to play a mage? Cuz I could go either way. Plus we lost pbangarth's "Pointman/Technician" so do we have a Face/Team Leader in the works?

Okay, still very rough, but what I have right now is a massive logic character. Main idea was to pump up first aid to be able to heal max boxes. In picking up heavy armor with big hydraulics, shock frills, strength enhancements, fire resistance, and ruthenium coating, and a goodly number of genewares and nanites, I found that she should be quite capable of jumping into the middle of a firefight (or even literal fire) and dragging someone out or even tending to them right there (Though the long heal times make that not always a great idea). I figure I can throw some points into infiltration so she can sneak in if needed.

Her high logic also lends her to possibly being a hacker if no one has the role covered.

I'm playing a TM/Face and with my backstory as an experienced DocWagon person, I'm prolly the most likely to be picked as the team leader too. Seems to me we have a pretty decent chunk of meatshield/sam characters, but only one (maybe two) mages, depending on what DaedalusK71 goes with (or if he's even still with us). There's nothing saying you can't play a troll combat/medic mage and still be a meat shield. The final decision is of course yours and what you want to play, but the areas where we have fewer people are: face (especially someone with a lot of contacts), mage, hacker/rigger.

Combat:
bmcoomes (former FBI ERT sam person)
crank (straight up sam)
AJCarrington (straight up sam)
Darquewing (a combat hacker)
ravensoracle (former KE guy)
Mickle (combat/face/infiltration)

Magical types:
Karoline (medic mage)
DaedalusK71 (maybe, he's only posted once)

Tech/Matrix:
GrimWulf (data search/investigation)
Me (hacker TM/face)
Darquewing (infiltration/hacker)

Faces:
Me (hacker TM/face, only one contact)
Mickle (combat/face/infiltration)

Infiltration:
ravensoracle (former KE guy)
Darquewing (infiltration hacker)
Mickle (combat/face/infiltration)

Driver:
DaedalusK71 (again maybe) or an NPC

Edit: So from what I've seen, there's our areas of skill, Method. Not sure how you wanna go with that. I'm pretty much the major tech player, and Karoline is trying to turn her mundane or adept medic into a mage, but she would be an almost purely Health mage, so a combat mage would not be out of the question, nor would a rigger.

My character, Vincent, is turning into a combat/face/stealth combination. He's a heavily cybered sort with some skill in first aid, about 12 dice in social skills, and enough combat skills to hold his own against all but the most focused of combat monkeys.

His focus has adjusted towards being able to approach threatening situations (either through stealth or negotiation) and neutralize hostiles with maximum speed and efficiency. His internal air tank also means that he can fill a room with knockout gas and proceed to enter the room to ensure that all hostiles go down.

As an aside, do the empathy software/emotitoys work as per raw, or are they being houseruled?

Ok, adding Mickle's character Vincent to the list, so we have 2 faces (and with 12 dice in socials he's better than mine with only 7), 3 sneakers, 2 dedicated tech peoples with a third specialist, 6 or 7 combat peoples, and a mage or 2.

I also have some Tech Skills - Electronics, Demolitions, First Aid, and a point in Electronic Warfare to aid in communications. I can roll 8 dice on any tech skill providing I get a skillsoft of 1.

By tech I mean Matrix stuff, i.e. hackers and riggers. I'm really just splitting us up into the core 5 types of Street Sam, Magic, Matrix, Face, Sneaker. I mean, if we wanted to be more specific now, I could break it into close combatants, ranged support, tanks, magical support, Matrix support, infiltration, investigation, negotiation, transportation, logistics, medic, overall leader, field commander, demolitions, etc etc. I do hope we have one person with some rating in Armorer and/or Automotive Mechanics (I would have gotten a point or two in both if we did karmagen, but my points are stretched thin as is) so we can upgrade our gear and/or rides as we go.

In the expanded explanations I'd probably classify my tech specialist character as closer to investigations/logistics then anything else.

Though if needed, (and with the given bio's so far it seems so) I do have an alternate character that I could bring in rather then the tech.

She'd be more of a heavy weapons/demolitions character. Don't believe (but haven't checked too closely) that we don't have any heavy's yet.

Wouldn't say rigger at all, the drone comment earlier was really just a side project. The character would pretty much be all about the data gathering.

Ok, so basically, aside from super specialized stuff like data searches and bypassing locks, I'm the sole tech person........


WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

Ok, got that out of my system.

Hmm, I'm not playing a mage actually. Was going with Adept for things like improved ability, but right now I'm sitting on mundane for the 100k extra resources. I might flip back to adept though, but either way not a mage. I mean I guess I could, but I don't know. I've only got about 2 essence tied up in the build, so being awakened wouldn't hurt too much. I'll likely have to sit on it for a while.

It seems that 100k has generated alot of interest in playing mundanes

Edit: If I could afford programs my character could do techie stuff.

Hehe, ok, so one mage or no mages, we lack magical support......

Well, in interest of our elite team of troubleshooters not getting taken down by a single mage with stunbolt, I'll shift over to magic mojo. Goodbye nanotech, I'll miss you. Luckily my build already included a 5 willpower and 10 logic

Hehe, and I can be the rigger, once I get some neuyen to buy more than my one drone (which is just for protecting me while I go full VR). I can tweak my sheet a bit, drop my weapons skill and medicine (will keep first aid) and pick up pilot ground vehicle and some drones, be our rigger/driver/hacker/face. Well rounded but not the character you want anywhere near combat, or even trying to sneak in.

Well... I think it depends. Since we are a Black Op team, we are one step away from becoming "deniable assetts". If a "non-official" operation turns into a Charlie Foxtrot, then DocWagon would deny any involvement while at the same time launching a second operation to clean up any evidence. And any of us who live through it would likely be considered evidence. This would become much easier with our records on file and knowing our SIN. We could easily go from high payed specialists to wanted criminals in the blink of an eye. Being SINless and using a fake with DW, while giving them a lot of false info for records, you would be in a much better position to walk away from a true cluserf***.

As for Zues, he's an elf that is cranked up with Logic, but also with Agility. One thing he would not be though, is a meat sheild. While he has a really good Perception rating, running point would be risky, especially dealing with AR a lot. He could however be a slackman (guy behind the guy running point) pretty well. While he does not have Armorer or Auto Tech, he getting dice pools of 10-13 in firearms, electronic, and hacking skills. Also, I gave him the juryrigging quality because I think it will be useful for quickly bypassing physical security measures while also making things work when, by all rights and purposes, they probably shouldn't. Yea, it won't work twice, but we'll only need it once

Ok, I reworked my character, and she's still weak in her Cracking and Electronics groups (3 in both groups) and her CFs aren't anything pretty since she's having to dual-spec basically for both hacking and rigging, but she's got a few more drones, and will be better at managing multiple things at once like hacking while commanding the drones as well, and also managed to get her a little better in the influence skills group. She's going to be relying heavily on threading and sprites until she can get more karma to bump up her skills and CFs as is, but considering they'll be rating 6 sprites and she can thread anything, that's a safe fall back option, especially with her being pretty hard to hurt in the Matrix.

Edit: Does anyone else have any pilot/driver skills to be our driver? I'm debating dropping that and putting it into beefing up my CFs a little bit since I need it.

I have a reaction of 9 so I can default to 8 dice for ground craft.

Congratulations, you're our driver if someone doesn't have better. I'm dropping that to help even out my hacking/rigging/social stuff.

Our driver is being provided for us by DocWagon.

as can I. I'm also sitting on 75k for buying non-attached gear, so I can pick up the autosoft if we really need it.

Whatever the case may be, I'm tweaking this character to stop trying to cover the whole of tech stuff but still be good at what she does, but basically she's going to be your traditional hacker/rigger, either crashing out in the CrashCart or back at the HQ while supporting via full VR and drones, less out in the field directly as I'd originally planned.

Ok, slight tweaking, and with discussion of with a friend, I've come to the conclusion that I didn't really understand some of the matrix stuff correctly.

So, with that said, my character while remaining his awesome self at the data searching is also a lot better at hacking side of things then I realized. So, I'm pretty confident that's not going to be a problem.

Still, not much on the rigging/drone side however. But I believe I can tweak that, though I'd need to free up some BP somewhere.