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Post by Jet on Jan 18, 2011 16:13:31 GMT -5
I hope my GM wont get that idea. I like having my characters NOT die. And when they do, I want them to go out with a bang.
So, any tips for creating a machinegun totting guy with augmentations (Deus Ex style)? Other then of course improved vision, which is obviously useful and not expensive.
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Post by WildKnight on Jan 18, 2011 16:18:01 GMT -5
I hope my GM wont get that idea. I like having my characters NOT die. And when they do, I want them to go out with a bang. So, any tips for creating a machinegun totting guy with augmentations (Deus Ex style)? Other then of course improved vision, which is obviously useful and not expensive. Stock up on things that boost your ability to hit targets in combat. It doesn't matter how big your gun is, or how much damage your double-barreled rocket launcher can do, if you never hit what you're aiming at (yes, this advice relates to a specific incident in my past. No, it wasn't my PC. But take the advice seriously). If you really want giant weapons and massive damage, get the strength augmenting cybernetics and the stabilization, etc. Firing lots of rounds in Shadowrun means taking lots of penalties. Rest assured, if your character dies, it almost certainly will be with a bang. Perhaps not the kind of bang you're referencing though.
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Post by malice on Jan 18, 2011 16:36:34 GMT -5
Well you'll want a high Agility. Reaction is also important (go first, go often) for initiative. Don't neglect infiltration, enemies who don't know you're there get no reaction against you.
You'll also want either automatics or heavy weapons. Automatics covers a LOT of weapons. Getting a firearms package can include Automatics and a lot of other guns, but you'll be forced to buy it lower. The system forces you to prioritize skills, so you'll want to be exceptional at your primary ability.
Heavy Weapons is a great skill, it includes Machine Guns as well as grenade launchers (You'll need to be able to use grenade launchers in order to use underbarrel or overbarrel grenade launchers) and missile launchers. The problem with Heavy Weapons is that you have to work to take them places. They tend to be AWESOME in a fight, but you have to get them to the fight, and if you're in the city going through a lot of checkpoints this can become a problem. The other problem with Heavy Weapons is that a lot of the weapons are difficult to acquire (High availability). Keep that in mind when deciding whether you want your primary weapon to be a Heavy Weapon or not.
Smartlink all your weapons.
Best Assault Rifle: Ares Alpha. I'm a big fan of that thing, and almost every character I create that can use assault rifles gets one of these. The reason it's the "best" is because it has a rare line of text giving it 2 points of free recoil compensation that don't interfere with other recoil modifications you can make to the weapon. It also just comes with a lot of nice things.
I don't recall the name of the weapon, I think it's the "Ares SuperSquirt". You fill it with narcject and it hits as hard as a panther cannon except that it does stun boxes, so it drops them faster, and it's legal to carry one. It's a good standby weapon for when you're moving around the city and you don't want to worry about moving your assault rifle or machine gun around.
Do you have the "Arsenal" book? In that book there is a heavy pistol with that special line of text, I believe it's the Ruger Thunderbolt.
Also in the back of the Arsenal book are rules for modifying your own weapons. This is a great way to start play with extremely nice guns.
Enough about weapons. Designing your character to use them well will depend on how much you want to augment yourself. Adepts actually augment well, because you can mix their Adept powers with cyberware and bioware to gain excellent dice pools. The more you augment yourself the less "human" you'll be, so how much you do is up to you.
Also when getting cyberware and bioware you want close to even amounts of both essence-wise, because the one you have less of does something unusual where it penalizes your essence half as much. I don't have the books before me so I can't explain perfectly unfortunately, and I'm about to head out to a movie.
Good luck for now.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2011 22:05:56 GMT -5
My friend was telling me about shadow run over the weekend. He's wanting to GM a game, but I'm not that much into roleplay any more being as busy as I am. I lost interested whenever he told me how much the Matrix stole from it. He said they actually had "The Matrix" in it, and they did that weird jacking in, or jacking on thing that the Matrix did. I donno, I hated the first Matrix movie so I didn't fallow it, and I seem the first Matrix when it came out, and that was years ago. He could have been lying to me about the Matrix ripping things off from Shadow Run, but it wouldn't surprise me.
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Post by WildKnight on Jan 18, 2011 22:25:15 GMT -5
LOL your friend needs a reality check. Shadowrun didn't invent anything. The concept of logging directly into an internet-like structure goes (at least) as far back as the 1970's in science fiction, and really got legs when a guy called Gibson got into the game. Gibson's contributions to the concept and to cyberpunk in general are so famous, his name is used to describe the supercomputer in the movie Hackerz.
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Post by malice on Jan 18, 2011 22:48:39 GMT -5
My friend was telling me about shadow run over the weekend. He's wanting to GM a game, but I'm not that much into roleplay any more being as busy as I am. I lost interested whenever he told me how much the Matrix stole from it. He said they actually had "The Matrix" in it, and they did that weird jacking in, or jacking on thing that the Matrix did. I donno, I hated the first Matrix movie so I didn't fallow it, and I seem the first Matrix when it came out, and that was years ago. He could have been lying to me about the Matrix ripping things off from Shadow Run, but it wouldn't surprise me. Errr, you have nothing to worry about. Shadowrun may or may not be your type of game, but "the Matrix" doesn't make or break it. First off, "Matrix" is a word that means something all by itself without a movie. In Shadowrun the Matrix is just their word for the internet, and more things are connected to it than are connected to the internet. Almost everyone in Shadowrun is "jacked in", it's not that different from everyone in the our world having a cell phone. Hackers have the choice of connecting themselves directly to the Matrix (read: Internet) in something that's called "hotsimming" or "running hot" or something like that. They DO hook their brain up directly to the Matrix, which is almost where the similarities to "the Matrix" end. It just allows them to do everything faster, which I believe means they get to roll more dice. The other similarity to "the Matrix" is the risk of doing this. Since they're directly connected to the Matrix (again, read: Internet) any retaliation or defenses like computer viruses do direct damage to the hacker. A hacker who links themselves directly to the Matrix can die if they step wrong. They aren't walking around in a world that looks like ours though. Like I said, "Matrix" is just Shadowrun's word for a more pervasive internet.
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Post by WildKnight on Jan 18, 2011 22:52:48 GMT -5
If you want to see something like the way people interface with the matrix in Shadowrun, check out Johnny Mnemonic.
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Post by Jet on Jan 19, 2011 4:19:02 GMT -5
So the rule of thumb is "Get a lot of accuracy", then "get a good weapon". Never would've thought about it But yeah, thanks for the input. I'll be making my character with my GM this saturday anyway, I just want to know what too look for.
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Post by malice on Jan 19, 2011 5:52:34 GMT -5
...and "get good recoil compensation". Gas Vents, Foregrip, Custom Grip, Gyro if you're using a machine gun, etc.
Sorry if you had hoped it would be more interesting design-wise. The concept is simple, the fun is playing it.
Also in character creation you'll get most your dice pool fast, with your weapon skill and agility score. After that you spend most of your time gaining little increases here and there, that when added up make the difference between you and a mook.
So smartlinks are one. Enhanced articulation is another.
Also there's more to firing a gun than just firing a gun. You have to locate a target (vision enhancements), act before they do (good initiative), and have an answer for return fire (not always reaction). We definitely make a point of killing people before they even raise their weapons, which is a good way to get by.
My first character was a stealth operative with High Infiltration, Automatics, and Unarmed Combat. The simpler you are the better you can be at what you do. Later we re-made him but focused as much on stealth as possible because not being seen means not being shot. You can even get options to hide from mages and spirits. You can afford to lose some dice being less accurate if your enemy has no chance of dodge. We also gave him some Logic so he could use the armorer skill to make really nice weapons for himself and the rest of the team.
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Post by WildKnight on Jan 19, 2011 7:44:51 GMT -5
Sorry playah... it really is one of those systems that has a lot of specific little tidbits, but the base concept of crunching a character is always the same.
Recoil Compensation, as Malice says, is one of those tidbits that is sometimes overlooked by new players, but it makes all the difference (like I said... nothing means anything if you can't hit in the first place)
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Post by Jet on Jan 19, 2011 18:36:54 GMT -5
Ok, so lethality is high, I get that. Hopefully my team wont be as stupid as my ED group (thought to be honest, I also did one crucial mistake which killed us, but I justify it by not knowing the details of how that tool worked and nobody told me just how powerfull it is).
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Post by malice on Jan 19, 2011 19:26:16 GMT -5
By the way, when you finally get to play the system for awhile - and I hope you do, and I really hope you enjoy it - prepare for the disorienting effects of playing other systems after playing a lot of Shadowrun. You will find that in other games you aren't always being set up, not everyone is a traitor, and morality extends beyond survival. Often I get mixed up in other games, because I distrust everyone, murder every loose end, and get confused when people question my extreme caution. Of course I also enjoy doing all those things, but that's beside the point. One of our players took the Shadowrun mentality too far in Shadowrun! A contact found us to warn us about incoming forces, just as the forces were incoming. This player decided the best thing to do would be to taser that contact in case it was a set-up (to make that contact look special when he helped repel the enemy), even though this particular contact was some kind of super-special honest guy (A paladin/templar guy or something) and the rest of the party thought it was overkill. I actually thought it was fine, but was playing a character who is allergic to combat (Body of 2) so I was much more interested in exiting stage right. Either way, have a great time with Shadowrun , it really is one of my favorite games, and just talking about it makes me grin big ;D
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Post by Dhark on Jan 20, 2011 21:23:04 GMT -5
LOL your friend needs a reality check. Shadowrun didn't invent anything. The concept of logging directly into an internet-like structure goes (at least) as far back as the 1970's in science fiction, and really got legs when a guy called Gibson got into the game. Gibson's contributions to the concept and to cyberpunk in general are so famous, his name is used to describe the supercomputer in the movie Hackerz. I heard somewhere they're making a movie of the book that started it all. I think the first one was Neuromancer? I know I read it a long time ago... One character carried over into Johnny Mnemonic (also written by Gibson I think) too. The girl, I think she had pink hair. She was in both stories if I'm not mistaken.
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Post by WildKnight on Jan 20, 2011 21:27:51 GMT -5
They've been trying to make Neuromancer for years. I heard they were finally going to do it... but that was a while back and I haven't heard anything since.
I used to be a huge fan of cyberpunk as a genre.
As far as Johnny Mnemonic... eh. It's a rare instance where I think the movie totally ignored the source material, and actually improved because of it. Despite Keanu doing everything in his power to ruin that movie (and by everything in his power, I mean what he calls "acting"), I really enjoyed it. Intelligent dolphins with leet haxxor skillz ftw!
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