[Patrick Goodman]

Don't get ugly, Reaver. I appreciate the vote of confidence, but we're just now getting things calmed down. I'd rather they not get calmed up again.

[MijRai]

I do have to second his praise of you, however.  You're the one who got this train rolling, and that is awesome.  I even get to be on the ride!

[TedEbay]

Well, that was a bit of a read.

Me: long time gamer, been playing Shadowrun since it first came out. Been game-mastering it  since its first year.

Not going to comment on the previous thoughts, just asking a question about Run Faster and a possible errata, which has a tie-in to Hero Lab.

In Run Faster the Metavariants go from page 88 to 97, then Metasapients from 98 to 101, where it then goes into describing Creating Something Different.
On page 103, the first sentence of Creating a Changeling states "SURGE can happen to anyone and anything."

Changelings being in the same section as metaspaients, are they a metasapient? Can SURGE occur in an existing metasapient; such as Pixie, Naga, Centaur, or Sasquatch?

If SURGE does effect them, then why does Hero Lab exclude metasapients from access to SURGE?

I have asked this in the LoneWolf bug report for Hero Lab (Shaowrun 5th) as well, just asking here for clarification and possible addition to errata for Run Faster.

[Patrick Goodman]

That's actually a discussion we're having now, as that's the chapter we're working on right now.

My personal feelings are that SURGE should be available to metasapients. It's affected paracritters since the beginning; devil rats SURGEd into demon rats, for instance.

We'll see where the discussion goes.

[Novocrane]

SR3/Year Of The Comet, at least, you could randomly suffer SURGE with an Essence(12) test. Metahuman +2, Metavariant +3, Albino or Otaku +4, Infected +5, Shapeshifter +6, with Awakened receiving +Mag/2.
Anything with Essence Loss or Essence 0 never rolled. If everything else short of vampires and cyberzombies can manage it, I don't see why metasapient critters shouldn't, too.

[Axiomshift]

Well. Reading through this thread. Something that popped out at me was being able to use agility and unarmed to deal damage based off strength and whatever natural weapon a dual natured creature might have. That alone eases a lot of problems non awakened dual natured creatures have. Though makes me wonder if str is supposed to be able to be used instead of charisma to pass barriers and the like. Also whether interupt melee attacks would be possible to deal with spirits. Issues like these made me wonder how low/no magic ghouls are able to survive against pollution spirits or other magical threats in the sewers when I was first reading the RAW of 5th. EDIT: well seems like the martial arts counterstrike in run and gun solves the melee interupt if it is applicable in this case, guess most ghouls become martial arts masters to survive.

[Kiirnodel]

The better fun is a dual-natured critter grappling a spirit/astral form. They both have Astral Forms, so they are both Astrally "real" so it technically works. So, the dual-natured critter can grab hold of the spirit and keep them in melee by going subduing combat. Also, I don't see any reason why an Interrupt action couldn't be used to do an Intercept attack as normal. You don't need to go into Martial Arts to do it, it just makes it more effective.

In my group we had a funny story where an Astrally Projecting magician got grabbed by a Vampire when she wandered too close. It was a "perfect storm" of relatively new player, playing a "naive" magician that was lost in a new city. She decided scouting Astrally would be faster, and didn't think to discuss it with anyone else. Then when she got lost she tried to stop and ask for directions, as an astral form. First, she decided to approach a spirit that was patrolling a building and ask nicely. Luckily for her, the spirit didn't attack on sight (it just told her to stay away), this eventually got the attention of the resident magician who likewise projected and approached. Basically ended up in her being (sort of) politely told to back off and not come back.

So then she tried looking for other people that she could talk to. After wandering around looking for someone she eventually noticed someone that was dual-natured. Thinking they were a magician that was astrally perceiving she approached to talk to them, and what she found out was actually a vampire lunged at her. She managed to get away and she decided it wasn't safe to scout astrally.

Best part of all that was that she was super worried that she had contracted HMHVV and insisted on us checking on her over and over again to make sure she wasn't infected. Out of character she was convinced/paranoid about her character getting in deep trouble like that. I didn't have the heart to tell her that she was freaked out over nothing. Not only had she not been in contact long enough for the vampire to drain her at all, but Infection is a Physical power, can't be used on purely astral forms. It was sort of like a person being worried about contracting HIV from a hand shake.

[Axiomshift]

Huh. Forgot about intercept being a thing tbh. If that works against spirit astral melee attacks that is pretty neat. Also just got a great image of infected dogpiling onto astral forms from your story.

[Sir_Prometheus]

Well. Reading through this thread. Something that popped out at me was being able to use agility and unarmed to deal damage based off strength and whatever natural weapon a dual natured creature might have. That alone eases a lot of problems non awakened dual natured creatures have. Though makes me wonder if str is supposed to be able to be used instead of charisma to pass barriers and the like. Also whether interupt melee attacks would be possible to deal with spirits. Issues like these made me wonder how low/no magic ghouls are able to survive against pollution spirits or other magical threats in the sewers when I was first reading the RAW of 5th. EDIT: well seems like the martial arts counterstrike in run and gun solves the melee interupt if it is applicable in this case, guess most ghouls become martial arts masters to survive.

Dual natured creatures already use str/agi/unarmed/natural weapons. That's what the whole last few pages was about. It's already how it works but unfortunately not so easy to read nor obvious to new players. Which may include you. I'm not yelling, just clarifying.

The str instead of cha for barriers may be intended as well, but that's less clear.

[Axiomshift]

Dual natured creatures already use str/agi/unarmed/natural weapons. That's what the whole last few pages was about. It's already how it works but unfortunately not so easy to read nor obvious to new players. Which may include you. I'm not yelling, just clarifying.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Yeah, I had a feeling that might have been the case from reading through the 4th ed. books. Just am never sure on what is supposed to be intended changes or simply unclear text. Because frankly just reading 5th its easy to come up with wrong answers on stuff like that. Which is why I'm glad for the errata team hopefully clarifying a lot of stuff like that so its usable in the online shadowrun community I am in.

[StPaul]

Life Module Question

The following passages seem to contradict each other:

Pg. 66 "Note that no active skill may be raised above 7 in this system. If a module is selected that would raise an active skill above 7, the module can be selected, but ranks in a skill over 7 are lost."

Pg. 76 "Additionally, skills cannot go above 7 in this process. If the skill is not part of a group, transfer the points to a skill with same linked attribute."

Additionally, the wording of pg. 76 seems to imply that if the skill were part of a group, you might transfer the points to a skill within the group. Or that may be wishful thinking on my part.

Thank you.

[Sir_Prometheus]

Patrick, interested in these changes to edge for the nartaki and wayakambi meta variants. I'd assumed the old stats were intentional, particularly for the nartaki. I.e. We have four arms but aren't as lucky as normal humans. Made a lot of sense to me because I thought human luck was a benefit for being "normal" in some way.

Is this a confirmed typo/mistake or are you just resetting to the base metatype?

[Patrick Goodman]

That was from the German errata. There was no indication anywhere in-universe that wakyambi or nartaki varied in any way from the base metaspecies in terms of luck/Edge, so we went ahead and rolled with it. Seemed like an honest typo to us; God knows I've made a few of those, working on tables like that.

[Darzil]

On the new Banshee stat errata, it has 1/9 Cha going to 3/9. I'd expect 4/9, as normally changes increase min and max by the same amount, and 5 points different is the largest I've seen.

[Patrick Goodman]

No, that's right. Vampires, nosferatu, and wendigos also have a minimum of 1. I structured the table to just raise the caps when I was doing the math, but for the life of me I can't remember why. I just know that banshees were getting shortchanged.