[Nycidian Grey]

So after reading a thread here I came up with an idea for a campaign which I will eventually run although I have a feeling its not going to be very soon.

However, if I'm going to be running a game I want to make some specific rules to allow for character concepts that the rules are not friendly towards, things that because of the rules become overly complicated to play, too powerful (meaning they are frowned upon or just not allowed) or simply not viable.

What I'm looking for is feedback on things you have wanted to play but just don't seem to work well in SR.

Examples:

Technomancer Rigger

Because most of the rules involving technomacy is based around the matrix often to make a viable rigger technomancer you have to be part technomancer part non technomancer. for example you can't learn complex forms for autosofts meaning you drones either suck or you have to buy programs which seems kind of odd for a technomancer to be doing. Another example is widgets, widgets have very little use for a rigger about as much as a widget would for a street sam.

Possession Mages

I haven't looked into this a whole lot but from what I've seen posted on these forums they are overpowered in some fashion. The idea of it sounds really cool though and perfectly fits with voodoun so If it is over powered when I do some looking into it I would rather modify it a bit and make it playable than to dis-allow it.


If you know of anything in SR like the above that just isn't all that playable in a standard game please post what it is and a least a little bit about what makes it hard to use in games.

Your help is appreciated.

[Mirikon]

Technomancer Rigger - If you're jumped into a drone, you wouldn't use autosofts anyways. And if you're not, a machine sprite does the job nicely. Or you can just buy autosofts. Don't see any need for a change, honestly.

Possession Mages - It can be powerful, but isn't any more powerful than a regular mage, IMO. Instead of having two entities on the field of battle, as with a normal mage, you either give up your own actions, as the spirit possesses you, or you have to find a vessel for it, which it must then succeed on a test to actually possess. If it is possessing you, it essentially gives you a 'toggle' type character, switching back and forth between spellcaster and street samurai, at least until you get some Initiation done.

[JustADude]

Technomancer Rigger - If you're jumped into a drone, you wouldn't use autosofts anyways. And if you're not, a machine sprite does the job nicely. Or you can just buy autosofts. Don't see any need for a change, honestly.

Actually, they forgot to give the Machine Sprites the actual ability to jump into Drones. Everything in the rules says they meant Machine Sprites to be able to do it, but they never actually gave them the mechanics to get the job done.

In any case, here's what I'd recommend:

House Rule #1: Give Machine Sprites the Override power, which I actually formally wrote up back in February. Essentially codifying how they do their jobs.

House Rule #2: Count each tasked objective as a single Service, allowing on-the-fly "tweaks" to how the task is carried out at no charge. For example, "Take out Group X" is a Service. If you have to delay the attack for some reason, getting the Sprite to hold off and then attack after the complication is cleared doesn't cost you 2 more Services.

House Rule #3: Allow for Ally Sprites... start with the Ally Spirit rules from Street Magic and tweak the Karma costs down, since a permanently bound Sprite is somewhat less useful than a permanently bound Spirit.

[Tsuzua]

Possession Mages

I haven't looked into this a whole lot but from what I've seen posted on these forums they are overpowered in some fashion. The idea of it sounds really cool though and perfectly fits with voodoun so If it is over powered when I do some looking into it I would rather modify it a bit and make it playable than to dis-allow it.

While all mages have the extremely powerful "summon big spirit and win" option, possession mages have two routes to power normally not available to materialization mages.  The first is most common "broken" possession mage build of being an mystic adept with punching powers, get possessed, and punch harder while on fire.  It can be hideously effective but so can a HVBR. 

The second is a heavily cybered mage who summons the biggest spirit of man he can to possess himself.  This raises his magic attribute so now he can run around casting spells like a normal starting mage (or possibly much better).  However, he also is extremely tough due to all the defensive ware he has.  Basically he's the best parts of being Robocop and Gandalf rolled into one character.

You can keep an eye out for both builds and things should fairly alright.  One thing to note is that being possessed isn't subtle.  So if you're running around growing, people might notice and care.  It's basically the same if you had the spirit follow you around materialized which is likely not a great idea in all cases.

To get the most out of possession, you need the Channeling metamagic but that's fairly cheap to get after 2-3 runs so it isn't too much of a drawback. 

[Crash_00]

One thing to keep in mind is that Possession does not anywhere state that it allows stats to go over the augmented max/max of the person. Tsuzua covered the basics, but it's not really a huge issue most of the time. The spirits are, in general, not as powerful as a normal spirit and take control of the person's body away (without channeling at least).

I don't think that having a spirit possess you would raise your magic over your maximum (6+initiations-essenceloss).

[Mirikon]

Having a spirit possess you doesn't affect your magic, edge, or mental abilities at all. A spirit possessing the mage who summoned it would use its own mental ability scores, or that of the host, whichever is lowest, I believe. And it would use its own magic and edge to deal with its powers. If the mage has channeling, he would use his own magic and edge, not the spirit's.

Summoning powerful spirits, whether it is a possession or normal tradition, is going to skew the odds heavily in your favor. That's just the nature of mages. However, the difference between the two is that with a normal tradition, you have two entities on the field (meaning yet another target to draw fire) taking two sets of actions according to their initiative. A mage summons a fire spirit, and then the mage can lightning bolt someone while the fire spirit flamethrowers the same guy, or someone else. With a possession tradition, a mage who has that fire spirit possess himself (even with Channeling) only has one entity on the field (albeit one that is largely immune to bullets) and only one set of actions. He can lightning bolt someone, or flamethrower them, but not both, and not at two different targets. Both are powerful, but both have weak spots and consume resources.

[Crash_00]

Of course there is always attempting to possess other people. It's risky because of the, for lack of a better term, cooldown on attempts, but turning an enemy into a very very capable ally is always a good move when it works.

[UmaroVI]

Having a spirit possess you doesn't affect your magic, edge, or mental abilities at all. A spirit possessing the mage who summoned it would use its own mental ability scores, or that of the host, whichever is lowest, I believe. And it would use its own magic and edge to deal with its powers. If the mage has channeling, he would use his own magic and edge, not the spirit's.

This is entirely wrong. Street Magic 102. You use the spirit's mental and special attributes for everything. Channeling changes this so you use the lower mental attribute to defend against Mana spells or powers, but otherwise doesn't change how it works.

[Mirikon]

Apologies. Had forgotten what page that was on.

[Tsuzua]

Yeah it's little know effect of possession that most don't realize.  Personally I think it's more broken of the options.  Once you're channeling, you also can cast with the spirit's spellcasting which can get WTFcrazy. 

However in the end, high force spirits are amazingly powerful materialized or possessing.  If you don't generally have a spirit issue in your games and you watch out for the more crazy possession builds, you'll be good.   

[Nycidian Grey]

I guess maybe I should have written my original post a bit differently.

I'm not overly interested in the two examples I brought up I'm more interested if anyone has run into other problematic character types.

[Crash_00]

Uhm...I don't see where it says the mage gets to use the spirits Magic/Edge anywhere. I see where the Spirit gets to use it's mental stats, special stats, and the vessels physical+force (up to augmented cap), but to my knowledge the mage doesn't get access to anything new unless I'm completely missing it somewhere.

Without channeling, the mage is trapped in his body with no direct control, with channeling he has control, but nothing states he gains the spirits stats that I can find.

[Ryo]

Doesn't one of the books have example NPC possession mages that go way past augmented caps? I thought that was the reason the tradition was seen as broken.

[Tsuzua]

Uhm...I don't see where it says the mage gets to use the spirits Magic/Edge anywhere. I see where the Spirit gets to use it's mental stats, special stats, and the vessels physical+force (up to augmented cap), but to my knowledge the mage doesn't get access to anything new unless I'm completely missing it somewhere.

Without channeling, the mage is trapped in his body with no direct control, with channeling he has control, but nothing states he gains the spirits stats that I can find.

It's the passage:

Living Vessels:
If the vessel is a living creature, the spirit’s Force is added to the vessel’s Physical attributes. While possessed, the spirit’s Mental and Special attributes  are  used  (which  means  that  a  pos -sessed technomancer cannot access Resonance), with  Initiative  recalculated  as  normal  (use  the spirit’s normal Initiative Passes).

That passage is clearly talking about the statistics of the living vessels while possessed.  So if you're possessed by a spirit, you have its magic and not your own.  Now I'm not entirely sure if you can spend a spirit's edge points or not, but you can use its magic just fine for tests.

You do need Channeling for this to work.  However, that's at most 13 karma which is 2-3 runs.  Until then, you're "only" an augmented mage.  You can also self-possess for spirit fun times for the time being.  A mage can order around a spirit he summoned while it possesses him (SM 103).  It's even heavily suggested that the GM lets you roleplay the spirit in the same sidebar.

I'm not overly interested in the two examples I brought up I'm more interested if anyone has run into other problematic character types.

As for other character types, there is the unaugmented adept.  He's got several problems.  The first is that his "keeping up with Joneses" powers like Improved Attribute and Improved Reflexes are over-priced.  Thus he's strongly tempted to get ware from that angle. 

Simply discounting the powers don't help as well as you think since his power list is overbalanced.  Thus augmented adepts can buy all the worthwhile powers cheaply and then load on the good ware if you merely decrease PP prices.  This problem plagues the otherwise worthwhile "PP instead of Metamagic" optional rule.  The best way would to fix the adept powers and remove ratings, just have them scale by magic rating.  Thus adepts are encouraged to have a high magic just for its own sake like mages.

There's also the Jumped in Rigger.  He's big issue is that he's tied to a vehicle's attributes.  He's got to increase his vehicle's response to 6 to keep up with the hot simming command rigger hella cheap Command 6 program.  A command rigger can take any old drone of the street and rock while a jumped in rigger needs to carefully hand out his Response 6 chips.  The Command Rigger can also focus on various options that improve one matrix action.  Thus with optimization (command), codeslinger (Control Device) the Command Rigger gets an additional +3 to all rolls.  The Command Rigger also has the advantage of being able to walk around while AR command rigging (at -2 dice).  The Command Rigger also doesn't get hurt if the vehicle gets blow up either.

The Jumped in Rigger has some advantages.  The Control Rig helps, but the big one is immunity to hacking and spoofing.  Really he just needs dice pool increases.  Allowing the Control Rig to apply to all tests while jumped in helps a great deal.  Letting the Control Rig Boosters do the same is also a good idea.  Letting the Jumped in Rigger use either the vehicle's Response or his persona's helps a great deal as well.

[All4BigGuns]

Letting the Jumped in Rigger use either the vehicle's Response or his persona's helps a great deal as well.

Seems to me that this would be what would be intended anyway with the normal response and such of the vehicle just being for the purposes of the pilot program and any autosoft programs. Haven't looked into it too much, admittedly, but it would seem unnecessarily antagonistic to the rigger's player to rule the other way in my opinion.