Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Rules and such => Previous Editions => Topic started by: Dirtywork on <05-20-12/1740:48>
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Greetings!
I started playing SR back in 1990. After a few games I was in love! I GMd until around 1996 when life does what it does and I was forced to sell ALL of my books. And at the time I had everything related to SR that had ever been printed along with the DMZ. Sad day. :'(
A couple of months ago a friend and I were talking about RPGs and SR came up and I started getting nostalgic. A week later he dropped off a beat up old copy of SR4 on my doorstep. The jerk.
Needless to say I am wanting to get back into the shadows in a bad way. I've been devouring the SR4 rule book, I'm building a huge story, planning on doing Food Fight 4.0 for practice/familiarization, I've got a group of gamers itching to run it, and I've ordered the 20th Anniversary book as well as the Toolkit for starters.
Today I started working on building characters. I was going to dig up my old SR1 characters and see if I could convert them but it's probably best to start fresh so I can learn/relearn the game.
With that being said I have an incredibly noobish question so go easy on me....
Improved Reflexes
"This power increases the speed at which you react, just like wired reflexes. For each level, you receive +1 die to Reaction (this also affects Initiative) and 1 extra Initiative Pass. The maximum rating of Improved Reflexes is 3, and the increase cannot be combined with technological or other magical increases to Initiative."
My question.....When building an adapt who is using Improved Reflexes how does it affect initiative? I know I'm getting an extra D6 per level of Improved Reflexes but are those extra dice used during the initiative roll or am I actually adding 2 points to my reaction attribute?
It's kind of embarrassing going from hardcore daily SR GM to starting all over and having to ask for help on what is probably an obvious answer. So thanks for any clarification!
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You are adding the dice to Reaction
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well if you roll dice equal to your reflexes and intution, and add the number of success to the number of dice rolled.
such as reaction 7 Int 4
rolls 11 dice if you have 3 hits you then go 11+3 giving you 14.
so adding to your reaction whould give you extra dice to roll witch is also the number you add success to.
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Your Initiative score is equal to your Reaction + Intuition. So when you increase your Reaction with the Improved Reflexes, your Initiative also increases as a result.
To compare things to how it was done in older editions, Dexterity has been split into Agility and Reaction, and Intelligence has been split into Logic and Intuition. So Initiative has been changed from Dexterity + Intelligence to Reaction + Intuition. (The initiative stat is the number of d6s you roll. The Target Number in SR4 is always 5. Add the Initiative stat to the number of successes on the roll to decide who goes first.)
Each level of the Improved Reflexes power also gives you an extra initiative pass, which is to say that you go additional times per turn. Unlike older editions, where the number of times you went per turn could vary depending on the outcome of the initiative roll, in SR4 the number of times you go in a turn is always the same.
So Improved Reflexes at Level 2 means that you get +2 Reaction (which also means you get +2 Initiative) and 3 Initiative Passes.
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My question.....When building an adapt who is using Improved Reflexes how does it affect initiative? I know I'm getting an extra D6 per level of Improved Reflexes but are those extra dice used during the initiative roll or am I actually adding 2 points to my reaction attribute?
It works exactly the same as Wired Reflexes, now. :)
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Thanks for the help so far. Being a noob again kind of sucks lol
Weaving together engaging, fun, campaigns is still second nature to me and the rich source material of SR is what I've always loved the most. But relearning the mechanics is a beehotch. Not to mention when I was in high school I had more time to study Shadowrun mechanics lol
I also stumbled upon a twinking/munchkin thread. Great ideas for NPC builds but I think I'll stay away from all that for now.
I'll be playing with several people who are brand new to SR as well as RPGs in general so I want to be able to help them breeze through character creation with minimal fuss.
Ok! Just so I'm clear.....
With Improved Reflexes 1 my stats would look like this......
Reaction 5 (7)
Intuition 5
Initiative 12
Initiative Pass 2
Would it be ok for me to post a few character sheets here for critique and/or tweaking? Or is there another thread for that?
Thanks again for the help everyone! It's nice to come out of retirment.
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With Improved Reflexes 1 my stats would look like this......
Reaction 5 (7)
Intuition 5
Initiative 12
Initiative Pass 2
Close. It's +1 Reaction, +1 Initiative Pass per level, so with Improved Reflexes Level 1, your stats would look like this:
Reaction 5(6)
Intuition 5
Initiative 11
Initiative Passes 2
,,,and with Improved Reflexes Level 2 they would look like this:
Reaction 5(7)
Intuition 5
Initiative 12
Initiative Passes 3
Would it be ok for me to post a few character sheets here for critique and/or tweaking? Or is there another thread for that?
There's actually a "Character creation and critique (http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?board=21.0)" subforum dedicated to character advice.
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I was looking at a different value on my character sheet :-[
Ok. I think the wording of the rule was throwing me off and I was over thinking it. It was so simple and right there in my face! But I'm tracking now!
Thank you so much for the info!
And I'll be sure to post my character up in the creation/critique forum
Thanks again for all the help chummers!
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Also, if you want to spend a bit of money ... Hero Labs is an excellent character creation (and tracking!) program. Does all the math for you when building a character, including and especially displaying derived attributes (like Initiative), adding up your Dice Pools, and so on.
Costs $30 for the base program and core rules module; another $55 for all the supplements so far.
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Dirtywork,
I noticed you mentioned you've been working off SR4 and have 20th ann book coming.
I recommend that you wait till you get that book. Enough things changed again that you will get frustrated trying to figure what did and what didn't change.
Better to start fresh with SR4 20th Ann. Ed.
G.
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I've been looking at the Hero Labs stuff all day. Great looking tools. Unfortunately I spent my SR budget for the month on the 20th Ann book and the toolkit so I'll have to wait til June.
I'm in the 501st Legion so a lot of my cash goes into weapons, armor, and build supplies. That all comes out of my "fun money" budget. The Boss (aka wife) has informed me that any further geekery will come out of my fun money budget....which also has to cover 501st stuff, video games, collectables, and now SR. lol On the brightside I opted to get back into the shadows rather than buying Diablo 3. ;D
As for the 20th Ann edition.....from what I understand there were several tweaks to magic and the Matrix. But what about the core mechanics? Can I still use my old SR4 book to brush up and study a bit while I wait for the 20th ann ed to show up? Or should I just read over the fluff/history/atmosphere stuff and leave the rules alone for now?
I'm also dissecting Umaro's replacement archetype builds so I can get a better grasp on character creation and different builds.
As always thank you all for helping me out. It is very much appreciated and it makes me that much more anxious to get back into the game!
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The basic mechanics are mostly the same, but like I said there are a lot of rule changes. For me, it was frustrating to have to go back and read all of 20Ann to find them all. If I could go back a few years, I would tell my self to wait.
But thats just me
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Guess what the postman just dropped off?! ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Ok so now the old SR4 book can go on the shelf and I can get to work!
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There is a free one not getting up dated think it was at dump shock.
Think the offical forum ther for it is
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=24282
That is a fan made one i belive, not quite the same scale and quality of the hero lab.
the hero lab one will most likly be updated more often. (also there are a few erros in this one so it will help with the match but double check what you're taking.) Unforutanly printing its work is masive wast of paper as the format it puts it down in takes mote space than needed. The hero labs one is most likly a better choice.
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Guess what the postman just dropped off?! ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Ok so now the old SR4 book can go on the shelf and I can get to work!
Saweet!
Did ya give him a big wet kiss? lol
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Thanks Blue!
I tried to give the postman a kiss but he was too fast :P
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Thanks Blue!
I tried to give the postman a kiss but he was too fast :P
that should hold you over tell you get the good one from hero lab.
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Another noobish question...
Here's the situation.....
We were working on building characters today and one of our guys wanted to get a pair of custom synthetic lower cyberarms. The book says the arms come with Body 3, Agility 3, and Strength 3. Do those values add to or replace what the player already has?
So if the player has a Body 5, Agility 5, and Strength 5, will the cyber arms actually drop the players ratings down to 3?
Thanks :-)
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for tests that you involve the hands like shooting a gun yes, but you can customize your cyberlimb for higher stats.
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The rules are covered in the cyberlimb section of SR4a on p343.
Up front here's another link which answers a few other questions about cyber...
http://www.shadowrun4.com/game-resources/frequently-asked-questions/
The current version of the FAQ is quite good at clarifying and not trying to act as errata. (It only directly contradicts the rules as written (RAW) in two places. One regarding splitting dice pools where it tries to create pre-split modifiers and post-split modifiers, and the other regarding how mystic adepts calculate their magic rating (you use their full magic value, not the individual split quantities).
For tests involving ONLY the cybernetic replacement they use the cyberarm stats..... (so for example... you could build a decker with low agility.... bolt on a FULL cyberarm with agility/body/str upgrades... and even some further enhancement in capacity. So long as he fires a 1 handed weapon like a heavy pistol he would only need use the cyberarms superior stats... if he used a two handed assault rifle (or a two handed grip on a SMG for extra recoil comp).. he'd need to average the cyberarm and his natural value on the other arm.
So effectively for getting a half-arm. The character receives...
1. 1 extra box of physical damage.
2. a melee physical attack weapon which does physical instead of stun damage (effectively the cyberarm is brass knuckles).
3. gains 10 capacity in which to install further components. (these are supposed to be the same grade as the limb itself... but I've seen a lot of GM's fudge this).
4. Adds 0.45 to the cyber essence loss count. (remember to track bio and cyber tallies seperately... the essence score is 6 minus the larger... then minus HALF the smaller).
5. a wierdness in the rules where he'd normally use his bodies stats for most tests... excepting those directly involving the partial cyberlimb (EG: crashing a cup in his cyberhand... would involve only the partial cyberlimbs stats).
5a. my experience here is that GMs allow a full cyberarm to replace stats, but partial limbs not so much... IE: stuffing on a partial limb or only a hand for an agility enhancement when firing pistols. (firing the pistol is sitll a full arm test.). Again invokiing the above cup crushing.... crushing the cup in a cyberhand is one thing... claiming the cyberhand allows the characters arms to lift far more than they normally could quite another. Use your best discretion as a GM here.
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Dirtywork, if you want a free character generator look up Chummer. Way better than the other one posted. Regular updates and it includes all the rule books out to date. Here is the forum on Dumpshock for it .
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=34674
Also welcome back to the game. I went through what you are going through about 3 years ago. New rules and the old stuff just kept creeping in.