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Street Legends supplemental review

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Nath

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« Reply #30 on: <01-07-12/2001:59> »
Of all the IMs, he's one of the ones always willing to try new and interesting things.  I mean, hell, he plays MMOs!  His immortal foe can't even figure out how to use a TYPEWRITER yet!
If you meant Ehran, he is the one playing with Harlequin in the short story at the beginning of Dusk. He just happens to find such occupation ridiculous.

CanRay

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« Reply #31 on: <01-07-12/2027:47> »
Haven't gotten those adventures.  :(  Budget constraints.   :'(
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Neurosis

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« Reply #32 on: <01-07-12/2222:42> »
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To be more specific: I feel like Harlequin's character sheet contains far, far too much space dedicated to explaining how super-duper-awesome and amazing he is, and how much cooler he is than everyone else, and how much more powerful he is than everyone else, and so on. The result is that instead of coming across as an NPC, he comes across as an enormous Mary Sue. Specific examples:

The sidebar about his tradition. I agree, a simple note saying "Harlequin uses a custom tradition similar to Hermetic, but with Intuition resisting drain" would have been plenty.

"The initiate grade and Magic attribute given here do not necessarily represent the upper limits of Harlequin’s magical capacity, merely the upper limits of what the Sixth World is likely to require of him."

Yeah I see your point now: most of that stuff was actually put in specifically to try and avoid pissing off the fan base, ironically.

Basically, when I dropped Lugh Surehand's stats, someone literally linked me to a PC they had played that could blast him to death. It was a completely ridiculous 40-50+ dice pool monster PC that wouldn't even be allowed in an "ultra-high-power" campaign by any reasonable GM, but still...it existed, and it was preposterous, and I wanted to account for that. Besides revamping the way I looked at numerically optimizing mages (specifically, I think I learned a lesson about the efficacy of Shielding Foci versus Counterspelling Foci thanks to whoever posted those stats), I also wanted to make sure, generally speaking, that no one was looking at Harlequin and thinking "this is pretty weak compared to some of the crap in my campaign".

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"The initiate grade and Magic attribute given here do not necessarily represent the upper limits of Harlequin’s magical capacity, merely the upper limits of what the Sixth World is likely to require of him."

So I put in those lines because I didn't want the character's theoretical power to be limited by my own ability to optimize and at this level by "optimize" I of course really mean "choose arbitrarily high numbers".

So it was less *fap fap fap omfg Harlequin force 1,000,000* and more *let me really cover my bases here and make it clear he's the most powerful metahuman magician in the world and every aspect of his writeup reflects that*. It's not that I particularly think that what's interesting about the character is how ZOMG powerful he is--that's not what draws me to the character--it's just a canonically established fact that I felt obliged to comply with.

tl;dr generally speaking, coming up with Harlequin's canonical stats was a really daunting task; Shadowrun has made a point of not statting him before this point, and there's the whole theory of "if you stat it, players will find a way to kill it" and all of that was on my mind. The lines in question were supposed to be my escape clause, so to speak, in case I screwed anything up. I can see what you mean when you say they came across as belaboring the point, though.

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Saying he knows all spells, and then having that enormous, bloated list of favorite spells. A shorter list would have been far more useful. The "Demolish Pants" spell, for example, got buried under a tide of generic spells. I think everyone can figure out that if Harlequin needs to knock out a bunch of people, he can Stunball them. I'd rather know that he likes casting Physical Double Image and other "trademark" spells like that.

I know it's a gigantic list, but that list of spells was really just supposed to be his favored spells. With that list and with the skills, I was also trying to do some characterization-via-stats. Personally speaking, I believe that stats can also serve as a form of characterization, although I also understand people who want stats to be only and always the mechanical information they need to play and nothing more.

*On A Lighter (oh god enumberance pun) Note*

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Damien Knight is wearing too much armor for his body, and is encumbered – but it isn't factored into his statblock

I interpreted the armor modification options in Attitude (p. 160) as working the same way that helmets, shields, the PP system, and anything else with a "+" in front of the armor value do, and effectively not counting towards encumbrance. If they count towards encumbrance and nothing else with a + in front of it does, then that is quite an inconsistency.
« Last Edit: <01-07-12/2238:34> by Neurosis »
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Mirikon

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« Reply #33 on: <01-07-12/2312:55> »
When dealing with dragons and Immortal elves, one should always assume that they have forgotten more about magic than you will ever know. Also, if someone is a few thousand years old, why shouldn't they be uber? It isn't like they forgot everything during the downtime, and had to build from scratch. And most would have picked up new skills and abilities during that time.

As far as the armor mods, the +blah mods don't count as STACKED armor. They still count towards the BODY*2 limit, though.
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UmaroVI

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« Reply #34 on: <01-08-12/0236:04> »

I interpreted the armor modification options in Attitude (p. 160) as working the same way that helmets, shields, the PP system, and anything else with a "+" in front of the armor value do, and effectively not counting towards encumbrance. If they count towards encumbrance and nothing else with a + in front of it does, then that is quite an inconsistency.

They do work the same way that helmets/shields/PPP do - but that is to count towards encumbrance. They add to the value of the armor, and you check that for encumbrance. So if you have a Armor Jacket (8/6) and then put on a helmet (+1/+2) it makes the armor jacket count as 9/8 for all purposes - protection and encumbrance. Threading and PPP works the same way.

UmaroVI

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« Reply #35 on: <01-08-12/0250:43> »

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Saying he knows all spells, and then having that enormous, bloated list of favorite spells. A shorter list would have been far more useful. The "Demolish Pants" spell, for example, got buried under a tide of generic spells. I think everyone can figure out that if Harlequin needs to knock out a bunch of people, he can Stunball them. I'd rather know that he likes casting Physical Double Image and other "trademark" spells like that.

I know it's a gigantic list, but that list of spells was really just supposed to be his favored spells. With that list and with the skills, I was also trying to do some characterization-via-stats. Personally speaking, I believe that stats can also serve as a form of characterization, although I also understand people who want stats to be only and always the mechanical information they need to play and nothing more.

My point is that the characterization via stats would be better with a shorter favorite spells list. Knowing someone's top 60 spells doesn't really tell you much about them. Knowing their 5 or 10 favorite spells does.

A good example: if you asked everyone in this thread to list their top 60 favorite sci-fi movies in alphabetical order, you'd get a bunch of very similar lists and it would be really hard to distinguish people. Where there are differences, lots of people would overlap heavily so they'd be hard to compare. If you asked for everyone's top 5 list instead, it would be much easier to get a sense of how people's tastes differ.

Mäx

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« Reply #36 on: <01-08-12/1208:18> »
I interpreted the armor modification options in Attitude (p. 160) as working the same way that helmets, shields, the PP system, and anything else with a "+" in front of the armor value do, and effectively not counting towards encumbrance. If they count towards encumbrance and nothing else with a + in front of it does, then that is quite an inconsistency.
All of those thinks do count toward encumbrance, would be pretty damn imbalanced if they didn't.
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Nath

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« Reply #37 on: <01-08-12/1354:53> »
When dealing with dragons and Immortal elves, one should always assume that they have forgotten more about magic than you will ever know. Also, if someone is a few thousand years old, why shouldn't they be uber? It isn't like they forgot everything during the downtime, and had to build from scratch. And most would have picked up new skills and abilities during that time.
There's a basic assumption here, that you can always know more about magic.

I mean, how much can you learn about forging? You could learn every to swing your hammer and the effect it produce, and learn the exact color of every alloy for a given temperature. A mortal blacksmith may achieve such knowledge in two or three decades of work. And after that?
As a swordman, you could learn every move and the ways to counter them, much like chess, but versus one, two, three or more opponents wielding different kind of weapons. But as far as I can tell, Immortal elves have Immunity to Age, not Immunity to Memory Loss (an immortal with the Photographic Memory quality would be a different beast...). Nor do they have a faster brain to process information, at least not more than a normal human could with the maxed attribute or the Exceptional Attribute quality.

Magic is only different because we're told it's about powerful mystical forces from other planes of existence, and because rules give no upper limit to Initiation and thus to the Magic Attribute. Active and knowledge skills, on the other hand, cannot go beyond 7 (a legal limit several characters in Street Legends violate). It could be argued that, as Initiation allows to increase an Attribute and not skill, it's not so much about knowledge of magic than being "attuned" to mana at a deeper level.

squee_nabob

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« Reply #38 on: <01-09-12/0955:40> »
Not to belabor the point, but it may be useful to draw attention to SR4A Page 161 “Armor and Encumbrance” (bolding mine):

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If a character is wearing more than one piece of armor at a time, only the highest value (for either Ballistic or Impact) applies. Note that some armor items, like helmets and shields, provide a modifier to the worn armor rating and so do not count as stacked armor.

Too much armor, however, can slow a character down. If either of a character’s armor ratings exceeds his Body x 2, apply a –1 modifier to Agility and Reaction for every 2 points (or fraction thereof ) that his Body x 2 is exceeded. Note that this may affect Initiative as well. If a character is wearing multiple armor items, add their ratings together before comparing to Body

Additionally look at SR4A 327

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Helmets and shields do not count as separate pieces of armor; instead, they modify the rating of worn armor by their rating (Armor and Encumbrance, p. 161).

Attitude 160 notes that “Layered protection rules still apply”

PPP notes on Arsenal 49 that they modify the rating of armor worn by their rating just as helmets and shields do.

I can see how an argument can be made that helmets and shields do not count as multiple armor items due to the second paragraph of SR4A 161, but I do not think it is correct. My interpretation is that helmets and shields do not provide the “stacked armor” penalty, but do add their ratings together before comparing to Body.

Finally, I do want to commend Neurosis for giving a published example of a character wearing multiple pieces of armored clothing with Armor modifications and not double stacking threading on any given piece.

Mirikon

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« Reply #39 on: <01-09-12/1026:09> »
I was fairly certain that ware such as dermal plating or natrual abilities like a troll's dermal deposits or a critter's Armor didn't count to the Body*2 limit, but otherwise, yes, everything else you add up and then compare.
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UmaroVI

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« Reply #40 on: <01-09-12/1037:10> »
Yes, things that are not worn armor - other examples include cyberlimb armor, Mystic Armor, and some of the SURGE effects - don't count towards encumbrance.

JustADude

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« Reply #41 on: <01-09-12/1041:30> »
I can see how an argument can be made that helmets and shields do not count as multiple armor items due to the second paragraph of SR4A 161, but I do not think it is correct. My interpretation is that helmets and shields do not provide the “stacked armor” penalty, but do add their ratings together before comparing to Body.

Pretty much it works like this:

You divide it up in these categories:
Formfit: Armor Value = 6/2, Encumbrance Value = 3/1
PPP: Armor & Encumbrance Value = Total of all pieces worn = (P1/P2)
Ware: Armor Value = Total of All Ware Armor Mods = (W1/W2), Encumbrance Value = 0
Powers/Qualities: Armor Value = Total of All Armor Values = (Q1/Q2), Encumbrance Value = 0
Helmet: Armor & Encumbrance Values = Listed Stats = (S1/(S2)
Shield: Armor & Encumbrance Values = Listed Stats = (S1/(S2)
All Other Armor: Armor Value = Highest Ballistic (A1) and Highest Impact (A2), Encumbrance Value = Total Ballistic (A3) and Total Impact (A4).

So what you end up with is this:

Armor
Ballistic = 6+P1+W1+Q1+H1+S1+A1
Impact = 2+P2+W2+Q2+H2+S2+A2


Encumbrance
Ballistic = 3+P1+H1+S1+A3
Impact = 1+P2+H2+S2+A4




EDIT: Removed post and posted it again more cleaned up.
« Last Edit: <01-09-12/1043:30> by JustADude »
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Neurosis

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« Reply #42 on: <01-09-12/1529:20> »
I think the point has been officially belabored.

(That is something I have been doing wrong since I started playing SR4, and no one has pointed it out to me before now. I still think an argument could be made for my interpretation being equally valid based on nitpicky wording issues within the rules text, but I certainly see where you guys are coming from, so I'm not going to pursue that argument.)
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nightslasthero

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« Reply #43 on: <01-10-12/1240:17> »

As for the "Hermetic only cooler tradition" that is heritage stuff from previous appearances of the character that I personally felt obliged to carry over. It's how his tradition is described in both of the classic Harlequin adventures. In hindsight, I wish I had just put "Harlequin resists drain with Willpower + Intuition" as that's the only important distinction from Hermetic.

As for the buttons, that was purely my idea and I thought that the idea that he carries around a bunch of Hot Topic bargain bin buttons attuned into foci at literally random Force would be a good way of converying how powerful and mercurial (for mercurial read: he does not give a shit) the character was and ah fuck it-


I thought the buttons thing was cool. Seemed to me like somethign a confident (and possibly phsochotic) elf who has been around forever would do. It adds something unique to the character, a bit of a personal touch. You could have foci be anythign and for him it is just a simple button.

And where does it mention the way cooler part?
I also liked the

The Jake

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« Reply #44 on: <01-30-12/1945:41> »
There's quite a few things with the Street Legends and Supplemental to it that irk me - not the least of which was statting out NPCs who should never have been statted IMHO (Lofwyr) and blatantly ignoring those who should have (Man-Of-Many-Names, Fastjack).

Fastjack to me is very much an anomaly. Being a pure mundane, hacker and no technomancer, even a human + Lucky + Aptitude + maxed Edge, I don't understand how he can keep up with TMs with umpteen Immersion grades. It just doesn't add up.

The fluff text within Harlequin I quite liked but to my reading, Bull was definitely the guy out of Harlequin's Back and the author didn't make it clear to seperate that this wasn't the case. So yes, I can see why many people would be pissed. Also, turning around and saying "oh they're criminals so you can't trust them" completely undermines the notion of people reading Jackpoint for info IMHO.

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