Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Character creation and critique => Topic started by: markelphoenix on <06-24-20/0858:03>
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So, Firing Squad added a lot to the Str and Melee route, was curious what the hypothetical most lethal build as far as raw DV would be? Any flavor of Close Combat (unarmed, blade, etc.) Hell, throw melee exotics into mix if it is hypothetical best.
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Troll, Precision Strikes Martial arts, Monowhip. Highest base DV.
Adepts can add levels of Critical Strike. Mundanes can add Muscle Replacement.
Mind you "Monowhip" and a reasonable dice pool is all you'll need vs 90% of opponents. But if double digit DV is the goal, Troll, Precision Strikes, Monowhip.
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Troll, Precision Strikes Martial arts, Monowhip. Highest base DV.
Adepts can add levels of Critical Strike. Mundanes can add Muscle Replacement.
Mind you "Monowhip" and a reasonable dice pool is all you'll need vs 90% of opponents. But if double digit DV is the goal, Troll, Precision Strikes, Monowhip.
Think it'd be handy to handle spirits, in a generic way that works for other mobs as well.
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Whenever I see threads like this, all I can think is:
"Never build anything you wouldn't want the GM to use against you."
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Mundane attacks with a high enough DV will work "fine" on Force 4 on down. Force 5 or 6, still leak a bit through. Force 7+ you'll occasionally do a box. Force 9+, nope, just nope.
You want to handle spirits, play an Adept with a Weapon Focus or Killing Hands.
And please note, high DV isn't the most mechanically effective. I was answering the "...raw DV..." question.
IMO most effective is likely a Metahuman burn out Adept with +4 Agility from Muscle Toner, Bone Augmentation, maxed out Close Combat skill, and PP spent on Increased Reflexes, Killing Hands, and Critical Strike. You can hit... 8? DV with Martial Arts and such with an Unarmed attack. (Iron Hands, Kick, Flying Kick...) And you can go anywhere with this, and punch out Immunity to Normal Weapons, and get a high dice pool to increase your DV. And keep adding levels of Critical Strike as you advance.
But then I value "go anywhere" over a few points of raw DV, as long as you're still able to one shot a majority of opponents. And Adepts eventually win at raw DV because of Critical Strike, just takes a while.
Attributes A, Resources/Metatype B/C (whichever), Magic D, Skills E. Elf is my personal preference for the Agility, but really anything but a human for the higher Metahuman Priority.
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Whenever I see threads like this, all I can think is:
"Never build anything you wouldn't want the GM to use against you."
Some folks have different thresholds of character loss. If you are a person that gets very attached to characters and/or gets upset when they die I think this is good advice.
I still fully plan to build a grenade jockey for Missions, because I am a single minded man on a mission until those things get errata'd. If I die to grenades in response, no big. I have unlimited character ideas. Only thing I care about is rule adjudication that is either fair to the rules as written, or something that was discussed as an alteration to those rules before hand. That's one thing I've always enjoyed about organized play.
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IMO most effective is likely a Metahuman burn out Adept with +4 Agility from Muscle Toner, Bone Augmentation, maxed out Close Combat skill, and PP spent on Increased Reflexes, Killing Hands, and Critical Strike. You can hit... 8? DV with Martial Arts and such with an Unarmed attack. (Iron Hands, Kick, Flying Kick...) And you can go anywhere with this, and punch out Immunity to Normal Weapons, and get a high dice pool to increase your DV. And keep adding levels of Critical Strike as you advance.
Hey, I built the same one! I thought it was a secret. Leave it to Hobbes to sniff it out.
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Whenever I see threads like this, all I can think is:
"Never build anything you wouldn't want the GM to use against you."
If the GM wants to get you the GM will get you.
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What about Troll or Ork Grappler:
Tackle dmg is Body. So if I have bone density+critical strike+sangre martial arts you could also reach 10+dv . Ofc you need turns to tackle, more str. to get the tackle and enemy has chance to get out with martial arts/edge stuff.
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Note that Bone Lacing/Bone Density doesn't actually give you an augmented bonus to Body, it only gives bonus dice to Body tests for the purpose of resisting damage.
Although:
1) the extra mass imparted by these augmentations should warrant consideration for the circumstantial Edge in on the Tackle attack roll
2) since it's NOT an augmented bonus, that means it stacks with +4 Body from other sources that ARE augmented bonuses! (example, Increase Attribute)
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Devil Rat,
Thanks for pointing the Bone Lacing/Bone Density out. I had missed that.
Best,
SL
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Whenever I see threads like this, all I can think is:
"Never build anything you wouldn't want the GM to use against you."
If the GM wants to get you the GM will get you.
GM: "As you exit the Stuffer Shack you have the misfortune of running into a group of Aztech HTR unit, a dragon, and 3 vampires. Roll initiative....."
Players: "That doesn't make sense...."
GM: "Should of thought of that before having a dice pool above 12!"
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Whenever I see threads like this, all I can think is:
"Never build anything you wouldn't want the GM to use against you."
If the GM wants to get you the GM will get you.
GM: "As you exit the Stuffer Shack you have the misfortune of running into a group of Aztech HTR unit, a dragon, and 3 vampires. Roll initiative....."
Players: "That doesn't make sense...."
GM: "Should of thought of that before having a dice pool above 12!"
A pre-game discussion of expectations is the way to handle this properly.
If you do not have such a discussion prior to game, and a player min-maxes, and the GM responds with escalation, you have a bad GM. Period.
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Exactly.
But also:
If you build to a certain standard, you shouldn't be expecting to face challenges built for a lower standard. You don't see level 15s fighting 4 hit point goblins in That Other Game (tm), so neither should you expect gutter punk encounters if you're throwing 20+ dice. Sure, cyber ninja vampires filling in for gutter punks in gutter punk-appropriate encounters is bad GMing, but if cyber ninja vampires are what you're powerful enough to fight then that's what you should be getting ;)
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Exactly.
But also:
If you build to a certain standard, you shouldn't be expecting to face challenges built for a lower standard. You don't see level 15s fighting 4 hit point goblins in That Other Game (tm), so neither should you expect gutter punk encounters if you're throwing 20+ dice. Sure, cyber ninja vampires filling in for gutter punks in gutter punk-appropriate encounters is bad GMing, but if cyber ninja vampires are what you're powerful enough to fight then that's what you should be getting ;)
As long as the 'Run pays out commenserate with the risk, I agree. If the reward don't scale, why would someone with that kind of proficiency opt in for the run in first place?
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Exactly.
But also:
If you build to a certain standard, you shouldn't be expecting to face challenges built for a lower standard. You don't see level 15s fighting 4 hit point goblins in That Other Game (tm), so neither should you expect gutter punk encounters if you're throwing 20+ dice. Sure, cyber ninja vampires filling in for gutter punks in gutter punk-appropriate encounters is bad GMing, but if cyber ninja vampires are what you're powerful enough to fight then that's what you should be getting ;)
My philosophy is a little different.
If I am just running/playing a murder hobo game, that doesn't focus much on role-play or character development much if at all, then I am down with that.
But most of my core group's games are half murder hobo and character optimization, and half role-play and character development. When I am running or playing a more serious minded campaign like that, I want appropriate world consistency to be part of it. A big part of world consistency for me is NPC power levels. I feel like a character with 300+ karma, or magic rating over 8, or nothing but alphaware and deltaware should be quite uncommon. You'd be talking about the elite corp forces and shit. If you encounter them, or higher, every time you do a run then it starts to feel like exceptional people are endless.
When I am running those games I save those tough fights for critical moments. When the party engages most fights, I instead use enough lower key enemies as is necessary to make them sweat a little, or I let them have a cake walk in terms of their fight. I instead threaten them by threatening what they care about. Sure, your 800 karma mage is so strong that in order to challenge it I have to whip up what amounts to some bullshit. . .but how tough is your grand daughter pal? How well protected is that new humanitarian enterprise's office building? How secure is your personal reputation vs. being dragged through the mud? Stuff like that. It makes the game more engaging while maintaining an appropriate sense that the exceptional are equally rare.
Mind you none of that really matters until several hundred karma in.
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Powerful PCs are still helpless on a setting scale. They can certainly handle something directly that is right in front of them. But the dystopian nature of the setting means PCs are (generally) not making lasting or meaningful changes without a lot of plot devices/story arcs from a willing GM.
You can handle little Timmy's gang problem by eliminating the gang. But next week another gang has rolled in.
Sure you can steal the mcguffin from Giant Evil Corp A, but you're just giving it to Giant Evil Corp B. Nothing really changes.
I have no issue with PCs being powerful and able to easily handle discrete, specific challenges that are right their in front of them.
GMs that feel the need to escalate combat dice pools just haven't learn to really crush a player's soul you need to show them the futility of their choices : )
Honestly the "Murdo-Hobo" play style is fairly easy to justify in Shadowrun. PC "I can't change the world, but I can take out this jerk." Fatalistic / Nihilistic PCs are part of the whole cyber psychosis trope anyway.
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I agree with all that. Additionally, no matter how personally powerful a PC gets, they will likely never have the sheer resources to fully compete with a corp outside of select murder.
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Yea, plus also the corps can escalate forever. Even if their individual soldiers arent as powerful as the runners, they can pull out all sorts of "unfair" tricks. For instance, you have a runner team firing missiles and throwing grenades everywhere and causing a bunch of property damage that is hurting their bottom line?
Forget HTR team, thats when they escalate and bring in the heavy artillery in the form of attack helicopters, drone missiles, spirit squads and the like. Stuff that a simple runner team cant really deal with. If you are costing the corps more in damage than it would cost them to deploy such expensive assets (and pay the legal fees required to do so), then the corps are just gonna bring the hammer down on your head.
The level of response to the runner's actions should be proportional to how much economic damage they are doing (or will do) to the corp (remember, stealing a McGuffin might classify as a LOT of economic damage). Similarly, the level of security at a site is proportional to the economic value of the site.
The best way to deal with runners with high dice pools is just to send them on more challenging missions. Fixers aint gonna waste their time sending their star teams on simple milk runs when they can earn so much more by giving them higher paying jobs (and getting a small cut)
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Back on Topic. Best Melee is now Cyclops. Get two actions, make two attacks, get two Edge. Every time. So replace "Elf" with "Cyclops" and carry on with one less Agility, and five less Karma, but gain Edge for any test made at Close Range.
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Back on Topic. Best Melee is now Cyclops. Get two actions, make two attacks, get two Edge. Every time. So replace "Elf" with "Cyclops" and carry on with one less Agility, and five less Karma, but gain Edge for any test made at Close Range.
Depends on which leg of the Edge triad that comes from. Sounds like the "Gear, Augmentations, and etc" leg to me. It's nice, sure... especially since it's relatively hard to find gear that gives edge for close combat. But if you have huge strength, you're likely getting edge from AR so you're already capping out on 2 per round with that 1 attack. May as well save the 4 minors for not dying.
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Automatically generating Edge at any close range test lets you dump Str if you're Unarmed. And I don't understand not attacking when you could attack. If you're a melee combat character and opponents are in Melee range, you attack. If they're not in Melee range, you move closer and shoot at them with your crossbow if you don't close the gap.
But I'm a simple man, with simple needs. Unaware of complex nuances like "dodge" or "parry". ;D
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Automatically generating Edge at any close range test lets you dump Str if you're Unarmed. And I don't understand not attacking when you could attack. If you're a melee combat character and opponents are in Melee range, you attack. If they're not in Melee range, you move closer and shoot at them with your crossbow if you don't close the gap.
But I'm a simple man, with simple needs. Unaware of complex nuances like "dodge" or "parry". ;D
I mean, if you're a super high DV melee fighter, if you can take out 2 threats and survive anything that comes from the remaining targets, assuming your team mates don't geek them for you, can see the strategy here :-p
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Well, since the whole idea revolves around close range and falls apart if the opposition just spreads out...
I'd rather save some potentially life-saving minor actions in my back pocket :D
Edit: Oh, and lulz. I'm not sure I'd want to play a one-eyed anything in this edition. How easy is it to get an eye put out via the glitch table? :D
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Well, since the whole idea revolves around close range and falls apart if the opposition just spreads out...
I'd rather save some potentially life-saving minor actions in my back pocket :D
Edit: Oh, and lulz. I'm not sure I'd want to play a one-eyed anything in this edition. How easy is it to get an eye put out via the glitch table? :D
The importance of players getting clarity from GM if they'll be using that horrendous glitch table...like, holy cow...
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Well, since the whole idea revolves around close range and falls apart if the opposition just spreads out...
I'd rather save some potentially life-saving minor actions in my back pocket :D
Edit: Oh, and lulz. I'm not sure I'd want to play a one-eyed anything in this edition. How easy is it to get an eye put out via the glitch table? :D
The problem with a universal movement rate is that it's just trading actions. Opponent spends a minor action move? You spend a Minor action move. Opponent spends a Major Action move, you spend a Major action move.
And every action the opposition spends on Move Actions, is an Action they aren't shooting you or your team. If all you accomplish is to make the other team spend 1/4 to 1/2 their potential attack actions on move actions while the rest of your team plinks away, that's probably a team win. And one of the more efficient ways to Tank that is available in SR.
"Eeeeek!!! Run away! Run away!" is a splendid result for a lot of Shadowrun tactical situations, from a PC perspective. You don't get XPees for fighting the monsters here.