I've also always known it to matter what kind of GM for that sort of thing, and how much tolerance he has for running decking. Since this is pbp, I'm not super worried about that though.
This.
And I'm a comp sci major and I love decking and playing deckers. Decking/security hacking will be a big part of tactical play in my games.
Everyone wants to play a shaman, so I'll just turn Cross mundane or into an Adept.
Catholic adept? A crusader!
I'd have to find a list of adept powers from the magic book. The ones in the main book are so bland. At least the fourth edition has social adept powers.
Here are the books I have on hand. I'm stupidly excited over Shadowrun now too. :P Missing in this picture are Man and Machine and another book or two maybe that are stashed somewhere.
Since combat isn't going to be too rules intensive, does that mean we can get away without having improved reflexes? I vaguely remember that being pretty much mandatory in one shape or another for everyone.
Because of combat phases, if you fall behind in Reaction and Init then you are literally sitting out of the combat for turns at a time.
Since I'm not really going for that like I said, that's likely one of the things to be house ruled away, although I'm not set on exactly how yet. Open to suggestions. I'm thinking though adopting one of the rules to eliminate the extra phases and have it more round based ala D&D?
Hmmm, well, this is what I've go so far. Haven't got names yet, not sure what would fit but:
(Troll) has always been obsessed with speed. Ever the runt of the litter (Troll) realized that it doesn't matter how much bigger the other troll is if he can't catch you. Soon if (Troll) was going anywhere he was running. It became his passion, and he was unable to sit still at any task for more than a few moments. This lack of commitment and attention span soon gained (Troll) a disreputable name, but it wasn't very hard for him to just outrun his detractors.
Eventually a gang of street urchins took note of (Trolls) abilities as a runner. The head of the gang, an aspiring young elf, didn't have to think hard to find a use for (Troll). His large stature allowed him to get places others couldn't, and his strength let him vault others to heights before though unreachable by the gang. And of course, one can never underestimate the intimidation factor of a troll in your ranks.
But (Elf) found (Troll's) movements unrefined and primitive. Realizing (Troll's) potential, however, (Elf) took him under his tutelage, teaching him to move with grace and efficiency quite startling for a Troll. Coupled with his natural strength and long limbs (Troll) was soon reaching heights his peers could only dream of. (Elf) also taught him to throw his weight around in combat, and a troll throwing his weight around at these kinds of velocities is nothing to be scoffed at. It wasn't long before (Troll) earned the gangs bright red livery.
(Troll) had finally found a place where he belonged, but such things never last in the city. (Elf) got overly ambitious and tried to bite off more than he could chew in some grand heist. Things went sour fast, most of the gang gunned down and as (Elf) died in a pool of his own blood he yelled at the shocked (Troll) to run and not look back. (Troll) ran, and he didn't look back, even as the tears streamed down his face.
Since then (Troll) has run alone, constantly trying to eek out more speed with practice and cybernetics, no longer trusting just his raw physical abilities. Taking low key jobs as a courier (Troll) has lived a quiet day to day life. But he is restless as heart and longs to run free from building to building. Most recently a friend has turned (Troll) on to racing vehicles, which has become a sort of side hobby for (Troll). While not as fun as doing it yourself, (Troll) appreciates the raw speed they offer.
(Troll) is of a slighter build than your average Troll and wears an outfit that is pieced together out of articles of clothing handpicked for their luck and speed. The color red predominates, followed by yellow and brown leather. Most things are accented with a border of a black and white checkered pattern. The outfit is loud, to say the least. A leather hat painted bright red with yellow racing goggles, a red scarf, a black and white checkered belt, shoes with good grip, bright red gloves and such. The cloths fit snug as to not snag on fencing or other such obstacles.
So yeah, basically, parkour troll. :P
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INeedNoSaltwith blood on my teethRegistered Userregular
edited November 2008
so you are effectively penalizing dudes who do have multiple init passes huh
You could make inits > 10 give extra actions instead of extra full initiative phases, allowing for an extra attack or doing more in a persons round, instead of giving them multiple times to assess, react, and multiple waits for their post.
Say a simple for each additional phase they would get such that:
5 init would get you two simple or one complex as per normal
15 init would get you three simple, or one complex and one simple
25 init would get you four simple, two simple one complex, or two complex actions
35 init would get you five simple, three simple one complex, or one simple and two complex
etc
Of course, that really does play down how twitchyness affects your reaction, so maybe allow players with high reaction some free dodge tests per round or something to represent the fact that those bastards dodge bullets, or can give up one of their simples or complexes or whatever to give you a "reaction action" that you justify as them reacting beyond thought--the grenade rolls infront of them, and they get a dodge test that's more than just dodge pool to represent the fact that they had actions, or they duck from the sudden fire from the side, or they grab their hat just before the door slams shut, etc.
edit
This would still give you the ability to represent that the fast people do a lot, letting a street sam make five weapon fires in a round, or twice as many melee attacks in addition to moving around. More actions at once is a boon for the twitchy guy, because they get to frontload their actions, instead of having to give people an oppertunity to respond before punching them again, and an advantage to everyone else because less actions overall. There's some balance to the concept, I'm just not sure if it's 100% balanced.
Of course, if you know how it works ahead of time, it is balanced, because its your choice to take the cyberware, but that's a different can of worms.
edit2
This ALSO has the advantage of rectifying that issue of players going, "Oh come on, are you sure I can't grab the grenade, throw it back, AND run away?" The answer is simply, "If you had a higher initiative, you could--sorry bub, too slow."
But if someone wants to help me with the mechanics of this character I'd you forever.
I totally plan to start my first fight by jumping on someone from two stories up.
to begin with, are you sure you want your runner to be someone who is nine feet tall and weighs five hundred pounds?
yeah, being huge might help you get into some places you might not otherwise ... it also means you can't really move around in locations that were built before Trolls showed up on the scene.
trolls are also the slowest of the races (the only race with a Quickness penalty)
stuff to keep in mind the before-hand phase of things
Assuming we're doing priority, you'd probably want:
A Money -> More money means more and better Cybernetics
B Attributes -> Just enough points for massive strength and quickness
C Troll*
D Skills -> You'd have to sacrifice one of the above if you want to have more skills.
E No Magic
to begin with, are you sure you want your runner to be someone who is nine feet tall and weighs five hundred pounds?
yeah, being huge might help you get into some places you might not otherwise ... it also means you can't really move around in locations that were built before Trolls showed up on the scene.
trolls are also the slowest of the races (the only race with a Quickness penalty)
stuff to keep in mind the before-hand phase of things
As long as I won't be a terribly gimped liability to the party I am fine with that. I'm okay with being a little sub optimal.
Also, I can apply the James Bond style of moving quickly from Casino Royale as a Troll.
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INeedNoSaltwith blood on my teethRegistered Userregular
edited November 2008
It becomes a big problem when your big guy can't fit in the building basically, but I am just trying to give some input, I don't really care what you do
It becomes a big problem when your big guy can't fit in the building basically, but I am just trying to give some input, I don't really care what you do
Well, wouldn't this be a problem for any troll ever then? Like, if trolls are really such a problem, why would anyone play them at all?
Or do trolls just...stay outdoors?
Edit: Hmm, adept or cybernetics...this is a tough choice. But yeah, definitely some breaking and entering skills.
It becomes a big problem when your big guy can't fit in the building basically, but I am just trying to give some input, I don't really care what you do
Well, wouldn't this be a problem for any troll ever then? Like, if trolls are really such a problem, why would anyone play them at all?
Or do trolls just...stay outdoors?
It's where they belong, filthy metahumans. </Racism>
I think INNS might be overplaying the size angle a bit. There are tall people in real life you know.
It becomes a big problem when your big guy can't fit in the building basically, but I am just trying to give some input, I don't really care what you do
Well, wouldn't this be a problem for any troll ever then? Like, if trolls are really such a problem, why would anyone play them at all?
Or do trolls just...stay outdoors?
More trolls live in the wild than in cities because cities aren't really built with them in mind. They don't fit in chairs, have trouble moving through doorways, can't ride the bus, can't get work doing anything except manual labor, etc
It becomes a big problem when your big guy can't fit in the building basically, but I am just trying to give some input, I don't really care what you do
Well, wouldn't this be a problem for any troll ever then? Like, if trolls are really such a problem, why would anyone play them at all?
Or do trolls just...stay outdoors?
Well, the issue is putting your parkouring to use. If you're running across sprawl rooftops, you have less places to duck away into, even though you're built for it. You're more likely to collapse a roof. While most trolls can fit into most houses, even pre-awakening ones (though they may have to stoop), you will run into serious trouble when you want to do something like scale the side of a building and go in through a ventilation duct.
Edit: And your running indoors would be hampered too. So while rooftops and streets might be your friends (and tall fences!), you'll snag when you try to blitz through an office complex.
Edit 2: I don't think it's a huge deal. My only problem with the concept is that trolls are pretty fat, and you should play a metavariant so you look like you're built for speed :P
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INeedNoSaltwith blood on my teethRegistered Userregular
It becomes a big problem when your big guy can't fit in the building basically, but I am just trying to give some input, I don't really care what you do
Well, wouldn't this be a problem for any troll ever then? Like, if trolls are really such a problem, why would anyone play them at all?
Or do trolls just...stay outdoors?
It's where they belong, filthy metahumans. </Racism>
I think INNS might be overplaying the size angle a bit. There are tall people in real life you know.
tall people in real life aren't nine feet tall though and don't tend to weigh five hundred pounds
a pretty big portion of the Trolls part of the introduction chapter is dedicated to how difficult it is to be a troll in a city built for people three feet shorter than you and explaining how most trolls end up living in the wilderness.
An Adept would make a great parkour dude. Cybernetics obviously can suffice just fine, so it's almost a thematic thing. Cybernetics may be cooler to you, and then you're not stuck having to avoid cyber (cyber implants cost Essence, which goes against your Magic and therefore your Adept powers, they don't mix well)
How big your troll is can vary. You can be a small troll, which means you're basically inconvenienced as much as a very tall human is.
As for Initiative Phases and why I think they will be hell for PbP, and to answer Inquisitor's question:
Basically IPs are separate turns. Imagine you are playing D&D. Imagine that you are told you can only play every third round. That's IP if you don't have reaction enhancement.
So everyone needs to be up to snuff. Cyber chars spend a huge chunk of essence and nuyen on them, mages must spend points on initiative spells and sustain them throughout combat, etc. Mundane/uncybered characters are inviable.
And when it comes to PbP, initiative enhancement means we take 4 rounds of combat and turn it effectively into 12 rounds on average. Now of course there is more death being dealt out, but it does lengthen the number of rounds overall. SR isn't very PbP friendly because of this.
Hurm, well, maybe the troll part will have to go then. Not having the book yet I was imagining trolls being maybe a foot or two taller than people, not three or four, and certainly not weighing triple the amount.
I'd still like to take a non-typical agile race for this though, maybe orc?
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INeedNoSaltwith blood on my teethRegistered Userregular
edited November 2008
Anyway I am not trying to say that trolls are bad PCs or anything, just that being huge is as much a drawback as a benefit (if not moreso)
And deciding you're a really tiny troll is like cheating, you might as well just play an ork
Yeah, as mentioned earlier, trolls are more ogre than Warcraft. An ork would suit the concept.
A troll would be doable, but you will run into problems no matter what in your area of expertise. If you think about what role you'd play, you wouldn't be able to do any of the crawling through vents infiltration type stuff that you would otherwise be all set for, etc.
Yeah, as mentioned earlier, trolls are more ogre than Warcraft. An ork would suit the concept.
A troll would be doable, but you will run into problems no matter what in your area of expertise. If you think about what role you'd play, you wouldn't be able to do any of the crawling through vents infiltration type stuff that you would otherwise be all set for, etc.
Yeah, no vents = no go. Ork it is, besides, it only plays even better into my red wunz go faster thing. :P
Also, I'll drop cybernetics for adept focused on movement. I'll rewrite up my back story soon.
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INeedNoSaltwith blood on my teethRegistered Userregular
edited November 2008
It is funny to note that your average dwarf moves faster than your average troll
Orks, mechanically, are like light trolls; they still have Body and Strength bonuses, but smaller -- they still have Intelligence and Charisma penalties, but less severe. They lose the dermal armor and quickness penalty that Trolls have.
Instead of thermographic vision, orks have low-light vision.
It is funny to note that your average dwarf moves faster than your average troll
Orks, mechanically, are like light trolls; they still have Body and Strength bonuses, but smaller -- they still have Intelligence and Charisma penalties, but less severe. They lose the dermal armor and quickness penalty that Trolls have.
Instead of thermographic vision, orks have low-light vision.
Orks are also the coolest race.
I guess thematically, you can't really have too many orks considering how common they are. Man, I love Shadowrun art, the dwarf is too goddamn hilarious.
We used to keep chargen pretty simple. I'm a fan of the Priority System, warts and all.
Unless I am convinced otherwise, I'm defaulting to my normal group means of ABCDE choices, standard races, and you can choose up to 6 points of Edges offset by at least as many points of Flaws (from the Companion).
Min-max isn't the point here so it should do the trick I think. Looking around at some house rules, it looks like a lot of people that shift to one IP turn the initiative boosts into reaction and defense boosts.
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INeedNoSaltwith blood on my teethRegistered Userregular
edited November 2008
If we have an orkish priest-shaman and an orkish movement guy, could I present a concept for a human ghoul mage
I am imagine a ghoul who is an active member of GLL (that's the Ghoul Liberation League) in his very rare public image, but is personally a very ravenous and power-hungry junkie who gets a sort of thrill from the horror the population feels towards himself and his people.
This is only made more fantastic by the fact that he did not lose any of his mental faculties during his infection, although his personality did change dramatically. He was a capable mage (a graduate from MIT&T) as a human, and though the HMHVV did stunt some of his power during the change, he is still a practitioner of the arts even in his 'undeath.'
Despite his personal tendency towards cruelty and madness, this character would still be a strong supporter of GLL, and likely became a Runner to fund the League. He would serve to fill the combat spellcaster role in a group, as well as being one of few characters who can interact directly with the Astral Plane without leaving his physical body behind.
(I know you said probably not ghouls, but I figure, give it a shot!)
Whoops, Adepts are priority B not A. I guess I should look through the rules again and write up a character sheet. It's been a while since I've played 3rd.
Whoops, Adepts are priority B not A. I guess I should look through the rules again and write up a character sheet. It's been a while since I've played 3rd.
I won't really get a chance to sit down with the rules till sometime later tomorrow, frakking school. But, I'll get something hammered out as soon as I can.
I just had a big post typed out, and lost it, but I'm going to type it out again because it's related.
Adept is super in-line with what you're going for I think.
1) It's a semi-unique Adept. Most people try and make their Adepts super-killing machines, at least most that I saw, but this seems like an effective, and yet interesting use. I'm imagining the scout from Team Fortress if you manage to drop the troll part. (a note of interest: Adepts were banned from the Olympics in 2032, and most athletes find their adept powers come with a stigma, pushing them into a life of the shadows anyway),
2) It magnificently fits your character's focus on running. The adept is all about physical ability calling to them and them answering that calling by pushing themselves to the extreme, beyond mortal people. This concept fits that to a T.
3) Improved ability costs .5 per extra die you add to a skill. Unless that skill is athletics, stealth, or diving. Then it's .25. That means you're looking at 12 dice for running for pretty cheap, leaving a bunch of left over points for other related abilities (or other things to pull you a little more together)
4) Tons of other abilities that fit the bill. Boost Attribute/Improved Attribute for being beyond metahuman perfection. Improved Reflexes and Enhanced Perception for finding the way out quickly and fast responses to new changes, like seeing a truck move by to jump on, or oh there's a pipe to climb, or hey someone shot at me keep cool keep moving. Flexability for fitting through small holes, free fall for jumping off of tall things (2 meters ignored height of a fall, at .25 points per level, 1.25 points means you can run off a three story tall building and hit the ground with no ill effect). Great Leap will increase the distance you can jump, and give you extra dice for doing so. Sixth sense means that you will not be surprised. Traceless Walk means you do this all quiet as hell, without knocking stuff over, ignoring motion or pressure sensors, and without leaving tracks in the snow.
5) This fits the ganger concept better than going off of money. Off of money means you have to have been good or lucky enough to somehow have a million nuyen of cyberware fall into your spine. An adept would mean not only were you amazing at first, but you ended up outstripping your teacher, etc.
Looking around at some house rules, it looks like a lot of people that shift to one IP turn the initiative boosts into reaction and defense boosts.
I still think extra actions should be part of the solution, just maybe less of it. Fast people should do fast. Bonus combat pool might also be appropriate, but everyone's going to have more combat pool then they can spend on any action anyway.
Infidel, if i had seen this threat sooner I would be all over it.
But truth be told I may not have time to play.
But I will be watching, and if you don't mind terribly, put me in as a reserve for later in case you lose players and need a replacement later?
I miss my love for SR so hard right now...
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LEVEL 50 SWORD JUGGLER/WIZARD!
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Gabriel_Pitt(effective against Russian warships)Registered Userregular
edited November 2008
Wow, this thread really exploded while I wasn't looking. A lot of people seem to be digging on magic users, and I say I kind of want to give one a turn too. I like characters at odds with themselves, and a burnout shamen is an intriguing concept. What chargen system will we be using? Point buy? Priority? I guess that would lead into are we allowed access to other books besides the core SR3 one (since the point buy rules are in the players guide, and if doing a burnout, having access to the Canon Companion, Magic in the Shadows, and Man & Machine would be a big help)?
Okay, character proposal, burned out shaman. Elf, Cat Totem, enough bio and cyberware that she has two geases to fullfill to cast at full power - She has to have at least one shot of liquor every hour, and when she casts, she has to speak in rhyme.
Corinna St. John is an elf of mezoamerican descent. She manifested her magical skills early on (Cat is a very well suited totem for an awakened teenage girl), excelled in college, and graduated to become an promising surgeon with a meteoric career. If she had one failing (she actually has quite a few, but will never admit them) it was her inability to say, 'no' to temptation, and realize when she was getting in over her head. As the years passed, she realized that she was losing her edge as a surgeon to others who had more current training, greater drive, or were simply more skilled than she was. She tried everything she could to keep up, but her skills had simply reached her physical limit.
She'd decided she'd just have to improve that then. It would cost her her magic, but that was a price she was willing to pay. She turned to a colleague who sometimes operated on the shady side of things, and he directed her to a good, under the table cyber surgeon. Oh, all the wonderful, amazing shiny gadgets he offered to her. How could she say 'no' to a chipjack, allowing her to keep up with cutting edge procedures without having to waste time studying them? Or cyber eyes that gave her a full range of analyztion and diagnostic aids at a thought? She put herself into his debt to get all those wonderful toys. More importantly, to pay for her unexpectedly large surgery bill, she had to get into a few other peoples' debt too (and I don't mean Tir Tangire Saving and Loan).
Even with her 'upgrades,' her desperation to maintain her position caused her work to slip still further. Worse, although she was willing to give up on Cat, Cat was not willing to give up on her. He allowed her to keep her magic, but whenever she tried to channel mana, she found herself compelled to spout doggrel in order to maintain her concentration. Surgeons who muttered about 'slivers of livers and gluts of guts,' were not very popular in the operating room.
Then, her debts came due, and she was far, far behind in paying them. The people she'd borrowed from were very reasonble. If she didn't want them to rip her eyes out and give them to someone else, she'd see to it that every now and then 'paperwork errors' would result in fresh cadavers getting 'lost,' or certain kinds of cyberware had a tendancy to wander away from their owner's bodies in the morgue. Her lenders kept demanding more and more get 'lost,' and people started getting suspicious. Then she got caught. So much for worrying about keeping her career on track. She made it out of there about one step ahead of Lonestar.
She still had a debt to pay though, and wouldn't you knew it, her lenders had a place already lined up for her. They needed a new surgeon at their chop shop. And that was how Corinna became an organ legger. Not surprisingly, this was about the time she started to drink heavily, reaching the point where she'd have to take a drink if she wanted to feel _more_ sober.
Somehow, her debt seemed to be getting bigger at this point. She started doing freelance work, picking up nuyen wherever she could get them. She hit rock bottom when one night at a bar, so drunk she was stone cold, a guy tried to pick her up. She said, 'yes,' immediately. He was cute, well built, and most importantly, his insides were positively shining with chrome. Unfortunately, what she didn't know when she cut it out of him was it had 'property of Aztechnology' stamped all over it, and that the guy had been a well-connected Aztech wetwork specialist out slumming. Aztech figured things out quickly enough when some of the resold hardware made its way back to them, and they slaughtered their way back through the chain of possesion, tracing it right back to the chopshop where she worked.
So, good news was, her lenders were no longer breathing enough to collect on her debt. Bad news was, she had no job, no connections, and if Aztech ever found out she was still alive... Denver no longer seemed quite as welcoming as it once did, and burning the last few favors she had in the town to get the hell out of dodge. She'd heard Seattle was nice this time of year.
Her drinking got worse, got better, and then got worse when she realized that she couldn't stop. Even Cat had finally started losing patience with her. Only if she loosed herself from her worries and fear with a drink could she even hear his voice. Coulds things get any worse?
Native American names are rough to find, for the record. I can't find an explanation of any naming process, and I don't trust baby-name websites. edit But things are looking so shaman heavy, I'm dropping that anyway.
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This.
And I'm a comp sci major and I love decking and playing deckers. Decking/security hacking will be a big part of tactical play in my games.
I'd have to find a list of adept powers from the magic book. The ones in the main book are so bland. At least the fourth edition has social adept powers.
Spoilered for toolazytoresize.
Since I'm not really going for that like I said, that's likely one of the things to be house ruled away, although I'm not set on exactly how yet. Open to suggestions. I'm thinking though adopting one of the rules to eliminate the extra phases and have it more round based ala D&D?
(Troll) has always been obsessed with speed. Ever the runt of the litter (Troll) realized that it doesn't matter how much bigger the other troll is if he can't catch you. Soon if (Troll) was going anywhere he was running. It became his passion, and he was unable to sit still at any task for more than a few moments. This lack of commitment and attention span soon gained (Troll) a disreputable name, but it wasn't very hard for him to just outrun his detractors.
Eventually a gang of street urchins took note of (Trolls) abilities as a runner. The head of the gang, an aspiring young elf, didn't have to think hard to find a use for (Troll). His large stature allowed him to get places others couldn't, and his strength let him vault others to heights before though unreachable by the gang. And of course, one can never underestimate the intimidation factor of a troll in your ranks.
But (Elf) found (Troll's) movements unrefined and primitive. Realizing (Troll's) potential, however, (Elf) took him under his tutelage, teaching him to move with grace and efficiency quite startling for a Troll. Coupled with his natural strength and long limbs (Troll) was soon reaching heights his peers could only dream of. (Elf) also taught him to throw his weight around in combat, and a troll throwing his weight around at these kinds of velocities is nothing to be scoffed at. It wasn't long before (Troll) earned the gangs bright red livery.
(Troll) had finally found a place where he belonged, but such things never last in the city. (Elf) got overly ambitious and tried to bite off more than he could chew in some grand heist. Things went sour fast, most of the gang gunned down and as (Elf) died in a pool of his own blood he yelled at the shocked (Troll) to run and not look back. (Troll) ran, and he didn't look back, even as the tears streamed down his face.
Since then (Troll) has run alone, constantly trying to eek out more speed with practice and cybernetics, no longer trusting just his raw physical abilities. Taking low key jobs as a courier (Troll) has lived a quiet day to day life. But he is restless as heart and longs to run free from building to building. Most recently a friend has turned (Troll) on to racing vehicles, which has become a sort of side hobby for (Troll). While not as fun as doing it yourself, (Troll) appreciates the raw speed they offer.
(Troll) is of a slighter build than your average Troll and wears an outfit that is pieced together out of articles of clothing handpicked for their luck and speed. The color red predominates, followed by yellow and brown leather. Most things are accented with a border of a black and white checkered pattern. The outfit is loud, to say the least. A leather hat painted bright red with yellow racing goggles, a red scarf, a black and white checkered belt, shoes with good grip, bright red gloves and such. The cloths fit snug as to not snag on fencing or other such obstacles.
So yeah, basically, parkour troll. :P
pshhht
bwuahahahahahaha!
You know you love it!
But if someone wants to help me with the mechanics of this character I'd
I totally plan to start my first fight by jumping on someone from two stories up.
There're some houserules out there that balance this, let me see if I can find them.
Say a simple for each additional phase they would get such that:
5 init would get you two simple or one complex as per normal
15 init would get you three simple, or one complex and one simple
25 init would get you four simple, two simple one complex, or two complex actions
35 init would get you five simple, three simple one complex, or one simple and two complex
etc
Of course, that really does play down how twitchyness affects your reaction, so maybe allow players with high reaction some free dodge tests per round or something to represent the fact that those bastards dodge bullets, or can give up one of their simples or complexes or whatever to give you a "reaction action" that you justify as them reacting beyond thought--the grenade rolls infront of them, and they get a dodge test that's more than just dodge pool to represent the fact that they had actions, or they duck from the sudden fire from the side, or they grab their hat just before the door slams shut, etc.
edit
This would still give you the ability to represent that the fast people do a lot, letting a street sam make five weapon fires in a round, or twice as many melee attacks in addition to moving around. More actions at once is a boon for the twitchy guy, because they get to frontload their actions, instead of having to give people an oppertunity to respond before punching them again, and an advantage to everyone else because less actions overall. There's some balance to the concept, I'm just not sure if it's 100% balanced.
Of course, if you know how it works ahead of time, it is balanced, because its your choice to take the cyberware, but that's a different can of worms.
edit2
This ALSO has the advantage of rectifying that issue of players going, "Oh come on, are you sure I can't grab the grenade, throw it back, AND run away?" The answer is simply, "If you had a higher initiative, you could--sorry bub, too slow."
Edit: I'm also fine with making my troll an adept if that would give him better movement options than cybernetics, maybe both?
to begin with, are you sure you want your runner to be someone who is nine feet tall and weighs five hundred pounds?
yeah, being huge might help you get into some places you might not otherwise ... it also means you can't really move around in locations that were built before Trolls showed up on the scene.
trolls are also the slowest of the races (the only race with a Quickness penalty)
stuff to keep in mind the before-hand phase of things
A Money -> More money means more and better Cybernetics
B Attributes -> Just enough points for massive strength and quickness
C Troll*
D Skills -> You'd have to sacrifice one of the above if you want to have more skills.
E No Magic
*Trolls have +5 Body, -1 Quickness, +4 Strength, -2 Intelligence, -2 Charisma, Thermo Vision, +1 Reach in Melee Combat, +1 Armor (Body)
As long as I won't be a terribly gimped liability to the party I am fine with that. I'm okay with being a little sub optimal.
Also, I can apply the James Bond style of moving quickly from Casino Royale as a Troll.
Just replace money with magic and you're good to go.
Edit: Given your background, I'd pick up some breaking and entering skills to fill that niche.
Well, wouldn't this be a problem for any troll ever then? Like, if trolls are really such a problem, why would anyone play them at all?
Or do trolls just...stay outdoors?
Edit: Hmm, adept or cybernetics...this is a tough choice. But yeah, definitely some breaking and entering skills.
It's where they belong, filthy metahumans. </Racism>
I think INNS might be overplaying the size angle a bit. There are tall people in real life you know.
But but it's so cold out in this rain mister, won't you let me in?
More trolls live in the wild than in cities because cities aren't really built with them in mind. They don't fit in chairs, have trouble moving through doorways, can't ride the bus, can't get work doing anything except manual labor, etc
Well, the issue is putting your parkouring to use. If you're running across sprawl rooftops, you have less places to duck away into, even though you're built for it. You're more likely to collapse a roof. While most trolls can fit into most houses, even pre-awakening ones (though they may have to stoop), you will run into serious trouble when you want to do something like scale the side of a building and go in through a ventilation duct.
Edit: And your running indoors would be hampered too. So while rooftops and streets might be your friends (and tall fences!), you'll snag when you try to blitz through an office complex.
Edit 2: I don't think it's a huge deal. My only problem with the concept is that trolls are pretty fat, and you should play a metavariant so you look like you're built for speed :P
tall people in real life aren't nine feet tall though and don't tend to weigh five hundred pounds
a pretty big portion of the Trolls part of the introduction chapter is dedicated to how difficult it is to be a troll in a city built for people three feet shorter than you and explaining how most trolls end up living in the wilderness.
How big your troll is can vary. You can be a small troll, which means you're basically inconvenienced as much as a very tall human is.
As for Initiative Phases and why I think they will be hell for PbP, and to answer Inquisitor's question:
Basically IPs are separate turns. Imagine you are playing D&D. Imagine that you are told you can only play every third round. That's IP if you don't have reaction enhancement.
So everyone needs to be up to snuff. Cyber chars spend a huge chunk of essence and nuyen on them, mages must spend points on initiative spells and sustain them throughout combat, etc. Mundane/uncybered characters are inviable.
And when it comes to PbP, initiative enhancement means we take 4 rounds of combat and turn it effectively into 12 rounds on average. Now of course there is more death being dealt out, but it does lengthen the number of rounds overall. SR isn't very PbP friendly because of this.
I'd still like to take a non-typical agile race for this though, maybe orc?
And deciding you're a really tiny troll is like cheating, you might as well just play an ork
A troll would be doable, but you will run into problems no matter what in your area of expertise. If you think about what role you'd play, you wouldn't be able to do any of the crawling through vents infiltration type stuff that you would otherwise be all set for, etc.
Yeah, no vents = no go. Ork it is, besides, it only plays even better into my red wunz go faster thing. :P
Also, I'll drop cybernetics for adept focused on movement. I'll rewrite up my back story soon.
Orks, mechanically, are like light trolls; they still have Body and Strength bonuses, but smaller -- they still have Intelligence and Charisma penalties, but less severe. They lose the dermal armor and quickness penalty that Trolls have.
Instead of thermographic vision, orks have low-light vision.
Orks are also the coolest race.
I guess thematically, you can't really have too many orks considering how common they are. Man, I love Shadowrun art, the dwarf is too goddamn hilarious.
Unless I am convinced otherwise, I'm defaulting to my normal group means of ABCDE choices, standard races, and you can choose up to 6 points of Edges offset by at least as many points of Flaws (from the Companion).
Min-max isn't the point here so it should do the trick I think. Looking around at some house rules, it looks like a lot of people that shift to one IP turn the initiative boosts into reaction and defense boosts.
I am imagine a ghoul who is an active member of GLL (that's the Ghoul Liberation League) in his very rare public image, but is personally a very ravenous and power-hungry junkie who gets a sort of thrill from the horror the population feels towards himself and his people.
This is only made more fantastic by the fact that he did not lose any of his mental faculties during his infection, although his personality did change dramatically. He was a capable mage (a graduate from MIT&T) as a human, and though the HMHVV did stunt some of his power during the change, he is still a practitioner of the arts even in his 'undeath.'
Despite his personal tendency towards cruelty and madness, this character would still be a strong supporter of GLL, and likely became a Runner to fund the League. He would serve to fill the combat spellcaster role in a group, as well as being one of few characters who can interact directly with the Astral Plane without leaving his physical body behind.
(I know you said probably not ghouls, but I figure, give it a shot!)
Edit: For future reference Alt-157=¥
I won't really get a chance to sit down with the rules till sometime later tomorrow, frakking school. But, I'll get something hammered out as soon as I can.
I just had a big post typed out, and lost it, but I'm going to type it out again because it's related.
Adept is super in-line with what you're going for I think.
1) It's a semi-unique Adept. Most people try and make their Adepts super-killing machines, at least most that I saw, but this seems like an effective, and yet interesting use. I'm imagining the scout from Team Fortress if you manage to drop the troll part. (a note of interest: Adepts were banned from the Olympics in 2032, and most athletes find their adept powers come with a stigma, pushing them into a life of the shadows anyway),
2) It magnificently fits your character's focus on running. The adept is all about physical ability calling to them and them answering that calling by pushing themselves to the extreme, beyond mortal people. This concept fits that to a T.
3) Improved ability costs .5 per extra die you add to a skill. Unless that skill is athletics, stealth, or diving. Then it's .25. That means you're looking at 12 dice for running for pretty cheap, leaving a bunch of left over points for other related abilities (or other things to pull you a little more together)
4) Tons of other abilities that fit the bill. Boost Attribute/Improved Attribute for being beyond metahuman perfection. Improved Reflexes and Enhanced Perception for finding the way out quickly and fast responses to new changes, like seeing a truck move by to jump on, or oh there's a pipe to climb, or hey someone shot at me keep cool keep moving. Flexability for fitting through small holes, free fall for jumping off of tall things (2 meters ignored height of a fall, at .25 points per level, 1.25 points means you can run off a three story tall building and hit the ground with no ill effect). Great Leap will increase the distance you can jump, and give you extra dice for doing so. Sixth sense means that you will not be surprised. Traceless Walk means you do this all quiet as hell, without knocking stuff over, ignoring motion or pressure sensors, and without leaving tracks in the snow.
5) This fits the ganger concept better than going off of money. Off of money means you have to have been good or lucky enough to somehow have a million nuyen of cyberware fall into your spine. An adept would mean not only were you amazing at first, but you ended up outstripping your teacher, etc.
Edit
I still think extra actions should be part of the solution, just maybe less of it. Fast people should do fast. Bonus combat pool might also be appropriate, but everyone's going to have more combat pool then they can spend on any action anyway.
But truth be told I may not have time to play.
But I will be watching, and if you don't mind terribly, put me in as a reserve for later in case you lose players and need a replacement later?
I miss my love for SR so hard right now...
Okay, character proposal, burned out shaman. Elf, Cat Totem, enough bio and cyberware that she has two geases to fullfill to cast at full power - She has to have at least one shot of liquor every hour, and when she casts, she has to speak in rhyme.
She'd decided she'd just have to improve that then. It would cost her her magic, but that was a price she was willing to pay. She turned to a colleague who sometimes operated on the shady side of things, and he directed her to a good, under the table cyber surgeon. Oh, all the wonderful, amazing shiny gadgets he offered to her. How could she say 'no' to a chipjack, allowing her to keep up with cutting edge procedures without having to waste time studying them? Or cyber eyes that gave her a full range of analyztion and diagnostic aids at a thought? She put herself into his debt to get all those wonderful toys. More importantly, to pay for her unexpectedly large surgery bill, she had to get into a few other peoples' debt too (and I don't mean Tir Tangire Saving and Loan).
Even with her 'upgrades,' her desperation to maintain her position caused her work to slip still further. Worse, although she was willing to give up on Cat, Cat was not willing to give up on her. He allowed her to keep her magic, but whenever she tried to channel mana, she found herself compelled to spout doggrel in order to maintain her concentration. Surgeons who muttered about 'slivers of livers and gluts of guts,' were not very popular in the operating room.
Then, her debts came due, and she was far, far behind in paying them. The people she'd borrowed from were very reasonble. If she didn't want them to rip her eyes out and give them to someone else, she'd see to it that every now and then 'paperwork errors' would result in fresh cadavers getting 'lost,' or certain kinds of cyberware had a tendancy to wander away from their owner's bodies in the morgue. Her lenders kept demanding more and more get 'lost,' and people started getting suspicious. Then she got caught. So much for worrying about keeping her career on track. She made it out of there about one step ahead of Lonestar.
She still had a debt to pay though, and wouldn't you knew it, her lenders had a place already lined up for her. They needed a new surgeon at their chop shop. And that was how Corinna became an organ legger. Not surprisingly, this was about the time she started to drink heavily, reaching the point where she'd have to take a drink if she wanted to feel _more_ sober.
Somehow, her debt seemed to be getting bigger at this point. She started doing freelance work, picking up nuyen wherever she could get them. She hit rock bottom when one night at a bar, so drunk she was stone cold, a guy tried to pick her up. She said, 'yes,' immediately. He was cute, well built, and most importantly, his insides were positively shining with chrome. Unfortunately, what she didn't know when she cut it out of him was it had 'property of Aztechnology' stamped all over it, and that the guy had been a well-connected Aztech wetwork specialist out slumming. Aztech figured things out quickly enough when some of the resold hardware made its way back to them, and they slaughtered their way back through the chain of possesion, tracing it right back to the chopshop where she worked.
So, good news was, her lenders were no longer breathing enough to collect on her debt. Bad news was, she had no job, no connections, and if Aztech ever found out she was still alive... Denver no longer seemed quite as welcoming as it once did, and burning the last few favors she had in the town to get the hell out of dodge. She'd heard Seattle was nice this time of year.
Her drinking got worse, got better, and then got worse when she realized that she couldn't stop. Even Cat had finally started losing patience with her. Only if she loosed herself from her worries and fear with a drink could she even hear his voice. Coulds things get any worse?
Some questions really aren't worth asking.