has anyone played/dm'd shadow run?

[The Green Man]

I used to play Shadowrun. Still would (the setting hasn't lost any interest to me), but I have to concur with so many others...the Deluge of d6 system just had to go. So much so, that when I ran a group during home room in 10th grade, one of our friends (the resident computer/math geek) made a program for one of those old TI-81 computer/calculators to roll the dice and count the successes. 'Course, two years later I got hooked up to the Internet and found that you could get those programs for free...

But anyway, final say: setting's great, system's not. And of course, most DnD-reared people other than me didn't like it as "it was too easy to die".

On a somewhat unrelated note, I'll say that there was one thing I didn't really like about how health was handled in SR: while it was great that most humans were on the same playing field, it was just unrealistic that there was no scaling system - i.e., it was as easy to bring down a Behemoth (elephant-size reptile) as it was to kill Joe Blow Cyberhead from down the street.

 

[Kichwas]

I think my old Shadowrun website is still up:
http://www.geocities.com/arcady/SR/

I've both played and run the game.

3E is the best by far. It fixed a lot of major problems in the rules. Unfortunately in the setting and style department it went a bit away from my tastes at that point. It got more 'mercenary' focused. That may or may not change again with the new publisher.

The mechanics of the game are similar to those used in White Wolf's games. The same person designed the core engines of both.

dice pools and check for successes against some target number. From there the details differ though.

In the 3E it's quite a playable game. Very different from d20 however.

But if the style of the setting appeals I would recommend it.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

I love the game and will probably be running it on the weekends the d&d dm doesn't feel like running the game. the setting rocks, I love the character creation system, and everything else about the game.

Also I like the game mechanics, yes it CAN become a buckets of dice system. The standard dice rolled in a fight may be around 12d6s. Sure that is a lot compared to a d20, but I don't think it is any slower than d20 games at mid levels nad is in fact faster than d&d once d&d hits the high levels. Like any system familiarity makes the game go 1000 times faster.

 

[Victim]

Oh yes, I just remembered one other thing relating to Shadowrun.

How can mages become so crazily powerful? We have a mage in our group that throws super stun ball/bolt spells and crazy fireballs. For example, he throws stun spells that seem to knock out just about anything (ie. dropping creatures with a will of 6+ on stun bolt), while suffering little to no drain. He even has cyberware should his spells should be less effective (a smartllink, probably plus enough other stuff to bring essence down to 5, because magic rounds down anyway).

Our DM doesn't have the time to completely master the rules as this player has done, and I don't have the rule books. Our GM fears that he may be cheating in some ways, by selecting rules from different editions, to overpower his character. Is there any way to reverse engineer to see if this is the case? I can probably have more info by Saturday.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Salutations,

Sounds like he is probably cheating or atleast mistaken about the rules- I played magic users in the game.. and in no way was I ever as powerful as your describe.

Have the dm ask for a complete breakdown of how the player is doing these things (not during a game, outside of it), this should help clear things up.

FD

 

[Rayston]

Mages too powerful?

I have never played a mage, and dont even know the magic rules of SR very well, but yes I have heard this complaint OFTEN, that mages get ridiculously powerful very easy compared to the other characters.

There are various ways to combat this as a GM, one way I know of for mages is there initiations.

Mages in SR have to go through a sort of "quest" to make certain of there magical powers better, these quest are and should be VERY dangerous. alotta dms are prolly goin soft on em.



Another way is damage, when mages take high levels of damage it can PERMANENTLY damage there spellcasting abilities, with no hope of recovering it through normal healing, this is a weakness no other archetypes have, they get hurt, they heal, they move on. mages get hurt bad enough? they retire from shadowrunning forever.

of course I may be speaking out my butt about all of this as I said before my knowledge of the SR's magic system is skimpy at best, but this is what I have gleaned from talkin with mage characters.




Rayston

 

[Geoff Watson]

Shadowrun is an interesting game, though I find the dice rolling mechanics to really suck.

Eg: A +1 penalty on the target number can make a huge difference (going from 5 to 6 halves the chance of success) or make no difference at all (going from 6 to 7 makes no difference whatsoever).

Geoff.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

magic too powerul

I also find this hard to believe. He must be doing something wrong somewhere. If someone hasa will of 6 to do anything to them I have to roll some 6s on my sorcery check. I might bust out 12 dice, maybe 14 to 16 if I'm very experienced. So I'll likely get what 2-4 successes. Now I can start the damage off at deadly damage but then the drain is deadly as well(for a stun bolt if stun ball its deadly with a high target number), so I'd need 8 successes on my drain resistence check to take no damage. Now the target number may be 2 for a stun bolt depending on the force, but still even with a will of 6 its likely I won't get 8 successes. Also if the target gets as many successes on the resistence check you take he'she takes no damage, you don't scale the damage down the target effectively dodged the spell. Assuming the other group has a mage he can dish some dice for defense of the group making this even more unlikely.

If you want nasty, equip the street sam with a narco-jet pistol those without toxin extractors or really high bodies will be dropping like flies.

 

[Scarab]

I've solved the "6 = 7" bug in IMC by letting a six give a result of five, and then you reroll normally.

And yes, a +1 to the TN really makes a difference. That's what I like about this game - it's lethal. My players do their best to complete their missions without combat.

 

[Scarab]

Oh, and about mages being powerful, there's the "geek the mage" rule.

If you see a guy with light armor and light weapons among a gang of hulking street sams, shoot him first. He's the mage.