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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8980593" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 135: April 1999part 4/5Shamanic Weaknesses: Shadowrun also has a whole ton of animal shaman types with various appropriate powers that can be a real nuisance to a group of runners. Fortunately they also come with thematically appropriate weaknesses and tendencies towards stereotypical behaviour. And if there's one thing the internet is good at, it's spotting patterns in data and disseminating information. So here's one of their mostly IC chatroom discussions where a bunch of runners discuss how best to take out a troublesome spellcaster. Watch out for the ones that are prone to frenzy because they can be a big liability in a team. Pride, greed or overly obsessive following a particular cause are also relatively common. Of course, since it's a public chatroom, there are also more than a few shamen there who lack a sense of humour about their own limitations or ideology, which means the moderators need to step in to ban them for making personal attacks. So this is pretty funny, and a good reminder of how the internet used to be before stricter registration procedures and long term bans made most websites a little more sedate, because the people who flame out at the slightest provocation have already been banned repeatedly and learned to be a little more diplomatic in stating their opinions or gravitate to the same few cesspools that do still allow open abusiveness. It's also a good reminder that giving your character mechanically enforced flaws makes them more interesting than just adding ever more powers and higher numbers as you accumulate XP. Not hugely useful to me as once boiled down it's system-free advice I've seen many times, but it's still a good implementation of the concept that's extra amusing for being very of it's time.Gifts from Below: Erik Mona has been appearing in the letters pages and lists of top players for several years now. Now he gets his first article in here, on one of the topics that'll become a lot more common when he gets in the editors seat. Time for a look at some more of the unpredictably dangerous magic items that come from the Abyss, which also allows him to add more lore about their creators in the process. Flame Amulets of Alzrius give you blasty powers and immunity to fire, but are near impossible to take off, and eventually compel you to go to a place where you'd cause maximum devastation and explode like a balor, taking the souls of everyone fried straight down to said demon lord. If you've done your research you definitely won't want to put them on, although using minions as suicide bombers seems a pretty effective tactic for the cunning evil overlord as long as you have someone lurking nearby to pick up and reuse the amulet afterwards.Bloodmarker weapons are less of a double-edged sword, inflicting unhealing wounds and dragging the souls of anyone killed with them straight to the abyss. Not that useful for PC's since they usually kill enemies straight away, leaving no time for wounds to fester, but very annoying when an enemy has one, especially when you're several levels down in a dungeoncrawl and don't have access to magic to fix the problem. Relics of Unlife give you undead controlling powers, at the not too surprising price of gradually becoming ever more undead-like yourself. Give it up after 3 months while the benefits still outweigh the penalties. Another one that's probably more trouble than help to PC's, but an excellent plot driver in the hands of an antagonist.</blockquote>

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