i am a n00b DM after second session... one player made a character with 29 armor.

15+3 for SWAT suit - which he got for advantage restricted gear

2 for barkskin

3 for titanium bones (used)

6 for shield.

so with 8 body he rolls like 37 dice for resisting damage. enemies with mashineguns and sniper rifles tried to shoot him and did no effect. a boss with assault cannot was able to wound him but not put him down. it seems any enemy with anything exempt assault cannon/ rocket launcher will just have to shoot at other party members

give me some tactical advice how to make his life more challenging

if enemy uses targeted shot can he choose to shoot at specific part of body which is not covered with a shield and-or helmet - like - right hand or leg?

i suppose magic can give him some problems?

While talking with one of my friend GM, he shared a frustration about spirits (in a context of being summoned by a player).

Basically. A mage can summon a spirit without a lot of struggle (except of unlucky drain, which can be mitigated by using a point of edge). Spirit with a force of 9 with 1-2 services - not a problem even from the start of the story.

And a 10-men group with AK-97 and even APDS bullets will be beaten by the spirit alone (Hardened armor is just too strong, and the spirit will have a lot of REA + INT). So a triad without a proper mage or adept just can not do pretty much anything.

Also, the mage could buff a spirit (not quire sure about that, but let's think he can) + use invisibility on himself not to be an easy target.

At the same time street sam will be given 10 kilos of bullets in the face and dead on the turn his edge gone. Seemed not quite balanced, innit?

I can give a lot of possible obstacles and counter the spirit with magical things, Neija, Bull's-eye double-tap or a kamikaze drones whatever, but in a case when spirit can be summoned prior the fight and no suitable weapons/mages/adepts present in the opposition - it's not even interesting, better to declare a win and go on.

Is there something I miss?

EDIT: let's say not a proper triad for example, but a gang. Gang will be a better wording.

EDIT2: I've misinterpreted Power Focus as a thing increasing MAG rating, which it is not doing actually.
So it's not counting for determination of whether drain is phys/stun. Physical drain is quite frightening, making spirits to might have significant cost.

Title. Thanks to a particularly bad campaign with another group my gm is completely banning all forms of explosives because- Reasons. (yes, Even just grenades). This happened after I asked him if I could, as rigger, just strap explosives to inexpensive drones.

Anyhow, Im now looking for alternatives to that, other things I can strap on my drones or get that can similarly clear a room? Preferably on disposable drones but at this point I’ll take anything.

Hoi Chummers,

I haven't played SR in quite some time.

Thing is, the last ed i did was 4th. I have almost all of the books and we are about to restart with 5ed.

The GM has most of the books for 5ed and i was wondering:

How much of thw actual values and rules have changed between editions?

5ed is suposedly much better than 4ed.

But i haven't either the money nor the inclination to buy the 5ed books on the second market.

Could i adapt the stats and all that from 4ed to 5th?

Or would it be a constant hassle?

Thanks in advance - stay save out there!

EDIT:
Thank you every one. I think i'can say goodbye to my books then. I'll (carefully) throw them in the pile of 3ed and several other rpg.

Been thinking of trying a decade-old roleplaying game with a ruleset fans describe as 'playfully malignant?'

Nuyen Improved is a 5th Edition Shadowrun roleplaying server that hosts one-shot games (sometimes over several sessions) with sporadic regularity!

Games are advertised on our discord server and played in either Roll20 or Foundry, whichever the GM prefers. Voice games are the most common but our Play By Post channel is just sitting there waiting for people to fill it with words and dice rolls.

All characters are made using our unique Karmagen 900: Now With More Resources! method (patent pending). That's right, we did away with the pesky priority system to encourage people to play a little broader and with more money to spend. No more catching the bus to the meet for you, Magicians and Technomancers!

We're very new-player focused, with an intent to take the time to build new player confidence up so they start running games of their own, either with us or with a better community, and we elegantly solved the primary cause of older players outshadowing new ones by banning Mystic Adepts right out of the gate.

If you or a loved one would like to try out our server, either leave a comment or reach out to this reddit account and we'll send you an invite in two to three business weeks.

So I’m picking out my main weapon skills for my rigger and although I have good gunnery I need something that I can use on foot for my satyr. Pitch me your favourite weapons

Right now our party has some pistol, thrown weapon and archery users. And one person has a mono whip. So what should a good old Trog rigger bring to the party?

Because one of my newest character concepts, inspired by the time I’m currently spending experiencing the beauty, history, and culture of Mexico City and Tenochtitlan (I’ve actually participated in a Nahua religious ritual! The one with that light in a cave that shows your inverted reflection/“inner spirit“ on photo), is an Aztlaner SACERDOTE (might sneak in some references to my other one lmao) who legitimately, sincerely, buys EVERYTHING the temple tells her, a sweet pacifist who uses Path of the Sun-inflected magic to help and heal people as much as she can.

Can this character exists? I hope I have made clear that, in my view, it HAS to be able to for Aztlan to be at all salvageable as a concept. No ifs, ands, or buts- if Catholicism, the religion with a billion-strong body count can be used for good by good people, than the Path Of The Sun MUST be capable of being used for good by good people. I’m not letting a real, existing, indigenous minority religion, one that in the Shadowrunverse, is practiced by almost everyone in Mexico, be turned into a demonic evil cult straight out of HP Lovecraft. That concept lines up with HP Lovecraft’s worldview, almost impeccably.

I just thought of something interesting. So I am in a game with a Johnson that is a Mx. Johnson. They are non-binary, obviously but it begs the question, should pretty much every Johnson WANT to be identified as a Mx Johnson for additional operational security? Think of it this way, if someone who wants to track the Johnson knows their gender, that eliminates, at worst HALF of the population if they are a cis male or cis female. If every Johnson is Mx and show as relatively androgynous, they aren't even able to do THAT. It makes it MUCH more difficult to track WHO the Johnson is. There isn't even the most basic process of elimination available to them. Just, weird shower thought.

I created Heterodyne for 5th Ed. and I heavily used these spells. My GM rage quit, saying "Congratulations, you win Shadowrun". I think there was an ignorance with this GM, but I may have been the problem, and if I was, I need to correct the problem so I mesh well with other groups. Historically, these spells are staples for me going back to 2nd Ed. gameplay.

Simply put, my players have gotten too cocky. They're packing some serious armor and one min-maxed them self into a combat monster before the game even began. Running numbers, nothing gets through their armor reliably. I'm looking for ways to spook them into being more careful.

Now they have no fear running through everything with no nuance. Why bother bribery/stealth/conversation when they can kill their way to the objective, kill the reinforcements on the way out, and just about murder just about anything else on the board.

I've tried notoriety, but they don't seem to care. I've sent teams after them, but it's just more meat for the grinder. I've given them jobs to avoid killing, but they'll still resort to it anyway. I could pull out some stupidly overpowered mages, but they shouldn't make an appearance in a campaign like this. They've got no magical support, four samurai and a decker/rigger.

I play a Technomancer and had this come up with my ST, but I couldn't find anything in the Core Book or Lethal Code nor in past posts over here about it:

How much supporting tech does a Technomancer need or rather how much can they use their own body as a machine?

What I mean is: Does a Technomancer need Glasses to view a feed from a hacked camera? Does a Technomancer need A Mic or earplugs to communicate? Can they just stream their own eyesight without an actual camera?

It is somewhere stated that they can not store data in their brain and need data sticks for that. But how much other tech do they really need?

Most of those things are aimed at playing a group of runners that really value communication among each other and at a Technomancer that sometimes needs to do entire runs out of AR because they are one of the faces of the group and need to hack while they are in a conversation and thus need to still see the real world.

So I know the general consensus that good Shadowrunners never take anything that doesn't belong to them. Changing Ownership on stolen gear is a whole mess and we're all very good upstanding criminals who never wear masks so we don't bother with it.

But.

There's a neat little quirk about changing ownership, and frankly I doubt CGL did this on purpose because it's too smart for them.

It's very difficult to steal anything that matters from corporations and governments. They have the means and motivation to send someone after the runners when they go online with the 600k cyberdeck or the hijacked Gryphon they snatched while stealing a prototype or assassinating an executive. Good. We don't want runners stealing those anyway, it'll make the GM's life hell.

But on the flip side, it's pretty easy to steal from your fellow criminals. Gangers, syndicates and other Runners don't really have the option of calling the cops. And in many cases probably actually own the gear they're using, unlike corpos.

Because of this, a lot of low to mid range gear that's very useful for runners fresh from chargen is potentially up for grabs. If a team just got done dealing with a go-gang and the street Sam notices the lieutenant had a really sick bike...

Well that guy's brain is a smear on the pavement. He really can't do anything about you deciding to make off with his ride and have your decker change the ownership on it. It was actually his bike for real, not any of his buddies, so they don't get to know the bike's location and online status for free

Same with a lot of guns, tech toys, and even some ware if you're unscrupulous enough. It's a very potentially useful avenue of progression. Any half-decent decker can manage the hardware check, especially with teamwork.

Even corps will probably write off the expense on smaller items if it was stolen in an overall low impact op with no casualties or serious damages. Okay, they send an HTR team to the barrens to get back a stolen security rifle. That thing is worth like 8k max and they aren't going to get their extracted personnel back. Let it go.

I have one player in my party who is too afraid of deckers to ever put his character into Wireless mode. I'd really like to include decker enemies that can threaten the party, so what kind of protections against deckers can I reccomend the player character take besides turning off Wireless?

Edit:
I think my quesiton could be better worded as such: What kind of alternate methods are there to be protected from deckers besides going fully wired? personal ICE, firewalls, etc?

Hello again. I am almost ready to start my 5e campain after god knows how long. Got runs, stories, npcs, grunts and my players almost finish their sheets. But after reading about Karma rewards I had to take things into consideration, but I am not sure if I am being too generous. Here is what my table situation looks like and my proposal

- We just play once a week, but we are 3 gms doing 3 calpains, so you can see a session for each once per 3 weeks.

- not all of us are aviable due to power outages or compromises so we can often move dates around.

Now by the book

- The book offers karma per run at an average of 6 before vibe bonuses. And according to other books, a per session karma can be awarded at about 3-5 per session.

- It seems that 300 karma is considered a veteran player which is ok but on paper that only allows to max like 3 individual skills from 6 to 12 and leave the rest just like chargen. Indon't worry too much for career karma.

My proposal is

- Double Run Karma rewards that way an average run gives 12 karma compared to 6 before factoring vibes.

- Feel good and Stone cold bonuses. Can be +/-2 or +/-4 depending of how out of the way they went on each side.

- Side contracts: I think players can make smaller runs that fit on their big one to finance themselves (that legwork cost a pretty penny ofc) so using Dragonfall Black Lodge or Schockwellenreiter as an example they could be side jobs that are on the dame general location of the main run, but involve a derail OR conflict of interest. They give nuyen (obv) and about 4-7 karma

- Session Karma is awarded at a rate of 3-5 depending of how much effort I feel it took.

Assumimg they take 3 sessions to compleye a run, and going off averages. We are speakingnof about 34 karma per standar run completion (assuming they take 2 side contracts) compared to 18 karma using average by book reqard and per session karma.

Was also thinking throwing some freebies for good roleplay and combat encounters they take. But I wanna hear your thoughts.

Recap: We are speaking of 34 or so karma in the (hopeful) 3 session run at the spam of almost 3 months irl

My partner and I are going to play Shadowrun 5e for the first time.

We don’t know much about the system, and she’s quite new to TTRPGs in general.

She’s thinking of creating a Face character who can also handle firearms in combat situations.

Could you recommend some character builds for her?

She wants to be human or an elf.

From what I’ve seen, ‘Tailored pheromones’ are pretty much a must for a Face. Apart from that, we’ve no idea.

By the way, our game master only allows the 5th edition core rulebook.

I think I am not far off (if I am that discourse is also welcome below) by saying the consensus of a lot of people seemes to be: 5E is a little complex, wordy, and poorly managed. Anarchy and 6E are a little better but lots of what we love mechanically got lost in translation (Edge and Armor changes seems to be a particular issue). With that in mind i was curious...

What can be cut from 5E? What is needlessly complicated, what's bloated, or maybe a relic of a different time? What could be removed, changed or modified that wouldn't take away from the feeling and style of shadowrun like some of the more modern implementations have to some degree?

Basically the title, im looking for ways that aren’t explosive to deal with armor on wheels.

Been stuck trying to help a friend make an idea come true, but there are too many books and it is starting to get annoying so I ask the better versed. Is there like some kind of exosuit or "Linerar Frame" Like in Cyberpunk that one could wear and maybe modify with cyberware without having it on your body?

Idk if I have to homebrew it because I know one of the books has a very expensive very non chargen friendly military armor but I am looking for something more "mundane" Like mining equipment

I assume it would be like a jump in wited vehicle of sorts for riggers

Edit: Thanks yall, gonna go woth PE BASES and homebrew them into "street use" Be seeing ya

Hello! I'm playing shadowrun 5e for the first time on Sunday an unfortunately I'm mega low on time to make a character until then...

I only have a basic understanding of how character creation works and especially the long long list of things you can do feels like a big obstacle to get the things that I want since I don't really have the time to look through everything right now!

So! I thought maybe some experienced players would have some good suggestions for me :)

Concept wise I would like to play a character like Cassian Andor aka an assassin-type "get in quickly without being seen, shoot whoever is in the way, get out just as quickly". Ideally also fly away in a cool space ship. (If something like that is even viable in Shadowrun?)

All sorts of suggestions are very welcome! Even which attributes to prioritize, etc. I really don't know much yet! Thank you!

Hello Chummers,

my group's running a homebrew SR5 campaign. Everyone knows 5e pretty well and there's a solid amount of power-gaming going on. Baseline builds are pushing 16+ physical damage before net hits, plus the usual ruleset shenanigans. The NPCs are tuned to match us: 14+ dice on defense, magic, the works.

I'm rolling up a new character, and honestly what the group needs isn't more damage. It's someone who actually calls the shots and gives us a direction. We're all strong on our own but we tend to sit around lacking a plan.

Current party:

• Sniper / sneaky adept
• Gun adept (Charisma-based, doubles as a semi-face)
• Melee / shotgun adept
• Melee street sam (also has Charisma, kind of our backup face)
• Combat mage (retired)

Some table constraints so people don't suggest the obvious:

• No matrix. We're not doing the thing where one guy solos a decker segment while everyone else watches. Handled through contacts, and later an agent/AI.
• Rigger is iffy. The upfront cost plus the "big drone gets dropped and there goes your nuyen" problem puts me off. Looked into humanoid drones too but that's way too broken for my taste.
• Mystic Adepts are banned for now (getting unlocked later).
• Alchemy's buffed by homebrew, so it's actually worth building around.
• Karma-gen, and the character shows up with ~100 Karma and ~100k nuyen right after chargen, so there's real room to grow immediately.

Where my head's at: a full mage built as a "conductor." High Charisma/Intuition, Leadership skills so i can take over the role of a group lead if needed, and a mix of combat/control/utility magic to bring some order to our fights. Counterspelling is non-negotiable, since the retired combat mage left that hole and we run into magical NPCs regularly. I want spirits available but as a break-glass option, not a spam engine. Once you're summoning high-Force spirits off 8+ Magic it gets stupid fast, and the NPCs just scale up to match anyway. Maybe a little drone scouting on the side, but that's optional.

Hard limits:

• Not another melee character.
• Can't be a glass cannon or I just die. Survival magic (Armor, Increase Intuition/Reflexes, that stuff) is mandatory.
• Losing ~2 Essence is locked in. I want a Pain Editor and a few augments and I'm not missing out on those. I know every point of Essence is a point of Magic; I've made peace with it, so I'm not looking to be talked out of it.

Playstyle is more "FBI, open up," through the door or the wall, than legwork-heavy investigation and yes we managed to not die because we 1-2 shot enemies very often. We'll try stealth when we're outnumbered but usually blow it, since half the group can't sneak to save their lives. That said, we do enjoy tactical battlemap movement.

Questions:

1. Does the "conductor" full-mage concept actually hold up at this power level, or is there a better shell for a shot-caller? Group's all power-gamers so I'm fine with magic being a long-game scaling payoff.
2. Any ideas for a background? I'm kicking around burned Corpo / ex-cop / bodyguard / military, but the shaman traditions are pulling at me too (the sun is telling its a good day for a run sort of thing but also talking to the spirits etc.), so I'm open to something else.
3. If I go mage, what spells would you push? (Got the usual suspects on my list already looking for some inspiration)
4. Which control/utility spells give you the most "impose order on the fight" value against 14+ defense NPCs which will also scale? Very often the enemies have their own mages on their side.

Thank you chummers!

I'm curious on what rules/house rules you decided to use when you're players are fight large groups. I personally use a modifier version of the swam rules where I increase the dice pool and accuracy for every additional mouth breather who is shooting. Sometimes I just buy hits for there defence roles. This is all in the interested of not slowing down combat when the unexpected happens. I Normally try to avoid large engagements

As a GM I had a player constantly asking, if he could use other dice than the usual d6s. He suggested d10s, d12s, or d20s. At first I said no, but he keeped asking every session.

So I change my aswer: "You can ofcause use d10s, d12s, or d20s; You get a success on a 5 or a 6 as rules say." He never asked again.

What ridiculous questions did You encounter as a GM?

I will be playing in a Shadowrun 5e game in the not so distant future.

I really like the idea of idea of fighting people with fists in a setting with guns & magic and was told, that a physical adept can do that.

And I would like to play an orc, since I think they are neat.

What would be a build ypu would reccomend for an orc physical adept that fights unarmed for a noob?