5punk

What pants said in the thread about payment has me thinking: would it be useful for people if I were to point out things that they probably want to spend their hard-earned cash on? It wouldn't be an absolute list, just hints about things you will want to consider. There's a frankly insane amount of choice in SR when it comes to gear, especially if you include augmentations and modifying stuff, so its understandable for people to be a bit at a loss as to what they need, or even to just miss things.

I was thinking something along the lines of:

Archetype (Face, hacker, mage, adept etc)
Essential gear: stuff that you really need a good reason not to have
Good stuff: Things that are not essential, but are still worth considering
Fantasy gear: the top of the line, uber expensive stuff that you are probably never going to afford but should want anyway.

Like I say, it wouldn't be comprehensive, just something to let you feel less at sea. Would that be useful?

Yeeesss. I quite like window-shopping for my drones, but they're expensive enough that I'm hesitant to buy one unless I know it's going to be useful.

For me it certainly would. As much as I enjoy playing Al (because I like the Face archetype that I can't really play anywhere else), I'm not a huge fan of Shadowrun, never have been, and as such I really have to horse myself to read up on it. As you say, there's a lot of gear, and it's made more complicated by availability ratings and references to a set of rules I don't fully understand and have little inclination to read about. Of course most GMs would probably say fuck off and put the effort in if you want to play, and they'd probably be entitled to, and I do want to play, but not enough to read all the books. So yeah, that would be very useful thanks.

I'll also offer up the same service for SLA for anyone interested, although the list of kit is far smaller. Mind you, I've seen people create characters without armour before now...

Yeah I don't ever know if there is anything to spend money on besides medical things and SINs, which leads to a mage buying things like riot shields and pistols.

Foci and fetishes! Foci cost fucktonnes.

That.

I've never really needed them though. If there is one to absorb drain I could use one of those.

They also need large amounts of Karma to bind, I need to boost all my skills instead of spending it on a focus.

deject wrote:I've never really needed them though. If there is one to absorb drain I could use one of those.

You havent really come up against another mage yet, not properly. Nor have you come up against any serious Spirits. When I say serious, theres one in a pre-written mission for guys of about your level that is horse 9 and has counterspelling 9, as well as 14/14 armour. You would need to be slinging some crazy mojo to take that thing down. It laughs in the face of horse 6 stunbolts.

As for drain, there isnt one that does it directly (AFAIK, I could be wrong), but you can achieve this indirectly using Anchoring Foci (Street Magic, page 84). Essentially, these let you cast a spell now, and have the effect go off later. For instance, one NPC I know of has a anchoring foci with a shield spell on it. He touches the foci, and the spell turns on. No spellcasting test, no drain, as that all happens when you anchor the spell (which can be any amount of time before-hand). Fucking expensive though: the foci costs 10k per level of horse, so one that can anchor a horse 6 spell would cost 60k as a base price!

Well if I faced that I'd be in serious shit with or without any sort of foci.

deject wrote:Well if I faced that I'd be in serious shit with or without any sort of foci.

To be fair, that encounter is supposed to result in the players running away, so its probably not a great example. But you get my meaning.

Joose wrote:To be fair, that encounter is supposed to result in the players running away, so its probably not a great example. But you get my meaning.

Since when have we EVER made a tactical retreat? We'd stand there dumbfounded till we were reduced to bits of red jelly.

Well in order to run away you need to know how powerful things are relative to you before you wade into them. Hopefully there'd be some indication before we started beating on it.

Dog Pants wrote:Well in order to run away you need to know how powerful things are relative to you before you wade into them. Hopefully there'd be some indication before we started beating on it.

Having read the mission in question, if you are still standing around fighting this guy after more than a turn or so you are being epic stupid. It'd be pretty clear how outclassed you are.

Dog Pants wrote:Well in order to run away you need to know how powerful things are relative to you before you wade into them. Hopefully there'd be some indication before it started beating on us.

Fix'd

I'd send a few SnS rounds into it and judge from that how hard it was. Then likely run away.

Ive started putting this together here:

http://www.5punk.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Gear

Its at an early stage yet, but I'll add stuff/make it clearer as I go along. Feel free to comment/question/suggest.

Might want to rename that page to Shadowrun Gear, as it's a bit ambiguous at the moment.

added my tuppence on hackers

Faces can benefit from vocal enhancement.

A bit extreme is the false front bio-mod, extra muscles and stretchy cartilage that are designed to alter the shape of the face or body when a drug is injected. The mimic option costs even more, but allows you to look like someone else as opposed to generating a random new face/body each time.

Chameleon skin works well with nano-paste or latex to help change appearance.

There's also loads of glands and such that can secrete drugs that make you think faster, move faster, smell nicer etc.

Grimmie wrote:Might want to rename that page to Shadowrun Gear, as it's a bit ambiguous at the moment.

Fair point, donned.