Shadowrun Custom Rules
Contents
SKILL UPGRADING
According to the rules, you have to do an extended skill test in order to upgrade skills. I think that's a needless level of detail, so we shall have none of that silliness here. Just pay the karma, and get the skill.
DIRECT COMBAT SPELLS
The removal of GM prompted 'net hits on target' to remove a step from spell combat. Joose and HereComesPete decided it offered too much insight into the skills of the target and removed some of the guesswork inherent in the spell casting process.
You the Mage pick your spell force and roll your magic + spellcasting +/- modifiers and generate a number. This number can then be used wholly or partly to up the damage value of your spell, it also ups your drain value as a result.
No matter how well you roll, you can only add dice up to the force the spell was cast at.
E.G. Roman, his manabolt and a rather exceptional roll of 9 hits.
He chose force 6 so the drain is 6/2 = 3. He then rolled Magic 5 + Spellcasting 5 - 10 dice and he got 9 hits. Because he chose force 6 he can then add up to 6 of his 9 hits to the damage value of the spell. If he adds all 6 then the damage value would be 12 and the drain would be 9.
If he had chosen force 9 for his spell he would have the option of adding all of those 9 hit dice to the damage value but would of course have to resist the drain too.
Regardless of whether the spell does anything to the target, the drain that Roman sets himself must be resisted.
A word of caution! Because Roman is overcasting here (his magic attribute is 5 but he is casting at force 6), any unresisted drain is taken as physical damage not stun damage.
AVAILABILITY
In HereComesPete's runs availability on gear is less dependent on availability and restrictions than the books suggest. If you're a drug user getting you next fix is a simple task of going to your usual sources and buying more. If you're a B&E specialist, picking up a new set of picks or maglock passkey is a case of paying a visit to your normal shady man in bar.
If you're buying enough through a contact related to your line of work then you'll pay no more than book price unless it's an unusual and hard to source item. If you buy enough then they'll start offering discount to keep you happy. Alternatively if you need something rare and from a source you've never used before, it may well cost you more than the book suggests.
Save yourself time, poke him on xfire/pm and see what you can get!
REPUTATION - NOTORIETY - PUBLIC AWARENESS
In Joose's runs the participants are getting Karma at an increased rate to normal per run, Joose has modified it so that the reputation is calculated from total Karma/20 rather than total Karma /10. This seems to be giving more reasonable numbers.
As for what they are -
Street Rep
How well known you are in the shadows and on the street. It’s a basic guide as to how much respect you will get off your approximate peers. Obviously, people who don’t move in shadowy circles are not going to be impressed by this. In general, a higher street rep is a good thing.
Notoriety
How much of an arsehole you are. Doing things like stiffing your Johnson (wahay!), being generally obnoxious and killing people who didn’t need to be killed will raise this. Most of the time, it’s a bad thing (although it could be used as a bonus if you are trying to scare someone). Too much notoriety and you need to start watching for the cops/hit men.
Public Awareness
How much the general public know about you. This is an amalgam of the other two ratings. Basically, keep it low and no one outside the shadows will know who you are. Keep it high, and on the one hand you might be able to sign a movie deal, on the other hand *everyone* will know who you are. Recognition is generally a bad thing for career criminals.
ENHANCED SENSES
As the rulebook never covers enhanced senses in any great detail, merely announcing them and then leaving it with the only attempts to cover them being buried in errata pages and critters books a problem ensues. Dumpshock is consulted, the brains of Joose and HereComesPete are applied and thusly the following ideas were formed -
The maximum modifier to the senses will be a +/-4. These situations are extreme - an eco-shaman trying to find focus amongst the toxic outflow of a AAA corp will suffer a -4. Trying to focus in some ancient elven forest however would see them get +4 (and maybe a sharp blade in the back from a leaf eater).
Generally the modifiers are going to sit around +/-2, some of these enhanced senses can of course be negated with various methods. If someone with natural hearing enhancements spends too much time in noisy places it'll adversely affect them, so they can wear earplugs.
NON-LETHAL ROUNDS
When using less lethal specialised rounds such as stick and shock, the upped damage value generated by called aimed shots is capped to stun damage so physical damage on the target isn't applied and consequently lethal. This is to allow for exceptional rolls to not be super effective and end up killing the target where the intention is to merely disable or disorient.
