Shadowrun 5th Edition

Hmm was just going over Clutch of Dragons and noticed they start tossing around 2074. This means it increases the odds we will be seeing SR5 start off in 2075 or possibly even 2080

There has always been a strict time convention for all SR new editions. Each new Shadowrun edition is set exactly 62 years in the future. I don't know if this convention was settled on intentionally, or if that's just simply how it happened when the first edition came out and tradition has carried it forward since then. But in either case, they've kept to it. At the moment, I can't see any reason for that convention to be challenged, changed, or otherwise upset - nor any indication that it has been with or without reason.

Which would indicate that SR5, since it will be released this year, will be set in 2075. Exactly 62 years from this year.

I never noticed the 62 year thing. Cool!

The latest article on the crossover of P&P and SRO crossover is out.

Every boxset/book you buy will have a one time use code to get you special items unavailable otherwise.... geh... There goes any money I thought I might save...

Heh! They always find a way to get you! I hate to admit it, but they may have gotten me too...

I wonder, if they do decide to run the game with 5th ed rules (they really did have enough time to make the change) will they sell electronic versions of the runs from the P&P releases?

I would expect them to explore that market. Can't say how well it will work but it is a viable idea with a potentially reasonable money stream. They might also do something similar to how Sims3 does there add ons.

I haven't learned all the intricacies of SR4 yet... now I gotta start over with SR5??

(...where's that fragging killswitch... grumble mumble grump)

Yo i don't know if anybody brought this up but just read this... And I put this up cause I always play adepts for what ever reasons, umm but quote from the developer blog i think is

"What we eventually came up with was: qi foci, a kind of focus just for adepts."

I need to read more about this Woooord! Adepts are my fav so this is of particular interest to me... thoughts comments anybody else read this know anything...

The idea is to let adepts bind foci just like spell-slingers. There will likely be a number of foci for different purposes. They will cost Karma to bind (just like current foci) and will cost money too. It is because adepts currently develop really slowly.

If a character has a Magic of 6 it will cost 30 karma to increase that score to 7. But to do that, the character will first have to initiate. Initiate level 1 costs between 8 and 13 karma depending on the means. That is a total of 38 to 43 karma just to effectively get 1 Power Point to improve or gain new Adept Powers. That's a lot of runs with very little gain. Where as a R1 focus costs between 3 and 8 karma (type dependent) to bind. Way cheaper.

They are hoping that by adding foci, adepts will scale closer to the rest of the archetypes. What strikes me as odd about this is, why hasn't anyone thought to do this before? I've not even seen this as a house rule.

They bringing tattoos back too lol... you make a good point Wreck should have done this before word...

There are other ways to do this already in the rules. Quickened spells can be purchased, so an Adept could go to a talismonger and purchase a quickened spell with money - though it's quite expensive! And since the quickened spell cannot be defended by the Adept, it's also most definitely a weak point in the Adept's defenses.

Other than that, though, Adepts definitely scale slowly - typical runs come up with money much faster than karma, in terms of spending power. So magical characters often scale significantly more slowly than technological characters. The tradeoff, in general parlance, is that technical characters have a functional cap while magical characters do not.
This is obviously an unreasonable statement - characters die, or the campaign ends before magical characters really start to break their stride a bit and get warmed up. The only time magical characters really get to have some fun with their character progression is when playing a higher build run.

That said: the "fun factor" of magical characters seems to be sufficient, even with the significant delay in progression, that plenty of people are willing to play them, myself included! So, while I think that the rationalization for the slow progressing is just silliness, it doesn't happen to be a deterrent for me. And given the "statistical numbers" of magically awakened characters in 2070+, my guess is that there is a significantly disproportionate number of magically awakened characters among my build choices, and the player characters that I review.
So, long story short: I don't think the slow progression has been any significant deterrent.

And: I am definitely looking forward to seeing what can be done with a Qi focus! That should be quite interesting!

Gala, I agree that the slow growth of Adepts isn't really a deterrent for most players. I think the designers just want to put adepts on a similar footing with Magicians in the mid-game. Let's face it, there is a significant difference between them there. A new spell isn't cheap to learn, but it is a lot cheaper than trying to get that Power Point. I'm just curious how this will affect early game Adepts. Foci could really swing the balance of power toward them quickly.

I see your point about Quicken Spells, but that definitely isn't the same thing as having an item that can be active or not and can affect skills or Adept Powers in ways not currently available. +1-+4 Sorcerous Perry anyone? Me, thanks!

I wonder if the rules would allow a skillwire for sorcerous perry... Just a thought...

As for Quicken: despite that it is severely underutilized (likely because any GM worth his salt simply won't allow it... because it is freakin' game breaking!!!) there are some really cool/interesting things that can be done with quickening. Many of them are completely ignored by most adepts, and even magicians. In fact, Quickening would work for any character, though as a GM I would require a good RP reason for a technology character to think of using them - and another justification for "risking their hides" in a way that they can't protect against (a tech character is immune to magic-only spells; unless they have a quickened spell on them!). There are some skills that can be boosted with a quickened spell; additionally, most of the underlying attributes (except magic) can be boosted with a quickened spell.
The downside, as you correctly point out, is that quickened spells cannot be deactivated. And perhaps just as important, unless you're personally the magician who cast the spell, they can't really be defended either. You can have them "bolstered" with additional successes paid for with karma (at a whopping 5k nuyen per point) but those successes can be broken down systematically by a determined magician without the least resistance. That's probably the only reason they can even be considered acceptable - because they are indefensible. Even still, I have yet to allow a Quickened spell in one of my games.

Yeah, Adepts definitely fall even more markedly far behind in the mid-game.

hope they dont bury mystic adepts i still want one of those lol

Yeah, Mystic Adept is one of my favorite build challenges. The truth of them is that their potential power is enticing, while being almost entirely out of reach for any normal build. That's what makes them so interesting to build (but not quite the same to play) - trying to find reasonable ways to put together their power, without completely handicapping them in almost every way is fun! Ultimately, it's generally a losing battle. But it's a fun one! Think: playing a game of chess against a player who is much better than you, but likes you enough to let you actually have a fight. There's no potential for harm - it's chess after all. But it can be really exciting, despite the ultimate futility.

Agreed, and good chess example...

Yeah, so much potential, but the points get dispersed so much that you would need at least 50 to 100 extra BP to make them survivable. Similar things happen when you play a spell slinger with orcs and trolls (not to the same extenet, but similar).

I love playing an Orc magician! The extra body can really make a HUGE difference in survivability! I think the extra body of an Orc more than makes up for the extra cost on the magician's drain attribute. In fact, the majority of my table-top characters are Orcs, irrespective of archetype.

Mystic Adept becomes moderately playable at about 550 BP. They're still miles behind what most other characters are at the same BP, but that's about when they start to have an accumulated karma base to be able to just start to realize some of their potential (which, if it's done properly, can be awesome). The problem with that is this: 150 BP corresponds to about 300 karma; and there's no way any PC will ever save up enough karma to be able to spend it properly over the course of the 2 years of once-per-week tabletop games it would take to accumulate 300 karma. Even if the character and the campaign last that long, there's no way the player saves up the karma, rather than spending it on quick-wins like skill improvements and non-magical attribute improvements. When what the player really needs is the patience-fortitude to save up for the badly needed magic improvements!
If you're willing to munchkin-to-kingdom-come, you can drag that 550 back to about 500; or about a 200 Karma savings-account, at which point the Mystic Adept can start to be fun and useful. But there's really no good way to put together a survivable character who is Mystic Adept at 450. They'll have to be so heavily specialized as to basically require the GM to spare them... And we all know how that typically works out!

So they just released their third teaser about the 5th edition. They are going back to the Priority build system. It's cool though, they worked it to where it is still really flexible. Oh, and they have upped the power of Mystic Adepts for sure! I haven't read the whole thing yet, but it's looking like the Mystic Adept will be a real playable character!

Wreck wrote:

So they just released their third teaser about the 5th edition. They are going back to the Priority build system. It's cool though, they worked it to where it is still really flexible. Oh, and they have upped the power of Mystic Adepts for sure! I haven't read the whole thing yet, but it's looking like the Mystic Adept will be a real playable character!

I actually preferred the priority system in SR2. When SR3 came out, though, I started to prefer the Points Build, because of the huge number of cool things you could do with characters with SOTA and YOTC. Because of the relative inflexibility of the Priority system, and the wide degree of options after SOTA and YOTC, I think the vast majority of players preferred the Point system in SR3 which is what I think led to the Priority system virtually vanishing in SR4 (I vaguely remember it being in Runner's Comp.).
The problem with that, though, is that the Priority system is much simpler in terms of keeping track of the build. It's easier for quick character creation, and it's easier to adjudicate as a GM. It's good to know that they've revamped it and that it will be more useable.

I'm really looking forward to what they do with Magic. SR4 initially had very little Magic improvements - it wasn't until the Adept handbook came out that interesting things started to emerge for Adepts. But very little has made the Mystic Adept playable - they've been relegated to "use this for story purposes only" characters, where their back-story requires that build. I have two Mystic Adept characters in play, and they're only useful because of the huge amount of BP in those games. And even still, Sha'hGrim is a few steps behind the other characters in terms of general usefulness; I had to play with the build quite a bit to get her to the point where she could keep up.

In 5th ed, MA's will get their magic attribute based on the priority they choose, 6/4/3. These can be modified with other build choices but 6 is still the starting max, unless some other rule not yet revealed allows it.
This is where things change though. MA's no longer assign Magic Points to "Magic" and "Adpet." If they want Adept Powers, they have to buy Power Points with Karma (25/13 depending on game strength setting). So if a player is willing to sacrifice buying additional skills, gear, attributes, etc, she could Set Magic at priority A- Mystic Adept and spend Karma to also Purchase 6PPs. Oh, did I mention that Priority A Magic gives a Magician or Mystic Adept two magic skills of the players choice at Rating 5 AND 10 SPELLS?

Wow - they may become a legitimate archetype all of their own. That's a really astonishing change, and most definitely worth working through once the books hit the shelves!

Looks like they finally decided to also make Technomancers have the same game mechanics as Magicians. I always thought it was funny that they changed the way spells were purchased in 4th (no longer by force rating, but just a flat rate per spell) but decided that the system with which many a mage had thrown up his hands in irritation was just fine for the technomancer. But the new teaser indicates that complex forms will be purchased out right (just like spells). It will be the character's physical/gear limitations that will keep them at a certain ability.

Oh but one thing GMs will have to be careful of during creation, the three different character starting levels (Street Level/Standard/Prime Runner) have different limit caps on gear, and Ability limit caps. That means checking every piece of gear for multiple data points during work-up as well as the character's Ability limit set-up. Ah well.

Oh, and one of the good things is that this priority system has much higher char-gen cash options than previous editions. So either gear is going to be a lot more expensive, or no one is ever going to need to take Resources A. 450k! If they keep the pricing similar to 4th ed, that means a lot of chrome for some one... The next level isn't bad either. 250k.

Well, resources were a lot higher in previous editions than they are in 4th. The resources in 4th were more than a bit surprising for me and most of the people I played with. So it's nice to see that they've gone back to somewhat reasonable resources in 5th.
In 2nd and 3rd, resource cap was at 1Mil; and with the top of the line stuff in 2nd, and the SOTA in 3rd, you could actually spend that much, without becoming a supermunchkin. Believe it or not!