Houserules: Movement Power

The Movement power is what allows some spirits to move at incredible speed, as well as either buff or restrain others by either multiplying or dividing it with the Spirit’s Magic (which equals Force).

In SR4 this power had only two restrictions listed: Inside terrain it controlled, and based on Body (B>M = halved effect, B>2*M = no effect). SR5 has more detail to it, going back to SR3’s description and talking more explicitly about terrain/domain the Spirit controls, as well as containing a separate rule for vehicles.

This unfortunately runs into two complications. First of all, what IS terrain a spirit controls? Clearly it’s not just ‘their natural habitat’, since otherwise an Air Spirit could easily target any plane they see, while a Plant spirit would rule surpreme in the jungle. Don’t even get me started on what kind of terrain would be a Guardian spirit’s natural habitat…

The second is that the power’s description went back to its SR3 version. Unfortunately, some mechanics have changed since SR3… Some even midway SR5’s development, such as Vehicles… Rather than having a significant Acceleration and Speed directly translating to m/CT, Acceleration is now a tricky number solely for Vehicle Chases (which a previous houserule already covered) and Speed simply is a limit as well as translating to how fast you can go.

I mean nobody woudl believe it’s intended that a good test on a good car could easily make it go 2^18 as fast. That’s 50 million km/hour… If we look at SR3’s Speed system the original intent seems more clear: Say you got a vehicle with an Acceleration of 10, and Speed actually is your actual speed rather than a single-digit number, then those 6 hits would translate to making the vehicle go 100 m/CT faster/slower instead, which likely (especially with deceleration rules) could actually cause it to crash due to the sudden changes.

I’ll be discussing three core Movement houserules here, two of which I have already applied in my own campaign. An important note: This has actually impacted my campaign’s balance and I’ve been thinking of ways to nerf it down for a while, which will be included as corollaries. It wasn’t that bad (sorta) with one Speedster, but with four magicians all outshining the Rigger’s speed… Not to mention it kinda ruins ambushes and all that.

Ahem. Before we go into the houserules, there’s something VERY important you should know first, a small detail of the rules that many probably missed.

Your actions and movement are declared at the START of your Action Phase. That is, you FIRST declare what all you’ll do, THEN you start executing it. (Page 158, 159, 163.) You can stop or change direction, but you cannot increase your movement after finding out some of the results of your actions. Logically the same would apply to your offensive actions, even if not explicitly stated.

So say you decide to run around a corner. If there’s an enemy waiting around it, you can’t go ‘oh then I’ll just run past him’. You can break or dive back, but not go further than originally declared. You also cannot attack him if you didn’t keep the option in mind. That’s why I make my fast players declare what their intent will be in somewhat-vague terms, for example ‘cut the first enemy that dares to get in my way in two’. That way the runner still can go around a corner and attack, assuming there is in fact an enemy within reach.

This might seem like nitpicking but when it comes to combatants easily moving 100 meters in a single Combat Turn, it becomes VERY important. You can’t walk 20m, see what enemies are where and THEN make a detailed plan for the rest of your Action Phase: Decide at the start and run into danger! You can run up a staircase but only if you knew it was there and declared the intent.

A sidenote: This also means that you got to keep a few possible outcomes in mind as player. As GM I wouldn’t give you a lot of hassle if you used an If-statement in your Action Declarations, but you got to keep in mind the highest declared movement will count for your movement allotment of the Combat Turn. Just make sure you make clear to your players what the limitations will be before they run into nasty complications, as part of the social contract.

Rule: Spirits can only use Movement on others inside Aspected Areas

There are basically three ways for an area to get Aspected in the advantage of a Tradition: The Personal Domains of some Free Spirits, frequent use by that tradition and magical lodges, in order from large to small (multiple acres, ?, very-small-region). Which means that for nearly every situation the Spirit will not be able to use Movement on others, only on themselves, fitting with the ‘only in terrain they control’ restriction being an actual restriction.

If they have the home advantage though, from defending their magician’s turf or their own… Ohboy… And that’s exactly what this houserule is about: Making it about the home-advantage. You get the enemy to fight in an area aspected in your favor, they’ll be in massive trouble against your Spirits unless they cleanse the area… Only being able to run 6 meters per Combat Turn as a 9-Agility character can REALLY hurt in combat, especially once AoE effects are put into play!

Rule: Movement against vebicles uses (M+W)d6*Accel*10/Body

Leaving aside the whole ‘Speed-changes’, which obviously no longer is intended like that with the new Speed mechanic, there’s another problem I personally have with Movement against Vehicles. Right now they have to hit a threshold, which can be MASSIVE for high-Body vehicles (9 for a Roadmaster!), but the threshold itself is merely to decide if it works! You hit a threshold 6, you suddenly count as 6 hits instead of 0. That’s plain weird. It’d make more sense if your effect was divided by Body.

Now keeping the Acceleration is an easy call since it seems logical that the better a vehicle accelerates/decelerates, the more easily a Spirit can manage to change its speed. The biggest problem is what multiplier to use. SR5 mostly uses Acceleration 1~3, where 3 is the max that matters for a Vehicle Chase, only the occasional vehicle goes above it. So a significant multiplier seems required.

A Force 6 Spirit would average 4 hits, so on a 2-Accel Body-8 Jackrabbit we’d be at 4*2/8 = 1 as base modifier. To compare, in SR3 Accel-rates were roughly from 3 to 12 and the SR5 rule employs a Body/2 for the threshold. So let’s roughly quadruple to convert back to SR3’s concepts, double to fit with B/2 and round up to x10. Now 4 hits would translate to 40 m/CT. With the modified Speed system from my previous houserules, this could actually lead to a lot of discomfort for your enemies or even a crash test.

Rule: Channeled/Possession Spirits can use Movement

A Spirit can only use Movement on itself outside terrain/domains it controls. When a Spirit possesses someone or is channeled by a magician, they form a special kind of combination which impacts Physical attributes and their resistance to mental spells. So it makes sense to also let them use their powers (such as Elemental Aura and Movement) inside these bodies, with all the downsides in the case of Elemental Aura. (Congratulations, you’re on fire, how well-protected is your gear? You’re electrifying? Enjoy the fried commlink.)

There is a big balance risk with Movement though. Even a 3-Agility character Channeling a Force 6 Spirit will suddenly have 6 Agility and 72/144 as their Movement rates… A 5-Agility with a Force 8 would hit 9*8*4 = 288 m/CT running rate, that’s ~345 km/h. Compare that to a Rigger whose 4-Speed Drones, even under my Speed table if you don’t make them lose Speed categories (which I should consider only doing for walkers, and for any drone moving indoors), can only move 150 km/h, and you realize that indeed this houserule risks favoring Movement players too much. Of course there’s downsides (spooking cars, Metamagic or Tradition sacrifice, drawing unwanted attention, cannot mask this only Manascape it, etc.) but there’s still space for a few fixes to this.

(Incidentally, I already employ slight Accel/Decel-rules and ‘Gridguide hates you and demands you wear a tracker on the highway so you don’t spook their cars’, but there’s still space for more because it’s fun but not enough.)

Rule: Movement’s buff is divided by TerrainDifficulty

Note that this does not just matter for Channeling and Possession. Great Form Spirits with 6+ net hits on the ritual can Endow a power, meaning you can now let your Spirit pass Movement on to multiple teammembers… Anyway:

On page 201 you’ll find terrain modifiers for vehicle stunts. Now we could demand Gymnastic tests for magical-boosted movement speeds, but that’s a bit tricky for long movement and rather detracts from the game. So instead we’d nerf it differently: You want to channel a spirit and run through side-streets? The buff you get is divided by 2 for the Vehicle Terrain Modifier, so a Force 6 only triples your speed instead. Want to hit the back-alleys with a Force 8? You only double instead of eightfold due to/ 4. Rounding is of course on the final movement speed, not the multiplier.

(No, these are not insane examples. Now it might be because I employ a karma<->nuyen rule but I actually do have people working towards being able to Channel Force 10 Spirits and already using Force-9 ones…)

An important note here is that the same Vehicle table includes terrain modifiers for flying. Irrelevant for metahumans themselves, but Spirits CAN fly, even if they normally don’t. Still facing some restrictions even if they take into the air is quite nice and means drones are still quite useful: A Roto-Drone managing 200 km/h (+1 Speed Category with risks, no Speed Category reduction for being a drone) would still be able to outfly a Spirit using Movement, IF directly controlled by its Rigger or solely doing normal low-altitude flying (threshold-2 is doable for 9 dice, 15% failing odds and that simply means failing and a second attempt normally).

An alternative houserule would use percentages rather than division, and of course the vehicle table is for vehicles so the descriptions would need to be altered. What is the pedestrian equivalent of sidestreets?

Two sidenotes to make. First, Harlequinn channeling would easily go faster than the speed of sound but others would have a hard time coming close. Even if you go with ‘Increase Agility stacks with Possession’ like I do, you essentially need a Force 16 Spirit in a 5[9]->17 Agility character or a Force 14 in an 8[12]->19 to barely reach 1 mach.

Sidenote two: You need ~30 m/second, so ~90 m/CT, to be able to run on water. If we count running on water with Magic as /2 for difficulty, you’d need 180 meters/CT before division. Divide by 4 for running, and 6 for a normal Force 6 Spirit and you’d need 8 Agility which is doable.

Want to walk on water without running penalties or eventual running-exhaustion? You’d need 360, say Force 9 Spirit for 10 Agility, 4 of which from the Spirit so quite doable with a bit of magic. A Force 8 would require 11~12 Agility.

Houserules: Karma to/from Nuyen

In Shadowrun characters earn and spend both karma and cash (nuyen, alt+0165 = ¥ for those that want to type the yen symbol). In previous editions the karmic rewards could differ per player, but in Fifth the rewards are normally the same for everyone.  However, different types of characters have different needs. A Street Samurai can always get more or better ware, a Rigger can get more drones or upgrade them, a Decker can save up for a new one, but magical characters tend to not need money. Often not at all. Instead they need more karma, because they need to work on their Magic and Initiation Grade on top of all the other karma expenses. So you end up with characters who desperately need karma and have way too much money at hand. On the other hand a Street Sam might be all ‘who cares about karma, right now I need a ware upgrade!’ and the Decker will moan and drool about better decks.

To accomodate for different people needing different amounts of Karma and Nuyen, a table can houserule that you can trade one in for the other. This already happens in chargen, where 1 karma becomes ¥2,000, so there’s something to base things on. The question is, how exactly will you do it. What is the price, what is the limit? Because if you allow for too much to be traded, it can seriously impact the balance between characters.

The following three rules are simple: The first is how Missions does it, the second has a different at-a-price and is similar to how some (including me) did it in SR4, the third is the way I currently do it in my own campaign. My own way combines it with another houserule, but that part can easily be ignored.

Rule: ¥2k <–> 1 karma (takes time, 5 max per downtime)

Missions works with Working for the Man/People. You spend a week of your time doing either good work or soul-draining one, letting you freely convert up to 5 karma per downtime period. The only price paid here is time, which with Missions matters since you fully control your free time. Outside Missions it hardly ever matters though, unless you’re working on something that takes a lot of time. Which means Mages suffer under this, because Initiation tends to take a lot of time. Others not so much. So a Street Sam can easily grab a quick buck now, then later on convert the money back to karma. In fact I did this on my Missions character. And it’s just weird flipflopping all you want on this.

Another downside of this rule is the quantity. If you earn 12 grand on a job, which a lot of Missions get you, then with this rule you can pay your Lifestyle and buy 5 karma, no cash left. Vice versa of the 6 karma you’d usually get, you can convert nearly all of it into cash. So you can end up with characters that basically end up with twice the cash or twice the karma. Giving them extra karma/nuyen, sure, but when they can double and nothing it has a significant impact on the game balance.

Rule: ¥4k –> 1 karma –> ¥2k (2 max per month)

Under this rule, people can easily trade Karma for Nuyen, or Nuyen for Karma. However, something is lost in the exchange.  If you trade one way then the other, you’ll have less than you started with. This is to make the trade come at a price, so people won’t as easily do it because it’s not easily undone. The maximum is what I used in SR4 (though the quantities were 5k and 2.5k then), because I wanted it to be more limited.

An upside of this rule is that the time required is handwaved, so there’s no additional restraints for people who spend a lot of time training.

The biggest problem here is determining what actually is the decent trade-in value. Is 1 karma worth 4 grand? Would you rather make it 3? Or 5?

Personal Rule: ¥2k <–> 1 karma (3 max per month, sidejob)

My current rule is a variant on Working for the Man/People. Basically I let my players do the same thing, however with a lower limit (see above for reasons why). The big difference is that here it doesn’t cut into training time, at the price of having to tie into a sidejob.

This is due to something else people note: Your runner obviously doesn’t sit around doing nothing but training inbetween runs. Even if you do train a lot, you won’t be training 12h/day. So you have spare time, and you can try to use that. Some people try to steal cars* or run a business, which can lead to balance complications (one runner earning far more than another, or people earning way too much compared to runs), playing complications, etc. Instead, I decided to handwave the executional details. Instead, characters without a Day Job simply spend part of their downtime doing some form of sidejob, which they earn compensation for in the form of ¥2k and 1 karma.

This sidejob doubles as their method of karma<->nuyen transfer, letting you trade 3 steps up or down. Say you trade 2 grand for 1 karma, then your sidejob gets you 2 karma and no cash. If you trade in six grand, you’ll be losing 4 grand but getting 4 karma. The other way around you can be a coldhearted bastard that loses 2 karma and earns 8 grand.

One restriction: The player has to tell what their runner does, and the sidejob has to be related to their skills. For example I got a player baking cupcakes or selling commlink apps, one working for the Mob with cleanup jobs to earn money at the expense of karma, while a third one does charity work in pro-bono street clinics that costs him cash in return for extra karma. They can do something similar each time, or change it up every now and then if they so desire. Through these jobs they also hear things (hello Metaplot!**) and get to know people, or improve their relations with them. It helps me give a bit of extra flavour to the campaign, while it lets the players give more flavour to their characters.

((When it comes to people with Day Job or Made Man, there’s some restrictions that apply at my campaign. It boils down to how I don’t want to let people get way more money than others, and actually pay the price for the time they have to spend on their Qualities. So Day Jobbers end up not getting the default 2k+1karma for the sidejob, while the Made Man will have to do sidejobs related to the Quality and cannot easily turn cash into karma.))

* Do not get into the whole car-theft-as-a-job debate, I’ve seen the debates and they’re not pretty. If your players try this, you COULD retaliate with natural consequences but you really should just go ‘come on guys, let’s not do that okay, you’re runners not carthieves’ and go with the Social Contract.

** An example would be overhearing some intel about group X moving around. If group X then features in a run, the player will be able to go ‘wait, I heard about this, weren’t they getting ready to hit Y?’ or something like that. Foreshadowing is awesome.

Cyberlimbs (2/2): Houserules

This is the second out of two blogposts covering Cyberlimbs.

Where the first post about Cyberlimbs explained the situation and some problems, this one lists a whole bunch of possible houserules for them. Unlike most of my houserules these will not have a detailed explanation after them, just some short feedback of mine. That does mean losing out on subtleness unfortunately, but the alternative is a massive debate with far too much math.

The Nerfbat

Rule: Cyberlimbs cannot be customized past the natural attribute

Some GMs think Cyberlimbs are overpowered. As a solution to this, they want to nerf them down. That a character can get past Augmented Maximum with them, and thus for example go for a 1/9 Agi character (or a 3/9 for that matter), is not something they approve of. Under this rule cyberlimbs can only be customized to the player’s racial attribute, and then enhanced 3 more.

I personally find this rule extremely problematic. There are two reasons for this. First of all is that a cyberlimb cannot grow. So even if you have 4 Agility and 7 with your Cyberlimb, if you raise Agility to 5 you’d be stuck at 7 still with the limb. Meanwhile, someone with Used Muscle Toner 3 (available at chargen for 0.75 essence and 72k nuyen) would go from 4[7] to 5[8] then. So in the long term this restricts characters that want to increase their natural attributes.

The second is that it heavily nerfs cyberlimbs to the point where I consider them near-worthless. If you have any form of decent Agility and get 2 cyberarms, which you need for the big guns, then you’ll be spending more nuyen AND far more essence than if you simply get Used Muscle Toner. For an Agility+Strength character the nuyen cost would be higher only at high natural values, but it would still cost far more Essence, leave you with a lower Movement Rate, less Strength against spells, a lower Physical Limit, less sneaking dice and more. Compared to the benefits of Cyberlimb Enhancements, I do not consider the trade-off anywhere near fair myself.

Rule: Cyberlimbs do not give you a bonus past augmented maximum

A less hostile rule, this one will still let you grab your max-rating Cyberlimb but only give you the Augmented Maximum if you’re past it. This means that if your natural attribute improves, so does your actual dicepool.

While this lets you have 1 die more than with the previous case, and let your limb grow with you, it still heavily nerfs cyberlimbs so my second reason still stands. Under this rule cyberlimbs are still nerfed very heavily, to the point where I believe you’d be better off telling your players ‘I just don’t want you to use cyberlimbs’. To be blunt, at least have the guts to tell them that.

Rule: Your maximum Cyberlimb attribute depends on your natural attribute (details)

To be precise in formula form: Your maximum Cyberlimb attribute is Racial Minimum + 2 + (Natural Value – Racial Minimum)*2. In other words, if you’re at Racial Minimum it can be 2 higher. If you’re at RMin+1, it can be at RMin+5. Any higher is RMin+8 (normal maximum) max.

To put it in numbers: A Human with 1 Agility can only have 3 Cyberlimb Agility. With 3+ Agility they can have 9 Agility. A Troll with 5 Strength can only get 7, 6 means 10 max, 7+ means 13 Strength as maximum Cyberlimb Strength.

Now normally GM and players depend on the unspoken social contract. This rule makes the social contract explicit. Almost all agree that the 1/1 9/9 character is a horrible munchkin. But what about the 2/2 9/9? Or just the 2-Agility 9-Agility Decker? Rather than leave things unclear, this rule makes things explicit: For the maximum bonus, you should be at 3 (or the racial equivalent).

I like this rule very much, not because my brother was one of its creators but because it targets solely the abusive cases. Rather than nerf all cyberlimbs and discourage them for players, it solely prevents the most problematic characters without restricting the rest.

Rule: Exceptional Attribute only applies to cyberlimbs if you softcap or hardcap the Attribute

You can customize a Cyberlimb to your natural maximum, and Exceptional Attribute lets you increase that. So with that your Cyberlimb could have 1 more Agility or Strength. However, this makes little sense if your attribute isn’t anywhere near that natural maximum. How is your Strength exceptional if you only have 3 Strength? Unless it’s at least 6, you don’t get to take a 10-Strength Cyberlimb (example, higher for some metatypes).

This rule makes sense, but it also leads to a situation where the cyberlimb isn’t any better than just taking other ware as far as your Attributes are concerned. One could always just disallow Exceptional Attribute instead, since it requires explicit GM permission.

Rule: Partial limbs can take 2 Armor, hands/feet only 1

A character has to invest quite a bit of essence into getting multiple full cyberlimbs. Partial limbs are cheaper but have less Capacity, Hands/Feet are even cheaper and have very little Capacity. Now when it comes to their Attributes costs are identical no matter how big the limb, but the Essence is very important here. Four limbs is 4 Essence, 2 hands and 2 feet is 1 Essence.

This doesn’t matter that much, except for when a player uses a partial arm for really high Agility (their call as far as I’m concerned) and when they decide to heavily grab Armor… Cyberlimb Armor, like all ‘Ware Armor, is a universal Armor bonus without Encumbrance problems. So if you grab 4 Cyberlimbs and put +3 Armor on each, you’ll have 12 extra Armor without it weighing you down.

Now if someone wants to spend 4 Essence and then enhance those limbs, if the GM approves then who cares really. But spending 1.25 essence and slightly over 58 grand? Now that smells of abuse… So this houserule puts down the law by letting you grab less Armor bonus with non-full cyberlimbs.

The Boosters

Rule: Tests with a Cyberlimb use its Strength for all relevant values

This rule lets you use your Cyberlimb’s Strength for the Physical Limit of Unarmed Attack, and buffs your general Physical Limit a bit as well. Your PL usually involves Strx2, so with 3 Strength this gives you 6 = 2 entire PL points. With a 9-Strength arm you’d get (3×4+9)/5 = 4.2 = 5 as Strength, so you’d gain 1 PL and 1 point that may or may not become even 1 more PL. And for a single-arm attack you’d gain 4 Physical Limit.

I really disagree with this rule. The reason is quite simple: Limits exist to fight munchkins. They encourage people with high dicepools to put proper effort into buffing their Limits as well. This also follows SR5’s theme: Everything At A Price. My Missions Street Sam has 2 Strength and had to take Indomitable 2 to get his Physical Limit up to 7. That’s 14 karma I’d have LOVED to spend on other qualities, but I munchkined my Strength and paid the price for it. I got a really good Charisma for it in return (which, if we want to be a proper munchkin, I could have replaced with Skills Priority A instead of B).

In other words, I paid a price. And it’s a price I believe you should pay. You want all the benefits Cyberlimbs give? Sure, but at a price. And its current price is one I consider fairly balanced, except for a few fringe cases. A 1-arm Unarmed Attack? Not a fringe case.

Rule: Cyberlimb stats start at Racial Minimum + 2.

A cyberlimb has 3 Agility and 3 Strength. Every point you customize after that will raise its Availability, that excludes the Enhancements. So a capped 6/6 Arm would be at Availability 10, Alphaware at 12. A Torso with any upgrade past 12, which only matters for partial cyborgs. More importantly a capped 7/6 Alphaware Elven Arm would be at 13, while a capped 6/10 (Standard) Troll Arm would be at Availability 14…

So an Elf cannot take a maxed Alphaware arm in chargen, while a Troll would need to grab a Used Arm if they wanted one fully customized in chargen and can just forget about Alphaware. If they don’t, well congratulations you spent all that money on an arm that is forever restrained until you bleed a lot of cash to replace it…

So this rule compensates, making the cyberlimb start at Racial Minimum +2. This way all metatypes can grab Alphaware capped Cyberlimbs in chargen.

The only problem here is that a player might cheat and try to take a Troll arm on their Human due to its lower Availability. Just shake your head sadly and say no to that please. Tell them limbs are heavily tweaked to metatype differences as well, so it wouldn’t work as well and make it function as if they bought an arm for their own metatype at that availability.

Rule: Cyberlegs their Agility applies for Movement Rate

Cyberlegs have more Capacity but less use than Cyberarms. For implanted weapons it doesn’t matter, and you could get some cute special cyberfeet for attacks, but you cannot use them for a lot of things. You want to crush someone’s hand to intimidate them? Pick a lock? Throw a grenade? Yeah sorry. And on top of that, while your cyberfeet CAN impact your Movement Rate, their Agility doesn’t? That’s just plain weird.

So instead this rule does let you use their Agility for moving. If you have 3 Agility but are willing to invest in 2 Cyberlegs with 9 Agility, why shouldn’t you have the right to get a decent movement rate? And yes, as you can tell I really like this houserule.

The uncovered

These houserules do not cover all issues people have with Cyberlimbs. For example, the almost-cyborg isn’t covered. The reason for is that quite simply I wouldn’t know where to start in many of these cases. So all I can say is ‘think it over carefully, avoid abuse but also avoid being unfair’.

With the cyborg, IF a player does this for whatever reason, while neither player nor GM want to simply make them a full cyborg instead, I cannot really help you. The only thing I could point you at is that in SR4, you needed a Cybertorso for really good Cyberlimbs. So if you want to let someone with four Cyberlimbs use their Cyberlimb stats for their inherent values, maybe consider requiring a Cybertorso for this. Or making it a Careful Coordination of all five limbs, which means you need all five limbs. (Yes, Cyberskulls don’t matter. They never should. Grrrrrrrrrr…)