Vigilante vs. The World: Spellcaster Archetypes

 Just because I carry it so well doesn't mean it isn't heavy. 

I don't think a discussion of Vigilante would be complete without talking about the archetypes. Many of them function as a "third" specialization, overwriting your identity as Avenger or Stalker. Some of them give spellcasting capabilities, turning them into a type of class I refer to as "utility half-caster" like bard or alchemist. Despite being Pathfinder's most populated category, I think Vigilante really shines among them. 

First, a word about the other archetypes that I won't be covering here. They're fine, and mostly in the realm of "probably worse than standard, but not enough to be unplayable" that most Pathfinder archetypes sit in. Of note is the fact that many of them are inspired directly by pop culture superheroes. Notably, Agathiel, Brute, Gunmaster, and Wildsoul. They're perfectly playable save for Brute and its "attack my friends" bullshit, but I hate the idea of vigilante being so tied to modern superhero conventions and thus I hate them. 

An aside. There's been a history of archetypes, prestige classes or powers where the character is exceptionally powerful, but has a chance to attack their allies. I have personal experience with a fellow player taking Frenzied Berserker in a game of Dungeons and Dragons 3e. These archetypes are tedious and exhausting, adding a "control the asshole" sub-game to the end of every fight. They're only fun for the person playing them, and only then if they're the sort that's obsessed with big numbers. If you enjoy them, you are stupid. Don't allow this kind of thing into your game. 

Ahem. Vigilante's best archetypes are ones who introduce interesting twists, aesthetics or mechanics. Splintersoul comes to mind, its dual identity being less a disguise and more two separate people stuck in one body. Teisatsu turns you into something of a ninja-monk. It probably exists solely because of the character Iron Fist, but I'll let it slide for now. Experimenter is undeniably cool, evoking images of mad scientists experimenting on themselves. It's a shame that it's yet another "attack your friends" archetype, though this aspect could be removed without making the archetype too powerful. 

So that leaves our spellcasters, which will be getting more detailed feedback. This is because they fundamentally change your style of gameplay more than the other archetypes. I might have called Teisatsu cool, but at the end of the day, you're still some weirdo in a mask who punches people. Adding spells and removing most of your vigilante talents is a much bigger change. 

A final note: Every one of these archetypes gives up all of their vigilante talents except the ones at 2, 6, 12, 18 and 20. Since games very, very rarely make it past level 15, this means you have access to three vigilante talents. They also give up 2 skill points per level, putting them all at 4+INT per level. Since this is a commonality between all of them, this is the only time I'll mention it.

Cabalist. Our necromantic cult-joining friend casts spells on the magus progression and from the witch spell list. First off, if you're going to be a half-caster getting up to sixth level spells, Magus is probably the best progression. Your track is just a bit slower than a sorcerer at first, then gets a bit slower as time goes on: getting 2nd level spells at 4, 3rd at 7th, 4th at 10, and so on. You're behind, but it never feels debilitating. 

Casting from the Witch spell list is prime utility. You get a little bit of everything: some cure spells, not restoration or its siblings but remove curse, blindness, disease, and break enchantment. Some evocations and buffs, some utility like scrying or , and a list of debuffs as long as your arm. A lot of Pathfinder's debuffs are lackluster, but Witch has got some of the greatest hits like bestow curse, enervation, stinking cloud and black tentacles. Is it a better spell list than either Cleric or Wizard? Well, no. Is it a buffet of useful stuff from both lists? Yes. 

Finally, Cabalist's special abilities. They can take some good stuff with their very few talents, like Tattoo Chamber turning your hand into a staff/wand machine or the always-good-to-have Familiar. That's kind of where it ends, though. Shadow Jump is interesting but never really gets enough feet per day to feel useful. Living Shadow is interesting, but comes late and is pretty limited until you hit 14. Finally, Cabalist has this strange focus on bleed damage that I can't figure out. They can deal bleed damage against unaware or flat-footed foes and take a talent to further bolster this ability, but I just don't think it's very good. Even after they get further abilities surrounding bleed damage like stacking debuffs, a witch (who does not get the standard cleric buffs) is just plain unlikely to be running into melee to activate all of this instead of casting spells.

I like Cabalist. The weird bleed damage thing holds it back, but the only thing they give up for those abilities is Startling Presence and Frightening Presence. It's not a big loss. 

Magical Child. IN THE NAME OF THE MOON, I WILL- alright, alright. I won't do any more of that. This extremely obviously inspired by "magical girl" anime archetype casts as an Unchained Summoner, both in progression and spell list. Unchained Summoner's spell progression is identical to Magus, and everything I said there could be repeated here. However, it's also a sorcerer spells known/per day style caster, and your mileage may vary greatly on if you think that's better or worse than memorizing spells. In my experience, it's a stylistic choice. 

The Unchained Summoner spell list is, however... is not great. You get buffs, lots of buffs, and just enough of anything else to make it hard to say the spell list is Just Buffs. It's not "bad", exactly. You get some evocations, some good group buffs like Haste, and some of the game's better CC like grease, glitterdust, slow and stinking cloud. But that's it. You have an almost complete lack of utility in your spell list. Does that matter? You tell me, I suppose.

They get Transformation Sequence to make switching identities loud but fast. It's fun and thematic, but I don't think the fast transformation is worth it being very noticeable. It makes finding an opportunity to actually do it harder, and I don't like that. Animal Guide, however, basically makes up for it. You get Improved Familiar for free, and you can alter it several times until you hit 9th level, when it gains access to all four types of familiar it was. This means that that you can use the familiar to fill several different roles, even combat. A pretty obvious idea here is to take at least one of the spellcaster familiars like Imp or Lyrakien, then just swap to another one after all of its spells are depleted for the day. 

Magical Child is okay. I'm not a big fan, but it's okay. Animal Guide is more than worth it, but I'm held back by the spell list which, again, you may not have a problem with. I do. It's got a few gems, but it's otherwise lackluster. 

Warlock. It's got Magus-ass spellcasting and the Wizard spell list. I'm not going to waste much time here. I already gave the Magus progression glowing praise twice, and I'm not going to do it again. It's good, and you never feel too far behind. The wizard spell list is, as we all know, chock full of utility and will allow a Warlock to fill a variety of roles by just altering what they're memorizing. You don't get access to 7th, 8th and 9th level spells, but even lower-level spells can provide a wealth of utility. 

Warlock's most prominent special ability is Mystic Bolts, which is a relatively minor amount of energy damage that you can take your iterative attacks with. There are ways to fluff its damage upward, but it's not terrible even without that. I mean, it may only be D6 plus change but it hits on touch AC. You can maybe get some value out of specializing into these attacks, but I see Mystic Bolts as only slightly above the sorcerer 1st level bloodline powers. You know, the ones I tell people to trade out. Your role in combat is likely to be casting spells, and only using Mystic Bolt for conservation. In that case, I guess I can damn it with faint praise: At least it's better than a wand of magic missile. 

Fortunately, Warlock gets some decent talents. Elemental Armor is an okay scaling resistance to a single type of energy that also comes with some "thorns" damage. Familiars are always welcome, and Social Simulacrum can turn your dual identity into something virtually unbeatable by showing both of you in the same place. Tattoo Chamber is here too, and I welcome it with open arms, if only because I love the idea of having five wands or staves on tap at once. 

Mystic Bolts might be a booby prize of an ability, but just like Cabalist and Spill Blood, it's not like you gave up basically anything to get it. Warlock's a damn fine choice and I can owe that determination almost solely to being a wizard-list spellcaster. Obviously I think it's neat, seeing as how I'm playing one at time of writing. 

Zealot. They cast Inquisitor spells on the Inquisitor spell progression, which is the Magus progression again. As I write this, I'm slowly starting to realize that they just use the same progression for all of the "utility half-casters" and I feel silly for not noticing beforehand. Still, everything I said is true. You're only a little behind compared to full spellcasters. 

The Inquisitor spell list is best described as a Cleric spell list that a Rogue had final edit privileges on. It's mostly a Cleric list, including its buffs, heals and status-removers. However, you also get a handful of "self capable" style utility like disguise self, invisibility, knock, Full Pouch and Insect Scouts. Inquisitor as a class has a vibe of "what if a rogue worked for The Church" and Zealot is no different. 

You also get an inquisition, which provide an interesting variety of powers and is a welcome addition. Zealot's talents include a debuffed Channel Energy, Stalwart which functions as Evasion but for Fort and Will saves, and otherwise a bunch of middling crap. That's not so bad, considering you only get three choices to begin with, can still choose general Vigilante talents, and will definitely be taking Stalwart at 12. 

Zealot can be seen as an Inquisitor that trades in several of its class abilities, including the iconic Judgement, for social talents and Dual Identity. It's up to you if you think that trade is worthwhile, but it's definitely a consideration I'd have. I wouldn't blame you, honestly: even with Solo Tactics, teamwork feats aren't that great. 

Avenging Beast. I'll go over this one quickly, in part because it's blessedly, refreshingly simple and in part because it just came to my attention. It casts spells like a Hunter, which is the same progression as all the other ones. As for spell lists, it's colossal: it's all ranger spells, and all druid spells of 6th level and lower. They even explicitly use the lower of the two spell levels, meaning basically that you're a druid who can also cast a few things druid doesn't normally get like lead blades, hunter's lore or burst of speed. 

Your sole other unique ability is wild shape, which you can only use to turn into the animal you chose when you made your big weird Avenging Beast animal mask which I didn't mention. That's not a big loss, depending on the animal you picked. It's only ever Beast Shape I, but it still serves as a solid combat buff that can bring some utility and qualify you for some interesting feats on its own. Avenging Beast doesn't have its own unique talents, so you're stuck picking from the short list of "general" vigilante talents available to all specializations. There are worse fates.

Avenging Beast is a decent option if you want to play something ranger-y or hunter-y without dealing with their unique abilities, or bear the stink of playing a ranger. I don't have to tell you that druid has a solid spell list.

So, this was predictably glowing. Utility focus is my favorite way to build a character, and I feel that Vigilante shines in that role. While other archetypes stack on top of Vigilante Specialization, these five feel like they belong to a third "spellcaster" specialization that's just as valid as Avenger or Stalker. Hell, in the case of Stalker, the Spellcaster Specialization beats the pants off it. 

Until next time.

Vigilante vs. The World

Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

I actually really like the Vigilante class in Pathfinder 1e. I think it's fun and versatile, and it brings more utility to the table than fighter, one of its contemporaries. When designing one of my new characters, I went looking for advice or tips on the internet. Bad idea, I know. One of the most common questions was how one should deal with Vigilante's dual identity power. I can see why, it's not like anything else in the game. A piece of advice from the point of view of Pathfinder Society was to just... forget you have it. Just treat yourself as a fighter with some social powers. 

I haven't been able to stop thinking about that reddit comment since. So we're gonna talk about that, and the comparison between Vigilante and its older siblings: Unchained Rogue and Fighter. 

I'll address the actual piece of advice in question first. This is going to end up sounding backhanded, but I think it's decent advice for Pathfinder Society. It's structured play, and presumably you're mostly doing adventure paths. Adventure paths aren't "rigid" so much as... well, lame. Standardized. Yeah, let's just tear my mask off right now, I think it's good advice because I hate adventure paths and I dislike Pathfinder Society. I can't imagine it welcoming a tool that requires innovation and thinking outside of the box to use. 

But I'd be lying if I said Vigilante didn't feel like an alternate rogue or fighter, depending on the specialization you took. I mean, that's the point, isn't it? Even some of its archetypes feel similar to bard or Pathfinder's numerous other utility casters. So... what really is the difference? Pathfinder does have classes that feel like they're intended to replace others. Arcanist comes to mind, it feels like the devs saying "We're sorry that Sorcerer is rigid and its bloodlines are lackluster. Here's a better version.". But it's too different to call it Unchained Sorcerer, and Sorcerer still has some advantages, so they exist in tandem.

That isn't the intention behind Vigilante, obviously. I can't help but notice the parallel, though.  Remarkably similar to Arcanist, it's as if they're saying "We're sorry that Fighter doesn't have much to do outside of combat. Here.". So let's start there and compare what you're getting by playing Avenger Vigilante over Fighter, and what you're giving up. 

What You're Getting

Pick-and-Choose Vigilante Talents. So, Avenger gets some pretty tasty powers, such as the pounce-like Mad Rush or the door-destroying Nothing Can Stop Me. You also get some talents that give more than just a bonus feat, like Lethal Grace, Vital Punishment or Unexpected Strike. Further, there are a lot of utility focused "general" powers that a warrior type would still benefit from, like Shadow's Speed.

But they can also take bonus feats like a Fighter. They even qualify as a Fighter of half their level, meaning they can reach some of the lower-end Fighter specific feats. A dominant strategy here is obviously to take a few nice or thematic talents, a few "bonus feat plus" talents, then fill out the rest with bonus feats. This is overall head and shoulders above Fighter. 

Social Talents. The consensus is that you're giving up numerical bonuses for out-of-combat utility, and here's where some of it is. Social talents are chock-the-fuck-full of fun and useful things to take. They lean toward skill utility, either providing direct bonuses like Social Grace or capabilities like quick change or everyman to give you a quick, essentially unbeatable disguise. Social talents are amazing. 

Dual Identity. This ability is the best disguise in the game... if you play your cards right. It's virtually unbeatable in terms of numbers and provides you protection against divination spells like Detect Alignment or Scry. However, it must be closely guarded: if you get revealed, you could lose your ability to use social talents or enormously impact your character's ability to interact socially, depending on the circumstances. A huge ability if you use it right.

Skills. Six plus INT mod is a lot more skills than Fighter gets, and the list of class skills is as long as your fucking arm. Here's the other half of that out-of-combat utility we were talking about. It's an enormous boost, you're almost a Rogue or Bard.

What You're Giving Up

Hit Points. You get fewer hit points, Vigilante's D8 vs. Fighter's D10. It's not a big loss, in my opinion.

Heavy Armor. You have to take a talent if you want to wear heavy armor, but at least it comes with a minor secondary bonus. Is this a big loss? It depends on your GM. In games with higher ability score values, this doesn't sting much. If you have the room to add some level of Dexterity to your character, you're likely to end up in medium armor anyway. In games with very low ability scores (such as Pathfinder Society) this certainly stings. But... see also Armor Training below. 

Weapon Training and General Numeric Bonuses. So assuming your game gets to about level fifteen, Weapon Training by itself will be +3 to attack and damage. Gloves of Dueling is another +2, and Avengers can't wear those. You're also not likely to reach Greater Weapon Focus or Greater Weapon Specialization, which is another +1 Attack and +2 Damage. This brings your overall penalty to +6 Attack and +7 Damage. That's a fucking lot, and it's a major loss. 

Advanced Weapon Training also bears mentioning here. You're still advancing the bonus on your primary weapon training group, but instead of additional groups (which let's be honest, nobody wants) you can take things like Effortless Dual Wielding to reduce TWF penalties, Weapon Specialist to expand weapon options, or various ways to apply your Weapon Training bonus to checks such as Trained Initiative. Another major loss. 

Armor Training. So remember when I was talking about Heavy Armor Proficiency not being a big loss for Avenger? I do believe that. However, Armor Training means that a Fighter can wear progressively heavier armor without taking a loss, and you can expect many Fighters to end up in Full Plate over time. Realistically, this means they're about 2 to 4 points of Armor Class ahead, without counting Advanced Armor Training. 

In addition to that, Fighters that don't need the expanded Max Dex Bonus on their armor can pick from a variety of powers, some of which will put them an additional 2 or 3 points of AC ahead or grant DR. In a low stat value game, this is an even bigger benefit to the Fighter, because you'll naturally get pushed to the heavier armor faster and take the Advanced Armor Training powers more readily. 

The Verdict. So... I was prepared to call Avenger a solid and clear winner here, but six points of attack and damage is a fucking lot. The AC loss isn't as big, but it's the icing on that giant cake. Is six points a lot? Yes. Is it so much that you shouldn't ever sacrifice it for a ton of utility, if that's what you want? Definitely not. The true answer here is to weigh what you want your character to do and what kind of action the game's going to have. Just like I like it. 

Stalker is up next. Unlike Fighter, Unchained Rogue is already picked for its ability to play as a "switch hitter", a class that can dish out decent damage but still carry utility along with it. Don't be surprised when I go into the differences in specific utility powers available, unlike the previous comparison.

What You're Getting

Pick-and-Choose Vigilante Talents. So, for things a rogue might take, there's a lot to love that a Stalker can easily reach. They can grab a climb speed via Rooftop infiltrator, an ability I always thought was underrated. They can take Hide in Plain Sight at 8th level, the always-nice Shadow's Speed for extra move speed, or Shadow Sight for decent senses. You also get access to some of the "bonus feat plus" talents I mentioned above, like Lethal Grace. 

You can also do a similar thing as above, and take rogue talents. The same dominant strategy applies here, in a way: You'll pick the tastiest vigilante talents, then fill the rest out with rogue talents. 

Social Talents. Not a lot more to say here that I didn't already say above. Social talents are a wealth of utility, and they fit nicely into a Stalker's kit. A minor note here is that social talents lean toward being... well, social. It's a different approach than the classic Rogue sneakery, but it intersects in some places, like Skill Familiarity or the various disguise powers. 

Dual Identity. Everything I said above is still true. However, this can matter a touch more for a stalker: your vigilante identity can be the one seen doing all the dirty work or spotted while sneaking around, and your social identity stays squeaky clean and innocent. Avengers likely get their sneak-and-subterfuge on as well, but not as often as Stalker.

General Toughness. Stalker still gets medium armor proficiency Avenger does. Not a big boost, but it can be nice if you'd like to divorce yourself from being married to DEX like Rogue is. 

Weapon Proficiency. Unlike Rogue, you get the full spread of Martial weapons. Another minor boost in my opinion, but weapon choice will matter a bit more for you than for a Rogue. See the section on combat prowess, below. 

 

What You're Giving Up

Skills. It's not a huge deal at this level, but it's worth mentioning that your skills go down from eight plus INT to six plus INT. You also don't get Rogue's Edge, instead relying on your social talents to compensate. This is not a huge loss, as not all of the skill unlocks are very good.

The Curse of the Buffet. There's two key abilities that rogue gets, and vigilante can reach, but they have to spend a talent on it. Namely, they are Uncanny Dodge and Evasion. You can choose not to take them, of course, but in general this means you're going to have fewer talents than a rogue does. You can't replace it with feats, either: There is no "Extra Vigilante Talent" feat. Some talents may feel as if they make up for it with their "talent plus a bonus" nature like Sure-Footed, but it's a push-pull that mostly leaves Rogue ahead. 

General Combat Prowess. I'm not gonna lie. Oh, lordy this one hurts. You may remember from my previous posts that Unchained Rogue can actually be competitive with Fighter in terms of damage output. This is in no small part thanks to Debilitating Injury, which Stalker does not get and does not have an analogue for. Stalker does not get Finesse Training either. Lethal Grace is arguably better damage overall, but it's another talent from the buffet that Rogue is getting for free. 

And finally. We gotta talk about it, the elephant in the room: Hidden Strike is a straight downgrade from Sneak Attack. On paper, it looks like it's an even trade-off: you're worse at flanking, but better at other sources of gaining Sneak Attack. In practice, flanking is overwhelmingly the best source of sneak attack. As in past ninety percent of the time. Feinting requires a heavy feat expenditure, and doesn't really even get to a place where it competes. Other tricks, such as blinding, are gimmicks that also, again, require investment. Flanking remains free: you just need a friend. 

Vigilante does get a few ways to assist you getting in those flat-footed attacks, but they're lackluster. Startling Presence extends your ability to deal damage in an ambush situation, but let's face it: not every game is going to be conducive to constant sneak-and-ambush combat. You're going to be in traditional combat situations most of the time, unless the GM is running a different kind of game. You also get Perfect Vulnerability, but... I'm sorry, it sucks. It's one attack, and once per day per enemy. 

There's also even more to say about loss of combat effectiveness in the next section. 

Advanced Talents. This is another one that hurts, ya'll. No advanced talents means no Opportunist, which can be an enormous source of damage if played right. It means no Crippling Strike for a bucket full of free STR damage, and you also lose out on some nice defensive options like Slippery Mind or Defensive Roll.  A loss of particular note is Rumormonger, which can be difficult to use but wildly effective in the right hands or in the right game. Losing out on advanced talents isn't the end of the world, but Stalker doesn't get anything to replace many of their capabilities.

The Verdict. This time, Unchained Rogue wins handily. Does Stalker suck? Of course not. Can you still play Stalker if it's what you want? Of course you can. But as I said earlier, the core idea of Rogue is that it's a utility player that can handle itself in combat too. Stalker doesn't perform as well in that role: the loss of Debilitating Injury and the downgrade from Sneak Attack is enormous, and they don't get anything to compensate.

Like I said at the beginning, I really like Vigilante. I think it brings a lot of unique gameplay opportunities and cool powers, and at the end of the day... that's what counts. Is it more than viable compared to its siblings? Yes. Am I a little biased here, as well? Also yes. Giving up some amount of numerical bonus to have a wider range of utility is exactly the choice I make all the time when designing characters. 

Vigilante can make that choice in a dozen different ways, and next up I'll talk about one of the bigger ones: its spellcasting archetypes. See you soon. 

Automatic Bonus Progression: A Total Failure

 "It was all over the news stands! Nary a mention of my Brass Cannons, and an entire spread on the bestial man storming down the manor, dragging the mayor screaming from his home."

I'm putting a somewhat unrelated disclaimer here, before I start. Like "phylactery" and a few other words, saying "skinwalker" gives me the ick. Navajo culture is that you're not supposed to say it, but more than that I don't want to support cultural appropriation in gaming. This, for once, is definitely cultural appropriation: the term's been used entirely without respect to Navajo stories and culture surrounding skinwalkers and without acknowledging where the term originates.

Expect me to use the term were-blooded as appropriate. 

Hello again. Do you miss me, when I'm gone? This blog is swiftly becoming a place to dump the essays that pour out of me whenever I run across stupid shit during my tabletop gaming career. I'm comfortable with this. Today's topic is an optional ruleset for Pathfinder 1e that I really, really wanted to like: Automatic Bonus Progression. 

Pathfinder has a lot of magic items, and that fact rubs some people the wrong way. Gently, I am one of them. There are a lot of magic items I'll be referring to as "math" items: things that exist solely to give you numerical bonuses. These items exist to provide "meat" to the loot you're given and a constant stream of things to purchase with your gold. Little +1s and +2s feel good enough that you have a constant stream of dopamine dripping toward you via treasure rewards. 

But it can feel like a bit much, and in 2025 it does kinda rub me the wrong way that I'm playing a character who's wearing the entire GDP of a small kingdom. You don't have the option of not doing that, really: the game's balanced around you having a certain amount of gold value. You're obviously not supposed to think too hard about it, but sometimes it's inevitable. So, thus exists Automatic Bonus Progression. 

ABP as a system takes 50% of your expected gold value and applies it to numeric bonuses to entirely replace those math items entirely. In your world, they simply (mostly) don't exist. I like the idea of this very much, it can create a world where individual magic items mean more. It can even support a world where magic items are very, very rare. 

But they cocked it up real bad and I fear the system isn't useable at all without a huge overhaul. Let me begin with two item lists: The first is what my level 12 were-blooded magus Eddie Crossheart currently has in our pathfinder campaign, which is using the standard ABP ruleset. Some values have been adjusted in accordance to ABP rules.

Adamantine Agile Rapier        5k

Amulet of Mighty Fists            4k

Celestial Armor                        13.2k

Hat of Disguise                        1.8k

Pelt of the Beast                       15.6k

Liar's Charm(custom)               2.9k

Deliquescent Gloves                8k

Ring of Sustenance                   2.5k

Wayfinder of Hidden Strength  5k

Dusty Rose Prism                      5k

Fleshwarper's Music Box           6k

Pearls of Power                           14k

Total:                                           83k

Edward's Craft Wondrous Item feat accounts for roughly 30k value. Level 12's expected gold value is 108k, so Edward is roughly where ABP says he ought to be: 50% of the expected wealth by level value. Next I'll list the bonuses he's gaining from ABP and their gold value. 

+4 to Dexterity                            16k

+4 to Intelligence                         16k

Armor Attunement +2                  4k

Weapon Attunement +2                8k

Resistance +3                                9k

Toughness +1                                2k

Deflection +2                                8k

Total:                                              63k

So, 63k plus 53k equals 116k. A bit over. I think that's fine, damn close to the mark. Next, as a thought experiment, let's see what I might have bought if this was a typical game. You're intended to give 25% extra wealth by level if a character has a crafting feat, and Edward had plenty of opportunity to craft, so our gold value is 135k. 

+2 Agile Adamantine Rapier          21k

Celestial Armor                              22.4k

Belt of Dexterity +4                       16k

Circlet of Intelligence +4               16k

Vest of Resistance +3                     9k

Pelt of the Beast                             15.6k

Hat of Disguise                               1.8k

Ring of Protection +2                      8k

Amulet of Mighty Fists                   4k

Fleshwarper's Music Box                6k

Pearls of Power                               12k

Total:                                                131.8k

Doesn't look a whole lot different, right? At first glance, it may even seem like the ABP version of Edward comes out ahead. The first thing I want to point out is that the book standard rules for crafting, the 25% bonus, is extremely conservative. I could have easily gotten far more value out of it: ABP Edward got 35% extra value out of his gold, and that's without utilizing every opportunity he had. 

Notice how traditional ruleset Edward ended with fewer, more powerful items? I only bought the deliquescent gloves, the liar's charm, the wayfinder and the ioun stone because I didn't know how else to advance my character's power. Funny how a system intended to reduce the amount of magic items ended in owning a larger amount. 

The weapon situation has to be addressed next. Weapon attunement is the biggest failure of the ABP system and serving as an enormous elephant in the room. You can only attune one weapon and one suit of armor, despite the fact that martial characters will often carry multiple weapons. You also give up your attunement's numerical bonus if you use special abilities, meaning two things. The first is that our gold values for ABP Edward include up to 8k in slop. The second is that it removes your ability to spend extra on weapons. You can't exactly spend extra to cover a deficiency, nor can you attune multiple items for different circumstances. Neither can you manipulate what sort of weapon you're using at higher levels: you're locked into +5 enhancement bonus, then 5pts in special abilities. You can't choose something like 4/6 or 2/8, because the system as presented doesn't support it. Traditional Pathfinder does.

The system rewards STR (and to a lesser extent, DEX) stacking and 1:1 attack bonus classes by letting you "slop over" your weapon attunement. You can buy whatever weapon you want and simply "eat" the attunement loss via race or class selection. It doesn't matter what your attunement value is, you're tossing it away for a huge number of special abilities. 

I want to pause here to remind everyone that making race and class selection more important is a bad thing, not a good thing. People shouldn't feel punished for playing what they want to play. 

And that kind of leads me into the other problem. I'm not the only one who was stumped on what to spend gold on. Everyone was. Magic item purchases are a sub-game that you may not be aware that you're playing. Traditional Edward could have dropped his vest of resistance entirely, relying on the value from his pelt of the beast to fluff his save numbers, or taken Craft Magic Arms and Armor for even higher value from his rapier. He could (and already is) making up for an attack bonus deficiency via his selections, and could manipulate his choices even further for it. Or, he could drop his DEX item entirely in favor of focusing on INT and spellcasting.

ABP Edward doesn't get those choices. He gets what he gets, and there's no way to make different choices. When given gold value by his benefactor, he traded an agile spell-storing rapier for an agile adamantine one. It's objectively a worse weapon: a +2 equivalent traded for a +1 equivalent. He needed to do that to raise his attack bonus a bit, but what in-universe justification could there possibly be? Magic weapons aren't harder to use because they're more powerful. 

We never even answered that question! We just avoided discussing it in-character. 

It also creates problems which aren't as important, but still silly. At higher levels, your restriction is less your gold value and more the equipment slots you get. ABP Characters get two extra, because "belt" and "circlet" were invented by Pathfinder to solve stat boost items being lock-in choices. There's virtually nothing else that goes into those slots. 

In fact, this whole system does feel a little like whoever designed it didn't really play past level 12 or so. Options open up later because of how magic item costs scale (mostly) exponentially, and lesser magic items become far easier to get Backup weapons and armor become a far smaller percentage of your budget. ABP more or less removes this aspect of the game.

So how should this be fixed? I have a few ideas. First is that the attunement trade-off rule has to be removed. It makes no sense and it places undue importance on other aspects of the game. It's ridiculous, asinine, and honestly stinks of something added last minute. 

Frankly, this whole system smells like something either thrown-together or created by someone who's playing a much, much different version of Pathfinder than I am. 

Gold values can be adjusted to allow for magic weapons and armor to be entirely removed from the system. That might be for the best, but you lose something like a character using a mundane weapon for the entire game, like our battle Oracle in Edward's game. That's cool, but not cool enough for me to want to support a busted system. 

You could create several different bonus paths to choose from. Bonus paths like offensive, defensive, utility, stat-focused, something to re-introduce some small vestige of the equipment sub-game. 

You could lock this system into providing stat boosts and resistance bonuses to saves on a track, to lessen the amount of magic items flowing through the game and reduce some of the mathiness. 

Guys, I haven't been this disappointed in a long time. ABP just doesn't do what it says it does. It doesn't really reduce crunch, it just makes you go look for esoteric ways to get ahead. It doesn't reduce magic items purchased... if anything, it increases it. It certainly can't support a game that doesn't have magic items, let me make that perfectly clear. 

But I love the idea of this! Despite the magic item sub-game and how much I missed it, I don't think any of PF's "required" items should exist. Every character buys stat boost items and every character buys cloak of resistance. If nothing else, I'd love a way to remove them from consideration. ABP could have been that, but it's just not. 

The Divide - SR3's progression problem

And I'm aware you were lying in the gutter, 

'Cause I did everything to be there by your side...

Back from the fucking dead, just in time for Halloween. I gotta be honest, this is probably not me returning to regular updates. I've been focusing on fiction writing, and anyway... I think I probably said everything of value that I have to say. Nobody wants to read personal opinions on the progression balance of a dead and abandoned edition of Shadowrun. 

So today, the topic is personal opinions on the progression balance of a dead and abandoned edition of Shadowrun. 

My current game of SR3 has about a year left, and while that sounds like a long time for most games, for us it's 12 sessions. That sounds like we're close enough to the end to unpack some of the problems I have with the system, and honestly... it's worse than I thought when we started this game. This is the first time we made an attempt to bridge the gap between cybernetically enhanced and magic-using characters, and I definitely, solidly think we didn't go far enough. I'll unpack the evidence I've got and possible solutions today. 

I did a whole post on this that you can read at your leisure, but the gist of it is that magically active characters scale their powers blindingly fast compared to a character who scales with cyberware. Not only that, but the high and scaling cost of skills(more on that below) and the relative lack of ability score applications means the magically active character is guided toward blowing all the karma they can on initiation. Raising a skill from 6 to 7 will cost ten karma, and from 7 to 8 will cost twelve. Initiation with a group and an ordeal (which, let's face it, will be the vast majority of characters) is as low as nine karma for grade one, and ten for grade two. Compare a single extra die in a skill to a full point of physad powers, a raise in your magic rating(which, admittedly, may or may not matter much) and a metamagic power. The choice, most of the time, is obvious. 

Like I said, our GM used several house rules in an attempt to alleviate this. We lowered street index, lowered the costs of higher grades of cyberware, raised costs on initiation, and gave group discounts on skills. Our characters have just gotten to the one hundred karma milestone, so it's an excellent time to see how those attempts to close the gap played out. 

Let's address skills first, since this was (mostly) our best success. We saw a lot of buying skill groups in character generation and early on, which slowly fell off. It's obvious that was going to happen. It worked out well, for reasons I've gone over at length. Later on, the characters focused on buying up individual skills, which revealed something a bit problematic. Our group has always gone with the original printing of the Mnemonic Enhancer, which was that it reduces skill costs by 1 per level. This... is probably too powerful. Since I focused on buying a wide amount of skills up to four instead of improving a smaller list past six, Flamingo has a frankly embarrassing array of things she's capable of doing. Part of this is just how the system works, but part of it is that the Mnemonic Enhancer discount is much nicer at lower skill upgrades than higher ones. Mnemonic Enhancer should probably be knocked down to providing a two point discount, one at its first level, and one at its third. 

How did karma shake out in terms of magic power? Well, for the awakened characters of the game, it went okay. I don't think the raise in initiation costs impacted them much, but neither were they optimizing their builds very much. What could they have by now if they were? Let's see. 

Our modified system is (5 + new grade) times 3, then reduced up to forty percent if you do everything you can to reduce it. Assuming they did just that, seven grades of initation would be 116 karma. Allowing for the fact that they've all bought the maximum (three) amount of karma every session, this would easily be possible, with grade eight either being on the horizon or attained already. 

Where would they be if we didn't modify the rules at all? That would be (5 + new grade) times 1.5. Given the exact same 116 karma, they'd be grade eight, looking at grade nine soon, if they didn't have it already. 

Hardly a difference. So frankly, we didn't do enough for me to want to bother with a house rule. I'm going to unpack my problems with initiation later(in a different post), but in general I don't fault our GM for being wary of going further. House rules aren't for enacting a total restructuring of your game.

Now, how'd money shake out? This is more informal, because Flamingo started later in the game, and I don't have exact figures on our Nuyen totals. Full disclosure: I could get those numbers, from our GM, and I just don't want to do that level of math when I already know what the problem is. 

For cyberware, we lowered the cost of higher grades, slightly reduced Street Index, and basically hoped that making Initiation more expensive would close the gap. If she was there for session one, Flamingo would have begun the game with all or mostly Alpha-grade 'ware. At this point in our career, she has fully beta-grade cyberware and a small amount of extra room for upgrades. Her Guardian Angel system can charitably be called a major new purchase she would have made in the portion of the game that I was playing Shivani. Following that, She has purchased one major new piece of 'ware: cultured tailored pheromones II. 

So compared to seven grades of initiation, that doesn't sound great. Allow me to make it worse: The party agreed to fully fund Flamingo's cyberleg upgrades from standard to beta, and without them gifting me 1.32 million nuyen for it, She wouldn't have ever gotten them. She'd be stuck more or less in the same spot for 48 or more sessions and probably ending the game without a significant difference in her 'ware. Even as it is now, I'm still wondering how many of my (meager) planned upgrades I won't be getting. 

And I want to point out that, despite the lowered costs, I've completely abandoned the idea of getting delta 'ware. It's a pipe dream. It won't happen. I could find a clinic, I have the social skills. I simply don't have the nuyen. 

The other thing worth mentioning before we go over the real problem is that we've been given plenty of nuyen. From a certain point of view, too much. We're a once-a-month game, so the rewards were always going to be bigger: it sucks going several months between upgrades, even if it's only been a few sessions. However, while Flamingo is terminally broke... every other character has hundreds of thousands of nuyen in their bank account and relatively little idea of what to spend it on. Despite the fact that Flamingo is desperate for more so she can actually utilize the room her leg upgrade made in her build, we've inarguably been given too much.

Is some of that cash flow difference inexperience in play, not knowing what to buy? A little. Is some of it the fact that magically active characters in general rely less on gear? Yes. Does everyone else include, bizarrely, the rigger and the insertion decker? Also yes. 

Let's look at those leg upgrades. Kid Stealth legs are 100k Nuyen. Beta cyberware in our house rule system is x3 cost, and Kid Stealth legs have a SI of 2. There's a 10% extra cost for the ability to remove and replace the lower leg(which I haven't even been able to take advantage of) for a total of 660k nuyen per leg for an admittedly large essence return of 0.4 each. 

In theory, a sammy can double their amount of cyberware from first to final session, if they go from all standard to all deltaware. In practice, they'll be starting with mostly alphaware and upgrading to mostly betaware, for a rough increase of a mere 20%. In most cases this means that, over the life of a game, the most you can really hope for is to add a half dozen minor pieces of 'ware, or one or two major ones. Even if we assume 'ware is twice as powerful per point of cost compared to physad powers(It's not), that's still less than half as many points as the physad got over the same length of time.

That won't ever change, really. Playing with essence and bio index costs would be fiddling with a house of cards, and I won't be doing it. What can we do? Which solutions would work, and which wouldn't?

Solution One: It is what it is. 

This is the one where we all simply agree the system's too busted to fix elegantly. Lots of magically active characters, sammies rarely(if ever) get upgrades, and we all agree that while karma is distributed equally, nuyen will not be. Either that, or everyone just plays a physad or a mage.

Needless to say, I don't like this one. 

Solution Two: We don't take kindly to mages around these parts.

We could just fuck with initiation. If we double the cost of it, you're still coming out ahead compared to the poor sammy. Play whatever you want, because upgrades will be small and incremental. 

This doesn't work at all. Initiation costs ought to be tweaked, but they're not in a terrible place. Not only that, but this doesn't exactly solve the nuyen problem: The magically active characters will still be flush with cash if you give anyone enough nuyen to actually upgrade their 'ware. 

Solution Three: Call your uncle who works at Kash-4-Karma.

We could raise the output of selling karma. Every awakened character in our group bought karma, up to their limit, every session. Nobody ever sold karma. Ever. Flamingo was the most likely candidate, and I never did because despite the output being raised to 10k nuyen for 1 karma, it never felt like enough. It's a precious resource, and I had plans for it! I wanted to buy skills too. Giving up a whole skill at rating 4 just to get less nuyen than I'd need for one upgrade never felt worth it.

Selling karma would have to give 20k or more before it was worthwhile to do it, but I'm not confident about raising it so high. Added to that is the fact that buying and selling karma being so far removed from each other in cost creates problems of its own.

Not only do I not think this works either, but I don't know if selling karma will ever work. Ever. 

Solution Four: Just overhaul all of the cyberware and bioware costs by hand, NBD.

SR5's solution to this problem was to reduce the scale of nuyen in general. Things cost less, with 'ware being the biggest discounts, but you get less for character generation. In addition to "the million" being the much less cool sounding "the 400k" but having roughly the same buying power, Street Index is gone as a concept. 

Overhauling the costs of the whole cyberware and bioware list is too much. It's too much work, too likely to go wrong, and too much to ask of a group of players. Note, however, that Street Index doubled the cost of Flamingo's leg upgrades for basically no reason. Without it, She would have been looking at the still steep but much more attainable cost of 330k per leg, or 660k.

Eliminating Street Index from the game can only improve it. It's unwieldy, sort of asinine in concept, and it causes huge problems for street samurai. If costs of 'ware go down, the GM can give less nuyen for the same effect: the sammy will still be broke, but the other characters will no longer be flush with so much nuyen that the monopoly guy is blushing. There are absolutely individual pieces of equipment in the game that would need to be raised in cost to compensate, but I'm willing to bet the list is less than a dozen items. 

It's obvious which one I'm going to do, if and when I run. I never liked Street Index, anyway. Will it be enough? Honestly, I don't think so. Delta cyberware will remain unattainable and cybernetically focused characters won't ever see the amount of upgrades and cool new things magically active characters get. The system seems to think that risking magic loss in certain situations is a balancing factor, and... I'm simply not convinced. I've never been convinced. You can effectively "lose" up to twenty karma if you lose a point of magic at a high initiation level, but at 5k nuyen a pop, that's 100k. Go re-read my section on Flamingo's leg upgrades again and use that info to infer how bad I feel for you.

This post is titled very carefully: I call this problem The Divide because I fear that SR3 is irreparably broken in this respect, and all we can do is make the Grand Canyon sized divide a bit smaller and a bit less painful. On some level, it'll always be this way. After all: 

Some characters want nuyen. Every character wants karma. 

I think we're playing Shadowrun again either way once this game's over... so I guess we'll see what shakes out. Until next time. 

Social Penalties in TTRPGs

 There is nothing more bitter than an opportunist who miscalculates. 

Social skills in general and Shadowrun's social skill penalties are on the table today. No other aspect of tabletop gaming varies so wildly from game to game than social skills, not even combat. Philosophies on gameplay style, character design, and whether or not social skills should even be included at all combine to create a rat-king of surprisingly common problems with them.  

I've often said that when a game designer can't think of an appropriate drawback or penalty, they make it a social one. Sometimes it's appropriate and provides rich gameplay opportunity like the Nosferatu clan drawback, but most of the time these sorts of penalties feel thrown-in and poorly thought out. 

Before we go any further, there's something I need to explain about flaws. It can be very easy to 'check out' of a concept when building your character. We all do it on some level when we decide on the strengths of our build. The natural drawback is (of course) being bad at that particular thing and often covering your weakness with another character. That's teamwork. 

This can become problematic in two ways. The first is when that particular concept is one that will never present itself outside of the player proactively creating the situation. It's fine to be comically bad at something when you won't ever have to do it. Some things just seldom come up on their own, like social skill rolls or stealth. Others carry their own natural penalties for a deficiency, like ranged combat. 

The other problem is the depth of the deficiency you can create via flaws or character choices. When you've already decided you won't be participating in a particular challenge, it doesn't matter how large the penalty is that you're taking. Games with a lot of different penalty sources for one thing can create tilted character building scenarios that are often toxic. The feeling is often that if you take one social flaw, you may as well take them all. 

Here's what I mean by toxic. Is checking out of a whole concept bad? Well, yeah. Most of the time. The most fun you can have at a table is being able to participate as often as possible. The way you do that in a healthy game is having more than one way to contribute. Tanking or dump-statting something narrows the character's usefulness. Social skills in particular are a one-two punch of a skill that's often proactive, and can often be handled by a single person. It's ripe for discarding to fluff your numbers somewhere else. 


Mentions of narrow usefulness bring us to the Shadowrun portion of our discussion. Cyberware in SR causes a large variety of social penalties: +1 per 2 essence lost or portion thereof, +1 for "particularly lurid" cyberware, and even more for certain items like the balance tail, kid stealth legs or my favorite, the cyberskull. A sammy, even one that didn't take the million, can easily be taking +4 to social skills with penalties that the book states outright should apply in "most situations". 

I have a lot of problems with this. A lot. We'll go through them in no order. 

One. Applying enormous penalties on the sammy is yet another thing included "LoGiCaLlY" that tilts the game's bias toward magically active characters. It's one of the worst offenders, because not only do they not take any kind of penalties like this, but also physads can take bonus dice in social skills. 

Two. Shadowrun is already a game where a player can end up sitting and waiting while someone else does something. This is by design and this strange "Ocean's 11" playstyle is part of its charm. Because of this, it absolutely does not need players being less capable. 

Three. A flat, "most of the time" penalty just for having visible cyberware doesn't make sense within the world's internal logic. While it's expensive and rare, cyberware is constantly advertised and displayed in media. The world's most popular athletes all have cyberware. Depicting runners is an extremely popular subgenre of action sims and movies. Would you sometimes run into a situation where you're taking a penalty? Absolutely. Cyberware and visible body mods don't fit into the corporate omniculture of conformity. Would it be "most of the time"? No. Would it be so heavy handed? Absolutely not. 

Four. Transhumanism, punk fashion and culture, and body modification are a core part of the genre as well as Shadowrun's world. Trying to shuffle players away from one of the most interesting ways you can express yourself in a TTRPG with hefty penalties is cruel. It's called Cyberpunk, not Cyberconformist. 

Five. Setting the penalty based on Essence is wildly deceptive. The section even has to tell you that non-visible cyberware shouldn't count. Re-calculating your penalty based on the essence costs of your visible cyberware is pointless busywork.

Six. Surely penalties might be in mind for etiquette, negotiation and leadership. However, try as I might, I can't think of why interrogation, intimidation or instruction would take penalty from visible cyberware. Really, I'm being nice saying negotiation might take a penalty, because I don't think lying to someone(which is covered by negotiation) would be affected much.

You know, there's probably more but I think I've made my point. Social penalty rules are often misguided and poorly placed, and this section is no different. A better rule would be to say that visible cyberware or body modification can mean social penalties in some situations, primarily when dealing with corporate employees. The penalty, even when counting wild cyberware like cyberskulls, articulate arms and kid stealth legs(which I maintain aren't even that fucking weird) should, at no point, rise higher than +3. 

Everyone knows I have appearance-related emotional baggage, and over the years it's made me treasure expression of self and appearance in TTRPGs. I also love the gameplay style of cyberware. It sucks that SR3 wants to penalize you for trying to place those two things together, and I'm glad that most people seem to agree that this section of the book is particularly heavy-handed. 

Oh, and not for nothing: this section in the SR3 core book is right next to a really stupid rule for rolling racist biases randomly that implies half of all people are racist in some way. That's fucking bleak. 

The End of Every Road: What I learned from Shivani Sedana

 "Cable... Shivani had to have died. Right? She couldn't have survived a rocket strike. If she's dead, then what am I?"

I loved my most recent character. Shivani Sedana is a cybernetically enhanced soldier, a monster with a golden machine gun, and a natural leader. She was also mentally ill, a sickness called cyberpsychosis bubbling just under the surface. She's a lesson in the dangers of ignoring your problems: it doesn't make them go away. 

I loved her, but my interpretation of her mental condition is born from dysphoria, depression and disassociation. She was originally designed in 2017 and... I think it's fair to say I wasn't doing well. It's 2023 and I'm doing better, better enough that I'm making the decision to put her away. We had to skip a session this month, so I made a deal with the GM to get the game back on track and avoid having to think about Shivani for another thirty days. I can shelf her for a while, and write some long form content dealing with her condition. I can put her character finale to paper with some nice, rich description. Maybe even portray her improving. What a wild concept: a pen and paper character ever getting better.

I think playing her was pretty enlightening for a number of reasons, and I thought I'd go through them in no order. Some of these deal with building and playing characters, and some of these are specific to Shadowrun 3rd Edition. 

Mental Illness is rewarding but draining to portray. Shivani only suffered a break for one session, showing extremely obvious signs and symptoms. However, her mental health issues were present the entire time I played her. Habits like her direct(to a fault) thinking, lack of backup plans and callousness were all informed by her condition. Her persistent delusions came up every single session: I just didn't say it out loud. For a long time it felt great to play her. It was an outlet for a lot of various feelings I had when I started playing her. Ones you can guess if you know me, and wonder at if you don't. 

One of our players, the man behind the surveillance-drone rigger Director noted that he could tell something was wrong with Shivani from day one. I don't have a lesson to go along with that. It just made me feel really good.  

But as those feelings and thoughts started to go away, she became a drain. It's tough to know what would help your character's mental health and know they won't do it. One of Shivani's unhealthy coping mechanisms was routine, and one of those routines was Shadowrunning. Running puts her into contact with a lot more stressors than her rigid adherence to routine was ever going to alleviate. So, playing her still felt good, but became emotionally taxing. It's probably just me, but watching a character make choices that will ultimately harm them is frustrating, even though those are the choices that remain true to their personality. It's even worse when those choices are done in-part or solely to keep them playable.

Be wary of characters you conceptualized a long time ago. I don't think this is a mistake on my part. Far from it, Shivani helped me a lot! But I should have expected playing her to become more difficult the better I felt about myself. Everything about Shivani's mental health was defined a long time ago, before I started medication and therapy for my own. I really should have seen this coming, but I guess nobody expects their mental health improvement to cause something like this. 

I(Me, Mouse) Might be a Leader. I don't know what to say about this one except that I feel like I lean toward this role in games now, and I might be reasonably good at it. I guess you never stop learning things about yourself, right?

Homage Characters are Awesome! Most of the Time. Shivani was inspired by a friend's character from 20 years ago named Bob Collins. He also had Cyberpsychosis and heavily personal themes. Some of them are quite similar to Shivani's themes. Doing an homage to Bob without understanding those themes completely would have been catastrophic or even insulting. It's a good thing I didn't do that. Everyone should feel free to homage an existing character with their own... just be sure to know what you're doing and put in a little work.

Hobbies and Friends are Key to Building a Rich Character. So, I've started to see a lack of hobbies, activities, casual interests or friends as indicators of illness. That's an important tool, but I can't help but think that not including those things is simply a common mistake. I think it's especially true of fantasy games, where travel is overwhelmingly common. You sort of have to carry your interests on your back and count the PCs as your only friends. 

But in a modern game, you really have no excuse. You definitely have a house. It's definitely full of stuff. Like, things. Things mean you have interests, and hobbies, and personality. The other PCs can't possibly be your only friends. Lacking some or all of these things would be a major red flag. Including a major red flag should be deliberate. 

I probably have more to say on this later, so I'll save some for next time. In Shadowrun it's easy to focus on only taking the knowledge skills you think will definitely come up, like Chemistry or Security Design, or Gang Identification. I think that's a big mistake.  If Shivani didn't have her skills on the bass or her love of tailoring, she'd be a poorer character. Did I ever roll Bass? Of course not. That's not why I took it. 

I did roll Tailoring, though. Several times. So maybe it's just a question of what skills you're able to finesse into a situation.

Heavy Weapons Really Aren't as Great as they Seem. I enjoyed the hell out of Shivani and her gold-plated light machine gun, Golden Mandala. A Mandala can be described as a spiritual road map, and Golden Mandala is a map that helps you meet God. I noticed a few things about heavy weapons while I was using it. 

* It's a pretty narrow skill. Realistically, it covers light machine guns, and assault cannons. That isn't as flexible as other skills. Other guns can be quiet, apply chemtech or cover funky utility weapons. Cannons and LMGs are quite nice weapons, but they really only do the one thing.

* The damage boost is slight. An assault rifle is 8M, and a light machine gun is 7S. You get a damage level bump in exchange for a reduction of power, and I'm convinced that ends in a very slight boost, especially if you're optimized for the skill you're rolling. It means that machine guns are better at suppressive fire, but... I'm tempted to say "so what?". 

* They're big. So this isn't a concealable weapon in the slightest. I definitely couldn't carry or use it on every job. I can't say the same about shotguns, rifles, or even assault rifles. In a world where a sawn-off SPAS-22 is 9S, can burst and has a conceal of 6, I don't know how much I can justify carrying an LMG for any reason.  The weight even became a factor: the GM can attest that I sanity-checked Shivani's loadouts for weight, and that's not something I ever had to worry about with other SR characters.  

* They require resources to optimize. If you don't put forth resources toward lowering recoil, I don't know if LMGs turn out better than assault rifles at all. Mandala had a custom 2 pts of recoil compensation and Shivani had a cyberarm gyromount, both of which were integral to this weapon being a good one. That isn't a cheap piece of 'ware. If all you did was pick up an LMG off the shelf, I don't know if it's a great choice.

My GM was Right and Skill Groups are the Way to Go. I just wanted to say here that slightly improving the amount of skills someone can take via skill group discounts is a good thing, and there's very little downside. The bonus isn't that pronounced: I definitely didn't even roll every firearms skill. Even more of them I only rolled once or twice. They soften the blow of "required" skills and lets characters branch out and be useful in other situations. Seeing as how this is a game where you're sitting on your thumbs by design sometimes, that's good. 

SR 3 Sure Has Weird, Draconian Armor Rules. I think it's weird that basically everyone layers form-fit with something else. If I had my way, I'd bump most sets of armor by 1/1 or 2/1 and just remove form-fit entirely. Just make the decision for you and let you wear one piece of armor. I understand the aesthetics don't necessarily matter, but having relatively little freedom in dressing your character and imagining their outfits sucks. 

In addition, the penalties for having too much armor rating compared to your QCK is a pretty bad system. There should absolutely be a penalty here! It's just that trading points of combat pool for armor is a mathy decision and I don't like it. For as crunchy as people think this system is, it has very few of these decisions. I can see why future editions do away with pools entirely. 

You Don't Know What You've Got 'Till It's Gone. I'll make this short. This is my first character with a low combat pool, and you really don't understand how nice it is to have a large pool until you don't any more. It's a good thing that Shivani was built to let things hit her. Because they often did. 

That's it for today. Thank you for this weird potpourri of lessons that I don't think I could spin into whole posts on their own. If you're sad that Shivani is gone, don't worry: The next part of her story is coming soon. That, and I don't think the other characters are entirely finished feeling her impact. 

Roasting Myself Again: Girl Edition

 "Don't name your children after fictional characters. 

If they're transgender enough, they'll do it themselves."

Hi. I feel like being a little mean to myself today. That's not true, I'm just interested in an answer. Today I'm going through all of my old characters to see how many of them have very particular themes of identity. If you know me, you probably know what theme I'm talking about. If you don't? You'll probably figure it out by the end of the list. Consider this a companion piece to the other two posts I did about my characters. Don't know how interesting those posts are, but memory lane is fun and the blog is for me, not you. Well, it's a little bit for you. 

Criteria is a simple zero to five rating, zero meaning none at all, and five meaning the theme is basically central to their character. 

To speed things up, here are all the zeros: Thorgg, Autonicus Jamble, Chief Tumbling-Dice, Callisto, Mister Smiley, Levistus, Skag, Cipher, Cpl, Ramirez, Blind Mary, Icke, Vaux, Arkham Pawn, Elle Arcineau, Tatters, Riyo'to, Seong, James March, Trixie Glimmerskull, Cardinal Seras Hearstring, Cable's Daughter, Celine LaRoque. 

All of these characters either have no strong personal themes or very different ones from what I'm looking for. Most of these are great characters that I'd play again some day! Let's call them The Control Group. Following are every character who scored above a zero and a few comments on each. 

William Loman. Themes of being happy with what you've got are central to Loman's story thanks to his tie to Death of a Salesman. It's not an identity-centric story by any means, and "being happy with what I've got" turned out to be impossible. Still, it's somewhat adjacent, so Loman scores a 1/5.

Akuma. Akuma was rejected by society for his appearance and, as such, hated himself for it. I still think he's a shitty character. 4/5. 

Anna Lacroix. Anna's a character with pretty dense themes, but has some themes of second chances and body modification among them. Outside of the obvious stuff that comes with every cybernetically enhanced character, she enjoyed body mods like heavy tattooing and piercing. 2/5.

Lenore. Shapeshifter. Listen, shapeshifter nets you at least 2 points just on its own. While not every female character I played had an appearance I strongly would've liked for myself, Lenore(and a few others) did. 3/5.

Zero. Was literally transgender. Also had themes of "new life" or "second chances" thanks to being a CIA agent on the lam. Girl this was like 2006 why didn't you get it yet? 5/5.

The Medusa Socialite. She bears mentioning because she was a result of a human mother being cursed in a social power play and decided to just rock it instead of falling to despair. 1/5.

Sianalayn Vyanathen. At some point in the campaign Sia undergoes a transformation to change herself. This was to rid her of the Warlock class which I was very unsatisfied with, but like... she didn't need to come back as a Tiefling. It didn't need to be a physical transformation at all. 2/5. 

Miyako Summerfield. Transformed against her will. Basically the same theme as the socialite. 1/5.

Inkless. Shapeshifter. Also, another "new life" or "second chance" theme because she ran away from Heaven. Honestly I think "second chance" is a great, solid theme for a character so I'm on the fence of saying it doesn't count, but...to prove a point I'm saying it does. 3/5. 

Viktoria Wakefield. Only mentioned because "Slutty carnival folk with a huge rack" is probably wishful thinking on my part. 1/5.

Aikiyo the Mockery. Aikiyo is a robot, but her story centered strongly around purpose and living for yourself as opposed to others. 2/5. 

Pink Annis. Shapeshifter. Pink also had issues with her perception of self and society, seeing human society as something that isn't "for" her, and something she shouldn't be interacting with. 4/5. 

Lace Weaver. Transformed against her will but glad for it. (again). Another theme of second chances as well. 3/5. 

Shivani Sedana. Practically an avatar of dysphoria. Dysphoric and delusional because the UCAS Military ruined her life, meddled with her health and caused her to develop cyberpsychosis. 5/5.

A little math later and I can tell you that 14 out of 36 characters scored above a zero, or about 39%. In addition, only two scored a "perfect" five: Shivani and Zero. The two who have literally felt dysphoria in some way.  This whole time I was scoring my characters I was practically pleading for me to be below 50% and thank god I made it. 

It's also 24 out of 36(2/3rds or 66%) girls, with one being genderfluid(Seras) and one being a robot(Aikiyo) who counts as girl because that's how she sees herself.

But really, I'm just being playfully mean. I just like data. Without these characters, I might not know who I am today. I might never have known. For that, I'll always be grateful.