Got questions about rulings or need clarifications? Here you can post a question to the community and the community can help provide understanding.

I am officially confused about something.

I've been giving my complete characters another looking over and I'm confused about Edge.  Is the number given in the Priority table the total amount or do you add it to base?

It depends on the rule book you are using. There are six editions of shadowrun :) I currently only have access to SR4 and SR5.

Edge in all of them is 'luck'. The idea that the PCs can influence the die and be more heroic.

• SR4 There aren't priorities I think, so I'm guessing it's not this
• SR5 You can add to 'special attributes' depending on your race.

With SR5 if you pick human as priority A you have 9 points you can spend on 'special attributes'. With priority D only three points. Those special attributes are either Resonance (for technomancer) magic (for ... well ..magic users) or edge.

You start with a value of 1 in edge. So if you don't spend anything you still have 1 pt.

So if you are a mundane person the value you will have is 1 (the starting value) plus the value in the priority table. BUT the cap is 6 still (baring the spending of qualities). So don't pick a priority with >5 or you just wasted your points.

If it's a different edition, just ignore the above!

A rules question for shadowrun 5

Let's suppose I am a decker of some sort and I become the 'owner of a system' for a short time period. How do I give myself admin priviledges?

My read of the situation:
Looking at the rules 'invite mark' would appear to be the matrix action. That invites the owner of the sytem (which would be me) to give me a level 3 mark which says 'admin priviledges'

I'm still new to the SR5 rules though, so I might be missing something. Idea? Comments?

OK I'll answer my own question :)

I think it's as in the question

• There is an action 'invite mark'
• The system owner (me) can then slap a mark.
• When you add the mark you give data like 'how long and what level'

It's pretty much like today in an 'IAM' gui where you say 'this user for this amount of time has priviledges X'.

So question that came up in game, how much is a fair payment for a run?

I know difficulty and length of task plays into it but how much do you think is fair?

Personally I start with lifestyle costs...if it's 2k a month for a low lifestyle I need a fair bit more than that to make progress.....or am I wrong?

(thinking normal start game)

Just my twopence


First of all ask yourself the question 'who cares and why?'. I don't mean that in a derrogatory sense, but in a searching sense.

So why do people care?

• To improve their gear
• To party and show off and improve their lifestyle

The second is 90% RP and feel good and as a GM it has almost no impact on your game other than happy players. If you like happy players it's all good. If you want misserable players then it's not good.

The first... who cares if their gear is improved?

• Everyone who isn't a wizard or a technomancer

Because they want to see their character improve. And they need HUGE amounts of cash to do that for even small improvements. The game is already called 'Magic Run'. If you don't give out cash then it becomes even more attractive to be a wizard and not a cyborg. All you do by restricting upgrade costs is make the already unattractive character options less attractive

Summary:
Give out loads. Or perhaps let them get extra while on the job if they can work out how to do it. They are world class thieves. There is stuff to steal. if they steal it... as well as the cash there can be fun RP around that as well.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:07, Wed 30 Aug 2023.

In reply to Tarrakhash (msg # 6):

The fifth edition actually gives you a complete breakdown on what you're "supposed" to get for a job.   It generally runs in the 5k to 10k range, in my experience.    How much per run is one of those compromises between player and GM, though.

You also need to remember that gear and upgrades cost; in some cases a lot.   Part of the appeal of shadowrunning is supposed to be that it pays well; if they're barely making lifestyle, then they'd probably do something less risky for a living.

My expectation: 3-5 runs a month paying between 3k to 10k, depending.   The exact breakdown, is page 375 of the Core Book (SR 5th) for nuyen and page 376 for karma.
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:12, Wed 30 Aug 2023.

In reply to Siran (msg # 7):

I agree. I almost always play awakened.

It's hard to ruin a SR game with giving too much cash to mundanes.

It's really easy to make magic run worse by not giving enough money and giving too much karma and allowing working for the man etc...

As a GM you need to be stingy with karma and generous with Nuyen to keep a semblance of balance

I've been saying that since second edition days, but the majority of people I talked to about the subject back then clearly thought that I was drinking the kool-aid.

*nods*

See  mages are the main power increase in the game. And they are limited by karma. The non mages.... need every help they can to compete. And it is an ENORMOUS amount of cash needed to get signficant upgrades

Especially for Riggers since many times at least a few of their drones get scrapped during the run.

If you actually become the owner of something either legitimately or illegally as per the Owners section in the SR5 Corebook page 236 in my copy, you are considered to have four marks already and already have all the marks required to do any action even those specific to just owners.

The Owner can use the Invite Mark action to give others access at the varying level between 1 through 3 but given that most things a matrix user attempts to get into they will not have ownership nor is it likely the owner is going to do so which leaves the other two methods to gain marks, either Brute Force or Hack on the Fly. You can either try to get it all at once as per their descriptions or you can build up your marks over time with successive uses of these actions.

It gets a bit more complicated if you are trying to leave those permissions in place for later use when you are no longer the owner. But this also depends on if you are using Owner here in the same way as the core book is representing it.

Thanks for that.

I agree with you that transfering ownership can't be done quickly while an owner I think. That's certainly the impression I got. Which is interesting when it comes to 'how do I legally transfer ownership of something I legally own'... is that incredibly complicated and time consuming?

My question though was about how to give myself admin priviledges not owner. And I think the invite mark action on myself is the way to do it. Rather like today sending yourself an email: you can do it but it's a little odd. I do though quite often give myself (today) priviledges while an admin. It's normal today for an admin not to be able to do everything, but instead be able to give people priviledges. Thus you can protect yourself from accidents... A good example of that is the 'sudo' command in linux

---

My impression of the SR5 hacking rules are that they are the first set that I thought were actually playable as is, not to horribly complex (especially for play by forum) and not too abstract. 'Overwatch' is the most abstract thing there and it's just 'how much you have been noticed... when it gets to 40 you are finished'.

The marks are very gamified, but hey... this is a game ... and it's very easy to understand. If you have ever played Mutants and Masterminds and looked at how they do saving throws it's pretty much identical.