There are a totem in Hong Kong that gives a permanant accuracy buff. You could use that to make a decent gun-wielding shaman, but otherwise, there is little reason for a magic using character to attack with anything other than spells (dex, str and int become dump stats).
Right, but again this isn't an inability and if someone really wanted to they could go ahead and do it.
There are a great many things you can do, but I was under the impression this thread was about advising a new player about good choices. You can trick out a mage with a full set of cyberware, or create a character with a Body stat of 1, or a great many other things that range from the slightly sub-optimal to the completely gimped, but I wouldn't advise a new player to do that.
I was taking issue with the "you can't do this" phrasing regarding the smartlink. I don't think it helps to use misleading language to make it sound like you are actively prevented from making suboptimal choices when the reality is that you can very easily make those choices. A new player might be led to assume if they can make a decision then it's probably okay, because someone said they couldn't make the bad choice.
I was taking issue with the "you can't do this" phrasing regarding the smartlink. I don't think it helps to use misleading language to make it sound like you are actively prevented from making suboptimal choices when the reality is that you can very easily make those choices. A new player might be led to assume if they can make a decision then it's probably okay, because someone said they couldn't make the bad choice.
If we're being brutally honest here, that's a reading comprehension gaffe on your end - I was very clear that "while it's certainly possible to do a decker/mage build, the problem is that cyberware diminishes essence (hell, that's an actual plot point in Dragonfall). Any upgrades you'd get to improve your decking would add more cooldown and reduce your spellcasting; you could still do it, but it'd be very difficult to optimize a character like that." (Reply #11)
In Dragonfall I played through as an elven rigger called Konrad with some points in rifles and a dash of cyberware.
In Hong Kong, I've played through twice as a human decker with the handle of 'Breaker' specialised in hand guns and a bit of unarmed fighting.
Moderate cyberware thrown in for flavour (datajack, basic cybernetic eyes & bioware polymer fluorinated arms x2 to boost strength/quickness by 2 points each).
Typical etiquettes I take - gang (reflecting his time in Redmond Barrens with gangers + prison) and shadowrunner (reflecting him learning the trade from Gobbet et al).
I find Hong Kong to be a bit more of a forgiving game with builds. As long as you have some sense of what to specialise in, the odd, arbitrary dip into other areas won't mess you up too much.
I was taking issue with the "you can't do this" phrasing regarding the smartlink. I don't think it helps to use misleading language to make it sound like you are actively prevented from making suboptimal choices when the reality is that you can very easily make those choices. A new player might be led to assume if they can make a decision then it's probably okay, because someone said they couldn't make the bad choice.
If we're being brutally honest here, that's a reading comprehension gaffe on your end - I was very clear that "while it's certainly possible to do a decker/mage build, the problem is that cyberware diminishes essence (hell, that's an actual plot point in Dragonfall). Any upgrades you'd get to improve your decking would add more cooldown and reduce your spellcasting; you could still do it, but it'd be very difficult to optimize a character like that." (Reply #11)
I make "sub-optimal" characters in RPGs all the time, tabletop and digital, and they are among the most fun choices I make when making characters. To each their own, but I think it's valid to point out it's not a restriction to do a thing that might have someone thinking "oh damn, I thought that'd be cool...guess I can't do that..." if they don't know enough about the setting. Personal cool factor always wins out with me, even if I don't have the same cool factor checklist as someone else I like to encourage people to just do what's fun! Because those are fun choices (and you can surprise yourself finding combos that don't seem like they'd work that actually do!)
Right, but again this isn't an inability and if someone really wanted to they could go ahead and do it.
There are a great many things you can do, but I was under the impression this thread was about advising a new player about good choices.
Let me squeeze on in here...
We kind of left the whole "advising new players" thing in the dirt the second we started talking about leylines and cyberlinks though. We started talking about things that more adept players to the crpg would actually know what we were talking about, not a newbie.
Comments
There are no anti-magic zones or criters.
In Hong Kong, I've played through twice as a human decker with the handle of 'Breaker' specialised in hand guns and a bit of unarmed fighting.
Moderate cyberware thrown in for flavour (datajack, basic cybernetic eyes & bioware polymer fluorinated arms x2 to boost strength/quickness by 2 points each).
Typical etiquettes I take - gang (reflecting his time in Redmond Barrens with gangers + prison) and shadowrunner (reflecting him learning the trade from Gobbet et al).
I find Hong Kong to be a bit more of a forgiving game with builds. As long as you have some sense of what to specialise in, the odd, arbitrary dip into other areas won't mess you up too much.
We kind of left the whole "advising new players" thing in the dirt the second we started talking about leylines and cyberlinks though. We started talking about things that more adept players to the crpg would actually know what we were talking about, not a newbie.