Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

SNES Reboot
arek75 12 Sep, 2018 @ 8:56pm
Chi Casting/Adepts?
I noticed that (relatively) recently, you've made some modifications to how magic spells are acquired in order to better support the player either being a mage or a shaman. Unfortunately, having played through tenth street, it seems like you have made no provisions for adepts (Chi Casting). I have a few suggestions on how to fix that:

1. Retool the way magic works (again), by either placing a magic vendor (or making Dog itself a magic vendor), who sells the various spells you need and increases his stock based on the spell components you've turned in. This has the disadvantage of being different from the original way, but the advantages of being an additional nuyen sink and allowing a player complete freedom on if/how s/he learns and uses magic (or Chi Casting).

2. Add an "Adept" option to the "Amulet" conversation, granting Killing Hands, and then grant Adept spells much like it looks like you're planning on handling Spellcasting/Conjuring now. This has the advantage of being more like the original, but could lock the player into having to make a hard choice among Spellcasting, Conjuring, and Chi Casting, depending on how you implement it.

3. Add a Chi Casting vendor somewhere (assuming you haven't already). This may work because adepts aren't considered magicians in Shadowrun, but rather use their Essence/Magic to improve their bodies. It has the disadvantage of being (if you consider Chi Casting to be magic) even more different from the original than Option 1, imo. :) Note: If you do this, it would probably be a great idea to also add the Adept option to the Amulet conversation as mentioned in #2 above, unless said vender ends up being in old town from the beginning.

Thanks for the consideration. :)

--Arek75
< >
Showing 1-15 of 15 comments
ledeir  [developer] 12 Sep, 2018 @ 9:08pm 
Howdy,

Adding the ability to be an adapt was one of the areas that felt like it needed a hammer more than some tape to add it... There are adept spells there, one for each point of magic I believe. Unfortunately they are all locked behind dog's fetch quests. (Each collection of widgets will unlock a class of spells)

Option 3 has potential though, treating it as something other than magic... I'll see if I can come up with anything along those lines, but it won't be for a while.
DaveOfDeath  [developer] 13 Sep, 2018 @ 3:00am 
I was only asked to build Mage and shaman magics... So that's what I did.

CHI casting is a bit tougher than mage or shaman abilities (the only modified spells currently are the two basic attack spells. Power bolt, and toxic "spirit" bolt)

CHI casting relys far more on picking the passive and active benifits for your specific playthru style, rather than a single attack spell... So stacking abilities like that becomes more problematic.

In a perfect world, what would the chi casting amulet grant, in your opinion? Would they be all stacked together on a single attack spell, like the power bolt and spirit bolt?

Killing hands doesn't really lend itself to "modified versions" like the bolt spells did... So I'm not sure exactly what would be a reasonable course.

Adding a magic vendor is a simple solution, but they'd really need all schools of magic to make it fair. Which kinda goes against the "dog grants the magic" theme. (Not accurate to Shadowrun, for sure... But faithful to SNES' version)
Last edited by DaveOfDeath; 31 Oct, 2018 @ 4:53pm
Geeked  [developer] 13 Sep, 2018 @ 8:59am 
well you guys already know my opinion on how 'magic resistance' is one of the best spent karma passive spells for mages - not sure if it applies to pure adepts though - speed and damage is probably best
arek75 31 Oct, 2018 @ 1:01pm 
If you really, truly want Chi Casting to be balanced, you need to put essence requirements on some of the spells, in particular those with passive effects - I'd give the early passives a requirement of 3-4 and later ones a 5-6. And don't include Counterstrike at all - that one's just too abusable (works with any selected attack on any weapon...think about what that means for a moment). With that in mind, even a 6-ess requirement is likely not enough - the base ability needs to be fixed to only work with melee and chi attacks (chi bolt not being nearly as OP as other things).

Basically, this means you can be an adept, but if you start buying cyberware, you'll limit what adept powers you can use.

The fact is, tho, that this game wasn't really well-balanced on the SNES (armor 1 made you invincible, or you could use invisibility instead to make yourself untargetable - both were basically "i win" buttons, tho invis was the better one, since enough hits could still stun-lock you even if they did no damage), and anyone who wants to do so can simply turn "Jake" into an invincible walking wrecking ball with the right cyber and/or adept powers.

--Arek75

Edit: Nevermind about the datajack.
Last edited by arek75; 31 Oct, 2018 @ 2:55pm
DaveOfDeath  [developer] 31 Oct, 2018 @ 4:58pm 
The data jack (both the broken one and it's repaired counterpart) are both zero essense cost. We didn't want to penalize magic oriented characters with a but of cyberware they can't refuse.

So that's a free-bee for everyone.

I wonder... Could they be built with two active (or passive) abilities? A strong version for a high-essense build, and a detuned version for chrome plated ninjas...

Probably not going to look into it, if I'm honest... But it's a neat concept. Maybe for my next project...
arek75 4 Nov, 2018 @ 8:24pm 
Dave, have a look at SR:U (the newer community version) for an idea of what I mean. :)

I think their essence requirements might be a bit steep (5 for Stride, for example), but puttin essence requirements on Chi Casting is exactly what they did.

And yes, you could have more poerful Chi Casting abilities have a 6 essence requirement, and have less powerful abilities with lower requirements.

Do not put counterstrike in, tho (or take it out if it's there now), if you want any semblence of balance. You can literally grab a Vindicator or Ares Alpha, select "Full Auto Fire" and use Counterstrike with your last AP for the round to become a "trap turret", retaliating against up to 3 targets per round with your weapon's Full Auto mode. No cyber required, tho you do want high armor, Martial+Magic Defense (active), and Pain Resist to prevent 'em from killing you.

--Arek75
arek75 14 Nov, 2018 @ 7:52pm 
I just thought of a way to properly make Chi Casting and Cyberware exclusive: Turn Adept abilities into "Cyberware". You'd have to figure out which abilities belong in which slots, but this would rather effectively make adepts and cyberware mutually exclusive. In order to facilitate the story for this specific mod, all "Head" abilities should also act as a Datajack. :)

Also, if this hasn't already been addressed, when entering the mod all Cyberware is stripped - when doing this, would it be possible to also refund the essence taken (ie set the character's Essence to 6)? If not, you should put a big fat warning in the description not to take Decking or Rigging at creation, but instead wait to spend points in them until you're in-game.

--Arek75
Last edited by arek75; 14 Nov, 2018 @ 7:54pm
ledeir  [developer] 14 Nov, 2018 @ 9:17pm 
Turning them into cyberware would be possible but probably more work than we are willing to do ... We need to focus on "finishing"

I'm familiar with the essence hole issue... I tried fixing it before but to no avail. I feel like someone told me it wasn't possible... We could add a warning...
DaveOfDeath  [developer] 14 Nov, 2018 @ 11:08pm 
We removed the import character option... Making the essense hole irrelevant.

I already repaired the broken and repaired datajacks to have zero essense costs. (Since they're forced, and might affect magic characters.)

There was a mod for adapts back in DMS that created mystical tattoos in cyberware slots...
ledeir  [developer] 15 Nov, 2018 @ 10:46am 
Originally posted by DaveOfDeath:
We removed the import character option... Making the essense hole irrelevant.

Silly me... I forgot about that.
arek75 15 Nov, 2018 @ 11:56am 
I just checked, and if you put points into Decking, you get the default datajack (not this mod's custom datajack) at creation, which then gets replaced with the broken datajack, leaving a 0.5 essence hole. This very likely goes for Rigging as well, and in the event of a port to SRHK, possibly also Cyber Affinity. Perhaps a warning about this in the in-game description is in order? :)

--Arek75
Last edited by arek75; 15 Nov, 2018 @ 11:57am
DaveOfDeath  [developer] 15 Nov, 2018 @ 2:10pm 
The 'repaired' datajack is also zero essense. So if you started with a default jack, your character is starts with the 5.5 essense, correct. When it gets repaired, you're still at 5.5... as you'd expect. If you don't start with one (magic type character), they don't have that .5 loss out of the gate.
DaveOfDeath  [developer] 15 Nov, 2018 @ 2:11pm 
The decker archtype and rigger archtype datajacks can't be affected by us. Those are hard coded options.
ledeir  [developer] 15 Nov, 2018 @ 7:25pm 
I think its something we don't need to worry about... if they create a character who is a decker or rigger they are signing up for sacrificing essence... so they are pretty much just prepaying the cost for the future...
DaveOfDeath  [developer] 15 Nov, 2018 @ 8:46pm 
Exactly.
< >
Showing 1-15 of 15 comments
Per page: 1530 50