| From: | Paul Jonathan Adam <Paul@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Samurai vs. Mages |
| Date: | Mon, 3 Apr 1995 20:08:01 GMT |
> of anti-dweebs---people who are like the people you can sometimes find in
> karate classes and always find in weight-rooms. Think of someone you would
> really want next to you in your squad in the army or the Marine Corps but the
> very last person you would want with you on your chess team.
I had a former Spetznaz mercenary who was an excellent chess player :-)
> ...basically, the street samurai is about enhanced physical power and
> has no reason to be neccesarilly good, noble, or overly smart.
Which character class does? With the possible exception of shamans, no
character type has any reason to pursue any course other than blatant self-
interest. And apart from deckers there's no intelligence qualification on
any class: smarter is better for anyone.
Besides, think about a mission as close-protection for a scientist or research
professor. You're meant to be inconspicuous. If the samurai is still learning
to walk without dragging her knuckles on the ground, they'll hire someone
else instead: someone who can fit in. That needs brains.
> Another thing
> about them is that they are, by nature, less fundamentally human than other
> player characters in that their abilities derive from having lots of
> mechanical parts stuffed into them.
Lynch's abilities *depend* on himself. The mechanical parts are a bonus, but
as he proved when hit by an EMP weapon that temporarily nulled a lot of
his cyberware, he could still shoot and still fight and still think. The
corp guards coming for him had lost their wires, their integrated comms
suite, their data-link from their commander... that EMP pulser was the reason
Lynch got out as easily as he did.
Now drop a magician into a high background count, say a +4. Or better still,
have the run involve a phase in orbit :-) Who's suffering now?
> Their lifesyle is essentially a denial of
> and a turning away from basic, straightforward humanity---unlike mages and
> physical adepts who have to maintain their physical integrity in order to use
> their power.
Lynch has a tribal background: and a lot of military experience. While he kills
for a living, he's seen enough death that he places a high value on life - even
that of an enemy. Compare that to a Shark shaman. There's nothing here that
really applies to a samurai any more than any other character.
> Mages in particular >must< be intelligent and complex of soul in
> order for them to cast hermetic spells while physical adepts are often
> portrayed as being the ultimate martial artists---people who study the
> martial arts as ways of physically and spiritually perfecting themselves even
> as it makes them deadly fighters.
Um... well, Lynch the mercenary is a demolitions expert, a superb musician,
a very good armourer and an outstanding tactician (he's been played for
six years...) Where does "stupid" come into that job description? Yes, anyone
can hold and fire a gun. Sniping at long ranges involves Coriolis force,
Magnus effect, differential yaw, and some advanced calculus. Intelligence
to use your weapons and abilities effectively is essential for any class.
And where do mages *have* to be intelligent and complex of soul? For that
matter, why would a physical adept be a Zen expert? A (retired) assassin
character of mine is a Zen expert, but with wired-II and lots of other
cyber he's a samurai by your definition.
> When you think about street samurai, you are thinking about poeple who are
> willing to undergo piles and piles of surgery to become stronger and faster;
> to have claws pop out of the backs of their hands and to be fast and
> accurate pistol shots. You don't expect anyone like this to have the
> complexity of personality that you would expect of most of the people playing
> the game and posting questions and answers on this board (think about
> interviews with professional boxers for an example of what you might imagine
> street samurai to sound like).
Like hell. Think about interviews with professional soldiers. Why would a
physical adept be "more complex of personality" than a mercenary with years
of experience in assorted conflicts? A physical adept is more likely to
sound like a pro boxer than a merc or samurai.
*Why* did someone undergo this painful, dehumanising and invasive surgery?
Isn't that a complex question? Isn't the answer going to involve some very
interesting background? Nobody grabs a stranger off the street and forcibly
inserts reflex enhancers: the character had a degree of choice. Why would they
take this path? If you're not asking this question, you're not GMing samurai
properly.
> <relative power argument trimmed>...Mages however are another story. A mage
> standing behind a barrier spell strong enough to stop bullets isn't even in
> the debate.
So pop a smoke grenade in front of him and all of a sudden he's out of the
game. Switch to astral perception? Through a barrier spell? And he can't
target the samurai in astral space anyway. You might not be able to kill
him but you can put him out of contention for a while.
It's just an anti-bullet barrier? Try throwing knives, or a well-aimed frag
grenade. Arrows are fun too.
And you _were_ trying to be stealthy, weren't you, cloaked in that nimbus
of glowing crackling magical energy?
Meanwhile Lynch in a helicopter gunship is a tough target for a magician, no?
Compare the target numbers for a spell to damage the helo and for the helo's
weapons to damage the magician. The secret is to make sure the advantage is
on your side when the shit hits the fan.
> Despite what anyone might have to say about it, I really do think
> that a mage will clean up on both samurai and physical adepts who lack
> magical protection
Unless they fight smart and get lucky. Which is why samurai who live long enough
all tend to be smart. Lynch knows a lot of ways to spot and take out a magician.
He's learned them because he has to.
>---without direct magical protection, there is no good way
> to fight off a fire elemental. This truth is more than just the wishful
> thinking of munchkinism: this flaw is common to all the role-playing games I
> have ever played that involve magic. Eventually, the magicians overwhelm all
> other characters in their ability to do damage.
Which is why KILLING THE MAGICIAN FIRST is always a firefight priority. And life
for a captured magician is likely to be short. Captured samurai? Disarm, cuff,
take them in. Magician? *BLAM BLAM BLAM* "He looked at me, sir, like he was
gonna cast a spell or something! So I shot him in self-defence..." Power has
drawbacks. And a fire hose works quite well on a fire elemental. So does the
sprinkler system, which often goes off automatically.
> the complexity and subtlety of
> character is not built into them <samurai> from the beginning and they more
> dependent on complex implant/prosthetic technology than any of the other
> classes.
> Without being written by writers with the talent of a Willaim Gibson, it is
> very possible to see Street Samurai as enhanced football players; the sort of
> thing that makes people turn to the next page in the manual when starting up
> new characters. It is much easier to devolope interesting and powerful
> characters using the other character classes and it might just be more fun.
I don't know - most of the really interesting characters I've met have been
mundanes or adepts. Samurai with rounded backgrounds and credible histories
are more vulnerable, therefore more challenging to play. When I've played
mages, I found myself reacting purely in magical terms to most things -
use spell X, use spell Y. It's more interesting IMHO to role-play an
interrogation than it is to use a mindprobe spell. It's more interesting to
jury-rig the burglar alarm to warn of approaching security than say "post
a watcher spirit". Trying to spot who's casting spells without getting killed,
and then taking them out, is a real challenge: peeking in astral makes
it too easy.
--
When you have shot and killed a man, you have defined your attitude towards
him. You have offered a definite answer to a definite problem. For better or
for worse, you have acted decisively.
In fact, the next move is up to him.
Paul J. Adam paul@********.demon.co.uk
