![]() Brutes are typically better than soldiers. For enemies, use lots of artillery, lots of ranged minions, and relatively light amounts of melee oriented enemies. I didn't try it, but mods that reduce monster hp and increase damage would also likely work well. That makes combat faster and deadlier, which again, fits the feel that you're going for. That means you want a lot of strikers, some controllers (who can be either magical or martial in feel, whatever class they are in mechanical terms), and few defenders or leaders. In Shadowrun, healing is generally scarcer, and ranged combat predominates. Party role mix (and monster mix) is also different. Similarly, I encouraged the players to narrate their actions as often as possible-the goal is to get the imagination focused on "I fire my Predator heavy pistol twice" instead of "I use my Twin Strike at will power, ho hum, still just D&D." When you reskin that to "I activate my tracking computer and designate that Renraku corp security guard as my target," it feels like Shadowrun. The Hunter's Quarry power is actually perfectly reasonable as-is, but every time they say "I make them my quarry" they feel like they're playing a ranger in the dungeon somewhere. The players always can see the D&D underpinnings of the character, so you always want them to have ways of thinking about it that keep them immersed in the Shadowrun feeling. I've attached the mechanical parts of the characters, so anyone who's curious can check them out. Neck items were sorta the hardest, since the PCs need them to make the math work, but they don't have a clear analog-so those tended to become bioware, except on magic characters, where they became foci and minor magic items. A magic bow that gets a bonus on missed attacks? That becomes a rifle with a Smartgun link and Ares AutoAimCorrect. I then filled them out with feats and D&D equipment, and then I reskinned that equipment so that it fit the Shadowrun feel. In each case, as I picked powers, I always asked myself, "how can I reskin this power so it fits the concept?" If I couldn't, or if it was a stretch, I just picked a different power. A more complicated example was the idea of a heavy weapons specialist-I built that character as an invoker. I built that character as a bow ranger, renaming and redescribing powers along the way. So, the first character was a street samurai, a standard rifle-wielding, chromed up combatant. My method was to start with a Shadowrun concept, then identify a class that I thought could represent it well, and then build a character to fit the concept. ![]() The only major difference is that I increased most ranges-in particular, I would give an assault rifle (mechanically a longbow) a range like 20/200, meaning that with a range penalty they can shoot anything on the map. I renamed powers, changed descriptions, and listed feats as being based on "cyberware." From a mechanical standpoint, the characters were (almost) exactly equivalent to standard D&D 4E characters. So instead, I used the D&D 4e rules, but I "reskinned" everything to give it a Shadowrun flavor. I started off with an idea for a Shadowrun game that I thought would be fun to run, but when I started looking at the rules, I decided that it was just way too complicated to get up to speed. I thought other people might be interested in hearing about it. ![]() The game was a great success, I think, both as a game and at getting the Shadowrun feel through the D&D rules. I ran a game set in the Shadowrun setting but using D&D 4E rules at my favorite convention ( Anonåon) last weekend.
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