Shadowrun Shadowrun Returns - Dead Man's Switch Original Campaign

[aris]

Man, having tested a shitloads of builds, I'm pretty sure that there is absolutely nothing that can come close to being as powerful as this one:

Race: orc
class: none
body: 10
quickness: 9
ranged combat: 9
shotgun or rifle: 9
dodge: 9
the rest: 1

S-drones are nice, but they have a much much lower accuracy than a guy with ranged combat 9, which makes them miss much more often. This guy is also a power-tank, able to dodge most of the time, and with shit ton of HP. Furthermore, with shotgun, you can stun-lock a group of mobs with kneecap shot, or you can one shot almost all enemies with the full-automatic ability, as even with the 10% penalty, I still got a 99% hit chance on most enemies.

 

[FuelBlooded]

10 body?! At least invest something in Charm for 1-2 etiquettes.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Meh.

Pick elf instead, dump like half of the body and transfer it even further into quickness and ranged.

 

[aris]

It's a powerbuild build. The sad thing is that non-combat skills are very limited in this campaign. I have realized that you almost never use them for anything useful, and you can never talk or sneak your way out of battle.

Meh.





Pick elf instead, dump like half of the body and transfer it even further into quickness and ranged.

Good idea.

 

[Trash]

Huh, that's almost a complete copy of my build. Apart from me putting points in charisma because I like conversation choices. SS are deadly as hell in the setting, mages are deadly when they get stronger spells, shaman can call up deadly stuff and riggers have all sorts of tech shit to wreak havoc with. Deckers are powerfull and needed to get by security and basically get stuff out of computers. They all have their niches.

The game doesn't do riggers and deckers justice as their strengths aren't needed that much in the campaign or their possibilities are artificially limited. Mods like the 'late night call from your fixer' however show that can chance. Can't even start the module properly if you haven't got a decent decker on your team and the first time I tried messing with a mechanical lock without letting my rigger do it I raised all the alarms. Now that's the kind of stuff I want in my shadowrun.

 

[aris]

It's a powerbuild build. The sad thing is that non-combat skills are very limited in this campaign. I have realized that you almost never use them for anything useful, and you can never talk or sneak your way out of battle.

Meh.





Pick elf instead, dump like half of the body and transfer it even further into quickness and ranged.

Good idea.

Tried it, body 5, quickness ranged combat and dodge 11. Definitely much worse, on the scenario I tested. Having 11 in dodge doesn't make up for losing 5 points in body, not by a long shot.

 

[FuelBlooded]

You get hit by magic in endgame much more often so it's obvious body is more useful than dodge.

 

[aris]

I'm pretty sure dodge also counts towards dodging magical attacks, unless it's an AOE.

 

[aris]

I refuse to believe that they couldn't implement a save anywhere feature with no effort at all. It was more a design desicion.

I don't know why they would lie about something that makes them look dumb.

I wouldn't mind the save system they have now. It prevents save scumming, which is incline in my book. But they should have put more frequent check points.

 

[crawlkill]

The funny thing is that there is actually a 'holster weapon' button on the UI. I suspect this game was supposed to be much more ambitious initially, but they had to massively cut corners eventually.

Yeah, remember the alpha demo. There was that guard you could talk to in the Ares run if you approached him with weapons holstered.

Was anyone else hugely disappointed when this was totally ignored? I actually solo'd that mission, but it would've been a lot easier if I could've done it with Charisma checks instead of by exploiting overwatch and line of sight.

 

[Western]

I've made a human shotgun shaman for my second playthrough, took the +15% to hit totem, a few points in Decker as well. Working well so far, the hit totem is pretty handy, not sure whether or not to invest in conjuring but I probably will, don't think there's a real need to take the shotgun above 5 with this build.

 

[Delterius]

I refuse to believe that they couldn't implement a save anywhere feature with no effort at all. It was more a design desicion.

I don't know why they would lie about something that makes them look dumb.

Don't they look more dumb for being unable to implement a save feature, instead of it being a design decision?

 

[Burning Bridges]

Well, the game was supposed to be a tablet-release at first, right? I could imagine this system works better for tablets than the usual "save-whenever-you-want"-system does. But I'm just speculating.

Saves are dug a bit deep in Documents and Settings. See below what is actually the fruits of your progress . Admittedly that was still very early in the game.

Spoiler

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102”

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...

How primitive . Needs to be redone from scratch if you ask me, if they ever want to do more than store a few variables that initialize the next mission. They could have gone with a small ini file that would be at least editable, so you could skip some parts of the game.

 

[Excidium]

Save system designed by Prosper

 

[Bobbles]

Tip: Don't combine rigger and decker. Decker has to be the most useless class in this campaign. He has only a single worthwhile skill outside combat, which is admittedly pretty good, but has a too low hit rate and the possibilities to have him in the matrix or use his out of combat skills are extremely limited. Even in the long ass matrix mission, you can only have a single decker inside at the time, which is a fucking disgrace.

Furthermore, when you are in the matrix, you lose control over your drones. I should have understood this, but I didn't before it is was too late. So again, never invest points in both rigging and decking, even though it seems tempting.

I beat the game on very hard with an almost pure int character with 4 body who only put a few points into body, rifles and dodging when he had maxed out the rigging skills (no need to max out decking). Once you get past that early jewel theft mission, it's smooth sailing. If not for this thread, I'd have thought I was playing an overpowered class.

You're also ignoring the fact that the decker's "single worthwhile skill" has great synergy with drones and works well with the fact that you'll only have 1 AP for the majority of the game. Going deep into weapon skills as a rigger seems like a waste imho.

 

[imweasel]

I finished the game myself. It is definitely rather light on the RPG elements and is extremely linear, but I did still enjoy it. The music is also awesome, especially for those who loved the SNES game.:D

The Alpha gameplay level was a lot simpler. Pretty much just run in and kill everything, no button to let the Basilisks out or anything.

o_O

The level from the alpha gameplay video is in the game. It also plays almost exactly the same except for one or two minor details.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

The funny thing is that there is actually a 'holster weapon' button on the UI. I suspect this game was supposed to be much more ambitious initially, but they had to massively cut corners eventually.

Yeah, remember the alpha demo. There was that guard you could talk to in the Ares run if you approached him with weapons holstered.

Dude! I remembered that and spent a good five minutes trying to get that result before I realized: goddammit, budget AGAIN?

 

[Monkeyfinger]

I'm pretty sure dodge also counts towards dodging magical attacks, unless it's an AOE.

According to the stat tooltips willpower is what lets you dodge magic and dodge only works on physical attacks.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Stat tooltips are bullshit though. Doesn't even mention that STR directly impacts melee damage.

 

[Wulfstand]

I love how Dodger is described as talking 'as if he were from a Charles Dickens novel', but you don't get to hear him say jack shit, at least during that one mission where he was necessary.

The game's pretty solid, can't wait for some serious mods/dlc to come out.

 

[Minttunator]

Yeah, I didn't see Dodger say a single word either. :D

 

[Wulfstand]

It actually got my hopes up for an actually interesting character. Come to think of it, there's barely any party banter in the campaign, I'd love to see that drastically changed in the Berlin/player-made campaigns.

 

[aris]

I'm pretty sure dodge also counts towards dodging magical attacks, unless it's an AOE.

According to the stat tooltips willpower is what lets you dodge magic and dodge only works on physical attacks.

I did a test with this using the module "make a high level character and test it".

First I made one with willpower 11 and doge 1. I let a mage hit me 15 with a directed spell, that I do not think was powerbolt, as the effect was akin to flamethrower he also made an invocation before throwing it, but then again he threw it every round, so either the computer cheats or he was throwing another spell, or possibly not a spell at all. Thus I'm not 100% sure about this, but the results were as follow:

With willpower 11 and dodge 1, I only dodged a single one of the 15 attacks.

with willpower 1 and dodge 9, I dodged 13 out of 15.

Now this could be a coincidence, the chances of getting hit probabilistic, but by the same token; The chances of this being a coincidence is extremely low, probably beneath 5%. But again, I'm not 100% sure that the attack counts as a spell, or as a physical attack, as the powerbolt that the mage has, seemingly does.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

So I'm playing a troll adept/mage, figuring his sheer trolly bulk will make up for not being able to use much cyberware. Haven't decided between unarmed or melee weapons yet. Is Throwing worth it? If so, are there other kinds of throwing weapons, or just grenades?

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

Only grenades and no it's not worth it. Cyberware is also pretty shit in general