How come V so powerful ?

[Uboa]

If John whick himself can't defead Adam Smasher . David with years of experience and top of the line Arasaka exo sekeleton can't defeat him . Then there is no reason a dying man with a montage of doing street level stuffs and some cyberware he picked up from the local ripper docs have any real chance to defeat Adam Smasher .

[Mander]

Mainly for 3 reasons:
1) V (no matter the background) was since the beginning on the fast lane to become a very competent (and very scary) asset for their employers/fixers. The relic (and the desire to be free from it) simply accelerated exponentially V’s growth. As others have already pointed out, V has a background very few others can match among the budding edgerunners, regardless of life path. This is especially true regarding combat background: all 3 life paths have a flavour of direct combat exposure in military situations (above the “paltry” gang warfare of Night City).
All 3 lifepaths have also given to V a perspective beyond Night City (Atlanta timeskip for streetkid V, Mexican operations for corpo V, and Nomad V has probably travelled all of the Arizona), meaning not only every V has streetsmart, but they all are also streetwise, so strategy + tactics applied to the ability to see outside some boxes and critical thinking about the bigger picture.
If wisdom were a stat in the tabletop game, V would have it… some of it.
2) A ripperdoc they can trust and a damn good one. How Martinez would have fared with Vik as his ripperdoc?
Vik, for all his old fart, simple dream countenance is a damn maestro in weaving together chrome and flesh. It means that V has a lot less problems integrating whatever ♥♥♥♥ they want to themselves. Not only works, but it works swimmingly, which in turn, amplify their very good base talents to living legend status.
It also helps (after 2.0), that V has some personal wisdom regarding chrome, capping themselves with how much they install. They skirt cyber psychosis, sure, but they remain in control. And they function the best for it, even with the Relic slowly killing them.
3) Motivation and a very strong desire to live.
By the time V reaches the end of the story, victory or death has become their mantra. Adam Smasher, for all his bluster and track record, is fighting a murder blender with a lot to lose. And playing on harder difficulties, they are evenly matched.
But again, they are because they earned the strength they flaunt. Not because they are special, but because, by deeds and endeavour, they stand on top in the end.

4) This is more a personal observation than the others, so I’m splitting it from the above. Reason why, it is tied to the tabletop lore and background. If you don’t want to blow your mind, stop here.


The Johnny Silverhand we have in our head, is not the real Johnny Silverhand. It is, most certainly, an AI construct built by Arasaka, based on the original memories uploaded by Spider Murphy on the Arasaka servers after Adam Smasher sawed Johnny in 2 during the Arasaka raid. Everything past the nuke activation is for certain false memories created for the construct.
Arasaka created such construct, probably, to have an AI seed to counter Alt when/if the mother of the Black Wall were to come knocking on the Arasaka’s servers.
This makes V an augmented Solo with scary experience and a plethora of last gen cyberware installed AND with a functioning AI tied to them, working in tandem. Which was one of the aims of the Cynosure project, the Militech counter to the Soulkiller program, among other things.
So yeah, there is also this: Adam Smasher has his dragoon acpa, but V has 2 AIs helping them, with Alt shielding them from Arasaka netrunners, and Johnny AI supporting the fighting in the background.

[EricHVela]

In the videogame, Smasher like to play with the odds in his favor, either one-on-one or with a lot of backup.

In the Smasher fight in my game, Smasher is up against a lot of turrets in V's favor. This changes the playing field from what Smasher usually wants, and he probably can't handle it as well as he could with his focus divided so much.

My Vs are not more powerful, just more resourceful. A Cyberpsycho(?) like Smasher has a bulldozer mentality which is a weakness against an opponent thinking clearly who's not allowed to be afraid of him. (Most people probably lose their minds when facing Smasher thanks to all the tales spun about him.)

[valium]

Even within the in-universe lore, V has a good shot at taking on Smasher. V is a cornered animal, chromed out of his or her gourd, with a vast array of experience, and an arsenal to rival a small mercenary company.

People like Smasher are always on the verge to being taken out due to hubris. Smasher would absolutely underestimate a cornered animal, and get mauled in the process because he preferred to play with his food. If Smasher opened the exchange with a salvo of ammo, V would stand no chance, but what is the fun in that for Smasher?

[TwinChops]

I like it how the OP says "David with years of experience" lol

[Wingnut Mcmoomoo]

Nar! lähetti viestin:

Actalo lähetti viestin:

Exceptional netrunners can shield others on the same network from scans and hacks - and since T-Bug had complete control over the hotel's security network, she may have been able to mask V and Jackie's signatures.

That is one of the speculations I've read before and it's a pretty good one imho. Still... it's kinda creepy how Adam looks like he's staring right at you when he's standing across the room. lol
I honestly thought he was going to start attacking. I was waiting for it.

Personally i think smasher did see us, but didn't care enough to do anything about it, we weren't his target and pointing us out would cause emergency procedures to happen. Failing his bosses plan.

(he would have had to interupt a very important thing his boss was doing in front of the targets men. him doing anything would have started a full on fire fight possibly failing the job. it was in his interest to just ignore us thinking we were just some randos in a bad place at a bad time doing some job we were too dumb to do)

[Cyber Barbarian]

The entire point of Adam Smasher is however chromed up you are, however invincible you looked in the last raid, any gig can be your last. Why should Smasher himself be the exception?

The exception is Morgan Blackhand. And V is basically Blackhand but instead of survival instincts they have a death wish and an imaginary friend and as much cyberware as a maxtac operator, and probably more cyberpsycho kills than one. Why is it weird that someone like that can kill some clanker that was kicking around since the 2010s?

[crsypu]

Adam who?

[Wingnut Mcmoomoo]

TwinChops lähetti viestin:

I like it how the OP says "David with years of experience" lol

this is a good point lol... david started his career at the age of 17, he ended his career at the age of 17. Edgerunner took place over months at most lol

[Irrelevant]

You can't even buy the cyberware needed to go toe to toe with smasher in CP2077. The game is dumped down a lot and you only have plot armor that helps you. On top of it V isn't even a Samurai but a random pleb with no war/military backround to begin with. It's just an insert from CDPR.

Then again killing Smasher isn't that hard depending what rules you bring to the table. Good old CP2020 and Microwave weapons would diable smasher from head to toe and you can be equaly chromed. Using the abomination CDPR created V has 0 chance and only plot armor.

On the other hand who cares? Games are all about power fantasies. Imagine a realistic CP2077 where you die after taking a bullet in the eraly game :D .

[Vyss A'lare]

If you think about the amount of ♥♥♥♥ V accomplished (In say a 100% run) compared to the amount of time V had to do it in. V must canonically be Altair (Assassin's Creed 1 Never gets hit) levels of good. There's not enough time for V to recover from severe injury so one could theorize most gigs are done without said injuries. Any merc that can effectively drop hundreds(or thousands) of people in a couple months solo must be insanely good.

So perhaps player V is just way worse than canon V?

[Phynrae]

Le sigh..

Well then, go download Wolvenkit, tweak Smasher's stats untill he's the unstoppable murder machine that you think he should be after having watched the animu.


Then let's see how many people would actually want the game's final boss to be literally unbeatable. I'm sure it will be a very popular mod, and that it will get many an upvote and find a permanent home on the trending page.

[Mr_Faorry]

Because V is stronger than those two were.

Johnny might have been a big deal being Arasaka enemy no.1 and Smashers Nemesis but in the end he was weaker than Smasher since he was just a dude with a robot arm. He might have had the skills and experience but he didn't have the tech to hold in a 1v1 fight.

The only thing special about David was his prototype Sande, otherwise he was just some punk kid who lived a sheltered life. And by the time he fought Smasher he was basically full Cyberpsycho so he was anything but sane. He had the tech but not the skills or experience to compete with Smasher.

V is at least as teched up as David but with skills/ experience comparable to Johnny. V is essentially Smasher 2.0 but with more subtle cyberware all being internal rather than external.

[GrandMajora]

Johnny never actually fought Adam in the first place. He's distorting his own memories in order to make himself seem greater than he actually is. The club owner even tells you he had a habit of doing that.

Canonically in tabletop, the roof top mission was Morgan Blackhand, while Johnny's team tried to infiltrate the building from the ground floor and got wiped out in the process.

[GrandMajora]

Mr_Faorry lähetti viestin:

Because V is stronger than those two were.

Johnny might have been a big deal being Arasaka enemy no.1 and Smashers Nemesis but in the end he was weaker than Smasher since he was just a dude with a robot arm. He might have had the skills and experience but he didn't have the tech to hold in a 1v1 fight.

Tell that to Morgan, a man who also is "just a guy with a robot arm," yet is such an undisputed badass, that Adam considers his very existence to be a threat to his ideology of cyborg supremacy.

[Mr_Faorry]

GrandMajora lähetti viestin:

Johnny never actually fought Adam in the first place. He's distorting his own memories in order to make himself seem greater than he actually is. The club owner even tells you he had a habit of doing that.

Canonically in tabletop, the roof top mission was Morgan Blackhand, while Johnny's team tried to infiltrate the building from the ground floor and got wiped out in the process.

CDPR said that the game was in an parallel timeline to the TTRPG so that they could do their own thing. So what's in the TT isn't really relevant as they're two separate canons.

I know there's a popular fan theory that tries to marry the two timelines together by saying Johnny's memories are fake, but aside from the TT itself nothing contradicts them and several things support what you see like how Rogue will directly reference having dropped Johnny from the AV during her ending something which only happened in the games timeline. Like literally everyone in the game talks about how Johnny was responsible for the attack and the only mention Morgan gets at all is a quick namedrop from Jackie saying nobody knows if he's alive or dead right at the start of the game.