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Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 1 2013, 10:02 PM

So, a new http://www.shadowruntabletop.com/2013/02/sr5-dev-blog-where-do-dice-come-from/ just got posted. I'll let you read it for yourself, but the gist of it is: gone are the days where gear could outshine skill, when it comes to building DPs.

Point by point:

Skill ratings will be 1-12 (again) ... but costs are not coming down. The upper echelons of skill ratings will be rewards for development and progression (and survival).

Matrix actions are going to be Skill + Attribute ... though they did not specify which attribute(s).

Weapons are being given a new statistic, "accuracy", that will limit how many hits can be counted when using them ... it seems likely that thins like Laser Sights and Smartlinks will become Accuracy modifiers. It also seems logical to infor that one's programs, and/or commlink stats, will work like "accuracy" for matrix actions. A direct comparison was made to how the hits you can count for spellcasting are directly limited by the Force you cast the spell at.

Limits and Edge interact in some unspecified way (detailed in the next article, yet to be published ... *shrug* ... lots of room for speculation, here.

Posted by: Bull Feb 1 2013, 10:05 PM

This should be an interesting topic of conversation.

I'll be hiding in my fallout shelter if anyone needs me.

Posted by: Darksong Feb 1 2013, 10:10 PM

I guess no hope for the return of combat pool and the like. Too bad.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 1 2013, 10:14 PM

Well, as I said on FB ... I'll have to see how its actually laid out before I have a final opinion.

But having a few more minutes to think about it, I will add that I am "guardedly optimistic". It's not a bad idea, really; I just wonder how it was implemented.

Certainly, Accuracy (and shifting many bits of gear to affect that, instead of DPs directly) have the potential to make it harder for huge power imbalances between characters. I mean, DP of 12 or DP of 20, if both have an accuracy of 5 ... then the huge-DP character may consistently hit that accuracy limit, but even their best, won't be better than the low-DP character's best. I see the huge starting DP being more resistant to negative circumstance modifiers, more than anything else. And that, IMO, would be a good thing.

So, like I said ... "guardedly optimistic". The concept at least has some good possibilities going for it.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 1 2013, 10:15 PM

Really, all those pools (and the Karma Pool, ofc) got rolled into the Edge statistic.

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 1 2013, 10:16 PM

Intriguing, kinda love it...
I wonder if they will extend the accuracy concept to other tests and make the hits represent respectively.
Example on top of my head.
Let's say we apply the system to jumping the unaugmented limit for jumping is 5 hits modified by the speed of your metatype.
So for a troll it would be 6 and a dwarf 4, similarly affected with someone who had kid stealth legs or was a satyr.
Each hit gives you 2 meters per hit, so a human scoring 5 hits would be at world record lengths.

If you were to say get an adept power or hydraulic jacks, each point would increase the hit limit by one, so someone with jacks 6 would have truly super human jumping capacity.

Posted by: Darksong Feb 1 2013, 10:17 PM

edge stat and the opposed combat test, yeah

Posted by: UmaroVI Feb 1 2013, 10:21 PM

Yeah, this is not an inherently bad idea - it's going to come down to execution, editing, and playtesting.

Posted by: Glyph Feb 1 2013, 10:26 PM

I don't want to read too much into a few hints, but it looks like they are addressing a few of the core issues with SR4 dice pools.

Having a higher cap for skills will make skills a more important component in dice pools, and it will put a halt to characters who are able to reach the skill caps at character creation. On the fluff side, it should ameliorate the hyperbole of the skill descriptions, where differences of a point (one third of a success on average) were presented as being far more meaningful than they were in actual play.

I don't have enough information to judge the "accuracy" mechanic, but it seems like an elegant way to cut down on the dice pool bloat from modifiers, while still ensuring that augmentations and tech mean something in a fight (important!).

They are keeping the Attribute + skill dice pool mechanic and a fixed target number. It is just the skills will be a more significant component of those dice pools, and modifiers will be less significant (only letting you uncap your hits, rather than adding dice). Could be good or bad. Like UmaroVI said, it comes down to how they will implement it.

Posted by: Bull Feb 1 2013, 10:30 PM

He's actually referring to the SR1-3 Pool mechanic, which was significantly different from SR4's.

Posted by: Darksong Feb 1 2013, 10:30 PM

right, I'm talking about pre-fourth edition, where attributes weren't an inherent part of your starting dice pools, but instead gave you access to ______ pools that could be used to enhance your rolls (either offensively or defensively, depending on your strategic decision)

for me, that was always something iconic about SR that I was sort of hoping might return

this just seems further away (although mechanically I think I like the idea of it)

Posted by: thorya Feb 1 2013, 10:35 PM

I will second the cautiously optimistic opinion. I like not having ballooning dice pools. I like skills mattering more. And I like equipment effecting rolls differently than skills and attributes. But we'll see how it's implemented.

Posted by: Umidori Feb 1 2013, 10:44 PM

Accuracy is a cool concept that makes sense, that already has an equivalent mechanic in magic, and that appears elegant and manageable.

Very eager to see more specifics.

~Umi

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 1 2013, 11:06 PM

Quite. Not something I'd have come up with on my own, but I can totally see it.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 1 2013, 11:10 PM

And here Bull thought he needed to hunker down in a bomb shelter ... ha!

Posted by: NightRain Feb 1 2013, 11:14 PM

You can call me cautiously dubious about limits. Whilst I don't mind the idea of hard upper limits on successes for magic or the matrix, I'm concerned that it might end up being frustrating for everything else.

It should always be possible in theory for someone with a pistol to take down a troll in one hit. I don't mind whether they have to call shots, spend edge and roll well to achieve such a result, but I'll be unhappy if it's simply outright impossible. The reason I'm concerned about such a possibility is because if the "average" limit enforced by accuracy is low enough to be a point of differentiation between characters, then it's likely to make single shot troll dropping a literal impossibility. And if the "average" accuracy limit is high enough to allow for skilled shooters to drop a troll in the right circumstances, then the limits are unlikely to be relevant for the most part.

That being said, having only seen a tiny window in to the future, I'm not going to get too worried at this point. I'll see how it plays out...

Posted by: Umidori Feb 1 2013, 11:27 PM

Well I imagine there are going to be high power / low accuracy weapons for things like dropping a troll. Something like a Warhawk on steroids, dealing out Massive Damage™, but relying practically on chance to actually HIT anything with it. If you DO hit, that Troll goes down. The only problem is actually managing to hit the troll in the first place.

And to be honest, a Troll SHOULD be hard to drop. They're friggen TROLLS. To take one down in a single hit you either need to connect with a very precise and skilled shot, or a very lucky but monstrously overpowering shot.

The more I think about what Accuracy is going to mean for the game, the happier I get. Sniping with actual Sniper Rifles is likely going to be superior to sniping with Assault Cannons (which currently are just as concealable as sniper rifles, and can easily be silenced and modded for semi-auto fire). There's probably going to be meaningful variation between similar weapons of the same basic category. Shotguns might even get reworked, and people might actually use them! (They're actually pretty decent currently, but for some reason highly unpopular and viewed as terrible.)

~Umi

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 1 2013, 11:36 PM

Based on the article, there will be a clear interaction between Edge and Accuracy (and other limits). One can also posit that a Called Shot's direct boost to DV, may not be affected by Accuracy. Or may even serve to increase accuracy.


In 3E, I had a troll whose entire raison d'etre was "stop bullets and say they tickle".

First combat scene, he took a full, long burst from a Stoner-Ares GPMG firing APDS rounds - with a LOT of successes (the player apologised to me for the lucky roll). My troll's soak roll, which was a shade below average, combined with a trauma damper, converted the entire hit to 1 point of Stun damage. He looked up at the shooter, and said "Right; you and me, we gotta have words. I'll be right up." (That was a fun night - my introduction started off being misperceived as an enemy by the party, but ended up being counted as a very useful asset ... "unobtanium bullet sponge" was the term they used, I believe.)

Pistol, shotgun, even a rifle? Don't make me laugh. nd no, he wasn't wearing milspec armor, either. But he had 19 dice for soak (this is SR3 rules, mind), and I think 10 or 12 Ballistic armor, gelpacked to boot. In SR3 terms, he'd have a 15 body, and armor / DP modifiers to bring his soak pool into the 45-50 range. And I don't care HOW good you are, if you're not sniping with a frelling Tank cannon (or a Thor shot), you are not dropping that kind of character in one shot.

... just to put some perspective on that. (Also: now I know what character to build for fun, next!!)


Right tool for the right job. I'm pretty sure a Light Pistol is going to have a lower accuracy in general, than a sniper rifle.

Posted by: Sengir Feb 1 2013, 11:40 PM

• Higher skill limits: All for it, provided hitting the cap at chargen is (near) impossible. It makes attributes less important, gives characters room to improve, and also allows for better fluff associated with skill levels
• Accuracy stat: I can understand the reasoning, a crack shot still needs a decent rifle. But it's yet another stat added to weapons, and breaks up the beautiful simplicity of "skill + attribute +- modifiers". Besides, crack shots with prehistoric rifles are certainly not such a widespread problem that it warrants a whole new mechanic.
• Attributes in the matrix: Many wanted it, I'm still not one of them. If metasploit has not been updated in a year you can't hack, and even the best reflexes will help you if [random FPS] lags badly on your rig.

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 1 2013, 11:43 PM

It's reasonable to think that your programs and rig gonna act as "accuracy" for the matrix Sengir, given how they want all three worlds to have the same type of combat

Posted by: NightRain Feb 1 2013, 11:48 PM

Yes, I agree there. They should be /very/ hard to drop with a pistol. But if you're lucky/skilled/focused enough, it shouldn't be totally impossible.

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 1 2013, 11:48 PM

Skills are Rating 1 to 12 . . again . . since when?

Posted by: NightRain Feb 1 2013, 11:57 PM

I'm not talking about those guys though

I just mean an average troll, not armoured, not particularly skilled. It should be possible to drop him in one shot if you're optimised for it. I'm perfectly happy with the idea of not being able to one shot a troll optimised towards not being able to be one shotted

As I said though, I'm happy to wait and see.

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 2 2013, 12:00 AM

I don't get why an average troll should be more prone to stand up after a shotgun blast then any other bloke. They're flesh and blood afterall not a race of Terminators

Posted by: ChromeZephyr Feb 2 2013, 12:04 AM

I am very intrigued, especially about the Accuracy stat. I can totally see (as an example I'm pulling out of thin air, no foreknowledge at all) an AK-97 having a barely adequate stat whilst an M22A2 has a much higher one, to reflect the differences in how the two weapons are designed. Which, of course, allows for MOAR GEAR PR0N.

Perhaps Edge can be used to push successes over the Accuracy stat, or maybe increase the stat itself for a combat turn? Just spitballing here.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 2 2013, 12:08 AM

I think they meant "Looking at this idea (which was never used) again."

Posted by: Bull Feb 2 2013, 12:08 AM

I'm surprised myself. Though the night is young. But Dumpshock occasionally surprises me.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 2 2013, 12:20 AM

Essentially, since ... SR3, I believe. The effective limit based on attributes - the cap for skills was 1.5x attribute, yes? So 9s for unaugmented himan maximum, 12's if you got to 8 (not unreasonable) ...

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 2 2013, 12:25 AM

@Chromezephyr
Weren't they saying they wanted to de-empathize edge?
Also Kalashnikov's are notoriously durable and reliable, how that reflects in accuracy... Heck if I know

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 2 2013, 12:27 AM

Ah . . no? O.o
The Skill-Limit of Natural X1.5 was introduced in SR4.
In SR3, there was NO skill-Limit at all . .
Skills just got progressively more expensive in terms of Karma in SR3, the further you got them above the attribute for the skill . .
So, skill half as high as Attribute, 1 Karma per Level. Skill up to Attribute, 2 Karma per level. Skill x1.5 as high as Attribute, 3 Karma per Level. skill 2x as high as Attribute, 4 Karma per Level.
Or something along those lines, been ages since i actually had to deal with costs of skill above attribute @.@

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 2 2013, 12:53 AM

Ah, well, I haven't had an SR3 mainbook to check in, for ... six or eight years, minimum.

Posted by: Bull Feb 2 2013, 01:08 AM

There wasn't a limit, though the core book didn't describe skill categories above 8 (8+ was World Class), and due to cost inflation it was incredibly rare to see anyone with a 12 or better (Barring those anomalous multi-thousand karma games out there). It was also a fairly common house rule that skills capped at 10 or 12.

Bull

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 2 2013, 01:12 AM

Well, seeing how people could start with Skill 6 and higher Attribute or with 5/7, skill 10 was very much a possibility . .
But it is a game of diminishing returns, and at skill 12 why would you ever need to go higher?

Posted by: Falconer Feb 2 2013, 01:27 AM

The old shadowrun computer game used to limit skills to 12. (though there was some trick to get a 13 in one type of firearm IIRC... you'd raise the group to the max then do the old school specialization).

SR1 and 2 both didn't limit the skill.

But I'm glad to hear this... it sounds like it'll go a long way towards improving things... Answers a few of the bits we brought up in the thread on the SR4 forums about dice mechanics...


Some speculation & consequences I can see of this...

If the limits on skill modifiers don't change... this could mean they could go up to 12(18) for adepts... giving them a solid boost for the people who chronically complain they're underpowered. Or it could be improved some other way... it'll be interesting to see how...

I like the concept of accuracy... if it follows the same method as magic, then it would allow you to exceed it when you spend edge..

Characters will be far more competitive with spirits for skills. Spirits right now have unlimited skills... and this will help with this.

Armor and hardened armor increases will need to be seriously looked at... especially vehicles and spirits... on one hand you'll no longer to be able to blow through an armored car with a light pistol most likely. But if itnw isn't addressed this will be something to watch for trouble with.


A hope:
I hope they change the skill karma cost down to 1x new rank since ranks are now doubled... and then just by knowledge/language skills two ranks at a time (almost halving their costs). This and dropping the price of groups down should go a long way towards bringing attributes and skills into balance.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 2 2013, 01:32 AM

That's actually a very good point. Will be interesting to see what the Official Version says, there.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 2 2013, 01:51 AM

Rather than "modified damage rating" being ignored, making it "listed DV" being ignored* would go a long way to preventing holdouts from blowing up trucks as well. And make low-value hardened armor (*cough* drakes) actually have meaning.

Alternatively, hardened armor could be treated as "auto-hits" on damage reduction tests.**

*Spirit immunity to normal weapons possibly getting a tweak so that high force spirits don't become neigh invulnerable to everything short of a nuke.

**With spirit immunity being "force" instead of "twice force," which is a house rule used at some tables, IIRC.

Posted by: Falconer Feb 2 2013, 01:55 AM

I wasn't trying to derail the thread... just raise some random thoughts for the powers that be.

Mostly in the mold of... if this is done... what are all the unintended consequences of it?

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 2 2013, 01:55 AM

With the Immunity to Normal Weapons, it should be left as is. A high Force spirit SHOULD be impossible for mundanes to deal with, and they should have to call in magical backup (or flee if they don't have access to any) should they encounter one.

Posted by: Umidori Feb 2 2013, 01:56 AM

Damnit, Draco. Now I'm wondering what the Accuracy of a nuke is gonna be...

~Umi

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 2 2013, 02:07 AM

Infinity (assuming it works, which it may not since the mana stuff seems to make them unreliable).

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 2 2013, 02:07 AM

While yes. No.

Yes, a high enough force spirit should require a magical response.

But.

Players should not be able to summon these at a whim.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 2 2013, 02:14 AM

Accuracy of 1. Autonomous die pool of 1. Pray you don't glitch. ;D

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 2 2013, 02:14 AM

By the time a mage (PC or otherwise) is powerful enough to summon a spirit of Force 10 or higher as easily as breathing*, they deserve to be able to do so.

* This means summoning the spirit with only Stun damage drain and taking no more than 1 or 2 points of that drain.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 2 2013, 02:19 AM

Oh. Sure. I meant more the Force 6 spirits, which under the current rules, pretty much are immune to non-magical damage, until you pull out the cheese that is stick'n'shock.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 2 2013, 02:30 AM

Well, there is one change I thought of that I'd like to see with ITNW, and that is for it to be true Immunity, as in if it isn't a Weapon Focus, spell or Adept's punch with Killing Hands, the spirit can not be harmed by it at all. Period. Full stop.

And, again, I'm saying this as someone who plays mundanes more than Awakened, and as such would not be able to affect spirits with my characters.

Posted by: Falconer Feb 2 2013, 02:49 AM

This thread is about dice mechanical changes... not about the merits of anyone's particular views on how hardened should be. That's why I said i wasn't trying to hijack the thread...

Merely point out what may or may not be the law of unintended consequence.

Posted by: tasti man LH Feb 2 2013, 03:17 AM

Hmm, lesee...

-Skill cap rais- MOTHER OF GAIA YES, PLEASE!!!!!! Yer darn skippy that skills should matter more when it comes to DPs! I'm all for this one.

-The Accuracy thing for gear is an interesting idea...but I'm hoping for a little bit more on in. Because otherwise, there's a lot that it could go wrong.

For one, I do think that the Skill of your weapon should factor heavily if you make or break. Since, y'know, a Pistol will typically have a much shorter range in comparison to a Sniper Rifle.

So if you've got a guy who's main thing is dual-wielding two Colt Manhunters and has trained years and years with the thing, versus Joe Schmo, who's never fired a slingshot in his life, much less a rifle, just picks up a shiny new Ares Alpha off the street, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense if Joe Schmo has a much better chance to hit his target just because he has an overall better gun in comparison to the pistols our gunslinger has.

...of course, it could be that we're just missing a couple of bits of information and that Accuracy modifiers are a thing, but we'll see.

Putting a hard limit on rolls are fine, but idea still needs some fleshing out to do.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 2 2013, 03:30 AM

Let's presuppose an Accuracy of 4 for Heavy Pistols, and 6 for Shotguns.

So hypothetically, Gunslinger Bob has Agility 5, and Pistols 7, specialised in Manhunters for +2. That gives him a DP of 14. Now, since he knows what guns he's going to be wielding, they're both Smartlinked, for +2 accuracy - a 6 total. He can count up to 6 hits, out of that DP of 14. Even if he splits that, to 7 dice per gun ... and even if dual-wielding has a -2 penalty to accuracy (an excessively harsh setup IMO), he's still going to be getting 2.33 hits per gun, firing 4 shots per combat turn. Or 4.66, capped at 4, if he alternates between pistols and gets only 2 shots per combat turn.

Meanwhile, Joe Random picks up a shotgun; he's got Agility 4, and - hey, he's a big Cabela Hunting/FPS junky, so he actually has Longarms 2; his DP is 6. Not bad for someone who's never shot a gun outside a video game in his life. And, ";ucky" him, his gun is loaded with FL ammunition, with a wide-open choke, for +2 accuracy. But he still only has a DP of 6, so an 8 accuracy is pretty worthless for him: he's going to get 2 successes on average, and accuracy doesn't mean bupkis to him.

And in the end? Bob's putting either 4-hit shots into people twice a turn, OR, he's putting four 2-hit shots into people per turn. Meanwhile, Joe gets two 2-hit shots per turn.

Either Bob has more successes per shot, OR, he has twice as many shots. No matter how you look at it, Bob's got the clear advantage.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 2 2013, 03:30 AM

That "Joe Schmo" won't have the dice pool to get the hits necessary to fully utilize that Ares Alpha.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 2 2013, 03:47 AM

Yeah, that's pretty much what I just said. I even gave Joe Schmoe the benefit (IMO unearned) of 2 ranks of skill with the gun, and an above-average Agility to boot. He probably seriously pwns at Miracle Shooter ... ;D

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 2 2013, 03:49 AM

This forum doesn't warn a body when someone posted while you were reading and typing a response :/

Posted by: Dolanar Feb 2 2013, 03:54 AM

basically the concept seems more or less "No matter how good a shot you are, the gear you use still has its physical limits"

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 2 2013, 04:16 AM

I wasn't being unfriendly, just ... agreeing. And we both know how unfamiliar THAT is. ;D

Posted by: Cain Feb 2 2013, 04:21 AM

My problem with Accuracy is more on rather or not it'll slow down combat. It's adding yet another stat you have to track. If average Accuracy is high enough that it's ignorable, there's no benefit. If it's low enough to balance the game, it becomes one more thing you need to check each time.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 2 2013, 04:24 AM

Yeah...I know. Was just saying that I didn't see that post until after mine was up.

Posted by: Umidori Feb 2 2013, 04:28 AM

Do you find comparing Spell Force against net hits to slow combat down substantially? Because they're pretty much the same.

~Umi

Posted by: Cain Feb 2 2013, 05:06 AM

Spells are slower to resolve, yes. And magic generally has a smaller dice pool than shooting, so it's less of a factor.

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 2 2013, 05:09 AM

It's less likely that Accuracy as a limiting stat will actually balance anything, and much more likely that there will be a couple weapons that emerge as 'best.' It works for Magic since there's a Stunbolt spell and only one Stunbolt spell -- you don't get to shop around. But it won't take long for people to figure the likely number of hits they'll get and simply optimize accordingly.

Now a more robust system, where Accuracy is a factor (and gear can modify accuracy up or down, for example silencers and gas-vent systems should lower accuracy) and Recoil varies from weapon to weapon (Light Pistol = light Recoil, etc), and Accuracy and Recoil could be affected by ammo type (those SnS rounds probably aren't super aerodynamic), could probably work to actually balance things out. But it'd also probably be a drag on combat.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 2 2013, 05:21 AM

Yes and no.

In real life, especially-accurate guns tend to also have a lower rate of fire, and/or, smaller ammunition capacity. So that will be an internal balancing element on guns, as well: bigger capacity, faster-fire guns will be lower accuracy than a comparably-priced weapon from teh same general class.

Or ... let's put it this way: Heavy Pistols. Browning Ultra-power (300¥; 5P, AP -1; 10c) versus Colt M1991 (300¥; 5P, AP -1; 7c). Give the Cold a +1 accuracy over the Browning, and it's slightly better, but not inarguably so. Meanwhile, the Colt Manhunter (300¥' 5P, AP -1; 14c) probably warrants a -1 accuracy ... offset by the build-in laser sight, but then, a smartlink would only be worth a net +1.

See what I mean?

Posted by: Umidori Feb 2 2013, 05:58 AM

But then, with that example, if instead you've got 3 less dice to roll than is optimal (and thus cancel out the extra net-hit that the Accuracy affords you), then the Ultra-Power goes back to being the better pick.

And that's precisely what I like about the idea of Accuracy. Currently, weapons are very static. For two weapons with identical damage and armor penetration, you take the one with more ammunition, or the one with more beneficial mods built in standard. But with different accuracies, suddenly what is the optimal weapon for one character becomes suboptimal for another, because of their differences in skill. Instead of everyone who uses a Heavy Pistol having very little reason to run around with anything other than an Ares Predator, now you've got everyone with pistols skill X using the Predator while everyone with pistols skill Y is using the Ruger Super Warhawk and everyone with pistols skill Z is using the Colt Government 2066, et cetera.

Does it entirely do away with optimal weapons? No, it doesn't. But it definitely diversifies them. There is now no one single optimal choice for everyone, but rather different optimal choices for different people. In my book, that's a big step up.

~Umi

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 2 2013, 06:10 AM

Indeed.

If done right, this new mechanic has a lot of possibilities to it. I can't wait to learn more about it.

Posted by: Dolanar Feb 2 2013, 06:45 AM

I think in the long run it could bring some weapons some more "flavor" how about taking a heavier weapon that has a "flaw" in it lowering accuracy if you have a smaller overall pool. Also the excess gear will not add extra pool anymore it seems, as has been mentioned, things like Smartlink & Laser Sights will likely modify the Accuracy of a weapon & will keep pools at Att+Skill,

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 2 2013, 06:54 AM

Some gear will probably still add dice - a TacNet, for example, which has the benefit of helping out everyone on the team, not just one guy.

Posted by: NeoJudas Feb 2 2013, 07:26 AM

I have to,admit, from what I have seen, Accuracy seems like an amalgam of two other pre-existing rules. Signature first of all. Second is Armor Penetration. Signature changes the die pool of the skill test. Armor Penetration changes the armor modifier of the intended target. That's how I see this Accuracy thing going. At that point adept centering or aiming do the same things and require no new rules. And thus Accuracy becomes a quality of a weapon. EOD.

And as one of those 20+ year 'runners whose games regularly crack the karmic stratosphere, skill caps are nice to a point, but do not resolve the long term issues of game balance. Same with any kind of "caps". Attribute caps become one of the things players work the hardest at breaking/maxing out because the damage resistance tests are heavily based here. Who cares if you can hit the other guy with your gun/spell/fist ... If you can't take what you are going to dish out, then stay in your own sandboxes.

The mechanics would be far easier to flex out and adapt to if they were simply allowed to do so. When SR4 was released, it was obvious that the game designers-in-power didn't desire anything above "street level". That was the problem. Gamers want escapist release. And when the game mechanics were created with inherent inflexibility, the first real problems and imbalances were easy to make out.

There have been and remain to this day two principle areas where the rules break. Barriers and Vehicle Integration. Within the realm of barriers can be found the hardened, vehicular, structural armor issues. And vehicle integration ... Well as long the adrenaline pumping action of vehicle chases and combat exist, then there's the focus to look upon.

Posted by: NeoJudas Feb 2 2013, 07:33 AM

In your games perhaps yes. But not in our ours. Action resolution usually falls to how well players and referees comprehend what adds and what doesn't. And by limiting the spell effect by the spell force in hits, we get some incredible limitations at the higher ends. And with spell force influencing area effect as well, effect resolution is actually easier than say grenades and or explosives which have a more flexible potential.

Posted by: phlapjack77 Feb 2 2013, 07:36 AM

As long as Accuracy doesn't have the problems that other ideas for hit caps have. If a pistol is Accuracy 6, that's hardly a limiting factor for 99.9% of characters. So Accuracy 6 should be the pinnacle of accurate weapons, fairly rare...or something like this...(math is hard)

Posted by: NeoJudas Feb 2 2013, 07:38 AM

Problem with Tacnet rules is that it still uses the one channel per sense bs. Multi send and quantum interfaces what they are now in shadowrun and this exists??? Want to fix a Tacnet mechanic, get rid of that multichannel crap. Information overload is going to fall into the realm of the user more than the devices in that age. And since when does a Tacnet have it's ability to project and advise requiring multiple points??? That's what things like human eyes and ears do now, and they are in pairs "stereo". Sure, more people mean more points of reference, but that still doesn't mean a tactical computer shouldn't give help to even a single user acting alone.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 2 2013, 08:01 AM

That's an entirely separate issue, and can be fixed in ways that have zero bearing on the DP mechanics.

Posted by: thorya Feb 2 2013, 08:34 AM

Okay, so to open another box of worms. How do you think accuracy interacts with burst fire and auto fire?

I could see it increasing accuracy on wide bursts, because you're spraying a bigger area, so the accuracy of individual shots don't matter. Then it becomes possible to hit even a very evasive target with an otherwise inaccurate weapon.

And decreasing accuracy on a narrow burst, you're increasing damage by focusing your fire but the holding on target gets harder.

Also unrelated to autofire, I am really hoping that accuracy puts an end to called shots with an assault rifle from more than a football field away and makes sniper rifles worth the money again.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 2 2013, 08:42 AM

I suspect that a narrow burst will work the same as now, a direct DV boost.

Wide Burst may offer the shooter a choice: increase their own accuracy, or, decrease the target's defenses.

Posted by: Sengir Feb 2 2013, 10:29 AM

Which raises another problem: Since "accuracy" is a fairly specific term, the same mechanic will have fifteen different names in fifteen different situations...which is bad design, really.

On the other hand, I've warmed up to the idea of using attribute + skill in the matrix when combined with caps imposed by your equipment. It captures what I said earlier, that crappy hardware limits how much good your reflexes are in a FPS.

Posted by: Dolanar Feb 2 2013, 10:59 AM

the way they explain it in the article invokes the idea of Pistols having lets say a 4 base accuracy that can be modified with attachments etc, heavier pistols maybe up to a 5. Assault Rifles might have a 6 or 7 base accuracy. Shotguns probably around 5-7. Sniper Rifles will probably have an 8-10 these will be the max amount of extra dice they can add to the DC from net hits. Some gear will add to Acc also I imagine Recoil will have some effect on Acc as well. Beyond this...I imagine Distance modifiers will be working for & against Accuracy as well.

Posted by: NightRain Feb 2 2013, 11:55 AM

That exact scenario is why I'm curious to see how they implement this. If, as you say, 6 is a rough peak for accuracy, then it means that 3-4 will be the "typical" for the older/cheaper gear. Which means anyone wielding such a weapon, whatever their skill, is going to be capped to 3/4 successes. Assuming similar damage values to SR4, that's going to be a low lethality game...

Posted by: Sengir Feb 2 2013, 12:30 PM

Having high-end equipment cap players at six hits would be quite harsh

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 2 2013, 01:39 PM

They didn't call it accuracy. We did. The actual blog post referred to the game-term as Limits.

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 2 2013, 01:48 PM

Does that make edge limit breaks?

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 2 2013, 01:53 PM

Yes.

Yes it does.

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 2 2013, 01:56 PM

Actually the system as a whole is refered to as limits, accuracy is the version applied to weapons.

Posted by: Sengir Feb 2 2013, 02:10 PM

Straight from the horse's mouth, also note the capitalization:


Something else...mundanes now have higher limits for their abilities, but still limits. What about Magic and Resonance, will the sky remain the limit?

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 2 2013, 02:16 PM

Go go gadget inaccurate memory powers!

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 2 2013, 02:36 PM

Um ... what?

Magic and Resonance are attributes - the only ones without a static Maximum. If you initiate/submerge often enough, you could have either attribute at 50, 100, 500 ...!

Meanwhile, both Magicians and Technomancers will benefit equally in the increased skill cap. Magic 8, Spellcasting 12? Yayy, you!

Posted by: Sengir Feb 2 2013, 03:23 PM

...which allows awakened and TMs unlimited progression, while mundanes will only be able to broaden their skillset sooner rather than later.

Higher skill limits (hopefully) give everyone some more progression, which is good. But if Magic and Resonance remain uncapped, the problem is only postponed.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 2 2013, 03:28 PM

Not really. I mean, by the time a mundane actually hits the cap, the game would have to be like 500 Karma. Sure the mage still has places he can go, but the game has been going on for so long that it's an anomaly.

Posted by: Sengir Feb 2 2013, 03:36 PM

You either just broke your NDA, or this remains to be seen

And for something different once again, this from the blog comments:

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 2 2013, 03:47 PM

and there was much rejoicing

Posted by: Sengir Feb 2 2013, 03:55 PM

That much was already known from the hidden stories

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 2 2013, 03:57 PM

I don't follow that thread

Posted by: Falconer Feb 2 2013, 04:42 PM

Draco:
There is no point arguing... to some people even if raising magic/resonance is horrendously expensive... just the mere fact they can continue is enough to set them off. Even if it does not actually happen in practice because the costs are too prohibitive.


As far as his counterpoint... I've said it before... the problem is there are not enough magical spellcasting skills... spellcasting is the one skill to rule them all... one skill for all spels no matter they be combat, healing, mindrape, utility.... Since one skill gets used for everything with only 5 karma to learn a new spell/trick way to use that skill to replace another skill in many cases (such as replacing disguise skill with an illusion spell).

Just like there used to be only one firearms skill... that should probably be broken out into more individual casting skills.


Another unintended consequence of this is magic will see a slight nerf if they are removing equipment bonuses from things like foci... because counterspelling will now scale to 12... adding a lot more resistance dice than it has in the past. (short of high initiate grades and that one metamagic).

Posted by: apple Feb 2 2013, 04:49 PM

Not really if the cyberdecks are the old clunky steampunk abomination von SR123. *sigh*

SYL

Posted by: Sengir Feb 2 2013, 05:16 PM

Hint: Starting an argument with "this is not worth arguing, but here are my arguments" is like hitting on a girl after telling everyone that she looks like a cow's rear...

Posted by: Falconer Feb 2 2013, 05:25 PM

No, it's an acknowledgement that you're not going to change THAT person's point of view. So going into posts with the goal of persuading them is probably not going to do anything more than erupt in an extended session of 'he said, she said' as each airs their opinions repeatedly.

The best you can do in those cases is to simply write your position for everyone... and not tailor it specifically to a single poster. Know your audience.

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 2 2013, 05:29 PM

so . . a reboot then?

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 2 2013, 05:33 PM

Fairly neutral to the whole deal, but some people seem to adore plugging themselves into keyboards...

Posted by: Sengir Feb 2 2013, 05:53 PM

I don't have a POV on something unknown. If raising attributes becomes the cheaper choice after 100 Karma, mages get a clear advantage. If unlimited attribute increases only become a boon after 750 Karma, meh, that's only "win more"

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 2 2013, 05:58 PM

100 karma is a long way into a character's career, and a lot of times a game doesn't go on that long (things tend to happen like people moving away, deciding to play something else or any number of things).

Posted by: tasti man LH Feb 2 2013, 08:46 PM

As long as commlinks don't "suddenly" stop working, it'll be all good.

Because mother of god, retconns are the bane of my existence....

*grumbles darkly about Spider Man and One More Day*

On the other hand, this'll make the transition for my players from SR4 -> SR5 all the more easier...

Posted by: Nath Feb 2 2013, 09:04 PM

As far as the spoiler stories went, it seems new security designs were introduced for Matrix security, making existing hacking software completely useless overnight. Fastjack and others were able to hack their way through the new system only with specific hardware they created from scratch.

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 2 2013, 09:29 PM

How does that affect those that don't rely on hardware one may wonder...

Posted by: tasti man LH Feb 2 2013, 09:33 PM

Well, the Eye of the Hurricanes stories do suggest that something funky is happening regarding the Resonance and that's its' screwing with TMs...

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 2 2013, 09:48 PM

Building on the whole dissonance thing?

Posted by: Sengir Feb 2 2013, 11:39 PM

Or it could just be a single TM with a bad blackout...or maybe it's a side effect of dealing with the special allies of the N'drangheta...

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 3 2013, 12:08 AM

Ideally, I'd like to see things go back to hackers plugging their brains into things and Technomancers go back to being more techno and less mancer, a la Otaku.

A short-and-sweet use of the cyberdeck as hardware limitations on the brain/computer interface would be kind of cool -- instead of using a large host of programs they could simply rely on a quick set of hardware statistics to affect the various Matrix actions (ha ha, ACIFS). That is to say, searching a system for a file could be a Logic + Data Search test, limited by the deck's (for lack of a better term) Index rating. Breaking into a system could be a Logic + Hacking test, limited by Access.

In fact, in that instance I'd sort of like to see them slyly nod with a four-stat ACFS model, for Access, Control, File, and Security. Access: breaking in, system analysis, system-level modifications (spoofing, etc); Control: manipulation of attached devices; File: encryption/decryption, data searches; Security: cybercombat, detection avoidance, tracking. In this sort of model you could then simply provide a system a Security rating and any IC would have appropriate attribute/skill combinations (so an Attack IC could roll its Pilot + Cybercombat, limited by the system Security rating). A security decker would simply bring his own deck with its own ACFS type ratings to the party. Security rating for a system could establish the breaking-in difficulty, so a Security 4 system could simply have a threshold of 4 to hack in, which would make Security 6 systems a crapshoot even for your 18-dice Logic 6 + Hacking 12 superstars (though there would surely be some modifiers available to help the odds).

Posted by: Umidori Feb 3 2013, 01:31 AM

Personally, the Eye of the Hurricane story made me think that maybe Technomancy is becoming a two-way street - that now machines are becoming able to manipulate them.

Sure, you can hack that fancy system with nothing more than your mind, but maybe your mind itself can now be hacked by others. Sort of a Ghost in The Shell mindhack kinda thing.

~Umi

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 3 2013, 01:36 AM

Body snatching AI and mindhacks... Weren't we done with shedim?

Posted by: Bigity Feb 3 2013, 02:06 AM

Quick, I need to hit the streets and find a rating 6 Ares Predator V!

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 3 2013, 12:10 PM

Post from Primetide from SRO

Posted by: Demonseed Elite Feb 3 2013, 04:07 PM

I like the Accuracy mechanic and the general idea behind the Attribute + Skill (12 point cap) limited by another stat. I want to hear more, but the idea is appealing.

Also, I love the return of cyberdecks. But I also need to hear more. Beyond the fluff concept of plugging into a deck, what are the new differences? I'm curious!

Amen.

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 3 2013, 04:10 PM

Somebody probably figured out how dumb it is that everybody and their mom runs around with a comlink that's capable of being used to hack into all sorts of stuff . .
It's like everybody running around with different kinds of pistol after all . .
This way, otto normalo can run around with his AR capable smartphone, err, comlink, and the real professionals use something that will compute circles around these toys in full VR . .

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 3 2013, 05:22 PM

No, because all I have to do is look at the current karma costs and extrapolate.

* Draco18s phases out of the conversation*

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 3 2013, 05:38 PM

Posted the following on the other forum, but thought it might be a good idea to bring it over here.

* This 'suggested' would be spending New Rating x 4 to raise attributes and just New Rating to raise skills. It comes to 80 karma for a human to max out a natural attribute and 80 karma to max out a single skill with a specialty using the new cap mentioned in the blog-post.

Posted by: Nath Feb 3 2013, 05:41 PM

On the other, nowadays, everybody and their mom have a desktop or laptop computer at home that's capable of being used to hack into all sorts of stuff. If it's not already the case with smartphone, it's only because most people stick to the padded OS they were given.

Posted by: Sengir Feb 3 2013, 07:06 PM

In other words, making up numbers based on the assumption that Karma costs (which were already changed by as much as 66% in the middle of the current edition) will not change in 5th...sounds legit.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 3 2013, 07:09 PM

Actually, it is legitimate. He's just using the costs available at the time since any knowledge of what they'll be in the future is lacking. Just because you don't like it, doesn't make it not legitimate.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 3 2013, 07:10 PM

* Draco18s phases back into the conversation*

No. The costs might not stay the same. But the design goal is to be "possible, but only through extended play."



I'm not saying "it will take 500 karma to have a skill of 12" but that "players will be spending karma on other things, and won't have a skill of 12 until 500 karma total." Sure, if you rush it, you'll have it at like 60-80 karma. But you also didn't do other things.

Posted by: Falconer Feb 3 2013, 07:56 PM

On the decks things... no it's not all that much different.

In prior editions practically every runner had a 'personal secretary'. Which was nothing more than a smartphone! It'd make cell phone calls, texts, run simple programs to help you organize. But hacking required decks (which lets face it, didn't need keyboards... it could be a small box with a few plugs and would work just as well).

SR4 just got rid of the decks... a bad thing to do.



On the attributes and costs bit.

It will absolutely need addressed... so long as an attribute gives +1 dice to many different skills... plus gives other benefits as well on top of that. (example reaction helps piloting, AND is used in attribute only defense tests). At current karma costs attributes are far too cheap... the higher skill cap simply won't matter because most people won't make any use of it because attributes are more efficient uses of karma until maxed out generally. At current karma costs skills generally don't go past rank 1 + specialty for a while.

It makes no difference if skills can now go to 12... if it's so cost prohibitive that attributes are still the better deal to max out first. Most games rarely go past 50 or 100 karma. Let alone the 300-500 ones. Or even rarer 1000+.

Quite frankly I don't see this changing unless the way attributes and skills are augmented radically change. Skills have a limit in them based on 1.5X rank limitation. Attributes don't... so it's possible to go 1(6) agility with muscle toner and suprathyroid... then simply pay 10 karma to go to 2(7)... 3(8), 4(9).... saving tons of karma while still having a kickass stat. Unless attributes are similarly limited to 1.5x base value... that won't go away. Also skills don't have nearly the number of ways to augment them that are present for attributes... (improved adept power, and reflex recorders are pretty much it... and 1 point reflex records don't give much reason to go beyond rank 2 skill).

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 3 2013, 07:59 PM

Really, the comm-link thing wasn't a "bad thing to do", as it just opened up hacking as a potential for more people. While yes, anyone could dabble a bit in hacking (enough to do a few simple things or get themselves into trouble) the dedicated Hacker was still better at it to a large enough degree--at least until the upper levels of karma when a mundane needed to start branching out into other areas, at which time, sure they could get to be as good as the Hacker, but that was a long time off.

Posted by: Umidori Feb 3 2013, 08:16 PM

This only works at chargen, where you're assumed to be buying the attribute first, then adding the 'ware.

In-game, the cost of increasing an attribute is based off of the total modified value, so while your natural value is only 1, the effects of the 'ware boost the cost of increasing it to the same as if you were increasing from 6 to 7 naturally.

~Umi

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 3 2013, 08:59 PM

Um, say what?

As I understand it, Cyber doesn't work that way - it certainly never did in prior editions.

If I have Agility 5(7), and I want to raise it to 6( ... I pay the cost in karma of 5-->6, not the cost of (7)-->(. Because the cyber could be removed.

Posted by: Umidori Feb 3 2013, 09:02 PM

I might be misremembering, and I'm going to check my books right now, but it's definitely that way for the adept power equivalents.

Checking now for the rules spelling out the cyber equivalent, although it should be the same, as you can lose both cyber and magic alike.

~Umi

Posted by: Umidori Feb 3 2013, 09:16 PM

Well, I'm hitting a wall. My initial indexing has failed to turn up any ruling anywhere that actually expressly states how you're supposed to handle improving augmented attributes. The corebook only talks about improving natural attributes, and then the adept power modifies that with it's own special rule, but I can't find anything about how to handle boosts from 'ware.

*frustrations*

~Umi

Posted by: ChromeZephyr Feb 3 2013, 09:21 PM

Apologies for bringing something up from a couple days ago, but I don't like leaving things directed at me unreplied to, just seems rude...

I didn't see the bit about making Edge less than it is now, I was simply spitballing.

As for the Kalashnikov's accuracy, that's the drawback for that legendary reliability. It's built to far less exacting specifications than the assault rifles made by Colt or HK, so it can survive being buried in mud for a week, as well as being cleaned (or not cleaned, more than likely) by a peasant conscript and still function. It's still capable of hitting targets at a good distance, but compared to the precisely machined parts and fit of the AR-15/M-16 or G36 it's definitely less accurate. It's not hard to find photos of the groups that a decent shooter firing both types of guns will make, and the difference is noticeable.

Posted by: Umidori Feb 3 2013, 09:21 PM

And now my google-fu is turning up a lot of things that, while not definitely confirming anything, do seem to suggest that the accepted norm is to pay karma based on the base attribute, and that the adept power is just needlessly gimped for no apparant reason. Awesome?

One more thing to add to the SR5 wishlist, I guess... "Please, sir, I want some more."

~Umi

Posted by: Falconer Feb 3 2013, 09:22 PM

The rules for cyber/bio enhancements are the costs to raise are based on the natural attribute.

Page 270... improving attributes...
"The cost of raising the NATURAL attribute rating is the new rating x5."
2 paragraphs later..
"Raising the natural attribute may raise the augmented attribute value up to the augmented attribute maximums."

p68... Attribute Ratings... "Care must be made to distinguish between natural, undmodified attribute ratings, and those augmented by cyberware, biowre, adept powers, and magic."

The rules clearly distinguish between augmented value and natural value of the attribute for purposes of improvement. And also for purposes of chargen... for example cerebral boosters don't get you freebie knowledge skills in chargen, only the natural attribute does.

Improved physical attribute adept power is an EXCEPTION to the rule. (and one of the reasons I don't like the power outside of flavor, and vastly prefer attribute boost instead). The reason it spells it out under the power is because it's a specific rule creating an exception to the default rules on page 269 or so.

Posted by: Umidori Feb 3 2013, 09:39 PM

Yes, thank you, I picked up on that already.

So yeah. Pure adepts without 'ware? Hilariously not worth it.

Give up a point of magic and 6 BP worth of nuyen for Muscle Augmentation and Muscle Toner at Rating 2, get +2 Strength and +2 Agility, and still have 0.2 Essence left over for something else. That's equal to anywhere from 3 to 6 power points (it used to be 4 to 8 points before errata!) worth of Improved Physical Attribute, depending on if you're going past your natural maximum. And you don't have to pay premium karma costs to improve those attributes later on.

Seriously, you guys. What the flaming fuck.

~Umi

Posted by: Falconer Feb 3 2013, 09:51 PM

Yeah you ninja'd my post... started typing after and hit add reply only to see a bunch more posts.


But I disagree with you on those particular augmentations... while nice... they are very essence heavy for an adept to get all of them (especially up to rating 4 in both). Unless you're going down the biocompatibility/alpha grade path..

But that's one of the things about the setting. There are very few characters which can't do well with a point or two of ware.... the question is are you willing to do it or not? If you want to be an absolutely pure adept... then that's a price you pay.



But in this case. I still prefer the attribute boost powers. 0.25PP... roll the dice and I can easily add 1-3 to the attribute when I need it with just a simple action. Attribute boost also pointedly does not work with any augmentation except improved physical attribute.

Also as the game progresses and magic gets higher they get better and better, especially if you're a mystic adept with a power focus.


I believe people even give the increase reflexes power short shrift... yes 1.5... is a bit expensive but you get the attribute increase and the extra pass... 2.5 is easy to improve for the next step. But unlike someone with ware... you don't have to have the old one ripped out and buy the new higher grade to replace it. You simply add a little more magic.

Personally I think the way to help out adepts is to take that advanced metamagic which comes after adept centering a step farther to make it more usable... sorry forget it's name. The one which allows to supercharge abilities up to higher levels than you have them, but then you take drain equal to your magic or magic x2... forget which. I think it needs to have it's drain scaled down so instead of adding a ton of PP... you can add like 1 or 2 PP for a short burn... and lower drain.

Posted by: Umidori Feb 3 2013, 10:43 PM

The problem is that 'ware is supposed to have a cost. You lose Essence, and by extension, magic. This is supposed to be a BAD thing for the Awakened.

But it isn't. It's actually BETTER to get a little bit of 'ware to go with your powers. It's so much more efficient, there's no reason not to, mechanically speaking. And that's the opposite of what it's supposed to be. Suddenly 'ware doesn't have a cost, it's a straight up bonus over staying purely magical.

Now sure, 'ware has limits. But if you've got a decent Strength or Agility to start with, that limit easily takes you up to your augmented maximum for most characters. Start with 4 Agility and Muscle Toner Rating 2 for an augmented 6 Agility. Later on, sacrifice a second point of magic to upgrade to the maximum Rating 4, taking you to 8 Agility. For anyone other than an Elf, that's 1 point less than the augmented maximum. And if you really want that final ninth point, all you have to do is pay to increase your natural Agility from 4 to 5, or 25 karma.

Compare that to an adept. Same 4 Agility at start, and equivalent Increased Agility 2, but costing a much greater amount of BP for being an adept (which also eats into your total positive qualities), and paying for the magic points you need to fuel your powers. Later, to upgrade to Increased Agility 4, you need to increase your magic, so that adds substantial karma costs. And since most adepts start at or near their maximum magic, you may even need to initiate once or twice first, costing even more karma. Oh, and since the power point cost is doubled for every point beyond your natural maximum, you actually need double the karma to buy double the extra magic and initiations than what you would otherwise! So a quick back of the envelope tally gives us anywhere from 45 to 100+ karma (plus time and costs to Initiate) to upgrade your adept power by two ranks.

But now you're at 8 Agility. Pretty respectable, yeah? What's that? You want to push it to 9? Well either spend karma to initiate again and increase your magic again such that you can pay the 1.5 power points for that final point of agility... or! You can pay 45 karma, nearly twice what the 'ware user pays for the exact same effect.

Oh, and you mentioned how as a game progresses, magic gets better and better. Well as a game progresses, a character also makes more and more money. The pure adept has to pay for all these bonuses purely with their karma, but the 'ware user can use nuyen instead, saving their precious and limited karma supply for other improvements. The former has to spend massive amounts of karma to improve their agility to the augmented max, while the latter can achieve the same effect with a mere dip in nuyen, putting his karma elsewhere, such as into mental attributes. Or if they're a 'ware using adept, they can spend the karma on entirely different powers, saving quite a bit of karma in doing so.

~Umi

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 3 2013, 11:15 PM

Indeed.

That is why one of my houserules was and is, to change the Adept power to be in line with Augments. And always cost 0.5PP/+1, too. I've even considered dropping that even further, though I'd have to look at tweaking Attribute Boost as well, if I did.






Increased Reflexes is a fair and reasonably-priced power, I agree. Roughly comparable to Wires. (Which it didn't used to be, in older editions.)

Posted by: Glyph Feb 4 2013, 01:15 AM

When they did up adepts, they tried to make them better at some things than augmented characters (like skill boosts), and worse at some things than augmented characters (like initiative and Attribute boosts). It worked in SR3 - street samurai were the super-fast dudes with overall toughness and versatility, while adepts were more specialized sharpshooters, ninjas, and martial arts masters.

In SR4, though, the rules changes messed this up. Extra initiative passes became more important, and Attribute increases added to the dice pool. Plus, bioware was cheap enough, Essence-wise, that adepts could get a point or two of it to shore up their weak areas (the aforementioned initiative and Attribute boosts), while spending their remaining power points on things like critical strike and improved ability. In addition to cost-effectiveness, the other benefit to augmented adepts is that often, technology and adept powers stack. You can get an attention coprocessor and enhanced perception. You can get tailored pheromones and kinesics.

The power cost changes in SR4A made unaugmented adepts slightly more viable, as did adept Ways, but augmented adepts skill have an edge over their "pure" brethren. This is fine if you like a game where even awakened characters are tempted by the allure of quick, easy boosts from augmentation. Otherwise, your only recourse is house rules - either make the offending powers cheap enough so that they have parity with bioware, or make the consequences of getting augmentations more severe for an awakened character. And in either case, you might also want to rule that certain tech/adept power combos don't work.


The big question is, what will SR4A do to change all of this? Personally, I hope they use the carrot more than the stick, but making a few more adept powers incompatible with augmentations that do the same thing might be a good idea.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 4 2013, 01:22 AM

The problem is that the people who complain about Improved Reflexes are always comparing it's Power Point cost to the Synaptic Booster rather than the two cyber equivalents which the cost was obviously--at least obvious to me--based off of, and they ignore the fact that they're spending a lot more points for the Resources to get the Synaptic Booster than they're saving by getting it.

A good way to bridge that gap would be to forbid Adepts with implants from taking a Way (other than Burnout Way).

Posted by: Glyph Feb 4 2013, 01:28 AM

If, and only if, Ways are included in the basic SR5 rules (which they should be, considering how drastically they change the power levels for adepts). Oh, and only if they are upgraded from optional rules to default rules.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 4 2013, 01:50 AM

/facepalm

Not this again. Putting a different-color dress on it, doesn't change how useful or appropriate the idea is ...

Posted by: Falconer Feb 4 2013, 05:08 AM

All4Big... did you even read way of the adept?!

Any adept who loses too much essence is kicked out of their way and is put on the way/path of the burnout.


Glyph:
I agree very heavily with your post... except this.

Extra passes were still very important in prior editions. They were just less predictable than they are now... because the sam didn't know if we was going to roll 2 or 4 sometimes. The thing which kept them in check was that combat pool had to be split between all passes.. instead of the attribute combat pool adding to every single skill check.

SR4's big monkey wrench was that attributes got added to everything and skills pretty much stopped mattering for most checks since you had so many other ways to get dice for the skill check (attributes & equipment & specializations).

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 4 2013, 06:35 AM

Dude, it's possible to miss something. It happens.

Posted by: NeoJudas Feb 4 2013, 08:29 AM

... Then the game is an anomaly.... Sorry, to some of us, that means the group has begun to really mature. But, Mundanes have always needed some more exertion to keep up with the higher end paras. That's always been a flailing of the game mechanics, regardless of the version.

Posted by: NeoJudas Feb 4 2013, 08:33 AM

Shedim, shmedim.... I've always waited for the psychotropics to fight back. I admit in our home games, the TMs are righteous, but when it was discovered that the corporations and the mages could still out resource a single TM in the end, then even they backed off some.

Posted by: tjn Feb 4 2013, 09:29 AM

You're out of line here, especially as you are wrong here:

There's nothing in the rules of the Way of the Adept about kicking anyone out of their way and that the Path of the Burnout is only eligible, not required, for anyone with 2.0 or more of Essence lost to augmentation (Pg 13, Way of the Adept).

As I like mixing my chocolate and peanut butter, so I really don't have a problem with Adepts (smartly) augmenting via cyber/bio and keeping their way, and as I have found adepts are a somewhat "weak" in general (I understand in their specific niches some min/max character can throw 40+ dice to do some specific thing, but I'm talking more in my general in-play experience).

I'm personally not all that convinced that there is a "gap" that needs to be addressed, either in 5th or as a houserule for 4th. Somethings cyber's good at, something's magic is good at, and I like those differences. That being said, others have different tastes, and that's cool. But being a an aggressive hypocrite? That's not cool.

Posted by: Glyph Feb 4 2013, 11:35 AM

I should have been more specific. Initiative passes became more important for melee in SR4, when melee combat stopped being an opposed dice contest where the defender could damage the attacker, and when the option of full defense as an interrupt action was added. In SR4, if you take two otherwise identical fighters, and one has 1 IP while the other has 3 IP, the one with more IP will be the odds-on favorite. He will be able to use full defense every round, and still have twice as many opportunities to do damage. In SR3, an adept with improved ability: 6 in a combat skill was dominant (since he could damage an attacker whether attacking or defending), but in SR4, that adept would need extra initiative passes to stay competitive.

On the other hand, there is far more parity among initiative boosters. Before, an adept, or a mage with increase reflexes level 3, really couldn't keep up with a speed sammie when it came to initiative scores/number of actions.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 4 2013, 01:54 PM

There is nothing wrong with 500 karma games. I'm just saying that most groups don't last that long.

We also don't know that Mages will remain uncapped.

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 4 2013, 02:23 PM

Skill can't be higher than twice the associated attribute and magic is an attribute like every other attribute too, meaning you can have a maximum of 6(9) magic, initiation allows usage of specific abilities such as using a power focus which acts like cyber/bio for Magic. No initiation, you can't bind the power focus, you can't get your magic attribute higher. Only way to raise magic attribute is a power focus, not karma rising anymore.
power-focus costs new magic attribute(base+focus)x3 karma to bind and new magic attribute(base+focus)x3000
(these numbers may need looking at)

[optional]
you start with magic attribute of 6 again, automagically, but if your base is reduced so is your maximum. so if you go down to 2 magic, your maximum magic using a power-focus is now 3



this will keep both power and dice pool size a bit more in check i think.
of course, if you hard max your elf to 10(15) attribute you can raise skill to 30 for huge dicepool again, but otherwise not.

Posted by: Warlordtheft Feb 4 2013, 02:33 PM

If you have a 12 skill + 6 Attribute, that's 18 dice. Meaning that on average 6 hits. So those with lower skills and attributes with gear levels of 6 should be good to go.

Posted by: Cain Feb 4 2013, 03:00 PM

I'm still not sure about accuracy. Rolling bucketfuls of dice can be fun under the right circumstances, but stealing the ability to roll a huge success seems to take the fun out of it.

Posted by: Umidori Feb 4 2013, 05:48 PM

Except that it seems overwhelmingly likely that they're going to make accuracy scale well enough that, with the right gear, you can have enough accuracy to still make use of those buckets of dice?

I mean, sure, it's kinda funny to drop 20+ dice and get 15 net hits, splattering a troll's brainpan across the wall using nothing more than a tiny little derringer, but it kinda forces you to suspend your disbelief a little. All accuracy is going to do is ensure that you can't use a piece of junk weapon or tool to pull off a godlike success. So if you want to reduce your opponents to a fine crimson mist with your overwhelming dice pools, hey, that's fine, you'll just need to shell out some nuyen for higher quality gear to make it possible.

~Umi

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Feb 4 2013, 05:53 PM

Why? People die all the time to nothing, peasly weapons. No suspension of disbelief at all.

Posted by: Umidori Feb 4 2013, 06:00 PM

People die, yes. Typically from shock, bleeding out, organ failure, et cetera.

They don't have their heads explode into quivering chunks of man meat by being struck with a a bullet the size of a frozen pea, however.

~Umi

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 4 2013, 06:06 PM

That one may not "splodey" their head, but it may very well practically turn their brains into scrambled eggs.

Posted by: Umidori Feb 4 2013, 06:10 PM

Well with 15 net hits, I dare say it would!

That said, if your gun is so inaccurate that you can only hope to barely graze them, then you're skill is worthless. It's all up to luck at that point. (Which makes me curious if you could spend Edge to temporarily boost accuracy?)

~Umi

Posted by: Cain Feb 4 2013, 06:23 PM

It's a very fine line to walk. If Accuracy is, on average, high enough that it doesn't matter and use all those dice, then it won't work as a balancing mechanism. If it's not, if it's too low, then it'll balance the game but make things less fun if you prefer cinematic action. It's a tradeoff, and I can't see that any one point will work for everyone.

I don't see that it's "overwhelmingly likely" that they'll do anything with it so far. All we have to go on is the one blog post, no specifics. It's too soon to say rather or not they'll pull it off.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 4 2013, 06:24 PM

While for the most part, I don't mind the new Accuracy stat on weapons, I do have to say that while the accuracy of the gun does play a role, a skilled marksman can compensate for an inaccurate weapon with their skill.

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 4 2013, 06:36 PM

I'm with you on this. I'm generally opposed to success limits because for the most part overwhelming numbers of successes are strictly outliers in normal play, and so limits are pretty much just a mechanism to say "hey, wow, you did great and all, but no" for the odd times that you actually roll in excess of the limit. Note that there's no reciprocal mechanism to ensure minor levels of success if you roll poorly, so it's not even really fair from a gameplay perspective.

The way Accuracy is talked about at as a limit doesn't even do anything to model actual weapon accuracy -- a success limit strictly acts as a potential damage cap, which is to say that a high Accuracy weapon with moderate damage could potentially do more actual damage than a low Accuracy weapon with high damage. Actual weapon accuracy would be better modeled as decreased or increased difficulty (either by threshold or die pool mod in SR4 terms), which is to say that scoring damaging hits is less likely but possible if you're really good and/or lucky.

I don't buy it. I think it's an offshoot of the desire to take the old SR2-3 system and cram it into a more simplistic resolution model -- and to explain, it has to do with the Matrix system. You had Dice Pool (skill+hacking pool), Program Rating (difficulty modifier), Difficulty (ACIFS), and Degree of Success (number of successes). In SR4 you get Dice Pool (skill+program rating), Difficulty (opposed system roll or set threshold), and Degree of Success (number of hits/net hits).

To make this conform to the standard Attr+Skill roll, they have to give Program Rating a real function, but with the removal of scaling difficulty, there's not really much Program Rating can alter. It can't subtract from the Threshold or add to the Degree of Success (ie, automatic hits -- and well, it really could, but that would be a further departure from meatspace and magic tests), and Attr+Skill+Program would make the dice pools big (again, further departure), so the last thing is making it a limiting factor.

While I'd like to see Program Rating go away (perhaps simply have programs in the way that magicians have spells -- they have them or they don't, everything else managed by the various cyberdeck stats -- I'm not exactly thrilled at hit limits being applied to everything across the board.

EDIT: I was going to go in and fix my parenthesis/dash pairings, but eff it.

Posted by: StealthSigma Feb 4 2013, 06:45 PM

Accuracy vs precision. Accuracy is the ability to hit a target. Precision is how close together multiple samples hit. A high accuracy low precision weapon would be a shotgun (you're probably going to hit with some of the shot). A high accuracy high precision weapon would be a sniper rifle. It's a poorly named stat.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 4 2013, 06:46 PM

And a low accuracy, high precision weapon is one that needs its sight adjusted.

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 4 2013, 06:55 PM

Sure, but even a weapon that throws bullets upwards of 30 degrees off the barrel axis isn't going to do less damage if the bullet somehow manages to strike someone in the temple.

The combat system is already fairly abstract. Previously Accuracy has been modeled by some weapons as being more/less accurate at range (treat this light pistol as a heavy pistol for range, since it's more accurate, and so on). Modeling Accuracy in such a way that it means "X gun can do a max of Y damage no matter how skilled you are" is just kind of.. weird, and unpleasant. It makes the abstraction uncomfortable, but it doesn't do anything to promote simulation/realism.

Posted by: Umidori Feb 4 2013, 06:56 PM

To a point, yes, but some inaccuracy is too great to predictably account for. Take a flintlock pistol, for example. I don't care how straight and true you level the barrel, the aerodynamics of spherical ball ammunition fired from a smoothbore barrel makes for a very strong tendency to tumble and fly off course. Beyond a certain range it's anyone's guess where the ball will land, and you certainly aren't going to be getting tight, consistant shot groups.

Basically it boils down to the quality of the weapon and ammo, and the distance over which you are firing. A precision machined professional sniper rifle should pretty much always hit where you point it (up to a certain distance where gravity and wind start significantly messing with the trajectory). But a homebrew zip-gun sniper rifle is going to be a lot less accurate. Likewise, a precision pistol should do the same at short distances, but suffer at longer ones. (I imagine they'll represent this in the new system by having Range Categories modify Accuracy rather than Dice Pool.)

And if you're stuck using a Barrens Special that looks like someone's been using it to hammer nails into concrete, the accuracy of that weapon is probably so bad that even a world class marksman is going to have trouble hitting a moving target at any significant distance (and that's assuming it doesn't just blow up in your hand when fired).

~Umi

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 4 2013, 07:02 PM

I don't know if this is overboard, but that's a goddamn brilliant idea that I think could solve the shotgun vs SMG vs assault rifle problem. Give short-range weapons very high limits, but have them fall off faster at range (so an SMG at long range might be down to like Accuracy/whatever 2). Then the damage limit would make more sense -- longarms would retain higher accuracy/damage at longer ranges, whereas SMGs and shotguns could do high damage close up but decline at range. That'd give you a real reason to switch to a shotgun or pistol when clearing hallways in a building, but make you want a rifle outside.

Posted by: StealthSigma Feb 4 2013, 07:12 PM

The reason you use a shotgun/PDW over an assault rifle in an indoor environment has nothing to do with damage and more to do with who quickly you can bring the weapon to lethal bearing on a sudden target.

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 4 2013, 07:26 PM

Yes, but try to model that in Shadowrun. In an abstract combat system, modifying the damage potentials in different range categories still roughly brings you to the same place -- more bullets on target close up with close up guns, so close up guns are more desirable close up. If you wanted to get crunchy, you could put each category of gun on its own skewed bell curve, so a sniper rifle might be awful at close range, so-so at medium range, and really good at long range (and back down to so-so/decent at extreme range).

EDIT: This would also allow for some cool weapon mods and effects: various range sights (ACOG, etc) to skew the accuracy curve, heavy attachments (grenade launchers) could screw up accuracy at close range, or other attachments (gas vent, silencer) could screw up accuracy at long range, or even adjustable stocks to make a carbine/assault rifle more suitable to a particular range with an action.

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 4 2013, 07:29 PM

I'll just throw in some food for thought, what if they amp up all the DV's and have accuracy be the throttle...
So a Heavy pistol would do 8P but only have accuracy 1 or 2, for example.


Increasing lethality, bit by bit.

Posted by: Umidori Feb 4 2013, 07:36 PM

Exactly. If we tried to model firearms realistically, all guns would be just about equally likely to kill if you hit your target. The abstraction of dealing more damage with shotguns instead of assault rifles suits the needs of the game while still making sense as an abstraction of reality.


I'm actually hoping for exactly this sort of thing. A heavy pistol might have a much higher base damage than a light pistol, but a light pistol should be much more accurate.

~Umi

Posted by: thorya Feb 4 2013, 08:12 PM

Regarding accuracy limiting the hits and preventing bullet from being deadly and eliminating the possibility of pistols killing trolls, I feel like the adding net hit rules already does this in reverse. Why is it that simply because you're inexperienced with a weapon it is literally impossible to kill someone with it?

Example, Joe average defaulting on using a pistol even with an above average agility of 5, he's rolling 4 dice. With a heavy pistol, the most damage he can do is 9 DV, if he rolls all hits and the defender doesn't have any successes on the defense test and they have no successes on the soak test it's still only going to knock out them out, not kill a low body human or elf. Because the shooter is inexperienced, the bullet can never hit the temple. I'm not saying I want it to be a frequent occurrence, but it's not possible under the current rules and it would be nice if it was. But it's a game, you have to sacrifice realism for play.

I don't think we're losing anymore realism by limiting hits to damage than we are losing right now by not letting low end users have any chance at those levels of hits to damage. And I will be happy to see a game where the damage from a light pistol doesn't magically triple in the hands of an expert. How often the expert hits, sure, but damage? a lot of what the bullet hits in the body and what it does is chance. Even a well placed shot has a chance to avoid major organs regardless of how good the shooter is. Light pistols shouldn't regularly be more deadly than a high explosive grenade exploding at your feet.

I would also like to see an complete change on called shots. I'll never understand why aiming at a spot their vest doesn't cover makes it completely impossible for me to hit their vest or any other part of them.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 4 2013, 08:14 PM

I would sacrifice my neighbors to see SR5 do this. Both of them (neighbors, I mean).






SUDDEN EPIPHANY .... what if Recoil stops being a DP modifier, and becomes an accuracy modifier?

Posted by: thorya Feb 4 2013, 08:31 PM

Wasn't that mentioned a few pages back?

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 4 2013, 08:36 PM

Well, since there's going to be fewer positive dice pool modifiers from equipment, there really should be a commensurate reduction in negative ones as well.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 4 2013, 08:41 PM

Maybe. If there was, I missed it.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 4 2013, 09:02 PM

There probably will be.

Posted by: Glyph Feb 4 2013, 09:26 PM

To me, those kind of fluke, one-in-a-million shots are represented by the Edge Attribute. Assuming that Edge in SR5 still uncaps the maximum possible hits.

Posted by: Warlordtheft Feb 4 2013, 09:37 PM

Just to add a few more thoughts. While I like the concept, I'm not sure I'll like the execution. Here's what I found when using the matrix + attribute in SR4:

1. Certain rules interactions become stupidly broken. Threading up a program, means you can take your CF of 4 an thread it up to an 8 (or higher, AFB). Meanwile your opposition hacker can get at most 4 hits (with a rating 4 program to me being standard jo blow security software).

2. Barring incompetancy, say enough to get 6 to 8 dice, skill did not matter as much as the limits did.

3. Agents were wither stupid good or a cakewalk, balancing for a challenge was difficult for me.


For 5th Edition:

1. They will have to rework the matrix rules to better handle infiltrating a site. As it stands now a Techno can waltz right in to most systems.
2. Agents/IC should just be a single number ranging in rating from 3-18+.Keep it simple, and an agent can have its rating in programs.
3. Go back to a security tally for deckers! One of the things I miss from 2nd ed.

OT:Guns
1. Range should reduce accuracy--it does not need to be linear. Ex shooting a sniper rifle at a target within point blank and short range modifies the rifle's to a 3, while at medium range and longer it jumps up to an 8 and then drops to a 6 at extreme.
2. Wide bursts should just be a negative to the persons dodge roll as it is. Narrow should still increase the damage.
3. Recoil should reduce accuracy as well.
4. Cover should limit the dodge roll.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 4 2013, 09:43 PM

Because clearly the matrix isn't getting an overhaul.

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 4 2013, 10:04 PM

My thought is that weapons could be restricted to a damage maximum (say 50% above their base damage). Extra hits above that would still affect the damage resistance test and have to be negated.

So you shoot a guy with a weapon that's Accuracy 5 and Damage 6. You get your 5 hits, bringing the weapon damage up to 11. The target only soaks one damage, bringing the damage down to 10. Since the weapon max damage is 9, he actually takes 9 damage (not 10).

There, that makes a lucky amateur able to do the same amount of damage as a sharpshooter, but the sharpshooter is still doing more damage in general because people have to soak more in order to reduce his damage.

Posted by: UmaroVI Feb 4 2013, 10:45 PM

One ordinary dude being able to murder another ordinary dude with a gun really shouldn't be a fluke one in a million shot.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 4 2013, 10:50 PM

One ordinary dude murdering another ordinary dude with a gun and a single bullet. Yeah, it should be. Anyone can double-tap for a kill.

Or at least, on average, the injured guy isn't going to die from the initial wound.

Posted by: O'Ryan Feb 4 2013, 11:44 PM

To put it back in perspective...

The same average Joe with 5AGI goes to shoot a guy from ten feet away. (4 dice, +2 for point blank. 6 dice.)
He knows Ganger McGangerson has to die, so he aims for the head. (-4 dice, called shot head. +4 damage. 2 dice.)
He steadies himself for a second. (Take aim, +1 dice. 3 dice.)

He shoots and, on average, does 10P with the potential of 12, enough to kill a low body enemy.
Random people CAN one hit kill other random people. A single shot to the chest? Survivable. To the head? It still depends on if they hit you between the eyes or take an ear off, but it's doable.

Posted by: sk8bcn Feb 5 2013, 08:54 AM

You still should make it into persepective. When I play DD, no matter if I roll 5 or 18, my sword still deals 1d8+Strength in damages. In Call of Cthulhu, nigh the same.

Heck, many games doesn't offer any success mesurement.

I'm willing to see the outcome. I've got my 4th and 4A books but still didn't read them as I'm playing all the old adventures I bought. However, from what I've seen here, equipement's effect was mmmm lack luster? Like +1 die/+2 dices (+0.33 succes, +0.66 successes?). While adding equiment to highten the cap feels, IMO, stronger.
Well, 'kay, the stranger point about such a system it is that a lower dice pool character wouldn't benefit at all from equipment.


And btw, if I understood that, you still can uncap the roll with edge.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 12 2013, 11:41 PM

NEW BLOG ENTRY ... relevant to this thread:

http://www.shadowruntabletop.com/2013/02/sr5-dev-blog-more-about-limits-and-exceeding-them/

Seems Edge is one way to exceed those Limits - including, AFTER the roll; if you get an awesoem roll, just blow a point of Edge to ignore whatever Limit there was. Or if you spent the edge beforehand, to gain dice ... you also ignore the Limit.

I actually like that.

Posted by: ChromeZephyr Feb 13 2013, 01:16 AM

I'll be damned, I guessed right. It seemed like a common sense thing to me, so I'm glad it's in there.

The refreshing edge thing instead of karma seems like something you'll want to talk about with your players as a GM if it's an either/or thing. I can see some players saying "Nope, I'd rather have the karma. If I run out of luck in the middle of the run, well the world is a cold place and agricultural property is cheap."

Posted by: DMiller Feb 13 2013, 01:28 AM

I agree with ChromeZephyr. If the karma costs stay about the same as they are now, I would much rather have the karma than the luck.

A GM could also rule that the down-time required to regain (at least some of) your edge could be shorter so that you can gain back edge during the mission. We do this already at our table.

-D

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 13 2013, 01:44 AM

Letting everyone refresh a single point of edge at the close of each major Scene would also work. It would encourage people to spend a point now and then, without worrying too much about "OMG I'll be out of Edge during the climactic scene at the end of the 'run!"

Posted by: Umidori Feb 13 2013, 02:30 AM

We still don't know what, if any, changes are going to be made to karma, however. They may already be planning a way to compensate for this change.

~Umi

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 13 2013, 11:00 AM

so, instead of doing something to actually make the dice pools smaller, they just limit how many hits you can use and then give a limitbreak to get around that limit?

The more things change . .

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 13 2013, 01:46 PM

Something about trying to make character stats look about the same at a glance, but function together in a completely different way.

Posted by: Bull Feb 13 2013, 01:55 PM

Honestly, there wasn't much attempt to really make dice pools smaller. For most of us on the design team, we didn't feel this was an issue.

The thing we focused on was finding more balanced ways for your attribute, skills, gear, and gear mods to all work together.

At this point you still haven't seen everything regarding Limits and how Skills and Gear and stuff all work together. I imagine Jason will cover more of this in the near future.

Posted by: StealthSigma Feb 13 2013, 01:58 PM

Yeah we need limit breaks.

OMNI-SLASH!

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 13 2013, 02:09 PM

I find that a little off-putting, since I've always thought the large dice pools and the more-dice-more-often design were the biggest weaknesses of the system. Since there's an extremely tiny chance for literally achieving no successes once you reach the standard character range of dice pools, you have to heap additional qualifiers for what counts as success in order to maintain any tension brought about by the possibility of failure. This leads to more Opposed Tests and Extended Tests -- opposed tests are just more dice on the table, but extended tests are pretty weak, since again with large pools there's no real likelihood of failure, so it's just an exercise in rolling again and again and again until you get it (which has led to optional/house ruling of diminishing dice pools for extended tests). It's all very brute force and inelegant.

Posted by: Tashiro Feb 13 2013, 02:12 PM

I like this limiter on dice pools. Roll lots of dice, but you're going to hit a theoretical wall based on your natural capabilities. Quite nice. The one thing I'm uncertain about is that this will still push people to raise attributes again and again, meaning that sooner or later, Shadowrunners are still going to end up superhuman. I hope they raise the cost for increasing attributes a bit more (10 x Level perhaps?), so that people will focus more on skills, and raising an attribute will be considered a significant expenditure, representing months or more of improvement.

That being said, I have a suggestion: While only X Hits will count for your effect, I'd like additional rolled Hits to be able to be used to counter a target's defence. If your Accuracy is 2, and you roll 6 hits, perhaps the 4 uncounted Hits can be used specifically to counter the target's Dodge roll - you'd still only get your 2 hits for purposes of damage, but the remainders could help ensure those two hits count for something. If your target rolls only 1 Hit on dodge, you still only get your two Hits, but if he rolls 4 Hits on dodge, your two Hits still count. This is something we've done with magic (any Hits higher than the spell's Force count to reduce the ability to resist the spell).

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 13 2013, 02:43 PM

That makes it an explicit damage limiter as opposed to a to-hit limiter. Keeping hits over a hit cap to increase the resist/defend difficulty sort of defeats the purpose of capping things in the first place, and more leads you to the realm of guaranteed low damage rather than an actual failure situation.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 13 2013, 02:45 PM

I disagree. That makes weapons with low Accuracy not-inaccurate.

Posted by: sk8bcn Feb 13 2013, 03:39 PM

And if dodge test is capped by something, the successes achieved are substracted to the over-success of attack test and...

I find the base idea more in-line with an overall cap system.

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 13 2013, 03:56 PM

i remember one of the design goals of SR4 having been to reduce the ammount of rolled dice . .

Posted by: O'Ryan Feb 13 2013, 03:57 PM

And it worked! For instance, my face is DOWN to only 30-something dice for negotiation!

Posted by: Bull Feb 13 2013, 04:01 PM

Problem is, this isn't unique to Shadowrun. In Shadowrun, characters get more dice. In D&D, they have a higher skill that they're adding to the dice. So you have to increase the difficulty, add more modifiers, whatever. Same goes for Vampire, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Star Wars, Cartoon Action Hour, GURPs, Mutants & Masterminds, and pretty much every other RPG I've played over the years.

Every game has a success scaling issue, if there's any kind of real progression for players. That's the nature of gaming. Players want to get better, they want to be better. And at some point, the success to failure ration on a basic test diminishes to the point where it's a non-issue.

At that point, as a GM, you have to start looking at other ways to challenge your players. Maybe even put them in situations where success or failure depends solely on their choices and actions, and not on their dice rolls.

Bull

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 13 2013, 04:02 PM

Personally I love rolling buckets of dice, the modifier system could use some work though, which it looks like they're doing.

From now on Edge is Limit break, lets see if it catches on

Posted by: Bull Feb 13 2013, 04:08 PM

I think that was one of the stated goals of SR4, yes. And you'll note it failed, pretty spectacularly in some cases.

Hell, I regularly roll MORE dice in SR4 than I did in SR2-3.

So early on in discussions, we decided we weren't going to concern ourselves with the sizes of dice pools. For every player I've met that didn't like the size of SHadowrun's average dice pool, I've met one who loves rolling big handfuls of dice. But those two players represent a fraction of the players who simply don't care about the size of the dice pool one way or another. So long as the sources of those dice make sense and fit the character, it doesn't matter.

So rather than concern ourselves with arbitrary numbers (What is too many? How many are too few? Everyone has a different opinion.), instead we focused on where those dice were coming from and how they effected game play and character growth.

Bull

Posted by: Tashiro Feb 13 2013, 04:17 PM

Hmm. Good points raised. I retract my suggestion. Especially the one about dodge caps and how that would play out. I'd completely not thought of that!

4E did hold back on the larger dice pools I had in 1E to 3E, and I'm glad for that, but I would really like to see more limits on increasing attributes. I'm almost tempted to say I preferred 1E, where each attribute could only be increased once. Seriously, people can only improve themselves so much naturally... there's hard limits that normal people slam into, and the only way to surpass them is if you dedicated a portion of your time to fixing that -- and continued to dedicate that time to maintain it. Someone starting at Strength 2 should not be allowed to hit Strength 6, since Strength 2 should be close to their 'optimal' rating for their current lifestyle and employment. Sure, they might get to Strength 3, by training themselves, but unless they maintain that regimen, they're technically shouldn't be keeping that Strength 3. I can accept a bit of slide there, but ... when attributes go up 3 or 4 points, you have to really wonder what the hell the character's doing to get to that point.

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 13 2013, 04:26 PM

I heard running for your life is good exercise

Posted by: Tashiro Feb 13 2013, 04:31 PM

If you're doing this regularly, something's wrong. But I usually believe that your 'starting character', while fresh in their career perhaps, has the attributes that represent their 'normal' manner of living. So if your character is a mercenary, their attributes came about from mercenary training and experience. I can understand skills improving - as you use these skills, you'll get better at them, but attributes I see as more a byproduct of genetics and lifestyle.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Feb 13 2013, 04:38 PM

It is funny that you mention that, since I almost NEVER improve any single Atttribute more than once in game (outside of Augmentations). Magic/Resonance aside, of course. I far prefer to improve my Skills. I also rarely ever hit DP's above a 16, though, either. *shrug*

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 13 2013, 04:43 PM

It's not a matter of basic tests -- generally speaking, there are dozens of things you might do every day where you have no real chance of failure unless you're completely inattentive. The chance of failing a basic task should recede to nearly nothing, and generally pretty quickly.

It's the really difficult stuff becoming relatively easy that irks me. Taking a long-range called shot through smoke while running at a guy in cover, for example. At a certain point you're virtually guaranteed to get a few successes on anything you try, just because you're going to apply every negative modifier in the game and still have dice left over. I've said it before, but it's linked entirely to the fact that success drops from a worst case of 33% likely to 0% likely in a single point.

Tacking on thresholds and using opposed tests alters that probability, but thresholds add complexity (requiring some calculation to determine the appropriate threshold) and opposed tests tend to make any task a craps shoot (if the opposing force has anywhere near the ballpark of the dice pool of the character) rather than a risk that can be evaluated. Further, thresholds tend to be somewhat arbitrary -- when you use them versus when it's an opposed test etc, sometimes switching from one to the next within related activities.

As a GM, I can always ditch a system or play an entirely different game or decide to have popcorn and watch movies. That doesn't actually help the game system's ability to arbitrate and resolve conflict. I understand that any system taken to extremes will break, but SR4 tends to reach the breaking point pretty damn early. I already know why, but I'd like to think some effort is being made to make it nicer, rather than repeating mistakes.

Posted by: Tashiro Feb 13 2013, 04:53 PM

Hmm. Perhaps things like range can reduce how much accuracy a weapon has. A sniper rifle might have an accuracy of 6, for example, but at extreme range this might drop to 2. A scope can offset this, adding a +2 accuracy, rather than an increase in dice pool, perhaps. So, a hold-out might normally have an accuracy of 2, but with a laser sight, this increases to 4. Firing at long range can reduce this to 1, which makes sense for a pistol.

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 13 2013, 04:53 PM

I don't know where the "I rolled more dice in SR3 than in SR4" people are coming from. I sometimes see.. 12 dice? Rarely more than 12.

I honestly don't care how arbitrarily large the average dice pool is. What I care about is the effect of dice pool modifiers versus the size of the dice pool versus the probability of success per die. A lot of the problems I see in SR4 have to do with importing the Target Number modifiers from SR3 whole cloth as dice pool modifiers. -2 TN for a Smartlink is not really close to the same thing as +2 dice out of 18 for a Smartlink.

Posted by: sk8bcn Feb 13 2013, 05:25 PM

Well, a quick way to consider the thing is to transform 1 die into 0,33 successes.

And if you take 2nd-3rd, not considering TN over >6 or <=2, a -1/+1 TN was equal to 0,16 success x Nb of dices rolled.


So a +2 smartlink 4th ed (+0,66 successes) is way weaker than a -2 3rd ed with a skill of 6 (+0,32*6=+2successes) and with a full combat poll use, +4 successes.

Posted by: Falconer Feb 13 2013, 06:03 PM

Yeah I mentioned some of this in another random brainstorm post....

But really short of 'percentile' penalties/bonus to dice pools... don't know what else to do. That's a bit math heavy for some... even if calculating 5 or 10 percentiles is pretty easy.

You either end up with a ton of nit-picky situational mods which slow things down... or you end up with no meaningful mods whatsoever on a monstrous dice pool. So unless you have something which penalizes the dice pool by say 30%... a -3 is a big deal to 'joe average'... but no problem whatsoever to 20 dice pool.


But that brings it's own set of problems... much more needs to be seen about how this accuracy system works in fact. But I doubt we'll see enough in these sneak peeks to make any good/substantive opinion before the release in summer.

The concept of applying force limits to equipment is kind of nice... as is the confirmation that edge would allow exceeding the limits... though as always devil is in the details... including how exactly edge works to be spent... how often it refreshes partially or in full... etc. Right now it has the sound of... go big on edge or go home... (something many of my GM's criticize me for... making characters with 5 edge normally out the gate when half the rest only have 2 or 3).

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Feb 13 2013, 06:08 PM

Had a Troll Ganger who rolled 16+ Dice on all Combat tests he made (and his Unarmed was 19 IIRC), without Combat Pool. Pretty easy too.
Of course, he had about 300 Karma by that point too.

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 13 2013, 11:34 PM

yes, if you pump every single point of karma into raising skills, you can get skills higher than drek in SR3 . .
but really, usually people build to broaden their characters instead of specializing even more in game . .
and 16-19 dice is easy enough for starting characters in SR4 to achieve.

Posted by: Halinn Feb 13 2013, 11:44 PM

Well, aside from skills, pools added more dice to the rolls in SR3.

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 14 2013, 12:55 AM

That's an interesting point, as pools also provided a limiting factor since they were split up over multiple initiative passes. So you could burn all (or almost all) your combat pool to double your dice for one roll, but the other 2, 3, or 4 rolls you might make that turn would be straight skill.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 14 2013, 01:21 AM

And most karma for non-Awakened went into skills back then because it was a complete waste to bother with attributes beyond character generation because they didn't affect jack. Including attributes in the dice pool was the SINGLE BEST thing 4th did because it actually made attributes matter for a change.

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 14 2013, 04:08 AM

Surely melee damage, damage resistance, Reaction (Initiative), magic resistance, perception, and derived pools meant a little. Why is it that attributes should count, point for point, the same as skills for making tests?

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 14 2013, 04:24 AM

The thing is, it was easier to spend you cash on better Cyber (for the attribute bonusses) .... and your karma on Skills. So much better and easier, in fact, that you'd be "gimped" if you did it any other way.

Posted by: Glyph Feb 14 2013, 05:01 AM

With the higher caps for skills, they should be a more significant portion of the dice pools, at least at the higher levels. I am also wondering if skill in SR5 will also play a role in the base cap for hits (which Accuracy then modifies).

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Feb 14 2013, 01:51 PM

This... I never raised Attributes with Karma in SR3 after Character Creation. Always went into Skills.

Posted by: Falconer Feb 14 2013, 06:53 PM

TJ: yet in SR4... outside of buying 1 rank or a specialization in this skill or that... all my karma tends to end up in attributes... even for mundanes.... and yes I'll pocket that nice cyber/bio bonus to attribute scores on top of that thank you very much!

Because the SR4 cost structure is just so far skewed in favor of attributes over skills...

That's why I'm looking at the new skill cap with a jaundiced eye... it won't make a difference the higher cap if the current attribute costs relative to skills stay in play.. people will still max out attributes instead of spending on skills if they can if they're trying to spend karma efficiently.

And this tends to become more true the more you gimp karma awards... the rarer and harder to get to advance the more efficient I find people tend to be with those expenditures.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Feb 14 2013, 07:18 PM

And I am completely the opposite of you in SR4. I rarely, if ever, raise my Attributes outside of Augmentations. All my Karma goes to Skills, Spells, Complex Forms, Magic/Resonance or Initiations/Submersions. Different Strokes, I guess.

Posted by: O'Ryan Feb 14 2013, 07:45 PM

Same. I think I've raised an attribute maybe once or twice, and that was always going from 1-2 or 2-3, never higher. Everything else goes into raising skills, learning new ones, or qualities.

Posted by: Falconer Feb 14 2013, 08:39 PM

Well in earlier editions... all that karma went into skills yes. (and initiations which came with free magic... talk about the gravy train days... just avoid that magic loss!).

Attributes were largely ignored...


But as of 4th edition... that's largely changed... if there are more than 2 skills tied to that attribute it's a no brainer. If it's an attribute like reaction which gets rolled a lot solo... again no brainer.

Again... even individual skills.. it's generally cheaper to raise the raw magic score than worrying about spellcasting, counterspelling, summoning, and binding. (and more effective because of all the other thing magic adds to and sets thresholds for). If each of those is at 4... you're looking at 40 karma to raise them all... 40 karma will buy you magic 7->8 provided you have the initiations (and you *WANT* the initiations anyhow).

Yes even counterspelling... want to neuter a mage without extended masking... see that increase reflexes spell... dispel it (roll magic + counterspelling...) the mage loses extra IP's immediately. And he can't counterspell you doing it like he could a combat spell.


Agility is another good example... how many different skills do I use? a melee... thrown (oftentimes defaulted for grenades)... a ranged... heavy weapons... and that's not even touching infiltration, palming, etc... 25 karma to raise from 4->5 is damn cheap... as is 5->6 at that point.


In general i find the rule of thumb is optimal karma expenditure is natural attribute == 2x skill. And again there are some things attributes can do which skills never touch or help with. It's simply a matter of willpower to avoid spending it early and often on small things... (though 6 karma here and there for a skill + specialization is generally well spent).

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 14 2013, 09:32 PM

<< Post Deleted >>

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 14 2013, 09:43 PM

I generally make a habit to not explicitly suggest how to alter numbers or mechanics. Mostly because it's time I could have spent better doing other things and also because I'm not a game designer.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 14 2013, 09:54 PM

Being a http://velociraptorcannibalism.wordpress.com/ http://globalgamejam.org/2013/crown-king,* I am the reverse.

*Speaking of, during the making of this game, we were having trouble determining how to take the end-game positions of the players (and other tokens) and converting it all into a single, numerical score to determine the actual winner (i.e. does X have more weight towards winning than Y, and how much more Y do you need to overcome a lack of X?). Offhand I went, "this plus this plus three times that" and promptly did the math for the result on the board, got a reasonable spread of final scores (24 to 36), swapped the positions of two tokens because the setup was "very clearly player 3 won, he has the most X, the most Y, and the most Z" so that a different player had high X, moderate Y, and low Z where player 3 had low X, moderate Y, and high Z (that is, took a losing player and gave him half of the winning player's points, so instead of P3 having dominated in all three categories, the two players had taken different routes: one person monopolized X the other monopolized Z). Recalculated the point spread and....it was a tie game, 31 to 31.

A few more games using that scoring calculation ended similarly, a narrow point spread (indicating a close game even at the end), but clear and logical winner. I think we ended up making one small change to reduce the power of the conversion from resource X to Z, but it ended up not altering the calculation significantly.

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 14 2013, 10:07 PM

I used to do it a lot like post novel long suggestions on the wow forums and stuff...
Came around to realising one day, "Just WTF am I doing?" spending hours telling someone how to run their game?
If Im not enjoying it, I could do something I enjoy, twas quite a boggling moment of self reflection.
On the other hand I think of elaborate designs and machinations anyway, else my muse gets annoyed with me...
Like the time I wrote a 25 page backstory for a 300 year old elf ranger.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 14 2013, 10:13 PM

I'll make suggestions, but I generally reserve them to things that I know work pretty well, and think that they could work well in the system at hand--such as my suggestion of using the attribute and skill advancement costs that L5R uses for the upcoming new edition of SR, I know that those costs work well from playing L5R and I think that it could very well work for SR.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 14 2013, 11:24 PM

Why must one only make suggestions when one doesn't enjoy something?

Back when I was still playing City of Heroes, I was very active on the forums. And I made quite a number of suggestions - some of which ended up being done, even.

Turns out I enjoyed the forums nearly as much as the game itself.

Posted by: Cain Feb 15 2013, 12:16 PM

Because those who make the most noise get heard.

Back when SR4 came out, I and several others raised such a stink over some of the more broken parts of the game, our fixed were actually adopted. I was the first person to propose capping dice pools at 20, for example. I've mellowed a bit since SR4.5 came out, but I'm still not allowed to discuss some of the examples of brokenness that still exist.

Accuracy still worries me. It's a fine line between setting it so high that it's no longer a limiting factor, and setting it so low that it ruins the fun of having huge dice pools. Introducing Edge as a limit break doesn't make me feel any better, either; my experience is that Edge is severely overpowered as is.

Posted by: Blade Feb 15 2013, 12:43 PM

The problem is that those who make the most noise are not necessarily the majority, and they're not necessarily right, especially in the way the problems should be fixed. A good example is the direct combat spell limitation which was poorly implemented and doesn't solve the problem.

Posted by: KarmaInferno Feb 15 2013, 03:40 PM

I do remember our 3rd ed GM housruling increasing costs to raise dice pools based on the related attribute, because he felt people with inherant strengths in those areas should be better at them, and conversely if you were weak in an area related skills should be much harder to improve.



-k

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 15 2013, 04:45 PM

that's no house-rule at all O.o
skill up to attribute=1 point per level
skill up to twice attribute=2 points per level
skill up to thrice attribute=3 points per level
or something along those lines.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 15 2013, 05:50 PM

You just answered a question I did not ask. Congratulations.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 15 2013, 05:53 PM

As I remember it:

Skill up to half attribute: 1x cost
Skill up to attribute: 2x cost
Skill up to 1.5x attribute: 3x cost

Posted by: bannockburn Feb 15 2013, 06:06 PM

And the real amount is for base skills:
New skill level...
up to attribute level: Action skills *1,5 | knowledge skills or languages *1
less than double the attribute level: Action skills *2 | knowledge / languages *1,5
more than double the attribute level: Action skills *2,5 | knowledge / languages *2

for specializations:
New level is ...
up to attribute level: Action skills, knowledge skills and languages *0,5
less than double the attribute level: *1
more than double the attribute level: *1,5

interesting thing, the German BBB doesn't tell us what the cost is when the new skill level is _exactly_ double the attribute level


On topic though:
I like higher skill levels, but I would like to see lower costs in raising them. Not _much_ lower, but lower overall. Taking a skill from 0 to 12 would mean a whopping 158 karma points, and depending on the character creation that could lead to a huge (perceived) imbalance of the worth of build points or whatever is being used. If karma creation is used (and I hope it will), this apprehension would be cleared, of course.

Also, it appears to me that the focus is being shifted back from attributes in direction of skills, but a high attribute would still be more worthwhile. I disliked that attributes in SR3 were basically used only as pool generators, karma cost adjusters and for hilarious perception tests and the like. SR4 did it a better involving the attributes more in the pools (and I have no problem with big pools), but the attributes are, at the moment too dominant, IMO.
I would like to find a solid middle ground where it isn't a no brainer to raise an attribute instead of a skill, but rather both being a valid decision on its own merits.

Posted by: Falconer Feb 15 2013, 07:34 PM

Well I guess to me... my standard is such that... if i were making a purely human karmagen character (to avoid the meta stuff which breaks karmagen)... and there were no limitations on attribute spending... what would you do?


I know what most of the efficiency types like me would do... dump every point I could into attributes and raise a lot of skills to 1 (with specializations) as well as picking up qualities to taste. Only some skills are exceptions to this by the 4th rules (those which don't get rolled + attributes often or get rolled by themselves).


I take the point limit on attributes as prima facia evidence that their costs are too low relative to skills in either BP or karma.

Posted by: bannockburn Feb 15 2013, 07:38 PM

Yes. I agree and this is one of the reasons why I feel that attributes are too important at the current state of play

And at this point, the limits concept could come into play to balance between skills and attributes.
Random speculation: Skill Level*2 is the limit of successes. Skill Level is the limit of successes. Skill Level+Attribute Level / 2 is the limit of successes.
All these solutions would make it more important to take higher skill levels and would make you think about what you want to raise with your karma.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 15 2013, 07:49 PM

Most people get their primary attributes as close to the level they want in creation, and if they spend any experience raising attributes, it's getting less-important-to-character attributes to a more preferred level. This is a sign that attributes in fact have too much 'opportunity cost' for their worth beyond a certain point.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 15 2013, 07:51 PM

In the first case (skill*2) it become irrelevant above skill 3 to raise your skill any farther. 6 hits is more than you're ever likely to see.
In the second case (skill) it too harshly imposes upon the low-skilled people (e.g. 1 skill)

In both cases, defaulting becomes impossible (0 skill = 0 hits)

In the third case, (skill+attribute/2)* you don't have a return to skills either because raising your attribute gets you the same increase as raising your skill (in terms of capped hits and dice rolled) so why spend on the skill?

*I am assuming you mean the average? Even if half-attribute + skill, 3 skill/6 attribute is enough for most people in terms of total hits, and they're going to get more out of the attribute increase anyway.

Posted by: Falconer Feb 15 2013, 07:52 PM

Actually i think the best way to handle the specialization 'problem' if you so choose to call it. Is to change specialization to a skill modifier instead of a situational bonus. That would subject it to the augmented skill caps and it wouldn't work with less than 2 ranks in a skill and wouldn't be fully effective til you had 4.


It would still be reasonably cheap and effective to do...

As you'd need 2 ranks in the skill to get an augmented 2(3) skill value which would improve to 4(6) when you advanced the skill two more ranks. 4 karma gets you 1 rank... 4 more gets you the second. a mere 2 gets you a 3rd for one specialization using the current cost structure.


If skills are going to higher values then there should probably be more ways to get more augmented skill values than only adept powers, move-by-wire(dodge), and reflex recorders.



Overall: I think SR4a did one thing right... they increased the amount of karma awards... so the costs weren't so rigid... increasing karma rewards and attribute costs by 50% effectively made skills and everything else which didn't have their costs changed cheaper. Really I think the game wouldn't hurt if karma awards in pure numerical terms were doubled or tripled... and all the costs adjusted accordingly. Then you could keep 1karma as the cheapest cost in the game for a knowledge specialization... and adjust all the others accordingly.

Restated with karma awards so low... there isn't enough room to adjust costs meaningfully... and fractions are messy and should be avoided.

Posted by: bannockburn Feb 15 2013, 07:52 PM

Draco: that's why I said 'random'. It was just a top-of-the-head thrown out numbers game. Obviously not a picture perfect system I do imagine though that having limits affected by skills would be a fine thing.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 15 2013, 08:01 PM

I see this in my workplace too:

Rather than voicing an idea, think about the implications first. It makes your ideas sound smarter when you throw away the ones that won't work in a desirable fashion.

(At work, an example was that our sales person tried to suggest a control scheme to map to camera angle and for picking objects out of a scene. Her idea was that the mouse would control the camera and that your finger would pick the objects. Never mind the fact that those two control schema don't exist on the same platform at the same time...)

Posted by: bannockburn Feb 15 2013, 08:06 PM

No. Seriously, I don't see a reason for building an elaborate rule system when throwing out a brainstorming kind of idea.
This is not my workplace, it's a forum about a game on which I am not even involved in writing the rules. Just a thing I would like to see.
Were I in the process of writing a rule set, a lot more thought would go into thinking about the implications, and a lot less thought (and effort) into posting it on a forum.

To spell the main and important point out for you (and not to sound smart, as this is not a thing I am really concerned with): Skills and Attributes should be more balanced.

Posted by: KarmaInferno Feb 15 2013, 08:21 PM

I think he upped the multipler for skills past the attribute cap.

Been a while, my memory is fuzzy.

I think there might have been an attribute based pool cap too.



-k

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 15 2013, 08:23 PM

I completely agree. I just don't think those suggestions work to that end at all. Largely because they make changes that do nothing to encourage the purchase of skill points, as limits scale on a flatter curve than skills do, so you can't suggest a 1:1 ratio.*

*If +1 skill die is +0.333 hits, then why should I care about the +1 maximum hit allowed? On average I'll never need it. And when skill ranks--for SR5--are known to scale up to 12, there's even LESS I need that extra max-limit.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 15 2013, 08:27 PM

Attribute Costs (taking high attribute metas into account and assuming same costs and caps
Attribute 1 to 2: 10 karma
Attribute 2 to 3: 15 karma
Attribute 3 to 4: 20 karma
Attribute 4 to 5: 25 karma
Attribute 5 to 6: 30 karma
Attribute 6 to 7: 35 karma
Attribute 7 to 8: 40 karma
Attribute 8 to 9: 45 karma
Attribute 9 to 10: 50 karma

Skill Costs (assuming the new cap and same costs)
Skill 0 to 1: 4 karma
Skill 1 to 2: 4 karma
Skill 2 to 3: 6 karma
Skill 3 to 4: 8 karma
Skill 4 to 5: 10 karma
Skill 5 to 6: 12 karma
Skill 6 to 7: 14 karma
Skill 7 to 8: 16 karma
Skill 8 to 9: 18 karma
Skill 9 to 10: 20 karma
Skill 10 to 11: 22 karma
Skill 11 to 12: 24 karma

As you can see, skills are cheaper to buy unless the skill rating is already very high and the attribute rating is very low (an unlikely situation). Sure the attribute will affect more skills, but that is already affected by the increased cost.

Personally I think the attribute and skill costs should be the following:

Attribute Costs
Attribute 1 to 2: 8 karma
Attribute 2 to 3: 12 karma
Attribute 3 to 4: 16 karma
Attribute 4 to 5: 20 karma
Attribute 5 to 6: 24 karma
Attribute 6 to 7: 28 karma
Attribute 7 to 8: 32 karma
Attribute 8 to 9: 36 karma
Attribute 9 to 10: 40 karma

Skill Costs
Skill 0 to 1: 1 karma
Skill 1 to 2: 2 karma
Skill 2 to 3: 3 karma
Skill 3 to 4: 4 karma
Skill 4 to 5: 5 karma
Skill 5 to 6: 6 karma
Skill 6 to 7: 7 karma
Skill 7 to 8: 8 karma
Skill 8 to 9: 9 karma
Skill 9 to 10: 10 karma
Skill 10 to 11: 11 karma
Skill 11 to 12: 12 karma

As you can see here, the same is true, but to an even greater degree with skills being FAR cheaper to raise, and yet attributes don't have an exorbitant tax applied while still being priced higher due to affecting more pools.

Adding in some 'special abilities' relating to the skill at various skill ranks could also encourage skill purchase on top of these cost schemes.

Posted by: Falconer Feb 15 2013, 08:52 PM

Rediculously undercosted All4Big. I'll counter it here just like i did over on SR4 forum.

You *REDUCE* the cost of attributes. You put up a full chart to simply repeat what you've stated elsewhere.

You completely eliminate the difference between 'soft' skills like knowledge skills and regular ones as well. Plus you continue the problem of attributes being way undercosted in relation to skills.

I'll repeat this on this forum... as of this writing there are more than 80 skills in the game quickly counting.. That's right over 80... with 9 primary attributes (+ edge)... that works out to more than 8 skills per attribute. Granted most players don't want or need every single skill... but raising an attribute still raises defaulting on all it's linked skills... still is used for attribute-only tests. Stated another way attributes do more than just add dice to skill tests. They define the characters physical characteristics and capabilities in ways skills can't.


Given your 1000 karma needed for balanced character and example... I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

One of the worst cost structures I've seen to date. Because it completely undervalues attributes yet again. (sorry but even in prior editions... I found a lot of people undervalued attributes... as proven by how quickly they'd cyber/bio up to raise attributes! they simply weren't willing to spend karma because skills were cheap and could only be raised through karma... while attributes were cheaper to raise with augmentations... wow look at SR4... a similar criticism is there... only now it's cheaper to raise attributes with karma than skills AND augment them with tech... the only place you see the complaint so much is adepts who don't want to resort to 'ware' for cheap boosts).


That said... I have toyed... with 1x costs for skills and they worked out pretty well from my limited experience.... the problem was knowledge skills... I solved that by buying knowledge skills 2 ranks at a time instead of only one.. (paying 2 karma got you 1 rank in an active skill... or 2 ranks in the knowledge... you could only raise active skills 1 point at a time while raising knowledges 2 at a time). It goes back to that whole 'karma granularity' problem when all your costs are a mere 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x... you have next to no room to meaningfully adjust things without resorting to messy and nasty fractions because you don't have enough discrete cost points to use. That's a direct problem of chitzy small karma awards.

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 15 2013, 09:04 PM

So if an attribute provides a +1 bonus to ~8 skills, you're looking at what.. a x16 multiplier just to balance the cost against skill bumps, maybe make it an even x20 to account for the extra benefits you get (damage resistance, etc)?

If you think about it more like a Skill Group, where you get a bulk discount, make it x15?

Since attribute points contribute to skill rolls identically to skill points, I don't see a balanced way of costing them that won't look ludicrous on paper.

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 15 2013, 09:05 PM

How about approaching it from the other angle then looking at karma awards rather then costs?

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 15 2013, 09:12 PM

The other thing you have to compare is the relative cost of buying an attribute point vs. buying off a negative quality.

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 15 2013, 09:14 PM

The ideal solution would be to make them not apply identically, but I somehow doubt that will actually happen. It's a linear system, and linear systems trend toward arbitrary power levels -- stopgap limiting measures that don't bend the curve at the upper limits are patchy at best.

Posted by: Falconer Feb 15 2013, 09:36 PM

I'm going to preface this... the only thing we can meaningfully argue/discuss is broad cloth ideas... we don't know enouh specifics of how SR5 differs to make any statements about how things should work in pure definitive terms.


Lionhearted... that was my point earlier... all these things don't exist in a vacuum. Yet every time I mention it... that seems to get lost in a vacuum.... To date the authors don't seem to like tables much either... when they can just use a simple easy to recall formula.


But look at the current cost structure...
1BP == 2 karma
5x attribute
2x skill.

Karma awards are currently based on these costs

you can only go down to 1x skill or up to 3x skill... when what you might really want might be 1.5x skill (merely for sake of argument).


If you were to simply double, quadruple, quintiple... everthing... (karma awards, and costs..)... you have a lot more room to fiddle with things without resorting to messy fractions.


So if costs doubled... then you're looking at instead say... double all the karma awards (so costs stay exactly the same... just the numbers are bigger).
1BP == 4 karma
10x rank == attribute..
4x rank == active skill.
2x rank == knowledge skill.

Those are just a starting point... but you see it gives you a lot more room to fiddle... you could double those again and the number still stay fairly nice and easy to work with.


As far as the proper ratio between skills and attriutes... I'd say attributes need to be somewhere between 5x and 6x skill costs.

And none of this exists in a vacuum... if costs are made too expensive for attributes vs skills... it simply exacerbates the BP 'build' problem of raisin a few things as high as you can in chargen (especially attributes)... to avoid inflated costs later.

Once again to reiterate is all this is preliminary for any of us to discuss specifics... except as it regards SR4 and SR4 only... we don't know how many skills are in SR5. Some may be merged/split... Similarly some attributes may have their functions altered... might even see logic and intuition recombined into a single attribute again... unlikely but we don't know anything except what they've told us. (My own view is the logic/intuition split was too many individual attributes... 7 was enough....).

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 15 2013, 10:24 PM

Im actually quite happy with the existing attributes, they seem to give a well rounded description of a character.
Stat weight could use tweaking though...
Body and Willpower while having their niches are marginally useful.
They're diminished by the general lethality of combat and having bugger all skills tied to them. The interaction with damage boxes at odd numbers is just that odd...

Strength see to little use, partly because it's so easy to beef up artificially but also because of it's limited use... Not sure how to amend this.

Agility is just way to good a stat, it's useful for most everything!

Reaction and Intuition hits the sweet spot in my honest opinion, but is thrown off that happy balance by having initiative linked to them.

Logic could use some more love, well... It kinda depends on how useful you deem knowledge skills... Matrix changes might fix this though.

Charisma is charisma, it's the same in every game ever... If you're the face or a mage it's golden. But pretty garbage otherwise.

It feels like I never got points over for edge, which is a pity...

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 16 2013, 12:24 AM

I'd probably work my way over toward derived stats again, if I were doing it.

Keep Agility, Strength, Intuition, Logic, Charisma, and Willpower

Derive Body from Strength and Willpower
-- damage resistance, endurance, general athletics (ie, running)
Derive Reaction from Agility and Intuition
-- dodge, intiative, pilot/drive
Derive Mind from Logic and Charisma
-- social resistance, indirect social skills (etiquette, forgery)


Then:

Agility = gun skills, stealth, acrobatics
Strength = melee skills, melee damage
Intuition = perception skills
Logic = technical skills
Charisma = direct social skills (intimidation, negotiation)
Willpower = magic resistance, magic skills

I'd consequently get rid of the varying damage tracks (just set everyone at 10). EDIT: I'd probably allow qualities to expand/contract this, so you could take varying levels of Ow, Hurty negative quality and get fewer physical boxes, or Brain Burnt for fewer stun. Or Meat Shield for more physical and I Don't Bruise Easily for more stun.

That would give you 6 normal attributes and each contributes a fair share to your everyday defenses and secondary skills, while each owns a group of directly useful primary skills.

EDIT:

Edge, I don't know what to do with. As it is in SR4, it gets exponentially more powerful (eg, Edge 1 gives you 1 die 1 time for 1 die, Edge 2 gives you 2 dice 2 times for 4 dice, Edge 3 gives you 3 dice 3 times for 9 dice, etc).

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Feb 16 2013, 12:55 AM

That is only a single use of Edge, though..
Rarely do I ever add dice to the roll with Edge. I tend to reroll failures or use it to gain an extra Pass when desperately needed. So........

There are many uses for Edge.

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 16 2013, 01:04 AM

What you do with things rarely seems to mirror the general case of what things are useful for, and doesn't really change the fact that Edge 7 is worth 49 extra dice on a run.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Feb 16 2013, 01:14 AM

No, it means that you POTENTIALLY have an additional 49 Dice BETWEEN Edge Refreshes. Big Difference there.

Posted by: Cain Feb 17 2013, 04:19 AM

That doesn't mean that Edge isn't ridiculously overpowered to begin with, and giving it even more options makes it even more so. I've seen Edge 8 characters make the game unfun for everyone else recently.

Posted by: Grinder Feb 17 2013, 09:14 AM

Don't bring references to you Mr. Lucky idea into this thread.

Posted by: Trillinon Feb 17 2013, 07:15 PM

I like the idea of using Edge as a limit break, though I share the concern of it being yet another use for edge. I would very much like to see Edge reduced to just adding dice or breaking limits.

Though, to be honest, I kind of miss the idea of the Karma pool that Edge replaced. I wonder if the two can be reconciled.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 17 2013, 07:20 PM

On the first, another use of Edge isn't bad except for one thing. It's already a finite resource and another use would just make it even more so. It really needs a cost reduction to reflect that it is so finite and gives little other benefit to the character without expending uses of it.

On the second, unnecessary except to the Grognards out there.

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 17 2013, 07:29 PM

I think what bothers people with edge is the exponential growth of it, you don't just get more uses for each point but you also get more benefit with each use.
Then again it's exceedingly expensive for the benefit you gain, I never find room to increase edge at chargen atleast...
Hm, what if edge was a derived attribute that ran off your karma?

Posted by: bannockburn Feb 17 2013, 07:33 PM

Your argument is fallible. Giving Edge another use does not make it more finite. No one is forcing you to use the option, and as such you don't use more of it. WHEN you use it, you have more options. Thus it does not 'really need a cost reduction'.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 17 2013, 07:33 PM

To me, the cost of Edge to raise makes Edge 1 with Bad Luck better than raising it.

Posted by: phlapjack77 Feb 18 2013, 03:05 AM

I like this idea! Hearkens back to karma pools of older editions, and it makes a lot of sense that more experienced runners have better "luck".

+1

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 18 2013, 03:14 AM

It does need a cost reduction even as it stands now simply because it is finite and affects pretty much nothing else. Also, as it stands, unless the GM is very generous with refreshing it (no less than every session--not run/adventure) it quickly becomes a complete and utter waste of points if actually used, and if it isn't used it's by nature a waste of points because it affects maybe two rolls in the entire game (that don't come up often at all at that).

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 18 2013, 03:17 AM

You're not using your Edge properly. I've used 3 points (of 4) in one session. Hell, one SCENE. It was well worth it.

Posted by: phlapjack77 Feb 18 2013, 03:23 AM

I think All4 does have a small point, though. The unknown, GM-decides nature of when Edge refreshes means that Edge could be worth a lot less in games where Edge refreshing happens infrequently. It's abitrary.

So along with other changes, it'd be nice to have actual rules on when and how Edge refreshes. That would allow a proper costing to be determined I think.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 18 2013, 03:30 AM

But unless it refreshes fully at the beginning of each session at minimum, then once you're out, the points spent on it are wasted until the GM "decides to give another point". As such, 1 Edge and Bad Luck is a better bet than throwing your points down the drain into Edge.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 18 2013, 03:33 AM

It totally didn't refresh each session. If it refreshed each session I'd have spent all four.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 18 2013, 03:35 AM

And then there's that there are a lot of GMs out there that play their NPCs as being omniscient of the metagame factors, knowing when the players spend Edge and "counter-Edging". This too makes Edge worthless.

Posted by: Draco18s Feb 18 2013, 04:10 AM

THAT is not a mechanical issue with Edge.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 18 2013, 04:13 AM

But it is an issue with Edge, and one that only firm and definitive rules on refreshing it and use by NPCs can solve (personally, I prefer a "no NPC may possess Edge" and that's how I run it, but I realize not everyone does prefer that).

Posted by: Patrick Goodman Feb 18 2013, 04:35 AM

I represent that remark.

Posted by: KarmaInferno Feb 18 2013, 04:44 AM

It's really a GM issue, not a rules issue.

If a GM is willing to do that he's likely pulling other meta-gaming stunts.



-k

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 18 2013, 04:51 AM

Possibly, but not necessarily. I mean, look at all the people on here who so vocally defend NPCs spending Edge (even when it's pretty obvious it's only being spent because the player did on their roll). Not to mention the people who so vocally advocate spirits always spending Edge to resist summoning and binding.

Posted by: phlapjack77 Feb 18 2013, 05:08 AM

This sounds made up. Can you point to "the people" who so vocally advocate these kinds of things? I've only seen one person who could be said to be vocally for spirits spending Edge, and that's when it's F4 or whatever (not naming names or anything )

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 18 2013, 05:14 AM

Hmm...calling someone a liar. Sounds like a personal attack to me.

Posted by: phlapjack77 Feb 18 2013, 05:22 AM

Thanks for validating my position with your response

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 18 2013, 05:23 AM

Thanks for confirming your intention on the last post being a personal attack.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 18 2013, 06:03 AM

Only if it's not true.

Edge doesn't need a cost reduction. It needs some clear guidelines for when it refreshes.

For my part, I would refresh players' Edge as follows:

• Starting Off Right - at the beginning of a new shadowrun, your Edge pool refreshes completely.
• Participation - at the end of any Scene in which your character played a significant role (three or more lines of dialog/narrative, and/or two or more rolls of the dice): refresh 1 Edge.
• Entertainment - once per night, if you can prompt at least half of the other people at the table into sincere applause / cheers / consternation / horrow / etc, thus adding to the overall enjoyment and excitement of the session: refresh 1 Edge.
• The Gods take Pity - Every second time you glitch or critical glitch (on a roll with significance to the story): refresh 1 Edge, and accept our collective sympathy.
• GM Fiat - if, as GM, I have to over-ride a PC's dice - either the result, or even the opportunity to roll at all - in pursuit of that night's story: refresh 1 Edge up to 1 point higher than your normal maximum.

The last one mirrors the rules for gaining a Hero Point, in Mutants and Masterminds, for when the GM excercises their Fiat authority. For example, "Yes, Kal-El, I know you just managed to ace your resistance roll, and the Kryptonite shouldn't affect you, but I need you to be captured by Lex's hit squad, and weakening you with kryptonite is the only way that can happen. I'm afraid I have to over-rule that resistance roll. Sorry, man." ... in which event, there isn't even any need to ask or clarify: Superman's player gets a bonus Hero Point, on the spot. Poof.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 18 2013, 06:09 AM

Between Runs isn't often enough for the cost. For that rate it needs to be at least reduced to half of what other attributes cost (I know Void in L5R costs more, but raising it speeds character advancement in rank more quickly than other attributes--Edge does not do this.) Refreshing 1 point at the end of each Scene, that's fine, but "significant involvement" is too subjective to be an appropriate catalyst.

The third point, again, is too subjective to be appropriate.

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 18 2013, 06:15 AM

I'd rather see them dump Edge and bury it with the rest of the Mechwarrior RPG where it belongs.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 18 2013, 06:19 AM

Try and re-read what I posted - especially my better-stated edit, but even the original you quoted.

For example, I defined "significant participation". Granted, my re-edit upped the bar slightly, but only because the topic got me thinking more about the idea in general.

And, I defined the third point pretty well. If, in a group of six (GM and five players), you can get thre people at the table to spontaneously applaud you, cheer you, or curse the very ground you walk on (etc) ... refresh a point.

And even if that remains "too" subjective for your tastes ... All4, the entire game is subjective. Every bit of it. Because the GM can over-rule whichever parts she wants, with full line-item veto power. Or add whatever she wants, for that matter. If the GM wants to declare that all trolls look like Sully from Monsters, Inc ...? In her game, they do. Period. End of story. Thank you for playing.

Posted by: phlapjack77 Feb 18 2013, 06:25 AM

These are pretty much mostly still GM-fiat though. Anything that a player spends points on yet almost wholly relies on GM-fiat seems like a bad mechanic.

Lionhearted's suggestion of sort of a throwback karma-pool idea for Edge makes alot of these problems go away. Sure it's GM-fiat when you get karma, but it's not something the player spent points on, so there's no room to complain. There's no more Mr. Lucky builds either, a good thing imo.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 18 2013, 06:31 AM

You did succeed in fixing the issue with the second one, but the first should still be changed to "the start of each Session", at least for Edge to be worth what it costs.

All in all though, Epicedion is right. Edge just needs to be dropped down the well and removed from the game entirely.

Posted by: _Pax._ Feb 18 2013, 06:40 AM

The whole game is GM Fiat.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 18 2013, 06:43 AM

Not if run properly. The "Rule Zero" thing is something that should be used very sparingly. Overuse of it is a possible sign of a poor GM. (I won't use it at all, however, as I hold myself to a higher standard when I run than I hold the players to)

Posted by: Patrick Goodman Feb 18 2013, 06:46 AM

Oh, c'mon, guys. This is why we can't have nice things!

Posted by: phlapjack77 Feb 18 2013, 06:48 AM

You could reduce the whole thing like that, yeah But then, why have any rules in the first place if that's the position you take? The point should be to identify areas where (better) rules can make the game better, rather than leaving things largely to GM fiat. Edge seems like one of those places (to me, anyway).

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 18 2013, 06:51 AM

Exactly.



Edge, the Matrix and maybe vehicle combat/chase are about the only areas I think need attention. Changes anywhere else is just trying to fix something that isn't broken.

Posted by: phlapjack77 Feb 18 2013, 07:00 AM

I agree with you that these are (seemingly) pretty big areas that need fixing. But it seems like there's tons of other areas that need fixing too, such as Attr vs. Skill (effectiveness, point cost, etc), magic gtfo-ness, spirits being overpowered, hardened armor / damage, the list goes on and on.

I think this isn't an area of conversation pertaining to die pools though, so I'll stop now.

Posted by: Falconer Feb 18 2013, 07:03 AM

Yup... this is what happens when you advance your favorite motif of 'ignore the rules' to it's logical end conclusion.

The GM ignores the rules... and you are subject to his diktats. With not even the paper shield of the rules.

And you wonder why I argue both sides of the fence as a rules lawyer... and do my damnedest to point out broken mechanics. And utterly dislike the 'pat' answer of... if you don't like it... don't use it or Rule 0 it. Not everyone has that luxury... and i choose to argue for them.


As for the other silly notion of yours... it's not metagaming when players spend edge. But it is when a GM uses edge pool for NPCs? When he looks across the table after a roll and askes if you'd like to spend edge on that reaction test to avoid getting shot. Yet he's not allowed the same discretion for a prime NPC. No, rather than playing by the dice... yes I guess he should just 'ignore the rules' and invoke plot armor.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 18 2013, 07:13 AM

I've never seen a GM that asks if you want to spend Edge on a test. The GM's rolls are secret, and you have to decide with no information whether to spend Edge or not, but the players' rolls are in the open, so yes it is metagaming for the GM to spend Edge for the NPC.

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 18 2013, 07:59 AM

Spending Edge is a metagame decision, just the same as Combat/Spell/etc pools in SR3 -- as a player you're dedicating a limited game stat resource to some in-game task. Something that has no analogue within the game world itself. As a player you're saying "I want this to be easier for my character" so you deduct a point and suddenly it's easier.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 18 2013, 08:10 AM

Basically the breadth of the GM's knowledge of the situation, the plot and the players' rolls just makes giving Edge to NPCs too much. A challenge is one thing, but Edge can turn a 'challenge' into a TPK.

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 18 2013, 08:29 AM

That's sort of a dumb issue, because the GM isn't supposed to be out to get the players. This is part of why I find Edge to be a stupid mechanic for NPCs to use against the players -- the GM doesn't need help making things harder for the PCs, and most NPCs are barely worth the notecard they're printed on so it's not like you desperately need them to be able to save themselves. Major antagonists typically get a few get-out-of-jail-free cards anyway so they can escape the fiery crash or whatever.

Posted by: sk8bcn Feb 18 2013, 08:51 AM

Yay. I guess you're the kind of rule-player type (the one always able to find the rule and argue about everything). No seriously, can't the GM be honest? I mean I don't need to "meta-game". I don't play against my players.

I can wipe them out any day. I just have to build a situation for this. I could roll 10 success on a die roll, no need to spend edge, I just have to pretend that I did it.

But that's not my game.


I quite do not get why Edge refunding needs such clear guidelines. These are areas were GM is the most likely to house-rule anyway. Back in SR3, I found karma pools growing damn big. Contrary what was written, I ruled out that they would refresh every scenario.

The rest is history.

If, at your table, Edge refresh very often, you'll probably buy only a few. If it refreshes very seldom, you'll probably dump it too. Else you will increase it. Accordingly to the usefullness of the stat (which also depends on the type of games your playing).




About Attribute versus Skill costs, IMO, a fair balance is Attribute cost=3*skill cost. You, then, wanna balance skills and attributes a bit and not overly increase one versus another.

Posted by: All4BigGuns Feb 18 2013, 08:59 AM

No, I'm not, and how you get that from the quoted post, I have no idea.

Posted by: bannockburn Feb 18 2013, 10:18 AM

To wit: Dumping one stat in favor of others is the very definition of minmaxing.
You claim to build characters with Edge 1 AND a quality that makes it give you even more points, because you think it's useless and will probably not use it. Congratulations, you're a minmaxer and playing the rules. Not that this is a bad thing, but there it is.

As for the rest of your ~20 last posts: I will not even try to refute your points, because it seems pointless to me. Most of your postings lack reflection or make broad claims and are so highly subjective that I can't even find where to begin.
You think edge is useless, for various reasons, and that's fine for you, your table and everyone who agrees with you. The claims you make, however, are not universal, and it would behoove you to try for once and look over the edge of your own plate (is that a thing in English? Well I guess you'll get the metaphor) before posting.

What I will do, is point out a few things:
There are two things that guarantee you (without resorting to GM fiat) to regain edge. One is rolling a critical success, the other is rolling a critical glitch.
However, the same section says

I really don't get why it is so very difficult to use one of these suggestions.

At my table, I use the specific goals approach and a lot of GM fiat to refresh edge, as it is, in our opinion, far too useful to refresh at the start of each session. See what I did there? This is a personal opinion, that's diametrically opposed to yours. It is not more or less valid than yours. It is what works for us.
However, it is also what a lot of the people use that I've met over the years, so I can deduce that it is a somewhat common opinion.
Basically: You spend edge at my table, you'll get it back if your character has time to rest, fulfills his goals and whatever other suggestions are found on p. 74.

Now, a digression to illustrate my point:
In this thread it has been said that refreshing edge is too much relying on GM fiat. It's also been said that the whole game is GM fiat. Both are, in my opinion, not true.
The game in itself is not GM fiat.
The rules provide a foundation upon which the GM builds his campaign, his one shots, basically everything that uses his imagination. That part is GM fiat. I think I'm not leaning too far out of the window if I say that most people agree that this is not a bad thing. This dude is the one providing their fun by creating the world, after all. The GM presents an adventure, we try to succeed in it, his plan tries to thwart our efforts. As basic, as you can get, of course.
Now, why is it suddenly a BAD thing, when the same dude you use as a referee, uses his views and sense of fairness to arbitrate when you get back edge? Why not trust the guy or gal to be fair not only in creating your fun but also in rewarding or punishing you? It's not a thing I will ever understand.
Your GM is usually not some kind of moustache twirling evil guy who's out to get your character, you, your dog, your grandmother and the free world. And even if he was, his power is only in the game world, so you could just ... you know ... get up and leave if you're not enjoying the game.

Based on this line of thinking, I'll refer to your point of "Bad GMs use edge badly and thus it should be removed from the game".
This is utterly ridiculous.
In the same vein you could say "Bad players use X badly and X should be removed from the game".
Does the fact that people build pornomancers as fringe case example warrant a removal of charisma from the game?
Or do trollwalls mean that body should be removed from the game?

I'm sorry, but no. You cite fringe cases to remove edge from the game, you cite fringe case to remove cyberware for adepts from the game and I could probably go on if I were to look up some of your other postings over at jackpoint.
I get the distinct impression that you've had a lot of bad GMs in your life as a gamer. You don't trust the GM, you want complete creative control, and demand complete insight into the GMs stories and plans.
I don't know why bad GMs flock around you, but could it be that your standards are impossible to meet? This is a rethorical question. I don't have a real basis to have real insight into your reasoning over the internet and I don't know you personally. But maybe try to reflect on some of these questions for yourself, instead of dismissing them out of hand.

Re: NPCs use edge.
See above, GM fiat. NPC usage of edge does not make edge useless in itself. It does, when the GM is bad. But then you already have other problems.
My NPCs use edge in ... not a lot of cases. Mooks don't even have edge. Prime runners and other powerful entities have a varying attribute and will use it, but usually defensively. I'm not out to kill my players, but I will let a BigBad use his edge to soak more damage or to flee. I've let spirits use edge against binding if their force was over the summoning character's magic attribute, but this happens so infrequently that none of my players have really had problems with this. Enemies will use edge to the same degree as prime runners will. Sometimes in a blue moon, an NPC will use edge to sneak up on characters.
I feel like I'm doing it right, since no one's been complaining.

Also, interestingly, players in my circle of acquaintances will raise their character's edge, use it and even burn it, and it's the odd man out that only has 1 in this attribute, and then usually only as a character concept, not because the player thinks it's useless.
My own characters usually don't start with less than the average for their metatype (so 4 for humans, 3 for everyone else).
I dislike the concept of karma pools of 3rd and earlier editions, since a lot of players had so much karma that they would just reroll everything.

In conclusion:
I think Edge is a wonderfully diverse mechanic that makes the game WAY more interesting. Edge is more finite than karma pools and I like that.
If you think it's useless, use it as a dump stat, but don't complain when your character crit glitches and / or dies.

Posted by: phlapjack77 Feb 18 2013, 10:50 AM

I don't think your post was directed at me specifically, but it does touch on things I've said about GM fiat a few posts above, so I'd like to respond

At it's basest, everything in the game can be considered GM fiat. Your character's Toughness PQ is only useful when you get attacked, something the GM fiats (?). Your magic is only useful if the GM decides not to constantly use wards / mana level stuff. Your allergy to silver will only ever come up if the GM introduces it in the game somewhere. Etc, etc. If we're able to move past this and accept this, we can move into the area where we talk about having actual rules.

If you trust your GM as much as you say, why have rules at all? Why have a Pistols skill, when you should trust your GM to say "Yeah, you've got a clear shot, your character is "really good" with pistols, so...yeah, you hit." There are games for free-form storytelling like this, but SR isn't one of them. SR has rules, and that's one of the many reasons we're playing it. We can (within reason) decide the outcome of situations using rules, skills, dice.

So if we've established that having rules is a good thing, then I hope we can move on to see that when areas are identified as relying on GM fiat, that there's the possibility that taking away the GM fiat and adding rules could be a good thing. Probably a good thing. Definitely a good thing In the area of Edge, when a player spends honest-to-goodness resources on Edge, it seems it would be better to have a real mechanical rule on how often the Edge is usable.

Speaking about the karma pools, I agree that if Edge accumulated too quickly based on karma it can get too easy to reroll things. But that's also fixable by adjusting the rate of Edge increase. Wasn't 2nd edition like every 10 points of karma was 1 pt in the karma pool or something? That seems too high, but it can be tweaked to make the idea workable and not overpowered.

The rest of your post, I heartily agree with.

(sorry if this post is incoherent or has a weird tone, I'm trying to practice getting my thoughts across with the written word)

Posted by: bannockburn Feb 18 2013, 11:01 AM

I think, in general, we agree. Rules are important to provide the foundation upon which the adventure is built. Do not take control over the shot away from the player, or you just force the group to sit there and here you prattle and tell them your story instead of involving them. (Exaggerated for dramatic effect)
I just tried to illustrate that there ARE in fact several suggestions on p.74 to handle edge refreshment. It's not as if it's pure GM fiat. But where it is, trust the guy

Edit: But since this isn't really pertaining to the topic of the thread, I'll leave it at that.

Posted by: Patrick Goodman Feb 18 2013, 01:57 PM

That's a quality control issue with the GMs you've played with, then, not a rules issue. The GM's rolls are as secret as he wants them to be, but with few exceptions, at my table at least (and those of dozens of GMs I've played games with over the past 30-odd years), most of them are pretty open. Most of my players can see my dice unless it's critical for the story for them not to.

It's a roleplaying game. It's not a competition, as you make it out to be in most of your posts. Seriously, man, what is your issue with GMs?

Posted by: Epicedion Feb 18 2013, 02:12 PM

It helps to think of the other posters as a haphazard collection of misanthropic shut-ins.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Feb 18 2013, 03:07 PM

We refresh every session. Works out really well.

Posted by: sk8bcn Feb 18 2013, 03:14 PM

Well it was just how it looked like. At least how I perceived it.

"We recommend refreshing Edge at the beginning of each game session, though in some cases it may be more interesting or challenging to only refresh Edge when a full adventure has ended, or when specific goals have been met. One possibility is to refresh 1 point of Edge for each achieved goal, and the rest when the scenario is completed. Alternately, Edge can simply refresh every day."

To me, as GM, this is enough. Guidelines are pretty clear and I'll do accordingly to my preferences. It could be even writen like "GM must refresh pools under these X conditions" I could change it accordingly to my own tastes (alongside with players. I'm always willing to hear their own tastes/points of view).
To summarize: I'd overrule this anyway if unsatisfied.

As a player, I wouldn't care for the same reasons as stated above (let's play within GM envisionnement with my own taste expressed).

The only case I'd like, as a player, to get clear rules about it is for arguing with GM and tell him: "look the rulewriters themselves tells to refresh this way your pool. Your technique is too slow/quick/overpowered..."


That's where it came from. In thruth , I don't know how you are. It was not a personnal attack. I play with pleasure with some of my players that are rule lawyer and handle the situation pretty well. I think it helps me to better my GMing.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Feb 18 2013, 03:14 PM

Just becasue you have never seen it does not mean it does not exist.

Our GM's always ask us if we would like to spend Edge in a situation that we think is important (Players or GMs). They will also let us know if the expenditure of Edge is not a necessity. He rolls, I roll, I don't like the outcome of my roll and say I want to spend Edge. The GM says that it is not necessary, that the roll I had was a success. He will not stop the expenditure of Edge if the player insists, but he does mention if it is not a necessity. *shrug*

Posted by: sk8bcn Feb 18 2013, 03:32 PM

First a disclaimer: I don't know what "fiat" means. I've taken it as "personnal view". If that's not the case, I may have misinterpreted some points.


IMO, you make a mistake there. It's not because a GM defines an interpretation of a rule or house rule something that such a rule is unfair.

You pointed out that it's a good thing to have a rule for pistols. I agree. However, I wouldn't be mad at my GM if he modified armor, damage or added a penetration value, whatsoever. I'd express my opinions on his rule and then let him decide what he want to do.
Likewyse, if he says Edge refreshes every game session, it would be ok too.

But it's not about having a rule or not. He HAS one. It doesn't change every day depending on his mood. So no, it's not proven that having a clear rule by RAW would be better (ps. I'd probably overrule it anyway ).


To me, Edge refreshment is too closely linked to the GM-ing style. A heavy in action-GMing requieres more refreshment. Heroic style requieres regular refreshment. On the Edge-GM-ing style requieres low refreshment. Heck, even between two same-style GMing, the average length of a session makes a difference (with group A, length of session=4h, Group B=8h). That's typically a zone where rules shouldn't be written in stone.

Posted by: sk8bcn Feb 18 2013, 03:36 PM

I do the same usually.

Oh and 95% of my rolls are open. i'm sometimes scared myself for the result when the life of the character is on the line.

You might feel bad when something awfull happens. But it's such a great feeling when the character win on the edge