I have done a search, but I believe my Search-Fu is weak, as I cannot see this question NOT being brought up. SEVERAL (10+) pages in the search and still nothing.

Has anyone ever played with no skill caps? Even using the thought of double karma after 6? If so, how is this working or is it? I'd like your thoughts if you wouldn't mind.

*Yes, I know the screams of power gaming might arise, but I am a long time player/GM and have seen characters reach retirement level with skills in the 11-14 range in previous editions.*

I have yet to run into it, but I certainly don't think it would hurt. I'm not a fan of the skill caps (or attribute caps, for that matter), personally, and I think that as long as the GM removed the caps from NPCs (when/if it was appropriate for that NPC to have such a high score), I don't see the system breaking down or anything.

There are already ways to get pretty absurd die pools, so people doing so thanks to hard work and skill, as opposed to just external modifications, is a-okay with me.

The game didn't last long enough for it to come into play, but the last time I was going to GM a home campaign, I was gonna play sans caps.
I can't see that it would really hurt anything, honestly.

For the sake of the game, I'd probably do a couple things...

1) Limit augmentation to 1.5 the characters current unaugmented attribute. This prevents players from really abusing the removal of the attribute cap.

2) Increase karma costs above 6. Maybe add an extra 1x modifier (so 3x for Skills, and 6x for attributes, that sort of thing). This lets them go above 6 (or 7 if they have the quality), but it's a bit more expensive, to represent that it's harder to achieve those near superhuman levels.

Bull

With Normal Attributes going up to 9 (metagen. Improvement, genetic Opt.) and Gear now going up to Level 10 (Thanks to War ! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohplease.gif) )I wouldn't mind Skills going up to 8 (9 with talented) in a
High-Level,Highpowered Campaign(with Cost x3 for level 7,8 (and 9))
Sometimes you have to adapt to the Powercreep(If you can't fight it)

with a flexible Dance
Medicineman

The question is how grounded you want to keep the game. If rating 1 is a hobbyist's ability, rating 3 is professional competency and rating 6 is a leading authority then what is 9+? Should it be possible for the gap between a PC and a professional to dwarf the gap between said professional and a child? Can someone really push the boundaries of human knowledge and bodily control so far without the support of a team of professionals? It's the making of a superhero game, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

If you do remove the skill cap, consider reducing ratings that are higher than 6 for those characters who don't devote time to maintaining their expertise (much like how neglected contacts drop in Loyalty rating).

So if a Longarm 1 is a entry level shooter that is just getting into the sport and said level 6 is olympic/elite shooter would a 10 make him God?
at olympic/elite level even the smallest factor that CAN be controlled it usualy IS.
So say at skill 6 all gun factors and ammo/internal ballistics are acouted for and practiced so they become of minimum issue. personal human error factors are at the very minimum too. wind reading is great.
by skill 7 you remove all internal ballistics factors you can control and you most likely have zero human error. wind reading is awesome
if there wer any infinitesmall human error by skills 8 and 9 they are gone. wind reading is better than a wind reading instrument.

Skill 10. GOD: I control the wind and move the bullet itself. who needs powder and guns (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

There is a point where excessive skills just dont make any sense. As with anything the excessiveness to get to that point in both time and money invested training you are better off spend that time reading some fiction novel or watch some movies and spend the money to outsource the ability to multiple people with lesser skill. much cheaper i reckon.

a bagof rice and a certified credstick can buy you a small group of wannabe snipers from the local gun range with skill 2 in longarms. Thats alot more hitpoints and dice pool total than you at skill 10 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

its not uncommon in my games for our face to outsource the combat interference mission to a small group of "will work for rep and food" gangers.

im just saying.

First of all, thanks for the replies and input.

I actually was thinking on the Attribute cap idea. This doesn't bother me as much, I mean there should be an upper limit to what the (meta)human body can achieve, however with skills, I do not believe that you ever stop learning or refining your learned abilities. It may become more difficult and take much longer (representing the fact that to really grow at something, you must be challenged, which becomes increasingly difficult).

So, with that in mind, yes, an increase to the amount of karma needed to increase is, without a doubt. a "no duh moment". This begs the question, would Aptitude need to be repriced AND reworded or just increased in someway to accommodate the lifting of the skill cap?



My long time group and I find those descriptions a little forced, and they never really set right with us.

Now this hits on another problem I was looking at, and really points to another thread which brought some good points.

Really, the difference between a Professional and a Minor League Athlete are only 1-2 dice? Assuming 5 Skill for Pro and 4-5 Attribute, and 4 Skill and 3-4 Attribute for Minor. An average of 3 to 3.33 hits for a Pro, and 2-2.66 hits for a Minor League. I just think the scale needs to be adjusted. Even in the older additions, we used a modified version of the skill level definitions we found here. Before finding that on the web, we used this for a long time.

I'm not suggesting going that high just to chart out a description, but I think there should be more of a range to denote ability than just a couple of dice.

Any thought as to a suggested upper end (if there should be one) or as to the cost increase? I don't want to change the whole mechanic of karma cost across the board, though I did like how SR3 linked the cost to attributes, I don't think that would work as well here.

It is of my opinion that the game should have been built from the ground up to allow for something like this, i.e. take that "3 is a professional" table and double every number. You're still limited to having 5/6s at chargen, but that means that a starting character, at best is a professional at what they do (one 6 or two 5s) but over the course of the Long Game they rise in the ranks until their highly talented experts (12 skill).

It also has the advantage of making street games doable without having to go "bwuh?" at having skill ratings of 1s across the board and 2s in stats.

I think it's pretty obvious that in a game where the GM would remove skill caps, he'd be having to take a look at that skill level chart and make some revisions, too, fellas. Don't get bogged down in what a 1 is supposed to mean, a 3, and a 6...if the GM is letting them go to 10 or 12 or infinitely high, it should be clear that would mean a 7 is no longer considered legendary. Changing the number range obviously changes the relative ratings.

The descriptions make the very dangerous mistake of forgetting that skill is only a (fairly small) factor into the equation that is how good someone is at something. Stats tend to contribute at least as much as the skill itself, and very few things out there don't have another few to several points to be gained from equipment and/or ware. When firing a gun for example, you're likely to see a larger contribution to the DP from agility (Thanks to muscle toner) than from the skill itself. Same goes for any agility based skill really thanks to the ease of pushing it to augmented maximum. And then for guns there is the smartgun for an extra 2 dice, which is essentially the difference between a novice and a professional.

Which is a small part of my problem.

My group and I like skill level description for in game use, "you are looking for Mr. Smith, a cutting edge researcher in Arcane Research". In older editions, my players knew this was high level stuff, skill 9 min (in his specialty at least) but in SR4 he would be currently equal to our group mage (Arcane 7, Aptitude). Who, I might add, will never be able to "expand her knowledge" of Arcana any more.

I just think there should always be a chance to learn more, no-one knows everything.

I think adjusting the skill cap, or removing it entirely might be an option.

Has anyone already tried this? If so, any comments, suggestions, or warnings?

I know it's ultimately my game, but I like to have an informed option and weigh my options that way.

There's more to it than that. Does the mage have access to a research facility and a dozen gifted post-graduates with which to push the boundaries of mankind's knowledge? Is there no limit to how good a runner's technique can be developed? Can anyone's brain effectively handle the amount of information required for a rating 12 knowledge skill? People aren't computers with limitless Response ratings, but when you check your biological datafiles to see if you recognise a ganger's name I bet you'll expect an answer in the same combat turn, right?

Actually, we need to be even more careful than that - skill ratings aren't about what you can achieve, they're about reliability. Nobody can know everything but a limit on how well a person can put their learning into practice sits quite well with me. There's a limit to how competent the body can get (attributes) so why not the mind?. Whether the value range is too limited or not is another matter, but this edition is largely built around maximums.

Also, wrt the Arcane example, I would expect Mr. Smith to have a Research specialization but would be astounded if the PC did too.

No, but if you're turning them over to a corp, the PC mage could go "take me. I have the skill." And be just as good.




It's like...2 karma to change a specialization.

Except they don't have the actual knowledge, experience or understanding of the other guy. Merely the same aptitude. It's not at all feasible to swap an established project leader with a complete stranger and expect a seamless continuation. That said, if the corp had all the research data already then they would probably be happy to take on the mage rather than steal someone else, but then the mage will be looking to arrange his own extraction since he presumably already has good reason for not pursuing a career at the top of his field.



Yes, but now you have to find a runner willing to do so ...

Well, be astounded. Her character concept was a former high end military researcher for Tir Tairngire (good enough and almost trusted enough to go to Crater Lake level of good) that got caught up in some....unfortunate cover ups. "Fatal" accident, new identity, new "life" in the shadows (unexpectedly that is), and she still doesn't know who to "thank" for her second chance. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ork.gif)

Personally, I think yes. The (meta)human brain is one of the most mysterious and astounding "computers" in the world.

In real life, yes. In game mechanics terms, no. Skill 7 is skill 7 as far as the rules are concerned.

Also:

http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

Exactly. Equal skill means equal aptitude, not "I know what he knows". It's perfectly possible (if highly improbable) that a rating 1 guy knows more in the field than a rating 7 guy. The rating 7 guy is only better at using the skill.

Fair doos, that does sound like an interesting back story. Does the player know to keep nice and quiet about her priceless talent?

I would worry a bit about the power level in a game with no skill caps, but I think that it forcing a revision of the fluff skill descriptions would be a GOOD thing.

Because, frankly, the skills don't mechanically work in a way the even remotely matches the fluff descriptions. Skills are only a portion of the dice pool, and even looked at by themselves, someone with a skill of 6 is really not that much better than Joe Average with a skill of 3. It's only one success, on average, separating them. A wider spread of skill ranges would make the fluff work a lot better (now 6, the max for a starting runner without the Aptitude quality, is "professional", while world class skill are in the 12+ range).

Exactly.

The Skill and Attribute caps have been a source of discussion for a long time. The argument has been made (I think Karoline is one of the stronger proponents of this) that dice pool is the real issue, not the ratings of Skill and Attribute.

When I think of 'professional', I think of someone who can regularly do the job in a competent fashion. How that translates into dice pool is a matter of interpretation, but I think being able to regularly get three or four hits is a reasonable ballpark figure. One or two hits is barely succeeding, and more than four is approaching critical success level.

So what kind of Skill and Attribute level does that require? It needs a dice pool of nine to twelve, so dividing equally, that gives about a five or six in both Skill and Attribute. That seems a lot. There are two qualifiers that probably drop those a bit, tools and specialization. Each can easily give two to the dice pool, so drop the range from 9-12 to 5-8. Now the 'professional' split is about three in each of Skill and Attribute. That would appear to be around where the game puts the fluff description of professional now.

One way to look at the 'consummate professional' (best-of-the-best?) is to say he can do what the professional does, in any circumstance. So, take away the tool mod and the specialization mod, and we are back up to five or six in Skill and Attribute. We're still not far off from the fluff in the text.

Another way is to say that the best-of-the-best can do critical successes on a regular basis. So if the professional gets three or four, then the consummate professional working against him gets seven or eight. This is where the current scale suffers, because that needs a dice pool of 21-24, and in most cases that is pretty hard to achieve without a lot of modifiers due to hardware and situation. this is a key point, however.

If we are focusing on Skills and Attributes, then a 'best-of-the-best' character is cruising in on nine or ten in each of Skill and Attribute. Removing caps on Skill and Attributes would allow attainment of this level of performance. The game of Shadowrun, however, is all about a world in which the human form and psyche have been augmented by technology and magic. In that world, a person of skill and ability is magnified by forces outside himself into something capable of prodigious feats. Someone with Skill three and Attribute three can be bumped up to have a dice pool in the twenties, making him a 'consummate professional' in deed, if not in breed.

Within the framework of the ideology behind Shadowrun, then, is the current scale system that much of a failure?

I've been using higher caps almost exactly as Bull described for quite a while now, and I've never had any problems with it. Partly because not a lot of people get their characters that high (so as not to throw off the curve too much), but even then, it's not much of an issue.

I allow skills up to 10, attributes to 1.5. In order to do so, you still must by the Exceptional/Apptitude Quality corresponding to it. Interestingly, I've yet to have anyone do it with strength or body. It's usually a mental attribute. Skills get bought up more often. All I do to increase cost is to increase the multiplier by x1. Wroks well enough.

My basic reasoning for this is that the listed level of skill is off. I'm also not a fan of a character being able to start at the absolute maximum, but that's a whole other topic. Essentially, a higher skill means that you can work in more difficult enviroments than someone with less skill. Firearms and the ranged table is the easiest to demonstrate this on.

For the example, we're going to say that we're shooting a man sized sihloutte. The table assumes a stationary target, since there's no modifier for a moving target, only a moving shooter. That's why you roll Reaction to dodge. For our example, we're going to go with a good, very professional shooter, with a decent agility.
Agility 4, Pistols 5 = 9 Dice.
Now by our given standard, this should be a more than professional shooter. This guy should be good. I also strongly disagree that you should have a 5+ agility to be a good shooter, but again, digressing. While the given stats should be very good, nine dice is not very impressive. Now we'll add the scenario with some modifiers.
We'll go with shooting from cover - around a barricade, two shots on two side by side targets. We're going to go with a double tap, two shots per target, in one round. As scaling successes is 1 = just succeeding, ie. hitting your target, and 4 is a critical success - bull's eye, we'll say that two successes is generally towards center mass.

Modifiers:
shooting from cover -2
multiple tartgets -2 per additional target in the same actino phase
Recoil -1 for second shot
------------
Total mods = -5
Meaning that at best, by the time the professional shooter gets to target two and is only reliably (average successes of 4 dice being 1) hitting all over the target. You can take an unprofessional shooter who is just learning (Skill of 1, Agility of 4) and all of a sudden they have no chance in hell. This isn't even factoring in range. This is just outside of point blank, which is really close.

I choose shooting because I know it well, and shooting is probably the part of the game most people know best. I can also tell you that the given scenario is not that hard. Especially considering that the given example could be one shot on reach target with an unmodified 9mm and the modifiers would be the same. So there may be some problems with the modifiers as well, but I think we can chalk that up to trying to simplify things. For me, two shots at two targets in three seconds from cover is pretty damn easy. I'm a qualified Expert Marksman, but that's by US Navy standards, which really isn't that hard. We'll be generous though and say I have a skill of 5 (or 3 Specialized semi auto if that makes folks more comfortable;) ). I can easily hit center mass at short range in that scenario. That would be what, three successes?

In order to be able to match that scenario, without modifiers like laser sights or smart gun links to cancel out, remember we're going on pure skill here, you'd need a remaining dice pool of 9 to get an everage of 3 success , shooting a good center mass shot on each target in three seconds. So if you have a -5, you need a dice pool of 14. Without modifers from cyber or gear, straight up skill and attributes only, you get 14 dice from Agility 7+Pistols 7. So only a world class shooter who's Jet Li can shoot around a barrier, one shot on two targets, and hit well? So yeah, skills needs to range higher to work reliably with modifiers.

Now, I did only get about 3 hours of sleep, and I'm not a big one for probabilities and all that, so there may be some rule or some such I've missed somewhere. But really, a barely skilled shooter has almost no chance of hitting two targets, and a sharp shooter can only just do it? Change the scale of what the skill levels are supposed to mean and let them go a bit higher, and that helps with some of the issues.

Edit: Holy crap. Sorry, that ended up being one damn long post. No more posting stream of thought for me.

I recall posting a revised skill rating description of sorts that used your total DP as opposed to simply your skill to give a general idea of how competent someone is at something. It has some slight failings of its own thanks to the fact that it is painfully difficult to get high DPs in some areas, and painfully easy to get them in other areas. Survival for example is hard to even get into the double digits, while anyone without double digits in weapon skills will be laughed at.

Edit You can find my thread here.

Agreed on the topic in general too. That's one of the reasons I went with firearms - more to work with. Skills that don't get as much play simply don't have as many expanded rules, modifiers, etc. They're left a lot more abstract. For those ones, the basic scale works, because there's no listed modifiers, so what's to say that Survival 6 isn't "All that you can be", when there's no modifiers that show otherrwise?

This where I think a house rule of Knowledge skills having some impact mechanically on the Active skills dice pools through the means of something like a Team Work test helps.

I know its not the best of examples, but when I think of the best MMA fighters in the world, one of my personal favourites is George St Pierre. It isn't enough for this guy to be as dominant as he as been in some match ups, it was also being very humble in defeat and learning from his short comings. So by being a very knowledgeable fighter, he seems to routinely plan meticulously his way to demolishing opponents who have been just demolishing everyone else that goes up against them. To make this somewhat analogous to SR4A, natural attributes and skills trained to a peak doesn't simply seem to be enough to be the best of the best, the mental attributes seem to factor in somehow to get that extra edge over others at their same level of that, so I think knowledge ratings adding a few extra dice to the total pool should have an impact to represent that extra depth to some characters in specialized situations they have planned for and/or are knowledgeable about.

Just food for thought, I am very much seeing SR4A these days as something that must be tweeked by house rules and customized fictional settings that fit what you are looking for to get the full enjoyment out of - official products be damned.

Edit: I love Karoline's revised fluff descriptions based on dice pool, I am going to go read it again (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)