Please do not forget. Most of those combat drugs were developed specifically FOR the Corporate Guard/Cop types. They are an alternative to permanent augmentations, which cost a lot, as you have already observed.

EDIT: Which was obviously covered in the posts above... Sorry.

Yeah, Jazz.

It costs 75 yen a hit, lasts an hour, with no side effects, and is something every guard should have.

If your crew is getting the drop on every guard, it's always going to be boring, but anyone who is expecting combat should have 2 or more IPs, including your team's mage. Whether it's casting a spell or hitting the "GO TIEM" button on their autoinjector, it's so easy to have a 2nd pass that anyone who is on the job working should have one.

That said, always tailor responses to jobs, and jobs to your team.

Well, there are *supposed* to be side effects. Ah, well. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I'd call that a side effect...

Matters for players who might have something to do 10-60 minutes after that 3 second combat, but -2 to paperwork tests for 10 minutes is not something that a guard worries about. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

dunno - critical glitching a paperwork test might result in a nasty papercut...

It also used to make you insane with longterm use. I guess they removed that. It's still addictive per the normal rules, right?

I personally just have my players roll 1 initiative per combat encounter. Most combat, at least from what I've seen doesn't go past 1 or 2 rounds at the most anyway so it's not much of an issue.

Jazz goes into the list of things to use should the Lone Star agents have a round to shoot up.

As for LonePaladin's suggestion, about each 4 hits modifying IP by +1 but that only having an effect if that surpasses their augmented automatic bonus IPs, I think I kind of like it.

I may try out both and see which one works better in play. This week's game is expecting some combat, and I have some permissive players who don't mind my effing around with the system so long as we ditch it if they hate it.

It's interesting that you are happy for a fixed cycle of acting but want a variable number of IPs for the characters. I'm not arguing against the variable IPs (I think that was a notable loss with SR4) but I think the fixed cycle detracts from the experience somewhat. The practical implications are small – it only becomes unfair with regards to non-action timing, where the faster people are guaranteed to act first after a timed event occurs – but having players embroiled in a conflict know exactly who will be acting and in what order between their own actions is too simplified IMO. For example – When the chips are down and there's a chance your nearest opponent might get two actions before your next action you might well consider a different approach to the one you'd employ should you know for a fact he'll only act the once (or even not at all should you have more IPs).

And I've just thought of another thing – sacrificing actions. Suppose someone acts before you and you give up your next action to dodge. By RAW you should have a chance to act before their next action by beating them in the initiatve roll the following turn, but if it's a fixed cycle you know you won't. If your assailant is good enough he could force you to keep sacrificing your actions for full dodges and your only means of turning the tables are to take the hit, which could knock you down and consume your action (simple action?) with getting back up. This makes winning the one-and-only initiative roll in a fixed-cylce system a much bigger advantage than it might seem.

After which he's either in a grave or promoted to a nice cushy desk job.

I think it's perfectly good that PCs usually have a few more IPs on average than the opposition. The opposition only has to take out one team of PCs after all. If the PCs are going to succeed at an entire mission, they need to be better than the individual obstacles.

Also, in many combats, there are more enemies than PCs, so they really need those additional IPs, if you start totalling the IPs of both sides.

I'm intrigued by the variable IPs based on Initiative, but preferably in addition to normal IP boosts. It eases out some of the weirdness from high-initiative 1IP builds.

I personally also favor letting drugs and augmentations stack. Powerful, but I like to keep the temptations dangling in from of the players; addiction just fits SR.

I'm not really "happy" with the fixed cycle of acting. There's just no real benefit to rekajiggering the Initiative order every 3 seconds, so I haven't been doing it. With a house rule that allows extra IPs for exceptional Initiative rolls (that I'll be trying in the next game), I'll be returning to Initiative rolls every round.

Arguably with Wired Reflexes 2 in 3rd edition this didn't happen. It was pretty easy to get minimum score of 11 or better. You only needed a reaction of 4 with wired 2 to get a minimum of 11 on an initiative. I had a 3e character with a minimum of 19. So as long as I got two 2s or better on my four dice I went 3 times. I have heard of minimum scores in the 20s.

I’m just wondering how you are looking at the 4 hits = +1 IP, only if you get more bonuses than you have base IP. Does that mean that a character with 1 IP needs 8 hits to actually gain an additional IP, and a 2 IP character would need 12 hits? It would really limit the wired 3 folks from gaining an additional IP at least, as they would need 20 hits on an initiative test to gain their 5th IP. Twenty hits should be unheard of even with edge. Eight or twelve hits sound pretty darn hard to achieve. But this is talking about a free IP which is pretty powerful.

-D

I feel like you might as well just use the SR3 divide-by-ten method if you want variable IPs. Which I do like, it's a fun little uncertainty.

Yeah, a little extra analysis would show that to be pretty well impossible. As far as I can tell, there's a hard limit of 19 dice on Initiative with max augmented Reaction and Intuition and the Exceptional Attribute quality.

Going by the 4 hits (+ additional IPs beyond the first) concept as opposed to the one you described, that would mean a maxed out 19 Initiative / 4 IPs would need 7 hits to get a 5th IP, which would happen about 45% of the time.

But, honestly, 19 Initiative is really reaching for the sky. I think if someone wants to devote a quadrillion nuyen to Initiative, they should at least have fun with it.

On the other side of things, certain creatures like dragons (especially great dragons) generally have 16+ Initiative, and would end up getting their third IP pretty regularly. But they're dragons, so meh. A few other paracritters and spirits might also end up on the winning side of the deal, but that doesn't bug me either.



I thought about it. Initiative = Init + 1d6 per IP, and use the 10s system from there. However, you'd end up with some unaugmented people always getting an extra IP (10 Initiative is easy/cheap to get with unaugmented stats). With the 4 hits (+1 per extra IP) = +1 IP rule, you're either looking at augmentation or paying through the nose for maximum unaugmented Reaction/Intuition scores to get 50% odds on a bonus IP or better. The 50% mark is breached at 11 Init dice, which means at least one unaugmented stat at the natural cap.

At slight augmentation (+1 IP), that 50% mark is passed at the 14 dice mark, and heavy augmentation (+2 IP) hits it at the 17 dice mark. Someone with +3 IP never gets there within the 19 dice limit.

Those are obviously going to be extreme cases.

Under your numerics....
Human
Intuition: 7 Natural + 3 Augmented
Reaction: 7 Natural + 3 Augmented
Total: 20

Human - Exceptional Attribute [Reaction] & [Intuition], Genetic Optimization [Reaction] & [Intuition]
Intuition: 8 Natural + 4 Augmented
Reaction: 8 Natural + 4 Augmented
Total: 24

Unless there's a race out there with better than 6/6 natural unaugmented max in Int/Rea. Also not sure how feasible it is to acquire an augmented capped Intuition...

there are really no Intution augmentation except Increase Attribute Spell.
But some races can get fairly high Rea+Int: Pixie, Nosferatu, Fox shifter.
And don't forget rigged/remote controlled drones. Matrix initiative can get pretty very easy.

The drug psyche provides +1 Intuition.

Maybe you'd have to average them, or maybe all those people *should* get 2 IPs. I mean, that's kind of the point, right?

Another option might be decoupling high Initiative (going first) from extra IPs (going more than once). That's a bigger change and possibly not work the effort, though. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Humans don't get 7 natural max Reaction or Intuition, and you can only take Exceptional Attribute once. I don't know about Genetic Optimization, but I'm assuming it does the same thing as Exceptional Attribute.




Basically my opinion is that if you manage to get yourself a quadrillion Initiative, you should probably get an additional pass even if your gear doesn't explicitly give it to you. In previous editions, unaugmented normal people could get a second pass some of the time, and there were non-Wired-Reflexes gear options that weren't nearly as powerful Initiative-wise, but had other benefits and would at least make you capable of hitting the 2-3 passes range if you stacked them right.

You know what the problem with variable IPs is? The weird outliers. This system was designed to have less statistical outliers. No grannys exploding 6's on their initiative and getting 6 turns.

<small addendum>

If you want to dangle a carrot for the unwired and non-magical, let lightning reflexes have a 2nd rank that also grants an IP but only if they have no wires or magical ability (or technomagic for that matter really...)

Statistical outliers can make games fun, though. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

The most memorable parts of any game are usually the ones where the most unlikely things happen. You don't want those things to happen too often, but the way dice rolling follows a normalized curve gives you sharp drop-offs toward the fringes of success (weighted by probability so that total failure is more likely than total success). It's unlikely you'll roll 0 hits on 10 dice, but it's even less likely that you'll roll 8, 9, or 10 hits.

Yeah, I *like* the weird outliers. Besides, the granny'd have to use Edge under the SR4 exploding-6 rules.