Speaking as a designer myself, I do agree having a sliding TN is a bad decision. You can already adjust difficulty by determining # of successes, or by +/- dice pool, why add sliding TNs to the mix?



I'll have to disagree here. I have seen what's possible in SR4 for Street Sams, and when you add Adepts and Spells to the mix, it gets obnoxious. Combat should be very lethal - something you want to avoid, or put an end to as quickly as possible, rather than walking in, guns blazing, and laughing as your opponents bounce bullets off your armour and spells. I would like the knife-in-the-back or the sniper rifle shot to do their job - kill the person outright.

The point of the SR3 Skillset was that you had a fixed number of dice to roll for a skill.
TN changed and number of hits needed changed. Skill-Pool never changed. You may have had dice pools which you could allocate to different things, but you never had things like in SR4 where your ammount of Dice can go from -10 to +30 or more . .

The thing is - what's the point of the dice pool system? This would basically relate to 'more dice per roll' if you evened out the pool between your various actions, and if you end a round with any pool left over, that's a waste. I think the 'spend 1 edge, get X dice' worked better. It basically amounted to the same thing, but you had a limit on how often you could do it.

Okay, so you have Dice Pool X. You could + or - what you needed for a success, and you could + or - how many successes you needed. I'd definitely have to go with 'pick one'. Because together, those are kind of redundant. What's the effect of +1 TN versus +1 success needed?

I can accept a +/- dice pool with +/- successes needed, which is what SR4 did, but I'd be more inclined to do a +/- dice pool, with 1+ successes needed. This would work better to reducing dice pools (thus reducing the number of dice rolled) by penalties, and presuming any success over the first produces a greater effect, but the 1 success is the threshold needed. Having the weird 'you got 3 successes, you failed' scenarios tend to bother me.

In most tests, you only needed 1 single success to succeed . . extras added bonus or reduced time needed or something. The tests where both number of needed hits and TN changed were really seldom.

It's a fine balance to strike, if you make combat to lethal, you're in danger of reducing variety and thus lessening some peoples enjoyment of the game.
While some a lot of people here is all mirror shades all of the time, there's definitely a place in SR for guns blazin' pink mohawk. Making combat overly lethal in a game completely without resurrection (Well not counting hand of god, that still leaves you in a shoddy state), would severely hamper more action heavy playstyles.
Otherwise I agree, some of the soaking possible is silly and need adjustment.

For the most part, that doesn't happen that much except in the case of opposed tests where the opponent gets more hits than you. The cases where it does happen, well, if the threshold is 5 hits and you get 3 hits, then you fail.*

*- If you think in the term 'hits' (used in the books) rather than 'successes' it's much less of a confusion.

Having a sidebar with some optional tweaks to reduce lethality is a way to go, but I generally like games which have the option of the one-hit-kill. The big armoured Troll of Doom who doesn't wear a helmet getting a bullet through the eye sort of thing. I've seen one game which does it well, though I don't think it would work as well with SR5.

Abney Park's Airship Pirates has a round of combat be a variable amount of time. The die roll is to determine the result of a series of exchanges, and one roll can actually kill someone outright. It makes for dramatic narrative, and if you survived being hit once, you're probably inclined to run like hell, but I don't think the 'flexible timeframe' sort of scenario would work with Shadowrun. It would allow for dramatic action sequences, mind... but I don't know.

Which reminds me.

And the difference to SR3 is what? There your TN could change between 2 and 20 depending on the situation - and of course you could get bonus dice depending cyberware etc.

No thank you.

SYL

A reminder to everyone to keep discussion civil, especially with highly inflammatory topics such as new editions.

L5R - One of the Deadliest games I have ever played. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I have to Agree with Murrdox, but for all the wrong reasons...I am not fond of the "wireless" world. I preferred 3rd edition when the only way a Hacker or Rigger (cyber or Technomancer)had to Jack in to the target. It forced the the Matrix character to physically with the group instead of being safely far away from the flying bullets...I like to put all my players in mortal danger (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

You're thinking of it wrong misdemeanor!
Hacking from home means that he got no backup when you bust down the door (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I would like two core settings. Seattle and a rural area. One thing I thought Shadowrun could of used was a rural setting similar to the Far Cry games.

I'd like to see the archetypes more different and more... I dunno, fleshed out?
Technomancers shouldn't be just matrix magi, there should be a mystery to them. Shamans and hermetics should deviate more. Adepts and sammies, hackers and riggers, all should have their own unique things going, both in mechanics and fluff. Yeah, that'd mean learning new rules to play a new archetype. So... what?
In this vain, I like the idea with cyberdecks returning. They really helped hackers to stand out. I don't think they should be that different or complex to design or anything; just having anything past a certain Rating threshold require a cyberdeck might work.

All I want for Christmas is my matrix back.

Fuck Technomancers. Fuck wireless. Fuck RFIDs. Fuck AR. These things are the opposite of fun, and make deckers useless.

"Bring back 80's speed metal"
And the Rocker Archetype.

And this.

Rockers make every other face look lame and boring by comparison. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wub.gif)

Omae, if we were in the rules it wouldn't be metal \../

That's progress. Look at the world now - wireless. RFIDs everywhere. Augmented Reality exists in the now. I was just writing an essay on Science Fiction, and one of the things I praised Shadowrun with is that they're keeping up with modern technology, and thus remaining relevant as a science fiction genre. If they ignored the wireless world, AR, and everything that comes with it, Shadowrun would descend into irrelevancy -- much like Cyberpunk did. Cyberpunk tried to stick to its roots, and in doing so, became less and less realistic, and showed its age more and more.

I want Shadowrun to take modern advances in technology and culture into account, and keep updating to match the shift in what's relevant now. This means that the world is wireless, this means that everyone's going to have a full-fledged computer on hand. This means that scanners and ID tags are going to be everywhere, on everything. That's just how the world evolved, and Shadowrun should mirror this if it wants to make sense.

Otherwise, you're going to have things like 'we're able to do this NOW, why can't we do this in SR?' -- and the excuse 'because we can't' isn't going to cut it.

The way to do it is to have the "optional tweaks" be the higher lethality like it was done in SR4 (unneeded as they are, it's lethal enough as-is).

I don't know if I would change enough to make a while new edition. My main gripes my group and I have had were the rocket rules and hacking being too easy. Im sure for the hacking thing im missing something when I run it. Not sure if my group will jump ship to SR5, I kinda don't want to learn another rule set when im happy with the old one really. I understand from a sale point why they have another one coming out after this time but im not really that excited for it.

Crap, forgot about rockets and their scatter... Then again, that's a really easy fix (ignore it on rockets or swap rocket and grenade scatter).

My simple fix is to ignore SR4A's scatter table and use the old SR4 one. The new scatter table is nothing short of lunacy. With that sort of wild and random inaccuracy from even the best heavy weapons experts using the best guidance systems, there's absolutely no reason to use rockets, missiles, or grenades in the SR4 world.

Ah, yes. That's something else for the wish list. Explaining exactly how hacking works. What programs do what, how they are used, and a breakdown of the methods to go about breaking into a computer and getting what you need in non-vague terms.