Heh.

Technically, I count as pansexual. It's not really as dirty as it sounds.

Back on topic, I don't mind large dice pools. Fistfuls-of-dice games can be a lot of fun. Limits, however, bother me. If you're going to allow huge dice pools, then tell players they can't use them effectively, that ruins the fun. Really, dice pool inflation isn't a problem by itself. It's when the rest of the system breaks while allowing those huge dice pools that you have a problem. You're better off designing a system that either doesn't break under those dice pools, or directly cap them (like I do, and how Missions copied my rule).

I'm going to give it a chance in actual play to see how it works, but I'm not overly optimistic about it.

I'm open-minded at this subject, but I couldn't watch shemale porn anyway. I'd feel dirty looking at that (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)



As I player, I buy option A anyday over option B. Even without Equipment/Edge modifing limits.

While under limit, each die adds 0,33 success average. So if limit=4, that's 12 dices. Over 12 dices, I get very disminished returns. But I can decide whether I push my skill or use it as a limit.

With a hard cap, no limit, you could go way over 4 in successes. That's were I find the possibility to spend edge to take full advantage of it nicely found. I'm entousiast at that aspect of the system.

Hey all,

I'm kind of new to the forum, although I have been part of others in the past.

I don't want to drag up an earlier part of this conversation, but I wanted to weigh in on the concept of limits on skills portion of the thread. I am a big fan of skills having more importance than the associated attribute so I have come up with different ideas in the past and felt I would share them with you guys in case there was something you liked.

1) My players and I have tried to use a rule that limits the number of hits a skill test can achieve (Max Hits = Skill Rank +1), and from experience, it just didn't work for us. The main reason is everyone kept forgetting about the limit, including myself as the GM. If you and your players are confident you would remember, then my point is moot, but I thought I would share that. Personally I don't like this one, as I am a firm believer in the GM moto: "nothing is impossible, just highly improbable" and I think a player should always have a chance, no matter how small, to succeed. This is also why I like the optional rule of 6 for all rolls and not just rolls with Edge.

2) A different way I came up with to incorporate skills as a limit, but never had a chance to actually try, was to dictate that no skill test may have anymore attribute dice added to the dice pool than the skill rating. (Example: a character with Pistols of 3 and Agility 5 would only have a dice pool of 6 because his Pistols skills of 3 would only allow 3 of the 5 Agility Dice to be added to the test). Defaulting would allow only 1 die. --- This concept has its merits, but also its flaws. Some will notice that it is similar to early SR where the use of combat pool was limited to skill rating.

3) An idea I've recently had is to go back to something similar to the rule of 1s from SR1, SR2, & SR3. If a player rolls a number of 1s greater than his skill rating then he glitches (rather than half the dice as per SR4A & SR5). This puts extreme importance on the skill and prevents low skill players from adding too many dice to their pool from other sources out of fear of glitching. A GM would probably want to allow a player to control the number of Attribute Dice he adds to the pool so as not to be rolling a massive amount of dice to a default skill test.

4) an alternate version of #3 could have a number of 1s equal to the skill just being an automatic failure.

If anyone wants to try these ideas, go for it; and please let me know how it goes. However, if you wish to critique them, please be constructive.

Thank you.

B.S.

*SIGH* Essence figures into the social limit, good to see that Magicrun is alive and well into the new edition.

Jesus people, Cyberware has been around 50+ years in the game world, people will have gotten over it by now.

I don't know. I'm cool with this idea. As a person gives up essence, he becomes much more machine (or perhaps animal). And social interactions with dogs and toasters doesn't work very well.

That being said, I also don't think Mages are benefiting from this, either. They have to invest ALOT of karma into magic already, and I know most players that I have run for hated being Magic because of the karma drain. Especially when their cyberbuddies had an abundance of karma for skills/attributes and managed all those great abilities with nuyen.

Of course this is only my opinion and doesn't really amount to much in the great Ghost Dance of life.

Honestly i'm not really going to have this debate, because essentially what's done is done and there's now f-all reason for me to buy the new eddition, because they iinsist on forcing me to play my preffered "side" of shadowrun a certain way, and impose some fairly arbitrary across the board penalties on it. Unless they've significantly reworked and buffed the cyberware (which i highly doubt) essentially from 4th to 5th cyberware will have just gotten a not insignificant debuff.

Or put another way, under previous editions I could find huge amounts of high essence gear that would have absolutely zero visibility outside of an astral scan or a cyberware scanner. Now "for some reason" such a low-profile sam will be inhumanized and find it harder to talk to people, likewise the concept of the cyber-face is nerfed from jump in favor of more pornomancers(slang term for a very socially focused adept). It gets even more odd when you think about it this way, two highly cybered people, both members of a trendy seattle transhumanist club or the same cyberware of the month club can't get over how inhuman each other are as they talk amongst themselves, they must commiserate on their inability of people to understand them like some World of Darkness exiles.

Also mages having to invest Kharma to do what they do, oh noes, those poor babies, having to spend Kharma to be able to rend reality asunder at will.

Also while i'm on the subject of things that make me extremely uneasy. The glitches example seems to indicate that the astral to physical barrier on spell casting is going away. Ewwww. I'm hoping it's just bad phrasing.

What makes you think it has anything at all to do with how visible cyberware is, as opposed to how dehumanizing it is on the inside? Someone doesn't have to be visibly weak or sickly to have a low/moderate Strength or Body score factor into their Physical Limit, so why are you assuming it requires visible augmentation for Essence to factor into someone's Social Limit?

And what exactly makes you think it's such a major factor in Social Limit that it's worth skipping an edition over, anyways?

What makes you think being able to see things that ain't there doesn't make you inhuman as frag as well?
for every point of essence you lose, you gain a malus.
for every point of magics you should gain a malus too.

Yes, this is the way I was looking at it too.

Lurker, I'm sure you have your reasons for disliking this aspect of the game, but don't hate the new system before you have even tried it. We all have different preconceptions of how SR should be. Myself, I think the new age of SR is nothing but a bunch of kids walking around the mall with cellphones and guns. the cyberpunk grit is gone. I don't hate SR4 or SR5 because of it, I just take the new rules and go back to the dawn of 2050something. If you don't like the essence/social rules, don't use it. No one is holding an Ares Predator to your head and forcing you to use it. It is possible, however, that you may like every other aspect of the game despite this. Just don't quit until you've given it the ol' Redmond Barrens try.

I disagree. The massive investment of karma is costly enough, not to mention the drain of doing anything with those abilities. On the other hand, nuyen is easier to come by, and a cyber-runner gets all the perks much easier (and earlier) than mages, but suffer little penalty. In fact, they still get all that great karma for skill and attribute improvement.

And that is the problem: Cyberware takes a bite out of your "soul", thereby making the recipient more inhuman. Until now that has been only fluff until hitting zero, now it gets some rules backup. I like it.

Of course there is the problem with "social" cyberware, it would kinda blow if you install a False Front and end up being less successful in Disguise tests...but somehow I have the hope that this problem is too obvious to miss even for Hardy and accordingly will be taken care of. Just make certain cyber increase the Social Limit (like weapon mods do for Accuracy), problem solved

You are aware this has been around since 1E, are you? SR4 just cut your social skill pools instead. SR1 through 3 added to the target number. This doesn't make SR5 more or less Magicrun than any other edition (other things might, but not this). Also, barring you know the formula and want to skirt the line of your NDA, assumptions on the impact of this are wild guesses at best.


I can't see this working well because it makes small skills nearly unusable and, to be honest, slapstickrun. You have a 33% chance to glitch at skill 1, regardless of your attribute. Generally, everything that shrinks pools in the current system brings you closer to a glitch-heavy, three sooges version of Shadowrun. So I can't really see this go well. Your first idea, with skill as a limit, is interesting though, and might be a working way to introduce success limits into SR4 that punishes attribute-focused advancement appropriately while not resorting to SR4A's atrocious attribute cost, and thus making adepts nearly unplayable.


Where do you even take that from.


Wrong, cyberware-induced mali have always been a part of Shadowrun, they have just usually been used rarely.

feel free to do so

and why does being able to speak with your imaginary friends and have them do stuff for you not make you less human?

If you use it, I hope it works. Like I said my group, more often then not, forgot about the limit and it ended up just being dropped for lack of use.



Like I said, it has its flaws. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Me as a GM, I would be ok with that. Back when I played SR3, and players added combat pool, my house rule was that you rolled the skill dice using different colour dice and if these off-colour skill dice all came up 1s, you botched. So that is something that could be added to that option.

What imaginary friends? They are real. And in game terms, as I've always understood it (of course our perceptions of the game may be different), improvements to magic are a spiritually-non-invasive augmentation; where as cyberware is digging out that spirituality and replacing it with black.

Magical improvement is like enhancing your garden with flowers and shrubbery, and cyberware is like an oil spill in your front yard.

However, I could see the concept of an equivalent penalty when a magician loses a point of magic for some awful reason. To a mage, this is just as bad as having part of your soul ripped out and could easily cause social problems.

SR 3 and 4 based social penalties for cyberware on how unfitting or threatening it looks. One obvious arm is worse than two synthetic ones, the 3rd Ed BBB even told GMs to ignore Datajacks because they are totally common. SR 5 on the other hand seems to care about Essence, not looks. No matter how invisible the implants are, the humanity loss (as CP 2020 would call it) makes you less compatible with humanity.

I want to point out this is HUGELY campaign dependent, unless they've dramatically altered the rule set for mission awards in 5e. I've had campaigns where we make million nuyen mission payouts and get only 2-3 karma, but I've also had games where we get 10 karma and 10,000 nuyen. Different campaign/reward styles will favor one character archtype over another, but in theory there should be a moderate point where the two are balanced. This means you absolutely should not have penalties for type of progression, and none for another. Otherwise, when you play at that balanced point, the one that gets the penalties is inherently weaker.

Because magic does not diminish the connection between your being and this plane of existence, i.e. reduce Essence.

Or for metagaming reasons, because that is not an area where mages require a nerf.

This is true. Reward balance will affect these things greatly. I've always been a fan of the Cash for Karma and Karma for Cash rules. It helped out Karma hungry mages in a nuyen heavy campaign, and it helped nuyen hungry cybers in a karma heavy campaign. However, I have never known a cybergoon to bock at karma for skill improvement.

If you're looking at metagaming reasons, this is a place where adepts need the nerf more than cybered characters do.

If you're looking at an in-game reason, it doesn't diminish the connection between your being and this plane of existence, but it DOES diminish your connection with the rest of humanity. A high magic character sees and interacts with the world in a completely different way than a Mundane does. It makes at least as much sense to implement a penalty there as it does to implement a penalty for losing essence.

The problem is too many people have it firmly ingrained in their heads that magic == better

These people aren't wrong. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

And that's a problem.
Magic. Should. Not. Be. Better.
It should be an equal choice.
So if they ain't giving cyber a boost, magic needs a nerf for balanced gameplay.

I don't think, that's true at all.
Characters are not made equal, and it's difficult to quantify 'power'. I'd even go so far to say that it's a futile attempt to compare a samurai with a mage.
What one person perceives as MagicRun is not necessarily the whole truth.
Personally, the biggest powergamers I've met invariably played cybered characters.

IMO, it's basically a question of bias, and personal preferences.