I don't think it will be a problem at my table, so there's nothing wrong with SR5 from my perspective. You're entitled to play the game or not, it's your table. *shrug*

Maybe you're just too concerned with character's getting statistical anomalies and needing to amazingly succeed. We tend to define the awesome in our games by roleplaying and what players decide to do instead of just rolling high. People not being able to do +12 damage on an attack with a hold-out pistol isn't really a problem for us. *shrug*

I remember that mundanes with resources B would get 400,000 but the awakened would get 150,000 and 50 Force points.

Anyway, back to the topic:

I speculate that limits could be good for magicians. Depending on how they work, wouldn't it be nice to still be as effective while sustaining several spells? Did they leave those increase and decrease attribute spells in the game? You had better hope that your resistance rolls either don't have limits, or there's some gear for that.

And you are making assumptions. I cam concerned that they are going the wrong direction (as evidenced by what they have previewed) and i am not convinced that they are doing so to make the game better. *shrug*

It has nothing to do with Damage (why do people always assume that?)... It has to do with them moving in what I believe is the wrong direction.

But let's take your damage situation in hand, just to address it. I think that if someone manages to get into a position where the Hold-out pistol is a viable solution, and they utilize it to solve the problem (likely by using it to eliminate a threat, as a last result, because, you know, it is a hold-out pistol), they should not be penalized if they manage to make a totally awesome roll (by forcing them to spend Edge to apply hits already received, assuming they even have any left at that point), because the piece of equipment they are forced to use is sub-par. They should be REWARDED for that roll, by allowing them to utilize the hits they rolled in the attack. A Hold out pistol will kill you just as dead (and likely just as often) as a Sniper rifle will, after all.

Magicians already have limits, and have had them for some years know.

And somehow applying similar rules to other characters is Just Plain Wrong.
*Shakes head*

by that logic, drain for shooting guns yes?

Sure, if you shoot the gun with stuff generated from your own body.
Polemic offers nothing.

It's been suggested before.
The tradeoff that exists (without putting "drain" on guns) is that spells have a higher-on-average damage output due to being resisted by 1 stat* rather than 3**

*Wilpower (+counter-spelling***)
**Reaction + Body + Armor***
***Armor is more common than counter-spelling. Anyone can wear armor, only mages can provide counter-spelling.

Let's not forget how much more diverse spells are. Both guns and spells can be used to kill people, but good luck finding a gun that will do any of the more interesting things spells get away with. Even if everything else were perfectly balanced, spells having drain to make up for their versatility would be fine by me.

Yes, and now everyone shall feel my pain.

How is adding 5-7 damage to the standard damage not a reward? That can still "solve the problem" as you put it. Or how is that maglock any less open with 8 successes rather than 12? Damage is just one of the few places in the system where success or failure is not mostly binary, so it is one of the places where limits are most likely to come up. And having an obstacle that you just aren't good enough to overcome until you've found some way to push beyond your normal limits, even if you're an expert, is appealing.

Aren't they already limiting the guards unfairly by only giving them a dice pool of 6? Or PC's that don't invest in charisma or social skills, by not letting them roll as much as the face? They cannot even get the 8 successes a face character is limited to. Surely, they should be REWARDED if they roll well on their small dice pool, right?

Like I said, not likely to be a problem at my table, and by your own repeatedly stated opinion, that's the only standard for whether or not something is broken. So it's fine and I don't see what your problem is. *shrug*

Again, and again, and again, magic limits cannot be directly compared (much less deemed equivalent) to the limits being introduced in SR5, because the magician makes a choice to set his own limit when he casts the spell. He can lower that limit to make Drain easier at the cost of Power or increase that limit to make Power easier at the cost of Drain. The SR5 limits work nothing like this, as higher limits are always preferable, and you don't get to decide what your limit is whenever you make the action. The fact that they both limit hits is a superficial similarity at best.

Not necessarily true.

A low-limit gun with high base damage might be the Gun of Choice for the low skilled goon. There's no NEED for a higher limit because he's not going to "cap out" so he might as well trade that extra potentia for more raw kick.

So in that sense, you do chose your limits; it's just more fixed than it is for spells.

Necessarily true. You're adding a separate axis (limit vs base damage) to point out that gear with Limits can be balanced against other gear with Limits, and that's irrelevant. If you have Physical Limit 8, there's no reason to restrict yourself to Physical Limit 4, because there's no penalty/risk/etc for using the higher value. A character isn't going to pull a hamstring for using his full Physical Limit.

In the explicit context of comparing this to the Magic system of hits-limited-by-force, they don't line up at all. If you could crank damage up on your gun at the cost of a lower limit, on the fly, then it might compare to the Magic system (but even that would be a really sidelong comparison, because re: Magic, if you crank up your limit you're also cranking up the damage output). If you had a brain aneurysm for Overthinking your Mental Limit on a Logic test, then it might compare to the Magic system. But they ain't the same.

Well with magic it had a decent reason. They wanted to force players to need to cast spells at a higher force so drain actually would be an issue. If a force 1 fashion did the same thing as a force 6 fashion you cast it at force 1, no one would cast any non-combat spell or other spell that used force in its effect equaltion at a higher force than whatever would give a DV of 1. Nothing else really has that as a balance argument, its limits just to have limits.

For the record, I've already stated that my player's least favorite thing was when I took away successes from them for exceeding the Force cap. So yeah, if it's wrong for mages, it's wrong for everyone.

I concur. It would take a bit to keep magic from being too exploitable with no hit caps, but I think it's possible. My thought is that direct mana spells could just do their Force in damage and leave it at that. It would certainly provide impetus to use some of the more creative spells more often, where you trade off to-hit rolls and armor and body resistance for the chance to commit those extra hits.

I would actually remove them, personally. I have an idea on how to keep Mages Balanced without them. *shakes head*
But that aside, Mages CHOOSE how their limits aply, and they slide. They are NOT FIXED, and never have been.
Oh wait, yeah, that has been mentioned many times before already. Guess you missed that part.

I haven't, but none of us have had an original argument in about 25 pages now.

Problem is that Limits also affect your Opposing rolls, just as much as they affect your static thresholds. If I have managed to get my 6 Successes on an Infiltration Check, the guard (for example) has absolutely no chance to see me, and cannot even get lucky without spending that Edge, due to his limit of 5 (example). No longer can he roll his DP and apply those miraculous 8 hits on 9 dice becasue, damn, he just does not have EDGE to spend. Sucks to be him. THAT is what is wrong with Limits. You may like that feel, where everyone is effectively the same. I do not. I like the whims of chance to have its say in the mater, for good or for ill. Limits remove that... completely.

Or how about dodge vs. Attack Pool. Your Target, somehow hits his 8 Successes (because he has a MAX limit of (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) and you are wielding an Ares Predator with Smartlink (Limit 7). Sure sucks to be you, even if you do have a DP of 20, becuase if you do not have Edge, you CANNOT HIT HIM. Gone are the possibilities that you will ever be able to hit him on a lucky roll, becasue you have removed LUCK from the roll altogether. Yes, there will be rolls where Limits are not that big of a factor, but those are rarely instances where Exceptional rolls are necessary or needed. However, anytime there is a life or death situation, Limits can actualy get you killed. Anytime there is opposition, Limits will have an impact,. Anytime a firefight starts, Limts may be the deciding factor. I hate that. Because it completely removes the potential awesome factor that a statistically improbably (but suprisingly regular) dice roll may tip the scales one way or the other.

Limits are a horrible way to balance things, because they PUNISH players for rolling exceptionally well, even if those rolls are not reliable. Will those types of rolls be rare at our table? Probably not, because we DO see outlier dice rolls at least several times per game session (in both directions), even if our DP's are not all that high (in comparison to regular Optimised/Hyperspecialist Characters). They happen, and never according to their statistical probability.

Now, there have been several designers/freelancers here who say that the Limtis do not impact play at all, and while they may have some experience in that matter, I am somewhat cautious about their experiences. Coming from a table that sees statistical outliers fairly regularly (and those indeed make the game exciting as the tides of chance flow, whether for good or for ill), I have a hard time believeing that those limits will not be hit fairly regularly (at least several times per session), depending upon what task is being pursued. They say they are rare; so rare, in fact, as to be mostly insignificant. IF THAT IS THE CASE (and I have my doubts), then why pursue the Limit function at all? If they are so rare, then they are not performing as they have been intended to perform.

Either way, my opinion is still unwavering. Based upon what has been previewed so far, SR5 is just not worth my limited funds. *shrug*

How would it be? If base weapon damage was increased then the bar for what is normal has simply been raised. It becomes something everyone gets. It ceases to be a reward and instead becomes the status quo.

I'm really trying to look at things the same way you look at things and I'm still not seeing how your complaints about SR5 are valid if they're not a problem for me. Maybe my tables just different than yours. *shrug*

I don't actually understand what you mean by this. The way I'm reading it is: All damage has increased by 3-4, so every shot is potentially deadly. And you conclude that if every shot is potentially deadly already, a 5-7 increase in damage is no longer a reward because it no longer raises a shot from not life threatening to deadly? Because that 5-7 doesn't make them more dead. So damage codes should be low so that only crack shots have a chance of killing someone by shooting them?

But if success is killing them and you've killed them, how are limits keeping you from being rewarded?

Because there is no kill like overkill, apparently.

No doubt... Each table is different, and sometimes even unique. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
No worries.