Yeah, why not cap dice pools or do away with rampant dice pool stacking?

Also: if a rule meant to contain oversized dice pools doesn't actually come into play very often, then it's not doing it's job. If it comes into play too often, it's an annoyance. There's a possibility that Limits can ride the fine line between these two, but so far I haven't seen any evidence of this.

That's exactly what I think. I still see no justification for the added layer of complexity.

Here's an idea:

A pistol that does a normal amount of damage has normal accuracy

A pistol firing extra large caliber that does more damage has lower accuray

Lower base damage but more possible hits, or higher base damage but less possible hits. How does that sound?

What still bothers me is that in an edition where the character matters more than the gear he has, hу is too dependent on the gear he has. For example, if you have a commlink that allows only 4 successes, but need 5 to break into the system, no matter how good you are, you'll never be able to do it. It all comes down to the gear in the end. Of course, unarmed characters will have an advantage in combat as they are limited only by their physical thresholds. Which will lead to the instance where an apex fighter would be more dangerous without a sword than with a sword (as he has, say, 8 physical threshold, but only 5 with a weapon).

The simulation doesn't seem too right. With a skill cap of 12 I'm sure to see a lot of ~20 pools on player characters. After all, even before all gear and augmentation a human can get dice pol of 20 (6 Attribute +12 skill +2 specialization)

You are assuming situations where you need more successes than you can possible generate even exist.

Yeah, I do (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Of course, I don't have the full rulebook, so I have to use existing thresholds. There are thresholds of 5 now. On the other hand, there will be gear with a limit of 4 or 3.
Of course, static difficulties may drop this much, but that seems unlikely

So all things being equal you're both assuming that the game designers made sure to create a game that was unplayable as well as assuming GMs, the ultimate regulating device of the game, would systematically put players against situations they cannot possibly win against.

I think what you're missing is that they're trying to find a middle ground between gear and skill. A character can make a pipe-bomb in their basement with household products. It might be enough to get the job done. Does that mean they just created high-grade C4 to level half a city block? No. Same thing for guns. A world-renown marksman still needs top of the line gear to allow him to reach his full potential. Giving him anything less and, sure, he can hit a target that's still outside of the range of most people. But it'll be harder on him to do so.

The limits presented give, what I feel, more of a psychological limit. You see the number of hits that you cap at and, suddenly, a poor gun choice or a sub-par cyberdeck is starting to look a lot less attractive. You'll opt for something that can get you the successes you need, nine times out of ten. You'll want to align your dice pool with a reasonable accuracy and cap. And, in those cases where you need to get a high number of successes on a roll (such as your hacking example) you'll likely be spending edge anyways. At that point, your limit goes out the window and you can roll and keep 10+ successes.

In my opinion, they've given just the right amount of limiting variables and features to be fair while also giving us the right ways to break or exceed them. As it's been pointed out, the limits aren't going to become a factor as much. So why have them? For the people that carry around a dice pool of 20 and are only packing a holdout pistol. For the people that got a Hello Kitty disposable commlink and were able to break into a AAA corporation. And, for the people that can splash on a pretty face, wearing grimy and dirty clothes and not having showered in a few days, and STILL get the Johnson to fork out more money. When I see characters regularly using light pistols to end shootouts with high threat response teams without breaking a sweat, throwing 25+ dice and getting more then ten successes each time, I pray for limits. Just because a few people don't like them doesn't mean they're invalid.

That's exactly what this system is supposed to do.

The SR4 core system can play well with hit caps. I've played with a GM who enforced a skill*2 cap, and it worked pretty well to ensure that unskliled characters played by lucky players didn't outclass skilled characters played by unlucky players. It also ensured that characters with an agility augmented to 9 weren't very good fighters if they had low combat skills, or that characters needed to be skilled in order to benefit from dice pool bonuses.

So I don't have a problem with the hit cap concept. What I question is the choice of the limits.

When my GM enforced his skill*2 caps, it did fix problems caused by some characters, as explained above. But using attributes or gear as the limit doesn't seem to have any interesting impact.

First, there are the gear-linked limits: the fact that no matter how good you are at shooting, you can't do much damage with an old and broken rifle? It's taken into account by that rifle's DV. There's no need for an extra stat for that gun.

Then there are the attributes-linked limits. I guess they apply to characters with too many gear/powers bonuses who can do stuff far more impressive than they should be able to. That concept was already in the first aid rule for SR4, where it was tied to the skill. Tying this limit to the attribute will only make sense if boosting attributes isn't cheap and easy. If it is, then we'll still have the problem of the face who's got 9 AGI in his arm for a few nuyens and a skill of 1 and can shoot as well as the AGI 5/Skill 5 specialist...
Except that if attributes are harder to raise, then this whole limit thing becomes redundant.

So I really feel that limits are a bad solution to problems that lie somewhere else.

Or that different people did the limits and thresholds and it gets missed in the edit because that never happens....

Opposing rolls will tend to generate such situations. *shrug*

I don't buy that. Large caliber rounds IRL often have a higher accuracy, because they have more propellent and can be rifled. A .22 holdout is not as accurate as a .357 holdout for many reasons, including caliber size.

What we seem to be looking at is superior Gear = superior everything. Which is fine, except that makes cash the balancing factor in games, and that's notoriously hard to control for in a Shadowrun game. (I'm using "control" in the sense of a Control group, not as a personal table thing.) It also encourages looting and hoarding of equipment, something I usually find to be annoying to deal with.

I need to see some actual play reports. I need to see if Limits are really discouraging players from maxing out dice pools, and if Lucky characters are even more overpowered than before.

Additionally, how does doubling the skill rating *shrink* dice pools?
Now GMs will have to keep track of MORE dice and an additional weapon stat.

On of the people I played with was frustrated with how the rules didn't really permit the style of character he wanted to play. An unarmed disarmer who uses disarmed weapons while using the disarmed as human shields.

Sounds doable to me (would take some effort, though)... What were the obstacles?

I'm not familiar with the houseruling we needed to do to make it possible. That was between the player and GM mostly. I believe it had to do with grapple rules not making it possible.

Of course, grapple rules themselves were a mess. Very difficult to get a grapple and trivially easy to maintain it.

In fairness, it was three things and three things only...melee combat needed a fix too.

True, but you also have the adage that you are not going to be able to win every fight. If you are looking to get lucky, then that is what edge is for. Spend a point and remove the limits and you are all set.

I'm making no personal assumptions, I'm voicing my concerns that we're can be heading into a very gear-dependent edition of mediocrity-triumphant averages. In all honesty, I don't want to play a game of joe averages. As I see the system right now, it's a speedway to joeaverageland - if you can't get more than X successes because of caps, there's no need to raise your skills to the apex level, also the difference between a character with medium pool and high pool becomes really vague. Let me put it straight - I like playing strong characters. When I make a character, I select a proficiency for him and make sure he is the best in the chosen field, and i don't settle for being 'the best around'. I don't like playing mediocre or weak characters, those that can't excel in their chosen field, those that struggle even against basic odds and so on. So, naturally, I like game mechanics that reward me for gearing towards being the best and hate the games that punish me for the same things or force me to be mediocre.

Again, I'm not accusing anyone. I haven't seen the full book yet. Maybe there are some additional rules, tweaks or whatever that fix everything. I'm only voicing my concerns, I'm speaking about what bothers me, what I'm afraid of. As it stands now, I see the limit system as a punishing tool only. It doesn't bring - again, as it stands now - nothing positive to the game, nothing deepening the game. It gives birth to some problems - namely, gear dependance and dominance of non gear-dependent characters as natural limits seem to be higher than gear limits. I see this as a problem, a problem that would certainly bar me from playing the edition if it's not resolved. I do hope that it will be resolved and my fears are misplaced. Because, of course, it is only fear itself we fear. And drop bears.


Just to illustrate my point.
Assume there are two identical guys with, say, 20 dice for attack. One has a regular gun with limit of 5, the other has a smart-linked gun with a limit of 7. Who of the two will win the shooting contest? The one with the better gun. More still, if the second guy has less dice, until some point he will still have a better chance of winning. That just doesn't sits right with me.

Nnnoooo....

Unless you've got some kind of statistics to back this up...

Because a DV5 gun limit 7 vs. a DV7 gun limit 5 are going to cap out at the same total DV, so the two guys with 20 dice each are going to be tied.* Likewise, if the guy with the DV7-limit 5 gun starts losing dice his total DV isn't going to miraculously go up. He's just going to cap out less often, which lowers his average damage, which means he starts losing.

*Actually the limit 7 gun will be slightly behind, on account of averages: he's going to cap-out less often, but only because we're looking at a total Dice Pool smaller than what he would need to roll to on average cap out his hits. But again, as the other guy loses dice the other guy is going to drop in damage, on average, and eventually end up lower than this guy, so the main point still stands.

Take a look at Feshy´s diceroller with statistics function. Enter your expected dice pool, consider how many hits you need to succeed.

The interesting part is opposed tests and having as many hits as the opponents limit, forcing the use of edge if they want to win.

There are some fundamental misunderstandings of dice littering this subject.

I think that's going to be a major hurdle to appreciating limits.

For instance: Having a lower limit than another person in no way eliminates your ability to beat them in a contested roll. Just like having less dice than someone, in no way, eliminated your ability to beat someone in a contested roll.

Additionally, having a larger dice pool with an infinite sample size dominates a smaller dice pool without limits. In the same way, having an equal dice pool, and disparate limits is likewise dominating in infinite sample sizes. There's no fundamental change here. The core result is a function of probability. Same as its always been.

There's a bit of a mathematical shell game going on, and if sounds like some of the above commentary isn't even looking at the table, let alone the shells, let alone trying to figure out which shell will win you a big kewpie doll.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Some of the commentary makes me think that they aren't even on the same block as the shell game.

Peronally, I am going to wait to see the whole thing before having an informed opinion. However, that being said, I have a house rule fix that may work for some who see this as a problem right away. It keeps limits as they are and head nods to SR 1-3. Won't know if I will use this myself till the book comes out, but here it is anyhow.

Treat all hits over the limit on a 2:1 ratio. Spend edge to treat them as normal.

Still gives a character with a crappy gun a reason to call it a PoS, but doesn't completely nerf him either. He can still potentially kill someone with a hod-out pistol.