It might not be just you, but that doesn't mean dice pool inflation isn't a problem for a majority of Shadowrun players. When SR4 first came out, I ran a lot of Missions, open play games. I saw a wide array of dice pools, depending on the players level of system mastery. Even in home games, getting everyone on the same page was difficult. I used the Missions rule to cap dice pools at 20, and then they found a way around it.

Anyway, with SR5, I think we have to consider the learning curve. Back when SR 4 came out, 15 dice was a big deal. The book street sam, with 17 dice, was a scary combat monster. However, it wasn't long until 20+ dice became more common, as players mastered the system. Splats tended to make this worse; but even so, the first incarnation of the Pornomancer was strictly core book, and it had about 32 dice.

SR5 is starting slightly higher than SR4 did, most of the characters I've seen in play are in the mid/upper teens for primary dice pools. That number will increase, though as people learn the tricks of the system. Expansions are going to tend to increase this number. I don't know where it'll end up, although I suspect it'll be pretty high.

Wait... wouldn't 19 Ballistic armor push you into Encumbrance penalties of -2 to Agility and Reaction with only 8 Body? I thought that stacking Armor from things like Dermal Plating also counts toward max Encumbrance?

~Umi

No, it was 19 dice total, including Body dice. I just kept with the two armor types, and dice pools, separated to remind folks it was 4th Edition, not 5th. The total rating for the armor was 11/9 with both Dermal plating and the ArmorJack.

Doh! Right you are.

I think it was just how you worded it saying "19 dice ballistic", which I read and instantly conceptualized as all being armor. Thanks for the clarification!

~Umi

No book handy, but IIRC, cyber and natural armor didn't count. Troll's dermal armor definitely didn't count.

Oh yeah, Champions. Champions was the game where I learned the importance of system mastery. My first attempt at a character was unplayably bad: You have to buy your actions per round, and since I was coming from a D&D background, I thought one action would suffice. Boy, was I wrong. Because initiative in that system is fixed, everybody else went multiple times before I even had a chance to move. Combats were usually over before my action even came up.

The GM let me do a full rewrite, and I came back with a martial artist based on Iron Fist. She was much better overall; but when I actually unloaded her biggest attack-- a 15d6 HKA with armor-piercing ability-- I basically one-shotted a tank with my bare hands. I had learned from my mistake, and I probably overcompensated. Fast forward a decade or so, and you'd see my pinnacle of system mastery: a combination of Iron Man and Green Lantern. I munchkined out the Power Pool rules, so I could basically whip out whatever power I wanted, whenever I wanted it, as big as I could manage. And in both cases, I was still outclassed by Planet-Man type characters: characters who couldn't do anything but throw planets at you, which did a couple thousand dice of damage and basically screwed up the world you happened to be standing on. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

You can't run a reasonable superhero game (or any genre, really, but superhero games tend to have more character points) with the Champions/Hero system unless you have a graduate degree in saying "no" to players. The book even tells you which powers specifically you should monitor carefully for abuse with "warning" and "stop" icons. It's a great example of a system that doesn't try to coddle groups by adding "player fences" to the system; rather it recognizes that players (if so inclined) will *always* find a way to abuse the rules, and puts the responsibility for dealing with that firmly in the GM's lap. Personally, I prefer that approach.

No worries. I seem to have jumped to conclusions myself a bit back and shoved my foot in my mouth. At least it didn't take 2 pages of replies for you like it did for me.

YMMV, of course, but I took the wrong lesson away from that game. I learned that if you don't min/max for every advantage you can, you'll be outclassed in no time flat. To this day, the first thing I do when I encounter a new RPG is to see how many ways I can break the system. Once I'm confident I've found all the tricks and pitfalls, I can feel comfortable playing a reasonable character. And as I learned to GM, I came to appreciate systems that worked *with* me to keep things even, as opposed to systems that said: "You're the GM, you deal with it." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

It wasn't even that hard in champions, slap an active point limit on the game if you need it and you wont have 15d6 HKA's(a 150 AP attack), avengers level is around 80-90 AP max. 150 is planet stomping monsters. After that all you need is to watch out for douche moves like 1d6 30 shot autofire 0 end, NND area of effects, usable against other shenanigans and the ! and stop sign powers.

I think you need more breaks on games like shadowrun though. In champions you are building a character from scratch, why your flaming monkey character can't teleport people into the sun is up to you. But in shadowrun the cyber and devices exist so it is harder to justify why someone who isn't an idiot isn't taking advantage of them. When your out of game justifications shape the in game environment, nothing but the GM is needed. When the in game environment effects the out of game character building decisions you need more limits/

I guess it's largely a combination of play style and where you sit as a gamer. I've been gaming for 29 years now, and have actually played a World of Synnibar campaign, so I've gone full-retard with min-max and munchkin. I love chucking dice as much as the next gamer, but once you get to 15 dice or so it gets to be a real PITA to count all those little bastards up. Why anyone would want to toss around 20+ dice at any one problem when you're going to be looking at an average of 5 hits on 15 dice (Hard-plus/Extreme-minus by 4th AE standards on average without adding Edge to the mix) is a complete mystery to me. I mean, seriously? Don't you want some semblance of risk and excitement in your game sessions?

The only answer I can come up with is that the player is not interested in telling a fun story with their friends at that point. They just want to "win the game" and that is an attitude that I left behind quite a while ago and have very little patience for.

Its not always about being more powerful, but about making logical in game choices that your character would make. IN SR4 a smartgun link gave you 2 dice to shoot, that is the difference between professional and world class skill levels. Who wouldn't get one if they were going to shoot people in combat. Enough of those basic logical choices and you end up throwing a bucket of dice, not because you are power gaming but because it makes sense.

Well, there are a couple of things that motivate me.

First of all, while I enjoy all styles of game play, I prefer the gonzo, over-the-top, cinematic kinds the best. If that involves dumping buckets of dice on the table, all the better! And there's nothing wrong with it, as long as everyone else at the table is in on it. If people come to the table with different power levels, the game is going to be less fun for everyone, but especially for the weaker players. One of my biggest complaints about SR4.5 was that it was inconsistent: it was simultaneously too easy to break and gimp a character.

The second is that I game to escape the ordinary. I do not want to play an average, ordinary Joe; I especially don't want one who's as disabled as I am. I want to get away from that, so I refuse to play a character that's gimped. Of course, gimped is a relative term: what I consider to be powerful might be painfully weak at someone else's table. So, my solution is to min/max to hell and back. I aggressively seek out pitfalls and power tricks, to make absolutely certain I'm not playing a gimped character. It's not enough to avoid the trap options; I have to make sure I can play at any power level the game might offer. So, my initial characters for any system will be as powerful as I can make them.

SR5 is still very much in that phase for me. I've only played a handful of sessions, and while my character is kicking butt, he doesn't yet feel effective enough. Once I'm comfortable with the levels of play offered, I'll settle down, and aim for something suitable, instead of something no one can take advantage of. But until I feel secure enough to have fun a different way, I'll keep going for the maximum power levels.

There's the "stunt dice" rule at my table. If you want over-the-top and you describe what you wanna do very well, I'll give extra dice to the act. So much funner when I can actually get the players involved in the action, more than just "I'll shoot the sprawl ganger." A whole lot easier on me, too, LOL.

Plasying a game in San ANtonio about 20 years ago... I had been running a Champions game for about 8 or 9 years by that time, and a new guy joined our group. Said he wasnted to run Champions game... I was cool with that having come off a very long run as GM for a 4th Edition Game (the Blue Book). So, I asked him what his game parameters were (200 point Supers), what we were allowed to play and what was off limits. He said, and I quote... "You can do whatever you want, does not matter, because there is nothing you can create that I cannot control."

So, Gauntlet thrown down, and challenge accepted.

After Creation, my 200 Point Super was about 1200 points (or so, may have been more) prior to limitations on powers. Took all of about 1 session to establish that no, he could not control the character in any fashion. Was then asked to not come back... which was okay with me, because I was starting a new character in a campaign of Immortals at that point anyways, so no enamel off my teeth.

Did not have to resort to the super crazy Quadriplegic, one blast fixes all, either. He was an Uber Martial Artist, who sported a 10 Speed and 50 Dex, and enough Combat levels to not ever need to worry about the opposition, like ever. Interesting character. Eventually, I added 50 points to him (and toned him back at the same time), and made him the enforcer for a new Villain Organization when I started my NEXT iteration of Champions a few months later. He was much more fun as a Villain, anyways. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

If you can Master Champions, you can do some crazy, Scary stuff... It still amazes me that many people playing Champions are adverse to taking limitations. Cannot tell you HOW many complaints about how a character was just all sorts of suck. They were mechanically sound, but were always getting trounced by more superior characters who were actually CHEAPER than they were on the power scale. It is an entertaining thing. I generally let people play with their concepts for a bit, and would then help them re-develop them after a few sessions once they got the flow of the game. Their characters tended to be MUCH better on the re-write. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I never had a problem with that. And the guy I learned under was a MASTER of the Genre, so I hade a good teacher in that regard. Champions is my Go-To system for Super heroes. But the Math does tend to keep people away a lot.

I am sure nobody else likes to admit that they are the vocal minority. I am pretty sure that you are belong to that particular subculture, but I will not say you are unique in that regard.

Well... The Dozens of players I have gamed with vs. the 10-12 or so who are Vocal about it here. Seems like pretty simple math to me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
I like to think I am somewhat Unique, though. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

thats what we all do !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVygqjyS4CA

with a philosophical Dance
Medicineman

I have to admit I'm more on TJs power scale when I play Shadowrun, not as small dice pool but not far off. My mages pretty much never start with power focuses, my street sams are fine throwing 15 dice for shooting in their specialty etc.

I make a point to match the power scales of my characters to the game the GM wants to run. That said, that power level consistently tends to be above what TJ would hold as all you ever need.

Wait a minute here.... If you are a veteran Runner with 400+ Karma, I can see the scale sliding a bit. Maybe 18-20 Dice or so. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Whereas I've played games where that's considered reasonable for starting characters.

Yeah, limitations are the way to go. The second character I mentioned was crazy powerful because all his powers had huge limits on them, that never managed to get exploited. I think you could reduce powers down to 1/4th by taking enough limits, so a cleverly-designed 100-point character could effectively have 400 points of powers. Since he was an Iron Man/Green Lantern fusion, all his powers came from his armor, which gave them all the Focus limit at a decent level; there were lots of others. Add to that the fact that cosmic power pools are broken to begin with-- any power you want, at will!-- and you see how he got out of control.


I've gamed with over a hundred players in SR4/4.5, in both home and open play environments. And there was a huge wide disparity in dice pools that crossed my tables. It really depended on player experience and system mastery: a few players thought 10 dice was really good, while the min/max masters weren't satisfied with anything less than 20. So, while your experience is your experience, that doesn't mean that dice pool inflation isn't a real problem in Shadowrun.

Now, some people think this is a feature, not a bug. Shadowrun can handle low powered games, and high powered games, is their logic; set level to taste. Unfortunately, that never quite works: because characters can and do come out at wildly different power levels, balancing a game gets to be really hard. It'd be much better if it always went low, or always went high: as long as it produced consistent characters, the problem would be lessened. However, that's not what we have.

Yeah... I am a big fan of Champions. Maybe I should start a new campaign again. Been a while since the last one. Kind of out of practice, though. *sigh*
Never really had problems with Cosmic Power Pools, really (They were not my go-to power framework). Though you are right, they could get really broken really quick.