YMMV, usually proportional to how close to RAW you want to stay.

For characters supposed to tell new players "here, this is how a character you play might look like", how about as close as possible?

For characters supposed to tell new players "here, this is how a character you play might look like", how about as close as possible?

My opinion on the sample characters is that I don't expect them to be optimized, or to be completely error-free, but they should be able to function at their role, and not have huge errors.

My opinion on the sample characters is that I don't expect them to be optimized, or to be completely error-free, but they should be able to function at their role, and not have huge errors. Now, I'm not picking on the people who initially made the archetypes - from the impression I get, the archetypes were put together at a point in the design process where the rules were in flux, then didn't get updated with the rules changes.

My opinion on the sample characters is that I don't expect them to be optimized, or to be completely error-free, but they should be able to function at their role, and not have huge errors. Now, I'm not picking on the people who initially made the archetypes - from the impression I get, the archetypes were put together at a point in the design process where the rules were in flux, then didn't get updated with the rules changes.

Thus, the street samurai with way too much money was probably made before some prices were drastically revised, or the amounts for starting money were dropped down. The covert ops specialist was probably done before locksmith was revised to become such a super-important break-in skill, because a covert ops specialist without that skill is like a decker without the hacking skill. I don't know what happened with the combat mage. But these archetypes are pretty much unusable unless you make some drastic revisions to them. There is a thread on the other forums that reverse-engineers and fixes the archetypes.

If a player came to me and wanted to play some norm who thinks trolls are the greatest thing since sliced bread and wants to emulate one, and offers to do so with a distinctive style negative quality, I'd be hard pressed to suggest a more fitting one.

My personal issue with the character is that the spell in question does not allow for a norm to convincingly mimic the size of said troll.

And his Edge is too low, and a ton of other issues which were not fixed.

Yesterday we had a post updating Missions; today it’s time to talk a little about the main line.

I’m going to start with a disclaimer: Much of this is going to be vague, perhaps frustratingly so. But that’s because there are some things going on that are simply not for public consumption, as they relate to the personal lives of people involved, and I don’t feel appropriate to share some elements in a business post.

The past half-year has been chaotic for Shadowrun. Chaos and lots of work is not new, but the nature of the chaos was different. Some of it involved different systems that have been set up over time, including the proofing system, not working as they had; others involved trying new types of products, and the inevitable mistakes that come with trying something new. Catalyst is a small company, and there is almost no redundancy built into it. When something breaks down, it’s difficult to fix it on the fly, and repairs don’t always come quickly as time is short.

One of the results of this chaos was that product proofing was not what it always should be. That’s not at all the fault of any proofers—it was a problem of my process and Catalyst’s process. As new processes were being built, I made some mistakes in judging what would work. I learned from the mistakes, and they have led to changes that will make the new processes stronger.

The good news is that most of the chaos has now passed. Systems that were not working right are back to regular functioning, or have been rebuilt so that they will work better going forward. Some of this was discussed in yesterday’s post, so one thing you can expect is more regular Missions. What else should you expect?
•More regular releases of books;
•More accurate, more reliable rules documents;
•Release of errata for Run & Gun and Street Grimoire by the end of summer or sooner.

We hope to use the changes and processes we have in place to provide books and more that will improve your Shadowrun experience and make you excited about the options you can introduce to your game!

From the SR Blog

Here is hoping it's a step in the right direction.

I'd be too happy if Hardy and CGL finally managed to pull their act together, but given the history, I'm not buying it (in neither sense of the word) until I see some actual improvement.

Know what I still have?

The delivery confirmation slips on the complaint letters I wrote about WAR!

The change document for SR4A is dated March 2009, when Peter Taylor still was line dev. Jason Hardy took the helm in September 2009, between that date and February 2014, a grand total of ZERO errata was released. And what was released in February, half a year after SR5 was released, were a mere 4 pages compiled by two freelancers, before CGL resumed to play dead. In the same vein, editing and general content quality has gone down the deep end for a long time, including constant report by proofers that their feedback was simply ignored. The line certainly had lemons before, but it has become a citrus monoculture since then.

Everything we are seeing since the release of 5th is simply a continuation of the four years before, explaining that with personal or other problems in the past six months simply doesn't float -- no matter how serious those problems might have been.

I'd be too happy if Hardy and CGL finally managed to pull their act together, but given the history, I'm not buying it (in neither sense of the word) until I see some actual improvement.

Seriously, a year and several releases later and now Hardy's just realizing something's not working, after being yelled at for six solid months after SR5 core published about how poorly edited it was?

This isn't anything promising, it's a 'shut up and give us money' ploy again. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

Seriously, a year and several releases later and now Hardy's just realizing something's not working, after being yelled at for six solid months after SR5 core published about how poorly edited it ist was?

Any idea when an updated real book will be available?

Otherwise, approximately never as they went to press on the reprint with the same crap as first printing.

Oh Hardy ... again? Really?