Here is where the example relates back to the original topic.

Smartlink gives all you need for increased accuracy. But requires vision mods and has a cost that it in itself is expensive, but also adds a cost to your vision devices by taking up capacity that could be used for other modes. It is also a risk for attacks from matrix threats but in return it gives the best accuracy bonus available.

An Adept, that can't take cybereyes and don't want to drop important vision modes in his glasses go with Laser sight + increased accuracy adept power. He gets the same level of power, roughly, and at a cost of power points but enjoy the slight increase in stealth by being away from matrix. Instead of +2 dice for smartlink he gets +3 dice from improved ability, but that too at a power point cost.

The mage however has to struggle more to get the same level, but enjoys the ultra-portable spells that deal pistol+ damage but at near infinite concealability. The mage also has unique power of Detect Enemies to find his targets, but at -2 penalty for sustaining a spell.

The rigger can get the smartlink bonus and also use a more weapon independent skill (gunnery) to shoot with when rigging drones.

Diverse ways to get decent accuracy, and similar dice pools for attacks depending on the preferred path of character. = Diversity

The Adept with Smartlink and a pocket cheerleader on his mp3 player that gets +2 (smartlink) +1 (team task leadership), + 1 (aim), + 1 (enhanced accuracy), makes any weapon have ludicrous accuracy (even things like an old blackpowder musket shooting a flimsy paper airplane will have 5-6 accuracy, a number that is intented for sniper rifles). He makes smartlink not a choice, he makes it a part of the stacked stuff that everyone else gets.

He makes hits go up to 10 hits, inflating damage by a huge amount and forcing yet another arms and armor race to keep up. You need to get around 3 extra armor for every accuracy that is added. Easily obtainable accuracy also inflateds the value of ludicrously specialized attributes and skills. If weapons never go above accuracy 6 there is little point to get 11 agility and 16 automatics. Those 27 dice will just cap out your accuracy more often. You get effective diminishing returns for maxing out one skill. Without a limit you have the opposite problem. Every dice added to your attack makes all other dice worth more. You gain more effect per extra dice the higher your pool already was.

If by low power you mean a game where the "meta" doesn't just allow but also encourage one-shot-kills as de facto standard then, yes, I do prefer low power. IT is way more fun if the game doesn't end in one hit. For both sides! 3-4 bad guys can offer the players a fun firefight with movement, melee, grenades and action packed destruction in a "low power game".

With one-shot-kills you suddenly need 20 enemies to do this, and if they just get a lucky roll (and roll 8-10 hits since accuracy is not an issue when everyone can stack stuff) to eliminate a character combat becomes tideous, slow and boring. It is way too dangerous to be fun. Noone can do cool moves since they just need one bad roll to cease to exist. Forgot to save 6m movement for avoid-grenade-interrupt? Oops, you died. 20 armor won't roll 18 hits to soak that grenade. Tough luck. High power games are just annoying. Guns are so deadly they become extremely reliable and encourage a meta with maxed out armor and defence and completely murders the character that decide to just wear casual clothes for one day.

High power gaming means you stack armor to maybe survive 1 shot, but nothing you do makes you take 2 shots. Low power gaming means you can take 2 hits naked, 6-7 hits with proper gear but either way it varies and is thrilling and dangerous. Soaking 4 boxes of damage can end in 0 boxes, or all 4 if you are unlucky. It is exciting to roll since you don't know how much if any damage you will take.

Soaking 18P from a grenade is not interesting at all. It just become statistics. It is completely uninteresting if you manage to roll 7 hits or just 2 hits. You get to overflow and loose the current fight anyway. Even if you roll 9 hits you get knocked down, -3 penalty and unable to help your team much. 12 hits on damage resist is so far off that it feels pointless to even try. Is it deadly? Sure is! Does it feel dangerous? Nope, it just feels pointless.

I feel characters are way more powerful and fun in a lower power setting where almost nothing can be stacked to get out of the tight bonds of manageable damage, accuracy or efficiency.

I feel empowered by knowing that "Okay, I got maxed out accuracy bonus on my shotgun, I don't have to comb through 3 terribly written books to find the random stuff that stacks and buy every single one of them for my character".

I feel like my character is pretty awesome for having 10 dice attacking people. I have pretty good stat and almost maxed out skill from start. Nice. I don't want to see someone with 12 agility and 9 skill join in and make my character completely obsolete because I didn't combine Type-O system bioware with Adept powers in the right order. To settle for 10 dice out of possibly 14-15 for a specialized character feels pretty nice. To have 10 dice out of possibly 35 just feels weak. Knowing that I also never will even be close to 35 because I didn't pick the right race/magic/gear combo from start makes it even worse. Enemies will be buffed to handle 35 dice attacks so my 10 dice won't matter any more, I'm a complete waste of space in the shadow of a 35 dice biowarrior. While I'm a pretty decent decker with a shotgun attacking with 10 dice next to a Sam with 14 dice. I am still 60% as good and still do my own thing. Being 25% is not the same story. Sure I can shoot Professional rating 1 street gangers just as well (10 dice is still 10 dice). But it doesn't matter, rating 1 enemies are not a threat since we all got that Small Unit Tactics move to get 15-20 dice in defence so they can't hit us any more. Thanks 35 dice Adept ninja for putting your free knowledge skill points in that crap. We needed that in our group (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Anyway, my diversity argument breaks down if smartlink isn't even a consideration but a mandatory standard to be combined with layers of glasses.

I hope it makes some kind of sense, that laser sight + adept power OR smartlink OR detect enemies but no accuracy bonus OR drone rigging is Diversity while "adept power + smartlink + pocket leadership gives more than twice as much as anything else so pick that instead" is not diversity, it is a pigeon hole.

I don't hate cool characters, I don't think player characters should be "shit" because they can't be trusted with good stuff. I want interesting characters to feel good because noone in the world oneshots people or get insane dice pools. Their 12 dice Pistols is world class awesome, not a mere 30% on the way to "Best in slot". Do I make any sense?

If you like low power then adjust rules and values to your satiscation.


Or perhaps you do not seek the confrontation and use alternate methods - corruption, investigation, legwork, infiltration - to achieve your goal, while in your world I simply draw my pistol.

And no, a character with 10 dices for attacking may be good in the real world (skill 5 and attribute 5 is pretty good IRL), but is not good in the context of a cybernetically/magically empowered world. There, he is simply average when it comes to his combat abilities. The standard for "being awesome" in the rule/world contact goes in the direction of 20-25 dices (depending on the kind of attack of course). That is the mechanial range which definies which is poor, average or awesome.

To become world class both in reality and ingame who usually need to have several things come together: a certain basic competence, luck and possibility, hard training and sacrifices and using every trick in the book to survive / achieve the goal / win. This is nothing new - check out almost every high level politician, special forces soldier, cop, world class surgeon, formula 1 driver or simply every being on the planet who redefines what humans can achieve (bot negative and positives). If you don´t use all these parts your character will never be awesome in context of what is possible in the contect of the sixth world.

Note: your character may still be an awesome character - as in interesting, deep, complex and fun to play. But if you cannot run 100m in 8 seconds you are still not an awesome sprinting athlet, even if you are satisfied with 25 seconds.

SYL

You do make sense, Surukai... No worries. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I disagree with you Apple (Thanks Medicineman)... Above Average Professional Grade is 12 Dice (6 Skill, Specialty and 4 Stat)... That is PROFESSIONAL GRADE.
What you call Awesome, I call the 1% of the 1% of the 1% of the Best in the World.

Yes, usually I would only consider the top x% "awesome" (as per definition from Surukai). The rest is simply varying degrees of bad, average, good or very good. Not awesome.#

Michael Schumacher is an awesome formula 1 driver. The experienced firetruck driver who had to drive a 20ton vehicle with high speed through an urban street nightmare is average to very good. But usually not awesome.

SYL

So why can't a Shadowrunner be Professional? Why must he be Awesome?

???

I have no idea of what you are talking about.

From Surukai :


Inside the rule/world system of Shadorun, 10 dices are not awesome, but average. Nothing else. I never made a statement if 10 dices are enough for runners or not.

###

But if you want an answer: depends on your playstyle. If you want "normal metahumans in bad situations", stay with the 10. If you want "high powered metahumans in bad situations", go for the 20+. Thats all (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

SYL

Fair enough. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

In my experience, Limits don't stop dice pool hyper-inflation, they just change the number of things you need to consider to get there. The other night, I rolled 35 dice (Edge + NERPS for some of them, but still) and didn't have to worry about a Limit thanks to Edge. It was also only the second time I scored a one-shot takedown; but since everyone witnessed me getting 38 successes, I damn well should have. (Technically I didn't even kill it, I just overflowed its stun monitor, and it was Regenerating.)

As far as game balance goes, there's lots of places where SR5 breaks, and stacking vision mods isn't one of them.

The funny thing is: the limits are so high, so you can usually only reach them with edge (at least in your area of specialisation) ... end edge breaks the limit. And I don´t really understand why exactly a player should feel punished if he has luck (not edge) every few hundred dice rolls and rolls a WTFLOOKGUYESATTHISGODLYROLL-roll - and not being able to use it because of [3]. *sigh*.

SYL

Because at some tables it is not every few hundred dice rolls... I routinely exceed limits at our table. Multiple Times in a Night, in fact. And my limits are not all that bad, nor are my Dice Pools excessive. For example... Last night, I was playing my Technomancer Spy. She has decent Limits (Physical 4, Social 5, Mental 7 and Attack 3, Data Processing 6, Sleaze 5, Firewall 3(6)), and average Dice Pools of 7-11 (Majority of my skills), with my Hacking/Electronic Warfare DP's at 16. I hit my DP limits 5 times, exceeded it 4 times, and blew it away once (13 hits on 15 Dice, no edge); my Sleaze Limit I hit 3 times, and exceeded 4 times. Hell, I even hit and exceeded my Mental Limit once each. It occurs with maddening frequency and it irks me. I see no value whatsoever in the Limit Rules other than to piss me off. I am not alone in this. Some people like Limits... more power to them, but I am not one of them.

I suspect that CGL intended
A) to force Players to spread their Attributes
B) to have a Rules Mechanism that sets SR5 apart from 4A ( to make it more explainable to produce the New Edition)

but that what Tymeaus writes is what happens in reality at some tables . Limits are seen as a Hindrance & Spoiling the Fun.
, so that more Players than before have a tendency to play mystic or Adepts so that they don't have to bother with Limits.
or setting Prio A or B to Attributes.
Most Builds I see (in Forums and on Conventions ) are Prio A or B for Skills or Attributes

With a Tendency to Dance
Medicineman

That may be the case, but I encountered during 15 years of SR just one player who could really push the limit rules (SR3, no roll without an exploding 6). But event then? Punish someone because he is a lucky bastard? It simply feels wrong to punish luck in a luck based dice-game.

One of the often mentionend negative points from the authors when it came to SR4 was, that attributes were to important and that they want to increase the importance of skills. I feeld that they achieved the opposite with the limit rule.

SYL

Limits can go one of three ways. The first is when they're so low, they're a constant annoyance. For example, let's say you want a shotgun specialist. But most shotguns have a limit of 4, which is really easy to hit. It becomes a serious problem, because every time you get a decent shot, your roll is taken away from you.

The second way limits can go is when they're so high, they cease being a limiting factor (pun not intended). With a limit of 8 or better, you never encounter the limit except on extreme shots, many times in which you're already spending Edge. The limit may as well not exist, which means it's a useless rule.

The third way is the theoretical middle, where limits need to be carefully considered and balanced against dice pool sizes. The first problem here is that it's a fine line to walk, and I don't have faith in the developers to get it right. The second is that it only works if limits and dice pools are a direct tradeoff, which they're not under the SR5 rules. They draw off different areas, so you can maximize both with ease if you know what you're doing.

So, no matter how you look at it, Limits simply don't seem to work out.

I'm not fond of limits, but I find them tolerable. As a player of spellcasters predominantly, I've been dealing with hits capped by spell force for so long that I was used to it long before SR5 came out. (It was nice when I didn't have to deal with that on my SR4 gun adept.) The widespread use of limits in SR5 is simply expanding a niche rule to apply to everyone. I'd have rather the concept had disappeared in the move to SR5. But I know how much people think spellcasters in SR are broken, so I suspect if Catalyst had made that decision 'Magicrun' would have been flung around for another edition predicated on the loss of their one 'real' limit. This way, everyone suffers equally. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohplease.gif)

-Temperance

The issue is that the Magician can set his Limit for Spellcasting at a whim. It is variable and scalable dynamically. Not so with any other application of Limits except Technomancer Complex Forms, and they are so whacked out of proportion on Fading that it is laughable.

Yes, and you can also break Force limit on spells without spending Edge via reagents, which isn't possible for any other use of limits (including CFs) either, as far as I can tell.

The functional implementation is effectively different, but the intent behind it isn't. And like Cain said, limits can be annoyingly low or absurdly high, and therefore ineffectual at their job. That spells and CFs manage to fill both criteria at the same time doesn't make any difference to me.

While yes, now everyone is 'suffering'* under limits to one degree or another; my point was that I'm used to the intent, so it's tolerable because I have been tolerating Force in SR4. (Secondarily, I was mocking "spells vs. guns" balance arguments that come up a lot with SR. I was not intending to bring them back up.)

I admit this opinion is influenced by my table experiences, which aren't applicable to mechanical theory, I suppose. Typical spell Force at my table is 4 or 5. Unless something has to happen regardless of the drain cost; then it jumps to 8 or 10.** So regardless of limit dynamics, the limits are similar enough to be equally annoying or ignored at the table regardless of archetype. (Reagents are another problem. But they've been banned at the table for now.)

* - for various values of suffer.

** - Based on Magic rating of the mage in question. Yes, I know we're 'doing it wrong', you don't need to tell me. It works for us.

-Temperance

Reagents are terribly implemented.

Limits are too easy to raise too high.


Low limits are good. I understand that at glance, it is frustrating to hit the limit of 4 on a Combat Axe and feel that your extra good roll is wasted. But it rolls both ways. the GM won't suddenly roll 8 hits and oneshot your character.

The "no fun instakill" works both ways. As a GM with above average luck I often roll stupidly good. In many fights, one of the grunts becomes a death ninja and dodges 3-4 attacks in a row and then makes an awesome comback even though he has half the dice pools of the PCs. IT is a fun phenomena but was outright boring in SR4. A Strength 5 characer with an axe can at most deal 14 damage with his axe. That is lots of damage but almost every character can deal with that to some extent.

Grunts can't but important people can. IF you just mount a scope on the axe and roll 8 hits on regular basis you a) make all other weapons irrelevant and b) randomly oneshot stuff in a very boring fashion. It also c) devalues edge if it isn't even needed to do stupid stuff.

Not winning the first combat turn in every fight is more fun. Limits are not boring, the meta game of too high (or easily ignored) limits is a very splatty game where every action that doesn't instantly kill at least one enemy is a wasted action and characters who can't cheese out a oneshot every action are a burden to the party.

And that isn't fun in my book.

I can understand those who like the ultralethal fights where fights are so dirty and lethal that they are rare around the table because sudden 8 hits on a shotgun turns trolls to liquid. It is just a very different game from what I like to explore. I have other game systems that work better for the "one shot kills you, better avoid combat" kind of games. So much of shadowrun screams "cool action with explosion and fire!" that I want to experience that.


And, I consider 10 dice to be pretty good. You have above average stats and maxed out skill from start, how can two short of "human maximum" be considered just 'meh' ?

Above 12 dice is something you need to go into supernatural tricks to reach as a character. Granted, SR5 added some dice inflation with skills going to 12 so I guess 10 is just bleh and starting characters are not cool any more, they are just average noobs. Not sure I like that change of perception of shadowrunners. I've always thought Shadowrun to be pretty cool because your starting character is cool and awesome. Unlike many other games you don't start out as a pathetic lump only capable of collecting 5 rat tails for your Johnsson. But maybe that is just me.

In a world, where the human limit is boosted by cyberware, bioware, magic etc? Yes, it is.



In relation to what is "world class" in world and rulesystem like SR5? Yes, they are.

If the possible range of awesomeness goes from 1 to 100, and you have 10, you are pretty bad.
If the possible range of awesomeness goes from 1 to 11, and you have 10, you are pretty good.

Not sure I like that change of perception of shadowrunners. I've always thought Shadowrun to be pretty cool because your starting character is cool and awesome. Unlike many other games you don't start out as a pathetic lump only capable of collecting 5 rat tails for your Johnsson. But maybe that is just me.

If you want to reduce one-shots, then don´t raise the damage of weapons to one-shot level (6p to 11p for assault rifle, 10 to 16 for grenades (with always hit mechanic), Str/2 to Str for melee combat).



That is certainly something runners could be, but 10 dices is still not an awesome. For that you should really double your dicepool.

SYL

Fair enough, 10 dice is pretty bad compared to what is easily obtainable by dedicated characters. Your reasoning makes sense. I thought "max skill and near max in stat" should be awesome, but I can't just go around ignoring cyber/magic in a game full of it. You win (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)


-4 damage and -30% armor is just what you had in SR4, interestingly enough. SR4 failed with the stupid "narrow burst" nonsense, overcast stupidity and no limits on weapons adding ludicrous damage to attacks instead.

But, you gave me an idea, using SR4 weapon and armor levels in SR5 could work for my purpose. Why didn't I think about that before? (Though STR can be =STR, even with the +100% damage boost of melee weapons in SR5 they still deal pathetic damage. The biggest melee weapon in the game, the Combat Axe deals damage just like an average pistol, not like the assault cannon or at least sniper rifle that it is equivalent too in size and effort to use ^^)

I'll grant that one-shots were very common in SR4.5. Maybe too common, I don't recall people getting wounded very often in that system, it was either up or down. Slowing down one shots is a valid design choice of SR5. That said, I think they went too far; I have an adept who rolls over 20 dice for Pistols, and he's only one-shotted two opponents ever since the game came out. Lieutenants and better opposition should be durable, but mooks should be one-hit-kills, otherwise you're having to track damage for all of them, which is a chore. Additionally, having to shoot a mook at least two times to drop them slows down combat, and SR5 combat is plenty slow and crunchy to begin with.

And the problem is more than limits. In "Chasing the Wind", I hit the sniper with an Edged shot for sixteen successes, and he lived. The one mook I one-shotted critically fumbled his defense roll, otherwise he would have remained standing. And the one clean drop was another Edged shot for 35 successes! (Yes, I had witnesses. Exploding NERPS will do that.) The sad part was that he technically lived, he was starting to regenerate when the other adept finished him.

One shots should be the norm versus mooks, a reason to high-five versus lieutenants, and a rarity versus big bosses. As it stands, because it takes two or more hits to drop anybody, combat drags on and becomes much less exciting. This does cut both ways: PC's don't go down quickly, but the spiral of death means it becomes harder to make effective shots, so finishing a fight takes even longer.

I'll grant that one-shots were very common in SR4.5. Maybe too common, I don't recall people getting wounded very often in that system, it was either up or down. Slowing down one shots is a valid design choice of SR5. That said, I think they went too far; I have an adept who rolls over 20 dice for Pistols, and he's only one-shotted two opponents ever since the game came out. Lieutenants and better opposition should be durable, but mooks should be one-hit-kills, otherwise you're having to track damage for all of them, which is a chore. Additionally, having to shoot a mook at least two times to drop them slows down combat, and SR5 combat is plenty slow and crunchy to begin with.

And the problem is more than limits. In "Chasing the Wind", I hit the sniper with an Edged shot for sixteen successes, and he lived. The one mook I one-shotted critically fumbled his defense roll, otherwise he would have remained standing. And the one clean drop was another Edged shot for 35 successes! (Yes, I had witnesses. Exploding NERPS will do that.) The sad part was that he technically lived, he was starting to regenerate when the other adept finished him.

One shots should be the norm versus mooks, a reason to high-five versus lieutenants, and a rarity versus big bosses. As it stands, because it takes two or more hits to drop anybody, combat drags on and becomes much less exciting. This does cut both ways: PC's don't go down quickly, but the spiral of death means it becomes harder to make effective shots, so finishing a fight takes even longer.

But that was not a goal of SR5. Bull explicetly stated that an increased lethality and more dangerous combat was a central goal for the development in SR5.

SYL

Another obviously failed goal. *shrug*

Wouldn't it be easier (and also more positive) if we concentrate on what CGL succeded in ?

with a karmic positive Dance
Medicineman