I've been trying to figure out exactly what it was that bothered me about Shadowrun lately. This is exactly the problem I have.

Yeah, that's something I really like to make explicit in my games. For shadowrunners, 'us' is very much the disaffected and unwanted SINless of the Barrens. You may have half a mil worth of cyberware crammed up your ass, but all that came from somewhere, and the rent in some cozy uptown gated community costs more than nuyen when you don't have the right social cred.

It actually is not always the case... Is it true sometimes? Of course, but I cannot say that it is ALWAYS the case. We have seen examples where your "Always" scenario is not true. Even if you claim they are biased, those situations do happen, at which point it is better to Soak than to Dodge. Therefore, Always is a myth. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Hmmmm... Feature, not Bug, in my opinion. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I've given exceptions earlier, like when you have so many body dice, soaking is practically a guarantee, without spending combat pool. But then again, that means you conserve even more combat pool, so you have more for later.

However, even with a higher TN, you're better off dodging. If you have more dice than attack successes, then you may as well go for it. There's a chance you'll get lucky, and you still get a soak later (which you can also add combat pool to). So, you can make the attempt to dodge-- if you succeed, you save combat pool. If you fail and have to soak, you can spend more. Dodging is a no-lose situation.

Lay it out for me then. Why exactly would runners in that situation not just get a better paying gig working for a mega?

Because the pay rates the game specifies are a hell of a lot lower than the salary a cleaner with a runner's skills would demand, and the social perks are much better too.

if i choose to pay 60 bucks for something that i could have chosen to pay 30 bucks for, i have lost an opportunity to save some money. a penny saved is a penny earned, and if your goal is to come out of a series of difficult spots with the least amount of damage, it is entirely possible that soaking, rather than dodging, will be the better choice, even if you have to spend combat pool on it. a less than 1% chance of avoiding all the damage is not that great when you could instead drastically increase your chance of decreasing a moderate wound to a light. yes, a light wound still sucks, but i'd rather have a very good chance of reducing my damage to light than a miniscule chance of decreasing it to zero and otherwise most probably only reducing it to moderate.

I don't get what you're saying.

If Ii spend combat pool to soak, I need to spend a lot of dice. If I spend combat pool to dodge, I can spend less dice if I succeed, and about the same if I fail. So, dodging is always the better choice, because of the possibility that I spend less.

Maybe they have issues with the Megas. Maybe they are a group of Government Contractors, Maybe the are Independent Contractors (you know, like all Shadowrunners are). Maybe they want to help the downtrodden, etc, etc, etc. There are many reasons that you may choose the Shadows over the SINner's lifestyle.

And yes, I agree that the published rates of pay are garbage. That is why we do not use them. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

If your Dodge TN is 5 or Higher (maybe you have wound penalties) and your Soak TN is a 2, it would be beyond Stupid to choose to try and Dodge (If they are both TN 4, then it is mostly irrelevant). That is One example that would be better to soak over Dodge. There were other examples provided above that could occur in the course of the game and they distinctly show that Dodge was not the better choice. You keep saying that they were biased examples, but they do occur in game and are no less biased than your examples were. There were many times over the years I played in SR3 where the character was better served with soaking rather than dodging. It is all relative to circumstance and character build.

if you spend half as much, and get 1/4 as much, you're not getting a good deal.

*if* you dodge you'll be better off. but sometimes, your chance to actually dodge the entire attack is in the sub-1% range. sure, you *can* dodge someone who scored 5 successes on their attack roll with only 6 dice. but it's *extremely* unlikely. if you throw your 6 dice against TN 4 (which iinm isn't actually quite into <1% territory yet), you probably knock them down to only 3 successes (on average), after which you get to soak. actually dodging the entire attack is incredibly improbable, and should not be your go-to plan any more than your go-to plan for making money should be lottery tickets (unless of course you hacked the system - so sure, if you're throwing loaded dice, then dodge every time).

if you instead in that same scenario choose to spend your 6 combat pool on soak against a TN of 2, you probably used the exact same number of dice to drop the damage down to the base damage of the weapon, having knocked them down to 0 net successes (plus whatever your body would allow for, which will be the same in either case).

soaking in such a case will on average result in ~3 extra successes towards staging the damage down, which is likely worth either 3 or 6 boxes of damage, depending on break point.

now, i'll grant you that average rolls are not by any means something that always happen. i'm sure most of us here have rolled 6 successes on 6 dice vs a TN of 4 at some point (or at least rolled well enough that we could have), and i'm sure most of us have rolled 0 successes on 6 dice vs a TN of 2 (or rolled poorly enough that we would have). but you don't know those are going to happen until after the fact. over time, we can expect that you will roll more hits against TN 2 than against TN 4 by a significant margin. and this is without anything raising the TN of your dodge roll, either, which only makes your chances even worse.

it isn't just about chance to avoid all damage entirely. sometimes, you soak not with the expectation that you will take zero damage, but rather with the expectation that you will take *less* damage as a result of soaking than you would have as a result of dodging.

I get what you're saying, but the difference is, even at a higher TN dodging is a better choice.

We could go into expected values, but as you pointed out, there's a lot of variability there. But since dodge successes also reduce damage, there's no real risk in dodging first. Sure, you might roll bad, but that happens: I've lost count of the NPC soak rolls I've "oopsed" on. Dodge, too, I have a documented string of critical fumbles when GMing Shadowrun that tracks back to 1989.

If the choice is between 8 dice on soak, or 5 dice on dodge, dodging is smarter. If you don't completely dodge, you can spend the dice on soaking later. If you succeed, you saved 3 combat pool for the second shot that's coming.

If you fail to gain any successes on the Dodge, however, then you have wasted that Combat Pool completely with no benefit. Especially if the Damage Soak would have been at far easier TN.
8 Dice at TN 2 is far better than 5 Dice at TN6 and then 3 Dice at TN2. I am statistically more likely to get 8 Successes at TN2 with 8 Dice, than I am likely to completely Dodge an Attack at TN6 with 5 Dice, and if not completely Dodged then soak the remaining damage at TN2 with 3 Dice.

who said anything about spending more dice on soak than on dodge? i'm not suggesting that soak is frequently a better way to reduce damage to zero than dodging, i'm saying that it's a better way to reduce damage in general in many cases, especially in cases where you already have no reasonable expectation of dodging an attack completely. if you have a reasonable chance to dodge an attack entirely (for example, if your opponent only generated one success) then sure, go ahead and dodge. if your opponent has several hits, and your combat pool is limited, you're not likely to dodge though. if you then also have good armour, it will frequently be a better choice to soak than to dodge, because soaking will do a better job of reducing damage (whether or not it can decrease damage to zero).

Bad rolls happen all the time. I've lost count of the times I've botched. However, it's not a question of successes, but rather of outcome.



That still depends on how many dice you have to soak. If you don't have enough dice to succeed, dodging is better.

Let me try a different example, leaving combat pool out of it for a moment. This example is a bit exaggerated, but it's just for illustration. A heavily armored Body 1 mage and a body 15 naked troll are both surprised and shot in the back. The mage has so much armor that his soak TN is 2, while the troll has to soak against the full power. Who is better off?

Obviously, it's the troll. Even against the higher TN, the troll has a better chance of soaking some of that damage. The mage, however, cannot.

The difference between dodging and soaking is, soaking's effectiveness depends heavily on your Body. Dodging does not. So, at low and moderate body scores, dodging is better, because you can get a better result with fewer dice. There's a case to be made at high levels of body -- 8+-- and super high means you shouldn't bother dodging at all. Or spending combat pool, either.

So you finally admit that there are times it is better to just Soak than to Dodge. Dodging is not ALWAYS the better option. Glad we are finally on the same page. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I've said it many times: when you have troll levels of body, it's definitely better, if only because you don't have to spend combat pool to soak. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

But anything much less? Dodging all the way. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

*nods* Trolls may have the least ammount of Combat Pool (-1 QCK, -2 INT will do that to you), but they also have much less they actually need to worry about.
Trolls are the Kings of Combat for a REASON in the fluff god damn it . . It's just that the elf-lovers nerfed them more or less into oblivion in that regard.
Getting a Troll up to 18 Body, 10/8 Armor and and 16 STR basically made you a semit intelligent fire and forget instakill weapon against most anything else.
And yes, as of SR3, you could actually REACH THAT RACIAL IMPROVED MAXIMUM! They made that impossible as of SR4, which is another Nerf to Trolls.
Same as the nerf to STR usefullness. And the switch from variable TN to set TN and variable dice pools. Also a nerf to Trolls.
And the way higher Armor than Damage now makes the incoming Damage into stun instead of disappear is also a nerd to Trolls.
NOTHING was hit as hard as Trolls when it came to the Nerf-Hammer. Because people complained about them being too good in combat for some stupid reason.
Completely forgetting or simply ignoring the fact that combat was more or less the ONLY thing Trolls were actually ever really good at . .
So they factually simply took the only thing Trolls did well away from Trolls. This also applies to Orks on a lower scale too actually.
But because you get more points out of them than you have to pay for, they actually can do better in anything else now . .

except that instead of spending that combat pool on dodge, you *could* spend it on soak. at which point, having low body does not at all mean you're incapable of soaking. if you have the combat pool to dodge, you have the same combat pool available to soak with, potentially at a lower TN.

Yes, which is why I left it out of the example. However, with combat pool, you always want to look for how you can spend the fewest dice.

Basically, on a good dodge roll, you're more likely to achieve a better outcome with fewer dice. Soaking gives you more base dice, but you're also going to need more successes, so dodging has an advantage there. Even if soaking gives you a better TN, you've still got a better chance of a better outcome with fewer dice with a dodge.

Let's say you have a body of 2, and four Combat Pool left. You're hit with three successes from a D weapon. You've piled on the armor to the point where your soak TN is only 2. What are the outcomes?

If you score one, two, or three successes with a dodge, you've gotten exactly the same as if you had soaked. If you score 4 successes-- unlikely, perhaps, but not impossible-- you take no damage whatsoever.

But if you soak? Even if you get all successes, you're taking a Moderate. If you get a bad roll, you're taking a Serious or Deadly. Again, the odds of a bad roll are low, but not impossible, I've done it many times.

That's why TN doesn't matter so much as dice. If you don't have the dice to succeed, it doesn't matter if the TN is 2 or 20. You need to account for that when assigning combat pool. TN's don't come into it until after you've figured if you can succeed.

and if you roll less than 4 successes on your dodge, you're facing deadly damage with 2 dice and a best-case scenario of serious damage, assuming you instead managed 3 successes with your 4 dice as opposed to a more average 2 (again, assuming nothing is penalizing your dodge TN, if there is anything your average is lower). if you did roll 2 successes on your dodge (the average result, which will happen around 50% of the time), you're quite likely facing deadly damage and unconsciousness from the hit. that doesn't sound an awful lot like the greatest argument in favour of not being worse off by dodging... by soaking, i have an excellent chance of not taking deadly damage. by dodging, i have a very small chance of completely avoiding damage. yes, it is a chance, but it sure isn't a good one.

avoiding spending combat pool sounds all very well and good, but it all depends where else you're going to spend it. if you've already made the decision to assign it to defence, then a 1/16 chance to avoid all damage in exchange for ~50% chance of going from perfect health to unconsciousness (in a best case scenario) frankly sounds like a really poor decision to me when you have other options that offer a rather good chance of taking less than deadly damage.

TN is really important. 3 successes from a D weapon. What kind of D weapon? More than likely (unless you are playing games where the standard weapon of your opponents are Assault Cannon) you are talking about burst or full auto fire.

Which means you are talking about a TN of 5 or 6 to dodge.

If you are saying Body 2, CP 4, if you spend those 4 dice to dodge, (giving the benefit of the doubt and saying it is only a 3 round burst) then yes, you could roll 4 successes and dodge, but it is very unlikely. You are far more likely to get 1 - maybe 2. Whereas if you piled on the armor and gotten the TN down to 2 to soak, then those 4 dice are far more likely to yield 3 successes, (with a fair chance of getting 4).

What you are saying is that given the choice between rolling all 4 dice and having an infinitesimally small chance that you can get 4 successes and dodge the shot from your combat pool, which comes along with the very large chance that if you DON"T roll that well, you are stuck with 1 success on the dodge, and then 2 successes on the soak, yielding a Deadly wound - OR just adding those CP to soaking, and having a very good chance of getting 5 or 6 hits, which would reduce your damage to Serious, you would go with the former.

I would much rather take the Serious Wound than roll 4 dice and pray I roll four successes.

You also need to consider the fact that while nothing modifies your TN to soak (it is simply Power minus Armor), there are lots of things that modify dodge. Anything that gives you a modifier, really. Rate of fire of the enemy weapon, flashpaks, wounds, spells, etc.

Is your above example still valid when you have been hit with a Flash Pak (let's assume you have Flare Compensation), and it is a 3 round burst, and you have a light wound - which raises your dodge test from 4 to 8? Are you still better off rolling those 4 dice looking for 8's instead of adding them to your 2 Body looking for 2's? Remember that every die that you roll looking for an 8 and fail is one less die you could have rolled looking for a 2 and getting a hit.

What about when you start raising those combat pools to higher numbers, and the enemy successes higher as well? Same example as above, we'll even give you the idea that you are hit with a single shot base D weapon. Body 2. Only now raise the number of hits on the test to 6, and give yourself a combat pool of 7.

What would you rather do, roll 7 dice to dodge, on the off chance you somehow roll 7 4's on 7 dice, - but in reality probably only getting 3-4 successes, and then with the extra 2 dice in body adding 2 more hits, yielding you a deadly wound, OR dump all 7 into soak, needing 2's, and giving yourself a very good chance of rolling 8 successes, reducing the damage to Serious? The math says that the second way to go is better.

And let's add another one. I don't know about your games, but in mine we often got hit with Heavy Pistols. Not everyone carries a shotgun or sniper rifle, or fully automatic weapon - which means the base damage code was usually M, not S or D.

Use the same example, Body 2, CP 4, 3 hits on the attack test, TN of 4 to Dodge, 2 to soak. What do you do now?

You do not have enough dice to soak the damage to 0 (that would require 7, you only have 6 at best). Is it better to roll 4 dice for 4's, hoping against hope you get 4 hits, and likely getting 2, and 2 more on the soak, giving you a Moderate wound, OR just adding all 4 to the soak and getting 5 or 6 hits, reducing it to a Light wound?

If you get a bad roll, you get a bad roll. That happens regardless if you soak or dodge.

But, I will admit, my example assumed that soaking would succeed on every die. That's not likely to happen, really-- on six dice vs TN 2, you're likely to get five successes, yes? Three negate the attack in my example, the last two stage it to serious. If your numbers are correct, on an average dodge roll with these givens, you're also looking at a serious.

So, the odds say if you don't completely dodge, you'll end up in about the same place. But if you do completely dodge, you take nothing. So, there's no real risk in going for the dodge.

I see what you're trying to do, but the problem is that we could throw examples at each other all day, and not resolve anything. We can each cite many examples that favor our arguments, tweaking the numbers whichever way suits us.

So, the best way to avoid bias is to use as general of examples as we can. Come up with the overall pattern, and not edge cases. And if you do that, you see it's always better to dodge, since it takes fewer successes to dodge than soak, and even if you don't completely dodge, you can still soak. The exception, of course, is if you have so much body that you don't have to worry about dodging. (The troll I mentioned earlier? He only ever took one Light wound his whole career, and that was a AV assault cannon fired by a sniper, to the face. He just had so much Body, he could soak anything, so dodging was superfluous.)

PS: There are plenty of things that can affect the soak TN. First of all, there's the Power of the weapon to consider. If it exceeds your armor by a lot, it can go sky-high. Also, some weapons will reduce your armor-- APDS, monowhips, AV rounds, lasers, etc--, so you have to consider that as well. I've been using the example of someone with undefined amounts of armor, probably looking like the Michelin man, who can reduce any attack TN to 2. Even that doesn't work, though, and is a little unreasonable to have in practice. In practice, you're probably looking at much higher soak TN's than 2, or even 4 for that matter. However, that would also devolve into counter-examples, so it's kinda pointless.

I agree that patterns are important, but it is hard to develop said pattern given that the answer as to whether it is better to use CP to Dodge or Soak is based on:

1) Body of the target
2) CP Remaining of the target
3) TN to Dodge (which in itself has to account for wounds, ROF, etc)
4) TN to Soak (which in itself has to account for Power of the attack, Armor Rating, Ammo)
5) Base Damage of Weapon
6) Total number of successes on the Attack Test

That is an awful lot of moving parts, and I would submit to you that there isn't a pattern, simply a series of examples. I would go further to say that you can't say that it is always better to dodge, or always better to soak, but rather you have to look at each of those examples, and make the decision at the time.

I can give you a perfect example (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Take one of my player's characters, who had a 6 body, a combat pool of 10, and wore an Armor Jacket with FFBA (full suit), had Kevlar Bone Lacing, and Orthoskin Level 2. This gave him a Ballistic of 9. In a given adventure, he is shot by:

1) A Heavy Pistol with Reg ammo (9M), with 3 hits, and then again with that same weapon with 4 hits. (Same Initiative Pass, as it is semiauto and it isn't like 5e where you can only have one attack per IP)
2) A Heavy Pistol with APDS ammo (9M) with 3 hits, and then again, same weapon, another 3 hits.
3) An SMG with Explosive Ammo, 6 round burst (14D) with 2 hits.
4) Having taken a light wound, he is hit from that same SMG another 6 round burst, with 4 hits

Looking at example 1, he is looking at having to get 7 hits, needing 2s. His body is likely to net him 5 or 6 hits, and so he only needs 2 more to pretty much assure he takes no damage. He can assign 4 dice to dodge (TN 4) to get those 2 hits, or he can assign 2 dice to soak (TN 2) and get the same 2 hits (maybe he has to assign a 3rd just to make sure). Either way, assigning those 2 or 3 dice to soak is better than assigning it to dodge. The second shot is similar. Needing 8 hits to reduce damage to 0, or 5 hits to dodge, (with at best 8 CP left, assuming he only assigned 2 to soak), he could allocate 8 dice to dodge, giving him 4 hits, and if he is lucky, 5, or slightly unlucky, 3. Either way, his 6 body dice will more than likely provide him with the extra successes required to reduce it to 0, but it is more efficient to assign the CP to soak, as he needs less dice to give him the requisite number of successes.

Example 2: Now we are looking at soaking with TN 4 (as APDS halves armor, round down), and Dodging with TN 4. With 10 dice, you are better throwing 6 or 7 dice at the first shot in order to dodge, and then the remaining 3-4 CP at the second shot, since your 6 body will more than likely not generate enough hits to reduce the damage from M to 0. (assuming your dodge negates the hits but does not exceed them, your 6 dice needing TN 4 will probably not generate the 4 hits necessary).


Example 3: Here, he is soaking with TN 5, and Dodging with TN 5. Here, it is clearly the better option to dodge, since he only needs 3 hits on 10 dice (which he can reasonably assume he can get) as opposed to getting 6 more dice to soak, but needing 12 hits to reduce it to 0.

Example 4: Here, he is soaking with TN 5, and Dodging with TN 6. It is extremely unlikely he is to roll 5 hits with his 10 CP, and since you are statistically twice as likely to roll 5+ on a d6 as you are a 6, it makes the most sense to dump all 10 dice into his soak roll, as you are more likely to soak than you are to dodge. Since you need to get 6 hits to reduce the damage to S and stay conscious, it is better to dump it all into soak, where you are now rolling 16 dice looking for 5s, as opposed to rolling 10 dice with half the chance of getting hits, in the unlikely event you get five 6's on them.

Now, I could come up with a Mage with a different body, armor, and CP, and run him through the same (or different examples), and what you will find is that there IS no pattern that covers most or all examples (Note by the way, I didn't use a troll with a 15 body, I used a body of 6, high for a normal person, but not out of the ordinary at all for a Samurai (even a human one).

Sometimes it is better to dodge: i.e. high power weapons, or low armor, or low body, or small number of hits on the attack test. (i.e. either the TN to dodge is lower than the TN to soak, or you have the opportunity to negate a high damage attack with only a few hits on the dodge.)

Sometimes it is better to soak: i.e. the opposite of above - low power, high armor, high body, large number of hits on the attack test. (i.e. the TN to soak is lower than the TN to dodge)

Sometimes it doesn't matter: i.e. the TN is the same, and you don't have enough dice to completely dodge the attack.