Yeah, Bull, what the fuck?! Explain yourself!

Would it break the game if there were no upper limit except at chargen?

I'd say it would be more profitable to starve them of new releases until they switch over...also, 5th is the grognard edition with all its "every was better in 3rd" throwbacks (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

It wasn't in 3rd ed . .

Counterquestion:
Would it break the Game if the Standard NPCs have a Skill of 12+ and a Pool of 20+ Dice, if the Mary Sue NPCs have Skills of Level 15-20+ and pools of 30+ Dice while the Chars need Dozens of Karma to reach Skills of Lvl 8-10 and get a Pool of 20 Dice ?
If You say No, than my Answer is No too
(as I see it, now only NPCs profit from the High Level Skills ! Unlimited Skill Level would widen the Gap between PCs which have to earn each and every Karma Point and NPCs that can be given any Skill level (and any Pool level ) they need)

with a Counterdance
Medicineman

Highly Subjective Statement, there Stahlseele. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
While it was rarely the Skill level that was the problem for high level PC's/NPC's (And to be honest, I rarely saw any beyond mid-level Teens - they were just too expensive), the Karma Pool resulting from spending the Karma to gain such levels renders the argument pretty moot, since they could just reroll till they succeeded. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I know a skill of 12 is something a PC will rarely reach, but it should be very rare among NPC's, too. I know what you are saying, Medicineman, but SR4 had the same problems - they just gave special rules for their legendary NPCs. Or gave them ludicrous levels of initiation, since Magic was not capped. I would rather have a rarely-reached level of skill to logically depict the best of the best NPC's, than see the shenanigans that SR4 had. I can live with 12 as the new limit - I just wish Magic was capped, too.

You can actually reach a rating: 12 skill - at character creation. If you're an adept (magicrun, don't ya know?), that is. Take Aptitude and start out with 7 in a skill, take 4 levels of improved ability (yeah, it rounds differently than in SR4). and take a reflex recorder (which stacks, because SR5 has no augmented limit for skills). Voila, you're a "legend".


SR3 had completely uncapped skills, but it had a different feel. The PC archetypes had lots of skills at 6, while the NPCs tended to have lower stats, with a 7 or an 8 being reserved for the best/toughest of the stock NPCs. A skill of 6 might not have been the maximum, but it was still damn good.

In SR5, it is curious - the archetypes almost look like they were built with SR4 skill caps, but the contacts, wow, lots of high skills. The fixer has a negotiation of 9, and even the beat cop has three 6's in his active skills. It looks like they revised NPC's down to more realistic levels with Run Faster, where they are toned down more. But the archetypes are definitely a lot more like SR4 characters than SR3 characters.

As for delays, I can sorta see why. The downside with an evolving world with 'dates' attached to it is that you really can't keep it static. At the same time, it can be difficult actually writing that storyworld as it evolves. There is a serial nature to this stuff, where the previous stuff is the stuff that current stuff builds off of. It does make swerves (nanotech, etc) more noticeable and we can perceive them as disruptive because we can see it as 'step back' or 'step away' or because we have no idea where things are going its harder to put it into context other than, "so why did I buy all those books again?"

Like I noted, I stepped away from the game pretty much entirely since 2013 when I was last here, and I believe SR5 had just come out. Gamers get fatigue and I imagine the devs do as well.

I do kind of wish we nail down a basic system, then just supplement it with flavor and additional stuff. Like you know how a GURPS or Palladium system is basically going to go, and the world just gets built around that.

Target: Smuggler Havens was released in 1998, and I don't think it mentions Lagos at all. You're most likely referring to the Lagos chapter in Feral Cities in 2008, written by Jennifer Harding.

I'm pretty sure that elfy asshole Critias is too busy writing lame-ass fiction and can't be bothered to write any game rulebooks. So there's that.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Yeah, Feral Cities. I've been on a bad insomnia binge for several days now, so... My critical thinking and memory are slightly fuzzy at this point.

Maybe that's 2 totally disconnected problems? Skill cap just looks a tiny bit absurd in a game with elves. Granted, the karma pool could be a problem, but hardly could compensate for skill advancement. Especially if you played game where the TN would easily and often bounce to 10 or 12.

On topic: as far as I understood it, SR4 went toward shadowrunner being low-level guys, more "beginners" like, and SR5 followed the same way. Hence why the average runner can be outskilled by the average cop.

Actually, it's the other way round. SR4 presented the skill levels runners got out of chargen as "world-class professional", and with a bit of implants and bonuses, you could get to "best of the field" easily. SR5 curbed this nonsense.

I know, but at the same time, everybody was talking about how the game was more "street-level" and all. I just mean it was the stated goal to make shadowrunners lower level guys. So for me, SR5 is a better implementation of this principle.

I also never quite got how you could talk about "world-class professional" for a skill while your performance relied almost as much on your attribute. But the description for the numbers in various skills always was, mmm, arguable in all editions…

Break as in "unplayable"? No.

Break as in "unrefined rule system"? Yes, because there are hard caps for attributes (there were always hardcaps for attributes in every edtion). So while "the strongest man" would be strength 7, the "best sniper" should not be 7 or 12 oder 28 oder 131. You apply the same reasons for an attribute cap to a skill cap: humans can only go so far.

Nothing speaks against hardcaps for "normal human range" skills and it is a philosophical decision if that cap should be lower, the same or higher than attribute caps. I favor 1-6 for normal humans and 1-9 for augmented humans for both, with 7-9 the "wow, world awesome sauce" area (so most humans, including NPCs, would be in the area of 2-6),

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Actually not necessarily in the area of expertise and competence (even if it was almost impossible to create a normal, competent soldier with 400 BP - most people were talking about one trick ponies, when talking about the mysterious "ohhhh, skill 7 at start" scenario), but mostly in the area of costs and plausibility.

For example 250k for combat cyberware sounds a lot more grounded in the setting then the infamous prio A in SR3 for 1 million ¥. A hacker who could really hack with low level decks for some hundred ¥ and spending a 5 digit sum for a professional SOTA deck (not milgrade) contrary to "Orange/Red 12/14 host? Without a 6-7 digit Kraftwerk and rating 6+ programs you do not even have to start being a decker".

Or to make it short: smaller numbers, scaling better from squatterware for billionare-ware.



Which breaks of course if you look at the entire package and realize that the street samurai in the basic book uses 650k ¥ for combat cyberware and that the most incompetent and useless decker in the world still needs hardware with a value of two familiy cars at minimum. Or there won´t be any kind of cyber criminality. At all.

Which does not really sound "street level" if my base equipment on squatterlevel could pay my lifestyle for 2 years.


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Well, that was skill rating 8 in SR3, easily reachable with a single digit Karma investment in some cases, otherwise requiring 30 Karma usually - not that much for "Genius" and "world class" per definition. But yes, at least 1 point higher than in SR4. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

SYL

In SR5, the overall power is higher than in SR4, it's just that the PC's have relatively less power compared to the rest of the game world. The archetypes which are "street level" reflect the preferences of the people who put them together; there are multiple ways that you can create some fairly powerful characters, without exploiting any ambiguous rules or making one-trick ponies.

Yes, there are only so much that en elve might learn in a lifetime.

More seriously, why should this cap be in the vicinity of the attributes cap? There is only so much karma an unaugmented human can cumulate in a lifetime. How much will you see someone exceed 20 in a skill? (edit: that's not even factoring the training time)




I really don't see how it's more or less plausible in either edition. The definition of shadowrunners was just different in different editions. It was clear in SR3 that despite being (possibly) sinless you were already someone in the business. The archetypes were sold as experienced runners or at least experienced combatants/professionals.

The difference really remains in having 250k or four times more?



While 250k only pays it for 8 months. Honestly, I was just talking about the goal of the systems to explain why now street cops could have 6s in some skills, the max for PC.



Which was indeed stupid (but if you have the SR3 book, the Target Number difficulty table is even more hilarious, 10 being an "nearly impossible" task). But at least, the game system didn't pretend it was true by caping it at 8 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) .

Indeed, especially if you are only playing around 10-20 years max, have no rules for skill degredation and are using an out of game mechanism for good players (and not a strictly ingame mechanism like learning time without Karma).



For me? Symmetry. But of course other caps are possible. SR5 went for 12, SR4 for 6 (which was too low IMHO).



Same goes for attributes: why caps for attributes? You would probably argue that there is a physical limit to what humans can push themselves. But what about mental attributes? Do the same reason apply for them as well? And would the same reason apply for skills as well (as skills are simply information saved and connected in different parts of your brain)? If yes, hardcaps are ok - just the level of the cap is a matter of discussion.



In some ways yes. In other ways no. You can build a 25 dice one trick gun bunny as a starting character (11 attribute, 7 skill etc), but usually that character cannot do much besides being a world champ with one weapon doing one kind of action. If you want a balanced character, the 400 BP are quite precious, as a even a normal veteran soldier (lets say a sergeant after some tours in "Corporate Court peace keeping missions") can be hard to build with 400 BP if he should still have a decent dicepool (of course nowwhere nere the region of 25 dices).

SYL

Mmm… I assumed you were talking about skill caps from a realistic viewpoint here, ignoring game mechanics. That's quite sad for mundane elves if they have such limitations in shadowrun's world, never to be able to beat the best humans despite their much longer lasting youth.



The link between symmetry and "realism" being?



Indeed, physical attribute caps seem to be biologically induced. That pretty well translates for intelligence, and we could perfectly argue that willpower is linked to the brain, and charisma linked to both your physics and brain. I honestly wouldn't care if Charisma or Willpower were not caped, but the caps makes sense.

The biological limit on skill is definitely not as evident. If skill is limited by an max amount of information in your brain, why isn't there a cap on the number of skills you know? Why isn't there a cap on the knowledge skills you can afford? On the language skills you can have? See the problem here? Why on earth cannot you exchange "brain slots" of those driving 5 skills and armed combat 4 to go from 7 to 8 in your trampoline skill?

I won't go further on, the "realistic" view that skills should be capped doesn't make so much sense. To effectively cap it, it's really sufficient to just implement increased cost (karma and/or time) and diminishing return. Doubling the "world class" professional rating (8 to 16) didn't help you overcome the "nearly impossible" so much more that the cost was worth it (TN10, hitting 3 out 4 times rather than half the time, not factoring the number of success stuff…).

This should highlight the fact than capping is made necessary only by game mechanics, that's to say going from a moving TN to a fixed TN. But let it be noticed that I'm not here criticizing either mechanics. They both have advantages. One support uncapped skills, one doesn't, and that's fine. But I just reject that skill caps, especially when limiting dice pool to what you get out of chargen or twice (more like 3/2) that, are "real life" based.




The original point was that the characters out of SR3 chargen were not "ground based" in the settings I think. I didn't get how it was linked to the 250k vs 1M the first time, I don't get how it's linked to the inability to make polyvalent one trick pony out of SR4 chargen. I once again just said that SR4 aimed to make more street based character, that SR5 went this way too, and that it explained why street cops in SR5 could have better skills than PC at chargen.

@freudqo:

You had (even if the rule was rarely used) to take time to get you're skill up, even if you had the karma.

Raising a SR3 skill from 6 to 7 implied rolling 6 dices at a TN of 14. That alone could take around 3-5 scenarios. It did really slow down the high skill ups to world class level.

I think this adds pretty well to what I said, or am I mistaken? But nevertheless: your number and rule are wrong in my version of SR3 Comp. The TN to hit is 9 (new skill +2), and not hitting the TN just make it longer to learn the skill (assuming attribute 4-6, that'd be base around 100 days, 150 with no successes, and this had to be uninterrupted or it would get even longer). Or has this been erratad? PLUS that's an optional rule. Plus, an optional rule I would, personally, use only in very rare cases…

But indeed, this proves there's perfectly fine way of preventing too much character advancement without adding absurd caps on skills.

Never had an issue with Caps at 6 for skills. In fact, they worked pretty well, in my opinion, you just had to adjust what you considered Professional (which was 3 in SR4).



Depends upon your definition of a "Decent Dicepool." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I guess that's the kind of 'helpful' commenting that got you on my personal list for SR freelancers whom's actions made it easier to decide against further expenditures on the P&P side of the game. Last time I made reference to you being on said list you asked which kind of action got you on that list and I wasn't inclined searching an example.

You do realize that Critias' Statement is very Tongue in Cheek, Yes? It is Sarcasm, at its best. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
He isn't seriously calling Bull out there. As was evident by Bull's Response. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Well, you are well known for "one dice only, no problem, can do" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) A decent dice pool for a player character in an average campaign would be something between 10 and 15 in the main areas) considering both the threshold, opposed tests and ingame explanation what rating means what exactly. Certainly a compromise in some cases.

MfG