freudqo got it. For me, SR2/3 let me dig in and make meaningful tactical choices for my characters. That isn't just floating TNs, but the dice pools, robust rules for overwatch, drone support, etc. (not saying that none of that is in SR4/5, but that's part of the whole SR2/3 package).

SR4/5 has become a 'beer and pizza' game for me, because it has meaningful choices still, but they cut out a lot of the more intellectually interesting ones (i.e., anything involving mathematical operations beyond addition). I can't play D&D at all because it feels completely shallow. I've gotten deep into Eclipse Phase because, while the mechanics are simplistic, the setting provides a constant source of novelty to compensate for that (and frankly, given the level of setting complexity, I think trying to model it mechanically would be unfeasible).

I've hated the floating TNs for a long time. They were garbage, and always have been. Through 2nd and 3rd, I endured the rules to play in my favorite setting. But it go worse and worse, and finally, I just threw the damn book down, picked up GURPs and ran SR in GURPs. Which wasn't perfect, but wasn't bad. And didn't have the problems of bullet testers.

I never liked the high TN issue, because it made hard, but plausible tasks(shooting someone with a rifle from 500m) into damn near impossible tasks, completely dependent on luck. I'm not a big fan of relying on luck to perform tasks that my character should be able to do routinely(a 12 dice sniper in 3rd was... um... A big deal, like world class). There was no point in having skill 1 or 2. What became more important than skill was negative modifiers to the TN: I'll take Pistols 4 and a smartlink over Pistols 6 and no smart link every day of the week.

Then the problems of low body and the way armor worked. Sheesh. A body 1 guy was dead anytime he got shot, didn't matter if he had armor or not.

Combat pool, which made the best fighters the magic guys. Sheesh.

The condition monitors, which were... meh, at best.

Oh, and vehicles. Look, Vehicles have been a pain since the original RBB came out and gave them their boost in durability. I mean, I understand that a Citymaster is an APC, and shouldn't be hard to kill, but a GMC bulldog? A steel lynx? Seriously, a combat drone the size of a motorcycle is immune to evevery man-portable weapon that doesn't use some kind of special "anti-vehicular" ammunition or rockets. Which would be great, except the AV ammo turned SMGs and assault rifles into vehicle killers.

See, that's what I hated, the rock-paper-scissors of vehicles and drones. If you didn't have access to AV ammo, then a steel lynx or doberman could wipe your entire party, but if you did? It suddenly became another mook.

Not a fan of that.

Automatic fire was wonky.

Anyone remember how R3 had to rewrite the collision rules to make sense? And then, as cool as Tzeentch made it, the easiest way to drop a drone out of the sky was just to use hot-mike jamming...


But it all comes back to the fact that I don't think the base mechanics were very good. They never have been. For 2nd edition, I struggled through them. By the time I was starting to care about the mechanics, Tzeentch introduced me to GURPS, and SR3 went away.

Now, fifth? I like it. Sure, some of the background and fluff isn't nearly as robust, but that's ok: with 20+ years of experience, I can bring the fluff to life for my players. And now, the rules arn't completely crazy.

What I've always loved with the floating TN issue and the hate of the haters, it's that it's completely irrational as always shown in their example.

So, let's shoot someone with a rifle at 500 m. Let's say 501m, so that's extreme range, and TN9, since bad guy is walking around. Joe average, with skill 3, will accomplish it 1 time out of 5 without combat pool. That's reaaaaaallly so impossible. Sure, we could consider the bad guy was running (+2), and it's a bit foggy, so another +1, whatever, so the TN is 12. Joe average will then manage the shoot once every 13 times. He could of course spend a little time to aim (or buy some kind of better sight for his rifle) to get the TN to 11, managing once every 6 shots.

Without combat pool. Really, what a crazy game, how difficult it is to shoot this guy at long range with a rifle. If there was an issue, it's with the limit on take aim actions (half skill), a really easy fix. And we could also remind the audience the skilled 12 dice guy you quote would make TN9 2 out of 3 times. We could recall the fact that in SR4+, the difference between very hard and impossible is that you manage the very hard once out of three times and the impossible never (well, 2 or 3 times a day, don't try more).

Of course you would take pistol 4 and a smartlink any time over pistol 6 (edit : ain't pistol 4 + smartlink exactly the same as pistol 6 in SR4+??) . It's a device that indicates the trajectory of your bullet in your field of vision in real time, whatever the position of your gun. I ignored that the difficult part with a gun was to pull the trigger and understand the mechanical action. I thought it was aiming.

The body 1 guy (likely a mage who was the best combat guy, apparently) had combat pool and should have saved it in case of getting shot. And also, if you have body 1, never get in a position where you can get shot, and if it happens, well, of course, you have body 1.

Wow, you mean if you had those availability 16 (a TN you never seemed to be able to reach in your game even with a 12 dice face) expensive ammunition designed to destroy vehicles, you could destroy vehicles ? Terrible idea indeed.

Automatic fire in shadowrun should always be wonky, obviously, since no edition solved the problem that uncompensated auto fire suddenly make you less good from the first bullet fired.

The condition monitor is awesome. Well, no need to argue here, obviously.

There are many arguments to dislike SR3. I could write ten times this post saying what's wrong or stupid or clumsy and time waisting. I'm always wondering why it's always the irrational ones that get highlighted.

Because the irrational one is such a hot button?

While your statistics may indeed work out the way you indicate (mathematically), the reality is that it rarely did... I have been in SR3 Games with DP's of 8-12 (Guns of one variety or another) and smartlinks with Final TN at 9's and spent HOURS enmeshed in combat because no one could hit squat. It was frustrating and caused tons of heat at the table, because it really sucked. By the same token, I can also remember games where it was one and done, even with TN's of 12. Floating TN created extremely swingy results, for no real gain, in my opinion. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Don't get me wrong: having to roll 6 times to hit squat', however "logical" and "not impossible" it might be, can be quite problematic and frustrating. The usual solution some quotes is "you should move or act or do something for the TN to get lower". That's a poor solution, since you character might really well want to spend those 30 seconds of real game time trying to kill his opponent from his cover instead of leaving a secured position, for example. Rushing the player into rolling faster is somewhat efficient, but it : 1 - kills creativity 2 - can't be done with new players 3 - might seem impolite with players you don't know well.

The combat pool has a good deal of responsibility in this problem, especially when players like to take their time allocating it, and it authorizes full dodges of the shots. But it's almost as much a part of SR3 as the floating TN.

But all in all, this kind of situation remains sufficiently rare in my game so that I appreciate its gain at my table while not suffering too much from the drawbacks (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) .

And that's fine, that subjectively, the problems of SR3 arn't your problems. Different folks, different strokes.

I however, did not like the damage system in anyway, shape or form. It did not sit well with me, and I prefer SR4 and SR5s system.

I particularly hated that Assault Rifles were less "effective" than a pistol. That's just nonsense, there's only a few pistol rounds in existence that even begin to rival the firepower of a 5.56 or 5.45. And yet, Heavy pistols were more capable of damaging things than assault rifles, unless you used theb urst fire or full-auto of assault rifles. Guess what? That's not how it works: a single assault rifle round does considerably more damage than a single pistol round, while being more accurate and longer-ranged. Always sat wrong with me when they didn't appropriately hurt vehicles.

The man advantage SMGs and ARs had was their ammo capacity and... Burst Fire, because two bursts killed everything except for the bullet testers. And drones. And the magic slingers with their huge combat pools and the ability to use them purely for defense. Yay.

Speaking of drones, damage levels and weapons: Jeezus christ this was a problem. A single Steel Lynx could either be an insurmountable problem for your team, or handled by a few pistol shots with av rounds. So you either had the drones roll the opposition with no problem, or you had the drones get rolled with no problem.

The point is not about subjectivity, it's about irrational argument. I already said there are plenty of good reasons to prefer one version over another. I just wonder why the arguments of SR3 haters are always so distorted.

The point you raise about assault rifles and pistols is indeed true. But it has strictly nothing to do with the floating TN. It has to do with the damage code of the weapons being poorly established. Once again, an easy hack. I'd like to notice that even if SR4 "corrected" this problem, the "considerably" higher damage dealt by an assault rifle compared to a heavy pistol is exactly one box. Except for the warhawk, which is better than an AR. And we could also talk about SMGs dealing less damage than pistols there too.

You keep complaining about the magic slinger and his huge combat pool. That's, well, wrong. Most combat heavy character would have a comparable combat pool. Most of them could keep them for defense too. This is generally something people quote as anecdotally funny. I don't get how it could ruin your game.

And about drones and AV round. AV rounds in pistols didn't make sense. Ok. AV round were availability 16/2weeks for 10 of them at 800 the box. You complained about never hitting TN9 earlier. Plus, honestly, once again, something that could get corrected in the framework of floating TN and dice pools.

You're missing the point. ARs in SR3 were balanced around the idea that they would be commonly used for BF/FA fire, and in order to keep them from being overwhelmingly good in those modes they have a lower base SA damage. Zero question of 'realism', this is a pure game balance moment. Same reason pistols seem 'better', because in order to make them a viable combat option they couldn't just reduce the pistol damage codes to make the AR relatively better without making them pointless.

The Warhawk, mind you, is somewhat realistic. It's intended to be a heavy magnum pistol round, like the .454 Casull, which while shorter ranged than an AR bullet out of a rifle or carbine length barrel still delivers massive kinetic force to a target. Compare :

300gr .454 Casull out of a 7.5 inch barrel (Ruger Super Redhawk) : 1,650 ft/s and 1,814 ft·lbf of energy
55gr .223 Remington out of a 23 inch barrel (M16) : 3,240 ft/s and 1,282 ft·lbf

For another comparison of effectiveness, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_KO_Factor.

There's a reason .454 Casull, and .44 Magnum are considered acceptable mid-to-large-game hunting rounds even out of a pistol length platform and .223 is too light for anything bigger than a coyote. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Balance, scmalance. I'm not a big fan of this whole "balance" thing where weapons have to all have a combat presence. We carry pistols because we can't carry assault rifles and walk around in public like it was cool. The pistols are used to get us to our rifles and heavier weaponry, not to compete with rifles or smgs when we have them. I don't want perfect "realism", but I prefer for things that are pretty mundane if they made sense within my knowledge of them. And that means we don't use pistols to shoot up cars and expect them to do anything impressive. Rifles are rifles, and pistols are pistols. The utility of the pistol is what makes it popular, not it's effectiveness in comparison to rifles.

And especially when planning and playing, I want things to do what I imagine they do in real life, and that means that assault rifles should be pretty darn effective against light vehicles and people at most combat distances. They really are that good, and they deserve to be that good, and I deserve to be able to expect that sort of performance from them. They shouldn't be so damn wimpy(I can't rememebr the GMC Bulldog's armor value, but I seem to remember it being enough to pounce ARs, but not heavy pistols).

I really don't see what advantage the "balance" of making ARs generally inferior to Heavy Pistols is? The pistol has the advantage of cost, size, portability, legality and general utility, while not being able to burst-fire(but some can!). The assault rifle, for it's amazing ability to burst fire and larger magazine, is worse in every category. The only time you should consider using an assault rifle is when you expect outright hostility, not just for a a meet with a contact somewhere. Because Burst fire wasn't all fun and games, you could really mess up your to-hit chances with that recoil. But hey, that's great "balance".

Shooting vehicles was just a pain, and I certainly like the changes between 3rd and 4th and 5th there. The vehicle scale damage was silly, and we're much better off with it being gone. Now vehicles actually get damaged by fire, and you don't need some goofy "anti-vehicular ammo" the can damage them. Assault rifles, LMGs and Grenades will all do the trick. Which is pretty accurate: a 40mm HEDP grenade will end a hummer, and laying into it with concentrated rifle fire has an impact.

Shotguns. Heh. Just... Heh. No, they don't do that, and the current method(lower damage, penalty to defense) makes a lot more sense than... that. And it was fucking broken when that enfield went off. Double your armor jacket, go ahead. what was it, aroudn a 15 or 16D attack? That killed lots of things for me. But, yeah, that was craziness.

Yeah, I'm not going back. I like it this way. I like having ways to destroy light vehicles that don't involve anti-tank weapons.



The Super Warhawk never bothered me, as I always imagined it to be something like a .454 or above. A .44 Magnum is on the low-end for energy compared to an assault rifle, but I don't have a problem with that. I have a problem with what should be pistol rounds comparable to 9mm, .45, 10mm, .357, .38 +P, etc being better than rifle rounds for punching holes in things, which is plain out ridiculous.

Mmm… I'm not sure "game balance" is a good reason to promote unrealistic behavior at any time. There are many ways of balancing assault rifle, everywhere in the game. Notably concealability. They should be less handy in close quarter than SMGs, probably should have somehow more recoil but more armor penetration, whatever is "realistic". These are not hard rules to implement, frankly. They already implemented double recoil on shotguns and heavy weapons.

There was a real problem with firearms in SR3, but it was not their damage code (except for light pistol, where it was insanely stupid), which could be quite easily "corrected". After all, I could spend all day on the inter web trying to understand which will kill the most: .45 ACP or 5.56 Nato? Some will say that i should consider Taylor KO factor, other muzzle energy, other will tell me that I'm stupid for even comparing rifle to handguns and other will just remind that apparently, 5.56 is shitty in a short barreled carbine. Honestly, there's no point. Then people here will remember that no matter, past 5 meters we're at middle range for a heavy gun, so already less success than with the AR where we are at short range til 50 meters. Nothing will be "realistic" for everybody and we're talking about nuances.

The real big problem is that everything was somehow compatible with everything and handled the same way. You could put smart link, laser, gas-vent, sound suppressor and the like on almost anything, anytime. There was no reason not to have your 2 bursts fully compensated using gas-vent IV, shock pads and under barrel weight (or just taking the ares alpha at char gen with gas-vent IV). There's absolutely no feel because weapon could be moded at will, in any possible way. This was the utter and major failure at this level, because pass realism or game balance, there was no flavour. I'm not sure how SR4+ made it better in any way. I'm actually pretty sure we're confronted to the same "build your weapon" logic.

The condition monitor had a point in that it made the range of shots outcome wide. A heavy pistol shot by even Joe average could easily range from lethal to minor. That's why some like hit, and that's why some hate it and prefer a "hit point" system, I don't think it's any worth precising the reasons for such preferences.

The basics of SR3 IMO sucks as a system because it was statistically inconsistent.

But it had tactical options and depth.

Personnally, if I'd had a wish, it would be to have a system that would be robust statistical wise with depth and options.

Like dice-pools from 3rd could have been (more in offense-defense and so on)

Or do you mean that SR4 is "statistically consistent"??

While I understand that these terms will change from person to person, in general I found SR3 combat to be very tactical, while SR4.5 was very strategic.

In SR3, combat basically boiled down to who made the smarter choices. Character build was important, but so was the active choices, most notably dice pool management. Your decisions could quickly change the outcome of the fight, and it was never an easy tradeoff. Going for offense might leave you weak on defense, and you never knew if taking a support action (say, something to lower the TN) would be a better choice than just attacking. The net result was that you needed to play smart to win, and there was no single way to play smart.

Starting with SR4, everything boiled down to one factor: dice pool size. So, if you built your character well, unless the GM threw a massive curve ball, you would always win if you were halfway smart about things. If you went into a fight with 20+ dice, you knew you were likely to win, and the exact decisions you made during a fight didn't really matter. So, everything was basically a strategic decision: the fight was over before it began.

Now, both playstyles have their advantages and disadvantages. And in some games, the strategic playstyle is a lot of fun. However, in the case of SR4, we didn't have many of those advantages. It was just one choice-- if you were better at dice pool inflation at the start of the game, you were basically dominating throughout the entire campaign.

I've bought most SR2-3-4-5 books existing, but my readings aren't past SR3 era.

I know SR4 basics but since I didn't read and play it myself, I avoid commenting it flaws.


However, some RPGs are more consistent stat-wise. You can't say all are flawed like SR3 was.

Well, I've learned that this statistical consistence stuff generally relies so much on subjectivity that I'm skeptical. But it would be nice if you provided examples…

SR3's inconsistencies are (a few that falls into my mind) :

> TN 6 to 7 doesn't generate any difference in probabilities.
> Make any roll where the number of success counts (Combat, Etiquette rolls, opposed tests) and TN works well. Now make a simple test, and the "near impossible" tasks doesn't have adapted probabilities (even with 1 die, you could succeed with 8% chances).
> Open test are inconsistent (no question of successes rolled - high luck involved - when an opposed test has a discrepency way lower).



If I had to give exemples:
> DD is a game with much luck -for skills- : a d20 roll is linear in probabilities.
> Gurps has less luck involved, because a 3d6 roll has more a gaussian style (rolling 10-11 in total is more likely than 3 (triple 1)).

However I find DD not consistent with probabilities: Your damage rolls are very fixed (like 1d8 + strength + Magic bonus => 1d8+7) with lot of hits point. Fights aren't very random (despite the attack roll) when skill is very random.

SR3 unfortunately goes a step further. Nothing impossible to fix, but it's still disappointing to have a "rule/simulationist" system whose probabilities weren't checked.

Another very inconsistent system : Vampire:

A strength 5 guy lifts 200kg.
A strength 3 roughly 100kg (numbers are not exact but given for explanation).

With such a difference in power, the strength 3 guy could NEVER beat the strength 5 guy.

But make a roll in Vampire, and the outcome won't match the description at all (win probabilities for the STR5 guy doesn't match the descriptions)

Well, at least, the TN 6 to 7 doesn't hinder the fact that the probability of success doesn't decrease linearly, contrary to such inconsistent system as DnD or Vampire, where moving the TN or threshold modifies your chance of success linearly. Both those system fail at representing difficult tasks in any way.

TN 6 to 7 is a minor inconsistency. 5% chance of success on any roll whatever the difficulty is a major one. IMHO of course.

Open tests are bullshit. I wholeheartedly agree.

Near impossible just depends on the definition of near impossible. But that's a problem with the game designer obviously never comparing their words and the actual chance of success.

SR3 was tactical? No. It was arcane, and if you knew the right rules combinations to abuse for any given circumstances, then you won.

First: Smart link. -2 to TN changes your odds of success dramatically. This is the first piece of kit a "serious" combat character must run.
Second: Cyber eyes give you flare compensation, low-light or thermo(or BOTH!), and most importantls vision magnefication.
Third: As much skill as you can get with your gun

Fourth's dice pool mechanic wasn't fair, you're right. I generally find the limits of SR5 to fix problems I had with it. And the demise of Combat Pool is great. Screw that mechanic.

Smartlink and cyber eyes are now arcane crazy rule abuse combinations.

We're talking of something available with priority D money, 20000 nuyens, which was highly recommended by both fluff and rules, and cost few essence. I don't get how this can be considered arcane, seriously.

Plus, those are in no way going to help you if that average cop happens to be able to fire at you in the open, with no cover whatsoever. What Cain meant (if I may, and correct me if I'm wrong) was that in SR3, PC with huge dice pool could be handicaped with high TN, while NPC with low dice pool fared pretty good against low TN. So you had to take cover and try to surprise the NPCs so they didn't take cover. In SR4, a high dice pool makes you immune to standard penalties, and means you're almost always going to screw average NPCs, however you're running in the open and he's hiding behind a wall. Of course, I'm caricaturing a little, but I think it was the argument you missed.

That and the vis mag and smartlink do not work together.
And the lowlight and infraread might reduce your TN modifier from bad lighting, but it's still not a complete negation so you still end up with a + to your TN in the end . .

Might be worth add that cybereyes were also always worse at reducing penalties than natural vision.

Yeah, for maximum eye-cheese you play a Troll or Dorf with the edge natural low light vision.
Then you build lights, electronic image magnification and microscopic into your fleshy eyes.

SR4 dice pools were a very important aspect to a character, but they were not the be-all, end-all. Such characters could still get ambushed, get attacked by multiple opponents with lower but still effective dice pools, etc.

In SR5, you have equal or sometimes greater dice pools, but the big difference is that grunts have been beefed up a lot. Which kind of makes me wonder how practical some of the archetypes are - they have a nice, organic feel to them, but one or two mouthbreathing thugs would be a significant challenge for them.

First: Keep in mind that I haven't played SR3 in... a long freaking time, like, atleast a decade. When I started, there was no Dumpshock, but there was a Deep Resonance board, and we posted all sorts of crazy stuff. That's a long time ago, and I don't have eidetic memory, so I can't recall everything. My copy of SR3, if I still own it, is packed up somewhere, and I'm not going to dig it out just to argue about specific rules interactions. I can, however, recall enough that there were glaring, massive problems with that rules set, and I have no interest to go back to it, especially after playing other games that have much better mechanics.


If everyone has a smartlink, then what's the point? Obviously not everyone is cybered: in 20+ years of playing this game and reading supplements, it's pretty obvious that most people do not have cyberware more invasive than a datajack, eyes and a few other minor mods. If everyone doesn't have a smartlink, then the difference between the haves and the have nots is pronounced. And that difference is massive: reducing a TN of 4 or 5 to 2 or 3 isn't just a small boost, it's a dramatic one: A TN of two means you have rougly an 85% chance of a hit per die you roll, compared to a 50% or 33% chance, that's almost twice as effective as without it. Yes, smartlinks are awesome, but I don't think they should be THAT awesome, or everyone would have an implant for them. Which virtually every non awakened one did(And I've played gun adepts where losing a full point of magic rating and the two extra dice on skills was offset by the smart link) as a PC. The difference between augmented and non augmented characters was clear as day: I've played SR3 characters who were Skills and Attributes heavy, but without the resources for extensive augmentation. Everyone hated that when we went on a Mr. White run(you never win with Mr. White).

Now, moving along: Using SR4 to compare to SR3 isn't my arguement. You wanna erect that strawman and tilt at windmills? Go right ahead. But that's not what I'm saying. I am saying that I prefered some SR4 mechanics(Hacking and rigging being more accessible, for example) over their SR5 incarnations. I'm not happy with SR5's return to the old psuedo class system. However, the fixed TNs, large dice pools, and unified mechanics are fairly robust, and they work for gaming out being a shadowrunner. They work enough that I don't just break out GURPS and do a cyberpunk game there. SR5's limits help to deal with dice pool inflation: if you have an Acc 5 gun, then throwing 24 dice(which is pretty hefty and implies a very high skill, high attributes, and numerous positive modifiers to your dice pool) isn't that big of a deal. You can be the best pistol slinger in the world, but if you pick up a crappy, low-end gun, you're going to be limited by your hardware. I like that.

Now, regarding dice pools: While I see some big dice pools from time to time, the truth is that a starting character really can't have so many dice that enviromental modifiers are not a real consideration. I mean, what, the best you're gonna get is around 16 dice for firearms, because you can't take Aptitude AND exceptional attribute at the same time. Well, I guess you could get muscle toners for more Agility. But that doesn't allow you to "ignore" enviromental factors, and those add up quick. Light rain and partial light, target in cover, and you could be looking at a -5 or -7 dicepool modifier. Sure, if you're some kind of hyper specialized gunslinger, you can eat that and still have 12 or 13 dice. But you paid through the nose to be that specialized.

Also, this argument that PCs should be handicapped, while NPCs should not... well, it smacks of gamism. If it's foggy and partially lit, that modifier is going to apply to all the involved parties, not just the combat pool 9 characters. And who is better able to eat that modifier, the PC who reduces the penalties to -1 or 0, and has a -2 smartlink, or the unaugmented security guards? In addition, not having a two-page chart of modifiers is both simpler, and more fluid to work with. At first, SR5's enviromental penalties seemed a bit cludgy and confusing. In practice, it works pretty well, and we don't spend a lot of time constantly flipping through the book to the modifier table(which is still pretty big).

Continuing with this whole "Tactics vs. strategy" thing: let's say you're pulled over for a routine traffic stop(say some tusker kid threw a rock and knocked out your tail lights*). The streetsam with restricted cyberware, grenades, and illegal guns decides to "fix" the problem by shooting the cops. Let's say neither party is surprised(The cops halfway expect a traffic stop to result in gun fire, the runners expect to shoot, etc), and combat starts. The augmented street same is probably looking at something like 8+3d6 initiative, or multiple passes and going first, while the cops are going to only act once, and probably be last on the draw. There's no "tactical" decision there, you simply go before them and hose'em. Oh, and with something like 8 to 9 armor as a matter of course, the street sam can just stand in the open, because he's throwing 12 or 13 dice to resist damage against a TN of 2, so even if you hit him, that pistol isn't going to do squat. Even when the SWAT team shows up, they end up having problems with the brick. Further, while combat pool might seem like a tactical deal, it was not: your combat pool was decided at character generation, and it's uses(bolstering offense, or morei mportantly, keeping you alive) didn't change based on whether or not you used good tactics. Hiding behind a corner didn't give you a bonus to combat pool, and walking like a terminator with your gun at your hip, spitting hot death didn't disadvantage you.

So you had combats that were either entirely lopsided(Augmented vs. non augmented, Augmented rolls the opposition unless very disadvantaged by environment and numbers) or became stalemates(equally matched, and good tactical decisions on both sides) and drawn out. Whether or not that is realistic(most gunfights/combat situations are generally one-sided and resolved quickly, or turn into drawn out bloody affairs), it's not fun. It's tedious and bogs down the game, to the point that you didn't want to run too many combats, or you'd spend a session running one combat at a damn time. Again, not fun.

It's not the same these days. Even a routine traffic stop can turn very lethal. Those Cops have a professional rating of 3, which gives them three edge. One cop can Blitz or Sieze the Initative so that he's not flat-flooted and can actually do some things, they can toss edge as a bonus into their dice pools, and generally they can be a pain in the ass. Now, in all fairness, the PCs will probably be victorious, but they gotta work a little bit more for it, and it's not a given that the Street Sam will automatically go first and act before the cops can respond.

Now, back to hating floating TNs? Yeah, I do, because of things like Sustaining spells. For three editions, a wizard sustaining a spell and or astrally percieving was pretty much uncapable of of doing anything. A simple +2 modifier made everything much, much harder(TN 4 is about a 50% chance of succes per die, TN 6 is a 16% chance of success) to do. Now, there were tricks around it(spirits and quickening), while reducing a dice pool of 10 to 8 is a much smaller decrease in effectiveness. So you didn't have a lot of sustained spells being used, unless that was all you were going to do. Which... didn't match the fluff at all.

Again, getting tagged with a lucky AR burst in SR3 for a 11S wound wasn't that big of a deal: you only need to get 6 success to stage it down to nothing, if the combat pool dice didn't evade the hit outright, and with armor 8 or 9, you could soak that all day long. Which lead to increasingly bizarre things, like Lonestar carrying a gun that fired faster than physically possible to "penetrate armor" by allowing no penalty bursts. Silly.

I've rebuilt Meat/Jolly Roger and played him in SR3, SR4 and SR5. In SR3, Meat has around 11-12+ dice for damage resistence and an Armor value of something like 8/5(Armored vest /w armored jacket layered over, titanium bone lacing, and maybe other cyberware. He was a freakin' cybermonster) when walking around on the street, higher when he geared up for violent runs. IF you weren't packing APDS, you were not hurting him(the one time he was really taken down, the shooters used stun ammo to get around his stupid high ballistic armor, and he still soaked a lot of bursts and killed a few guys before going down). In SR5, he'd have something like a 23-24 dice pool to soak. Against a pistol, he's throwing 23 dice against a DV of 7 or 8, which means he can eat a pistol round to the chest pretty well. Against an AR, he's looking at 22 dice, and something like 10 or 11 hits he needs to completely soak that damage.

Also, since those average guys are now throwing 7 or 8 dice on a test, rather than 3, they're more likely to get more hits, stage the damage up more, and prevent him from dodging. That's pretty sweet. It means that Meat isn't a juggernaut anymore, and he doesn't just wade through automatic weapons fire, with his AS-7 spitting hot flechette death. Sure, he won't take but a box or two of damage at a time, but that still means he's gonna go down if he tries to go full terminator.

What I'm seeing in SR5 is that "good" combat characters are throwing around 10-12 dice at char gen for their attacks, and regular "mooks" are throwing around 6 to 7. The PCs do outclass them, but not nearly as much as before when you saw Skill 5 and 6 people(with -2 to their TNs) vs 3s and 4s(Tns of 4 or 5). In SR3, regular runners could generally pull off 4 or 5 hits on a mook, while the mooks were lucky to get a hit or two. Addint enviromental modifiers into that, and the SR3 mooks just can't compete.


*This couldn't happen with the damage rules for vehicles, but whatever