It seemed silly at the time. Priority D for Dwarves and Orks, Priority E for Human? There was very little reason to make a human, unless the GM was playing up racism. I did have two players make humans in my 3e game, almost out of spite, really.

I'm not saying it was a bad thing to see (many) more metahuman runners, it was just a radical shift from 2e to 3e.



3e Troll magicians were pretty badass. Still love that combat mage.

-paws

...been involved with Shadowrun ever since 1st ed. Pretty much did most of my GM duty in 2nd & 3rd ed. Recently rebooted my Rhapsody in Shadow campaign using 3rd ed. Yeah 3rd has its issues but so does 4th (as well as 1st & 2nd). All of the editions were prone to Min-Maxing (my 4th ed character Hurricane Hannah was a good example of that) so that argument really doesn't hold water when comparing the different versions.

Played and GM'd 4th but came back to the "insanities" (as some put it) of 3rd because there are other features I and the players still prefer. It also fits the timeline of the campaign I am running. For one I feel that the whole "See All, Do all, Know All, Everyone can Hack in ", wireless Matrix really takes a major element out of the game that I like. I'm also not into skill caps. If you want to be the best of the best and have the Karma to do it, then you should be able to. There are other things as well, but the two above are the main reasons I archived all my 4th ed PDFs and dusted off the 3rd edition books.

A lot of how the game works or doesn't work depends on the players and the GM. My current group is comprised of very seasoned Rollplayers. Only one character has additional dice in initiative (+1) and he's the team's mage-detective. There is also an Aspected Shaman-B&E specialist, a Mystic Adept, and a Rigger who's only initiative boost is when jacked in. These were by the player's choices, not my recommendations. There is no Charisma 8 elf hermetic who can command a small army of elementals & watchers, no .0001 Essence combat monster who needs a Cyberzombie to make it a fair fight, and no adept martial artist that can give both Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan an inferiority complex.

We are all having a great time and everyone is really into the intrigue and up to the challenge of running in London and Europe and this is shaping up to be the best run of the campaign.

QFT. All this edition comparison stuff is really pointless. All RPG systems have their upside and downside. I don't think any system is immune to things that "break" the system, so you simply get a group of players that don't try to break it. As long as everyone is having fun, that's all that matters.

Any sufficiently complicated system. Its a tiny caveat but I think it needs to be clear that if people want a complicated game, they also get... well... complications.

If you want a simple game, you will get a simple game. And then gamers will slitch about it lacking depth.

BlueMax

True but we were talking about the Pornomancer vs. A pissed off blind Street Samurai. They both have back up if you want to go there by logic so.. Plus if he doesn't one-kill her, I don't think she is gonna be breathing enough (Or look to good with a bullet wound pouring blood all over the place.) to try to seduce anything. Wait, my God! IS Form Fitting Armor that high? Man, the armor stacking rules need some work then.

Let's face it, the Pornomancer and all of these other extreme builds would get massacred in a good SR campaign. Too specialized for their own good. That pornomaner is good for getting info and favors but that is it.. Not really functional in combat or any other endeavor. Can't infiltrate, can hardly shoot a pistol, can't dodge well. The range of the Pornomancer is very limited.

Same with the climbing master troll.. So what? He can climb, big deal. He can't hit anybody unless his agility is high, his reaction probably sucks. SO what he can climb the tallest building in Shadowrun, that is pretty much all he can do. Everything else is sifted down to secondary or tertiary.

IMO, it is more fun just to build a competent Shadowrunner that works well in a team. I have never felt the need to min/max my characters.

i love sr3 and have almost all the books as softcover, hated the IMHO(!) more post-cyberpunkish feeling of AR too (i like the wire-style plug-in decker feel lots more, even if it seems outdated by some technologies which where developed IRL)

nothing more to add, just my oppinion (im interested in 4e only storywise, hate the layout of the books and some inbook gfx too, sr2/sr3 was much more compatible from the feel of it to each other, while i feel sr4 just cuts off its roots)

everything said above is just my oppinion, not an objective fact, so there is no discussion needed (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

With a max wound modifier and a -2 from the wound itself, she'll still have enough dice to buy nine hits. Without Edge. So she'll be doing plenty of seducing.

Or just hypnotizing you with Gymnastics, whatever.



6/3, counts as half. That's without getting into the fact that, as far as I can tell, you can wear two suits for 12/6 armor and 6/3 encumbrance.



Wrong.



Against anything alive, she can just Social her way in.



Which never matters, because she doesn't need to.



Gymnastics Dodge. What, you think those four ranks were just for Enthralling Performance?



Patently false, as shown above.



The Pornomancer works well in a team. It's nice to have someone with guns, and it's nice for them to have someone that can get the Johnson to pay 300% or so.

Well that sturied up a lot of feelings and just to put in my 2 pence worth (yep i'm a brit) i have nothing against 4 th ed i'm just a lot happier with 3rd ed there are some parts of 4th ed i like, The points based chargen I though was very good i find it allows players to fine tune there charaters a lot more but when i first read then played 4th ed it just didn't exicite me it was ok but i had no desire to play it again unlike 3rd ed which i have run on meny times over the last few years with a great sense of FUN which after all is what it's all about my new game has started well and my players all like the low level feel i've gotten in to the game (which is what i wanted) as for the rules i have a few house rules which i think improve the game like a new way of sorting initiative which evens the playing field a little along with some idears on recoil and the like (all of which i'm happy to share if anyone wants) but most of all i have a group thats not interested in having super runners just a good group that works well so we all enjoy our games.

I'm not reading all three pages... just decided to post after I got to the bickering (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

We play SR2. SR3 is silly, and I'm still mad that they killed off Captain Chaos. Other than that, we like the feel of the 2/3 system, much more than that of 4. And... I'm not sure what you're all talking about, because the amount of change in the system from D&D3->4 is about the same as Shadowrun. But well, we all have our opinions, which is why my group still plays SR2. After reading through some (there are a bbunch already) of the 4th edition books, we just don't feel that it fits our storytelling and play styles. That's not to say that anyone else is wrong, mind you. Just our preference.

Which is Moot if the Johnson can only flex upwards to a max of 25%...

He can go higher for her.

Dude.. No.. One you seemed to miss a little caveat that I knew the first person to read the post without really reading it and then quote would do.. It has been missed twice. I have said Blind Street Sam. There are PLENTY of powers and cyberware that can give a blind man the ability to shoot a Pornomancer down.. All that seduction and dancing does nothing if the sam can't see it. Examine the post your reading dude.. Yes I know it is a trick, yes I know that is unfair but when you have an unfair build like a pornomancer, you need unfair counters. Not to mention that beyond the wound penalties, A good shot that takes a chunk of health is going to have other effects. Knockdown being one of them.. You can't dance when you ass is prone on the ground.

Yeah, what GM is going to give you 300% up from starting price? I know I tend to max mine out at negotiable up to 30% at most. If I let you negotiate 300% up from starting price, have another character ready because your PC you have now.. Not going to make it.

A pornomancer cannot seduce a drone. A pornomancer cannot seduce an awakened animal. A pornomancer can't seduce a spirit, a pornomancer cannot seduce a homosexual man, a pornomancer cannot seduce a straight woman (well, that might not be a good example), a pornomancer cannot seduce a MAD sensor or a camera. She can't seduce a car bomb. She better have a good team around her or she is dead! Too specialized. I can think of 50 ways to kill her right now before she even looks at an NPC with those "Fuck me" eyes. The pornomancer is a one-trick pony.

The point is, you can look for any perceived advantage you want for your PC.. I and any good GM can kill it before the end of the first run if we really wanted to.

As for SR3 vs. SR4. Hell, I love them both.. I play SR4 because i like the streamlining but I have been rocking it SR style since 2nd edition. You can break them too. Game balance is a myth and anybody who convinces you otherwise is a pornomancer.

The specialized builds are just not that uber when put under the spotlight. I'm sorry but I do not see the advantage of these so called uber-builds.

We took the hacking from 4th ed and the simplified types of sprits but otherwise we kept with 3rd ed and have no use for 4th ed or 5th ed, I mean 4.A

The problem is that the Pornomancer so outshines everyone in his chosen area, and is reasonably competent in most other areas, making it so you have a superior character. Everyone else therefore feels inferior, simply because they're not tossing two bricks of dice in their specialty.

And of course they're going to be specialized. That's the whole point of Shadowrun. No matter what edition you're playing, the game is about teams of specialists, working together. Generalist characters are naturally going to be underpowered in comparison.


Hardly "prohibitive". The pornomancer is just one super-specialized character with a well-rounded skill set. There are many others posted on Dumpshock. As for SR3, you always needed to improve your skills as you faced opposition with greater ability. There was always a need to improve your skills and attributes.

Look, I'm not arguing that SR3 was a perfect system. It has holes and breaking points. What I am arguing is that SR4 isn't vastly superior in this regard-- in fact, it may not be superior at all. In both systems, you can easily start with insanely huge dice pools; neither system does a good job of reining in power gamers.


A good chargen system should be intuitive. That is to say, it should easily communicate the desired results to the players, so that they know what they should be aiming for. Now, I'm not saying SR3 did that, especially if you were using BeCKs or Points. But SR4 decidedly does *not* do that at all. A good system won't rely on the GM to tell the players what kind of characters to create; it'll do most of that work for them.

For example, GURPS is confusing and fiddly, and you never quite feel like you know what you're doing. I just started playing in a D&D 4e game, and I have to say that character creation was pretty smooth. Choose a stat array, assign to taste, presto! I knew instantly what level of attributes were good/average/poor.

If you can point me to the place in the book where it says that you can only use Seduction if the target can see you, I will happily concede that point. Phone sex is awesome.



Of course not. You'd have to be a bloody idiot to let me play this in a game. But it can be done, which is the point.



True. Machines are the 'Mancer's one weakness, though that's why she has a team backing her up.



None of these are good examples. Because even if she can't seduce them? (And in the case of all but the animals, I'd say with that many dice she could.) She's still rolling 40-44 dice on a CON test, since none of her bonuses are Seduction specific except the specialization. Can't be Conned? She's rolling 24-28 for Negotiation.



A one trick pony that can one-shot any group of things that are alive and she's aware of.



Any bad GM can kill it. Any good GM will have trouble doing so, because good GMs play by the rules they've set down. The best GMs don't allow this nonsense to begin with.



HAHAHAHAHA!

Oh, that is totally sigged. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Charisma is the gut-reaction attribute. It influences an NPC’s reaction
to a character before any words are spoken or actions taken. It represents
the way a character reacts after a first glance across a crowded
room, out on the street, or in a dark alley

Now that is taken from the first paragraph from "Using Charisma-Linked Skill". From that in the RAW, it say that charisma is a gut reaction based on the FIRST GLANCE of a character. I would assume that this would take into account that Charisma-Linked skills are also sight based.. Plus I really want to know how you phone sex a crazed, pissed off Street Sam (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif) Of course this is pretty weak so.

"Many sorts of modifiers may apply to social skill tests, depending on
the situation and characters in question. For example, trying to influence
someone in a club where the music is overbearingly loud, while
being covered in blood, or when wearing a rival team’s sports jersey
in the wrong sports bar may all impact a character’s Charisma-linked
tests. The gamemaster should evaluate each situation and apply modifi-
ers as he feels appropriate. The Social Modifiers Table (p. 131) provides
some examples." pg. 130 Anniversary edition.

This says that as a good GM, I start taking penalties for quite a few things. If there is a penalty for trying to influence someone in a loud club, then there is surely a penalty for trying to seduce a blind man. Based on looks alone, that ain't happening. Not to mention that the pornomancer starts out at a -8 dice modifier from the start as the Blind Street sam is obviously an Enemy (-4) and the results of being seduced is probably disastrous for him (-4). Not to mention that these are just examples and, as suggested by RAW, is not an exhaustive list. Not to mention that if the Street Sam has a bad rep as a stubborn killer, that is a variable penalty. We haven't even got to if the chick is wounded with blood all over her and the Street Sam hates elves and knows that she is one, those are also negative penalties. This is all by the RAW and by no means hateful. As you can tell, I am not trying to argue with you.. I am just trying to show that too much emphasis has been put on how "uber" these builds are without seeing the weaknesses. The pornomancer has MANY weaknesses.



Good point..



The team can't be there all the time..




Not a good example.. I think most of them are.. Thinking that the hot elf could turn the totally gay man straight for on night is like bragging that you can turn lesbians.. Truth is, you can't..

Also see Social modifiers. Trying to Con or seduce a magical spirit would not be any easier than the homosexual guy. Just because you roll lots of dice does not mean you can do something that would be impossible. You just have a chance for more successes. Negotiation is easily balanced out with capping money raises and goodies.





Which outlines her weaknesses very well. I'll take away alive because I am sorry but a Devil Rat could care less how charismatic your pornomancer is..





I agree with all but the bad GM part.. I don't have to cheat to take down a pornomancer, I can do it with the RAW. I have already outlined someways. Yeah, I would smack this crap down before it even got close to happening. Starting with emotitoys..





Thanks! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

The pornomancer was purely a dice-pool exercise, just like the mundane climber build. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that the pornomancer is invincible, just that it is a hyper-specialist who is functional in other areas - functional, not capable of standing up against someone who is a specialist in those other areas. I already said, in another thread, that, while I made the effort to create an actually playable build, it is far from optimal for a real campaign. Too much spent hard-maxing things, and too many conditional modifiers. And all for a level of ability that is wasted 90% of the time, because it is overkill. By the way, agree with you on empathy software - it's something you kind of have to get if it's there, because everyone else will have it, but I prefer games where it is nerfed or non-existent.


On SR3 vs. SR4, I like both. I do my gaming on the boards, so I followed the switch along, but while I like SR4, I am still fond of SR3. Both have their good and bad points, but I think, unlike previous edition changes, that SR4 is more or less a new game - so many things are completely different in it. I think both editions tend to reward specialization, but in SR3, it was a lot easier to make a skill monkey, especially sorcerers.

If you go through the build I posted, I actually got rid of a lot of that when I brought her over to 4A. Magic is now something like 3, and most of the temporary modifiers are gone. In fact, she gets a straight 36 dice all the time on Seduction; the rest are body language, smell, and voice, consisting of 3, 2, and 1 dice respectively.


I wouldn't really call it overkill: you can get about 10 dice worth of negative modifiers, if not more, if trying this on a group of hostile NPCs shooting at you. On your average guard who thinks you're hot, yeah, it's overkill; on the five gangers hell-bent on shooting elves on sight that'll be killed if they don't, not so much.

Well-rounded skillset is hardly enough for a character to make it on their own. They still need the team to do things for them. That's my definition of broken, someone who doesn't need a team at all. In SR3, principally thanks to the 1 million nuyen option, I came very close to that. I've been monkeying with SR4 for years now, and my closest approximation is still nowhere near, at least not without piles of karma.



Sure, but I still maintain that characters are more limited in SR4. That doesn't mean they're not uber, but just do the math:

In SR3, 1 million yen was 30 BP, or 25% of starting resources. In SR4, 250k is also 25% of resources, but it is only 1/4 the money. Prices have come down, but not by a factor of 4. Therefore, you can spend the same on money, but get less.

In SR3, attributes were 2 BP, or 1.6% per point. In SR3, they're 10 BP, or 2.5%. Not only that, but you have more attributes to spend on. So attributes have increased in price significantly.

In SR3, skills were 1 BP, or .08% per point. In SR4, they're 4 BP, or 1% per point, a 20% price increase. Skills also mean less, accounting for only 1/2 of your dice pool. Not only is it more expensive, it's worth less.

Now I'm not sure whether you're actually disputing the power level between SR3 and SR4. It seems like a hard thing to dispute, especially given the math above. It is clear as day to me that the baseline power level is just not comparable. That doesn't mean you can't start an SR4 character who's maxed out in one area, only that the power level in general is lower -- it has to be, seeing as how money, skills, and attributes all cost more than they used to in terms of BP. Unless you spot some kind of glaring flaw in my math, you really can't argue that they're just as strong as they used to be...



You just made a case for D&D 4! Does Cain have a dirty secret he's not telling us? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) The fact is, the chargen is a feature of Shadowrun. We like the complexity. You don't like it, but your unsupported declaration of it being bad is completely meaningless. You can judge a game for yourself, but you cannot sit in judgment of all games everywhere for everyone.



Oh, I see that you really are making a case for D&D 4... Seriously? Yeah the chargen is easy to do, but that makes it stupid! I can pick any combination of skills and still rock the house. That makes my choices pointless. When I made a D&D 4 character, the result I came out with was little different that if I had chosen all my abilities at random by rolling a die. Every D&D 4 character is generic, with only slight variations in abilities between members of the same or similar classes. That's precisely what Shadowrun is against -- there are no classes, no limits. That also means there's no guidance. But if you don't want a 2 dimensional cardboard cutout of character, you have to wade into complexity. It's a price we gladly pay.

I still think SR4 Chargen is much more complicated(not in a good way in my eyes either) than the SR3 Point Chargen

Wow Cain, we agree on something. The SR4 character creation system allows for a lot of flexibility but it is not friendly for new players. Priority is the only thing that is really friendly for new players. However, from what I've heard about the PACKS system that CGL is working on for Runner's Toolkit, it will help alleviate a lot of those issues. Want your character to be really good in hand to hand? Take the "Hand to Hand Specialist" package, its 33 BP. Want to be a Hand-to-Hand Hacker? Well then, take the "Hacking Skills" package and the "Hacker Gear" packages. It should make things really quick and easy.

On the Pornomancer issue: I'm not concerned. It's not a practical character, IMO. It uses a ton of conditional bonuses, and its skills are not useful in all situations. Seducing someone just means they want to have sex with you, it doesn't mean they're going to do anything or give you anything in order to do so. Also, Seduction is not something that can be done in a single Complex Action in a combat situation.

Ack! Eee Gads no. Those packs sound like taking Archetypes. Just fix priority and make it standard.
Haxxor pack, how silly. Just take TM.

BlueMax
/spirits and sprites FTW

I still don't know why people rant on the Mundane Climber Troll.
45 Dice is HARDMAXED EVERYTHING!
40 Dice, only 5 dice less, and he has about 70 Points freed up i think.
And with that, you can make him viable by using those points on OTHER stuff.
Or drop down to 30 Dice, still one boat-load and with the right Ware he STILL WON'T FALL.
And has now even more Points to spend on something else.
Maybe make him a Drop-Bear. Or Breaking and Entering Specialist.
Let the mage levitate up, i can crawl up that building faster on my own!

Same Applies for EVERY Built with 40 or 50 Dice.
Even IF you do manage to get circumstances against you so you have 10 dice less,
you are STILL at 20 Dice.

Larme: Apples and oranges. Attributes don't function the same way in SR3 and SR4, largely because dice pools don't function the same way. Attributes got a fairly significant power boost, you're rolling more dice for many tasks, and, well, the systems are just different.

Is there a power level difference? I'd argue that the only meaningful way of looking at a power level beyond fluff is comparison of the disparities between a characters optimized for something, capable of something, and incapable of something. Room for improvement might help too.

Disparity? In SR3 you're pretty much rolling a hard maximum of 8 dice (7 specialization +1 for articulation). Maybe toss in a few more for your combat pool or whatever. A completely incompetent character is defaulting from something else, but even marginal competence (let's call it two dice), isn't completely overwhelmed by the expert.

I haven't fiddled with SR4 enough to know how big the power gap gets, but it doesn't seem terribly different in sheer numbers of dice. TN shifts make it harder to compare, but it's not a huge difference.

Yes, an optimized street sam will grind J. Random Pedestrian into fine red paste without breaking a cybersweat (20% enhanced heat dissipation! Now 50% off in all participating shadow clinics!), but that's part of the game. If you want it to be lower power and grittier you can set that up too, but I like over the top, absurdly skilled characters.

Shadowrun is a game in which you can build a character capable of picking a fight with Chuck Norris. That is part of its awesomeness.

Pick maybe, win never. He is after all Chuck Norris.

When Big D told me the oldest and toughest thing on earth wasn't a dragon, I asked if it was Chuck Norris. He didn't deny it.

BlueMax