Try using Karma Gen instead of BP. Skills come fairly cheap with that system.

Most combat tests are opposed rolls. Which is something quite different.


"Most" of them might have been. I really don't know what the mixture over the years might be. But I do know for a fact that not all them where. All you did was try to create an edge condition and then put on your rules lawyer hat and and twisted the text of the rules beyond.

Any game "breaks" if you pull on the asshat and maliciously rules lawyer away at it [and the GM is snowed by this]. Yes, even SR3. There have been thousands and thousands of Dumpshock threads written as a testimonial to that.

Of course the really ironic thing is that when a reasonable reading of the rules is applied and the odds are worked out for SR3 and SR4 the difference was something like +/-10% difference (that being above or below, since there are different variables in play in SR4) in the chance for your cherry picked scenario.



Of course there is nothing in it for you. A little hit-and-run smear is pretty much all you've got. Your selective memory is what serves you needs best, right? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) Have fun and take care!

You do realise that where talking about superhuman shooters here with smartlink.

Seeing the target firs is perception roll, that has nothing to do with how good a shooter you are.
After all you can't shoot anythink you don't know is there.

I'm trying to figure out if this is ruined FOREVER or just They Changed it and now it Sucks.

Actually, more than anything it sounds like a quote from this all-to appropriate article:

Surely you don't imply?

haha, i'm such an addict. there is nothing else to do this week, though. we just finished a big contract, all the shows i watch are on season break, i've beaten all my games, and there aren't any good copies of any good movies available to download that i haven't already watched. i suppose i could go outside, but i'm concerned about the bears. so i'll sit here and argue with people whose immediate response to encountering an opinion different from theirs is to go for the insult.


this situation doesn't require an opposed test. for one, i don't believe that surprised opponents--and coming under accurate fire from someone a klick away, at night, is pretty surprising--get dodge tests; for another, this result is just as silly if you're shooting at an inanimate object. the usual response to this point is that the GM should raise the threshold to hit stationary targets. i don't find it realistic to make stationary targets harder to hit.


it's a simple combination of modifiers--one that has, in fact, come up fairly frequently in games i've played. hardly an edge case.


if my selective memory serves me, i started quite a few of those threads. as one of the more loudmouthed proponents of SR4, back before i got ahold of a playtest copy, i'm well aware of SR3's many shortcomings. and to SR4's credit, it does address many of them. but in my opinion, what it sacrifices is not worth it.


as i recall, the SR4 shooter had something like 2 dice. an SR3 shooter would have however many dice you wanted to give him--14 seems like a reasonable number. he'd be facing a TN of 17. if you like those odds, well, your bookies must be either very rich or very angry with you.


yes, and as far as i remember, that's an attribute+skill roll, just like the shooting test, which means that it's just as easy to pass.


no, "where" not. we're talking about a shooter with high attribute and high skill, with no cyberware and no magic and no scope. he can make the shot i describe fairly reliably, if my selective memory serves me correctly.

I don't doubt that you recall it a certain way. That's really my point, isn't it? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Just as I expect you'd do with any detailed discussion in this thread. You'd got a good head start already. Running through the same busted logic by rote, retracing your same fundamental mistakes and misunderstandings, plugging your ears, gaining nothing, and accomplishing nothing.

Go be bored somewhere else.

Oh man, I've seen several of those on DS. We have some Purists and Elitists but not a whole lot. We've certainly had our share of Toxic Critics ("first of all, I hate SR4..."), but I've seen boatloads of Toxic Genius' and at least one prominent Toxic Visionary. Wow... it's scary how right TV Tropes is...

No he definedly can not, If we stay below superhuman max dice at scenario is 2 without smartlink.
Agility 6 + Long arms 6 + spec in sniper rifles 2 - 12 for full darknes and extreme range = 2 dice, not very reliable.

yes, it's quite apparent that you lack the facility to debate the facts rather than attacking the poster. this is your vendetta, not mine.


he'll succeed something like 2/3 of the time, i believe. that's pretty reliable, given the conditions. it's especially bad because he's not even aiming--this is a snap shot. if he actually took a few actions to aim, he could be all but guaranteed a hit.

That raises the question: Do the Rules allow TAKE AIM Action, if you are in complete Darkness at a -6 and more or less effectively BLIND?

Sure it's going to appear apparent to you...when you do a memory dump of when I (or anyone else) does go through the trouble of laying it out in detail, with rules references.

They have help.

He is also the best human sniper ever. Also i would never allow some to take aim under those conditions.
And ofcoure i still don't understand how this scenario would ever even come up, as that guy should actully first somehow see his target so he can try to shoot it.

Even more than you think.
Uncle Ancient more or less said he had been writing on the shadowrun page on tropes *g*

*Tosses in a penny*

I just miss the combat and spell pools (and the rest of those lovely piles of dice), I've heard the complaint they were too complex, but I liked having a turn based "I'm awesome and trying hard" renewing stat. It added a nice tactical and cinematic feel to the game and it makes me slightly sad they are gone. The changes to the rest of the system are largly cosmetic. I too miss the atomically super impossible target numbers, but its just a matter of which end of the game you want math heavy. I've played with enough different RPG contest resolution mechanics that I don't care about them much anymore, so long as they kinda work in most situations common to the game.

*Tosses in second penny*

*Goes for a beer*

Only really bad part was how frigging high those target numbers got with hacking, rigging and medicine rules.
everything else was pretty mediocre in TN's . . and could be brought down to low with some work usually.

yes, exactly. as anyone who has any shooting experience can tell you, the best human sniper ever couldn't make this shot in a million years.


that's fine, but it's not in the rules.


as i already stated:


it's been laid out many times: 6 attribute, 6 skill, -6 for full darkness, -3 for extreme range. that's actually 3 dice left over, and i didn't even count specialization--enough to reliably get one hit. not every time, certainly, but far too frequently to appease my taste for realism.

It's -6 for extreme range in SR4A.

'k. we're back to 2 dice (counting specialization) then, and roughly 2/3 chance of getting a hit.

Hm, and what is it with this shot: Medium skilled (human) individual, Handgun, near running foe, in the darkness:

SR3: Skill 3 + 3 dice combat pool. difficulty: 4+6 +2 (running defender) So he has 6 dice to hit a 12. Fairly possible, but unlikely. Maybe around 10%? But he can do it, because he knows the dude is there, and he is good.

SR4: Skill 3 + 3 Agi -6 vision = 0 his action is denied... Yeah he CAN do a long-shot, but then the outcome is not based on how good he is, how fast and agil he is.. but only on his luck.. Even if the outcome is the same, the source is different. (And the SR3 char can "use" his luck too, but that is different)

That is one point which feels different now, i guess. Ah, but before people rip me apart: like i said, i haven't really played that much SR4 now, can be i made a mistake.

But why i am really here: Calm down people i have never mindlessly attacked the System. In my first post i have stated manymany concerns, yes, but i also asked just for opinions on differencies, and experiences from people who have/had the same concerns. I already said that i will try the game and also i was sure that i like it either way. And a few posts down i already said, that since most people seemed pretty content, that the rules maybe "meld together" in play and are not as ... strange as on paper. That was my main topic for discussion, not a rally cry for SR3 is the better ruleset and we have to kill SR4 with fire...

Ah well... also IF you change the initiative rules to: All first, faster guys get their more turns later... yes the unenhanced character shout "Yay..." but don't the people who bought a Wired reflexes, or MBW or with Ki-enhanced reflexed feel betrayed? After all... well, realism is on their side there (in-game realism i mean). But well, let's see how this pans out for me.

See ya, and chill.

5/9, actually. And while that 14 starting dice represents the maximum possible unaugmented human, I question how many - even among the best snipers in the world - would actually have that level of competence. After all, Elite Military are suggested as being Firearms 5, which leads me to suspect that the average dicepool among such people would be 11 or 12 rather than 14.

Perhaps more importantly, however, the blind-fire rules require you to be able to guess or estimate the target's position with a reasonable degree of accuracy. While that requirement isn't detailed any further, it does put the GM declaring shots such as the one you described completely impossible firmly within the scope of RAW.

Though, as others have said, this is an edge case. Preventing those from having the potential to cause issues within the rules tends to require a great deal of extra effort and word-count going into situations that will rarely, if ever, come up. And most of these problems are easily solved by applications of GM-fiat. "No, even if you still have dice left over, 12 points of dice penalties means that action automatically fails."

Not a chance I'm reading all of the posts i this thread. But Summerstorm, I agree. Go get yourself some ebay action going, beat up your new friends, and then play real Shadowrun, the cyberpunk one.

No offense anyone! ^-^

Your calculations are wrong.

P( X > 0) = 1 - P( X = 0)
P( X = 0) = 2/3 * 2/3 = 4/9
1 - 4/9 = 5/9 = 0.555...

It's still significantly larger than you might want, but the fact is that even if you've got a single dice you're looking at a 1-in-3 chance of getting a hit.

there are a number of possibilities that would reasonably allow a shooter in such a position to estimate the target's position. for instance, if the target pops off a shot, you can sight in on his muzzle flash. regardless, though, the perception question is irrelevant to the question of being able to hit such a target at such a range in such conditions.


again, this isn't an edge case at all. as a player of many stealthy characters, i have used the difficulty of such shots in SR3 to my advantage many times. if you want, you can halve the range and use an assault rifle instead--it's still an incredibly hard shot, and the RAW does not reflect that.

and it's more than this particular scenario. i like this scenario because it clearly delineates why i don't like SR4's dice mechanic: standard modifiers increase difficultly linearly in relation to ability, and the total number of possible outcomes is far too small for my tastes.