I have the 4th Edition books, read through them, tinkered a bit and realized that 3rd fits me better. From the bitch slapping of the Tir Tairngire to the whole Nova Tech situation, my vision of the Sixth World is simply so radically different from what has been published that the two don't resemble each other. The thought of chucking out my material is something that I can't bring myself to do.

As far the insults go. I have met people from various RPG sites at conventions and gotten along with them...some of whom I was positively certain I would not be able to restrain myself from chocking the living shit out of them (after some of the flaming I had gotten). At a little convention on Long Island I was talking with a game designer about the disconnect between forums and RL interactions. He said it was pretty amusing to get bitched out online and then meeting the guy in RL at a con, thinking that their alter ego was unknown. A lot of the most obnoxious people online don't realize that game designers talk and that there is no mystery as to their RL identities.

No, it is your clinging to that broken example and misconceptions.

Prefer SR3 over SR4. Don't like SR4. Don't ever buy it. Don't ever play it. Whatever. If that floats your boat, happy sailing.

EDIT: Good to hear you are dialing down the Ruined Forever rage. Good luck on squashing that.

i'm not including edge/karma use because those are specifically intended to allow odds-defying feats. as for impossibility... i want to have my cake and eat it too. i want things to be "impossible" without actually being impossible, for two reasons: one, that feels like a better model for realism, to me; two, i hate limits. i hate, as a player or a GM, to be told "you can't even attempt this". i prefer a game system that encourages trying (not to mention wider ranges of power) to one that defines a certain range of possibilities and doesn't let you stray from it.

it's a matter of mathematical superiority in pursuit of a certain style of game. i'll freely admit, SR4 is better for certain styles of game. but in general, those styles of game aren't the ones i'm most interested in, and they're not the ones that i wanted SR to primarily support.


that's a pretty accurate description of my point. to expand a bit, taking a 1km shot in the dark--that's pretty hard. in the real world, it doesn't matter if you're a pretty good shot or a great shot--a 1km shot in the dark is pretty dang close to impossible. with a variable TN, you can reflect this reality: unless you pump your skill+combat pool up into the 50s or higher, you're not going to reliably be able to make that shot. higher-skill characters have a higher chance of getting lucky, but until they reach extremes that even immortal elves are unlikely to see, they can't rely on being able to make that shot. in order to reliably make that shot, you need night vision and a scope. skill and circumstance are not equal--circumstance can stack against even the best shooter in the world such that they can't reliably make a given shot.

with a fixed TN, though, you can very much rely on being able to make that shot if you're good enough, in the same way that you can rely on being able to make that shot if you have night vision and a scope. it makes skill and circumstance equal.

and threshold doesn't really help with this. despite what has been said here, threshold penalties are linear in nature--they can translate pretty directly to dice penalties, in that you need 3-4 positive dice (skill or circumstance) to reliably overcome 1 point of threshold. at best, threshold can be used to simply shove the problem out of SR4's range by effectively reducing dice to the point where success is literally impossible because of the hard caps on attribute and skill. with a variable TN, the value of extra dice is relative--there's no set number of extra dice you need to reliably overcome a +1 TN penalty. that is to say, in general, you need more than twice as many dice to reliably overcome a +2 TN penalty as you do to reliably overcome a +1 TN penalty.

Yeah, that's the misconception and the broken example. All that changes mfb when you get out of the edge condition you contrived where it's a fixed Threshold of 1 (with high value placed on just meeting Threshold, AKA Sniper Rifle damage). Opposed rolls (for example Intuition for the defender in combat when he can't see the attacker) and/or Threshold modifiers and things go back to much smoother operation.

You think there's greater freedom by making things impossible, only not? You actually appreciate the freedom of being able to attempt to hit a TN 99? I don't get it. There is no practical difference between impossible and effectively impossible. I understand that this is pure preference, based on your feelings, but I don't understand those feelings. I cannot for the life of me see the point of attempting a shot that you'd never make in a thousand years. If it's TN 99, you may as well not shoot, and you may as well not be ALLOWED to shoot. There is no practical difference.



Hang on, you object to reliability? You want to spend all your karma and cash on upgrades only to have them amount to nothing? You're basically saying "Hooray, all my years of playing this character have amounted to nothing because the GM decided to raise my TN to 14+! Awesome." Your arguing that a valuable feature of SR3 is to throw out the ability to rely on your skills, and instead pray to jebus that you roll a bunch of 6's in a row. I can't agree with that. It feels like Cyberpunk 2020 to me -- roll a 10, and then another 10, and you headshot the enemy, and they die. Otherwise, not much happens to them. That isn't an RPG where stats matter, that's an RPG where dice rolling luck is the primary factor. Of course, SR3 only sees that happen with super high TNs, but I still don't see why it's a positive feature that you take all most strategy and character building skill out of the mix and replace it with lucky rolling.

And again, I'm not even sure that your conception of the system comports with reality, not with karma pool involved. Things can be made harder, but karma pool is also more powerful than Edge. That effectively nullifies the difference between the systems -- things are easier in SR4, but you only get one reroll. They can be harder in SR3, but you get as many rerolls as you have karma for. You want to ignore them for this discussion, but you can't. They're not the same thing, they're not equivalent, which means they're not the same variable on both sides of the equation so they don't cancel each other out.

+++ and then some...

i swear, for DS its summer thats the "never ended" rather then september...

or at the very least, whats the off chance that two "old timers" took the time to post anew on a forum within days of each other?

one interesting bit is that i recall someone arguing way back that SR4's ability to turn something impossible was bad vs the old system, i guess it just shows that you can please everyone...

3 Dice

• Threshold 1: 70.37% Success
• Threshold 2: 25.92% Success
• Threshold 3: 03.70% Success
• Threshold 4: 00.00% Success

6 Dice

• Threshold 1: 91.22% Success
• Threshold 2: 64.88% Success
• Threshold 3: 31.96% Success
• Threshold 4: 10.01% Success

9 Dice

• Threshold 1: 97.39% Success
• Threshold 2: 85.69% Success
• Threshold 3: 62.28% Success
• Threshold 4: 34.96% Success

12 Dice

• Threshold 1: 99.22% Success
• Threshold 2: 94.60% Success
• Threshold 3: 81.88% Success
• Threshold 4: 60.69% Success

Could you please define 'linear'?





Opposed Tests:
Tie / Win / Lose

3 Dice vs. 3 Dice: 33.60% / 33.19% / 33.19%

6 Dice vs. 6 Dice: 24.06% / 37.96% / 37.96%

9 Dice vs. 9 Dice: 19.74% / 40.12% / 40.12%

12 Dice vs. 12 Dice: 17.14% / 41.42% / 41.42%


Again, how is that 'linear'?

Not sure what to make of that post. Care to elaborate?

lets just say i highly agree with the bit that i quoted...

Coolio. What can I say...this is the kinder gentler Bob Lord of Evil. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

at TN 99, sure there's no difference. but what about TN 10? 11? 12? 17? 25? where exactly is the line between "unlikely" and "impossible" drawn? what i like about the variable TN system is that there is no such line--there's just a curve that at some point becomes a wall.


i object to the reliability of skill in the face of mounting negative modifiers, yes. as i said, in real life, i don't find that skill and ability can universally overcome bad conditions. i prefer it when games reflect that reality.


both edge and karma are designed to help you beat the odds--to succeed when you shouldn't. they have no bearing on ensuring that the unmodified odds of success (that is, before the effects of karma or edge) reflect reality, because their entire purpose is to push the bounds of what can realistically be achieved.

what a lot of people don't understand is that i actually hate SR3. i despise it. it's a broken, terrible game. it needs fixing in a million ways. karma's certainly one of them. i'm not here talking about why SR3 is better in every way than SR4--it's not better in every way. there is only one way, in my opinion, that SR3 beats SR4 (relevant to my point in this thread, at least) and that is the die mechanic. overall, yes, i prefer SR3 to SR4--but that doesn't mean i approve of every aspect of SR3. SR3 is the lesser of two evils.


the linearity is in the number of dice needed to reliably beat a given threshold. for instance, in order to have a ~80% chance of beating a threshold 1, you need 4 dice. threshold 2, 8 dice. threshold 3, 12 dice. threshold 4, 16 dice--it stays at roughly 80%. it's not perfectly linear; there's a very slight upward trend in probability of success as the dice and thresholds rise. for instance, at threshold 10, rolling 40 dice would actually give you a ~90% chance of success. but within the bounds of the way SR4 uses the mechanic (there are no threshold 10s, and good luck getting 40 dice), your chance of success with (n)x dice at threshold (n) remains the roughly the same. please check my math; i'm not great with statistics.

Wait, you hate SR3, and its dice is the only reason it's better than SR4. But those dice are so much better, that it's enough for you to prefer a game that you hate overall? That sounds wildly overblown to me. The dice mechanic is one of the least important things about the game IMO. And reality arguments? No offense, but lol. D6's do not accurately model reality in any way shape or form. Saying one system is more realistic is a category error -- RPG dice do not have the property of "realism."



Really, the thing that's most surprising when you play SR4 is the lack of reliability. Sure, there's some level in SR3 where reliability becomes suspect. But at most TNs, you know exactly how well you're going to succeed. If you play your cards right, you drop your TN to 2, and can't possibly fail. The only unreliability is when you play your cards 100% wrong and get forced into a situation where you have a TN over 6, which is often your own fault for not paying attention to system mechanics while you play. It's a penalty for lacking tactics more than it is a statistical feature. In SR4, you can predict success, but those predictions aren't worth jack. When each die has only a 1/3 chance of rolling a hit, it's not that uncommon to roll vastly less hits than you want -- I've rolled 12 dice and got 0 hits, once I saw someone roll 20 dice and get 2. That doesn't happen when you play SR3 right -- I've never seen anyone roll against TN 2 and not roll a whole bunch of 2's, because the chances of that happening are astronomically small. The chances of rolling badly in SR4 are never astronomically small. So statistically it might be reliable, but experimentally it's anything but.

i don't think you're parsing what i'm saying correctly, which may well be because i said it badly. i look at SR3 as a really good system with a lot of glaring flaws. i hate those flaws--there are a lot of them, and i'd love to fix them. i look at SR4 as a bad system with a few good parts.

whether or not dice mechanics can model reality isn't important. what is important is whether or not they can meet the expectations of realism held by those who play and run the game. SR4's dice mechanics generally fail to meet my expectations; SR3's generally succeed.


i don't find that the higher variation on a given individual roll that SR4 offers is necessary, in SR3, because i generally play under GMs who work to challenge me. for that matter, i generally tend to challenge myself, sacrificing reliability for greater possible results.

I heard a statistician once say that anything less than 10,000 samples is statistically irrelevant, so the instances of X #d6's failing to obtain successes isn't, in my opinion, a strong argument. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

By keeping the TN fixed in SR4 and making the number of successes variable I don't think that you have altered the landscape that dramatically. The TN in SR3 isn't completely in control of the player, a GM who has taken the time to calculate (hopefully prior to the combat) a list of modifiers in play can certainly keep the TN at a challenging level. When designing an adventure I would routinely consult the copies of character sheets to see what TN's would be needed to keep things interesting. Creating a cheat sheet of TN modifier totals for certain skills that would come into play.

Of course, Karma was a wild card. I can know how much a character had but not when they were going to use it. It kept things interesting for me to see how players would react to threats. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Agreed, this is a key thing that often gets missed when comparing versions. The majority of tests in SR4 are Opposed; the Opposed Test "is the new Success Test." In SR3 you have a system where TN varies by situation, in SR4 you have a system where Threshold varies by situation. I agree that when playing SR4, there's is less predictability than there used to be.

Just did the math for the same blind fire per SR3 rules.
Threshold 9 (extreme range) + 8 (blind fire) : 17
Probability to get a 17 on 1 die (that is 6, 6, 5+) : 1/108 = 0.92%
Probability to get at least 1 success with 12 dice : 1- (107/108)^12 = 11%

11% for a near impossible shot... this sure is less than SR4, but it is still at least 2 orders of magnitude too high to pretend being close to realism.

I think I got what mfb likes in SR3 system. The roll looks near impossible because the striking figure is the probability of success with 1 die. This 1/108 is fairly easy to compute, plus the physical process of having to reroll twice makes it feel even more difficult as there are several steps to overcome.
Then the behaviour when you add more dice is much more blurry, so the actual difficulty of the roll remains hidden.
This is perfect for an heroic gameplay setting: you get to accomplish miracles on a daily basis, or at least you feel so.

The behaviour of SR4 rules is not that different, but as system as has been simplified it is not hidden anymore.

Actually, 30 samples is pretty damned good for most applications. As an engineer, I'm happy to have 3 or 5 repeat samples in my experiments - usually, I can't afford more.

In engineering, there's a lot of math with a lot of predictive power, if your math is right, your experiment confirms it, you don't do experiments and then derive the math from that (usually). In dice rolling, math has very little predictive power in small sample sizes, because the rolls are random and each die is independent of each other die.

I have heard over the years one of the biggest complaints about SR3 was the dice pools making it hard to determine the probability of succeeding. So Traul you have a good point there. There were long threads about the evils of dice pools on another rpg site and SR was frequently mentioned.

I am not a statistician (at least that was what my prof of Statistical Analysis told me...more than once) so I defer to Larme's excellent explanation. I know that on more than one occasion I felt like a fugitive from the law of averages when the dice turned on me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

The previous versions had higher target numbers and then you needed hits on top of that to perform better. I much prefer either a higher TN or greater numbers of successes, but when it is combined it is overkill.

As for engineering I found we did lots of experiments confirmed observations and then used them for prediction. Later correlations were used and finally the science to explain it finally came into being. I wish the experiements confirmed the math, but there are too many unknowns.

Witch part of this example makes it impossible in you mind, the range without a scope or the total darkness.

Oh, well even so, engineering experiments aren't dealing with random events. Dice are random, so in a small sample size it's virtually pointless to predict them, unless the odds of each one rolling a hit are really high (like when you have TN 2).

SR2 (and SR1 and SR3): Difficulty can be based one Target number and successes. EG TN5 (4 successes).

In SR4 you have only 1 way to adjust diffculty, increase the number of successes (I guess that is linear).

The problem I had (a.k.a. IMHO) is that in SR2-once you start going above target number 6, you are basically in the realm of a difficult task-barring a large amount of bonus dice. In SR4, they fixed the TN to 5 and use skills, attributes and sometimes bonus dice to determine success. To me the SR4 system is better from a GM and player perspective as there is only one variable affecting the outcome of the roll (number of successes) and not 2.


This also reduced the effectiveness of the smartgun (+2 dice instead of -2TN).
IN SR2: MR T has a fire arms skill of 6+6 dice from his combat pool-with a smartlink:He rolls 14 dice getting 10 successes.
IN SR4: MR T has a fire arms skill of 6, agility 4-with a smartlink:He rolls 12 dice getting 4 successes.