That's pretty short-sighted. Peak human performance has increased at more or less the same rate since about the 17th century, following trends of medical science and food production. What makes you think we've run out of ideas?


Tests are Attribute+Skill, not just Skill, so you've actually got 6 dice. Throw in a specialization if you care about your job, a die or two from gear, maybe a little Teamwork, and your odds of success start to skyrocket. When all else fails, you've still got a point or two of Edge.

Yeah, I went through and calculated my character's karma cost at 561, and that's with using 410BP. I think most of us are new to Shadowrun, and the GM wanted us to all be highly versatile. I agree that karma-build allows for more versatile characters, however I'm thinking that the best method to create a character is to use BP to create your character within its specialization (ie don't take extraneous skills unrelated to concept). Then convert it to karma and use the remaining karma to flesh our versatility and character background.

Most, if not all, the players in our group are new, including the GM. I think we may not have adequately considered karma-build to create the versatile characters the GM wanted, so what I'm suggesting to the GM is that we convert our characters into their karma build equivalent, take the remaining karma-pool, split it in half. The GM gets to use one half to improve the characters to shore up the weaknesses he perceives in the whole group, and we get what the GM doesn't use plus the other half. So I would have 189 karma left, GM would get 94 or 95 to shore up my character to fit within his group concept, I get 94/95 plus what the GM doesn't use to shore up my character to fill some of the concept/background stuff that I feel is missing.

Overall
1. Construct character via BP to fit within specialization + some.
2. Convert character to karma equivalent.
3. Split remaining karma pool.
4. GM spends his half shoring up the PCs.
5. Player gets unspent GM karma + his half to shore up his PC.

You KEEP saying that Glyph, and I will keep arguing the point...
You can play any way you want (That is the beauty of Role-playing games), but the indicators are that the system is not set up for characters with 20+ Dice, as the power creep begins to get absolutely crazy...

Keep the Faith

Don't get me wrong here StealthSigma... I have no problems with the concept or execution of your character... could it be a little better, of course, they all could be a little better... but if you stayed relatively true to your concept and the GM's guidelines for the campaiogn, you are doing great in my opinion...

Don't worry about it...

Keep the Faith

Sure,

the scale is small, but i think it works. If you have 6 dice, you can accomplish moderately difficult tasks. And the situational modifiers make a big difference too. You might be a doctor, but have you stitched someone up before the security forces bust down the door and shoot you in the face? also, If your character has a 7 in medicine and 1st aid, then you built the Doogie houser of 2070, because thats the guy you wanted to play. The same holds true for Magic. Its supposed to be kind of rare, but there isn't a shadowrun team out there that doesn't have at least a phys ad. why? Because these are the people that are interesting to play. Do I have my own golf video game? no, because people don't want to play "joe shmoe's golf" the want to play "Tiger Woods". As far as the "Darth Vader" of epic Bad guys, Its tricky in shadowrun. anyone can be shot to death on the street. so Your Baddie has to be too smart , too prepared, and too hard to find. The real powerful guys are behind 300 less powerful guys. everyone enjoys killing the high pain tolerance chromed out Troll or the uber powerfull mage, but its the guy that hired them that matters

Oh noes!! Power creep in a game of cyborgs, magical kung-fu fighters, fireball-chucking wizards, ultra-hackers, and people commanding robot armies? What were they thinking?

Looking at the mediocre archetypes and bare-bones sample NPCs does not give any kind of baseline for PCs. Other than that, a slavish adherence to the fluff of the woefully truncated skill levels, and some anecdotal evidence easily countered with other anecdotal evidence, is not convincing in the face of how the mechanics of the actual game are set up.

Or do you think SR4 was designed by retarded monkeys? Because honestly, if they made an high-powered, action-oriented game, and set up a kajillion hard and soft limits to character generation, but still made it possible to make game-breaking, power-creeping characters by making normal, logical choices in character creation, but expect you to somehow intuit some unwritten power level, then SR4 topples F.A.T.A.L. to be the worst game to ever exist.

In some games, there is no limit to how high you can go. All things become relative; Skill 20 means nothing if the average skill is 20, but when the average skill is 5 it becomes godlike. Shadowrun tried that for a couple of editions. Go back in the old books and you'll see 6's, 8's...skills of 12 and 15 and higher were not unknown. By setting a ceiling on skills, game designers basically force players to spend their resources on other things. Instead of raising their skills directly they have to raise them indirectly - implants, mentor spirits or other qualities, foci, attributes, gear, related skills, etc.

I'm sure I had a point where I was going with all this, but I'll be damned. If I can think of it. Well, that too.

Even more than indirectly raising skills themselves, shadowrunners become tougher by developing the complementary aspects of their specialty. Sure, you have 20 dice in pistols, but can you use a rifle if it is longer-ranged combat? Do you have a high Reaction and lots of IPs? Can you dodge and soak the bullets from the other guys? Can you spot an ambush before you get surprised? Can you sneak up on the other guys? Can you fix your own gun if it gets broken? Do you know someone who can get you APDS rounds? Can you hide your gun if they do a pat-down at the door?

The 800-point character thread was pretty instructive to me, in a way. It demonstrated that while you can make a tough 400 or 500 point character, they are still a long way from being as tough as they can be.

OK. I read all the posts in their entirety, and I think it' time I stuck my proboscis into this one.
There are some good arguments here, as well as some bad ones. But the first thing I’d like to do is just look at the new SR4A thresholds and consider what they imply.

The highest TN listed anywhere in the actual SR4A book that I have found is 5. If we look at what you get at that TN 5, factor in that the previous TN is a 3 (not a 4), and the degree of improvement implicit in the differences in description between the TN 3 and TN 5 results, I think we should all be able to agree that TN 5 really is “Ok, that’s the highest meaningful level of success ��" everything above that is sauce.� If we can agree on that, some interesting things can be inferred.

First: Succeeding in a TN 5 test should be an astounding result to mortals, even in the hyper-enhanced 6th World.

Second: The minimum Dice Pool to be able to reliably pull off that TN 5 test by the odds most of the time is 15. To be able to BUY that test right off as routine, you’d need a Dice Pool of 20… to achieve the nigh-impossible with such regularity that you disdain the possible chances of failure.

Third: if we accept the first two premises, which can fairly reasonably stand on their own, we can see that the SYSTEM itself is truly designed to handle Dice Pools only up to about 20 dice; Beyond that and you’re starting to break the system. Every system has a point where the numbers start to do things that break the rules. Furthermore, see the following except:

SR4A, P.61: Dice Pool Modifiers

Optionally, gamemasters may choose to cap dice pools (including modifiers) at 20 dice, or at twice the sum of the character’s natural Attribute + Skill ratings, whichever is higher.

I think the Devs are making their opinion pretty clear in black and white for us.

So, let’s examine that 20 Die Pool, shall we? Let’s call it 10 dice worth of skill for an Adept with an Aptitude for the skill at hand and maxed skill ranks.

Furthermore, let’s give them 10 dice in the controlling stat, assuming it’s exceptional. How many individuals like that should exist in the 6th World? To have both qualities, in a stat and skill that compliment each other, and then furthermore develop the skill’s potential to that extent? Not many. Then we have a new assumption: that the net modifiers cancel out to 0 or better in the Adept’s favor. Then, and only then, can the absolutely fantastically capable and powerful Adept buy off that test as a matter of course.

Instead, let us look at the average human professional, qualified to do their job on a daily basis. They have a DP of 6. That means they can expect an average of two Hits on any given test, excluding modifiers. Let’s look what that buys her:

SR4A, P.62: Success Test Difficulties Table

Easy 1
Average 2
Hard 3
Extreme 5+

That means that, on average, the average human can achieve an average result the vast majority of the time! Seems they got something right.

Routine (missing from the table because it’s assumed): Don’t even roll! Examples include driving in average rush-hour conditions, walking and chewing bubblegum at the same time, stepping over a 0.5 meter high fence, or running on flat level ground in decent shoes.

Easy is just that: make sure you achieve a minimum level of success. Even defaulting, an average stat character has a 2/3 chance of succeeding.

Average is average; this is where you would expect somebody to require the requisite experience and ability of a professional at work to achieve success ordinarily. Examples might include talking on the comlink to your brother-in-law’s friend in East Africa while driving a cab aggressively in heavy rush hour traffic while it’s raining and managing to not hit the child who just chased their ball out into traffic, Interpreting test results with observational data to correctly determine a common illness that is afflicting a patient, and successfully vaulting a 1 meter tall hurdle at a full run.

Hard is where even an experienced veteran with above-average statistics needs something to break their way to pull off an activity on average; You need a 9 Dice Pool to expect to get 3 Hits, and 4 Skill + 4 Stat is only 8. You’re still looking for a net +1 DP modifier somewhere. Even your Elite characters with the maximum unmodified Stat can only buy success casually if the net DP modifiers are even or in their favor.

Extreme suddenly looks a lot more impressive, neh?

So, I have touched on how stats and skills at their representative levels reflect on expected success rates against subjective thresholds. Everybody still with me, as this has turned into one of my characteristic and infamous rants?

Now, why do we have problems with number creep? Because we’re gamers, even the hard-core “role-players� on some level know it’s a game and that games have rules, so more dice is better. I never met a positive modifier I didn’t like. But that’s us looking at it as a game, not as imaginary avatars in a fantasy setting. If we were to look at it from a WOLD perspective and KEEP our frame of reference in that space, like I demonstrated above, we could keep in line with the system’s base assumptions and expectations instead of breaking things.

To help with that, I like both the caps quoted above, as well as the other one limiting the maximum number of hits to 2x Skill. That means without spending Edge, a defaulting character can’t achieve even an average target number. Why? Because that’s what we’d expect from a professional individual, not a schmuck who’s guessing! But even the barest of actual training allows a “beginner� (RTG 1) to routinely pull off average tests with enough modifiers in their favor. A “novice� (RTG 2) can do hard things, and a “professional� (RTG 3) can achieve extreme results, when things go their way. Is that unrealistic? Not in the least. Does it bring the focus squarely back onto skills? You bet. Does it Nerf^TM characters back to levels the system was inherently designed to handle? It just might at that.

That is why, whenever I create a character (or examine a character sheet) I am asking myself “what is the thematically appropriate skill level for this character in that Skill?� I did that with Kerenshara when I built her, and had to do a lot of trimming. But guess what? I did NOT assign even one skill (naturally) at RTG 5 (Expert) or above! If I had the points I might have put a 5 into Perception given her specific upbringing and background.

It’s also useful for RP purposes to keep those skill guidelines in mind, because I guarantee that although the characters don’t know what their DP count is, or what their Skill RTG is at, they know their approximate level of capability, and in the real world, I “role play� to my own perceived level of capability every day.

Finally, let’s look at the closest thing we have in real life to Prime Shadowrunners as most of us conceive of them:

U.S. Navy Seal team member

Statistics:

BOD: 5 (Even the scrawny guys are in extreme peak physical condition.)

AGI: 5 (If they didn’t have it before, their AGIlity will be superior before they’re done.)

STR: 4 (Swimming, Running and Jumping are all STRength, plus carrying.)

REA: 5 (Their training is intense in all kinds of REAction based Skills.)

CHA: 3 (Guys who can’t get along in a group won’t make it onto a Team.)

INT: 4 (By the time they’re out, their ability to intuitively process data is well above average.)

LOG: 3 (Contrary to some popular belief, these guys are actually smart.)

WIL: 4 (If their WILlpower wasn’t at LEAST above average, they’d have washed out of B.U.D.S.)

Core Skills:

Firearms: 5 (Expert) - specialists will have even better.

Athletics: 5 (Expert) - all that Swimming, Jumping, Running, Climbing and Tumbling?

Close Combat: 4+ (Veteran) - these guys are lethal up close, though they prefer firearms.

Throwing Weapons: 3+ (Professional) - Grenades, knives, incendiaries, you name it.

Diving: 4+ (Veteran) - even Nuggets on the Teams are veteran divers.

Parachuting: 4+ (Veteran) - HALO jump at night? Par for the course.

Infiltration: 4+ (Veteran) - If you’re not quiet, you’re worthless.

Perception: 4+ (Veteran) - What you can’t see, kills you.

Leadership (Tactics): 2+ (Novice) - Even the nuggets know the basics.

Demolition: 2+ (Novice) - Even the nuggets know the basics.

First-Aid (Trauma): 2 - Everybody’s cross-trained in basic trauma first-aid.

Can you build that with a starting 400 BP? Not a chance. Should that character intimidate the drek out of any shadowrunner less than full Prime status (read: not a recurring name in the Fluff)? If they’re smart, yes. Do they have a pile of 6’s in anything? No. And the numbers above don’t even include 6^th World augmentations! These guys are picked from amongst the best of the best of the best. They are trained at a crushing pace over the course of years and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars. No Shadowrunner can match that out of the gate.

The thing about those two nerfs you mentioned is that, even for extreme cases (dice pools of 20+), neither is likely to come up too much. So they're really "fixing" an almost non-existent problem.

But also keep in mind that social skills, magical skills, and combat skills are not threshold-based, but are opposed tests with lots of potential negative modifiers. For threshold-based tests, generally things like technical skills and the like, it is much, much rarer to have one of those super-high dice pools, and you generally don't need one, either. Someone tossing 12 dice for pistols is decent, but could be a lot better. A hacker tossing 12 dice for hacking is pretty damn good.

The important thing to remember about characters is that they will seek to become better with time. Will they know their dice pool? No, but any Runner worth his dark sunglasses has shot enough bullets to know a smartlink makes his life easier, and spending time at the range is necessary for existence. When you make Prime Runners to use against the PC's I'd bet my Power Focus you look at their DP's. In the real world, people who aren't good enough at their profession or avocation get better or quit. In SR, runners get better by any method they can, or they die.

I think the argument that somehow players should avoid going above a certain level is fatuous, at best. The truth is in SR anybody else can be just as good as you are. In fact, the classic setting puts the characters against the corps. The corps always have more resources than the runners. If a group of players churns out specialized 25 DP badasses then the GM needs to stop whining and run a game where they are challenged. If the group wants to hard cap DP's at a certain level for their game, great.

Attempting to interpret the intent of the game designers as to power level from a combination of suggested house rules, fluff, and various off-hand comments in blog posts is like reading your tea leaves to find out if you have cancer.

Kerenshara! A cogent, well-argued, impassioned statement. How refreshing. Thanks!

Really? OK, I guess you haven't played with my group then. When the GM announced they were going with those caps, the players excep me (who fundamentally designes assuming those caps to begin with) wound up going back for a complete re-do of their sheets. Nothing was in stone, but we were hashing out team roles and backgrounds and so forth. Trust me, the number of times Kerenshara's had to leave Hits in the tray, it's an issue.


THIS is a better argument, but if both opponents were built with the caps in mind and the general design of the system and game universe in mind, the same things still come to pass: highly skilled characters will routinely surpass and/or defeat lesser skilled opponents. I don't care HOW talented you are in terms of LOGic, you're not going to beat Garry Kasparov head-to-head.
If you cap hits at 2x Skill, and max DP modifiers at 2x [Skill+Stat], you eliminate a surprisingly large number of the "odd" conditions and bring things back to more centered results. The dice are the engine of randomness. With them eliminated, modifiers can only affect the outcome so much.

Kerenshara: I have a gut reaction against looking at something a person has created and inferring that person's opinion from it. THAT SAID, I agree with pbangarth that your statement was cogent and well-argued, and I agreed with all of its assertions.

My only interjection is that this skill-centric thinking is probably great for game-balance and fluffy reasons (as many have argued), but I feel it'll result in a great preponderance of adepts. Resonance, spellcasting and conjuration all fail to give any boost to skills, and bioware has only the limited +1 from Reflex Recorders to offer. If hits are going to be capped by skill (or skillx2), why give adepts the highest ceilings?

I just wish the +3 skills love was shared. I don't see why we couldn't have an Increase Skill spell, or Reflex Recorders grade 3.

Of course they do, and I wasn't attempting to argue otherwise. What I was saying is that by using the 20 DP cap, you keep things from spiraling endlessly out of control. There is going to be a fundamental point where it's going to come down to luck; Take the sniper (modern day, not 6^th World) who has the best possible rifle, Legendary skill, hand-eye coordination to boggle computerized controls, and aims to the end of time, but in the end, at 2500 meters, it's going to come down to a fair sized measure of luck. Did there happen to be a stray puff of wind? Did the shifting balance of the rifle dislodge something a millionth of a centimeter and deviate the aim point ever so slightly? did the target decide to turn to talk to their friend at the last moment once the bullet was on the way? Adding more dice isn't going to change that, and 20 is plenty to account for whatever else you have come up.


I never said they should avoid going above a certain level. What I said (or implied) was that there is no subjective NEED to push a character that far. The rules have hard caps in them, aside from the "optional" limits. As long as the character isn't "breaking" the rules, I have no problem with the actual taking of stats and/or skills to those heights. I am concerned when doing so is merely an attempt to further push the limits of the system, not to do with any particular character motivation or need. Getting to Longarms RTG 6 takes a lot of time, dedication, practice and rounds downrange. Are you the team's dedicated sniper? Is that your focus? Than why shouldn't you be satisfied with being "Expert" with the weapon? It's one more die, and even with the caps, you're already within the "max 20" cap leaving a Stat and Skill both at 5. Now, please bear in mind, when I talk about Stats (in any discussion like this) I am referring to the ones that are completely natural. Augmentations, be they magical or technilogical, are, to my opinion, simply more modifiers. And as I pointed out in the long post above: with the Hits <= Skill x2, you still can get "Extreme" results (5+ Hits) with RTG 3 Skill. Add a Stat augmented to a 7, and you can hit the 20 DP cap with no problems.

I'd like to turn your proposition on its head. Instead of a GM who stops whining about characters with too many dice, why don't we have a group of players who push their GM to come up with more creative challenges that require the PLAYERS to think and respond, rather than just throwing double-handfulls of dice? If the GM sets a tone where the 20 DP cap is not only a limit, but also an unusual limit reached by the top professionals in their fields, then they won't be as incentivised to buil such extensive Dice Pools in the first place, and we won't have the vicious spiral to begin with.

Your argument here unfortunately boils down to "I can make a badhoop mother-slotter, so the GM just needs to deal with me!". Omae, I don't mean to sound confrontational, but doesn't that sounds just a tad immature to you? If you don't think so, take another look at your assertions. If neither you nor your GM set out to break the system, doesn't the whole argument just go away? We're here to play a game together, not to beat each other.

Oh, and as a side note: GM's are SUPPOSED to lose. What makes their job fun and challenging, is keeping the margin of failure to as thin a line as they can. If the players lose, that's it. Roll up new toons, folks. But if the players blow the GM out of the water, it lacks the satisfaction of pulling off a brilliant last-minute victory from the jaws of defeat with a brilliant use of a point of EDGe and a load of creativity and chutzpah. The secret is, nobody is as satisfied with that ending as the GM themselves.

Is it any less pointless than proving that you can build a character and engineer a situation to break the rules system? That's what I have seen over and over again in these threads: ways to break the system. Can we do it? Absolutely. Can we prove it afterwards? Without a doubt. Do we deprive ourselves of some of the flavor and sense of the immersion in the word we play in as a consequence? Unfortunately, yes. If you and I as players make a point to keep ourselves "reasaonable" and not push the outer edges of the rules, the GM won't feel compelled to follow suit to "keep up", and there is still plenty of room to frow and develop as a character.

And Samurai with Reflex Recorders plus all their other goodies. And Mages who creatively use their spells to thwart the űber Adepts. And Deckers who skillfully screw the űber Adept or the Gonzo Sammie or the technically less-than-able Magician.

Keep in mind, that those skill bumps are limited to 1/2 of native skill. How many Adepts are going (if you go with my take on things) to take multiple RTG 6 skills just so they can spend .75 MP on each of them? You only need a total of 10 points in Stat + Skill to get to the 20 DP max, and Skill RTG 3 to hit the 5+ TN threshold. Why bother going to such lengths unless it's the character's focus and they don't want to have to rely on modifiers?

Yes, an Adept can go to the highest heights. But then again, that's no different than now, is it? They ALWAYS can get higher skills than anybody else. The most proficient non-TM Deckers are Adepts, neh? That means they always had the higher maximum DP. By your own argument, the 20 DP cap actually reigns them back in just a tad, don't you think?

And one thing nobody mentioned that can be a huge drain on those modifiers: Wound Penalties, especially for your physically tougher or much more WILlpower gifted characters at the bottoms of their tracks.

I do not see capping successes at 2x skill in the SR4A changes document. May I know where is that mentioned in the rules?

Dear heavens! You mean I got the drop on rules just ONCE on this bleeding forum?

Toturi, I cited the page reference in my PDF copy of SR4A, which I presume to be version 2 because the thresholds are 1,2,3,5 instead of the original 1,2,4,6. If you have the PDF, it's in the section where it talks about game concepts up front. It's an optional rule, exactly like I cited, but it appears in main text, rather than a side bar. It's not in the "changes" doccument to my knowledge.

Oh, poo. I misread that the first time through. The cap on hits is another "sidebar" optional rule from the existing BBB.

In the old main book, it is on pg. 69, TWEAKING THE RULES, under the subheading: Grittier Gameplay. It is one of the optional rules.

I know it is an optional rule in SR4, but the previous posts gave me the impression that it was a non-optional rule in SR4A.

My first impression on the capping of the dice pools is "What were they thinking?" Remember the discussions we had on the Pornomancer pwning the Don and his mom or the Neenja infiltrating clad in day glo orange screaming his head off? Yes? Good, those are choke full of negative modifiers. You want the player to load up deliberately load up on negative modifiers because it isn't really going to matter to him since you are capping his dice pools anyway?

Even on a top notch street sam (with 20+ dice pool) will be Calling his Shots, simply because any extra dice he had would be wasted. Apart from the Porno, the other guy with a ton of dice - Mr Perceptive won't really be bothered by this optional rule. Why? Simple, Perception has whole loads of negative mods normally! Not really paying attention? -2. Concealment? -(Force). What about camouflage/invisibility/rutherium suit? More negative modifiers. The real reason why Mr Perceptive needs so much more dice is to overcome the negative mods, not to have a really high dice pool -because his direct opposite would also be limited to 20 or so (Stealth) dice anyway. But Mr Stealth, sneaky git that he is, is throwing those 10+ negative dice pool mods at you. Besides, Mr Pornomancer can be easily limited with "No hablo ingeles!"

Kerenshara, what exactly do you think is "breaking the game"? I was reacting to people who seemed to think that a skill of 6 at char-gen was a sign of hideous munchkinism. My PCs tend toward the high teens in their primary dice pools, with low 20's occasionally popping up for an optimal combo (like an adept with muscle toner: 4 and a weapon focus). I was serious when I said that the Attribute + skill x 2 limit wouldn't affect most of them, and neither would the hits cap (maybe I just don't roll as well (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif) ).

Other than social skills (where the modifiers tend to be very conditional past a certain point), my experience with 25-dice characters has been that they are more suited for a "how many dice can you get?" thread than an actual character for play. Not out of any need to place restrictions on myself, but because they get to the point of diminishing returns. Things like hard-maxed Attributes, the Aptitude quality, and such wind up costing an exorbitant amount for a minuscule increase.


One thing I have frequently posited is that the GM needs to make the power level of his campaign, and the house rules and expected dice caps, known to the players. Especially if they like a lower dice pool cap than what players can get by making a character within the rules. A lot of confrontations and accusations of munchkinism could be averted by some communication beforehand, rather than the GM assuming that the players should know where an invisible line is.

Another way is for the GM to give the players what they want. You know the old saying be careful of what you wish for. This is one of them. For me, if my players come to me with a 5s and 6s with dice pool of 20+, that's fine. They want to walk all over everything except the hardest opponents I can field. That's alright with me. If my players do not want a challenge, then it behooves to me, as their GM, not to do that!

Thank You Ancient History, That about covers it for me...

And Glyph... It is Your Game... Play how you like, But I am going to use the Fluff and Rules as they are, somewhat significantly out of the Stratosphere...... It is very obvious the intent of the designers... skills from 0-7 with the average being in the 3-4 range... You may not agree with that, but you cannot argue that point...

Keep the Faith

Bravo Kerenshara, Bravo...
*Bows*

What the hell "average" are you talking about? Shadowrunners, in case you might have missed it, are not average. Let me clue you in. You haven't stumbled onto the one true way the game was "intended" to be played.


Words to live by.