My country has a conscript army, and for my position, I do not even need to be proficient with antitank weapons, but I got to fire one anyway. Different forces, different training doctrine (and different budgets) I suppose.

I'm saying I do, or even that it was a better system. I'm just trying to remind people of how these sorts of things were handled back in the ancient past (the 50s and 60s). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

On topic:

Usually it's pretty clear who has what from a contact's description. A lot of contacts have relevant knowledge skills, which are often a good indicator of the sorts of things that they had an interest in or access to. There's nothing wrong with adding an equipment acquisition active skill (with specialties for each type of equipment) and using it for finding gear, rather than negotiation. That's how I've handled PC fixers in the past. Players were a lot less keen to pick up an active skill to do something their contacts could do for them; unless it fit their character. Part of the problem is that social skill are generally very broad even in SR4.

Yeah, I'm not saying they're getting screwed on every deal, I just think that it is perfectly reasonable for the rockets to have higher availability than the launchers. The explosives are guarded and restricted to a much higher degree than the launchers from my experience.

Iirc, the US spends 4 times as much per GDP as Denmark on the military budget, so it is perfectly reasonable that your troops gets to spend more on training. I think it is mostly a budget issue here - I've thrown live frag grenades, white phosphor grenades, and used small demolition charges, so it isn't like we couldn't handle explosives. Also, about 25% of young men gets drafted (or they did back then, they changed the system a bit), and that costs a lot.

But, for antitank practice, we fired 9mm tracer rounds at cardboard tanks (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I'm curious how you handled the rockets regarding safety? For example, live fire exercises where the whole squad does fire and movement, do you do that with live rockets too, or just for the small arms? We didn't even use live grenades for that - do you?

On the subject of ammunition...what is stopping players from having their characters use high school level* chemistry to cook their own munitions and explosives? There are even rules for using chemistry to do this sort of thing. You might not be able to make military grade guided munitions and APDS, but you could sure as heck make dumb fire rockets, ex-bullets, mortar rounds, grenades, etc. If a GM made it too hard to get munitions, I'd expect smart players to do exactly that. It might even be cost effective to buy a shop or facility for the groups' ammunition needs.

*Yes, really. Freshman college level at most. The hard part is getting the procedures, not following them. It's much easier than people generally think it is to make propellants and explosives. Safety and material purity are the main concerns. No, I won't tell you how to, you'll have to look it up on your own. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Unless you have fake sins leading somewhere else for just this purpose. Heck maybe you buy ones you can dispose of for just this purpose.

Hmm? No one said that. Food don't have availability numbers, thus can be bought over the counter.

As for the slightly off-topic of armed forces and AT weapon availability, yes we also have a conscript army (like the danes I think), and I'm fairly certain we don't get live fire training with AT weapons unless in a special force unit or maybe if specifically trained for it (as in a specialization).


Also, guys please don't slam Graymagiker with the iron fist of RAW, after all he did say this was his version of the rules, and I did ask for house rules specifically, not just RAW and it's interpretation.

As for the availability of legal items, I didn't know the rules said you only need them if you try to get those legal items through illegal channels. After rereading the chapter, it actually says you can get legal items over the counter without making tests. It also says you can get those same items on the black market usually without making any test, but with price adjustments. It doesen't specify how to deal with legal items with an Availability rating at all.

Because of this lack of rules I've rationalized it as these being items although legal, is in very high demand or very limited supply, thus hard to get. It could be tickets to a major superstar concert, specialized treatments with long waiting lines etc.

Paying more than the market price would of course expedite the process and almost guarantee you get the items anyway, but most people are not willing to do that. And of course items like limited tickets etc. are available on the black market for exorbitant prices.

Of course, some items are fairly strange to have an availability rating. Bows and throwing knives should be available in a serious sports store, or on the matrix.. availability 2 means it takes some hours to search for it though which might be a but too much. Also, data search should be alot more appropriate for this than negotiation, unless you use contacts for it.

Most legal items have a low availability, but a few are strange. A rating 6 select sound filter for your cyberears has availability 18, which is not available at chargen for some reason and difficult to get without a face or contact. Why? Is it the SOTA? Experimental augmentations still not available for the general public? If so, why the low price of 6000 nuyen? Ok, that's a significant sum for a wageslave, maybe several months pay, but if the item is so rare as the availability indicates, then the price should be higher.

And really, if we're supposed to ignore the availability rules for legal items, then why include the numbers in the first place?

I'm going to write a seperate reply to Mus.

Or you get players to take the building skills, and steal a nonfax and the materials to run one, and have a hacker steal the plans for the weapons they want. Cause the way you're running it is a little harsh.

For the first part of your post, I'd like to remind you that Magiker's post was not a statement of RAW, thus it's kinda pointless to write "no your wrong, this is how the rules are".

And withholding some equipment and doing a street level game are two different things - there is a difference between basically letting the runners have anything in all the books and making them fight in a pit for their first Beretta light pistol. In my game for example, the PCs are assumed to be runner wannabees - possibly ex-gangers of a superior kind (like the ganger archetype in the book), but more often normal citizens with special skills wanting do do something else - a corporate matrix security consultant, a troll ex-militairy etc. These guys certainly won't have access to the same kind of gear an established Shadowrunner team would have, and I dared say even established experienced teams will have difficulty getting hold of certain items.

Yes, if it exist in the world then it is theoretically possible to get it, but some items are simply so SOTA or experimental/dangerous that only the top dogs of the corporate or national world are going to get hold of them. RL example are nukes, heavy ordnance, heavily armed and armored vehicles and maybe even some infantry weapons. But basically, whatever a successful and powerful gang can get hold of, so can the runners.



The main problem is the availability test in itself which is extended, which by oldRAW meant that you could never fail to get it. Even if you used the limited dice rolls optional rule (which I did), it was very easy to get hold of anything. PCs that can get 10 HITS on a single dice roll simply cannot fail extended tests. Also, the negotation skill does not seem to fit very much, and has very little to do with knowing the right people and places to get illicit goods. Also, the "on hand" thing you mentioned is lacking. Often the PCs were asking for what contact X can get right now, which there are really no rules for.




I actually love those rules from SR4a. Suddenly extended tests have become challenging again, even a decently good negotatior (without magic or cyber boosts), with say, 9 dice in negotation, will have difficulty getting items with a higher availability than 12. I still don't like the negotation skill use at all though, or the lack of roleplay and use of contacts this indicates.

BTW any links of these "discussed elsewhere" points? I don't want to sidetrack this suprisingly constructive discussion, but I like to know opinions on the SR4a rules in general. Even hacking becomes a real challenge now (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

And yes, Climbing skill rules is bollocks already, and surely will not work with limited dicepools at all - but why let one or two cases ruin a generally wonderful rule? Why should distance affect the climbing skill test at all - does it really matter if you rappel down 5 meters or 30 meters? Instead I'd like general threshold based on slope of climb, modified by climbing gear, if any. And strict enforcement of fatigue rules (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)




Most sense.. only because none of the others make sense either. There really isn't any gossip skill, rumingmongering etc. Etiquette might actually be more fitting, it's about fitting in, getting people to open up and talk about things, and generally trust you. With the right etiquette skill, you might even be able to meet someone you never met and get him to tell you how to get drugs, guns whatever. As long as you talk the talk and walk the walk.
Data search is also fitting, but only for getting programs and products online - alot of which might not be for sale. Or can you get illegalguns@mafia.org? Or streetdrugs@pushers-international.com?


No? I don't really see how this contradicts what he said. He said case-by-case, but that doesen't rule out archetypes such as street docs. However, there are limited archetypes and no set rules on what a certain archetype can get. Delta bioware from a low connection street doc who's main job is to patch up people and sell drugs? Nope. From a illicit doctor running a black clinic? More likely. I don't see how slaving to a set method will improve gameplay at all. Adding character and details to contacts makes for a more immpersive gaming world anyway.




Why would it have to be unavailable to anyone else? Having it being unavailable to most criminals and civillians should be enough. Of course if any ganger or mafioso is sporting around Mitsubishi missile launchers while the runners have no chance of getting hold of one, then something is wrong. If said missile launcher always self destruct after the user's death, you know the GM is shafting you big time.

Notice he said "for now." Those heavy weapons might be available at a later time when the runners have gotten more contracts and street cred. This is to reinforce the notion that the runners can gradually improve their equipment as they make the nuyen, but it's easier to get several different kinds of "low-level" items than one big expensive "high-level" item. Sorry to use D&D or WoW terminology, but it actually makes sense that a ganger can get a SMG, 2 pistols and a stun baton without being able to get a machinegun with the same cost as the total of those items. Thus nuyen alone is not a good limit on items.

I don't think it is harsh at all.

Because not everyone has assault rifles with exex ammo, I don't have to tool up the opposition to match. Now runners can get things done with unarmed combat and pistols. They can try social infiltration approaches, because if they get spotted, they can probably survive a firefight even though they aren't in military armor. I think this is one of the major problems in SR4 once players get tooled up, either targets are so soft they can just go in full force and roll through it, or targets are so hard they have to use stealth but it is instadeath if something goes wrong.

On top of this, players get to be much more proactive. Generally, there are parallel "mini-adventures" running where players try to acquire gear. This is stuff they initiated, where they call the shots. They're doing legwork not because some Johnson gave them a job, but because they want this stuff for themselves.

I think it works much better. I once had players all tooled up, but then there was a sourcebook where the shadowtalk had a discussion about a guy who broke into Fort Something to steal 2 clips of APDS ammo, but he had to use it on the way out to escape. I then realized that was the sort of campaign I wanted.

My real problem has always been balancing it with magic. I'm not running anything atm, if I get a new campaign started up I might go with some sort of big ass foci needed to cast and summon powerful stuff. Previously I mostly just upped the drain, which gave them some unique options - they could safely compete at the low levels, and at will drag out some heavy artillery but at a price to themselves. It could just be overpowered in stealth mode, and when the big guns did come out, they were sometimes left standing because in those cases the opposition tended to have magic support - I could of course just tone down counterspelling. But I think i'm going with some sort of foci next time - if you want to dish out damage like the guys with assault rifles, you need to find and bring along this 4' magic sword.

I totally agree, you can easily have a medium-to-high powered game and still withhold equipment. No one says that anyone has to tote assault rifles, that is entirely dependant on the setting. In one of the old sourcebooks they talked about England, where it was hard to get hold of even a pistol iirc - private and corporate guards couldn't carry firearms, and even street cops didn't have any.

If you did you would not use it.


Odd you seem to think the presence of guns in the parties tool bag automatically renders the ability to go for steal out of the question.


And the leg work smart people would be doing is getting a nanofax, some RFID tag free powdered materials, and the plans for things like lasers, rail guns, various kinds of drones, assault rifles etc.


An entire military base with 2 clips of APDS ammo? Maybe 2 per soldier. I think who ever wrote that needs their head examined.



Anything mages do is at a price to themselves, even without upping the drain.


Just going out on a limb here, but you don't sound like you're the biggest fan of RAW or RAI, I've ever seen.

The way I see it, there are two issues running in this thread;

1) What are good game mechanics for getting gear?

I don't like the endless-retry extended tests myself. But diminishing dicepools might be a little harsh, too. Maybe a different sort of timer makes more sense? Every time you try to fish for illegal gear, The Law gets a chance to hear about it. They need to beat a certain threshold before things become problematic, and you might be able to bribe them to look away when they find you. But whoever enforces the laws probably has at least some undercover cops.
(Nothing happens if the item you're looking for would be legal)

2) How much of the gear process do you want On-Screen?

In any game or movie, there's a choice of what happens on screen, and what doesn't. I personally prefer to give legwork, including arms dealing, some more on-screen time than the current rules call for. The current system is a bit too abstract.

How I'm thinking of dealing with it is this: any appropriate contact can assist you in trying to find an item. You pay their Connection*5% fee, and they roll Connection. The availability drops by 4 for every success they make. If that drops the availability =< 0, then they have it on hand immediately. This also avoids the messy question of how many dice any given contact has, if you'd let the contact do it for you all the way.

Note that whether a contact is appropriate is decided by common sense and by how the contact's been described. Some arms dealers only deal in particular sorts of weapons, or from particular producers, like the Ares black market intermediary.

Also, contacts should be willing; they're not just vending machines where you push in the fee. You'll actually have to talk with them.

I don't consider it out of the question, but it becomes an extremely high risk option. The problem is that you generally have to add lots of well geared guards if they're to stand a chance in a fight against the runners. Now, if the players then try the stealth option, especially social infil, they're going in with no or minimal armor and weapons. If they get spotted, they're getting turned into mince meat by the guards.

I'd much rather keep the general level of armor and weapons down, so the lethality gap between having your toys and not isn't that large. It makes it a lot easier for the players to decide to go in light.



They work fine imo, and I don't change that much. But I do make a few adjustments to make the rules fit with the sort of campaign I like to run. General rule changes should be able to easily fit on a single sheet of paper imo. There's some more stuff I modify that takes a bit more, mostly changes to gear, especially my revised firearms lists (basically I threw out most arsenal mods and made about 10 qualities for weapons, each weapon gets one, so there's a real choice of what and why, rather than just everyone picking up the one weapon with a special chamber recoil reduction).

Or just have the guards armed appropriately for what they are guarding......


and apparently taking a nerf bat to magic users, and having every guard on the planet armed with similar gear to a single runner team, in a single city.

What does appropriate mean? In a setting where assault rifles, exex ammo and heavy armor is common, guards are going to be tooled for that. It isn't just the runners that can get that sort of hardware. In a setting like mine, fewer guards and less weapons are needed to protect an asset properly.

But no matter how you cut it, you have to deal with the fact that unless you want to railroad the players, the same target could be handled with stealth or firepower. This means the same guards that you buildt to deal with the runners in full kit, could end up shooting at the face and spec ops guys with minimal gear. If that makes it instadeath, if they make a mistake while infiltrating, you're pretty much forced to either let them recover from it no matter how unrealistic it is, or kill a few PCs. Neither option is attractive, and frankly the latter is much worse, and the players now it, so you end up in situations where I as the GM have to be the one to rake my brains on how to get the runners out of this one. I'd much rather keep the option of failure open, by having lightly armed guards that they can get away from.



I'm not taking a nerf bat to the mages only, I'm balancing them to fit with the shooters. If an assault rifle sighting is reported to the cops, they're dispatching drones and magic surveillance to track them, and a SWAT team to intercept. The scene will be searched for evidence afterwards, and there could well be an active case. A pistol, that's not even certain to get a patrol car driving by. When the sammies are faced with that, and having to run the risk of arms dealing to get the rifles in the first place, I have to do something to balance it with the mages.

I'm inclined to houserule out the whole nanotech desktop production angle. It's way too Diamond Age for my tastes. The economic implications are vast, and I don't think that following them to a logical conclusion would leave much of the setting standing.

I prefer a people-centered campaign, not so much focused on equipment. Skill should definitely trump gear.

I'd like it like this: low-end gear comes and goes all the time. It's not hard to get a pistol, but they also get confiscated by authorities all the time. No big deal, knock out a security guard and take his. High-end gear comes closer to being a plot element, and you won't lay hands on it without there being some story attached to that.




Drain is fairly doable, especially with a friend with a first-aid kit standing ready afterwards.




Realism isn't worth everything. The game is still about the PCs, and balancing things so that you can have the game you all want is more important than plausibility in a fantasy-sci-fi setting.

Is diminishing dicepools that bad? If you're talking about people with low dice pools, yeah of course they will struggle. They will also struggle with the limited number of tests rule.
Still do we want the orc sammie with Charisma 1 and Uncouth to be able to get any illegal item without help?

Let's look at the middle ground instead. 6 dice for negotation is hardly good for a shadowrunner, but decent for a non-face. Also notice they might be able to add up to 3 street cred to this if they have it. On an average test they should be able to get about 7 hits, which gets them most guns, SMGs or even an AK-97.
With the cred they should be getting Ares Alpha or a machinegun with little difficulty unless they're unlucky. Isn't that ok?

Devoted faces with 12-20 dice will still be able to get some extra tough items, like sniper rifles and explosives, maybe a heavy MG and missile launcher. Stastically, they should be getting items with availability 26 or higher!

So actually with diminishing dicepools, the system more or less works. The only catch is the lack of contact speciality, that armsdealer with connection 4 might not be any better than the party's face that can charm a stone.

As for your system, I like your gist of it and the 5%* connection rating fee. Also this gives a system that allows the arms dealer to actually have some pistols at hand for runners with little time.

It has some problems though. First, just rolling connection means you have a high chance of failing, and a high chance of getting glitches. Also connection has little to do with field of expertise and more with how.. connected the contact is. Fixers have generally high connection, but said arms dealer should have better chance of having that ares predator lying around somewhere.

How about having the contact simply add a number from 0 to 6 for how appropriate that contact is for said item, and additng that number to the connection test? I'd also let a fixxer (arhgh that extra x keeps getting in.. oh well) use the normal availability rules using his own connection+etiquette+charisma, but with no reduced availability and of course the normal waiting time while the contact asks around.

But yes actually interacting somewhat with the contact is necessary, unless said contact has handled the request many times before.

- Sammie
"Hey wilson I need 3 more boxes of APDS for the Alpha."
-Wilson
"hmm yeah ok whatever just wire over 1500 creds. You can pick them up friday at the usual place."
-Sammie
"ah cmon man how'bout some quantity discounts for once? "
-Wilson
"Hey I'm delivering with no fuzz. You don't have to sugar talk me or take me out to dinner. Now you want them or not?"
-Sammie
"Hmppf ok it' wired to the usual shadow account."

Assault rifles and heavy armor are uncommon enough to warrant availability tests. The world may be flooded with AK-97s and armor jackets (the latter even being legal), but that doesen't mean every sec. guard is going to have one. The a team of shadowrunners are going to be able to get them though is fairly clear, although they might not want to go through such an overt attack. Such weapons are hard enough to conceal anyway so pistols will always be popular for runners.

But why not let the players decide if they want to go the stealthy approach or not, instead if railroading them to it by making some items unrealistically rare? This is America goddamnit, UCAS or not, and guns are probably no less common in 2070 than it is now. Small pistols are very common aong the general civillian populace, and corpsec often sport smgs at the very least (judging by the sample ones in the book). So unless you're playing in a slightly less dystopian setting like Scandinavian Union or UK, players should expect it to be possibly to actually have some use for that automatics skill they invested in.

If they don't know when NOT to bring the AK, then make them learn (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Now corpsec guards with full body armor, custom fitted Ares Alpha's with EXX ammo and APDS as standard does exists, but only for the more high security facilities. A normal office building will probably not have anything more than one or two guards with light pistols and armor vests, if they have armed guards at all. However both kinds of facilities will be able to call on significant reinforcements from Lone Star or similar, and here everything goes. If the runners go in with assault rifles and heavy armor blowing shit up, they should expect to meet heavily armed Swat teams with armored vehicles, mages with spirits in tow, a city-wide alert, roadblocks, helicopters (possibly with heavy weapons) etc.

Should they fail to stop the runners the Metroplex guard might be calledin, leaving the runners in a world of hurt. Even troll tanks have difficulty ignoring several soldiers shooting at them at the same time with assault rifles - even if it means taking 1 stun damage at the time the troll will probably go down eventually. And after such a mess you might as well just make characters since these losers are surely not gonna get a job as shadowrunners EVER again, if they see the light of freedom at all.

In any case, so far the runners in my game has learned that corpsec guards are dangerous, and spirits and mages even more so.

It is the Urban Samurai Catalog. The runner was able to steal 2 clips from the firing range in Fort Lewis and used it all escaping the place. Now, I assume that someone else was training with APDS ammo and he took it from the soldier and was never able to get to the Armory.

That's exactly what I do. Assault rifles tend to come out against heavily defended targets, and then the planning focuses on deploying and displaying the weapons in a way that means they don't have to use them, and make absolutely sure alerts don't go out, or if they have to fire them, getting the hell away because the cop clock is ticking.

And that interest in military weapons, that goes for arms dealers too. It isn't impossible at all to get hold of assault rifles, they just have to do some legwork, work through some contacts, check the dealer's background, set up the meet properly and safely.

Appropriate means look at what is being guarded. Is it a seniors hospital? A generic industrial site? A ultra high tech research lab a mile under ground?


Make the guards 'fitting' for the place and allow the characters to decide what gear to bring. I've found most social infiltrations can be done without a shot being fired, or is properly planned the people even knowing something happened at all. As far as instakilling pc's where are they going that every guard could possible be armed with hypervelocity apds miniguns?


1) Not sure what neighborhoods your talking about where that would happen in SR, but they'd better be nice.
2) Most assault rifles we use are about 22-24 inches long, and fit very nicely under a jacket of any length, so unless someone is getting through our jammers and using the radar goggles somehow they tend not to be seen.
3) Adding extraneous rules to a character concept which gimp its ability to do its job, such as giving a mage additional drain is in fact pulling out a nerf bat. Also I'm not sure where you live, but in my home town carrying a sword around is in fact perfectly legal. Its odd, but legal, so long as its not concealed. So they could carry it openly and notoriously and the cops at best could simply take note. Which if the mage has physical mask, and the masking metamagic accomplishes precisely nothing.

Given the level of nanotech in the game you'd pretty much have to house rule it all away to be plausible.


Tell that to the kung-fu masters who'd spent 30 years training, and got mowed down by some conscripted country bumkins with flint locks.


Good, because there is really no cost to anyone with a gun squeezing the trigger, and it doesn't take a 10 BP edge, and a whole new stat, just to use a gun.



Different groups I guess, to us realism is made to match as closely as possible without hitting fun vacuum territory.


Actually plausibility within the confines of the setting is very important to the groups I play with. Things which should happen, should happen. Things which do happen should have been likely to happen before they do happen, or the result of some fantastically odd dice rolling.

I don't ban ALL nanotech; just some applications that I don't like. Desktop production is one of those, and can be removed without changing the setting much. In fact, the setting doesn't really correspond logically to it's existence as-is.




I didn't say outdated skills. A 2070s kung fu master who hasn't learnt to use gun-fu and cover belongs in a museum.

What I mean is that specific equipment shouldn't be too important; a pistol is as good as another, it's your shooting skills that matter most. If you lose your gun, and find another one on an unconscious guard, it shouldn't screw up your stats.




Bullets cost money. AP bullets cost more. Bullets that hit several people at the same time, ignore armor and dodge, are called Magic.





Perhaps "cinematic logic" is the best term? The rules of what makes sense vary across movie genres. Shadowrun can do well with several genres. Just what is "realistic" and "should happen" varies by genre.

I prefer a somewhat swashbuckler-like style; it's okay to get captured, as long as you escape, steal a guard's weapon and complete your mission from within the enemy stronghold. You don't just kill any guard you meet; nor do they kill any captives out of hand. There's no inescapable super-surveillance either. Security isn't perfect; escape is doable. While people may pretend to be cold, most people can still be charmed somehow, or conned. Mouthing off against someone also won't get you killed in an inescapable way; but you might be challenged to a duel.

Yeah, That is true...
Keep the Faith