Yeah, the US does spend a lot of money training their troops...

AS far as training goes, There were times that we just went out to a firing range and fired at vehicles or whatnot... and then there were the times we actually performed live fire exercises, using fire and movement with actual live rounds, rockets, mortars, Mines, and explosive charges, and even the odd Bangalore Torpedo...

Such exercises are (or at least were) pretty common for the US Marine Corps Infantry (at least when I was in, which has been almost 20 years), and we were required to pass a Regimenta Scale Combined Arms Live Fire Readiness Evaluation at MCAGGC 29 Palms before being deployed overseas...

As for budget allowances, yeah, we had a fairly robust budget for live fire... when I was deployed to Japan in 87-88 we blew off about 50 Rockets (on one day of exercises) and almost 1,000 pounds of High Explosives (TNT, Dynamite (Really) and C4) on another day... that was one of the things that I really enjoyed about being an infantryman... I was crosstrained in all 03xx (Infantry Rifleman, Machinegunner, Mortars, Assault Gunners, Demolitions, etc.) MOS's, which afforded me a lot of "play time" with the various weapons involved...

Keep the Faith

I call them gas grenades. Also tell me how many gas grenades one could by for the bp(edit) needed to be a mage with a 5 magic, a 5 spell casting, and the cost of the spell you're casting in the first place? I'm guessing a few.

Hmm, what about a rule shift based on the following idea:

The interval for Availability tests isn't based on the price of the desired item, but on it's Legality. Unrestricted items get the test every hour, restricted every day, and forbidden weekly.

Just a thought, haven't compared it to the books yet. Comments?

Hmm maybe, although I liked the system with the possibility of a contact having items on hand, even for restricted items.

Maybe it could be combined with the current rules though, and simply doubling the pice of an a restricted item for availability purposes, and quadrippling Forbidden ones.

Thus a Forbidden item worth 500 nuyen would take 2 day interval instead of 1 day. Not quite so drastic, but a bit more.

Otherwise it would take a week just getting hold of a Tag Eraser... some items, although forbidden, are supposed to be quite common. Think about the avilability of illegal drugs in real life.. although forbidden you can easily get it off the street at short notice.

You really have to look at the other side of the equation too. What are criminals normally packing?



Sure most can be done, but sometimes something goes wrong. I don't know why you think you need miniguns to down a PC. If the guards have SMGs with flechette ammo, each pass they hit 2 short burst each with a DV of 5 SMG + 2 ammo + 2 burst + 1 hit, that's 10 at least, and he'll have maybe 8 dice for damage resistance. Basically, first time a guard gets to shoot, there's a PC down.

I think it makes for a better experience if PCs are able to recover from mistakes.

never heard of body armor? it usually makes flechett slide off like water off a duck.

I definitely think the diminishing pool is the best fix for availability, though it's not technically a house rule since it's included in the book as an optional rule. Or is that still a house rule? Not important (although I can't count the number of debates I've seen on Dumpshock arguing whether to define something as a house rule or not, as if that really mattered in a game where "Because the GM Said So" explains everything).

I like how in SR4 you can get anything, given enough time. But for people with, say, 4 etiquette dice, it does start to get silly. "Ok, I'll get that gauss cannon to you in... 29 months!" At some point, you just have to say "nobody agrees to sell you one." The diminishing dice pool isn't a real barrier for social characters, but it does prevent bumbling streetsams from ordering gear that doesn't arrive for three years.

But I think you should keep in mind that the SR4 system is not designed to keep gear out of the player's hands. Though it's not spelled out very clearly, fixers can get whatever gear you want for you, rolling their own social pools to do it. They will always add a finder's fee (something like 10%, unless they don't like you and decide to negotiate it higher, or unless they really like you and lower it), but you don't have to roll etiquette to get your fixer to find you gear. That's a fixer's job, he doesn't have to be convinced to do it. You just have to pay him his finder's fee to make it worth the risk.

As for the system in the OP, about limiting availability to Connection * 3, I think it's kind of neat, but ultimately unecessary. All the gear in the world is no match for 12 guys with assault rifles (who are smart enough not to stand in a big clump where they are all hit by the same spell or grenade, and also to take cover). And a GM can pull 12 relatively smart guys with assault rifles out of his butt whenever he wants. A GM who feels intimidated by his players' fancy gear--a GM who feels intimidated by players, period--needs a lesson in how to build challenges in the SR4 system.

well yes. Unfortunetly our dm only wanted to throw big scary monsters at us. Not the hardest thing to kill with most any kind of party.

What criminals are packing also depends alot on what target they are attacking. If they're robbing a high-security bank, they'll probably have assault armor, heavy body armor, explosives and whatever else they can get access to. In SR, this includes spirits, mages and Trolls with more damage resistance than an armored vehicle.

On a normal office building for instance, guards are not likely to meet anything but normal gangers, burglars, punks or just drunken fools, many of which are not armed at all. Thus some light armor, pistols and tasers should be enough. This is essentially the standard equipment for corporate security guards in the main book as well.

SMG with flechette is a bad move. With EX-EX the guards can do more damage to armored targets and at the same price. Or they can use APDS for even lower price. After all, availability isn't much of a problem for a licenced security corporation. Many kind of runners will have difficulty standing up to this, but heavily armed street samurai should be able to survive it and take down several of these. 8 dice for damage resistance? Yeah, if the runners are wearing armor clothing... more likely they will have armor vests (with average body, 9 dice), and for the combat characters, armor jacket for 12 or more dice. These guys are not easy to take down... they are shadowrunners.






I don't have SR4a, but according to the rules change document, the diminishing dicepools rule is not optional - while the extra drain for direct combat spells is. The rule makes the availability rules a bit less ridiculous, but still lacking in many areas (see previous posts).

The connection*3 system's problem is how the costs of contacts are handled in the way that connection is just as expensive as loyalty, even though one should be much rarer than the other. I mean who doesen't have a mother or father with loyalty 5 or 6? How many have contacts with the pull simular to high-level politicians or corporate executives? Actually, come to think of it my rule was (connection*3)+loyalty, thus a 6/6 contact enabled 24 availability gear - pretty much anything in the books.

My own karma cost of contacts being connection * rating didn't help much, as it made 1/6 and 6/1 contacts very attractive. Oh well, we learn (I use BP again now).

12 guys with assault rifles will get pwned by 12 guys with ares alpha assault rifles with lots of recoil compensation, APDS rounds, smartlinks, reflex recorders, HE grenades, wired reflexes (or better), and heavy armor. Even with the training not to bunch up, it's difficulty for a squad of soldiers to engage the same target(s) at the same time without being very coordinated and close to one another, especially indoors. Skill is important, but so is gear, magic etc.
As they say in SMAC: "Well trained, well equipped troops can stand up to many times their numbers than linear arithmetics would indicate."

Now this is not about being intimidated by gear. Whatever the PCs can get hold of, I can use against them. The problem is when the munchkin troll with FFA, full body armor, and whatever super weapon he can find engages enemies that are challenging to him - and the rest of the party get autoilled by the same enemy. SR system is not balanced in any way, it is easy to get ridiculous dice pools in attack and defense, and there are always some characters that don't have that either because their role makes it imppssible or they want to play characters rather than stats.

Also, when the runners can get the most rare and obscure items from day one, they have nothing to look forward to. They will always have the best gear they can afford, and 80% of the gear in the book will simply not be used by them. I could let it be used by NPCs to make the world more believeable, but that makes them no challenge at all. Really, if the runners have too much armor then APDS must be standard in order to have a chance at wounding them - and I like to play in a world where regular ammuntion is standard.

Now if this works well in your group and the players either don't abuse it or somehow you manage to challenge them all without risking too much PC death or ruining the suspense of disbelief, then all the more power to you.

And it will all do stun, or if they have a decent armor spell up, bounce off. Flachet ammo increases armors ability to stop it, so if the PC's remembered to bring their armor from home, they should have in the neighborhood of 12-15 armor easily, not including any magical protections. Against flechette ammo, it looks more like 18-22 armor, add a body of 4-5 on top of that if they're human, they should soak 7 points without too much trouble.

Outside of extraterritoriality, guards aren't going to be using forbidden items. Flechette is the best restricted option.

You have people doing social infiltration in that much armor? I don't think we can even compare between our campaign, they're like different planets.

Orly? :O Did they instate diminishing pools for all extended tests, or just get-getting?



You ever GM for 12 people? If you do, you\'re some kind of GMing god. Regardless, you missed my point. What kills people in Shadowrun are a) numbers and b) tactics. Tactics typically means the enemy finding cover in places where the runners don\'t have any. And numbers is obvious. Runners take a penalty for every attack they dodge. If 12 guys focus fire, especially if using weapons that negate dodge dice like assault rifles, they will start to hit. And once you start getting hit in Shadowrun, you start getting hurt, and then you start to lose. My point is, no matter how strong the runners are, if they bull their way into stupid situations where they\'re vastly outnumbered, they can\'t mathematically survive. As the GM, you have to ensure that such situations exist, otherwise every mission is just a cakewalk and they don\'t have to think about how to accomplish the task.



Well, sure. Having one uber person and a bunch of noobs makes life difficult. Either the uber kills everything easily or the noobs die. That can be solved by putting limits on character power, for sure. But it can also be solved by helping the noobs to build comparable characters. Party imbalance is a problem you get with a complex system like Shadowrun, where one guy spends 400 BP and gets shit, and another guy spends 400 BP and gets Cyborg Rambo. The problem with placing soft caps on availability to correct this problem is, of course, that they are soft.

Even if you limit the uber character\'s starting power, he\'s still likely to build right up to the max, while the noobs are likely to fritter away BP without considering the consequences. You\'ll still have an imbalance. And that imbalance will be increased during play when the uber character uses superior knowledge of gear to buy all the good stuff he couldn\'t start with, while the noob isn\'t sure how to spend their cash efficiently.

Either way, it comes down to the GM getting involved in the chargen process. Either ask the power player to make a less powerful character, or help the non power players to make something a little less worthless. If you try to house rule your way out of the situation, you just get tangled in a net of new rules. Each tweak opens new exploits, and each fix compounds the problem. The best way to correct party imbalance is to go in and do it manually, rather than monkeying with the gear buying system and hoping that it sorts itself out.



By the base rules, they can\'t get the most rare and obscure gear from day one. If you think APDS is the most rare and obscure, that's a little confusing to me. IMO, the really awesome rare things are lasers, flamethrowers, autocannons, military armor... stuff you're not going to get until you've saved a large chunk of change and waited a significant amount of in-game time for it to arrive. There is always room to go up in Shadowrun if you have imagination. Even if characters feel geared to the max, they can start working on building a super hideout, or maybe acquiring facilities to produce even better prototype level gear. The only limits in Shadowrun are imagination, and that means that the limits themselves are imaginary. You can only stop growing when you run out of ideas.

EDIT: Oy. It placed a backslash after every apostrophe.

Our social infiltrations thus far have never involved bullets....

EDIT: when trying a new game system,
Doesnt everyone break out a computer and run the statistical numbers to determine the best way to make a char do what is desired?

<shamed> No, some of us only got a C in Statistics class.

Stop looking at me like that. It's not my fault my brain melted after chi-squared regressions!

First of all, extraterritoriality might definitively be the case. Runners often operate against the big Megas.
And even if not - forbidden items are forbidden for normal citizens. You can't get a personal licence for plastic explosives, but a demolition company could certainly get some sort of certificate or license for using such. So could any other legitimiate company for legitimate reasons. Lone Star will have access to heavy weapons if need be, and they don't even have extraterritoriality, at least not in Seattle.

That said maybe small time security companies won't have access to APDS, machineguns, etc. In which case, the runners probably won't have much difficulty getting past them.

Also, against the average shadowrunner with heavy armor (not going low-key on social infiltration missions), Stick n Shock is much better than Flechette, and cheaper. It also means they don't really need assault rifles, smgs and machine pistols will do the same damage.





All really. RAFO:

http://shadowrun4.com/resources/sr4a/sr4a_changes.pdf




I was responding to your rather broad statement. Gear is important, and even more so for shadowrunners. Tactics and numbers are also important. BTW I've done a scene kinda like the one you describe. I think it was about 14 gangers firing at one supertroll at the same time (ignoring the other runners for the time being). Result? The Trog was one stun box away from going down, but the team managed to kill/disable/scare them all. Ok, they had a various assortment of smgs, shotguns, pistols etc., but focus fire meant that Trog had almost no dodge and almost every round hit. Being able to soak 8 damage easily means you can take a punch. Still, some stun almost always creeps through, so anyone will go down eventually. If these thugs had been better equipped, they might have taken down Trog quicker and then taking down the others more easily.

In another scenario, the party's mage (while high on Kamikaze at the time) was confronted by 2 Lone Star cadets with Colt America light pistols, was shot down, and arrested.

In any case, the reason why runners have to be careful is that no matter how tough they are, they will eventually face tougher opposition in terms of numbers, gear AND tactics if they ignore the dangers. Yes they can sometimes brute-force themselves through security, but then they'll have to make a quick getaway and probaly spend alot of resources laying low afterwards. The best runs are handled silently, quickly, and with minimal collateral damage.




So if for some reason you don't want to play Cyborg Rambo or Super Possessed Warrior with 20-30 dice pools, then you're a noob and need help (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)
What if you want to play say one of the sample characters? What If we want a game where everything isn't min-maxed and people make choises based on character rather than power? I'd rather limit the extreme munchkin than have to force everyone else to play the same way. What do you mean by soft caps?



Maybe, but the differences will be less extreme. Dice pools will be similar. A tank with 20 dice in soak works ok, and is not so bad compared to the hackers say, 9 dice.
My players are ATM all noobs, but some are more used to number crunching than others. Still, so far it seems all the PCs have their areas to shine in. And even the troll street samurai fears the hidden mage (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)




Not a bad approach - and I'm doing this as well. In fact I have just scrapped my rather inconvenient karma-based chargen for these exact reasons. I've tried to ask the players to make less powerful characters since they're supposed to be noob runners, but the troll still wants as high body as possible, two rating 5 starting combat skills etc. etc. Gear seems to be the most unbalancing game mechanic in this game, so I want to limit the gear at this point. Even with good skill and attribute, the runners really can't get that many dice. So far I think 12-13 dice in attack is the highest, which suits me fine.






I think of APDS as fairly rare yes. They are forbidden, pretty high availability (not available from day 1 but maybe day 2). If this wasnt the case, why is gear limited to av. 12 at chargen? Sure, the runners will get hold of some APDS some day, but it might take several runs to do so, maybe getting some rep and contacts. But yeah they will get it.

Also part of the reason to limit items is the joy of gradual improvment. There is a reason why you can't start with a Vorpal Axe in D&D at level 1. Just like you can't start with MBW 3 in Shadowrun. You are supposed to have to work your way up. And while the normal setting assumes the runners are not complete noobs (like in mine), it also assumes the PCs are fairly fresh and unheard of.
Prices could be used to control this, but they are not. Items costing less than 100k is can be bought at chargen, unless they have a high availability. Thus, there is another mechanic to handle the gradual improvement of gear, and that's supposed to be Availability. I just take it a but further than the RAW does.

why limit the min/maxed guy? I can understand if its an all combat game but if its more diversified then the min/max dude will only be able to make sure his area is done. so if a dude is awsome at combat why would that affect how the mage spreads his points? or the face?

Good point. I'll have to think on that some more.



About the social infiltration.. that generally means you can't bring your heavy-duty gear with you. No-one will believe you're just an office clerk if you're wearing real armor. And that means, that if it goes wrong, you'll be unprotected.

And now don't tell me that if you're good, it never goes wrong. That's just tempting the GM, and will get you in trouble.

Isnt that why you go with no armor and have the combat specialist watching you with a sniper rifle, the b/e specialist staying physically close but out of site behind a locked door and the mage either on the astral or watching through some optics?

Because I would do the combat monster a great injustice if all my combats were only designed to challenge the face, mage etc. Unless of course I do some silly thing like always having the goons shooting at mr-soak it while the mage is actually killing hordes of enemies by himself. In my game, any obvious magic means you're target #1 no matter if there is a troll tank nearby or not.

Don't get me wrong I want some good at combat, but the gap shouldn't be too high. Also, when combat hits most of the players will want to have some chance of contributing. If the Tank can handle everyone by himself then why should they even be there? Some characters are natual support characters, but I think all PCs should be able to contribute some in combat. Even the nerdy hacker with combat paralysis. Now I expect the hacker to go down on hits that the Tank can shrug off, but I don't want the hacker to be autodead by such a hit just so I have a small chance of doing some damage to the tank. Mind the Gap.




By real armor I'm guessing armor jacket and heavier? Otherwise, FFBA, armor vests, or maybe a lined coat can be concealed easily. And even some office clerks wear light civillian armor, at least if he's working in a somewhat scrummy neighbourhood.

And let's not kid ourselves... it always goes wrong somehow (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) If nothing did, we might as well just consider they plan, and either say "ok you succeeded" or "now you're being chased by lone star." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Actually... No...

Keep the Faith

I think that was my point. No matter what gear you have, enough mooks with assault rifles will kill you dead. And the GM isn't limited to sending mooks with assault rifles, the GM can send in the Red Samurai or Tir Ghosts if he wants. A platoon of them will kill ANY running team, unless there's something really asymmetrical about the engagement (i.e. runners have a tank and bad guys have no anti-tank weapons).



That's one thing I love about SR4. In SR3, wearing reasonably good armor made you almost immune to light pistol fire, when it wasn't fired by a pistols master. In SR4, you take cover, and you take it NOW! If you don't have cover, you're going home with bruises (or in a box).

But yeah we're both saying the same thing in this regard. My point was, the GM can always win no matter the power of the players, and it doesn't require sending in an army of prime runners. Enough badguys will take down anyone.



Noob is a pejorative term, what I mean is people who aren't powergaming. The point is, if someone wants to play Nerfenstien the sample character, everyone needs to match Nerfenstien's power level. Either that, or he's got to improve his sheet. Otherwise you've got two problems: A) The team makes no sense, because you've got a badass running with a bunch of mediocres; and B) It's impossible for the GM to set an appropriate threat level.

By a soft cap, I mean you're capping the availability runners can start with, but it's a cap they can pierce after play starts. Play long enough, and the cap will cease to matter. And the powergamer will still end up outstripping everyone else, because he started off with superior pools. All he lacked to begin with was the gear. Once he gets the gear he needs, your headache is just as bad as it would have been.



Well that's a perfect example of something I've long said about house rules: the more you tweak, the bigger mess you make. It's simply not feasible for anyone who's not a full time professional game designer to re-create a system, or even part of a system, so it fixes all targeted flaws without creating new ones to replace them. Life is too short. Instead of trying to create a complicated solution, look for a simple one that changes as little as possible.

I think the real thing to do if you want to cap starting power is to impose a dice pool cap. The gear really doesn't matter. What matters is having 24 dice. Give me 24 dice and I can take down anyone, even if I'm stuck with an AK-97 instead of an Alpha. You can even impose a hard cap, like a maximum of 20 dice for all tests. That is a very simple solution that places a definite limit on power. It's not like an availability fix. Your fix covers over the problem, but play long enough, and it will no longer have the desired effect. Even if gear is more rare, given enough time, the players who want to powergame will end up with the powerful gear.



I dunno, it's hard to get up in arms about APDS. It's not even that great. The thing is, each armor die is only 1/3 as valuable as each DV, because each +1 DV requires 3 armor dice to soak. When you shoot someone with APDS' -4 AP, you are having the same effect as if you increased your DV by 1.33. ExEx, on the other hand, gives +1 DV -1 AP. That is exactly the same, it effectively increases your DV by 1.33. The only reasons you might prefer APDS are: a) hardened armor, since you need to pierce the armor to hurt it at all; or b) targets with higher stun than physical, or stun immunity like Pain Editor, since APDS will more easily do physical damage instead of stun. Other than that, APDS is pretty much equal to ExEx. And both are often inferior to Stick-n-Shock, which reduces armor by half to deal with your most heavily armored foes. Of all the things to fixate on as too powerful for starting characters, APDS is not the thing I would choose.

oh...

@friendofthedork - perhaps you should try having a larger number of baddies and a more dynamic situation so that if one guy is really good at combat he can shine while everyone else has to do something themselfs even if its just self defense. I say this as a player who has gotten very annoyed at DMs for imposing a wide myriad of restrictions in an attempt to force me to make a char that would be hard pressed to take on a single guard or squad of guards.

I'm beginning to see a pattern here. Social infils never take a wrong turn, characters roll through any opposition with heavy weapons and 20 dice or armor.