I don't care if you think 'balance' is an unobtainable Nirvana. You are accusing me of advocating cutting all options and replacing it with no options at all. I am not advocating that position. I am advocating for a diversity of differentiated and balanced options.

More options with better balance and more differentiation is better. Yes, I doubt you'll ever get to a point where it is perfect, but hey at least we can try to improve diversity, differentiation and balance. That should be the objective. Options that are too similar should be cut in favour of options that are different to improve diversity and differentiation. Options that are too uber should be cut for ones more in line with other choices. Options that are just bad should be replaced with options that are good. I want more people to write Uzi IV down on their character sheet. That's good!

Hooray for options! (Boy, you're really easy to escort to answering things for me. Too bad you never seem to see yourself doing it. I'm a big fan of Socrates, by the way.)


And back to the "problem with the options, not having options themselves" bit.

And yet, I use neither of them for my characters...

And actually, Restricted vs. Forbidden is a FLUFF Difference, because it changes based upon jurisdiction...
So your point is actually meaningless in this case...

Keep the Faith

Okay, we obviously consider fluff and mechanics to be something different. If there are rules for it, I consider it 'mechanics.' R v F has rules, so I consider it 'Mechanics'

Don't explode,

Cthulhu

Why would a electrical attack do anything to a spirit? they are not meta-human and don't have the same weaknesses?

In the interest of fairness I am not certain I can agree with this. Yes the book does state that other jurisdictions may alter the legality, but availability and legality rating are a mechanic. Just happens to be one that can vary.

And there is the disconnect. We get where you're coming from. But I don't think you get where we're coming from. Your logic is not (mostly) incorrect, but you start from a different premise. To tell others that they are coming at this from the "wrong" perspective shoots down your argument from the start. We (and obviously the game's designers) want something that you don't care about. Therefore there can be no conclusion to this other than you saying: "my preference isn't their preference". Unless of course you can demonstrate that the other party's beliefs are internally inconsistent which I don't think you can.

But just to pick up on a few bits where the logic did fail.



This is a bad analogy to having better and worse firearms and ammo in Shadowrun. Firstly, we're not talking about classes or archetypes, we're talking about equipment. Your correct fantasy analogy would be to say person A might want to pick up a dagger and use it, and person B might want to pick up a sabre and use it. Clearly some weapons are going to be better than others. The presumption that all characters are only going to have the best weapons, always going to be able to afford the best weapons, agree what the best weapons are, always going to have the best weapons available, is very unrealistic. Secondly, Shadowrun isn't like your other game where they have to say that an armoured, mounted knight and a fleet footed barbarian must be equivalent in power. Knights wore armour (and were expensive) for a reason. I've done plenty of martial arts. If I were a class, I'd be a monk. If I had a hypothetical class level and went against a person with the same hypothetical class level but they had a sword and shield, do you know what would happen? I'd (probably) be chopped up. Shadowrun is by design a game where some approaches are better than others. Close combat fighters (outside of generous GMs tailoring encounters) get wasted by characters that had the sense to put their training time into guns. At least usually. Shadowrun wouldn't be shadowrun if everything were balanced.

Hooray for Bad Game Design:
We have skills A, B & C, where A & B partially, but directly duplicate the functions of C. That's called redundancy as well.

In the case of S&S, indeed.
In the case of the defense rules… here, the existence of the options itself causes the problem.

There's no good reason why it should, but by RAW it's arguable that this is the case. I put it down to an oversight in the rules and rule it has no effect on spirits unless that spirit has some special vulnerability to electricity. Some have come up with fluff reasons to support the RAW which of course is fairly easy to do. But it makes spirit's less satisfying if people just shrug and load up Stick N' Shock.

No explosion necessary... the problem with your R vs. F is that they are not universally applied to the same equipment, as you so eloquently pointed out... so the comparison of the two falls into the Fluff range... in Seattle, your comparison may hold some water, but it may not in Hong Kong for example, as legality may be completely different... when a "Mechanic" changes based upon your location in the world, it is no longer a "Mechanic"...

I consider Differences in choices to be... wait for it... Differences in choices... they are differentiated, no matter how small that differentiation may be... some will be better than others (That is generally the nature of things), depending upon their use...

As the Doctor said... you cannot balance options, as one combination of options may (or may not be) inherently better than another set of options, otherwise the options are identical, and there would be no reason to choose one over the other...

Rregardless, they are still options that are available for player's characters to choose... in some cses, these choices may result in what you call a sub-optimal choice... I would call that a personal preference myself, as both choices have utility, based upon the perceptions of the characters...

Just Sayin'

Keep the Faith

So your problem is with the fluff? You think the existence of tasers is inconsistent with the existence of Stick N' Shock? Heh. That's inot the argument you were making. You said there was no reason for cops and security guards to carry tasers when they could use Stick N' Shock ammo. I gave a few reasons why tasers might be preferable. Those reasons stand and I don't see that the ammo capacity of tasers has any relevance to them.

K.

"It destabilizes the bonding forces of the ectoplasm the materialized form of the spirit consists of, thus damaging, disorienting or incapacitating it."

There, Technobabble. Good reason.

This would be a major problem in a fantasy RPG where you wanted people to play both 'knights' and 'monks' - the point is choices that you want players to choose between have to be balanced. This will be relevant in a second. The stuff about weapons in a fantasy RPG is not really applicable to SR, because remember St George is DEFINED by his shining armour. (It's right there in the archetype 'a knight in shining armour') so you really cannot consider fantasy characters independently of their equipment. It would certainly be bad design to have a monk class in the book that was terrible and would lose a lot.

This does make it hard to compare against SR, yes.



Yes, but this is a problem if people want to play that archetype. A modern ninja is hardly that outside of the genre. American Ninja is even a movie that many people have watched. People are going to want to play dudes that run around in pajamas and stab people in SR. If that character concept sucks donkey balls, that's not a great thing. All the elements are in the book, so people will try and do it.

That said, I think people are broadly okay with blades being worse than automatics, but I suspect that that also means blades should cost less BP than automatics. One of the problems at the moment that reduces diversity is that the only good melee weapon is a monowhip. Increasing the number of playable options by boosting the power of blades OR decreasing the cost of the blades option would be a good thing (personally I'd bundle the melee weapons up, but whatever works)

I'd just like to point out the cheap bit. Available and/or cheap is a strong point of differentiation. If an AK is a gun you can quickly buy and then toss into a river when you are done with it and not feel the financial, that's a pretty good point of differentiation.

No, there are two points: One being S&S a complete uber-option, the other being that the tech-level required should have serious implications on taser capabilities.

No. I said that I don't see a reason for them not to be equipped with S&S. Which was refererring to other firearm ammo. Look it up.

Range and ammo concerns are the most limiting aspects of tasers IRL.

Why did you cut off my post after five words just to insert a less qualified version of what I said a sentence later. I said there's no good reason why it should, but some have made up reasons to support the rules interpretation which you can do. I fail to see what you have contributed other than trying to make it look like I was saying something that I wasn't.

K.

And also inappropriate to compare, which was my point. These are different games with different aims. You want Shadowrun to have the same aim as the fantasy game where player choices have a degree of arbitrary parity for the sake of not being penalised for picking something that in reality would be inferior. But you can flip open pretty much any page in Shadowrun and see that this is not an aim of the SR4 rules. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) It's absolutely fine if you would prefer the game to be more like the balanced fantasy game, but by the same token, it's absolutely fine for the rest of us to dislike that or set it at a lower priority than other things such as realism. Really, you're at an impass with us. Your logic makes sense, but you have a different aim. None of your arguments showing how things are bad because they don't achieve that aim will work for people who don't share it. And that's where I see this thread going - turning into some actually quite snide comments (though mainly from Rotbart) when it's basically just people wanting different things. Now Doc and I and Tymeaous (if I can speak for them) are in a privileged position because the designers obviously shared our tastes in this area as well, and I recognize that we're the lucky ones. But basically, you want the game to have different aims than it does and we disagree. I don't think it's that anyone think's you're wrong to want something different but we are happy with what we've got.




Heh. I think it would be very interesting to play in each others games. A pyjama wearing ninja-type in my game is likely (but not certain) to get shot quite quickly whilst the other characters shake their heads in wonder. One of the things I like about Shadowrun is that character concepts that would be naff in real life, are usually fairly naff in the game.

Player 1: "My character is a deadly wielder of his two daggers"
Player 2: "My character has a fully automatic assault rifle.
Player 1: "Oh."

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Peace,

Khadim.

I know I would in his games. I'd summon and mind F6+ spirits routinely and just hose the opposition.

Also, concealment and guard, and other nifty powers...Get an ally spirit to inhabit my military spec armor...then get skimmer discs and the spirit to use Movement on me (what's that? 96 meters per round walking speed?)

Yeah, as I said - maybe you want the mall cops to have a limited range, low-power weapon that you can use on light trouble makers, rather than something that might send a bullet shooting across the room and strike down a shopper. That's without repeating the other reasons that I gave earlier which still stand. It's simple, there are reasons why you might see the tasers around instead of pistols (or other firearms) loaded with Stick N' Shock. And as mentioned, cheaper too. By your argument, everyone in real life should be using super quad-core computers. What? Not everyone needs that? Well so it is with tasers also. It's not worth getting into a fluff fight over whether or not tasers as listed in the book are feasible whilst Stick N' Shock exists. I can give you half a dozen decent reasons why it would be so if I want, it's just fluff. The book lists them as available, so they are.

K.

n/m

Yeah, just that's not what I said… and of course, tasers are no low-power weapons by any means in shadowrun.
But it would be exactly the point that if (and only if) a security guard or police office does carry a firearm, it would be loaded with S&S par for the course – which is, incidently, what I said. Because even with a higher threat level requiring greater range, RoF and ammunition, it still won't overprenetrate and kill bystanders… while being just as effective as said taser (and more than regular ammo).

And if you would take the technology of the S&S projectile for light arms that is available by RAW, you could create "tasers" that would replace firearms even on higher threat level, due to them having higher ammunition capacity if you want to, as well as higher range and RoF. Basically, the book would list taser pistols, taser submachine guns, taser rifles, etc. instead of firearms.

Like I said: "Because that what's S&S is – it's stun-phaser ammunition for regular firearms."
And given that level of technology, there should be plenty of specialized stun-phasers around.

I think you finally nailed it there. Tasers are good and useful both for runners and for low-threat guards and civilians. But guards (or even civillians) with guns might as well use S&S. Is there anything by RAW they are less good at? Maybe unarmored people, in which case Flechette and Ex-EX are better.

But unless you actually want to murder someone, S&S is an excellent default protection ammunition with hardly any drawbacks. Unarmored civilians going nuts and threatening lives and assets? S&S works well. Gangers? S&S, which also defeats their armor jackets etc. very well. Professional Shadowrunners? Well with S&S you might actually be able to damage one, and/or incapacitate one. Spirits? S&S is the best against hardened armor. Vehicles and Drones? Ok you might not destroy it but you might take it out of combat for a few turns.

The conclusion is that having a "clip" of S&S is always a good idea for CorpSec, Lone Stars, and even runners. It's simply a bit too good.
If you nerf it a bit however, it still retains it's specialization of being a long-range less lethal weapon that can incapacitate even well-armored foes.

Thus reducing damage to 4S (making other kinds of ammo slightly better at raw damage). You might cry heretic for this, but I also made spirits immune to Stun damage of all kinds.

As you said: "I think you nailed it" as far as I'm concerned.

Light Pistol/Machine Pistol, Damage 4P, AP -, Armor: Ballistic

That light damage curve, especially against the easily-bumped ballistic armor means you're "flattening light ammunition against heavy armor" as they said in ShadowChat in Fields of Fire. Essentially, against somebody in even moderate armor, barring getting VERY lucky, you're doing 4S damage in the end anyway.

Now, let's slap SnS by RAW into the light pistol.

SnS Light Pistol/Machine Pistol, Damage 6S, AP -Half, Armor: Impact

Impact is almost ALWAYS significantly lower, and halving it means you're not up against much protection at all. Ok, so E-Insulation gives extra dice, but it's "expensive" generally to just go throwing around high-enough levels into general purpose armor to make up for the extra two damage (exclusive of the -Half). Plus, having that found on you is going to raise questions if you get stopped, Citizen. "Were you expecting to have to come up against riot-control officers, Citizen? Was there something you wanted to tell us?"

Now, dial it back to 4S, leaving the rest alone, sure, you've improved the AP on the weapon, but you are paying a LOT of nuyen for the privelege, as opposed to having a more-concealable super-heavy pistol. Now, you're using the thing as intended - like a long-range-but-expensive non-lethal-tazer option for your lethal firearm. And Stun Damage can always overflow if you shoot the slag enough times...

Yeah, I probably will.

WHY?

Unless you somehow also made Banishing better, Stunbolt was the spiritkiller spell of choice.

Because spirits weren't a pain in the ass enough for the common man to deal with.

*grins cheekily*

(In the voice of Johnny Depp ne. Captain Jack Sparrow)

"MA-gic."