 SR3 vs 4 in Play |
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 Mar 10 2006, 03:51 AM
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#126
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Free Spirit  Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 3,950 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Bloomington, IN UCAS Member No.: 1,920  |
I've heard similar, that it is supposed to be grittier and back to the streets, etc.. However the rules do not back it up when you can max out a character in one area to be almost as automatically successful as the legend. At least in SR3, you could figure the legend had a higher skill. In SR4, it should be impossible, unless NPCs get to cheat and break the caps. |
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Mar 10 2006, 08:05 AM
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#127
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ghostrider Group: Retired Admins Posts: 4,196 Joined: 16-May 04 Member No.: 6,333 |
NPCs always cheat. Those bastards. :D
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Mar 10 2006, 08:44 AM
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#128
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185 |
Nope. They just don't have the limitations chargen characters have (and yeah I know you were being flippant).
That's a false assumption. No starting character is as good as Fastjack. You're basing your judgement on performance in one skill.
As far as I'm concerned Fastjack - which means if he ever comes under my editing pen - has maxed-out his Cracking and Electronics Skill Groups (maybe to the legendary level) and no starting character can compete with that. Dr. Raven has maxed the entire Influence Skill Group and probably high Conjuring and Sorcery Skill Groups too. I won't even mention how much Edge those two characters could have piled on by now or their contact lists either. Definitely no starting character is on par with those two. |
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Mar 10 2006, 08:47 AM
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#129
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Grand Master of Run-Fu Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,840 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Tir Tairngire Member No.: 178 |
That's exactly the point. There seems to be a major disconnect between the stated goals of the game, and what you can actually get in practice. This doesn't mean SR4 sucks rocks, but it does mean that it doesn't meet it's own expectations. No matter what, a fresh PC should not be as good as Fastjack, since a fresh PC is just starting his career. Also, as Mr. Lucky shows, not only can you have a character who's that good right out of chargen, he won't have any major weaknesses over an ordinary "balanced" character. This demonstrates that the game encourages hyperspecialization. Theoretically, the caps and point limits are in place to prevent this sort of thing, but apparently they're not working. If the goal is to have more balanced characters, the character creation system needs an overhaul.
You can't do that, though. Not only can you not bring an entire skill group to the Legendary level, you can't get more than *one* skill that high. That means that Fastjack is capped to one skill at 7, with the rest at 6. A starting character can have the same starting skill at 7, and the rest a 4, with specializations making up some of that difference. The differences are miniscule, and might even be equalized by creative character tweaking. They can definitely "compete", right off the bat. |
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Mar 10 2006, 09:34 AM
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#130
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185 |
You are correct, I didn't mean to imply the whole group but one skill in the group after maxing out all the others. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the differences are not miniscule. If you believe that a two point difference in 6+ skills (that see extensive and unavoidable use in the character's chosen field of specialization) is insignificant to game balance, comparing characters and application in game play then there's really no reason to continue discussions. Any creative character tweaking applied to a PC can be applied to Fastjack as well so I fail to see your point. Furthermore, when in doubt accumulated Edge will win out every time and Fastjack has had 45+ years on the scene. Finally, if a player choses to pick up a skill at legendary level he is consciously chosing a certain character build, one where the character is so naturally gifted and talented in one field that he is as good as the top 11,1% of the specialists already active. In SR4 this comes at a cost but it reflects only one possible build choice and one that you can take if you want (knowing what it implies). If you don't want to be a legend in that particular (and limited) field, then don't take the skill at 6-7 and leave the possibility of improvement in. It is the players choice. Obviously this isn't the min-max or optimal build approach, but then SR4 tries to level the field somewhat (with the linear progression) and yet leave room for both design options. |
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Mar 10 2006, 10:00 AM
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#131
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
the problem is that in practice, those two dice just don't mean a whole lot, because of the way the die mechanic works. they're nice, sure, and they mean that Fastjack is going to succeed in those tasks more often than any PC--but only by a very, very small margin. Edge helps widen that gap, but it also creates weirdness in that Fastjack is now also able to show bursts of freakish ability with pistols, watercolors, rotorcraft piloting, etcetera.
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Mar 10 2006, 11:36 AM
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#132
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185 |
I noted the difference in skill levels, but the same could be said for Atts figuring in another 1 or 2 dice from there. But ultimately that's beside the point. As I mentioned previously whether or not you feel the skill differential translates to an adequately "realistic" difference in results in your games is highly subjective. It boils down to a question of whether you think the differential between levels is sufficient or not for your particular vision of the game world. The developers think it is and so that's the reference framework the new system uses. Some people will like it, others won't. But if you're going to be using SR4 rules its important to make the mental shift to this new framework and accept its implications. Playing the system with SR3 differentials or results as a reference just doesn't work.
I see a lot of people making the same mistake regarding Edge. Yes, what you're saying is correct... to a point. As you've noted "freakish burst of ability" are limited in end results by the base skill level and the linear system. More importantly it assumes your GM regenerates Edge in a certain way. But I've said this before Edge is only as unbalancing as the GM wants it to be - it has a built in "control" which is completely adjustable (ie. the GM ultimately decides when you regenerate Edge). Make it a slow refresh and the use of Edge becomes much more strategic and you won't see players using it for that watercolor painting roll. Make it fast and you get a lot more cinematic action and life and death saves. It is entirely scaleable and its up to each GM to find a balance. My experience from my year of playing with SR4 rules is that my preferred measure is to regenerate Edge only at the end of multi-session adventures (3-4 sessions on average) or story arcs in campaigns. This took a little trial and error but I picked up that given the "threat level" of my campaign my players tend to use 1 or 2 points up in any regular session. If I do it any faster they'll be making more use of Edge than I want in my game. Making Edge a rarer commodity means it is used to affect only crucial rolls, so I chose to make it slightly more common than SR3 style Pool use (and quite similar to the way we used Willpower in Trinity 1.0). By default, SR4 assumes a relatively slow refresh rate (but faster than mine) for a grittier game, which is intended to make Edge use more common than SR3 Karma Pool, but nowhere near as intensive as SR3 Pools. Since this is entirely adjustable, Edge's impact on a game (in a way SR3 Karma Pool wasn't) is also completely subjective - except to say that in critical situations characters with higher Edge always have a ... well ... edge. |
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Mar 10 2006, 11:47 AM
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#133
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
the problem i have with that low level of difference is, why is Fastjack so special? he's only a marginally better hacker than a maxed-out starting PC; by the rules, he can't have done anything to deserve the reputation he has. that means that he's either more flash than substance, or he gets to ignore the rules. the developers are welcome to anything they like, but the rules they've created don't mesh well with the world they're portraying.
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Mar 10 2006, 12:05 PM
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#134
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185 |
Well, he's been at the top of his game for 30+ years and more importantly he has has the raw talent, the intelligence and the wits to stay alive in a fast attrition field such as shadowrunning. Yeah, maybe there are newcomers hackers out there that are his equals (I'd be amazed if there weren't, there's only so much a 60 year old can do to keep up) in specific skill areas, but few match his ability to use those skills and fewer still will keep up with him if he uses all his abilities. Note- Fastjack in particular is a bad example because he could have hardware and prog ratings that are far beyond a chargen character's... and that's a big advantage in the Matrix. I like to think it's sorta like the RL balance between an experienced SEAL or SpecOps, and a green "operative" with only a couple of ops under his belt. Skill and training-wise they're both so intensively trained as to be on par or at least so close that in practice the difference in results is irrelevant - in fact the new guy might have the edge for being younger. But the veteran has experience and field practice to back him up that a newcomer could only dream and ask any military instructor and they'll tell you that 9 times out of 10 experience makes all the difference. Note this isn't to say that some time down the line there won't be rules to distinguish "superior", "superhuman" or "legendary" characters from regular mortals, as there have been in all editions of Shadowrun. The point is it still makes sense even without them. |
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Mar 10 2006, 12:14 PM
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#135
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,889 Joined: 3-August 03 From: A CPI rank 1 country Member No.: 5,222 |
I forget, how were Sergei Bubka and Alexander Karelin excused with the easily achieved absolute maximum attribute/skill system?
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Mar 10 2006, 12:23 PM
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#136
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185 |
Care to clarify what you mean by "excused"? |
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Mar 10 2006, 12:29 PM
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#137
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,889 Joined: 3-August 03 From: A CPI rank 1 country Member No.: 5,222 |
How does someone like Alexander Karelin, undefeated from 1987 to 2000 and not having given up a single point from 1994 to 2000, fit into a world where a contender at the very top of a sport like wrestling cannot have any significant numerical advantage on his challengers?
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Mar 10 2006, 01:07 PM
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#138
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Hoppelhäschen 5000 Group: Members Posts: 5,807 Joined: 3-January 04 Member No.: 5,951 |
If you really want to excuse it, call it a pre-awakening adept or the extensive use (burning) of Edge.
If you don't, it's the loss when linearizing a logistic curve (result(ability)). |
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Mar 10 2006, 01:17 PM
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#139
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 934 Joined: 26-August 05 From: Earth - Europe - AGS - Norddeutscher Bund - Hannover Member No.: 7,624 |
I don't think Alexander Karelin has to fit into the SR4 rules. SR is not a game about sports. It is a roleplaying game where players pretend to be professional criminals. The rules are a compromise between playability, balancing and realism.
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Mar 10 2006, 01:18 PM
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#140
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,889 Joined: 3-August 03 From: A CPI rank 1 country Member No.: 5,222 |
I thought you might have something to say about that. ;)
Personally, of course, I'll just keep calling it a higher Unarmed Combat/Wrestling skill for now. Oracle: Seems to me realism has absolutely nothing to do with it. |
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Mar 10 2006, 01:52 PM
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#141
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185 |
Stat-wise Alexander Karelin would probably have 6s in Bod, Str and Agility probably one of the latter as an exceptional attribute at 7 (having seen him in action I'd also give him a reaction of 5-6 but that's just me), Unarmed Combat as an Aptitude and Subdual Combat/Wrestling as a specialization (9 dice), and an Edge of 5-6 (which, given his focus in life, he pretty much only used to supplement every roll he made on the mat). This means he has a dice pool of 15-16 dice possibly boosted to 22 with Edge (plus any exploding dice) - seems pretty world class to me. His Body and Str factor into how he resists Stun and the damage he does too. But more importantly than all of the above in my mind is that he had not only the raw talent but the skill and intelligence to put it to the best use possible. I think most starting characters would have a ways to go to reach those levels so I definitely disagree with the whole "easily achieved absolute maximum attribute/skill" argument that people keep bringing up in the first place. And for the record in the case of an unaugmented athlete such as Karelin, SR3/BBB skill and Att breakup was just as bad, if not worse, when it comes to differentiating him from any other high level human wrestler. So realism has has as much to do with it in SR4 as it did in SR3. But that's besides the point, in all its incarnations the SR system was meant to be one of abstract representations with a variable measure of realism thrown in. The framework has changed so significantly that giving Karelin an Unarmed skill of 9 (10) in SR3 has pretty much the same end results as giving him an Unarmed skill of 7 (9) in SR4. |
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Mar 10 2006, 02:26 PM
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#142
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,889 Joined: 3-August 03 From: A CPI rank 1 country Member No.: 5,222 |
Take someone who's 30 years old, who's main focus in life for the past 20 years has been a particular sport, and who has completely dedicated himself to that sport for 8 years, 4-6 hours a day, 6 days a week. Let's assume this person doesn't mind skimping on anything that doesn't directly help him in his chosen sport -- he's not the brightest person, bad at school, pretty useless in any social situation, etc. If you were to stat out such a character, the average Olympic finalist, for SR4, do you think it would make sense for him not to have a capped out skill with aptitude and with the relevant specialization and a capped out relevant physical attribute with aptitude, as well as very high levels of the other physical attributes? Or let's say you created a player character according to the canon rules, trying to recreate a person like above, a character who will spend everything he can on the relevant abilities first and the leftovers mostly on things that might indirectly help. How much karma, such as he might gain from continuously competing against the best in the world in various games, would he have to spend to be at STR 7/BOD 6/Wrestling 9/Edge 4?
Does Not Compute. In SR3 you could, for example, simply give him Unarmed Combat/Wrestling 9/17 when his competitors had 8/15s and 8/16s. Because of the immense amounts of Karma it takes to get a Strength of 11, let alone a STR 11/BOD 9/AGI 9 statline, most Olympic finalists won't have those in SR3.
That's a valid perspective. I'm fine with people playing SR without giving any concern to realism, even. But if that's how you feel, I don't get why you'd take part in an argument about real world logic in SR in the first place -- that should be no concern of yours, right? |
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Mar 10 2006, 02:35 PM
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#143
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Hoppelhäschen 5000 Group: Members Posts: 5,807 Joined: 3-January 04 Member No.: 5,951 |
Why not Edge 8 and Agility 7? |
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Mar 10 2006, 02:45 PM
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#144
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,889 Joined: 3-August 03 From: A CPI rank 1 country Member No.: 5,222 |
Is Unarmed Subdual Combat/whatever an Agility- or Strength-linked skill? If the former, the whole Alexander Karelin example is pointless since it'd be the smaller, quicker guys who'd be better at Wrestling in SR4. Or is the amount of exceptional attributes unlimited in SR4?
Count the karma for any amount of Edge up to whatever is the human maximum given the other mentioned stat figures. I said 4 because I figured that'd allow the character to feel secure enough to augment a few critical rolls in a match. Regardless of how much Edge you've got, you wouldn't be able to keep using it constantly anyhow. |
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Mar 10 2006, 02:57 PM
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#145
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,635 Joined: 27-November 05 Member No.: 8,006 |
Being ok with the abstraction of realism is not the same as tossing out realism the door. If the abstract model end up with roughly the same end results overall as what the physical world, even you look at the individual bits and they don't obviously map to literal real world bits, it would indeed still have a strong element of realism. |
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Mar 10 2006, 03:06 PM
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#146
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,651 Joined: 23-September 05 From: Marietta, GA Member No.: 7,773 |
"OMG this real-world person/place/thing doesn't make sense using SR4 rules."
For the luvva Pete, people. It's just a game; it's not the Grand Unified Theory of physics with a different user interface. "Close" is good enough in horseshoes, hand grenades, and game mechanics. |
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Mar 10 2006, 03:27 PM
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#147
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185 |
I'll get to your other post after lunch but for now:
Unarmed (Subdual Combat) - skill and specialization respectively - is indeed Agility-linked. However, without a high Body and Strength in SR combat a agile wrestler is going to have a hard time winning any bouts. And yes, both skill Aptitudes and Exceptional Attributes are limited. As a placeholder for a lengthier reply, and noting that I'm away from my books, to get from starting character to a STR 7/BOD 6/Wrestling 9/Edge 4 character you need no karma (iirc you can start with that). Though a more typical build would take a 5 in Bod (and using the 20 BPs elsewhere) and spend 18 karma to raise it in play. A more rounded build for a wrestler is AGI 7/BOD 6/STR 6 which would be pretty costly at creation (though possible).
You've missed my point: I'm taking part in an argument about real world logic in SR in all its incarnations. Meaning I'm talking about how SR3 and SR4 game mechanics address real world logic and how those two compare in the way they do it. What I am not doing is taking part in an argument which compares abstract game mechanics directly with real life. |
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Mar 10 2006, 03:35 PM
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#148
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,635 Joined: 27-November 05 Member No.: 8,006 |
DSF meet Azralon. Azralon meet DSF, the anal retentives that stole Christmas. :cyber: |
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Mar 10 2006, 03:42 PM
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#149
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Hoppelhäschen 5000 Group: Members Posts: 5,807 Joined: 3-January 04 Member No.: 5,951 |
Indeed.
Still, it is much better to add 8 dice 8 times than to add 4 dice 4 times. |
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Mar 10 2006, 04:12 PM
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#150
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,889 Joined: 3-August 03 From: A CPI rank 1 country Member No.: 5,222 |
Brahm & Azralon: I apologize if my wanting an RPG system that doesn't go out of its way to get rid of the central human experience of achieving ever greater things somehow makes you feel bad.
Right, so my original point (that people competing at the highest level would have these stats, and numerical differences between them would be insignificant) stands. Whereas in SR3, because there are no strict maximum skill levels, Olympic Finalist X can still have a serious statistical advantage over Olympic Finalist Y. If I was really mean, I'd also bring up that smaller differences in dice amounts might be more important in SR3 than in SR4 because of the lower base TN and thus less variation in roll results -- but that's probably not relevant. |
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