SR3 vs 4 in Play Options

[Azralon]

[mfb]

we indeed touched on it; i remain unconvinced that SR4 characters are more street than SR3 characters. future expansions will most certainly widen the gap. but because of the caps inherent in SR4, that gap simply can't be widened by very much.

[Azralon]

To be clear, MFB: Your inflexible position is that standard SR4 characters do not generally start out any less potent than standard SR3 starting characters?

[mfb]

sorta. it's like this: in SR3, the unaugmented attribute cap for humans was 9, with a realistic augmented max of about, what, 16 or so? that means that a guy with 3 Str, say, has achieved 33% of his possible unaugmented Str and about 19% of his possible augmented Str (these are loose figures, but they're close enough for my purposes). in SR4, the unaugmented attribute cap for humans is 6, and the augmented cap is 9. that means that a guy with 3 Str has achieved 50% of his possible unaugmented Str and 33% of his possible augmented Str. 3 is a lot closer to his utmost potential in SR4 than it is in SR3, which means that characters who have reached their fullest potential are a lot closer to 'street-level' characters than they were in SR3.

the same thing goes for skills, and can even be somewhat applied to device ratings. it's not a question of how potent characters are, really, if you're talking about things like comparing the relative difficulty of similar tasks for SR3 characters vs SR4 characters. it's about looking at the scale of characters that are possible, and plotting where on that scale each system puts starting-level characters. SR3 characters were near the bottom of the heap--just look at a starting SR3 character compared to, say, Elissa Carey's Ghosts in Corporate Punishment. then compare a starting SR4 character to the Ghosts in SR4. SR4 starting characters are a hell of a lot closer to the possible top end than SR3 characters are, and that is my complaint.

[Azralon]

Okay. From your specific complaints, it's been hard to tell if you've been trying to say that the new ceiling is too low or the new floor is too high. All you really care about is the actual headroom.

[mfb]

indeed. i view this basic issue as being a symptom of an even more basic issue, which is the system itself. if you lower the floor, making starting characters less competent, you start running into the problem of characters being completely incompetent, unable to perform in the face of even minor adversities without resorting to Edge. if you raise the ceiling, you run into the opposite problem, where top-end characters are completely infallible even in the face of what reasonably ought to be utterly impossible odds.

[Azralon]

What about the fact that the opposition operates within the same scale?

[mfb]

that's part of my argument. basically, NPCs that are supposed to be high-end badasses aren't far enough ahead of the street-level characters--and they can't ever get any better (not by much, anyway) because of the caps. moreover, even if they did get better--by removing the caps--the system would completely fall apart. high-end characters would be able to perform completely impossible feats without even spending any Edge.

[Azralon]

So you're saying both the headroom is too small and the ceiling is too low.

[mfb]

yes. and i'm saying that you can't raise the ceiling without introducing serious structural problems.

[Geekkake]

If you're just looking at base numbers, you're missing a lot of the point, in my estimation. Street-level isn't just stats. You're a street-level runner because you have street-level contacts, street-level gear, street-level support. Not because you can't bench-press as much. Any jackhole prison inmate who lifts rusting, awkward weights in the yard every day can achieve a 6 in STR. Does that mean you should get a higher stat because you're using a gym full of digitally augmented equipment, instead? Of course not. You'll probably get there faster and with less sodomy, though.

The primary difference between an experienced, professional shadowrunner team and an experienced, professional government spec-ops team lies in resources and support, as far as effectiveness is concerned. If you runners are calling up Joe the fixer who deals out of alleys and are getting military 'ware and equipment and highly skilled subcontractors, the GM is fucking up. Until they reach the upper eschelons of the shadow support structure (and maybe not even then), they should be receiving middle of the road gear (at best) that fell off the back of a truck somewhere. Meanwhile, the spec-ops team is being issued equipment that's SOTA and beyond, cutting edge technology designed exclusively toward making them even better at their given tasks. A spec-ops team can call in reinforcements, satellite imagery, even a goddamned airstrike when authorized, but what can shadowrunners call? Hoss's Heroes, the local go-gang? A bartender?

When it comes to basic skill and abilities, I see no reason for there to be any demarcation between the two. A dedicated, talented street samurai can sneak up on your ass and cut your throat in an alley just as well as a special operative can in the jungle. If they couldn't, corporations would never hire those resources. Instead, they'd operate secret training facilities and maintain their own groups of special operations teams with total deniability.

Indeed, what separates an experienced, professional shadowrunner (NOT just out of chargen) from those other teams is the ability to operate entirely without a dedicated, efficient support structure. Instead, their support structure is a rag-tag economy of cut-throat black marketeers, gangs and racketeers, most of whom themselves have no efficient, dedicated support structures, and most of whom would betray you for a percentage of the pay you expect to earn on your current run.

That's street-level. It has nothing to do with numbers. It has to do with people. I know it's hard, I know it's scary, but I want you to look past the character sheet, and whole fucking world of interconnected individuals, all trying to hustle their own fortune from other people trying to do the same. On the other side of the tracks, you have the gleaming towers, the hive-like efficiency, and the huge power wielded by those with wealth and connections.

That's the difference.

[Azralon]

I submit, then, that your actual objection can be simplified by the statement of "the ceiling is too low." If the ceiling were higher then that would obviously create the headroom you want.

How, within that viewpoint, do you reconcile the existence of "twinked out" characters? The forums have demonstrated multiple times that such-and-such of a build can throw 20-30 dice on a particular task. This ceiling is not high enough for you?

[Azralon]

[mfb]

[Azralon]

I think you'd feel a lot better if you didn't think of high-dice characters as "breaking" the ceiling so much as defining it.

Seriously: You say that the ceiling is too low, but then in the same post you talk about people within the current system who supposedly can't be challenged because they're just too good.

I dunno, man, I give up. It's not your objections that I take exception to -- it's their mutability.

[mfb]

that's because you're trying to simplify what i'm saying into a single statement, when i'm actually making two (or more) seperate but interrelated points. point one: the difference between the average starting character and the average top-end character is too small. point two: the ceiling for top-end characters can't be raised by very much without breaking the game. these objections to SR4 are seperate, but they are related to each other on several points.

[Cain]

[Azralon]

All I'll do here is point to the smooth bell curves in these two polls and let 80+ people lend their collective wisdom to this conversation.

[mfb]

heh. i've never claimed to be in the majority. just in the right!

[Dashifen]

[Shrike30]

SR4 seems to be written in such a way that the gamers and GMs are given credit for being able to reign in their "oh my god huge handful of dice" instincts. Instead of SR3's attribute 6 supposedly representing "Superhuman" (or whatever the description was), but humans actually being able to go all the way up to 9 without a stupid amount of effort, those definitions actually have some real meaning to them. 6 *is* as far as most humans can get without being extraordinary or augmented.

If the people you play with aren't understanding and respecting what these values represent, then they're stepping outside of what the system is intended to do. I don't feel that the system is inherently "flawed" because it lets you create godlike builds... I've never seen a system that you couldn't do that in. It's just placing more of the responsibility for being reasonable and attempting to reflect a character with statistics (rather than building a die pool with a name) on the heads of the GMs and the players.

If you feel that a system should have built-in protections against god-build shenanigans, SR4 is really not going to be very good about that. It is, however, quite flexible in letting people create reasonably diverse "normal" builds that are playable and enjoyable.

[Azralon]

[Azralon]

[Kremlin KOA]

remember kiddies power gamer != munchkin

the defining trait of a munchkin is the disregard for anybody else's fun and desire to wreck the game's base premises

[Cain]