Round Up / Round Down? Options

[Veggiesama]

Is there any rhyme or reason to the book's use of (round up) and (round down)?

For example, in the section on Special Types of Damage, every example seems to have you resist with half your Impact armor (round up). Then you get to falling damage, and it's half your Impact armor (round down). Typo or some sort of mystical logic I'm not seeing?

[PlatonicPimp]

Nope. I personally say round like you were taught to in third grade, but some systems go for round down to prevent people from benifitting from "I've purchased 1.5 levels in this, it acts just like level 2 but I saved points." SR4 seems to round however the fancy struck them.


I'm compiling a comprehensive file of house rules and expansions I'm going to use in my home campaign, and in there I've been doing things like adjusting to a consistent rounding method and defining what bonuses are capped and what bonuses aren't.

[RunnerPaul]

The general house-rule of thumb is if the book doesn't specifiy, round to the disadvantage of the character.

[FrankTrollman]

In general, the Shadowrun 4 book uses the Champions mechanic, where characters round halves in their favor. So Drain Values for spells round down, damage value from strength and wound boxes from body round up.

There are a few exceptions to that, but they are rare enough that I strongly suspect them to be errors. In general, round however the character rolling the dice would want it to round.

-Frank

[PlatonicPimp]

3 people, four answers. I love it.

[Grinder]

Did you expect something else?

I always round down, btw. Sometimes it's an advantage for a char, sometimes not. But in the long run it seems to be balanced.

[Azralon]

It'd be best if they had a global "always round like this" rule, but they don't.

[blakkie]

But sometimes up is down. :) I'd rather there be no rounding at all, or at least a lot less, that's probably the only way for it to work well.

[PlatonicPimp]

I have a 5.65 strength? how do I roll. 65 of a die?

[blakkie]

[PlatonicPimp]

Sorry, I was being facetious. How about this? I have a skill rating of 5. My modfied skill limit is 7.5. I have the Adept power Improved ability in that skill at rating 3. (The only thing everyone can agree the cap applies to.) That totals 8, but the max I can have is 7.5, so I lose the half-point and have a skill rating of 7.5. Now do I roll 7 or 8 dice? Or 7d6 + 1d3?

[Azralon]

Let's look at it like this: When does it say to round up, and when does it explicitly say to drop fractions?

Here's some of the list off the top of my head:

* Body damage boxes are calculated by 8+(Body/2, drop fractions). Stun is 8+(Willpower/2, drop fractions).

* Magic Loss is equal to (Essence Loss, round up from any fraction).

* Attribute augmentation caps are (Natural maximum x 1.5, drop fractions).

[FrankTrollman]

[Azralon]

Like I said, off the top of my head.

Coulda sworn I read somewhere (maybe here in Disinformation Land) that it was like:

1 & 2 = 9 boxes
3 & 4 = 10 boxes
etc.

EDIT: Ahh, I see what I was doing.

[blakkie]

[PlatonicPimp]

[Eyeless Blond]

Well personally I'd perfer to drop fractions when calculating Magic/Resonance loss instead of rounding up; I really don't think a pair of cybereyes should drop a full point of Magic. Then again I'm also a fan of mages with a little cyber, and of the houserule that technomancers need to actually connect to the Matrix to use it, rather than "magically" make their brains into radio tranceivers.

[blakkie]

Er, no PlatonicPimp. IMO it should have been designed in to start with. :P They did remove some rounding issues, just not as many a i would like to have seen.

P.S. I actually prefer to keep as is as opposed to trying to implement a house rule blanket rounding. *shrug* Partially because sometimes up is down anyway, so you have to remember how you are suppose to look at it.

[blakkie]

[Eyeless Blond]

Well, why *not* bioware? It's not like their particular form of Awakening should be incompatible with technology, after all. :)

[blakkie]