Somebody sell me on SR4... Options

[Hacker]

I just briefly looked at SR4 the other day at my FLGS and was not sure if I should get it or not. I have played SR2 and SR3, and I think SR3 is the most refined of the two, so far.

Somebody tell me the good points about SR4 and maybe some advantages (POV of course) that it has over previous editions.

THIS IS NOT...I REPEAT...NOT...INTENDED TO START A FLAME WAR.

Let's keep this civil shall we?

[Azralon]

PRO: They simplified a lot of stuff while maintaining the core of the game very well.

CON: There are still holes in the rules that you can drive a GMC Banshee through.

Also, see my sig. :)

[Makar]

I think I'm a good spokesman for SR4. I hadn't actually played SR3 until just a few months ago, and despite being fairly well-versed in a variety of systems, I found the rules to be pretty unfriendly. I actually played for a couple of months and was still only just starting to understand how combat worked.

On the flip side, SR4 I got after reading the book through once. The standardization of tests, the resolution of combat, it is much more streamlined.

So, for beginners, SR4 is definitely the way to go.

I'll admit its not perfect. From my outsider's perspective, I often wished that certain rules were explained more fully, or more examples given. SR4 really needs some sourcebooks covering things like hacking and vehicles/drones in more detail.

[Valatar]

SR3's big problem was the gargantuan amount of fiddly rules around nearly every profession. Riggers constantly had to worry about jamming rules and vehicular combat while the deckers were getting sucked into ultraviolet systems with matrix combat while the mages were zooming around on the astral having astral combat while the street samurai were dealing with cybermancy rules while engaged in plain old-fashioned bloody combat. For just about every facet of life in SR1-3, there's at least ten rules, none of which ever come into play with any other facet of life.

SR4 is far from perfect and definitely needs a few errata sweeps, clarifications, and a reprinting. But so far it's more coherent than its predecessors. We'll see whether that still holds true after the other books get released.

[Fuchs]

Hm... d20 kind of sold me on the "when in doubt, use a single test to solve the question" idea. For most of the stuff SR3 has rules I use some sort of skill test, or opposed skill test, with modifiers.
Instead of checking or learning an obscure or special rule we just set a TN and roll, and get on (well, most of the time, we got our share of rules checking too).
Is SR4 similarily sculpted?

[Aku]

yes, it is, from what i've heard, you have a base TN (5), and then merely add or subtract dice based on the modifiers

[Azralon]

Yep. Everything has a fixed TN of 5.

Although there's this Threshold stuff that comes up occasionally, where your test has to make a certain number of "hits" (previously known as "successes") before it's considered to be successful.

For instance, locating a 10,000 nuyen item on the grey market with an Availability of 20 requires you to roll Charisma+Etiquette(+modifiers) until you get 20 hits, with each roll representing a week of looking.

[Ancient History]

[MaxHunter]

Sorry boys. AH is right, this topic has been amply discussed elsewhere. (And you'd better get out of here before the real flame war begins -again-)

Cheers,

Max

[eidolon]

[blakkie]

[JongWK]

[eidolon]

[Demon_Bob]

[blakkie]

[Clyde]

SR4 runs faster. It also has more variability - high stats don't guarantee success. So even weak little security types can stand up to you once in a while (or if they're smart).

You can play a combat focused character with no cyberware or magic whatsoever if you so choose. I have done this.

None of the spells are useless. None seem totally broken, either. Compare to Force 6 stunball and Force 1 improved invisibility.

The hacking rules don't suck. Hackers are a part of the team now, instead of something everyone else has to work around.

[Azralon]

Well said, Clyde.

[mfb]

i would note that Clyde's first point is somewhat misstated. the reason weak security types can stand up to you once in a while is because of the lack of variability; stats and skills are confined to a narrower range, and the chance getting success (er, hit, whatever) never changes. that means that security types are much closer to PCs in terms of ability than they were in SR3 (and PCs are similarly closer to Ghosts/Wildcats/supar awsom bad guys du jour). moreover, in a fixed-TN system, high stats do guarantee more successes than in a variable-TN system such as SR3. a character with 24 dice in SR4 is going to succeed just about every single time he tries, no matter how difficult the task; a character with 24 dice in SR3 is going to succeed pretty often--unless the TN is 20.

and, really, you can say the same thing about SR3. give those weak security types some good security armor and high-end weapons, and run them intelligently, and they can give just about any group some serious trouble.

[Liper]

My favorite thing about sr3 was that danger WAS around every corner.

Go and pop a gang member and with just one luck of the dice, bam, you're withstanding whatever weapon they aimed at you.

[Ophis]

mfb:

What if you want somene who is really good at something to be able to succeed all the time? The problem with the high TN thing was that once you break 6 the probability goes all screwy. How well you do has little to do with your skill and more to do with one dice rolling six alot, beyond being more likely to get that first six high skills did nothing on high TN test. I got sick of the amount that low stealth characters beat high stealth characters on tests, surely the more skilled person should be consistantly better. You want to make something hard in SR4 pile on the mods (range, cover, moving target, bad lighting etc) and ramp up the threshold. Oh so a novice can't get lucky because he looses his pool (actually he can see edge), and the best shot in the world which 24 dice is more or less stands some chance. I like this in a system.

Liper:

In SR4 danger is still there. The ganger is much more liekly to survive that shot than in SR3 so more likely to shoot back...

[Cain]

Ophis, the problem is that things in SR4 can easily reach the point where low-skilled people have zero chance at accomplishing something. In SR3, you always had a chance, no matter how slim; but in SR4, if your (pool + edge) - modifiers is less than the threshold, you just can't succeed, or at least not without invoking the "lots of sixes" problem you mentioned.

SR4 has got its advantages. It's easier to read, easier to follow, and has working rigging/decking rules. OTOH, it has a really messed-up chargen system (I'm going with HB's review on this one) and favors one-trick ponies. Every actual SR$ character I've seen looks about the same, except with one or two super-maxed stat pools. Anything else just doesn't work out.

[Ophis]

One, sometimes I don't want less skilled people to be able to succeed. I sometimes want a situation when the specialist in a field shines, and only he can succeed, just the kinda games I run, usually I will avoid putting the threshold so high as to shut out the less skilled character, if they really want to succeed at the impossible test thay can always burn edge to get a crit success.

I've found characters look no more or less samey than SR3 characters, sure the skills are lower but most pc I've helped create are wholey different to each other. I do however play with a very none munchkin group so the whole min-max thing don't happen in my games(i'm lucky that way). I've found the chargen system to be very nice actually, easy to use and creates well rounded characters not one trick ponies. Yes you can probably get gross one trick ponies but I haven't seen it happen yet. Most of my players work on a "if your really good at one thing you won't get to use it" mindset, which I will say isn't entirely true but I do try to keep players on their toes.

I have found that 400 point doesn't give quite the char I want to run for (a bit weak for the craziness I go in for in games) so I use 450 for most games, I will probably run some games at 400 if I want to do the newbie runners thing. It has to sad though having read HBs review I wondered if we were reading the same gamebook...

[Azralon]

[Nkari]

Aye, now it is not death to a non troll pc to get shot, it will hurt but mostly no 1 shot wonders..

[Eyeless Blond]

My personal opinion is that SR4 is a very decently written draft of a first edition game system. There are some solid game mechanics ideas here, but many of them need to be playtested a little better. Layouts need a little work; moving the Qualities section from right in the middle of the chargen rules to the end is one of the more obvious fixes that can come out with a little editing work.

The point-buy system has gotten so much more labyrinthine, and yet is so much more unified into a single build point total rather than the odd abstracted bits in the SR3 system that it becomes a comparatively simple task to turn everything into stepped costs, effectively making the advancement system and the chargen system into one unified whole.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm enjoying this pre-beta release of New Shadowrun, and I look forward to SR4.5/SR5, when the rules will finally finish being properly developed. It's a shame I had to pay for it, but in this age of planned obsolescence what else can you do?