Hard Skill Limit, Is max rating 6 too low? Options

[mdynna]

As I was reading through the SR4 rules, I generally liked them. I think its worth it to convert just for the updates to the Matrix, as Deckers (Hackers) can finally be a member of the group.

My biggest concern, however, is the "hard" limit of 6 on skills. Does anyone else think this seems really low? I mean, you can have a starting character with a (couple) skill rating 5. That means they are one point away from the *maximum it can ever be*. I could see this as a problem because a lot of characters won't have much to look forward to. Back in SR3, your "typical" Street Sam had an SMG and Pistols of 6. the main objective of running that character was working him/her up to be a "gun god" with ratings of 10+ in those skills. Now, in SR4 the standard SS has Automatics and Pistols 5, with Agility 5. A few runs later and they have 6 in all of those and... then what?

Do you think SR4 characters have as much room for improvement as SR3?

[mintcar]

There are a lot more skills now. I´ve only made characters with 300 BP, and the characters in my groups have skills of 1 maybe 2, rare cases 3. Look at the descriptions of different skillvalues. 2 is concidered enough for an uneducated professonal. With 400 points I´m guessing characters go up to 2 or 3 rare cases 4 in skills if they don´t insist on extremely high values and take all the skills they want. The hard cap makes it more important to curb inflation, but I like it.

[stevebugge]

Reading the quick conversion rules it's quite obvious that they really intended to reduce the numbers by about a third. 4 is the new 6, allowing a character to start with an attribute at 5 or 6 under SR4 would be equivalent to allowing someone to start with a single attribute at 8 or 9 or two at 7. Same with skills, keep in mind that power level now a 6 is equivalent to 8 or 9 and the skill cap doesn't seem so bad.

[Gothic Rose]

[Guest_MK Ultra_*]

I like it, too. Whithout insulting anyone, gaming style depends after all, in my groups skills of 10+ would be real munchkin, it was rare even for very long term charakters, to have even 8. Thet being said, you have to take into acount, the change rate for Att & Skills from SR3 to SR4 is 3:2, so a 6 in SR4 would equal a 9 in SR3 and 7 (with aptitude) would be 10 in SR3. I think the hard cap willlead to more well rounded and realistic longterm characters, which is a good thing IMHO. It represents the real world better, to, when you´ve mastered one skill, branch out and learn others, not just go on forever with one specialisation like in Dragonball GTZ.
But then, it all depents on what gamingstyle you prefer, if you like a higly cinematic, action and dice laden game, just go for it and have fun. I wont think bad of you. One of my players would like to just go on specialising with most of his characters. But since he wont gm ever :S , he´s got to play in my world ;)
Sure, the players do influence the setting much, but most of the others are not this munchkinized either.
My flavor is more to the low and midpower gaming, so the hard cap sits well with me. Also, if you only have so much time to play, you non the less get the setisfaction of mastering your chosen specialization.

[Azralon]

[Kerberos]

[Azralon]

[Kerberos]

[mintcar]

The oposit has been claimed before. It will take much more testing to be sure.

[Kerberos]

[Ryu]

Any character always had the choice of specialization vs. a broader skillset. You can now get very close to the theoretical limit right out of the gates of character generation. So what? It was never a good plan for "character" advancement to put all karma in one skill, even if Firearms, Sorcery and Computers made that an efficient choice for quite a few skill-levels.

What do you want to play? Start out as the best and you stay the best, want to become the best, stay below. Start professional (Level 4). 3 Skill Levels and one positive quality to go. Consider secondary skills and knowledge skills that pop up along your path to power. Consider attributes (My sammie needs 70kp on those alone, thats several months of playing!)

[mfb]

[ThatSzechuan]

[Guest_MK Ultra_*]

Why are sammies good in social tests and faces good in dodging? :wobble:

I agree with you ThatSzechuan. Adept means Specialist, so they shuld be abled to boost a small field to extraordinary levels, while being less versatile. Because, they won´t opt for many cybertoys and can´t spare the karma to get all the skills, needing it for the one skill and the magic that boosts it.

[emo samurai]

There's the improved skill adept power; does that have much of a cap, or is it limited only by one's magic rating, too? And kinesics is great; once you have good skills and charisma, you can basically mind control Damien Knight into giving you his shares in Ares by shaking his hand; as far as I can see, there is NO good way to boost your willpower dice pools to counteract it.

Oh, and maybe you could have the extroadinary skill thing break the skill limit instead of raising it by 1.

[Guest_MK Ultra_*]

The max for skill boost is actual skill level/2.

Well you might not get his shares, but you sure can raise hell with this kind of social skill pools. You´d have a "Dead not alive, and shoot first don´t bother about talking"-contract on your head real soon, if you are abusing this to blatently.

[Azralon]

No adept power can have a rating higher than the adept's Magic, as well.

[mdynna]

I totally agree. Voluntarily capping your character just so they have room for advancement in the future means that the system is broken. I've run through the character creation process a few times now and every time I make a Street Sam/Gun Guy I end up *looking* for things to spend BP on. Why should the player *have* to take Automatics at 3 if they can put it at 5? I don't consider this "munching", its just making your character good at what they do. In SR3 who didn't have a Decker with a Computer of 6? Or a Sammie with an SMG 6? Or a Mage with Sorcery 6? Now in SR4 there are some cases where there are more skills: Magic and Hacking come to mind. There are 3 or 4 skills in those areas where characters should be really good. On the other side of the coin is "gun guys". SMGs, Assualt Rifles, and Machine Pistols got merged into "Automatics". So your average Sammie has less skills in their area of expertice.

In the end, though, there's an easy fix: after character creation, eliminate the skill limits. Maybe you double the karma cost for above 6 (or above related attrib) but other than that, let them advance away.

[Gothic Rose]

[Grinder]

I don't like the skill cap at all, but haven't been able to test it (haven't run a longer campaign of SR4). I'll use it at first, but when i don'T feel comfortable with it, i'll drop the rule eventually.
In SR3 we didn't have a skill cap at all, but only a few chars had skills above 7 - and if so, only one or two skills. Most had enough other fields to sepnd karma or/and wanted to have more skills at 5 or 6 then being a one-trick-pony for any long.

[Azralon]

[mintcar]

Really. Try doing this: Make starting characters with 300BP and allow for 200BP attributes. This creates starting characters that makes sense according to the descriptions of attribute- and skill values. When it comes to attributes, 2 is concidered sub-par. When it comes to skills, you are actually initiated in the area. Sure, you are just as sub-par compaired to other practitioners. But you are highly superior to the average person that never did it, whatever it is. That´s the difference. Realisticly by the skill descriptions, starting characters shouldn´t have more than 1 or 2 in most skills.

If you want to skip the gutter-punk stage, 400BP is propably good for professional shadowrunners. In that case I can surely agree that a strict, old fasioned street samurai does have far to easy a time to max out their potential. If they´re willing to focus on just a few weapons and don´t want to do any break ins, healing, driving, gun-smithing on the side, they can have a hard time finding places to spend the points. If you want to hack or do magic you have so many skills to think of that you´ll propably have to worry about completing your selection with Karma, rather than improving your main skill. Street samurai will have to use their freedom from BP/Karma sinks like magic and hacking for something. Magicans have 8 special skills, hackers have 7 or 8 not sure, then they have to be able to survive in combat reasonably too. What do you propose should be equally obligatory skills for street sam? No, the good thing with that character type is the simplicity that lets you do what you want after making yourself sufficiently bad-ass. Get a hobby you killer-nerds! :P

[MaxMahem]

In my experience a skill rating of 6 is a fine hardlimit for characters. A character with a 6 in a skill and a 6 (or possibly more) in it's linked attribute has 12 dice in his pool. That gives him a good chance of success even at extremely difficult tasks, which have a Threshold of 4.

[Glyph]

Like BeCKS (which it seems to heavily borrow from), the SR4 character generation system makes starting out maxed out in one area possible, but disproportionately expensive. Why spend 18 build points (Aptitude plus double the normal cost for a point) to go from 6 to 7 in a skill, when you could add a new skill of 4 with a specialization instead? I'm still experimenting with the rules, but I have roughed out some characters. I will often start out maxing out something, then dropping it back down, because there are other useful things that I can add to the character more cost-effectively. With half of your points usually being spent on Attributes, and with so many useful skills, it's tempting to be more of a generalist - and I tended to gravitate more towards specialists in SR3.

But I still think that the skill maximum should not be something you can get at the very start of the game. You should be able to improve vertically as well as horizontally! And subsequent character advancement can lead to an unrealistic number of paragons - people who are nearly the best there is at lots of skills.