What do you like about SR4 and what changes?, SR1, 2 and 3 not included! Options

[Deadjester]

Idea behind this is to see what others have thought of that I have not so that I may get ideas for impoving our groups gaming. Its not about compairsions to other versions.

So off the top of my head.

I like the general idea behind SR4. It seems pretty straight foward and easy to change to ones needs.
I like the build system much better.
I love how the skills are broken up and seem to add more to the chars for roleplaying. I love the defaulting off of attributes and how attributes help your skills.

Dislikes are the combat formula. I don't like how AP and Power on ammo and hits are done vs Armor.
Skill caps. I think with the present build system skill caps, that the upper skill caps should have been 2 to 4 points higher higher and that Legendary should mean more then it does, maybe with a +2 or +3 added to the high end skill caps due to the present dice effects.
Don't like how stun vs damage works.

[FrankTrollman]

I like all kinds of things. Too much to enumerate in one post. Of more interest, I think, is what I would change.

Dislikes:

Skill Costs vs. Attribute Costs. Skills are too expensive for what they do. Having Attribute cost about twice what Skills do is a legacy from back when they did different things. The relative usefulness of Charisma vs. Ettiquette has changed a lot, the costs should reflect that. Skills should cost half of what they do now.

Karma Costs. There's no reason to still have these at all. They should go away and people should buy their bonuses with Build Points just as they build their starting characters with them. Karma is a legacy that holds the game back, it should have been dropped with the Hacking Pool.

Conjuring/Compiling Drain: Too random, making it too meaningless most of the time and too lethal when bad luck rears its head. A better drain code is 1/2 Force/Rating plus Spirit/Sprite's resistance hits. Keeps the flavor, but makes characters get a little drained more often and take no drain and lethal drain less often.

The whole idea of Unbound Spirits on Remote Service being technically uncontrolled. That was just a bad idea all around and should have been dropped.

The Hacking Dicepool. Program + Skill is simply not the way things work in Shadowrun, and it leads to script kiddy twinkism. A better system is Logic + Skill, hits capped by relevent Program.

Hardened Armor. Enemies and vehicles with large amounts of Hardened Armor have two states: unharmed and dead. That's really not very dramatic at all. I prefer simply having Hardened Armor reduce DV by its rating, causing large amounts of hardened armor to still allow through small amounts of damage. Of course, this change necessitates the reduction of many hardened armor sources - once this house rule is made, most things need to have their armor halved (especially spirits).

-Frank

[Dv84good]

I dislike the power of magic
I am going to take Body + Will+ Essence/3/4 which will be used to give mundane a spell theshold.

says Frank can you give an example of what you would do for character advancement after chargen instead of Karma

[Cain]

I'll start off with the positives:

• A very well-written ruleset. The basic rules are presented in a very clear, easy to follow format. They're not actually any simpler, but they're presented so well, they're much easier to absorb and put into use.
• The ability to build a tradition.
• Vehicle rules that are actually playable.
• A strong attempt to integrate deckers with the main team.
• Inclusion of Edges/Flaws, Initiation, and high-grade 'ware in the base book. Now everyone has full advancement possibilities without needing extra books.
• Easily scaled opposition stats in the NPC section.

Now, for the things I don't like:

• Skill+Attribute vs fixed TN looks too close to nWoD.
  
• A linear probability curve encourages mathematics instead of tactics.
  
• Edge is overpowered, and front-loads too easily.
  
• Longshot tests don't take skill into account in the slightest.
  
• Teamwork tests have too much potential for abuse.
  
• Character creation is too complicated, too fiddly, too confusingly laid out, and takes way the hell too long.
  
• The chargen skill and attribute caps are useless to prevent abuse, but do wonders for screwing up character concepts.
  
• Generalists are not very well balanced against well-made hyperspecialists.
  
• Edges/Flaws aren't very well balanced against one another.
  
• The attribute and skill range is too compressed.
  
• The build-a-tradition rules are low in flavor, and encourages characters to overload Intuition.
  
• There are too many different kinds of combat, which are totally incompatible with one another.
  
• Variable damage boxes smacks too much of hit points, and the loss of damage codes adds an extra step to combat.
  
• Ranged and Melee combat are overloaded with options, while matrix and astral combat are restricted to: "I try and hit him again".
  
• There's no reason to use your wireless connection to link your gear--skinlinks can handle all of that.
  
• Using more than one commlink breaks the system, but can't be fixed without breaking suspension of disbelief.
  
• How to accept total loss of privacy as becoming completely acceptable in the three years the new Matrix has been in place.
  
• Cyberlimbs are utterly useless except as carrying cases, and even then, they're not very much use.
  Edit:
• The on-again, off-again shadowslang.
• Instead of futuristic or cyberpunk terminology, we get terms lifted from the WinXP users manual.

My biggest problem, however, is with the core mechanic. For years, I've followed the mantra: "Don't tell the players it's impossible, always let them roll." It's led to some of the most tense scenes I've ever encountered, as players sweat it out hoping they'll get lucky. I believe in encouraging players to try, no matter what happens; giving up just isn't any fun, and fun is what a game is all about.

What drives me nuts about SR4 is that once you've dropped your pool to zero, it's entirely up to your Edge. Skill doesn't matter anymore. Also, if you don't have enough Edge left-- or a high enough Edge to meet the threshold-- you can't roll at all. You can't even try, and hope; you can't bet everything you've got on one last prayer; you can only lie down and give up. What's more, you can't fix this without completely overhauling the core mechanic-- we could go nWoD, and always give them one dice to roll, with an increased chance of failure; but then we'd run into the problem of making longshot tests totally unnecessary, and thus a good part of the Edge mechanic. And we'd still have the munchkinous problem of piling on the modifiers, since the odds don't matter anymore: it doesn't matter if you're at -1, or -101, you still have the exact same odds of succeding.

[Oracle]

[Grinder]

[Ophis]

What I like

The new skill set up in general
The new tradition system ( I play with people well versed in real world "magic" so no flavor issues)
The damage system (much easier to grade, some characters can take more than others in straight damage)
The Initation/metamagic stuff
The reduced cyber costs
Character gen
Metahuman stat mods
New matrix rules
The slower progression


What I dislike

cyberlimbs still don't quite work right
the ammo (did they even playtest this bit?)
the all or nothing power of magic
the really quick healing times (only from practiculy dead)
the lack of sourcebooks (I want my crunch n fluff)
The speed for hitting being awesome (unless your players are sensible)

[Dashifen]

[stevebugge]

[Dashifen]

Well done. I forget about that one.

[mdynna]

What I like:

WIRELESS RULES AND HACKING (biggest reason for SR4 IMHO)
Reduction in the number of kinds of tests
Reduction in power of starting char Magicians
Flexibiliy of character creation
Skill groups
Melee only characters appear more playable
Better overall integration of rules

What I don't like:
Skill caps, and the enormous compression of scale this gives*
Horrendously munchable Flaws (Incompetent anyone?)
Impossible tasks (Dice pool reduced to <= 0)
Skimpy Rigger rules (vehicle mod, the hallmark of Riggers is now given a grand total of 8 lines in the book, with no supplement on the horizon)
Enormous reduction in gear costs
Everyone complaining about Skinlink**

* Just wrote a quick program: an "average" human with a DP of 6 in a skill vs. a "best in the world" human with a DP of 13 (6 attrib, 7 skill). In 100,000 opposed tests the average guy won or tied 18%. That means me vs. Joe Montana throwing a football, I will do it at least as well as him 18% of the time. I don't think so.

** It is not as powerful/useful as everyone is making it. All a PC needs to do is say to the GM "All my PAN devices are configured to respond only to my Commlink's Access ID". Done. Your devices are now unhackable unless your Commlink is breached. The only thing Skinlink gives you is resistance to ECM.

[Lindt]

Likes:
Wireless matrix.
A semi functional automotive combat system.
Cars with more body then your avg. troll.
Scaleable magic system.
Skill groups.

Dislikes:
Impossibilities (dice pools <=0)
No more riggers!
The open proliferaton of otaku and removal of fading.
The WHOLE Att+skill concept.
Hackers.
The fact that the matrix rules still are trash.
The FORCED reduction in the power level of the game.
Magical traditions pretty much heaved out the window.

Oh, and everything else that I have read so far.

[Cain]

[JongWK]

You mean like Edge?

[Cain]

No. Edge is a fixed bonus. Someone who likes a wilder style of play would want chances instead of fixed bonuses. Like I said, it's a personal playstyle preference. SR4 can't possibly cater to them all, although I admit that I can't see any easy way to adapt it to a more freewheeling initiative system.

[FrankTrollman]

[Shrike30]

For the group thing, you could just say that every success beyond the 4th would be one more of the goons who gets an extra pass (you roll 6 hits on the init check, 2 of the goons get an extra pass). Prevents absolute insanity.

[Brahm]

[Dv84good]

[hobgoblin]

so 18% of the time it matched a world class person. maybe the world class had a bad day while luck was smiling on the avarage joe?

it still leaves 82% of the tests where the world class outperformed mister joe...

[Brahm]

[FrankTrollman]

Well, also remember that someone who "Has played catch with friends in the backyard" is an example of a character with a skill of zero. The character with a throwing of 3 is an NCAA Division III quarterback.

So Alex Kofoed has an 18% chance of pulling off a play as good as Joe Montana. I can buy that. Over the course of a game, you'd still rather have Joe.

-Frank

[IAmMarauder]

[Cain]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Using that example, you don't do yourself a favor - in programming, that's a pretty real possibility. ;)