I know Kung Fu...., Are skills easier in this game? Options

[mrobviousjosh]

I guess part of what I'm saying here is...okay, take away all my dice and I'll use 1 edge for another X dice (X being your edge rating) and then get to use edge to reroll if I don't like what I see. I realize you buy edge in this system as opposed to Karma, but it also seems significantly stronger in this version. But, yeah, the primary premise is that, statistically it's easier to hit 5s than other numbers. As a quick example, say someone is hiding from me in SR3. I roll against the open test he produced with Stealth and, depending on the number of successes on my perception test, I may or may not know exactly what I see (in the core SR3 book 1 success relates to "you know something is there"). In that sense, threshold was already being used in SR3 on some tests. In an opposed test like this, his number of successes becomes my threshold but it still seems much easier to meet a harder difficulty than to have a couple of dice meet an insane TN. Like I said, maybe I'm just not used to the new system yet.

[Shrike30]

It's my understanding you can't use Edge more than once per roll (meaning you couldn't take a Long Shot and then reroll failures). If that's the case, it'd limit your ability to do off-the-wall stuff somewhat.

[Dashifen]

That's the way I understand it.

[James McMurray]

You may not want to use open tests as an example, as they are capable of creating some incredibly whacky results. It's a running joke in my group that the guy who specialized in stealth in SR3 rarely had the highest stealth checks.

It is definitely easier to spot someone using stealth in SR4 because of the inability to get mildly lucky and have a TN of 15.

[mrobviousjosh]

That's very true and, yes, the rule of six made a lot of the TNs really high; in my opinion it's a lot like the skill system in D&D where a roll of nat. 20 means you could theoretically beat a level 4 Artisan on a skillcheck because he only has a +10 and rolls low. I wasn't aware of the inability to use edge more than once per action but that does make sense (though I thought I read something about doubling it if you use it more than once and continue doubling if you keep using it to reroll an action- I think that mechanic was also in SR3, though I have neither book in front of me). It may generally be easier to spot someone in SR4 but you also have to think about how perception is now a skill.

[James McMurray]

The doubling was SR3.

Perception now being a skill makes it easier to spot someone.

[mrobviousjosh]

Yeah, I guess that makes sense, since you're rolling stat vs. skill. I'm just used to having 6 dice for 3rd edition and, maybe, that many in 4th. Although, that's part of where the TN 5 bugs me. Again, maybe I'm just adjusting.

[James McMurray]

Against an opponent's skill 3 in SR3 you've got pretty good odds of ending up with TN 5 or 6.

[Voran]

I do rather like the "take 10" kinda approach of Sr4 skills, helps speed things up. It'd be nice if they incorporated a combat skill version of that too. Like, every 6 dice you can pull an automatic hit for combat situations.

[Cain]

The problem isn't just the "impossible task" bit, it's also the "Edge as Uberstat" thing that makes the game really stop working. Basically, after a certain point, it doesn't matter what you do, what modifiers you pile on-- you will have the same chance of succeeding, no matter what.

For example, let's take Mr. Lucky against Super-Marksman. Between visibility penalties, movement penalties, and whatever other penalties you want to toss at him, Mr. Marksman has been reduced to a dice pool of 0. He can't make the shot without spending Edge; and with his Edge of 1, he's not likely to make it. So, he hands his rifle off to Mr. Lucky. Mr. Lucky doesn't even have the rifles skill, kicks the thing into burst-fire mode, happens to have a serious wound, and decides to call a shot to bypass 10 points of armor. He has an Edge of 8, so he's likely to roll at least two successes, probably three.

Because the dice pool cannot drop below zero, once you're into longshot territory, you may as well go for the most extreme trick possible. If your edge is high, it becomes disturbingly easy to make it; if your edge is low or out, it becomes effectively impossible. Thus, harder tasks are easier, while easier tasks are harder. (If we assume that Mr. Lucky has Quickness 3, then even if he spends Edge, he'll have less dice than Mr. Marksman, who likely has Quickness 7, Rifles 7. Even invoking the rule of six, Mr. Lucky will probably score less successes.)

[James McMurray]

Which is easily countered by teh GM deciding to also apply some penalties after edge. But yeah, many people think that's a problem.

[Moon-Hawk]

I don't understand. The edge dice in the longshot test are, by definition, applied after all penalties. You can't add more penalties after adge.

[James McMurray]

What I'm saying is that if someone sees they're down to edge and wants to "cheese the system" by adding 500 more modifiers to their shot because it can't go lower than edge, you'll need to slightly modify the rules to accomodate that sort of rules lawyer mentality. One option is to somehow have modifiers carry over to the edge roll as well. Not sure what a good ratio would be, maybe 2 to 1?

[Cain]

[James McMurray]

Sounds interesting (the +1 TN for longshots), but what makes the rest necessary? If the problem is that someone can stack on a bunch of modifiers once they hit the longshot test portion, why change anything beyond the longshot test itself?

[Cain]

Well, by guaranteeing 1 die, we eliminate the impossible roll situation; you've always got a chance, however slim. Also, since we're increasing the TN, we need to allow 6's to explode, otherwise a -2 modifier makes the task effectively impossible, regardless of your Edge. If the TN jumps to 8, you'll need an exploding 6 to hit it.

If we do this, we have to allow exploding 6's for normal rolls as well, otherwise we end up right back where we started: players deliberately pushing things into longshot territory in order to get a benefit. So, we may as well be fair and allow it for everyone. Of course, by the time we've gone this far, we've pretty much abandoned the SR4 core mechanics-- we're effectively using a SR3 variant with a default TN of 5.

[James McMurray]

So you think people will push things so they can get one die to roll in the hopes for a 6 rather than try and make normal rolls when they can? Interesting.

[James McMurray]

I'd be interested in an example of when that would be a good thing. For instance:

My penalties are such that I've got a normal roll. Worst case scenario I've got a single die at TN 5. Why on earth would I want to pile on penalties just so I can spend an edge and try to roll an 8 instead?

[Apathy]

[James McMurray]

We'd moved past that part. The discussion now is his idea that more dice penalties would up the TN on the last remaining die on the long shot test (with penalties also applying to the edge dice pool). So your situation would drop the guy to his edge pool. If he tosses more modifiers on he could go down to one edge die. Any further modifiers increase the TN from 5 to 6 or more.

So if he was at 0 normal dice and 3 edge dice then decided to try and bypass an armor rating of 9 he'd have to go down to a single longshot die with a target number of 11.

My question is why would you toss even more penalties on top of that.

My second question was why would that necessitate opening up exploding dice everywhere (instead of just inside the lognshot test).

[captainwhizz]

can't you just carry on the negative modifiers?

dice pool of 8.
-15 modifier to the dice pool.
character has Edge of 5- too bad character.


or say that once they've declared Edge use, no changes to the action are allowed?

if you declare you're firing two shots from an AK-47 on semi-automatic and find out you need you to use Edge dice, you can't suddenly decide that you're firing on full-auto whilst ice skating and baking a cake.

[James McMurray]

You could do that, but Cain has severe problems with actions that are impossible because of dice pool penalties.

You already can't change the action you've declared, but a lot of folks can add up the relevant dice modifiers in their head and know they are going to need edge.

Note: this hasn't been a problem in my games, so it's really just a thought experiment for me. That and part of the ongoing back and forth between Cain and myself. :)

[captainwhizz]

also, why are people talking about target numbers?
I thought that SR4 was all successes on 5+, and thresholds? aren't target numbers a thing of the past?

[James McMurray]

His response to the longshot problem was to have longshot tests able to lose dice, but always leave at elast one. to continue makingt he test harder, increase the target number instead of getting rid of the last die.

I'm still wondering if my questions will get answered. And for the record, if I were to find myself in a game where someone was trying to abuse the longshot test rules by adding tons of modifiers and then relying on their edge dice to see them through, I'd definitely test this option out. I didn't want people to think that I hate everything Cain related. ;)

[FrankTrollman]

I honestly don't see the problem of people abusing Longshot tests. Let's consider the be-all and end-all of longshot tests: shooting an armored personel carrier.

The Citymaster has 20 points of hardened armor, which means that your weapons are useless, and any weapon capable of doing it any significant damage (that is to say: one coming through with a DV of 21+) is more than likely going to turn the vehicle into a pile of softly glowing slag. So what do you do? You take a called shot, that's what!

By taking a dice pool penalty equal to the vehicle's armor rating (so -20 dice), you can ignore the armor, and have your hit resisted with Body alone. That is, you would if it weren't for the fact that there's no way in hell that you're going to have a dicepool left over after taking a penalty that large.

So you take a longshot. You spend an Edge and you roll a couple of dice, maybe you even hit. Now your weapon does its base DV (somewhere between 5 for a heavy pistol and 8 for a sniper rifle), and does an extra DV or three for your hits on the longshot attack test. And now the vehicle resists with its Body of 16, and probably gets 5 or 6 hits, and you might not have even done any damage with your heavy pistol.

Yeah. I really honestly fail to see how that's "abuse". You spend an Edge and you shoot your bullet into the Citymaster and quite possibly... cause some minor damage to the undercarriage. Holy crap, I think my sarcasm circuits just blew. I have no idea why people would want to hose characters doing that, it's really not a big deal.

-Frank