[X] My Assistant

[Mr. Unpronouncea...]

[James McMurray]

In SR3 you can default to an attribute if you have no skill. IIRC it's +2 to the target number.

In both systems a little kid killing you is pretty hard to have happen, but possible. Combat in SR4 is faster to me because you don't have to portion out your combat pool, making decisions with every single roll as to how much you should use and how much you should save. Also SR4 tends to be deadlier IMX. It's harder to flat out kill someone with a single shot unless you're really geared towards doing that, but it's also harder to totally avoid damage unless you're really geared towards doing that.

[Mr. Unpronouncea...]

Ah, that's right...attribute defaulting - forgot about that...but I think it was more like +4 or +6 to the TN. SR4 is still much more risky.

[stevebugge]

How much or little having a combat pool slowed things down really varied by player. But for players who have to carefully weigh the use of every combat pool die they have and who went out of the way to develop huge combat pools, and then had Karma Pools of 10+ on top of that, those could create major delays. Edge topping out at 8 for a Lucky Human reduces the number of times those decisions have to be made (I haven't figured out how to increase the decision making speed yet). As for SR4 being deadlier, I haven't noticed that yet but I have noticed that three entire classes of weapon (hold-out, light, and machine pistols) are no longer useless pieces of dead weight.

[mdynna]

I too have (so far) found SR4 combat is slower. However, the plain and simple fact is that SR4 combat has more rolls than SR3 did. The addition of the "bullet dodge" test for ranged combat means there's one extra roll that SR3 never had, so that's going to slow things down. I'm looking seriously at the "no reaction test, range is now a threshold" optional rule.

On the "don't change rules" side. Players should know their skills/rolls. Make sure they know what skill they're rolling, what its related attribute is, and the total Dice for both. One thing I did with SR3 and am starting to do with SR4 is "assign" certain modifiers to players and others to the GM. For instance, I can't always remember what gear a character has so I have told my players that the modifier for their gear (smartlink) is their responsibility to keep track of. Injury modifier is another one. Then all I need to tell them are the circumstances when those don't apply for whatever reason. Also, since the player's are keeping track of their skills, when it comes time to make a test I will just tell them the "net situational modifier." This speeds things up as it doesn't put all the responsibility on the GM.

[mfb]

huh? SR3 has a dodge test. it's optional, sure, but it's there.

[stevebugge]

[mdynna]

[phasmaphobic]

[Butterblume]

As in SR3, you don't dodge the bullet. You dodge the shot.

[Serbitar]

[phasmaphobic]

[Serbitar]

Inconsistent. Tests in SR4 are always opposed test if two entities (shooter, target) working against each other are involved.

[mrcatman]

Even though "Buying Hits" (SR4, pg.55) doesn't seem like it was made for this purpose, you could use that option in place of rolling for any tests your group finds the least exciting to roll.

If they get a kick out of rolling attack, ditch & damage dealt checks, then you could buy hits for damage soak checks to help speed things up a tiny bit.

Not sure how it will actually play out, but it seems better (to me, at least) than the alternate combat (pg. 69) armor reduces attack DV idea.

We also noticed that our mage didn't really need to roll when casting low force Heal spells outside of combat, because he had so many dice for casting and drain resist. This seems like a good application of the Buying Hits as well.

[Serbitar]

You could also not roll at all, but use the buying hit rule for every roll in combat . . .

[phasmaphobic]

[mrcatman]

[TBRMInsanity]

I recall reading somewhere about trading in dice for hits. Does anyone else read something along those lines?

[mrcatman]

[Serbitar]

@phasmophobic:

Rules need only 20% of combat time. GM and players desicions need the rest. If the GM wants to speed up combat, he has to press the players. Do not let them think 1 minute about what the want to do. Calculate the combat modifiers for them if they cant do it in 10 seconds. Do not let them "celebrate" every dice roll, there is nothing left to think about (no combat pool to distribute), they just have to roll.

In my expereince, a good GM can accelerate combat by a factor of, say, 3 if he wants to and is prepared. The most important things are fast combat modifier calculation and to spend no time on figuring out who can act next (write the complete sequence from first to last down, in the heat of battle just the initiative and passes wont do).

@mrcartman: I just wanted to show, that there is a reason why something is rolled. It is kind of unfair to let the shooter roll, but not the defender.