flovor text vs die results Options

[shardoglase]

I'm not going to say its a problem because I have fun playing the game. But in this system the results you usually get from your dice dont seem to match the expectations from the flavor text. As an example a physical adept is supposed to be capable of things a mundane couldnt dream of pulling off. Then I look at imrproved ability and go at best 3 extra dice, 3 extra dice with a TN of 5 mean usually 1 extra success.

1 extra success thats not pulling off the fantastic thats being marginally better than the mundane, heck any time the mundane gets lucky(rolled good) he does just as good or better. So a pysad is slightly better than a mundane except when the mundane is having a fairly good day, not best day of his life just pretty good.

Heck the difference between top notch at a skill and the average in the skill is 3 dice which means 1 success which means very little. About the only time it seems to matter is when there are tons of penalties involved. The best dont seem to pull off the fantastic, the pull off the average in bad situations.

Again I'm not sure this is even a problem since we have fun, but it would be cool if the best could seem like the best more. If this does become a problem, I just dont know what to do. Drop the TN to 4, remove skill caps, return the improved ability power to pre-errata form where it could be up to skill level instead of up to 1/2 skill level. Maybe some of these, all of these.

[Garrowolf]

Since it's magic you could replace the extra dice with extra hits. You still have a chance of glitches and not meeting some thresholds but over all you would do better. I would reduce the number of dice they get verses hits or make it more expensive or something.

[shardoglase]

If it was just magic, I could do that. My point is it applies to lots of other things, a skill of 6 is the best of the rest, a skill of 3 is just professional. The best of the rest on average gets only 1 more success than mr average professional. It just seems kind of odd. Now sure the best might have good stats and be tweaked a bunch so this gap widdens. But I guess it just seems wierd to me that 3 extra dice the difference between a average pro, and mr best of the rest is so small in effect.

Its not effecting game play in any negative way that I'm aware of or at least it hasn't yet, it just seems a bit wierd. Maybe I'm just noticing it since no one has a tweaked out character there all just slightly above average pros. So far there havent been any instsant kills from 20+ dice master whatever. It is just a few extra dice one way or the other and whoever has the couple extra dice edge usually does a little bit better. But a few dice should seem like a lot since a few dice is the difference between average pro and best of the rest, a few dice is the most a physad is getting from improved ability. A few dice seems like it should be a big deal, but its not.

[kzt]

[laughingowl]

Remember the intent is not a 'super-heros' game.

Magic isnt meant to be the 'end-all be all' but does make a person notably better.

look at any of the uber X threads and 90% likely it will be an Adept :-) (unless it is a full-blown mage).

Now I will say the hard-caps on SR do make it so that even elite prime+++++ runners are only moderately better then green runners in their 'focus', the primes are just ALOT more rounded out.

SR4 does help limit the 'super-hero' aspect that older verision could get with time/karma/money after character creation.

[laughingowl]

YEah the fixed caps do limit the range of 'newbie - professional - expert)

As mentioend, look at the table on page 69.


1) Consider the skill rating limits total hits line. This alone can make a HUGE differne in a skill 3 and a skill 6. on the potential for effect.

2) Look at changing the rule of 6. If you want 'professionals' to be better. Considering allowing: any dice from 'skills' (and possibly magic/ware/feats that add to skills) to always follow the rule of 6. (requires tracking attribute dice and skill dice seperately but gives 'skill' alot more bang for the buck).

3) Another option to open up the 'range' some is allow 'team-worker' test to be done by the same individual'. It can 'slow' the game down alot, unless carefully thought out and perhaps 'generalized'

But instead of just being a gun-bunny
Agility 9, Pistols 6.

Look at doing such things a:


Knowledge Skill: Close Quarters Combat Tactics

Now the 'Special Force Expert' Makes the first test and can get an extra die for his 'shots' due to better use/understanding of tactics.

It will slow the game down (a littel if you spend a fair amount of time planning the system up front and making it somewhat rigid) or lot (if you allow rolls (as oposed to automatic sucesses) and allow adlibing what skills might 'apply'

But can aid considerably 'expierenced' characters versus new green characters.

All (most obviously the last) would be house rules.. but have the base work laid out in RAW.....

[Garrowolf]

I saw a house rule somewhere that said your cap on your roll was your skill.

I personally limit the number of successes to the number of the dice pool but use a more cinematic rule of six. You always get to reroll 6s once but if you are using Edge then 6s are automatically two successes to the limit of the dice pool.

You could use your dice from the adept power like edge dice all the time. Basically think of the magical bonus to be guided more then normal effects.

You could change the ratio for trading hits if your skill is above say 4.

The other thing you could do is reduce the threshold on certain rolls for highly experienced characters or allow their rolls to have special effects.

Another thing you could do which might make things more complicated is get a different color dice for attributes then skills then lower the TN to 4 on the skill dice.

As for adepts being superhuman, cybered characters are much less balenced then adepts. They cost very little in karma to have much more. They are easier to upgrade and are harder to hurt. Besides Adepts are representing suerhuman characters in the first place. That's the point.

[deek]

In the RAW optional rules, it suggests having a skill limit to total successes of rating x 2. Serbitar suggested a rule of rating + 1, for the cap, which actually is a lot more realistic when you start looking at the numbers and probabilities.

In my current game, we have been using a skill cap of rating + 1. I just created a new positive quality that allows a character with the Aptitude quality to change the skill cap to rating x 2 (cost of 10 BP or 20 Karma).

This has worked great in our group. It really shows a difference between someone with a rating 1 skill and a rating 6. It also caps a defaulting skill to 1 total success. Which to me and my group, makes sense...

[Lantzer]

deek, bear in mind that those house rules mean that a character with no perception skill (who could still be tossing 6-9 dice due to Intuition and bonus dice) will be incapable of noticing a guy walking down the street.

A normal perception check has a threshold of 2.

[kzt]

[deek]

[Mistwalker]

I have to agree with Deek,

For a lot of things, you don't need to make a perception check. Does the traffic sign have graffity on it? Yes. Is the cop armed? Yes, pistol in the holster.

But, you would need to be able to see/notice small details (perception). Hidden in the graffity is a message. The gun in the holster is the wrong type for Knight Errant.

It's all in the details.

[Lantzer]

A quibble, Mist - I was just going by the rules. Seeing/Noticing small details is actually a higher threshhold. Big obvious things are threshold 1.

You make perception tests when it _matters_ - for things that are easy to notice and and things that are not. When it doesn't matter you can hand wave it.

So for an example (I'm not sure on the precise thresholds - I dont have my book handy.)
So is the cop armed? 2 hits, sure.
3 hits - the holster is unbuckled and ready to draw
4 hits - its the wrong kind of gun

When the cop is in a crowd, add more hits to the threshhold.
If the cop has the new day-glow orange uniforms and is shouting into a bullhorn, subtract hits from the threshold.

Busy chatting up your Johnson at the time? -2 dice to the pool, but the threshholds don't change. Dark out? Noisy? subtract visibility penalties from the dice pool, but again leave the thresholds alone.

[Crusher Bob]

Your thresholds are way out of line, imho. getting 4 sucesses with any regularity would basically require the pinnacle of human perception (12 dice). The sucess percentages for 'profesional' skill level are:

0 ~9%
1 ~ 26%
2 ~ 33%
3 ~ 22%
4 ~ 8%
5 ~ 2%
6 ~ 0

So, someone whose job it is to notice stuff (like say, a bodyguard) would only notice that someone was openly carrying a weapon around 65% of the time.

[WhiskeyMac]

That makes sense though. You can't always see something everytime you look, even if you know it's there. Kinda like those magic eye puzzles or those flippable multi-picture collage things. The one that springs to mind is the old lady/young lady picture. I know both are there but it takes me time (more perception tests) to discern between the two (successes). I only called for perceptions tests if it was important to the storyline, the players requested more information about an area/target or I just wanted to make them sweat. :D

[Crusher Bob]

From a game design point of view, I'm generally in favor of PCs with a professional level of skill in something doing simple things automatically. Imagine if you were in a game, had a 'prefessional' level of perception, and some guy openly carrying a weapon walked up to you without you noticing. Either the GM is screwing with you, or your professional level of perception just sucks ass. Your next character is going to have 'expert' levels of perception. Why? so you don't look like a gimp again.

This kind of feedback loop is what makes players want to have superhuman levels of skill in many things, haveing only professional skill is usually not good enough, even for simple things.

[blakkie]

[Crusher Bob]

More than 12 dice is greater than human perceiption. If your adept has a perceiption of 20 dice, then he should be able to notice thing that an unmodified human has no chance of noticing.

[Garrowolf]

An adept with a 20 perception could even notice that he was a character in a RPG!


"Wait! I hear that strange dice sound in my head again!"

"That shouldn't have worked!??! Has somebody changed the rules of physics on us?"

"Has anybody else noticed that life seems to be running more stream lined but the available equipment in stores has dropped considerably?"

[Inu]

Just because it's possible to boost your dice pools up that high, doesn't mean the system should require you to do so... unless what you're doing is truly superhuman. That is the way of White Wolf, my frieds, where to guard against twinks they guaranteed that everyone would become one. We do not want to go that way.

So yes, while 20 dice is possible, even at chargen, I'd rather have a 'regularly achievable by a skilled yet normal, unmodified human' threshold be 1-3, not 4-5.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[blakkie]

[Critias]

Uhh, no, Blakkie. By definition, that's mediocre. That's the average. The human norm. An Intuition of 3, and no skill points -- ta-da, welcome to the world of mediocrity.

A 12 is the best 99% of humans will ever get at something. The other 1% will have the Qualities needed for a 14, instead (but statistically 2 dice isn't all that huge a difference, and not-really-ironically that's the original poster's point).

The core mechanic of the game, or at least the flavor text attached to that core mechanic, should be balanced not just around the uber min/maxed munchkin with every piece of gear, the best attributes, the most twinked out edges and flaws, and stacked technological and magical enhancements, but balanced around the "good but not ridiculously great" power scale. Why? Because all that magic and cyberware pushes you into the realm of the superhuman, by definition. And since we don't have those superhumans in real life, those superhuman skill levels shouldn't be required by the probability curve of a game system in order to pull of routine, or even difficult, tasks that people in real life are capable of.

If your average beat cop in real life can spot someone carrying a gun with fair reliability, for instance, then you average beat cop in Shadowrun (using the core stats given for an average beat cop) should be able to do the same. It shouldn't take a 7 attribute, a 7 skill, maxed out visual modifications through technology, a quickened spell providing further boosts, and the expenditure of an above-average Edge point to pull it off.

[blakkie]

[Shrike30]