Reasonable Dice Pools Options

[Noctum]

I have notice that most players want to throw as many dice as possible, and with the new rules there is a great deal of room for Min/Maxing. But as a reasonable game master I Have limited y players to around a Dice pool of 12. With 12 dice they will average 4 hits and be able to make most thresholds.

So if you were a player in my game how would you Rationalize a dice pool of more than 12 dice. Consider before you answer, That the averages for "real" people are around 7 to 9 dice, for instance a Street cop with Agility 4 Pistols 3 and a Smartlink is a Dead Shot with his Pistol (9 Dice is three below my Cap).

[toturi]

RAW allows it. That's all the reasonable rationale I need. Anything else means I am an unreasonable GM.

[Jaid]

i was against the hard caps of SR4 being possible straight from chargen. i am even more opposed to them being *easily* obtained with very little min/maxing involved. (for example, a fairly standard hacker will have programs at rating 5 and a hacking skill at 5, for example. throw in hotsim, and they are no longer able to improve)

add in the fact that players are supposed to start off exceptional people, and that they can be augmented beyond human levels of possibility, and it just gets even more of a limitation. if your players would min/max to get obscenely high dicepools, they're still gonna min/max, only now they're going to go for 12 in everything. so instead of being the best in the world at one thing, now they'll be the best in the world at 5.

consider also that many modifiers can easily bring dice pools to much higher levels (for example, a chargen hacker would likely get no use out of codeslinger. a chargen elven face likely won't ever need more than 2 points in each social skill. and so on)

if min/maxing is a problem with your group, you need to either:

1) switch to a less min/max exploitable chargen system... for example, serbitar's karma chargen, or frank's BP after-chargen advancement.

2) *talk* to your players. tell them that you want to see in their characters, what sort of game you'll be playing etc. in the end, no matter *what* system you use, it *can* be min/maxed. there are always choices that will be "the best" no matter what you do. if you limit the dice pool to 12, then people will just figure out a way to hit that limit with the least possible resources, and there will still be min/maxing.

personally, i recommend either using the second one, or using both (in fact, it is my opinion that the chargen rules and the advancement rules should be unified whether or not you have min/maxing issues in your group, but that's up to you)

[Glyph]

The problem with someone with 12 dice being able to get 4 hits "on average" is that you are assuming both optimal conditions (no penalties) and that the target of the skill gets no successes. So 4 hits does not translate to 4 net successes.

A dice pool of more than 12 dice should not be something a player needs to "rationalize", beyond "My character is a shadowrunner". Even some of the archetypes, which are middling (at best) examples, get more than 12 dice.

And they need that crushing advantage, because in a game of randomly rolled dice, you will quickly get killed if every fight is a statistically "even" one. And there are also countless penalties (dim light, switching targets, running, working under poor conditions, trying to convince someone who is racist against your metatype, etc.), which can drag a dice pool down.

So no, I don't think there is anything "reasonable" about gimping players with a maximum dice pool of 12, unless you are running a 300-point game of street kids from the Barrens.

[Jack Kain]

[djinni]

since they've already said it I'm not going to...
I did have a few questions though.
that 12 dicepool limit, do the bad guys roll dice?
example: I shoot I roll I gain a hit therefore I hit?
or are all other rules involved?

[Ravor]

Well personally I've started "encouraging" my players to make more rounded Runners with lower starting Dice Pools, and in my opinion it makes the game more fun for everyone once people get used to the idea that you don't need to roll a bucketfull of Dice to be sucessfull as a Shadowrunner.

Of course, it only works if the DM also agrees to abide by the same rules and doesn't use NPCs with huge Dicepools themselves.

[Glyph]

[Whipstitch]

Wow. You must really hate Adepts. Anyway, since I assume you balance your campaigns with the PC's power level in mind, my expectation with such a situation would be that unless you're a touch sadistic, having a dicepool of 12 or so would suddenly place people near or at the top of the food chain, obviating the need to take such high dicepools to begin with, so metagaming would live on regardless. You'd just change the dominant characters from super high dice gunbunnies to jack-of-all-trade types who could comfortably expect to meet your expectations of what character is capable of in a wide variety of areas. For example, a min-maxed elven agility or social adept could theoretically default any charisma or agility linked skills at or very near your new cap. Odds are, you're really just taking characters from being super awesome compared to everyone else at one or two things and making them awesome at practically everything compared to everyone else.


[Massively Edited]

[Ravor]

Well hate is a bit strong, but yeah, I don't much care for Adepts whose sole reason to exist is to roll the most dice possible in one or two things.

However, the simple fact remains that Fourth Edition tends to break once the bucket-loads of Dice comes out to play. Something is wrong when you can piss on the Don's Mother and still convince him to be your best buddy or take off your clothes, paint yourself orange and run around screaming and still be able to sneak past sec guards.

One way to fix this is to run with the idea floating around in another thread of having Modifiers affect Thresholds instead of Dice Pools, but that seems like too much work to properly balance to me.

The other way to fix it is to lower the Dice Pools in play, and it seems to work, now my players tend to try to hedge all the extra Modifiers that they can to up their Dicepool, which in turn leads to more tactics used, which is a win in my book.

Still, your milage may vary and if you enjoy playing Shadowrun with buckets of Dice and superhuman feats being pulled off all the time then more power to you, I enjoy those games as well, but right now I'm trying something a little more down-to-earth and gritter and am having a blast.

[Whipstitch]

Problem is, braking a low powered game is often about as easy as breaking the high powered ones. Having a frank discussion of what it is you want to accomplish with the direction of your sessions is often a better way of going about it than introducing hardcaps. So encouraging one's players is certainly always a good option.

[Ravor]

Ok, you've managed to tweak my curious streak, how would you go about doing so? (I've haven't given it that much thought so I might be missing something really simple.)

*Edit*

Just to prevent confusion, I'm talking about as easily breaking a lower powered campaign as a higher powered one.

[Whipstitch]

It's really all about alternate tactics in this case. Relatively low powered games tend to overemphasize the usefulness of negative dicepool modifiers. Suddenly things like smoke grenades and wide bursts take out virtually anyone and everything, a development which tends to favor high powered heavy artillery, oddly enough. It IS less broken then the worst case social adept scenarios though, no argument there. I was just getting a bit overzealous.

[Ravor]

Ok I see where you are coming from now, very good points, but I think we may simply have different definations of what is and isn't broken, but as long as everyone at both of our tables is having fun then everything is cool.

[Crusufix]

Shadowrun has always been a game very easily broken. I actually quit playing for a couple years (basically I skipped over SR3) cause the game was so easily broken by anyone who wanted to specialize in a certain area and ignore all other areas.

I came back to SR4 because it seems much less likely to be broken and it appears that breaking it can be controlled a lot more easily than previous editions. I've not played it enough yet to really get a feel for it though.

I've loved Shadowruns setting, always have. Loved it so much I had even attempted to transplant a modified Earthdawn Ruleset into the setting. Never did complete that project...

Hmm, maybe I should start that up again.

*wanders away mumbling to himself*

[Crusher Bob]

AS for breaking a low powered game, some back of the napkin says that I can get an adept with 12 dice in all social skills, 11 in all gun skills, and 12 in most hacking skills.

Looks something like:

Ork Adept
B 4
A 5 (7)
R 5 (6)
S 3

I 4
L 3
C 4
W 3

E 3
M 5 (4)

Hacking Group 4
Influence Group 4
Firearms Group 4

Adept Abilities:
Kinestics 4
Increased hacking skill 2 (3 skills)

Cyberware:
Muscle Toner 2
Synaptic booster - 1

Costs seems to be around 380 points. Enough left for some round out skills and to pay for other gear and stuff after your flaws. Some more min maxing may let you max out another area of skill (for example, dropping edge and fiddling around a bit more can get your the stealth group, which you cap out due to your boosted agility.

In a non-capped game, this character is sorta interesting, but underpowered compared to any specialist character. In the 12 dice cap game, has has maxed skills in a very large number of abilities in the game.

[FriendoftheDork]

This seems like the worst idea I've seen in a long time. With 12 dice you cannot even on average kill a helpless pedestrian with a single non-aimed shot from an Ares Predator.

The adept in my game has 16 dice when shooting his pistols, and he hits pretty much everything. He takes down standard security guards in one shot usually, but he would have a hard time against a squad of Ghosts, as damn well should be. Yes, he is a master at what he does (pistols 6), yet that doesen't make him invincible.

The hacker in my game actually only has 7 dice in computer skills, so he needs to use hot sim often in order to have a chance, and the last mission he spent 3 edge while hacking a security station in order to succeed. He's not a specialized hacker though, more a thief.

Although it might seem "unfair" that the adept has that many dice compared to the thief, both characters are extremely important in the group. And the Troll sammie can perform almost as well as the adept anyway, and still be ALOT harder to take down.

That's the name of the game. The characters are supposed to be good at what they do, or they won't survive a mistake.

[Noctum]

This is for Starting Characters I have no issues with Character getting better than that... And I mis-spoke in the original post.. I meant Skill + attribute being 12 dice Max... With Smart gun and other mods I have no issue with 14 or even 15 dice I just feel that its not horribly reasonable for a player to start with 21 or 28 dice like I have seen.

Reasonable is about game balance. (And yes Modified Attributes and Skills)

[toturi]

What is Skill + Attribute? Unmod skill + unmod Attribute? Unlikely to be over 12 in the first place. But mod skill + mod Attribute - now there's the many dice.

[Whipstitch]

[Critias]

I don't understand people that would rather play in a game world where everyone is good at everything, instead of individual characters being great at one or two things apiece. Given how easy it is to get a 12-die pool, after just a few session with reasonable karma awards, wouldn't you just end up with everyone rolling 12 dice for everything useful?

[sunnyside]

First off Noctum, define exactly what your problem with the large dice pools is, in regards to what happens on the table and the like.

For example my problems with it are.

1. A character super specialized in a skill tends to be bad at other stuff, which leads to one dimensional play. Also if their skill is combat it tends to lead to retarded play in order of hose everyone elses plans and cause combat, and if it's in something else you can get bored players if that specific thing doesn't come up a lot.

2. Eventually the dice modifier mechanic starts comming apart. Not only does this allow some ridiculous things to happen (moreso for toturi than the rest of us since "running around orange and naked" doesn't have a RAW listed modifier, so I suppose he doesn't apply one. ;) ).

3. Tied in with #2, tactical play flies out the window. When you're throwing a huge pile of dice it doesn't much matter what else is going on, you don't care, and that reduces how much they care about any of that leading to banal unrealistic play.

2&3 are kinda new issues because a D6 target number based mechanic doesn't tend to suffer from them. I'm liking the threshold thing for that. Or you could just flip back to a variable TN system.

Problem number one requires talking with the characters. Remember you have to OK their characters before they can play them in your campaign. And don't forget that specialization isn't a bad thing, it's super specialization at the cost of all else that stinks things up. We're talking about doing things like exceptional stats or skill qualities on top of a bunch of other stuff and other stats at 1 and only a handfull of other skills.

[Lagomorph]

[Garrowolf]

What I do is move dice pool mods over to threshold mods. That way you don't have to have such high dice pools in the first place.

I changed to d10s instead of d6s with a TN of 7. 10s open once normally but count as 2 successes automatically with edge rolls. Can't have more successes then the number of dice you rolled.

Then caps are not as much of a problem. Smaller dice pools work out fine. It's not always success for free but it works out.

[sunnyside]

You might want to reply in the "threshold" thread instead garrowolf. But what do you do with negative thresholds?