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> Edge, SR4 luck v. SR3 experience
mfb
post Jul 11 2007, 04:46 AM
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QUOTE (Talia Invierno)
This reminds me of the old argument why SR was broken at the core: purchase a permanent high lifestyle with chargen funds. Game over.

(You can't do it any longer with the High lifestyle -- but you can still do it with Low. Considering that many PCs choose to start at Street ...?)

i'm not sure what the two arguments have to do with each other. buying 8 edge does not take away any reason for shadowrunning--it's just an advantage you can purchase, like wired reflexes or a magic rating.
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Talia Invierno
post Jul 11 2007, 04:50 AM
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Do you always quote replies while omitting what was replied to?
QUOTE (mfb)
why couldn't you have a character who's had a lot of pre-game experience? such a character would be a prime candidate for having a high Edge.

If the PC had had so much experience pre-game -- what's the point of gaining any in-game?
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mfb
post Jul 11 2007, 05:07 AM
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i don't know of any runners who run to gain experience. most runners i see run to make money. if gaining experience is a character's main goal, then yes, statting them up with maxed Edge might not make much sense.
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Crusher Bob
post Jul 11 2007, 05:21 AM
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QUOTE (Talia Invierno @ Jul 11 2007, 12:50 PM)
If the PC had had so much experience pre-game -- what's the point of gaining any in-game?

?

Because there are many stories that don't use the farmboy as the PC? If Beowulf a valid character concept? Sam from Ronin? McCauley from Heat? Batou for Ghost in the Shell?

All of these characters have plenty of experience, but there are plenty to good stories left to be told about them. Besides, Bildungsroman irritates plenty of people, they've seen it too much already.
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Talia Invierno
post Jul 11 2007, 05:22 AM
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This begs for a spin-off thread. But for now: what does money represent to the runners you see?

Editing to include the Beowulfs, Sams, McCauleys, and Batous of the gaming world into the second question:

Would your group still play if you took away karma improvement entirely? and left only money, or whatever their primary motivation is, in the equation?
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Critias
post Jul 11 2007, 05:24 AM
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QUOTE (JonathanC @ Jul 10 2007, 01:58 PM)
Likewise, the increased racial maximums aren't that big of a deal, and yes, all metahumans have some kind of stat penalty.

What stat penalty do Elves get, in any edition of the game? Because I've played my share -- shit, I've played my share, and your share, and his share, and her share -- from SR1 on, and I can tell you right now they don't have one. +1 Quickness, +2 Charisma, Low Light vision. Once upon a time they got an allergy (like all the other metas), but that's it. No Body penalty, no Strength penalty, nothing like that.

And I still can't help but point out that on one hand you continue to insist stat bonuses are no big deal because a human can catch up really easily with cyberware, bioware, or magic -- but then you go on to harp about the poor metas and their stat penalties like they're the end of the world. Which is it? Are attributes so easily picked up in the Sixth World that the net gain +3 all Metas get is no big deal (despite them having access to all that same magic and technology to then push those already boosted attributes even higher)? Or are attributes so hard to come by all the poor metahumans (even Elves, who don't have any stat penalties) are automatically crippled by their penalties, regardless of everything else?

You can't have it both ways.
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Cain
post Jul 11 2007, 05:26 AM
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Someone asked me for a Mr. Lucky the Mage. Here's what I came up with. Let's assume he's a tradition with Intuition as the main attribute. This was done using Daegann's 1.1, so if there's any mistakes, let me know.

Body: 3
Quickness: 3
Reaction: 4
Str: 1
Cha: 3
Int: 4
Logic: 2
Will: 4

Edge: 8
Magic: 4

Edges/Flaws:
Lucky
Apt: Spellcasting
Magician
Sensitive System*
SINner (normal)*
Incompetence x 3*

*(Yes, I know some people are going to deride these choices as munchkinous. They're just easy examples, so get over it.)

Skills:
Summoning (Your choice) 3
Binding 3
Counterspelling 3
Spellcasting (Your choice) 7
Pistols (Semi auto) 3
Con (Fast Talk) 2
Infiltration (Urban) 2

4 spells of choice
25,000 :nuyen: in gear (5 BP)
One 2/2 contact.

As you can see, while he's light in certain areas, he's far from helpless outside of his specialty. For things outside his specialty, he can either blow edge or (more likely) rely on a specialized teammate to cover him. For example, he isn't a front-line combatant, but he's not meant to be; that's the role of the sammies and combat adepts.
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Da9iel
post Jul 11 2007, 05:46 AM
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My proposed longshot house rule is that a character adds edge to his or her pool as normal and may choose to roll negative dice pool modifiers as a virtual opponent. In the Mr. Lucky vs the 1 km out boat example mentioned earlier, Mr. Lucky rolls Edge (8 ) + Agility (2? 3?) -1 (defaulting) for 9 or 10 dice. He expects 3 or so hits, but with exploding sixes he could theoretically get any number of hits. The GM rolls the 53 dice penalty and expects around 18 hits but could theoretically get 0 or 1 or 2. Chances are very high that the GM's hits will reduce Mr. Lucky's hits to well below zero, but it is no longer absolute. It creates a situation something akin to SR1-3 where a Target Number of 30something was possible but certainly not probable. It also means that Mr. Heavy Weapons is more likely to succeed even with his edge of only 1 or 2.

[edit]Hit enter too early[/edit]
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mfb
post Jul 11 2007, 05:50 AM
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QUOTE (Talia Invierno)
Would your group still play if you took away karma improvement entirely? and left only money, or whatever their primary motivation is, in the equation?

i'm not sure what you mean by karma improvement. do you mean spending karma to improve attributes and skills? if you took that away, my players might leave, but their characters probably wouldn't, since that's a abstraction of how things work in the real world. if you mean gaining karma pool, or Edge, then again--my players might take issue, but the characters have no in-game knowledge of karma/Edge.
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Glyph
post Jul 11 2007, 05:52 AM
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Cain:
He adds up to 400 points, but you are only allowed up to 35 points' worth of positive qualities (you have 45).

To me, this character, like my elven gunslinger number-crunching exercise, illustrates how it is generally a poor tactic to hard-max anything at character creation. Yeah, he has an 8 Edge. But he could have a still-very-respectable 6 Edge for 55 Build points less (20 for the quality and 35 to go from 6 to 8 ).

That's a lot! With that many build points, you could - get a mentor spirit, soft-max Magic, Intuition, and Willpower, buy and bond a Force: 2 power focus, and increase summoning and counterspelling to 4 - to give only one example.
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Cain
post Jul 11 2007, 05:58 AM
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QUOTE
Cain:
He adds up to 400 points, but you are only allowed up to 35 points' worth of positive qualities (you have 45).

Mea Culpa. Okay, so drop Apt: Spellcasting and reuse those points to do some of what you suggested: Raise magic to the soft cap, and buy/bond a focus.

The point is, however, that Mr. Lucky Mage is still more than capable of duking it out magically, without invoking Edge. When he does, he's a magical terror.
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knasser
post Jul 11 2007, 06:33 AM
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QUOTE (sunnyside)
Ok so mfb and knasser would you say that you actually have a fluff problem with edge in SR4 not a mechanical one? i.e. it isn't that you think edge is broken or doesn't play well.

It is that, whatever it is that edge in SR4 represents, it does NOT represent experience. And what you want is something that DOES represent experience in some way. So you don't like it, and therefore houserule it.


Hmmmmm. It depends a little on your definition of fluff. Fluff I take to be in-game background and justifications. With Edge, my dislike is of how it affects the feel of the game, rather than any perception of how the world of 2070 works. Characters who make up for a lack of skill with luck don't contribute to realism for me. Furthermore, I don't like the wild variability between player characters that happens when it's a purchasable attribute. If Edge is a certain movie cool factor, then I want to smear it equally across the characters. Not have one Roger Moore and one Danial Craig.

I'm not looking for something to represent experience, and definitely not in the D&D leveling-up sense of the word. If the question your asking is do I think Edge in RAW is unbalanced, then no (although Cain does show how it can be broken, I've seen no player actually abuse that). I do dislike the way it affects the perception of my game world. I also don't see Edge as having a quantifiable justification in fluff, as some sort of mystic attribute. It's just a product of ability and will which cannot therefore be a substitute for other stats. So the progression system I came up with works perfectly for the effect that I want.

Does that all make sense? It is one of my three houserules. It's also incredibly simple to use, requiring the GM to write down how much karma he has given out at the end of each game.
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Rotbart van Dain...
post Jul 11 2007, 08:48 AM
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QUOTE (Glyph)
To me, this character, like my elven gunslinger number-crunching exercise, illustrates how it is generally a poor tactic to hard-max anything at character creation.

With the exception of hard-maxing the single 7 in a skill - due to the doubling cost rule, it costs the ridiculous amount of 32 Karma to go from 6 to 7 - and 8 BP if done so at chargen.
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eidolon
post Jul 11 2007, 01:46 PM
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QUOTE (Talia Invierno @ Jul 10 2007, 11:22 PM)
This begs for a spin-off thread.

Consider it spun off. That sounds like a damn interesting discussion.
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James McMurray
post Jul 11 2007, 02:53 PM
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QUOTE (Da9iel)
My proposed longshot house rule is that a character adds edge to his or her pool as normal and may choose to roll negative dice pool modifiers as a virtual opponent.

I like it. It adds more dice rolling, which I'm normally against, but it should come up so infrequently that tossing a few more dice isn't a big deal.
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Moon-Hawk
post Jul 11 2007, 03:07 PM
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QUOTE (Da9iel @ Jul 11 2007, 12:46 AM)
My proposed longshot house rule is that a character adds edge to his or her pool as normal and may choose to roll negative dice pool modifiers as a virtual opponent. In the Mr. Lucky vs the 1 km out boat example mentioned earlier, Mr. Lucky rolls Edge (8 ) + Agility (2? 3?) -1 (defaulting) for 9 or 10 dice. He expects 3 or so hits, but with exploding sixes he could theoretically get any number of hits. The GM rolls the 53 dice penalty and expects around 18 hits but could theoretically get 0 or 1 or 2. Chances are very high that the GM's hits will reduce Mr. Lucky's hits to well below zero, but it is no longer absolute. It creates a situation something akin to SR1-3 where a Target Number of 30something was possible but certainly not probable. It also means that Mr. Heavy Weapons is more likely to succeed even with his edge of only 1 or 2.

[edit]Hit enter too early[/edit]

Hey, that's a really good idea.
Personally, I haven't had any problems with longshot abuse (yet), but this does fix the issues.
I have no objections, and only one concern: I'd have to look at the numbers, but my only concern would be whether there's an odd hiccup in probability when you go from a pool of X with a penalty of X-1 (and thus are rolling 1 die) to a penalty of X so now you're rolling X vs X. As the penalty approaches and crosses that threshold, does the probability do something drastically weird, or is it acceptably continuous?
Thinking.....
Well, we're using rule-of-six, so our expected # of successes decreases to 0.4 as we drop the pool to only 1 die. Then as you add another -1 penalty we're looking at an opposed test between DP of X and X. Well, intuitively, there's a 50:50 chance it could go either way, but that's really not the case. Since, in the event of a tie, the characters hits would be reduced to 0, it seems that ties would be considered failures, dropping the success rate (as defined by achieving 1 or more net hits) below0.5. Exactly how much below will depend on the size of the DP, but I'd say that decreasing from 0.4 to a number that is less than 0.5 is close enough to continuous, but nit-pickers could get hung up on this point if they really wanted to. It's not as bad as the glitching with even vs odd DP problem, anyway.

Well done.

edit: Ooh, James, ya beat me! Hopefully I still had something to contribute. ;)
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Dashifen
post Jul 11 2007, 03:31 PM
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QUOTE (James McMurray)
QUOTE (Da9iel @ Jul 11 2007, 12:46 AM)
My proposed longshot house rule is that a character adds edge to his or her pool as normal and may choose to roll negative dice pool modifiers as a virtual opponent.

I like it. It adds more dice rolling, which I'm normally against, but it should come up so infrequently that tossing a few more dice isn't a big deal.

The GM could just buy hits. The Mr. Lucky might still be able to beat 2-4 hits with a Long Shot test allowing for the concept of luck, and I don't know that I've realistically seen many penalties beyond -16 in a game.
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James McMurray
post Jul 11 2007, 03:50 PM
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QUOTE (Dashifen)
The GM could just buy hits. The Mr. Lucky might still be able to beat 2-4 hits with a Long Shot test allowing for the concept of luck, and I don't know that I've realistically seen many penalties beyond -16 in a game.

True. Or the counter-roll could be replaced with an increase to the threshold of 1 per 3 penalty (or portion thereof). The averages remain the same but the extra die roll and comparison is removed.

I don't think I've ever seen a longshot test caused by massive penalties. They're usually caused by a low starting dice pool and some minor penalties. Generally when the penalties get so monstrous that skilled types need longshots, the players begin seriously rethinking their current plan.
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sunnyside
post Jul 11 2007, 04:50 PM
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As Glyph pointed out I don't think Cains mage is broken (though munchy in a range of areas).

As was pointed out it costs 55 BP for those last two points of edge. So an equivalent mage could, say, hardmax magic,aptitude up spellcasting, get a mentor spirit, and still have points for a better foci than you.

This means that when they roll their edge of 6 in their specialty(and with four spells you can expect things to fall in their specialty) they will probably beat you by 3 die. Also their spell would have a higher base damage value, or the attribute they're boosting could be higher etc.

And I think most people would agree that a char with such a limited spell selection and no astral combat/assensing would be rather rough, so they'd be inclined to ease up on the specialty a little and spread out.

My strong feeling at this point is that much of the hate for "Mr. Lucky" is either that they're otherwise munchy or that the other players are going with too low edge values.

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Cain
post Jul 11 2007, 05:25 PM
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QUOTE
My strong feeling at this point is that much of the hate for "Mr. Lucky" is either that they're otherwise munchy or that the other players are going with too low edge values

Having played Mr. Lucky in the strict environment of Shadowrun Missions, I can tell you that he's no more munched out than any other Dumpshock character. The problem is close to your second point: everyone else has a relatively low Edge value, which leaves them in the dust.

It isn't that Mr. Lucky is hyperspecialized, just about every effective build is. It's the fact that he's hyperspecialized *and* has such a disgusting Edge that causes problems. Any of the book solutions to restricting edge ends up punishing the other players far more than Mr. Lucky.

An Edge 8 character dramatically alters the power level of a game, simply because he can pop 8 bonus dice just about anytime he likes. Suddenly, he's expert in every field outside his specialty, and a terror within it. Even the threat of that can cause mumbles among the other players. In short, Mr. Lucky can break a game just by existing.

As far as the mage build goes, that was what I came up with after two hours on Daegann's. I'm noo expert on mage builds, so I challenge the Dumpshockers here to do better. You can create any mage build you like, so long as they have an Edge of 8 (7 if metahuman). Let's see what everyone else can come up with.
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James McMurray
post Jul 11 2007, 05:37 PM
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Anyone got a link to the original Mr. Lucky stats? I may play him in our upcoming campaign as a second string runner just to see what he's like, although our refresh rate of once per mission and choice not to abuse longshot rules won't let him completely stretch his muscles.
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JonathanC
post Jul 11 2007, 05:43 PM
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QUOTE (Critias)
QUOTE (JonathanC @ Jul 10 2007, 01:58 PM)
Likewise, the increased racial maximums aren't that big of a deal, and yes, all metahumans have some kind of stat penalty.

What stat penalty do Elves get, in any edition of the game? Because I've played my share -- shit, I've played my share, and your share, and his share, and her share -- from SR1 on, and I can tell you right now they don't have one. +1 Quickness, +2 Charisma, Low Light vision. Once upon a time they got an allergy (like all the other metas), but that's it. No Body penalty, no Strength penalty, nothing like that.

And I still can't help but point out that on one hand you continue to insist stat bonuses are no big deal because a human can catch up really easily with cyberware, bioware, or magic -- but then you go on to harp about the poor metas and their stat penalties like they're the end of the world. Which is it? Are attributes so easily picked up in the Sixth World that the net gain +3 all Metas get is no big deal (despite them having access to all that same magic and technology to then push those already boosted attributes even higher)? Or are attributes so hard to come by all the poor metahumans (even Elves, who don't have any stat penalties) are automatically crippled by their penalties, regardless of everything else?

You can't have it both ways.

At the start of play, having penalties to both stats AND karma pool is crippling, and certainly not worth a few extra attribute points.
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mfb
post Jul 11 2007, 05:47 PM
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QUOTE (JonathanC)
At the start of play, having penalties to both stats AND karma pool is crippling, and certainly not worth a few extra attribute points.

dude, elves still don't have a stat penalty. also, your phrasing of that statement was pretty unclear. i think what you meant to say is that having penalties to both stats AND karma pool is crippling, and certainly not compensated for by a few extra attribute points.
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Critias
post Jul 11 2007, 06:04 PM
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QUOTE (JonathanC)
QUOTE (Critias @ Jul 11 2007, 05:24 AM)
QUOTE (JonathanC @ Jul 10 2007, 01:58 PM)
Likewise, the increased racial maximums aren't that big of a deal, and yes, all metahumans have some kind of stat penalty.

What stat penalty do Elves get, in any edition of the game? Because I've played my share -- shit, I've played my share, and your share, and his share, and her share -- from SR1 on, and I can tell you right now they don't have one. +1 Quickness, +2 Charisma, Low Light vision. Once upon a time they got an allergy (like all the other metas), but that's it. No Body penalty, no Strength penalty, nothing like that.

And I still can't help but point out that on one hand you continue to insist stat bonuses are no big deal because a human can catch up really easily with cyberware, bioware, or magic -- but then you go on to harp about the poor metas and their stat penalties like they're the end of the world. Which is it? Are attributes so easily picked up in the Sixth World that the net gain +3 all Metas get is no big deal (despite them having access to all that same magic and technology to then push those already boosted attributes even higher)? Or are attributes so hard to come by all the poor metahumans (even Elves, who don't have any stat penalties) are automatically crippled by their penalties, regardless of everything else?

You can't have it both ways.

At the start of play, having penalties to both stats AND karma pool is crippling, and certainly not worth a few extra attribute points.

And yet somehow I have dozens of 50+ karma metahumans that haven't disagree with you as to what the word "crippling" must mean.

I, once again, feel you're grossly overstating the case.
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JonathanC
post Jul 11 2007, 06:04 PM
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QUOTE (mfb)
QUOTE (JonathanC)
At the start of play, having penalties to both stats AND karma pool is crippling, and certainly not worth a few extra attribute points.

dude, elves still don't have a stat penalty. also, your phrasing of that statement was pretty unclear. i think what you meant to say is that having penalties to both stats AND karma pool is crippling, and certainly not compensated for by a few extra attribute points.

Yes, you're correct. And my mistake about Elves. I think I was mixing up 4th (where they have penalties to their stat limits) and 3rd. In any case, I always thought metahumans were a bit of a rip-off in 3rd edition with the way karma worked. Humans already receive the benefit of being "normal"...outside of entering one of the Tirs (and Tir Tairngire would probably just deport you, not lynch mob you to death) or the Ork Undeground (and you could overcome that just by being nice), humans don't have to worry about racism at all. An ork could get killed just walking down the street in the wrong neighborhood.
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