[X] My Assistant

[Kagetenshi]

[Blade]

Yes you're right about the skill caps (I forgot them because I houseruled skill caps). Still, it was really hard to create a character that was an expert in an area, compared to other characters.
Granted in SR4 if you create one, it'll be hard to push him any further (but it's possible with various augmentations/power/spells)... But such a character won't see a lot of people matching his level of expertise.

And for the decker/mage it's exactly the same way in SR4. At chargen a hacker/mage won't be as good as a full blown hacker or a full blown mage.

[Kagetenshi]

SR4 doesn't actually work without the skill caps, so the houserule isn't much of a fix (what with characters getting Immunity to Normal Modifiers at high diepools that are normally prevented only by the caps and the cap on modifiers which is made absolute by the caps—SR3 suffers the same fate with high-initiate-grade Centering, but even Riggers can't muster even close to the same level of modifier-ignoring). For SR3, there are a number of areas where you can make experts, but that's due to the existence of expensive gear or edges that a non-specialist wouldn't take—the ability to be great does indeed come after chargen. However, it does eventually come, rather than being impossible.

~J

[Ol' Scratch]

Every edition I've avidly played (started near the end of 1st Edition but didn't really get into Shadowrun until 2nd Edition was almost over), I've pretty much put together an extensive list of house rules due to major inconsistancies, oddities, or what I just felt were flat-out stupid rules. My biggest notebook, naturally, has been for SR3 -- and while it's packed away in a box at the moment, it was well over 30 pages long at last count. So far, my notebook for SR4 is only 4 pages long. While I know my views aren't really all that popular, I still think that says quite a bit about SR4.

That said, there's a lot of things I don't like about the core mechanics in SR4. I really dislike the new mechanic. Yes, it's more consistent and less difficult to explain to a new player, but the old system (despite its flaws) was more robust, fun, and versatile. This system you basically have two options which amount to the same thing; add/remove dice, or add a threshold (basically counting as 3 dice at once). The older system let you control the target numbers, the thresholds, and how many dice you could throw, each having their own unique impact on your overall odds. That was just a ton more useful as a GM and a ton more unpredictable which, for me, equates to fun.

But, yeah, in the end my point is that as far as SR4 goes as written, it's a big step towards being less in need of house rules than previous editions were. Some of it seems pretty weird at first, but if you play within the constraints of typical characters (as opposed to creating outrageous examples or munchkin characters to "prove a point"), it works fairly well.

On one hand that's a good thing (solid, consistant rules), on another it's a bad thing (less room to move beyond the standard street/medium-level of play), and on your third alien arm it's a horrible thing (completely broken if and when you do move beyond a certain level of play, which the game permits).

Since my preferred playstyle revolves around more street-level, underworldy and magic-oriented emphases, SR4 isn't too bad of a system. I miss the diversity each subgroup (magic, hacking, rigging, combat) had in the older systems, but the consistency is nice, too.

[Blade]

[Kyoto Kid]

...@Kagetenshi thanks for the reply on my points about skills and Awakened characters being deckers/riggers. Pretty much ths same thoughts I have.

As to the commlink thing. It depends on who is running. GMs for the most part in the games I've played in make every purchase (even the at corner SS) a commlink purchase. So yes, Dynamo would have needed to do an electronic transaction for her Orc Rinds & beer and get a hacker to cover her trail.

As to having internal systems hacked, any crowded area will work. It doesn't have to be in combat. Heck a TM can slip a sprite into your ware, or a "Matrix Specialist" can do the same with an agent & then simply walk away.

[FrankTrollman]

The core divergency in every edition seems to be the Matrix rules.

4th edition is no exception, and I no longer have faith that Unwired will stave that off. I predict at least seven major distinct Matrix systems used by Shadowrun players.

-Frank

[Kagetenshi]

[Blade]

Granted 8 is not "the best" but "one of the best" and it was not a system issue, more of a consistency issue.

I had trouble envisionning runners being as good as people dedicating their lives to something. Even if they are top-rate criminals, they still can't afford to focus on a single skill and even if they do, it'd be hard for them to do it as well as a world-class celebrity who'll be in the perfect environment to dedicate himself to his art.
So, even if I allowed it, I was already reluctant to let players reach the 8th skill rating (naturally at least, magic and tech are here to push the limits).

And I didn't want to see it further, because then It'd lead to totally ridiculous characters. I mean, when a player has a natural rating of 15 in a skill (I've seen it), it doesn't make much sense (at least to me).

[Kagetenshi]

Right, but the question is, what does it really get you? Three successes on a TN 6 test with 15 dice is still under 50% likely, for example. Single successes are likely pretty far up the TN scale (there's a catastrophic drop from ~57% chance at TN 11 to ~34% at TN 12), but relatively few tests in Shadowrun give big payoffs in for single successes. Besides, Adepts can roll twelve dice before pool out of chargen (15 or 18 if you use ambidex), which sorta weakens the argument against skills getting anywhere near that high.

~J

[Blade]

As I told you, it's not a rules problem. It's just a fluff problem.

[tisoz]

[Pendaric]

SR3 is a lurching old monstrous chimera of a rule system. Just about everything I would do to improve it has been done in SR4.
The system is cleaner and simpler, making it more accessable and user friendly.
However SR3 for all its faults, now that I have put in the effort ot learn, is more evocative and still interesting. The biggist reason however for me to stick to SR3 is my current game. The second is all the books are out so its as balanced as is going to be. I know the loop holes and the flaws.
Till Unwired comes out am just not interested in SR4.

[Blade]

[Platinum]

Dude... it's a game .... not real life. If someone is going to pump that much karma and money into their character why not let them become the best. They can't be the best at everything. If you look at special forces soldiers or astronauts, they are brilliant people that are very very good at many things and world class at a few.

[Herald of Verjig...]

I have two problems with skill caps.

1) It removes both the "I can always get better" and "There's always someone better" possibilities.

2) Why does a fluff issue nee a houserule?

[Kagetenshi]

Fluff and rules need to reflect each other. I don't agree that there's a conflict here, but where they conflict, one needs to change to match the other.

~J

[Herald of Verjig...]

If the rules work as written, and the fluff doesn't, why is he changing the rules?

Easier to redefine those two pages that most people never even read when making characters.

[Kyoto Kid]

...when Leela was still a PC, invested nearly 90 Karma into her performance related skills an attributes. At the time of her retirement she had:

Keyboard Performance: Spec. Piano of 15
Keyboard Performance: Spec. Harpsichord of 12
Keyboard performance: General 9
A number of knowledge skills in the following areas
...Music Literature: Spec. Keyboard music
...Improvisation and composition
...Music History
...Classical Composers: Spec. Josef Haydn, Frederic Chopin, Claude Debussy

Natural Charisma OF 8 (we were using the Shadowbeat performance rules)

The funny thing is as "fluff" as this sounds it did come into play on several occasions and was setting her up for when she would retire and become an NPC for an upcoming campaign of mine.

...however, give her a 5 kilos of C-12, a couple radio detonator's, & her GyroJet & she could still be a very dangerous and cunning little runner being that she cut her teeth on the shadows of Occupied Zagreb.

[Enigma]

I have no time at all for SR4. Skill caps were pretty much all anyone had to say to me to put me off this system, and the system is written in such a way to make it near impossible to house-rule the skill caps away. My style of gaming is characters striving through experience to reach an elite level. Danger comes from going up against professionals and the highly skilled, and the adrenaline comes from coming out on top. I don't like that you quickly reach the limit of skill levels, and thereafter you really are getting no better.

I always very much liked SR3. I think the new fixed 'target number' system in SR4 is stupid. If I wanted to play White Wolf games, I would have. The SR3 system was good as a GM specifically because it allowed for variation in target numbers and far, far more fine tuning of tasks. I dislike the SR4 system to the point that I cannot see myself ever running it.

SR3 had a huge amount of rules, but I for one liked them so much that I learnt them. Of course there were things I didn't like or use much, but compared to other games these were trivial things. I never liked the SR3 open test for stealth and interrogation and I had kept some SR2 things in that regard, and I have never used the SR3 Vehicle Combat rules because I run vehicle combat a different way, but apart from that I use all of SR3, in all of its glory.

I always had a feeling that SR2 favoured street samurai types too much. I think this was related to the sheer amount of 'ware you could cram into a person, and also the megolythic Firearms skill covering everything that has bullets, essentially. SR3 favours magicians more, and I'm OK with that. I far prefer Man and Machine's approach to ware to Shadowtech, Cybertech and so on, but all of those books have the edge over the waste of space that was Augmentation.

When SR3 came out I converted almost immediately, and I think the thing that drew me in was the new skills. I hear whining a fair bit from the people I game with about the split firearms skill, but no-one has yet convinced me it didn't make the game more interesting, and more balanced.

I have bought SR1 books because of how much I was in to SR2 and SR3. Never actually played it. Based on the SR1 adventures I have, I would have thought it was a game with a very different flavour to SR2 and SR3, but I don't know from experience.

[Link]

[Enigma]

I have a mate that I game with that has a theory - every SR1 published adventure is media-related (media being defined to include rocking out/the music industry). Either you're protecting a rocker, or extracting one, or involved with the media or something. I think the theory falls down with Harlequin, but other than that I haven't been able to shoot holes in this theory.

[tisoz]

[Fortune]

Going solely off my aging and senile memory from years ago ...

One of the NANs had a Toxic Shaman at the Kingdome (or equivalent) during some kind of public event or other (sports or music).

I think Ivy and Chrome was about a teenage private school girl and her ganger boyfriend.

UB had the media all over it, and even had an introduction by an investigative reporter, IIRC.

DNA/DOA was a dungeon crawl, but I can't recall any appropriate connections right now.

Bottled Demon was a semi-Bad focus and a Tir assassin and a dragon or two all rolled into one unholy package.

[tisoz]

I was just listing the media related aspect.