Sr4 Question From An Sr3 Player! Options

[DarkShadow]

I had a quick question.

I heard from a few friends who play SR3, that SR4 isn't any good. A few of the problems they said to me was that there is no room for improvement, and that a character straight out of chargen is extremely overpowered. I was also told that the rules for Deckers ("hackers" in sr4) are not even any good and hard to use.

I just wanna hear from some of you players how it is, and how you felt making the switch.

Also, which books are a must? I know I need SR3, Augmentation, Arsenal, but is there a sourcebook for deckers/hackers and magic?

Thanks!

[Stahlseele]

for magic there is the appropriately named street magic
also whoever told you that seems to know less about SR4 than me . . because the SR4 rules book for hackers is not out yet of course there's bound to be some things that don't work as well as they could for example . . generally the starting characters in SR4 are weaker than those in SR3 . . but of course there's allways ways to make them uber . . social adepts, possession magic, the mundane climber, the tank troll . .

[Lionhearted]

Yes Decking is piece of cake in these days (once you read the entire chapter) even a halfwitted newb like me can understand it ^^
For magic you're looking for Street magic, although its about 70% fluff, dont know about matrix although.

[Grinder]

Street Magic is the magic book and available in PDF and hardcopy, while the hacker/rigger-book Unwired is not out yet, but will be released later this year.

[Grinder]

I had a quick question.

I heard from a few friends who play SR3, that SR4 isn't any good. A few of the problems they said to me was that there is no room for improvement, and that a character straight out of chargen is extremely overpowered. I was also told that the rules for Deckers ("hackers" in sr4) are not even any good and hard to use.

There is room for improvement, be it for magic or mundane characters. There is a skill cap though (a point where you can't improve a skill anymore), but that's really hard to reach at char gen.

[Redjack]

As a player since sr1 here is my input:

• I like the dice system better then previous editions, though I still miss my skill web.
• You have to rethink your idea of powerful attributes and skills when creating a fourth edition character. It takes ~450bp (your mileage will of course vary) in sr4 to make a starting character equatable to an sr3 starting character.
• You can munchin starting characters, just like any other game/edition. A starting dice pool max of 12 is a good rule of thumb for starting characters.
• There is LOTS of room to improve characters, unless you munchin out the character and they start with an 18dp...
• Street Magic is out for the awakened, but Unwired will not be out till later this year.

[It trolls!]

There are official SR3->SR4 character conversion rules around somewhere and paraphrasing Rotbart van Dainig, converted SR3 starting characters are around 450 Build Points (yes, SR4 finally did away with priorities by default) while a regular SR4 starting char has 400 BP available.
Personally I find it rather dubious how someone could even come to the conclusion that SR4 characters are overpowered. From my experience (weird min/maxing mutations aside) while a SR3 char started as a somewhat experienced runner. SR4 chars clock in around the level of a total newbie who's about to have his first meeting with a real Johnson.

e,fb by Redjack

[Stahlseele]

well, the modified versions of the mundane climber, social adept, brick the troll and i think even the posession mage when soft maxed in their specialty were pretty much useable and still kinda overpowered a little bit . . but that's neither here nor there ^^

[ElFenrir]

I tend to agree; except for a couple of the famous broken builds, SR4 characters tend to be a bit lower starting. Personally, i preferred the SR3 method of coming out of the box a little more experienced...but growing a little slower. I sorta liked stretching it out. Now, in SR4, we tend to ditch Availability...and with that, our characters are more up on SR3 level.

Funny thing is, even with our larger dice pools on average, most of our games end up being spent talking, RPing, and planning. 3 sessions of gaming saw two combat rolls...one to shoot out a tire, and one to grab a guy and pull him into the van. The other rolls were all social skills. Go figure. So no need to fear a dice pool of 16 or something. I really doubt it's going to break a game wide open. It hasn't yet for us. It's natural a specialist will be heavier in some things than others, and a generalist be a little more spread out. Be careful while putting hard and fast caps on skills; I'd play it by game, rather by ''in general''. (IE: This game, DPs are capped at 12. This game, DPs are capped at 16. This game, no caps, etc.)

But i do like SR4's hacking system, dice pool system, and a few other things. While i still have a preference for SR3, SR4 has brought me lots of fun. The skill system is pretty cool, with skills and skill groups. We have houseruled a few things(no Availability, final point of a max attribute costs 20 rather than 25, to even out the math a bit-even though we have yet to max something that wasn't Magic-charisma x2 free contact points), but that comes with the territory of any of the editions.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

A few of the problems they said to me was that there is no room for improvement, and that a character straight out of chargen is extremely overpowered.

Actually, a standard SR3 starting character is officially worth 450 SR4 build points, whereas a standard SR4 starting character gets only 400 build points.

On the other hand, it is possible to hit the hard caps in chargen.

[Mercer]

Yeah, speaking as a member of a group just converting from SR3 to SR4 (and from SR2 to SR 3 before that) the hard caps did take us by surprise. It doesn't make advancement worthless, but I could see someone having that reaction prima facie.

I don't think that SR 4 characters are necessarily less powerful than SR3 characters (BP considerations aside), because it all takes place in the context of the system. A 400 BP character going up a 400 BP NPC is evenly matched (well, not really, but BP-wise its even), under the old system it was 450 BP characters going up against a 450 BP "even" challenge. As to what the characters can accomplish in the system, given the nature of the mechanical changes, it has much more to do with the rules than it does with the BP. Guns seem to be a little less damaging, damage penalties a lot less punishing, everything else seems to shake out in that nebulous grey area for those of us too lazy to do the math. Its natural to compare the editions because they use a lot of the same terms, and cover a lot of the same ground, but its like comparing apples to apples that use an entirely different dice mechanic.

[Fortune]

N/M

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Actually, guns do a lot more damage in SR4. Even Holdouts are no laughing matter anymore...

[DarkShadow]

Thanks for the quick replies. I'm planning to buy the books eventually, I just don't wanna get stuck with a printing full of errata. I'm glad they are making an Unwired book, I guess the best way to try out the system is to have the books.

[Cain]

There is room for improvement, be it for magic or mundane characters. There is a skill cap though (a point where you can't improve a skill anymore), but that's really hard to reach at char gen.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

It's easy to hit the skill caps at char gen. Just max out your one skill. Buy an Aptitude and Exceptional Attribute if you really want to max your dice pool.

Just judging from the characters posted here (and excluding the extreme builds like the Pornomancer) we're still talking everyday characters who throw 15+ dice in their specialty, and 8-10+ dice outside of it. My worst character throws 11 in her specialty, and that's because I deliberately underpowered her.

[Glyph]

For Attributes: you can start out with one Attribute maxed out, but it costs 25 points for that last point. Since you are limited to 200 points spent on Attributes, getting that last point effectively costs you three points that could have been put into other Attributes. Most players will soft-max Attributes (one point below the maximum) for this reason. You can buy a quality that raises your maximum for one Attribute, which costs 20 build points.

Attributes also have an augmented maximum, which you won't generally be able to reach at character creation due to Availability (for example, muscle toner goes to rating: 4, but you can only get up to rating: 2 at character creation). So sammies have a lot of room to improve by further augmenting themselves.

Magic and Resonance (the Attribute used by technomancers, formerly otaku in SR3) start out capped at 6, but initiation (for mages and adepts) and submersion (for technomancers) can raise that cap. So mages, adepts, and technomancers can improve greatly after character creation.


For skills: the normal maximum for a skill is 6, and you can start out with one skill of 6 at character creation. This doesn't cost extra, so skills of 6 are more commonly seen. But that still leaves all of your other skills to improve. You can buy a quality that raises your maximum for one skill, which costs 10 points - and raising the skill to 7 also costs double. Another factor is that you can buy skills in skill groups for a discount in points. Skill groups are capped at 4 to start out, though, so sometimes you have to choose between being great at one skill, or fairly good in a range of skills.


A note on dice pools: SR4 uses a formula of Attribute plus skill, so dice pools in the 8 to 10 range are not unusual. Some skills, notably combat, spellcasting, and social skills, can get a lot of dice pool modifiers, which is why you will tend to see higher dice pools in those areas. But keep in mind that these skills are usually used for opposed dice contests with many potential negative dice pool modifiers, so a lot of times someone with 10 dice to roll to fix his motorcycle is better off than the guy with 18 base dice for firing his pistol.

[DTFarstar]

Average negative combat modifier in my game is about -5 so yeah, those dice pools get raped pretty quickly.

Chris

[Cain]

Magic and Resonance (the Attribute used by technomancers, formerly otaku in SR3) start out capped at 6, but initiation (for mages and adepts) and submersion (for technomancers) can raise that cap. So mages, adepts, and technomancers can improve greatly after character creation.

This is something of a myth. When you calculate the amount of karma necessary for an otaku to really stand well above an equivalent decker, you're talking well into the high triple digits or so, far and above anything that is likely to occur in the course of a normal campaign. Frank Trollman had the exact numbers on this.

A note on dice pools: SR4 uses a formula of Attribute plus skill, so dice pools in the 8 to 10 range are not unusual. Some skills, notably combat, spellcasting, and social skills, can get a lot of dice pool modifiers, which is why you will tend to see higher dice pools in those areas. But keep in mind that these skills are usually used for opposed dice contests with many potential negative dice pool modifiers, so a lot of times someone with 10 dice to roll to fix his motorcycle is better off than the guy with 18 base dice for firing his pistol.

I've yet to see that happen. Even at -5, the pistols guy will have 13 dice to throw. Sure, the Motorcycle guy isn't facing an opposed test, but he does have a threshold, which equates to an opposing dice pool. A Threshold of 3 is roughly equal to an opposing pool of 9. 13 dice vs 9 dice > 10 dice vs 9 dice.

[Glyph]

I agree that technomancers suck, but I wasn't comparing them to hackers at all. I only said that they have a stat that they can continue to improve after character creation, to counter the misassumptions that the original poster's friends made (that characters have no room for improvement after character creation).


As far as comparing the mechanic to the pistols expert, the mechanic will typically be making an extended test, so I wouldn't quite equate a point of threshold with 3 opposed dice.

[Blade]

I had to reread your post several time to make sure I understood correctly because, for me, these are 2 SR3 issues that have been more or less corrected by SR4.

In SR3, characters started as experienced runners, and became some kind of semi-gods after getting some karma (especially if you considered the official attribute and skills scale). In SR4, they start lower and progress and the skill caps prevent your street criminal from being 2 times better than a legendary character in a skill. But the progression speed is more or less the same.

As for the Matrix, it has been streamlined and somehow simplified, but even if it's now easier to understand (and don't require you to learn a whole new ruleset), it's still too fuzzy, lacking a lot of details and need a bit of work on the GM side to interpret it.

On the whole I prefer SR4, even if I played a lot of SR3, liked it and knew the rules quite well. A lot of issues I had with SR3 were fixed, and even if it's not perfect, there's nothing that would make me switch back to 3rd ed.

[Cain]

In SR3, characters started as experienced runners, and became some kind of semi-gods after getting some karma (especially if you considered the official attribute and skills scale). In SR4, they start lower and progress and the skill caps prevent your street criminal from being 2 times better than a legendary character in a skill. But the progression speed is more or less the same.

I'd have to disagree on this point. SR4 intended for players to start lower, but even non-extreme builds can start off as semi-gods, and quickly spiral out of control. The skill caps don't help this, because you can bypass them far too easily: they don't restrict, they just mean everyone will get there quickly. You can start out as equal to the legends and then stagnate, is the OP's complaint.

[Cardul]

For Attributes: you can start out with one Attribute maxed out, but it costs 25 points for that last point. Since you are limited to 200 points spent on Attributes, getting that last point effectively costs you three points that could have been put into other Attributes. Most players will soft-max Attributes (one point below the maximum) for this reason. You can buy a quality that raises your maximum for one Attribute, which costs 20 build points.


For skills: the normal maximum for a skill is 6, and you can start out with one skill of 6 at character creation. This doesn't cost extra, so skills of 6 are more commonly seen. But that still leaves all of your other skills to improve. You can buy a quality that raises your maximum for one skill, which costs 10 points - and raising the skill to 7 also costs double. Another factor is that you can buy skills in skill groups for a discount in points. Skill groups are capped at 4 to start out, though, so sometimes you have to choose between being great at one skill, or fairly good in a range of skills.


A note on dice pools: SR4 uses a formula of Attribute plus skill, so dice pools in the 8 to 10 range are not unusual. Some skills, notably combat, spellcasting, and social skills, can get a lot of dice pool modifiers, which is why you will tend to see higher dice pools in those areas. But keep in mind that these skills are usually used for opposed dice contests with many potential negative dice pool modifiers, so a lot of times someone with 10 dice to roll to fix his motorcycle is better off than the guy with 18 base dice for firing his pistol.

(edited for the points I am going to refer to)

First, one of the great things if you have Augmentation, and are wanting to have something with a higher max attribute so you can up it: Sure you canspend the 20 Build Points(BP) on Exceptional Attribute, but, you can also choose to take a small essence hit, and 9 BP from your 50 BP resource limit for Genetic Optimization, which IS cumulative with Exceptional Attribute. With this, in an attempt to break the system, I did build a 6 natural Charisma Troll Face.

The Aptitude Quality is great if yu want a cahracter to eventually be able to hit that 7 in a skill, however, given the prohibitive cost(you have to pay 12 BP for both 6 and 7), it is unlikely you will start with that. It is almost always a better use of the build points if you want a 7 rating in a skill to take it to 5, then drop a specialization in. Of course, sme Bioware or Cyberware that boost the particular skill can also be good.

I typically build characters with a 4 or 5 in their primary attribute(depending on the type of character I am doing), and I tend to build characters using Skill Groups because, well, often they are the most point efficient way to do things. So, often my builds are 8-9 base dice. Now, combat skills are often the only things I don't stick with skill groups to(unless teh character is supposed to be proficient with multiple different weapon types for some reason), so I can stuck a specialization. For instance, I got asked to build teh characters for our current group, and the Gunslinger Adept we have has Pistols(Semi Autos) 5(+2), with an Agility of 4(and the agility boost power), so, base, the Adept is rolling 9 with any pistol, but 11's regular pistols, before her Smart link kicks in, so, she has a pistol(SA) dice pool of 13. Our Hacker hs a full Cyber arm, with an Agility built in of 6, unarmed combat optimization, Martial Arts Specialziation in his 4 Unarmed Combat, so he is rolling a 6+6+1=13 Dice for unarmed combat. Note that the Adept can get a higher dice pool with pistols, but at the cost of having to resist drain. In fact, the worst dice in the group in their primary is our Mage, who has 5 Magic, 4 Spellcasting, and a Rating 1 power focus for a total of 10 dice.

[DireRadiant]

I heard from a few friends who play SR3, that SR4 isn't any good. A few of the problems they said to me was that there is no room for improvement, and that a character straight out of chargen is extremely overpowered. I was also told that the rules for Deckers ("hackers" in sr4) are not even any good and hard to use.

It's different. Whether that is good or bad is up to you to decide.

Hackers. The big change here is that, as with all the archetypes, anyone can Hack moderately well if they choose to. Just as anyone can Rig. And it's useful for anyone to rig or hack. This makes drones, hacking, and matrix actually more accessible in a game. The other part of that change is that the Dedicated Hacker or Rigger, while still the best, isn't going to be the best and only by a wide margin.

Chargen. It's a wide open flexible system where you get points to spend where you will. If you take the 400 BP and spend it 380 of it all on what you need to shoot a gun straight, you are going to have a character who probably cannot really improve on their gun shooting skill. Obviously no room for improvement there. But then you might get shot, and then there that's whole issue of resisting damage which you spent 20 BP on. You can improve there. Overall the 400 BP base is typically a new shadowrunner if the points are spread out in any sane manner. 450 BP is closer to the optimal SR3 builds. Hard caps in skills exist, and yes, you can hit them in chargen, but there is no way you are hitting all of them, and by hitting one hard cap, you are making far harder to get at the other hard caps. I doubt anyone is really going to get anywhere near maxing out a character unless they play a game for years regularly.

[Ravor]

Also something to remember is that due to the nature of Fixed TNs, Modifiers are less meaningful then they were in Third Edition, so large dicepools quickly turn the game into anime in terms of the stunts that characters are capable of pulling off.

However, as long as you have your players control themselves and build lower dicepool characters Fourth Edition actually runs quite smoothly other then for a few warts like Longshot Tests and the fact that the Matrix Section was written by a couple of meth addicted monkeys banging on broken typewriters.

[Mr. Unpronouncea...]

Meh - the "no room for improvement" line is way overused. Almost noone caps an attribute during character creation, and you aren't allowed to cap the half-dozen or so skills it takes, at minimum, to have a complete, functional character. I suspect a lot of the people making that claim design characters who can't buy a microwave burrito without a bodycount.


You can get fairly close to the caps in two, maybe three specific skills at chargen - which just means your character has plenty of room to branch out. At least SR4 doesn't penalize you for NOT defaulting like the versions with the skill tree did (hmm...one die at target 2, or 12+ dice at target 4 - tough call.)


Modifiers are less meaningful only after you get your dicepools into the teens. Losing 3 or 4 of your 6-8 dice is painful. Having to roll a 5 or 6 instead of a two, but having those 8 dice to do it, not so much.)