Social Software Killed the Face, Sad Face about Empathy Software Options

[Edge2054]

My buddy just picked up arsenal and I seriously don't understand how something like emotion software could be introduced into the game.

Now everyone can be a face for the paltry sum of 3k nuyen or less then a full build point at character generation.

Currently my character rolls about 12 dice on social skill tests, this is five charisma dice, tailored pheromones, and social skills. I'm not a min/maxed character by any means but it works for our campaign.

But... for 1 build point you can buy empathy software that equals half my skill dice before factoring in skills or charisma. This basically puts my character out of a job in many regards.

So... from what I gather from this new precedent is either the writers no longer want teams to use face type characters or they expect everyone to roll 18 plus dice for skill tests.

We don't run a min/maxed campaign for a reason... they're retarded. In another thread concerning dikoting it was mentioned that dikoting was never specifically mentioned because it became a must have. Emotion software has become the new must have for social characters and frankly I think the writers were smoking something when they put it in.

I generally love the stuff you guys put out but as a long term shadowrun fan... seriously, who came up with this lame ass idea?

[quentra]

Do what I do and pretend everyone and their mothers have one, thus it cancels out.

[KCKitsune]

Or say that the emo-softs don't exist... just got a brain storm. House rule the emo-softs to just rank 3. This way, you can still have them, but you gimp them enough that the Face still has a job (he can use the emo-softs to make his life easier).

[Fortune]

I am still kind of partial to my house rule of only using the Emotitoy's bonus to negate any penalties (up to their rating). There are almost always penalties in Social situations, and this way the toys can be of some use without dominating the game.

[Glyph]

You know, normally I am extremely conservative about houseruling things, and hate when anything is called "overpowered", but even I have a problem with social software.

I could see software used to analyze someone to judge their intentions, or note their tells when they are lying, but I can't see how it could give a +6 to social skills - yeah, I could see the software analyzing social data, but I have a harder time seeing someone using it in real time. They are talking with someone while data is being pumped into their head? That would seem more of a distraction than a help. Also, if it works by analyzing facial expressions and the like, wouldn't kinesics reduce its effective rating, since kinesics involves inhuman control of your body's social cues?

I'm not sure yet how I'd fix it - maybe reduce its role to judge intentions tests alone, which would still be useful. But this is the first time I've had a big problem with gear since SR3, when the (pre-errata) mnemonic enhancer could give -3 to Karma costs for skills.

[Edge2054]

You know, normally I am extremely conservative about houseruling things, and hate when anything is called "overpowered", but even I have a problem with social software.

I could see software used to analyze someone to judge their intentions, or note their tells when they are lying, but I can't see how it could give a +6 to social skills - yeah...

This is me also on the house ruling thing.

Also on judge intentions, that's great, software that can judge intentions at it's rating I can buy.
However, my face rolls 10 dice for judge intentions. If he's better at doing this shit then the software is how does the software possibly give him six extra dice for his social skill tests. Should my face get 10 extra dice naturally since he puts even rating six social software to shame on judge intentions tests?

I hate to flame the writers on this because like I said I love 99% of what you guys put out but I really don't follow what you guys were thinking when you put this stuff in the game. I'd love to be enlightened. Maybe I'm missing something.

I will say that software that adds a couple dice to social skills wouldn't be bad but six is a lot of dice. If a smartlink system was put in the game that added six dice to firearms tests I'm sure it would be thought of as game-breaking.

[Fuchs]

No such stuff in my game. I consider it a pure and unneeded power creep, probably the result of someone thinking "Hey, we need a new "must have" for faces too so their players will buy the book.

[masterofm]

Part of me thinks this is in the game for the only reason that if a game happens if no one plays a face in a group.

GM: "so who made the face?"

*crickets*

GM: "Damn it..."

Then someone in the party buys the toy so at least someone can talk to the Johnson w/o getting the party killed. Other then that why bother with them? If no one wants to play a face I can see how this thing would be helpful, but thats about the only reason I can come up with.

[Edge2054]

Part of me thinks this is in the game for the only reason that if a game happens if no one plays a face in a group.

GM: "so who made the face?"

*crickets*

GM: "Damn it..."

Then someone in the party buys the toy so at least someone can talk to the Johnson w/o getting the party killed. Other then that why bother with them? If no one wants to play a face I can see how this thing would be helpful, but thats about the only reason I can come up with.

Except that if emotion software is in the game then any Johnson worth his salt will be using said software. Like Fuchs said, it's a power-creep.

I roll six extra dice, you roll six extra dice, we all roll six extra dice. The shit is to cheap not to invest in and even if it cost ten times as much it would be to good not to invest in... and hell even at ten times the cost you're still getting six dice in every social skill for six build points.

[ElFenrir]

You know, normally I am extremely conservative about houseruling things, and hate when anything is called "overpowered", but even I have a problem with social software.

I'm totally with you here. I rarely think ANYTHING is overpowered. In fact, the amount of time ive seen things called overpowered on this site, at this point you'd believe the entirety of SR4 is overpowered and unbalanced at the rate these words are thrown around. But there IS something off with these things. (Me, I have a problem with the 20 DV bow, among maaaaybe one or two other things scattered about the several books.)

Now, im ok with Skillwires, for example. Can't use edge, and the higher levels of softs are kind of costly anyway. If someone wants to pop their Leadership or specialized Etiquette soft or their Con ive got no problem. These things have been around forever and i never saw them break the game.

But these give stuff on TOP of that. I actually like the idea of them cancelling modifiers rather than adding dice, however. That's a clever use, it's still an advantage for sure but it's...different somehow. Im not sure how, but it is. Though the Judge Intentions bonus is cool too. Limiting their rating to 3-4 could combine with this and make for a nicely balanced too that's not screwing over the Faces.

[Stahlseele]

it's different in that somebody with a dicepool of 6 and the software doen't get degraded to dicepool of 0 with some bad modifiers in there.
it does not give him 6 more dice making him the 12 dice face again. and if he has rating 6 software and there's only modifiers of -2? well hell, he only benefits of 2 of those ratings . .

[KCKitsune]

I still like gimping them to only rating 3. They can give a boost, but not enough to make the Face of the Party want to take up being a sammy or some such.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

There's an easy solution to Sensor Software in general, that even streamlines it: Treat it as a Teamwork Test.

[Fortune]

it's different in that somebody with a dicepool of 6 and the software doen't get degraded to dicepool of 0 with some bad modifiers in there.
it does not give him 6 more dice making him the 12 dice face again. and if he has rating 6 software and there's only modifiers of -2? well hell, he only benefits of 2 of those ratings . .

Exactly. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Another potential fix, and one that might fit with the intent of the toys, is to make them non-compatible with Kinesics. I know it was suggested before, but the idea didn't seem to get enough attention. The toys could be a factor in leveling the playing field against the dreaded Pornomancer, if that Pornomancer can't really make use of the toy herself. Since these doodads seem to replicate the Kinesics ability (to some degree), it seems reasonable that they be mutually exclusive.

Maybe combine both house rules. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Particle_Beam]

Perhaps the developers will bring out an errata for the rules concerning the emotion software... I sure hope that Unwired isn't going to have such lame power-creeping things...

[MaxHunter]

I wouldn't be so hopeful...

However, I intend to use emotitoy dice as teamwork tests, however, so far none of my players have picked up on the dice bonus thing. I guess they are busy tricking out their guns. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)


Cheers!

Max

[nathanross]

Errata for Emosofts, "They do not add their rating as a modifier to social skill tests"

I sincerely expect to see that in Errata for the book. There is no reason why you should be able to get the exact same number of dice from a world class skill in that area from some software that isn't even a skillsoft. It is just retarded. It still works well as a detect intentions/lie detector.

EDIT - And another thing: emosofts should not be equal to kinesics. If you feel that Kinesics is too powerful, raise the price or limit is to one half the highest social skill rating. To say that an adept has to pay 25BP for 5 levels of kinesics should be outdone by some chump who spent less than 1 BP on softs, and maybe 10more for Tailored Pheremones 3 (9 dice). That is just bullshit. Tailored Pheremones is the mundane's answer to the Pornomancer, not emosofts.

[Fortune]

Any decent Pornomancer that I have seen already has Tailored Pheromones as well as Kinesics.

[b1ffov3rfl0w]

Errata for Emosofts, "They do not add their rating as a modifier to social skill tests"

I sincerely expect to see that in Errata for the book. There is no reason why you should be able to get the exact same number of dice from a world class skill in that area from some software that isn't even a skillsoft. It is just retarded. It still works well as a detect intentions/lie detector.

Hey, we totally agree on something! Groovy.

[Daier Mune]

I'd allow them to give a bonus to Judge Intentions test, but i don't see how that would directly benefit social skills.

again, its probably the devs feeling that not enough people had good social skills and wanted to throw people a bone. just like how Augmentation had +perception mods leaking out of every pore.

[jklst14]

None of my players have purchased Empathy software yet, but when they do, I plan on limiting it to just Judge Intentions tests. I'll probably do the same with Enhanced Pheromone Receptors from Augmentation.

A few other related items:
I was thinking of not allowing Kinesics and Tailored Pheromones to stack. It reduces a pornomancers max possible die pool just a little. But perhaps more importantly, it can help mundane faces keep up (at least a little bit) with adept faces.

I also toyed with the idea of capping Kinesics to level 3 (or Magic/2). I was also thinking of turning Judge Intentions and Composure into new skills rather than having them be attribute only tests. If I did this, I would give the players some extra BPs to compensate for adding new and important skills to the game.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

JKL

[KCKitsune]

again, its probably the devs feeling that not enough people had good social skills and wanted to throw people a bone.

The devs should have just let those players sink.

just like how Augmentation had +perception mods leaking out of every pore.

They had one bioware mod and one cyberware mod, and the cyber one sucked compared to the bioware version.

[Glyph]

Enhanced Pheromone Receptors add to the overall social dice pool creep, but at least they have drawbacks - strong smells wind up giving you a penalty, and tailored pheromes act at double their normal effectiveness against you. Indeed, the drawbacks are so strong that I probably wouldn't get Enhanced Pheromone Receptors for a face build.

I don't think letting emotitoys offset penalties significantly weakens them. A face will often face penalties of 6 or higher for difficult tasks, so this would only let the face retain more dice for such tests. And the face wouldn't need those 6 dice for non-penalized tests.

There is no real non-metagame reason to not let Tailored Pheromes and Kinesics stack - one acts by scents, and one acts by controlling your own social cues and reading those of others. On the other hand, I agree that Kinesics and social software should not stack, since they do work the same way (analyzing social cues).

[Fortune]

They had one bioware mod and one cyberware mod, and the cyber one sucked compared to the bioware version.

You're kidding, right? The Attention Coprocessor is gold!

[Kremlin KOA]

I am still kind of partial to my house rule of only using the Emotitoy's bonus to negate any penalties (up to their rating). There are almost always penalties in Social situations, and this way the toys can be of some use without dominating the game.

or use my idea...

Another potential fix, and one that might fit with the intent of the toys, is to make them non-compatible with Kinesics.

Yeah, that idea.

I know it was suggested before, but the idea didn't seem to get enough attention.

At least someone noticed it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)

The toys could be a factor in leveling the playing field against the dreaded Pornomancer, if that Pornomancer can't really make use of the toy herself. Since these doodads seem to replicate the Kinesics ability (to some degree), it seems reasonable that they be mutually exclusive.

My thought exactly

Maybe combine both house rules. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

possibly
but i think not