20th Edition changes, List what you find is different here Options

[paws2sky]

I'd like to see Direct Combat Spells resisted by (Body or Willpower) + Edge. This really only helps out PCs, important NPCs, and certain critters, but I'm OK with mooks getting toasted by magic.

Oh... yeah. That's a good one. Thumbs up, HappyDaze.

-paws

[cryptoknight]

Likewise, Kinesics is capped to Level 3.

Which sucks for Face Adepts in Missions... time to find something else to do with those power points I suppose.

[cryptoknight]

No ones forcing you to use those updated rules in you game.Same as any other errata.

If you play missions they are.

[Mikado]

a mundane cop cant spot a mage until the spells go bang. unless one is blind, one can spot someone carrying a PAC (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Yea... your missing the point.

[Draco18s]

Spells (Over Casting)
To represent the difficulty in knowingly hurting oneself, you must make a Composure (Drain/2) Test in order to overcast. Failure represents an inability to overcast and the spell is then cast at Magic Rating.

Every shaman (or similarly Charisma linked spellcaster) would make all of those tests ever.

For instance, a stunbold force 10 does...4P? So they'd need 2 successes on Willpower + Charisma (the two best stats of a shaman). At 10 dice (we'll go for the soft-cap-chargen) that's just over 3 successes average on a Composure (2) test.

[Malachi]

Here's a change to the DC Drain rules I proposed in this thread.

Here's a thought: instead of Net Hits that changed the DV, why not have the increased Drain based on the number of hits the Opponent rolled on their test? This would be similar to how Drain is calculated for Summoning Tests. It also has the nice mechanic that the Magician isn't getting "punished" for success, it's more of a "negative feedback" situation from the Opponent. The Magician is channeling a ton of Mana and trying to "jam" it directly into his Opponents aura, the Aura "pushes back" on some of that mana and (having no other place to go) it slams back into the originating Magician. For area affect you could use either the highest hits achieved by any opponent, or the total of all hits achieved by all affected by the spell... though the latter may be too punishing for Area Effect spells.

No this doesn't address Overcasting, it's not intended to. It's just something I thought of to make the increased Drain on DC Spells make more sense.

[Method]

So slightly back on topic- can someone who's been following along post another summary of the changes noted thus far? I'd compile one myself but I a.) don't have SR4A yet, b.) would have to read back through 15 pages of debate and c.) am lazy. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Mikado]

Every shaman (or similarly Charisma linked spellcaster) would make all of those tests ever.

For instance, a stunbold force 10 does...4P? So they'd need 2 successes on Willpower + Charisma (the two best stats of a shaman). At 10 dice (we'll go for the soft-cap-chargen) that's just over 3 successes average on a Composure (2) test.

And I also said our table increased the drain on stun spells.
Yes, you’re talking about soft-caps, min/maxing and such...
My character is a shaman with a will of 4 and charisma of 4. Also, my character has a magic of 4 (well 6 but 2 are in adept powers) and spellcastng of 4. Yes I am specialized in combat spells and have a mentor spirit bonus in them as well but that only gives me 12 dice for casting and 8 for resisting... (For completeness I do have a F4 ally spirit but he is bound to a body and is not available all the time) I take drain enough. The new rule affects 8 of my 14 spells. The changes to OR affects 6 (7 if you include invisibility) of my spells. So, yea I am a bit upset with it. I didn't min/max my character to dish out damage. I have been playing him since 4th Ed came out, I have over 430 karma and yet none of my dice pools are over 12. (Yes, I can get to 16 with my ally but as before he is not around all the time.) Mind you my character has saved the team more that all the other characters combined and they roll more dice than I do for their specialties.
Yes I have stunbolt and stunball (because I feel leaving targets alive is better than killing them, my sidearm is even a narcoject pistol) and one direct damage spell to deal only with spirits, that’s 3 out of 8... The rest only affect objects. My character is useless. You tell me what my options are.
The "fix" they came up with fixes nothing. The player who makes balanced characters is the only one to suffer under it... Min/maxed characters are marginally hindered by it. Play a mage with 400 karma and most people will have a magic of 8... Wow.. You just did 8 damage and still took no drain.
Not only are the rules encouraging overcasting but they are encouraging min/maxing. This is fine in some circles but is frowned upon in ours.

[cryptoknight]

and we are back at SR3 rules with a new dice mechanic (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Cool... I didn't know somebody could get a job repairing dice (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[cryptoknight]

EDIT: Okay, so say this is made to try to make high-skill characters. But wait...weren't those skill levels supposed to be...well, ''best in the world'', etc? You mean that it's better to have a bunch of runners end up ''best in the world'' after a few months of gameplay than it is to just start with some high attributes and branch out?

I think you mean for highly diverse skilled characters... because with skills basically capped at 6... you'll hit that ceiling pretty quick.

[Draco18s]

I think you mean for highly diverse skilled characters... because with skills basically capped at 6... you'll hit that ceiling pretty quick.

The other problem I've always had with the skills system. Even if I have to deal with attributes being more expensive than skills, I quickly hit the peak. I can either spend 0 karma and go nowhere, or I can spend an exorbitant amount to improve my pools by 1.

I don't see why skills couldn't have been made half as expensive, but expand the range up to 12 (char gen still being limited to 5/6). That not only solves the problem of increasing attributes, but also allows FAR MORE character growth. If I max out my Automatics skill (6) at char gen, and buy my Agility to 5, then my character has only two avenues of growth: 1 more die to killing people and Sideways. He can never be better at what he does, all he can do is learn New Things.

[pbangarth]

Allowing skills to progress past 6 (say, after chargen) would go a long way towards making skills more important in the game... after some play time. Keep Attribute advancement cost with the X5 multiplier, but allow skills to advance to 12, with the current multiplier. Skill would eventually outweigh natural talent, but after a lot of experience.

That sort of makes sense, doesn't it?

[Draco18s]

Allowing skills to progress past 6 (say, after chargen) would go a long way towards making skills more important in the game... after some play time. Keep Attribute advancement cost with the X5 multiplier, but allow skills to advance to 12, with the current multiplier. Skill would eventually outweigh natural talent, but after a lot of experience.

That sort of makes sense, doesn't it?

Quite. I was mostly ignoring whatever multiplier on Attributes merely for the sake of "where they max out." If my attributes can only be improved so far (+1 to +2 over what chargen gives me) then I might buy that up first (if cheap)* or later (if expensive), but in either case, the cap on skills allows for more improvement in the long run.

*Ex: leave attribute is *3, skill is *2. Buying a single skill to 9 costs the same as the attribute to 6. Skill groups would need to come down though: 25 karma to raise a group to 5. So I could see a swap between groups and attributes: attributes are *5, skill groups are *3.

[BlueMax]

Allowing skills to progress past 6 (say, after chargen) would go a long way towards making skills more important in the game... after some play time. Keep Attribute advancement cost with the X5 multiplier, but allow skills to advance to 12, with the current multiplier. Skill would eventually outweigh natural talent, but after a lot of experience.

That sort of makes sense, doesn't it?

Mechanically, it makes oodles of sense.
Thematically, it may not. I wont pretend to know what Synner wants for a theme but he may want a "Capped" world.

*may* people, may

[Mikado]

Quite. I was mostly ignoring whatever multiplier on Attributes merely for the sake of "where they max out." If my attributes can only be improved so far (+1 to +2 over what chargen gives me) then I might buy that up first (if cheap)* or later (if expensive), but in either case, the cap on skills allows for more improvement in the long run.

*Ex: leave attribute is *3, skill is *2. Buying a single skill to 9 costs the same as the attribute to 6. Skill groups would need to come down though: 25 karma to raise a group to 5. So I could see a swap between groups and attributes: attributes are *5, skill groups are *3.

Skiil groups to *3 is a bit drastic, I would lower it to *4 at most. But the group I run with has had attributes at *4 since the beginning so going to *5 is not so bad.

[pbangarth]

Draco18s, in Malachi's scheme, the 'world's best' Rating would be 12, with your example of 9 being in the 'top gun' category. It would make sense to me that getting a whole Group to that level should be way difficult. Michael Phelps can outswim anybody, but give him a shotput and let's see how well he does.

[cryptoknight]

But that's maxing the attribute, ranking the character with the Sixth World's elite. Now lets pay 40 karma for a troll to raise his strength to an 8. Sheesh.

All I know is my group is going to have to seriously up its karma awards. We do 3, 4, maybe 5 a night. The change makes sense - think how tough it is to raise an attribute in the real world, as compared to raising a skill, but it sure slows advancement.

Well it's really (8-2)*5 = 30 karma... because the racial bonuses don't count when improving an attribute with karma.

[cryptoknight]

Making attributes harder to rise is a good thing, in my opinion.

I agree... except for Magic... you have to pay silly karma to initiate... and then start paying 35,40,45,50 additional karma to bring the magic attribute up to your cap...


Old New
Initiate Lvl 1 13+21 13+35
Initiate Lvl 2 16+24 16+40
etc...

[Synner]

For the record, and just so my message box gets a rest:
Cameras and most other individual sensors are intended to be treated as Electronic Equipment (ie. Object Resistance 4). The gamemaster is, of course, free to rule that a particular sophisticated sensor suite/array is so complex and offers so much rendundancy that it qualifies for Object Resistance 6. While some sensors may indeed incorporate enough processing power and data management subsystems to qualify as "computers", the sensor itself is usually a relatively simple electronic system that that lack the mechanical complexity, technological sophistication and subsystem integration that drones, commlinks, and 2072 vehicles possess.

[Angier]

I think it would help to give cameras as an example for an electronic equipment in the print version of SR4A, eh?
Besides that - thanks for the clarification. as usual :>

[cryptoknight]

Activesofts of rating 1-4 all now cost Rating * 10000 nuyen and have a flat avail of 8 [SR4A, pg331]
Upgrading Hardware now costs half the upgrades book price and in the case of commlinks is measured in days not weeks

So buy Pirated Activesofts for 1000*rating?

[Mikado]

For the record, and just so my message box gets a rest:
Cameras and most other individual sensors are intended to be treated as Electronic Equipment (ie. Object Resistance 4). The gamemaster is, of course, free to rule that a particular sophisticated sensor suite/array is so complex and offers so much rendundancy that it qualifies for Object Resistance 6. While some sensors may indeed incorporate enough processing power and data management subsystems to qualify as "computers", the sensor itself is usually a relatively simple electronic system that that lack the mechanical complexity, technological sophistication and subsystem integration that drones, commlinks, and 2072 vehicles possess.

Please don't take this as me trying to be a dick but...
Commlinks have cameras and microphones on them... By your rules a commlink is OR6. Unless we are supposed to sperate objects out to their components that would make fooling a commlink camera with imp. invisibility OR6. If we are supposed to just count the camera by itself why would we count drone sensors any different.

[Angier]

Please don't take this as me trying to be a dick but...
Commlinks have cameras and microphones on them... By your rules a commlink is OR6. Unless we are supposed to sperate objects out to their components that would make fooling a commlink camera with imp. invisibility OR6. If we are supposed to just count the camera by itself why would we count drone sensors any different.

You don't. It all depends on being a full blown node or not. peripheral devices are OR 4, anything being a full blown node is OR 6. A camera IS a peripheral device. the nexus getting the sensor feed of the camera is not. But because you are tryring to trick the camera it is OR 4. If you are trying to trick the optical sensors of a drone (which are part of the drones full blown node) you have to beat OR 6.

[Dunsany]

For the record, and just so my message box gets a rest:
Cameras and most other individual sensors are intended to be treated as Electronic Equipment (ie. Object Resistance 4). The gamemaster is, of course, free to rule that a particular sophisticated sensor suite/array is so complex and offers so much rendundancy that it qualifies for Object Resistance 6. While some sensors may indeed incorporate enough processing power and data management subsystems to qualify as "computers", the sensor itself is usually a relatively simple electronic system that that lack the mechanical complexity, technological sophistication and subsystem integration that drones, commlinks, and 2072 vehicles possess.

Again I'd ask what the purpose of the change was. This seems like a change in not only the rules but the setting.

1. What sensor isn't a computer, even today? It seems as if you believe some are. Is there something that happened in the Shadowrun setting to change this that I am not aware of? Also, if your meaning of "computer" is a "complex electronic system" then I'm not sure what qualifies as an object resistance of 4. From the setting material I was given the impression that just about everything in the Shadowrun future is a computer to some extent.

2. Is the intent so that illusion spells are still useful against sensors but not against drones? Given that drones are cheap and prevalent throughout the setting, there doesn't seem to be a distinction as they'll be used anywhere that the non-computer sensors were used before.

3. If drones are not used, then why not? Have drones become more expensive? Are they less prevalent in this new setting?

[Mikado]

You don't. It all depends on being a full blown node or not. peripheral devices are OR 4, anything being a full blown node is OR 6. A camera IS a peripheral device. the nexus getting the sensor feed of the camera is not. But because you are tryring to trick the camera it is OR 4. If you are trying to trick the optical sensors of a drone (which are part of the drones full blown node) you have to beat OR 6.

Ah, but the drones node is geting information from its peripheral device (camera), when do you stop treating peripheral devices as seperate from the device they are built into. The sensors (however you want to quantify what they are) are not part of the computer that is a drone.
What about microdrones??
To be honest, this is not a topic I would bother talking about. Nor is it one I care about terribly. Cameras are OR4 drones OR6. Commlinks, while being OR6 are fooled like any other regular camera. I am just in an argumentive mood... with the back and forth emails with my GM over the direct combat spell issue.