shadowrun 3rd ed Options

[aftershock]

Hi all just joined up and wondered how meny of you where still playing 3rd ed or has everyone jumped ship to 4th ed like D&D ?

[BullZeye]

I would not quite compare SR3->4 change the same as D&D 3->4... Good chunk here is still SR3 but for those who are new to SR, 4th ed is about the only option when wanting to buy new books. Some have changed from 3 to 4 but my guess is majority of 4ed players did skip SR3 for most part.

[Malachi]

I don't know, I think a bunch of people did go from SR3 to SR4. I'm included in that group.

[paws2sky]

For me, it was more like I tripped over SR3 on the way from SR2 to SR4. I GM'd 6-8 sessions of SR3 and was about ready to throw the books out the window.

But to answer your original question... no, I don't play SR3 and probably won't ever again. Much, much happier with SR4 (and would still play SR2 if anyone around here would ever run it).

-paws

PS I also agree that the comparing D&D 3e/4e to SR 3e/4e is pretty far fetched. Also, I dislike leading questions.

[Daddy's Litt...]

3rd ed worked just fine for us and with 2 small children we are not shelling out for all new books when the ones we have are just fine.

[nezumi]

I play (and love) SR3.

[HappyDaze]

For me, it was more like I tripped over SR3 on the way from SR2 to SR4. I GM'd 6-8 sessions of SR3 and was about ready to throw the books out the window.

This is pretty much retraces my path to SR4. I don't know what made SR3 seem so different from SR2, but whatever it was, it broke my enjoyment of the game.

[BlueMax]

For me, it was more like I tripped over SR3 on the way from SR2 to SR4. I GM'd 6-8 sessions of SR3 and was about ready to throw the books out the window.

But to answer your original question... no, I don't play SR3 and probably won't ever again. Much, much happier with SR4 (and would still play SR2 if anyone around here would ever run it).

-paws

PS I also agree that the comparing D&D 3e/4e to SR 3e/4e is pretty far fetched. Also, I dislike leading questions.

This describes my experience perfectly.

[Stahlseele]

I don't get to play PERIOD.
But my group is mostly going to stay with SR3 for a while

[eidolon]

I played SR3 for a long time, and after reading up on it I moved to SR4. I loved SR3 but SR4 is my new favorite SR system.

I also wouldn't compare it to D&D's progression.

[Maelstrome]

i still play sr3. played a few session of sr4 and i can solidly say i prefer the mechanics of sr3. the only reason i would play sr4 is for the extra character options which most could be back ported to sr3 with a little effort.

[Pendaric]

SR3.
Like what has been done with SR4 setting and the streamlining but I dont have time to bring half the group up to speed or distruction test the system. The real game breaker is we're currently happy with the campaign characters per SR3, to much effort and jarring of feel to change and tweak every NPC, valued experence vehicle and the entire game world.

Still buying SR4 though, as a gold mine of great background and system flourshes to dribble in as time marches on in game and I just enjoy the concepts.

SR3 though is the old devil you know and for me, a system is just one tool in the tool box. My group have crafted our use of SR3 to our purpose.

[Larme]

Please don't read my post unless you think you can respond calmly. I don't want to start a flame war. The below is a discussion of why I prefer SR3 to SR4 SR4 to SR3: because the chargen in SR4 is more limited and requires you to make choices. EDIT: D'oh!

[ Spoiler ]

I've given up SR3 for one major reason: the chargen. SR4 chargen forces you to make a lot of tough choices. You can be awesome but highly specialized, or be versatile but relatively weak. The closest I have come to breaking this system is by using second hand ware to cram a character full, down to .18 essence, to compensate for skimping on attribute spending and to make her powerful in combat. Then I used Born Rich to snare those extra nuyen for the gear to make her a rigger AND a hacker. What I ended up with is a character who has 19 full defense dice, 13 pistols dice, 10-12 hacking dice, 11 rigging dice, and 8 social dice. This makes her something of a swiss army knife -- with Edge, she can do almost anything, outside of magic, to help the team. But she's far below a true specialist in every area.

SR3's chargen, in contrast, is insanely easy to break. My "standard" build in SR3 had 8 body, 6 charisma, 8 strength, 8 quickness, 8 intelligence, and 6 willpower. This character had the unarmed skills to pound almost any NPC's face into custard, the shooting skills to take down almost anything (especially if I used a SPAS-22, 11D bursts ftw), the armor to absorb damage from most small arms unscathed, and the social skills to charm her way into anything. Such a character has literally no reason to bother improving, all she can do is go from "amazing" to "ridiculous." Even with the cost of cyber inflated to sky-high prices, starting with 1 million nuyen was just too much. Attributes were too cheap, and skills were pretty cheap too. The one thing I will say for it is that you couldn't make a really good samurai/rigger/hacker, but that's largely because the costs of rigging and hacking were astronomical beyond suspension of disbelief. It would cost you 800,000 yen of resources just to be an elite hacker, and a tricked out van would run over 100,000. I think that this ended up as more of a negative than a positive though -- riggers and hackers were forced into a single area of specialty, an area that nobody else could be good at, requiring them to gobble up all the game time if they wanted to participate.

So that's the long and the short of it. SR4 cuts out a lot of no-brainers from chargen (enhanced artwinkulation, for instance), and forces you to make choices. Even doing my best to break the system, I came out with a character who can be easily out-classed. But in SR3, I could make a character at the top of her game in multiple specialties, no problem. SR4 doesn't force you to be a street level punk, but it doesn't allow you to be an expert in everything you do like SR3 did. In SR3, you have to intentionally try to create a gimpy character, while in SR4, everyone's going to be a gimp in some area, which makes reliance on the team all that much more important, and promotes everyone having a good time and getting to participate. I know that SR4 isn't perfect, but IMO the more limited power of SR4 starting characters seals the deal against SR3.

[Psikerlord]

I agree wholeheartedly Larme. SR3 char's had less room to improve, which ultimately was less enjoyable. Also trolls could have bows which did more damage than panther assault cannons.

[eidolon]

Please don't read my post unless you think you can respond calmly. I don't want to start a flame war. The below is a discussion of why I prefer SR3 to SR4: because the chargen in SR4 is more limited and requires you to make choices.

Think you meant that the other way 'round. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Lordmalachdrim]

I'm still using SR 3. In fact I'm in the process of setting up a campaign starting back in 2050 to take a group of SR newbies from the beginning on though the years.

[Daishi]

After a solid decade my gaming crew switched to SR4 last month for our Shadowrunning needs. I'm still getting used to it, but so far so good. Most of my knowledge of SR3 house rules and character min-maxing has been tossed out the window, but that's probably a good thing.

[silva]

or me, it was more like I tripped over SR3 on the way from SR2 to SR4. I GM'd 6-8 sessions of SR3 and was about ready to throw the books out the window.

But to answer your original question... no, I don't play SR3 and probably won't ever again. Much, much happier with SR4 (and would still play SR2 if anyone around here would ever run it).

-paws

Perfectly describes my feelings too.

[lordnth]

My group just started playing SR3.
We talked about going SR4, but with PDFs of the core book only and all the source we had for SR3...
we choose the game for what we already had the stuff for.
That and I didn't have to learn a new system. Just refresh what I had forgotten over the years.

[Cain]

Please don't read my post unless you think you can respond calmly. I don't want to start a flame war. The below is a discussion of why I prefer SR3 to SR4 SR4 to SR3: because the chargen in SR4 is more limited and requires you to make choices. EDIT: D'oh!

[ Spoiler ]

I've given up SR3 for one major reason: the chargen. SR4 chargen forces you to make a lot of tough choices. You can be awesome but highly specialized, or be versatile but relatively weak. The closest I have come to breaking this system is by using second hand ware to cram a character full, down to .18 essence, to compensate for skimping on attribute spending and to make her powerful in combat. Then I used Born Rich to snare those extra nuyen for the gear to make her a rigger AND a hacker. What I ended up with is a character who has 19 full defense dice, 13 pistols dice, 10-12 hacking dice, 11 rigging dice, and 8 social dice. This makes her something of a swiss army knife -- with Edge, she can do almost anything, outside of magic, to help the team. But she's far below a true specialist in every area.

SR3's chargen, in contrast, is insanely easy to break. My "standard" build in SR3 had 8 body, 6 charisma, 8 strength, 8 quickness, 8 intelligence, and 6 willpower. This character had the unarmed skills to pound almost any NPC's face into custard, the shooting skills to take down almost anything (especially if I used a SPAS-22, 11D bursts ftw), the armor to absorb damage from most small arms unscathed, and the social skills to charm her way into anything. Such a character has literally no reason to bother improving, all she can do is go from "amazing" to "ridiculous." Even with the cost of cyber inflated to sky-high prices, starting with 1 million nuyen was just too much. Attributes were too cheap, and skills were pretty cheap too. The one thing I will say for it is that you couldn't make a really good samurai/rigger/hacker, but that's largely because the costs of rigging and hacking were astronomical beyond suspension of disbelief. It would cost you 800,000 yen of resources just to be an elite hacker, and a tricked out van would run over 100,000. I think that this ended up as more of a negative than a positive though -- riggers and hackers were forced into a single area of specialty, an area that nobody else could be good at, requiring them to gobble up all the game time if they wanted to participate.

So that's the long and the short of it. SR4 cuts out a lot of no-brainers from chargen (enhanced artwinkulation, for instance), and forces you to make choices. Even doing my best to break the system, I came out with a character who can be easily out-classed. But in SR3, I could make a character at the top of her game in multiple specialties, no problem. SR4 doesn't force you to be a street level punk, but it doesn't allow you to be an expert in everything you do like SR3 did. In SR3, you have to intentionally try to create a gimpy character, while in SR4, everyone's going to be a gimp in some area, which makes reliance on the team all that much more important, and promotes everyone having a good time and getting to participate. I know that SR4 isn't perfect, but IMO the more limited power of SR4 starting characters seals the deal against SR3.

No offense, but are you kidding?

SR4 is just as breakable as SR3. Things like the pornomancer simply weren't possible under the old system. I could point to any number of threads here on Dumpshock describing min/maxed monstrosities under SR4.

Now, I'm not defending SR3 on this count. You could twink out characters there, too. But all SR4 does to stop twinking is to throw some arbitrary limits and caps into the mix-- limits which don't help. I can easily create a well-rounded gun bunny with 20+ dice in his primary attack pool, even with the caps in place. If I wanted to go one-trick pony, I believe I could get to 32 dice. The pornomancer, IIRC, caps out at 49 dice. You couldn't even get a dice pool that size in SR3. What's more, those 32 dice are more meaningful in SR4; the fixed TN system means that power is proportional to your dice pool, and not a combination of dice pool size and TN modifiers.

Yes, you could break SR3 easily. But you can break SR4 easily as well.

I'll argue that in the big picture, the power level of SR4 isn't any more limited than SR3.

[Maelstrome]

im with cain on this one.

i actually made essentially the same character in both sr3 and sr4 and that character just seemed way more powerful in sr4 than he did in sr3.

ive seen powerful characters in both editions and though the stats of the characters are higher in 3rd edition, you get way more bang for your buck in 4th.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

No offense, but are you kidding?

SR4 is just as breakable as SR3. Things like the pornomancer simply weren't possible under the old system. I could point to any number of threads here on Dumpshock describing min/maxed monstrosities under SR4.

Now, I'm not defending SR3 on this count. You could twink out characters there, too. But all SR4 does to stop twinking is to throw some arbitrary limits and caps into the mix-- limits which don't help. I can easily create a well-rounded gun bunny with 20+ dice in his primary attack pool, even with the caps in place. If I wanted to go one-trick pony, I believe I could get to 32 dice. The pornomancer, IIRC, caps out at 49 dice. You couldn't even get a dice pool that size in SR3. What's more, those 32 dice are more meaningful in SR4; the fixed TN system means that power is proportional to your dice pool, and not a combination of dice pool size and TN modifiers.

Yes, you could break SR3 easily. But you can break SR4 easily as well.

I'll argue that in the big picture, the power level of SR4 isn't any more limited than SR3.

Sorry Cain, but It always seems to comes back to this... Are YOU Kidding ME?

Chargen is much more limited in SR4 than in SR3... as well, you will have a hard time convincing me that your Pornomancer is a Starting Character Build at 400 BP... which I believe was Larme's point... You may be able to eventually get to that point of 49 Dice... BUT NOT AT CHARGEN... at least, not legally as far as I can see...

ANY Game System can be broken, in the Big Picture, given enough time and character resources (BP, Nuyen, Karma, etc.)... but SR4 does a good job of allowing playable characters that make sense at chargen... can we create characters that fall outside of that norm (Crazy Min/Maxed Characters that are one man armies)? Sure, though I contend that it is not the Norm to do so, and takes some doing...

As for Dice Pools being more meaningful, I would argue this point...
In SR3, you could have targets ranging from 2 to 12+, with the usual result being from 3-5 for the most part... Given this, a 20 Dice Pool in SR3, with a Target of 2 was an average of 5/6th of your Pool or 16/17 Successes... At Target 4 (the Average) your Successes averaged 10

In SR 4 Your Target is Static... That same 20 Dice gives you an average of 6 Hits... Pretty Significant decrease of Reliability and Meaningfulness to me...

What SR4 did was infuse more unpredictability into the system... Soaking 2's for Damage was pretty laughable even at Deadly Damage...... Now, Soaking 10 Boxes of Damage is not a guarantee anymore for that Combat Troll who now needs 30+ Dice of Resistance to perform that task "Reliably"... Not that I am arguning for massive dice pools here, just using that as a comparison...

I think that the Changes from SR3 to SR4 were very positive, and Our gaming group has not looked back since converting to SR4 when it came on the market...

Yeah... I am a big SR4 Fan...

[Lordmalachdrim]

You must be ignoring most if not all the modifiers to ranged combat if your averaging TNs that low in gunfights.

[Telion]

For SR3, Its not hard to get TN2 in most gun fights. Its only when the battle gets going and people are rushing for cover or creating environmental effects that the TN increases. Though I will say this is all about the type of campaign and battles you have. I have also seen plenty of fights where I've increased the characters base TN to 18, could likely be worse.

As for me, I played a campaign or two in SR2, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Played SR3 heavily, some things from SR2 would have been nice if they carried over. More intense drain, grounding, hellfire.
SR4 I'll play whenever a group requests it but if I'm the GM I'll probably go back to SR3 where I can recall all the rules and make characters fairly rapidly.

SR4 to me is a mixed bag, some interesting features, and some buzzkills. Friends have given positive comments but those comments are also some which would normally tell me to avoid it. Really I'll just approach it as a new game and let my prejudices relax.

[Cain]

Chargen is much more limited in SR4 than in SR3... as well, you will have a hard time convincing me that your Pornomancer is a Starting Character Build at 400 BP... which I believe was Larme's point... You may be able to eventually get to that point of 49 Dice... BUT NOT AT CHARGEN... at least, not legally as far as I can see...

I'll refer you to Glyph on this one, since he's the one who made it. However, the pornomancer is indeed a legal starting character. If you do a search on it, you'll see the BP and/or Karmagen breakdown for yourself. It's also surprisingly well-rounded, and could function as a viable character.

Chargen is hardly more limited in SR4, simply because it is a points-based system, and a high number of points at that. Point-buy under SR3 was restricted to 123 points. With 400 points to play with, you actually have fewer limits; you can fiddle and tweak a great deal more. Basic game design principle: the more points you have, the less limited your character becomes.

In SR3, you could have targets ranging from 2 to 12+, with the usual result being from 3-5 for the most part... Given this, a 20 Dice Pool in SR3, with a Target of 2 was an average of 5/6th of your Pool or 16/17 Successes... At Target 4 (the Average) your Successes averaged 10

In SR 4 Your Target is Static... That same 20 Dice gives you an average of 6 Hits... Pretty Significant decrease of Reliability and Meaningfulness to me...

Yes, but getting that dice pool of 20 was much more difficult. You rolled skill alone, plus whatever Combat Pool you had available. Gaining bonus dice was not as easy as it is in SR4, since attributes had only a soft link to skills. And while you could use Combat Pool, it was an expendable resource; meaning, you could run out easily.

What SR4 did was infuse more unpredictability into the system... Soaking 2's for Damage was pretty laughable even at Deadly Damage...... Now, Soaking 10 Boxes of Damage is not a guarantee anymore for that Combat Troll who now needs 30+ Dice of Resistance to perform that task "Reliably"... Not that I am arguning for massive dice pools here, just using that as a comparison...

I'll argue that SR3 was much more unpredictable, largely due to the floating TN mechanic. You could never quite know if it was better to have a large dice pool, or a smaller one with more TN modifiers. OTOH, the probability distribution for SR4 is ludicrously simple: Dice Pool / 3 = Expected Successes.

Yeah... I am a big SR4 Fan...

That's good, and I'm glad you're having fun. But don't let the fact that you're having fun blind you to the fact that SR4 is an easily breakable system. Yes, SR3 is just as breakable, but that doesn't make SR4 into a perfect system by any stretch of the imagination.

Edit: I couldn't sleep, and did the search for you. You can see the 750 Karma Pornomancer build Here. A 400 BP version of the Pornomancer can be found on that same page, who only has 46 dice. Both these builds are pre-SR4.5, so some variations may be in order.



This post has been edited by Cain: May 13 2009, 06:07 AM