4th Edition did hurt my soul..., rant, questions Options

[Omenowl]

Game balance is "Can the character add a positive contribution to the party?" The GM is also responsible for not making a player useless.

And I don't believe in trying to house rule weapons that have real life counterparts and very lethal (automatic grenade launcher). Collateral damage, notoriety and being hunted should have enough effect to limit such weapons.

[Cain]

I didn't say you thought you were right. I said you're coming off like your opinion is the ONLY one that is right.

Well, of course my opinion is the only one that's right! Where would we be if we acknowledged dissenting opinions?

The way to prevent that from becoming the whole game is for the GM to create differing circumstances. If the GM's only idea is to present targets to kill, then the players will use the same tactic every time to kill them. We're back to where we started, to your D&D 4e mindset where the GM has no discretion to change things up and make things more challenging and interesting, where it is the job of the system and the system alone to make combat fun. When you call all storytelling railroading, I guess you can't escape that conclusion.

First of all, I've only played D&D 4e about three times. Not long enough for it to have given me cancer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Second, you're missing the point. It is the job of the rules to provide a framework within which you can share a story. The rules should make things easier for the GM to do his job, not harder. In fact, it should be up to the system to provide challenges, as much as possible; all the GM should need to do is select them and place appropriate flavor text on them. The system is flawed when you try and provide interesting and varied challenges, all of which are beaten in the exact same way. For example, many combats end when the mage casts manaball. You can make a couple of edge cases here and there, but for the most part, it's an "I Win" button. The same holds true for fully-automatic grenade launchers.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Well, of course my opinion is the only one that's right! Where would we be if we acknowledged dissenting opinions?

You know, I would ask if you are kidding, but we all know the answer to that one don't we...

Maybe that is why we don't get along all that well...

Anyway, to each his own I guess...

[Larme]

Well, of course my opinion is the only one that's right! Where would we be if we acknowledged dissenting opinions?


First of all, I've only played D&D 4e about three times. Not long enough for it to have given me cancer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Second, you're missing the point. It is the job of the rules to provide a framework within which you can share a story. The rules should make things easier for the GM to do his job, not harder. In fact, it should be up to the system to provide challenges, as much as possible; all the GM should need to do is select them and place appropriate flavor text on them. The system is flawed when you try and provide interesting and varied challenges, all of which are beaten in the exact same way. For example, many combats end when the mage casts manaball. You can make a couple of edge cases here and there, but for the most part, it's an "I Win" button. The same holds true for fully-automatic grenade launchers.

See, I don't think "interesting and varied challenges" can all be solved one way. That's almost definitional, if they're not highly similar what are the chances that they'd all have the same solution? You seem to be taking similar situations and grouping them together as "varied," thus leading to your erroneous assertion that manaball solves varied challenges. The only thing that can be solved with manaball is a group of mundanes, fairly close together, in an area with no background count. That's the ONLY one. This is why I say you're trying to rely on the system and not the GM to mix things up. If the GM always throws tightly bunched groups of mundanes at you, it's not the system's fault, it's his lack of ingenuity and creativity.

[Cain]

And if you're always throwing the same contrived counters back at the team, to nerf the manaball, then you're railroading. If there's always a significant enough background count to restrict the manaball tactic, your players will notice.

[Matsci]

And if you're always throwing the same contrived counters back at the team, to nerf the manaball, then you're railroading. If there's always a significant enough background count to restrict the manaball tactic, your players will notice.

F10 Manaball only insta-wins in the following conditions

1. The Enemies lack magical support...
2. Are all within 10 m of each other...
3. Are arranged so that the mage can avoid hitting allies and himself...
4. Are in an area without background count...
5. and can all be seen by the mage.

As for background count, look at what creats background count

1: Violent Crime, Love affair, Awakened Hangout- Runners often create background count of level 1!

Background count is pretty common.

[Omenowl]

Second, you're missing the point. It is the job of the rules to provide a framework within which you can share a story. The rules should make things easier for the GM to do his job, not harder. In fact, it should be up to the system to provide challenges, as much as possible; all the GM should need to do is select them and place appropriate flavor text on them. The system is flawed when you try and provide interesting and varied challenges, all of which are beaten in the exact same way. For example, many combats end when the mage casts manaball. You can make a couple of edge cases here and there, but for the most part, it's an "I Win" button. The same holds true for fully-automatic grenade launchers.

You are right the rules are to make a GMs job easier within reason. They are not to cover every action nor hinder the game/storyline to the point where the entire story fails. If it comes up often for a particular scenario not covered then you can formalize rules, but overall rules are a guideline rather than law, and unique situations don't need to be codified by a mechanic.

The problem you are giving us is the GM shouldn't have to put the prepatory work and thought process into designing scenarios and missions where players have to try different tactics. The GM is not catering the game to his players, but rather sleepwalking through design. Maybe this is the problem with the group refusing to play different styles, but that is less a problem with the mechanic than the group.

Manaball can be countered by magicians and spirits. It doesn't work as well if the opponents are spread out.

Grenades have nasty effects if they are detonated. Grenades are heavy and bulky. Fine you have an automatic grenade launcher, but how do you carry them? With armor of 2070 then grenades will have less of an effect. They can't be used close and only work within 4 meters for an HE or 12 meters for a fragmentation grenade where an opponent with body armor might only take stun damage even on a direct hit.

[Omenowl]

Not everywhere has to have a background count, but once you start getting into the high levels of shadowrunning rather than the penny ante stuff you should be dealing with background count on most missions. The reason is corporations will be aspecting the count to their advantage. Spirits will patrol the area and so will mages. Do you think their physical security won't have a mage with them to protect the group? It is no different than the physical security having more body armor or better weapons. It comes with the tougher jobs.

There are other places such as Chicago and other toxic locations, which would be very dangerous and highly aspected. High notoriety shadowrunners don't get the plum stealth missions instead they get the smash and grab missions where they are expendable and no one cares if they are seen.

A mage that has to deal with this often enough with background counts will get filtering metamagic.

A challenge is something a character can overcome with the right skills and actions
A nerf is when you diminish the power of something with no recourse.
Railroading is no matter what the player chooses to do the result is the same.

[Cain]

1. The Enemies lack magical support...
2. Are all within 10 m of each other...
3. Are arranged so that the mage can avoid hitting allies and himself...
4. Are in an area without background count...
5. and can all be seen by the mage.

Generally, even when the other side has magical support, they only get Counterspelling to try and soak that manaball. And I guarantee you, a well-designed mage with be throwing more dice in Sorcery than they get in counterspelling. Counterspelling does not instantly negate high-force spells, it just slows them down a bit. You can also with hold dice to increase the area of effect on spells.

As far as background count goes, a background count of 1 or 2 isn't going to slow down a high-force manaball, either. You'd need a significant one; and like I said, your players will notice that everytime they try to cast a high force spell, they happen to be standing in a high-power background count.

The problem you are giving us is the GM shouldn't have to put the prepatory work and thought process into designing scenarios and missions where players have to try different tactics. The GM is not catering the game to his players, but rather sleepwalking through design. Maybe this is the problem with the group refusing to play different styles, but that is less a problem with the mechanic than the group.

The problem is always with the group. The group has a certain style, and the game will support that playstyle to a greater or lesser degree. If it's a lesser degree, maybe they'd be better off playing a different game.

But if you think the rules aren't to blame, you're mistaken. Poorly written or thought-out rules can make an otherwise enjoyable game into a headache. A good game will suggest varied types of challenges that require varied approaches to solve. In SR4 combat, there's certain uber-tactics that simply win every time. This is a problem, and they need to be fixed.

[Larme]

The problem is always with the group. The group has a certain style, and the game will support that playstyle to a greater or lesser degree. If it's a lesser degree, maybe they'd be better off playing a different game.

But if you think the rules aren't to blame, you're mistaken. Poorly written or thought-out rules can make an otherwise enjoyable game into a headache. A good game will suggest varied types of challenges that require varied approaches to solve. In SR4 combat, there's certain uber-tactics that simply win every time. This is a problem, and they need to be fixed.

You keep saying that the same tactics always win, no matter what counters I provide. Because for you, using the counter to an auto-win tactic is unfair railroading. You have already decided to fix the system, you're not arguing, you're just stating your opinion over and over without considering or really responding to the counter proposals. Like your last post, you effectively just said "no you're wrong" and restated your original position. For you, it's a circular argument, the system is broken and must be fixed because it's broken and must be fixed. I don't need to change your mind, but I'm not going to let you foist logical fallacies on everyone else unchallenged. I have never experienced a game of SR4 become dominated by auto-win tactics -- if you were right, every game would be. The exception shows that the universal statement you make about the system being broken is actually specific to your table. Maybe your GMs are uncreative, maybe your players do their best to destroy the system even if it leads to them having less fun, I don't know. But the fact is, you're pretty much the only one here who thinks like that, so you need to accept that things you take to be true are actually anecdotes, and not facts.

[Malachi]

Well, of course my opinion is the only one that's right! Where would we be if we acknowledged dissenting opinions?

Civility.

[Cain]

Larme, I can find dozens of threads complaining about direct combat spells. Your "counters" only work if you use them all the time, which makes them railroading. Surely you can see that? So, before you go attacking the GMs at my table, maybe you should read through the archives, and see how many people have posted the exact same problem.

[Matsci]

Larme, I can find dozens of threads complaining about direct combat spells. Your "counters" only work if you use them all the time, which makes them railroading. Surely you can see that? So, before you go attacking the GMs at my table, maybe you should read through the archives, and see how many people have posted the exact same problem.

Link 'em. Let's see if any of them were started by someone other than you.

[Fuchs]

If in D&D you always bring hordes of skeletons as foes you'll end up thinking that Turn Undead is overpowered.

[Larme]

Larme, I can find dozens of threads complaining about direct combat spells. Your "counters" only work if you use them all the time, which makes them railroading. Surely you can see that? So, before you go attacking the GMs at my table, maybe you should read through the archives, and see how many people have posted the exact same problem.

You're just repeating, for the dozenth time, this same vapid all or nothing idea, that if it ever auto-wins in any situation, it requires a total rules rework. What you're doing is defining "broken" in such a way that no amount of work within the system could ever possibly fix it. Thus, your entire argument is a circular fallacy -- it is broken because it is broken, and the way we know it's broken is that we define "broken" in such a way that it could never not be broken-- indeed, in such a way that no RPG exists which isn't broken.

I submit that everything auto-wins at some time, and thus everything is broken according to you. Following your train of logic, bullets are broken because you need to wear armor to survive them. You have to rewrite the whole system, because the only way to counter bullets is to wear armor all the time, and that's railroading if the GM makes all NPCs wear armor. Cars are broken too, because people can't really survive being run over by them. The only counter is to drive a car of your own which offers protection from being run over. But of course, the only way to fix that is to have the GM make the NPCs drive cars *every time*, which would be railroading. And let's not forget about explosives -- the only way for NPCs to survive a bomb is to carry a chem sniffer and detect the bomb before it goes off and kills them. But of course, it would be railroading for the GM to make all the NPCs carry chem sniffers, so you can't do that. Everything is broken because, even though everything has a counter, you can't use that counter 100% of the time.

Your definition of broken-ness is plainly unworkable, because everything can auto-win when you don't use its counter, and you can't use everything's counter 100% of the time. Your definition invalidates literally everything in the game. It's a worthless tool for anything except arguing that the game should be ripped up and thrown in the trash. But try this on for size: nothing is broken unless it cannot be reasonably countered. That is a workable definition. Balance doesn't mean a 50-50 chance of success every time. It means that no move can be made that can't be countered. The fact that combat spells can be shut down when the GM deems appropriate ensures that they will be shut down enough of the time to make things interesting. Same with cars -- NPCs can't survive being run over, but the GM can ensure that NPCs will have their own cars enough of the time that running them over isn't an auto-win every time. Balance is not random chance, balance means that each tactic has a counter-tactic, and a counter-counter tactic, ad infinitum. There is no final "I win and you can't do anything" button. Combat spells are not such a button, because they do have a counter, and a counter counter, ad infinitum. Whether the counter is used depends on the players and the GM, on how the players set up the situation, and how the GM makes it flow. The fact that a counter isn't used doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and the fact that it is used doesn't mean that the GM is forcing it on the players who don't want it. In short, everything you've argued about game balance is disconnected from a reasonable and workable definition of what balance means. Is it what you really believe, or just a troll to make me angry? I hope you'll answer, but I know you well enough to suspect that you won't.

If you're ready to be reasonable, to concede where you have to, and be a fair and balanced adjudicator of SR4's merits, I'd be glad to continue this conversation. But please, don't just repeat your unproven, unworkable assumptions of what game balance means. It's insulting.

[Omenowl]

Cain,

You also always pick the most screwed interpretation of the rule. IE the pistol killing the driver in the APC. Doesn't matter that it is explicitly stated it is up to the discretion of the GM to allow it in the first place.

Are vehicle combat rules screwed up? Sure they are, but this is not unique to shadowrun 1, 2, 3, 4. I found it to be true in almost every game. The games where vehicle combat is done well tend to be games where the two types of combats don't merge well anyway or are so time consuming with tables as to be a pain.

As for the I win combat are we assuming non crowded spaces with long LOS and no civilians. Once you start getting into the high levels of Notoriety don't you think rewards and threats should go up? This isn't GTA where they stop looking for you after awhile. Get it high enough and you will find threats of 5 different shadowrunner groups gunning for you at the same time and place. And they will be armed and armored accordingly. The tactics will be the same and you might find more spirits than you can shake a stick at. That is the limiting factor for combat. The repercussions of the combat. I don't think any player wants a reward high enough every shadowrunner in Seattle is gunning for you let alone the corporations who no longer view you as a deniable asset, but rather a threat to be squashed.

And I do like SR4 for putting in a lot of simple but profound optional rules such as the number of dice is equal to your current EDGE not your entire edge stat. Same with number of hits, etc.

Let's face it your group are probably a bunch of rules lawyers who are trying to use optional rules and interpretations to break the game and then say how broken it is. Maybe if the spirit of the rules was followed more rather than the exact + and -, and the GM gave you varying situations where you are limited in your combat choices or tactics the game would be more fun. If I was your GM and you used an AGL don't expect there wouldn't be a racking up of Notoriety and the consequences that came with it.

[Mäx]

You're just repeating, for the dozenth time, this same vapid all or nothing idea, that if it ever auto-wins in any situation, it requires a total rules rework. What you're doing is defining "broken" in such a way that no amount of work within the system could ever possibly fix it. Thus, your entire argument is a circular fallacy -- it is broken because it is broken, and the way we know it's broken is that we define "broken" in such a way that it could never not be broken-- indeed, in such a way that no RPG exists which isn't broken.

I submit that everything auto-wins at some time, and thus everything is broken according to you. Following your train of logic, bullets are broken because you need to wear armor to survive them. You have to rewrite the whole system, because the only way to counter bullets is to wear armor all the time, and that's railroading if the GM makes all NPCs wear armor. Cars are broken too, because people can't really survive being run over by them. The only counter is to drive a car of your own which offers protection from being run over. But of course, the only way to fix that is to have the GM make the NPCs drive cars *every time*, which would be railroading. And let's not forget about explosives -- the only way for NPCs to survive a bomb is to carry a chem sniffer and detect the bomb before it goes off and kills them. But of course, it would be railroading for the GM to make all the NPCs carry chem sniffers, so you can't do that. Everything is broken because, even though everything has a counter, you can't use that counter 100% of the time.

Your definition of broken-ness is plainly unworkable, because everything can auto-win when you don't use its counter, and you can't use everything's counter 100% of the time. Your definition invalidates literally everything in the game. It's a worthless tool for anything except arguing that the game should be ripped up and thrown in the trash. But try this on for size: nothing is broken unless it cannot be reasonably countered. That is a workable definition. Balance doesn't mean a 50-50 chance of success every time. It means that no move can be made that can't be countered. The fact that combat spells can be shut down when the GM deems appropriate ensures that they will be shut down enough of the time to make things interesting. Same with cars -- NPCs can't survive being run over, but the GM can ensure that NPCs will have their own cars enough of the time that running them over isn't an auto-win every time. Balance is not random chance, balance means that each tactic has a counter-tactic, and a counter-counter tactic, ad infinitum. There is no final "I win and you can't do anything" button. Combat spells are not such a button, because they do have a counter, and a counter counter, ad infinitum. Whether the counter is used depends on the players and the GM, on how the players set up the situation, and how the GM makes it flow. The fact that a counter isn't used doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and the fact that it is used doesn't mean that the GM is forcing it on the players who don't want it. In short, everything you've argued about game balance is disconnected from a reasonable and workable definition of what balance means. Is it what you really believe, or just a troll to make me angry? I hope you'll answer, but I know you well enough to suspect that you won't.

If you're ready to be reasonable, to concede where you have to, and be a fair and balanced adjudicator of SR4's merits, I'd be glad to continue this conversation. But please, don't just repeat your unproven, unworkable assumptions of what game balance means. It's insulting.

QFT

[Link]

Thus, your entire argument is a circular fallacy -- it is broken because it is broken, and the way we know it's broken is that we define "broken" in such a way that it could never not be broken-- indeed, in such a way that no RPG exists which isn't broken.

WTF

[Larme]

WTF

Is that a jeer, or a request for explanation? I'll be charitable and assume the latter. A circular fallacy is one where the conclusion is also the premise, i.e. it's broken because it's broken. It's logically invalid, because a conclusion that is also the premise does not prove anything, it's little more than a statement. In order to logically prove something, you need to prove its premises in the first place, and the statement "it's broken, therefore it is broken," relies on the unproven premise that "it's broken."

To expand it out more, Cain explains it like this: if something ever auto-wins, it's broken. Because combat spells sometimes auto-win, they're broken. But all he's really doing is using an overbroad definition of broken to make this argument. What he's saying, in essence, is that auto-winning some of the time is the same as being broken. The problem is, he's making that assumption without proof, making it nothing more than a restatement of his conclusion. Subbing in the appropriate terms, what he's saying is "It's broken because I write the definition of broken to include it, therefore it's broken." Simplified, "It is broken, therefore it is broken." That's not a logical argument, that's a rhetorical abortion. Maybe Cain didn't realize that when he wrote it. I hope not, because if he did, it makes him a dishonest and cynical person. But I'd like to think the best of him, no matter how aggravating he can be.

[Wesley Street]

I can find dozens of threads

Woah, deja vu.

[Cheops]

Alright, after lurking here since hearing about SR4.5 I am finally compelled to the point of having to post again. I have to defend Cain on this one. His table and mine seem to share similarities so I will explain why I think that SR4 is so broken and needs fixing.

We play 2 different kinds of games at our table: heroic and realistic. I'll detail both below.

Heroic (D&D4, Exalted, SR4, Earthdawn (sort of)): These game are where the world revolves around the PCs. Difficult scales up with their level so that when they hit level 8 they are now facing level 8 challenges. They never face a level 15 or a level 1 challenge. You don't need a horde of rules for this one except -- Is it cool?

Realistic (D&D2 or 3 (sort of), SR3, nWoD): These games couldn't care less if your PC bleeds to death in the gutter or dies at level 1 in a bar fight. Difficulty does not scale -- if you so choose you can fight the City Prince with your starting character (as my Mage players did) or you can decide to get into a firefight with LoneStar. In these sorts of games the rules are VERY important because it is a lot more competitive.

We've always played SR as a realisitic setting which I am starting to realize is NOT how the devs nor most people here seem to play. In what I call a realistic setting the GM is there to officiate the rules and to provide a living, CONSISTENT world -- not to TAILOR the world to his PCs. As GM I set the bounds of what is normal according to the fluff and the GAME MECHANICS. Both the NPCs and the PCs are held to this same in-game laws of physics and society. To be fair this requires that the same rules apply to both and that there be a logical explanation for why something is the way it is or how something happened.

The way I've seen things play out in SR4 and the way the game mechanics work is what has largely turned me off this game. I LOVE the fluff of SR a lot. However, there are so many no-win situations or auto-win situations in SR that I have, largely, given up (I am being forced to convert ED to SR4 for my time hopping campaign because I haven't finished with my SR D&D4 conversion yet). Here are some examples:

Mr. Lucky: not for the so often mentioned APC shot. For the fact that he can add 8 extra dice to a test 8 times per session. This forces me to not regen Edge every session which penalizes everyone else at the table. Even at 4 or 5 Edge this becomes a problem. You can't get rid of it without making humans less interesting however. To be fair this problem also existed in SR3 but only at the high Karma end (ie. after playing for the better part of a year).

A-rated Neighborhoods: Runners CANNOT enter these areas anymore without 24/7 Hacker protection. The inexpensive cost of constant Cyberware scans, ID scans, Hidden node scans, chem sniffers and sensor/drone surveillance means that runners can't go into these areas. The same applies to Corporate facilities.

Matrix Security: Hate to agree with Frank Trollman especially after arguing against him so long and so vehemently but he is 100% correct. And Unwired made things worse not better. Either the GM has to "dumb" down the security to a point that strains the difference between my Heroic and Realistic settings or else the Hacker gets completely replaced by a Face (social engineering--hello Pornomancer) or a Street Sam with a commlink (infiltrate building and use their connection).

Arbitrary Band-Aid Fixes to Core mechanics: I find it funny that people should decry Cain and his APC shot so much when SR4.5 seems to have SPECIFICALLY gone out of its way to remove that problem (with the Longshot changes and the Bypassing Vehicle Armor changes). Note also that they tried to change Manaballs in 4.5 but due to general outcry of "Shitty Rules!" decided to make it Optional instead. For another good laugh look up the thread based on Object Resistance in 4.5 and Invisibility. Essentially SR4 was a poorly designed system and band-aid fixes have been applied. I would have been much happier if the Anniversary edition had been a complete rework of the rules instead of a 4.5 edition.

As my final word in this post: I am not saying that one of my defined playstyles (heroic or realistic) are better than the other. What I am saying is that Cain and I both seem to fall into the Realistic camp and we both see SR4 as major failure for that playstyle. That is where the major disconnect seems to be occuring. This is in my opinion.

[Blade]

I don't see SR4 as heroic.
Actually it's the exact opposite: I used to feel an heroic trend in SR3 (but I still wouldn't say it was an heroic game, at least as long as the karma pool wasn't too high), which I disliked and I feel like SR4 more or less corrected that problem.

Anyway, my point is that I try to play a realistic game and even though I do use house rules and respect common sense more than rules (but that's what I do for every game I GM), I still don't think that RAW SR4 is unsuited for a realistic approach.

I think that the point isn't that SR is broken (even if there are failures and problems), but that SR let you play in a lot of different ways, and if you chose to play it in a way that doesn't suit what you expect, you'll end up disappointed.

[Cheops]

I don't see SR4 as heroic.
Actually it's the exact opposite: I used to feel an heroic trend in SR3 (but I still wouldn't say it was an heroic game, at least as long as the karma pool wasn't too high), which I disliked and I feel like SR4 more or less corrected that problem.

Anyway, my point is that I try to play a realistic game and even though I do use house rules and respect common sense more than rules (but that's what I do for every game I GM), I still don't think that RAW SR4 is unsuited for a realistic approach.

I think that the point isn't that SR is broken (even if there are failures and problems), but that SR let you play in a lot of different ways, and if you chose to play it in a way that doesn't suit what you expect, you'll end up disappointed.

Perfectly valid. That is where the disconnect seems to be coming from. Especially between Cain and Larme.

And in my group, as far as SR is concerned, our idea of fun is to succeed in a world where everyone tries everything REASONABLE to accomplish their goals. Handwaving away problems doesn't fulfill that notion for us.

"So why didn't Stuffer Shack spend 600 nuyen (or whatever it was) on every store to have a Cyberscanner/panic button installed in the front door?"

(ie. for 2 nuyen a day they can be forewarned about all cyberware short of Beta/Delta and automatically call the Star if R/F pieces are detected for very little cost to gross profit margin)

[Malachi]

A well written post, Cheops, and I understand your position. I'll explain my own by starting with your premise of Heroic vs. Realistic playstyles. I do agree that those are two ends of the spectrum, but I would say there is also a third, middle ground (or possibly sub-type of Realistic): Contrived Result Realism. Shadowrun exist in an interesting middle ground between Heroic and Realistic. In so many ways, it parallels our world so as to seem realistic, yet it introduces completely fantastical elements. This is because the Shadowrun game exists to achieve a certain result: shadowrunners doing cool stuff, stealing, shooting, and all that fun stuff. The fluff of the world is thus "reverse-engineered" to produce this contrived result. Sometimes (often times, even) the reverse-engineered fluff reason for the contrived result produces logical inconsistencies. For example, one of things I very much enjoyed about Frank's rules was his introductory section explaining why Shadowrunners just don't commit bank fraud with their easily acquired and disposed identities. This is a classic example of a logical inconsistency coming from contrived result fluff: in order for Shadowrunners to do their job they need to be able to quickly and easily acquire false identities, otherwise law enforcement would quickly shut them down. So, the game makes false identities readily available: the fluff is reverse engineered from the result. However, when one tries to "forward engineer" from the resultant fluff you end up with "huh?" moments. You must learn to be okay with those. They are a fact of life in a system that is designed to produce a certain result. The key to moving forward and maintaining the "fun" of the game is to hold the result constant and change the fluff. If you can think of a fluff-driven reason why the contrived game result shouldn't be, just go back and hand-wave a reason for that result to not occur. Otherwise you're just a masochist ruining your own fun. Its an easy trap to fall into when the SR world, upon surface inspection, appears so real and vibrant. This is great and wonderful, but never lose sight of the fact that it was created in order to generate a specific result. This technique of "hand-waving" away non-desired results is one used by Frank himself.

Behind the Scenes: Why not allow IC to reach out and touch someone?
... having unstoppable armies of Agent Smith is unacceptable. So pretty much everything we're saying about technological specs and hardware limitations and such is flavor text to explain what is at its core a completely game mechanical concern. If we've overlooked something and you figure out some way to have IC operate at range other than Connection and still be consistent with what we wrote – just walk away and pretend you didn't.
Presumably there is some additional technical constraint that is preventing you from doing that or something. Seriously. For the children.

I think it is unrealistic to expect any RPG system to be able to simulate a completely realistic world and not have logical inconsistencies. The key thing to remember is not to get hung up on them. If they are inhibiting your fun, remove them, change them, or whatever you need to maintain your fun. Cain has said a few times that he "politely" asks his players to limit their dice pools to 20 or lower. Great! Absolutely nothing wrong with that. Cain and his group find their game much more fun when the DP's are smaller. By the same token you can "politely" ask your players not to make Edge 6+ characters, or not Overcast Manaballs all the time, or whatever. Shadowrun is a game that has grown in scope with every new edition, and it supports a wide variety of play styles, which I think is a great credit to it. The designers clearly do a lot of work to try and support different play styles within their game, but there will inevitably be some bumps in that road. I don't think that's a good enough reason to dump the whole system and throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak.

[Larme]

We've always played SR as a realisitic setting which I am starting to realize is NOT how the devs nor most people here seem to play. In what I call a realistic setting the GM is there to officiate the rules and to provide a living, CONSISTENT world -- not to TAILOR the world to his PCs. As GM I set the bounds of what is normal according to the fluff and the GAME MECHANICS. Both the NPCs and the PCs are held to this same in-game laws of physics and society. To be fair this requires that the same rules apply to both and that there be a logical explanation for why something is the way it is or how something happened.

You don't have to tailor things to defeat an auto-win tactic. If there's a counter to it, nash equilibrium states that the counter will be employed as often as practicable. You don't have to railroad the players for there to be magical security, there's going to be magical security wherever there's a hardened facility. You don't have to railroad players to ensure they fight drones, drones are a common part of many security arrangements. The only way the PCs can use their same tactic over and over is if they specifically go after milkruns. If the PCs only wanted to attack low level rentacop guarded facilities and gangers, then it's true that the GM would be wrong to force powerful threats on them. But it's also true that a game involving nothing but milkruns is a boring waste of time. If you want to run with the big boys, expect to see the things you're not invincible against. Again, something is broken if it's always invincible, not if it's invincible against weak, negligible threats. It sounds to me like your play style isn't so much realistic as it is street level. Only without limiting the power of starting characters, they're going to make a mockery of street level. 400BP is not a street level character, so playing your so-called realistic games with 400 BP characters is doomed from the start. If you start street level, and never graduate up from there, is it any wonder that your PCs always win without being threatened? No. It's not that the game is broken, it's that neither the GM nor the PCs are actively trying for challenges, they seem to be unaware that there's some kind of run other than "kill the clump of unenhanced humans."