Worst additions to the Shadowrun line? Options

[Samoth]

I haven't played in over a year, but even then I found it impossible to have as much fun as I did back in the mid 90s. As new sourcebooks were released, and game information was updated, lots of fun-killers were introduced to the Shadowrun world. I am asking essentially what things you wish had never been implemented into Shadowrun. I'm not trying to be overly negative. My choices are:

Mnemonic Enhancer. I've read the errata, and it still makes things too powerful. Easily the biggest game-breaker I've ever encountered.

SURGE: Essentially pointless. I'm sure some freelancer who worked on it will chime in here and flame me about all of the wonderful benefits from using a SURGEd character, but I've never seen any benefits. Almost all of the positive surges can be done better with bio/cyber/edge/magic, and all the negative surges are stupid. Who is going to pay 15 BP to be an ork, as opposed to 5 through regular BP construction?

Build Points: I am a min/maxer, but this system totally promotes powergaming to the extreme. I haven't used ABCDE creation since the Shadowrun Companion came out.

Otaku: if you want to be a badass decker these days, you're going to be severely hindered unless you are an Otaku. Otakus also promote huge min/maxing.

Ghouls as player characters: negatives far outweight the positives. Same goes for shapeshifters. Just try to make a shapeshifter character who can hang with the rest of your starting group. Good luck.

Metavarients: Why?

Cyberlimbs: Totally underpowered and virtually useless, nobody who knows the rules will ever get these (unless you're cramming them full of rigger gear or whatever else).

[Phaeton]

I believe Nickolodeon put it best...

"Because we can."

[Shadow]

Night-ones rule. They are not unbalancing. They are just different. To be honest your problem isn't the game, it is your gm, or if you are the gm your handle on the game. Fun is the goal, and if you don't like something that a rulebook puts out, do not allow it. So start having fun again!

This post has been edited by Shadow: Jan 27 2004, 10:39 PM

[Herald of Verjig...]

[Prototype]

Crap Stuff In Shadowrun:

Metavarients: Totally agree, they're all rubbish and don't really add anything to the game. At least the basic metahumans look okay, some of these guys look like total fannies.

Shapeshifter/Ghoul PC Rules: Totally underpowered compared to their NPC counterparts, and unnecessarily so - a well designed mage or sammie is still gonna whip them all day even with NPC style benefits.

The 'changes' to Aztechnology: The shift from Ultimate Evil wearing Megacorp guise to 'Just One of the Boys' in Corp Download was total rubbish.

Cyberlimbs: Totally agree. In my book a guy with cyberlimbs should be rocking! Why on earth does a guy with two cyberlegs, a dermal sheath and titanium bones hold up better to bullets than a full cyber replacement? Surely a metal body is equivalent to having titanium bones and more than just a dermal sheath! Titanium bone lacing has a better bonus to damage than full cyberlimb replacement as well! Ridiculous. These rules need a total overhaul. My basic house rule at the mo' (no PC has invested yet) is to halve the ECU's, costs and Essence costs of the improved Quickness and Strength whilst also having alpha, beta and deltaware proportionately increase the ECU available as opposed to decreasing it (which makes NO sense!)

The changes which reduced vehicle body scores down to the 2-5 range for most. Really stupid! Though you've got to go all the way back to RBB to find the more credible body scores!

The death of the ED/SR crossover stuff... okay, so it's not dead, but most of it was put on the shelf for a long time!

Cutting out a whole bunch of cool stuff in 3rd edition critters... off the top of my head they done over Alienation power, Megalodons and Wraiths. They added in some cool new spirit types, but nothing amazing. Admittedly rules for Wraiths have since been published elsewhere so I won't complain too much.

The total shafting magic users got in 3rd edition: Where to begin? How about the impossibility of learning high force spells (Double force TN!), the ludicrous changes to anchoring or the spell lock bumming (give them force ratings, yeah, but the system is screwy!)

Whilst on the topic of magic, how poor is the convenient and silly removal of the spell grounding rules! Nothing dissuaded ridiculous foci use like the threat of a spell blasting your team-mates to pieces through it. Now all you have to worry about is the focus taking a hit.

SURGE: The most pointless and silly thing I've ever seen. Somebody thought it was a good idea... I'd like to meet them and thank them for wasting a good bunch of pages in an otherwise pretty good sourcebook.

The change in format of the books... I probably would never have gotten into SR if it wasn't for eye-catching, exciting and downright cool books like Shadowtech, Paranormal Animals of Europe and the like. The new books might contain more, but I'd settle for less with a higher quality factor!

Most of the athletics rules in the SR Companion... toss them out and start again. If anybody at Fanpro has a copy of Fields of Fire they might start there - I can lend you my copy if it'll improve things!

Otaku: Essentially bumboys. I'd rather have a decker any day. Keep them as NPCs and I can just about handle them existing!

Tactical Computer: Okay, so it was ridiculous before... but now it's just combat sense but cyberware. Feels kinda pointless! Some halfway house was needed. In a prior campaign (2nd Edition) we had one cyberguy who's gimmick was pretty much that he had a tac comp - he had some other cyber, but that was it. It took up most of his essence and was installed in less than wholesome circumstance... but it made the character and made him unique from everyone else. In 3rd edition he'd not be much different from the rest of the boys, just with a few more combat pool.

Changes which are clearly ridiculous but designed for 'game balance' (urgh! gimme realism anyday!): Examples include the very silly 'Hauling the Load' rules and the totally harsh levels of strength needed for recoil compensation.

Ambidexterity: I do love dishing this out... but it's a bit ludicrous at the higher levels... a guy with this will always hammer a non-ambidextrous fighter of similar skill which just shouldn't really be the case.

The changes in the Tir: Oh, actually, we're not really this great, super-paranoid hard to bust into place that runners should be terrified of... in actual fact we've flopped and our economy is bust and you can cross our borders and bum us anytime. I liked it when the very name of Tir Tairngire terrified runners!

That's all that spring to mind at the moment... I'm sure there'll be more later! There are lots of good things too, but that's not what this thread is about!

[bwdemon]

Immortal elves & unbalanced magic...

[Phaeton]

Crap about how the Horrors are coming and stuff. It's made people at this forum care more about ED at times than SR...Made things whacktastic, imo.

[Teulisch]

It kinda annoys me that to use a rangefinder with my smartlink-2, i need both the cyber, and the extra .1 wt on the gun taking up the top mount of my pistol. and its the only way to get a bonus better that my mag 3 eyes at long range.

Encumberance rules are broken. definte houserule on that.

totaly agree on the screwyness of alphaware ECU. But at least it says round to nearest, so 1 ecu is still 1 for alpha. I rather like the cyberskull myself, despite its many shortcomings as a cyberlimb. and limbs dont give enough ECU to compensate for the essence cost of the limb.

metavarients are messed up, primarily in the stiff amount of racism they have to face.

ED stuff annoys me a bit, mosty because i dont care about ED and dont want to buy books for a game i dont play just to understand the metaplot.

[Phaeton]

Aye, Teulisch. I don't fragging CARE if the Horrors are coming in SR or not. LEAVE IT ALONE.

Besides, it's Yamatetsu who's the real bad guys. <_< >_> *flees*

[Crimson Jack]

As an artist, I'd say that one of the unfortunate changes over the years has been the artwork. The metavariants are fine as far as the rules are concerned, but I can't even think about making half of those characters due to me not being able to shake some of those dumbass drawings (don't get me started on that shapeshifter illustration.... blech). I'd agree with whomever said that they'd prefer more quality over quantity.

Yeah, SURGE is pretty lame. I don't understand decisions like that. I disregard SURGE in my games. It never happened. "Oh, so you want to play a tiger-striped troll with bat wings? right..."

Other than that, I love the rest of the world. I make my own changes to keep things dark and freaky for my players. When something seems a little too 'nancy', it gets balefired.

[Phaeton]

SURGE is good. We have a surprising amount of SURGErs in our game. Well, only one...But she's one of the central chars in the group. But it's mainly a flavor option for the harder-core RPers, I suppose.

[FlakJacket]

[Frag-o Delux]

Haven't Mnemonic Enhancers been around for a very long time. I have the Shadowtech book, it was printed n 1992.

The changes made in Man and Machine (1999) should be what you don't like. I don't see a problem with them any way, big deal you can learn Language and knowledge skills faster. Which seem to be neglected skills anyway, it seems most people I hear from and see choose a starting Language or 2 then a hand fulll of Knowledge skills and call it a day.

[DigitalMage]

I think the point is, what some people hate, others quite like - you can't please all the people all of the time.

I like the fact that Aztech went back to being a more normal megacorp.

[ Spoiler ]

When reading the Universal Brotherhood "handout" I thought it cool that Aztech was the only corp which hadn't been inflitrated by bug spirits. When it came to bug spirits Aztech was sometimes the only corp a runner could trust!

[Cray74]

[DV8]

Shadowrun is slowly but surely turning into a comic book. I dislike SURGE because of that, but the one thing I cannot stand, which I truly loathe, and sadly few people agree with me, is the fact that Shadowrunners are supposed to be discrete. Corporate doctrine teaches us that they don't exist.

Read: I fucking hate shadowrunners having movies and shoe endorsements.

[Adarael]

Part 1: Rebuttal

Otaku: Not worthless if you have a high money vs. karma game, a lot of which I see go around. Buy your way to the top, rather than spend Karma? Any day of the damn week, thank you. But wait... what if you're not in a money-grubbing game? Deep Resonance, here I come.

Ghouls as player characters: I love my ghoul. Sure, the benefits don't match the drawbacks, but jesus. If that's your take, why play Shadowrunners instead of mafiosi or an all-lonestar game, eh? Because it's *fun* to play a ghoul some days! Because it's neat! Because you have to wear a wristband that says, "DO NOT TOUCH MY BLOOD, CONTAINS HMHVV!"

The changes in the Tir: Maybe it's just me, having played such an anti-Tir, economics-major character for so long... but look at Tir Tairngire. With their original laws, their nearly-absolute Iron Curtain, their economic policies of total exclusion for non-Tir corporations... Their Empire of Grass and Steel couldn't have lasted more than 20 years, tops. Which is about how long those laws were in place. They were like the old USSR, except lacking a few vital things that made the USSR last for 50 years - an exploitable population base that was almost as large as the ordinary citizenry, absolute fear and obedience from the populace (almost all of whom were portrayed as loving their Gov't), semi-open trade with friendly nations (find me a nation, in canon that is openly friendly with them. Azzania. SOME NAN nations... Sort of... not many, eh?). The most important thing they lack, that the USSR had? The vast natural resources that come with owning nearly all of a continent. Tir has oregon. OREGON.

Sure, it made a great bad guy, but it would've been totally unrealistic to keep it going like it was any longer.

The 'changes' to Aztechnology: With Darke out of power, why would they be any more evil than say... Fuchi was? And Fuchi was plenty messed up, yo. This was taken care of *in* canon, through published adventures and sourcebooks.

Part 2: Agreements and Furthers.
Cyberlimbs. Yes, yes, yes. They should be more useful than they are, or be much cheaper. They're a staple of the genre, yet I made an NPC that paid more for one cyberarm than Wired Reflexes 2 Alpha'd. What was it? Oh, it just had strength 10 and Quickness 10, to match his bioware-raised natural stats. Oh, and a Gyro in the wrist. 's it.

DNA/DOA. While it's nice to see, every once in a while, a run that can't be beaten... that was just a BAD adventure.

The small print run of Universal Brotherhood. I couldn't find a copy of this to complete the arc until long after it'd been rendered irrelevant by the passage of time.

Rigger 3: I love riggers. I do. Especially drone riggers. But jesus on a pogo stick, could you please have eliminated the need for Rigger 3 revised? Some of those tables and scales are just insane. A motorcycle having a fuel tank max of like 5 liters, and only being able to get 15 km per liter? WHAT?

[Adarael]

[Cray74]

[Dogsoup]

Im quite content wth SR as it is. I don't understand the "immature development" some seem to refer to.
My only "but" is that nearly every impact on the world or major event circles around or is heavily connected to magic in some way. Ok, the sixth world is an unpredictable and dangerous place, but politics, economics and technology is fun once and then, too.

[Spookymonster]

[Pthgar]

Maybe I'm not doing it right, but Surge hasn't been an issue in our game. We use the random Surge Test rules on page 138 of YotC, even for new characters.

The Sammies usually don't Surge because of low essence. Theoretically possible, but hasn't happened yet.

The Magicians/Adept generally don't surge because of way too high T#'s

Out of 8 characters only 3 have Surged, I know that's way high "statistically" for the SR universe but so is the team's level of Magic (and Cyber for that matter).

Of those 3 these were the results:
Character 1: a -2 and a +1
Character 2: a -2 and a +2
Character 3: a -1 and a +3

Granted anyone could have got a +6 and a -6 allowing them to look like a bad Saturday morning cartoon, but you can also have the GM pick your positive or negatives or both.

[Pthgar]

[Solidcobra]

let's see.....
Otaku: bleh, whatever, i don't allow them

SURGE: nonononononononono and once again: NO! surge is not allowed in my games, it's cyberpunk, not a fraggin' freakshow (hah! like it isn't already.... someone with more metal than soul that moves faster than god, a 3.5 meter tall monster, someone lobbing fireballs while being only 1.2 meters high....)

Ghouls: Hey, they are cool, and the "OHMIGODAGHOUL! RUN!" factor is fun! Watch those guards flee when you slash around with your claws..... fun, fun!

Cyberlimbs: IMG they cost 20k, and cost 0.5 essence for a obvious normal one..... so, cost cut in 5, essence cut in 2, that helps put cyberlimbs higher on a runners list.....

Mnemonic Enhanchers: Bleh, whuddeva, it's not allowed for starters anyway, and it's only a way for samurai to get more even with mages (i don't allow awakened people to use the ME, it messes with their magic for reasons yet unknown....) in mid to high karma games....

Metavariants: most are gay, the Night one is cool though.... i always wanted to play a drow in SR... dual wielding scimi-*is shot*

build point system: it's great, it allows for great control, and it slightly hoses the mages! you all know what i think about magic, right?

Changes in the Aztech: *shrugs* whuddeva, just run them as the great evil dominator with a booming voice in your games..... i do!

Changes to the tir: hah! the sissy elves get hosed! i love it, but i combine it, the tir is dissolved from inside, but it's also keeping it's bordersecurity on the top of their list! Runners still are afraid, but the tir gets hosed as well...... weeeee!

[Austere Emancipa...]