How is 4e simpler than 3e (sell me on the idea)? Options

[tete]

Because I'm just not seeing it. For example you have replaced TNs which change in one dimension with Variable Thresholds and Dice Pool Modifiers which is two dimensions of change.

[limejello10512]

well I remember putting 3rd edition down cause I found it to be unplayable.... I don't know what possesd me to buy fourth ed but it is the game I am playing now....fantastic game....I find it simple and easy.

Also there is one demension to dice pools it's just the number of dice the target is always the same a 5 or 6 is always a hit....in 3rd the target and dice pool changed, and I don't know why it was confusing. everything also used weird different systems.....this doesn't everyhting is a variation of the dice pool system and it works very nicely. It's also easy to redesign everything. It what was up with power AND damge? Especially when damge was static? The damage system in this is way better. There are a bunch of other things too but it's been so long since I've played third ed that I don't remember.

HOWEVER

if you want some help I found some great cheat sheets here that pretty much sum up the book in 4 pages

http://www.geocities.com/grant_erswell/sr/index.htm

While tryin to find the above site I also came upon this but I haven't looked it all over yet so it might suck:

http://pavao.org/shadowrun/cheatsheets/

[Apathy]

Dice Mechanics

• The old mechanic had you rolling a variable number of dice based on your stats, attributes, and lots of different modifiers against a variable target number based on difficult and lots of different modifiers. The number of dice rolled effects your success chance linearly, but changes in TN impacted your chances non-linearly, which made odds difficult to calculate. Does your opponent have better odds of hitting you with a TN 8 and 10 dice pool or do you have a better chance of hitting him with TN 12 and 15 dice? At the time I made tables to keep track of the stuff, but I was never able to just rattle the odds off the top of my head. Also meant that a given TN modifier could have wildly different impact depending on how many other modifiers stacked up with it (going from TN 6 to 7 was a lot different than going from TN 9 to 10.)
• The new mechanic is completely linear. Fixed TN, and variable dice. Effectively, changing threshhold by one is the same as modifying the dice pool by 3 - still linear. You will always know that roughly a third of your DP will be hits on an average roll, so it's easy to guess your chances of beating the threshhold at a glance.

Rules Consistency

• SR3 had very different paradigms for each group of actions. Matrix, Magic, Melee were all calculated differently, and it was tough to remember the distinctions. It's been too long since I've played SR3 and I can't remember many examples, but I do remember feeling that when SR4 came around that the rules were more consistent. Of course, the flip side of that is that the detractors would call it dumbed down.
• SR4 didn't follow their own guideline for consistency in all cases. Matrix actions are still calculated differently than physical ones (which many of us dislike and have house-ruled away), for instance. But they're still more streamlined than the old rules. They no longer have different rules for hermetics vs shamans, etc.

[Screaming Eagle]

Simplifications:

THE MATRIX RULES - OMG! i'm not even sure where it start, that paranoia style colour coding, the program dependant TN's, the variable rating on all the different tasks depending on the system the grossly differing IC rules - all gone. On the sad side I had just figured it all out solidly when they switched

Then Magic rules - actually now unified, actually now using the same rules for everyone, not all good changes, but no serious complaints

The Chase rules - Still a nightmare, but whats a body to do.

No more pools - this is one of the few changes I outright didn't like but it does make teaching the game easier.

Bioware uses essence not its own tracking system

Less math to figure out how many dice you need to do hard things - this is the biggest simplification. The difficulties are far more transparent and it is rather easy to see how many dice you need to reliably do X task.

Things they haven't sold me on that are "simpler":
The new take on riggers - they ain't riggers. They don't feel like riggers in play and they don't make baby Jesus cry when behind the wheel when compared to a decker doing the same thing with a good command program.

[tete]

sure I'll buy that the skill increase is more linear with a fixed tn, but I don't feel that is simpler... Coming from the GM perspective I now have to calculate 2 things, the threshold and a dice pool modifier where as before all I had to calculate was target number. I understand many people find calculating a TN difficult, I never did, its just adding and subtracting. The new system isnt hard I just have to do the TN calculation twice now, once for dice pool and once for threshold.

sr3 was skill+any dice pool you wanted to add. Thats pretty much the same now only you don't get a choice is attribute+skill (except matrix that falls back to the sr2 rules of program+skill unless you use the optional rules)

dice pools were pre-calculated as karma, hacking, spell, combat + a couple optional ones. This again doesn't feel any harder than the new system just less options, i can't choose to save some of my pool for later.

Magic well ill buy into its better but i still wouldn't say simpler. A tied force to a spell just didn't make as much sense when they moved away from spell pool+force (sr2) to spell pool + skill (sr 3)

Bioware, ill buy into that...

Matrix that is a tough one using the standard rules they added a lot of skills (from 2 skills to 7) to keep track of making it "i roll what?" and made the decks more complicated by separating the MPCP into two components. But they removed the different TNs for each test. Programs are pretty much the same so I call that a wash.

[Karoline]

Wasn't it possible for the dice pools to change throughout a game? Which means you're still dealing with two numbers changing. Personally I think it is more complicated to keep track of a half dozen 'pools' which can change than to just use attribute + skill.

Also the TNs are fairly set and don't change a whole lot. Most TNs are actually opposed tests, which is alot easier to do in SR4 than SR3, as you don't have to calculate anything, you just roll the dice.

Never ran the matrix in SR3 so don't really know how different they are.

[Screaming Eagle]

Frankly having given 4th ed a shake down over the last year and change I have no preferance either way. If I had a group that wanted to play 3rd over 4th I'd be all over that.

I was REALLY fond of the "pool" rules and their ommision bothered me far more then the change in dice mechanincs ever could.
The Matrix has always been my weakest link in this game and I found the newer system more intuitive - still not actually intuitive, but more so.
I seem to recall there have always been thresholds, in opposed and extended tests as well as many spells (petrify comes to mind for some reason), but maybe I'm out of it (I am at work and far from my 1st and 3rd ed books, never did have a copy of second *weeps a single tear*).
I don't feel the need to wax poetic the "New and improved" system... because I don't feel it is greatly improved and if I had a group want to use first Ed. I would... now I want to run first Ed... dang...

[Dragnar]

SR3 had a lot of fake flexibility in it, that actually didn't make the game any better. Having "more dimensions of change" is actually a bad thing, as it makes probabilities harder (or even impossible) to gauge for the GM, while not actually allowing for all that much more significant probability spreads.
Case in point: How does the probability of success change if a character with a dicepool of 9 changes from having a TN of 8 to a TN of 9, compared to reducing the dicepool to 7? If the GM can't eyeball the difference within any reasonable margin of correctness, the technically "more gradual probability" becomes utterly meaningless in an actual game.

[Malachi]

I also seem to be one of the few people that didn't like Dice Pools (neither did my players). They were a far too abstract, "gamey" concept for us. What were they supposed to represent exactly? They were these incredibly abstract things, only somewhat related to your character's combat abilities, and were very difficult to explain/grasp for new players. Especially so since you needed to pre-declare them at the beginning of the combat turn, we always forgot to do that. What it boiled down to was that any roll in a Combat Turn that you really "cared" about, you doubled your dice. With SR4's mechanic of adding your Attribute to skill to form the "dice pool" it's just like you're throwing your Pool dice into every test. It's also a whole lot easier for new players to understand.

[PBI]

Dice pools in Sr1-3 never changed unless the stats they were based on changed, so, no, you never had to recalculate pools that often.

[Shinobi Killfist]

SR 4 unified things, which is a bit simpler. But on the other hand I never thought it was that hard to learn a sub-system if I was going to be using it. If I am playing adecker I will learn the decking rules, so its not a big deal IMO.

SR 2&3 there core mechanic I actually found easier. A variable TN makes it easier on both sides of the table for me. Before it was simple you roll your skill and what ever pool you were going to put into it, and then the GM says how many 6's did you get. Bang easy. Now you are constantly adjusting how many dice you roll for recoil, damage, lighting etc. A fairly constant amount of dice to roll and the GM says your TN is X just seems easier to me. I understand its basically the same thing but in reverse for 4e, but again for me it was easier.

SR2 was my favorite, though SR1 is a close 2nd. Sr3 I found less impressive, and SR4 even less impressive. You know I like unique sub-systems. I don't think one rule fits all the things in play. I don't feel it added much in the way of difficulty but it added immensely to the game play.

[Karoline]

Well, it may have been all well and good for each player to know their own sub-system and not all that difficult, but the GM needs to know them all, which puts on a fair bit of extra work.

[Heath Robinson]

SR 4 unified things, which is a bit simpler. But on the other hand I never thought it was that hard to learn a sub-system if I was going to be using it. If I am playing adecker I will learn the decking rules, so its not a big deal IMO.

SR 2&3 there core mechanic I actually found easier. A variable TN makes it easier on both sides of the table for me. Before it was simple you roll your skill and what ever pool you were going to put into it, and then the GM says how many 6's did you get. Bang easy. Now you are constantly adjusting how many dice you roll for recoil, damage, lighting etc. A fairly constant amount of dice to roll and the GM says your TN is X just seems easier to me. I understand its basically the same thing but in reverse for 4e, but again for me it was easier.

SR2 was my favorite, though SR1 is a close 2nd. Sr3 I found less impressive, and SR4 even less impressive. You know I like unique sub-systems. I don't think one rule fits all the things in play. I don't feel it added much in the way of difficulty but it added immensely to the game play.

You're offloading much of your work to the already overloaded GM. Have you no shame?

[Shinobi Killfist]

I didn't think it was much extra work when I GMd SR2. Magic had like 4 or 5 basic rules to learn.
1. Spellcasting
2. summoning
3. drain
4. astral

Decking was a bit of a bitch but I have no problem learning the basics and letting the player handle the rules side a bit. Really how much did I have to learn as a GM, a few basic program and IC types, and the basic rating system. The mechanics weren't exactly far off form the normal mechanics. You rolled X dice based on the program etc and your TN was the opposed attribute. The player had the fun time of learning like 40 different programs.

[Dreadlord]

I was running a group of players new to Shadowrun with 3rd edition. We quit in mid-campaign, because we all found the system non-linear, chock-full of speacial-case rules, and WAY too much load on the GM.

Plus, 2 words: Skill. Web. UUUUgggghhh!!!!

Now, I am running 4th edition, and the basic dice mechanic is fairly uniform throughout the game. Thresholds (which you need only occasionally) are pretty standard: 1, 2, 3, 5 hits needed depending on difficulty. Extended tests are a breeze as well, and with the new -1 die cumulative per roll, it is now much more exciting than it was where it just wasted real time and game time.

I hate to admit this as a GM, but often I don't stat out every opponent, I just assign basic pools for everything, and fake it! I couldn't do that as easily with SR3.

[Shinobi Killfist]

You're offloading much of your work to the already overloaded GM. Have you no shame?

Um, I was the GM. And I really did not find it much more difficult to learn, and I found it easier to run.

[Paul]

I don't think 4e is simpler, but it is different. But that's my vote.

[cndblank]

Well, it may have been all well and good for each player to know their own sub-system and not all that difficult, but the GM needs to know them all, which puts on a fair bit of extra work.

AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is no comparison in the game systems.

3rd was a huge step forward but they kept adding more and more subsystems.



Just getting rid of those horrible Rigger vs Spider/security rigger combat system made 4th worth it.

And you can run your campaign in 2050 and play down the wireless.

[Joe Chummer]

One changed aspect I like better is the handling of damage. In SR1-3, attacks could only inflict 4 amounts of damage:

Light wound - 1 box
Moderate wound - 3 boxes
Serious wound - 6 boxes
Deadly wound - 10 boxes

All characters had only 10 boxes on their damage monitor, regardless of metatype, and you could only scale damage up or down in whole-level increments, not individual boxes. So, if you already had a Serious wound, then took another Serious hit from the same weapon, you'd be out (and with 2 overflow boxes, to boot), even if you managed to scale the damage back from what started as a Deadly-level attack. If you take a Deadly hit with a fresh, clean Condition Monitor, you're out, no matter how well you did on your Damage Resistance Test.

With SR4 rules, you could possibly scale the damage of an attack down to 5 boxes, then you could take another hit from the same weapon and scale the hit back to 4 boxes. In this scenario, you'd have blood in your eyes and not be able to shoot straight, but you're not yet down for the count. And if you take a single hit with a power of 10 (enough to fill most characters' whole condition monitors at once), if you do well enough on your Damage Resistance Test, you might be able to scale the damage down to 9 boxes and at least be able to limp away. For those with survivability of their characters in mind (like myself; I hate senselessly killing characters with a bad roll), I think this is a big draw.

I also think that characters being able to have more than ten boxes of damage puts high-Body characters in a more realistic perspective.

[Heath Robinson]

Um, I was the GM. And I really did not find it much more difficult to learn, and I found it easier to run.

You found it easier to run all of the mental maths for every player at your table? I question the reliability of that anecdote.

[Joe Chummer]

You found it easier to run all of the mental maths for every player at your table? I question the reliability of that anecdote.

Maybe the guy just has an "Affinity For Numbers" quality or something? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Let's face it: some people are just good at math. I'm certainly not one of them. I think my mother took the "Hates Numbers with a Passion" quality at character creation.

[the_real_elwood]

I was always fine with 3rd edition, and the variable target number and dice pool thing never bothered me. Sure, the rules then made it worthless to spend the effort to move your target numbers from a 7 to a 6, but that was never a problem for our groups.

I think the biggest advantage is the simplified way that magic works over all disciplines, and the further integration of the matrix rules. Our 3E groups never played with a decker, partly because no one wanted to, but partly because for most of the time the decker would have been sitting around the table doing nothing.

[Dikotana]

SR4's Matrix and rigging are hands-down better, because those don't become single-player games with lots of observers.

SR4 unifies rules. Things work the same way, and if you learn how SR4 works you can handle SR4. SR3 has subsystems. They're oddball, they require a lot of learning or accepting that you, the player, don't quite get how that decker/rigger/mage/bioware works. It's okay. The GM needs to know more, which can be either good or bad. Running SR3 on the fly isn't much different from running SR4, though. You can make up dice pools and stats for challenges on the fly for either if you know what you're doing.

TNs? Yes, the probability is weird. I usually keep a cheat sheet of odds handy.

Bottom line: The games work differently. SR4 is definitely more newbie-friendly, but all the special rules for SR3 are a lot of fun if you like special rules. (You do definitely want a GM capable of picking and choosing, though. Anyone trying to force the surgery rules on players deserves to lose said players!) SR4 is simpler in learning curve and rules; SR3 is simple enough once you've played a few times in a few roles.

[Cain]

With the exception of the Vehicle rules, SR4 is not simpler than SR3. Where the difference lies is that SR4 is written much better than SR3, making it more accessible. The writing quality and layout in SR4 are far superior, especially when you consider that FASA always had serious layout issues. This makes it look simpler, but it's actually an illusion.

There are advantages-- the increased accessibility means you can use the book examples more often, rather than trying to come up with your own, thus decreasing the need for your own teaching skill. I've discovered, however, that it's easier to explain the core mechanic of SR3: I can explain that using only a sentence or two, while SR4 requires about three sentences and a handful of dice as a visual aid. Not that either is especially difficult to explain, it's just that SR4 is easier to explain with props.

SR4's Matrix and rigging are hands-down better, because those don't become single-player games with lots of observers.

I never had that problem. I had deckers go along with the party most of the time, and act in the same time as the others. For solo decking runs, it was no worse than the mage going on an astral space recon, or the team ninja going on a stealth recon.

Running SR3 on the fly isn't much different from running SR4, though. You can make up dice pools and stats for challenges on the fly for either if you know what you're doing.

Technically true, but SR3 NPC's are easier to make up on the fly and by prepwork. By the book, SR4 characters are built with BP's. So, you need to build each one from scratch. What's more, the same number of BP's won't guarantee you the same power level of character, so a 450-BP NPC is going to get his butt handed to him by a well-built 400-point runner.

[tete]

I was running a group of players new to Shadowrun with 3rd edition. We quit in mid-campaign, because we all found the system non-linear, chock-full of speacial-case rules, and WAY too much load on the GM.

Plus, 2 words: Skill. Web. UUUUgggghhh!!!!

Now, I am running 4th edition, and the basic dice mechanic is fairly uniform throughout the game. Thresholds (which you need only occasionally) are pretty standard: 1, 2, 3, 5 hits needed depending on difficulty. Extended tests are a breeze as well, and with the new -1 die cumulative per roll, it is now much more exciting than it was where it just wasted real time and game time.

I hate to admit this as a GM, but often I don't stat out every opponent, I just assign basic pools for everything, and fake it! I couldn't do that as easily with SR3.

There was no skill web in 3e...You either defaulted to a similar skill for +2TN or back to the attribute for +3. The skill groups were almost the same as they are now just you could only take the individual skills but you could default to any of the others in that group. 1e and 2e had the skill web.

[edit]I have always done like you and never stated npcs. I find 4e no different from previous editions in this regard.

Where the difference lies is that SR4 is written much better than SR3, making it more accessible.

This is true since 4A especially...

If you take a Deadly hit with a fresh, clean Condition Monitor, you're out, no matter how well you did on your Damage Resistance Test.

Huh? if you make your damage resistance test you don't take that level of damage... I don't see how your "out"?