Glitches- kinda glitchy, house rules? Options

[Jericho Alar]

I believe I'm right in saying that this applies, accepting where it is specified in the rules to round one way or the other.

I can't find a citation for it, but every case a brief search turned up of the whole word 'round' in my pdf copy indicates that this is the case explicitly.*


*I stopped after eight or nine, there may be an example against the players later in the book.

[edit] and method has located one. so there's at least one exception.

[Cthulhudreams]

Yeah I'm not 100% but this has definately come up on dumpshock atleast half a dozen times before that I can remember.

Edit: In any case, it's what I did last time I ran a game.

[Jericho Alar]

Does it actually state that as a rule, or is that another of the helpful "suggestions" that were so liberally scattered throughout the SR3 rules?

Edit: ok, I just dusted the cobwebs off of my copy of SR4, and unless they've changed it in SR4A it is indeed a suggestion. You can buy successes with 4 dice under the same conditions as with any other number of dice, that is to say "if the gamemaster allows it".

~J, who recently had to go through every sourcebook and make a ruling on every last suggestion and optional rule in the game. This is why optional rules and suggestions for fudging are design failure, people.

(Bitter, me? Never!)

While we're on the topic and you checked, is SR3 explicitly round against the players? or did I just incorporate an old house rule of my own into my mental ruleset as canon?

[Karoline]

Pretty sure SR4 actually states you always round fractions in favour of the players in one of the introduction sections. It would seem that it would influence all rounding.

So, searching through my SR4 PDF the only mention I could find of how to round was in jumping tests where it specifically states to divide by two, rounding up.

Oh, just found one on condition monitors, once again round up.

Melee damage is once again round up.

Impact armor against falls (Halved) rounds up, so presumably so does v electricity.

Actually quite a few other instances of rounding are popping up.

It seems like the rule is "Round in favor of whoever the rounding is affecting directly"

Drain is down, damage to vehicle from ramming is down, a penalty to a particular drug is down.

The only oddities I see are that you round down when halving concealability for a pat down, and you round down for weapon mounts on drones... oh, and round down on how many throwing weapons you can ready in an action.

So yeah, some oddities it seems that doesn't really allow you to put down a general rule all that well after all. It does seem that rounding is accounted for in everything that rounding is needed for though.

[Method]

It does seem that rounding is accounted for in everything that rounding is needed for though.

My guess is that its due to a concerted effort on the part of the SR4A writers.

[Kagetenshi]

While we're on the topic and you checked, is SR3 explicitly round against the players? or did I just incorporate an old house rule of my own into my mental ruleset as canon?

In SR3, pool calculation is always round down, as are chargen knowledge and language skill points; in several places during these calculations there are references to "always round down" which seems to apply specifically to the current calculations but could be misread. Both halving armor for armor-piercing munitions and halving Power for normal weapons against vehicles round down; it's not clear to me if that's round-for, round-against, or just round-somehow. Dice rolled for the grenades/explosives optional rule (half Power vs. TN 4 for staging) are rounded up; again, favor is unclear.

Wait! I found one! Visibility Modifiers other than Full Darkness are halved, round down when in melee combat; that's probably something that you could consider rounding in their favour. Also, Flux Rating for Sensors and ECM is Rating*1.5, rounded up, which sounds pro-player.

Heh, there's even a bit of flux I forgot where you round to the nearest half. Oh, Shadowrun.

Anyway, there's a lot I can't firmly call one way or another in terms of being pro-player or anti-player, but there are some cases where it seems to be pro.

~J

[Karoline]

My guess is that its due to a concerted effort on the part of the SR4A writers.

Except I'm just using the SR4 regular book (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Method]

Well more props to them then.

[Mercer]

it's not clear to me if that's round-for, round-against, or just round-somehow.

Most of the time in SR3, you round down. There are a few things that specifically mention rounding up (Kage mentioned soem of them, and I can't think of any more off the top of my head), but nothing is player specific. You round it how you round it, and it screws whomever it screws. (In fact, my group houseruled it as Always Round Down, because simple, universal rules are easier to remember. Like, Tie Goes to the Defender.)

[Karoline]

Technically almost everything that rounds is going to not really be for or against the PCs, because the NPCs run under the same rules. So half impact armor round up when defending against e damage helps the PCs when they are being hit, and hurts them when the 'bad' guys are being hit. Only ones that basically only affect PCs would be karma rounding up/down in the case of initiation.

[Kagetenshi]

In principle you could have a round-for or round-against PCs (so a Heavy Pistol round against a hostile NPC vehicle would have an adjusted Power of 4, while the same against a PC or PC-allied vehicle would have adjusted Power 5), it would just be sorta dumb.

~J

[Jericho Alar]

Technically almost everything that rounds is going to not really be for or against the PCs, because the NPCs run under the same rules. So half impact armor round up when defending against e damage helps the PCs when they are being hit, and hurts them when the 'bad' guys are being hit. Only ones that basically only affect PCs would be karma rounding up/down in the case of initiation.

always rounding impact armor down would generally be more dangerous to players since they take more shots on average than the typical npc.

kage summarizes the absurdity of 'round against the players' rather succinctly however. (although a rule like 'round against the defender might work ok.)

[Ascalaphus]

Occasionally you get situations where it's rather hard to decide who is the defender. I think I prefer to round .5 up and .49999 down, except if explicitly noted otherwise.

And all ties not explicitly noted are resolved with rock paper scissors. It's faster than looking stuff up.

[Method]

The thing is .49999 doesn't come up much in SR because you are generally working with whole numbers and generally halving them (cyberware essence costs and grades being the chief exception I can think of). So if you start with an even number you get an obvious whole number result, but anything odd will result in a .5 and thus round up per standard mathematical rules. So really "rounding up" should be the default, but there are some situations where that might be silly.

And I want to apologize to Mongoose for derailing his thread.

[Mongoose]

PS: Mongoose, your numbers are actually for critical plus non-critical glitches.

True, I didn't differentiate. Didn't seem important to the discussion.

Since they were asked about in general, I use a house rule where you glitch if a number of 1s show up equal to the lowest of the associated Attribute or Skill. Critical glitches follow the same rules as normal glitches. Say you're shooting a pistol and have Agility 6 and Pistols 2. It's only going to take two 1's for a glitch to occur regardless of how many dice you're throwing, as your Pistols skill is only a 2. If half the dice pool comes up as 1s, it's a critical glitch.

So if you default, you always glitch? Or if you have equally low skill and low attributes, you are less likely to glitch than if you have a higher rating in just one of the two? Seems... glitchy. But hey, if it works for your goroop, cool. I agree that glitches are a bit rare, and that was one problem I had with the house rule I considered- it makes them rarer.

As for rounding, I'm an old SR2 player (where things like halved armro most certainly did round down) so assumed you always round down unless otherwise stated. It seems to apply in SR4- most notably when determining maximum augmented skill ratings, and (iirc) for drain. But it does seem to generally be covered in the new text on a case by case basis.

[wind_in_the_ston...]

Back in SR1 and 2, almost everything was "round bad". Now, the rule of thumb is that if rounding a 1 to a 0 doesn't makes sense, you round up.