Toying with Dice Options

[sunnyside]

I was one of the people who was drug kicking and screaming into the realm of fixed TNs.

However Frank does make an excellent case for why the old system "didn't behave as advertized"
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...st&p=902606

So I'm pondering what I might like to do when I next have a game (presuming I'm the GM, which is more likely than not).

The thing I've found I really dislike about how the current system players out is mostly.

#1 All the tactics I enjoyed in earlier SR editions seems to have gone out the window. Going from TN3 to TN5 instantly halves the expected number of successes and going from 5 to 6 halves it again so even skilled characters respect conditions and modifiers. Not only does this make for more interesting tactical play, but it seems to fit reality. Take the best shooter on the planet and than make them shoot while running, there will be a significant degredation in their performance. Under the current system if you have a pool in the high teens modifiers like that are essentially negligable. Players with sufficient dice pools stop bothering with things like getting better angles, firing while stationary, or bothering to look where they're shooting (OK, that list bit might be an exageration, but not by much)


#2 For people with lesser skills, things quickly become impossible that shouldn't be impossible physically. I'm guessing that edge usege is supposed to be the patch for this, but in Franks example for some tasks some people will just manage it MXC style. I.e . the good shooter may notably degrade their performance if they're firing while moving, but it doesn't suddenly become impossible for granny to hit a target just because she's moving while firing. She'll just need more tries.

And finally a problem from both systems (and most game ssytems really)

#3 You know that weapons in the hands of a lesser skilled user can only do so much damage in a given period of time. I find this annoying because it removes the option for a lot of the interesting standoff situations as well as removing tension in general. I.e. if an enraged girlfriend pulls a gun on the teams hacker while they're out of their body armor, they still know they can make a break for it and just soak up the damage for a certain number of turns.

What I was wondering is what people might think of something closer to maybe variable target numbers, but a constant dice pool.

If you always throw, say, twelve dice than you should have a pretty reasonable distribution most of the time. There is always a chance of a whopping 12 successes. And TN variation can make a big difference. The skilled player acheives better results because their TNs will be lower.

But I don't quite like that either. Especially if we're still using d6s.

Any thoughts?


Maybe having some base number of dice you always throw, then adding skill/stat numbers onto that and having sitautional factors modify the TN?

[tete]

What I was wondering is what people might think of something closer to maybe variable target numbers, but a constant dice pool.

Not for me, I like my dice pool to change as I get better.
However I would like to see Shadowrun borrow some ideas from Ubiquity when 5e rolls around.

[sunnyside]

Not for me, I like my dice pool to change as I get better.
However I would like to see Shadowrun borrow some ideas from Ubiquity when 5e rolls around.

Ubiquity?

Please elaborate.

[Dwight]

What I was wondering is what people might think of something closer to maybe variable target numbers, but a constant dice pool.

You don't need a variable TN for that. Have the penalties up the Threshold, all benefits increase the die pool size. This makes the penalties have a lot more bite. When you have results for doing damage which are related to the net successes over the Threshold, or you have to beat an opponent rolling and you add the penalty to their success to come up with your Threshold, you end up with grit-licious difficulty....but perhaps something somewhat more grounded than what Shadowrun has traditionally been.

P.S. It is also much easier to recall/ajudicate which changes the Threshold and which changes the die pool.

[Voronesh]

Ive seen WAY too many strange dice numbers come up even with a dice pool of 12.

When you have like a dice pool of 19 and you make only a single dice a 1/2 and the rest a 3+. Well you can say i got lucky, but if you want some kind of avering the dice, you need to get alot more dice, at least 30+. Then you can kinda get an average result.

When you want to keep variables in, ofc it doesnt matter how small the dice pool is.

What i would prefer instead of a variable TN, is a relative dice pool modifier. SO instead of -4 Dice, youd lose half dice because youre shooting while running. One realizes the power of that when shootiung SNS ammo instead of APDS at some 50+soakdice troll. Nothing makes em squirm more.

A variable TN, also only gives you a range of 5 Target numbers. 2-6

Switching to a different die, is a possibilty, but also reduces your number of dice. D6 are a die that is still very good when comparatively small. D8 too, but beyond that its just not as good anymore. d10 and d12 might barely cut it at 12 dice. But then youd prolly need both hands to do it. And d20 is right out.

[tete]

Ubiquity?

Please elaborate.

Its my new love in RPG mechanics, its the engine behind Hollow Earth Expeditions and Desolation. It has some similarities to SR4 but I think the differences are where it shines (and thus why I hope the devs get some inspiration from it). My experience comes from Desolation. Some of the changes I would personally like to see implemented are dice are 50% chance rather than 33%, you can take the average rather than roll (this is because everything is either a threshold or a vs roll), skills are rated 1-12, and defense is a single roll rather than dodge and then soak. There are some other good things in there to but those would be the easy things to implement.

[Blade]

#1 All the tactics I enjoyed in earlier SR editions seems to have gone out the window. [...] Take the best shooter on the planet and than make them shoot while running, there will be a significant degredation in their performance. Under the current system if you have a pool in the high teens modifiers like that are essentially negligable. Players with sufficient dice pools stop bothering with things like getting better angles, firing while stationary, or bothering to look where they're shooting (OK, that list bit might be an exageration, but not by much)

First of all, from experience, I haven't seen a degradation in tactics. It's even the opposite, since my player now can't be sure that they will soak the damage. (In SR3, some players didn't even need to bother rolling when hit by something that wasn't shooting APDS or burst-fire).
Pool in the high teens let you run and shoot without problems, it's true but pools in the high teens aren't ordinary pools. Today's best shooter will have something like Agi 7 + Skill 7(9) = 16 dice. Today's average soldier will probably have less than 10 dice.

#2 For people with lesser skills, things quickly become impossible that shouldn't be impossible physically. I'm guessing that edge usege is supposed to be the patch for this, but in Franks example for some tasks some people will just manage it MXC style. I.e . the good shooter may notably degrade their performance if they're firing while moving, but it doesn't suddenly become impossible for granny to hit a target just because she's moving while firing. She'll just need more tries.

That's true, but I have to admit I haven't seen a lot of situation where this had been a problem.

#3 You know that weapons in the hands of a lesser skilled user can only do so much damage in a given period of time. I find this annoying because it removes the option for a lot of the interesting standoff situations as well as removing tension in general. I.e. if an enraged girlfriend pulls a gun on the teams hacker while they're out of their body armor, they still know they can make a break for it and just soak up the damage for a certain number of turns.

Light Pistol: 4P.
The girlfriend shoots and hits so she has at least 1 net hit: 5P. The hacker rolls his Body (3), probably gets 1 hit. He takes 4 damage.
The girlfriend shoots again (single action on a SA pistol) and gets 1 net hit again. The hacker gets another 4 damage for a total of 8.
Seems ok to me.

[McCummhail]

Light Pistol: 4P.
The girlfriend shoots and hits so she has at least 1 net hit: 5P. The hacker rolls his Body (3), probably gets 1 hit. He takes 4 damage.
The girlfriend shoots again (single action on a SA pistol) and gets 1 net hit again. The hacker gets another 4 damage for a total of 8.
Seems ok to me.

Also worth noting that the first shot and the second shot both dealt damage in excess of his body score and therefore cause knockdown.
The situation changes slightly when the first bullet floors you.

[Draco18s]

Also worth noting that the first shot and the second shot both dealt damage in excess of his body score and therefore cause knockdown.
The situation changes slightly when the first bullet floors you.

I dislike that rule so much. Note that if you manage to deal 10 damage to something (even a dragon) after the soak roll, it falls over (or was that capped at 10 only for Blast-effect magic?).

At low body it sucks because any damage you take bowls you over. At high body is also sucks because not only are you nearly dead,* you're on the floor!

12 body -> 14 boxes of health. Take 13 damage and you're on the ground and 1 box away from dead. At 16 body you're unconscious anyway. At 20 body...well, you're already pushed into bleeding out. If the "10 damage always knocks over" then dragons--with a 40 body--are knocked down if they're hit with a blast spell for 6 or higher (4 net hits on a F6 spell isn't that outrageous). Force 10 Blast spells will always knockdown, unless fully resisted with Willpower.

[tete]

In SR3, some players didn't even need to bother rolling when hit by something that wasn't shooting APDS or burst-fire

I don't buy into this.

In SR3 your armor could only take your TN down to 2, cus 1s always fail and even if you had a high body you need 2 successes MINIMUM to not take damage. More likely 4+ as most things are going to do a medium or higher wound level. So anyone without a body of 5+ will probably take some damage because they end up with a 1 in there. And thats some serious armor to take 9M to 2 (armored jacket is only 5)

SR4 you get your body+armor [which could be insane (I think I saw a 40 something dice build once) but lets keep it reasonable for the example] Body 5 + Military Armor (cus thats what you would have to get a TN 2 in the other scenario) now I cant remember what the rating is but I'm sure its above 10 as most armor values have doubled. So 5P would leave you with 1 or 2 pts of damage on average

Sounds about the same to me.

[Blade]

In SR3 your armor could only take your TN down to 2, cus 1s always fail and even if you had a high body you need 2 successes MINIMUM to not take damage. More likely 4+ as most things are going to do a medium or higher wound level. So anyone without a body of 5+ will probably take some damage because they end up with a 1 in there. And thats some serious armor to take 9M to 2 (armored jacket is only 5)

With FFBA and an armored jacket, they could get up to something like 7 or 8 pretty easily. Which meant that 9M turned into 2M. If you didn't have a body of 5+ (which you could easily get) you just had to use a little of your combat pool.

It's true that in SR4 you can also get a high armor rating and soak a lot of damage, but most of the time the victim will get at least 1 or 2 points of damage instead of none.

[tete]

With FFBA and an armored jacket, they could get up to something like 7 or 8 pretty easily. Which meant that 9M turned into 2M. If you didn't have a body of 5+ (which you could easily get) you just had to use a little of your combat pool.

It's true that in SR4 you can also get a high armor rating and soak a lot of damage, but most of the time the victim will get at least 1 or 2 points of damage instead of none.

So its a problem of the old armor stacking rules, where you could buy more than one type of armor and stack it but you sacrifice reaction. Where as now you can only stack with form fitting.

[edit] I dont think its fair to compare the combat pool as in 4e the combat pool is your reaction on the defense end and static. You can now only use it to dodge the incoming attack, which your guy could have done in 3e to.