I miss the old feeling.. Options

[jaellot]

Could just go back to the level 12 Skillwires days. Hell, techincally speaking, shouldn't there be some of those out there? I mean, just because the Matrix crashed (again) wouldn't mean everybody goes out and gets brand new wireless compatible wares, right? Nor would you change out your perfectly fine high level skillwires for these new crappy ones, that cap at 6.

I think I recall the book saying something about the "miles and miles" of fiber optic cable being rendered obsolete with the new wireless matrix, too. I put it to use via some savvy hackers setting up an old Matrix (1.0 I guess) for those who couldn't afford better. Pay essentially a monthly bill, and they keep your telecom, trid, internet, phone, etc. up and running for the down and out. Sure, it's wired, but so was everything else "x" number of years ago. And it's not as expensive as the new commlinks, or the suscription fees. It's mainly as a bit of flavor for us.

[Semerkhet]

Could just go back to the level 12 Skillwires days. Hell, techincally speaking, shouldn't there be some of those out there? I mean, just because the Matrix crashed (again) wouldn't mean everybody goes out and gets brand new wireless compatible wares, right? Nor would you change out your perfectly fine high level skillwires for these new crappy ones, that cap at 6.

I think I recall the book saying something about the "miles and miles" of fiber optic cable being rendered obsolete with the new wireless matrix, too. I put it to use via some savvy hackers setting up an old Matrix (1.0 I guess) for those who couldn't afford better. Pay essentially a monthly bill, and they keep your telecom, trid, internet, phone, etc. up and running for the down and out. Sure, it's wired, but so was everything else "x" number of years ago. And it's not as expensive as the new commlinks, or the suscription fees. It's mainly as a bit of flavor for us.

Argh!! I'd love it if we could agree that Crash 2.0 was an extremely poorly executed setting retcon, rife with blatant nonsense and inconsistencies. I would have preferred they just had the 'universe blink', as my group calls it when we choose not to explain the transition to a house rule that changes how something was previously working. Our group ended up agreeing "The Matrix has been a mix of wireless and wired infrastructure since the 2010s" and let it go at that.

I'm not trying to shut down discussion about which edition of the matrix rules was better, because I think both sides have valid arguments. It just frustrates me to see the clumsy retcon BS trotted out as evidence for anything.

Quick Edit: Please don't take my quoting of Jaellot to mean that I'm blaming him for anything. His post just made me think of the terrible retcon.

[jaellot]

I totally agree that a bit of extra backstory would help tons. Completely for me and my group, personally. I don't mind outlandish concepts (like VITAS, and Dragons, and Elves. Oh My!) if there's at least some sort of story to go with it. That's the fun of these games, all of them, after all. The story of each game world. The stories you make at the table.

[Karoline]

This is one of those things in SR4. Does anyone else think the hard skill cap of 6 should just go out the window? It just doesn't make sense. While it does amplify the problems of large dice pools, it kills a lot of immersiveness of the system. Also, as long as you apply the cap (if you use it) AFTER modifiers, there is really nothing wrong with pushing up the skills - and you still do get a gain.

I would think that would be fairly okay. Perhaps the biggest problem would be that it would allow adepts to take extra points of improved ability, which compounds the problem a bit.

I do think there should be a bit larger scale or a bigger restriction on starting skill. I find it mildly annoying that you can start basically the top of your possible game in your specialty. I don't know that the skill needs to go up that much. Maybe up to 9. 12 starts getting a bit crazy, but it does fix the 'talented novice vs hard working expert' problem.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

I would think that would be fairly okay. Perhaps the biggest problem would be that it would allow adepts to take extra points of improved ability, which compounds the problem a bit.

I do think there should be a bit larger scale or a bigger restriction on starting skill. I find it mildly annoying that you can start basically the top of your possible game in your specialty. I don't know that the skill needs to go up that much. Maybe up to 9. 12 starts getting a bit crazy, but it does fix the 'talented novice vs hard working expert' problem.

Personally... I would just go with Karmagen all the way. Get rid of pointbuy. That way you don't even need hard caps, you just limit the total amount of karma - and simple cost-effectiveness should do the rest. That and punishing super-specialists within the game. If you need a lot of skills, you just can't min-max too much at chargen.

If the system were better, it should balance out all by itself.

I wouldn't even introduce a hard skill-cap, at all. BUT I would perhaps limit the effective skill rank to the augmented attribute - if you don't have the raw physical abilities, you just won't be able to use the skill ranks.

[Karoline]

BUT I would perhaps limit the effective skill rank to the augmented attribute - if you don't have the raw physical abilities, you just won't be able to use the skill ranks.

That I don't like very much, because it is entirely possible to be highly skilled at something without natural ability. I mean, I have horrid hand-eye coordination, and couldn't shoot a basketball to save my life, but I can juggle and do a ton of tricks, because I've practiced.

[Cheops]

Hence why ealier editions had a lower karma cost for skills below the linked attribute and higher cost for those that exceeded the linked attribute. Worked beautifully -- natural ability made it easier to be skilled but hard work was still rewarded. Now everyone wants to raise their stats because they affect more than 1 dice pool.

[Karoline]

Hence why ealier editions had a lower karma cost for skills below the linked attribute and higher cost for those that exceeded the linked attribute. Worked beautifully -- natural ability made it easier to be skilled but hard work was still rewarded. Now everyone wants to raise their stats because they affect more than 1 dice pool.

I seem to recall the problem with that being that it was possible to be better off with no skill than low skill. But even that can be true. You could have someone who is a natural at shooting a gun, but they are shooting it wrong, so they go down in ability as they learn the right way to do things.

Still, overall I think I like that old way to do it, where natural ability was easy of use so to speak, as opposed to a replacement for skill.

[pbangarth]

I seem to recall the problem with that being that it was possible to be better off with no skill than low skill.

Used to be that defaulting cost half your Attribute, not just -1 die.

[Karoline]

Used to be that defaulting cost half your Attribute, not just -1 die.

Ah, I thought it was full attribute with a TN modifier.

Even at half attribute, if you have a 6 or so, that means you need at least 3 skill to equal out.

Of course from what I understand, a 3 skill was fairly low back in SR3.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Used to be that defaulting cost half your Attribute, not just -1 die.

It used to be at least in SR2 and 1(I don't remember how 3 did defaulting) you used your full attribute but it was +2 on the TN for each move on the skill web. Usually at least 2 moves to get to an attribute, so +4 to TN but rolling a bunch of dice or normal TN and rolling only 1 die. I don't feel like working out the statistics of where 1 die at TN 4 beats X dice at TN 8.

For me on the house rule side I let people use their combat pool for any physical skill so that helped a little. But if you were caught stealthing even with your dice from the combat pool you started the fight down a few dice. The usual lack of a pool for many tasks made any TN mods a ridiculous barrier to overcome IMO.

[jaellot]

Ahh, the Skill Web. Now that's something every game should have! We still laugh about that now and then. Oddly enough, it made sense somehow...

[Shinobi Killfist]

Ahh, the Skill Web. Now that's something every game should have! We still laugh about that now and then. Oddly enough, it made sense somehow...

I actually liked it. It did make sense to me. Knowing similar subjects should help when defaulting. If you are awesome sauce with pistols you should not suck with automatics. Sure you wont be as good if you didn't train but it wouldn't be like you had never picked up a gun before. Were there implausible items in the skill web sure, but the idea behind it is sound.

[Yerameyahu]

Certainly *something* like that would still be nice for the firearms skills in SR4.

[capt.pantsless]

I actually liked it. It did make sense to me. Knowing similar subjects should help when defaulting. If you are awesome sauce with pistols you should not suck with automatics. Sure you wont be as good if you didn't train but it wouldn't be like you had never picked up a gun before. Were there implausible items in the skill web sure, but the idea behind it is sound.

The Skill Web was frankly one of the most realistic ways of handling related skills. The trouble was that it was damned complicated, as it was a full-page directed graph. Not a simple lookup table, mind you - it was a directed graph - there were some one-way links. It was dropped in favor of game-speed, frankly I don't think many RPG players understood how to use it, and it sorta became the poster-child example of 'stuff that was too complicated' and subsequently dropped off a cliff.

Normally I'm a big fan of game-speed over realism, but even now, I often let players 'default' to related skills in a manner strikingly similar to the old skill-web.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

Normally I'm a big fan of game-speed over realism, but even now, I often let players 'default' to related skills in a manner strikingly similar to the old skill-web.

That's also something I would like to see back. I mean, skill groups make it easier to get a lot of skills, but they are still rather expensive. Defaulting not only to attribute, but to similar skills would be very nice.

[Cheops]

Ah, I thought it was full attribute with a TN modifier.

Even at half attribute, if you have a 6 or so, that means you need at least 3 skill to equal out.

Of course from what I understand, a 3 skill was fairly low back in SR3.

In SR3: Defaulting to another skill in the same group was +2 TN, defaulting to the specialization of another skill in the skill group was +3 TN, defaulting to the related attribute was +4 TN. The nice thing about this was, if you specialized in the Ares Predator you could use that skill to carry over for shooting your SMG just at a higher TN. Likewise, the street sam with 15 reaction was often as good a driver as the rigger (just not in combat).

Skill 3 meant you were Proficient while 5 was Professional -- so equivalent to 1 and 3 nowadays. Of course you only rolled the skill dice but, except for combat, you generally only needed 1 success.

[Karoline]

Setting up defaulting in SR4 would be fairly easy by allowing you to default into another skill in the same skill group. So if you don't have pistols, but have automatics, you can default to it. Might be some 'out of group' defaults (Exotic weapons in particular) but for the most part I don't think you need to get more complicated than keeping it in the group.

[Sengir]

If you tap into the main trunk coming out of a corporate facility you log into their Host. You'd still need to hack access or else you'd only have whatever public access was available.
[...]The best it could do for you in SR4 is get you the AID so that you can try to hack directly into the node you wanted.

Uhm, what is the difference between those two?

So you could bypass the matrix dungeons that Unwired re-introduced

Saying "node A and B are connected by cable, that connection is the only access to B, accounts on A are not valid on B" hardly requires Unwired (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Deckers perfectly illustrate another thing that irks me about SR4. There is very little room for advancement in your specialty and gear upgrades are so easy to get.

Agreed, it's too easy to max out your matrix gear

[Semerkhet]

Setting up defaulting in SR4 would be fairly easy by allowing you to default into another skill in the same skill group. So if you don't have pistols, but have automatics, you can default to it. Might be some 'out of group' defaults (Exotic weapons in particular) but for the most part I don't think you need to get more complicated than keeping it in the group.

I let it be known to my players that if they have a knowledge skill that it particularly relevant to the use of an Active skill that I'll give them a die or two in bonus for the FoRK (Field of Related Knowledge, taken from Burning Wheel).

My reasoning being that if you have "Redmond Barrens Area Knowledge" at 4 then you should get a +1 or +2 to Tests like Shadowing and maybe even driving that take place in the domain of the Area Knowledge. Same applies for Social tests if you have a relevant knowledge of the cultural subgroup you are dealing with.

[Yerameyahu]

That's another whole issue. I feel like SR4 isn't balanced for dice-adder Knowledges; if you want to add that back in, it takes some care. We all know the issues: free Knowledge skills are suddenly part of the crunch, everyone takes 'metahuman vital spots' and 'corp-sec tactics', etc. It's certainly a workable option, but I'm also okay with the current function of Knowledge skills (information only).

[pbangarth]

Ah, I thought it was full attribute with a TN modifier.

Even at half attribute, if you have a 6 or so, that means you need at least 3 skill to equal out.

Of course from what I understand, a 3 skill was fairly low back in SR3.

Hmmm... this and subsequent posts make me think I may be remembering another game, rather than an older version of Shadowrun. Too many games... too many rules.

[hobgoblin]

Hmmm... this and subsequent posts make me think I may be remembering another game, rather than an older version of Shadowrun. Too many games... too many rules.

Then comes house rules and such. It can become quite confusing over time.

[Cheops]

Uhm, what is the difference between those two?


Saying "node A and B are connected by cable, that connection is the only access to B, accounts on A are not valid on B" hardly requires Unwired (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

1) Not too much except for the fact that you may stll not know where the SR4 node is. If it is running in hidden mode you still need to make a Scan test and in any case you need to make a Matrix Perception test to learn the AID. None of this is explained in SR4.

2) Again, design was supposed to be "no matrix dungeons." That wasn't as straight forward as you make it seem from the BBB. There were lots of fights and arguments here on Dumpshock from 2005 - 2008 as to how this worked. Unwired made a certain way official and those threads stopped. I guess you are just some genius who is smarter than most of Dumpshock. (BTW until Unwired and Runner's Companion I was actually a defender of SR4). Or, looking at your join date, working from hindsight and the community's increased expertise with the system.

[Critias]

It just tickles me no end that two of the most popular, most posted-in, threads here on the front page for Shadowrun discussion are one about how the NAN craziness was so silly and stupid and poorly written and how that could never happen and all the first edition fluff was just so ridiculous it ruins the game...and the other is about how serious and businesslike and taking-itself-way-too-seriously the recent books have been, and how all this overthinking by the devs and writers sucks all the fun out so much that it ruins the game.

On the internet, sometimes ya just can't win. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)