Mathematical Analysis of Daka, Using math to optimize character builds Options

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

They both 'make sense'. It's just a question of where you want the glitches.

Yeah... My gun jams because you take cover... In what world does that make sense Draco18s?

[Draco18s]

Yeah... My gun jams because you take cover... In what world does that make sense Draco18s?

Huh? I never said anything about cover and dice.

[Draco18s]

Yeah... My gun jams because you take cover... In what world does that make sense Draco18s?

Huh? I never said anything about cover and dice.

[ZeroPoint]

First, that was Yerameyahu that posted that, not Draco.

Second, unfortunately, thats the problem with many things regarding modifiers and glitching. Being in full darkness, fog, or shooting around cover? running? splitting dice pools for dual wielding? Extreme Range?

shooting at someone at extreme range, from cover in light fog is a -10 penalty. I don't see any reason why that should cause the gun to jam either.

Personally, I don't like it either, but when it applies to the defender's pool then what happens when they are unaware? Since they can't make a defense test do they not get any benefit from cover at all?

I think a GM should feel free to apply the 2 to 4 dice wherever they should go as is appropriate for the situation, since they will work out the same numerically in 90% of cases.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Huh? I never said anything about cover and dice.

Sorry Draco18s... My mistake. Long Morning already. I stand corrected, and now implicate Yerameyahu. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

First, that was Yerameyahu that posted that, not Draco.

Second, unfortunately, thats the problem with many things regarding modifiers and glitching. Being in full darkness, fog, or shooting around cover? running? splitting dice pools for dual wielding? Extreme Range?

shooting at someone at extreme range, from cover in light fog is a -10 penalty. I don't see any reason why that should cause the gun to jam either.

Personally, I don't like it either, but when it applies to the defender's pool then what happens when they are unaware? Since they can't make a defense test do they not get any benefit from cover at all?

I think a GM should feel free to apply the 2 to 4 dice wherever they should go as is appropriate for the situation, since they will work out the same numerically in 90% of cases.

If they are unaware, they still get the dice for cover. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
But you do have a point.

[Yerameyahu]

I think I pretty clearly mentioned the glitches. If anything, that's a problem with the glitch mechanic, not the cover mechanic; or, a smart GM would probably not *choose* 'gun jam' as the resulting glitch. ZeroPoint nailed it.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I think I pretty clearly mentioned the glitches. If anything, that's a problem with the glitch mechanic, not the cover mechanic; or, a smart GM would probably not *choose* 'gun jam' as the resulting glitch. ZeroPoint nailed it.

Indeed... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Ryu]

agi 5 skill 5 is not exactly a standard guard. for an ordinary guard, you're probably looking at around agi 3 skill 3, for a total dice pool of 8 after smartgun. maybe 10 if they specialize, but even that would be pretty unlikely for an ordinary run-of-the-mill guard.

Agreed. I would also add that "non-combatant" runners have it easy ending up with pools below 12, too.

The canon fodder should spray and pray.

[Xenefungus]

I think every guard worth his name should have at least

agi 4 (above average because he is more trained than joe average)
used muscle replacement 2 (it's only 5k! and essence doesnt matter for those guys, they won't use it up anyway)
skill 2 (if you use the silly descriptions of the skill value page. if he was just spending karma points, 4 at least)
specialization (2 karma for two dice? yes please!)
smartgun (just a few nuyen)

for a MINIMUM total of 12 dice. i really dont see any guard having less than that.

[Strungest]

Well, at a minimum, you have at least one flawed assumption. Cover bonuses are ADDED to the Defender's Pool, not subtracted from the Attacker's pool. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

This is exactly what I needed. Thank you. Do you see any others? Ill edit the OP with my current code.

[Jaid]

I think every guard worth his name should have at least

agi 4 (above average because he is more trained than joe average)
used muscle replacement 2 (it's only 5k! and essence doesnt matter for those guys, they won't use it up anyway)
skill 2 (if you use the silly descriptions of the skill value page. if he was just spending karma points, 4 at least)
specialization (2 karma for two dice? yes please!)
smartgun (just a few nuyen)

for a MINIMUM total of 12 dice. i really dont see any guard having less than that.

the average security guard is not there to shoot the bad guys. the average security guard is there to scream like a little girl and hit the panic button when the bad guys show up, then shoot in their general direction to slow them down by forcing them to take cover and such, and discourage people from just throwing rocks at the windows and such things.

good training and expensive gear (like 5k worth of 'ware) are not going to be wasted on an ordinary security guard. they're going to be spent on the people who show up when the crappy security guard screams frantically for help. if programs could be trusted to know when to call for help rather than being easily fooled and causing regular false alarms, you probably wouldn't even *have* a security guard there in the first place, quite frankly. if there weren't so many guns that come with smartun systems pre-installed and if smartlinks weren't so cheap and easy to get, i wouldn't even presume the guard had even a smartlinked gun.

now the people the security guard calls for i would agree should be throwing around 12+ dice on the attack. depending on just where you're at when the security forces get called in, i would say it's reasonable to expect 16+ dice or more (choosing people with 5 agi, training them to 3-4 skill and giving them a specialization, throwing in some agi-boosting 'ware, etc).

unless by "security guard" you mean "high threat response team", i don't think you're going to see much spent at all on them. the security guard is there so that a person can't drive up in a main battle tank and tell the computer they're the floor cleaners using an exploit they hacked the night before with a few thousand nuyen worth of hardware and some pirated hacking programs and an agent, and their job is to call for help, not to fight off the main battle tank.

frankly, i wouldn't be surprised if a large number of security guards don't even *have* guns issued to them...

[Manunancy]

First, that was Yerameyahu that posted that, not Draco.

Second, unfortunately, thats the problem with many things regarding modifiers and glitching. Being in full darkness, fog, or shooting around cover? running? splitting dice pools for dual wielding? Extreme Range?

shooting at someone at extreme range, from cover in light fog is a -10 penalty. I don't see any reason why that should cause the gun to jam either.

Personally, I don't like it either, but when it applies to the defender's pool then what happens when they are unaware? Since they can't make a defense test do they not get any benefit from cover at all?

I think a GM should feel free to apply the 2 to 4 dice wherever they should go as is appropriate for the situation, since they will work out the same numerically in 90% of cases.

A glitch isn't necessarily a jam - it can esaily mean hitting something embarassing or toher mishaps. In that light there's no problem with the od for glitches going up. The more marginal and difficult the shot, the more likely it is to get a result diffrent from what you wanted.

[Midas]

I think that it is fair to say that different GMs have different ideas on how skilled and cybered corpsec mooks will be, and it is an interesting question.

I tend to use AGI 3-4 (with the odd 5), skill 3 and smartgun as baseline, possibly with specialization but not always. Experienced team members might have skill 4, and if appropriate weapons specialists 5. I then tend to round out the corpsec detail with a smattering of cyber - one or two guys might have WR1 or a cyberarm, perhaps Bone Lacing or Muscle Replacement/MT/Reaction Enhancers or whatever. There is probably a company programme for corpsec to buy cyber in instalments from their salary, but I do not hold with the "corp requires all sec guards to get skillwires/muscle replacement whatever" gameview, or the assumption that every average corpsec Joe wants to replace his body with as much chrome as he can.

This ad hoc system of "a few extra stat points and bits of cyber here and there" approach helps flesh out these mooks and gives me as the GM differing tactical hooks they might employ when they come up against the bad-ass shadowrunner gang (assuming they survive the first salvo, of course), and keeps PCs a little out of their comfort zone (you never know if the guy you just shot has bone lacing or not).

[Blade]

Warning: Use of this ammunition in bad vision conditions on a target far away can be dangerous to some users, especially when wounded.

[Aerospider]

If they are unaware, they still get the dice for cover. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
But you do have a point.

I thought they didn't and my justification was that cover is of little use if you're not trying to hide behind it. It might be near you, it might obscure half your body, but standing still and looking the other way still makes you a non-resisting target.

But if you say they do I'm sure it's true.

[Aerospider]

Not to derail the thread, but the main mechanical effect of the cover rules change is that lower DPs are better off and higher DOs are worse off. A slight levelling of the playing field as it were.

This is down to the fact that probability of success in opposed tests is proportional to the ratio of the DPs. If you have 8 dice against 4 dice and the gap must narrow by 2 dice, you would be better off taking a penalty than your opponent gaining a bonus. 6 will beat 4 more often than 8 will beat 6.

Ergo, relatively strong attackers would on average prefer to take a penalty. Similarly, relatively strong dodgers would on average prefer the attacker to take a penalty. Thus the new rule is to their detriment and to the advantage of weaker attackers/dodgers.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I thought they didn't and my justification was that cover is of little use if you're not trying to hide behind it. It might be near you, it might obscure half your body, but standing still and looking the other way still makes you a non-resisting target.

But if you say they do I'm sure it's true.

Well, if it qualifies for the term "Cover" (ie. you can only see half their body) then they would get it. If they are standing in front of a wall in relation to the shooter (with nothing obscuring the Shooter's view), then it is not, by definition, "Cover." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Yerameyahu]

It might be near you, it might obscure half your body, but standing still and looking the other way still makes you a non-resisting target.

Wherever you move the bonus/penalty, this is affecting the shot. It's harder to hit a smaller target.

[Aerospider]

Wherever you move the bonus/penalty, this is affecting the shot. It's harder to hit a smaller target.

Usually only in extreme cases. Dwarves, for instance, don't count as any harder to hit. A skinny person could have less than half the cross-sectional area of a rather fat person with no difference in dice pool to hit.

[Yerameyahu]

If 'extreme cases' means 'whenever we're talking about Cover', yes. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) The point is that cover affects the shot, that's all.

[Strungest]

I now have 16+ thousand images showing values for most combinations of weapon/attacker/defender situations. Any idea where I could upload a .5 gig file so that you guys can see them without having to mess with matlab?

[Yerameyahu]

Dropbox.

A glitch isn't necessarily a jam - it can esaily mean hitting something embarassing or toher mishaps. In that light there's no problem with the od for glitches going up. The more marginal and difficult the shot, the more likely it is to get a result diffrent from what you wanted.

However, it's still true that there are many cases where the GM is having to gut it out. It's hard to constantly remember to include gun jams, but not *too* much, y'know? Because we don't track where the penalties come from in that way. It's not a big problem, but the abstract system kind of ignores that stuff. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) A more (annoyingly) simulationist system might have a constant jam chance added to the overall 'screwup' chance. Bleh.

[Aerospider]

If 'extreme cases' means 'whenever we're talking about Cover', yes. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) The point is that cover affects the shot, that's all.

No, you misunderstand me. My point was that the cover modifier is not simply a matter of the target being made smaller from the attacker's perspective, because it can incur a modifier where a target of an equivalently smaller size would not. E.g. Shooting at a fat person and shooting at a slim person incur no size modifiers (except for the extreme case, like Janna the Hut vs Kate Moss) but if the fat guy had enough cover to reduce his visible size to that of the whole slim person there would be a modifier for cover.

My view of it is that the cover makes dodging easier by giving the target somewhere to move to for protection. Maybe it's academic, but for me it makes cover more suited as a bonus to defence than a penalty to attack.

[Draco18s]

My view of it is that the cover makes dodging easier by giving the target somewhere to move to for protection.

Even if it's not something the target is aware of. Maybe he bends over to tie his shoes at the critical moment. If he is standing behind a low wall, then the cover is important: when he bends down to tie his shoe, he's completely hidden.