[X] My Assistant

[Umidori]

The problem is that 'ware is supposed to have a cost. You lose Essence, and by extension, magic. This is supposed to be a BAD thing for the Awakened.

But it isn't. It's actually BETTER to get a little bit of 'ware to go with your powers. It's so much more efficient, there's no reason not to, mechanically speaking. And that's the opposite of what it's supposed to be. Suddenly 'ware doesn't have a cost, it's a straight up bonus over staying purely magical.

Now sure, 'ware has limits. But if you've got a decent Strength or Agility to start with, that limit easily takes you up to your augmented maximum for most characters. Start with 4 Agility and Muscle Toner Rating 2 for an augmented 6 Agility. Later on, sacrifice a second point of magic to upgrade to the maximum Rating 4, taking you to 8 Agility. For anyone other than an Elf, that's 1 point less than the augmented maximum. And if you really want that final ninth point, all you have to do is pay to increase your natural Agility from 4 to 5, or 25 karma.

Compare that to an adept. Same 4 Agility at start, and equivalent Increased Agility 2, but costing a much greater amount of BP for being an adept (which also eats into your total positive qualities), and paying for the magic points you need to fuel your powers. Later, to upgrade to Increased Agility 4, you need to increase your magic, so that adds substantial karma costs. And since most adepts start at or near their maximum magic, you may even need to initiate once or twice first, costing even more karma. Oh, and since the power point cost is doubled for every point beyond your natural maximum, you actually need double the karma to buy double the extra magic and initiations than what you would otherwise! So a quick back of the envelope tally gives us anywhere from 45 to 100+ karma (plus time and costs to Initiate) to upgrade your adept power by two ranks.

But now you're at 8 Agility. Pretty respectable, yeah? What's that? You want to push it to 9? Well either spend karma to initiate again and increase your magic again such that you can pay the 1.5 power points for that final point of agility... or! You can pay 45 karma, nearly twice what the 'ware user pays for the exact same effect.

Oh, and you mentioned how as a game progresses, magic gets better and better. Well as a game progresses, a character also makes more and more money. The pure adept has to pay for all these bonuses purely with their karma, but the 'ware user can use nuyen instead, saving their precious and limited karma supply for other improvements. The former has to spend massive amounts of karma to improve their agility to the augmented max, while the latter can achieve the same effect with a mere dip in nuyen, putting his karma elsewhere, such as into mental attributes. Or if they're a 'ware using adept, they can spend the karma on entirely different powers, saving quite a bit of karma in doing so.

~Umi

[_Pax._]

Seriously, you guys. What the flaming fuck.

Indeed.

That is why one of my houserules was and is, to change the Adept power to be in line with Augments. And always cost 0.5PP/+1, too. I've even considered dropping that even further, though I'd have to look at tweaking Attribute Boost as well, if I did.

I believe people even give the increase reflexes power short shrift... yes 1.5... is a bit expensive but you get the attribute increase and the extra pass... 2.5 is easy to improve for the next step. But unlike someone with ware... you don't have to have the old one ripped out and buy the new higher grade to replace it. You simply add a little more magic.

Increased Reflexes is a fair and reasonably-priced power, I agree. Roughly comparable to Wires. (Which it didn't used to be, in older editions.)

[Glyph]

When they did up adepts, they tried to make them better at some things than augmented characters (like skill boosts), and worse at some things than augmented characters (like initiative and Attribute boosts). It worked in SR3 - street samurai were the super-fast dudes with overall toughness and versatility, while adepts were more specialized sharpshooters, ninjas, and martial arts masters.

In SR4, though, the rules changes messed this up. Extra initiative passes became more important, and Attribute increases added to the dice pool. Plus, bioware was cheap enough, Essence-wise, that adepts could get a point or two of it to shore up their weak areas (the aforementioned initiative and Attribute boosts), while spending their remaining power points on things like critical strike and improved ability. In addition to cost-effectiveness, the other benefit to augmented adepts is that often, technology and adept powers stack. You can get an attention coprocessor and enhanced perception. You can get tailored pheromones and kinesics.

The power cost changes in SR4A made unaugmented adepts slightly more viable, as did adept Ways, but augmented adepts skill have an edge over their "pure" brethren. This is fine if you like a game where even awakened characters are tempted by the allure of quick, easy boosts from augmentation. Otherwise, your only recourse is house rules - either make the offending powers cheap enough so that they have parity with bioware, or make the consequences of getting augmentations more severe for an awakened character. And in either case, you might also want to rule that certain tech/adept power combos don't work.


The big question is, what will SR4A do to change all of this? Personally, I hope they use the carrot more than the stick, but making a few more adept powers incompatible with augmentations that do the same thing might be a good idea.

[All4BigGuns]

The problem is that the people who complain about Improved Reflexes are always comparing it's Power Point cost to the Synaptic Booster rather than the two cyber equivalents which the cost was obviously--at least obvious to me--based off of, and they ignore the fact that they're spending a lot more points for the Resources to get the Synaptic Booster than they're saving by getting it.

A good way to bridge that gap would be to forbid Adepts with implants from taking a Way (other than Burnout Way).

[Glyph]

If, and only if, Ways are included in the basic SR5 rules (which they should be, considering how drastically they change the power levels for adepts). Oh, and only if they are upgraded from optional rules to default rules.

[_Pax._]

A good way to bridge that gap would be to forbid Adepts with implants from taking a Way (other than Burnout Way).

/facepalm

Not this again. Putting a different-color dress on it, doesn't change how useful or appropriate the idea is ...

[Falconer]

All4Big... did you even read way of the adept?!

Any adept who loses too much essence is kicked out of their way and is put on the way/path of the burnout.


Glyph:
I agree very heavily with your post... except this.

Extra passes were still very important in prior editions. They were just less predictable than they are now... because the sam didn't know if we was going to roll 2 or 4 sometimes. The thing which kept them in check was that combat pool had to be split between all passes.. instead of the attribute combat pool adding to every single skill check.

SR4's big monkey wrench was that attributes got added to everything and skills pretty much stopped mattering for most checks since you had so many other ways to get dice for the skill check (attributes & equipment & specializations).

[All4BigGuns]

All4Big... did you even read way of the adept?!

Any adept who loses too much essence is kicked out of their way and is put on the way/path of the burnout.

Dude, it's possible to miss something. It happens.

[NeoJudas]

Not really. I mean, by the time a mundane actually hits the cap, the game would have to be like 500 Karma. Sure the mage still has places he can go, but the game has been going on for so long that it's an anomaly.

... Then the game is an anomaly.... Sorry, to some of us, that means the group has begun to really mature. But, Mundanes have always needed some more exertion to keep up with the higher end paras. That's always been a flailing of the game mechanics, regardless of the version.

[NeoJudas]

Body snatching AI and mindhacks... Weren't we done with shedim?

Shedim, shmedim.... I've always waited for the psychotropics to fight back. I admit in our home games, the TMs are righteous, but when it was discovered that the corporations and the mages could still out resource a single TM in the end, then even they backed off some.

[tjn]

All4Big... did you even read way of the adept?!

You're out of line here, especially as you are wrong here:

Any adept who loses too much essence is kicked out of their way and is put on the way/path of the burnout.

There's nothing in the rules of the Way of the Adept about kicking anyone out of their way and that the Path of the Burnout is only eligible, not required, for anyone with 2.0 or more of Essence lost to augmentation (Pg 13, Way of the Adept).

As I like mixing my chocolate and peanut butter, so I really don't have a problem with Adepts (smartly) augmenting via cyber/bio and keeping their way, and as I have found adepts are a somewhat "weak" in general (I understand in their specific niches some min/max character can throw 40+ dice to do some specific thing, but I'm talking more in my general in-play experience).

I'm personally not all that convinced that there is a "gap" that needs to be addressed, either in 5th or as a houserule for 4th. Somethings cyber's good at, something's magic is good at, and I like those differences. That being said, others have different tastes, and that's cool. But being a an aggressive hypocrite? That's not cool.

[Glyph]

Glyph:
I agree very heavily with your post... except this.

Extra passes were still very important in prior editions. They were just less predictable than they are now... because the sam didn't know if we was going to roll 2 or 4 sometimes. The thing which kept them in check was that combat pool had to be split between all passes.. instead of the attribute combat pool adding to every single skill check.

I should have been more specific. Initiative passes became more important for melee in SR4, when melee combat stopped being an opposed dice contest where the defender could damage the attacker, and when the option of full defense as an interrupt action was added. In SR4, if you take two otherwise identical fighters, and one has 1 IP while the other has 3 IP, the one with more IP will be the odds-on favorite. He will be able to use full defense every round, and still have twice as many opportunities to do damage. In SR3, an adept with improved ability: 6 in a combat skill was dominant (since he could damage an attacker whether attacking or defending), but in SR4, that adept would need extra initiative passes to stay competitive.

On the other hand, there is far more parity among initiative boosters. Before, an adept, or a mage with increase reflexes level 3, really couldn't keep up with a speed sammie when it came to initiative scores/number of actions.

[Draco18s]

... Then the game is an anomaly.... Sorry, to some of us, that means the group has begun to really mature. But, Mundanes have always needed some more exertion to keep up with the higher end paras. That's always been a flailing of the game mechanics, regardless of the version.

There is nothing wrong with 500 karma games. I'm just saying that most groups don't last that long.

We also don't know that Mages will remain uncapped.

[Stahlseele]

Skill can't be higher than twice the associated attribute and magic is an attribute like every other attribute too, meaning you can have a maximum of 6(9) magic, initiation allows usage of specific abilities such as using a power focus which acts like cyber/bio for Magic. No initiation, you can't bind the power focus, you can't get your magic attribute higher. Only way to raise magic attribute is a power focus, not karma rising anymore.
power-focus costs new magic attribute(base+focus)x3 karma to bind and new magic attribute(base+focus)x3000
(these numbers may need looking at)

[optional]
you start with magic attribute of 6 again, automagically, but if your base is reduced so is your maximum. so if you go down to 2 magic, your maximum magic using a power-focus is now 3



this will keep both power and dice pool size a bit more in check i think.
of course, if you hard max your elf to 10(15) attribute you can raise skill to 30 for huge dicepool again, but otherwise not.

[Warlordtheft]

• Higher skill limits: All for it, provided hitting the cap at chargen is (near) impossible. It makes attributes less important, gives characters room to improve, and also allows for better fluff associated with skill levels
• Accuracy stat: I can understand the reasoning, a crack shot still needs a decent rifle. But it's yet another stat added to weapons, and breaks up the beautiful simplicity of "skill + attribute +- modifiers". Besides, crack shots with prehistoric rifles are certainly not such a widespread problem that it warrants a whole new mechanic.
• Attributes in the matrix: Many wanted it, I'm still not one of them. If metasploit has not been updated in a year you can't hack, and even the best reflexes will help you if [random FPS] lags badly on your rig.

If you have a 12 skill + 6 Attribute, that's 18 dice. Meaning that on average 6 hits. So those with lower skills and attributes with gear levels of 6 should be good to go.

[Cain]

I'm still not sure about accuracy. Rolling bucketfuls of dice can be fun under the right circumstances, but stealing the ability to roll a huge success seems to take the fun out of it.

[Umidori]

Except that it seems overwhelmingly likely that they're going to make accuracy scale well enough that, with the right gear, you can have enough accuracy to still make use of those buckets of dice?

I mean, sure, it's kinda funny to drop 20+ dice and get 15 net hits, splattering a troll's brainpan across the wall using nothing more than a tiny little derringer, but it kinda forces you to suspend your disbelief a little. All accuracy is going to do is ensure that you can't use a piece of junk weapon or tool to pull off a godlike success. So if you want to reduce your opponents to a fine crimson mist with your overwhelming dice pools, hey, that's fine, you'll just need to shell out some nuyen for higher quality gear to make it possible.

~Umi

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I mean, sure, it's kinda funny to drop 20+ dice and get 15 net hits, splattering a troll's brainpan across the wall using nothing more than a tiny little derringer, but it kinda forces you to suspend your disbelief a little. All accuracy is going to do is ensure that you can't use a piece of junk weapon or tool to pull off a godlike success. So if you want to reduce your opponents to a fine crimson mist with your overwhelming dice pools, hey, that's fine, you'll just need to shell out some nuyen for higher quality gear to make it possible.

~Umi

Why? People die all the time to nothing, peasly weapons. No suspension of disbelief at all. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Umidori]

People die, yes. Typically from shock, bleeding out, organ failure, et cetera.

They don't have their heads explode into quivering chunks of man meat by being struck with a a bullet the size of a frozen pea, however. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

~Umi

[All4BigGuns]

People die, yes. Typically from shock, bleeding out, organ failure, et cetera.

They don't have their heads explode into quivering chunks of man meat by being struck with a a bullet the size of a frozen pea, however. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

~Umi

That one may not "splodey" their head, but it may very well practically turn their brains into scrambled eggs.

[Umidori]

Well with 15 net hits, I dare say it would! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

That said, if your gun is so inaccurate that you can only hope to barely graze them, then you're skill is worthless. It's all up to luck at that point. (Which makes me curious if you could spend Edge to temporarily boost accuracy?)

~Umi

[Cain]

Except that it seems overwhelmingly likely that they're going to make accuracy scale well enough that, with the right gear, you can have enough accuracy to still make use of those buckets of dice?

It's a very fine line to walk. If Accuracy is, on average, high enough that it doesn't matter and use all those dice, then it won't work as a balancing mechanism. If it's not, if it's too low, then it'll balance the game but make things less fun if you prefer cinematic action. It's a tradeoff, and I can't see that any one point will work for everyone.

I don't see that it's "overwhelmingly likely" that they'll do anything with it so far. All we have to go on is the one blog post, no specifics. It's too soon to say rather or not they'll pull it off.

[All4BigGuns]

Well with 15 net hits, I dare say it would! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

That said, if your gun is so inaccurate that you can only hope to barely graze them, then you're skill is worthless. It's all up to luck at that point. (Which makes me curious if you could spend Edge to temporarily boost accuracy?)

~Umi

While for the most part, I don't mind the new Accuracy stat on weapons, I do have to say that while the accuracy of the gun does play a role, a skilled marksman can compensate for an inaccurate weapon with their skill.

[Epicedion]

I'm still not sure about accuracy. Rolling bucketfuls of dice can be fun under the right circumstances, but stealing the ability to roll a huge success seems to take the fun out of it.

I'm with you on this. I'm generally opposed to success limits because for the most part overwhelming numbers of successes are strictly outliers in normal play, and so limits are pretty much just a mechanism to say "hey, wow, you did great and all, but no" for the odd times that you actually roll in excess of the limit. Note that there's no reciprocal mechanism to ensure minor levels of success if you roll poorly, so it's not even really fair from a gameplay perspective.

The way Accuracy is talked about at as a limit doesn't even do anything to model actual weapon accuracy -- a success limit strictly acts as a potential damage cap, which is to say that a high Accuracy weapon with moderate damage could potentially do more actual damage than a low Accuracy weapon with high damage. Actual weapon accuracy would be better modeled as decreased or increased difficulty (either by threshold or die pool mod in SR4 terms), which is to say that scoring damaging hits is less likely but possible if you're really good and/or lucky.

I don't buy it. I think it's an offshoot of the desire to take the old SR2-3 system and cram it into a more simplistic resolution model -- and to explain, it has to do with the Matrix system. You had Dice Pool (skill+hacking pool), Program Rating (difficulty modifier), Difficulty (ACIFS), and Degree of Success (number of successes). In SR4 you get Dice Pool (skill+program rating), Difficulty (opposed system roll or set threshold), and Degree of Success (number of hits/net hits).

To make this conform to the standard Attr+Skill roll, they have to give Program Rating a real function, but with the removal of scaling difficulty, there's not really much Program Rating can alter. It can't subtract from the Threshold or add to the Degree of Success (ie, automatic hits -- and well, it really could, but that would be a further departure from meatspace and magic tests), and Attr+Skill+Program would make the dice pools big (again, further departure), so the last thing is making it a limiting factor.

While I'd like to see Program Rating go away (perhaps simply have programs in the way that magicians have spells -- they have them or they don't, everything else managed by the various cyberdeck stats -- I'm not exactly thrilled at hit limits being applied to everything across the board.

EDIT: I was going to go in and fix my parenthesis/dash pairings, but eff it.

[StealthSigma]

The way Accuracy is talked about at as a limit doesn't even do anything to model actual weapon accuracy -- a success limit strictly acts as a potential damage cap, which is to say that a high Accuracy weapon with moderate damage could potentially do more actual damage than a low Accuracy weapon with high damage. Actual weapon accuracy would be better modeled as decreased or increased difficulty (either by threshold or die pool mod in SR4 terms), which is to say that scoring damaging hits is less likely but possible if you're really good and/or lucky.

Accuracy vs precision. Accuracy is the ability to hit a target. Precision is how close together multiple samples hit. A high accuracy low precision weapon would be a shotgun (you're probably going to hit with some of the shot). A high accuracy high precision weapon would be a sniper rifle. It's a poorly named stat.