[X] My Assistant

[_Pax._]

Letting everyone refresh a single point of edge at the close of each major Scene would also work. It would encourage people to spend a point now and then, without worrying too much about "OMG I'll be out of Edge during the climactic scene at the end of the 'run!"

[Umidori]

We still don't know what, if any, changes are going to be made to karma, however. They may already be planning a way to compensate for this change.

~Umi

[Stahlseele]

so, instead of doing something to actually make the dice pools smaller, they just limit how many hits you can use and then give a limitbreak to get around that limit?

The more things change . .

[Epicedion]

so, instead of doing something to actually make the dice pools smaller, they just limit how many hits you can use and then give a limitbreak to get around that limit?

The more things change . .

Something about trying to make character stats look about the same at a glance, but function together in a completely different way.

[Bull]

so, instead of doing something to actually make the dice pools smaller, they just limit how many hits you can use and then give a limitbreak to get around that limit?

The more things change . .

Honestly, there wasn't much attempt to really make dice pools smaller. For most of us on the design team, we didn't feel this was an issue.

The thing we focused on was finding more balanced ways for your attribute, skills, gear, and gear mods to all work together.

At this point you still haven't seen everything regarding Limits and how Skills and Gear and stuff all work together. I imagine Jason will cover more of this in the near future.

[StealthSigma]

so, instead of doing something to actually make the dice pools smaller, they just limit how many hits you can use and then give a limitbreak to get around that limit?

The more things change . .

Yeah we need limit breaks.

OMNI-SLASH!

[Epicedion]

Honestly, there wasn't much attempt to really make dice pools smaller. For most of us on the design team, we didn't feel this was an issue.

I find that a little off-putting, since I've always thought the large dice pools and the more-dice-more-often design were the biggest weaknesses of the system. Since there's an extremely tiny chance for literally achieving no successes once you reach the standard character range of dice pools, you have to heap additional qualifiers for what counts as success in order to maintain any tension brought about by the possibility of failure. This leads to more Opposed Tests and Extended Tests -- opposed tests are just more dice on the table, but extended tests are pretty weak, since again with large pools there's no real likelihood of failure, so it's just an exercise in rolling again and again and again until you get it (which has led to optional/house ruling of diminishing dice pools for extended tests). It's all very brute force and inelegant.

[Tashiro]

I like this limiter on dice pools. Roll lots of dice, but you're going to hit a theoretical wall based on your natural capabilities. Quite nice. The one thing I'm uncertain about is that this will still push people to raise attributes again and again, meaning that sooner or later, Shadowrunners are still going to end up superhuman. I hope they raise the cost for increasing attributes a bit more (10 x Level perhaps?), so that people will focus more on skills, and raising an attribute will be considered a significant expenditure, representing months or more of improvement.

That being said, I have a suggestion: While only X Hits will count for your effect, I'd like additional rolled Hits to be able to be used to counter a target's defence. If your Accuracy is 2, and you roll 6 hits, perhaps the 4 uncounted Hits can be used specifically to counter the target's Dodge roll - you'd still only get your 2 hits for purposes of damage, but the remainders could help ensure those two hits count for something. If your target rolls only 1 Hit on dodge, you still only get your two Hits, but if he rolls 4 Hits on dodge, your two Hits still count. This is something we've done with magic (any Hits higher than the spell's Force count to reduce the ability to resist the spell).

[Epicedion]

That being said, I have a suggestion: While only X Hits will count for your effect, I'd like additional rolled Hits to be able to be used to counter a target's defence. If your Accuracy is 2, and you roll 6 hits, perhaps the 4 uncounted Hits can be used specifically to counter the target's Dodge roll - you'd still only get your 2 hits for purposes of damage, but the remainders could help ensure those two hits count for something. If your target rolls only 1 Hit on dodge, you still only get your two Hits, but if he rolls 4 Hits on dodge, your two Hits still count. This is something we've done with magic (any Hits higher than the spell's Force count to reduce the ability to resist the spell).

That makes it an explicit damage limiter as opposed to a to-hit limiter. Keeping hits over a hit cap to increase the resist/defend difficulty sort of defeats the purpose of capping things in the first place, and more leads you to the realm of guaranteed low damage rather than an actual failure situation.

[Draco18s]

That being said, I have a suggestion: While only X Hits will count for your effect, I'd like additional rolled Hits to be able to be used to counter a target's defence. If your Accuracy is 2, and you roll 6 hits, perhaps the 4 uncounted Hits can be used specifically to counter the target's Dodge roll - you'd still only get your 2 hits for purposes of damage, but the remainders could help ensure those two hits count for something. If your target rolls only 1 Hit on dodge, you still only get your two Hits, but if he rolls 4 Hits on dodge, your two Hits still count. This is something we've done with magic (any Hits higher than the spell's Force count to reduce the ability to resist the spell).

I disagree. That makes weapons with low Accuracy not-inaccurate.

[sk8bcn]

I like this limiter on dice pools. Roll lots of dice, but you're going to hit a theoretical wall based on your natural capabilities. Quite nice. The one thing I'm uncertain about is that this will still push people to raise attributes again and again, meaning that sooner or later, Shadowrunners are still going to end up superhuman. I hope they raise the cost for increasing attributes a bit more (10 x Level perhaps?), so that people will focus more on skills, and raising an attribute will be considered a significant expenditure, representing months or more of improvement.

That being said, I have a suggestion: While only X Hits will count for your effect, I'd like additional rolled Hits to be able to be used to counter a target's defence. If your Accuracy is 2, and you roll 6 hits, perhaps the 4 uncounted Hits can be used specifically to counter the target's Dodge roll - you'd still only get your 2 hits for purposes of damage, but the remainders could help ensure those two hits count for something. If your target rolls only 1 Hit on dodge, you still only get your two Hits, but if he rolls 4 Hits on dodge, your two Hits still count. This is something we've done with magic (any Hits higher than the spell's Force count to reduce the ability to resist the spell).

And if dodge test is capped by something, the successes achieved are substracted to the over-success of attack test and...

I find the base idea more in-line with an overall cap system.

[Stahlseele]

Honestly, there wasn't much attempt to really make dice pools smaller. For most of us on the design team, we didn't feel this was an issue.

The thing we focused on was finding more balanced ways for your attribute, skills, gear, and gear mods to all work together.

At this point you still haven't seen everything regarding Limits and how Skills and Gear and stuff all work together. I imagine Jason will cover more of this in the near future.

i remember one of the design goals of SR4 having been to reduce the ammount of rolled dice . .

[O'Ryan]

i remember one of the design goals of SR4 having been to reduce the ammount of rolled dice . .

And it worked! For instance, my face is DOWN to only 30-something dice for negotiation!

[Bull]

I find that a little off-putting, since I've always thought the large dice pools and the more-dice-more-often design were the biggest weaknesses of the system. Since there's an extremely tiny chance for literally achieving no successes once you reach the standard character range of dice pools, you have to heap additional qualifiers for what counts as success in order to maintain any tension brought about by the possibility of failure. This leads to more Opposed Tests and Extended Tests -- opposed tests are just more dice on the table, but extended tests are pretty weak, since again with large pools there's no real likelihood of failure, so it's just an exercise in rolling again and again and again until you get it (which has led to optional/house ruling of diminishing dice pools for extended tests). It's all very brute force and inelegant.

Problem is, this isn't unique to Shadowrun. In Shadowrun, characters get more dice. In D&D, they have a higher skill that they're adding to the dice. So you have to increase the difficulty, add more modifiers, whatever. Same goes for Vampire, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Star Wars, Cartoon Action Hour, GURPs, Mutants & Masterminds, and pretty much every other RPG I've played over the years.

Every game has a success scaling issue, if there's any kind of real progression for players. That's the nature of gaming. Players want to get better, they want to be better. And at some point, the success to failure ration on a basic test diminishes to the point where it's a non-issue.

At that point, as a GM, you have to start looking at other ways to challenge your players. Maybe even put them in situations where success or failure depends solely on their choices and actions, and not on their dice rolls.

Bull

[Lionhearted]

Personally I love rolling buckets of dice, the modifier system could use some work though, which it looks like they're doing.

From now on Edge is Limit break, lets see if it catches on (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Bull]

i remember one of the design goals of SR4 having been to reduce the ammount of rolled dice . .

I think that was one of the stated goals of SR4, yes. And you'll note it failed, pretty spectacularly in some cases.

Hell, I regularly roll MORE dice in SR4 than I did in SR2-3.

So early on in discussions, we decided we weren't going to concern ourselves with the sizes of dice pools. For every player I've met that didn't like the size of SHadowrun's average dice pool, I've met one who loves rolling big handfuls of dice. But those two players represent a fraction of the players who simply don't care about the size of the dice pool one way or another. So long as the sources of those dice make sense and fit the character, it doesn't matter.

So rather than concern ourselves with arbitrary numbers (What is too many? How many are too few? Everyone has a different opinion.), instead we focused on where those dice were coming from and how they effected game play and character growth.

Bull

[Tashiro]

Hmm. Good points raised. I retract my suggestion. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Especially the one about dodge caps and how that would play out. I'd completely not thought of that!

4E did hold back on the larger dice pools I had in 1E to 3E, and I'm glad for that, but I would really like to see more limits on increasing attributes. I'm almost tempted to say I preferred 1E, where each attribute could only be increased once. Seriously, people can only improve themselves so much naturally... there's hard limits that normal people slam into, and the only way to surpass them is if you dedicated a portion of your time to fixing that -- and continued to dedicate that time to maintain it. Someone starting at Strength 2 should not be allowed to hit Strength 6, since Strength 2 should be close to their 'optimal' rating for their current lifestyle and employment. Sure, they might get to Strength 3, by training themselves, but unless they maintain that regimen, they're technically shouldn't be keeping that Strength 3. I can accept a bit of slide there, but ... when attributes go up 3 or 4 points, you have to really wonder what the hell the character's doing to get to that point.

[Lionhearted]

I heard running for your life is good exercise

[Tashiro]

I heard running for your life is good exercise

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
If you're doing this regularly, something's wrong. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) But I usually believe that your 'starting character', while fresh in their career perhaps, has the attributes that represent their 'normal' manner of living. So if your character is a mercenary, their attributes came about from mercenary training and experience. I can understand skills improving - as you use these skills, you'll get better at them, but attributes I see as more a byproduct of genetics and lifestyle.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I'm almost tempted to say I preferred 1E, where each attribute could only be increased once. Seriously, people can only improve themselves so much naturally... there's hard limits that normal people slam into, and the only way to surpass them is if you dedicated a portion of your time to fixing that -- and continued to dedicate that time to maintain it. Someone starting at Strength 2 should not be allowed to hit Strength 6, since Strength 2 should be close to their 'optimal' rating for their current lifestyle and employment. Sure, they might get to Strength 3, by training themselves, but unless they maintain that regimen, they're technically shouldn't be keeping that Strength 3. I can accept a bit of slide there, but ... when attributes go up 3 or 4 points, you have to really wonder what the hell the character's doing to get to that point.

If you're doing this regularly, something's wrong. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) But I usually believe that your 'starting character', while fresh in their career perhaps, has the attributes that represent their 'normal' manner of living. So if your character is a mercenary, their attributes came about from mercenary training and experience. I can understand skills improving - as you use these skills, you'll get better at them, but attributes I see as more a byproduct of genetics and lifestyle.

It is funny that you mention that, since I almost NEVER improve any single Atttribute more than once in game (outside of Augmentations). Magic/Resonance aside, of course. I far prefer to improve my Skills. I also rarely ever hit DP's above a 16, though, either. *shrug*

[Epicedion]

Problem is, this isn't unique to Shadowrun. In Shadowrun, characters get more dice. In D&D, they have a higher skill that they're adding to the dice. So you have to increase the difficulty, add more modifiers, whatever. Same goes for Vampire, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Star Wars, Cartoon Action Hour, GURPs, Mutants & Masterminds, and pretty much every other RPG I've played over the years.

Every game has a success scaling issue, if there's any kind of real progression for players. That's the nature of gaming. Players want to get better, they want to be better. And at some point, the success to failure ration on a basic test diminishes to the point where it's a non-issue.

At that point, as a GM, you have to start looking at other ways to challenge your players. Maybe even put them in situations where success or failure depends solely on their choices and actions, and not on their dice rolls.

Bull

It's not a matter of basic tests -- generally speaking, there are dozens of things you might do every day where you have no real chance of failure unless you're completely inattentive. The chance of failing a basic task should recede to nearly nothing, and generally pretty quickly.

It's the really difficult stuff becoming relatively easy that irks me. Taking a long-range called shot through smoke while running at a guy in cover, for example. At a certain point you're virtually guaranteed to get a few successes on anything you try, just because you're going to apply every negative modifier in the game and still have dice left over. I've said it before, but it's linked entirely to the fact that success drops from a worst case of 33% likely to 0% likely in a single point.

Tacking on thresholds and using opposed tests alters that probability, but thresholds add complexity (requiring some calculation to determine the appropriate threshold) and opposed tests tend to make any task a craps shoot (if the opposing force has anywhere near the ballpark of the dice pool of the character) rather than a risk that can be evaluated. Further, thresholds tend to be somewhat arbitrary -- when you use them versus when it's an opposed test etc, sometimes switching from one to the next within related activities.

As a GM, I can always ditch a system or play an entirely different game or decide to have popcorn and watch movies. That doesn't actually help the game system's ability to arbitrate and resolve conflict. I understand that any system taken to extremes will break, but SR4 tends to reach the breaking point pretty damn early. I already know why, but I'd like to think some effort is being made to make it nicer, rather than repeating mistakes.

[Tashiro]

Hmm. Perhaps things like range can reduce how much accuracy a weapon has. A sniper rifle might have an accuracy of 6, for example, but at extreme range this might drop to 2. A scope can offset this, adding a +2 accuracy, rather than an increase in dice pool, perhaps. So, a hold-out might normally have an accuracy of 2, but with a laser sight, this increases to 4. Firing at long range can reduce this to 1, which makes sense for a pistol.

[Epicedion]

I think that was one of the stated goals of SR4, yes. And you'll note it failed, pretty spectacularly in some cases.

Hell, I regularly roll MORE dice in SR4 than I did in SR2-3.

So early on in discussions, we decided we weren't going to concern ourselves with the sizes of dice pools. For every player I've met that didn't like the size of SHadowrun's average dice pool, I've met one who loves rolling big handfuls of dice. But those two players represent a fraction of the players who simply don't care about the size of the dice pool one way or another. So long as the sources of those dice make sense and fit the character, it doesn't matter.

So rather than concern ourselves with arbitrary numbers (What is too many? How many are too few? Everyone has a different opinion.), instead we focused on where those dice were coming from and how they effected game play and character growth.

Bull

I don't know where the "I rolled more dice in SR3 than in SR4" people are coming from. I sometimes see.. 12 dice? Rarely more than 12.

I honestly don't care how arbitrarily large the average dice pool is. What I care about is the effect of dice pool modifiers versus the size of the dice pool versus the probability of success per die. A lot of the problems I see in SR4 have to do with importing the Target Number modifiers from SR3 whole cloth as dice pool modifiers. -2 TN for a Smartlink is not really close to the same thing as +2 dice out of 18 for a Smartlink.

[sk8bcn]

Well, a quick way to consider the thing is to transform 1 die into 0,33 successes.

And if you take 2nd-3rd, not considering TN over >6 or <=2, a -1/+1 TN was equal to 0,16 success x Nb of dices rolled.


So a +2 smartlink 4th ed (+0,66 successes) is way weaker than a -2 3rd ed with a skill of 6 (+0,32*6=+2successes) and with a full combat poll use, +4 successes.

[Falconer]

Yeah I mentioned some of this in another random brainstorm post....

But really short of 'percentile' penalties/bonus to dice pools... don't know what else to do. That's a bit math heavy for some... even if calculating 5 or 10 percentiles is pretty easy.

You either end up with a ton of nit-picky situational mods which slow things down... or you end up with no meaningful mods whatsoever on a monstrous dice pool. So unless you have something which penalizes the dice pool by say 30%... a -3 is a big deal to 'joe average'... but no problem whatsoever to 20 dice pool.


But that brings it's own set of problems... much more needs to be seen about how this accuracy system works in fact. But I doubt we'll see enough in these sneak peeks to make any good/substantive opinion before the release in summer.

The concept of applying force limits to equipment is kind of nice... as is the confirmation that edge would allow exceeding the limits... though as always devil is in the details... including how exactly edge works to be spent... how often it refreshes partially or in full... etc. Right now it has the sound of... go big on edge or go home... (something many of my GM's criticize me for... making characters with 5 edge normally out the gate when half the rest only have 2 or 3).