[X] My Assistant

[Cain]

Also remember that "glitch" and "failure" are not the same thing in Shadowrun. You can succeed, even brilliantly, while also suffering a glitch. Glitching just means "unintended consequences", a side-effect that isn't necessarily what you wanted. Nor necessarily something that fucks you over, either.

Yeah, that's just it. Under current rules, the higher your skill the less likely you are to suffer a botch. Under a flat system, you're equally likely to botch no matter what your skill is.

[Bigity]

I disliked the "glitch die" in Star Wars d6. Basically, it meant there was a 1 in 6 chance of something going wrong or you failing, no matter how good your roll was. Increasing the number of misfire dice will only make this worse.

Pretty sure 99 percent of the time it just took away the highest die, not an automatic failure. That was only for special occurances, or ways for the GM to advance (or twist) the plot.

[_Pax._]

It gives a patchwork feeling. Like ADD and his Rogue/Thief rolling d100 for their skills while the other skills were d20 under Attribute. And which you substracted bonuses. "Yes you get a +2 weapon! So your 19 THAC0 is now 17 ofc. It sounds, ermm, badly integrated.

Thief Abilities were not skills prior to 2nd Edition. And the %ile system predated "skills", or mroe properly, "non-weapon proficiencies".

Rolling d4 in a game that only use d6 otherwise seems out of place.

"Out of place", I'll accept. "Amateurish" ... not so much.

okay I got it, but I rather prefer it occuring on a 2-3 (max)% on a dice-roll and decide for myself *a GM* mostly otherwise.

2d6 then, both come up 1, you glitch. 1:36, or just under 3%.

[_Pax._]

Yeah, that's just it. Under current rules, the higher your skill the less likely you are to suffer a botch. Under a flat system, you're equally likely to botch no matter what your skill is.

But, the higher your skill, the less likely that glitch is to be CRITICAL, still.

[sk8bcn]

Thief Abilities were not skills prior to 2nd Edition. And the %ile system predated "skills", or mroe properly, "non-weapon proficiencies".

It's difficult to me to discuss about the terms used as I've played the game in french.

but AFAIK, your thief could have [lock picking] at 70% when a riding skill was [Dex+something]. Pretty inconsistant (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

"Out of place", I'll accept. "Amateurish" ... not so much.

2d6 then, both come up 1, you glitch. 1:36, or just under 3%.

Maybe I didn't used the right word. What I had in mind is that patchwork systems are more common in amateur game (where people tend to put in everything they like initiative cards from SaWo/Deadlands, dots from WoD...).

It probably sounded more negative than intended.

[Cain]

Pretty sure 99 percent of the time it just took away the highest die, not an automatic failure. That was only for special occurances, or ways for the GM to advance (or twist) the plot.

Not in the game I played. It was usually a botch so bad, you may as well have failed. The only exception was damage rolls, where it always took away your highest die.

But, the higher your skill, the less likely that glitch is to be CRITICAL, still.

Doesn't matter. The higher your skill is, the less likely you are to have made the silly mistakes that lead to a fumble. You maintain your guns so they're less likely to jam, less likely to get the safety confused with the clip ejection button, and so on.

Done your way, the most poorly-maintained gun in the hands of the worlds worst shooter has the exact same chance of jamming as a precision sniper rifle firing handmade bullets used by a professional gunsmith and shooter.

[Lionhearted]

After playing D&D with fumble as standard for 10 years, I can't express how much I hate flat fumble curves on high level characters, 5% doesn't sound like a lot... It is enough to be detrimental to you feeling like the rightful badass you are.
Failure should be dictated by the strength of your opposition not banana peel mishaps, well it's fine with inexperienced characters because sod's law and hilarity like the moo(n) walking tauren attempting to sneak.

[Epicedion]

Done your way, the most poorly-maintained gun in the hands of the worlds worst shooter has the exact same chance of jamming as a precision sniper rifle firing handmade bullets used by a professional gunsmith and shooter.

Done the other way, the most poorly-maintained gun in the hands of the world's best shooter has less of a chance of jamming, which doesn't make any sense. Glitches aren't tied to the quality of the device or the complexity of a scenario, or even the background skills, knowledge, or planning involved. They're tied exclusively to the active skill being used right here and now.

If a glitch is when climbing a rope it breaks, that's not really related to the skill of the climber at climbing. It would really be related to how well the climber might take care of his equipment or inspect things before use. The climber's response to the glitch (grab hold of the wall before plummeting) would definitely involve that active climbing skill, but in a realistic sense it wouldn't have anything to do with the actual breaking of the rope.

In that scenario, with a fixed glitch chance, the climber could roll his dice and the glitch would pop up. Rope breaks, but the climber has successes, so he grabs ahold of the wall. If he had no successes (critical glitch) then he could fall. The result of the normal glitch would be an additional climbing check at increased difficulty (no more rope).

This seems to be closer to what (in reality) happens and why than having a professional climber that never has a rope break because he's so good at (the active skill of) climbing, and having a pathetic 1-dice climber who breaks ropes every other time he touches them.

[Epicedion]

After playing D&D with fumble as standard for 10 years, I can't express how much I hate flat fumble curves on high level characters, 5% doesn't sound like a lot... It is enough to be detrimental to you feeling like the rightful badass you are.
Failure should be dictated by the strength of your opposition not banana peel mishaps, well it's fine with inexperienced characters because sod's law and hilarity like the moo(n) walking tauren attempting to sneak.

5% is certainly high if you take the tack that it's a critical fumble and something bad happens. Shadowrun afford us the idea of the Added Complication (glitch) and the Critical Failure (critical glitch). There's no reason that the standard glitch should necessarily be anything more than a small setback, or an additional hurdle to overcome, or some penalty to your next action, representing some extra detail.

Honestly I think that more frequent glitches with smaller effects could result in a pretty spiffy addition to the narrative of a run. A glitched grenade throw might result in a bad fuse (extra delay on the blast), or it might roll behind the floor safe, adding extra protection to those in the blast radius. A glitched gunshot might impact a fire extinguisher, providing some effective 'smoke' cover in the area for a couple rounds.

[Falconer]

Yeah really... glitch is something like...


You shoot the goon, but accidentally shoot the control panel as well. You're going to need to use your electronics skill to open the blast door instead of just punching the button.


And some rounds like Ex(-Ex) should just be dangerous to anyone to use, no matter their skill.

[Tashiro]

I've had to wonder about people saying their characters are so good, a glitch / botch shouldn't come into it. I mean, I've seem Olympic-level divers crack their heads on diving boards, Olympic-level runners suddenly blow out their Achilles's tendon, and a mixed martial artist shatter his shin blocking the kick of another mixed martial artist during a fight. To me, those are critical glitches. But even just normal things can be a pain. I've slipped on the staircase running up it, and 'running up a staircase' isn't something that requires a lot of thought normally. Just because you're 'professional' doesn't mean that bad, or just plain annoying, things don't happen to you from time to time.

And, as a GM, I don't think it should be GM fiat to decide when and if an unexpected complication shows up. That's why it's an unexpected complication. The GMs in my world are neutral arbiters... they don't throw in curve balls just for the sake of making things 'interesting'. If I'm doing awesome on a mission that was expected to be hard, so be it, I did awesome. On the other hand, if I screw it badly, that's on my head, too. Glitches make for an interesting curveball, which comes into play not because the GM's wanting to 'tweak' things, but because sometimes crap hits fan, and nobody saw it coming.

Personally, I don't think glitches / critical glitches show up often enough at the higher end, but there's no easy way to fudge that, so I'm willing to keep things where they are.

[Epicedion]

Personally, I don't think glitches / critical glitches show up often enough at the higher end, but there's no easy way to fudge that, so I'm willing to keep things where they are.

The glitch/critical-glitch rules are just an example of a bad port from the old system. The old rules were "all 1's = something bad happening" which was perfectly fine, since dice pools were generally smaller. You might be rolling 6 or 7 dice on a task if you're pretty good -- in some instances you'd get some pool dice, but those run out pretty fast (especially in combat if you have a few IPs) and you'd end up pretty often just rolling straight skill for your 3d, 4th, 5th, 6th gunshot (et al). Out of combat you could be pretty okay at something and be rolling 4 or 5 dice. The difficulty was wrapped up in the target number.

In SR4 dice pools tend to effectively be much larger, which makes all 1's and half 1's remarkably unlikely once you get up to the reasonable skill/attribute/modifier range of 10-15 dice.

[All4BigGuns]

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[bannockburn]

I don't get all this griping about glitches and crit glitches and the need to be mollycoddled.
The system is not meant to perfectly emulate something bad happening. There is no underlaying thought of 'this should represent equipment failure' or anything else. It's abstract.
The SR4 glitch system is the first one I like, and I'm playing since SR2. All 1s happened to me in exactly 2 memorable cases during SR2 and SR3 and both were skills at the level of 2.
Right now, glitches happen. Critical glitches happen, too, but not very often and you can edge out if you don't want to accept them, in both cases. The system works fine, IMO.

[All4BigGuns]

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[bannockburn]

I don't like any 'glitch system' because there is never hard-and-fast rule as to what happens. If there was and the whole thing wasn't "fiat", it would be fine.

Yes. We all know by now that you have trust issues.
You're partly right, but the sheer range of possible glitches makes the request absurd.

I remember the rolemaster tables *snrk*

[Epicedion]

I don't like any 'glitch system' because there is never hard-and-fast rule as to what happens. If there was and the whole thing wasn't "fiat", it would be fine.

Play a Roguelike, then.

[All4BigGuns]

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[bannockburn]

What else would you call your _constant_ innuendo that the GM is out to get you?

[All4BigGuns]

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[bannockburn]

If that's all you can think of, that's what's called 'trust issues' in polite circles, 'paranoia' elsewhere.
And you seem to have that position most (if not all) of the time.

As I've said elsewhere: You let the guy run your entire game, trust him to do the details right, too. If he's doing it wrong, call him on it but stop with the constant whining about the evil GM pulling your strings and twirling his mustache.

The rules do not need to represent persecuted gamers.

[All4BigGuns]

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[bannockburn]

Manifest Destiny?

[hermit]

The 'problems' I've noticed stem from what I see people posting on what they would do on these forums and the other ones. Lots of potentially bad ones on the two boards.

So the evil people are 'the others' (who?), and there you are, riding in to save all those potentially fucked-over players unsolicitedly, blunderingly and without getting anything done. Congratulations.

Right now, glitches happen. Critical glitches happen, too, but not very often and you can edge out if you don't want to accept them, in both cases. The system works fine, IMO.

You know we differ on that, and why. Let's leave it at that.

Manifest Destiny?

Team America.

[All4BigGuns]

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