SR5 Preview #3, In which is discussed character generation Options

[Seerow]

Is there a reason they didn't use the Skill Rating to determine the Hit Limits?

My guess is having skill rating as the primary limiter would have resulted in low skill characters with much lower caps, where the current model was chosen to provide higher average limits.

I'd also guess to reduce book-keeping. While it might make sense that your guy with extensive training in Athletics can use twice as many hits as the guy with no training, having a different limit for every skill would get tedious and hard to track. Like if SR5 were being designed as a video game, we might have seen a limit baseline of 2-3 (as opposed to 4-5), but with skills increasing the limit at a 1:1 ratio. But in a game where we need to track all of these modifiers, having limits be that fiddly would be even more annoying, and would punish players with lower skills (while that may be seen as a good thing by some, it's not a universal desire that skills be critically important. Some people like the idea that a high attribute character with lots of mods/gear can beat out the most skilled person in the world)

[Mäx]

Also, there may be games out there where people have huge drain pools and regularly overcast to force 12, or where characters have 500 karma and 12 points of magic, or whatever, but in the majority of games, the highest force you're going to see is 6

6 is really stupid force to cast a spell at, either you go up to 7 for no extra drain or you drop down to 5 so you get 1 less drain.
Or attleast thats what everyone with brains did in SR4, as SR5 has a general round up rule that might change.

I'd also guess to reduce book-keeping. While it might make sense that your guy with extensive training in Athletics can use twice as many hits as the guy with no training, having a different limit for every skill would get tedious and hard to track.

Skill is part of the dicepool so it has to be looked up every time you roll either way, so i don't see where the tedious and hard to track part is.

[Nath]

Also, if we really "must" limit the DP's, then why not just simply limit the size of the DP itself, rather than apparently the number of successes that can be achieved.

See existing arguments about the fact that once you hit 20 dice ("da cap") there's no reason to ever buy more. Because no matter what, you've hit the cap. So you buy something else.

Increasing dice pool above a maximum size still allows to "ignore" as much negative modifiers.

It's a situational boost, where as limiting hits is an all-the-time (if small) increase in the probability of hitting your cap.

There's a difference between having "no reason" to increase your dice pool, and finding better reasons to increase something else.

Besides, I think that when Kyrel suggested to "simply limit the size of the DP itself, rather than" the number of hits, he was thinking about not having a limit on hits at all. In that case, that "something else" wouldn't even exist.

[Warlordtheft]

If you used the Optional Rules in SR4A, the Logic 1 Hacker had a drawback in comparison to the Logic 8 Hacker. Logic Scores meant something. *shrug*

Yeah, I tried using the Logic+Skill for hacking [Limit program rating]. For the most part it worked. Then threading came along and mucked it up.

[Draco18s]

Then threading came along and mucked it up.

Technos pretty much middle-finger a lot of house-rule attempts at "fixing" the matrix.
Even a set of rules I came up with made no sense when technos got involved.

[binarywraith]

Technos pretty much middle-finger a lot of house-rule attempts at "fixing" the matrix.
Even a set of rules I came up with made no sense when technos got involved.

This is a direct result of Technos making no sense relative to the rest of how the Matrix functions. Hopefully some genius fixed that for SR5, but won't know yet.

[Warlordtheft]

On to the priority system. The good point is that it makes character creation easier. The downside is the loss in flexibility.


Also one of the other problems is that the dice cap limits is that it can become just a battle between who has the better gear/program. Skill not having an effect after a certain level of dice.

[Draco18s]

This is a direct result of Technos making no sense relative to the rest of how the Matrix functions. Hopefully some genius fixed that for SR5, but won't know yet.

Point.
Just that with various "house rules" on the matrix, there just ends up being no way to work Technos in at all.

Reminds me of Frank's house-rule-suggestion which was basically "brain hacking." The only reason to have a com-link on you was to prevent anyone from just rewiring your brain as they saw fit. Which of course lead to absurdity: having a com-link was a weakness because they were impossible to secure,* but you needed one otherwise you had even less security.

*Security ended up being measured in "how many computers do you have strapped to your body?" because who ever had more won. Because you'd run an agent on all of them, and either they were attacking the other guy or defending against his agents. Sheer numbers (one -> two -> five -> ten -> infinity) was the solution.

[Cain]

To throw something back at you guys: the biggest complaint I got from mages was when I took away extra successes because they hit the Force limit. I never did it without receiving a complaint of some size, ranging from a small whine to near-table-flip rage. In comparison, I got compliments when they passed out from Drain! That should tell you how disliked Limits have been in my experience.

On to the priority system. The good point is that it makes character creation easier. The downside is the loss in flexibility.

I'm not sure it makes things any faster. I need to experiment with it more and find out. But playtesters have reported times of about 90 min or so to start, which is very slow.

[Nath]

As far as I'm concerned, the slowest parts in creating a character always had been choosing equipment and choosing spells/powers, which is not going to be faster with priority, BP or karma. Well, maybe even slower with priority, since you will have to select gear that fits into one fixed amount of nuyen, and then find a way to spend the extra nuyen your character concept don't really need. I remember a few characters I made with SR2 or SR3 priority would ended up with as much as 10 months of lifestyle paid in advance because I didn't see anything else to do with that money.

[Epicedion]

As far as I'm concerned, the slowest parts in creating a character always had been choosing equipment and choosing spells/powers, which is not going to be faster with priority, BP or karma. Well, maybe even slower with priority, since you will have to select gear that fits into one fixed amount of nuyen, and then find a way to spend the extra nuyen your character concept don't really need. I remember a few characters I made with SR2 or SR3 priority would ended up with as much as 10 months of lifestyle paid in advance because I didn't see anything else to do with that money.

If that's a major issue, I can think of a simple way to deal with some of it -- let characters keep some of their unused chargen cash (maybe up to 10%) 'floating' after the game starts and let them withdraw it on a graduated scale. You could easily work that into the character's background, and say it's some money that's in escrow from a car or some cache of gear they've sold, or that it's a job payout that hasn't come through yet (tied up by an investigation or simply too much heat). You could even let them go over their nuyen limit by a small amount just to keep things quick, and saddle them with a loan to a shark (or a shark shaman) or one of their contacts that could bring negative consequences if they don't pay it off as fast as they can once in game.

[Black Swan]

To throw something back at you guys: the biggest complaint I got from mages was when I took away extra successes because they hit the Force limit. I never did it without receiving a complaint of some size, ranging from a small whine to near-table-flip rage. In comparison, I got compliments when they passed out from Drain! That should tell you how disliked Limits have been in my experience.


I'm not sure it makes things any faster. I need to experiment with it more and find out. But playtesters have reported times of about 90 min or so to start, which is very slow.

I don't know anyone who can make an SR character with the point buy system that can do it in less than 2 hours and be happy with it.

[Black Swan]

My guess is having skill rating as the primary limiter would have resulted in low skill characters with much lower caps, where the current model was chosen to provide higher average limits.

Only if the skill alone was the limiter. But It's easy enough to say Skill Rating + 1, or Skill Rating +2, etc. and there would be very little book keeping. Less than what they have done now.

[Nal0n]

I don't know anyone who can make an SR character with the point buy system that can do it in less than 2 hours and be happy with it.

Where would be the fun in that? You can just play Archetypes if you are not prepared to invest some time in Character Creation.

I have not a single Character (in all of the P&P RPGs I ever played) that took less than 2 weeks to create (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Shinobi Killfist]

I don't know anyone who can make an SR character with the point buy system that can do it in less than 2 hours and be happy with it.

Odd I don't know anyone who took more than 1 hour to make a xharacter with the BP system after they knew the rules. And they were all happy with them. Some peoople are just more fiddly with others. I make most of my characters in 15-20 minutes. I don't play deckers or riggers in 4e so those would probably take me a while as I tried to figure out the system.

[phlapjack77]

To throw something back at you guys: the biggest complaint I got from mages was when I took away extra successes because they hit the Force limit.

I had never thought about it before, but now that this discussion made me look at it, I don't really like the limits on spellcasting either. I had a mage recently make a really good roll but had to lose half the successes....and it killed the enjoyment of such a lucky roll. I'd be for getting rid of that limit too.

[Umidori]

How about instead of getting rid of that limit, you could instead spend Edge to exceed it? (Also, Edge would be easier to replenish?) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

~Umi

[Black Swan]

How about instead of getting rid of that limit, you could instead spend Edge to exceed it? (Also, Edge would be easier to replenish?) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

~Umi

I'm pretty sure that is how it works.

[Glyph]

I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic. It's interesting, like another poster pointed out, that a mundane human has a minimum Edge of 5 now. They may have hit everything else with the nerf bat, but Mr. Lucky is still there... and everywhere!

[Seerow]

What I don't get is the progression of special attribute as you continue to pay more into Race.

Going from E to D, Human gains 3 points. For every rank up from that point on, they gain 2. (ie 0, 3, 5, 7, 9).

For Elf it goes 0, 3, 6, 8 (+3, +3, +2). Ork goes 0, 4, 7 (+4, +3). Dwarf goes 1, 4, 7 (+3, +3, +3). Troll goes 0, 5 (+5).

There's really no rhyme or reason to these improvements. I understand the desire to keep them low, because otherwise you end up with points you can't spend (which already happens at the high end if you're mundane), but honestly I'd rather have a progression that makes some sort of sense and just a "putting this rank on this race is a dumb idea sometimes" type of deal.

I mean look at attributes. +2, +2, +4, +4. It makes sense, and each step up is worth more than the one before. Magic similarly has each rank worth a bigger increase than the one before it, by mixing in skills and spells. Skills also go up on an increasing scale (+4, +6/2, +8/3, +10/5) where each new rank adds more than the one before it. Money does as well, and is the most obvious about it (roughly doubling money gained per rank).

The racial special stat bonus seems to be an outlier in that it doesn't progress at any predictable rate. For it to line up more with how Attributes work I'd expect something like Human going 0->2->4->8->12. Elf going 0->2->6->10. Dwarf going 1->5->9. Ork going 0->4->8. Troll going 0->4. Even if attributes and special attributes aren't considered to be worth exactly the same (so the exact same progression doesn't apply), I'd still expect something along those same lines as a logical progression. The way it is currently makes it seem like the first few points are dirt cheap while points above that are increasingly more expensive... which would fit with traditional karma costs of improving attributes, except that isn't reflected in the normal attribute rules.

[Shinobi Killfist]

How about instead of getting rid of that limit, you could instead spend Edge to exceed it? (Also, Edge would be easier to replenish?) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

~Umi

Maybe people don't want to have to pay an edge tax in order to get a lucky roll. Maybe you are a low edge character and no matter how fast it refreshes you are out of edge. Maybe the limit will come up too often for edge to be used in all of the tests.

[Shinobi Killfist]

What I don't get is the progression of special attribute as you continue to pay more into Race.

Going from E to D, Human gains 3 points. For every rank up from that point on, they gain 2. (ie 0, 3, 5, 7, 9).

For Elf it goes 0, 3, 6, 8 (+3, +3, +2). Ork goes 0, 4, 7 (+4, +3). Dwarf goes 1, 4, 7 (+3, +3, +3). Troll goes 0, 5 (+5).

There's really no rhyme or reason to these improvements. I understand the desire to keep them low, because otherwise you end up with points you can't spend (which already happens at the high end if you're mundane), but honestly I'd rather have a progression that makes some sort of sense and just a "putting this rank on this race is a dumb idea sometimes" type of deal.

I mean look at attributes. +2, +2, +4, +4. It makes sense, and each step up is worth more than the one before. Magic similarly has each rank worth a bigger increase than the one before it, by mixing in skills and spells. Skills also go up on an increasing scale (+4, +6/2, +8/3, +10/5) where each new rank adds more than the one before it. Money does as well, and is the most obvious about it (roughly doubling money gained per rank).

The racial special stat bonus seems to be an outlier in that it doesn't progress at any predictable rate. For it to line up more with how Attributes work I'd expect something like Human going 0->2->4->8->12. Elf going 0->2->6->10. Dwarf going 1->5->9. Ork going 0->4->8. Troll going 0->4. Even if attributes and special attributes aren't considered to be worth exactly the same (so the exact same progression doesn't apply), I'd still expect something along those same lines as a logical progression. The way it is currently makes it seem like the first few points are dirt cheap while points above that are increasingly more expensive... which would fit with traditional karma costs of improving attributes, except that isn't reflected in the normal attribute rules.

I don't feel like checking the math on each race but lets say Human A magic D. You have 2 edge and 2 magic, you still cap both special stats outside things like lucky. So more than 9 kind of doesn't make sense since there is no place fo r the points to go.

I'm not saying each race wold cap out, but that since humans cap at 9 you have to go down from there. And you can;t fit regualr in such small number pools.

[Cain]

How about instead of getting rid of that limit, you could instead spend Edge to exceed it? (Also, Edge would be easier to replenish?) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

~Umi

How about we just don't punish players for rolling well?

Seriously, Edge is overpowered as is. I don't see any indication that SR5 is reining it in. Why make it even more powerful?

[phlapjack77]

How about instead of getting rid of that limit, you could instead spend Edge to exceed it? (Also, Edge would be easier to replenish?) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

No sir, I don't like that idea (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) As others have said, I'm getting punished for rolling well, unless I pay a tax in Edge. Either way I'm punished.

More and more it seems like many of the ideas from SR1-3 worked pretty darn well and should've been kept. Using pools (instead of (Attr + Skill - limits)) really seems like one of those ideas.

[Cain]

Odd I don't know anyone who took more than 1 hour to make a xharacter with the BP system after they knew the rules. And they were all happy with them. Some peoople are just more fiddly with others. I make most of my characters in 15-20 minutes. I don't play deckers or riggers in 4e so those would probably take me a while as I tried to figure out the system.

I've heard of 15 minute characters, but I've never actually seen one that worked. There's always something overlooked, like a crucial piece of gear or Contacts.

I once challenged the Line Developer, Peter Taylor, to do a 20 minute SR4 character at Gencon, on video. We agreed on what an "effective" character should look like-- pool sizes, IP's, that sort of thing-- but he ended up declining because I didn't want him to use his personal crib sheets.