How do you reduce lethality, 5th Edition Options

[mister__joshua]

Yes and that points up the key issue with SR5's combat - if you do hit, you hit very hard, with most weapons - and you can all but ensure that you hit by using autofire and buckshot and the like.

See, this is one of the things I like about it. Maybe it's coming from a high-lethality Cyberpunk 2020 background where you had no defence roll (shots were success tests) and pretty much any shot could kill you if it hit you in the head. I love the increased lethality of shots. You certainly have to think before exposing yourself to autofire. I missed this a little in SR4.

I can see how people see these things as 'issues' though

[Slide_Eurhetemec]

See, this is one of the things I like about it. Maybe it's coming from a high-lethality Cyberpunk 2020 background where you had no defence roll (shots were success tests) and pretty much any shot could kill you if it hit you in the head. I love the increased lethality of shots. You certainly have to think before exposing yourself to autofire. I missed this a little in SR4.

I can see how people see these things as 'issues' though

Sure, that's cool, there's always someone who loves swing-y-ness and high lethality. Lots of people (mostly DMs, truth be told) like low-level old-skool D&D where the mage can be killed in one round by a housecat, and even the Fighter has barely enough HP to survive a single full-damage attack from an orc! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

The issue is, how to counteract it, if one wants to? Higher armor values is, I think, the answer.

I would question whether CP2020 was this lethal, myself, because in CP2020, people constantly got hit and shrugged it off with zero or minimal damage - that's almost impossible here. If you're hit at all you're in trouble unless you're in truly terrifying armor (which can happen). A headshot could kill or seriously injure most people (not serious cyborgs or people with helmets on), but was a 10% chance (much lower odds than here) or a called shot, and I regularly saw tougher PCs laughingly walk through autofire in that. One thing is identical though - any DV which will even challenge someone in "serious" armor in SR5 will auto-splatter the average PC. Balancing that was always a challenge.

[Cain]

I'm certainly willing to admit that my experience might just be my experience. It doesn't invalidate my point, though.

When it comes to lethality, Shadowrun has always been a game of eggshells armed with giant hammers. In every edition, taking out even tough opponents has been fairly easy. In SR2 and 3, killing someone was just a matter of net successes; because of the way soak rolls worked, there was a very fixed limit on how much you could soak, regardless of how much armor you wore. SR4.5 increased the size of attack pools, but also added regular defense rolls (they used to be a managed resource), and also vastly increased the size of soak pools.

In other words, Shadowrun, like CP2020, has a history of being very all-or-nothing when it comes to damage. In my experience, wounding mooks was rather rare; you either took them out in one shot or missed. The same holds true for bosses and bigger threats; they shrugged off lesser shots until you hit them with a big enough attack. Now, though, I'm throwing huge attacks at times and only succeeding in wounding people. If you're saying that the developers wanted people to get wounded more often, instead of getting killed outright, I'd be inclined to listen-- that'd make it a feature, not a bug. I just can't see how that dovetails with the increased lethality goal they were going for. )I'll accept that this is like combat spells-- for the longest time, Shadowrun combats tended to end when the mage's turn came up. Now with the nerfs, one-shots with combat spells are infrequent, which may end up being a good thing.)

I also disagree with it from a game design standpoint. Over time, I've come to prefer systems where mooks are one-hit wonders: they're up, or they're down. Tracking separate wound tracks for each-- or hit points, or damage boxes-- can get really tiresome. If I have five different mooks, all at different levels of damage, it gets really hard to keep track. Up-and-down mechanics for mooks is much easier and simpler.

By the way, I would disagree with your assertion that one has to factor in misses to lethality. That is true on a statistical level, but it's not true on an actual in-game level.

Actually, it does. Because Shadowrun is a net success game, the more accurate your attack is, the harder it is to avoid *and* the harder it is to soak. In SR4.5, a weak weapon with a lot of successes was much deadlier than a powerful weapon with one successe. In SR5, that's now folded into accuracy. So, even though an Enfield is much more powerful than an Ares Predator, the Predator is more likely to hit and hurt you. If you can routinely get 5+ successes on a dodge test, you have little to fear from the shotgun; but getting 7+ is harder, so the Predator is actually more dangerous.

[RHat]

The problem, Cain, is that the increased lethality is basically on the swing - as in, it's not a question of whether or not you get hit where the increase is seen, but in what happens when you do get hit. Even if the statistical breakdown of a "hit more often for less damage" and a "hit less often for fatal or near fatal damage" were the same, the experience of each would be radically different; it takes only one moderately unlikely roll to completely take things off of the "expectation". It is not simply a matter of multiplying the damage against the proportion of the time that you get hit.

[Cain]

The problem, Cain, is that the increased lethality is basically on the swing - as in, it's not a question of whether or not you get hit where the increase is seen, but in what happens when you do get hit. Even if the statistical breakdown of a "hit more often for less damage" and a "hit less often for fatal or near fatal damage" were the same, the experience of each would be radically different; it takes only one moderately unlikely roll to completely take things off of the "expectation". It is not simply a matter of multiplying the damage against the proportion of the time that you get hit.

That doesn't follow.

Look, comparing the shotgun to the Predator again: a Colt has a base damage of 10P, and an accuracy of 4. The Predator has a base damage of 8P, and a accuracy of 7. So, the maximum damage you can deal with a Colt is 14P, but the Predator caps out at 15! Since net successes count for both damage and accuracy, the ability to get net successes is a greater measure of lethality.

If this were D&D, you'd be right: in many games, weapon damage is independent of degree of success. But those games tend to be less lethal anyway; a dagger isn't going to kill a high-level fighter, not without something significant backing it up. But in Shadowrun, damage depends on degree of success. So capping that ends up capping damage.

[RHat]

You're missing my point. What I'm getting at is that in comparing the lethality of the systems, you can't use a simple statistical model of expected damage, because that wholly fails to capture the actual experience. What I'm getting at is that even if the statistical expectation is the same, the system where you hit less often, but hit for lethal or near lethal damage when you do, is going to be perceived as more lethal and in a very real way is - specifically because of what happens when results deviate from statistical expectations.

[Cain]

You're missing my point. What I'm getting at is that in comparing the lethality of the systems, you can't use a simple statistical model of expected damage, because that wholly fails to capture the actual experience. What I'm getting at is that even if the statistical expectation is the same, the system where you hit less often, but hit for lethal or near lethal damage when you do, is going to be perceived as more lethal and in a very real way is - specifically because of what happens when results deviate from statistical expectations.

No, I get what you're saying. The problem is, damage in Shadowrun depends on net successes. Even if you ignore misses, and just figure degrees of success, Limits put a cap on how much damage you can actually deal out.

Look, in D&D, degree of success doesn't matter. The weapon with the higher damage code is the deadlier one. In Shadowrun, however, level of success matters: hitting for one net success isn't as good as hitting for five. Damage codes matter, but so does how much you stage up your hit. This has been true in every edition of Shadowrun so far: eight net successes means just about any hit is deadly!

The problem is that in SR5, you can't *use* those eight successes under normal circumstances. If your accuracy is five, unless you have a way of bypassing a Limit, your damage can't be staged past that. I'll use 4.5 as an example, since it's the easiest to compare: in that system, a Roomsweeper might do 5P, while the same gun in 5th does 7P. That sounds deadlier, except that even 7P isn't enough to actually kill most humans. In addition to that, now the Roomsweeper has a limit of 4. That means, under normal circumstances, you can't actually stage the damage past 11P. So, on the best possible hit with a Roomsweeper, the other guy only needs two successes on soak to remain in the fight. In 4.5, like every other edition of Shadowrun, there was no cap on damage output, it was only limited by how many successes you got. And since you're talking about statistical outliers, you can't say that getting a lot of successes was unlikely. (Not to mention, my experience is that it wasn't; a well-built character in any edition had little trouble getting a massive pole of successes.)

[RHat]

No, I get what you're saying. The problem is, damage in Shadowrun depends on net successes. Even if you ignore misses, and just figure degrees of success, Limits put a cap on how much damage you can actually deal out.

Yeah, but that's sort of secondary, especially when one of the weapons you're using as a point of comparison is potentially lethal on just a single net hit.

[Cain]

Yeah, but that's sort of secondary, especially when one of the weapons you're using as a point of comparison is potentially lethal on just a single net hit.

That depends on defense pools and soak pools. Armor increased as well, so even though damage went up, so did soak pools. And defense has increased too; it's not just Reaction anymore. Soak and dodge pools don't have Limits, either: so even if you are hit with a direct shot from a Roomsweeper, if you can roll two successes you will not drop. Two successes aren't hard to get, so it strikes me that the weapon is less deadly.

[RHat]

That depends on defense pools and soak pools. Armor increased as well, so even though damage went up, so did soak pools. And defense has increased too; it's not just Reaction anymore. Soak and dodge pools don't have Limits, either: so even if you are hit with a direct shot from a Roomsweeper, if you can roll two successes you will not drop. Two successes aren't hard to get, so it strikes me that the weapon is less deadly.

The way Soak went up didn't keep pace with how much weapon damage went up. The Roomsweeper's not much of a one-shot weapon - though the flechettes are hell against unarmoured targets - because it's just a bad weapon. But let's look at some other categories, too - the AK-97's gonna do a pretty great job of one-shotting someone with average stats.

[Slide_Eurhetemec]

Actually, it does. Because Shadowrun is a net success game, the more accurate your attack is, the harder it is to avoid *and* the harder it is to soak. In SR4.5, a weak weapon with a lot of successes was much deadlier than a powerful weapon with one successe. In SR5, that's now folded into accuracy. So, even though an Enfield is much more powerful than an Ares Predator, the Predator is more likely to hit and hurt you. If you can routinely get 5+ successes on a dodge test, you have little to fear from the shotgun; but getting 7+ is harder, so the Predator is actually more dangerous.

This is simply not true. On average the Enfield is vastly more dangerous. To average 5 successes you need a pool of 15. To average 7+ you need a pool of 21+. Those are huge effin' pools. You yourself said you didn't see 20+ pool characters in your games. Either way, normal enemies typically have combat pools of 8 to 12 - averages thus being 2 to 4.

Plus if you're rolling with flechettes the Enfield is negating some significant part of your Defense pool anyway (probably only doing stun damage but eh...).

You keep saying SR is a game where margin of success affects damage - this is true - but it's a small factor in most cases which aren't wild overkill. If you have numbers that mean you typically hit with 6 net, your enemies probably average 4 net - thus only 2DV comes from success - whereas 11DV comes from weapon damage and AP factors in twice too (probably more important than net successes if significant).

[Blade]

When SR4 came out, I remember many people saying that finally light pistols could be a threat and that PC could get killed in two shots. A few books later, and you could get bulletproof PC once again (though maybe not as much as in SR3).

So I don't know how long the "higher lethality" of SR5 will stay.

[Slide_Eurhetemec]

When SR4 came out, I remember many people saying that finally light pistols could be a threat and that PC could get killed in two shots. A few books later, and you could get bulletproof PC once again (though maybe not as much as in SR3).

So I don't know how long the "higher lethality" of SR5 will stay.

If we see a scenario where armor values generally increase whilst weapons stay the same, then "higher lethality" may decrease. For example, if armor values increase by 3 for most PCs, that'd make the lethality a fair bit lower in one sense - you'd still get two-shot (or even one-shot), but it'd be stun damage. A 6 point increase would take things up to a three shot and that'd be very noticeable, but at the same time, I think that whilst the high end will certainly increase as more books come out, the low end looks set to stick around 9 to 12 armor (with, ironically, a business suit with a coat over it being about the best unobtrusive armor you can get - much better armor than, say, explicitly armored biker leathers, thanks to the wonderful logic of Run and Gun).

You can already make pretty bulletproof PCs - it's just that they're all heavily cybered Street Sams - they'll get even tougher when the cyberware book comes out (that's not even a prediction, that's just what will happen, dermal sheathing etc.) - whereas everyone else will stay where they are.

There's also the question of whether gun modification or armor-design rules ever appear (why they weren't in Run and Gun and yet extremely lengthy environmental hazards and demolitions chapters were, god alone knows), and whether they make it easy to increase offenses or defenses.

[Cain]

When SR4 came out, I remember many people saying that finally light pistols could be a threat and that PC could get killed in two shots. A few books later, and you could get bulletproof PC once again (though maybe not as much as in SR3).

So I don't know how long the "higher lethality" of SR5 will stay.

Oddly enough, my experience was that SR2-3 was the most lethal of the editions.

In SR1, while you only got Body to soak, armor soaked wounds for you, in the form of autosuccesses. What that meant was with enough armor, you were practically invulnerable. If you had enough armor, weapon power didn't matter, you could soak anything.

SR 2 and 3 changed the model. You still only got Body to soak, but while armor made it easier, if didn't soak the damage for you. The amount you could stage down a wound was limited by your Body. No matter how much armor you piled on, a damaging enough attack would hurt and kill you. So, having a Body of 1 or 2 was a serious liability. You couldn't rely on your armor to take a hit, your Body was crucial.

SR4.5 went back to the old model. Armor soaked damage for you. This time, instead of autosuccesses, it added dice; while IMO this was a huge improvement on SR1, it still meant Body was less important. If you had enough armor, your actual body score could be low or even irrelevant, you might get the most of your soak dice from armor anyway.

[Umidori]

The problem is that in SR5, you can't *use* those eight successes under normal circumstances. If your accuracy is five, unless you have a way of bypassing a Limit, your damage can't be staged past that.

Well, you're not taking into account the notion that actually can bypass that Limit on a regular basis, and that you don't often need to.

See, with most limits you probably aren't going to be exceeding them all that regularly to begin with. An accuracy of 5 means you'd need an attack pool of 15 to consistantly reach your limit. As one of the big changes that SR5 introduced was smaller dicer pool sizes compared to 4E, having 15 dice isn't as common as it once was, and consequently you're not really gonna be hitting your limit terribly often, much less actually exceeding it.

And then when you do hit your limit, another of the SR5 design philosophies comes into play. The devs wanted to reduce Edge hoarding, because the actual fact of the matter is that in 4E, a whole hell of a lot of Edge went unspent on missions (unless your character concept revolved around spending it constantly, as with a Mr. Lucky). Their intention, then, is that even when a player does hit the limit, they should merely see that as an excuse to consider using the Edge which many of them would end up not even touching during the entire mission anyway.

Unfortunately, this runs into a slight snag in the form of player perceptions - it's the old "But I Might Need It!" mentality which drives players to get to the end of an RPG with a bag stuffed full of countless unused healing potions and restorative items that they've collected on their way, but always saw as being so potentially valuable that they didn't want to use them for fear of being caught without them.

~Umi

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Well, you're not taking into account the notion that actually can bypass that Limit on a regular basis, and that you don't often need to.

See, with most limits you probably aren't going to be exceeding them all that regularly to begin with. An accuracy of 5 means you'd need an attack pool of 15 to consistantly reach your limit. As one of the big changes that SR5 introduced was smaller dicer pool sizes compared to 4E, having 15 dice isn't as common as it once was, and consequently you're not really gonna be hitting your limit terribly often, much less actually exceeding it.

~Umi

See, I have different Experiences. DP's have GONE UP in SR5, all skill descriptive being equal. What was once professional at Rank 3 is now Professional at rank 4 or 6 depending upon how you interpret it. Since that has increased, and since I have never been one to super-stack modifiers, I end up with MORE Dice, rather than less Dice, in SR5. If the intent was to limit Pools (which many will deny) then they failed miserably. *shrug*

[RHat]

See, I have different Experiences. DP's have GONE UP in SR5, all skill descriptive being equal. What was once professional at Rank 3 is now Professional at rank 4 or 6 depending upon how you interpret it. Since that has increased, and since I have never been one to super-stack modifiers, I end up with MORE Dice, rather than less Dice, in SR5. If the intent was to limit Pools (which many will deny) then they failed miserably. *shrug*

That's specific to your methods, TJ, not systemic.

The goal wasn't to reduce dice pool size, though, but to change the source. That said, we shouldn't pretend someone with a high dice pool will voluntarily use a low Accuracy weapon.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

That's specific to your methods, TJ, not systemic.

The goal wasn't to reduce dice pool size, though, but to change the source. That said, we shouldn't pretend someone with a high dice pool will voluntarily use a low Accuracy weapon.

I don't know... I LIKE Shotguns. They are quite deadly, low Accuracy be damned. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[RHat]

I don't know... I LIKE Shotguns. They are quite deadly, low Accuracy be damned. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

And smartlinked they have a respectable Accuracy. The Mossberg in particular is a nice choice.

[Cain]

Well, you're not taking into account the notion that actually can bypass that Limit on a regular basis, and that you don't often need to.

Might just be my experience, but that's not what I've found in game.

Sure, you can bypass the limit by spending Edge. Edge, however, is finite. While it's quite powerful in SR5, even more than it was in SR4, you can't rely on it for routine rolls. It's really useful for turning a borderline roll into a spectacular success, but it's not good to need it on a regular basis.

Second, while dice pools are currently lower than they were in SR4.5, SR5 also doesn't have as many options to increase dice just yet. That will come in time. Right now, though, I'm seeing bigger dice pools in SR5 than I saw at the outset of SR4. I'm not sure where things will end up in terms of dice pool sizes, but they will increase over time.

See, with most limits you probably aren't going to be exceeding them all that regularly to begin with. An accuracy of 5 means you'd need an attack pool of 15 to consistantly reach your limit. As one of the big changes that SR5 introduced was smaller dicer pool sizes compared to 4E, having 15 dice isn't as common as it once was, and consequently you're not really gonna be hitting your limit terribly often, much less actually exceeding it.

As I said, in a relative sense I'm not actually seeing smaller dice pools. I am seeing optimized characters hit their Limits on a regular basis, which does force them to spend Edge or be less effective. I am still seeing pools in their upper teens; my character rolls 19 dice on a regular basis, and can push that further with Attribute Boost. So, I'd say that 15+ dice is still common; it's the over 20's that I'm not seeing as much of.

And then when you do hit your limit, another of the SR5 design philosophies comes into play. The devs wanted to reduce Edge hoarding, because the actual fact of the matter is that in 4E, a whole hell of a lot of Edge went unspent on missions (unless your character concept revolved around spending it constantly, as with a Mr. Lucky). Their intention, then, is that even when a player does hit the limit, they should merely see that as an excuse to consider using the Edge which many of them would end up not even touching during the entire mission anyway.

This is another thing I never saw. In SR4.5, it was normal for most characters to end the game with no Edge left, at least at the tables I ran and the games I played in. The exceptions were high Edge characters, with an Edge of 6-8. If you avoided combat, 6 Edge was enough to give you a small surplus some of the time; and I've *never* seen an edge 8 character run out when it was properly built.

This is simply not true. On average the Enfield is vastly more dangerous. To average 5 successes you need a pool of 15. To average 7+ you need a pool of 21+. Those are huge effin' pools. You yourself said you didn't see 20+ pool characters in your games. Either way, normal enemies typically have combat pools of 8 to 12 - averages thus being 2 to 4.

Well, with an Accuracy of 4, the defender only needs 4 successes to dodge a normal attack, no matter what the attacker is rolling. So far, the SR5 character's I've seen have a base defense pool in the double digits, so it's not all that odd for them to get 4 successes on a dodge test. At any event, this is where I see a lot of edge being used: so far in SR5, I've seen more Edge spend on defense rolls than any other kind of roll. And that makes a lot of sense, it's a very good use of Edge. But that also lowers the lethality of the game.

You keep saying SR is a game where margin of success affects damage - this is true - but it's a small factor in most cases which aren't wild overkill. If you have numbers that mean you typically hit with 6 net, your enemies probably average 4 net - thus only 2DV comes from success - whereas 11DV comes from weapon damage and AP factors in twice too (probably more important than net successes if significant).

The problem is you need a net success to hit in the first place. In all editions of Shadowrun, Dodging > Soaking, because dodging an attack means no damage at all, while soaking carries risks. If you can't get that net success, though-- because of Limits, or because defenses went up, or in the case of SR5, both-- then you can't reliably deal damage.

Look, one of the goals of Shadowrun, from the very beginning, was to differentiate it from D&D. In D&D, a thug with a knife isn't a threat: he can't deal enough damage to kill even a moderate level fighter. In theory, Shadowrun was trying to avoid that, so a punk with a gun was a real threat. In practice, SR1 failed in this regard. SR2&3 did better, since you couldn't pad your soak dice with armor. SR4.5 and 5 are steps back to the SR1 idea: armor directly increases your soak.

More important is that dodging is easier from SR4 onwards. You didn't get a regular dodge pool in classic Shadowrun; it came from a spendable pool, which meant as you used it, it went way. Additionally, spending on defense hurt your offense. In SR4 and 5, you routinely get a dodge roll. What makes SR5 worse, though, is that non only have defense pools increased (from just Reaction to Reaction + Intuition), but attacks have limits (and defense rolls don't). That means getting a net success is harder, and you not only need that to increase your damage, but to hit in the first place.

[Draco18s]

Unfortunately, this runs into a slight snag in the form of player perceptions - it's the old "But I Might Need It!" mentality which drives players to get to the end of an RPG with a bag stuffed full of countless unused healing potions and restorative items that they've collected on their way, but always saw as being so potentially valuable that they didn't want to use them for fear of being caught without them.

Man, you missed the session that my 4-edge character spent three points in the space of about 15 minutes. 15 table minutes.

The only reason I didn't spend the last one was so that I had a point left in case I needed to actually stay alive. It did, however, make the combat that soon followed MUCH safer for the group as a whole (as the automated ceiling turret considered us friendlies and therefore was effectively removed from play).

(Oh and 4 edge is notoriously low for me. I almost always picked up 5, unless human in which case 6).

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Man, you missed the session that my 4-edge character spent three points in the space of about 15 minutes. 15 table minutes.

The only reason I didn't spend the last one was so that I had a point left in case I needed to actually stay alive. It did, however, make the combat that soon followed MUCH safer for the group as a whole (as the automated ceiling turret considered us friendlies and therefore was effectively removed from play).

(Oh and 4 edge is notoriously low for me. I almost always picked up 5, unless human in which case 6).

Wow, My Edge average is a 2-3 for all Characters. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Cain]

Wow, My Edge average is a 2-3 for all Characters. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Most of the new players I've seen go for an Edge of 3 or so, at least in SR4.5. The skilled character builders always went higher, though, usually much higher. High Edge is useful to everyone, so there's no reason not to max it if you can. There's an ongoing argument as to how far you should push it, though, or how much you should give up to get it. But in general, I've found that I don't need to give up a whole lot to end up with a bunch of Edge.

[RHat]

Most of the new players I've seen go for an Edge of 3 or so, at least in SR4.5. The skilled character builders always went higher, though, usually much higher. High Edge is useful to everyone, so there's no reason not to max it if you can. There's an ongoing argument as to how far you should push it, though, or how much you should give up to get it. But in general, I've found that I don't need to give up a whole lot to end up with a bunch of Edge.

There are cases where it gets less useful - specifically, characters for whom it can be more costly to use. 01 technomancers in particular, since they have to spend 2 points rather than 1 to negate a glitch.

[Draco18s]

Wow, My Edge average is a 2-3 for all Characters. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

It might've only been three. That particular game was...gosh, at least five years ago now.

Might've been three with one edge at the tail end of one session (with a small refresh) and two more at the start of the next. It's all fuzzy.

But yeah, I literally did not have the budget to allocate to get a single extra point.

My high-edge characters rarely (if ever) spent down to having only two left to spend, but it wasn't like I stayed at 6 the whole campaign. Naw, I'd spend it, not every session, but where it counted. "This guy needs to die, edge on my attack." "Holy shit grenade, edge on defense." "Oh god I don't have this skill, edge like a mofo! I CAN BE A FACE TOO." Mostly I got high edge because the number of added dice was higher, thus each point was more useful.