So, let's talk about Trolls. Options

[Cain]

Cyberarm doesn't care about your current stats, only natural maximum for your metatype. No problem at all getting that cyberarm of doom and spend all other attribute points on making a character with awesome stats.

This is not correct, or at least not very clear. Your attribute maximum is your natural attribute +4. While you can read it so that cyberlimbs aren't subject to this, there's nothing explicitly saying you can break the augmented max with them.

When faced with this sort of confusion, I go back to first principles. Just because the rules don't say you *can't* do something, doesn't mean you *can*. Often, saying "it doesn't say I can't do this!" is a munchkin excuse, so I'm a little wary whenever I hear it. Anyway, I would rule in favor of caution, and say you can't use cyberlimbs to exceed your augmented max.

[RHat]

This is not correct, or at least not very clear. Your attribute maximum is your natural attribute +4. While you can read it so that cyberlimbs aren't subject to this, there's nothing explicitly saying you can break the augmented max with them.

When faced with this sort of confusion, I go back to first principles. Just because the rules don't say you *can't* do something, doesn't mean you *can*. Often, saying "it doesn't say I can't do this!" is a munchkin excuse, so I'm a little wary whenever I hear it. Anyway, I would rule in favor of caution, and say you can't use cyberlimbs to exceed your augmented max.

You realize that you're reading requires the text to actually straight up say something other than it does, right? The rule is that the maximum bonus you can get is +4 - and cyberlimbs are not conferring a bonus.

[Surukai]

Cyberlimb customization is maxed at NATURAL MAXIMUM (i.e. 6 for human, 10 for troll)

Then, the cyberlimb enhancement only goes to +3, so natural +3 is max with cyber limb (compared to natural +4 with other means)

Cyberlimb is 1 short of global maximum and that is a good design decision since cyberlimbs are so much more accessible and cheap.



Back to drain, the difference in 2 less drain stat is much less than I earlier said.

Casting spells with 10 drain (for example big big big fireballs) causes on average 6,33 boxes of stun/phys for a human with 6+5 charisma+willpower. The troll gets 0,66 more, or 7 boxes of stun/phys.

But, casting a more sane spell, like drain 3 the troll shaman takes 0,546 average drain, the human shaman 0,321.. One in five casts causes the troll one more box of drain, boohoo.

The full table of average drain taken for a drain pool of 1 to 20 versus spells with drain 1-6, 8 and 10

drain
Pool 1 2 3 4 5 6 8 10
1 0,667 1,667 2,667 3,667 4,667 5,667 7,667 9,667
2 0,444 1,333 2,333 3,333 4,333 5,333 7,333 9,333
3 0,296 1,037 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 7,000 9,000
4 0,198 0,790 1,679 2,667 3,667 4,667 6,667 8,667
5 0,132 0,593 1,383 2,337 3,333 4,333 6,333 8,333
6 0,088 0,439 1,119 2,019 3,001 4,000 6,000 8,000
7 0,059 0,322 0,893 1,719 2,674 3,667 5,667 7,667
8 0,039 0,234 0,702 1,444 2,356 3,336 5,333 7,333
9 0,026 0,169 0,546 1,197 2,052 3,009 5,000 7,000
10 0,017 0,121 0,421 0,980 1,767 2,690 4,667 6,667
11 0,012 0,087 0,321 0,793 1,504 2,382 4,335 6,333
12 0,008 0,062 0,243 0,636 1,267 2,090 4,004 6,000
13 0,005 0,044 0,182 0,505 1,057 1,816 3,677 5,667
14 0,003 0,031 0,136 0,397 0,873 1,563 3,356 5,334
15 0,002 0,022 0,101 0,310 0,714 1,333 3,041 5,002
16 0,002 0,015 0,075 0,241 0,580 1,127 2,738 4,672
17 0,001 0,011 0,055 0,185 0,467 0,944 2,446 4,344
18 0,001 0,007 0,040 0,142 0,373 0,785 2,170 4,019
19 0,000 0,005 0,029 0,108 0,296 0,648 1,911 3,700
20 0,000 0,004 0,021 0,082 0,233 0,530 1,671 3,389


Being troll shaman is still not craptastic. The importance of Drain stats are to some extent overrated, period.

[Cain]

You realize that you're reading requires the text to actually straight up say something other than it does, right? The rule is that the maximum bonus you can get is +4 - and cyberlimbs are not conferring a bonus.

That's not what it says either:

Keep in mind there are three restrictions when it
comes to purchasing gear. First, when purchasing augmentations
such as cyberware and bioware, each attribute
rating (Mental and Physical) can only receive an
augmentation bonus of up to +4. If the attribute being
raised has not reached its natural maximum limit, the
attribute can be raised naturally with Karma; but at no
point can augmentations exceed the +4 bonus cap.

What happens next is an argument over rather or not cyberlimbs count as a natural attribute or an augmented one. They don't actually specify what they count as, so we could end up going around and around on it. That's why I go back to first principles: just because the rules don't say no, doesn't mean it's a yes.

[Sengir]

Back to drain, the difference in 2 less drain stat is much less than I earlier said.

Casting spells with 10 drain (for example big big big fireballs) causes on average 6,33 boxes of stun/phys for a human with 6+5 charisma+willpower. The troll gets 0,66 more, or 7 boxes of stun/phys.

But, casting a more sane spell, like drain 3 the troll shaman takes 0,546 average drain, the human shaman 0,321.. One in five casts causes the troll one more box of drain, boohoo.

Problem is, those tiny fractions add up

Probability of taking at most X damage in total with 11 Drain dice EDIT from casting five spells with DV 3

CODE

Damage      0        1        2       3        4       5       6    7    8    9    10    11    12    13    14    15
Probability 0.264    0.538    0.76    0.894    0.96    0.99    1    1    1    1    1     1     1     1     1     1

..and with 9 dice

CODE

Damage      0        1        2        3        4        5        6        7        8        9        10    11    12    13    14    15
Probability 0.093    0.271    0.491    0.694    0.839    0.928    0.972    0.990    0.997    0.999    1     1     1     1     1     1

In other words, 11 dice mean a 76% chance of slinging those spells without suffering wound modifiers. Knock down two dice and you're down to 50:50

[Critias]

Of course, having a high Charisma but being bad with people is probably one of the smarter uses for Uncouth.

There are no smart uses for Uncouth.

If you want to have a high Charisma but be bad with people, just don't invest in social skills, never dress appropriately (those modifiers add up, just like in real life), etc, etc. Uncouth is a trap and should never be suggested to anyone, ever.

what would have made a lot more sense would have been a quality that basically gives gremlins for social interactions. and also, if you want to call it uncouth, not making it apply to intimidation.

Which is almost exactly what I said in the most recent Critical Glitch podcast (where we discussed Negative Qualities), and I pointed people towards Social Stress and away from Uncouth.

[Surukai]

Say we cast a lightning bolt that has 3 drain over and over again.

Troll shaman takes on average 0,546 drain per cast, or some 10 casts before getting 5-6 boxes and stopping.

She then rests 2 hours before next combat, rolling 14 dice to recover from stun, She has 94% chance to recover at least 5 stun on two hours rest and be fully ready for next fight.


The human shaman takes only 0,321 per cast, and is expected to only take 3-4 boxes from casting 10 lightning bolts

She then rests 2 hours and have 90% chance to recover at least 3 stun.. She has lower chance to recover 3 out of 3-4 stun than the troll has to recover 5 out of 5-6 stun.

They then get a harder right, and decide to cast F11 fireballs (10 drain or so?) to obliterate large groups of enemies in one cast.

They both cast 2 of those, one with reagents (for stun drain)

The troll is expected to take 7 physical + 7 stun. She must be careful to make sure overcasting is done right but I use this as an extreme example of high drain situation as contrast for the low drain situation above.

During one day of healing, the troll rolls 18 dice to heal physical damage and has a 75% chance to heal at least 5 (getting no penalties). and a full 40% chance to heal all physical drain by the next day.

The human is expected to take 6.3 drain, or 6 + 6 or so.

The human have only 25% chance to heal enough physical to have no penalties (at least 4 boxes healed)

She has 2% chance to heal 6 or more (body 4), a whopping 7,5% if she has maxed out body at 5 (charisma is at 6).


10 casts low-moderate drain, troll wins.

2 casts cripping high drain, troll wins again!

Conclusion: No evidence found for trolls having serious problems with drain. Trolls can be effective shamans and work comparably well with humans (baseline)

Even an elf shaman is not that far ahead. Elf shaman takes 0,182 stun per cast at 3 drain, and 5,667 at super high drain. With same body as human, the elf is as good as humans at recovering and taking 0,67 less drain from high drain stuff than humans means they will come out slightly on top of humans.

Body is important for magicians, trolls have lots of body. Trolls can be magicians. Even after the penalty to their mental stats.

A troll shaman using clever buffs will sit on 16 dice drain resist out of chargen, a human shaman can get 10+8, (charisma 6, focused concentration and increase charisma +4, willpower 4 + foci 4 just like the trol for total 18 dice)

The difference between 18 and 16 dice is smaller than 9 vs 11, further making the troll just as good (if not better) shaman than the human or even elf (elves can't buff from charisma 8 so the foci+focused concentration trick doesn't work as well for them.


Yes, it adds up but not automatically at the troll's disadvantage. We have just underestimated the value of Body as a stat.


Now, that said, maybe we can go back to troll general topic again? Or do we still think troll are sucky mages and hopefully craptastic?

One thing that bothers me a bit is how they lemon-lime changed the troll movement speed from being fastest to slowest to run. This is a big problem for the melee trolls. Is it a typo or why did they go from +50% faster (SR4, can't remember in SR3 since I never played troll there) to -50% for running in SR5.

[Surukai]

[quote name='Sengir' post='1291414' date='May 9 2014, 02:39 PM']Problem is, those tiny fractions add up

Probability of taking at most X damage in total with 11 Drain dice

CODE

Damage      0        1        2       3        4       5       6    7    8    9    10    11    12    13    14    15
Probability 0.264    0.538    0.76    0.894    0.96    0.99    1    1    1    1    1     1     1     1     1     1

..and with 9 dice

CODE

Damage      0        1        2        3        4        5        6        7        8        9        10    11    12    13    14    15
Probability 0.093    0.271    0.491    0.694    0.839    0.928    0.972    0.990    0.997    0.999    1     1     1     1     1     1

EDIT: I wrote a long stupid post about nothing useful since I didn't read properly


Yes, it is a difference but the troll recovers faster, as I showed in my previous post.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

My point was that the ganger's artificial arm is worse than his natural one - so why replace it to begin with?

Because he had his arm removed against his will (say, eaten by a barghest) and instead of being a one-armed man he paid for an off-the-shelf cyberarm because having a weaker arm is better than having no arm at all?

[Critias]

My point was that the ganger's artificial arm is worse than his natural one - so why replace it to begin with?

Because Wak -- I'm pretty sure that one was Wak -- wanted to make a down on his luck ganger with a shitty cyberarm (and because he had to make it match the artwork)? I mean, it's just a ganger. They don't always have to make the best decisions, or be sporting the best gear.

[Sengir]

10 casts low-moderate drain, troll wins.

...assuming enough time to heal a few boxes of damage but not enough for an empty stun track...when was the last time you had that happening?

one with reagents (for stun drain)

The limit = #reagents rule fucks up any aspect of drain (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Now, that said, maybe we can go back to troll general topic again? Or do we still think troll are sucky mages and hopefully craptastic?

If you insist, let's go back to my first point: Being forced to increase Charisma sucks, even more for trolls.

[Jaid]

the ability to reduce drain damage is always valuable.

the ability to recover from drain damage is only useful if you have time between casting spells to do so.

and no, the troll being able to spend priority A on attributes to have more than everyone else isn't really an advantage. it's a trap. attributes A is crap, especially when combined with race B (or vice versa). your skills and resources are going to be absolutely awful if you do this; yes, you can patch up some holes with karma, but there is a monstrously huge difference between skills A and skills C. if you're stuck putting skills in D or lower (for example, because you want to have decent magic or you want to have more than ~50k nuyen of gear), it really is not even remotely close. you're going to have a guy with decent all-around attributes, and can basically do one thing moderately well if you put attributes and race as your top two priorities. and in just about every other area, you'll be lucky to call yourself mediocre. it only works well for extremely narrow areas of focus, and even then, you'd likely be better off having made different decisions (for example, you could have an adept or street samurai that actually has enough magic or resources to do more than one thing only).

not just that, but the troll with attributes E most certainly does not have the same situation with attributes as a human with attributes B (not that i would ever recommend investing priority B in attributes). the troll *must* buy strength and body of 5 or better. the human can buy whatever attributes are needed. for the vast majority of characters, strength 5 is not even remotely needed (in fact, i somewhat suspect that 2 is one of the most common strength values amongst shadowrun characters that are not melee or otherwise very focused on strength). and even though a body of 5 is nice to have, for most characters it is not as important as investing elsewhere, such that 3-4 points of body is much more likely. functionally, the human has 3-4 points at least to spend wherever they want, while the troll has those points locked into a purchase that, when given the choice, almost nobody wants.

strength is better in SR5 than it was in SR4. that doesn't make it good, though. it just makes it less bad ( though perhaps bad is the wrong word; it's only bad because you're trading something better for it)

[Shinobi Killfist]

And let us not forget how long the Troll Combat Mage has been an archetype. If you're going to have examples and artwork of trolls doing magic in the source material, why make trolls so bloody terrible at being mages due to their crippling mental attribute caps? Allowing a troll to be race priority C would do little to help this.

In 3E you could get around the worst of the mental attribute restrictions ( for a shaman or conjuror at least) by using metavariants. Fomori used to drop the charisma penalty (and lose the dermal deposits) in exchange for one less point of strength and body. (They did not have any magic resistance, but a higher than usual percentage of the Fomori population were awakened.) In 4E those stat adjustments vanished, but the fluff still described them as more attractive. Unless 5E is going to reinstate metavariants having different attribute adjustments, any player who attempts to replicate the fluff in 5E is walking right into a trap.

Pre 3e had stats as less meaningful so a 4 charisma Shaman was perfectly fine. 4e on the caps hit trolls a bit harder as they are now part of the dice pool. Still I don't think the caps are a problem, trolls being worse at being mage/shaman is fine. They were playable in 4e because your race was not equally valued to your entire skill or stat expenditure. 40 out of 400 left plenty of wiggle room, trolls could still easily afford to put 200 more points into attributes.

[X-Kalibur]

That's not what it says either:


What happens next is an argument over rather or not cyberlimbs count as a natural attribute or an augmented one. They don't actually specify what they count as, so we could end up going around and around on it. That's why I go back to first principles: just because the rules don't say no, doesn't mean it's a yes.

Here's what it says -

Customization: You can have your cyberlimb tailored
and customized to your frame and musculature. Customization
lets you add to your limb’s base Strength and/or
Agility ratings. Each increase of either attribute increases
the limb’s Availability and cost. If either of your limb’s attributes
are increased beyond your natural maximum for
that attribute, you can’t use the cyberlimb (so don’t overdo
it), but you can still add cyberlimb enhancements. You
customize your cyberlimb when you buy it; you can’t customize
it after purchase, but you can add enhancements.
Cyberlimbs may be either obvious or synthetic.

Also note that the table for enhancements on page 457 caps rating at 3 and furthermore, the rules for it state you can only have 1 enhancement per attribute, so you can't stack 2 str enhancements in one arm.

[Stahlseele]

That's quite the heavy handed (get it? GET IT?) nerf to limbs and makes them useless again . .

[Sengir]

EDIT: I wrote a long stupid post about nothing useful since I didn't read properly

Nah, I just realized I left out a smewhat important detail in the post...

[X-Kalibur]

That's quite the heavy handed (get it? GET IT?) nerf to limbs and makes them useless again . .

I thought it put them on about the same level. They start at 3 str 3 agi, you can customize them to whatever value, up to your racial natural max, and then use enhancements to push them to +3.

[Glyph]

Because Wak -- I'm pretty sure that one was Wak -- wanted to make a down on his luck ganger with a shitty cyberarm (and because he had to make it match the artwork)? I mean, it's just a ganger. They don't always have to make the best decisions, or be sporting the best gear.

That would be great for creating a character to match a backstory or concept, but I would question it for an archetype. *Shrug* But then again, the archetypes do tend to be gimped a lot.

[Jaid]

That would be great for creating a character to match a backstory or concept, but I would question it for an archetype. *Shrug* But then again, the archetypes do tend to be gimped a lot.

well, the main problem as i see it is that after so many editions with a tradition of basically screwing up the archetypes, the only people who are likely to look to the archetypes for guidance are the people not familiar with the system and who therefore don't know better (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

so those most in need of guidance are the ones getting the bad advice.

[Glyph]

Yes. It can be a bit frustrating. You could point out the Street Samurai's cyberlimbs to show that they can go over the normal +4 since their own Attributes are separate from the character's Attributes... but the same archetype is 200,000+ over on resources.

The excuse seems to be that the archetypes were created before the rules were finalized, but the question becomes, why weren't they corrected after the rules were finalized?

[RHat]

The excuse seems to be that the archetypes were created before the rules were finalized, but the question becomes, why weren't they corrected after the rules were finalized?

Seems possible that some corrections were made, but that some stuff got missed.

[Cain]

I thought it put them on about the same level. They start at 3 str 3 agi, you can customize them to whatever value, up to your racial natural max, and then use enhancements to push them to +3.

The problem is, it doesn't actually say you can customize a limb past your augmented cap. So, if you had Str 1 and got a cyberlimb, by one reading of the RAW you couldn't push it above Str 5, no matter if you used customization or anything else. It is a pretty confusing area, and it could be read many ways. However, I'm going to stick with the No unless you get an explicit Yes.

Seems possible that some corrections were made, but that some stuff got missed.

Who says it got missed? Some of the proofreaders are still wondering why mistakes they caught made it into the finished printing.

[RHat]

The problem is, it doesn't actually say you can customize a limb past your augmented cap.

Because there is not such thing as an "augmented cap" - that's an undefined concept. There's a cap on bonuses, which cyberlimbs simply do not meet any text definition of.

[X-Kalibur]

Because there is not such thing as an "augmented cap" - that's an undefined concept. There's a cap on bonuses, which cyberlimbs simply do not meet any text definition of.

Plus, they clearly state that they use your natural maximum as a limit for customization. This means when you use that arm or leg, it is treated as it's own part and not subject to... whatever he's coming up with.

[Sengir]

Seems possible that some corrections were made, but that some stuff got missed.

Because incorrect archetypes are a matter of tradition?