Sixth Edition, Release Announcement Options

[Nstol_wisper]

A few thoughts. Edge is going to require a cheat sheet for every player or there going to be a lot of slow down in the action. Lower damage codes seem to be an attempt to offset lack of armor soak. While this seems reasonable at early game, doesn’t look to scale well when advancement kicks in. See some good changes and ideas but like most of “new” editions it seems to suffer from lack of polish. I know what pain it is to open play test but honestly think SR Would benefit greatly from a larger test base.

Seems to be the opinion early for most editions.
Situational modifiers need cheat sheets, the most. Every player needed to keep track of edge/karma and two tokens just to to keep track of the new system is not that much.
I don't understand your link to damage and soak with advancement since better armor protection be it spell of or not must be bought or reseasrched or found. More armor still offests more dmamge. How does this system not give logic to advancement?

[binarywraith]

More armor, in 6e, does not in fact offset more damage in any way.

If you're going to cheerlead, at least cheerlead from a position of knowing the system.

[Nstol_wisper]

More armor, in 6e, does not in fact offset more damage in any way.

If you're going to cheerlead, at least cheerlead from a position of knowing the system.

So a little armor gives the same protection of say, full armor? I have to say that's not true.

How does having more dice to a defence test not offset damage?

[Sendaz]

So a little armor gives the same protection of say, full armor? I have so so that's not true.

How does having more dice to a defence test not offset damage?

More correctly a little WORN body armor gives the same total lack of protection as wearing alot of WORN body armor does as neither one actually aids your Damage soak roll, it is just Body being rolled- you get ZERO dice from the WORN armor for damage soak. Worn armor only helps figure out who gets Edge.

The Armor Spell and BioWare/CyberWare bone enhancements like Bone Lacing or Bone Augmentation will give you more dice toward Damage soak as well as improve your Armor Rating for comparing for possible Edge

Which is sort of an uneven way to do things, keeping it the same for 2/3 thirds of the Armor Triangle- ie magic and warez, but throwing the third (and most commonly used) option of actual worn armor under the bus.

Hence our earlier suggestion of house ruling some level of soak dice back into worn armor.

[Nstol_wisper]

But more armor adds to the defense test, true? And more dice in your defence pool means you are more likely to take less damage or no damage.

[Moirdryd]

No, it just increases Defense Rating which is only used in determining IF you get bonus edge from an action being performed by or against you.

[Sendaz]

But more armor adds to the defense test, true? And more dice in your defence pool means you are more likely to take less damage or no damage.

You may need to go back to the Quickstart and brush up on this.

Let's Say you are Joe Runner with 4s across the board in stats & Skills, using an Ares Predator and you are shooting Bob The Ganger who also happens to have 4s across the board in stats & skills and is wearing an armor jacket.

Your Attack Rating is NOT necessarily the number of Dice you get to throw on an attack, just like Defense Rating is NOT your Defence Pool.
Yes, they maybe should have come up with some more diversified names here.

Your Attack Rating is the Value assigned by your weapon modified by range category if applicable , or in the case of an unarmed attack this is your STR+ REA.
In this case the Ares Predator has an Attack RATING of 9 at near and close ranges.

Your actual Attack TEST is made with a pool drawn from (Weapon skill) plus Agility, so 4+4 gives us an Attack test of 8 dice.

Bob has a Defense RATING of 8, as he has Body 4 and the Armor Jacket adds +4 to his Defense Rating.
But when the attack comes he will be rolling a Defense TEST of 8 dice which came from his Rea 4 and Intuition 4.

Upon Comparing Joe's AR of 9 (based on the weapon) vs Bobs DR of 8 (based on the Body plus WORN Armor), there is no clear advantage either way, no Edge is awarded to anyone for now. NOTE: From here on, the WORN Armor plays no further role in the dice.

Joe rolls his Attack TEST and gets 4 hits while Bob only gets 3 hits on his Defense TEST. Joe shoots Bob.

Ares Predator has a DV of 4P, plus he has one net hit raises the damage to 5P.

Bob now has to roll BODY of 4 dice to actually resist damage. Regular WORN Armor adds NOTHING to this roll.

Bob is going to probably get just 1 hit, maybe 2 hits if they are lucky on just those 4 dice(from Body) being rolled so he is going to take some damage off this hit.
The only advantage that WORN armor as written gave Bob is that Joe didn't get a free point of Edge out of the exchange.

NOTE: IF BOB had been a Mage and had the Armor SPELL up or had some Body enhancing cyberware/bioware this WOULD have added to the resist rolls. Regular WORN armor does NOT as currently being written under 6th. One third of the Defense triangle(worn armor vs magic armor and cyber/bio) is a bit wrecked.

Now this skips a lot of nuance like Edge use and further circumstances like lighting and other stuff, but the main beef is the ruling is not evenly applied.
If you want ONLY Body to be rolled for defence, then do so, but at least make it apply to all three sides of the Defence instead of just one side or let all three sides apply their defense equally.

[Koekepan]

The whole thing is wrecked.

Seriously, check this: in the real world, if I shot a basic .45 slug (typical big pistol load) at someone wearing a t-shirt reading "I hate shadowrun", the slug would zip through the shirt like a divorce through a bank account, and carve a wound channel through the tender, tender flesh behind.

If I shot the exact same round at someone wearing kevlar body armour with inserted plates, that slug would mostly splash (yes, for those who don't know it, lead can splash when hitting hard surfaces) against the plate, and the worst outcome for mister shadowrunhater would be the heat generated at the point of impact, plus the stylistic implications of the bullet's impact point.

Entering a world where armour maybe kinda helps avoid critical hits (?) and does nothing else if you do get hit? Makes no sense at all, unless all firearms have been suddenly converted to magic armour-penetrating deathrays.

Game design fail.

[Nstol_wisper]

I guess the argument is there is no soak mechanic. Edge will likely give one.
But the big picture....Armor absorbing all damage it can what ever the situation, whatever the attack choice, does seem extreme. Good for characters who wish to tank though. The Attack should do no damage at all if the armor is that good.
But it can be argued that there is a very narrow set of circumstances that always allow armor to absorb all damage it can on contact leaving the wearer without a scratch.

[Erebus]

I'm actually rather surprised they didn't do something like comparing AR vs DR to determine if damage was physical or stun in addition to working with edge.

[Sendaz]

I guess the argument is there is no soak mechanic. Edge will likely give one.

But there IS a SOAK Mechanic, has been for many editions. It just so happens that they took it away from WORN armor, but left it intact on Spell and Cyber/Bio based means.

And how much is Edge going to do? 1 dice of Edge lets you reroll 1 Die.

You could splurge and spend 4 Edge to get to add your Edge to your Soak plus you get exploding 6's but that's only gonna save you from 1 attack.

Plus you should not have to rely on Edge. Edge was supposed to help lend a more cinematic feel, letting you push the envelope a bit.
Requiring Edge to do basic functions like take the place of your armor is a bad idea.

But the big picture....Armor absorbing all damage it can what ever the situation, whatever the attack choice, does seem extreme. Good for characters who wish to tank though. The Attack should do no damage at all if the armor is that good.
But it can be argued that there is a very narrow set of circumstances that always allow armor to absorb all damage it can on contact leaving the wearer without a scratch.

And no one is saying that WORN armor should just magically absorb ALL the damage, but it should play a factor in reducing damage, whether it reduces the total damage or adds dice to the SOAK roll in conjunction with Body or changes Physical to Stun or something rather than it being the wet toilet paper it is being cast as in 6th.

[Sengir]

Since we just are at the topic of ammo and armor... https://abload.de/img/1564810401557jhjmb.png

[Stahlseele]

THAT is even more stupid and asinine . .

[bannockburn]

"EVERYTHING GOTTA HAVE A PRICE!"
"Better show the inventory micromanagement rule to make that price go away in the same breath."

How pointless. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

[Prime Mover]

Armor ratings are very low, and using them in a soak pool would add one or two success’s on average. With the low damage codes I don’t see how this would be unbalancing as houserule. Easy enough to fix.

As for cased ammo, expect whoever buying my blackmarket ammo from to pre erased the tags for their own safety.

Grenade damage is insane when compared to other damage codes and can’t help but think might need a look at.
Need to see this all in play, see how math shakes out.

[Moirdryd]

Low ratings or not, the fact that they have little to no impact on things at all is a serious issue. If such a simple fundamental principle is broken then what will the rest of it be like? There is nothing, literally nothing, we have seen so far that Sixth does better than Fourth or Third and a fair amount that it's doing worse.

[binarywraith]

No, it just increases Defense Rating which is only used in determining IF you get bonus edge from an action being performed by or against you.

And, as Prime and Sendaz note, the Edge gain doesn't scale in any way, so as enemy dice pools go up, the value of gaining Edge drops quickly as single-die rerolls can't mitigate the number of incoming successes.

I guess the argument is there is no soak mechanic. Edge will likely give one.
But the big picture....Armor absorbing all damage it can what ever the situation, whatever the attack choice, does seem extreme. Good for characters who wish to tank though. The Attack should do no damage at all if the armor is that good.
But it can be argued that there is a very narrow set of circumstances that always allow armor to absorb all damage it can on contact leaving the wearer without a scratch.

Hey, you don't have to go with 'likely'. The rules are available. Quit bad-faith cheerleading for what you imagine the system to be and go read the system.

[Sengir]

"EVERYTHING GOTTA HAVE A PRICE!"

More precisely,the price is a 100% markup for caseless ammo, which somehow cannot be equipped with those RFIDs, despite tracker rounds with an RFID in the projectile being a thing.

But really, what ticks me off the most is how stupidly unnecessary this is. It's an Extended Test with a treshold of 2, so anybody with decent tech skills will succeed. Which means you can just let characters buy hits during downtime. Which means you can just ignore the whole thing altogether. Congratulations CGL, you just kicked my suspension of disbelief in the nuts for nothing. Why not go back to paper cartridges, if shooters have to bite down on the paper for loading that leaves more evidence, right?

[binarywraith]

You're missing the hilarity. You know where this comes from? Hardy's precious mages have to scrub astral traces after blasting people in order to not leave evidence everywhere.

Now everyone else has to do the same with digital traces.

[bannockburn]

Yes, that was exactly what I meant with "pointless".

[Iduno]

Low ratings or not, the fact that they have little to no impact on things at all is a serious issue. If such a simple fundamental principle is broken then what will the rest of it be like? There is nothing, literally nothing, we have seen so far that Sixth does better than Fourth or Third and a fair amount that it's doing worse.

I can only name on thing it does better than 5th edition: removing limits. How can anyone be so bad at game design that they make a worse version of SR5?

You're missing the hilarity. You know where this comes from? Hardy's precious mages have to scrub astral traces after blasting people in order to not leave evidence everywhere.

Now everyone else has to do the same with digital traces.

Hardy

Ah, that explains it.

[binarywraith]

Looks like CGL has gone back to the well again with plagiarising internet artists' work and doing a quick photomanipulation over it for SR.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments...yuki_matsumura/

[KCKitsune]

/rant Why couldn't 'Runners just... I don't know... MAKE THEIR OWN AMMO! / end rant

I mean seriously, you can make your own ammo today.

[Sengir]

Looks like CGL has gone back to the well again with plagiarising internet artists' work and doing a quick photomanipulation over it for SR.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments...yuki_matsumura/

The original image image could may have been bought from a stock photo service, in that case neither model nor photographer would need to be credited. I also the two or three people making up CGL were the ones who did the artwork, so the correct summary would be "CGL got artwork from someone who maybe did not license his source material" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)



@Kitsune: You can also make your own ammo in SR. Hard Targets, p. 189

[Tunnel Rat]

I'm considering house ruling armor so it will convert some of the incoming damage to stun before rolling to soak.

So let's say a runner wearing an armored jacket (+4 Defense Rating) gets hit with an Ares Alpha (4P) by a guard that had 4 net successes. (Say the guard got 6 successes vs the runner's 2).

By the current system the runner would need to soak 8 damage. By my system they would first roll body to soak 4 stun damage (converted by the jacket to stun), and then roll body to soak the 4 remaining damage as physical.

With stun I might let them roll just defense rating, or I might divide stun in the same manner.

Any thoughts?