*bump*

Adam, any word on whether an official SR3->SR4 character conversion guide will come out? A simple "Yes, it's still planned" or "No, on second thought, we decided not to" would be fine.

--K

Yeah, so have I. What's your point? An SR3-SR4 Character Converter isn't really going to help that any. I just think it's much more personal to rework the character with care instead of slapping numbers on.

I'm thinking of just getting general re-work rules. For example, what we were thinking for initiates would be to subtract 6 (or 3 for lower powered campaign) from the characters magic rating, then divide their grade and remaining MR by two, then adding the 6 (or 3 back in) for their end rating.

For skills, say, a sammies weapon skill, a mages general sorcery, subract the average by two or three, and make that the Skill Group. If they have one they want particularily higher, subtract another form the group, and add one to the skill rating. Attributes I had planned on leaving the same. For Cyber, just convert, and rework if your current essence would now kill you due to cyberware.

I know a few of my players are not that big of fans of even basic math, and they will just not do that much work on their characters. Even on characters they've played for years. They'll need an arbitrary conversion if that's what it takes to avoid breaking it down by karma. Otherwise they'll just make new characters.

I guess that's the difference between them and myself. I'm excited to sit down and convert some of my longer-lived characters over to SR4.

I'll try both on one or two characters to see the diff, but for my group, I'm probably just 'convert' instead of break down the character. I'll work through a few of mine first to get it all straight in my mind. And yes, I'll work the first one the short hand way, then do it the long way t osee how well it equates. On a happy/sad note, my FLGS called me today saying my book is in, but I don't have the money until Fruday. So Happy/sad. I'll let you know how my bastardsized conversion goes.

getting back to this now that I've finally gotten SR4, I've gone through and broken down a few of my characters that were relatively new (humans with 5-6 in karma pool) and getting them down by karma for all the skills and attributes. First character, after breaking down all of his karma totaled to 451 (that's breaking down stuff from char gen of course, and some cash for karma), and the other was a bit more, around 681.

First character had high attributes on average, and skills averaging 5, a few at 7. After breaking down everything and buying back, his skills ended up being around 3 on average, and two skill groups at 4. And he was still over by about 20 karma.

Second character had high attributes and a number of skills but his skills went into a few nice groups, since he was more of a street sam type, and he ended up skills only being about 1 below on average, and having about 40 karma left over.

So breaking the character down by karma doesn't seem to work. I haven't worked out any of our mage characters yet, and dreading that. But what I'm seeing is that characters with high intelligence and quickness get pretty screwed for one. On the characters have had to spend half of their total karma just buying back up their attributes to have them close to what they were. Characters with diversified skills get hurt as well, and adding necessary skills like dodge and perception also hurt.

B/R skills being incorporated into the skills help, like the hardware skill do hepl. But only so much. I'm still thinking that eyeballing a conversion is a better way to go.

Well, I still think a character converter would still be helpful- especially since there aren't (m)any modules for SR4 and a lot of the stats for character archtypes are still in SR3 form.

While I like the SR4 book its severly lacking in world-building aspects (NPC stats, Seattle in 2070, a current MAP!, etc.)

So Runner Havens is due out in Nov?

If you want to break it down by Karma, you'll have to do it on a skill-by-skill, atribute-by-attribute basis, and then use the left overs where it 'seems right'

Can we get a comment from anyone who worked on SR4? Is an official conversion likely?

--K

I don't know.

Dodge - Anyone can try to get out of the way of a skateboarder, but it takes added skill to evade a thrown knife with the same success rate; even more for a crossbow bolt, and yet more for bullets. This is one of the things that separates 4th Dan Black Belts from normal people off the street.

Perception - Intuition is the appropriate stat, but there IS a degee of skill involved. Have you ever read Sherlock Holmes? "You see, but you do not observe."

Admittedly, I am still not totally up to speed an all the nuances of SR4 combat yet. I simply have a bit of difficulty with having to apply of build points/karma to do something that was an everyman's action under SR3.

I do not disagree that additional training is helpful, but there should be no default penalty for only using the linked attribute (Reaction - Dodge, Intuition - Perception).

One thing I will say, I always had a little difficulty with the concept of characters dodging bullets while out in the open (unless you are Remo Williams and then he only was able to so it when the attacker was in fairly close range so he could watch the shooter's hand motions). Yeah, I'll admit, Dodge has saved a few of my characters' lives, but somehow the idea of evading a tiny, difficult to see object travelling at supersonic velocity always seemed a bit of a reach.

Diving for cover, now that is an entirely different matter, but that would be a full defence move which would take a complex action to execute.

When would anyone ever default on a Dodge test?

Reaction is the appropriate attribute, and is already used by default with normal defence. Assuming ranged combat, if a character does not have Dodge (or Gymnastics), why would they ever bother with the Full Defence option in the first place? They would gain nothing at all, and waste their action in the process.

Wouldn't they default to Agility for Gymnastics (and therefore gain Reaction +Agility -1) if they took a Full defense action?

Regarding dodging bullets, I think it's more an issue of dodging where the gun is pointing.... think of someone trying to shine a very tight flashlight beam on you, and dodging around to avoid that. Clearly, no one is really dodging the supersonic metal itself.

That said, if you're hundreds of feet away, your erratic movement will make it very hard for the person to aim, because you do have some noticeable time from when the bullet leaves the gun to when it arrives. But of course, you're just using tactically erratic movement, not dodging the bullet.

Maybe Dodge skill should be called "evasive tactics".

--K

i don't think you can default on the test. you don't add in the results of a dodge skill check, you just add your dodge skill itself.

I've been using a system pretty much like Omer suggests, which seems to be working well.

Basically, and skill goes at 2/3 it's original score. For skills that become a group, take the average of the skills. Anything that no longer exists ( divination), multiply by 2 and add that to karma. Round down on all fractions ,add the remainder ( skill of 7 becomes 4 and 1 karma) to karma. For quickness and intellignce, multiply by 2/3 add any remainders to your choise ( agility, intuition, whataver). Divide karma pool by 3 for edge (sucks if you're a meta. mimimun 3). If you're feeling generous, you can also divide your karma pool by 3, and allow that for more points on to attributes, although I didn't really find it necessary. Then take the karma pool currnet total and add it to current karma, that way your PC's aren't screwed out of it. If you're feeling generous still, you can also start runners with a perception and dodge skill (whether or not it's worth while, I can't say yet) at 2, and let them build from there.

Magic and resonance I don't know yet though. WHat I tried was to subtract the mage's original magic of 6 from their magic attribute ,then divide it by two, the ad dthe six back in. This worked well for keeping the magic attribute in a more playable range. But at higher grades, you end up breaking the rule that the initiate grade can't be hihgher than the attribute, and I couldn't justify taking away their grades and metamagics.So anyone above rank 4 got magic = to initiate grade.

Also , for characters that had skills that could go in to groups, but wanted just the one skill (eg - stealth - stayed with just infiltration) I kept them skill at the same rating. For more experiences characters (skills of 9+) you have to either arbitrailly cut skills (and hopefully give back some karma for it) or allow the apptitude quality to apply for more than one skill. but the 2/3 brings most of them within line. I even did this with a 2,000+ karma character, and his highest was a skill at 10 (originalyl sorcery 16!). Only 3 dice off the mox for a skill, which isn't bad.

Newer characters tend to get screwed on edge, but the karma they get back form skill adjustments (and attributes) help with that.

thoughts?

So, any word on an *official* character conversion guide from SR3->SR4?

Maybe as a Halloween gift?

--K

Asking for the sixth week running, months after the debut of SR and 7 months after this was posted to the SR4 FAQ:

"Q. Will there be rules for converting characters from SR3 to SR4?
A. Yes, we will publish a conversion guide on the website (not in the core rulebook)." (March 28th, 2005)

So, any news on this? Is it still planned? When might we expect to see it?

--K

Swordfish Mustardball

Gee, that's kind of cryptic.

--K

The conversion rules are available on the main site; HERE

If I was beaten to it, oh well. If not....

Now I just have to wait until X-Mas to read my copy of SR4 (I have it on reserve & holding at my gaming shop).