I rather like the old mechanic as well as a large portion of information from the old rules. However, there are things that are just weird.
However, I also like some of the new stuff, but there is a lot that is just weird/contradictory and/or just not my flavor.
So my question is, would you reccomend adding house rules to SR3 to bring it somewhat in line with some of the new things (mainly AR, magic rules, possible with Edge replacing Karma Pool, things like that.)
Or would you suggest House Ruling new system (Doubling wound penalties, at least. Fixing ammunition outright. Making up a karma based build system - unless someone has already done that for SR4. Remove arbitrary skill restrictions.)
Either way it looks like a list of house rules as long as I am tall. Sigh.
Full Version: Question about which way to House Rule
There are lots of things that I won't miss about the old system, and a few of your suggested changes would be quite easy.
Want higher wound penalties & immediate penalties from a single box of damage? Change the penalties from 1/3 damage rounding down to 1/2 damage rounding up.
If you really must fix ammo to work like it did in SR3 then put certain types back to AP multipliers (B/2 for APDS, 2xI for flechette).
You can build a character using karma quite easily as there are karma costs listed for almost everything you can do during chargen. The exceptions are race, which could be bought like a quality (2xBP cost in karma) at the start of chargen, and resources (2 karma for 5k, as if it were a quality, seems fine to me). Start from a base of a 0BP character and add about 700 karma (I haven't balanced that number to anything, I just pulled it off the top of my head).
Removing skill restrictions is hardly an excercise in intricate house-ruling.
Want higher wound penalties & immediate penalties from a single box of damage? Change the penalties from 1/3 damage rounding down to 1/2 damage rounding up.
If you really must fix ammo to work like it did in SR3 then put certain types back to AP multipliers (B/2 for APDS, 2xI for flechette).
You can build a character using karma quite easily as there are karma costs listed for almost everything you can do during chargen. The exceptions are race, which could be bought like a quality (2xBP cost in karma) at the start of chargen, and resources (2 karma for 5k, as if it were a quality, seems fine to me). Start from a base of a 0BP character and add about 700 karma (I haven't balanced that number to anything, I just pulled it off the top of my head).
Removing skill restrictions is hardly an excercise in intricate house-ruling.
actually, using race, contacts, and resources as 2 karma per BP results in roughly 475 karma, on average.
personally, i recommend counting 1 karma as 1 BP instead and giving about 425 karma. as i recall, each point of logic and intuition works out to being worth approximately 7.5 free karma for knowledge/language skills, based on the archetypes (mind you, that was all figured out assuming they were accurately made, which i understand now is not the case).
the only archetype in the books that can't be made is the troll enforcer, iirc (or whichever one has 9 str and bod, if not that one).
alternatively, you could go with SeCKSY (do a search for it, you should find it no problem) which includes a few other houserules too, such as making attributes cost more iirc... or maybe skill groups cost less? or both?
of course, if you want your PCs to be equal to starting SR3 characters, you might want closer to 550 or so karma to pull that off, i would guess.
if you wish to remove the limits, then i recommend either:
1) increase karma by quite a bit
2) count skill only for dice pool
3) wherever attributes only are used, stick with that.
4) change hacking/decking so that the program rating limits max hits, like the force of a spell does.
5) make higher rating devices of all sorts. currently, the only thing i can think of with higher than a 6 is the satellite uplink, which grants signal 8, plus some theoretical military hacking software iirc.
6) make the attribute limits attainable without cyber/bioware or magic. the attribute limit for augmented could then be removed, i suppose. naturally, anything beyond the racial maximum will cost more karma than normal to improve.
you'll have to work out defaulting on your own, though
of course, i haven't playtested this yet, so you may want to test this out before using it.
or, alternatively, you could just allow players to purchase the extraordinary attribute and the skill thingy multiple times per skill/attribute. this still makes it unappealing to boost them beyond sanity (20 extra karma for skills, 40 extra for attributes), but still allows them to do it if they want. if you do this, you probably won't need to change much else... so this is definitely the *easier* way to go, IMO.
personally, i like the wound modifiers the way they are, but if you want i suppose it's easy to do.
anyways, hope that helps.
personally, i recommend counting 1 karma as 1 BP instead and giving about 425 karma. as i recall, each point of logic and intuition works out to being worth approximately 7.5 free karma for knowledge/language skills, based on the archetypes (mind you, that was all figured out assuming they were accurately made, which i understand now is not the case).
the only archetype in the books that can't be made is the troll enforcer, iirc (or whichever one has 9 str and bod, if not that one).
alternatively, you could go with SeCKSY (do a search for it, you should find it no problem) which includes a few other houserules too, such as making attributes cost more iirc... or maybe skill groups cost less? or both?
of course, if you want your PCs to be equal to starting SR3 characters, you might want closer to 550 or so karma to pull that off, i would guess.
if you wish to remove the limits, then i recommend either:
1) increase karma by quite a bit
2) count skill only for dice pool
3) wherever attributes only are used, stick with that.
4) change hacking/decking so that the program rating limits max hits, like the force of a spell does.
5) make higher rating devices of all sorts. currently, the only thing i can think of with higher than a 6 is the satellite uplink, which grants signal 8, plus some theoretical military hacking software iirc.
6) make the attribute limits attainable without cyber/bioware or magic. the attribute limit for augmented could then be removed, i suppose. naturally, anything beyond the racial maximum will cost more karma than normal to improve.
you'll have to work out defaulting on your own, though
of course, i haven't playtested this yet, so you may want to test this out before using it.
or, alternatively, you could just allow players to purchase the extraordinary attribute and the skill thingy multiple times per skill/attribute. this still makes it unappealing to boost them beyond sanity (20 extra karma for skills, 40 extra for attributes), but still allows them to do it if they want. if you do this, you probably won't need to change much else... so this is definitely the *easier* way to go, IMO.
personally, i like the wound modifiers the way they are, but if you want i suppose it's easy to do.
anyways, hope that helps.
I'm not as worried about making the power equal to SR3. Though I am leaning towards adapting SR4. Will depend on how much I like the rules.
It is distressing how long the list of house rules will have to be for either one.
I actually like the max 6 points (7 with exceptional) for unaugmented and then +50% of that for augmented that they have now. Much prefer that.
I also like skills being limited to 6/7. The limits I want to get rid of are the arbitrary one skill at 6 or two skills at 5 plus whatever limits thing. Just too annoying to keep track of really.
The thing I liked most about SR3 was the wound modifiers. When you were hurt, it actually affected you. Most games, including SR4 from what I have seen, it's like okay, so I am horribly wounded. -3 dice. Allrighty, so I lose one success. Yay.
Just seemed more dangerous. Doubling it up makes it much more noticeable when you take a .45 cal round to the chest.
I will search up SeCKsy - Google says Secksy is a robot that distributes files via Internet Relay Chat. ... Secksy supports
Drag And Drop for adding files, Resume for continuing broken downloads...
plus a bunch of people who think they are secksy. I guess you meant to search the forums.
It is distressing how long the list of house rules will have to be for either one.
I actually like the max 6 points (7 with exceptional) for unaugmented and then +50% of that for augmented that they have now. Much prefer that.
I also like skills being limited to 6/7. The limits I want to get rid of are the arbitrary one skill at 6 or two skills at 5 plus whatever limits thing. Just too annoying to keep track of really.
The thing I liked most about SR3 was the wound modifiers. When you were hurt, it actually affected you. Most games, including SR4 from what I have seen, it's like okay, so I am horribly wounded. -3 dice. Allrighty, so I lose one success. Yay.
Just seemed more dangerous. Doubling it up makes it much more noticeable when you take a .45 cal round to the chest.
I will search up SeCKsy - Google says Secksy is a robot that distributes files via Internet Relay Chat. ... Secksy supports
Drag And Drop for adding files, Resume for continuing broken downloads...
plus a bunch of people who think they are secksy. I guess you meant to search the forums.
Hmm. Seems interesting. I think overall I liked what BeCKs for SR3 did better, it was much cleaner but it is unavoidable with the new edition I suppose.
I really can't believe that they did not notice how amazingly good attributes are. With the base rules there is no reason for any character to increase skills when they could just increase attributes instead?
I mean, white wolf had the attribute + skill dice pool system for a long time and they realized how much attributes are worth more than skills, why couldn't the SR4 developers figure that out?
I really can't believe that they did not notice how amazingly good attributes are. With the base rules there is no reason for any character to increase skills when they could just increase attributes instead?
I mean, white wolf had the attribute + skill dice pool system for a long time and they realized how much attributes are worth more than skills, why couldn't the SR4 developers figure that out?
Yes, Search here. 
As for the wound modifiers, you have to keep in mind that:
1) Stun is more likely to occur than in SR3, so having mix of and Physical is quite possible. So you are likely to end up doubling up modifiers there.
2) It tends to be harder to completely stage down damage.
3) The tracks are going to tend to have more boxes, especially Physical. A beefed Troll can be taking -5 for Physical and -3 Stun for a total -8 dice penalty before going down. Even for min-maxed characters that can put a dent in the max part, and absolutely cripples anything they mined. For example unless they have the correctly speced Spell Defense mage covering and/or they add a decent sized Edge up front they simply aren't going to be resisting spells.
4) As the penalty approaches the size of pre-wound modifier penalty dice pool the chance of a Critical Glitch rises dramatically. So stuff you aren't as good in become extremely dangerous. Unlike SR3 a simple failure is no longer the worst case senario.
5) A seriously injured character that tries to, or is forced to perform Tests is going to run through Edge like water.
As for the wound modifiers, you have to keep in mind that:
1) Stun is more likely to occur than in SR3, so having mix of and Physical is quite possible. So you are likely to end up doubling up modifiers there.
2) It tends to be harder to completely stage down damage.
3) The tracks are going to tend to have more boxes, especially Physical. A beefed Troll can be taking -5 for Physical and -3 Stun for a total -8 dice penalty before going down. Even for min-maxed characters that can put a dent in the max part, and absolutely cripples anything they mined. For example unless they have the correctly speced Spell Defense mage covering and/or they add a decent sized Edge up front they simply aren't going to be resisting spells.
4) As the penalty approaches the size of pre-wound modifier penalty dice pool the chance of a Critical Glitch rises dramatically. So stuff you aren't as good in become extremely dangerous. Unlike SR3 a simple failure is no longer the worst case senario.
5) A seriously injured character that tries to, or is forced to perform Tests is going to run through Edge like water.
| QUOTE (TheHappyAnarchist) |
| I really can't believe that they did not notice how amazingly good attributes are. With the base rules there is no reason for any character to increase skills when they could just increase attributes instead? |
Or maybe it's OK because it is all ability that costs progressively more per step. The base is mostly Attribute and you tend to build there first, but not exclusively. The top end of ability tends to be built with the more expensive Skills.
| QUOTE |
| The limits I want to get rid of are the arbitrary one skill at 6 or two skills at 5 plus whatever limits thing. Just too annoying to keep track of really. |
It's not hard to keep track of really, because it only applies to character creation. It's just to characters from having three or four skills at six, and no other skills. It helps keep characters a bit more... rounded. Once play starts, though, it no longer applies. You can raise as many skills to 6 as you have karma to spend.
One thing I've been wondering though -- does that limit apply to knowledge skills at character creation too?
| QUOTE |
| The thing I liked most about SR3 was the wound modifiers. When you were hurt, it actually affected you. Most games, including SR4 from what I have seen, it's like okay, so I am horribly wounded. -3 dice. Allrighty, so I lose one success. Yay. Just seemed more dangerous. Doubling it up makes it much more noticeable when you take a .45 cal round to the chest. |
Yea... loosing 1 die isn't nearly as serious as a +1 target modifier, in most cases. It does mean that if you have very few dice to start with, you could be prevented from even attempting an action though. Those mods can add up fast. For instance, in a dim alley (-2) firing at someone behind a trashcan (-2) while you yourself are behind a trashcan (-1) and lightly wounded (three boxes, -1) with a laser sight (+1) means that the "average" beat cop (agility 3, pistols 3) will only roll 1 die to hit on his first shot, and can't even attempt a second shot without spending edge. Doubling wound modifiers makes that situation a lot more likely.
All in all, I think I like the new wound system. In the old SR, that very first box of damage cut your successes in half and that was just too much. In this SR, for the average person, being almost dead is only a little worse than not using a smartlink. I think my characters spend more time slightly wounded, and less time almost dead, so overall I take it as an improvement
Certainly makes sense.
Of course, I never had any problems with characters taking 4 skills at 6 and nothing else.
Anyone that was that specialized generally ended up regretting it, as I give out runs and if the characters do not have a the skills they need to complete they have to find another way.
Of course, I never had any problems with characters taking 4 skills at 6 and nothing else.
Anyone that was that specialized generally ended up regretting it, as I give out runs and if the characters do not have a the skills they need to complete they have to find another way.
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.