I just briefly looked at SR4 the other day at my FLGS and was not sure if I should get it or not. I have played SR2 and SR3, and I think SR3 is the most refined of the two, so far.

Somebody tell me the good points about SR4 and maybe some advantages (POV of course) that it has over previous editions.

THIS IS NOT...I REPEAT...NOT...INTENDED TO START A FLAME WAR.

Let's keep this civil shall we?

PRO: They simplified a lot of stuff while maintaining the core of the game very well.

CON: There are still holes in the rules that you can drive a GMC Banshee through.

Also, see my sig.

I think I'm a good spokesman for SR4. I hadn't actually played SR3 until just a few months ago, and despite being fairly well-versed in a variety of systems, I found the rules to be pretty unfriendly. I actually played for a couple of months and was still only just starting to understand how combat worked.

On the flip side, SR4 I got after reading the book through once. The standardization of tests, the resolution of combat, it is much more streamlined.

So, for beginners, SR4 is definitely the way to go.

I'll admit its not perfect. From my outsider's perspective, I often wished that certain rules were explained more fully, or more examples given. SR4 really needs some sourcebooks covering things like hacking and vehicles/drones in more detail.

SR3's big problem was the gargantuan amount of fiddly rules around nearly every profession. Riggers constantly had to worry about jamming rules and vehicular combat while the deckers were getting sucked into ultraviolet systems with matrix combat while the mages were zooming around on the astral having astral combat while the street samurai were dealing with cybermancy rules while engaged in plain old-fashioned bloody combat. For just about every facet of life in SR1-3, there's at least ten rules, none of which ever come into play with any other facet of life.

SR4 is far from perfect and definitely needs a few errata sweeps, clarifications, and a reprinting. But so far it's more coherent than its predecessors. We'll see whether that still holds true after the other books get released.

Hm... d20 kind of sold me on the "when in doubt, use a single test to solve the question" idea. For most of the stuff SR3 has rules I use some sort of skill test, or opposed skill test, with modifiers.
Instead of checking or learning an obscure or special rule we just set a TN and roll, and get on (well, most of the time, we got our share of rules checking too).
Is SR4 similarily sculpted?

yes, it is, from what i've heard, you have a base TN (5), and then merely add or subtract dice based on the modifiers

Yep. Everything has a fixed TN of 5.

Although there's this Threshold stuff that comes up occasionally, where your test has to make a certain number of "hits" (previously known as "successes") before it's considered to be successful.

For instance, locating a 10,000 nuyen item on the grey market with an Availability of 20 requires you to roll Charisma+Etiquette(+modifiers) until you get 20 hits, with each roll representing a week of looking.

Sorry boys. AH is right, this topic has been amply discussed elsewhere. (And you'd better get out of here before the real flame war begins -again-)

Cheers,

Max

SR4 runs faster. It also has more variability - high stats don't guarantee success. So even weak little security types can stand up to you once in a while (or if they're smart).

You can play a combat focused character with no cyberware or magic whatsoever if you so choose. I have done this.

None of the spells are useless. None seem totally broken, either. Compare to Force 6 stunball and Force 1 improved invisibility.

The hacking rules don't suck. Hackers are a part of the team now, instead of something everyone else has to work around.

Well said, Clyde.

i would note that Clyde's first point is somewhat misstated. the reason weak security types can stand up to you once in a while is because of the lack of variability; stats and skills are confined to a narrower range, and the chance getting success (er, hit, whatever) never changes. that means that security types are much closer to PCs in terms of ability than they were in SR3 (and PCs are similarly closer to Ghosts/Wildcats/supar awsom bad guys du jour). moreover, in a fixed-TN system, high stats do guarantee more successes than in a variable-TN system such as SR3. a character with 24 dice in SR4 is going to succeed just about every single time he tries, no matter how difficult the task; a character with 24 dice in SR3 is going to succeed pretty often--unless the TN is 20.

and, really, you can say the same thing about SR3. give those weak security types some good security armor and high-end weapons, and run them intelligently, and they can give just about any group some serious trouble.

My favorite thing about sr3 was that danger WAS around every corner.

Go and pop a gang member and with just one luck of the dice, bam, you're withstanding whatever weapon they aimed at you.

mfb:

What if you want somene who is really good at something to be able to succeed all the time? The problem with the high TN thing was that once you break 6 the probability goes all screwy. How well you do has little to do with your skill and more to do with one dice rolling six alot, beyond being more likely to get that first six high skills did nothing on high TN test. I got sick of the amount that low stealth characters beat high stealth characters on tests, surely the more skilled person should be consistantly better. You want to make something hard in SR4 pile on the mods (range, cover, moving target, bad lighting etc) and ramp up the threshold. Oh so a novice can't get lucky because he looses his pool (actually he can see edge), and the best shot in the world which 24 dice is more or less stands some chance. I like this in a system.

Liper:

In SR4 danger is still there. The ganger is much more liekly to survive that shot than in SR3 so more likely to shoot back...

Ophis, the problem is that things in SR4 can easily reach the point where low-skilled people have zero chance at accomplishing something. In SR3, you always had a chance, no matter how slim; but in SR4, if your (pool + edge) - modifiers is less than the threshold, you just can't succeed, or at least not without invoking the "lots of sixes" problem you mentioned.

SR4 has got its advantages. It's easier to read, easier to follow, and has working rigging/decking rules. OTOH, it has a really messed-up chargen system (I'm going with HB's review on this one) and favors one-trick ponies. Every actual SR$ character I've seen looks about the same, except with one or two super-maxed stat pools. Anything else just doesn't work out.

One, sometimes I don't want less skilled people to be able to succeed. I sometimes want a situation when the specialist in a field shines, and only he can succeed, just the kinda games I run, usually I will avoid putting the threshold so high as to shut out the less skilled character, if they really want to succeed at the impossible test thay can always burn edge to get a crit success.

I've found characters look no more or less samey than SR3 characters, sure the skills are lower but most pc I've helped create are wholey different to each other. I do however play with a very none munchkin group so the whole min-max thing don't happen in my games(i'm lucky that way). I've found the chargen system to be very nice actually, easy to use and creates well rounded characters not one trick ponies. Yes you can probably get gross one trick ponies but I haven't seen it happen yet. Most of my players work on a "if your really good at one thing you won't get to use it" mindset, which I will say isn't entirely true but I do try to keep players on their toes.

I have found that 400 point doesn't give quite the char I want to run for (a bit weak for the craziness I go in for in games) so I use 450 for most games, I will probably run some games at 400 if I want to do the newbie runners thing. It has to sad though having read HBs review I wondered if we were reading the same gamebook...

Aye, now it is not death to a non troll pc to get shot, it will hurt but mostly no 1 shot wonders..

My personal opinion is that SR4 is a very decently written draft of a first edition game system. There are some solid game mechanics ideas here, but many of them need to be playtested a little better. Layouts need a little work; moving the Qualities section from right in the middle of the chargen rules to the end is one of the more obvious fixes that can come out with a little editing work.

The point-buy system has gotten so much more labyrinthine, and yet is so much more unified into a single build point total rather than the odd abstracted bits in the SR3 system that it becomes a comparatively simple task to turn everything into stepped costs, effectively making the advancement system and the chargen system into one unified whole.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm enjoying this pre-beta release of New Shadowrun, and I look forward to SR4.5/SR5, when the rules will finally finish being properly developed. It's a shame I had to pay for it, but in this age of planned obsolescence what else can you do?

I really dislike games that encourage people not to care if they get shot.

Thus I will either double the wound penalties or make them subtract hits and not dice.

Handily solves that problem. Well that and letting them know what happens when they get shot.

I really hate it when a player takes x damage and goes, okay, I can take two more of those before I die, so I should be able to take down threat Y.

ophis, i can't argue with you about SR3's stealth mechanic. i really hate it. don't get me wrong: for all my arguments against SR4, i'm not satisfied with SR3. it's just that i'm even less satisfied with 90% of SR4.

the probabilities do not go 'all screwy' after TN 6, with the noted exception that TN 6 and 7 are identical (as are 12 and 13, 18 and 19, etcetera). they progress on a fairly smooth curve. if you want to make someone in SR3 who can succeed in the face of extreme circumstances, then you need to think and plan ahead--figure out what possible circumstances could be set agaisnt your character, and acquire gear/techniques/magic that counteracts or ameliorates those circumstances. i like that in a system--the need to think, the inability of pure skill to overcome all odds reliably. in SR4, a guy with 15 dice in a firearms skill will be able to hit a target at maximum range blindfolded every single time, without taking even a little bit of time to aim (it's -8 dice for noseeum targets, and -3 dice for max range, right?). that, to me, is not a good system, and the problem is only exacerbated at higher levels. i want to have my cake and eat it too: i want it to be possible to do just about anything, but i want the probability of "impossible" things to be pretty low.

re: wound penalties. one thing that could be used to quell some of that in SR3 was the knockdown rules. they were bulky (an extra roll every time you take damage? bleah), but they did occasionally force wounded characters to act like wounded characters--ie, lay on the ground and moan.

ah. then i can cut my example down to 13 dice. with blindfire and extreme range, that leaves you with 4 dice, which i believe allows you to buy a single hit. even if it doesn't, 4 dice gives you upwards of a 50/50 chance. find me someone irl who can hit a distant target while blindfolded every other time he fires, and i will pay you one hundred dollars.

Yep the rule every one complaining about how "easy" SR4 is for high skill charskeeps forgetting. Blindfire is off Int not Agl, for most gun bunnys thats at least a minus 2, for a super tricked out gun monster as much as -5 or 6 on top of the other modifiers. And you opponent gets to dodge.

As an example

Metatron (converted over 300+ karma sniper from SR30

Longarms 7 (sniper spec+2)
Agil 12
Int 6
ref recoreder long arms +1
Smart link +2

Normal shot 24 dice pretty looney right
Blind folded no camera extreme range foolishness 7 dice pretty good actually but far more likely to miss than before. But he has to now where opp is. and he does has a smartlink telling him if he's on target, with out that, 5 dice (about) average street punk who can use his gun level, but this guy is the best in the world so I can live with that.

A big point to rember in SR4 is that the opps always get to dodge if they know its coming, this really affects stuff.

ps- I'm enjoying this a reasoned discussion of 3vs4 with no flames. Why can't all threads be like this

One of my gaming group has what he calls the ".45 Rule" with respect to game system damage. Basically it says that if you were to shoot a normal human in the head at point blank with a heavy pistol, he should be instantly dead or dying. D&D's escalating hit point system, for instance, would not follow the realism rule.

Super Warhawk (6P) applied to the head (called shot, +4 DV) does a base 10P. That's exactly enough to drop your average human, even without any additional hits from the attacker (who would need at least one, for a total of 11P, but that 1 would likely be soaked by Body).

see, i really can't live with the best guy in the world having an 80% chance of hitting a target he can't see, and that is, what, half a mile away? yes, this assumes that he somehow knows where the target is, but the same restriction applies in SR3, so they cancel each other out since we're discussing differences--same with dodging. heck, it's easier to dodge in SR3, a lot of the time.

and it's not like this guy is taking his time, aiming, checking his posture, bracing his weapon properly. no, this is a snap shot. he's shooting from the hip. this is him standing around with a gun in his hands, looking at his shoes, and then all of the sudden he brings the gun up and bambambambambambambambambambam he's got eight holes in the target.

sure, factors like having a lower Int than Agi apply. but this is just one example. it's the easiest example--the modifiers invovled are the highest available. you can do the same thing using other modifiers. the modifiers don't matter, as long as you can throw enough dice at the situation. wounds, darkness, range, cover--sure, there's gear, 'ware, and magic in SR4 that will ameliorate stuff like that, but they're no better than just having boatloads of dice. in SR3, boatloads of dice are not the answer to every problem. i prefer that.

I think what mfb is getting at is that in SR3, higher TNs effectively take away a percentage of your successes -- whether you're rolling 5 dice or 25 dice, a +4 TN is going to take away most of your successes. This is good for modelling really hard things -- a TN of say, 12, is really hard even for a world-class character, without being completely impossible for mere mortals.

In SR4, on the other hand, all you can do is take away dice. -6 dice really sucks if you only have 5 dice to start with, but if you have 25 dice it's not such a big deal.

Personally, I think the simpler mechanics are worth it. But then, I'm not afraid to tell my players "No, you can't shoot that guy half a mile away, because you're BLINDFOLDED!"
(And conversely, my players aren't likely to whip out the book and say "But according to the table on p143, that's only a -9 penalty!")

It's the tradeoff for simplicity. Tracking both TNs and dice can afford more opportunities for realism, but having only one dimension of modifiers allows for easier gameplay.

I'm not saying you're wrong to want more realism and I'm not saying the specific example of an overskilled sharpshooter's blindfire is invalid. I am saying that for the middle-ground people throwing around 10 dice, the blindfire mechanic works well enough. The gun-fu masters do break versimilitude, but I guess that's their job.

BTW: Don't forget about cover modifiers!

eh. i just don't see how SR4's mechanic is all that much more simple than SR3's. "add up modifiers and apply them to a TN, then roll a static number of dice plus however much out of your dice pool you prefer" doesn't strike me as much harder to grasp than "add up modifiers and apply them to your dice, then roll against a static TN and subtract successes equal to the threshold". they seem about equal to me--though i'll admit that SR3's mechanic allows players to put more thought into their dice rolls. they don't have to, but they can. but, well, i kinda like that.

In SR3, things can modify both number of dice as well as the target number.

In SR4, things can modify the number of dice.

That's all I meant: 3rd had two dimensions of modifiers, 4th has just one.

but that's not true. in 4th ed, things can modify how many of your successes count. that's two dimensions. to be fair, certain spells in SR3 also used the threshold mechanic. but we're looking at overall simplicity, right? how the die mechanics affect gameplay? in which case, it's necessary to weight the amount of complexity a given mechanic adds by how often that mechanic is used. thresholds in SR3 are not common, so they don't really add much to the overall complexity of the mechanics.

edit - re: bull's comments. like i said, i'm not holding SR3 up as the paragon of game systems. there are plenty of things about SR3 i don't like, grenade damage being one of them. yes, every game has wonky rules that don't make sense--but in SR3, those wonky rules were not the base mechanic. sure, all games require GM adjudication--but one of the things a game should do is to reduce the amount of GM intervention required. the GM has a lot on his plate already, without making him step in every time a person with lots of dice tries to do something hard.

Threshold situations are either rare or all over the place in both games (depending on how you look at it), so I intentionally left them out.

If I had 3 successes/hits on my attack, then the other guy has a Threshold of 3 on his defense to avoid the damage. Technically that's not a Threshold-based test like Availability is, but it's similiar in function.

Real SR4 Threshold tests are somewhat rare, but you're right in that they do exist. In any case, SR3 had Open Tests as well, and I'm glad they're gone.

i can certainly agree that open tests are teh suxx0r. i was under the impression that thresholds are a lot more common in SR4 than SR3, though.

yes. but we're discussing the differences between SR3 and SR4, and SR4 uses that same quasi-threshold mechanic. therefore, increasing successes and comparing successes do not increase or decrease the relative complexity of either system.

In comparison, indeed:

So SR3 had three dimensions (dice, target, successes), whereas SR4 has two (dice, successes).

As more dimensions are what makes mechanics more complex,

like i said above, actual thresholds are rare in SR3. therefore, they don't add much to the overall complexity. personally, i'd be happy just removing thresholds from SR3; it's not all that great a mechanic.

Then there's SR3 pool allocation, but that's an obvious complication.

agreed. i like the pools, though--they give players more control, and they give GMs a safety net. but, yeah, they add complexity.

anyway. i'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before. if anyone else makes a big misstatement, i might jump in again.

I didn't mind the pools either, myself. However I have direct experience with more than one player that was overwhelmed by them in addition to everything else.

Player: "Okay, I roll 6 skill, plus, umm.... 5 out of my 9 combat pool against a TN of 4. Wait, he's got reach, so my TN is 5? Oh, then I'll use 7 combat pool, so that's 13 dice against a 5. Crap, I forgot I was wounded and using a sword, so I'll actually roll...."

Rest of Group: "JUST PUNCH THE GUY!"