Upward for a maxxed shooter, minimum skillset: two other gun-skills, dodge, perception.

4 skills 4->6: 176 karma. Will be a tad unrealistic, but that doesn´t matter in the numbers game.

Actually the more I see system comparrisons, the more I like SR4 and the less I like SR3. SR3 in my opinion catered too much to powergamers, people who just like to mow down the opposition while facing no real threat themselves. The Min-Maxing Combined with the Damage system, the Initiative System, and the Dodge Test to make combat a one sided joke unless players were put up against vastly superior opponents, which also got kind of dull. While SR4 gives up some realism, and I'll agree gives up some flexibility, it improves quite a bit in balance. The single best thing about SR4 in my group is the demise of the one dimensional character.

Here's what I don't get:

If your character has a skill equivalent to the "best of the best" in the world and a linked attribute that's likewise at the pinnacle of your species, and your experience/luck/deific favor (i.e., Edge) is the stuff of legend.... then where would you go from there?

I mean, if you're the absolute best in the world -- numerically speaking -- then who exactly do you need to outshine?

stevebugge, if that's how you feel then you weren't playing with the right people. Done right, SR3 was all 90% planning and possitioning vs 10% execution. Part of the one trick pony syndrome is due to the limited points to spend on skills. This was fixed by the skill group concept which is most welcomed, although it could be toned down some. Personally, I don't mind having skill groups caped at 4 and I wouldn't mind making that cap permenant, thus forcing one to specialize after a fashion.

Yes, Frank, there are actually people who prefer SR3's not quite exponentional probability curve (5/6, 4/6, 3/6, 2/6, 1/6, 1/6, 5/36, ..., U(n) is not a geometric sequence). It is, in some ways, more realistic. Little problems do hamper even the best during a stressful situation.

In SR4, with high dice pools you can shoot blindfolded and still hit more times than not while small dice pools mean that the slightest modifier will greatly reduce chances of success. The result is a little more D&D ish where you level (in this case skill level) is more important that situational factors and modifiers which is why just removing skill caps is a bad idea. By just removing skill caps one ensures the creation of characters who can not fail at a task ever, even if they are blind, deaf, mute qradruple amputees and they are on fire. No, removing or altering skill caps requires a complete reworking of the modifiers.

Isn't that the possibility to surpass yourself some people are asking for?

Rotbart, a counterpoint: tuna basketweaving. additionally, weaselbutter.

is weasal butter what i think it is?

Reading thru the thread and some good points are made.

I'm not sure what i think about the skill hard caps yet. Ive played it quite a bit, but not long enough to really see that skill hard cap in action yet. I suppose after you play a character for awhile, after maxing a couple skills you just keep going down the line. Where, as pointed, in SR3 you could keep pumping the one skill if that's what you wanted. But so far, the skill hard caps seem alright to me. Does lead for well roundedness.

As for attributes...i'm for natural hard caps, but I sorta like the idea of being able to go over the 1.5x with ware. I mean, it IS ware, you are paying for it in essence...and if ware can speed up a person to beyond who knows what, i son't see why someone with Agility 6 couldn't benefit from a 4th level of muscle toner. It's how we rolled it in 3, and i'd probably houserule that you can. I mean, i'd try it out first.....what with the attribute+skill pools, i might decide to go back to that cap limit when i see 30 firearms dice being rolled, but who knows. There still WOULD be limits....(Muscle Toner 4+ Suprathyroid is a +5...and as far as i can tell, it's as high as you can get), making the Agility 6 person and 11 instead of a 9. Two extra dice doesn't seem that bad.

As for chargen caps...those are easily modified for campaign type. Want to play a normal powered, but 'gang' style campaign? Allow more initial BP to be used for attributes, but less for resources(cap it at 20 or something, instead of 50.)

A player might have a concept for a rich, spoiled college kid who is smart, plays sports, etc....go ahead, let them take more than 50 BP of resources, but limit ware and stuff they can buy more(i mean, why would they have wired reflexes), but use it for lifestyle, etc...and let 'em take more attributes to reflect all their hours studying and at the gym...but limit their skills to 'they can't do jack'. It's all adjustable there.

Keep in mind that a lot of upgrades, like muscle replacement, are capped at 2 due to the Availability rules at char-gen. But such upgrades are more desirable in SR4, since Attributes are part of the dice pool now.


As far as the skill and Attribute caps, I think they have two problems with them.

First, starting characters should not be able to begin the game maxxed out in a skill - I don't think professional criminals should be like first-level characters by any means, but they should still have to earn some experience before they can match the very best.

Secondly, I don't think there is enough difference within the narrow numerical range given, for skills to really represent what they are supposed to. The difference between the absolute best and the next step down is one piddling die. Someone with average skill has a halfway decent chance of outperforming a master of that skill. The odds are against it, sure, but not enough to really represent what the difference between those skill levels should be. This wasn't a problem when skills where extremely difficult to improve at higher levels, but didn't have a cap.

the big deal has very little to do with anything in-character, and a lot to do with things out-of-character.

Yep out of character. I want to have it within the rules that I can make raven from Snow Crash. I want to the ability to make Danny Crane, or maybe an Iron chief, or Hendrix, or say Bruce Lee. All these people could be made in shadowrun if you gave them magic but as mundane nope. All of them do things that would take dice pools of at least 20.

It's not just fictional characters or Hollywood-glamorized martial artsist that SR4 can't let you recreate. Do a google search for Bob Munden, Tom Knapp, or Patrick Flanigan sometime. These guys are all a little chubby, a lotta old, or both -- yet they're some of the fastest men alive, with guns in their hands. They do things that are well outside the probability curves of SR4, and they do it (rather obviously) without astronomically high attributes.

How?

By being "min/maxers" or "powergamers" or "munchkins," or whatever you want to call them, and having very, very, high firearms-related skills. Which is something you can manage in SR3, but not SR4.

Hell, look at your average Blackwater or similar "civilian contractor" operating in the Gulf. I'd say more of them (and, in fact, more still-in-the-Service) are built like everyday guys than twitch-o-matic walls of muscle and adrenaline. It's quite possible, in the real world, to be a badass with skills and smarts, not phenomenally high physical attributes. It's too bad you can't manage it in SR4 (where, in order to be great, or even above average, at anything, you need a string of stats that'd do any action movie proud).

I have no issue with caps at chargen. I believe that once in play, if you want to spend the karma, you should be able to push the skill or attribute. The "Rule celing" basically takes the whole fun out of building a character. In SR3 KK can still strive to be the Better of the best. In SR 4 she ends up like every other Adept once she hits the maxims. I look at the hard caps after chargen as the "Glass celing" most women face in the business world. It is basically wrong. Why even try to strive for greatness when you know you will end up bumping your head?

My .02 Euros worth.

Did you Google 'em? These guys are fat old men, or withered old men, or fat middle aged guys. They are not Olympic athletes with out-of-this-world Agility scores, all weasel-quick and lean.

What they do is from skill and practice. Not raw physical ability.

And they would outperfom themselves if they possessed both their current skill-level AND the physical attributes of their youth.

In SR4 they would. But SR3 understood that ability and skill realistically count for more than raw, unrefined talent -- so they don't need their youthfull physiques to be able to shoot like this. Because they practice (ie, have a much, much, higher skill than 6 or 8 in their chosen field) obsessively, and have poured karma into their skill.

Which you just can't do in SR4.

Someone has yet to give a good reason for a hard skill cap, by the way. I mention these three guys because they are living proof that not only (a) skill counts for more than physical attributes, but (b) there's no such thing as a real-life skill cap. I've yet to see either point really refuted.

Someone with extreme talent and mediocre training might be nearly as good as they are. That is realistic. They did pour enough karma into it to make it skill 6, but anyone who does that can compete. There is a decreasing return on effort after learning the basics of any trade, so collecting the world elite in one category is fitting.

What I do see is limiting attribute dice by skill dice +x, but that is hardly an argument versus a hard cap or the linking of an attribute.

that's great, but it's completely tangential to Critias' point. Critias' point was:

You're also conveniently forgetting how malleable TNs are in SR3. A -2 TN for a smartlink is hugely more potent than a few extra dice. A -1 TN for aiming can make all the difference in the world. If the Pistols 8 SR3 shooter aimed, and had a smartlink, his TN would drop to a 5, and he could expect more than twice the successes. What sort of benefit for the SR4 character get for that? A few more dice? One more hit, maybe? Even ignoring TNs for a moment -- throwing in Combat Pool or Edge can (very obviously) make a huge difference.

It's easy to ignore all that (and I would, too, were I arguing that SR4 was "better"), and ignoring all of it is one of SR4's strengths (it's meant to be streamlined, after all, and including those things adds quite a bit of complexity). But making a comparison using SR3 where all you're doing is rolling base skill dice (without any of the other options available to an SR3 character), where those same options result in nothing but a few dice here and there for an SR4 character, is a truly lopsided comparison.

But, that's all besides the point: I'm not real sure what you're even trying to say with your fantastically in-depth example. What does it really have to do with what we're talking about?

Why pick a Pistols score of 8, anyways, and expect it to show anything worthwhile? The entire point of the discussion is that there is no skill cap in SR3 (so how does arbitrarily picking a specialization that a starting character can hit in 15 karma prove anything?).

as opposed to SR4, where every team's got a Fastjack-level hacker. completely unabsurd, yessir. i think i'd rather have absurdity in the long run than in the very, very short run.

Regarding skill being worth more than raw ability:
I think the thing that bothers me most about the skills is that the descriptions of what the various levels mean are utterly meaningless. A 7 is the pinnacle of skill? This skill is just as easy to obtain if you have a linked attribute 1, than if you have any other attribute.
Someone else could have a little cyber and bring their attribute up to, what, 10? Nah, skip exceptional attribute, let's just give them a 9. They're attempting to do something they have no skill at whatsoever, and must default.
Both characters have 8 dice. The expert who knows more than anyone else in the world in this field performs equally to the person who has no clue what they're doing.
Maybe someone will argue that this is reasonable for physical skills. I would disagree, but it could be argued. What about hacking? Or medical skills? It's just absurd. Not to mention that they're both solidly outperformed by someone with 5 attribute and 5 skill, neither of which are really that amazingly high.
So I really hate the table that days what a skill 1 means vs a skill 7, because when you look at actual performance it's meaningless. That table should be replaced with a table ranging from 1 to 20 or so, describing your ability relative to your total pool.

Until you limit max hits by skill x 2.

But yeah, as long as that house-rule-option is not used, or first aid the skill in question, attributes are way better.

No, when you put it that way it's not. But bear in mind the mildly retarted doctor is concidered to be the best in his field, a paragon of medical prowess, superior to all others. The description of skill 7 says so. My problem is less that the brilliant medical student can match him, and more with the description of what a skill 7 means. If they changed the description of skill 6 to "years of dedicated study" and 7 to "years of dedicated study with a knack for the skill", and said nothing at all about how good the person was at it, I would have less of a problem.