It was changed because it really sucked for mages unless they walked around all the time hopped up on Improved Initiative, and even then they mostly just waited for at least a couple of initiatives and the fight was over without the mage or the mooks you were fighting getting to do much of anything.


What to do, what to do?

My suggestion is that you first use a large dildo to beat him unconcious. No man can retain their dignity when beaten unconcious with a dildo. Then handcuff him, drag him to a bus station and wait for him to wake up. Once concious again give him swirlies in the public toilet until he sees the light.


"But I don't like violence?" Option Number Two

Stop playing in his game. Perhaps GM your own game.

Slow characters aren't as well off as they should be in SR3, but they also aren't screwed as much as they were in SR2.

Right now option 1 is looking good to bad he is also a good friend. And his wife might get mad at me on the other hand she might help....I will have to talk to her.

Other than this I really enjoy his game he does a good story. If we can't solve this I just might retire my mage and play something wired.

He is thinking of going to fourth edition I have not picked up the book yet has the rules changed for initiative in fourth?

I had a foci until I was captured and lost all my equipment. Right now we are on the run from at least one major corpration and we think either UCAS or CAS military and we have a deranged blood shaman from Atzlan after one of the team we have not had time to stop to replace lost items that cost nyuen like Foci.

If we make it to our base in Denver safely we will have time but we are not there yet.

If he won't change his mind I will show him your table thanks.

Yes the 4th edition initiative rules are substantially different. You have a derived initiative score based on your Reaction and Intuition Attributes (If you haven't seen the SR4 book yet Intelligence was split in to two component attributes Intuition and Logic, and Quickness split in to Reaction and Agility). To get your initiative score you roll dice equal to your initiative attribute, count the successes and add to your Initiative attribute. Compare all the scores and the highest goes first. Then if you have cyber or magic or drugs that give you extra Initiative Passes, those characters take another action after the first pass (in the same order) until all initiative passes are exhausted. It is similar in concept to the SR3 system but the numbers are smaller and the extra actions are guaranteed, not subject to a dice roll.

As one of the few people that refuse to move to even SR3, I worked on a system that I thought was a healthy compromise. The SR3 initiative is more friendly to slow people but took the focus off being on the cutting edge. In truth if you are faster there is no way a slow poke is going to pull off an action right after you.

I came up with something that took the 3 seconds and distributed the actions more evenly. It is a little more work to keep track of actions, but I think plays well and actually lets mages go in the middle of when a gun bunny shoots, rather than after. Then again the gun bunny doesn't go once, soak damage, wait for every slowboy to act, then go 4 more times.

Check it out.

Other than having to consult the table and working through it the first time, there were no complaints about the system, and everyone agreed that it was a more even reflection of a combat round. It is a system that is easily figured out.

Or you can burn out your mage a bit.

I can see your logic though, it always bothered me that stronger people can lift more, trolls with high body resisting more than a pastey decker, people with more willpower can resist spells better.

The trade off for the slowness of magic, is utility, flexiblitity, kicking some astral booty, astral travel, concealability, and a never ending supply of ammo. The price, not being a combat monster. I see how that is unfair.

Yes mages run out of ammo. It is called drain.

But it isn't about fair or unfair. It is about sitting at the table watching other people have fun playing the game. Which sucks. It is bad enough that you only get an action every once in a while, but the worst is no action at all because there were literally 10 to 15 complex actions taken by the rest of your team beforehand and the combat is already over.

You, him, handcuffs and a large dildo. Just remember to make sure you are very clear about explaining what your intention and plan is when asking her to join in.

If you are worried about action, you might have not had the right type of campaigns,
as a street sam. As a sammie you are useless when your mage is out astrally casing the place or fighting spirits. (which happen an aweful lot in the games I played)

Combat was not something that happened alot in our games, and when it did, it was deadly both ways. Our mages never complained about lack of actions because we didn't get exp for fighting, and they had alot to deal with on their own. The GM kept them busy with Astral barriers, reconnaisance, assensing and spirits. The mage was necessary for penetration with invisiblity, masking and other utility spells.

We also managed to keep combat deckers busy as well with having them crack electronics, and jury rig whatever we needed to get past security.

I have played both sides of the fence, My best char was a cutter, and he was really quick, 4d6+27, but I was just as happy playing my oak shaman with 1d6+3.

Once people realize that combat gets you killed, and doesn't earn you karma, they are usually a bit happier letting the gun bunny have his 15 minutes of combat fame, and then everyone else gets down to their business while the sammie watches.

I am not sure if combat was so deadly because all we sported was form fitting, and an armoured jacket, or because it was all about 1 shot 1 kill. Geek the mage was always the last thing on our minds, because razorboy was going to fill you with lead. They didn't mind the fact that each mission I would walk out with a serious wound and they didn't even get shot at.

You can still throw spells with drain, it just means you have to be more careful. If you are not soaking your drain, you are spreading yourself too thin.

Yes, that doth truely sucketh as well. We tried to avoid having extended astral sessions. Meaning no Astral Quests during a group session, those were taken offline to one on one between the GM and the player.

It is also why all Deckers were NPCs. Electronic wireheads PCs to crack doors, sure. But nobody owned a Deck.

You are describing having the big blocks of dead air spread around the table, that is just sharing the misery. Cutting up the dead air into smaller, more paletable chunks is a solution.

It is also IMO the biggest strength of SR4. Everyone is more or less playing the same game, meaning less sitting around doing diddly. Diddly still happens. Bound to to some extent when you have different types of action and different specialties in a team to deal with them. The diddly just tends to be in smaller doses, and not quite is stark as to have people left feeling their characters might as well not be there.

I can honestly say that we never really had blocks of dead air, everything basically runs
concurrently. As you are moving through the facility, the mage is running the astral, the decker/electronic geek comes with you an pops open security. Sometimes the mage would stay offsite with someone watching over the body, but most of the time they were in on the action, because we needed them there. Our groups were usually GM + 3-4 players so everything flowed quickly. Astral quests were done on personal time, but casing the joint astrally was always done before the run started. Only a few players I have played with over the years were overtly "secretive and protective" about their contacts. We were all about sharing the story line with the whole group.

So the strength of SR4, is not really something specific to version 4 but rather a global style change for some people. We have always played this way, since the start of SR2. I guess we were just keeners. (probably why I am so fond of the ruleset)

Amen. The bogdown times aren't based on the type of action being performed (deckers do not bog down the game, nor do mages, nor do streetsams) but the degree to which the actions can be parallelized. A decker cracking security is no problem. If you wait to have that decker crack security until everyone is standing in front of a door that there's no other way to open, you have a problem. A mage doing astral recon is no problem. A mage doing astral recon so that the rest of the party can even begin figuring out what to do is a problem. A Rigger cracking a drone network is not a problem. A Rigger cracking a drone network so lethal that the rest of the team will be slaughtered if they move in before the Rigger finishes is a problem.

So on and soforth.

~J

SR4 was a change to the game to support that sort of thing to happen in all sorts of places, and with the different aspects running the same Initiative. On the road. In the barrens. In the wilderness. Not just in a wired up dungeon crawl building.

With SR3 the Deckers were limited to that overwatch of mainly on preplanned breakins, or their own separate runs in the Matrix (AKA pizza time). If secure building breakins was the main staple of your campaign? The dead air wasn't as bad. The rest of the time they were either not deckers at all the player would be on Nintendo in the next room. The rigger/decker combo didn't really work well at all unless you cooked up the cash numbers, because deckers were extremely cash intensive and riggers that wanted to do much were as well. But the hardware overlap was near nill. The closest it came was the patch up of CCSS.

I'm thinking of CCSS as an attempt to allow riggers to do overwatch. Although I guess they did also have that rigger emulation thing for deckers. But both kept the two world separate and using different hardware/software.

we Never did Pizza time.... all the while the decker was in the matrix doing his thing, there was action happening IRL, we would setup defenses, scan the hallways with drones, keep astral lookout, or at least jack in and hitch a ride. Not all our runs involved buildings... some were old temples ... etc. A decker would not come along in the old temple, unless they would be piloting something ... or had other skills, like demolitions etc. The whole scene was like a movie cutting smoothly back and fourth.

We kept things reasonable in our campaigns, we never really went past 2055 meta plot wise. I think two people actually scored MP lasers in several years... no one ever used hardened armour on a run. I think I actually used a panther twice in my whole career.

So what did the player do then?

Everyone had more than one character? That would certainly explain the lack of dead air and pizza time.

So what would have happened if a Decker showed up for that run?

it depends ... if it was me, I would probably just run something else. ... most of my runs were made up on the fly anyhow, if someone else was running ... they might ask them to grab an arch type ... or just tell them ...you will be more combat then decker ... or possibly have them run some drones for surveillance .... still get 1d6 dice and can control drones.

....all because if the decker PC showed up as a decker for the temple run it would be largely pizza time for the player. So SR3 didn't have any pizza time problems, it was just a lack of people having alternate PCs.

That used to be what I did. But now with us on the run being hunted by such powerful foes it has just gotten silly and not fun.

I can't go astral they have my DNA and the minute I pop my head in astral down come more mages and shamans than I can handle alone. We have the resources of a major corp and the military after us. I am out of elementals and cannot stop and summon more.

For the last six sessions I have not been able to get fully healed and have not been able to cast any spells because I don't dare take drain in case we get ambushed again and I get shot again.

We are running for our lives our contacts are being hunted down and killed our bolt holes wiped out. We are often ambushed by people who want us dead so going last in the initatiive with street sams who go multiple time before me and targeting me with the intent to just kill me is just not fun anymore. Sooner or later I will not be able to soak the damage.

To be honest I almost wish my character would just get geeked and die but then it would be hard to bring a new one in at the moment. I am just a little frustrated.

Perhaps she may even lend you one of hers. If you're lucky, she'll have one of those 20"+ monsters you can wield like a baseball bat.

Sounds like your problem isn't with initiative, but with getting in over your head. A change in game mechanics will not save your neck, you will just take more drain and pop off earlier. Are your sam's getting dropped before you? Hopefully you can ride this one out. You might need a little talk with your GM. (but I cannot say since I do not have all the facts.)

Ummm... a decker in SR3 would still be as lost, and an adept in space would still be as dead. If a character is put into a situation where he has no applicable skills, then it has nothing to do with the system or edition of the rules.

As GMs, we have to adjust our individual games to suit the players. I also made deckers only NPCs, simply because I felt that giving a decker time to run the matrix properly would create downtime for the other characters. I know that other (better?) GMs have found ways around this, but many of them do so by streamlining matrix encounters.

Elfwitch: I was very happy with SR3 and the change to how initiative works. I know that it is less "realistic", but for gameplay it makes much more sense. For that matter, the breakdown of initiative passes that was posted elsewhere in this thread (reminds me of Champions) is another good way around it. I would hate for someone to retire a character over an issue that can be compromised on, so I heartily suggest sittting down with your GM (without the blunt objects) and trying to reach a workable compromise.

Seriously. Just because you get to act after everyone else has gone once and then you have to endure everyone else's attacks when you have no pool it dosen't mean that you're suddenly going to kick ass and take names.

Obviously the campaign that you're in is a high lethality one and whether it's SR2 or SR3 initiative is beside the point. You just have to do what you can to minimize your statistical risk (remember that dropping prone is a free action) and try and come out as best you can. If you really feel that you need to get you shots in delay your action you get in the first combat turn and act first in the second combat turn.

And you know what? In such a high lethality campaign your character may die. The key is not to get upset over that. For a fictional character death can be a consumation. It can be dramatic, emotional, or perhaps callously random and dramatic in that way. If the campaign is designed to kill PCs then death is part of the story. The question is, how does your PC die?

"I'm not running anymore. Tomorrow morning the Red Samurai will come, and I will die, but I will make that death the consumation of my skill, experience, and training."

"I'm not running anymore. It's too much. I'm tired, and what's the point? Wherever we go, they follow. I'm tired, man. I don't want them to get me. I'm ending it all now. Sorry guys, I can't hack it no more." *commits suicide*

"I'm not running anymore. We obviously can't escape and we can't fight them all. Tomorrow morning I'm going to try and surrender. They might shoot me on sight but frankly speaking it's the best chance I have. Better to die smart than die tired."

"I'm not running anymore. We can't easily escape someone with this many resources and they're too strong to fight. But maybe if they get a few of us they'll forget about the others. Tomorrow I'll be here in the morning when they come, and I'll die. I need one or two people to die with me, and we'll let [insert youngest character here] slip away in the night. Maybe at least a couple of us can survive."

"The full moon in the sky is the most beautiful sight in the world, and warm Japanese sake is the best taste in the world. Let's celebrate our friendship with perfect sincerity before the morning comes, and then meet our enemy with the same perfect sincerity."

See? No need to get stressed out of it. Remember that you don't have to "win" to have one hell of a character-driven experience.

You know, the first SR GM I ever had was a killer GM. So I focused on making my characters die in good ways.

Ah. When the situation is this bad, it always brings pertinent Radiohead lyrics to mind.

o/`
You do it to yourself, you do
And that's why it really hurts,
'Cause you do it to yourself, it's true
You and nobody else.
/ o/`

I always wonder what the team did when this much force is after them. So often do you hear this half, but not the half in which the team made some bad choices, mouthed off to the wrong guy(s)/gal(s), took a run that should have been turned down.

Ummm... That was Platinum's point to Brahm. I think Brahm was to busy advocating SR$ to bother.

Elfwitch, maybe you need to ask for straegies and tactics? I think I'd start summoning Watchers and have them get the astral magicians off your back. Have them attack their foci, too. You don't need ant special equipment to summon them, and they can't conjure while astrally projecting. So it becomes something of a battle of attrition on your end to get rid of them.

You might see about having them follow your astral form on a merry chase around the world and then underground and back to your body just before your astral travel time is up. Then have a teammate bury the entrance and trap them underground. It takes a base time of 30 minutes to travel through 1 meter of earth (reduced with a Charisma 4 test) so you may kill them off this way. Combine with conjuring and sending the watchers at this point and they can't run and fight at the same time.

Pitch this idea at him...*shrug*

We saw something on a run involving alien creatures that nulify magic. The corp developing them thinks we saw more than we did and wants us dead.

The military wants us alive and had us on ice for 9 months probing our minds until we were taken by another shadowrun team hired to free us all of them but one bought the farm. But we were knocked out the entire time and none in the military will just come out and ask us oh knows instead of kidnapping us we might have worked with them told the little we know.

We are totally screwed.

I will show him this.

Other way around. This isn't about SR4 at all, this is about SR3 pizza time and the denial that it existed. Platinum is trying to justify SR3 pizzatime by trying to imply that SR4 doesn't help with it.

Of course I couldn't speak to the specifics of the particular temple, but the team doesn't have to bring vehicles or drones for there to be things for the decker/rigger to do and get involved. Getting rid of the exclusive nature between deckers and riggers, and making electronic warfare more playable, and the Matrix far widerspread and much more common in the game world makes it much easier to mix it in to most senarios. But again this isn't about SR4, it is about me being told that decker pizzatime didn't exist in SR3.


@Platinum - Besides the fact you should have used magicians instead of adepts in space you provide a great example, for my assertion. Space travel tends to be uncommon outside of fairly high powered senarios. Driving down the street or seviceless Barrens buildings more common. In SR3 it tends to be pretty common to be away from Matrix access and influence. Not always of course, but it certainly happens.

It only existed as much as any other character type doing their 'thing', or you were/had a crappy GM. There was a matrix thread going here up until about the time Synner, the guy explaining it, knew SR$ was coming out, probably writing for it, and decided actually clarifying and explaining the SR3 decking rules to jokers like you would detract from SR$ sales and how it 'fixed' decking.

Are you even reading this stuff you are writing? I do not know the specifics of the temple either, but I will compare it to the Harlequin scenario where the team goes into the Amazon. There is no 'pixxa time' for the decker, there is just about nothing for the decker (or the rigger for much of the scenario) to do once you deprive them of their toys. SR$'s wireless world is not going to make a difference.

A lot of simple house rules ignoring the mid-brain rigging explanation did the same, or implementing the on off trigger or a second datajack.

Extrapolating this to its logical conclusion makes shadowrunning obsolete in SR$.

It is about you baiting and guiding the discussion that way so you could pounce with this generally accepted, but faulty conclusion.

And in SR4 Big Brother is always watching and collecting information making shadowrunning impossible impractical. You could do it, but are likely to be caught if anyone cares.

@tisoz

In a court that general processes of question and answer is called cross-examining, and has centuries of track record of testing and uncovering facts. His initial claim is not consistant with his actions.

Yes, removing sizable portions of rules and adding in a number of house rules could help. For various reasons I and the people I played with did not find the effort of making all the rules changes worth the gain of adding the extra rules for decking. Nor did we consider multiple PCs per player solution one that fit for use. So SR4 isn't the only way of addressing that one root problem of the limited domain of deckers. Of course SR4 was aimed at addressing more issues than that, so the rule changes went beyond that.


As for your misinformation about SR4, we are likely already well over this line. http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=11854 So I guess I'll just leave it at that.