Suddenly his 8 edge cycles down very quickly as he runs out of luck.

Additionally,

Please don't let me stop you from beating a dead horse, but make sure that we all know the state of affairs.

For Fastjack, Unwired could provide additional rules similar to the knowledge skills from SR3 which increased your pools depending on the type of host you were in. The flood of extra skills would definitely show the difference that 40 years of experience can make.

Bad? Nah. Amused or maybe bemused at worst. Thanks though.

i'd be satisfied with "close".

This sort of stuff isn't necessary in Unwired since it'd just be a strict rehash of the SR3 book. What's needed is new ways of using and looking at this brand new Wireless Matrix. My group has already been using Knowledge skills in that fashion using the teamwork rules. Roll complimentary skill and successes add dice to primary skill. This might even be covered in the rules (can't remember right now).

It doesn't make me feel bad. I was just trying to get through to Azralon how him trying to appeal to all people to stop getting worked up over perceptions of mimicking reality in the game were going to be about as effective as screams into the dead and empty night.

The point of Mr. Lucky was to demonstrate that you can have a character who's at an equal skill level, and *still* have an Edge of 8. Since that's the absolute cap for any character whatsoever, all of Fastjack's experience becomes meaningless.

As for creative character tweaking goes: one example would to create a maxed-out otaku. Under the current rules, all programs are capped out at 6; there's no way even an experienced PC can get much higher. However, an otaku can invoke Threading to give his Complex forms a higher effective rating than Fastjack's. He can still have a high Edge, and his Threading makes up the difference in skill levels-- he becomes equal, if not superior, on a good Threading roll.

Even if we allow for self-coding of programs and OS, there's only so much Fastjack could reasonably have gotten. Assuming a Software of 6, a Logic of 7, and an Edge of 8, we still aren't looking at much of a gain in the less than five years the new matrix has been in place. What's more, all of that is possible in the hands of a starting character, so Fastjack's bonuses start dropping rapidly unless we invoke serious GM handwaving.

You may be right that, in play, two dice is a mechanical advantage. In my mind, it's worth .66 additional successes, which means 1 more success more often than not. Which often spells the difference between success and failure, but it does mean that you're barely squeaking by, instead of completely dominating. As you pointed out in your examples, even though some people might theoretically be equal from the view of us Joe Averages, some of them consistently beat others at the same level. There needs to be more granularity at this level.

There are several problems here. First of all, as Mr. Lucky demonstrated, SR4 hasn't noticeably leveled the field in generalists vs. hyperspecialists. In fact, the one-trick ponies not only keep their advantage, they don't have much in the way of relative disadvantages.

Because of this, hyperspecialization is the optimal build choice. Just like how in SR3, you would always set certain skills to max, you now always set one given skill to the max. Players are encouraged, through the mechanics of the build-point system, to create legends.

So, intentions aside, the caps actually do two things: they make it so starting characters are encouraged to be equal to the living legends of Shadowrun; and they prevent a character from being able to ever improve. I'm all for a system that prevents abuses and encourages more balanced characters, but the way SR4 has gone about it isn't one of the more effective ways I've seen.

Numerical differences are only important if they translate into a differential results. If the end result is identical the numerical differences are only there for color.

To take your example - while your premise is perfectly valid in theory, in practice (in SR3) if you asked 5 min-maxers (perfect choice to represent an Olympian's focus on performance) to come up with the best Sixth World 4 minute mile runner and even slapped 100 karma points on the basic chargen build to represent experience, you'd end up with a one or two die variation in dice for the relevant tests. This is because to get the same end result you optimize the same basic skill sets so ultimately nobody gets a "serious statistical advantage" when competing with athletes (or anything else) at the same skill level. SR3 has long recognized this reality and included this in play with the Prime Runner/Opposition rules - as the definition of an Equal adversary.

SR4 simply incorporates this into the basic framework of performance levels (though the Att+Skill combination can lead to minor variations).

This is a false argument since lower base TN applies to both parties involved in such a straight up competition. In fact its one of the reasons I mentioned unaugmented athletes above - without augmentation there's no significant modifier that wouldn't apply to everyone involved identically and hence in SR3 like in SR4 it boils down to overall dice pools, of which IMHO variation in specialists is minimal in both cases.

/bow

I think of Nicky from Casino (Joe Pesci). He's an excellent leg breaker but that's all he does: he breaks legs. He never bothers to learn how to do anything other than break legs because he can intimidate people into giving him what he wants. Until he gets capped for not being happy with a leg breaker's role and ticking off too many people. Great recipe for dying young.

With the way things are in SR4 I've got no trouble with specialists. Look at the olympians: once they get their gold...then what? Teach? Sure, if they learn how to share what they know. Be a TV personality? That requires social skills and/or perform. Vertical growth will only take you so far and you'd best be happy where that is or else like Nicky you're going to be disappointed.

IMO most of the top olympic athletes are basically playing a game of chance: is today the day that I make no mistakes (aka not rolling anything below a 4)? Barring that, is today the day I make fewer mistakes than my opponents?

That's where secondary skills come in. Athletes in many cases will try to psych out their opponent; intimidation is, if not rampant, not unheard of. Does athlete X win because he's so much better or because he rattles his opponents' cages so much?
Is athlete Y just such an annoying prig that your desire to crush his skull distracts you from your event?

Plus this is Shadowrun, not Olympiad 2054. For all we know there are complementary skills that can factor into certain athletic endeavors, much like Gymnastics can be incorporated into a full dodge. Complementary skills also make an appearance with Forgery suggesting it is possible that for performance-type activities where you try not only succeed at an action but do so with a particular style or appearance (e.g. ski jumping where a good jump is more than "controlled landing") you may need Athletics(Skiing) limited by a Jump test or in ice-dancing you'd have the Perform(Dance) test limited by the Athletics(skating) test.

The GM running a multi-dimensional game does wonders to having multi-dimensional PCs. The flatter the game a GM runs the better off a flat PC is. The better off a flat PC is the more you are going to see flat PCs.

Don't like flat PCs? Don't run a flat game.

By definition, if two characters are fully min/maxed with the same amount of BP/Karma/XP/GP/CP/whatever to perform a certain task, they're going to end up equally good at said task. This problem (if you consider it a problem) is inherent in any non-randomized character generation system for RPGs.

My personal issue is more with how there appears to be a strict limit beyond which a non-augmented character (or maximally augmented character) can no longer gain an advantage over another similar character in a particular task. A breaking point where there's no longer any point in training harder and longer to better yourself in something. An absolute ceiling of As Good As It Gets.

This just seems wrong to me. I feel that the ability to get better and better, to improve yourself with no concrete limit to what you can achieve, is central to the human condition. I do not understand why the rules would deny characters this, and it didn't help that when this was first discussed people were trying to pass it off as "realistic" instead of as a means to make the game have a certain kind of balance.

No doubt many people feel that kind of balance appealing -- else I suppose the rule wouldn't be there. Maybe it's just that I often use the real world as a kind of ideal for game balance, but I feel the ever increasing cost vs. ever decreasing returns model makes for a more enjoyable game, and is more realistic to boot. And no, it's not exactly problematic to house rule that into SR4.

When the TN is lower, the variation in the amount of successes rolled with a particular amount of dice is smaller, hence more dice will more reliably roll more successes. Unless my Math Processor is really acting up, having 20 dice vs. 10 is much more likely to produce a victory in an opposed test if the TNs are 2 than if the TNs are 6.

You're missing the point or chosing to ignore it. You brought up the possibility that it was possible that (that in SR3 given that there were no upper Att and Skill caps) competing between two Olympian athletes would have "serious statistical advantage". I counterargumented that two (nonaugmented) athletic specialists given the same exclusive dedication and focus in life even there the statistical difference would be minute and not "serious". Even if you gave 100 karma to one and only 70 to another (to represent less experience and/or training) the statistical difference in results would be as minimal as it is in SR4. So in fact it is illusory.

I doubt you'll disagree that a ceiling does exist in real life. And there is a concrete limit, either imposed by biology or physics. No human athlete is going to run the 100 meter dash in under 8 seconds in our lifetime. No human is going to bench press a ton either. Those are hard limits - no known human being can exceed them. What does exists is a fine line or fuzzy area at the very top of human ability which is constantly being redefined as somebody knocks 0,5 seconds off a record or jumps an extra 5 cms.

Both SR3 and SR4 abstract the issues completely. SR3 ignores concrete caps in the interests of continual development and unlimited growth options - meaning potentially, given enough karma, someone unaugmented could run 100 meters under 8 seconds (iirc I've seen someone run the numbers for just that on DSF with a character out of chargen). This is one approach, in my mind no more or less right or realistic than SR4s - because both are flawed abstractions.

SR4 on the other hand proposes a closed framework which divides human ability and potential into the variable-sized "levels of performance" we know as ratings (normally 6 for Attributes, but exceptionally 7 and the same for skills, though specialization could push it up to 9). Everybody capable of achieving the "fuzzy area" where records get broken, where 0,01 seconds are knocked off the 100 meter dash (ie. at the limits of human ability) is assumed to have the relevant ratings maxed out and has at least a little luck on his side (or is less capable but exceptionally lucky).

The point I was making is that SR3 was equally unrealistic (and basically any game system will be) because of the way abilities are abstracted (yeah I keep mentioning that) and managed by the game system.

I suggest you reread my post. For what you're saying to happen one or more of the athletes/specialists competing would have to have a significant handicap (a 10 die difference)! There is no realistic reason for such a ability level handicap between world class competitors (or any specialists in their field). Not when the differences between the first and last runner in an Olympic event can be down to less than a second. Without the handicap there is no reason why they shouldn't both have the same or similar "dice pools" and the same or similar TNs - which means that the statistical difference between hyper specialists in an open system is illusory and is in fact pretty similar to the SR4 model in terms of final results.

Where there might be a problem is something entirely different. mfb put his finger on it a while back. The problem isn't comparing those at the top of each field with each other. The problem for some people lies on whether or not the 1 or 2 dice difference, which distinguishes the best of the best from those in the next lower "level of performance", actually translates to consistent results that realistically justify the former's exceptional status.

Or to put it simply whether a top-of-his-game world champion with a dicepool of 16 (Att 7 + Skill/Specialization 9) is significantly and consistently better than a maxed-out character with a dicepool of 14 (Att 6 + Skill 8) to justify a "legendary" status.

Having a bunch of min-maxers and hyperspecialist freaks weened on SR3's open framework and variables in my regular group (one has an SR4 mage chucking 22 dice out of chargen) I thought this would be a problem. After almost a year of playtesting I can honestly say it has never cropped up and never mattered, in fact they're pretty happy with the fact that their comparative performance levels with NPCs and amongst themselves. Mileage will vary.

I guess I missed the point. When you said "the same skill level" and "100 Karma", I though you meant such characters were indeed fully min/maxed utilizing the same amount of BP or Karma or whatever, which assuming the min/maxers have a perfect knowledge of the rule system (regardless of what the rule system is) will indeed produce characters that are completely equal in a particular task.

At 70 vs 100 Karma, assuming capped out starting characters, the difference really does come down to just one die, since going from Unarmed Wrestling 7/13 to 8/15 takes 40 more Karma. Good thing too, I guess, because going from 13 to 15 dice against TN 4 increases your 20-80 percentile range by a whole success, from 6-8 to 7-9, a very significant advantage in an opposed test. I would call some 10-20% greater probability of success a "serious statistical advantage".

If a concrete limit can be agreed upon without agreeing on exactly where it is, then many/most physical achievements do indeed have some ceilings for their results. I think the rules concerning physical tests of this nature should be crafted such that these ceilings aren't broken, regardless of whether a character is significantly better at the particular task than any other living human.

It is not the theoretically unlimited growth but the screwed up rules for such physical tasks that allows unaugmented humans to run insanely fast, or jump insanely high, or lift insanely little, or be incapable of jumping across any serious distance in SR3. The rules for these tests break down just as horribly at the low end as they do at the high end. It shouldn't take the average human adult male 25 seconds to spring 100 meteres, nor should the best unaugmented human athlete be capable of doing 100 meters in 5.7 seconds.

The way SR4 handles skills does make it easier to handle the rules for such tasks, since you have a smaller scale of possibly figures to work with, and the lack of upward mobility means you can even get away with linear progression instead of rules with an inbuilt logistic curve. What it can't handle as well are tasks like wrestling, where the result is only determined by how well you did compared to someone else, where you can always be better than someone else regardless of how good they are.

We're now officially talking about two completely different things. I'll try to clarify what I was originally getting at:

When rolling several dice against a fixed target number, the lower the target number is the less variation there is in the number of successes achieved with a particular number of dice. For example, if you draw a success probability graph of 20 dice vs. a TN of 2, the graph will have a sharp ridge at the center, or indeed at the rightmost edge, falling off sharply on either side -- it will have very little deviation. A similar graph of 20 dice vs. a TN of 6 will be much flatter -- it will have much more deviation. Though the difference is much less pronounced between TN 4 and TN 5, it's still there.

When rolling opposed tests, you're basically overlapping 2 such graphs. If character A rolls 20 dice against TN 2 and character B rolls 22 dice against TN 2, because of the probability distributions with little variation character B actually has a pretty massive advantage on character A, even though he's only got 2 more dice to roll. With TN 6, ceteris paribus character B would only have a very minor advantage over character A. Regardless of how large the dice advantage or disadvantage is, it will make more of an impact in the outcome the lower the TN is.

In SR3, the base TN is 4, while in SR4 it's 5. Hence in SR3 there's slightly less deviation in the success probability graphs than in SR4, which leads to smaller dice differences making bigger impacts on outcomes of opposed tests. You'd need a better mathematician than me to statistically show how much more of an impact. From the beginning I figured the difference wasn't large enough to warrant a thorough discussion of the matter, which is why I did not explain that part of my message at length earlier.

Sorry if I sounded condescending, I just wanted to make absolutely sure we understand each other.

I can agree with that. I just can't absorb weapon-related knowledge fast enough, nor can I maintain a "gun-high" as long as I used to. (And no, I'm not suggesting I'm anywhere near a skill rating 6, either in SR3 or SR4 reckoning.)

not really true, in practice. i've seen a lot of characters, many of which had a pretty large amount of karma. i don't recall any that had a skill or even specialization higher than about 14.

indeed. however, the nice thing about a diminishing-returns system is that is becomes progressively harder and harder to keep up with the mobs. that, combined with SR's variable TN dice mechanic (which makes it so that even the most skilled characters have a hard time with tasks if you slap on a few modifiers), virtually ensures that it's possible to challenge just about any level of character. i've seen a character with around 5,000 very well-spent karma fight desperately for his life, in one game. granted, that's a rare occurrence--but the fact that it's even possible endears certain basic features of SR3 to me more than SR4.

I agree that having players spend edge is standard use. However you'll likely have to be quite active to burn them or work at screwing edge out of him (for example limiting edge refresh rate) and you'll likely burn the rest of the team out of edge before then. Being built the way he is, he'll unlikely be using edge in combat and instead save it for major rolls when it really does matter. Does this happen faster than the refresh rate (which admittly varies between a game session or a day)? Likely not.

As for defaulting, you have every skill at start if only at 0. That's why incomptence is a flaw! Heck the skill readout for perception says "Default: Yes." The game itself says what skills should or shouldn't be defaulted to. So the GM isn't being generous with defaulting, you're being stingy. Do you have to have to be at least rank 1 in Computers just to use a mouse? Do you need to have a rank 1 in Pistols to hold an Ares Predator? Do you need Running 1 to run? Then how come someone needs at least Perception 1 to perceive something? You would have to do this all to everyone other player in the game to make this "consistently applied" who will also be lacking in many skills. And if you did do this, getting incompetence is great idea because you can't default anyways!

I will admit that the lack of Perception is rather odd choice. Personally I would have gone for it rather than hand-to-hand (for reasons I'll explain later). But he isn't totally screwed either way. First of all, perception is a skill that it helps the party as a whole. If one player spots the ambush, though commlinks, mindlink, radio, or whatever, they all know often in a fairly quiet manner.

But let's say, Mr. Lucky isn't so lucky and is by himself and he has to perceive a bird for whatever reason. Instead of going out of my way and following the book's design philosophy in the matter, I'll say he can default.

His max pool for this is 3. 4 Intuition -1 for defaulting. (If he had to see said bird he'll get +3)
Now let's compare this to other PCs in the book (who I assume are better examples of "rounded" characters). Their perception pools range from 2 (for the one fourth of characters who don't have perception either) to 8. I'll say the average is 5 to 6. So on average, he'll score about one success lower than most shadowrunner. He'll be roughly tied if his vision enhancers count. And if stuck in a "do this or die" scenario, he can spend a point of edge (which I assume most other characters would also do if this is case if they have enough edge which they'll run out of before Mr. Lucky), he now throws 8 more dice into the mix which is up there with the best of them.

As for hand-to-hand, I would think under most cases, it'll be better to shoot your enemy in melee and take the -3 hit to the pool. And if the guy takes your gun, pull out another one and shoot again. Even if due to modifiers he's "only doing" 10 or so dice, his enemy will be hurting. Unarmed would be useful if he's gunless, which should be rare. Even if he is, one of his teammate be it mage, Jackie Chan, or hacker can likely get one for him at which point he's back in town.

I will point out Mr. Lucky does and will require help from his teammates be it for protection when missing a pistol, perception tests, hacking, and dealing with spirits. However this is not an usual case for any character. Even character will have their weak spots, or otherwise they wouldn't need to be a team in the first place! In this regard, Mr. Lucky isn't that noteworthy and he's a great gun bunny.

But let us say Mr. Lucky's player "sees the light" and makes a more balanced character. There are two possibilities for this to happen. Either Lucky will survive to spend XP (which shouldn't be too hard) or he will make a new character. If he survives, he can branch out into things like perception or unarmed combat or anything he wants! Better yet, it'll cost a relatively low 4 XP to get the first rank which he'll get after one or two adventures. If he gets perception, his pool jumps to 5, likely within acceptable limits. He can do this to any skill that he doesn't have.

The other option is the player has to make a new character. He gets rid of Lucky and Aptitude: Pistols. He now have 30 BP to be more "rounded." He can buy 7 ranks of skills or get 3 in a skill group. Surely this will make him better! But look, he's only lost one point of edge (or 1/8 of his edge pool) and one point for pistols (or 1/18 weaker than he used to be). Mr. Lucky is the functionally the same but now he's supposedly more rounded. Even if he cuts down a bit more, he's still going to be high on edge and have a badass pistol skill. Either way, the problems still stands, he's damn good in one field with a good ace in the hole and to root him out you'll have to screw over everyone else too. Things can also get nasty if a team of Mr. Luckys get together (with different focus for their abilities). If you have to do that, as I said something's up either with the rules, game play, or the GM wanting to make the characters for the players.

i strongly disagree with this statement, which is probably one of the reasons i have such a problem with SR4--the developers agree with you. RPGs are not just an excuse to get into character and interact; they are games. part of the enjoyment, for many people, comes from the ability to make your avatar in the game better and more capable. freezing my ability to advance my characters would take a good bit of the enjoyment out of it.

It couldn't be hype that nobody knows him? Or the assumption that nobody knows his meat body solely because of his decking skills. Nobody alive that is.

SR canon fluff is by it's very definition a mixture of truth, half-truth, misconceptions, misunderstandings, and lies. Fastjack reads like hype....or an IE, which is canon shorthand for carte blanche. Not to mention that authors left to their own devices tend to do wacky things.


*awaits persecution for uttering heresy against the Church of the Kewl NPC*

Curious, have his stat's ever been published? Full or partial? Or is he just given the Plot Device power? It never came up because I don't bother with that sort of power of game. I might have come across them at one time, but I would have just tossed it as useless info.

If you are going to have lords over them all stats for him anyways then just give him stats than no PC can ever legally have. He's just so good it is like he isn't human, or metahuman.

If fact why bother to even have him roll at all. In the Matrix he is just another Harley, he does whatever he wants to do.

I don't have that book, so what does superior mean in practice? The GM just takes whatever the PCs have and multiples it by 1.5?

perhaps they'll end up doing that, in Unwired or something (though, judging by Synner's comments, i doubt they will). as it stands, however, Fastjack's abilities have basically been retconned.

i didn't insist that the gods have stats in D&D 3.0/3.5, but i will say that the stats they got were amazingly crappy. the xp awarded for killing them (hey, they have stats, what else are you going to do?) is retardedly high, though. one of these days, i'll run a battle between a 30th-level character and a bunch of rank-0 giants. i can just about guarantee that the character will end the battle with half or more of his hp, and will have gained 10 levels or so. sigh.