Treshold VS Dicepool

Ok, I don’t know about you but combat and dice pool bug me.

Now, that a target is harder to hit behind cover is a logical thing, but that you become a crappier shot?

Let’s say that your target sits behind hard cover and you have a total skill pool of 8, that pool is now reduced by half down to 4. Isn’t it odd that the chances for glitching got higher just because someone got into cover.

And your Edge just got crappier since exploding dice to help hitting your target got shot in half too.

One solution would be to increase the threshold for the attacker instead so that instead of threshold 1 it would become 5 when the target is in hard cover. You would still have your full skill but it would be a lot harder to hit, as it should be.

Your edge would also be fully functional because you would roll your initial amount of dice but increase the threshold depending on wound modifiers, cover etc.

And finally, it would allow you to hit those “impossible” shots requiring edge just to get enough exploding dice to make the threshold that is above your skill.

With the current system you would just not be able to shoot and automatically miss.

sorry, lemme reiterate. You're saying instead of using dice pool modifiers for cover, use a threshold, right?

Maybe a play tester can shed some light on the differences they found between one and the other, and why it was chosen one way. Or was it even considered?

That makes sense. I see where you're coming from. No reason that shooting at someone behind a wall should give you a bigger chance of your gun jamming

The gun jamming is easily solved by the ref taking it into account for deciding what the glitch does.

Converting mods straight to threshhold seems a little harsh to me, however adding them to the tagets reactions for dodge would do nicely I think, as a wall surely makes it easier to dodge...

what would you do to acocunt for the glitch? You can have it ricochet, but of course not every shot that hits a wall is going to make a dangerous ricochet.

As for threshold, it acutally makes sense. Since it's only the net hits over the threshold that hits, it would make it easier to dodge, since there are less successes for the target to dodge. Being behind a wall doesn't make them a better ducker/dodger/whatever, it makes them harder to hit. I think the threshold makes sense personally, but I'm still plenty open to suggestions or opinions, since cover (sadly) hasn't come up in our games a lot. My group tends to stand out in the open, then wonder why they get shot so damn much.

I actually rather like the idea of the cover modifier adding to the defender's Reaction test, instead of adding to threshold, as Ophis suggested. This is mostly because I think it's easier to handle dice pool mods instead of threshold mods when doing an opposed test. Also, when you add to the threshold of an attack, what you are effectively doing is giving the defender free hits on his defense roll. That's a huge bonus. Giving him extra dice would represent that because of the cover, he is better equipped to avoid attack. Instead of having to fall prone or dive away, he merely has to duck (or whatever). I might actually start doing it this way in my game.

good point. A threshold of 8 for example would give 8 free hits, where 8 more to the dodge is going to give an average of 2-3 hits. It's easier to avoid being hit with cover as opposed to being extremely difficult. And adding the dice to the defenders roll removes the glitch weirdness as well. I don't suppose anyone has ever tried it to see what the difference is like? I'd like to, but damnit, my players just won't duck for cover. They're being pampered by having a bunch of really good mages with healing spells I think. Need to run an all-mundane game I think.

Giving the modifier as a reaction bonus will probably work better in an opposed test but a treshold should be applied when shooting at either a stationary target that is hard to hit or in surprise situations when they are in cover sicne they cannot dodge but are in cover.

@The Jopp - or allow them to only use the cover bonus dice to dodge or have them as bought sucesses (ie threshold 1 for heavy cover). I always imagined cover as something you were ducking behind so if you are suprised you aint duck less use of cover. If you're fully behind something then blindfire rules apply.

A threshold of 1 is roughly equivalent to a -3 dice penalty.

Blind fire is a -6 dice penalty. So, you could do something like say "Blind Fire raises the threshold by 2" and statistically you'd approximate a zero-sum change. It still does skew things, as Edge would behave differently as well as the glitch math, but it's close enough for comfort.

Since "Partial Cover" is -2 dice and "Good Cover" is -4, you may as well just lump them together into "Cover" (leaving it as a binary state: you either have it or you don't) and have it raise the threshold by 1. That way you're sort of averaging the dice penalties and then translating them into a threshold hike.

keep in mind that 4 successes is a critical hit. if you mess with threshold, you make critical hits less likely. we already have reaction reducing the hits we make.

the average person (ability 3, skill 3) will have 6 dice to throw around. they will on average get 2 hits with that pool. which means threshold is very bad for them. now, shooting at a runner who is behind cover, they have 2 dice. if theres poor visibility, they may drop their pool to nothing. and dice of zero or less is auto-fail unless you spend edge.

always look at how the rule affects the worst member of the team. instead of focusing on how shooty Mcshooter uses guns, look at how the hacker/rigger is with his sidearm, or the shamen, or the face. sure mcshooty has 16 dice to throw at a test. but those other guys are lucky to have 6. mcshooty probably defaults to 6.

threshold currently is seen mostly in driving tests. and its very easy to get a very high threshold. avoiding an obstacle is threshold 2, +2 for light trafic or side streets. thats threshold 4... you need a dice pool of 12 to be able to do that manuver reliably. if you want to jump an obstacle on a motorbike while in high trafic, thats threshold 7, and a probably crash.

yeah, I' think raising the threshold would be bad, I'm definately in favor of giving bonuses to the defender rather than penalties to the attacker. (That way stealth suits would add to the stealth roll rather than subtract from the attackers perception)

And by "bad" I mean that I haven't done any calculations but my gut feeling says it would make too many things impossible to do.

I had a thread about cover recently, where the idea with a threshold was also voiced.

I have decided to house rule it to a dice pool bonus to the defender's pool, though, which is pretty much the same thing.

Bye
Thanee

I don't really have a problem with the glitch chance going up. Maybe the slug ricochets, maybe it hits something interesting in the cover itself, maybe it zings past the guy and blows out the window of the zeppelin you're all in, decompressing it.

There's all sorts of wacky stuff glitches can do. When your bullets don't hit what you're aiming at, they hit something else...

I have already been using the idea of cover as an addition to the target reaction test.

In an ambush situation I do apply penalties to those shooting at targets behind cover, but after reading here I could make it a harder threshold as well.

So far -six months- we had no "funny" glitches and targets find it more comfortable to roll extra defense dice when behind cover. Kinda they feel rewarded for their strategic decisions. (Seeing extra dice in their hands make them feel more in control I guess)

The top shooter likes it as well because he gets to roll his 19 dice most of the time.

Those are my 2 nuyen.

Cheers,

Max

The two mechanics, reduced pool or increased threshold, serve the same purpose but in different ways.

Changing the threshold by +1 reduces the typical success and maximum effective successes by 1.

Changing the dice pool by -1 reduces the typical successes by 1/3 and maximum successes by 1.

So the die pool method provides the most granularity on controlling the typical successes while having a pretty dramatic ability to curtail the impact of a yahtzee. For a game with a focus on leaner characters, the die pool method is the obvious choice.

I suspect the reason they didn't have the dice transfer to the target is to cut down on the paperwork and avoid the weird situation where someone being sniped with no reason to dodge suddenly has a dodge dice. Could they roll Edge with that? No, much simpler to just make the dice vanish in a puff of entropy.

In the game I'm playing in, we had some EX explosive rounds cook off due to modifiers for cover and moving and what not. We all had a laugh about how someone ducking behind a barrier increases your odds of shooting yourself in the face...

That's I think a situation where the GM should exercise a little more discretion in interpreting the rules.