You've had problems with players bombing things with whales and petunias too?

I hadn't, when the whales were well within availabilty ratings und the petunias had a good backround story.

But with an availability rating of "42" neither of these things should ever have been in "question"

I also agree with this. There are some situations, that players simply shouldn't have any chance at success. You shouldn't be able to shoot a pistol and blow up a tank...exploding dice allow for that possibility.

You can quickly get into situations were players will try anything because there is a small chance of success and hope the dice rule in their favor.

I've seen people re-roll d6s, and get insane lucky streaks...so I know it's more probable than most impossible situations that people seem to be talking about here.

Instead of putting mechanics into the game that allow for impossible actions, GMs should be running adventures that don't lead into situations so critical to the story that they can only be decided on single insanely lucky die roll.

And on the flip side players shouldn't be able to ruin a story by allowing for the possibility of near-impossible actions.


GM: Ok, the bad guy, who is escaping with the data file, laughs from his chopper as it speeds into the night. You'll have to track him down the hard way.
Player: I shoot him in the eye with my red rider bb gun. <rolls>
GM: I don't think...
Player: Zing! Fifty 6's in a row! He's dead!
GM: ...

Well, I suppose it requires good players to make something like exploding dice work. And a GM who's willing to make the bad guy fall onto the pilot, which causes the helicopter to crash onto the PCs.

I must be missing something, but why not? Say I call a shot for +4 DV and after cover and other modifiers I have, say, two dice to roll and try to hit the target. I roll them and it comes up 4, 5. If the extra damage for the called shot kills the target, where's the problem?

So cap hits by the number of dice in the pool.

so you dont like hard caps yet you want a cap? sorry but i feel like labeling that impossible (or atleast very close)...

if the cap isnt hard its more often then not anything but a cap...

Wow sounds like a collective bargaining agreement for the NBA, there is a salary cap but there are all these exceptions.

Again that's not true. All it requires is that the GM "fix" the system to allow the player to burn one Edge to get a hit (on pure luck) and presto, its possible under SR4's dicepool +/- modifier system with as much of a tweak as was needed for SR3. Not a solution I'd chose though, just there to prove you wrong.

For the record, exploding dice were ruled out of Long Shot tests to limit the degree of success possible when relying on pure luck. Remember if you end up in a situation where you don't have Edge to spend (ie. out of luck to fall back on) and really need it its because you chose to use it elsewhere.

not at all. all you have to do is set it up so that one must roll extremely well on multiple dice in order to get high levels of success. a variable TN is the best way i know of to achieve that, but there might be other ways.

First of all, that's something of a redundancy, since you can already spend Edge to score a critical success. (Which is another issue I have, although it's not nearly as bad as it was under SR1: "I attempt to summon a force 200 spirit. Hm, no successes? I spend a point of karma. )

Second, that opens up the can of worms as to rather or not you're allowed to burn a point of Edge you've already spent. According to the RAW, you can; which in turn leads to the immortal character issue. ("I get hit by a direct THOR shot? No big deal, I burn a point of Edge.") If we don't allow that, we end up right back where we started-- no Edge left means no chance to even try. There's not much middle ground, unless we start making up a lot of specific-case rules; and *that* would rapidly get unnecessarily complicated and confusing.

That actually cuts both ways. The player spent the Edge because you, as the GM, convinced him that it was the best choice he had. If we GM's had presented him with other options, and made them look equally attractive, would he have spent that edge? Is it really his choice, when we're telling him that it's his only chance?

What's more, there are plenty of situations where a character should have the chance to get lucky, with or without spending Edge. The aforementioned spray-and-pray situation is a good example-- no one knows where those bullets are heading, so anything could happen. Maybe you'll get lucky. Maybe not. But Edge or no Edge, the player should get a chance to try. Even trying and failing is a lot more fun than never being allowed to try at all.

i guess that makes its offical then. alltho i must say that only sticking that rule into a list of what you can do with edge and not into the text of the long shot test itself is basicly stupid...

Another approach to help is to treat things more like Assensing is treated. You get partial credits for any hits you do score. For example I failed a Test driving a boat that was forced by a spirit using the Accident power. Rather that doing damage, which wasn't really as important to the story as time lost, the GM ruled that I was going to lose 6 CT turns minus 1 CT per hit. So the top Threshold was 6, but really there was a condition for Threshold 1 through 5 too. So even if didn't have exploding dice, and my dice count was less than 6, there was still meaning to my roll.

Without exploding 6's some things were possible, others were not, and they all could happen on the same roll. It also allowed the GM to set a really high Threshold without setting up the PC for complete failure, which is probably what they were worried about when they wrote about Threshold 4 being the top Threshold. And then broke that rule for Assensing.

Another example is a PC trying to jump rooftop to rooftop. If the gap is 4m then the Threshold is 2. If the PC only gets 1 hit you could give them another Test to see if they manage to grab onto the ledge on the other side, or perhaps carry forward enough to at least only fall part way down before crashing onto a balcony or fire escape or even wide window ledge to take a lesser crunch. Roll no hits though and you are taking a taking a swandive into the asphalt pool.

Here's a suggestion for Long Shots;

When all the penalties to your rolls are compiled, you always get ONE die, even if you have zero or negative dice to roll otherwise.

However, the target number increases now...

you need to roll a 6 on one die if you have 0 dice after modifires,
you need to roll a 7 if you have -1,
you need to roll an 8 if you have -2,
if you have -3 dice you need a target number of 9, and so on.

Then, make this single die roll subject to the old rule of 6. When your target number is 5, it can easily be ignored, speeding up play. In a "Longshot" situation, when you've got zero or negative dice and your target number is higher than 6, you roll that single die again and again if you keep hitting sixes. Bear in mind however, you're only going to get one single hit out of it...

Unless you start using your edge...