Okay, fairly familiar with 4th edition but not totally yet. My one big peev of the system is that the constant TNs of 5 means that, generally speaking, it's harder to do easy tasks and easier to do hard tasks (like jump out a building, into a chopper, knocking the gunner out, and holding onto the chopper- yes, it's the example given in SR3 with the Hooper Nelson rule for Karma Burn). I realize that dice get taken away from extreme actions (and don't get me wrong, I think the simplicity is great by keeping the TNs the same and just adjusting the number of dice) but the liklihood of getting 1 or 2 successes on an extreme activity is easier now, especially if I spend Edge to reroll. Am I wrong? Maybe I'm not adjusting to the sudden stability of TNs. Any thoughts? (And no, I'm not saying 3rd edition is better, I'm just asking if my interpretation of this system is correct). Thanks.

I don't think you're correct. Let's assume temporarily a dice pool of 6 to perform an action. With a hit on 1 out of 3 dice, you should get 2 hits on average. Now, easy things might only have a threshold of 1 or 2, meaning you'd succeed in this case, but harder actions might have a threshold of 3 or 4. Thus, those actions would fail if you only got 2 hits.

Then, as you mentioned, if the harder activity reduces your dice pool for any reason, now you're trying to reach a higher threshold with less dice. That, to me, seems to make harder things harder and easier things easier.

mrobviousjosh I'm not sure I can follow your logic.

Easier tasks have lower thresholds than harder tasks. You can tweak dice pools and thresholds to help measure how "hard" a task is.

The "easier" task with a 10 dice pool and Theshold 1 have a far better chance of succeeding over a "harder" 10 dice pool and Theshold 3.

Even adding situational dice pool modifiers (lighting, wounds, speed, etc.) and you still have better chance of success with the "easier" task as long as the modifiers are applied in a similar fashion.

For "simple" tasks, I was thinking about adjusting the HITS to 4,5,6. The book actually mentioned it, although I haven't seen it in action.

I screwed around with a dice roller earlier, and was getting alot of 4 and 5 Hit rolls using 4 as the minimum hit, and throwing 8 dice.

With 5 as the minimum hit, it was alot of 2s.

Which is how it should be, since 4-6 is 50% and 5-6 is 33%.

when you start with an average of about 10 d for a decent skill and attribute, you're on average coing to get three success, but take away 2 d and you get 2 on average. As the GM I tend to take away alot of dice from my players. (They really hate that)
Remember too on the jumping that you do still have a max distance you can jump.
But most importnant is the threshold. If the threshold is 4 or more it's not going to be easy to get with 10 dice, especially since you can only effect an actio with one edge point (IE> no more spending mass karma pool to pull off the impossible.)

not sure f easy tasks became harder, but at the higher skill levels hard tasks became easier

itmakes the game mre 'anime' or 'cinematic'

I LOVE anime.

I think our original poster was assuming the SR3 staple of "1 success means you accomplished it". This is not true anymore. Tasks need a certain number of successes in order to be accomplished.

Now, in SR3 there was really only one "slider" to change the difficulty: TN. You ratchet up the TN, your PC lumps in every pool the possibly can and throws an ice cream pail of dice, often enough, one of those would hit the TN, whatever it was. Granted, for many things, 1 success wasn't going to get you much. However, for other things, like spectacular feats of athletisism, 1 was all you needed.

In SR4 the GM now has 2 "sliders" in order to alter the difficulty:
1) Modifiers, which reduce the PC's dice
2) Threshold, which determines how many hits it takes to have "success"
IMO, this allows the GM to make hard tasks really hard. Of course, with modifiers reducing the PC's skill it does create the "impossible task" issue. This problem bothers people to various degrees, and is a byproduct of the way SR4 does tests.

A task with a threshold of 1 and a -8 dicepool penalty is outright impossible for anyone who isn't a super-ninja at the relevent skill. For anyone who is a superninja, it's fairly routine (they'll automatically succeed if they can take their time doing it).

A task with a threshold of 4 and no dicepool penalty is extremely hard for average joes and they will very rarely succeed. It's the kind of thing that a superninja has a noticeable chance of failing, but still succeeds about half the time.

You can mix and match between those two extremes depending on how you want characters with a 4 die pool and characters with a 12 die pool to respond.

-Frank

As a GM, I find the easiest way to "control" the difficulty mathematically is to adjust the dice pool. Threshold adjustment is nice, but it has the largest impact in just a minor change.

**removed incorrect formula**

IMO, threshold adjustments will work best for Extended Tests instead of Opposed or Success Tests unless of coarse you want to impress how difficult the immediate task is.

The general formula for the probablity of at least one success looks like: 1- (2/3)^(number of dice rolled).

So sample numbers:
1: 1/3 (~33%)
2: 5/9 (~56%)
3: 19/27 (~70%)
4: 65/81 (~80%)
5: 211/243 (~87%)
6: 665/729 (~91%)
and so on

[edit]
To find out more, such as the probability distributions of a certain number of hits, you'll need to read up on Binomial Distributions
[/edit]

Okay, since there have been a few different interpretations of what I've been saying perhaps I didn't explain myself that well. I understand the basics of SR4 and, to some extent, the Threshholds needed. HOWEVER, even with threshholds of like 4, if I have 8 dice for an action statistically, it's harder to achieve one success at TN 12 or so than to achieve 4 at TN 5. I realize that each 5 has a 33% chance of being hit and I'm talking half of your dice for the threshhold here but, in SR3's system even using karma points to reroll your dice pool multiple times, it's far more difficult to achieve an insane TN than to eventually get yahzee. This becomes even more true, as I've witnessed, if the GM allows you to buy hits. I realize that when you roll Stat + Skill and only need 1 or 2 threshold you should be able to achieve most without rolling, if hits are bought, and ensuring success but at the same time it seems to make achieving a success easier because, and I may be wrong here, IIRC you can't be limited below one dice. If you need 2 hits and have edge points to use, you could achieve a TN 5 much easier twice than achieving a TN 9 or more with one dice (meaning a 6 and then another roll of 3 or better). Maybe I'm just not used to this system yet, and I admit I could be wrong, but the lower TN seems to be easier to achieve (maybe I just know too many people who consistently roll well).

I guess part of what I'm saying here is...okay, take away all my dice and I'll use 1 edge for another X dice (X being your edge rating) and then get to use edge to reroll if I don't like what I see. I realize you buy edge in this system as opposed to Karma, but it also seems significantly stronger in this version. But, yeah, the primary premise is that, statistically it's easier to hit 5s than other numbers. As a quick example, say someone is hiding from me in SR3. I roll against the open test he produced with Stealth and, depending on the number of successes on my perception test, I may or may not know exactly what I see (in the core SR3 book 1 success relates to "you know something is there"). In that sense, threshold was already being used in SR3 on some tests. In an opposed test like this, his number of successes becomes my threshold but it still seems much easier to meet a harder difficulty than to have a couple of dice meet an insane TN. Like I said, maybe I'm just not used to the new system yet.

It's my understanding you can't use Edge more than once per roll (meaning you couldn't take a Long Shot and then reroll failures). If that's the case, it'd limit your ability to do off-the-wall stuff somewhat.

That's the way I understand it.

You may not want to use open tests as an example, as they are capable of creating some incredibly whacky results. It's a running joke in my group that the guy who specialized in stealth in SR3 rarely had the highest stealth checks.

It is definitely easier to spot someone using stealth in SR4 because of the inability to get mildly lucky and have a TN of 15.

That's very true and, yes, the rule of six made a lot of the TNs really high; in my opinion it's a lot like the skill system in D&D where a roll of nat. 20 means you could theoretically beat a level 4 Artisan on a skillcheck because he only has a +10 and rolls low. I wasn't aware of the inability to use edge more than once per action but that does make sense (though I thought I read something about doubling it if you use it more than once and continue doubling if you keep using it to reroll an action- I think that mechanic was also in SR3, though I have neither book in front of me). It may generally be easier to spot someone in SR4 but you also have to think about how perception is now a skill.

The doubling was SR3.

Perception now being a skill makes it easier to spot someone.

Yeah, I guess that makes sense, since you're rolling stat vs. skill. I'm just used to having 6 dice for 3rd edition and, maybe, that many in 4th. Although, that's part of where the TN 5 bugs me. Again, maybe I'm just adjusting.

Against an opponent's skill 3 in SR3 you've got pretty good odds of ending up with TN 5 or 6.

I do rather like the "take 10" kinda approach of Sr4 skills, helps speed things up. It'd be nice if they incorporated a combat skill version of that too. Like, every 6 dice you can pull an automatic hit for combat situations.

The problem isn't just the "impossible task" bit, it's also the "Edge as Uberstat" thing that makes the game really stop working. Basically, after a certain point, it doesn't matter what you do, what modifiers you pile on-- you will have the same chance of succeeding, no matter what.

For example, let's take Mr. Lucky against Super-Marksman. Between visibility penalties, movement penalties, and whatever other penalties you want to toss at him, Mr. Marksman has been reduced to a dice pool of 0. He can't make the shot without spending Edge; and with his Edge of 1, he's not likely to make it. So, he hands his rifle off to Mr. Lucky. Mr. Lucky doesn't even have the rifles skill, kicks the thing into burst-fire mode, happens to have a serious wound, and decides to call a shot to bypass 10 points of armor. He has an Edge of 8, so he's likely to roll at least two successes, probably three.

Because the dice pool cannot drop below zero, once you're into longshot territory, you may as well go for the most extreme trick possible. If your edge is high, it becomes disturbingly easy to make it; if your edge is low or out, it becomes effectively impossible. Thus, harder tasks are easier, while easier tasks are harder. (If we assume that Mr. Lucky has Quickness 3, then even if he spends Edge, he'll have less dice than Mr. Marksman, who likely has Quickness 7, Rifles 7. Even invoking the rule of six, Mr. Lucky will probably score less successes.)

Which is easily countered by teh GM deciding to also apply some penalties after edge. But yeah, many people think that's a problem.

I don't understand. The edge dice in the longshot test are, by definition, applied after all penalties. You can't add more penalties after adge.

What I'm saying is that if someone sees they're down to edge and wants to "cheese the system" by adding 500 more modifiers to their shot because it can't go lower than edge, you'll need to slightly modify the rules to accomodate that sort of rules lawyer mentality. One option is to somehow have modifiers carry over to the edge roll as well. Not sure what a good ratio would be, maybe 2 to 1?

Sounds interesting (the +1 TN for longshots), but what makes the rest necessary? If the problem is that someone can stack on a bunch of modifiers once they hit the longshot test portion, why change anything beyond the longshot test itself?

Well, by guaranteeing 1 die, we eliminate the impossible roll situation; you've always got a chance, however slim. Also, since we're increasing the TN, we need to allow 6's to explode, otherwise a -2 modifier makes the task effectively impossible, regardless of your Edge. If the TN jumps to 8, you'll need an exploding 6 to hit it.

If we do this, we have to allow exploding 6's for normal rolls as well, otherwise we end up right back where we started: players deliberately pushing things into longshot territory in order to get a benefit. So, we may as well be fair and allow it for everyone. Of course, by the time we've gone this far, we've pretty much abandoned the SR4 core mechanics-- we're effectively using a SR3 variant with a default TN of 5.

So you think people will push things so they can get one die to roll in the hopes for a 6 rather than try and make normal rolls when they can? Interesting.

I'd be interested in an example of when that would be a good thing. For instance:

My penalties are such that I've got a normal roll. Worst case scenario I've got a single die at TN 5. Why on earth would I want to pile on penalties just so I can spend an edge and try to roll an 8 instead?

We'd moved past that part. The discussion now is his idea that more dice penalties would up the TN on the last remaining die on the long shot test (with penalties also applying to the edge dice pool). So your situation would drop the guy to his edge pool. If he tosses more modifiers on he could go down to one edge die. Any further modifiers increase the TN from 5 to 6 or more.

So if he was at 0 normal dice and 3 edge dice then decided to try and bypass an armor rating of 9 he'd have to go down to a single longshot die with a target number of 11.

My question is why would you toss even more penalties on top of that.

My second question was why would that necessitate opening up exploding dice everywhere (instead of just inside the lognshot test).

can't you just carry on the negative modifiers?

dice pool of 8.
-15 modifier to the dice pool.
character has Edge of 5- too bad character.


or say that once they've declared Edge use, no changes to the action are allowed?

if you declare you're firing two shots from an AK-47 on semi-automatic and find out you need you to use Edge dice, you can't suddenly decide that you're firing on full-auto whilst ice skating and baking a cake.

You could do that, but Cain has severe problems with actions that are impossible because of dice pool penalties.

You already can't change the action you've declared, but a lot of folks can add up the relevant dice modifiers in their head and know they are going to need edge.

Note: this hasn't been a problem in my games, so it's really just a thought experiment for me. That and part of the ongoing back and forth between Cain and myself.

also, why are people talking about target numbers?
I thought that SR4 was all successes on 5+, and thresholds? aren't target numbers a thing of the past?

His response to the longshot problem was to have longshot tests able to lose dice, but always leave at elast one. to continue makingt he test harder, increase the target number instead of getting rid of the last die.

I'm still wondering if my questions will get answered. And for the record, if I were to find myself in a game where someone was trying to abuse the longshot test rules by adding tons of modifiers and then relying on their edge dice to see them through, I'd definitely test this option out. I didn't want people to think that I hate everything Cain related.

I honestly don't see the problem of people abusing Longshot tests. Let's consider the be-all and end-all of longshot tests: shooting an armored personel carrier.

The Citymaster has 20 points of hardened armor, which means that your weapons are useless, and any weapon capable of doing it any significant damage (that is to say: one coming through with a DV of 21+) is more than likely going to turn the vehicle into a pile of softly glowing slag. So what do you do? You take a called shot, that's what!

By taking a dice pool penalty equal to the vehicle's armor rating (so -20 dice), you can ignore the armor, and have your hit resisted with Body alone. That is, you would if it weren't for the fact that there's no way in hell that you're going to have a dicepool left over after taking a penalty that large.

So you take a longshot. You spend an Edge and you roll a couple of dice, maybe you even hit. Now your weapon does its base DV (somewhere between 5 for a heavy pistol and 8 for a sniper rifle), and does an extra DV or three for your hits on the longshot attack test. And now the vehicle resists with its Body of 16, and probably gets 5 or 6 hits, and you might not have even done any damage with your heavy pistol.

Yeah. I really honestly fail to see how that's "abuse". You spend an Edge and you shoot your bullet into the Citymaster and quite possibly... cause some minor damage to the undercarriage. Holy crap, I think my sarcasm circuits just blew. I have no idea why people would want to hose characters doing that, it's really not a big deal.

-Frank