Ah. I'll disagree with that also. To get true seperation for a high powered game you have to remove the skill cap and possibly change the availability limit, but it's easy enough to do.

Mr. Mcmurray, you appear to be defending the system as writtne by noting how easy it is to change it. That's an interesting tact.

I'd like to make this analogy, its not a perfect one, but it will do.

Imagine you walk into a store. You want to buy something, you have that something in mind. You go in to look for it. You can't find it. In fact, you can't find anything. Their inventory is non-existent, mostly display goods. Immediately a helpful store clerk asks if they can assist you. After you explain what you are looking for, they inform you that they can order that for you, exactly what you wanted, even the color, at a great price. You'll need to wait a week, but you'll get exactly what you want.

Does this store give you what you want? Yes. But it involves a wait, and it has nothing to offer you right now.

To me, SR4 sometimes seems like this. They offer up so much potential for the gamemaster to fudge, alter or make up the rules as he goes, but doesn't always offer enough actual content to work with. Frequently many choices are offered without informing us which one is standard. This becomes a major issure if , say you are making a character for a campaign with a new GM. Every GM should inform you of their housr rules right off the bat, but much of hte main rules have a great many different interpretations that you don't really know how it gets played until you are in the group. This is especially true for hackers.

And you can't defend the matrix rules today with supplements that will be coming out next year. We can discuss whether Unwired effectively deals with the problems when it comes out, until then, the matrix rules are incomplete and that's a problem.

Because some challenges are about something other than dice pools, they're about getting a chance to use that dice pool, ie getting into the right position. I have found that SR4 is very good for high powered games, where I found high powered combat in SR3 to be frustrating for all involved.

Once you factor 25+ average dice on the other side, it becomes manageable again. It is when you are rolling for a fixed threshold with a lot of dice that the game mechanics seem to break down. 25 against 25 opposed isn't broken.

I disagree. The GM (especially in a player vs environment setting like SR) has to rule thus, that he could always justify every decision if he was asked to.
There always has to be a reason for why things are happening the way they happen. And if it is random things, a random dice roller at hand is a good thing (people are very bad at trying to emulate randomness).

The only exception are random events that appear to give rise to an interesting plot. As one generally assumes that the life of a Shadowrunner is "interesting" above average.

If everyone is special, then no one is special....

no, not really. if everyone is special, the world stops making sense. what must security precautions be like in a world where a skilled man can kill someone in a Citymaster with a banana peel--without making a longshot test? what must the Olympics be like in a world where top-end shooters can make thousand-yard bullseyes while doing a handstand, blindfolded?

The answer to both your questions is AWESOME.

(I'm not really trying to make a point now... I'm just amusing myself.)

James, you ignored one important argument. Namely, that your argument amounts to: "The rules as written are absolutely perfect, because you can change them however you want." Your argument is a fallacy, an oxymoron, and is therefore dismissed.

Aemon: Untrue. Not every single table-top RPG forces out the same level of GM Whimsy that SR4 does. Some are noticeably worse, but the vast majority of them are a lot better.

When you buy a game, any game, you're buying *rules*. No rules, no game. No rules, and it all degenerates into a session of: "I shot him!" "No you didn't!" "Yes I did!" ad infinitum. Rules are meant to prevent this sort of thing. And every time a rule says: "Just tell him he missed", you've gone past design choice and into design flaw, because that's exactly what a rule is supposed to avoid.

I could hand you a complete Monopoly set; but without the rules, you wouldn't be able to play the game. But if I handed you a rulebook, you could fake up a board, dice, and cards, and start playing. So long as the rules are complete, there's no need for the "I shot him!" argument. There's no need for GM Whimsy.

GM's have a lot of discretion, but it all has to be logical. We can't throw a Great Form dragon into a 10x10 room, no matter how much GM fiat you want to toss around. So, the behavior of NPCs, world reactions, opfor levels, and so on, all need to be internally consistent and logical, and preferably predetermined with the players beforehand. GM Fiat, or GM Whimsy, is simply an arbitrary and spur-of-the-moment decision without invoking player input. It doesn't even need to take player consideration into account.

Every case of GM fiat I've seen has been because the player(s) have come up with a combination that ruins a GM's carefully-prepared glass tunnel, and so they toss a "You can't do that! Wah!" into the mix. And I've had mostly very good GM's, but a lot of people don't have the choice of whom they get to game with. Is it any wonder that so many people shudder at the thought of having to game with complete morons with the ability to ignore the rules on a whim?

I disagree. I think SR3 was a much better platform for the type of game that mfb is describing.

high-end characters in SR4 stand a very good chance of accomplishing impossible tasks. for instance--an instance i've used before--a character with 6 skill and 6 attribute can hit a target 1km away at night without stopping to aim--without any sort of vision enhancement at all. granted, if the target gets to dodge, he probably won't get hit, but that's still a horriffic level of accuracy. the argument i've heard against this example is that the GM should apply a threshold to such a test. that still makes no sense to me, because it means that shooting at a wheelchair-bound target (1 dodge die) is easier than shooting a stationary target (no dodge, but you have to overcome a threshold).

this is also the example i use to point out how dependent SR4 is on GM fiat/intervention/whatever. you can't even make a simple shot in the dark without the GM having to stop and say "do i want to let him use the rules that are clearly stated in the book as being the only ones applicable, even if that means that he can do completely absurd things, or do i make a GM ruling?"

and as for modifiers overwhelming the base skill of the characters, what about the fact that in SR4, the modifiers can completely negate the characters' skills? with enough modifiers, you don't even get to roll.

SR4, to me, is about a step away from being level-based. this is perhaps exemplified by the fact that when i questioned power levels in SR4, McMurray went straight to d20 for examples. there's nothing inherently wrong with level-based games, but a game that's going to effectively be level-based ought to go ahead and use levels.

and, as i've said before, if i wanted level-based SR, i'd adapt d20 Modern. at least that system doesn't require so much GM intervention!

i think we need some GM intervention on that phrase.

Yeah really, can we get an errata on that expression?

edit: Should that be, "an erratum"?

in New Zealand, it's "omg teh erattaz!!111!!!11!1"

show me your math. my math says -6 for total darkness, -3 (or 4? don't have my book available) for range, leaving 3 (or 2) dice for the shot.

-3 for extreme range. (edit: this is clarifying mfb's range modifier, not trying to stack another one on)
And, since it's total darkness, the 6 attribute in question here is Intuition, not Agility.

the darkness is just icing on the cake. the idea of someone being able to make a 1000-meter snapshot stands on its own to anyone who's ever trained with firearms.

mfb, I see the mechanics of what you're saying. It's just that to me (I can't speak for anyone else), it seems ludicrous to me that as GM, you would even allow the test.

The banana in the tailpipe thing was exactly the point, as far as I'm concerned. You would never allow a character to try that, right? So what does it matter if there's some mechanical way to construct a test for it?

Why create (or allow) the situation to come up in the first place? It really seems like you're arguing about nothing, to me, because it seems absolutely ridiculous to think that any GM, when presented your "in the dark while running longshot test" by a player, would go "well damn, I guess you can try it because technically the rules can support it if I let you".

I GM. I don't want the rules to GM for me.

When I'm playing, I want a GM. I don't want the rules to attempt to cover every possible ludicrous occurrence.

But that's just me.

McMurray, you picked another false premise. i never said i wanted high-end characters to fail at mundane tasks. i said i wanted them to be challenged by impossible tasks.

re: levels, it's simple. characters with a certain number of base dice, in SR4, cannot be stopped by certain amounts of negative modifiers. that's true in any system, of course. the difference is that in SR4, the progression of how base dice relate to the amount of modifiers that can be easily overcome is absolutely linear. raise the base dice by one, and the amount of modifiers that can be overcome is also raised by one. it's not exactly like levels (and i never claimed it was), but that simplistic linear approach to challenges is very similar to level-based gameplay. the idea that X is always trumped by X+1 is what i'm talking about, and what you clearly stated that you are in favor of.

the long-range shot is perhaps an overly-heinous example. people look at it and focus too much (for the purposes of the point i'm trying to make) on how wildly the rules differ from reality, ran than the underlying problem that higher levels of ability completely negate reasonable levels of modifiers. the fact that it's possible to make this shot without aiming isn't necessarily the problem; you can even do that in SR3, with enough karma. the problem, to me, is the sharp divide between "it's possible, and even easy" and "can't even attempt to make the shot".

I'm kinda looking this over, and one thing that stands out, to me at least, is that something a mile away, or 1600m, is off the charts, according to pg 139. Is this max range being ignored in the examples?

Also, in this scenario (extreme range shot in total darkness), wouldn't cover (blind fire) at -6 also apply? So, at extreme range (-3), in the dark (-6) and target hidden (-6), that's 15 dice of penalties to overcome, right?

As a GM, I'm tempted to give a character a shot, but realize that I wouldn't let them attempt it past the extreme range of their weapon, so one mile (1600m) is out of range for any of the weapons listed in the core book...

i said 1km, not 1mi. and yes, you could also apply Target Hidden. in that case, you just need to have 18 base dice to overcome it. the problem doesn't go away, the more modifiers you add; it just gets put off by the exact amount of the modifier.