Yep. That's what it means.

And that's what most of the player will do, for the most part. Like you don't see many starting mage with less than 5 magic. Or many Technomancer with less than resonance 5.

Which of course means that these hackers in such a setting will tend to be geekier and less apt to do anything else but hack very well. And the TM already tend toward the geeky side enough as it is.

I started writing something about this in the post you quoted but opted to edit out in order to be more concise.

---

So to recapitulate, this house rule...

...will drain more BP at chargen since the player will now boost their INT, cerebral booster and still have to buy high program.

...will result in hacker with higher dice pool right from the start (most will start with at least intelligence 7 which is better than program 6 and then they'll get themselve up to 9 faster than a mage can initiate and raise his magic once).

...which means will need to tweak up the security's dice pool to maintain balance.

There's just not that much good that comes off this houserule, IMO. I don't see how anything's gained.

Cant find it at the moment.

But its just simple binomial stuff that every excel sheet can do . . .

The main point is, that you can easily adjust node security to compensate if you want to. Im trying to provide a good baseline in my SGM 1.0.

No. Now it is a choice. Previously it was just a case of slap down a small amount of BP for nuyen and be the best. If a player wants that now, it's a sacrifice, just the same as it's a sacrifice if the samurai wants 6 agility or the mage wants 6 willpower. And that is good.

Taking this with the four remaining points in my last post that you didn't address, I'm now in the mind to adopt Konsaki's system. I think it adds significantly to hacking.

EDIT: I think you added to your post while I was writing. This wont "drain more BP at chargen". It gives the player the chance to spend their BP in that fashion if they choose. Nor will not doing so leave them weaker. Instead, it gives the GM the chance to introduce a more realistic range of opposition. It's no fun to have all hackers start off with maximum "attributes" which is what very cheap Program 6 means.

likewise you don't want a system that cannot support them. As 'non-standard' as Edge is, don't you think it will occasionally be used?

Then there is the experienced, dedicated Hacker, who after several months of gameplay finds himself at 21 dice for some Hacking tests. He's going to average 7 Hits, and occassional roll better than average. Your house-rule should probably support him too.

Well sure, it's your choice.

But don't pad up your case with so-called points I didn't answer.

All I see is a comment about allowing hackers to be better than agent and various opinions about the need for heroics and how you believe hacking is portrayed.

Valid opinions but nothing for me to answer. I don't agree but I might as well discuss whether D&D or Amber is more fun. Pointless.

Beside, I only have one Hacker in my campaign and he didn't start with every program maxed so I doN't quite see your point. And if I were worried about a trend in PC who always max all their program right off chargen I'd just cap the rating by asking that only one program start at 6, 2 at 5 and the rest at 4.

It's less trouble than instituting change that will result swiftly enough in +3 dice to all matrix skill check and then rebalancing the opposition.

Since the opposition can also counter with its own edge, Serbitar's assumptions are reasonable.

As an aside, how does a hakcker reach 21 dice?

I can easily see Program 6 + Skill 6 + specialisation + codeslinger = 14

Where do the 7 additional dice come from?

Edit : Wait, aptitude to boost your skill to 7. I can see how you reach 15 now. Only 6 dice short now.

Edit : forgot hot VR! Up to 16. Getting there...

Ill give you another example in the current system:

The most dice any node or IC will ever come up with are 12.
The most dice a hacker can get are 7(skill)+2(spec)+2(VR)+6(program)+3(improved skill) +2 (codeslinger) thats 22 dice.

The odds of 22 dice vs 12 dice winning are 92.0 %. Give him an edge of 4 and he is unstoppable using the current system, even with the best there is.

Seems like the RAW do more than "support" the experienced hacker.

@charon:

its actually:
logic 10 + skill 7 + specialisation 2 + VR 2 + codeslinger 2 + improved skill 3 = 26 dice

Opposition in my mind included security hacker. But you're right.

Also, it's not logic + skill, it's Program + skill.

Logic + Skill is the proposed houserule, not the official one.

Serbitar : Improved skill? I didn't think of the physical adept hacker... Wonder if it's legal ; there's nothing physical about it. Even social skill have at elast body language to justify it. But not the place to debate it.

Why do you also use attribute? That'd be the maximum under the proposed houserule.

And yes, it's +2 not +1 in hot VR as I wrote. Brain fart.

So the legal maximum would be 19

The fact that the RAW has problems, is in no way related to the problems I'm bringing to your attention with your system.

& @ Charon, no I'm not talking about RAW now, just Serbitar's stuff.

But I have and if you wish to argue that these house rules are bad then you should address all of my points.

I've no wish to repeat myself in full. As you say you couldn't see any other points, I'll highlight them for you. But please re-read the original posts as these are a summary:

1. Buying all programs at rating 6 is very cheap and leads to all hackers starting at close to maximum ability. Introducing logic makes this only possible with a significant amount of sacrifice. This introduces more variety in character creation.

2. As it currently stands, there is no real difference between the hacking skills of an idiot with Logic 1 and a genius with Logic 6. This is counter-intuitive and basing hacking on logic negates this. You are happy with likening using hacking programs to "Unreal Tournament" (your words), I am not. It doesn't suit the flavour.

3. It makes becoming the best hacker comparable to being the best samurai or best face or whatever. It doesn't seem right that the other archetypes must make big sacrifices to get their high stats when the hacker buys all the ones he cares about at maximum for a paltry 90,000

4. It gives the player scope to be better than agents. This prevents the player being overshadowed by puchased software. You dismiss it as opinion, but equally it's your opinion that this is unimportant. To me it is not and I choose to list it.

5. The new system fits the flavour better. I'm not going to mutilate my point by surmarising. My reasons why it fits the flavour better were given earlier. Please re-read them.

6. It creates a greater range of ability in the opposition. There is no reason why all enemy hackers (and NPCs) wouldn't all have rating 6 programs. Adding Logic adds variety to a GM's portfolio.

I'd also like to add a 7th point, while I'm typing. That is that this helps delineate the hacker from pseudo-hackers. By making an additional attribute important for hacking, then it makes it harder to become a great hacker. This is good because otherwise the samurai, rigger or face with a data jack can lay down the paltry sum of money for rating 6 programs and be nearly as good as the poor hacker character. A GM can easily adjust the power of the opposition to challenge different levels of hacker ability (so it becoming harder to achieve power is not a problem), but he will find it much more difficult to keep things fun when the samurai or whoever decides to beat the hacker at doing his thing.

@yesman: How did you get 21 dice? I can't work that out!

And there goes a lot of opinion.

I answered what were arguments relevant to the mechanics. The rest is flavor and I'm not gonna respond, for example, with a long post explaining why I consider that the fact that cybercombat has nothing to do with logic to be in keeping with the flavor of the setting because it's not the topic.

The topicis the Matrix Dice pool rewrite and I've stated my argument against ; Primarily a concern for the fact that Hacker's dice pool will augment and now you need to balance the counter-measures (which you never adressed).

Plus a lesser concern that this will mostly result in Hacker that have even less BP to assign to non-hacking functions though whether it's good or not slips into matter of preference so let's just say that it's my informed opinion that such a rule will yield a lot more specialised hacker with fewer secondary talent. Take that as you will.

I could add that this would probably create even more uniformity in hacker than currently exists.

The rest of your point is basically saying that you like the effect this houserule would have on the hackers in a campaign.

Well good, now I know your taste and they are valid but I have no intention of answering to statements like : "The system fits the flavour better". This can only lead to a serie of elaborate "Says you!" "Nah ah! I'm right!".

We're doing what now? When did that start?

What? I thought Edge did remove hit caps already, specifically with magic.
Have I been doing things wrong?

Nope.

I would say you did it right.

What!? Evidently I wasn't as clear as I'd hoped.
No one's talking about rerolling failures, I'm talking about adding extra dice. If you use edge to add dice before you roll, all dice explode. If you use edge to add dice after you roll, only edge dice explode.
And I was saying that applying caps to hits would be done in an analgous manner.
Rerolling failures is a totally different thing.

edit: Oh, okay, you got me. Oh well, hopefully this clears my idea up for anyone else who was confused.