Remember that a +1 Willpower would be worth 'triple' now, because of the derivation.

It would be worth triple to raise naturally. You could just as easily say it's worth less now, because you now get it effectively free when raising other stats that have other benefits of their own. I think 15 BP per point is pretty fair for something that is nearly exclusively a defensive benefit.

That's only if you're using those stats for something, yes. I'm saying that, if your goal is to raise willpower (i.e., you are Brainpiercing), anything that does so directly is doing it 3x as good as raising a mental stat. That's all.

Ah okay. And yes, that's true, but I also don't necessarily think that's a problem that something raising something directly is more efficient than something raising it indirectly. *shrug*

I have every intention of coming back to defend BP, (plus there's more to be said on the issues of skills, cyberware, essence, and magic items that Seerow raised) but since the conversation has moved to the Body/Willpower as derived attributes discussion...

Body and Willpower are both oddities from a design perspective. They have fewer linked skills (Parachuting/Diving and Survival/Astral Combat) than the other attributes, at least half of those skills are ones that nobody takes (and arguably shouldn't exist), and the other half should have been assigned to different attributes all along.

In Shadowrun, attributes exist largely so that you can hang skills on them. From that perspective, both Body and Willpower fail.

Now there absolutely is a need for damage mitigation, it simply doesn't need to be it's own attribute. There simply shouldn't be a "you take this stat to not die" attribute, because at it's core, that is NOT Shadowrun. That has applications in other games, where simply being a player character makes you relatively invulnerable in a world where house cats can kill peasants. But in Shadowrun, if you don't want to die you buy some armor, you use cover, and a double-tap to the head pretty much kills PCs and peasants alike.

If that weren't enough, it discourages dumpstatting, and it actually means that people will be seriously considering qualities and augmentations that provide extra dice to damage resistance tests. And it has the added bonus of providing a design reason for why elves are so magically-inclined, with their whopping average "Willpower" of 4, compared to the puny Human's 3.

Seerow, I wasn't saying it was a problem. I was touting it as a feature.

Yeah I got that with your last post. The first post where you mentioned it sounded like you were citing it as a problem, hence the defensive reaction.



Nothing to say to JesterZero because on this particular issue at least we're in agreement as far as I can tell.

That's happened more and more lately. It's starting to freak me out. *grins*

Alright, on to defending BPgen over and against Karmagen...

First, let me state that my biggest concern is that whatever method is used for chargen is also used for advancement. Originally this wasn't as much of an issue back when we were rocking Prioritygen, but point-based chargen became the new hotness so here we are. Regardless, most if not all of the bad chargen optimization tricks can be eliminated simply by embracing a unified system for both creation and advancement.

Now, I've seen it said on this board that Karmagen is a scaling system and BPgen is not, and that is flat-out wrong. Both scale, the only question is the granularity of the scaling. BP scales at certain breakpoints: most notably the racial maximum for attributes and the magic number 6 for skills. Karma scales at every single value. But they do both scale.

The question really is how much scaling do you desire...or to put it another way...are you willing to put up with? Because while some people like really granular scaling because the "curves" are "smoother," the reality is that it brings a number of side-effects with it: larger numbers/overhead, more difficult math/overhead, and slower progression at lower levels.

• Now, our group personally doesn't like big numbers. We see enough of those at our jobs every day, and the novelty has worn off. We actually worked really hard to houserule the standard 400 BP chargen down to an equivalent 200 BP chargen, and we consider that roughly twice as good. Now I've seen it said before in this thread that people like big numbers, and I won't begrudge them that joy, strange as I may find it. But when we consider the overhead involved, more of something typically means more time spent keeping track of it.
• That brings us to math. Now the people in this particular conversation may not struggle with progressive number sequences, but many people do. In fact, the person who wrote the Karmagen section in Runner's Guide actually uses the wrong mathematical terminology. And we've all seen the threads where people weren't able to even calculate karma costs for advancement, which is not nearly as complicated. I think it's really something to keep in mind, particularly if you want to appeal to a broader base.
• And that brings us to the issue of slower progression at lower levels with Karmagen. I've seen this argued both ways, but personally, below a certain threshold we want to make it easy for people to raise their skills, otherwise what exactly is the point of diversifying? I seriously have no problem at all with people rapidly achieving basic proficiency in a skill fairly quickly.

I could stop there, but since we're on the subject of skills and scaling...let's briefly take a look at what Seerow proposed with his 3/6/9/12 system. As I understand it, that is simply a more complicated version of the current BP system, except instead of having one breakpoint at 6, you have four breakpoints at multiples of 3 up to a limit of 12. I personally don't think the extra granularity is worth the tradeoff in complexity, but that's my personal taste. I'm totally fine with the principles involved, I just quibble with the implementation.

Either way, you have arbitrary values below which you are saying "Sale! Buy now!" and above which you are saying "You must back up this many Brinks trucks to afford this." The value in such a system is that you can enforce expected upper limits on DP, which is super important. In other words, the not-smooth curve can be an element of good game design.

If you want to change Shadowrun from a system where attributes/skills are roughly equally important to something that favors skills, then you can either take the cap off skills completely (which I am opposed to for design reasons), or you adjust the size of the pools so that skills make up more of the total contribution (either by increasing skills or decreasing attributes). What you don't want to do is all of that because then you've created a system that trivializes attributes and the things that add to them in the long run.

You also have to keep in mind the reality of what the numbers mean when you put all this together. Assuming you succeed on a roll of 5 or 6 on a d6, the system simply works best mathematically when you're rolling a total of 6-20 dice against a final threshold of 1-6. Above and below that you simply get into "why bother rolling?" territory. Please note my use of "total" and "final" though. You can have modifiers that go outside of those ranges, as long as you can reasonably expect other modifiers to bring them back in.

And I do apologize for the wall 'o text. Hopefully I won't have to play as much catch-up going forward.

See, BP scales… one time. That hardly counts as a scaling system. Maybe that's just me.

Actually, I just checked my SR4A pdf, and it doesn't indicate an increased BP cost at rating 6, and the example character with 6 pistols only paid 24 bp. Was there an errata that made the last point cost more? Aptitude makes the rating 7 cost double, if that's what you're talking about, but that applies to karma as well. I don't ever start a character at 6, so I'm not sure offhand, and increasing the cost of the skill at 6 sounds familiar, but that could also just be the cost increase for attributes I'm thinking of.



That's basically the idea, except without the hardcap at 12. You say you don't like the design of infinite skill scaling, personally I think it's fine as long as there's a softcap where the cost starts ramping up quickly, so people are discouraged from buying higher than that.

As for the complexity, if you can come up with something simpler that achieves the same goals, I'd love to hear it. The "increase cost for every 3 skill ranks" I don't think is too complex, you can make a pretty simple chart out of that. It doesn't get complicated until you consider softcap for the skill based on attribute. But people shouldn't be pushing the skill past that (or really even to that) point prior to char gen, and post chargen a little extra math when making a skill up once every few sessions isn't so bad. Of course, making the softcap a less linear cost increase would reduce the complexity. ie I suggested increasing cost by +1 for every point you exceed your cap. If you really wanted to make that softcap a little less soft and a little less confusing, you could outright double skill cost past the softcap. While this prevents high end characters from going too far into their primary skills however, it does make increasing a skill linked to a weaker attribute much harder. On the other hand, that makes raising those weak attributes a more enticing prospect, so maybe not a bad idea....

Yeah I'm kinda liking just making passing up the softcap (of unaugmented attribute x 2) incur a double karma cost. And of course Aptitude would increase the softcap (and possibly lower skill cost, if that is deemed to not actually be a useful quality with just that effect)



The real problem is right now attribute/skills aren't valued equally, because attributes can go higher than skills, and are easier and cheaper to raise. Reducing the effect of attributes is just bringing it in line. Flat out just applying the 50% attribute nerf in game would make skill and attribute roughly equal in the majority of dicepools. However this deflates dicepools in general, and penalizes generalists who typically rely on higher attributes and lower skills.

So on the other end of the spectrum, you raise skill cap, and make low end skills dirt cheap, so that anyone who has an interest in a skill is likely going to pick up 2 or 3 ranks in it. So yes, defaulting sucks a lot. It does already anyway. Though I could see an argument in favor of taking away the -1 penalty for defaulting. Between that, free skills from attribute, and cheaper low rank skills, it seems to me that it would balance out okay in the end.

From a definitional standpoint, that's just you.

You're welcome to set forth a case that it's not sufficient, but that's a different argument.

Same argument. I saved time by wadding them together. And I'm pretty sure I already did it with TJ earlier in the thread. One terminal bump does not a scaling system make. Depends on your definition, I guess.

--
"However this deflates dicepools in general, and penalizes generalists who typically rely on higher attributes and lower skills." These are both probably *good* things. Such generalists are really just gaming the system; god knows I do it often enough, PCs with 1s in all their skills. I'm all in favor of increased skill granularity, though, with cheap entry levels.

I honestly can't tell if you're joking here or not. Sometimes I get a kick out of how much equivocation I can engage in using English; maybe you do too? If you're just having fun, that's cool, but by definition, a system that scales is a scaling system. BPgen, Seerowgen, and Karmagen are all scaling systems, they simply differ at the frequency at which they scale.


That's a totally fair challenge. For starters, I can tell you that we've tried the following and liked the result:

• Lower the costs of skills relevant to attributes. Our house rules cut skill costs in half. You have to hunt through the system to find the places where that has cascading consequences (skillwire and chip costs, for example), but it's a great start.
• Unify the augmentation mechanic. Attributes establish an augmented maximum limit of racial max * 1.5. Skills establish an augmented maximum limit of base skill rating * 1.5. That's a pretty considerable inequality. You can either reign in attributes or let skills off the leash, but until you do one or the other, you're playing into the exact problem you correctly identified in regards to the mismatch between the two.
• Last but not least, there's an augmentation to raise almost every attribute from 1-3 points. Seriously consider the possibility that there should be the equivalent for skills. Sure, you want to be careful that it's not crazy-good like 1st Edition Enhanced Articulation was where everyone took it, but here's an idea: Enhanced Reflex Recorders or ActiveSofts that actually add to an existing skill rather than simply replace one.

I should admit that the last point there is something we have not tested. The first two have been extensively tested, and they work well for us.

In any event, that may not go far enough, but hopefully it's food for thought as we move forward.

And very briefly, since apparently my Dumpshock privileges have been revoked until I fix my wife's laptop, I would love to loop back to the issue of nonsensical cyberware combinations and ideas for handling them at some point. I believe the specific combination of bone lacing and cyberlimbs was raised, although there are others.

Our group severely nerfed cyberlimbs, (and I'd be happy to share details on that if anyone cares), but even so, we haven't found a solution we're completely happy with for that. Some of the optional rules from 3rd Edition are a good start, but they still wind up feeling like a patchwork mess.

Back tomorrow.

Lol Seerowgen, I like that.






Okay, so in this case, rather than raising skill ratings that you train, we're either making skills more easily augmentable, or reducing the augmentability of attributes. I can dig that. We're also straight up lowering skill costs without making any other changes.

I have some qualms with the flavor (individual skill ranks are still relatively meaningless, and with your changes augmentations are now roughly a full 33% of your base dicepool) but ignoring that and looking at it straight up mechanically it seems like it would be functional. The big issue is people would be hardcapping skills left and right pretty easily. The lower skill cost with no real meaningful skill cost scaling means it's a race to the top, then on to the next big thing. Besides that though, dicepools remain mostly the same, and with attribute augmentations requiring an unaugmented attribute, at least the attribute requires more investment. On the other hand that investment is 100% worth it since it still applies to a far wider variety of things. I definitely wouldn't want to see this system alongside attributes granting skills.



Personally? I don't like augmented skills at all. Skillwires are all right as long as they're limited to physical skills, and are limited to a rating below the top end, but something that just flat out adds a bonus to one of your skills I think is generally bad. That means improved ____ ability adept powers, cyberlimb optimization, reflex recorder, etc. This is really a personal opinion, where I feel rather than augmented skills you should have higher skill ratings. That is of course personal opinion, and personal feeling for what the flavor seems to point to. Augmented skills from a game design perspective is a pretty simple solution to "Skills aren't contributing enough" as it automatically increases skill contribution 50%.

Augmented Attributes are all right, because they represent pretty much what you expect from your cyber/magic, making you smarter, faster, stronger. I also however feel that augmented attributes should be cheaper, but less generally useful than unaugmented. If you'll recall I mentioned that unaugmented attributes would ideally be what controls your skill softcaps, and provides free karma for skill points. I would also go along with what you mentioned of making augmented max based on your unaugmented attribute, rather than racial max. (so the 4 strength human has an augmented max of 6, not 9)

Augmenting attributes should be pretty much straight up just for getting 1-2 bonus dice on a bunch of checks. Maybe even something like other stats can give minor bonuses for getting above 6 (like how strength gives recoil comp. If other attributes have similar little perks it can make up for the fact that the augment isn't doing quite as much as it does currently) They should be cheap and efficient on both sides of the magic/cyber spectrum, and the game should be balanced assuming that characters are augmenting their key attributes as much as they can. (Options for attributes that can't be augmented currently, such as Intuition... and maybe Body/Will should have something included to boost them, depending on whether or not augmented attributes factor into body/will. Maybe have augmented factor in, but you can only get +1-2 Body/Will via augmentation, as opposed to the normal +50%)



And I think I've rambled enough for one night. I'll be back tomorrow as well.

I hope you plan on fixing the thing about bioware costing half the essence when you have twice its base essence cost in cyberware and vice versa. In encourages min-maxing and there is no fluff reason for it.

Thinking about it some pieces of ware are in dire need of fixing. For example muscle replacement falls directly into "Nobody is rich enough to afford cheap garbage" category, it could perhaps add its rating to body too or something. This way even poor ganngers will rather invest in a bit more expensive bioware than to mess their bodies with obsolete cyberware and honestly they are just a few stolen cars away from it. Perhaps Zip the 12 years old gangta wannabe would buy second hand muscle replacement with his allowance.

Adrenaline pump is another tricky piece. As I see it, this thig gets worse as its rating goes up because if you roll too well, you end up knocking your dude unconscious form the strain with as much as 18 boxes of unresisted stun damage; enough to kill wounded character. Either I am missing something important there or people who wrote 4E didn't thing too hard about it. I suggest reducing the damage to half and making it resistable to make it more attractive piece somebody might take.

Another thing... how come purrely defensive impants are restricted? Insurance agencies would love people who don't get injured much and these along with augmentation manufacturers are pretty big lobby in sixth world I think.

Again, Jester, it's totally both. I think you'll find that while you've given *a* definition, mine is at least equally valid. If something has water in it, that doesn't make it a beverage. I would say the minimum is 2 points of inflection, though more is better, and fully scalar is best. (From a definitional POV, not necessarily from a game design one.)

I'm not thrilled about increasing the skill augmented max, nor making skill augmentation easier. DP creep is still a big issue. Your other points are neat: cheaper skills that go higher sound great, even higher Attribute:Skill ratio ditto. One problem with the direct skill augmentation vs. DP augmentation issue is that the mechanic is confused. Most things are DP mods, and they tend to be cheaper and bigger; the few direct skill mods are weirdly alone, expensive, etc.


I agree with Seerow that direct skill mods seem counterproductive. I prefer *specific application* DP mods (+1 Jumping, +1 Damage Resistance); the worst ever example of this problem is perhaps Enhanced Pheromones?

Yes, we can probably do without the ultimately confusing mechanic of 'half Essence cost for the smaller of cyber/bio'. It just doesn't do much for the effort. Personally, I love Muscle Rep and use it one everyone; you can always swap it out later. Adrenal Pump is definitely a huge mistake, to be fixed. But fixing cyber, limbs, 'ware in general is certainly on the list (I think we mentioned it earlier?).

Which implants are purely defensive, and 'normal'? Just from curiosity.

Actually, there was...it's just mangled enough that it's hard to recognize.

The fluff behind that was the intention to account for the situations where systemic augmentation A isn't quite so systemic because of systemic augmentation B. To put a face to it, when Sally Street Sam goes to see her Street Doc for Muscle Toner, he's not going to be toning as much muscle if she already has two cyberarms. The fact that they just abstracted it to "50% of whichever is less" was a compromise to account both for when it happens all the time and when it never happens.

That particular abstraction and how to handle it is something I totally think we should discuss when we get to handling augmentations in 5th edition.

Generally because people who have enough defensive implants tend to do things with them that aren't so defensive, and cause the insurance company to pay out for others. When you get a bunch of augmentations that have a net effect of "trucks and bullets can't hurt me!"...most people start thinking about engaging in the sort of behavior that trucks and bullets typically dissuade.

Ah, I appreciate that insight into the 50% thing. I still think it's a mistake, but it does make more sense as a failed 'systemic' discount.

1) Muscle Replacement has always bugged me too. It's not just double the essence cost of Toner+Augment. It's triple. Given how much people are willing to pay for a 20% decrease (see: Delta costs) , I think that cyber equivalents should be about 20-25% more essence intensive. So if Toner+Augment 4 costs .8 essence, Replacement 4 would be 1 essence. If Synaptic Booster is .5 essence per rating, wired reflexes should be .6 per rating. This keeps cyber as the cheaper more essence intensive stuff, without making it "Holy shit why would I ever pay that much? No amount of saved money is worth that!"

2) The alternative is to keep costs roughly where they are, and accept that unless you want your body made completely out of chrome, cyber is a defunct option, and Bioware is king of augments. Basically this would mean going with the system I proposed earlier where cyberlimbs subsume the essence cost of other cyber augments in exchange for capacity. So while yes, Muscle Replacement 4 is 2.4 essence, Muscle Replacement 4 in a cyberlimb is only 2 capacity. What you would want to do here is reduce the essence cost of cyberlimbs just enough that you can afford a full cyber replacement with standard versions of the cyber. Yes, playing basically a cyborg is a valid character gen option with this. And then people load up on cheap cyber enhancements because they no longer cost essence, just capacity. Higher grades of cyberlimbs, in addition to reducing essence costs a bit, would up capacity some too, allowing room for more augmentations. For the most part, these augmentations would subsume a lot of current cyberlimb mods (why have a +str/agi mod when muscle replacement is available? Why have an armor mod when you can get titanium lacing or dermal sheathing? etc)

To avoid dump stat abuse, all cyberlimbs are default customized for your body's unaugmented strength. So no, you can't have a 2 in strength and agility, and buy a custom limb with 6. It would start with 2, and have an augmented max of 3, just like if he didn't have the limb. If you want a cyberlimb with strength 9, you better have the strength 6 to be able to get the augment 3.

As for Bio, if going this route I'd say only cyber can be subsumed like this. Bioware works pretty much like it does now, and flat out doesn't work with any body part that you have cyberlimbs on.

I honestly don't understand this Muscle Rep thing. It's a huge amount of saved money, and you can always take it out and reuse that Essence later. Some rebalancing is always possible, but it's simply not that horrible. My feeling is that cyber should be more than 25% more, especially at *standard* grade.

I agree that customizing limbs to to your racial max is always abusive.

It's a lot of saved money, but consider what people are willing to pay to save 20% essence. I mean, going from standard to alpha (a common choice for starting characters) is doubling the cost. Beta and Delta is many times more. A similar cost to essence reduction ratio is something that actually makes sense systematically. If Bioware costs are too high to make that essence ratio work and bio still be a viable options, the costs can be modified, so it's more like 50-100% more expensive (much like alphaware is). Point is people will pay a lot to save a tiny bit of essence, and the essence costs of cyber right now are so outrageous that they aren't viable for runners.

If you don't like that, I'm just as happy with the other alternative I suggested. It makes it basically if you want just a few augments on the essence cheap side of things, bio is the choice. If you want a ton of augments, cyber is more efficient, because it is cheaper and in the long run can provide more total augments.

But Muscle Rep is very obviously viable. Essence is an *independent* resource to be spent strategically. Yes, the Essence savings on some items going from Beta to Delta are astronomically expensive. So what? If you're going to make the curves identical for all items, it removes strategy.

Do you find that the cyber capacity rules don't already allow 'more total augments', as you mention?

I probably won't have time to chime in much until either late tonight or tomorrow, but cyberlimbs are actually a pretty serious balance issue in the current implementation. Partially that's because there was such a significant shift in mechanics from 1st/2nd to 3rd/4th that never got fully resolved, partially because they simply have unreasonable options (4/4 armor per limb is flat out nuts), and partially because the rules for them are written at a significantly different level of abstraction than most everything else that deals with modifying attributes (which is related to the shift in mechanics issue).

And hence you get strange optimization issues like the "cyberlimb of doom."

The bottom line is that in a system that is as abstract as Shadowrun is (which is not necessarily a bad thing!) we need to define at the outset if we really want to be calculating individual values for things like "the STR of my left arm" or "the AGI of my right foot."

I'll tip my hand and say my answer to that question is "no." I'd actually like to get back to the approach that earlier editions took, with a nod to the effects of the later editions. And I could be dead wrong, but I have a sneaking suspicion that based on his comments on skill mechanics, Seerow and I might actually agree on the solution *winks*

Sorry to post and run; I'll loop back around to this when I get back.

Define obviously viable. The only place I've EVER seen it actually used is on NPCs. A PC with magic has no use for something eating that much essence, when a not too expensive much more essence friendly option is available. A PC without magic typically needs to ration essence extremely carefully, since they are relying on cyber augments extremely heavily. Wasting half their essence on something that can be bought for a third of the price is something most people won't do.



The strategy is still there in terms of figuring out what fits and what doesn't. You still have to make hard choices as to what you want to have and what you don't want. Different things have different costs still, there's just no reason to have any augment that is exactly identical to another augment, but take 2-3x more essence. That is a ridiculous extra amount, to the point where it's not worth it to any character, money is far far easier to come by than essence, 45k nuyen for 1.6 essence is one hell of a bargain. And that assumes you actually want both str and agi, most people probably only want the agi, because strength is a relatively weak attribute.




They allow for a lot of augments, but they tend to be more limited. That's why I'm arguing in favor of instead of having a handful of separate cyberlimb augments, being able to use any cyberware augment with your cyberlimbs. So yes, with a full cyberbody, you can get wired reflexes, or even a move by wire, built into it for a few capacity points. With a cyberskull, you can get cybereyes/ears, or an Encephalon, or other headware. Various cyberparts might be able to be embedded into any of the limbs (such as a nanohive, or an embeded commlink).

I just want to reitterate again that this is a separate suggestion from the reduced cyberware costs. In this, the only thing that would be reduced in cost is Cyberlimbs, which would be made just cheap enough for someone to get full Arms/Legs/Torso/Head (probably totaling something like 5.9 essence total at std grade)

I just can't understand this Muscle Rep thing. Most people are not maxing out their Essence Loss at chargen, and are also very short on money. You have more Essence to spend than nuyen, and MR fits the bill beautifully. That Essence can *always be reused later*, when you have more money.

I agree that many people only want the AGI (lame ), and that Toner is much less Essence. It's also more expensive. That's how it goes. Again, some rebalancing may be possible, but that doesn't mean MR is 'broken' like Adrenal Pump is.

Muscle replacement suffers from the cost of Synaptic Booster and the weird 50% rule more than its own stats. Since Agility and IP enhancement are the big Essence sinks for a sammy, you want one of them to be cyber and the other bio. Synaptic booster is too expensive for the typical sammy, so he goes for Wired Reflexes and that forces him towards Muscle Toner. The builds that use Synaptic Booster are either bio sammies or awakened. In one case they don't want any restricted cyber, in the other they can't afford the Essence cost of Muscle Replacement. That only leaves a very tiny niche: gangers who still cannot afford Wired Reflexes. Maybe also for some infiltrator type with no IP enhancement.

That's just not the case. I'll find my last character:

Muscle Rep 2, 2 lower cyberlegs, Wires 2, that's 4.9. He's got a few other tiny widgets, but what's impossible or even inadvisable about this? It's not 'theoretically optimized' like a Binky or Porno, but that's hardly the point.

It's not broken as in "unplayable and will kill you if you take it". You can play a perfectly viable character with muscle replacement. However it is horrendously sub-optimal. 20k nuyen vs 60k nuyen is triple cost, and 1.6 essence vs 4 essence is 2.5x essence (I was wrong earlier, apparently replacement is a full 4 essence for rating 4).

Betware is a x4 cost multiplier and a -30% essence cost. So a beta muscle replacement is 2.8 essence for 80k nuyen. Standard Toner/Augment is 60k nuyen and only 1.6 essence. So you pay 20,000 nuyen for the privilege of losing an additional 1.2 essence. The toner+augment is just flat out better all around. If you go up to delta, it's 2 essence for 200k nuyen. Yep, even at delta level, you are paying 140k nuyen more, for the privelege of getting the same exact bonus, at a .4 higher essence cost.

About the only way that muscle replacement is worth it is if it is the only augment you are getting and you have no magic. Which may happen occasionally with NPCs, but PCs -always- have a reason to conserve their essence. Whether it be for magic, or for other augmentations. Even at character gen, you're not so poor that you can't afford to get essence pretty low even while buying optimally, and buying something as inefficient as muscle replacement caps you out far earlier than you need to. I would rather get a used Muscle Toner/Augment (bringing that cost all the way down to 30k, only 10k more than the replacement), because it is THAT much more efficient.

Do you think we could get rid of the weird rule that you only pay 50% of the Essence cost of whatever flavor of Bio/Cyber you have less of? It has these really funky side effects when you remove one of them and may or may not have to track separate cyber and bio Essence holes.

How about instead a slight reduction in Essence costs across the board, so on average people can get the same (amount of) implants for the same Essence cost, but the actual purchasing and calculation of costs becomes simpler?

That sounds like a good idea. And I think that we should get rid of cyber essence holes only filled with new cyber, and bio essence holes only filled with new bio.

I'm thirding this. Regardless of which augment fix we go with, this is a good thing.

Yeah, that was what I was driving at. There's really no need to keep those systems entirely separate, it's just complication.

I think the separate Essence tallies for bioware and cyberware are really an artifact from olden times when bioware had some different system to it. I know of no reason why we need it now;
* You can still make bio more expensive nuyen-wise and less expensive Essence-wise. No separate tally needed.
* PQs/NQs that alter bio/cyber costs don't need separate tallies, you can just apply them per implant, just like alpha/beta/delta/2nd hand. That's probably what people do now anyway.

That has been gone for a while. It is a single Essence Hole, which can be filled by Either.

Yes, but determining how big the hole is, particularly if the balance between cyber and bio tilts to discounting the other one, is confusing. Very confusing. How big a hole does a given implant leave, if it stops or starts being discounted?

Not having them be separate totals eliminates that confusion and generally simplifies character creation because you don't have to fiddle with the cyber/bio balance.

In a way, it's actually truer to fluff: bio will always be cheaper Essence-wise than cyber, instead of only if cyber isn't getting the discount because you already have a majority of bio.

2 pages back I said this:



I'm going to go into a little more detail on what I was thinking since it kind of touches upon what we're discussing. A lot of it is more of a focus on how magic interacts with augments though, so it's kind of going on (yet another) tangent:

Then my copy of Augmentation lied to me.
Page 128,

Indeed it did. I would bet that you have yet to see the German Errata (which we still cannot get ihere in the states for some reason) for that book have you? Our friends across the pond have informed us that this has been fixed.

Because everyone frequently keeps up with errata released in another country

No, But I have heard it enough...

I need to find a way to get my hands on a copy of the German Errata for various sourcebooks. I've seen them referenced numerous times here on Dumpshock, but haven't actually seen them myself.

Would not really help me much. I cannot read German.
Or, more precisely, cannot understand what I am actually reading.

Totally random question:

Would it kill the game to cut IPs down from 4 to 3? Or increase the time that a combat turn actually lasts? Right now 1 IP is effectively .75 seconds, I'd like to see that be a whole number for ease of calculation. Like just bumping a combat turn up to 4 seconds. That way rather than measuring speed as "8 meters per combat turn" you could readjust that to "2 meters per pass" or "2 meters per second", with everyone taking a movement action every IP even if they don't have a complex action available. (I believe this is actually more or less how it already works, so this would effectively be clarification and streamlining). This also makes vehicle speeds much easier to relate to. While Meters Per Second isn't as common as kilometers per hour, it at least is a measurement of speed that is frequently used (though typically for lower speeds), and it is easier to convert. This could also potentially allow the sprinting skill to make a bigger difference, if you had hits on the test add to speed per pass rather than per turn. It does lead to faster ground speeds, but nowhere near the silliness of spirits with movement power, and lets people with high running skill actually feel like that investment meant something.

The other thing related to IPs was brought up earlier (or maybe it was a different thread I don't even remember anymore): Handling Full Auto with multiple IPs. The way it works now makes no sense, but letting FA work on turns when you don't have a pass makes FA a substantially stronger option. Maybe make it so recoil comp only resets on action phases when you have a pass, so if someone goes full auto who only has one pass, chances are they're taking ridiculous penalties on pass 2, and pass 3 and 4 he's most likely rolling nothing, and just spraying bullets everywhere. So say that once you run out of dice to roll, it goes from an attack to suppressive fire with effectively 1 net hit automatically.

As it is now, movement speeds are a pain to work with because they're measured "per combat turn", with characters having anywhere from 1 to 4 passes per combat turn. It also brings up the question about running penalties applying over multiple passes, and stuff like that.
As for the FA working over multiple passes, could you describe what you're proposing a bit better? It seems like you're saying that FA should be measure in bullets per combat turn, with a penalty applied if you shoot on a pass when you don't have an action, which doesn't make much sense...

I find the movement not too hard. Divide by 4. The glitchy bit is Sprint tests, so just clarify those. And, of course, re-calibrate the movement speeds so they're reasonable. Personally, I'm fine with removing the whole system of base speeds. Let trolls be tall and not-any-faster… unless they invest in Sprint.

So you're implying that characters can move during a pass that they can't act in. Otherwise you have someone who has fewer passes moving faster than someone who has more passes, which makes about as much sense as full auto guns firing faster because of more initiative passes.

Right. That's why I'm saying move it from speed per combat turn, to speed per combat pass. And simplify things a bit so 1 pass = 1 second, just for ease of conversion. Saying you move 20 meters per 3 seconds is kind of awkward, 2 meters per second is a legitimate unit of measurement. From there you just clarify the rule to make sure that people move every pass regardless of whether they have an action that pass or not.

It's still functionally the same rule, but it makes more sense and is easier to work with and explain to people.



Okay sure. What I'm saying is, Full Auto is basically just holding down the trigger full out, as opposed to burst fire, where you're pulling the trigger multiple times to shoot in controlled bursts. But the way the system works now makes it so getting extra initiative passes actually multiplies your rate of fire. A guy with 1 IP can only shoot 10 bullets per 3 seconds, while a guy with 4IPs can shoot 40 per 3 seconds. That's a pretty big difference. Then you also have the complication that Supressive Fire lasts until your next action, whenever that is, but only costs bullets when you activate it. So a guy with 1 IP can supressive fire for a whole 4 seconds with 10 bullets, while a guy with 4 IPs spends 40 bullets doing the same damn thing. Neither one of these scenarios makes a ton of sense.

So instead what I'm proposing happens is, the guy with 1 IP takes his action to full auto. Say he has 10 recoil comp somehow or another, and has a dicepool of 14.

His first pass, he has no penalties for recoil, as his 10 recoil comp eats that full recoil amount no problem.
His second pass, he's still stuck full autoing despite not having a pass, and he has 1 recoil comp left, so the remaining 8 uncompensated recoil becomes a penalty, leaving him with 6 dice this pass.
His third pass, he has no recoil comp remaining, so he takes an additional -9 penalty. Unfortunately, that leaves him with no dice to roll. So instead of getting to actually target anyone, his weapon fires pretty wildly, acting as a 1 success suppressive fire. Pretty much just wasting bullets, but the occasional unlucky fool might get hit.
His fourth pass ends up just like his 3rd, because he still has no dice.


The end result is he fires 40 bullets while full autoing that turn, just like anyone else.


Another example, this time of someone with 2 IPs, using supresive fire. The guy has the same dicepool and recoil comp as before, for simplicity.

First pass, you supressive fire, recoil comp is more than enough to handle it, so there's no penalties and he scores 5 hits.
Second pass, you choose to supressive fire again, since you did have an action this pass, recoil comp resets, and you have your full 10 available again. So no penalties, and 5 hits.
Third pass, you don't have an action, but since you were supressive firing the previous round, you continue doing so but without resetting your recoil comp. So now you take a -8 penalty, and only roll 6 dice, giving you only 2 net hits on your supressive fire.
Fourth pass, you now have no dice remaining, you're treated as suppresive firing with only a single net hit.



Of course, you can mix it up. Say a guy with 2 IPs on round one does a long burst, and a short burst, then second round full autos. Or Full Autos, then on round 2 switches to supressive fire. But if on your last IP if you are holding down the trigger for a full auto, that is what you continue doing for the rest of your IPs, because you don't have the actions available to choose to stop, or do something else.






It is important to note that this does make full auto a more attractive option for slower characters. On the other hand, slower characters likely have smaller dice pools and less recoil comp, so will hit that supressive fire zone more quickly, so it pretty quickly turns into a lot of bullets flying around that effectively just reduce character's dodge dice, at the cost of a ton of ammunition. Which is honestly fine.

Rolling back the topic a few pages I got to thinking about some people saying that various spirits needed automatic immunities to some classes of damage. This struck me as a enedless step as a GM can always make them immune to thematic things they should be immune to, a fire elemental can be immune to the flames of the house fire it started, but applying it in blanket leads to silly things, like no fire on earth being able to harm a level 1 fire spirit.

A current example of this can be found in how silly powerful guard can be. Rather then grant a variable level of portection a force 1 water spirit can protection from drowing at the bottom of an ocean trench with one power, in short if you can get a spirit up with guard power you don't need any of the survival gear listed in the book by the rules.

On the whole though all spirit powers need a serious top down look now that spirits are no longer restricted by domains.

Seerow, while that would make it so RoF actually makes sense in Shadowrun, it would, as you said, make FA unattractive to players with a low number of IPs. I don't like the sound of characters wildly shooting because they don't have an action, and they used FA. However, I can't think of anything that would make FA work well for a variable number of IPs. Maybe FA guns can be modified to shoot faster, but can't be controlled unless the characters has enough passes?
Additionally, how does suppressive fire work with RC? I thought that the rules said something along the lines of the recoil penalty canceling out the defender's defense penalty, so both of the negative modifiers are ignored.

I think you misread. I was saying it makes FA more attractive to people with low IPs. Because sure, it wastes some ammo, it lets them be doing -something- on passes they'd otherwise be doing -nothing-. Which is a damn good tradeoff. Especially if the player is using a belt feed or something so they don't need to reload every turn or two.



Actually you're right on this point, I had forgotten that there was no RC on supressive fire. In that case supressive fire would remain pretty much as it is, maybe with a penalty to net hits for every turn you lack an IP. The big change would be for regular full auto.