as melee weapons go, spike stilettos are nasty. They easily pop a skull and can cause lethal wounds. This was evident in an altercation back in the 60's IIRC, where cops raided a drag club and it turned violent. The queens took out several cops in self defense (it was an illegal raid, based on hate. from what I've heard there was no warrant)

sure, if you get a lucky hit. but i have a hard time seeing them doing more damage than an actual knife.

Doesn't really take a lucky hit. Hold shoe by toe, bring down in a hammering motion towards oponents head.

Is it easy to defend against, sure, if you are expecting resistence and know how to handle yourself.

Knives do the most damage ina stabbing moting, unless a cut is applid to a few select locations. So the same could be said, with a lucky hit, it does some good damage.

what Demosthenes said, up to and including the MWWG Exception Clause. shoes are for wearing, knives are for stabbing. neither should be better at the other's job than the other is.

Fair enough. The knife is a much deadlier weapon, by the very nature it is designed to be a weapon. Never argued that point, nor did I mean to.
Let's face it, the basic mechanic for damage in SR1~3 does not lend itself to a wide variety of weapon representation. I could see a shoe doing STR-2L (stun if a flat, physical if heel, nail or stiletto's do STR-1L as they are more likely to puncture than the broader heels)

It's true that stilletto heels can be dangerous, but it's true that knives simply are dangerous. One needs to be held a certain way and very methodically and precisely used in a fashion for which it was not designed. The other has fairly simple directions, largely involving holding the correct half of it, and making some part of someone else's body hold the other half.

By nature, a specifically designed combat weapon is going to be better for making-with-the-stabbing than a not specifically designed combat weapon. It is, as such, quite strange that a shoe (in this example) does the same damage as a sword. Think about that.

Perhaps it's a dikoted stilletto heel.

Or an ally spirit? Maybe?

Grumble, grumble...

Sure, if you don't mind the (STR)M damage.

I guess I'll add my top 5.

1.) All powerful zaibatsu and inscruitable asian men in perfect blue business suits.
2.) Punk rockers with uzis, and the return of electric guitars to the equipment lists
3.) Katana does STR + 3 M damage, but Sword only does STR +2 M damage
4.) Elves with mullets, pistols, and leathers.
5.) Ninjas who drink mountain dew

1) All NPCs stats and skills boiled down to a threat rating value (or three - one for Mind, Physical and Social).

2) XP system that is based upon character goals and the accomplishment of those goals during play.

3) Inclusion of mechanics that give in game bonuses to players following their character goals.

4) Removal of Essence from the game. Instead make cyberware modify/reduce the willingness of the character to pursue his goals as defined in (2) and (3) above. So the more cyberware a character gets, the less he cares about the world and the slower he will advance. Immediate gain at the expense of what it is that makes us human - our drive to pursue that which is important to us, however illogical that thing may be.

5) All the game rules boiled down to 100 pages, and the rest of the core rules devoted to the setting, to equipment, contacts, critters, etc.



The Horror

1) less reactionary people shouting "the world is ending" on Dumpshock's Forums
2) less whiners on Dumpshock's Forums
3) more elf pr0n
4) more posts praising folks who are kind enough to both playtest and keep us informed as best they can
5) More people making constructive posts and dropping the needless speculation...

What else can we do besides speculate?

6) Less posts complaining about other posts

Well, hmmm...

1. Something with the damned vehicle/rigging rules. Please. I'd like to think of myself and my group and somewhat bright but when we are looking at rules that look like 'When Vehicle X is driving 60 KPH down the road, Vehicle Y is driving 46 KPH down the road and vehicle Z is coming in at 50 KPH down the road, first add together the three speeds, divide by 5.7, and don't round. Next, Runner A is standing at the side firing his Ares Predator at vehicle X, while runner B is shooting Vehicle Y's tires with an Ingram Valiant. Vehicle X's rigger is going to take a shot at Runner B. Meanwhile, Vehicle Z must make a Pre-Pre-positioning test because he is in combat with vehicle Y at the same time and is driving over a pothole. Take the number from the three speeds and multiply that by the number of meters that have passed by in the combat turn to figure out the number for the Second Positioning Test, but keep in mind that Vehicle X's rigger is eating a bowl of oatmeal at this time so...' we go nuts. This is what the current rules look like to us. (and yeah, i did overblow it a bit there but it's not terribly far off...)

2. I'd also like to see more skill based decking. And yeah, cheaper programs. It's true when they say the decker is the reason for the million...I made a part time decker once with moderate programs that still ran me into the hundreds of thousands.

3. More Shadowbeat esque stuff again. I'm a music junkie and like other ends of the spectrum as well.

4. Which is it...can or can't Astral beings pass thru living stuff? Just pick one and stick with it.

5. I am also all for a nice BBB with all the stuff you need. I mean there will be sourcebooks, but just give some nice tables of the stuff at least...and yeah, don't skimp on the artwork.

Only one thing: Free Spirits as PC's.

1)A BBB that doesn't start losing pages after 2 months of use.

2)A new gaming group to hook up with.

Alright so the first one is a little far fetched. I can hope can't I?

[QUOTE=warrior_allanon,Apr 21 2005, 08:12 PM] [QUOTE=Aardvark892,Apr 21 2005, 08:00 PM] Only one thing: Free Spirits as PC's. [/QUOTE]
and you've been smoking WHAT!!!!

or more appropriately whats your GM been smoking, thats some good drek

i can honestly say that i have never seen any GM allow a PC to be a free spirit


I didn't say I allowed it as a GM (I've never had a chance to play SR, only GM'd it). Don't you think that would be interesting, if very over powered, to play?

Actually, I've considered the Free Spirit as PC thing. It might work. you'd have to tweak chargen a bit for SR3 rules, but no worse than the crazyness with Drakes or Shapeshifters. They'd have to have a good background for where they came from, buy up all attributes (Including Force, max 6, 'natch), and if they wanted to be a Free Spirit with spellcasting powers, they'd have to buy up the Aspected Magician template as well. Upsides: Immunity to normal weapons, a variety of powers and Spirit Energy (starts at 1 or 0 no matter what), plus no-drain magic. Downsides: All their karma would have to come from their teammates or NPC's, True Names and the magicians who know them, and other Spirit problems.

I don't think they should be in the core rules for SR4, though. Or any rules, leave it as a houserule for games where stuff like that's okay.

My 5:

1) Fix the 6-7 (12-13) Tn Problem (as with Fixed TN and threshold)

2) Make a single success count: As in staging down damage: A Char is hit by a Pistol doing 9M with 2 Successes and gets 5 Successes on his soaking test (still taking an L Wound). I often had the situation that one of my players burned Karma or Rerolled just to get an extra success that didn't help him anyway. I allowed players in this case to save their karma but the solution is still a PITA. as with having an impair number of successes beyond the first. Or the Teaching skill: for every 2 sucesses you add one to the success to the students test in reducing time... However: every success should state a difference.

3) more on "The Shadowrunners Everyday Life" Fiction. Plus some roleplaying advice about special topics: How to portray a Bodyguard? a Pickpocket? What would a character of some sort look for on another character?, sort of a Little guide to Surveillance, Shadowing, Special Ops, Forensics, Interrogation etc. Something I could give to new players without having to run a Seminar, that is. I used to give new players books on Social Skills/ Management/ Leadership or Negotiation so they had a sort of guideline how to portray their Charisma 6 Negotiation 6 character, but I am a Social Skills Trainer so I have things like that at hand.

4) Damage Codes: connect damage codes connect to caliber and range to weapon. Melee Combat: Make the Skill level relevant for the Power of the attack not just the damage level.

5) Technology: Things like Hoverboards and Mini - LAV - Bikes, Public floating Commuter systems from Suburbs to Enclaves...

+ Decend, integrated and harmonic game system. Basically anything but the current patchwork system

+ Revised and more resonable damage codes from holdouts to 490mm ship guns

+ More "anti-magic defences" for the mundanes, Mages have enough toys for now

+ A decision what you are playing (Anti-corp rebel or professional criminal) in the main rules book. Alternate campaigns are nice but mixing them in the basic book is lousy

+ More structure what is technically possible


Birdy

1) A description of 'a day in the life of a wageslave/shadowrunner/SINless'. It is very difficult to get new people involved in the game, where there are such radical differences in the setting that are so easily taken for granted. Since (for me at least) half of the appeal is seeing how the modern world has altered with the events of the 6th world, anything that helps describe 'normal life' in the 6th world for new players would be appreciated. A walk-through of a run would also be a good thing, to give players an idea of what's a good idea, and what's a bad idea.

2) A simpler way to integrate deckers into a shadowrunner team. It's fairly simple to ensure that the more magical, or brute-force types can be involved, however putting together runs that properly involve a decker can be quite tricky, especially if the run doesn't involve a stationary building of some sort.

3) Ideas for contacts, NPCs and other randoms in the street, all in the one place

4) Making it simpler to generate NPCs, beyond creating whole new characters, or just 'cut-pasting' the generic security guard/ganger stereotype that gets boring after a while.

5) Update the gadgets to be more reasonable considering current technological trends (as previously suggested, Pocket secretaries becoming iPod size).

Edit: Edited for clarity

Looks like most of that is going to be there Altheas

I think you're better off making some generic bogies, spec out some balanced MOS skill load outs, and then pick and choose say 15 points to round them out. For the hefty interaction NPC's, you're better off hand building them as a PC, then advancing them a certain amount of Karma.

Personally, I love McMackie's work for this sort of thing. It's relatively painless to try new concepts without hours of number crunching.

High on my list would be another look at the Fence rules. The part where the base time is 10 days, and every day the original owner gets (days)d6 vs TN 6 to locate the meet. In other words, by my reading, if you take the base 10 days to locate a fence, the original owner has 55d6 vs TN 6 to find the meet! This isn't as serious if the item has a low value and you don't need successes to increase the bankroll, but I think if I had fewer than 4 successes available to reduce the time (below 6/15/55 d6), I'd skip the meet!

The other odd part is that on account of this you need to get more people involved in finding the fence, in order to maximize successes and minimize the time required to find the fence. It seems counter-intuitive that spreading the word as widely as possible *reduces* the chances that the bad guys will find out!

For #2, it would be nice to get the author/company behind Ultramodern Firearms to publish a Shadowrun supplement -- that's a pretty good guns book (originally for Millenium's End, now for D20 Modern), and it has all the artwork and detail one might want. Of course, it may be trickier to keep up the quantity when all the stuff has to be made up and "futurized", but still...

For #3, it would be nice to have more bluetooth-style wireless gear (in addition to 802.11-style wireless gear). Such as, wireless smartguns (no induction pads), wireless skillsoft jukeboxes, wireless interface between cyber Transducer and handheld radio, wireless access to pocket computer/secretary, etc. Sure, it can be hacked.

#4, any device that's vaguely possible today should be ultra-miniaturized and super low-essence, including eyes and ears (but not necessarily all their accessories). There's still plenty of room to pay through the nose for the impossible stuff (bone lacing, wired reflexes, spurs, smartguns, skillwires, etc.).

#5, really put everything you need in the core book. Ha ha ha! Oh, I kill me. Still, it would be great to have the supplements be more background and less rules. Must we leave out initiation and all the halfway cool guns, vehicles, and cyberware? Would anyone ever consider playing a character without that stuff? Is anyone going to play this game before the first 5 books are released?

Oh, and #5B: make low levels of encryption free, like they are today (gpg, etc.). At higher levels, I assume you're paying for cryptographic researchers to spend a lot of time validating and improving the product/implementation, rather than actually paying for a new encryption algorithm. Of course, I'm not sure how to fairly price decryption -- it seems like the best tools are rented CPU-hours and skilled researchers, neither of which you can really buy for your cyberdeck... It really seems like more of a service than a product. (And what's the purpose of the chart on SR3 p293, in contrast to the Data Encryption System and Data Codebreaker on 292? Just to let you pick the most favorable price of the two?)

Good magnetic field generator to f* up the dirty sammy with wireless skill smg gun at 10 and its wireless smartgun
Bad mental ... sorry ...

There's a spell for that... "Hot Potato"...

I already won that one. It's BP.

1. Magic Items other than Foci
2. Cyberdecks - Damnit, I just love my deck
3. Better Damage Rules - A 6L pistol makes no sense
4. Lethal Grenades - I mean, really
5. Good Vehicle lists that include pictures

@ Crimsondude 2.0:

Yeah, I know. But I can dream, can't I?

No.

In a game like SR, it's probably not a good idea, but in Warhammer Fantasy RP, most one-handed melee weapons are lumped into a broad category "Hand Weapons", and function exactly the same way, leaving the RP to cover the differences.

I want one thing. A nicve big sign saying "Just Kidding!"

1. Sorcery broken in to Mana spells (spell catgory), Physical spells (spell catgory) and spell defence (spell catgory, defending self, defending others).
Too much behind one skill now.

2. Essence costs would be cheked again.
The introduction text in M&M was nice but it didnt reach some items like bone lacing.
How is replaced bones affecting your brains? It does not add up.

3. Damage increasing from ware removed or at least cheked.
E.g. bone laicing: The ridicilous armor increasings and melee damage increasings should be removed and simply stated that the characters bones need X much force to be broken or strenght roll Y with Z many success to break them. Only possible place where the bone lacing would give armor benefit would be head and agaisnt crushing weapons that are designed to used to break bones.

3. Decking made part of Shadowrunning.
As a GM im not quite happy puting hours of effort to make nice matrix grids that will entertain/chalenge only one in the game group. Needing a local access for decking should be a rule and decking in from out side should be a feat that only few can pull off.

4. Smartlink benefits cheked.
Average Joe having smartlink-2 bumps in to a FRT captain and desides to pull the trigger. Base TN4 - 2 from Smartlink2 + 2 as he calls the shot to head using the "only head armor applies" option = TN4. He rolls the 3 dices and 3 from combat pool. Dices end up 1,2,3,4,5,6 thats 3 success. His shotgun damage is pumped to 10D and the poor troopper starts to knock on heavens doors. Imagine the same thing happening with pro level player using exlusively the same tactic with savalete guardian combined with armor piercing ammo while self having military grade helmet and armor giving ware to boot.

5. Damage codes & ranges remade more realisticly.
Ammo (read: caliber) has damage codes and penetration values, not guns. Guns only affect the recoil, target numbers and in rare occasions power code & penetration (result of silencers & too agressive groove).
Also how can be that flechette ammo does more damage than regural ammo? Even small research would point out that flechette has less penetration and less kinetic power than regural ammo. It might be more accurate ammo thus it would affect TN's instead of damage code.
Also guns have little to do with range, but ammo (read:calibers) does.

6. Grenade timing/back-tossing fixed.
Room is filled with 5 characters that have iniative +30. If the first one throws a HE, it can be tossed back and forth 14 times before it explodes. Even phsyicaly impossible and ridiculous when witnessed.