You mean the little old lady who's just shy of being a complete cripple is missing someone? God forbid. (Keep in mind I'm ignoring the retardedness of your last bit of the comment [hint: Aimed Shot], and nevermind the text on page 106 that states that it's up to a GM to determine the modifiers for special situations -- you know, like having a gun duct-taped to someone's skull.)

First you're upset that a little old lady who can barely stand has trouble killing someone to being upset that a slightly underfit kid who's had training with a pistol can kill someone (nevermind that I don't see how you're getting the instant killwithout assuming Edge or Aimed Shot in this case). What exactly is your point, again? I'm extremely lost.

Which orifice are you pulling this out of? All Humans have at least an Edge of 2 and all non-Humans have at least ann Edge of 1 by default. Feel free to look up any sample contacts to verify if you don't believe me.

Suppressive fire is far more scary than a single shot from a pistol. Especially if you're house ruling (which you apparently are, for whatever bizarre reason) that no one but a Shadowrunner has Edge. Since, you know, the test to resist Suppressive Fire is Reaction + Edge with a threshold equal to the attacker's Agility + Firearms. And assuming an average ganger has an Agility of 3 and a Firearms skill of 2 (the Go-Ganger sample contact has Pistols 2, but we can assume they have it in Automatics instead if you're using that as your example), that's 5 dice to the defender's 3 dice, and they're defending against multiple attacks to boot.

That's one function of Edge (which I personally hate all around, but that's neither here nor there). But one that only Shadowrunners have in Your Little World™ for whatever odd reason.

Yeah. Your average person should easily be able to have Strength 30. Spot on. How stupid is it that everyone can't be a superhero capable of juggling tanks and destroying buildings at a whim? For serious.

Ditto. Nevermind that a Skill of 7 represents the legendary level of achievement for people (Babe Ruth, James Bond, Einstein, Tesla, etc.), and that hitting 9 or 10 is superhuman. Should be able to have Firearms 30 and really show those amateurs up, huh?

SR4 has a few problems, some quite large, but little of what you just spouted out are serious issues so much as 1) problems created due to either some weird house rules you're working under and/or lack of understanding of the game system and 2) forcing weird situations and purposely breaking the system in order to prove your point.

3. Edge. Edge is either an obvious problem or not according to the style of play you want. If you want something with less potential for Road Runner style escapes and a bit more grit and fear, use the following system. It works very, very well for me and parallels the old karma system.

4. Blood Spirits. There's a loophole in the rules that allows them to recurse themselves up to infinite power. Very easily house-ruled, however.

5. Technomancers. If you use these (I don't), then they have a tendancy to be impossible to stop in their chosen area of specialisation (e.g. Stealth, Cyber Combat), whilst being crap at everything else.

6. Cyber tanks. This hasn't come up for me, but I could easily envisage a character putting together an armour-focused cyber character. What with the additional condition boxes and the stacking armour points, they could get pretty tough, pretty fast.

That's about it off the top of my head for actual problems. What might be more interesting is things that appear to be problems but turn out not to be.

Possession. There was a lot of fuss when that came out, but after some heavy debating (and actual play-time), turns out that in a lot of ways, Materialisation is actually a much better choice.

Magic. Resist the urge to fiddle. It actually works very well so long as the GM is playing things properly. This includes using visibility modifiers for spellcasting. Somebody round here had a useful list of things new GMs needed to consider about magic. If they're reading - please share!

Caps and skill and attribute levels. I originally intended to remove skill caps when I came to fourth edition. In retrospect, it would have been a terrible idea. If you're coming from a previous edition it is absolutely critical that you readjust your thinking about what the numbers mean. A six in a skill is an absolute world class level of ability. A professional in their field has a skill of 3. All those soldiers who are out fighting Desert Wars? They have 3's in their Automatics skill. 0 in a skill means the typical level of ability for getting by in society. As for attributes, the normal human score is 2, with a 3 for areas that you're particularly good at. This sort of perspective is really, really important for a good Shadowrun game and the caps held maintain this.

As regards things like called shots to the head. Shadowrun has a certain level of abstraction. If you make a called shot to the head and you don't get enough successes to kill the victim, then you didn't manage to get them between the eyes, it grazed through their temple or across their jaw or somesuch. Don't put the result before the attempt and conclude that the rolls aren't realistic. Put it the other way around. There are plenty of dice pool modifiers a GM can apply if they wish to (+40 Victim Unconcious, +20 gun pressed against temple ought to do it ).

Whoops. Too late. Where did all those posts come from?

Yes, if whoever shared this could, that would be awesome. Kudos to Brazila for starting this thread. I will try and think of some things as the work day goes on. I know I have experienced some oddities, but just can't think of the specifics.

No they don't, which is why there was debate about the entire thing. Wards were a meaningless obstacle to the ritual spellcasting abuse, which is why a few people (myself included) were trying to put focus on the actual rules for ritual spellcasting as opposed to ignoring it and instead beefing up wards which offered as much protection against ritual spellcasting as a piece of paper does against a bullet.

"Everything's okay, we broke how wards work (but always intended them to work this way, HONEST!) so now everything is fine! Erm, so what if an extra 6-12 dice is meaningless against a 100-dice magical bomb? Ignore the man behind the curtain! Wards help! Everything is okay!"

nah, its just the dragon in the corner eating chilli...

I thought the debate was resolved by remembering that all spells (including ritual magic spells) are limited to raw hits (not net hits) of the force of the spell. That way even if you throw a million dice at the ritual magic test, you still aren't going to get more than <force> raw hits, which isn't too hard to resist down to zero net hits, especially if you're hiding in a ward (and what bigwig doesn't have a ward around his office and home?).

Nope. Edge gets around that for magic (and only magic for some bizarre, twisted reason). Not even a permanent burning of Edge, just a single, common use of it.

Do you have the links to those guidebooks?

Knasser also created a compilation of standard matrix nodes that was tremendously useful for GMs. I lost the bookmark though.

A large caliber round going through one's head generally has a good chance of killing a person regardless of who fired it. Note I'm not talking about hitting the target, but instead how much damage is done. Granny can do a max of 7 boxes with her Warhawk. Ever. Period. She cannot aim because she has no skill rating (page 137). The average schmuck has a CM of 10 boxes. Do the math. This was my point, the "retardedness" was a little thing called exaggeration for effect (ie not serious).

I don't know what put a burr in your britches today Knasser, but I don't appreciate it. I have no issue with you, and I'd like to keep it that way ok?

That "can" was a typo, it was meant to be "can't". That should clear that up.

Did I say that? According to RAW, only "important" NPCs (which would logically include contacts) have Edge, grunts have group Edge, and everyone else (aka average schmuck on the street) is out in the cold. If this isn't correct, please let me know. Perhaps I missed something - personally I hope I have.

That's how the players use it, that's why I said "functional" [shrug] Me, I mainly GM.

Again, did I say that? Me, I like natural atts maxed at 1.5 racial max (but paying a buttload of karma to get there), with no limit for enhancements (cyber, adept powers, etc) save Increase spells and the Attribute boost power (which are I cap at double natural or double racial, whichever is lower).

Umm, nooooo - when the game says that 7 is the absolute maximum and then gives examples that include numbers like 10, it becomes clear that the 7 max is just "for the little people". Which is bullshit. I'm not saying it shouldn't cost hundreds of karma to get there or take a damn long time - it should - but it should be mechanically possible.

Oh, you mean like alot of the arguments we've seen recently?

Oh that's right, the fix to that is to say that only the hits scored by the actual Edge dice (and the exploding 6's from those Edge dice) count in surpassing the force limit of spells. That way you only have a maximum of 8 extra dice from Edge (not counting the exploding 6's from those 8 dice) which means you are probably only going to get 2 or 3 hits passed the force of the spell. Which nicely limits both ritual sorcery and Aid Sorcery (from bound spirits).

I really like this. Not that I ever had a problem running the game as written, but this makes more sense to me. I think I'm going to use it.

Considering you think I'm knasser (even going so far as changing the quote) speaks far more of your mental state than it does anyone else's.

Both can be found in their signatures.
knasser's website with his Matrix's history and example matrix sites
Serbitar's shadowrun supplements including his Matrix guide.

Well excuse the hell outta me. For some dumb reason I thought it was knasser, probably cause I saw his name at the top of the last post while I was typing and copy pasted from the quote box to respond. I'm human, I fuck up, big deal.

Glad to know you're so goddamn perfect though your royal highness.

(PS - Sorry knasser )

That would put the "average man" at lifting 100 kg overhead. That seems like a lot of weight for the "average" man to be lifting overhead. From what I've seen and read, average overhead lifts should be about 50-60% of a man's weight, not 100%. 100% is plausible for weights, which are designed to be lifted, but I don't think the rules are meant to simulate lifting objects of ideal dimensions/proportions.

which is why you need to fold str into body!

I said where who say what?

(Suspect Doc. Funk. is more likely to be offended than I am)

Not sure I agree with your calculation, but please correct me if I've misunderstood. I'm taking the average man to be a 2 in both Body and Strength. That's four dice and a likely one successes. That typically means about 35kg or 75lbs weight straight overhead. I don't remember exactly how much I could shoulder press over my head before I started weight training (it was a long time ago), but I think it was around the 65lb - 70lb mark. I was moderately fit but quite skinny at the time. Also, that was a shoulder press, not a full from the ground lift with momentum. At any rate, the range for an average man ends up between 30 and 50kg. That's more swing than I would like, but the 50kg is truly a superhuman save-the-baby, effort on their part so I guess the hundred pounds is allowable. They're not doing repeated sets of these. I'm not sure how much the average man weighs (and it will be different between the US and Europe). Perhaps about 65kg - 70kg? The 50-60% of a man's weight figure I haven't heard before but it would vary enormously depending on the fitness and body type of the man involved.

Convoluted?

-K.

Meh, like his opinion matters?

With all due respect, civil went out the window tween me and Funky a couple hours ago Eidolon. Not that I intend to continue it (not counting the above).

I thought it was 2 in 4th? Can you give a reference?

Oh, I agree. I always disliked Strength being a separate attribute from Body/Constitution/Stamina/etc. in Shadowrun and most other roleplaying games. Just one of those things D&D put out that's gotten stuck in the genre. I'd much rather see a division between size and health than health and strength.

Human Attribute Ratings table, p. 62, SR4.

That doesn't make sense. The average person is not half as strong as the world's strongest man. In fact, they're not even close. Very few people reach their potential in any area. The attribute scales, like the skill scales, require greater room at the top than at the low end.

If you peg the most common attribute as three it wont correspond to what we see in the real world. It might be the mid-point of the scale, but it's not what makes sense as the most common. It also has a positive effect on the player's perceptions of their character's abilities.

I know the book gave 3 as an average, but this is very misguided. It makes very much more sense at 2.

Hence my dislike of skill and att caps as a general concept.

Yup, that's the kind of system I dig. Would have helped balance Trolls and most of the other metahumans a bit better, too. Heck, even something similar to D&D's relatively new Size rating would have been a nice addition if/when Strength were eliminated as a solo attribute.

Things work better if the average is 2.

That's what I was saying earlier. They don't scale linearly. They're also not used linearly (you rarely ever roll just one Attribute or one Skill by itself; it's Attribute + Skill in most cases). Even modifiers aren't linear; +2 to a character with a dice pool of 2 is far more potent than a +2 modifier to a character with a dice pool of 20.

Which is why any attempt to work a linear system for carrying/lifting gear is doomed to failure on one side or the other.

It should be. I'm guessing the scales were made before they really settled on the whole "4 is the new 6" ideology.

Granted. The most accurate lifting rules would be progression chart of some kind, with perhaps just a sliver of dice rolling on top for tension. You are right. But I feel that the rules I came up with are simple and vastly more accurate than the published ones. If people are using 3 as the average strength and body, then it might need some tweaking and it will become inherently more innaccurate the closer "average" gets to "maximum" in its attempts to preserve real world correlation (which is the point you are making about linear attributes). Still, a quick and reasonable fix that works for me and with an average attribute of 2 corresponds surprisingly well to the real world.

An average attribute of 2 won't correspond to the real world, either. Since a person with attributes of 2 is really to wimpy to some things that an average person can do, 3 isn't wholly inappropriate.

Can you give an example? I actually use 2 as my baseline and people who have a reason / profession that would emphasize certain attributes usually get 3's in those (e.g. office workers with 3's in logic, cops with 3's in strength) but I can't think of anything in the rules that would actually prevent an average person from doing average things, if their strength or body was 2.

This is what I'm talking about. We're actually in agreement in the above quoted paragraph. Average is not a mathematical term. It can actually equate to the mean, median or modal value of a data set.

Mean is the mid-point of a range. Disregarding the Exceptional Attribute quality, which we probably shouldn't be considering, the mean strength of a human is 3.5. If people are using the mid-point of the range to describe the average attribute, then they're actually saying that the typical human has a strength of 3 or 4.

Median is the average value of a dataset and Mode is the most common value. Median is where we get statistics such as most people having 2.4 children. I have been talking about the Mode. I.e. that most people would have strength 2. The median value would probably be 3 in that most people have the average attribute but some people improve themselves beyond it (whereas far fewer manage to make themselves worse).

So it occurs to me that all parties can be satisfied. The most common attribute score can be 2, which makes sense, whilst the BBB that says "the average is 3" can be referring to the median value which is a perfectly valid interpretation and in fact, would be the most common interpretation given how most people consider averages to be calculated (add all together and divide by the number of numbers).

Ta dah! Sensible AND RAW compliant!

I'm quite proud of that.

Wearing NIJ IIIA equivalent armor, for example. As came up in the explosives thread, a body 2 agility 2 cannot wear an armored jacket and move at the same time. He'll be paralyzed due to having his agility reduced to 0. However, an armored jacket provides just enough ballistic protection to stop a heavy pistol shot to the center mass (single success), no more.