So the whole point of the thread was to prove that if you spend 400 BP (ar at least all necessary karma) to max out ONE dice pool, you'll get the highest possible dice pool and won't be able to get anything more with karma?

If it was the case, there was no need to argue: maxed-out attribute+maxed out skill+maxed out edge = x BP. Since there are hard caps the character can reach these at chargen, the character will have the highest dice pool and won't be able to improve karmically.

Actually that's just a feature of the game, or the sum of two features :
1. The game allows you to create the best metahumanly possible character in one given field at chargen.
2. The game limits ratings to what's metahumanly possible.

But I guess that most people thought that Cain's claim was that it was possible to create a character so good at everything that he couldn't karmically improve.

Matter of perspective, that. How much defense would it take to be considered "enough"? We could then improve his Stealth skills, his social skills, and so on and so forth. Until we have a character who'd rightly be called a Munchkin at any table. Those don't improve his chosen area, they just improve him laterally.


All of those are handled through strategy and tactics, not character builds. Smart tactics win out every time. I maintain that smart tactics plus an Edge of 8 = teh win, but that also is a matter of perspective. I have personal experience that has proven it to me, but clearly that isn't enough for some people. Which is why I invite people to take the character for themselves, and get their own personal experiences-- that's the only thing that could possibly convince them at this stage.

Gah. The challenge is not! maxing one natural attribute and connected skill. That would be a rather insulting. How far you would go depends on the used ruleset (Core/Aug/Ars). Implants quite fittingly take away the need to improve.

A role is Combat/Matrix/Magic/Social etc. Not able to improve means all required skills don´t profit from another die, and there are no secondary skills missing. All key attributes are at their sweet spot, for combat thats agility, reaction, intuition, plus body/willpower. I very strongly suggest starting the build with minimum edge. Spend leftovers on edge and see how far it goes.

A few things, Cain.

First, "Cannot improve" and "Cannot meaningfully improve" are NOT the same thing. One is a hard cap, the other is a chosen sweet-spot completely based on percepective. The original challenge was "Cannot improve" and thus has not been fulfilled.

Second, as has already been pointed out, you've posted only ONE character build, Mr. Lucky. I'm not sure where you're seeing this fabled second character build, because it's not in this thread. Maybe you forgot to post it, in which case simply do so so that we can critique it.

Third, and this is the second time I've asked this, why does it take you multiple days to produce a character who only needs attributes and skills? Hell, if you'd like, I can send you an excel file that autocalcs build points for you to ease your pain. It takes every member of my group (including the new people) no more than 2 hours to make a character, and that's with insufficient books to go around, and including all gear, spells, adept powers and spirits (if applicable). Given you'll not need to go that far, you only need Attributes, Skills are 'ware, I just can't wrap my head around what takes days.

Fourth, a chosen field isn't "I shoot a gun!" Well, unless you're a competition marksman who never gets into combat, it's not. A person who involves themselves in combat is taking the field of "Soldier" or possibly "Infiltrator" or "Sniper" or somesuch. A "Field" is exactly that. It's a wide area or collection of stuff making up a skillset. To be good in combat, you need to know how to disable or kill (either through melee or ranged attacks) and you need to know how to not get disabled or killed in return (through tactics, dodging, being a walking armored wall, or whatever). Mr. Lucky is good (not perfect) at shooting, and does have room for improvement. You may not feel it's "meaningful" improvement, but that does not mean there is no room to improve. Mr. Lucky is certainly not the best at getting out of the way. The ONLY example you've provided is Mr. Lucky getting the drop on a team of runners from a moving armored van. What happens if he gets caught on the 4th floor of an office building that he's infiltrating to get paydata by a sec team that he didn't know about?

The fact is that there is always someone out there that is smarter, faster and/or stronger than you. Eventually, smart tatics won't be your saving grace, it'll be your skills that save you. And frankly, Mr. Lucky is lacking in the skills department once you pass his pistol ability.

OK fine. Let's take it away from Combat for just a sec. This isn't my build, but once again, it's proof of principle.

Race: Elven

BREAKDOWN (400 Points)
Core Attributes: 165
Special Attributes: 105
Race: 30
Active Skills: 86
Qualities: +5
Contacts: 6
Resources: 13

=Attributes=
Body: 3
Agility: 3
Reaction: 3
Strength: 1
Charisma: 8
Intuition: 3
Logic: 2
Willpower: 3
Magic: 6(5)
Edge: 5

Essence: 5.0

=Qualities=
Adept
Aptitude/Con
First Impression
Mentor Spirit: Seductress
---------------
Allergy/Silver, Moderate
Low Pain Tolerance
Sensitive System

=Active Skills=
Con/Seduction: 7/+2
Gymnastics/dodging: 4/+2
Etiquette: 2
Negotiation: 3
Perception: 1
Pistols/Semi-Automatic: 2/+2

=Knowledge Skills=
English: N
Sperethiel: 4
--------------
Acting: 4
Local Area Knowledge: 4
Street crime/Vice: 2/+2

=Bioware=
Tailored Pheromes: 3

=Adept Abilities=
Cool Resolve: 5
Enthralling Performance/Dance
Improved Ability/Con: 3
Kinesics: 5

=Contacts=
Fixer (4 Connection/2 Loyalty)

=Lifestyle and Gear=
20,000 Nuyen left to spend on Lifestyles and Gear.

Since he's not a combat character, he doesn't need to do much more than dive for cover and occasionally plink a shot off. With his insane social pools, improvement, while possible, is well past the point of diminishing returns. We might improve him laterally, by giving him more IP and combat ability, but that's just icing.

So he's a great con man but for some reason is only average at negotiating? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense in my mind, but okay. Also, how is it that a con man has near-zero perception? Great at fast talk, never notices that his wallet just got palmed by the thief he's attempting to talk into giving him more than his fair share. Riiiight.

Glad this isn't your build, because it's seriously lacking. Great, he can fast talk people. Awesome. Average intuition, low logic, means that he's not particularly witty or quick-thinking, two things that will be needed in some situations. He's definitely not at the top of his game. He's at the top of his SKILL, but that's all. Skill = field

To be fair, I never intended the pornomancer to be an optimal face, merely an optimal seducer/seductress. It is still certainly a playable char-gen character, but if I played one, I would definitely have lots of things that I would want to spend my Karma on.

As Jhaiisiin pointed out, though, an argument, not about whether improvement is possible, but whether meaningful improvement is possible, is entirely too subjective.

Hmm... how about this for an objective test? Someone post a build that can't be "meaningfully" improved, someone else spend 200 Karma and 500,000 on that build, then we can compare them side by side to see if the original build has, in fact, been "meaningfully" improved.

Now *that* is a challenge. Though wouldn't it be best served in another thread. Cain Challenge 2.0 or something? If not, I'll run with it and maybe take you up on that challenge. (My friends love to tease me about enjoying making characters for no friggin' reason but the enjoyment of making them)

EDIT: Though if I add 200 karma to a character and thusly finish him up, round him out some more, or otherwise branch him out, I'd call that a meaningful improvement of the character, though maybe not in his original chosen specialty.

If, after six pages of prevarication, concluding that someone is unable to produce a character build having boasted it is easy to create such a build is an ad hominem, then you have a rather generous definition of the term. And if stating that someone sees the debate in terms of "winning" when they have stated things in those terms themself is an ad hominem, then again, a generous definition of the term. It's not an ad hominem if it's germane to the discussion and when asking why it's taken seven pages to get a build out of you, that's germane. And as to no refutation of your points, my sole demand has been to get an actual point out of you so that we can consider it (not necessarily refute it). Now that you have finally produced a build, we can do so.

I'm sorry to see that the build you have posted is not your own as I see that as a preemptive attempt to deflect criticism for another round of you stating that a real build would meet the challenge without actually posting one. I certainly don't buy that it takes you this long to put together a build unless you're unfamiliar with the SR4 chargen rules (which I would believe). The build you have posted has many areas that would drastically benefit from improvement. Remember that your boast was that you could create a character fresh from chargen that not only had no room for improvement in its primary area, but no meaningful room for improvement in secondary areas. This is blatantly not the case with the build you have just posted, though others have already begun the preliminary critique of it.

The posted build does NOT meet this challenge, so I'll have to say that again, you need to either post a build that does, or drop this criticism. Though I'm happy to debate whether or not this character can be meaningfully improved through karma if you actually feel that it can't.

-K.

Huh? He's got, what, 18+ dice for Negotiation? That's hardly "average".

The whole point is to improve his chosen specialty. Until a character has 6's in every stat and skill, there's room for meaningless improvement.

Dude, you're doing it again.

You're changing wording again. You originally said karmically improve in his chosen FIELD. Now you're saying meaningfully improve in his chosen SPECIALTY. These are not the same thing. Stop changing the rules to suit your needs.

And Karmically, the face posted by you (not your character, I know) can still improve his negotiation by 3 points, plus can improve his kinesics, and can get improved ability Negotiation, etc. He's not done with improving, so he fails your challenge as well.

You need to post a character that can meet your challenge or drop this silliness. Seriously, last call.

And you STILL haven't answered my question on what takes you *days* to create a simple character.

Semantics. Actually, the original term was "area", and no one has even tried to provide a meaningful definition of that word for this debate. At any event, all of social stats are his specialty field, and there's not much further that the Pornomancer can really go without hitting an advancement wall.


3 points = 1 success. Not significant improvement, as I've been saying all along. I'd say that an improvement of 3-4 successes on average is pretty significant. Can you do any better?

The original wording of the challenge was that you could make a character that could not meaningfully improve in his chosen field...
I have actually admitted that it is possible to make a face who indeed is so close to the top of his game that any karmic improvement is minor...
I also said that I don't believe Mr. Lucky manages this, but the face does...
And I know ware can improve characters as well, but that was not the scope of this challenge...

Okay, you must be ignoring most of my posts, then. As for Area, that indicates a grouping, or range. Not a single item. If you somehow feel this is different, that's your issue. No one here will debate that area means encompassing a given amount of space/volume/skills/etc. However, to really clear this up, I'll restate what I said in a previous post, only in a lot more detail.

A FIELD of expertise is a series of skills and aptitudes that allow you to perform your job. It's an encompassing range of complimentary abilities. A SPECIALTY is a specific thing, a single or couple of items a person does well. A sniper's FIELD is the ability to find out where his target will be based on intel given and gathered, penetrate into enemy territory unseen, find a spot to set up shop in, fire his fatal bullet, and then escape either unseen or through a swath of badguys. That's his FIELD of expertise. His SPECIALTY is shooting his target once and knowing it's dead. Do you understand the difference?

It's not semantics. These are very different things. You're changing your wording and it is having HUGE impacts on the arguments that can be made. Stop changing the rules.

And you originally stated karmically improve. You didn't say significantly improve. This is a VAST difference, and the basis for the original challenge. If you'd said significantly or meaningfully improve, then you might have had a lot more supporters. But you started at karmically and then changed your wording when you came under fire. Stop pinning this crud on everyone else because they don't understand your meaning when you keep changing it.

That said, I can see 10 dice of improvement available in that character off the top of my head. It requires initiations, but it's not hard. 3 points in negotiation, 1 in kinesics and 6 in Imp Ability: Negotiation. If we want to go with cumulative, given that "all of social stats are his specialty field," a statement I'd agree with, we could see this:

Improve Negotiation by 3
Improve Etiquette by 4
Add and improve Leadership to 6
Add specialties to above skills
Improve Kinesics to 6
Add and improve Imp Ability: Negotiation to 6
Add and improve Imp Ability: Etiquette to 6
Add and improve Imp Ability: Leadership to 6

There, MASSIVE Karmic expenditures, massive improvements to his social stats arena, including his skills and complimentary abilities. He fails. Miserably. Choose another example.

And you STILL haven't answered my question. Holy crap, man.

Fair enough.

As far as Mr. Lucky goes, I just played him in a one-off today. The GM had designed two troll cyberzombies to fight as the big bads, both armed with burst-fire Panthers. (Yes, he's a Monty Haul, overkill GM. But all that besides the point, since he believes in trying to overpower players.) Mr. Lucky spent all of 1 Edge point the entire game. I had a mage and decker with me, so I can't claim both kills in their entirety; but he was the only one getting shot at. So, here's yet another situation demonstrating the effectiveness of the build, without spending copious amounts of Edge.

Okay, I *really* want to know how that happened, Cain. Two troll cyberzombies, supposedly optimized given this GM likes to kill PC's, armed with burst fire assault cannons, and you only spent a single edge? We really need to see a play by play on this. I mean, short of the most hideous rolling known to man and God, how did the 'zombies *not* go first on every initiative, thusly splattering your team across the pavement with their anti-vehicular, burst fire weaponry?

My impulse is to cry foul, but I really want to see how that played out first. So far, I just can't wrap my head around it, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.

Actually, I did. Check the first page in this thread:

That was my *first* post.

Not all in one skill, you don't. That amounts to less than one die in some of the areas you discussed.

Irrelevant. An area or field is not one skill. It's a collection of skills. You said "all social stats" for the face, and so I addressed specifically what you stated.

And okay, you've got me there. Your first post stated meaningful improvement. However, by the time you posted a character, you'd changed to this:

The problem is Mr. Lucky *isn't* "so well-rounded" in other areas. He's got one good skill, and a whole heapload of mediocre stuff, or otherwise was missing things. You compensated by adding skillwires. This does not mean there's no room for meaningful karmic improvement, because you're relying on 'ware to get you there. I stated this 5 pages ago.

You keep saying the same thing, which is that with a character, they can be so good in one area, and so well rounded in others, that there's no point in improving karmically. Only that's not true, because both Mr. Lucky (who relies on skillwires to fill his shortcomings... what happens if you don't have them, or don't have time to swap skills?), and the pornomancer who doesn't even have all the face skills, let alone all of them at maximum levels both have room for meaningful karmic improvement. Just not in your eyes, which is not something we can quantify. We're not supposed to be debating an opinion here. That's an no-win fight.

The problem we run into is this is going to get (or is it already there?) very objective. You believe it's not worth spending the karma, and the majority of others seem to disagree.


EDIT: And why does it take you 2-4 days to make a character? I really want to know because I can't for the life of me figure this out.

Mostly due to a less-than-the-brightest GM, I admit, but here's roughly how it went:

The decker infiltrates the troll's cyberware and infects it pretty badly. He reprograms everything to go haywire on his command. I get in close, under cover of Improved Invisibility, my own Infiltration skill, and a Force 6 spirit providing Concealment. Initiative is rolled; the zombies win, but can't make their perception rolls well enough to spot me. I get one free shot off, and I'm using an AVS modified to full-auto from the Arsenal rules, plus all the recoil comp I can cram onto the thing. This is where I spend Edge. I have a disgusting number of exploding dice, and even with the +5 AP from the gun, it's simply too much for the troll to take.

The mage goes next, and throws a big stunbolt at the remaining cyberzombie. Even with the cyberzombie resistance to magic, enough gets through to rock him. The decker goes next, and as a free action, makes his cyber go bananas. His official action is to send an Agent Smith army to crash every piece of ware the troll has.

Now it's the troll's turn, but with all the dice pool penalties he's facing, he can't make an effective shot. (The GM really should have gone for a Wide Burst instead of a Narrow, I concede.) I drop the AVS, quick-draw a Thunderbolt, and finish him. He falls due to Stun, and then I basically walk up and coup de grace them with a direct AVS shot to the head. (The GM ruled that a helpless opponent could have his armor bypassed at no penalty. Not according to RAW, I know, but I wasn't going to complain.)

So, it was a combination of smart team tactics, a GM who wasn't expecting several of our moves (and used Edge unoptimally), and a humongous Pistols dice pool. The others did most of the work, I was just the triggerman in this escapade. You can cry foul, if you like; but the fact is, Mr. Lucky is very good in his chosen role.

OK, despite lots of people in this thread laying out parameters for what constitutes an area, you still don't think anyone has tried to provide a definition?

I'll leave the Pornomancer out of it, because Jhaiisiin has already pointed out the numerous ways that build can improve as a face.

But for combat, I would certainly say you would need the following to truly dominate in this 'area':

1. Preparation - those who are more aware (Perception), more sneaky (Infiltration) or just better informed stand more chance of survival.
2. Initiative - those who go first have more options to make the other side dead.
3. Offensive Skills - need to be able to make the other side dead.
4. Defensive Skills - need to be able to stop the other side making you dead if the above three points fail miserably.

Now on those criteria, I would say you could argue the case that point 3. is admirably covered by his Pistols skill (although I would still counter that improvements can be made, and particularly meaningful improvements can be made with other firearms to cover situations when you are sans semi auto pistol). But points 1, 2 and 4 could all be improved karmically on your build, and all would make Mr. Lucky a better combatant in his chosen field.

The problem is, no one character should have all four of those in equal measure. Smart tactics dictate that you choose one or maybe two of those areas, and max the hell out of them. I'll also mention that Point 2 cannot be improved karmically; it can only be improved through ware or magic. So, we only have points 1 & 4 to deal with.

Now, I define meaningful difference as an average of 3 to 4 extra successes, mainly because 4 net successes is enough for a critical. Being able to reliably crit on a character is pretty important, wouldn't you say? Well, in looking at the build, I can't see many ways to karmically raise the other dice pools to that level, without seriously rewriting the character into something else.

Regarding point 1: if you max out Perception, and plan for combat, you're essentially building a sniper. Your job is to spot them before they spot you, and kill them before they find you. That's not such a necessity for Pistols combat, which generally occurs at close range. Granted, a sniper will mess up his day, but that's true for any build.

Regarding Point 4: this can be dealt with through your Point 2. The goal is to kill all the opposition before they can get you. The best defense is a good offense, and all that. Additionally, smart tactics really help in this area: use of cover, movement, and stealth are all at least as important as a high Defense pool. Standing and shooting it out at High Noon is stupid.

So, we see that improving those separate areas won't meaningfully improve Mr. Lucky's combat ability. And even if we raise them a little, we can't raise them to a meaningful level without rebuilding the character into something else entirely. By the time you get around to creating an equal-all-around combatant, we've basically now got someone who's mediocre at everything.

I thought it was worth restating Cain's boast. Neither of the builds are anywhere close to meeting this.



You're wrong in the above. 3 points equals an average of 1 additional success. It also means a 3 higher maximum and 2 extra hits fairly often. It can also push you over the limit you need to just buy hits. And most people would consider a higher average by 1 to be significant anyway. And being 3 dice lower is certainly not "top of your game" as in your original boast.

As regards the cyberzombies there are so many things wrong with how things were run it's not funny. When you say:


I have to ask what on Earth you think you're saying here. Does crying foul mean pointing out the gross flaws in the cyberzombie scenario? Yes. So let's clarify your statement:



Make any sense? No.

And you've again back slid on your boast from being the best in a chosen area and so good in others that it is meaningless to try and improve in others to just "Mr. Lucky is very good in his chosen role." :rotlf:

And as others have pointed out, you are choosing to ignore people's points when you are unable to deal with them, rather than acknowledging they are correct. Are you unaware that this tactic of "winning" the argument works only for you and doesn't affect how other people see the argument going?

You've had two attempts to post a character that met your boast and both are admitted to not meet the challenge. Now you have to either post a build that does meet the challenge, retract your boast, or have everyone here come to the conclusion that you get your kicks by trolling on the Internet - sad.

If you have a build that meets your own boast, then please post it. Otherwise admit that you can't meet your boast as stated.

-K.

I need a LOL WUT PEAR!

You define meaningful improvement as getting an average of four additional hits?! Wonderful. That's just fucking wonderful.

An ordinary security grunt rolls 8 dice on Automatics tests. To get an average of 4 more hits, he'd need to have a dice pool of 20. That's the human adept augmented maximum as it happens (9 Agility, 6 Automatics, Improved Ability 3, Smartlink). Since the normal security grunt is not an Adept, he can at best get a Reflex Recorder, popping him up to a dice pool of 18 - which is less than four additional average hits. Worse, at least 4 of those dice are going to come from cybernetics, which you also don't count because it's not karmically improving.

Congratulations, according to your completely inane and contrived personal definitions, you have redefined a grunt with a Professional Rating of 2 to be incapable of meaningful advancement.

Indeed, you've defined virtually all characters as incapable of meaningful Karmic Advancement. With an attribute of 1 and a skill of 1 you have a dicepool of 2. The maximum that you can increase that with Karma is generally to 6 and 6 - which is less than 4 additional average hits. You've moved the goal posts on this discussion so far backwards that they are actually before the starting line.

So while I guess by your personal definitions you have now "won" - in reality I'm pretty sure everyone else can see that you have "lost." It's pretty clear that you are not, and can not, produce an effective example or argument to bolster your position. You sir, are wrong. Your theories are without merit.

-Frank

I still don´t accept the limitation to karmic advancement. The claim was made for chargen. Anyone can do it with 400BP plus unlimited ressources, or can do it as well as the chargen limit on skills permits.


Not related to the chargen challenge:
The cyberzombie scenario does suggest that the GM is not finding ways to challenge his players due to lack of rules knowledge. Case in point: CZs dual nature and invisibility spells. Conceal seems to be a physical power, too. As apparently there were no magical defenses in place, someone should have told the mage to attack from the astral, if the player did not know himself. And burst-fire assault cannons? Who uses those? The proper choice if going to the unhappy place of player hunting is HMGs on a gyromount. Apart from an edge of say 3 exploding 30+ base DR dice on the defense.

The driveby scenario is also not exactly easy. It is an ambush from a superior position (moving cover), against opponents who can´t be argued to be "at the top of their game". Not the worst selection of archtypes, but none of those is an even semi-munched combatant. Depending on gear, they have the option of either destroying your Bulldog or going on the defense. I think everyone should declare edge to go first on the first IP and get out of the firezone. Those who manage to beat you on init (likely both samurai and adept, due to you rolling "only" 10 dice OR 18 and going last), try to throw those who didn´t behind cover. Offensive action at all costs is what makes battles short.

The GM totally glitched the cyberzombie scenario. Looks like the GM crudely built the biggest, baddest thing he could and expected them to wipe out the PC without anything more than "stand here and shoot at the PC".

Come on: the hacker infiltrating the cyberzombie's cyberware is ridiculous! The cyberware's signal should be as low as possible (0=3m), it should be deltaware (cyberzombie with any other grade doesn't make sense) and the only way to really affect them would be to use an admin account. I don't have the book to check, but this should be extremely difficult to do on the fly.
Improved Invisibility should be bypassed by the Astral perception of the cyberzombies.
Also, when you have cyberzombies you usually have some astral support around because it doesn't make sense to send such valuable assets with a glaring astral weakness.

To be fair here, don't both of those examples involve Longshot tests? You make it sound like Edge is the game-breaker, when (if anything) it's specifically potential abuses of the Longshot rules.
I haven't actually had a problem with it, but I certainly concede that an argument can be made that it is.

Sorry to dredge up something from two pages back. Carry on.

As others have already mentioned, your cyberzombie example is an example of decent tactics combined with an absolutely clueless GM. You won because the GM didn't know what he was doing, pure and simple. Run the same scenario with half a dozen different GM's here, and I guarantee your team would have been sucking lead. And Mr. Lucky didn't dominate anything in that scenario. Any street sam could have done his job for that. 2/3 of your sneakiness was due to your mage. The only thing you did was shoot once. Whoopee, go dominating Mr. Lucky.

And as Frank already pointed out, your arbitrary and ridiculous definition of "meaningful advancement" means that NO CHARACTER out of chargen can be improved, based on what you just said. You're asking for 9-12 more DICE before calling it meaningful. That's ridiculous beyond words.

It's painfully obvious you can't produce an idea within the realm of reason, so I think it's fair to say you've lost this challenge. You've changed the rules, and offered up astronomical qualifiers to need to be fulfilled, and it's frankly asinine.

And you still never answered my question about why it takes you 2-4 days to create a character. Hell, in all the time you've been on this thread you could have made a couple of characters. I'm assuming it takes you 2-4 days because you do it in 10 minute blocks, and you keep getting distracted and forget where you were. You won't answer my question (6 times asked now), so I have no choice to make assumptions.

Right, so you admit that it isn't shadowrun that is broken by allowing Mr. Lucky to exist, its that you let five year olds GM your games. Got it.




At what range? As someone else pointed out, signal 0 (standard for most gear) is 3m. Never mind that I don't see anyone sending cyberzombies out with wireless cyberware OR a hacker riding shotgun to make sure that you don't take them out by just this sort of thing. Of course, I also think that runners using wireless enabled equipment are suicidal anyway, so... still, 3m... that's practially arms reach for a troll.


In other words you didn't do anything. Got it.

This was not your pistol skill, yes? Even with 8 dice from edge, where did the 'disgusting' number of dice come from? I don't recall Mr. Lucky even having Autofire as a skill, which means, what? skillwires? So a skill of 3....



So. You do nothing again. The hacker uses a free action to do something that is, by the book, a simple action (give a command to crash.. yes you said he 'set it up'... still and action to trigger it) then, once again, manages to prove that anyone not either a hacker or a mage (that is cybernetically enhanced gun users) are walking victims in the GM's game because lets everything be hacked quick and easy. Got it.



So, again, don't blame Shadowrun for the GM's constant failures.



Translation: Our GM lets us walk over everything...



Translation: and doesn't really know what he's doing.



Which, I never actually rolled...



Because he's smart enough to let the competent members of his team do all the hard work....




That was a lot more fun than I expected it would be. Thanks, you made my morning, Cain.

Now, now...just because the SR4 rules were mutilated beyond recognition dozens of times (between himself, his team, and the GM) doesn't mean that he's wrong...it's undeniable proof that the SR4 rules are completely broken, just like he says, and therefore we should all be required to switch back to the SR3 rules which had absolutely no flaws or explots.



And the one-shot-a-van exploit is nothing new...remember the called-shot-to-bypass-all-armor ruling of SR3?
If anything, it's harder to do now.

Not SR3, Savage World, if I'm not mistaken.

The utterly broken ruling?

it was in the SR3 faq.

It was an utterly unnecessary modification of the called shot to bypass impact armor rule that was introduced with injection/squirt weaponry. Which was required to make them viable, since otherwise the impact armor acted as a threshold for the success test.

Unfortunately, a lot of munchkins used the rule to argue that they could bypass ballistic armor, and the devs bought into it.

I think he means Cain wants us all to switch to Savage Worlds, not that the rule came from SW...

I can see that everyone else has covered the idiocy that was the cyberzombie encounter, and the ludicrousness that is 4 successes = meaningful karmic improvement, but I did want to point out one small thing to Cain:

Granted, gaining IPs is only possible through either 'ware or a complete character rewrite to be an adept, but with 4 Reaction and 4 Intuition, Mr. Lucky could certainly karmically improve his Initiative by a further 4 points...

But that's only an average of 1.33 successes, which is in no way meaningful.

Unless of course, we add in the extra 4 'auto successes' that are gained through the increased Initiative itself, for a true average is 5.33 successes (with a minimum of 4 and a max of 8 ). I'm not quite sure if that would be considered a meaningful enough increase though.

Well obviously not, as Mr. Lucky is incapable of meaningful karmic improvement any improvements made through the expenditure of karma are inherently not meaningful. Haven't you been paying attention? Some people...

I'd say bad rules is what defined a grunt with a professional rating of 2 as being incapable of advancement. TN 5 and the skill caps basically means the difference between the best and the average is fairly small on average.

That's just it... it ISN"T 'meaningless'. Only Cain (and I suppose now you...) seem to think you need 12 more dice for it to be a meaningful increase...

Or did you miss the sarcasm?

Which has nothing to do with this challenge, it being another discussion entirely...

Well,there is a tangential relation. Speaking of which, the main discussion of this thread died a long time ago. It seems like the current focus is to see if Cain floats and then whether to burn him at the stake or to hang him.

Everybody sees things differently, I hope. Otherwise the world would be mighty boring.

A bunch of people saying 1 success is meaningful, huge and wonderful doesn't make it so. Sure there is an increase and in some case it may actually be meaningful, like if Mr. average gets dropped to 0 dice so has to go long shot and Mr. great still has dice. But to act like 1 success on average is some huge special thing is just silly. Fact is with a TN of 5 it just takes a lot of dice to make a real difference on average.

You are right it is a bit off topic, its tied in but not directly so I'll drop it at this point.

Keep in mind that 1 success on average could very well be 3 successes in a particular instance. 3 extra dice also make a difference as to whether a person could buy successes in certain endeavors. 3 extra dice is not meaningless in a system where a professional has 6 dice and a top-line pro has 12.

Well I'd say that it isn't meaningless just not particularly meaningful. 3 dice on average is one success and fairly rarely is up to 3 more successes. I'd suspect you would see 0 difference in successes more often than you will see a 3 success lead. But its been 15 years since i took statistics so i am not sure on that. I'll just say I think there is a big difference between meaningless and not particularly meaningful. Sure there is some meaning, on average 1 success. Its just not that big of a deal.

And yes 6 dice to 12 is a bit more meaningful it is on average 2 successes In the 2e on days that is staging things up one level. Heck combat wise the old staging rules is another reason 3 dice means less now. Before you might stage up and gain like 3 boxes of damage from it, now its one box of damage.

So I guess my point is I accept the contention that 3 dice wont improve a character in any meaningful way, yes it is an improvement, but one success just isn't that big of a deal even if it has the potential to be 3 successes.

There is a limited range from some points of view. I think you're getting a little jumped on because you've come in at the end of a long, increasingly polarised thread in which something has been argued heavily without any substantial basis with a point that people sort of see as re-opening a hard-won case for the forces of rules-reading.

You put your finger on it when you said "in some case it may actually be meaningful" and that is the necessary point. Sometimes the mark of being good at something is being able to do that thing in a variety of different circumstances and variations. That average 1 success means often 2 more actual successes and sometimes 3 and it certainly makes a difference in extended tests and in buying successes. Who would you rather employ in your garage? The person with 4 dice in Automotive repair, who will only misdiagnose the problem with every fifth customer, or the person with 7 dice who will only make the same mistake every sixteenth customer and with far, far fewer (critical) glitches, also (assuming they don't just buy a hit)? Likewise when fixing the car, the person with four dice, gets to roll them four times (extended test) whilst the other person gets seven attempts to collect the necessary successes (12 more dice in total) as well as the potential ability to buy a hit.

This is the difference between just one average extra hit. You can certainly make the case that in some circumstances it isn't significant, but in other circumstances it clearly is. Being good at something doesn't necessarily mean being able to do something well. It means being able to do something consistently.

Is this like how in SR3 you could easily be looking at a TN of 10 and have to pick up 12 extra dice to average an additional success?

In a world of opposed tests, like is generally used for both the firearms and negotiations that have been being thrown around by Cain, one hit is meaningful, huge, and wonderful. It is the difference, on average, between winning and not winning. That is to say that if you make this great social character with a huge negotiation dice pool, and then he goes up against a clone himself after he has advanced with three more dice in his pool - he now wins. If he had not advanced in that manner, the result would be a tie.

Yes, having additional dice for perception, longarms, defense, infiltration, palming, or pilot are not important once you've reached the point where you've won, but having one more average hit always increments who you can beat. And yes, as you get better and better the number of potential opponents that you will now defeat who you wouldn't have beaten with one less hit is a smaller and smaller number - it's also a more and more important group of opponents to overcome.

Rolling 2 or 3 hits is enough to hit a security guard. Double tap him with a rifle and he's down whether you rolled 3 hits or 13. But when you're up against a Street Sam with a Reaction of 8 and a Synthacardium who is seriously going Full Defense and rolling 15 defense dice - then 2 or 3 hits aren't going to cut it. Heck, 5 hits probably aren't going to cut it. But if you can get 6 hits you can probably double tap that guy out of the fight. And let me tell you, dropping that dude is really important. You won't encounter someone of that caliber every run (unless you command high salaries because you specialize in taking on runs with that kind of opposition), but when you do the advancement to 18 or 19 dice is certainly going to feel meaningful.

-Frank

"Meaningful" depends on the range of thresholds possible for a given skill. Someone who wants to be in the premier league in multiple skills that are used in opposed tests needs several nearly maxxed skills. In those cases, the minimum required concessions are three dice - skill 4 instead of 6 and a soft-maxed attribute. Even that leaves hard-coded room for improvement.

Test of concept:


Max. Agility: 6 , at chargen: Muscle Toner 2, Genetic Optimisation: Agi, Genetic Heritage. 60BP, 16k¥. Agility 6[8]
I´m intentionally neither buying the last attribute point, nor buying exceptional attribute. Buying those increases the distance our BP have to go.

Minimum combat requirements on other attributes suggest an Ork. Distribute 150BP on top of that, so the spending is 170 BP on top of the 60 BP above.
I´d say Body 5, Agi 6[8], Reaction 5, Strength 5[7], Intuition 5. Don´t care much about the rest, high willpower would be nice... Gimping both Log and Cha to 1 would allow Will 5. Hey, I´m never going to play this build anyway, so lets have Will 5.

We can make good use of 250k¥(234k¥), so 50BP on ressources is a given. For the demonstration at hand, attribute enhancers make up the top list.

Left BP for the skillset and contacts: 400 base -200 attr -20 race -10 quality -50 ress=120. In order to achive broad dominance, we are going to use group rebates wherever possible.


Automatics: 6(SMGs) (Off-tangent, but anything with a Full-Auto mode should fall under this skill, even the modded heavy pistol, Yes?)
Bought on top of Firearms 4, so 50 BP. (The FAQ tells me I may, but I shouldn´t. My education tells me that paying less is better, and I´m not in Robs game.) This is in the case that Pistols combat is considered one area. Might as well do "other combats" as well, shall we?

120-50=70 BP

Before we go to "other areas", we need to get our evasive ability up. Athletics 4 + Dodge speciality on Gymnastics. 42 BP.

Any combatant needs Unarmed skill, and it is rather foolish not to buy MA qualities at chargen. Unarmed 4, MA of choice 2, Maneuvers 4. 24 BP + 10 quality BPs.

70-76 BP=-6 BP.

Now we have to prove dominating or even half-there ability in "other areas" with -6 BP + negative quality BPs. Attributes that can be used as base are strength, Agility and Reaction (the latter depending on choice of augments). Multiple relevant attributes are below the soft cap, as are multiple skills. Edge sits happily at 1. We have no social, technical or vehicle skills. Technical skills are not even useful with logic 1, except in the matrix. We have no Contacts. Stealth 4 is a strong option for the remaining BP, if it can be afforded.

Consequence: The build is pretty good in all forms of combat. It sucks at everything else. It can, due to hard-coded limits on BP spending, and the available BP budget, be improved with karma.

Edit: [8] instead of (.

There is not now, nor has there ever been, a "Dodge" specialization of Gymnastics. It's one of the complaints that kept coming up for Cain's first posted build.



A great many things with a full-auto mode are Heavy Weapons. However a modded pistol is definitionally a Machine Pistol, and those fall under the Automatics skill explicitly both on page 307 and page 111 of the basic book.

-Frank

You forgot Perception which is a must have for combat dominance (don't want to be surprised)... At least 1 point to get from Intuition-1 to Intuition+1.