Okay, so something that has been bouncing around in my head this week, the 4 = 6 baseline that differentiates SR4 from SR3. We have about 1.5x the DP in SR4, but at a constant +1TN. Thinking about this, I realized that the character creation value for SR4 are wrong. We still are caught up in the mindset of 6.

• 5 is the new base Racial modified limit
• Essence is now 5 for Metahumans (yes, I know cyberprices need tweaking)
• Magic, Resonance, and Edge can all be bought up to 5 at chargen for 10BP/point
• Physical and Mental attributes cost 10BP up to 4, and 20BP for 5 (this is before modifying numbers by metatype)
• 7 is the new Augmented maximum for humans. EDIT - (5*1.5 = 7.5, round down = 7)

It's getting late and this is only a start, but it is a start for sure.

Where else in the system do you see too large a starting DP? Please contribute things you think need changing.

Off the top of my head:

• Perception
• Hacking

Eh, all this system does is to change the minmax targets. Right now, the horribly minmaxed pornomancer gets 28 dice on his social skill of choice compared to the normal human skill level of 6-8. Just capping things heavy handed like you suggest just reduces the pronomancer to 24 dice and the normal guy to 4-6.

If you want to reduce dice pool inflation try out the following changes:

Augmented stat max is now current (natural) stat +3.
Kinestics costs 1 PP and is available at only one level.
Reduce most pool bonus items to level 1 (attention coprocessor, pheremones, etc)


For a more comprehensive fix, change character generation so that the costs are no longer linear, for example:

Unmodified stat cost:


In addition, your chargen fix should make character generation use identical costs to character advancement (e.g. characters are built with karma, or BP are awarded instead karma).

wel.....i mean, it's cool...but honestly I don't think i can agree with you here. In our games, the DP is just fine as it is. Cutting things off so badly here as a GENERAL act just tosses those times where you just want to play that high DP dude out the window, and i don't think that's right...some folks like to play a nice specialist. To me, the more options a player has(specialist, uber specialist, generalist, high power, mid power, low power), the better. Honestly i don't see the DPs being too high at all in SR4. Sure, the odd pornomancer sneaks through but that isn't the norm. I guess it depends on what you consider too high-in our games our specialists usually run 11-14 before mods like smartlinks and reach, for their main skills(about accurate, Pistols 5(+2) + Agility 4(7) for example. Personally, that's not unreasonable for a guy who's 26 years old and has been running the shadows for the past eight years. (Yeah, if we play ganger campaigns? Of course they are lower.)

That being said, this might be a good ''lower power'' OPTION to have available. But if this were the actual game, i think i wouldn't be as happy with it.

I dunno. We play a standard 400 BP game but with some houserules that ease certain things.

Personally, if they made a book that had a lower-power option(like you gave), AND a higher-power option(450-500 BPs) in there it would be great. There's nothing wrong with a game of any power, but I personally think in a BBB, they should introduce people in a game where they feel like they can really kick ass BUT have limitations(like the current 400 BP game) and then a GM can ease it up or down from there.

Just my opinion. Then again ive played in the same group for 13+ years so we have our style sort of settled in.

EDIT: And i just read what Crusherbob said. Thing is, when you start nerfing the big guys(the pornomancer, the elf pistoleer adept), the little guys get nerfed too.

...why?

Not to be a jerk, but...just...why? What's the point or purpose, what's the gain of rewriting everything -- and it's really everything -- in SR4, to do this? Why does it matter?

Your fix doesn't solve the problem you're aiming at. You're reducing all dice pools by 1-3 dice. Did you think they were 1-3 dice too high in every case? Clearly, you're targeting the 20 DP monsters who virtually can't fail at a basic task, almost irrespective of the penalties. That is something that could be described as a systemic problem (I wouldn't, but it's fair). But people starting with 6's in skills and attributes? Far from it. If you dislike dice pool inflation, that's what you need to aim at: the inflation. Don't nerf the little guy.

If I wanted to stop DP inflation, I'd use a solution that's just as simple but a lot more effective: limit all skill pools to skill * 2.5, rounding up. So someone with a 6 could have a DP of 15, and someone with a 7 could have 18, and that's the highest it can possibly go. That's the way to stop DP inflation--put a hard cap on dice pools. If you just impose a general -1 or -2 penalty across the board, you'll have the exact same kind of DP inflation, only very very slightly mitigated. If 2.5 is too much for you, you could always lower the multiplier to suit your needs.

Just to be clear though, Shadowrun had always allowed for crazy superhuman ability. That's kind of the point of the system. It is not a simulationist system where people are limited to realistic levels. Characters are supposed to be able to have fantasy level badass-ness. And keep in mind also: if you limit the PCs, you limit your NPCs. Your players will become weaker, but the NPCs you use to swat them will also be messed up. You will have a harder time using the Iron Fist of GM Fiat, because by your own rules your NPCs have a limited power level.

i think its a reasonable suggestion to reduce dicepools if one wanted. however, i think that instead of changing the whole ruleset it should be more of a gameplay option, as ElFenrir said. i know this won't jive with alot of people, but i think the GM needs to put thier foot down sometimes and say "you know what? no. you can't be a world-renownd specialist rolling 25 dice on (skill). change your character."

its unfortunate that that would have to happen, but players have to understand that they're participating in an interactive story, and are part of a team. specialists are good in large teams, but specializing to the point where you're over-the-top good in one role, and utter shit in everything else isn't helping the team. more than that, the GM has to scale up certain aspects of the game in order to keep things challenging for the over-specialized player. which means that Jerry Generalist rolling his 8 dice is utterly fucked when it comes to making a test against whatever monstrosity the GM had to cook up in order to keep Sally Specialist from getting bored.

if you want a superpowered (and hey, this is a world where i can put a shotgun inside my arm and a radar dish in my head, so why wouldn't you?) or low powered game i think it should just be up to the GM to state his case to the players before they make thier characters.

I like this quote. I mean, on one hand, Shadowrun is more a realistic in ways system; the people are(or at least were) human at one point. There are average joes in the world. Plenty of them. There are also people a cut above the rest. And yeah, i agree that players should be allowed to do some friggin cool stuff that they normally can't.

Generally speaking, this is who gets played. I mean, no rules are against you running a game where everyone plays 'joe average and works their way up''. Again, just opinion, but Im just missing where there needs to be hard and fast rules limiting the DPs. Now, Larme suggested a really good one IMO...Skillx2.5(i'd go as far as to even round up). That way, someone who pays dearly for something they really want can have it still. i tell you because im seeing it. I have the thread asking for advice on an adept. Ive never really gone over 5s in my skills before and i think my biggest DP was 15 AFTER smartlinks were involved, so make that a 13 to be sure. To get to a 15 unarmed DP, i really had to do some serious tweaking around to still have myself somewhat useful in a couple of other areas(ok, so there were easier ways i could have done this, absolutely...but i tried to keep in character scope at the same time. I think i managed to do a good job...super-good at what i wanted him to be at, still useful in a couple of other ways and all within the character concept.

If someone then told me they were dropping my DPs i'd a bit upset after all of that. I mean, if they tell me at FIRST the DP range should be something, well i'd play something else of course. But if they let this go thru and then suddenly say ''well, i wanna lower DPs of everyone''...then id be a little miffed. Some folks take it and run with it, not minding, but some of us tend to do(ok, a bit much) character agonizing to really build what's in their heads. Sometimes these concepts have some bigger dice pools attached. Sometimes not. The times that they are, i don't think makes the person a crazed munchkin trying to ruin fun. Sometimes we just get ideas and we want to play someone REALLY impressive at something to see how it flows.

Now, i know a concern with DPs is it upsets game balance. Well, i mean, the SR4 game i always thought was designed with 400 point characters in mind, as in the NPCs are also designed with 400 point characters in mind. Now, granted, those/we(hey, im both GM and PC in different times) can sometimes come up with some crazy ideas that perhaps the designers didn't think of at the time. Hell, even look at the Character Tutorial in SR4. The character creating the Dwarf Weapons Specialist hard-maxes Agility, soft-maxes Reaction and Intuition, hard-maxes Pistols and takes a smartlink. A tutorial character right there with a DP of 12/14 and this is before specializing. They could have easily went to 14/16, or a PC could do this, if they played that hypothetical sample character. Now, the sample character that created the Street Witch took a more rounded approach. To me, they were showing that you TOO could go either route...smaller amounts of larger DPs or a larger amount of rounded DPs. They each have their advantages and disadvantages.

Sorry if this is going on long, but ive read a few threads about this DP inflation and i guess it's hard for me to understand it since it's never affected us. (If it did, maybe i could see the other side). We sorta play by a DP honor system. If GM says ''lower powered'', we do it. If they say ''go nuts'', well we just might. If they say ''standard game'', we run as we usually do with our teen-DP specialities. Why force-cap something if an honor system can work?


I mean, im not trying you how to run your game, but i sorta go with the school of thought that unless it's REALLY broken, be careful of fixing it.

I agree that the rules for DP do not need tampering. Characters who are only good at one thing are pretty easy to deal with IMO.
even a combat beast who has a huge pool for his guns can be countered with any number of things, to spiritis, invisiable opponents, drones. Someone could hack his cyberware...one thing I used was a guy had his smartlink hacked and the person just made him think he was aiming at the guy when he was actually targetting something else. He cuaght on and turned it off and his DP went down.
Thats what I love about this system, ther is always something to through at characters.

Well, I guess I should be glad that people are reading my idea. I did kind of hope that at least one person would agree with me. C'est la vie!

Seriously though, I did not even consider the 20DP monster when I came up with this. I am merely trying to correctly model how the attributes should have been written. This does not hurt the little guy, as he is already under this limit, it merely lowers the top end growth from augmented attributes. It also makes Genetech much more valuable.

BTW, taking into consideration the 20DP monster, is there anything to do to trim that, even just a bit?

When I have some time later I'll write up the specifics of Perception DP inflation.

The easiest solution, IMO, is the house rule that my group uses:

The universal positive DP modifier is 1/2 skill.

So, using shooting as the common example:
If you've got a smartgun link (+2DP), there's no reason to take anything else to increase your weapons accuracy until your skill with a gun is higher than 4. There's also no reason to aim if you've got that smartgun link.

This sets a hardcap of the largest common pool for a human as 21 dice. Here's how I calculate that limit - 9 (enhanced attribute cap) + 8 (Specialized Skill cap) + 4 (Max modifiers).

Yes, you can squeak a few more points out with Exceptional Attribute et al. No, we don't limit Edge in this manner. Yes, this makes a fair bit of gear and/or powers less useful.

We've found that it reduces min/maxing. It also dramatically cuts down on the "fiddly bits." It's not for everyone, but it works well for us. YMMV.

I'll concur with most people and say that there is no real need to limit SR4's dice pools - with a fixed TN of 5, they are a far different beast than SR3's, where someone with vision magnification and a smartlink could shoot people with a TN of 2.

SR4 is already set at a lower baseline than SR3, with Attributes capped at 200 BP and skills limited to a single skill of 6 or two skills of 5. It's a far cry from SR3, where people could routinely start out with several Attributes with a base of 6, and numerous skills of 6.

As far as high dice pools breaking the game, they only do so if you ignore all of the penalties (for magic and combat) or treat social skills as mind control instead of subtle manipulation.


If I decided to hard cap anything, it would probably be Magic - I know that, realistically-speaking, you won't have players actually reach those theoretical double-digit initiation grades, but it is still jarring that everything else is capped, and magic isn't. I wouldn't change what you could reach at char-gen, though.


Nathanross, I will give you the advice I would give most people considering house rules. Don't make a house rule just because something doesn't "look right". Actually play the game, with the rules, to see if they work or don't, before you house rule things.

Wow dunner, that is actually really f'ing cool! Nice way of doing it. Just to ask, have you tried limiting the hits by skill level (or skill level+1)?

More random limiters:

• The max Force mages may overcast or summon is not Magic x2, but Magic x1.5 (round up)
• The maximum level of any one power an adept may take is equal to Magic/2 (round up)

May not be necessary, but keeps what would be a Force 10 Stunball at Force 8. The adept version may also not be necessary since the dunner's ruling.

My motivation for doing this is only about 50% because DPs are too inflated. I feel that SR4 is stuck between the assumptions of the first 3 editions, and aspirations to be something different. The system is not so much a problem, as it is an itch for me. It just doesn't feel right.

I feel the core mechanic is absolutely fabulous, but the numbers they assigned are just wrong. Somewhere in the back of all our minds is the magical number 6. They decided to soft-cap it at 5 to get our conception of the max lower, but the option to have multiple attributes at 6 (the equivalent of 9 in SR3) and be more usefull than ever before is something that cannot be ignored (IMO).

I understand that the basis of the rules is to make a game that is fun, and SR4 has been fun for me for over a year now. Now that the system is fairly well understood by the group, some holes seem to appear in the concept of some things. I am merely trying to rewrite parts of the system so that SR works the way I think it ought to. I do understand that most will not agree, but that is where I stand.

That is a HARSH cap on Adept powers. They are already limited by Magic. Not all adepts take a 6 Magic. Some adept powers are limited as they are(Penetrating Strike is capped at 3 regardless, forex.) That houserule is really...rough.

Again, i like Glyph's advice and I don't go changing things unless i know for sure they are broken. Ive done it before, and it's bitten me in the ass almost every time. Problem is with changing some things, other things end up changing. And then other things. It's a big chain reaction, really. I mean, some houserules tend ot be pretty harmless(Blakkie's Cha x 2 contacts i have yet to hear break a game), but when you start tampering with DPs be really wary here.

And also, something to think about; ive found in my time sometimes the MORE you limit, the MORE minmaxing comes out of it.

Again, if it makes you AND your players happy then all is well and good but if rules do nothing but cause disquiet be aware of changing them.

...I agree with the casting cap. I have to side with ElFenrir on Adepts (with the exception of the Pornmancer) in that they are also pretty hamstrung by the fact the 4 =6 rule does not apply in most instances when it comes to power costs. For powers such as critical strike I would limit that by the Adept's unarmed combat skill (similar to how Improved Ability is capped). I also would have no issue with Kinesics costing 1PP per level which is what it cost in 3rd ed. Always caught me kind of odd that this power had a reduction in cost while almost all the others remained the same.

We tried it during the course of playtesting and didn't really care for it. Basically, we found that to be extremely limiting for "Jack of all Trades" character types. IE, the guy with great attributes, but just a smattering of low-ish level skills.

Okay, maybe the adept power was a bit much (not that I ever even cap my powers above 3, anyways), but 1pp for Kinesics? Common! It's not like Magic, and +1 die is certainly not equal to -1TN/level. Especially when the TN was the opposing char's Int. .5/pp of Kinesics is plenty fair.


Ah, I see, though I'm not sure I agree that a guy with great attributes and low skills is a "Jack of all Trades". I usually consider that a guy with 3-4 in most skills (allowing him to get succeed on Extremely difficult tasks) and average 3-4 in most Attributes. In fact a guy I play with came up with the "Above Average Adept", hereafter referred to as AAA, who had 4 in all attributes (3 in all physical, 4 in all mental, and all physical atts boosted by Improved Physical Attribute adept power) and a ton of skills at 4. Pretty cool dude.

I use the optional rule for "grittier play" presented in S4 main rule book.
successes on a test are limited to twice your skill. So far it has been really good. I didn't like how attributes at 9 and skills at 1 meant 10 dice compared to other guy with 5 skill and 3 attribute for 8 DP.
I do let some DP bonuses increase the max successes you can get, such as adept Great Leap for jump tests and positive quality social DP bonuses.

It works quite well.

Yes. It provides +1 to 5 skills. (Con, Negotiation, Leadership, Etiquette, Intimidation); doing the same thing with increased ability would cost 1.25 pp. In addition, it provides the minor bonus of the silent body language trick. If that wasn
t already enough, the bonus it provides is a pool bonus (uncapped) compared to capped increased provided by increased ability. At one PP and limited to one level it's still a pretty good deal. At .5 pp a level and capped only by magic it's crazy good.

One of the quickest ways to flatten out dice pools is to nerf things that provide uncapped bonuses to pools. So stuff like, tailored pheremones, kinesics, various athletics boosters, etc. If you nerf all pool increasers down to +1 pool, then even if they are stacked, they still tend to keep pools lower.

This is what the_dunner's house rule limiting stacking DP mods to Skill/2 (round up, right?) does perfectly. If you have Influence Group 4, you can only gain dice from 2 levels of Kinesics, no matter how many you have purchased. Seems fine to me. To get more out of Kinesics you have to increase the skills associated. Wonderful.

but it will make for a heck load more of min/maximing . . i only have skill 4, why should i ever use something else than a smartlink? even if i were using a frigging artillery cannon, a gauss-rifle, a laser-beam, an LBX Sniper rifle . . there will be no other benefits aside from AP/DV from my trusty little pocket pistol . . so i can use the money that i would have put into that to make my whole-some character-image to get some other things that get me the maximum dice pool of 1,5xskill for everything else i want my char to do . .

That's really the point of it, for us. We end up with characters that are better diversified. As I said above, though. This is our house rule. It's definitely not for everyone.

True enough. I do like some healthy debate on these things. Myself, i believe that there is not need to force diversifacation, if players want a more tightly-specialized character(or group), they'll make it because thats what they want to play and what will be fun for them. If they want to diversify, they will, for the same reason.

But again, it's cool if groups like to sort of push it. It's not my cup of tea(i sorta don't like forced stuff), but it might be for others.

Hmm...you know, i think i know why im not as into it myself. See, we usually try to do group creations to be balanced. We do have a fairly lean game and yeah, we do push into mildly higher power levels sometimes(though we stay at 400 BP, so it's not excessive). We've played on all types.

I've been on teams(usually our same people give or take a couple), and seen teams made of A. heavily divirsified but not excessive people, B. Specialists around; a smattering of skills in other areas to help but each absolutely had their thing, and C. Mixed.

Honestly, in my experience, team A had the MOST problems. None of us really had enough ''oomph'' in any one area to make a big difference and trouble was ran into. Maybe we were going about it wrong, and it did have some good sides(teamwork rolls went fairly smooth), but there were alot of bumps; more than what we preferred(sure, SR isn't supposed to be a smooth road, but still).

The specialist teams were awesome, there wasn't much we couldn't do if we worked together. The downside was getting seperated. Sure, we weren't useless in other areas but there could be problems. I had more fun here though.

The MIXED team was great; the diverse guys could help out anywhere while the specialists could carry easily. The current game im playing on and off has one of these. Again there were a few drawbacks but IMO, a mixed team is the most fun. I'm one of the super-specialists here, and it's nice to both be relied upon...and having to rely on other people.

I like seeing things like this, myself, but im sure other folks might have had bad experiences with 'specialist' teams and thus might have a bad taste, like i did with ''low DP diverse teams'. Let me add that diverse teams are NOT useless; it could have been our team was WAY too diverse and lacked any sort of focus. Diverse characters can save the day in those mixed team games; but so can the specialists. In a way, the more...diversity between..diverse and specialists is allowed the better, if that didn't come out too confusing.

amen to that

We've been running the skill + 1 capping successes since we started playing SR4 and it works very well for us. That way, I could care less if my players have a DP of 60, as I know their skill of 3 is only going to gross them 4 successes. Even at the upper levels, you are talking about a skill of 7 getting 8 successes, so not a huge deal when you take into account opposed tests or thresholds.

That leaves us with little to no rule changes and a level playing field for most skill levels. Now, the higher DP players will be able to do some extraordinary things still, as they can eat a lot of negative DP modifiers...but they should be able to do crazy stuff!!!

I think DPs are too high too, I wanna play! (rolling 20 dice is teh suck... too many dice, man.... too many dice...)

But trying to rejigger every number from the ground up like that is teh suck.

What I'd do is remove attributes from the dice pools: you heard me, that particular change made me wince, puts way too much emphasis on the attributes. Sure, you'll have a few problems with some subsystems ( subdual combat, when I put the squeeeze on him should I still use skill or should I use strength?)

But right there you've just cut your DP's in half. Amazingly enough, I think that even with the current threshold system, that means your high end dudes actually have to struggle to hit those 'world class difficulties.

While the low skill guys actually have to struggle for positive modifiers to actually beat threshold 1 with any reliability.

Its freaking GENIUS man!

Oh, there's a few minor things, what to do with attributes that aren't called on much (Logic? Agility?) outside of skills, but I hated the 'extra attribute' thing too. 6 was plenty, 8 is just ugly. Of course, this does make Edge more potent, best to just cut that away (it sucks anyway...)...

You know, if I wanted to play without Attribute + Skill DP system, I would just go back to SR3. Since I don't, I think I will just continue to tweak the SR4 rules.

You know, if I wanted to make sweeping fundamental changes to the game because I think some aspect of it is overdone, I would just design a whole new game from scratch. Since I don't I will just continue to use the SR4 rules.

Well, in the end, the whole DP thing is really subjective. What's too much in one person's game is just right for another. For example, Im not a big fan of the skill +1 cap; it makes low skills not as good anymore(one of the things im glad they changed from SR3. I feel like i can have some chance at something if i have a bit of knowledge in it.)

Each table just has to find what works for them. As i always say to alot of folks, im the biggest fan of the 'gentleman's rule' way of doing it; the whole table decides on a rough range before the game(give or take a couple before OR after modifiers depending), and sticks with it. No rules have to be changed and since everyone decides at the start then the whole table is happy.

What sweeping fundamental changes? How is lowering the hard cap by 1 fundamental? Almost all of the characters presented in BBB dont even need changing. I really don't see what the problem is. I merely wish to slightly lower DPs so that a threshold of 4 actually has meaning.

@nathanross
Take a look at your original post...you said more than just lower the hardcap by 1.

I think that opposed tests are already balanced, unless you have your players with a lot bigger DPs than their opposition. That end of it really does take care of itself. If you have 20 DP v. 20 DP, then it really is whoever rolls better that wins out.

Same idea with extended tests...you can move that threshold up as far as you want. Additionally, you can alter the timeframe to make the extended test take longer ("when" it gets done can be more important than how bad-ass it gets done).

So really, you are looking at just the unopposed simple tests, right? Why not just impose higher thresholds? Right now you only have four...so it wouldn't be too complex to add one (or a few) more, right? That leaves most everything as-is, just makes it a little harder to do really hard things.

I have a different approach. It may not suit all games but it works for me and it stops short of house rules.

I take a soft approach to discouraging maxed out dice pools by absolutely stuffing my game with strategy, tactics and situational modifiers. Yes - it's great to have six in an attribute, but it's expensive and the difference between that and having 4 is just two dice. That's two dice you could make up in combat by attacking with the Sun behind you, that's two dice you could make up in a social roll by researching the target's home town and slotting an accent chip, that's two dice you could make up on your driving roll by just spending the BP on a vehicle control rig and still have a bundle left over. And at the same time, the players see their characters getting hammered by less skilled opposition who just happen to be co-ordinating their security response effectively with good use of 2070-era comms and expert systems. And at the same time, I thrust all sorts of situations at the team. Primarily this is to force them to work together but it also puts an emphasis on not leaving obvious weaknesses. To round all this out, I make very certain that I apply the appropriate descriptions to the appropriate scores. A PC with a Strength of 4, well they still get people cooing over how strong they are and the person with a Logic of 3 - they still get to say they're a little smarter than most.

None of this constitutes a hard and fast rule, but it's good in that it often relieves players of the need to have a 6 in some skill or attribute. They soon learn that the rest of the world isn't built around these super high attributes and they adjust accordingly. At least in my experience.

Lets look at the points, shall we?

In reverse order: lowering dice pools by 3 odd dice will not magically make thresholds of 4 all that much harder to hit. When your 'high end' dicepool is 20+, and to realistically make a threshold of 4 statistically challenging you need to reduce it to 12, this little change is a drop in the bucket. Note that 20 isn't even the high end here, its more of a reasonable 'high pool'. Worse, you'll see more 'high' pools across the spectrum, since without rejiggering the DP totals they will have on average more points to spread around, seeing as they won't have so many 6's or even as many 5's eating their points.


Since you want to keep it simple, humans (with no stat boosts at all) become even less attractive to play. Think about it, what's more damaging a loss of 1/6th your dice or one 10th? or even that 1/7th or 1/8th (more common...). The change doesn't impact all races equally by any means. Worse, since the augmented cap drops by TWO instead of one... Elves with their agility of 6/9 will be much more attractive than their 7/11 (and very hard to reach 11 at that...) ever were before.

But lets move to combat. Since everyone will have less body to resist damage, all your weapons are going to be that much more lethal. Same thing with existing toxins and poisons and diseases. healing times will slow down.

You've already backed off the poor magic bastards, which means that high end spells will continue to appear, and be harder to resist than ever. Good job.

Eh: melee weapons are always 1/2 str, sadly now str has a odd number cap base. Not huge, but still and annoying dangly bit.


We haven't even gotten into your strange comment about perception DP's requiring special attention. I'll let the hacking one pass, as aside from the fact that your little rule has absolutely zero effect on hacking to begin with, takes us into the quagmire that is discussing the SR4 matrix rules.

Why does Perception piss you off so much? Seriously? Do you play Ninja alot and get tired of failing your sneak rolls or something? Seriously, perception should be the least of your worries, as quite often it will be opposed by another skill using the exact same mechanism of determing number of successes. And since last I checked, its possible to get a superhuman agility far easier than it is to get a superhuman intuition... if anything you're doing it backwards: Stealth needs nerfing!


And all of this... all of it... is just the tip of the iceberg of things that will change when you suddenly, and arbitrarily decide to alter the one thing that every character has (that is: attributes scaled from 1-6, with changes due to race). It is at best a piss poor 'solution' to the 'problem' you currently have. Its ineffective and has more drastic changes than just about any other solution.

You, friend, just made my night. I think youve said what ive wanted to say but i forgot to say it.

Alot of players(me included) fall into the SR3 trap; when i first started, i was used to SR3. High numbers were norm(and if you were doing something like face or build and repair, AKA stuff that had no pool dice, a requirement). 4's were the 'ah, average' stat, 5s and 6s were norm attributes, samurai were super fast as well as Mensa members with iron will(combat pool.) And then a dramatic switch to 2's being what the ''man on the street has'', and 3's being a little above average; you were probably noticed in your class if you had a 3. But trying to change that mindset over can be difficult. I remember failing miserably trying to do direct translations of my SR3 characters.

But when i started thinking of it like Knasser mentioned, it got so much easier. Rarely do I max a stat or even a skill. Most of my stats are in the 3-4 range-sometimes even 2-4, and i've popped natural 5s before, but it's not often. Skillwise i take some 5s now and again but the majority has been in the 2-4 range. Sure, there are modifiers, and yeah ive specialized, but ive learned that the numbers are just different now. Ive done the max thing a couple of times-maxed magic on a character once and recently wanted a character with a 7 in a skill, just to see how it would work out and I was interested in playing That Guy To Beat. I havn't brought him in game yet but I have a feeling the people are going to react a bit differently than they did with my old sam with a 5(7) in something. Sure, in SR3 a 5(7) person was considered hot, but eh, there are better, you know?

In fact, i'll expand on this a bit. Explain to your players what the numbers mean, as mentioned. Say that 2 Logic doesn't mean he's a dumbass(in SR3, a 2 Intelligence meant yeah, you were a bit slow.) Not now, though. You're just as smart as the guy down the street. You probably graduated school, even, with typical grades. That 2 Reaction doesn't mean you're a total slowpoke, it means that you catch the ball about as much again, as the guy down the street.

And yeah, tell em that 4 whatever means it's well known. If they have a 5 in a stat it should be damned noticable nowadays. a 5 Strength guy probably gets called first when someone needs help moving and probably get challenged often to arm-wrestling contests by drunken patrons. the 5 Logic guy probably could make a career winning on a trivia show and by damned he could be a top scientist.

As for skills, 0 is the typical untrained masses. But you can still do it. If someone has a 5, again, they'll be widely noticed. Again, im almost afraid of what is going to happen to the guy where i took a 7.

Now, players will still want to be successful in their chosen fields. If that firearms guy puts a 5 in Agility, gets a couple levels of Muscle Toner and a 5(+2) Pistols, well, he's just trying to be damned good at what he does. Alot of times these guys aren't trying to break a game open. 5s are high; but they are also reasonable, IMO. They are also limited to 2 of them so they have to choose carefully. Sure the Face probably wants to ensure they do their job to the best of their ability. If a Face puts a 5 to Charisma and a 5 Etiquette, to me, that's reasonable. Oh, they are going to be a noticed face for sure; a 5 charisma is friggin high, but i can't blame a player for wanting to do it.

A part of that is how you scale your opposition too. Sure, the players are tossing aside 24 dice to shoot some poor bastard, and feeling pretty bad ass about it... for a while anyway.

Until they start realizing that the sec guards are happy to throw 8 or 9 dice at them, and count on numbers.

Then 'the math' kicks in. They start thinking of all they ways they skimped to hit that 24 dice of shooting, all the other things they could have done and been content with, say 20 dice... and how those four 'uber' dice turned into 6 or 7 'other dice' somewhere down the line.

Then maybe they'll trim a little more, bring 16-18 dice. Still bad ass shooters, but a bit more rounded.

Of course, the first time you take a world class, specialized until it hurts, opponent against them you just lost all that natural de-escalation.


And its not as simple or easy as I just suggested, but its a forum, not a paid seminar....

I'm a fan of numbers and tactics. 6-8 guards throwing 8 dice are enough trouble vs. a few shadowrunners chucking large amounts of dice. And again, tactics. Make the opposition hide, make em sneak around, and take cover. Suddenly those 24 dice drop with negative modifers of firing into almost full cover.

And they realize ''hey, maybe taking a 4(+2) Automatics and 5 Agility was a better idea than the 6 Agility, 6(+2) Automatics and i would have had points for running and a melee skill so i could have closed on his ass and clocked him one''.

Don't *punish* them per se. Don't have all the enemies suddenly hide behind a Giant Wall Out of Nowhere with only holes they can shoot out of. But now and again toss em up against situations to make them think and understand.

First, in response to deek: all of my original proposals were a result of a shift from 6 to 5 as hard cap and 5 to 4 as softcap. Also a slightly reduced hardcap cost (20 instead of 25). When 5 is the hard cap, 7 becomes the augmented cap by SR4 standards (5*1.5 = 7.5, round down = 7).

Now, maybe this is just me being narrowminded, but I like Magic and resonance to be equal. This is the only reason I proposed it as Magic all the way to 5.

Spike, I don't think I can really respond to all of your criticism, but I will try.

First, you are right that this changes the metatype balance. I'm not sure is some values need to be raised/lowered or what. If you have something to solve this, please present it.

Second, you say that high force spells are going to still be an issue, but I don't think so. First, Drain DP is the main reason behind high force spell casting, and I have just taken 2DP from drain min-maxers. Also, I think it was also in this thread that I proposed a limit of Magic * 1.5 (round up) on overcasting. This I feel is the number 1 solution to Force 10 spirits and spells.

Third, I don't understand why you think this is so drastic. As you said, it is only -3DP tops. How does -1DP from Body (assuming soft-capped Body) suddenly make you vulnerable, when the shooter also has -1 Agility.

Fourth, since when did I say that perception "pissed me off"? It does not in any way. It is most important thing for a shadowrunner after IPs. I merely think that there is too many +DP for perception. This is no longer an issue since the dunner's proposed rule and thus I have no issue anymore with perception. Happy?

Fifth, as for the matrix, I have given that up until I see what Unwired brings. I want to know what corporate Nodes/Hosts are like stat wise before I comment on the issue of scaling.

Knasser and ElFenrir, I understand the importance of modifiers, and taking them into account is one of the most important aspects of the game. However! Modifiers become less and less useful at modifying DPs as the DP scales upwards. Unless most DPs are in the same approximate range, -DPs really hurt low dice pools and have hardly any effect on large dice pools. I am not saying that they aren't crucial, just that it isn't enough, at least for me.

...Crusher Bob: Thank you for replying in my absence You pretty much covered my points exactly (viral infections are a bitch).

Technically, it would be six skills, as Kinesics actually benefits Instruction as well, if I'm not mistaken.

Nathanross: My solution is simple: don't alter the attributes, and then you don't have to worry about how to scale down the various metaraces to keep them all in balance.

You yourself listed Perception out for special attention at the bottom of your OP. It and hacking were the two areas that you felt needed special attention. You tell me why.

As for magic: since you backed off on reducing it's cap, that means that many mages are casting at 6 without worry of overcasting, thus the marginal reduction in drain ability only partially offsets that fact that their spells are just that much harder to resist.

The -1 agil from the shooter is offset by the -1 reduction in defensive DP, so it has a zero net balance to damage, the only number that we're looking at is the fixed DV of the weapon, as it hasn't changed. Further compounding the damage issue: Since armor is capped (effectively) at double body (or for some houserules str+bod), that means less armor overall as well. Guns have no such attribute related cap to their fixed ability to dish out the pain.

Do you see where this is going? Cascades of changes, all from altering, even minorly, this single facet of the game. THIS facet in particular because it is the only thing that every other aspect of the game has in common. Therefore it happens to be a fundamental alteration, which was what you tasked me with proving. I think I've done that.

Sure its a 'minor change', but it implies a host of changes, some you'll like some you won't. If you want to keep the general balance of the game the same then you'll have to change all those other things.

And again: Since the goal is reducing dice pools, and this provides trivial changes (1 or 2 in most cases...) its a hell of a lot of work for a pathetic gain. Its the back end of the mule.

...hacking is kind of moot in that if you go by RAW attribute does not come into play. In our group we elected to use the Logic + Skill houserule for Matrix ops.

For perception, there are an number of conditional modifiers that adjust the DP downwards including: distance, available light, ambient noise, materials, infiltration successes, weather, smoke, concealment (not the Spirit kind), Camo, ruthenium polymers, size of target, etc. Personally, I have not seen these brought into play as much as they should be.

Also keep in mind that the oppos have all the sensory technology and implants at their disposal, and most of it takes little or no essence & doesn't cost all that much.

...of course for me the jury is still out on perception being a skill rather than an attribute test as it was in previous editions.

what? Mages casting at 6? how the hell did you figure that? When I say reduce the attribute hardcap, I mean ALL the caps. That includes Essence/Magic/Edge. ALL of them. As I already mentioned, this could bone sammys, but that bridge will be crossed when I get to it.

I can see more where you are coming from about the constant weapon DV, but just because you can only take Body * 2 before becoming encumbered, doesn't mean you can't take more. In fact just there the agility DP has been reduced further. If you want to shoot like a god you will have to give up some security. Seems fine to me. Or get tailored armor that gives Body *3 before encumburance.


You are right KK, there are a ton of modifiers on Perception that we forget. But as you said, there is sensory tech that don't even need to implant and costs pennies. You can elimintate DP mods and get +3 dice for 500 glasses. Why would you not!

...but as I mentioned, that means the Oppos can easily have them too which levels the field a bit.

KK, it is not that everyone can have them that is the issue. At those prices with that much of a bonus, why would the not have them? DP inflation is not just an issue on the PCs side.

As for Perception, just a question, but has anyone made it an Intelligence test again (Intuition + Logic)? I've been wondering if this is better or worse than Perception as a skill (a Physical one at that!).

MY current character rolls 17 dice (6 Int +6 Per +2 Spec +3 contacts with enhancement) for visual perception (looking for clues) and our GM loves it, finally someone in the party has a good chance of finding even threshold 5 clues so he can actually use them...
I don't see how you could get that DP much higher so I don't think it should be kept down...
All the gun lovers in the party roll more dice to shoot than that...

Observe In Detail +3
Betel Gum +1
Directional Orientation (from Spacial Recognizer) +2
Microscopic Vision +2
Nanites +3
Exceptional Intuition +1
Gene Therapy +1
Increase Intuition spell +3
Cognition Adept Power usage +3

... that's off the top of my head ... there's probably more. Not all can be used together in every situation, but it isn't too hard to pump the Perception Pool.

Show off...

Reception Enhancer (Rating 3)

+3 to all perception checks, and is usable with sensors and matrix. The fluff of it describes it more as allowing you to process the multiple inputs better allowing you to interpret it better. I don't have my book with me to provide the actual page, but its damn nice I have a Perception guru myself in the works


Intuition 4 + Perception 5 + Vision/Hearing/Phermone Enhance (3) + Reception Enhance (3) = 15 perception.. ok you beat me so far
Phermone Enhance being the sensory, not the perfume itself

And there's always the Attention Coprocessor, which is good for +3. How the hell did I forget that?

Now, of course these things are not always in the same place at the same time, but to summarize them: quoting Fortune for some)

Intuition: 5-12 (12 is done through exceptional attribute + genetech to raise aug max to 12, and magic or adept power to fill the rest.)

Perception: 6-7

Specialization: +2

Enhanced Perception adept power: +Magic (4 in this case to account for ware)

Ware:
Reception Enhancers +3
Attention Coprocessor +3
Vision Enhancement +3
Nanites +3
Microscoptic Vision +2
Directional Orientation (from Spacial Recognizer) +2

Other:
Observe in Detail +3
Betel Gum +1

Now this totals to 37 on the low side to 45 on the high side. Now I understand that this character is purely stat masturbation, but the idea that you could get 20 dice completely outside of Attribute + Skill is DP inflation if ever I have heard of it. I guess the main reason I feel this is a problem is because the ware should be redundant. They all basically do the same thing, why should they get the same bonus to do it?

I forgot to note that with the dunner's totally pimpin rule, this is down to 16 on the low end to 23 on the high end. About -20DP eh? This does not take into consideration whether the Enhanced Perception adept power is also limited by this, a point I am not too sure of myself (I do kind of like the idea of adepts being infinite in some areas, though I do not support the Pornomancer).