I just quoted you the English version, so obviously, yes.

In the English books, it uses the same language every time it talks about an interrupt language. Which seems to mean that you can always borrow an action. Even if you've already acted that turn, you'll have an available action next turn, making that your next available action. The only place where this becomes messy is Finishing Move, where you could read it to allow infinite finishing moves. But it's better just to handwave that away, it's not even worth considering because it's so obviously not what the devs intended. I think it's better to just use the RAW, and ignore the crazy interpretation of finishing move, than to fix the entire interrupt system just because of finishing move.

EDIT: And before anyone says "how to YOU know what the devs intended," can you credibly argue that they wanted infinite finishing moves? Didn't think so I'm not saying I can read their minds, but this one is a big fat DUH.

This is only true if you forbid people with 1 IP from using edge to gain another IP. My 1 IP mundane could easily be bumped up to 4 IP using 3 points of edge...

And isn't the 4 IP person in that same position when we are resolving actions in the 4th IP? I just don't see future turn IPs being available before you actually roll initiative. YMMV.

You know what would be REALLY cool, is if we could have something like a internet forum somewhere where potentially ambiguous or problematic rules could be discussed among players, perhaps a consensus reached on whether it's FAQ-worthy or else how it should be dealt with, and where the devs can swing on by if they want to, possibly answer questions and/or pick out stuff they can add to the FAQ.

Now, all we need is a good name....

I don't think I can support an interpretation that forces 1 IP people to spend edge to full defense after acting. The system is so deadly that it really needs the full defense option in all non-surprise situations to keep it balanced.

Yeah, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind, just throwing it out as another option. Like I said, I was thinking about this last week while I was driving to lunch. I wanted to share it before I forgot it.

While I think it is noble of you to want to balance the 1 IP mundane in combat, it seems that someone building such a character should be fully aware of the weaknesses of such a character in combat. I would find it rare that the 1 IP guy is going to actually act first in combat and even if s/he did, why would they attempt to blow their load before everyone else?

I agree, the system is deadly. I also would think that any GM looking over a sheet with 1 IP should question it. I mean, if they are not boosting their speed with drugs, magic or ware...well, everyone at the table should understand that the character is gonna be gimped in combat. If the GM is running a typical SR game, then combat is going to be occurring and that 1 IP player should really know what they are getting into. Obviously, a lower powered campaign or specific settings, this is cool, but you have to know going into it.

Again, not trying to change anyone's mind, but that's kinda like building a hacker with a commlink with 1s all around or a mage with only one point of magic...you can do it, but you have to know its gonna be weak.

I can see where people come from, from experience; but I think I disagree with the 1 IP thing being gimped from experience, too.

Again, we have played SEVERAL campaigns, where no one died because of one IP, and the 1 IP combat people were perfectly effective.

But all games run differently. I think one of our things is that we look at the IPs of everyone and decide the opposition that way. Spending Edge can gain an IP if you need it, and now we're happy that these Arsenal options give more options, since we are cool with borrowing actions.

Perhaps folks have seen 1 IP people not do too well. Again, it's all experience. A game that we played last year, had the whole PARTY with 1 IP each. We fought people with multiple IPs. we won due to tactics and just being damn good at what we did. The current party we have i think consists of...4 out of 6 of us having 1 IP(2 have 2 IPs). So far, there have been few injuries and no casualties. With careful balancing of defense, offense, and borrowing actions, it works just fine. Sure, it's safer to take more than one but i don't agree with thinking a combative character is automatically hosed with 1 IP.

Between two combatants with roughly equivalent skills, the one with more initiative passes has a marked advantage, and that's a huge deal because beyond a certain point attempting to gain more dice runs headlong into diminishing returns. It's easy to make a skilled combatant who's extremely deadly once his extra initiative passes are factored in, and Wired Reflexes are pretty damn cheap, all things considered. Meanwhile, it's damn near impossible to make an equivalently deadly character who bypasses initiative enhancement-- skill points and extra dice simply aren't affordable enough to make a realistic argument that you're getting the same bang for your buck that you would have gotten from initiative enhancement. If you have a highly proficient team who can ALL hold their own in combat, yeah, sure, you might be able to alpha strike the other guys and get by without extra passes since your teammates all act as your "extra passes," but frankly, for many games the far more likely scenario is that the non-Samurai are pretty OK in combat but are frankly rather dependent on the Samurai when the fur really starts to fly. I routinely send things at my players like 2-3 Spirits (a couple with Magical Guard, natch), 2-5 drones and 3 or 4 mooks tossing around 8-10 dice in firearms and frankly, I can't imagine them surviving without the ridiculous, jacked up beast of an ork Samurai my buddy Mike plays. Trust me, he needs those passes. Add in the simple fact that extra initiative passes usually come hand in hand with having a higher initiative scorel overall, and yeah, I am kinda skeptical of 1 pass "combat" characters. Hell, I'm actually even kinda skeptical of Wired 1. That's not even better than Jazz.

Well, the current team we have is SIX characters. It might have something to do with it; granted, not all are combative(there are two heavy combat, one moderate heavy combat, one that CAN be heavy if she has her vehicle or a drone, and one more moderate with one non combatant). Having six folks might give us that said 'alpha strike' advantage. Now, in the other game where we were 1 IP each...all three of us were magically active(me; adept, friend; combat mage, other friend; spirit specialist), so the Alpha Strike THAT little team pulled off was pretty...sick to say the least.

However, the current 6 man isn't bad at stealth either; so getting an early leg up is a big help. Of course, in a combat situation we try to 'dole ourselves out' in a way, to our strengths. Now, i might have one IP, but my guy has a ton of martial arts manuvers and more dice to smash face with than...well, probably 4 mooks put together. He's also set up for massive amount of counterattacking. He almost WANTS people to come at him physically so he can parry them, counter, and finish them off. meanwhile, our gun experts(2, actually up to 4 if there is a drone), take the ranged targets. down to prevent damage to our melee/slower folks. (Actualy, i THINK 3 of us have 2 IPs. I can't remember off the top of my head.) But i know that running into a room full of firearm wielding people isn't in my character's best interests; this is where flash-bang and flash-pak comes in to give an edge. (Since i knew i didnt have room to get more than one IP, i managed to juice up reaction and athletics to some fairly high levels to help with defending. between that, armor, mystic armor, and body, im preeety survivable.)

But yeah, we do have some heavy guns and IP passes handy if stuff goes awry.


and also, it's rare that we have 5 drones, 4 mooks and a few spirits coming at us at once, unless we really, REALLY do something wrong.

EDIT: I should also add; it really depends on the game. If i know i'm playing with a game with said armies(i playing in a game where it was made obvious that..yeah, lots of things, and lots of big guns...classic action game)...well, damn straight, if i play a combat character(hell, i might not feel like it), im going to take extra IPs. But we tend to use opposition in a 'normal' game that's a little more realistic....like, Red Samurai only have a base 2 passes according to RAW, and they are usually looked upon as ''you're in deeep shit if they come after you''. Going by THAT yardstick, the average corpsec won't even have jazz, that's reserved for better ones, and the leaders MIGHT have wired 1 if they're lucky.

I've not had players with 1 IP, so I can't actually speak from experience on that one. Our current group has a sammie, a hacker (with sammie-like gun skills), a rigger (with sammie-like gun skills) and a mage. All four have 3 IPs. Three with wired reflexes and the mage with increased reflexes sustained through his focus almost all the time.

I can see 1 IP being viable, but its all about play-style and opponent balance. If all my players had 1 IP, yeah, as the GM, I wouldn't smoke check them all the time with 3 IP opponents. But, I'd also hope that they realize that they can't brute force everything either.

So, I'm not saying 1 IP is worthless, its just tough to get by in a world when everyone else has initiative mods and your group isn't wanting to play a full-out stealth campaign...so, in my perspective, a combat player with 1 IP, is gimped.

I guess its all about your perspective on just how much of the world has initiative mods. I'm more inclined to go with the Red Samurai have 2 IPs and are bad mothers, than to think you must have 3-4 IPs to be badass.

Keep in mind Joe Drone has 3 IPs. Luckily, the way the weapon systems rules works means they aren't firing twice a pass, but that's cold comfort when they just blow their attack on a long/full auto wide burst anyway.

I love how everyone gets scared of wide bursts, when the shooter takes fairly massive penalties to do so.

Bah. Who takes recoil penalties? What kind of slack jawed idiot fires a full auto weapon without modding it up to full compensation? People take fairly massive penalties if and only if they fail to purchase relatively cheap upgrades for their firearms. Full auto is powerful, and the penalties are basically a joke because they can be eliminated so easily. Not that I'm complaining. This is how the system has worked for over a decade. Just don't tell me that full auto isn't that good because of recoil penalties...

Hrmm, and what slack jawed idiot just stands around for someone to shoot full auto at him? Cover, lighting penalties, camo clothing, invis spells, running, etc are all easy quick ways to make it much harder to shoot you.

None of those things are specific to full auto. You were telling us that full auto isn't that good because it entails massive penalties. It doesn't most of the time because it's easy to add recoil comp to guns, and this has been the status quo for years and years of Shadowrun history. Now are you going to change your position to telling us that guns in general aren't that good? Cuz... yeah.

I'd just like to point out that, for someone who's arguing so passionately on another thread about how disgusted he is over how quickly threads on Dumpshock deteriorate into flame wars, Larme, you were the one who introduced the term "slack jawed idiot" into this particular conversation. Shit like that doesn't help.

If you're out to be an asshole, that's cool and all. Revel in it, have a good ol' time, laugh about it, and be prepared to get the occasional PM and take a few weeks off here and there. Lord knows, I've passed the time that way myself, on occasion.

But don't act like that, and then suddenly clamber desperately to some moral high ground (after being the one that starts the shit-slinging), and then wonder out loud over how so many threads turn into flame wars, pointing fingers anywhere but at yourself.

Critias i think he meant the "slack jawed idiot" as a IC comment about the theoretical character thats firing full auto with out any of the easily availeble compensation. Not as personal attack against someone OC.

Maybe. But, see how -- right after "slack jawed idiot" got introduced to the conversation -- things took a turn for the worse? The exact phrase got thrown right back at him, and bickering ensued. That's just how people work, especially over the internet. Personally, I'm pretty okay with it, because I log on for amusement and entertainment as much as I do to learn anything or get rules questions answered, etc, etc.

I couldn't help but point it out, though, given how strongly Larme was posting about how it's rules-bickering that makes conversations turn to flame wars, and then in another thread he started slinging insults around (either as an OOC comment, or an IC comment, either way it's easy for it to be taken the wrong way and cause tempers to flare). It is not the most terribly productive of comments, is all I'm saying, coming from someone who otherwise seems to worried about how flame wars start.

After all, who controls a character that doesn't something slack jawed and idiotic? A player, who makes all that character's decisions. Even if it was meant as an IC sort of insult, it's the sort of thing that isn't friendly to say.

I don't get how an insult directed at someone who doesn't even exist could justify someone turning a discussion nasty. We're not kids here, we shouldn't have to watch our language. I think flame wars start from people being intractible, stating their position over and over without listening to reason. I don't think they start because of impolite language that isn't directed at anyone. I don't think we're in a flame war now. I don't think we're likely to be, unless someone takes someone else's language out of context, and uses that to attack their personal argument style, questioning whether their motivation is to be an asshole just for fun... Good thing nobody has done that, now, huh?

Of course, if they did do it, I would take the high ground. I'm not going to attack anyone else's motivations or character, they aren't ever relevant to a conversation on Dumpshock. If people do it to me, it just shows their own quality.

Yeah playing a 1 IP character is a street called 'one way to gimp town' with no turn offs between here and there. Unless the fact you have 1 IP is completely incidental as you have several drones that have LMGs and multiple IPs.

In other news, I think wired 1 is about a million miles better than jazz, because you have it all the time, and the last thing you want to be doing in a surprise situation is trying to find the jazz puffer so you can stop sucking.

Edit: That said if a cybered mundane came to me with a character with wired I, I'd say 'go find room for wired II' unless they where like.. a a rigger, or hacker or face or something.

It is really all about game balance. If the players are running 1 IP and into 2 IPs then the 2 IP SAM is not gimp.

However, as you seem to be more used to designing to the full allowable potential at CharGen then yeah, obviously 2 IP sams are a joke.

Personally I prefer to run games that aim at the middle ground. 1 IPs for mages and so on (not counting reaction increasing spells) 2 IPs for primary/ secondary combat and the occasional 3 IP character. It is all a matter of preference

Up until arsenal came out, full recoil comp was considerably harder to get. Even with arsenal, it takes a LONG time to put all that stuff onto your gun, and even then, I don't think its possible to completely eliminate recoil penalties unless you have a harness or gyros on your arm.

You know, this tangent is so completely unrelated to the thread topic that we should agree to drop it. Yes there are penalties for full auto, yes they can be negated, no not everyone will have fully compensated guns, but any automatics wielding runner coming out of chargen should be there, or at least very close. Full auto is good, it's not perfect, we agree with each other, the end.

Combat drones are for all intents and purposes vehicles equipped with weapon mounts so recoil isn't really an issue for them. You can handwave it in for them, if you want, and in fact the developers and I myself both encourage you to do so in situations where a small drone is using a weapon that doesn't quite pass the sniff test. Just keep in mind that a Steel Lynx or Crimson Samurai drone is essentially designed to act as a roving weapon platform and as such should be quite capable of handling at least a long burst per pass if not a full burst. After all, Arsenal describes Crimson Samurai as typically being equipped with LMGs and underbarrel grenade launchers or even Panther Cannons! A skilled samurai should be able to take them out quickly and efficiently thanks to smart use of Edge combined with high initiative and Full Defense/Firearm dicepools, but against rank and file troops and modestly combat capable shadowrunners 2 or 3 of those things can be exceedingly deadly.

IP's in my games:

1. Average Joe, Lone Star, Meat runners, Corp Sec
2. Runners, SWAT team, Professionals
3. Drones, Spirits, Red Samurai, Tir Ghosts
4. Cyberzombies

Getting 3 IPs is such an easy thing to do at chargen. The only reason not to, IMO, is if everyone agreed to go lower end. Most of the trash mobs I throw at my players will have 2-3 passes. Granted, that may be a mundane spending edge and being on a drug, or WR1 and spending edge...I guess I am a huge proponent of spending edge for more passes.

I haven't had any opponent that actually had 3 passes from WR2 or magic...but I guarantee they would be acting in 4 passes because I would use edge to do it.

All of my players are so experienced and we all know the char gen rules in and out and we decided to back down from the arms fight. Sure, we all could start with 3IPs (4 for the mage), but we just decided not to. We are not the biggest fans of Edge either, and usually only spend it to go first (and that only rarely). I guess it really boils down to what kind of game you play.

Yes, but unless they're being manned, then they must use sensor gunnery, which frankly, is pathetic. Even with fancied up sensors, the chances of actually locking onto a metahuman are pathetic. Especially if they have thermal dampening.