First, I would like to apologize if I made an offense - it was not intended, & I was half-asleep with my post.

Second, I would like to ask why you decided on interrupts only being usable if you have more than one pass? The number of passes one has is already a huge factor in how effective they are in combat, and this just makes them even more important, while not making much sense. Why must a single IP person be able to use an edge to use Finishing Move or Riposte before they even know if they will meet the other requirements? Why can a 4 IP person be able to interrupt three or four times at the beginning of a Turn, but be unable to do so on the 4th pass, even if all they did on the first 3 was inconsequential actions?

It simply does not make sense, hurts lower IP people even further, and I believe most people will end up house-ruling it. I have posted my suggested limitations in other threads, and I know my group will be house-ruling it if borrowed actions ever becomes a problem.

Hey, you're the one with mislaid priorities. Birthday being more important than Shadowrun chat, indeed.

Folks, can we lay off of Bobby? The chat got pretty hectic, the normal support personnel were absent that day, and there just wasn't time for anybody to go digging through several books AND the errata AND the FAQ. Not to mention the difficulty of having every iteration of the rules in his head because he was in on every one of them.

I know this post doesn't apply to most folks, but I'm carpet-bombing this anyway. Next time the man has an off-day, try thanking him for all the stuff he's already done instead of playing gotcha with the rules.

[/soapbox]

I don't want to sound ingrateful, but the whole point of the chat was to field rules-related questions and based on the thread announcing this, the interrupt issue was going to be asked...everyone should have known that ahead of time. It just seems like when the whole focus of the chat was to clarify rules (at least that was my impression) that there should have been someone ready to field those questions...

Shrug. I don't think anyone is being overly harsh. There was a problem with one of the official responses, and the question was raised here as to the answer's validity. I don't see anybody (well, very few people) jumping up and down screaming 'Heretic! Burn him at the stake! Fry his monkeys!'. Shit happens. There was just an original query, and then speculation ensued until an official response was forthcoming.

Just to be crystal clear (if there was any doubt), nothing I say is 100% certain unless you read it in a rulebook or an official FAQ or errata.

That being said, the limitation was initially conceived - but not added to the final draft - in response to playtest concerns. Infinite borrowing, while fun, had the potential for some characters doing 20 things during one Combat Turn while others (with more IPs but fewer maneuvers) doing two or three. Two characters could potentially riposte each other dozens of times during a single turn.

I (and the other freelancers) know IPs are a major concern for many players, but you have to consider the big picture. What does it cost for players to get those extra IPs? What they could do with them without maneuvers? What's fair? Granted, limiting the number of "borrows" per turn is less cinematic, but I don't believe it is necessarily broken.

I am not questioning why it was limited, but how it was limited. Why, for example, not simply limit a person to a single interrupt at a time? Or as I have suggested, have the limit based on a character's Reaction (Rea / 2), without directly restricting the ability to borrow into future turns?

Limiting a character to a single interrupt per turn is overly restrictive - each character would be able to go on full defense, or riposte an attack, or initiate a finishing move, but not combine them or combo them. Borrowing from future turns is where using maneuvers becomes problematic - it becomes less a case of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul and more an exercise in how many actions you can squeeze into a single Combat Turn. A limitation based on Reaction isn't bad, but not ideal because it becomes, in effect, a derived attribute. The language of maneuvers is very clear in that the interrupts use the next "available" action - it seemed reasonable that only the actions in the current Combat Turn would qualify as "available" and thus provide a reasonable restriction without adding any additional math.

Having it based on how many passes you have, is in a way, still classifying it as a derived attribute. Further, Combat Turns are used as a game mechanism to prevent confusion on who is acting when. In-game, however, it is a smooth flow - there is no difference between the 0 to 3 second mark and the 1.5 to 4.5 second mark.

Having it based on Reaction would, in addition to making sense, avoid the complaints about creating even more importance of additional passes, and for the "average" person, would allow 1 or 2 interrupts. Combat characters would typically receive 3 or 4. In the most extreme case, you could get up to 6.

Anyways, a few more questions regarding maneuvers that were not addressed in the chat:

• Can Finishing Move be triggered off of Finishing Move, assuming you still have Interrupts available?
• Can you use Finishing Move to make special attacks such as Disarm & Trip?
• Can you use Finishing Move to use another maneuver, such as Set Up?
• If the first and third are correct, does this mean you can, in a single pass, use Set Up>Set Up>Set Up>Attack?

Sure.
The bastard was still breathing - well, gurgling - so I twisted the knife and started digging a bit more.


You can't use the Disarm maneuver, but you could make a Called Shot in an attempt to get your opponent to drop the weapon. Tripping is fine.
Denille knocked her sparring partner's feet out from under him. The combat was over.


As long as it a melee attack, yes.
Nigel's head butt disoriented his opponent just enough - he feinted to his left, and the poor mug lifted his head up in the perfect position for an upper cut.


Yes, though for clarity I'd say Set Up attack>Finishing Move(Set Up attack)>Finishing Move(Set Up attack)>Attack. If you got, say, 1 net hit on the first Set Up, you would add 1 die to the second; if you got 2 net hits on the second Set Up, you would add 2 dice to the third, and if you got 3 net hits on the final Set Up you'd add 3 dice to your final attack.
The ork was better than me. It was like a chess match, every move he made forced me into a more and more compromising situation until he had me right where he wanted me.

The book lies when it says it's a good idea to use a set-up before using a finishing move, at least in most cases.

For instance: Kimmy Karate has 12 dice. Let's say she's just fighting a training dummy so we don't have to factor in opponent skill. If she does a set-up, she averages 4 hits, adding 4 dice to the next attack. The finishing move will now average 5 hits, so she has only raised her total hits by 1. She has strength 6, so instead of doing DV 7, the punch does DV8. Not exactly devastating. If she had made a regular attack before a finishing move, she would be throwing 4 net hits, then another 4 net hits, which would mean tossing a DV 7 and another DV7, which is a dead dummy.

This isn't to say it's never useful. It's worthwhile, for instance, when you're just a few hits short of breaking through a barrier or hardened armor. I dunno how it makes sense to set-up a wall, maybe you couldn't even do that. But it's a practical way to use the skill, since it can provide the 1-2 extra DV that makes the difference between doing no damage and lots of damage. The same applies if you're fighting a very tough opponent who has just enough body dice to fully resist you, but not really enough melee dice to avoid being hit-- if you set-up, then instead of each attack doing 0, each set of two attacks will do 1-2, meaning you will eventually win.

But most situations I can't see it helping. Weak opponents should just be punched twice, because each punch will hit and damage them, making them go down much faster. And skilled opponents there's not much point -- you might throw everything you have into a set-up finishing move combo only to have your opponent of roughly equal skill go on full defense and swat away the few extra dice you've netted from your set-up, wasting two of your passes on one failed attack, in exchange for the opponent only sacrificing one interrupt.

Dare we hope for that many books? Seems like an aweful lot but it would be great if it happens! Any chance for some sort overview over when all these books are coming out in the rest of the year?

Bluntly, no. Assume that the order Peter gave the titles in is roughly accurate [although he left out Runner's Companion], and extrapolate from there if you like, but Catalyst isn't going to participate in the folly of having well over a dozen books [between our various game lines] announced down to the month and having to juggle with the actual schedule and the public perception of the schedule. This is going to be a consistent policy; we aren't suddenly going to decide to announce the January, March, and April 2009 releases.

Everything you say is true,but your conclusion differs slightly from mine, in that much like with burst fire the additional DV gained from set-up such as it exists generally translates in to pure damage. The issue hear is that firing a 3 round burst, the closest comparison to finishing move in some ways, takes a simple action, whilst set up takes 2 complex actions for generally a lesser effect. However, the value of setup is thus proportional to your unarmed DV as well as your skill as the 13th point of damage is far more worthwhile than the third. The question is the extent to which called shot gives a larger effect in a shorter time frame, although set up allows you to offset the dice pool penalty here, which could be seen as its key use.

On a related note, Two weapon fighting allows you to make 2 attacks in one complex action, can these be split between manuevers? Also, is there space between finishing the first attack and activating finishing move that allows the use of the called shot action?

*looks at Twitter and notes all the chatter about Battletech, cardgames and Eclipse Phase*

So, any new word on the status of Unwired ?

To avoid further confusion and since there's been at least one mistaken posting on the order of upcoming books, the order of our developent and release schedule (barring disaster or intervention by the spirits) looks something like this:
Unwired
Ghost Cartels
Feral Cities
Runners Companion
Vice
Corp Guide

We have a number of other books listed and planned for release after that (including Running Wild and Awakened Haunts), but they are not in production at the moment.

It's still in layout; when it's closer to release, we'll start releasing previews. Jason is laying it out, and he's not posting to our Twitter account -- it's staff only, not freelancers.