That is a possibility, but not one I've encountered yet. Few players seem interested in capping out more than one or two dice pools. And even if they do, they're not at problem levels. They're not breaking the game with two dice pools at 30; instead they're strong with three dice pools at 15.

Actually in my experience, it would be more of not broken at 2 dice pools at 30 but instead broken at 6 at 15.

Instead of a logical gap in the armor where NPCs can exploit the PC's weakness, there is now no/little weakness to logically exploit and now it is just brute dice pools against each other.

It's always *been* brute dice pools against the other. Suggesting a cap doesn't change that in the slightest. It just keeps things manageable.

Additionally, it's difficult to get one dice pool at 20, and then a bundle of others at 15. You might hit it in a group, such as firearms; but it's tricky to get 15 dice in firearms, decker skills, and social skills all at the same time. Certainly, you'll never see the "six at fifteen" you describe!

2 dice pools - 2 skills, 6 dice pools - 6 skills. Certainly it is quite easy to get 6 dice pools at 15.

Example: Firearms(3 skills), Stealth(2 Agility linked skills), Influence(5 skills)

Assuming as base 4 for skill group and 6 for Attribute.

2 for smartlinks, 3 for Adrenaline Pump, 1 for Reflex Recorder. 16 - 3 skills

3 for Adrenaline Pump, 1 for Reflex Recorder, 1 for Enhanced Articulation. 15 - 2 skills

6 for Emotitoy. 16 - 5 skills

Total number of dice pools that is 15 or more = 10

Firearms, Cracking and Influence has 11 dice pools. Even if you manage to only do half of those 11 dice pools at 15, you already have got 6 dice pools at 15.

I am already low-balling the figure when I said 6 dice pools at 15.

You can't get 6 for attribute in all those. You're also including the rather unreliable adrenaline pump, which only really works when you're wounded. That drops you down to high, but not unmanageable, dice pools.

Additionally, all that can be accomplished without dice caps. The difference is, you're dealing with a 51 die pool on top of all those others.

If you're going to dispute me on a build issue, take 400 BP and build a character with 10+ dice pools at 15.

You can easily get 6 in attributes in all with karma. Adrenaline Pump may be replaced with Muscle Toner 2 and Oxygenated Fluorocarbons. Additionally, if you want that 51 die pool, you do not have the resources to have all the rest of the other dice pools so high.

If you are going to dispute me on a build issue, why don't you take a 750 karma and see if you can't build a character with 10+ dice pools at 15.

Little Miss Airhead aka Illegally Blond

Elf
B4
A6
R4
S1
C7
I3
L1
W5
E3

Firearms 4
Influence 4
Stealth 4

Reflex Recorder
Reflex Recorder
Enhanced Articulation
Muscle Toner 2

4000 nuyen and 8BPs left

750 Karma? Ha! Too easy. Here's one with 400 BP. Note that the 'ware is only the relevant stuff - the character has enough Nuyen and Essense left for other things (wired reflexes, cybereyes, etc.).

BREAKDOWN (400 Points)
Core Attributes: 200
Special Attributes: 0
Race: 0
Active Skills: 160
Qualities: +15
Contacts: 5
Resources: 50

=Attributes=
Body: 4
Agility: 5(9)
Reaction: 4
Strength: 2
Charisma: 5
Intuition: 3
Logic: 2
Willpower: 3
Magic: 0
Edge: 2


=Qualities=
Restricted Gear (x 2)
Surge II
> Glamour
5 more positive, 10 negative
-----------------
35 negative


=Active Skills=
Automatics/Assault Rifles: 4/+2
Gymnastics: 4
Infiltration/Urban: 4/+2
Influence Skill Group: 4
Monofilament Whip: 6
Long Arms/Sniping Rifles: 4/+2
Perception: 2
Pistols/Semi-Automatic: 4/+2

=Bioware=
Enhanced Articulation
Muscle Toner: 4
Reflex Recorders:
>Infiltration
>Firearms
>Gymnastics
>Monofilament Whip
Synthcardium: 3
Tailored Phermonones: 3
[total cost of bioware: 202,000 Nuyen]

Other relevant gear:
Monofilament whip with personalized grip
Commlink (using the second restricted gear quality) that can run a microsensor and empathy software: 6

so we have:
4 social skills: 21
3 firearms skills: 16/18
infiltration: 15/17
gymnastics: 18
monofilament whip: 19

Would such a build really be unbalancing, though? The character is good enough to do well in several different areas, but I don't see him dominating the game. You could create a character without as wide a spread of skills, but better damage soaking ability, 4 IPs, and a high Edge, for example. Both BPs and karmagen involve tradeoffs in character creation.

My point was that a character that was created with the dice pool caps would be as unbalancing as a character that was created without. The character created with caps has legitimate cause to hog the spotlight because instead of trying to impose his one skill into all situations, he can genuinely say that his character would shine in those many situations.

And indeed, having a character with that spread of skills at that depth is too easy to build.

Again, would that character be unbalancing? Considering that he's capped in most of those dice pool areas we can eliminate most of the excess back down to 15, so it's not as bad as it first looks. And certainly, the character would be powerful, that was exactly the point.

But compared to someone slinging 51 dice in one dice pool, and 30+ dice in a few others? A hyper-optimized character will overwhelm anything but another hyper-optimized character, every single time. And because of the critical success rule, he not only gets to hog the spotlight, he gets to dominate it when he has it. 21+ dice should be reserved for the BBEG.

A hyper-optimized character under any set of rules will overwhelm anything but another hyper-optimized character, every single time. 21+ dice should not just be reserved for the BBEG, it should be for everyone who wants to have it (and can pay for it).

isn't that kinda the whole premise for shadowrun somehow?
you can't do something, so you go chop off whatever part of your body is not operating in the standards you want to set, and then you replace that part of yours with something that DOES what you want it to do . . you wanna punch through walls, but even your racial maximum strength of 8 with exceptional attribute and genetweak won't allow you to do that . . you lop off one arm, boost it up untill eleven strength and switch off the pain receptors and overdrive it to about 15STR and voila, after some whacks you're through the wall O.o
i am still peeved about the stun from redlining that won't even be stopped by augmenting the rest of your body to keep up or switching off the pain receptors of the whole body . . redline to double maximum rating and you're dead meat in some seconds <-<

Hyper-optimized in one dice pool, or optimized in numerous dice pools, are both potentially good builds, but they are not the only way to go. A lot of characters can be optimized in two or three things, then tweaked for the other three biggies - initiative/initiative passes, high Edge, and good damage dodging/soaking.

If you pimp out too many dice pools, you don't do as well in those other three areas. My example guy has above average stats, and could afford wired reflexes: 2, but if I hadn't given him so many high dice pools, I would have been able to make him a super-fast and super-tough SOB with an Edge of 5 or 6.

A hyper-optimized single dice pool is not fun from a metagame standpoint. You spend too much time simply figuring out which modifiers apply or not. You are boringly dominant in your area - the GM might tell you "Yeah, yeah, you do (such-and-such), don't bother rolling" for most tasks. On the other hand, the GM will also be paying more attention to ways to "challenge" you, so you might wind up having more problems than if you simply rolled 20 dice or so and succeeded most of the time. Some GMs might be able to run with it, but for other GMs, you could wind up being bored when your specialty comes up, and twiddling your thumbs the rest of the time.

That's one of the reasons why a suggested cap is so important. It lets you know what power level the players want to run at. If you ask them to keep things under 15-20, and they all go over by one or two, you can adjust accordingly. If everyone brings you a highly optimized character, you also know what they want. And if almost everyone sticks to the caps, except for one guy who brings you a pornomancer, well, that also tells you something important.

Yeah, I just think of it in terms of equilibrium. I care more about the players being roughly equivalent in value to eachother than about whether they're doing their job with 8, 15 or 20 dice. If the PCs want to have pain editors, ceramic skeletons, jacked up reflexes, elite skills, and personal Agent Smith/Drone armies, that's fine by me-- but they're not going to be offered many small-time milk money jobs. I can adjust NPCs and gear the campaign towards being a high powered prime runner level campaign if I have to, and they'll need that stuff if they expect to waltz into an MCT laboratory and live to tell the tale. But what I can't do is easily adjust a PC's sheet once it's in play without feeling like I failed to get everyone on the same page in the first place. I'd much rather set some limitations up front than tell someone to pare back their character later on, especially if their character concept was heavily based on being specialized in one skill set. I'd rather set some groundrules than jerk around a player later, even if his character concept could best be described as Billy Badass the incredibly generic street samurai with a million dice.

You seem to place a lot of stock in that "critical success" rule. Not one of my players has ever asked to use it. My understanding was that it was intended only to be a small "narrative flourish" and shouldn't dominate any play session.

Er ... I think you're misreading the rules, there. Lemme check ...


I'm not sure a hyper-optimized character would often qualify as being "against the odds" in most cases. Rolling, say 15 dice against six, ten, or even fifteen can hardly be considered "against the odds," I think.

Agreed, I really wish Cain would stop bringing up the ridiculously nebulous and ultimately fluff oriented critical success rule. In the example given in the books, the PC involved needs to do a repair test, which traditionally is an Extended test with an interval determined by the GM. Since the PC in question managed to beat the test in a single interval, the job was done really damn quickly whether you really follow the Critical Success rules or not. The PC is allowed to add flourishing details, sure, but the event was already unqualified success by any standard. I mean, really if a PC moonlights in a trog rock band down by the Barrens and gets a critical success to impress the crowd, he's well within his rights when saying he played a kick-ass guitar solo. It's a flourish and doesn't tell us anything we didn't really already know about how the situation panned out. But if the same scenario results in the player claiming "I impress everyone so much that a Horizon talent scout immediately contacts me about a recording contract," then well, it's not really a "flourish" at all and the GM has every right to tell him to dial it back a notch, since the rules never give players the right to start railroading the storyline.

Who said anything about getting Edge back? I'm talking about the Critical Success rule, which is the worst implementation of narrative rules I've ever seen.

According to the Rules As Written, a critical success allows a player to add whatever "flourish" they like. It doesn't matter how silly, or ridiculous, he gets it and No One Can Override Him. If someone wants to jump into low earth orbit, they can. They want that huge recording contract, they get it. So long as it's a "special effect", they're allowed to break disbelief in the game as much as they like.

Even if they're not openly breaking things, the ones who score consistent critical successes get more accolades from the table: more cheers, more high-fives, more "Damn, that was a nice roll!" from everyone. That's effectively the same as more spotlight time, and a higher quality of it at that.

I don't know who said that no one ever uses it, but that doesn't make the rule any less broken. I don't see many full-fledged pornomancers appearing at tables, but that doesn't make them any less broken. Just because something doesn't happen often doesn't mean it won't happen. Just because pornomancers are rare doesn't mean that one won't show up at your table someday; and just because people don't use critical successes doesn't mean that someone won't abuse it in the near future.

Cain's definition of 'flourish', especially used in this context, differs greatly from mine, and that of many others here.

Are you sure you understand what the word flourish means in this context? It's an ornamental detail, an embellishment. Your italics on "no one can override him" are a flourish. The italics don't mean jack shit; all the meaning was invested in the words you chose, not the silly details you used for emphasis. What you are calling a flourish in your examples are not flourishes, they are material changes to the meanings of the dice rolls, and thus are not covered by the critical success rules.

In fact, it's quite possible for me to get a critical success while attacking my opponent in unarmed combat followed by him rolling a critical success on the soak test. In such a case I can describe myself as expertly launching a punch straight to the kidneys while the other guy says his incredible conditioning allows him to absorb the force of the blow. At no point are either of us allowed to say "killing him instantly" or "his foot bounces off my rock-hard abs, shattering into a million pieces" because those aren't flourishes, they're railroading and don't even really reflect the result of the dice rolls. A flourish does not materially change the course of the game, it just reflects the fact that there's been a clash between the unstoppable force and an immovable object.

You consistently have the strangest reading/interpretation of the rules I have ever seen.

Ditto's to what everyone else said. Its clear that Cain's post is even self-contradictory with itself.


I doubt any rational observer would consider "jumping into orbit" a "special effect." Maybe if this was a superhero's game, but clearly not in Shadowrun.

We've done this debate before, but I find that I still get a kick out of it. It's kind of like watching an old episode of Mork and Mindy.

Cain, you seem to be using definitions of the words "flourish" and "detail" that of which I am unaware. Could you offer us the definitions you're using?

By RAW, there is no definition for "flourish" or "detail". Even when we use the dictionary definitions, there is still no guide as to what constitutes a "flourishing detail" in Shadowrun.

There is also no RAW definition for 'air,' but we don't just assume that everyone instantly suffocates, or that they can breathe in space. Seriously dude, even for you that was over the top. =P

There are no definitions for 'flourish' or 'detail' by RAW, because they're established words with a meaning of their own that can be discovered by opening a dictionary to the appropriate page.

So, even if we blatantly ignore the fact that there's no restriction on the flourish, pretending like it cannot break the Suspension of Disbelief required to run a good game, we still see that it adds extra drama to a roll. So, the person who succeeds routinely is getting lower-quality spotlight time than the one who routinely scores crits.

The bigger problem is that there's no firm distinction between Drama and Melodrama. What's dramatic in one moment might be silly and game-breaking in another. It's usually up to the group to decide what's appropriate; but a SR4 critical success doesn't allow for that. It's up to the player, who may or may not be on the same page as everybody else.

There's also the fact that you can burn Edge for critical successes, leading to all kinds of wonkiness. Someone could leap from a tall building and burn Edge on his soak roll, saying he hit a truckful of mattresses as he landed. Sure, a GM could cry foul; but in reality, people have fallen from greater heights and emerged unscathed.

And none of that hits on the point that you can blatantly kill off Disbelief in a game by getting a critical success. If you don't like that argument, fine. Try going against the other three I've posted.

I think it's pretty safe to say that neither a flourish, nor a detail, nor a flourishing detail is more important or profound than the main action for which it is a flourish, detail, or flourishing detail. So I think any extra touch a player chooses must be less of a deal than the original action. "Jumped into orbit" is a lot more extreme than "jumped a fence," and to say otherwise is at best something of a stretch.

Tha ignores the other points that I made, but to put it simply, sometimes the flourish is the action. For example, waving a flag dramatically might just be the whole point. When we're discussing things like leaping from a tall building without taking a scratch (remember, stranger things have been recorded) then leaping a quarter mile higher before coming down for a landing isn't as extreme anymore.

Because in RAW, although air and breathing are not defined explicitly in and of themselves, it is implied through various means like Swimming(Holding Your Breath), Internal Air Tank, inhalation-vector toxins, etc. Otherwise, you would be partially right, nobody would need to breathe.

Correct, there are no definitions for 'flourish' or 'detail' by RAW, hence my statement:

The guide you're looking for is common sense coupled with understanding of the english language. Go only by the exact RAW and never extrapolate when things are not clearly defined, and you end up with things like sharks in D&D drowning (because the 'aquatic' sub-type never states that the creature breates water, rather than air).

A narrative flourish in SR is, therefore, whatever you and the people at your table agree on as being acceptable.


That argument doesn't hold, though. People in real life have fallen from thousands of feet and miraculously survived, but I'll bet you've never heard of someone jumping more than a few feet off the ground under their own power, have you? Leaping a quarter-mile in the air is always going to be ridiculous for a mundane human. Magic might let you do it, jet boots might, and superpowers will, but without outside assistance, there are rules under athletics for how far / high you can jump. Saying you want to jump one foot in the air, and then getting a critical success does not let you exceed those limits. A crit success might let you do a flip in midair before landing, as an extreme case, but it's not going to let you flagrantly break the rules, or the bounds of common sense.

Also, if you're waving a flag dramatically, why are you rolling in the first place? Just wave the damn flag as a complex action. A critical success on a shooting roll (or similar) might let you use a 'narrative flourish' to keep waving the flag while you do so, however.

And what is common sense? What is its RAW definition? The likelihood of someone having the same exact common sense as someone else is almost zero. You can extrapolate, but extrapolate from existing material within the context of the game, not from your existing understanding of how the rules should be or any other preconceived notion.

Could we PLEASE get back to topic?

I honestly don't think there is any point in debating any of these points with you Cain. It is obvious to me that pushing your SR4 is bad agenda is far more important to you than any rational approach to the rules could ever be. If you can honestly present things like "jumping a quarter mile" as appropriate 'flourishes' for the critical success rule, then we have clearly left the realms of rational discourse. And entertaining your argument as if it was a serious proposition does a disservice to us all.

I repeat - though it might be a double post, I'm annoyed enough not to care - could we please get this thread-train back on its tracks?

As usual, you ignored the other points, in favor of the point that's "exaggerated for effect".

Second, who ever said I have a "SR4 is bad" agenda? I defy you to show a single occurrence of me saying that. I have a "SR4 is mediocre" point that I have been pushing, but that's hardly the same thing.

Third, what exactly is "back on track" mean at this point? The conversation has meandered, and the topic has changed. Happens all the time on internet forums. If you want to get things back to the original topic, make a controversial statement about "BP vs Karmagen", and watch the counterarguments roll in.

Note RAW does not state that the flourishing detail is required to be appropriate. However it does state that the "flourishing detail" has to be "what she likes".

What more do you think needs to be discussed on the topic? If you have something specific in mind, feel free to post about it. If you have a question, ask it. Otherwise, your posts about thread drift are just as off-topic as everyone else's.

Well, for the mathematically inclined: Is there a point (dice pool size) where BP is more effective in making a character that's very good in one area, and well-rounded in the rest?

I was mostly just getting tired of arguments that went nowhere.

I think generally you hit the point of diminishing returns once you start hard-maxing. A skill of 6 is fine, but when you hard-max Attributes, get Aptitude and a skill of 7, and so on, you are paying lots of points for a few extra dice, when the 20 or more that you have are plenty. You can generally have two decent specialties if you don't hard-max, and still be able to have decent stats and general skills. You can have more if they are closely related. If you have a skill of 6 in pistols, with the related Agility boosters and so on, it's not that hard to add another ranged or melee skill at 4. Likewise, some builds such as hackers or faces often take skill groups, and get most of their dice pool pimping from modifiers.

Generally, for combat and magical skills, it is in the 17-20 range, with social skills being higher than that. That's me, though. I like having either a lavish spread of the essential skills, or a good solid secondary specialty. If you want to be more hyper-focused, you can get closer to the hard maxes without really sacrificing playability.

I must agree there. I was more interested in the debate karmagen end BP than the flamewar about a rule every GM can handle right.

I meant: At which point (if any) does the BP system get more efficient than the karma gen system, measured by dicepools?

At the default pointage/values? None that I can come up with.

More efficient? Hmm....

Yeah, generally speaking Karmagen is more efficient...BUT, a few things should be kept in mind:

-Under BP, it is more expensive to max an Attribute. However, under Karmagen, maxing skills is more expensive. A skill of 6(+2) is 26 BP. A skill of 7(+2) is 34 BP.

A skill of 6(+2) in karmagen is 46 Karma. 7(+2) (you still need to double the karma cost of the 7th point), is 74 Karma.(the 7 costs 28 Karma-14x2.) IMO, it's more efficient to pick up that Aptitude skill under BP. Paying 74 Karma for one skill hurts to do, IMO. 34 BP is quite a bit for one skill, but not as bad.

If you go the hardmax route, the percentages are roughly the same, actually. In the Pistols example, it would cost 65 BP to max the Agility(I'll keep the ware costs out of it, since it's roughly the same), 34 BP to get the 7(+2) Pistols and 10 BP for the Aptitude, for a grand total of 109 BP. Under Karma, it's 60 karma to max the Agility, 74 Karma for the Pistols, and 20 Karma for Aptitude, for a grand total of 154 Karma. Now assuming around 600 karma(if you want to have as close a match as you can for power level), and 400 BP, it's still about 1/4 of your starting points either way. It somehow...feels more efficient under Karma, though-even though it's technically roughly the same percentage of starting points.

If you soft-max in each system, it's 40 BP for the 5 Agility, and 22 BP for the skill(5 is the technical skill softmax), and runs 62 BP total, or around 1/6 of the starting points(a little less.) Under Karma(again, assuming 600 karma), it's 42 Karma for the 5 Agility, and 34 Karma for a 5(+2), for 76 Karma. In THIS case, however, it's more efficient under Karma-it only costs about 1/8 of the starting points. Going lower is typically a little more efficient in Karma; 4 skills at 3(+2) in BP runs you 56 BP, or about 1/7 of the starting points; the same skills in Karma are only 64, or about 1/10th of the starting points.

Now, assuming you can get more than one 6 at the start(just for the sake of things), it would cost 78 BP for 3 6(+2) skills, and 134 Karma...this turns out between 1/4 and 1/5 of the starting points, both ways; the higher you seem to go with the skills in BP, the more the bridges are gapped.

It just goes back to Karma seeming to favor the non-maxers, BP favors the maxers; both slightly.

Of course, my math here was done quickly and might be a load of BS, but this is just how it seems to turn out.

I know when I make characters, I seem instinctively drawn to go the middle-route for skills a lot in Karmagen. Somehow, I don't mind seeing a long list of skills that run 2-4, with 3's most prevalent and one good, solid biggie; whenever I make a BP character I see a lot more 4-5's or a 6(to what I'm allowed), and a couple of 1(+2's) floating around. It might be just something mental. Under Karmagen, I also notice my characters have a better pool of Knowledges(I know some folks say that the knowledges tend to be forgotten, but not in my experience, YMMV here), with a nice list hovering around 3's, with a 4 and a 2, with a couple languages; under BP, i tend to have a bunch of 2's and a few 1's, with perhaps a 3 in a language. Even though I know I can pull some BPs out of my pool for knowledges, I don't, I admit it. I don't mind pulling 43 or so Karma out for knowledges, though, and I don't even get free ones.

Could i get a page reference for that.

Aptitude, page 77, BBB:

Under the BP rules, I prefer to take skills at 4 or higher or not at all, plus I never take specializations except as a last ditch effort to bootstrap my way up to a decent Full Defense pool. Even then, I explore other cost saving measures first. If I just want to avoid defaulting something, that's what SkillWires are for. Likewise I'd rather spend my 2 bps on buying another level of Mnemonic Enhancer rating than spend 2 bps on purchasing a single Knowledge skill. New Specializations and merely dabbling in rather than mastering Knowledge skills is cheaper once you get in game than they are in chargen, meanwhile getting new cyberware can often be a pain in the ass once you hit the streets. Plus, once in play you're in a better position to figure out what knowledge skills out there are actually useful in the context of the campaign. It's not uncommon for the majority of my karma expenditures to be on dabbling in new Knowledge skills and picking up specializations in all my skills while my nuyen goes to a new vehicles, some drone backup and bribes. It's likely a good thing I don't play mundanes very often; for whatever reason I feel less of a need to min-max my mages.