Does anyone here play using house-rules that do away with the opposed tests in combat? It seems to me that there is going to be a lot of dice rolling in combat and that it would bog the game down just a bit. I haven't played a serious game of SR4 yet, just monkeyed with the rules so I don't know how combat really flows with all the opposed tests.

On a side note, any veterans of SR3 out there have an opinion on Attribute + Skill vs. the old only skill rolls? One of the things I loved about Shadowrun in previous editions is that it was a skill based system and not an Attribute + Skill system. I was monkeying around with having players roll double skill in SR4 instead of Att + Skill, has anyone else tried this?

Thoughts and opinions are welcome. I'll be starting up a game of SR4 for some friends of mine soon and haven't decided whether or not to run it with the written rules or some house-rules I've thought up.

Thanks for your time!

-Silk

I would strongly suggest starting with RAW. We had a complete ban on houserules for the first half year of playing SR4, back in the days.

As you are concerned about speed of resolution, you might want to have a look at Aaron´s Cheat Sheets.

Thanks for the suggestion Ryu!

I'll take a look at that website:)

Still playing SR3 here, and have only read the SR4 core rules recently.
While I am used to the pure skills tests rather than Attr + skill, I actually found that this perhaps is one of the elements that does make sense to me. Attributes in a certain area would make people naturally better at some tasks than others. Sometimes it almost seems better to default to the attribute than to rely on a poor skill in SR3, even with the +4 modifier to target.
Having said that, using Attr + skill wil be too many dice in SR3 IMO - but perhaps a modifier based on attributes would be a decent element (e.g. attribute rating less than 3 - +1 to target, ratings of 5 or more -1 to target)

It's attribute + skill + modifiers that's the real nightmare. The pornomancer only has a few dice coming from attribute + skill, the rest of the 51 dice are all modifiers. Calculating modifiers and then rolling the bricks of dice is what slows down combat the most.

But the modifiers (especially the Combat ones) are nearly identical in SR4 as they were in SR3 (range, visibility, recoil, target running, etc), except they are Dice modifiers instead of Target Number modifiers. I haven't found that portion of SR4 combat has slowed anything down from SR3. Even the Opposed Reaction roll didn't slow things down that much for me, though I will admit that it does make combat slightly slower than SR3. What did bog SR4 combat down for me was calculating Armor Penetration. For whatever reason (maybe it was just me) I found it difficult to remember: Base DV + Net Hits (but not bonus from Autofire) vs. Armor + AP. I found myself always having to ask the player 2 for the number of hits they rolled: once for the total damage of the attack, and again to determine if it was Stun or Physical (because of Armor Penetration). That's when I moved to using a spreadsheet aid where I could simply enter all the raw info: Net hits, base DV, autofire, AP, defender Armor, and have it tell me the total DV the target was facing and whether it was Stun or Physical. Once that was done, SR4 combat was back up to a quick pace.

I tend to think that needing a laptop to play a pen-and-paper game is just silly. That being said, the difference is that the dice pool modifiers in SR4 mean you have to add another layer of calculation. In SR3, you just rolled your skill; now, you calculate attribute + skill + modifiers to determine your dice pool. This means you can't eyeball the modifiers like you used to. Things become much more difficult, since not only do you need to calculate thresholds, you need to calculate penalties and bonuses as well.

I didn't say the laptop was needed, I said it was faster. I still don't see the big difference between SR3 and SR4 modifiers. My players in SR3 always waiting for me to tell them the TN before they rolled, and now my SR4 have to wait for me to call out the modifiers before they roll. I can still eyeball modifiers in SR4 just like I did in SR3. Almost all tests in SR4 are Opposed rather than against a Threshold, so having to calculate both modifiers and Threshold doesn't happen that much. Even then, in SR3 tests had TN modifiers as well as Threshold, so I really don't see the big difference.

I'm preparing an SR4 campaign now. Being a veteran Shadowrunner (I made my first run on the first edition hard cover- God I wish I had that book now!) I like most every change they've made with the SR system in fourth edition. One thing I'm worried about is the excessive number of opposed tests in middle to large combats. I'm thinking of just dividing the NPC's dice pool by 3 and subtracting that from the PC's hits for short hand. That way the player still gets to do his roll and there is still an appropriate level of randomness on the test but I get to skip all the NPC rolls during the fight. Anybody try this, or have other shortcut methods to speed the game along?

According to the rules you can always choose to take auto succeses where 4 Dice= 1 Success. Of course this is a slightly less than average roll.

Note that you can only by success with the GM's approval, and typically only in non-threatening situations where there is no serious penalty for failure. You couldn't just buy success for shooting some one for example, or for resisting damage or drain.

Not a houserule per se but an agreement in my group is to avoid changing a characters modifiers too often. If I know the pornomancers usual modifiers and the player knows them, we can move pretty quickly.

As for combat, my players never need ask me for the modifiers. They have them all worked out. I try hard to explain them in clear term when I describe the scene. This involves perhaps too many shouts
"Goon 42 uses his flash pak. Poacher, your hit dead on 4 dice. Axeman is below cover, clean. Delta has flash compensation 2 dice"

Now, its a tart when a new guy comes in and has to be brought up to speed but our rapport is the solution not the rules. It may also help that we use the dice coloring system, so we can count hits and 1s fast.

To me the remember modifiers isn't any worse than any other game system. I find it annoying that you need to layer on modifiers to make anything even remotely challenging. My players now play a special game called "Which modifiers now?", which must be the highlight of the edition.

I second this. Once you get used to it, you may find that it's not really difficult at all. There may or may not be a question of modifiers. Then GM and player roll at the same time. GM says "What'd you get? Six? That's net two. What's your damage?" GM rolls dice again, subtracts, marks.