And by average, I mean 'someone who takes reasonable care of themselves, tries to be reasonably fit, and is reasonably educated'? Most people unfortunately, RL, fall under the bar of what a human being could be as 'average'.
Thats not average but above average by definition and thats a "4" in SR
and Thank You for keeping up this discussions where it doesn't belong to.
Is beeing right even though you're wrong so important to you ?
I would continue this discussion(even though there is not much more to say) but not in this Thread.

with a final Dance
Medicineman

Then why do you keep responding?

It's the internet, man. Get over yourself. Conversations evolve, it happens. When discussing the importance (or lack of importance) of a major change to the prices of increasing attributes, it's perfectly reasonable for the importance of attributes themselves to turn into a point of discussion. Some people defend the increase in karma cost by stating that most people should have a string of 2's, and others insist that 3-4's should be more normal; it's a pretty major shift in how reasonable (or unreasonable) the cost of increasing attributes is from one campaign to another, and as such a perfectly rational discussion to have while debating the importance of a change in karma expenditures.

Their conversation's plenty on topic. Stop derailing it with your complaints.

Actually, we usually start between 3-5, and rarely even buy stats at that point(unless it's a 3 to a 4.) And also, we have fun doing it this way. It makes us feel a bit more than a 6 2-stat and 2 3-stat mailman, whom I'd be playing ''Mailrun'' if I wanted to play. Sometimes, we have a particularly high stat-my current character has a 7 strength as part of his background, and it certainly doesn't throw off the game, given the weight of the stat. (Also, for the record, we all have rich backgrounds, and do heavy roleplaying. We have some sessions where we barely even roll the dice. We aren't a bunch of munchkins who are only happy shooting things and watching them die. We just prefer to play people with some competence that's above Joe Average.)

Also-let's see, making it harder to get Attributes(under Karma.) Skill costs are the same. Thresholds are higher.

They are making it necessary to have a high die pool to do a hard task(which in and of itself, I'm ok with-a hard task should be somewhat tough, and a TS6 is tough even for an 18 die pool character)-but then they take away the means for us to get that, and even make 4's freaking hard now. Ranges now are harder to shoot at (-6 is freaking full darkness mods. Which means that the world's most agile, best gunman at 6/6, only gets 6 dice to roll at extreme range. wut?) Not to mention all of the electronic toy tweaking rules/drone changes.

Sheesh, do they want us to fail? o.O There's challenge and then there is making things so hard it begins sucking the fun out. (and yes, once again, in desperation to get some die in the pools so people don't fail, it's going to be high-pumped Cybered purchased attributes, putting anyone who doesn't do that behind.)

All of THAT being said, one rule I'd consider is Karmagen characters use the old rules(x3 cost), and advancing uses x5 cost. Dunno why I'd consider that but I would. (I still think the old rules are going to be my game, though. I really haven't seen any new rules I like, as they all seem to limit the gameplay heavily, and the Adept powers, we have already houseruled to the way we like them in our games.) Perhaps I'll find some changes here I like besides the Adept powers, but...gah. The game started moving, IMO, into the perfect directions with Augmentation, Unwired, Street Magic, Arsenal, and finally the RC...and then it just...went flat backward. (ymmv, of course, but that's how I feel.)

I feel weird, because I've always been one of the folks here sticking up for the books in about 85% of any instances. I was defending the dev decisions of Karmagen like hell, but now I know what it feels like to be on the other side of the fence, I guess. Instead of agreeing with about 80-85% of the decisions, I now disagree with about that much. (Again, I'm but one player, no big deal, and opinions are opinions, we all have them.)

to tell Him that we can have a discussion but at a different Place
(Thanks for not Reading my Post)
So 1 Post to Tell The People to get back on Track is derailing,but a whole Page with a Disussion about the Average of Attributes is not ? Even if The Topic is 20th Edition Changes ?
You have a strange viewpoint !
BtT
Any Information if there are a lot of Price Changes ,or any at all ?

JahtaHey
Medicineman

@El Fenrir: I´d like to sidestep a part of that discussion - part of why we liked 750 karma is that it was more points across the board (speaking for my group here, but I suspect at least you feel similar). The old-timers amongst us (who hold the majority) did never really start to like the limited potential of 400 BP. In fact, we used to play at 500 BP.

I think that attributes x5 lets BP-gen and karma-gen end up in about the same spot. Karma-gen: 375 karma spend on attributes is a sum of (triangular numbers of attribute ratings - triangular numbers of racial minimums) = 75, it used to be 125. Assuming 10 attributes and a human (lazy bastard that I am), that´s an average of 7.5 per attribute instead of 12.5, and therefore close to an average attribute between 3 (delta triangular number 5) and 4 (delta tn 9), about 3.6 at most. It used to be between 4 and 5 (delta tn 14), close to 4.7. The BP-gen permits you an average of only 3, but freely choosen within soft caps.

Now what can you do if you liked the previous karma-system balance? I´ll say it: start with 1k karma. You know you want to! (The average attribute should be at most 4.2, but skills will be force-fed karma to compensate for the rest of the loss.)

No.

The height of the normal distribution is the mean, and thus 3 per SR 'typical' definition.
The median of the attribute distribution would be (3+4)/2 - the same value as the arithmetic average: 3.5

So the attribute bell already is distorted as it's mean is shifted 0.5 points downwards.

Oh, I like characters to be 'realistic' as well - for me, that first and foremost means that they are able to survive their chosen profession.

What's difference between an olympic candidate and a runner?
The olypmic candidate doesn't get shot and eaten by dogs if he doesn't make the dash.

Just for the record, as I've mentioned elsewhere, Karma character generation will be revised and updated in Runner's Companion errata to reflect the changes in SR4A.

And by that you mean 'swap the attribute multiplier and be done with' (that much we figured...) or do you mean 'swap the attribute multiplier and adjust totals'?

It's incredible how badly the issues SR4 had were adressed with this. And the worst part? It made me agree with Cain. If you make people agree with Cain, you're doing it wrong.

Skills were too expensive. Solution: Increase Attribute cost? Really? Also, this discourages to play Awankend/Emerged charakters, if you like to see any improvemend in a reasonable time.

Overcasting made direct combat spells broken as hell. Solution: Increase drain in a way that makes overcasting even more sexy than before. Well, at least casting multiple spells simultaniously seems now more interesting. Great job.

Extreme range is now almost the same as not being able to see your target? Somehow that's just terribly wrong.

Sure, DPs got too big, too soon, but all those changes do is make it impossible (or at least frustrating) to play not-maxed characters. The 20+DP Guys will not overwhelm opposition by brute force (TMs still might, unless they got some changes, which I doubt at this point), but Slim-Jim Average got hit by the nerf bat that was not even directed at him.

Man, and I even wanted to get a Limited Edition, just for the heck of it. Now? I think I stick to not using anything past the last errata, hence going the way of 3rd Edition, i.e. stop playing a supported game. Or I houserule the new book to death. Thank you very much. It's 3.5 DnD all over again, somehow.


Are there any changes to how Matrix mechanics work, at all? If anything needed serious changing, this it is.

It would have been much more easy to cope with the change if the total multiplier value didn't change:

The total in SR4 was 11 (Attributes, Skillgroups, Active Skills, Knowledge Skills - Complex Forms are just Knowledge Skills, basically).
With SR4.5 (or SR4A, if you insist), it's now 13.

Of course that seems like a small change, but it accumulates very quickly.

They back-ported Unwired into the main book, basically - which solves not that much, but the overall usability of the chapter increased tremendously. Of course, the rule that upgrades to matrix attributes are limited to +2 original will subtly change things as noted above... as does the fact that Electronic Warfare now actually is used to defeat encryption.

Having had overnight to think about this, I couldn't agree more.

This was a dumb move on the part of the dev's. I can see what they were trying to do, which is make Direct Combat Spells pwn less, but they've badly missed their target and a whole bunch of innocent victims have gotten mown down in the crossfire.

Why you ever had to overcome the OR of a sensor to affect it with a physical Illusion is beyond me. The spell doesn't affect the sensor it creates an illusion. The spellcaster is likely completely unaware of the sensor and doesn't need to have line of sight to it. Why is he making an Opposed Test here?

Surely a Success Test with a Threshold based on complexity would make more sense. Or an Observer gets a Perception Test to spot that a perceived sense has been faked based on number of hits. But a Resistance Test that never made sense.

Now it's FUBAR. Now you need an 18 Dice Spellcasting pool to even hope to succeed against a threshold of 6. What do you think that is going to do to starting characters. It's going to make them even more twink than the were before.

You can bet your ass that every Mage I design is going to be able to throw that many dice either straight out of the gate or within a couple of runs. Power Focus 4 and a soft-maxed Edge and Magic.

And mathematically the effect on Direct Combat Spells will have been very small. Hell you won't even need to increase the Drain against Drones because all you have to do is hit the Threshold, so no net hits spent, base Drain code. Will it punish overcasting? Nope.

Dudes the current Drain system encourages overcasting!!!

The higher the Drain Code the less relevant the Force is in the end. Jack Mana Static up from Force 2 to Force 13 and the Drain rises by 5. That's an 82% increase for a 650% increase in Force. What's worse is Force isn't really that relevant after Force 8 for everything other than.....


(dan, dan, dan)

... Direct Combat Spells!!!

The number of hits you can expect to get from a Spellcasting Test maxes out at about 8 until you've spent masses of karma on an Ally. So it doesn't matter how high the Force of the Spell is past that point unless it's a Combat Spell and DV is derived from Force.

Way to go guys.

I can only hope they see sense and have an open discussion about it here before they send it to the printers.

On the tangent of 'the folks that are whining are the ones that haven't even read it yet, bleat, bleat.'

No I haven't read it. But folks are posting the dif's so I don't need to. I already have a BBB. Now I have the 'changelog' why do I need the new book to criticize the changes?

Or to turn that on it's head...

The only people I see here defending this crap are the 'fanbois' that have run out and dropped $45 on a pdf the instant it went on sale. Some wonder they are defending the changes with such fervour....

It is beyond my understanding how you could produce such an amount of rant based on a misinformation someone else posted. either wait for the errata or buy the eBook before you whine, thanks.

To be constructive: Imp. Invisibility works just like before. It has nothing to do with the OR.

How exactly is this misinformation? Enlighten us, Wise One.

As posted before: Improved Invisibility doesn't take OR into the equation. So the increased OR for a camera leaves this spell totally untouched. So this is a problem of the confusion spells.

Riiiiiiiiiight. Next time, just don't post anything when you think an epiphany hit you, ok?

A sensor rolls it's sensor rating to pierce through the veil.

Just for the record, as I've mentioned elsewhere, Karma character generation will be revised and updated in Runner's Companion errata to reflect the changes in SR4A.

Pierce that veil. Or rather, just stop embarrassing yourself.

the spell description is contradictionary.

One of you misinformations:

The SR4A PDF is only $25, or $20 if you already have the old SR4 PDF.

Lars

Dude, are you like, for real? Ok, I know you are, that's why I advised you to stop embarrassing yourself. Futile, I guess.

That would be a better way of dealing with it, but no. Physical illusions must beat the OR threshold to effect a technological device. Go check pg 208 of the PDF. There is nothing under the mask spell or improved invisibility that would indicate it works differently.

I really hate cheesing my characters, I like starting with like 9-10 dice in spellcasting and working my way up to 12 dice. I don't want to start with 15 dice and work my way up to 18. Since physical illusions are resisted by just intuition(+counterspelling) think of the odds of someone beating me in an opposed test now with 9 dice, vs the soon with 15 dice. It was hard before with counterspelling, now people have virtually no chance at all. Why even put physical illusions in the main book, have them come out in the super secret you are absurdly advanced in karma now book.

It is as futile to discuss with you. I've seen my fault beforehand and edited my post. besides - normal sensors (like the usual camera) are a threshold of 4, only drones and vehicles are now that much harder to beat.

Oh on the bright side, now spirits with the concealment power are even cheesier. Since my only way to get past cameras now is summoning, I'll be summoning and maybe summoning, oh and then summoning.

Sure it is. Because I back my claims with proof, reason and crimcon fury. You? Not so much.

Personally I think if the problem was overcasting(which I saw as a problem) my solution would have been to make the drain both physical and stun drain of equal amounts. I actually would always overcast because with first aid physical drain was easier to deal with than stun drain. If a force 9 fireball was 10 physical and 10 stun damage, roll one soak test to reduce both it would be fairly frighting. Either than or make it full force instead of 1/2 force once you overcast, and what x4 successes when overcasting a summoning.

Don't need to as I'm willing to see my fault in the discussion. That's why - for the better of this topic, I'm backing off.

this thread is going on a fast track to the basement...

Passed that some pages ago. Who cares? Never stopped the more interesting threads, did it?

That is up for the GM to decide since security camera is not a listed option. Is a security camera Electronic Equipment level complexity, or Computers, Drones, Vehicles level complexity. Personally I see it at the drone/computer level.

Sure maybe old school cameras might be basic level electronics, but most cameras you will have to deal with as a shodowrunner probably has enough software in it to be considered drone level. It really depends on how you want to play it, and besides odds are anywhere I am going where I need a physical mask or improved invisibility spell there is going to be some drones.

Nope.

what other electronic equipment would be influenced by an illusion affecting the visual sense than some sort of optical sensor? and isn't a standard camera sort of an optical sensor?so I plea to see it as having a threshold of 4.

Huh?

Sorry for not making my question clear: Do you imply that there will be more Karma to go around at Karma-Gen or will just the costs increase accordingly to the new main book?

that was because they where interesting. this is a wreck in slomo, and i have seen way to many of its kind over the years online...

If that is the only problem they were trying to solve it would be a bad solution. But what if the problem they saw was attributes were to cheap? I think attributes at x5 can be okay, but I think they could of also lowered the skill costs a bit. At x5 attributes are still the best deal in the game, whether that is because they were to cheap before or everything else was too expensive kind of depends on how fast you like characters advancing.

A wreck in slomo can be quite intersting. If it's on fire!

A camera that just records might be basic electronics, a camera that acts as a sensor with some level of interpretive software is more like a drone. YVMV but I see the latter as more common in any place I'd need these spells. And as a side note the OR threshold table includes trees and dirt, I'm not trying to fool them with an illusion. The table is for most spells like how hard is it for my mage to powerbolt the coffee machine.

Like I said though its up to the GM to decide where devices fall into the chart.

as mythbusters have proven, anything becomes interesting ones one add some fiery explosions

Wow! I turn my back for a couple of months and this place turns into the WotC D&D forums! What a bunch of flames and hissy fits!

I was going to wait for the actual print copy of the Anniversary Edition, but all this talk has gone and got me to buy the PDF which is downloading now so I'll know what I'm talking about shortly. But that doesn't seem to be the done thing, so I'll make my comments now.

I feel for those people in "official" games where they might have to re-calculate their characters abilities, and I hope it doesn't take too long to do so.

I also feel for the devs who were no doubt ready to reveal this exciting and shiny new and improved edition celebrating TWENTY YEARS of our favourite game only to be greeted with lots of grousing and a minor flamewar. Poor devs! From what I've seen of it in the preview, it is very shiny indeed!

I have to say that I like the sound of most of what I've heard. At some point changes have to be made in order to progress. The obvious issue of whether it is "progress" or not is the big debate but knowing how many passengers I can get in a helicopter, speed making a difference to pursuits, the belated mercy to adepts, sensible Sensor rules, clarification about on-going area effect spells... these all sound good to me. I even like the improved Object Resistance thresholds because Shadowrun has always been a game not of everyone being able to do the same things but with different labels on them (like 4e D&D or somesuch) but a fast and deadly version of Rock, Paper Scissors. If mages have a slightly more tightly defined area of weakness then that just plays into the heightened differences and co-dependence of magicians with their mundane tool using counterparts. And I'll point out that magicians still have Indirect combat spells which will work just fine against drones, etc. This was the intent in the pre-errata version of 4e but with lowish thresholds and highish Magic casters it didn't really work that well. This makes a bit more of a distinction between the two types of spells and restores Indirect combat spells to usefulness to some extent. (Well, they were also useful with Counterspelling, but now their niche is broadened out slightly). And it allows GMs to make heavy hardware slightly more resistant to a powerful magician. Sometimes I would actually like a big armoured Citymaster to be a bit more magic-proof.

And quite frankly it is worth $20 to shut Cain up about the Hand of Fate rules. I think I'm going to have to dig out that old thread now and post a closing argument.

The PDF has downloaded by now and I have to say that the presentation is stunning. It's a really beautiful book with some nice artwork and I'm looking forward to having the physical copy in my hands.

Now all that said, I have a concern about what they've done with Direct Combat Spells. I was not one of the people who considered the original system to be overpowered. A samurai had similarly powerful ways of affecting targets without the risk of damaging herself due to drain. The magician had the advantage of using actual LOS and was able to be less concerned with armour. Going back the Rock,Paper,Scissors approach of Shadowrun, I kind of liked the magician to have these advantages. The change appears to me to reduce a magician's sustained ability to hurt people in this manner. On the other hand, it was getting tiresome having to produce an unrealistic number of spirits and magicians sitting around waiting to counterspell any attacks on every NPC, so making magicians a little more cautious in Direct Combat'ing everyone might be okay. Magicians remain very powerful, but become less reliable both due to increased damage to themselves and through slight uncertainty on how much drain they will take. I'm going to have to think about this. I feel that this is the sort of change that had it been this way from the start would be accepted as one of the ways in which Shadowrun is "interesting" but that having come in late in the day as it were, is generating a lot of controversy. I'll have to think about it.

Anyway, off to read my PDF now. I'll just say again, the artwork and feel is way better than the previous printing.

Peace,

Khadim.


EDIT: Cain - you have to read pg. 62, they've cleared up the long shot rules just for you!

EDIT EDIT: The artwork in this book is really something extraordinary. And I note that this printing is 24 pages longer than the previous printing. I assume a lot of that is the new, epic index.

Just had to point out that this isn't even close to true. Some quick calculations: suppose we start with 6 dice in each of two pools, and either up one by 3 or drop the opposite by 3. In the first, case, someone with 9 dice has about an 80% chance of beating someone with 6 dice, and a 39% chance of getting 3 net hits. On the other hand, someone with 6 dice has an 86% chance of beating someone with 3 dice, but only a 36% chance of getting 3 net hits. So not at all identical. (And, as others have pointed out, non-opposed tests and the existence of glitches make even more of a difference.)

Killfist, I was with you till you had to be a drekhead and destroy a coffee machine. Did one need to destroy a holy object?
Besides, as an engineer I would say coffee machines are a natural object . Naturally, the have been in every breakroom at each of my workplaces.

THANK YOU! I might get involved in missions now.

While I agree that their reasons were in the right place (make attributes less dominant) I think they applied the wrong solution.

Okay. now I've found something I don't like. And just when I'd decided that the revised Attribute improvement costs were a positive step, I turn to page 67 and see that rather than resolve the ambiguity about what the "average" human attribute is by giving 2 as the Modal value, they've explicitly given the mode as 3. I can put a very logical argument why 2 is better as the mode and that's what I've always used. Now I have to contradict the book.

*Grumble* goes off to sign Crizh's petition. : (

EDIT: They didn't fix the Lifting rules either.

It will probably matter nothing but I too think that adding the net hits to the spell drain is the wrong way to solve the issue of overcasting (and it remindes me awfully the MMORPG in wich "this class is overpowered, nerf it"), if overcasting is the problem hit overcasting specificaly; instead of adding net hits (which should rapresent a level of success, adding them to the drain could bring to having mages killing themselves by being too good ) add the points of force that excide the magic attribute to the spell's force for the porpuose of determining the drain value (casting a force 10 stunbolt with a magic attribute of 5 would cause having to resist 7P of damage: (10 force + 5 overcast)/2 round down). Another problem seems to be how easy is shrugging off the drain thanks to first aid, it could be resolved by ruling that damage caused by drain comes in form of minor internal bleeding, and wide area tissue damage (think about the tissues being reduced like a worn out piece of cloth, it's not broken but it's severely weakened), this kind of damage could probably prove to be hard or even impossible to heal with first aid, if ruled to be not healable with first aid (just like it can't be healed by the heal spell) it would become a major concern disincentivating overcasting at the price of making drain a quite terrifying prospect for the magician, if ruled to be simply be hard to heal each point of drain could be worth two points of damage for the porpouse of First Aid, or maybe adding a negative modifier to the test due the innatural condition in wich the organism happens to be; however it's chosen to be handled I realy hope that they won't gimp the magicians, they will have to deal with higher Object Resistance ratings and the increased cost of the attributes (both changes that i consider necessary), adding the net hits to the drain is overdoing.

That identical chart is on p.62 of every prior printing of SR4.

Yeah. I was hoping they would change it. That, the lifting rules and the fact that you are allowed multiple Sprint actions in a turn are some of my biggest issues with the rules, believe it or not.

QFTW