OK, now, first, this is not about how you would have done things they put in differently. No talking about what you thought they should have done to the Matrix rules, just what you think, with the SR4A, they could have put in, but did not.

For me, BTW, it was reintroducing Grounding(you know: hurling a spell from the astral to the physical using someones fetishes and Foci as the conduit).

I also feel that they could have put a Mystic Adept into the sample characters.

Does anyone have anything like that they can think of?

some more sample characters working with resonance.

I wouldn't mind grounding, but it isn't that important to me.

Some proper vehicle construction rules would be quite nice.

No grounding for me ever! The planes must remain separate.

What I'd like to see is:

• Clarification how damage to projecting mages works. Is it possible to remain active if the body is dead?
• Alternate weapon names just like with vehicles.
• Clarification on Grenades/Area Effect Spells. What happens if the primary target scores more hits than the attacker?
• SIN verification rules that reflect the fluff.
• Better Encumberance rules

How about a sample character magician that could reliably cast their Improved Invisibility or similar OR threshold spell?

I would have like to see a couple more Sample Characters, maybe something hearkening back to the SR1/SR2 era. Even just changing things up a bit with the existing characters would have been nice. (I saw that they went back to an SR3 version of the street samurai, obvious cyberarms and all.)

As far as rules that could have been reintroduced...

• Grounding, definitely.
• Inclusion of the optional rule from Street Magic that allows Adepts to take a power point instead of a metamagic ability when the initiate.
• Clarify the description of how Mystic Adepts split their Magic. As its stands, even in SR4A, the reading of the rule flatly contradicts the SR4 FAQ.

-paws

I think a huge step towards rebalancing Skills and Attributes could have been achieved simply by reintroducing the Defaulting mechanic from earlier SR editions... dice pool equals half the Attribute, rather than a mere modifier of -1.

Which edition was that? 3rd had a form of "skill group" mechanic where skills within the group could "cross-default" at a +2 TN, and going to the attribute was a +4 TN. Second (and I think First, but I never played it) had the (horrendous) "skill web" where each "little dot" was +2TN and each "big dot" was +4TN. I don't ever remember a "half Attribute" rule...

I only have SR4 and 4A with me right now. Your reference to the skill web, Malachi brings back memories I had suppressed.

It must have been First, then. Help me out, folks, am I out to lunch on this? I can't think of any other game with a similar mechanic with which I might have confused SR.

The only game I know that defaults to half abilty scores is Alternity.

What about White Wolf's World of Darkness games? I played Changeling for a while. Maybe it was that.

In any case, it seems like a good way to circumvent the "High-Agility-can-do-anything" syndrome, without hurting people who do have skills.

From my perspective, the issue is that Agility can be jacked up to 9/10 (12/15 if you really line up the stars) and skills are capped at 6. If 9 dice are coming from stats and only 6 from skill, the skill is the least important aspect :sad face:

SR4A missed the boat on removing skill caps. The game should encourage skill.

I completely agree... Enforce the skill caps on created characters, remove them afterward.

I've been waiting for that since SR3

Does anyone use the vehicle rules? If not, check out ramming. For fun pit two Ares Roadmasters ramming into each other at 30mph, see what happens. Now try two buses (Vistas from Arsenal), loaded with passengers, one t-boning the other at 25 mph. In real life a few people may die; in Shadowrun it looks like 80 people fed through a Troy built chipper vac.

Oh, and while I think you're usually right Cardul, I'm glad that Grounding is gone. It totally screwed Phys Ads.

Don't get me started....

I've been capping skills to Skill + 1 since day one. Even added a positive quality to up the cap to Skill x 2. I don't see uncapping skill in games at my table.

So if I don't start with a skill I can't raise it higher than 1?

You know, I read your beef on Ramming and I realize that I had been playing with some rule tweaks that I didn't even realize. For determining ramming damage, I use the net speed difference between the two vehicles instead of just the total speed of the ramming vehicle. I believe SR3 had some rules to this effect: for rear end subtract target vehicle speed from ramming vehicle, for t-bone use ramming vehicle speed, for head on add both speeds together. I also apply the damage to passengers that the vehicle took after its resistance roll. Those things bring ramming back into the level of "reasonable."

I hear you Malachi, and many folks here seem to play it that way. It leads me to believe that none of the playtesters actually run RAW. If they did, this would have been fixed by now. SHAME ON YOU PLAYTESTERS!!!

Re: Skill Importance

IMO, they really did miss the boat on this. Not trying to nitpick or compare, or bitch, but they said they raised Attributes because they wanted to make Skills more important. This is fine. In fact, had they took extra steps to actually make skills more important, it would have worked.

But nope. They left them exactly the same, so the problem still exists, and is even worse in a sense(since skills are the same price, and attributes more expensive, it REALLY makes upping those primary attributes at the start with BP more enticing.)

Yes, I agree, missed the boat on removing skill caps(NOT hit caps, but skill caps....allowing one to go past 6, 7, or even 8 in game), as well as not lowering skill costs.

Yeah, I don't understand why they didn't work on making skills more attractive as opposed to making investing in attributes (which everyone still NEEDS to do anyway) more expensive.

And it does exactly what you've said it will, basically push everyone to take max 200 BPs when starting out as that's easily the most bang for your BP. Everyone except possibly Awakened and Emerged characters will want to use their max allowed BPs for attributes at CharGen.


There are so many ways they could have made skills more attractive to invest in, but just didn't.

Removal of skill caps and grounding. Though I would of changed grounding so the only people who could be targeted were those directly linked to the grounding vehicle. So you are bound to a focus, they can ground a spell through the focus to you if it is active. Try to ground a spell through your spirit and you only hit the spirit and yourself. It adds cool flavor to magic, and it puts a nice limit on magic items.

All Grounding did in my old group was ensure Mages never used any foci. Also, allowing Grounding to go through the Spirit's link to the Summoner greatly reduces the worth of spirits.

Using Grounding was basically a major way of mage spankage and all but telling mage players to not bother. I'm not sorry to see it go away.

I agree that while grounding sounded useful in theory, it never worked in any group I played with. No mage ever took anything vulnerable to grounding, as it was just too damn easy to exploit for the opposition.
SR4 led to an explosion in focus numbers, but I prefer that to the days of old.
Wouldn't mind some other way of restricting focus usage, though. The current limit is a way too soft.

Besides the hard cap the GM can always ask for an addiction test if a character runs around with active foci all the time. Also rival runners may be hired/inclined to pluck some of the candy from such an astral christmas tree. 5-25K¥*Force is not so bad loot

You're absolutely correct, I just happen to dislike "If the GM feels annoyed by it, he can screw the player"-type restrictions, because they just generate bad blood at the table if the GM and the player happen to disagree on what's reasonable.
A hard and fast rule is preferable, imho.

I actually think the way focus items works now is fine, as nothing stops other characters from loading up a huge arsenal of guns, explosives, drones, vehicles, etc.


However, I had an idea off the top of my head that might appeal to you for a houserule.

Similar to buying Cyberware with ESS, and buying Adept powers with power points from MAG, how about this.

A mage may bond (Focus RTG point Karma cost/20) equal to their MAG score.

Example.

Force 4 power focus = 8 karma per point, total 32 karma.

32/20 = 1.6 MAG used to bond the Force 4 power focus. (.4 per RTG)

For a steeper cost you could do (Focus RTG point Karma cost/10) equal to their MAG score. Making the above power focus use 3.2 MAG.



Alternatively for something extremely simple, instead of allowing a mage to bond a number of foci equal to their MAG attribute, you could make it MAG attribute /2.


Just some ideas, not sure how balanced they are.

And before I get pounced on, let me reiterate that I think # of Foci = MAG attribute is fine as is.

Same here. I mean, 6 foci is making someone easily look like a christmas tree. It IS a disadvantage to be so. I mean, not even in a ''picking on a PC'' kind of way, but simply in a ''these guys will not be able to pass a ward, and will glow to anyone who can even perceive astrally.'' Also, I'd say focus addiction is still a real threat. I mean, if someone took Jazz at every combat, eventually they wouldn't be able to keep the monkey off their back, I imagine. Too much of a ''good thing'' can come back to bite anyone in the ass, be it magical or mundane.

Exactly what I wanted to write, ElFenrir, but I was too slow.

I think the maximum of MAG bonded Foci is enough. Don't forget there is another limitation. You can only have LOG Foci active at any time.

I don't see why people are pissing on mages for having foci the spent karma to bind, when a rigger can litterally have an army of drones equiped with everything from sensors to anti capitalship rail guns.

I think the issue is that the mage is more likely to get in with his "arsenal". Whereas the army of drones may get noticed.

may.

Then you're using your drones wrong.
The ones people are likely to notice (ie the rail gun equipped ones) don't enter the building
the ones that do are small skimmers and spider drones with ruthenimum armor and the ability to act as target designators for the ones with railguns 2 or even 3 buildings over.
And has been said, unless you're good at masking, enough foci will attract unwanted attention.

I don't want to tangent this thread to heck but feel compelled to do so anyway.

Whats the avail on that fancy ruth armor? the railguns? (your talking about the big ares thing from arsenal right?)
Those guns shoot through barriers without loss?
Now I have to look up ruth and see the rules as I cannot imagine it protecitng against all spectra.

The thing is at a "secure" meet, the mage gets to bring more to the table.
Not complaining but getting whats going on.

Ruth armor 12R and Body x 1000

Thunderstruck MP-Gauss Rifle? 24F and 13000

Light Gauss Cannon? 25F and 200,000

Battleship Gauss Cannon? 30F and 600,000

The Gauss Weapons halve armor before adding AP, so shooting someone through 10 CM of Concrete, they soak like 1 extra point damage.

Ruth only covers visual spectrum, which is why your sniper drone also packs Signal Masking

Thats a whole lot of twenty plus F. We don't see much if anything in the 20plus F range at any of the games I play.

I was more wondering how to mask the flyer and spider drones he spoke of so that they could get into secure locations for targeting, as suggested.

Again, we don't see any twenty something F gear in our games and that's something to consider.

I doubt I'll ever see a game with capital ship rail guns in it. But to address your issue, for me it si because I think mages bring more to the table without gear than any other character type. Allowing them to GEAR up on top of that is a little too much ++ good IMO. My main gripe is with sustaining focuses though. I loathe the Sam in a bottle style spells that they can have up at all times. Further more I feel grounding puts magic gear on the same levels as non magic gear. Tech based gear as plenty of flaws that non magic gear does not, grounding adds in flaws that tech does not have to deal with.

Mages leave behind signatures after a fight and have to spend time erasing them or they will be tracked. Mages have to deal with background counts which can effectively be a "you can't use any of your abilities" zone.

You mean I can kill someone with move by wire from astral space with out them EVER knowing I was there. Cool, you'll have to show me that trick some time.
Also when was the last time a ward caught someone with a cyber disguise?

In SR 3 our rigger would often try to get one of the light naval railguns mounted on a steellynx that had its turret removed, so it had a very narrow arc of fire. But the sammy would have a target designating module under his assault rifle, and when the excrement hit the oscillating ambient draft device, a 30mm projectile moving at ~ 5 KPS would punch through a wall and splatter some poor bugger all over the place.

Back to topic, Attribute calculations for cyberlimbs should be in line with the fluff for melee attacks i.e use average or even minimum. Also there should have been a clarification if only the arms and legs are used in the average or skull and torso as well.

I managed to get a light one onto a Roadmaster....GM ruled that I had to be going at speed to fire it and not go backwards..and, yes, Deceleration Stress SUCKED....I think I fired it ONCE...with a Troll Rigger..almost passed out from the Deceleration.

I feel bad for the poor Adepts and Technomancers who now have a hideously expensive stat, which raising is central to how their character operates.

I also agree that raising the skill cap would have been a better solution. Pro-athletes have amazing stats, but what about the saying "talent will only take you so far?" As is, you can build a character who, with only stats (no skill ranks), can equal the very best human mundane with the highest skill level, with specialization, and maxed out (non-augmented) stats. If your going for a "humans are only human" vibe that's one thing, but I'll play Rifts if I want that.

Also I don't see a problem with "magic Street Sams." Background count makes their spells fall down, wards stop them in their tracks, and there of course is astral signature (a lesser problem, but one none the less. What mundane runner doesn't do something about his fingerprints, after all?). They are rockin, but their boosts are unreliable.

What deceleration? Isn't one of the advantages of magnetically propelled projectiles that the weapon is near recoilless?

@AngelisStorm: What are you talking about exactly? Are you referring the table that list skill rating 7 as the best of the best? This table is misleading at best. A skill usually isn't half the dicepool. It is more useful as a guideline as to how much time a character with a high skill rating should have devoted to learning and practising that skill. Comparing the actual dicepools is better for judging what a character can reliably do. In that situation it is irrelevant if someone is talented or skilled.

Not really. It does have less recoil than a comparable energy gas-propelled weapon because there's no excess gas pouring out the end of the barrel. However, you've still got to shunt the air ahead of your projectile out the barrel, and the amount of energy the projectile has is still going to be the same.

In fact, it's highly likely that people will keep the amount of recoil the same between a railgun/coilgun and the appropriate gas-propelled weapon size, and just speed the projectile up. We've done some pretty large tests on the amount of recoil people are comfortable with, might as well pack more damage into that budget.