It seemed silly at the time. Priority D for Dwarves and Orks, Priority E for Human? There was very little reason to make a human, unless the GM was playing up racism. I did have two players make humans in my 3e game, almost out of spite, really.

I'm not saying it was a bad thing to see (many) more metahuman runners, it was just a radical shift from 2e to 3e.



3e Troll magicians were pretty badass. Still love that combat mage.

-paws

...been involved with Shadowrun ever since 1st ed. Pretty much did most of my GM duty in 2nd & 3rd ed. Recently rebooted my Rhapsody in Shadow campaign using 3rd ed. Yeah 3rd has its issues but so does 4th (as well as 1st & 2nd). All of the editions were prone to Min-Maxing (my 4th ed character Hurricane Hannah was a good example of that) so that argument really doesn't hold water when comparing the different versions.

Played and GM'd 4th but came back to the "insanities" (as some put it) of 3rd because there are other features I and the players still prefer. It also fits the timeline of the campaign I am running. For one I feel that the whole "See All, Do all, Know All, Everyone can Hack in ", wireless Matrix really takes a major element out of the game that I like. I'm also not into skill caps. If you want to be the best of the best and have the Karma to do it, then you should be able to. There are other things as well, but the two above are the main reasons I archived all my 4th ed PDFs and dusted off the 3rd edition books.

A lot of how the game works or doesn't work depends on the players and the GM. My current group is comprised of very seasoned Rollplayers. Only one character has additional dice in initiative (+1) and he's the team's mage-detective. There is also an Aspected Shaman-B&E specialist, a Mystic Adept, and a Rigger who's only initiative boost is when jacked in. These were by the player's choices, not my recommendations. There is no Charisma 8 elf hermetic who can command a small army of elementals & watchers, no .0001 Essence combat monster who needs a Cyberzombie to make it a fair fight, and no adept martial artist that can give both Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan an inferiority complex.

We are all having a great time and everyone is really into the intrigue and up to the challenge of running in London and Europe and this is shaping up to be the best run of the campaign.

QFT. All this edition comparison stuff is really pointless. All RPG systems have their upside and downside. I don't think any system is immune to things that "break" the system, so you simply get a group of players that don't try to break it. As long as everyone is having fun, that's all that matters.

Any sufficiently complicated system. Its a tiny caveat but I think it needs to be clear that if people want a complicated game, they also get... well... complications.

If you want a simple game, you will get a simple game. And then gamers will slitch about it lacking depth.

BlueMax

True but we were talking about the Pornomancer vs. A pissed off blind Street Samurai. They both have back up if you want to go there by logic so.. Plus if he doesn't one-kill her, I don't think she is gonna be breathing enough (Or look to good with a bullet wound pouring blood all over the place.) to try to seduce anything. Wait, my God! IS Form Fitting Armor that high? Man, the armor stacking rules need some work then.

Let's face it, the Pornomancer and all of these other extreme builds would get massacred in a good SR campaign. Too specialized for their own good. That pornomaner is good for getting info and favors but that is it.. Not really functional in combat or any other endeavor. Can't infiltrate, can hardly shoot a pistol, can't dodge well. The range of the Pornomancer is very limited.

Same with the climbing master troll.. So what? He can climb, big deal. He can't hit anybody unless his agility is high, his reaction probably sucks. SO what he can climb the tallest building in Shadowrun, that is pretty much all he can do. Everything else is sifted down to secondary or tertiary.

IMO, it is more fun just to build a competent Shadowrunner that works well in a team. I have never felt the need to min/max my characters.

i love sr3 and have almost all the books as softcover, hated the IMHO(!) more post-cyberpunkish feeling of AR too (i like the wire-style plug-in decker feel lots more, even if it seems outdated by some technologies which where developed IRL)

nothing more to add, just my oppinion (im interested in 4e only storywise, hate the layout of the books and some inbook gfx too, sr2/sr3 was much more compatible from the feel of it to each other, while i feel sr4 just cuts off its roots)

everything said above is just my oppinion, not an objective fact, so there is no discussion needed

With a max wound modifier and a -2 from the wound itself, she'll still have enough dice to buy nine hits. Without Edge. So she'll be doing plenty of seducing.

Or just hypnotizing you with Gymnastics, whatever.



6/3, counts as half. That's without getting into the fact that, as far as I can tell, you can wear two suits for 12/6 armor and 6/3 encumbrance.



Wrong.



Against anything alive, she can just Social her way in.



Which never matters, because she doesn't need to.



Gymnastics Dodge. What, you think those four ranks were just for Enthralling Performance?



Patently false, as shown above.



The Pornomancer works well in a team. It's nice to have someone with guns, and it's nice for them to have someone that can get the Johnson to pay 300% or so.

Well that sturied up a lot of feelings and just to put in my 2 pence worth (yep i'm a brit) i have nothing against 4 th ed i'm just a lot happier with 3rd ed there are some parts of 4th ed i like, The points based chargen I though was very good i find it allows players to fine tune there charaters a lot more but when i first read then played 4th ed it just didn't exicite me it was ok but i had no desire to play it again unlike 3rd ed which i have run on meny times over the last few years with a great sense of FUN which after all is what it's all about my new game has started well and my players all like the low level feel i've gotten in to the game (which is what i wanted) as for the rules i have a few house rules which i think improve the game like a new way of sorting initiative which evens the playing field a little along with some idears on recoil and the like (all of which i'm happy to share if anyone wants) but most of all i have a group thats not interested in having super runners just a good group that works well so we all enjoy our games.

I'm not reading all three pages... just decided to post after I got to the bickering

We play SR2. SR3 is silly, and I'm still mad that they killed off Captain Chaos. Other than that, we like the feel of the 2/3 system, much more than that of 4. And... I'm not sure what you're all talking about, because the amount of change in the system from D&D3->4 is about the same as Shadowrun. But well, we all have our opinions, which is why my group still plays SR2. After reading through some (there are a bbunch already) of the 4th edition books, we just don't feel that it fits our storytelling and play styles. That's not to say that anyone else is wrong, mind you. Just our preference.

Which is Moot if the Johnson can only flex upwards to a max of 25%...

He can go higher for her.

Dude.. No.. One you seemed to miss a little caveat that I knew the first person to read the post without really reading it and then quote would do.. It has been missed twice. I have said Blind Street Sam. There are PLENTY of powers and cyberware that can give a blind man the ability to shoot a Pornomancer down.. All that seduction and dancing does nothing if the sam can't see it. Examine the post your reading dude.. Yes I know it is a trick, yes I know that is unfair but when you have an unfair build like a pornomancer, you need unfair counters. Not to mention that beyond the wound penalties, A good shot that takes a chunk of health is going to have other effects. Knockdown being one of them.. You can't dance when you ass is prone on the ground.

Yeah, what GM is going to give you 300% up from starting price? I know I tend to max mine out at negotiable up to 30% at most. If I let you negotiate 300% up from starting price, have another character ready because your PC you have now.. Not going to make it.

A pornomancer cannot seduce a drone. A pornomancer cannot seduce an awakened animal. A pornomancer can't seduce a spirit, a pornomancer cannot seduce a homosexual man, a pornomancer cannot seduce a straight woman (well, that might not be a good example), a pornomancer cannot seduce a MAD sensor or a camera. She can't seduce a car bomb. She better have a good team around her or she is dead! Too specialized. I can think of 50 ways to kill her right now before she even looks at an NPC with those "Fuck me" eyes. The pornomancer is a one-trick pony.

The point is, you can look for any perceived advantage you want for your PC.. I and any good GM can kill it before the end of the first run if we really wanted to.

As for SR3 vs. SR4. Hell, I love them both.. I play SR4 because i like the streamlining but I have been rocking it SR style since 2nd edition. You can break them too. Game balance is a myth and anybody who convinces you otherwise is a pornomancer.

The specialized builds are just not that uber when put under the spotlight. I'm sorry but I do not see the advantage of these so called uber-builds.

We took the hacking from 4th ed and the simplified types of sprits but otherwise we kept with 3rd ed and have no use for 4th ed or 5th ed, I mean 4.A

The problem is that the Pornomancer so outshines everyone in his chosen area, and is reasonably competent in most other areas, making it so you have a superior character. Everyone else therefore feels inferior, simply because they're not tossing two bricks of dice in their specialty.

And of course they're going to be specialized. That's the whole point of Shadowrun. No matter what edition you're playing, the game is about teams of specialists, working together. Generalist characters are naturally going to be underpowered in comparison.


Hardly "prohibitive". The pornomancer is just one super-specialized character with a well-rounded skill set. There are many others posted on Dumpshock. As for SR3, you always needed to improve your skills as you faced opposition with greater ability. There was always a need to improve your skills and attributes.

Look, I'm not arguing that SR3 was a perfect system. It has holes and breaking points. What I am arguing is that SR4 isn't vastly superior in this regard-- in fact, it may not be superior at all. In both systems, you can easily start with insanely huge dice pools; neither system does a good job of reining in power gamers.


A good chargen system should be intuitive. That is to say, it should easily communicate the desired results to the players, so that they know what they should be aiming for. Now, I'm not saying SR3 did that, especially if you were using BeCKs or Points. But SR4 decidedly does *not* do that at all. A good system won't rely on the GM to tell the players what kind of characters to create; it'll do most of that work for them.

For example, GURPS is confusing and fiddly, and you never quite feel like you know what you're doing. I just started playing in a D&D 4e game, and I have to say that character creation was pretty smooth. Choose a stat array, assign to taste, presto! I knew instantly what level of attributes were good/average/poor.

If you can point me to the place in the book where it says that you can only use Seduction if the target can see you, I will happily concede that point. Phone sex is awesome.



Of course not. You'd have to be a bloody idiot to let me play this in a game. But it can be done, which is the point.



True. Machines are the 'Mancer's one weakness, though that's why she has a team backing her up.



None of these are good examples. Because even if she can't seduce them? (And in the case of all but the animals, I'd say with that many dice she could.) She's still rolling 40-44 dice on a CON test, since none of her bonuses are Seduction specific except the specialization. Can't be Conned? She's rolling 24-28 for Negotiation.



A one trick pony that can one-shot any group of things that are alive and she's aware of.



Any bad GM can kill it. Any good GM will have trouble doing so, because good GMs play by the rules they've set down. The best GMs don't allow this nonsense to begin with.



HAHAHAHAHA!

Oh, that is totally sigged.

Charisma is the gut-reaction attribute. It influences an NPC’s reaction
to a character before any words are spoken or actions taken. It represents
the way a character reacts after a first glance across a crowded
room, out on the street, or in a dark alley

Now that is taken from the first paragraph from "Using Charisma-Linked Skill". From that in the RAW, it say that charisma is a gut reaction based on the FIRST GLANCE of a character. I would assume that this would take into account that Charisma-Linked skills are also sight based.. Plus I really want to know how you phone sex a crazed, pissed off Street Sam Of course this is pretty weak so.

"Many sorts of modifiers may apply to social skill tests, depending on
the situation and characters in question. For example, trying to influence
someone in a club where the music is overbearingly loud, while
being covered in blood, or when wearing a rival team’s sports jersey
in the wrong sports bar may all impact a character’s Charisma-linked
tests. The gamemaster should evaluate each situation and apply modifi-
ers as he feels appropriate. The Social Modifiers Table (p. 131) provides
some examples." pg. 130 Anniversary edition.

This says that as a good GM, I start taking penalties for quite a few things. If there is a penalty for trying to influence someone in a loud club, then there is surely a penalty for trying to seduce a blind man. Based on looks alone, that ain't happening. Not to mention that the pornomancer starts out at a -8 dice modifier from the start as the Blind Street sam is obviously an Enemy (-4) and the results of being seduced is probably disastrous for him (-4). Not to mention that these are just examples and, as suggested by RAW, is not an exhaustive list. Not to mention that if the Street Sam has a bad rep as a stubborn killer, that is a variable penalty. We haven't even got to if the chick is wounded with blood all over her and the Street Sam hates elves and knows that she is one, those are also negative penalties. This is all by the RAW and by no means hateful. As you can tell, I am not trying to argue with you.. I am just trying to show that too much emphasis has been put on how "uber" these builds are without seeing the weaknesses. The pornomancer has MANY weaknesses.



Good point..



The team can't be there all the time..




Not a good example.. I think most of them are.. Thinking that the hot elf could turn the totally gay man straight for on night is like bragging that you can turn lesbians.. Truth is, you can't..

Also see Social modifiers. Trying to Con or seduce a magical spirit would not be any easier than the homosexual guy. Just because you roll lots of dice does not mean you can do something that would be impossible. You just have a chance for more successes. Negotiation is easily balanced out with capping money raises and goodies.





Which outlines her weaknesses very well. I'll take away alive because I am sorry but a Devil Rat could care less how charismatic your pornomancer is..





I agree with all but the bad GM part.. I don't have to cheat to take down a pornomancer, I can do it with the RAW. I have already outlined someways. Yeah, I would smack this crap down before it even got close to happening. Starting with emotitoys..





Thanks!

The pornomancer was purely a dice-pool exercise, just like the mundane climber build. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that the pornomancer is invincible, just that it is a hyper-specialist who is functional in other areas - functional, not capable of standing up against someone who is a specialist in those other areas. I already said, in another thread, that, while I made the effort to create an actually playable build, it is far from optimal for a real campaign. Too much spent hard-maxing things, and too many conditional modifiers. And all for a level of ability that is wasted 90% of the time, because it is overkill. By the way, agree with you on empathy software - it's something you kind of have to get if it's there, because everyone else will have it, but I prefer games where it is nerfed or non-existent.


On SR3 vs. SR4, I like both. I do my gaming on the boards, so I followed the switch along, but while I like SR4, I am still fond of SR3. Both have their good and bad points, but I think, unlike previous edition changes, that SR4 is more or less a new game - so many things are completely different in it. I think both editions tend to reward specialization, but in SR3, it was a lot easier to make a skill monkey, especially sorcerers.

If you go through the build I posted, I actually got rid of a lot of that when I brought her over to 4A. Magic is now something like 3, and most of the temporary modifiers are gone. In fact, she gets a straight 36 dice all the time on Seduction; the rest are body language, smell, and voice, consisting of 3, 2, and 1 dice respectively.


I wouldn't really call it overkill: you can get about 10 dice worth of negative modifiers, if not more, if trying this on a group of hostile NPCs shooting at you. On your average guard who thinks you're hot, yeah, it's overkill; on the five gangers hell-bent on shooting elves on sight that'll be killed if they don't, not so much.

Well-rounded skillset is hardly enough for a character to make it on their own. They still need the team to do things for them. That's my definition of broken, someone who doesn't need a team at all. In SR3, principally thanks to the 1 million nuyen option, I came very close to that. I've been monkeying with SR4 for years now, and my closest approximation is still nowhere near, at least not without piles of karma.



Sure, but I still maintain that characters are more limited in SR4. That doesn't mean they're not uber, but just do the math:

In SR3, 1 million yen was 30 BP, or 25% of starting resources. In SR4, 250k is also 25% of resources, but it is only 1/4 the money. Prices have come down, but not by a factor of 4. Therefore, you can spend the same on money, but get less.

In SR3, attributes were 2 BP, or 1.6% per point. In SR3, they're 10 BP, or 2.5%. Not only that, but you have more attributes to spend on. So attributes have increased in price significantly.

In SR3, skills were 1 BP, or .08% per point. In SR4, they're 4 BP, or 1% per point, a 20% price increase. Skills also mean less, accounting for only 1/2 of your dice pool. Not only is it more expensive, it's worth less.

Now I'm not sure whether you're actually disputing the power level between SR3 and SR4. It seems like a hard thing to dispute, especially given the math above. It is clear as day to me that the baseline power level is just not comparable. That doesn't mean you can't start an SR4 character who's maxed out in one area, only that the power level in general is lower -- it has to be, seeing as how money, skills, and attributes all cost more than they used to in terms of BP. Unless you spot some kind of glaring flaw in my math, you really can't argue that they're just as strong as they used to be...



You just made a case for D&D 4! Does Cain have a dirty secret he's not telling us? The fact is, the chargen is a feature of Shadowrun. We like the complexity. You don't like it, but your unsupported declaration of it being bad is completely meaningless. You can judge a game for yourself, but you cannot sit in judgment of all games everywhere for everyone.



Oh, I see that you really are making a case for D&D 4... Seriously? Yeah the chargen is easy to do, but that makes it stupid! I can pick any combination of skills and still rock the house. That makes my choices pointless. When I made a D&D 4 character, the result I came out with was little different that if I had chosen all my abilities at random by rolling a die. Every D&D 4 character is generic, with only slight variations in abilities between members of the same or similar classes. That's precisely what Shadowrun is against -- there are no classes, no limits. That also means there's no guidance. But if you don't want a 2 dimensional cardboard cutout of character, you have to wade into complexity. It's a price we gladly pay.

I still think SR4 Chargen is much more complicated(not in a good way in my eyes either) than the SR3 Point Chargen

Wow Cain, we agree on something. The SR4 character creation system allows for a lot of flexibility but it is not friendly for new players. Priority is the only thing that is really friendly for new players. However, from what I've heard about the PACKS system that CGL is working on for Runner's Toolkit, it will help alleviate a lot of those issues. Want your character to be really good in hand to hand? Take the "Hand to Hand Specialist" package, its 33 BP. Want to be a Hand-to-Hand Hacker? Well then, take the "Hacking Skills" package and the "Hacker Gear" packages. It should make things really quick and easy.

On the Pornomancer issue: I'm not concerned. It's not a practical character, IMO. It uses a ton of conditional bonuses, and its skills are not useful in all situations. Seducing someone just means they want to have sex with you, it doesn't mean they're going to do anything or give you anything in order to do so. Also, Seduction is not something that can be done in a single Complex Action in a combat situation.

Ack! Eee Gads no. Those packs sound like taking Archetypes. Just fix priority and make it standard.
Haxxor pack, how silly. Just take TM.

BlueMax
/spirits and sprites FTW

I still don't know why people rant on the Mundane Climber Troll.
45 Dice is HARDMAXED EVERYTHING!
40 Dice, only 5 dice less, and he has about 70 Points freed up i think.
And with that, you can make him viable by using those points on OTHER stuff.
Or drop down to 30 Dice, still one boat-load and with the right Ware he STILL WON'T FALL.
And has now even more Points to spend on something else.
Maybe make him a Drop-Bear. Or Breaking and Entering Specialist.
Let the mage levitate up, i can crawl up that building faster on my own!

Same Applies for EVERY Built with 40 or 50 Dice.
Even IF you do manage to get circumstances against you so you have 10 dice less,
you are STILL at 20 Dice.

Larme: Apples and oranges. Attributes don't function the same way in SR3 and SR4, largely because dice pools don't function the same way. Attributes got a fairly significant power boost, you're rolling more dice for many tasks, and, well, the systems are just different.

Is there a power level difference? I'd argue that the only meaningful way of looking at a power level beyond fluff is comparison of the disparities between a characters optimized for something, capable of something, and incapable of something. Room for improvement might help too.

Disparity? In SR3 you're pretty much rolling a hard maximum of 8 dice (7 specialization +1 for articulation). Maybe toss in a few more for your combat pool or whatever. A completely incompetent character is defaulting from something else, but even marginal competence (let's call it two dice), isn't completely overwhelmed by the expert.

I haven't fiddled with SR4 enough to know how big the power gap gets, but it doesn't seem terribly different in sheer numbers of dice. TN shifts make it harder to compare, but it's not a huge difference.

Yes, an optimized street sam will grind J. Random Pedestrian into fine red paste without breaking a cybersweat (20% enhanced heat dissipation! Now 50% off in all participating shadow clinics!), but that's part of the game. If you want it to be lower power and grittier you can set that up too, but I like over the top, absurdly skilled characters.

Shadowrun is a game in which you can build a character capable of picking a fight with Chuck Norris. That is part of its awesomeness.

Pick maybe, win never. He is after all Chuck Norris.

When Big D told me the oldest and toughest thing on earth wasn't a dragon, I asked if it was Chuck Norris. He didn't deny it.

BlueMax

OK, Challenge, going out to Dumpshock.
Disregard all rules but use only shadowrun Stuff to recreate Chuck Norris.

That probably deserves its own thread...

*Picard Voice*
"Make it so!"

I don't get why anyone would use the climber as an example of a broken sheet. Sure, it's a lot of dice, but... climbing? I don't think I've ever built a character who knew climbing in any edition. I guess it has its uses, but it can't really break the game no matter how many dice you have...

With climbing being a specialization of the athletics skill in SR3 many of my characters had it and even enhanced it with stuff like articulation, reflex recorders and synthacardium ... Particularly certain burglar types that even had the specialization.



Depends on the type of campaign you're playing. In a not to combat but burglary oriented scenario a "super-climber" can potentially break the game ...

How?? By infiltrating somewhere? Isn't that the whole point of the game? Last I checked, there was also this spell called levitate that allowed you to climb as high as you wanted. And one called spider climb. Someone who's able to climb is undoubtedly an asset. But the only way for climbing to break the game is if you think it's game-breaking to go outside the GM's railroading. If the GM wants you to go in the front door and has a whole combat scenario planned, and then you climb, that might "break" his plans. But it doesn't break Shadowrun, there is rarely if ever one route to take on a Shadowrun, as most GMs know, and that's how it should be.

By making certain things too trivial? Or by the sheer fact that one trick ponys - regardless of type - tend to break the game, since breaking the game does not only happen when you're too good at something but also when you're too bad for everytghing else and thus heavily limit the GM's possibilities to provide the scenario where he and the player of the one trick pony can have fun?



Why limit yourself to going in?



Infiltrating is the whole point of the game? Since when?



And either of them can be as game breaking as Mr. Super Climber who easily climbs skyscrapers even under conditions where e.g. these spells cannot be used.



Actually there's no need for "railroading" on the GM's behalf although it can ofc occur. A player's choice to have such highly specialized character is also kinda "railroading" by forcing a GM to either come up with scenarios that fit the specialzed characters bill (and thsu exceeding the limits of other characters) or constantly face the situation where either the GM's ideas will be trivialized by the player or the player's character ends up dead due to his lacking other proficencies.



And now think of a case where the GM has a scenario planned that actually involves climbing but expects it still to be challenging to a certain extend and now Mr. Super Climber comes along and trivializes that for himself and cannot be "stopped" or at least be hindered in a dramatic sense for the plot without crippling all other players also involved?
The very same can btw. happen when you have a super combat oriented character: Introducing a potential opponent who can at least pose a certain threat to the "Super Smaurai" can lead to very dead other characters ... unless you now advocate that the GM then railroads to save characters with less combat prowess.

Ok, every time I've ever heard "broken" used to describe something, it's talking about it being too good. If the climber is too shitty to be worth playing, what's the danger that anyone would even play it? How is the possibility of making a shitty character a problem with the system in any way? I could make a mundane with no cyberware who had severe mental and physical disabilities and couldn't do anything. And that shows that there's something wrong with the system? The fact that I could voluntarily make a character that can't participate in shadowrunning? This shows that either a) the term "break the game" is too ambiguous to even be useful in a conversation, or b) you just have no idea what it means.



The GM is responsible for approving everyone's characters in the first place. He can simply tell the climber to make a good character that doesn't suck at everything but climbing if he wants to avoid the situations you're pointing to. But ultimately, the GM cannot be responsible for every player's fun -- if one guy makes a horrible character, and the GM tells him it will suck, and he makes it anyway, it's the player's fault. You can't coddle someone who makes a pure climber build and then has nothing to climb, he has to learn not to be such a jackass and make a useful character.



Are you saying that nobody should be allowed to make a powerful combat character? Are you saying that a powerful combat character is comparable in its effects to a guy that climbs? I'm honestly confused, because neither of those things make the slightest bit of sense on any level. So the GM incorporates climbing into the game, and super climber does it easly. Oh shit, he just broke the whole game, guess we can't play anymore. Defeating the GM's expectations is one of the players' jobs. The GM sets up an ambush, the clever players go around it. The GM sets up a situation where they have to make a difficult climb, and they get a helicopter. There is always more than one way to skin a cat in Shadowrun, just like in the real world. Your argument seems to be, that if someone is too good at any one thing, they won't be challenged by that one thing! No shit, that's what happens when you have specialized people. Where I come from, being good at the thing your specialized for is the whole point of having a specialty. Your argument does not prove that the climber is somehow a threat to game balance, it only proves that no, the GM will not be able to create a dramatic, suspenseful climbing situation for someone with that many dice. Having never once used or seen climbing used in all my Shadowrunning career, my only response to this is, "Aw, snap."

Honestly, I'm beginning to regret responding to you. The more I evaluate the proposition "characters who can climb really well are broken," the more it seems like you must be arguing just for argument's sake, just to provoke me into responding. I sure hope that you're not trolling, and you're simply not thinking clearly about what you're arguing for.

Again, I'd like to see this build of yours. A breakdown under points or priority would be nice as well. Heck, I may want to play said character the next time I find a SR3 game. So, post it!


As other people pointed out, there's a difference in the way the system handles things. Enough so that your comparison isn't meaningful. I can argue effectiveness of characters, however. A pornomancer was not possible under SR3, nor was there anything close.

What's more, power levels are relative, and not absolute. You can create a character with more relative power and relative well-roundedness under SR4 than SR3. That can be shown by the simple fact that it's hard to create a useless character in SR3, but easy to create one in SR4. Both games favor certain uber-builds, certain no-brainer choices that are significantly better options than others. The only difference is, in SR4, the game-breaking choices aren't as obvious. For example, I put together a NPC Leadermancer with Commanding Voice. He proved to not need a team, since he could use Commanding Voice to end any combats, dominated any social situation, could fight, could use an Agent to handle most of his hacking duties, and was magical to boot. His appearance led to a unanimous ban on Commanding Voice in our games.

Easy fix for the leadermancer - make Darkeus' samurai blind and deaf.

But seriously, good point about relative power levels. SR4 seems weaker at first glance, but characters are weaker across the board. Combine that with hard caps, and you actually have the ability to start out closer to being the best at something. The one thing SR3 did better, depth-wise, was that it was a lot easier to make someone with lots of skills.

Uhm, no?
No Skill-Groups in SR3, so you had to buy every skill for itself.
And as the attributes did not factor into your dice-pool, only into the cost for skills, you could not go high attribute, low skill for a moderate pool in many skills.
low skills meant low dicepool and low dicepool meant probability of sucking bigger. Especially with changing target numbers.
it's hard enough to roll a pair of 8's on 8 dice, much harder on one or two dice . .
SR3 was really more for the one maxed out skill on starting the game. 5/7 and artwinculation made for 5/8 dice on start of game. much people did not need to get that one up further, but instead worked on eliminating negative modifiers to their target number. and because skills are cheaper in SR3 than attributes, people don't raise attribute in game either. most of the time.
mostly, it's seeing:"hey, attribute x is high enough for me to only spend y karma on skill z to get level 5 and thus have a good chance of suckceeding on that"

First: You just encountered a situation where someone said that "broken" also refers to not being good enough.

Second: Over the course of 20 years of playing SR with a substantial number of gaming sessions at conventions I have been confronted with more than enough characters that were deemed "worth playing" by their creators but were such one trick pony types. So the danger of facing such characters largely depends on the kind of campaigns you're playing (where playing at conventions would fall in the category "non-continous campaign" or "one-shot adventures").



I nowhere claimed that such problems are caused by the system ... although ofc you need a system that allows the creation of such characters in the first place. So I guess your questions in this paragraph as well as your binary choice in possible conclusions are simply not hitting the spot and the second one is even going into a rather personal direction



The problem remains that until he has learned that lession (which is one that heavily depends on personal tastes as well) the choice made by the player affects not only him, but also the other players and the GM. "Breaking the game" always is situational, since it's still possible for a GM and all players to have fun with such "shitty" characters.



~hmm~ Reading the text you quoted yourself again: No, I didn't say anything that would call for either question. I said that a super specialized combat character can create similarly unbalanced situations as a super climber and that any character that takes specific proficencies to not only "powerful" but "extreme" levels in terms of game mechanics is going to create situations where putting him to at least a minor test will automatically put other characters at a point where they simply do not have any chances.



It's possible that your confusion stems from interpreting stuff into my text that isn't there at all and I'm starting to doubt that you actually understood me, since I was speaking of a GM incorporating climbing into the game as an aspect that actually challanges the climber and then looking at the consequences of such a challenge for all others sitting at the table. Having Mr. Super Climber can even create situations where he still isn't challenged at all (due to the sheer number of dice he can roll) and the rest already hasn't got a good enough chance of overcoming the challenge.



One can have objections about that first claim. If that's your gaming style, so be it. I can only say that I have meet players that didn't see that as their job. The latter is a conclusion drawn from a wrong assertion ... Logically right but also wrong ...



And where I come from, there's a difference between being specialized and taking it to extremes where the system's capabilities of modelling the gaming world simply falls apart. Your conclusion concerning my "argument" is based on your wrong interpretation. In logic we're now again at the point where you draw a conclusion from a faulty assertion. The result is: You're logically correct while being totally wrong on all other levels. Oh and ofc a gm will be able to create a dramatic, suspenseful situation for such a character ... The problem lies with the consequences of such a gaming situation for all other players being in the very same situation with our climber.
As for you having never having encountered gaming situation where climbing was used during your SR career? "Aw, snap" Or should I say "I pity you for not having GMs that were capable of incorporating a rather usual skill"?



Interestingly enough it wasn't me who brought up this socalled "proposition" of "characters who climb really well are broken" and actually the original proposition done by others went into a "sllightly" different direction. I merely tried to present you with a different outlook onto something that you - by your own words - could not comprehend. If trying to be helpful now turns out to be perceived by you as argumenting for the sake of an argument, I'm more than happy to say: Pleased to not having helped at all and having gotten stupid assertions on your behalf.

And as for you last sentence there: The fault is always with others ...

Again, no books. The strategy was to use an elf with fairly average attributes, i.e. mostly 4's, and then boost everything up to 6 or 8 with cyber. Thus, instead of an unbalanced person with some attributes high and some low, you end up with this perfect being who has no flaws. Assigning the skills you need is then a simple matter, and can be changed based on how you want the character to play. The only problem with the build is that it creates a mundane combatty type person, it obviously wouldn't work for a decker or rigger or mage because those things take up so many of your resources.



Are you including the SOTA rules for social adepts in that? I don't know what they were, but I'm not positive that they weren't comparable to pornomancers. That said, the pornomancer is one example of a really over the top build that you couldn't make in SR3.



You can use commanding voice to end any combats? You do realize that at the gamemaster's discretion, the target just stands confused, right? That's the check against making a commanding voice person invincible. And I guess you never fought against any drones.

Regardless, the difference in my opinion is that no matter how strong you get in SR4, you always have a kryptonite. If you're a mundane, your kryptonite is magic. That wasn't true in SR4, because with a Willpower 6 a sammie would rarely get seriously hurt by magic, and with the damage code system, there were few spirits alive that you couldn't blast out of existince.



You've helped. You have shown me that anyone who seriously thinks that the troll climber is problematic is batshit insane. Thanks for being helpful!

Some forms of ignorance truely are bliss

In other words, you created a powerful elf street sam. I can create powerful troll street sams as well. WHat's your point? He's still weak versus magic.


Well, the leadermancer was a NPC. Second, the more successes you get, the more likely is it that they'll follow the command... and with his dice pool, he could buy critical successes. If he rolled, he would score much higher. So, they would tend to obey the command; and those who didn't throw down their guns would get shot as they stand around confused.

Also, in both editions, Magic was the "kryptonite" to any mundane character. Even with Willpower 6, you were no match for an 8D Manabolt with some spell pool behind it.

A good GM always plays to his PC's strengths. Trying to come up with a climbing challenge every game, one that will challenge the troll but not leave everyone else behind *is* problematic. The same holds true for combat challenges, magical challenges, decking challenges, and so on and so forth.

I would challenge the notion that the entire point of the game is to "challenge" characters. I understand that GMs might get frustrated when specialists just solve their challenges without breaking a sweat. I don't see the problem, myself. They spent the points to be good at something, so let them. You don't have to almost kill people to have a good game. The way to have a good game is to use story, and to challenge the players to think laterally to get things done. A GM who can't challenge the players except by almost killing them with powerful threats is not cut out for the job.

Now, people have mentioned convention play. TBH, if this game was designed for convention play, it would have to be easily as restricted and single-track as D&D 4. Playing a game with a bunch of strangers, with no chance to review sheets beforehand, with no ability for the GM to refuse sheets that won't work, that's a recipe for an awful game of Shadowrun. I'd say it's a miracle every time a convention game isn't fucked up somehow. The game is built for tabletop with a more or less set group. Placing it in a non-ideal situation like conventions does not show problems with the system as written, it shows the problems with transplanting a tabletop game into the harsh soil of a convention.

POINT LARME!!

In SR3, you could start out with 50 points of skills, and no limit to how many 6's that you had. Perception and dodge were tests, not separate skills. Athletics, sorcery, conjuring, and stealth didn't have to be skill groups - they were single, all-encompassing skills.

I like SR4 a lot, but there are certain character types that you can make in SR3 but not SR4, and vice-versa. In SR3, I could make a viable sorcerer with 50 points worth of skills, and only 6 of those points needed to go to a single skill, sorcery, to take care of his magical abilities. You simply can't get a similar lavish spread of skills in SR4.

If you don't wanna use Skillwires.
Those are KING in SR4.

Really costly with SR4A's changes, though. I'm not that familiar with the rules for buying pirated stuff, which might bring the cost way down if you get stuff after char-gen. Still, with the restrictions on Edge use (even with the expert system mod), I would only use them for tertiary skills.

Pirated Skillsoft is 10% Price.
in SR3, those were hellishly expansive

It breaks dramatic tension. Sweating bullets and fighting for your life in a RPG is fun, and fun is the whole point of the game. If things break down into Monty Haul-ism, you're not having as much fun as you could.

Also, there is a concept called: "Spotlight time", where each character should have an equal chance to shine. The problem with spider-man is that it's hard to give him spotlight time, if his focus is on climbing. You have to offer him contrived climbing challenges, that break the plot and take spotlight time away from other characters.


A good game should be versatile. It can't only work for a certain group, it has to work for all groups. Convention play, like it or not, is one way of testing out the versatility of a game.

The solution? Don't let a random esoteric builds into your campaign. The problem with the climbing build isn't how many dice he has, it's how many points he's wasted on climbing. It would be the same with a guy who spent all his points on having every language at 4, or a guy who spent all his points on swimming. Can estoeric characters mess up a game? Sure. Is that unique to the climber? No. How do you deal with it? Check peoples' character before they start, have them start over if they're going to seriously break the proper allocation of spotlight time. You're playing at a convention? Maybe you shouldn't play conventions where the ruleset allows "any legal character no matter what."



Here you are again, arbitrarily defining what a good game should be, based on your own person opinion. And what do you even mean by versatile? That's not exactly a word that applies intuitively to RPGs. Conventions are a perfect shitstorm of people who don't know and might end up hating each other, and GMs who can't review characters beforehand to make sure they fit with what the GM has in mind. No RPG is going to survive that, except an extremely limited, formalized one like D&D 4. I'm not saying D&D 4 is bad, but there are lots of people who prefer a more complex RPG, along with all the baggage it brings. Complexity is not inherently bad, it just has its own set of problems. Just like simple RPGs carry different problems, such as characters being similar and generic. Shadowrun has a long history of being a deep, complex game with plenty of ways to abuse the system. It requires, and has always required, strong GM participation to make it work. You can dislike that all you want, but don't tell me that you have the absolute standards that all RPGs must meet to be good. The goodness is subjective, either you like it or you don't. That opinion can be based on rational arguments, but ultimately there is no litmus test or proof of a good RPG, not until you get far out into the periphery like FATAL. Games like that are so horrible that reasonable minds cannot differ about their quality. But Shadowrun is far from that. Reasonable, thinking people can enjoy Shadowrun, including its system. So stop insulting us by telling us that our game has to meet your standards to be considered "good."

Sorry, but I don't like railroading players, and that includes their character choices. I've personally witnessed someone bring a pornomancer into a game, and everyone had fun with it. Right now, I have a player who brought in a skillwire generalist, and he's having fun with it.

You can't arbitrarily pick on players for creating characters you don't like. You have to have a standard. In my games, I have the dice pool cap, which prevents pornomancers and spider-man, but still allows for off-the-wall builds and powerful characters. In other games, they have house rules that fill the same roles. But you should never toss out a character simply because you don't like it.



ver⋅sa⋅tile
  /ˈvɜrsətl or, especially Brit., -ˌtaɪl/ [vur-suh-tl or, especially Brit., -tahyl]
–adjective
1. capable of or adapted for turning easily from one to another of various tasks, fields of endeavor, etc.: a versatile writer.
2. having or capable of many uses: a versatile tool.

A good game can handle many different conditions, and many different takes on the setting. Rifts, for example, lends itself to only one type of play.

And I've played in many "convention games" of SRM, and we all had a good time with it. In fact, with one or two exceptions, I've always had fun at convention games. What's your beef with them?


What, you've never heard of crtitcism before? If a movie doesn't meet Ebert and Roeper's standards, it's not good. Ultimately, although it's the consumers who decides if something is popular, it's the critic that decides if something is any good.

I thought you've stated many times that you limit your PC's dice pools to 20 maximum. Aren't you "railroading" (albiet politely) there?