Do you mean someone who knows how to damage people with baseballs (throwing weapons/baseballs 1/3), or someone who knows how to throw knives, shuriken, spikes, grenades, and baseballs equally well (throwing weapons 3)?

And this matters how? SR could modify it all it wants so long as it sticks to OGL minimums.

LOL! Again, d20 is more lethal than SR. Only once have I ever had a character die in SR and I've had plenty of characters die in d20 at all levels. I've never even been threatened with death on any character over 50 karma. Use vitality/wound points and d20 becomes far more lethal at all levels of the game.

Feats do have different "costs", in a way. Many feats have pre-requisites that prohibit players from simply acquiring the best feats immediately. These prerequisites can be level, class, attribute, skill, combat ability, and/or prior feats. Because you have to fulfill the prerequisite, you cannot just grab the latest and greatest at chargen and many require 10+ levels before you can even consider them.

PCs are not average humans. I am a huge fan of low-power campaigns with restricted access to equipment and dice caps. Even in these games, the punk wouldn't come close to hurting any of the runners I've gamed for and with. I'd love to hear how many PCs are out there with 2 Body getting surprised by and taking 6 boxes from a low-end street punk with a heavy pistol.

and

My point there is that a lot of people do not believe that d20 can do the things I mentioned. I find myself repeating them all too often and I've seen people from the other thread continue to make the errors even after they've been corrected. My hope is that repetition will eventually force them to learn. The alternate mechanics are not minorities, as others have mentioned, and there is no reason to make SR d20 conform directly to D&D d20 when other mechanics would work better and are already available.

If a d10 system is better than a d6 system, a d20 system is better still. The bigger issue is that, in SR, the difference between a 2 and a 3 stat or skill is HUGE. As for skills, absolutely nothing limits SR skill advancement. In SR, you can have a 6 (or a 5/7) in any skills you have the points to purchase at chargen. That's before any 'ware, magic enhancements, or die pools (we all know of the ambidextrious physads). After that, you're limited only by your karma gains. In d20, you are always limited to (level + 3) for maximum ranks in the skill. To this, you add any modifiers from magic, attributes, 'ware, and other factors. Thanks to the mechanics of the d20 system, the modifers still don't upset the game balance at any given level. Basically, d20 balances gameplay by default among all characters at the same level.

It depends on the skills that are used in the d20 system in question. There are many skills available for all attributes, giving any character a wide variety to choose from. Characters may perform most skills adequately without having any ranks in them at all, they just perform more consistently and can accomplish greater feats if they take ranks in the skills. Skill advancement is limited by level. Attribute advancement is limited by race. Feats are not gained so rapidly as to allow for imbalance. Attribute increases are even more limited. The skill spread is not perfectly balanced, but when combined with combat use and saving throw modifiers, the skills and attributes balance out reasonably well. They certainly balance better than SR3, which is among the worst offenders and doesn't even allow attributes to work on their linked skills except for purposes of skill advancement.

The SR d6 system simply uses numbers and probabilities that are too small to achieve desired and remotely realistic results. A change of a single point to a TN incurs a 16.7% change in probability. That is, so long as the TN doesn't go from 6 to 7 (or vice versa), which is a 0% change. Gotta love that. Things get really bad when you get over 7. The chance of succeeding changes drastically with even the most minor changes in TN, let alone a change of 2+ points. This applies to skill use and combat. Armor reduces damage to you, based on how tough you are under it. A character with 6 Body, wearing an armored vest is less likely to take damage from an attack than a character with 1 Body wearing heavy armor.

In the d20 system, the difficulty of completing a task can be raised or lowered 5% incrementally for any given character in any given situation. For skill rolls, however much you make the roll by determines how well you did and, if applicable, how much time it took you. For combat, you first need to hit, and then your damage is rolled based on your method of attack. If you do very well (critical) then you may do more damage. Damage is randomized for each weapon, allowing for a greater range of effects than in SR. Depending on which system you use, armor may lower than chance of your being hit or it may reduce damage to you. I highly prefer the latter mechanic, but both can be justified and they'll work equally well regardless of the toughness of the character wearing it.

Now, onto the balance of feats. Cleave may give a single extra attack. However, it has two pre-requisites: 13 STR & prior feat (power attack). If you kill an opponent and there is another opponent adjacent to you, you may get a single attack on that adjacent opponent. Under no other circumstances may you do so and you are limited to one exercise of the feat each round. Great cleave allows for additional attacks on multiple adjacent opponents, but further requires that you have a base attack bonus of 4+ and that you have both power attack and cleave as prior feats. You still only get additional attacks so long as opponents are adjacent and killed by you in that round. The second that one survives an attack or you miss or you cannot reach them, your great cleave bonus ends. Now, is any character likely to kill anything greater than a CR1-2 mook in a single swing? No. Further, all of these feats require that you be in melee combat, which will spoil the shots of your party members against anyone adjacent to you (unless they've taken the appropriate feat). They do balance, thanks to prerequisites and game effects. Is taking a skill focus comparable to taking a feat like cleave? In a combat sense, no. In a sense where your character needs to use that skill, yes. If your game is about anything other than combat, which any game can be just as easily as any other, then it the skill focus will be equally useful.

As for spells, nothing would force SR d20 to accept the same spell mechanic as D&D. However, I will say that my D&D spellcasters know far more spells than my SR spellcasters. They just can't cast as many (usually). Again, the limits of the d6 system regarding TNs severely impact the use of drain as a game mechanic. I really like drain as a mechanic. So make it a check based on spell level, caster level, and spellcasting stat. Fail the check, take spell level in d6 damage. Critically fail the check and take the damage in wound points. Use part of the sorcerer-style spell system (no memorization) combined with this simple drain mechanic and you're good to go. This took me all of maybe a minute to come up with, so I'd guess that a decent game designer could flesh it out fully in a day or two at most.

I'll let this go for now and get back to reading the rest of the thread...

You only get 100% of the XP value of an opponent if you defeat them in combat.

Any other means of 'surviving an encounter' nets you only half the XP.

Umm. How lethal SR is depends on how you play it. If you really do just send below-average gangers against the players then it won't be deadly at-all. All it takes is a bit of APDS, however, and anyone wielding a heavy pistol becomes a threat.

Remember: Corps don't need to pay street index or roll the availability number. If heavy armour is so common that APDS is *needed* to stop shadowrunners then for god's sakes give it to the dammn guards.

In SR, the difficulty to treat a wound with magic is dependant on the level of the wound..

In D&D, cure is cure is cure, regardless of how close to death you are.

That said, it's not as easy to heal in SR as it is in D&D...

So a critical hit in D&D may very well knock you down to -5 HP, leaving you with 5 rounds to live, but any Cleric can make it over to you and cast a few decent healing spells on you (with little to no problem), and boom! You're no longer in danger of death.

In SR, a critical hit can put you at Deadly + Overflow, and then your mage runs over to heal you. You've got roughly the same amount of time to live, but it will be harder for the mage to heal your deadly wounds, because they don't just say 'I cast Cure Critical Wounds'.. They have to make rolls to see if they succeed, then they have to resist drain, and even then, the healing spell has to be sustained, so it's entirely possible that even after the casting of the spell, you'll still die. And this isn't even counting the difficult involved if the person who went down is heavily cybered..

In D&D a mid level party has the means to have a slain party memeber resurrected.. In SR, a party is lucky if they can drag their dead chummers corpse out to prevent him from being chow for paranamials, or overtime for the local chop shop..

You cannot possible convince me that D&D is anywhere near as lethal as SR. I've played both games frequently for 7 years, and I've seen the difference (even with both systems going from 2nd edition to 3rd edition).. SR is hands down the more lethal system.

Another point, in D&D the DM is supposed to tailor the difficulty of an encounter based upon the parties average level.. The MM has CRs for all monsters to make this easier, and the DMG has XP charts for proper rewards.. This means that the name of the D&D game is 'kill monster of equal skill, gain set amount of XP, repeat until leveled'..

There is no such luck in the SR game. Karma rewards are based on the GMs whim, and little else.. If you're a new character and you decide to raid Renraku, you're going to face the same opposition as someone who's been running the shadows for a decade.

D&D is a dynamic world, with dynamic encounters.. In my mind, SR is static in most regards (Renraku will always have the best defenses possible), and dynamic in only a few regard, which never help the PCs (Renraku just developed a new version of APDS, that reduces the ballistic rating by 3/4).. Stuff like that makes it quite easy to see how SR is way more lethal than D&D..

Also, note.. This entire rant is based on the idea of running the games as they are meant to be ran.. You can quite easily make a D&D game more lethal by lowering the PCs attributes, giving them significantly less XP, and forcing them up against larger numbers of more powerful enemies.. That will make for a deadly D&D game (and I know, because I've seen it happen many times).. But that doesn't mean you are playing D&D 'by the numbers'.. Even the DMG suggests that if a DM does this they are doing something wrong.

In SR, if you piss of Renraku, you WILL have the Renraku Red Samurai after you, and they are well equipped, highly trained, and have large numbers and resources to draw from.. The relative strength of your PC doesn't change this.. Nor should it. You fuck with Renraku, and you get what you diserve. That's the flair of SR.

First off,bigger dice aren't always better.Wile the D20,always can be counted in +/- 5%,a character only has 20 tests he can make.In shadowrun,you can theroetocilly do things that are "impassable".And 10d10,hell 3d6 have more gradeation than a d20.

As for people only being able to kill cr1-2 things with one hit?In D&D3.5, at level 10,you can make a character with great cleave that does 1D8+at least 30.And up 1d12+75.Oh,the more deadly you make combat,the more deadly you make great cleave.

And critical hits in d20,are joke.They just hapen,no mater how skilled you are.Level 20,or level 1,you crit the same amount of times,unless you spend one your few feats on one weapon.

as a Quote from one the best rules lawyers ever,Frank Trollman

[d]Design Intent: Feats

Having a feat should be very different from not having it. That is, characters and monsters are going to have a variety of different statistic values. Strength in particular, varies massively between different creatures. As such, the disparity between attack and melee damage between different creatures is huge. So much so that a simple +2 to-hit or damage isn't really noticeable most of the time. Therefore it is extremely undesirable for a feat to give anything simple like +2 to a roll or value. All feats should be abilities that are much more obvious than that - they are gained infrequently enough that each and every feat should be a big deal that has a significant impact on how the character is played - not just on what number you add to a d20 roll.[/d]


It took me just about as long to change Shadowrun into D10,as it took you to fix spells.

So, does that mean that a d100 game would be 5 times better than a d20 game?
Should we all be using a big honking die to roll everything or two "percentile" dice?
Come to think of it, the original PARANOIA game used a percentage system and I think Call of Cthulu did in one of its versions too, does that make them what every game system should aspire to be?

I house rule a lot of stuff. I know I'd have to house rule a lot more stuff if I wanted a modern d20 game that I'd like -- I have tried. Just to make a modern d20 game playable, I would have to house rule everything I've house ruled in my SR games (mainly the ranged combat stuff, firearms, armor, explosives, etc), and then a couple of dozen additional things. And even if I house ruled all that stuff, I still wouldn't like it as much as I like the SR d6 system, simply because I like the way probabilities work with multiple small dice better than the probabilities on one large die.

Is it possible, then, that perhaps d20 is not absolutely better than d6, and the other way around? Could it be that some people just like one system better than the other?

If the only criteria here is the "neccessity" to house rule a lot of stuff for any given GM to like it, I'm sure most RPG systems suck a lot of ass.

And where the fuck are you getting a character with a 20 quickness?

That's fucking ridiculous.. It's like saying that a level 1 Wizard is as good at combat as a level 20 Fighter, so long as the Wizard has a STR and CON of 100..

And due to the harshness of defaulting, a character is better with 2 Pistol dice than defaulting to a quickness of 6..

A regular target number of 4 becomes an 8 when defaulting to quickness.

With two dice, vs a target number of 4, you've got a 50% chance of succeeding with any single dice.. Since you've got two dice, on average, you will succeed at your standard target number.

With a target number of 8, you've got to roll a 6 (16.67% chance of occurrance with any given dice), followed by at least a 2 (66.67% chance).. So, out of your first 6 dice, on average, one will come up as a 6. Then, on the reroll, you will succed vs the target number of 2 (to make an 8 total). This means that only 16.67% of the time you will get a 6, and only 66.67% of the rest of that 16.67% of the time will you get the 8.. Which works out to about 11% of the time..

So a Pistol of 2 vs TN of 4 has a 50% chance of any given die succeeding.

Defaulting to Quickness of 6 vs TN of 8 gives you an 11% chance of any given die succeeding.

I fail to see how you're better off without the skill. Learn basic mathematics before you try to argue this kind of a point.

Oh, and 'called shots' aren't a house rule. They are listed in the BBB. It stages the damage level up one, and requires a complex action to aim (and I believe it raises the TN, but I don't offhand recall what it is exactly).

For one, I don't consider it a good thing that characters should be able to do impossible things. 3d6 allow for only 16 different results (3-18), each with varying degrees of probability according to a standard bell curve. However, in a successes-based system like SR, each individual d6 is what matters, not the total result. Thus, only 6 things are normally possible. The open d6 makes a 6 TN = to a 7 TN and the game loses 16.7% of difficulty for every 6 rolled. So modifiers don't even modify the roll at times.

Really? At level 10, I could have (in the worst possible example of a Monty Haul game) a half-orc fighter with a great sword (2d6), a 22 natural strength for +6, +3 from strength enhancement from magic items (maximum allowed), +2 from inherent bonuses granted by wishes and the like (+5 to any characteristic is the maximum allowed), +5 from power attack (-5 to hit, but this is just for max damage), +2 from weapon specialization, +2 from Bull's Strength, +1d6+5 for a +5 flaming burst weapon, and +5 for using the weapon two-handed. That's 3d6+33 for a 10th level character given every single possible bonus allowed in D&D 3.5. On a critical hit, this becomes 4d6+1d10+33. Feats include power attack, cleave, great cleave, weapon focus, weapon specialization, improved critical, sunder, improved sunder, and improved overrun. That's not even half of your "+75" claim above and it would require the worst possible Monty Haul game to pull off.

A 10th level character is pretty powerful. This character is stacked solely for combat and would be truly horrible at anything else (25 point buy system, which d20 is based upon). This one would have survived many conflicts, despite being unable to to anything but swing a great sword. He'd lose all of the benefits of his weapon (+5, flaming burst, two-handed bonus, weapon focus, weapon specialization, improved critical) in a tight area. He also requires a mage to cast Bull's Strength on him and that does not last indefinitely.

By comparison, an ambidextrous (8pt.) adept with a pair of force 3 weapon focus katanas, edged combat of 6, improved ability (edged combat) 6, and 9 combat pool is far more terrifying. A normal GM could give the weapon foci to a character and the PC could bond them with a meager 24 karma and a Monty Haul GM might give them out as party favors. Considering the average karma gains of most players this would take far less time and experience (4-5 sessions) than getting a D&D character to 10th level with any of the bonuses listed above (@40 sessions), let alone all of them. The adept would also be more effective in melee if only because he'd have equivalent defensive characteristics to match his offensive characteristics thanks to the SR melee mechanics. This also doesn't include the various spells that a friendly mage could heap on the adept or the other three magic points the adept had to spend.

They do? So you don't have to roll within the weapon's critical threat range and then roll again to actually hit your opponent before you can do critical damage? Because, that's what the rules say you have to do...

Good points in your post, LoseAsDirected, but off a little on the math. Rolling a 2+ is an 83% chance.

It's a Free Action to Call a Shot, and it does not require a complex action to Aim. Aim is optional, and is a Simple Action if the character chooses to do it.