So the story goes: I played Shadowrun second and third edition for about.... 8 years or so. A while back when the forth edition came out first, i borrowed the book, and i remember not much else than i read it for a day, gave it back and continued to play 3rd edition, never thinking about it again. (only shuddering a bit when the thought accured *g*)

So i moved, and have a new roleplaying group here and they want to start a Shadowrun group. I was one of the first shouting: YAY... But: They have the 4th edition books and want to play IT.

Ok, now i borrowed the books again and thought: Hm what was wrong with it again? I just power-read them, created a few chars and such. And..... well: Do you know the feeling when you have loved something as a child (or teenager) and you see a new improved ™ version of it and it is horrible? You know... this bad feeling on the heart, the cramped pressure on the chest?

I have the feeling they just made a new edition for the heck of it. They added nearly nothing and just took away...

Well, i have stomached it now, i think. And yes, it is still Shadowrun and i will play it (and i will like it - but i will try my best to get my GM to change many things back and to make MANYMANY houserules), but i have a few questions:

If you feel about the changes of 3rd to 4th edition the same as i, what did you change back (or kept)? What did you find objectable? What was an improvement over the older editions?

I for one will try to get the shamans and magicians seperated again, especially their spirits. I always liked the difference between their methods of summoning, and their different costs and uses.
Also i find the hardcap of attributes and skills... laughable. (Let's say a Initiated magician with power foci and stuff has a magic rating 12, he overcasts magic on power 15 or so... can pretty much explode houses at will... but he cannot give a human the strength of a troll?)

Initative: All people get their action in the FIRST initiative pass and AFTER that all faster people keep going? WHY??? It is completely possible (but unlikely), that an unmodified (but fast) guy can shoot a Move-by-Wire Dude in the face, before that dude can do anything. And after that he ceases to do anything, while the faster people do stuff. This is completely turned upside down.

The use of ONLY dices as modifiers. No open tests anymore, no modifiers to the difficulty? That takes so much sweet complexity and realism (And still isn't really a faster system now) This mechanic i completely dislike.

And many, many more things: Why is Move-By-Wire completeley harmless, better than wired reflexes but only a tiny bit more expensive? Why is a cyberzombie not so "bladder releasing" terrifying as a foe anymore? Where are the boosted reflexes? Why are the availabilities of gear like in a bad MMORPG? Why so many arbitary hardcaps? Why is the powerlevel of standard 400BP character so... strange? (I would say a normal 120 point character of SR3 would wipe the floor with a standard 400 BP Char... but maybe i am missing something?) To explain that a bit deeper: The range for attributes is still EXACTLY like in SR3 but all enhancements are now not as potent, as they can't stack and are limited by the natural value, also i can only invest 200 BP into it. which is barely enough to get a char over the norm for people on the street (everybodies and nobodies) While in SR3 you could (and most did) pack 60 points into attributes (4,4,4,6,6,6 anyone?) And could get boosted magically AND though tech, bio and chem.

The "vanishing" of elemental manipulation spells... which became the "indirect" combat spells.... this is just grrrr. (I wanted to make a sustained, aimable stream of elemental damage, it was possible in SR3, but now??? I work around it now with a kind of "elemental wall" spell, and hope the GM will take my solution.

Ah well, but i liked the splicing of Agi-Reflex and Logi-Intuition. Good move. And even if it isn't my taste (it... changes the feeling from the 1980ies future a bit into the future of today *g*) The wireless world and some technologies (like, maybe genetech) are a good addition.

P.S.
A question about character generation: Can i buy a skillgroup up to 3 for 30 points, then raise one skill (and destroy the group) to 4 for 4 points, and buy a specialisation for it then? (Lets just say, i like the logic of skillgroups, but find it strange that i can't buy specialisations for the included skills.

P.P.S
Why have some Archetypes more than 200 BP in attributes if it is clearly stated that 200 is max for 400BP chars. They break their own advisements... (Yeah i know the book is more of a guideline)

Ah well, i stop my rant now. Hi to all boardmembers, and sorry to have my first post be so late and... ranty.

S'right. A certain amount of headasplode is probably normal.

Uh, no. Of all the things you can gripe about, that's NOT one of them. If it seems that way, play a few games. You'll see it ain't so.

I mean, SR2 -> SR3 had questionnable amounts of real changes. SR4 certainly doesn't suffer from that.

I'm not sure how much I can help, being an indifferent SR4 player and still an avid fan of SR3, but I'll take a crack at it all.

Initiative: In SR3 everyone moves in the first initiative pass as well. More IPs meant higher initiative, though, so more IPs also meant going first. You can fix this by making all characters with more IPs go before all characters with fewer, but it's not such a good kludge with IPs and initiative separated in SR4. Still, you can learn to live with it or fix it easily. No major changes either way; everyone already pretty much wants more IPs.

Only dice: I'm ambivalent here. On the one hand, having two ways to change rolls was nice. On the other, TN changes don't scale anything like dice. Basically, the new system works fine as far as I can tell. Different, but fine, and now you always have a much better sense of relative difficulty. For ease of use it's good; for realism it actually makes no real difference.

SR4 characters start at much lower power than SR3 characters, generally speaking. It's intentional. The game is now grittier and smaller-scale. Don't like it? Start with higher BP characters. Keep in mind, though, that rolls are very different now. Instead of rolling skill (so 6-8 dice for most starting characters' areas of expertise), you're now rolling skill + attribute, which can be a huge number of dice. Because of this, both attributes and skills start lower on average to keep the dice pool sizes down.

A fair amount of 'ware has lost crippling downsides and some flavor. It simplifies mechanics by removing wonky special systems, but I'm with you. I like having move-by-wire degrade over time and lead to TLE-x. Cyberzombies are supposed to be soulless killing machines that lose their focus and drop dead. You can still do it with fluff in SR4, but the crunch isn't quite there. Not necessarily a bad thing, actually, once you get used to it, but it does require players to ignore rules and accept that there are downsides not explicitly written out.

Magic: It's changed a bit. It happens. It doesn't bother me much, honestly.

Wireless: Hacking in general has become much, much better now. The wireless makes sense and is nice. The AR/PAN/Commlink systems are great as fluff; I backport most of that to SR3 even without rules to really support them. All good stuff!

Genetech was in SR3 at least. Not in the core sourcebooks, but I think it appeared in SOTA '68. Or earlier? I vaguely recall it making a debut in SR2?

Skillgroups: It's up to the GM, but I'd say it's against RAW to do so during character creation. If you have a skillgroup, you can't break it and you certainly can't specialize it. My personal preference is generally to use skillgroups as base skills with base skill cost and base skill specialization rules. After all, Athletics and Stealth are single skills in SR3. That gets a little iffy with guns, but you can tweak the system yourself.

Archetypes: Honestly, I wouldn't pay too much attention to them. They're terrible characters anyway.

Fire in the hole! Take cover!

Seriously, you do realize that a thread like this is just a timed incendiary device, right? Just a matter of time before someone turns this thread into a flame war. I wish that wasn't the case, I wish there was no cause for self-censorship, but certain topics on Dumpshock are pretty much undiscussable thanks to a well entrenched heckler's veto. I hope we can change that, but I'm not confident.

As for your post...



To me, it was the difference between playing checkers and chess. I had mastered SR3 chargen to the point where it was no challenge at all to create godlike characters coming out of chargen. You couldn't make someone who was literally maxed out, but you could make them so close to maxed out that it didn't matter. The only reason to play a well built streetsam after chargen was to accumulate karma pool so you could go from godlike to invincible. Blah. SR3's chargen had such a high base starting level that I knew many people who intentionally gimped themselves just so they could have "room to grow." If you didn't gimp yourself, there would be very little such room, unless you were a mage.

SR4 stripped away a lot of no-brainers, it made me think. Skills were more expensive, and also more expansive -- now you needed to buy a whole group to cover what used to be within Stealth, you needed to buy Perception instead of it being a derived stat, you needed to buy a defense skill instead of it just being a derived pool... The only thing that shrank in skills was the number of firearms skills, but that's small consolation. In SR3, your character could be nearly maxed out in one area and still well rounded. In SR4, if you're close to maxed out in one area, you are going to have at least one glaring flaw, if not more. You'll have holes in your sheet to work on no matter what. Every character in SR4 has room to grow, even without intentional gimping -- you might not have a reason to increase your social skills as a pornomancer, but you can bet there will be attributes you left gimped, or skills you didn't acquire, that could serve you well as your character progressed.



This was one of the best things SR4 did. Magic was a MESS under SR3. They created whole new mechanics for no reason. It was arbitrary. It was ok when there were just hermetics and shamans, no biggie. But then they just piled them on willy nilly. You had houngans, wujen, psionics, and I forget what else, all of whom had completely different magic, all for no reason. Why did voodoo get its own system, but not, say, chaos magic? No reason. The SR4 magic system is unified, and not random. Everything is under one system, no matter what kind of magic you practice. And you can very easily make your own traditions by tweaking things here and there. There is honestly not one advantage that SR3's scattershot magic mechanics had over SR4's, except maybe flavor. But if the flavor makes everything that messy, it might be better to leave it out.



Yeah, he can. Increase Attribute states no limit on how much it can increase an attribute. Most stats are indeed limited by their augmented max, but not when pumped up by an Increase Attribute spell.

A little known fact is that SR3 also had a hard cap on attributes. It was, in fact, the same hard cap we have now -- 1.5x natural max. The thing is, the text in the book that was supposed to prevent you from augmenting beyond the augmented max was horribly written. It was so botched that most people didn't realize what it was supposed to mean. FASA admitted as much, but allowed that those who wanted a higher power game could ignore the hard caps. That's still true in SR4, you can ignore the hard caps if you feel like it, the only difference is that the rules now say what they mean.



I don't really get this comment. You explained it, right? A guy could start with Reaction 1, and get wires. Then a fast guy without wires could still go first and shoot him. Why? Because wires enhance your existing reflexes, if they suck, then they still suck after the wires. This was true in SR3 as well. If you add on Wired Reflexes 2 to a guy with Quickness 1 and Intelligence 1, he's likely to go after a guy with Quickness 6 and Intelligence 6 and only 1d6 initiative. So, it's not even different from SR3.



There are modifiers to the difficulty, they're both thresholds and modifiers. The difficulty is in fact a lot more scalable in SR4. In SR3, once the TN went beyond 8, the chances of success became infinitessimally small. Higher TNs became exponentially more difficult beyond that point. SR4 has a linear difficulty scale, there is no sudden jump between difficult and impossible, it is one smooth scale of difficulty. And realism? You think the word realism applies to a system that tries to represent the entire world using only the humble d6? Really?



Technology advances. I'd be miffed if it didn't. I think that SR3 had way to many "you can't have this" choices printed in the book. Honestly, why even print up move-by-wires? Too expensive for any runner, and also deadly. You'd never ever use that. Cyber in general had massively inflated costs, even though the average wageslave earned like 20,000 yen a year, your normal streetsam had about 1 mil of ware. And if he had acquired it paying street index, it would have been vastly more. If cyberware is something that punks on the street have, you can't have it costing more than a runner makes in his lifetime. If cyberware is something you hope to see appear in a game, you can't make it expensive and also deadly. Old move by wires were a waste of page space, fluff for fluff's sake. The only time they'd get used is when the GM made a cyberzombie. I like that there's now a reason for them to be in the book -- better than normal wires, but a lot more expensive. And I'm not sure where you're getting tiny, they're more than twice as expensive. 30k is not a paltry sum any more, even though it was in SR3.



I'm not sure what you mean, they're still quite nasty, not much changed as far as I can tell.



Antiquated tech that no longer made sense given SR3's change to the initiative system. They were redundant, and in cleaning up extraneous stuff, the SR4 team got rid of them. Good riddance.



You mean, why is it possible to get gear, instead of it all being like 1000 days and 100x street index? Maybe because the gear in the book is for players to use and have fun with. I was exasperated with SR3, filling page after page with ways for the GM to kill us, things that we'd never get to put our fingers on. Rigger 3 was the worst offender -- warships? Give me a break. I want to pay for product I can use, not random background tech that will never appear in my game.



Manipulation is perhaps the most powerful school of magic because it contains mental manipulations AND physical manipulations, allowing you to do a huge range of things. And SR3 combat spells were comparatively very limited. They made combat spells better, and manipulation spells more balanced. I'm not sure what you mean by a sustained elemental stream, either. None of the old elemental manipulations worked like that. Unless the stream was just a tinkle of fresh spring water, any spell that sustained an elemental stream at something would be instant head exploding drain. Elemental manipulations were (and still are) horrendously dangerous to cast, and that's without adding sustainability to them.

Ok - I have more than my share of gripes with 4E but many of these are just patently false.

Let me dissect a few:


Streamline the Matrix rules for one by making it on par with magic. Introduce AR.
Streamline Magic rules so they are much easier to grasp.
Fix otaku so they no longer permanently Fade (that was just a stupid rule).
Streamline combat so that damage is much more efficient.
Solve the initiative problem.

That's off the top of my head.

Granted there are a few casualties on the way (driving and vehicle combat rules make no sense, P2.0 in LA) but overall, significant improvements.

Re: spirits.
That was largely established in SR3 if you ever read Magic In The Shadows.... the only difference is the spirit thing really.


Because this has been a problem since time immemorial. Yes you're argument makes sense - but nothing sucked worse than the mage going last after everyone else in the party acted first, gunning down 6 combatants, leaving him with nothing to do. I don't fault your logic, but there has to be a balance between realism and fun. That change was to optimise game enjoyment and I for one, am radically stoked with this change.


How? This is pretty much the same as before, except instead of adding or subtracting modifiers, you're adding or subtracting dice. Granted if you're used to that game that shall not be named, then you're probably used to hurling a dumptruck full of dice. Personally I find this mechanic much simplier as rolling LESS dice means we spend LESS time worrying over the results and trying to work everything out.


Availability.


Because you fail at reading? Cyberzombies are actually MORE terrifying than ever, if you read Augmentation correctly. They get an increase to all attributes, hardened armor, Immunity to Age and to make it worse, they've almost functional.


Some 'ware clearly didn't make the cut. In some cases it was rendered obsolete. E.g. in cases where the mechanics have been modified so they are no longer relevant. Also some have been optimised. MBW as you keep referring to, is basically amazing now. Availability is the only real hinderance. You also now have access to nanotech, genetech. I am personally finding the technology in SR4 to be much more sensible.

I could say more but the quoted text rule prohibits me.

Some stuff like you skill cap issue can be solved with a house rule. But trust me, you're game will be richer for it (in my experience).

- J.

Actually, Hermetics and Shamans ARE separated. First, Shamans, appropriately, use Charisma for resisting drain, while
Heremtics use Logic. This is a great distinction in terms of flavour, as it focuses the Hermetics as thinking spell casters
while Shaman are more about pursuading magic to do what they want(at least, that is how I see it). Additionally, they summon completely different set of spirits, with Hermetics being Elemental-based spirits, and Shamans being nature
based spirits. Now, can both have "Mentor Spirits"? Yeah, they can. The difference, of course, is that a Hermetic
and a Shaman probably see a Mentor Spirit differently. for a Shaman, it is something that chooses them, and they model their life after it. For Hermetics, the Mentor Spirit is probably seen as some form of Goetia, an manifestation of
their inner-self, or even their Magical Identity.




Move-By-Wires count as Skill Wires, give a +2 to Dodge, and give the benefits of Wired Reflexes for just a few K more Nuyen. Wired Reflexes are old, clunky technology, while Move-by-wires are a more refined tech, so the essence now, after a decade of work on it, makes sense. Move-by-wires are a must if you are building a Dodge-Tank Street Sam. Or want a Troll who can occassionally dodge.

Cyberzombies not scary? I think this is the scariest iteration of them. Let me see: they drop a magicians magic, and apply that reduction even if the spell is going from outside their background count to them. They get boosted attribute caps, both natural and Augmented, and they can THINK now...Which would you rather face: something that will just keep coming as you pour tons of fire into it? Or something that, if you bring up a gun that can actually hurt it, will duck behind cover, and find a way to come at you without that weapon being able to be used on it? Imagine that, instead of the old CyberZombies relentlessles attacking you, they went for cover, maybe even went through the floors, used ambushes, or anything you would, as a player, do...AND they had all that Cyberware? You are saying that that is not "bladder releasing terrifying"?

Seems to run with the german crowd somehow.
The first reading of SR4 for myself and my whole complete group made us use the book only to reign in people who did not want to listen to reason.
Meant that someone else could read in an SR3 book while a third person gets hit with the SR4 core book ^^

Care to elaborate? Since i wouldn't agree with this statement.

Most german people i know that have been playing SR3 had more or less exactly the same reaction after first, second and third reading of the SR4 corebook.
Unbelieving blinking, thinking:"naaah", reading again, going:"really?" and then:"nope, not for me"

SR1 in Shadowtech by the way.

@OP
Your problem is a simple one. You are German. You have played a game for several year and it was very comfortable. Now (like severeal years ago) a new iteration of this game apears and it is quite different in ways you are unable to comprehend (seriously, the Magic Tradition thingy is a prime example of Germans beeing utterly unable to comprehend or even recognize abstract rules), a scary thing. Another thing Germans tend to do A FUCKING LOT is to houserule something they have never ever played, much less understood. That's why I started to hate houserules with a passion, but... different story...
As long as you don't view fun as some kind of lower form of entertainment that is undesirable within gaming, you might actually come around. Now, before you start hating SR4 just play it as it is. You will most likely have little fun, because it's different and you will do a lot mistakes based on your expectations and experiences from SR3. Now, go, play the game. Don't houserule a frigin' thing before you know what it does and what it means. Come back here with your issues (and character, maybe) after you have played some games, so you know what you are actually talking about. A lot of your points up there made me want to slap you and shout "Read the book, dammit, it's all in there" or "Play the game, you will get it".

There is one very simple alternative, if the game proves to be no fun: stop playing. Don't tinker around, don't try to convince your group the game they are playing is no fun and they should not be playing that version, because clearly, they have no fun because you have no fun.

People like you make me thank for my group where even the experienced gamers see the benefits of SR4 compared to it's predeccesors. Not all hope is lost in good ol' Germany.

Jetzt scher mal nicht alle über einen Kamm.

The main issue german players had were the crappy translations with changed rules and additional errors. Easily fixed by using english rulebooks though.

What's it with the german bashing? Not that I particularly mind in general, but because of some post on dumpshock?


[flame on]

Malicant, I'm not German (but I do have family and friends there) and I find your last post offensive. It's no different than if you had said Black (or Jewish or gay) instead of German - sweeping generalities based on factors like ethnicity, nationality, or whatever are just unacceptable conduct in modern society.

Replace "German" with "German gamers". There you go. Also, beeing German I can talk about my people whatever I goddam want.


Ist einfacher als alle einzeln prüfen und zum selben Ergebnis kommen.

I salute you, good sir. May your holidays in austria be pleasant ones.

Well I'm 3 times removed from my Austrian ancestry so I'll steer clear of that subject. What I will say is just a thought on edition changes. I'm getting older and set in my ways (with some things). I sigh every time one of my favorite games ends an edition and moves on. I did this with SR 3rd edition, didn't really care for it really and after having faithfully playing SR1 & SR2 for years I strayed away from SR for the most part (a few games of 3rd edition but no long running campaign). SR 4th edition brought me back, I liked the changes (mostly) and after my initial holy shit another freaking edition shock I became a fan boy. Personally I like what they've done with the core books, how they've done it and were there going. (One of my first gripes was the street level campaign after having run the same group through 3 editions and having them deeply involved in past metaplots. But I understand why they did it and there certainly nothing keeping me from running it another way. Although my players did finally cave and create new pc's.) I'm not an edtion whore in any sense of the word. For example I steer wide of that unamed games unholy new edition.

EDIT: Anyways welcome to Dumpshock Summerstorm and remember above all HAVE FUN, do and play whats best for you and your group.

I'm German. I started playing with SR2. I own most SR3 books but never really played it as the release coincided with my gamer group finishing school and scattering all over Germany to study in different cities.
I've been excited by SR4 ever since the release was first announced. I like the tech update, the magic streamlining, the new matrix rules...
Sure, the background has holes - but most of SR's world was defined by people working on a "weird = kewl" principle. Any changes would mean retconning. I don't like retconning. Unless it is minor like the EC/Euro change...

Ah yes... even though some post were a bit strange and maybe... aggressive, that is a good sign. Nearly no one of you condemned 4th. All either accepted the changes, or even liked the game more. I take that as a good sign, that maybe things work out while playing, even if they look horribly wrong on paper.

Of course i stand to most of my points. There were some misunderstandings, i think it was because i compressed my examples so much, and did not elaborate others at all. But i didn't want to make it a four-pages rant *g*.

Well and some comments had wrong bits in them. If i would argue with every post seperately... that would be too much work for me. Also i want to be convinced at least at some things to like them.

But: Shamans and Mages should really be seperated i think. A complete paradigm shift in 6 years, while both sides have entrenchened veterens on their side which would never change their ways? I would think that this powerful advances in magic theory needed at least two(or many more) generations of spellcasters exchanging knowledge, and melding their traditions together. And what with all those Houngans, and Druids and stuff... they are not known for sharing (or researching) at all. I want my weak but tricky free spirits and the powerful, but expensive bound elementals back. Domains and everything. The magic system was easy, comprehensable and yet rich and complex.

That thing with the reflex booster: I was not really complaining about the thing itself (even if would like one *g*) But the feeling i get from them loosing it: It feels like they lost it, because you cannot ever replace it. It was a dirty, quick, cheap procedure, but irreversable (And it worked, why would they stop using this treatment?). The new feeling is (paired with these strange prices and availablities) that you should start with something, then if neccessary upgrade you stuff in game. It feels like a ... bad MMORPG. Also this ties into the mentioned lower powerlevel overall.

And like mentioned this overall feeling for the game is something, strange and new for me. We always played real shadowrunners, veterans. Well rounded, but with special talents. With the new game this changes. We play people just rising into into ranks, or maybe insanely specialized.

Of course i have played a low (and even higher level) level campaign before, but that was different.

And last: I really shouldn't have filled out my "location" in my personal informations, or what? Since when are german gamers different? Thought we had the 90ies behind us, where the idea of comunicating with strange and exotic foreigners over the net was a new and scary thing? And no we really had not much houserules in most games (Especially in SR3, since it was so great - ah well we had a few speedrules for Matrix, but only used them sometimes)

Ah well, i will maybe resume this discussion for a better (in my and some more peoples eyes) 4th Edition, when i have played the game to the fullest. We start our campaign maybe in a month or so, let's see how this goes.

Also... why is the Suprathyroid Gland forbidden (and avail 20)? People are scared that you eat their food?

See ya around, and thanks for (some) answers

Suprathoid Gland is more or less what MBW was in 3rd ed it seems.
Hugely forbidden, illegal up to nowhere and likely to knock you out/get you killed.

No such thing. There are just some hermetic nerds in Prague who think that they have some fancy unified magical theory but that has hermetic roots and the 64 stand was, that they argued about what is better, a single unified tradition or many many small traditions. But it's not like hermetics suddenly could summon Nature Spirits or anything. That's just the rules and nothing more. If you'd like your hermetics to bind their elementals longer, than just require your hermetic mages to summon the spirits and instantly bind them or they are lost.


No, it's cool. I think it's actually a funny thing how some national stereotypes actually shine through everything somebody does. And i like it.

So if people don't like something you like its because they can't understand it?? If you can't understand why some people would have a reasonable dislike the new magic system, then I suspect its you with the comprehension problems. Streamlined and easier does not always equal better. For you maybe SR4 equals fun, for others SR2&3 might equal fun. There isn't some inherent rule on which system is fun and which isn't. IMO there are good things in SR4, there is also a whole pile of suck. The lost differences in traditions might make things easier, but they also make things a lot less fun to me. Skills capping at 6/7 is just epic fail on the fun scale to me. While the new basic mechanic of losing dice instead of an increased TN is fairly cool.

I agree with you on one point. The OP sho0uld just play the game as is, he might find out he likes it. Only tinker around with the rules if the group agrees there is a problem, don't force your own style upon the others.

To the OP.

The things that I so far like about SR4(all are under the assumptions you are not trying to break the system and just trying to have fun)
The new dice mechanic is clean and easy, and I don't feel like much of anything was lost from the change.
Edge, I dig edge and I like it a lot more than the karma pool systems of the past.
The matrix. Decking is just smoother and now its easy to integrate into the combat rounds with the rest of the party.
The combat system. In SR3 and earlier combat was deadlier for us. It might be due to character builds or something, but everything died before it could move. Now a lot of people seem to get on both sides and can still hang in the fight for a couple passes.

I still don't like most of the changes in the magic system. Previously enough was the same that we never had any ease of use or speed of play problems, so we gained nothing and lost lots of great fluffy differences backed up by the mechanics.
Skill Caps: There is no words to describe how bad a limited 1-6 scale is for me. Way too many dice come from sources that aren't skill so your measly skill dice of up to 6 are almost meaningless. Also I think its lame that you can start off in the game under the core assumed norms as the best in the world in a subject.

You're making the (admittedly common) mistake of assuming that the OOC rules describe the actual nature of the rules that characters labour under. The rules for magic ensure that everyone understands what a mage might be able to do before they start incorporating their tradition's IC rules and stipulations.

This problem seems to be an effect of having rules that are extremely tied to the tradition's "flavour" in previous editions. Your brain doesn't shift gears to understanding the magic rules as being an OOC balancing mechanism instead of a proscription of the real, in-universe rules that magic works along.


So let me state once and for all. Hermeticism works exactly the same way in universe. Shamanism has not changed. The rules that determine how you represent them in the game have changed to make sure that everyone is on an even footing. You should take Negative Qualities to back up your tradition, and some Qualities are verboten or quite necessary for some traditions. This is all flavour/fluff and should inform your crunch choices, but not every bit of fluff needs a crunch representation.

Shamans who don't take the Mentor Spirit quality, for example, follow the totem of the Coyote, just like the Shamans in 3rd Ed who didn't want to bother with the Totems. Just because they don't have the Mentor Spirit quality doesn't make them less a Shaman. To put it another way, a Sam may have a background in the Navy Seals, but there's never been a quality or edge/flaw to represent that. Doesn't make them less a former Navy Seal.

I don't know if the national origin thing is right, but the OP clearly doesn't get it. His whole post is almost nothing more than "I don't get it." He can't see the flaws in SR3 that SR4 corrects, even though they exist. He can't see the benefits of SR4's new system, even though they exist. It's true that preferences are preferences. Someone is entitled to like something just because they like it. But the OP isn't just saying that he likes SR3 already, he's also saying (and showing) that he doesn't understand why SR4 made the changes it did. Maybe understanding their benefits will help him get beyond his innate preference for SR3, maybe it won't. But I don't think that's the point of the post. If it were just about his personal preferences, we'd have nothing to discuss. You can't argue with someone whose only problem is "I don't like it as much."

Shadowtech is SR1? How time flies...

The OP hasn't played SR4, or hasn't played it much. It's very different; it's the biggest change in an edition switch yet, I'd say. It's jarring, and he's understandably leery. Now, what part of someone asking what all these changes contribute is so strange? Sure, he phrased his post rather negatively, but isn't that understandable? He likes SR3, and SR4 throws out a lot of stuff that you can call baggage but that to SR3 fans is all good stuff. It's not preferences, but it is expectations.

While the German-bashing seems distasteful and way out of line, I'm also amused. Bashing German gamers? We should all be so lucky as to game in Germany! I'd just like to point out that America brought us such classics as Candy Land and Monopoly. Germany brought us Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan. I'll trust German gamer tastes, personally. (Yes, I'm aware that board games are not roleplaying games. Normally I'd just stick my tongue in my cheek and move on, but apparently on Dumpshock that's a dangerous proposition. So consider the humor flag raised and waved vigorously!)

I'm skeptical that you can actually draw a principled distinction between preferences and expectations. Preferences are what you like, expectations are more like a minimum standard that you want to be met. But in both cases, they are based on personal opinion, not on objective standards. Calling it preference means that it's not right or wrong, it's up to the individual. That's no different from an expectation -- someone's expectations cannot be right or wrong, it's up to them. Expectations can by high, low, realistic, unrealistic, whatever, but they cannot be right or wrong, exactly like preferences. Calling something a preference isn't derogatory, it's simply a way of saying "you're not any more right or wrong than me." On whether SR3 or SR4 is better, it's ultimately a matter of taste, whatever you call it. All we can do on a board is discuss what objective advantages and disadvantages we think it has, but in the end that cannot prove anything. You cannot put their strengths and weaknesses on a scale and weigh which one wins. What we're trying to do, I think, is help the OP understand things about SR4 that he clearly doesn't understand yet, perhaps helping him to appreciate the features of the game.

this is the worst part of SR4, to me. SR3's dice-vs-TN mechanic had a number of flaws, but most of those could be easily remedied. SR4's dice-only mechanic has, to me, an insoluble flaw, in that difficulty scales linearly with ability. in simple terms, a hard task is as easy for a skilled character as an easy task is for an unskilled character. i do not find this model to be realistic; since realism is a trait i value in my SR gaming, SR4's dice mechanic is a flat-out dealbreaker.

other complaints, like hard attribute and skill caps, i dislike but could swallow if it weren't for the dice mechanic. when all is said and done, SR4's dice mechanic is the reason i no longer purchase SR products.

Your other questions seem to have been addressed, so I will field this one. The 200 point cap is only for the eight physical and mental Attributes, not the special ones (Edge, Magic, and Resonance). The archetypes are confusing because when they list Attribute costs, they list the combined cost for all Attributes, including the special ones. If you look at them carefully, you will see that none of them go over the 200 point cap for physical and mental Attributes. But as usual for archetypes in any edition, they have a number of errors, and range from playable to atrocious.


Also, a quick note on manipulation spells. They have (element) aura and (element) wall in Street Magic.

Whoa, hold on. That isn't an accurate assertion. One die to make Threshold 1 is a much higher percentage roll (50%) than two dice to make Threshold 2 (25%). As you go up the scale on the pool size the easier tasks are easier and the harder tasks are harder. When you factor in the effect of having modifiers from your equipment, operating environment, and Edge this non-linear behavior becomes even more apparent as things bend quickly one way and another.

@Summerstorm

What Open Tests were used for is generally replaced in SR4 with opposed rolls. So you aren't actually dealing with a fixed Threshold there. Now what you say about fixed Thresholds is sort of true in that it's not the strongest point of the dice mechanic. The nature of die pool dice mechanics in general is such that opposed rolls are their strong point, and SR4 is no exception to that. Use opposed rolls wherever feasible.

On all the takes on Deutschland SR fans further up the thread, the single in-the-flesh German born fellow (he emigrated to North America as an adult) that I know that is also a long time Shadowrun player is all for ditching pre-SR4 for SR4 rules. He plays with his English speaking wife so it is possible that he's never even picked up the German language SR4 core book. That could be, following from someone's post above, a partial factor in this?

P.S. Or maybe the real reason he's here is because long ago he was booted out of the Fatherland because they recognized him as not really being a true German? I kid, I kid.

Wait, let me parse that. A hard task is as hard for a skilled character as an easy task for the unskilled character. That's... common sense, isn't it? For example:

It is a pretty hard task to run a mile in 5 minutes, only a person in good shape can do it. I'm "unskilled" because I'm not in good shape, so it's very hard for me. A professional runner, on the other hand, is very skilled. A 5 minute mile is his warm-up. It is easy for him. What's the problem with that? Are you telling me that's not how it works in real life?

Take another example: target shooting. I've never shot a rifle before. It is hard for me to hit the dead center bullseye. An expert shooter, on the other hand, can hit it very reliably. Easy for him, hard for me.

Hard tasks are always easier for more skilled people. That's just plain common sense. It's true in SR3, too. A guy with 2 dice is very very unlikely to hit TN 8. A guy with 6 dice, on the other hand, has a darn good shot at it. Hard for guy with 2 dice, easy for guy with 6 dice.

I see this over and over again, people complaining about both the realism and the math of the dice systems, and getting both of them back asswards every time. Not only that, but it's kind of flabbergasting to see people saying that one D6 system is more realistic than another. Does anyone seriously think you can represent the world with dice? Especially with just one type of dice? No dice system is realistic. When real people use their skills, there is often no element of chance whatsoever. It is entirely dependent on dozens of factors that you could never represent with a PnP system. We use dice because it's a fast way to determine success and failure, not because there's anything realistic about it whatsoever.

I initially felt the same way when I looked at the 4e magic rules. But the more I've thought about it, the more I like how it is now. I mean, really, why do an Air Elemental and a Spirit of the Sky need to be totally different? I also like how the rules aren't totally biased toward Shamans now. Hermetics used to get hosed. They had to spend 10s of thousands of nuyen on formals, while shamans only need a few hundred nuyen lodge. Hermetics using lodges will take a bit of getting used to, but I don't really mind. I just think of it as their library or the place where they have all their magic circles inscribed on the ground and such. When you think about it, all magical traditions use sites of power, though they are very different in appearance.



They had to put some limit on it, geez. Even now people can roll 20+ dice on actions. It doesn't need to be any more ridiculous.

And actually, the wording of the spell has me believe that it can boost an augmented attribute past that limit. "This spell increases an attribute (natural or augmented) on a voluntary subject."



This is also how it worked in SR3. They just simplified it by calling them initiative passes. And beleive me, as someone who played SR2, I am VERY glad for this change. Nothing was worse than playing a full magician in those rules, and sitting there, twiddling my thumbs while I waited for the street samurai and physads to go 6 times before I got to act once. Often the battles would be over before I even got to act. Realism be damned in this case, I like rules that let everyone participate.



Things can modify the threshold (difficulty) as well.



I've always thought the "elemental manipulation" spells should be combat. Manipulation is already the largest, most versatile and most powerful of the spell categories. It doesn't need to steal the thunder from the combat category. And FYI, there are still elemental wall spells, in Street Magic, and they're manipulation.



That's funny. This is actually one change I found totally unnecessary and don't like.



The 200 point limit only applies to physical and mental attributes. The costs for sample characters also includes Magic, Resonane and Edge, which don't count toward that limit.

Also, when its a "sure thing", dont roll, just trade in the dice for hits.

That is, 8+ dice in the pool, 2 hit threshold, and no stress? trade and move on.

If the gm refuses under those conditions, said gm is being an asshole...

I think the problem people have with the SR4 dice system is the hard caps, not the hits mechanic itself.

With no caps on skills, and a open TN system, one could technically play the same game forever, with the GM shifting the TN's as needed, and throw in the odd prime runner or similar with character+1 dice...

I got to admit tho, there is one thing i'm sad to see go with the transition to SR4, the combat pool and friends.

They added a tactical element to the game that was fairly unique to shadowrun. One was always wondering, should one go all out or save up some dice for the defense?

technically, SR4 is back with SR2 on this, as SR2 had combat spells with elemental effects (hell, fireball showed up in SR2 BBB without any definition of a elemental effect and had to be brought in line with the rest in grimoire 2).

manipulation spells have been the collection bucket for anything that would not fit in the other categories...

err, checking my books, i see that elemental effects could be put on both combat and manipulation spells in SR2, with the funny effect of having a fireball (combat) and fire strike spell (manipulation) doing exactly the same, and with the same drain code...

thresholds are non-linear, but they cap off quickly. modifiers are completely linear.


these are not hard tasks. a hard task would be shooting at something a kilometer away, at night, without vision mods. a top-end SR4 shooter can do that as easily as a low-skill SR4 shooter can hit an unmoving target. a top-end SR3 character would find such a task quite difficult.

Not if you ignore that singularly bizarre bit of advice for generic, unspecified Tests that you shouldn't set a Threshold higher than 4. Given that a number of individual Skill descriptions have tables explicitly going higher than 4, as well as a number of other places where there are Threshold modifiers and formulas to calculate Thresholds that can easily push to a total well higher than 4, that line in the rules text is one of the most puzzling and suspect entries in the book.

Opposed rolls are still the optimal way to go but there is quite a bit of range in Thresholds, if you are willing to use them.

P.S. I haven't read the SR4A PDF yet. Can anyway say if they modified that part of the text to give more appropriate advice?



How do you figure that? What exactly do you mean by "linear" in that phrase? What correlation do you see as linear?

What's excatly is unrealistic about that.
And hardest part about that has nothing to do with characters shooting skill, that being actually seeing what you're going to shoot.

Most of the French players I know made the switch to 4th ed, and I haven't seen many players who hate the new edition.

Personally, I welcomed 4th ed and like it better than 3rd, but I had never been much into rules anyway, so I liked the fact that now I wouldn't forget to apply half the rule or forget how they should be applied.

But you know, after playing a lot of 3rd and a lot of 4th ed games, I have to admit I haven't seen many differences. The only two that come to mind (except for the "I don't look through 3 books to apply all the rules and apply them correctly") are:
- The Hacker does for the team what the NPC decker did in 3rd ed, and a bit more too.
- Characters get damaged more often and sometimes quite badly, even with good armor.

one point of skill = one point of modifiers, in either direction.


if you're unclear on what's unrealistic about being able to reliably hit a kilometer-distant target at night with no vision mods, i'm not sure how to explain it to you. and if being able to see the target has nothing to do with shooting skill, then why do vision modifiers affect shooting rolls?

given that sr3 have infinite skills, would not the shooter eventually have enough dice to make said shot?

That's an intermediate step, having in itself no relevance. Whether you succeed or fail is what matters. The percentage of success in the important part, right? That has a decidedly non-linear relation.



This wouldn't happen to still be that same heavily flawed example you were giving years ago, is it? Where your particular choice of interpretation of the rules and the scenario gave the results you took umbrage with? Your response here sure sounds a lot like that's the problem.

P.S. Are you still not playing 4e?

sure, if they were an IE.


most combat tests are threshold 1.


i had no "interpretation" of the scenario--i'm the one that crafted the scenario. and no one ever showed how my interpretation of the rules was flawed. most of the counterarguments that were made were along the lines of "well, the GM should just disallow it".

i play 4e when i can't find a 3e game, which is rarely enough. regardless, as this discussion and every possible variant on it have all been done to death many times over, i don't think pursuing this current incarnation any further will do anyone any good. seeya.

The GM is the only thing that keeps a game from sucking horribly. You can whine about how the system relies on GM discretion, but that's the way it is. If it wasn't, you could roll a Lucky Shot to shoot a world leader from 200000 meters away, without knowing where he is, using a holdout pistol. Just because it doesn't say you can't doesn't mean the GM has to allow it. If you truly can't accept that proposition, I have no idea how you could ever play an RPG without it turning into a fight.

ha! "arguments" like this, where people make wildly unwarranted assumptions and leaps to dubious conclusions--such as the idea that because i don't like having the GM intervene in every difficult shot, i must not want the GM to ever intervene in any situation--are part of why i decided to stop posting here. the fact that you chose to insult me for the grave offense of posting my opinion in a thread where opinions were solicited really seals the deal. thank-you for the reminder.

Dude-chill....it is not just a german thing. I know alot of gamers (roleplayers and hardcore wargamers) in the U.S. that do the same thing when confronted with a new ruleset.

My advice to the OP-try it for at least 5 sessions RAW and then see how the game goes. Your opinion of it might change.

Ummm you are aware that is a mechanic in game called THRESHOLDS designed precisely to reflect this?

Hitting a Threshold 5 with a dice pool of 2 (avg attribute 3, defaulted skill test, assuming it isn't extended), is a no win. With edge, maaaaybe....

- J.

I didn't assume anything. I said, if you can't accept it, precisely because I didn't know whether you could or not. If you can accept that basic proposition, then nothing I said applies to you. Sorry if I gave offense, I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth. But there are those who have made the argument. Some have said that you can shoot someone inside of a tank by using a called shot to ignore armor, and then rolling a Long Shot cuz the -30 dice takes you to 0 dice. They think that it's wrong for the GM to say, "But it's a tank, that called shot is unavailable." You may not be one of those people, but the argument you posted made me think that you very well could be. I used hyperbole, but the purpose was not to insult you, it was to highlight the absurdity of the argument I thought you were making. If you're not making any argument of the sort, then I'm the first to admit I was wrong.

Have you seen some of the builds posted here?

Generally, a competently built SR4 character is going to be substantially more powerful than a SR3 character constructed with the same degree of competence. The intent was to lower the power level, but that wasn't the actual effect.
The actual effect can be summed up in one word: Pornomancer.

The real advantage of the SR4 build rules is that they allow greater design synergy. In SR3, you'd generally max out a few important skills, leading to characters who have a 6 in pistols but no other firearm skills, and such. This isn't nearly as common in SR4.

Are we playing the same game? Everything is more pricey in SR4. I did the math. Skills cost more in terms of total BP, and are less important. Attributes cost more in terms of total BP, and there are more of them to buy. An SR4 character can have certain pools stacked sky high using bonus dice, sure. But your overall skillset is a lot narrower, simply because dice cost more than they used to. That's unavoidable. Not to mention nuyen -- we get 1/4 as much. Our money buys more, but not 4x more. So samurai are going to be less crammed with ware, and will thus start with a lot more room to grow on that front. I think the builds like pronomancer are corner cases, they don't represent the general overall power of SR4 builds. SR4 builds are less powerful simply because you start with less absolute resources. There's just no circumventing that math...

SR4 characters can start out more powerful relative to everything else in the game. Other than that, the two editions are too different to really compare directly. The one thing I do miss about SR3 is the skill monkey with 50 points in skills - you can't really get that in SR4 (I don't consider skillwires the same thing).