Unbalanced stats are a problem in all games.

Charisma and Strength are the 2 dump stats in this game, and only when you look at the majority of archtypes. All you need is a Strength 3 to do essentially anything, unless you plan on rushing in there and beating people to death. And you only really need one face.

What if you did away with combat pool all together and had a pool equal to 1/2 your attribute for linked skills. Thus, to fire a pistol you use dice from your Quickness. To soak damage you use dice from your Body pool. Perhaps move Athletics to Strength to allow you to use dice from your Strength pool.

well i realy would hear about that 6/10 dudes Str too. and if THOSE are the numbers we are talking quite high end characters, not about some fresh-outs.
Str 1 would give him enough to carry 5kg's without penalties (rule in SR, at end of gear section, page XX), enough to wear lined coat, thus you can forget about the layering edge.
and you need those darn dices to dodge a full auto, while body 10 is more likely going to let him self just suck it all and reducing it to nothing.
besides, if you use guns you need high Q, if you are going to hit someone, go for the body and Str.
simple as that.
no, Quickness is realy not the "best" attribute if the character is not build around it.

if character got low Str and low body, for fucks sake i DEMAND it to have high Quickness because he will simply DIE before the real war starts.


night one? the one with black short hair all over the body? well you need that meak +1 Q compared to regural "elf" because if you catch fire, your going to need all the help you can get.
night one looks nice on paper but it has real draw backs also and besides, you get the Q increase for the metavariants cost anyway (metavariants cost nice chunk of PB's if you haven't noticed).

well if you got charisma 1, i'll bet that character is not going to make much of runs.
japanise Mr. J : "so here is the deal..."
cha 1 dude from behind: "sure thing gaiji! well kick you faters toom stones just for fun!
Mr. J(whispering):"boys, kill these insanely rude ..animals"

and party might need only one face that talks, but if a character ever wants to get better cyber, bio, magical groups, initations or anything personal, HE makes the etiquette test, NOT the face altrough he can use the faces contacts if the face lets him.
by the book.

unlike in D&D, in SR there IS impact about who you are and how silvertongue you can be.

An invisible mage with Decrease Charisma-2: a min-maxed samurai's worst nightmare...

This thread was to discuss the possibility of a 4th edition, not for everyone to rant about how their personal house rule should be cannon, or the best way to min/max. If you guys want to discuss it make your own thread, but don't hi-jack mine.

Sheesh.

No need to be rude. Esp. when the topic of "your thread" has come up at least three times that I can remember. And the consensus was about the same. No need for 4th Ed, just use the errata.

Besides, what would a 4th Ed be? Just the errata? Would that make the current print of the BBB (what is it now, 13th?) the 13th Edition, since every one had a different errata? If you don't include new and changes to the rules, then why bother with a new edition? And in discussing if there SHOULD be a 4th Edition, then it's very topical to talk about what rules NEED to be changed.

The Abstruse One

Ironic that you suggested more dice pools, cause IIRC 1st ed Shadowrun had multiple pools for combat, and the combat pool we all know and love was implemented to streamline things.

Perhaps armor should be dependent on your Body attribute, and layering (which restricts movement) based off quickness.

SeventhSon good point I hadn't thought about it that way *goes and looks for new drawing board*

*comes back with new board* Okay, check this out. Int pool is simply task pool. Willpower pool would be magic pool (which would be calculated will+magic div 2). Weapons skills would still use their linked skill as a pool. Soaking would use body pool. Dodging could only be done with a pool created by using Athletics(Tumble) or SUT. So yeah, it doesn't create six pools since you can roll several of the pools into existing ones. Also for the Social and Task pool I would make them refresh every scene.

Shadow, no disrespect but it's only "your thread" in that you started it. Beyond that I thought we were on topic. We are discussing what sort for changes we think should be made that are significant enough go beyond simple errata and warrent a new edition. For the most part people seem to think that there isn't a great need for a new edition but we have also tossed ideas out there and kicked them around. Erratas adjust values and clarify or minorly change the rules, a new edition would introduce new ways of handling things.

So, to get back to the point. Here is a summary of the ideas I've thrown out there.

First I'd like to say that the way I'd organize things would make some of them fairly large and so all books should have two predominant qualities: Good indexing, and good bindings.

PB creation in the core rules.

Skill use instructions (from SR companion) in core rules.

Becks in SR companion

SR Companion become the repository of all advanced rules. Initiation, MIJI,
Cybermancy, Martial Arts, Metavariants, etc. This will make it huge, but ah well.

The expansion books would be mostly flavor text about their specific subject and new equipment. Of course new world source books (Target: X) would have new rules specific to that area, we can't expect them not to come up with new stuff as they expand the world (thus when the amount of new stuff is significant enough they come out with a 5th edition or a revised edition that includes all the new stuff in the Core or Companion book)

Attributes have more of an impact on your skills. Through pools or complimentary dice perhaps.

A streamlined combat model. Do we fix the initiative system or maybe how attacks are resolved.

And here's a new one I'm stealing from another thread. Cyber and bioware have an essence and bio index costs. Bone lacing would have a lower essence cost (because it's a functional change and not a change to who you are) and a bio index cost (because again it would be a change to the way your body functions). Smartlink would have a higher essence and a fairly low bio index (DNI, and it extends your senses. "You" are different, but your body is functionally the same).

its nice to see so many people agree in things that i have tough so long of.
GoldenAri:
your not stealing those from another thread, i meantioned them earlier in this thread and some part in this thread.

but i like to stay in the original tough of mine about pools, thus every atribute creates a half of their rating, a pool that can be used to any linked skill tests.
these pools would refresh only after the situation is over or next iniative.
thus quickenss pool used for shoting would refresh when next iniative is rolled and willpower pool used for ritual casting would refresh after the whole casting is over.

also ware that has DNI interface would cost essence.
no DNI, no essence cost. prediot.
but ware that does have DNI, should cost much more than is now presented in books.
and yes all ware should have bio cost, in some degree.
bone lacing (in present writen form) would hamper blood cell reprodution so much that it should have bio cost at least one or two.

what about this kind of encumberment rules.
for every point of Str you can carry as many items that exceeds your Str.
carrying more than this slows you down, thus every item carried exceeding your carry limit would reduce your effective Quickess by one.

Moonstone Spider:
10 body for human is no freshout. you are talking about numbers that can not be achived by simple pedestial.
so it realy does not mater if you wonder witch one is better 10/6 or 6/10 because such charcters would wipe off a go-go-gang just for fun.
only dilemma about those numbers is that if you use guns, go for the high Q. if you hit people get high B. characters that select low Q usualy compensate the "loss" with cyber/bio/phyad powers, just like low B characters try to compensate their vurneability for soaking damage.
if there would be no way to compenaste this, THEN there would have a "best" attribute.

I personally hope we never, ever see BeCKS become canon. There are things I like about it, but far too many that I really don't to want it to have canon backing. I have enough munchkins to deal with already, thank you very much.

~J

Yes, BeCKS ends up quite munchkined in my experience. Hell, you can get two Rating 4 skills for the price of a single Rating 6 skill. Tradeoffs are suddenly a thing of the past...
And yes, I know what I'm saying. Someone with a whole host of 4s is significantly scarier than someone with a whole host of 3s or someone with a few 6s. Besides, it's unrealistic. Most people are really good at a few things, not more-than-competent at nearly everything.

~J

No, they really aren't. Getting large numbers of skills to 4s in-game involves spending a lot of the intervening time with skills in the much less useful 1-3 range, which BeCKS allows you to skip right past.
The realism argument is admittedly deep-sixed by your reply, but it wasn't my main argument anyway.

~J

well that is realy bad idea. (sori vaan, se on)

first of all it would penalize only cahracters with low skill ratings. rising skill rating from 1 to 2 would cost the same than rising 12 to 13 but the realism would be thrown trough window.
if you are realy good at one thing, it is damn hard to get even better.

actually i should be damn happy if they make skill risings a flat cost of XX karmas. because it would cost me 36 good karma to rise one single point my old characters ninjutsu.

~

i also resist Becs to become in SR books.
the best part of the system is that player learn realy fast how to impróve their characters, but puting all around one general building form makes the characters all look the same. now you priorise things and divide those resources as you see fit, Becs system does not allow you to make this. in ABCDE you put resources to A and spend all the money for contacts and you still got other resources (BCDE) to make a desent character. with Becs you dont have this "freedom". the characters all end up to be jacks-of-all-trades because the system "punishes" building characters that are focused in one thing and that makes unbelivable characters.
think about yourself.
like Kagetenshi said, You are good in one or few things. Becs system almost forces the characters to become Jack-of-all-trades because it costs more to make character realy good in some things than generalize him.
having 2x6 skills costs as many BP's than 6x2 skills, but not with Becs.

~

Becs is a good system to ADVANCE characters but bad one to MAKE one.

making a character that can survive at his own in any situation is munchkin.

BlackSmith got it. However good the intention, I really don't like the idea of a character that can replace the rest of the party in many situations with a minor hit in effectiveness.
And no, Priorities/Points doesn't reward unrealistically low numbers of skills, because as much as it makes more sense to take a skill at 6 than at 4 if you can, you still need to know more than one or two skills unless you're a Fastjack never-leave-the-house decker or something similar.

~J

The priority system and point buy can be in the core book. Priority if very simple to explain and wouldn't take more than a paragraph and a small chart to add.

Becks, as I said before, I would keep in the companion as an advanced option.

*nods in agreement to the wisdom put forth by Austere Emancipator and GoldenAri*

I, for one, would love to see an example of a starting character, created in BeCKS, that could "survive on his own in any situation" or "replace the rest of the party" with only a "minor hit in effectiveness."

Maybe if the BeCks character started with 1024 Good Karma?

One thing that can get surprisingly munched out in BeCks is if the characters are allowed the optional "Buy Karma Pool Die" rule, if the GM isn't wise to that a player starting with 5 pool can be game-breaking compared to a 1-pool standard.

So then Becks allows you to get a VCR-2, a quarter million in drones, half a million is deck and programs, three hundred thousand in cyberware, and another hundred grand in weapons ammo and other miscellanious gear? Cause that's what a starting character would need to replace be able to replace the rest of the party.

And it allows you to follow more than 1 tradition at once, allowing you to be a mage/shaman/wujen/Houngan psionicist adept following the paths of the Wheel.