I believe that part of your problem is that you don't know basic probabilities. There is far far far far far far less than a 5% chance to fail in a 20 DP v 1 DP situation. Try it some time, roll 20 dice 20 times and see if you ever even only get two hits, much less 0 which would be required to even have a chance to lose to someone with a DP of 1.

(Here is a hint, the odds of rolling 0 hits on 20 dice is .66 to the 20th power * 100% For those without a calculator, that is a .025% Yes, that is less than 1/10th of a percent of a chance of complete failure. That is less than 1 chance in 1000 of rolling all failures)

The same holds true for 12 v 20. The 20 is going to win -alot-, not just some of the time, not just more often than not, but most of the time. Don't feel like doing the math for the exact odds, but I'm guessing the 20 would win at least 9 times out of ten, if not far more.

Not really sure where you get that 5%.

Chances to get certain numbers of hits w/20 dice (from Feshy's die roller):


Assuming a straightforward opposed test, you'd need 2 hits to guarantee success against a 1 die pool, which is a 99.7% chance. I'd call that "never fails", especially since you can reroll with edge if you're spectacularly unlucky.

The assumption of well rounded is by nature having enough skills to do what you want in most situations. This does not mean specialization or professional level for each skill. There is a reason you can default on skills and why a skill at 1 is not hard to get. A well rounded character is probably one who has put most of his effort into stats of at least 3. This gives 2 dice which means you can succeed in most easy tasks given enough time and by focusing on you putting things in your favor.

You can always buy up skills later to a 1 level to get to 4 dice, which would make almost any simple task a default success.

Bit more to add. I've got to agree with the other poster that said that min/maxing is maximizing benefits and minimizing weaknesses. The fact is that this is exactly what people who make rounded characters are doing too. They view not having any stealth/social/other skill as a weakness, and so minimize it by spending a few points to cover those areas, while generally trying to keep good in their specialty.

I don't believe anyone isn't 'guilty' of min/maxing, because no one goes out and says 'Okay, I'm going to create the weakest character possible.' Sure, they may bar themselves from certain things that could make them -more- powerful (Like creating a non-cybered mundane), but they are still going to try and make their character as good as they can within those bounds, and will generally be even more careful to sure up their weaknesses.

Personally I hold a great belief in specialization. Why should I hire a lackluster gunman that might be able to hit the target, vs someone who will almost certainly hit that target? Sure, maybe the first gunman can hack in an emergency, but I don't really care because that is why I hired a hacker.

I'm currently running a sniper who is a true specialist. If she is in a sniping situation, she -will- kill her target, but if she is outside of a sniping situation, she is slightly below par with another gunbunny. I should point out that I managed to do that while keeping up her ability to do plenty of stealth, a bit of negotiation, and a handful of 'just in case' type things. She isn't great at them, but she can do them in a pinch. This works because there are other characters in the party who generally does them. There is a face, so I don't generally need to worry about being social, but the ability to do so if pressed isn't bad. Same with hacking, that is why there is a hacker in the group. Unskilled hackers set off alarms, so as long as there is a real hacker along, they should stick to their other specialties.

I think the biggest thing that has to be remembered is that you're part of a team. If the team is working together well, each person should be doing their specialty, and doing it well, and generally not need to worry about doing other things. But it is still a good idea to have just a touch of backup skill for if you get separated or something happens to the specialist in question.

You're right; I was in a rush, didn't bother to plug it into a binomial, and made a rookie mistake. I sorta thought we were past the point in the conversation where the numbers mattered. My bad.

Was the definition of min/maxing always minimizing weaknesses? If so, i've had that definition wrong for a while.

For anybody who wanted to know, I played around with a Poisson Binomial distribution for a bit and discovered that, in the 20v12 situation, if the guy with a 20 pool rolls <=5 hits (~30% of the time), the guy with a pool of 12 is statistically gonna beat him.

As far as from a base level win percentage, I can't remember the formulae and don't feel like coding a simulation, but I'll eyeball it at roughly 65% wins for the 20 pool, hardly a sure thing when you remember that 50-50 is equal skill.

Gah, ignore that, I did it wrong. I'll try to set it up right tomorrow when I've had more sleep.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

I think that a bunch of professionals would expect that if everything went according to plan on a run then none of them would fail in their specialty.
If a hacker says he can open a door and surpress the alarm then he had better be able to pull it off.
Otherwise they would have to come up with a different plan or give it up as a nut too tough to crack.
I mean they are risking jail time or worse here, so everyone had better be able to pull of their part of the plan.

Now how many times does everything go according to plan?

Rarely, cause no plan survives contact with the enemy.

I can count on one hand the number of times that has happened in my group.



I think we can all agree that to have a good story you need something to go wrong.

So something will go wrong.

And if something has gone wrong then the specialist is going to have to take risks.

I see where you come from and I somehow agree with you. But I think that a team of specialist will always find a challenge in their league. They'll be sent on runs where each part is very difficult. The problem will be that the gun bunny will be the only one who's able to survive (or do anything useful) in a firefight against the guards, only the infiltrator will be able to infiltrate and so on.

They will still be able to do the run (for example the infiltrator will infiltrate in order to get the access to the internal network to the hacker who'll disable security so that the rest of the team can infiltrate too) but each runner will act on his own. Some players will enjoy it, but some won't like having to play in a turn-based game.

I think Karoline hit it on the head. It is the group that needs to be well rounded not the individual characters. Now players should be able to fill a secondary role else I would view them as too specialized.

Like Soylent Green, stories are made of people. It's not the risks that make a story, it's how the characters deal with the events thay face, three dimensional characters make a game interesting. And remember, no matter how good you are, there is always someone better, something that will push your limits. And, as you said yourself, use their weaknesses, or, just take away their toys once in a while. Make the run so involved that they have to split up to cover all the bases, remove the comfort zone entirely. Create situations that prevent mutual support. There are a lot of ways to test even the best without going to extremes. But hey, that's just me, and no one cares what I think anyway.

In defense of some of the other posters, this is the first time I've ever heard Min/Max used as anything but a spiteful epithet on the worst kind of munchkin - the kind of unbalanced melee powerhouse who technically can't order food or dress himself, and whose player doesn't mind since those aren't important actions. Seriously, I have never seen it cast in a positive light before, and I've been playing RPGs since the late 80s. The explanations you give make a lot of sense and are a completely rational way to approach character building, and I want to thank you for explaining it to me. I do think you may be using a loaded word in a lot of communities, though.

On the subject of unbeatable specialists, that's entirely up to the GM. The GM has access to every loophole the player does, as well as corporate budgets, whimsical dragons, and four flavors of crazy mage. If the GM wants to put you in a position where only rolling really well is going to let you survive, he's got all the ammo he needs to build that scenario. The question becomes: are you going to adjust your character to fit the story, or is the GM going to adjust the story to fit your character?

In my experience, even powergamers need to prove they're the best by beating the best - by all means, let them do their thing, but make them work for it occasionally. If you bring a guy to my table that rolls 20+ dice, I'm going to assume you expect to need them, and I hate to disappoint my guests. If you bring a guy to my table that ruins the game for the other players, well...that's something else entirely.

First rule of RPGs is, was, and always shall be: It must be fun for everyone.
Break it at your own peril.

Maybe I've had a different upbringing into the RPG world, but min/maxing wasn't considered a bad thing in the tables I've been in, it was just what everyone did, tried to minimize weakness and improve strengths. Characters that focused only on the max where called munchkins, and while they excelled alot at the max, they tended to fail horridly when presented with anything that wasn't combat. Characters that focused only on the min (ie they have no weakness, but they aren't really good at anything without being a proper jack-of-all-trade) where called gimpy.

To be honest, some of the greatest characters I've ever played where ones that were virtually reliant on another character to be fully effective.

I agree. Where I game, min-max is considered to be good etiquette and considerate behavior. No other character has to carry your ass. Munchkin (as in only maxed) is mostly looked upon as stupid. Min-ed guys, frankly, I have very rarely seen, and those that I have seen were all jack-of-all-trades.

Some of the best characters I have seen were created as part of a team and work as a team.

I think min-maxing is something that has become a pejorative, mainly due to people who either buy into the Stormwind fallacy (that you need to gimp your character to be a "real" roleplayer), or who think that roleplaying and effective character design are mutually incompatible. Shadowrun characters can go all up and down the power scale - mainly depending on their concept.

My personal opinion is that good character design and roleplaying can be complementary. I also think, though, that while the system lets you make nearly any kind of character, it is still there to make characters to play in a game. It is not simply a creative writing exercise - I feel that the player, while not compelled to min-max, should still make a character that can function within the context of the rules, and within a game played with other players. Realize that the system is designed to showcase transhumanism, and make specialists who function in a team. It is more difficult to make a Jack of all Trades, or a mundane unawakened character, because you are going against the grain of the system.

If you look at other systems such as D&D then you will see each player is inherently a specialist and by nature were inherently min maxed. This promotes group play and allows each player to shine if they fit a particular niche. The specialist approach is one reason I moved over to skill based systems rather than level based systems.

A well rounded character is one that seems able to actually function in normal society. Defaulting in skills doesn't make this unreasonable. A min maxed character in shadowrun has their attributes at the two extremes of 1 and 5. Charisma, logic and intelligence of 1 all make for a character that is unplayable because defaulting in those attribute based skills is worthless. Also players who don't play their stats deserve to be keel hauled. These are the types of characters I modify when I play and as a GM forbid.

The idea is to have a well rounded party and to have players fill a secondary role. A sniper without perception and stealth is fairly worthless at finding his target. A hand to hand specialist without stealth may never get close enough to his target. Not everything involves combat. So if a player doesn't want to sit out a session then it is in his best interest to be well rounded enough to do more than 1 thing.

But again, those kind of characters could more accurately be called munchkins, rather than min-maxers. Those examples that you give are of characters who don't even have the full skill set of their own specialty, especially the sniper (a sniper without stealth skills or perception isn't much of a sniper, in my opinion).

Yes, I agree. A character with Cha 1 and Logic 1 can presumably function if he has Etiquette 1, Negotiation 1 and Intuition 5 and this would likely be the case from a min-maxed point of view. Such a character could be a person who has had minimal human contact and behaves very instinctively.

If the character cannot or is not likely to function in his own chosen field, then he has neither max-ed his strengths nor min-ed his vulnerabilities.

Hmm... I always see the "Min" in MinMaxing as minimizing the "costs" of stuff you do not need for your specialization (or for basic defenses; like Will in SR).

Social skills (and attributes) can often be left undeveloped for this purpose. Especially, since social situations are often handled by roleplaying, and you don't need high stats for roleplaying. I despise the Cha 1 Combat Monster Casanovas.

Low social stats are fine, just roleplay them as they are (which can be a lot of fun) and don't (ab)use (characteristic-defying) roleplay to cover your social bases.

Bye
Thanee

Hehe, yeah, this has always been one of the biggest problems I've seen in any RPG, is the disconnect between character and player intellect and social skills. I'm not a very talkative person, yet when I play a character with huge social abilities, my GM has occasionally given out penalties because I couldn't give a convincing speech or tell a good tale or whatever. Meanwhile most of my GMs haven't had a problem with a character with no social skills and low charisma basically being the party face because the player is very talkative and convincing. Same thing with intellect. Always weird seeing the 8 int fighter coming up with plans instead of the 18 int wizard, just because the person playing the fighter was smarter than the person playing the wizard (Or at least better at coming up with plans).

Unfortunately it is just one of those things that most GMs don't think about alot. For some reason you need to be smart to play a smart person, and social to play a social person, but you don't need to be good with guns to play a gunbunny.

I dock Karma if people don't keep in character when they have chosen low stats. I also reward 3 dimensional characters with backstories with karma. So the fastest advancement goes to the players that play what they have on their sheet. It helps keep everything in check

Yep, I generally try to keep an eye on stats as well, even if they are not mechanically used all the time (though I would always allow a less outgoing player to just roll the dice, if that's what's prefered, and just describe the desired effect instead of trying to "mimic" it). Also, I generally do not give experience points (or Karma ) for roleplaying. Experience is gained by the character and not by the player. Roleplaying is about having fun, and that's enough of a reward.

Also, I like the method of rolling first and roleplaying second. Otherwise, it's often that the rolls do not really fit the roleplayed scene for some reason. If a player makes a really cool speech, and then rolls crap, what do you do with that? Ignore the speech? Seems a bit harsh. Ignore the rolls? Why roll in the first place, if you are going to ignore any non-fitting result, anyways? Either way, something will feel wrong.

As for planning... I think that's fair game. Planning, in general, is a group affair. If the player of the Logic 1 Troll Butcher always comes up with the smartsy plans, then so be it. It's not necessarily the character who had the idea. Group mind, so to say.

Okay, but that's going a bit off-topic now, I guess.

Bye
Thanee

What happens when a player say his PC is shooting someone with his pistol? You have him roll Agility+Pistol to check if he hits.
What happens when a player say his PC is jumping from one roof to another? You have him roll Agility+Gymnastic to check if he's able to.
What happens when he say his PC has come up with a plan? You have him roll Logic+Inuition (or Logic+skill if a skill applies here) to check if he was able to.
What happens when he say his PC say this and this to convince someone? You have him roll Charisma+Con to check if he was able to think of saying this or if he was convincing enough to say it.

It's not because the last two can be roleplayed that the rules aren't the same.

I've -never- seen this happen. I've -always- seen 'if the player is smart enough to come up with a plan, the character automatically is as well.'

You've never played in my games. If a player is smart enough for the plan but the character fails the roll (if the character has poor mental stats), then either the PC doesn't think it is a good plan (and the player takes the hint) or if the player insists on going ahead with the plan, then it backfires. Or if the character is a karma intensive one, he doesn't get roleplay karma.

Does that work well in practice?

Basically, this playing style would require the GM to lay out the plan for supersmart characters (with an average player with average 'IQ'), or not?

Or at the very least give substantial hints.

I definitely prefer to keep things a bit metagamey here and have the "group mind" as explained above.

Bye
Thanee

I do not need to do so most of the time (given my players are pretty experienced in the genre). Suuuuper geniuses are more likely to come up with plans that go smoothly or at least have contingencies in place. So in essense, high Logic and Intuition (together with high Knowledge skill levels) can really help in making sure nothing major goes wrong and everything proceeds according to plan.

I have always been a proponent that it should not just the NPCs that should be able to say, "Everything is as I have foreseen. Everything is going according to plan. Mwahahaha!" and PCs should be able to do so as well. If you created a mastermind-type character, you'll get your fun and run rings around my NPCs(if you want to).

Heh, I once GM'ed a run, which worked completely smooth with basically no obstacles (that weren't considered).

The players found it quite refreshing, that something actually worked as planned.

Bye
Thanee

I do it myself (rolling to check if my character comes up with a plan), as a player, when playing character less clever than I to see if they could be pondering what I'm pondering (or if they think so but wonder where they could find pants large enough to fit a horse). When planning, if I get a good idea but can't have my character come up with it, I usually tell the player whose character is most likely to think of this. I also encourage this as a GM, so that player who play "dumb" character can still have fun when planning.

As a GM, no matter how good the RP is, I often ask the player to roll their social skills to check if the character is convincing enough. I also ask for the players to roll when they come up with clever tactics in combat to check if their character could have think of it in the middle of the battle.

On the other side, when the character's abilities are superior to the player's I either let the other players help, or be more "easy" on the player: if he can't tell me a convincing story I still let him roll his social test and if his plan has holes I'd let him roll a logic test and tell him what's wrong with it and some way his character can see of making it better.

Narf... Hehe.

I'll allow a little metagaming like this, especially if the player with the dumb character is the only one who can think of anything. But I keep it to an absolute minimum. And, I still make him roll a social test to see if he can convince the others it's a good idea.

Wow I got to this one late, lots of stuff to reply to.

My definition of Min/max:
Adjusting minimums and maximums to greatest effect. One fine example, Stephen Hawking. Another excellent example, Jessica Simpson. If the effect you are seeking to achieve is having a well rounded character (well rounded is defined as having some capability in all roles), or a specialist, you will min/max differently.

The premise of minimizing is that you want to achieve a goal, but do not wish to be penalized too heavily. You can be so dumb that boxes of rocks occasionally give you advice, but this will leave you in great difficulty. If the difficulty is considered acceptable, put on a bikini and smile for the camera. If that level of penalty is too severe, you adjust until it will meet your needs.

The premise of maximizing is similar. How good do you need to be? In order to be the most brilliant man on Earth, under these rules, you will need a lot of flaws. If you don't want to be wheelchair bound, you might want to settle for low grade MENSA member instead.

The point was made earlier about metagaming, and this is important. If you bring a well balanced jack of all trades to a table with John McClain, Neo, Jessica Simpson, and Stephen Hawking, you will not fit in. It is important to know your game, and adjust accordingly. All of that aside, I have noticed trends. I have only been in 3 or 4 different groups (plus convention gaming which is different), in these groups, you make your first character. That character might be min/maxed, or might be some version of rounded. Which ever you built originally, all of your Karma goes to fix your initial mistakes. Your 20dp gun bunny starts adding all of the skills he doesn't have with karma. The 9dp Jack of all trades starts speciall6izing in whatever he perceives as "The Important Skills". Very rarely does the Jack continue spreading his points, and very rarely does the specialist put more into his specialty. This leads me to conclude that both approaches are somewhat correct. If you have nothing that you can do really well, your character is not finished. At the same time, if there are things that you cannot do at all, you are equally not done. I believe that character growth is the most fun you can have in RPGs.

I have also noted that it is easier to challenge a group of specialists than to do so with a group that is more flexible. What happens when your only mage glitches and knocks himself out? What happens when your technomancer gets shot early in the run? Answer is you fail the run in many cases. Sometimes you can improvise, instead of hacking the system, we steal the hard drives, or intimidate the spider into getting you the pay data. With a more rounded group, if one member is incapacitated, there is another to replace him. Hope that helps.

Hang on...so they players come up with a good plan (Let's hijack a delivery truck, let the Face finally use her Disguise Skill, and bring in our guns in scanner-proofed boxes!) and then you say, 'Somebody roll me X hits on a Logic+Intuition' and if nobody can do it, the players have to scrap the plan?

...is that more fun?

If my players wanted to go all A-Team and for some reason nobody had the smarts to roll it, I'd keep the plan intact and give a 3rd party credit for it. Like Dilbert's Garbageman, for instance. Some random NPC overhears and says, 'Hell, just take one a dem Fedex trucks inna front gate. Nobody messes wit a guy an' a clipboard.' For extra comedy, the NPC becomes a recurring character and unwittingly the brains of the team, despite being a drunk and a little confused by all the attention. Have other NPCs refer to him reverently, and spread rumors about the tactical genius - he's a prototype cyberlogician, he's a renegade AI, he's a great dragon, he's the lost son of the Emperor...everyone wants to know who is coming up with these plans and what dark bargain the PCs had to make to score this ally... Turns out a six-pack of PBR will gen'rally do it.

...kill the PCs, not the plan.

I have had one person walk away from my group recently because of my preferences as a GM, but I have no lack of players at my table. In fact, I typically have 8-10 players at my table so most of the people seem to enjoy my style, which emphasizes RP over stats. The one player who did walk away is still a good friend, and we enjoy playing WH40k together, though he always beats me, as he can power game the hell out of that system (or seemingly, any system). He is looking at starting his own SR group now, and he even asked me for advice on the setting the last time we got together for 40k. It is all in ones preference, if you don't like the way your GM and/or group plays, find another group, or start one yourself.



That is just it, the moment for everyone to shine is why I don't allow power gaming. The vast majority of my group has been playing with me for years, and they know that I actually enjoy Role Playing in my Role Playing Games, so they bring characters that are quirky and fun, not statted for maximum benefit. When the power gamer came along, he stole the show by min/maxing his character, and the rest of the group felt marginalized. For the record, he was a Mage, who focused entirely on Control Thoughts/Mob Mind, resisting the resulting drain, and high initiative/ max IPs. Every situation they encountered while he was in the group, except for one run centered around matrix action, devolved into his character controlling thoughts on one or more individuals before anyone else could act. It was not fun for me, and it was not fun for the rest of the group. The others complained, I nerfed his spells, and he quit playing. He was given the chance to produce a new character more in line with the rest of the group, but he apparently could not resist the urge to power game.

Let's put the debate on what exactly constitutes min/maxing to rest. The consensus of what the term means can be found on wikipedia:

Min maxing

Min-maxing is the practice of playing a role-playing game, wargame or video game with the intent of creating the "best" character by means of minimizing undesired or unimportant traits and maximizing desired ones. This is usually accomplished by improving one specific trait or ability by sacrificing ability in all other fields.

If you are not using the above definition, you are talking about something else, so please don't call it min/maxing, as this will only lead to confusion.

kthxbai

Since min-maxing has also been tied into power gaming in this thread, I think it is only fair to include the paragraph that follows your quote found on the same page.

Min-maxing is usually associated with powergaming, though the two are not necessarily the same; min-maxers often min-max during character creation but play the game the same as any other player, and powergamers often create characters within the normal scope but then proceed to build them up by earning their power-ups during gameplay. A certain amount of min-maxing is expected and even desirable, as it indicates interest in the game, but beyond a certain threshold it becomes destructive to the game.

At the end of the day I believe every player should have a spotlight moment. A point where they are useful and a valued member of the team. This doesn't mean the characters have to be the best, but they have their chance to contribute to the story.

As for the plans with a stupid character. I will let the player make up plans then I will let him burn a point of edge for an auto success. If a player wants to get 1 karma per session because I can't give him roleplaying, heroism, good plan, etc. That is fine, but it will self regulate in about 5-10 sessions when they are 30-40 points behind the rest of the group.

I have to agree with this... There is no skill for planning in any of the games that I played over the years; that was always up to the players...

Keep the Faith...

Oh no, they needn't scrap it. Maybe they just think that the plan is lousy but they can still keep it and things just don't go according to plan.

Personally, I would lean towards keeping a character's mental and social game stats in mind as I run the game, but rolling dice as little as possible, for situations where the game mechanics can intrude into the actual roleplaying.

When I do need to determine a characters likelihood of knowing something, I would find knowledge skills to be even more important than mental Attributes. Someone with Logic of 2 but the knowledge skills of Mafia politics: 4 and Italian cuisine: 3 might have an easier time dealing with the Don than the charming but clueless face.

Amen to that... I would have to agreee with you on this one...

Keep the Faith

Shadowrun demands specialists who are also capable of operating independently. You're in a team, so you need 'your thing', but you ALSO need to be able to operate independatly. If you're caught by yourself you need to able A) Spot the ambush B) Defend yourself C) Escape and Evade - every character needs to be able to do that stuff.

Yeah, been trying to find various ways to get me SR4A fix, so no worries on that account. Glad to hear everything worked out.



Whoa. Devil's in the details, huh? I didn't even realize that was possible in SR4A, guess that just goes to show what I noob I am with it. It makes me wonder then, maybe if I ever did get the chance to have your style as a GM, would my character even be targeted? If that is the extreme it takes to be targeted, perhaps then your way isn't so bad as I first thought. I hope you understand I was just looking at it with the perspective my own experiences have given me.

Quirky and fun characters don't mean not being powerful aka specialist, right? I would tend to think from a role playing perspective that a specialist is more likely to be quirky to have gotten that way.

Specialists in general, I have no problem with (is that a great sentence, or what?). The player who thinks the only way to make a specialist is by min/maxing (using the generally accepted definition, of course) is the player I have a problem with. There are many ways to power game, but min/maxing is the easiest thing to spot at character generation. I only wish I would have caught this earlier in our current campaign, then maybe we could have avoided losing that player.

Previously, I was able to control most power gaming by requiring detailed backgrounds on characters, and making sure the character sheet meshed well with that background. I could make observations like "Why would your character have such a low rating in this particular attribute, when according to your background this is something that they would definitely have a use for?" At the outset of this campaign, though, we had several players who were entirely new to SR, and I was new to SR4 myself, so I backed off from that, which led to the situation I described earlier. It is hindsight that now informs me as to what to look for in SR4 when new players join the group, or as current players build new characters.