So, I have been thinking about how to balance Empathy Software for the game I am running on here and this is what I came up with:



I figure this is like the software running a Judge Intentions test every time you use it for a Social Test. (The text on Empathy Software allows you to make a Judge Intentions test with it, using just the Empathy Software's Rating as the dicepool, which is where my idea for the way to run it came from.)

My thoughts on this ruling is because the emotive recognition software is relatively new in the game, and thusly not perfect, and also because I do not think that the software would be able to always accurately read people's emotional state by their face and body language. An orc or troll's mouth area is going to show emotional changes differently than other metatypes dues to the presence of tusks. With people watching things in AR all the time, you can't accurately tell what a person is feeling by eye movements and where they are looking.

What do you guys think about this?

That might be a reasonable way to use it without outright banning it (what most people probably do).

It's actually something I use as a general house rule for complementary skills (i.e. if you have a fitting (usually knowledge) skill for a task you can use it as a complementary skill with exactly those rules: make a roll before the actual roll using the complementary skill and hits scored give bonus dice to the actual roll you make afterwards; if you Glitch / Critical Glitch you get a penalty to the roll).

Bye
Thanee

Sounds like a Teamwork Test, except broken because it allows the use of Edge for the Software.

You can use edge on any other teamwork test, so why is that broken?

Besides, using edge to get more hits on something that only gives you a bonus to the actually important test is practically a waste, so I don't think you're going to see it happening much. I mean I can get +6 dice and exploding sixes on my 3 DP test that only gives me bonuses to my con test, or I can just give myself +6 dice and exploding sixes directly onto my con test. The second option is going to be about 4-5 times more effective, so why burn edge on the teamwork test?

It is nice that it is there if you have sucky software and want to avoid a critical glitch, but it otherwise isn't likely to get used much.

My comment is that the software (even at the higher ratings) is easily duped. And a con roll (1) will easily dupe the program. Of course the target of the empathy software must know it is being used on him/her. I''d also note it only works on metahumans, and not sapient critters.

I would be tempted to use similar rules for other kinds of sensor-softs, which would otherwise be kind of useless.

There are softs that use their rating as a dicepool for visual or audio perception... meaning they can rarely see something right in front of them - and will almost never see something that a character can't see on his own - but allowing an "operator" to use them as "teammates" in a teamwork test suddenly makes them viable as a +1-2 die bonus. I think teamwork tests are even how the book suggests you handle multiple characters looking for someone (or one person avoiding the attention of multiple characters).

Seems like applying that same logic to social sensor-softs will work well.

Only problem that jumps out at me as a possibility is if a character with, say, 10 emotoys, could "network" them for a +10 bonus? The rule might want to include some sort of cap on how many teammates are reasonable.

I think the dice roll made by the software is essentially a Judge Intentions roll (which the software can be used to make). Trigger mentioned this in another thread, but I don't think he repeated it here. if anything, it would be an opposed test pitting con vs judge intentions, but going back to the teamwork analogy for perception vs stealth you don't roll an opposed roll against the teammates... the teammates just generate dice (roughly 1/3 of what they have, themselves) and then you roll the opposed roll against the team's final dicepool. I think the same thing would happen here, which is how Trigger's rule would already handle the situation.

Edit: This is assuming that you're attempting to dupe the user with that same con roll.

I'd not allow networking with programs, or similar "Helpers" - that becomes real unbalanced real fast when it comes to programs.

For you, not for other people.

True, but the point is it can be used. It isn't like edge being used on teamwork tests is some radical new concept. And like I said above, there really isn't much point in using it except to make sure you don't glitch or critically glitch. But if you're worried about that, you shouldn't be using the software in the first place.

If the rolling entity has Edge.

The Software hasn't.

Software isn't an entity. I don't see why you're so stuck on this point. It isn't like it offers a huge advantage or anything.

I mean you can use edge when you hack someone, and that is a program at work.

If it runs by itself, it is.

Because it's an exception contrary to any other rule - and it's not needed, either.

Spending Edge may be the single biggest advantage a character has.

And your skills.

I don't think the edge thing is particularly unbalanced, but I also don't think its necessary. Like Karoline pointed out, nobody would use edge on a "secondary" roll rather than one their "primary roll", so it would almost certainly be relegated to the job of canceling out glitches. If you don't like the idea of allowing PCs to do that with their edge (since the program glitched on its own), fine. The program will impose a 1-3 die penalty, and the character's edge can instead be used to add dice (and make ALL of the dice exploding) to the primary roll, which, most of the time, would be sufficient to negate the penalty imposed by the software hiccup.

The end result is pretty much the same - if not in favor of a character with 3+ edge, or low rating software - and doesn't violate anything by allowing a PC to lend edge to autonomous device rating rolls.

Mostly I am a third edition girl, but I own the 4th edition books. What about this thing makes them imbalanced? I tried to read up on them but I couldn't figure them out, much less what makes them a game breaker.

By RAW they add their rating to your social skills - up to rating 6 for 600 nuyen.

So I could have say Negotiation 5, add this on and it would be an 11?

The main argument is that they are a cheap and easy way for anyone to get 1-6 more dice on all social tests. Its like enhanced pheromones, but you don't have to pay essence, and its a tenth of the price. They're certainly not balanced against other options, such as that, but they hardly break the game - especially if dice pool limits are enforced.

Other than the slight social faux-pas of pulling out a keychain toy at a meet, or turning your commlink's built in camera on the Johnson, almost anyone can pick up the free dice easily. Someone who wants to do so secretly has to go through a few more hoops, buts its still not bad. It does become a bit of an arms race, though, and eventually the Johnson pulls out a tiny man-in-a-suit emotoy to watch the Runners in return, and every face basically *has* to buy rating 6 emo-soft to stay relevant.

To be fair, the 600 nuyen version is an "emotoy" which is the device I eluded to in my previous post. The unmentioned disadvantage is that an NPC could easily stand up and walk away from the negotiation if someone pulled one of these out and set it on the table. I imagine its like asking the J to please attached this polygraph machine before we negotiate the price for the run. That, or he pulls out his rating 6 emotoy, and the two toys basically cancel one another out.

Also, you normally get your charisma + negotiation (+ other modifiers), and with the toy you get charisma + negotiation + 6 (+ other modifiers).

Exactly. As with so many 'advantages' that players think they can pull over the competition, if the PC can buy it, the NPC can, too.

I'd say it might be cleaner to treat the software as separate from the character; it has it's rating as dice pool to judge someone's intentions. If it succeeds, it adds a +2 dice to the character using the information (the generic +2 for some favorable influence). The higher the software's rating, the better it's chances to succeed in giving the bonus.

I'd consider letting the software roll it's rating * 2; many other independently rolling devices do so. Or let it use a Sensor's rating; the better the sensors, the more data the software has to use in it's assessment.

The only problem I see with this is you very quickly get players going "Well, why can't I just make a normal judge intentions roll and get a +2 on my roll?". To which I would personally be inclined to answer that they could. It does after all allow a player to do something naturally that other people have to have tech to replicate (Kind of like having lockpicking skill instead of relying on an autopicker)

So a rigger can't spend edge on his drones?



Lets look at this.

Rating 6 EmoSoft, rolls 6 dice. Statistically 2 successes. +2 DP mod.
User has 5 Edge, so using edge on the test gets 11 dice, statistically about 4 successes. +4 DP mod.

Compared to
Rating 6 EmoSoft, rolls 6 dice. Statistically 2 successes. +2 DP mod.
User has 5 Edge and spends one on the actual skill instead. +7 DP mod and exploding 6s.

Even if they spend Edge on both, that's 2 Edge for +9 dice, where 1 Edge gets them +7.

I think it's best to treat the empathy soft as a "second opinion"; it makes it's own assessment of a person, it doesn't make yours better. But if it has a different result than you have, it would be a warning your own assessment might be wrong.

That's what a teamwork test is. Besides, what if the software is wrong, and you're not? How do you model that with the dice we have?

That would be a critical glitch and thus why it gives you a deduction in dice.

No hits would be a simple "I don't know" from the program, and thus no bonus, and a glitch might be that it fritz out afterwards and you can't use it any more until you reboot.

Yes, exactly.

My PC's were listening in on a drug deal where a dirty undercover cop they were trying to dig up dirt on was selling some coke to a bunch of gangers. The gang had a clown emotoy they called The Bobo making most of their negotiation decisions for them.

--commlink ringing in the background, a muttered conversation, and then footsteps entering the room--
"Word on the street is, you a cop, man."
"Word on the street is I'm your momma's donor, dickhead. I've been selling volume to you guys for months, cops don't do that."
"Oh, you're trying to trick me! You're so silly!"
"The Bobo says you're a lying sack of shit, man."
"What the... that's a fucking toy clown! Are you crazy?!"
"The Bobo don't lie, man, The Bobo never lies. And The Bo-"
--heavy gunfire, petering out to a few stray shots and some moaning after about ten seconds--

When they got into the house, the surviving gangers had fled, and nobody left inside was recoverable. A few meters away from their target, a blood-spattered animatronic clown was singing quietly to itself on the kitchen counter. Creeped out, they torched the clown before they left.

Clowns are creepy!

Bye
Thanee

In my game, I have ruled that the emotitoy is a separate entity and rolls its rating in a Teamwork test to the PC's roll. The real problem is the Empathy SOFTWARE that a PC can buy for his drones, which is also cheap at 3000 nuyen for Rating 6. I had no choice but to equip NPC's similarly, which has worked to re-balance the pools.

Which is about the same as removing the item from the game (which seems preferable to me, really).

Bye
Thanee

Hey all.

Decided to try out this houserule and my group brought up an interesting question.

Is sensor software considered programs? Are the ratings limited by the commlink's system? Do they add to the processor limit? My inclination is yes they do but there seems to be a little confusion so I figured I'd ask.

I would recommend to simply drop the last line of the empathy software entry (Arsenal, p.60) and all problems are solved.

btw: I am SO stealing the Bobo scene!

Would it be reasonable to have two identical toys come up with the same response to a specific situation? Given that the data sets are probably near identical, toys of identical ratings might even give the same responses.

Not really, as it depends on the dice roll.

Basically, advanced decision-making isn't deterministic anymore.

So, is there anything stopping me from ripping apart the emotoy, hiding the actual processor in my cyberware, routing the feeds so it see out my cybereyes and relays it's results in my image link, so nobody's the wiser that I'm actually using it?



-np

It's available as a sensor software package, anyway. No need for the toy in the first place.

Except the toy is like 10 times cheaper.

And can run as a level 6 program out of chargen.

Both can be bought during chargen. However, they should fix the price for emotitoys; they are too cheap. I'd say rating*600¥ sounds reasonable to me.

Precisely. Simple & effective, I have been using this for quite some time now. Even suggested it on the forums a few times (although people may not have noticed as it was included with numerous other House Rules).

Software has been kinda confusing me about SR4 in general, as there's no dedicated "computers" anymore, aside from possibly commlinks, apparently.

Do I just buy it and declare it's running in my cybereye?



-np

You would buy it and it would run on your commlink (Or directly on your eyes if you want, but the eyes have a much lower system and response rating, so can't run a very high grade program) and have your eyes provide a feed to your commlink which would then use the software to interpret the emotions, then feed the responses back to the HUD on your eyes.

Keep in mind that the problem with buying the software separate from the toy is that you have to have a response 6 system 6 commlink to be able to run it at max rating. This also seems to indicate that the emotitoy comes equiped with a response 6 and system 6.

It depends on the "type" of software.

Regular software (like autosofts, pilot programs, firewalls, common use programs, ect.) need a Node to run in, usually that would be your complink, but it can be a drone with a built in pilot, or a local just just as well. "Sensor Software" is special in that regard, as it runs directly in the sensor it is installed in.

I hope that helped clarify it, even though I am not 100% certain all of the above is completely correct, so if anyone finds an error, please do point it out.

I s'pose I could buy another commlink with ratings 6 and the wireless turned off, to run software - stick it in the cyberarm.

My standard commlink isn't connected to anything but my glasses. The character is paranoid about getting hacked.



-karma

No reason to be. With the slaving rules from SR you just have to set your commlink to only accept commands from your datajack (Or manually input commands or whatever) and it is hack-proof. You then slave all of your other things to your commlink and they are now also hack-proof. Basically the slaving rule means that personal commlinks and devices of anyone with any sort of thought for security are completely impossible to hack.

Corp/Public/House nodes will still generally be hackable because those generally need to be able to be accessed by multiple users and so won't be able to be slaved to anything.

I did say "paranoid".

He's a grumpy 65 year old ex-black ops guy. He's not always rational about these things.



-karma