i have noticed over time how players talk about gettting the most for a dice pool. i have even 'borrow' some of the ideas, becasue they are that good.

but how in the world can you have over 20 dice in a pool when most attributes max out at 9, with mods, and skills w/ mods at 9, 11 with specializaation?
page 68 in SR4A has both maxiums listed.

yes, thank you, i understand depending on which metatype you pick, you can get say...24 dice pool with a troll having a Body 15 and athletics at 9, maybe 11 if specializied making it 26at running or climbing.

that does not explain the 30 dice pools i have heard about

what little sentence am I missing that everyone else has read?

thanx in advance for enlightning this player

I would refer you to Doc Ripper and the Pornomancer, but could not find them (my Search-Fu is week today), but suffice it to say that the Good Dr. had just over 30 (32 if I remember correctly) for First Aid and could heal 10 boxes at a whack, almost reliably so in fact... the Pronomancer has at least 2 versions, one of whihc has 44 (i thnk) dice for Social Skills, the other has 50+ Dice for the same skills...

Suffice it to say, that by RAW they are indeed allowable, but some of the "tweaks" used to rape the system were a little questionable in my opinion...

I am sure that someone can post you to these characters, and many others that exceed the rational 20 Dice Limit sugested in SR4A.

Keep the Faith

Modifiers, mostly. Let's take a few of the most common skill checks:
Perception - Visual Enhancement 3 (+3 Dice), Perceiver is actively looking for it (+3 Dice), Object/Sound stands out in some way (+2 Dice), and you get a +1 per extra character assisting you (up to +5 Dice) if you are rolling as a group. This doesn't count any Intuition bonuses like nanoware or geneware. (See SR4A pp 135 to 136)

Social Skills - Street Cred alone adds a nice chunk of modifiers to the roll. Check out the huge table on SR4A p 131. Also, Charisma and Charisma-linked mods (magic or cyber or otherwise) are some of the cheapest and most common modifiers you can get. Tailored Pheromones, Vocal Modulation, etc.

Though aren't Street Cred Dice limited to your Charisma? I believe that they are, so it is still dependant upon your Charisma Stat... though you CAN get a fairly hefty Charisma Stat if you really try hard enough...

Keep the Faith

Sup Pete?

Honestly it really depends on the skill in question. Some skills have much more support and opportunities for larger pools than others.

The Social Skills are very much supported in this way. For example, not only do you have a slew of implants, adept abilities, spells, and gadgets that increase your pools, but also you have many situational modifiers that can be used. I don't have the book in front of me, but there's a chart that takes up a whole page and is nothing but modifiers for various Social skill pools. Even somebody with a lowish Charisma and little to no ranks in a given social skill can beef up his tests nicely. A Charisma 2 troll, using that chart, can still be very effectively intimidating if he plays the right angles.

There's even some decent support for most Combat skills. Everyone knows about how to ramp up Agility and Skills with the right implants and powers, specializations, smartlinks, etc. It's quite possible to get pools easily into the 20's. The 30's might be pushing it.

And then you have some skills with almost no book support, like Diving or Parachuting. Check out those skills and see if you can find a chart somewhere with modifiers in it.

Again, it depends largely on the skill. One skill might be hard to raise up to 14, while another is almost effortlessly taken into the 20's or 30's with all the options in all the books taken together.

But you also have to keep in mind that if you're pushing a skill into the 30's range you are doing so at a serious detriment to other things. I've found that the higher you want a certain pool to be, the more you must invest in terms of your resources to get there. So yeah you might be Annie Oakley with that rifle or you might be able to convince the local chapter of Humanis to throw off their robes and take ork wives, but you are going to be short in other areas that might round you out and make you useful to the team more often, rather than just being a tool for a single job.

Example: When I was using Bane in your game, I had Magic 5, Spellcasting 5, spec. in Manipulation spells, +2 to Manipulation spells from my Mentor Spirit, and a Force 2 Power Focus. Those are "only" 16 dice for casting Manipulation spells. And I put alot into getting my pool that high, such that he wasn't much of anything aside from a magician. But he was a powerful magician, and you can attest to that. He helped the party out good a bunch of times.

The best way to challenge a character with a high pool is to put them up against a situation where that pool won't help them. Of course that's where the REST of the team comes in...

SUP!!

I know how powerful Bane was. Lucky taxi companies didn't put a hit on him.

I am just wondering how characters are getting around the 1.5x max on skills, which is 9. most att.s have the same limit....9+9=18

implants and magic can add modifers to a skills dice pool, hence the 1.5x max on skills max dice pool

so with these limits in place, how are players getting over 18 dice pools???

The 1.5 max on skills only limits the skills, not situational modifiers. For example, you get the smartlink bonus, even if your skill is already maxed out.

So, let's say you have someone with 9 Attribute dice and 9 Skill dice. Not difficult. We'll use a social adept, because it's easier-- we're going to build a mini-pornomancer. We add in a Magic of 6, along with Kinesics of 5. We'll also buy the racial edge of Glamour for an additional 3 dice. We can buy Seductress as a Mentor Spirit, giving us +2 dice to Seduction tests. We'll add in tailored pheremones and whatever the other one is, which will reduce our Magic by 1 (which is why we only bought 5 levels of Kinesics) for an additional 6 dice. We're already at 34 dice, and we haven't even begun to twink some of the rules.

All of the above are modifiers to the dice pool, and thus aren't subject to the cap. It's the same as a lighting modifier or aiming in combat. You wouldn't say: "You can only get +2 dice for aiming, because you already have 16 dice", would you?


That very much depends. The pornomancer that I've seen Glyph post here has a full range of skills. They're nothing spectacular, but they're no pushover either. A pronomancer will never be a match for the sammie in combat, but they'd be about equal in decking, and the pornomancer would have a respectable edge on the samme when facing a spellslinger. And this is not a bad thing: Shadowrun has always been about teams of specialists, working together.

Well let's take an example. Not saying this is a viable character, just building something to show how you can get above 18. I'll stick to human so we can avoid the metatype bonus factor (and because I'm doing this from memory.)

We want to be awesome with swords.

Human max Agility is 9. You can use gene therapy to make it 10. I think you can SURGE out another point for 11 or so. Blades 6 is a given. Specialize in swords for +2. Get your favorite sword a customized grip for another +1 die. There's probably some martial arts that'll get you another +2 or so to Blades tests. In all you're looking at 22 dice for swinging a sword around. And I *know* there are specialized cyberlimbs that'll let you get bonuses to Blades tests, +1 per limb if you get two of them. So 24. If you're being a cheesy burnout adept, throw in 3 ranks of Improved Ability: Blades and you're looking at 27 dice. Oh, forgot my Reflex Recorder. 28 dice. And I'm sure this can go up with options I don't have in front of my face currently.

We can do the same thing with an Ares Predator IV. Agility 11 as above. Pistols 6. Specialize in Heavy Pistols for +2. Smartlink is a given, +2. Throw in Improved Ability for laughs, +3. So far we are at 24 dice and I *know* we haven't exhausted all our options.

So you see, it's not too hard to get a high dice pool. Now making a character with such a pool who is also awesome at other things, that's a bit of a rub.

Long running magical and resonance types. TMs especially, being able to thread, can have some pretty impressive dice pools if they get high enough resonance.

Attributes and skills, even augmented, can usually only get you close to 20 dice. But dice pool modifiers can get you over it. If you have a human with an augmented Agility of 9 and an improved pistols ability of 9, then a specialization and a smartlink can take it to 22.

Social skills are the easiest to get to the stratosphere, mainly because there are multiple qualities, magical abilities, and technological enhancements to improve them, and most of them stack. For qualities, you have first impression, trustworthy, glamour, exceptional attribute (taken for Charisma), and metagenetic improvement (Charisma). For magical abilities, you have improved ability and kinesics (which is capped at 3 now). For technological enhancements, you have tailored pheromones, cosmetic biomods, pheromone receptors, vocal range enhancer, genetic optimization (taken for Charisma), and empathy software. And that's not an all-inclusive list, either - there are plenty of more specific improvements you can get, such as the home ground advantage, some mentor spirits, etc.

Ranged combat skills, you can get to 20 or a bit higher fairly easily, without hurting your other combat-related abilities, and while leaving room for specialties outside of combat.

Social skills, you can get sky-high, but it can cost you depending on your concept - if you are playing a pure face, you can have high social abilities and be functional in other areas. If you want a face who is also good at other things, though (detective, sammie, hacker, etc.), then you can cut back on the dice pool modifiers a bit. My faces that I actually play tend to have lower dice pools, because they all tend to be such hybrids. Also because some of the modifiers are either very conditional, come with offsetting disadvantages, or are too costly for the minimal extra benefit they bring. And empathy software, I find simply cheesy.


Some things are fairly easy to have high dice pools for. A lot of people say they would rather be "more well-rounded", but a high dice pool doesn't always preclude this.

Don't forget adding Edge dice. So assuming your human with 9 attribute + 9 skill + 7 edge = 25 dice

8 edge. You can Lucky and SURGE that one for +2.

The good Doctor uses a maximised, adept-boosted, and aptituded skill for 10 dice, a SURGEd, genewared, biowared Logic for 11 dice, and then dips into various bonuses for Logic-linked skills as well as a Rating 6 Medkit. I've indicated the components of his dice pool for ease of understanding, but the process is basically just tracking down every synergystic bonus to the skill in question, and cramming those in. Read the "Using [Skill]" section of the BBB really carefully, to find out modifiers you can use to your advantage.

You can't SURGE luck. Luck is a special attribute and the SURGE attribute is for regular attributes only.

Also I'm fairly sure that edge allows you to break the 20 DP limit since you are burning edge.

Yeah, high first aid isn't difficult. I have a logic based 'jack of all trades' (named Jane actually) who got stuck with the 'medic' position because she has 19 dice in it despite only having 1 rank in the skill.

Hm. I'm AFB at the moment, but I thought there was a way to get to 8.

Oh, right. Human (or pixie) + Lucky.

Yep, but 9 is unobtainable for non-spirits AFAIK.

I never said 9, I said 8.

ah, edge..........have had many players burn buckets

ok, understand situational mods, and so on..

modifers add to the rating which stops at 9, while bonus bypasses

who all notice tailor phermones adds modifer dice, not bonus dice??
and some of the items listed above won't work with other items

I see where smartlinks are bonus dice
those with over 20 dice pools may need to recheck the descriptions.

Actually it is a DP modifier, which means it stacks with everything and isn't affected by the 9 max. There are actually only a very small handful of things that are actually affected by the 9 skill max (reflex recorder being the only thing that springs to mind). Virtually everything else provides a direct bonus/modifier to the DP of a related roll, as opposed to providing a direct bonus to the skill itself. It is only when it modifies/gives a bonus to the actual skill (and not the DP of the skill) that it has to worry about the 9 point maximum. Oh, I think improved ability might have to worry about this limit as well, but that is about it.

Basically you have to read if it says bonus to the skill or bonus to the DP related to the skill.



Notice that it modifies the DP, not the skill itself, and thus isn't affected by the max 9 skill. As I said, virtual every bonus in all the books is a DP bonus and not a skill bonus, and so the max 9 skill rule very very rarely comes into play.

With a Human, That one would actually get you to 8 (Base 7 Human) as No Surge I am aware of to 9

Keep the Faith

Preemptive strike!

With Aptitude the maximum Skill rating becomes 10, which is why Doc Ripper has a healing limit of 10 boxes (the limit is equal to your skill). Skill Rating modifiers cap out at that level, but most modifiers are DP modifiers (usually stated as a "dice pool modifier") and do not. The most common Skill Rating modifiers are Move-by-Wire, the Ability Enhancement Adept power, Reflex Recorders, and Drugs.

*Grumbles*

Keep the Faith