I would just like to reiterate a point I made in another thread, which is that as a Citymaster has no windows you cannot target the driver with an attack. You can fire blindly into the vehicle and hope to hit them, but- and I feel the need to emphasize here-if you do not know where someone is, you cannot target them with an attack.

Also, as to the not shooting through a barrier rule... well this is just another point of vagueness- or rather in my opinion lack of destruction testing on the system- where GM fiat is necessary. Which, like I've said before happens in SR a lot- but I prefer in that way as a GM. I have played under a GM who I feel is typically unfair and while I mildly enjoyed his games every time I must say I did feel the sting a bit more in SR4 than WW or DnD partly because of SR4's reliance on GM arbitration and partly because he was less familiar with SR rules and would just make things up as he went along because he is a bad- in my opinion- GM. So, while I prefer to play and GM SR4 to most other systems, it sucks just as badly or worse under a poor GM. Oh, back to the shooting through a barrier vs. Targetting an opponent in a vehicle... I would be more inclined to employ the former than the latter in a standard Citymaster situation. If someone in the Citymaster had glitched or it had previously been injured severely by something that did penetrate it's armor- bypassing it would be fine. However, in the standard completely buttoned down situation you cannot see your target and do not know he is there, thus you cannot target him inside the vehicle. You can attempt to penetrate the vehicles armor and hope to catch a glimpse or that he is behind that particular section, but if you don't know where the driver is or- in the event of rigger adapted vehicles- even IF there is a driver then I see no reason to allow someone to target them. I don't see how it would be possible to target someone who you do not even know exists. Can you target the invisible man sitting inside the Jackrabbit? Not unless you can see him or somehow extrapolate his position- no. You can target an area and hope someone is there, but then you can't target someone in the vehicle because you are no longer targetting someone. You are doing someone else completely.

If your point is that there is always some vulnerability then I agree. You can +4/-4 the citymaster any time you want by targetting a place where the bullet will do more damage if it lands there. If you assert that there will always be a vulnerability [i]on your side of the CM, that is near the driver, and also allows the shooter to see the driver to target them, then I have to respectfully disagree. Under most common circumstances there is no reason whatsoever to believe such a weak spot exists. I posit that allowing such a weak spot is favortism not the other way around.

As to all the italics and stuff, I am not trying to be mocking or yelling, I am emphasizing what I believe to be the highlights of this argument as you have so many to respond to that I figure if you need to reference mine, it will be easier to notice as you try to find it in this very cluttered thread.

Chris

Personally i have no problem with the called shot rule but an impossible shot IS an IMPOSSIBLE shot.

I would just remove the "Long Shot" option when spending edge. You can already spend edge to gain extra dice and that should be enough.

The extreme example with a -52 dicepool would definitely be impossible as the dicepool is effectively zero.

Yes, I don't use task spirits in my game. And I am wary of the possession stuff as well - I don't want it to be some super-buff mechanic, I prefer it to be more (old edition) voodoo-style, where the GM takes over the PC possessed.



That's what I have edge for in my games. And there are other ways to reduce those modifers. Smartlink, aiming, vision enhancers for shooting, conditional modifiers (gifts, bribes, blackmail, etc.) for social stuff.



No "encumbrance free" FFA in my game.



So far "shutting down" the enemy mage worked well for my players. High-calibre weapons did the job.

Yassum, the big counterpoint to spirits in my opinion is that your character has a very low half-life if you plan on summoning Force 6 spirits to finish off combat because you WILL have to deal with the big 10S or 12S at some point, sooner rather than later often enough, and when that knocks you out, your spirit goes uncontrolled and probably kills you. I know you could usually soak that down to something acceptable, but still you just took about as much damage as the Sammy would have shooting them all to death. It has a cost.

Chris

EDIT: Oh, and with the Armor the basic answer to that is you need to set a tone for your game. If you want gritty and realistic, play really low level. The higher the starting BP, the less realistic the game becomes, which is fine with me simply because if you have one man defying the laws of physics and logic constantly(the mage) then everyone else will feel really left behind if they get shot and immediately go into a coma. The more power available, the less realistic and gritty the game will be simply because grit and realism come from the disadvantaged(those without the power to protect themselves from exploitation) and adhering to reality where we don't have magic or trolls, and body armor is ineffective compared to SR high end options. Set a tone, and just like you wouldn't let someone have a gun in a fantasy setting don't let someone bring a hugely overpowered troll combat monster with 30 dice to soak into a ganger level gritty game. That character would no longer be at that level, so don't let him be.

Chris

not aiming for a 'weak spot' to bypass armor, just aiming for parts that wil take damage

ie the +4 option not the remove armor option

No, you took a -4 penalty for called shot. You need a dicepool of 29 dice. Even with an Edge of 8 your base dice pool is 21, meaning that this guy is seriously legendary in literally every way. Legendary Agility (10), Legendary, Adept Enhanced Longarms (9), Smartlink, Legendary Edge (. This is an edge case so edgy that I've never even seen such a character posted on these boards.



Indeed. Now we go look at the page citation in question:

OK. So unless some part of the target is hanging out of the citymaster, we are dealing with blind fire. That means that you have to shoot through a barrier rating.



Show me the rule that allows you to bypass the barrier rating of... anything with a called shot.

Cain, none of these examples work. The part where you knife the citymaster doesn't do any damage because the citymaster still rolls its considerable Body. The part where you use called shots to hit people inside vehicles doesn't work because called shots don't actually do that.

And we've been around and around why these examples factually don't work dozens of times in the last three fucking years that you've been beating this particular dead horse. Without going into GM fiat. Without even discussing the very real fact that called shots are a GM discretionary tool in the first place. The rules simply don't do that. They never have.

Please shut up. It's really annoying how you keep bringing out the same discredited examples again, and again, and again.

-Frank

so one in every 729 spirits will harsh you out as much as a sammi would be harshed out in the fight... nasty

I admit 1 in every 244 spirits if the GM is a big enough dick to make every spirit use edge to resist summons.




what about the 20 dice to soak troll who is poor and cannot afford to rise above ganger levels yet?

Well, sure. But that won't kill the crew. And with what was it, 21 armor? - that's not that powerful. You'd still need an ungodly amount of luck or dice to damage the thing.

First, thanks for the welcome it's been a while since I've been reading the forums. I finally took the time to write a bit (also excuse my sometimes random english I'm french speaking).



I don't really understand why you need to bind the spirits, can't you just summon them whenever you need one ? I know you can't have more than one unbound spirit, but they aren't limitied in Force are they ?.
Also about the spirit enforcing their powers, I guess the player would feel it like a personnal attack if suddenly the spirits are interpreting strangely his orders.
I can't really comment any more on that since our mage mainly use task spirits, or channel spirits in him for a combat boost, so I lack experience. But on this I must agree with Cain that putting these kind of counterweight solely in the hand of the GM puts him at odds with the player.



I agree that playing smart is better than being tough, but being tough means you don't really have to play it smart (for fun I built a troll street sammy with magic resistance 4, 4 in willpower, 20+ in armor, 30+ dice in damage resistance, platelet factories, trauma dampener,using 10-12 dice for his weapon skills and having a decent defensive dice pool). I mainly play a covert ops specialist since all the other players are combat munchkins useless in anything besides combat.

On another note, what are your thougths about influence ? it's limits seems to be purely based on the GM discretion, but it's permanent and the target will never know that it's not his idea. Seems a bit broke too (our mage abuse it, influencing guards to recognize him as authorized, combattants to drop prone to take cover, people we need to interrogate to consider him as a close friend, ...)

Edit: Whow you people react fast, drop those synaptic boosters !
For the tone of the game I agree it needs to be set, but it's not hard to get "overpowered" armor bonus, sure you won't soak all the damage of the full auto assault rifle, but you'll merely take stun damage. You can always tell a player, no I don't want some stupid form fitting body armor which makes a standard lined coat nearly as good as military grade armor, but it feels ... lame.
Besides everything can be house ruled by the GM, I'm just stating the points I find problematic in SR4, especially since from what I understand, is supposed to be more street level and with quicker fights.

First things first, this is not a starting character.


legendary edge 8 is the Mr Lucky thing, so you have seen that

now as for agility I admit 10 is unlikely outside of elfdom but 9 is achievable with implants
as to the longarms, how about longarms 6, specialisation shotguns and a reflex recorder? 9 dice there
2 dice from a smartlink makes 20 dice
8 from edge makes 28
and the penalty makes 24... damn one dice short...

oh, wait a sec shotguns have base AP of -1 therefore I only need damage 20 so I only need 22-23 dice, 23 to be sure. I have 24 and I need 23 all i need now is the right implants to negate most if not all of the other recoil problems.

I assume that reply is to me

I was never trying to one shot the crew

I was trying to kill the citymaster with far less than a reasonable amount of killiness

Kremlin KOA =/= Cain, despite him quoting me in his sig.

now it takes 2 bursts on average after soaking to kill the citymaster (20 damage - average success from 36 soak dice = 8 damage, 8x2=16 and a citymaster has 16 damage boxes)

I was replying to Cain's "I shoot through the window" actually.

But in your case, you are dealing with the luckiest man alive, top of the world skill with a weapon, and superhuman stats.

If one does not want such a person to be able to kill a city master (and that's an "if", no one would care much if said person was using a LAW instead of a shotgun to destroy it), all one has to do to negate it is up the armor a few points. Doesn't look like a big problem to me.

Honestly, Kremlin, I am not that impressed by 20 soak dice, but I play on the higher end of the spectrum both in player power and in lethality. In my games, if you don't plan things out well there is a good chance at least one of you will die- messily. The opposition is typically intelligent, defenses are planned out with booby traps and corridor structure is often built for defense. So, if they surprise the enemy, good, if not say hello to running away or being held there in a drawn out fight till you have to deal with HTR. Enemies have dice pools close to yours and there are generally alot of them. We use the armor degradation rules, and the cooking off rules and as of now, the only person who has been able to get enough defense to reliably stage it ALL down is the Troll Magician with a body of 8 or 9(I forget) and 3 points of cyber/bio focused on defense( magic of 5/2) who just picked up channeling and gets to add 4 to all his stats and 8 to his armor. Puts him at over 30 dice, but he still gets hurt regularly enough. Usually stages most or all of the damage down, but since he's so big and crazy attracts a bit more fire than his counterparts and so he may only take 1 or 2 S from any given attack, but when you take 10 or 12 shots a round, even 1S every 5 shots still significantly damages you.

I know the statistics, but unless you are the oddest person I've ever seen, you realize that while they effect things, they don't rule them, because you aren't going to see things being 1 in 764 until you have rolled it several hundred thousand- or more- times. At least it is unlikely that you will. I have seen many a mage killed or almost killed or taken out of the rest of a run by summoning a spirit. If the enemy mage has decent spells or spirits of his own, or just spirits assigned to the facility whatever, then it is even less of a problem. Most sec mages I create learn the Mana Static spell, because it is so insanely usefull at debuffing the opposition and weakening/killing spirits. High DV, but for a few stun damage they can debuff the party or at least greatly lower the effectiveness of their spells, and dismiss spirits allowing their mundane counterparts to deal with the party on a more even level. I mean, a Force 4 or 5 Mana Static(provided you get 4 or 5 hits of course) will debuff most spells the party has on them(at least most runners I've run into don't buff above Force 5 or so on a routine basis) and with either dismiss an enemy spirit or weaken it so much that a few bursts will tear it apart.

Chris

I was replying to this



Now quite frankly in a ganger level gritty game, you should not be playing at the high level of power. I was asking if you would let a 20 dice troll into a gritty game.




maybe I am reading this wrong, but you base opposition dice pools off what the players have? Not based of what would be reasonable and realistic for the type of facility being guarded and the value of goods? Very different GMing style from me



First. Anecdotal evidence, in my experience the mage never seems to die from a force 6 spirit.
Second, if the facility has spirits assigned and the team doesn't bring one then TPK. Ofr do you only have the nemy have magical defenses when the players use magical offence?




I am going to have to investigate the SR4 version of that spell more closely, I wonder if it is overpowered

It isn't. But it of course will also hinder the one who casted it in the first place. Basically, that simply means that both sides get their magic capabilities reduced. Most times, this will hurt the defenders more than the assailants. Shadowrunning mages do tend to be quite good, after all, and most of them will still be able to cast and use magic, whereas the corp security mage will turn himself into a temporary mundane guard (with terrible head-aches). Still, it helps...

My apologies



luckiest man alive? check
superhuman stats? check, cyberware does that
top of the world skill? nope 'Best of the rest' according to the core book.




I personally am not overly fussed (I run SR with a strong dose of hollywood logic, and I run SR3, i play SR4 on occasion tho)
I am noting the physical impossibility of an acxt the rules allow. Since i like Hollywood action to appear it is cool by me. Others want grit and thus they have to rework a few things there.

Just for the record. If I were running SR4 and a Mr Lucky clone pulled this off I would describe how the slugs got a lucky hit on a tank tread link and how this caused the APC to flip... then reference the blues brothers.

Mana Static helps most (since it's not moving) if the runners stay in its range/area of effect, and the security mage stays outside it. It can be used to "herd" runners, or to weaken runners pinned down in an area.

Of course. He's on a mission from God.

-Frank

Nah, I'm pretty sure that he has two guns, making him god.

If they're not broken, why fix them?



First part: True, and already factored into the -52 penalty.
Second part: False. Nowhere in the blind fire or Targeting a Passenger rules is there anything about shooting through a barrier.

Show me the rule that it's necessary.

Unnecessary. When targeting a passenger, the vehicle's Bod doesn't help.

Besides which, even with it's considerable body of 16, it's only going to score 3 successes against the 11P attack. Which means it'll survive at 8 boxes, but then the second shot from the slivergun is fired. Not a one-shot anymore, but one IP isn't bad either.

Like I said before, I wasn't shooting thrugh a window. I was aiming for the "thermal exhaust port". And hoping for a Magic Bullet style ricochet. Unlikely, but as Peter Taylor keeps pointing out, this is the Luckiest Man Alive we're discussing.

Oh, by the way, Knasser? The first paragraph of your post:

Is about me, and not really providing any sort of argument other than: "It is so". There are others. No one but you is interested, however, so I'm not going further off topic.

That's an "extended ad hominem fallacy," according to you? For that, you decided that a thirty line post was therefore "properly discarded." It's not remotely an ad hominem! After really being pushed to support what you said about me... that's the best you can do?

Yeah - I'm fine to let your "there are others but that will do" comment just slide. It's plain to all that if you had been able to find a more damning example of my arguing by personal attack, you would have done so.

I've not argued against you by ad hominem, only with actual counterpoints that you would have undoubtedly tried to dismiss with logic if you'd been able to.

And you may not like that people will conclude this, but it is so. <===(Not an ad hominem)

Rereading the Long Shot rules...it doesn't mention optional modifiers at all, merely GM ruled ones.
(Oh, noes! Someone had to think about the circumstances! Teh gamez broken! We should all go play a different system where thought is verboten!)

I stand by my ruling that you cannot voluntarily reduce your die pool past 0.

Alternatively, Mr. Sitting Duck can spend an IP to actively dodge, and/or an edge point to get extra dice for his reaction test, which should put his dodge pool up to at least a similar size as Mr. Lucky's 8 dice, so no net hits on the Long Shot test are likely.

You are sort of right. The definition actually goes the other way. Shooting through barriers says that it is a Blind Fire test on page 157. But since equalities work regardless of which way they are written, it does mean the same thing.

You do have to read the entire rules to know what they say. The fact that the Barrier rules and the Passenger rules both refer to blind fire means that you know they both apply in this circumstance. Yor willful refusal to accept this after it has been dragged up for literally years is just kind of sad.

Three years running and you still don't have real rules problems, just a single broken page citation. :shakes head:

-Frank

I smell hypocrasy from Cain when he tell Knasser that 'it is so' is not an argument.

I won't bother quoting him because I commited an 'ignorable' offense apparently by reiterating Frank's point that you can't argue logically against the emotional arguements that Cain keeps using.

Nor will I continue to point out that he still fails to grasp when Ad Hominems are logical fallacies and when they aren't (namely, when not attacking his arguements they are not logical fallacies) beyond this last mention.

However: I will use as 'Exhibit A' in my case that he is here with an ulterior motive, and not for honest discussion of the game that when he DID respond to questions about his choices for games, at no point did he mention Shadowrun, of any edition.

We got Hero, Savage Worlds and Wushu.


I'm reasonably new to Dumpshock compared to some poster's here, so I still remember having to take a couple of days to register and get approved. Maybe that wasn't the case in 02, when Cain registered, but he's made over 4000 posts on a forum dedicated to a game that he doesn't even admit to liking.

Now, I can only speculate as to WHY he is here, that's all any of us can do, but I submit to you, Dumpshock, that Cain is not here because of any fondness for the game. My personal take, which I believe is supported by the evidence at hand, is that he is specifically here to convince people to abandon the game and take up one of the two he normally harps upon as 'superior'.

In short: A Shill.

Nope, just part of one. The rest is pretty obvious.

And that entire post is another example of an Ad Hominem. It doesn't deal with the Citymaster, it doesn't deal with called shots, it deals with you and me. Just because you cannot admit you're wrong, that this is about you and me and not Shadowrun, does not make you right about the game.

Oh, damn, I got dragged off topic again. Shall we call this the final post on the topic, and leave it alone?

I said:

You said:


That's my point - show that they're broken? I play with those rules and am fine. So do many other people. Others sometimes adjust things to suit their personal tastes and this is absolutely fine - people can do that and they are happy to do this and still enjoy the game. But whilst people adjust little things like this all the time and think nothing of it, you take an extremely obtuse combination of rules which deliberately ignores the instructions in the book and keep making statements that the rules are "horribly badly broken." You've hated the 4th rules since before they came out.

I mean, you included the Improved Invisibility spell in the above list of "broken rules," for Pity's sake! You just grabbed a few things that you remember there being discussion on and said that it indicated the rules were broken! It's meaningless.

But nowhere does it say that the Blind Fire penalty is reserved for shooting through barriers. In fact, it's just a visibility modifier, and can be in place when there's no barriers at all. (E.g., a completely dark room without vision enhancements.) (EDIT: And invisibility.) Since that's the case, there still is nothing that says you need to Shoot Through Barriers to specifically target a passenger, and in fact there's rules that say the opposite.

They needed fixes, right? You yourself posited a fix for the matrix rules, one that was very well recieved and adopted by many. Since that's the case--since a house rule is more popular than the RAW-- wouldn't that indicate that there's something wrong with the original rule?

In addition to being an Ad Hominem, this is simply not the case. I was one of the biggest defenders of SR4 until right before it came out. When I got it, and I saw the mess I had been handed, I changed my mind. If you read the Dumpshock posts of that era, you'll see what I mean.

Well if it were just part of an ad hominem attack on you, then why didn't you quote the whole thing? Tell you what, Cain - if it's part of an ad hominem attack on you, let's have a look at the whole thing:



Now Cain - find me one person in this thread so far that thinks the above is "an extended ad hominem fallacy and is properly discarded." Then we can see if the "rest is pretty obvious."

And as to:


The way I see it you just want to be able to say something derogatory about someone (that my argument depends on personal attacks) and then when they demand you support it, try to pretend they are dragging the thread off course. It's actually entirely on-topic. You have made a counter to my points and I am dealing with that counter. The fact that it was a simple attempt to dismiss them as fallacious is immaterial - I'm showing that they're not and that you should address them or accept them.

It's amazing to me how very one-way this discussion with you is. People keep dealing with the things you say, but there's very little actual engagement on your part with the things that are said to you.

I'm not dragging this thread further off topic. Since you like past posts so much, I'll point out that I responded to your actual arguments several pages back, and you decided you'd rather jump on the fact I called you on the Ad Hominems. In the case you mention, it has nothing to do with the examples posted, since we're discussing Longshots and Called Shots.

You're right - I can't support that comment with evidence - it does nothing but attempt to undermine your arguments through means of personal comments. I'll withdraw it.

You see how that's done?

Hmm...he's failed to so much as acknowledge my argument yet again.

Well, silence is assent, after all - I guess he agrees that he has no basis for his positon.

Actually, Cain, I've never seen you respond to a counter arguement with anything more than 'ad hominem' or 'I'm right you're not'...

Your latest response to Frank is illustrative of the point. You go off arguing some weird tangent about blind fire rules, which completely misses the point on wether or not shooting a passenger relies on the barrier rules or not, of which blind fire is only tangentally related.


Thats not a counter arguement at all. Its is, in your case anyway, deliberate misdirection and obfuscation to avoid having your precious example shot down.

Just as claiming Synner was not a suitable GM to test your MR. Lucky character due to Bias is merely a dodge to avoid having to prove your case publicly, rather than relying on incidents which only you are fully privy to. If a scientist won't show me his data, I can not accept his conclusions. If a lawyer will not show me the evidence I can not accept his case. If a critic of a game refuses to put up or shut up, I can not accept his conclusions at face value.

Which is fine, because I don't belive you intend to make a case. You are here for propaganda purposes.

The cure is facts.

Which is why I continue on in this thread. And which is why you desperately avoid having to deal with facts, often by chosing to ignore posters who bring them (like Frank and his 'emotional vs. logical' arguements point... or the fact that called shots don't ignore barrier rating, or how Savage Worlds still requires GM fiats and has just as many, if not more, problems than Shadowrun...)

My apologies. I lose track of posts when there's a lot of them. If it's no issue, could you repeat your points? I'll try and pay closer attention this time.

Basically, in no particular order:

• You're assuming that the guy in the car can't dodge Mr. Lucky. 8 dice just isn't that hard to match.
• You're assuming that edge only works one way, i.e. enemies can't use their edge to counter YOUR use of edge.
• You're assuming that any ruling by a GM is bad, then using the longshot rules that specifically use and require GM rulings in their example.
• You're assuming that the rules actually support what you're doing, rather than it merely being a poor choice of wording that doesn't specifically disallow it.

To clarify that last point: the longshot rules fail to mention optional modifiers at all - that doesn't mean that it is intended for a called shot to bypass 24 points of armor to be "free" if you're already reduced to 0 dice.

I won't go into the additional arguments from earlier threads.

Just a factual point: I think Palladium has been in a pretty deep financial hole for a long time. And they almost went bankrupt at one point.

Regardless, though not going bankrupt is not proof of quality, it's proof of some popularity. A game which is qualitatively bad should not have much following, if any. Shadowrun isn't the most popular game out there, but enough people out there like it that, from their collective points of view, your subjective arguments about the game being bad are absolutely refuted. I don't care if another game is more popular; you're not arguing that Shadowrun is somewhat good but less good than other games, you're arguing that it SUCKS and is not worth the money. The fact that you stand alone in a sea of Shadowrun supporters almost proves that this isn't true. It isn't strong evidence of the game's quality, but it is strong evidence that you have vastly overstated your case. If it were as clear as you insist it is, most people would figure that out and the game would not have as big a following as it has.

While trying to avoid the hellstorm you guys have going, my only real problem with the rules is a lack of realistic limits.. While we all know that the stat examples are garbage, I dislike how high some of the stat ceilings are. There's no real incentive to play a character with a realistic stat-set beyond what a GM pushes. Furthermore, I hate how some of the stats interact.. there's just no way that a troll with a bow is going to be able to take out an IFV unless he's using some kind of specially tipped arrow. Just little stuff like that.

Also, the whole program + skill thing makes me angry, too, although I'm hoping that Unwired will make Logic essential again by requiring it for regular SOTA patching or something.

Heh, OK, as far as I am concerned, Cain has been absolutely torched into a pile of ashses on the Mr. Lucky killing a citymaster point. I hope he takes the message and moves onto rules examples which aren't wrong.

As I have stated and restated: IF the rules are ambiguous, AND one interpretation is good AND one is bad, CHOOSE THE GOOD ONE. It proves absolutely nothing about the system when you interpret the rules to allow retarded loopholes when that isn't the only interpretation. You have retarded loophole versus sensible rule. Which one do you think the devs were trying to put forth? Which one is correct?

Not that I'm suggesting that Cain is in any way right about Mr. Lucky. It just seems like all "problems with the core mechanics" are based on the worst possible interpretation of slightly vague rules. The books were meant to be read with common sense, and arguing that without common sense they don't work is like telling us that without gas a car won't drive. Um, duh

Mr. U: Basically, Points 1 and 2 are debatable, but glossed over for the sake of argument. Point 1 in particular is weird, but I didn't want to get into rather or not the -6 for Full Immersion applied to Reaction defense tests. Point 3 isn't quite what I've been saying; it's a sign of a bad system that forces GM's to use GM fiat for every combat.

Point 4 is where we're really going to get into it. Page 55 doesn't make any distinction about voluntary/involuntary modifiers at all. So, calling a shot to bypass armor and then longshotting it is legal, and within both the spirit ond the letter of the RAW. If Mr. Lucky has used an anti-vehicular rocket instead of a flechette pistol, fewer people here would have issues with it.


IIRC, that was because someone stole something like a quarter of a million dollars from them. I can't remember the details, though, so I may be wrong.


Rifts is considered to be quite bad, yet it has a huge following.

Dude, I could pull up the Pinnacle Forums as proof that Savage Worlds is of higher quality; certainly they don't have nearly as many threads on rule fixes. Hell, I could probably find you a forum with a few hundred people who like Synnabar or FATAL, even though those two are in contention for Worst RPG Ever.

The existence of Dumpshock proves nothing, except that like-minded people band together. If Dumpshock were any indication, Shadowrun would be the most popular game in existence and D20 an afterthought.


Well, the Citymaster isn't wrong; but whenever I bring up other examples, I have to ram them down people's throats to get them noticed. Everyone else keeps coming back to the Citymaster, which is why I keep posting it.


In some cases, the wrong one is what's errated in. Just look at Errata v1.5 for a few examples. They did a few good things, like accept my suggestion on Teamwork tests finally, but they made a few doozies as well.

Oh, the guy in the car is rigged now?
Pfft - then the whole van dodges effortlessly. 8 edge dice won't come close to cutting it. And he certainly has the IPs to go on full defense.


Then you're playing solitare. Becase there is NO tactical system in existance, even computer games, where GM fiat (or something very, very similar) is NOT used in every combat - though there are a few where it is delegated across the group.
What's the weather like? GM fiat.
What's the lighting? GM fiat.
What cover is there? GM fiat.
How many opponents are there? GM fiat.
What guns and armor are they using? GM fiat.
etc.

The problem with fiat is when it's used poorly, not that it exists.


Not legal - but arguable, yes. Legal effectively means intended, and we don't know that without a FAQ ruling. And if you have a GM that'll let it fly, more power to you.

If he had used an anti-vehicular rocket, he wouldn't have to be using a probable rule expoit to destroy the van. So, of course people aren't going to argue as much. Using a flyswatter to kill a fly won't get a lot of comment. Using a flyswatter to take down a MiG will.

Ah, well - at least you're admitting there's a debate there, instead of simply claiming victory. Definite improvement of debate style.

Well that's interesting, because the very first post in this thread from you is here and it's also the first reference to the Citymaster in the thread. It goes on about it at quite some length, in fact.

EDIT: The Citymaster example is wrong, btw. The rules specifically say that you can use a called shot if a vulnerable area exists. For you to say that "a thermal exhaust port always exists" is as much a GM judgement call as to say that there isn't one. The rules say only that called shots are possible when the GM says a weakness exists - there is no default state that a GM is altering. It's always the GM's decision and it can't be abstained from unless the player gets bored of waiting for the GM to study tank designs on the Web and decides to do something else instead. You can only get away from GM decisions like this by strictly specifying what fixed actions in what fixed circumstances can be applied to what fixed units. And that's only possible if you reduce the game to a table-top wargame, forfeiting story all together.

In short, I didn't want my example falling flat on its face. Got it.



What is weird about allowing the defender to make a defence test and why does there 'have' to be a full immersion penalty? Oh, right, because if you didn't your arguement falls utterly flat again. Right.



You HAVE been saying that, actually. You have ALSO been saying its a sign of a bad system if it has to happen in every combat. What you have yet to do is prove that assertion.



That's his point, Cain. You deliberately read into the admittedly poorly worded rules for the absolutely most extreme situation you can come up with yet you insist that others take your examples on blind faith and actually ignore, at times, what is specifically written that contradicts you.






Actually, it was revealed in the last week or so that Savage Worlds Forums have something on the order of a tenth the traffic Dumpshock does. Naturally, having less posters, and less threads, means there will be (amazing, I know...) less threads about rules problems. If I hand you ten apples with worms in them, and I hand Frank 2 apples with worms in them, does that mean Franks apples are less wormy?




Only if you ignored all the D20 forums, and the amount of traffic they generate. Heck, I'm willing to bet even if you did discount them, you could find, without asking, plenty of posts on Dumpshock that acknowledge that D20 is the bigger game. But then, this is a sterling example of the quality of your arguements, par for course, as it were.




Actually, Cain, YOU bring up the citymaster. YOU bring up Mr. Lucky, though since he seems inextricably attached to the Citymaster example (as in, it fails with a more modest Edge total), that is a given. The only time anyone else ever mentions the Citymaster example is to deride it.

I always assumed the vehicle was rigged; but when someone riding in a vehicle is specifically targeted, the rules on p162 make it perfectly clear that they use their own Defense pools, and not the vehicle's. At any event. he's at -6 to even notice he's been hit, so his defense pool is going to be nonexistant.


Untrue. The GM's job is to set opposition and provide fluff text. Making sudden calls out of the blue is GM fiat. It's an arbitrary pronouncement, not something considered in the interests of fun.

Mechanically speaking, what's the difference? The shot actually becomes harder if Mr. Lucky uses a rocket, since he's got no Heavy Weapons skill. The only difference is fluff. Break it down to the numbers, and only the numbers... does it really change anything?


Read more closely. That example is the Shot Heard Round the Barrens, an example the Shadowrun Line Developer agreed was totally legal. And IMO, still broken.

[EDIT] Oh, and I discovered a new one while reading the FAQ. Did you know that *anyone* can use that STR min 15 Troll Bow? All that happens is that you take a -2 dice pool penalty. So your Strength 1 Otaku can use the bow and cause just as much damage as the burliest troll.

Spike: Quit trolling.

Great, Cain - you're not even reading your own posts now. The last paragraph of your post where you begin "There's a variant of this where Mr. Lucky takes out a Citymaster with a called shot from a flechette pistol..." It's the first reference to a citymaster in this thread which is exactly what I said. You raised this topic so don't tell people you only discuss this because you're forced to.

As to this:



You'd be okay with things if the GM wrote down in advance "opposition consists of a Citymaster with no vulnerable parts" or "opposition consists of a Citymaster with a vulnerable point" ? The acceptability of a GM judgement call is dependent on how far in advance it is made? Because if a GM's job is to set opposition, it's a little difficult to do that without deciding what the opposition's capabilities are.

And I pity the GM that isn't psychic when the players suddenly decide to go off the prepared trail and storm Lone Star HQ because then the GM would be forced to "set opposition" in real time and every instance of deciding the capabilities of the opposition would then be "GM Fiat."

The vehicle's defense pool IS the rigger's defense pool. Certainly when he's in full VR. It would probably not be a mere passenger's though (unless, possibly, the rigger was actively trying to defend that person, specifically.) If you were INSIDE the van, then the rigger (generally) couldn't really use the van to dodge, though. Of course, that's what rigger cocoons are for.


You're defining fiat differently than the people you're arguing with. That should probably be a clue that maybe your definition of their position is possibly incorrect as well. Noone is arguing that completely random or vindictive GM rulings are good, merely that the GM has to process events in a way that allows all involved to suspend disbelief. That's why a lot of GMs would simply refuse to allow a called shot to bypass vehicle armor to target a fully concealed individual inside - they can't see a justification for it. "There's always a thermal exhaust port" won't cut it in every group. And no sane GM is going to let you call-to-bypass-armor that you can't know is there (i.e. the concealed passenger's armor or the rigger cocoon.)

After you...

Also: Am I the only who noticed that Cain just dismissed my entire post of counter-arguements with an Ad Hominem?


Just sayin'.

Dude. Honestly. Since when is stating "No, the opposite is true" without support a refutation? Stop pretending that you know The Job Of The GM. Every game puts the GM in a slightly differnt role, and every GM adopts a slightly different role for the herself. You can only speak to your preconceptions of the GM's job, which don't prove shit. "It isn't the GM's job" is flat out wrong when the system, which defines the GM's job, gives it to him.



I thought that too at first, but you should read the rules carefully before making pronouncements about them. p.306: -2 penalty PER POINT BELOW THE MINIMUM. So your str 1 Otaku could use a str min 15 bow... with a -28 penalty. Another case where your statements about broken rules are actually wrong, without needing to resort to GM fiat.

"...but people really start to whinge whenever I pull that one out." So I didn't, until it was basically forced upon me by people misquoting it.


No, I wouldn't.

Generally speaking, in the default SR4 environment, the Citymaster only comes out when the GM wants to screw the players in some fashion. To either kill, capture, or punish, for the most part. If that's not the case-- the Citymaster is just fair opposition-- then there's no ulterior motive, and it can be shot down and/or knifed to death. Mechanically speaking, there's no difference between an autocannon, a pistol, and a knife, once the armor has been bypassed.


By the rules, there's no difference. Is it illogical? Yes. But one of my points is that the rules are illogical.

Pity Citymasters don't come with those standard. Besides which, it counts as Armor, so it's bypassable.


What I'm seeing is this:
Cain: "Here are some corner cases that break the game."
Anti-Cain: "You can house rule or GM discretion them away."
Cain: "That doesn't mean the system couldn't stand some improvement."
Anti-Cain: "HERETIC! UNCLEAN! Shadowrun, love it or leave, you shill!"

Basically, relying on house rules/GM discretion is not a sign of a good system. Quite the opposite. And besides, no one ever answers this question: How many house rules does it take, until you're not playing the same game? (For this question, GM discretion is pretty much identical to House Rules.)


You're right, my bad. But even so, this is another case for the Longshot issue.

Ah, but if our STR1 Otaku was also MR. Lucky, he'd be able to kill, well at least 8 people a session with that bow... and he'd never even need the archery skill....


Sorry, that was a poor example of Cain. He's likely to just dismiss you arguement by saying

"Having to read that extra line means its broken. In Savage worlds you simply can't do this, while in Wushu, as long as its cool you can use any weapon you want'...