I am have been thinking of house rules to balance out some of the big problems with shadow run.

1. Allowing adept and mages to but metamagic/PP or have the choice at inniation(For adepts) sounds like a good start.

2. I honestly think the magic damage resist should be CHA+WILL. So you get an opposed WILL to reduce hits. Failing that you get WILL +CHA to soak the Damage.

This give everyone a chance verses magic not just the mage and balances things abit.

I would like to get the weapons system straightened out. It is broken 9 ways to sunday and so in the melee system.

any ideas?

Anything about the game that's not broken, then?

How are things going to get better if there is no discussion? They did some things right, but I am finding a hoard of stuff they could have done better

It'd help if you we knew what you meant by broken. Some people have fundamentally different issues with the way the system handles things.

For example, some people wish to break the weapon skills up into more categories while I frankly think the game is better off if you consolidate some of them. It may offend those who cannot reconcile the idea of using the same dice source for pistol and assault rifle attack tests, but in practice I find it leads to players using a wider variety of weapons instead of just dragging around the same ol' piece for every situation, which frankly hits me as even less unrealistic than using "the same skills" to be good with different firearms.

Also, melee skills aren't necessarily as bad as you might suspect. While they aren't very cost effective for harming people relative to firearms, do keep in mind that they also serve double duty by acting as a defense pool if someone tries to knife you and style bonuses can give a few nice advantages. If you already plan on taking Gymnastics it's a good way of skipping Dodge entirely. But with that said, I give my players some "free" maneuvers and style bonuses for every point of skill at 3 and above-- I find the real problem with melee artists isn't that they suck at melee but rather that it costs so much to be good that they turn into one trick ponies. Charging so much for styles and maneuvers hit me as adding insult to injury. Oh, and I give out the Krav firearms bonuses for free to anyone with a 4 or better in appropriate gun skills. I got tired of everyone just going straight to Jew-Jitsu.

i'm honestly not even sure what you're proposing. could you give a few examples of what you mean?

[double post?]

It seems to me the taser rounds are way over powered and the flechette rounds are useless(even on the lightly armored). sub machine guns need to be given the 2x recoil for 1 handed operation and BF/FA pistols as well. and shot guns need to lose that x2 recoil. Any weapon the that is BF or FA should be allowed gas vent or any clip mods.

Specialty round should reserved for shotguns or larger.

shotguns should be a 9DV with +1 AP for slugs (however the knock back for them should be improved)

The shot rules for shotguns is ok. Buckshot in a shotgun is worthless against armor, but against unarmored they are brutal. limit AP (+whatever to impactx2). IF the gut is wearing leather jacket he gets a max impact of 2x2=4 Total adjusted impact verses flechette not 2+5 AP. It means that armor is more effective at higher levels.

I am more willing to look at the melee a second time, some of the weapon damages are way off. A bayonet doing the same damage as a knife(I don't think so). A bayonet is two handed weapon and is very lethal when attached to a rifle.

I do think you are right skills need to be more condensed, but how is the problem?

The recoil system needs to read uncompensated recoil+the second burst recoil mod.

To be honest, I think neither of the things you listed are broken or need fixing.

Thanks for your input. I just happen to disagree with you.

That was pretty much obvious

Interesting Opinions...

I will have to digest them a bit and reflect upon them, but initially, at least, I have to agree with D2F... I see no reason to change the things you are indicating...

Keep the Faith...

One of my pet causes is the restructuring the Automatics, Longarms, Pistols and Heavy Weapons into one group with three skills that have everything but the kitchen sink, actually. It's an ugly mess and it doesn't jibe with irl weapon classes very well (after all, such things are pretty informal regardless) but from a pure game balance perspective it works pretty well. That's because in practice players choose weapons by weighing three prime characteristics: Convenience/concealment, range and raw power. I put the convenient/concealable weapons under "sidearms," which nets you everything from tasers up to machine pistols-- so you can get a decent chunk of power and concealment here (machine pistols and heavy pistols are surprisingly nasty) but no range. Then you get "longarms," which includes SMGs (Messy, I know; carbines and such often use "pistol" caliber cartridges and are scarcely more than upjumped machine pistols, the lines are blurry, yada yada), assault rifles, shotguns and sport/sniper rifles-- you get a good mix of power, unique abilities and range here, but hiding things gets a bit more touch and go; the easiest thing to hide here is a sawed off shotty. Then you get the heavy weapons group unchanged-- you get range and raw power here but obviously concealing these things is going to be quite the magic trick (probably literally).

It's an admittedly ugly grouping and just calling the group "firearms" seems weird considering you have launcher and tasers in there, but it gets the job done and the players generally come out smelling of roses. The non-combat specialists like hackers and faces can get a machine pistol and holdouts with the same skill set, the classic automatics only samurai gets better at long range marksmanship thanks to sniper rifles and the much maligned merc and weapon specialist archetypes can cover all their bases with one skill group instead of a group AND heavy weapons, which is a discount that quite frankly I think they need. Alternatively, you could just go old school and throw every thing with a trigger under one "firearms" skill and be done with it.

See, we do (Holdouts to Machine Pistols), (SMGs to ARs), ('Battle Rifles', Sport Rifles, Snipers), and Shotguns fit into Pistols if they're sawed-off, Longarms if they're not. So, really only Machine Pistols get moved. It's a minor tweak, because my group's never really had any trouble with it.

The thing with the magic resistance.

Maybe one could just allow people to skill a personal anti-magic skill. Call it Mental Discipline or something. But yeah the whole Mage: Attribute+Skill+Modifier+extramodifier+equipment against Target: Attribute is ridiculous. EVERY spell will always succeed (well, ok some will not in extreme cases). Giving everybody at least Attribute+Skill would allow at least extraordinary people to resist bad-okayish wizard on their own. and become harder targets with magical support on their side. (But of course the advantage should lie on the attackers side in global)

Ummm do you guys limit the magician to spell force in hits? Unless he has a high magic attribute or over casts all the time he isn't likely getting more than 5 or 6 hits max. More likely 3 or 4 and this is defendable with a good will or body. If you want protection from magic get a magician of your own and spell defense. It's like complaining about bullets always killing you cuz you never wear armor.
I do agree with the firearms skill thing but haven't really seen a work around I like yet. What there is is fairly balanced with one skill that seems the go to skill (automatics) if you aren't a gun bunny. Logically though, firing a pistol isn't much different from firing a machine pistol or some of the smaller SMGs. I never really liked assault rifles being separated from long arms either. I suppose they should be grouped by method of use rather than weapon type and firing method (SA, BF, FA) since this gets blurred with some light and heavy pistols as well as FA shotguns. Oh well.

The way I see it, Machine Pistols *are* pistols (like the G18 or the Beretta 93), so we put them into the Pistol skill. On the other end, ARs go up to about 600m, while battle rifles, sport rifles (obviously, a broad category), and sniper rifles shoot strong cartridges that go 800, 1000, even 2000m; that kind of high-recoil, long range shooting is a different-enough skillset to seperate Longarms from the AR/SMG category. For my group, the different typical range, recoil, and shooting tactics are a good reason to keep that line there.

On the other hand, that's the same reason shotguns *don't* really fit entirely in Longarms. Some act like huge pistols, some are like SMGs/ARs, and some have shape (if not the range) of longarms. This isn't a problem, though; it's a solution. Spreading out shotguns lets a Pistols user bring a beefy sawed-off, an Automatics user bring an AA-16 or AS-7, and a Longarms user bring a Desperado.

I like the idea of reorganizing the firearms skills. I would think we would have them by how then are fired: Pistols, SMG, Longarm. SMG is a very different skill from either pistol or rifle. The AR is fired like a rifle, shotgun or sport rifle or sniper rifle.

[quote name='Mantis' date='May 1 2010, 05:48 AM' post='924793']
Ummm do you guys limit the magician to spell force in hits? Unless he has a high magic attribute or over casts all the time he isn't likely getting more than 5 or 6 hits max. More likely 3 or 4 and this is defendable with a good will or body. If you want protection from magic get a magician of your own and spell defense. It's like complaining about bullets always killing you cuz you never wear armor.



A WILL of 3 will never brush off 4 to 6 hits on a spell. then they have to roll that same stat of 3 to resist damage. Where as will a firearm you get body+armor. that is why I think of WILL+CHA. That balances out the uber-mage effect.

I had a near cyberzombie pissed at my little gnome mage. I cast just one force 8 stunball at the bad guys and took them all out, all of there gunbunnies, magical support, counter-spelling spirits, the works. 8 successes. For my trouble I took 1 stun in drain. magic 5 and 3 point power focus.

Yeah, as I hinted at earlier, I really try not to get worked up about where I chose to draw the line between sub-machine guns and machine pistols. You're generally talking about the same sort of rounds and the big difference just ends up coming down to whether the form factor is aping a pistol or a rifle-- oftentimes the distinction is "official" only because we know what ancestor the final product is being scaled down/up from. If it's a jumped up pistol, then you have an MP, and if it's essentially a select-fire carbine then you have an SMG. What really makes a mess of things, however, are the weapons that aren't really directly built off of any one parent design in particular, like the venerable Ceska Skorpion with its folding stock and teeny magazine.

Ultimately, I'm pretty happy where I placed them and the game mechanics made the decision easier for me-- MPs are a li'l easier to hide than I'd like for the "longarms" group and SMGs are a li'l more powerful than I'd like for the Sidearms group. That MPs ape regular pistol design and that SMGs are essentially aping carbines is just icing.

Pray tell where did you got those 3 extra successes?

force 8 stun ball

So you want to add nerfed direct combat spells to the already nerfed indirect combat spells? All this will achieve is that mages will specialize in mind rape instead of outright killing.
If they want to kill people they can still use buff spells and weapons. Ever thought about someone with a decent Heavy Weapons skill, one or two sustaining foci (Increase AGI, Enhance Aim)? This is at least as deadly as a manaball.
There is even a Grenade Launcher that can be owned legally at CharGen. This is not possible for any Combat Spell, not even those that do stun damage.

And someone is going to discover you know "illegal" spells exactly how?

With magic 5 the drain becomes Physical. Also the drain becomes 8/2(+1) +hits=13 P drain... and you somehow reduced that to 1 Stun? That's enough drain to potentially kill you.

Adding net hits to drain is an optional and stupid rule, which only encourages overcasting.

3 point power focus raisies the threshold at which you take Physical damage. So it is still Stun

You might want to reread the Power Focus rules.



It's a DP modifier, it does not increase your Magic. Unless you happen to be playing a completely different edition to me.

It has been that way since the first printing of SR4. The only way to make the drain Stun is to increase your Magic by Karma, Spirit Pact, Infection, etc.

But against the you get reaction defense and the body+armor.

With very little chance of coming out unharmed. Direct Combat Spells are all or nothing.

I was thinking about a restructuring along the same lines, myself. It would be considerably more plausible in the setup.

But would it be balanced?

I'm going to say this one more time because it is easily the most overlooked issue in the whole Direct Spells are overpowered argument: never, ever forget to factor in cover (and by that I mean both the attacker's and the defender's cover modifiers). Even when they remember to factor in cover on the defender's side, all too many GMs forget to apply the attacker's cover modifier too. And that is before factoring in any visibility and other situational modifiers.

In this case it would probably prevent the caster from taking out all these people so easily...

And what's wrong with overcasting?

Synner what would the caster's cover have anything to do with his spellcasting?

Two times zero recoil is still zero recoil. I guess that's harder to pull off in FA than BF, but not too hard with the right weapon and mods.

Regardless, any time someone is firing with one hand, be it an SMG, Taser or Assault Cannon, they are cutting their DP in half. The assumption is always that they are using their second hand to steady the weapon or they are taking a penalty for not doing so. Even the Beretta 93 Machine Pistol mentioned in this thread has a fold-out front grip to help steady it for BF operation.

The optional rule doesn't discourage overcasting, it blatantly encourages it, which is why (about two minutes after the PDF hit Battlecorps and a swarm of people did the math) it was demoted to an optional rule.

With a magic rating of 5, casting at F8 and using three successes, he gets a base of 11 boxes of stun and takes a base drain of 8P. Casting at F9 and using two successes gives him a base of 11 boxes of stun and a drain of 7P. Casting at F5 (not overcasting), and using 6 successes gives him the base of 11 stun, but a total of 9S drain. Since the force is halved for the purposes of drain, raising the force is more efficient that using all your successes when it comes to achieving the same number of base boxes of damage.

Shadowrun has cover modifiers for both attacker and defender - which explicitly apply to both firefights and spellcasting. In both cases the attacker's cover modifier represents the added difficulty of getting a clear bead on a target while ensuring that the attacker himself is not unduly exposed to return fire and doing so in limited window of opportunity (ie. a combat phase). If the attacker is hiding behind an Americar to avoid getting shot by the opposition and decides to peek out over the hood to attack, his line of sight and angle of attack are limited so he incurs a cover modifier to his attack regardless of whatever cover the target has. By RAW (in both SR4 and SR4A) this applies equally to gunplay and spellcasting.

And yes, the (now-)Optional Direct Spell drain rule does favor overcasting, and because of that has had a lot of criticism leveled at it. I stand by for a number of reasons though.

While that's an interesting house rule for you to chose to inflict on your players, there's nothing in the mechanics to support it. Would this house rule of yours also apply to thrown weapons, or holdout pistols that are too small for two-handed operation?

Players will use the weapon they favor, regardless. They would simply pick the relevant skills. Personally, I don't see automatic weapons as so powerful that they need their extra skill set, especially when that leads to people using that skill set almost exclusively for all weapons (you don't need pistols or longarms if you have automatics).

I go even so far as to claim it would most probably be even more balanced than the current setup.

How can you have 6 hits with a force 5 spell? Unless you are using Edge of course. The point of the rule is to make Direct Combat Spells more draining, and that they do. And if you cast at high force but retain only 2 hits, then the targets are very likely to resist.

It is strange that when people complain about mages being overpowered, they usually point out the Direct combat spells as examples, but when there is an optional rule that increases the drain of said spells, they don't like it because it encourages overcasting. Uhm ok? Then let the mages overcast and too bad for them if they fail to soak it all. And yes even with 10-15 dice in resisting drain mages still fail to resist it all from time to time.



I never liked that rule anyway. And now it's -2 for shooting from cover? That pretty much negates your defensive advantage in shooting from cover in the first place. Angle may not be limited at all when shooting from cover - some you can shoot at and some you just can't.

In my game I encourage players to take cover when they can. In any case people can always move behind the cover if they're close enough.

There is no such thing as a pistol which is too small for a proper firing grip/stance. As to throwing, yeah, you use your whole body in a throw, or it's half-assed. The thing is, this stuff is assumed. A guy has to declare that he is doing something with his other hand, like holding a 2nd weapon or dragging along an extraction target or downed teammate, and, in either of those cases, I'd slap the same penalty as if they were trying to shoot with two guns. The only functional difference between shooting two guns at once one handed and shooting one gun one handed is that you're not going to confuse your sights. So, if someone wants to slide down a rope with one hand while firing anything other than suppressive fire, they're going to have a nut-tough time of it.

Meh. If you do that, we're back to everyone purchasing Iaijutsu and Quick-Drawing their guns off Lanyards. *shrug*
At best, I'd just remind the players that foregrips only work if you use them, *maybe* you also need that second hand for Stocks.

I'm obviously biased here, but I think so. Basically, at the end of the day, guns are mostly just good for rolling agility+skill to hurt people, which isn't a very flexible niche compared to what you get out of the Athletics, Stealth or Electronics group. It's an excellent niche, but for most roles you could just grab the canon automatics skill and call it a day. The system simply isn't terribly granular and so multiple gun skills are pretty redundant, with the canon longarms in particular being a sort of weak skill. They give you the option of firing at extremely long ranges, but that's really about it, since vision magnification does perhaps too good of a job of negating range penalties. so you can easily argue that you're actually better off using Heavy Weapons like a MMG or HMG for sniping-- there's nothing that's really mechanically stopping you from doing wide bursts at 1,200 meters, and assault cannons have virtually the same effective range as any rifle. It's just hard to justify the current longarms as anything but a filler skill to pad out a somewhat redundant group. The addition of sawed offs and burst mode sniper rifles in Arsenal helps, but I'm not sure it's enough to offset the ability to use underslung and mini grenade launchers.

I also think it's worth mentioning that what I'm suggesting here actually encourages lateral development rather than pure dicepool inflation. Under the current system, many Samurai builds simply grab a 5 or 6 in automatics as a matter of course, since the current skill offers all three commodities: Concealability through machine pistols and power/range via assault rifles. Taking my more attractive grouping instead gives them the option of using heavy weapons, which are admittedly powerful, but pistols and automatics still tend to be the workhorses, and in those cases the samurai is actually throwing around less dice than if they had just grabbed the one skill and softcapped. Further, it gives players a discount so they can be something other than just a gun bunny for a change. I find narrow characters more problematic to design runs around than flexible ones.

Hey Triggvi, as I also said, unless the magician is over casting, it isn't as hard to resist a direct combat spell. You gave an example that throws 8 hits on a force 8 spell with a magic of 5. Overcasting. Hard to deal with. Regular spell casting isn't so bad. Also curious as to how you turned the 5p drain into stun. And why the astral hazing that surrounds cyber zombies didn't effect your spell. Unless you meant heavily cybered baddie, not an actual cyber zombie.
As I said, you want magic defense, get a magician. Or free spirit with magical guard, or astral hazing or spell resistance. I'm not trying to start anything here. Just annoyed with the constant harping on how 'over-powered' spell casting is. Anything in the game taken to an extreme is going to be unbalanced. I've played all the previous editions and seen how unbalanced spell casting can become. At least this version is applying some good game balance limits on magic. Heath, Daka and Synner hit on all these points in their posts as well so I'll leave it at that.

The point is that the rule's extra drain only applies if you use the net hits for damage. If you don't there is no extra drain. Example:
Sebastian Spellslinger throws a Stunbolt at Ronny Rent-A-Cop. Sebastian gets 5 hits, Ronny resists with 1 hits. So Sebastian gets 4 Net Hits.
At Force 5 Sebastian would want to have as much extra damage as possible so he opts for all three net hits. this results in (5/2)-1+4=5S Drain and 8S damage to Ronny
With a Force 10 spell Sebastian can reasonably apply no net hits to damage and still hope to drop Ronny with 10S. Sebastian only has to soak (10/2)-1P=4P drain.

And also, even though one of the devs, I think it was Synner, said that this does not work in the same way for area effect spells, the rule does not make this distinction.