Okay, PACKS has been well received (over 800 downloads!), but I had to proof it myself - I couldn't even use the proofing done by Catalyst's proofers because I was banned from the forums and Basecamp. Still, I've received a very generous offer on the part of Platinum to actually lay PACKS out and make a nice product out of it. So what I would like from those of you willing to participate are a list of the mistakes and suggested corrections for PACKS. Anybody that submits a correction that gets used will have their name (if you want to PM it to me) or handle included in a list of proofers on the final document.

Anybody game?

I'm going to keep a master list running in this first post.



Proofers: Bladehate, crizh, Da9iel, Deadmannumberone, Glyph, gtjormungand, Mesh, Nomad, Raven the Trickster, Ryu, tagz, wiley

I don't know that I'm that good at picking out things that are wrong just by reading through, but if you guys need an artist, let me know- I'm willing to lend a pencil to community projects.

You're mainly looking for errors in the gears, not the polish, yeah?

I'll consider anything, if you have a worthwhile suggestion.

===Page 12, Adept Sets:

Magic 4:

Negamage: Cloak 4 (1), Iron Will 4 (2), Spell Resistance 4 (2)

Adds up to 5 points rather then 4.

I'll add more if I notice anything else.

-Update(s):

Almost all of the kits contain Knowledge Skills. Some of these kits contain upwards of 30 or more BPs spent purely on Knowledge Skills (The Astral Martial Artist for example) with a recommended Logic + Intuition total of 6 (IE 18 "free" Knowledge skills). That means some of these kits are basically recommending that a player spend 12 or more BPs on Knowledge skills. This seems like a pretty heavy investment for what is essentially RP fluff.

As an alternative, I would suggest changing the Knowledge Skill section to a list of "Suggested Knowledge Skills". I think for many people, Knowledge skills are one of the areas they have the hardest time selecting so having some suggestions included in the PACKS would definitely encourage and guide people into making intelligent, relevant choices.

By leaving it as Suggested Knowledge skills, you're not guiding newbies into potentially dangerous water where they are spending significant BP amounts on skills that they might never use but still helping them to pick relevant RP choices for their Knowledge skills. I realize that a more experienced player can easily spot this and backtrack the various knowledge skill points spent, and adjust it to their allotment of free Knowledge skill points. But this strikes me as counter productive to the stated goals of PACKS: Giving new players guidance solid guidance, and giving even experienced players a faster method to generate a character.

This is just my opinion though.

===Page 12, Astral Martial Artist (100 BP).

In the requirements, it lists the Astral Perception (5 pt) Quality (Among many others of course). I'm pretty sure that this is intended to be the Astral Sight (5 pts) quality from Street Magic which is only available to mundanes.

Please also note that Astral Sight Quality only allows a mundane to learn Assensing and Astral Combat, but does not allow them to learn the Banishing skill which is listed further down in the kit.

If this is an oversight on Astral Perception (Banishing would be logical given the ability to learn Assensing + Astral Combat) or if my Errata is not updated I apologize for mentioning it.

Sorry. Running out of steam now (5 AM at the moment). Might pick this up at a later date.

I haven't compaired the first PT of your system with what you did here, but my anal retetive guys had submitted 5 pages of notes on pricing/points errors and other little things. I'll see if you changed any of those things when I have a few minutes to spare.

Change it to Adept and spend the point on astral sight?

My cadre are getting together to make characters. We'll take a look at it

I posted the ones I had already found in the main thread, which were mainly errors I found last March. You fixed a lot of little things already but I assume you made a lot of SR4A fixes that will need proofing.

I'll try to have a good look through it tomorrow. Glad to hear you've found someone to do layout, it looks odd without the stuff Adam already did....

Skillwire Junkie
After the increase in costs to Activesofts in SR4A, wouldn't the prices of the Skillsoft clusters need to be adjusted for the increase? I think they are still listed on Packs as the price taken out of Unwired, but the price is a 20% reduction in total cost of all Activesofts, Knowsofts, and Liguasofts, if I recall correctly, so I think they need a price change. Though this will make this particular pack look far less appealing sadly. Sorry, don't have my books on me at the moment to double check myself.

Pg 14, Recon Shaman:
Mystic Adept costs 10 BP, not 5.

Pg 23, Posthuman Operative
A cyberskull has an availability of 16, so that should be noted that this package shouldn't be chosen by normal PC's.

Pg 31, Vampire Hunter
Contacts also need an image link to support the smartlink and a second rating, +125 nuyen.

I haven't looked over all the PACKS yet (still re-reading all my 4e books to catch up as it is since I've never played this edition and my friends want me to run a game), but it might be good for flavor text if they were "labeled". Basically, something like a project I abandoned for 3rd several years ago where you have a set of skills that would have been imparted by various organizations. Lone Star's training, for example, would be pretty uniform across the board -- teaching the same style investigation, interrogation, firearms, armed/unarmed combat, etc. skills. Same for specific corp's security and military. UCAS boot camp's going to train everyone the same skills the same way, then move on to specialization after basic.

Again, this is more flavor than mechanics, but it would probably help out a lot with NPC or even PC creations when they have specific backgrounds.

I could help proofread for basic spelling errors, but I'm not good enough at min-maxing to make balance suggestions. I think other people here has more experience in making broken characters and thus can see the pitfalls.

I dont think this system is meant to make min-maxed characters.

Flavor text and/or a quick description of the pack for each one would add alot to it in both polish and ease of use.

Agreed. Short, witty one-liners can do wonders to sell a concept.

Kits - the Joe/Jane Commlink´s response does not support the System, and therefore programs. Several ways do deal with that - add a warning note or optimisation.

Which is why you want min-maxers to test it to see if it can be abused.

I'm of the favor of leaving it as is, for a couple of reasons. One, if the players meet the minimums they can just use their free Knowledge and Language skill points to buy the skills. Two, Logic + Intuition = 6 isn't terrible - it is (or should be) about average. Third, I don't consider them pure fluff investments, though I know many gamers do. That's because they don't play to utilize their character's knowledge skills.


This idea was floated several times when I was putting PACKS together, I just generally dislike limiting player's concept of the profiles this way. Also, there were space concerns. I dunno about this one.


This was actually intentional in many cases, since the program would run at a lower rating but give room and incentive for expansion. I mean, it can be done, it might be a good idea to put it up in the warning/minimums line. What does everyone else think?

I see your point Ancient.

To counter that, I would like to point out that if "many players" consider them pure RP fluff, having an extensive listing of kits with heavy investments in what they consider RP fluff is a good way to alienate a portion of your potential users.

By making the suggestions on what Knowledge skills to take, rather then assigning exact point values, you are still guiding new players and even experienced players alike. That would actually encourage them into making Knowledge Skill choices that are intelligent and relevant, and helping more players to realize that Knowledge Skills have value and are not just filler (IE TV-shows of the 20th Century).

But that's just my opinion of course.

Put it up in a warnings line.

Maybe as an addition then or maybe a suggestion at the end? It also doesn't have to be brand name related. In terms of number crunching, I seriously doubt that KE and Lone Star officers as well as rank-and-file security guards are going to be trained differently. Pistols, Longarms (Shotgun), Clubs, Etiquette, Intimidation. They're going to get training in the Predator (or a competing manufacturer's product), a shotgun, nightstick, and taser. They're going to know how to talk to different members of society on a basic level. They're going to have "command presence" to walk into a situation and show they're in charge. KE/LS SWAT, DocWagon HTR, various corpsec units, etc. are all going to be trained in the same weapons, tactics, etc. Grunt soldiers are going to know how to fire an assault rifle and a pistol and how to throw a grenade, plus some survival odds and ends. Doesn't matter if it's UCAS Marines, Aztlan Army, or Ares's regulars. So on and so forth.

Like I said, this is more useful for me as a GM than it would be for players, letting me throw together NPCs quickly...but it'll also help fill in the stats when one of my players says, "He was a Lone Star officer who was kicked off the force when Knight Errant got the Seattle contract and couldn't leave his sister who's in the hospital and had to start running to pay her medical bills when his corporate DocWagon ran out."

I'm with AH on this one. I finally took a good look at the Knowledge Skills for 4e and they're actually useful, unlike 3e in which they were only useful if you were a rigger, decker, or magic user with the appropriate sourcebook. One line in Runner's Companion I read a few minutes ago really hits it for me...

That looks like a Security Procedures check to me...

The problem here is that knowledge skills is something the players think they have already. For instance, knowing that security guards often must report in at intervals could be Security Procedures skill, but a player might just know this even if his PC doesn't have the skill. This is often called players being smart or inventive, but they're really using their own knowledge to solve problems.

You might think that Security Systems skill could be useful in taking on Matrix Systems or physical security, but in the end this is resolved by Hacking and Hardware.

Now a GM could check on the skills every time a player does something clever, but it would be very tedious, and really if the PC should have a knowldge skill for every little tidbit of info a player might have, then 400BPs would not be enough.

Thus Knowledge Skills become mostly for fluff reasons.. you want your security hacker to have some Security Systems knowledge skill even if the GM never calls for a check or just gives you info for free. Other than that it's mostly a matter of "WTF is that" knowledge skills such as Magic Background, Parazoology, Spirit World etc. where the player can actually get info from the GM during play they don't know or remember that can be very useful.

Knowledge skills are not useless, but some of them are unless the GM and players really try to make it otherwise. For example, the GM can invent a situation where befriending a potential contact becomes automatic if the talking PC has any "Classical Music" knowledge skills and can roleplay a conversation about it. But these situations are few and far between.

That's the GM's job though...create situations where each of the player's skills comes in handy at some point. Sure, I'm going to throw more bodies to shoot at to the gun adept or more datasteals at the hacker, but if I see "Botany" on a character's knowledge skill list, I'm going to work that in somewhere just like I'm going to work in their contacts and background history. I guess it's a zen thing...I don't create adventure hooks...I just look over my player's sheets and the adventure hooks create themselves.

That's not how I play the game.

Sorry, but even if you have knowledge: Botany I'm not gonna make missions where you need a botanist to save the world. You might find some use it for some day, but it is highly unlikely. A game where everything that happens is based on people weird knowledge skills makes for a surreal game and break the suspension of disbelief.

Although I would like to spend more time getting ideas from PCs backgrounds and such, in practice it's not always time for it. I prefer to create the world and the situation and see how the PCs handle it by their skills. There might just be a underwater sea mission even if none of the PCs has taken the diving skill.

If I was just going to create missions just based on the PCs then it would be combat all the time Well, with some magical problems and hacking in between.

Which brings things down to personal choice on how the game is actually played...

At my table, I have used all of my Knowledge Skills in the course of play... Including such mundane ones as PS: Cooking, Classical Literature, Gourmand, and Games (Mahjong)... it is these skills that tend to make characters unique... take a look at a Large group of characters sometimes, and the basic Active SKills of the Archtypes are almost always identical (Though actual levels of said skills will vary)... where your characters will tend to differ is in the focus of their knowledge skills...

Knowledge Skills tend to make the character come alive in my opinion...

Keep the Faith

Knowledge skills can be way more then fluff depending on how the GM wants to use them.

I love them for the simple fact that they will let my players who don't know the SR world very well gleem important knowledge when they need it. Also, if appropriate I will sometimes let the player use a knowledge skill to assist with an active skill. For instance, the if face is trying to convince someone to let them inside to install "Technomancer-Proof Firewalls" on their home node, then I might let them roll a know-skill in matrix related areas and if they do well get a bonus to fooling the suspicious target for using the right sounding jargon.

The gang colors those guys are flashing, what gang is it and how likely are they to randomly pull crap with us, or can we buy drugs off them?
Can Knight Errant pursue the team from the UCAS into Ares Corp territory as they are part of Ares Corp, or are the laws worded such that KE has to go fill out paper work anyhow if we cross the boarder? Would they just ignore it if they WERE required to stop?
Do you have to feed a captured insect spirit? Will it die if you don't? What would it eat anyhow? Can I just feed it what regular bugs would eat or do spirit versions have different diets?
A little sticky note on a terminal tells you that the passcode to the 24-hour hard-encrypted paydata is the wife of Perseus... and the wifi negation in the room makes it so the hacker can't look it up.

I'm just saying, you never know how a know-skill might be a life saver. Cutting out long periods of legwork, providing decision making info, etc, doesn't sound like only fluff to me.

I tend to view Knowledge Skills as the difference between common knowledge and uncommon knowledge.

A guy doesn't need specific Gambling knowledge to figure out blackjack, but if he wants to try and count cards, figure out the exact % of hand or know the basic safety bets in roulette, that's a knowledge check.

Likewise, knowing that a sec guard has to check in on regular intervals is common knowledge, but knowing which interval is likely at a given level of security is specific knowledge.

Yay for threadjacking! Let's go back to talking about PACKS and open up a new thread to continue debating the usefulness of knowledge skills outside their use in PACKS. Sound good?

On topic - I haven't done the number crunching, but are the two Samples given at the start valid? Because the Alternate Identity kit seems incredibly useful and going right up there with a gun and some sort of armor as a shadowrunning essential...

They should be, if I did the math right.

I would agree that they are valid.

The kits are there to simplify character creation, a set of ready-made skills, gear, etc. The costs for each component are clearly listed, and there is no "group discount" in play. So anyone who doesn't care for the knowledge skills, or any other part of a kit, can simply not take it and deduct the amount from the total. I like them, because they are good at-hand suggestions for what knowledge skills might go with a certain role.


Back on topic:
The Bodyguard only needs 5 Body to wear his armor without penalty. Form-fitting body armor only counts as half its rating for encumbrance purposes (so his 12 armor is only 9, for calculating encumbrance). Also, the Ulysses is a coat, not armored clothing.

The Gunsel Karcist needs an image link to be able to use his smartlink.

The Basic Runner II only needs 4 Body to wear his armor without penalty. Forearm guards and shin guards both only add to impact armor. His total armor should be 8/8, not 9/8.

The Ulysses Line is a hooded coat with concealed armor under the armor type of Armored Clothing, as opposed to an Armored Suit which is milspec armor and Personal Armor which is form-fitting body armor and chainmail...don't ask me, it's in Arsenal that way.

As far as the smartlink...I've re-written this part of my post three times after finding crap on 4e that has completely changed from every other edition. Essence costs are the minor one, but the big one is that cyberware smartlinks are JUST the processor now. In every other edition, they've been the entire system including image link and hub. Personally, based on the build, I'd add in a pair of cybereyes with a few mods like image magnification. Solve that problem right there.

Anything else? I'm positive I made more mistakes than this couple.

Gunsel Karcist is a TM right he has DNI/simsense innately imagelink isn't needed as simsense can do all they showing of images and such.

reposts from the other thread

Covert Ops agents have to be doubly silent.

Under Skillsoft Junkie:

Wouldn't the costs of the various skillsoft clusters have changed significantly due to the raised price of activesofts: from 3,000 to 10,000 per point?

Opps, looks like others mentioned that one before me. Oh well, I'll keep hunting.

Not sure. Maybe.

According to Unwired, it requires a non-rated complex form.

The Drone Wisperer profile and the Armorer, Basic Rigger 3, Mechanic, and Occultechnologist kits all need the Workshop quality added to their lifestyle. I'd also suggest not calling the Basic Rigger 1 and 2 lifestyles a garage, as it implies a full vehicle workshop is available to them when they only have kits.

That's the SIM Rig complex form. All TM have SIM sense for free. In fact they go around 24/7 in Hot SIM.

The discussion though centers around the display of smartlink information. While I contend you are correct on the use of SIMsense, to truly utilize a smartlink as a technomancer, by incorporating the "hard-coded tactical software" (Unwired pg 136), you do need a non-rated complex form (which is listed right under the simrig).

I hate to sound too much like a rule lawyer, but since this is the thread for it...

A garage is a place you store vehicles. Therefore the word works. I personally read no implication beyond vehicle storage.

Graywulfe

On page 14 of 31, under Magical Healer, ... "bottle of dried frog pills" ..., should that be gills or should it be pills?

Pills. It's a Terry Pratchett reference.

I'll have to take a fresh look at this. When I saw it awhile back, I noted that building combo-characters created a ton of redundancy that became a bookkeeping nightmare on the front end as you worked to remove parts that were redundant, recalculate costs and values, and such. I'll throw together some new concepts in the next day or so and see if that still holds true.

What would be nice is if we could get together as a community to produce a series of kits that we could use as a shorthand in chargen.

One thing I did suggest to Jen' last year was that there ought to be a 'Basic Runner' skills and contacts kit with all the stuff it's so easy to forget. Perception and a fixer for example.