The other thread about which edition was best highlighted something that many of us feel - we miss those old combat pools...I must agree.

So if you were to house rule it - to bring it back in SR4A...how would you do it?

First you'd have to get rid of the actually used pool system and reduce dice throws to skill-only. Then you'd have to think about what attributes to use for the old-style dicepools.

Yeah, drop stats from the base DP for stuff and throw stats into various pools. One big question is: what do you do with the matrix? Leave it as is but logic actually helps you by giving you a matrix pool?

That would be a start. I might have to break out my old books that I still have (or have re-acquired) and re-read the pools sections. Might be an interesting mechanic. I liked them personally. Allowed you to go all out or to spend just enough effort to get the job done.

I don't know, all it really did was give you the choice of how you distributed your combat pool between 1st shot, 2nd shot and saved for defense, wasn't it?

The simplest way to achieve the same effect would be to allow for stances, defensive gives you +2 REA and -2 for attacks, and offensive stance the opposite.

I never really felt they added much above that, and they were a bitch to keep track of. I even tried to make it more interesting by not having it refresh each pass, they needed to get behind cover and do some test to refresh them, and a leader with small unit tactics and comms and battletac gave bonuses to it. It had the intended effect, combat became fire a bit, then hunker down and catch your breath and discuss tactics (refresh combat pool), resume firing, and with some interesting tactics of moving to flank while the opfor refreshed. But overall, it didn't really add to the fun.

What is it about combat pools that you guys liked?

I thought combat pools refreshed each turn, not each IP. Could be wrong though, 3rd is far from my strong point.

Maybe I'm thinking 2nd. Iirc it didn't even have IPs. You rolled dice the old fashioned way and added them to your initiative, you then acted on that score, and if it was above 10, you subtracted 7 and got to act again.

I'm pretty sure I played a version were RAW had pools refresh on each action.

EDIT: Yep, I wasn't thinking 3rd, I never played 3rd.

Right, but I thought it only refreshed when everyone had to roll initiative again.

Nope. Refreshed every time you got another pass.

/This is correct

You're thinking 3rd I think. In 2nd you got combat pool dice refreshed each time you acted.

I'll look it up tonight but I'm 99% sure combat pool refreshes every combat turn rather than every combat phase in 2e. A phase was each time you acted and a turn was every time you rolled initiative.

hi hi

Combat pool could be a place for all those extra bonuses that would otherwise put your dice pool over its limit.

I don't know that I've ever actually run into having bonuses over my DP limit.

Which could not be applied to the roll, because you are already over your limit...
Heheh...

ok after rereading 2e I can see how someone would think you get your Combat Pool every action but the key is the initiative section (pg 79) where it talks about how Combat Turns are broken into Phases. Your dice pool refreshes on your Action during the Combat Turn, not on your Phase Action. All Phases resolve before starting a new Combat Turn. So you roll initiative, refresh pools (kinda, you have to wait for your first action of the Turn to refresh), resolve actions per the Phases. When done roll initiative and start again.

[edit] its kinda funny rereading it as we would skip many of the steps (like declaring all the actions first) but yielded similar results. I cant imagine tracking all actions and not resolving them. That would be a nightmere.

[edit2] On further review I believe your interpretation is correct as it clearly says that Combat Pool works like other dice pools and the Control Pool clearly says it refreshes for every action

Considering how you can, in some cases, exceed 20 dice without a combat pool, suggests we would need to pare down the current mechanics to keep it manageable. Though, if you basically replace the current combat system with a combat pool that ultimately lets you get the same dice pool size (20+), the need for a change seems a bit less. Not saying its a bad thing, since what I liked about combat pools was the increased flexibility for generalized characters like me, that liked to be able to do many things well, as opposed to a limited number of things 'superawesome'.

Well, just throwing in Agi to the combat pool would take almost half the DP away from the main roll. So basic roll would generally be Skill + smartlink with a CP of Agi. Tacnet should definitely go into the compat pool. Reflex recorder would go onto the actual skill, as would improved ability. Can't think of any other bonuses off hand, but that should about halve the normal DP of an attack.