na the problem is the suckers who can't keep up on ability and performance.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/4262/saturday-ni...ai-delicatessen



Certainly other levels of escalation can lead to problems. The combative issue is just exacerbated because it can easily lead to player deaths. If a low charisma hacker is caught in a social scenario things will go horribly wrong, but usually in a way that the group can get a good laugh out of. While disemboweled, shot up, and dead character scenarios can be a memorable "laugh it up" experience for the group, it generally isn't.

yea just like that!

I enjoy combat and think that enforcing the idea of this world being dangerous is important. What bugs me is this: At chargen, a dice pool at 12 is considered 'good at something. you can pass tests and perform competently' while 16 or so is 'yeah man! you're pretty good!'. A 6 in a skill or attribute places you in the UPPER ECHELONS OF HISTORY at said skill, while a specialization and a 5-10 BP quality puts you in the running for greatest unaugmented capability at that activity throughout the known existence of all mankind.

Why does Mr. J need THIS man to protect a hacker while he downloads financial data from his rival? Why does this man accept 10,000 as payment when he could go on a goddamn performance shooting tour and retire wealthy?

The setting makes more sense without that being the standard. It makes more sense that the thug with a stolen Strength 6 cyberarm has a punch to worry about and that the computer in your brain monitoring your reflexes makes up a bigger chunk of your ability to dodge his swing than just icing on top

The game I want most is one where the players agree to limiting their beginning characters stats and branching out more so there's more cooperation between generalists with some spice in a certain area needed to complete tasks rather than separate specialists on opposite sides of a fence playing a different game at the table. And as the karma builds up they can begin to spread a couple points in the needed skills but save some to shine at what they like to do in SR

I think you might be overestimating the financial rewards of someone going on a "performance shooting exhibition", as opposed to getting 10K to shoot a few people in the face (or maybe not have to do anything at all). Skills of 6 will be fairly common in some areas and vocations. The downfall of the fluff is that it tries to assign levels of performance to a number that is about one third of the dice pool. The other problem is that it presents differences of a single die (about a third of a success, on average) as if they were incredible gulfs of ability.

Sure, you might shoot at the firing range every day (and have a skill of 6), but what if you have Agility: 1 due to a degenerative nerve disease that you're slowly recovering from now, and suppose your religion considers bodily augmentations a sin? How will you compare to the street sam with pistols: 3, who has a specialization in semi-automatics, 2 points of muscle toner to raise his Agility from 3 to 5, a reflex recorder for pistols, and a smartlink? The guy with completely average stats and skills is rolling 13 dice to your 7!

Right, so 12-14 without equipment or augmentation is the 'peak human' range. It's not unreasonable to say 'that man is the best, but look how technology/magic evens the score', and give the other man that Smartlink, Reflex Recorder, etc.

i have a reply and other thoughts, but im self-conscious of derailing the thread about power escalation with my own discussion so I'll make a new one

Plus, if we go by Leverage, we can see that Elliot is the primary muscle, but that's not all his skillset. He's excellent face/con support, can sing, is extremely knowledgeable on military/paramilitary/blackops information, and random bits of information. Much like the rest of the team, he's got several skill-sets. Though arguably Sophie and Nate are more 'pure social skill' type characters, with Sophie being face, and Nate being face/coordinator, though Sophie tends to be just as good.

I think part of the issue related to that is that skill doesn't equal payday. I mean life doesn't always reward skill, it rewards the guy that exploits the skill (theirs or someone elses). In SR, sure you have runners, largely the PCs, that have 6s and 7s, and should be godlike entities walking around, so why don't they own the world? Usually their backstory is they don't wanna play by the rules. They like their 'independence', they like regularly using their skills for mayhem, profit and whatever. In general, Runners are a little 'off-kilter'. They don't make good 'company men' and can't be trusted to be loyal company men, especially since one week they may be hitting your enemy, next week they've hit one of your own facilities.

Yeah, I would not call these theoretical sammies slinging 24+ dice with a gun and nothing else they can do min-maxed. I would consider them poorly-crafted munchkins. A true min-maxer might have 20 or so dice in his primary specialty, but instead of pursuing those last few disproportionately expensive dice, he will make sure that he has other areas covered, such as first aid, infiltration, perception, etc. Heck, it's not too hard to make a street samurai with a complete second specialty - sammie/face, sammie/covert ops, etc.

This is why I enjoy my rigger so much in Missions. A variety of drones and hacking ability allows him to participate heavily in practically every module.

As long as the players have not broke any rules, I'd not call them munchkins but powergamers, although poorly constructed ones.

I'd say that the sammie can fill any role in pinch with skillwires. He should be able to back up any role short of magic. If he has Astral Hazing, I'd say that he can fill in somewhat for the mage for magical protection.

Yeah, you're right. Botched powergaming is a better description than munchkin, as the latter assumes some immature behavior as well.