It's been ages since I've posted in these forums, so forgive any out-of-touch-sounding parts of the post. I've read through the "what's your favorite edition" thread and gotten a sense of how 4E differs from previous editions, but I wanted to get some 4E-specific feedback. I picked up the 4E(A) book recently, mostly out of sheer disbelief that I bought the 1E book 20 years ago and thumbed through it. It whetted my appetite for Shadowrun again (I've played all editions, 3E very heavily). I know people have strong opinions about 4E vs. older editions, but that's not really what I'm interested here. If the mechanics don't work for my table, I'll change.

1. There was some complaint that the noir aspect of the Shadowrun is diminished in 4E. This plays a reasonably significant roll in my games; could someone give an example of how the mechanics (I'm not too worried about flavor--I can handle that as a GM) do this?

2. What is considered "competent" nowadays? By way of example, player-owned assault rifles are fairly rare in my games and heavy weapons are almost unheard of. I want the players to be decent at what they do, but not have day jobs as Navy SEALs. About how many dice should our resident heavy pistol-using face be rolling when he shoots someone? It seems like ~12 is reasonable--am I way off on this?

3. Are there any supplement books that are notoriously bad in terms of balance. I've seen a few pbp campaigns disallow Augmentation straight out--is this typical? If anyone is familiar with Legend of the Five Rings, I don't want to spend money on something like "Art of the Duel" and then never use it.

4. Is there something as I GM I should always look for on character sheets to avoid weird brokeness? In the past, it was layering armor (and other things)--what's the 4E equivalent?

5. What's the most common houserule?

Thanks for all the feedback!

Hm hm.. well, i wish you a lot of fun with the game. Let's see...

1. No opinion... maybe later in the discussion. But i think the one factor you need to scale down is magic. The best and dark happenings can easily uncovered and solved by high-force magics *g*.

2. Depends of course of the level of your game. I would say around 10 dice is very good (8 through skill + attribute, both above average, or average and slightly augmented) and two from equipment. But if you really want to play in the big-boy league... yeah, 12+ is good enough for nearly everything and 18 or so is just overkill (most of the times). In normal activity even 4 dice may yield good enough results.

3. Hm... don't know about this. But i know: whatever book you use. ALL have to use it. If for example a hacker has access to the Unwired. All NPC's need to have it too, since it builds up modifiers nicely and allows for more trickery. The street magic book introduces powerful different spirits and VERY useful metamagics, so the NPC's need it too. But totally unbalanced i wouldn't call any book.

4. Layering Armor. Seriously... highest numerical varience is there, i guess. Some have 6/4 or something while some trolls could be running around with 30/30. Not good. The other thing is drain/spell comboes (And PIXIES... don't allow them... i have one in my campaign.. good GOD those mental attributes). With the spells: It is now easier to get a spell through at high-resistance targets (except other mages) and there are no thresholds against mental attacks, just "timers". That can be very disbalancing in my opinion.

5. No idea... maybe the hacking rule with logic?

Pistol Dice Pools:
Agility 4 to 8
Skill: 3-5
smartlink +2
specialty +2
Take Aim +1
reflex recorder +1

So your face should be throwing around 12-14 dice.
Your Combat Sam is going to be throwing around 19-20 dice

1. no comment
2. I would say 10-15 dice would be a typical well trained professional, some instances this changes as some attribute+skill+gear combos have a whole lot more gear available for boosting than others.
3. Runners Companion still has many things that are throw outs, like it always has
4. layering armor, Edge 5+ on starting characters, pornomancers (read up on this one). Mind control spells (eak, i mean super eak). Not "broken" but I would also say magic on a whole, summoners and casters are more powerful than ever and your group is more hosed if you dont have one counterspelling for you. Also Magic Attribute != Old Magic Attribute, its some sorta weird hybred of the old attribute and spell pool so be aware that overcasting is now more common and not the same as before.
5. The two I hear most are you cant buy Edge at character creation (I agree), and that drain = force when overcasting (I disagree)

It all depends on the power level of your game. It's ridiculous to say the the face 'should' be throwing 12 dice for Pistols.

Why?
12 dice is basically competence with firearms.
That's a 3-4 agility and a 3-4 skills. That's a veteran combatant.

Yeah, a combat veteran. Not a face. Maybe I misunderstood the OP, and *his* face is a combat veteran. And I wouldn't assume reflex recorders. Smartlink, absolutely, but a 3 in Firearms is someone who shoots as their job.

And you're shadowrunners. I would expect for every shadowrunner to have one combat skill at 3.
Be it unarmed, or pistols, or something. I could see an argument for a 2, but not any lower. And really if that face is throwing out 7 dice, and the Sam is throwing out 18. Any opposition that can make the Sam think twice, will slaughter the face.

This is a face in the shadows. He shoots as his job as well.

If the face is an average joe in that department:

3 Agility (not his dump stat but not his best one either) + 3 Skill (3 would be a professional level skill-.ie. you're competent) + 2 from Smartlink=8 Dice (or 10 if he specializes in a certain pistol, like revolvers or automatics)

I play an professional mage and even i don´t have pools over 12. The corresponding attribute is at 5, skill 5 plus specialization. And this is my special field. A face has completely different preferences in attributes, so i even think that agility between 3 and 4 are not really common in this character class. Maybe you misinterpret old A-Team movies and the character "Face"in it, who is, if i remember correctly, a former special-military-unit soldier, not a real "Face".

I've started a street level game a couple of years ago and it is still going strong. Like you, I wanted the heavier weapons to be very very rare.

We use a number of House Rules that work pretty well, mainly to rebalance the game according to our power levels. A Mage, even one not optimized to do so can fit in pretty well in a game where everyone is running around with assault cannons and high damage output weapons.

Also watch out for electrical weapons, they can be very powerful because of the rules for electrical damage.

Specialty ammo can be another problem. Even if everyone in your games are using submachine guns and lighter weapons, ammo like stick and shock and APDS can really mess things up.

Spirits.

Tell me if you are interested in any of our solutions to these problems. And have fun in your new game!

1. There is no real rules change here

2. 12 dice should do fine in most circumstances - they won't be blowing anyone away in one round, but they'll be able to hit.

3. Runner's Companion has the most "broken" rules in my opinion, Pixies, etc, but it also has a lot of really neat stuff too. From a power perspective, I don't think that any of them are particularly "munchkin-only" or anything like that.

4. tete covered most of the big ones that I know of.

5. Probably "No mental spells" or some drastic reduction of power on them, no Possession Traditions, and some type of increased over casting penalty (F instead of F/2, does physical and stun, etc)

Thanks for all the replies. I decided to risk googling "pornomancer" from my work computer...wow. As someone who's been psyched for social adepts ever since they were hinted at in the Aztlan sourcebook, that seems pretty damn scary. Ironically, my intro adventure was going to revolve around a snatch and grab of a social adept--I may need to rework her now.

I'm at work so I don't have access to my book at the moment, but are the mental spells everyone's talking about things like Control Thoughts (from previous editions)?

The face in question is sort of James Bond-esque, but with a lower standard of living. Suave, well-dressed guy who can reasonably expect to hit things he shoots at, even if no one is going to confuse him with Doc Holliday. He'd have a smartlink, but not a reflex recorder, if that is any indication of how important guns are to the him.

Obviously, I'm going to have to really read and re-read the magic rules carefully. My saving grace is that the players most interested in playing mages are also the ones incapable of min-maxing, even when they try.

Your best bet is to be clear with your players how many dice they should be throwing and how many things they should be proficient in. Otherwise you'll be expecting 12 dice, some of your players will have 12 dice and someone will sit down with:



Yes, the above character is a min-max nightmare. It's a variation off the pornomancer because of trends I saw happening in Missions. (Face = profit. Face = reduced delivery time. Face = more profit when other players pay face for delivery time. And everyone in Missions had better be able to survive combat.)

Without being clear to your players you'll face similar nightmares. Pixie Mages. Emotitoys. Rating 6 medkits. Stick-n-shock. And coming soon, a pixie with Ares Redlines. Fear the pixie with a laser. Fear it.

Yes, statistically its very difficult for mundanes to protect against, they do get to roll again to break free but depending on what the mage wants them to do, its already over. I have heard of some groups imposing the opposite of social modifier table to the spells resistance rolls to help this issue. So if it would harm the guy he gets two bonus dice and what not. There is also a magic resistance edge so if every mundane buys a couple levels of that its not as big of deal. The problem is the caster gets attribute+skill and the target (non mage) gets attribute, but this is where counterspelling is supposed to come in but if the poor target doesn't have a mage friend hes hosed.

[edit] also +1 karma to suoq, for a good easy to build min/max character that will make everyone at the table cry a little.

I don't see that combat face as a particularly scary build. It's a competent face who is also very good at shooting a pistol. Effective but not exactly game-breaking. He won't replace the Sam (who should have bigger dice pools, bigger weapons, a greater variety of fitting weapon skills for the situation, more resilience to damage etc).

That face doesn't have Move by Wire 2 or Bone lacing + orthoskin
Trauma Dampeners, Platelet Factory

There is a lot of sophisticated character creation options that let you make serious monsters. And that's without dipping into the 'questionable ruling' game breaking characters

I mean more that the build could be done by anyone with only a little knowledge and hes not showing us in this thread 400 BP worth of stuff. It just is a good example of if a professional is 12 dice hes already at 16 for something that is not his focus.

Wow...just spent like 30 minutes doing some research in Catalyst. Since they're still around, I'm assuming they didn't declare bankruptcy and/or face charges--yes?

Its in court I think the next hearing is in October.

I don't think that the mechanics ever really supported noir vs. not noir. Tone is up to the GM and players to set.



4 stat + 4 skill (+2 spec) = 10 dice. This is a good minimum buy-in for a character's main skills.

In the games that I run, I tell players to shoot for 10-14 dice in their primary skills. I go so far as to put a hard cap of 16 to dice pools at character generation. I think that 12 dice is a good 'standard'. Twelve holds up to investigation as a derived standard by way of 12 dice allowing the buying of 3 hits (enough to hit most thresholds), leaving a player with at least six dice (a good minimum to avoid glitches) in all but the most extremely unfavorable of circumstances.



The .pdf's of the books are cheaper than the hardcover and worth the investment. Arsenal, Runners Companion and Seattle 2072 have proved to be the most useful to me by far. Street Magic makes Adepts a lot less mediocre and really fleshes out magic (without getting crazy busted unless the GM lets his pants get pulled down). Unwired adds some really nice stuff to hacking and can help make a lot of sense out of the hacking system. Finally, Augmentation has great rules for custom cyberlimbs, finally recognizes that a cyberlimb should do physical damage with a melee attack, and has some great bioware in it.

Really, SR4A is extremely playable out of the box. I'd only look into supplemental books based on what your PCs choose to play. If you get a sammy who exhausts his options and wants 'more', tell him to pick up Augmentation and/or Arsenal. Same for hackers / riggers / mages etc.



I always look at character sheets as broken down by BP. I expect 180-200ish on stats and at least 120 on skills. If you see someone with 240 bp on stats and 90 on skills, they are probably min maxing their face off.



Varies from table to table. I strongly suggest house ruling Social Mods to mind control tests with tasks that make no sense (ie, 'jump off this ledge - you can fly!') allowing an immediate check to break mind control. Influence spells are really, really dangerous. Use caution.