Hi there.

I just started SR4 after playing 3 for a few years and one thing I always remember from the previous editions is that obviously the more initiative passes you got the more powerful and effective your character was. While some characters only had one pass and were done with their turn, my characters (mostly adapt types) would go a few times while everyone else just sat there and watched.

Now, in-game it is justified by the adapt having the Improved Reflexes or other characters having Wired reflexes or other stuff that allowed extra init passes. But it seemed to be a bit over-powered in previous editions (haves and have-nots).

My main questions is whether SR4 has the same issues whereas if you don't have extra passes you are fairly lame (relatively speaking) and if you do you outshine the rest of the group.

I'm thinking of disallowing such things from my game altogether depending on what playtesting from the forum has found out.

Your take is appreciated.

Additional Initiative Passes make you just stronger in Combat Situations and are one way to separate Combatspecialists from the rest of the team.
And nearly every combat character can have them and needs to invest something into them. (2-4 Powerpoints, Essence, Nuyen, Karma for a focus)

So yes: They are an extreme advantage in combat, but if you are dedicated to combat you should have them anyway. And if not and you need to join a fight: There are drugs for that
Disallowing them would severly limit the growth potential and the advantage of dedicated combat characters (and opponents)

I just hate to see some players (like a Face with little combat expertise) become basically worthless in combat though I guess by the same token the Sammy would be worthless in Social situations....

It's quite simple. If you are not up to speed (pun, kinda intended), you will not compete.

That goes for everything, pretty much. Not just initiative passes in Shadowrun.

State of the art combat tech offers this ability, and it is powerful, so not having it is making yourself weaker than intended.

Every character who is going to see combat (especially on a regular basis) with professionals will have to have at least 2 IP (better 3) in Shadowrun.

There is nothing broken about it. It's just how things are.

And there is absolutely nothing stopping a face character to also have some basic combat abilities (i.e. a combat skill, a +1 IP initiative booster, etc).

Bye
Thanee

which is OK for most face scs. but it really stinks for all mages to get the IP boost spell (plus the sustaining focus)

Also, it might seem a little too much, but you can always spend Edge to gain another IP.

And as mentioned above, drugs are cheap and easy to use for those that can't afford/don't want wires.

Jazz and Cram both give +1 IP. Drawback is the chance for addiction (and subsequent crash).

Initiative was bad in previous editions becuase it was far more expensive and you didn't have a set number of IPs, 1E and 2E were even worse because the high initiative characters received thier bonus IPs at the beginning of the initiative phase, meaning a street sam could clear a room with 2 or 3 IPs before the rest of the party even blinked.

In 4E you have a fixed number of initiative passes and the bonus passes are at the end of the round. Extra IPs are cheap and readily available to anyone who wants them in the form of cyber, bio, adept powers, spells, astral projection, drugs, VR, and even edge. Between those two factors bonus IPs are far more balanced in 4E than they were in previous editions. You'll find that any character who wants an extra IP can or will get it.

Yet no-one ever complained about my wired 3 gunbunny being too fast.

My 2nd 2E character was a wired 2 or 3 gunbunny, I got complaints about being too fast and I wasn't trying to be problematic, it was just an idea I came up with for a system I barely knew.

People who complain about something that is pretty much a core concept of the system might look at the wrong system (for them) instead of an actual problem.

Bye
Thanee

4 of the SR2 pregens come with wired 2 so complaining about that is a little odd. While Wired 3 characters generally acted first, they didn't neccessarily get an extra action over those with wired 2 so in some respects it's less effective than the curent version.

Even the face should have atleast 2 IP:s that's juat a fact of life in the dangerous shadows of the world.

Well, the face is a face and the fighter is a fighter. But thanks to SR's "glass cannon" approach, a face or some gutterpunk with a rusty AK can still send a wired veteran to kingdom come...and with the ability to go on full defense as an interrupt might even survive it.

I don't see why a Face should be bad at combat. It's not to hard to get a solid amount of dice. A weapon skill at 4, smartlink, agility 3(5) with muscle toner, and a spec after the first mission gives him 13 dice to shoot with. Not amazing but enough to be effective with an assault rifle or shotgun. Heck my gunslinger face had 16 dice in combat and most social skills thanks to a little min maxing on my part but nothing huge.

my face tends to not join for the dirty stuff. if impossible, he's very experienced at finding hiding spots. and when the chips are down he has 7 Edge.

Extra passes at the end of the round was an adjustment made in 3rd Edition. Not a a 4th Edition, cough, improvement.

Galen

Hooray! And what has that to do with the part you quoted?

Bye
Thanee

So people without a bit of effort put into combat are bad at combat. Is that really a problem? For mundanes it costs like 2BP worth of nuyen and 2 essence or 16 BP and .5 essence. For awakened it costs 1.5 PP or a spell and a sustaining focus. For everyone it can also cost around 100-200 nuyen for some drugs. I don't see that as being an excessive price that creates a massive separation between combat and non-combat characters.

Now, when the combat characters start getting 4 IPs, there is a decent separation but... well, they are combat characters. They should be good at combat. Better than those who aren't as focused in combat.

I mean, I don't hear anyone complaining that the sammy is going to get his butt kicked in the social realm, or on the matrix without a huge resource sink. In the same way, it shouldn't be odd that a face of hacker is going to get their butt kicked in physical combat unless they invest some resources in that area.

Exactly, you'll notice the quote you made was in reference to the previous paragraph which was discussing not only 3E, but also 2E and 1E. In that paragraph I specifically mentioned 1E and 2E being worse for not having this mechanic, and while I didn't state that 3E was different, I inferred that it was simply by not mentioning that it wasn't.

Also everyone starts with at least one edge, so even if they spend 0 character resources at all to get extra actions, they can still take one if they want.

Our face-to-face game is experimenting with a home-brew version of Initiative passes in SR4A. I think it was drawn from a post here on DS. It is best represented by an inverted pyramid, with 4 IPs at the top and 1 IP at the bottom:

4___4___4___4
__3___3___3__
____2___2____
______1______

So, reading from left to right there are 7 potential Initiative passes in a Combat Round, in some of which more than one IP type gets to act. Within the passes, the better Initiative roll goes first. This appears to be a mix of Initiative Pass mechanisms from earlier and later versions of SR. Arguments in the group in favour of this method tend towards "augmented PCs with hyper-fast reflexes should go first as well as more often." Arguments against tend towards "PCs with high Initiative without as much 'pass augmentation' should be quick off the mark, but don't go first here."

We've only played a couple of sessions, so the experiment is still gathering data.

I came up with that actually

I'm interested to hear how it is working out for you so far. Can't be too bad if you're still using it after multiple sessions.

For your against argument, my counter would be "Yes, they are quick off the mark compared to others with the same number of IP, but the extra IP is a greater factor than init." Basically extra points of init measure a change in reaction time of something like 0.01 seconds, but an extra IP is a reach time change of something like .5 seconds. Hope that makes sense.

Me too, as I'm considering using it too.

Good idea! Well done.

That's basically the winning point that led us to try it. The system does put a greater emphasis on tech and magic that increase IPs than on those that increase Reaction. Of course, Reaction enhancements still help in ducking bullets!

So far the system works smoothly. We are currently in the middle of a run and I get the sense the GM is about to open a can of whupass on us. So I should have lots of 'data' after the next session in a couple of weeks.

Not necessarily on topic but related nonetheless is the thought process in restricting the amount of dice in a dice pool at character creation. I am purposesly trying to get my group away from the 4e D&D powergame min/max mode. Of course they can do the same in SR but like I said, I am trying to get them away from that. If I restrict all dicepools to 12 dice or less (not including situational modifeiers) am I really screwing the party?

A second question is whether that restriction would severely hamper the party during canon runs like Dawn of the Artifacts?

PCs who occasionally fight but aren't focused on it should have 2 IPs; combat specialists should have 3. Having 2 IPs is cheap enough that anyone can do it, and 3 is affordable if fighting is important. 4 IPs is usually not worth the nuyen/karma compared to improving whatever attack you're doing in the first 3 IPS.

No, having multiple IPs isn't overpowered: it's the standard.

Yes, you are, and yes, it would. Even the (sub)standard archetypes are not that limited. If you limit dice pools, you are running a low-powered, variant campaign.

If you still want to do that, I would advise against limiting dice pools across the board like that. Someone rolling 12 dice for sneaking, fixing a bike, disabling a MagLock, or hacking is pretty damn good. Someone rolling 12 dice for combat is middling at best. Some skills require higher dice pools to be effective, because they are opposed dice tests with lots of potential negative modifiers. So if you limit dice pools, I would recommend 15 for magic, combat, and social skills, and 12 for everything else (or 12 for magic, combat, and social skills, and 9 for everything else, if you want a really low-powered campaign).

The typical size of dicepools varies wildly. First Aid for example is a Logic + First Aid Skill + Medkit Rating check, which can easily bypass 12. It takes a whole lot more work to get some other dicepools that high. Since the difficulties for rolls vary wildly, putting in such a dice pool cap will have rather random results.

You might be better off having a somewhat lower starting attribute/skill maximum rating.

You might want to consider using the alternative Karma Character Generation in Runner’s Companion (page - 42). It makes highly specialized characters (min/max) a lot more expensive to build, thus naturally pushing players to generalize more.

Yes, but make sure to have stats be 5x instead of 3x, and you'll likely want to use 600ish karma.

Right, forgot about that, thanks

750 karma is the default amount of Karma to make a shadowrunner (with the errata being to use x5 for purchasing Attributes, and paying the BP cost in Karma for metatypes). 600 Karma is not really enough to make a shadowrunner, just a punk starting out or a wannabe.

In my experience, low-powered games are a nice variant campaign for seasoned roleplayers, but won't "break" people of min-maxing habits. They will still min-max as much as they can, will be even more limited outside of their specialties, and will be lukewarm about this new game because their characters will suck so much.

I don't entirely agree with this, especially not for starter characters. Your starter TM should only have 1 IP, and unless he's going heavily for AR hacking and gets 2 submersion grades specifically aimed at getting his first rank in the meatspace IP echo, he's going to stay there for a while. Of course, he makes up for this by having 3 IP rating 5-6 sprites in drones doing the meat combat for him (or going VR and rigging a drone or 12 himself). If a mage doesn't take the IP spell, she's not going to get those extra actions, but that doesn't make her ineffective in combat, it just means she's going to be your stereotypical slow heavy hitter. A mundane rigger doesn't need meatspace actions, he's always using VR actions through his drones, same as the TM above.

Technomancers are an exception that proves the rule since they are enormously expensive relative to the other archetypes. At any rate, getting 2 IPs with combat drugs isn't hard, although it has its own complications.

Aaaand double post.

I'm not sure First Aid is an especially good example, because you really need a gigantic dice pool to get decent results with it. Let's say your character is built to be the party medic, with Logic 6 + First Aid 6 (Combat Wounds) + Medkit 6 = 20 dice. You're trying to render aid to your adept buddy (-2 dice for an Awakened patient; see "Healing Modifiers Table," SR4A, p.253) in the middle of a firefight (-3 dice for bad conditions) after he's been hit with an LSD capsule round (-2 dice for an uncooperative patient). Suddenly your 20-dice pool is now 13 dice, averaging a little over four hits. Let's say you get those four hits on your roll; two of them don't count, because "each net hit over the threshold reduces 1 box of damage." ("Using First Aid," SR4A, p.252) With a theoretical dice pool of 20, you just healed your buddy of a whopping two, count 'em, two boxes of damage. Yeah, you can get a bigger pool with cerebral boosters and other things, but the point is that a dice pool that would be excellent for almost any other skill is "meh" at best for First Aid.

Maybe Im just old fashioned, but Im not too big on the idea of the less-combat oriented types(decker\TM\Face) having more than one IP, at least for awhile. So what if the street sam and mage get some extra nuking in? Thats what they're THERE for. The rest can still shoot and at least provide cover fire if nothing else(though usually more of course).

Granted there's always the idea of mixing. I just like spending my points on what Im supposed to do, and let the others spend on what they're supposed to do. Go ahead, get your 2 or 3 IP's, Ill be over here talking the entire gang into doing my dirty work, or hacking the local AR environment and making the enemies shoot eachother

Its a matter of preference in the end I suppose. Game's built with the idea of extra IP's firmly in mind, so run with it.

For a number of years I have used an initiative system as follows:

• You have a number of D10 equal to your initiative passes (you can buy extra with edge)
• You roll the D10s and these are the segments you go on.
• All actions on a segment are deemed to be instantaneous (so you don't take wound penalties until the next segment)
• You can use 2 die to "buy" a number. i.e. if you have three dice, you could roll 1, and spend the the other 2 to go on segment 1 (you can buy these at any time)

The interesting part of this is that people will often trade in passes to go first, or even more interestingly wait for the opponent to do things and respond immediately. It also introduces a surprising amount of variability into the game: a round in which you get all goes on the same number is one in which you can do some serious damage! Even the fastest samurai will occasionally roll 8,9,0, and the mooks might all roll 1,2 giving the mooks 2 actions before the samurai. People with 4 passes will rarely use all of them: typically they will roll 2 die, keep 2 back to spend at any time, so they often only get to go two or three times, but their actions are typically more effective.

While I don't disagree with this, I also feel that any IP chars that might see bullets flying should carry Jazz/Cram just in case.

That's one of the ways I play. I'm typically back away from the combat with the rest of the team taking the heat. Delaying and going last lets me engage targets that are about to become a big threat to a teammate by injecting my action phase before that target's.

Interesting approach. Bit too random for my taste, though (ok, you can do something about the randomness via the trade-in rule, but still...).

Bye
Thanee

Looking at the gameplay problems of an IP gap (i.e. half the players feeling useless when the game is at its slowest) one remedy is to elaborate on the combat scenes. If all you've got is a team-on-team shoot out in open terrain then the difference will be very noticeable.

This can be counteracted by giving the players more to consider, such as –
- Lots of cover
- Spread out opposition
- Surprises like reinforcements, unexpected weapons/spells/etc., third-party interlopers
- Flexible opposition tactics
- Suppressive fire

Things like these will increase the need for non-offensive actions, making the multi-IPers spend more of their IPs on tactical purposes. The single-IPers won't be affected as much because they will tend to learn things at the same rate and changes in the team's plan will be made between their actions by the others (e.g. saying something takes at least a free action, but hearing it does not).

It's also important that the GM has the opposition try to take out the more dangerous characters first. One or two rounds into a combat the goons should be so preoccupied by the sammy-shaped blur that the face can sneak up on any of them with ease.

I don't know about that. While a 1 IP person will learn stuff at the same time as a 4 IP person, the 4 IP person can react to it much sooner, and can do far more things about it. For example a 1 IP person getting shot at by some new threat has to give up their entire turn to dodge the bullets, but the other guy only has to give up 1/4th of a turn. Same goes for taking cover and spreading out and all that. The one with 4 IP only has to apply 1/4th as much effort, which means that after dealing with all these new things, he still has actions left to shoot people with. The 1 IP people however will end up doing even less because they'll have to burn all their actions on tactical maneuvering or taking cover or dodging or whatever and won't actually get to do anything meaningful.

This is likely true. The Mooks are going to be more concerned with the clear and obvious threat (ie sammy) than the non-obvious threat (ie hacker bringing up drone reinforcements, face that doesn't seem to have a weapon, etc)

An IP boost I haven't seen mentioned is rigging. If you know there's going to be combat you can rig a cheap armed drone and leave your meat body somewhere safe. Voila – 2 or 3 IPs for the cost of a skill or two. No essence loss, no magic loss, no resonance loss, no addiction (except hot sim maybe) and only a few thousand nuyen for the hardware and software.

I've just come up with this so I look forward to being shown all the flaws I haven't considered!

Not being able to accurately predict combat encounters would be the first, I guess.

However, what should the GM do when the "most dangerous" characters are blurred. How do you define most dangerous? How quickly the target is killing your buddies or how close the target is?

Rate these characters from least to most dangerous to the mooks.

Two sammies, one of which is running around punching the snot out of everyone who gets near each him. He's obviously armored. The other sammie is using knives and blades as an amateur cosmetic surgeon and wearing a chameleon suit.

Behind them is third guy dual wielding pistol and he looks like he's wearing maybe an armored jacket.

And a bit behind them is a guy hunkered down with a rifle killing your buddies using the one shot one kill mantra who is a bit difficult to see because of his chameleon suit.

There are no further characters spotted, and the hacker is one of these four. The sammies and the pistol guy seem to be acting faster and more often than the rifler.

Regarding rigging

Pro:
Highest possible Initiative Passes in meat combat (5 without houseruling this)
Possible ridiculous dicepools (Skill + Sensor + 2 Spec + 2 Smartlink + 2 VR + 2 Rigging Ctrl + Successes from Sensor targeting)
Low Risk for your meat body
Hardened Armor

Con:
Damage is expensive and won't be healed with Heal Spell or Medkit
Vulnerable to hacking. The Pro can turn into Cons when someone else starts giving the orders
Not as versatile as a meat body
High risk for your meat body (Someone sneaking up on you)

Having played cybered character in SR2 with 17+4d6 initiative and 12 combat pool, I'd agree that nobody "complained". But it did get a lot of comment as being powerful, and did force the GM to ratchet up the level of physical opposition if he wanted to pose a threat. Acting 3-5 times per round, with 1 or 2 actions before anybody else in the fight (which was usually held to take out the first person to move, negating their 3 actions), was a huge advantage. The fact that I got to use the full 12 combat pool made it even more powerful; that's 36-60 extra dice hitting the table each turn!

SR4 changes both of those things. Arguably, high reaction is now more powerful than a large combat pool ever was, but it has a hard cap at 1.5 times racial max, so you wouldn't see numbers like I mentioned above. (Actually, I think they can get up that high, but it takes a bit more massaging than it used to.)

Bye
Thanee

My gunbunny didn't carry anything particulary nasty, her standard loadout was a Guardian, Colt Cobra and an MGL-6. Our big threat was the troll with the sawn-off Panther AC.

Best guess is the rifleman for the hacker, and is also the character least likely to get targeted due to having good cover and being the furthest away. So they'd likely go after whichever of the melee combatants is closest to them due to natural tendencies. The pistolleer would likely be targeted either after the melee guys were taken down, or by enemies that aren't in close range of any of the melee opponents.