The only difference between those two calculations is what cyberware affects the combat pool unless you differently weight the variables.
I could accept reaction increases affecting the combat pool, but usually only after an adjustment period.

Ah, well first off my original suggestion was Pool = React + Wil/2. Note that this differs significantly from Pool = (React + Wil)/2, as reaction isn't halved. So with this rule Joe Average stays at the same 3, Tommy Troll goes from five to seven, Joe Cyber goes from 8 to 11, and Mr Munchy goes from 11 to a rather insane 21.

This does give Mr. Munchkin a sizable lead in Combat Pool. Of course, since I'm also fixing an egregious error in the rules by upping Wired Reflexes 2 to 3.5 Essence cost, Mr. Munchy is spending either 525k and 5.30 Essence for his speed, or 690k and 4.6 Essence, or 1.05M and 4.24 Essence for his ultramonster speed. I figure he ought to get his money's worth in Combat Pool anyway; he's not gonna have much else!

I'm not sure what to do about muscle replacement. Did cybered attributes ever increase Combat Pool? If they did, maybe these should just give a direct increase of half their Rating to Combat Pool, like the Math SPU and Encephalon do to Hacking.

I disagree, and my experience in "real" fighting does bear it out. It doesn't matter how fast the other guy moves, it matters how effectively.

For example, I've gotten into sparring matches with old men, who were also masters. I can move a lot faster than they can, in terms of raw speed-- if we had a video game contest, I could push buttons a lot faster; on the reaction time tests, I always outscored them by at least a third, if not more.

Did my speed help? Not noticeably. The faster I moved, the faster I got my butt kicked.

The 11% advantage seems about right. When I've sparred with people who were roughly my same skill, speed did help, although it wasn't a deciding factor. I've beaten people by being faster, and I've been beaten when I was faster; similarily, I've lost to those both faster and slower than I am.

Going back to the video game example-- it doesn't matter how fast the other guy mashes buttons. If he's not better than you, he'll lose. If he's your equal, then speed comes into play; but only then, and it's not a deciding factor.

Okay, I see what you're getting at. What I provided was a spectrum of the total possibilities, and based the outcomes on that. Thus, the results I posted were valid, as Zazen very kindly proved. (I was lazy and skipped a few details, but I think I got the overall probabilities pretty close.)

Anyway, when you think about it, three times as many actions does not equal moving three times faster. In one action, a person can fire two shots from a semiauto pistol. So, we have the difference between someone who can fire two aimed shots, versus six, in three seconds.

Now, if I take you to the range, how long do you think it'll take you to fire 6 rounds from a pistol? Probably a lot less than three seconds. You may not be able to aim those shots effectively, but I'd wager that you can squeeze off six rounds from anything but a single-action revolver in under three seconds. (And, with practice, I'm sure you could do that.)

So, we're not talking about full-body movement, necessarily. The movement rules bear that out-- higher reaction doesn't equal higher movement. We're talking small twitches, and not a cinematic battle royale. Basically, increased reaction means increased control of your body, allowing you to add more strikes into a series-- not that you're actually throwing more punches.

Hm, how to explain. Okay, let's say that you throw a hook to the face, then pull your arm back. That's a decent basic attack. Now, someone who is faster can throw that hook, fold his arm back for an additional elbow strike, and then pop off a backfist on the retraction. Three attacks in the same movement, and rather you throw one or three, the whole sequence takes about the same amount of time.

Now, here's the catch. Let's say someone hard-blocks your first hook. Suddenly, it doesn't matter how fast you can throw the series, the whole mess has been blocked. You've got to retract and start all over with a new series. It doesn't matter how fast you threw the punch, or how fast you can go through the series; one block, and the whole mess is gone.

So, we see that speed is an advantage, in that you can utilize more of your body to throw more blows. But it's not an overwhelming advantage.

The problem is that all real-world experience in sparring or fighting is essentially irrelevant here. The difference in Reaction between the most vapid, mentally and physically incompetent person on the planet and one of the greatest martial arts masters of all time is exactly 8. This means that the initiative difference is between 3 (1+6 and 9+1) and 13, (1+1 and 9+6), an average of 8. This is assuming our incompetent person is practivally incapable of movement or conscious thought, and the martial arts master is at the human Attribute Maximum for Int and Quickness. Those old men and quick youngsters you were fighting almost certainly didn't differ in Reaction (or, therefore, initiative) by even half this much; the Reaction difference here was probably closer to 1 or 2, if even that. No offense intended, but I wouldn't be surprised if those "old, slower men" you sparred against were actually more skilled than you were, or had a higher Int and thus a similar Reaction.

The difference in initiative betwwn a guy with 3 initiative passes and 1 per Combat Turn is at least 11 and at most 28, an average of 19.5. I don't think there's any way to truly comprehend how much quicker this guy can cognitavely react to things. To the guy with 3 passes, the guy with 1 is practivally standing still, reacting to a move that was either aborted or completed two attacks ago (see below for details).

There's really two problems with this argument. Firstly, the abstract rules for shooting firearms in SR does not have rules for firing faster other than the burst and full-auto rules, and in this case I'd say you're not so much making more firing actions in a round, but using a form of improvised burst fire, and adjust accordingly. So essentially the argument is irrelevant.

Secondly, sure I can squeeze a trigger six times in three seconds, but there's no way I'm going to be able to make each shot as accurate as if I only shot twice. The guy who has three times the initiative is not only able to shoot three times as fast, but each shot is just as accurate as the normal guy's two shots. This means that in the same three seconds he's had just as much "subjective time" to think about, isolate his target(s), line up, and fire each of his six shots as the slower person has had for each of his two shots.

Reaction is not about how fast you can move. If it were, then your movement rate would be equal to your Reaction in meters, rather than your Quickness in meters. Reaction reflects your ability to react to a situation. That is, it reflects your ability to look at a situation, determine a course of action, and execute that action in a limited amount of time. The higher your Reaction, the more quickly you can comprehend and analyze a situation, and the faster you can determine and execute an appropriate response. None of this has anything to do with how fast you can twitch; twitch reflexes are covered by Init dice, which I don't believe should give you extra Combat Pool die anyway.

Many people think of it that way but that is really not correct. The speedy person cannot physically move faster (No extra movement speed) nor can he process information faster (No extra combat pool). His actions are latgely running on autopilot, which is why he has to make rolls so prevent his body from doing things that he doesn't want it to (twitch tests). What he has is efficiency of motion, and the fact that his body's reflexes are moving (in some cases) faster than his brain consciously reacts. He does not see the world as standing still. he is not cognitively reacting to things faster.

It's sometimes difficult to come to terms with this but the faster reaction person is not appreciably physically or mentally faster, there's just a lot less wasted slack time in their actions. Just like identically that slack time is missing more and more from people who have practiced repititous moves for a long time, like martial artists, or any other similar professional.

An example of this is that when performing tests like electronics and electronics b/r to crack a maglock a cybered up speed man has absolutely no advantage over a normal human. Both of them take 60 seconds divided by sucesses on skill roll.

Y'know, I think I was hasty when I said that the results jibed with your argument. Right now I'm not sure what they say.

I just decided to look at the case of two combatants, one with skill 5 and one with skill 6. If winning ties was any kind of decent advantage it should be able to overcome 1 measly point of skill, but that is not the case here. If combatant A has skill 5 and an initiative of 10,000,000,000 (and B goes only once, TN 4), he still cannot get his overall odds to exceed 49.95%. You'd think that a reaction increase of ten billion would give him a significant advantage, but it doesn't even push him to even ground.

I don't know what conclusions to draw, frankly.

This is rather circular reasoning, I think. My whole argument here is that Reaction should be the basis for Combat Pool calculation rather than the base attributes of Quickness and Intelligence, as this better reflects both the intention of what the respective attributes and Combat Pool itself are meant to represent (p. 41 of sr3), and how a drastically higher-initiative melee fighter should behave in combat. You refute the argument that Reaction should be a factor in Combat Pool calculations by referring to the fact that currently Reaction is not factored into Combat Pool calculations. Circulus in Demonstrando

I argue that the whole "running on autopilot" aspect of Wired Reflexes is the result of increased initiative *dice* component of Initiative, rather than the increased Reaction component. The book bears me up here; if you look at p. 45 of M&M the twitch test is a result of too many initiative dice rather than increased Reaction. Indeed, Reaction Enhancement cyberware doesn't have this particular "twitch test" drawback, further bolstering my argument.

So are you saying that people with increased reaction become more skilled at martial arts? In martial arts less wasted movement is one of the hallmarks of increased combat skill. Are you saying that someone with no skill in martial arts and with wired reflexes won't foolishly wind up his punches and kicks anymore, or learn how to properly torque his shoulders and lower body to increase the power of his punches? I'm not quite sure I follow your reasoning here.

I agree that Reaction does not and should not appreciably decrease the amount of time to use a skill like Electronics B/R. Such a skill really has little to do with how quickly someone can process and react to incoming data, because the process itself is inherently slow. For the same reason, a guy with initiative 37 sn't going to be able to cook an egg any faster than a guy with initiative 4; the egg won't cook any faster no matter how fast a guy can react to things.

To be fair, he only disagreed with your characterization of initiative as having cognitive effects. He didn't say a word about Combat Pool calculations.

Okay, so that gives weight to my argument. See, the human body only goes so fast, regardless of the speed of the thought behind it. Nerves only conduct so quickly, muscle fibers only contract at a certain speed. While there's a lot of room for improvement in the basic human body, once you reach a certain plateau, the improvements will be miniscule at best.

Because reaction does not provide any additional movement speed, it's pretty clear that your body isn't actually moving any faster. What's happening is that you're getting more mileage out of your movements-- those wild shots are now more controlled.

You misunderstand the concept of unnecessary motion. Moving more efficiently produces speed, and not the other way around. If anything, a high skill in martial arts should provide a speed bonus, not speed providing an advantage in martial arts. People with increased reactions, in real life, are dependant on their skill for speed. You really don't find people being super-fast in general, only in specific.

Untrue. First of all, olympic-level athletes can safely be assumed to have Exceptional Attribute, and possibly Bonus Attribute Point on top of that. That could give them a quickness (potentially) of 11 or more, assuming we don't include certain oddities (like spike babies). So, with the lowest possible reaction being a 1, and the current max being a 10, the range is greater than you imagine. Also, once we calculate this in terms of reaction, people could easily have the equivalent of Adrenaline Surge, or perhaps even pre-Awakening adept abilities. Your comparison is most equivalent to initiative, and not reaction.

In which case, it should definitely not figure into martial arts abilities. Your ability to react to situations is a function of your martial arts skill, and not your raw mental speed. If I am incapable of figuring out how to block or counter an incoming blow, it doesn't matter how quickly it's travelling-- I will get hit due to my own ignorance, and not due to my reaction time.

A drastically faster fighter is not necessarily a drastically better fighter. I've certainly been able to outquick many people that I cannot lay a glove on. But when the reverse has happened, I understood what had happened. To them, it looked like I was moving extremely fast, because I countered their techniques. In reality, I had anticipated their techniques before they were thrown, and had placed myself in the optimum position to react.

For example-- one of my friends studies escrima, and can perform the basic heaven-and-earth pattern so quickly, he claims he can fire 27 strikes in one second. Now, he still gets beaten in sparring, even though he's the fastest. In fact, in one case, he was using his light rattan sticks against someone using steel rebar. You simply cannot move steel rebar clubs as quickly as you can rattan sticks, so he had a huge speed advantage.

Why did my friend lose? Because even though he could throw the series much faster, the other guy didn't actually have to block 27 times to avoid it. He just needed one sidestep and block.

No, it wasn't!

He was not, as you think, justifying the lack of Reaction as a factor in combat pool! His post has nothing at all to do with that!


I'm sorry to harp on this, but one of my pet peeves is when people whip out those fancy-sounding lists of logical fallacies without really thinking things through. I have never in my life witnessed communication of any kind that was genuinely assisted by those damned lists. I only ever see them used as a drunk uses a lamppost: for support rather than illumination.

Thanks Zazen, you took the words out of my mouth. I never even brought that up, not does my post have anything to do with it. Eyeless, you are hitting this from a sideways angle that noone here is even mentioning or arguing, yet you keep bringing it up.

Respond to my post again if you could be so kind without mentioning anything about combat pool calculations, reaction calculations, or reactions relation to combat pool. I mentioned none of those things and they have nothing whatsoever to do with my argument.

Aside from that Zazen has already pretty much said everything that I would. Go Zazen!

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...Also, in a related note before you start decrying that we use logcal fallacies (which for the last year have been linked to in my .sig.) you should look to see that we're talking about, because in both cases so far youve claimed this only because what you say borders a logical fallacy isn't what we actually said, nor it it what we're arguing!
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Yes, but *why* are you getting more milage out of your movement? You're obviously not magically becoming more skillful: someone with zero Pistols skill still can't even attempt that TN 8 trick shot even with Wired Reflexes 3. The way I see it, you're getting more use out of the same amount of movement because you have more subjective time to react to things. Or, if you'd rather, your Reaction is higher, so you are able to react more quickly to changing conditions in battle, and so you waste less movement. Maybe we're in agreement here and don't know it.

Yes, I agree, people with more skill should be able to do actions that they're skilled at more quickly than people with no skill. That is, however, irrelevant to the discussion at hand; SR has no mechanism for letting a person with Pistols 6 fire faster than a person with Pistols 1 when they have the same initiative, and neither of us is proposing that change.

Executing more actions in one Combat Turn is not the same thing as making more than one strike in an action. Your friend making 27 strikes in one second (very impressive, by the way) isn't really making 27 Simple Action attacks at once, but more likely combining them all into a Single or Complex Action: Heaven-and-Earth pattern. The Simple Action of making an attack involves attempting to read your opponent, deciding on a plan of attack, and then executing it. When you start getting better, you start throwing combinations, maybe executing several attacks in one "read->think->act" cycle. In fact, perhaps this is where the skill-->speed idea comes in: a guy with Martial Arts 6 rolls 6-12 dice to a Martial Arts 1 guy's 1-2. These extra dice might correspond not so much to extra power in the swing so much as throwing six different techniques in a combination, rather than winding up for one big punch or something.

Okay, I concede that with Edges and Flaws you can get as high as 11 for Reaction, assuming you take Exceptional Attribute for Int and Quickness. Bonus Attribute doesn't bring up the total any higher here, though; you are allowed only one per character. Reaction, however, has nothing to do with Adrenaline Surge, and the analysis is being made in the real world so Adept abilities and whatever spike babies are really don't apply.

The point I was making here is that a severely crippled, mentally challenged individual will differ in Reaction from the pinacle of human ability by a reasonable number of points, probably somewhere between 8 and 11, the number isn't really important. The point is that without Combat Pool differences between the two people, someone who can barely walk 1 meter in three seconds and is just shy of being a vegtable is going to beat a veritable god who can run nearly 27 miles per hour (36m/3sec --> ~27mph) and could outthink and out-strategize every genius our planet has ever produced more than 4.5 out of every 10 matches, assuming they have the same martial arts trainning. This is absolutely ludicrous; the physical attributes themselves should count for something in battles of this nature. And, according to the cannon rules, I'm right (see below for details.)

Something just occured to me while I was reading this: all our real-world arguments about how Reaction is no substitute for skill, looking solely at my proposed house-rule, are entirely meaningless. This is because my formula for Combat Pool is for all intents and purposes degenerate with the current formula if we're talking solely about attributes:

Reaction formula: React = (Qui +Int)/2 =(Essentially)=> Qui/2 + Wil/2
Current formula: Pool = (Qui +Int +Wil)/2 =(Essentially)=> Qui/2 +Int/2 +Wil/2
My formula: Pool = React +Wil/2 =(substitution)=> Qui/2 +Int/2 + Wil/2

In the end all real-world comparisons are vacuous, as noone in the current history of the Earth has ever had their Reaction increased or decreased beyond this number in the formula, so everyone on this planet has the exact same Combat Pool regardless of which formula we use. So at this point it becomes an argument only over whether Reaction-increasing cyberware and other artificial increases to Reaction and Reaction alone should increase Combat Pool.

Understood. I guess I thought that you were discussing my--admitedly off-the-wall--idea, as you were replying to my post. My mistake.

Heh, I am getting lost in my own world here, aren't I? Ugh, and here I thought people were taking me seriously, when in fact you were using my post as a springboard to discuss other people's ideas. Nevermind me then.

(Edit): And I'm well aware that the list of logical fallicies was linked to in your .sig. That's where I got the list from, in fact. Thanks, by the way.

That's two different things. Some people simply react reflex wise faster than others naturally regardless of skill, for example accidentall knocking a pencil off a desk. Some people will virtually always catch the pencil based of reaction speed alone, while others almost never will. On the other hand, someone who actively practices catching the pencil will do so regarldess of their natuaral predisposition either way. Natural reflexes can help when someone is untrained, but when trained it becomes the quality of training that matters, because your reflexes have been retrained to do specific actions.

That's not true. They can try it, they will just automatically fail. They are trying something so difficult that without skill and practice its effectively impossible. See above, natural reflexes is really no substitute for real training. Doing something quickly and doing the right thing are not the same.

We do and we don't. I agree they can react things to faster in battle, but it's just a reflex. Reflexes are not conscious thought. An analogy to this is that after a certain point in martial arts A man I know had someone swing on him, and he eneded up unharmed with them quite harmed, but he could not have told you what did to put the person down. His body had happily on its own reacted to oncoming stimulus, blocked and reflexively struck back with absolutely no conscious thought of his own. His body had reflexively moved far faster than he ever could have untrained simply because his body performed the correct sequence of moves. He had no faster cognitive speed, but because as soon as the other person even started to telegraph he swung giving the illusion that he was much, much faster. The reality was that he didnt physically move faster, he just swung without telegraphing, while the other man was still cocking back his fist. This, along with conservastion of mothing allowed him to throw two punches and a cross elbow before the first man woudl have even finished his first punch. All reflex. nothing cognitive. No increase of perception speed of the world. No conscious thought.

yes, I agree they can react to changes in caombat, but I disgaree it's a conscious decision, its the result of training and skill that actually gets anything done. Someone with wired reflexes 3 and no combat skills isn't going to do much good. They react fast reflexively then do all the worng things and are not useful. The same person with high skills will make the same high speed judgements but do the correct things and take down soem enemies.

It's just like when you get sucker punched and you've had no real fight training. You will hear many people say "I saw the fist coming but I just couldn't do anything about it". You'll hear that a lot.

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Actually that's not right. A Pistol marksman that has a skill of 4 has to aim for an action or 2 to be as accurate as a pistol marksman with a skill of 6. In order to get actually equal results, A shooter with a higher skill Does actually do things faster, just not directly, because someone with a lower skill has to waste actions to aim to pull off a shot that a person with a higher skill could do offhand. They only do things at the same speed if you accept inferior reults from the inferior skill.

This follows through with all skills that have a base time divided by sucesses also. The better skill does in fact do it faster than a lower skill.
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Ah, and to think I should've picked up on that lack of parenthesis... my apologies! Though now I think Mr.Munchy is getting a little too far ahead... I wouldn't worry too much about Wired Reflexes, but with that calculation I would greatly increase the cost of Reaction Enhancers.

Still seems a wee bit too much potential for problems there - but I like the idea regardless.

I had nothing to do but sit on my ass, drink Jim Beam, and post stuff here all night long

Bitbasher gave one excellent example, and I'll try and provide another.

Some years ago, I was horribly ill with the flu. I spent about three days with a fever so high, I was hallucinating that the Power Rangers were out to get me. I had not really eaten, I was surviving on orange juice, and I could barely move.

At this time, I lived in the basement of a boarding house. With extreme effort, I could manage to get to the bathroom and the kitchen; at one point, I had to go upstairs to get more orange juice. I nearly blacked out twice on the stairs-- I stumbled and nearly fell at least twice. Apparently, this alerted one of my housemates.

As I reached the top of the stairs, the door suddenly flew open. My housemate was there, but I didn't realize it at the time. (Remember, I was hallucinating-- I thought he was Lord Zedd.) I immediately launched an attack, making a basic clear-and-punch combo. Luckily for him, I came to in time-- I stopped my fist less than a centimeter from his face. I very clearly recall his eyes going wide, and him gasping... several moments after I stopped my fist.

Now, there was no way I could possibly have a reaction time anywhere near his. I was very ill, could barely walk, and was hallucinating. I clearly didn't have any time to process matters cognitively-- all I could see were Power Rangers. Yet I managed to throw a completely correct technique, even without any conscious thought. Pure trained reflex took over, and an attack emerged, so quickly that it was over before he even realized it had come.

Increased Reflexes, therefore, must be an increase in reflex speed, and not in cognitive thought. Reflex actions never actually reach the brain; they're processed at the spinal cord, and not by the main cortex. That makes it a different thing entirely from increased skill.

Never sparred someone in a wheelchair or with a cane, have you? I have, and let me say-- it's painful. Someone with a Quickness equivalent of 1 in the real world, who has the equivalent of skill 6, has trained so damn hard as to have earned that.

At any event, the use of combat pool does even that out substantially. And if your intelligence is really that much higher, you should be figuring other ways of beating this guy, that doesn't involve going in and getting hurt.

A noble and enviable position! Which reminds me... I moved into a house a month a go and theres still no alcahol here. I have to run to the store!

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May as well make a relevant point while im here...

That is also a misconception, specifically the bold text, which is mine. The reason it's wrong is that even with the same training the person with minimal attributes will have to spent far, far more karma to get the same skill as the person with the high attributes. This means it effectively takes him for more work to get an even skill. He would, in fact get his ass beat down quite handily with really equal training. You cannot look at the results of a test without looking at the entire equasion involved.
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To bring up a dead horse...

...if this is your stance, then how do you rationalize two characters with identical skills (say Brawling 2), yet one with vastly superior reflexes (Wired 3 with Reflex Boosters 6) while the other just barely gets a single action every three seconds, allows the character with the shitty reflexes to remarkably gain identical reflexes to the superior one? Not to mention becoming ridiculously quick to respond when facing four identical opponents simultaneously (and we'll say for the sake of argument everyone is using Whirling even if they don't need to, just to keep the weak avoid-the-topic argument about TN penalties and whatnot at bay).

to make a long story short, because defending against an attack is a totally and completely different animal that initiating an attack from scratch of your own, at least in my experience. Defending usually also takes far less movement, making conservation of momentum easier. Furthermore, he doesn't have to expend effort to get into striking range of his assailants, they are coming to him, which drastically shortens any movements he needs to make. And, against multiple opponents (4), all even skill stastically the ontnumbered person WILL get himself beat down. The TN penalties are not weak and avoid the topic as you put it, they are the reason that the outnumbered person gets beat down. That is the reason, not an avoidance of it.

When fighting one on one there is in reality a lot of wasted time usually.

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There is no ressurection in SR, leave the dead horse alone
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Okay, have you ever seen a demo of multiple opponents attacking one individual? What happens is that the demonstrator will usually throw the opponents into each other, maneuver so that they trip each other up, and so on. Under ideal circumstances, when faced by mulitple opponents, you don't have to make physical contact with all of them to cause damage. You can throw them into each other, so they're making contact (and causing damage).

So, if we have Generic Gangers versus Whirling Wan-Fu, what I'd say would happen is that the guy who took the most damage was sent flying into his buddies, and the others (who took varying amounts of damage) were hurt depending on how they got hit by their friend's failed flying lesson. (So the guy who only took a Light was in the back, the ones who took a moderate got hit directly, and so on.) Wan-Fu didn't actually move that fast; he only made one throw, and got a lot of mileage out of it.