Has someone played 3rd edition adopting the atrib + skill roll of 4th edition, and eliminating the dice pools (combat/hacking/magic/rigging) completely?

This seems an interesting option for making the 3E system a bit more agile, but I dont know what consequences it could have.

What do you guys (and girls) think ?

It could end up kind of overpowered compared to SR4, because in SR3, Attributes are a lot easier to boost, skills are not capped, and specializations can give you a lot more than two extra dice. Not to mention that things like foci can also go a lot higher. So you will have some serious dice pool inflation.

You will also have to decide whether to keep SR3's TNs and TN modifiers (imagine a sammie firing 30 dice or so, at point blank range, with a TN of 2 - optimal case, sure, but it can come up), or whether to adopt SR4's fixed TNs, at which point, you almost might as well simply play SR4.

hmmmmmmmmmm...Nope.

Just running it through some of our less-uber characters meant 20-30 dice without specialisation. If you're going to spawn dice like that, you may as well adopt SR4 and forget pools.
Variable TN's makes it very horrible, more so with exploding dice.

Also, the whole Intuition/Logic seperation isn't really addressed when it comes to computer (Or basic INT-based skills)

The rigger stuff gets really weird, REALLY fast, as well.

-Tir

"Agile"? Could you clarify what this means in context?

Pools (most notably Combat Pool, but really all of them except usually Hacking Pool) are one of the, perhaps the single most inspired feature in the SR rules. They're not without their rough spots, but I'm not at all clear on why one would want to eliminate them, especially in favour of a static, choiceless system like attribute+skill.

~J

Our group is finding more success with taking SR4 and modifying the shit out of it to kludge it back to being more like SR3. If you want to keep the attribute + skill dice pool but want a more SR3 feel then I suggest 1:1 dice pool modifier to threshold modifier. Forces everyone to really work the modifiers to their advantage -- just like in SR3 -- instead of the devil-may-care attitude of SR4.

I've actually given thought to patching Combat Pool (etc) back into SR4 and ditching the +Attribute system altogether.

This wouldn't really be that hard for combat and hacking and so on (an argument might start over which attributes to use where), but all of the non-combat systems in SR4 also rely on those extra Attribute dice. Without them, you'd start to have problems with people doing simple things like climbing over fences.

Oh, this gets a little tricky. Say you're shooting with 1 uncompensated Recoil (-1) at a second target (-2) who's running (-2) at Medium range (-1). You're firing from cover (-2), but have a smartlink (+2).

Your DPM would be -6, so you'd need, 7 hits to meet the threshold.

If you have, say, Agility 5 and Firearms 5, which means you're pretty handy with a gun, this shot is pretty much impossible (actually just slightly less than 2%). Especially when the guy gets his chance to dodge. But if you're just modifying your dice pool down by -6, you have 4 dice left. The shot is definitely something you can do, though success isn't really a guarantee.

Remember that every +1 or -1 to a threshold is worth about 3 to 4 dice.

I might suggest keeping the regular dice pool modifiers and moving to the optional system of treating ranges as thresholds (p75, SR4A), but not replacing all DPMs with threshold modifiers.

Well it would help with rigging.
Those TN's often came close to 20's needed <.<

(for the rest of the discussion, when I mention “Combat Pool” please consider all kinds of pools of 3e: Hacking/Magic/Rigging/etc).


Thanks for the answers, guys.

So, if I got what you all said, the problem lies with the “cheap to increase” attributes and with the starting high value attribs from 3e char creation (priority system). I would need to tweak these values for this adaptation to work, right?

If the tweaking is made correctly, I cant see how dice inflation would occur (at least not more than what already occurs in 4e anyway ), since the Attribute dice would simply substitute the Combat Pool ones, with the added benefit of rolling less dice for resisting (since in 3e armor don’t add up more dice), and rolling less dice in general than 4e, since it would only be Attrib+Skill, instead of Attrib+Skill+Gear. In the end, it would simply swap a “dice pool” for another (Combat Pool for Attribute). And the system would get more agile because one don’t need to make tactical considerations about Combat Pool usage.

Is that right? Am I ignoring something here?

In SR3, you can get a Starting Skill of 7 as a Mundane and i think 10 or 11 as an adept.
Troll Unarmed Combat. Skill 7 including Specialization+15 STR = 22 Dice
Granted, this is not as bad as the 44 Dice Pornomancer of 4th Ed . .
But seeing how you can get the Troll to need 2's to hit, it's pretty easy to Stage the Damage up to . . let's see . .
STR15+Bone-Lace=18+Hardliner Gloves=19. 19M Stun. And then 22 successes . . that's 22D and that's only 4 successes gone . . makes 18 successes left . . every second success adds one to damage . . 18/2=9+19=28D Stun . . not bad O.o
Yes, generally, it is harder to get huge starting dice pools for SR3. Technically, it is not limited by anything so they can get stronger than SR4 . .

Well, there WAS the one Wakyambi Elf With his scythe of Doom and 70? dice for attack . .

Starting skill max was 6 unless you took an Advantage (Positive Quality in 4th).

And with said advantage, you could then specialize up to 9 Dice?

Specialization in SR3 worked differently. To specialize, you added one point to the base skill to get your specialization and then took away a point from the base skill to represent the skill in general.

So if you had Pistols 5 and wanted to specialize in Ares Predator, you would end up with Pistols (Ares Predator) 4 (6).

From then on they were treated as separate skills, except specializations were cheaper to increase than a regular skill. Your Pistols skill in that example would really be 4, not a modified 5. Your Ares Predator skill would really be 6.

Specialization was free at character generation. IIRC, if you wanted to specialize in-game, you'd pay the specialization improvement cost based on whatever your skill was, so in the example you'd pay to improve a specialization from 5 to 6 and end up with Pistols (Ares Predator) 5 (6), instead of gaining a point one way and losing one the other.

So if you bought that maxed out 7 skill rating, you could specialize to 6 ( 8 ). edit: putting an 8 in parentheses apparently gives you this: (

That said, your skill was also soft-capped by its attribute. You could purchase the skill up to the attribute rating at normal improvement costs, but to increase it further you'd have to pay extra to surpass that cap. Otherwise you could pay to increase the attribute, which would raise your soft cap. There was another cap at twice the attribute rating, where it would cost even more to improve.

Karma costs for active skills were something like:
New rating <=Attribute: x1.5
Attribute < New Rating <= Twice Attribute: x2
>Attribute: x2.5

Specializations followed the same track, costing x0.5, x1, and x1.5.

Knowledge and Language skills cost slightly less.

My personal opinion is that SR3 was much tighter around the edges than SR4, especially with respect to skill/attribute ratings, specialization and improvement. SR3 was all about equitable trade-offs, while SR4 is much looser (and somewhat more adaptable) and rather about immediate benefits. Purchasing attribute ratings in SR3 involved vague benefits, like better skill improvement costs and small bonuses to various Pools, Reaction, and Initiative. They were long-term investments. In SR4, everything is direct, and based on one-for-one improvement.

SR3 had the problem of being very opaque and hard to get into, but there's a lot of purely golden stuff in there that should've been kept in for SR4 but didn't quite fit in with the basic dice systems.

Eh, and have only 4 or 3 dice for all other non-specialized actions with that skill?

Well... this thread is interesting, so i am providing my opinion nobody wants.

I wouldn't change the raw mechanisms of third edition. At least not to a near-SR4 system. I have tried out dozens of games and even build a few myself and found that the mechanism AND the world should work in unison. If you change one you change the other. And i REALLY like the way SR3 felt (With some houseruling and some SR2 callbacks and such).

If you make it a attribute+skill roll you deny the gifted and studious ones to be the best for example (You need to be born an elf to be the best gunslinger again) You promote weird difficulties if you take out the variable TN. (The SR4-problem of just THROW MORE DICE at the problem instead of intelligently working on reducing the TN).

I am still holding the old rules in much higher regard as the totally weird and not thoroughly thought out mess the SR4 rules are. (Negative dice on rolls of OTHER people, with rolls where you don't want them to know what they are doing? - Perception for example)

And the dice pools were great for differentiating people with similar base skills and promote strategic thinking and risk/reward. It is a great metagame and show of individualism. (You don't want any mage with spellcast4 and will4 be the same now do you? (This allows them to say: I take the risk of more drain for mow POW, for example)

I would say: work a bit on restructing the vehicle rules, maybe hacking, but leave the base. Or play SR4. Restructing the base system WILL completely fuck up the "feel" of the game.

I must have remembered 2nd Edition then. You could:
Have the Base Skill 6
Have a Concentration 5/7
or have a Specialization 4/6/8

Been a while since I playd either Edition. *shrug*

12 dice as an Adept, potentially 18 depending on interpretation of how Improved Ability and Ambidexterity 6+ interact, but the max skill is still only 6 (or a 5(7) specialization). Important for things like pool use.

The exception is Otaku, who are required to have Computers at at least 6 and are permitted to have it as high as 8.


I must admit, I wasn't expecting you to come right out and say that.

~J

Let's make an example:

we'll say Pistols (Predator) 5/7 and Quickness 6(9) (Augmented Elf, that should be a cakewalk to hit). You'd be throwing 16 dice, against a base TN of 4. Presume 8 hits.

Because we are getting rid of pools, let's say that we default to either Reaction for the Dodge test (since Combat Pool is gone). Roll Reaction of 6, against a TN 4, get 3 hits.

That leaves 5 hits, so the Damage Code scales from 9(M) to 9(D). An Armor Jacket will lower the Soak test to a TN 4 (9 - 5 Ballistic), and the target will need 8 hits to resist. Let's presume a Body of 6, for 3 hits. That would scale the D to an S wound.

It gets a little tricky, since there aren't any Dodge skills in SR3, though they could be added easily enough. Likewise, Armor reduces the TN, so you are just rolling Body to soak damage. Rolling Body + Armor, after applying Armor to reduce the TN is a little odd. You could do Body + Body, but then the trolls are really going to start shaking off the damage.

My SR3 is rusty, so if you see something I fragged up let me know.

That's pretty close, but I've never once seen a firefight where there was a TN4 to hit. At least not after I was about 14 or so and learned the cover rules. No one's going to stand still in the open in the middle of a gunfight and I've never seen a single runner ever who didn't have a smartlink or a laser sight. As for Dodge, I'd say just have them roll Quickness. Fits since it was used for damn near everything else in SR2-3

Reaction scores can be way too high in SR3 to allow a straight Reaction roll to dodge. The Street Samurai archetype in the main book has a Reaction of 11, and dodge rolls start at TN 4. This means you're likely to get 5 successes or so, which is probably twice or more what even a good shooter will get, barring very unfortunate circumstances.

I don't really know how SR3 works, but if skills aren't capped and it's easier to boost attributes, why is 30 dice impressive for a Sammie? You can do that in SR4 already.

No Dodge skill? Wtf? Someone's forgotten the infamous mantra of, "Roll to hit/GM will roll to dodge"?

Everyone got to dodge, unless under pretty specific circumstances (ie: if unconcious) Hell, even a deep-diving console cowboy hotdogging decker could, abet with a +8 TN (at a bare minimum)

The whole "Quickeness = insta win) thing was addressed waaay too many times, ie: My quickness 12 elf is running up a street while people shoot at him, can he survive? General consensus, "Survive? That's how we live!"

You could enhance TNs by cover, acrobatics, stealth, etc, but quickness was king.

-Tir

The attributes plus skill system seems more akin to earlier editions of SR where pool dice refreshed on your action. Where attributes were the main constituent of a pool you could effectively add your attribute to your skill for every test.

Also, there was dodging in SR3 but no skill as such.

15 dice in SR3 is "a crap-ton of dice" and almost always involves using most or all of one of your pools. And being ridiculously awesome.

A starting character is going to have about 6 skill and about 7 Combat Pool, and getting much higher is difficult. Especially since cyberware to upgrade your Combat Pool attributes is fairly hard to come by in SR3.

Because you used COMBAT POOL for the Dodge Roll.
Combat Pool is dependent on not one, not two, but 3 attributes.
Quickness, Intelligence and Willpower.
A Human with 6/6/6 in these Attributes would have a Combat Pool of 9.
And he can use these dice to either dodge or to enhance his own attacks.
And pools refreshed at the start of the next initiative round.
So if you got to go 3 times in one initiative round, you effectively had to split the combat pool by 3.
Or use it all up in one go or something highly unlikely.
And yes, 15 Dice is HUGE in SR3.
Usually, you'd see more along the lines of 8-10 Dice. Most Starting characters would be rolling 4 to 6 dice for any given task.
And pools only are useable, if you have one success with your normal skill roll first. And you can only use as many pool dice as you have rank in a given skill.
So even if you have 9 combat pool dice, if your shoot stuff skill is at 4, you can only ever use 4 combat pool dice to augment your shooting stuff.
And that only, if you managed to get one success with the 4 dice roll first. Which can be pretty hard, when the TN's go up to 11 or so . .

That's ultimately how the street sam would get you. He'd just leisurely roll his 6 skill dice at you 8 times in one combat turn. You've only got 7 or 8 dice to dodge with, and once you use them, they're gone.

But the Street Sam gets a +1 for every bullet fired.
So even if he manages to shoot at you 8 times with his ares predator, he'll be facing a +8 to his TN on the 8th roll. So probably a TN of 10 - 14 at least.
Edit: eh, it's fro recoil, so if you can get some points of RC in there, it will not go that high . .

Let's say Medium range (5), stationary target in cover (+3), attacker walking (+1), Smartlink (-2). This is pretty common in a firefight, and somewhat in favor of the defender.

The first shot is at TN 7 (effectively 6), the second is at 8.

Recoil modifiers were only cumulative within 1 Combat Phase, not in an entire Combat Turn.

Structure:

COMBAT TURN
Initiative Pass #1
-> Player 1 Combat Phase
-> Player 2 Combat Phase
-> etc
Initiative Pass #2
-> Player 1 Combat Phase
-> etc

Because your TN could be a 2+. Instead of the 5+ it is in SR4.

Indeed, the awesomesauce for SR3 isn't so much increasing the number of dice (that's just for intimidating the other players, and very rarely go above 15), but being able to shift that TN up and down.

The pools really did add a dimension to the gameplay. You can describe if you're fighting defensively or offensively, which tasks are important and which are less so, where your attention is and so on, with real, in-game effects (and without complicated rules). It really is elegant and, indeed, agile. Cutting out pools makes SR3 agile like cutting off legs helps a gymnast.

And i still say: if one goal of the SR4 system was to reduce the dice being rolled compared to SR3 . . THEY DID IT WRONG!
Only Trolls could regularly roll more than 15 Dice, and that was when they rolled Body to resist Damage . .

You obviously never saw my decker build...

i obviously never did.

Yeah, i never really saw many dice in SR3... No one ever had a skill above 8 or so, MAYBE specialized. Combat pool, i think maxed out mostly at about 10. Thats about 18 dice... and maybe a reroll with Karmapool.

But you couldn't do that all the time.

Ok, some extreme characters might have had more... can't remember anyone being slow with their rolls though. And the game had such finesse in some regards. Still my favourite game of all.... well, maybe after "7th Sea" That system was just pure beauty.

Drastically fewer sources of bonus dice, mostly, plus the fact that attributes don't directly improve the number of dice you're throwing (each point of INT, QCK, or WIL is half a point of Combat Pool, which you can only actually use once per combat turn and which forms a big part of your safety net).


Or Surprised.


You mean Intelligence. That said, Quickness was such a close second that the question was really the distribution of Exceptional Attribute/Extra Attribute Point.

You do, however, seriously exaggerate the power of dodging. With an incoming single-shot attack with one success, you need to spend two CP to expect to dodge—and that's accepting a 25% chance of failure. A burst raises your dodge TN to 5, and six rounds of autofire makes it 6. Meanwhile, your Quickness 12 Elf is only packing 6 Combat Pool from the Quickness, and is unlikely to have better than 14 total. This works only for circumstances where "people" is a very small number, very lightly-armed, or very poor shots.


10 Combat Pool is the standard I've seen for starting characters, with some 11s mixed in.


Not really—between Muscle Toners and Cerebral Boosters you can get 6 points of CP-attributes, for an additional three points of pool. There's not much after that, though you can get a free (not even pool) die for physical skills from Enhanced Artwinkulation. The big thing is that the cap on combat pool expenditure decoupled the number of dice you're throwing from the size of your pool after a point.


Adepts with Ambidexterity and Improved Ability, Riggers can roll 15 dice out of chargen thanks to sensor-enhanced gunnery and can go up from there, Orks who throw combat pool into damage resistance, a few other things here and there.

~J

Why on earth do you think this should be a shot that you can reliably make? You're trying to shoot 2 different guys the second of which is moving and at a decent distance from you while you are also trying to duck behind cover. Why shouldn't you be required to use Edge to make this shot? This forces you to make decisions about how the combat situation affects your odds of success -- maybe your second shot at the second target should be a wide burst to increase your chances of hitting him (by removing defense pool). Maybe you shouldn't be shooting at him and instead make sure to drop your first target or take a simple action to reassess the situation.

I contemplated doing 3:1 but that involves math and my house rule design goal was that my players are always rolling the same dice pool against a fixed TN and the only thing that changes is the threshold. I wanted to cut down on the amount of time that needed to be spent calculating dice pools. I didn't want to sully that with having to multiply everything by 1/3.

If you can give me an good explanation for answering yes & no to the above two questions (which you seem to be doing) I might rethink it. My rules make the game less over the top comic book shit and more gritty. It makes combat last a long time which is nice and makes cover really good/desireable.

Actually, the Combat Pool is INT+QCK+Will/2

Intelligence is hard to raise via cyber/bio. especially seeing how only NATURAL Numbers count for the Pools. A Rigger with Reaction-Enhancer Level 6 does NOT get +6 to his Rigging Pool.
CYBER-Intelligence does simply not exist. BIO-Intelligence is not Char-Gen Legal and then prohibitive expensive.

QCK12, INT6, Will6=12 Dice in combat Pool. Tie between dodge success and attacker success goes to Defender.
Where do you find the part about BF and FA raising the TN to dodge? Not that i could remember . .

As i said, QCK+INT+WILL/2. This means a Troll can usually not get much.
Neither can Orks usually. Dwarves get a +1 on willpower, this helps, but not much. It's 1/3 of a CP Die. Elves get +2 on Quickness. This helps a bit more. 2/3 of a Combat Pool Die.

As i said. Cerebral Booster is cultured Bioware, not available on Char-Gen, pretty much not available any time soon either.
And why would you do that anyway, when you can get 5 points of Bioware Quickness in Char-Gen?

Ambidexterity does NOTHING to give you more dice.
It LOWERS The TN for the weapons you are using.
Improved Ability only goes up to magic level, and is 0,5 Power-Points per level. So you can get it up to Level 6 for 3 Points of Magic.
This gets you a skill of 12 maximum. And you can still only use 6 Points of Combat Pool, because you can only use Combat-Pool Dice up to your natural skill.
And you DO NOT Roll them ALL AT ONCE. You roll your 12 Dice for the improved skill. Then you check wether or not you have at least one net success. If you do, you can use 6 Combat Pool dice in a second roll. And i think the intent to use combat pool has to be stated before making the skill roll . .

SR3, p. 113. Every 3 bullets fired in burst or FA mode increases the TN by 1 to dodge. I had to dust of my old book s for this thread. And remembered that my SR3 book is held together by duct tape...

Because the skill system states that someone with a Firearms skill of 5 (no matter which type) is a crack shot. This is both in the fluff for the skill system in both SR3 and SR4 as well as backed up by NPCs such as beat cops having Pistols: 2 or 3, army grunts having Automatics (or Assault Rifles): 3 or 4, etc. Someone with Pistols: 5 is going to be a competition shooter and someone with Automatics/Assault Rifles: 5 is going to be something like Special Forces with advance training. Hitting a moving target while firing behind cover should be very easy for someone with a skill that high. The question should be whether or not the first burst would be lethal, especially with the advanced armor.

And there's other considerations such as smartlink/laser sights which in SR1-3 lower the target number (thus greatly increasing the chance for success) but in SR4 only adds to the dice pool (which only moderately increases the chance for success). Hopefully someone will double-check my math, but lowering a TN of 9 (two stationary targets firing at each other from behind cover) to a TN of 7 is much more of a mathematical advantage than adding two dice to a flat TN5. A TN9 in Shadowrun requires rolling a 6 and then re-rolling and getting a 3-6, which is a 1 in 9 chance. Meanwhile, a TN7 requires only a single roll of 6 (since a re-rolled 6 would still get you 7 even on a roll of 1). Therefore statistically, you would get 1 success for every 9 dice rolled in the former and 1 success for every 6 dice rolled in the latter. The Quickness: 5/Pistols: 5 mentioned in that example would net you 1.11 success per roll against TN9 while it would net you 1.67 success per roll against TN7 which is statistically significant.

I was going to go into the specific differences between SR3 and SR4 combat with a specific example of two people shooting at each other from behind cover, but with the changes to how defenders roll against damage, it's a huge pain in the ass to try to work out the math. Hopefully, someone with more mathematical skill than I will be able to do it justice, but the end result is that in SR3, you're going to do almost twice as much damage per shot fired than you would in SR4.

Aaah, ok good to know . . .

Yeah, divided by 2. So each point of attribute gets you 1/2 pool die. Q4 I4 W4 is (4+4+4)/2 or 6. Increasing Quickness by 2 gets you Q6 I4 W4 is (6+4+4)/2 or 7. The only pool that divided by 3 was the Hacking Pool, which oddly is only 2 numbers (Intelligence + MPCP of the deck). Control pool is the only one that isn't divided by anything, but it's also solely your Reaction (which is average of Quickness and Intelligence) and modifiers based on the level of rigging cyberware.

Also, Elves got +2 Charisma +1 Quickness.

Yeah, but charisma does not help with dodging bullets or resisting damage . . and it's good that it does not!

You didn't ask yes or no questions. Ignoring that.

Reliably? No. But a threshold of 7 is ridiculous for a kind of shot that's not all that rare. To have a significant chance you have to be superman, since being of superior skill and attribute just isn't going to cut it. It's like the system is pre-dodging for the target.

I've stated before, I forget in which thread, but street-level gunfights don't last long in reality. If you've taken a gunfight that's normally 2 combat turns and turned it into 5+ combat turns for the sake of having a longer fight, you've actually departed gritty realism and headed for "comic book shit."

Not really. Combat turns are only 3 seconds long. Unless you're running 10 turn fights, you're still in the realm of realism. Also, your average street-level gunfight doesn't involve advanced bodyarmor either.

I also seriously doubt that modern crack shooters can hit 2 different targets in less than 3 seconds of shooting without just spraying and praying which is what I said they'd have to do. We're also talking about hitting one of them who is moving at range.

I also seriously doubt that modern crack shooters can hit 2 different targets in less than 3 seconds of shooting without just spraying and praying which is what I said they'd have to do. We're also talking about hitting one of them who is moving at range.

I did ask two yes/no questions in my first paragraph.

I also seriously doubt that modern crack shooters can hit 2 different targets in less than 3 seconds of shooting without just spraying and praying. We're also talking about hitting one target who is moving at range -- not stationary targeting dummies. If you want to hit them perhaps you should consider using Suppressive Fire as opposed to direct fire? I just work in the financial industry not the military so I'm not sure that I'm accurate in this statement but I'm pretty sure it is pretty much down to luck to do what you are proposing IRL.

I've found that my combats go from 1-2 IPs to about 3-5 turns. So combat changes from being 1-2 seconds to being max 15 seconds. That's about how long it takes someone to realize they've dropped something and pick it up in real life. Is that realistic?

Edit: sorry, accidentally submitted before typing whole thing.

3 seconds is a long time in a gunfight. Time enough to start and finish it.

Bob Munden would like to disagree with you there

No. Notice how long it took him to aim at and hit the coins he was flipping? That was a moving target at short range. The balloons were stationary, at point-blank range, and not shooting at him. That video reinforces my claims -- thanks! Saved me having to dive into more gun websites and make my firm's IT guys nervous.

A lot of this goes out the window with Sammy's but their benefit as compared to a non-enhanced person is that they get 3 IPs per round and are situationally aware during all three rounds. In other words they can adapt to the situation more readily than someone at 1 IP. So I might start a full burst from my assault rifle during the first IP and still be trying to recover/adjust to the situation 3 seconds later. The street sam would be able to fire 6 short bursts in the same amount of time and be able to more accurately choose their shots. Or he'd be able to shoot 4 short bursts, drop both the targets, pop open a can of beer and laugh at me while I desparately try to control the recoil on my gun.

Did it with both a Shotgun and a .45 Automatic at an FBI Range....
Did it with an M16 at a Marine Corps Live Fire Range in Okinawa at ranges over 200 Meters....

Is not all that hard to do really, if you are skilled.