Yeah, it does kind of diminish the 'cheap skilled labor' aspect a bit if a decent skillsoft costs more than you expect the employee to make in a year. Of course I suppose corps don't really have to pay for individual skillsofts so long as they make them themselves.

1k a month to keep up a pirated skillsoft is a bit much, but if you're a hacker you can spoof your lifestyle and take it out of that. Makes skillsoft somewhat more reasonable.

I think they'd have been better off leaving the price alone and saying you can't pirate skillsofts, as I think that is where the real problem kicked in when people were getting skills for 300 nuyen/rating, especially if they only needed them for one off things (No pilot in the group for the once in a campaign air mission? No problem.) I figure that is what caused the kneejerk reaction with the cost increase. They're actually fairly reasonable (5k to pirate then 1k a month to maintain isn't bad for a 5 skill) when pirating, but are basically out of anyone's reach otherwise.

Yeah, it's literally zero cost for the software for the corps, and yeah, skillware was (hell, is) being abused pretty badly. Unless that's what you want the world to look like. *shrug* It should be capped lower, for one thing: people can get effectively a 5, after all. In addition, they work for all skills (physical, mental, whatever), which is a problem to me fluff-wise, but it's also a missed opportunity balance-wise.

SR4's price was too low, SR4A's is too high. My off of the guess is Rating x 5000. That's 20,000Y per rating 4 skillsoft. That's a skill every 2-4 adventures which is about the same rate (or slightly faster) for buying up your skills with karma. Basically you're just doubling your skill gain rate at that point with a modest initial investment.

If you can pirate, skillsofts are really nice especially since you can then copy to your teammates.

As for Wired Reflexes 3 and MBW3, I'll reduce their essence cost to 4. You can fit most of the stuff you'll care about in the remaining 2 essence with biocompatibility, alphaware, and adapsin. I'll reduce the price of MBW3 mainly because +6 reaction is likely going to waste (unless you had 3 reaction which is an odd value to start for a guy who's getting MBW3). Also skillsoft 5 isn't as good as going from skillwires 2 from 4.

5k/rating is what I've put in my personal 'if I ever GM' ruleset, along with them being unable to be copied, cracked, or pirated (Moving is still an option)

I don't think making a software "not piratable" is the solution, here.

I think the best way would be to make a distinction between "generic" skillsofts, which give a max of 3 dice and are incompatible with expert systems, and then have adapted special softs that have a max limit of 6. Generic softs are cheap and can be copied, they are what is used for semi-skilled labour, but should also be sufficient for simple tasks a runner might not want to hire someone for. Adapted softs are taylored, or calibrated, to the user, and hence its no use to copy them, and they are also more expensive as they need special facilities to be created. A copied special soft can only give 3 dice to just anyone.

Basic skillsofts should cost 1000 per rating, and adapted softs 10000 per rating as SR4A.

That way low skill ratings are easily obtainable, but true skills still makes one an expert in his field. However, with enough cash, high skill ratings are possible from softs. (The special customization option to get one more dice remains available.)

i suspect the increase in skillsoft cost may be a response to the software piracy rules. if you can get skillsofts for 10%, those activesofts get a lot more affordable, even if they do degrade.

with the drop in cost for improved reflexes (which have always mirrored the cost of wired reflexes in the past), i think it would be balanced to give the same price-break to the essence cost for wired reflexes. A lot of the essence costs we have now have been grandfathered in from the old editions, and have not seen any re-balancing as 20 years of technology improvement march by.

skillsofts have a limit of 4.. not 6..
Skillsofts can be optimized to give a +1 diepool bonus, effectively being rating 5 (except for things that count rating)

You can never ever have a rating 6 skillsoft.

A Pirated Skillsoft could have all sorts of horrible horrible things in it that would scare the crap out of me.
Psychotropics, limitations, tracers..

Essence cost might have styed the same, but the price has gone down a whole lot, you can now get betaware wired 3 for 25% cheaper then standard rating ones 20 years ago and that only has an essence cost 0f 3,5.

You can also only get 25% of the max starting cash, so I think SR might have just gone through deflation.

And maximum starting resources have been reduced to 25% of what was allowed in SR3, I don't know about older editions.

Another thing I missed... but you are right, of course.

So what do I need rating 5 skillwires for, then? (Yes, I know I can then slot more lower rating skillsofts...)

… That's the answer. If that horrible +1 option is being used, though, they're all 5. That's just too high. Best to remove it, or limit them all to 3.

The thing is skillwires already have a downside(s), they require essence costing cyberware, you can't spend edge they have lower caps etc etc. I'm not sure why folks felt they needed further nerfing but it seems pretty sufficient to me.

That's kind of the point. Rating 5 (4+1, but same thing) isn't a significantly lower cap, except for the 2 skills that an expert might have that high, and you can spend Edge (not that you need to) using 2 different options. Either skillwires should be much worse than real skill, or they should be very expensive. Obviously. So they tried making them very expensive. It doesn't help that they can be pirated, copied, etc.

My list of rules is getting long

I'm actually kind of curious why you feel this way. I'll agree letting someone slot up a level 5 does seem excessive but other then that considering for example magic can do similar boosts to traits skillwires at least in concept doesn't seem that overpowered.

Skillwires should just allow you to spend edge normally. I know they wanted some sort of "you aren't really using the skill!" penalty. But at a reasonable price (likely 3000Y to 5000Y per rating), they're good enough. The other option would to make the skillwires system itself cost more and make the skillsofts cheap.

Now that I think about it, rating x 1000 skillsofts with Rating x 10000Y wires would likely be better. 40000Y isn't trivial, but it's well into the affordable range especially for mundanes. Then just grab whatever wires you want for a smaller price. You'll have to change up MBWs some though. I could see going cheaper on the skillwires though.

I'll also like to remove piracy. Balancewise it's a wash due to the mess that is the Matrix. But the mechanic is weird, a big reward for those who know about it and get it to work, and odd from a fluff standpoint ("I have to pay for my pirated ware? I just got the latest song for free with piracy!"). I would rather just make programs cheaper/easier to code than have it be "yeah if you read this one section and wait till after creation to get them, you can get 90% savings for 99.9% of all campaigns ever."

I totally agree that the piracy rules are weird. Where does it say that pirated software cannot be acquired during CharGen? Actually buying legal full price hacking software is a whole other can of worms.

I guess I don't understand, LurkerOutThere. It's basic balance: investment, payoff. Skillwires shouldn't cost unreasonably less resources (BP or Karma/Nuyen) than real skills, unless they're much less good. I feel like they're *not* much less good, therefore they shouldn't cost less.

Every Rating 5 (or you could stipulate 4, I guess) skill is 20 BP, or 4+4+6+8+10=32 Karma, right? That's 100,000¥ (or 80,000¥ if Karma=2500¥). Skillwires cost up to 10,000¥ (more if you want to spend less than 1 Essence), and skillsofts are either 40000+3000 (Personalized), 43000¥ each… or 4300¥ each, paying a little (bi-)monthly. (Fully tricked out skillsofts with DIMAP and Pluscode are 49000, quite the bargain.)

So, that's 2 Rating 5 skills for about the same cost of real skills if you don't pirate… or like 10 Rating 5 skills that you can swap out as a Free action and run *eight* at a time on your skillwires 4, and still use the main function of Edge (rerolls). That's what I meant. If you incorporate a MBW setup, you even save some Essence. There are even people who argue specializations work with skillsofts (at the cost of 6 BP/6 Karma).

between customized, and PLUSCOD you can get effectively Rating 5 skills, that cost you 1 slot. Meaning you can run 8 or 10 at once, depending if you have Rating 4 or 5 skillwires.

All for the low low price of 60K each.

I would disagree. Generally game balance is pretty horrible already, so it serves as a poor argument. And at least pirated software gives hackers a fat portfolio to use, fairly quickly. Also, availability doesn't change by pirating, so you can't get more than R4 mostly.
Also, it evens the playing field on the matrix side between corps that technically should always have the best rating software everywhere, and runners who have to scrounge every penny. While it does produce a power-creep, to the effect that basically the "low-level" play that SR4 had intended to re-introduce after the super-powered SR3 characters, with it hackers can again rule the matrix.

IMHO the only way to avoid issues with software in general is to change the hacking mechanic entirely, i.e. removing software, and replacing it with attribute+skill tests as long as you have DNI. Sort of a direct neural hacking mechanic. That would be, incidentally, again a piece of cyberware worth buying. It also makes technomancers obsolete, but... Let's say....



Hmm... that's not perfect, and ADDs to the mumbo-jumbo of matrix rules. However, it would have been better to reduce the importance of programs anyway...

As to skillwires and balance:
I think a design goal has to be defined, here. Either you want a world that is evolving towards slotted skills, or you want a world where slotted skills are a niche thing. IMHO once you have the things in the game, avoiding option 1 is pretty hard. The deal is to work out where you want slotted skills to appear, and where you don't want them. IMHO, there should be a deterrent on using them for combat tasks. But all other places are fine, since making a skill-monkey is already expensive enough, BP wise, and usually sacrifices combat prowess. Even the famed group skills don't stop this - in fact they make people worse in many competition situations.

IMHO, like all problems concerning skills, this could be solved by removing the hard cap on actual skills. Skills scale horribly, anyway - the average difference between a skill 3 guy and a skill 6 guy is just one hit.

Unwired, pg 94. Finding Pirate Networks and Downloading Programs. It's a bunch of overhead between the player and the GM and ends up requiring:
1) The player building a character with a lot of post character creation.
2) Someone paying the character who doesn't have the tools to do the job enough up front money to buy the tools.
3) Someone paying the character IN pirated software.
4) The team "carrying" the hacker for a first job that doesn't need one.

If there's a single part of the rules that needs to be house ruled or at least partially ignored for people to play, Unwired's software rules is it.

Easiest way to do that is to do what you just suggested. Use Attribute + Skill, and then cap the Hits based upon your Software Rating. It has worked wonderfully for us, and has the benefit of being an optional Rule discussed in Unwired.

The problem with skillwires is how you view them. From a certain standpoint it makes sense that they're a crippled cap skill. From that same standpoint it would make sense that spirits and sprites would also be the same crippled capped skill. But they're not.

If you're playing in a campaign where 4-5 skill points is substantial, then skillwires are a great investment by allowing (in theory, if not in practice) someone to have a bunch of skills at 4-5 on demand. With some fiddling with activesoft prices and availability, this can become part of the campaign.

If, on the other hand, your pornomancer is throwing 30-50 dice, your dwarf mage with cerebral boosters is triplecasting stunballs, and your technomancer is bendng Neo over like a spoon, the skillwires are simply an expensive joke.

Should point out it is impossible to pirate a personalized skillsoft. Personalized skillsofts only work for the person they are personalized for, and options cannot be changed on skillsofts because they have to be added at/before purchase.

I'm not sure how you disagree here. I said the balance issues piracy causes don't matter since the matrix rules are just a mess. And then I said I wanted to reduce the price of programs, just not though the piracy rules as they stand. They're a huge advantage if you know about them and build your character around them which often means you're fairly dead weight for the first mission but way better afterwards. There's a "drawback" of a monthly cost that only serves to trip up new players who don't realize campaigns pretty much never last for 5 years in game.

Nearly any hacker worth the name can find a pirate haven. They do sadly have to waste 600Y on buying Browse 6 legally. Assuming a hacker has a browse pool of 14 (Browse 6 + Data Search 4 + PuSHeD 1 + Neocortical Nanites 3), he gets 21 hits on the extended test if you're buying hits and -1 die per pass. That can get you any Rating 6 regular or hacking program with 1-3 options (avail 12 + program rating 6 + options 1-3). If you feel like spending the 2 karma for the specialization (Cracker Underground), that's 16 dice or 28 hits. That can get you a rating 4 TacNet. If you can get up a bit higher (teamwork with someone or having analytic mind or drinking Overdrive or cyberware), you can start pirating military programs fairly easily. Now that's a lot more expensive, but doable.

So what you do is at character creation, buy a nice commlink with Browse 6 and Optimization (let's say 10000Y). Then buy a month of High Lifestyle and make sure to leave 1200Y left over to get +12 to your starting cash roll. This means worst case your starting cash is 8000Y and more like 13000Y on average. Then spend the rest of your cash as desired but don't buy other programs. That's 21200Y cost there (and honestly the commlink cost shouldn't matter because you're buying that anyways). The first run you're not as useful as you can be. Maybe you can pass as a halfway decent street samurai, face, or just rig a drone. Or you can refuse the mission and just drink. Or whatever.

Now find the cracker underground after 2 days. Buy all the programs you want for 8000Y which is equal to the lowest possible starting nuyen roll. You're just bought nearly every program at rating 6 for 29000Y. It's an especially good deal since you're just buying stuff you wanted anyways (a nice commlink and a high lifestyle at creation). If you bought the programs at creation that's 60000Y+ for just the programs alone!

The problem is this system causes huge savings if you are willing to stink for a mission. That's terrible design. It doesn't really change hacker versus the world since that's literally playing Calvinball with the GM, but if you have two hackers or whatever it does cause big differences with them. Or the power scale is thrown out under the GM's feat (since he has to build the matrix rules for himself) when the players discover how this all work when they're building their characters and he doesn't realize this.

Edit: tl;dr
Piracy rules as they exist currently are bad because a pirate hacker is build in a very bad way from a RPG design standpoint (suck now for awesome power later). It's also a non-intuitive approach in that hackers are discouraged from buying programs at creation.

Character Creation 3/3 Group-Contact Warez Network.

And if your table wants to house rule that as being an acceptable way of buying pirated software at character creation go for it, but as far as the rules go, I don't see how having a contact helps you get pirated software in any way unless your GM says their connectivity means they can get it, their loyalty means they'll get it for you, and your GM sets a price, same as buying any other gear through any other contact.

To put it another way, contacts can be used in game to buy gear @ >12 avail but they don't let you buy gear @ >12 avail during chargen, no matter what their connection/loyalty is.

Yes that's a common houserule way to allow piracy during character creation (though I typically see the loyalty rating being lower). However, having access to the Cracker Underground isn't a contact. It's some weird special access thing. If you want to wonder why it's this is the case, ask yourself "where is the book does it says what's the connection rating and loyalty of the Cracker Underground when I just find it though google or mention the word contact?"

Honestly, I'll houserule it too if I didn't play Missions. I'll just say in big bold letters in my 90 page houserule document for Shadowrun on the start of the Matrix Houserule Chapter (pages 20-89) "Attention all Hackers and anyone else who cares about buying programs, all programs are 10% cost. There is a small monthly fee too of rating price multipler divide by 10." or something like that. Why bother with the middle men rules?

and if you save money by spoofing your lifestyle, that money gets spent on pirated software instead.

Sadly, the pirated option is mechanically better for hackers because of the problem with registration, the reduced cost is just a very nice bonus. Add in the fact that you can also get rating 4 freeware, and it only makes sense to spend ANY money when you need a rating 5 or 6 program, or a program with specific options.

of course, this is the reason why SR missions wont allow pirated software. the bookkeeping is a mess.

Personally, I find a second problem with registration.

If registration leaves a data trail every time you use it (Unwired 115) then using software that isn't registered makes it incredibly easy to red flag possible hackers who are otherwise legitimately accessing public data. They may be harder to track, but they've just announced that they are worth tracking.

Sure, maybe they wrote their own or they're using Finux, but isn't that the exact kind of person you don't trust in your data?

Ghost, you pirate it, then program the option on. You're right, I accidentally implied you could buy them that way. Pirated Rating 4's are bad enough, though.

Trust me, pirate everything!

Read FastJack's article in Attitude to find out why!

good point. We really need a better way to spoof the registration data trail. As it stands, if you probe the target for admin access, make a couple accounts, and log into one of those accounts, the registration tags are going to cause a problem. especially if they stand out, like using software from a handful of competing companies. that basically scream 'a hacker used this account' when you already know what vendor your company gets its software from.

Skillsofts should be on a tiered schedule. I personally like the idea that rather than invest a ton of money training employees various corps might implant their employees with rating 2 or 3 skillwires and then give them a couple of skillsofts that make them productive workers. Further you could for example deduct some money from their first 6-12 months of wages in order to recoup the upfront costs.

The skillsoft would be company owned and the skillwires either leased to the employee or sold to the employee because skillwires are frankly fairly cheap.

If you don't need Bob doing job x anymore you just give him a different set of skillsofts and viola instantly retrained employee.

So honestly skillwire 2-3 and rating 2-3 know and activesofts should be pretty cheap (linguasofts should be even cheaper). Need scuba diving for a mission, or pilot aircraft or first aid? No big deal.

Skillwire 4-5 and Skillsoft 4-5 (I personally don't mind rating 5 activesofts) should be more expensive as we are talking veteran and expert level of knowledge. That means a more comprehensive knowledgebase and fewer potential models for generating the activesoft. Overall though I don't really mind that a shadowrunner might be able to slot a rating 5 skillsoft and build a respectable pool.

Personally I'd make the cost be something like 2,000 x rating up to rating 3 and 5,000 x rating up to 5 for activesofts. Getting a first aid 3 activesoft would cost you 6k but a rating 5 pistol active soft would be 25k which is a much more substantial investment. I think this would encourage people to invest in a large number of cheap activesofts rather than 2 really pricey options. Restrict edge use with chipped skills and most people are still going to want a natural skill rather than relying on tech boosts.

Pirate software in general is problematic. You could just make it so that activesofts have to be customized and thus there is no way to effectively pirate them because pistol3 for troll requires different customizations than pistol 3 for a dwarf, etc.

You can't program an option onto skillsofts. If you want a personalized skillsoft it has to be legitimate.

Since unreferenced claims tend to lead towards debate/confusion: Unwired 118

Ah, phew! I am relieved to hear that abuse potential doesn't exist, then. I knew you couldn't program them, but I didn't realize you couldn't patch them.

Actually even the SR4 core book already suggests a way around the data-trail problem - that is, you buy the software legally, then crack it and copy it and use the cracked copies, taking care to "spoof your datatrail" now and then.

So... it's not quite that bad. Still, not being able to copy software has ALWAYS been one of things that bugged me in SR3, and I like being able to do it, now. So...

My suggestion on piracy:
Either use the contact option, or find a nice GM who will give you R4 pirated programs at chargen. So many rules are borked, this is just another one.

Concerning the alternate rule of using Attribute + Skill for matrix tasks: It doesn't quite remove the importance of programs, although an R4 or R5 will get you plenty of leeway for a while.

I still question the wisdom of giving full DNI access to software that you downloaded from a Warez Site.

Yeah, hack it yourself or get hacked, yourself.



-k

What if skillsofts just cost 1000*Rating^2 or something like that.

I know that Shadowrun seems to avoid exponents, but if its to avoid complexity, Mission Failed.

Rating 1: Worth 2 dice or the ability to perform a task that would otherwise be impossible - 1000
Rating 2: 4000
Rating 3: 9000
Rating 4: 16000

You could buy rating 16 rating 1 skills for the price of getting 1 of those skills at half a success more. Given this house rule, I'm almost guaranteed to show up at the table with skillwires, agility, reaction, and IP boosted as high as possible, and Mr. Lucky (edge at eight). Since the base Mr. Lucky build is every skill at 1, your proposal allows me to save a ton of BP by buying the skills for 1/5 of a BP each.

That only shows you'r a bad person who abuses the Edge rules (although, it was my understanding that you couldn't Edge skillsofts anyway).

I'm pretty okay with the proliferation of minimal-level skills among characters, but the cost numbers can always be tweaked.

Heh, who do you trust LESS, software pirates or megacorps .

Yeah, tough world.

I believe a hacker worth his money will fully analyze the program using his ph4t sk1llz, anyway.

Heck, if nothing else, get the Warez for your Sammy "buddy" to use... on another 'Run! Preferably one far, far away from you and see if there is any "bugs" in the software. If there is a bug you dispose of it and try again.

huh. you know, with skillwires, a datajack, a good commlink, a data search activesoft and a browse program.... you could build a really great skillwire hacker. need a specific skill in the middle of a run? he can pirate a copy and do the job.

makes me wonder if theres any Freeware skillsofts out there. there should be some.

"You have shot someone in the face five times. Please consider upgrading to our full version for only 5000 ."

That is the main drawback skillsofts, besides the inability to get specializations. Even with the Expert System you may not really use Edge. You may only reroll a failed test, whatever that means. It is the whole test that is rerolled not only the dice that did not score a hit. This makes the implant a worthless piece of junk IMHO.

You're absolutely right. I am a bad person AND Mr. Lucky is a horrible choice.

So I shy away from Mr. Lucky and become Mr. Assist. Lots of level 1 skills and I'm adding to everyone's dice pool.

Unfortunately, the mess is that they're multiple problems. Not only is it hard to balance between skillsofts you can't edge and real skills, but in the long run neither matter because sprites and spirits are so much better than skillsofts and mundane skills anyway that even if you do make skillsofts cheap you either have to power creep the skillsofts to the same unreasonable point as sprites and spirits (making skills close to worthless) or just accept that the whole bit is a wash.