Given that different roles have different bell curves (It's really easy to be on the top end on a face. It's incredibly difficult to be on the top end as a hacker without piracy), here's my old dice pools.



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Note for above. By "generic character", I meant the one I posted from Chummer, not the one you started the thread with.

Note #2. The guy who can "hold your tools" should be able to add 3 dice (assisting) to the guy who is asking someone to hold his tools, taking him up to 21 dice, same as the top level. Backup (15) + Backup (12) get 19 dice between them.

Seems like we're matching up pretty closely, then. (Also, amusing captions. Although I think 'I can hold your tools' for 9 dice is a bit unfair.)

I can agree with your benchmarks here. Not too bad. I might change a point here or there, but otherwise, I like it.

Check Neurosis' .sig.

I agree. Personally I'd lower the whole thing by two, but then again we've been playing with 300-350BP ...

Yeah, I figured after I posted...
No worries...

Powerful is being able to survive DotA and Ghost Cartels.

Maybe not but an atypical character with really maxed Agility does get exactly 30 dice(as long as you have 2 team mates for tacnet usage)

An atypical character can get as high as 10 unaugmented agility and 6 skill, for up to 32 dice. (if you can go over quality cap post char generation you can get that as high as 34). That was never really the point.

Funny you mention that, I'm actually running Ghost Cartels as a low-powered street level campaign; I toned down all of the opposition accordingly, except for the parts where the PCs are supposed to lose/run.

DotA is...really ridiculous. I have been not just surviving but thriving whilst PCing through it, but I think that's because I have a lenient GM, not a powerful PC.



It sure isn't.

No, just that it is usually not min-maxed or powergaming, since you can get there with a few logical choices, rather than any convoluted rules-raping.

Power level is very subjective, but overall, your original example would be "bad enough" for most campaigns.

I liked your dice examples. It's good to have something like that as a baseline for people to agree or disagree with. Here are my thoughts on those dice pools:

25+ DICE: Most characters rolling this many dice will be hyper-specialists, who might still be viable builds, but are not likely to be more than functional outside of their main specialty, and more often than not, have made too many sacrifices in other areas to get to this point. There are a few dice pools, such as social skills and gymnastics, can reach this level more easily because they have lots of potential positive modifiers.

20-24 DICE: Specialist level dice pools. Faces who combine several dice pool boosters, street samurai using a chosen ranged weapon with a specialization. Rarer outside of social and combat dice rolls. Mages, close combat specialists and such who reach this level can be compared to the hyperspecialists above. Specialists generally do not suffer nearly as much as hyper-specialists, when it comes to being limited in other areas.

15-19 DICE: Competent and capable for combat and social skills, extremely good for nearly anything else.

12-14 DICE: Still effective for a face (their dice pool to be good at their job starts out lower, even though it can usually go higher, compared to combat skills). Good combat ability for someone's secondary specialty, slightly weak (but still functional) for someone's primary specialty, at least against weaker opposition such as typical security grunts. For dice pools without a lot of dice pool modifiers, this is actually pretty strong.

10-11 DICE: This is usually where you get secondary specialties that can still be called specialties, like the street samurai who can also drive or sneak.

6-9 DICE: Tertiary skills, either that or defaulting in areas that the character has superhuman Attributes in.

1-5 DICE: Not a reliable skill (or default). Generally something that is not part of the character's role as a shadowrunner (etiquette for the troll tank, data search for the shaman, etc.). At the very lowest end, a genuine weakness. At the 3-5 range, it is something the character is at least not completely clueless about. In other words, the troll with Charisma: 2 and the influence skill group at 1 should not try to fast-talk his way past the bouncer, but at least he won't pick his nose during the meet with the Johnson.

So generally speaking, it seems like your expectations are 1-4 dice higher than mine, which is fine. That's a totally acceptable standard deviation.

I would say that 12-14 (especially 14) Dice is quite strong for a combat skill, whereas you would call it slightly weak. I guess that's our main point of disagreement.

Just to throw in my own two ¥... Powerful is relative. I scale my encounters based around the players. And if 5 players at my table want to play characters with 12-14 dice, and one player insists that he needs 22+ dice to be effective, guess who's going to get nerfed down? Fun needs to be had by everyone, not just one player.

Bull

*Sniffs* AW MAN! BULL! Light a match!

DAMN That's powerful!

Nerfing might not even be called for. Unbalanced power levels are not a problem as long as there is no competition between players. If the min-maxer is the hacker and nobody else wants to deal with hacking, you can just leave him be.

Agreed. though my experiences say that usually characters that need and insist on min-maxing their characters that way, especially if he knows the rest of the players are at a more moderate level of power, is also usually a spotlight and game hog.

If everyones having fun though? Yeah. then it's fine.

Guys, you can't but one dicepool to any skill.
Take first aid for example:
You get an easy+6 simply due to the medkit. Logic can also be boosted quite easy.
Or you look at the pornomancer beeing able to get up to 40 dices easy.
On the other hand take a skill like diving or survival. Linked to "hard to augment" attributes, no real out of the box boni etc.

Thats a general problem in SR.
The attribute + Skill dice pool is quite small, compared to the dices you may stick into it.
How much dice this can be does not follow any line. (This is why I like the optional rule, that the dice pool is not to exceed (natural attribut+ skill)*2.
It gives you a frame to work with.

Exactly. That's why my look at the dice pools differentiated between types of skills - 12 dice for pistols is weaksauce because there are ways that you can boost the Attribute, the skill, and the modifiers. 12 dice for survival, on the other hand, is Crocodile frikkin' Dundee.

But the obvious does not prevent conversation. We can accept that it's there and still talk as if it's not and understand each other. Metaphors and examples don't have to be perfect, they just have to be understood by people willing to work with metaphors and examples.

Yes, the first aid kit 6 provides an incredibly easy 12 dice + logic. That doesn't change the view of how many dice is "powerful". It just means "powerful" in this one particular area is easy to get. Likewise "powerful" in survival is close to impossible to get UNLESS everyone works together and assists. In a similar vein, the face is cheap dice compared to the hacker but that doesn't change the inherent usefulness of the dice pool. A well built face doesn't need an assist. A hacker who (through piracy or insane amounts of cash) has an equivalent pool probably already has that assist in the form of an agent (mook) with an EW autosoft.

If you ignore the assist rules, then having separate scales may be a necessary idea, but keeping the assist rules in mind, one single table still works for anyone willing to use it.

Huh, that's not how I read Medkits at all.



So you have 3 scenarios:

Medkit 6 left unattended: 6 dice (rating)
Medkit 6 used by someone untrained: Logic+6 (You receive the attribute and the device rating in place of skill, you don't get the extra +6 bonus at this point because you are using the medkit to replace skill)
Medkit 6 used by someone trained: Logic+First Aid+ 6 (Here since you are trained, you get your normal check with the device's rating as a bonus)


The only way you're getting logic + 12 is if you have First Aid skill all the way up to 12. The benefit of being able to use the medkit as a skill rather than a dice pool modifier is you don't take the penalty for defaulting.

The pools are different and the thresholds to reach are also different. Dumb example: you need a higher dice pool in close combat than in firearms because the melee defense is higher. To go back to the First Aid example, 12 dice are easy to reach but 12 dice can hardly be called powerful: half of them only get you to the Threshold 2. 12 dice is already pretty good as a spellcasting pool, however, and not so far from munchkinism.

Those Streeline Special bullets are Powerful Weak!

12 dice is powerfull if your multicasting 2 spells, for only one spell, not so much.

Yes, if you do the powerfocus trick, if you have at least 100 Karma or do not use ware and hardmax. etc. etc.
So 12 dices is quite powerfull for spellcasting. (in general)
(Yes, you may get 4 dices more for special spells)

I definitely disagree that 12 dice is a weaksauce attack pool.



Of course, munchkinery is something everyone has a different perspective on too. I'd disagree with you and say that 20 dice is definitely getting up there.

Yes, I believe your reading is correct.

glitch

12 dice is a weak attack pool, you lose attack dice very quickly when modifiers start subtracting from your pool.

Edit - spelling

I might concede that 12 is average, but weak? The Red Samurai have an attack dice pool of 14 and are considered within the game's fluff (which yes, unsurprisingly does matter to me) to be one of the most elite paamilitary units in the world. I don't think that two dice under them (or, in other words, them with their Smartlinks off) should be considered 'weak'.

12 Dice, remember, is equivalent to a character with basically the maximum possible attribute and skill for an ordinary human. So it's not 'powerful', because in SR we have superhumans, but being in essence the peak of unaugmented human performance it just seems insane to call it weak.

It's powerful to an unaugmented human yes. However, Shadowrun isn't about unaugmented humans, it's about augmented superhumans who face long odds regularly in order to survive. To Joe Wageslave 12 dice in anything is godly.

Edit- I was actually shocked at how bad Red Samurai were.

While I prefer your interpretation, the "and" seems perfectly clear
SR4A pg 337

Edit: Unattened = pg 253. My bad.
Going ONLY by pg 253, yes, your interpretation reads correct. I'd love to have someone errata 337 to have an "or" there.

Okay, I wasn't aware that it was also described on 337.

I'd say it's a case of conflicting RAW, so the GM gets to choose which to follow. I would however say any solution that doesn't make the first aid skill a complete and total waste of build points is probably the better answer.

For extra giggles and fun, turns out that part of the text was added for SR4A. It's not in the descirption of the device in SR4. The part on 253 is the same though. Ahhhh, editing for 'clarity' indeed.

And that being the case, I'd probably stick with the original. Either a bonus, or replace the skill, not both.

Well that would be the sane interpretation as the other interpretation punishes a character for having the skill.

But there comes a point where you're so good its silly. Even with augmentations the PCs are still ultimately human. And 12-14 is amazing. You think today, 12-14 dice is Tom Brady throwing a football, Stephen Hawking doing physics, or Bill Clinton being a pornomancer. Yes, successful runners are exceptionally good at what they do, and having the tech lets them be better than should be possible, but at some point you're crossing a fuzzy line where you're a better swordsman than Neil the Ork Barbarian. After all, we're only runners, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, more of us.

My experience is that at that point, you either have a LOT of Karma or a LOT of glass. If you want to avoid that point, don't ignore the glass.

Nah, those "superhumans" of today also get a lot of bonus dice: Experimental Physics Facility (+6 dice) or Thinks Tanks and Spin Doctors (both providing assist dice).

A significant part of any dice pool is going to consist of bonuses from tech, gear, assist and circumstances. 12 is a lot of dice if you ignore all those modifiers, but that's talking laboratory conditions; in the wild, everyone gets modifiers. So focusing on typical Attribute+Skill numbers warps your perspective of what weak and powerful dice pools would be in practice.