So the recent thread on SR 4E's longevity got me thinking. While the prior D&D edition change and the subsequent rise of Pathfinder are not applicable in this case, I think we can pull one good lesson from it: open design and playtesting (ala, Pathfinder) is the way to go. It not only allows for early user acceptance, it also energizes and grows a community. Additionally, it outsources much of the "hard work" of playtesting to the community. There's a lot of other perks, but I'm on my lunch break. Moving right along...

Instead of waiting for Catalyst to get around to it, why don't we just get the discussion going now? Tentatively, a first step would be to decide on some guiding principles and break the process down into manageable chunks.

Proposed Methodology

1.) Use SR4A as the framework (no need to rewrite everything).
2.) Decide what components of SR4A need to be changed/streamlined.
3.) Discuss each component from #2 and collate suggestions as to changes need.
4.) Vote on which suggestions from #3 are the "best."
5.) Begin playtesting of the highest voted suggestions in weekly games.
???
6.) Profit!!! (aka, fun)

I think going back to SR4 is not enough. SR4 did not do a good job at switching to a fixed TN. This brought several problems:
- smartguns and Control rig lost all flavor
- the blind fire penalty is laughable
- flechette ammunition does not do what it is supposed to
- the threshold system doe snot scale high enough
...

A 5th edition should go back to variable TN but keep the attribute+skill rolls which are much easier than the old dice pools.

Not to be a wet blanket, but I'm not sure this is worth the effort. While it's a good idea to try and guide Catalyst towards this idea, it's unlikely to take if they don't want it to.

The other thing is effort. I briefly took part in a community project like this for another game. While it was an interesting idea, I left the project because I saw no point. Now that the project is done, I've seen a few players use those fan made rules, but it is far from the standard of play. I'm concerned that such an effort here would end the same, and would just have a few dozen people playing with these rules while everyone else in the world ignores them.

I think a better approach would be to draft a proposal to Catalyst. At least that way, you can gauge their interest in an open playtest, as well as a new edition.

Suggesting to Catalyst that they go the open-design Pathfinder route with Shadowrun is a great idea for all crunch books, not just the core rules. (Fluff books could need plot secrecy.)

Having said that, I hope their is never a "Fifth Edition", rather I want them to go the route taken with Call of Cthulhu where each revision of the core book has errata and rule updates, but not wholesale change of core mechanics. Following this model (if I were Catalyst) I would hold the larger changes for Anniversary Additions (25th, 30th, etc.) This lets them get most of the sales boost of a completely new edition, without the player base fracturing that complete changes to the core mechanic seem to cause.

I would put fourth that this was done for SR1/SR2/SR3 in that it was still easy to use adventures from any version with any version, but the rules grew and were refined. SR4 was a true change (more for the better, than the worse IMHO, but with some notable gaps), but SR4A was incremental again, and I think/hope that SR5 (or perhaps SR25A or SR2014) is again incremental change.

P.S. Trying to do this ourselves without participation from CGL will probably just be a bunch of work that gets nowhere, like the groups that keep working on a Shadowrun MMORPG despite not having a license or any connection to people with a license.

My main issue with this is that SR4A has no framework inherent in the model. It fails at consistency, statistics, and underlying goals. I think if you're going to do it, a clear set of design rules, goals, and framework would be best.

Proposal Examples:
1) Dice Pools: Dice pools consist of Attribute(s) + Skill + Innate Enhancements (cyberware/magic) + modifiers. Skill is capped by attribute it is associated with. Innate Enhancements are capped by Attribute they're associated with. Positive modifiers are capped by highest attribute.
2) Karmagen: Due to the inherent price difference between BP and Karma, only one system (Karma) will be used for both character creation and character progression.
3) Karma balancing: Enhancements and gear will, in the design phase, have a "calculated" Karma cost based on nuyen, essence, Karma, ect to insure costs are remotely balanced. This includes races, skills, skill groups, etc. Group discounts are fine in moderation.
4) Design Approach: For simplicity sake, the meat work will be "fleshed out first". The awakened world will follow, adjusting the meat world as necessary for balance. The matrix world will be third, adjusting magic and meat as necessary. Last will be combinations of worlds, such as dual-natured critters, technomancers, etc.
5) Fluff: A version of the fluff will have to be agreed on. Current SR4 is a "dystopia" that's a heck of a lot better than the 1980's in which the game was first written.
6) Separation of Rules and Fluff: The text must make it clear what is a rule and what is just a description. This can be done with fonts, bolding, color, CSS markup, whatever.
7) Mary Sue Is Not Invited. We all have our favorites but this is no place to play favorites. Putting personal characters in the world, making sure your favorite martial art is better then gunkata, and insuring this great idea you had is so great people would be fools not to take it does not belong.
8) This is not a simulation. Accuracy is to be commended. Breaking balance or slowing play for the sake of accuracy is not.

This is why I'm not the benevolent dictator....

It's a Shiny Post-Cyberpunk Dystopia. Which means it has a veneer. A very, very thin one.

Of all your proposals, the one with which I have a major disagreement is the fourth: design approach. Despite the fact it would be somewhat more complex I'd recommend all three worlds be developed concurrently. It is their mutual existence and interaction that defines much of the shadows. By concentrating only on one or two you unavoidably make the ignored afterthoughts, forcing them into compromises before they can state their case and weakening them in later play.

I believe, given dumpshock as a model, that stating one's case does not result in consistencies. It simply results in two separate models that don't agree with each other. But this is not my project. Them that run it can do as they want. Personally, I don't care if magic or matrix is "weakened" because neither have balance reasons to be stronger than the meat world in which all characters live and getting the meat world balanced with itself seems to be enough of a complexity.

One thing our group has always held true with every system we've played in (D&D 3.5 - 4, BESM, V:TM, GURPS, ect) we have always heralded Shadowrun as the be-all, end-all of roleplaying. It gives you enough diversity to literally make any character you can think of. Based on that alone, we think this game is the best there is. Even then, I don't think we would call it infallible. But make no mistake, at the end of the day, SR4A does what it needs to do.

I still need a lot of hand-holding when it comes to the Matrix in 4E, but even then, I have had to look up rules in SR4A a lot less then I did in any edition of D&D. And even though the system has balance issues, it doesn't fall into the traps of other games where the players are disconnected from the rest of the setting. In other games I've played, the characters are always special for one reason or another. However, in Shadowrun, you're a normal-ass dude that has a handful of skills to do illegal things and a penchant for taking insane requests, all in the name of rent and groceries. Shadowrunning can run the gamut of going full pink-mohawk and gunning down waves of goons to being so professional that even your employer is amazed the he didn't notice you succeeding.

New edition or not, the makers of this game are getting my money. The only gripe I would have is that Unwired and Augmentation should have had more to them, or maybe more love should have been given to those sections of the settings, but everything is still great from my end.

I agree with this, which is why the matrix system as it is is often overlooked, a game-within-the-game, or only lightly touched on (cracking a lock, rigging a drone).

The matrix needs the be tied to the meat world so closely that even the troll brute remembers to get himself a comlink with Exploit on it. It might not be as good as the hacker's but he knows he's going to need it.

("pet" rules for the matrix would have programs enabling actions rather than replacing one dice pool or another. Sort of like "lock picks let you pick locks" or "maglock passkeys enable maglock bypassing." Along with a standard suit of software for every comlink: edit, browse, scan, and analyze)

Id put PACKS as the default character creation, have social modifiers apply to mind spells, make the regeneration power more powerful for critters, increase the dice pool for spirits to resist being summoned. Cap the magic stat by race, remove the cap on skills, add a group edge pool (and while im at it rename it back to karma), take a harder look at what you can do with edge and what the cost is, remove the soak roll (make it a static threshold), make default hacking attribute+skill, rework the two rigging systems (chase & combat) into one. Probably a bunch of other minor tweeks to gear.

I think the thing people forget/ignore is that cyber is matrix.

Except that it's not. If you accept into the game hacking people's cyberarms, then the only person you should bring on a run is a hacker (better yet, two or three). Because a hacker (using drones) is immune to magic (largely). A hacker is immune to guns ("that guy's cyberarm starts to strangle his buddy"). A hacker can go toe-to-toe with another hacker (they're equal, so bring two buddies).

The cybered characters are never going to have a system that will keep a dedicated hacker at bay. Every dime spent on cyber is a dime that the hacker spent being a better hacker than you.

Well... that depends on how quickly the cyberware can be hacked. If you cant only take over one persons arm every other initiative roll, firearm still beats hacker. You could make hacking useful in combat without making it overpowered.

I'd actually use 3rd edition as your starting mechanics. 3rd edition can accomplish a lot more than 4th, has gone through a lot more revisions and playtesting, and it's easier to take a complex, focused system and make it quicker and more casual than vice versa.

However, yes, this seems like dangerous ground without CGL's permission. Given CGL's previous behavior, I don't know that I'd be comfortable investing my time and energy in this when it's possible to just get shot out of the water, or for CGl to lift all the work without giving credit (and pay) where it's due.

Who says the hacker is on-site?

Does no one watch ghost in the shell?

Also consider matrix time versus real time. According to the fluff (read: published novels) perceptive time in the matrix is 10:1 with the real world.

Its overlooked (or ignored) because its a pain in the ass. Every type of action requires its own particular program to use, and is defended against with a different particular program, and being effective requires knowing all of them. I've never used Matrix in any of my games, as GM or PC, because every time I've tried I've ended up with pages of lists and fumbling with 'which program do I use for which thing again?' At least in SR1-3, the Matrix was easily ignored, but with 4 and RFIDs and AROs and EVERYTHING being hackable, that doesn't work as well. Also one of the main reasons I still immensely prefer SR3. There's another active thread right now about setting up comlinks for non techie roles, and even samurai are needing half a page worth of programs and settings. Maybe instead of so many lists of programs, fall back to just suites that do it all. If the hacker wants greater detail he can buy each program seperately, but otherwise just have "Hacking 6 Suite: +6 to any activities using the Hacking skill." Samurai builds can be very simple (if you like) and still effective, but there's no easy way to do the Matrix.

Its also illogical fluff-wise; walking around broadcasting that much information about yourself is dangerous today, without a world full of amoral super-hackers. I just can't get my head around the idea that Joe Average 2070 would intentionally make himself that vulnerable because it was cool, or that the Corps would want their people to be walking security holes. What military force would possibly buy new guns or implants that can be hacked, when the ones that made just a few years before can't? In trying to be super Facebook, its crossed the line into super silly. When there's more logic an army of cyborg elves conquering Oregon than in the flow of world information, something is off.

That, and ambiguous or otherwise confusing rules.



Or as I said once:

"We finished installing your aftermarket video surveillance system. It was too costly (and frankly just a pain in the arse to be bothered) to use closed circuit wires, so we just hooked them up to a wifi network. We made it as secure as we can, but it could be password hacked. Speaking of, you might want to change the password. Right now it's "password" but even then it'll only just slow a hacker down by about 5 minutes, and once they have access they'll have complete and total control over your entire security system from alarms to door locks to automated turrets. Enjoy!"

The whole point of ShadowRun matrix security are the IC and roaming (human) spiders checking to make sure that users are legitimate users. The problem is that the rules don't convey this as well as the fact that making rules to work that way verges in on sacrificing speed/fun for accuracy.

Finding a middle ground is difficult.

We need:

1) Everyone uses the matrix regularly (at least, the players. Joe Blow walking down the street might just have an AR ad overlay and make purchases and not need to hack open doors).
2) Hacking a device (directly) should take no more than 1 opposed test.
3) Cybercombat should be rare, but unavoidable, and not deadly.
4) Hacking should be required to be on-site, rather than contracted out to India (I don't care how many wireless networks there are. The security camera are not on the internet!)
5) Defenses should be cheap, attacks should be expensive (the cybersam shouldn't need to worry about the nuyen cost of his Firewall and Analyze, however the hacker should need to pay out the nose for Exploit and Spoof, just like the sammy did for his AGL 9 arms and his DoublePlus Hightech Supermach gun, but only shelled out 800 for a flak jacket)
6) Reduce the number of programs. First aid is possible without a first aid kit. Hacking needs to be possible without 12 hacking programs. They should aid not enable (in response to the unasked question about my prior stance of programs enabling actions, I mean in a general sense of performing specific, more niche uses of the skill; Special Powers if you will).
7) More Hardware, Less Software. Hackers need beefy computers, home users do not.
Hacking needs to be limited by target more than self, in some way. Hacking into a device of rating 1 should impose some kind of penalty (it should be easy, but slow).

I'm on board with 80%+ of that, certainly a better direction to take it.

Everyone uses the matrix. Not everyone has to hack it, even among the players.
Isn't it what spoofing does?

You can't have both. If cybercombat is not deadly, then the IC only wants to kick you of the node. If it only wants to kick you out of node, then it has no reason to prevent you from logging off. Locking a hacker inside the node only makes sense if the IC is targetting his meat one way or another.
I cannot agree more with all of that.
You have another contradiction here: why should the hacker beef up his commlink to end up limited by the target node?

It is less frustrating to keep everything on the hacker's side: he runs his personna on his commlink and his stats only depend on his own hardware. It is coherent with the rest of the setting: memory and data transfers are infinite but Response is not, so classical client/server have been replaced by a model where the server feeds the client raw data and lets him crunch the numbers himself, so that everyone pays for the computing power they use.

What I mean is, hacking shouldn't be a minigame that only the hacker plays, taking up the GMs time while everyone else gets pizza. They should be able to be involved, and do so with a minimum of character generation resources.



I mean. Cybercombat should come up about as often as some groups want a firefight: rarely, and it means you fucked up.
By "not deadly" I'm more referring to technomancers. To a regular hacker cybercombat isn't deadly. I also mean in the sense that if you get into cybercombat, it shouldn't be an "oh, you lose the mission" level critical fuckup (unless you lose the combat, of course).



Poorly worded. I mean something closer to the fact that right now there's no penalty if you hack a highly secure system via a vending machine (device rating 0). In fact, there's only good things from doing so (namely, not being traced as quickly). Some programs should operate on the target-node's hardware, rather than the hacker's node (anyone who's played...Slavehack will understand where I'm coming from).



The matrix makes no freaking sense, fluffwise. In order to find the nearest hardware store, you run your Data Search program, which then trawls the entire internet for you running from your local machine, rather than connecting to a remote database that everyone uses to find information like this (i.e. Google).

1) I disagree with the idea of going back to changing target numbers. While it did make some pieces of equipment more interesting, that price isn't worth the ease of use and the set target number gives. I remember in SR3 having to deal with ridiculous target numbers and it just being really annoying.

2) I agree with most of what's being said about the matrix. The number of programs you need to be competent REALLY sucks. Right now I'm getting a new hacker/rigger ready, and with 280k nuyen, Im barely affording the minimum of stuff that I want between cyber and my commlink.

3) On the topic of the matrix, stats should play a more prominent role. Everything else in the game uses stat+skill, yet the matrix uses skill+program. This kind of goes in hand with the need less programs, but really, I'm saying drop the vast majority of programs, and make all of the various actions usable by default with stat+skill, then programs can be bought to open up new options or improve existing options (like you could have a program that acts as a first aid kit, either replacing your hacking skill if you're untrained, or giving a bonus to your check if you have hacking). These programs should be cheap though, again similar in cost to medkits. Your biggest expense should be getting that nice commlink or nexus, then getting addons and the like is pretty easy.

4) I saw mentioned somewhere else the suggestion to make stat/2+skill, but with skills uncapped, or at least a higher cap. I could see something like that working pretty well, and would love to see it. It keeps stats important, but makes your skills more important, and makes a bigger difference between a skilled person with some natural talent and a guy who just has really good stats and no skills. (For example the hacker I mentioned earlier has 10 logic, but only 2 ranks in most skills, yet even so all his dicepools are about the same as your 6 stat 6 skill guy, where really you'd expect the guy with a skill rating of 6 to be much better by virtue of having all that training. Remember rating 6 in a skill is in current fluff a once in a generation master)

5) I'd like to see adept powers cut in cost so they're reasonable. A flat 25% reduction across the board, plus a trunctuated version of the Adept Ways in the core book (ie choose 1 power per 2 magic for a 25% discount and 2 metamagics for +1 initiation grade, cost 10bp) would probably make them bearable.

6) Id also like to see some way to resist magic without a mage introduced, and make elemental manipulations suck less compared to direct spells. I don't care if it means they beef up magic base damage slightly to compensate, it'd just be nice to see.

7) I will agree that having an open playtest is good, but I wouldn't base it on Pathfinder's, given they had an open playtest that was basically nothing more than publicity. Most issues that were brought up were completely ignored. I'd hate to see a SR5 that has tons of gaping holes and imbalances that people bring up months before release and never get addressed.

Speaking of skills, I'd raise skill max rating to 12, but not change chargen rules (max one 6 or two 5s). It'd make the game a little more granular and give a lot of room for characters to grow.
Some other things would need to be balanced around that, but that's ok.



The largest problem is that there isn't a dodge/resist test. Just a resist, and with a dicepool smaller than the spellcaster's (hmm, 4 dice versus 12...).

Speaking of magic. Background counts need to be incorporated more. My group has almost always not-used them (i.e. forgotten about them).

Actually this reminds me of one other thing I wanted to say: Please get rid of the BP/Karma system. Just have one uniform system for creating and developing characters. Personally, I'd prefer using BP (even if you rename it to karma, whatever), so stat and skill costs remain the same across the board... but I could see the point in using the karma system with rising costs as well. It's just really annoying knowing that if you want a high stat or skill you better get that at character gen, because getting it in game will take you months or years of saving karma to get it, when you can instead get your high stats/skills right at the start, and branch out picking up low level skills, specializations, and the like post character gen.


I'd also like to see a less subjective karma reward system. I see some people around talking about how if they don't get 6-8 karma a session then it's going way to slow. Up until fairly recently, my group was getting like 2-3 karma per run which would generally run 2-3 sessions, though we have recently switched it to getting karma per session, so we get 2-3 per session now, 4 if we're especially lucky. This is because of how the karma reward system is laid out, where the it has things like +1 for good roleplaying (some GMs will give this all times unless the player is acting OOC constantly, other GMs will only give it for something exceptional, like a really good dialogue exchange or doing something in character even though it's detrimental to you), or +1 for right skill right time (again, something some GMs give away to basically everyone because if you completed the mission you obviously had what you needed. Other GMs only give that if you have a particularly situational skill that he didn't anticipate making something easier). I'd much prefer something more akin to you gain karma equal to the professional rating of the run x1 + an extra .5 multiplier for every extra session the run takes up, or something along those lines. Not necessarily D&Desque XP where you get xp for killing people, but make the reward more heavily mission based rather than whatever the GM feels like.

Oh, last thing with the character gen/building rules that bugs me-training times and buying times. Apparently for most groups this isn't an issue, but in my group, having months of downtime is something that just doesn't happen. Every time I try to buy something or train something, we end up finishing 3-4 runs before I get it. I literally am incapable of spending my karma fast enough even at the slow rate of karma accumulation my group has, because it takes a month to train a skill to rank 1. I don't mind some bit of reality in buying stuff and training, but either put something in the rules explicitly saying runner's aren't in huge demand and typically only get one job every few months, or speed these times up significantly. (This complaint also applies to build/repair and especially software programming rules. Goddamn 3 month intervals to program a pretty basic program? I'd be an old greyhair before I had enough programs to do any sort of real hacking if I wanted to code it myself the way the fluff implies most hackers do!)



Yeah. Something as simple as a new manatech that somehow replicates the effects of counterspelling on the person worn would help a lot. Alternatively allowing dual stat for resisting (say make all direct spells resisted with body+will instead of just will). Add that, then make direct spells deal a little less damage than indirect spells (which get both dodge and resist) and it seems pretty fair.



There's no way to mechanically force that though, just like there's no way to mechanically force more matrix use. Maybe make a metamagic that lets you make an aspected background count in a specific area (actually doesn't geomancy already do that?). Then when you go breaking into a corp, your mages are probably feeling pretty weak, while the corp's mages are all superpowered.

Heh. You said veneer.

The problems with magic are now Conjuring wizards now get double the dice (in theory) with less of a chance to fail (again in theory), and resistance across all forms is more of a toss up. Willpower 1 and willpower 6 used to be vastly different because not only was it the TN but it was also the dice for the resistance test. So its good for the Willpower 1 - 3 guys but bad for the willpower 6 guys. Willpower 4-5 is kind of a toss up. Conjuring needs to be more static and not a roll off. Threshold in force seams a bit harsh though.

This makes attributes even more important and devalues skills even more. I'd have attributes give 1/2 rating round down since well they apply to multiple skills and I'd remove any skill cap, as for enhancements the main thing IMO is too come up with concrete stacking rules. Tying skill caps to attributes made sense in SR3 where attributes did less. It gave a reason to have a good charisma on your face, now since it adds to your pool it already is a good idea.

As for those talking about the Variable TN, I am kind of for it. Player controlled dice pools seem to go a bit quicker for us. It just seems easier to always be rolling X dice and then count the whatever the GM tells you than wait and have the GM tell you the mods, then roll the dice and count the 5's and 6's. But the TNs really didn't scale well, each TN mod changed the difficulty at a absurd rate. So a fixed TN is fine though I'd go with TN 4 maybe even 3. At TN 5 there is not enough difference between different dice pools sizes unless the difference is huge.

This.

As for how to tie the two together, I am unsure.
I'm not sure I like variable target numbers, but at the same time, there are things in 4E that are neigh impossible to counter (a good face and magic being two) without also being that thing.

Higher thresholds and strict stacking rules can counter things without making target numbers variable.


Alternatively you can have a set target number that varies with different tests. For example shooting someone might have a TN of 3 while casting on someone might have a TN of 6. The biggest issue with variable TNs is stuff like stacking modifiers that let you get TNs down to 2 to up to ridiculous numbers like 20 or more, that make a given task either impossible without extreme luck or exceedingly easy. Having different TNs within the system that can't be changed once that TN is set would be workable. Though I'd rather just stick with the universal TN for simplicity sake (though I'm not opposed to lowering to a TN3 or 4 instead of 5, to make bigger dice pools have a bigger effect, so you can have people with dice pools still able to reliably perform simple tasks, harder tasks can have higher thresholds without being impossible)

Under BP, this is true. If Chargen is kept to BP, then that part of the proposal needs to go.

That's why I proposed using Karma for everything. Karma's ever-increasing cost for an attribute means that the best dice pools come from matching skills to attributes. It's simply cost ineffective to try to buy an attribute through the roof and ignore skills.

Even under karma, it's incredibly easy to raise stats (at least physical ones) with cyber, it's much harder to raise skills.


Maybe make skills so training costs don't increase, but attribute costs do (so getting your 6th point of agi costs 30 karma, but any skill rank is going to cost 4-5 karma), and limit cyber/bio augmentation based on your actual attributes, rather than your race's maximums.


ie instead of a Troll having a 15 augmented max strength, starting with 5 strength, and grabbing cyberlimbs that boost up to 15, instead the cyberlimb customization enhancement is limited to his normal strength (5), and then the enhancement you can gain from that is +2, so he can get up to 7 strength on the limb. Alternatively he can grab Muscle Augment 2 to get 7 strength. However he would not be able to use Muscle Augment 3, because even though his theoretical max is 15, right now with only 5 strength his augmented max is 7.

Another example would be an Elf, with a genetic optimization, for 8 agility. He spends the BP/karma to hardcap it. Now he can get a cyberlimb customized to 8 agility, and enhanced beyond that to up to 12. Alternatively, he can grab Muscle Toner 4, which gets him up to 12.



If you do that, then you can make the attribute more important, because it costs a lot of resources to augment it high, and skills are relatively cheap. That said, I still wouldn't cap skills at attribute, I like the idea of making skill ranks potentially higher, allowing more room for growth. Maybe skills up to attribute at char gen, but after char gen you can advance it as high as attribute x2, and some cyber/adept powers that increase that for certain skills (ie reflex recorder might instead of giving +1 dicepool give +.5 to +1x attribute multiplier on your skill cap). Meanwhile, since attribute has more going for it now than just contributing to dice pools, cut its dicepool bonus down to 1/2 attribute as suggested earlier, and maybe cap extra dice pool modifiers at half attribute (so with 6 agility, you can start out with 6 gun skill. You now roll 9 dice, and can get up to 12 dice via pool modifiers)

A compromise I've seen suggested elsewhere that I'll throw out:

No cap on skill levels, BUT the cost is [some value] divided by [attribute]. So assuming the next skill point cost an arbitrary 24 points, an attribute of 6 would pay 4 while an attribute 3 would pay 8. A variation is it costs X-[attribute] points.

don't know if it's right for SR, just throwing it out for consideration.

I do not like this idea. It would make every character just about the same. I like the current free form design.

Now one idea that I would love to see implemented is limiting Initiation/Submersion to the level of Essence of the character. Take my cyber combat medic mage: He has an Essence of 4 due to a boat load of 'Ware. Under my rules he would only be able to initiate 4 times, and NOT the endless amount now. It makes it so that mages are limited just as much as everyone else.

I mean Street Sammies can't endlessly augment themselves. They have a hard limit that they realistically CAN'T break (no calls for cyber zombies please). Mages/Technomancers should have the same limitation.

If you did this Id vote in favor of making increasing magic cheaper, or have magic come with initiation as it did in old editions (especially if magic is factoring less into the tests). That sammy can get from 6 strength to 9 using augmentations, the mage can't spend some nuyen to get magic.


Incidentally that's one other thing-Give mages something to spend money on that doesn't also require karma. And maybe some more karma sinks for non-mages (preferably for things that awakened can't do, but I can't think of what that might be or why awakened wouldn't be able to do it at the moment. Then again, raising/removing skill caps prevents the "I have nothing to do with my karma" issue). Right now you have one group of characters who need tons of nuyen to improve, and one that requires tons of karma, and neither has a ton of use for what the other wants.

I don't think this would balance out. Magic is powerful and does need to be nerfed a little. Also, what prevents the mages from taking the same augmentation? Sure it costs them Magic, but they can just get a spell lock to do the same thing.



That would NOT be a problem for my mage. If I got the 'Ware that I wanted him to have, then he'll have to spend something like 1.5 million nuyen. Yup... riding the Betaware express for all it's worth!

Most mages don't want any ware at all though. It's a ton of money to become worse at your primary schtick. That's a tradeoff most won't make. It's not so bad a tradeoff for adepts who are straight up trading power points for cyber, and much of the cyber/bio is more efficient than PP spending. Not saying Mages taking cyber never happens, but I will say it is pretty rare.



I wasn't saying the Mage can't get a str or agi mod. More that he doesn't want those. The Street Sammy can get a relatively cheap +4 to their primary stat. A mage has no way to gain in his primary stat. If you're going to put a hardcap on magic/initiations, which makes it more akin to other stats, then picking up additional magic should be cheaper.

Yes, Magic is strong and could use some nerfs, but that doesn't need to be from making magic a ludicrously heavy karma investment. Making contributions from Magic a bit lower, and making magic in general easier to resist for people without a pocket mage goes a long way towards balancing magic out.

My apologies. I had a mental picture I didn't articulate well. I should have been clearer.

I consider increasing an attribute through cyber/magic/whatever to be an enhancement, not a change of the base attribute. A troll with a base 5 str would have a skill cap of 5 and an enhancement cap of 5. Under my proposal he simply doesn't have the raw strength to be able to have another 10 points of cyberware based strength.

The problem with doing an "open" playtest is that given twenty different people, twenty different versions of Shadowrun will be argued over. Your Shadowrun is not my Shadowrun, after all - and most of you would probably want nothing to do with my Shadowrun

The OP did mention one thing completely right though: an open beta does energize a fanbase. If you used in a positive manner, good things can come out of it. Say, like, errata for books that still have no errata, or fixing books that are terrible but it's totally cool because "that's how we meant to write it" and such.

Not that I'm saying such things exist

That's actually pretty close to what I proposed right after the bit you quoted. Except with my proposal a troll with 5 base str has a skill cap of 5 at char gen, and 10 post char gen. He can enhance his strength to 7 with enhancements (cyber, bio, or magic), or he can increase it to 6 with karma, which then lets him go as high as 9 with enhancements.

But in either case, I'd still argue in favor of nonscaling skill increase costs, to let people get higher skill ratings in a feasible amount of time. The goal would be to make skills the driving force in your dice pool, as opposed to random add on bonuses and attributes, as it is now.

I would re-tool magic a lot. I think it is more balanced than people think it is, but the whole thing of rolling just Willpower vs. a mage's dice pool makes mages seem overpowered even when they aren't.

I would make spellcasting more similar to other combat tests (you get dodge/resistance and then a soak test - but don't cap spellcasting hits either, then). I would beef up mundane resistance to magic - mundanes should be able to spend an action doing nothing but resisting a spell, the equivalent for full defense against regular attacks. Attacks of will should be beefed up to where a mundane with decent Willpower can actually do something against moderately powerful spirits. On the other hand, make spell defense cost an action, rather than being an instant dice pool bonus for the mage's buddies. Oh, and bring back thresholds for control manipulations! You shouldn't be able to completely control someone with a single net success.

Overcasting should be more difficult and dangerous, something that is done in extreme situations rather than a common tactic for certain builds. Make Drain untreatable by first aid or magical healing - but still keep direct combat spells with low Drain. A mage needs some bread-and-butter spells that can be used regularly. Also, background count should be a lot rarer, and should make spellcasting more difficult rather than directly lowering Magic. Spirit Force should be capped at twice Magic, and be dangerous to do at higher than the mage's Magic (same as for overcasting).

Adepts should not lose their innate abilities from background count. Adepts should pay less for raising their initiative and raising their Attributes, the two biggest reasons that you see so many "hybrid" adepts with bioware. I agree with the earlier post that would cap initiation to Essence. If you are going to have hard caps, hard cap everything.

I agree that there are problems with SR4A, but I think they can be fixed with a set of reasonable house rules. I've already posted my revised ranged combat rules for comment, and I'm updating them now.

There larger "house rule" elements that I think need to be addressed:

1. Skill Table The 0-6 skill table should be revised. It should be 0-12 (or higher) skill + ability. Changing the flavor text could then go a long way to fixing some perception issues. Having a skill of 4 means nothing. Have a total pool of 10...now that means something.
2. The Ranged Combat Rules See my posting (or follow the link to my SR page) to see what I think should be done.
3. Armor/Hardened Armor Hardened armor makes things brittle - once you overcome the hardening, they take massive damage. There is no middle ground. And I think that overall, the armor ratings (for people at least) are way too high. It's way too easy for people to be effectively immune to Predator IV shots. I haven't dwelt on the matter long enough to know what the right solution is. I suspect that just tweaking the mechanics isn't enough - you'd need to adjust the data tables.
4. Stealth in Matrix Operations Similar to the hardened armor problem. It's way too easy for hackers to get in and operate in systems with next to no chance of detection.
5. Vehicle Stat Blocks I like how they simplified them vs. SR2/3, but I think they went too far. It's mostly a data-compilation issue, but as a GM and a player, I find I need to know how many people can fit in a vehicle, what kind of doors it has, and roughly how much it can carry.
6. Mega Dice Pools I think a few simple tweaks to rules could prevent pornomancers and the like. My initial thought is to cap all bonuses to dice pools to no more than the base skill. E.g. If the attribute is 4 and the skill is 3, you can't get a bonus to your dice pool more than 3. It's less ham-fisted than capping pools at 20, gets you (close) to the same thing, and makes a little bit of sense to me, simulation wise. But I'll have to think about it.
7. AR vs. VR I appreciate what they were trying to do with AR, and overall, I absolutely love what they did with Matrix activities (the security sheaf is not much missed). But from a simulation perspective, I don't think VR operators have enough of an advantage over AR. Not sure how to fix, really (AR only gets one complex action a turn?), but there needs to be something.
8. Street Indexes, and Concealability I see why they got rid of them, but Ghost how I miss them.
9. Magic I agree that there is something wrong with magic, but I think the solution is a few tweaks. I think restoring the division between hermetics and shamans would help a lot, with hermetics summoning one or two bad-ass elemetals in elaborate rituals, and shamans summoning much weaker spirits (combat-wise) on the fly. (Though, that is a pretty big project, and not really a tweak, now that I think about it). I think the game-balance problem is that drain isn't harsh enough. I'm fine with mojo-slinging being seriously powerful, as long as mages can't do it too often. I think that if the drain codes were high enough that a mage thought real hard about casting spells at full-force, it would fix a lot of things. In SR3, a mage could cast one or two spells, and be seriously hurting. SR4? Not so much.
10. Damage Mods When the dice pools are typically 10-15 dice, a -3 die penalty is not nearly harsh enough. Either the ramp-rate should be increased to -1 die per two boxes, the first box should cause a penalty and/or it should apply a threshold penalty.

Those are the areas that I think most need fixing and would require the most work/thinking to get right. The core mechanic is reasonably good, has enough ways to tweak to be interesting, and has the kind of wide variability that all of the SR systems have had. Overall, I think SR4A is a pretty solid system, they just didn't play test it enough with enough different styles of groups - they seriously should have seen the large dice pools and adjusted some of their core statistics.

My ¥2.

I don't understand the point of having different rules for chargen and post char gen.
In my opinion, this devalues skills because it's simply a race to a the cap where scaling increases mean that people like Fastjack really are better without having to break an arbitrary skill cap.
I'd rather encourage a spread where skills, attributes, and enhancements all have roles to play. I was thinking attributes as caps, skills as less expensive karma increases (making it cost effective to keep skill up to attribute), and enhancements as essence/nuyen/karma increases.

1) Agree. Some things will need tweaking as a result, but a good idea.
2) Didn't look
3) Halve the values of all hardened armors in the game. Make them auto-hits on the damage resistance roll.
4) The entire matrix needs an overhaul.
5) One of the biggest issues with vehicles is the acceleration and max-speed numbers. What do they actually mean? The accel values are also referred to as the vehicle's "walking/running" rate.
6) Not a bad thought. I'd play around with other options, like max(skill, attribute). Skill will likely matter more (higher cap), but at least the AGL 4, Firearms 1 guy can take advantage of smart link and aiming.
7) See 4.
8] Concealability needs an overhaul. There are ratings for things, but no rules on how to actually roll for it.
9) I think the mage-end of things are fine. Maybe a few minor tweaks in the overcasting and/or multicasting rules, but most of the change should be on the defender-side.
10) And with skill caps higher (baring any other adjustments) then total dice pools will be higher (although this isn't a bad thing: I would like to have a game where a street-level, low skill game is possible: right now 4 dice (2 attribute, 2 skill) isn't a good plan, so inflating dice pools a small amount across the board is a good thing). So yes, I agree. I'm thinking -2 per 3 boxes (just doubling the penalty, rather than altering the interval, as High Pain Tolerance and Low Pain Tolerance need to be considered).

I think if you just name bonuses and like bonuses don't stack you'd go a long way to curbing excess bonus dice so the pools wont get insane. It is one thing D&D 3+ got right.




When 4eA came out on PDF and the optional overcasting rule was not optional its flaws were noted. One solution I saw was for drain instead of force/2 make it force but drop the modifier by 3. So a fireball instead of being f/2+5 would be force+2, this way the drain would be the same or a smidge less up to force 6 but more past force 6. Now sure some people might get a magic 10 so it would not be overcasting for them, it does trim down on really powerful spells being cast. You would obviously change the modifier a bit if you felt it needed to hurt more or less.

For spirits while I preferred the flavor of earlier editions spirits it is hard to balance them, when they act so different. I think I think they need a rewrite on a lot of their powers all this magicx2 vs willpower stuff really makes them too good. They are a bit too versatile, I would probably add a division on what powers can be added base don whether they were bound or just summoned as well. And determining if it is going to be bound or not should be done at the initial summon, not as something you add onto something you already summoned, you can get too many services on a bound spirit thanks to this IMO.

Primarily to discourage overspecialization at the start, and leave room to grow in the long run. I could be convinced it's not necessary, but it seems the only way to make it not necessary is having skill costs rise with skill ranking both pre and post char gen a la karma improvement now, which is something I don't particularly like, because it makes in game improvements start coming much further apart, since karma rewards don't actually improve as you become a better runner. (As opposed to say D&D where yes experience to level goes up, but your experience per encounter increases drastically as well, so you have a pretty predictable rate of power increase. I much prefer having a general feeing of gaining a level every 1-3 sessions vs after playing the character for a year I have to go through a half dozen sessions just to raise a single skill)



Pretty much addressed above. Yes, it makes NPCs with high skills better. But it makes players however have to wait much longer between increases. Players like seeing their character improving and getting stagnated because you've already reached a decent level with your skill is pretty boring.



I read them, and replied to them, but honestly they'd need a lot of polish to work as a core rule. It would also need to be adapted to indirect combat spells and some other things if made official. While I could see the reasoning for changing it, for 90% of people I fail to see the need.



Like Draco said, take half hardened armor value and make it auto successes does a lot. It's a fairly common houserule to my understanding.



How many doors and such should be variable without costing slots. You want a 2 door instead of a 4 door? Go for it. Number of passengers should be standardized across vehicle types (ie PMV = 1, Car = 5, Van = 9, or something like that), and carrying capacity could either be standardized, or done according to body, or both (ie vehicles of this type with this much body have this much, but vehicles of that type with the same body have a different capacity).



I don't want street indexes back. As for concealability, a quick an dirty overhaul would be reverse concealability. Instead of making it a dicepool modifier on perception tests, make it a number say 1-6, higher is better. The concealability rating makes a target need that many hits on a perception test to see it. Concealed holster adds 1 to the rating, longcoat adds 1 to the rating. Other modifiers are used as a dice pool penalty to perception as normal. So your holdout pistol in a concealed holster behind your jacket needs 8 successes to be seen. On the other hand your chameleon coated heavy machine gun that you're trying to palm with your sling and long coat gives the target a threshold 2, with a -5 penalty to his perception.





His discussion on magic was more about summoning than magic resistance itself. And while spells being unresistable is the biggest issue, being able to have a half dozen spirits that are almost as powerful as a typical runner, and definitely stronger than your typical NPC, can be a probelm.

The write up for Extra Exits in Arsenal says that a vehicle has sufficient doors, but the Extra Exits mod says that there will always be a door that is suitable for whatever situation has arisen (floor.. roof etc etc). As for passengers, there is a small sidebar page 348 4A that has typical passenger capacity. The amenity mod says you can drop the amenity to squatter to double capacity but it doesn't say anything about going the other way. I had a few slots left over in a van so I just told the GM I converted those two slots into seats bring my GMC Step Van to capacity 5.

Summoning is a weird issue unto itself. I suggest that we first fix the hardened armor problem, then fix the "skills = force" problem (A F12 spirt has skills greater than a metahuman could ever have? Watcher spirts are useless?), then work on figuring out what a mage should be able to regularly summon and what should be possible, but dangerous to figure out how to change the summoning rules.

Agreed that the skills=force thing is weird. If you get to play with karma gen the most efficient character is a mage with all of his karma poured into an ally spirit bumped as high as it can go, who then picks up new skills at force for like 5 karma a pop. If you make it an inhabitation spirit, you can even get its body a DNI and make it the best hacker, on top of the best everything else.

Well point build would still be there but it would allow new players to create character quickly while still having options (unlike picking the pre-gens).

@ Runner Smurf, some very good ideas in there.

Even with karmagen, Initiation at chargen is only an optional rule. It is no less disruptive than removing the Availability cap.