@Kolinho

You can't take back penis comments. It implies you have a small penis.

Negative. As I am not a powergamer, I am evidently neither 14 years old nor challenged in the phallic department.

You could still be a rules lawyer that needs control to make up for impotence

You know what really scares me?
I bet you could hold a lecture on this matter and if you manage to keep a straight face, people will take it seriously.

It's like art history!

Oh, definately!

They'd even pay to attend...

Thank you for the plug.

Careful, you're sounding far too aggressive and condescending about points that are either RAW or subjective. For example: a 17 (+2 spec, +2 totem, +6 spirit ; total: 27) dicepool for Spellcasting is quite easy to get at chargen with a 400 BP character, and that's not even taking Infected into account. From what you've said you'd think that is completely "munchkiny, power-gaming, jerkiness with a wet paper bag as a GM," but I ask why you seem to want to limit what the players are capable of? If it is possible under the clear intent of the rules of a game you are playing why do you feel the need to house-rule things out of existence (possession, Edge-boosted spells in sustaining foci)?

To avoid OP characters. Simple really.

The game provides me with a framework, a framework that is absolutely riddled with flaws and holes, to which I will adapt to fit the level of a game I wish to run. I have no interest in having the PCs come up against the same things I am outlawing so it's not like I'm being unfair.

Specifically, possession spirits seem extremely easy to manipulate into game breaking positions. An edge boost shouldn't be able to last, it's meant to be a one off. You can't use edge to help you in an extended test, so I don't think you should be able to use it (extremely cheesily imo) to give you a long term benefit in sustaining foci either.

I want, need even, the players to be limited into what is fair to everyone playing. Shadowrun, at it's heart, should be about danger and paranoia, suspense and subtlety. Reducing it into a penis-waving contest is not the kind of game I want to run, and devalues the amount of work I put into creating storylines and plots. If you make the game about how good you can be, I feel that takes away from making characters having actual substance. Too many times I have seen characters defined by what they can do rather than what they can do being defined by who they are, which is far more healthy for a story-based campaign.

I meant no offence though, each table is different and I respect that.

That's kind of a 'duh' question. 'Why would you want to limit player power?' … To limit player power! It's not about playing the game how you're 'supposed to', or how the RAW or RAI tells you. It's about making sure it's fun, and that depends entirely on the campaign and group. 'Can' doesn't mean 'should'.

Ragewind's suggestions are helpful, they give me idea's of what to look out for when I GM.

And lest ye forget o players, the proverb of the goose and the gander? Remember, just cause you can make a sniper with half a million dice on chargen, so to can you be sniped.

This is how it is. Definitely. Any attempt from my players to powergame, or if they are voicing an objection to a house rule, is responded thus.

But should it be like that.
I hear this in many game systems as an "solution", but can't help but wonder.

Shouldn't it just be a bit more difficult to snipe somebody? (I mean it is not that easy in real life, afterall)

You have to find a spot to set up, you need be close enough to hit but you have to keep your distance in order to not beeing spoted and so on.
And sure, some man sized target on a range might be easy to hit from 100m. But some guy in a crowed might be even hard to spot at this distance.
(And some guy sneezes at the wrong time and adds the additional "armor" of "his head" to the targets resistance roll. Well, thats what happens if you critical glitch an edge roll)

That I guess this is the case with most of the highly focused builds (well, some magic tricks aside).
It can get really bad, as soon as you add the world around you, to the theoretical situation.

The point is, many ignore that and tell, it is not part of the rules. But this stance would mean, it would only be allowed what is explicitly stated in the rules. (Which would undo most of the "builds" at this point)

So I have to agree, that Munchkin is the right word here. Because it is not about getting most of the rules. It is about using a different approach to determin the rules for what you do and for what the rest of the Gameworld can do.

That, my dear friend, is what a spotter is for. and in the shadowrun day and age any spotter worth his salt is going to be a hacker of some type, hack the node they are in, find their location, put a great big hunters mark (big red bobbing arrow, pointing down) into your snipers AR feed.

Hell, you wouldnt even need to have the spotter near the sniper with the tech here.

-- the point however, is that whatever the players can think to do, the gm can do as well, and better if he/she so wishes, because the only limits a GM has are the ones they give themselves (which a good GM will recognize and adhere to).

If you are playing in a high-powered, min-maxed game or with a GM who is thus, then by all means, go for it. If not, restrain yourself, for the fun of all.

@VykosDarkSoul
Finding a commlink does not probably not give you an exact location.
Butting a big Arrow over this guys head is not that easy. Unless you have marked him with something. And so on.


Because let all this tech work against the sniper too and before you even set up to take your gun out, two drones are hovering in front of you starting to warm up their gatlings and order you to drop it.

This is exactly what I mean. On the one hand letting tech work like magic but on the other hand just ignoring the effects...

We can parry and riposte back and forth all day about it, one of us positing a scenario, and the other rebutting, however, the point is that if you can immagine it, via tech or magic, you can probably pull it off.


The question is not if you CAN or CANT, but rather if you SHOULD or SHOULDNT.

@VykosDarkSoul
The problem with this view is, that it is so focused on a single act.

Here be it the sniper. It does not take into account what it would mean for the rest of the game world, if it would follow the SAME route of interpretation.

Can I imagine to scan for DNA Planet wide. Yes, of course. StarTrek is doing it.
Should it be possible in Shadowrun? No, definitly not.

If you want to boost your damage value as a melee adept here are some recommendations:
- Critical Strike ( +1DV per level)
- Bone density augmentation ( +1DV per rating)
- Elemental Strike (halves impact armor)
- Penetrating strike ( -1 AP per level)
- Martial arts Boxing (+ 1DV per rating, Max +2DV and also +1 dice to defend against melee per rating Max + dices)
- Bioware to boost strenght to raise the base DV
- Smashing Blow (doubles base DV against barriers, for example cars or walls)

I believe Muy Thai offers the same benefits as Boxing as well

And there is nothing stopping you from having both, except your own restraint... (for a total DV Mxximum boost from martial arts of +3 DV)...

don't forget that martial arts count toward positive quality limit of 35BP

It depends on the GM, though, and how he chooses to interpret (or sometimes house rule) vague or broken rules. With the exception of toturi, most GMs will tweak the rules or interpret them in a way that curbs the worst abuses. And approval by the GM is the final step of character creation.

Personally, I favor this approach over "If you do it, the GM can do it too" as a way to balance things. First, escalating the power level means that the powergamer is challenged - but everyone else is overwhelmed. Second, it does not make sense for things that are equivalently powerful to an elite criminal saboteur to be suddenly common. If a certain rules combo or piece of gear is unbalancing, address it; don't have the local street gang suddenly acquire several of them, too.


15 BP (for +3 to unarmed damage) is pretty doable, though. And the martial arts quality also gives you access to maneuvers, which can be very useful.

If you take changeling you can also take the positive quality spikes, which give you an additional +2DV but raises the cost of buying armor +50%

It doesn't have to be a case of one or the other though. Clearly a sensible combination of the two is the best option.

And you can always pick up Martial Arts after play has started. Gets prettty pricey at 10 karma per level of MA, but it is not horrible. The additional 4 karma per Maneuver is also a pretty good deal.

Um, it CAN be about that. It can also be about trolls with pink mohawks blowing the crap out of the neighborhood.

And even then you can powergame a character that is the best of the best at "danger, paranoia, suspense, and subtlety". Case in point, the character who's pictured to the left of this post. Old Man Jones has insane dice pools in his specialties, at the same time is a virtual ghost, and paranoid to the point of having at least ten different plans for any given scenario. And he's a cranky old man.

I dunno, I passed the "14 year old" mark a couple of decades ago. I still powergame like crazy if the character concept calls for it. I also roleplay like crazy - even my most powergamed min-maxed creations will not have a single thing that doesn't fit their core concept, and I play their personalities to the hilt. I don't equate "less optimized" to "more roleplay". I reject that idea utterly. I want ALL my dials set to maximum, powergaming AND roleplay.

Powergaming isn't just about a penis-waving contest. There's a point of pride in doing something well.

And let's face it, it kinda breaks immersion if you're playing a badass but don't have the game mechanic numbers to back up that claim.



-k

See that is the Key, Ive got no problems with people powergaming, but the fact is that most cant do it and keep a balanced character in mind, they spec to the point that the character doesnt know enought to wipe his own ass, but give him a Katana and LOOK OUT.

If you can cheese and sleeze it up, and still make a workable character, then more power to you!

Eh. If you're not making sure your character also fits in the world he's being played in, then you're not really powergaming.



-k

But so many players miss that in the end.

All fair and point well made, and taken.

The difference for me is whether a character is born before or after his dice pools. As has been said here and in other threads, Shadowrun is special because it allows for so many different game and character styles. As a GM I like to fudge rolls, I have no problem admitting that. I will be far more lenient to a well thought out character than I will to a walking dice pool. Further, regardless of how powerful your character is, there should always be someone round the corner bigger and tougher than you. That element, I feel, is not optional to the core theme.

Again though, your point is well made.



Agreed.

The point is there is minmaxing, powergaming and munchkin.

Minmaxing is just getting a bit more for the buck. It is about to save 1BP on gear because you thought of using just fewer stuff which covers you as good.
Powergaming is putting focus on one thing. (Mostly beeing good in combat)
And the munchkin is about reinterpreting the rules.

A minmaxer has no problems at all in any group. (Or lets say no problems caused only by his minmaxing)
The powergamer gets in trouble if the group has put their "spotlights" on different stuff. (Like taking an infected is not a nice way to boost your magic and take ware and magic but is a hard call for roleplaying, because in some areas you will be just terminated)
The munchkin can only be in a munchkin group. No other way possible. Somebody only claiming silly interpretations as RAW... You can't get along...

Haha. I'm glad to know the differentiation between them. I thought them all one and the same before!

Everything comes down to table-balance. If everyone is munchkin'd out and throwing 30 dice, then everything is fine. If everyone is role-playing fat security guards with 6-8 dice for whatever, then everything is fine.

The problem comes when there is some sort of disconnect among the people around the table as to what kind of game is being played. There certainly will be a problem, eventually.

If everyone is taking the RAW skills to heart for example (4 in a skill being professional level, 3 in an attribute being "average," and going from there), then we can expect starting dice pools for a character's niche to be in the low to mid teens. All it takes is one person at the table throwing 20 dice for something before everything goes down hill. It sets a precedent the GM has to account for and puts the GM in the precarious position of having to provide challenge for that one player without making the other players feel useless, have the spotlight stolen, or have their characters overpowered and killed.

It is hard as it is running a "balanced" game of Shadowrun where everyone has a chance to shine. The GM has to plan and account for: Talking, shooting, matrix, magic, sneaking, etc -- and most of these segments are mutually exclusive. It isn't DnD where you throw a trap their way and the Rogue is happy, this is Shadowrun where any Matrix scene with substance leads to at least a half hour where Joe is the only one at the table having fun. Making this balancing act harder by shooting with 30 dice and completely trivializing your Face's 8 die pistol shots isn't going to do your group any favors.

A good game really begins at character creation. It is the foundation upon which the entirety of the game rests, and I really believe that more groups should do it together.

Very well said

Or at least have a very solid grasp of what is and is not allowed at the table for the given game.

Great post. The balance is the key issue, not between power and weakness, but between the players.

I should also note that this isn't just balance between your shooty pools, but all of them, even across specializations.

For instance if your Street Sam has the chops to win a prolonged gunfight with high-end Renraku security, then your Hacker ought to be able to crack their systems, your Mage should be able to counterspell their magical attacks and defenses, and your face ought to be able to schmooze company men of this level.

Rolling 30 dice to shoot and soak during a gunfight with mall cops because the rest of the table can only handle low end jobs is wasting time and money just as much as a low end hacker accompanying a higher level group and being unable to crack the electronic security. If you look at things realistically, in a game like Shadowrun characters on different levels like this would be doing different jobs (to maximize individual risk vs reward) unless there are some pretty deep personal connections (ones that would make a strong character take lower paying jobs or weak characters take unnecessary risks).

I've taken a character out of a game for exactly this reason. It was a fairly low power group doing simple jobs and my absolute combat monster Street Sam realized he could do better, so he did. I came back the next week with a character who was more in-line with what the group was capable and I would feel comfortable saying that the games went better for everyone after that.

Aye, exactly. OP characters raise the bar for everyone and that's not cool. What really needs to happen is for chargen to be a group activity, at the very least running will be.

I do not think that OP characters raise the bar for everyone. That should only happen if the GM feels he must challenge the players and/or characters. In such cases, I would like to point out that I think the point of such a character in a "low-powered" game is NOT to be challenged. I think it is like bringing a level 99 character with the best equipment to the beginning levels in Diablo - there's no challenge? That's precisely the point!

Furthermore, some areas having an extremely large dice pool isn't really disruptive to the game most of the time. If some guy has 20 dice for Assensing, sure, he may know how powerful Harlequin really is, but I haven't seen many situations where that is disruptive to gameplay.


I say that characters would be trying to maximise individual reward vs risk (No, I wouldn't maximise individual risk vs reward - I wouldn't want the most risk for the least reward!). There is also the amount of risk the character is willing to take for all but the most lucrative reward.

Personally, while I concur that drastic differences in power level can be bad for the game, it is often a case of apples and oranges. Some characters will be specialists, and some will be generalists. A private eye with lots of dice pools in the 12-14 range can be just as effective as an elven gunslinger rolling 22 dice for pistols. I think it is more important to have a group that works as a team, and a GM that lets everyone have some time in the spotlight.

@Chainsaw Samurai
But now you have to think ahead.

I think there should be a new approach on how things work with skills/attributes and raitings...

It is mostly corebook stuff, which had 3 initiation techniques.
Now you have the corebook skill/magic/attribute raitings, but with stuff like BC and so on.

While a magic 4 was great in the corebook, (No counterspelling spirits, no BC etc., lower object resistance, no meanse to enhance object resistance) it has become rather week. (2 Points of BC and you can't do much anymore)

Same thing with hacking. This is espacially true for technomancers. With programms capped at 6 they were the gods of the matrix right out of chargen. (Even though they really sucked in the meat world)
Now, between Karmagen and military grade software they are loosing their stand...

Sams on the other hand became better and better compared to their counterparts to the point that the "professional raiting" seemed to be a bit off...
But what goes around comes around. So mages need to go at least magic 8 to have a high propability to at least "fight" with magic 6. This gives them quite a few initiations (which are cheaper thanks to additional rules)...Making it quite impossible for a sam to fight a mage, which is using quickening.

What I am trying to say is, that it is quite hard to keep it all together like that. With all the additional books out there.
Corebook only it wasn't a problem...

As a GM I feel it is my job to constantly challenge every player and character as much as possible. If I'm not, then I'm doing something wrong. If I have you right, you're suggesting that if a character has been powered to the point that they are extremely potent, then they surely aren't going to waste their time rolling with a group of also-rans when they could earn five times the nuyen hitting the Big Ten for megabucks, leaving the rest of their group to take on smugglers and gang-work.



This is a key point for me, If I have a Shaman or Mystic Adept who excels at reading astral signatures then it's up to me to make sure that their ability to read astral signatures is of significant importance in the runs, as often as possible anyway. If I don't, I'm not doing my job well enough.



I agree with this. The cost-benefit equation is more relevant in Shadowrun than in any other TTRPG, precisely because of the gameworld's ability to throw up work across all spectrums. If you have one character punching above the weight of the group, they will not be earning what they could, and very soon I'd have to come up with a real good reason why this demon sniper isn't being headhunted for a KE sniper team. This is fine if every character in a group is capable of mixing in at the same level, but if one or two are pulling the group through, not only is that unfair on such characters' inability to take on the work they should be able to do, it is also unfair on the other players, who have characters who are no more than also-rans.

I think you are correct in this. The Player never wants to fail, so he insures he has the Dice Pool so the he does not fail. However, I find that extremely boring. If you cannot fail, where is the drama? If you (generic) want to never fail, just go write your own story about the uber character that always succeeds.

Aye, it will be like most of the novels out there, just make sure to throw in a busty blonde and a short sidekick!

toturi, the problem is also that they're a team. The level 99 character removes the challenge for *everyone*, while also taking the spotlight away from everyone. It's not about that guy's decision, it's about how it ruins the whole group. … How often is the powergamer OP in Assensing? Agreed, *that* is no problem, but I feel like it's a rare case. For every PC who minmaxed his Knowledge skills, there are dozens who did it for armor, sniping, spellcasting, etc.

Bingo.

Does he really take the spotlight from everyone? Can he?

Maybe he does. But that could be precisely the point. The old hand the fixer sends in as insurance to make sure the team completes the job to the client's satisfaction.

Yes, he does and can. And while it's not necessarily *unrealistic*, it is unfun.

I think it depends on the character build. He might take away the spotlight or he might not. And the best part is not only can it be realistic, it can be fun too. If the GM does not scale the encounter, the more OP the character the better, he can twink the rest of the group, and that, to me, is really fun.

My first encounter with RPGs are with the Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf books. I hated the "challenge" encounters, whether it be combat or some skill challenge. I wanted to get on with the story. I played the combat passages out a few times and then skipped the rest of them. You cannot just "declare success" for a table top RPG, this is why I like it when people create characters that enable them to breeze past the challenges. Some people enjoy the challenges, I can understand that, but I do not think I am alone in wanting to get past the challenges as fast and as smoothly as possible.