If you get a Reflex Recorder for a Skill Group, and later break that Skill Group (ie increase one of the sub skills by +1) do you still keep the benefits of the reflex recorders? Logic says yes, but if so at $25,000 (5BP, 10KP) and a level 4 skill group you effectively get 30/40 karma worth of skills depending on the breakdown of the group. Seems like a hot deal to me.

Good question. By RAW, and by which I mean exact book wording, the answer would be no, as it is no longer a skillgroup.

GM's can overrule that for a house ruling, based on logical reasoning, as you suggest. I personally, as a GM, would say that your bonuses do not increase when you increase a skill separately. I am not sure how I would mediate, since I also do not believe the bonuses magically disappear either, so I'd need to look further than I can at the moment. Definitely something to ask your GM about.

I would say yes. The boost to the skill shouldn't be affected by whether it remains in a group or not. I interpret reflex recorders for skill groups as giving a bonus to skills within a skill group, not the skill group as some weird metagame construct. In other words, I would even let a reflex recorder for firearms give a boost to someone with pistols: 6, long arms: 3, and automatics: 4 with a specialization.

Otherwise, you run into the problem of losing the +1 bonus when you increase a skill in the skill group by +1, which actually keeps it at the same rating, which doesn't break up the skill group then... until finally your character implodes in a burst of recursive logic.

I think pretty much the same as Glyph, that the recorder adds +1 to all the skills in the group, even if the group is broken.

You don't even have to have the skill group originally.

If you have Pistols and Automatics, you get +1 to each if you get a Reflex Recorder (Group: Firearms).

Strictly speaking that's not what the rules say.

A Reflex Recorder (Group) improves the "rating of a skill group" by one. That's not the same as improving "all skills in a skillgroup". If you possess Pistols and Automatics, you have exactly zero ranks in the Group: Firearms and thus would get no bonus at all.
Plus, because of how improved skill levels work, you wouldn't even get the skill group at rating one if you didnt have it before.

Actually, what I'm not sure about is whether you can generally possess Pistols and Group: Firearms at the same time. I don't think there are any rules regarding this, except that Technos CAN have the Electronics and Cracking Skill(group)s twice if they start as a mundane hacker and then later become technos (via latent emergence), because they need to learn those skills anew. But that seems more like a special case.


But oh well, all those discussions are kind of academical, it's only one dice (in a fictional ruleset of a game we play in our heads). No biggie at all.

What is a skill group if not a group of skills? Improving the rating of a skill group is exactly the same as improving the ratings of a group of skills. If you improve the rating of a skill group, you improve the rating of the skills that comprise that group of skills.

You could have absolutely no skill in any firearms type at all, and you'd still receive the bonus. If you were required to have points in those skills, the rules would state so, such as in the case of the Catlike positive quality only modifying skills you have a minimum number of points in.

~Umi

I'd consider that to be some fairly extreme rules lawyerage, Xenefungus. It might be literal RAW, but probably not RAI and definitely not RAMS (Rules As Makes Sense - did I make that up? Hope it catches on if so!).

As Glyph said, it gets weird otherwise. You improve one skill of the group, but instead of gaining a die in it your body rejects all the previously recorded reflexes (and any future ones) with the net result of losing a die in each of the other two/three, which at the very least is a mad result of Karma expenditure.

"Why are you changing weapon? We don't need a sniper rifle in here."
"Because if I get any better with a pistol it'll fuck up my 'ware!"

Shadowrun is unrealistic?! Stop the presses!

"Why can't you use this pistol AT ALL?" - "I've only used MPs so far..."

Dahhh now dat I'm better at shooting pistols, my skill wire ish imbalanced and not work for skill group i no haz no moar...

Restrictive ruling is pretty "special" ... Just like the above sounds.

Xenefungus, it's not about 'unrealistic'. It's about 'makes a big crazy mess'.

I think Xenefungus is correct about what it says. It's really dumb even by SR standards but the wording is clear. I would certainly advise houseruling it, but it is a houserule.

My point was that if the RAW is *dumb*, we don't care about it.

Except thats Pistols isn't an undefaultaple skill.

That is not entirely true. If you have the skill group Firearms at rank 3, then you have pistols, automatics, and longarms at rank 3. However, when you increase pisotls to rank 4 you no longer have the skill group Firearms. As a matter of fact if you leave the ranks the same and specialize in semi-automatics on the pistol skill, you no longer have the skill group Firearms (and never will again because you cannot specialize with skill groups).


This to me says that if you don't have the skill group then the the reflex recorder would give you that skill group at rank 1. If you have skill at different ranks (or not all the skills in the group) already, then the recorders would not work because you cannot improve a group you cannot make (and you cannot make a group without all the skill in it being equal and unspecialized).

This is nothing but ridiculous rules lawyer ruling that any GOOD GM would spit in the face of.

I don't think so; I'd say you would get one die for each skill in that group, but still have to default to the attribute.

Say you have a guy who has never swimmed a day in his life, you wouldn't give him Swimming 1 with the recorder, you'd have him default to (body?) and give one extra die. Really though I think in common sense you'd disallow any modifier to a skill you don't possess.

Though, the issue is that it's not a DP mod, it's a Skill rating increase, right? So you can't do that within the rules. Bleh.

You definitely do not want to say *DP mods* don't count for defaulting, though. That breaks a basic mechanic of the game.

Exactly. However you slice it, the bonus will never apply to a skill rank less than 2.

And presumably, that's intentional? It could easily 'make sense' that you can't benefit from a Reflex Recorder with less than 2 already. (… or not, though: it's fluff.) Anyway, I'm fine with that limitation.

The issue about 'does it have to be a Skill Group' (as Glyph said, a metagame concern) is still more interesting. On that note, it seems like it should (should, as opposed to 'by RAW does') give +1 Rating to all the skills that are members of 'the Athletics Group'… that the character has and are valid. This seems like it should be the case whether or not the character currently 'has the group', or even if he doesn't have all the skills in the group at all. If I have only rank 2 in two of the skills in a group, those skills should still benefit from the Group recorder.

Not rule lawyering... taking RAW exactly as written. And any GOOD GM would not spit in the face of it, they would look at it, re-read it, consider the position the person is presenting and then discuss it with their table.


<removed to reduce flamming>

That's exactly what Rules Lawyering is.

Ya know, maybe we should just fight fire with fire. Next edition of SR, have a lawyer go over the rules before you sell the books.

~Umi

Not a lawyer, no.

But a Peer Review by active members of the Dumpshock and Jackpoint communities? Maybe *gasp* an actual playtest ...? And meanwhile, bring on an editor or two .... actual professional editors, not HS kids with a spellcheck program and 10L of mountain dew ...?

Yeah. That'd help immensely, IMO.

I actually think a lawyer would be good as well. Despite the popular stereotype, there actually are some of them who work for very little.

Lawyers are experts at finding loopholes and choosing appropriate wording to avoid confusion and alternate possible interpretations. I very much think the rules would benefit from such expertise.

~Umi

So we just have to find a SR4 playtester, who happens to work as a lawyer ^^

Shouldn't be hard...

The letter of the law is the letter of the law. Word definitions don't change either, despite people taking different things from hearing the same word.

By wording, RAW is clear: Skillgroup is a defined title, which can be broken into another defined title: Skills. If a skillgroup no longer exists, it cannot recieve a bonus for a "Skillgroup."

And RAW exact citing is rules lawyering, as a colloquial term. You are pointing out the book rule to contradict a house rule or other implied rule. The negative connotation is because some people use this for personal gain or other selfish means to contradict a GM or player, but it doesn't have to be negative.

However, I see two different general arguments here, neither of which seem to contradict much. A) the book states that this applies to a "skillgroup," and B) that a GM wouldn't likely restrict it that way, because it doesn't make sense. I agree with both of these points. I said about as much. How a GM handles it is purely up to them, and I would personally encourage some rational thought as opposed to rules lawyering here. However, because said rule would likley contradict RAW, then it's a House Rule. There is nothing wrong with this: I shall be using said House Rule myself, since RAW here makes no sense.

Oh hell no, that's what Hero 5e did and damn, that was an over-written book. To get watertight rules, you need to take up a lot more space with a lot drier language.

And even then, the rules will still leak. People will find ways around them that you never considered. It happens with real laws all the time, after all. Lawyers live for that stuff. The problem is more with the interpretation of 'RAW' here as being 'the plain meaning of the text, no matter how stupid it ends up'. It's why I do not care one bit about RAW, and my eyes glaze over and I click on the little 'x' on the tab whenever I run across arguments about it on Dumpshock. Seriously, the literalist approach to RAW makes me hate Dumpshock and leads to me reading and posting here less.

tl;dr: Fuck RAW.

I like RAW arguments when discussing D&D, because you can do some interesting stuff with it. So far, the RAW arguments I've read here are just "look how stupid this is".

Um? You just contradicted yourself, because they do… and you explained how.

In this case, it is not clear if the skill group refers to the character concept, or to the groupings of skills in the book. Obviously, we houserule whenever necessary, but it's also sometimes possible to get a perfectly good interpretation straight from the book. You just have to not choose the broken one.

As subjective as RAI and common sense are, you still need them to play a decent game (unless you are toturi). Look at the negative SURGE quality Thorns from Runner's Companion. It describes the constant physical discomfort from them, then says "+1 to all Physical Tests." Despite being a fairly clear statement (it isn't quite defined what a Physical Test is), most GMs and players would run it as some kind of penalty, reasoning that with the accompanying flavor text, it is obviously supposed to be a detriment. But purely by RAW, this negative quality not only gives you +1 to your punching damage, but gives you wider-ranging bonuses than enhanced articulation!

I always read it as +1 to the threshold of physical tests. Which for clarification are the tests for the Physical Active Skills - that includes Perception, the Athletics skills, the Outdoors skills, the Stealth Skills, the Animal Husbandry skills, Escape Artist, Diving, and Parachuting. All of those seem like things that should be negatively impacted by being in constant discomfort or pain.

I agree with you, the way it's written is actually pretty terrible and is worded more to suggest the reading you picked up on, rather than the one that makes more sense given the context of a negative quality and the explanatory wording associated with the "+1 to all Physical Tests" idiocy.

Of course, it could be something as simple as a plus sign in the place of a minus sign as well...

~Umi