Huh? 6 dice, TN 10 gives an ~8% chance of two or more successes—far from nonexistent. With 12 dice (read: anything allowing access to a pool) that jumps to ~26%. There's a lack of room for more than a few TN mods for things that are expected to be reliably succeeded at, but that's part of the whole switch to D6s thing and in practice only affects the more marginal parts of the system.

~J

Wait… What ? The number of success is supposed to determine how well you achieved a task. The dice system is meant so you can achieve very well at low difficulty, and that you barely achieve at high difficulty. So the core concept is not at all affected by what you point for high TN.

In kage's example of 6 dice vs TN10, you've got only 40% chances to achieve the task. What is so wrong that 3 times out of 4 when you achieved it's only barely ? With 12 dice it's 64%, and you still fail completely 1 out of 3 times, what is wrong with achieving correctly only 26% of the time ?

Maybe you should reread the game concept part of SR3…

And as for the problem of TN5 to 6 being the same drop as TN6 to 10, as I stated, there have been numerous way to correct it a bit.

that all the rules are laid out, that they arent many holes in the system. Mutant and masterminds is pretty comprehensive also, but 4E is pretty much complete from top to bottom. it's almost more of a board game battle simlulator than an RPG really. if shadowrun 4e is a little too loose, d&D 4e might be a little too tight the other way.

And if you consider 3 hits being something of an average success, and 4-5 being good/superb, you won't see that a lot.

The point is, the system is meant to count number of successes, that is the core of the dice pool system. But it never worked that way (at least from my experience).

As you said, the choice for using d6 is surely a big part of the problem. But the variable TNs are also an important factor.

If your chances drop from ok to basically impossible (to achieve a certain number of successes, let's say three) just by a rather modest +2 modifier (TN 4 raised to 6), then something is seriously wrong.

The new system certainly isn't perfect either, at some point you roll so many hits on average, that everything you do is an exceptional success by game standards. But overall it captures the spirit much better (IMHO, of course ) and it is much easier to adjudicate as well.

Bye
Thanee

I see.

Savage Worlds might also be a good system in this regard (and much less boardgamey than D&D 4E, though you can use it as a miniatures game, too).

Bye
Thanee

Why would you consider such a thing in sr1-2-3 ? Skilled means 4 dice and average difficulty is TN4. Getting three success or more is something like 30% of the time in this case.

The system is meant to beat a floating TN in the first place, and then count the number of success. Checking if you achieved a task has always been separated to seeing how well you achieved it.

I mean complete and nonambiguous. But you are right of course, to achieve this, it has become half a boardgame indeed.

I am currently running 4e and 2e-3e was too long ago for me to remember what gripes I had. This isn't a full list, just the things that are currently nagging me.


1: Fixed TN, While it has some pluses I hate how it effects the flow of the game. I think a player should know how many dice they are going to roll before it is their turn. It just flows better when they roll and I say TN 8 and they count the hits, vs me saying -6 dice count out your dice, re-roll and count hits. It is a minor nitpick, but there you go.
2: TN 5. I hate TN 5 I'd go with 3 or 4. Needing 3 dice to show an appreciable difference in skill kind of wrecks the flavor of the world. Near best level of training in the world vs average training and there is barely any difference, a smart link helps but not much.
3: Dice pool bloat. Sorry you just roll way too many dice on average, yeah you can go out of your way to use small pools but from shooting to damage resistance you just roll way too many dice on every action.
4: Attributes, dear god are they overpowered in this edition. Yeah they were lackluster in 1-3e, but damn it is moronic how much they effect the game in this edition especially given their low cost.
5: homogenization of magic. They should have made it more distinct between the spell casting types not less.
6: ease of summoning spirits vs their power has actually gotten worse in this edition. Not sure how you could make it more broken but they did.
7: overcasting is way too easy.
8: I hate technomancers and them being part of the core is irksome.
9: Bioware is too damn good easy on the essence compared to cyber and magic costs for phys adepts.
10: Augmentation is too friendly on magically active types. It should be a touch choice to stay pure or augment, not be a no brainer to augment.
11. Skill caps, hate em with a burning passion.
12. Too many things stack and make the game a min-maxing utopia.

Which is exactly my point. Since the system does not work otherwise.

But the idea behind the system is that the number of successes determines how well you do, just that it is completely impossible to use with the variable TN system in place.

Bye
Thanee

The system has been plumbed fairly in depth here, but I would like to throw in my own take. I prefer SR4, personally. Also, I would like to point out that SR2 had some serious flaws of it's own, and exploits abounded there as well. 2nd ed is also more complete (considering they finished writing it) and if you can find the books used is likely less expensive, considering you DO have to get the shadowrun supplements for SR4. You need them, period.


The largest advantage to SR4 is that the system does not get caught up on rigid details. GMs and players are not (as) restricted by the considerably rigid mechanics, and can therefore apply the more abstract descriptions to more situations (the GM descriptions as was mentioned previously) and tends to get less bogged down in details, and in my opinion requires a less encyclopedic knowledge of rules IN GENERAL.
It is a more organic system.

That being said, as an organic system, when you find a situation that is not covered under SR4 standard flexibility, it fails miserably. You will also find yourself at times trying to come up with some ridiculously twisted reasoning to adequately explain why those dice do what they do. When you do get to rules lawyering, the wording stands out as vague or poorly chosen. It requires some flexibility on the GM/players part as well to function. Rule junkies will be frustrated very quickly, as many of the long arguments on this forum can attest.


As I said, I prefer 4, but they both have their shortcomings, like every game does. We've overcome SR4 difficulties with some agreed house rules, the flexibility of the stat/skill dicepool rule, and the expansions. SR4 will require a flexible GM, and a group that either agrees with the GM's handling, or believe in the "GM is always right" idiom. I would personally suggest 2 if your group is more into the rules and system mechanics.

1) SR4 isn't cyberpunk, it's transhumanist. The SR4 gameworld is fundamentally different from the SR1-3 gameworlds, with a few scraps of familiar wallpaper tacked up.

2) Mechanically, SR4 relies too heavily on dice pool modifiers but then doesn't have the stones to actually make those modifiers matter that much -- the difference between having a neural subprocessor with a graphical overlay or an iron sight is about half a success on average. The difference between being perfectly healthy or being on your last pint of blood with two broken legs is about 3/4 of a success on average.

3) SR4 doesn't put characters in the hospital at nearly the same rate.

4) SR4 magic is awful in general. Specifically, traditions are too similar -- all of the intricacies have been stripped out of it. Spirits are elementals are all the same. Spellcasting overtly favors a couple of spells, with the remainder having a "why would anyone ever use this" caveat.

5) "I've only got one box of stun left, so I'm going to take off all my armor so I can take damage on the physical track and stay in the fight."

6) In SR3, using lethal force is easy, and using nonlethal force is difficult and costly and unpredictable. In SR4, nonlethal force is easy, and lethal force is unpredictable (due to armor rules), making the most efficient choice for a team to gear toward using all stun weaponry and stun magic (since you can reliably do only stun damage instead of mixing stun and lethal based on die rolls), with lethal backups for the odd situation in which they're called for (such as shooting out the engine block of a pursuit car). Combined with a system in which people either have roughly the same Physical and Stun damage tracks, or waaaaaaaaaay more physical than stun (but never waaaay more stun than physical), if everyone follows the path of least resistance (as they generally should) it turns the game into an elaborate game of tag.

7) In SR4, being able to hack everything will make the hacker want to try hacking everything. The system isn't very clear on this -- on one hand it suggests that hacking someone's cybereyes is possible, but on the other hand it offers no good examples on how this might actually work.

Given the state of computer security in SR4, anyone who puts anything important on a wireless node is an idiot.

9) Top-level computer networks in SR4 can have about a dozen people connected. As there's no indication that standalone terminals are popular (or wouldn't suffer the same connection limit problem as other devices), it means that a normal office would be unable to have have normal office drones function without access to dozens of nodes. A popular AR nightclub would be in the same boat.

10) Wired Reflexes + AR hacking. Numerous other overly complex hacking issues in SR4. At least in SR3, the decking complexity was focused and easily defined. If a primary complaint with SR3 is that decking takes too long or is too complicated, SR4 delivers hacking that impractical and thematically unsound.

11) Rolling 25 dice at things.

12) The excitement of uninterrupted extended tests: "I got 3 hits" "Not yet" "I got 4 more" "Still no" "I got 2 more" "Getting there" "I got 5 hits" "Pretty close" "Two more?" "Not quite" "Crap, only 1" "That did it."

I concur on several of those, but I find that last one especially irksome. SR3's way of doing extended tests (one roll, divide base time by number of successes) was incomparably more elegant. So much for the tenet that SR4 does everything better ruleswise.

No, the main idea behind the system is that you have to beat a Target Number to achieve a task. If you beat the task is achieved, if you fail, it is not. Then, counting the success would help determine how well you achieved, but this is secondary. These were two different stuff.

And, once again, it is logic that difficult task, that you fail a lot at, wouldn't be achieved perfectly very often.

I really don't know how you played SR3, but there are in my games, as a GM or a player, many situations where you can count successes. If you never have anything but difficult tasks to do, maybe your GM was sadistic.

Once again, when did you decide that 3 hits should be your average number of successes ?

These are the biggest issues I have with SR4's setting. The hacking side of things isn't even internally consistent with their worldbuilding, much less with any of how the setting has been written for the last twenty years or so.

Same as it ever was

After reading this thread and several others it sounds like the rules are as much as a cluster frak as they ever were and in a way that takes more time to house rule than previously. Sheesh.

Meh

The turn form cyber to transhumanism while not strictly SR, to me, does make sense. Moving away from the pink Mohawk look sounds good too just as long as then don’t pretend it was never part of the world. Time and fashion move on.

The Bad

If there’s no difference between traditions why even bother? That took a lot a flavor away right there. While I have no problem with the plot/timeline moving forward, putting a leash on the corps sounds like a bad thing.


Suggestions

Combat and Magic in 3rd Edition worked wonderfully (IMHO) Would it be too much to get Decking/Hacking/Rigging rules that were as easy to use? They don’t have to model reality, they just have to look like they do in a non mathematical genius way. I hated the rigging rules. I shouldn’t need a slide rule to play a game. Decking has always for me and my players just been so needlessly complex and muddled we just have NPCs do it and it’s all down to GM fiat.


Summation

So at this point it doesn’t sound like SR4 is for me. Curiosity may get the better of me and I’ll pick up the core book to give it a peak but sound like a return to basics is needed here.

It sounds like Shadowrun 2050 would is for you and several others here. It fixed common complaint like no more wireless, no more technomancer, magic tradition finally works differently, spirit summon are nerf wonderfully, and most powerful 2072 stuff are not available.

Bioware might be cheap on essence, but they are expensive on cash. You won't feel it on standard, but alpha and even beta will broke your wallet.

As for dices complaint... well, it's a different system with a new attribute stats, you just can't compare the dice numbers and TN from previous edition. Personally, it works fine for me and I have fun with it.


I agree, the average for general task should be 1 hit with some 0 hit being succeed with lesser result. There's also the Extended Test rule that you can stack your hits until you hit the TN and buying hits rule to exchange 4 dices for a hit.

There are differences in the traditions. But like the rest of the rules spirits and magic was streamlined. The differences are drain resist, types of spirits summoned, and fluff. I personally like it this way as shows more that magic is as much belief as substance w/o complicating the rules.
So if someone is playing a shaman; why can't he be dressed in some traditional garb with bones and feathers hanging off of fetishes. Or having you hermetic mage dressed in a business suit that caries a cane and a wand or two. It's about the imagination anyways.



The rules IMO are better then they have been in the past. As much as I enjoyed trying to play a decker in 2nd ed and again in 3rd. I've found that the rules have become much better in 4th in that my party doesn't feel like I'm taking an entire season myself. And they are more practical in combat then they use to be when not being a combat type.



It was mentioned earlier to try the startup ed that's free.


I've played 2nd, 3rd and was alos hesitant in moving to fourth. A buddy of mine had the core book, I read it and still hesitated. I came by his group one day and saw how badly the party was performing as shadowrunners (They still had the "I'm playing D&D" mentality) so I created a character and joined. I didn't realize the GM some of the concept himself and threw more wrenches in his plans but he enjoyed having me in and the party learned a lot. I do like the system and I'm a bit of a rules lawyer and also a GM.

The rules aren't perfect but they aren't perfect for any game system. It's all about what we like and what we can work with. My games tend to flow really well. My players already know what they are supposed to role in number of dice I give them their bonus/negative dice, they role done. If it's a long term extended test then we trade 4 dice for 1 success. I'll tell them how long it'll take and again done; only time there is rolling for extended tests is if the play wishes to try and get done quicker or is pushing for some luck.

If I where to buy an hard copy of the core book, wich one should I get? Anniversary?

And what manuales are the one needed?

You can start with the basic 20A core book
I'd suggest adding
Augmentation; Arsenal; Unwired; Runners Companion; Street Magic

If you order them online I'd suggest from battlecorp. You can get all their pdf's and hardbound books. They also have some combo packs.

I'd almost skip recommending Unwired completely. It just makes the hacking stuff more of a mess, IMO. Parts are good, but Spoofing really throws the rest of hacking out of whack, IMO. It exaggerates the nigh-unstoppable powers of hackers even more.

I might be a bit biased as I've been playing them since 2nd ed.

It depends on whether or not you're interested in technomancers. They get a lot more fleshed out mechanically in Unwired. Hackers get goodies as well, but a lot of extra layers of complexity (also available to technomancers, but don't have to be used)

The first 90 pages of unwired are awesome and actually add to the game- the stuff that clarifies rules and how the background matrix works, provides examples on what happens if you use too many subscriptions, Data Requests for when you don't actually NEED a subscription, security examples to actually setup your nodes right, and making Jamming not actually completely worthless.
The amount of clarifications in that section go a LONG ways towards making a GM or a Player able to wrap their brain around the matrix.

The rest of the book can wait, but the first section up till about page 80/90 or so pages are worth it. The technomancer section is pretty much required if you want to play an TM at all as they are very boring and pretty sucky with core book only. Everything from paragons to new echoes and sprites is pretty balanced and easy to incorporate, and dare I see actually NEEDED for the archetype. (woo hoo, guys, I initiated and got +1 firewall. What did the mage get? Great form spirits? Damnit.)

To answer the original question:

SR3 is almost identical to SR2, and you can use the books *ALMOST* interchangeably. SR4 is a significant change, however.

Regarding mechanics: SR4 is much faster and simpler, making it better for quick play. SR3 is mathematically more robust and better for simulationism.

Regarding setting: SR3 does change a little from SR2. It pushes forward the timeline and becomes a little more 'hard realistic'. IMO, SR2 is superior than SR3 for setting, but that's purely a value judgment. Regardless, both SR2 and SR3 are really built off a 1990s/cyberpunk paradigm. SR4 builds more off of 2010s tech (so cell phones now weigh less than a kilo), and has shifted a little more from cyberpunk towards transhumanism.

Both systems are quality products. I personally love SR3 and I just don't have as much fun playing SR4. But I know a number of people who far prefer SR4, and I understand why. So judge your own taste, and that of your group, and choose what's appropriate.

Yes, the differences in tone between the editions can be a fairly important point. Personally I'm rather fond of the 1980s elements in the older editions (moreso in SR1 and SR2, although I didn't get into the game until SR3). But I guess that may be a bit of an acquired taste.

The Fluff Change from SR2---> SR3 regarding Astral Space & Travel is significant
its ImO nearly as important for Mages as the WiFi Change was from SR3---> SR4 for Mundanes

with a significant Dance
Medicineman

It is, see below...



I've bought 4th ed. Still haven't read it nor played it. I was pointing the weakness I've found in 3rd ed.



I'm don't disagree with your opinion, Freudqo.

Still, remains that inconsistency with the system. And it's bad for the "suspension of disbelief".

A rough skill 8 TN 10 at 50% success chances, 40% at skill 6, 30% at skill 4..., 8% at skill 1....

As a GM I can't allow a luck roll for something impossible. Characters are able to succeed anything (unless you increase by a LOT the TN what feels unfair). Now make it resisted and the character turns out to be way more street levelled.


I can house rule or correct it. Simply by making most tests resisted.

Like: if a character tries to hide a weapon to some random guards, by RAW, they roll unresisted. The character will fail. I try to rule it resisted.

I never said it was hard to overcome the glitch. But there's one. And point is: the game feeling/spirit is too different when you roll unresisted vs resisted.

Once again, it depends on your definition of impossible, which might differ from what the game implies. Skill 8 is world-class person. Is it crazy that world-class person succeed 50% of the time at something a beginner succeed 8% of the time ? The author considered impossible something a beginner would achieve barely 1 time out of 10. Do you consider that impossible is the question ?

I have seen a lot of TN way higher than 10 by the way, but it's a different matter. It just means that you can have challenging tasks even at very high skill level.

And what are the resisted test you actually refer to here ? I have a hard time seeing where it comes from… And I have a hard time seeing why when someone is trying to oppose you, it wouldn't be harder than when success depends only on you.

I like SR4. I never got to play SR3, unless you count Corrosion as playing SR3... But, I like it, specifically for a lot of reasons other people don't.

As regards the dice system, I greatly prefer SR4's to SR3, probably because I was into Shadowrun 4 for a little while, couldn't find a game that lasted, then got into Exalted - where the dice pool system is very much the same, just using D10s instead of D6s - and then came back to Shadowrun.

Note to self: ask my group what they think about experimenting with a shift to D10s and what they think the appropriate TN should be.


As regards other things...






I both agree and disagree with this. Shadowrun 4 is very transhumanist in that Bioware is becoming a mature technology, geneware is starting to show up, and nanoware is the cutting edge, but mechanical augmentations are always going to have a place. You can't bioware yourself a direct neural interface or a computer in your head. You can't genetically add an image link, or spurs. And quite frankly, there's no way to get the Adam Jensen look without cyberware. So SR4 is very transhumanist - and cybernetic augmentations are the bedrock of those augmentations. I think the rules even go out of their way specifically to encourage you to mix both to taste, by giving you a 50% discount on the Essence cost of whichever ware type you have less of.


I got into a huge argument with someone on IRC - actually, one of the Exalted line freelancers who's a huge SR3 fanboi - about why he snubs SR4, and basically it boils down to all the things I like about SR4: the setting is changing. It's evolving. It's not grimmest, darkest, Neuromancer cyberpunk anymore. National governments are getting both hands on their ballsacks and recalling the times before a panel of retarded idiots listened to a company called Shiawase when they said they should be able to carve their corporate territory out of the nation's laws. Lone Star was not performing to requirements, and they were held accountable by losing their contract. Horizon has emerged as a good-guy AAA. (For given values of 'good-guy,' but in present company they're practically paladins.) Overall, things are getting better.

Shadowrun remains a dystopia, but it's no longer at the grimdark nadir of dystopia - as of SR4, I feel that it's starting to climb back up. There are rays of hope peeking through the shit-colored clouds. It's an interesting time to be a Runner, because your shadows might start shrinking... But that would be a good thing, wouldn't it, if the world gets better? Of course, just because there are rays of hope doesn't mean the world isn't still a terrible place full of Aztechnology blood sacrifice and Lofwyr who will summarily eat you if you come across his radar and what-not.

It's a pretty big change. Some people can't cope. But I like the 2070s, and I like the mechanics.



This is a plus in SR4's column in my evaluation of things. Too much grit isn't fun.



Why should things be different, anyway? SR4's magic system makes a lot of sense - Magic is Magic, how you view it colors it, but they remain fundamentally the same force being acted on in different ways but to largely the same ends. I prefer Spirits and Elementals being two names for the same thing. As for spellcasting favoring certain spells and others being derp options... Well, that's a price I find acceptable to pay.



There's an easy way to fix this; under normal circumstances, all damage to the Physical track is mirrored on the Stun track, with only modifiers from the highest track applying. Or don't let people huck off their armor in the middle of a fight/run.




This one I do think is weird. Nonlethal measures are inherently superior to lethal measures because they almost always have better odds, and you can always choose to kill a subdued opponent if you needed him dead. But it was the same in SR3 - look at Corrosion. Everybody's slinging Gel ammo because it's simply superior; Gel hits on Impact armor and everything has lower Impact than Ballistic.

If you wanted to fix this, you could muck around with expanding the Stun track greatly; you can pretty quickly toss up enough modifiers to someone's rolls to make him much less effective in combat, but knocking him outright unconscious will be much harder.

Still, this one goes in my 'prices I'm willing to pay' column, too.

Suggesting that hacking cyberware was possible was pretty stupid; failing to include examples or rules on what you can do with hijacked cyber was just stupid. Most players and GMs solve this by assuming that most people set their cyberware to completely ignore all wireless commands.



Well, yeah. There has to be some way to encourage people to still want a datajack. And to want to do physical intrusions rather than just hacking for the win from the comfort of your own mobile hacker pad.



Suggestion: Ignore subscription limits. They're kind of retarded, especially when computers are assumed to have WTFROFFLE amounts of bandwidth and processor speed/power. Nothing at all breaks if you ignore them and make them not exist. They never really become any kind of balance factor.



You say "flaw," I say "feature." Wired Reflexes being useful if you're doing AR hacking makes hacking without going into full sim VR possible, and it makes pulling double-duty as a hacker and a gun bunny easier.



For me, that's not an issue, as I play via IRC with a dicebot. If you have a problem physically rolling 25 dice, then use a computer to do it for you - such as a smartphone app, or a program on a laptop.




Okay, uninterrupted extended tests are a little derpy, I'll admit, but they're hardly something to raise a fuss about.

Since each dumpshocker's individual tastes are not likely to make your decision any easier, I suggest jumping into a SR4 play by post and see how you like it.

I say yes.
3rd was dying under all the different add on mechanics.
As a GM it was almost impossible to keep up.
The straw the broke the camel's back was rigger/spider (building security rigger) combat for control of a building's security system.


Just having one uniform set of mechanics makes the game run so much faster and I can concentrate of the game instead of the game mechanics.


Now I run old school (2055) and while wireless is out there, every thing really critical goes through fiber (both for security and due to the connection requirements of full VR simsense).
But it really lets me limit the most powerful bio, nano, and cyberware.

Better for the world? Yes.

Whether this is better for a game setting is highly debateable, and I think this becomes the sticking point for a lot of people on both sides of the fence.

In terms of flavor, Shadowrun 1e and 2e are "The future according to the 80's" A lot of people dig that. Others think some of the anachronisms that come with it are too much to bear. Some think a dystopia in a wireless world is impossible. If you dig the feel of 2050 and have no qualms with the setting, then I say if it ain't broke don't fix it. It's what you and your players are used to, so if y'all are all having a good time there is no particular reason to gum up the works.
If, on the other hand, you find things are just a bit too stale and folks would like the setting to evolve, then I'd say give 4e a try. If you play it and it turns out you don't dig it, you can always go back. Try out the quickstart rules and get a sense of how folks around the table felt about it.

In terms of mechanics...well, if everything is broken then nothing is broken.
The only thing I've ever heard about 4e mechanics is that the Matrix, Combat, Magic, Vehicles, Charisma and Everything is broken, terrible, unfixable and unplayable. Heck, a quick glance of some rules discussions on Dumpshock and you'd think everyone here hated Shadowrun and never played it.
I, personally, have never had any problems with the rules in actual game play that couldn't be resolved by a consensus around the table and only a handful that couldn't be resolved by RAW. Most of the rules issues I've had with 4e have been entirely theoretical and have never come up in actual game play.
I've played 4e for years and have never found the game "broken" in the slightest. Sure, it's not perfect and there are somethings I disagree with, but it's a rules heavy system. Unless you're dealing with an OSR type game, there are going to be rule arguments which come up. But as long as you aren't playing with people who are jerks, it shouldn't really be an issue.
The same goes for 2e. Especially decking. There are no small number of people who think those rules are equally broken on all fronts, it's just that it's not still in publication so I think people are less likely to throw their hands in the air and declare it unplayable when they know these issue will never be fixed in subsequent material.

The biggest issue with mechanics from 2e to 4e is decking/hacking. If you prefer a non-wireless world, I'd say stick with 2e. If you want to give wireless a go, give 4e a try. Heck, try both and keep what you like from one system and integrate it into the other!
Whatever you do, don't let salty old grognards sour your taste for what is a pretty cool game no matter which edition.

Well, some people liked the fact that by making a shaman or a mage, you were making a real choice rather than just some roleplaying flavour. You had real advantages and real disadvantages which differed from one to the other. Not so unexpectedly, it actually added a lot of flavor to the game. You didn't have to play them different because you liked roleplaying, but because they were different, and fighting them was different.



I'm not sure that's what the poster thought about, but 25 dice pool are a real problem not only linked to physically rolling them. It is the origin of the famous "immunity to normal modifiers" trick. Unless you really are unfair and overcripple the character's pool regulary, he will never fail no matter the difficulty. Even at -15 penalty, he will average 3 hits…

There are many things that are good with SR4 - I especially like the Cyberware/Bioware rules in regards to essence.

BUT...

I prefer the damage system in SR3 as you CAN kill someone by simply giving them 'deadly' damage instead of just adding boxes to be resisted.

That part changes the system completely.

Say you negociate. You have Negociation Skill 8 and charisma 4. Your opponent has skill 4, charisma 5.

You win the negociation 54% of times, draw 22% and lose at 24%.

If your opponent had charisma 4:
You win the negociation 80% of times, draw 12% and lose at 8%.

I have no problem with both statistical approches. Unresisted roll is a roll (IMO) pulp style. The character can win against all odds.
Resisted roll is gritty. A single +1 or -1 at your TN can change the win chances by A LOT.

And both resolution ways existing together creates at my taste an inconsistency. I don't like the fact that a little modifier can be gamechanging or barely noticeable depending on the type of test.


I like my game gritty. I find that it makes the game more tactical (each little advantage counts -e.g. Make an interrogation in an environnement that inspire fear, and the bonus you may get could change drastically the outcome of your trial-), what I want for this game (on the other hand for a exemple, I want HeroQuest to be heroic, so griityness is not an absolute Gamemastering style). I somewhat house rule most rolls so that they are resisted.

Not hard to bypass that weakness, but by RAW, I find it to be a big rule mistake.

I believe negociation targets intelligence, but it doesn't change anything.

Well, first of all, I actually don't like the way negociation tests are written. But the problem to me is more of the TN being an attribute. I like shadowrun 3rd because skill is the most important. This is rather bad that at the price he would have paid for his etiquette skill of 9, a 2 charisma troll will not easily overcome an etiquette contest with a charisma 5 skill 4 elve.

But if it were success contest much like combat, I would actually have no problem with it… In this case, if only one protagonist would get a +1, this would mean not only disadvantage for him, but advantage for the other one… It seems fair to me that in such situations TN modifer have more influence than when it only depends on you.

I guess this is more a question of personnal test, and the definitions of "barely noticeable" and "gamechanging".