I like high dice pools as much as the next person, but I draw the line at people claiming a character is "crap" because it doesn't have any pools at 18+, as well as the BS claims that an unaugmented mundane is "worthless". In fact, I do think that a dedicated Face character should have Social pools in the 12 to 14 range (because the 'average' printed Mr Johnson has a pool of 10).

...until some enterprising statgeek figures out the new way to do it under the rules. Usually within 2-3 days of the rules being released.

And the 40k mathhammerers are even worse. They'll have the "OMGüberborked" units figured out within 6-8 hours of a codex being known. Nerds.

Only thing is: Sengir wasn't complaining about dicepools of example characters, nor the limits.
He was doing the math on how often characters can evade attacks if _every_ attack is opposed with int+rea.

Please make yourself familiar with what you're criticizing before pulling up your old tune to a completely different song.

That's pretty much it, and those types are the reason it's a good idea to keep the Phone Book handy to whack them with a few times.



Just looked like more 'math proof' number crunching crap to me.

Eh, I find it's easier just to find out ahead of time as a player what the GM is like, and if I'm GMing to talk to the players about what I want in my game. Less hurt feelings and "You're an asshole!" "No, you are!" later.

As for the 40k dorks...well, I don't play in tournaments (hell, really only with friends I know) for that reason. I like going "pewpew" with my painted dolls, not going "LOL I jUst ROLFstomped u!" to the guy across the table. But that's off-topic. Sorry, mods!

Hmhm. And this is why you look stupid. But don't let me distract you with facts or stop you ranting about evil power gamers

It is not just A glance, it is THE first hands-on glance at CGL's big new project. This is the kind of presentation where you double and triple-check that everything shown works as intended and looks good. If instead the presentation delivers something which turns out to be unworkable at first glance, that is a bad omen for what will follow. If the developer is unable to come up with a few working mechanics for one of the most important aspects of product introduction, how am I supposed to believe he will do better in the product itself?

It's like an applicant sending work samples for a job: If he is unable to make himself look good in one small sample entirely under his control, or simply does not bother about this crucial introductory piece, would you trust that he does a good job nevertheless?


@Draco: The question was whether radar is a technological equivalent to E-Sensing. You only started bringing up the "well, maybe E-Sensing should work different than it does" angle after it became apparent you could not substantiate your claim that radar achieves the same

No, Sengir .. I meant _you_ were only able to take a glance. And even a second hand one at that.

The demo was a pretty low-key thing, it wasn't something they were even actively advertising. I don't think it really can be qualified as THE anything, more of just a fun little glimpse for those who were interested and looped in enough to hear about it. They used the SR4 pre-gens with some new bits added in pencil. They didn't have a map and your group just fought a couple of random security guards. I'm new to SR, but I still found it pretty enjoyable.

Ok, that made me laugh.

If Shinxy and Maximus had grossly misrepresented anything, I'm sure there would have been angry protestations by Critias et. al.
I think the following points can be considered given:
- Combat remains an opposed test (lack of contrary reports from PAX)
-- The attacker rolls Skill + Attribute (dev posts, they want everything to be Skill + Att)
-- Defender rolls REA+ INT (PAX reports)
- Limits are for gross hits, not net hits (dev posts and the fact that a limit on net hits do not really represent the idea of "you will have a hard time hitting that with your crappy rifle")
- The physical limit is higher than Accuracy (10 vs. 4)


And don't be so hard on A4BG. We all had that phase where everything we did not understand was stupid and was 100% guaranteed to be totally useless for our future...

Sengir, you seem to be forgetting a couple of things:

- First, this was being referred to as a playtest, not a demo, which means there's very different concerns involved.
- Given that this is a playtest with a constraint for testing purposes, you have absolutely no cause to assume that the constraint generalizes out. For example, let's say you re-run your numbers for Accuracy 8, or 12.

There are limits to what we can say right now, and I think it's fair to say that everyone knows that (which makes pointing out the foibles of a rough, thirty-minute, playtest/demo like this hard to do, without violating that NDA). There are also limits to what we should say, for professionalism reasons, even once the NDA's out the window and there's a wide product release. The only reason I even posted was to counter the "playtesting MY ASS" nonsense; playtesting has happened. I know playtesting has happened because I've DONE months of it, myself, and I've seen the conversations and debates that ensued from various waves of playtester data (with hundreds of comments/suggestions to be sifted through and decided). Whether folks like every new thing in SR5 or not, if nothing else, believe that it's been playtested to heck and back.

So, anyways. I've said the (little) bit I'm up to saying right now, NDAs and sinus issues aside. I'm back to lurking for a bit.

C'mon, Crit, this is the internet. Everything is crap. Even if it's Scottish it's still crap.

Not trying to deconstruct your posting, just a few annotations


So far, like in SR4


+ an unspecified number of additional dice based on full defense, if I remember the original reporting posting correctly


If that's correct, that would mean that the limits do not influence your ability to hit, only your ability to stage damage, once you have hit.
Example: I shoot you with a gun that has accuracy 4, and roll 11 successes. You roll int+rea, achieve 5 successes. My accuracy of 4 means: You'd still get hit, but only 4 of the remaining 6 successes can be used to stage up the damage.

I think your question kind of misrepresents E-sensing as "perfect vision".

Range is limited to Res x Grade in meters. So even high powered technos are limited to a pretty small area they can use e-sensing. And you don't get fine details on living things (except if they have cyberwear and technos). Most of the perception involves technological things, like nodes and stuff. So E-sensing to find one person in a crowd of lots of people does you no good.

I will grant that it becomes pretty easy to spot people hidden from normal perception (only need a 2+ on the roll, I think). I'm becoming a sucker for the techno-adept idea, so I don't see this as a big problem

Oh, so it's less powerful than UWB radar, which apparently NO ONE on dumpshock would take over e-sensing.

Well color me confused.

Me too - you seem to be lumping everybody together in one confrontational mess.

I never said it's less powerful than UWB, I'm just disputing that it's "perfect vision". If I'm not playing a techno, of course I take UWB! If I am playing a techno, and I'm lucky enough to play long enough to get several submersions, I'd definitely take e-sensing.

*points at the title*
There's a matrix thread right next door?

*looks at title, confused* How did I even get in here? It's like accidentally walking in to the wrong bathroom

you're right, sorry for the OT.

No worries, it's unisex

Critias... here's the problem with this. Right now SR4 has put out a bunch of product recently with dicey quality control. Some of it like SR:2050 is questionable if large swathes of it got adequate playtesting.

Or maybe the game is simply in the state of ... well gee... what do we do now to be even more over the top power creep.

But in any case, the only playtester I know personally doesn't care one lick about rules... so I can't believe he ever playtests them. He only cares about story... even to the point where he brags he doesn't hand out karma and doesn't advance players at all. Which means that chargen & advancement would logically get no playtesting whatsoever with him. Many of the authors only seem to care about story, and not providing a solid mechanical footing for the story behind it.


In any case, I with hold all judgement on if SR5 is adequately playtested or not until I see it. I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised and that recent QC issues have been because those playtesters have been being used for the new edition instead of the last gasp of the old product.

You make it sound like you think Critias is lying out of his ass...

Thread spillover.



Maybe you didn't, but UWB radar was suggested as a tech alternative to it, and it was shot down because "walls block it" and when I pointed out that it doesn't (and that the view radius is about 10-20 meters) it "still wasn't as good as e-sensing" which, trollololol, maxes at Resonance meters. Or about 6 without serious karmic expenditures.

It wouldn't be the first time he's accused one of the freelancers of lying...

Tasti:
It's more case of... recent releases such as War and onwards... have made me doubt the QC department.

We're not privy to playtest... I trust it progressed (but think it's getting too late now for any playtesting on SR5 before it goes into final editing stages)... but until product is released we have no way to trust but verify.

It's other people like yourself putting loaded words like 'lying' out there... which serves no purpose but to inflame discourse. Critias does not run the playtest... that is jmhardy's racket or whoever he's delegated it to. I don't care if Critias is a freelancer... that doesn't put him on a pedestal and he doesn't speak for the line dev. Anything he says is in an unofficial capacity and runs dangerously close to NDA territory.


All4Big:
And once again you have no idea what you're talking about spouting nonsense. I have not accused any of the freelancers of lying recently. That's only been others stating that I have and inflaming things. The closest is that I said I don't believe something out of one of the web supplements saw adequate QC if it was intentional on the part of the author because it so flagrantly flew in the face of all the established rules. The web products have a very short development cycle if you haven't noticed.

Did I say recently? No, I did not.

You may not have said the words "you are lying" in that instance, but when it was stated by the aforementioned freelancer that the information in question was "not an oversight" you continued on in the same vein which basically turns out to calling the man a liar--and you were called on it. With a blatant incident like that in your history, I don't see how you can expect anyone to think anything else.

Yes and I requested the mod to lock the thread because certain posters insisted on intentionally personalizing any discourse repeatedly by throwing around allegations of lying just like you are right now. Rather than discussing the topic.

This is not the subject of this thread. So I suggest you drop it before making loaded accusations about other posters.

By definition an 'ad hominem' as you're not addressing the subject of the thread instead making another poster the subject of discussion.

Oh, yes, you damn well have. You did so without basis nor merit. Or what else are we to call it when a freelancer explains that something as writeen is certinaly not an oversight or mistake, and you respond, in essence, with "I'm still saying it's an oversight or mistake"?

And is it so hard for you to consider the idea that a new edition is on a fundamentally different level of testing than a supplement like 2050?

<<<Deleted to remove Snark>>>

*Uses a mirror on a telescoping handle to check around the corner. Making sure it's safe. Then creeps out.*

So..... anyone at the convention or anything have any clue for a street date for this thing? I'm looking forward to SR5

I still want to know whether or not melee skills still contribute to melee defense.

wild speculation on my part: you get REA + INT for all defense. If you go full defense, you get to add either Dodge(ranged) or Dodge/Melee(melee).

This includes the added hope that they get rid of the gymnastics dodge BS

I could consider it intensely foolish to remove melee skill from melee defense.

Don't just leave us waiting with bated breath man! Bestow upon us your infinite wisdom as to why you consider it foolish. I'm shivering with anticip......pation.

Just make it so that if one tries parrying a sword with their fist, they still take some damage.

Because unlike in ranged combat, where your defense basically amounts to moving so as to be a harder target to hit, in melee combat your level of training will make a very big difference. The sort of blocking techniques and such you're trained in will dramatically alter your ability to prevent yourself from getting hit, or to alter lessen the harm inflicted.

Um, to be fair, no, E-sensing doesn't max at 6 meters. It's range is "Resonance times Submersion Grade". A Resonance 7, Grade 3 technomancer would have an E-sensing range of 21m. At Resonance 8, Grade 5, she would have a 40m range. And so on.

So, yes, purly for range - eventually E-sensing is better than UWB. But before R7/S3 or R6/S4, they're about the same; a few different upsides and downsides for each, but all of those being pretty minor, I'd say they are close enough to equal as to make no nevermind.

Graaa, mix-up. Not in the reasoning, though, the dev posts have made it quite clear that they want to limit hits, not net hits

I see.
However, we don't know how limits work with evading attacks

I posted this earlier in the thread, it got lost in the noise. The guy running the demo mentioned that they hoped to be able to release it at one of two different cons this summer. I think the two he mentioned were Gen Con and Origins, but don't quote me on that. I played first thing Friday, so PAX overload has made a lot of things fuzzy in my head. Origins is June 12-16 and Gen Con is August 15-18, so that jives with the summer 2013 that's on their site.

*Groan*
More evidence that the person who wrote the rules had no idea what the fuck they were doing.

Catalyst has promised "the first appearances of the Shadowrun Fifth Edition Quick-Start Rules!" for Free RPG Day, which is June 15th 2013.

Source: http://www.catalystgamelabs.com/2013/03/12...e-rpg-day-2013/

You don't do testing at the first public presentation of a product. It may be called "public playtest" or "fan involvement", but in the end game previews of any kind remain carefully hedged PR events.

Not that insane business decisions would be something new for CGL (see JH's de-errata crusade), but I am still hoping that they finally got their act together...

Is this the thread on playtesting asses?

so, back to the SR3 Initiative System then?

Good find. Thanks.

Where do you pull that nugget from?

Not that I mind if they do... prefer it to 4th's init system.

Just.... Horrible. *shakes Head*

i like the SR3 ini system better than the SR4 one.
makes it both less predictable and makes ini passes not be the be all end all . .

where i got it from?
apple was at PAX east and playtested it and posted about that.

also recoil accumulates over both ini passes and rounds as long as you pull the trigger.
you need to do something else for at least one action to get the recoil down again.
mages can now cast spells as SIMPLE ACTIONS with a +3 to their drain.
reaction and intuition is a blanket defense against all attacks, even ranged.