@Bull:
The only thing for that built that MBW would have added was the extra actions.
Raw Initiative and Reaction was better using a combination of Wired Reflexes and Reaction Boosters of both Bio and Cyber.
And this did not kill you and could actually be gotten too.

For me, it was less a matter of "not being combat oriented" and more being "I get a chance to do SOMETHING, even if it's just once, before the bad guys get to monkey stomp on me 3 times each." The slower characters still weren't going first in a combat, and they still didn't get any extra actions. The sammy still got 3-4 actions, while the mage or face or whatever got 1. But it gave them the chance to duck for cover or SOMETHING before they were turned into swiss cheese by the bad guys.

Plus, well.. You didn't always get the chance to plan the combat out ahead of time. The bad guys are rarely so courteous.

Bull

indeed,

the SR5 system needs something that allows that EPIC moment for the mundane or the HOLEE CRAP fumble moment for the Cyber super SAM,

just to level the playing field, not ALL the time, but the chance needs to be there, somehow

______
how about Roll init and SUBTRACT one's ! ?! ... dangerous to have many dices

If he does not drink that is obviously impossible

Now come on ... don't be a meany there ... Ofc his unaugmented mundane with the Adrenaline Surge edge constantly rolled 5+ sixes straight in a row ...

Have a MAge cast improved Reflexes on him instead.
Or use copious ammounts of drugs.

Do you remember why no one used drugs for more than one session in SR3?

We are talking Mr. Supernatural Luck here, therefore good chance that he will actually claim that...

because of cowardice

Dude...seriously...fracking stop with that crap. We fragging sat there watching his dang rolls (after the first couple of times).



And stop this crap too...

The part about GMs is just stating that it's the GM's job to make sure everyone has something to do in the session. Re: Combat for the Street Sam and Physical Adept, 'Sneaky-Sneaky' for the Infiltrator, Social for the Face, Hacking for the Decker, Magical Threats for those Mages that aren't Combat-Mages.

The burden of proof is on you.
Math says it is incredibly unlikely, so ... Still calling you on it.
This does not happen 'regularly' for an unaugmented mundane character, so until you repeat this experiment with a scientific basis (and earn money with the prizes that have been put out for it), a healthy skepticism is all you'll get.

So you fragging expect people to have photos of every dice roll someone made from a game that was 8 or 9 years ago? Please...

No. But I can expect you to repeat the experiment, if it's so 'fragging' reproducable.
Any scenario that isn't weighted dice will prove you wrong, or your chummer would probably have made millions in Vegas.
Please ...

Whatever...I know what happened. I'm just tired of bungholes on these forums calling people liars all the damn time (and getting away with it).

~erm~ giving him a maximum of 4 dice for initiative in total ... with no increase to reaction from that spell ... for an unaugmented mundane to hit 40+ under that condition (on what was said somewhat "regular" basis)? ... you can do the math yourself
But ofc the character will additionally be "juiced" by an increase reaction spell ... with plenty successes (2:1 ratio) against TN of his base reaction ... right?



Also leveling out at 4 dice of initiative and 4.5 points in reaction increase ... This guy better also roll sixes on a very regular basis and bring along a natural reaction of 12 (or still a mage who performs equally well on generating loads of sixes against the reaction attribute with his increase reaction spell).

The "fun" part being: Even if said player with his Adrenaline Surge character really rolled 5+ (or rather 6+) sixes in a row on a somewhat regular basis, that still isn't worth anything in terms of looking at the balance behind the SR2 initiative system and Sammies constantly outshining most other characters simply due to the fact that "combat" is usually the one thing that will take the least time from ingame perspective but the longest on outgame perspective ... even when good ol' sammie can walk up to a poor fellow, take out a cigarette and a zippo, light the cigarette, then steal the fellow's weapon from his own belt, say "booo" and then killing the poor guy with his own weapon in a single shot with his high weapon skill and full combat pool, before the guy even has the chance to notice what's going on ... and all of this on a very regular basis ... unless by miracle the opposition starts to field similar reaction enhancing stuff and every building suddenly has groups of guards so that at least one will survive the initial attack of Mr. Speedsammie (and then decide to geek the mage first, right?).

This is what's called burden of proof. You may want to look it up.
I once took a sleigh ride to the moon! I know what happened! I don't have to provide a record of my incredible story because I can call people liars.

To get to a 40+ Initiative in the best case you need a character rollign 6 6s in a row. With one dice.
Going from reaction 6, this means 1/6 (chance of rolling a 6 on 1D6)*1/6*1/6*1/6*1/6*1/6 = an incredibly low number. 1 in 46656 rolls would give you that. This is not 'regularly'.
So you may expect us to believe in Santa, but Occam's razor says, your buddy either cheated or you lied. I accuse you of nothing here.

Your move.

Actually it only takes 5 sixes and at least a 3 for a min/maxed SR3 starting character (metavariant with edges but without going into Surge, because that might somewhat contradict the "unaugmented, mundane" part) ... Numbers will get down to a minimum of 4 sixes and 1 five during play in that case, once karma is (heavily) invested into maximized, natural quickness and intelligence. However, the odds of that occuring regularly are still abysmal when compared to the number of times a just decently built Streetsam will get close or above 30 initiative with average die rolls under the same rulset und thus more than just once in a while will have 4+ simple actions even against targets with an initiative score of 13-17 (the realm of augmented, not attribute maximized NPCs that can be considered "normal" in terms of investment by their employers).

So from a GM perspective I do hope that the final product will ship with a mechanic that does resemble SR3 and SR4 in that particular regard: Round-Robin with excess actions being re-added at the back of the pipeline until the whole combat round has been resolved and the possibility of creating interrupts and requeuing due to damage modifiers

it's partly how much of an asshole you are with your dice.
when i was rolling regularly, i figured out a way to usually make a single die land with the 6 up.
at least once per gaming session i managed 5 or 6 rerolls on a single die. (usually did not help)
i think my highest roll on a single D6 was 42 or something like that once.

Right you are Forgot about the fact that the last roll doesn't need to be that high.
That's what you get for napkin math

Personally, I don't care which initiative system is being used, as long as it isn't back to SR2. Both SR3 and SR4 are fine with me, and they have different strengths and weaknesses.

I like the idea of wound modifiers mattering more.

Yeah. Getting away with it. Sure thing.

All4, I believe you. We had a guy in our group that could do that sort of dice rolling. He didn't do it all the time, but often enough to make us all *facepalm* when it happened.

It is not the GM's responsibility to fix a bad system.

I kind of wonder if they are going to up the wound penalties from SR4.

-1 per 3 points of stun or phys... rarely is enough to seriously hurt anyones checks. In earlier... that +1 TN per grade really hurt.


I could see a -2 though working reasonably well... (if you have 9 boxes of both stun and physical... I don't think a -12 penalty to everything you do is all that far out of whack!).

Only mentioning that since someone else brought it up... it might be a house rule I try experimenting with for a 'grittier' game. It would also make the combat drugs which give pain tolerance a big push since it would negate or hold off those penalties.

The problem there is the death spiral effect - which further emphasize alpha strikes, and often makes it nigh-impossible to turn an encounter around.

And from the data I've seen, it's nowhere near as realistic as people seem to think. In all reality, due to the influences of adrenaline you're not going to notice the effects of your injuries until after the fight.

Well, there's that objectively wrong opinion out of the way.

What the hell -is- the GM's job, then, if not to run the game in a way that is enjoyable for the players and themselves?

Maybe I wasn't clear. In theory, system should work as presented, out of box, without the GM having to fix it. He gets saddled with it if it has to be done, but at that point he's doing what was the designer's responsibility at the outset. Therefore, "the GM can fix it" is not in any way a defense of a bad mechanic.

Now, obviously, there will always be flaws you don't catch, but you don't EVER intentionally leave them in just because it's possible for a GM to work around them.

I was highly amused by this, partly because I'm a techie, but mostly for reasons currently covered by NDA. Thank you for making my evening.

Yeah, an issue of not being clear. I agree with what you're saying here, but was reading your earlier post as 'The GM should fuck the players over with the rules, no matter how badly written, if that's what the rules say.'

binary:
That depends.. I don't think the players should be coddled.... sometimes @#$#$ happens.

One of my friends favorite examples is the players had a plan... they proceeded to open up a warehouse door and peer into the darkness... then stand in the doorway silhouetted by the outside light and proceed to talk loudly for minutes about changing the plan in character. Then were shocked when a machine-gun was setup and fired on them while they were all standing in the open talking loudy.... after ignoring a few hints from the GM.

There's stupid and then there's stupid.

I say that fully expecting the GM to handle any of my PC's in a like manner if I were so stupid.


Games/players have changed quite a bit in the last few decades... it used to be 'normal' for a PC to get killed in the course of events. The player would gripe a little... then rush off to make the next char concept which caught his fancy. Even to the point that I see players complain about they're not enjoying their character in some games... and rather than retire the character and make one they say they'd enjoy more... they stick with it.

Oh, I agree entirely. It's one thing to hose a player for missing the obvious, though, and another to stick to bad rules for the sake of them being rules.

In the podcast on http://www.feartheboot.com/ftb/index.php/archives/3153 Mark Dynna spills a few beans on the new upcoming 5th edition.

Second part: http://www.feartheboot.com/ftb/index.php/archives/3164

Any guesses on what part of SR3 is coming back?

I can't guess since I have a NDA

I hate listening to podcasts; is there anything actually interesting they have to say?

QFT.
I won't even bother asking the same question. Someone else just post stuff I can respond to.

...you got to be freakin' kidding me...

Not really.

Podcasts tend to be of the long and rambling sort that maybe eventually after an hour get around to anything interesting.

No, seriously. They do. Because they can produce an hour of contentless-content and people will listen to it, unlike say...any other medium like radio or TV where empty minutes get cut out.

(Ok, not all podcasts are like that, but damn near every one I've listened to, except Radio Lab* has been).

*Radio Lab podcasts are...well...radio in downloadable format. It's still edited down to the pure essence of the story with none of that contentless filler.

Now I'm curious about which ones you're been listening to, considering the ones I've listened to are nothing like that at all. (and the issues you describe tends to happen with ones that are made by...well, not-so professional people. Like for instance, fan-podcasts).

If it helps, the article with the podcasts does list the time stamps where certain topics start, if you did want to skip ahead to certain stuff.

Basically anything that's been suggested to me as "a really good podcast in [topic]" which has varied. I stopped bothering after the fourth one.

(At least) one of them was supposedly fairly professional. They'd been doing the podcast for like four years.

I managed to listen to 10 minutes before growing bored and doing something else and tuning out. I realized I still had it running a half hour later, and had no idea what they were talking about or why I should care.

Edit:
Yogscast was one. I think I stabbed my own ears after 90 seconds. I don't really remember. Don't really understand the cult following of those two...two...how do I put this tactfully? Complete and utter buffoons?

Your loss.

But then, I'm also the type of guy who loves DVD commentary. I don't want just bullet point information. I want to hear the thoughts, the reasonings, and the stories that go with the people being interviewed and the topics being discussed.

I'm a fan of the Critical Glitch podcast (not a shocker), I miss Zendead's HiddenGrid Podcast. And I really liked this Fear The Boot ep. I think Mark did a great job.

for your convenience, there's even a timestamp with the discussed topics.

Do we have a concrete release date for the 5th Ed core book, or is it still just "2013"?

Yeah, don't enjoy that much.

I'm the kind of guy who wants bullet points first. That way if something sounds interesting, I can go research that precise topic in whatever detail I like. Rather than listening to three hours of audio for the 2 minutes that are interesting.

As no one is willing to listen to Podcasts:

Part 1 (Ignoring the stuff about how Mark started his job at Catalyst etc.)
- Release date won't be disclosed
- Development cycle is nearing its end
- One guideline for designing 5E was "Evolution not Revolution"
- The design team was intentionally staffed by people with different point of views of Shadowrun
- They redid the character creation because of trolls being hard to balance (high physical, low mental stats)
- "Catch phrase" for this edition: Everything has a price (See Cyberware in general or 2E Move by Wire)
- A lot of 3E elements come back (when it didn't work in 4E)
- No "severe" retcons
- More focus on players skills than on gear (no more/harder compensating for lacking skills with gear)

Part 2:
- Death of the middle class major point in the setting
- They do not try to make the matrix completely logical, it simply is something different than normal computers we know
- The Matrix is becoming much more dangerous. You should get in, do you stuff, and get out as fast as you can as the corps will get you when you stay too long
- Decking will be a "race against the clock" and nothing you do will be permanent as GOD will find out what you did eventually.
- The teams of SR5, SR Online and SR returns are in contact with each other so that everything stays canon and connected.
- "Bug spirits have gone a way and are out there"

Like I said, a lot of pointless chatter for the sake of taking up time. :V

Anyway, the bullet points show that I have no impulse to research what they're talking about. It's either stuff I already know or stuff that was pretty obvious (come on, balancing trolls is hard? Hello, Dumpshock's been saying that for a while).

Didn't Barbie say something about Math being hard?

One more thing that they mentioned that Ixal didn't mention is the relationship in SR5 between commlinks and cyberdecks.

-Commlinks will still exist, but they are now the "legal" devices for the Matrix. They have now been specifically disabled so that you CANNOT try to hack with them, no matter what you do, no ifs ands or buts.

-Cyberdecks are completely illegal to own and use, and they are devices that deckers had to have cobbled together and are built from scratch. So yeah, don't go strolling around with that thing out in public.

Not every part of an interview (whether via podcast or something else) that you don't like, personally, is "pointless chatter." Some folks really dig hearing that sort of behind the scenes stuff, like to hear how people got their foot in the door writing, how long they've been playing a given game, and stuff like that.

It's a casual interview, not a legal interrogation. Chatter is part of the point.

"Mungo haz wayza makin' ya talksiez." "He really does, don't let him do it again. The ice cream cone is the worst!"

So, retcons? How awesome is this.

So, are all the corp citizens going below the poverty line at once? Horizon and Evo citizens, too, at that?

No civilian users?

That's not saying much: they have always been out there. What has changed? They've taken over Ares?


It is par for the course for the medium chosen. Which is why, you have to understand, the medium is not to everyone's liking. For example, to the people who like to get to the point instead of beating around the bush.

Dude, wasn't me. Credit goes to Ixal.


And that's... Interesting. It seems to me that restrictions like that are the reason hacking came into existence in the first place...



Which is all well and good until someone's dismissing as pointless chatter that which is, in fact, the point to some people. I guarantee you that there are some people out there who found that to be the most interesting part of the whole thing.

As for the death of the middle class, that implies something pretty specific - a dramatic increase in the gap between those who have and those who do not, and a lack of middle ground. Middle class is not defined as "above the poverty line", either.

And I expect he meant HACKING the Matrix - I take the impression that it's going to be harder for a hacker to seem like a legit user, which seems very strange to me. I don't care how the computers work, the access methods for legit users are always a vulnerability, and all authentication/security/detection methods can eventually be beaten.

Also, if you're not expecting people under an NDA to hedge and qualify, well... If you say "not retcons", and someone comes along and decides something's a retcon, you have an issue. If you qualify that, you may not.