Not everyone believes that, though. *shrug*

You obviously only have experience with the Sr4.5 version, which does suck. However, the original priority system was the blueprint for most template systems out there, including White Wolf's. Fact is, templates are a time-honored and tested system that rewards creativity while reducing min/maxing, and has fast and smooth character creation.

My only problem with the old priority system is, the jump directly from 400,000¥ to 1,000,000¥. With no nice, convenient middle ground (say, around 650,000¥). So if you needed more than 350K or so, you had to jump all the way to "why not buy a permanent high lifestyle and retire immediately".

...

I'd like to see a "hybrid" Priority/Point-buy. A limited number of "points", to spread between the various categories (Attributes, Skills, Metatype, Magic, Money). And thus, greater granularity than the old priority system gave ... but, for those that prefer it, less "fiddly-ness" than BP or Karmagen give.

Actually, my experience with Priority is from SR3. I've intentionally avoided even glancing at the 4th ed one because of how much the SR3 one was a railroad.

How was it a railroad? Because it forced you to think of what was actually important to your character concept and allocate accordingly? To, you know, prioritize? What a shocking notion that is!

There's a lot from old editions that could stand to be revisited, in my opinion. Too much of SR4 was change for change's own sake, instead of things that really needed to be fixed or changed. That we got out of it with a rules system that I've actually begun to kind of like was little short of miraculous. By all rights, it should have been a world-class hot mess.

That doesn't excuse the violence done to the story and the metaplot with some of the silliness that was crammed into things to "update the setting," since I still feel a lot of that has failed and left us with a weaker game world. It's what we've got, though, and it's not the topic of this thread, so I'm gonna drop it here.

I've been toying with that concept already. For example, I don't know anyone who doesn't spend the max 200 BP on attributes, so it'd be simpler to simply assign that many "stat points", and charge triple for maxing out an attribute.

On the adept/implant issue I think the crux of the problem boils down to about 2 bioware implants. You can get muscle augmentation and muscle toner at rating 3 a piece for $100k and less than 1 essence. The same bonus for an adept is 6 magic..................

I don't think you really need to make the augmented adept impossible to play. Who knows why you adept has a cyberarm? Maybe he needed a cheap replacement?

I think if the costs were more even, it could even still favor bioware a bit, people would be less inclined to min/max.

For the adept/implant thing, have you looked at Way of the Adept? That combined with Street Magic geas make the expensive powers half off, which makes them significantly better than all but betaware... and by the time someone can get say betaware wired reflexes, the adept has initiated and gotten better as well.

That made me think about the critics of creating a character with karma (the thread was closed so I couldn't discuss that). Someone said it was the most open to min-maxing but I honestly don't see why. I take it for the best way to create a character.

Different options for character creation are on the SR5 wish list. No need to go back and forth about personal preferences of character creation over and over again.

Well, $100K, <1 Essence, and 20BP for "Restricted Gear" PQs.

However, I don't think it's the immediate costs that make this approach so attractive - I think the biggest problem is that Adept attribute boosts make the attribute more expensive to improve during play. They're treated like intrinsic parts of the attribute, rather than as "floating" modifiers the way Cyberware and Bioware are.

I did away with that in my houserules. I also flattened the cost to 0.5 PP per +1, period, end of story. That's still not as deep a bargain as those Muscle augs, but they're at least playing in the same ballpark as each other.

I think another problem is the fact that Adepts are still Penalized based on the fact that ALL adepts are physical Adepts, yet there is still room for an INT or LOG based Adept for hacking or Artisan type. No Adept can get LOG or INT or WILL improvement from anything but Karma expenditures so making this sort of overall rule makes getting those improvements period impossible. So you suddenly have made Adept Hacker's less desirable as a concept because they can only improve half of the concept.

Also on the idea of removing initiation options for Wared Adepts...you might as well just remove the option of Adepts from Latent Awakening since an Adept that cannot initiate is nearly unplayable especially if they have Ware, limiting their Core powers to 5 or less PERIOD is extremely limiting.

For SR5 I wish:

Casting spells and conjuring spirits should be more dangerous. When have you last seen a magician take any drain from casting a spell or conjuring a spirit? I don't want to knock out my PC or NPC, but I do want them to be worried, and take a little drain once in a while. In my campaings Drain is full force +/- modifiers, and we hardly ever see any drain in any case.

Adepts should be different. I want them to do things differently from augmented people. As it is now most people worry about how to get "X", and take the route that cost less magic/essence, nomatter what type of character. Adepts should be allowed augmentations, but at a cost to their powers. Maybe introduce the old burnout rule (once you loose 2 points of essence, your have to take a geas or go the way of the burnout. The current "Way of the burnout" (from "Way of the Adept") is actually a benefit IMO, and rewards adepts for taking augmentations.

Skills should matter more than attributes. I like the skill+attribute pool, but dislike how attributes rule. Maybe something like having dice from atributes a different color, and glitches from those dice have a bigger effect than glitches from your skill dice.

I want skills & attributes to have an effect in the matrix. I do use skill+attribute, hits limited by software rating, but I'm not really satisfyed with this solution.

Critical glitches should happen. I have never, since SR4, seen a critical glitch, never ever since 2005. And the amount of glitches I've seen has been very small. I don't want my players to fail all the time, but more than once in a blue moon would be OK.

I want to be able to increase my skills & attributes beyond the current limit (6). It's not fun starting at the peak of your abilities. But on the other hand this could lead to some incredible dice pools.

And more will likely come...

That's actually not 100% true; you just need to get a copy of Way of the Adept.

"Creative Eye" increases Intuition; it's restricted to Adepts who follow the Artist's Way.

"Keen Wits" increases Logic; it's restricted to Adepts who follow the Artisan's Way.

... and an ability that boosted Will directly, would be extremely open to abuse by any Mystic Adept.

Actually this is true today, becuse attributes matters a lot (compared to the 1st and 2nd Editions). If I am not mistaken, in the Second Edition atributes were the source of dice pools (like combat pool, magic pool, astral pool...), but they were almost never used isolated.

The proof of that was: you could raise your atributes easly, just spending the karma equal to the new rating.

Lots of oddities, like every street samurai in the world had willpower like 5 or 6... actually every character looked exactly the same. Honestly, I believe it's way better now.

As if its not an abuse to just pick up a Health Sustaining Focus & keep constant Willpower increase Spell on already for a Mystic Adept?

Yes those specifically cater to a single build, but how often do you find a character involved in a single build in this sort of game? Many builds if done well allow for the option of a Hacker/Infiltrator. More specifically, I have been playing with the concept of allowing my Sniper/Infiltrator to work on hacking some, but being that he's unable to take any abilities to boost his Logic (Already have Way of the Warrior as it made sense early on) it makes it less favorable for me.

Note: I don't wanna create a debate on whether Logic is overly useful in hacking, this is just a discussion on Adepts as a whole, the Use of Logic in hacking is best left to another discussion or at least another post.

I agree, and it's exactly what have been saying. Like my "Selene from Underworld" example.

I think awakened should "break/ignore" physics, while augmented fellows should have they big dice pools, be tough, but still not be able to fall from a building "Selene style". In game terms, reduce falling damage by a few meters - like adepts can to nowadays - is pointless, a condition that is rare itself and can be entirely avoided by many means (grappling gear, parachuting, levitate spells, "spider-man" Gecko bio/cybber...).



Actually, the way you wrote is the other way around.... attrtibutes would matter even more.

Active foci don't respond well to Wards. They're also rather visible on the Astral, IIRC.

Adept abilities ... not so much.


My Hacker-Adept does have the Artisan's Way, but doesn't have even a single point of Keen Wits. Honestly, boosts directly to his skills were mroe valuable - not only because RAW they actually apply when hacking, but also because they're just plain cheaper (all being noncombat, for 0.75PP you can get 3 dice of skills, instead of 1 point of attribute ... or worse, 0.5 points of attribute).

Besides, the way Adept increases interact with Karma, just makes them seriously poor choices or any adept, ever.

Side note: I should have thought the Invisible Way would be more useful to a sniper and/or infiltrator.


Then I will only say: Logic is very useful for crafting, especially software, which is indirectly of benefit to a hacker. But it's not critical in and of itself, if hacking is run per RAW. (I happen to like "RAW, but hits limited by attribute", myself.)

I never noticed that characters ended up playing the same, though. Those dice pools were the main source of power in the game, so having them high was always a good thing.

Attributes also had a weak link to skills: they affected the cost of raising skills, so the higher your linked attribute was, the lower the cost. Skills were your main source of dice, so don't underestimate them.

So you want people to invest MORE heavily in attributes?

We already have 13-AGL 1-SKILL gun bunnies attack monkies.

Hmmmm, I wouldnt count on it. The Major Horror artificer might have a field day with technomancers and cyberspace.

I think that this may be a table issue. Mages at our table take Nickle and dime drain ALL the time from spellcasting, and summoning/binding is exceedingly dangerous, since Spirits CAN spend Edge to resist (and do so at our table, but apparently not at many other tables).



Again, I think that this is a table issue. We have glitches commonly, and see at least one Critical Glitch in a session if not more.

What kinds of spells are the mages at your table casting?

As for spirits, they're only supposed to spend edge to resist if you/the mage abuses spirits. What you've done at your table there is a house rule.



Table Issue. Your table is frequently a very-low dice-pool-size table, and you've all agreed as such. If I were to show up with any character I've ever built--and none of them are twinkish--I suspect that I'd outclass any single character at your table.

Thing is that having well established unique roles actually accomplishes the exact opposite, it kills the unique concepts and makes everyone the same.
The wonderful thing about a class less open build system is that the sky is the limit for the characters you want to create, like the magical bum I suggested in another thread. SR doesn't only make him possible, but viable and able to flourish in his area of expertise.


Shadowrun is designed around the duality of technology and magic, if someone voluntary choose to ignore those options he's naturally going to be at a disadvantage. There's a very lengthy discussion on the subject in a recent thread called "Mundanes, self-imposed mechanical restriction?" (Sorry for not providing a link, writing on a mobile device)


6 years ago is recently?
I'm going to adress this because it's an interesting and demonstrable insight into game design.
So what you're refering to isn't actually true with WoW anymore, unique capabilities restricted to one class was very detrimental to the game as a whole and I'll explain why.
In the first expansion; the burning crusade.
Blizzard made a push to make hybrid classes (basically any class able to multiple roles like tanking or healing) able to perform outside of one role. Something that hadn't been true earlier as the design philosophy was that classes with multiple roles should be worse at those roles then classes with only one role, this lead to a situation where hybrids were locked into a role because they were suboptimal in every other aspect.

But, they still didn't want the hybrids to be as good at the other role as a pure class so instead of making them perform to an equal level they made them provide unique powerful buffs.
As you can imagine this lead to a situation where you needed to have atleast one of each of the hybrid dps speccs in your group or you were severely disadvantaged, but you never wanted more then that because they weren't able to perform aswell as the pure classes.
Several fights also had unique mechanics that required a certain class to deal with, in most cases this was limited to a single person using a unique class ability to perform a role he wouldn't normally.
That doesn't sound to bad does it?
That's where class stacking come in, because the hybrids brought pretty much all of the buffs and pures were only valued because of their dps entire classes would get left out of raiding because they couldn't perform aswell as their peers.
This escalated even more when the need for defensive cooldowns got escalated to the point that you needed to bring 9 of a specific class to a certain fight and then only 3 for the next and no this isn't exaggeration, the very best guilds in the world did this to be able to beat encounters, that's just how classes were built. Like a fight full of magic debuffs and only 1 or 2 classes can dispel magic debuffs.

Fast forward to the second expansion; Wrath of the lich king.
At this time it was decided that hybrids should be able to perform at the same levels as pures, the hybrid tax (as it was called) was abolished, and there was much rejoicing. Yaaay!
Except they also decided to make 10 man (as opposed to 25 man) raiding a viable option, and there was still these really powerful unique buffs around.
It meant that unless you had a very specific 10 man setup some fights would simply be out of your reach, this was made even worse with the introduction of hard modes. Fights were tuned around you having all these buffs and missing one could mean as much as a 10%-20% difference in performance, more if you were missing bloodlust (the most powerful cooldown in the game restricted to shamans only)
They had to introduce items to bandaid this issue.

This was addressed in the cataclysm by spreading the powerful buffs to several classes and consolidating unique debuffs into fewer categories, aswell as making certain key buffs or debuffs available to all of the choices of that role (like mana regeneration for healers or reduced damage debuffs for tanks)
The design goal of bring the player not the class was achieved! Not by unique abilities to encourage the integration of every class, but by giving the players true freedom of choice.

Well, the concept of TMs as they are does not preclude the existence of Otaku who still need a datajack (but nothing else). They could easily be written in as "everybody was up in arms about TMs with their wireless brains and those guys were simply missed"...

May I ask, what you define as low, medium, and high were DPs are concerned?

The last time I played, "normal" was around 14 dice in a primary skill.*

Secondary skills are generally around 10-12, with "this will come up at some point" skills at 8.

We didn't see crit glitches all that often (if at all). And yes, that was including my character trying to use a single valid ID card to get a security system to recognize the party as authorized employees--I think I had 3 dice on the last person, needing 1 success.** I had glitched a...swimming? role the previous session though, which was likewise all of like 4 dice.


*except this one new player, who's character was built by the GM, and had something like 30 armor--hooray cyber. That was pretty much his skill though: being a wall.

**I don't recall the exact details, but it was super-tight, and I totally blew through something like 4 points of edge that session, leaving me with 1 point in case of emergencies.

I would suggest, resepectfully, that it's not Tymaeus' table that's "especially low". Rather, I wold characterise your table as being a bti on the high side. Not by a huge margin, but by a few dice nonetheless.

Dropping those numbers by 2 or 3 dice would vastly raise the odds of glitches and critical glitches.

~Umi

Over about 6 dice glitches and critical glitches trend toward statistical insignificance. It's a bad critical failure system port from a mechanic that used far fewer dice for regular tasks.

There should definitely be a new glitch/critical glitch system.

As to the reason I went Way of the Warrior was primarily that the character had more invested in combat than in his Infiltration so it made sense at the time.

A glitch or critical glitch SHOULD be exceptionally rare, and should be handled carefully by the GM to create a memorable moment for years to come--not simply to screw the player over in some fashion for having an unlucky die roll.

I personally like the custom dice system used in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. The interactions between Success/Failure and Advantage/Threat serve to fulfill the same general function as glitches and critical glitches, but it feels much smoother and a little more robust.

Rolling up some Threat is roughly analogous to Glitching in the fact that if you fail your roll with Threat, it makes the failure worse, and even if you suceed at the roll, you still mess up somehow. But the opposite effect, Advantage, has no counterpart in SR. If you roll an Advantage, your successes are more successful and even your failures still give you some benefit. For example, if you fail an attack roll, but generate Advantage in doing so, you may not have inflicted any damage, but either you are now in a better position or your opponent is now in a worse one.

Now, yes, we are talking two very different systems with very different points of balance. I'd never suggest trying to just use the custom dice rules of one game in place of the dice rules of another. But EotE could at least serve as a point of comparison or a source of inspiration regarding ways to tweak the SR system.

~Umi

Thinking about it, I could come up with some suggestions:

Incorporate a "glitch die" -- on any test, have a way to identify one of the dice from the others (by having it a different color or size or something). Any time that die comes up a "1" on an otherwise successful test there is a glitch (minor complication). A glitch combined with a failure (read as "no dice on 5's or 6's" in the event of an opposed test where net successes are used) is a critical glitch (major complication). That would put a static 16.67% chance for a glitch on any test (no matter how many dice), while the probability would scale from a maximum of 16.67% (with one die) to 11.11% (with 2 dice) to 7.41% (with 3 dice) to 4.94% (with 4 dice) and so on. By the time you get to 8 dice it's something like 0.0017%, which is pretty much never going to happen.

14 dice in a primary skill is not high. Nor is it particularly hard depending on the skill. And I really should have put "12-14." 14 was THE top-end of primary skills at the table.

4 (6) stat + 4 skill + 2 tool* gets you 12. None of that would be considered more than "above average human" with "light augmentation"

*Smart link, when considering something like firearms.
Case and point: my drake gun-bunny (who was terrible, as being an orc would have freed up some 80 BP and actually come out better stat wise to boot) had 12 dice to firing a gun. And only 3 points of recoil compensation. He never fired more than a shot and long burst in the same pass. Didn't have the highest body count, but also didn't get shot either (largely due to the player-vampire who thought it would be a good idea to 'get into melee range with that guy with the shotgun')

Regeneration is a funny thing, lots of hoping that they don't have silver slugs though.

The guy didn't have silver slugs, but the vamp was totally out of the fight having done exactly zilch.

under SR3 Rules, the Regeneration Power was a much more 1:0 thing.
either you regenerate it all at once right then, or you keel over dead.

And the above scenario was in SR4, so this comment is irrelevant. *Tips hat*

Not at your table, maybe. But it certainly looks high to me.


And I would consider that - a 10-12 pool - to be the norm for primary skill, for a starting character. Just about two dice less than you suggest.

Like I said, I don't hink your table is high by a lot ... but by a little, yeah, I do. In fact, look at your post ... see every DP range you posted? Drop 2 dice, and you're at where I aim for, unless I am consciously trying for "high power" (like the 1K Karma builds I do "just for fun"). Those tend to get 4-8 dice more than your table's Primary Skill average (depending on how thinly I have to spread the "primary skill" definition).

*shrug*

I'm not saying you're playing wrong, Draco. I just think you're playing a bit higher DP than a lot of games mgiht, and so, Tymaeus' table might not really be "very low". Instead, maybe he's "a bit low" compared to your "a bit high".

Primary area of expertise should probably have 14 to 16 with secondary areas having anywhere from 8 to 12. That said, unlike some posters on this forum and the other one, I'm not going to give the "stink eye" to someone who comes in with 20 to 22 in their primary.

Well, we run the gamut... From Elemental Combat Spells to Physical Manipulations. F/2-1 to F/2+7. No different from most tables I would assume. *shrug*



Nope.. Here you are completely and totally wrong. Any creature with an Edge stat can use it just like a Character can do. And at our table, any spirit above Force 3 does so as a matter of course. It is NOT a house rule, as I have informed you many times before. You can find NOTHING that indicates when a Spirit may, or may not, spend his Edge. *shrug*



You are wrong again. we run the Average for Dice Pools which is 8-12 (as supported by about every single example of any type of character you care to show me in the book) with competent DP's in the 14 DP range.

I dare say that you would not. A character is not a Dice Pool, and you often seem to forget that. *shrug*
We have had monstrous dice characters (18-26) and to be honest, they were quite.... Boring. *shrug*

THAT is the exact house rule I am referring to. RAW says no such thing about "any spirit above Force X will resist summoning/binding with Edge."

A spirit may because it has it, but the house rule you have is that it always does so.

I just want overall less dice. Picking up 25 dice for a roll is tedious and then trying to become a generalist with pools of 4-8 is a monumental waste of time.

Again, you are wrong. ALL Spirits May, as a matter of course.
If I stated that All spirits did so, would that be more RAW for you? ALL MegaCorps MAY wipe any shadowrunner out of existence, on a whim, if they so desired. Is it a Houserule if that is enforced? *shakes head*

Yes, 25 Dice is tedious, and very, very boring after about 2 sesions. If you can never fail, there is no challenge. *shrug*
And before someone says that they can fail in their non-ficused skills, I would agree with you, IF THEY EVER ATTEMPTED ANYTHING OUTSIDE OF THEIR SPECIALTY. In my experience, when you have someone who insists on playing the 20+ Dice specialist, they just leave their non-specialty focus to someone else (the particular specialist with 20+ Dice in that Specialty), so they never have to bother with it. It gets real boring watching that, real quick.

Why is trying to become a generalist with 8 dice a waste of time? It is very doable. I have one now. 50+ Skills, most of them in the 7-9 DP Range, with primary skills at the 12 DP range, and secondary skills at 10 DP. Yes, there are a few at ONLY 6 Dice, but so what. The character is very good at his chosen primary skills, not bad with his secondaries, and can backstop every other character at the table with the rest of his skills. and he covers a LOT of areas that no-one else covers. He is a blast to play, and he is pretty damned competent.

I didn't say it was against RAW for spirits to spend edge. I said it was a house rule that all spirits WILL spend edge. Every time, all the time, without fail, provided [a condition that your table agreed upon, which is stated nowhere in the books].



Stawman.

Does not need to be stated in the books. Spirits will spend EDGE whenever they desire to do so. Higher power spirits (Force 4+) will spend it to resist servitude. Since that fits into the parameters of "whenever they desire to do so" it is not a Houserule. Does that preclude a Higher Power spirit from NOT spending that EDGE? Absolutely not, but that (Spirit NOT spending the Edge to resist) will take effort and time on the Magician's part to establish that relationship. Most of the players in our game do not take the time to do so. *shrug*

No worries, though, I get that we have different opinions on how to keep the game flowing.

So says what passage?

No passage needed, it is a personal decision, as all EDGE expenditure is. DO YOU LIKE SERVITUDE?
Just because we run it that way does not mean it is a House RULE. It is the view we hold on spirits in the game world.