Hi

So me and my group have been playing Shadowrun for long enough now that I think it's about time we can start introducing some house rules to change things we don't like. Is there a repository somewhere on here (or another site) of commonly used house rules and suggestions? We've got some ideas already, but I'd be interested in reading more.

If there isn't a repository for such stuff, but people have links to individual house rule threads I don't mind editing them into some sort of list in the OP

Cheers

Josh

Hm. A bit difficult to say.
I think Pax had a big document of optional rules he uses ...

What are the things you don't like? Maybe with a few examples, it would be easier to suggest common house rules

Mhm, don't change for the sake of change.

Well, it isn't any one thing specifically that we don't like, no massive changes, just tweaks.

I've been looking through the listed optional changes from the core book and like a few of those.

Here are some initial areas we'd like to deal with:
In our games edge has become a bit too powerful. I think this must be a common problem but may be exacerbated by the fact that our play sessions tend to be quite short. In this situation it often occurs that a character will have enough edge to 're-roll misses' on every test they fail in a session. The way I thought to deal with this was to remove the re-roll misses option completely and just allow edge dice to add to a test. This is almost always a smaller dice pool. I also considered combining this with the edge deteriorates optional rule, where you only get extra dice equal to your current unspent edge.

As long time Cyberpunk players, some of our group have been bemoaning the lack of the crit success/fumble you get in Cyberpunk. That's a 1 on a d10 fumble, and always re-roll a 10. I've been thinking of experimenting with the 'always explode 6s' rule to see if that adds a bit of the crit success thrill. It also enables characters to succeed against the odds more often. I think changing the edge as above should cause more glitching on its own.

Our GM, partly as a Cyberpunk player and partly as a physicist, doesn't like the idea of opposed tests for ranged combat. Shadowrun is the first game I've got him to play that uses them. We were talking about trying out the 'ranged attacks are success tests' rule to see how it works. I think this may make skills like dodge useless, and how the total defence action works against a success test.

There were a few other things. Due to there not being hit locations we found that characters haven't felt in danger in the same way they did in 'punk. Any gun shot could kill you. We're gonna go with the optional rule to not convert physical to stun if it doesn't beat armour (this is partially for easiness as we often forget to do this anyway).


Those are a few of the things we were considering. We're not gonna make changes for the sake of it, more experiment with changes and see if it effects the game in an enjoyable way.

look at the chummer character generator. it has a tab 'optional rules' and a tab 'house rules' in its option. These are the most commonly used ones.

I was thinking on a Count 6, Substract 1's: Positive or negative value=>A positive or negative side effect occur (unrelated to succes or failure).

Con of such a rule: A negative side effect is more likely to occur to high dice pools even if 0 remains the mean value.

You can refresh edge less often. It's even one of the optional rules. We refresh at the end of each story arc. So that's usually every two sessions, sometimes every 3.



If you want more frequent fumbles, you can use the rule that a glitch is whenever more 1's are rolled than anything else or more 1's than hits. It doesn't really effect glitches for low dice pools, but keeps them likely out to about 15 dice. We used the more 1's than hits rule in one of our games and it worked well. Just have a list of glitches or ideas available beforehand, because it will come up. I also like the rule because it eliminates that stupid oscillation in glitch probability as you go from even to odd dice pools.
Always explode 6s will work and make longshots more possible, but be aware it will slow things down, because what was one roll could be 3 or 4.



If you're going to use ranged success tests, may I suggest that you modify it for an aware target to be: current threshold + Rea/3 + (Dodge/3 on full defense)+ Modifiers (modified appropriately). It keeps it a little closer to the current miss chances and with a threshold of 1 for close range, no one is going to miss anyone during your entire game.



If you want to up the threat range, make the damage for all weapons: Current DV + 1d6. Suddenly even the lowly hold-out can be seriously threatening 17% of the time. Not one we use ourselves, but in our last game usually half the group was in over-flow or unconscious by the end a serious fight so we don't really need it. Also, have experienced opposition call shots for a +4 (though I really don't like called shots, because it doesn't make sense that aiming for a specific part gives me a binary of either more damage or no damage on the target).

Cheers guys, this is some useful info. Has anyone ever tried out the Ranged combat as success tests thing? How did it affect the game?

Thorya: Yeah, the high chance of success was partly what appealed, but never missing would be problematic also so I need to try and find a middle ground.

Not sure if knowing the probabilities would help.

Using a dice pool of 14 for attack (modest for most dumpshockers).

With the standard optional rules for threshold (assuming that ranges no longer apply modifiers, though this is not clear)-
Short Range- 99.7%
Medium Range- 97.2%
Long Range- 89.5%
Extreme- 73.9%

With the standard optional rules for thresholds but still applying modifiers for range-
Short Range- 99.7%
Medium Range- 96.2%
Long Range- 76.5%
Extreme- 25.8%

Those seem high to me (except the very last one), but it might be what you're looking for.

Using my modified threshold (for a reaction 3 and a reaction 6 target)-
Short Range- Rea 3- 97.2%, Rea 6- 89.5%
Medium Range- Rea 3- 89.5%, Rea 6- 73.9%
Long Range- Rea 3- 73.9%, Rea 6- 52.5%
Extreme Range- Rea 3- 52.5%, Rea 6- 31.0%

Current opposed tests for a reaction 3 and reaction 6 character-
Short Range- Rea 3- 95%, Rea 6- 84.9%
Medium Range- Rea 3- 93.9%, Rea 6- 81.4%
Long Range- Rea 3- 89.4%, Rea 6- 72.4%
Extreme Range- Rea 3- 77.0%, Rea 6- 53.6%

From there you can maybe have a better idea of the type of probability you're looking for in terms of hitting.

Another option is to just dump all the thresholds up by 1. Then there is a real chance to miss (to me greater than 1%), but it's pretty small.

A brief thought on Edge:

You could seriously reduce the (over)effectiveness of Edge by changing it to work more like a diminishing stat rather than its current state of spending a point but always receiving the full Edge benefit. That is, you could have it so that you may spend a point and receive the current (including the point spent) Edge dice (so at Edge 3/3 you could spend a point to receive 3 dice and have 2/3 remaining, and at 2/3 you could spend a point to get 2 dice and have 1/3 remaining). I think that's an actual optional rule, though I'm rusty on SR4.

I think another optional rule is to allow only the Edge dice to explode instead of all of them. Exploding dice tends to be a huge benefit to already-large pools, so the real luck-based "I only have 1 die" longshots aren't as advantageous to spend Edge on as the 20-dice murderate-ALL-the-guards rolls.

If you wanted to go a step further you could allow people to spend a number of dice from their Edge. That is, you could have Edge 3/3 and spend 1 Edge to get 1 die, or 2 Edge to get 2 dice, or 3 Edge to get 3 dice.

In either case you'd probably want to balance it by refreshing Edge more frequently. In the latter case you'd probably want to issue Edge points as "cool" points whenever someone does something awesome or heroic, so Edge levels could fluctuate during a run. Or even refresh some points as people take increasing amounts of damage in order to represent a sort of second-wind / heroic rebounding in the face of adversity.

Personally if I were going to go back to SR4 I'd probably treat Edge like a die pool that refreshes at the end of each full turn (but not each IP), under a spend-one-to-get-one mechanic, much like the Combat Pool of SR3, and nix Edge expenditures on noncombat tests as well as exploding 6's in general. That would make high Edge pools very desirable (having an extra 6 dice to split up amongst attacks and dodges in a combat turn would be nice) but wouldn't spiral into absurdity at the upper boundaries.