The variable Force rating of spells already has a downside: Drain. Casting spells can kill a magician.

That guy shooting his AK doesn't risk death by simply firing his weapon.

Unless it's at Lofwyr.

*rimshot*

SR5 off to print now. Does that mean a pre-order in our near future?

*golf clap*

1) Where do you see that news?
2) If it's true, it would have been nice to see some concrete rules before it did.

CGL twitter

Thanks. One would have thought that that was big enough news to put on the website.

They don't have a website guy, and they usually write blog posts for these news, which equals time and effort. Considering there's still the intro box to do (source: same twitter ), I can understand it in this case. Twitter is good for such quick news, IMO, and IIRC, it's also seeded on the FB page. Whoever's using THAT.

Besides, the thing is already announced, so a real update would be "It's out, buy it in PDF form now. Street date: XX-XX"

Any hints on what they have done to adepts, especially in terms of PP costs? I feel like they are still treated in an after thought kind of fashion.

That feeling is completely unfounded.
Mostly, because we have no information at all about how adepts are treated.
Could be horrible. Could be awesome. Why stress about it, if there's no information available?

Honestly with the new restrictions being put on mundanes/cyber, Adepts being left even as they are will probably be a great option just because it lets you get similar enhancements without making everyone in the world hate you.

Ah, good old overdramatization, again.
How do you extrapolate that from a snippet, Seerow?
Are you able to use the divination metamagic? Or is it just tealeaves and a vivid imagination?

So I guess AK-74 and M-16 are similar, then. They are both assault rifles, after all.

Well writing a wordpress post takes exactly as much effort as writing a twitter post. Actually, less, because you don't have to care about the absurdist character limits.

From what we know about magic and the limit system, adepts could be awesome, but far as I know, nothing concrete has been announced.

Not for me it doesn't.
If I wanted to twitter something, I'd grab my cellphone and type a half sentence. Not that I do that, since I have no real news to twitter to the world at large and people usually don't want to hear about my free time, perceived achievements or the quality of my food and bowel movements. #getoffmylawn

If I write a wordpress article, I have to fire up my browser, type full sentences, proofread it for a moment and then post it. One thing takes 15sec, the other 15min, depending on the size. And I don't use a blogging tool to write micronews. Additionally, I would personally ridicule the author of a wordpress article on the official site when it just said "SR5 out to printers".

Unfortunately, Mr. Bills also has a tendency to use the CGL account to tweet random factoids about his family instead of using it for company news. That's his prerogative, but also the reason, why I don't follow the thing.

Are you saying there was not an explicit statement that there are social penalties for having ware? Or increased restrictions on going places because you have it? Saying the whole world hates you may be an exaggeration, but it's a slight one. Right now I have a much greater fear of Magicrun 2.0 than I do of Adepts being underpowered.

I haven't been yelled at yet (although I haven't checked my inbox yet this morning), so I'll throw out there that we also took a good hard look at adepts and how they stacked against other character builds with similar concepts, and we made sure to close that gap in SR5.

So it will be even more adept run then? O.o
Because since most things cyber are available as external gear, in SR4 an adept can get most anything a samurai can have for only money and add his adept stuff on top of that, if i remember correctly.

No. I am saying, that you have no idea, how those penalties actually manifest themselves within the system. What you're spewing is not a slight exaggeration, it's pure hyperbole with no foundation on any information you have.
Let me recap for you the whole thing we know at this point: Cyberware will make people stand out, by influencing their social limit.
That's it.
It does that in the _current_ system. Excessive cyberware will give you penalties to your negotiation rolls, or a bonus to intimidation, or you will be treated biased. For all you know, the mechanical system could be just a change to this current status and no big deal.
Furthermore, you also don't know how certain implants actually influence limits and dice pools.
Another point is, that you don't even know the actual extent of how this will reduce the social limit.

Fear leads people to knee-jerk reactions, and you're no different.

Just off the top of my head a few possibilities how this could be handled:
1.) Your reduced essence makes you less human, and people recognize the cold look you give them. You don't regard them as humans, but categorize them as threat or no threat. Your limit for con and negotiation tests is lowered, but you get a bonus for intimidation.

2.) Cyberware case mods or similar 'cool' ware might give you an advantage. You look stylish, people want to be your friend, because your arm doesn't look like a killer can opener, but a fashion accessory. Raises your limit in certain conditions, no bonus on intimidation.

This is just speculation. Just as much as your fear is pure speculation.
Again: It could be horrible. Cybered faces could become completely unplayable. It could also become awesome.
Why you project your fear this way is completely not understandable for me. The most likely scenario is that the designers looked at the issue, thought about it and found ways to still make face characters with ware viable.

But without actual information, neither of us knows.

The main implant for a samurai has always been the one raising his IP count, in terms of both effectiveness and monetary and Essence costs. It's not available as gear. Neither are, say, the attribute boosters, skill boosters, skillwires, etc, etc, etc.

The game was actually called "Adeptrun" from 2011 to just last February, but the cross-marketing agreements with Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun Online required CGL to change the name back, despite the overwhelmingly positive response to the name change from playtesters and the report from CGL marketing about the advantages of having a game that appears earlier in alphabetical order than D&D, Pathfinder, and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

EDIT: =i) (apologies if I seemed at all serious)


I have another vague recollection about an official blog post about balancing adepts. If my memory serves, then you can probably read all about it there. If not, then I'm under NDA; sorry.

EDIT: Found it: http://www.shadowruntabletop.com/2013/04/s...wer-for-adepts/

Okay, so I get that you repeatingly get pissed off by the fact that people speculate on "your" work and thus resort to sarcastic comments on your own. But for heaven's sake, you're wielding a scalpel like a butcher. So please: Get back under your NDA hood and keep your mouth shut, because you're in no way better than the people you're trying to get at with your attitude.

Thank you ...

Not pissed off at all. I saw the smiley on Stahlseele's post and just riffed off of his immaculate and entertaining sense of hyperbole. Apologies if I offended; if there needs to be further discussion, I suggest a PM.

Meanwhile, I found the discussion on adepts I recalled and edited it into the post above. Here it is again, hope it helps: http://www.shadowruntabletop.com/2013/04/s...wer-for-adepts/

And just as a friendly reminder, please keep the discussion here nice and civil.

Bye
Thanee

More importantly, we have no idea what changes have been made to adepts.


Given the recent history of CGL, I have become a bit more pessimistic about them recognizing and fixing problems. But if the willingness is there, the implementation should not be much of an issue -- for example, we know that Accuracy can be modified by gear, who says the other Limits are set in stone and cannot be influenced by cyber?

No one at all.

Thank you Aaron. That was right around the quantity of data. I mainly have issue with thing like the cost of Distance strike. Without the use of optional rules, the growth curve of adepts is prone to weakness in the early "game", even if they have the potential for game breakingness in the late game. But all of this has been repeatedly hashed out by the members of this board, and further discussion is unlikely to be different, so now I shut up.

I don't really like how that works. A laser sight should give an advantage to pros and amateurs as well. But if a lasersight only makes the limit higher, just people with really big dicepools will score better hits with a lasersight. Giving a +1 dicepool modifier seems to reflect reality far better than this.

Well we did get the blog about adept focuses which while cool still does not address the core issue of rebalancing power costs so cyber adept isn't the only adept. The mechanics should try to reinforce the setting that magic types want to avoid tech as muh as possible. If they want to change that setting piece that is fine, but so far they haven't. So things like muscle toner being .2 essence and cheap to boot while adept stat boosts are 1 PP are way out of whack especially given how insanely powerful stats are compared to skills. So hopefully they did rebalance powers a bit with things like that in mind. Also some powers probably oculd cost a bit more, though that list is smaller.

Adept powers, adept advancement, and some other magical stuff as it relates to adepts, were all looked at, long and hard. Trust me.

From what I'm gathering, they're really, really trying to make as many concepts as viable as they can, rather than there being One True Thing. ''Want to be a Face? Better take Adept and start Pornomancing. Want to be an Adept? Better max magic so you can take the 1-2 point hit and get some cyber/bio while you're at it, and don't even think about Mystic Adept*." The more viable concepts the better, in my book.

Also, I think the Laser sight/Smartlink deal is trying to get out of 'throwing more and more dice modifiers onto things' by the look-and this would end up fitting pretty well especially if the skill cap is removed and Attribute/Skill numbers end up a little bigger at the end(even if it maybe sounds 'odd' on how it technically works.)




*To be fair, my Bear shifter is a Mystic Adept and he's quite fine...but we also play 750 Karma, x3 Attribute cost with slow Karma award advancement. In other words, we play a higher powered game and their fine, but jesus I could not make him work under 400 BP, and I'm a pretty awesome number cruncher...even if I don't always take the most optimal route.

That is a fairly good assessment. You can still throw dice mods onto things, but there's more of a cost or risk associated with it--no freebies.

Also, as laser sights tend to increase accuracy, having it effect the Accuracy stat is a good call.

Hm, depends. It does not make the weapon any more accurate. It makes it easier to take advantage of the accuracy already there, I'd say.

Whether the system models those situations differently, I dunno.

The way I see it, the laser sight makes a gun more accurate, but doesn't make the person wielding it any more skilled or coordinated.

So other than the label accuracy on the stat what does raising its accuracy stat do in most cases assuming a accuracy of 4 lets say. Does that seem like it actually made the device more accurate? It may end up working mechanically on a fantastic level, but that doesn't mean it makes a lick of sense in how it works.

Big fallacy: Going by the arbitrarily chosen name of the mechanic rather than the intended effect. Just going by the name, EVERYTHING would increase Accuracy.

And I still hope the base Acc is not 4, despite the preview and demos, as it would turn fights against mooks into this. Then again, with all the instand "wave my hand and pwn your gun" stuff, that might be the plan...

A couple of quick thoughts...

I'm interested in Limits but I'm down about dice pools still being huge. I think we've got way too many dice in play at the table; ten or twelve dice for a single attempt just seems excessive. Was it ever in the cards to make the pools smaller and yet mean more?

I'm also not excited for more GearRun. Buying gear was already one of the most laborious parts of the game, and now it's going to matter even more what gun we buy, what ammunition we buy, whether or not it's in clips, if it's explosive...I mean, I understand that people absolutely love picking every single loving detail about their gun, but the game should be about the Sixth World, not what cool gun you've got clipped to your belt.

On that note, thousands more gear options? Yay? Again, it just seems like it's a little excessive.

Finally, is there any chance we could get a preview link that isn't Battleshop or DriveThru, where I have to make a sign in and all that other noise?

I realize that I'm being excessively whiny here, but it definitely seems like Shadowrun and me are going in completely different directions (rules lighter, less detail, more narrative based...)

To be fair, the Human Mystic Adept I play works just fine, and we play a 750 Karma (400 BP), x5 Attribute Cost, Below average-Average Karma Reward game. It is all in your concept, really. Optimization may help, but if the concept sucks, optimization will rarely salvage it.

A gun does not become more accurate due to a laser sight being added. Mechanically, the gun has not changed at all. What happens is that the shooter potentially becomes more accurate. Laser sights are there for people, not for the gun itself.

Shadowrun has never really been any of these things, so I'm not sure why you would expect 5e to suddenly start heading that direction....

The only way I'd see to lower the number of dices rolled without:
1- shaking the "count successes" concept.
2-keep room of improvement for character

would be to roll skill vs TN depending on your attribute. That would be an complete modification of the game system.

I have never seen 10-12 Dice as excessive (I have had 3rd Edition Characters (and I am pretty sure 2nd Edition characters as well) rolling 18 Dice, before combat pools, to make attacks). Around 20 Dice is generally my upper limit on anything, with Primary Skill DP's around the 10-14 DP range (I try to start my Primary DP's from 8-12). The problem is escalation. The rules allow one to start at the top of their game, with upwards of 20+ DP (and sometimes up to even double that), if so desired, right out of the gate (assuming you enjoy hyper-specialized/optimized characters, and I know that some actualoly do); and then all I tend to hear is that there is no room for improvement in their primary skill DP's; or that the GM is out to get them when they are challenged in their Primary skill area, or that it is boring because they ROFLSTOMP the opposition all the time. It gets tiresome.

Limits already exist, if the table is willing to use them. They are often referred to as restraint. Just because you are ALLOWED to do something in character creation, it does not mean that you HAVE to do that thing.

Sorry. Yes I know, I am on the soapbox again. I apologize.

Sk8bcn -- That could start working with a variable target number like we had pre-SR4. Instead of a base TN 4, do something like (8-Attrib), with 6s always exploding. By not adding your Attribute to the pool, but it changing all of your linked TNs, my gut says it should be equally relevant. (Not suddenly more or less important) That would lead us back to all of the Dice Pool modifiers being TN modifiers.

Hmmm, I wonder how the probability curves would look.

Please no... Absolutely HATED variable TN's...

Besides, 8-Attribute (TN) woiuld really suck (yes, I know, quick and dirty estimate, though it works with the average Human with 3's in his attributes, giving a TN5), when all your Street Sam get successes on all their dice becasue they have 9's in their relevant attributes. It is a scaling nightmare....

[WARNING: Nerdy math stuff ahead]

Variable TNs were cool, at least I thought so when I started playing Shadowrun. On the surface, they're pretty intuitive: more dice is good, lower TN is good. But in practice, the actual results over time are not intuitive. The probability curves start high with low TNs and then slope downward, plateau, then slope down less, plateau, lather, rinse, repeat. It doesn't always match up with reality, which tends to have a more bell-shaped curve when events pile up over time.

The constant TN with variable numbers of dice make a probability curve that is more normal.¹ Most of the results are around the expected value, with some outliers happening every now and again, which makes the game still random, but a bit more predictable. With a TN of 5, the curve is skewed to the right, which means that when there's an exception you're more likely to have a result that's higher than the expected, which is a Good Thing for games, I think.

¹This pun goes out to my stats peeps out there.

No worries, Aaron, Nerds gotta have fun too...
I just grew to absolutely loathe variable TN's by the end of SR3.

Why should you never tell a statistician that he's Average?
Because it's mean.

*Shakes Head*
That was....... Just Horrible.

Tymaeus -- Personally, I like the Fixed TN system. There are just times when I feel like playing with the math to see how it all looks. My first few sessions of SR back in 94, I just listened as everyone else calculated my TN for me. Always rolling for 5/6 is substantially easier to explain to folks than "start at 4, -2 for smartlink, -1 for aiming, +6 for full auto, +4 for Ruthenium, -5 for Recoil Comp..."

If by Horrible you mean Awesome.