I can and I will. Watch me.


You are welcome to do that, if you are not willing or able to understand what I am saying.
But I am not a monkey, I don't care about the poop flinging. And since you insist on doing so, I'll stop the discussion with you here, because I cannot take you seriously anymore.

Have a nice weekend.

bannockburn, I really really don't understand why textbook truths have to be written up, but since your argument is obviously missing a few, I have to do just that.

First, roleplaying is a collective pastime where every player is supposed to get their time in the limelight. Usually, the time they get is directly influenced by their characters' abilities: the more capable the character, the more often his actions are crucial to the plot, and the more often the player gets to enjoy the limelight. To take it to an extreme to illustrate: if you have two players and the first one's character is a godlike being of immense power, and the second one's a measly mortal incapable of influencing the world around him due to being quadriplegic, in any plot based on classical storytelling techniques, the first player will get all the limelight, while the second will at best be able to describe his character's internal monologue.

Second, character archetypes exist for a reason, and they're based on works of fiction/other media as well as our real world experiences. As such, a street samurai is an archetype present in the genre since its very beginning, and consistently showing up in Shadowrun's editions, as well. Thus we can presume there will be players willing to play one, and I bet there will be street sams among the pregens.

Now, let's compare two players, one playing a mage and the other a samurai, and see how capable their characters are. One can't get anywhere secure openly, because he's full of cyber and needs a weapon to be effective. The other can mask his nature, and even the rare measures capable of defeating that disguise are far from sure-fire. One can kill about two opponents per IP, if they are not too armoured, and taking out anyone capable of soaking damage is taking him a few times longer than that. The other can not only kill any two opponents in a single IP, he can turn them against their erstwhile comrades. Regardless of the defensive measures they employ, because there are no effective countermeasures against his attacks. He is also doing that while flying, invisible, protected by lifelike illusions and surrounded by summoned helpers each of which rivals a sam in stats. And he also has a whole layer of reality as his personal playground. And he doesn't get any of the social stigma, or the mental trauma, or any of the maluses, really, to boot.

Which brings us to Stahlseele's point dismissed so casually: a mage is capable of doing anything that a sam can do (except better) plus so much more. This has nothing to do with "powergaming" or "optimization" (which are for some reason used negatively, despite being just roleplaying competence) per se. This is just a question of narrative balance, and the balance of narrative focus upon different players' characters. When one of the archetypes is in all the meaningful ways better than the other, you can't dismiss that concern by just stating that they are different, since their competence areas overlap. That is why there are design choices like limits on spirit summoning and service areas or mentor spirits affecting the magician's personality, after all.

You know the one thing that really balanced out cyber vs. Awaken was Skillwires.

Yeah, you wouldn't be awesome but you could be competent in any thing and most Awaken wouldn't take the essence hit.
Mass production at it's finest.

They they went and made all skill chips 10,000 nuyen per point of rating.
Killed that dead.

First off, thank you for a well made argument. Let me address some of your points.


So according to this truth, the most powerful character is the one with the most time in the limelight. Technomancers and hackers then, because their respective rulesets take very long to resolve their specialties? Followed by mages on astral patrol?
Or rather the characters with the most IP in combat heavy adventures?
Sorry, I am not buying this argument in its entirety.
Your example is a good one, though. It is entirely possible for two players to build a highly optimized god-mage and a quadriplegic cripple. Hopefully the cripple will have some reason to sit on the table (maybe he's the hacker?), at which point it is the GM's job to ensure their time in the limelight for the cooperative storytelling that is an RPG.
If the GM allowed such characters to be created, he is responsible to make sure that their respective specialties are used. God-Mage will very probably not be the matrix-nut, so it balances out.
If the GM does not do this, he failed at his job and one of the two players will probably go home unsatisfied. Except when he is kind of a masochist that way


I don't really see your point here. Could you elaborate?
If you mean by that that the mere presence of an archetype skews the perception of power levels, I agree.
I agree that people will play a street samurai, without thinking "Will I be weak?" Because they generally do not need to compete with the player sitting next to them playing a mage. Why? Because the GM makes sure that both get to enjoy their stuff.


This example is, in part, a fallacy.
To demonstrate my point, I'll deconstruct your example, at least for a bit.
First off, there are devastating samurai builds with unarmed combat, often as a backup to the weapon-necessity. They can very well get anywhere in security in the right environment. The highly cybered street samurai wouldn't be out of place deep in the Redmond barrens, or a combat zone. The prissy mage would draw fire. The street samurai doesn't need to wear his cyberware openly and thus can also mask his nature. The mage needs to initiate, before he can do this. The mage can run into background counts which makes him very unlikely to be that combat monster you're describing, while the samurai will still have his wired reflexes and a big gun. Cover provides penalties to some spells, why is counterspelling not an effective countermeasure and how many sustaining foci is that mage carrying?
And so on.
Why am I making these things up? To show the futility of it all.
We could go round and round for hours, if we were so inclined and find arguments and counter arguments in an endless circle.
My point is, it depends on multiple factors, who is actually superior.
For one: Black Trenchcoat vs Pink Mohawk. Where is the group on that scale? For two: Situational modifiers. For three: Individual character creation and progression choices. There are also in-setting social stigmata against mages, which you conveniently ignore. People are scared of magicians, ever since the Ghost Dance. If you let that just fly by, it's your fault as the GM. There are possibly more factors which all play into that particular equation, and I don't think it's just putting in a few variables to get a universally applicable result.


Oh, it wasn't so casually dismissed. I very carefully considered it before dismissing it.
If you got the impression that I used 'optimizer' as a derogatory term, I apologize. I tried to use one devoid of judgment, since I actually don't care about how much a person optimizes. I'll call out 'cheesy' (this is of course, depending on table and preference) options, and really bad concepts likewise. Where I disagree is that optimization represents a 'roleplaying competence'. This is not true. An optimizer can be a bad roleplayer, just as a 'true roleplayer' can be one. Numbers do not have anything to do with the ability to roleplay, just the ability to 'rollplay'

To address your actual point: Yes. A mage built to do the thing a samurai can do can do the same things, and, depending on a few dice rolls, presumably even better, until he gets to an area with background count. See above.
It is entirely viable to build a mage or an adept to mimic things a street sam can do. There is still no balancing involved between the two characters, because it is the GM's job to use his skills for creating a balance of narrative focus (I like that term). In 20 years of roleplaying and 15 years of being a GM, I haven't had a problem with street samurai players complaining about magic players. Usually it was the other way round.
"He has sooo many actions!" - "Then why don't you learn improved reflexes as a spell?" - "Oh good idea."
The thusly mollified mage player did not, in the majority of cases, use his new found quickness to splat enemies all over the place and instead focused on utility. And even when he threw mana balls around like there's no tomorrow, the street samurai players seemed happy as long as they could shoot things and demolish people.
This also neatly addresses your remark about competence areas. Of course competence areas overlap. Redundancy is a good thing, and players usually realize this. You have the samurai and his main field of combat, and the mage throwing his mana ball or stun ball or whatever floats his boat and degree of smart optimization (yes, stun balls ). Is the samurai unhappy that he's got help? I think not. It is not a matter of who's best. It's a matter of "Did I get to do my thing?"


I don't really follow here. Are you saying that mentor spirit personalities are in the setting because of balance against other character classes?
You've got a good point though about the limits on summoning. An army of spirits is nothing to laugh at as it is.
However, I am not entirely sure if that limitation is part of the internal balance of the field (which I mentioned earlier) or to balance it against other character classes. A bit of both, most likely, which means that I'd need to concede that there is a ceiling to the absolute power of the mage.
Except there is none. As mages progress in karma, they linearly progress in power. Street samurai go broader with buying secondary skills, mages just learn and learn and learn.
Yes, I freely admit that this can be a problem in extremely long campaigns. From a gut feeling, I'd say 7+ years.
Why?
Because I've played in a 7 year long campaign where I played a cybered mercenary. Our mage was initiate grad 6+ and had a ton of spells. I never felt inferior to him. In fact no one felt like they played second fiddle for his spotlight hogging antics. Because we had a good GM, who instinctively created a balance of narrative focus, instead of focusing on the system-inherent lack of balance between character classes.

An illustration of balance in characters.

For my part, I think balance is important, but its implementation should be less like handicapping and more like salary caps. If that makes any sense.

Makes sense, the barely-trained beefstick who swings a club around is pretty common and easy to find, but a highly-trained and calm sniper isn't. Your average Street Decker isn't going to make as much as a Magician with Spirits out the wazoo.

Of course, no one makes as much as Kain. Or raises as much Cain, either!

It's the other way round: the one with the most capability is the one with the most time in the limelight. Yeah, rule mechanics can figure into that, but again: if one character can fight and hunt and drive vehicles, and the other can only draw pictures, for them to get equal amounts of time to shine you'll have to really stretch the suspension of disbelief.

What you're doing here is moving from discussing whether certain game design decisions are good or bad to discussing whether good game design decisions are even required. The answer seems obvious to me: yes, yes they are. If you don't need a good rulesystem, you can as well just run freeform and never bother with the books. If you choose to use a tool such as a rulesystem, it should preferably be a good one.


Yeah, my point is: there will be people who will want to play the street samurai archetype, and the rule system should give them the ability to do so enjoyably.

The example is a hyperbole, but it's firmly grounded in fact.

Unarmed or not, samurai are still full of F-grade ware which any border or police scanner picks up. Mages are not, and there are no even remotely reliable scanners other than other mages. Mages, unlike samurai, can mimic other archetypes perfectly: you can cast wearing a full combat armor just as well as if you were wearing a robe and a wide-brimmed hat.

No, he doesn't: telling if a subject is Awakened still takes an Assensing test.

That's stacking the circumstances against the mage specifically, and if your runner troupe keeps for some reason constantly operating in high background counts, that's going to be little less than specifically targeting the mage with a nerf. Which is both less than enjoyable for a player, and shows that the rulesystem is far from ideal.

Except it doesn't. When one throws his dicepools against a strong attribute supported by a common skill plus significant gear bonuses, and the other can throw his dicepools against a weak attribute of his choosing unimpeded by the gear and most often skills, it is quite obvious who is superiour in a direct confrontation. Minding that only one of them can also fly, mind probe, turn invisible, create realistic illusions, summon powerful helpers, move to astral and so on and so for, the gap is even more obvious.

Except mundanes have no way to tell who's Awakened, but they only need eyes to see who is cybered more often than not. And cybernetic mods, especially combat-capable, carry similar stigma.

Gygax has a different opinion in his book appropriately named Roleplaying Mastery, but what I meant was that using an "optimized" character is roleplaying in-character competence.

Maybe that's because the mage player in your example did not care as much to read the spells available to him?

You argue here again against any sort of relevance of the rulesystem quality. But it's not GM's job to fix a broken system, his job is acting as an arbiter in a collective storytelling experience using a working one.
And the problem with your example, as previously noted, is that a mage can do everything a sam can do (only better), plus a bunch of things extra that a sam can not do at all. Offering additional complications to the sam is hardly helping, which is what the rules changes seem to suggest (but we don't know for sure).

Precisely. And the answer is "No, you didn't". Because the mage is not only as capable as you are in combat, he also went ahead and used his spirits and mind-affecting spells to do the run without you, rendering you irrelevant. And the only reason why he might not be able to do it is the GM specifically stopping him with targeted nerfs (like background count).


I am saying that mentor spirits and the negative effects they bestow, as well as certain other downsides to being a magician seen in previous editions, were apparently a way to balance the amount of goodies and problems a character receives for being a mage as opposed to other archetypes, yes. Except as time went by those downsides have been growing less and less significant. Which has already been mentioned in the thread: currently, as a samurai increases in power, he pays for it with his humanity. When a mage does, he... well... I've got nothing.

I do agree. The fluff (used to) go on and on about how magic users see things that would make normal people go crazy.

I got no problem with high levels of magic causing social penalties outside of magical circles as well.

1) become powerful quickly

2) become very powerful slowly.

In the world of SR, (as I've always perceived it, anyway) cyberware has always been the "quick fix". It is a way for a person to get the perks real fast without having to invest much time. The mage on the other hand must spend a lot of time and energy to reach a level equal to the cybergoon and then must spend more time and energy to go beyond that. The Mage might have greater potential, but he still has to survive long enough to reach that potential.

It's the path you pick at character creation. And anyone familiar with the game will know this when they generate their character, and should choose appropriately. Everyone has that same and equal option at the beginning.

1)
Samurai: Get a new gun
Adept: WeaponFocus, here i come! Bam! Extra-Dice galore, and it hurts Spirits!
Mage: Focus, here i come! Bam! Extra-Dice galore and it helps with most of my spells or summons!
Mage: New Spell, here i come! Bam! A whole new Utility/Attack-Option just like that!
Mage: New Spirit, here i come! Bam! A magical utility Knife that i can have do stuff for me to boot!

FIFY

Well, if you want to play that game:

Samurai: New gun, BAM. Wired Reflexes, BAM. Smartlink, BAM. Muscle Aug, BAM! Bone Lacing, BAM! Orthoskin, BAM! Hey Look, I still have all these build points and karma for other good stuff.

Adept: Weaponfocus, BAM, Several Powers, BAM. Oh wait, I'm out of cash and power points. Guess I gotta wait some time and do some work before I can get some more good stuff.

Mage: Magic Focus, BAM. wow, I'm broke.
Mage: New spell, BAM. OW, that hurts to cast.
Mage: New Spirit, BAM. Ouch, that hurt to summon. what? I gotta spend karma to keep it around for more than a day? No wait, I didn't mean to mistreat you. Please! No! Don't kill me! aaahhhhhhh!

Sadly, this sounds like the old linear warrior/quadratic wizard conundrum in a slightly different medium. (Warning: TV Tropes link.)

The fix WotC went for resulted in D&D4e, which is reckoned by most* as the worst edition ever. (* Based on the outspokenness of the various gaming communities I visit and my personal circle of gamers. Not me, though. I'm one of the few people I know that like 4e. A lot.) Exalted 2e made sorcery a slightly less optimal choice. Ars Magica just told everyone to play mages, 'cause mundanes suck; which makes sense since the game was about mages. Classic WoD? Mages win in the long run, just about everyone else in the short run. NWoD? Mages again win out in the long run. GoT? No magic in the version I played. Babylon 5? Technomages were just really advanced tech while actual powerfully psychic individuals trumped just about everything on an individual level. D20 Star Wars? Jedi pretty much win, though Saga edition did tone them down. (Never played d6 SW, so I have no idea.) Marvel FASERIP? Everything ended up on the same damage scale, so it was not unlike D&D4e that way. But then, everyone's a super in some form. I'm not familiar enough with any other games/editions to make a comment.

That all said, barring spirits, I think Shadowrun (in pretty much every edition) has struck a decent balance. Drain is an effective balancing mechanic in my gaming circle. Eventually a mage will fail a drain roll at the wrong time. With spirits? I've never been a fan of ItNW or overall spirit power. I consider spirits the break in the SR magic system. But taking them out kills some of the more important flavor of the setting. (IMNSHO.)

In the end, the optimizing player has the responsibility to avoid being an attention whore and dominate the spotlight. The GM has the responsibility to put the group in situations where each character gets their own chance in the spotlight. And the other players share with the GM the responsibility to ask an AW optimizer to dial it back. It doesn't matter what you play.

-Temperance

What most people forget to take into account is background count. That gimps mages hard. Usually, it is left out because it makes Adepts from "bad choice" to "Ha-ha *points finger*". Properly applied, though, it makes casting, summoning, and drain a lot harder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbzUfV3_JIA
Kinda what the problem feels like for me.

Second time that link has come up in the last two or three pages.

That was a good laugh. Thanks for sharing that. I've played SR for more than 20 years now and played every type of character at one point in time or another. It has never felt that way for me. Maybe the issue is with the GM?

I've always looked at it in comparison to the scene from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. When the swordsman pulls out his sword and starts swing it around and then Indie shoots him. To me, that is symbolic of a mage summoning up a spell (or spirit) but before he is able to cast the spell, the wired cybergoon shoots him.

In any conflict, the mage is the weakest and yet the most dangerous.

One of the greatest downfalls about being a mage is that most groups (runners, security, military, etc) follow one rule: Kill the Mage first. If you want to be this class that is powerful in a way that most can't deal with, be prepared to be the first one shot at.

That's more a problem of playing style that anything else. I've had players (both in SR and other systems) who got their share of limelight, but with inferior skills and powers. Dividing limelight time is not part of the rules, but it is part of being a good gamemaster.

I'm going to give Critas a personal response, because his post calls out for one.

Really, let me try and put your mind at ease, at least so far as my own motivations.

For the last several months I've been on intense SR detox for a variety of reasons. Shifts in life circumstances, time constraints, and changing gaming group demographics. That and as a writer I failed to deliver on projects caused me intense like paralyzing guilt which forever will be linked to my enjoyment of the game. That and some issues in my own household is why i couldn't for example GM the con season this year. Once I was in that SR = Revulsion mode I couldn't hang out in the forums dumpshock, SR4 boards, CDT boards, you name it. So at least personally when I finally break that, admittedly self imposed, exile with the upcoming con season so I can see what's up with the new edition and you accuse me of not keeping an open mind it's really frightening. Because all those things you accuse me of? The whipping myself into a frenzy, reading things int he least charitable manner etc? I didn't do that, I went online, i read every blog post Jason or another source has posted about the upcoming issue, only then after forming an opinion that's my own about things that are important to me vis a vis SR do i come in here and post. Was my post scathing, caustic, sarcastic, sure but that's my nature

Now I know you guys are under NDA's and I can respect that, I know that as you have seen the secret project in full, especially since you have been presumably hip deep in it you are very fired up about it. But you have a concious choice, you can either evangelize and sell people on the product, or you can attack them for not being as fired up about it as you are.

The only thing I can say to you in regards to whether or not I personally am keeping an open mind? I'm back here arn't I? I'm having this conversation with you, I'm back to reading dumpshock. All those seem like suboptimal uses of my time if I weren't going to give the game at least a fair shake.

On my initial poiint of complaint I think the greatest problem I have with the material put out about SR5 is it all seems to be pointing to an overarching theme, and maybe I'm reading it incorrectly. Rather then trying to fix the problems in SR4, which warts and all is IMHO the strongest edition to date, so many of the blog posts etc seem to indicate the development has been focused on going for a certain "feel" of game. To me the great strength of SR was always that you sit any 4 people down in the SR area of a big con down and ask them what SR is to them and you'll get 4 different answers. In essence SR5 seems to be less about improving the rules and more about making the rules support one interpretation of the game. Symptoms of this methodology, whether they exist in my head alone or not A) Ware is 100% dehumanizing reflecting in a social limit on cybered characters B) Higher skill caps (a good thing IMO) coupled with accuracy limitations (chaining peoples performance to their gear). Convoluted explanations to support the return of cyberdecks etc.

Now i could be wrong, cyberware could have gotten a much needed top to bottom review and update, to the point where doing something like penalizing cybered characters socially but not having a similar penalty for magic users makes sense. The improved reflexes spell could be gone or heavily tuned and the magic rating loss rules could be back moving mages back into a position whether they are not stealing the street sams thunder as much and yet still being more versatile, but I've seen no mention of either of these priorities that would assuage my concerns. So therefore I assume if the basic cyberware functionality remains the same, which it has in most material aspects in every edition prior, then right out the gate ware is getting a whack with nerf bat, when it was already in my opinion the less versatile and arguably the less powerful option.

All of this is compounded that for me at least there's a clock running, in 17 days we have origins where I hope to actually try the game out for a spin. Unfortunately before then we are in a holding pattern so in order to not play a pregen (because by tradition SR pregens must suck) I've got to either hope the PDF is released to buy, or hope that some sort of preview of the character creation is put up. Otherwise my only option is to try and find a intro to the sixth world slot, which I would imagine are going to be just as hard to come by as the individual games. I do kind of have to wonder why CGL didn't do some sort of more open playest, at least using the CGL demo teams to both get people prepped/evangelized and iron out some of the, lets be honest with ourselves, plaguing quality control issues.

A mage starts out more powerful and with more options, and keeps getting more so, while a sam has to spend millions on minuscule improvements.


Heard of Essence? Sammies leave chargen with a bare minimum, and purchasing more Essence effective implants costs literally millions.


Background counts are a bad solution because (1) they're relatively rare (2) those are targeting one of your players specifically, and if each time he's supposed to be awesome he is instead riddled with a background count, I don't think the player will enjoy that kind of a game.


A mage casts as fast as a samurai shoots. And a mage does not have to be weak: a mage can cast in armour just as well, and he has much more options for hiding in plain sight (invisibility and flying, remember?) not to be shot at to begin with.


That is a problem facilitated or lessened by the rulesystem. Again, you can compensate for the failures of the rulesystem, but the more you have to do it, the more does the suspension of disbelief get stretched.


Oh right, poor CGL got all the wrong bad fans.
To me, it's pretty obvious that the previews are done to give the future clients an impression of the future product. If that impression, let's say, leaves a strange aftertaste, why do you think people shouldn't make up their mind? It's a showpiece, if even it can't be done right, what can?
You know, the more I read about the new edition, the less I want to play Shadowrun, and the less I want to buy new books between horrible editing, freelancers pointing fingers at the fans for not being appreciative enough, and the changes as they are described in the previews and Q&As and whatever.

As per the Fluff, a BGC of 1 or 2 is applicable for every spot in a Plex.
Nobody does this, because it nerfs all magic.
For some reason, nobody has problems with scanners being everywhere.

What's with this obsession that it is the game system's responsibility to make a player awesome? A character being awesome is the result of the choices of the player in game. A low skilled character with no cyberware or magic can be awesome. It just takes a good player to do it. Players who require the system to make their characters awesome will never have awesome characters, no matter what they do.





Millions? Seriously? SR4 cut the price of cyberware (and other gear as well) by quite a large margin over previous versions. Its now cheap and easy to be a gunning cyber machine.




If I had to make a character using RAW from scratch for a one on one fight between a mage and a cybergoon, I would pick the cybergoon every time.

Most games I've seen actually use scanners sparingly, despite the fluff that they're supposed to be everywhere.

It's just impractical to enforce in play.




-k

I'd say the scanners are dispersed just as laxly. Otherwise there'd be no choice other than playing hardcore mirror shades, and that's a fringe interest.


If you don't need a rulesystem for your games, why use it and spend time creating characters and then following rules?

Can a quadriplegic be an awesome rock climber?
The logic of the world has to be consistent, and as such the obstacles that the "weak" characters face should be exactly the ones the "strong" characters face in the similar circumstances. The GM playing up to the players can compensate for it, but the consistency of the world is reduced for it (am I repeating it for the third or the fourth time now?)

Sure, as long as you use ordinary ware, that is, in chargen. Once you hit the Essence gap and try to improve, you need alphaware and up, with the costs raised accordingly.

And you'd lose every time because a duel between a mage and a samurai even in its most primitive form is rolling the primary stat plus the primary skill against a secondary stat as opposed to rolling the primary stat and a primary skill against a secondary stat plus a secondary skill, and then against a secondary stat plus gear.

Go ask Peg. I'll be as far away from your SIN and Argent as possible.

Who?
And besides, do they do actual literal rock climbing while being actually literally quadriplegic? And are awesome at it?

Peg is/was the Quadriplegic Decker that worked with the infamous Shadowrunner named Argent. We haven't heard what happened to her after Crash 2.0, but Argent hasn't retired from Shadowrunning yet.

He's the type that'd retire five minutes after he's planted.

I did not say I didn't need a rules system, so please do not put words in my mouth. A rules system is only a tool. Like a hammer or a wrench. It is not the hammer or the wrench that makes the carpenter or the mechanic awesome. It is how he uses it. And he does not blame the hammer or the wrench if it doesn't work the way he likes it.



Reductio ad absurdum only diminishes your argument.



I'm afraid you are mistaken. The mage starts out with more tricks, but they are weak tricks compared to a starting cybergoon. A starting mage can not start with a magical attack that does more damage than the starting damage of a cybergoon's weapon, and unless he starts with a bonded magical foci, he will never have more dice to attack with at the start. If he has that foci, then he won't be able to have the resources to purchase the sustaining foci that supports armour or improved reflexes. Or even the resources to have a skill that adds to his defence from a ranged attack. The Cybergoon will win, whether it is because he is faster, he has stronger weapons, or is tougher and can take

Yet workers prefer working with well-machined tools, not half-broken ones.

Even if so, yours is a fallacy fallacy.

Trid phantasm is weak? Or invisibility? Control thoughts, maybe?

Overcast stunbolt. Slay. Spirits.

Which is easily negated by the fact that he's rolling against Willpower. The difference will not be significant anyway.

Armour? Are you even serious. Armour is -¼ attack pool die per hit on spellcasting, Combat Sense is -1 attack pool die per hit.
And even that the mage does not really need because he can still wear armour, and will likely never be attacked due to never being detected.

I know, I'm behind... but "racial equality" has been a thing of the past for over 50 years here in the States yet *somehow* people just aren't *over it" either. Inherited Memory is just as scary as anything Genetic could ever dream up, sorry to say.

Okay... you asked for it.

A (presumably mundane) Samurai can ignore a Nuissance Watcher damn near all day (and night).
A mage/adept can probably sit there and monitor their sexual arousal states far better than a samurai with assensing.

A Technomancer with Skillwires (or Biowires) and Threading was (potentially) a righteous mess waiting to happen. But it was fun watching it, especially when one of the players asked the TM just where the "Sexual Forms-5" came from, and then tried to explain how the matrix just "pulled it all together". Yup, was worth a few extra role-playing and humor points there it was....

I feel that the whole approach is backwards. The social limits are there because you actually cut parts of your soul to replace with ware, not because people flee in terror after seeing your cyberhand. It's an internal thing, it has nothing to do with public perceptions.

Erm... That's not how Biowire works - skillsofts cannot be threaded, only emulated. As such, the skillsoft has to exist and be in the technomancer's possession first.

This might be an accurate comparison if the social hinderance was based on the outsiders perception or belief, however it's quite specifically laid out to be an internal effect due to the cybered indviduals loss of humanity, an outward facing effect. Basically unlike in previous editions where a cybered character could face social stigma due to the beliefs of their target audience in this edition it's actually become all about what they themselves believe and there is only one right way to believe per the rules. I frankly don't know where it comes from but taken at face value it just seems like someone getting their belief's over the way everyone in the entire game world will play the game.

It wouldn't be about their "belief" - it's about some sort of "loss of humanity", an actual change in their state of adjustment. That is something radically different from a "belief", and has a far, far, far stronger impact upon a person.

So? Initiation and buying up Magic is quite expensive in Karma, too.


So ... Mages are overpowered, but downpowering them is unfair? Sorry, but please make up your mind whether they need to be toned down a bit or not. Also, if you read the domain rules (pp. 118 SM) unfavorably, you can make every place with dense population a domain of some kind. The guidelines at p 121 imply background count should be given as in previous editions. Someone had great sex here last night? Background count 1! High School? Background count 2! Justin Bieber concert? Background count 3! More than 3 rarely makes sense (though strictly speaking most of Central Europe should be at 4), but that would already confront magical characters with a notable decrease in power. Also, wards are a great way to prevent sustained spells from being taken everywhere and can be used in conjunction with cyberware scanners.


A streetsam can shoot while wearing heavy military armour. While he cannot fly, a ward is an effective way of preventing people walking into everywhere with invisibility. Plus, they also make life a lot more difficult for spirits.

Much like Lurker's sig says: Magic is the more powerful the less the relevant rules are understood and applied.

I suggest that you play a 200+ Karma Street Samurai who tries to upgrade all his Bioware and Cyberware into Alpha/Beta-Quality. The number in the end is noxt exactly that what you would consider "cheap". And this simply means that the mage can improve a little bit slower at the beginning, but steadily even after hundreds of Karma, while *ware-Improvements can take month of gametime (Beta- Traumadamper, normale SB3, Nanoware etc) - except your usual payment per run is a higher 5 figure or lower 6 figure.

But usually 5 Karma vor the nextd spell or 20 Karma for the next grade or foci is far easier to accumulate than the next 500k ¥

SYL

And did you have to buy Magic up from 1 in previous editions? I've heard not. And if that's the case, what might be sensible handling of Background Counts in previous editions could make basically no sense in the new edition.

Okay.


I'm sorry to hear you had a rough year.

For starters, I'd like you to note that my post wasn't specifically about you. I used the plural there for a reason. I think that whole chunks of the community are engaging in the behavior I noted, not you in particular. I think that the fact there's kind of a feeding frenzy -- which isn't exactly uncommon for the internet at all -- is so clear that me pointing it out really shouldn't be this personally upsetting to you, and I'm sorry if you feel I've singled you out.


And here you just point out that yes, you formed an opinion already.

I'm...not sure that really counts as an excuse for being scathing, caustic, and sarcastic. And, surely, if it does count as a perfectly valid excuse, couldn't I, if I really wanted to, just repost the exact same thing? I mean, the absolute worst case scenario, here, if you felt that I was being all those things in my response (that response where I said that this sort of response isn't unique to Dumpshock and these products, where I said that maybe it's just that the previews are flawed, where I said maybe it's just how new editions work, and all the rest? That response where I pointed out maybe it's not really anyone's fault at all?), can't I just trot out this same line, and be effectively immune to criticism every bit as much as you are?

I mean, c'mon, man. "Yeah, I was being snarky, but oh well! I just gotta be me!" isn't exactly the way to tone down a heated thread, is it? That's not setting the bar very high for what someone can say, and get away with saying.


I really am sorry if you think that me posting my disappointment about tailspins of negativity (perhaps caused by the internet forum medium, perhaps caused by faulty previews, perhaps caused by any number of things) was in some way an "attack." I like to think I've been a member of this community long enough, and earned enough warnings for myself in the thousands upon thousands of posts I've made, that it's pretty obvious when I'm actually attacking someone, though. This was -- honestly -- me just being sad that something seems to be going wrong with the preview-and-discussion process, instead of anything that was meant to be an attack.

And, since you mentioned NDA's, you understand just how much that honestly limits our evangelizing potential, anyways. Even assuming I'm 100% fired up about every word printed in SR5, 100% on board with every single little change that got made, 100% psyched about every change we didn't make...well...it's not like I can really stand on a milk crate and sing praises, can I? Since, y'know, I'm not allowed to tell any of that stuff. What I'm allowed to share is what's already been shared via previews and blogs, basically, and the trickle of information released in those previews and blogs is what's getting some folks all up in arms, isn't it?

So what I'm stuck doing -- what I can do -- is basically say "Hey, calm down fellas, please remember you're reading just a few bits of information, out of context, without knowing how it all really works." And when I say that, I tend to get snarked at or dismissed. Or, well, apparently sometimes people take it as a terrible personal attack, even when that's really not what I mean it to be.


I...dude, listen. In your first post in Ghost-knows how long, just before your post about how open your mind is, you said you probably weren't buying it (and then rattled off a bunch of shit you don't like). Even right there in that post where you said you were keeping an open mind, you said you probably weren't buying it. So, yeah. I'm sorry. You can say your mind is as open as you like, and maybe your mind is really open, but everything else you're saying -- and, in fact, the remainder of this very post I'm responding to! -- is you going on and on about how terrible you think it is, and how much you feel you already hate it, and all the things you insist are already wrong with it. So, y'know, that's what I'm replying to. I can't read your mind, I can only read what you're saying.

And all I'm saying here, all I said in the post that you felt was so directly aimed at you and so personal in nature and such a scathing attack, was "Holy shit, I wish people weren't taking away what I feel is all the wrong things from these previews! Man, I really hate how people are latching onto a few lines and then making big guesses, and feeding off one another's guesses, and then getting all worked up over stuff that I think, in the end, they're actually gonna like! Boy, it sucks how conversations are spiraling way out of control, and how I can't really try to stop them due to my NDA, and how everyone's making up their mind about this edition before they see all of it!" I'm not mad at, or attacking, any one person. I'm not meaning to attack anyone (and I don't think anyone else has taken my posts as attacks, for what that's worth). I'm just frustrated at the situation, and at the mob mentality that's swirling before folks even get to crack the book open. Folks. Plural. Not you, singular.

Dude, we've gamed together. You're one of a handful of Dumpshockers I've gone out of my way to shake hands with and meet in real life. I'm sorry -- sincerely -- if you feel like that was some sort of attack. I'm sorry, in fact, if you feel this response is really some terrible unwarranted attack. But you took the time to spell out your thoughts over paragraph after paragraph, and I hope you don't mind me doing the same. That said, it's now going on 6:00 am for me, and I've been up all day and night driving to and from Dallas, so hopefully my exhaustion (and my effort to reply to you immediately, since you seem to have been so bothered by what I said) didn't make me more abrupt than I should've been.

And now please tell me where you got the idea that the dehumanizing effect of Essence loss has anything to do with beliefs?

200+ Karma advances are not the problem here. Jealousy of the mage's from-the-get-go awesomeness is. Besides, mages need to upgrade some skills too, and attributes. And at least in my experience, GMs are a lot stingier with Karma than Cash. YMMV.

Less Human then a troll, a naga, or a shifter? Less human then someone with the ability to summon fireballs from their hands and fly free of gravity unaided? To summon forth and consort with spirits for the beyond? Basically my problem here is out of all the radical changes that have been laid against humanity in the 6th world, and their ability to interact with non humanity why is implants singled out for special hate? Especially 4 editions in.

Critias I'll make you a deal:

If you promise me the following things I will not only buy a book i will have you, Jason, and everyone else sign it.

1) Ware has been suitably changed/buffed to make such a social penalty appropriate. If the ware table/rules is basically the same as it was in 4th edition and wared characters are getting hit with a social debuff that's quite the deal breaker.

2) The no casting cross the astral barrier rule remain in place. Loss of this rule would quite fundamentally break the game.

If the dehumanizing effect of Essence loss is something new, what exactly was the problem with cyberzombies, again?

People are freaking out about the effect of Essence on the Social limit, and I've gotta tell you, after doing the math...it's not that big a deal. I'll try to get permission to post supporting evidence ASAP, but in the meantime, it's my opinion that a lot of people are having cows over nothing.

Yes, I just opened myself up to a lot of people's rants. I'll deal.

The used blood magic (plus background count) and the resulting "undead feeling" along with the massive cyberware involved maybe?

Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not saying that Essence loss should have no impact on social interaction. However, it should not cause modifiers "just because Essence is lowered" and certainly other dehumanzing effects should get their share, if such things really are a desired part of the world feeling ...

You have no idea how badly I want to post a video of Hermes Conrad replacing his body parts with robot parts and becoming less and less human.
But alas, I cannot find the clip on Youtube.

At least part of it can be found here

If a cyber character has managed 200+ karma, he should be for past 500,000 nuyen.