Another thing that concerned me: The 'extra' karma-to-nuyen conversion. 2500 nuyen per karma. Okay that's pretty standard. But it's still 2500 nuyen per karma at street level, you can just spend less karma. It's still 2500 nuyen at prime runner level, you can just spend more karma. I was really hoping to see a nod here to higher level characters need a better karma:money ratio.

I mean prime runners start with a minimum of 100k nuyen, but they can spend 25 of their 35 starting karma... to gain 50k? Speaking of, at the prime runner level, E rating resources jump up from 6k to 100k, but A rank only goes up from 450k to 500k? Seems like a pretty raw deal for anyone actually investing in their resources, which is the exact opposite of what you'd expect from prime runner rules.

Hmmmm another major tent-pole change i'm really kind of "meh" on. I can see the arguments for going back to the priority system I'm just not sure they outweigh the downsides.

The PDF you're looking at is hardly a strait page-for-page copy of the actual rulebook. I doubt it's even a strait contently copy.

I would wager that the PDF and the actual book were put together by two different sets of people and that the preview PDFs are not as rigorously checked for errors.

On the other hand, if the core book is this error prone, you can be sure that I will not be buying it.

So,

Assuming we have purchased the first printing PDf, once the Errata comes out and a newer version of the publication becomes available, will we have free access to the newer PDF with the changes?

Prime runners have to pay the same Karma for stat increases, why should the pay less for ¥?

@Draco: Editing the same input in two different ways with two different teams, once for the paper book and once for the digital release, sounds like an exceptionally stupid idea. Like doing the entire cutting and post-production of a film twice, once for cinema and once for the home release..

Honestly it could have used another step back to SR3 from that preview. The whole "types of magic" left me feeling more Munchkin with the Mystic Adept and not anything like the old Shaman Vs. Mage agonizing my players always go through when making a magical character. Plus I wish we could move away form things being given familiar names with entirely different functions (I'm looking at you Reaction, Initiative and Karma).

Okay, you lost me here. Say what?

Not quite an apt comparison, but the point I'm getting at is that I do not think that what we're looking at is "final content." There are very obvious mistakes which various people have stated as being either leftovers or "thought they fixed it" (Dwarves lacking thermographic vision for example, was mentioned as being a layout issue that had been fixed).

Point is two fold:
1) I hope that a higher level of error checking went into the actual book
2) If not, I'm not buying

Hey, that bit is making me pretty happy. All I'll have to do is take a sharpie to the technomancer section of the book to suit my own prejudices.

In THEORY yes . .

In practice the errata should be out and the pdf properly released sometime shortly after Dunklezahn takes his oath of office?

Well first, they are already paying way less for ¥ as long as they're at the low end. This means for prime runners characters who don't care about money get a whole bunch of it for free, characters who do care about it get relatively little benefit. This seems like the exact opposite of what it should be.

Second, because unless they've changed things even more drastically, nuyen expenses go up way faster than anything else. Seriously compare the cost of upgrading all of your ware to get an extra point of Essence, then add in the cost of adding an extra point worth of ware in there to fill the hole. Now convert that money into karma, and see how much more a caster can do with that.

Basically, there's 3 ways this could work out:
1) Higher grade gear should get -much- cheaper (which I personally don't like, because it puts the highest grade gear in reach of starting characters, where it should be something you progress into)
2) Improving Cyber/Bio works something closer to how Foci work. ie let the characters spend karma basically assimilating some of their cyber as a part of themselves, leaving more room to grow without needing money costs to grow as ridiculously.
3) characters should have their expected money gains grow drastically as they get better so their ware can keep up

1 has the problem of putting the highest grade of gear into the realm of starting characters, rather than something you progress into, which I don't like, and doubt most people would either. 2 is probably the most balanced option, as something along those lines can really even out the growth of magic vs mundane in a way that any purely money solution can't... but it's also the biggest departure from the fluff, and thus I see it as unlikely. So the logical solution to me is assume higher quality runners make more money. This means yes, assuming prime runners start with more, and gain more per BP. It means assuming that as runners gain more street cred, their average mission payout increases. It also means the inverse, that a street level campaign has characters earning just barely enough to scrape out a low life style until they build up their rep to start bringing in some real money.

My group is interested in going from 3rd to 5th. So this is really a holdover complaint from 4th. But for example, in 5th adding your reaction attribute and intuition would give you what was your reaction attribute in 3rd. Karma spent to build your character in 5th doesn't really resemble Karma in 4th spent to improve your character or manipulate dice rolls. I tried explaining it to my wife who is a die-hard 3rd edition player (more so than me) and I got groans and a handwave that the explanation was over.

In Practice, speaking from experience with SR4 here, errata will be out in germany in a few days and america will get it sometime next decade if at all . .

So in other words, when Big D takes his oath.
(Hint: that was 2050)

Unwillingly ironic I guess, since trolls already went from an average 2.8 meters tall in first, second and third editions, to 2.5 meters in the fourth. So actually, they already somehow shrank by thirty centimeters between 2060 and 2070, and I never saw anyone complain about it.

9 August 2057 actually.

I have... and I think that's really strange. Well, if there are indeed no augmented maximums that's some good news for cybered characters I guess. But then this will most surely lead to some totally insane builds.

-CJ

Edit: Or it's the other way around and the given maximum values are the augmented maximum values.

I knew it was 2050s, I wasn't being exact. Point was: if we get errata for 5th after that date, we'll be missing the details for some while.

Pessimistic viewpoint says it could also mean really bad news for cybered characters, as the racial maximums ARE your augmented maximum.


My guess though is that it's neither, and they've either changed augmentations to cap at a certain point no matter what (ie augmented max is always your stat + 3, rather than racial max *1.5), or Augmented Max is exactly the same and they just didn't bother to mention it there.

From experience it can take months until the German version is out. For the new BBB they are apparently aiming for a closer release date by already having some of the translation in the works, but I doubt this will happen for all future books. Pegasus' PDFs also cost more, and all equipment names are surprisingly in German while most online stuff happens in English...
So there are reasons for English PDFs (plus German hardcopy) even if language is not an issue. So far I found them to outweight having a PDF with another round of proofing, but I am not so sure how much longer.

The priority system takes freedom away from the player.

--



Thermographic is really a pittance as far as balance goes. I consider it as problem more than a boon since it can't be switched off.

If I remember correctly (which I may not be. Playing anything other than Shadowrun tends to make me stupid. lol) I don't think they had augmented maximums in SR1 or SR2. Could they be revisiting that as well?

How so? It generally serves for me as shorthand to tell the players 'no, that's retarded min-maxing, don't do that' without ever having to watch their eyes light up as they see a point buy system.

I agree. I'm not a fan of min-maxing, and I'm happy to see the priority system put a check on that. Nothing against min-maxers, I just don't like being put into a position where I'm unintentionally screwing the players due to the fact that they all min-maxed and they are short some skills.

"Retarded min-maxing" is your personal opinion. If someone wants to get the most out of the options they have, then they should be allowed to. Karmagen is the only "fair" way to create characters since it is the same system later used for character advancement and has no inherent "bad choices".

We'll have to wait and see how the point values for Priority vs. actual karma values end up calculating.



That's their problem, not your's.

It takes away freedom because it does not permit balance. You have an A/B/C/D/E priority. You can't take something that would end up similar to C/C/C/C/C, A/C/C/C/E, or B/C/C/C/D. Simple as that. It's "NO! You must choose to have your character be rocking awesome in this area and you must be mediocre in this area!"

--



I'm sorry, but you seem to have a severe misunderstanding of the term min maxing.

Min-maxing stands for minimizing flaws while maximizing potential. It does not stand for minimizing everything else at the expense of maxing one thing. If someone is coming out where they have severe handicaps then they did not min-max.

Wissen ist Macht, und gelernt ist gelernt, aber wer nicht hören will, muss fühlen, oder?

Ich tatsächlich verwendet werden, um in Schwaben zu leben (gell?), aber heute finde ich es leichter (und lustiger) auf Englisch in Google eingeben Übersetzen. =i)

Google Übersetzer ist nicht die beste und oft PDFs sind nicht mit dem Text gemacht, die leicht kopiert wird.

So ist dies offiziell die Stelle, wo der Faden kreuzt von "diskutieren SR5" bis "Lasst uns alle sprechen lernen via Google Deutsch, weil die englischen Schriftsteller schrecklich sind"?

Nur bis 15 Juni.

Well, that got a little surreal fairly quickly. At least for me....

I can't speak for anybody else, but I like the idea of starting with a character that has some room to grow. It makes the campaign a campaign instead of a series of one-shots. Heck, even the upcoming Shadowrun deck building game has character growth between games.

EDIT: It just occurred to me that having a set of specialists instead of a group of generalists makes the teamwork that much more important. I like teamwork, so that's a plus for me, too.

Growth comes in two ways vertical and horizontal. No matter how you approach character building on the scale of roleplaying vs optimization, you will have room for growth.

ATTENTION

This room is fullfilled mit special electronische equippment.
Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is
allowed for die experts only! So all the “lefthanders” stay away
and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working
intelligencies. Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked
anderswhere! Also: please keep still and only watchen astaunished
the blinkenlights

~sigh~ I guess I have to work on my humor ... again.

German "Humor" is difficult for other nationalities somehow it seems.

Seems only fair, as Many Germans know English.
I really wish my brain would let me learn German, unfortunately, My brain is defunct in that regard.

No, I'm pretty much bang on. I think you have been misinformed.

Wikipedia:

"Min-maxing is the practice of playing a role-playing game, wargame or video game with the intent of creating the "best" character by means of minimizing undesired or unimportant traits and maximizing desired ones. This is usually accomplished by improving one specific trait or ability by sacrificing ability in all other fields."

It's what happens when you have a time limit.

They likely grabbed pages from whatever draft was available at the time and did an editing run so they could put out the preview NOW, rather than waiting for the book to be finished to do it, and having the previews show up like a few days before the book release.\


-k

Wikipedia is wrong in this case. Then again, it's usually a bad idea to use any wiki as a source of proof.

Minimize downsides while maximizing upsides. Anything beyond that is entirely personal choice. This has been the use of the term min-max in RPGs for more than 20 years.

Single focus maximizing is a form of min-maxing, but it is not the only way to do it. Depending on the system, it is often possible to maximize in several directions, not just one.

I personally call single focus characters 'one trick ponies'.



-k

This. Right. Here.

I've always heard/used min-maxing as synonymous with one-shot-wonders. Maximize one skill/area to the detriment of all others. I have seen/heard it used like for 20 years as well.

Not everyone min-max's to insane builds. Priority DOES take away freedom. You can't really argue that point. *shrug*

There we go... German I can actually understand...

I have mixed feelings about the return of the priority system. It mostly feels like constipation at the moment....

Heh... I can understand that...

Ach du Lieber!

As far as the definition of Min-Maxing goes, I'm mostly with Sigma. Min-Maxing certainly includes dump stats, but the player will somehow game the system so that his BOD 1 actually does not matter. Plus a bunch of irrelevant flaws like Severe Allergy(Plutonium) or Incompetent(left-handed wanking).

It was just kinda weird for me to stumble into a German conversation more or less out of nowhere. That's all.

Is that just about everyone on the planet? A GM who'd give him points for that needs to turn in his Bastards Club card....

Any GM allowing these should have his License rescinded.

I didn't call it "irrelevant flaws" for nothing...though the second case is really just an invitation for the GM to come up with an unfortunate incident where the player's right arm gets maimed...


And are you guys sure that constipated feel is not just your age showing?