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thorya
You know, it occurs to me that I would like them better (and maybe other dumpshockers though not likely since as a group we hate everything), there would be less resistance and worries of players getting upset about "I can't use all my hits", it would make more sense in explanation wise, and probably be easier to implement mechanic wise, if the limits had just applied directly to dice pools. So you had DP caps as a mechanic. Obviously they would have to be higher than the current limits, but it would keep a handle on things while allowing a second knob for tuning things.

i.e. A top of the line fully modded sniper rifle might have an accuracy of 20, meaning you can use 20 dice if you've got them but pushing your pool to 25 doesn't help you because your gear can't match you. But if you're using the dented hold-out pistol you bought second hand it might only have an accuracy of 8. So you only roll 8 dice regardless of whether you've got a pool of 8 or 80, because no matter how well you aim the grouping on that thing is terrible.
Or, you can be the best, smartest hacker in the world, but if you're using the cheapo deck that caps out at 10 you're not hacking any government mainframes without a lot of luck. You could still potentially get 10 hits and use them all, but the system is just not fast enough to keep up with your uber fast matrix skills.

You can even keep dice pool modifiers if you want with such a system. In fact, if you were to make it so that penalties adjusted the limited dice pool size down more than the dice pool penalty you make it so that low level people still have there chance at a shot in the dark while professionals are impaired.

i.e. Maybe the penalty for concealment power at force 6 is -3 to dice pool and -6 to total dice pool penalty. So the guard with perception pool of 5 and a dice pool limit of 12 (mental limit?)- instead rolls 2 with an adjusted dice pool limit of 6. He's effected but still has a chance of success, though slim, and he doesn't have to worry about the limit since he's not near it. While the specialized spotter who usually has a perception pool of 14 with a limit of 14, is reduced to a pool of 8. He still has a good chance of success, but the penalty is harder to shake off.

Just an idea, kind of pointless though since the rules are already written. Might be something I try as a houserule when/if I run a 5e game. Might just take the current limit rules and multiply by 2 to get new limits.
Nal0n
Iirc the Limits limit max. Successes not the number of dice you can roll.
Seerow
QUOTE (Nal0n @ Jun 4 2013, 05:10 PM) *
Iirc the Limits limit max. Successes not the number of dice you can roll.


It does, Thorya is proposing an alternate system that they think may have gotten better traction.

Which honestly just sounds like a more complicated version of capping dice pools at attribute+skill * 2 (from the SR core).
Fatum
QUOTE (Nal0n @ Jun 4 2013, 08:56 PM) *
Max augmented stat (15) + max skill (12) + spec (2) + whatever mods is giving you around 10 hits on average...
Highest Agi in the table is 7. Where are you getting augmented stat max 15?
Nal0n
QUOTE (Seerow @ Jun 4 2013, 07:12 PM) *
It does, Thorya is proposing an alternate system that they think may have gotten better traction.

Which honestly just sounds like a more complicated version of capping dice pools at attribute+skill * 2 (from the SR core).


I stand corrected, sorry, I'll make sure to read the posts more careful in the future.

As for the cap you mention: attribute+skill * 2. I do not think that would work that well. For extreme specialists that can still go up to the 40s, but I fear that it might "gimp" your secondary and tertiary skills too much and thus lead to more one-trick-ponies instead of more balanced characters (which seems to be the goal of Limits).
Nal0n
QUOTE (Fatum @ Jun 4 2013, 07:17 PM) *
Highest Agi in the table is 7. Where are you getting augmented stat max 15?


Elf (AGI 7) + Surge II (Metagenetic improvement AGI) (= AGI cool.gif + Ex. Attribute (AGI) (=AGI 9) + Genetic Optimization (AGI) (=AGI 10) + Muscle Toner 4 (=AGI 10(14)) + Suprathyroid Gland (= AGI 10(15))
Mäx
QUOTE (Nal0n @ Jun 4 2013, 06:25 PM) *
Nice, never realized that, thanks. Now I just need to hope that there are some accurate enough guns out there wink.gif

Colt America(witch isn't exactly top of the line) the example character has is an accuracy 7 light pistol so the limit on shooting shouldn't be to bad, there are surely more accurate guns and i have heard that targeting helpers(like smartlink or laser sight) got turned in to accurasy boosters instead of dicepool booster, so accurasy 8 gun with smartlink would give you a limit of 10 hits same as the non drughead pornomancer
QUOTE (Nal0n @ Jun 4 2013, 06:25 PM) *
Or you take a speedball of Ex,Red Mescaline and Novacoke for CHA 13 and a limit of (13*2+4+4)/3=11,33 rounded to 12, which still is pretty good.

But now your a drug addict and also stacking of drug bonuses like that is GM call, many might not allow it.

As a side note did you look up that drug combo from the books or did you took it from one of my post containing updated pornomancer stat list outs(i have posted it a few times in various topics)[just mildy curious, nothing else]

Edit: by the way where are you getting max skill 12, in SR4 atleast max skill is 10(natural 7 with aptitude augmented to 10 with improved ability adept power)

Edit2:Just read the other samples, all raise to who ever got the "round up,unless specifically told otherwise" side note added to shadowrun concept section
Fatum
QUOTE (Nal0n @ Jun 4 2013, 09:21 PM) *
Elf (AGI 7) + Surge II (Metagenetic improvement AGI) (= AGI cool.gif + Ex. Attribute (AGI) (=AGI 9) + Genetic Optimization (AGI) (=AGI 10) + Muscle Toner 4 (=AGI 10(14)) + Suprathyroid Gland (= AGI 10(15))
You have no way to know how SURGE, Genetic Optimization or implants are going to work in this edition.
Nal0n
QUOTE (Mäx @ Jun 4 2013, 07:24 PM) *
Colt America(witch isn't exactly top of the line) the example character has is an accuracy 7 light pistol so the limit on shooting shouldn't be to bad, there are surely more accurate guns and i have heard that targeting helpers(like smartlink or laser sight) got turned in to accurasy boosters instead of dicepool booster, so accurasy 8 gun with smartlink would give you a limit of 10 hits same as the non drughead pornomancer


Sounds reasonable, I guess I have to wait for the actual guns to see how far I can take that smile.gif

QUOTE (Mäx @ Jun 4 2013, 07:24 PM) *
But now your a drug addict and also stacking of drug bonuses like that is GM call, many might not allow it.


Sure, but as this is purely "food for thought" and not for a playable character I decided to go with the "worst case".
imho it helps going to the extremes if one is looking for mechanical flaws.

QUOTE (Mäx @ Jun 4 2013, 07:24 PM) *
As a side note did you look up that drug combo from the books or did you took it from one of my post containing updated pornomancer stat list outs(i have posted it a few times in various topics)[just mildy curious, nothing else]


I played around with some pornomancer-like concepts a few years ago and read up on the different builds here and in other forums.
Just now I looked through my SR stuff and found some text files with a lot of "weird" Min/Max'ing stuff in them, incl. my pornomancer notes, one of which mentioned drugs and the above speedball.
So: Was that from your post? I can't really say tbh, might be, might not be. But I did double check the stats in the books (at least in those I have available atm) smile.gif
Cain
QUOTE (Tymeaus Jalynsfein @ Jun 4 2013, 08:51 AM) *
And yet, in SR4A, I have rolled 15 Dice on a shooting test and received 11 hits, no Edge Spent. The limit rules potentially punish a character for being exceptional or lucky.

That's exactly what I was afraid of. In my experience, players love it when they make exceptional rolls. It's part of the fun when playing a bucket-o-dice game, with SR4.5 definitely was. Taking away their exceptional success doesn't sound like fun to me at all.

I'm also worried about how fiddly this makes character creation. The new Priority system looks a lot faster, but if you're constantly rejiggering things so you can improve your Limits, that's going to make things take longer. Also, one of my beefs with SR4.5's chargen was that it was wildly inconsistent. It was way too easy to make gimped characters alongside overpowered ones. Limits look like another area where it's easy to accidentally gimp yourself. It's basically a trap for the unwary, so those who have a lot of system mastery will make characters that are even more overpowered in comparison.
StealthSigma
QUOTE (Cain @ Jun 4 2013, 02:25 PM) *
I'm also worried about how fiddly this makes character creation. The new Priority system looks a lot faster, but if you're constantly rejiggering things so you can improve your Limits, that's going to make things take longer. Also, one of my beefs with SR4.5's chargen was that it was wildly inconsistent. It was way too easy to make gimped characters alongside overpowered ones. Limits look like another area where it's easy to accidentally gimp yourself. It's basically a trap for the unwary, so those who have a lot of system mastery will make characters that are even more overpowered in comparison.


I don't think it's possible to completely remove the ability to gimp yourself. The question is how quickly/easily is it to fix when someone notices it before the game has started or even after if that sort of thing is permitted. In that case, it's much easier to do so in SR4 since it's just subtract from here, here, here, and here to add to here, here, here, and here. With priority you have to, as you said, rejigger the character and if that requires adjusting priorities.... well you might as well start from scratch.
Umidori
Regarding exceptional rolls and not being able to use all the hits you were "lucky" enough to get on a stupidly large dice pool, remember there's always the option to use Edge to exceed your limits.

~Umi
StealthSigma
I just noticed the mental skill limit formula. It's great to see that they exacerbated the problem with logic being a super stat (the other being agility but I say logic is the worse offender). If they didn't strip logic as a linked attribute for a large number of skills this is just going to make that stat even more valuable and worthwhile to raise than it was in SR4.
Umidori
Overall, I feel people are being kind of absurd. First they complain "Limits won't have an effect on most characters, and thus are useless!" and then they complain "Limits are going to severely hamper min/maxed character designs with absurd dicepools!". Guys. That's the point. Limits are supposed to do exactly that - limit the amount of massive dice pool cheese that optimizers try to pull off, while not adversely affecting normal characters.

Limits don't break the system. When people can make wildly imbalanced characters that throw 25+ dice on shooting tests or 50+ dice on social tests, the system is already broken. Limits fix that. They stop people from making glass cannons and one-trick ponies, while in no way adversely affecting well rounded characters. How in the name of Dunkelzahn is that a bad thing?

Now, I love loopholes. I love building insane concept characters, and pushing the very limits (pun intended) of the rule system of the game. I've laughed my ass off reading about pornomancer exploits and I've personally built a character I dubbed Frothy The Murder Gnome, whose sole purpose was to live in a box and be deployed as a drug fueled combat machine by his allies when the drek hit the fan. But I recognize that these are things to laugh at for their absurdity, not strive to create more of. And yet the once-joke Pornomancer is everywhere, these days. The optimized gunshooter is considered a character design standard now. Surely someone else is as troubled by this as I am?

If any game needs that sort of imbalanced nonsense trimmed, it's Shadowrun. And moreover, if any SR community needs the same, it's us at Dumpshock. We are a bunch of weasely, rules-bending, min/mixing nutjobs who argue over the most absurd nonsense imaginable just so we can cram the maximum amount of power into our insane little experiments. I've done it, I admit it, and so have most of us.

It's fun, I know. I'm guilty of three of four threads which pretty much unravel entire sections of the ruleset, because I want to do things that there just are no rules for, or that no one ever really thought about the ruling's implications hard enough to bring to their every last absurd logical conclusion. But I honestly want Limits just for the sheer thought that they're going to cut down on the high-end insanity and promote better rounded, balanced characters.

Is it a perfect system? No. Is it somewhat inelegant? Sure. But does it hurt the average player? Not at all. The only people who stand to suffer are those who are used to getting away with abusing the old system.

~Umi
KarmaInferno
QUOTE (Fatum @ Jun 4 2013, 12:31 PM) *
QUOTE (Nal0n @ Jun 4 2013, 12:21 PM) *
Elf (AGI 7) + Surge II (Metagenetic improvement AGI) (= AGI cool.gif + Ex. Attribute (AGI) (=AGI 9) + Genetic Optimization (AGI) (=AGI 10) + Muscle Toner 4 (=AGI 10(14)) + Suprathyroid Gland (= AGI 10(15))

You have no way to know how SURGE, Genetic Optimization or implants are going to work in this edition.

Additionally, the devs have said they are deliberately designing in fewer dice pool bonuses than 4E had.


-k
Cain
QUOTE (StealthSigma @ Jun 4 2013, 11:40 AM) *
I don't think it's possible to completely remove the ability to gimp yourself. The question is how quickly/easily is it to fix when someone notices it before the game has started or even after if that sort of thing is permitted. In that case, it's much easier to do so in SR4 since it's just subtract from here, here, here, and here to add to here, here, here, and here. With priority you have to, as you said, rejigger the character and if that requires adjusting priorities.... well you might as well start from scratch.

There's a difference between suboptimal and gimped. A suboptimal character is one that's playable, just not as powerful as others. A gimped character is actually crippled. In SR4.5, it was very easy to gimp yourself, by forgetting things, like contacts or gear.

In many other systems, it takes effort to gimp a character. It's fairly difficult to make a gimped character in Savage Worlds, and it's pretty close to impossible in D&D 4e. You certainly aren't likely to do it by accident. In Sr4.5, however, gimping yourself on accident was easy; SR5 actually looks to be slightly worse in this area.
Draco18s
QUOTE (Umidori @ Jun 4 2013, 02:02 PM) *
Overall, I feel people are being kind of absurd. First they complain "Limits won't have an effect on most characters, and thus are useless!" and then they complain "Limits are going to severely hamper min/maxed character designs with absurd dicepools!". Guys. That's the point. Limits are supposed to do exactly that - limit the amount of massive dice pool cheese that optimizers try to pull off, while not adversely affecting normal characters.


My thoughts exactly, which is why I've been largely absent for most of this thread. Lot of rehashing over minute details that I don't care to read about.
KarmaInferno
QUOTE (Umidori @ Jun 4 2013, 02:02 PM) *
Limits don't break the system. When people can make wildly imbalanced characters that throw 25+ dice on shooting tests or 50+ dice on social tests, the system is already broken. Limits fix that. They stop people from making glass cannons and one-trick ponies, while in no way adversely affecting well rounded characters. How in the name of Dunkelzahn is that a bad thing?

The issue isn't reining back "wildly imbalanced characters".

It just, if the problem is massive dice pools, why not just cap the dice pools?

Instead of this limit system of allowing them the dice pools and then capping the hits.

Mechanically, yes, they are similar in result. However, on a visceral, emotive level, getting a huge number of hits, and then being told that some of the don't count, can feel worse than simply not being able to get the huge number of hits.

It's a tease. A cruel tease. "Hey, look, you had an awesome roll! But it doesn't count. Throw away those extra hits."



-k
Nal0n
QUOTE (Fatum @ Jun 4 2013, 07:31 PM) *
You have no way to know how SURGE, Genetic Optimization or implants are going to work in this edition.


No, I have not, apart from being resonably sure that they WILL be there in some way.

So I assume the "worst" and hope to be positively surprised when to books arrive wink.gif
Stahlseele
QUOTE (Umidori @ Jun 4 2013, 08:44 PM) *
Regarding exceptional rolls and not being able to use all the hits you were "lucky" enough to get on a stupidly large dice pool, remember there's always the option to use Edge to exceed your limits.

~Umi

doesn't edge use have to be declared before rolling for such things?
QUOTE (KarmaInferno @ Jun 4 2013, 09:03 PM) *
You have no way to know how SURGE, Genetic Optimization or implants are going to work in this edition.

Additionally, the devs have said they are deliberately designing in fewer dice pool bonuses than 4E had.


-k

and they do it by . . doubling maximum skill . . which doesn't factor into limits at all somehow O.o
Cain
QUOTE (Umidori @ Jun 4 2013, 12:02 PM) *
Overall, I feel people are being kind of absurd. First they complain "Limits won't have an effect on most characters, and thus are useless!" and then they complain "Limits are going to severely hamper min/maxed character designs with absurd dicepools!". Guys. That's the point. Limits are supposed to do exactly that - limit the amount of massive dice pool cheese that optimizers try to pull off, while not adversely affecting normal characters.

Limits don't break the system. When people can make wildly imbalanced characters that throw 25+ dice on shooting tests or 50+ dice on social tests, the system is already broken. Limits fix that. They stop people from making glass cannons and one-trick ponies, while in no way adversely affecting well rounded characters. How in the name of Dunkelzahn is that a bad thing?

Because it might not work.

Look, if limits come into play too much, they'll be stealing successes from players. That's no fun. If they don't come into play often enough, then they're not doing anything, and players are still rolling those buckets of dice. There is a middle ground, but it's really just a thin line.

Now, huge dice pool games can be fun. It all depends on your personal preferences, so I'm not going to judge. Small pool games can be fun, too. The problem is, limits don't prevent huge dice pools: they just reward those who can min/max in multiple areas. I don't think limits are going to effectively contain huge dice pools, and I think they're actively going to hamper the average player. My opinion is that they would have been better off designing a smaller pool game, or tackling pool size directly, instead of trying to make a complex end run around the problem.
Nal0n
I still wonder, apart from convention play and such, did anyone ever have a problem with the size of dice pools?

For the groups I played in we just talked about it beforehand. We talked about what roles everyone wants to cover and which size of DPs we wanted, so we never had such problems.

Was it so different for you guys?
Umidori
QUOTE (KarmaInferno @ Jun 4 2013, 12:13 PM) *
If the problem is massive dice pools, why not just cap the dice pools?

Presumably because you can exceed your limits with Edge. If you want to succeed massively and get 15 hits, or whatever, you can. You just need to spend Edge (which is something they wanted people to do a lot more compared to 4E, and stop hoarding it).

Now, why not just make Edge allow you to exceed dice pool caps? Because... well... your dice pool shouldn't be changing that much, that often, yeah? If you want a dice pool of 25, but only 20 is allowed to count, you're just probably just going to stop building your character's pool when you hit 20 dice. At that point, spending Edge to exceed the pool limit doesn't really work, because you'd also have to spend Edge to add extra dice necessary to exceed the limit.

And even then, you still have the problem of what the roll comes up as - you might get very few hits, even with your boosted dice pool, so you just wasted Edge increasing your pool for no reason. But if you already have a large dice pool, you can spend Edge to exceed your Limit only when you actually get enough hits to need to do so.

Also, limits do something else. They cap your maximum success, but they don't take away the ancillary benefits of a larger dice pool, even if the pool is too large for the limit. Just because you can only get X amounts of max hits on a roll doesn't mean that a dice pool of 25 is no better than one of 15. Why? Because those extra dice still increase your chances of getting hits, or put another way, reduce the likelihood of you getting very few or no hits.

QUOTE (KarmaInferno @ Jun 4 2013, 12:13 PM) *
Mechanically, yes, they are similar in result. However, on a visceral, emotive level, getting a huge number of hits, and then being told that some of the don't count, can feel worse than simply not being able to get the huge number of hits.

It's a tease. A cruel tease. "Hey, look, you had an awesome roll! But it doesn't count. Throw away those extra hits."

So you're cognizant of the emotional irrationality you as a player are experiencing, and your response is to complain that the developers of the game aren't properly manipulating you to achieve the psychological effect you want them to induce? nyahnyah.gif

I mean, yeah, I'm aware of the JC Penny's effect, but at the same time, I can't help but feel depressed by the fact that people are so genuinely irrational that they care more about the feelings they get from their own flawed thinking rather the logical truth behind the results they actually get. Yeah, on one level, bad game design to have "hidden power", or to impose the "burden of knowledge", but at the same time, I have to fault all of us, as players, for not only being so easily swayed, but for wanting to be manipulated in that way.

Ahh, humanity. What idiots we all are, deep down. biggrin.gif

~Umi
binarywraith
QUOTE (Umidori @ Jun 4 2013, 02:02 PM) *
Overall, I feel people are being kind of absurd. First they complain "Limits won't have an effect on most characters, and thus are useless!" and then they complain "Limits are going to severely hamper min/maxed character designs with absurd dicepools!". Guys. That's the point. Limits are supposed to do exactly that - limit the amount of massive dice pool cheese that optimizers try to pull off, while not adversely affecting normal characters.

Limits don't break the system. When people can make wildly imbalanced characters that throw 25+ dice on shooting tests or 50+ dice on social tests, the system is already broken. Limits fix that. They stop people from making glass cannons and one-trick ponies, while in no way adversely affecting well rounded characters. How in the name of Dunkelzahn is that a bad thing?

Now, I love loopholes. I love building insane concept characters, and pushing the very limits (pun intended) of the rule system of the game. I've laughed my ass off reading about pornomancer exploits and I've personally built a character I dubbed Frothy The Murder Gnome, whose sole purpose was to live in a box and be deployed as a drug fueled combat machine by his allies when the drek hit the fan. But I recognize that these are things to laugh at for their absurdity, not strive to create more of. And yet the once-joke Pornomancer is everywhere, these days. The optimized gunshooter is considered a character design standard now. Surely someone else is as troubled by this as I am?

If any game needs that sort of imbalanced nonsense trimmed, it's Shadowrun. And moreover, if any SR community needs the same, it's us at Dumpshock. We are a bunch of weasely, rules-bending, min/mixing nutjobs who argue over the most absurd nonsense imaginable just so we can cram the maximum amount of power into our insane little experiments. I've done it, I admit it, and so have most of us.

It's fun, I know. I'm guilty of three of four threads which pretty much unravel entire sections of the ruleset, because I want to do things that there just are no rules for, or that no one ever really thought about the ruling's implications hard enough to bring to their every last absurd logical conclusion. But I honestly want Limits just for the sheer thought that they're going to cut down on the high-end insanity and promote better rounded, balanced characters.

Is it a perfect system? No. Is it somewhat inelegant? Sure. But does it hurt the average player? Not at all. The only people who stand to suffer are those who are used to getting away with abusing the old system.

~Umi


I can be a bit more blunt. Most of the whining about limits really, really comes off as munchkins preemptively whining that their favorite rules exploit got nerfed, before even seeing the full rules. It's seriously starting to read like WoW patch notes in here, and that unnerves me.
tasti man LH
Considering that the other alternatives to "fixing" SR4's bloated Dice Pool problems would have been either:

a.) rebalancing/reducing existing DP modifiers (which probably could be house-ruled away anyways, and wouldn't necessarily stop players from trying to stack a crapton of mods)

b.) going full tilt back to variable TNs (which, judging by the dev blogs, they have no intention of doing)

c.) removing situational and gear modifiers entirely, which would make the entire concepts revolving around SR gear to be pointless.
Nal0n
QUOTE (binarywraith @ Jun 4 2013, 09:26 PM) *
I can be a bit more blunt. Most of the whining about limits really, really comes off as munchkins preemptively whining that their favorite rules exploit got nerfed, before even seeing the full rules. It's seriously starting to read like WoW patch notes in here, and that unnerves me.


Could you please elaborate who, exactly, it is you target with that comment?
Umidori
QUOTE (binarywraith @ Jun 4 2013, 12:26 PM) *
I can be a bit more blunt. Most of the whining about limits really, really comes off as munchkins preemptively whining that their favorite rules exploit got nerfed, before even seeing the full rules. It's seriously starting to read like WoW patch notes in here, and that unnerves me.

Yes, I suppose you can be "a bit" more blunt. But does it come off as holier-than-thou and judgemental, and make you look like a huge jerk? A bit. wink.gif

(To be fair, I'm just as guilty of being a huge jerk, but I'd like to change that fact. Think positive!)

~Umi
Umidori
QUOTE (Nal0n @ Jun 4 2013, 12:37 PM) *
Could you please elaborate who, exactly, it is you target with that comment?

He appears to be simply expressing his personal perceptions (negative and possibly flawed as they may be). If he isn't overtly targeting anyone in particular, we really shouldn't suspect that he's doing so secretly.

~Umi
Seerow
QUOTE
Overall, I feel people are being kind of absurd. First they complain "Limits won't have an effect on most characters, and thus are useless!" and then they complain "Limits are going to severely hamper min/maxed character designs with absurd dicepools!". Guys. That's the point. Limits are supposed to do exactly that - limit the amount of massive dice pool cheese that optimizers try to pull off, while not adversely affecting normal characters.


I'm pretty sure there's some sort of fallacy here involving taking the arguments of a bunch of different people, and combining them into a single argument that makes no sense. Yes, some people think limits will be useless because they're high enough they rarely come up, and just add book keeping. Yes, there are some people who think limits are the worst thing ever and take all of the fun out of the game, because even with relatively small dice pools you can get big numbers of successes. And yes, there are also the people who feel the limits will get in the way of their min-maxing. But each of these is different groups. They all dislike the same mechanic, but have different reasons for doing so. And each is valid from their own perspective and the types of games they run/play.



For what it's worth, I don't actually mind the concept of a limit system. I do see how it could be made to work well. What I have disagreed with (and I note your lack of response to my post on the subject) is the specifics of the implementation we are seeing. Gear replacing your base limits, rather than modifying them. The base limit formulas being nonsensical from either a game design or common sense perspective.

But ignoring those things, I see potential where Limits are concerned. For example having gear raise your limit on tests, rather than providing dice pool mods. Penalties/debuffs reducing limits, rather than sacrificing dice pool. I mentioned in my other post the idea of a category of weapons made assuming you have a smaller dice pool, with low accuracy, but the abillity to reduce/negate enemy dodge, so even a low agi/skill character can contribute in mundane combat without that being their main focus. Or rather than a rating 6 medkit giving you +6 dice, it sets your limit for first aid tests. Or having a debuffing spell that reduces enemy limits, rather than their dice pool, making it easier to render an enemy helpless through these sorts of spells so they're a viable alternative to just knocking out/killing the enemy. I can see the system as a whole working, there's just too many moving parts and variables for it to judge yet. If it's fully integrated into the core of the system, and is made to take everything into account, it could work out well. So for now I am withholding judgment on whether the system as a whole is flawed. My problems are instead with specific things we do already know.
Seerow
QUOTE
I can be a bit more blunt. Most of the whining about limits really, really comes off as munchkins preemptively whining that their favorite rules exploit got nerfed, before even seeing the full rules. It's seriously starting to read like WoW patch notes in here, and that unnerves me.


I disagree, WoW patch notes tend to have a lot more lobbying and complaining about someone else. You don't see people saying "Man I can't stand gear" you get people going "OMG Mages are OP NERF NAO" or "My class sucks! Buff me moar QQ"
binarywraith
QUOTE (Seerow @ Jun 4 2013, 02:50 PM) *
I disagree, WoW patch notes tend to have a lot more lobbying and complaining about someone else. You don't see people saying "Man I can't stand gear" you get people going "OMG Mages are OP NERF NAO" or "My class sucks! Buff me moar QQ"


We (myself included) already covered that part in the previous preview threads. rotfl.gif
Umidori
QUOTE (Seerow @ Jun 4 2013, 12:48 PM) *
I'm pretty sure there's some sort of fallacy here involving taking the arguments of a bunch of different people, and combining them into a single argument that makes no sense. Yes, some people think limits will be useless because they're high enough they rarely come up, and just add book keeping. Yes, there are some people who think limits are the worst thing ever and take all of the fun out of the game, because even with relatively small dice pools you can get big numbers of successes. And yes, there are also the people who feel the limits will get in the way of their min-maxing. But each of these is different groups. They all dislike the same mechanic, but have different reasons for doing so. And each is valid from their own perspective and the types of games they run/play.

I'm not combining arguments into one, I'm merely dismissing in general the ones I've seen in one fell swoop. Assuming your representations of them are correct, all three of the groups you used as examples are being narrowminded and only looking at the issue in a single light, missing or ignoring vital information about how limits tie into the larger system as a whole. I'm arguing from the position of a broader perspective.

"Limits will just add bookkeeping." Well, no, they'll also limit high end imbalance, and make gear selection matter.
"Relatively small dice pools can get big numbers of successes." Yes, they can. But you can exceed limits with Edge on those rare occasions when they do.
"Limits get in the way of min/maxing." Yes. Yes, they do. Thank Glob.

The only group which has any sort of validity to their perspective (at least as reprsented by you) are the min/maxers, but if the cost of having a more mechanically balanced game is to discount and disvalue their perspective and the types of games they run/play, so be it. Min/maxing is inherently problematic and toxic for the larger game system and community.

~Umi
Seerow
QUOTE
"Limits will just add bookkeeping." Well, no, they'll also limit high end imbalance, and make gear selection matter.


But in those games, high end imbalance isn't occurring, because their players don't play that way. You can't discount that for them, they're being forced to track extra stuff because of what someone else is doing at their tables. Once again, this is a point of perspective. In their games these limits will show up rarely enough it's probably not worth the hassle of calculating and tracking it.

QUOTE
"Relatively small dice pools can get big numbers of successes." Yes, but you can exceed limits with Edge on those rare occasions.


And if you've only got a couple points of edge, and you used them on something else before this lucky roll? It can happen. It's great for someone maxing out edge, but remember the point of the more lenient regeneration of edge is to encourage players to spend it faster. Telling them they're supposed to horde it in case they get a great roll they were not expecting instead is a complete reversal of that design goal.




For all your talk of other people lacking perspective, you seem to show a strong inability to see things from anyone's point of view but your own.
StealthSigma
QUOTE (Umidori @ Jun 4 2013, 03:02 PM) *
Limits don't break the system. When people can make wildly imbalanced characters that throw 25+ dice on shooting tests or 50+ dice on social tests, the system is already broken. Limits fix that. They stop people from making glass cannons and one-trick ponies, while in no way adversely affecting well rounded characters. How in the name of Dunkelzahn is that a bad thing?


It doesn't address the problem. It addresses the symptoms. The problem is that the way the system was designed in SR4. Bonuses all stacked unless otherwise stated. The rules were poorly written and there was no real overarching editor to keep track. The system, as a whole, was in a state of an arms race with each additional splat book. That 25+ shooting dice pool was, unfortunately, necessary because of the existing of various bit of 'ware. Let's start out with MBW3. 3 reaction and 6 dodge. Right there, that's one piece of 'ware that reduces that 25 dice pool down to an effective 16. Add 3 reaction and 3 dodge (idioticly reasonable) and you now have just a 10 dice advantage. It's also trivial to eat away at a significant portion of that 10 remaining dice with just a higher reaction or dodge among other augments that would provide a defensive bonus. That arms race created a necessity for such characters to exist.

I doubt anyone truly plays a pornomancer, it's an optimization experiment but it does illustrate the problem of how easy and cheap it was to get and stack modifiers (emotitoy).

Both of those are examples of poor control over the content making it into splats or not putting a sane mechanism in place to avoid the need for control. Those are solutions that they could have pursued that would have fixed the problem but instead they decided to treat the symptom and put limits on successes leaving the inherent problems intact which means that those exploits are still available with an ever so slightly higher bar to jump over. Plus they won't be readily apparent due to a lack of initial splat content.

Logic was a problem. My group ran into this one very quickly. "Why are went spending build points on skills that we never use? The hacker with 6 logic an a logic augmentation, and one rank in the skill out performs us." That just exacerbates the problem with glass cannons or one trick ponies. When once character can do a wide array of skills BETTER than the other character, there's very little reason to invest heavily in them and consequently that leaves you much more to invest in your "one trick" or "glass cannon".
Draco18s
QUOTE (tasti man LH @ Jun 4 2013, 02:32 PM) *
Considering that the other alternatives to "fixing" SR4's bloated Dice Pool problems would have been either:

a.) rebalancing/reducing existing DP modifiers (which probably could be house-ruled away anyways, and wouldn't necessarily stop players from trying to stack a crapton of mods)

b.) going full tilt back to variable TNs (which, judging by the dev blogs, they have no intention of doing)

c.) removing situational and gear modifiers entirely, which would make the entire concepts revolving around SR gear to be pointless.


a) ...they did
b) no no no no, this actually is the WORST way to solve this issue, because probability curves become unpredictable
c) ...they did

CGL did (a), ©, and new rules to "cap" success.
StealthSigma
QUOTE (Seerow @ Jun 4 2013, 04:10 PM) *
And if you've only got a couple points of edge, and you used them on something else before this lucky roll? It can happen. It's great for someone maxing out edge, but remember the point of the more lenient regeneration of edge is to encourage players to spend it faster. Telling them they're supposed to horde it in case they get a great roll they were not expecting instead is a complete reversal of that design goal.


Why would you even spend the edge. It's one of those false choices of edge use (like add edge dice or reroll non-hits) where the actual use cases are going to be narrow and far apart, which makes the limits even more pointless. They're likely high enough that all the successes you need will be under that limit and given that almost anything above 4 successes had mostly indeterminent outcome (based on GM fiat) it just makes the whole thing absurd.
Umidori
QUOTE (Seerow @ Jun 4 2013, 01:10 PM) *
But in those games, high end imbalance isn't occurring, because their players don't play that way. You can't discount that for them, they're being forced to track extra stuff because of what someone else is doing at their tables. Once again, this is a point of perspective. In their games these limits will show up rarely enough it's probably not worth the hassle of calculating and tracking it.

It's a question of costs.

How much extra bookkeeping do limits impose? Not a lot. If it's too much for you, house rule it. The rules aren't meant to cater exactly to every whim and playstyle - they're supposed to cater mostly to the greatest number of whims and playstyles. Limits impose very little annoyance in exchange for actually meaningful gear selection and a massive reduction in min/maxing.

QUOTE (Seerow @ Jun 4 2013, 01:10 PM) *
And if you've only got a couple points of edge, and you used them on something else before this lucky roll? It can happen. It's great for someone maxing out edge, but remember the point of the more lenient regeneration of edge is to encourage players to spend it faster. Telling them they're supposed to horde it in case they get a great roll they were not expecting instead is a complete reversal of that design goal.

So giving people an opportunity to spend Edge is going to encourage hoarding?

The entire point of using Edge to exceed your Limits is to offer you a choice. Spend it now, and not have it later when you might want it? Or don't spend it, accept the very respectable 5 hits you're limited to rather than the not much more useful 7 hits you rolled, and keep that point of Edge at the ready? Moreover, the larger your dice pool, the more often you hit your limit, the more often you are given a choice between spending and not spending Edge.

Let me put it another way - how would taking away limits encourage people to spend their edge, rather than hoard it? How does having players choose whether to spend or keep a point of edge less often combat hoarding?

~Umi
tasti man LH
QUOTE (Draco18s @ Jun 4 2013, 01:16 PM) *
a) ...they did
b) no no no no, this actually is the WORST way to solve this issue, because probability curves become unpredictable
c) ...they did

CGL did (a), ©, and new rules to "cap" success.


No, I mean in the context of having no modifiers for anything at all.

Limits are, from what has been released so far, just putting the modifiers on something different and not on DPs. (for instance, material has already mentioned that stuff like laser sights and smartgun systems for guns just modify the Limit, not the DP)
Critias
QUOTE (StealthSigma @ Jun 4 2013, 03:14 PM) *
Those are solutions that they could have pursued that would have fixed the problem but instead they decided to treat the symptom and put limits on successes leaving the inherent problems intact which means that those exploits are still available with an ever so slightly higher bar to jump over.

I think you're missing that quite a few of the old die-pool-bloat pieces of gear will now manipulate Limit, instead of bloating the die pool (which is to say, the symptom is being treated but so is the inherent problem).

I also think it's a little early in the game for you to be quite certain just what exploits are still available and which ones aren't, don't you?
Wakshaani
QUOTE (Samoth @ Jun 1 2013, 09:57 AM) *
I'm interested in seeing how cyberlimbs work. The ganger example has a cyberarm that doesn't list any attribute mods, so will we finally logically have cyberarms that automatically match your PC's stats with the option to install upgrades above your racial max?


There'll be more on those later, I'm sure. I normally wouldn't have put a cyberlimb on a street ganger since, you know, street ganger, but it was in the art notes, with an additional notation that it didn't fit right and was, generally junky. So then I was, like, "ah HAH! Ganger lost an arm in a fight, and either A) he rips the arm off a dead guy or B) they get one from a street doc who was fired for being bad at his job. Either way, it doesn't fit right, but what'reyougonnado? Have no arm at all? Pssh."

That won me over. smile.gif
Draco18s
QUOTE (tasti man LH @ Jun 4 2013, 03:22 PM) *
No, I mean in the context of having no modifiers for anything at all.

Limits are, from what has been released so far, just putting the modifiers on something different and not on DPs. (for instance, material has already mentioned that stuff like laser sights and smartgun systems for guns just modify the Limit, not the DP)


Let's put it this way. You are playing a game. You have one stat, it's called Awesome.

No awesome <----------------------------------> Really Awesome

Gear modifies your Awesome stat in various ways, the higher your Awesome, the better you do....except that everyone agrees that once you hit a certain value of Awesome (right around 15 to 18) the game breaks down and stops being fun.

No awesome <----------------- Really Awesome -----------------> Boring

Clearly the solution is to limit Awesome, right?

Well...how about this idea, let's add another stat.

Our first stat is called Awesome and our new stat is called Cool.

No awesome <----------------------------------> Really Awesome
Not Cool <----------------------------------> Really Cool

Now we have two stats for our gear to modify! Now rather than limiting awesome to a maximum, we can shift some of our modifiers from Awesome to Cool, and without having to put hard caps on things and without removing items, we have twice as much Fun Potential before the game breaks down.

You're advocating the former, CGL went with the latter.
Nath
QUOTE (Umidori @ Jun 4 2013, 10:01 PM) *
"Limits will just add bookkeeping." Well, no, they'll also limit high end imbalance, and make gear selection matter.
It only address a part of the problem. An inflated 25 dice pool will loose the possibility to get 8 hits or more but it will still retain the possibility to get 7 hits 78% of the time. It will also still be able to withstand negative modifiers of -6 or more that are supposed to make things difficult or impossible (full auto recoil, long range or blind fire). Limits alone won't fix these issues, hence the need to also directly address them with regards to the size of dice pools.
StealthSigma
QUOTE (Critias @ Jun 4 2013, 04:23 PM) *
I think you're missing that quite a few of the old die-pool-bloat pieces of gear will now manipulate Limit, instead of bloating the die pool (which is to say, the symptom is being treated but so is the inherent problem).

I also think it's a little early in the game for you to be quite certain just what exploits are still available and which ones aren't, don't you?


No. It's not. Simply put, if conjecture like this shouldn't be foisted about then they shouldn't tease bits and pieces while admitting that SR5 is similar to SR4. This shows how some things have changed. It is perfectly reasonable to take knowledge of how things worked in SR4, modify them as knowledge permits and make judgments based off that. Further, this exactly the sort of publicity that is going to make the product less marketable. I'm not going to order a rulebook to a game when there's concepts that I already greatly dislike just to see if maybe they fix the whole of problems in a satisfying way.

If equipment were a significant portion of the problem for dice pool bloat then you run into the issue where you reduce the dice pool while raising them limit which basically means you marginalize the limit. I believe you've said yourself that limits weren't coming up often so why even have the mechanic at all? You solved the dice pool bloat problem by eliminating gear as a sorce of dice but now the gear nearly functionally useless. I'd actually argue that this doesn't fix the inherent problem. Gear dice pool bloat is still just a symptom of the lack of control over bonuses or stacking. In this case, they just foisted the problem and the symptom to a different area, now you get limit bloat from gear which will just lead to marginalizing the whole mechanic and making it a pointless waste of bookkeeping.... unless you put a limit on limits but then were getting into meme territory with that.

QUOTE (Draco18s @ Jun 4 2013, 04:30 PM) *
Now we have two stats for our gear to modify! Now rather than limiting awesome to a maximum, we can shift some of our modifiers from Awesome to Cool, and without having to put hard caps on things and without removing items, we have twice as much Fun Potential before the game breaks down.

You're advocating the former, CGL went with the latter.


Funny, D&D 3rd edition has used that solution in a very elegant manner. Bonus types.... competence, dodge, enhancement, circumstance.... with bonuses of the same type not stacking. The only difference between what WotC did and what CGL did is that WotC did it in a positive manner while CGL's implementation is negative.
KarmaInferno
QUOTE (Umidori @ Jun 4 2013, 02:25 PM) *
Presumably because you can exceed your limits with Edge. If you want to succeed massively and get 15 hits, or whatever, you can. You just need to spend Edge (which is something they wanted people to do a lot more compared to 4E, and stop hoarding it).

[...]

I can, as a sometime rules designer, appreciate the benefits of the limit system. Dice pool caps affect Potential, Hit caps affect Results. They both attempt to curb power, but in different ways.

But I wasn't talking about the mechanical aspects of one over the other.


QUOTE (Umidori @ Jun 4 2013, 02:25 PM) *
So you're cognizant of the emotional irrationality you as a player are experiencing, and your response is to complain that the developers of the game aren't properly manipulating you to achieve the psychological effect you want them to induce? nyahnyah.gif

I rarely engage rules discussions from the point of view of a player. I look at the subject as a designer more often than not.

QUOTE (Umidori @ Jun 4 2013, 02:25 PM) *
I mean, yeah, I'm aware of the JC Penny's effect, but at the same time, I can't help but feel depressed by the fact that people are so genuinely irrational that they care more about the feelings they get from their own flawed thinking rather the logical truth behind the results they actually get. Yeah, on one level, bad game design to have "hidden power", or to impose the "burden of knowledge", but at the same time, I have to fault all of us, as players, for not only being so easily swayed, but for wanting to be manipulated in that way.

Ahh, humanity. What idiots we all are, deep down. biggrin.gif

~Umi

This is exactly what I was getting at.

Customer psychology is important. It's not something a developer can just dismiss. It's what sells a game, ultimately. People buy on emotion and irrational thought more often than most will care to admit.

I'm in sales. I manipulate customers all day. I can say the same thing twelve different ways, but there are always a couple that work better and several that will turn the customer right off of buying.

As I said, I appreciate the mechanical advantages of Limits, but I can't help but think that players will feel they are punitive. Reality and Perception are two different things.



-k
tasti man LH
QUOTE (Draco18s @ Jun 4 2013, 01:30 PM) *
~snip~


...I'm guessing I wasn't clear in my other post then.

What I was getting at was the other directions they could have gone in addressing the "bloated dice pool" problem, and how the three that I mentioned (that I quickly thought off the top of my head while eating lunch) aren't really that good of an alternative.

So, in summary, it was just me thinking allowed about "Well, what other ways could they have gone to solve this problem other than Limits" and if they could/could not work.

I'm not advocating for them to ACTUALLY do my suggested alternatives. That would be silly. wink.gif



For what Limits are, I'm currently in the "wait-and-see" crowd. On one hand, I get the primary goal of what CGL is trying to achieve, and I overall am glad that they are addressing the issue. On the other hand, I get all the general concerns and complaints over how Limits work.

I've just decided to not make any final judgements until the damn book is sitting in my hands. grinbig.gif
Umidori
QUOTE (Nath @ Jun 4 2013, 01:33 PM) *
It only address a part of the problem. An inflated 25 dice pool will loose the possibility to get 8 hits or more but it will still retain the possibility to get 7 hits 78% of the time. It will also still be able to withstand negative modifiers of -6 or more that are supposed to make things difficult or impossible (full auto recoil, long range or blind fire). Limits alone won't fix these issues, hence the need to also directly address them with regards to the size of dice pools.

So you're saying that Limits don't go far enough? Intersting how broad the opinion sprectrum is on this topic.

I personally don't like the idea of hard capping dice pools. If someone wants to keep bloating their dice pool, that's fine. They'll have a higher chance of succeeding, and they'll be less impacted by negative modifiers, and they'll almost never glitch. But they'll also be paying a high cost to do so, with somewhat diminishing returns. Getting those 25 dice in a single pool is going to be less efficient than adding a handful of dice to several different pools. You should get better bang for your buck by being well rounded, but at the same time we should also allow people to specialize if they really want to - they just need to have reasonable costs and lose efficiency to do so.

Now, soft-capped dice pools could potentially work, but that's kind of what limits do anyway, so I dunno. And we've been told that dice pools are going to be smaller anyways thanks to changes in modifiers, so hey, it may be a moot point.

~Umi
Draco18s
QUOTE (StealthSigma @ Jun 4 2013, 03:38 PM) *
Funny, D&D 3rd edition has used that solution in a very elegant manner. Bonus types.... competence, dodge, enhancement, circumstance.... with bonuses of the same type not stacking. The only difference between what WotC did and what CGL did is that WotC did it in a positive manner while CGL's implementation is negative.


Except that WotC kept coming up with new bonus types. sarcastic.gif

Alchemical
Enhancement
Size
Inherent
Resistance
Natural
Armor
Shield
Deflection
Dodge
Racial
Moral
Competence
Insight
Luck
Divine
Perfection
Circumstance
Profane
Sacred
Exalted
Dodge
Epic
Black Swan
QUOTE (Draco18s @ Jun 4 2013, 08:16 PM) *
a) ...they did
b) no no no no, this actually is the WORST way to solve this issue, because probability curves become unpredictable
c) ...they did

CGL did (a), ©, and new rules to "cap" success.


b) I am a fan of the "it's not impossible, just highly improbable" mentality as a GM. No matter how crazy the chance is, I am still happy to allow the possibility. Variable TNs allowed for this. SR5 limits will squish this.

What I would have liked to see was the Edge rule of 6 on all rolls, without using edge; and made the thresholds the variable modifiers, as opposed to dice pool mods or limit mods.

I am also a fan of skills being more important than attributes; however, since they are using limits based on attributes, I think my hopes on this one have been squisheed!
Wakshaani
QUOTE (tasti man LH @ Jun 1 2013, 01:49 AM) *
And now, some of my own little quibblings, this time mostly around the Sprawl Ganger pre-made sheet.

-Dude's got an awful lot of skills at rank 1...which seems kind of odd for a ganger. I get that the aim might have been to make this guy have as many skills as possible, and I personally do not consider myself to be of the mindset of the optimization guys that frequent DS, but why in the hell would a ganger do with Computer, Throwing Weapons, and Performance? I would rather stick more points into upping Pistols or Automatics (nvm that his highest skill is Intimidation).


Bull mentioned the 'slush fund' that pops up at the end of chargen, and while I can't give away details (NDA and such), those little 1 point skills were *not* taken instead of giving him a push in, say, Pistols by 1. They were cheap lil' add-ons after the fact to give him color. A ganger should be able to work his commlink (even if it is a piece of drek), and he has a guitar somewhere that he plinks away duing his downtime, helps with the chicks, right? Throwing weapons because there's always a good time to chuck something at a guy's head ... bricks, empy bottles, whatever. Plus chucking knives is just cool. smile.gif

As for Intimidation? Yup. Talk trash, get people to back down, establish yourself in the pecking order, give people to give you stuff without having to kick their teeth in ... it's really useful, and used far more often than, say, plinking away with an AK-97. The average bouncer doesn't fight all that much... they just come over, loom, ask, "Is there a problem?" and the situation resolves itself. Same thing here. Looking tough can keep you out of fights but keep legitimacy. See also: Police saying "Move along" instead of whacking them with sticks. smile.gif

QUOTE
-And speaking of which, Performance...I assume this is the new SR5 version of the Artisan skill? Or did Artisan get broken up into several other skills? If it's the latter, then that would make a whole lot of sense, since I did feel like just Artisan was WAY to broad and abstract as it was in SR4, and the potential silliness that someone with Artisan could play the piano, cook gourmet French meals, paint the next great Impressionist art piece, AND sing like a choir of angels.


Personally, I'd love to see it broken into three different skills. Mind you, I also want Etiquette broken into, like, ten, so. biggrin.gif


QUOTE
-Wee error regarding the Physical CM for our ganger, as well as for one of the qualities listed: it lists his CM as being 13, but if we take the formula for deriving it (I'm going to go ahead and assume that it'll be the same for SR5) of (Body/2) + 8 (round up), which in this case is (7/2) + 8, that would mean it would come out as 12, not 13.

I THINK what was supposed to happen is that he was supposed to have the Tough as Nails 1 quality, which would have given him that extra +1 box to his CM...but it's not there. Or, more likely, someone got it mixed up with the Guts quality. And all that does (in SR4) is give the character a bonus to resist Intimidation or Fear-based attacks. So unless if Tough as Nails is now called Guts.....don't think so.


Not an error. People are guessing why, and some are much closer than others.

QUOTE
-The damage code for the Sprawl Ganger's weapons are...well, scaring me. A lot:

I mean...by the Nine, that's a little bit much!

An SR5 Warhawk can do a base amount of 9P? And with AP -2? That's more than what a base SR4 PJSS Elephant Rifle could do, outside of how the Rifle can hit from farther away than the Warhawk without incurring Range Modifiers!

I'm going to assume this is what the very first announcement meant when they promised for SR5 to be "more lethal"...and if it meant upping the DV of each weapon, that is...not really the way to go. Now it could just be that the Damage Resistance rules might work differently in SR5 to address this, but even then, with most characters averaging at about 10-11P CM, now the likeliehood of a character dying (NPCs, and PCs) in one shot just went up a lot. And honestly? At least at my table, SR4 was still lethal as hell as it was. I would see it happen a lot where characters would die in 1-2 shots. I constantly stressed to my players that in SR, you REALLY really didn't want to get hit with bullets, since there's a good chance you could die in just one attack. But, there was still that leeway where characters can make it out with a bunch of dings and scratches (and damaged 'ware), but still be alive. Here though.....well, it's gonna kind of suck if it's going to be even more likely for starting characters to die on their first run.

-And then there's the fact that: this is the Damage Code for JUST Pistols! If the DV for Pistols are going to be this devastating, what the hell are assault rifles, shotguns, and sniper rifles going to have?


Damage went up across the board, as did armor, but since +1 DV is about the same as +3 armor, well, damage got an overall boost. Combat is really dangerous right now. Once again, avoiding it is good for you.

QUOTE
-Last issue that I'll bring up, and this is actually something that has bugged me with all three previews, is that there seems to be a disconnect with the artwork and the text of the previews.

Now, don't get me wrong, the actual artwork is fine and I really really dig the style of it and hope to see the rest of it when I have the book in my hands...but some of it just doesn't really match with the text that's right next to it.


Also, the gun that the Sprawl Ganger is carrying...that is not any of the guns that his sheet has in his gear section. That gun is the freakin' Barrens Special from Gun Heaven 2.

I'm starting to get a bit worried if the artists making these pieces had no idea what section of the book they were making them for, or had no context to the text that the artwork was supposed to be accompanied with.


That one's on me. The archetypes I put together almost all had art ready when I got started (And those that didn't had art notes) ... I know I had a reason for going outside the lines on this one, but I don't recall exactly why now. (Tho he doesn't have "molotov cocktail" on the list either, so. smile.gif ) Hrm. I'll have to get back with you on that one. Another archtype was listed as having cybernetic eyes, but the art showed goggles, so I changed it up and went with goggles instead.

Hrm.

At any rate, there was a lot of "What makes sense?" on this one. I wanted gear that was commonplace (Like the Colt) or cheap (The streetline special) and that would be fairly easy to carry around or ditch when needed, the axe being a noted exception for when things got serious. He had enough cash to get, say, an Ares Predator or avane an Ares Alpha, but my mental image of gangers looked at that idea and went, "Nope!" and moved on.

STreet Gangers are big on 'rumbles', brawling with whatever's at hand, rather than breaking out guns. When gunshots ring out in the 'plex (And you aren't in the Barrens), Lone Star rolls in quickly, and nobody wants that. Beating a guy goofy with your bare hands, or knocking him upside the head with a baseball bat or a piece of rebar, gets the message accross and doesn't fetch the cops.

(As an aside, a few years back, street gangs in ... I want to say Portland? ... started a new thing. They found that gangers were always showing off bullet wounds and scars as trophies and getting 'cool points' for it, rather than intimidating people to not mess around. So, new plan ... They'd round up opposing gangers, yank down their pants, and shoot 'em square in the buttcheeks. Just as painful, but not something you could ever show off for being tough. Surprised it hasn't caught on more widespread, truth be told!)
Umidori
@Draco18s

Wow. That's... quite a list.

I imagine that would impose some actual bookkeeping. I can just picture trying to remember the difference between Moral, Divine, Sacred, and Exalted types.

~Umi
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