And the solution was making them impractical to play rather than adjusting their racial bonuses to not be staggeringly large?

That's... a little backwards.


Okay, a lot backwards.

Yes, the final decision was Trolls and Dwarves just get the Lifestyle increase, but the fact some of the different versions slipped through were -- trust me -- the very first errata posted.


Jason Hardy, the line developer. The rest of us schmucks are just writers, so who edits/proofs our stuff is out of our hands. I think his email is available on the official website somewhere, but off the top of my head I know he's also got an account here, as user "JM Hardy," though I can't swear how often he checks this place.

So Trolls have to pay double on Lifestyle, which for most players is absolutely an afterthought they do with stray nuyen at the end of the day. You see that as making them impractical to play. The alternative, according to you, was that we should have, instead, lowered their racial bonuses (in an edition where basic stats matter more than they have in a long time) -- which absolutely, I assure you, would have brought upon us a shitstorm not seen since War!, because everyone would be bitching about how suddenly Trolls are gimped with weak stats, all the Trolls in the universe shrank all of a sudden, and on and on and on.

It could also be that the things trolls boost are overbudgeted. While +4 str/bod is a really huge gain in those raw stats, and results in being worth a whole bunch of points, in actuality strength is basically the weakest stat in the game, so the result was that trolls were really good at being massively survivable at the cost of losing out on agility (the best physical stat), and all of the mental stats (meaning you're going to be really crappy at being a mage, to the point of "Why are you bothering?"). While in a point for point sense the troll is overbudget, in an overall game balance sense, I never saw trolls as broken, just being really strong in a niche that generally wasn't strong to begin with. Now if we had a race giving those same sorts of stat boosts to reaction and agility, we'd have a whole different story.

That's all in the context of SR4 though. In SR5 it's wholly possible that you rebalanced attributes so that Body is good for something other than raw survivability, or strength is a useful stat at all. It's possible you tuned the rules such that melee combat is a totally viable tactic, and having reduced agility isn't a hindrance in melee. In that case, great, the troll's niche has been improved, and its points are worth more!

But then you realize, the priority system places Trolls at a B rating. Let's look at it this way: You want a totally mundane character. Your priorities are Money > Attributes > Skill, with magic at the bottom regardless.

As a Troll you get:
450,000nuyen
16 attributes
22 skills

As a human you get:
450,000 nuyen
20 attributes
28/2 skills
+4 edge (+1 base human, +3 for having Human at priority D instead of E, because you're mundane)

So you trade out 4 strength, 4 body, 1 reach, 1 armor
You gain 4 attributes of your choice, 6/2 skills, and 4 edge


I see very few situations where the Human isn't winning all around. Anyway, I'm making the assumption you already know all of this, because you said the +50% gear cost was intended to be removed, however I am demonstrating that with the priority system, you bumped up the cost of Troll dramatically compared to its cost in SR4. To the point where these two options are relatively balanced, with an edge to Human if you want more versatility, or more focus on ranged combat and an edge to Troll if you want more room to specialize/grow in the close combat/tank niche.

This balanced out nicely on its own WITHOUT the need for the increased costs. This means any cost increasing should be relatively minor, and show up as primarily flavor, as opposed to being seen as something that needs to be there as a counterbalancing penalty. ie minor recurring upkeep, or small increase on weapon cost, fine. Big increase on major purchases? Not fine.

I really like this balancing tool. Very nice.

Paying double on lifestyle isn't a big deal. Reading the bit about +50% on gear and especially cyber was the dealbreaker that would essentially mean the only trolls in the sprawl would be adepts. No way in hell can you support a samurai on the kind of payouts that have been mentioned in these previews at those cost rates.

Not that there's any reason to make anything but an adept or mage anyway, at least that's been released to us yet.

Ok, after thinking back to trying to walk my group through point buy character creation, I'm realizing that the priority system probably is best for new players and a new system, but I still can't wait for the point buy alternative in Run Hard(er?).

The troll gains 4 attribute points over the human and loses 8 skill points. Edge bonus vs. Reach, Thermo, and Armour.

You could say the troll attributes and the human skills balance out, but I still think the troll's Thremographic Vision, Armour Bonus, and Reach Bonus outweighs the Edge bonus. IMO anyway.

The +50% on gear that is not happening, and that we've already clarified here in this thread?


And yet, elsewhere, we have people insisting that mages are worthless because direct combat spells do too little damage. The internet's a funny place sometimes, ain't it? There are wildly disparate opinions falling off trees, sometimes.

Damage has gone up, too, and it looks like melee damage doesn't divide Strength by 2 any longer. Since it takes an average of three dice to soak one point of damage, the net result, despite higher armor ratings, looks like it will be deadlier combat.

Yeah, apparently while I was writing up my post.



I'm witholding my verdict on that for further rules, of course, but giving adepts their own version of a power focus still isn't sitting fully comfortably with me.

He doesn't lose 8 skillpoints. He loses 6 skill points and 2 points in a skill group, which is more like 6-8 skill points. In total the troll's down around 12-14 skillpoints.

Even if you were right, Thermo is dirt cheap (or at least has been in the past, I don't assume eyewear is going to become drastically more expensive, but it might), so you have +1 armor and +1 reach vs 4 edge. Unless you're really going hardcore into a melee specialist, that 4 edge will win 9 times out of 10. I know I'd trade 1 die in close combat and 1 armor for 4 edge any day, on any character. (unfortunately 1 die in close combat and 1 armor is generally worth more like 5-6 bp than the 40 that the edge costs, so I don't get the opportunity to make that kind of trade often QQ)

It appears that Karma is used to buy contacts and you get bonus Contact Karma based on Charisma?

The combats I've run in demos and playtests have been BRUTAL.

Oop, my bad.

Don't forget, though. The Body and Strength bonuses are not only a bonus to the attribute itself, but also a bonus to the equivalent natural human limit. Imagine the karma cost (if the rules allowed) to increase an attribute max and the rating itself 4 times.

I've come pretty close, and I'm fairly conservative with what I throw my group against.

One incident (the closest to death, come to think of it) that really hurt our Troll Tank/Wheelman was just stun damage. Most of it, friendly fire.

Also... Flash-Bang Grenades and Self-Induced Poisoning. It got so that my group was ashamed to walk into Sam's Surgery And Deli any longer.

Woohoo! Fellow Canadian!

Sure, now let's also calculate the cost for all of the stats (which are more generally useful) that the troll now has a lower cap in. Also let's not forget to count how many people are going to raise either strength or body to 6, let alone 9, let alone the 15 the troll gets access to.

Like I said, trolls are fun for niche builds where you want to show off big numbers. For 4e a year or two back I made a cyber-adept troll built to punch his way through tanks with his bare hands. I'm pretty sure that was about all that character was capable of doing, but that sort of thing can be fun as a thought exercise. However, most actual characters are better served with the increased versatility that taking another race gives. Trolls are balanced by the fact that they give up a huge load of versatility, in exchange for being awesome at a role that is frankly not particularly optimal.

Anyway, I'm not sure why you're arguing this point. My whole argument is that trolls are relatively balanced as they are, as long as that 50% cost increase stays far far away from ever hitting bookshelves. Given it's already been confirmed that the intention is it does go away, why are you continuing to make the argument that the troll is somehow objectively superior?

Then get a program like Chummer that makes generating characters pretty damn simple.

Anyone notice Dwarves got a +1 boost on Body? So now they are +2 Body, -1 Reaction, +2 Strength and +1 Will.

Has anyone else noticed that there is no mention of augmented maximums?

Even if they don't explicitly include a point build system, since they have included karma rules for customization and upgrading, it should be pretty easy to construct a karmagen system immediately. Metatype costs can be estimated from the priority system by what is equivalent to the metatype. It's the type of thing they could probably have put in as a 1 page set of optional rules and may even have done so, but even if they didn't we can (as much as people on DS adhore "house ruling").

I would guess 1000 karma would probably put you in the right ball park, but we'll know for sure once they release the rest of the rules. It's a little extra work now, but I'd rather do that then wait for another source book in a year.

That would be in Run Faster http://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/143045/run-faster

Simple: Use the amount of "special attribute points" gained by each metatype to establish the difference from baseline.

What does the 46/10 mean in the Skill Priority?

I think the second number is supposed to be the number of ranks you get for skill groups.

I don't think so,
the including of Karma as Freebees is totally fucked up, because I would think that a Adept cannont buy Power Points for 2 Karma ingame, but in character creation he can. Also the Qualities are really cheap. If you can buy these for the same Karma ingame I woud buy a lot of qualities ingame. Exeptional Attr for 14Karma instead of 40; Focused Concentration 2 for 8 Karma etc. that is really cheap.

If the ingame Karma Cost and the Karma Cost at chargen is different why even call it Karma at all? The reason for Karmagen is that you pay the same at Chargen and ingame. I really don't see that happening here...

Bull, all the respect I could possibly have. But this isn't really a good metric to use here, and I hope its not too far along to tweak things a bit.

Basically, Trolls large "karma advantage" is mitigated by the fact that much of their stats have either diminished value (Str on a non-melee for example), or diminishing returns (Bod over 8ish, post 'ware etc).

Like, its just not that useful to have a starting Bod of 9 or 10. An Ork can start with 8 just as easily as a Troll, which allows an 8/6 Armor Jacket, 6/2 FFBA, a full set of 2/6 SercureTech, and a 2/1 Ballistic Mask for an encumbrance total of 15/14 and effective rating of 18/15. Taking the Troll up to a Bod of 10, and his natural armor point, means hes rolling maybe 29 dice instead of 26 dice vs gunfire.... pretty small advantage in a relative sense. Sure, after 100s of Karma it might be a nice option to have available, but for the majority of game-play time spent at the table, its a relative non-issue... the Ork probably got more mileage out of his 20 extra BP than the Troll's one more average hit on dmg resistance tests.

I am not saying the above example is practical or whatever.... only that having gained an "extra" 95 karma worth of points on Bod there really didn't change much. If a character sank that into Bod during gameplay, the rest of the team would undoubtedly get better returns elsewhere for a chunk that large. Its not really a valid way of measuring gain to simply extrapolate free karma. If anything, the number of Trolls Ive seen has diminished relative to 3rd, with Orks showing up much, much more frequently.

That said, 100% lifestyle is a seemingly large annoyance. Its reasonable to increase a cost here (Trolls will undoubtedly need more space to live, stronger furnishings, more food, higher renters insurance, etc) but double seems punative. I would suggest maybe 50% more lifestyle, as that fits more logically with what "should be" relative to reality (a teen's car insurance might double, but the cost of his car won't... same idea with trolls, not everything will increase by double, etc). If there needs to be more penalty, somewhere else might make more sense. As it is, this only really penalizes characterful trolls who may try to play against type by living the High Life... and really lifestyle is more of a character flavor thing than a crunchy bit people will min/max around. I would hate to lose a lot of character concepts to impracticality over such a large margin of difference between player races.

Finally, I realize this feedback is made about a new system which has not been revealed fully, from the standpoint of an old system. Thus, it may be completely invalid. But I am wary of metrics like "free karma" being used because they tend towards abstract measures and away from practical gameplay. At least in my humble opinion, anyhow. Thanks for taking the time, cheers.

After reading the three previews and the quickstart rules I am asking myself if this is really Shadowrun 5 or some kind of Shadowrun 3 revised.

yes

I suppose you haven't considered that the Karma costs in SR5 could be a great deal different from where they are now, such that those numbers are not, in relative terms, so low? Or that Power Points would be capped by Magic (and thus, presumably, the standard Adept wouldn't need to buy them in the first place)?

I suppose you haven't considered that the Karma costs in SR5 could be a great deal different from where they are now, such that those numbers are not, in relative terms, so low? Or that Power Points would be capped by Magic (and thus, presumably, the standard Adept wouldn't need to buy them in the first place)?

I have never been all that fond of the priority system. The BP system is pretty much the only way I've been able to realize my characters. The SR5 priority system? I love. I *like* the way it works. On the other hand, I'm kinda curious what we're missing for mystic adepts. The 2 karma cost per adept power point (max magic) doesn't seem to be all that bad. The "cost" of being a mystic adept doesn't seem all that costly when compared to the magician and the adept.

One of the reasons I never played a mystic adept in SR4 was the time (and karma) it took to get "on par" with the rest of the group. My group's games don't ever really last that long. Don't get me wrong, I like the change. I'm just worried it went too much on the opposite direction.

Concerning the increased cost for playing trolls: At least in my groups, trolls have already been the least common type of metahuman. The increased cost will make troll characters non-existent. Actually most of the trolls were being played for fluff and not for bonus attributes. We had a few troll mages and shamans. The non-point disadvantages, like being easily recognizable, being just way too big or too heavy for many accomodations and problems with being stealthy have been a large enough disincentive, at least in my eyes.

Remember - the 'ware price increase thing is a typo.

Meaning if the Errata-Priority has not changed, it will be correct in the german version but not in the american one.

I'm not arguing at all. I'm just discussing. I'm sorry if you thought I was arguing with you.

I think you meant to say "YYYEESSSS!!!"

I was hoping for a step back. I always thought they took SR4 too far away from the original intent.

What is the difference between spells known and formula known?

SYL

Forgive me if I am wrong, I am not involved with professional editing and proofreading; CGL stated that the core rulebook had already gone to the printers as week or two ago. Doesn't the hardcopy book use the same text files as the PDF? If so, I have to say I'm worried about this edition already due to the incredible number of errors in these three previews.

following the tradition of the last books, there will be errors in this book, they will be fixed in 1-2years when the second print run is published, which will introduce new errors. And when these are fixed in the 3rd print run, they forget to include the errata from the 2nd run and the original errors will reappear.

Good thing the German publisher is not that neglectful of errata and proofreading.

My thoughts exactly. But don't worry, errata is already in the pipeline to be released around Christmas. Oh wait, that was the errata for Augmentation ca. 2009...

But they did announce that "everything has a price", didn't they? Well, looks the price for playing 5th Ed is learning German

On the other side, there is something positive in SR5: the "life for a magig user / technomancer" are very good (and should have been included in SR1234.

SYL

We did, indeed, reach back through all of Shadowrun history when we worked on it, yeah. Good catch.

So would you claim that the "Schnellstartregeln - Fünfte Edition" is error free?

Even if they were, *quick* start rules and the foundational rulebook of an edition do not compare. But the recent and not-so-recent history has plenty of good comparisons...

Thanks! I knew it was something like that, but couldn't remember off the top of my head.

Really liking art in this preview. Fiction decent. I'm good with priority system, old gamers with limited time welcome a system that speed up char creation day. Was totally against moving to another edition anytime soon, maybe its the fanboy or just the GM in me but now I'm really wanting to see the whole thing and put it into practice.

and people call me mean ^^