First, Patrick, good job man, good job. Thoroughly enjoyable read. Props where props are due.

Second, I am really surprised at the current priority system. I was filled with trepidation when I first heard that Priority would be used. However, fears have been attenuated.

Third, while I refuse to jump on the band wagon of whether Limits are or are not needed/wanted/etc, because they are part of the core rules, I do have issues with what I have seen with the Limit formulas.

I agree that Strength, Body, and Reaction should be a factor, but raw muscle power does not make sense to me as the major contributor to a group of skills that only some of them even factor Strength as a concept. Also, Intuition being left out of Social seems a bit odd as well. That being said, I have played with a few numbers and have reworked the limit formulas. These were re-worked with the express thought, NO attribute should be left out of the formula, and emphasis should be shifted slightly.

Physical = AGI*2+STR+BOD+REA/4
Mental = LOG*2+INT*2+WIL/4
Social = CHA*2+INT+WIL+ESS/4

Now, some reasoning behind this.

Physical: to be honest, in my experience and understanding, eye-hand/eye-foot coordination and balance is far more important overall than pure power. However, as someone else (Umidori I think) posted, if you aren't fit and reasonably in shape you cannot utilize that coordination to it's fullest extent in most circumstances.

Mental: I was pretty OK with the formula being the way it was, but it has been my personal experience (and YMMV) that Intuitive leaps are often times just as important as pure Logic, if not more so. I work in corrections, and I can tell you from personal experience, The ability to use logic creatively is what differentiates Smart from Intelligent IMHO. Will is obvious for the fact that you have to have the discipline and drive to make the most of those gifts.

Social: I have to say, I really like Essence being added into this. It really brings back a thought of the dehumanizing aspect of becoming more machine than man (Flash backs of old AD Police ). However, Intuition not being included seem...counter-intuitive? Having worked customer service for more than 2 decades I believe Intuition is definitely a factor. Willpower has already been addressed as to why.

All this being said, "How does this affect the Limits?". Some but not as much as might be thought. In this, listed below are the differences between. Now with Avg, I am assuming the standard of 3 modified by racial mods, Max assumes unaugmented attribute maximum, as how augments affect limits are as yet unclear.

OLD: Human (avg) P4/M4/S5 uncybered S4 if full cybered (0.01 Essence)
NEW: Human (avg) P4/M4/S5 uncybered S4 if full cybered

OLD: Dwarf (avg) P6/M6/S7 uncybered S5 if full cybered
NEW: Dwarf (avg) P5/M5/S6 uncybered S5 if full cybered

OLD: Elf (avg) P4/M4/S7 uncybered S5 if full cybered
NEW: Elf (avg) P5/M4/S6 uncybered S5 if full cybered

OLD: Ork (avg) P7/M4/S5 uncybered S3 if full cybered
NEW: Ork (avg) P5/M4/S4 uncybered S3 if full cybered

OLD: Troll (avg) P8/M3/S4 uncybered S2 if full cybered
NEW: Troll (avg) P6/M3/S4 uncybered S2 if full cybered

OLD: Human (max) P8/M8/S8 uncybered S7 if full cybered (0.01 Essence)
NEW: Human (max) P8/M8/S8 uncybered S7 if full cybered

OLD: Dwarf (max) P10/M9/S9 uncybered S7 if full cybered
NEW: Dwarf (max) P9/M8/S8 uncybered S7 if full cybered

OLD: Elf (max) P8/M8/S10 uncybered S8 if full cybered
NEW: Elf (max) P8/M8/S9 uncybered S8 if full cybered

OLD: Ork (max) P11/M8/S8 uncybered S6 if full cybered
NEW: Ork (max) P9/M7/S7 uncybered S6 if full cybered

OLD: Troll (max) P12/M7/S7 uncybered S5 if full cybered
NEW: Troll (max) P9/M7/S7 uncybered S5 if full cybered

At minimum stats, trolls have are superior in every way.

This does lower the caps by a point or so in some areas for the average attribute range, but also increases in others. However, the big change is really with maxed natural attributes. A troll will still have a mechanical advantage over all other races in Physical limits, but that gap isn't so drastic as it is now. Also, ALL attributes become important in the totals.

Anyway, this is all based off of current information, which is understandably vague (being Previews and all), and is conceptually more functional, IMHO.

Note that dice pool caps do nothing to limit min-maxing, they simply redirect it - and as a result of such caps (especially static ones), the notion of a horribly broken character would be one that meets or approaches its dice pool caps in a lot of areas; that would actually be a much worse problem to have.

@Cain: I'm curious, why is it a problem if players are losing successes with limits while it's not one if players are losing potential successes with dice pool caps?

Limits are far from untested. The playtest have gone on for a long time. They may be untested for you, me and a lot of other people, but saying they are untested is just plain wrong.

I'm wondering how limits from Attributes interact with limits from gear. Will every skill have an indication of what gear is used as a limit? This seems like it could be a lot of trouble if every time you roll the dice, you have to ask "Hmmm, I'm trying to sneak (Infiltrate). Do I use my Physical Limit, or does my chameleon suit provide the limit, or does..."

Only if he exceeds the other characters in their specialties. But because of the cap, the min/maxer can't exceed them, at best he can equal them.

Besides which, well rounded characters are seldom a problem.


The biggest thing is that when you're playing a bucket of dice system, getting lots of successes is part of the fun. There's nothing wrong with this playstyle, and Sr4.5 supports it, even though it tries to deny it. If you cap a pool, players won't think about dice they're not rolling. But if they roll a lot of successes, and you take them away from them, in front of their eyes, it's no fun at all.

SR4.5 (and 5e, from all we've seen) are still bucket of dice systems. The difference is that the developers don't want to admit the system is better for gonzo, over-the-top action than it is for skullduggery. Part of the fun on playing in a system like Exalted or SR5 is that you can roll a lot of exciting successes. In my opinion, Shadowrun should just admit reality, and go for action in the vein of Feng Shui or Exalted. Embrace the power, instead of trying to patch every hole.

I'll correct myself. Limits are a new mechanic, and only a few people have tried them. Other mechanics, like capping dice pools directly, have been tested in many games, by many different people. Since they're tried and true, we know they work. Limits haven't had a trial by fire yet.

I reserve judgement until I see the complete rules, but one "problem" I see with limits is, that they do prevent extraordinary good rolls, but do not prevent extraordinary bad rolls.

Bye
Thanee

Not exactly. If they're good in too many areas, the game basically starts to become about them because if they're able to equal or exceed other players in what are supposed to be those players chances in the spotlight, those players just flat out don't get their spotlight - especially since the variability the min-maxed character is going to mean he's probably got more options in the same scenario, meaning that the other character doesn't even get to equal him.

Having a character be impossibly fucking awesome in their speciality is not remotely close to being as much of a problem as having a character be awesome at their speciality and just as awesome at everyone else's specialities.

In Preview #2, they do state that Gear Limits will automatically override the Inherent Limit.

And I assume, regardless on if the Inherent Limit is higher than the Gear Limit.

Large dice pools already accomplish this innately. You can still roll extraordinarily badly, but you have incredibly diminished odds to do so.

~Umi

Right - but this starts to seem like a lot of trouble if every single piece of gear could or could not affect the limit. Infiltration limit = Physical Limit, UNLESS you're wearing camo suit / ruthenium coated armor / sneaky shoes / whatever. So now gear is even more fiddly, and you have to track what gear could be affecting what limit.

If Gear Limit overrides Physical Limit, you can get into situations where a PC with a high physical limit tries to infiltrate without the camo suit, because their physical limit is higher than the gear limit. But if Physical Limit overrides Gear Limit, you have a worse situation, where wearing the camo suit doesn't matter one way or another. I don't like either scenario.

My impression is more that requisite gear has its own limit that overrides the inherent limit. IE, weapons override physical limit for attacking with them, because they are required to do so. You can, however, sneak with or without the chameleon suit, so the suit would at most modify the inherent limit - like how a smartlink acts as a limit modifier for a firearm.

Yeah, that makes sense. If this is how it is in the rules I hope they make it clear what gear is requisite gear. Some things are common sense I guess (weapons/cyberdecks), but others might not be.

I would assume it would be those things that have some sort of a limit of their own. A weapon or cyberdeck's limit, for example, is known to come from a specific part of its stats (Accuracy or deck attributes).

Keep in mind, one stated goal is to make the character more important than the gear whenever possible. Having a chameleon suit, for instance, won't change Stompy McTrollfoot into a ninja, but if he was good at his job, it'd help. If you're a Shadowrunner with a strength of 1 who never learned how to climb a rope in gym class, getting a super-awesome pair of gloves isn't going to help when you can't actually hold your own body mass, as an example.

Focus on who they are and what they can do more than the tools in hand and you'll be in a better mindspace. Great tools don't make you better at your job, they just let you reach your potential in ways crappy ones don't.

Heck, in Generic Action Movie, you'll see time after time the hero reduced to nothing, so have to sneak around, beat up a guy, take his gun ... and then 9 times out of 10, they'll shrug, drop it someplace, and keep going without it. It's just a tool, Action Guy is the protagonist, the weapon is just a prop.

To me, that's *way* cool, but, YMMV.

Suddenly thinking of Iron Man 3 for some reason...

How where things playtested? Only starting characters? Or with high level characters (dozens and hundreds of Karma) as well?

SYL

This is the major crux of my concern. By switching gear from dice pool bonuses to limit bonuses you're pretty much running towards this outcome.

--



I think those are going to be some of the silliest first optimization characters "The naked X".

That is pretty nice system and definedly makes the priority system a whole lot more flexible, ill probably have to pitch this idea to the GM if i ever end up getting to play SR5.

Only concers about it is that it might make mundane humans a little too good as they can take E in Metatype and Magic categories, so they would get 10 points to distribute between 3 categories(for example A in Recources and B in both Stats and Skills). But i think i still like that better then the silliness of the standard priority system witch make it so that mundane humans have a minimum Edge of 5

I do like the inclusion of success limits into the core rules. They have been there before with force levels of spells and program ratings in hacking. They are now a part of the general rules, not "just" the "special" rules for magic and matrix use. It is also another incentive I can work with as a GM. I do hand out the occasional +1 to +3 Dice pool modifier for a creative idea or description and sometimes found that to be to much for the appropiate situation. Now I can give an "accuracy" bonus and/ or dice pool modifier depending on the idea or description makes something more likely to succeed or improves the chances of quality of success. For Example: Having an AR Map of the buiding with life feed updates on guard movement would improve the likelyhood of success AND the quality of success on an infiltration roll, while the map alone might only improve quality, not likelyhood. IIRC the Smartlink is now helping to improve the quality of the attack, not helping to ensure it hits.

On that note, I'm curious how things like Aiming will work.

If I stop to aim, will that still give me dice as per SR4, or will it boost my Accuracy now? How about if I set up a bipod or tripod in advance, or lay prone, or both, or in some other way brace or stabilize the weapon? Or would that still be Recoil? For that matter, how will recoil interact with Accuracy? A dice modifier, or an Accuracy modifier? Will different types of ammunition (like Deathdealer or Subsonic rounds) affect Accuracy? How about the special rules for shotgun spread and flechette ammo?

Dagnabbit, I have too many questions! What about melee weapons? I assume they have Accuracy as well, but what determines that, and can it be modified? What about cybereyes? Will having higher rating eyeware adjust things like your Perception limit, via enhanced visual resolution, et cetera? What about... and what about... and this other thing, too, and... and...

*explodes*

~Umi

Mundane humans just become AAC or ABB instead of ABC.

Both of the above, and spots in between. There was a long-running playtest kind of "campaign" where folks matured organically, there were sessions we showed up with really high amounts of nuyen and karma, there were lots of chargen-level playtests...and those are just the ones I know of firsthand by taking part in, personally.

Thanks. Can you give a Karma/¥ Number for the high level campaign / test and perhaps even describe how SR5 "felt" on a high power level?

SYL

When you take E in Metatype you end up with a human with minimum edge. The "Metatype" priority now also gives you attribute points for special attributes. So if you want to play a human with high edge you will have to take a priority higher than E for metatype (and you probably have to, given that you are a mundane human...).

-CJ

Where the world is that better than success caps? With a succes cap of, say 4. I'm having, say 10 DP. I may buy a 11th dice to increase my averages, will still be able to break the limit with edge, and so on.

Now cap DP to 10, and there's no point at all to buy another die.

Which makes it a more limitative, more frustrating (IMO) and with less option system.

Well the point is that your DP is derived from other things, just like the success cap. And so you wouldn't buy another dice, except:
1. You might want to be able to offset negative modifiers, which extra dice could do.
2. You could buy something that would increase your Dice pool cap. i.e. get a better gun, get a new piece of ware, raise an attribute, etc. And so getting that extra dice let's you use better gear and gives you the potential for future improvement. Do you feel frustrated if your GM doesn't let you use your pistol skill of 24, when you are unarmed? Maybe you do, but I suspect instead you focus on getting a pistol to use your skill.

If your hitting the physical cap, rather than just pumping your agility the way you would now, you can raise that limit by increasing your strength or body. And if the caps are above a certain point (DP 8 or 10) then they're not preventing a player from being able to succeed on any task like success caps do. You can still roll 8 successes on a dice pool of 8 and count them all.

It's just like armor works now. Do you get frustrated because your body 1 character can't get 8 armor? (please let's not have armor cheese debate that's not the point) Maybe, but it makes sense and you know what to do if you want more armor. If you want more armor you increase body to raise your limit on armor.

Finally, do you get frustrated when you reach the natural or augmented maximum on attributes now? Isn't that just a limiting system without options? I mean, if you were really free to increase dice pools as much as you wanted, why can't we just increase attributes without limit now? It's almost as if there are already dice pool caps, in the form of maximum attribute and skill ranks. They are just broken by the ability to stack dice pool modifiers indefinitely for some things and not for others. Perhaps you would prefer a cap on modifiers?

We also have the fundamental problem that, in order to keep making money by selling more splat books, there has to be a power creep throughout the edition. It doesn't really matter what sort of limit you set, because inevitably some other writer later on is going to give an option that completely ignores those limits and the balance is screwed. Nothing against the authors, it's just the business of roleplaying games.

They're actually really, really not.

They're the same type of strategy that 7th Sea originally used, in fact. Their damage codes were listed as '7k3', ie 'Roll 7 dice, keep 3'.

There are very, very few bonafide new concepts in game design, just different ways to use them.


That said, it's getting really frustrating hearing people go on about 'taking away successes'. Remember, kids, you can use Edge to surpass Limits, and part of the stated intent here was to get players to use Edge more.

Actually, limits have existed throughout SR4 with spells having successes limited by the force of the spell. They are really just expanding a concept that has been in the game to all dice rolls, not just spells.

For those that are against limits, should they be removed from spells as well? If no, why not?

I don't like the idea of Limits. Said that already, I am pretty sure. *shrug*
It punishes the good roll. And that irritates me.

I'll start with that. I've managed to have 12 dices for Pistols. Instead of my nice customized gun, I get a crappy one:

Rule Option A: Limit successes to 3 (for the sake of the exemple).
Rule Option B: Limit dice pool to 8.

You might be frustrated from rolling 12 successes but limited to 3 and you don't want to/can't spend edge.
You will be frustrated as much to roll 8 dices (like, say, the decker of the team)

I like option A better (without taking edge in account) because my character will, even with the same crappy gun, be better than the decker. Into option B, I'm just at the same level as him. I find that more frustrating.



See above why I like the success-limit better as a DP limit through gear.



I must say I would remove the limit but overprice highly above the limit attributes but it's no big deal so I don't mind much. Modifiers cap...Well I find success-limit to be a very elegant way to limit it. You may add another gun-option to max the limit from 10 to 12, but it's a minimal return in effectiveness. Technically, gear options rewarding disminish as you stack them (elegent!)

Yes if you make a mundane human you "have to" but E priority to Magic and thus lowest you can but for Metatype is now D and for humans that gives 3 special attribute points that are all spend too boost Edge for a mundane.
Thus mundane humans have minimum Edge of 5

Come on, seriously, bynarywraith is right. It never angered anybody to roll [Attribute+Skill] Keep [Attribute] (L5R-7th Sea).

And you could roll with 6 dices keep 3: 9-9-9-9-9-9 but have the same as 9-9-9-1-1-1 from another. Even if the first one looks better.

You push the "punishment" argument a bit to high (by adding a negative moral component in a rule that is only there to add new optionning).

You're making a mountain out of a molehill. You really are.

Ahhh, but the 7k3 works VERY differently than my 7 successes keep only 3 from Shadowrun.

Shadowrun Limits are a hard cap on what you just accomplished. I can ONLY keep 3 hits (and they will always JUST BE 3 hits), peroid, end of discussion (sans Edge, of course).

L5R/7th Sea: I can keep 3 DICE worth of effect, and those 3 Dice could still KILL YOU OUTRIGHT if they rolled well enough, since those dice ARE OPEN ENDED. By the same token, if I only wanted to make a point, and wanted to humiliate you by drawing blood from your cheek, I could ALSO take the 3 1's I rolled on those 3 low rolled dice and only deal minimal damage, rather than taking the 87 points of Damage from the 3 High Dice of the roll. THAT is a HUGE difference, and One I am sure that you are aware of, so please do not try to make the Limits of Shadowrun sound equivalent to teh L5R/7th Sea Dice mechanics. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME.

I'm really not. *shrug*
I can guarantee you that it will be annoying if, when I get an amazing success, I cannot use those successes.

I love how people are down to deny other not their arguments, but how they said they felt. If he said he's irritated (not angered, just irritated), he probably knows better than anyone else.

I for myself would say I was "bored" with Limits.

You did notice that damage codes went up, right? Didn't we just go over that for several pages? The number of hits allowed by the limits may in fact be perfectly deadly, and given the way balance has been described, they are quite likely to be.

Seriously, man, you're freaking out over something that is a literal non-issue, just a change of mechanic regarding what factor limits success. Previously it was dice pool, and that mechanic was gamed to absurd levels. Now, it is limit, and I'm sure we'll see builds within a few days of release being worked over by the math monkeys here to try and maximize specific limits on a starting character.

I still think that if they were going to do limits, they should have used the skill rating, rather than a mash of attributes. And when it came to gear, the limit could have been based on the lower of either the gear accuracy or the skill limit.

I'm Intrigued by it. Part me is like you TJ that is punishes a good roll, but part of me also likes the idea that the Logic 1 decker now has a drawback rules-wise.

Or it could mean you didn't hit the opponent at all, not because you didn't roll well enought but because the limit took away some of you hits.

'not liking' something is not the same as 'freaking out' or 'making a huge statement'. It's personal preference and was clearly labelled as such.

For me? I couldn't care less about limits, were I to start playing SR5 (which is not very likely due to reasons that are wholly unrelated to the product's quality or lack thereof).
I think the concept is interesting. At the moment, I can't make a judgement as to whether I like it or not, and there are probably ways to raise them if a character is particularly weak in a certain aspect.
Which gives the tinker in me something to do, hence 'interesting'.

You're making a really awkward assumption here that in no way reflects the reality of game design.

Simply put, if you could not hit the target after getting the maximum number of successes allowable under the limit, then that shot is not one that should be possible for you to make.

Being a shadowrunner, you then spend Edge to bypass your own limits and maybe do it anyway.

This is basic game mechanics working here.

Forgive me if this has been mentioned already, as I haven't read every single post in this thread.

On page 69 of the preview, it talks about how a magician can have at most Magic x 2 of spells, rituals, and alchemical preparations known. These limits seem to correspond to the Sorcery, Conjuring and Enchanting skill groups. So, could it be that spirits are now learned as rituals, much like spells, and you no longer automatically get to conjure certain kinds of spirits based on your magical tradition?

To my mind, that would be pretty cool. No more ubertraditions introduced in magical splat books, since any magician could learn to conjure any spirit.

The only alternative that I can see is that rituals are the same thing as spells, but for ritual sorcery, meaning you would have to buy the same spell twice if you want to cast it both ways. I can't really see that happening, but who knows?

Speculation is fun!

Well naturally, I was referring to in the context of just SR, NOT other existing game systems.

Even in the context of SR, Limits aren't new. See: Casters for one. Also see hackers in the common houserule where program gets replaced by logic, and program rating caps hits instead.

My irritation has absolutely nothing to do with how much damag is being inflcted (though that was an example I happened to use, to show how radically different the Limits of Shadowrun 5 are as compared to L5R's Mechanic). It has to do with scoring a large number of successes and not being able to apply them due to Limits (which I consider to be very stupid, whether my initial DP is 5 or 15). Whether it is in Combat, or Hacking or whatever, that will be very irritating to me.

Dice POOLS DO NOT LIMIT SUCCESS. You can apply all of your hits (except when actually casting spells) regardless of Pool size in SR4A. Having Limits, and actually tracking everything that goes into those limits, is not something that I want to have or do.

If you used the Optional Rules in SR4A, the Logic 1 Hacker had a drawback in comparison to the Logic 8 Hacker. Logic Scores meant something. *shrug*

Yes but when you used that optional rule you were subject to limits.

How did you deal with that, feeling as you do about limits?


Edit: What I'm trying to get at is, what is the problem specifically? Limits themselves? Attribute based limits? Limits on tests that you feel they shouldn't apply to? Because Limits themselves are generally accepted for 1/3 of the game already, and another 1/3 gets it via optional rules that a lot of people use. I can see where the developers could have thought that making it universal would be good just to make it standard across the board, rather than remembering "Do limits apply here, or not?" they make the answer "Yes, it always applies"