There are SOME things I accept, even if I do not like them. I accepted Limits for Magic because it limits the power of Magic (which many still complain is overpowered - I am not one of them). I accepted the Limits of The Optional Hacking Rule, becasue it fixed the bigger complaint I had with the Script Kiddie able to outdo Fastjack when it came to hacking. That being said, we are back to the Standard Hacking rules (No Optional Hacking Rules), at this point, and we do not have Script Kiddies. The Hackers actually have a Logic commensurate with their specialty, rather than dumping it because it is mechanically superior (which was always my complaint).

What I do not accept is being limited in most any other aspect of the game, because I do not feel that the other aspects of the game are actually broken (and the few that are can be so easily fixed with a simple conversation detailing expectations). A highly competent Shooter with the ability to routinely obtain 50-70% hits (call it luck, call it skill, call it whatever you like) should reap the rewards of such actions, rather than having to spend an expendable resource to allow it after the fact. Same goes with Hacking, Sneaking, Climbing, Healing, Etc.

My POV Probably has a lot to do with the fact that we do not have players/characters at our table who like to put characters together with astronomical DP's . As I am constantly reminded by many people here, the table I tend to play at is either very unique (I don't think so) or very accommodating (Not really). I see us as just not trying to break the system. You can break any system, if you try. I do not really see that as fun; I know, however, that some do. *shrug*

EDIT: Just saw your Edit Seerow...

My problem, specifically, is that I do not like the idea that you may end up removing success. And make no bones about it, that is exactly what it is doing. In previous editions, for example, you NEVER had a limit to what you could do, it was just not likely to occur beyond a certain point. However, I can remember some pretty amazing rolls in 2nd and 3rd Edition where I had effective rolls above TN50. Not many, to be sure (I think 1 or 2 in each edition), but they were there. They felt amazing. In SR4/SR4A, obtaining 15 hits on 17 Dice (did that once, no edge, even if it was in the end counter productive to my intended goal) is a great feeling. Being told that I will now have to only apply 6 of those hits sucks, and is stupid. You are now punishing someone for excelling. And I hate it.

Obviously not, since this is the first time it's being applied to everything else.

Right, and what I'm trying to understand is why it is fine when applied to one aspect of the game, but when applied to others it feels like the worst thing ever. Does the Mage feel any better when he rolls 15 successes on 17 dice and only gets 6 of them? If this is okay because of the necessary balance, why not argue for mages to be balanced in another way, so everyone could be limitless?

I'm just not sure I understand the double standard. It IS refreshing to see the double standard for once applying in a way that hurts mages, rather than benefits them, but it's still a double standard nontheless.

I do get your point on the Mage, Seerow, I really do. And yes, it IS a double standard. But it is one I can live with in that regard. Unfortunatley, from my experience with Powerful mages (I rarely play a powerful mage, apparently), if they have large Dice pools, they are casting High Force Spells (regardless of how I actually feel about that one - It irritates me that a Mage is willing to risk embolism or death to cast a spell just because he has the DP to soak that drain. I only overcast when there is absolutely no other choice) so their limits are non-existant.

As for balancing them differently, well, I would say that you just give them Base Damage = to Force, No Limit on Hits, do not allow overcasting at all, and Leave OR as it is (from 1-7) and that should take care of it. I Think that would work, personally.

This is a view I'm sympathetic to. My group actually just started a low powered game where our average dice pools are roughly half what we're used to, and probably closer to 1/3 of what's expected on these boards (I think the highest dicepool in the group is my character's perception at 13. After that is another guy's gun skill at 11, then a whole bunch of other stuff between 4 and 9, weighted heavily around 6-7), and having those much lower dicepools and character power level really is a change in the feel of the game. It also makes unusually high rolls a lot more common, because fewer dice means you're less heavily weighted towards the average. We saw a lot more 5 successes on 7 dice in the last few sessions than we ever did of the equivalent 10 successes on 13 dice.

So I mean, I can understand this. What I'm trying to wrap my head around is why for hacking, or for magic, limits are perfectly acceptable and have been for some time. But now applying them to normal every day stuff, and they're the worst thing ever.

Which brings us to


It would have been trivial for the optional rules to be "Since hackers are now more attribute dependent, they are less money dependent. Buying a program at rating 1 is all it takes to enable an option" rather than introducing limits to hackers. But I rarely hear of anyone doing anything like that, they continue running with program ratings and capping successes.

It would be more difficult to balance mages without limits, but it would be doable. Allow mundanes a better defense/chance of resisting against magic, give spells a set drain code/base damage value rather than one based on spell force, and you can basically get rid of spell force without changing too much. Magic is still a crazy valuable attribute because it applies to every magic related roll ever. But a few changes and Magic without limits is just as doable as Magic with limits. Yet people accept Magic with limits without question, attributing it to game balance. Game balance is the same reasoning the developers have given for Limits on everything, and other people have already made the arguments about why there are other, possibly better, ways in which balance could be achieved.

Personally, I'm not too bothered by limits. But I do question why the people who do have problems with them such as yourself have always just accepted them in the past, but are deciding to rally against it now, when you could have made the point against it much earlier. Had all of this rallying against it been around since SR4 launched and the Magic system was first put into place, we might have seen the developers take a different tack due to Limits being obviously controversial. Instead, we had a pretty much universally accepted system that the developers are now deciding to expand.



edit: lol we keep talking across each other TJ. I was just responding to the shorter post first

Basically, SR5 introduced limits on all dice rolls for the same reason SR4 introduced limits on spellcasting: because they needed another value to play upon. SR4 needed it to make Force significant for all spells and thus give an incentive to suffer from Drain. SR5 needs it to make gear and to a lesser extent some attributes significant when they don't contribute to dice pools.

Limits effect on game balance issues is little more than a side-effect that was considered either as positive, or at least neutral enough. But it's a side-effect nonetheless.

In one iteration of the Hacking Rules we utilized, we did consider the "just buy the program" and then have no limits, and that worked, as it made everything an opposed check (we only used this for a month or two to test it out, and some issues did crop up). In the end, however, we just went back to the main book, even if I did like that version (Attribute + Skill, Program Required, No Hit Cap) best of all.

I've always given Magic a pass on its limits, simply because the hit limit was part of the decision-making process inherent in spellcasting. That is, the caster would actually choose his own limit, which came with its own set of benefits and drawbacks, depending on how he might read the situation. The Physical Limit (et al) isn't a floating thing that's a choice by the player that changes per activity.

Okay, I've put a few minutes of thought into it and put this together. This is the way regular activity limits would match more precisely with Magic limits (a la SR4):

First, every activity produces some amount of Stress. Physical Stress, for example, might be from shooting a gun or climbing a fence. Let's go with shooting a gun.

The Ares Predator has, let's say, a Stress modifier of +1. You can choose to fire it normally with Agility + Pistols, choosing your own hit limit up to Agility (governing attribute for Pistols). You then must make a BOD+STR roll (We'll call it Physical Stress Resistance) against that Limit/2 +1 (for the Predator's Stress), and any hits you don't get apply directly to your Stun track. You may choose to set your limit as high as twice your Agility, but that makes Stress deal Physical damage instead of Stun.

So if you have Body 4, Strength 3, Agility 5, and Pistols 6, you could shoot the Ares Predator and roll 11 dice, deciding on a limit of 4, and then roll 7 dice to resist 3 Stress.

That would make the limits system similar to Magic, where you can push your own limits at a price.

Oh, I'm not advocating this at all (at least not in this form, though it gives me ideas for how to build a Fatigue system into the game to represent all that running and jumping around taking a toll), and I don't think it makes sense for someone to physically damage themselves or stun themselves into unconsciousness just from trying to shoot their gun better. It's just an experiment to show how Magic Limits and the new everything Limits aren't nearly the same thing.

This is very true...

@Epicedion they are not exactly the same thing, but in the context of TJ's complaints (the disappointment when you get a really good roll and only get to keep a small portion of that), they produce the same results. When the character rolls 15 out of 17 successes, he doesn't care if he's shooting, running, hiding, or casting a spell, being told he only gets to keep 6 of those successes is going to have the same downer effect.

Also, there may be games out there where people have huge drain pools and regularly overcast to force 12, or where characters have 500 karma and 12 points of magic, or whatever, but in the majority of games, the highest force you're going to see is 6, maybe as high as 8 or 9. The average person's limits in this system is 4-5. Anyone with above average stats, or gear to aid them, is going to have higher than that, to the point where they are probably well above the 6 limit you see with Magic. So for most comparisons, you're already starting off at, or close to, the top end (which is why we get people saying the limits just don't come up much).

I despise the idea of hit limits, but in the context of Magic they're not so bad because of the reasons I outlined. On the flip side, I really hate the optional hacking rules (limit by program rating). Of course I kind of hate the regular hacking rules, anyway. I generally wouldn't be opposed to scrapping nearly every rule from SR4 and rebuilding from the core fixed-TN mechanic.

What the game really needs is a diminishing returns mechanic. Each extra die is worth slightly less, until you reach some point where adding dice isn't really increasing anything. Alternately, where the cost of adding dice is so high that the benefit is outweighed by the cost. Unfortunately the fixed-TN mechanic lends itself to linear growth. Every 3 dice is about worth a hit (ish). The game is then a linear accelerator of getting more dice -- dice from gear, dice from stat improvements, dice from increased skill, dice from situational modifiers, dice from aiming, et cetera. Even Magic Feet McGee, with his 15 dodge dice, is no match for your 30 dice sniper rifle (this is where I go back to variable TNs, as Magic Feet McGee might be rolling those dice against a TN 4 while you're shooting at a TN 12, evening things out in a hurry).

Diminishing returns. It's magical.

Not really.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main...turnsForBalance

I'm sure you'll all hate this, but a simple modification would be to call everything Easy (TN 4), Average (TN5), or Hard (TN6). That would fit in with range increments for shooting (short-med-long). You could run into a Rating 6 Easy Lock, or a rating 2 Hard Lock for a completely different kind of difficulty. Matrix tasks could be done on Green systems (Easy), Orange systems (Average), or Red systems (Hard). You wouldn't have to worry about blowing out the probability curve like with SR3's monolithic re-roll-your-sixes difficulties.

Essentially you'd be able to create common situations where having 30 dice might still only get you 5 hits. And of course standing next to the 30 dice shotgunner street samurai (~15 hits at short range) would be a death sentence. Many problems solved!

Actually, it does throw out the probability curve:

Which is better, statistically:

Staging Down (making a task 1 step easier)
or
More Dice (add 1/3 more to your pool)

Essentially (and this is a very rough statistical treatment), to get say two hits, you need 4 dice (easy), or 6 dice (average), or 12 dice (hard). Three hits is 6/9/18. Four is 8/12/24.

This would mean that Hard difficulties would need twice the dice for the same degree of success as Average, whereas Average would only need x1.5 of Easy. (and Hard would need Easy x3)

Anyway, it's just a sneaky way of reducing the effectiveness of dice by couching the difficulty in lore and common sense -- "oh yeah, Red systems are boss" and "shooting a moving target in cover at 200 yards is actually pretty difficult no matter how good you are."

OK. 1st off, I haven't read all 25 pages worth of debate on this issue, so the following comment is based solely on my impression from reading the sneak preview of the character creation section of SR5.

Simply put, IMO the priority system is crap. Does it work? I'm sure it does, but it is nothing akin to an improvement of the system. IMO this is simply a matter of screwing around with a system that already works, simply for the sake of messing with it. The only thing this does, from my perspective, is adding less flexibility to the character creation system, and that is, again in my eyes, a clear and very significant deterioration in the system.

In general I'm with TJ on the matter of limits. From my perspective limitations are simply annoyances. Once in a while they are necessary for the sake of gamebalance, but most of the time I simply find them to be annoying and put in place by the designers to make the players play in a specific way. This is not a good thing IMO.

Inflated dice pools have been debated and put forth as a bad thing. Are they a problem? I'd argue that it depends on the table in question, and frankly, ridiculous DP's require that the players actively and creatively seek to create them. Is it a problem with the system that it technically allows a (overly) creative player to create silly sized DP's? IMO no, it's a player "problem", and any GM can prevent it simply by telling the player "No", if it will create problems at the table in question. If there is a problem in the 4a system, it is probably that there are too many different things that can be stacked to provide additional dice. Also, if we really "must" limit the DP's, then why not just simply limit the size of the DP itself, rather than apparently the number of successes that can be achieved.

See existing arguments about the fact that once you hit 20 dice ("da cap") there's no reason to ever buy more. Because no matter what, you've hit the cap. So you buy something else.

With limits you can a) increase your limit, b) increase your dice pool even more (diminishing returns for a higher average roll) c) buy something else anyway.

Why couldn't you just have rules that allow you to increase your DP limits?

Because we already have those (called SR4A) and apparently, they are anathema for those who want them?
After all, you cannot sell a new edition if it isn't new.

Increasing dice pool above a maximum size still allows to "ignore" as much negative modifiers.

In SR4, you may need a dice pool of 36 or more to still roll 20 dice when shooting in full auto mode at long range in full darkness from a cover. And a DP of 29 to roll 20 dice when interacting with an enemy NPC with plenty of time to evaluate the situation and a result that would be disastrous to him.

You are going to have to help me out on this one (my brain is jelly right now). Where in SR4A does that show up?

It's a situational boost, where as limiting hits is an all-the-time (if small) increase in the probability of hitting your cap.

Is there a reason they didn't use the Skill Rating to determine the Hit Limits?

There probably is
As to a detailed explanation, there probably won't be one forthcoming very soon.

Various people who were involved in the design process have stated that limits where hotly discussed with different models proposed and in the end they were mathed very hard and the final result after design, discussion and playtesting are the formulas you're now seeing.

That's the gist of it.

My guess is having skill rating as the primary limiter would have resulted in low skill characters with much lower caps, where the current model was chosen to provide higher average limits.

I'd also guess to reduce book-keeping. While it might make sense that your guy with extensive training in Athletics can use twice as many hits as the guy with no training, having a different limit for every skill would get tedious and hard to track. Like if SR5 were being designed as a video game, we might have seen a limit baseline of 2-3 (as opposed to 4-5), but with skills increasing the limit at a 1:1 ratio. But in a game where we need to track all of these modifiers, having limits be that fiddly would be even more annoying, and would punish players with lower skills (while that may be seen as a good thing by some, it's not a universal desire that skills be critically important. Some people like the idea that a high attribute character with lots of mods/gear can beat out the most skilled person in the world)

6 is really stupid force to cast a spell at, either you go up to 7 for no extra drain or you drop down to 5 so you get 1 less drain.
Or attleast thats what everyone with brains did in SR4, as SR5 has a general round up rule that might change.

Skill is part of the dicepool so it has to be looked up every time you roll either way, so i don't see where the tedious and hard to track part is.

There's a difference between having "no reason" to increase your dice pool, and finding better reasons to increase something else.

Besides, I think that when Kyrel suggested to "simply limit the size of the DP itself, rather than" the number of hits, he was thinking about not having a limit on hits at all. In that case, that "something else" wouldn't even exist.

Yeah, I tried using the Logic+Skill for hacking [Limit program rating]. For the most part it worked. Then threading came along and mucked it up.

Technos pretty much middle-finger a lot of house-rule attempts at "fixing" the matrix.
Even a set of rules I came up with made no sense when technos got involved.

This is a direct result of Technos making no sense relative to the rest of how the Matrix functions. Hopefully some genius fixed that for SR5, but won't know yet.

On to the priority system. The good point is that it makes character creation easier. The downside is the loss in flexibility.


Also one of the other problems is that the dice cap limits is that it can become just a battle between who has the better gear/program. Skill not having an effect after a certain level of dice.

Point.
Just that with various "house rules" on the matrix, there just ends up being no way to work Technos in at all.

Reminds me of Frank's house-rule-suggestion which was basically "brain hacking." The only reason to have a com-link on you was to prevent anyone from just rewiring your brain as they saw fit. Which of course lead to absurdity: having a com-link was a weakness because they were impossible to secure,* but you needed one otherwise you had even less security.

*Security ended up being measured in "how many computers do you have strapped to your body?" because who ever had more won. Because you'd run an agent on all of them, and either they were attacking the other guy or defending against his agents. Sheer numbers (one -> two -> five -> ten -> infinity) was the solution.

To throw something back at you guys: the biggest complaint I got from mages was when I took away extra successes because they hit the Force limit. I never did it without receiving a complaint of some size, ranging from a small whine to near-table-flip rage. In comparison, I got compliments when they passed out from Drain! That should tell you how disliked Limits have been in my experience.


I'm not sure it makes things any faster. I need to experiment with it more and find out. But playtesters have reported times of about 90 min or so to start, which is very slow.

As far as I'm concerned, the slowest parts in creating a character always had been choosing equipment and choosing spells/powers, which is not going to be faster with priority, BP or karma. Well, maybe even slower with priority, since you will have to select gear that fits into one fixed amount of nuyen, and then find a way to spend the extra nuyen your character concept don't really need. I remember a few characters I made with SR2 or SR3 priority would ended up with as much as 10 months of lifestyle paid in advance because I didn't see anything else to do with that money.

If that's a major issue, I can think of a simple way to deal with some of it -- let characters keep some of their unused chargen cash (maybe up to 10%) 'floating' after the game starts and let them withdraw it on a graduated scale. You could easily work that into the character's background, and say it's some money that's in escrow from a car or some cache of gear they've sold, or that it's a job payout that hasn't come through yet (tied up by an investigation or simply too much heat). You could even let them go over their nuyen limit by a small amount just to keep things quick, and saddle them with a loan to a shark (or a shark shaman) or one of their contacts that could bring negative consequences if they don't pay it off as fast as they can once in game.

I don't know anyone who can make an SR character with the point buy system that can do it in less than 2 hours and be happy with it.

Only if the skill alone was the limiter. But It's easy enough to say Skill Rating + 1, or Skill Rating +2, etc. and there would be very little book keeping. Less than what they have done now.

Where would be the fun in that? You can just play Archetypes if you are not prepared to invest some time in Character Creation.

I have not a single Character (in all of the P&P RPGs I ever played) that took less than 2 weeks to create

Odd I don't know anyone who took more than 1 hour to make a xharacter with the BP system after they knew the rules. And they were all happy with them. Some peoople are just more fiddly with others. I make most of my characters in 15-20 minutes. I don't play deckers or riggers in 4e so those would probably take me a while as I tried to figure out the system.

I had never thought about it before, but now that this discussion made me look at it, I don't really like the limits on spellcasting either. I had a mage recently make a really good roll but had to lose half the successes....and it killed the enjoyment of such a lucky roll. I'd be for getting rid of that limit too.

How about instead of getting rid of that limit, you could instead spend Edge to exceed it? (Also, Edge would be easier to replenish?)

~Umi

I'm pretty sure that is how it works.

I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic. It's interesting, like another poster pointed out, that a mundane human has a minimum Edge of 5 now. They may have hit everything else with the nerf bat, but Mr. Lucky is still there... and everywhere!

What I don't get is the progression of special attribute as you continue to pay more into Race.

Going from E to D, Human gains 3 points. For every rank up from that point on, they gain 2. (ie 0, 3, 5, 7, 9).

For Elf it goes 0, 3, 6, 8 (+3, +3, +2). Ork goes 0, 4, 7 (+4, +3). Dwarf goes 1, 4, 7 (+3, +3, +3). Troll goes 0, 5 (+5).

There's really no rhyme or reason to these improvements. I understand the desire to keep them low, because otherwise you end up with points you can't spend (which already happens at the high end if you're mundane), but honestly I'd rather have a progression that makes some sort of sense and just a "putting this rank on this race is a dumb idea sometimes" type of deal.

I mean look at attributes. +2, +2, +4, +4. It makes sense, and each step up is worth more than the one before. Magic similarly has each rank worth a bigger increase than the one before it, by mixing in skills and spells. Skills also go up on an increasing scale (+4, +6/2, +8/3, +10/5) where each new rank adds more than the one before it. Money does as well, and is the most obvious about it (roughly doubling money gained per rank).

The racial special stat bonus seems to be an outlier in that it doesn't progress at any predictable rate. For it to line up more with how Attributes work I'd expect something like Human going 0->2->4->8->12. Elf going 0->2->6->10. Dwarf going 1->5->9. Ork going 0->4->8. Troll going 0->4. Even if attributes and special attributes aren't considered to be worth exactly the same (so the exact same progression doesn't apply), I'd still expect something along those same lines as a logical progression. The way it is currently makes it seem like the first few points are dirt cheap while points above that are increasingly more expensive... which would fit with traditional karma costs of improving attributes, except that isn't reflected in the normal attribute rules.

Maybe people don't want to have to pay an edge tax in order to get a lucky roll. Maybe you are a low edge character and no matter how fast it refreshes you are out of edge. Maybe the limit will come up too often for edge to be used in all of the tests.

I don't feel like checking the math on each race but lets say Human A magic D. You have 2 edge and 2 magic, you still cap both special stats outside things like lucky. So more than 9 kind of doesn't make sense since there is no place fo r the points to go.

I'm not saying each race wold cap out, but that since humans cap at 9 you have to go down from there. And you can;t fit regualr in such small number pools.

How about we just don't punish players for rolling well?

Seriously, Edge is overpowered as is. I don't see any indication that SR5 is reining it in. Why make it even more powerful?

No sir, I don't like that idea As others have said, I'm getting punished for rolling well, unless I pay a tax in Edge. Either way I'm punished.

More and more it seems like many of the ideas from SR1-3 worked pretty darn well and should've been kept. Using pools (instead of (Attr + Skill - limits)) really seems like one of those ideas.

I've heard of 15 minute characters, but I've never actually seen one that worked. There's always something overlooked, like a crucial piece of gear or Contacts.

I once challenged the Line Developer, Peter Taylor, to do a 20 minute SR4 character at Gencon, on video. We agreed on what an "effective" character should look like-- pool sizes, IP's, that sort of thing-- but he ended up declining because I didn't want him to use his personal crib sheets.