If the guard's packing, say, a Predator and is using the smartlink, he's got a limit of 7. Give the troll Reaction 5 and Intuition 4, and you're generating 3 hits to avoid the attack. If I recall correctly, the DV seen on Heavy Pistols so far is something like 8 or 9. So that's 12 or 14 damage that the Combat Troll gets to soak - certainly has the potential to hurt him, I'd say.

OK, here's a question:

Which one of these probability curves offers the most improvement (that is, as play continues, characters get better)?
X-axis: game stats
Y-axis: probability of success, given some threshold

Choice A
Choice B

Hm. I may have missed that. Apologies.

Those charts aren't on the same scale. The only difference that I can discern between them is that A plateaus after an arbitrary point. Otherwise they both appear to have the exact same curve, based on my rough judgment. Hard to tell without any vertical lines.

Karma Pool was SR1, SR2, and SR3. (not being an ass, just clarifying)

I used to run with the rule that the first point of Karma pool was free (as per standard game rules) then one point was added to the pool for every step.

Total Good Karma Karma Pool
1-9 1
10-19 2
20-49 3
50-89 4
90-140 5
etc.

I found it to be a good way to stop players from becoming uberpowerful super fast.

Oh, and you could use 1 point of karma to reroll any number of dice that didn't come up a success. This is what my players ended up doing almost all the time.

Actually, they are. Both were produced using binomial distributions. If you mean that the maximum value isn't the same, blame excel.
I, have, however, artificially inflated the maximum value so that they are the same. If that helps.

Edge as a stat did appear in Mechwarrior 1 (IIRC), but the particular mechanics are unique to SR4/4.5. It didn't do nearly as much then as it does now. It's been a long time, but I do recall that even then, Edge was overpowered. I don't have my books handy, but as I recall, there were two stats you always maxed out-- one was the "Agility" equivalent, which factored into all your combat skills, and Edge. The rest of your attributes could be dump-statted easily.

At any event, I've discovered that any game with a front-loadable luck stat is more easily broken. For example, in White Wolf (any version) you always want a super-high Willpower, because it's just too good. The only reason Lucky in Savage Worlds and Fortune in Feng Shui aren't broken is because those games are over the top to begin with, so it doesn't matter as much. D&D 4e doesn't have a luck stat, but it does have rerolls, and I have a character who will go through several rerolls while crit-fishing. Luck stats are very powerful, and need to be managed carefully. Edge is managed badly.

Alrighty then. . . . despite my high IQ, I'm not a mathematician. Can you walk me through that?

You must be using a different term for chart scale than I'm familiar with. For two charts to be in scale, both axis on both charcter must have the same minimum and maximum values otherwise comparison between two charts is not easy to perform. Of course if you really wanted it to be easy to compare you'd chart both stats on the same chart (thus bypassing the whole scale issue).



The Y-Axis represents the probability of an outcome where 0 = 0% and 1 = 100%. The X-axis represents the number of dice in the pool.

The first chart with the plateau shows that you never exceed a 23% probability of success.

The chart is meaningless without know the data he's dealing with. Most threshold numbers for tests tend to be 1-4 so a 23% probability of success on a dice pool of 20 seems really really low for what it should be. I'm suspecting he included threshold numbers much higher than 4 or there's something I'm missing.

Correct

These approximations you're making aren't consistent though, unless skills/attributes are changing to a linear scale, while special attributes are still on an exponential scale. I mean let's use the Attribute*5 = karma cost rule, and look at what you gain as you go up, assuming you're looking to min-max as much as possible.

Regular Attribute:
Rating E: 12 pts. Allows for 2 6s and a 3. That's 225 karma
Rating D: 14 pts. Bump the 3 up to a 5. Up to 270 karma (+45)
Rating C: 16 pts. Bump 5 to 6, and a 1 to 2. Up to 310 karma (+40)
Rating B: 20 pts. Bump the 2 up to a 6. Up to 400 karma (+90)
Rating A: 24 pts. Bump a 1 up to a 5. Up to 470 karma (+70)

Compared to Special Attribute (assume Human, start with Magic 2):
Rating E: 0 (baseline)
Rating D: 3 pts. Bump the 2 up to a 5. 60 karma. (+60)
Rating C: 5 pts. Bump the 5 up to a 7. 125 karma (+65)
Rating B: 7 pts. Bump the other 2 up to a 4. 160 karma (+35)
Rating A: 9 pts. Bump the 4 up to a 6. 215 karma. (+55)

So no, even taking into account possibly having exponentially scaling costs, these numbers make no sense whatsoever. Nevermind the fact that this highlights the major problem of SR4's chargen system (which was starting out using a completely different system than what you use to progress), and how that got carried over into SR5 and doubled down on. But seriously I don't get how you can say with a straight face every other priority option gets progressively better as you increase in rank, while race gets progressively worse.

Don't bother. I made the argument in depth about agility like 20+ pages ago, and everyone decided to ignore it so they could come back and make the same exact arguments later.

To be fair, it's generally just the specialist that takes all of what Charisma offers - most would only take the one skill.

And how many people take all that agility has to offer? Typical character I see has a single ranged combat skill, infiltration, and maybe a melee combat skill/palming. They might get some gymnastic skill (usually through Athletics group) but use it exclusively for Dodge so it's paired with reaction instead of agility. If you do consider combat/infiltration/palming "everything that agility offers" then why exactly are we referring to it as a superstat? I can only imagine it's because of Combat, which leads us to what I've said before.

The reason Agility is so commonly maxed is because 1) It's really easy to cap out and 2) Taking part in mundane combat without high agility is a fools game.

1 is trivially easy to fix (make Agi boosting harder to come by), but if you fix 2, you probably don't need to, after all you rarely hear complaints about Muscle Augmentation/the strength superstat.

As for 2, there's a bunch of ways they could make that better. Making not everyone need to be able to shoot a gun to take part in combat would be a great start. This is partially accomplished by giving the Logic Based (oh hey that's still a main factor in limits AND a whole shitton of skills isn't it?) hacker a role in combat that doesn't involve shooting. Taking it further could have involved unlinking close combat from agility (it makes at least as much sense for strength, which could use the extra benefit, or reaction which would give melee focused guys an edge in initiative), and making sure that combat casting is viable and most mages aren't defaulting to using a gun (already the case in SR4).

It could also be done by making attributes less important in dicepools in general (while gun skills are where people like to go to highlight this, guys with logic 13, and a bunch of skills at rating 1 are just as bad), for example the suggestion others have made of counting attributes as only half towards dice pools, while raising skill caps and making skills cheaper. It could also be helped by adding in weapons that are itemized in such a way to be ideal for less agile/skilled characters (ie people who pick up the gun as a secondary), while characters with bigger dice pools go for something else that is better for them (This is actually one of the places where limits comes in really handy, and the fact that this doesn't seem to even be on the radar is somewhat concerning).

Regarding dump stats, I agree. One problem with having eleventy billion attributes is that it promotes building a character to use as few different attributes as possible (and it also causes arguments about whether a skill should REALLY be using X attribute instead of Y attribute). A system that abstracts things more heavily into, say, Physical attribute, Mental attribute, and Social attribute would certainly be more easily balanced.

Re: luck stats, I also agree. They're easily unbalanced if handled poorly. Going back to the archaic Fallout SPECIAL system, Luck was a fine stat, as it provided your critical chance and factored into certain skill chances (like Gambling). It actually represented the character's luck in a tangible way. Edge is all over the place, and trends (especially at higher levels) toward being an I Win button you can press 6 or 7 times a session.



And generally no one takes all of what Agility offers. Find me someone who has high skill in Automatics, Pistols, Shotguns, Rifles, Throwing Weapons, Unarmed Combat, Clubs, Edged Weapons, Heavy Weapons, and Sweet Kickflips.

You nailed it. I like to think of Edge (and previously the Karma Pool and burning Karma) as the result of experience rather than luck. You can buy the Lucky quality to add just one point to Edge.

Not to mention treating Edge purely as luck cause some metaphysical problems regarding the reason why humans would get one point more than the other metatypes.

Huh? Force 12 Stunballs are what I see at just about every Missions Table I've sat at or run. Why use a gun, when you can just stun them all and slit their throats with a knife if you want them dead?

7 points of drain isn't that hard to deal with when it shuts off the combat. And its physical... so after the combat, the medic pulls out the first aid kit and fixes whatever is left.

Which is why I even added that combat casting is already plenty viable in SR4. The main focus there would be not messing it up.


Unrelated: I'm pretty sure you can't first aid away physical drain damage.

And what makes you say that?

I have a character that has 3's and 4's in all of those skills.

No, you can.

All Drain can be healed by First Aid. It's just that Drain can't be healed magically.

Because while there is some truth to it not nearly as much as either you or Rhat try to make out.

1. While all ranged combat skills are for ranged combat they each have areas they excel in and suck in. So more than 1 skill has more value than just the 1 skill, presumedly why their is a break for groups, though it probably should be a bigger break.
2. You are putting the cart before the horse. Yes people frequently only buy automatics. But that isn't because the other skills dont have value it is because attributes ae so good for their price point and skills are so expensive for their price point people can't afford more.
3. If all ranged combat skills were = to just 1 skill why aren't they just one skill. Why not just ranged combat as a skill, no automatics, no pistols etc. Just ranged combat.

The correct approach is to look at what skills would a person want to imrpove for their character given a fairly normal concept. And that is how much agility is saving you, not how much the player trimmed down to fit it into the broken costs, but how much they would take for their concept.

Most street sams for example would know every gun skill, probably 2-3 close combat skills, infiltration, palming and gymnastics so at least 8 skills. Now they are agility focused so its not the best example. But most runners who aren't focused on this stat will want to know 1 close combat, 1 ranged combat, infiltration and maybe one more based on concept so 3-4. The balance of the stat should fall somewhere in between those 2 points.

I'll direct you to the analysis on the subject I posted previously (in the spoiler) - I don't disagree at all, I'd just weight Agility a little higher in terms of real value than Charisma.

Re 1/3: Actually, having the gun skills reduced is something that really should happen. The skills are not meaningfully different enough to warrant being separate skills. It's as if a Mage had to pick up a different skill not just for every school of magic, but for every spell he could cast. Turning "Firearms" from a Skillgroup into a Skill would be a great first step. Combining Gunnery and Heavy Weapons would be another good choice. As would be turning the Close Combat skill group into a Close Combat skill. While the different weapons do have their niche, they aren't different enough to warrant picking up a whole separate skill for them.

Re 2: It's almost like you're agreeing with me here. I agree skills aren't totally worthless, in fact you'd be hard pressed to find any place I've said that. The problem exists with cheap attributes and overpriced skills, as you said. I would, for example, love attributes that only give half their bonus to dice pools, and have skills go back to having cost based on attribute again, and become uncapped and the driving force in dicepools (ie if you have attribute 4, getting a skill rating up to 4 is really cheap. From 5-8 is a little more expensive. 9-12 a little more, and so on). Like having skill 1-3 in a bunch of random stuff shouldn't be character optimization suicide, it should be the sort of thing that is expected.

Either way this has little bearing on the discussion of whether or not agility is a superstat, and if it is if a valid solution to that was excluding it from limits.

Better if they just condensed them to some manageable number. I could see:

Longarms (covering rifles, assault rifles, shotguns, SMGs)
Sidearms (covering pistols, machine pistols)
Heavy Weapons (covering machine guns, grenade launchers, rocket/missile launchers)
Melee Weapons (covering edged weapons, clubs, etc)
Unarmed Combat
(Exotic)

That way a true warrior would want to have ranks in everything, and would have to be about as specialized as a Face is in social skills, or a Mage is in magic skills, or a Decker is in decking skills. Basically, getting all the combat skills should be painful to a nonspecialist, enough to discourage them from branching out too far in it (just like taking all the magic skills or social skills would be painful for the samurai), but also not awkwardly prevent it by the sheer volume of skills.

But you are alright with using edge to guarantee that you are not unlucky (spending edge to negate the effects of one glitch or critical glitch)?

Why is that OK then?

Or using general competence to avoid making a serious mistake.

1/3 I wish there was consolidation but there just isn't and from the sprawl ganger in preview 3 we can see its not consolidated in 5e. And each of the ranged combat skills do cover a different area, so slapping them under ranged combat is a bit much.

2. I do agree with you to some degree but I think it is being overstated. My point is you can't say people only take 3 skills so it only saves you on 3 skills if the reason they only take 3 skills is the broken costs. Part of what makes a stat a super stat is how much it saves your. This isn't a class system where things are just handed to you as you level up. You have to buy things so cost savings are in fact part of the determination in what makes something over powered.

And yes agility is a super stat. Agility covers physical combat, a large part of stealth and some side tricks. I think charisma is also a super stat in that it covers all social attributes. I don't find logic to be as much of one despite its long skill list since it mostly boils down to the decking stat. Yeah it also covers being a mechanic and what not but the big difference is every character who isn't a decker can freely ignore almost everything in logic. Very few characters can ignore agility or charisma to the same degree.

I realize part of this is game style, but outside of mages pretty much everyone shoots, everyone sneaks, everyone probably want to palm things because it is the hide the gun on me skill, everyone talks to people, everyone tries to negotiate with their contacts, to get information out of their contacts, to con people on runs etc. Sure the primary role in those skills might go to the street sam and face but pretty much everyone has to do those things in a run. Maybe not every run they are needed and sure very specific designs like the totally remote hacker don't need them, but I suspect in most games social and combat skills are valued by almost every character.

Basically the game is resolved around skill tests. When usually the biggest factor in the skill pool is the attribute and attributes cover multiple skills they are already on the overpowered side of thigs. While the idea that if they cost more they would be fine is nice I don't think it woudl pan out in play since. you can get so far with a combination of cyber/bio and starting stats. Unless the costs were such that people left the gate with something like 2-3 times the rank in skills as the attributes like 6 agility and 12-18 pistols they would remain broekn under this system. And that would one be too many dice and two probably to big of a departure from shadowruns system. So yeah while people over state the savings of attributes by listing all the skills saved, overly narrowing the skill list and saying its not broken just a bit out of whack on costs is also overstating the issue.

Now for the purpose of limits, while logic and charisma might fall under the super stat idea I think the main difference is when you are grouping things into mental, physical and social is that social and mental overlapped so there was less room to drop a stat and that charisma and logic were dump stated by a lot of people in play since they are a bit more narrow than agility. I’d of gone with 2 limits mental and physical and used every stat in the pools(I may have even thrown one mental into the physical pool and one physical into the mental to show that body and mind are somewhat intertwined.)

A lot of people just take the glitch because as much fun as a awesome roll is a bad roll can be just as fun. In 4e I could choose to take a crap roll or choose to use edge to fix that. In 5e while I can do the same on crap rolls if I want a awesome roll I have to use edge. I am not sure why this is hard to get, being FORCED to use edge for awesome is seen as bad by some. Sure you have to use edge to negate a glitch but there is a big difference in the two. One system I roll and can accept the result or choose to fudge the result, the other system I roll I don't get the result I rolled and have to use edge to actually get my result. There is a big difference in the two.

Me I am not a huge fan of limits but they may work and they don't seem very game breaking to me even if the math ends up being a bit off. But I get what people don't like about them I get what people like about them, and I don't find either side to be hypocrites in this compared to what they liked in 4e.

Just going to shortcut your post



This is pretty much what I was harping on about in my posts. The solution to this issue isn't "Try to make agility weaker by leaving it out in places where it makes sense", but to instead make it so either A) not everyone needs to shoot or B) It is possible to shoot as a secondary skill with a low agility and be useful in combat. Saying "everyone shoots a gun, and therefor everyone needs agility" isn't something that changes if you make physical limits based off not-agility. People who pick up agility just to shoot are still going to do that because the shooting limits aren't based on stats at all anyway! This doesn't fix the 'super stat' problem at all, and is instead just a copout excuse for bad design.



In SR5 though, decking is going to be a valid in combat way to deal with the enemy, just like casting a spell or shooting someone is. So that means that Logic is just as important of a combat stat as Shooting or Magic. And depending on how much the matrix rules get changed, you could very well end up with things like using Logic to shoot while remote controlling drones (ie what happens in SR4 now with the Logic replaces program optional rule)



This was one of the two suggestions I made at the beginning of this discussion That would have been something I was fine with. What I disagree with is Agility not factoring into checks where it really makes sense (and then Strength factoring in twice on those same checks), on the justification that Agility is a super stat, when Logic and Charisma both get factored in twice and are every bit as much, if not more, of a super stat in their respective fields.

I have no problem with that. My issue was I think saying agility is just the shoot people stat is a bit of an overstatemnrt. I also think in 4e agility is the biggest super stat of the 3 and by a decent margin. 5E I will wait and see on some level because supposedly it will have less dice pool bonuses. charisma and logic had a lot of skills that had out of attribute bonus items which devalued the attributes and skills quite a bit. And I do think the skills in them come into play less often than agility based skills, again that may change in 5e but I kind of doubt it. Applying minor penalties to people through hacking is usually a lot less effective than just shooting them even for the decker. I understand the game balance idea they were coming from, but yeah it makes no sense that the limit does not factor in agility and I am not sure it really is balanced. x2 strength I'm okay with as it is a fairly worthless stat, though I'd of just added some skills to it myself and then used all 4 stats evenly.

I know people love to say agility fits for close combat skills but it really comes down to how you define a stat. Agility could have focussed more on balance and hand eye coordination while strenght could have covered more speed and explosive energy based skills like close combat, running, jumping etc. And before eanyone goes on about the 80 year old granma running their dojo that is kind of perfect exmple of the old person using thier skill to overcome the young persons physical atributes. The problem is strength is only seen as the weight lifting stat and when you break a persons existence into 8 attributes those 8 things might be a bit broader than that.

You must be confusing me with someone who actually uses Edge for such purposes. *shrug*

Don't really see that happening, honestly. At least not beyond what is already possible in SR4A. *shrug*

The problem with using only two limits, Physical and Mental, is that you lose some personality archetypes, like the dumb but friendly brawler or the brilliant but unlikeable hermetic.

The problem with including too many attributes in a calculation is that you get less variation among the results.

If it is not the case, then they've oversold us on their intended changes to the hacking minigame. And pissed a lot of people off with the always wireless thing for no reason at all.

Yes, we all know limits are your baby Aaron.

It doesn't make your system any better. Sorry.

Hardly my baby. The credit really goes to whoever came up with the SR4 spellcasting system, with additional credit to whoever thought to extend that system to hacking.

A bunch of us proposed a number of systems, and limits was the option that offered the most. My money was on a double dice pool system similar to the one in SR3, but It didn't have the same range, functionality, or usefulness as limits.

Along those lines, calling it my system is kinda like calling this thread Seerow's thread. I'll take credit as a contributor, but it's hardly "my" system. What makes you think it is?

Okay, I'm here with an hour to kill, if anybody has a question. Obviously, NDA, wiggle room required, blah blah blah, but if there's anything I can say, I'm happy to.

Re: Chargen, I can say that there's at least one character made with Resources E in the mix, which ... man. That was painful. I will state that I don't suggest it, but I wanted at least one in there as an example.

Re: Cybered folks and social skills: Yeah, that rule's been around for ages but kind of got lost in the maze. Putting together one of the old "Charisma dumpstat, 0.05 Essence Street Sams" in SR5 is going to HURT.

And, overall, you'll find that attributes got some rejiggering. There were some things that have bothered people for years and the general 'Dumpstat' issue was one. Strength is way more important, for instance, while Logic and Charisma are both more important now as well. You can still have them, and some archetypes are going to lean more towards one low attribute than another, but there's no autodump like there has been in the past.

Resources E seems easy to me. Attributes C and below seem to be shooting yourself in the foot though.

Most Likely...

Seems easy, but isn't. Oof.

As for attributes, I'd have to check. I know I did at least a C in attributes, but I'm not sure if I went lower. I'm a skill guy personally, so going below B in skills was like pulling teeth. Absolute murder, since I tend to make characters that ... boy. I don't want to say "Are more realistic," since that opens a whole kettle of fish, but "Are well-rounded" might not be a bad choice of terminology.

In essence, everyone should be able to handle their commlink, buy things they need, use the Shadows (if a Shadowrunner), and contribute in a scuffle in some capacity. It's easy to say "Let the Face buy everything, I just want to shoot stuff," but I like a little more diversity in the mix. A sheet that just had "Pistols 6, Infiltration 4, Ettiquette 2, done" would make me twitchy.

That said, some of the archetypes of olde were functional with low attributes or minimal skills, so there's no reason to assume it can't be done... it's just painful in many ways.

While I agree with your idea of how skills should be, with the math of attributes to skills I suspect that taking skills at a higher level of attributes is rarely a mechanically sound choice. In fact the few times it would be are in the cases where you don't plan on rounding out your character but instead of a very narrow design which can be covered with 1 soft capped stat.

Off the top of my head, the old Corproate Wage Mage had a build that was Race A, Magic B, Resources C, Skills D, and Attributes E. Elf isn't as high of a priority these days, so I'd personally do it differently, but it's certainly possible. Burned-Out Mage (A long-term favorite of mine!) was Magic A, Resources B, Attributes C, SKills D, and Race E, again if memory serves (Skills and Attributes might be the opposite), so, "Fragile Mage with deep pockets" has always had a place.

I will say that going back to 1st edition to do some reading was more than just a trip down memory lane. Equipment lists were insanely small back then, for instance, and similar small flaws between art and archetype existed. (The Ork Mercenary's gear was, essentially, "Gun, armor, and a sword that he calls a knife", while the Shaman has a pistol on his hip in plain view, but doesn't carry one and, IIRC, isn't trained in them anyway.)

Of course, 1st ed also has us going on a decking run with Fastjack in his pre-JackHammer days, and has a mage named Harlequin die from drain, so.

If you're really looking to compare the effectiveness of attributes vs. that of skills, I can think of one experiment. Make a character with Attributes A and Skills E, and compare it to a similar character with Attributes E and Skills A.

And I'll say one good thing about Resources E: it really cuts down on character generation time.

There are cases that this is true and cases where it's false.

Some characters need a more diverse skill array than others. A few attributes will be key, but, for instance, a covert operative needs sneaking skills, hacking skills, some kind of "Things went drekky, I need to fight my way out" emergency back-up skills, social skills, probably some vehicle skills ... you have to spread out. Stabby McGee can get by with a low Agility and dumping points into a single "Stab people" skill, but, again, I don't reccomend it.

Mind you, I fully expect two or three regulars to pop up, say, "The archetypes are all too weak!", and the optimization wave will strike within a week of the book being released. That's kind of a given.

SR 1-3 attributes could be E without much of a problem with how much attributes do now E would be really hard to pull off. You'd most likely be metahuman so that would pad things to some degree but a high stat being a 3 just isn't functional in a system of stat+skill. Its not as bad in the specific where a high skill is 3, but when its the general and covers all skills it will hold you down. A mage or decker might pull it off if all they do is magic and deck, but that is a really narrow archetype.

Skills E?!

Lordy, Aaron, just take me back behind the garage and beat me with a bag full of doorknobs if you want to torture me, but ... Skills E?

Brr.

Yeah, Attributes E works for a few characters, but it's painful. (The old Corporate WageMage was human, by the by. The ELven Mage was a different build from a later book. Mea culpa there.)

Were I to make the ELven Mage, I'd probably go Race A, Skills B, Resources C, Race D, and Attributes E. A 4 in Willpower, Logic, and Charisma's not *amazing*, but it'd work. Poor thing'd be made of Kleenex ™ mind you, and about as fit as a college-Freshman Elf who was a magic-addict, but hey, we can't all be Johnny Action Hero, right?

I'd actually swap attributes and skills in that build. I'd probably get bigger dicepools with 20 in atrributes and only 18 in skills even though it meant I had a lot of skills at 1 or 2. Honestly E anything is really hard, for a metahuman mage I'd go E resources since you an get by with a armor jacket and a pack of smokes. So A magic, B atrributes C skills, D race E resources. Hard to say it depends on how close you are trying to get to remaking a old archetype or making a new one under gneric concept, elven mage. Honestly I'd be tempted to go B magic, to get A in attributes for a lot of mages and use the special attribute boost to get me back to 6 magic. Dropping 3 spells, 2 skill levels and 1 magic which can be made up from a different resource pool seeems worth it to me for those 4 attribute points.