I think the problem comes from the fact that not-spending special attribute points is less useful than spending them (because either you get higher edge or you get nothing). There's no tradeoff, what you're saying is possible is a false choice, like "Chocolate cake or death?"

You're right, I can't draw a conclusion. Ergo my use of the words "tentatively" and "from what we see". Since I don't have all the parts and I'm seriously missing most of the assembly instructions, I'm not sure if this game is going to fly, dig, or swim. All I can see is that it's a machine.

So I stand by what I said. It looks like it will ignorable, at this point. I may be wrong. I'm fine with that.

Though, I seriously doubt limit removal would be so upsetting as gear needing to be rebalanced. As I see it, in the worst case scenario and assuming there are no other balance factors, we end up with SR4's problem that some tools/guns are strictly better and players will gravitate to them. But we don't know for sure. So I repeat: We'll see.

-Temperance

1. It's already been stated that many pieces of gear provide a limit increase and no other benefit.
2. Accuracy is a stat that's been added to weapons which acts as another axis of balance.

These together show how and why gear would need to be rebalanced by removing the limit mechanic. In the first huge swaths of gear become points to acquire as they no longer have any stats. In the second case, by removing an axis of balance you upset the balance of weapons. Weapons that had a high damage offset by a low accuracy suddenly become the only guns worth using. Weapons with a high accuracy but lower damage codes are suddenly not worthwhile.

Like I said, I *like* Priority. I've always considered a good template system to be superior to any point buy system, and harder to break. And I admit, I haven't dissected the table yet, so I don't know how the math goes.

But even then, I'm not "wowed" by it like I was when I opened SR1 many many years ago. I remember being blown away by SR3, and even though I disliked SR4/4.5, I was impressed that they made a huge change and almost had a working system. The new Priorities... it's nice, but it's not setting me on fire like it should.

I know marketing isn't your department, but I haven't seen anything about SR5 that really makes me excited to play the game. And until I feel that excitement, I'm not going to spend actual money on it. See my dilemma?

Patrick. As the person who got the ball officially rolling on the Priority system, maybe you can tell me the following:

What were your reasoning behind changing over to this system, rather than staying with the FAR morer flexible Build Point or Karma system of 4a? What's your perceived advantages of this system to the 4a system?

I'm fairly sure that you must have had a well considdered reason for the proposal, but as someone who generally dislikes any form of character creation system that doesn't allow me to freely create the character I want to play, and advance it as I see fit, I'm genuinely currious about the thoughts and arguments that motivated the change.

/Kyrel


P.S.


You should really watch that movie Temperance. It's great.

I know what lead to it getting suggested:

Trolls.

Trolls in chargen were brutalizing the system, and Priorities got suggested as a way around it.

Since forums are generally a place where dissenters come to voice their opinion, I just wanted to say that I love the re-introduction of the priority system. IMO, there were just way too many abuses to the BP/Karma systems resulting in unrealistic characters. I think the priority system will result in varied and interesting characters that will be fun to role-play.

If there is abuse in the character creation system, blame your GM. They are the final say in who makes it in and who doesn't.
I don't think the design team should be "fixing" what is ultimately a player responsibility.

Really? In what way?
Trolls were not a popular choice for most players I know (we have only had 4 or so in the last 6 or so years).

This...
And you will see just as many Broken builds with Priority, as well... They existed in Previous editions, they will continue to exist in future editions. It is not the system's job to curb abuse.

In general i kinda like the priority system(this might sense when the companion is released and i try to remake my character as dryad, as elf she seemed quite doable in priority gen), it's just that there are some weirdness to it.
As for the option to not spend the special attribute points, as Draco18 said thats kind of a non choice as you dont get nothing for not using them.

Edit:As the preview 4 thread got locked ill ask this here, am i reading the rules right when i get the impression that mages can now shoot a gun and cast a spell in the same IP if their willing to take increased drain(simple action to shoot + simple action to recless cast)

No.

The GM can't catch everything, and the more ways there are to break a system, the more ways there are to hide it.

If the rules aren't providing consistent, balanced characters, then the rules need to be fixed. The GM has enough responsibilities, auditing each and every character sheet should not be one of them.

I don't think that part's public yet, so I can't go heavy into detail (NDA and all that), but, I can paraphrase a bit.

Let's say you had 100 points to make a character. Putting together a magician takes 50 of 'em, a street samurai takes 50 of 'em, a face takes 50 of 'em, and so on. Being a Troll wound up taking so many points that it was an archetype in and of itself.

"She's a hacker, he's an ork shaman, that guy's a Dwarf Mercenary, and I'm a Troll."
"Troll what?"
"Just a Troll."

RIght now, you're thinking, "Trolls didn't cost that much in 4E." and you'd be right.

Lots of problems with 4E were noted and were things that the rules guys wanted to deal with. (And quite a few of the non-rules guys. Like me, I didn't write a single word of the SR5 rules, but I had a list of things I wante dto see fixed. Luckily, almost every one of those was on the agenda. Like Stick-n-Shock. So hey.)

So, with Trolls, there was a problem in that they were getting taken more and more as "Discount Body". You could get a 5 Body, plenty for what everyone needed, a high strength for 'free', and off you went. Trolls went from being big heavy guys that you took along for oomph to "Cheaper way to get your stats boosted". Not quite as much as Orks, but close, and so many side-benefits (Fast speed! Body armor! Thermo vision! Whee!) that people were snapping them up for the wrong reasons.

So, if you want to encourage big thick meaty guys, the rules need to reflect that by giving them a way to do so. It was shockingly hard to do so. Ideas were floated for, like, half price on Strength, but that threw all these othe rmetrics out that had to be adjusted, or changing how stats were purchased but that tanked a few other things ... getting that balance right was dang hard. I'm not sure what the final angle will be, but when Priorities came up, it let us re-jigger things quick and easy, and suddenly Trolls could fit in with everyone else again.

And everybody went, "Phew!" and jumped on it.

It'll have to be opened back up when a Karmagen system is assembled (I think Bull mentioned that's a possible future goal), at which point we'll chew over it again. Once the chargen rules are more opened up for view, make sure to poke me to come back to this and I'll go into actual mathematical detail. Not as well as Aaron could mind you, but I'm a bit more chatty than he is by default. Who knows? Maybe you guys will see an angle we missed and hit a better way to do it.

Troll stats bonuses are just so *large* that it stresses the system.

You could choose priority E, which would give you a starting Edge of 3. It would be wasted, but could be done

I would argue that it is in fact an impossibility to create an unabusable system, and thus pointless to even attempt it. Make a flexible system, and let the GM and players make sure that they don't abuse it.

I agree and disagree. I agree that Priority will produce plenty of broken builds, just as much as BP did, and it will do nothing to minimize min-maxing. I disagree that it is not the system's job to curb abuse. I do think that the system should mechanically incentivize characters to behave in the way that best works within the system. This can be done in a number of ways, with or without priority, but I don't think the current system quite hits the mark. Right now in the system there's really very little incentive to not start out with your core skills as high as character generation will let you go (at least as far as we've seen), and if skills/attributes have progressive costs after character gen, with the currently shown linear costs before character gen, you still end up with starting characters as highly specialized with maxed skill in a couple areas with no skill at all in others (since it's cheaper to pick those up post character gen).

I also have problems with attributes in general, and the more the attributes get discussed, the more I feel that there should be a clean break between attributes that contribute to active skills, and attributes that provide passive benefits, with different costs for each type. Because that really feels like the main cause of attribute imbalance. But that's really a whole different topic.

Then how about simply reducing those bonusses.

Retcon!
2nd Class Ork!

There's a reason not everyone plays a troll.
Negatives in Agility, Intuition, Logic, Charisma and 40 build points less to spend? YES PLEASE!
I don't just like paying extra for all my gear, I LOVE IT!
Want to play a magician? I hope you like drain.

Yes but everyone knows that Body and Strength are the most valuable stats in the game, so getting big boosts to them is totally worth it even if you lose those lesser stats

No. A system should help the GM, not make more work. You can make systems that are more resistant to abuse, and the only reason to not try is laziness.

The GM is still the ultimate arbiter. As a GM, if you allow something overpowered into YOUR game it is YOUR fault.
If one of my players wants to play a dragon or walk down main street with an auto-cannon, it's up to me to tell them no.

Oh, I feel where you're coming from, believe me. Though it's probably just as well that I'm not the marketing guy, because I suck at things like that.

One of the great ironies of my life: The system's out there for all to see, but the proposal I wrote (which would have saved me some typing) is still under NDA and I can't post it. So I think I'll just can this answer for the next time someone asks.

One of my playtesters, very early in the process, said (approximately) the following: "I really miss the priority system. I could make a character in less than an hour and be ready to play by the time the pizza got here."

This brought to my mind one of my perceived issues, with BP and karmagen: The amount of choice faced in character generation is dizzying. Almost paralyzing, in fact. This is especially true for newbies, but it happens to old farts like me, too, who've been doing this for a while.

One thing I thought we should be shooting for, futile a notion as it might be for a game as complex as Shadowrun, was "Keep it simple, stupid." Priorities, in my head, fit that better than build points or karma. Here's your species, your magic/resonance, your stats, your skills, your cash. Spread these around, give your character a name, and you're ready to sling some dice.

As I imagined things, it would be quick and clean, and not overwhelming. What we got was a little more complex than I'd foreseen, and I don't think we necessarily stick as closely to KISS as I'd have liked, but it's a lot better in that regard than BP or Karmagen.

Those can take hours, and you generally have to make time for a new player ahead of the rest of the game. All the fiddly bits kind of get in the way. Priorities make it possible for a new guy to walk up to a table at your FLGS, and actually get into the game, in the time it takes for the other players to get set up and get some pizza delivered.

My primary considerations for pushing for priority system were speed and ease of making a character, and getting someone new into the game (whether they're new to Shadowrun period, or just new to your table) as quickly as possible.

That was on some peoples' minds, yeah, but it wasn't my primary motivator. I don't recall really having much of a dog in that particular hunt, but I could be wrong. I've slept since then.

Didn't say it was necessarily a good option, just that it was there. I personally like all the potential Edge points, because if I'm a mundane I'm gonna need all the help I can get in surviving. But that could just be me.

Sorry about that. I couldn't resist the pun.

It does seem like you can do both, unless there is some clause not yet seen where casting a spell makes it so that your weapon is no longer "readied".

It's not a "good option" versus "bad option" here. It's a non-option.

Have you ever met anyone in SR4 who said, "You know what, I know this is a 400 BP game, but I'm only going to spend 370. No no, not going to turn them into cash or anything. I'm simply not going to spend them"?

It's not a "suboptimal" choice, or a "bad choice," it's actually downright a muther frakking trap. It's not even a disguised trap, it's an outright spiked pit with no cover on it that has a sign saying "valid choice "

No it's not a valid choice! It's a blatantly obvious trap! No one is going to walk into it

It will be unlocked later today, after I've send PMs to a few posters.

Patrick, thanks for the reply I can't help not commenting on this though, because tbh, my first game of Shadowrun was in 4th ed., just prior to the release of 4a, which was the first Shadowrun rulebook I bought. And you know what, the first character (a Troll btw) I ever made in this game, is the fastest character I've ever made for Shadowrun. True, I still didn't make it in 1 hour (as I recall), but in my experience, what really takes time in terms of character creation, is Gear. Gear and Modifications. THAT is what slows down making a character. Remove that part of the game, and I'll make a character in time for pizza. It won't be optimized in any way, but it will be a character. Once you add gear and modifications etc. I'd like another 3-4+ hours though. The Priority system does absolutely NOTHING to address this issue, except that it means that now, rather than being free to distribute my points in the manner I believe will best represent the character I'm looking to make, I will now have to content with trying to decide how to set my priorities so as to best match the vision for my character. And in the end I'll probably just become more annoyed, because not only can I not get my vision to meet up with what I can do with the Priority system, but on top of that I'll STILL need to spend several hours trying to pick through page after page/books worth of gear and modifications, in order to find the stuff I want/need! To guys like me, the Priority system is absolutely no help at all, in terms of character creation.

/Kyrel

Guilty.
Not guilty.

I perused a few of the supplements, but I definitely new a bad product I'd never use when I saw it.


I'm curious about 5th, and for the sake of completeness (how silly is that, right?), since I have a hardcover of every other edition (aside from Anniversary), I'll probably end up with SR5 too. Even if just to see what elements I want to snag and work into my "semi-modernized" 3rd Ed. campaign. But it will be up to Catalyst whether or not the collection grows past that.

I liked the priority system back in the day. I think it's a fairly good way to balance character creation, even if not ideal. While personally I have enough gaming experience and confidence to wrangle in players who go overboard, I do agree that the system shouldn't put the caveat on the GM to be able to identify every ridiculous power-build. A GM has enough work to do already.

I dunno, that logic makes sense to me. After all, a smartlink is just calculating impact points. It isn't actually doing any of the physical work. You still need to have the mechanics of shooting down to be able to control the placement of that impact point. If you're a good shot, you can put that reticle on the place you want it. If you're not, well, at least you know when you've got a chance of putting a round into the guy at all.
Those Humanis bastards musta written that book.

I've always agreed with this. That was one aspect of SR3 I hated, that there were so many different weapon skills. Ultimately, there are two basic skill sets for small arms. There's very little fundamental difference for how to use an SMG with a stock as opposed to a full sized rifle. . Though I think having a separate skill for any kind of guided weapon makes sense though. Then you're technically using a computer to hit things, and not any more than basic aiming techniques.

Yes, I'm quite aware of both points. I think you're drawing a solid conclusion. I also think you are exaggerating the issue out of proportion to it's actual impact in play, but I won't know for sure until I have the rules in front of me. (Which is the position I've held since the beginning.)

Case 1 can be ameliorated by case by case adjudication. In come cases, I might simply require the item to complete the action or, if the task/goal can be achieved without the item, determine whether its absence/presence would cause a penalty/bonus. Effectively, that might be rewriting the item rules. But in practice, GM makes a spot ruling as required by the situation, explains why, and the game moves on. No rewrite really required.

Case 2 is irrelevant, in my mind. Weapons have other factors of balance; cost, availability, damage, and so on. Worst case scenario, there are some weapons that are strictly better. Since I play in SR4 where that's the case, in effect nothing changes. So still no rules rewrite.

All that said, the situation is completely hypothetical. As I said in my first post on the topic: "I tentatively like what I see about limits." When it boils down to it, I prefer RAW (as further adjudicated by my GM, or me if I'm GM). So, in my games limits will be there and they'll be enforced. (Assuming I run SR5.) As a player, I expect they will be present and account for it even if the GM ignores it.

But I see the other side of the argument and in part agree with them; limits suck. In turn, it makes me think, "If I put myself in their shoes, knowing what I know and can conclude, how do I envision the scenario?" My conclusion: Limits can be removed with little issue, barring additional information that may change the assumed constants.

Seriously. You think my handle was chosen by accident? (Not implying you are, just pointing it out.)



It's already in my Netflix queue. But thanks for the recommendation! I've heard good things and the actors are among my favorites.

-Temperance

This isn't something that comes up in the middle of the game, it's gonna come up(and multiple times) during chargen, after all you can't exactly make decisions on what gear to buy before you know what those items do.

My collection looks like this: SR3 - practically everything. SR4 - core rulebook and Street Magic. SR4A - nothing. I'd need a huge incentive to buy the SR5 stuff.



The method of skill defaulting (skill web) covered that, by letting you roll all your dice but making the roll slightly harder than it would be if you were specifically trained. But yes, the number of gun skills was a little much (and probably still is).

Yes you are correct, however "your" game is not the litmus test for a solid rules system. The question is can one or more builds be made to make other optimized builds obsolete or redundant within the game system. this is a test that must be based on all other things being equal. The game system should balance these things without too much subjective interaction from the GM.

Fair point.

The hypothetical GM may very well say, "Depends on the situation, what did you want/expect to do with Item X?" Or, "Hey, all those items that have no use other than limit increasing, your rule of thumb is it gives a situational bonus/penalty if you have/don't have it. And you might need it outright to attempt something at all. Here's an example, blah blah blah. Pick up the items you think your character would carry."

Still no rewrite, and everyone moves on. It helps that my groups tend to do character creation with the GM there, so they can answer those questions as needed. So my POV is probably biased in a direction that doesn't apply to most tables.

-Temperance

This implies that these are mutually exclusive concepts. I have met many excellent role-players with optimized characters. In fact the top three role-players that I come to mind are all excellent optimized character builders as well.

Hmmm. I'll have to at least pick up a copy and read it before I make any serious comments.

SR4 wasn't unabusable, but it really wasn't that bad, balance-wise. The game had tons of hard limits, so the very best at something in the entire world was still a finite, manageable thing. They just messed up in a few areas - they capped everything except Magic and Resonance, high-Force spirits no-sold too much, and they had too many stacking modifiers for a few things such as social skills (doubly bad, because the results of super-successful social skill rolls were extremely vague and subjective), athletics skills (not really that horribly unbalancing, truthfully - so you have a ton of dice for jumping or climbing - it doesn't break the game), and damage resistance (bad, because the risk of taking physical damage is a big part of challenging a PC, and newbie GMs won't always grok how vulnerable such characters are in other areas). It didn't help that additional sourcebooks kept piling on additional modifiers to the areas that least needed yet another boost.

It remains to be seen how SR5 will do in those areas. I hope social skills are better managed. If situational modifiers affect social limits instead of being a mere dice penalty, it might go a long way towards making the more outrageous uses of social skills less ludicrously easy for an optimized build. With higher skill caps, mundanes can join awakened characters in experiencing vertical growth. With lower dice pools and an additional limiting vector, maybe there will be less power creep. They may have nerfed spellcasting too much, though.


There is a blanket limit of one combat-related simple action, and I don't see anything exempting spellcasting from this. A mage could fast-cast a spell and do something else like observe in detail, but I don't think a mage could shoot his six-gun and chuck a fireball at the same time. I could be wrong, though.

What? One simple action attack a round?

Is commanding a spirit considered combat related? What about casting a spell with no combat applications (ie something like Fashion)? Or things like movement (I dunno, is there a simple action run option?)

Yeah the one attack action for spells things is a bit weird. What about levitate, is it okay? Does it stop being okay if it is cast at an enemy. Oh and run is a free action., it jumps to complex action on a sprint.

This right here would be a damn good thing to emphasize and put in big bold letters somewhere!

For one, it totally solves the melee versus guns problem, because literally every ranged weapon no longer fires twice as fast!

I don't have the preview up, but there are probably several things that mages would want to do in a turn in addition to casting -- manipulating a focus, shifting perception, casting a defensive spell, casting some buff before shooting, etc.


EDIT:
You could always cast more than one spell as a complex action previous (at huge drain cost) at least since SR3, so this would appear to be a limitation that you can multi-cast but only one spell can be offensive, to keep you in line with everyone getting one real attack at one target per action phase. Also it encourages learning Ball attacks to hit multiple targets.

No if you want to split you pool you can make multiple attacks with the same action(shoot multiple guns, cast multiple combat spells etc.) just like in SR4

And Glyph there's only a rule againts making an other attack action after shooting, only a small part of possible spells one could cast can be in any way counted as attack actions.

First of all, I used to run a lot of Missions. I couldn't say no to any legal character, and there's a lot of brokenness that can happen.

Second: you assume that you're smarter than your players. If someone manages to sneak something past you, what happens then? Stepping on them mid-game is the worst kind of GM power trip, *especially* if the trick is perfectly legal.

Third: Overpowered is subjective, but one definition of it is "stealing other player's spotlight time". What happens if someone brings in a super-sammie/pornomancer/son of Fastjack combo character? With the stats to back it all up? What happens to the less broken Decker and Face? And if you say no, how do you justify it? Assuming the character is perfectly legal, how do you justify saying No without coming off like a jerkwad?

The obvious solution is to tell such a player "Don't be a jerkwad. We're playing with friends here and you're muscling in on their specialties. Let's see how we can compromise."

Doesn't work in Missions games, though

Nobody's perfect.

Seriously, though, the more I hear about SR5, the less I like it. I think Priorities is a great idea, but the first look at the table leaves me feeling rather meh. The promise of a new Matrix is way overdone (the same promise has been made by every new edition, and twice when you include Sr4.5), and limits so far have been an active turn off.

So, even though it's not your department: Without breaking your NDA, can you tell us what part of Sr5 makes you the most excited to see in play? I don't want specifics if it'll get you into trouble; I was things like: "Character generation now takes less than fifteen minutes!" or "Combat runs much more smoothly than ever before!" What part makes you tremble the most to see players use and abuse?

I actually agree with you Glyph. IMO SR4a wasn't really all that bad, and my group hasn't really seen the problems with hyperinflated dice pools which apparently have plagued some tables. But then again, noone in my group tend to focus on optimization, and we commonly let our characters "shoot themselves in the foot" in terms of character development choices etc., if it makes sense, based on who the characters are, and what goes on in their lives.

With respect to my comment you quoted, the point I was trying to make, was that from my perspective, game technical balance should not be a driving factor in the gamedesign. There will ALWAYS be people forwhom part of the fun of the game, is character optimization, and these players will inevitably push every aspect of the rules in the game. And it is IMO impossible to create a set of RPG rules, which can not somehow be abused. However, the character optimizer is only one part of the combined player base. For every person who derives his/her fun from seeing how far they can push their character's abilities, you have another ten people who derive their fun from the game from something else. For some the system doesn't matter at all, as long as they get to roleplay a character. Others love an intellectual challenging game with plenty of puzzles and mental challenges and intrigue. Yet others prefer tactical combat simulations. Some people enjoy immersing themselves in the setting, and can't get enough details, whilst others only browse loosely through the setting information and spend the rest of their focus on the rules. Some people love huge worldspanning epic plots, while others have their characters try to actively run the opposite direction if they spell such a plot, much preferring to play out the more mundane happenings of their characters lives and relationships.

Of course you do need some level of balance in the game, but personally I'd rather have flexibility than balance. Also, if you have a table full of people who all like to push the limits on their characters and go guns blazing in-game, then who cares if the GM has a hard time challenging the players, as long as people are having fun. (I'm not even sure that such players are looking to be challenged. Rather I think they are looking to have their "superman" play through a cool story, where they get to "kick ass".) The only real problem you get, is if the different players aren't "on the same page", so to speak, and one shows up with a character with a high DP being 8 dice, another shows up expecting trenchcoat 'n mirrorshades, and a third one shows up with a hyper optimized character build for pink mohawk with DP's in the 25+ range on their specialties, and 1-2 in everything else. Nobody is going to be having fun at that table. But stuff like that should really be left up to the players and GM to address, because IMO you can't do it through the rules, and still have a game that can appeal to a wide selection of different player types.

/Kyrel

Max already addressed this one with it being a chargen issue. People are not going to waste resources on gear they don't know the bonus.



Irrelevant? In SR4 the major factors on a weapon were most damage code and armor penetration. The accuracy state becomes another valued attribute. In other words, you're 100% right. It goes back to the status quo for SR4 which is the problem. They invest in a mechanic for SR5, one which is a significant difference from SR4, in order to potentially increase variety. Players houserule that mechanic away, which reduces variety and returns to the status quo. Do you not see how that is a problem and how that is quite relevant?

Oh, I quite agree. I do see it as relevant. On the other hand, the hypothetical GM/group probably doesn't. If he or his group get rid of limits because they think the SR4 method of handling dice/skill pools was superior, then the "loss" of going back to the SR4 paradigm is an irrelevant issue. One could even say that was their intent from the beginning.

Though, if that was the case, I'd question why they moved to SR5 in the first place. I can think of several reasons, but none which are pertinent to the discussion.

-Temperance

As the GM (which is what I usually wind up being), I really am looking forward to easier, quicker chargen. If I can get someone involved at my table at my FLGS when they first walk up and say, "What are you guys playing?", without having to just make him watch and then schedule time to help him make a character sometime later...I'm down with that.

I actually kind of like the new Matrix, but that's going to be one of those subjective things, and I don't want to sound like I'm hyping it any more than it's already being hyped.

Combat's pretty deadly, but the return to SR3-style initiative gives more people a chance to participate meaningfully. This is not to say I'm on board with everything to do with the combat chapter, because I'm not, but in general I like how combat has gone down in the games I've run.

I like some of the changes to drugs and toxins, and I think critters are sheer perfection. Okay, actually I don't, but I'm required to hype them since I wrote that chunk of the book. I can point to any number of places in that chapter where I probably screwed the pooch pretty handily, but I'm still pretty proud of that. And that's not breaking NDA since Jason outed me in one of his online chats. I think I've made some improvements to them, though, so we'll see what people think of them when the book starts showing up in the wild.

Is priority really that much faster then BP/karma gen?
The biggest time sink is generally buying stuff and with priority you can get about 200k more then you could in SR4, so that might take even more time.
Well now that i think about it, there only being one book to get stuff from for a while should speed up the gearing up some what