Obviously what needs to happen is that everyone needs to give Catalyst their hard earned money for what sounds like a heavily flawed system their authors won't/can't talk about, before we discuss the fact that people who have actually played it are voicing very strong concerns about said system.

After all guys, how dare you want some discourse on the quality of a product before buying it?

Buy it.


Buy.


Seems fair. Wait, what?

*sigh* here I go again ...

Dear Catalyst people. I see you're upset about the reactions on Matrix boni. I can understand why. However, I think you're missing something.

The idea of Matrix boni isn't bad. Offer boni for more vulnerability, carrot and stick. If it wasn't for the concrete examples, I'd like that idea. There are a lot of fun things that can be done with them.

However, the execution is more than a bit problematic. As it seems, the "carrot" is yesterday's standard. They're no boni, they're what people expect their ware to be able to do. As far as we know, it's an approach of taking away unless you comply with the universal hackability of cybered characters.

The idea seems to have been to not make an offer, but to try and force people into being universally hackable by hitting their characters with the nerf bat if they choose otherwise. That's heavy-handed and does not go well with people who don't care for being hackable, but don't want their characters nerfed. It also goes against the carrot and stick idea; instead, it's extortion. And it gets the reaction Critas complains about. People don't like being robbed, and that's what the handling of Matrix boni as they are known for now comes down to.

I may have missed something. Can someone provide a consolidated list of matrix enabled bonuses revealed so far? all I have seen is that WR and Reflex Enhancers Stack. The baseline has always been that they don't hasn't it? I usually play awakened so I may be wrong in this assumption.

Of course this could all be solved thematically with minimal fuss by calling the safe mode Tortoise Mode and implying that along with the Matrix rewrite the corps did, general improvements in hacking technology made the old nominally offline cyberware vulnerable to even worse attacks, forcing everyone to either put their crap in low-usability modes or hook them into the PAN for at least slightly better security.

But how would they be vulnerable to a method of attack that they do not even support to start with? You can't hack something remotely if you cannot connect to it remotely. A hardwired hack is always possible, of course, but if that is what is going on, you have other worries, in my opinion.

Again, I can't see why people see it as such a viable tactic to just hack stuff.

You might end up disabeling Bubbas...

If it becomes the "I roll a test and an enemy dies" kind of thing at your table, thats bad but I guess it is not the fault of the rules.
Like I said the SAM can't either shoot in the air and excpect his bullets to magically hit his enemys even if he scored some hits.
Why is it that for mages and hackers this is so often assumed. It was the same with spirits, who magically do what the mage wants even if he changed his mind several times AFTER giving the order. (The spirit has to interpret it in a way that it is in line with what the mage wants at the time)

From memory (feel free to correct):
Smartlink: Baseline +2 accuracy, wireless enabled +2 dice
Cyberoptic enhancers: +[level] limit, wireless enhanced +[level] dice (unsure about this one)
Chemical seal: 1 complex action to close; wireless enhanced: 1 free action to close

Both have the SR4 standard function wireless-enabled only. That is no bonus. Reverse, and it becomes a bonus compared to the former edition's baseline. As is, it forces you into universal hackability to get what you had last edition.


Uhm, no. The baseline has been they do indeed stack (see SR4A p. 342). Reaction Enhancers and Wired don't stack with much else except drugs (arguably), though, as of SR4. RE don't stack with synaptic accelerators, but they do stack with Move-By-Wire (augmentation pp. 40).


Improvement in computing makes me hack a 1920s typewriter wirelessly!

Except that the baseline seems to have change to the limit concept. It seems to me that without the wireless bonus rule the +dice concept has been replace with the +limit concept. It is a mistake to assess the bonus from a SR4 perspective as the baseline for bonuses is different. So if the base bonus for the items had been the + dice and the wireless bonus was +limit it would have been ok?



As I said I normally play awakened characters. Assuming you are right then this seems to be an instance of what you were arguing.

Which is, exactly, why people are arguing.
It's not giving stuff for being online.
It's taking stuff away if you are offline.

Yes. I earmarked exactly that for a possible house rule to fix this, actually.

QFT

This whole matrix bonus think would have gotten a thousand times better reaction if the writers would have bothered to come up with actual sensible bonuses instead of stealing away basic function and hiding them behind the "Become hackable" -wall.

I see this too ... and I think it is highly entertaining

Off Topic: Just finished reading "Neat" ... me likes ... much ... want more!

On Topic:
Apart from all the carrot/stick/nerf/whatever stuff I am wondering: what can I do to protect myself?
I assume slaving is still available, so I slave all my ware to a nice rating 6 offline commlink which I call "Antarctica", which I run with the most badass Agents and black, psycotropic ICE I can find.
I then connect/slave (with a wire) "Antarctica" to a second commlink that is quite similar set-up, only it has Wireless enabled and call that one "Arctic".
"Arctic" in turn is slaved to the hackers deck, which is slaved to his Nexus somehere, which connects to the matrix via <Insert resonable big number here> Cold relays.
How will any Hacker be able to get to my ware in any reasonable amount of time anyways? (+ Changing the Access ID quite often + Hidden Mode + Unusual Radio Frequency + Encryption + ...)

Is that expensive? Hell Yeah!
So you start your career as a smart (as opposed to dead) runner without wireless bonuses, then, when you get the moneyz, you can set up a big enough safety margin that you can actually allow yourself to get all those Matrix-Boni.

I'd call it character advancement

On a side note: As a hacker: Remind me, why would I spend my time bricking something (which seems to need multiple passes) instead of just getting an admin account (which should be 1 Pass with all but the most paranoid ppl) and telling it to shut down (which is just 1 command to issue)? (If you like you can also delete ALL accounts after that, so he needs to do a hard reset of some kind)

But it's not. It is still giving a bonus. The bonus in 5th edition is just different. If this concept of wireless bonuses never existed in SR5 then + dice would not be included anyway. The +dice model has been replaced in SR5 by the +limit model. you are arguing under the assumption that smartlink woud give both bonuses or the + dice bonus if the wireless rules were not included. Im saying the they would give + limit only if the rules did not exist.

Definedly, in case of many items making doing something easier(+dice) is what the item is supposed to do.
Smartlink is probably the most jarring example as having a target reticule in your field of vision that show exactly where you bullet is gonna land no longer makes it easier to hit simple shooting target unless you also connect the smartlink to matrix

It's pretty worthless, actually - nerfing the equipment massively in effectiveness unless you go wireless, because by and large, the dice system is the same as in SR4. It still has some in-game relevance, yes. But Limit-enhancing boni are next to useless if you don't have the dice to fill them. The other way round, it would be an additional bonus. As is, you get something you are unlikely to need as a standard bonus.


Uhm, no?

You do realize that in the current rule structure + limit is better than + dice right? Since you likely be hitting the limits anyway the +2 dice will be effective far less than their 40% statistical probability. The + limit will come into play more with decent dice pool numbers.

... which won't happen if you don't have the pool to begin with?

Well these are all futuretech devices, not really comparable to stuff we have today. Another futuretech device could infiltrate the internal signals -- we know we can say transmit power wirelessly to typically hardline devices through electromagnetic induction. Expand the principle to matrix signals, as after all everyone is now running around with their gear fully immersed in a wireless matrix soup.

If you came up with a device that blitzes the Reflex Trigger for example without needing a back and forth connection, manipulating it with a malicious program, you'd be forced to slap a safeguard onto it -- dumb it down enough that the attack device can't affect it (tortoise mode) or else hook it up wirelessly to a defense device in your commlink that can keep the firmware from being scrambled.

Huh. So SR5 is going to double-down on the Matrix-enabled devices in order to justify having an active decker being involved. I think I'll wait for the Matrix sourcebook to how far down the rabbit hole they are going this time.

Reflexbooster does not stack with reaction enhancers anymore, if they are not online . .
If that ain't taking something away, then i don't know what is . .

But they aren't running around with all their gear fully immersed in a wireless matrix soup to start with. That requirement is being added to punish players for not running wireless to start wit. So the logic is still flawed.

I acceded that point. So far that is 1 of 3 devices that show that tendency. Far from a statistically valid pool. The other examples leave enough doubt that it should not be discarded out of hand.

From what I've seen so far that won't be too much of a problem for dedicated gun bunnies. Even moderate skilled shooter would have a use for it.

I don't see +[Limit] to be near as powerful as +dice. For one, you can limit-break with Edge, where limit is not an issue, but a lack of dice will punsih you. Also, you cannot have a large dice pool without dice. Smartlink is a beginner's accessory, not some advanced stuff. And beginners need dice, not Limit boni. Even moreso with vision enhancement.

No it's not, limits don't matter at all if you don't even have high enough dicepool to hit it semi regularly.
And as i said +limit doesn't actually make doing something easier, it's just gives a possibility for a more awesome success.

Edit:Lets for example take a totally avarage human with no shooting experience(Agility 3 no skill), he goes to range and rents a ares predator smart pistol.
+dice, his dicepool goes to 4 thanks to the smartlink and he has pretty good chance of hitting the target(the limit of 5 doesn't matter at all, he can't hit it at all)
+limit, his dice pool stays at 2(but hey his limit goes up to 7 woot woot) and he has good chance of missing the target.
Please tell me witch one of these two scenarios make more sense when we consider that smartlinks base function is that it paints a target reticule in the point where the bullets will go.

I don't believe the math supports you, but I will leave that to other to calculate. regardless of that fact it is all relative. In effect EVERY shooting dice pool has been reduced by 2 dice, so there is no relative disadvantage. You can now gain an advantage by wirelessly enabling your smartlink. It comes at the cost of being vulnerable to deckers.

No, really. They're right. The +limit model has largely replaced the +dice model. That's kind of the whole point. That's basically what limits are there for, giving us another way to show that something is good, without it necessarily adding directly to your die pool. You may not like it as a model, but it's what the model is.

+1 Limit needs +3 dice to be relevant frequently enough. Let's assume your starting character is the quickstart rules streetsam with her pool of 10 for automatics. Her Ceska SMG has an Acc of 5. Her pool grants her, statistically, a median of 3 successes per roll, which is very comfortably below the Limit. If she had a pool of 12, it'd be a median of 4 successes, and she might actually run into the limit a bit. Still, she gains more successes over time than if she had a pool of 10 and an Acc of 7. It is much unlikelier to roll 7 successes with 10 dice than to roll 5 with 12. The Limit enhancement, henc,e is a nerf opposed to the +2 dice the wireless option brings - and even then, having your pistol hacked (or your eye, because smartlink is eyeware) isn't worth the risk. And bricking isn't even the worst a hacker could do.


So there was a design decision to nerf everything. What is the underlying math? That you now have devices give boni that are relevant in a fraction of a percent of all rolls a character makes? Awesome.

And then the rules dangle the lost (more effective) boni befor the player's face to dare them to become hacked. That's pretty smooth. 'Take it or leave it' is a risky business practice. People might just decide to leave it.

Which, as others have stated, is entirely ludicrous, as there is absolutely no reason a Smartlink needs to be connected to the Matrix to provide the bonus. Looks like I will just use a Red-Dot Sight for its +1 Dice, with no chance of being hacked. *shrug*

Plase read my edit on the post 225 to see why this in many cases quite frankly doesn't make any ingame sense what so ever.

Tymeaus:Unless thay gave it a wireless bonus, laser sight most likely can't provide +dice at all.

And many people are saying that the Model is FLawed. *shrug*

I for one would be mostly satisfied with an errata that changed Wireless Bonuses for equipment that ONLY interacts with the user to a DNI Bonus. Most of the gear in this category seems to have a bonus "it activates faster", which would make sense as a DNI benefit but not so much as a Matrix Connected benefit.

As far as the bricking/repair issue, yes, there is no real fluff covering it. Only pure game mechanics. Hackers can brick a device. It gets repaired with the appropriate skill roll. Most of the rules in the book are like that, just the rules with little in-universe fluff.

Would it be nice to have that fluff? Yes. Can I accept that there simply wasn't space in the book for the fluff? Well, I'm a little dissapointed, but I can understand that.



-k

Something something "cloud computing" something "synergies" something. Done.

Reverse the polarity of the genetic DNA?

Prior to 5e, the limit was # of dice rolled.

I wonder though, for instance with Smartlink, if non-wireless was +2 dice and wireless added +2 limit if people would complain. I even wonder if I would.

My real rage comes from... what can hackers do to mages that so totally screws them, like they can to street sams... can they for instance hack and turn off foci? If this is turning into magical hackerrun, then screw the mages some more.

Just like many people said that model is flawed, when we were working on it. But that doesn't change the fact that that's what the model is, so an "Umm, no" is an incorrect statement. You can shrug all you want to (and apparently that's a lot), that doesn't change that.

Not Done... *shrug*

Why do you think a laser sight will give +1 Die?

It will give +1 Accuracy. If you want the +1 Die then you have to turn on the wireless, with a chance of being hacked. *shrug*

Well we can also just not buy the 5th edition, as it's becoming obvious that many people will have to house rule about half the book to make it playable.

Why on earth would a hacker be able to turn off a focus? Other mages certainly can attack one another's foci, though.

I think he was refering to what this hackability probably does to game balance.

Making the statement that "it is what it is" does not fix the fact that it is still flawed. I understand that many freelancers were at odds with the way it went, but just because we now have these ludicrous Matrix bonuses due to forced online presence, it does not make it right. And that is what a lot of people are apparently up in arms about. Telling them to suck it up does not help the situation any.

Red Dot is not a Laser Sight. And if you truly believe that an online presence for a LASER SIGHT matters, then I do not know what to tell you.

Why should a Hacker be able to turn off a DNI only piece of Internal Ware?

There is no Red Dot in SR5, the nearest equivalent is the Laser Sight.

But if you want a Red Dot to give +1 Die (and please notice it's not +1 Dice), then by all means play with your house rule, but don't pretend it's RAW. *shrug*

SR5 <> SR4 + Limits

Limits in SR5 were not something tagged onto SR4 mechanics to make SR5.

The core SR5 mechanics may share many attributes with SR4, D6, 5,6 are hits, add two pools etc, but the changes in the pool range, armor values, ap, force, drain values, init, edge use, etc etc make SR5 significantly different from SR4.

SR5 without Limits doesn't play like SR4 either.

I have totally disregarded any conceptual arguments as they cannot be logically compared. Opinions cannot be definitively argued. As for personal opinions of the risk/reward value of wireless bonuses it is up to the individual to decide if and what to turn on or not. Many of you will not be connecting smartlinks because they do not offer enough advantage. I may or may not depending on the math and that particular character build. That kind of makes the system appeal to me. the fact that smartlink goes from a "always" buy to a "choice" is an improvement in my opinion.
I am just trying to get this thread to look at the apples on the apple tree instead of comparing them to oranges. It is even more ineffective to ask why the apple tree doesn't grow oranges. The model is +limits, live with it, it wont change between now and the 11th. I am not saying you have to like it, but you do have to accept it. Or not play SR5 in which case why be here wasting your own time at all?

It will show up, eventually. Don't need to house rule, though, as I will not likely purchase SR5.

Well, no. Even choosing not to buy 5th edition won't change that +limit, not +die, is the new basic assumption of gear. Sure, it'll keep +limit instead of +die from being the big thing at your game table, but it won't change the truth of the statement concerning it being a change in the core mechanic. So, y'know, "uhh, no" still won't be right, is all I'm saying. It's a little weird to me that this has turned into a point of disagreement. You might not like it. I might not like it. But gear modifying limits, instead of directly modifying dice pools, is a thing. Denying it doesn't change the reality.

From what I've read so far in my copy of SR5O, the concept of limit is great but the implementation needs some work: most limits are high enough that it's only an issue in a very small minority of case, and then you can just spend 1 point of edge to solve that issue (and edge is a common commodity now).
In fact, having vehicle ratings (especially speed!) as limits just doesn't work well in my estimation. A sports car has a speed limit of 7, while a slower car will have one of 5 or 6. In practice, unless the characters are using giant, way-past-chargen dice pools, this difference has no effect. Since the book states that speed is the appropriate stat for chases and vehicle action is relatively obstacle-free areas, I don't see why you would need higher dice pools to take advantage of the sports car speed (because that's what limit are for: they only give an advantage for characters with high dice pools). Put Schumacher in a VW beetle, put me in a ferrari and even though he has a much higher dice pool than I have, I will CERTAINLY beat him in a speed contest on a roughly straight line. With SR5's rules, it wouldn't be so.

In order for limits to matter, the average limit should have been 1/3rd of the average dice pool, pushing players to improve the later (using quality gear, for instance) to cash in on higher-than-average rolls. However, most limits are in the 4-7 range.

In general, I see lots of good things in SR5O. Higher skill caps vs. beginning max skill (while I think it went a tiny bit too far, it's still a good idea overall), better balance all around, better combat options.
There are a couple imbalances here and there (it is still too easy to summon a very powerful spirit spirit to mop the floor with opposition) but overall I feel that things are quite a lot better than they use to be on that level. Matrix rules are finally looking like something I want to play with as is, once I've removed all those weird "everything is on the matrix" oddities.

My main issue with SR5 is how gamey a few of the core rules are. The wireless bonuses, for instance, are remarkably poorly justified and are here purely for the mechanical advantage they provide for the hackers. The "one attack per pass" rule is another example of awkward, arbitrary rule that doesn't have a lot of justification behind it. It works for guns (because bursts have their own mechanic), but for spells I have to accept that recklessly casting heal and flamethrower is okay, but not casting flamethrower and another flamethrower using 2 different simple actions.

So overall, a net positive for me compared to SR4.

No, there isn't that much gear that gives +limit in the book, at least not much more than straight +dice. We'll see when additional rulebooks are out, but for now this is just not what the gear really does.