A pool of 10 and a Limit of 7 means the Limit becomes relevant in 0.00341% of rolls. A pool of 12 and a Limit of 5 become relevant in 0.36848% of rolls. A pool of 12 is one more median hit than a pool of 10.

Limits are, by and large, relatively useless to augment with boni unless you add significantly to the pool first. If this was intended, design goal met.

I was actually poking fun at the "always online" conceit. Take a deep breath, man You sound like me back in SR2 when I used to rage about Power Factors and the terrible satellite decking rules.

It seems like they've gone a bit overboard on the gamist elements to justify some design decisions (notably, the 'active decker' concept that's been pushed since 3rd edition) and I will wait until the inevitable Matrix sourcebook to see if they handle it with some grace and mechanical simplicity. I'm ambivalent on the MagicRun complaints, since Shadowrun has never ONCE had a decently implemented cyberware game subsystem that didn't end up being an overcomplicated turd.

now there is an idea.
if a hacker/decker has to be usefull in combat, why should mages/their foci be safe from them?
switch on the wifi on the focus, else you get more drain from using it, or grounding works again.

I like what they are doing but they may have pushed it too far.

I have to say that some things just wouldn't be allowed to be open to insecure wireless access.
And with a decent hacker every thing that is wireless is insecure.

So you use physical hardware that can not be hacked and accept the limitation.

The military is going to use fiber optic lines and laser comm links just as much as they possibly can because they are nearly impossible to intercept let alone be used to hack in to a drone.

A suborbital can be remotely flown but it requires a physical emergency switch to be thrown in the cockpit.
Can you physically sabotage\bypass the switch so that some one can remotely lockout the pilots and take over control of the suborbital?
Sure.
Can you do so remotely via hacking in.
No. Physical switch. There is no connection between the controls and the comm system unless the switch is thrown.
Because you don't take chances with a huge intercontinental missile.

I mean how safe would you feel if someone could remotely hack your hand weapons and fire them while they are in the holster?
I could really see triggers still being very common on smart guns but used as an active safety (must be pulled back to fire the weapon unless switch to manual mode).
Training would be if the gun is pointed in the direction of the enemy, the trigger is pulled back and held.
If you are pointing the gun any where else your finger is off the trigger.

Yes you can fire it with a mental command with no chance of the motion of pulling the trigger moving the gun off target since the trigger is already pulled back, but the gun will only fire if the trigger has been physically pulled back in to the firing position.

There always were choices, though.

Smartlink
Laser Sight
Red-Dot Sight.

Looks like that is 3 Choices, and I, at least, used all of them depending upon my character. Saying that there was no choice indicates that you (generic) were not looking hard enough.

And no, I do not HAVE to accept it. I can definitely make my voice heard to show my displeasure. And continue to do so as new books are rolled out to show that at least one person (and I know I am not on a island here) dislikes the direction my favorite game is heading.

Just like it showed up in SR4... on no it didn't *shrug*

TJ, please listen to me. Please. Shhhh. Stop. Listen.

Someone said "Hey, limit modifiers are the new dice pool modifiers."

In response, someone else said "Uhh, no."

STOP. Stop right there. Stop right there and listen to me again. At that very point -- in response to that very statement -- I said "Yeah, they totally are."

That's it. That, right there, is it. I didn't say suck it up. I didn't say "limits are awesome and you're a poopoo head!" I didn't say anything, except to point out that "Uhh, no" was wrong. I'm not saying Hermit, who said "Uhh, no" is a bad person. I'm not saying Hermit has to like limit modifiers largely replacing die pool modifiers. I'm not saying you have to like it, or I have to like it, or anyone has to like it. I didn't say it might not be a flawed mechanic. I didn't say it was the best thing since buttered Jesus, or anything at all. I'm just saying, as a factual fucking statement, "Uhh, no" is incorrect, because -- stay with me, here -- limit modifiers are largely replacing die pool modifiers. Whether it's a statement you LIKE or not, it is a statement that is TRUE.

And then you came along, and started arguing with me about it like I was saying something else, or like you read something else, or like anything at all else happened. It didn't. I didn't say anything else. You shouldn't have read anything else. You certainly shouldn't have read anything else and then disagreed with the imaginary anything else that you read.

So please, please, can you stop disagreeing with things I never said, now? I did not post a defense of limits, I only posted the factually true statement that limit modifiers are a very real thing.


He can't. That's why you can choose to keep your ware offline, or why some pieces of ware are offline by default. You are, like so many others, exaggerating what a hacker can and can't do, all while not really knowing in the first place what a hacker can and can't do.

You do realise the discussion has moved far beyond this? If it makes you feel better: I was obviosuly wrong. Chalk it up to wishful thinking. There, happy now?


No, but saying "suck it up" doesn't really help any.


And have them stop working as they used to.

I really wish people would stop shrugging so much.
If you're that indifferent, please stop the circular arguments, stop talking at each other and start voting with your wallets.

As far as I know, no one is standing behind you with a gun (be it on- or offline) and forces you to buy and / or play the thing.

Ummm, Yes it did... You should check out Gun Heaven.

No, Hermit, the conversation hadn't moved far beyond that, because multiple people kept replying to it like I'd said something I hadn't said, in defense of something I didn't defend, and in response to something I didn't respond to. The conversation couldn't move far beyond that, because it kept happening, which is why I had to waste that whole post trying to clarify it so that maybe -- just maybe -- the conversation could move far beyond it.

A smart gun should at least do as much as a laser sight/red dot especially for user that won't be able to take advantage of the +2 limit.

What they should have done with the smart gun link is +2 limit and +1 dice with no wireless connection.
An upgraded virtual version of the laser sight with extra precision due the smart gun features (range finding, bullet drop correction, and the like).
Plus the smart gun would work at a much longer range than a laser sight.

And when the smart gun is wireless connected then it is +2 limit and +2 dice.
The wireless connection allows the smart gun to tap in to outside data as a primitive Tac Net using wind speed, GPS, triangulation, and other data sources to improve the smart gun targeting system.

That's a decent justification (for smartlinks, at least), actually. Well, you still have ignore all the ancillary assumptions that lie behind how trivial hacking has become in Shadowrun to support tactical decking, but it passes the first read "ok I can buy that."

I've also always taken it as a given that each new edition of Shadowrun is actually a subtly different alternate universe from each other, which is why the same gear and magic can be so profoundly different.

Critias, I can see where you are coming from, but until everyone has a copy of 5th edition to work from, aren't we just really killing time?

So a shrug is perfectly valid.

But once we can talk apples to apples.....

And thanks all for taking the time to tell us about 5th.

Three choice, and one that was predominately used. The other two were used in mostly niche or RP self nerf circumstances.
I am not saying you should not express your discontent. But I would ask that you do so in appropriate venues. A rules assessment venue is for analyzing the specific objective details of the system. Your argument is better presented in an OP/Ed Thread. This is bad game design is not an objective argument. My personal opinion is that the game has been going in the right direction with every subsequent release, and I think this will overall, prove to be no exception. That is my Opinion, and I will not listen to anyone tell me I'm wrong. I will listen to their opinions in proper venues and reassess mine accordingly, but this will be the last time I speak of it here. I respect the others on this board enough to keep my comments on topic. I respectfully request that all of us do the same.

@ cndblank
I would go to
Laser sight:
Offline: +1 limit
Online: +2 limit (if you really need to give it only capacity)
Smartgun:
Offline:+1 Limit +1die
Online:+2Limit, +2die +10% to 20% range

Except a 1920's typewriter isn't a high-tech electronic device.

Before you dismiss this out of hand, consider the plausibility of forcing a 1980s electronic word processor to emit a line of text by bombarding it with a signal. Does it sound impractical and potentially very difficult? Yes. But given powerful enough technology would it be impossible? I don't know.

But what we're talking about here is futuretech affecting futuretech.



Their gear is fully immersed in a wireless matrix soup, because everything is -- that's the point of the wireless Matrix, it's ubiquitous, at least in civilized areas. I'm immersed in wireless internet signal where I'm sitting because I have a wireless internet router bombarding me with wireless internet signals. They occasionally tell my phone to do stuff because my phone is set up to easily interpret those signals.

Now I'm going to make a comparison:

You have a tape deck. The tape deck is "dumb" in that you have to push buttons to make physical connections to get it to route electricity the right way to get things to work. No level of electromagnetic induction is going to make the tape deck switch on by itself.

Now you have an iPod that has no mechanical switches except for an off button. Everything is interpreted electrical signals routed through a central processor. It's conceivable that you could hit it with carefully targeted signals to induce the proper electromagnetic effect within its circuitry to get it to do something without touching it. Conceivable, but not really plausible with current technology.

Now in the advanced cybertech future, imagine that such a device exists and running special programs can suss out and induce the proper response in cyberware that was never originally designed to accept external signals. This level of technology would make every single formerly secure system vulnerable to brute hacking attacks (remember, it's just smacking the cyberware with a signal, not establishing a two-way connection) in sort of the way an electrical device would be vulnerable to an EMP (external electromagnetic signal just overwhelming and overloading the circuitry) except in this case it would carry an instruction: shut down, run amok, whatever.

The only two responses to this sort of threat would be

1) Make cyberware dumber. Sorry, you can't have an internal processor active, because it's vulnerable to our new EMP-esque instruction bomb technology. Baseline functionality can be retained. Cybereyes can transmit along the optic nerve connection, but you can't run the software needed for a full DNI to control all those special features. Wireless Reflexes still make you faster because the nerve connections are upgraded, but it can't coordinate with Reaction Enhancer systems because the two need heavy processing power to keep you from accidentally leaping off a building when you really intend to sidestep just a little.

2) Create an external system watchdog that can handle these signals and ignore them if they're not fully authenticated by the system. Everything gets linked up via the commlink, and the commlink detects the new information attack and instructs your Wireless Reflexes to keep talking to the Reaction Enhancers and ignore that new command to make your legs start going all Riverdance.

The end result is that cyberware gets options for #1 and #2 depending on the preferences of the user -- you can keep your 'ware running on tortoise mode for security and flip it to fully active mode integrated into your PAN for linked/active mode if you need it.

It seems to me that this is exactly what the new rules have done, they just haven't made a similar justification by introducing the necessary threat that would completely kill off the old-styled cyberware. Eg, we got the endpoint of my little scenario without the meat of it.

Just a quick correction from the peanut gallery:

A pool of 10 dice with a limit of 7 becomes relevant in ~0.35% of rolls. A pool of 12 and a limit of 5 becomes relevant in 17.5% of rolls.

I'm not sure how greatly that impacts your statement (as I'm only loosely following this thread), but the above is based on simulations of 100,000 rolls zero'd in on those two cases.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Edit: Just for fun, it looks like a 10 dice pool with a limit of 5 will be affected in 7.67% of rolls.

Edit Part 2: For clarification, the % quoted is the frequency that the dice will come up with a number of successes that exceed the limit, and thus are clipped at that limit.

No, it's 5-minutes-into-the-future-tech. That doesn't have the same liberties in functioning weirdly as hard scifi technology has.


But in a legacy system like Shadowrun, they cannot afford to without ruining the legacy nature of it. SR4 barely managed that with the combination of Skinlink and penalty-free wireless shutdown. SR5 decides to do away with that for out-of-world, metagame reasons that center around forcing a mechanic that wasn't well received into the system.

I get .13% and ~12% respectively, actually.

That starts to really stretch credulity given the timeframe that hacking attempts are made in Shadowrun, and the ease by which they can be conducted. A single hacker can just sit in a public area and grief a person every few seconds by bricking or disrupting their electronics and cyberware. The game obviously doesn't get into the full logical consequences of its mechanics, and everything is written under the assumption you are facing opponents at some level of cyberwarfare parity, but it should be kept in mind when writing the background details and shadow-comments for what is rather obvious inference from the rules.

Think of it this way. If it really worked like the mechanics seem to say (and it's not just a tactical decker crutch), how could it be economically or practically justified for doing anything even remotely important in this wireless soup? "Because reasons" works as a first pass, but I would hope more thought was given to the implications than that.

Limit+1 is relevant, not Limit.


But the mechanic still doesn't force the decker to be physically present. He can just hack people from full VR, unless hacking people now is limited to LOS.

Even if this sort of cyberattack was harder, I don't see red sams leaving themselves vulnerable because Renraku decided that distributed computing was better than installing a decent commlink and using DNIs.

The current system requires both a large amount of brain farts from all power players and shadowrunners (who decide to keep a system that leaves them vulnerable instead of jury-rigging/building non-wireless secure replacements), and a complete departure from all we know about computing since the 2070s (when good commlinks could run small AIs), which regressed to the point that basic functions need to be offloaded to distributed computing.
My code has a (if x > limit) in it, which is exactly what you're mentioning.

I disagree on the 5-minutes-into-the-future part. If you were playing in a 2020 setting with the birth of ASIST, maybe. But most of this stuff isn't even conceptually plausible in the next 100 years, if it's even possible to begin with.



Hence my scenario of the addition of a New Threat That Changes Everything. Think of it like the big old reboot switches they trot out in the form of Matrix Crash X.0 or Comet-induced mystical crap or Great Ghost Dance whenever they need to justify changing the setting a bit.

Most of SR4's tech is rather plausible in a 20 years timeframe, excluding legacy bits like vectored thrust tanks and an MMORPG as the standard internet interface, and supernatural things like manatech.


That gets cheap if it is used every 5 in-game years, don't you think? And by what we know, it hasn't even been done.


Huh.

Dude, it's good enough to support your point anyway: in practice, limits' effect on the mechanics is very light at best.

Well yes, but I'm still surprised I failed so badly at probability.

I think a real-life comparison works here. A guy with a shotgun could walk into a convenience store and shoot up the place, but it doesn't stop you from going to convenience stores. It happens, probably every day, but the average threat is pretty low, because there are a lot of people and a lot of convenience stores.

So grief-hacking like this probably happens in Shadowrun, but actually doing it exposes the hacker to a lot of threat -- presumably some level of Matrix forensics exists, probably a lot better than modern internet forensics, and going around blasting the public with griefware hacks for no good reason will probably get the hacker arrested eventually. So unless the hacker has a great reason to do it (ie, breaking into a liquor store, bricking everyone's eyes and ears and recording devices, and stealing the cash) it's probably not regarded as recourse-free pranking.

No, I've checked, I just failed at python.

17%, .33%.

Let's see. I'm not sure how I can account for your .13%, however the ~12% is close to the amount of times that 12 dice will break a limit of 5 dice, by 1 success. I.E, Roll 12 dice, receive 6 successes.

The cumulative break down I'm showing is: Exceed by 1 @ ~11%, Exceed by @ ~4.7%, Exceed by 3 @~1.47%, Exceed by 4+ @0.39%.

That said, let me dig back through my code and make sure nothing is tallying funny...

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Plausible in 20 years? Sure, that's what we were saying 20 years ago about SR1 technology. I still can't plug my brain into my PC.



I'm not suggesting they've adapted any scenario to justify the change (and I'm fairly certain they haven't). That's why I'm sort of tossing out the idea that a good scenario to justify the change would help everyone along, so that at least it makes sense in-universe.

And yes, it gets cheap if it's used every 5 in-game years, but new gadgets come along and change things all the time, and people have to cope. I'm sure soldiers in 1900 enjoyed the hell out of not being bombed from the sky, but by the time 1940 rolled around I'm guessing they didn't balk at having to institute air defenses ("augh, why can't we just have a big wall anymore?! this is so unfair").

EDIT: What I'm saying is that in the 1900 to 1940 scenario, the advent of airplanes forced a change in the way defenses were designed. Similarly, something should be introduced in Shadowrun that changes the way matrix/cyberware defenses are designed. Sort of like how castles used to be awesome for defense, but then cannons. Castles had to change.

Ahhh, okay cool. We're square then.

Here's the code I'm using.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS



...It's a shame the forums don't preserve indenting.

Actually you can, but it turns out that the Brain runs on Commodore 64 while your PC is either Windows or Mac.

20 years ago, SR1 was 70 years in the future, with good reason.


Mostly unsuccessful attempts to use blimps and balloons for bombing runs were done as early as in the Franco-German war of 1871. Technology always develops gradually first. And there have been no discernible hints of *yet another* crash or whatnot. It would feel just as forced as the always-wireless rules do.


Artillery, fast, armoured vehicles and automatic weapons changed the face of war much more than airplanes until the early 40s. Walls became oblivious as soon as you could reliably lob shells over them that do massive damage.

Load "Smartlink-v.02b" ,8,1

And now SR5 is 60 years in the future, also with good reason. What are you saying?



You've jumped the tracks and are running off into the trees, here. Look at what I'm saying -- there could be a good reason for a technological shift from always-offline to dumb/smart off/on-line cyberware in Shadowrun. They haven't really given it a good reason, so I'm suggesting a reason. They're not going to go "whoops, our bad" and throw the book line into the shredder, so having a quasi-plausible reason for the shift in technology is probably a good thing.

Except it's actually isn't as you can get that dice pool mod back if you bend your ass for matrix raping.

Also i love how nobody has yet managed to explain how this change to smartlink makes any sense what so ever in world(i mean smartlink straight up stopped doing what it's supposed to do by fluff unless you connect it to matrix)

Houseruling the crap out is a much better thing.

I' m really hoping that the suggestion that wireless often means having a DNI link is correct.

What? Where do you take that from?

Sans snark, the only thing that bugs me is the lack of explanation. The rules are probably fine, but just need to be backed up by some fluff. Hell, the smartlink could turn on its Matrix sensors and read the goddamn perturbations in the local matrix field to detect range and motion of even the weakest-interacting electromagnetic source (like a person) in line of sight for all I care.



I'm a guy who practically rewrote every major system in SR4 as an expression of general dissatisfaction with those rules, so I'm no stranger.

I guess one way they could address this is if we flip the logic around and think of the wireless bonus as an extreme SOTA issue.

Normal gear you basically have to upgrade/maintain periodically to keep your damage/bonues/effects at same level.

If you don't remain up to date your values drop. This does not mean your device is suddenly doing less, rather everything else is doing more so the standard has been raised so to speak. So rather than having larger and larger numbers, they instead change what those numbers mean.

The cybergear is so complex now that there are literally dozens or maybe hundreds of mini-patches, updates, fixes etc.. constantly feeding into the devices and so they get their wireless bonus for remaining SOTA.

When you drop it offline, you fall behind so to speak and hence the lack of bonus. The gear is still functioning to baseline specs, but everyone else around you who is using the wifi updating is remaining at cutting edge and the bonus is a reflection of this.

It is a much higher turnover rate than for the other gear, reflecting the constant evolution of the tech and we could then add the wording that wireless items maintain SOTA automatically except where major breakthroughs may require full out replacements/major upgrades to meet the new standards.

Just one way of thinking, not saying it covers all bases though.....

There is supposed to be "Noise mechanic that encourages that. We have yet to see anything on it other that it's existence.

The problem of SotA rules is that many numbered stats in SR5 (and SR1-4) are not technology related. Suddently, your gear performs a lot less well against unmodified flesh or compared to a SotA-independent fireball.

Well my person colplaint, which i'm endeavoring to voice through other channels, as it stands that otaku punk or cyberterrorist can't actually do anything to protect his sam other then slave him to his gear and have a high willpower. Add to the fact that said sam has go wireless to get his wires to be as good as his dads means we've got a problem in my opinion.

I love the idea, but the system doesn't support that angle, because it's not a logarithmic scale of growth (that is +2 is not, say, 10 times better than +1, and +3 is not 10 times better than +2 or 100 times better than +1).

Likewise, since core human values aren't affected by SOTA, you'd get this ridiculous scenario -- that is to say that an unaugmented human is the static baseline, and you're suggesting making the smartlinked value the static baseline:

Guy 1 with no cyberware has Agi + Firearms 15.

Guy 2 with a smartlink has Agi + Firearms 15, and gets +2 from the Smartlink so has 17.

Guy 3 with a smartlink is just like Guy 2 but one day stops updating his Smartlink's software. So he has a +2 bonus (17 dice) for awhile, but then it drops back to 15.

Guy 3 never updates his smartlink, so to represent this he loses the +2 bonus compared to Guy 2. But that means he's effectively the same as Guy 1 who never had a smartlink in the first place, even though they're all identical except for the smartlink.

That is, without blowing up the bonus to +4, +6, +8 etc over time, there's no way to represent someone who has gear that's merely not as good, but is still better than literally nothing.

What you're suggesting is that the smartlink degrades over time -- which means that if Online Updated Smartlink is the static baseline by which you measure, everything else has to get comparatively worse over time to represent that baseline improving over time.

I think a lot of people will be house ruling the Matrix Bonuses. In fact I thnk that was stated waaaay back. The big issue most have with the way they're implemented is a 100% lack of Setting basis for the mechanics as are. I don't care that they don't match the last system, because they don't match the SR3 system, but throughout its years there has been a strong consistency of Setting to Rules in Shadowrun and for three editions the information was backwards compatible for how things worked too. That's why I dislike SR4, the Wireless Matrix 2.0 that appeared almost overnight in a poor implementation (IMHO) when it could have been evolved out of what was already in place. The mechanical differences between the two Magical Traditions vanishing and being purely flavour (I dare say there were later mods to this, I don't know, but in the core...) for a single one system for all. Decking becoming a far more mundane feeling hacking and rigging being rolled into that too (not like you couldn't be a decker-rigger before, classless system) eliminating the "tech identity" to one umbrella.

I like a lot of what I am seeing for SR5 and will be getting it. I can happily tie in the setting material from my SR123 library with the decade gap to make sense for the SR5 setting material. But the lack of sensible canonical reasoning for the Boni system. Nope. Houseruled to fit the universe. All the coming up with plausible "maybes" for how it works doesn't work with the Setting Material that is presented. It's not Lazy Game design as some have said (mostly people are happy with the concept) its just poor Workd Building that's created an inconsistency with Mechanics vs Setting (or Gamey as has been said) its bad for my noggin and I've already said I'm rewriting bits of the 10year gap to make it fit with the Sixth World I love and doubles so for folks who know the SR4 "decade" material.

True, the concept has holes under the current rules, but just trying to flip the problem over and try approaching this from a different angle.

And noncybered people become better and better through accelerated evolution BECAUSE REASONS.


Fair enough. Though, how do Matrix searches work then? Or logging onto hosts a continent away? Does that stop working too?

As a Mage who plans to avoid any cyber in my body if possible I heartily endorse this concept.