Hello dear dumshockers,
This thread shall be a short collection of stuff you are afraid was changed in a bad way or you are afraid was not changed. Mechanics you feel will cause frustration or the like.
I started this thread because it seems to me a lot of threads are just experiencing a lot of "cross contamination". The fear of one thing causes people to be much more cautious about something they might not have cared about. This thread shall serve as an overview of whats the bandwidth of negative expections overall.
I would like it, if discussion about the single points was kept to a minimum, but I guess I myself will have a hard time with that.
To show how I imagine it, I will give a few examples.

@Mods: If you feel this thread gets out of hand or contributes to falming feel free to delete it. I am aware that it is walking a fine line.

Things I fear were not changed:
Essence loss: The point that you could buy back magic for few Karma and this way enjoy the benefits of both ware and magic has always bothered me. It increases the gap between the good and not so good created mage or adept but mostly it enables espacially adepts to get the best of both worlds, making it very hard for SAMs to compete with them in the end.

Things I fear were changed in a bad way:
Mystical adepts: This fear is augmented by my fear of the Essence loss mechanic. If mystic adepts are able to buy up powerpoints for a few points of Karma they would now be able to get the best of nearly three worlds. Beeing a good mage, a good adept and a SAM. Sure they would need to spread the Karma around, but due to the fact how many synergies existed in SR4.01 this dissadvantage will not carry very far I fear.

High Quality Ware becoming too cheap: Ok, thats kind of a hard point to really get behind. While it seems to be a great thing to give the SAM more ware, I am afraid that cheap high quality stuff will not really get to benefit the SAM the most. It will be great for characters who use only part of their essence for ware. And again this concern is again mostly due to the first two. It would mean that not only can magic characters now benefit from more ware for the same essence but they will be also able to lower the "side effects" like detectability by cyberware scanners. For a SAM that will probably not work at all, due to the larger amount of ware he will be using.



You see most of my fears are connected to each other. They burn down to the balancing between mages and sams. I would be interested if it is the same for you or if you are dealing with more or less independent fears. And I would like it if you too could but your "fears" in context. I tried you may the judge of my success.

Thanks
Irion

Nonsensical Online Active Cyberware.
I think we all know the perceived/"actual" problems here. Matrix Bonus can be very cool but only for the stuff that it logically makes sense for.

Lack of Tradition impact in magic making it all "the same thing really".
I'm hoping the magic book supplement delivers more of the cool flavour (mechanically and setting) that SR 4 removed in the name of streamlining.

Lack of Setting Material matching up with mechanical implementation.
The Smartlink and some of the other Cyberware stuff already does that, but it's not insurmountable. Other stuff though? Who knows.

Mystic Adepts.
They just look broken out the gate and don't slow down.

This. Nothing more and nothing less.
That said, everything being hackable including your cyberware and underwear was a thing when 4th edition came out of the gate and they backed off of it a lot. They liked the idea and tried to give it a mechanic, but people are as fond of the idea as they are of the Xbone. Hopefully they'll pull a Microsoft and walk this back in future supplements.

I hope the new magic books really gives us some good details on different "Spirit Types" and creates a good difference to the traditions in how they interact with them.

Maybe I'll have more when I finally have a book in hand.

Street samurai can't shoot twice using simple actions, have fewer passes under the new initiative rules, suffer from social penalties from low Essence, don't halve the lower of the two between cyberware and bioware, and are either vulnerable to wireless hacking, or gimped in the basic functionality of their 'ware.

Obviously, SR5 does not go far enough in gimping those pesky street samurai. I propose a "random cyberware damage" table that the GM can roll on several times a session. Or maybe instead of all of these complicated hacking rules, they could just say that deckers can command a street samurai with a free action, and the street samurai is compelled to obey because of all of his cyberware.

Well, yes and no.

The firearm attack actions are now:
SR4 ---> SR5
Single Shot ---> Single Shot (Simple Action, 1 bullet)
Two Shots ---> Semi-Auto Burst (Complex Action for SA weapons, 3 bullets)
Burst Fire ---> Burst Fire (Simple Action for BF/FA weapons, 3 bullets)
Two Bursts ---> Long Burst (Complex Action for BF weapons, 6 bullets)
Long Burst ---> Full Auto 6 (Simple Action for FA weapon, 6 bullets)
Full Auto ---> Full Auto 10 (Complex Action for FA weapons, 10 bullets)

More or less, "firing twice" in SR4 is now combined into one attack. Two shots became a burst, two bursts became a long burst. You're throwing the same number of bullets downrange (plus one extra in the case of SA bursts), but just rolling to hit once.

And if you want to dual-gun fight, you can do that too, but you split your dice pool.



-k

The difference he's getting at is that SR4 allowed you to deliver the weapon's damage code twice using Simple Actions.

Street Sam with 4(6) Reaction, 4 Intuition, Initiative 10 and Wired II.

SR4 will get 3 or four successes and a total Initiative Total of 14 with 3 passes.

SR5 will get an average of 11 on 3 dice so Initiative Total of 21 which is 3 passes at -10 initiative per pass.
Plus a free action every initiative pass and things like blocking and dodging a single attack are at only -5 initiative.
If you get a 26 Initiative Total you can get 3 passes and do a dodge.

As far as Bioware and Cyberware, Alpha, Beta, and Delta grade ware is much cheaper which will more than make up for it.
For example Delta Ware is only 2.5 times base cost instead of 10 times base cost.
Also it is so much easier to upgrade.
For an existing character the GM can just convert some of the bioware and cyberware to the next grade to make up for the missing essence.

Low essences will likely only subtract one or two from the social limit.

I'm just going to house rule the last one.

As far as attacking with 2 bursts, as a GM, I like the other players getting a chance to act against the enemy before the Street Sams and Physical Adept clean up.

And having recoil be cumulative for the turn unless a non shooting actions is taken is brilliant.
I understand that you get Strength divide by 3 plus 1 in natural Recoil Comp.

I would throw in that at Origins my Russian hitman was dropping a mook nearly every pass with his rifle.

Casters were taking multiple rounds to drop folks, though they had more options for mass targeting.




-k

In the larger sense, the Street Samurai will go first again, which was something SR4 sorely lacked, since you could have 3 IPs and still be going behind the 1 IP and 2 IP characters if those happened to get a good roll. This ran contrary to the idea that they're getting all of these extra actions because of their superfast reaction time. Now 'going first' and 'going a lot' are tied to the same roll. Much better.

From what I've seen Street Samurai function a lot like they do in 3rd. Which is fine. We also have four other threads where we are discussing these things. I think we should try and keep this one on topic and just to statements about our personal worries and discuss them in the other threads.

I'm not going to comment on the other points (others will do that for me) but I'll point out that my longstanding argument has always been that Edge was overpowered. Now, it looks as if it's even more overpowered than before. Does anyone have any argument to counter this?

Well you might be getting Edge back more often but you will also be using it more if you are hitting any limits hard.
Plus with fewer dice being thrown (at least until players get their skills in the 7 to 12 range), people will need Edge more often.

The importance of Edge gives mundanes a nice little boost over Awakened, as they'll trend towards higher Edge?

Edge is a lot easier to get for humans (a mundane human will have a minimum of 5 Edge), and refreshes a bit faster, but... while talking about something I like may be a bit off topic, I do like the changes they made - it is a lot clearer how spending Edge works now. And it's mostly little things, like clearly stating that re-rolling dice doesn't let you negate a glitch or a critical glitch. One big change - long shot tests are gone.

Well, that's good news at least. Is there something replacing it?

There's some speculation that most negative dice pool modifiers are being shifted to Limit modifiers, reducing the necessity of Long Shot Tests.

Well, I found the rules in the preview for edge. I think the only thing which really got on top of everything is the "one point of Edge per day" rule, as far as I see it. And looking at the other rules it quite seems like, well not that extrem.
I can't get around if If I do like the idea that the rate of refreshing edge does not depend on the attribute or if I do not like the idea...

Second Edit: Sorry, RHat I kind of found the part and changed my post before I saw yours.

Every in-game day.

I don't
I think You're right
I guess we'll be seeing a lot of "High Edge Chars" in the Future
(including some of mine )

He who dances with the Flow
Medicineman

or unless they Houserule The Matrix Bonus
and give Smartlink its rightfull +2 Dice or Laserpointer +1Dice without any WiFI-connection
You'll even have a higher Dice Pool ,especially with Higher Skilled Chars
F.E. Attr 10 & Skill 10 & Special 2 & Smart+2 = 24 Dice to Hit with higher Weapondamage and higher Soakpool

with a higher Dance
Medicineman

Not as such, although the main new function is that it overrides limits.

Due to the wording on physical Drain, it is unclear whether getting a lot of successes for spellcasting using Edge would turn the Drain physical or not (having successes over your Magic rating makes Drain physical - normally this would only be possible with overcasting, but Edge can do it too). I only have the previews, so maybe the full ruleset has an answer.

I think it was Bull who commented on this in another thread. If your successes exceed your magic it will be Physical and that includes if you are using edge. So you can burn edge for pulling off a bigger hit, but you pay for it.

I am still not sure I like this amending as you will get cases where you throw a overcast force spell, but if you roll low on the successes you still only suffer Stun drain. Yes the end damage is low as well, but you were still trying to channel a high level of mana through your system, you are still overstressing the body, but because you basically fumbled the casting you don't suffer the backlash so badly. It actually rewards low rollers in a way.

Again this will be rare cases as your dice in these situations should roll plenty, but still it is an oddity in the math that will pop up from time to time.

I am still debating with house ruling it back to Force over Magic = Physical, but will try the new way for a while to see how much of an effect on play it has first. I suspect they did this to lessen the impact of drain a hair since it changed to just F instead of the old F/2.

I'm afraid that Quickening will still be essentially broken. If you Quicken a buffing spell of any sort on someone, then that person can no longer successfully infiltrate anywhere with even low-level magical wards set up, because the people involved in setting them up are automatically notified when active spells cross them. Then they'll send someone capable of dispelling your Quickened spell. Who would waste Karma that way?

So dual-wielding is as bad as it is in SR4?

Given that you can get an overall larger dice pool due to the higher skill caps... Maybe, maybe not.

I don't have a current Priority chart in front of me to number-crunch, but is getting a super-high Edge easier in SR5 than in SR4.5?

I worry that the vast majority of adept powers will just be c&p'ed as has happened with the last edition transition. Just about everything else gets reevaluated, but adept powers are an afterthought.

~hmmm~ I seem to recall that there was a rule for voluntarily limiting your number of hit. Now, if that rule still exists I just wonder how that will interact with the Drain rule and Overcasting.

Good question, the preview shows this:
If the number of hits (not net hits) you get after applying the limit exceeds your Magic rating, the spell’s Drain is Physical instead of Stun damage.

So if you set your Force equal to magic you should never be going into Physical drain since Force is your limit on the spell casting. So if your Magic is 5 and you set Force to 5, even if you roll 7 hits, limit of 5 applies so 5 hits go forward to be resisted and your drain should remain as Stun unless I am misreading this.

Not sure about any other rule concerning additional limits, but the main book may have something.

In this particular case you'd never be overcasting. My question is aimed at the voluntary selfrestriction of hits and dice pool size that were possible in one way or another. If I'm still allowed to voluntarily reduce my pool dice and even pre-emptively limit the number of hits prior to comparing my actual hits against my Limit / Magic Rating, nothing will stop me from constantly Overcasting at Force 10 with Magic Rating 5 without ever taking physical Drain. Direct combat spells appear to be off the hook already but what about the rest of the spells?

Force is your Limit Cochise. That's all we've seen in the previews, so of you throw Force 10 and have Mag5 and come up with 6hits, then that's Physical drain. Although I don't see your math, why would you want to throw Force 10 if you're only after 5hits? Except for things that use Force as their baseline for effect?

Well, your damage is typically derived from your Magic attribute and hits. So if you cast Clout (physical indirect) at Force 10, your damage is Magic plus net hits which is then applied toward any armor/defences the target has. The Force chosen thus lets you keep more of your hits which applies toward the end, so if you are somehow self-limiting your hits why would you declare Force 10 when you are actually effectively taking it at Force = Magic to stay under the drain threshold. Again Force is your limit which you set at the time of casting, that IS your voluntary reduction/limit.

Now there may be spells where Force does directly apply to the end effect, but we will have to see how the new spell descriptions apply before we can go into that.

I don't know about SR4.5 , I only know about SR4 and 4A and I guess its a Yes
because the pos. qual. Lucky is only 12 Karma in SR5 instead of 40 in SR4A
and if You use the Prio System its quite easy for a Human to get 5 or 7 Edge from the Start

HokaHow
Medicineman

Looking at the thread title: I'm currently afraid that there may be spells where Force does directly apply to the end effect

Lets spell it out shell we: It is priority C for that one. Is it just me or are metas kind of fucked under this new system, espacially the troll?
From the looks of it, I would say skills give you the most bang for the bug. I mean 10 freaking skill groups?
Attributes kind of flat out at B. I mean you can increase your dumpstats but for what?

But I need to give it to the system, you have to make choices. Even starting with magic as priority C as a mage might not be the worst of ideas...

And here is what I am most afraid of as a quote directly from the book:

Thats the center of it.
While adepts and mages will be probably much weaker in the beginning compared to SAMs (due to the fact, that a SAM can get his hands on about 450k and this combined with cheaper non-standart ware) but with some growth the adept will catch him, and if he does he won't just be as good physically. He will be a spellslinger and to top this of he will be able to cover even another base due to synergies he can use and abuse.

Maybe I'm missing something here but from the preview... priority E human is listed at Human (1)... which means only a single special attribute point.

That would put the minimum edge for a mundane human at 3.

Priority D is Human (3)... for a minimum edge of 5.


Overall I disagree with Cain... I love edge. It's one of the keys to making a good all-rounder in SR given how punishing BP or priority is on making well-rounded chars as opposed to focused ones. No social skill... spend some edge on that critical etiquette roll.


I'm also 100% on board with mystic adepts being broken right out the gates. The entire point of the concept is they have to make hard choices... now they have no hard choices. They're simply mages who can't astrally project while also gaining the benefits of being a full adept for a song and a dance. God forbid they ever republish possession rules with mystic adepts as they currently are! (SR4's possession rules were badly broken enough... now on top of this cheddar will leave the rules looking swiss).


I can't agree with glyph on the change to 1 attack per round... The damage codes for those single shots appear to be a lot higher. With more limited armor... the soaking multiple weaker shots to zero or 1 point is going to happen a lot less it appears to me. Toss on top of the dodge/block for a minor initiative cost... and it seems like it would work out fine to me. All the rest as regards social penalties, hacking penalties, etc. newly imposed on the sammies I agree with.

If he doesn't take Priority E for Magic, he's not a mundane human.

For mundane humans, yes. Priority D for metatype gives you 3 points (Edge of 5), and Priority C for metatype gives you 5 points (Edge of 7). Metahumans have a harder time, because they have to pick a higher metatype Priority to get a decent number of points for special Attributes. Metahumans and awakened characters can both get high Edge, but compared to the mundane human, they need to make significant tradeoffs.

I'm not allowed to discuss specifics, but Edge 8 characters are broken in SR4/4.5, and it's been proven many times. Dumpshock is full of Edge shenanigans, if you want to look them up.

Elborating why you have a problem with something is (in my humble opinion) inside the thread (or at least I tried to point it out).
What I would like to prevent is directly arguing specific points back and forth. Edge was now one page because I guess me and some other people could not see what was meant by it right away.

So saying I fear edge is to easy to get because ..... and because edge was so damn powerful and I have the impression that it is even more powerfull because...

I think thats ok. It's just that I would wish that there should not be replies outside of questions, if somebody really does not understand what you meant. Not like "I think you are wrong"....

I'm afraid that it's still going to cost the new racially modified attribute times X to increase an attribute. So a troll wanting to go from strength 9 to 10 would cost, for example, 50 Karma.

Biggest Problem here: I cannot fire two 3-bullet bursts on 2 different targets in SR5 (you are only allowed one attack action per pass iirc).
Another problem: As you are only allowed one attack action per pass envision the following: SMG in the right, Heavy Pistol in the left hand. I want to shoot two 3-bullet bursts with the SMG and 2 Single shots with the Pistol. I do not think that would be possible in SR5.

It might be used with in cases with armored opponents as Force also acts as AP. But the question remains.

Is the rule that a character may voluntarily limit his successes (i.e roll 7 successes but choose to only use 5) being ported over to this edition?

Are these things possible in reality?

So we know from the preview you can do the following:

You can still shoot the two 3 shot burst on two targets, you would use the free action Multiple attack along with your shooting action but then you split up the dice pool.

Alternatively, you can shoot two weapons again using the free action Multiple attack along with your shooting action and again split the dice pool.

I suppose if you really wanted to go nuts one and your GM likes fireworks he could say the Multiple attack free action could invoke both conditions to allow for firing two shots/burst from both weapons, but you would have to split the dice pool 4 ways (half pool per weapon and half again for each shot/burst used). So either use edge to beef up the dice or expect to make a lot of noise and look impressive but not a lot of hits. And the combined recoil would be nasty so don't go playing willam tell while doing this.

Mostly what Sendaz said. Only we don't know exactly how the Multiattack (multiple targets) works as it's fleshed out on a page that isn't in the preview. Firing two weapons at a time is possible in both the Simple Action and Complex action attacks as that simply requires splitting your pool for the two guns.

Which is another pretty big nerf for the Sam once you have a pool > 4 dice (in SR4 it used to be: Multiple targets: –2 per additional target that Action Phase)



That is quite the same then, thanks, I forgot about the multiple attack option!



SR4a says: "Additionally, any uncompensated recoil modifiers applicable to one weapon also apply to the other weapon." Not so much a problem with 2 SMG that have -5 RC each and shoot two short bursts (for 5 recoil each) per Phase (assuming that this stays the same).

So all in all: Simpler but still a big nerf imho.

Yes.

/
With any chance of hitting the target(s)?

Splitting the dice pool for using a long burst to target multiple targets I think reflects the real world chances much better.

What is still silly is that extra IP lets your automatic weapon fire more bullets per second. But I like the game play that creates so I'm happy to leave reality (where I shoot 100% less bullets) at the door.