Hi folks,

as you might have recognized, i have been absent for a while... mostly because of the good old time-eating work. Therefore i hardly had time to follow the current discussions about the newly released SR5-core book. I my desperation i bought the pdf-version, hoping to get some explanations and to know what you all were talking about. But i have to admit i was quite dissappointed. Besides all the obvious mistakes (which are discussed at the moment in various other topics), every rule that reformed SR4-rule-crap was balanced out immediately by another "innovation" that ruined rules which were quite fine. IMHO sometimes it is better to fine-tune some mistakes, than completely starting over again. But we had this discussions at every new version of shadowrun and no matter which organization has the licence for the game, no matter who is the line developer, they all make the same mistakes over and over again. Errare humanum est, right?

But anyway, there are some things i really don´t get. I am sure it has been discussed somewhere else, but disscussions don´t have the tendency to provide a good overview. So please give me a short summary of the current status of the discussion.

1) cyberware and equipment costs for trolls +50%??? Really? Besides all the in-game problems a troll can have, this even makes them less attractive to play than ever before. Now you really have to think twice if you rather take an ork instead.

2) dwarfes without IR-vision?

3) trolls running as fast as dwarfes?

4) dwarfes running as fast as norms?

5) direct combat spells and overcasting becomes useless, therefore indirect combat spells become more attractive?

6) mystic adepts gain full access to magical skills and simply buy adept powers on top? No drawbacks?

7) initiative rules from SR3, but IP-costs for dodging, parrying etc? I can already see the runners complain if they will not be able to act once because there is no initiative left.

More questions will follow. thanks so far for your help.

1 and 2 weren't fixed? I thought they were supposed to be +50% lifestyle for trolls and IR vision for dwarves was an oversight, and known about before Origins.

nope, still in the PDF, and presumably still in the books. it's been mentioned that those will be getting errata at some point. when that is, well, that's completely dependant on catalyst (i know several freelancers have mentioned they already have a bunch of errata turned in to catalyst, and those two items were definitely included).

so, 1& 2 are mistakes, and are planned to be fixed. those costs were going to be for lifestyle-only, iirc, once they change it properly.

5) they are still useful in some situations, whereas before they were better in all situations than pretty much anything else. personally, i consider this a good thing, not a bad thing.

6) apparently, CGL is reviewing this. no word on any changes yet, however, but the general consensus is that yes, it is quite absurdly good.

7) IINM (haven't quite started the combat chapter yet), there are IP costs for dodge *bonuses*. if you don't want to spend IP on it, you have a passive dodge as well.

There is a big change from SR 3 Initiative. The attributes that make up your Iniitiative score, Reaction and Intiuition, are not halved, but simply added together. This means some characters without Initiative enhancing ware or magic will still get to go 2 times sometimes.

To be more precise: Having INT+REA >= 10 will always let you go twice unless you spend your Initiative score on other things.

Ugh not happy about that at all. 1 and 2 are big ones. CGL is not showing me they can handle errata any better, and that's going to cost them some sales on further products - even if it's just mine.

Yeah, I brought it up with Hardy in the IRC they did the other day, and Trolls paying more for cyber and bio is a known mistake. Apparently they were so rushed to get the product out that they couldn't fix known problems first, and are just now getting around to doing errata.


Note that this suggests the $300+ LE versions of the books aren't going to get updated proofing and errata before publishing.

And that's the problem people are having. If it was already known it shouldn't have wound up in the PDF.

This. If you've already spent a year or two writing the thing, there really is no excuse to not take the extra six or eight weeks to properly, perspicaciously proof the product par excellence, perhaps perfectly, and produce something palatable.

what makes you think it wasn't proofread?

mistakes happen. get over it. it takes a few seconds and a pen for you to resolve this problem for yourself.

i'll be the first to say that there are things to complain about in this edition. there are things that i like, and things that i don't like, and i've already started a couple of threads to deal with specific complaints that i have (i'm sorely tempted to start another one regarding how much time people are going to spend prone, but i think i'm just going to leave that one alone for the time being).

but seriously? this is a pretty minor thing, and they've at least confirmed it was a mistake and that they intend to fix it.

Except the errata thread is up to six pages and shows no signs of slowing down. It's not just one error, it's dozens to hundreds of them, throughout the text. If it was proofread, it wasn't proofread well.

It was proofed, it's just that 1) Proofreaders aren't editors or fact checkers, we're restricted to grammar and spelling fixes, and 2) Not everything we fix actually goes into the final document.

I disagree wholeheartedly sorry, would you go to a renowned restaurant and accept a half cooked burger for $100 ?

would you go to an amusement park and pay $100 dollars entry despite only half the rides being available ?

would you buy a book for $100 that comes with a pack of Crayons for you to add in the blanks or amend the mistakes ?

the answer in all cases is no. for me .. YMMV

how about if the burger was cooked 99% to your specifications, the amusement park had 99% of the rides open, and the book is one that you were going to modify or ignore a large portion of even if it there wasn't a single mistake in it and 99% of it is correct anyways?

because trust me, you're changing and ignoring rules when you play. you don't think of it, because you're used to using your house rules, (some of which will just be you trying your best to apply the rules the way you think they're meant to be applied, but which you apply differently because it makes more sense to you a different way than what the author's intended) but you do.

also, if you look at the general nature of the errata thread, much of it is not actually the rules being wrong, so much as it is very minor spelling or grammar mistakes which do not particularly interfere with your ability to play the game.

also, it's 6 pages because it's getting posted often 1-2 things at a time in separate posts.

Errors happen. But at some point a threshhold is met and it becomes unacceptable.

The fact that known issues, big ones, have been known about for at least since Origins and weren't fixed is a bad sign, period.

the fact that they had physical books in hand at origins should tell you why it hasn't been fixed since then. the fact that after all those books that were sold at origins, there were like, 3 people who actually submitted any errata here at all, and this is one of the largest shadowrun forums out there, should tell you something about how much information they got compared to how much they're getting now... and therefore should tell you why they haven't made changes to the PDF yet. once those of us who own the PDF get through with it, they'll have a huge pile of "errata" (some of which is spelling and grammar, some of which is going to be nothing more than fans griping about things that they don't like rather than actual incorrect rules, and some of which they may very well already have in their internal errata document that has not yet been implemented).

once they get through all that, it will make sense to release errata and update the PDF (and update the copy they'll send next time they do a print run). it doesn't make sense to publish half a dozen versions of the PDF in the first week since it has been out, and it makes even less sense to destroy all the physical copies of the books that they ordered some time ago (before we had given them errata to be able to update them with) and which only recently finally arrived to be available for purchase.

if you don't like SR5 or don't want to get it because you're content with SR4, that's fine. declaring it to be trash unfit for consumption just because it has errors in it (which is going to be the case for almost any book if you let large amounts of very critical people dig through it) is just silly.

just because you don't like it doesn't mean that it doesn't have any value.

What it tells me is that it was insufficiently playtested. The playtesters should have picked up on anything this glaring and it should have been fixed before anyone paid money for the game. I'm not saying 5th edition sucks or that its trash or that it shouldn't be played but errors of this magnitude are unprofessional, especially given how long some of them were already known before the books went to market. I really want to like this edition, I love things like the new ritual and alchemy rules for example. But there is so much what the fuck involved in it, from a calculation system for how much Runners should be paid that can't be used until after the run has finished to glaring errors that should have been fixed before the books went on sale that it's being made really hard.

look, as someone who has the PDF, i can tell you that it really isn't that bad. there are errors, most of them are pretty minor, for the most part it's well-done, and errata is being submitted so that future versions can get better.

people make mistakes. that's just life. get over it.

As someone who also has the PDF I'm saying it's pretty bad that they're selling a product that really feels like it still in the beta testing stage. Late beta, but still beta. I wish they'd waited a month or two to put out a better product.

i bought the pdf so for once i dont care how much errata there is, as long as i can download the updated pdf later. imo 5th ed is shaping up as the best SR ever. bring it!

How's that errata for Arsenal working out? Yea. That's the problem. The track record is there, and it's bad.

Nothing wrong with pointing it out, or letting if affect purchasing decisions.

It also doesn't make the whole line trash either I'll grant.

As someone who's been contributing to the errata thread, you and me both.

Most of the stuff we're finding is shit that an automated spellchecker would catch, or missing/incorrect basic rules.

I could understand bad page references, that happens, but this is basic shit like power point costs, or the issue with trolls that was brought up weeks ago when the previews came out.

Don't worry, the errata will appear in the 5th revised edition. In two years, for $40 bucks.

i had the pdf for Max. 2 days and it wasnt really a problem tofind at least
ten mistakes per hour . what bothers me most is not that the current edition is full of mistakes, that hasnt been different in previous editions. really Bad is that we are talking about the f*** 5th edition and the mistakes are getting more instead of less . THAT is unprofessional. i m talking about german professionalism. 50 or 80 % might be acceptable in your world , not in mine

I really don´t want to offend anybody, but - currently 6 pages of errata shows that this is a big failure. I think everybody including me would be pleased to playtest or failure-check new documents for free. We are here, so use us goddamit.

The list goes on:

dwarfes start with body 3, the attribute modifier table only shows "body +1"

9) the average assault rifle has a damage code of 10-11. Means that you can shoot every but the mightiest spirit with ease. That is ridicculous. Even the auto-successes doesn´t balance this out.

10) APDS at character creation????