Hello all

I'm relatively new to Dumpshock, but not Shadowrun. I've been playing since 1st Ed. but have yet to to pick up 5th Ed. and would like some feedback on whether or not its worthwhile to do so.
So I'd like to ask you all for some short honest reviews, thoughts, or a list of pros and cons about 5th edition. I just need some helpful input before I spend the little extra money I have on 5th Ed.

Thanks in advance

- Drevicious -

In all honesty, I would sit on 4th for a bit. I like the Matrix changes in 5th, but there aren't any supplements for experienced teams.

Also, there are... Editing issues which need to be fully dealt with. I actually have high hopes for 5th in the future, but if you can spare the expense for now, it isn't gonna cost you much.

Started with Shadowrun 3, 6 months ago and still quite happy. Bought some SR4 + SR5 stuff though - never used yet.

Looks like we stick to SR3 for some time

I personally would stick with SR4A (the latest version of the SR4 rules.) You have all the supplements out already and easily accessible, the rules are pretty well-developed, and the writing is more or less pretty good. The quality of the releases doesn't start to decline until after Ghost Cartels. I consider the release of War! to be a watershed moment, where the quality of editing, writing, and rules takes a nosedive into the abyss from which Shadowrun product line never recovered.

I cannot say with any honesty that SR5 is worth the change. I tried to like it, but (in my humble opinon) they fucked too many things up, and decided to lick the boots of SR3 grognards instead of moving forward with the line, resulting in many moves backwards. SR5 has soured me on Shadowrun to the point I have largely moved on to other games and decided not to give Catalyst any more of my money.

Now, that all said I am a huge proponent of people making their own decisions. I urge you to get a copy of the SR5 core rules and giving them a look over, and maybe even give them a side-by-side with the SR4A core rules and see what you think. I admit there are some areas where I think SR5 did great with the rules, and had some ingenious solutions to problems with SR4A. But the places where they messed up, they messed up big, to the point where it isn't worth it to take the whole just to enjoy the modest improvements they implemented.

I'd stick with SR3 until more source books are out for SR5. Our group went from SR4 to SR5 mostly right away. We are having to house rule in a lot of source material to keep the game moving and not have characters lose capability. You'll want to wait at least until the main gear, matrix and magic books are out. Run and Gun should be out soon that is the first one. That is the main gear book. I'm sure there will be more digital-only releases between Run and Gun and the next major supplement.

I've played a few SR5 sessions and made numerous characters, but I'm really lukewarm about the entire edition.

For my home games, I'm going to stick with SR4A. For cons and store games, I guess I'll play whatever.

Throwing in my 2 to say hold off for a while. This is pretty much prime 4E time, as the rules are literally as clear and cohesive as they'll ever be, and until 5E gets properly fleshed out it can't really compare.

~Umi

I'm with Umidori and the others for sticking a little more with 4E over 5E. At least until some of the splat books are out.

SR5 has some very poorly thought-out rules, especially regarding the matrix (particularly, matrix bonuses and bricking hardware), and some things are so vaguely defined or contradictory that I would hesitate to even call the rules functional at this point.

I would recommend waiting to get any SR5 stuff, at least until they have had some errata to fix/finalize things. Even then, I would hesitate to make the switch - SR3 and SR4 have both been around longer, have had mutiple errata, have a wide range of supplementary material (often available used), and have a wealth of house rules and other fixes for their problematic areas that you can find on the forums.

I'd suggest you wait until SR5 is out of beta.

Stick with SR4A and wait for SR5 if errata and all core books (magic, cyberware etc) are out.

SYL

I know I'm in a minority here, but I think SR5 rigging and hacking are leaps and bounds ahead of SR4. As a result, I endorse the system.

Part of the reason I can do so is that one of the main complaints here -- that the extra core rule books aren't out yet -- doesn't really bug me: most of the excellent games that I've run or joined in on have been influenced almost exclusively by the basic rule set. (Though I'll concede that the magic book usually does make life better and more interesting.)

That said, I'm in agreement that there are some rough edges in the editing and "rules numeracy" of SR5. They're not insurmountable, but you need to be ready to do some interpretation or ask Dumpshock for its many opinions.

I played SR4 (I didn't stick around for SR4A) I think SR5 is a big leap forward. The limits system makes a big difference on skill spam. The matrix is much better because it's not just about using commlinks with good programs, you actually need a hacker. The system relies a lot less on extended tests than SR4. From my experience it also seems that super powered or down right bullet proof characters are less common in SR5. (In general I'd describe the whole system as more lethal than SR4) Though I agree with above posts that the editing is very spotty but it's worth noting that compared to SR3 and SR4 the SR5 book has about 120 extra pages and rivals many college text books in it's depth.

Like Pragma most of the Shadowrun I've personally enjoyed was with just the core books.

You needed a good hacker in SR4 as well, not just hardware ...

SYL

Sounds like 4th and 5th Ed. Shadowrun are heading for a very split fan base like 3.5 and 4th Ed D&D

Thanks to everyone who responded to my question, looks like I'll be sticking with 4th Ed. for now.

-Drevicious-

That's not true. You could have gotten away with a good agent program to do all your hacking for you. A rating 6 agent is almost as good as max skilled hacker in SR4.

In SR5, a rating 6 agent is going to be nothing compared to a skill 12 and logic 6 decker.

Skill 12 is just dumb... *shrug*

I am a big proponent of SR4A, and I disagree. Part of the problem with SR4/A hackers was that they had to grow outward instead of upwards. What I mean is, they hit their "max" in both skill and hardware entirely too early, and had to diversify into other roles in order to continue growing. I think allowing skills in general to go past 6 (and also scaling SR4 Matrix programs and hardware to a max of 10 or 12) would've solved alot of issues with hackers, and even let them keep up with late-game technomancers.

Different Strokes, I guess... I never had a problem (and still don't) with the 9 point Spread (Unaware to 7) of Skill potential in SR4A.
Problem is with starting character levels (It was the rare skill for me that started above 3, so of course I have no problems with the skill system) more than anything else. Well, and the way programs are modeled in SR4A, of course. It also did not help that they divorced stat from the Matrix, which was a horrible choice that they corrected in SR5. As for Technomancers, well, they too were horribly modeled in SR4A, which got some attention in SR5 as well.

I think SR5 needs a couple of splat books to grow into it's shoes. Once the cyber, magic, and matrix supplements are released we'll all feel better.

I agree with the majority in this thread, but I feel moving to 5e should be postponed till at least a decent errata is out, too.
And I'm not sure I'll be rushing over, given the new matrix, too.

But you can't get away with ever inflating dice pools in SR5, like you can in SR4. So it makes sense that there are more ways to increase your DP in SR5.

In SR4, if you have your pornomancer (since they're the easiest to get high DP on) rolling 30+ dice in social tests, they'll pretty much destroy any semblance of game balance.

In SR5, they'll just hit their limit more often.

Really, did it make sense for the technomancer to be able to shoot better with a drone than a Sam who's entire archetype was dedicated to shooting people?

There were too many ways to cheese the system in SR4.

How about this:

I played Sr3 for... its entire run. The last time I ran an Sr4 game it was at GenCon the year it was released.

Will I be more happy with Sr5?

I have no idea why I'm in the minority here either. Probably because I don't have a time machine, unlike everyone else and so I can't scoff at the direction of wireless mechanics based on what technology is like in the 2070s....... even then I don't know why that matters...... because this is like, a game and stuff, but I digress.

5th Ed is leagues ahead of anything in prior editions. How anyone plays 3rd or before is beyond me. Having target number AND pool modifiers makes no sense and statistically it's a basketcase. You can actually read the matrix rules once and have some idea of how it's supposed to work. I guarantee you that you will read the 4th Ed rules 50 times and still basically make all the matrix stuff up on the fly. Yes, like all RPGs it's not perfect but it's better, a lot better than Shadowrun 4.

The only reason I wouldn't upgrade to 5th Ed is if you want to keep the same characters that are heavily invested in another edition, because as others have said we're still on the basic rules at this stage. I've recently restarted a campaign because of 5th Ed and I think it was worth it anyway.

I'm not sure. For all of the throwbacks to SR3, SR5 still seems more heavily influenced by SR4, to the point of copy-pasting big parts of SR4 to the new edition.

The good:
Skills, you will probably like more - the problem with SR4 skills was that they had too narrow of a range to represent what they were supposed to. The skill descriptions were over-hyperbolic, describing differences of a point (a third of a success, on average) as if they were wide gulfs in skill. This was compounded by the fact that you could hit the hard caps for a skill at character creation, and that skill was only about a third of your dice pool. A range of 12 gives everyone more room for vertical growth (a mixed blessing - being forced to diversify your skills was not always a bad thing), and doesn't give you absolute-best-in-the-world gunfighters who can often be outshot by Joe Average.

The mixed:
Hacking is greatly simplified, but on the other hand, they also have those horribly implemented wireless bonuses, and the equally bad rules for bricking hardware (messing up something's software, I can see. Shorting out a street samurai's wired reflexes so that they need to actually be repaired is a bit more of a stretch - they went too far in giving the hackerdecker "something to do.") - Rather than having them disrupt communications, hack drones, or mess with security systems, they gave them this, which, like the wireless bonuses, suffers more from implementation than the basic idea.

Initiative is better in the sense that initiative passes and initiative score are tied together again - no more someone who goes last but then goes three more times. The bad is that the difference between a high-augmented initiative and a non-augmented initiative is less than in SR4, and will be really shocking to someone used to SR3 speed sammies.

Limits are a new rule, a limit to how many successes you can get based on either a calculation based on Attributes, or based on a rating of the gear you are using. Some of the formulas/Attribute mixes seem a bit off to me, but overall, I like the concept. I remember reading a Gunsmith Cats manga where the main heroine, Rally, is facing off against a criminal, armed only with a Saturday Night Special, and she realizes that out of an extremely short range, her accuracy will be non-existent, and this is someone who habitually disarms people by shooting their thumbs off. I also liked the idea of having another improvable vector to soak up some of that dice pool bloat - there can be things that add to accuracy instead of to the dice pool, now. I have not really seen it in play, though, so I couldn't tell you how effective it is in practice.

Character creation is the priority system, which an SR3 veteran will at least be familiar with. But anyone other than a beginning gamer will feel constricted by this - it isn't as bad or limited as the SR4 version of priority that they had in Runner's Companion, but it is still a step back, flexibility-wise.

The bad:
The book really need eratta. Already we have things like being told mystic adepts will get a "fix" to the cost to gain power points (it is fairly easy to have a mystic adept with a Magic of 6 for spellcasting, and 6 points of adept powers). Some other things are vague, or cases where you have to house rule what you think the intent of the rules was, because the RAW flat out doesn't work, or is contradicted later.

Mages have been heavily nerfed, with higher spell Drain and much lower damage for direct combat spells. Setting aside the question of whether they have been over-nerfed, I can say that coming from SR3 to SR5 will be a major shock. SR3, honestly, is, in my opinion, the point where mages were the highest powered. SR4 nerfed them, and SR5 continues that direction.

A good hacker has more dices and IPs than a level 6 agent program. Build an optimized agent and an specialized hacker and do the math. It is really simple. A rating 6 agent (with agent autosofts of course) is nothing against a SR4 hacker with supporting knowledge skill, positives qualities, neo cortical nanites, genetics edge, cerebral booster, specialization, encephalon, math SPU, simsense booster/accelerator (and a tricked out agent as well of course) etc.

And please do not forget: an agent can only use rating 6 software - a human hacker can use rating 10 software (military grade software in high power campaings - and hey, you m entioned level 12 skills for a decker).

Of course a specialized hacker is only useful if your group uses the matrix to its full extend and not reduce the matrix to "hack the door". But that is not different from SR1235. And yes, most groups will never go beyond "hack the door" matrix level.

It´s a little bit like magic and astral space. You can loan a spirit from a summoner and for most parts it will be enough ("protect us from astral danger, attack astral enemies, warn us about astral security measures"). The moment you have a complex magic problem, challenge, metaquest at hand, you want someone who really have knowledge (and is usually better). However, if you never go to that level, then yes of course every specialist (a Street Samurai in a campaign, where a low level security guard is the common enemy, a rigger who has only to fight against simple guard bots etc) is not really neccessary and can be replaced by secondary professions (just like a street samurai who buys a 200k deck, upgrades himself with a cerebral booster and learn the hacking skills on level 2 or 3 - it should be enough for most easy issues).



Not really. Someone who is rolling 30 social dices will have a very high limit. Build yourself some faces and test it.

SYL

I really loved how SR4 standardized the mechanics for everything.
I still remember the SR3 mechanics for building spider/rigger combats (SHUDDER!)

I think SR5 continued the trend.
Once over learning the changes the game seems to run faster.
The mechanics in SR5 are better because they set out to make serious improvements and were not afraid to make changes.

I agree with the "Whys" of most of what was changed in SR5 but there are several area where they really took it TOO far.
So I'm running SR5 and ignoring what doesn't work for me.


Bring deckers back... Good place to start.

Doubling the max rating of skills really needed to be done.
It really helps to let the really skilled standout.
Now you know when you are facing a Fastjack caliber opponent.

Also having the quality of your gear limit the number of successes helps a lot since it both limits the mega skill dice pools and provides some variety in the weapons and gear.
In real life the best gear can only do so much unless you have the skills to back it up with.

The success limits really make sense and help play. Edge matters more.
Combat actually goes faster when you are only allowed attack per action.

Decks are way too expensive.
Cyber and Bioware went up in price but are still cheaper than they used to be. Still a little too expensive for my tastes.
Reducing the cost of better grades cyberware REALLY needed to happen.
In my game in 2050 I just halved the cost of cyberware and decks (bioware still being new I left the same price.)

The new combat system has some nice features with the norms getting a chance to go twice per turn and defensive actions that reduce your initiative.

SR5 has really made all of your stats more useful with limits and using two stats for most defense rolls.
Considering how much SR characters in general are glass cannons, the two stats on defense is very good.
Also nice to see that all magic is now resisted with two stats.
That helps balance it out some.

Mages may have been nerfed too much at least as far as drain goes but have a lot more options.
I do think they have to specialize more. Certainly Adepts have more options.
Only being able to use Counter Magic dice once certainly makes it use more critical, but that is balanced out since there are way fewer once shot kills and everyone has more dice to resist magic thanks to using two stats to resist magic.
I also like the changes to background counts (per Missions). A dice penalty is easier to handle then reducing a magic stat and still gives the mundanes a chance to shine.

The whole no bonuses unless wireless connected was way too forced.
But from what I've heard, decking is a lot faster.

Still very easy to run NPCs from SR4 in SR5.
Just add a few skill points to the heavy hitter and figure a few limits.

I have read that argument now many times ... is that really the game reality? Because honestly, if I compare usual dice pools in SR5 and compare that the the usual limits (both attribute limits and weapon limits) I cannot image that this often plays a significant role.

attribute limits 5-8
Katana limit 7
Baton 5
Predator 7
HK227 7
Alpha 7
Panther 7

Do you really hit these limits often?

SYL

Basing my answer on the reactions of a friend who almost did the same (like one or two SR4 based games), odds are highly in your favor that you'll be more happy with SR5.

I would rather ask: what did or didn´t you like in SR3?

SYL

It's been my experiance so far (played several sessions of SR5), that you do not bump into your limits all that often as long as you have your own gear. When limits really come into play is if your character is in a possition where (s)he is not using his/her own gear, but having to improvise.

Now you will occasionally bump into your limits even with a properly built character, but it shouldn't happen too often. There are exceptions to this of course. You can also build to ride your limits but you have to try to do that.

At least this has been my experiance, others may have a different story.

This was my experience as well. I liked Shadowrun 3 quite a bit. I played SR4 (no SR4A and no splatbooks) and I didn't enjoy it much. I used to challenge SR3 runners with throngs of weak security and my players liked the "us versus the world" thematic. The characters my friends made with their first go at SR4 seemed bulletproof in comparison to 6-9 dice pool security guards and the tension was lost. It seemed only characters with dicepools surprisingly close to their own could threaten them. In our first game of Shadowrun 5 we noticed a big difference even compared to SR3. One of my players exclaimed "Light pistols can actually kill people!"

I feel the same way too, we just started 5th Ed last week and so far im liking a lot of the changes. I started with SR 3 and worked my way to 5th, of course I always went though the whole edition shock/ hate thing but so far each edition has grown on me. I have a feeling 5th will do the same. I looked back to the rules for 3rd ed and came to realize we must of really loved the system to play it all these years but hey stick to whatever edition works for you to tell/play epic shadowruns

Just because you CAN do something in a ruleset does not mean that you have to. *shrug*
And for comparison, If all you care about is DP's, My STARTING Hacker for SR5 has MORE DICE than the Hacker/Cyberlogician I played for Years in SR4A Ended with. So, I think your point is not all that good of a point. *shrug*
It is Ludicrous to have a functional Cap of 19-20 as an Adept FOR A SKILL RATING. Complete Lunacy, in fact.

That's funny... My characters almost ALWAYS carried Light Pistols, and had a very high kill ratio with them. More, in fact, than any other weapon they carried.
In comparison, They were never really all that deadly prior to SR4A, in my experience. *shrug*

Throngs of weak security? What, like, a dozen enemies? Your combat must take AGES!

Occasionally my Runners ask me to put them through unofficial, non-campaign, non-canon "arena fights" where I send various nasty enemies against them in a preset environment. We did a big "Zombie Invasion" fight once, where I just kept throwing corebook statted Ghouls at them, and they hacked away at wave after wave. It took FOREVER, literally hours, and the only reason they started risking any substantial injury was because they'd get bogged down by a four or five ghouls on a single target and their Defense test dice pools would slowly dwindle with repeated "Defender has defended against previous attacks since last action" negative modifiers stacking to disgusting levels and crippling their dice pools. Eventually their dice luck would fail them and they'd take a grazing blow for a point or two of damage, nothing big, but it slowly stacked up over time, inflicint even more modifiers. It became a masochistic endurance marathon.

That said, if I threw "throngs of weak security" armed with light pistols at my team, short of sending in small armies or continous reinforcements, they'd chew through ten or twelve low level grunts like bubblegum, just as they did against the ghouls. While the problem of defending against multiple previous attacks is made even worse by the ability to "Double Tap" with firearms in SR4, it does still work both ways, and with the Runners typically ending up with higher Initiative than baseline security forces, my three man team can wound or eliminate a good four to six enemies before the other side gets a chance to fire off a shot, evening the odds immensely. Plus, once they start taking hits, their armor allows them to soak quite a lot more than the individual enemy guards can. And goodness help the guards if the runners throw a grenade!

No, I think it makes sense that you need to have on-par enemies, at least in SR4. In SR5, I very much like the boosted damage values and increased lethality of weapons, but even putting that aside, it's just so much more reasonable on every level to send fewer enemies of a more appropriate skill level against your runners than it is to drown them in waves of mooks. If nothing else, it cuts down on bookkeeping, dice rolling, and time spent slogging through combat.

...unless you're the sort of person who grew up on dungeon-crawling combat slogs like early editions of D&D, and actually enjoy spending hours in combat, happy to grind whatever meaty grist your slaughter mill requires.

~Umi

SR5 is generally an improvement to the SR4 system, partly as a scaling back of some of the more ludicrous stacks of modifiers, and partly as a replacement of systems that were originally kludgy or clunky.

Pros:
Initiative is a huge improvement, with the return of "being faster means acting more" instead of the prior disconnect between reaction time and initiative passes. No more acting last but acting 4 times.

Matrix is easier to adjudicate, since almost everything is handled through an opposed test rather than a mix of opposed and extended tests. Having real deckers back with a real Matrix (rather than simply living in a soup of overlapping nodes) is a definite plus.

Rigging. Way easier.

Weapons have hit a good balance of being very dangerous yet potentially resistible. A reduction in rules overhead regarding armor is a bonus -- SR5 doesn't make wearing a coat and a vest and a suit a complicated endeavor.

Magic is better-tuned for damage and drain. Someone who loved dropping Stunbolt nukes on crowds may complain, but it works better in play now.

Cons:
Limits didn't go far enough. Characters tend to have high enough limits that they're not impacted very often. Limits really should've been lower. For example, instead of (Strx2 + Body + Reaction)/3 for the physical limit, (Str+Body+Reaction)/3. An "accurate" pistol probably should have a 4 instead of a 6 (lights ~4, heavies ~3, sniper rifles ~5) making smartlinks, aiming, and future gun mods more desirable. Also if your base limit is 5 instead of 9, it makes limit-modifying adept powers and cyberware more desirable.

Wonky edge cases that you probably won't run into much but will annoy you if you do. See: really low Force spirits and low-Force/high-reagent spells.

Technomancers need.. something. Personally I think they need to be set on fire and dropped down a well, but it wouldn't be fair to disclude them from the Cons list.

Some rules didn't get full treatment, or at least don't seem like they're complete. Explosions are the big culprit right now -- don't listen to the people who complain about grenades destroying walls better than demolition charges, they're just reading the rules wrong. However, the lack of dodging, the nominal speed at which you can detonate a grenade, and their high effect tend to make them extra powerful. Coming from SR3 you might like this, as having to soak a 6S hit (after armor is applied) is a common grenade result in SR3.

SR4 has more options, SR5 has less cluttered rules. Both are good.

SR5 doesn't have fewer cluttered rules, it just has fewer rules.

That's like finding praise for genocide because it reduces hunger.

~Umi

I would not make that judgement yet, because for SR5 there is currently only the basic book available. If you compare book to book you don´t have that many possibilities to stack something in SR4 either. But I can image that with the Gun/Magic/Equipment/Matrix/etc book the stacking oin SR5 (as limit increases are a pretty unnecessary and dissatisfying mechanic) will come back.

And of course: SR4 knew real hackers as well, that is not a domain of SR5 with "real deckers".

SYL

I would. I did. I set my SR4 book on fire, planted its ashes, and salted the earth so that nothing would grow from it. Right next to my D&D4 book. I hold them in approximately the same regard.



SR4 didn't actually have a Matrix, so it's not really useful to bring up.

Oh, there's plenty of rules. They're just not organized in any fashion and contradict themselves when repeated in different sections. It's a fun exercise!

EDIT:

I would mostly agree except that in SR2 and SR3 in the hands of a Shadowrunner most guns were extremely deadly. It was very easy to roll 8 - 16 dice (combat pool) with target number 2 and scale up almost any weapon to levels way beyond an opponents available body dice. To make weak throngs of security work in SR2 and SR3 I couldn't actually equip them with light pistols because they were simply too impotent (Dice pool then for a guard was like 3 to 6 due to combat pool restrictions). In SR4 it was improved but notably just the way dice pools played out they were still very weak. There was an interesting moment when we hit SR5 and the throng of security personnel (6-9 dice pools) armed with light pistols let loose and the player's shadowrunners were actually taking damage. (This mostly due to the new burst rules which quickly cut down on dodge madness. Thank you long burst on Baretta 201T)

Umidori, yeah combat takes awhile in the groups I've been running with. I'd say two or three hours of combat and running gun battles and mayhem are not uncommon. That scene in the matrix where Neo shoots up the lobby would be just considered a segment and would be about 30 minutes. Usually it's my players trying to escape a building surrounded by Lonestar patrols trying to contain the scene and wait for back up. In previous editions it was not uncommon to just charge through the line but we noticed that it takes a greater investment of resources to charge through a police line in SR5.

Without getting into a debate with anyone on this board about the relative merits of SR4 vs SR5, I'll add that I like SR5 so far. I've only gotten to play it a few times, but the new Matrix rules are light years ahead of previous editions in terms of simplicity and ease of use.

There's a general gripe about errata, contradicting rules and whatnot; those are all fair complaints about a product someone purchased. My SR3 book literally had all the pages fall out; I had to rebind it with a hole punch and plastic ring. I'm not saying a product shouldn't meet certain minimum standards, but for the most part I think Dumpshock can get stuck in an echo chamber on some issues such as this that in reality don't affect playing the game all that much.

Additionally, and this probably puts me in the minority, I actually like the current lack of splat books. While I certainly would like some things to be fleshed out more (Rigging, alchemy, etc.) I recognize that anytime a new splatbook is added, power creep becomes an issue and actually running a game or campaign is more difficult than just working off the base rules. The comparison I would draw would be the problem D&D had, once it was possible for players to start out of the gate as a half-vampire Kensai, monkeygripping 2 claidhmores.

I like the new matrix. I like the new initiative system (a throwback to 3rd that makes sense and makes combat interesting. The samurai does't get to murder everyone before they get to go- huzzah!). I like the return to the priority system for character generation. Again, this is a board where people want to squeeze every single iota of power out of their builds; and I respect that. I am sure that some future sourcebook will provide rules for karma gen. However, for a game where you want to pick up and play, the priority system makes the chore of character creation much more palatable to new players.

As with all things, YMMV. I don't see a reason to go back to the previous editions; but a game of SR4A wouldn't be the worst in the world; it's all relative.

-DrZ

I find that hard to believe, considering that you always can distribute archetypes and alsways say as a GM "Hey, distribute 20 attribute points, 25-37 skillpoints and divide 50 points between money, edge and race.

SYL

I have seriously considered some thing like this actually for both Shadowrun 4 and Shadowrun 5.

My newer players who mostly started roleplaying With D&D 4 just about fainted when they saw the build point system in Shadowrun 4. In Shadowrun 5 one of my newer players said to me "So what can I play?" I say "There's examples in the archetype section of characters people actually play in Shadowrun run." She says "Yes, but how do I know I'm making a Shaman that isn't breaking any rules? Can I use a Shotgun? There's a lot of choices here. It seems like I might make a character that might really suck or make no sense. How do I know if I should put 4 points in Spellcasting or 6?"

I pretty much had to walk through the whole character creation process and make helpful suggestions the whole way. So yeah I think it's not just a problem for either SR4 or SR5. My players who had played Shadowrun 3 found making characters in SR4 and SR5 to be tricky simply because of various rules interactions. Like for example they might know which skills they need but they still have to math check every thing and make sure the character isn't inherently bogus. One of the things I hear my more experienced players say a lot in SR4 and SR5 when making characters is "Oh that's an opposed check." which roughly translates to "isn't good unless it's highly rated".

Don't forget that if you do this with SR5, you'll have to point out that most of your players have illegal characters.

I like some things about SR5. I like the changes to the combat system and the increase in skill caps, and the idea of Limits. On the other hand, the way limits were implemented means they're generally high enough to not matter. I also like the idea of progressive recoil as the book describes it. Unfortunately, there are comments from some of the authors suggesting that what they wrote in the book and how they intended it to work are very different and the way they intended it to work makes the change essentially meaningless. I like the change to Initiative, since it means every combatant isn't obligated to spend a ton of Essence on Wired Reflexes. I like that Stunbolt doesn't allow any mage to instantly subdue any mundane and make banishing completely pointless. The changes to the matrix also meant that every hacker is no longer crippled in high level play since his Stealth rating doesn't climb anywhere near as fast as the opposition's ability to search for him.

I also hate some things about SR5. The preposterously expensive cyberdecks mean that the only way most PCs will ever see a cyberdeck upgrade is by prying it from the cold dead hands of another decker. The wireless bonuses and bricking rules create a risk/reward curve so skewed that I have a hard time justifying ever using a Wireless bonus. Drones are so laughably fragile that I can't imagine a PC rigger ever getting to spend cash on anything other than replacing the same blown up drone over and over. The rules for vehicles and control rigs mean a good piece of cyberware will make a motorcycle transsonic. The lack of any rules for device transmission ranges oversimplified the matrix into a set of massive omni-present data layers with no infrastructure to speak of. The Mark system means that rather than making extended tests to hack things, PC deckers just make about the same number of unlinked skill checks, not doing anything to reduce dice rolling unless your SR4 hackers were laughably inept.

And then there's the layout. I got a physical copy of the book out of a sense of loyalty to my FLGS and haven't touched it. None of the tables is ever where it seems like it should be. The list of Skill Groups and what skills they contain isn't even IN the skills chapter. The searchable PDF is essential for finding anything in a book this poorly laid out. Losing Adam Jury has been killing Catalyst for a while, and this is really the zenith of that descent into chaos.

These things aside, I'm enjoying playing Shadowrun 5. Then again, I also enjoyed playing SR, SR2, SR3, SR4, SR4A, almost as many incarnations of Dungeons and Dragons, and have had some great games of dodge ball.

An intro like "there are no classes except magical/nonmagical, what you are is defined by your attributes and freely choosen skills" would be very helpful.

SYL

Yeah it's kind of a given in Shadowrun that there are no classes. But many players (mostly my newer players who came in late D&D 3.5 or D&D 4) find a game like Shadowrun to not have enough guide posts. There's a lot of choices you can make and opportunity costs to consider and they're pretty hard to consider if you actually haven't read the book front to back. I remember helping a player and explaining that they might want some form of image link so they can see AR. I remember a player who took locksmith but didn't realize that the rules for most maglocks also require hardware.

Yeah, I considered writing a DND/PathfindeR style guide to the sam or mage (with blue/red/orange colors *cough*) myself some time ago. For the German boards I wrote a beginner guide, but yeah, it doesn´t reach everyone of course.

SYL