Hey everyone, for a long time now (even before 5e) I've had a problem with rolling program rating plus skill for a Matrix die pool. It just feels wrong. In my own games I've house ruled a 5e style Attribute + Skill [Program Rating] system, where the rating is used as a cap, but this doesn't work quite right either. Then someone up here on the internet (I believe this very forum) suggested treating the program rating as reach, and that worked pretty well.

Instead of there normal die-pools, hackers and technos will roll Attribute + Skill for matrix actions, with the program rating treated as Reach. For example, Slamm-O wants to take a shot at a passing IC, and thus rolls Logic 4 + Cybercombat 4 (8 dice) with an Attack r.5 program. The IC will rolls its Response 5 + Firewall 4 (9 dice), to defend. Since Slamm-O's Attack program is one higher than the IC's Firewall, he can choose to add to his die pool one die OR subtract one die from his opponent. Slamm-O choose the later and this rolls his pool of 8 + 2 for hot sim, for 10 dice, and gets 3 hits. The IC rolls 9 - 1 from reach for a total of 8 dice, and only nets 2 hits. Slamm-O lands a hit with his Attack program.

There are a few kinks that need to be worked out, since agents could be doubly penalized under this rule if abused. Now I'm entering a new 4e game, and I need to pitch this house rule to another GM. To be honest, he's my roommate, and will probably go for it. Still, I thought I would workshop it here for fun and exercise. Anyone use this rule before? Any other good Matrix house rules to suggest?

We used a very similar rule in one of my games, but just giving the difference in rating as a bonus to whoever had the advantage (you didn't get to decide as you are proposing). We also did it for using exploits and pretty much all the matrix tests, not just cybercombat. It worked pretty well for our game.

We also simplified agents. Rather than being independent programs, they just assisted whatever you were doing and acted as an allocatable dice bonus each round (not pass), but they required a dedicated device to run them. So a rating 6 agent could give the hacker +6 for a round. He could use +2 for stealth, +4 for exploit. Then he gets discovered and in the next round he reassigns the agent (with a simple action) to be +3 armor, +3 attack. The hacker rolling for himself and agents just slowed everything down and this made things faster. Obviously, you'll have to put limits on how many agents and devices they can have to prevent the infinite bonus problem, but we never had a problem with that since the player doing the hacking wasn't interested in building an invincible bot net of rating 1 agents. We also limited the rating of the agent (and its bonus) to the device it was running on's response. The extra rolls for the agents were just slowing down an already slow part of the game.

That's an awesome house rule, one I might have to steal. I do like the idea of having a network of agents and drones and comm-links to control, however. But for a new 4e player that could really ease them in to the Matrix rules.

We played with it briefly and I always thought it worked well.

It actually solves one of the biggest problems with the Programs as Limits option, as this way technomancers can still get very solid benefit from Threading (inter-stream balance remains a very serious problem there, though - might be worth considering letting them use Fading Attribute in place of Logic, representing fundamentally different forms of Matrix interactions and creating more varied characters). Taking it out of Cybercombat for a second though, I've got to wonder how that would work for things like Command or Browse. Just a straight bonus?

For unopposed rolls, we just assumed an average rating of 3 for comparison in determining your programs "reach". So Rating 1 was -2 Dice, Rating 6 was +3 dice. That was mostly because I was trying to keep dice pools from getting ridiculously large.

That'll happen regardless - Logic can be cranked pretty freaking high in terms of effective rating.

Awesome, I floated all this by my GM and he says it's good to go. Now I just need to slog through the matrix chapter and figure out my dice pools. I'm pretty sure it was one of your posts Tymeaus that I got this idea from, so thanks , and thanks to everyone for the feedback. I'll let you know how it goes- It's a street level game, so I can only begin with rating 4 programs. I could be facing the penalty from this rule pretty easily, and having been a GM, I'm okay with that. Besides, that's what edge is for.

You are very welcome... let us know how it goes...
Good Luck.

I've been thinking of something very similiar with my own set of matrix-lite houserule changes. This is a little more elegant, I like it.

The ones I'm nearly dead set on using are, basically, set around removing pirated programs as being totally exploitable, and making the information race a little more relevant - mostly through Exploits(unwired 96). Essentially, knowing of a vulnerabilty/hole/exploit/oversight in a program gives you a +2 bonus vs the program you know the vulnerability in. Sounds like modern life, right? Where people discover, exploit, and then patch out things in programs from flash to firefox.

I'm accomplishing this as follows:
Programs have no Registration option by default (4A missions standard).
State of the Art rolls/program degredation is no longer a thing. Fuck it so hard. instead of reducing the rating, every so often an age counter on it goes up.
In the case of a newer program vs an outdated one, the newer one TENDS to be able to claim an exploit vs the older one for a +2 bonus.
Open Source programs are available for most programs(read: common use, hacking if you know where to look), barring specialty stuff like autosofts. (its likely an open source Maneuver 1 autosoft is available for/from robotics fans to make a project go, but highly unlikely a targeting autosoft is)
Piracy is available - usually costing 40-50% of normal, not 10%.(i hadn't decided on a final figure) Patches cost 20%. Pirated programs have no Copy Protection, but are almost always older/outdated/beta/buggy/virus ridden versions. basically, the real life baggage you expect with it. The cheaper a pirated program is, the more likely it has hidden nasties in it.
Patching or updating a program sets its age counter to 0.
Uncracked/corppatched programs are ALWAYS up to date. Thats the benefit of buying it legitimately. Additionally, uncracked programs can just be upgraded with Options from their licenser's store - the same method used to deliver updates can be used to buy extensions to stuff you already own.
Technomancers echoes don't enter into this minigame. (If they did, they would always claim the bonus since echoes are always up to date, and they don't need the bonus.)

What this means is that people CAN run cracked and spammed versions of software (like today), but people with the most bleeding edge tools are going to burn right through it.
Suddenly running outdated stealthware is a lot scarier, and running old combatware on your drones makes them predictable - and easier prey for a meaner foe.
Essentially, though, it delinks the quality of a program and the outdatedness of it.

Things under consideration:
A multiuser Option for Copy Protected programs(does not take an option slot). rated 1-6, common use, lets a given program be Running more than once. Essentially, you can pay to relax the copy protection protocols on a piece of software if, say, you want to give a copy to an agent without having to buy a program twice. (may price it as hacking option, just because common use is so cheap). Other considerations: May adjust price of pirated stuff back down to compensate.

Thoughts? I need some second opinions here. What I want to do is : Not deal with degredation, but make the theme it uses somewhat relevant without being a headache, as well as cutting down on the cheese of pirated/cracked software in general, and also by making uncracked/official software better and also less of a hastle. (getting rid of Registration entirely gets rid of the retarded datatrail problem the whole system introduces in the first place)

Also:
The easiest way to use Logic+Skill Program=limit fairly without screwing technomancers is to let them use the old system, btw. So a hacker does logic+hacking, while a technomancer has the extra option to swap the program in for the stat.(or the skill, i forget which) Which makes complex forms worth taking, as they are both dice and hit limits.