I do understand what Upper Bound means. The stated Design goal of Limits was to remove DP bonuses and add them as limit bonuses, providing a different axis so as to shrink the Ludicrous DP's that were possible in SR4A. Obviously, DP's can still be Ludicrous in SR5, so they failed. And that is BEFORE Any further books come out, which will only further the potential Dice Bloat.

Yes, I know... Personal opinion and all that. I will state it again... if the average occupant of the world needs 8-12 dice to perform their job, then there is absolutely no reason to provide ranges of DP that exceed 25+ Dice (I would still cap at 20 Dice, personally).

You cannot design a world to fit the exceptional people and provide them a challenge, since that leaves the average individual incapable of performing basic functions. And if you move the bars to allow the average people to perform their functions, then the Exceptional people will not be challenged, and thus the above design principle mandates that you move the bar again, so that Exceptional people are again challenged, and therefore your average people are again failing at their basic function. Once everyone is Exceptional, no one is.

You design the world to fit the average, and then Exceptional People are exactly that.

I like limits. They make some of the cheesier methods of getting insane dicepools redundant and enforce some degree of generalization within a character.

I don't like them at all.

If you want to avoid Cheesier/Insane DP's, just avoid them. Have a conversation with your table and tell them that such characters will be disallowed.
It is not hard to design sensible characters that fit the fluff of the world.
You should be wary of a Firewatch Team through a good portion of a campaign arc, not set out to outclass them at character creation (just because you can does not mean that you should). They should always be a threat.

I know... I am on an Island on this, apparently.

A ganger should also always be a threat. That is not saying much about Ares Firewatch.

If you look at the quality of Ares Firewatch ruleswise in the various books, they are all over the place. In fact, it is quite possible that the PCs are in the same weightclass at character creation.

In Numbers, Yes...

Only if you allow them to be. That is directly within your control both as a GM and a Player. *shrug*

It is the way that the Ares Firewatch is portrayed. They have a very elite rep, they can kick Red Sam ass, but the other side of the coin is that Firewatch quality control isn't very good, they can span from something a new PC can match or narrowly outmatch to something a veteran Prime Runner will find challenging.

Everything is within the control of the GM, you can have an Ares Firewatch that is easily outclassed by a non-optimised beginning PC to a monster that can mop the floor with a multiple campaign veteran PC.

The first part is true; the second part is not. The overall goal was to steer characters into investing in skills and attributes instead of dice pool modifiers if they wanted high dice pools. It was NOT to reduce dice pools.



http://www.shadowrun.com/shadowrun-tableto...-from/#more-343

As I've tried to explain before, the highlighted portion is where you're mistaken. Dice pool size wasn't the issue, rather, dice pool source was.

Big dice pools aren't a design problem - hell, rolling a ton of dice is fun. And I have to disagree with the assertion that you can't set things to cover off both the average person and the exceptional person - you just have to remember that the average person isn't supposed to achieve what the exceptional person does, and that the exceptional person isn't supposed to be at all challenged by what the average person can achieve (the "any idiot can get lucky" principle aside). Take SR5's thresholds for a second - the average person isn't troubled by average tasks. With 8 dice, a combination of a Proficient skill and a person with a minor aptitude for their field, it is possible to buy enough hits for an average difficulty task. An exceptional and experienced person, on the other hand, is going up against thresholds as high as 10; they should have a pretty good facility for even very hard tasks (which means pools approaching or exceeding 20).

If you want to model both the average and the exceptional, you simply need to provide for a large enough range in both ability and difficulty.

You must have played a different Shadowrun to me because in the 1-3rd editions that I played the Decker always needed to be on site so he could physically jack in. If anything 5th Edition is the easiest edition for deckers to 'sit at home'.

Absolutely. This is why I'm confused that you seem to think that mages should just handwave riggers out of the game. Not even deckers should be able to do that and for all intensive purposes they are the 'Anti-device' archetype.



I don't really understand your point. It sounds like you want specialists to also be generalists. Sorry, it just can't work that way. If your mage puts all his resources into driving skills then yes he will not get better at casting. However, you have to remember that the exponential cost growth of attributes and skills in shadowrun mean that generalists actually get a lot of bang for their buck.




Your dice pool always makes your chance of success higher. If you roll 15 dice and your limit is 5, raising your pool to 16 or even 20 will still increase your average successes, albeit with a smaller return for each die.



You rely too much on hyperbole with your arguments. Without crunching the numbers a mage with 6 magic and 6 spellcasting probably has around a 40% chance of success over an OR15 device. Yes if a plans success or failure relies on that roll then it's a bad deal but when faced with several drones an improved invisibility spell can stop 40% of them from targeting you then that's pretty sweet.

Also remember that Mages have access to some of the best dicepool boosters in the game: Foci.
A mage with priority A magic and priority D resources can easily start with a dicepool of 18 in a single area (6 magic 6 skill 4 focus 2 specialization), and if they're willing to have little else in the way of gear they can have the same start with an E in resources.
if you wanted to run a human you could pull the same dicepools with magic C Metatype D Resources E, using the special attributes from being human to buff out your magic. Mages getting a high dicepool isn't exactly difficult.

Loose the specialization and swap to a power focus and the dicepool drops to 15, which still gives you just a bit under even odds to defeat a drone's OR. Or summon a spirit to make the drone its bitch. or use levitate to drop a rock on it. You have options, is my point.

What you are failing to correlate is that Dice Pool SOURCE directly relates to Dice Pool SIZE.
If you remove the Bonuses, you have an intent to reduce Size, because you are shrinking Source. And that IS an intent or they would not have taken those steps, whether you agree with that or not.
The fact that they then went back in and Increased the Source is irrelevant (but entertaining to me).

Rolling a ton of dice is NOT all that fun, at least to me.
It is in no way difficult, to be sure, but the more dice you roll, and the more often you roll it, well, it tends to slow down game play.
Another design principle that they were trying to change, especially in the Matrix and Combat areas.

Now, Those areas did not bother me all that much in SR4A. But I cannot count how many times I heard that complaint right here on the forums. *shrug*
Whether it is a good change remains to be seen.

Every Edition I played the Decker was always on site. Not new to me at all.

The highlighted is where I have my Issue with your argument, FuelDrop...

If the paradigm is that Magic is having a hard time dealing with OR (Say Drones, as that was your example), then that Spirit should have JUST AS HARD A TIME dealing with that Drone.

It should not just be a matter of summoning and making the drone the spirit's Bitch. Cognitive Dissonance.

Just because removing dice pool bonuses from the dice pool must reduce the size of the dice pool doesn't mean that the intent of the action was to reduce the size of the dice pool. I already quoted & linked for you what the intent was, earlier in this thread.

It's akin to watching a guy inspect a pile of logs prepared for a fire. He pulls one moldy log out of the pile and discard it, and puts another good one in its place, and your conclusion is "He must have meant to reduce the size of the fire, but haha, he added one again, his left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing."



And the Spirit DOES - IF the spirit is trying to cast a spell that directly manipulates the drone. If the Spirit simply Engulfs the drone, or uses its Accident power, it's going to be relatively easy to deal with. Just like the Mage can relatively easily deal with it by using an Indirect combat spell, a gun, or any number of other options besides trying to directly manipulate a highly processed object using mana.

I think we basically come to the point: why has magic a hard time dealing with highly-processed items? In SR4A there was a good example that showed up, where the real difficulty might be: the fashion spell. Because modern clothes have a lot of electronics integrated, the result of the hits you created with the spell were somewhat limited. Why? Because the magic doesn´t understand technical circuits very well and to keep the functions running was difficult. If we would talk about stuff like that, i totally agree. If we talk about the ignite spell (setting off a fire on a ceramic and plaststeel drone even sounds difficult), i am still with you. But 15+ (and please don´t forget the "+") dice for resisting active detection spells and stuff? For resisting illusion spells? Makes no sense to me. Also the OR for sensors is 9, why does it raise to 15+ just because the same sensor is plugged into a drone? There is way too much stuff in SR5 tha makes no sense, that it makes SR4 look like the perfect version of SR.

in my opinion, it kinda depends on the kind of illusion spell used.
manabased will not fool a drone, because that's more mind rapery than illusions. and there simply is no mind there to use an illusion on.
physical will have the same problem as most illusions have when used against people too:"needs to be multi sensory.
simply having the image of a large troll is not enough, if he does not make any sounds for example"

the detection spells are a different reason for me too:
ok, you find . . several dozend things with electronics and moving parts in them. some of them are actually moving. might be a car passing by, might be a drone, might be a vacuum being used. might be your cyber-samurai buddy right next to you. kinda hard to tell really.

Not actually true - you can change the source without impacting the size, all that requires is that the same dice be coming from the new source as were coming from the old source.

That mana-spells don´t work on drones should be chrystal-clear, because it is mentioned in the basic rules of sorcery. ^^ Physical spells are another point. I would be more satisfied, if these spells would have a fixed threshold, that shows from which point the illusion is so realistic, that a computer program cannot differ between spell and reality anymore. The problem is, that you are not targeting the autosoft, you target the material the sensor is made off, what makes absolutely no sense.

Also the problem: sensor = OR 9, sensor in drone = OR 15+ is not solved.

Even worse is the problem with detection spells, where the best (and IMHO most valid) example would be "combat sense". It is an active spell, which is resisted with OR. Means your bonus dice will most likely be "dispelled" by any microdrone, leaves you very bad options to fight or evade such a thing.

Hmm - I'm probably playing it incorrectly, but the way I play Combat Sense is this:

Switch the Mage has Magic 6 and Spellcasting 6. He casts Combat Sense and gets 4 hits.

He walks down a hallway, and is ambushed by 2 thugs and a drone.

He rolls his surprise test adding 4 dice.

Now, at the beginning of the combat, Thug 1 rolls Willpower +Logic and gets 1 hit, Thug 2 rolls Willpower + Logic and gets 2 hits, and the drone rolls OR and gets 4 hits.

Whenever thug 1 attacks him, Switch rolls 3 extra defense dice. Whenever Thug 2 attacks him, he gets 2 extra dice. When the drone attacks him, he gains no extra dice - which sort of represents he is able to determine what Thug 1 and 2 are going to do more easily than what the drone is going to do, because it is harder for the magic to read the drone as opposed to living beings.

Also, I'm not at all convinced that Combat Sense shouldn't just be a Passive spell - since for most of the Active Spells (apart from Detection which refer you to the chart), it says "each net hit" (see Analyze Device, Analyze Magic, Analyze Truth, Mind Probe.) while for Combat Sense it says "each hit".

OMFG, the paperwork. x..x

It isn't any more paperwork than Chaotic World - it would work the exact same way. Caster rolls gets a number of hits, each target resists separately, and would roll less dice based on the comparison.

So in the above example, instead of

Whenever thug 1 attacks him, Switch rolls 3 extra defense dice. Whenever Thug 2 attacks him, he gets 2 extra dice. When the drone attacks him, he gains no extra dice

it is

Whenever thug 1 attacks he rolls 3 less dice. Whenever Thug 2 attacks he gets 2 less dice. When the drone attacks him, it loses no dice.

And that is definitively the way Chaotic World works.

Combat Sense may be nominally resisted, but the resistance test doesn't actually do ANYTHING.

Combat Sense should probably be Passive.

How do you figure? Granted, I want it to work this way, but it's listed as an Active Detection spell. Barring anything in the spell description exempting it, I don't see why the Resistance test wouldn't apply. If it were to work that way, I think it would have to be Passive.

Probably, yes. Something to submit for errata, I guess.

Reason enough to conclude that interpretaion is probably not RAI, especially as it's not hands down even RAW.

Care to explain? Lobo seems to be drawing his conclusions based on Combat Sense being an Active Detection spell. Since Combat Sense doesn't say it doesn't follow the normal rules for Active spells, it is, indeed and sadly, resisted as described.

Granted, I think most of us think it should simply be a Passive Detection spell since it apparently creates a form of hypercognition in the subject rather than reading minds.

The resistance roll, strictly speaking, exists. However, the spell is explicitly based off of hits on a Spellcasting test, not net hits on an oppsed Spellcasting vs. Resistance. So, either the spell isn't supposed to be resisted, or the spell description is in error.

And because we are talking about SR5, i assume it is the latter.

In other words, you think it's stupid because you want it to be, not because of what it actually is. The spell is not what your argument needs it to be.

No, i think it is stupid because - well... it IS stupid? ^^ Nad a lot of things in SR5 are highly illogical, so the chance that the description is wrong, COULD be quite high. Don´t you think?

For me either:

1) It is supposed to say Passive, not Active (IMHO the most likely)
2) The description should say "net hits" (IMHO 2nd most likely)
3) The description is correct and overrides the normal rules for Detection Spells. (IMHO least likely)

In this instance, I do not. You are choosing to see the more ridiculous possibility as more likely, rather than actually looking at what is more likely - specifically, the smaller error is the more likely one, essentially as an application of Occam's Razor.

While I agree, I think from a strictly "putting the words on the page" editing perspective, it's just as likely (if not more likely) that a word is omitted (net) rather than an entirely incorrect word being used (Active vs. Passive). From a game perspective, using the latter does make this thing quite a bit more ridiculous with respect to bookkeeping.

I do wonder about people who advocate using the reagent trick to sustain this spell at a low force though... That seems to really reduce its effectiveness.

You know what I just noticed? SR4A has the same issue - Combat Sense is Active, but based off hits rather than net hits. I'd assumed it was passive... So is someone going to argue that the same problem applies to Combat Sense in SR4?

Cut & paste between editions? I'm sure that would never happen.

I have my SR4 (not A) book at home, I can check that one out too. I did find a few posts from 2010 asking about whether CS was resisted, so I guess people have asked before...

that goes for 95% of the supposed issues people have with 5th while completely ignoring all the improvements.

There are no improvements. There might have been a good will that turned out badly implemented.

So apparently "this problem existed, oh look it got copy-pasted without being fixed" is not a valid complaint.

No it simply means that you can't say "OMG Combat Sense sucks now compared to 4th ed" because the problem existed there as well.

So the matrix is not more steamlined?
Deckers are now a playable archetype is clearly a downer.
So combat is not quicker now that we have less attacks?
So the fact that we don't have to look up a table now every time it's dark to determine what my combat modifiers are isn't better?
So the fact that the first 2 spells any mage takes are not powerbolt and stunball isn't an improvement?
So the fact that hold-outs/light pistols now have a point (besides for physical adepts with 30 dice) isn't a good thing?
The fact that it takes a couple of hours to make a character now rather than a couple of weeks apparently isn't worth the perceived loss of customization?
The fact that burst fire and full-auto are now tactical choices instead of no-brainers isn't an improvement?
The fact that I now get told how many seats a car has is clearly a waste of time right?
The fact that there's no point in just aiming for 30 dice at character creation because you now have a limit you need to improve as well.

No, all that stuff is meaningless compared to how some spell works the same way as it did in 4th ed except in 4th ed we all just conveniently ignored it. 4th Ed apparently didn't need eratta and all the rules were just shiny from day 1.

Yes there are things that 5th ed didn't do well, but I'd argue that most of them aren't any worse than they were in 4th ed anyway.

1. Arguable, since I think SR4A's Matrix worked just fine. And they really screwed some stuff up with the New Matrix. That said, I like some of it.
2. Played a Decker for many Years in SR4A. Your argument falls flat in the face of that (and we STILL have a Technomancer in play).
3. Not once did I have to look up a table for Darkness modifiers in Combat. It is right there on my character sheet.
4. My current Magician has 62 Spells. None of which are Powerbolt or Stunball. In fact, he has only 3 combat spells, and they are highly specialized.
5. My Cyberlogician killed multiple times more individuals with a Light Pistol than any other Weapon he ever used. By a factor of 3 or 4, in fact.
6. Most of my character builds happen in 30 minutes or less in SR4A. Only ones that take longer are for advanced builds. Starting characters are a breeze.
7. They have always been tactical choices in our game. Not sure how you play.
8. Arguable... I am fully capable of determining such things from descriptions by "ballparking" it. Can't you?
9. Not seeing that, since the limits are functionally non-relevant anyways. And if you generated 30 Dice wombats, well, I would argue you were doing it wrong.
*shrug*

There are a LOT of things that 5th Edition did not do well, and will likely take years to put right, if ever.

Just a note: The just-released SR5 errata has indeed changed the Combat Sense spell to a Passive Psychic spell. 1.5 editions later and it works correctly now.

Well now you don't have to write them down. Now you can just remember how big a step is and how much your chosen form of vision enhancement modifies it.



TJ, anyone can answer a post saying "My current Magician has 62 spells and none are [the 2 everyone takes]". The thing is, I don't believe you, and even if I did it's just anecdotal. It doesn't mean that powerball and stunball weren't balanced towards being stupidly overpowered. Let me guess your character is a 'Mob Mind'er? What a surprise...........



I'd like to know how? Was he just executing people in their sleep with called shots? I'd really like to know how you get 5-6 damage over the base for that pistol AFTER damage resistance without a huge dice pool?



Sure you do.............



When the recoil is easily accounted for almost 2 times over in 4th edition then the only negative to firing burst fire or full-auto was having to reload, but since way more bad guys were likely to be dead by then it was pretty much a no-brainer. Now the recoil rules mean that no matter how much recoil you have you need to stop pretty soon so you tend to use it for suppression or high reflex opponents only.



I guess being gifted with just the name of the vehicle should have been enough for me. Thinking back being told for much body or armor a vehicle had was the writers micro-managing us.



It stops you taking your automatics/hacking/spellcasting skill straight to max because leveling the skill does not increase your limit. Yes, there is probably an issue with the cost of raising statistics vs skills, I get that. Conceptually, however it is a good step to reduce those fist fulls of dice that slow the game down.

TJ fallacy.

And now it is, in the new Errata:



Score one for common sense.

Just to reitterate:

Holy shit we have errata.

Wow, errata!