The issue for me, and I think others - although I will not try and put words in their mouth, is that your argument is that the mechanics are a problem, that the system is broken, when what in fact is the issue is that your dice are apparently screwed up.

It is the equivalent of me saying that we need to raise the limit on skills and attributes, because even though my characters have a 12 firearms, specializing in Heavy Pistols, and have a 10 Agility, but I am unable to roll more than 1 hit on my 24 dice. (which, btw, happens about just as often as rolling 8 hits on 9 dice).

I can't really argue that because on my one table, because I and my friends are incapable of rolling more than 1 hit on 24 dice, it is the limit on skills and attributes that are the problem, and not my die rolling.

It is okay.

In SR4A, 9 Dice was Professional Grade (assuming 3 of that came from Skill). In SR5, that Same 9 Dice is a Casual Professional at best, not a True Professional (again assuming Skill 3/4 vs. Skill 7 for the difference).

SR5
You get a new recruit - He has no training initially (Skill 0) but goes through Boot/Advanced Training, etc (skill 2).
He hits the Field - He continues to be trained (skill 3)
At that point, he is competent (just barely with a Skill 3, 4 for someone in an MOS who uses an actual Pistol), but still not up to par compared to the veteran who has been there for 10 years (who has a 7+ in the same skill)
And yet, I have seen crazy feats of accuracy from the barely competent.

SR4A - That guy (of which I speak) would have a 1 or 2 skill at best, while the professional will have 3-4.

So, mayhap I got caught up in an Edition Terminology issue. In SR4a, I could easily represent such a character with a Skill 1-2 and it would be all good, since the MOS guy would have 3+. In SR5, that Guy now has a 3-4, while the true professional has a STARTING skill 6 and goes up from there. Which is simply another dislike I have of the new system (the Skill change), but one I can live with, for the most part, even if I think it was wholly unnecessary. Either way, in SR4A, that character can pull of amazing things. in SR5, he cannot. Not unless he spends Edge. In my opinion, that is a bug, not a feature.

I probably still am making less than sense, but Oh well.

Which happens a lot to at least one character at our table as well, but that is not a Limit issue for me. And it never really matters which dice he uses either.
Swing happens. In SR5, when it happens in the positive direction, you are punished for it. That is why I dislike that particular piece of the system. It is a Punishment. Nothing more.

If you don't like it, you don't like it. I get it. I'm not a fan of 'em, myself. But I don't think they're as bad as you seem to think they are, is all. I don't see it as being "forced to purchase Edge" any more than a spellcaster is "forced" to purchase Magic, or a gunbunny is "forced" to purchase Agility. "Being a lucky dude" is a game stat (for a few editions now), just like "being a strong dude" or "being a fast dude." So if you want to be lucky, well, you buy Edge.

Except that in Previous Editions, I could be Lucky by simply rolling really well. Well, so much for that in SR5, though.
Yes, if you want a Mr. Lucky, you buy Edge. You should Not HAVE to buy it, though, to get lucky.

No worries, though.

What it literally says is that for a sufficiently large number of rolls, the ratio of rolls where "this" happens converges to 0.09%. The number of rolls you make even in the worst roll-playing session is anything but sufficient, and therefore outliers like not hitting the proverbial barn can become relatively common (because there are not enough repetitions to even things out over the long run).
TL;DR: Statistics over five data points are rubbish. Expecting five data points to adhere to a pre-established statistic doesn't work, either.

PS: And for precision to two decimal places, even 10k repetitions are a bit on the sparse side

There you go talking about that Statistics thingy again. *sigh*

Issue with limits that drives me nuts is how it's obviously a response to the increases in dice pools. When you have noob SR characters tossing 21+ dice at a time, even in the (self-professed) bad builds you see in FuelDrop's campaign, you're obviously going to run into the dice proliferation issues that are pretty commonly honked about from 4E and 4A. How to fix it? Well, the CGL editorial staff and writers thought about it really, REALLY hard and though to themselves, "Self, we have to think up a way to keep this eruption of dice pools under control...how to do it?...Ahh! *Lightbulb!* We'll add an arbitrary, ham-fisted 'limits' thingy with a sense of game balance approximating the military brilliance of the Charge of the Light Brigade...yeah, that'll do 'er...and they'll love it!"

Me? I'm a bit more "out there", y'know? When I run into the bucket-o-dice insanity I stop what I'm doing, think for all of two seconds, and decide that maybe...perchance...possibly...the answer might be in making it really, REALLY hard to be tossing 21+ dice as a noob Shadowrunner?

Nah!

Which could have been accomplished with a karma build system and rapidly escalating prices for attributes and skills. But oh well...

I don't know about you guys, but I personally think that the 1-6 + 1-6 with a maximum of +4 to a stat (or skill) would have done the job just fine. Call me crazy...

I have that exact same problem. I think strength is a total waste of a stat and always take one in it but 5th ED sucks because I always do awful damage in melee and can't modify my armour much

This is such a perfect example of "if you want your character to be lucky, buy Edge, just like if you want your character to be strong, buy Strength," that I honestly can't tell if you're poking fun at TJ or you're legitimately irritated that your low-Strength characters have a low Strength, and are blaming SR5 for that fact. So, uh, kudos, I guess?

-- I hope you won't be disappointed

Poke fun or not, its all good.

Maybe I would dig that idea if that comparison between Agility and Edge actually worked out in a truyl similar fashion. Unfortunately Edge is not an actual representation of "being lucky", but rather a variation of the karma pool that hadn't much to with "luck" either. It's more of an (retroactive) alteration to probability from a meta level where I as the player try to become "Lady Luck" myself instead of having her on my side. Exceeding limits (and limits are the new thing here) as a "luck" mechanism don't work too well either: When investing Edge prior to the roll I won't create a lucky roll; it merely allows me having one, which comes closest to having luck, however it's limited number of uses per session (or other Edge resetting events) certainly interfere more than often, thus making it a "tactically bad choice" of using Edge in advance. And when using it after a lucky roll to exceed a potentially interferring limit just bring's me back to changing an outcome retroactively from that metalevel ...

So while I can agree that in order to be the "strong" or "fast" guy I'd have to go for strength / agility, going for Edge won't actually make me "lucky".

Indeed...

While I can see the point, I don;t see complaining about limits stopping you from being lucky to be any different than saying 6 dice stopped me from getting lucky enough to get 8 hits. In 1-3e with variable TNs a TN limit would cap your luck. In SR4-5e era you luck is capped by your dice pool and this is just another flavor of that, People can still hate it, but it really is no different than complaining that having only a 6 die pool capped my successes at 6 without edge. If exploding 6's was the default rule and not the edge rule, then sure.

I Disagree that TN's capped your Luck. I can still remember the Rocker who managed to get a Performance Score above 40. In just 1 Roll. It is just highly unlikely. But when it does happen, it is LUCKY.

And when I refer to a Lucky roll sans Edge, it generally goes like this. I have 14 Dice. I roll the Dice. I tally hits, and what do you know, look at that, I have 12 Hits (Very Highly Improbable, so can only ascribe the roll to Luck). That is my definition of Lucky. In SR5, if the roll is capped at Limit 6, My Lucky roll is garbage at that point. It pisses me off. The Edge score is not a representation of Luck, in my opinion. It just allows you to potentially abrogate Limits. But Lucky? Not at all.

Wait. Doesn't Edge only allow you to ignore limits if you spend it before rolling? Like declaring 'I'm going to pull off a crazy lucky shot now!' before actually rolling and then kind of hoping you manage to roll well?

Sure, it will let you try. In My experience, that actually goes something like this...

I spend Edge so I can Bypass Limits.
I roll the dice (My 14 DP is not +2, so 16 DP).
Damn... look at that, I rolled 1 Success (we have a guy who would get Zero Successes more often than not - he is really unlucky that way).
Well, can't spend another Edge to reroll. That Sucks.
(Now, it does not always happen that way, but I think you get my point)...

Edge Expenditure allows you the opportunity to be Lucky, it does not make you lucky.

But wait, you will now say "Just save that Edge to use when you actually make a Lucky roll so you can Uncap your limits."
And that just pisses me off, because NOW I need to spend a Resource to actually use the roll, that has already been made, to its fullest capability. That is Horrible game design in my opinion.

Nope, both the pre-roll and post-roll versions of Push the Limit break your limit. So if you roll really awesome and want to keep all your hits, you're more than welcome to spend Edge to break your limit after the fact. The difference between the two is that the Rule of Six applies to all dice that are rolled in the pre-roll version, but only to the Edge dice that are rolled in the post-roll version.

I was unclear. In SR 1-3e you had no cap on luck with the TN system, so if a limit were added there it would cap your luck. In SR4-5e limits IMO don't cap your luck in any fundamentally different way than the base die pool system already does. It might be a lower cap, but saying you can only have 5 hits due to a limit of 5 is no different than saying you can only have 5 hits because your dice pool is 5. Now if exploding 6s were the default rule instead of an edge rule then limits would work in a fundamentally different way at capping your hits than the dice pool does. So to me complaining that the limit steals your hits is no different than complaining that your 2 die pool stole your hits because you would have rolled more hits if you had more dice.

That comparison isn't quite correct either. For the older editions (3rd and prior) there hardly weren't situations where you needed larger numbers of success without a smaller number still having at least some effect. So even with just 6 dice against the need of getting 8 successes I could get "lucky" in so far as I could still get 6 successes (particularly without losing the 6th due to a limit). And no, there's no need to provide an example where you needed 8 successes in order to more or less binarily decide whether or not something happened, because I'm perfectly aware of these ...



That's outright wrong. The variable TNs certainly didn't cap my luck. They only interfered with the likelyhood of me actually having Lady Luck on my side. Any possible TN still has the - infinitely - small chance of me rolling successes with every single die that I have available.



We seem to talk different things there, because SR4/5 don't cap "luck" by dice pool either, since "Luck" only exists within the boundaries of possible outcomes - as infinitly small as the odds may be. Situations where my available dice pool isn't large enough to ever met the required number of successes are factually impossible ... in 3rd and prior more strictly than in SR4/5, but there I still have to "force" that luck from the previously mentioned metalevel via Edge.
Edge still is the mechanical equivalent to karma pool which doesn't truly reflect "Luck" either. And I merely objected to the notion "wanna be strong go for Strength ... wanna be lucky go for Edge".



"Exploding dice" was the default rule in 3rd and prior, they just didn't create additional successes

Oh and I'm not necessarily hating "Edge" ... certainly not more than I hate Karma Pool (and I have my gripes with that one, which causes my SR3 characters to have "Bad Karma" as default handicap and me deliberately burning Karma Pool on a regular basis). I'm just saying that Edge (with or without limits) is not "Luck"

I guess the difference (to me at least) is that I would never complain that my two dice only got 2 hits (I would in fact be ecstatic about that). But when the Limit means that my super exceptional Dice roll removes 6 of my hits due to the Limit? It pisses me off. Completely different animals in my book.

Which is fine. Go ahead and hate away. I was expecting to hate it for the same reason. But in play for me it was more ha ha I'm too weak to make the jump.

Well, I have lost Hits to Limits in every game so far, as have others. We will see how it goes as the game continues to progress.

You sure you're not on a hellmouth or something? The laws of probability seem wonky in your area.



-k

Well, that would not surprise me...

The issue can arise quite often, depending on how a character is built. The second character build I tried with SR5 looked nice on the surface (a "super-normal" character with no cyber and no magic, Edge 7, 10+1D6 Initiative score to always act twice, and Agility 6 and Firearms skill group 5). But he would hit his Physical Limit 18% of the time when rolling Sneaking (Urban Environment)+Agility and 31% when rolling Unarmed Combat (Kung Fu)+Agility. So I'm pretty confident I could hit it once per game.

While Limits were supposed to hamper seasoned players who use their knowledge of the rules to min-max large dice pools, I'm afraid it hampers even more beginners who didn't search the book for every available options to raise their Limits, along with their dice pools, and set the attributes at the level they thought their character should have, instead of calculating how rounding up could increase their Limits. In the end, it's just another stat to tweak.

Actually, limits are supposed to only really hit often on things you have NOT invested a lot of resources into.

On things your character is supposed to be good at, your limits should be naturally high since being good at something generaly means investing a lot of resources.

The system breaks hard though on those characters with low attributes but high skills. Honestly, putting lots of points into a skill SHOULD also increase the limits a bit.


-k

I've hit a limit every game now as well, but like I said I find it fun and amusing especially when its at a critical moment. I'm not getting as many spiky rolls as you, but there are plenty of times I go for tasks that are not in my wheelhouse. My last attempt to pull a stunt while driving a big rig was freaking awesome due to limits. I think it is sweet that I rolled 5 hits on 6 dice and then only kept 3 of them because my physical limit blows.(its usually even less than that but I was using a increase reaction preparation to get me more dice) I thought it was fun to get a great roll and yet still crash the truck because I'm just clumsy. I don't see it as dice stolen, I see it as a characters limits and flaws adding to the story.

See, in that situation, I would have seen it as the character making a freakin' awesome roll to do something freakin' awesome. The fact that he lost hits, and failed the roll in the process, just ruins the narrative for me. I don't go out of my way to maximize a character, so when he/she is robbed of a lucky roll, it is an irritant, not something cool and neat, and it detracts from the story for me. That said, I don't pass on rolls I know I am likely going to fail, either (Characters do not know what their Dice Pools are, after all). Because where is the fun in that? Failure can be entertaining and fun, but Limits just do not work in that way for me.

By how much? How many hits are you losing per session? how often are you rolling?

And if it such a problem, why are you not doing called shots? If you're so damn good at rolling, roll fewer dice that are more potent. Or dual wield. Or pick up the quality to increase your limits, or adept powers if you have access to that. Or use edge. You make it sound like there is nothing you can do about all those wasted hits, you just got to be smart about it.

His point isn't

'Limits suck and they constantly kill my rolls, how do I fix this'

It's

'I just rolled really hot, why should I have to jerrymander the game to allow me to roll hot?'

Some people like rolling the dice and rolling that natural 20 in D&D is still something that gets comment from around the table, it's a silly bit of feel good factor that rarely comes up. Yes, you can avoid the problems caused by Limits by taking and using certain options. TJ just doesn't believe you should have to.

So posting a list of the ways of overcoming Limits isn't going to make TJ any happier, it's also not the first time people have mentioned them. The R+G hack to remove them outright is probably more likely to have traction.

Truly, that's really the disconnect. For me, I see it as the player making a freakin' awesome roll to do something freakin' awesome. In order for the character to realize the player's lucky roll, they themselves would have to be lucky, which is a defined trait in SR5 called Edge. Some people like it, some people don't.

Technomancer - Physical Limit 4 (5 for Weapon), Mental Limit 7, Social Limit 5.
Last Friday - ALL my hacking rolls broke Limits (Mentals 3/5/6/3 - Some by only 2/3 Hits, One roll by 5, and I hit them right on most of the time - DP's ranged from 10-12 Dice after Noise/Grid Penalties), since that was about as good as I could get without dumping Physicals (which I refuse to do, the character needs to be functional after all). Social Rolls Don't cross Limit, as the DP is one above Limit, so IF I am ever lucky enough to get 5+ Hits Social, I am not going to complain (though I did get one or two rolls at 4 hits). Physical Rolls crossed limit for my Physical Skills (by one or more) about 50% of the time with 9 Dice. If My Limit for Physical was 6, it would likely only occur once or twice in the session (I think I had one roll last week physical that lost 3 hits, the rest were 2 or less, and about 50% rolling at Limit or lower). So, as you can see, it is often enough that I get frustrated about it (for something that is NOT supposed to happen all that often). Now, maybe it is because the Character generation system sucks (in my opinion, I have always HATED Priority systems) compared to 4th Edition. There was not MUCH I could do to improve the character using the design standards that I have in place.

As a comparison, my primary character for SR4 had a DP 14 for his Pistol skill... Often enough that it became a running gag, he would roll double digit hits on those 14 dice. Could I have removed dice for called shots? Of course, but WHY? I already rolled extremely well and -4 Dice for +4 Damage was a wash more often than not because I was likely to get those hits anyways (not to mention that removing armor would have been an even worse idea). And it was definitely counter-productive to begin with, since his goal was never to actually kill someone with the Narcojet Capsule rounds he used... Sadly, I killed them nonetheless.

AS for how often the Character actually rolls - That is a hard one, since WE all tend to be heavily involved, either as primary actors or secondary/tertiary actors. Rolled in the 25 Times range, probably more due to teamworking a lot. Obviously for many different rolls covering all the Limits and most of my skills, both Active and Knowledge.

Point is, I should not HAVE to do anything to use the hits generated... The fact that I DO is what irritates me. I DON'T LIKE LIMITS or the Requirements for EDGE to abrogate it.
If, when the game gets longer in the tooth, I can do so, I will likely increase Stats (Because Technomancer, which does very little to nothing for the Physical side, which will likely take longer to improve), but that is not a solution (for Limits in the short term) since it takes 3 points worth of Stat to increase a Limit by One (assuming they are at the break point, with one over for rounding purposes, which they are). I COULD also buy a Quality, already on the list of OTHER things the character needs. I DO know how to construct a character, so please do not assume I am inept at it.

No Worries.

Ah, now it all makes sense. I was in the boat with others on wondering how you hit limits so often, but now it's clear. The issue isn't that you have crazy dice luck or you're not doing called shots or whatever... the issue is that you're playing a Technomancer. As you have clearly discovered, Technomancers are awful and borderline unplayable in 5th edition (depending on your appetite for being horribly ineffective at everything you try to do in life). The attributes you need (i.e. every single Mental attribute) to be even remotely decent at hacking are so expensive, and if you want to be, heaven help you, a normal well-rounded character (gasp!) and put points into some other physical attributes, you are unbelievably screwed...

Not to say that you shouldn't hate limits if you hate limits. I don't mind them at all, but I hear where you're coming from... but just wanted to clarify that you struggle MUCH more with hitting limits because you're playing one of the most broken (in a very bad way) archetypes to ever be created in a roleplaying game before... poor Technomancers...

:_( <- that's a tear for the Techno's...

She is not all that bad of a character, and as Long as I play to Strengths, she does well, but she does hit Limits more often than not, even with the average DP's (in the 8-12 Range) that she is throwing. She can do everything she needs, but again, She is what an average person is likely to have for Limits (even if Mental is a bit better in the long run). MOST of her attributes are 3's (Average) after all. I do think a Technomancer is Viable, but you DO have to choose your strengths and then play to them.

However, with 9 Dice, that is an Average DP for a Casual Professional (Skill 4 with a Specialty). And they should not Bust Limits all that often. The fact that she is consistently busting Limits with 9 Dice is somewhat of an issue. Yes, given 10,000 rolls, it will likely average out to where it should be, but that has yet to be the case.

I do understand the Tear for the Technomancer, though. The pendulum swung back to far, in my opinion.

honestly, i sometimes want to try and build a technomancer that completely ignores hacking, and is actually just a lightly augmented mostly-face character with lots of skills and the ability to use sprites and complex forms entirely for support (on account of they're not much good for anything else anyways, so why even bother pretending?)

unfortunately, that's when i realize that priority C as the minimum for technomancer really makes that very difficult to build well.

How so?
Category a to d, category c for TM, category d for human, category a for skills, either category b for ressources or attributes . .
Should work out nice enough right? O.o

Mine worked out pretty well...
Skills A (46/10), Stats B (20), Technomancer C (Res 3, 1CF), Resources D (50,000¥), Human E (+1 Res)

resources D means you're either losing most of your resonance, or you're not getting much of that light augmentation.

you could make the same character with several extra points of edge instead. you could make the same character but as an adept, and considerably better. you could make the same character with more augmentations and edge. you could do all sorts of things that would make a better character without technomancer abilities getting in the way.

Maybe (Better is relative after all ), but the thing is that I did not WANT more Augmentations, nor did I want more Resonance or Edge (I really wanted more Qualities, but alas, that was not possible). Edge is a non-starter for me, almost always (RARELY do I ever go above a 3 - In SR4A, I had 2 characters that broke the 3 Mark out of almost 60 of them - If you build right, Edge is almost unnecessary). New character meant Midrange Resonance as well (Ended with a 3 after augmentations). I far more desired the Skills and stats (they are, after all, what the character is about more than anything else). And since the Technomancer actually started with a Better Living Persona than the Deck for the Hacker I was contemplating (because again, Skills and Stats were going to be Priorities A/B regardless), it was not an issue to me either.

Last night's game actually started to normalize rolls for me (Yes, I tracked each and every roll, and I swung back more towards expected averages (though still higher than the average baseline), which is what I anticipate for characters when I build them). Still broke Limits fairly often, but not quite at the rate of previous games. Out of 38 Rolls, 8 of them broke Limits, One by 7 (After the fact Edge Use to reroll a horrible roll), Two by 4, One by 3, the rest by One. Seven more of the rolls HIT the Limit. So not quite Half (15/38 - 39.5%) were at Limit or better, with 8/38 Actually breaking Limit (21.1%). Hopefully, the Character will more closely approach averages over the next few months of play, as things shake out, though I expect them to still be high (since that is the norm for me, generally). All in all, Percentage wise, 20/38 rolled outside of the Average zone (52.6%), either up or down from expected , with most of those being High rather than Low.

Egads. I focus on work for a week, come back, and things have gotten a little hot. Hi everyone! Run and Gun talk here. How ya doin'?



Probably a better idea to open up a new thread on this one, since the topic will get a little philosophical and a lot mathematical. Some of the stuff that probably needs to be talked about can't due to NDA, but we can possibly work around it. Well, we *will* work around it, I just hope it makes sense.

I still have a loooong post on page 3 to get back to, but I won't quite be able to today, durnit. Just not alot of time to do what I'd like to do yet. As soon as I can, however, I'll go back and address some of those things.

Onwards and upwards and all that!

This...



Limits, to me (and probably to TJ too), is like having a limit to the number of natural 20's you are allowed to use in D&D.

"Wait, that is your second natural 20 this game session? You either have to spend (insert some D&D edge equivalent here) to use it or get a better sword."

It would be like winning the lottery in real life and having the state say "Sorry, you are to poor, we can only give you half of the winnings. Then we get the taxes (opposed hits from opposed rolls) from that number. If you want to keep all the winnings you need to cut off your arm or be less poor."

Take your time! I've got work stuff to do as well =p

I think I've mostly wrapped my head around where Trolls fall into the design scheme, but this prompted me to start thinking about the other races and and what their design places were. Humans are baseline, Trolls are the "big guy," Orcs are the cheaper troll and those who want to be a tougher off-type, Elves are for pretty faces, specialist shamans, and those that want ever +agi die they can get their hands on, but Dorfs... I don't know. The extra WP doesn't click over to an extra stun box very often, and it's a resistance stat and it's not a "do something" stat which takes the initiative away from the player. Orcs are slightly better physically, but have similar costs and are only non-optimal in a decking type role. Now add the dorf penalty to sprinting and lifestyle costs, and I'm wondering why anyone would chose to be a dorf outside of fluff reasons or a non-standard setup like the street scum rules.

willpower is used in the matrix fairly often. most often as a defensive tool, but i'm pretty sure i've seen it at least once used for a skill check somewhere.

that said, defense in the matrix can net you some nice stuff anyways, so even if it's not strictly offensive, well... it can help you get marks on people who try to hack your gear, or can let you deal damage if they use an attack-based approach. that's pretty handy.

Oh, no doubt it's handy, and a decker is probably the one archetype that has a reasonable argument for dorfs under the current priority scheme, however it basically boils down to +2 Str, +1 Wil, vs +3 Edge, and at least for me, I'd choose the Edge every time.

But to clarify a bit, there's usually more value in choosing to do something first, rather than waiting for someone to choose to do something against you, if you have equal dice bonuses. Matrix is a bit of an exception to this as you pointed out, but in order to realize any benefit at all, it still requires an action on the part of someone else. The elf with the +1 Agi can use that on every single attack, regardless of if the target even knows the elf is there, and that's what I was refering to as a "do something" stat, if that's clear at all.

Dwarves have been the unloved stepchild of Shadowrun for forever. When's the last Dwarf-centric plot you've seen, for instance? Most people would be hard pressed to name three Dwarves ever used in fiction. (Mind you, Trolls are a bit shorted in that regard as well, but.)

They're there becasue, you know, CYberpunk + D&D = Shadowrun, so you *gotta* have 'em, but they've never really gotten lovebeams across the bow.