could you at least provide a bit more detail on what search terms i should be using for those dev comments? (links would be ideal, but i'd be willing to do some searching on my own since i don't expect you to have them handy just in case some random person on the internet asks you)

It is on page 94 under Spend Your Resources, last paragraph, where it talks about the restrictions when purchasing gear. It is also obliquely referenced on page 455, under reaction enhancers, where is says the wireless bonus lets the combined bonus from wired reflexes and reaction enhancers go above +4 if both have their wireless enabled.

I still think cyberlimbs are not subject to this limit because they have their own, separate Attribute ratings, but the part I quoted doesn't explicitly address augmented limits, so I suppose that's another nebulous area in the rules for now.

On a tangent, I was looking at the cyberlimbs on the other two archetypes. The sprawl ganger has a natural Agility of 4 and Strength of 7 - but he has an unmodified cyberarm, which will have Agility and Strength of 3. Whyyyyy!!???

My issue with Trolls.

I am new to SR with SR5. I have no history with the game or the setting, no fond memories of that game where Michelle did X with her Troll or hat really cool fiction where the Trolls did Y. I have the scant info/background/coolness factor/etc. from the core book only.

So, SR5 has to sell the Troll to me to make me want to play one. Coming into the game blind I have no reason to prefer any metatype over any other. From my P.O.V. Humans, Elves and Orks look cool. Dwarves and Trolls look like annoying extremes that will be subject to the host of aggravating player behaviours like making your size a huge character point. The Hyper focused stat points of the Troll also scream 'only melee types need apply'.

So, from my new player perspective, Trolls say to me: I am used for one character type, I'm going to be the butt of player stereotyping as the big dumb brute even if I push Logic to max and I suck away those few floating points you may have had to spend on silly/useless but characterful stuff to make yourself distinct by taking your highest priorities.

So. Rather than arguing over if in the specific a Troll is actually worthwhile or when put through a specific analysis they actualy come out n top in this build I need someone to first make me want to play a Troll. Because I don't. Noone I play with (in either of my two games) has even once expressed interest in playing a Troll. The only Troll we have come across is an NPC in Missions (Juan in Chasin' the Wind). Trolls are essentially a non-Entity in our games, no one cares.

You are very right that Elves are far far more flexible. But, the attribute sum is compareable, the troll has just as many points to get Charisma 3 and body 2, as long as you are at all interested in body and strength, and trolls are about that so I really can't see why people who hate big strong characters pick the big strong metatype!

When going for citrus, don't go for lemons if you hate sour, pick the #&!% orange!



It is exactly that demographic trolls are there to fill. Players who want to play a big strong dude/gal. Picking troll means you are interested in those stats. Having one metatype that is slightly less effective at general things in return for having the two highest stats of every metatype in the entire game is not broken.








Not at all

Used full cyber arm. 0.75*(15000 for arm, 12*5k for customization (+7 strength, +2 agility)) total availability 4 (Arm) + 7 (Strength) + 2 (agility) -4 (used) = 9

+3 strength and +3 agility is 6*6500, cyberspurs is another 5000, total capacity used 9 (out of 15)

another 9k (before discount) for rating 3 armor.

We got an arm with 13 strength, 8 agility, +3 armor, +1 physical box, Spurs doing 16P AP-3,

Total cost before "used" discount, 113000 , total cost with used discount, 84750 and 1.25 essence.

85K nuyen for agility 8, strength 13, built in weapon and nice armor is an extremely good deal.

Some 60k nuyen for just the base arm with "only" max strength and max agility for a troll if you are on a budget.

Add exceptional attribute to boost a stat of your choice by 1. The Used reduction still has more room. Or go with only 9 strength and 5 agility and go full price not used.

Resources C is enough to get this and have plenty to spare.

Cause he is a Ganger and couldn't afford anything better, obviously.

Some exotic metavariant isn't really a satisfying solution. Especially because it does not solve the problem that a lot of Awakened and TMs are not supposed to be charismatic in any form and still are forced to play the womanizer type.

Curious... Why would an Awakened or Emergent Character be any less Charismatic than a Non-Awakened, Non-Emergent Character? That makes absolutely no sense.

This has been debunked earlier in the thread if you had read the entire thing. Just because the numbers of attributes are equal, does not mean, in any way, shape, or form, that the character types are balanced. Specifically because of that flexibility is essential to the priority system, because the lower you can place one priority, the better off every other priority is in relation to it, and the converse is true such that every time you're forced to place a high priority (say, taking a Troll), every other priority suffers in relation. For example, a Troll simply can't take Skills A and a maxed Magic Attribute, yet every other metatype has that option available to them.
But the converse is almost never the case, because no one is interested in getting 5's in both STR and BOD. If no one is choosing to spend those chargen resources like a Troll when they have the option to not spend them like a Troll, forcing the Troll to spend the chargen resources in a way no one else would, is a penalty not an advantage.
They don't hate big strong characters, they'd like to play a Troll who isn't just a melee monster and still be near to humans at that role. Trolls make excellent melee monsters, so good that they're arguably too good, but that's balanced against how they are consistently worse than any other race in any other possible role. They pay for being a god in one role by being craptacular in all others. Honestly, if the game straight up told the player that Trolls are best at melee and will be a step behind everyone else in everything else, I might not have as much of a problem, but they didn't and now playing a Troll Shaman, which was an archetype for most of the game's existence, is something of a trap build.
It's more like I'm reaching in the orange bin, same as I was for the past twenty years, and suddenly I'm pulling out a lemon. There's a mild shock to that, especially as the orange bin was never relabelled.
Some of us have been with SR for a long, long time. Picking Troll does not automatically mean you want those stats, but it is only through the lens of this edition does Troll become the race only chosen if you want more STR than an Orc can give you. Charismatic Troll Thrash Metal Rocker cum face? Yeah, no. Troll Street Shaman? You can, but you're hobbling yourself. Back in 3rd we had a Troll Decker that just wanted to be small and petite due to being Japanese and a lot of self-hatred, but she could be "herself" in the matrix, and she also was a damn good decker because skills worked differently. Yeah, I wouldn't want to recreate that character under 5th with needing Resources, Skills, and Meta all needing to be high. These concepts can be worked around in 5th, but no matter what, the character will be 2-3 dice behind and at this point you're just fighting the system, especially as there's a much easier solution if you just give up on being a Troll.
It is when virtually no other character would ever spend the attribute points to get to the Troll's starting point, if they aren't hyperfocused on melee.
You understand you still need a normal STR of 9 and a normal AGI of 4 to use that arm, right? Half the point of the convoluted cyberarm rules is to make up for low physical stats and perhaps shave a priority level off of Attributes. But when trying to hit the racial maximum with a cyberarm, you're still pretty much maxing the attributes anyways, which then requires Resources, Meta, and Attributes at a high level, leaving Skills for D. Yeah, it's workable, but the character is giving up so much flexibility, especially in light of the fact that with just 100 nuyen, the throwing skill, and a wireless link, anyone can put out an undodgeable 16P -2 AP.

...which is why I didn't claim that.

cyberlimb customizations are based on racial maximum, not your personal maximum.

as to your other points:

more flexibility provides more power. even more to the point, more options that people want is more power than having fewer options and being forced to take some options that almost nobody wants.

and, as has been pointed out, trolls don't have to be melee builds. they make very good melee builds (though not exactly leaps and bounds ahead of an ork, or even a human or elf, for that matter), but there shouldn't be this pressure towards making only one character type. i can pick any other metatype and fairly comfortably make an effective character of almost any archetype (and i only say almost because non-support technomancers are going to suffer just from being a technomancer, regardless of metatype. i do feel i should point out that troll technomancers suffer more than other technomancers, though). and then i can compare it to a similar troll, and the troll will be behind in multiple areas, in some cases in fairly crucial areas. except, of course, for melee builds (and even then, some of the metatypes compare pretty favourably too).

heck, depending on the type of melee build, trolls aren't even great at that, either (for example, if the form of melee i am using is not strength-dependent; shock gloves, monowhip, etc).

But you did, and I quote...



My question is... What did you mean by that statement?

On the subject of cybernetics and choice of citrus, this is relevant.


Especially since they are regional/cultural in nature and your character concept and/or particular game setting may not work at all with being from the particular region/culture corresponding to the one metavariant that suits your mechanical needs.

Cross-pollination is a thing by the 2070's.

i would say that forced is rather a strong word for it, but basically:

to make a technomancer or magician which gets the most out of being a technomancer or magician, you kinda need high charisma. you can't be a wallflower, or a person who just has no clue how to talk to others, or a rude person who is just plain disgusting, crude, etc. if you want certain benefits (and getting multiple bound spirits/sprites can be a pretty significant benefit on it's own, even if you have no other use for charisma - which is never the case for technomancers, and only sometimes the case depending on tradition for magicians).

but again, i would say that forced is rather too strong. you can absolutely be a magician or technomancer and have awful charisma. you can even be a pretty good magician with awful charisma (technomancers have rather more of a rough time of it, but it is possible, albeit more limiting than it is for a magician).

but to make the strongest magician or technomancer, you do need to have charisma, and the more you have, the better you are at being a magician or technomancer.

It is, but that's a different character concept...

Of course, having a high Charisma but being bad with people is probably one of the smarter uses for Uncouth.

no, it really isn't.

one of the smarter uses for uncouth would be to represent someone who is literally incapable of social interaction with other human beings, probably due to some form of severe mental disability. because for any other concept, you're going to have to take skill ranks in social skills just to be able to accomplish the most very basic task related to those skills, and if you have a good charisma to back it up, you're actually pretty likely to succeed.

i mean, we're talking about someone who is incapable of lying, intimidation, negotiation, etc.

an uncouth person is a person who when their parents told them to clean their room and they didn't want to do it, instead of saying "i'll do it in 10 minutes, i'm in the middle of something right now", they would sit there hopelessly clueless as to what they could possibly say to express a desire to do that task later (or more likely never quite get around to doing it), because that's negotiating (or lying, in the parenthetical case), and the uncouth person cannot even attempt that without training.

we're talking about someone who probably has difficulty even grasping the concept of interpersonal interaction, here.

what would have made a lot more sense would have been a quality that basically gives gremlins for social interactions. and also, if you want to call it uncouth, not making it apply to intimidation.

That "a lot of Awakened and TMs are not supposed to be charismatic", for the same reason a lot of mundane characters are not supposed to be charismatic -- character concept is "social like a brick", dumpstat, player doesn't like to RP conversations, whatever. Problem is, for playing a shaman, gode, hougan, or [Shinto priest] you need a high Charisma, because apparently reclusive shamans, socially awkward godes, or just plain asshole Shintoists who are still powerful don't exist. And TMs...even if you choose a non-Charisma stream, they still need at least average stats in it or die from virtually stubbed toe. Which is stupid in general, and completely breaks when trolls enter the picture.

See, I approach that from a different position. Attribute of 3 is average, and is not bad. If you want to be an unsociable character, don't take any Social Skills. Simple as that. Stat 3 with no skills defaults you to 2 Dice and there you go.

Charisma 3 is perfectly viable for a socially inept Magician or Technomancer (My current Technomancer has a Charisma 3). In fact, my last 2 Awakened/Emergent Characters have BOTH had Charisma 3. Average is Average for a reason. As for strongest, well, you have to accept that he will likely be fairly social, after all, he is the best he can be.

My point was that the ganger's artificial arm is worse than his natural one - so why replace it to begin with?


The problem is that they made an Attribute associated with social ability one that is needed to be effective at roles (mage, technomancer) that don't necessarily have anything to do with high social ability. It's kind of like if they made Strength the linked Attribute for hardware tests, so despite wanting to play a skinny geek decker with no close combat ability, you have to play a buffed-up dude if you want to be any good at hardware. Only Charisma is even worse, because it is a mental stat. So if you want to play a nerdy technomancer or a reclusive shaman, you have to either have a low Charisma and be less effective, or have a high Charisma and have your character's personality sabotaged by the game mechanics.

On the other hand, those two roles are ones where mental abilities translate into power, so it actually makes sense that a curmudgeonly type would be weaker due to lacking, essentially, force of personality. There are more than a few roles where playing to concept costs you mechanically, and they can range from slightly suboptimal to all but unplayable.


The good thing about the U.S. being a melting pot of immigrants is that you can play a Greek, British, Indian, etc. metatype without needing to actually be from one of those countries. SR5 seems to have been designed with an axe to grind against any option that was effective in SR4, so if they do bring metavariants back, expect them to take a nerf bat to a few of the favorites such as fomorians.

if charisma 3 is average, and 0 is the normal level of skill for someone who hasn't been trained in it, how exactly is a charisma 3 character with no social skills socially awkward? (at least, they aren't more socially awkward than most people at any rate).

Really? Can you provide a link, would be much appreciated.

I'll have to do some digging at some point to see if I can track it back down - it was early days; didn't take long for people to start complaining about the Cyberlimb of Awesome still being a thing.

While I agree that 3 is average (and perfectly functional) it's also not exceptional nor is it a dump stat. If you're dumping strength or charisma, you don't set it to 3. So, if your troll has a Charisma of 3, it's not a dump stat; you've actually invested in it. He's not socially awkward, at least not in relation to the average person. He's exactly the same.

Troll can instead pick Attributes A and Troll B and have more total than anyone else so I really fail to see the problem. As a metatype with very high bonuses to stats they have the luxury of getting a huge total but at the relatively small cost of NOT being able to dump stats but who does that anyway?

Even with attributes E you have points to get all stats to a decent level as if you were a human with Attributes B. Your worst stats sum is comparable with the human max or near max. Trolls are a front loaded attributes heavy metatype and balance wise it would be terrible if they could get those awesome stats for free while everyone else has to pay for them. Even if it means they get a little pigeon holed to melee/tank/ish builds.

To be able to get 24 + 8 = 32 total attribute points is not a penalty, it is a high specialization privilege only trolls have. The closest runner up are orcs with 24+5, one point short of a full priority worth of attribute points LESS than the troll. (priorities generally give +4 attribute points per level, except E)




You make a very good point but the fluff of troll shamans are not handled well in the game mechanics and I am willing to agree that it is a bit at the game mechanic's fault but hear me out on this

A troll shaman has 2 less drain resistance than a human

But 4 more "mana regen" (thanks to higher body). And a full 8 more dice at recovering from physical drain.

High body shamans burn through stun quickly because they are slightly worse at resisting drain, but they recover much much faster. With higher soak total they might end up getting comparable levels of stun boxes in a regular combat.

Troll shaman are far more effective than a human shaman at nuking people with F12 instakill fireballs. The troll gets around 0,67 more phys damage each cast, but he can take more (more phys boxes) and he'll recover by the next day ready for more, while the weak human sits with slow healing physical drain.

The troll shaman only sucks if you only go for "Never take drain"-caster. I know from playing SR3 (and Sr4) that that is the usual path to take and only then does drain resistance matter above all else.

Troll shaman can get 8 Charisma from only 4 ranks focused concentration + increase charisma self buff. That is still decent and requires less karma for positive qualities etc.

With higher body for recovery and the change to always get +4 augmented maximum a troll shaman has 4( charisma compared to human 6(10) instead of SR4 where they had 4(6)..

4 is the sweetspot for a F4 attribute boost. It uses the full force and requires no higher force. This makes foci optimally cheap and happens to be where availability is best. The human going for F6 sustaining can't affort the foci, it has high availability and costs more karma to bind and leaves no room left to avoid addiction. Charisma 4 is not that terrible when you look at it this way.

That said, the hermetic troll is still better, getting Logic 4 (not maxed) means he gets Body 10 (maxed) and enjoy everything else a shaman does. But, if I recall, my poster from SR3 at home has a troll combat mage, not troll combat shaman or did I miss something?

Troll combat mage is a good mage and the best at nuking enemies with F12 doomballs thanks to his much faster recovery and he is able to have reliable statboost to get decent drain resist. Will 4(8 with 1 cheap foci), logic 4 (8 with focused concentration), body 10 and an F6 spirit of man supplying increased reflexes and you have a monster mage that throws devastating fireballs and makes stuff go splat with excellent performance. That troll mage is anything but craptastic. In fact I'm scared of her!



I would agree 100% if we talked about SR4 where strength was absolute crap and had no value even for a melee character. Trolls were absolutely useless in SR4 but I don't feel the same in SR5.




Cyberarm doesn't care about your current stats, only natural maximum for your metatype. No problem at all getting that cyberarm of doom and spend all other attribute points on making a character with awesome stats.

The gaping black hole between priority points and karma makes skills stupid anyway. Your 25 bonus karma gives you 10-ish skillpoints so even skills E have plenty to spend on all the needed skills that you need a few ranks in to survive (Computer 1 to handle a commlink, etiquette and others) and use your priority points to max out unarmed, automatics and perception. (I think this is a problem too, why penalize players who DON'T go for only maxed out skills by making them suffer?)

The grenades being superior to expensive arms and throwing being stupid is a huge problem I've whined about for months in almost every post on this forum. I can only agree that grenades break everything, from troll tanks to elf shamans and make everything irrelevant. I have posted about grenades here
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...c=39934&hl=

This is not correct, or at least not very clear. Your attribute maximum is your natural attribute +4. While you can read it so that cyberlimbs aren't subject to this, there's nothing explicitly saying you can break the augmented max with them.

When faced with this sort of confusion, I go back to first principles. Just because the rules don't say you *can't* do something, doesn't mean you *can*. Often, saying "it doesn't say I can't do this!" is a munchkin excuse, so I'm a little wary whenever I hear it. Anyway, I would rule in favor of caution, and say you can't use cyberlimbs to exceed your augmented max.

You realize that you're reading requires the text to actually straight up say something other than it does, right? The rule is that the maximum bonus you can get is +4 - and cyberlimbs are not conferring a bonus.

Cyberlimb customization is maxed at NATURAL MAXIMUM (i.e. 6 for human, 10 for troll)

Then, the cyberlimb enhancement only goes to +3, so natural +3 is max with cyber limb (compared to natural +4 with other means)

Cyberlimb is 1 short of global maximum and that is a good design decision since cyberlimbs are so much more accessible and cheap.



Back to drain, the difference in 2 less drain stat is much less than I earlier said.

Casting spells with 10 drain (for example big big big fireballs) causes on average 6,33 boxes of stun/phys for a human with 6+5 charisma+willpower. The troll gets 0,66 more, or 7 boxes of stun/phys.

But, casting a more sane spell, like drain 3 the troll shaman takes 0,546 average drain, the human shaman 0,321.. One in five casts causes the troll one more box of drain, boohoo.

The full table of average drain taken for a drain pool of 1 to 20 versus spells with drain 1-6, 8 and 10

drain
Pool 1 2 3 4 5 6 8 10
1 0,667 1,667 2,667 3,667 4,667 5,667 7,667 9,667
2 0,444 1,333 2,333 3,333 4,333 5,333 7,333 9,333
3 0,296 1,037 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 7,000 9,000
4 0,198 0,790 1,679 2,667 3,667 4,667 6,667 8,667
5 0,132 0,593 1,383 2,337 3,333 4,333 6,333 8,333
6 0,088 0,439 1,119 2,019 3,001 4,000 6,000 8,000
7 0,059 0,322 0,893 1,719 2,674 3,667 5,667 7,667
8 0,039 0,234 0,702 1,444 2,356 3,336 5,333 7,333
9 0,026 0,169 0,546 1,197 2,052 3,009 5,000 7,000
10 0,017 0,121 0,421 0,980 1,767 2,690 4,667 6,667
11 0,012 0,087 0,321 0,793 1,504 2,382 4,335 6,333
12 0,008 0,062 0,243 0,636 1,267 2,090 4,004 6,000
13 0,005 0,044 0,182 0,505 1,057 1,816 3,677 5,667
14 0,003 0,031 0,136 0,397 0,873 1,563 3,356 5,334
15 0,002 0,022 0,101 0,310 0,714 1,333 3,041 5,002
16 0,002 0,015 0,075 0,241 0,580 1,127 2,738 4,672
17 0,001 0,011 0,055 0,185 0,467 0,944 2,446 4,344
18 0,001 0,007 0,040 0,142 0,373 0,785 2,170 4,019
19 0,000 0,005 0,029 0,108 0,296 0,648 1,911 3,700
20 0,000 0,004 0,021 0,082 0,233 0,530 1,671 3,389


Being troll shaman is still not craptastic. The importance of Drain stats are to some extent overrated, period.

That's not what it says either:


What happens next is an argument over rather or not cyberlimbs count as a natural attribute or an augmented one. They don't actually specify what they count as, so we could end up going around and around on it. That's why I go back to first principles: just because the rules don't say no, doesn't mean it's a yes.

Problem is, those tiny fractions add up

Probability of taking at most X damage in total with 11 Drain dice EDIT from casting five spells with DV 3


..and with 9 dice


In other words, 11 dice mean a 76% chance of slinging those spells without suffering wound modifiers. Knock down two dice and you're down to 50:50

There are no smart uses for Uncouth.

If you want to have a high Charisma but be bad with people, just don't invest in social skills, never dress appropriately (those modifiers add up, just like in real life), etc, etc. Uncouth is a trap and should never be suggested to anyone, ever.

Which is almost exactly what I said in the most recent Critical Glitch podcast (where we discussed Negative Qualities), and I pointed people towards Social Stress and away from Uncouth.

Say we cast a lightning bolt that has 3 drain over and over again.

Troll shaman takes on average 0,546 drain per cast, or some 10 casts before getting 5-6 boxes and stopping.

She then rests 2 hours before next combat, rolling 14 dice to recover from stun, She has 94% chance to recover at least 5 stun on two hours rest and be fully ready for next fight.


The human shaman takes only 0,321 per cast, and is expected to only take 3-4 boxes from casting 10 lightning bolts

She then rests 2 hours and have 90% chance to recover at least 3 stun.. She has lower chance to recover 3 out of 3-4 stun than the troll has to recover 5 out of 5-6 stun.

They then get a harder right, and decide to cast F11 fireballs (10 drain or so?) to obliterate large groups of enemies in one cast.

They both cast 2 of those, one with reagents (for stun drain)

The troll is expected to take 7 physical + 7 stun. She must be careful to make sure overcasting is done right but I use this as an extreme example of high drain situation as contrast for the low drain situation above.

During one day of healing, the troll rolls 18 dice to heal physical damage and has a 75% chance to heal at least 5 (getting no penalties). and a full 40% chance to heal all physical drain by the next day.

The human is expected to take 6.3 drain, or 6 + 6 or so.

The human have only 25% chance to heal enough physical to have no penalties (at least 4 boxes healed)

She has 2% chance to heal 6 or more (body 4), a whopping 7,5% if she has maxed out body at 5 (charisma is at 6).


10 casts low-moderate drain, troll wins.

2 casts cripping high drain, troll wins again!

Conclusion: No evidence found for trolls having serious problems with drain. Trolls can be effective shamans and work comparably well with humans (baseline)

Even an elf shaman is not that far ahead. Elf shaman takes 0,182 stun per cast at 3 drain, and 5,667 at super high drain. With same body as human, the elf is as good as humans at recovering and taking 0,67 less drain from high drain stuff than humans means they will come out slightly on top of humans.

Body is important for magicians, trolls have lots of body. Trolls can be magicians. Even after the penalty to their mental stats.

A troll shaman using clever buffs will sit on 16 dice drain resist out of chargen, a human shaman can get 10+8, (charisma 6, focused concentration and increase charisma +4, willpower 4 + foci 4 just like the trol for total 18 dice)

The difference between 18 and 16 dice is smaller than 9 vs 11, further making the troll just as good (if not better) shaman than the human or even elf (elves can't buff from charisma 8 so the foci+focused concentration trick doesn't work as well for them.


Yes, it adds up but not automatically at the troll's disadvantage. We have just underestimated the value of Body as a stat.


Now, that said, maybe we can go back to troll general topic again? Or do we still think troll are sucky mages and hopefully craptastic?

One thing that bothers me a bit is how they lemon-lime changed the troll movement speed from being fastest to slowest to run. This is a big problem for the melee trolls. Is it a typo or why did they go from +50% faster (SR4, can't remember in SR3 since I never played troll there) to -50% for running in SR5.

[quote name='Sengir' post='1291414' date='May 9 2014, 02:39 PM']Problem is, those tiny fractions add up

Probability of taking at most X damage in total with 11 Drain dice


..and with 9 dice



EDIT: I wrote a long stupid post about nothing useful since I didn't read properly


Yes, it is a difference but the troll recovers faster, as I showed in my previous post.

Because he had his arm removed against his will (say, eaten by a barghest) and instead of being a one-armed man he paid for an off-the-shelf cyberarm because having a weaker arm is better than having no arm at all?

Because Wak -- I'm pretty sure that one was Wak -- wanted to make a down on his luck ganger with a shitty cyberarm (and because he had to make it match the artwork)? I mean, it's just a ganger. They don't always have to make the best decisions, or be sporting the best gear.

...assuming enough time to heal a few boxes of damage but not enough for an empty stun track...when was the last time you had that happening?


The limit = #reagents rule fucks up any aspect of drain



If you insist, let's go back to my first point: Being forced to increase Charisma sucks, even more for trolls.

the ability to reduce drain damage is always valuable.

the ability to recover from drain damage is only useful if you have time between casting spells to do so.

and no, the troll being able to spend priority A on attributes to have more than everyone else isn't really an advantage. it's a trap. attributes A is crap, especially when combined with race B (or vice versa). your skills and resources are going to be absolutely awful if you do this; yes, you can patch up some holes with karma, but there is a monstrously huge difference between skills A and skills C. if you're stuck putting skills in D or lower (for example, because you want to have decent magic or you want to have more than ~50k nuyen of gear), it really is not even remotely close. you're going to have a guy with decent all-around attributes, and can basically do one thing moderately well if you put attributes and race as your top two priorities. and in just about every other area, you'll be lucky to call yourself mediocre. it only works well for extremely narrow areas of focus, and even then, you'd likely be better off having made different decisions (for example, you could have an adept or street samurai that actually has enough magic or resources to do more than one thing only).

not just that, but the troll with attributes E most certainly does not have the same situation with attributes as a human with attributes B (not that i would ever recommend investing priority B in attributes). the troll *must* buy strength and body of 5 or better. the human can buy whatever attributes are needed. for the vast majority of characters, strength 5 is not even remotely needed (in fact, i somewhat suspect that 2 is one of the most common strength values amongst shadowrun characters that are not melee or otherwise very focused on strength). and even though a body of 5 is nice to have, for most characters it is not as important as investing elsewhere, such that 3-4 points of body is much more likely. functionally, the human has 3-4 points at least to spend wherever they want, while the troll has those points locked into a purchase that, when given the choice, almost nobody wants.

strength is better in SR5 than it was in SR4. that doesn't make it good, though. it just makes it less bad ( though perhaps bad is the wrong word; it's only bad because you're trading something better for it)

Pre 3e had stats as less meaningful so a 4 charisma Shaman was perfectly fine. 4e on the caps hit trolls a bit harder as they are now part of the dice pool. Still I don't think the caps are a problem, trolls being worse at being mage/shaman is fine. They were playable in 4e because your race was not equally valued to your entire skill or stat expenditure. 40 out of 400 left plenty of wiggle room, trolls could still easily afford to put 200 more points into attributes.

Here's what it says -


Also note that the table for enhancements on page 457 caps rating at 3 and furthermore, the rules for it state you can only have 1 enhancement per attribute, so you can't stack 2 str enhancements in one arm.

That's quite the heavy handed (get it? GET IT?) nerf to limbs and makes them useless again . .

Nah, I just realized I left out a smewhat important detail in the post...

I thought it put them on about the same level. They start at 3 str 3 agi, you can customize them to whatever value, up to your racial natural max, and then use enhancements to push them to +3.

That would be great for creating a character to match a backstory or concept, but I would question it for an archetype. *Shrug* But then again, the archetypes do tend to be gimped a lot.

well, the main problem as i see it is that after so many editions with a tradition of basically screwing up the archetypes, the only people who are likely to look to the archetypes for guidance are the people not familiar with the system and who therefore don't know better

so those most in need of guidance are the ones getting the bad advice.

Yes. It can be a bit frustrating. You could point out the Street Samurai's cyberlimbs to show that they can go over the normal +4 since their own Attributes are separate from the character's Attributes... but the same archetype is 200,000+ over on resources.

The excuse seems to be that the archetypes were created before the rules were finalized, but the question becomes, why weren't they corrected after the rules were finalized?

Seems possible that some corrections were made, but that some stuff got missed.

The problem is, it doesn't actually say you can customize a limb past your augmented cap. So, if you had Str 1 and got a cyberlimb, by one reading of the RAW you couldn't push it above Str 5, no matter if you used customization or anything else. It is a pretty confusing area, and it could be read many ways. However, I'm going to stick with the No unless you get an explicit Yes.


Who says it got missed? Some of the proofreaders are still wondering why mistakes they caught made it into the finished printing.

Because there is not such thing as an "augmented cap" - that's an undefined concept. There's a cap on bonuses, which cyberlimbs simply do not meet any text definition of.

Plus, they clearly state that they use your natural maximum as a limit for customization. This means when you use that arm or leg, it is treated as it's own part and not subject to... whatever he's coming up with.

Because incorrect archetypes are a matter of tradition?