Eh, second hand ware, unless it is alpha, isn't worth it. Recovering essence later in game is theoretically possible, though I've never seen anyone actually do it, mostly due to cost and time required. It isn't really worth while at 0.1 essence/month of gene therapy and a price tag of 75,000 + 20,000/month. Better off to get the basics you need to start play and then upgrade as you go if you are worried about essence.

My Cyberlogician did it towards the end of the Campaign. Not something that you do in the beginning, to be sure.

getting a good initiative booster in chargen is generally a good idea. wired reflexes < synaptic booster < move-by-wire, as a rule (although if you're going augmented adept, the synaptic booster is better since you already have a way to boost your dodge skill).

move-by-wire: 2 is the equivalent of wired-reflexes (alphaware) combined with reaction enhancers: 2, having the same Essence cost and only costing 1,000 Nuyen more, although you need the restricted gear quality to get it. It is worth it, since it also gives you +2 to dodge and rating: 4 skillwires. Wired reflexes: 1, though, at 11,000 Nuyen, is just the thing for a character who has combat as a secondary specialty and needs a cheap initiative boost. Synaptic boosters are the most Essence-friendly option, but are expensive. They are worth it for adepts, because synaptic boosters: 2 only cost you a single power point in lost Magic, compared to 2.5 power points to get improved reflexes: 2.

Although if you're packing an adept way with access to Improved Reflexes for discount, it becomes hard to beat you just taking it to level 3 rather than getting 'ware, and using the essence for agi/str increases.

<edit> and a 'jack, because I'm old school and like my characters having 'jacks.

Don't forget boosted reflexes from the way of the samurai as they stack with any non-aug IP booster 5 IP!

That leaves the Increase Reflexes spell which is unfortunately not explicitly forbidden - IPs are just limited to 4. Still, the combination is ludicrous.

How is the "Increase Reflexes" spell excempt from the clause "other magical increases to Initiative"?

I think he means that the improved reflexes power won't work with boosted reflexes, because it has restrictive text, but the improved reflexes power will because it doesn't have that restrictive text.

Indeed.

The most important part, I think, is the clarification on number of physical IPs you can have. No matter what you do or how you stack stuff, no more that 4 IPs are possible.

Unless you are a Hacker/Rigger or Technomancer/Rigger, who can both get up to 5 Passes.

Which is why I pointed out it was physical passes.

Arguably, though, the Rigger's Passes have a Physical Component that is applicable. While the Rigger's Actions are considered Matrix Actions, the vehicle's actions that they coordinate are very real indeed, and very physical.

Makes things very easy then if you've got 5 IPs in the Matrix and rigging hot: up to 4 IPs spent on whatever Physical world actions you need, and at least 1 IP on Matrix overwatch to make sure no hacker's decided to break into your network.

That is one way to handle that...

"Some implants and magic may give a character extra actions to
take in each Combat Turn. These are noted as extra Initiative Passes
on the character’s record sheet. The maximum number of Initiative
Passes a character can have is 5, but most character types can only ever
achieve 4." P68 SR4A

Kapow!

Are we really doing this? A dispute about the number of passes you can get and how only folks acting in the matrix can get more than 4? Cuz honestly I don't feel like digging through the books to find the references.
Most character types can only ever achieve 4 passes because they aren't hackers, riggers or technomancers using their exceptional tech or echoes to achieve that extra 5th pass. In the matrix. Not in the physical.
So 4 passes in the physical. That is your actual meat body. Sure matrix types can get 5 but that isn't in their meat bodies.
Kapow!

You may only ever have four, UNLESS there is a [b]very specific in an item, and tend to be very specific with the combo.

The only two I know of are in the Advanced Echo for overclocking and the simsense accelerator commlink mod.

This leads to situations where a technomancer can have a simsense booster cyberware(which they DO benefit from) and overclocking, and only get 4 passes, or two simsense accelerators in one commlink (it does have 4 slots, and accelerators are 2 each), but the specific exception is with the booster, not another accelerator.[/b]

And many GMs will disallow stacking two Accelerators.



-k

Doesn't work by default anyway.

Boosted reflexes and blood of kali gets you to 5.

And drones have a number of passes, when rigged, equal to that of the matrix persona rigging it (or 3 without rigging). Meaning that, while the TM/Decker/Rigger has 5 IPs in the matrix, his totally physical world drone is moving at 5 IPs as well. There is literally no restrictive text that says you cannot have all 5 of those in the drone, making it do stuff, in the physical world.

That's just it, though. I shouldn't have to closely police characters; if the system is robust enough, it'll make the expected power level clear and encourage that. I don't know about you, but when I was running 4.5, a character generation session was a lot of discussion, and a lot of books being handed back-and-forth. It's really impossible to closely monitor six different characters at once. What's more, since you need accounting spreadsheets to keep track of Sr4.5 characters, it's easy to bury powerful tricks so the GM can't catch them, at least not until they've approved the character and it's too late.

In games like Savage Worlds, I can easily look at a character and see where every point was spent. It's a little harder in White Wolf, but it's still pretty straightforward. Even SR3, minus gear, can be easily double-checked in a few minutes. SR4.5 takes almost as long as building the character itself, and that
s using a calculator or computer!

See, I think it is VERY obvious what the power level of the game is. Take a look at the opposition and it should be obvious to you too.
If the ELITE opposition (professional Ratings of 5/6) is throwing 16-20 Dice, PC's SHOULD NOT START at 20+ Dice. They should not even start at 15+.

The system assumes that 10-12 Dice is the Starting point based upon the character opposition that they provide. Can you play above that, with Hyper Specialists? Of Course you can, but please do not try and pass that off as the intent.

Of course, SR5 escalates that a bit right out of the gates by increasing what skills mean and how high they go so those numbers will increase by 3 or so, but in SR4A, if is pretty straight forward. If you tell me you are a Professional Grade [Whatever], your skill better not be a 6 (nor should it be a 1). Simple as that.

If you want to avoid issues, you need to:

A) Communicate Clearly and Thoroughly.

B) Be Vigilant Making Sure Their Characters Fit the Game.

You can say you shouldn't have to all you want but by hook, crook, or achievements in the field of ignorance, people can come up with the damnedest things. That's why I wrote The Gentleman's Agreement you see linked in my signature as a catch all "Problems will come up and this is how we're going to handle it" policy. I don't nee to be prescient since we're all agreeing to work together to have fun at the start.

And I do agree that this is the best policy to eliminating issues. Communication is key.

can't say i agree with this.

if you want to be the guy that people hire to get into a place guarded by professionals with 10-12 dice, then considering your plan is likely to hinge on opposed rolls against those people multiple times, you'd bloody well better not be sitting there with 10-12 dice yourself.

if you have an even dice pool, you're looking at about 50/50 odds of success. that is pretty damned awful if you only need to make one check already (equal chance of success and catastrophic failure means you've got a terrible terrible plan, in my books).

if you have those same 50/50 odds per test, and you need to make 4 such tests, the chance your plan will work as intended is 1/16. nobody should be stupid enough to take those kinds of chances for any amount of money.

even having 4-5 dice up on your opponents isn't what i would consider exactly reliable. at that point, you're reasonably confident your first few rolls will succeed... but if you have to make more than 5-6 important opposed rolls, expect at least one of those to fail because your opposition got lucky and/or you got unlucky.

this just becomes even more true for situations with major consequences should you fail... for example, hacking on the fly, fast-talking your way past a security checkpoint, disabling a key security system, avoiding detection by a patrolling guard, etc. even something as simple as legwork can be absolutely essential.

we're talking about people who, for a living, sneak into high security facilities and steal things from people with vastly superior combat capabilities. you shouldn't be expecting to live for long if your plan is completely dependent on you getting luckier than every single source of opposition you meet. you had bloody well *better* be throwing more dice than your expected opposition, because if you aren't then either your employer screwed up in choosing you for the job, or you screwed up in accepting the job.

you wouldn't take your car to be repaired by a person who told you there was only a 50% chance they could fix it. you wouldn't go to a restaurant that screws up your food 50% of the time. you wouldn't go to a barber/hairdresser/etc if there was only a 50% chance they'd give you the haircut you asked for. and nobody should be looking to spend tens of thousands of nuyen on some dumbass who only has a 50% chance to succeed at a single task, when you're asking them to successfully complete a dozen or more tasks.

I do understand what you are saying, to be sure. But, none of these professions that you describe are rolling more than 8-10 Dice, and they are probably not rolling for most things.
When you are unopposed, like the Hairdresser, Mechanic, Chef, etc. are, then one success is success. Likewise, One Net success is often more than enough to succeed at your Professional Criminal Enterprise. So, if your opposition (Low End) is rolling from 8-12 Dice then you get 10-14 Dice and you have the edge. But when I see the DP's over 20, you are not looking for the Edge, you are looking to Never Fail, and that I have issues with. If you never fail, then there is no challenge, and if there is no challenge, then you might as well write a novel instead of playing a roleplaying game. Failure in a roll does not immediately lead to failed mission and the characters ending up dead or imprisoned (rather it leads to complications that must be overcome). If that is the way your (generic) table runs, then maybe it is a table issue. The characters at our table fail individual rolls often enough that it adds to the challenge, but not so often that it leads to blown runs. And THAT is interesting. Never losing or failing is super boring. Why bother rolling the dice at all at that point.

I get that I see things different than most, but that perspective WORKS (though it may not WORK for others), so I don't see anything wrong with it.

Starting shadowrunners can really run the gamut of experience and ability. By the rules, a shadowrunner can be elite at one skill (6), or an expert at two skills (5). A skill of 3 is "professional", but that description is further clarified as "Competent at general skilled tasks". Examples given of rating: 3 skills are regular beat cops and entry-level kids just out of college. So depending on a shadowrunner's background, they may indeed have skills higher than 3. A security guard who got tossed to the curb because they needed to blame someone for a security breach, an idealistic teenage hacker, or a down on his luck street punk might have skills around that 3 mark. A cold-eyed former corporate expediter, a former Lone Star HTR combat mage, or a freelance assassin might have that skill of 6/two skills at 5.

Some people like to play Rock; some people like to play Revvy.

That's simply not the case. SR4.5's archetypes have primary dice pools ranging from around 10 to 17, a huge variance. That leaves players confused as to what they need to be effective. And that doesn't even factor in hyperspecialists, who can exceed dice pools of 30. If players want characters who are better than the opposition, they might need dice pools in the low 20's, depending on your table of course.


That perspective does not work, though. Shadowrun is a degree of success system; the more successes you roll, the better you do. So someone with Hairdressing 1 and Hairdressing 6 will have a noticeable difference in the haircuts they put out. Unopposed or not, more successes = better, in every edition of Shadowrun.

When they're opposed? Variability means you need an even higher dice pool to offset things. If your dice pools are even, that means you'll fail 50% of the time; but if your dice pools are 30% higher, that might mean you only fail 30% of the time-- still unacceptable. Would you drive a car with brakes that only failed 30% of the time? You kinda need double the dice pool to drop your odds of failure into an acceptable range-- in other words, 20 or so.

Now, me personally? I found that capping dice pools directly solved most of the issues.

First off, 10-12 dice is the elite of the various CorpSec guard forces. We're talking the Red Sammies and their ilk here. Nobody has the scratch to guard everything with Red Sammies, not even a Mega like Renraku. If your GM is tossing 10+ dice opposition at you on the daily, your group has stepped on someone's (proverbial) dick that was never intended to be stepped on by anyone still breathing, or they're being an asshole. I rephrase that, they're being an asshole because you were an asshole first and made a character chucking 20+ dice and made them toss SEAL Six and Spetzgroupa Alfa in disguise at you to make it semi-challenging...occasionally...like when you roll badly...far more often then usual....for the whole session.

1-in-16? Psh! Tell that the guys that go rob banks. Base jumpers. Race car drivers. Tony Hawk pulling that 900. The guys that kicked the entire city of Mogadishu's ass and walked out completely unharassed for miles. Hell, tell that to any of the Prime Runners you guys always talk about from the metaplot I could give a shit about. I'm sure that more than once each one of them would have taken 1-in-16 with tears of joy in their eyes.

As for the opposition...how many CorpSec forces run around in armor with the super-fly cammo shit on it for all their guys? I don't see a one. Fully custom weapons and gear are where the Shadowrunners get their edge. Small units, highly specialized in equipment and tactics, and with the balls to put their asses firmly over the handlebars and gun that motherfucking crotch rocket right at the ramp.

i get that none of those professionals are throwing 20 dice. but would you go to someone who claimed to be a hairdresser if they were throwing 1-2 dice at cutting hair (assuming you knew their skill level)?

like i said, if you have a somewhat larger dice pool, you're pretty likely to succeed... but even rolling 16 dice vs 12 dice is far from a sure thing. hell, rolling 20 dice vs 10 dice is pretty likely to succeed, but even then it's not remotely a sure thing, and in any event i've never seen a character who is 20 dice in everything, which means there's always something to challenge your team.

as to the dice pools of the opposition sucking, that's largely because nobody took the time to apply readily available and inexpensive sources of dice pool bonuses when they were figuring out opposition. just because the people who designed the game are too dumb to figure out that a large bonus to perception is useful for security guards, and costs a relatively small amount (which because there's so many desperate people looking for work can come out of the guards' salary anyways), doesn't mean that i have to assume no corporation has a security force making use of those things. just because the people who wrote the book couldn't figure out that there are inexpensive commonly available guns with smartguns for their guards to use doesn't mean security guards in my games don't use inexpensive tech that gives significant bonuses.

now, obviously, you don't go around handing out 100,000 nuyen in cyberware to everyone. but when you could spend something like 1,000 nuyen extra (and take it out of the guard's salary, not to mention that's the retail price you're charging them which means that isn't an expense, that's revenue) and get a massive increase in effectiveness, you should be spending that money.

You both make good points, and I think this goes towards establishing the group's power level at the start and tailoring missions to them. If you want your players to make more broadly skilled characters then they aren't going to be throwing 20 dice, even in their specialties, and there's nothing wrong with that so long as you match the difficulty to what they're bringing to the table. The only problem is when you have some characters at one level and other characters on another and can't challenge one group without shredding the other.

10-12 dice is decent, but far from Red Samurai level. It is a step up from a minimally-trained security grunt, bog-standard ganger, or beat rent-a-cop, but it is not elite special forces level by any means. Someone with Agility: 3, automatics: 3 with a specialization, and a smarlink is rolling 10 dice. Raise that Agility and the automatics skill to 4, and you are at 12 dice. I would consider 10-12 dice professionals (as opposed to cannon fodder), maybe even old hands at violence, but still a far cry from elite forces, or shadowrunner, level.

The oversimplified examples of upper-level grunts in the main book are sorely lacking in the specializations (most of them just have a bunch of high-ranked skill groups to keep it simple), augmentations (weak) and gear that groups such as the Red Samurai or Tir Ghosts would have. The published adventures, from what I recall, do a better job of presenting high-professionalism foes that are actually credible threats. A Red Samurai or Tir Ghost would have dice pools in the 10-12 range solely based on skill plus Attribute, but they need to have more boosts from the same augmentations and gear that make street samurai so superhuman.

To bring it back to optimization - the reason shadowrunners are better than similarly tough or skilled foes is the bonuses they get from augmentations. Even comparatively average characters become a lot tougher when they have muscle toner, wired reflexes, reflex recorders, and such.

From Street Legends, referring to William "Bull" MacCallister.

I agree that the GM needs to sit down and establish some additional ground rules about the group's power level, but don't assume that someone rolling 20 dice will lack broader skills. As I said way before, a lot of ways to boost your dice pools have a very low opportunity cost. And things like muscle toner can also add to other dice pools. A street samurai with augmented Reaction of 9 and Agility of 9 might get, say, locksmith: 1, infiltration: 1, and pilot ground craft: 1 for secondary skills, and be rolling 10 dice, while the generalist with Attributes of 4 and skills of 3 or 4 will be rolling less dice.

That's a potential source of imbalance - when you go against the grain of the system (playing a minimally-augmented mundane), you can fall behind the power curve and not even have additional versatility to show for it.

That's true.

Which is actually the point of this thread.

I think that one is more a feature than a bug. If minimal/augmentation free mundanes were as viable as the heavily cybered or awakened/emerged character, then heavy cyber loses its reason for existing,

That sounds like a great idea, actually, for a game where everybody has a legit SIN (or a fake good enough to live legit on,) or at least a game where the Runners are doing fairly long-term undercover stuff in a corp.

You know, you COULD use it as a starter to a campaign, but only for a experienced group that is able to play constantly and long term.

All the players start off as regular joes (street level chargen) working for the Man until something insides snaps a bit and they decide among themselves to leave papa & mama corp, which will mean basically extracting themselves or laying some of the groundwork for same.

Think Office Space but set in the 2070's where they don't just rob the corp but they take to the shadows afterwards....

Or you go more Black Lagoon route where they are still office drones but circumstances drag them into the shadows and they are forced to adapt to survive.

Rock?
Revvy?

I must be missing the connection... or I am horribly immersed in another decade.

You cannot say that it does not work, because it DOES WORK for me. Different Experiences and all that.
And yes, Capping at 20 Works wonders.

My wife cuts my hair all the time - I have not paid for a haircut in over 12 years. ANd I would give her absolutely NO skill in HAirdressing.



See, I see it as the designers working with the world they write for. No matter How nice it is in game to have all the cool toys, as a person, I would NEVER spend 8,000 Dollars on a PHONE. Hell, I don't even OWN a Cell phone, let alone a smart phone. So, while there are some really cool things out there in the Shadowrun verse, most people won't ever own any of it at all. That includes the Opposition. No Corp is gonna spend 1,000 Nuyen/Man for 280,000 People. Just not gonna happen. And that is for the low end stuff. And I think that is where the disconnect is... Everyone assumes that because the Megas are functionally unlimited in spending (for the things they want to be) that they will provide everyone with the best of the best. That simply is not true. They did not become Megas by throwing money away, which is what that amounts too.

Think of it this way - The guards that you run into 98% of the time are there to make a show of force (after all, if they look pretty and look efficient, 99.9% of their problems go away) and be a speed bump for the truly dedicated people that will come in anyway. They are not there to die in place (contrary to what many GM's feel) and they are only there to observe and contain intruders, if they can, while the truly superior forces are en route. If your team is any good, they should be gone before those reinforcements arrive. If they are still there when that happens, well, then they have issues, because THEY will be the Team's equals or better. Shadowrunners are Little Fish in a very Large Ocean, and no matter how good they THINK they are, they will lose when the Megas throw their weight behind their own people. I think that a LOT of players forget that little piece of information.

Mind you, she does default (ala 3rd edition) to her Knife specialization.

Good enough to not take an ear off, but style is pretty simple.

See also Black Lagoon anime. Japanese business man dumped by his corp as a casualty hooks up with his pirate hijackers. Now called Rock (brock?) Puts his business acumen, language skills and puzzle solving talent to good use.


Revy is just plain loco and in SR would be a gunslinger adept with a ton of mental/social NQs.

Very True.
Currently, My Mercenary is Competitive (10-14 DP's in a LOT of skills with thrice as many in the 7-9 range), but we also do not have any Heavily augmented characters either (though 3 of them have 3 IP), though we DO have a Mr. Lucky with a ton of experience.

With an average Attribute too. But you are right, style is not all that important.

if she's not glitching and crit glitching on a regular basis any time she's distracted, then she's got better than 1-2 dice.

and you're misunderstanding: the corps are not spending 1,000 nuyen/man. they are *selling* 1,000 nuyen/man worth of equipment to their employees, minus the part where the employee gets to decide if they want to spend the money. i agree, no mega is going to want to give that stuff away, but they don't have to. they can require that the employees buy it, and no corporation is going to be turning down a guaranteed sale.

they don't start assigning equipment until they get up to those elite forces. when you're looking at a barely-trained nobody, they have no bargaining power, and you have no incentive to offer them a good deal; at that point, in the SR universe, you are doing them a favour by letting them be a security guard instead of a homeless bum on the streets. the corp only has to offer their elite forces any sort of special benefits (like issuing them high quality gear without charging them), because it's not until you're a higher skill level that losing you has any significant cost. (on the flip side, with many of these elite security personnel i wouldn't be surprised if some of their income was spent on getting their gear just the way they like it, considering they're probably fairly focused on improving themselves and such).

if joe blow the prospective security guard refuses to have the installments for his equipment (and uniforms, of course) taken out of his paycheck over the next few months, well, he doesn't ever become an actual security guard. there's plenty more people desperate enough for work that they'll commit to buying all their equipment (plus probably paying for training, most likely using simsense instruction programs... again, sold to them by the company if they want to work there at all).

It should really depend on the character's story. Ex-Elite Opposition, now a PC. Heck, Ex-Elite of the Elite Opposition, now forced by circumstance into the shadows. Not just run of the mill Red Sam but one of the best Red Sams, now ex-Red Sam.

That's not be a problem if the group you can't challenge don't want to be.