You're right... The Characters story should MATCH the Mechanics on the sheet. You cannot claim to be an Elite and then be lacking in key skills and equipment.

Thing is... a Beginning PC cannot BE an Ex-Elite Best of the Best, there are not nearly enough points to get there. Having a 6 in one skill does not an Elite, Best of the Best in the World make. There are so many other things (just in skills alone) that would determine whether you are an Elite or Non-Elite. And that is the issue. Most characters I have ever seen that claim to be an elite are not. They are at best a Savant in a single skill (Super High-Def Specialists to be sure, but NOT an Elite, or Best in Best of the world, in their Profession), but their Sheet DOES NOT MATCH their concept, and for me, that is a big no-no. If you cannot make the stats match the concept, then your concept shoots too high and should be brought down to match what your sheet says.

And while we are on that... Match your definitions to the world. If, in SR4A, the Definition of Professional is Skill 3 (which it is), then your Skills should be 3 in all the relevant skills (Active and Knowledge) that make up the profession. They should not be 5's, nor should they be 1's.

From the anime Black Lagoon.

Which is pretty much Shadowrun: 1980s, minus the overt magic. Tons of bullets, explosions, insane melee and gun adepts, and a church that has more firepower than many small nations.

A Japanese sarariman office worker (known by his nickname "Rock") with a talent for social interaction and puzzle solving gets tasked with delivering a data drive through a crime-riddled southeast Asia inspired fictional region called Roanapur . His boat gets hijacked and he gets kidnapped along with the drive by a oceangoing team of mercenaries comprised of a crazy gun chick (Revy), an elite hacker, and their spec ops soldier leader. After the action filled opening caper concludes, the sarariman gets hung out to dry by his own corporation and decides to join the team that kidnapped him, becoming their Face and eventually a strategic mastermind.

Over two seasons and a miniseries they run into a wild array of colorful characters, all very distinct and memorable, many drawing inspiration from 80s action films and Hong Kong cinema. Pretty much every named character in the series could be dropped into a Shadowrun game and feel right at home.


-k

I really do not see why a Beginning PC cannot be an Ex-Elite Best of the Best. The descriptors used are for skill ratings and as long as the character has a skill of that level, then he is deserving of that moniker.
Alternatively if you are referring to the description of the Red Samurai as "elite paramilitary forces", then really someone who claims to be an ex-Red Sam should have a skill set similar to that described in the book. But I would not expect him to have the same level of skills as the Red Sam in the book unless the player really wants. In fact, I would point out that there should be at least one reason why the character is an ex-Red Sam. If there are more reasons, then it makes the character that much more real. In fact, having low skills in a particular profession would prompt me to ask,"So how does he make a living? Why is he still alive? Why is he no longer an Red Samurai?" Then the answer could be,"He is really Elite with his Pistol" or "The character really has an Edge over the competition" or "He never really fully recovered from that encounter with Blood Magic." Any of the above would make sense to me.

Ahhh... Thank You.

Elite Military Training does not focus on a single skill. And when the vast majority of PC's (some players actually do it right, to be sure) get a Single skill and boost it to the Moon and then completely ignore the rest of the skills that go along with being an actual Elite Military Character, then they ARE NOT AN EX-ELITE MILITARY CHARACTER, regardless of what they may think. Simple as that. And I am sorry, but that statement covers so many characters (covering any and all other Professions that you can describe as Elite) that I have seen, that I just shake my head and weep. *sigh*

With German 750 Karmagen you can easily build a character with competitive (12-14+) DP in all the fields a Special Forces Operator would be proficient in. Getting all of them to 18+ gets kinda hard though.

That is true, yes, but then, they are Skills in the 3-4 Range (Not Elite/Best in World Range of 5-6).
My Mercenary was built that way, and he is QUITE competitive, though only about 5-6 skills are 12+, with ~10 More at the 10-12 dp. Some 30 More are in the 7-9 DP range iirc.
He is quite GOOD (Definitely a Veteran), but NOT Elite.

The concept of skill values translating to actual proficiency needs to die in a fire, IMO, as DP is what actually matters. They should revise the table accordingly. Skill usually contributes less than 50% of a character's DP anyway.

It does not work, because in Shadowrun, more successes = better. It if works for you, that's because you've got a house rule.

Look, with 3 dice, you're expected to reliably succeed at a Threshold 1 test. So, if you're unopposed, 3 dice is just as good as 30, by your logic. Except it's not-- more successes mean you did better, even if it's mostly in a roleplay sense. In a backwards and a bizzare way, your house rule rewards rollplay over roleplay


You're wrong on this one. Elite military training produces specialists, even though they have a good grounding in other skills. For example, all SEALs can shoot nearly any gun... but only a few are sniper-grade marksmen. And if you're seeing 4.5 characters who completely ignore their other skills, then they're doing it wrong. Shadowrun is about teams of specialists, working together, so you don't need to be expert at everything. However, there are several areas where everyone has to be competent in, and ignoring those is folly.

Nope, You're Wrong - No Houserule. Why is that so hard for you to believe? Why do you insist that I am wrong? It is really starting to annoy me. If I get ONE NET SUCCESS I have succeeded in my action. PERIOD. YES, more is better, but I do not have to chase the DP goblin to have Fun. I do not have to have a DP that is monstrous just to have fun. I do not have to have a DP that guarantees success against my opposition (Boring). Maybe you do, but that is not MY problem.



And there you go again, talking about a Houserule. THERE IS NO HOUSERULE!!! Get over it.

If all I have is a Threshold 1, WHY WOULD I EVER chase a 30 DP (that is such a ludicrous DP that I have a hard time even talking about it, especially when 15 DP is often MORE than enough). I have no need for the excess Hits, so I don't care about the excess hits. I don't care if the excess hits results in a flourish at the end.



Having worked with a fair number of Elite Military Personnel over the years, I can categorically tell you that you are VERY mistaken. BECAUSE they are a small group, they HAVE to be able to cover multiple specialties to function the way they do, and they cannot do so with minimal skill - They are Highly trained in EVERY aspect of Military application that they Will/May encounter. Yes, you might have a few that are better in one thing, but that level of specialty is not what YOU are talking about. And it is not what I see when discussing character concepts. As for Teams of Shadowrunners, I despise the Hyper Specialist, since they are so very unrealistic in execution. I would far rather see a well executed specialist with good core competencies in their actual profession, over a boring and ill-executed one skill wonder (which I find most of them to be, BECAUSE they are doing it wrong... but you cannot tell them that because they think they are right).

EDITED: [Redacted]

At this rate I'm going to end up banned for creating the most contentious topic in recent forum history. Hahaha~

Cain, Tym, I think you both should take a step back and check your tone. Or continue via pm.

*Sigh* Probably...

Always happens...

Topics on Optimization seem to get heated after a bit. Gonna hopefully detune a bit as I go to my game tonight. Probably be a lot calmer in the morning.

I think that as long as you can make the Thresholds that the character is expected to make, then whether you have the skill or not, I do not think having the actual skill matters.

So if he needs to do something and his Attribute is high, then maybe he doesn't need the skill. In fact, if the skill is only used occasionally and if he is not the primary guy for it, I'd even say that he doesn't even need the Attribute for it to be high, he could make do with high Edge.

Start a topic about Infected on these boards and grab some popcorn as the shit storm approaches. Even if the topic is about optimizing an Infected character, people will use it as an excuse to voice their hatred.

Some say the high ups almost went with Twilight vampires for 5th edition to try and snag a new market, but thankfully cooler heads prevailed.

They should have gone with Sparkly Vampires. *Rolls up Buffy the Cyborg using stakes propelled from a rail gun*

Personally, I do agree that too many characters are made with the background of ex-special ops, who don't fit it. One skill of 6 doesn't make you the equivalent of a Red Samurai. Starting characters have to make tradeoffs between effectiveness in their primary role and versatility in secondary roles. When they have both, they have achieved parity with the spec ops types and will likely be considered prime runners. That said, you don't have to be an ex-Red Samurai to be as good as one at one skill. That is where the skill examples fail - they give broad types (politician, special forces, go-ganger) which are an amalgam of skill, related Attribute, and complementary skills and advantages. They should be describing the skill itself.

Someone with a skill of 6 in pistols is someone who spends a lot of time at the range, who has used a pistol in actual combat, who can make minor aiming adjustments or change out a clip without even needing to think about it - this is someone who has invested a lot of time learning to shoot a gun, but it does not automatically follow that this person will also know rotor aircraft, wilderness survival, assault rifles, etc. Freelance hitters, bounty hunters, or Mafia enforcers might have high skills at dealing violence but not be as well rounded outside of that area. The character might even be someone you wouldn't normally associate with that skill, such as a hacker who is a real gun nut and can rattle off stats for them all day, or a face who is a cold, skilled shot because she learned the hard way that she is her own last line of defense.

As an aside, skills deteriorate in real life, so you could roll up someone who was an elite whatever that has just been out of the game for awhile, maybe abusing some stuff so they're not starting in their prime.

Someone is forgetting how threshold tests work, as well as Extended's successive rolling penalty.
1 net hit won't cut it for.... pretty much all the important shit.

There is plenty of room to find a middle ground between 3 dice and 30 dice though.


Also, seriously? Nine pages of arguing and literally no one's added more info to the first two posts. For shame.

There is a difference between "net" and "gross". One net hit is one hit beyond what was required for a successful result.

And I have learned a great deal of information, namely there is zero need to shoot for 15+ dice to be "good" at something in SR4A. In fact, right around 8-9 dice points pretty well at being a pretty skilled individual at the given task.

And once you need to perform under pressure (i.e. negative modifiers), the 8-9 DP character is pretty much screwed.

Depends entirely upon what you mean by "screwed."
I see it as "challenged." Especially since your opposition will also have to deal with the pressure. After all, your character's DP's are not adjusted in a vacuum.

^^^ This.

I'm actually *harsher* with my house rules for penalties than RAW and my players still succeed just fine without ridunkulous dice pools, thanks.

Except they are in certain cases where it matters, such as social skill checks, which tend to favor one side immensely (especially if said side is the corp guard you are trying to BS your way past). Uncontested checks with negative modifiers exist too, such as hacking a maglock while under fire.



I am not advocating "ridunkulous dice pools", but a DP of 8-9 is not "pretty skilled", it's beginner level competence. I'd call 12-14 DP skilled. If that constitutes a "ridunkulous dice pool" in your book, then you and I are not going to see eye to eye in Shadowrun.

Dice pools may go up high, but most of them go up to a finite level. At the top, there is the best in the world; at the bottom, someone too clueless even to attempt the skill. The dice pool where someone can be considered "good" varies, because different skills have different thresholds/levels of difficulty, and different quantities of possible positive modifiers - and the modifiers themselves can either be easy to get, or difficult to get.

Look at survival. It is a straightforward skill + Willpower test. The types of wilderness that the PCs are most likely to run into (forest, plains, urban) are all in the Threshold: 1 category. Best in the world, I suppose, would be a ghoul adept with exceptional Attribute: Willpower and a 10 Willpower, aptitude: survival and a skill of 7 in survival, raised to 10 with improved ability/survival: 3 and a specialization in urban, rolling 20 (22) dice. However, most of those modifiers are fairly uncommon, so most survivalists would have much smaller dice pools than that. The bounty hunter archetype has a dice pool of 6, and would probably get by with that fairly well. A dice pool of 8-9 would be considered "good" at survival.

Look at gymnastics. You can boost Agility with muscle toner and a suprathyroid gland. You can boost gymnastics with a reflex recorder or improved ability. Then come the modifiers - neo-EPO, synthcardium, enhanced articulation, and satyr legs or kid stealth cyberlegs. Finally, there is the natural athlete quality. Best in the world would be an elf changeling with augmented Agility of 15, skill of 7(10), and neo-EPO, synthcardium, enhanced articulation, and satyr legs, with a specialization in dancing, for a final dice pool of 32 (34). So a dice pool of 8-9 would... still be considered "good". It is good enough for a decent gymnastics dodge (unless Agility is the lion's share of that dice pool) or making normal jumping tests. The stripper contact roll 8 dice for dancing, including her specialization in dancing, so a dice pool of 8-9 would plenty to get your groove on at the local nightclub. This example is to show that you don't always need a high dice pool, even for ones where it is possible to get one.

Look at pistols. You can boost Agility with muscle toner and a suprathyroid gland. You can boost pistols with a reflex recorder or improved ability. And you can get a smartlink fairly cheaply for another +2. The semi-automatics specialization covers a large selection of pistols. We'll keep tacnet bonuses out of the discussion for the sake of simplicity. Best in the world would be that same damn elf changeling with augmented Agility of 15, skill of 7(10), specialization in semi-atomatics, and... a smartlink. So 27 (29) dice. A dice pool of 8-9... frankly, sucks. At least for a primary combatant such as a street samurai - it is fine for someone's secondary specialty. But the street samurai needs to fight when outnumbered and picking up the slack for non-combatant teammates. He has to deal with penalties for light, glare, cover, movement, weather, fatigue, and wounds. It is an opposed dice contest. For pistols, I demonstrated earlier that is is ludicrously easy to get a dice pool of 10-12. Even a far from min-maxed street samurai - let's say Agility of 5, raised to 7 by muscle toner: 2, the firearms group at 4, and a smartlink - is rolling 13 dice, which is frankly near the bare minimum, for a street samurai.

Don't even bother, Elfen.

TJ is fucking married to that stupid call-out on page 119 of SR4A where it states that a skill rating of 3 is a "Professional" and that that ought to be good enough for any player character. Despite the fact that a statistical analysis of the dice pools shows that such a "Professional" fails to do their job a laughable amount of the time.

Thing is, there is professional, and there is professional. The description goes on to clarify that a rating: 3 skill is something like a private in the army, or someone just out of college. Shadowrunners tend to be a bit more experienced than that! I think people have a subconscious expectation that "starting" characters should be novices, but even the far-from-optimized archetypes tell a different story. They are either seasoned pros, or if they are new to the shadows, it is because they are moving up from another vocation that they are experienced at.

I think part of it is that TJ seems to make character that are new to the shadows - street punks scraping by, office workers recently fired, etc. I tend to make more seasoned types, so even with the hyperbolic descriptions at the upper end for skills, I have no problem justifying high skills for my characters.

Technically that high schooler working at the Stuffer Shack is a professional.





-k

I look at it from a different angle. I base my thoughts upon the Success Test Difficulty Table on pg. 62 of SR4A. This is the basic framework of the system, IMO, and they designed the whole damn thing around this little chart here. Pretty simple set-up, just like the attribute and skill levels with an Easy difficulty of 1 success through Extreme with 6 successes. Opposed tests are a totally different animal and this is where the GM has to make some decisions of their own.

Since we looked at Pistols above, why not stick with a training scenario since combat is a pretty common thing in most SR games. Hitting a stationary, man-sized target at short range is an Easy Task needing a single success. Hitting that same target under the stress of a case of beer being on the line and a timer is Average needing two successes. Hitting that target with the case of beer on the line, a timer, and walking is a bit harder at 3 successes. Hitting that target while being timed, risking your favorite brew, and walking while the target is moving at a walk is a fairly Hard task at 4 successes needed. Hitting that target while all of the above is happening and someone is threatening to taze your bitchass if you fail needs 5 successes. Hitting the target when all of the stuff before is going on and you're trying to pinch off the rectal eruption from those three Stuffer Shack burritos you ate an hour ago is a difficulty of Extreme at 6 successes needed.

Now, I'm of the opinion that Extreme difficulty should never just be a given without Edge being spent. You're looking at the whole mess of "You gotta be shitting me!" when you hit that Extreme difficulty. SOTA software. Top-of-the-Line Maglocks. Pulling off a bootlegger reverse in a severe downpour with moderate traffic around you without a single ding on your ride. Sneaking your bag of Deepweed past the drug dog that just won the national police dog championships and he really likes that ball of his. Some pretty heavy shit going down.

Many of your opinions obviously differ and that's cool. Once my players hit my hard cap of 15 dice, including gear and enhancements (but not situational modifiers), I simply ask them, "So what else does your character like to do?" and we go from there.

What are the odds of getting 6 successes with 30 dice? At what level of success would you consider something to be a given? 99%? 95%? 90%?

psychophipps, I think our main area of disagreement is where we are getting the baseline from. I look at dice pools as I said above - there is best in the world, worst in the world, and player characters somewhere in between. Unfortunately, the game is not consistent with its power or difficulty level, so you have to pick a spot to gauge it from (example - the skills table lists fixers and faces as examples of a 3 in social skills, but both of the contacts have negotiations at 5).

A dice cap of 15 lets you be okay at firearms. Obviously, in such a campaign, I would shy away from ex-hit men and play a character more like a rough-and-tumble private eye; dice pools in the 12-15 range for a lot of things such as pistols, unarmed, infiltration, locksmith, first aid, data searches, etc.

Well, I rolled six hits all the time with 16 total dice. Not sure what the actual numbers are as my algebra-fu is at at a solid skill of 1, but I do know that with more dice you start seeing "average" more often.

A sniper can hit a human-sized target at Extreme range all damn day with 15 dice (average roll of three hits with the 9 dice left). Not like there is much risk of a dodge from that far out and shooting from ambush. Oh yeah, and he hasn't even starting aiming yet. Where is the "not good enough" in this example?

Well you would be much luckier with your dice rolls than mine. It will be a good day if I get 6 hits with 30 all the time.


Well, I think the "not good enough" would come after that first shot.

I've heard of snipers needing a second shot, I just haven't seen it myself. What's it like?

As an aside, I think that the main difference between our play styles is that many of you guys have this thing for what I call, "Bicycle Operations". A Bicycle Op where the team shows up, they start pedaling through the in-book obstacles, get the job done, pedal right back out, hop in the van, wipe the sweat off their brows with a handy hand towel, and drive off. Like taking a nice ride through the countryside with guns and random acts of mayhem to spice stuff a bit, but nothing too crazy.

To be honest, I'd love to have a bicycle op...just once. But alas, I'm doomed to always have what I lovingly call (not really), "The Porkchop Operation". A Porkchop Op is when Mr. Murphy grabs your team by the face, gouges out an eye (usually the left), and starts humping their skulls. The Sammy critically glitches and his gun blows up. The Face calls the Fem Fatale they team is scamming "That dumb cunt" with a critical glitch at that critical moment. The "missing mage" they're after is actually an Aztechnology Black Ops Blood Mage that has just topped off and cranks off a Force...ohh NINE Flamethrower spell with six hits. You know, the usual goat rope crap that turns your relaxing Bicycle Op through the countryside into a bicycle ride through the streets during the Battle of Fallujah. Oh baby, I love the way you give socket...

15 dice is plenty for sniping, because none of the factors I listed limiting the effectiveness of firearms apply. No visibility, cover, fatigue, or wound modifiers, and the dice roll is unopposed by the target's Reaction. 15 dice in those circumstances is better than 22 dice in a firefight that has all of those potential modifiers and targets that dodge you and shoot back. Now, I consider 20+ dice less of a dice pool, and more of a "this is how many dice you can toss under optimum conditions and point blank range against a stationary target". If the GM ignores modifiers for the sake of speeding combat up, then 20+ dice is definitely overkill most of the time, because the modifiers are a big part of the balance.

or, just possibly, the opposition in our games isn't as crappy as the opposition in your games?

maybe in our games, we ignore the bits where supposedly the various security personnel use absolute bottom-of-the-barrel gear, have crap for training (seriously, skill 4 is someone who is more experienced than a person fresh out of college), and never seem to look for any ways to improve their dice pool. perhaps in our games, the red samurai are a threat because hey, guess what, they use the same augmentations that give the PCs there large dice pools. perhaps in our games the HTR teams are actually moderately prepared to face people who use decent equipment.

maybe, just maybe, the opposition for the above-average hired corporate espionage team is actually equipped and trained in such a way as to be able to deal with those sorts of threats.

I think the main reason why you have porkchop instead of bicycle is that your group do not optimise as much as you can. I mean come on, critically glitch? When you have 30 dice? I am unlucky with my dice and I have not been that unlucky yet.

To me, it is a message you are sending to the GM. Everyone says they want to have a fun game. Everyone says that they want to "fit in", not "disrupt the flow" of the game. But at the end of the day, there is your character sheet. And a dice pool of 15 tells me (when I GM) that you want to be successful only on the simple, unstressful stuff. 15 dice tells me you want PAIN, you want HEADACHES, you want to be BUTTFUCKED. A dice pool of 30 tells me you don't want to sweat, you don't want to be challenged; you just want to come to a game, roll some dice, be successful and go home, feeling good.

Really though? At 15? I would think it would tell you that they want to have to actually think out what they are doing instead of attempting to just steam roll the opposition. Hell, my GM rolls his eyes at my DP of 18 as being absurdly high. Although I think that's mostly because he hates my 9 AGI arm.

A sniper might be able to hit people dead on with 15 dice, but the idea of a sniper is to put a target (any target) down in one shot, ideally. When I build a sniper, I build assuming I have to drop a well armored Troll with 25+ total armor in a single shot. If I wanted to be someone who was just good at hitting with rifles from distance, I'd call that just a Marksman, a Sniper is meant to make people dead in one shot, 2 at the worst.

And X-Kalibur has it. *ding! ding!*

When the GM has to go full retard with AGL +4, REA +3, and Unobtainium Bone Lacing on each and every Red Sammie to make the already elite enemies a challenge, they're failing at doing the most important thing to do in a SR game...thinking. The Red Sammies don't need any of that shit to kick ass, they just need someone to run them as smart and vicious as those crimson cocksuckers are meant to be.

Yeah, but... if the PC's have AGL +4, REA +3, and Unobtainium Bone Lacing, then why the hell wouldn't the Red Samurai? They should be smart and vicious, okay, but why should they lack the augmentations and gear that they should logically have? I wouldn't give street gangers AGL +4, REA +3, and Unobtainium Bone Lacing, but I would definitely give it to the Red Samurai. I believe that while challenges should be tailored to the PCs, the game world should still have its own internal consistency. If the PC's are asskickers with 20+ dice pools, the local mall security guard won't suddenly develop a skill of 6, tote around an Ares Alpha, and have a jet engine attached the the back of his Ares-Segway Terrier. Similarly, if the PC's are neophytes with dice pools in the 8-10 range and decide to pick a fight with the Red Samurai, then the Red Samurai should still have super-high skills and Attributes, top-notch augmentations, and kickass gear.

I get the attitude of not wanting the crutch of high dice pools that give you the slack to be able to just turn off your brain and roll a bunch of dice to get out of trouble. But those dice are the primary mechanism to represent a character's effectiveness, and I think most of the time, the stats should match the attitude. People who are ruthless, calculating, and unhesitating in combat are usually that way from experience.

But the problem is that depending on the characters, PC shadowrunners could also be meant to be smarter and more vicious than Red Sammies. In fact, I think that by dint of the shadowrunners being PCs, they are supposed to be smarter/more vicious/etc than even the best of AAA security forces.

Stop, you are gonna make us blush.

What's luck got to do with anything, on 30 dice you should be averaging 10 successes, in fact the chance of getting 6 or less is around 9%.

DP hardcapped at 15? Wow, that's heavy handed. Certainly not the kind of game I would want to play in, but whatever works for your group mate...

Exactly. My averages are less than 10.

I agree that 12-14 DP is the target for what I consider Shadowrunner Primary Skill DPs. 9-12 is for Secondary Skills DPs, with 6-9 DPs in Tertiary. Ridunkulous DPs at start (for me) is anything above 15 DP (in SR4A, of course).