Your entire premise here is hilariously off base. This is a roleplaying game, with a character advancement mechanic. One which explicitly, in SR4 and up ties that advancement to the recognition of the character by the wider world. I don't want to be rude, but I am getting the impression that you have missed the entire game design concept behind character creation other than players having the desire to warp it for the greatest power level possible. There's no 'seeing deeper into the system' involved. There's simply the usual problem that the game designers did not build in enough munchkin control, and thus it is left to the GM to simply deny characters.

The character creation system, as noted by skill caps and limited resources, is a balance between giving the player freedom to create the concept they want to play and producing a baseline starting character power level. The fact that they erred in the direction of freedom of concept and left large holes where the letter of the rules would allow unreasonable variation is not in fact a demonstration that such powergaming is the expected norm. This is born out by pretty much everything else in the system, from the statting on the sample characters to the suggested antagonists and the opposition in the printed runs intended to be for new characters.

Where do I envision the campaign going story-wise? Anywhere. Nowhere. Some players just want to play a heist game with no overarcing story. Some players want to build and grow their character's primary interests, which may be a junkyard in the barrens that they're slowly turning into a fortress, or they may be expanding as a silent business partner to a number of ventures. Or there may be a story, if they don't take to their heels and run at anything with even the slightest whiff of plot.

As for why someone can be damn good and have no rep, that's easy: being good is not the same thing as having rep, especially in a setting where empowering technologies can let even a mediocre athlete perform at the level of an unaugmented Olympian, and where regular joes can lift more than the toughest, biggest pre-Awakening strongman ever could, simply by virtue of being a Troll.

Also, lots of good reasons for why someone might have a low rep: they've kept their heads down intentionally, or they've made a clean break with their old life. Maybe they're untried but extremely talented, without having had much opportunity to show off their real skills under pressure.





I curse that dice pool table and feel that the person who wrote it should hang up their cyberdeck in shame.

The issue is that the character creation system needs to support the baseline power level and style of play. In SR4,5, it does not. A poorly built system has no excuse. It should help the GM in creating sensible characters, and not be their worst enemy.

I think it perfectly demonstrates EXACTLY what the designers had in mind for characters in play. In fact, I have NEVER had any issues fitting any concept into the descriptions on the skill rank table. *shrug*

See, I think it supports the baseline power level perfectly. Just because you CAN break a system does not mean that you MUST break a system. *shrug*

Al lot of people have been saying that but I don't see it.

As you said yourself, Shadowrun is not Dungeons & Dragons.

There is no "Baseline." There is no 1st-level Street Samurai, who should in theory be roughly equivalent in power to a first-level Magician, or a first-level Rigger or a first-level Gun Bunny (but isn't because even in D&D there wind up being character class tiers.)

There is only who you are, and what you can do. If you've put your points into hacking and facing and medteching, you have no right to expect to enjoy any success in combat, because you have not built your character to succeed at combat. Likewise, the street sammy shouldn't expect to have any success at spellcasting, because he's not a freaking Magician.

Ideally, the sum of the group's abilities equals "successful Run, everybody gets paid." But every component of that group tends to bring very different skills to the party, not all of which will be applicable to all situations. A hacker and a face can both do legwork. A hacker and a technomancer can both do hacking. A technomancer and a magician can both travel to alternate realms of reality. A magician and a PhysAd can both use magic to affect the world and/or themselves. A PhysAd and a Ninja can both do free-running. A Ninja and a Street Samurai can both chop people's heads off with swords. A Street Samurai and a Rigger can both drive.... Etcetera.

But not everybody can do everything, and they shouldn't. If a character is woefully unequipped to the point of having no exceptional faculty at anything, though, you should tell them to rebuild the character, asking more mechanically-competent players to help them.

Also, if you're really worried about power levels, institute some kind of minimum competence test, like "All characters must be able to prevail in white-room combat against three gangers," or "All characters must be able to solo Food Fight," or whatever you feel is appropriate.





It's absolute drek. You use those numbers, and everybody looks like a fucking incompetent clown.

No, No !
3 different Char Creation Systems is a must !
How else am I going to find out which one creates the best char if I have a new concept (f.E. like Spike Baby or Beastmaster ).
I make the same Char with all 3 Systems and whichever results in the best Char , I'll take

with a Min/Max Dance
Medicineman

@Cain


When I skim through the Threads of Char creation (English & German Forums as well) most of the Chars have either Attributes or Skills at Prio A and B and when they're awakened with Prio Race and Magic at C and D
for me there is a striking similarity in Char Builds with the Prio System !

with a similar dance like the one before
Medicineman

Actually, there is a baseline. Each character must be able to function as a shadowrunner. That means, in addition to their specialty, they need to be competent in a fight, able to use stealth decently, and convince a Johnson they can pull off the job they're being hired to do.

Beyond that, though, Shadowrun is a *game*, and games are no fun when one person always wins. You see this a lot in superhero games, when you try to balance a team that has Hawkeye, Captain America, and Superman. Cap and Hawkeye are competent enough in their own right, but they can't compete with Superman, who's a Mary Sue with a ridiculous number of cosmic-grade powers. Unless every crook has kryptonite bullets, Superman will dominate in every conflict; if you come up with a different challenge, he'll either develop a new power or combine existing ones in such a way to beat it. That's pretty much how most Superman comics went.

To bring this back to Shadowrun, a pornomancer is pretty much Superman. When you're rolling 50+ dice, you're guaranteed a critical success against anyone you come against, no matter how steep the penalties. They're so powerful, the other players won't have much to do: it all ends when the pornomancer opens his mouth. You can end every fight that way, every contact tells him more, and you can even persuade spirits to leave you alone with enough successes. Plus the fact that the pornomancer is an adept, and since the build doesn't use up all his PP, he might have some combat tricks in reserve. And don't even think about throwing another pornomancer at the group: the other players will be helpless against that, so they're still not doing anything. It's no fun.

Anytime you have a significant power imbalance, this happens to a greater or lesser extent. In one of my SR4.5 games, it was the techno who dominated at the end. He used high force sprites to take over some drones drones, used a commlink to take over others, and then controlled some directly. He ended up fielding a drone army. If you challenged him with another vehicle, he simply took it over. If you sent spirits after him, when it materialized the drones destroyed it. Fortunately, this was towards the end of the campaign, so it didn't last long.

In another game, it was the adept who dominated. I was running Missions, which had adopted my house rule, and capped dice pools at 20. He found the loophole: Edge. So, he had a lot more dice than anyone else, and had it more often. No other character could compete. As a result, they never tried negotiating with enemies, because it was more effective to have the adept shoot them. Luckily, the player was a good sport, and voluntarily reined it in, so others had a chance to shine.

Not that I've noticed. First of all, we need to consider mundanes and magicians separately. Let's start with mundanes: I saw a lot of mundanes with Priority A resources. However, that worked for many archetypes: Sammies, deckers, riggers, etc. Within those archetypes, there were many variations: Speed sammies, katana maniacs, gun bunnies, etc. Then, among those, there was still a lot of room for variation in augmentations and gear: gun bunnies might focus on pistols, sniper rifles, carbines, and so on.

And all that is possible within just one priority choice. We still have all the other priorities to assign, and we haven't even gotten to roleplaying.

Magicians tended to be more limited, because you pretty much had to go Priority A magic to be a good magician. Tradition was more important at differentiating characters, and Totems were essential for creating Shamen. Metahuman mages were even more limited, but since they were also correspondingly more rare, they still were pretty unique.

And finally, adepts in SR3 were really flexible. There were so many variations, I couldn't list them all: I saw troll archers, ork brawlers, gunslingers, wheelmen, a dwarf sumo wrestler (that was a lot of fun, actually), a Scotsman with a katana, the list goes on and on. The books even mention gunnery adepts.

And none of these are viable with a BP chargen why, again?

You're shifting the goalposts. BP is more complicated, harder to use, much slower to use, and doesn't produce characters that are equally balanced or consistent. It's not a question of viability, it's a question of which system is better at producing good characters.

the fairest Char System is still the Karma System as it uses the same Tool (Karmapoints) for Char Creation AND Char developement !
the one that creates the most unbalanced is the Priosystem (someone else calculated a difference of 500 Karma Points wether you choose the Priosystem from the effectivety Angle or from the ...."Hush-Hush gonna make just a Char " Angle
(with no optimation in Mind)

I don't consider BP more complicated or harder to use than Prio System (maybe because I like creating chars so much, that I've got a bit of experience in doing so ? )
in the Contrary , sometimes when a new Player creates a Char with Prio System he has to start all over again ,because he missed something important (Like when He needs to buy Alpha 'ware because he doesn't want to get low Essence
so he has to re-shuffle Resources ,which means he has to re-evaluate all Priorities again and re-do the whole Char !
...This happened twice at the Feencon (in Cologne) and Ratcon, when I assisted Newb Players that wanted to Play SR5 and needed to make new Chars and the most time consuming Part is choosing Equipment (as was mentioned before by others )


Thats why I prefer all 3 Systems (BP, Karma and Prio) to do the Char in all 3 Systems and choose the best one !

with a Dance of Choice
Medicineman

The thing is, what a GM might see as unreasonable variation, a player might see as logical choices in character creation, especially since the concept is that you are playing a freelance expediter with superhuman abilities of one kind or another. Hell, one of the examples of character creation has one of the players unabashedly maxing out his pistol abilities (sure, he doesn't use every trick, but the intent is there), and the mini-story blurb in front of the skills section is from the POV of a self-admitted one-trick pony specializing in violence.

Now, some rules exploits are munchkin, in the bending-the-rules-pretzel-shaped sense (trying to get away with things like shapechanging from human to ork to get the physical Attribute bonuses from the spell, trying to stack two sets of FFBA on top of each other, etc.). But someone who gets a 6 and a specialization in his primary ranged skill, then gets a reflex recorder for it, muscle toner: 2, and a smartlink in his cybereyes is simply making logical, straightforward choices which fit the character concept. Even using the hyperbole of the skill descriptions, it is not hard to justify a 5 or a 6 for a starting shadowrunner, which is an entirely different beast than a starting security guard.

Dice pools are one of the main guages of character power, but with the limited resources of character creation, you need to balance that power with versatility. Someone who can shoot, sneak, climb over a wall, jimmy a lock, negotiate the sale of a crate of AK-97's, and intimidate that ganger trying to stare him down can actually be more successful than someone with a few more dice for shooting but none of those other skills. In practice, though, the guy with the high dice pool for shooting doesn't have to be a one-trick pony, because that one trick doesn't always cost that much.

The rules do fail in two areas, adepts and social skills.

They tried to give adepts their own niche, making them better than street samurai at some things, and worse than them at others. But this created two problems. First, it was more cost-effective to get low-Essence bioware for the things they were worse at than the street samurai (mainly Attribute boosters such as muscle toner and synaptic boosters for initiative). Secondly, adept powers too often stacked with the augmentation that gave a similar bonus. In other words, the adept could get critical strike, then add bone lacing to it, or get kinesics, then add tailored pheromones to it. SR5 did not solve either of these fundamental problems. It is harder, or requires more sacrifices in other areas, to be an adept and have high resources, but this, at best, only postpones the problem briefly.

Social skills had numerous boosts. My opinion is that the higher dice pools were at least partly by design, as with combat (both were opposed tests subject to a lot of potential negative modifiers). But there was too much dice pool bloat as supplements came out - social skills were already on the borderline of too many dice pool boosters; the last thing they needed was even more. If they didn't want pornomancer dice pools, they could have stopped with kinesics and tailored pheromones, not allowed an adept to take improved ability for technical or social skills, had pheromone receptors just give an olfactory perception bonus, not given the vocal range enhancer a social skill bonus, and beaten whoever suggested the bonuses for empathy software with a rusty tire chain. But they didn't. SR5 nerfed kinesics (although I think the magic book brought something like it back again), and at least the fluff has changed a bit for the better - the intimidation example has the ganger pausing and suddenly being more willing to negotiate, rather than instantly folding like soggy paper, and it is at least implied that social skills are more for PC vs. NPC rather than interactions between players. The real test will be when additional rulebooks come out.

You're literally the only poster here and at rpg.net who needs hours (or days ) for character creation in SR4/4.5. You and your bunch of players are the exception, not the rule. So please drop this topic.

I'd very much like to see numbers on that. Because of the asymmetric nature of BP costs, I don't think you'll actually see a huge difference in dice pools, assuming we're talking SR4.5. Then again, their Priority system sucked-- it leeched all the flexibility and simplicity out of the system, and those are its main advantages.

I'm wondering if you're discussing SR3? Because there was no official karmagen system for it. There was BecKS, but that was fan made. Only 4.5 had officially released all three, and their Priority never worked. It was a rather insulting sop to us older players, really.

Your complaint was literally that BP chargen produces all the same characters, while with priority system you've seen the characters listed. So I want to understand what is it exactly that makes these any worse with BP gen. What, do carbines get worse stats, or is sumo prohibited there?

To be fair, I usually spend a good couple of hours making a character in the 4th, and a dozen more on fleshing his background and personality out.

Someone here from Dumpschock calculated when the 5th ed BBB was fresh out.
And I'm always talking SR4A when I mention the last Edition
I only used BP System and Karmasystem for my 4A Chars. I never used Prio System cause I had a hard look at it, laughed and made my chars with Karma and BP.
With SR5 I have to make Chars with Prio System (I got 6-8 meanwhile !) but I'm sooooo waiting for Karma and BP for SR5


No Whay !
for 3 Reasons
A ) its too long Ago ! I don't know the Rules anymore
B ) I don't really like SR3 Ruleswise ( I nearly stopped playing Shadowrun once and for all because some of the Rules where so stupid ! so we had to invent Dozens/Hundreds of Houserules )
C ) you can't really compare the rules of SR3 with those of SR5 .
SR4A is close enough to compare them though
What I'm talking about is the Future, when SR5 has Priority, Karma AND BP System to choose from (Hopefully in Running Harder ) Than I'll make two more chars that I have on a .....waiting List with all 3 char creation Rules to see which one creates the best char

With a future Dance
Medicineman

If I my understandings of Cains ramblings are correct, he and his group needs hours/ days just fpr the points alone.

Where did I say that? I did point out that effective characters tend to follow the same pattern, which you can see for yourself in the Dumpshock Character Archive we put together here.


Could you link me to that? The problem is that karma tends to made different assumptions than Priority, especially when it comes to metahumans and high attributes.


Well, first of all, most posters (here and at RPG.net) report about two hours to make a character, Which is comparable to Hero and GURPS.

Second, it's not just my group. I had three different home games during SR4/4.5's run, all with different people, and I ran Missions for a long time. So, I've probably encountered over a hundred players during that time. Of those, not one has produced a viable character in less than two hours. There were a couple that were done in less time, but they all had critical mistakes that took forever to fix-- like the aforementioned Techno, with no CF's. Or no Fake SINs for Denver Missions, that was a common one.

So, there's over a hundred different people who have experienced the same thing. My involvement in their characters varied, but they all took a minimum of two hours to get a working character. Some of those people are Dumpshockers, like Method-- I gamed with him for a month, before I moved to Oregon. I think thaT constitutes a representative sample.

I've done a lot of chargen, mostly for new players (all SR3 only). I've looked at Karmagen, point-buy, priority, and sum-to-ten.

Of the four, priority is hands-down the fastest. I usually run with just the main book, and normally my players need five minutes of initial guidance where I explain what priority is, and what their character concept really needs to prioritize. Point-buy they do tend to get bogged down a bit more, because each point can go into attributes OR skills OR equipment OR edges/flaws OR ... and it's just choice overload. With priority it's already set; you are spending this much on attributes, choose your favorite attributes. Rebuilding isn't a huge issue, unless you REALLY messed up (example; rigger with $5,000). But if you did point-buy and spent all but 5 points before buying gear, that's a pretty big mess-up there too. Changing one priority to another isn't too hard. You need $1M not $400k? Okay, skim off 6 attribute points. Done.

Priority does have the disadvantage of wasted priorities for some archetypes, which is why I prefer sum-to-ten. It takes 10 minutes to explain instead of 5, but people seem to be happy with it.

I do run point-buy, but only with experienced players who already know pretty much what they're looking at. Point-buy certainly gives a lot more versimilitude, but it lacks the structured 'okay, next let's go here!' hand-holding that priority gives me. As an advanced player myself, I still use sum-to-ten when I can, just because it keeps me from having to sweat the small stuff like point-buy does. If I have 2 extra skill points hanging around, I just dump them, because there's nothing else useful i can do with them. With point-buy, I now need to reconsider every use, and whether I should skim a little more so I have enough points for a new spell or what-not.

I'm sure other peoples' experiences will vary, but I've found Cain's comments to be pretty much spot-on with my own.

(Of course, I can't comment on SR4/5. Maybe things work differently there.)

Given that the original stone louse eats 20 kilos of rock a day, a human-sized flesh form certainly has potential

Personal Opinion that has absolutely no basis in fact. *shrug*
I have used that table for each and every character I have produced and they are fully functional and capable characters. They just are not the top .0001% of Humanity, nor should they be.

From the 5 months or so of SR5 Experience I have accumulated, I see the same as Medicineman. Priorities A and B for Stats and/or Attributes. All but one of the characters I have seen fit this mold.

Without a doubt, BP or Karma Gen is more capable than Priorities. Personal opinion, but after having created dozens and dozens of characters over the years, Priorities just get in the way.

As for speed of character creation... 20-30 Minutes structural and 10 - 15 Minutes Gear. So, 30-45 Minutes. Been doing it a LOT of years. Now, do some characters take more/less time than others? Of Course. Some I get in half the listed time, and others take 10 minutes longer. It all depends upon concept. But I have found that if I have a good concept, it is about 30 minutes and done. It is only when I have a half-formed concept that it takes longer as decisions need to be finalized. So, lesson to take home is to have a fully formed concept before you go to the drawing board, and you will fly through character creation.

Sorry, personal opinion backed up by facts.

It's been shown - statistically - that using the numbers in that drek table results in characters who are hilariously incapable of doing ordinary, everyday tasks which lie within their purview on anything resembling a consistent basis - you know, things like driving a car, something that probably a billion humans do on a daily basis without the streets turning into your standard-issue zombie movie carnage freeway. Let alone the things where people's lives are actually on the line, like a doctor's skill with medicine, or a pilot's skill at landing an aeroplane.

Uh, around here?
Where you contrasted against So I want to know what exactly is it about the BP system that mind-controls people who'd otherwise make all these vibrant and original characters you've listed into making exactly the same characters with the same gear and the same set of secondary skills?

As indicated, I routinely use the table to benchmark my characters and they are fully functional. I will take actual play results, accumulated over many, many years of play, over theory crafting any day of the week and twice on Sunday. *shrug*

As for statistics, they only matter when your test data sets are in the Tens (Hundreds?) of Thousands of tests. The table I play at routinely breaks the statistics you are so very, very proud of.

[/lurk]



You mean the rolls that the corebook advises the GM that he shouldn't be requiring?



Tests should only be made when its important - ordinary, everyday tasks need not apply. So those characters that are apparently incapable of doing ordinary, everyday tasks on a consistent basis - are actually able to get by just fine using the values presented in the table.

- Jack

[lurk]

Somehow people tend to forget that part, Smilin_Jack. For some reason they think that you should be rolling to go to the bathroom lest you wet yourself.

I was discussing SR3 Priorities. I don't have as much experience with SR5, so I haven't formed a judgement on it yet.

You also don't produce characters that are viable at many other tables. When I ran Missions, primary dice pools in the upper teens were standard for the better characters, and over 20 was common. In my home games, 20 was the standard, and went up from there. IIRC, you run characters who have about 12 dice, which is fine at a lower powered game, but not typical for Missions or home play.

I was discussing SR3 Priorities. I don't have as much experience with SR5, so I haven't formed a judgement on it yet.

You also don't produce characters that are viable at many other tables. When I ran Missions, primary dice pools in the upper teens were standard for the better characters, and over 20 was common. In my home games, 20 was the standard, and went up from there. IIRC, you run characters who have about 12 dice, which is fine at a lower powered game, but not typical for Missions or home play.

I don't see where I said that. You're reaching, and failing to get a straw man.

There is a pattern to effecive SR4.5 characters, but if you look at the archive, you can see it for yourself. Patterns aren't mind control, which is why your point is a straw man. And SR4.5 does require certain pieces of gear to function in the setting: armor, weapons, fake SIN, and commlink, to start. Those are the bre minimum gear you need to be functional.

Well, to be honest, these are the main pieces of gear to function as almost every archetype starting in SR1 (replacing the link with a cell phone (2 pounds of weight)). This is nothing special to SR4+.

SYL

It's rather peculiar that you don't see it, when I've quoted it for your convenience.


There is a pattern to effective characters in any edition of any system. There is basic gear that a character needs to function in any edition of any system. None of that is determined by the chargen method.
Let's go with your example of the wonderful variety inside an archetype that priority chargen allows: "gun bunnies might focus on pistols, sniper rifles, carbines, and so on". Assault rifles are the most effective armament for a street sam, of them Ares Alpha is the traditional favourite. That apparently did not stop the players using the priority system from choosing other options. What could stop the ones who used BP chargen, other than mindcontrol?

Considering I never said that, I call straw man. Show me where I said BP stopped that, please.

Allow me to summarize.

"Oh shit, you know those tables where we printed out "this many dice is what a person ought to have with a given benchmark of skill? Turns out, by our numbers and statistic breakdown, he can't do jack shit - guys can't merge into highway traffic without killing themselves, medics can't apply first aid without killing the patient. What do?" "Uh..." "We could fix the table?" "Nah, just add some BS about everyday guys ignoring the rolls." "Ah. So, do we remove the tables with rules for the difficulty of everyday tasks like merging with highway traffic?" "Fuck no! GMs gotta kill their players somehow."

In the quoted bit where you claim the characters made with BP were all the same, and all had the same gear? See, I even highlighted that bit for you in the reply above.


Well no, not really. A lot of systems say in the rules that tests performed when not under stress are easier or aren't needed at all. Even GURPS does this.
And it seems reasonable: merging into the traffic is much easier when you don't have a pack of howling go-gangers chasing you, guns blazing; heart surgery under fire is not exactly a common occurrence, either.
So yeah, common citizens don't roll dice for everyday occurrences, but a car driver could need to roll his Pilot if the Gridguide system fails and he has to avoid a collision in manual. He's quite likely to crash; but that's realistic, too - RL drivers aren't exactly all ninjas capable of getting out of a dangerous road situation most of the times.

Nope. I did not say all BP character were all the same, and neither does your attempt at selective misquotation.

You keep highlighting those words. I do no think it means what you think it does.

Your straw man is failing. _

Yeah - that's a bunch of drek.













Throughout every edition of SR - the rule has always been that you don't roll the ordinary, everyday bullshit.

-Jack

So IPs do not exist in the Fifth edition, and "the same" does not mean "the same". Fresh.

Where did I say "BP characters are all identical?", as you claim I have? You're reaching further and further, and only grasping at straw men.

Are you seriously trying to argue that heart surgery with someone's life hanging in the balance is ever a routine thing and sufficiently non-stressful that it can be handwaved?

That rule is, quite frankly, a cop-out. I'm not saying you should have to make a dozen rolls to get from your home to your office, because that falls under dick DMing - calling for rolls until the players bitch one, which you then latch onto to make their life hell.

What I am saying is that ordinary, average joe should have enough dice to accomplish ordinary, everyday tasks performed without major adverse conditions such as being under gunfire or heavy weather, with sufficient regularity that, if at any point in time a roll were called for them, they would not be statistically likely to start a massive pile-up on the freeway or whatever.

Partly, this is due to things having difficulty ratings which they should not have - merging with highway traffic, for instance. Everyday Joe should have enough dice to buy the successes needed to do that and thus bypass any chance of failure, not have so few dice that if the "you just don't have to roll" cop-out is ever removed, he suddenly proves to be so fantastically incompetent as to present a credible danger to himself and others.

Heart surgery nearly always involves someone's life hanging in the balance. But whether it is routine and/or sufficiently non-stressful really depends on how practised the doctor and whether he cares the guy lives or not.

Not that heart surgery was simply in SR3 or that, according to the skill ratings, the survival chance would be very high If ShadowDragon8685 would enforce rolls there for a normal doctor. Same goes for SR2 (estimated due to missing extended med rules) or SR5 (estimated, see SR2 (in SR5 it´s a little bit better due to stretching the entire skillset between 1 and 12)). Usually this is where Karma or Edge boosts would come in.

And yes, even life threatening operations can be routine for an experienced doctor.

SYL

Yes, what of it? There are surgeons who perform dozens if not hundreds a year, and in SR, they'd be getting a bunch of bonus dice from valkyrie modules, autodocs, AR assist, drone assistants, etcetera.

But they do have enough. An average Joe with an attribute 3, skill 2 or 3 and a skill specialization is capable of driving no worse than the real-life people you see on the roads.
Actually, better, seeing how these latter are total goddamn imbeciles.

I frankly don't see this as a problem. Yeah, a civilian under fire will not exactly prove to be a Schumacher most likely, what of it?

In SR4.5, the Average Joe has a skill of 0 in driving. They default or rely on Pilot programs. A skill of 3 is supposedly "professional", and a pro driver is a lot better than your average commuter. Still, that leads to problems-- with an attribute of 3, if merging into traffic has a Difficulty of -2, they can't do it at all, which is downright silly.

Yes, yes, the same does not mean the same, I have completely agreed with your peerless reasoning. No need to get agitated.

*sigh* If you pay very close attention to the block of text you're quoting, you'll note that I have never mentioned skill 3 there.

Attribute value of 3 is a human average, according to the core. Skill rating 2 by the description in the core, again, is a novice "shaky on more complex yet still routine procedures". Given that an average driver only drives one class of vehicles, we can safely assume he's specialized.
Merging or performing a sudden stop requires a Vehicle Test (Reaction+Pilot+Handling) with a threshold of 1 (CoreAE, p.168). The 7 dice we arrived at in the line above are more than enough to buy the requisite number of successes or roll and succeed.