Neither mine, but the fact that proselytizing is necessary shows that even the cheapest price does not guarantee customers. One principal problem is that you have to make people who don't read every RPG forum aware that your stuff exists, which again brings us back to the lack of WoD print products


PS: There also is a more official source for EP material http://robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs

The problem is that, even for a site like Amazon, they only rank the products they sell. So, White Wolf wouldn't appear, since they pretty much only sell through their own site. Just going for a quick overview, I only see about a dozen different new games being offered on Amazon, and a lot of used.


A higher price will drive away interested buyers, too. As far as I can tell, the Pegasus strategy is to make their product as accessible as possible, and get lots of people interested. I'm honestly not sure what the CGL strategy is, but I suspect it's "wring as much profit as we can out of this line".

The fact is, Pegasus can print a virtually identical book for a much, much lower price. Exactly how they can is a matter of speculation, but since they are, the likely reason is because CGL's book is overpriced.

The torrent I'm plugging was also seeded by Rob. Those are his "get them as you need them" links, the torrent I'm seeding is the "fuck it, get 'em all at once and save the difficulty of it" link.

But if SR was just a small fish in the pond competing with dozens of others, how would that work?

As well a a candle vs. a dozen helicopter spotlights?

It works just like any other product competing for market share.

Look, there's a lot of ways to compete. Generally speaking, providing a quality product at a lower price is a recipe for success. Pegasus seems to be following that model, with a corrected core book and a low price.

I'm honestly not sure what the CGL strategy is, but I'd guess they're banking on the willingness of die hard Shadowrun fans paying anything for the new books. Which is not a winning plan, since they're not really attracting new players. With their high price point, and poorly-edited books, not a lot of people are willing to buy in. That includes me: I've yet to spend real money on a SR5 product. I've got a stack of credits, which I use instead.

So, what exactly was the point where I was wrong according to your opinion?


Well, according to CGL (which meshes with their previous statement about the percentage of LEs vs. regular books), they sold 15,000 copies, +X. So I guess the brand name still sells, and maybe the high price also sets an expectation of high quality, aka. the Apple effect.


PS: Another thing which I feel should be pointed out, the Buchpreisbindungsgesetz. Book prices here are fixed for the first 18 months, which includes (at least according to the book traders' association, nobody has yet dared to challenge that) PDF releases. In other words, without that price Pegasus would have to sell grossly overpriced PDFs...

Damn, the title of this thread summarizes precisely how I have been feeling in the last couple of weeks.

I have been playing Shadowrun since Fourth Edition came out, when I was about 16 years old. It is also the first P&P I ever seriously played, so I am pretty much a SR4-native. Since then I have almost exclusively been GM-ing.
In the last couple of years I have become more and more tired of the rules and mechanics of Shadowrun 4/5, as well as aspects of the setting. I have almost come to hate it for its needless amount of complexity and its appearant need to have a written rule for every circumstance, e.g. "Treading Water" in fifth edition.

A few weeks ago I finally came to the conclusion that I have to substitute the rules system of shadowrun with something else. At first I was thinking about GURPS or Eclipse Phase, the latter of which really impressed me with its setting more than anything else.

On a whim however I checked out Shadowrun 3. Previously I had never taken a look at it, since I had heard everywhere that it was by far the inferior system of the two, but I liked the concept of Dicepools, and since sometimes I have the 'tism going bad for something like this, I made an Excel sheet to compare the two basic dice mechanics. The result of which are these tables:

Chance Per Threshold SR4/5
Chance Per Threshold SR3
Chance Per Dice Amount SR4/5
Chance Per Dice Amount SR3

I was completely flabbergastet at how elegant Shadowrun 3 worked with higher diffliculties and higher amounts of dice, an how crudely Shadowrun 4/5 works in comparison. When you have 5 or 6 dice it comes close to a D100-system in how linear the decrease in success probability is, compared to the success threshold. Truly beautiful!
In my estimates it will make GM-ing far easier when it comes to setting diffliculties for tests.
The graphs explain why I always had my super-specialized player-characters failing in the fields they were best in, because the task was "hard" (Threshold 4). I did not expect that that would lower their chance of success to less than 5% (a 20 on a D20), even with 30 dice at their disposal.

That is because the dice mechanic in Shadowrun 4/5 appears to work much more intuitively than it does in effect. Unexpectedly, the diffliculty increase is exponential. And quickly exponential at that!
This is caused by the fact that Shadowrun 4, unlike nWoD, sets a Threshold. nWoD still only requires one success, as did oWoD and Shadowrun 3.

As it turns out I have found my substitute of choice for Shadowrun, it's Shadowrun.

EDIT: The graph about 4th/5th edition I uploaded is based on bad math. I leave it in this post for context. Further down I uploaded both graphs again, this time the correct ones.

Err, you will quickly notice that one hit is most of the time basically worthless under SR3, so don't be too disappointed there please.
You will need at least one NET HIT to accomlish anything. For example hitting somebody with a Gun. If you only score one hit against your TN and then the other guy scores 1 hit against his TN to evade, you miss.
And that's not the only example. Magic is especially bad here, as you need to keep in mind the dice pool to roll(skill+magic pool), then the force at which you cast the spell(which limits hits barring use of Karma), and then you need to keep track of how many actual hits you had when casting certain spells later on when somebody is trying to resist the spells as well . . 1 Hit on Improved Invisibility CASTING will be worthless as soon as somebody points a camera at you . .

Well I know the difference between needing a Success and needing a Net Success of course,
but the fact that the Dice Mechanic of SR4/5 is inept for success tests still stands.

When a guy with 30 dice only accomplishes a hard task in his field 3,7% of the time, that is kind of weird.
And a guy with 4 dice is at 1,23% chance of Success, so basically no difference between godly strong and pathetically weak charakters, when it comes to hard tasks.

EDIT: The percent figures are wrong, sry. I correct it further down.

My point is:
The system with variable Target Numbers allows for a more seamless transition from easy to hard tasks in success tests.

Also the fact that Net Hits are vital, and the fact that you have to keep track of them is true for Shadowrun 4/5 as well.
I am pretty sure though that the enemy needs to spend pool dice to evade the way you are describing, and if he does not have any I will hit with 1 Success.

For a week now I have been fiddling on a highly customized, streamlined and simplified version of Shadowrun 3.
The Vehicle stuff from Shadowrun 3 was too complicated for example, so I inserted the chase-mechanic from the 007-RPG. Some research had indicated that it was greatly simple and simply great, which turns out to be true. It is also surprisingly easy to adapt to Shadowrun, they did so for fifth edition after all, but I preferred to lift it from its original source.
Also I do intend to mix in good mechanics from Shadowrun 5 where I see fit.
So far that has been nowhere, but I have not gotten to the Magic and Matrix chapters yet.
To my surprise the fifth edition decks work similar to the third edition decks, at least at first glance.

Well, you seemed to think the fact that Pegasus was selling books for so little was a sign they were doing something wrong. Actually, it's a sign that they're doing something very right, and CGL is doing it wrong.


Interestingly, they only cite numbers for the initial release. That's when book sales are the strongest, they're including prerelease orders and con sales. They also don't provide any useful point of comparison; I'm given to understand that D&D 5e sold hundreds of thousands of copies, both online and at FLGS's. They don't mention how sales went after the initial buzz wore off, so we don't know if they tanked or not.

I can only speak for one [little] local store in my Podunk corner of the world, but they continue to order more D&D5 books and have yet to place even a second order on SR5 core books (and have not ordered any supplement books). Out of those of us there that are into Shadowrun in general, I believe I'm the one with the most SR5 material in total.

In my experience, this is entirely the case. It is -very- easy to scale SR3 on the fly solely via target number modifiers.

The vehicle rules though are pretty universally terrible. Killing someone with a vehicle impact is pretty much impossible under SR3 rules. It's just too easy to soak.

There's something wrong in your math I think. A dice pool of 3 achieves 2 hits or more 26% of the time under 4th edition mechanics, and all your numbers beyond that point seems wrong to me.

the fact that they seem wrong is exactly my point.
The way the system portrays diffliculty is unintuitive.

I have no idea where you got that figure of 26% from, but my math on the three dice with a threshold of two goes as such:
1/3*1/3+2/3*1/3*1/3=5/27
It comes to a bit under 20%.

Yeah, I don't think Shadowrun ever had decent vehicle rules.

I mean, 1e basically didn't have any. 2 skated along for a while, but we eventually ended up with the &^%%!! Maneuver Score, which goes down in my book as one of the worse mechanics ever devised. 3rd kept that stupid rule, so 4th was the best-- they were almost functional.

I honestly treat vehicle combat as entirely cinematic in my SR3 games, and just give riggers better target numbers.

You honestly can't go wrong in SR4 by generally assuming that a TN4 is average for most anything except shooting and modding it up and down based on the situation.

Three dice can give 216 different combinations, 56 of them containing at least two 5 or 6.

The chances the first and the second dice gives a hit is 1/3*1/3 (with 1/3 giving a third hit on the third dice)
The chances the first dice gives no hit and the second and third does is 2/3*1/3*1/3.
Your count left out the chances the first dice gives a hit, the second doesn't but the third dice does, which is 1/3*2/3*1/3.

(1/3*1/3) + (2/3*1/3*1/3) + (1/3*2/3*1/3) = 1/9 + 2/27 + 2/27 = 7/27 ~ 25,9259...%

Been trying to correct myself for half an hour. Damn mobile!

You are right, I was wrong, thanks!

I will correct my graph in a few hours and upload the corrected version.

Your numbers are very, very wrong if you think that 30 Dice only gives 4+ Successes 3.7% of the time. Average number of Successes will be around 10 with 30 Dice.
The guy with 4 Dice will probably only ever get there about 1.23% of the time, but the guy with 30 Dice will only likely FAIL about 3.7% of the time (probably less often than that even).

Yo dude! I just admitted I had made a mistake, and promised to correct it within the day.
Don't kick me while I'm down man.

Ahhh... Sorry. My Mistake. Carry on then...

Here are the graphs again, this time the Graphs for the 4/5th Edition are corrected.
Thanks again Nath for calling me on my bullshit.
This was harder work than expected. Damn them combinatorics!

Chance of Success per Amount of Dice in 4/5th Edition
Chance of Success per Threshold in 4/5th Edition
Chance of Success per Amount of Dice in 3rd Edition
Chance of Success per Target Number in 3rd Edition

Critics of the success test system in fourth/fifth edition that still stand in my opinion, and that are not around in third:
If you have one die, you wont make a test that is even remotely hard.
The system is incredibly elitist when it comes to high diffliculties, you need a neverending dicepool to even attempt them.
The general capability of a runner is far worse in 4/5th than in 3rd, when his stats are balanced (-> when he is not a min-maxed character).

Other than that:
I always hated the fact that players in Shadowrun 4 and onward, never could just roll dice.
For a basic test which they were not prepared for, they had to:
1. Look up the specific attribute
2. Look up the skill and maybe the specialty.
3. Add all of it together
4. Wait for the GM to apply positive and negative modifiers
5. Total the sum and add/subtract it from their dice pool.
All of this before they could even roll.
For one attack this had to be done three times between both parties, with some math mixed in for flavor.
God I love AD&D in comparison! SR3 too handles it easier, basically you can just roll while your GM thinks about TN for a sec. In SR4 onward you have to wait. This made every test a drag.
I also love the wounding system in SR3, though I am not sure about balancing. It lends a special flavor if you tell the player: "You receive a serious wound.", rather than: "You receive 6 boxes of physical damage.".

I also tended to abstract vehicle combat, I usually treated it as a set of opposed rolls. It worked pretty well, and variable TN's made it easy to adjust difficulties. 4.5's vehicle combat had serious issues with that, you couldn't easily adjust for, say, a helicopter chasing a car.

4.5's biggest problem was that it depended entirely on skill. Factors like speed and type (air vs ground, for example) were largely ignored. In fact, excessive speed was actually a penalty. So, if a moped rider had greater skill, he could easily overtake a jet plane.

Or, as an example that really happened: we were in a sports car, trying to escape from some gangers. We were going at the top speed, 300. The gangers bikes were much slower, but since there were more of them, they were able to consistently beat our driver, and stay in close range. So, in order to escape, I had a force 10 spirit use Movement on us.

The GM did some math: 3000 meters/turn was roughly equal to Mach 4.6.

He simple handwaved our escape, but later, we looked at the rules. First of all, that speed would been a huge penalty to our driver, so he might have had no dice at all. Second, even if we did win the opposed test, we would need to win three times before we could even try. That meant it'd take a minimum of 4 minutes for us to escape. By that time, we could have been halfway to Portland!

3rd edition (and previous ones) had pools. So the actual steps for some rolls were 1° Look up the skill 2° Look up any of the pools that can apply 3° Decide how many dice from the pools you want to use, before actually rolling. In those case, it was not anyhow shorter than summing up and attribute and a skill.

Pools also led to a situation where different action had completely different range of dice pools. Characters in their area of expertise could throw as little as 6 to 8 dice if that roll involved no pool, and as much as 16 to 18 if it did. So it was impossible to consider a given TN as "easy" or "hard" overall, as it depended on each skill. With the exception of the Intimidation skill (which had a pile of situational modifier available)

The 4th edition has a similar problem, albeit for a different reason, as dice pool inflation didn't apply evenly between skills and attributes. So while from a mechanical standpoint you could assess what easy or hard meant for an unaugmented mundane human (whose dice pool would remain fairly contained within a 1-16 dice range), practically there was a number of skills or tasks for which characters could have much higher dice pools.

The part on waiting on the wait for the GM to provide all the modifier is nonetheless true.

However, in general 3e had fewer modifiers to apply to any given task. And all of those were TN modifiers, there were hardly any that affected the dice rolled. As such, it was often easier to eyeball a TN adjustment. In 4.5, you couldn't do that, since the modifiers directly affected the dice in play. You had to be more exact.

Also, although allocatable dice pools could get tricky to manage, they were a limited resource, and had better controls in place. Your Combat Pool was the big one, having a big Combat Pool was a huge advantage in a fight. However, it was also your only means of dodging, so if you used it up on an attack, you were hosed when they returned fire. As a result, shoving all your Combat Pool into one attack was a very dangerous move. The only time that was feasible was with troll tanks; they never needed to dodge, so they could afford to spend all the pool on attacks.

The things you mention are precisely what I remembered slowed down the game. Questions like, can we get the entire group down before their next attack? Aren't they going to target our mage first before turning on me? Isn't it more important to be sure their mage is down rather than dodging physical attacks? Should I attack once or twice? Should I use my Combat Pools on both attack or only the first? Or the second one? Do I use one dice? Two? Three? Four?

Sure most RPG systems feature such dilemma (by the sole virtue of providing actual choice), but most of the time at least it's only yes/no questions, not bean counting among dozens of possible permutations.

If you are an elf or human(squishie), you have more dice you need to worry about.
If you are an Ork, Dorf or Troll, you have less to worry about in gerneral.

But that sounds completely awesome to me. I always had the problem that fights were over within the first three seconds, with no tactics at all.

Also the time problem here is very easily solved. If the player has not decided whether or not to spend pool dice on his action, he has a timelimit of five seconds for example.

Then you aren't running combats especially well, are you?
If all your opponents are clustered enough that only 1 Turn is required to eliminate them, then they did not apply any thought/tactics of their own...
If all they do is stand around waiting to be gunned down, then they deserve what they get...

Believe me... 3rd Edition combat sucked rags... royally.

Untill my Troll gets bored at least, yes . .

There is just something about Trolls, isn't there?

If you are a 3m Tall Muscle Machine with a Sledgehammer, you can solve Problems even if they don't look like nails initially.

This is very true...
Of course... You may be "Solving" the wrong "Problem" but who cares, right?

No, as long as i am advancing proceedings either by throwing coals on the fire or by taking the torch and running with it, then there is no such thing.

Hmm, Right. What I meant was that selling SR books for 19.95 would not be possible if it were an also-ran


D&D is impossibly far ahead, nobody will dispute that.

Point...

Well yeah, I was, for a long while. By now I do not have quite as much of a problem with that stuff.

The problem was generally that combat came from situations that escalated into violence,
and the NPCs do not generally begin those situations in full cover,
spread out over 2 acres and with guns firmly at their shoulders and 7 spent aiming actions on the characters.
Generally they, just like the PCs, begin combat in an unprotected place, and they have to wait for Initiative to jump for cover.
With the way the sammys in my group were done, that meant that up to 4 of them died before they could act.
An ambush against the PCs is something completely different of course.

But as I said, I am not having that big of a problem by now.
It was just extremely difflicult to master Shadowrun as someone who is new to RPGs.
Shadowrun is not exactly a handholding system when it comes to new players,
especially GMs, and especially 4.0.
My characters breezed through the first encounter with ease, killing a gang on its own turf, and claiming it as their own.
Then, a few days later, they were attacked by a few Ghouls, because they had left the dead bodies lieing around of course,
Murder Hobos that they were.
In that encounter two of the PCs almost died.

But seriously, as I told before: at the moment I am basically writing my own Shadowrun hack, based on third edition.
I like the combat rules, but if combat sucked, please give me some hints as to what sucked exactly,
as to what was unbalanced and so on. I have not yet played third edition, and I would love to tap into your experience on this.

What I take from your posts and from the rules themselves for example,
is that Body is too important a stat, because of damage resistance.

The most unbalanced things in SR3 combat were Trolls.
But that is the whole point of Trolls, so you can't really take that away from them without making them mostly useless . .
Trolls with 8 to 10 points of Armor and up to 18 dice of Body PLUS COMBAT POOL can regularly take a shotgun 3 bullet burst to the face and simply ignore it most of the time.
Trolls with STR of up to 16 can dish out 20D Damage with either a -3 to their TN, a +3 to the enemies TN, a -1 to their and a +2 to the enemy TN, a -2 to their and a +1 to the enemy TN.
This is very much broken in direct combat. Combine with Trollerskates to get them into close combat basically immediately for maximum lulz.
And combine it with a Trollbow to make a Barret Sniper Rifle and the Panther Assault Cannon basically weep in jealousy at the efficiency there.

Of course, there are ways around this, but if it comes to in building straight up shooting and punching people . . nope, the Troll is basically just waltz over anything in his way if done correctly.
This is to do with the SR3 Combat/Damage system. Where the Power is the TN to resist and the Damage is the number of Net Hits Needed to resist.
So even if the Troll is doing 20l damage, which equals one box of damage, that's still one basically impossible to resist box of damage. And the troll can usually take the returndamage better.
So in the long run, he will still out dps anything that stands up against him . . And then you can still combine this with chem-tech! so as soon as a single point of physical damage goes through, the hit target has to deal with the chemicals effects as well.

Furthermore, as expected Trolls can handle guns better, especially heavy weapons, than anybody else in the game. Yes, this includes Drakes.
If you are playing a low-power environment with limited build points, Trolls win out even more because of the bonuses they get to their attributes.
STR and Bod are the king stats in SR3 combat. Combat Pool is derived from QCK, INT and WILL. Reaction is derived from QCK and INT as well.
Trolls get a malus in both QCK and INT, so they will usually not be able to get the combat pool high. So the smart Troll(yes i know) will look at that and go:
"right, dodging unlikely, need to tank damage instead."

Body is the most important stat in SR3, because if you take damage you are out or even dead. For a pretty long time as well, if you are unlucky. There is no sweet spot, get that shit up as high as you can justify, no matter what you are playing. Yes, this goes for deckers, techies, faces and magic types as well. Because if you take one hit, you are basically down for the count if your body is low. Body dice are vitally important (heh) due to how the damage system works. Body also helps with most athletics stuff aside from stealth which uses QCK. And remember: in SR3, it's very much possible to actually hit the augmented maximum. There's a maximum of +5 on STR and QCK and a +9 on BOD from augmentations alone.
Second is for combat the Attribute that actually is used for the weapon set that you as a character want to use. QCK allows a higher guns skill and a higher whip skill. It also makes you cover ground faster and lets you carry more armor and increases your dodge/attack combat-pool and reaction. The Sweet spot for this is depending on what you want to be. Ususally it's 8 with only elves being able to actually max out at 12 QCK.
STR allows higher anything else close combat both unarmed and armed and actually straight up increases the damage output. And it also helps with reducing recoil from guns. And of course throwing stuff and shooting bows. You want that generally to be as high as you can justify or simply get it as high as you can and then try to justify that later if your main character shtick is combat. It's a neglible stat for most non combat oriented characters.

Willpower is usefull for resisting stun damage, so typically magic drain damage. it only helps with higher combat pool and reaction i think? also factors into the driving pool if i remember correctly.

INT is for the combat people only usefull in that it adds to reaction and combat pool and acts as your perception pool to notice stuff because in SR3 perception had no actual skill behind it, so there is that.

That's only for the combat types.

For NON Combat Types, INT is the most important because it is actually linked to ALL non combat skills. Build/Repair, Knowledge, All technical aside from lock picking which uses QCK and even one social skill uses INT instead of charisma. with Charisma being second due to being linked to all but one social skills and WILL only being really relevant for Magical types. Driver-Skills are especially arsed in SR3, because they do not get a direct but a derived attribute. Namely reaction.

Skills should technically come directly behind attributes, but actually it's getting mods to your most used TNs because getting the TN down is easier than getting the skill up. What does it help you if you have a dice pool of 20-30 dice(basically impossible to achieve most of the time) if your TN is in the double digits range?
Low skill with lower TN is always preferable to high skill and high TN.
Of course, high skill with low TN trumps most anything else again.

The TN Mods also come into play in how you handle situations where you don't actually have a needed skill.
You default to the attribute linked to the skill, if you are not using the skill web mechanic.
A Troll that does not have any athletic skill or any close combat but has pushed both STR and BOD to Max will still roll 16-18 dice for these.
He will just suffer a +4TN modifier, so if he can get that down he will have 16-18 dice for achieving something he has no idea of how to do, simply through brute strength and tenacity.
Now keep in mind 18 dice is the maximum you can achieve for a starting skill roll using adepts and that is hellishly expensive to do and usually not worth it.
Your close combat does not get weaker without the skill, it's just harder for you to hit stuff in the first place, but on a lucky roll you will still do maximum damage.
Your body does not get any less athletic just because you have no propper technique, your bones, sinews and muscles will simply propell you up ladders, through water, along the road and straight up with their sheer force and escape artist becomes less of a "how do i squeeze out of this" and more of a "puny chains can't hold hulk" plink.
fun fact: Body is also used to determine how big you are. And because fat swims on top, high body also helps with treading water without drowing.

One of the more broken builts is to use a Troll with Max Ressources, maxed out attributes, only put some alibi points into natural skills and then get twinking with the skill-wires and pool/skill/TN mods.
Money CAN BUY ABILITY in SR after all! And if you do it correctly, you can end up with a Troll that is the racial maximum in both STR and BOD and despite being as dumb as a brick can still roll up to 8 or more dice in any 16 skills you want . .

Iron Man and Batman have it right: MONEY IS THE BEST SUPERPOWER THERE IS!
There is very little that can NOT be done by applying money to the equation/problem.
And the things that can't be done by money are usually something magical anyway.

Depending on if you use the priority system, another hillariously broken built is an adept with 1 million nuyen. Attributes at 3rd priority, skills in 4th, race human in 5th.
That means you can cram your body full of 4 points of Bioware to get the Attributes up to human improved maximum and use the remaining 4 points of magic (because bioware only costs 0,5 magic per full point) to do other stuff.

One thing I usually did for any mundane character I played was give them a Willpower of 6, because that is the Attribute you usually use to resist mana spells. The mage may be tossing more dice, but a TN of 6, with 6 dice to roll, is pretty good. In SR4, high Willpower means a few extra dice and an extra success or two. In SR3, a high Willpower really matters. And you want that protection, because in SR3, mages are at perhaps the apex of their power.

Stahseele touched upon cybered mages - they are much more viable in SR3, where Magic is mainly used to determine if spell Drain is physical or stun damage. And there are so many ways to get around that - power foci add directly to your Magic rating, Magic loss can be geased away, and spells can be taken with fetish or exclusive modifiers to reduce their effective Force for purposes of determining Drain.

Mm, that doesn't seem to follow. If you want to introduce a new product onto the market, or edge more share in a crowded one, you push your price down as far as you can. If you're established, then you can keep the price higher. It's kinda the way Coke and Pepsi can charge more than generic sodas, even when it's the same soda.

Within the RPG market, there's a lot of variation in price. FATE is becoming popular, in part because of their low core book cost. Savage Worlds sells a full color core book for $10, even though they're a well established system. Typically, a low price means you're fighting for market share, and it often (but not always) signifies that you *are* an also-ran.

Ok, that was really helpful. Thanks a lot.
Now I know what to look out for.

Going through 3rd edition is like reading a book about the history of a country you have been living in.
Suddenly a lot of stupid traditions make sense, and you realize where some customs come from.

Trolls for example never struck me as especially tough and resistant in fourth,
while the fluff hyped them like mad at some points.
Now I know where that comes from.

Bumping trolls up one category in Priority might go a long way in fixing that stuff,
but I think talking to my players is the better choice here.

I intend to counteract a lot of min-maxing by adjusting karma costs.
The sole reason I myself min-max my characters in WOD and SR,
is that getting an attribute from 1 to 2 is so much more expensive than getting it from 4 to 5.
So having an attribute at 2 and one at 4 is bad book-keeping, when you could have 1 and 5 instead. (talking about WOD here)
That is a gripe I have with all systems where XP-costs are raised in ^x.

Yeah, trolls really got a raw deal from 4th onward.

Because of the way soak rolls worked in classic Shadowrun, you only got your Body in dice to roll. Armor could reduce the TN, but it could never take it below 2, and you still needed a lot of successes to soak. So, if you only had a Body of 2, no matter how much armor you had on, you could only stage the damage down once. That could get really bad.

My best troll tank in 3e had a Body somewhere around 15. He did take a hit to his Quickness, but that mostly affected his combat pool. Combat pool had several uses, but it was your only source of dodge dice, so most characters wanted a really high Combat Pool and spend a lot of it on dodging. Trolls, however, seldom needed to dodge. With enough armor, it was actually easier to soak than to dodge. So, even with the reduced combat pool, they could save more of for offense. That made the scary, because they could go on full-attack and not worry about defending.

4e and 4.5 kept the Quickness penalty, but forgot the reasoning behind it. Because of that hit, trolls were now worse at combat than ever before. And because everyone could pile on armor, they lost the advantage in soaking. Thus, trolls went from being tough and scary, to a clumsy oaf.

@Bertramn:
You should NOT mess with the priorities.
Trolls may get the biggest bonus in STR and BOD, but they also get -5 points in Total.
-1 QCK, -2 CHA AND -2 INT.
Nobody else has that big of a Hit.
ORKS only get a -1 to both CHA and INT, but nothing else.
Dorfs and elves only get + to Attributes at all. Dorfs lose 1 running multiplier though.

@Cain
Yes, one of my main gripes with SR4 and beyond. Too much of a Nerf to my favourite thing <.<

SR3 simply is technically speaking the best SR system.
It certainly is closest in fluff/crunch relations.
The biggest flaw is also the biggest boon.
YES IT HAS RULES FOR THAT. YES THAT TOO.
The rules were very specific, even for edge cases.
Breaking SR3 was harder as well because of the TN system.

If you wanted to make an SR System into a Computer-Game, you should always pick 3rd edition.
Because if a computer is doing all the calculations for you, then it actually helps that there are rules for everything, no matter how complicated they might be.

And seriously, the art kicks ASS.

Especially the Judge Dredd style black and white stuff with the expressive faces.
But also the wacky full-color art.

While I did not like the original art from fourth edition for the most part,
since almost everything that looked any good came from the older editions,
I like the art from fifth edition.
The style is good, the colouring is excellent, every picture has extensive backgrounds, which show you a little of the Neon-Graffity-Highrise-Setting. Backgrounds were almost always a blurry mess in fourth.
The only thing I do not like that much is that everything looks too realistic, too clean, faces are too good-looking.
I prefer the sometimes extremely ugly faces in third.

By the way, with the "rules for everything"... how is that different from fourth and fifth edition?
And where are all those rules? I do not see that many rules in the core book,
I did not even see Bioware anywhere, though maybe I have missed it.

Though for any PC-game the vehicle rules would be perfect with their exact speed values.

Canon Companion < = more weapons modifications, build your own, more rules for combat and stuff
Man and Machine < = More Cyber and Bioware and other implants and Improvements
Magic in the Shadows < = Adepts and more Traditions and spells and the such
Rigger 3rd < = Vehicles, drones, modifications, build your own.
Matrix/Virtual Realities(not sure which one of these is 3rd ed and which is 2nd ed) < = Otaku(Proto-Technomancer and MUCH more Decker Stuff
Runners Companion < = Assorted oddities, Subraces, Infected etc.
Seriously, using only the core book, you only utilize less than 20% of what's there.

In SR3, you had numbers for how many doors and seats and how much fuel it used depending on what kind of fuel you used.

Ok, I thought I had missed a bunchload there.

Funny that there is so much extra stuff, when you think about the fact,
that the corebook collected all the expansionbooks from 1st and 2nd edition into one volume.

How balanced was Bioware? I never really liked the way it was handled in conjunction with Essence in fourth.
Fifth did nothing really, except get rid of the math if I recall correctly.

Also there were no rules for the multiple arms of Nar'taki in third, or were there?

Yes, SR3 expanded GREATLY on Stuff. Both in crunch and fluff.
Hell, there's a complete fluffbook talking only about dragons . .

Bioware was balanced MOSTLY by Price. Well Money Price. Not Essence, since it does not use up essence.
The Bioindex in SR3 is what tells you how much(yes, there's a maximum) Bioware you can have installed.
The Bioindex is YOUR CURRENT ESSENCE PLUS 3!
So at Essence 6 you can have 9 Points of Bioware installed. At Essence 3 you can have 6 Points installed.
At Essence 1 you can have 4 points installed. And even these 4 points can break the bank if you want the good stuff.
It's preferable for Magicians because each point of essence index used only uses up half a point of magic.
The Main Thing about Bioware is that technically, Bioware counts as NATURAL ATTRIBUTE. Which means you pay less karma for raising skills.
And it also figures into the derived attributes, while cyberware stuff does not do that but is considered an improved attribute.
The downside to this is that it also increases the karma cost for raising the attributes that you put bioware into.

Things that "suck" with SR3 combat (plus magic) rules (not necessarily limited to that particular Edition nor SR exclusive):

1. Different combat / damage resolution mechanisms for ranged and melee. With the exception of the (correct) application of the excessive damage rules you'll only ever need 8 successes to resist all damage in melee. The maximum numbers for needed successes to avoid damage from ranged attacks is only limited by the number of dice the attacker can accumulate for his attack test.
2. Inconsistent treatment of armor depending on combat type, attack form and which rule set you're using:
   
   • (By RAW) the core rules use a totally abstract armor model with no distinct target zones. The zone that is hit is merely a subject of the narrative after the actual damage of an attack has been determined. In this core situation all worn armor is used for all target number calculations in both ranged and melee combat, regardless of how and where the player intends to hit (opposed to where he actually hits when looking at the overall results of all tests). House rules often involve some degree of armor bypassing when using the "called shot" option. But typically this just leads to more dead bodies in an even shorter time and players get easily pissed should the GM use some degree of "what goes around comes around" there. Side note: Helmets do use those "+" symbols before their armor values for that very reason and their individual armor values can under no circumstances be considered "reasonable" when compared to armor values of armor clothing.
   • Man & Machine introduces some degree of target zones with how armor in cyberlimbs is treated.
   • Man & Machine also introduces a totally fucked up form of armor bypassing with chemical attacks that allows you to bypass all armor even the one in the "targeted" area => Take a heavy crossbow under standard ranged attack rules against a target with a light security armor including helmet (a total of 7/6 armor) with a called shot "to the head". The target will have to resist against a target number of 2 (8-7, but never below 2) and the GM can (and usually will) opt for increasing the base damage level from S to D before staging via net successes. Now poison the bolt of the same heavy crossbow and make a called shot "to the head" once again. This time the player can opt for armor bypassing - even the armor worn in the affected area. Subsequently the target would have to resist the base damage S at a target number of 8 (since by RAW now armor applies at all) plus the additional damage of whatever the poison will cause.
   • Cannon companion provides advanced melee rule sets (not just for Martial Arts) that also introduce armor bypass options when using the "called shot" option in melee. "Thankfully" using said option in melee is usually not worth the hustle because it either causes you to instantly lose the encounter (if your skill is not high enough) or you'll knock out / kill your opponent easier when making an attack without that option if your skill is high enough.
3. The aforementioned chemical attacks can cause double dipping in damage which can easily unbalance stuff
4. Inconsistent treatment of technically identical weapons: A shock glove will also double dip on damage by doing both the slightly reduced melee damage an unarmed combatant would do plus its (not staging) electrical damage (separate resistance test against usually halved impact armor). The cyber implant version (shock hands) however only causes the electrical damage (which can be staged this time however)
5. The possibilities for multiple attacks and the initiative mechanics can - depending on number of combatants - easily lead to situations that take hours to resolve the encounter from off play perspective but from in-game perspective a mere 3 to 6 seconds passed by.
6. Melee - while certainly having some pretty good tactical options when using the advanced melee rules and Martial Arts options - usually is over rather "quickly" (ingame perspective) as well and making use of those tactical options usually just worthless ... even for melee specialized characters.
7. Unless a GM doesn't arbitrarily make NPCs aware of Mages during combat, doesn't provide them with above average willlpower or constantly imposes high levels of background count your average spellcaster will be able to end combat situations rather easily with spells that somewhat go against the fluff of SR magic: Stun spells (single target and area versions) have the same difficulty to cast and their drain is easier to resist than non stun spells albeit the fluff suggesting that hard destruction and unleashing magical energies is way easier than finer manipulations of mana and attempts at confining the magical energies to smaller areas of effect.
8. The rules for grenade deviation can create insane results even for rather well trained personnel
9. The rules for firing through and firing at barriers are outright stupid
10. Three different types of personal "armor" that cause different treatments for determining actual armor values: standard armor, hardened armor and "immunity to normal weapons".
11. Vehicle armor adding a fourth armor type that does insane things ... unless you happen to have anti-vehicular ammo with its "magic bronze core" that will allow the ammo to do insane things instead.

This list is nowhere close to complete.



No, not really. Body certainly is an important stat but beyond it's value for damage resistance it's not overly present in the system since it hasn't that many skills linked to it and isn't included in any of the dice pool calculations. The actual superstat in SR3 is - just as in SR4 - Quickness since it's linked to the vast majority of ranged attack skills, a rather broad range of non-combat skills, is part of the calculation for the special attribute Reaction and also comes up in the calculation of the dice pool with the broadest application: combat pool (a pool that - despite it's name - is not totally restricted to use during combat).
The other superstat is Intelligence due to its similarly broad influence on many (mainly non-combat skills), even more dice pools and again the special attribute Reaction.

If I were to rank attributes in SR3 it would be Quickness >= Intelligence > Willpower >= Body > Charisma >>Strength where Body and Charisma will switch depending on character focus. Strength for pretty much all intends and purposes is a dump stat ... even for Stahlseele's much beloved Trolls.




It's different in the way that pretty much each and everything has mechanically different rules where the mechanisms are pretty consistent in fourth and fifth.



Spread across a larger number of rule books



Correct ... not "many" but different for pretty much every single aspect. Combat vs. Magic (divided into spellcasting and conjuring) vs. Matrix vs. Rigging.



Bioware is in Man & Machine. Geneware - that makes use of the Bio Index mechanism - is in yet another book (SotA'63)

____________________

Objection! Bio Index tells you how much Bioware you currently have installed.



No, that value is not Bio Index. That value is what's called Essence Index. And that Essence Index is not the general upper limit for Bioware. It's merely the maximum value of Bio Index your character can have before suffering further drawbacks.



You can always have 9 points of Bioware installed in SR3. Values above your Essence Index however will cause severe drawbacks (some that might even kill you rather quickly). Any Bio Index above 9 instantly kills the subject.



But technically also restricts it to the natural maximum attribute limits per race => You can make a reasonable argument that a human with a natural strength of 6 without further genetic improvements / edges cannot have muscle augmentation bioware at level 4.



Not quite correct. Cyberware does factor into derived attributes as well it usually just creates augmented values (in []brackets) on the derived attribute as well. The problem there being that way to many implants and game aspects have special rules that create further exceptions.