So, uhm, hi.
I was hinted at this forum having a few grumpy old men people with good rules knowledge, so I figured "can't hurt to ask".

So, to the meat:
I recently, while mulling over a character concept (even before I fired up the excel), stumbled upon this bit:


However, when I discussed the implications with my pool group, it turns out that in the german rulebook, it reads the (freely translated) the equivalent of:

Now, I can't expect anyone here to know why, but as to the implications:
Am I right in my assumption that in the english version, Reaction Enhancers + Wired Reflexes would be compatible with Adrenaline Boost and/or Vampiric speed?
And would, in the german version, Reaction Enhances stack with the Improved Reflexes Adept Power?
Are there any other options to 'get cheesy'?

Regards

I believe the intent is that you can only stack a single method of reflex enhancement, be it Reaction Enhancers, Wired Reflexes, drugs, or adept powers and spells that have the same effects. Adrenaline Boost is explicitly incompatible with any other reaction enhancement.

Where does it say so?

As far as I know, it should work just fine with the Enhanced Reflexes Spell, and drugs sure work with everything that doesn't specifically exclude 'everything'.

Assuming the distinction between "augmentations" and "all enhancements" is intentional, Wired Reflexes would be compatible and Enhancers would remain incompatible even when wireless is enabled (since their Wifi bonus only makes them compatible with WRs) in the English version, and under the German rules it would be the other way round.

But an interesting find you made there, could somebody with an account at the Pegasus board ask if this was intentional?

I think this is simply a case of copy pasta that went wrong because of how SR3 handled initiative.

I suppose I'll ask there myself once the registration goes through, which is roughly the same laborious process as it is here.
So, tomorrow, by any chance.
Edit: And how would you go about converting a char from one system to the other in case you switch groups or something?
Edit2: Question on Pegasus-Forum: Link So far the discussion revolves around whether "Augmentation" just means improvement.

Sorry, my bad, was thinking Adrenaline Surge.

Still, my reading of all of the above still points to none of the initiative enhancements stacking except those that specifically say they do.

Getting 'cheesy' just leads to the same problem they're trying to fix, the Sammy that reliably goes first and is the only one that gets a combat turn, which is no fun for the rest of the table.

The Sammy will always go first unless tehre's also an Adept.
You'll get 4 dice and a decent base score, you'd need a pityful roll to not be the fastest.
If you want to be the only one to get a combat turn, the combat needs to end in a complex action. Unlikely.
Edit: Infected have an extra die, so they may challenge that superiority.

Unless one plays with the optional initiative rules from Run&Gun, which drop the concept of initiative passes.

If you have an initiative of 36 there, and the next highest initiative is 10, you act 3 times before the next guy.
It may not make more sense to have the sammy act 3 times before everybody else, but I kind of like it better,
and having him act 3 times after anyone else does not make sense either.

Well, the best approximation would be to have him act more in between, but that's neither here nor there.
No group I'm in uses those optional rules, however;
In most cases, it results in sammies or combat adepts to act first and last, but that's bearable.

That once WAS the official Rule for how initiative goes . .
It was changed because people complained that their non combat characters could not contribute in combat due to the combat characters with boosted initiative taking care of it before they can get going . .

SR3 Initiative is still the best way to do it in my eyes . .

I actually -like- the oldschool 2e version that lets a wired-up Sammy go twice before anyone else even moves... but then I also run under the assumption that you only get one initiative boosting effect, so ~40 init scores don't happen reliably.

Yeah, it was fucking hard to get to 4 passes under these rules x.x
so hard that it usually simply wasn't worth trying anyway.

The complaint didn't necessarily come from "non-combat" characters. There were two major issues with that particular initiative rule set:

1. In order to provide decent opposition for characters with such high initiative values the GM was pretty much forced to resort to larger numbers of NPCs and/or similarly boosted NPCs ... both of which was somewhat "unrelistic" from the world perspective and also increased the danger of killing unboosted PCs ... particularly when some level of "Geek the mage first" was enforced.
2. Combat orientation for a character forced players regardless of archetype and focus into heavy initiative boosts in their characters or otherwise they couldn't contribute to their player's satisfaction. Both melee oriented characters (adepts as well as sammy types) and mages fell victim to that despite having a combat focus

However, 30+ wasn't that much of a stretch ... which more than often caused respective characters to act not just twice but thrice in a total of 6 standard actions before opposition could even act. Add some degree of "surprise" (which prevented and still prevents opposition from utilizing some of their defensive tools) and a single sammy downed 3 to 6 NPCs pretty much instantly.

With an Infected, you get 5 die with a single augmentation or rating 3 power. I'd say 3 passes is average for those chars (it's not spectacularly unlikely for regular sammies/adepts either).
And 4 is quite reachable at times. All that for starting characters, mind you.
That aside, no progress on the actual topic yet, I'll keep you informed.

And people complain about DS getting lost in sideshow discussions

That's understandabla because the 1:1 translation does lend itself to that . .

Well, true, but there's plenty of arguments against that in the book and shadowrun lore.
Still, problem seems to be that after agreeing on that, the discussion kinda died. So no luck there

i remain at the point that only things that gave + initiative dice in SR3(if not explicitly mentioned oterwise) should be incompatible with each other.
The only things initiative wise that worked together in SR3 were boosted reflexes and synaptic accellerator. Everything else simply did not work together.
Reaction improvement you could always stack on, they were incompatible with cyberlimb enhancements and nothing else i can remember off the top of my head.
I am not sure about the compatibility of magic and drugs with tech enhancements though. magic and magic are not compatible with each other either, there only the highest bonus applies.
Still no idea about how drugs would interact with this. SR3 had no upper limit to how much initiative you could get, so i guess magic, tech and drug would all directly stack with each other.
SR4 had a maximum of how much initiative passes you could have, no idea about SR5 though.

And in SR3, initiative means roll your initiative dice, add up the eyes on top, and then straight up add your reaction score to that, but under SR3, reaction was not a normal phyiscal attribute.
Under SR3, reaction was like initiative a more or less artificial/derived attribute . . So you can see where my guess of bad copy pasta does stem from i guess . .

Well, given that there's an entire SR4 between those two, I'm sure it'd be that easy to get it that wrong.
It's pretty close to SR3, though.
INT+REA + Dice.
With the Ware, I could go either way, really, as long as it's the same, which it currently is not.
I was thinking about finally doing a char that uses extensive ware, and now I'm not sure anymore; I might use it in different groups, that by extension suddenly seem to use differing rulesets.

Iirc at least in 2e the regeneration trait for paranormals like vampires was incompatible with cyberware, I know the weakened regen segnificantly in 4e though

Wired Reflexes does not stack with Reaction Enhancers...unless both devices are in Wireless mode. In that case, they DO stack.

I am perfectly aware of that. But Wireless Reflexes do stack with Magic, which in the german Edition they do not, and Reaction enhancers do not stack with magic, which in the german Edition they do.