Hi all.

I got a bundle of SR5 PDFS which I haven't really had time to digest. I'm planning on running an SR campaign soon and while all the players have SR4 core book, several also got the same sr5 bundle. I am trying to figure out if we can intermingle SR4 & SR5 at will or if there any major changes.

Anyone know of a synopsis of changes? From a skim it seems like SR4 with minimal (none?) material changes to RAW.

Check out the always-online, automatic bonus for being online silly crap that was basically created as an excuse for deckers without imagination being able to do something during combat, with no coherent explanation of what, how or why.

That right there was a big source of pain, and a reason for me not to ever bother with that edition. It doesn't even make in-world sense.

I'd say no if someone offered me a seat at a table that played 5e. That thing was an abomination. Shadowrun has always made an art out of complicating things that were already complex enough, and of slowing things down just when the story needs fast-paced action, but 5e took that to another level in so many, many ways. Take out your hard drive with the 5e PDFs and burn it, just to make sure the horrid lack of editing doesn't infect more than it already has.

How the 4th edition differs from the 5th: All of this written from memory, having only played SR4 for some times now.

- No Limits. Every hits count in SR4. Most of the stuff that increase Limit in SR5 increase dice pools in SR4 instead.
- Skill max rating 6 (7 with Aptitude). Characters can start at the top of their game in SR4, with little to no room for improvement in their line of business. This also means the power scale is narrower.
- Lower base damages for weapons and lower armor rating in SR4, plus the fact that attacker had a Limit in SR5 but resistance roll do not, so I can't say if one edition is more deadly than the other.
- Initiative Passes are a fixed number. Increasing your number of Initiative Passes by 1 is much more potent in SR4 than increasing your Initiative by 1D6 in SR5.
- No "online" perk. There is no incentive to keep your weapons or augmentations online. Hacking during a firefight is thus limited to comlinks, drones and vehicles.
- Lower pricing for augmentations and hacker consoles. Pay needs to be set accordingly.

SR4 is my edition, but I've got most of SR5 to nick things from. In general, my advice would be to do the same. While I'm not a fan of SR5 overall, it's got little bits here and there that you can splice in as part of your SR4.5 House Rules.