What the title says. My group played Shadowrun 5 for the first time and they already hate Edge and think soaking/resisting damage roll just slows things down too much. I kindof agree with them on both accountes. So how do I ditch these ?

For the Edge, I thought about making "exploding dice" default for compensating the lack of help, but dont know if its really a good thing to do as I just had my first game.

For the Soaking damage roll, I thought about increasing players condition monitors in some way, but also dont have any idea how or if its really advisable.

Thanks in advance.

You take the Pool of worn Armor and BOD, divide it by 3 and this is a Fix Number that you remove/substract directly from the Damage done


Hough!
Medicineman

Edge will not be too hard to lose, the exploding 6's may allow extra possible hits though limits will keep that from going too crazy.

The soaking damage will be a bit trickier though. You only have small variations between the health bar of an average 3 body Human (10 boxes) and a top end 10 body Troll (15 boxes).

Run & Gun did offer one idea for armor affecting attack rolls more than soak pools in RC5 which you could tweak to your effect.

Basically Armor ceases to be a dice pool on the Damage Resistance test and instead becomes an Attack Test penalty.
It’s a simple way for Armor, and the various aspects that go into its calculation, to still play a part in the roll.
In these cases the majority of shots are stopped by your armor flat out. Doesn't really carry across the effect multiple impacts should have on your body, but if you want to run through a hail of bullets, this may be for you.

When playing with this option you apply AP before the attack and use the modified Armor value as the Attack Test penalty. All damage stays the same type (Physical
or Stun) and a miss is a miss. No Grazing Hits here.
And when using this method, any hit by an injection weapon has an effect. Even if the damage is resisted, the needle still made it in.

Now if you do this, you really need to roll back armor values to pre-5th as they boosted the armor a bit.
Likewise as you are wanting to skip body rolls to soak, damage should also be rolled back to pre-5th, still lethal but a little less.

So say you have an armor jacket (armor 8 as per 4th) and someone shoots you with a Predator (AP -1).

Shooter has 5 pistols and 4 Agility so throws 9 dice. Your armor is 8 minus the AP (-1) so any shots at you by this gun would have a -7 dice penalty, reducing his shot to 2 dice.

So the shooter will probably flatten a lot of ammo against your jacket before getting a hit. Course shots that do get through are gonna hurt, though you might want to offset this a little by going with 8 + full body for healthbar instead of half bod.

Now he could adjust by taking aim for a pass or two to build his pool a bit (max bonus is half your Willpower, rounded up) or use some armor piercing ammo or S&S to help cut through better (APDS adding -4 AP of S&S for -5)

It is not ideal, and needs a lot of tweaking to really make it work, but it may give you a starting point to think about.

Using armor as a dice pool modifier means that you better heavily reduce the Dodge test, or you won't hit ANYTHING. In 5e the pretty standard armor jacket has a 12 AV. That means without specialty ammo, you are going to be taking somewhere between a -10 and -12 dice pool penalty on your attack test. I don't think this works.

You are better off going back to 1st edition style, and Armor simply counts as automatic successes (obviously you'd have to reduce the Armor values) - basically what Medicineman described.

I just use the average instead of rolling the Dice. It safes Time,
it's easy to use and not so far away from the RAW

with an easy Dance
Medicineman

@Lobo which is why I did bold the section saying you had to roll back armor values to pre 5th boosted armor values.
Yeah it was an odd concept when I saw it originally in Run & Gun (pg 109) because even a basic armor jacket will flatten a lot of ammo, let alone something like mil-spec.

@Medicineman well sure if you want it easy.

Yeah, I'd just go with Medicineman's solution rather than hack in 4e rollbacks to most of the gear. If you start mucking with the armor values and DV on the weapons, you have to muck with dodge values, and with augmentations and spells.

It's a full-conversion hack, and way more work than you really need to do when the RAW already contains the easy answer.

You'll never get government contracts with that attitude.


Remember an Elephant is just a Mouse built by government contractors.

Thanks for the help, chummers.

I like Medicineman solution, but didn't get exactly how this works. Should I simply divide resistance pool / 4 and auto subtract from the damage ? Is that it ?

Also, is it better to this calculation on the fly, or previously convert the ratings and note down the new ones on the char sheets (Ie: noting "Armor Jacket 3" instead of 12). The problem Id see here is that modifiers lesser than 4 (helmets, bone lacing, etc) would be noted as fractionary values (.5, .25, etc) which could cause confusion.

Edit: Oh I just noticed Medicinemam used 3:1 factor instead of 4:1. Shouldn't it be the latter ? I mean, there is even a rule for skill rolls that say you may get 1 auto-success for every 4 dice you roll, right ?

In the rules you are allowed to buy hits at a ratio of 4:1, round down. I can't speak to why Medicineman used 3:1, except that on "average" (and I use that term very loosely) you would roll 1 hit for every 3 dice.

If you are ALWAYS going to use this rule, then yes, I would have them change the information on their sheet to say "Armor jacket: 3" (or Armor Jacket:4, depending on which ratio you use.)

With the rounding there is no fractional result, so it makes add on armor sometimes not matter, depending on the AP of the weapon.

For example, if a character is wearing an armor jacket and has 2 points of armor on his cyberarm, and he is hit by a light pistol using regular ammunition, (assume a factor of 4:1 for arguments sake) his armor would reduce the damage by 3 - the same as if he had only been wearing an armor jacket. However, if he were hit by a weapon with an AP of 2, he would still get to reduce the damage by 3 (as opposed to if he were just wearing the armor jacket, and then it would only reduce damage by 2).

You can sort of tailor it to your game.

Want something more lethal? Use a factor of 4:1 and round down.
Less lethal? Use 3:1 and round up.

Or mix and match those as you want to.

No its 3:1
because You can round off more easily. A Pool of 20-22 = 7 Points soaked , 23-25 = 8 Pts etc
if you use a Ratio of 4: 1 and have a soak Pool of 22 is it 5 or 6 ? so 21, 22 and 23 have the same ratio, etc
the 4:1 ratio is a bit ....clinky /wobbly. A 3:1 ratio is more intuitive to handle (ImO)
and 3:1 is more Character friendly (also NPC Friendly )



Yeah but that 4: 1 ratio is for "safe Rolls" where you avoid a Glitch thats why ist the worse ratio


Yes but divide it by 3
( we call it Soakpool its BOD plus any armor ( worn and cyber or Magic) )
thats why its not

Even a naked Char with BOD 2 has an automatic Soak of 1 Point so there are no Fractions


not Exactly,
have them write down : Armorjacket & BOD = 17 D = Soak 6
Because If Hit by APDS the pool goes down to 16 or 15 = Soak 5 or if Hit by Flechette it turns into 21 or 22 D = Soak 7

with a more friendly Dance
Medicineman

Medicineman:

You have a point. Since the armor ratings are multiples of 3 (except that "Business Actioneer Suit" which is 8 ), indeed the ratio 3:1 feels more intuitive.

Even so, some of your examples seem a bit off:



This seems wrong to me. See:
6 soak pts = 18, 19, 20
7 soak pts = 21, 22, 23.
8 soak pts = 24, 25, 26
9 soak pts = 27, 28, 29.
etc.

right ?



What ? A BOD 2 character would have 0.66 soak pts, which is rounded down to 0. So a char would begin having natural soak pts at BOD 3 (not 2).

right again ?

Sendaz's suggestion is pretty much how World Of Darkness does it. Defensive modifiers just get subtracted from the attack roll. But you still get to roll to soak.
So my suggestion would be, subtract the active defense (int+reac+modifiers) from the attack roll, but still roll bod + armor to soak damage.

Edge on the other hand I can't help with. To me, it's a great part of the game, and there's a similar mechanic in pretty much any modern game, including older versions of Shadowrun.

wrong

17/18 & 19 are Soak 6
because its 5.66 / 6 and 6.33
20 is already Soak 7 because its 6.66
You simply round mathematically


Noooh !
Wrong again
0.66 is rounded up. 0.5 and more is always round up
....I'm talking about rounding mathematically ! .....


which doesn't matter at all ! The Pool is BOD & Armor.
so even a Slim "Supermodel" (BOD 1 ?) with a Leather Jacket has a Pool of 5 = Soak 2

with a well rounded Dance
Medicineman

Always round in favor of the defender.

with my Houserules I allways round mathematically ,so there's no arguing with the players

with a discussionfree Dance
Medicineman

I was going to say something like "do a 3-for-1, then add 1." So even if they only have three dice, they still have 2 points of soak, so it accounts for the "lucky defense roll" a little better. The defense will always be "slightly above average" and keep the game from getting TOO deadly.

Might want to allow for "edge on defense" in some manner, too.

I too got tired of edge in the game; frequently players would take a 5 or 6 in their edge score and then essentially it would become an edge-fest between the GM and players, or players vs. players, which with the additional dice-rolling slowed the game down even more. Saw the same thing with 4th ed and still did not sit right with me.

So what I've decided to do should I GM again, is I think I'll keep the basics of edge intact BUT only allow a player to use edge once per turn (for offense or defense or whatever) in combat situations. Same applies to NPCs, I just won't tell the PC's when I'm using edge.

It might be helpful to understand what you don't like about edge.

For example, it's pretty much implied that NPCs don't have edge, but if you play that they do then it pretty much ruins the stat and makes NPCs vastly more powerful than PCs for no particular reason.

You may also find that in your first few games things like soaking slow the game down because players are always looking up how to do it and what the values are. Once they settle into the rules it becomes pretty streamlined. I'd be very surprised if you found it more arduous than calculating modifiers to hit for example.

My group thinks Edge is overpowered and detract from the "simulation mode" they engage while playing the game.

By the way, if I ditch Edge, it seems the metatype row on the priority chart gets broken. What should I do: Simply divide the points for "special attributes" by 2, or ditching these entirely and going with the old "Priority A for anything other than a human" ?

if You ditch Edge completely in Your Game you should give something to a Human for an Exchange !
( one Attribute +1 for free maybe ? )

with a Dance for free
Medicineman

I thought assigning priority E to metatype was advantage enough for humans.

Even at Priority E, Humans have an advantage that others do not...

thats
1 ) Meh
2 ) Not enough
3 ) not valid if You use sum->10, Karmasystem or Lifepath
4) You use E for Mundanes ( If You 'd use it for Humans you can only create Magic Chars ?? !!)

with 4 simple Dances
Medicineman

Ok, I won't debate you on that, but was this concluded because 1 or 2 of the characters had high edge values? I tend to find that most characters have 1-3 edge and that they tend to make many more than 1-3 rolls in a session. Characters with 7 & 8 can be problematic, but again, game speed can often overcome this. They should roll a lot more than 7-8 times in a session.

Have you thought about capping it at say 3 (4 for humans).

As for breaking the table I think the only easy way around that is to switch to point buy in 'Run Faster'.

One also has to consider when thinking about removing edge as there are a few special abilities that also cost edge to use: Finishing Move from Run & Gun, Greater Reflection from Street Grimoire for example, which in turn just encourages people to have extra Edge for these.

Ok, updating to say my group actually changed their opinion on Edge and now they like it. Go figure.

We also liked ditching the resistence test roll, and Medicine man suggestion of keeping the ration of 3:1 was spot on. We loved it. My question now is: how about extending this to other types of tests ? I can see this kind of "auto-averaging" pretty useful for matrix rolls, so instead of having to make opposed rolls for each device the decker is trying to mess with, just "auto-average" the device pool by the 3:1 ratio and have the result as a fixed threshold the decker must beat. Or, instead of rolling opposed for perception, just have a threshold based on the decker pool and make anyone attempting detection beat it, etc.

It looks like the game could run much faster wityh this, which is a BIG plus for us.

Thoughts ?

I'm glad You like my Idea


hmmm averaging every Diceroll (especially opposed Rolls) would be ....a spoilsport of the RPG itself.
ImO one important fun factor is to roll the Dice and see what is the result. Especially Lucky (even Unlucky) rolls are ImO the "Salt in the Soup " of any Fight or Competition.
We use the "averaging" of the Soakroll because there is already an opposed test ( hitting with a Weapon vs Dodging) so we don't need another test

with a competitive Dance
Medicineman

Medicine, while I understand your point, I think Shadowrun has too many opposed tests. A little simplifying wouldnt hurt, at least for me.

My question then is: Supposing I use the "averaging" for things like device defenses/rolls like the one cited above, do you think this could break the rules in some way ?


P.S: oh and BTW, I already ditched the "dodge roll" too. Instead of it, we usually declare that our characters are dropping prone or running for cover, and use the appropriate modifiers. Faster and more plausible this way (as dodging bullets really breaks ou suspension of disbelief)

Medicineman please, there's no need to "shortcut" my name !
If You want to play it that way ,Ok, but I like rolling dice as part of the Fun and Ithink the amount of opposed Rolls is ok, but when Its too much for You and your Group go ahead
D&D f.E. has only one roll at all ( plus the Roll for the Damage) their big plus is the fast combat. the big Minus is otoH
that you can't do much about being hit.but with lots of Hit Points its ok to play that way.


thats a Fallacy that happens sometimes.
The Chars aren't actively dodging the Bullet( that can only be done by Neo or a master of Sinanju). They are just making themselves harder to hit by movinge errately ,keeping a low silhouette, etc

HokaHeyaHej
Medicineman

Med ( ), so you think that, particular tastes aside, the system wouldnt break if we average most resistence/opposed rolls ?

Coming from Apocalypse World - a game where the GM never rolls dice - Im tempted to average all NPCs rolls.

I've always found that probability adds life to an RPG world. As soon as you take that away then everything becomes GM fiat.

If you don't roll your your NPC mook attacks then as long as the PCs have a bigger pool the mooks become a non-threat. Having that probability bell curve means that even the best dodge ninja still can't just wade headlong into mook crossfire with his eyes closed.