In the dystopia of Shadowrun, most of the poor slots barely know their name and what they had for lunch.

Still you want a real world example of a niche product just killing a company, look at New Coke. Why it was so disastrous that you hardly even hear of Coke anymore. Damn near drove the company to bankruptcy. So you can see how catastrophic the failure of a battle rifle would be to the company that owns such things as GM, Honda, and NASA.
Bah, that story line was/is such utter shit and just shows how little research goes into some of these products (books). Either that or how little editing actually gets done. Editing should be more than just checking for typos. Layout seems a bit of a failure in 5th ed too. Anyone else notice how stat boxes creep out over the header and footer art of the pages. Check pg 24 or 37 (I think since I can't see the page number) in Run and Gun for an example.

Started looking at ware prices between editions. Ugh I know a bunch of the writers hate ware for various reaosns, but seriously a 7x price jump on cybereyes?

Yeah, you know, the basic replacement 'oh shit you got blinded, here's something' cybereyes now cost 4,000 .

That is, for comparison, equal to 2 months of a Low lifestyle at 2,000 per, or given the base-book calculations, about as much as a runner should expect to pull from a moderately dangerous run.

God only knows what the bioware version costs, it barely exists in the book anyway. Closest equivalent is Cat's Eyes, which run in at 4000 as well, but come with standard low-light.

Ah, the fights over 'ware prices I wish I could share. NDA means we can't talk specifics of backstage discussions, but...ugh. Yeah. Things got pretty ugly, and you can't win every argument/debate/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. All I can say is that prices were almost higher.

I always felt part of the problem was cost is really the only real inhibitor on ware.

Sure the ware costs essences, but for those willing to spend on the better grades, you can pack in a helluva lot of ware.
Yes, it's expensive, which again only reinforces the concept of cash being the real limit.

So the devs do go down the route of trying to curb ware via throatpunching the wallet by making ware spendy and payout for runs abysmal as it's the easiest mechanic to have in place instead of looking at other options.
And really ware should not be stupidly high priced as it is a staple of the environment and it makes it hard to explain how street trash has any, yet they should because it fits the setting.

There is the social stigma of ware, but frankly it is often overlooked by groups so quickly becomes a TJ fallacy.

So rather than make people around you mysteriously nervous because they just 'know' you are Ess 2, the onus should be on the ware user to be that bit unhinged by it and have actual quirks/issues from it.
Always thought we should have something like cyberpsychosis like CP2020 had, with lower essence making you a bit more schizo or have reflex/responses linked to the ware.
So a guy with wired reflex 3 who gets caught in an ambush situation may find his wire is attempting to shoot the first target he sees, even before the main meat brain has processed that might have been a by-stander and therefore a non-target so may need a contested roll to avoid blowing the guy away.
Call it a Hair Trigger NQ or similar. Could build a number of NQ to fit the various wares with a range of effects and levels of interfering with regular life.
Course I would also have a similar rule for mages who raise their Magic over 6 as well, reflecting the pitfalls of becoming a god-like figure and how easy it is to be disassociated from the muggles.
So as the Magic climbs, the mage finds himself using mojo to expedite things, even when not necessary, like using MC to shut the neighbor's bawling kid up or similar.

again this doesn't mean having a 4 essence or a 8 Magic makes you a threat to society, but you will have... quirks or small problems, but when you hit 1 ess or 11 magic, yeah you are frakkin scary to be around.

Augmentations, like cyberdecks, are simply too expensive compared to what a shadowrunner typically gets paid (something that is quantified in SR5). Also, both Run Faster and Chrome Flesh do play up the social stigma of augmentations, with Chrome Flesh also playing up how corporate-controlled all of the halfway-decent cyberclinics are and going full retard on this lameass CFD crap (to the point that even common augmentations such as cybereyes are stigmatized). So yeah, be sure you start with Resources A or B and get most of the augmentations you will ever have at the start, and expect to be a social pariah because of it. Ugh.

I don't think rules compelling cyberpsychosis would add anything to the game, though, other than taking away even more player agency. I prefer the SR4/SR5 way of having optional qualities you can opt into if you want physical or sociological problems arising from excessive augmentations.

So basically, your complaint is that you can't complain about hitting the skill cap soon enough...but apart from hurting your Germanness to the core, where is the harm in not making players "the pinnacle of mortal achievement" after two sessions but giving them basically enless room to grow?


@Lurker: The intention seemingly was to limit characters to just one "class": You can be a decker, but won't have money for anything else.

While the price hike is partially offset by handing out far more money at chargen, this actually makes it worse -- without a matching increase in the SoyMac index, cyber users once more are far too rich for the setting, which apparently pleases some grognards.

The New Coke wasn't that stupid Ares rifle.

The New Coke was Shadowrun 5.


The difference is that some of us were actually looking forward to it, before we got our hands on it, at which point we realized it was rancid, and should be called Magicrun 5, featuring NPC Cyberbeasts.

It seems like you didn't understand even a bit about what I was writing.
I'll try it from a different Angle

A Skillcap of 12 is a Stick disguised as a Carrot.
Chars or their Players can't/won't achieve it in a Lifetime of playing and all NPCs can have it without any efford or justification
( and since that sentence about hurting my Germannness to the core neither makes sense nor does it concern me I won't ask what you mean by that , also because I don't care )

HokaHey
Medicineman

Just had to mention, this exact thing happened in my old campaign. The mage used Control Thoughts on an infant to stop it crying, and the infant critically glitched it's resistance test - the result is a child that can never cry again and will probably have shitloads of mental issues growing up. The rest of the group started to be a bit wary around him due to his mind control ability because they saw the effect it had on gangers and whatnot.

It seems to me more of a preference issue than a balance issue. I like the idea of having 12 as cap, as it means the best in the world actually has a lot of dice because of his skill rather than just having a high attribute, specialization and tons of "wireless" bonuses. In SR4 the Tir Ghosts had Firearms 6 and maybe attribute 8, which meant they were woefully incompetent compared to the Runners who could easily get dice pools above 20. Now, with skills around 9 for the top elite teams as well as the really good Contacts, they can be proper challenges for Runners who generally have to compensate for their lack of experience with 'ware or Magic. Sure, it is karma heavy to get there, but that also makes getting 12 in a skill a much higher achievement for a character, and could easily be the main motivation for being a Shadowrunner in the first place. It's not a level you have to be at, and you're unlikely to ever meet an NPC with skill 12 (unless you hang with world champion athletes or entertainers), but these individuals should exist. 'runners should not be at Ussain Bolt level in Running skill just 30 karma out of chargen, but likewise spend a life perfecting themselves to have a chance at reaching it. I really do like that skill actually matters, despite magic and ware. It devalues those two a bit, but they are still vital augmentations that complements skill, or a shortcut (the dark side) to getting close to the really good ones.

The danger of getting even higher dicepools than before is easily countered by the SR5 limit system, which I also think is a very good idea. Someone with 20+ dice is someone who can routinely get 6-8 hits on a test, and once in awhile do something truly wondrous.

It's not a carrot, it's a stick of fried delicious mozzarella

That would be the carrot. because you have something to aspire to as long as you play the character. Where is the stick, and where is the problem?



If your GM decides that the regular grunt is among the top 0.0001% in his field for all of recorded history, that's hardly a fault of the game system.

Yes, I have seen characters come out of Gen with Best in Class skills.
But in my opinion, that is a Player concern (wanting to be best in class), not a chargen concern.
In My Experience, Most Best in Class Character Concepts were not truly best in class, because they player sacrificed the majority of supoort skills that comprise the concept to get the High End Skills because it was more cost efficient to go that way than to actually pick up the skills required to make the concept work. As much hate as the Skill descriptions received in 4A, I still believe that they were very good guidelines for making a character.

And yes, That did have the tendency to force more width (breadth) in post gen development.

Never had issues with What to do with Karma in play either; in fact, I rarely ever had ENOUGH karma in play to get where I wanted to end up at.

I've always seen dicepool as a better representative of how good someone is than just straight skill rating.

Opinions do vary on that point, to be sure...

I'm on the side of the 12 cap too.

I really dislike RPG's where you can hit the cap out of chargen or a few sessions only.

Actually, I don't even see why caps are usefull. The usual increase in costs skyrockets anyways for diminishing returns. It's way enough at my taste.

With regards to the relevance of skill, I've made decent experience with a general Limit of [skill*2] on skill tests. It has its own problems, and doesn't solve the default trap, but at least it prevents trolls from being the best possible ninja and cat burglars.

Not a fan of Limits, personally... Limits generally introduce issues that tend to make little sense (Troll Ninja Cat Burglars. for example).
They are either too restrictive or not restrictive enough. And in my experience they tend to punish the non specialized character far more than the highly optimized ones. They do not do what they are intended to do.

All rules do. Characters optimized for rules conformity and exploiting loopholes will exist as long as there're rules. Any rules, be it in a game or laws in any society. You cannot change that, you can just try to minimize the impact.

Not such a fan of limits either (the skill-based limit raises huge questions about defaulting, for instance), but if you want to rein in either attribute-based default monsters or give skills more weight, it's a viable way, I think.

That was really my biggest problem with SR4 skill ratings. Not so much how truncated they were, but how differences of one die were presented as vast gulfs of skill. Especially with skills only being a portion, potentially a small portion, of the dice pool.

SR5's wider skill range helps, a bit. I do see Medicineman's point about NPCs being the only ones likely to hit that 12 mark (except for adepts, who can get it right out of the starting gate - skill 7 with aptitude, 4 points of improved ability (which rounds up now), and a reflex recorder (which stacks, because there is no augmented limit for skills), and there you go - because Magicrun).

It doesn't help that, in the core book, a lot of the people making the archetypes thought the old SR4 limits applied (one skill of 6 or two at 5), while simultaneously they were giving super-high skill ratings to the contacts (which at least they seem to have noticed - in Run Faster, they are toned down a lot).

But see, Shadowrun always had that problem with initiation being uncapped, resulting in these Gary Stu immortal elf GMPC's running around breaking the game with their triple-grade initiate levels, or great dragons that can apparently fight off modern mechanized armies now. Compared to that, a "best of the best" NPC with a skill of 12 at least scales with the system, and the game world. Better to do it with rules that apply to everyone, rather than special snowflake rules like I heard that Street Legends had.

I really hate that, honestly. Especially when statistical analysis proved the provided examples to be laughably absurd: consider that anyone who is rated as a licensed automobile operator, but only just, is statistically likely to crash their vehicle thevery first time they are called upon to make any kind of roll.

1) Great Dragons always could fight off armies. At the very least ever since Ghostwalker just walked over the ZDF and claimed Denver and nobody could do a damn thing, but even taking down Firewing took the combined force of three or four armies (and, according to SRRDF, prototype nanoweapons). Great dragons are Kaiju, not fightable monsters, and always have been.

2) I'm toying with the idea of a sanity meter. The base idea being to standardize cyberpsychosis, as well as put a soft-ish cap on initiation. Sanity Meter could be essence *10, and lose (essence cost*10) points every time an augmentation is added. To make the impact less straightforward road to madness, I considered splitting the effects itno 4or 5 tallies, each progressively adding different and escalating negative qualities - one makes you more paranoid, one makes you less sociable, one makes you increasingly oblivious to risk, that kind of thing. The player decides where to put the cost for each individual implant's sanity loss - meaning you can spread out 20 datajacks all over and not have much of anything in impact, but a huge block like wired 5 WILL make you less sane. Not sure if that's a good idea. But the same would also apply to initiations, with each costing sanity blocks that go with their Karma cost. Sure, you could optimize and not take much in terms of madness for some time but eventually you'd become the insane weird supermage. And Intiation finaly has a price.

Just on a side note, if someone is installing 20 datajacks in themselves, that is a pretty good sign they should be buying a psychological NQ in any event.
Bonus points if all installed on the face/head so you can get that Pinhead look going when all plugged in.

Well, yes. Though if you plug into 20 commlinks, a RCD and a Cyberdeck, daisy chain them that is a LOT of drones. and since the highest stats ina PAN count, you can also optimize there a lot. Just saying. But the point is that lots of little ware may be compensed by spreading it all out, but one big 'ware chunk will have an impact. Don't know whether this can ever get anywhere, though. The basic idea was to make intiiation more of a choice than a natural progression into infinity and beyond.

Tying Essence loss to loss of sanity/empathy/humanity is an interesting concept for a Cyberpunk approach, but it's clear that if you want to go this way you need to add a similar mechanism for magic. Otherwise, you're going into "ware is bad, magic is good" territory, which is a bad tendency Shadowrun often had and from the looks of it, still has.

For my home system I've merged Edge and Essence. The player needs to give a "meaning" to each point. That meaning is something that makes his personality, something that keeps him alive.
Both Magic and implants bite into it. There are variants depending on the concept of the game:
- Technothriller: ware and magic are just tools, no impact besides the loss of Edge/Essence (mostly for game balance but you can explain this by the fact that the character relies more on magic/cyber than on his luck/abilities)

- Cyberpunk: when an edge/essence point is lost, so is the character's link to the meaning behind it. While not completely gone, it gets more hazy or twisted. The character gets more and more distant from humanity as he gets more ware/power. However, it is possible to buy back edge/essence points with karma (with an exponential cost) and discover that actually humanity wasn't gone but was there all along. It is possible to spend these again for more ware/magic but in that case, the point is lost forever.

- Post-cyberpunk: When an edge/essence point is turned into a magic/implant point, its meaning is transformed accordingly. If the meaning was "rage against corporations", it can turn into "becoming stronger" to justify buying muscle replacements: the character decided that he had to become stronger to fight the corporations and slowly "becoming stronger" becomes the goal in itself. New points can be bought, but have to keep inside the same philosophy as the other ones. The magic/implants become part of the character's identity and makes him something that's neither human nor inhuman, but just different.

Yes, that was actually the basic idea. The Augmented get Humanity Loss, and the Mages get Lovecraft. The idea was to attach a cost to each initiation that progressively adds up, just as implants do. Not sure if that's balanced enough, it's still a very rough idea after all.

Your concept seems not so dissimilar to mine, after all. How do you scale how much Edgessence magic costs? Do you go by the magic attribute, and it's now hard capped at [Edgessence]?

Yes, it's one Edgessence point for one Magic point.
So it's hardcapped at Edgeessence for Technothriller (which is meant for "Shadowrun 2035", where initiation shouldn't be a thing anyway), it's hardcapped at twice that for Cyberpunk, and it's not capped (but getting very costly) for Post-Cyberpunk. But I admit I haven't thought much about the place of Initiation in all this.

I used to go this route, but I don't anymore. Often the players who will load a guy up with 'ware want a reason to use it, so giving them more excuse to be paranoid and low on self control by nature leads to disruptive behavior to the group. Unless you're playing Pink Mohawk, then you can totally have a party of remorseless psychos and still be in genre.

Same reason I don't like to see Sams with the Holy Trinity of Vindictive, Impulsive, and Combat Monster on the flaws.

Which has always raised the question to me of why? Why is there a social stigma other then service of the status quo.

But perhaps that's a separate discussion.

5th Edition already figures 'Wared Up Social Stigma into the character by using Essence to Calculate your Social Limit. No need to add more on top of that unless the player is interested in playing such a character.

Also ware got ridiculously expensive again.
And the starting money got lowered too.

There really shouldn't be. Not after a whole generation and change of people have been raised where augmentations are commonplace. Shadowrun's timeline is rapidly approaching transhumanism, and SR4 correctly embraced that. Then some turdburgler said "We're losing our base, let's try to remake the grimy nasty cyberpunk of the '80s" and lo, with the wave of the hand of an idiotic god, it attempted to be so.

So, frankly? I just ignored all of that shit. You're not gonna get funny looks with 'ware, unless you're somewhere really posh and your 'ware is something high-profile, like Adam Jensen's cyberarms. But nobody in the world is gonna bat an eye at augmented eyes, datajacks, etc, etc, unless they're like, asshole essence purists or whatever.



And that's why I went over to Eclipse Phase. The prices on augs are all reasonable, and nobody except the hardest of hardcore biocons gives one chrome-plated fuck about the augs you've got in your body.

Yes, Not sure why, but there you go.
SR45A had it right in that regard, thoguh they could have come down a bit on Grade multipliers.

Well, under 4th Ed rules that is absolutely realistic:
For example, if a character is driving downtown to buy soymilk and NERPS, no test is necessary. If she’s suddenly found herself in a car chase, however—perhaps she ran a red light and a Lone Star officer is in pursuit—then it’s time to break out the dice. (4A, p. 60)
Having barely made your license is enough to drive downtown for shopping (because that doesn't require a test), but challenging situations are statistically likely to not end well -- sounds good.

Things are arguably different in 5th:
Most of these things—common tasks like eating, sleeping, and crossing an empty street—are done automatically and are kept in the background of the game. When you need to do something difficult or extraordinary, or when you need to avoid someone who has got you in their crosshairs, you have to roll the dice to determine a result. (5th BBB, p. 44)
Driving to the supermarket certainly is more complicated than "eating, sleeping, and crossing an empty street". On the other hand, is it "difficult or extraordinary"? And if not, is it closer to "crossing an empty street" or closer to "difficult"?

No, I'm sorry, it's not.

The entire point of issuing driver's licenses and making drivers take tests and undergo education before getting behind the wheel is to make sure that they actually can respond appropriately in an emergency situation. Or even an ordinary driving situation; let's actually take a look at the things it says you need to roll for.

Threshold 1: Merging, passing, sudden stop.
How often do you merge into traffic when you drive? Fairly often, I'd say. Pass someone, every now and then, I'd reckon.

So according to this, every time you merge into highway traffic, you have to roll. Sure, the threshold may only be 1, and if you're not, say, in the middle of a car chase or anything, you might well be able to just buy a hit - but throw anything at the character that reduces their DP (say, moderate rain,) and suddenly they have to roll. And we all know that every highway on-ramp turns into twisted car-nage every time it starts to rain and the cops don't get the onramps sealed off quickly, right?

Yes but according to general Skill description You DON'T need to roll for standard Situations like going from A to be and this includes merging, passing by ,etc
So the rules say both ( you don't need to roll ,and you need to roll with a threshold of 1...)

He who dances with Schrödinger's Cat
Medicineman

I think from a rules perspective, as in what overrides what, the small or specific rule overrides the big or general rule. So, yeah the general rule is no test is needed to go from Point A to Point B but then the specific rule states a test is needed to merge, pass, etc. So lots of horrible accidents in the SR world. Must be why all cars have gridguide and top notch autopilot programs by default right. Oh wait... ah, there were too many people in world anyway.

There is a difference between when a test is appropriate and how the world works. Sure, in real life dangerous situations happen in traffic every day, and pretty much everyone who has been behind a wheel has been in one or more of them. Not everyone survives, but most people get away and avoid crashing. There is no need to roll dice for these everyday NPCs, so the ability can be fairly low and still be reasonable - for example 4 dice is enough to buy a single hit, and thus avoid most of these situations. The book says not everyone who has a license have a skill (being untrained, but no unaware), but that makes little sense to me - not sure how this is done in the US, but in Europe getting a license surely requires training, theory and experience to justify at least 1 rank in the skill. Average rea of 3 + 1 is thus enough in most situations, even when doing mergers and passbys, but if the driving conditions are bad (rain, high speed, uneven terrain), these average joes can and will fail spectacularly.

They could make a system to better simulate this reality, but instead they choose to focus on the players and their likely characters. You only need to roll when it's dramatic, and random dangers in everyday traffic is not fun, thus it is assumed that just getting from a-b in a normal day require no rolls, but when you do a chase as part of a run, or have to drive through the Redmond barrens while being fired upon by gangs, then you have to roll and better have a decent dice pool to pull it off.

Almost every system I have played has had some stipulation that everyday actions does not require rolls, although not everyone has been as clear about it. Still some GMs make the error of enforcing rolls for trivial things just because of reading rules too literally (or misreading them), or to make it unbelievably difficult. You want to slowly walk down a hill outside combat? Ah, roll a balance check! You need to cross a river with some current? Well that requires multiple swimming checks, or you drown. Someone has written with blood on a wall? That must be a Perception or Search check to notice. I could go on.

Or, alternatively, they dramatically lowballed the level of skill required with that stupid table, and 1 skill/3 REA is not enough to get a driver's license, it's barely enough to begin practicing driving under controlled, ideal conditions. And thus, anyone who gets out on the road with a license to manually operate their own vehicle actually has REA 3, Skill 3-4, meaning they can absorb a lot more penalties and still buy their hit before they have to roll.

We've partly done away with Essence as a concept. The whole mechanic really exists to prevent cybered-up mages, so we just reduced it to that. Each point of Essence loss reduces your Magic Rating by a point, but this is only a problem if you're Awakened. If you're not, feel free to get a fully cybernetic body. Welcome to Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex meets The Sixth World. There's no such thing as "Cyber-Zombies" - you don't die if you have 0 Essence, you just won't be casting any spells.

This is more or less what we've done. I'm about the only one in our group that's purchased the SR5 books, and we've imported a few things here and there, but we've taken a pass on most of it.

Not knowing what the deal with nano machines is, what is Eclipse Phase you are referring to?

I am surprised to not have seen anybody bitching about this yet, because OH NOES WARE OP/NERFPLZ! Make Magic Great Again!.
In my eyes, that approach is the only thing that can get Mundanes back up to competitive levels . .
But it will also break the entire infected/essence sucker system. Not too much of a Problem in my eyes anyway, seeing how sudden unwanted in game essence loss is basically the most dangerous thing that can happen to an augmented character. Be it due to drugs, suckers or critters . .

Basically, Nanites are the big NO NO NO SCARY EVIL BODY SNATCHERS of SR5.
SR2/3 had Insect Spirits, SR3/4 had Shedim instead. This time they went with a Technological instead of magical Bodysnatcher Enemy for people to be paranoid about.
"See? We are totally not doing magic run! The new big bad is a TECHNOLOGICAL TERROR! What do you mean that only makes people play even more magical characters? Filthy powergamers!"

Not if you just rule that the Infected either eat flesh or drink blood and just leave Essence out of it altogether.

Yeah, but aside from it being SUSTENANCE for them, it also is MECHANICALLY important to them.
Their Essence-Stat basically determines how strong and versatile they are, how reasonable as well.
You would have to go over every single sucker and critter in the book that has the essence drain and then see what it does for that specific entry and the re-balance the entire entry to some fixed numbers
Which would mean cascading errata all over the place . .
And the essence also determines wether or not you get turned from the essence drain from a sucker as well . .
Essence is a stat that has been around and used for literally dozends of different applications for 5 editions by now.
Fiddling with it on one end WILL break it on up to N other ends. That's what makes it so problematic.

I've already put in LOTS of work to reduce the Infected down to just Vampires and Ghouls - see here.

I left the Essence draining stuff intact in the above version, because I didn't want to get into 2 arguments at once when I was debating the need to simplify and straighten out HMHVV, but our in-house version makes no reference to the Infected either draining Essence or having some sort of fluctuating Essence score. They're just magical Critters like all the other ones (who happen to be infectious).

Yeah, that's what i meant with it cascading into 1 to N changes that then need to be house ruled as well.
You can't simply remove 90% of one variable without tinkering with basically everything else the one variable touches.

When they're NPCs only, it's working out well enough for us. The Infected exist only for target practice at our table - they're not playable.

As it should be.

If someone wants to play a special snowflake then there is a massive body of White Wolf games that will happily accommodate it and not require everyone else at the table to deal with chances of having their character end up as one of the undead fuckers as well thanks to a bad roll during first aid.