for that matter, by the look of things there is going to be a fair amount of work for many of us even if we decided to use 6th edition in terms of creating house rules... so if you're going to be making house rules, it really isn't any worse to start from a finished 3rd (or 4th) edition than it is to start from a barely-started 6th. and given the presence of people who have been working with those earlier editions for years, i'd say it's a fair chance you could get some guidance on popular house rules from those earlier editions should you feel so inclined

I think the first house rule we will be considering is letting the armour value (or just the highest armor piece in the case where multiple armor pieces are worn to avoid silly stacks) add dice to the damage soak roll.
But again it will depend on what the actual final damage and armor values are in the core book as values may change...

I figure people will be reapplying the damge modifier for strength with melee weapons.
But how do you account for no skill with the weapon? Then just trusting your attack rating against say, a low body attribute and low armor if you have the avantage should be enough?

That's an excellent question to ask the incompetents who designed 6e.

Uhm, what. Do you want to say there is little granularity in the results? That's not true in SR3, as the to-hit was variable too, and you're more likely to roll a 2 with 1d6 than an 11 (exploding) with 8. Success probability was very scalable, much ore than in subsequent editions. It was also less predictable and exploding dice scale horribly nonlinear but there you go. A lot of criticism can be made about SR3's core variable TN/Pool system, but "it lacks granularity" is not one of them.

It seems you never got into the core mechanism of 3E (too much work?). There wasn't that much to house rule, but it was a very chrunchy system with a number of individually well-working mechanisms (the Matrix rules are way undervalued), but no common, unified design that makes rules instantly recognizable (like SR4 tried to introduce with it's attribute+skill dogma, which it then itself immediately broke because it produced seriously bad results, given the existence of magic that raises attributes, with matrix and rigging). Every aspect of SR3, effectively, had its own rules. Rules that individually worked very well within a simulationist view of game design, but where each aspect of the game meant learning a somewhat different rules set. However, it required little in house rules; aside from detail fixes you always have even in the most well-designed simulationist games, you could play it all out of the box with little problem.

Completely unlike SR5, which needed a number of fixes to even barely work.

No, I actually said exactly what I meant as in this example it made no sense to use words like granularity without explaing exactly what I mean.
This was not a single case I was explaining and was my reasoning why any system with the same principles was not a great one therefore cause, effect and a possible solution was given.

I've read discussions in the past were people has complained that the strength bonus coupled with the high body attribute was too much.
And I agree somewhat that weapon strength bonuses in the past were a bit too high for a skill based game.

Yet you've clearly not spent enough time actually playing the game to understand what the issue is in context. That is purely a character optimization complaint that doesn't pose any practical problem in actual gameplay, because the GM can simply shoot that character from outside of melee range.

Someone skilled with a melee weapon or martial arts should have the advantage over a less skilled opponent. At least now with the new Edge system a martial art or the like will actually give a more noticeable advantage over an unskilled or less skilled opponent.

So which is it? Is bonus strength and body too good, or does being better statted for melee and martial arts mean you should have a tangible advantage in combat?

You do have an advantage with skills, just not EDGE

Page 9 in the quick start lists Unarmed having an Attack Rating for Edge comparison as being the combination of Strength + Reaction, actual skill levels in a MA does not affect this.

Likewise Defense Rating is down to Reaxction + Intuition, plus any armor or other gear mods, again skill does not affect Edge calculations.

So Bruce LeRoy with a Strength of 4, Reaction of 5 and 6 levels in a MA does not get any Edge from throwing down against an unskilled opponent who happens to have Reaction 5 and Intuition 4 but only 2 levels in MA as they have the same base total ratings of their stats, that being 9.
PLUS if the defender was wearing armor Bruce could actually be at the Edge disadvantage in a fight depending on the level of armor worn, despite having more skill in fighting.
Bruce does gets to throw more dice at the problem, but won't be getting any bonus Edge to spend in that fight unless they wrinkle out some other type of positional advantage to provide some.

That is one of the complaints about Edge, it is kind of unevenly applied throughout and seems more gear/magic driven. The purpose was to streamline it, but it does seem a bit clunky right now.

But we have not seen Core yet, so there may be more ways to earn Edge. Maybe a MA will have in it's description that you can earn a point of Edge to be used toward doing certain things, so like Judo might give a point of edge that can only be used for their Great Throw attack.

But we don't know yet and it may be wishful thinking.

It's almost like someone with a martial art quality already has an advantage. Even back in SR4, it's access to the specialization giving a flat +2 dice, various bonuses depending on style, and access to maneuvers.
Melee weapons likewise have various advantages, starting from the point that it's easier to get physical damage out of them, reach bonus and so on.
Even considering an equally skilled opponent, not a less skilled one like you postulated, these advantages are there, and very noticeable.

Your last sentence is nonsensical as well: Everyone who's skilled has a HUGE advantage over an "unskilled or less skilled" opponent, regardless of style or weapon. That's just mathematics. Why compound the issue with a weird Edge mechanic? It's not like it's needed at this particular example, and only adds another calculation before the attack, i.e. making it more complicated.

The point actually was how a character with high strengh and body tends to cancel out those advantages.

Good point, if it were true.

High Strength only contributes to a good base damage, not to general ability in hitting or avoiding to get hit.
High Body is always great, but out of the defensive stats is the hardest to stack. Furthermore, it has lower returns because damage avoidance is superior to damage reduction. Reaction is way more important since it can completely negate an attack, and it can be raised easier with augmentations. Armor is also easier to put on top of your body attribute.

Body and Strength are mechanically less important than Agility or Reaction, so I see it as a plus to have actual value if you decide to put resources into either. It prevents further devaluation in comparison to the "God stats", like Agility.

It made no sense, indeed.

In the meantime,

No 6th ed PDF yet on Drivethru, but the Errata has been released to start fixing things already.

https://www.shadowrunsixthworld.com/wp-cont...ta-Aug-2019.pdf

From seeing some of the corrections, bone density BioWare and bone lacing cyberware will both be adding Body for damage resistance purposes as expected along with the usual changing unarmed damage to physical, adding to your Attack Rating.

A correction to grenade launcher also shows some of the expected damage from a fragmentation grenade, 16P for Ground Zero/12P for Close /8P for Near.
Am assuming actual blast zone ranges are smaller than weapon ranges, otherwise that 8p would be going out 50m as Near is 4-50 ,which seems unlikely and would prove hazardous to the group themselves, but if they are different meanings and they are using the same terms that's not confusing at all.
Will have to see..
Edit: Just checked at another forum and they said each type of grenade will have their own cap on what their Near Range Damage extends to.


Compare that to the Ares Predator's DV of 4P and you can see why someone is getting a semi-auto grenade launcher and riot shield (to duck behind) for Xmas again.

SR3:
Roll skill to throw grenade. (let us assume 2 hits)
Roll 2D6 to figure out deviation from target point.
Substract Hits from Grenade Throw Skill Roll from Deviation. So-2.
Deviation is in Meters. So 2d6 means 2 to 12m off. If you had rolled snake-eyes on the deviation roll, you would have 2m of deviation.
And substract 2 from that for this example. Direct hit/ground zero. Ful Grenade Damage.
Grenade DMG drops of by 1 or 2 points per Meter, depending on AP or HE Grenade.
Much more simpler.

Going by the Errata.....
It's looking like the changes in 6e compared to 5e are the least between editions so far.
For the Matrix take away Grids and and the more complex Master Device, that is the spirit of 6e Martrix.
They had me wondering how a PAN would operate without slaving, but you obviously still can.

Obviously, we're nowhere near the amount of changes introduced by the 4th edition (which introduced attribute+skill dicepool, fixed target number, fixed initiative passes, removed damage level and the bonus pools...). But the 6th edition Edge pool mechanism alone is far more consequential than all the changes between 2nd and 3rd edition (the biggest being, what, reversing Initiative Pass order and... removing the Skill Web?).

And the new, host-based, Matrix system, though that only became usable later, with Matrix. Othetr than that, it was details, like the split of Firearms and the integration of stuff introduced into 2nd in splatbooks.

Changing how the Matrix is mandatory for a new edition anyway

So there's a leaked PDF that matches the books. The folks on Reddit are laughing their asses off at just how bad this book is.

Typo ridden beyond even CGL norms, a 16 total page GM section. Day zero errata doc that contains it's own typos.

Strap in chummers, it's CGL season.

I agreed with that being the most CGL thing, until I read they did errata. They did it wrong, but they still actually wrote it and published it.

I'm thinking that Awakened Deckers will be fun in this edition, more so than 5e. No limits, maybe new spells, mentor spirits,....

A few thoughts. Edge is going to require a cheat sheet for every player or there going to be a lot of slow down in the action. Lower damage codes seem to be an attempt to offset lack of armor soak. While this seems reasonable at early game, doesn’t look to scale well when advancement kicks in. See some good changes and ideas but like most of “new” editions it seems to suffer from lack of polish. I know what pain it is to open play test but honestly think SR Would benefit greatly from a larger test base.

Seems to be the opinion early for most editions.
Situational modifiers need cheat sheets, the most. Every player needed to keep track of edge/karma and two tokens just to to keep track of the new system is not that much.
I don't understand your link to damage and soak with advancement since better armor protection be it spell of or not must be bought or reseasrched or found. More armor still offests more dmamge. How does this system not give logic to advancement?

More armor, in 6e, does not in fact offset more damage in any way.

If you're going to cheerlead, at least cheerlead from a position of knowing the system.

So a little armor gives the same protection of say, full armor? I have to say that's not true.

How does having more dice to a defence test not offset damage?

More correctly a little WORN body armor gives the same total lack of protection as wearing alot of WORN body armor does as neither one actually aids your Damage soak roll, it is just Body being rolled- you get ZERO dice from the WORN armor for damage soak. Worn armor only helps figure out who gets Edge.

The Armor Spell and BioWare/CyberWare bone enhancements like Bone Lacing or Bone Augmentation will give you more dice toward Damage soak as well as improve your Armor Rating for comparing for possible Edge

Which is sort of an uneven way to do things, keeping it the same for 2/3 thirds of the Armor Triangle- ie magic and warez, but throwing the third (and most commonly used) option of actual worn armor under the bus.

Hence our earlier suggestion of house ruling some level of soak dice back into worn armor.

But more armor adds to the defense test, true? And more dice in your defence pool means you are more likely to take less damage or no damage.

No, it just increases Defense Rating which is only used in determining IF you get bonus edge from an action being performed by or against you.

You may need to go back to the Quickstart and brush up on this.

Let's Say you are Joe Runner with 4s across the board in stats & Skills, using an Ares Predator and you are shooting Bob The Ganger who also happens to have 4s across the board in stats & skills and is wearing an armor jacket.

Your Attack Rating is NOT necessarily the number of Dice you get to throw on an attack, just like Defense Rating is NOT your Defence Pool.
Yes, they maybe should have come up with some more diversified names here.

Your Attack Rating is the Value assigned by your weapon modified by range category if applicable , or in the case of an unarmed attack this is your STR+ REA.
In this case the Ares Predator has an Attack RATING of 9 at near and close ranges.

Your actual Attack TEST is made with a pool drawn from (Weapon skill) plus Agility, so 4+4 gives us an Attack test of 8 dice.

Bob has a Defense RATING of 8, as he has Body 4 and the Armor Jacket adds +4 to his Defense Rating.
But when the attack comes he will be rolling a Defense TEST of 8 dice which came from his Rea 4 and Intuition 4.

Upon Comparing Joe's AR of 9 (based on the weapon) vs Bobs DR of 8 (based on the Body plus WORN Armor), there is no clear advantage either way, no Edge is awarded to anyone for now. NOTE: From here on, the WORN Armor plays no further role in the dice.

Joe rolls his Attack TEST and gets 4 hits while Bob only gets 3 hits on his Defense TEST. Joe shoots Bob.

Ares Predator has a DV of 4P, plus he has one net hit raises the damage to 5P.

Bob now has to roll BODY of 4 dice to actually resist damage. Regular WORN Armor adds NOTHING to this roll.

Bob is going to probably get just 1 hit, maybe 2 hits if they are lucky on just those 4 dice(from Body) being rolled so he is going to take some damage off this hit.
The only advantage that WORN armor as written gave Bob is that Joe didn't get a free point of Edge out of the exchange.

NOTE: IF BOB had been a Mage and had the Armor SPELL up or had some Body enhancing cyberware/bioware this WOULD have added to the resist rolls. Regular WORN armor does NOT as currently being written under 6th. One third of the Defense triangle(worn armor vs magic armor and cyber/bio) is a bit wrecked.

Now this skips a lot of nuance like Edge use and further circumstances like lighting and other stuff, but the main beef is the ruling is not evenly applied.
If you want ONLY Body to be rolled for defence, then do so, but at least make it apply to all three sides of the Defence instead of just one side or let all three sides apply their defense equally.

The whole thing is wrecked.

Seriously, check this: in the real world, if I shot a basic .45 slug (typical big pistol load) at someone wearing a t-shirt reading "I hate shadowrun", the slug would zip through the shirt like a divorce through a bank account, and carve a wound channel through the tender, tender flesh behind.

If I shot the exact same round at someone wearing kevlar body armour with inserted plates, that slug would mostly splash (yes, for those who don't know it, lead can splash when hitting hard surfaces) against the plate, and the worst outcome for mister shadowrunhater would be the heat generated at the point of impact, plus the stylistic implications of the bullet's impact point.

Entering a world where armour maybe kinda helps avoid critical hits (?) and does nothing else if you do get hit? Makes no sense at all, unless all firearms have been suddenly converted to magic armour-penetrating deathrays.

Game design fail.

I guess the argument is there is no soak mechanic. Edge will likely give one.
But the big picture....Armor absorbing all damage it can what ever the situation, whatever the attack choice, does seem extreme. Good for characters who wish to tank though. The Attack should do no damage at all if the armor is that good.
But it can be argued that there is a very narrow set of circumstances that always allow armor to absorb all damage it can on contact leaving the wearer without a scratch.

I'm actually rather surprised they didn't do something like comparing AR vs DR to determine if damage was physical or stun in addition to working with edge.

But there IS a SOAK Mechanic, has been for many editions. It just so happens that they took it away from WORN armor, but left it intact on Spell and Cyber/Bio based means.

And how much is Edge going to do? 1 dice of Edge lets you reroll 1 Die.

You could splurge and spend 4 Edge to get to add your Edge to your Soak plus you get exploding 6's but that's only gonna save you from 1 attack.

Plus you should not have to rely on Edge. Edge was supposed to help lend a more cinematic feel, letting you push the envelope a bit.
Requiring Edge to do basic functions like take the place of your armor is a bad idea.



And no one is saying that WORN armor should just magically absorb ALL the damage, but it should play a factor in reducing damage, whether it reduces the total damage or adds dice to the SOAK roll in conjunction with Body or changes Physical to Stun or something rather than it being the wet toilet paper it is being cast as in 6th.

Since we just are at the topic of ammo and armor... https://abload.de/img/1564810401557jhjmb.png

THAT is even more stupid and asinine . .

"EVERYTHING GOTTA HAVE A PRICE!"
"Better show the inventory micromanagement rule to make that price go away in the same breath."

How pointless.

Armor ratings are very low, and using them in a soak pool would add one or two success’s on average. With the low damage codes I don’t see how this would be unbalancing as houserule. Easy enough to fix.

As for cased ammo, expect whoever buying my blackmarket ammo from to pre erased the tags for their own safety.

Grenade damage is insane when compared to other damage codes and can’t help but think might need a look at.
Need to see this all in play, see how math shakes out.

Low ratings or not, the fact that they have little to no impact on things at all is a serious issue. If such a simple fundamental principle is broken then what will the rest of it be like? There is nothing, literally nothing, we have seen so far that Sixth does better than Fourth or Third and a fair amount that it's doing worse.

And, as Prime and Sendaz note, the Edge gain doesn't scale in any way, so as enemy dice pools go up, the value of gaining Edge drops quickly as single-die rerolls can't mitigate the number of incoming successes.



Hey, you don't have to go with 'likely'. The rules are available. Quit bad-faith cheerleading for what you imagine the system to be and go read the system.

More precisely,the price is a 100% markup for caseless ammo, which somehow cannot be equipped with those RFIDs, despite tracker rounds with an RFID in the projectile being a thing.

But really, what ticks me off the most is how stupidly unnecessary this is. It's an Extended Test with a treshold of 2, so anybody with decent tech skills will succeed. Which means you can just let characters buy hits during downtime. Which means you can just ignore the whole thing altogether. Congratulations CGL, you just kicked my suspension of disbelief in the nuts for nothing. Why not go back to paper cartridges, if shooters have to bite down on the paper for loading that leaves more evidence, right?

You're missing the hilarity. You know where this comes from? Hardy's precious mages have to scrub astral traces after blasting people in order to not leave evidence everywhere.

Now everyone else has to do the same with digital traces.

Yes, that was exactly what I meant with "pointless".

I can only name on thing it does better than 5th edition: removing limits. How can anyone be so bad at game design that they make a worse version of SR5?






Ah, that explains it.

Looks like CGL has gone back to the well again with plagiarising internet artists' work and doing a quick photomanipulation over it for SR.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments...yuki_matsumura/

/rant Why couldn't 'Runners just... I don't know... MAKE THEIR OWN AMMO! / end rant

I mean seriously, you can make your own ammo today.

The original image image could may have been bought from a stock photo service, in that case neither model nor photographer would need to be credited. I also the two or three people making up CGL were the ones who did the artwork, so the correct summary would be "CGL got artwork from someone who maybe did not license his source material"



@Kitsune: You can also make your own ammo in SR. Hard Targets, p. 189

I'm considering house ruling armor so it will convert some of the incoming damage to stun before rolling to soak.

So let's say a runner wearing an armored jacket (+4 Defense Rating) gets hit with an Ares Alpha (4P) by a guard that had 4 net successes. (Say the guard got 6 successes vs the runner's 2).

By the current system the runner would need to soak 8 damage. By my system they would first roll body to soak 4 stun damage (converted by the jacket to stun), and then roll body to soak the 4 remaining damage as physical.

With stun I might let them roll just defense rating, or I might divide stun in the same manner.

Any thoughts?