Sure, this is why I said "if you want something for the collection" Just wanted people to know that they have the option without having to buy twice.

...yeah, that's sort of what happened with Deus in the 2060s.

One of my characters was so peeved that Lucien Cross died in a plane crash. She was a Fallen Angel and wanted to be the one to give him his "last rites" for ruining her life. They just wimped out on so many good plot threads in the changeover, particularly all the politically juicy stuff that was happening in the UK and Europe.

When I think about such a scenario, and then imagine, with how dependent we are on wireless and satellites in RL, the chaos one good solar flare would cause. Suddenly everyone's smartphone, netbook, notebook and desktop computer becomes an expensive paperweight, and that old manual typewriter I have in the closet gets a new lease on life.

Now that is an apocalypse.

The Shadowrun Matrix is like a wild continent. They move in, people grap all the resource rights they can. then the governemnt lacking a real conservation plan just depletes the resources until the system collapses, destroying the natural inhabitance and killing off species.
In a regular cycle.

To be fair, leaks do not have to be intentional. Leaks through webserver directories, misconfigured S3 buckets, or good old FTPs with default password have happened to organizations with far more stringent security procedures than CGL.

The Matrix concept imitates life. People put their immorality out front covered by a lie, covered by another crime covered by another lie,........
Now...They.....Can't...Get...Out.

Fair enough. There's enough incompetence to go round at CGL at least.

So, am I missing something, or is it hard to make a swordsman that hits as hard as a bare-knuckle troll?

It looks like nothing commonly available beats the DV of a punch from a cybered-up troll.

With an augmented Strength of 13 and dermal deposits, the troll has a base DV of 8P. Titanium bone lacing or bone density augmentation 4 can get this up to 10P. With an AV of (15 + Reaction) which outclasses even a monowhip.

Even a much less maximized troll with an augmented Strength of 7 and plastic bone lacing or bone density augmentation 1 gets a DV of 6P and an AV of (8 + Reaction) which is still as good or better than all melee weapons.

no, you're not missing anything. even more funny is that if you give that minmaxed troll a knife and give a pixie a sword, the pixie will do more damage. [sarcasm] hurray for streamlining!!! [/sarcasm]

A high Reaction, Willpower, Agility and a big gun will solve most problems.

I don't see the Problem.
That means a considerable investment of ressources just to be good at punching people hard.
Doesn't even mean he will be hitting all that often, only that when he does, people are gonna notice.
WHICH IS HOW IT FRAGGING SHOULD BE!
Trolls USED to be 3.5m huge Monsters, weighing in at half a ton or more of Muscle and Bone.
Trolls are the stuff of legends come to life, quite literally. Violent Legends at that.
You think this is bad for some reason?
Be very happy you never played SR3. Most SR3 Trolls would wipe the floor with even small dragons as of SR4 <.<

he thinks it's bad that if you give that troll a knife, suddenly he becomes no different than anyone else with a knife in terms of damage and attack rating. and also that if you give that troll an axe, his damage and combat rating will go down (it goes down with the knife too, it's just more silly when you consider that it happens with a great big axe too).

...exactly.

OK, yes, that is, indeed, very stupid. Carry on then.

Skill with a weapon or fighting style should not be canceled by Strength alone.
There is strength sure, but body and willpower allows a character to absorb damage, Agility is related to skill with a style. A good fighter knows how not to get hit.
Look at grappling in the Combat section. That is unarmed strength against unarmed strength plus skill. In reality most fights end up in grappling contests, since the average person can't fight anyway...no skill.

Which explains why a Troll does less damage with a knife that it's fist how?

...and only body absorbs damage under the new rules, Willpower does not come into play in physical combat.

Eh, he may be reading a different core book than the rest of us.

Plus remember wearing actual damage resistant materials between you and the weapon does nothing to reduce the damage, while bone lacing still helps reduce damage even if it doesn't punch all the way to the metal wrapped calcium sticks stuck in the middle of your meat.

The Willpower attribute is used to calculate your Stun condition capacity.
And normally, unarmed combat does stun damage. I suppose you can ignore willpower and risked being knocked out.

Pg. 38 Condition Monitors

Or you could realize that just because WP governs the boxes in the monitor it doesn't mean that you resist damage with it (other than spells, of course).

Long story short: You're not making sense.

WP totally does add to your overall stun capacity, but its not by much as it is just relevant stat/2 (rounded up)+ 8 boxes.

So one guy who took just WIL 3 and 6 Body has 10 stun boxes/ 11 Physical vs the your bloke who splurged on Will 6 but only spent 3 on Body has 11 stun boxes/10 physical boxes.

Your guy has one extra stun box( yay!), but only throwing 3 dice to resist punches to the face so on average will reduce hits by 1.

Our guy may only have 10 stun boxes (boo!), but 6 body on average will be reducing 2 hits on each punch.

So who do you think is going to last longer in your proverbial fistfight?

Now for the sake of argument, lets say they both have the same body to soak the punches, that one extra box may be a small edge, but not as much as you try to make it out as most of the punches will probably be a few hits wort, so the two would go down pretty close to one another.
It might be different if the condition bars were full stat instead of half stat in addition to base.

Plus if your guy has already splurged on max WIL and BOD, how much is left for STR to land those hard hits? Absorbing damage is nice, but dishing it out fast enough that the other guy quits hitting you has its appeal.

Here is a fun NQ they added.


Impaired (Attribute)
Some folks are just not meant to be naturally talented. A bum knee, poor genetics, or an illness as a kid has you lacking the maximum achievement level of your peers.
• Bonus: 8 Karma per level
• Game Effect: For each level, the character’s maximum for the chosen attribute decreases by 1, to a minimum of 2.


So say you plan to be a cybered up Sammie who is more than a little gruff because he is a killing machine just waiting for the GO! signal? Take an Impaired Charisma to represent just how chilly you are, even with friends as you can warm to them only so much.

Or say you are a street rat mage who grew up on really substandard fare so your bone structure development was a bit subpar which means BODY and STR max is capped so no Steve Rogers look for you, even if you do start buying the good stuff thanks to Running or stealing Americars.

Not sure how this meshes with any augmentations, though some folk are already talking about house ruling penalties to boni from augments for an impaired stat to avoid the worst cheesing.

...hmm, Impaired Attribute: Body. Guess some characters may have a real death wish. May as well get a cranial area bomb implant and take a few of the oppos out when you flatline.

I actually remember doing something similar in a Champions "battle royale to the death many years ago (never liked PVP). SO I built a character with just a single power Ranged Killing attack, with explosive and area effect, one time use only (so it was extremely powerful) with the trigger being hit by any attack and no other super powers, as well as the Glass Jaw disadvantage. Wandered around the fighting pit for a couple turns occasionally insulting other characters who ignored him at first then one of the big brutes decided to punch the annoying skinny guy in normal clothes. Ended that bout real quick.

Kind of like playing the Saeder-Krupp card in the old SR trading card game when my safehouse was on the ropes and one of the other players was one mission away from winning.

eh, well, it's probably fine. if you were never going to hit body 6 anyways (let's say body 5 is enough for you), it's no big deal to impair it by 1.

more to the point though, from what i've heard many of the negative qualities are horrendously crippling and give FAR worse karma than you get for impairing your dump stat. as has been mentioned, impaired attribute is such a (comparatively) good negative quality that there's been extensive discussion on how to nerf it to avoid abuse.

personally, i think perhaps they should focus on making horrendously crippling negative qualities actually provide a decent enough amount of karma that you wouldn't have to be a moron to take them (from an optimization standpoint at least... and frankly, i think you'd be better off RPing most of those negative qualities if you think they fit your character, from everything i've heard). because let's face it, if you nerf all the negative qualities that *aren't* going to utterly cripple a character in exchange for a pittance of karma, that just leaves you with a situation where people don't take negative qualities at all.

So, from what I have seen so far, everyone takes this multiple times on Strength, and is a Troll Mage.

...well said. So Much for additional build Kaerma.

A bad quality for karma trade off is relative to the character you are playing. If the goal was simply to give enough karma for a negative quality, then the problem would only be worse.
Some people will still take a negative quailty because it pays off and is not necessarily crippling while others will complain that it now pays too much karma to others for something that hurts their character. The same problem
Or worse everyone taking a quality, and everyone having the same negative effect no matter what archtype they are and choosing to ignore the other negative qualities.
At least now there is some balance that makes people spread their karma gain across multiple negative qualities

...yeah but why cripple an attribute that may (well at least hopefully) save your character's life? This also means (at least according to 5E rules) that you cannot augment it either unless they changed that.

Apologies, but even 6 Body dice against an attack pool of say 15 - 18 is pretty sad as 6 dice may yield an average of 1.5 hits against 5, ergo, dead character.

sure, but the difference between 6 dice and 5 dice is not particularly extreme.

also, for a lot of weapons their damage is so low that i think that would likely keep you alive and conscious, provided it's your first time being hit.

also also, i'm pretty sure i've seen discussion on limiting the amount you can augment the limited attribute by, which to me implies you're not restricted from augmenting it.

Different metatypes can have different Impaired Attribute qualities if even just to highlight their differences.
It's easy to imagine why an elf might have less than standard body or strength, or a dwarf migh have less agility or reaction, or a troll might have less reason or logic......

...agh, apologies.

I was getting it mixed up with the Infirm Quality, that is the one which prohibits augmentations. I am involved in Missions play and in 5E, Impaired Attribute is a mutagenic quality which are disallowed under Missions guidelines, so I never bothered looking into it.

Taking a negative quality should result in a practical penalty of some sort for the character. That is, either being unable to perform a given action or having reduced chance of performing it successfully. The value associated to the negative quality should in turn be related to how often the player may need or want to perform said action. That's the whole point of the specific rules that used to apply to Codeblock, Incompetent or Sensitive System (depending on the edition).

If the player can systematically avoid being in a position where he has to perform that action, that value should be zero. With SR6 Impaired Attribute negative quality, "systematically" don't simply mean "very often", but being mechanically able to, per the rules themselves. Raising an attribute is purely a choice from the player (with its own associated cost). There is no absolutely no circunstance in the game where the gamemaster can say "every character present should have raised this one attribute to the racial maximum of that metatype". Even a test as specifically targeted as having a Threshold equal to the Racial Attribute Maximum minus the appropriate modifier, besides the fact that it would equally penalize character that did not take that particular negative quality but simply did not chose to raise their attribute to this level, and have a ridiculously low chance of success even for characters who did, would still not fit the bill, considering the available temporary and permanent augmentations.

Fundamentally, raising an attribute has a cost in the first place. You shouldn't get points simply for refusing to pay that cost.

Now, obviously, if you are to play an SR6 elf street samurai, I'd highly recommend taking Impaired Charisma twice, because getting 16 karma upfront seems like a pretty good deal for abandonning the "opportunity" to spend 75 karma in a way you'd never want to.

Sounds like the mechanics for Flaws in the New World of Darkness. Take as many as you like - they're all worth no bonus points. However, in any session where the Flaw causes you some serious inconvenience, you get a bonus XP reward point.

There may be a reason why I have never taken Incompetent (Pilot Aerospace).

Are you just bad at optimizing?!

well, first off, losing the option to pivot to increasing an attribute you didn't expect to want to increase is a cost, however small of one. if the street samurai's face buddy bites the dust, he can't just pick up those extra points in charisma any more. if the street sam finds out that having a second reasonably capable face is a good idea 5 sessions in, too bad, that option is gone. so no, it isn't free points with no drawback, though there is certainly room to question whether that drawback is large enough for what you get.

secondly, if the majority of the other options are "hey, why don't you go screw yourself and your team over royally for 5 karma", the real problem is at least partially that the balance on the other negative qualities is crap. if there were plenty of other reasonable options, i expect you'd see a lot more diversity in the negative qualities people take, rather than everyone looking at the other options and concluding that no, bleeding from your eyeballs any time you're exposed to pollution doesn't seem like a reasonable negative quality to get similar karma rewards to limiting an off-stat by 2-3 points.

that elf street sam is taking impaired charisma twice instead of uncouth because they actually get a reasonable amount of karma out of it, and the party doesn't get screwed over by the sam taking a crippling flaw that gives barely enough karma to raise a single skill by a single point.

If the circunstances for that negative quality to matter are when another character get entirely removed from the game and/or the player is switching its entire character concept from "I'll never raise this stat to its racial maximum" to "I need it maxed", then you may consider using SR chargen system as a trap option in the first place.

I don't know if the option to buy back a negative quality for twice its karma cost in SR5 remains in SR6. If so, it would rather come on the cheap end of pivot cost, when compared to 1) the difference on attributes cost between chargen and character progression, 2) the difference between starting nuyen and recommanded nuyen payment during game, 3) the extra cost in nuyen if you don't have enough Essence available to get the role appropriate augmentations, 4) that you can't change metatype anyway if yours is not optimal for your new occupation, plus 5) pivoting to an awakened occupation, if allowed, is going to cost twice the karma cost as well, but with quality in the 15-35 range.

For the drawback of Impaired Attribute to matter, it requires the player to change his mind about his character design in a way the rest of the system is discouraging him from.

Now, I agree with you that there already were plenty of terrible qualities in the list.

I wonder if Impaired Attribute is not here first and foremost as a way to put a cost on the one component in metatype choice that didn't have one, and have a basis to calculate metatype "real" cost. Too bad that doesn't come up with a broader reflexion on how metatype attribute ranges relate or not to specific role and, by extension, if and how a character can escape its initial concept and pivot.

A big change from other editions to 6th.

Somethng I thought was underappreciated were Teamwork tests. Now they are a straight roll to add hits to the leaders test.
The older editions were written to discourage any interaction outside of a direct run/jhonson situation. But if the characters can have all these skills, histories above the regular person on the street, why was it so haed to imagine the same characters finding a way use their skills in a coordinated way more often?
Sure people like stories of control and keeping the masses down and the winning by loosing theme, but isn't the point of playing, at least for most, is a character that hopes to ultimately "win" above those situations?

Whatever you played, it wasn't a previous Shadowrun edition.

Nope, I'm sure they were.

@Nstol, I think you are misreading it, as it does NOT add straight hits to the leader's test.

Teamwork tests have not really changed from 4th onward.

As per pg 36 in 6th Core, we can see it acts as follows:

Team designates the 'leader'

All persons with applicable skill can roll, those hits add 1 DICE each per hit made by the team to the leader's test pool, these are NOT guaranteed hits added to the leader's test.

Total number of dice that can be added is equal to the leader's skill being used, or highest attribute if its a test calling for two stats being used.

Leader now rolled the augmented dice pool to determine result.

This is also how it operated in 4th, in 5th it also worked the same as above but it also raised your limit by 1 per die added as otherwise all those added dice would potentially have gone to waste.

Glitches are a bit different due to changes in how some rolls work and limits are gone but if you glitch the teamwork test in 6th you can not gain or spend Edge for 1-3 rounds.

As for your suggestion that earlier editions discouraged play outside of the usual Shadowrun for A Johnson scenario, I guess it depends on books books or adventures you read as there was several that fell outside that usual trope, including a couple of adventures that were more Murder mysteries style.

"......The helpers roll first; any hits become extra dice added to the leader’s dice pool."

Teamwork Tests.
Page 36

Yes. and you are trying to say what exactly?

Because that is what WE referred to in our post about team hits become DICE added to the leader's pool, unlike YOUR original quote higher up the posts where you claim they became HITS on the Leader's test.

And that is the way it worked in 4th & 5th as well.

bolding by myself on the relevant bit that YOU stated originally.

I think we've pretty well established in this thread that NSTOL is either impossibly bad with the rules or just plain not posting in good faith.

But systematically avoiding such situations can already be the penalty. A player can systematically avoid any situation where use of limbs is required for a character with Quadriplegic, but having to avoid that is the penalty. For the same reason I was fine with the old (4th Ed) Sensitive System, IMO not taking any cyberware wasn't avoiding the price, it was the price because cyberware has useful upgrade paths for everyone. The new Impaired Attribute (or Incompetent (Aerospace)) on the other hand neither require the player to do something nor preclude something the player might want to do, they only exist on paper.



A new edition where the entire setting is changed for the worse and all artwork is photos of action figures. But 15 years later, boundless hype from an upcoming PC game

...yeah, I still miss 3E sometimes.

Global Data Wipe, Mass Extinction, the same thing.....

At this rate Everyone will be Technomancers in a couple of editions.

Well, given the Matrix is officially magic now, that suits the design goals of everyone being a mage just fine.

...well at least by then, getting 5 hits on assensing make sense now.

In 5E it states that 5 hits on an assensing test reveals your target is a technomancer.

It was also the case with 4th edition (see table page 183). So, it was in fact the case ever since technomancers replaced otaku.

..yeah didn't play much 4E.

Didn't much care for the hard skill caps, that magic trumped everything, and that the archetypes became sort of homogenised (now a mage or sammy with a commlink, a little skill, and some programmes could also hack systems).

About the only parts I did like were the build point system, which I wish they would have retained in 5E, and genetic modifications for characters.

I ended up going back to 3E.