On the one hand, any GM who wished could simply say "No home-brew traditions; use the examples provided, or don't be a spellcaster."

On the other hand, obviously such a system would need to be playtested and refined. It'd never be perfect - but then, neither is what we have now.






Good point.

For magic defense, that isn't a direct damage-resistance test or the like (IOW, that doesn't already have a significant built-in nonattribute DP contributor, the way armor is)? Double the die pool. And yes, I know that would weaken certain kinds of magic (i.e., Mind Control stuff). And I'm okay with that.

For defending against Ranged attacks ... add in another attribute, one not called on as often. I nominate Intuition - knowing which WAY to dodge/duck/twist/etc can be as useful as how fast you can do so.

So, an Agil3 Pistol3 shooter with a laser sight used to get 7 dice, and your Reaction 3 character used to get 3 to defend; net 4 die attacker's advantage. Statistically, 7 dice gets 2.333 successes, 3 dice gets 1, net 1.333 hits in attacker's favor.

Same shooter, same gear, same target but count in Intuition 3; shooter gets (3+6+1) 10 dice, defender gets (3+3) dice; net 4 die attacker's advantage. Statistically, 10 dice gets 3.333 successes, 6 dice gets 2, net 1.333 hits in attacker's favor.

At least at the "all 3's" hypothetical average dudes level, my gut check says "slightly more dice, but same general outcome. There'll be a bit mroe randomness in the system overall, but the overall outcomes should be about the same - we're just pushing the extreme possibilities out a couple hits' worth in either direction.

Still, you handily illustrate two things:

One, my suggestion would entail going over the whole system and finding possible conflicts/faults like those two, which is a pile of work;

Two, fixing them shouldn't be impossible, nor necessarily even be particularly difficult ... so the work is only a pile, not a whole mountain range.

I defintiely agree that it should be a conversation betwee the GM and the player - though I would also include the other players, at least peripherally. Not everyone may be happy playing alongside an Elf Stripper Ninja who also happens to be a practitioner of Tantric Sex Magic, after all. Even if it WAS somehow made perfectly balanced.

OTOH, others might leap at the chance, hahaha. ;D


Actually, I'd suggest not even publishing a range. Just list the price as "variable", and give a dozen (or two dozen) examples. Geasa can be very, very wildly divergent in impact, even within the same campaign, let alone between two different groups. It's the sort of thing an entire sub-chapter could, and IMO should, be devoted to: giving a bunch of examples, and their BP costs ... while reminding player and GM alike, that even the examples might nto be priced quite right for each particular campaign - they're only balanced for a bog-standard, RAW, Seattle based campaign.

Just for one example: Geasa about water should be worth more, or less, in a desert campaign than soemthign in teh rain forests around Seattle ("Ritually bathe in a natural, running stream of water once a week, or lose Magic rating" would be harder to do in Libya, than in or around Seattle, after all; "Lose magic when it rains" on the other hand, would be far easier to avoid in Libya, than in Seattle).


Oh, my ... yes, that would rather tend to toss a spanner or three into the works, wouldn't it? O_o

Next Problem:
What if counterspelling is availiable? Does he still defend with WIL*2+Counterspelling*2 vs MAG+Spellcasting*2? What about OR thresholds?
What if someone goes on full defense vs a ranged attack? Is it REA+INT+Dodge/Gymnastics*2 vs AGI+Skill*2?
What about full defense in meele? Normally you double your meelee skill, or add dogde and the melee skill. Is it now skill*4?

On the other hand, it's not necessarily a problem that someone walking, who has no cover and refuse to lose his next action can be easily shot at short range.

That's heading into territory I really don't have enough personal experience with.

As a general answer, though? The entire ruleset for counterspelling would have to be looked at, as would the rules for melee defense.

Thresholds, across the board, would have to change - the DP going against them would be increasing by +50%, after all. So ORs would probably increase by a simialr proportion - plus or minus a little bit, perhaps.

Actually it's not all that problematic... there was a fairly common house rule that i used to occasionally hear people talk about rolling 2x willpower (or intuition) to resist spells. (not all spells are resisted with wilpower!).

2x skill is no different than changing skills BACK to going from 1-12 like they used to instead of SR4 halving them for no good reason :(.


What are the constraints...
Willpower doesn't really have any skills of note linked to it and is very hard to augment without magic.
Intuition against the spells which don't target willpower. Again hard to augment without magic.
Reaction is easy to augment and the only skills of note linked to it are piloting (don't know why they did that to be honest except to keep even more skills from being linked to agility/quickness when they split the attribute in two).

Those are your two primary defensive attributes.
Body for damage soak... but damage amounts aren't really changing... and again no


You could use a skill for the defense test instead of the attribute.... turn the relationship around. Examples..
I roll a ranged attack... you defend with Dodge (+ reaction on full defense).
Or I actually use my piloting skill to avoid getting hit in the vehicle! (that makes so much sense why does a street sam drive better than a rigger in so many cases...)... again with a reaction bonus if I'm on full defense.
Melee same deal... dodge + melee skill + reaction again if on full defense. (simplifies having a ton of full defense options and eradicates the problematic gymnastics skill).
Spells is the only one this doesn't make a lot of sense for... in which case there are no non-magical skills which make sense here.


Another option is to just roll attribute x2.
This solves the problem with no mundane skill for magic attacks.... since both wil and int are hard to boost. (increase attribute spells would need a serious rethink here though... probably switching them to they can only increase attributes up to their force).
But for normal attacks with reaction it's a bear because it's rediculously easy to boost that attribute up with cyber/adept magic. Which is the only reason I don't like it as much compared to using a dedicated skill for defense. (remember in prior editions you didn't dodge unless you devoted combat pool to dodging... it was rarely done unless you were a mage).

Then there's hybridizing which helps good deal.
Spell resistance is either 2x willpower/intuition. Or Wil/int + counterspelling if available. Nice and simple.

That .... that has some intriguing possibilities to it.

Only if your idea of "balance" is "everything must absolutely positively be completely equal in all things".

Oh, gods, I LOVE the Advanced Lifestyle rules. Love love love LOVE!!

They let me personalise how my character lives day to day, as much as they let me personalise the character itself.

For just one example ... a Hacker-Adept, curmudgeonly sort of guy, has:

• Comforts 2: Low
• Entertainment 2: Low
• Necessities 2: Low
• Neighborhood 1: Squatter
• Security 4: High
• Free access 1
• Workplace 1
• Saferoom 3 (homebrewed LSQ)
• Poor Condition -1
• Rough Neighborhood -1

Net cost: $4,400/month (just under a Middle lifestyle).
HOME SWEET HOME
Grave's home is a somewhat dilapidated apartment in the basement of a large, run-down, and low-rent building, in a neighborhood populated by more squatters than legitimate residents (because as bad as his building is, most in the area are worse off, and if the City ever came down here it would condemn the lot of them). The wallpaper is stained and peeling at the edges, the power is unreliable from minute to minute causing the lights to flicker every so often, the heat struggles to stay above "shivers and icicles", and "air conditioning" means sticking a cheap electric fan in an open window and hoping a fuse doesn't blow - and remember, BASEMENT apartment, so those windows are small and actually below street-level - grates in the sidewalk lead to window-wells, that Grave has to clean out monthly to avoid attracting rats, or worse ... not to mention the smell. Meanwhile, stepping over less then four chipheads, junkies, and/or bodies in the hallway and stairwells is "a good day".

However, the apartment is adjacent to - and rent includes exclusive use of - a small underground garage big enough to park two vehicles in and STILL provide floorspace for a well-supplied workshop. And the doors, locks, and alarm systems are almost literally the best that money could buy - not a one of them original to the apartment. Finally, Graves had a "panic room" installed shortly after he moved in, where he stores anything illegal (including himself, if need be).

There is a Free Access node not merely in the neighborhood; the antenna array is actually on the roof of the building across the street. Signal is good, access is free and anonymous ... ask any hacker, and they'd say "man, what a view!"

(Note: the Saferoom quality provides a hidden room, with reinforced walls/door/ceiling/floor, with floorspace equal to twice the Necessities rating in square meters, and a few days marginal food/water)

Now, that's pretty darned personalised, and provides plenty of really cool details for any narrative set there (for just one: the contrast between the ocassionally=flickering, cheap yellowish lights of the space in general, versus the steady, actinic-blue glare of the lights over his workbenches (electronics/hardware "shop"). Mechanically, it also establishes that while the area around the apartment is pretty bad, and it's not the most comfortable places to be (let alone live) ... it's hella secure, for a private residence. So, generally, a low lifestyle in an even-more-piss-poor neighborhood than usual, but with awesome locks, elbow room, and "character".

...

See, I find the option to do something like that really, really liberating.

We'll agree there that those lifestyle rules...well rule, but unfortunately they've always been in a later source book, and I doubt that will ever change. :/

I also really like them, and i make good use of CanRays work.

We have never once found the advanced lifestyles worth all the extra headache they cause.

In many cases... they're even worse. And a lot of the benefits/drawbacks are problematic and covered by other sections of the rules. (such as having a vehicle shop insteaad of 'feng shui').

Most of the advantages and benefits are the normal bits of... I'll pick advantages which matter to me and offset it with negatives I don't care about. The very definition of min maxing.

It's not, but neither do I think that anything should be obviously better than anything else. You propose that magic is canonically and rules-wise the obvious best for just about anything. If it is something that no mundane can defend against, why should mages bring any mundanes with them on runs, since they have to be babysat all the time or die due to enemy mages.

O_o ... what headaches?


What benefit is "covred by other sections of the rules" ...?

And why can't you have BOTH feng shui, and a vehicle shop? 5 points for the feng shui, 1 point for Workplace, and then buy a Vehicle Shop to put into said workplace.


So, the GM needs to look at say "hey, dude, you don't use computers ata ll - so NEtwork Bottleneck doesn't matter to you, I'm not giving you that -1 LQ. Find something that matters, or your rent is going up."

No different from character creation. In fact, it IS character creation - you're creating the "character" of your PC's home life.

You just perfectly illustrated what I mean. It's a headache... players what perfection... the world doesn't deliver and it's the GM's fault. It also beggars suspension of disbelief that such a prime piece of real estate isn't in higher demand by other interested parties... (like say your local friendly crime syndicate in need of a drug lab or discrete stash).

Now toss on multiple locations and identities for a safehouse.... and juggling all of them.. and the GM keeping track of perks and benefits...


If it's a GM making stuff up... and setting rents... great.

If it's player custom crafting a location in the greater world... BS.

Just think about how exactly you even find said location in the first place.. where do you file for it with your local real estate agent?!


And you completely missed my point on 'feng shui'.. the bonus is bigger than pretty much anything else you're going to get... even being bigger than the proper tools penalty! A +3 dice bonus for people who don't even believe in feng shui... but just want the dice. Call it what you will it's overpowered BS and the GM is the bad guy when he says 'no'.

Sadly in the 6th world not believing in magic will not make it any less effective, aligning furniture after aura emissions and ley lines is as legit as structural integrity in SR.
Wouldn't it be great if you just could disbelieve those fireballs?

So .... Falconer, tell me why the heck you even play RPGs, anyway. Seriously, if the process of creating something is such a headache, such an unwelcome duress ... why do you bother at all ...??


IT is a plus five LQ. That's not cheap, by any stretch of the imagination.

Low Lifestyle, vanilla? 2000¥/month. Same lifestyle, but with Feng Shui? 5000¥/month.

Medium, without? 5000¥/month. Same, with? 10000¥/month.

That right there represents the "in higher demand" side of things quite well. Not to mention, there's certainly going to be other considerations. "Yeah, Boss, the chinaman here says the place has great funk-sway or whatever. But it ain't got the kinda power we'd have to pull, and it'd cost way too much to put that in. So, yeah, yeah, the other site'll have to do."


Oh, please. :rolleyes:

90% of the Advanced Lifestyle rules, is simply breaking up yoru Lifestyle into different elements of it. Like, say, the one for my bodyguard/gunslinger build. Everything's at Middle, except his Neighborhood (Low) and Entertainment (High). He found a lower-rent neighborhood, so that he could put more of his money towards "party night".


Fuck that noise.

No, seriously. That's just patently ludicrous. You can't really mean to say, you don't want your players to be engaged in the setting, to be motivated to add to the game.


You know what? In Hong Kong, they do have people you can hire, solely as feng shui consultants. Not just for new buildings, but for existing sites. And for FINDING good places, too.

Given that Shadowrun is in the Sixth World, and that feng shui is proven to work ... you don't think there's maybe a couple in and around Seattle?


Feng shui is just another kind of "magic". And you don't have to believe in magic, for it to work - for OR against you.

And, +3 bonus, the highest? No, no it's not. Programming Suite, R5.

Not to mention, so the frag what? We're talking about build/repair tests, here. So what if that "jacks his lifestyle costs up a full notch" feng shui LQ maybe gives him an extra success per test, and maybe MAYBE shaves off one single-day test off the time he needs to finish.

The character in a home with feng shui, isn't going to be using that skill bonus every month. But he's certainly going to be PAYING for it every month.


Do you .... do you only play with petulant nine-year-olds, or something? O_O

Pax: Your example with the Advanced Lifestyle rules is essentially what we were going for. The Advanced Lifestyle rules are better packaged because they were put together all at the same time. Hopefully they can do that with the magic rules this time around. The magic rules have more components that the Lifestyle rules, which was partially intentional, because it gave the GM areas he could control without locking things down too much for players. So if your campaign is set in Hong Kong, you could say no to Voudoun traditions, but players still have a lot of customization they can do through magical groups, geasa, mentor spirits, etc. I even put in handy cultural/regional mentor spirit list into Street Magic, to assist with picking which mentor spirits worked for certain backgrounds and giving them culturally-appropriate names.

I really do think that if someone were looking at all the magical framework customization right at the beginning of a new edition, you can package all that customization up nicely. And like you said, just present a few "off the shelf" frameworks in the core book built with the system and then include the entire system in an expansion book.

To Falconer's issues with customization, that's why it's optional. Advanced Lifestyle rules are optional, magical framework customization is optional, etc. If it's not something you think your players can handle well, either build the options for them and present them to the players, or go with the off-the-shelf stuff. One thing we did notice about Shadowrun players, though, is that they love to build not only their characters, but the worlds around their characters, so the options are good to have.

Demonseed:
I think you got my point... I'm not adverse to the optional rules per se. I'm adverse to the way in which they're used to min max in 90% of the cases I see them for a little bit of chump change. The same players who will argue to death State of the Art rules... and jacking an extra $1000 a month or so to keep themselves in the unlimited copies of updated warez/cracked programs every month. They don't bat an eye at spending a bit extra to customize their lifestyle to gain some benefit. Despite that both are nothing more to the monthly bills bottom line.

If a player comes and is looking for some real estate... fine work with him to figure out 'what's on the market' that doesn't mean some custom designed with all the perks for a medium lifestyle.. while they're living the high one.


In the case of magical traditions... the custom ones I see... always tend to pick the best spirits... with no thought given to fluff. Typically with a drain attribute that again mechanically works the best. They're rarely exercises in roleplaying... more often exercises in rollplaying. So this is why I'm skeptical at first.

I guess it's because I tend to take the view if something can be abused it will be abused... I'm fine with GM discretion.

As a GM, I have never, ever had a problem with saying "no." Not in any of the games I've run, Shadowrun or otherwise. Sometimes you just have to. Sometimes you don't even have to, but the player is being such a min-max munchkin that unless you do something to adjust their point of view, the campaign you're spending so much time working on and the other players who are working with you will just get sidelined.

So yeah, almost anything can be abused or at least "engineered for maximum advantage." As someone who has worked on rules and mechanics, I try to make sure everything is balanced pretty well, but I hate to throw out options just because some player might abuse them. Something like the lifestyle description that Pax did up, that's the kind of thing I would love to see my Shadowrun players build when they are fleshing out their characters.

Oh, and yes, I've seen some terrible tradition ideas before, even on this forum. They make me cringe, because I love building traditions and magical frameworks for the historical depth. I wouldn't allow those terrible ones at my table, but that's why we have GMs.

Oh, this. This in so many ways, and in mile-high letters of billion-candle-power neon.

Look at an entirely different game - D&D 3.5E. And the setting, Eberron. RAW, Eberron is pretty much "anything is legal, from any book". That offends my basic sensibilities, so in preparation to run an Eberron game ... I took teh time to go through every one of my books (and I have about three thousand dollars' worth fo them), page by page, item by item. And I vetted all of it for Eberron ... with plenty of "nope, can't do it" stuff listed. Also plenty of "talk to me first", and a few "I'm tweaking this in X direction" or "this class is associated with Y faction so plan accordingly" notes. Only about half of each not-Eberron-specific book got the total green-light.

So I, too, have no problem saying "no".

Flipside, I also have no problem admitting Iw as wrong, even as a GM. Way back when, I was Lead GM for a PVP, play-by-post "arena" game of D&D 3.Xe. We're talking min/max central, because that was the POINT of the game. Andwhen I first heard about the Vow of Poverty, my initial gut reaction was "HELL no".

Then I looked it over. I tried making a few builds that used it. Even with the most-favorable extensions into the Epic levels the game used (early ones - level 25 to start), it still .... was NOT as bad as I'd thought. It was actually pretty hard to abuse, except in a few edge cases. And even those edge cases, were ... well, they maybe eked out a few %ile points of "uberness". Which any of a dozen OTHER options could have done just as readily. (I mean it. I even looked at a straight-up gestalt build, Druid/Master of Many Forms/etc on one side, and Incarnum Meldshaper on the other. Vow of Poverty, PLUS Soulmelds, PLUS shapechanging ... about as leveraged as any of the three ideas could get, with a whole lot of synergy between them. And it still failed to measure up, even against non-Gestalt characters.) In the end, I completely changed my tune about rules I thought were too easily abused, when I learned that in practise ... not so much, after all.


I aim to please!

Chump change. Really.

Look at my example lifestyle above. It costs 4,400¥/month as presented. Add Feng Shui to it, and it jumps to 9,000¥/month - a change of 4,600¥/month. Yes, the lifestyle cost more than doubles. And you call that "chump change" ...? You'ge got to be kidding me.


So ... what exactly is it you want, then? Are players - whose characters are, at least nominally, professional freelance covert operatives - not supposed to have those characters behave professionally and competently?



First off, I don't want to play "Curb Appeal: the RPG: 2074".

Secondly, there's nothing wrong with the GM looking at your lifestyle, and either saying "no" to the whole thing, or to part of it. Or even saying .... wait for it ... "yes, but _____".

Look at your objection to feng shui. You think organised crime would want in on such a property? Okay, tell the players "Yes, but it's in a neighborhood one step worse than you want; that's the only place available that meets your other criteria. Oh, and getting Security that high will cost you an extra ____¥ up front to change out all the locks and such. Finally, you're not the only one to go looking for good feng shui; the Vory have .... something ... going on, two floors up from you, and they "own" the service elevator. 55-gallon drums go in, boxes and odd odors come out, and it's probably best not to ask too many questions, right?"

Which means the player's fancy lifestyle just lost a point of Neighborhood (-1), probably picked up Rough Neighborhood (-1) and definitely Worse Neighbors (-1), and a couple thousand nuyen as a one-time added cost. But, hey, bonus: the rent is also lower thant eh player had been planning on. And maybe the player would like to make a counter-offer, and up the stakes a bit: RP out a meet with the local Vory rep, and arrange for a bigger kick-in to the local Benevolent Fund (IOW, push the Security rating up another point).

Nonetheless, the Advanced Lifestyle Rules you've expressed such disdain for, provide a common language between Player and GM. It gives everyone a good, solid and mutual basis on which to calculate prices, based on what you want, and what you're willing to live with.

(Also, some of us - me, in fact - will come up with the Vory drug-lab angle right from the get-go. We want lifestyels with narrative potential, not just "the best durned numbers there is". Sure, sure, we'll slide in some good numberstoo ... but that's not abuse.)


... and that is a sad, sad, unfriendly, and did i mention sad way to look at your fellow players. No wonder I dislike you so much.

It's also a plot hook for a whole sideline with potential contacts, enemies or employers.
Instead of "My lifestyle? Middle".

"My lifestyle? Middle" is for the pre-packaged stuff where you want a no-frills average whatever.

It'd be like taking Hermetic or Shamanic mage under similar rules (they'd differ, the same way "middle lifestyle" differs from "high lifestyle":* different, but essentially a normalized baseline).

*By which I mean that the two options are mutually exclusive and offer different benefits not in that they "cost" the same. Magical traditions would all "cost" the same.

Absolutely, and when helping folks build characters, I always took the time to point out "even using the advanced rules, you can always just say 'Low' or 'Middle' or whatever. You can even just leave it at that. But if you want to tweak things a little, that's possible too. You can even do BOTH ...!"

Both being, of course, "I want Low, but I want better locks" (hey, Security jumps to 3, and it costs 2600¥). Or, "I want middle, but I want it in an isolated cabinin the woods" (so, hey, Middle, with No Neighbors, and it cosys 6,000¥ ... unless you also want to be off the grid, in which case we can add in Green Plan and Home Grown Farming, and it still costs 6,000¥).

Stuff like that is what I love about the Advanced Lifestyles rules: no two Middile lifestyles need to be the same.

And I think it also works so well in that the advanced rules are totally optional, but dovetail perfectly with existing rules if used. If you don't like 'em, don't use 'em. If you do like 'em, they work great and don't break existing rules.

A counter-example to this is the spell-building rules. I like having the option, but some of the basic spells don't abide by the spell-building rules, so they lose a bit in that aspect.

Yup

In unrelated news, but semi-relevant to this thread, CD Projekt RED (the guys that did The Witcher) just announced that they're going to be doing a video game based on Cyberpunk 2020.

So you know.

In case SRR/SRO wasn't your thing.

Backed SRR to teh tune of $60.

Backed SRO with $25 (was running out of available funds at the time - Wasteland 2 got to me first, and grabbed a nice round $100 pledge ...).

CP2077 is very much of interest, nonetheless.

I know basically nothing. Friend was talking to me, sat down at his computer, and it popped up on Reddit, so he had to walk back out and tell me. XD

And once again Pax misses the point... so players can take one thing... +5 quality fine... add a few more negatives which don't do much of anything.

If the players are allowed to dictate one, they can logically dictate the other.

Once again you've missed the bit about GM tool... and player abuse. You can put up a reasonable one... which is great... but I've seen enough powergamed ones to know yours isn't fully representative of how these things are used.

You're also forgetting that just because it may not be that much of a problem on your Runs (the Network Bottleneck since that was an example given already), doesn't mean it isn't still a negative, as it would still affect the life of the character. For instance, should he/she wish to play a Matrix-based video game during off-time, that Bottleneck is gonna make that a PITA. Point is, the lifestyle negatives don't have to screw you over for jobs. It is perfectly reasonable for them to only be an irritation in other aspects of life.

I suppose you'd consider the following abusive:

Comforts: Middle
Entertainment: Middle
Necessities: High
Neighborhood: Middle
Security: High

Perfect Roommate
Workplace

No Privacy - Astral - Rating 3
This Isn't Big Bob's Autos

(Not bothering with detail because it's immaterial for these purposes)

Watch your tone.

On the shamanic / hermetic divide, put me in the camp where I wish there was more differentiation in traditions like in the older editions.

(apologies if this was said somewhere in this thread already)

One thing I don't particularly like about the new spirit summoning rules is how easy it is, and how spirits are some of the single best things to have. If you're a mage or mystic adept, you'd be crazy not to take summoning. Summoning a F6 badass is the work of a few seconds, has almost no restrictions, and takes a minimal investment for a character that already has magic. And if the spirit is disrupted, it's only the work of another few seconds to whip up another monster to send out, nearly ad infinitum.

Basic SR4 had the huge exploit where you could summon a spirit, send it on a remote task ("kill those guards"), then summon another after another until you decided 100+ spirits attacking the guards was enough (there was a term for this exploit, but I forget it). SR4A saw this problem and slightly fixed it by having spirits on remote tasks still count against the summoning limit, but it missed the bigger problem that it was still too easy and quick to summon a death machine for little or no resources. I guess by that point a quick patch was all that was possible.

Accident, Guard, Conceal, Movement. These powers are crazy good. And that's not counting many of the other powers like Engulf, Binding, Fear, Compulsion, Confusion. The list goes on. Task spirits with technical skills. Guidance spirits with divination. Plant spirits with magical guard. Notice I'm not even talking about pure combat abilities. The only real way to counter them is ?, further exacerbating the GTFO-ness of spirits. Well, the main way to counter them is BGC, otherwise known as GM fiat.

Old editions had a tradeoff: hermetics took a long time and a fair amount of money to summon an elemental who was pretty powerful. Shamans could summon a spirit quickly, but the spirit wasn't so powerful and was restricted to certain domains. The current rules remove all the restrictions, leaving it too easy to summon a combat monster / swiss army knife at a moment's notice.

You forgot the "magically arranged for bonus dice" thingy.

That's my biggest grief with SR4(A). That and the fact that mundanes have small chances to resist magic in general.

The problem with the 3rd edition approach was that it meant one ruleset for each tradition. For example, possession by bug spirits, shedims and voodoo spirits all worked differently, which made it a bit difficult.

I think all traditions should share the same mechanisms but have different limitations according to their beliefs. The problem with that approach is that there would probably be clear "winners", traditions that are mechanically superior to others. Chaos magic, for example, would be pretty powerful since, in the Shadowrun universe, its approach (all traditions works) is valid and can theoretically lead to chaos magic taking the best thing out of each tradition. But I guess this could be balanced one way or another...

Dynamic TN worked well in mundanes' favor. An opposed test between a mage (spell 5) and a mundane with willpower 9 was almost a draw. In SR4, mundanes are just fucked by it's massively overpowered mages.

Not so much because of static TNs - more so because of attribute + skill vs. attribute only (don't get me startet with counterspelling).

I do agree with Falconer (to a degree). I hate putting it on the GM to decide which rules apply how. If we need the GM to modify and selectively enforce rules to make the game playable, why are we shelling out $40 for a rule book? From the pure abuse standard, the easy solution is conditional flaws. You cannot take a decker lifestyle flaw if no deckers live in the house (or at least, the value for that flaw drops precipitously).

But Falconer also brings up a second point which applies to both lifestyles and magical traditions.

When my player comes to me and says "my apartment is high-network in a Low neighborhood, with a garage, not Bob's apartment, feng shui, defensible ... etc. etc., and I'm moving in this month, here's my $10k", that does break realism. House hunting doesn't work like that. Unless the place is custom built, you're going to be compromising somewhere. Sure, as a GM, it's 'my job' to ... I don't know, randomly generate houses and let them choose? Enforce a time for shopping around? I don't know. There are no rules for it (at least, in SR3). So as a GM, I'm sort of left in the lurch, stuck between spending time making up a new system for real estate shopping, or letting my players get away with an unreasonably perfect house he 'found' after five minutes of skimming the classified ads (or not using the rules at all).

It boils down to a very sharp divide between roll-playing (choosing something based SOLELY on the mechanical advantages) vs. role-playing (playing out a realistic character in a realistic world). For lifestyles, I've never been able to bridge that gap. I fear that a menu-based magical tradition system will suffer the same flaw.

That too, but before it was skill+magc pool versus attribute; only the attribute - if very high - would serve as a sort of equaliser, pitting some 14 dice vs. 9 against 9 dice vs. 5-ish. Leaving out qualities.

Maybe something like the ranged dodging rules could work here as well. So normal magic defense is attribute, but you can choose to go full-magic-defense for attribute x 2 or something...

...yeah that's a stupid idea - why wouldn't everyone go full-magic-defense all the time...maybe you can only go full-magic-defense if the character is aware of the magic being cast ("noticing magic") ? This would have the added effect of making more powerful spells more risky, in that the target of the spell would be more likely to resist.


This seems like 2 different situations are possible.

If the player is saying this at character creation, then just like any other thing, it's up to the GM and the player to discuss the specifics.

If the player is saying this after character creation, then I sort of see your point. If there were some Availability modifier for each lifestyle customization (it could be as simple as every quality is +2 Availability, starting Availability is the sum of the base lifestyle stats), then that could solve (alleviate?) your complaints, I think.

You could make it even simpler: each positive lifestyle quality gives its points cost as availability modifier.

Qr even simpler: Use the published availability rules. Runners Companion, p. 159

All of which is easily fixed if you have your higher force spirits spend edge to resist Summoning and Binding.
All of a sudden, summoning that Force 5+ Spirit is dangerous and could get you killed. We do this at our table for anything above Force 3. A Force 5 Spirit resisted a sumoning with 10 Hits and dealt 20 points of Damage (stun) to the Summoner (Edge case here I know, getting 10 successes on 10 dice). It does make a difference.

Advanced Lifestyles are 5 attributes + qualities

What magic traditions would need IMO: Drain attribute, spirit list, conjuring method (Summoning/Binding/Inhabition/None), mentor options (idols/totem/none, required/allowed), built-in qualities including Geasa.

If there were to be no change to the magic tradition stuff, I'm all for this change instead I would hope that some rules along the lines of spirit-summoner relationship would be added as well, indicating how likely the spirit would be to resist the summoning. I know this would probably end up being in magic teaparty land, but oh well.

BUT given the choice, I'd rather see the tradition differences brought back. Your group's change is probably mechanically simpler, but the tradition differences gave SR magic much more flavor imo.

I know that Flavor is a personal thing, but I find the SR4A Magical Traditions MUCH MORE flavorful that any previous edition. Possibly becasue we DO make the Traditions somewhat unique, per Demonseed Elite's indications of intent. We have always made the Fluff relevant, complete with Spirit selection that actually makes sense (rather than the most choice spirits), Mentors, Groups, Geasa, etc. *shrug*

Maybe my group is exceptional in that manner, I do not know, but it has never been a problem at our table to have fully realized Traditions with tons of flavor, even if it is mostly based in the Fluff. *shrug*

As for the Spirits using Edge; it is always an option that is in the book. We just choose to use it for Spirits above Force 3 to control the insanity of high level spirits (guess how many spirits above Force 5 have been Summonned, let alone Bound at our table). I know that some other tables set that threshold at any Spirit's Force Higher than the Summoner's Magic Attribute. That works too. *shrug*

It is truth, but I have the feeling that that was the intention.

I have played many RPGs in my life and usually my friends feel that in most systens "magic is nothing special and it should be". We were delighted when we started to play SR 2nd Edition and the mages/shammans where feared, not becuse they were ivulnerable, but they were special, different, and we felt like we needed a mage/shamman to protect us (even with the weird pools at that time).

I am not advocating that the 4 edition have the best solution, but the feeling is the same. I am 90% shure the writers wanted to create a game enviroment where elementals or spells could not be dealt with guns and explosives, and I admit I like it, makes magic unique, diferent.

In my opinion those guys realised that in many RPGs the spellcasters are just glass cannons (or variations of that), but in a futuristic game where the characters can have acess to modern weapons and explosives (including lasers, flame throwers, tasers, annoying SnS ammo etc.), why would magic be unique? Make magic even more explosive tham a grenade? Would be a competitive game among the players, not a cooperative one.

Now, I am pretty shure there must be a ton of exploits, imbalances in Shadowrun, as it happens to any RPG that launchs more tham 1 basic book. That powerplaying, min/maxing, rule-loopings will aways get hairy in a RPG that has a flexible point-buy style character creation and development (even worse in ShadowRun, becuse characters have different sources to play with, karma, money, essence etc.).

I believe most of my friends are "purists" and we actively confront powerplaying. Usually if someone is a caster in a medieval game, he will not use a polearm without a very good plot/explanation and taking into consideration the game balance all the time. Becuse of that, I believe our mages/shamans usually stay in the same power-level as everyone else. A good example of this: I can't remmember a mage or adept with a single piece of cyber/bioware in our games.

Of course it's just the way my friends and I are, just passing by to express that maybe the issue is not the magic itself, nor the lack of magic defenses, its the way people (including GMs) abuse things...

Just my 2 cents.

Personally I think it makes sense if a mage got some pieces of ware to make their daily life easier. Like the mage in AH's intro story to the magic chapter in 4A, who had a datajack.

The real problem in SR comes down to the fact that even though you know who the mage is, they can wear the same armor as everyone else. And they're less One Shot Wonders than that other game where they get one fireball at the level where it does the most good.

Combine that with the fact that a single mage using a single spell has >85% probability of taking out the entire opposition before the opposition can react and do this repeatedly...you start wondering why you need mundanes at all.