Just for conversations sake, I'm interested in some opinions....

Call me old fashioned, but one of the things I liked prior to 3rd edition was the inclusion of the general skill of "firearms" or "armed" or "unarmed" combat. It became pretty expensive in the long run to raise them above 6, which prompted you to specialize.

This is sorta a topic with 2 sections, one that I hope people familiar with firearms participate in, and the other part I hope those who like to number-crunch participate in.

1st off, does the +2 TN, 1/2 base skill dice pool when defaulting from a combat skill (via 3rd edition rules) to another combat skill feel right? Should there be a reduction in penalty for having more than one 'related' combat skill? The way the basic rules are setup, I could have 5 in pistols, 5 in rifle, 5 in assault rifle, 5 in SMG, but as soon as I pick up a shotgun, I get a +2 TN and 1/2 the dice pool. In real life is there enough of an overlap that if you know how to fire/use various types of weapons along the spectrum of say 'firearms', you become really much more useless EVERY time you pick up say the shotgun in the example.

This next part is for the numbercrunchers.

Is it more cost effective karma wise, to buy up skill levels in the various skills of pistol, rifle, assault rifle, shotgun, SMG, etc etc, so you can fire them all? Or should you default? At what point of skill dice you're defaulting from does it become not so bad to default?

That +2 TN really seems harsh to me.

Remember that shots with TN > 8 may not be defaulted.

I just encourage my players never to default, to be honest. I don't like the rules but anything else is either complicated, unbalanced, or even more painful to the player.

Note that one of the things to remember is that it is assumed you have had no time to familiarize yourself with this weird lil shotgun you just nicked from the broken body of the security guard, and this accounts for the steep defaulting penalties.

Alternatively, if you really feel like it, you can devise some system of generating a "generic" skill based on a composite of their overall skill in the area.

Or, if they do take the time to learn a lil about that shottie, you could award them a temporary skill specialization of 1-2 with it.

My take on the ranged combat skills can be found here. Nope, it doesn't make a whole damn lot of sense that someone who knows how to operate 3 kinds of long arms (e.g. ARs, shotguns, SMGs) is as screwed when it comes to firing a (non-assault) rifle as someone who is good at physically manipulating electronics-circuits when it comes to programming with a computer. And someone who goes from firing this to firing this is as useless as someone who's never even seen a gun before.

I've ranted about it a gazillion times, and my views haven't changed: if Computer, Electronics, Biotech and similar skills are all rolled into one, then at least Handguns and Long Arms should be as well. Game balance is not significantly altered, since the weapons specialist will still have to pick up a whole lot of skills, e.g. Handguns, Long Arms, Launch Weapons, Gunnery just to cover most common conventional small arms and support weapons.

True. Electronics vs. Electronics B/R is screwy. Yare yare.

~J

Electronics is a really different skill from electronics b&r, as I can testify from RL experience.
While studying physics I got some courses on electronics.
at the same time a friend got a course on electronics, not in college, but for the radioshack kind of things.

At the end of the course, I KNEW how the different parts of a circuit worked, and could `do the maths`on them, calculate impedances and resistances, integrals, complex numbers, whatever, and could tell you WHY this particular simple circuit allowed electricity to pass through under certain circumstances.
this approach gets too complex for bigger circuits however so there I got lost.

he just learned the practical uses and very little of the theory underneath, ie you put a resistance here, a condensator ?? there, a switch here parallel or serial and this happens.

at the end of the day, I could probably have helped design a condensator or a battery, he could not. however he could actually BUILD a USEFUL REAL LIFE circuit, with REAL LIFE applications, I could not.

DS

For a long time, I've been thinking about a new list of Shadowrun firearm skills. A whopping four of 'em -- Handguns, Long Guns, Full Auto, and Launch Weapons.

If it's a pistol, small smg, sawed off shotgun, etc, etc, with a certain concealability rating and lacking certain options/upgrades (most notably a shoulder stock), you use the Handguns score, as long as it's firing a burst or semi-auto.

If it absolutely requires both hands to be fired properly -- be it carbine, sniper rifle, assault rifle, shotgun, SAW, whatever -- you use Long Guns, and ditto with burst/semi auto requirement from above.

If it's been switched over to full auto and you're pulling the trigger, whether it's a machine pistol, smg, anything at all... you use Full Auto.

And Launch Weapons is, well, largely unchanged. It's still the one you use for stuff that goes boom when it hits.

The original idea's poached from the old Cyberpunk: 2020 campaign setting/guidebook, Hardwired (from the novel of the same name). I think it could convert over to Shadowrun pretty well, without being insanely imbalancing.

DarkShade is describing what he thinks is the Electronics and Electronics B/R. Actually, I think Academic/Background: Electronics is taking the exam paper on Electronics with all the symbols and math. Electronics is figuring what is wrong with your P-Sec or trid. Electronics B/R is doing it after you figured it out.

Academic/Background: Electronics - What the professor teaches in class.

Electronics - What you use to figure out what you need to do.

Electronics B/R - What you use when doing it.

Someone with Acad: Electronics may know how to design a circuit on paper. Someone with Electronics knows how the circuit looks like actually. Someone with B/R can solder all that together without spoiling the parts.

I've allowed something relevant in my games before. Someone wanted to be a super great mechanic. I allowed him to take a skill called "vehicle (B/R)" that worked with cars, bikes, fixed wing planes, blah, blah. I left off some of the more esoteric ones like vectored thrust and hovercraft, he had to buy those seperately, along with electronics (B/R) and such. I made the skill cost the standard cost x3 or x4 (I don't remember which). He thought it sounded like a fair deal, and so did I. We didn't end up getting to play that campaign a WHOLE lot, but it seemed to be working fine.
I've considered a similar deal with firearms, sort of bringing back the Firearms skill, deciding which weapons should be included in that and which shouldn't (like launch weapons, maybe) and then just assign a multiplier to the cost. Whatever seems fair.

I like the idea of firearms covering all man portable weapons ex launch, gunnery and may heavy weapons at 4 times the cost.

Possibly change it to being a separate skill that costs as normal but you must have 3 included skills hire than firearms. You may not specialise firearms. This would keep it from making all users the same. You would have 3 weapon types you re better at and still be skilled with everything.

Edward