No offense intened Patrick, I just tend to make my posts off the cuff.

I did have another question, but I'm not sure if it might break any NDAs or anything, so feel free to ignore it if it does.

6) Will there be any type of edge/flaw mechanic built into the core rules, and if so, is it going to be handled in a way similar to how it's been handled or will is it completely new in its implentation? As a follow-up, if there is one, how do you like it compared to the current way of things?

I have to say here, not to go against the stream, SR4 has me a LOT less worried than I was when SR got turned over to the Clix people. I just knew that all they were gonna be putting out were Troll Barbies on big dials, and just dropping the books altogether.

So, I will be anxiously awaiting the arrival, and if I can swing it, may even go to GenCon Indy to get a copy firsthand.

Since not a whole lot has come out yet about the spell system, I would like to know how it is changing. I know this also probably comes under the "game mechanics" ban in the NDA, but a guy can dream.

Hey, that's a thought - it's getting released in the US at the con, what about Europe?

Like all FanPro books, it will be shipped to European distributors and stores as promptly as possible.

Since SR4 is going to be debuted at GenCon Indy, will there be game events scheduled? If so, on what days, and how can I get a piece of the action?

First) Is SR going to stick with the classic L,M,S,D damage system or will it adopt a fixed 10 hit point system or will it be some completely different?

Second) How is combat handled, is it an opposed test similar to SR3s Melee or does it function as the SR3 Ballistic combat and will it allow for dodging and other cinematic combat features?

Third) Initiative, how does it function in SR4?

Thats something I'm very interested in knowing too Blitzen , will we keep our Damage Code system. I hope we do , its just one of those things that set SR apart from DnD Case in Point
DnD : (DM to Fighter) : ok take 50 points of Damage
(Fighter to DM): bah thats alright plenty more where that came from!
(DM to Mid Level Mage) : and you take 50 Damage as well
(Mage) : *silently grabs a new character sheet *
SR : (GM to high Karma Sammie) : and you take a Deadly wound
(Sammie) :*silently grabs a new character sheet *
(GM to high Karma Mage) : you did too
(Mage) :* silently grabs a new character sheet *
I don't know I just like the fact that a deadly wound is just that : Deadly
If it can kill you in shadowrun , it doesn't care what archetype you are , it doesn't care if your awakened or mundane it kills you ; and honestly thats one thing I can't stand about D&D , if your a fighter somehow your body can take some unnatural amount of damage and just shrug it off , no penalties to any of his attacks just goes from 60 to dead... I guess I just like the lethality of Shadowrun , it makes death the great equalizer it should be .

I second that. In our last SR-session our dwarven sammie with really body value nearly died. He was slashed by two gangers with cougar fineblades. The player of the dwarf was so surprised how it deadly SR can be that even forget to complain about it.

Yes, the damage system, and the flowing, drain resist, MP-less magic system, were the single best things SR had top offer. If these are gone, I'll use SR3revised, and won't buy a BBB4, period. That's what made SR SR for me, and if that is missing, I can as well go and convert SR to D20 and implement character classes and all that shit.

SR is always deadly, and even a 400-KArma character can be outright killed by two Red Samurai with machine pistols and ExEx ammo firing two salvos each. Bang. No more 400 Karma character. In D20, the lv.20 fighter would walk up to the 300 man lv.1 orc army, pull his +5 enchanted combat spoon, and proceed to wipe the floor with them. With a certain level, D20 turns into DragonballZ. SR never did, it always kept a character grounded and aware of their own mortality.

I hope they'll make drain a little bit harder to resist, but that's the only thing i want to be changed when it comes to damage, combat and the like.

Actually, drain is fien as it is, but the effects of spells need to be adjusted so that force DOES matter. I mean, invisibility or mask or stealth are almost as good on ,low levels as on high, and keeping them low makes drain resisting soooo much easier.

Good point too. I dislike the way drain is handled. Half Force rating is too low imo. This is usually 2 or 3 and that's handled easily by most mages. I know that there are ways to harrass any mage/shaman, but that's not the point. i want drain to be a more serious drawback of mojo-throwing. Not deadly, but it should leave you with some minor injuries. And no, i don't want to start a discussion about mages vs. mundanes - who's more fucked up or sth. like that.

Not nescessarily that every spell causes drain, but it shouldn't be that, drain-wise, uneven force spells are as hard to resist as even ones that are lower force (Force 5 spells, like force 4 spells, have a base drain resist number of 2).

Also, with the new system of dice pool modification, combat will already speed up, even if the old hit test/dodge/damage resist if applicable mechanic is kept, because hit and dodge can be rolled simultaneously, and results then be compared, and then (if applicable) damage resist is rolled. essentially speeds things up without crippling the general idea of SR combat. I hope they won't make it opposed tests to speed combat up more. Melee is handled that way, and I have always hated how Melee works in SR3, where every Kung Fu 10, str 6 Bruce Lee type can be knocked out by a troll with martial arts 0, str 12 he attacks from behind under cover of silence and invisibility spells, because the defaulting Str 12 troll can knock him off in that test, whcih makes no sense at all, but is how things happen under SR3 rules). THAT could use a revision.

A troll attacking from behind disguised by an invisiblity spell is nothing that happens so often.

But you're right, a good fighter should have an edge about an nerd with melee 0.

Er, no, that's not how things happen under SR3 rules. Even a Brawling 4 Troll is at a pretty significant disadvantage against Kung Fu Fighter 10, and even a single point of modifiers tilts the balance even more. In your example, the Troll's chances to hit the Bruce Lee type are atrocious.

~J

Bad example.
The point is : troll with 4 in skill and a club (sr4) av. 2 hit - has more chances to win against kungfu master 10 in skills (sr6) av. (less than 2 hits). Even without counting the damage.

Even worst point : someone with a gun was always advantaged in close combat, because being able to counter strike when he was defending, and the other had no possibility to counter the bullet attack (hum I think my english is shit on this post, I hope you get the point):
The trouble was a really bad error of design in rules, because the flow of time was treated in two incompatible ways depending on weather you are using a ranged weapon or a close combat weapon.
Close combat weapons use a parallel flow of time (you give time to your opponent to react)
Ranged weapons use a sequential flow of time (you don't give time to your opponent - even if you are actually in close combat)

Considering old combat pool as bonus-time.

I really hope they will fix that in SR4 !!!

That's way too simplistic to bee even remotely realistic. Besides, still, if the attacker is out of a weapon's maximum range, he just has no way of hitting back. Not to even think of the fact taht being shot at doesn't automatically equal knowing WHERE that shot came from ... no offense to you, Blitzen, but this isn't a good idea.

Unless the so called experts here on the boards are wrong (and we know that never happens).

I have been told repeatedly here on the forums that wound modifiers DO NOT affect your drain resistance tests.

Unless they should affect other damage/soak tests, they don't affect drain resistance tests. What makes you think they do?

Well Grinder was saying drain TN's were too low.

Just add the wound level mods in and see if those tn's are too low.

See?

you want to take your spell slingers down a level, add the wound tn back in.

Let me tell you that really hurts when you're toting around a serious stun, and you're TRYING to resist another serious stun from the manabolt you just threw.

or

you just GOTTA heal a sammy teammate and he has no essence and you have a serious stun.

He'll die and you'll pass out.

n/m. I wasn't thinking.

...Because reaction and initiative are not how fast you are.
They're a measure of how fast you can change what you're doing.

You can have ungodly reaction and initiative and be the slowest thing on the planet.

I mean.. take a dwarf adept with quickness 1, improved reflexes 3, int 6.

That's initiative: 9+4d6.. initiative 13-33, average score, 23.

Said adept is the slowest metahuman on the face of the planet, in all likelihood (at least possessing of 4 working limbs) -- but he can adjust what he's doing really really well. He can run at.. yep, 2m per combat turn. All of 0.5m a phase, at his top initiative. Walking? What a joke, he can walk 0.25m a phase. Even with 33 initiative, how can anyone expect him to be able to 'make attacks come from anywhere' or however you justify making counter-attacks not occur when you're out-initiatived, or just not occur at all?

Just because a troll has 1 action doesn't mean the troll is slow -- and just having multiple actions doesn't make you fast. Likewise, going fast doesn't mean you can't be knocked out. In fact, it's easier to get knocked out going fast -- when you run into the hit because they've timed you, you're going that much faster so it hits that much harder.

The concept of 'I have 6 complex actions an initiative round, I am your god, you cannot touch me in melee' is insane -- you can will get knocked out if you rely just on the number of actions. And you should be, otherwise skill becomes pointless. I mean, so what if you've got some uncybered mundane who consistantly beats the grand masters of three different martial arts -- just because someone can change what he or she is doing multiple times in 3 seconds does not mean they'll win. Especially if they're not even remotely close to as skilled.

The easiest way to "take mages down a notch" is to use the rule printed right there in the book, where it says "to take mages down a notch, don't cut the Power in half when figuring drain resistance test TNs."

But, I dunno, maybe I'm just crazy. There I go, thinkin' what's in the book might be a good idea.

Saying initiative is not speed is quite correct. It is another non-realistic problem in SR3, because wired reflexes makes you quicker to swing your sword etc...
This is stupid - but it is not the worst point.

Some of you were wrongly speaking about serial/parallel time flow in ranged/close combat.
This is a mistake !!! Actually the point in SR3 was a difference between ranged/close WEAPONS.
Which means I can't parry the arms carrying a gun on my head, even when the guy is less than one step away from me !!!
I think it could be patched saying: firearms use close combat rules with adapted mods - when those weapon are used in close combat (it seems so obvious to me )
Hope for better rules in SR4 ...

It was always my understanding that initiative was a representation of how fast you think and respond to external events, not physical speed but the ability to act upon your decisions. It's not your fists moving too quick to be caught on high speed camera, it's throwing multiple punches in rapid succession because you've already figured out where to throw the fourth punch before the first has landed. That was why Wired Reflexes got the optional rule about responding reflexively to surprises, the character's wires moved their body before their brain had finished thinking.

It's true that the attack/counterattack combat rules mean a character can get multiple 'free' hits and possibly beat opponents who are faster than them. I have tried a couple of things in the past, one was that every attack or counterattack had to include some combat pool dice, so that when you ran out you could no longer defend against incoming attacks, but that really favoured those with high combat pools as opposed to those with high initiative. Another tactic was to only allow characters to use their combat pool (no dice from their skill) during an initiative pass when they had no action, and for their combat pool to refresh during their first action in each round rather than at the start of a round. So everyone starts with zero in their combat pool, refreshes it to full at their first round (and so is rather helpless until then) and must make those dice last until their first action in the next combat round. It seems the Combat Pool is dissapearing in 4th Edition, but I feel that a reduction in the size of your dice pool for every extra attack you defend against (extra attacks being determined by how many actions you yourself have) is a good way to go for melee combat. Has there been any word yet on actual combat rules/changes?

On the subject of ranged weapons in melee combat there are two things to consider. Stopping a melee weapon is a matter of either intercepting the weapon or the arm that is swinging it. If you grab the arm of someone with a handgun they just need to pivot their wrist and they can still shoot you, secondly I imagine a handgun would make a poor tool to defend against a melee weapon and that something as big as an assault rifle would be difficult to use in any capacity. I would like to see some clear penalties for using ranged weapons in close quarters, I have had players that tried to get away with using their firearms skills in melee combat so that they didn't need to bother learning a melee combat skill.

Every time I wanted to use guns in melee... I had to make an opposed test with unarmed/cyberimplant combat... and if I won, I could make a test to shoot the person I was fighting.

I don't remember if I had restricted dice or not, it was a year ago that I actually did it. Yay for mages with swords that you can only hurt with your gun..


And the wired reflexes speed thing:

It makes you react faster than your brain can control. In effect, you start moving before your brain catches up. That's not you going faster, that's you going before you start thinking. The real life version of those people who always manage to open their mouth and say something stupid even when they know better.

Personally, I don't see any problem with counterhits. It's a lot easier, it requires a vast amount less effort, and is usually far more reflexive then an attack. So you've got someone coming in low with a knife to try and make your mistress an unhappy woman.. You spin out of the way (reflex) and your knifearm lashes into their back as they go past.

Or you're the troll, and you've got the terrifyingly fast furry elf attacking you, but he's telegraphing everything (low skill) and you're pretty good. He comes in, you drop your elbow and he runs into it. He tries again from a different side and you swing your arm as he's getting close. Glances off his head, but it stops his attack. He launches one more attack, going in fast, desperate... and you just step to the side and stick your arm out. He runs, neck first, into the massive line of corded muscle and bone, and ends up lying on the air 4 feet above ground before he falls.

All of those particular things.. well.. defend and counter are reflexive. They aren't based on conscious mind, they're built into muscle memory -- and they far faster then most every attack -- they have to be, they're designed to be used when you see/sense it coming.

edit: changed for clarity.