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Toa
So what do you think about fixed TNs in Shadowrun? This is more about the basic principle of a fixed TN than about the specific way it works out in SR4.

Personally I don't like fixed TNs, since I have the feeling it takes out a lot of the depth of the system. I need both, varying dice pool size AND varying target number.
Grinder
As long as the TN is changeable and NOT the number of dices to be thrown, i will be fine with it.

edit: Just read the other thread to this topic. It's really a fixed TN. That sucks imo.
Capt. Dave
Fixed TNs make Capt. Dave cry. frown.gif

Synner
To sum up for those who haven't bothered checking; the system announced uses a Att+Skill Dice Pool vs. a fixed TN of 5 with varying thresholds/difficulties.
SirBedevere
The fixed TN will take some getting used to. I'll wait for the SR4 book before making my final decision on whether or not I like it. My wife Lady Bedevere thinks the concept sucks though!
NightHaunter
It does quite well in nWOD and this sounds similar. I'm a fan.
Trying to keep track of your total when you are going for a 24 for instance is irrratating espeshaly when your result is 23. twirl.gif
otaku mike
I say that's a great idea. But maybe I'm biased smile.gif
Honestly, when you see the rules built on that, you can't think anything else than it's a good idea. Much faster to use.
Patrick Goodman
QUOTE (SirBedevere @ Apr 5 2005, 04:21 AM)
The fixed TN will take some getting used to.

It did; this is what I was referring to here a few days ago when talking with Doctor Funkentstein about the new system.
hermit
Puts too much emphasis on attributes, unless skills get more dice per point than attributes in some way. It's surely a nice idea to speed things up a lot, which I do appreciate, and simplifies the system a great deal, whcih I also appreciate, but I fear that, this way, a quickness 3, pistols 6 elite sec guard will not be able to shoot as good as a quickness 9 night one who has never held a pistol before, and that's just idiotic.
Rajaat99
I've never had a problem with the "old" system. I think it stinks that the rules are being dumbed down.
I don't like fixed TN's. The changing dice pool is fine, but I agree with Toa and Hermit. I would like both changing dice pool and changing TN. This system will also place more focus on attributes than skills.
Gizmo
i don't mind fixed TN, as there will be modifications of the number of dice thrown it seems. In the end it comes to the same. Either you increase the difficulty to achieve a hit, or you reduce the number of possible hits.

on a more probabilistic point, i'm not good enough to know. but i think it's a nice change.
Spookymonster
I'm guessing this also means the Rule of Six is RIP? While I'm happy to see an end to the whole '6 is really 7' mess, I'm also saddened to see another unique SR element disappear.
Bigity
I'd be interested to see the numbers breakdown as far as chance of success with this method vs. the old one.
Austere Emancipator
I'll definitely keep the Rule of Six regardless, combined with Extra Successes for Every 6 Rolled Above TN. Ie. 2 successes for an 11, 3 successes for a 17. Or maybe it'd be simpler to just give the extra successes per 6 rolled, ie. 2 for 12, 3 for 18, etc.

QUOTE (Bigity)
I'd be interested to see the numbers breakdown as far as chance of success with this method vs. the old one.

Echo that. I'm sure it would be easy for someone who's just done statistics to provide a simple table of probability of X(1,2,3,...,8,9,10) or more successes with Y(1,2,3,...,18,19,20) dice. I can only do it for 1+ successes, and maybe 2+ if you give me 2 hours. frown.gif
hobgoblin
QUOTE (hermit)
Puts too much emphasis on attributes, unless skills get more dice per point than attributes in some way. It's surely a nice idea to speed things up a lot, which I do appreciate, and simplifies the system a great deal, whcih I also appreciate, but I fear that, this way, a quickness 3, pistols 6 elite sec guard will not be able to shoot as good as a quickness 9 night one who has never held a pistol before, and that's just idiotic.

most likely the night one will take a -dice mod or a +success treshold mod as its only using attributes for the test. but trow in one skill dice and suddenly you dont get that mod and boom eek.gif

only time will tell if this system will suck or not...
Elve
QUOTE (hobgoblin)
most likely the night one will take a -dice mod or a +success treshold mod as its only using attributes for the test. but trow in one skill dice and suddenly you dont get that mod and boom eek.gif

I think a maximum of #skill dice from attribute or something similar might fix that?
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (Elve)
I think a maximum of #skill dice from attribute or something similar might fix that?

That'd get you into the exact same problems that you have with defaulting in SR3 -- it would in some cases be better not to get a skill at all, since having a skill at 1 might actually reduce your chances of success from what you get through defaulting.
nezumi
I'm in favor of variable TNs, but my mind could be changed. This is an area where I'm going on faith that FanPro will make it okay (although I voted I prefer variable.)

Don't fail me, FanPro!! I'm watching you.
Spookymonster
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)
QUOTE (Elve)
I think a maximum of #skill dice from attribute or something similar might fix that?

That'd get you into the exact same problems that you have with defaulting in SR3 -- it would in some cases be better not to get a skill at all, since having a skill at 1 might actually reduce your chances of success from what you get through defaulting.

How about something like a max of 3 dice when defaulting to an attribute alone? The implication is that using nothing but raw ability, your results will be average at best. Having at least 1 level in the appropriate skill would remove the cap. That way, having a skill will always be better than defaulting.
Bigity
So, instead of having no reason to learn a skill that defaults to a high attribute, there is now no reason to learn a skill higher then 1 that links to a high attribute.

hobgoblin
you still end up with the crasy stuff that a night one with minimal training can kick the ass of a avarage guard with avarage training any day...

edit: outch, bigity out-typed me nyahnyah.gif
hermit
yeap. no matter how I turn this, I see many problems with the apparent upscaling of attribute importance. indifferent.gif
Spookymonster
QUOTE (Bigity)
So, instead of having no reason to learn a skill that defaults to a high attribute, there is now no reason to learn a skill higher then 1 that links to a high attribute.

Sure there would... if skills are cheaper to raise than attributes. Official statements seem to indicate that raising attributes is going to be hella expensive. If it costs less to raise all your Qui-based skills from 1 to 2 than it would to raise your Qui from 6 to 7, you'd probably pick the skills instead. Raising your base attributes so as to increase your dice pools when defaulting would face the law of diminishing returns with a max cap; anything above 3 would be useless to the unskilled.

I'm sure there comes a point in the attribute cost vs. skillset cost matrix where it becomes cheaper to raise the attribute, but it still forces you to focus on a few key skills vs. being an untrained Quickness god.
Orient
Absolute crap. For years White Wolf has been using the retarded little brother system to SRs d6 system. Now SR is moving more towards WW...? Absolutely wonderful.

Given that they've done some pretty amazing things in the past, I'll withhold final judgement until I see it, but it doesn't sound very promising..
CradleWorm
As far as high attributes go... I have to imagine that the troll ganger with street smarts and a Brawl 3 and Strength 7 is going to be a match for the trained human security guard with a karate 5 and Strength 5. Lets face it, the human knows his stuff... but the troll has 3 feet and 300 pounds on him. It should be tough going on the human.

Now, with high attributes, does it make since to learn skills? Yes, because I'm sure there will be an untrained penalty for using a skill when you have "no skill." Does that make learning a skill at 1 useful? You bet. A really smart guy, lets say Einstein, with no computer skill is going to have a tough time using a computer, but even a normal kid today, with no formal training (skill of 1) can navigate and use a computer effectively. There is a big difference between knowing nothing and just enough to be dangerous.

Also, you are still assuming attributes will be used in the same way as in SR3. Attributes might not be more important then before, just used differently. For example, using body to resist damage may not happen any more. Perhaps, Body just represents how much damage you can take. I personally enjoy the resisted test however, but adding extra dice to resist for armor sounds good.

In the end, FanPro announced that they are trying to streamline the system. Fixing the target number is one way to accomplish that. In SR3 you had to compute a target number and number of dice for every action in combat. Now, you have no dice pools to worry about. Add attribute to skill and your done. GM will add or remove dice for modifications. No more waiting for a player to figure out how to best use pool dice. No more adding up target number modifiers for range, visibility, or injury. It might not be as complex, but it will be fast, and that is what FanPro said they wanted.
NightHaunter
I've been covering that very thing Here: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...opic=8041&st=75

Any thoughts
Vuron
I don't mind it that much as it will almost certainly end the exploding die system.

Actually if the mechanics are roughly compatible I might go with a (TN 7 d10 with 10s counting double like exalted) as there are some interesting mechanics that could be ported over (stunts etc) that could make shadowrun a more cinematic game.
StranD
I've been playing Shadowrun since the first days... Hi to everybody... first post.

Changing the target numbers to a fixed system scares the crap out of me for the flexibility of the game. Regardless...

What if they did something along the lines of the original Shadowrun... You roll your skill plus get an equal number of dice equal to your attribute TO A MAXIMUM OF your original skill level?

It doesn't address the tactics factor of a dice pool but it might be workable. It addresses the issue where somebody will default to an attribute over the lower skill level. Not sure how defaulting to an attribute alone would be handled.
hobgoblin
unless the cost for increasing attribs goes way up there is will be a hard sell to take a lot of skill increases over a attrib increase for intel or quickness if the skill connections stay similar to today.

and if one do like strand suggests then it just gets even more interesting to go for attrib over skill unless the untrained pentalty is big. and as the target number is fixed the only mods they can do is decrease dice or increase "hit" requirement. neither is a nice solution...
mr0b1tsc
I agree the target number of 5 makes sense, but if there are no modifiers having both a high attribute and a high skill will be needed to pull off some of the high end stunts.
Rajaat99
QUOTE (Spookymonster @ Apr 5 2005, 02:36 PM)
QUOTE (Bigity @ Apr 5 2005, 10:15 AM)
So, instead of having no reason to learn a skill that defaults to a high attribute, there is now no reason to learn a skill higher then 1 that links to a high attribute.

Sure there would... if skills are cheaper to raise than attributes. Official statements seem to indicate that raising attributes is going to be hella expensive. If it costs less to raise all your Qui-based skills from 1 to 2 than it would to raise your Qui from 6 to 7, you'd probably pick the skills instead. Raising your base attributes so as to increase your dice pools when defaulting would face the law of diminishing returns with a max cap; anything above 3 would be useless to the unskilled.

I can guarantee that it will be cheaper to raise your Quickness than to raise ALL your Quickness based skills. Maybe, and I strongly suggest maybe, it will be cheaper to buy ALL you Qickness based skills up when your Quickness is very high, like 10, but I doubt it.
L.D
QUOTE (Rajaat99)
I can guarantee...

So I take it that you're a freelancer who's been developing the game then...
metal-dog
Fixed TNs have sucked in StoryTeller so I see no reason they shouldn't suck even more in SR in which the variable TNs worked a lot better than they ever did in ST.

Based solely on this piece of information, I can already say that I will keep using the 3rd ed. rules. If anything for 4th ed looks promising, I suppose I may convert it to the Shadowrun system.
Ol' Scratch
QUOTE (Synner)
To sum up for those who haven't bothered checking; the system announced uses a Att+Skill Dice Pool vs. a fixed TN of 5 with varying thresholds/difficulties.

Okay, I have to say... I'm disappointed by that. A great deal so.

In the beginning, it made sense that Shadowrun and the Storyteller systems had similar basics since some of the same people worked on both. But this? This sounds way too much like they just grabbed one of the latest editions of Storyteller and stole the idea right out of the book. :/

I was hoping for some genuine originality in the new system. frown.gif
Shadow
Well it is Fanpro's Shadowrun now, all traces of Fasa have been removed.
RunnerPaul
QUOTE (Shadow)
Well it is Fanpro's Shadowrun now, all traces of Fasa have been removed.

Hardly.
Synner
QUOTE (Doctor Funkenstein @ Apr 5 2005, 10:58 PM)
QUOTE (Synner @ Apr 5 2005, 03:27 AM)
To sum up for those who haven't bothered checking; the system announced uses a Att+Skill Dice Pool vs. a fixed TN of 5 with varying thresholds/difficulties.

Okay, I have to say... I'm disappointed by that. A great deal so.(...) I was hoping for some genuine originality in the new system. frown.gif

As has been mentioned elsewhere, the new SR system was in development before nWoD was announced, although a case could probably be made that there are similarities to the Aeonverse system, which preceeded nWoD.

However, those who've played Trinity in particular (and possibly Adventure!) know it plays nothing like the nWoD and there are many system nuances and modifiers. There's no reason the new SR system (beyond the obvious D6) shouldn't be as versatile and different as Trinity was to the current nWoD. Note that there are still various core system elements missing from my clarification (and which I can't advance at this point), that will bring some people round.

As several people have said it is still recognizably Shadowrun, in both playstyle and atmosphere.
otaku mike
And most importantly, I wouldn't care about rules "originality". I'm more interested in a good system that runs smoothly and leaves room for roleplaying, even if it's a pure copy of another game's system, than a completely new and original system, half baked and clunky.
Of course, you're entitled to want the best of both world, with a new original system that works flawlessly, but that's not the point I was addressing...
GrinderTheTroll
QUOTE (Synner @ Apr 5 2005, 02:27 AM)
To sum up for those who haven't bothered checking; the system announced uses a Att+Skill Dice Pool vs. a fixed TN of 5 with varying thresholds/difficulties.

Intially, I like the sound of that.

Makes bonuses and penalties drive the TN as well as dice to increase probability.

OK, we need someone to mathematically show how many dice will be needed to keep roughly the same probability of hitting a TN as that TN increases (sorry I never much cared for statistics).
Fortune
QUOTE (GrinderTheTroll)
Makes bonuses and penalties drive the TN as well as dice to increase probability.

OK, we need someone to mathematically show how many dice will be needed to keep roughly the same probability of hitting a TN as that TN increases

I'm not sure what you are getting at. The TN is fixed at 5, and therefore does not fluctuate.
GrinderTheTroll
QUOTE (Fortune)
QUOTE (GrinderTheTroll @ Apr 7 2005, 03:00 AM)
Makes bonuses and penalties drive the TN as well as dice to increase probability.

OK, we need someone to mathematically show how many dice will be needed to keep roughly the same probability of hitting a TN as that TN increases

I'm not sure what you are getting at. The TN is fixed at 5, and therefore does not fluctuate.

So no situational modifiers, ever? No "+1 for Medium, +2 for Long, +3 for Extreme" range adjustements? So every single TN will always and forever be 5?

That I might not like, but making the base TN=5 sounds more reasonable IMO.
Fortune
Those adjustments are supposed to be reflected by adding or removing dice from the Pool (made up of Attribute+Skill), or by increasing or decreasing the Threshold of Hits (successes at TN 5). As it stands right now, there is no fluctuation of the TN at all ... it stands fixed at 5.
Jérémie
Null vote, because my asnwer is not in it.

A fixed TN is an improvement over the old system. If there is no rule of six, it's again an improvement.

But this system is still "roll 10 to 15 dices with a beginner character", it's still a lot of dices for nothing.

A attribute+skill+dices vs TN would have been better I think... something with 2 or 3 dices, and the all sum up. Like Fusion, or dozens of others systems around here. Quite like what Gurth (iirc) proposed on ShadowRN some times ago.

Why roll 10 or 15 dices when 2 or 3 is enough to add randomness (spelling ?) to a test ?
Jérémie
QUOTE (Fortune @ Apr 6 2005, 06:46 PM)
Those adjustments are supposed to be reflected by adding or removing dice from the Pool (made up of Attribute+Skill), or by increasing or decreasing the Threshold of Hits (successes at TN 5). As it stands right now, there is no fluctuation of the TN at all ... it stands fixed at 5.

That is going to be the exact same mistake as the old system. One of the major glitch with the old system was, for a specific test, you could have 3 differents bonus/malus : dices number, TN number, or number of success needed.
And of course, no one even bother to write this down, and explain the differences between these 3, what they would imply, and so on.

So the TN number variable is fixed, why keep 2 type of bonus/malus when one is enough ? Who is going to write a statistic analysis in the SR4 rulebook about a +1 threshold vs a -1 dice ?

I can't believe that in 2005, after 30 years of experiment; 40 or 50 very skilled and knowledgeable people around the world can't write a pure mechanic test system that is simple, very fast, easy to understand, easy to modify, easy to apply, easy to use, and yet powerful. Fusion does it, the Chaosium % system does it, the d20 system (I'm talking pure test mechanic here, not hitpoints, classes, level or whatever) does it, and I'm sure many others.
Eyeless Blond
What sounds reasonable to me is that you add/remove dice from the dice pool to account for player options, rather like it is in the current system where you can, for instance, withhold dice from your Sorcery test to increase the area of an area spell. Maybe you withhold pool dice from all tests made in that round to use in Dodge tests or something? *shrug*

The adjustment to threshold will be for GM (envorinment)-imposed modifiers; Blind Fire, for instance, would be a +4-8 to Threshold, for instance.

But then that's just what sounds reasonable to me. I'd also have players reroll 6s as if they were another die. This would mean, for instance, you roll 7d6 and get 6, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You reroll the 6, getting a 5, and thus four (three plus the successful reroll) total successes. Of course it's not my system, so I don't know if that's how it'll actually work or not, but that's what sounds intuitive to me.
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (Eyeless Blond)
I'd also have players reroll 6s as if they were another die.

So that makes it at least you, mfb and me. Maybe after some more discussion on the matter and perhaps a few more "revelations" about SR4 we could set up a vote to see how many really want to keep the exploding dice.
mintcar
I read it similarily. Modifiers doesn´t have to mean environment modifiers, it can mean equipment and cyber as well. Dice would be modified by personal conditions and player options. Threshold would signify the difficulty of the task itself, and so be modified by the environment and such. Pretty simple and understandable.
Kanada Ten
Defaulting without skill may also not always be possible, or half the dice pool, etc. Still the probability curve with a TN of 5 is weak at either extreme.
GrinderTheTroll
First Deckers, now no more "rule of six"?

/mourn.
JongWK
QUOTE
Puts too much emphasis on attributes, unless skills get more dice per point than attributes in some way. It's surely a nice idea to speed things up a lot, which I do appreciate, and simplifies the system a great deal, whcih I also appreciate, but I fear that, this way, a quickness 3, pistols 6 elite sec guard will not be able to shoot as good as a quickness 9 night one who has never held a pistol before, and that's just idiotic.


The problem is that you're still thinking about attributes by SR3 standards. Plus, you should also consider the possible penaties for defaulting.
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