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Ellery
I'd like to discuss what the various advantages and disadvantages of dice systems are, in order to understand what the current change (as currently understood) means for Shadowrun.

First, let's be clear that dice systems matter. They matter to how you play the game, and they matter to the story. If you're writing fiction loosely inspired by the Shadowrun setting, it doesn't matter one whit what the dice mechanics are. You design the story the way you want to, throw in "smartlink" and "astral" here and there, and generate a piece of fiction essentially independent of the rules. But that isn't what happens when you play the game. You're building a story there, too, except you don't always get to decide which direction the plot will turn, what will succeed and what will fail. The dice decide.

So it's important to get the dice system right. If it's done wrong, you don't just end up with a system that's a pain to play. You can end up with a system that destroys the ability of roleplayers to participate in an engaging story, because the dice are fighting them at every turn. (At that point, some just give up and go diceless.)

I've grumbled at the dice system in SR2 and SR3 often enough, but it has a subtle genius to it when it comes to storytelling. When you want your story to go a certain way, you throw your dice pool at it, and then your karma pool. It's a mechanism for the dice to listen to how much you care about an outcome. This has real power in a roleplaying setting, and opens up all sorts of sophisticated tactics and opportunities if you care to take them. You can ignore them, if you want, and not be bothered by the complexity. Likewise, if you're trying to do something difficult, it's never truly out of reach with the Rule of 6. You'll never perform a really competent job at the difficult task (many successes), but you have some hope of getting it done.
It nicely captures the one-in-a-million basket thrown at 00:01 from across the court, the crazy luck of shooting an assassin in a distant window in the dark, and other nearly but not completely impossible tasks.

My question about the dice system is whether the current mechanics can possibly afford these same advantages. If the answer is no, I then have to ask whether it would make more sense to streamline the old system than switch to a new one. I have other concerns about the mechanics (and other complaints about the existing mechanics), but let's look at these two questions first.

First, let's look at how a player's determination can affect an outcome. With the stated mechanic, taken at face value, someone who is pretty good with a sword is probably also pretty good with a mace and at gunnery and every other skill linked to that attribute. So there's less variability in outcomes to begin with. It doesn't matter if the books declare "Str 3 is average!". It still reduces the differences in people's ability, so if they really care about one thing (like being a good swordsman), it matters less that they're skilled in it (again, everything taken at face value). So in the long-term, the mechanic proposed seems to reduce the impact of determination on abilities. (I'm waiting to see why it isn't always smart to raise your attributes until they max out before paying any attention to skills at all. Maybe raising attributes will be ten times more expensive?)

Okay, so if your determination is lessened in the long term, what about the short term? It looks like it's going to be hard to win a sword duel because your character built up his sword skill. Now that there aren't dice pools, you don't get to decide as much how determined you are to not be hit, or to succeed at once swing. Stuff just happens to you--unless, presumably, you use karma pool.

But there's a problem with karma pool too. Our master swordsman probably doesn't have as much karma pool as a strong runner who has lots of karma, but has barely ever touched a sword. In fact, if karma pool provides much flexibility, the strong runner is probably going to wipe the floor with our master swordsman. Now, granted, with existing pool rules you have some of the same problems. But it seems to me that it will be a challenge to allow the player's determination to affect outcomes, and you could get even less desirable results than in SR3.

Now let's turn to the fixed-TN system and whether an average person will ever, ever be able to accomplish an extraordinary task. The key problem is that if you have fewer dice than you need successes, you're screwed. Without some extra mechanic (like the Rule of 6), if you need five successes and you have three dice, you're never going to make it. Beginners' luck? Forget about it--not with that dice system.

It doesn't really matter how many dice are rolled, or how many successes are needed. The flaw is inherent in the system. If you need 3 successes, someone with a stat of 2 and skill of 1 can do it almost 4% of the time. But someone with a skill of 2 and stat of 0, or a stat of 1 and skill of 1 can never, ever do it, not in a million years. The only real way to fix this is to go to very large numbers of dice. For example, if you need 10 successes, and you roll 10 dice, your chance of success is about one in 60000. The difference between that and "no chance at all" isn't likely to matter in more than one game you play in your lifetime, so there everything is cool. But rolling such massive handfuls of dice all the time is really awkward.

What do other people think? Can you see how to keep the dice from destroying the impact of a player's determination and desire with this new mechanic? Can you see how to give the unskilled some chance of success at difficult tasks? Do you not care to have these things in your games?

(Hint to playtesters and those in the know: have you played these rules with badass munchkins who roll fists full of dice? With middle school kids? With a spindly geeky hacker in a fistfight? Do they still work there, or are the rules for typical runners only and broken for everyone else? This is where the problems are more likely to show up and terrorize the intended storyline.)
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (Ellery @ Apr 5 2005, 08:36 PM)
If you're writing fiction loosely inspired by the Shadowrun setting, it doesn't matter one whit what the dice mechanics are.  You design the story the way you want to, throw in "smartlink" and "astral" here and there, and generate a piece of fiction essentially independent of the rules.

Speaking from personal experience, that isn't remotely true. I have always kept the rules in mind while writing SR fiction; I've found it's a good way to keep the SR feel.

~J
Raskolnikov
I echo the concern about the border cases. Additionally I'd like to say that threshold for difficult tasks reduces the degree of sucess significantly. Even skilled characters will find many, many all-or-nothing situations. While this may be applicable in some situations (defusing a bomb) is it really a desired mechanic to build into the system for all situations (running a race, tracking down data, tailing the badguys, or sneaking through the forest)?

I was quite happy when threshold was removed in the decking rules the first time around. It reduced the problems that existed in the border-cases. While I feel it aggravates them, I don't think just threshold causes these problems.

Without compensating mechanics, natural talent will quickly backseat training. This posses significant concerns in many cases. Every decker needs to be a genius. Every gunfighter needs to be a wiry, lithe athlete in prime condition. Every martial artist needs to be a hulking brute. If they are not, they will find themselves little better than the genius winging it, track star picking up a gun for the first time, or brick of a man swinging his fists like hammers.

Granted the system hasn't been fully disclosed but the jack of all trades seems to not be a character buying many skills but instead spending most points at creation in attributes.
kevyn668
What will be, will be. To struggle, however, gives meaning to life.

[ Spoiler ]
Spookymonster
With a Rule of Six-ish ruling (e.g., every 6 entitles you to add 1 more die to your pool) and a cap on pool size for unskilled tests (e.g., no more than 3 dice allowed in your pool unless you have an applicable skill) you'll make the impossible possible (you rolled 7 successes with a pool of only 2 dice thanks to the Rule of 6) while keeping the implausible unlikely (a Night One with Qui-9 and no Pistols skill has the same chance as an unskilled human with Qui-3).

Of course, this is pure conjecture on my part.
Vuron
Grr I posted some possible solutions to the tendency of attributes to overweigh skills in this style system in the faq thread. There are so many damned threads these days it's hard to argue in all of them wink.gif
Wireknight
I agree with Ellery; this system has a potential to eliminate some of the good things that were possible in Shadowrun, i.e. control on the part of the player from moment to moment how much effort they expend toward defense or offense in a fight, down to a single die, and the fact that most any task one can undertake in Shadowrun can at most be very unlikely, rather provably impossible.

However, we know the dice system, but we have little idea how that dice system will actually be played out as far as rules go for combat, magic, hacking, and the like. Ideally, they will complement the system and allow greater modelling of outcome without sacrificing potential in exchange for simplicity. I also hope that they will ultimately work in similar fashions. The major problem I always saw, in Shadowrun, was not the way dice were rolled, but the fact that most systems were totally different in number of actions, target numbers, etc, etc, etc...
Ellery
Kage, I always keep the rules in mind when writing fiction myself. I'm just contrasting the different constraints faced by people who are working artistically to develop the feel of a setting through fiction (where rules-breaking or rules-bending happenings can nonetheless be thrilling and motivating), and what happens when you're actually playing the game.

But just imagine if authors always kept in mind the presence of a threshold system, and their hero could never perform the miraculous save at the last minute because he needed too many successes. It'd take out some of the thrill of the writing, wouldn't it? And of playing, too, in my opinion.

Rask makes a good point about the experts-suck phenomenon. I don't fail to tie my shoes 10% of the time, and I don't think my attribute plus skill in shoe-tying is as much as six (which has a 9% failure rate on a single success). I'd wager that I can tie my shoes properly 1000 times in a row without fail, and I really doubt that I have a skill plus attribute plus modifiers of 17 (0.1% failure rate). But maybe it's really, really inexpensive to buy a very high level of shoe-tying skill.

Spooky suggests a way to generate the possibility of success for an opponent of lesser skill. That's rather weird mechanically, since you have to keep grabbing more dice as you roll 6s, or reroll ones you've already rolled which makes the final count harder. But it seems to solve the problem. For the hypothetical example before, with three successes needed and only two dice, you jump from a 12% success rate with 3 dice to get 3 successes down to 4.5% with only 2 dice (and 1% with one die). That works pretty well. I like it. I hope they do it. If they weren't planning on doing it, they should.

Vuron refers me to his FAQ thread post. I'll go read his stuff there, then come back and comment here if appropriate.

WK's point about the dice system not really being the source of complexity in SR3 sounds right to me. It's the million different types of rules for every different situation. I suppose with a simpler dice system, it's harder for people to make rules seem different since there just isn't that much choice in what you can say for a rule. I'd prefer that editors keep things consistent, but hey, if the dice system needs to do it, maybe that works too.
Demonseed Elite
Yeah, I wouldn't say it was necessarily the dice system that was the source of complexity in SR3. The actual mechanic of rolling dice in SR3 was pretty easy. The more complicated part was there really was very little in the way of a universal standard for determining the nature of a test, there were so many potential modifiers to target numbers, and you had weird quirky situations where you had a flat change with TNs of 6 and 7, for instance, which ended up with the same modifier being less meaningful to someone in one situation than it would be to someone else in a slightly different situation.

The NDA forces me to be vague, but here's about what I can say:

Did similar issues like these come up when I looked at the playtester rules? Yes.
Did they occur to the people actually doing the playtesting? Yes.
Have ideas been presented to address them? Yes.
Are those ideas being tried? Yes.
Am I, personally, 100% satisfied? Not yet.
Is the work done yet? Nope and nothing is written in stone.

I realize that's not all that helpful, but my hands are pretty tied.
Ellery
DE, I like that this system seems less prone to weird threshold effects (TN5 to TN6 vs TN6 to TN7 is pretty bad) but only if it is not prone to the much more drastic threshold effect of dropping below the minimum required number of dice. Adding big new problems in order to fix minor old problems is usually a bad design decision.

I think I'm starting to be able to see a way out of the potential problems that have been created. With a Rule of Six (which is hardly a "complicated" rule if it always applies), the success issue goes away. With very cheap skills, the attribute-focus goes away. With some sort of effort-based pool, the impact of the player's attention is retained. And then the only problem remaining is that I can't tie my shoes reliably, which is probably tolerable (if caring about success has a big enough impact).

Those changes (if they are changes) still leave us with a simple ruleset. Not quite as simple as before, but pretty simple and working is better than really simple and broken. And it is definitely simpler than the existing ruleset.
mfb
i think the 'exploding' dice idea is the best one, for allowing one-in-a-million situations.
Demonseed Elite
You should be able to tie your shoes reliably. I've seen a simple mechanic that would address that. I don't think I've gone over the bounds of the NDA by saying you should be able to tie your shoes reliably in SR4. sarcastic.gif
Ellery
You could have automatic successes, of course. But even I have failed to tie my shoes at least once in the past decade.
Sandoval Smith
QUOTE (Demonseed Elite)
You should be able to tie your shoes reliably. I've seen a simple mechanic that would address that. I don't think I've gone over the bounds of the NDA by saying you should be able to tie your shoes reliably in SR4. sarcastic.gif

'Tying shoes' is a trivally easy task that should generally not require a skill test to perform correctly, along with other mundane tasks, such as 'brushing teeth,' 'dressing oneself,' and 'wiping ass.' However, should circumstances warrent it (you're under fire, engulfed by a fire elemental, being swarmed by devil rats) the penalties might mount to the point where a roll is required to determine whether or not you can complete the task successfully.
mfb
it's a metaphor, meant to convey the concept of easy tasks.
Critias
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
QUOTE (Ellery @ Apr 5 2005, 08:36 PM)
If you're writing fiction loosely inspired by the Shadowrun setting, it doesn't matter one whit what the dice mechanics are.  You design the story the way you want to, throw in "smartlink" and "astral" here and there, and generate a piece of fiction essentially independent of the rules.

Speaking from personal experience, that isn't remotely true. I have always kept the rules in mind while writing SR fiction; I've found it's a good way to keep the SR feel.

What works for you (and me, and Ellery, for that matter) rather obviously isn't what works for everyone that's ever decided to write some Shadowrun fiction. Just flip through 9/10ths of the published novels to remind yourself of that fact.

And the "rules are more important to a game than to a short story" statement she made is still completely true. It's an easy cop out for someone to come back with a clever "setting the tone is up to the GM, not the rules," but that's a lie.

Setting the tone is a mixture of GM, players, and die mechanics. When a character knows any street punk can sink CP and KP into a pistol shot and get really lucky (and result in the death of an experienced character), it keeps them on their toes. When a character knows his capacity for dodging (as reflected by CP) is limited round for round, and an incoming hail of full auto fire from even untrained beginners is likely to result in his death, it keeps them in the mood to avoid security rather than confront it. When a player knows just how easy it is to die -- compare the tactics you find in an L5R game versus a d20 L5R game -- it makes them act appropriately.

Die mechanic and rules are absolutely vital to maintaining the feel of a game. Any game. Shadowrun, especially, in my opinion. Staged damage means even a hold out is lethal. Contested melee rolls makes every punk with a knife a threat (especially if there are two of them). Any mage that's willing to push himself can kill you with a gesture. Shotguns, even in largely untrained hands, are to be feared and respected. It's hard to hurt Trolls. The die mechanic causes much of the feel and flavor, from start to finish. The world is an oppressive place, danger -- genuine, character-ending, danger -- is all around you, and the GM can kill you any time he feels like it (much moreso than in many other games). No matter how tough you think you are, someone is tougher. No matter how long standing your character is, you don't know that it's gonna take a street punk all day to kill your 300 hp fighter with his dagger. One good shiv in the ribs and you're probably either dead, or sucking up so many wound modifiers you're wishing you are.

Oppressive. Bleak. Dangerous.

But not hopeless -- because much like the Shadowrunner-rebels we're all supposed to be playing, you can fight back. You've got choices. You've got options. You've got the rules-set on your side, as much as it's on The Man's. You've got combat pool you can use to play it safe (or to take them down when they need to drop). You've got karma pool. Your mage can hold up spell defense and protect the rest of the team. You've got flexibility, and you've got a say in what your character is going to do to fight back. You aren't just adding up modifiers and rolling dice -- you're choosing when to spend that combat pool, that spell pool, that karma point. You get to roll soak (modified as you see fit, based on the dice you've got left) when you get shot. You get to try and dodge. You get to decide very, very, much about how a combat (no matter how brutal) plays out. The rule of Six means you've always got a shot, no matter how long the odds.

The game world is dangerous, and dark, and it's very easy to die. But at the same time, you feel like you've got a chance, because it's always up to you what's going down. You choose when to dodge, how much to soak with, and when to spend that sacred karma to make sure things happen the right way.

That's the Shadowrun die mechanic. The odds are stacked against you, but there's always a chance and you've always got a say in it.

That's also the Shadowrun game world. Isn't it?

Until August, I guess. Then we just add up the modifiers and hope for the best, round after round, and cross our fingers that the GM doesn't throw us up against anyone wearing enough armor we can never get the successes we need to hurt them.
vapor
Critias, that had to be the most eloquent post i've ever had the pleasure of reading.
Shockwave_IIc
QUOTE (Critias)
Until August, I guess. Then we just add up the modifiers and hope for the best, round after round, and cross our fingers that the GM doesn't throw us up against anyone wearing enough armor we can never get the successes we need to hurt them.

Whats to say that there isn't a new rule of six??

Say if you roll a six you get another dice and roll to if you get another success, and so on (or not so as to stop hold outs killing dragons).

That Joe Shmoe could get lucky and put one round through you eye.

Though i know there's ALOT of people that don't like even the possibilty of something like that.
Wireknight
QUOTE (Critias)
Until August, I guess. Then we just add up the modifiers and hope for the best, round after round, and cross our fingers that the GM doesn't throw us up against anyone wearing enough armor we can never get the successes we need to hurt them.

Nonsense. That's when you get yourself a suit of that armor, and go take over whatever your local municipality happens to be. I hear Denver's a popular spot for starting a path toward global domination. Well, that is, unless you encounter that guy with the uber-armor combo, while you're wearing uber-armor combo, and you both happen to have insufficient skill/attributes/modifiers to harm one-another. Then it's bad. Crossing-the-streams bad.
mfb
like when aircraft and anti-aircraft meet, creating a massive explosion and the annihilation of both.
Austere Emancipator
I can't find it right now, but I'm sure Patrick Goodman implied quite strongly in one thread that they won't let impossible dice rolls to come up in SR4, ie. that they will put in some system of allowing you to score however many successes even if you've got a limited base dice pool.

Like mfb, I think exploding dice are the best for this.
Patrick Goodman
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)
I can't find it right now, but I'm sure Patrick Goodman implied quite strongly in one thread that they won't let impossible dice rolls to come up in SR4, ie. that they will put in some system of allowing you to score however many successes even if you've got a limited base dice pool.

Like mfb, I think exploding dice are the best for this.

I don't even think I implied it; I think I outright said it. It's very early in the morning, though, and I'm only awake because something about the gale-force winds outside woke up my cat. My brain's not fully engaged at the moment, and won't be for several hours.
Critias
Which, unfortunately, still doesn't help with the loss of player-controlled pools. I'm more upset about the loss of those, and the tactical thinking they brought with them, than I am the basics of a fixed-TN system.
Synner
Let me submit - for the sake of argument - that the " tactical thinking" that "player-controlled pools" supposedly brought was actually quite limited, essentially boiling down to a boost to the first attacker's strike and to the defender's first defense - to ensure the first strike takedown which is what's kept most SR3 firefights to less than a Combat Turn. In the years I've run SR3 that's been the case for all but a handful of ocassions, and the number of characters with consistently no pool left whatsoever for second or third actions (and hence truely tactical usage) is minimal (except in the case of particularly high-skilled or augmented skilled attackers) - and even then 1-2 dice left over do little for the probability curve.

Yes, there is the illusion of tactical use. Yes, there is the perception that they allow more leeway in Combat. And yes, I quite liked them. However, in very few cases did Pools (Combat and Sorcery) really work that way in practice.

They did somewhat increase survivability in first action combat, but even that was balanced by combat types heaping on modifiers to either increase their skill pool or lower their target numbers - which in turn led to people using up all their combat pool on first strike defense and mostly cancelling out any true tactical application.
Backgammon
QUOTE (Patrick Goodman @ Apr 6 2005, 06:07 AM)
I don't even think I implied it; I think I outright said it. It's very early in the morning, though, and I'm only awake because something about the gale-force winds outside woke up my cat. My brain's not fully engaged at the moment, and won't be for several hours.


QUOTE (Patrick Goodman)

QUOTE
You know, this new method takes await a lot of the drama of SR. I mean, with the new system, if you need 5 successes and you only have 4 dice, you lose. you CANNOT make it, no point in rolling.

This has not been my experience playing the new system so far. There are mechanics in place, or being tested, to allow for long shots and such.

Why is it that no one believes us when we tell them that we're thinking of things like this?


Bold mine.
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (Synner)
[...] the " tactical thinking" that "player-controlled pools" supposedly brought was actually quite limited, essentially boiling down to a boost to the first attacker's strike and to the defender's first defense [...]

Yes, in SR3 those who win initiative tend to use up a lot of Combat Pool in the first action -- and, based on my (quite limited) understanding of ranged combat IRL, that only makes sense. If you've got your gun pointed at your enemy and ready to fire first, assuming there are no other threats, you're going to focus on making that first shot count.

Beyond that, it comes down to how your group plays. In my games, ranged combat tends to be a mess, ie. the players (and their characters) very rarely have accurate knowledge of what's going on in the game world. They often have no idea whether there are other threats around, so they have to concerve their CP. Consequently, outside of turkey shoot scenarios, it is not uncommon for my players to reserve a significant amount of CP for Dodging and only using it in the last pass(es) if it's still left then.

I have to agree that in some cases, like 1-on-1 close combat, the CP mainly just serves to increase the amount of dice thrown. But that sort of thing rarely if ever happened in my 2060s SR game, so it was never a problem for me.
Wireknight
Well, hmm, this actually ties in to something that was left undescribed, but made me curious. As it stands, damage-dealing is done with a {skill + dice pools + bonus dice} set, and damage-resistance is done with an {attribute + dice pools + bonus dice} set. Given that the sets involved, at least in damage-dealing, now (or will in the near future of SR4) seem to be {skill + attribute + modifiers}, how are the dice sets used for damage resistance generated?

Is there going to be a skill devoted to resisting various types of physical and mental damage? Will these attributes simply be counted doubly? Will (and I hope not, as this really would be contributing to the "seperate rules sets that are way too different" thing that I like to believe we're trying to evolve past with the new edition) there simply be a seperate and different mechanic for resisting damage, be it drain, gunshots, etc..? Or more than one mechanic depending on what system (magic, combat, rigging, decking) is generating the damage?
Critias
The "blow all your wad as soon as you can" thinkers don't tend to do very well in the long term (later combat phases), or in anything but a one-on-one fight.

If the fights you run into in Shadowrun are all handled by two groups who can see each other squarely, are equipped similarly, and who are evenly matched in terms of numbers and skill (not only perception and gear), then yes. I can see how "he who goes first does an all-or-nothing attack, and wins" might come up. I'm a little leery of any Shadowrun campaigns that never, or even rarely, see the characters outnumbered and outgunned, though.

With my primary character alone, I've been in enough Shadowrun combats to kill upwards of five hundred PC's and NPC's (primarily NPC's, but a good dozen or so not), in SR3 alone. No, I'm not kidding. No, I don't have "pushover" GM's, or play with a group that doesn't understand the rules. Ask around, several of the GM's post here. I very much enjoy SR combat, and have seen quite a lot of it.

I've only ever spent my full combat pool on a single action when it was either (a) an ambush, where no threat of retaliation was likely if I acted swiftly and decisively, or (b) an act of utter desperation (needing to completely dodge something like a machinegun burst, or similar). It just isn't worth it to use up your CP all at once when you're outnumbered, it's poor planning, it's short-term thinking, it's leaving yourself open and vulnerable.

I'd give some example, here, but I'm not in the mood to see the whole conversation/discussion degenerate into a hypothetical "what if" or number crunching contest, especially one that would wander into potentially off-topic realms (like including the smart usage of cover, suppressive fire, aim actions, etc, all of which are as vital to decent SR tactics as wise CP expenditure).

Even if you find a situation as I described above -- where two groups or even just two characters are wholly equal in every fashion, from gear to skills to attributes -- you'll find, if you run enough combats, that those who use their Combat Pool smarter will win. It's a simple statement; using CP wisely keeps you alive, and wins you fights.

You can call Combat Pool an illusion of tactical thinking, if you want. I can point to -- or more literally link to -- dozens of pages on-line, full of dice rolls and close calls, that say otherwise. And those are just the combats off the top of my head, featuring that single character of mine, alone.
Wireknight
QUOTE (Synner @ Apr 6 2005, 11:42 AM)
Let me submit - for the sake of argument - that the " tactical thinking" that "player-controlled pools" supposedly brought was actually quite limited...

I think that the placing of "quotes", around "certain phrases", is both disrespectful to the poster and unnecessarily incendiary, given my opinion that Critias is correct. Implying that his ideas are somehow illusory and delusional can really upset people who happen to agree with him.

By definition, the presence of dice pools allowed one to exert very precise control over the degree to which one invested in (in the case of combat, which is the primary source of my thoughts on this matter) attack and defense. If you contribute enough combat pool to make a kill very likley, and fail, or retain a lot of combat pool but prove unable to nullify the attacks of an opponent who you could have downed had you contributed more combat pool to a prior attack against them, you're responsible. You considered it (or didn't), and made a choice, and are thusly, even if it turns out badly, more the master of your character's destiny for it.

By removing dice pools, you remove that choice. The player feels less in control, and, barring additional sets of rules to which I have not been made aware (a caveat I must place upon any judgment I render on the new rules), actually possesses less control. Their control, rather than moment-to-moment, is pushed back to bigger decisions like whether or not to fight. Once a fight has begun, they have less of a say in how it plays out, and as such feel a bit more helpless and a bit less like they can (and they can) reasonably consider the odds and make a good tactical decision on just where their dicepools should be applied. I fail to see, beyond people being simply too uncaring of how to really use the flexibility of the system, or lacking any real concern for forethought and strategy, how the control imparted by combat pool was limited.

The player could choose to make it limited, by choosing to not delve into the potential capabilities of the enemies, or of their character, and simply letting the dice fly in one of two simple and predictable methods (all-out attack at first to down the enemy quick, or full defense to let the enemy miss and be vulnerable to payback from their choice of the first option). Is my style of play, and my use of the combat pool, really that more esoteric and archaic than the baseline player that the system must cater to?

Either way, I'd like to discuss the system itself. I tend to discuss what's on-hand as much as the topic itself, but the topic is a very important one and should be retained. I'm certain there are better threads for this particular topic's discussion.
Critias
It's worth pointing out, by way of explaining my perhaps only half-lucid and coherent post, that the response I want to give to an argument like "combat pool never did much, anyways" is to just scream and burn things. Combat pool (and other pools, but given the nature of the characters I invariably play, CP most of all) has always been one of my favorite things about Shadowrun, since I thumbed through my first (and still owned) copy of SR1, halfway through my freshman year of high school in '90.

The first RPG I ever played -- this one -- not only rewarded you for rolling well, not only rewarding skill over brute strength, but let you choose when to fight defensively, when to try an all out attack, when to take a hit but attempt a more sturdy soak, when to aim and give a shot all you've got. Imagine, if you think you can, my disgust -- wholly undisguised -- a few years later when I first strapped on studded leather armor and tried to kick ass as a first level fighter in AD&D. Shadowrun was my first, and remains my favorite, RPG, and the flexibility and options, the need to think and not just act, is a large part of that favoritism.

Seeing someone, especially someone who may or may not be involved in the evolution or even just playtesting of this game (frankly, Synner, I just can't remember who around here is involved with it and who isn't), brush aside the die pools as inconsequential just makes me want to join the "fuck SR4" crowd. I've spent half my life playing this game, and liking it more than any others I've ever picked up a die to try my hand at. I'm amongst the most die-hard advocates of canon material (ask the people I game with), among the most serious scorners of house rules (again, ask the people I game with), and was, up until the most recent FAQ update, amongst the most vocal defendants of SR4 (poke around these very forums, even just a little).

The casual disregard for die pools and the tactical thinking they represent, however, is quite honestly enough to make me dread rather than look forward to Gencon this year.

And that's saying something.

Of all the changes and all the streamlining and all the (yes, even) retroactive alterations that could be made to this game, the removal of player-controlled die pools was one that quite simply never crossed my mind as a possibility, because they've always been such a vital and fantastic part of the game.
mmu1
QUOTE (Wireknight)
Well, hmm, this actually ties in to something that was left undescribed, but made me curious. As it stands, damage-dealing is done with a {skill + dice pools + bonus dice} set, and damage-resistance is done with an {attribute + dice pools + bonus dice} set. Given that the sets involved, at least in damage-dealing, now (or will in the near future of SR4) seem to be {skill + attribute + modifiers}, how are the dice sets used for damage resistance generated?

Is there going to be a skill devoted to resisting various types of physical and mental damage? Will these attributes simply be counted doubly? Will (and I hope not, as this really would be contributing to the "seperate rules sets that are way too different" thing that I like to believe we're trying to evolve past with the new edition) there simply be a seperate and different mechanic for resisting damage, be it drain, gunshots, etc..? Or more than one mechanic depending on what system (magic, combat, rigging, decking) is generating the damage?

Perhaps it'll use Body + Bonus Dice From Cyber + Bonus Dice From Armor?

Although in that sort of system, decent armor would have to grant a crapload of bonus dice to make a meaningful difference... It's something that worked very badly in the Other Fixed TN System, I'm curious to see how Fanpro'll implement it.
Wireknight
The major problem with that idea, bonus dice from body, cyberware, armor, etc... is that it assumes a total soak. How will dodging work, if at all? I likewise agree that, when the TN# is 5, they will have to add a godless number of dice for armor to create a statistically notable increase in the chance of generating more hits on the resistance test.
mmu1
QUOTE (Wireknight)
The major problem with that idea, bonus dice from body, cyberware, armor, etc... is that it assumes a total soak. How will dodging work, if at all? I likewise agree that, when the TN# is 5, they will have to add a godless number of dice for armor to create a statistically notable increase in the chance of generating more hits on the resistance test.

I guess it depends on whether they keep the connection between the attacker's level of success and the defender's dodge/soak. There are systems out there (like GURPS, for example) where your defense roll is made completely independently of how well the attacker rolled (aside from special situations like feints and so on).

It'd also help if we had a clue how the damage monitor worked in new edition, since that'll affect the possible methods of damage mitigation... If they go to Hit Points, armor could grant DR. wink.gif
apple
QUOTE
I likewise agree that, when the TN# is 5, they will have to add a godless number of dice for armor to create a statistically notable increase in the chance of generating more hits on the resistance test.


Automatic successes? wink.gif

SYL
Wireknight
QUOTE (apple)
Automatic successes? wink.gif

SYL

You shut your mouth. You shut your mouth and you never open it again.
RunnerPaul
QUOTE (Wireknight)
QUOTE (apple @ Apr 6 2005, 12:51 PM)
Automatic successes? wink.gif

SYL

You shut your mouth. You shut your mouth and you never open it again.

But I'm only talking about Shaft Automatic Successes.
Nomad
Damn straight.......
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (RunnerPaul)
QUOTE (Wireknight @ Apr 6 2005, 08:01 AM)
QUOTE (apple @ Apr 6 2005, 12:51 PM)
Automatic successes? wink.gif

SYL

You shut your mouth. You shut your mouth and you never open it again.

But I'm only talking about Shaft Automatic Successes.

As long as they reintroduce the Rocker as an archetype, I'm down with it.

~J
Patrick Goodman
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
[/QUOTE]But I'm only talking about Shaft Automatic Successes.[/QUOTE]
As long as they reintroduce the Rocker as an archetype, I'm down with it.

I'm actually fiddling with a couple of sample characters that are more artistically oriented. The Rocker is not an archetype that I consider out of the question. I think socially-conscious musicians have a place in the Sixth World.

And no, I'm in no way being sarcastic.
Kagetenshi
Damn, now I have to figure out whether or not I was…

~J
Fortune
QUOTE (Synner)
Let me submit - for the sake of argument - that the " tactical thinking" that "player-controlled pools" supposedly brought was actually quite limited, essentially boiling down to a boost to the first attacker's strike and to the defender's first defense - to ensure the first strike takedown which is what's kept most SR3 firefights to less than a Combat Turn. In the years I've run SR3 that's been the case for all but a handful of ocassions, and the number of characters with consistently no pool left whatsoever for second or third actions (and hence truely tactical usage) is minimal (except in the case of particularly high-skilled or augmented skilled attackers) - and even then 1-2 dice left over do little for the probability curve.


I am definitely in agreement with Wireknight and Critias on the subject of Pool use. They do give the character (and hence the player) much more control (and not just the illusion of control) over his actions during the game.

This is one instance where I totally disagree with your assessment of the matter Synner.
DrJest
The Rocker as a Shadowrun archetype worked fine within the game as long as their career was pretty low-key. Famous rockers would of course have major issues 'running, even aside from the question of why they would need to with their income:

Guard 1: Hey, wasn't that Maria Mercurial?
Guard 2: I think so!
Guard 1: Wonder what she was doing in the vault?
Guard 2: I shoulda got an autograph...

Runner/Rockers would probably have a few common points:

1) Poor. Mostly playing pubs/bars and the lower end clubs. No Underground 93 here, at least not with any kind of regularity. We're talking 8-Mile here.
2) Unknown. Ditto.
3) Socially aware. Not always, I grant you, but the runner/rocker is probably getting song material from his runs, and the transference of experience to music tends to lead to social commentary songs. Folk (my particular genre) and rap see a lot of that these days, but with the nature of SR and its roots I'd expect to see more rock/metal music.

Incidentally, I truly hope "skill to damage" stays in SR. Technically it's present in nWoD; the combat mechanic is (attr+skill+weapon damage) - (target's defence + armour). Successes equate directly to damage. I might add that there's no soak roll any more, and you don't get your defence against firearms (which bright pillock thought that up?).

I have my doubts that an exact translation will work for SR, which is far more firearms-heavy, but you get the point.
mfb
i'm with wireknight and critias. the guys who tend to burn most/all of their CP on their first attack are the guys that me, wk, and critias eat for breakfast precisely because we don't. i consistently throw my main character into situations that i probably shouldn't; that character has survived to 200+ karma despite my best attempts to get him killed, because i'm not dumb enough to dump all my cp into my first attack.

the fact that many people don't take full advantage of the tactical advantage combat pool offers doesn't mean that the advantage isn't there to be taken advantage of.
Patrick Goodman
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
Damn, now I have to figure out whether or not I was…

Sorry. biggrin.gif
Patrick Goodman
QUOTE (Fortune)
I am definitely in agreement with Wireknight and Critias on the subject of Pool use. They do give the character (and hence the player) much more control (and not just the illusion of control) over his actions during the game.

And this is an instance where, upon contemplation over the past several weeks, I can say that SR4 design and playtesting isn't all an echo chamber. I've been kind of on the fence about dice pools, but in general I disagree with their disappearance, for many of the reasons listed here.

I think they're a pain in the ass from a GM standpoint, and I think there should be a uniform formula for their creation (as opposed to the hodge-podge that exists now), but I think they should remain. I'm not the control freak that some of the other guys are, but I do see the utility of the pools. I'm just thinking we don't need ten of the damn things to try and keep track of.
RunnerPaul
QUOTE (Patrick Goodman)
I've been kind of on the fence about dice pools, but in general I disagree with their disappearance, for many of the reasons listed here.

As long as that information is getting passed back up the line, and you're sure they're listening to you as much as they listen to any playtester, that's all we can ask.
mfb
i can ask for quite a bit more, myself. just not from goodman.
Demonseed Elite
QUOTE
And this is an instance where, upon contemplation over the past several weeks, I can say that SR4 design and playtesting isn't all an echo chamber. I've been kind of on the fence about dice pools, but in general I disagree with their disappearance, for many of the reasons listed here.

I think they're a pain in the ass from a GM standpoint, and I think there should be a uniform formula for their creation (as opposed to the hodge-podge that exists now), but I think they should remain. I'm not the control freak that some of the other guys are, but I do see the utility of the pools. I'm just thinking we don't need ten of the damn things to try and keep track of.


That's about where I stand also. I do think the current (SR3) dice pools are a horrifying mess, as I mentioned to WK this morning over AIM. If you look at the pools (Combat, Hacking, Control, Magic, Task, Astral, Astral Combat), I don't think any of them use the same mechanic for calculating their pool. Combat uses the sum of three attributes divided by two. Control uses a derived secondary attribute plus a gear-based modifier. Hacking uses an attribute plus a gear attribute. Astral isn't even available to starting characters, and only enters play once you're initiated. It's tangled. I don't like that.

That said, I do like the concept of dice pools. I agree that it's possible to use the dice pools in a totally non-tactical manner, but lots of mechanics can be "brute forced." That's like saying you could use Stunt bonuses in Exalted in an non-cinematic matter (and cinematic roleplaying is what they are intended for), and you certainly could, but they are a significant part of what makes Exalted's system unique and interesting, regardless.

Some sort of check needs to be ensured to make sure that tactical pool dumping doesn't cause an imbalance in the game. Some of that will be on the GM's shoulders, to create situations where pool dumping isn't favored (just like an Exalted GM has to ensure he's not giving out Stunt bonuses for weak attempts at roleplaying). Part of it would also need to be some mechanical check, like the limits involved in how much pool dumping you can do.

But yes, I do think it would be a large mistake for SR4 not to have this tactical pool use mechanic. Shadowrun is a tactical game, just as much as Exalted in a cinematic game. Not only are tactics an inherent theme in Shadowrun, but the choices that shadowrunners make is a theme that goes far beyond just dice, but is strengthened by a mechanic which allows for choice in dice application.
Ellery
Good posts, Critas. Well-stated.

And I am another player whose characters have survived countless situations because I know how to use pool and, typically, my opponents didn't have any or didn't use it cleverly. In particular, Synner, if your players use their full pool on their first action, hey, that's their business. It makes keeping track of pool simple, too.

But (as has been suggested elsewhere here), simply having one pool--maybe called "attention pool" or "focus pool"--adds back most of the tactics while removing most of the stuff you have to remember. ("I have used 3 combat pool and 4 spell pool and one task pool and three karma pool....")

It's possible to create rules systems where you have advanced tactics without the equivalent of pool dice by building a complex system of actions and counteractions, so the skill comes in choosing the correct set of counteractions that give you lots of bonus dice and remove a lot from your opponent. But these systems are much more complicated than having pool dice because there's so much more to remember. I think that pools are actually a simple way to enable a tactical aspect to parts of the game you have to play with dice. And if even remembering your pool is too much work, you can always not use it, or blow it all on your first roll. It's not like remembering a number or two is unfamiliar to roleplayers--how many meteors do I have left in Melf's Minute Meteors? How long until my Giant spell wears off? When was the last time I laid on hands? Which of my spells have I already cast? And yet these systems seem to work; people don't complain uproariously about how complicated D&D is. (Granted, they do complain some, but it's also viewed as a feature by others.)
Demonseed Elite
Yeah, some sort of "Tactics Pool" would be what I'd be leaning towards. The need for a dozen different pools seems unnecessary, especially since the design intention of SR4 is to bring the other archetypes back into the steady stream of things. The decker doesn't need a seperate pool for hacking a network, now he needs to decide if he wants to focus his attention (tactics pool) on cracking access to the system on the first try, or in staying out of the way of the bullets coming at him from the security guards.

This is also a facet of the rules where things like Small Unit Tactics skills and BattleTac systems can come into play.
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