*shrug* Less dice rolls. Immediate resolution. Think of it as damage boxes per net success and you'll likely not realize that it's even multiplying. That's why when kids first learn multiplication they start out with the small numbers and do it by adding. 3x2 is 3+3. They begin multiplying before they know that they are.

Sure, if you have 10+ years of playing SR1-3 and you think of it that way.

As i mentioned earlier, SR3 knowledge and mindset is likely going to serious screw with your SR4 mind. The reverse equally so. You'll likely not want to mix playing the two.

If you say you soak and dodge.

But if you say:

You defend yourself using your abilities, those abilities varying on how you are attacked. There are situational modifiers that alter how well you can defend yourself. When you are attacked with a firearm you avoid and resist damage using your reflexes (Agility) and your body's physical resiliance (Body). So you add those together.

If they have a Body 2 and an Agility 6 they are likely to envision something resembling Neo at the helicopter pad (because, you know, the Matrix is k3wl, and Keanu Reeves is hot, and it's ok to be gay as long as your friends don't know).

....and?

So SR doesn't have abstraction? Wow.

Separation good, dragging out combat bad.

Besides, for your rolling pleasure if you are having difficulties imagining the scene, you could still follow your own suggestion and roll different dice. *shrug*

I never said that it was unique to S1-3. What was ment that if you are looking for something because it was there before that it makes it harder to see the other. The preconception created by several years of getting shot at in SR means rolling twice makes it harder to think of it as one roll.

No, it would appear that a desire to play a simulation rather than a game is a factor in this. The closer you try to simulation RealLife the more complex you must make things. That drive to simulation has historically taken over SR rules at times, and would appear to have created things like the vehicle combat rules. Of course what the outcome was was a series of different games within SR. Often many of those sub-games either house ruled into some sort of hand-waving simplicity or simply not played at all.

Frankly i don't feel particularly respected by the SR3 rules. It's telling me that my time isn't important, and that i must learn many different systems and roll multiple times for something that can be done in a cleaner mechanism. Thus i am delayed getting back to, you know, the story.

mfb didn't seem to think it was simplistic, much less insultingly simplistic. Because multiplying is hard, ya know. :^)

I know the reference to Armor Class was an empty "burn D20" insult.

Did you know that well over 95% of criminals drink water or water based liquids? You don't drink water or water based liquids, do you?

EDIT: BTW, so what is your final verdict on the relative simplicity of what i'm suggesting?

It's not just two rolls vs. one. A closer assessment is:

Select dice, roll, decision, record successes, select dice, roll, decision, damage assessment.
Select dice, roll, decision, damage assessment.

And i'll suggest that "five seconds" is not a good assessment of the extra time. Especially if they happen to be exploding dice.

Since two posts below in that thread is a post by you can we assume you read his? If you read his post perhaps you haven't heard anyone (except me) because you don't want to?

I don't think everyone would think it an issue. In fact i suspect that a good number of people here don't have a problem with rolling twice. But then again this is a very self-selected group.

Especially if you're in the crowd of people that blows their whole CP the first chance they get -- you'd think the second and subsequent phases would go pretty quick.

Which is why none of us should miss it when it's gone!

My point would be that you read it without seeing it at all, or saw it and did a memory flush of it very fast (within 2 hours). So what does that suggest about the quality of the "best of [your] memory"?

EDIT: You'll note that the line above that where Namergon talks about extra people commenting on the slowness. So it becomes a situation where people could have an issue with the extra rolling but haven't identified it that specifically. That could push the total up to more than 2 now.

If that aspect is kept Agility die aren't included in the Pool if they aren't applicable. *shrug*

If you wanted to take the extra time to roll each part separately you still could under my suggestion. But that would kinda work against the streamlining goal. Extra steps and rolls chasing the false hope of simulation of RL is exactly what i hope SR4 does away with.

he was not at all talking about other people complaining that SR was slow because of how the dice are rolled.

blakkie, by your argument, there's no point in rolling a combined dodge/soak at all. why bother with all these stats and figures? why not just give everyone a Shadowrun score, and roll that to see who wins in any given situation? or, heck, why not just flip a coin? the point of any RPG is to simulate reality to greater or lesser degrees--to simulate it as closely as possible, as a matter of fact, without needlessly bulking up the system. seperate dodge/soak doesn't bulk up the system all that much; ergo, i think it should stay.

How do you know that? You seem to have forgotten Namergon quite shortly.

So what criteria did you use to flag Namergon's comment as unimportant? The "it doesn't fit my view, so he never said it" filter?

My job? To prove? LOL Well i guess i did my "job" quite handily, no? In the process showing that it might acually be your bias that is blocking your vision and/or memory of other such clues.

How about we put the whole paragraph up there.

He was talking people preceiving a slowness in SR3. However it has been my experience that when people are bothered by something that they do not always see all the way back through the contributing causes. My suggestion is that more than one person might be annoyed by the multiple rolls and not realise it. I would like to emphasis "might".

No more than your arguement suggests that with each shot fired that a separate roll must be made for each variable condition from the attacker's sighting action, to the attacker holding her breath at the right momement, to the roll check for a skill check for the janitor sweeping up dust from the floor of the factory where the ammo was made.
You aren't suggesting that, are you?

I'm sure you are completely satisfied. Totally and thoroughly. No doubt about that. But i do see you are now down to "don't remember many people". That's good enough for me too, because to start with the part about me being all alone was really not particularly relavent.

Why? Because sometimes i'm reasonably at ease with a large group of people saying that my "answer is clearly at odds with the truth.".

Not that that's slowing them down about anything else, mind you...

I showed that at least one other person thinks that extra rolls slows SR3 down. You are contending that things weren't slow (i guess once you got in hundreds of sessions of practice?)

I'm at ease (not nessasarily happy) with not having a lot of people posting that they agree about this. *shrug* But i "should be quiet"?

Now there is the crux of it. There is a reason for the change. Streamlining. Will Fanpro actually streamline in this particular way (reduce combat resolution to single opposed rolls, as opposed to multistage rolls)? I think they might. I think it would be one good way to speed up the play at the table.
Of course you seem to think that there isn't a need to speed up play and/or reduce the clutter. Fortunately it appears that the developers don't agree with you.
Will they do it exactly as i described? *shrug* Given there are a lot more people putting a lot more time into finding the best procedure i'm guessing that they'll find an even better way of streamlining. I was really just demonstrating that it could be done while keeping the fear and general form of SR combat.

You don't always have to be the smartest one in the room to see something that everyone else is missing....at first. I'm use to it happening enough. *shrug*

Really? Where would this demonstration be found?

no, actually, i'm not. i never said that SR3 isn't slow; matter of fact, i said the exact opposite at least once. i'm contending that rolling dodge and soak seperately doesn't slow SR3 down enough that it's worth losing what you get by keeping them seperate. two people isn't much of a trend--one person and a vaguely supportive statement by another isn't a trend at all.

you're missing the point of streamlining, blakkie. FanPro isn't (or shouldn't be) streamlining for streamlining's sake--they are (should be) streamlining in order to make more people want to play the game. hence, we circle back around to the idea that if combining dodge and soak won't bring more players to the game, it's not worth doing. fortunately, the devs don't appear to agree with you, since we've still got lots of different stats and skills and dice to roll, instead of just flipping a coin or playing paper-rock-scissors to determine outcomes. that would, after all, be much more streamlined.

The streamlining is likely being done to speed up the play and shorten the time to learn the basic mechanics of playing....so they can increase the number of people that will play it. So what do you base the assumption of speeding up the game and making the dice rolling easier to learn by removing 3 steps from each attack is not something that could help in that manner? Ah yes, the "5 seconds" you purport. I assume the "5 seconds" that you haven't measured in actual game use, and is based on someone with several years practice.

Instead you suggest to make the mechanics uniform that you -add- 3 steps including an extra dice roll to places that don't already have it?

we've already gone over why i think this. i'm not going to go over it again.

my suggestion had a lot of bulk, yeah. the first idea that one comes up with isn't always the best idea.

Of course it had a lot of bulk. To get rid of bulk you have to be willing to cut bulk. Cutting usually hurts.

Sometimes you even have to burn the whole thing to the ground and start again because you've dead-ended, because there is something in the basic premise of the existing that system that is holding you back. I suspect that L-M-S-D and the idea of staging damage (EDIT: and the concept of a base damage for a weapon) is holding back combat.

LMSD is an interesting sequence, it is 1, 1+2, 1+2+3, and 1+2+3+4. This [roughly] follows the quadratic curve (x^2)/2. Given how sharply the number of successes tended to drop off with variable TNs this progresion makes sense. If you are going to change the underlying probabilities LMSD might no longer be the natural choice. Starting off assuming the use of LMSD and staging down handcuffs you, and you start going down old dead-ends....like variable number of successes per stage down.

This one?

Sorry, i missed adding in there third item of a fixed number for the base damage for a weapon. Somewhat related to LMSD, but not the same. Basically you are trying to shoehorn a different type of dice rolling into the old procedures. The same SR3 procedure steps are there. You are just changing a few numbers (for example replacing a 6 with a 5 for the base damage), and trying to convert a die roll ment for variable TN to fixed TN.

EDIT: The LSMD comment was more directed elsewhere, not to you mfb. My bad.