Edge is probably a term grandfathered from the old FASA RPG Mechwarrior (the RPG companion to Battletech). It functioned exactly like Karma Pool did (a reroll pool that refreshes every so often). It also was "bought" like an attribute.

Hmm... I actually like this. Not so big on the int/qui splits, for the reason Kag mentioned, but I do like the idea of buying magic and luck... I mean "edge". Just as long as we don't have to buy our movement rate, like in CP. This really does give a chance for more roleplaying, since you can make someone who's neither chromed to the gills nor the epic mage, but can still at least survive fighting next to them.

Now we just need to get willpower renamed "cool" ;P

One other thing I'm interested in, since I guess it links more here than anywhere, is the possible of variable essence cost for cyber. The cyber cost is say 1d6/3 essence points. You roll, and it's between .3 to 2 points, depending on how lucky you are (or not). But then again, as I've said before, I don't pay quite as much attention to what the rules actually say as I should.

I suspect the Awakened will be, over all, less powerful than before since they have a new drain on their attribute spending, unless we see a corresponding increase in attribute points.

-Siege

The notion of variable humanity loss kept things interesting.

Cyberjunkies in SR tend to be number-crunched exercises in accounting because you know a smartlink, for example will cost you exactly this much essence.

In SP, you knew your loss would be in the range of X to Y, but it made min-maxing harder since you had no idea how much you'd suffer for each piece implanted.

However, I don't think SR is re-writing the mechanic that drastically.

-Siege

Variable essence loss would be quite interesting but while it would certainly doom some people there would be others who somehow manage to always roll the minimum essence loss (legitimate or not). In general though I disagree with random elements during character creation as it makes balancing characters a total bitch. Now if there was a mechanic for after generation optimal and non optimal implantion (beyond the cyberware grade rules) that might be an interesting optional ruleset. It should be way easier to use than the M&M surgery rules though.

Vuron - which is why my old CP GM always either rolled the humanity loss himself or carefully monitored people when they did.

And some cheese monkeys you know you have to watch more closely than others.

Semi-Awakened
I am concerned that there will be a sudden surge in Awakened characters (sorry) unless Magic still becomes a Yes/No proposition with a high priority cost or 4th edition equivalent.

-Siege

I never liked karma pool anyway. I am glad to see it eaten.

That and Patrick as well as other writers involved with the project are under non-disclosure agreements and risk severe legal, financial and professional repercussions for violating those agreements.

So even if they did know more than the writers are letting on, we can't really fault them for their reluctance or inability to discuss specifics.

-Siege

Well if the magic attribute is equal to the other attributes in cost yes I think there might be a significant jump in semi-awakened characters however if magic attribute cost is 1.5 or 2 times the cost of other attributes then I think there will be an even amount or even a decrease in awakened characters.

If the physical adept needs to sacrifice his attributes to gain neat magical edges it suddenly becomes a lot less appealing to do so at least short term. Now long term they will probably have the same edges they do now (although depending on what format initiation takes this might be debatable) but if you want fewer or more awakened characters in your game it would be simple enough to change the point cost for the magical attribute up/down according to your desires.

Overall I think it allows more flexibility in character generation over the current system.

As for shamanic/sorcerors/conjuring adepts I can the various magical abilities we accept now as being part of a package deal being individual purchased during the augmentation phase. For example you might want a sorceror who has strength with combat spells but no ability to astrally percieve or you might want someone who can astrally project and summon watchers but nothing else. I'm not sure if they might go with this sort of design but it might be interesting to make magic more modular than it is currently.

Some thoughts:

-Splitting up Charisma is unlikely to happen because it would require splitting up Strength to maintain the attribute pairity. Previously, this was STR/CHA, BOD/WIL and QCK/INT. They split up both INT and QCK as they did for more reasons than to correct their over-usefulness. The new pairity might have INT/REA and LOG/AGL.

-Variable Essense loss would be a deal breaker for me. As would a drastic change to the initiative structure. If one of these things happens, I will have to seriously reconsider buying SR4. The first is a horrid idea that breaks any previous understanding of SR I have, and the second would just sadden me because I like the current system and minor variants on it so much.

One thing that can be done is rather than have Edge be a constantly regenerating resource that steadily increases with karma awards is to make it burn once then it's gone. Granted you'd likely want to dramatically increase it's power for the one time burn and be more liberal in awarding it but then it becomes more of a fortune favoring the bold style mechanic rather than a fortune favoring the old style mechanic.

Say starting characters have 5 Edge dice that they can spend on rerolls etc but once they are spent they are gone. The characters might then get 3 or more edge dice at the completion of a mission. That way most characters might have a handful of dice or points available to generate cool effects but they never have so much as to totally overwhelm the effect of skill and experience except during very brief periods of time.

With a mechanic like this you can do something like 1 edge point will automatically stabilize a dying character, reroll all dice. 2 might allow you to reroll all failures or generate a critical effect like instantly incapicitating a mook NPC. 3 would allow you to do really cool things like buy successes etc.

What the hell. I mean, geeeeeez. No karma pool? This isn't going to be the same game.

Strength and Body are more or less pretty self-explanatory. Perhaps my imagination is lacking, but is there anything to be gained by splitting Strength and/or Body into new categories?

-Siege

Ugh, that "What haven't you changed?" reads like a joke. "We still use dice, honest!" I'm surprised they didn't work in "we still number the pages".

~J

I think the idea is to increase ease of play relative to the previous versions of the game rather than neccesarily looking for simpler rules. Just because on the surface it seems like there are added complexity in the base rules doesn't mean that the game will be harder to run. There are plenty of games with simple rules that are hard as hell to adjudicate and there are complex games that are breezes to run.

Yes I do think that fundamentally that the underlying system behind the world is getting wholesale mechanical revisions (in fact I've been suggesting this since we heard the base dice rolling mechanic) rather than a facelift or simplification of the rules. Overall I don't think this is a bad thing as game design has advanced signficantly since SR3 and keeping sacred cows really hampers innovative designs.

One thing I would say is that conversions between systems is quite likely to be kludgy at best. I'd say planning on updating characters will like the updating of materials between 2e DnD and 3e DnD; possible but hardly advisable. While the people that have faithfully held upgraded characters from 1e through 3e might be disappointed I pretty much anticipating redesigning characters rather than trying to upgrade them.

Hmm, not sure if anyone mentioned this as I got kind of put off after reading some of the less sensible more rantish comments and as a result skipped a few pages. However it's entirely possible that since you now have to buy up the Magic attribute as per a normal stat there may be no additional cost associated with playing a magically active character. Instead the cost to play a magic user could simply be the cost of buying up the Magic stat and the associated skills to use it.

A possibility at least

TBO

It is indeed. A very, very unpleasant possibility, but as you say a possibility.

~J

So..the very scenario we feared most is coming to pass. The demise of what could have been the most realistic system in RPGs (with some revision) to a Ninja-Turtle rip off. Great. I guess I'll just go back to tinkering with SR3 and doing what the developers should have been doing all this time. Oh and that edge thing...that is really sad why don't they just call it "karmic edge". "Buying" luck is such a poorly thought out concept.

And if so, what would one point of magic get you? Anything? Nothing? Everything?

I suppose they could stagger it;

You need at least 2 magic points to be able to percieve and cast spells; 4 to conjure, and 6 to project.

This whole thing = bad idea.

I hope there's more to this "Edge" attribute than meets the eyes, like implants and magic directly lower it in a fashion similar to Essence/Magic in the current system. Because otherwise, just like it is now with any purchased attribute, implants and magic don't stop players from maxing out any attribute they see fit. Sure, their other attributes might not be as beefed up as they could be (assuming the player didn't prioritize Attributes), but that still wouldn't change the fact that the "Edge" mundanes are supposed to have isn't truly a mundane "Edge" at all... no more so than Strength or Logic would be at least.

Oh, and Charisma is fine as it is. They just need to fix how it's used in the game (ie, drop it for use with Conjuring, or make Conjuring into more of a domination/negotiations ordeal than the quasi-Willpower Test it currently is). Apperance and its affects should be handled purely as an edge/flaw type of mechanic at the most, not as a core attribute. "Looks" attributes are just stupid.

Patrick Goodman:

You may notice the twitch, but you're still relying on your intuition to know what that twitch means. Perception = mindless senses (best reflected in modifiers due to implants, situations, and that sort of thing). Intuition = interpretating that data.

I'm still trying to figure out why mundanes (non-cyber/non-awakened) should have an 'edge' over their counterparts in the first place.

It's a metagaming thing. Believe it or not, at its core, this is a game (gasp!), so there should be some leeway for suspension of disbelief regarding game balance and that sort of thing. I'm very glad to see they're at least trying to make true mundanes a playable character concept. I always hated the fact that you pretty much had to be cybered up or magicked up in order to be a competitive force in the game (and yeah yeah, I know we all have that "super cool" mundane character running around that's nigh-on invincible -- bite me). So it's groovy that they'll at least have a possibility in the game for making them both playable and more common in the setting.

Do you actually use the word intuition casually in english? As a filosofical term it is highly problematic and some argue there´s no such thing, even. In swedish it has come to mean an almost supernatural ability to predict things that no one refers to eccept as a figure of speech.

All words changed their meaning in time. I guess intuition is a common word with a wide meaning in english. I did not know that. Maybe the split up isn´t such a bad thing then.

I don't have time to slog through the rest of this thread, but I have to say that this sounds like a fucking mess unless there are complete changes to the way things work with, say, perception tests. Because, right now, we have more attributes and still all the problems that came with not having many attributes. Why wasn't Intelligence split into Perception and Intelligence? Why wasn't Quickness split into Agility and Dexterity? Why the fuck does this not make sense?

[edit]

Just to be clear, do not misunderastand me. I like some of the changes. Magic and Edge are good ideas, and I'm with Funk on that. But splitting the mundane attributes seems to have fallen through all kinds of wrong.

Arethusa: I had the same question. Adam said Intuition=Perception. As I said in a post above, I figure it´s my understanding of the way the word functions in the english language that is lacking.