....moving out tangentally to the topic. But when i do that Ellery rolls out on the high horse and scolds me.

I don't "trivialize" them all. I happen to think that the wireless Matrix is pretty damn big evolution of the setting.

But no longer learning how to cast a spell at all Forces between the one you learn and below, but instead learning how to cast a spell at the top humanly possible Force and all below that (keeping in mind that you are likely to implode you skull if you actually exert hard enough for the top Force)? Or the likely evolution of magical theory along the lines of UMT to allow hermetics to summon "unbound" elementals?

If you had that much trouble going from SR2 to SR3 then yes i'd expect moving to SR4 will claim them all. Apparently you have a rather stringent standard for moving PCs? Or were some of the ready for retirement anyway?

Never mind dreading a rule system change. You should be dreading any book that comes out. Welcome to writing for a plot/system you don't control, you don't have full knowledge of (not everything is immediately published), and your material is not considered for backwards compatibility.

EDIT: Just don't come to me complaining about a little scratch when you stick your arm in a gator's mouth.

Given the depth of the problems with SR3 [as seen by the developers] all sorts of crap is going to get moved around and evolved a little bit. Then when it does someone tosses out that Fanpro "didn't really mean they weren't changing the setting much"? Yes, i'm going to call them on it.

Sorry, i was going to give the reference earlier but couldn't remember for sure if it was '63 or '64. Definately didn't have the page number, so i figured i'd just wait for the reference wizards.

Why? It's easy enough to duplicate this in SR3 already...

An Otaku with a headware radio + radio link complex form or a headware cellphone + cell link complex form...or even a normal decker with the link program and a comunication device hooked up to his cyberdeck.


It never ceases to amaze me how much people complain about the new rules, when they don't even understand the rules they 'prefer' (usually meaning: houseruled to the point of incompatability with canon games)

The evolution is the apparent prominence of standard retail devices that have the ability to radio communicate with each other, and the standardizing of the communications standards for riggers and deckers. It could be cobbled together before, certainly it would seem technically feasible. That is why i call it an evolution, not just a change. But that it is everywhere is different.

I think that's the point. Why bother with a fake SIN if it doesn't fool ordinary verifiers almost all of the time?

~J

A baby step, yes. But that's a cred stick, which are effectively single source. I had always assumed credsticks were passive transponders from the beginning? I didn't envision them with external metal contacts.

I'm not a playtester, or even very up on things, but I think it has been said previously in this thread that upon choosing a tradition, you get a list of what is summonable to you. This list can contain bound and unbound spirits. So maybe a voodoo gets unbound Loa and bound zombies? At least as far as I can tell this is what they mean by the whole bound and unbound thing.

Closer proximity to the antenna for easier, more secure transmission. If there are multiple credsticks in the immediate area you can be far more certain to communicate with the correct one the first time.

Absolutely Classarific!

I heard what happened is they were low on budget and couldn't afford to send red highlighter markers and page marker stickies to all the retail outlets to highlight the section.

P.S. I am a big fan of a good solid index, and wish i'd see more of them. A cynical person would take the lack of indexes in these books as a cunning plan to push the sale of PDFs duplicating a customers hard copy.

So do you reroll initiative for each round?

P.S. As a mage did you happen to notice your options for types of spirits? If you did could you please pop over here and fire off a quick clarification? Thanks in advance.

Gaaah! It's not coming out in the US until the September... *stomps off mumbling angrily to see about shipping from Canada or the UK*

Remember that things like Toxic and insect spirits were never in the core rulebooks. Street Magic will very likely add a bunch to the basic magic rules for traditions.

Bull

Yes, initiative is re-rolled each combat round.

In the 5 demo tables I ran, no one attempted any conjuring. I can't honestly say what happened at tables that any of the other GMs ran.

That is, of course, an option. But the drain would be rather unpleasant.

Thank you synner that makes it a little better. Hopefully a magic rating of 3 will be prohibitively expensive to prevent everyone from having it.

Reread what he said. He said you can get Magic 1 by starting at 3 and working down from there as you add 'ware.

That is the same way as you get to 1 Magic in SR3, only you start at 6 so you need to buy more 'ware (nominally, depending on the new Essense costs) to get there.

You do reroll each round.

I didn't see anything about the spirits, sorry.

Yeah I had to import it from the U.K. myself.

His first novel, "Altered Carbon" is an excellent place to start though, I think it's still my favorite of his works.

Absolutely. Morgan goes on the Short List of Awesomeness. Can't wait for Furies.

Are you sure this is right as that would meen the TN is NOT 5?

Thanos

+ f'ing +. Great book (the second one wasn't, though.) Kovacs is a great character, and Morgan has a neat universe made up.

like so maybe:

drain = the numbers of boxes of damage your taking before soaking them.
then you roll willpower vs 5 and reduce the damage by one box pr hit/success.

basicly the same damage resolution as with normal combat. and i must say i kinda like it

hmm, that would put a force 12 spell into the 6 damage area and physical to boot. nasty if you dont roll good on the test then. two of these should either severly wound you or drop you if that happens...

So you don't care, actually, to communicate with people. I'm not sure what you're doing here; ego-stroking, or passing time, or what. I'm here to discuss Shadowrun 4, including context (which includes SR2/SR3 changes), hypothetical situations (including speculation on how rules work and perceived consequences of announced rules), and so on; and I recogize that discussion involves an exchange of ideas about the matter being discussed, and that these ideas must meet minimal standards of relevancy, sufficiency, and truthfulness in order to be worthwhile for the other person to consider.

If your policy upon finding a debate insufficiently on-topic for your personal standards is to bring it much more off-topic without even mentioning that you question the topicality (and then trying to justify your statements afterwards by appealing to the lack of topicality when at the time it wasn't important enough to mention), then there's no point in discussing some things with you. Since I can't tell when you're adopting this policy, and there are plenty of people on DS who try harder to communicate (or do better at not letting emotional responses interfere with their posting, or whatever the case is here), I'll stop trying to discuss anything with you. If this was your goal all along, it could be much more efficiently achieved by simply asking, "Could you please not read and respond to my posts? I'm not going to make it worth your while, so there's no point wasting your time. Thanks."

Henceforth, if anyone wants me to address any of blakkie's comments, please ask them again in your own post. I have better things to do than waste my time reading what he writes, so I very likely won't even notice if something is worth addressing, and even if I do, I probably won't be motivated to address it.

This seems like quite a hit on the non-magical, non-cybered character. It used to be that with high quickness and intelligence, you could go twice fairly often. (E.g., with 7 in each you'd go twice half the time.) Magicians without quickened increase reflexes spells often got two actions as well. Also, unless there are fewer levels of reflex enhancement, it's going to accentuate the power of wired reflexes, since it used to add only about one action for every two levels before.

I suppose this does streamline the initiative process, although not very much if everyone still has to roll to determine the order in which they go. It seems like a pretty small savings for a rather major impact. It certainly simplifies things, as there's no arithmetic required to figure out if you're likely to get an extra action after upgrading your 'ware. If you dislike arithmetic sufficiently, this could be a bonus, even though you only have to do it rarely and during downtime (or character creation).

I wonder what this does to wounds penalties leaving people with no actions at all? I suppose that's gone as well?

I does agree with that ...
I find it a shame wired reflex still won't be considered as "reflexes" by the rules ...

Without any training(skill), people will still be able to act 3 times faster without any penalities ?

Wait, just for clarification... I did see that mentioned earlier that everyone starts with magic 3. But are we actually saying EVERY runner is magical? Every joe shmoe? Every office receptionist? Every little two year old playing ball with her dad? Heck, what about fido? Is he magical? That would quite put me off, if fireballs were more common than handguns.

I dunno - so the mage with a magic attribute of 65 could fling that force 12 spell - and Worse case scenario only suffer 6 boxes mental stun. Assuming he's got a bod of 2, he's still got 4 boxes left to operate and has likely thrown a Major - not easy to resist - spell.

I hope theres more to it than that....

*applause*