i, uh... yeah. my gm and i would have had a talk.

it's a rules change. even on shadowland, we accomodate rules changes in ways that don't overly screw a character. if they change the rules in a way that would make your character drop dead, no online community in its right mind would not allow you to remove enough cyber/bioware to make him a viable character again. i mean, jeesh, that's harsh.

Ok, that is a solution, and I suppose they get all the costs back, too. But what if the character needs every bit of augmentation for the concept and maybe to be worth a damn? Like the mnemonic enhancer thing, it did not hurt my character, but it sure did suck and if the ruling had occurred prior to my character getting that piece of 'ware, he would not have gotten it. The GM thought it was kind of funny. I thought it sucked, but my character was like, "Hmm, this thing doesn't work near as good as I heard it did."

In my game, tisoz, I would have given you the option to not have it installed. That type of cirucmstance was outside the game, due to a rules change, so I wouldn't make your character be stuck with it.

As to rules changes screwing over characters, we as a group vote on what errata we use. We do it as a group because of stuff like tisoz's situation. I might not care about a new ruling for Mnemonic enhancer, but a player who has one most likely will.

@ Topic: (kinda)
I think that with the combination of Bio Index and Essence, a few of my characters might just have to retire. That's one mechanic (among many) that I'm very interested in seeing.

I'm really curious about how the conversion rules will work. I mean, I got a decker with a computer skill of 6, and an Int of 5.

Do I have to split my 6 computer skill points among the new computer skills group that Computer got split into? That would make my character less than what he was. Get 6 in each new computer skill? That doesn't sound right.

And Int. Do I get 5 points in each of the skills int was split up into? Or do I get to split them up - once again, severly weakening my orginal character..

Not that I plan on using the conversion rules, I'm just wondering how they will execute them.

Mfb I just played an ork adept next... new campaign began with 3rd ed so it was easier.... Then I played a wierd shaman (Jaguar totem... except in his mind the totem was the car, not the animal)

No sane and/or decent GM in the world wouldn't give characters a chance to update themselves to match a new rules-set. If "Man and Machine II: OMG So Much Chrome!" were to come out tomorrow, and in addition to adding a bunch of new stuff it doubled the Essence costs of every existing piece of cyberware, people would get the chance to have stuff pulled out of them instead of having their characters spontaneously combust.

It's like with Program Carriers, from 1st Edition. They ruled that using them gave characters cancer (or something similarly lame), in order to make that piece of chrome no longer available, so they could sort of "make room" for Otaku (not wanting normal deckers to be able to jack in without a deck any more). I don't think very many GMs went "Oh, hah hah! Your old decker has Program Carriers! Now he has cancer! Now he's dead! And so is Dodger, and Fastjack, and your mom!" I'd say most GMs just went "Huh. Oh well. That piece of chrome isn't available any more. We'll pretend you never had it, or you can get something else instead with that Essence, or something. Edition changes suck, sometimes, huh?"

I mean, if your GM is such a jackass that he doesn't give his players at least the option to update/evolve a character to keep up with a rules change, he doesn't deserve to have very many players.

seriously. what about all the 2nd edition mages who used un-nerfed anchoring to complete their runs and survive ambushes? do they suddenly die because the drain they should have taken at activation would have imposed enough wound penalties to get them killed? what about the deckers with rating 1 datajacks--do they suddenly gain hundreds of thousands of nuyen because they would have been able to complete their runs faster with SR3 datajacks? killing a character because the edition change screwed them over is just silly.

i mean, okay, if you decide you don't want to play the same char in the new edition, great. your choice, and all. but i'm just saying, if someone's GM forced the issue by using an edition change as a weapon, the GM ought to be dragged out and shot. preferably with a 1st-edition rocket ripple.

Yay! Be astounded as I lob in my two-cent grenade! As my current focus is on Magic, I'll comment on that, chiefly.

You no longer have to buy spells at a specific force:
Yay! Jack up the cost however much you like, I don't care. I always thought this mechanic seemed a bit...mechanical, anyhow. And I didn't like how a lot of spells had no reason to be bought beyond a certain force. It was also bloody annoying that you had to keep paying for the same spell you've had since forever rather than getting newer, wizzier spells. Also, I disliked how it made it brain-dead to get anything but force 6 good spells at the beginning, since getting them at 6 increased the amount of time until you had to upgrade. Feelings: Positive.

Magic starts below 6 and must be bought up
Yay! It's possible to make characters who are not all that great at magic but who still have it. Boo! I'm worried about too many players "splashing" a bit of magic ability for some utility. I like this change if and only if they prevent every bloody character having magic because it's no longer such an investment. Feelings: Guarded

Hermetic Mages and Shamans can now each Bind or Spontaneously Summon
Yay! Mages can summon on the fly! Boo! I feel less distinction between myself and shamans now, something that I treasure. I always liked that there were small but vital differences in the way these two traditions worked. It was a simple choice: If you wanted an on-the-fly ace-in-the-hole, be a shaman. If you wanted a more tactical game where you planned ahead and worked out contingencies ahead of time, you played a mage. I'm really going to miss that. Feeling: Cautiously optimistic, but worried

Drain seems more likely to affect you
Boo! As a mage I enjoy being able to cast for long periods of time so long as I am more judicious with the power level of my spells. So long as I can still resist the occasional damage level S-equivalent spell, I'll be happy. If casting things with an M causes even light fatigue to a dedicated, well-played mage then I'll probably be switching to a sammie. Not that I mind, I enjoy playing everything. Feeling: Really Quite Worried

If there's one thing I really, REALLY hope they fix about mages, it's to nerf the hell out of Foci of all kinds. In my opinion, they are ridiculously, game imbalancingly powerful, and I feel dirty and used any time I make use of them. I mean really, who needs these things to be so powerful? I've never, ever felt that I needed them to be successful (except the occasional sustaining focus or spirit focus.) I wish they would make it such that you could only have one of each type bonded to you at any given time, and that the total force of all foci bonded to you at a time could not exceed, say Int or int x 1.5. I feel more than capable without them, so I really hope they tone them down a bit.

Off-Base Rant: And who says that a mage wouldn't buy smartlink + whatever even if it cost .01 essence? My current mage (former bodyguard) has cybereyes, a smartlink, and several pieces of bioware (Total cost < 1 Essence) and I'd pit him against a mage with magic 1 higher any day of any week you can imagine. Even this small bit of cyberware has opened tactical possibilities impossible to most mages. I'm seriously questioning if I'll ever play a non-cybered Awakened character again.

OSUMacbeth

The ability to cast force 6 spells was important in SR3, but won't be with the new mechanic, so the penalty for starting mages to take cyberware will go down. If you combine that with presumably cheaper costs to get partial magical ability, I'd expect to see many more mages with a bit of cyber, or street sams with a bit of magic.

If foci stay powerful, then maybe you'll still be able to cast a M-drain spell without taking stun. Perhaps you shouldn't wish for them to be toned down!

I don't quite understand why you're cautiously optimistic about the merging of mage and shaman summoning. Your comments are almost entirely negative. Is the "woo, new toys!" factor big enough to offset all the disadvantages of having new toys (i.e. that the richness of subtle distinctions is gone)? Or might you better be characterized as tentatively pessimistic, but still openminded on that one?

Well, I hope at least one of the conclusion she's jumping to is valid, regarding cyberware and partial magical ability.

If characters with reduced Essence need to buy multiple points of magic in order to have any magic rating at all (i.e. a character with 4.5 Essence needs to buy Magic up to 3 in character creation in order to get Magic 1 in play), then... eh, it's a design choice, but it's not a design choice I would make. I hope that magical ability in minor amounts, even with cyberware, is relatively easy to get. The alternative, as outlined above, just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The idea that I liked the best would be to have a character's Essence impact their maximum magic, not their current magic.

It's a crude oversimplification to suggest they function as they always did. Magic does not function as it used to, so nothing related to it can "function as it always did". If my above example is correct, but magic burns out at 0 "like it always did", does that mean that characters with Essence lower than 6 cannot ever Awaken later in life, as they will Awaken, automatically assess the Essence reduction to their new Magic rating of 1, and burn out instantly? Does having Magic directly linked to Essence, given Magic's new maximum rating of 6, result in Magic working as it always did?

I think that there are too many changes in the basic attribute mechanics of magic, and dice mechanics of the magic rules, to think that preserving certain outward functions that were existent in SR1-SR3 in an eye of keeping things the same will actually result in the same system behavior. The system's different, and if you want the same (or similar, "the same" is virtually unachievable) behavior, it's probably going to require a lot of mechanical dissimilarity between editions.

uuhm, ok, so according to Bull we have a condition monitor that is 8+1/2 BOD for physical and 8+1/2 WIL for mental, fine, now, here's my little question.

If you get a +1 modifier for every 3 boxes of damage it will get a bit confusing when we compare a normal human and say a Troll with a body of 16 (yes, excessive but I just use it to get my point across.)

Human: 10 Boxes
Troll: 16 Boxes

Human: 9 boxes of damage= +3 / 12 boxes of damage= overdamage and unconcious

Troll: as above but when taking 12 boxes of damage is a +4 modifier and if they take 15 boxes of damage (as with the human 1 box of damage from unconcious) they have a +5 modifier.

Percentage wise they have basically taken the same amount of damage to their body but the troll has a harder time of doing anything worthwhile whilst the human has an easier way with "only" a +3 modifier?

The fact that a Troll can have taken less damage than a human in wound boxes/total boxes but have more penalties really sticks in my craw.

~J

Human, 8 boxes out of 10 boxes: -2.

Troll, 12 boxes out of 15 boxes: -4.

Wound boxes/total boxes: .8 in each case.

I pulled the Troll's maximum boxes out of my arse, but it's the same for 12 boxes: 9 boxes out of 12 is -3, but is less of the total condition monitor than 8/10.

~J

In my opinion, a strong troll with 75% of its damage boxes full (12 of 16, using the example above) should function the same as a weak human with 75% of its damage boxes full (8 of 10). Instead, the weak human is only mildly impared, while the troll is barely walking.

Yes... but remember that the Troll has got more strength and body than a human. SO even with a -3 or -4, he won't suffer too much...

Once again, I'm no math wiz, but I think I see where they are coming from:

Human 9 boxes
Troll 15 boxes.

they both take 3 boxes of damage.
For the human, that's one third of his total, and he's +1 now.
For the troll, thats one fifth of his total, and he's at +1 as well.


The troll has taken less over all damage - when comparied to his total - than the human, but has the same negative modifiers.

Now let's take it to 6 boxes. The humans is over half way to dead, with a +2 modifier. The troll is less than half way, he is also at +2.

Yeah, they've taken the same amount of damage, but not when compared to the entire condition monitor.

That human, at 8 boxes is a shot up, quivering mass of blood- with what, over 90% damage?. That troll should still be able to function - he's only a little over 50% damaged.

I think you're misreading wound boxes/total boxes. Specifically, I'm saying "wound boxes divided by total boxes", not "wound boxes or total boxes".

~J

Bear in mind that the attribute + skill dice pool mechanic (minus the 1 per 3 boxes of damage) still gives the troll significantly more dice for strength and body based tests than the aforementioned human.

Yeah but the human has more attribute plus skill dice for just about every other stat. And presumably paid less for his race pick so has more points to spend on other things like cyber and skills than the troll in the first place.

To Ellery: I suppose you're correct. My view on the changes to summoning would probably be summed up better as "Slightly pessimistic, but open-minded." I'm a bit gun shy about jumping to *any* conclusions on the new system until I have a complete text in my hand, so that I can see how the whole of the rules works together. I never thought I'd see an SR4, so I pretty much consider this entire addition a "freebie" when it comes to what I expect out of it.

OSUMacbeth

Then how would you streamline it?

It really depends on how much damage a single box represents and if damage is still resisted by body. If damage is resisted by body then it is already scaled proportionately to each character. The elephant would simply shrug off the 9mm pistol round without significant damage because of its body.

Say a troll and a human both step on landmines. The human gets his leg blown off, taking 9 boxes of damage. The Troll, having higher body, only takes 6 boxes and only loses a foot.

Now lets make the Troll's landmine more powerful. This time both take 10 boxes of damage. The Troll is still able to function becaue of its higher larger condition moniter but is missing an entire leg just like the unconscious human. Obviously, the Troll should suffer wound penalities as it hops around on its one good leg.

Indeed. The nonsensical part of the new wound monitor is that for the barely pre-death individual (1 box short of full), the hardier individual is the more they're impaired.

~J

I'll address my issues with the "they don't represent the same amount of damage to the individual" view when I get back from Trader Joe's. For now I'll just say that the elephant problem would have been solved if some, anyone, had considered that an armor rating of 3 might be just a little bit too low.

On the other hand, elephants and their ilk are one of those places where the identical Power of a Heavy Pistol and a heavy Sporting Rifle really jumps out with a nonsensical result.

~J

I really enjoy this: characters finally get the ability to remain standing longer after taking larger amounts of damage, and people still complain because you'll have high TN penalties. As I see it my troll should just count himself bloody lucky that he's not already a rapidly cooling corpse like the majority of humans would be at 10 boxes. Remember: You will be alive while other characters are Dead.

In reality, some people die from non-life threatening wounds suffered from say, a 9mm shot to the shoulder. The wound doesn't kill them, the shock does. But I digress. Most people who take this sort of wound are not in danger of their life. Presumably this is because their body's system is more resilient to the shock caused by systemic damage. In most cases, however, people with nearly identical wounds live. But if that second man who took a shot to the shoulder and lived were shot again near the heart, he might be very close to death, and you better believe that he would have a harder time functioning than the first person would have had he lived.

To me everyone seems to be taking the condition monitor as a percentage-based measure of how hurt you are; thinking that a human with 3/4 of his boxes filled is "as hurt" as a troll with 3/4 of his boxes filled. I say this is not at all the case. Is it not possible that the condition monitor is a measure of systemic, physical damage? In this case, a 9mm shot to the arm does exactly the same amount of systemic damage to the troll and to the human; the difference is that the troll can take, say 4 such shots before his body dies rather than the human's lesser 3 shots. If we take TN modifiers from injury to be primarily a measure of how much mechanical, systemic damage a target has taken, (i.e. both characters' arms no longer work after being shot because muscle has been blown away) then this system makes perfect, logical sense.

OSUMacbeth

It's hit points. Just because it's a new name doesn't take away from the fact that it is in effect transplanting one of the dumbest mechanics ever in RPGs into one of the simplest and sensible mechanics in Shadowrun.

For what it's worth, I agree. Do not try to get me to say I think this system is superior, because I wholeheartedly think that this is several dozen steps back. The damage modeling is probably my single favorite thing about the mechanics behind the Shadowrun system. It really pains me to see it going away, perhaps more than any other single change. As long as damage staging remains, I won't complain too loudly, but I think the new damage system is the answer to a question no one asked. The thing I thought separated this system from almost all other mainstream systems was that even at later levels, you would truly fear having a light pistol pointed at you if the gunman was skilled. In D&D, I hate how a group can point ten heavy crossbows at you but you don't even break a sweat, because you know that even if every bolt hit for a critical, mathematically you would still be unable to die.

I tend to take the tack of not making up my mind about this preliminary info ahead of time because we're not getting the whole picture, but I find myself reacting to the changes in damage more than any others with a visceral hatred.

OSUMacbeth

That depends on how far you can stage damage and how many boxes each damage level adds. It is very possible that staging will allow someone with enough skill to do 30 boxes of damage in 1 light pistol shot.

I'm wondering how the new body system is going to work with other things like regeneration. Like the example of the vampire that now has 15 damage boxes, and regenerates it all at the end of the round. That's assuming regeneration stays the same of course, but it's something more to keep ya' up at night if you're planning on going against anything with regeneration in SR4.

yeah, a lot more, and from a lot farther away if you can