I was telling someone I know that SR > d20 because in SR, it's the skill of the character, not the price of the gun, that makes you good.

Which is it? He adamantly refuses to believe, even when we tried rolling it off. 12 Pistols skill better than 6?

That's a toughie, a .22 to the eye will kill you just as dead as a shotgun blast to the face, but it's a lot harder to take out someone's eye with a .22 than it is just to blast'em.

Yeah, but we're not talking .22s versus .44 magnums here.

We're talking Ares Predators vs some super-gun that costs 200,00 nuyen or something.

So 6 skill and a 9M pistol vs. 12 skill and a 6L pistol?

Lets make this a simple test. No other fun toys. TN of 4.

Big Gun guy can expect 2 successes with 9M damage. Equivalent to 9S, but fairly easy to dodge.
Little Gun guy can expect 4 successes with 6L damage. Equivalent to 6S, but fairly easy to soak.

Against an unarmored foe, I'd probably hand it to the latter (small gun). Against an armored foe, I'd say it's about equal, with a slight advantage to the second (TN of 4 to dodge the first, 2 successes required. TN of 2 to soak the second, 6 successes required.)

If you throw on a smartlink, the second guy would probably need the skill increased to maybe 16 or 18 to compensate.

The skill numbers are actually fairly reasonable, if you consider pools. Average guy might have skill of 3, and so can only put 3 Combat Pool dice in. The second might have skill of 7 and can put all 5 combat pool dice in.

Skill 12 beats skill 6. Pretty consistently. A high powered gun is more likely to kill on hit -- but killing on hit requires the dodge test to leave at least 1 success.

Reason being, who other than adepts using SOTA 64 has enough combat pool to dodge a 14+ success hit? Skill 12 can throw up to 24 dice with high enough combat pool.

Skill 6 with a supergun? At most 12 successes. It's at the upper edge, but it's possible for a pure mundane to dodge it. (Quickness, Intelligence, Willpower all at 8 gives combat pool 12)

That's a hard question to answer, unless we actually know what the super-duper 200,000 gun does.

If it's something that does 10M damage, has 10 points of integral recoil compensation, a 120 round magazine an fires AV rounds, then yes, I'd sure as hell rather use that with 6 skill dice than an Ares Predator with 12 dice. Same goes for a PAC, or something like it.

Even if you take a much less extreme example: Having a smartlink - and a smartlink-equipped gun - is often worth a hell of a lot more than extra dice. If you have 12 dice and the TN is 6, and you have no smartlink, or any other aiming aids, you're worse off than the guy with 6 dice who's got a smartlink and is making the same shot at a TN of 4. So in this particular case, having a better gun counts for more than 6 more dice.

Sure, SR doesn't really have very many personal weapons that compare to a stock heavy pistol the way a mithril +5 Keen Longsword of Speed compares to a dagger, but in d20, the +5 sword is only more important than what you can do only at very low levels... It's not going to save you when someone who knows a lot more tricks than you do trips you and then uses the +4 he gets to hit you to disarm you easily, or just grapples you and strangles you to death.

It all depends on your style of play. In some groups, toys rule just as in d20 (Ueber runner base == castle to base out of, Ares Alpha with all the mods == +4 vorpal longsword, 3 Mnuyen T-bird == griffon for your paladin to ride on, APDS == +1 ammo).

In other groups, the game is more about contacts, attributes, and the judicious use of skills (these groups tend to have runners who discard their weapons after every run to avoid being traced).

Playing both SR and The Other Game, I can say with conviction that both games can be played in a "skills rule" context or a "home shopping network" context. The trick is to find the right balance. Both games sometimes require the right tool for the right job. Both games also require the advanced abilities to use those tools effectively, though.

Look, the math on this is wrong. Most shootouts don't happen at target number 4. They happen at 6 or 8, sometimes 12 on a bad day. At those levels, it's all skill. If you're not talking about total ambushes where it's ok to throw in your whole combat pool for offense then those skill dice really add up.

Say it's Smartlinked Ares Predator II with skill 3 versus laser sighted Fitchetti 500 and skill 6. In partial light, with both shooters walking and using partial cover. That's target numbers of 9 and 10 respectively. The guy with skill 3 can throw all of his combat pool into attacking - he'll get maybe one success even with two shots. The skill 6 guy can dodge that without breaking a sweat. When it's time to return fire, he can probably succeed with both shots. Only one'll be dodged - the other's up to soaking. Keep this up for as many initiative passes as it takes to win.

But a more important part of Shadowrun's superiority to some other games is the level of tactics involved. If the guy with the light pistol is smart, he can maneuver around to where he has cover and the guy with the big gun doesn't. Then he stops and takes aim for a simple action. That makes the target numbers 9 and 4. A clear win given that 12 dice will get you 6 successes (undodgeable) and a 6D wound (hard to soak). Maybe the guy soaks it down some - just shoot him again next round.

The real skill in shadowrun isn't something that's necessarily written down on a character sheet, it's something the player does by being smart - and that is using the detailed, cumbersome, slow and sometimes crazy Shadowrun rules to do painful things to those who think combat is about standing around trading blows like a couple of boxers. . . .

Ok, you take cover. And then the guy with some good eye mods and a nice assault rifle with an underbarrel grenade launcher and grenade link lights you up with an airburst IPE grenade.

Gear matters in SR just as much if not more than in the "other game" - if you don't oversimplify things by comparing various heavy pistols, it's pretty damn obvious.

Skill. No matter how good the gun is, skill allows you to hit the bolt that is holding the fuel tank in place on that badly made vehicle.

mmu1, you said that in both game systems when a character loses all of his gear they are basically the same. I don't think that's true. A fighter in D&D is minorly dependent on strength to hit but heavily dependent on his level to hit. A new character in SR has a definite advantage then because he can have a skill up to 6 and add combat pool to enhance his ability to hit. A 1st level character in D&D is mostly subject to luck when trying to hit anything with a decent armor class, whereas in SR you can probably hit them decently and do some light to moderate amount of damage when the D&D character is probably just going to miss most of the time. With no gear then SR definitely wins until you get into higher levels in D&D, but even then an equivalently high level SR character can just pump his karma into combat skills.

Well, shadowrun is a lot like real life. The situation means everything.

If the guy is wearing hardend armor, hell yes the toy matters. 6l or 6D is no different if the bugger has 8 pts of hardend armor.

However, in most situations, skill rules the day.
Nightshade, a physad in our group, has the power that lets a playing card do physical damage. str/2 L. So he is doing 2L, before successes. He specialised his thrown skill, so he can roll I think something like 10 dice. He never uses combat poll to attack, only dodge. With Bod 3, I can't say I blame him. He usually does 2D + 2 successes. Another person in the group uses a real throwing knife, doing str L. If there skill is 6, the seem to do about 4M on avg. 4M as opposed to 2D +2 successes. Also, since he uses playing cards, rocks, rubber ducks, whatever, he can get his weapons into just about anywhere. Throwing knives are harder to explain at airport security than a deck of cards. Or hell, a pack of penuts. It was really fun the time he picked up a guys gun, took the clip out, and threw the bullets.

Sorry, digressing.

I also put together a STARTING physad one time that, on avg rolls, could do D damage to a troll with high body and light sec armor with a Tiffani Self Defender.

In most cases, skill maters. But as always, there are exceptions.

whats more importaint? the man, or the toys? what you have to remember is that whilst ON PAPER a big damage code and power looks better, it actually depends on the situation. Lets face it, everyone here is quoting sucsesses at target number 4. i can say with a fair degree of certainty, that no one ever takes a shot at tn 4, with any regularity, First of all, you'd need to be a close range.. in perfect lighting conditions, un harmed, and totaly in control of the situation.

secondly, your ref had better be either really nice to you, or just plain stuupid to NOT be applying condition modifiers.

this is called SHADOWrun for a reason. if the runs going off in anything other than partial light (at best) or total darkness (more likely), then somethings going wrong.

secondly, most security guards will be carrying flash paks, smoke grenades, teargas, or any amount of "non leathal, but TN increasing all the same" technology.

if memory serves, the last firefight that my group of players got into had an average target number of 6. the only people in the combat who were aiming for 4's were the sniper (and only on the first round of combat), and the burst firing buckshot loaded shotgun carrying troll. (note to self. make security guards stand more than 4 meters appart in firefights from now on)

in a "real world" situation.. ie, one where everythings gone to hell in a hand basket, the guy with the insane "shoot stuff" skill will beat the pants off of the "i've attended a day-long course in shooty" guy every time.

on the other hand, (and this applies to the other game too), as characters get more experienced, they're going to pick up better kit, either by design, or because the new shiney toys are just more effective at doing what they aughta.

given a choice between carrying a holdout/light/heavy pistol, of course i'll take the heavy pistol. bigger bullets = bigger holes in the rent-a-goons. on the other hand, (most of the time, anyway) if my characters are on a "downtime" run, then they'll usually be carrying a light pistol. they're small, light, and easy enought to conceal.

(i say usually, as i do have one character who point blank refuses to carry anything heavier than a tazer. Frankly, with his taser skill, he really doesnt NEED to)

on the other hand, if anyone wants to ask me why my fighter in the "other game" is carrying a huge mercurial great sword arround, she'll tell you that it was her great-great-grand pappy's sword, and it's got sentimental value. i, on the other hand, will simply say, Enlarge, Rage, charge. Next!

Don't forget, the average human can not kill anything with a heavy pistol while in a firefight without possessing some sort of skill in pistols. Give said human an assault cannon and that changes.

Point being, gear is important in Shadowrun, as is skill. Something I think applies pretty much to both games. If anything gear in SR can be an even larger balancing factor between the skilled and the unskilled then it is in that other game.

Take for example a group of runners running across a Steel Lynx, I won't explain how, or why, other then to say said GM happens to have a Feline Fetish when it comes to those miniture tanks. Had one of the players not managed to find a single clip of AV ammo for his Heavy Pistol no-one in the party could have laid a hand on said drone. He wasn't the most skilled, or the fastest, or the most heavily twinked combat character in the group. Still he was the only one that could get the job done because he was the only one that was packing the mystical bullets of Uber armored drone slaying.

On the other hand, had said player not been packing his magical toys, said Lynx would have trounced the party, regardless of the skill of the Rigger controlling it, simply because the team wasn't packing the gear to take down what is, essentially, someone elses gear.

Arcady: SIGGED!


Edge: Sure, if you get ridiculous. I mean, pistols are pistols, and rifles are rifles, and assault cannons are fragging ridiculous. But within the same catagory - Heavy pistols vs. heavy pistols, light pistols vs. light pistols, rifles versus rifles - shoulden't the skill matter more than the price in of the gun? I mean, I've never played too much to really get into it, but I put the chances of anything in any nonCore book persuading my characters to give up their Ares Predator at about zero to none. I mean, it's the street standard. It's the Ares Predator + Smartlink combo, it's been killing people for 20 years. It just dosen't get better than that, and it won't until a complete generational overhaul of firearms technology comes through. The Colt M1911 is still the preferred gun of choice for (most) people who're looking for something in .45 ACP. And that gun's just a hop, skip and jump from being a Centinnial.

y'know? I just don't want it to be who can buy a bigger +2 Penis, like it is in D&D. That's already creeping into my d20 M game, and it makes me want to beat people. We captured a flying vehicle not unlike a T-bird in practicality, about the size of an airborne infantry fighting vehicle. Granted it was a drone, but we have lots of people who're handy with blowtorches on-hand, most of them PCs.

The stupid fraggers sold ALL eight LMGs that came with it, even though they were a common type and we could get the official conversion from drone-powered computerized firing to manual firing, and we could just take the pintle mounts off the bottom of the ship and put them in holes cut into the hull, and make it into a flying gunship.

Why did they do this? Because none of them have the applicable feats for use, despite the fact that our DM instituted a house rule saying you can keep firing for as long as you have bullets left. And we're packing 1,600 rounds here, on 200-round clips. Natch 20s are a garuntee.

What did they sell them for? SNIPER RIFLES. Because two of them were good at snipering. They actually think they can fire an unsupported sniper rifle from a moving-in-three-dimensions vehicle, which is undertaking evasive manuvers, with more effect than they can fire door-guns.

And they may well be right. I took this to the DM, who informed that they would be taking massive penalties for trying to do that, while the guy who has his machine gun mounted on a pintle will be far more likely to hit, even with his penalties. They STILL sold the machine guns, and most of the ammo, to get their bigger +2 damage rifles.

Aiiiighffffsss... *sigh.*

I need to get into a Shadowrun campaign.

Or. In most cases a heavy pistol is about as good any other heavy pistol, ans so it comes to skill.

So if both players are using the same type of weapon then skill. But if theya ren't then it changes based on how much more skilled and how much better of a weapon. I would sall it soemthing like 60/40 with skill getting 60.

mmu1: Yes. But the problem is that in D&D, your weaponry skill is determined by your class-based BAB, not your deliberate advancement in freaking excelence in your weapon of choice.

In Shadowrun, for example, it's possible to have a professor who is as good if not better a dead-shot with his Ares Predator as the street sammie. In d20? Forget it.

Hey, I'll take skill 6 and a light pistol against a guy who's only got 3 points in his assault cannon any day. He'll have penalties to hit me from cover, and bigger penalties once I put a couple rounds into him. Yeah, if he gets me I'm toast - but he has to luck out to do it!

Clyde...

I'm pretty sure someone shooting an antivehicular weapon at your cover will get you through dint of collateral damage.

Remember, what's cover from a BB is concealment from a 22, what's cover from a .22 is concealment from a .44 mag, what's cover from a .44 mag is concealment from a buffalo rifle, and what's cover from a buffalo rifle (Hint: mil-spec armor plate is about all that is) is concealment from an assault cannon.

It's true that you do need the right weapon for the job. But within that job, there are ranges of competency, and ranges of quality, and I'm thinking you don't need to go hawg-wild for the latest most expensive toy that SK or Ares can put out.

Have the Bard do it. You should have better luck getting them from said fixer that way.

It's niether the gun nor the skill. It's the smartlink II and ammunition that matter.

At the upper absurd extremes, either one can eclipse the other.

Get a big enough gun, and skill don't matter.

Get a high enough skill and the gun don't matter.

=)


-karma