...Or is this the part where I just refer to you as a jackass?

Lastly, regarding the little parting shots between the use of the word 'Tool'. I'm not really going to argue it with you, kid. If you'd prefer to be one really big tool, instead of a multitude of tools, that's all fine by me. Congratulations, you're a tool.

-RoleModel
"I haven't figured out how to say 'FUCK YOU' politely."

-I don't think that will be neccessary. I'm not sure if there's more than needs to be said on the matter.

Then again, maybe both of you are just looking for an audience and the rest of us should just ignore you.

*edit*Or why not just start a seperate thread? Where the two of you can go off on each other and have the public spectacle if you want but at least stop hijacking this one before it gets closed.

On that note, most people respond better to constructive criticism that's not laced thoroughly with personal insults and sarcasm.

It's one thing to point out someone elses logical faults and it's another to rip them into little pieces and take a shit on them.

Neither has the pompous declarations of your moronic "majesty", but I've enjoyed the entertainment.

Gee, I dunno. So far I've actually attempted to add something. All you've done is rant on and on and on in a purile attempt to prove your superiority. Which, by the way, isn't working. So, really, I would say it's more to spare yourself.

I haven't conceded anything. Merely pointed out the reality. Relevance is determined by subject matter and point attempted. Since you missed it, I'll point it out. The question brought up early on was whether or not SR4 is adaptive to certain campaign styles. My point has been that it isn't. I'm currently waiting for a few replies from Tisoz before I finish my examination and come up with my final opinion on the subject. However, to some, what I said is important because their own campaigns are similar in style. Not everyone plays street style.

Once again, you fail basic reading comprehension. I never did imply that challenge is laid equally. However, I can prove to you that it has. Go read Tisoz's posts and note what information he pulled from the book about challenge. In fact, note your own posts where you brought it up.

An irony: This conversation started because of you bitching about my comments on tailoring. Now you're saying I am basically not going to tailor to the characters? Wow. Make up your mind: Am I tailoring too much, or not enough?

As expected, you attempted to twist a minor item into a point in a futile hope you can ignore what you wish. You've been doing that the entire time. Well, guess what: It isn't working, and it's only getting more and more obvious on your end that you are running out of items to say without going further and further into absurdity.

Little piece of common sense: You cannot compare separate systems of rolling dice without comparing unequal situations. You have to compare the inequality and determine which one is better.

Wow. The monkey is punching away at the calculator.

Okay, tell me: At what point did I specify time taken? If you can answer that, you can have a point. Until then, you have none because you are facing the fact I said a possibility. You also, Mr. "I 'passed' math," have to accept the fact that, mathematically, it is not impossible. The chance approaches zero, but never gets to it. It's one of those lovely mathematical concepts you should learn later, and even learn how to calculate for.

If you wish to prove it is, you have to prove the universe has a finite amount of time. You also have to prove that it will never happen. And, before you bring up mortality, I'll remind you of the strange things people sometimes put in their wills.

Nah. I don't want to take your favorite spot.

I'm sorry, but are you saying you are important enough that I should care what you want and don't want? Didn't think so. Now, stop twisting it to your own fantasy land and read the rest of the statement to get the real point.

Refer as you wish. Won't really change your status.

Hey, man, even tools have roles in society and some acceptance in it. Just too bad your niche is to be an example of those who don't.

Now, sonny, come back when you're on your meds and we can have a real talk. Until then, don't bother using up the bandwidth.

I've had my fun. I really doubt there is anything more that can be said.

Nah. No need. As far as I'm concerned, this is over. It's just too bad I spent all my time typing and missed a few posts.

To be honest, I know my role on these forums. Now, I'm getting back to it. This was fun, but not something I want to continue. After awhile, it gets boring. If I want an extended flamefest, I'll just post a bad review of Final Fantasy on the GameFAQs forums.

My only complaint about the removal of those random luck roles is the same thing you view as a boon. I don't get the joy of watching my players try for months to hit that TN 200. I would rather give them something that's remotely possible than outright tell them its impossible. The remote possibility, to me, represents the chance of an accidental discovery. Like, say, they're working on a new program and accidentally hit the right combination to create an AI without all of the steps in between. It's an astronomical set of odds, but similar discoveries have happened in real life.

Actually, I'd call that an example of Not-Even-Remotely-Having-A-Feel-For-Probability, more than anything else.

Reminds me of a game I was in a few years ago, where players thought a caper involving ten steps, each with a ~ 90% chance of success was a brilliantly foolproof idea.

(not that I'm trying to flame anyone here, but it is seriously faulty logic)

I have to agree with DE, the ability to "ignore" for a while would be nice ... but onto more interesting (ie: game related) blathering....

After reading more and starting to construct some tests using various "theoretical" characters ... new and experienced, we're starting to see somethings. I want to also note that I will put into play some of the comments from the "What's Up.." seminar as well as comments from elsewhere paraphrased as best as I am able to.

A) Under Skill Development (post character creation), no skill may be developed above a rating of 6 through the expenditure of karma with the exception of those whom have the Quality of Aptitude with a particular skill which allows it to go to a 7.

This is one limitation we are immediately throwing out. I understand that Rob and the other devs were working towards creating a more "street level" campaign, but as I have often said in the past ... "Epic" is not a measure of power it is a measure of roleplay intensity. By trying to create a system that is inherently limiting you are automatically going to set limits in the mindsets of the players. Not the best thing to do ever.

B) I understand the Spirits thing/rules considerably better and will really enjoying playtesting this one in our own group just to see what happens. I do find the DV (Drain Value) for Summoning a Spirit to be overzealous but at the same time I also find the rules for Spirits to have changed so much as to perhaps require this zealousy (word?).

To sum it up, there are the four types of elements (Air, Earth, Fire, Water) as well as Spirits of Man and Spirits of Beasts. Mages (Hermetics) get the four elemental types and Spirits of Man. Shamans (Shamanics(?)) get Air, Earth, Water, Man and Beasts. In truth, the Mages information gives me the impression like it is setup to allow for the WuJen type mysticism easier down the road.

C) Spell Force - Wow ... though not heavy Wow. This is all tied into the Magic Attribute (more later I think). Learning a new spell is 5 points of Karma, flat rate. Learning Spell is, IMO, incredibly easier to do. Whenever the Street Magic book comes out, I can hardly wait to see what the rules for Designing Spells will be.

D) Ritual Spellcasting (Ritual Sorcery), I can only say that "Yes, we'll be using this more." Any magician with a decent degree of fully developed initiation is going to be intensely lethal with Ritual Spellcasting. I am presuming (perhaps wrongly) that expanded rules for Ritual Spellcasting will be provided in the future Street Magic book as well because if all Ritual Spellcasting were to use these rules, then the world of Shadowrun would've blown up from it's usage by now IMO.

E) Casting Spells. Okay ... I have an understanding of why spell force should limit the effect of a spell's hits on some occasion, but on spells that are resisted spells I fail to fully understand the limit. I'm not sure I can relate my concern here without quoting a whole section of the book (which I will not do), but while I can see how a limit might apply to spells like Mind Probe or Analyze Device ... I do not see why the limit has to exist for spells like Manabolt and Blast.

F) Back to Spirits ... anyone can have a Bound Spirit. The process is (basically) Summon the Spirit (using Summoning + Magic) but is now an OPPOSED Test, with the would-be summoned spirits Force used to oppose the test (I actually really like this idea). After this, then the would-be Binder using their Binding + Magic in another OPPOSED test this time with the Spirit getting twice their Force to oppose with. All they need to Bind is one net success ("Net" in this instance for SR4 now means the final tally of successful hits). Binding now basically means the spirit remains in service until all Services it "owes" to the Summoner/Binder are used up. Additional hits after the first net indicates additional services the spirit now "owes" to the Summoner/Binder.

G) Initiation - Okay ... cool what they do give but annoying on other scales. The biggest one that will take some playing out to determine is that as the magician advances, they do NOT automatically increase their magic attribute. What they do is they increase their magic attribute CAP. They must still increase their magic attribute using karma as they would increase any other attribute. This is the one example I have found so far that allows for an attribute to go beyond the natural cap of 6, prior to adjustments for Race or Mods. I guess you could view Initiation as a "Magical Mod" now if you wanted to.

H) Metamagical abilities (the few given) simply are quick, easy and make sense. Centering, Masking, Flexible Signature, Quickening and Shielding are the ones given. Centering and Shielding are very simple to use now. Masking is basically what it used to be as is Quickening. Flexible Signature is the new one and to understand what it does, take the name for what it is. It is the ability to dramatically alter/reduce the impact of ones Astral Signature upon the astral plane. I particularly like the one about reducing how long a spellcasting signature remains.

More Mundane Stuff-

A) Learning Skills, I don't think this section has changed much with the exception of the skill cap I mention above. I do admit, I have to like the fact that learning a brand new skill is now 4 Karma instead of 1. Cost for skill advancement again does not bother me in the slightest.

B) Commlink/RFID chips ... okay, suffice to say everyone will get one of the Commlinks *somehow*. RFID chips are cool, and definitely an extension of the dystopian "Big Brother" mentality, but they are also something that already is being looked beyond in modern science. I appreciated the team working on improving the tech curve, but this is definitely one where someone should've dug deeper.

Technomancers (more later) but I have to say this. Way cool concept, and I am really irked now that System Failure did not come out. I would really like to know how they explained this happening in the world. Still haven't really read through the Matrix/Rigger section yet though, so I will go more into this later.

I would have thought that you at least would be smart enough to realize why that feature is a horrible, horrible idea…

~J

I guess not, because I do use it occasionally on RPG.net and haven't had any horrible experiences. I do like having the option, used or not.

My question is can that quality stack?

In other words if you buy it enough times can you end up with a skill higher then 7? Or is 7 the absolute cap?

What about dragons? Especially great dragons. Do they end up with a sorcery of 6 + stat for dice just like everyone else? I seem to remember Rhonaby's (SP?) old skill list as being pretty uber in the sorcery area.

That might be a good way for handling it. Allow multiples on a given skill to stack. It certainly makes it expensive to take the skill higher but that seems a good thing, no?

Incidentally is there a firm or suggested limit on Qualities in count and/or total value?

Thanks for the summary. I'm really interested in the vehicle rules.

Are there any rules for performing called shots vs vehicle subsystems (tires, windshields, etc...)

How did they handle vehicle armor?

How effective is magic and Spirits vs. vehicles/drones?

Is there a decent amount of vehicles and drones in the main rulebook, and if not, does it look like it will be hard to convert current SR3 hardware to the new edition?

Are passengers still forced to hold their actions to act after the vehicle's driver does?

Are acceleration/breaking handled differently?

And most importantly: Are Riggers still viable characters with the new rules, or am I going to have to wait for future sourcebooks to fill in the gaps enough to make them playable?

I completely agree with this sentiment.

I give this example. A magician runner has spotted a guard using binoculars or magesight goggles. He needs to take him out quickly and quietly. So he casts a simple sleep bolt spell. The guard has a willpower of 2 or 3. The mage should be able to completely knock out the guard sentry with his sleep bolt spell without resorting to a spell of such force that it causes physical damage drain.

Ya, and you should only have to cast Inivisibility at Force 1 and let your massive number of Hits completely blind people.

I think this is a good thing. Want to take them out in one shot? Then pay the price.

Physical drain is a little high a price to pay for knocking out a single security guard with a sleep bolt spell.

Ahhhh..... I feel a house rule coming. That will prevent the caster from getting ridiculous levels of successes with low force spells while still allowing them to preform some tasks without resorting to physical damage.

Perhaps changing the dice from

(Magic)+(Spellcasting)

to

(Force) + (Spellcasting) with magic once again relegated to the sole purpose of determining if physical or mental drain while chucking the maximum success rule.

That would keep spell Force relevant while not handicapping spells with the max successes = Force rule.

You can only get Aptitude once, for a single skill.

They roll a ginormous amount of dice, and aren't subject to the same limitations as metahumans.

I think you should be able to pretty easily, if you have a Magic Rating of 5. Fire off a Force 5 Stunbolt, and then your DV is 5 + hits. If you get 4 or more net hits, the hapless guard is knocked out. Besides which, the drain even on a Force 5 stunbolt is only 1 point; you only need 1 hit to stage it down. If you overcast it at Force 7 (almost sure to knock the guard out), you are still only suffering 7/2 (round down) - 1 Drain or 2 points; you only need 2 hits to stage it down to nothing, and even if you don't stage it down, you won't have wound penalties.

Erm. Edge? You'll probably be rolling anywhere from 8-10 dice pre-Edge, and there's some other modifiers that can help, too (Mentor Spirit modifiers, Spirit assistance dice, Foci, etc.). Besides, Force 7, as I stated before, only does 2 DV drain, which is barely enough to ding you, and that would only require 2 net hits to KO that guard.

What's so wrong about casting a Force 7 spell that does less Damage than a knife wielded by a 10-year old? Or even a Force 9 spell (guaranteed to drop the guard, flat out) that only does 3 boxes of Drain? Sure, it's physical Drain, but Hold-Out Pistols do more damage than that.

HURRAY!!!

SYL

Another House Rule I'm toying with is to increase damage staging from 1 to 2. So every extra success from a spell or weapon would cause 2 more boxes of damage not one. I can't be sure since I don't have the book yet, but I'm starting to get the opinion that SR4 has lost some of its SR3's lethality.

Because it shouldn't be necessary. We're talking about taking out a grunt! by surprise! With no enemy spell defense! In SR3 this would have been a very easy task. But in SR4 you'd need a god-like roll plus put the force into the physical damage range to avoid the maximum success rule.

So, in other words, you have to pay twice to be allowed to raise Magic above 6? This is quite interesting. It sounds to me as though they are using this as a way to prevent magicians from innitiating themselves into godhood. That was a slight problem some GMs experienced with SR4.

I must say I love this. They promised to streamline it, and that appears to me as though they have.

Hmm. This makes me think they will be releasing more advanced options in later books. It is quite possible that what they are doing with this is the common version every man on the street will have, to fit with their idea of a street-level setting. The more advanced stuff is likely to be found in books that come later. It's annoying, but not something we can't deal with.

So, what are they? Mages who affect technology? Or uberotaku? The concept may sound cool, but at the same time it's irksome. An exact explanation of how they work is pretty much required in order for them to not be annoying.

Rolemodel- Look, play time is over. Crawl back into the shadows, under a rock, whatever. It's no longer amusing and, frankly, I have better things to deal with. The entertainment value was worn out before my previous post, and now you're just reaching. We adults will be actually discussing. You can join in, or try to find some other way to attempt to establish yourself as important. Either way, I don't care. Consider yourself dismissed and any further wastes of electrons you attempt to use to regain my attention ignored as not worth my time. Maybe, if you can contribute to the conversation, we can have another of our chats. Oh, and you should really listen to the advice given towards you. It'll save you embarassment in the future.

That's unfortunate. One of the things I liked best about playing a Rigger was tinkering with vehicles and drones. Taking a stock drone or cheap car and modifying the hell out of it was fun.

If Rob is opposed to giving design and customization rules for Vehicles, I wonder how he feels about design rules for other areas, like Spell Design?

Are you sure about this? It seems awfully steep, and it also contradicts what tisoz wrote earlier.

Does this mean that an adept with magic 6 has to pay 34 karma (21 magic + 13 initiation) to get another power point? And 40 karma for the next one?

How does centering work?

Ya, not the best choice.

A better way to have put it is that under SR3 Force was separate from Damage level chosen. In SR4 Force is the Damage level chosen. If you aren't willing to take the drain risks of a serious Damage level you shouldn't expect to do a serious amount of damage.

You could use those rules to create a totally unique vehicle if your GM decided that you had the right skills/contacts/facilities..., but IMO the cost would likely be orders of magnitude higher than what R3 suggests.

I usually used R3's rules to create new stock vehicles to fill in gaps for vehicles that didn't already exist, or to modify existing vehicles.

I noticed though that in calculating Drain the standard is normally Force/2. At least they got rid of some of them, and apparently most that deal with actual number of Hits?

EDIT: I guess Centering only being used for avoiding Drain is a pretty good way to take what was a fugly mechanic and make it usable.

Well, the Force/2 Drain "problem" still exists. Most people like the fact that it's rounded down; it's neither here nor there. You could always go with the sanctioned (read: in every single edition of SR) house rule that base Drain is equal to Force instead of Force/2. Just as the 6/7 problem is something you live with when you play SR3, you also live with the "2 successes to change any variable in the game" Threshold rules.

i agree.

i also find it strange that they exclude the possibility that there will be a rigger 4, i mean, hey, its not like we want this shit for free... (we'd pay for it).
But if they'd offer a conversion guide for SR3 Vehicles and some future equipment for hackers in other books, its going to be ok for me.

We can easily create new vehicles and chassis by our own, the german Rigger 3 for example contained some chassis that were not to be found in the original.

lets just hope that they didn't change much with the vehicles.

could anyone fill me in on the vehicle rules, especially electronic warfare (ECM,ED)..

will there be a cannon companion?