Well they work a bit differently. They subtract from your dicepool. Say you had a 8 dice pool at 8 boxes you only have 6, take one more and you're down to 5 dice. And thats before other mods which may lower it further. So it can be equaly crippling. That +1 modifier wasn't that bad all by itself if you had the dice, its when it started adding up with the other modifiers that it realy hurt.

Can you still make an athletics skill test to increase movement?

That's what the "running + strength test" is for.

I think he is asking about increasing walking distance, not running. But the whole area is still unclear since it wasn't explained what you have to do to switch from walking rate to running rate, or if Running + Str can also be used to increase the walking rate either directlyor indirectly.

Once you raise a skill outside of a skill group, the skill group ceases to exist, and the skills are split off at the same rating as the skill group. You can "build" a new skill group if you have all of the skills within that group at the same rating, and then raise them as a collective Skill Group. You cannot start with a Sorcery Skill Group 4 and Spellcasting 6, as far as I can see.

I'm going to disagree with hahnsoo. I don't see where this breaks a rule.

Say you buy the Sorcery group up to 4. (Max group rating at chargen is 4) Cost is 40 BP.
Then you buy Spellcasting up to 6. (Need to check on the single skill of 6 at chargen, so all other skills and groups at 4 or less.) Cost is 8 BP.
I would allow it as GM.

The thing is, there are no examples that use this tactic, and it doesn't come out and forbid or condone it. It just says the group is dismantled when one skill gets raised above the others and no more group discounts.

What is even trickier, is if it is possible to have Sorcery Group 4, Spellcasting 6, then tack on Manipulation Spells Specialization for 2 BP at chargen? It says groups can not have a specialization, but the group has been broken.

I didn't mention recoil because I mostly used two pistols - modified enough so that recoil wouldn't be an issue. Same with SMGs. I'd keep the bullet count low enough to not have recoil - and I guns are a thing I always took REALLY seriously, so I had some sweet pieces made by my gunsmith to suit my specific needs. But yeah, when you're just trying to mow down a guy standing 3 or 4 meters in front of you, recoil shouldn't really be much of an issue. Maybe your last bullets or your first will be off target a bit, but there's no way in hell you should get two complete misses if you pump 20 rounds in the poor guy's direction.

I like wide bursts. I don't have the book yet, but I love the idea. I guess I'll allow players to decide how narrow or wide their bursts will be by splitting the DV and dice bonuses the way they want. It will probably require some tweaking of the dodging modifiers, but I'm pretty sure I'll find the right way to do it once I actually have the book.

That's pretty much how it works. Whoever has greater net reach decides. So a reach 3 guy gets to decide whether to get +2 dice or make the reach 1 guy take a -2 dice modifier. Doesn't mention splitting net reach.

Thanks! It's a good thing that the bonus/penalty can be applied as you see fit. Or else, if a high-skill character wanted to cut a low-skill guy in half, reach just wouldn't really matter. I don't know the melee weapons stats yet, but it probably wouldn't make much of a difference whether you have a Dikoted knife or a No-dachi. And that would be rather sad.

They effect sprinting which requires a skill test and wound modifiers affect skill tests.

But it does not look like they affect running rates, unless they decrease initiative score to 0. Then the character gets no actions. Running requires an action.

Just noticed something fragged. If wound modifiers reduce a characters initiative score to 0, they get no actions. However, walking requires no action to perform, so the character could just walk away.

Dear god BULL, you just blew my mind!!!!

Kerensky is Harlequin!

Now i understand why the clans have a seperiority complex.. they fragging imortal elves genetically engineered to be the best.. I can't believe i never saw it before.

Which of course means random human pilots with 2 months training and a "great" leader can completely defeat armies twice their side. but, i digress into problems with the classic b-tech storyline. which is still great

No. When you're on defense in HTH combat, it's strictly defense. No counterattacks.

This was done, I believe, to streamline, simplify, and speed up combat. Plus, a lot of players didn't really like that rule. It made a certain amount of sense, but the end effect was that unless you had a ton of skill, you were better off not ever trying to punch someone or attack them with a melee weapon since you had a halfway decent chance of taking damage every time you attacked.

I have no idea if this is the case, so don;t quote me on this, but seeing as the expansion books are going to be designed to be more advanced rules, it's possible that more involved (and possibly strictly optional) melee combat rules will be introduced in either the SR players Companion or the GM's companion )Whatever those books end up getting called).

Bull

While I don't find explicit language that "you cannot break skill groups at character gen", there are no archetypes that break a skill group, no examples of characters that break a skill group at character generation, and the example given for breaking skill groups on p106 show it happening after a month of play.

Neither Math SPU or Encephalon are in the book (I'll add that to my list). The Cerebral Booster now goes up to 3 and adds directly to Logic, and thus supercedes those pieces of cyberware.

Dermal Sheathing may come out in a different sourcebook, you never know. Same with the Trauma Damper.

You are correct that it doesn't explicitly say you cannot do this. It is implied, I think, though. And that was the intention.

You are supposed to buy either the SKill Group, or the individual skills, but not both. Otherwise you're seriously cheesing the system, min-maxing heavily to save a few BP.

To use your example, your method it costs 48

Buying them individually, there are 3 seperate skills. So buying two of them up to 4 costs (4*4)2=32. Buying the 3rd skill to 6 costs 4*6, or 24 points. So you'd normally be looking at 56 points, so you saved 8 BP. Take a 4 Skill Group into account, and you're looking at 16 MORE points.

Skill groups are already a nice savings... I don't think they need to be min-maxed out any further.

Bull

I think that was a given when Active Memory for cranial cyberdecks turned out to have 1/10 the essence cost.

If that's the case, then why have a rule that says raising one skill but not the others dismantles the skill group? If you're simply not allowed to do it, that rule has no reason to exist.

That rule applies to Karmic increases to skills, not Build Point/Character Creation. That's why.

Clarification (because we recently ran into this in LitS): is 10 an absolute bullets-per-combat-round cap, or just an autofire cap on everything below supermachinegun class?

Autofire cap. You can fire up to 10 bullets per initiative pass, just like in SR3 (unless I missed something under SR3 rules, I thought it was the same).

Oh... Right, my bad.

I recall reading somewhere (FAQ? Here on Dumpshock?) that the combat round was now 6 seconds instead of 3. If that is the case and the autofire cap remains the same as for SR3 then all firearms are now effectively operating at half their original rate of fire (ten rounds in six seconds instead of ten rounds in three seconds). Is that right? Is that realistic?

Combat Rounds are still 3 seconds.

The only new ones were the ocular drone and vision enhancement that gives modifiers for perception tests. They all took up .1 essence. Capacity varies from 1 to3 except the drone which is wrong, and I forget where the right capacity is stated. Eyes come in different ratings that accept differing capacities.

When I ear "Ocular drone" does that mean your eyeball is a drone?

It was simply bizzare.

So long killer defense, won't miss ya.

It functions as a normal eyeball (can be bought for 1 eye), until taken out. Then it functions as a drone that can roll on its own. Has trouble even making it over lips.

Bummer, i always really liked the idea of "i've got a calculator in my head that is great for flawlessly working out mortar tragectories".

Does this mean if i want to walk from point A to point B i say "i start walking". I don't actually get anywhere until a simple action or complex action passes. While the walking occurs i can use that simple action for something else, like going Dirty Harry on someone? With a penalty of course. If i simply want to get from point A to B i just let the simple or complex action go by and at the end of it i'm that much further?

What about running? Same thing, i can [attempt] to do things while running? Or just not allowed to at all? Or is it that GM disgression thing again?

VTOL version coming soon to supplimental book near you?