I would say that 5% of the runs I have played in or run have gone for only 1 game session (5-6 hours of rp'ing each day) most have gone for 5-6 sessions with I think 1 going for 10-11 and that was the Renraku Shutdown

There is no wording of "for each skill" or anything in it, so you have aptitude in one (!) skill and thats it.

Unless I am mistaken

My players had prime runner-level chracters(skills around 8-10, with between 150 and 350 karma under their belts), and two of them still died in the Arcology, with a third with permanent wounds - and that's in making the crawl up to the climax alot shorter than it 'should' have been (we finished in 3 5-7 hour sessions I believe).

yes, blakkie - and that is maybe my biggest gripe with the SR4 system.

The 'legendary' skill 7 athlete with strength 6 can just about match the skill 4 Str 10 troll - which should make the troll the 'true' legend...

Attributes are simply way more important than skill, given their low cost and wide usage. At least with the skill capped at the standard human attribute. If the skill cap was higher (say 12, or 15), attribute would be less significant.

Using the optional rule of limiting hits to double your skill helps this somewhat, though, but the problems still remain. And solving them won't be the easiest thing...

My initial suggestion would be to raise the skill cap to 9(10 with aptitude), make abilities harder to increase, at x5 karma (though for magic/resonance/edge this might be a bad idea, so sticking to x3 there might be smart).

Put skill groups at x4 (or maybe keep the x5).

This increase isn't large enough to unbalance success rates, I think, though I have more testing to do.

Gripe, why?

Because you are hung up on the label being Attributes and not Basic Skill or General Ability or Skill Group or some other name that better describes to you what it represents? Because it sure doesn't compute to see it as just raw physical state. It is bad enough trying to wrap your head around a mundane increase from occationally forgetting to breath to to performing amazing feats information recall without chalking it all up to physical changes and not at least some to teachable general use techniques.

I'm suggesting that Attributes is a dubious name for what they seem to represent in SR4. They are more like general base skills combined with a raw physical state of your body. Perhaps even Skills is not pure skill. Attributes are a broader base that you build the more task specific skills and raw physical state, or sometimes the moderatetly broad Skill Group that are set of skills and physical state common to 3 or 5 different Skills.

Clearer explaination? Nah, not likely. But if you just keep tossing ideas eventually you'll hit the right one for someone.

So what if they aren't? With a cap on Attributes you can try ignore them for a while, but eventually they are there waiting for you at the end of development of that abilitiy. At a given matching level of Attribute and Skill the Skill costs more to raise per die? *shrug* Welcome to diminishing returns when you get around to the Skills, the system is functioning.

Once again you are assigning YOUR meaning to the labels, not letting the system tell what the meaning of the label is. Then you create an arbitrary senario based on YOUR meaning. Then you complain that the system doesn't model what you wanted correctly?

Of course it didn't model what you wanted to, you unwittingly told it to model something else.

EDIT:

Yes, lets get rid of that extra 15BP for the top Attribute point too. Because a BP is a BP. And picking up Skill 7 should cost the same as picking up Skill 6, because a BP should be a BP.

How about just treating Attribute dice like general skill dice instead of doubling up Skill dice? The ever simple no-fix fix.

mainly because that doesn't fix the stated problem.

The problem you assume is there.

There is the difference i guess, i actually care if there is a problem or if any "fix" is just busy work. Of course determing if it exists, and where, is a fairly important part of properly identifying and understanding a problem. Which in turn is a step on the path to devising a fix. Hrmmm.

I guess this helps explain why you don't care if you are suggesting fixing illusionary problems or not. It does however seem to come up short in explaining WTF you are here.

Because of the inclusion of legacy rules which were a bad idea in 1989 and are a bad idea now. If it costs the same number of BPs to go from Skill 5 to Skill 6 as it does to go from Skill 0 to Skill 1, it should cost the same number of Karma.

If you could actually make a system where it literally cost you more to get more dice in your dice pool the more you already had, then you could make a functioning diminishing returns system. But you can't do that in SR4, because it would have to take into account your skills when you raised your attributes and your attributes when you raised your skills. Since you can't make a functioning and fair diminishing returns system in SR4, the task then becomes to make a functioning and fair linear system instead.

Because it's impractical to come up with a mathematical formula that properly takes into account your skill in Intrusion, Lockpicking, Automatics, and Unarmed Combat every time you try to raise Agility, any diminishing returns system you try to put on the SR4 mechanic of "roll attribute + skill" is automatically going to be retarded and non-functional. But a diminishing returns system is not the only way to make a balanced game. A linear system, in which bonus A costs X every time, and bonus B costs Y every time can easily be balanced. Especially in a game like Shadowrun in which you are actually being asked to do many different things and ultraspecialization eventually stops being worthwhile.

-Frank

I wouldn't think it to be rocket science, because there they tend to a good deal of effort into understanding stuff. Yes, every day "reasonable" people fail to take the time to fully look where they are going before rush off.

Yes, Trollman is peddling the pot of complexity solution. Your suggested solution is less so. My suggested solution even less complex yet. Is it not an improvement? It gets the job done because it addresses the problem. Not the problem as framed by Trollman, but the actual root cause.

Done without doing.

Given your stated lack of interest in understanding problems i think i can be forgiven for putting only a hair more than zero stock in your assessment of the state of SR.

Silly troll, the dimishing returns is already built and staring you right in the beady eyes. And the kicker is you started out by complaining about that very dimishing return. Where adding the die for Skill die (X) effectively costs more than the die from Attribute die (X) because to get the same effect Skill(X) has to be bought for all skills linked to the Attribute to have the exact same increase across all the skill pools!

blakkie, maybe you should read the explanations for attributes and skills in the SR4 rulebook.

"A character's attributes [...] represent the raw material that makes up every person: her body and mind, what the character has done with both, and what's inside the person to make her unique. Because attributes can be improved during the course of a character's life, they represent something more than genetics."

Examples for low attributes include: 'someone with a leg shorter than the other', 'small and skinny or simply too busy to work out', 'a fat, out of shape character', 'inner-ear problem'. The list goes on. Yes, these represent alot more than just physical presets, or even overall shape - they always have.

"Characters possess knowledge and techniques known as skills, [...] Skills define what a character knows and can do."

"Whereas attributes represent an individual's inherent capacities, skills are abilities an individual learns over time. Each skill represents the training and methods a character has picked up that enable him to use her natural abilities in a certain way. To reflect this connection, each skill is linked to an attribute."

I think the explanations are fairly clear, and sets a fairly distinct line between skills and attributes.

Yet the system doesn't accurately represent that line, imo - the basic system makes attributes alot more important than training, and makes it easier to improve your 'raw material' and 'inherent capacities' than to learn how to 'use her natural abilities in a certain way'. Raising an attribute costs a mere 50% more than specific skills, and almost half of what it costs to learn a skill group.

The text talks about attributes and skills defining a character, but under this system the character's who aim for similar skillsets will quickly have near identical attributes and skills suited for that skillset...


I don't take the name to describe what it represents - I take the rulebook's definition of what it represents.

Does it say that Strength is "body" only? Does it say Logic is composed of a single type of mind use?

Like personality? Like habits? Those can be seen as the product of techniques in motion. Some actively cultivated. A technique, a skill.

So what are the examples for how someone with short legs improves their Attribute?

Yes, the book's explicit explaination of what is what i'd class as poor and limited. But lack of explaination isn't lack of existance.

But i'm not? Sure, not superficially like you. But i am none-the-less, and coming up with solution that doesn't require changing the mechanism at all.

First of all the explanation of what things represent takes precedence over contradictory and badly designed rules, imo. Explanation points to intent, Rules point to functionality.

Second, you just took a few phrases out of those sentences - read it all as a whole, and compare to how that matches with ALL the text on attributes and skills, yet isn't reflected in A FEW points of the rules (but is in others). I hardly find the explanations poor and limited - on the contrary! However, in an attempt to try and explain attributes as a wider collection of basic skill groups, then yes - it is poor and limited...


And I agree with mfb wholeheartedly in his last comment.

John or Joe wouldn't. In fact, in almost all cases of 'in-game' examples, characters would choose to study the respective skills or skill groups instead.

But a player is more likely to think about the hasrd facts and numbers, and increase that which gives the most bonuses for the least cost - hence, the attribute.

And there lies the problem, coupled with the fact that both attribute and skill is limited to a range of 6 points (barring aptitudes).

Erm, it really can go either way, mostly because ADD is a diverse constellation of symptoms that range from hyperactivity to an inability to concentrate. No two patients are alike. You can have a lower Intuition (less perceptive because of your inability to seek and process details) OR a lower Logic (untreated ADD results in a lower learning capacity and lower "base" knowledge due to the reduced effectiveness of education compared to "normal" people) in SR4 terms.

EDIT: Anecdotal evidence is all well and good, but your particular case of ADD is always going to be different from the next person's ADD. And don't stoop to condescending remarks... no matter what your IQ (which is an outdated moniker that cannot be accurately tested), those kind of remarks make you look like an "idiot". I'd also like to point out that the fact that you said your IQ would be higher without ADD would point to an increase in Logic, not Intuition.

Just because I am lazy, can you please do the math for me to show that raising a skill from 2 to 3 is more expensive than raising an attribute from 4 to 5? 3 to 4? Or even raising a skill from 3 to 4 versus raising an attribute from 4 to 5? 3 to 4?

Well, his example DID state that the person has "a learning disorder" with ADD components, rather than "a person who is stupid because he has ADD". Many MANY learning disorders also have an ADD component because the person just can't process the information given in a classroom in an appropriate manner. Folks with dyslexia, for example, don't pay attention to the blackboard or the teacher, because what's being written sometimes looks like gibberish.

thing is that if you increase the base attribute by 1 you increase all dice pools that use said attribute by 1. this can be many more then a similar increase in skill groups or single skills

therefor its more cost effective...