I'm just trying to see how many people have actually played the system rather than just read over the rules and how they felt it went. I'm just going with what I know so far and I'm trying to expand that knowledge. This is all a matter of opinion anyway, and I'm trying to get as much information as possible because, while I'm likely not to flip over, I'll certainly change my mind on certain areas. What I'll change my mind to? Who knows. I had assumed those involved would realize this ... but see what I get?

Actually, said four adventures have used the standard rules. No house rules... yet. Interestingly enough, while certainly not min/maxed, all the characters "specialized" in a certain area and put a good focus on the skill(s) needed. Most of them had a rating 6 skill, with a specialization (+2 dice for almost nothing? Suuuure...).
Attributes were far more varied.
During play, they found a more broad skill base to be usefu. It made it interesting as well as slightly easier to plan than going min/maxed in SR3(a point I will give this current system is that it tends to gravitate toward a more broadened skill base) but everyone having a niche made it interesting as well as slightly easier to plan. However, the lack of growth in their particular field changed the gameplay and roleplaying a bit (and jumping around saying they're bad roleplayers would just show you're ignorant of the situation and people, so don't bother. Trust me, every session draws the lot of us into the setting and surroundings, not just from my efforts but theirs as well.) In this case it seemed to show either arrogance or a lack of interest if asked to put their skills to repetitive use (not universal but it seemed to crop up in four of the five characters in one way or another.)

Edit: I should add that while I had my concerns about what seemed to be problems in the low skill caps, it was confirmed by four of the players, with one player not really caring either way.

As a playtester I was initially concerned with some of the early rules but the more we actually played, the better the rules seemed. So far as peoples concerns with maxing out and such, I'd suggest you wait for the shadowrun companion style supplement if and when such a thing comes out. I'm certain that there will be expansions that address the high-powered campaign. However, what's the point of having a super high level campaign where you're running around like Ryan Mercury. I don't see much opportunity for competitive play in that...

I've played SR4 on both sides of the GM's chair. And Xenith is right (if somewhat overblown):

* Skill caps are too low.
* Skill costs are too high.

These two problems are linked. The goal of the SR4 designes was pretty clearly to use to absurdly high cost of skills to give people stuff to work on late in their careers. This was not a successful strategy. What actually happens is that people max out their favorite skill at start, and suck in a lot of other things. Then character advanacement is dissapointingly slow because skills are so overpriced, and simultaneously dissappointingly irrelevent because the character already has a longarms skill as high as it will go.

I see what the design team was trying to do. They were trying to get people to diversify their characters with hard caps and give people things to work towards by making skills extremely expensive. This is not a successful strategy.

But then again, it's really not hard to swap that out by simply instituting some caps that are lower for starting characters than they are for experienced players and some advancement costs that are designed to be fair rather than punitive. The basic mechanics of shadowrun 4 are astoundingly easier. Until you've been there, you really have no idea how much nicer it is as a GM to be told how many hits a character got on their test than it is for a player to tell you how many 3s, 4s, 5s, 8s, and 11s, they got. Even rolling similar (or in some cases larger) piles of dice in SR4, the resolution is astoundingly faster for that reason alone.

-Frank

i think the real problem is that the skill-6 level is labeld as best of the best in that field. now if it was labeld train professional it may make more sense...

Best of the Rest, actually.

We've played two sessions with it now, the the rules seem to work much smoother than SR3. We had 20man combat that lasted turns and turns, and it didn't take the whole night

We got our group together last night. It was a mix of people who'd been playing since SR1 BBB hit the local game store's shelves to those who'd only been in one shortlived SR3 campaign.

The group made characters: a dwarven combat mage, elven summoner, ork adept of speed, elven sneak, lucky human jack of all trades, and an elven 2-gun-fu with Super Warhawks.

Since my very first SR1 experience was Food Fight I decided to run a rehash, with the group randomly scattered through a Stuffer Shack when a group of Halloweeners comes in. Between the ork's grenade and the 2-gun-fu, about half the gang was toast at the start of the 2nd IP. The few who didn't spend their action diving for cover managed to scuff up the summoner's body armor with roomsweeper shot. The surprised PCs put up protective spells or moved into defensible postions. The fight ended the second pass as the party mopped up the dregs.

Test run #2 had the party inside a warehouse, trying to swap out a package. The summoner has a F:5 beast spirit on standby with a pair of watchers at each door while the combat mage sent a F:2 air spirit to keep an eye outside. 4 Tir Ghosts hit the scene for their own purposes, easily sneaking past the rather dumb air elemental. The fight kicks off with a flashbang from the Tir going off and the jack of all trade's Comm shutting down. Three ghosts drop through the ceiling only to be greeted by the unsurprised ork who again lobs a grenade. The 4th ghost, a leutenant, stays on the roof to hack comms and to run the pair of Lynxes they brought as backup but aren't supposed to use unless absolutely necessary.

This fight is messier with the grenade and the spirits screwing up the Ghosts. An Intercept action by the beast spirit killed one ghost as his choice was to stand next to a grenade, run past the spirit or try a 20' vertical leap. In retrospect, he should've gone for the 20' leap. 2gunfu takes out one ghost with one shot before he runs out of targets. 2gunfu and the ork both wind up staying defensive for several IPs b/c they are out of targets and are guarding an entrance. The jack of all trades has started the van manually as the mages and the sneak try to get inside. The F2 spirit is ordered to accident one of the Tir but manages to critical glitch, turning his power on the jack of all trades but managed to critical glitch that. I scratched my head and we just moved on.

The sneak gets shot by one of the ghosts but survives to return fire. The best spirit, pretty much unphased by the grenade, finishes him off. The 2gunfu's decoy Comm beeps as the hacker shuts it down. Blindfire, a fireball, and a grenade are fired at the roof. The last ghost tells the drones to seek'n destroy. Things get interesting when the lynxes bust down the door. I though about rolling for "surprise in combat" but since there was a watcher at each door screaming "TANK!" I figured it was redundant. One drone managed to critical glitch shooting the exposed mage so we ruled part of the door was jammed in the feed mechanism. The other just about killed the summoner.

2gunfu and Ex-Ex SuperWarhawks managed a one-shot kill on one Lynx and maimed the other. The decker had managed to hop into the surviving lynx and was destroying the van. Only the jack of all trade's Edge:7 was keeping the thing intact. Finally, the mage blew the drone up, even as the summoner sent his still-alive beast spirit up to the roof to kill anything it found. Gunfire is heard as the ghost comes out of dumpshock only to find the spirit and some Edge-laden blindfire from the sneak manage to finally kill him.

I kept looking for rules about small arms vs vehicles but from what I can tell, the 2gunfu really can slaughter a Lynx with a Warhawk, autofire seems more useful with wide bursts than narrow, spirits are mean, and Edge is a good thing. Opponents who don't have decent skills aren't credible threats for 'runners (four rounds of buckshot at close range hit the summoner and he took maybe 3 boxes of stun) and wires are something of a necessity.

I wish they'd made all movement rates easily divided by 4; using a 1m grid the ork adept with 4 passes got 2.5m/IP. They probably should just go ahead and give movement rates in meters/IP just so the timing is a little more accurate.

lovely story!

love the mental image of watchers screaming TANK! while the lynx's come crashing thru the doors

and the idea of picking between a grenade, a spirit and a 20' leap straight up, flawless

but i think the prize goes to the air spirit that criticaly glitches two times in a row

Not sure if the ExEx was the critical factor or if it was the absolute amount of twinking that went into the character. Elf, Exceptional Agility, Aptitude Pistols, Specialization:Revolvers, Ambidexterity, Muscle Toner, Enhanced articulation means Agility:10 + Skill:7 + 2 specialization + 1 Enh. Art + 2 dice smart = 22 dice.

Average of 7 successes, if I understood the drone rules it got 6 dice to resist ~ 2 successes, net 5. Modified DV=12. Body 4+ Armor (9-2)7 = 11 dice ~ 4 successes = 8 boxes. Under normal circumstances, the Warhawk would just about nuke this drone. IIRC, the dice really liked the shooter and came up with ~10 successes.

The flip side was 2gunfu was an idiot (Logic:1) who shot first (Intuit:4) and thought about the consequences later. Oh, and his Body was 3 so if he got shot he wasn't much tougher than the summoner. He also was useless at anything other than beating on people.

We were tryin' to break the system so this wasn't indicative of the group's play style. I think we decided that rounded characters are more appealing, that SR4 doesn't really nerf a character more than SR2/3 did (at least early in a career, not sure about advancement yet) and that anytime you make 1-dimension character you get something razor sharp but fragile.

Enhanced Articulation does not add dice to Combat skills. It only adds to Physical skills linked to Physical attributes.

There is an absolute problem as regards hardened armor - it doesn't scale properly. If you have hardened armor of X, you ignore any attack of DV X or less. But against an attack of X+1 or more, you only get X dice to resist the damage. So if a weapon can hurt you at all, it is going to be doing 2X/3 actual wounds to you. So for any sufficiently large X, you can't not be instantly destroyed by any weapon capable of harming you.

That's actually pretty dumb. But it's something that I can live with. I would rather that hardened armor reduced DV by its value, as this would make its effect on a weapon of DV X and DV X+1 identical.

-Frank

Having never played SR3 I'll go ahead and put on my flame retardant suit.
But having experienced SR4 and playing other tabletop RPG's for years, GM'ing and playing.
I think the majority of the responsibility lies on the shoulders of the GM.
I've been reading this thread and I'm noticing for the most part people are crying nerf. Complaints that players are coming out of the gates to strong to fast.
Well the single most effective solution seems obvious to me.

At character creation, give your players a limited amount of build points.
270-300 build points ensures a somewhat effective char without having the legendary char at start up people seem to be having.
And even if a player takes those 270 bp and min-maxes to make a legendary char by having a huge agility, all his other attributes will suffer, his gear and other skills will be mediocre at best.
Guns are surprisingly cheap in the manual, so as the GM raise the prices. Blame it on inflation or a shortage of goods on the market.
Also the core book says you can spend up to 1/2 the given BP towards attributes in character creation, as a GM make it only 1/3rd.
The book basicly says GM's has the power to change whatever he/she feels like...so take advantage of it. I'm hearing from a friend who has played SR3 since beginning that it was released as the Bible of SR3 what it says goes and you don't have much room for change. SR4 seems to go in the opposite direction, giving you the freedom as a GM to make critcal calls on all the balance issues that ensue with your particular game.
While most GM's do not like placing to many restrictions on players, because most players will whine about how they aren't free to do as they want.
Most players will agree that power is the "end game" objective.
If you as the GM give them that power from the get go, its like playing Doom 3 with god mode on....sure you get to go around slaughtering everything with no chance of dying, but you loose interest fairly quickly.
If you give the player the "craving" for power and make them work to get it...that sense of accomplishment will be much more satisfied when they finally get that 6 attribute and 6 skill.
And by that point they have done enough runs and earned enough reputation, that yeah they are actually considered more than professionals, almost legendary statis. I don't think I've covered everything I wanted to but this post is getting long as it is.


Necro

*edit* edited a sentence that wasn't worded the way I wanted it to be.

By the way, I forgot to mention I like SR4, I think its concepts and rules are pretty sound, and provide a good foundation. But like I said there is alot of responsibility for the GM to keep everything balanced.


necro

Right... And Mr Karelin somehow managed not to have a single bad day for 13 consecutive years?

My money is on "better tailored athletic drugs", but that's the Olympics for you. It's not cheating if you don't get caught...

EDIT: Added a smiley, for those who mistake my post as anything but jest. Sorry about that.

If it's pure luck and basic medicine that makes unbeatable athletes, I wonder why people like Karelin and Bubka trained 8-12 hours a day, every day, when their opponents did not.

it becomes pure luck and good medicine when everyone is at the peak of physical ability. then there is a question of maintaining that state year after year. at some point the body just stops as it have buildt in limits and all the training goes into maintaining that limit.

and who knows if not everyone in the cold war olympics where not on something?

most likley tho i think that the exceptional skill/attribute or whatever its called isnt as available in real life as it is in SR

but hell, its been said pre-SR4 that if the number of runners where represented by the number of people playing SR then there would basicly be to many of them

thing is that if you want to reprecent real life then quailtys should not be buyable but rather be rolled to reprecent their randomness. as long as they are buyable anyone and their dog will get it just to tweak out fully. but then if they could have it, everyone would driving ferraris or better

we are all muchkins at heart

hobgoblin: So you do admit that "luck" hardly explains how these guys always soundly beat all their opponents for years on end? And that the medicine, which was equally available for just about everyone in all powerful nations, and which wouldn't help you develop better technique (which Bubka and Karelin obviously had compared to their opponents), fails just as spectacularly in the same?

bingo.

look at runners from african nations, and then more specificaly from one area, vs the rest of the world. there is something there that makes them more or less consistently better then the rest at what they do...

and medicine just helps push the luck factor in the right direction. get a bad start and you may not be able to recover. that to me is equal to a bad roll.

in the end we may never know how he did what he did, and frankly i dont care.
when i play SR its not to compete in the olympics, its to do something that at best will get me in jail if done in real life, at worst i may well end up shot.

maybe so. but in the end i play a game to have fun, not to simulate physics down to the last quark or whatever.

so yes, i play as the rules wants it to be, not how RL wants it to be.

sometimes i even end up wondering what your kind is doing on this board as you simply seems to not like any variation on the SR rules out there. why cant you and your fellows take a virtual walk and make your own rpg the way you want it and leave SR to the people that dont feel like complaining about every , . and ! of the text?

im not aguing that they are solidly realistic, im arguing that they are good enough to get the job done. and that flaws only show up on the theorietical level as one trow away many of the limitations and only focus on one thing, being able to do one thing at the best it can be done with the rules given.

any rpg will break down at that point as they are not tuned for that kind of min-maxing. rather they are tuned for characters that have a broad base to stand on and then grow from there.

then there is the factor of fun. where is the fun when there is no difficulty?

where is the fun where the player have tweaked their char so into the stratosphere that the GM either have to attack the persons weaknesses and therefor run the whole character or basicly throw equaly insanely tweaked NPC at the char and then watch then duke it out until either side calls it quits.

then there is the unescapeable power of the dice. this have the bad habbit of sooner or later coming up badly. but in RL you dont have a dice that can go bad no matter what you do. instead you have a probability curve that can be flattend as you conpensate for diffrent variables. in the end you hit the point where a person can do the best they can do no matter what you trow at him.

that is the one element that seperate game from real life.

yes, to some degree SR1-3 simulated that better by having open ended skills. but that allso lead to people being able to crumple a carrier with a single blow without the aid of cyber or magic, in theory. to get there you would have to be insane sure but if it can be done it will be done.

as it now stands the players will know that they can allways meet someone that can match then for skills without the gm having trown out the book and just cloned their character sheet. sure you may say that any top end character in SR4 is a clone of anyone else thanks to the hard cap but i dont see a problem with that as now we know that sooner or later one will hit a limit in ability.

in the end i think the only flaw is that they put the label of best of the best on the top end skill level. instead it should read something like true professional in that field. ie, your not the top world wide performer in said field but you realy know what your doing when your doing it.

as the rules are now its simpler to play the tech noir kinda feel that films like blade runner and most cyberpunk books have. your no longer ryan mercurys clone, your a normal person trying to do his best with what he got.

but in the end it comes down to playing style. and by the looks of it, SR4 will fit my style nicely.

so how about we declare 18 as the new max in skills? but going over attribute costs you atleast double the karma that it would normaly do?

that way one have better resolution while still having a hard cap that you know cant be passed. hell, even in SR3 and older, 18 in skill was in the area of insane and on the treshold of cheesy...

well you end up rolling more dice and therefor may end up getting some very insane high end results on the tests if the number of meters are a multiple of the number of hits.

but then you can get the same result by trowing in edge dice and rolling 6's, only its not that surefire a result...