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Commiekeebler
Granted, I haven't read the rules yet, just listening in on people's opinions. Got me thinking...

What happens to the 'low powered, gritty, easy-to-learn' SR4 system if you try to remove all the hard caps built into it via a house rule?

The skill caps, the dice caps, the ritual sorcery team size caps...

Seems to me that's how you get the epic 'save the world' IE+dragons+Dunkie+Lowfyr campaign.

Or would the rule system become completely unplayable due to disbalance?

P.S. I actually prefer the low-power, gritty campaigns and characters...
Synner
I will just note that there are quite a few of us who believe SR4 is not "low-powered" and that this particular observation comes from direct and erroneous comparison with the SR3 value framework/scale and doesn't take into account the adjustment made to all internal SR4 reference values (for Atts, Skills, etc in PCs and NPCs alike).

Rolling a 10 dice pool in SR4's capped system means something different from what 10 dice did in SR3's open system.

I'm not saying its better or worse, I'm just saying you need to adjust your reference framework to "new" settings before considering whether this better or worse in terms of gameplay. I've seen way too many people (including my playtest group) making direct comparisons between values in SR3 and SR4 terms - ie. a lot of people seem to think SR4 characters are wimps in combat based solely on their equivalent Skill and Att values in SR3 and are disregarding that the combat system as a whole has changed to a different reference scale and paradigm.

Whether characters are as effective as their SR3 counterparts is the true issue here and that comparison can only be truly seen in gameplay results.

In my playtest experience, characters achieve roughly equivalent results (even slightly better) in terms of technical and social abilities.
In terms of combat SR4 characters are less "efficient" (with specialist combat characters being slightly better), and in general combat effectiveness is lower even though the (rarer) hits cause equivalent or greater damage (for reference and comparison I ran SR3 by the book and a tricked out sam in a non-ambush or high-noon duel combat situation was looking at average TNs of 5 anyway).
Magic users (both magicians and adepts) are either weaker generalists or more effective specialists - spellcasting ability is roughly identical if magicians realize overcasting is a normal part of the game, conjuring has become more effective and powerful (comparison is skewed by the fact that spirits are different in gameplay).
Deckers are pretty balanced with their SR3 counterparts though direct comparisons are hard (though I did run a SR4 decker through a couple of my trial IGTTM Matrix runs and my impression there was they're more powerful). Technomancers are more versatile but generally less powerful than Otaku were.
Prospero
I haven't got the book yet (waiting for the paper version), but from all I've heard the hard cap seems to be the only thing I really don't like in SR4 (on skills, specifically. Attributes are fine - the (meta)human body can only give so much after all). I'll probably just raise it or eliminate it - not so hard to house-rule. After all, it seems like with the higher karma costs characters with uber-high levels of a skill won't be very common and so pose that much of a problem anyway. And it gives people who are really dedicated to one thing something to really work towards (cause the karma costs will require lots of saving up).

And not having caps makes room for the few truly extraordinary characters and creatures out there. There will always be rummers with 6 in their main skills. Having them be able to say that they are among the best there ever was (and be right, according to the book), when there are such characters in the majority of runner groups just seems silly to me. There has to be room for people who are the real geniuses to be better than that. Any runner could, for example, take a 6 in playwriting and be as good as Shakespeare (to use a slightly ludicrous example). I prefer to think that Shakespeare was an 9or 10 (well, I don't actually love his stuff all that much, but for the sake of argument...) and if a PC wants to be a really bad-ass playwright, he or she can save up that karma and, after lots of work, get up to that level of competence. And then be proud of it and know that they're the equal of Shakespeare. And with the increase in karma costs (which I actually kind of like, to tell the truth) it will really be a major accomplishment - if they want to put the work and massive amounts of karma into it.
WorkOver
yeah, I only use 2 house rules also.

I just raised the modified max of atts to 2 x racial max, as opposed to 1.5.

I also removed the cap on skills totally. 7 cap on skills is just dumb.


I used the -4 dice for an amied shot, but a +4 DV to make head shots lethal. I swear that was an option in the aimed shots section.

thats it.
Talia Invierno
From an e-mail I just sent to the LitS GMs:
QUOTE
What my tabletop group found useful is to recognise that the numbers no longer mean what they used to: to just adapt to a different scale of meaning.  Coming out of SR3, that's hard!  We're just so used to "6" being the true beginning of the professional shadowrunner scale, and not near its pinnacle. (Preceding statement does not reflect my personal opinion, but does reflect that of what seems to be most SR players.) ...

... we've found that taking into strong consideration the amount to which the linked attribute "ups" the # of skill dice: eg. where several primary skills/skill groups link with that attribute, mid-to-high attribute value creates fairly strong dice pools even where the skill/skill group levels are only 2 or 3.  It seems to translate into a lot less hurt in the "skill" part of the equation. ...

That having been said, I've elsewhere proposed the following house-ruled adaptation (for use among my tabletop group only, not LitS!) for removing the skill caps ... cautiously, because it WILL throw everything else out of alignment if the existing balance and meanings aren't respected. The reasoning for allowing it at all is to compensate for Magic being de facto an uncapped attribute (expensive, but infinitely grow-able through initiation); and thus to give some outside chance for the dedicated non-cybered, non-magic types to even begin to touch the same realms as are open to the cybered and physads. Diminishing returns, yes: but at least no longer in the realms of the utterly impossible.

Our tabletop group's compromise will be a soft cap taking into account both the SR4 hard cap (6) and the SR3 idea of linked attributes, usable for individual skills only. Each skill level over the attribute level will cost double. Additionally, every skill level over six will have +1 added to the multiplier. Thus:

Improving an Active Skill by 1 (<= linked attribute, <= 6) - (New Rating) x 2 Karma
Improving an Active Skill by 1 (> linked attribute, <= 6) - (New Rating) x 4 Karma
Improving an Active Skill by 1 (> linked attribute, >6) - (New Rating) x (4 + [new level-6]) Karma

The hard caps for Attributes are staying, though.
FrankTrollman
The thing to understand about SR4 is that your skill total by itself doesn't actually mean much of anything. The important factor is how many dice you roll overall, attributes, skills, and bonuses. Skills don't stand on their own much at all in the new edition, they are just a source of dice that go into the same pool as everything else and generally can't even be distinguished at the end.

So the new system is that for dice totals:

2-4 Dice: Bystander grade. If you start picking on one of the guys who was represented by a plastic zombie on the map of the mall, this is how many dice he rolls.
5-8 Dice: Mook Grade. The security officiers and goons who are described collectively and don't get dialogue roll this many dice.
9-13 Dice: Shadowrunner material. This is how many dice a shadowrunner rolls in a field of endeavor that he can be considered proficient in.
14-20 Dice: Specialist. This is how many dice a specialist (whether a 'Runner or not) rolls in their bst field. So "The Mad Bomber" rolls this many dice on demolitions tests, "Firelord" rolls this many dice when conjuring Fire Spirits.
21+ Dice: Prime Runner (or Tweaker). This is how many dice a prime runner or a min/maxxed single-aspect character rolls on their thing(s).

That being said, skill totals by themselves don't really mean anything, because you can get all the way to Prime Runner status in a task without cresting a skill of 4. Remember: some guy with an Edge of 7 can be every bit as good at a task he's never thought of before as a character with a skill of 6. A skill cap of 6 really doesn't affect, and getting rid of it wouldn't change much either.

-Frank
Fortune
QUOTE (Talia Invierno)
Our tabletop group's compromise will be a soft cap taking into account both the SR4 hard cap (6) and the SR3 idea of linked attributes, usable for individual skills only. Each skill level over the attribute level will cost double. Additionally, every skill level over six will have +1 added to the multiplier. Thus:

Improving an Active Skill by 1 (<= linked attribute, <= 6) - (New Rating) x 2 Karma
Improving an Active Skill by 1 (> linked attribute, <= 6) - (New Rating) x 4 Karma
Improving an Active Skill by 1 (> linked attribute, >6) - (New Rating) x (4 + [new level-6]) Karma

The hard caps for Attributes are staying, though.


That would tend to make Attributes even more important than they already are in SR4, which seems to be a problem for some people.
Autarkis
In a complimentary game where two different aspects are rolled together (in this case Attributes and Skills/Skill Groups), not having a cap will cause severe problems. Edge, for example, becomes broken. You can use Edge X times to get X dice where X is the rating of your Edge (potential in SR4 of 1-8 -human and Lucky.) And it becomes even more so depending on how quickly Edge replenishes.

If you don't have a skill cap, people will attempt to get the largest bonus possible. In SR4, this correlates to individuals concentrating on 1 Skill (not Skill Group.) Even in the variations I have seen, this seems to be a problem.

I normally defer to the original mechanics because even if the system is slightly flawed in some aspects, the game mechanics are designed around that flaw. When you change an aspect of one thing, the impact to others may be adverse.

For instance, I have seen posts about making Attributes more expensive than Skill Groups and more so than Skills (one post had 10 BP Attributes, 5 Skill Groups and 2 Skills) Now, this was used to solve the problem for people buying Attributes for Skill Group roles (individual was not concerned with Skills.) This solved that problem but another arose. Attributes are more than dice adders for skills rolls, but also have other abilities.

Now, this means that when you are making "soak guy" or "quick guy" or "attribute main guy" they are going to fall behind "shoot guy", and "hacker guy", etc.... This actually reduces the effectiveness of Sammies and increases Hackers (since Hackers can use their Skill + Program instead of Attribute+ Skill.) There are no skills to determine how much damage you can take, how much stun/physical boxes you have, providing power points for Adepts, etc...So if someone decides they want to be able to take a lot of damage...well...thats all they will do.

There are solutions you can put in place to then solve these problems, but then something else pops up, and by the end, eh...your designing your own game. More power to you, but I stopped designing game mechanics awhile ago when I realized there was no money in it.

So long thread short, an Attribute + Skill game needs caps. Think of it as two trains racing ahead with the other train catching up when you reach the train station. Without that, the trains will never meet (people will concentrate on Skills (or Skill Groups if you increase Attributes) in lieu of Attributes which provide indirect benefits) and one will just run out of control (and then we have a stupid Steven Segal movie on our hands.)
Stormdrake
Just as a side note the hard cap for skills was apparently ignored by the writers themselves when they wrote up the skills possesed by dragons. Dragons are described as having a skill of 8 in assensing and the Sorcery group (Page 296). Granted they are dragons and if anything in the game is going to exceed the hard cap rules for skills it would be them but the hard caps are apparently not that hard even to the writers. Nit picking on my part probably but if they are going to make exceptions my players are going to ask why I can't as well.
Ranneko
I think that is just that the hard caps are for metahumans.
Clyde
I think that if you remove the caps on skills and attributes you will eventually see 2 problems.

1) The game might slow down. It just takes time to roll 20+ dice, and you are opening up that possibility. A possible fix to this would involve trading in dice for a set number of automatic hits, then rolling the rest. It seems fair that an epic character should get a minimum level of success on a specialty skill. 10 dice should still provide plenty of variance, so the game doesn't "go diceless." On the other hand, the current cap is something like 20 dice for a human. I'm not sure how much slower 30 is than 20.

2) Published stats. You'll reach a point where a character may be significantly more powerful than a dragon, maybe even a Great Dragon. This is a matter of taste - if you believe a person at the pinnacle of human ability who pushes beyond it using magic and cybernetics should be better than a dragon then this is fine. If you believe a dragon should be more powerful than any human, no matter how much chrome he has in him, then this is a slight issue.

Neither problem is insoluble.

(Personally, I don't have a problem with the caps. They do, in the context of the system, allow a human to roll 10 attribute dice and 10 skill dice with appropriate qualities. I think that's plenty.)
FrankTrollman
QUOTE (Clyde)
1) The game might slow down. It just takes time to roll 20+ dice, and you are opening up that possibility. A possible fix to this would involve trading in dice for a set number of automatic hits, then rolling the rest. It seems fair that an epic character should get a minimum level of success on a specialty skill. 10 dice should still provide plenty of variance, so the game doesn't "go diceless." On the other hand, the current cap is something like 20 dice for a human. I'm not sure how much slower 30 is than 20.


Um.... there is already a dicepool trade-in for automatic successes rule in the basic book, and it goes up to dice pools of 39 dice, which is in turn the most dice I've figured out how to roll on an attack with a starting character out of the basic book. I don't really see adding 3 or 4 to the skill and/or attribute caps as significantly affecting that. For one thing, a raised cap isn't going to affect a starting character at all.

QUOTE
2) Published stats. You'll reach a point where a character may be significantly more powerful than a dragon, maybe even a Great Dragon.


Uhhhhh.... maybe. I guess with no caps at all a character might eventually get to that point. But a Great Dragon has a lot of skills at 8, and more importantly has an agility of 11 before taking advantage of its spells cast out of a magic attribute of 12 with a spellcasting of 10. You can call me after you've intiated 6 times and exceeded the original cap by 4. Then you can rest assured knowing that Lum will still kick your ass in magic because he knows so many more spells and has the Twist Fate power that allows him to totally own you anyhow.

QUOTE
They do, in the context of the system, allow a human to roll 10 attribute dice and 10 skill dice with appropriate qualities. I think that's plenty.


My big problem with them is that while they apply to magic bonuses to a metahuman from spells or adept powers, they don't apply to spirits that a metahuman can summon. That means that a starting magician can summon things which roll more dice than a prime runner rigger or adept could ever aspire to in their field of interest.

-Frank
snowRaven
Increasing the skill cap by 3 should be enough to fix the lack of advancement - keeping the SR4 rules that increasing a skill beyond 6 costs twice the karma.

If you wish to keep things 'balanced' I suggest one of the following:
- Add half attribute to skill tests (matches dice as added above, and just shifts the powerlevel slightly, and makes skill groups a sensible choice).
- Increase karmas cost of Attributes (to make skill groups a sensible choice, and has the bonus effect of keeping attributes more static and 'character defining').

I'm not certain yet which approach I'm leaning towards.
Kyoto Kid
QUOTE (WorkOver)
yeah, I only use 2 house rules also.

I just raised the modified max of atts to 2 x racial max, as opposed to 1.5.

I also removed the cap on skills totally.  7 cap on skills is just dumb.


I used the -4 dice for an amied shot, but a +4 DV to make head shots lethal.  I swear that was an option in the aimed shots section.

thats it.

These are two good simple and sound house rules.

Rasing the augmented cap on attributes makes an adept more appealing since she has a higher (albeit more Karma expensive) goal to attain.

Dispensing with the skill caps (as I have mentioned in other posts) gives all characters - awakened, chromed and unaugmented - something to continue striving for. (Damn the Karma cost! I want that Classical Piano skill of 10...uhh maybe 12!)
Xenith
An intersting side note, perhaps add an additional requirement to the doubled karma cost: An instructor at that skill level, as well as a "quest" to find said instructor (in which that character receives no karma but other characters involved do, I suggest this only apply to Awakened skills).

As a side note, I'm requiring something similar (though to a lesser extent) for all initiation. Mostly something like a Metaplanar quest to study and/or comune with your Patron Spirit.

This makes a "deal with a dragon" more appealing and not just dangerous and stupid (despite the seeming rewards).

Free Spirits, dragons, immortal elves, and similar long live individuals could be considered to have no such limits, which is what the core book seems to suggest in rare cases (and lays out for Dragons and maybe even spirits.)

Edit: By rare cases I mean high-powered NPCs and never PCs. Though I like allowing a higher progression, I feel the need to make it costly in both blood and karma. **evil grin**
Narmio
While removing the hard skills cap at 7 is a good idea, as mentioned here it can lead to other problems.

As far as I'm concerned, the major problem with the low cap is the amount of time it takes a runner to get 7 in a skill, if they focus on them. Consider 10 runs a year at 5 karma each, you can get from "What's an SMG anyway?" to world class Ingram-slinger in a very short time, compared to real world advancement. With a raised skills cap, even keeping the cost New Rating * 4, this problem just gets worse, until players soon hit the cap of 9 or 12 or whatever you set it at, and the problem starts yet again.

However, if we say that skills of 7+ represent incredible ability (And require the Aptitude quality to reach), but adjust the karma costs to an exponential scale, the time it takes to reach skill levels above 9 or so becomes insane for a runner, but you *could* believe that Tiger Woods, Einstein or Harlequin have done it.

So the costs double at 7. Make them also double at 8, 9 and so on. The multiplier for 6 is 2, for 7 is 4, for 8 is 8, for 9 is 16, and for 10 is 32. These sound insane (Advancing to rating 9 costs 144 karma, to 10 costs 320), but when compared to real-world learning times, they start to make more sense.

For those who are mathematically minded, that makes the formula (for active skills past 6) New Rating * 2^(New Rating - 5).

I think it covers all bases, it's *possible* in a long campaign to get skills of 8 or 9, and yet you can justify super-unique NPCs having skills above that. I don't use super-unique NPCs, but at least this way your players can't say they're Harlequin's equal at Sorcery.

[Edit: Minor cosmetic modifications]
Xenith
Just because you have the karma to do it, doesn't mean you learn it right away. Going from 4 to 5 should take months of part time training and effort. In fact, I'd say the cost in time is about... maybe 2 weeks per rating of active part time training and tutoring, which tutors can decrease. Rather than dividing the time by the successes, I'd say each success could take about a week off the total time. And this training can be done during runs so long as the run doesn't keep you away from the training/tutoring for longer than... say... a week.

Edit: while this certainly doesn't reflect a real world progression, I'd also say a character can't just keep upping a skill, one after another. A certain amount of time must pass while using this upgraded skill and even other improvements must happen before they can go back to increasing the skill. In the end the GM has to think it over and decide on their own.

Edit2: I might also add that I knew a guy who got good, I mean real good, with throwing knives in an insanly short amount of time. He put alot of effort into it, practiced alot. And entered a state contest about 9 months later. He got what amounts to second place. Funny how that works.
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