Shadowrun
Catalyst Game Labs => Catalyst's Shadowrun Products => Topic started by: Typhus on <07-17-13/2214:27>
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Hoi Chummers!
I just picked up the 5E PDF. Decided I should probably join these boards too.
I've been playing SR since '91. Mostly GMing, but playing too. Pretty much have always loved each new edition more than the last. If I have a game that I call "my game" SR is it. Made a lot of friends through playing SR as well. Big part of my life really. Usually buy all the supplement books, though not adventures, as I prefer to make my own. Still have a lot of the 1e/2e era adventures though.
All that said as a disclaimer, I really want to like 5e...but I am having some trouble getting there as I read through it. I'm hopeful that some insight from a lot of the folks on here that clearly are liking it might help me see the brighter side of the tree.
Don't want to start ed wars or flame anybody. 5e was clearly a very big project, lots of effort and love, which I am glad of. I am still reading through it, but I keep finding rules I either disagree with, wish were simpler, or just see no need for. I want to like it, but need some help. Anyone up for helping me out, feel free to jump in. I'll post some questions and issues as I get them better formulated, and read more in detail.
Thanks in advance.
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OK, just tripped over this one. Starting Contacts cost Karma?
Upsides here? I see the logic of it being a Karma cost, but at CharGen? Can't count the number of starting characters in 4e that went contactless...this seems to exacerbate this possibility, since survival related costs would take priority for most players (myself included). Contacts are a pretty crucial part of a character's ability to function, and contacts coming the very finite 25 starting Karma seems like its asking a lot of players to go here vs a Positive Quality.
I think I might just start a log of the things I find as I go through making a character. I'm starting with a self-challenge: an Elven Decker.
Edit: went too fast. Missed this:
"Every character receives free Karma to spend on their initial contacts. This Karma is equal to a Character’s Charisma rating x 3"
Problem solved. This works OK.
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Taking a break after an hour. Getting frustrated. Info is very spread out, hard to find answers easily. I've never stalled out this hard in SR CharGen before. Some of it is new rules, but mostly its that info that logically belongs in certain places doesn't live there. There a lot of places where things could be explained much more simply or streamlined. Finding a few typos too, which doesn't help. When I saw Lockpicking and Locksmith as separate skills on the skill chart, I had to laugh. Gamed SR with a locksmith for many years. I envision he would have facepalmed. Skill section tells me that's a typo that got missed, since Lockpicking didn't appear to be there. Glad of that.
After an hour, I have most of my skills active skills, attributes, Qualities, Contacts, and 5 extra Karma, which I am not sure if it will be useful from here. Will have to wait until the weekend to properly major in The Matrix, so I know what I actually need, and can then go rebuild my character properly. :P ;D
As a frame of reference, I have made over 500+ SR characters in my time (I counted the stack once). No rookie here. To call it second nature is an understatement! ;D
It's too bad the Character Concept section (page) doesn't have suggested skills listed. It would be nice to know what my Decker needs to function in a summary format. I defaulted to skill choices I needed in 4e, but a new player could easily overlook skills they would need if they go by the way things are laid out. More build advice on archetypes, and more brevity in description of the build process itself would have been helpful, both as a veteran and thinking of new players at my table.
Maybe I should be using the Quick Start rules? Thoughts? How was CharGen for you the first time? Any tips?
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With a brand new player and nothing but a concept chargen in 5E took 30 minutes including gear.
My advice breath, stop deciding you hate it in advance and just go step by step. Its really really easy.
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I don't feel I'm hating it in advance. I was excited when I bought it, and I keep tripping over some things as I go along is all. I'm actually here to try to be sure I am being fair to it. I really want to like it. If anything I'm too excited and skipping ahead.
It's not that it's hard as such, just see some places where it could be easier. After 500 character builds, none are 'hard' really. ;) I got a bit lost trying skip ahead to where I thought I should be going, I will admit. Your advice is that one must go in order the first time, OK. Up to a point I was. I'll go back.
What type of character did your player make, and was anyone helping them? I did start potentially more complex, which may have been a mistake for a first attempt.
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Just read the character creation section from start to finish. The developers gave you step by step instructions, but you aren't actually reading them in order. That's your main mistake.
Just reading character creation all the way through, then hitting each thing step by step, I made my first character in about half an hour, same as Crunch. It really isn't that hard, and honestly, everything I've seen so far in 5e is a vast improvement over 4e.
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When all else fails, read all the directions, eh? Shut up for me.
Just encountered the fact that programs no longer have ratings. That's pretty awesome, for sure. Magic looked good too. Out of time for tonight, will try again tomorrow.
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I wonder if you're tripping up because you expect things to work in a particular way and they're not, and that's why it's not working so well for you?
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Typhus, regarding the starting contacts costing Karma. Yes, they do...However, you have free points equal to
your Charisma x 3. If you are building a character that the concept is going to require a lot of points in Contacts?
Well...those ALWAYS had to choose something, no matter the edition you were in. However, you are guaranteed
at least 3 points in Contacts(though why anyone would take a 1 in Charisma is beyond me...I consider anything
lower then a 2 Charisma to be a "Deadman walking" because Etiquette is a life-or-death skill to have...)
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I don't feel I'm hating it in advance. I was excited when I bought it, and I keep tripping over some things as I go along is all. I'm actually here to try to be sure I am being fair to it. I really want to like it. If anything I'm too excited and skipping ahead.
It's not that it's hard as such, just see some places where it could be easier. After 500 character builds, none are 'hard' really. ;) I got a bit lost trying skip ahead to where I thought I should be going, I will admit. Your advice is that one must go in order the first time, OK. Up to a point I was. I'll go back.
What type of character did your player make, and was anyone helping them? I did start potentially more complex, which may have been a mistake for a first attempt.
I was stepping the player through it and he made a low resource mage.
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For a Decker, go with what you know from SR4 and take into account that tests are now Logic + Skill and not Skill + Program anymore.
Attributes for solid decking are Willpower, Int and Logic (most of all, Logic!).
For skills, Data Search is gone and was merged into Computer. Rest is the same. You should have Hacking, Cybercombat, Elec Warfare, Hardware at least. Hardware is for repairing your Cyberdeck which is the primary receiver of damage in SR5.
Programs are tweaks and addons to your deck and dirt-cheap compared to SR4. In fact, you can buy all the hacking ones for less than 5000 Nuyen total.
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For a Decker, go with what you know from SR4 and take into account that tests are now Logic + Skill and not Skill + Program anymore.
Attributes for solid decking are Willpower, Int and Logic (most of all, Logic!).
For skills, Data Search is gone and was merged into Computer. Rest is the same. You should have Hacking, Cybercombat, Elec Warfare, Hardware at least. Hardware is for repairing your Cyberdeck which is the primary receiver of damage in SR5.
Programs are tweaks and addons to your deck and dirt-cheap compared to SR4. In fact, you can buy all the hacking ones for less than 5000 Nuyen total.
Big thing to remember, though, is that your Deck is the most expensive piece of gear your Decker will have. I recommend
no lower then priority C for Resources for a Decker. And most of THAT is going to be your Deck itself, before you even look
at programs. If you go to Priority D..almost all of it is going to be your bottom-rung deck. You cannot get a Deck at Priority E.
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Big thing to remember, though, is that your Deck is the most expensive piece of gear your Decker will have. I recommend
no lower then priority C for Resources for a Decker. And most of THAT is going to be your Deck itself, before you even look
at programs. If you go to Priority D..almost all of it is going to be your bottom-rung deck. You cannot get a Deck at Priority E.
All true, although you don't HAVE to have a top of the line deck to be reasonable effective.
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Big thing to remember, though, is that your Deck is the most expensive piece of gear your Decker will have. I recommend
no lower then priority C for Resources for a Decker. And most of THAT is going to be your Deck itself, before you even look
at programs. If you go to Priority D..almost all of it is going to be your bottom-rung deck. You cannot get a Deck at Priority E.
All true, although you don't HAVE to have a top of the line deck to be reasonable effective.
No, you don't. But you do have to have a Deck, so Priority E is right out. If you go Priority D, you are already having to tap
into your Karma just to cover lifestyle and programs and armor and your side-arm and your Datajack and your fake SIN
and your Commlink that the fake SIN is linked to...that is ALOT to cover with just 20K Nuyen, especially as your Fake SIN
should be half of that(to be rating 4).
Going priority C means you can have a better Deck and still have nuyen for programs, etc. A means you are going to have
a top of the line Deck with programs, etc, but are going to have less skills then if you went A skills, B-C Resources.
Deckers definately want Priority A or B to be skills.
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Thanks everyone. So far (left over from last night) I went with:
Resources: A (due to deck costs, bought the Sony deck and all programs plus a data tap so far)
Attributes: B (20) - Maxed Logic and Intuition, Will 3, with Reaction 4, that gives me a meatspace/AR init of 10+1d6, occasional 2nd action even in meatspace is a win as a decker w/o reflex boosts. Chose this priority that high because they set the Limits and having low stats here seems like giving yourself
Skills: C (28/2) - Tentative plan for a base of 4 in all six computer skills, with 4 + 2 group left to allocate for the support/rp stuff
Race: D (Elf-0) - "Edge shmedge" he said, hoping to live to regret it.
Magic: E - Duh.
Came out with Mental Limit 7 + 1 for indomitable Quality.
Physical + Social (before cyber): 5 each.
Feeling good about him overall so far. Limits were worrisome as a concept to me at first glance, but with 4 hits still being a strong degree of success I feel okay with their outcome.
Bought a 3/3 Fixer and a 2/1 Techie for contacts, plan to add some Karma to boost the techie slightly.
Going to read up on the Matrix (which is so far is quite nicely written) and see what else is new.
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If I recall right, I think you can only max out one attribute.
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Nothing about in the Attributes section, nor true for skills either as far as I can see. If I'm overlooking it somewhere, definitely will need a pointer to the right page/section.
I know 4e had some caps like that for skills, and Atts were cost prohibitive, IIRC. So far, I think the Limits mechanic makes that kind of cap mostly irrelevant.
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Characters at character creation
may only have 1 Mental or Physical attribute at their
natural maximum limit; the special attributes of Magic,
Edge, and Resonance are not included in this limitation.
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OK, thanks. I looked right past that sentence twice and didn't see it. I'm getting old I guess. It would be nice to have on one master chart somewhere. I keep expecting critical stuff like this to be much more obvious to find by glancing through a page, more like it was in past editions. In this case, it looks like I can shift 1 Intuition to Will and not wreck the whole of the party train of an 8 Mental limit. No big whup.
On the other side, I seem to be liking most things outside the chargen section quite well. Its this one section that seems to be the most challenging. I want it to get to the point more quickly and it doesn't serve that end. 20 years of SR, I know what I need to do more or less, and want it more "one page" style. I don't want to read 5 pages of description of things I already know about. Oh darn, poor me. :-X
I'm also becoming a one-rule-to-rule-them-all kind of gamer, and this seems to have a lot of exceptions and special circumstances to keep in mind. I'm starting to evaluate the prospect of GMing this and trying to track all these circumstances and conditional exceptions seems daunting at first read through. Has anyone run a game of this yet? Or is there a podcast up of a game being run? I'd like to see how it should be done by people who know it, so I can get a feel for how it could/should go.
I haven't been making the character tonight, and reading the matrix took a backseat to e-mails. I do note that this is the first edition where an Elven Decker is actually viable at creation, relative to other builds. Choosing Elf so far down the list at this point doesn't seem like a handicap...yet. Those and metahuman magicians were always challenging builds. This comes closer than 4e to minimizing that gap I think. I have enough points and money for everything, and limits didn't trip me up. It's in the win category overall. I may just need to go through the chargen section more meticulously and make my own summary page. If someone has one already done, that would be swell. If not, I can post what I come up with.
Thanks again folks.
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Thanks everyone. So far (left over from last night) I went with:
Resources: A (due to deck costs, bought the Sony deck and all programs plus a data tap so far)
Attributes: B (20) - Maxed Logic and Intuition, Will 3, with Reaction 4, that gives me a meatspace/AR init of 10+1d6, occasional 2nd action even in meatspace is a win as a decker w/o reflex boosts. Chose this priority that high because they set the Limits and having low stats here seems like giving yourself
Skills: C (28/2) - Tentative plan for a base of 4 in all six computer skills, with 4 + 2 group left to allocate for the support/rp stuff
Race: D (Elf-0) - "Edge shmedge" he said, hoping to live to regret it.
Magic: E - Duh.
Came out with Mental Limit 7 + 1 for indomitable Quality.
Physical + Social (before cyber): 5 each.
Feeling good about him overall so far. Limits were worrisome as a concept to me at first glance, but with 4 hits still being a strong degree of success I feel okay with their outcome.
Bought a 3/3 Fixer and a 2/1 Techie for contacts, plan to add some Karma to boost the techie slightly.
Going to read up on the Matrix (which is so far is quite nicely written) and see what else is new.
You might see how he looks with Skills A Resources C. I suspect you'd like it more.
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I would suggest reading the Matrix section before starting the character creation of a Decker. It pretty much spells out what makes a good Decker and what would be most important to him.
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Thanks, I'll be getting back to it later today I hope. Matrix section is pretty readable so far.
@Crunch: Are the deck stats not as relevant? I recall someone said skill now matters more than program, is that why?
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Thanks, I'll be getting back to it later today I hope. Matrix section is pretty readable so far.
@Crunch: Are the deck stats not as relevant? I recall someone said skill now matters more than program, is that why?
Ok so here's how it works.
Skill and attribute provide pool.
Deck stats provide [LIMIT] and are reconfigurable.
Programs are a flat +2 bonus to die pool.
Limit is useful, but only really matters if the character already has a large die pool, and Edge allows characters to push the limit and ignore limit either before or after a given roll.
I haven't played a decker in this edition yet, but I suspect that Deckers will NEED skills and attributes and WANT shiny decks.
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Have you (or anyone) had a chance to play any sessions of it yet?
Everything is making much more sense as I go through now. The one thing I will say I am overall unhappy with as I go through the book is the endless list of fiddly conditional rules: including wireless mods, and how simple things are no longer as simple. It sometimes feels like handicaps have been thrown in just to make something else able to solve the artificial handicap later on. Maybe that's part of a "grittier feel" plan or something, but for me, it's just more work at the table. I usually have to walk players through various SR rules multiple times in a session, so seeing more rules than the game needs to function being so baked in, I get to dreading being the human rule base to that extent.
That's why I want to see how it plays out, both in how it should go, but also what people think of the system as they play and GM both. I'll poke around the forums and see if people have game play reports, I guess. Its my one big reservation so far, but that's an untested theory. If modding what I feel is "extra" complexity out is easier than it looks or if it actually helps rather than hinders, that would be great to know. Is there a good SR5 play stories thread I should check out in specific?
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Skill and attribute provide pool.
Deck stats provide [LIMIT] and are reconfigurable.
Programs are a flat +2 bonus to die pool.
Actually programs are a little bit more complex - only a few add dice to the DP, most of them add to your deck's attributes and therefore raise the limit for certain tests!
This makes especially cheap decks a lot more effective.
Example:
Erika MCD-1, Device-Rating 1, Programs 1
running: Virtual Machine (Common program, adding 2 additional program-slots at the cost of higher vulnerability)
in the 2 bonus-slots:
- Exploit (+2 to Sleaze (and therefore the test's limit) for Hacking on the Fly)
- Stealth (+1 to Sleaze)
Now you can allocate your highest Deck-Rating to Sleaze (4) and add 3 to this while Hacking on the Fly for a total limit of 7. But you won't get any DP-Boni out of programs for Hacking on the Fly, that's all in your Attribute+Skill(+Qualities)
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There is also a very good program known as Sneak, which not only gives you + 2 to your pool against traces, but makes you immune to the physical location trace part of demiGod Convergence.
You may want to look more into edge before discounting it. It's better than ever this edition, both with it's uses, and how it refreshes. It actually does make it fairly hard to make a metahuman decker though, because a Decker has to be strong in so many areas. Not much left over for Edge and Race.
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I think I'm going to go ahead and say I am done with this thread, and say thanks to you all for your help.
The more I read, the less I like this edition. I gave up on the Decker after reading the Wireless World section, and after looking around some more considering other character types, I'm pretty sure I'm giving up on this edition entirely. :( It's not that it's hard to understand, I understand it just fine. It's not that I think it's "bad" or anything, it's just that it's not for me. It has too many rules, unnecessary complexity in those rules, they are not well laid out for ease of access, and overall it feels too oppressive to players and characters -- everything has some artificial limit, restriction, or qualifier to bear in mind. You can't just kick back and play the game, you have to have millions of rules for every exact situation, not just a few solid ones that govern everything, and easy ways to modify to suit circumstances, and allow people to get on with the dice. I looked back at earlier editions, I find them instantly understandable and accessible, and above all, simple. Each one has it's own possible improvements, but still, they elicit a very different response in me. I would always dive in and devour new editions, and the convert my friends, and we'd play on. It's not happening here, its more the opposite. This one...I'm sorry to say...every page I find something new I dislike, or else wish was handled differently.
I did end up getting the Quick Start Guide, and it's more what I want for presentation, which resolves my issues with accessibility...but then I'm still left with the systemic issues I am not liking. From what I can see, there's no fixing that without a degree of houseruling beyond the time I have available. Even then, how do I ask a player to invest in a rule book I will be ignoring most of?
I'd give it 1 point for all the obvious hard work and effort, and another 1 point for quality of product, but it's ended up as a 2/5 star score for me as a fan since 91. I'll possibly retcon some things to an earlier edition, because it does have some positive improvements in places, but overall this one is not for me. I really have given it more of a chance than you've seen me say so here, there's just only so much I'm up for explaining. I never thought I would say this, but I won't be investing in this edition of Shadowrun. I hope those who do so enjoy it.
Thank you fans for helping explain some things better, and definitely thanks for keeping the brand alive, Catalyst. I won't be far away. Good luck.