Here's the first draft, still incomplete. If you think anything is missing, please note it in the other topic.
Attributes:
Augmentations
- Augmented Maximum: p94: This is your natural (unboosted) Attribute value + 4, NOT your racial maximum + 4. Note that this limit only applies to Augmentations ('Ware), and anything else that actively states they obey Augmented Maximum, like the magical abilities/spells that raise Attributes. This means that Drugs, by confirmed developer intent, ignore it.
- Body Augmentations: Bone Density Augmentation, Bone Lacing and Toughness do not have an actual higher Body. They do not get additional Condition Monitor boxes from it, they do not get a bonus to Toxic Resistances, it doesn't help their Physical Limit, Overflow or Resting. They simply add to the Body part of the Damage Resistance Test, which is the non-reducable part (in contrast to the Armor part). Note that the Suprathyroid Gland augmentation and the Increase Body spell DO raise your actual Body stat, and so does Kamikaze. Incidentally this means that you could die if such boosts stop working if you are heavily injured.
Some of the same restrictions apply to Body Boost, which only works as dicepool modifier on any test including Body, so not on your Condition Monitor, Overflow or Limits.
Magic
- Magic & Power Foci: Power Foci do not raise your actual Magic. All they do is give you a dicepool bonus on any test that includes the Magic attribute as part of the dicepool. A GM may decide to also apply it for tests that have [Magic] as limit, though right now only Wall Running has that.
This means Power Foci do not affect Overcasting/Oversummoning for Physical Drain and maximum Force. They also do not stack with other Foci that give a direct dicepool bonus (such as Spellcasting & Summoning Foci). They do not give Power Points to Adepts.
- Magic & Initiation: Initiation does NOT raise your actual Magic, all it does is raise your maximum Magic. Your Maximum Magic is pretty much Essence (rounded down) + Initiation Grade, 1 higher if you have Exceptional Attribute: Magic. Adepts do not get a free Power Point from Initiating, they would have to pay karma to raise their Magic and/or take Power Point as Metamagic for that. Mystic Adepts also need to take it as Metamagic.
- Magic & Power Points: If a Physical Adept raises his actual Magic score with 1, he gains 1 Power Point. If he lowers it due to taking augmentations, he'll lose Power Points. If a Mystic Adept raises his actual Magic score with 1, he does NOT gain a Power Point. If he lowers it, he'll lose Power Points. See the houserule topic for more info.
Chargen notes:
Priority Table
- Trolls & Dwarves do NOT pay extra for Gear, they simply pay more for Lifestyle, as confirmed by developers from before SR5 released. See the errata for a partial fix. Trolls pay +100% lifestyle (note it's +100%, not x2), Dwarves pay +20%.
- Elf(3) means you are an Elf with 3 Special Attribute Points (SAPs). These SAPs can be used to raise Magic/Resonance and Edge above their starting value, up to your maximum. So for example a Magician B Elf(3) has 1 Edge and 4 Magic, and could use the 3 SAPs to go 4 Edge / 4 Magic, 3/5 and 2/6.
- You must take a Metatype entry listing the race you want, you cannot for example be a Troll at Priority E.
- You cannot raise a Special Attribute you do not have. If you do not pick a Priority that makes you an Adept/Magician/AspectedMagician/MysticAdept/Technomancer which gives you a base Magic/Resonance, you cannot raise this value with SAPs or karma.
- A Magician / Mystic Adept who gets free Spells, actually gets free 'Spells'. They can use these for Spell, Ritual and Alchemical Preparation Formulae. Note that Alchemical Preparation Formulae are not actual enchanted alchemy objects, they are 'alchemist spells' that you can cast. For example, a Magician with Magic A could use their 10 free spells for 6 Spells, 2 Rituals and 2 Alchemical Preparations.
An important detail is that the spellcasting rituals are rituals that require you to know both the formula of the specific Ritual (such as Prodigal Spell) and the formula of a spell you want to perform with it (such as Stunbolt). You do not need a ritual for each spell, you only need a ritual per spell type.
Limitations
- You're limited to one maxed Physical/Mental Attribute at chargen, so max Agility OR max Charisma OR etc. This limit does not apply to Special Attributes.
- There is no limit to how many skills and skillgroups you can have maxed at 6 at chargen. However, you can only have 1 Specialization per skill.
- You can spend SAPs/AttributePoints/SkillPoints to make use of a raised maximum from a Positive Quality. So earlier-named Elf could learn Exceptional Attribute (Magic), then put all 3 SAPs into Magic for 1 Edge and 7 Magic.
- You cannot initiate/submerge in chargen, as confirmed by multiple developers. However, they also stated they do not see a problem with a GM houseruling it. See the houserule topic for more detail on it. It's not allowed in Missions though.
Combat:
Damage Resistance
- Damage Resist, Physical vs Stun: When an attack deals Physical damage, and the modified Damage Value equals or exceeds the Modified Armor, the damage 'penetrates' and remains Physical. This very likely applies in ALL cases, even where equality is not explicitly mentioned, such as Vehicle Armor and Hardened Armor.
- Damage Resist, Stun: Page 173 is often misread, having people miss the line about modified Armor Value being positive. As a result, they think that Stun damage is only resisted with Body. However, this is not the case, you still add your modified Armor.
- Damage Resist, Modified Armor: The line often skimmed past, resulting in the previous-mentioned confusion, is about modified Armor. If the AP of an attack equals or exceeds a character's Armor, his Armor simply counts as 0 for the Damage Resistance test. Excessive AP does NOT result in additional soak dice lost. This is why BDA/BL/Toughness mention they add to the Body part of damage resistance tests: Their bonus neither impacts Physical-vs-Stun, nor is it reducable by Armor Penetration.
- Immunity to Normal Weapons: The sloppier explanation does not mean a difference in mechanics. Immunity works exactly as Hardened Armor, so AP still applies to determining whether or not the attack actually can do damage. Furthermore, AP does impact how many auto-hits the Immunity adds.
Condition Monitors
- Overflow damage: When you receive more Stun Damage than your Stun Condition Monitor can contain, any excess is divided by 2, rounded down and only then converted to Physical Damage. This means that if you take 3S twice when it's full, you end up with 2x1P damage. Note that this is an actively stated exception of the "round up unless stated otherwise" rule.
- Losing consciousness: You fall unconscious if either of your Condition Monitors fills up. While the rules erronously do not state it explicitly, there are references to this fact in other abilities. Note that a Pain Editor actively circumvents falling unconscious from Stun damage.
- Magic: You cannot sustain spells when unconscious, and foci, including sustaining foci, also automatically deactivate. Only Quickened Spells and innate Adept Powers remain active.
Defense Tests
- Area of Effect Defense: There is NO Defense test against explosions and Indirect AoE Combat Spells. The -2 in the table was erronously not removed between rule changes. However, Run&Gun includes an Interrupt action that lets you run away from/to the expected (pre-scatter) AoE attack.
- Defenses & Skills: Any test with a skill in it has a Limit, only Attribute-only tests do not. As such, any addition of a Skill to a Defense Test, such as Dodge, will cause the test to now have a Limit.
- Cover & Ties: When being attacked while in cover, a tie doesn't just miss but instead the attack hits through the cover. This employs the Barrier rules. In the case of guns, for example, this means that if the base damage exceeds/equals the modified barrier armor, it leaves 1 damage behind in the cover and the remainder is resisted as a normal hit.
- Cover & Unaware: If you are unaware of an attack, you get no defense test but cover may still apply. The action Take Cover is simply needed to employ it in an active defense test. If you are completely concealed, the attacker also receives a Blind Fire penalty. Of course the attacker still needs to know where you are, if they don't and don't get lucky guessing, they cannot hit you no matter what.
- Cover & getting defense benefits: To get a Partial/Good Cover bonus on your Defense Test, you must take the Take Cover action first. This lets you add the cover bonus to your default defense dice. Total cover is a different beast altogether: You won't need to actually use the Take Cover action, simply walking around the corner is sufficient to block the line of sight. However, you will count as unaware, as noted above.
- Cover & Attacking: There is no actual penalty when firing from normal cover. The "Attacker Firing From Cover with Imaging Device" penalty only applies when you're firing from total cover, by "sticking the gun around the corner". In this scenario, the GM may decide that this lets you defend against an attack made on you, due to being able to perceive it through the Imaging Device. In that case the attack still takes a -6 from Blind Fire, while you would have +4 defense dice rather than 4 defense dice. The GM may also decide that you need to employ the Take Cover action to position yourself for being both in total cover and being able to fire around the corner.
Damage:
- Damage is not a Dicepool: As it says, damage is not a dicepool. After you succesfully hit your target and determine the modified damage, this damage value (DV) is not rolled against the enemy's damage resistance (often called soak) roll. Instead, it simply is a fixed value, which is then reduced by the enemy's soak roll. So for example 13 damage against 4+10 modified soak means the enemy risks taking 13 damage, and rolls 14 dice with each hit reducing the damage taken by 1.
- DV Limit of Called Shots: Some Called Shots from Run&Gun, both Location-shots and Ammo-Whammy!-shots, have a maximum DV. This DV applies after, not before, the soak roll. After the soak roll, you look at the remaining damage. If it's at least 1, the called shot succeeded. If it now exceeds the maximum DV, you reduce it to the DV Limit of the attack before applying the damage. Keep in mind that Location-shots won't get any bonus damage from net hits, and you need at least 2 net hits to apply Location-shot effects.
- No Headshots: Attacks are always resisted with all the (modified) Armor the target has, no matter where you shot at. There is no such thing as a called shot to the head to bypass Armor in Shadowrun. The system abstracts from hit-location and armor-location like that, with a few special-protection exceptions. So yes, you might have actually nailed the guy in the head in the description, but in combat he'll always get his modified armor on his soak roll. Outside combat it's a different tale and the GM can have cinematic rules apply, such as when interrogating or executing someone.
Misc:
- 1 Attack Action per Action Phase: Page 164, if a character takes 2 Simple Actions, only one can be an attack action. The Missions FAQ is more explicit and stricter: One Attack Action per IP, period. No rulelawyering what constitutes an Attack Action either.
- Accumulative Recoil: For any non-Single-Shot weapon, recoil accumulates if you constantly keep firing. If at any point you take a Simple Action that is NOT a firing action, recoil resets to zero. See the houserule topic for different approaches.
- Multiple Attacks & penalties: When splitting your dicepool for Multiple Attacks, the dicepool is calculated before splitting. This means that all penalties and bonuses apply BEFORE splitting into as-equal-as-possible portions. Multiple Spells is the stated sole exception to this. As noted in the errata, Edge used to Push The Limit is included in the equal split, while Edge used to Second Chance lets you reroll every attack for 1 Point total.
- Martial Arts: Martial Arts are not Specializations. They can, however, be 'taken as specialization' to skills. This does not, despite the identical karma costs, mean you have the Martial Arts. So it's 7 karma to buy a Martial Arts with 1 free Technique, 5 karma per additional Technique, and 7 karma to take a Martial Arts as specialization. For example, someone might pay 7+10 karma for learning Parkour and 3 of its Techniques, then pay 7 karma to take the Gymnastics(Parkour Martial Arts) specialization. They then have a +2 dicepool bonus from the specialization whenever they use Gymnastics with a Parkour Technique. A SWAT officer might have Clubs(Knight Errant Tactical) as specialization and take up Barbed Hooks and Hammerfist, giving them a +2 from the specialization on Intercept and Called Shot(Blast Out Of Hands) when wielding a club.
- Defender Unaware of Attack: When you are unaware of an attack, you do not get a defense test and thus only cover dice may be in your defense pool. You still get a soak roll though. There are multiple ways one can be unaware of an attack. You might be surprised, the attacker might be behind you, or you might not be able to see the attacker. If you're already in combat, you're generally considered aware of every attacker you can see, barring Surprise. However, it's possible to not be able to see an attacker even in combat. For example, they're concealed and you failed your Perception test to find them, or you're behind Total Cover and don't have some kind of imaging device at hand to see them anyway.
