You know, I'm a mathematician. Got a bachelor's in straight mathematics. I love MS Excel and number crunching all day.
That being said, I appreciate these changes. It seems like everyone is skimming the article instead of reading the article.
Why is it harder to sum up modifiers for Attack and Defense dice rolls (SR1-5) than summing up Attack and Defense rating (S6)?
I dont really get what replacing modifiers with rating makes faster. You still have to calculate two numbers that can be affected by a large value of possible effects.
Adding up Attack and Defense dice roll modifiers is the player and DM spending 5-15 minutes on their turn adding together all the modifiers that tells them what their chances are for firing a bullet in three seconds. Attack and Defense rating are already figured out at the beginning of the game and doesn't require the combat round to stop to figure out the roll.
So the following does not affect attack rating?
- wind
- distance to target
- lighting
- rain/smoke
- that you are running or not
- cover
Traditional dice pools for a task (attack values, soak pools and so on) are also largely static and can be calculated up front (and you have to do this for the attack and defense rating system also, so you have to calculate pool and rating. which is more not less). The point in situational modifiers is, that they are situational. Either Attack and Defense rating neglect situational modifiers, then you could just use the old system and ignore those modifers, or they have the same problem (meaning that you now have to calculate modifiers for Attack Rating instead for dice pool). In both cases you added calculating Attack and Defense Rating on top of what you did before.
There is absolutely no benefit. You could just use traditional pools and ignore situational modifiers (if the Attack Rating/Defsense Rating does so, I dont know. If it doesnt, well then you also gained nothing).
Old:
calculate pool (static)
calculate situational modifiers to pool (optional, if you want to streamline)
New:
calculate pool (static)
calculate rating (static)
calculate situational modifiers to rating(optional, if you want to streamline)
New is more complicated and has less game effect (see discussiona bout armor and such).
Wind, distance, lighting, rain/smoke, running, cover - affects both attacker and defender. -X to attacker, +X to defender, so you spent twenty minutes to figure out that your five hits rolled counts as five hits against the defender.
The dice pools are not static for an entire session. Currently, they are static for an encounter (unless you move inside/outside, a spell is cast limiting sight/cover/etc., you're in a vehicle... ), so you have to figure everything out in the beginning, adding a half hour for all the players to "get ready". The new rules have it figured out when you sit down at the table. If you're running 3-4 encounters, that's two hours you get back for play.