[penllawen]

Either way, the +1 DR means a whole lot more than "the list of exactly AR16 attacks is short".

...like what? Genuine question, I can’t see what you’re getting at.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Either way, the +1 DR means a whole lot more than "the list of exactly AR16 attacks is short".

...like what? Genuine question, I can’t see what you’re getting at.

Ok, going back to what I was responding to... you said:

This got me thinking...

Alan's DR is: 7 points of body, +1 from his bone lacing, +4 from his armour jacket, +1 from his helmet for a total of 13. So if he leaves the helmet at home, that will only matter if he's shot at with a gun with an Attack Rating of exactly 16. (Any more, the attacker would gain Edge regardless; any less, Alan denies the attacker any Edge without the helmet.)
ous.

Which was then followed by examples of how short and contrived the examples are that would hit AR 16 exactly, summed up by the following thought:

(This, I think, is exactly the kind of thing people are talking about when they say they don't like how armour feels underpowered in SR6.)[/list]

In other words: 7+1+4+1 has little advantage over 7+1+4, and that's an example of why people think armor feels underpowered.

To which I rebutted:

ok, but that last +1 means you could have instead gone 6+1+4+1. That helmet giving you the final +1 means you don't have to spend whatever costs it took to go from 6 to 7.  And those costs can be steep, compared to the cost of buying a helmet.  Ergo, the helmet is actually giving quite a strong effect.

[penllawen]

ok, but that last +1 means you could have instead gone 6+1+4+1. That helmet giving you the final +1 means you don't have to spend whatever costs it took to go from 6 to 7.  And those costs can be steep, compared to the cost of buying a helmet.  Ergo, the helmet is actually giving quite a strong effect.

Ok, I understand that bit. What I’m struggling with: you’re suggesting (if I follow you) there are two scenarios:

1) Alan wears a helmet, reduces his Body by 1, has the same DR, now has a spare Attribute point or karma to spend elsewhere
2) Alan skips the helmet, now he has to have Body 5(7) to hit the same DR, now he doesn’t have an Attribute point to spend

And therefore we can, in some sense, suggest the helmet is worth one Attribute point. Which is super valuable. Is that what you’re saying?

Edit - formatting.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

...
And therefore we can, in some sense, suggest the helmet is worth one Attribute point. Which is super valuable. Is that what you’re saying?

Yes. 1 DR from a point of Body Attribute is mechanically identical to 1 DR from a helmet.  But not only is +1 DR cheaper from a helmet than from adding a point of body, it's available even after you max out body.

[penllawen]

Gotcha. But...

Yes. 1 DR from a point of Body Attribute is mechanically identical to 1 DR from a helmet. 

That's true as far as DR goes, but aren't you ignoring the other things Body does, though? To go back to this:

1) Alan wears a helmet, reduces his Body by 1, has the same DR, now has a spare Attribute point or karma to spend elsewhere
2) Alan skips the helmet, now he has to have Body 5(7) to hit the same DR, now he doesn’t have an Attribute point to spend

Compared to (2), in scenario (1) Alan has:

• One fewer die to roll to Soak
• One fewer box on his condition monitor
• One fewer die on rolls against toxins and physical addiction

...and so on.

A helmet only contributes to DR. A point of Body contributes to many things, including DR. I don't think they're comparable at all, and I don't think the idea that "Alan can wear his helmet, save a point on his Body, and come out ahead" is true.

[penllawen]

You should also note that this is not really a fully functional character. It is mostly a one-trick-pony character created just to prove the point that anticipation might be useful when the situation is right.

I had the same thought, so I present: Prescient Patty, Alan's sister. Unlike Alan, Patty stayed in school, and learned all about computers.

She has a deck and a cyberjack and ASDF of 7/6/9/8. She rolls 15 dice in Cybercombat and 13 in Computer, which covers most of the main Matrix stuff; she has -2 on those dice pools for other Matrix actions.

She rolls 11+2d6 for initiative and just like Alan has Edge of 5 and dual SMGs, so she can bust out Anticipation on her first move. When she does, she'll lay down 4x attacks, each with 12 dice, DV 5P, AR 10/13/10/-/-.

Unlike Alan, she has some options for quickly regaining Edge by carrying out 1 Data Spike. This is guaranteed to generate 1 Edge due to Analytical Mind, and as long as she picks the weakest device or commlink she can see, will be quite likely to generate a second Edge due to her deck's pretty reasonable Attack+Sleaze stats of 13. It doesn't matter one bit if the hack attempt succeeds or not.

This means if she can beg 1 point of Edge from a team-mate, she can hope to use Anticipate on the third combat round as well as the first.

She also has 1 Major and 3 Minor actions per turn, which means she can keep 1 Minor in reserve at all times for defence. This raises her Defence Test from 11 to 18 dice so is well worth the investment.

But there's a better trick that I just thought of. She pops by the Suffer Shack and buys a load of Rating 0 commlinks for a few nuyen. First round, she can use 1 Major + 1 Minor for Anticipate / Multiple Attacks.  She can then use her remaining two Minor actions to turn the wireless functionality of two of the commlinks off again. Each of these is a Electronics + Logic (1) test, so each garners a point of Edge, as per Analytical Mind.

She now enters the second combat turn with 3 points of Edge. She uses her first Minor action to repeat this trick, giving her the 4 she needs for Anticipate, and then she can do 1 Major + 1 Minor to put another 48 attack dice down on the table.

(I've done this one in a bit of a rush so I may have made some small slips, although I don't think so. In any event I think the general principle holds.)

[GuardDuty]

What does it sound like for one team mate to "beg" a point of Edge from another?

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

What does it sound like for one team mate to "beg" a point of Edge from another?

That's already covered. You can spend 2 to give 1 away to someone else.

[GuardDuty]

I don't mean how does it work.  I mean, what does it sound like?  What does your character say to try and "beg" Edge from someone?

[penllawen]

“Yo, little help?”

Depends what fiction your GM/table wants to use. Admittedly it’s a bit strained if, say, a samurai gives Edge to a mage who used it in Astral Combat while projecting, or to a decker who uses it whole hacking. I’ve... actually I’ve no idea how you do that.

[tequila]

Thanks for posting this penllawen! Alan is very similar to what I was planning to build.

No worries! If you take a pass at it, I’d like to see what you come up with. I’m sure there’s ways to improve.

Will do. My plan was to make my namesake which was a dual pistol (and Panther) wielding Phys Ad from 4e.  I think it's going to be tricky to make him in 6e as a Phys Ad, so I think I'll make him as Street Sam first.  Hopefully that will help me wrap my brain around character generation a little better before I try a Phys Ad.

[tequila]

Ok.  Below is a link to a copy of the spreadsheet I use to make characters.  Sorry if it's a little scattered, but it works for my scattered brain.

One note: I'm running with 20 earned karma as the max allowed to be earned from Negative Qualities rather than the 20 net karma as written.  I'd rather have to add things to the character than have to figure out what to remove if this gets errata.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K8SYnECdG5Q4Wss4LQ8vda9h3WRTR7PvLqabsUP4VVw/edit?usp=sharing

Dicepools:

Firearms (Automatics): 16 (19; 20 with wireless Smartgun)
Athletics: 13
Stealth: 13
Perception (Visual): 8 (10)

[markelphoenix]

Ok.  Below is a link to a copy of the spreadsheet I use to make characters.  Sorry if it's a little scattered, but it works for my scattered brain.

One note: I'm running with 20 earned karma as the max allowed to be earned from Negative Qualities rather than the 20 net karma as written.  I'd rather have to add things to the character than have to figure out what to remove if this gets errata.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K8SYnECdG5Q4Wss4LQ8vda9h3WRTR7PvLqabsUP4VVw/edit?usp=sharing

Dicepools:

Firearms (Automatics): 16 (19; 20 with wireless Smartgun)
Athletics: 13
Stealth: 13
Perception (Visual): 8 (10)

First thing I noticed is a lot of wasted skill points. Makes much more karma economic sense to spend skill points to boost/buy the higher level skills you're spending karma on, then spend only 5 karma to raised those level 1 skills you wasted skill points on. Same with specialization. Take Perception to 3 with skill points, then spend 5 karma to specialize in visual.

Also, only one specialization allowed during character generation.

Also, Aria made a pretty wiz Excel char generator for 6e with formulas and everything, pretty fragin' sweet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HgUQPBL9C4PuZbDv7Kc9F_jvt11hQ25p/view

[penllawen]

Ok.  Below is a link to a copy of the spreadsheet I use to make characters.  Sorry if it's a little scattered, but it works for my scattered brain.

Nice! Thanks for sharing.

One note: I'm running with 20 earned karma as the max allowed to be earned from Negative Qualities rather than the 20 net karma as written.  I'd rather have to add things to the character than have to figure out what to remove if this gets errata.

This is probably wise, although I guess we've no idea how it's going to get errata-ed so you may need to brace for changes regardless.

First thing I noticed is a lot of wasted skill points. Makes much more karma economic sense to spend skill points to boost/buy the higher level skills you're spending karma on, then spend only 5 karma to raised those level 1 skills you wasted skill points on. Same with specialization. Take Perception to 3 with skill points, then spend 5 karma to specialize in visual.

+1 to that

No cybereyes seems surprising?

Platelet Factories are well worth trying to sneak in, if you can manage it.

Maybe consider APDS ammo, at least in a few spare magazines. The +2AR, while on the face of it not as useful as the net +2DV on explosive ammo, might help contribute towards rapid Edge rebuild and getting to use Anticipate more often.

[tequila]

Thanks for the feedback!

That's a good point about the skill points. I'll take a look at tweaking the skills later.

I somehow missed that character generator. That's really impressive!

I actually had cybereyes in the build initially, but wanted to try some other ware (like damage comp), and cybereyes get pricey compared to contacts+glasses. Might rethink that, but in my head I like the idea of High Pain Tolerance and Damage compensators pushing the -1 penalty down to the end of the second row (if I'm understanding damage compensators correctly).

I was wondering whether APDS would be better for the Edge building but decided to go with Explosive ammo since APDS is all I would buy in 4e & 5e.  I should probably try to squeeze a couple APDS clips in the build.