[Crazy Ivan]

I can't explain in any real logical way how to improve intuition. It's those gut feelings, those hunches that we have. To me, I can't see a way to boost that with cyberware, but that's just me. Other GM's may see it as connecting synaptic relays in the brain as improving sensory production, thereby improving reaction time/reflexes/ initiative.

It's all in how you justify it.

[StarManta]

By all means, let us know how your experiments go StarManta.

Won't be for a while yet - besides the fact that the fall anime con season is now upon me (4 cons in 2 months!), I'm also broke as hell and can't really put in more time to SR (at least, not more than the two games I'm running). Starting a new campaign would probably mean handing off one of the games to someone else to GM, and as both are running interesting longterm campaigns (Emergence and Ghost Cartels, respectively), I'd like to see both of those through. So "my next game" probably means early next year.

As for how to improve Intuition, I could actually see Bioware that increases the number of connections between the two halves of the brain doing just that. I think I've read about some studies that have been done showing that people with more connections between the halves are... uh, something. Smarter, more creative, I forget. But it improved something about their mental ability, and just a strong enough basis for a scifi technology I think.

[Onion Man]

Won't be for a while yet - besides the fact that the fall anime con season is now upon me (4 cons in 2 months!)

For some reason the geniuses (Read: incredibly thoughtful and hard working people) keep scheduling the Milwaukee Anime convention for late February.

Talk about bogus scheduling.

[Crazy Ivan]

Oh lordy. I know how that goes. I would have been at GenCon this year (right now, technically as of this writing) if not for the delayed birth of my daughter. She was finally born today, so I've been itching to get my gaming on, but its hard to find gamers in the West Michigan area.

This is only marginally off-topic. 

Anyways, can anyone test-drive/critique/fix that concept for combat initiative that i came up with?

[StarManta]

Oh lordy. I know how that goes. I would have been at GenCon this year (right now, technically as of this writing) if not for the delayed birth of my daughter. She was finally born today, so I've been itching to get my gaming on, but its hard to find gamers in the West Michigan area.

Those damn offspring. They're always interfering with what's really important!

[Crazy Ivan]

Lol. Nah, wouldn't change that for the world. It just makes gaming a little more difficult. She's wonderful though.

Back on topic--

[JoeNapalm]

Despite how frequently this topic comes up, I still haven't found an answer, and i don't see many posters on here coming up with solid alternate ideas. And in the interest of fulfilling my desire to find a workable, logical system that is still abstract, but realistic enough in terms of speed both unaugmented and augmented (well, what Shadowrun represents as augmented). Kind of annoyed that the other thread got locked, but such is life.

So here's a system I came up with on the fly--

Base Initiative Score is Reaction+Intuition (Nothing new here)
To roll initiative- rolls your score, count hits. Add hits to Initiative Score.
For every set number (5 is what i came up with, though its untested)- An extra SIMPLE action is taken. Or, if luck is especially favorable to you, you can spend two SIMPLE actions to get a COMPLEX action.

Augmentations (magical and otherwise) give their Reaction bonus, but not the bonus pass. Instead, they only give a single SIMPLE action per pass they would have normally received. And they can turn in 2  SIMPLE actions for a COMPLEX action. Any of them can be turned into a FREE action should the need/desire arise.

Thoughts? I'm open to criticism, as long as you offer at least a reasoning why. I've been in fights enough to know that speed is everything, and sometimes you get that extra step, and other times you don't. Nothing in combat is perfectly predictable. But at the same time, giving complete combat turns is insane.

You have just reinvented the Initiative system from SR1, while making it slightly less streamlined.

Congratulations. 

I actually found the system intuitive - you basically got extra actions based on how high your Initiative roll came out, which makes a lot of sense. In practice, Street Samurai killed everything that moved before anyone not Boosted could react. Also fairly intuitive, but problematic from a gameplay stance for those non-combat specialists who still wanted to participate.

I don't find SR4s system nearly as cumbersome as many seem to - I've played with a lot of progressive initiative systems, I even modded a hybrid SR1/CP2020 system into CP2020 (and the many variants of that game that I designed for my own use - Westernpunk and Spypunk were favorites of my group).

SR4s "pass system" strikes a good balance of not overly neutering augmented characters while keeping characters with fewer passes in-play. It's not terribly complicated - each Pass is a self-contained sub-round of combat. In old school AD&D terms, each SR4 "round" is a D&D "turn", while each Pass is a AD&D "combat round".

You guys want a complex fight on your hands, try running an AD&D game with high level Fighters who are dual-wielding vs multi-limb/multi-attack oppponents and high level Fighter-class NPCs who are dual-wielding. (I think this is actually what put Hawking in that chair of his.)

-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[Crazy Ivan]

I've never seen the SR 1 rules, so I have no idea. Again, it's just an idea. Was it streamlined?

I'm familiar with the AD&D rules, having been someone who's had the pleasure of playing all 4 editions (5 if you count 3.5). It did take time to get a feel for the crazy amount of attacks that a character could get. The scariest i saw was a dark elf character hanging out near 72 attacks per round...it was insane. And it did take so much time to go through everything, the player rarely used the ability to get that many attacks, since it did actively require some use of a few abilities. Ideally, we like a combat turn (1 full go around from start to finish, regardless of what we call it) to take as short a time as we can and not have one person dominate everything.

[Charybdis]

SR1 - For every 10 points of initiative, you got another full Intiative Pass.

Ergo,
- the Mage would roll 5 - And get 1 action
- The Face with a few augmentations would roll 13 and get an action on 13 and 3 (2 IP)
- The big scary Street Sam would roll 26 and get 3 actions on 26,16,6 (3 IP)

And the mage, on 5, would get turned into sushi by the Street Sam before ever casting a spell

I read the other thread. And I don't understand the negativity around multiple IP's?

Every PC-archtype (Cyber/Bio/Magic/Technomancer) has the option to get them and utilise them *shrugs* even straight out of CharGen. If people Don't want to use them, then don't *shrugs* simple.

[Crazy Ivan]

It's the need to get them to avoid certain death that i have a complaint with. Yes, I understand that each method of creation can get extra passes in some way (wires, riggers, improved reflexes, etc. etc.) And I know that SR promotes things like that by emphasizing their State of the Art gear/magic etc. etc. or risk "falling behind." But what about a face character? Or a character that doesn't want to be magical, and doesn't want cyberware.

I'm just not sure full extra passes are the way to go to represent inhuman speed. And some humans (unaugmented) are as inhumanly/supernaturally fast.
I'll keep playing with the passes and see if I can find a way to improve them one way or another.

[Charybdis]

It's the need to get them to avoid certain death that i have a complaint with. Yes, I understand that each method of creation can get extra passes in some way (wires, riggers, improved reflexes, etc. etc.) And I know that SR promotes things like that by emphasizing their State of the Art gear/magic etc. etc. or risk "falling behind." But what about a face character? Or a character that doesn't want to be magical, and doesn't want cyberware.

I'm just not sure full extra passes are the way to go to represent inhuman speed. And some humans (unaugmented) are as inhumanly/supernaturally fast.
I'll keep playing with the passes and see if I can find a way to improve them one way or another.

There is a way to avoid certain death without extra IP's...it's called STEALTH.

We have an Invisible Way adept in the group, and basically she can''t be seen. 1st pass she disappears (if she was visible to begin with), and gets into a nice hidden sniper position.

As for the complaint that you need them to avoid certain death, you only need them because other people (who want to kill you) will have them. Ergo, you need to either escalate your abilities to compete, or find a workaround.

The classic workaround is to not get targetted by attacks, and the ways to do that are:
- Look unassuming, but non-magical. Pretend to be a civilian
- Just plain hide...duck for cover and don't shoot back. Enemies will take out people shooting back with SMG's and shotguns before hunting down the people taking cover

And if a character doesn't want to be magical, and doesn't want cyberware, then I recommend bioware.
If they don't want any augmentations at all I recommend Combat drugs.
If they don't want any combat advantages at all, then I recommend they stay out of combat.

But combat is a big part of shadowrun, so if they don't want to be in combat, the player (not just the PC) is going to be twiddling their thumbs a lot....

If you find a better way to account for superhuman speed (other than Initiative passes) I'm all for it. But to me, I haven't found a better option than the guy who snap-shots 4 bullets before the average Joe can blink. To me, that's superhuman, and very much what the current rules allow...

[The Big Peat]

First off, I am agreeing with everything Charybdis said about IPs as they are now.

Secondly, if anything, I think Wired Reflexes and the like would be even more important in Crazy Ivan's system. As all of a sudden you really, really, really want to go first. I don't want to go behind anything that has about 4 simple actions to lay down short bursts on my character. At least currently I only have to put up with 2. I also predict that people would spend Edge like crazy on those rolls as such a lot hinges on them. In short, I'm not a fan of it. Sorry Ivan.

[Onion Man]

AD&D with high level fighters and dual wielding... comlex?  I think not.  There's a reason the A was dropped when WotC created the "role-playing" abomination that was 3.x, it's not AD&D.  They knew it, at least internally, and they accepted it.

Dual wielding and high level fighters were phenomenally simple in the last version of D&D to even resemble being Advanced in any way.  No action economy to deal with.  You were either specialized or you weren't, your number of attacks were static and attached to a chart, only your level and specialization effected how many attacks you could make.  If you weren't a ranger, you really didn't want to dual wield anyway, rangers were still special and somewhat unique.  No such thing as two weapon training (not until CFH came out at least) and no such thing as Ambidexterity.  Just your level, your specialization, and your exceptional strength (if you were really lucky or were a boldfaced cheater).

3.x was the end of the age of role playing in D&D, and the start of the age of rule-playing.



Back to on topic, what is with the obsession in the last couple of days with fixing something that just isn't broken?

[Ryo]

That's the thing, though. IPs ARE still broken. Having multiple turns has been a factor in every edition and the developers have desperately been trying to balance that in all four editions thus far. Are IPs more balanced than what we had before? Absolutely. Are they absolutely perfect and without the possibility of improvement? Not even close. Hence, suggestions to fix them.

One possibility might be to just reduce the cost of all IP boosters. You recognize them as a Must Have that every player is gonna invest in, and you make them cheap enough so that it doesn't impact the rest of their build.

Also, rebalance the various IP boosters vs. one another. There is something seriously wrong with the fact that it is significantly more cost effective for an adept to take Synaptic Boosters than Improved Reflexes as a power.

[The Big Peat]

I don't see what's broken. They're available to all and they don't distort the game into weird shapes.

The pornomancer, yes. A Mage with a private army of Force 12 spirits, yes. Initative passes? Not seeing it particularly.