[Finstersang]

Having switched from 4th to 5th Edition when the latter came out, it finally grew on me that the Limit mechanic might be 5th edition´s "Original Sin", for a variety of reasons:

• As another advantage/penalty mechanic added to the simple "add or subtract dices", it´s hard to balance out what´s worth of a dice pool or limit bonus, especially when the system grows. Consequently, things got messy.
• Many Limits, especially Social Limits turned out too high and too easy to boost to 10+ or higher, where the mechanic basically becomes pointless. Often, your dice pool won´t even reach those inflated limits.
• Other kind of Limits, especially Matrix Limits and some weapon limits (looking at you, bats...) are way to low, hard too boost and thus affect tests way too much. In the Matrix, this is particulary nasty, since these are not only resisted by unlimited tests, but also suffer the harshest consequences when failing. There´s a reason why Deckers (and don´t let me start on TMs here...) are underplayed, even in the new, "streamlined" Matrix...
• Consequently, the limit mechanic turns out to be in herently unfun to play with. You only recognize them when they suddenly take your fun away. Limits either mean nothing because they are too inflated, or they dwell at medium and lower levels, where they steal you the joy over your few lucky rolls unless you use edge.
• Speaking of which: The Interaction of Limits and Edge defeats the main purpose of Limits by letting you completely ignore them when your dice pool is peaking. In combination with the spellcasting rules, this also makes the force of spells pointless when using Edge.
• Mostly, the difference between limit and dicepool bonuses is used to shoehorn wireless gear use. "It´s not wireless? Well, then you only get the not-really-a-bonus-bonus..."
• Lastly, there are still some "Pseudo-Limits" to be considered: Jump Distances, Dice Pool Limitations because of low language skills...

But enough of the ranting. I put "Houserule" in the title. Limits are so entwined in 5th edition´s system that they seem hard to fix on a global scale, but I think it´s still possible with a few relatively small changes:

1. Softened Limits: Limits are no longer hardcapping, but softcapping the number of hits. Instead of ignoring all hits above the limit, those hits are divided by 2 (round down). When rolling 5 Hits on a test with a limit of 3, they count as a total of 4 hits. This is the main change to the mechanic, the following rule changes elaborate from here.

2. Edge and Limits: Using edge to Push the Limit does not fully remove the limit. Instead, the limit is raised by 2.

3. High Limits: When the Limit for a test is higher than or equals to the dice pool (counting in all bonuses and penalties), one bonus die may be added to the dice pool. This bonus does not apply if penalties to the test would otherwise reduce the dice pool to zero.

4. Limits on Spellcasting (and similar) tests: When the Limit for a test is set by a force (or level) linked to the drain (or fading) value, the character making the test may choose to count only a number of rolled hits up to the set force (effectively using the Limit in the old way) or count the hits above the force (divided by 2 and round down) and adjust the force (and the according drain values, damage codes etc.) to the number of counted hits.

5. Matrix Limits: Every Matrix device has a theoretical Sleaze and Attack value of 0, allowing illegal actions to be performed by skilled individuals. In these cases, the full amount of hits is devided by two and round down. Note: This rule is pure flavour. I like the idea of having deckers out there that are so good at their job that they can do small hacks even with an unmodified commlink. However, in a pinch those hackers might already be able to scoop up some spare parts, add a Sleaze Attribute to a device and hack away. With halfed successes, both ways would hardly mean the revival of 4th edition´s commlink hackers.

I tested these rules in a number of sessions now, and I think I can definitely recommend it.

[FeydMourne]

1. Softened Limits: Limits are no longer hardcapping, but softcapping the number of hits. Instead of ignoring all hits above the limit, those hits are divided by 2 (round down). When rolling 5 Hits on a test with a limit of 3, they count as a total of 4 hits. This is the main change to the mechanic, the following rule changes elaborate from here.

We have been using your Softened Limits houserule for quite some time in our game and find that it works rather well. I agree with you that Limits are so entwined in the game that it is hard to change them without having a disruptive domino effect to the mechanics. We have tried to go further by eliminating the Social, Mental, and Physical Limits and just using half the Skill Rating [rounded up] as a Limit for Skill Dice Pools. It has produced inconsistent positive results.

[Overbyte]

3. High Limits: When the Limit for a test is higher than or equals to the dice pool (counting in all bonuses and penalties) and there´s at least one die left, one bonus die may be added to the dice pool. Thus, even inflated dice pools still have a purpose.

I don't understand this one. Example?

[Kiirnodel]

3. High Limits: When the Limit for a test is higher than or equals to the dice pool (counting in all bonuses and penalties) and there´s at least one die left, one bonus die may be added to the dice pool. Thus, even inflated dice pools still have a purpose.

I don't understand this one. Example?

I'm guessing your confusion is over the "at least one die left" part? I think the intention was that you can't get the die bonus if penalties reduce your dice pool all the way to zero.

So for example if you Physical Limit is 5, any test that uses the Physical Limit would get a +1 die bonus after all other bonuses/penalties are applied as long as that pool is 1-5 dice. Equal to or less than the Limit, but still greater than 0.

Finstersang, if that is the case, I would suggest rephrasing it like so: When the Limit for a test is higher than or equals to the dice pool (counting in all bonuses and penalties), one bonus die may be added to the dice pool. This bonus does not apply if penalties to the test would otherwise reduce the dice pool to zero.

[Quatar]

I don't know, I don't find limits that terrible. It's another stat you have to watch out for, so you can't just pump everything in a single dice-pool without trying to balance it with the limit. If you leave your limit at 5, there's really little difference if your dicepool is 18 or 28. You're forced to make a compromise here, spend some resources on the limit as well and end up with a limit of 7 and "only" 23 dice, which will make you better.

However you're not wrong, when you say that most limits either are so high they barely come into play at all, or so low that they make any dice pool bonuses pointless as you're already hitting your limit more often than not.

Don't forget about teamwork tests however, they can give you bonus dice, but they also increase your limit.

• Other kind of Limits, especially Matrix Limits and some weapon limits (looking at you, bats...) are way to low, hard too boost and thus affect tests way too much. In the Matrix, this is particulary nasty, since these are not only resisted by unlimited tests, but also suffer the harshest consequences when failing. There´s a reason why Deckers (and don´t let me start on TMs here...) are underplayed, even in the new, "streamlined" Matrix...
• Speaking of which: The Interaction of Limits and Edge defeats the main purpose of Limits by letting you completely ignore them when your dice pool is peaking. In combination with the spellcasting rules, this also makes the force of spells pointless when using Edge.

     

I agree with you on the Matrix tests, but the "Are resisted by unlimited tests" is true for any defense test. None of them are limited (by default, some qualities can change that). But yes, missing a shot is usually not as bad as "fragged up a hacking attempt and alerted security"

For spells, some spells have effects tied to their force, radius, base damage, how easy it is to resist, so just using Edge isn't the "I win" button on those that you make it seem.

Now for your houserules:
1. That actually seems like a good idea. It will make balancing dicepools and limits still better than just pumping dicepools, but dicepools still matter after a certain point.

2. That's essentially a +1 hit, seems a bit weak for a limited resource like Edge. Pushing the limit to have all your amazing 14 hits count is one of the best uses of Edge.

3. I don't know about this. It usually won't come into play with anything you actually use often, as you got skillpoints in that and are way above the limit. It either matters when you're defaulting and your dicepool is real low, so you get an automatic +1 on that, or when your limit is real high, which usually means the associated stats are high too, so your dice pool already is higher as well.

4. Ok guess that's mainly in there so mages can still control that their force remains stun?

5. Could be fun, probably won't come up often either. So no opinion on this.

[Kiirnodel]

I guess I never responded with my own thoughts about the Houserule in general.

First up, I understand where you're coming from (and pretty much agree with just about everything Quatar just said). But I also think Limits are a great mechanic that just needs tweaking. Having also transitioned from 4th to 5th edition, I still remember the sort of dicepool shenanigans that would crop up. I don't remember exactly where I heard it, but back when 5th was first coming out I remember someone making an example of why Limits as a mechanic was a good idea:

Imagine, for a moment, you have two characters with very different skill sets both trying to shoot a Pistol. One is Untrained in Pistols, but has a decent Agility to compensate, and bought the best gun on the market with all the custom molding and gadgets to make him better at shooting. (Pistols 0, Agility 4). The other is equally Agile, but is well trained in firearms and doesn't believe in those fancy gadgets, he's just using the loaner gun at the shooting range. (Pistols 4, Agility 4)
Now, in 4th edition, those gadgets would have given a dicepool bonus to our untrained shooter, giving him a higher dicepool, and the crappy inaccurate gun that is beaten up would give a penalty resulting in the two having the same total dice pool of around 6-7. So by that logic the two of them end up being just as good as one another.
In 5th edition, the tides change. That crappy gun is really just inaccurate, so it gets a hit to the Limit of the Pistol (lowering it down to 3), and all those gadgets primarily just give an accuracy boost (and only a minor bonus to the dice). The final results here are: Untrained at 4 dice [Acc 7], and Trained at 8 dice [Acc 3].

The 5th edition mechanics end up with something that really does more closely match what you would expect in real life. The guy who has never handled a gun before, even with targeting assist is going to have trouble hitting the target accurately, while the well-trained shooter is going to be hitting the target regularly even with a crap gun. I mean, at a shooting range, stationary targets would probably range in threshold from 1 to 3, maybe 4 at the most. So that trained shooter takes a second to Take Aim and they have the Accuracy to hit any of that.

Overall, that analogy really works for me as why Limits are a good idea. It also gives a way for items and effects to give different kinds of bonuses for different causes. Where before it was all just lumped into "here's +4 dice."


Now, like I said before, I do think there are some tweaks that could be made. Personally, I always thought that melee weapons have accuracy ratings that are a bit too low (particularly when you factor in that there are very few ways to increase that accuracy). I thought a good fix for that would be for Melee either a) use the weapon's Accuracy or user's Physical Limit, whichever is higher; or b) make melee weapon accuracy a modifier to the user's Physical Limit (for example inaccurate weapons would be a -2 limit, while extremely accurate ones would be +2). Between those, my preference is the latter and the guideline I generally use is subtract 5 from the melee weapon accuracy before adding your Physical limit.

Thinking about that, you could make a similar alteration to Matrix limits. I never really thought about it until now, but why doesn't a user's Mental Limit apply to Matrix actions at all? You could use the same formula even, Mental Limit + Gear Limit - 5. And that would work for the idea of particularly gifted hackers not needing a deck for some actions. Although I'm still a bit wary of that, maybe make that one a bigger penalty to the total, or require a quality to be able to do an action without needing to have the Sleaze or Attack rating (like Jurryrigger).

[Reaver]

I can understand the frustration some have with limits, but I actually like them.

Kiirnodel has laid out one reason why.

The other reason, is that it pushes the player to think about what they were doing, where their karma and money should go, and (in general) forces a player to make a (slightly) more rounded character.

I played with a GM for several months that just HATED limits! And I mean HATED!! So he just up and removed them completely. (Hey, his table, his rules, and his mess... I get that!)

but what I rapidly saw happen just re-enforced my love of limits.

We basically ended up with many 'cyberarms of doom' coupled with gun scores in the 10/11 range before weapon mods....

Everyone just basically invested their karma directly into their combat skill and nothing else leading to (IMO) silly skill pools for shooting things, and very poor skills else where...

The Limits force you to re-examine your build every time you go to spend your resources.

Are you hitting the limit with your weapon every time? Then maybe its time to upgrade to a better weapon (higher ACC). Or maybe invest some karma into your attributes to raise your physical limit for that infeltration skill...

But I don't see exploding dice pools to be an issue with your houserules.... which is a nice change.

[Finstersang]

3. High Limits: When the Limit for a test is higher than or equals to the dice pool (counting in all bonuses and penalties) and there´s at least one die left, one bonus die may be added to the dice pool. Thus, even inflated dice pools still have a purpose.

I don't understand this one. Example?

I'm guessing your confusion is over the "at least one die left" part? I think the intention was that you can't get the die bonus if penalties reduce your dice pool all the way to zero.

So for example if you Physical Limit is 5, any test that uses the Physical Limit would get a +1 die bonus after all other bonuses/penalties are applied as long as that pool is 1-5 dice. Equal to or less than the Limit, but still greater than 0.

Finstersang, if that is the case, I would suggest rephrasing it like so: When the Limit for a test is higher than or equals to the dice pool (counting in all bonuses and penalties), one bonus die may be added to the dice pool. This bonus does not apply if penalties to the test would otherwise reduce the dice pool to zero.

That´s the way I meant it. Will change it to your phrasing 

I do see the purpose of the limit mechanic, but as I said, it´s prone to become misbalanced in the design process. Which is exactly what happened. It could have become a smoothly working mechanic, but it seems there has been little oversight over when to give out penalties or bonuses to limits or dice pools, what limits are applied, how they are calculated etc. Play a Technomancer (there, it´s happening again...) and you have to max out all your mental attributes to be a somewhat usefull character. Play a Face and you mostly use your Social Limit, which will already be pretty high because its predominantly formed by Charisma and can be further enhanced in so many (often quite cheap) ways that you hardly need to do any optimizing to reach the "Limits don´t matter anymore"-zone. 

Now, like I said before, I do think there are some tweaks that could be made. Personally, I always thought that melee weapons have accuracy ratings that are a bit too low (particularly when you factor in that there are very few ways to increase that accuracy). I thought a good fix for that would be for Melee either a) use the weapon's Accuracy or user's Physical Limit, whichever is higher; or b) make melee weapon accuracy a modifier to the user's Physical Limit (for example inaccurate weapons would be a -2 limit, while extremely accurate ones would be +2). Between those, my preference is the latter and the guideline I generally use is subtract 5 from the melee weapon accuracy before adding your Physical limit.

Thinking about that, you could make a similar alteration to Matrix limits. I never really thought about it until now, but why doesn't a user's Mental Limit apply to Matrix actions at all? You could use the same formula even, Mental Limit + Gear Limit - 5. And that would work for the idea of particularly gifted hackers not needing a deck for some actions. Although I'm still a bit wary of that, maybe make that one a bigger penalty to the total, or require a quality to be able to do an action without needing to have the Sleaze or Attack rating (like Jurryrigger).

That´s another valid approach, at least for these cases where it´s hard to explain why gear limits trump inherent limits.

Letting them use their full Mental Limit for Matrix test would surely be a good Houserule/Fix for Technos (At least until the missing supplement comes out *cough cough*) and maybe for some Deckers with a new Special Qualitiy, too. Since the Matrix Attributes already have other purposes besides serving as Limits for some tests (Matrix Damage Value, Detection Resistance, Initiative and of course most uses of Firewall), they would still be far from useless.
     

[Overbyte]

3. High Limits: When the Limit for a test is higher than or equals to the dice pool (counting in all bonuses and penalties) and there´s at least one die left, one bonus die may be added to the dice pool. Thus, even inflated dice pools still have a purpose.

I don't understand this one. Example?

I'm guessing your confusion is over the "at least one die left" part? I think the intention was that you can't get the die bonus if penalties reduce your dice pool all the way to zero.

So for example if you Physical Limit is 5, any test that uses the Physical Limit would get a +1 die bonus after all other bonuses/penalties are applied as long as that pool is 1-5 dice. Equal to or less than the Limit, but still greater than 0.

Finstersang, if that is the case, I would suggest rephrasing it like so: When the Limit for a test is higher than or equals to the dice pool (counting in all bonuses and penalties), one bonus die may be added to the dice pool. This bonus does not apply if penalties to the test would otherwise reduce the dice pool to zero.

That´s the way I meant it. Will change it to your phrasing 

I still don't understand what you are trying to do here. And it seems not to have to do with limits really, but dice pools.
The statement at the end is "Thus, even inflated dice pools still have a purpose." With an "inflated" dice pool how does this come into play? You won't have a pool less than the limit. So instead it helps people with very weak pools. If I have 4 dice and a limit of 5 I get an extra die??
Makes no sense to me.

[Finstersang]

Ah, that was supposed to be "inflated limit", not "inflated dice pool". However, I already removed that sentence.

So yeah, the point is to offer a small benefit for tests with high Limits (and also for tests with very low dicepools, but why not?). 

[Dwagonzhan]

Having jumped from SR 3rd Edition to 5th Edition, I'm in the minority who really likes limits.
If only because I've had difficult tasks utterly trivialized by insane, dumb luck on the part of my players (of course, I've done the same).

That said, the way limits are presently calculated are a bit meaningless outside of specialty tasks.

[adzling]

I actually love limits, they are an excellent counterbalance to inflated dice pools and correctly put the emphasis for the highly skilled on ensuring they have the best equipment/ are in the best physical shape.

the only thing i don't like is the super easy methods for pumping your social limit through the roof.

[Reaver]

What do you mean??

Argyle socks +1
Wearing shoes +1
Clean pants +2
Non-holey shirt +2
Combed hair +1



That's not easy to get you know!!

 

[dposluns]

I think a lot of this depends on how black trenchcoat vs. pink mohawk you want to be. Hard limits are a good way to be more black trenchcoat, create scenarios that require careful planning, and reap the rewards of seeing that planning bear fruit, etc. On the other hand I really like the soft limits idea as a way to lighten things up at a table where you don't want to penalize your players for not having been quite so meticulous in their character builds or their strategy. It's a cool houserule, but obviously not gonna be for every table.

The other houserules I could take or leave:

2. I think this rule is pretty unwarranted. Edge is cool and powerful but it's a limited resource and you need to choose to invest in it at the expense of other things; I say if that's where you want to spend your karma then you should be allowed to make that play.

3. I think there are already so many ways to bump up dice pools that adding another way (and only for a single extra die) adds needless complexity to an already complex ruleset.

4. What is the justification for this being different from the regular soft limit rule?

5. I play a mage so have no opinion on Matrix stuff. :-)

[Kiirnodel]

4. What is the justification for this being different from the regular soft limit rule?

The reason for letting Magicians use the Hard limit rather than the Soft limit house-rule in the case of spellcasting is to keep the magic-balance when you take into account the conversion of drain from Stun to Physical. It seems like an attempt to keep that force/drain/effect ratio correct. Not sure I understand the OR part though...