Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Marcus on <06-01-20/0514:19>
-
Clearly the industry is following the success of 5e DnD and its simplified rules set. 6e SR was intended as a simpler cleaner version of SR. Now it's easy to understand the appeal of the concept, but it not always easy is to achieve simplicity. Doing that requires trade offs, in 5e it's stuff like simplified movement math (Moving diagonally is the same as moving straight on the grid, range doesn't care about elevation, the advantage/disadvantage system.) What 5e did best, was the bounded hit curve, which fixed the AC vs To Hit, scaling issue characteristic of previous editions.
6e SR wanted to do the same thing. Now a big part of 6e and the biggest part that failed imo is the edge system. While the edge system's goal was clearly to be simple and add some cool action movie options to the game, it failed to because it became the core problem. It simply became internal complex, pulled in too many direction and then ultimately pulled down by it's own weight. To many random options, to much internal restrictions, to much disconnect between stat and system outcome all feeding back to edge. AR/DR, Flaws, edge uses, restriction on edge generation, gear modification and worst of all cancellation all lead to this completely not simple core change to SR.
SR like DnD has a scaling issue, where in DnD it was AC vs to Hit going on forever, SR die pools scaling is fairly out of hand as well. So on the list of easy fixes should be a die pools. Next outcomes, 1/3 success rate on dice and glitch and critical glitches without balancing critical success. That math all is just awkward and unsatisfying.
But all we really need is a simple cleaner variant of SR. I would suggest starting with the most simple element of the game. you roll a D6, on 4+ you get a success. For spice you can add some number of 1's of ones gives you a worse failure and some number of 6's gives you a better success. 50% is easy, it makes the math cleaner and makes dice more valuable. Next Bound Curves, this can be used to fix scaling problems. So we can make the SR version of a bounded to Hit curve, with a bound success curve, SR5 limits attempted this, but the community didn't embrace it. This would entail fundamentally rebuilding the math around attribute and skill outputs and what tech and magic can give you. I'd put forward 20, but i could see 10 possibly working as well. Then you just need to add edge back to the game in some form that is meaningful but not overly complex. I would put forward combat pool, as a function of some attributes and linked to karma total.
Finally how to deal with circumstance modifiers, advantage/disadvantage is another of the great strength of 5e. To accomplish this in SR, on the face of it, straight pool modifiers are tempting, but they aren't actually simple b/c the are just to many place to look. I also considered just shifting success values up and down one, but once again this complicates things to much as well. So to keep it simple and fun, I recommend having it simply being a non exclusive increase/decrease the number of 1 or 6 needed to get a better success or a worse failure (IE Critical Success vs Critical Failure). Something mathematically very easy like 50%. To me this is cleaner outcome. We hate critical failures and we love critical successes. So pushing people to find these solutions seems easier and better to me.
I know there plenty on here who just won't or can't agree with my premise and that's fine. But I hope this can serve as constructive basis for a useful conversation on what we would all like to see in a simpler, cleaner version of SR.
-
Unfortunately, I can't speak to Edge or how 6e plays, but I do want to comment on the success of 5e besides it's simplicity.
From this outside observer to the SR rpg (though a long-time SR gamer through videogames, cardgames, etc), I wish SR would adopt the basic idea of the PHB. Let the core rules be core rules, not a big setting guide as well with a changing story. I understand the shift from 'pink mohawk' to 'black trenchcoat' that has happened over the years. And first, I was anti-black trenchcoat, but now I understand a little better why it fits the current narrative. But, even then, focusing on one or the other is too confining. its also too much. Far too much for a casual gamer to jump into. There's 30+ years of backstory...too much of a barrier. That needs to be reset.
With 5e, WotC gives you a solid set of simple rules in their corebooks, then Adventure Paths based on the type of game you want to run. Want gothic horror? Crawl in the underdark? a lighter jungle romp? adventure across the planes? Their adventure path books allow players to select a campaign style that interests them. All of the narrative necessary is also contained in that book. You don't need to know anything of D&D's 40+ year history.
It would be cool if SR was similar. With each edition, just update the rules and tech to better approximate the future. No need to have some big epic storyline explaining everything, just let the core book assume the tech as the current default for that edition. Then, provide adventures and supplements of different flavours to hit the different tastes of gamers.
-
Disagree with you on one thing: To GM D&D, I basically need to buy 3 books minimum. With Shadowrun, the CRB suffices. And the setting is one of Shadowrun's core strengths, cutting that out of the book leaves it rather bland.
-
Fair point on the 3 book issue. I've long felt the MM and DMG were a bit superfluous.
And I'm not saying the setting should go away, just don't move the plot along with each edition. Have the core book just include the basic tenets of the setting.
-
I largely agree you want the three books, though the MM given online resources is probably unnecessary.
I do think modern SR is more setting independent then previous 5th even had the elf court book, which was effectively alternate setting for 5e. SR has the problem that what made it great largely precludes it’s setting independence.
There was late 2nd edition supplement called Sages and Specialists that largely reads like a contemporary SR supplement (circa 1996). While something like that theoretically shows you could run more settings independent SR, I think most of the Fanbase likes the forum simulation concept.
-
We actually talked about that during initial development.
Having 2 different but smaller books. A players guide (ie the core rules), a GMs guide (basic tenants of challenges and overall setting)
-
First of all, I mostly agree with your assessments. It remains to be seen if and how long 6th Edition will manage to hold up against it´s own flaws and the soured community. Either way, props for thinking ahead, to an all-new and actually simplified SR ;)
One paragraph stood out for me though, because it rubs against a few musings of my own lately.
SR like DnD has a scaling issue, where in DnD it was AC vs to Hit going on forever, SR die pools scaling is fairly out of hand as well. So on the list of easy fixes should be a die pools. Next outcomes, 1/3 success rate on dice and glitch and critical glitches without balancing critical success. That math all is just awkward and unsatisfying.
I keep on hearing that, and there´s also so many half-baked attempts to "fix" the supposed dice pool problem: The abysmal Limit mechani of 5th (Whenever I rant about Edge and AR/DR, I have to remind myself how much worse this mechanic was...), now there are voices in the community to restrict the +4 limit to Attribute bonuses to all bonus dice (as if there are that much left, will so many modifiers turned into various Edge mechanics)...
First: Are the "inflated" dice pools really that much of a problem to begin with? SR dice rolls are based on counting successes, which already has a much better scaling than 1D20, Percentiles etc., because the number of successes follow a standard distribution. IMO, the biggest problem with bloated dice pools is plain table space and tracking all the numerous little +1 / -1 modifiers when adding up.
Second: Where are these bloated dicepools coming from (at least in 5th and 4th Edition)? I think the main problem besides powergaming über alles is a general inflation of ingame gimmicks, gizmos, modifiers and perks that all somehow need to have some kind of "stat bonus" linked to them. So as a designer, you either have to go with more and more positive and negative dice pool modifiers or you "shunt" the bonuses away to some kind of auxilary stat - like the Limits in 5th Edition or the AR/DR values and Edge shenanigans in 6th. However, these auxilary mechanics need to be fun and meaningfull as well.
So, crazy idea: What about a return of target numbers? The standard target number for a success could be reduced to 3 as you suggested, and then certain effects can shift this up or down by 1 or (rarely) 2 Points. This could either happen directly (which should only be the case with high-impact modifiers - the kind that would grant Edge in 6th Edition) or via comparing other stats like Armor Piercing, Attack ratings, Ranges etc.
If done right, this could be a impactfull alternative to dice pool modifiers that can also easily bring more depth to the gameplay. The interesting part here is that the mechanical impact of a target number modificition scales with the actual dice pool.
Here´s one example on how this could be used to increase gameplay depth: The difference between Flechette or APDS Ammo. In 5th Edition, Flechette mostly increased the Damage Code and increased the Armor in the soak dice pool, while APDS decreased the Armor in the soak dice pool to model their "Armor Piercing" qualities. However: Statistically, increasing or decreasing the soak dice pool is pretty much the same as modifying the damage code. So in the end, APDS, Flechettes, Standard or explosive Ammo etc. mostly just affected the damage codes* with little consideration to the actual opponents you used these against. But what if, instead of Dice Pool modifiers, these Ammo types changed target numbers for certain tests - F.i., Flechettes increases the target number for the enemy defense test to reflect the "spread", while APDS increases the target number for the soak test? That would make Flechette the better option against quick and "dodgy" targets while APDS would have a bigger impact when used against "tanky" targets.
*Yes, I know that Flechettes, APDS and Armor also had other effects in 5th...
-
I saw 4e the way some of you see 6e.
Removing TN was one of the things that went too far for me to forgive... took another edition for me to come back to SR. Where TNs still weren't back anway, heh.
I wouldn't mind SR with TNs again. My formative experiences with SR had that third dimension of dice pool modification, so if anything "static TNs of 5" still feels somewhat odd :D
Although I'm not sure if going back to three dimensions on dice pool manipulation is actually simplifying things. I'd imagine the whole point of switching to "hits" rather than TN was simplification to begin with.
-
Yep that´s what I thought when I had a first deeper look into the mechanics of Editions 1-3, after "growing up" with 4th and 5th - maybe they simplified the wrong parts out of the system? ???
I wonder how well 6th Edition would play out if you just replaced most of the Edge Sources with Target Number modifiers (or dicepool modifiers in some cases) :P
Removing TN was one of the things that went too far for me to forgive... took another edition for me to come back to SR. Where TNs still weren't back anway, heh.
Well, there was limits. Golly gee, what a phun and impactfull mechanic that was ::)
-
I see the complaints about the "huge" dice pools all the time too... and for the most part, they are usually self inflicted.
For some reason, players have it in their heads that they need to throw 20+ dice "to be good" at something.. And the reason they always give is... "Because"
And GMs, they seem to have it in their heads they have to chase the dice pools of their players.... And the reason they usually give is... "Because"
In my opinion, the removal of target numbers are a step in the right direction for reducing dice pools.. at a TN of 5, you know you have a 1 in 3 chance of a success. which means a dice pool a 6 has a reasonable chance of gaining you that 1 hit you need to pass just about any test (but not opposed tests).
But with a floating target number... well... do I have a 1 in 2 chance? a 1 in 3 chance? a 1 in 28 chance??? The only way to "make sure" you succeed was to dice up....
The floating target numbers also had "dead spots" in the testing... a TN of 12 was the same 13.... So was 6 and 7... Which kind of lead to silly things...
They did try to do something about dice pools in 4e.. with their caps to skills and abilities... but then blew that out of the water with modifiers for everything down to your socks... And lets NOT talk about what they did to hacking in 4e.... (lets remove the character from hacking altogether!)
5e again tried to influence dice pools with Limits... and most people either hated it, or didn't understand the reason for it... Or ironically enough hated the limit system, AND complained about high dice pools...
So... I have come to the conclusion that really, Dice pools are not the problem.... Its people's expectations...
reading some people's complaints... they are filled with contradictions or misunderstandings, or just simply problems of their own creation....
FOR EXAMPLE: There was a poster that came to this forum about 4 years ago to rail against the system, and how broken the system was with people throwing 40 dice all the time... yadda yadda yadda....
And after about 50 posts the community finally dragged the ENTIRE story out of him. He (The GM) never used social rolls, thus voiding characters taking any social skills, Never made use of knowledge skills..... He basically cut everything out of the game EXCEPT for combat skills... so his players just... invested ENTIRELY into combat skills and edge! (Seriously, I saw a character..... 3 fucking skills!!! Automatics, heavy weapons, long arms.... END OF FUCKING LIST!)
The other big issue I see is the big push for "Rules simple systems"... That's what I hear... everywhere... and yet.... And yet it just rings so hollow.
many of the "rules lite" game systems have very limited markets. And mostly seem to be competing with each other for their limited client base... MEANING... They build a hatchback car, and it appeals to people who want a hatchback car... and everyone else could care less.
Personally, I want a complex and in depth system. Something with a lot of chunk to it, something that tries to cover as many bases as it can, while still leaving room for a GM. Now, I may not use all the rules presented (I have always made up, cut out, modified, or changed game rules to fit my table's needs. After all, It's my table, I know that they don't give a crap about Encumbrance Rules, or how many copper coins they can carry in a sack at one time! - But its nice that the rules are there in case I need them for reference!) <And you can find how many coins a sack holds in Pathfinder!>
As to power scaling in SR...
This is mostly a GM created problem.
You can't really control your players in SR in terms of power. Yes you can limit money and karma, you can limit the gear they can buy, or whatever else... but you can't really dictate how they spend their karma..... And while their is an opportunity cost to each investment in a skill... The player is still free to raise his long arms skill to 12, while every other skill is a 1.
The issue comes in when GMs start feeling the need to either increase the opposition or increase the dice pool of the opposition, for no other reason then "Because"...
And pretty soon, GM are describing scenes such as....
"As the doors to the elevator opens up to the lobby of the office, you see a typical security greeting area with a smiling receptionist in her Ares approved business suit. followed by a MAD scanner armed by 127 Ares Security guards, in their Ares approved uniforms and security gear."
OR
"As combat breaks out with the this gutterpunk gang, the First ganger pulls out his light pistol and shoots! he deflects the bullet of 13 surfaces, and lands the round directly into your ear cannal. Resist damage.. The Second ganger pulls out a shotgun, then doing a triple reverse backflip, blindfolded, shoots your drone that is 300 meters away! Teh Third ganger pulls out a knife, and while reciting the Iliad in greek, does a double forward flip into cartwheel stabbing attack!!!"
If this is a GMs idea of gutterpunks... RUNAWAY NOW!!!
They basically have to no internal consistency to their game world... Which I blame back on DnD and their power scaling worlds.....
(At level 1 in Dnd an Orc with a greataxe causes most players to shit themselves... At level 15, an Orc with a greataxe isn't worth putting on armor or even a weapon for.)
I dunno... I think first people have to realize what they want out of SR before you can even talk about "Fixing the Rules"
I will say this.. I miss the Dowd/Findley days...
-
So I agree that die pool issue is self inflicted it's also the product of power creep across the editions. I also agree GM could reign this in, but I also think the same can be said organized play, which does some effort to do so, but it still wildly variant.
I don't see going back to a TN based system as being bad or good, so long the as the statics are well understood. While I expect most of us understand that 16.7%^X is number that gets small really fast, I'm not sure your average player understands that.
I've been mathing out a 10 max pool concept but it required a totally re-write of the all game's systems, and complete re-scaling of the math and accept structures to an even greater extent then 6e does. Which once i got far enough in pretty much just was like it's an interesting concept but it's not really Shadowrun anymore. Regardless of that, I do think there is considerable value in the concept of increasing the value of each die. Wild die are basically a move in that direction, but suffer from edge issues of 6e.
-
I'm not saying a cap on dice is bad. Just saying that context does matter.
For example your 10 dice limit, that could work just fine in one ruleset, built around that max.... but you would have to build around that max from the ground up.
Having a 10 dice max for say melee combat, when the DP is STR+Skill is a really shitty thing to do to trolls if they can max out their DP without a skill....("I don't care if your STR is 16 and you have 6 ranks in melee combat.... 10 is all you get!)...
Or if you have so many modifiers as to push the skill to nothing. ("I buy this gun, add on a smartgun, laser site, led pimp lights, and gold plate for +12 dice! Now I don't need a skill or attribute at all!!"
One house rule I played under, the GM allowed only a flat +4 max to any dice pool. No matter the source... took a little getting used to, but worked well enough.
-
I wouldn't even say that the large dicepools are in of themselves a big problem. Pool mechanics have a lot of benefits, and the fact someone 'good' at something in SR rolls a lot of dice creates a lot of statistical stability in a game setting where instability and risk tends to come from sources external to the actual rolls. With an app or other electronic assistance its pretty easy to roll them.
Ultimately, I find the idea of thinking of a dicepool of 20 as 'powergaming' kinda... silly? Forget about the fact that optimization isn't, in of itself, bad or a negative behavior but merely an example of a player preference. It isn't like people are hardcore minmaxing, you get to 20 dice in a skill naturally through relatively unoptimized play, it is literally an inevitable result that you hit these levels of dice because of how easy it is. A 10 dice max is comical, because you literally blow past that before even 'ware, it is a mystifyingly low number that even most PR 3 grunt corpsec will hit...
Take guns, for example. You are Billy Newplayer, no idea how Sr works in detail, but you can read alright. You know you wanna be good at shooting revolvers, so you take pistols 6. You then read you can be extra good at specifically revolvers and specialize. Because you wanna shoot you max out the 'shooty stat' at 6. You didn't pick an elf cuz they are lame. You then take a smartgun, because apparently that is the item that makes shooting better, and a smartgun system in your eyes, getting you to 16. Finally, you grab some muscle replacement or toner to help your shoot stat more.
Two bits of 'ware and the 'radical' optimziation technique of putting your best stats and skills in things you want to be good at put you in striking range of 19. A modifier, aim action, or being an elf gets you to 20. For 20 to not be a 'normal' PC pool in SR, either SR needs to take stats and skills off the 1-6 range, or needs to not feature superhuman augmentation. Neither of these seem likely, and we need room to go over for splatbooks and character customization to exist. Even in 1e a 20 pool wasn't that weird, and it certainly wasn't weird after (and because of TNs, it was stronger than a 'modern' 20 pool). The idea a PC's pools should be limited to 10, or 12, or 14, or 16, all things I heard, and that is where 'sr is meant to be' is just... false and its so transparently false because this complete scrub blew way past those breakpoints by just accidently combining the things the book effectively told him to combine. A 10 dicepool limit makes most of the 1e pregens illegal. I believe every single 3e pre-gen also has a dicepool over 10, and most actually have one over 16. It just in no way reflects the reality of SR to assume that superhuman dicepools are unintended in the system. Heck, I think lonestar statlines are above 10, you literally can't have the system cap at 10 without totally re-contextualizing 10 because 10, in SR, historically is 'NPC scrub pretending to be able to do this or a PC acting in a side role out of their comfort zone' tier. Like the 3e decker is literally rolling an effective 14 dice to shoot in that system, and 9 in reality, I don't think their relatively pathetic investment into shooting is intended to represent 1 off the peak of what can be mechanically accomplished.
This means we should expect a player's pools in things they care about to range from around 16-30 if they are really good at optimizing. But that is ok, because these pools functionally aren't very different vs grunts, and mostly exist to 'guild the lilly.' The exception is soak, but soak tanks work well if the game A: Focuses on the limitation of samurai to not be able to 'remotely' help like every other archetype (Hacking, leadership, drones, spirit aid, ect), B: That your runs aren't essentially D&D dungeons where you go in and fight room by room to the death, and C: The genre we are trying to emulate with SR literally includes people who are so tough that a giant mech suit couldn't crush their skull directly stepping on it, cyberpunk is an extremely high powered genre that includes characters who would make some superheroes blush. Like Molly Millions is... just objectively stronger than Lady Deathstrike, another cyborg with crazy deadly razor claws and an armored body who exists in the same universe as iron man.
TNs are weird in that it is a large increase in statistical complexity for pretty low gain in granularity when looking at TNs from 2-6, and then it is a dramatic increase in statistical complexity from 7+. Any SR that wants to be remotely accessible to a modern RPG market basically can't use TNs. Like for perspective, a TN of 7 is not a linear drop from TN 6 like almost every other TN, a TN of 7 only drops your percentage of hits by about 3%, rather than the 13% each TN gives you, so a TN modifier either is changing your pool by about 10%, or a much smaller direction in a super mathy non-intuitive way. Not really worth the effort, you would literally have a better result by adding in situational modifiers that just increase or decrease the pool by a percentage, because otherwise you have a weird system where when things get REALLY REALLY hard you don't care about TN, but when things are at the median stage you confusingly care way more.
Furthermore, TN is complicated by the fact it just is plain confusing to have two different 'targets' in both the actual 'target number' and the number of hits you need, and you need to re-calculate TN every time. Its only virtue is that it creates a lot of statistical uncertainty and confusion which may be good for a horror game, but not for a game about awesome career criminals pulling heists. It is like THAC0: I get that its what you were used too and you were devastated by its changes but, in the end, yeah no lets not go back, I like being able to quickly evaluate dicepools as both a GM and player.
Limits, while a bad system, are a non-invasive bad system. They rarely matter, which is a problem for rules bloat, but the way they don't matter also means you don't need to think about them often. New Edge is problematic because the stakes of getting edge wrong are way higher, and players have an incentive to care about it rather than not, which means players push for AR and DR to be tracked despite the vast majority of times it doing nothing. This isn't to say limit is good, but its mental cost is lower because no one is going to cry over Billy forgetting he had 1 fewer net hit to DV. Limits also had interesting design space potential, but clearly weren't worth it.
Edge also is trying to solve an already solved thing in the game industry, complex modifiers. This is where we run into the rub: Situational modifiers are intuitive and easy to understand. Pretty much every RPG has been using them for some odd... what 40 years? Nothing in the world could be more intuitive than 'its dark, take -2 to hit' besides maybe how 5e D&D had advantage (Which doesn't really work in SR and plays into making 5e's dice more like SR's rather than the reverse by increasing consistency as your reward rather than dramatically changing what you can do). SR's issue with supremely hard to understand combat modifier rules has nothing to do with how complex they are (ok... a little to do with how complex they are, there is room to make things easier like changing it so bullets fired=the penalty on autofire to defense, rather than bullets fired -1 for example, and a few things like knockdown while tactically interesting could be reserved for special attacks) and how... astoundingly poor the SR layout is. They aren't complicated, they are obfuscated.
Take a look at 5e and count how many pages the modifier rules are spread over, what order they are in, and how many pages are between all the modifiers to get what I am talking about: Lets see what I need to go between in order calculate up a ranged attack roll, assuming I already know what action it takes and that I am using a gun and might or might not want to called shot.
- Accuracy rules on 168, before I even know how attack rolls work
- Armor and Encumbrance on 169, not located on any tables
- Wound penalties on 169, not located on any tables
- Electrical damage on 170-171, not located on any tables
- Combat resolution mechanics on 173, a full 15 pages into the combat chapter well after esoteric nonsense like armor stacking and elemental damage
- Enviromental mods starting on 173-175 with extremely detailed rundowns on them as a seperate subheader with lore and worldbuilding about sensors and the like, squished under a super large example of ranged attacks in the MIDDLE of the ranged attack section, before I finally get to the actual table for 175 that runs down what counts as what and how to combine it and what the actual penalties are. This all should have been on 1-2 pages tops with details later on
- Rules for how range affects ranged combat on 175... seperated by 10. Entire. Pages. from the actual table that shows range modifiers.
- Recoil rules separated by 4 pages from the actual rules that utilize recoil on page 175.
- A situational modifiers table, again squished under a sidebar example that takes up half the page, followed by details of the situational modifiers, again squished under a sidebar.
- The actual rules for autofire and recoil on page 179. Finally no massive overwritten example crushing me under its weight, on page 178-179. Lets be generous and count shotguns in here too and take it to 181 because they are thematically linked and it makes intuitive sense to combine these rulesets.
- A big fat melee combat header on a page break BEFORE the ranged table on 185.
- Defense modifiers on 189, mercifully actually relatively well laid out and concise with a table on one page, so I can at a glance get the mods and go over the next 1-3 pages to find details if needed, which means that it really isn't as 'big' as it seems!
- 2 pages of active defense rules on 190 with no quick glance table and again crushed by a giant example of defenses BEFORE defenses are actually explained, so back to having to read an entire section of stuff very much not relevant to find out its all not relevant.
- 3 entire pages on surprise rules when surprise rules could literally fit in 4 sentences from 192-194
- Knockdown rules on 194 that again make combat crazy interesting but everyone forgets
- Called shots on 195-196.
(https://media1.tenor.com/images/2623d4b9a1fc11b1199666748cf5e7b8/tenor.gif?itemid=4560909)
So we need to skim or read around 30 pages of material for relatively basic information. To resolve a ranged attack in SR, I need to read 20 more pages than the ENTIRE combat section of D&D's core book, including flippin underwater combat! Now SR's combat naturally has a few rules D&D doesn't, like autofire, and D&D has smaller font it isn't so complex that the rules for a basic gun attack are spread over 3 times as many pages as the entire D&D combat chapter, or that the entire combat rules (not including long term healing which is more just a structural difference) have to be about 5 times as long. In fact, considering D&D has complicated maneuvering rules while SR doesn't, it sorta is weird its so much bigger. Even 3.5's combat section is only around 30 pages long, and 3.5 REALLY got into the weeds of tactical combat.
It is a case of over-explaining and over-detailing things, bad layout, way too many longwinded explanations, and poor formatting in general. Ultimately SR's combat system can be explained as "Roll an attack pool vs defense pool, here is a list of modifiers that could apply that would fit on two tables over two pages in the important tables section in the back but mysteriously they spread them out THERE too, choose a defense option."
You don't need paragraphs and paragraphs on every specific option, one of the big sins of the combat chapter looking over it is subdividing information too much: Fire rate and recoil rules being seperate despite them existing only with each other, melee mods and ranged mods being entirely seperate sections of the book rather than just together but seperated by a single header, interrupt actions each getting their own major header rather than all being explained together, ect. You could easily condense down the combat chapter to maybe half its length, re-order things so information is more centralized, and make it clearer despite removing information. Most fan made player aides basically can contain all the information in that section on 3-4 pages, 6 if they want to add some clarifying detail. Obviously the full book needs more than that, but it is clear how absurdly decompressed combat's rules are. Why are situational and environmental modifiers separate? Just put em on one table and have the headers be different. Why is melee combat its own section when most of the rules are the same? Ect ect.
For real, I doubt SR's combat complexity would ever be a complaint if they just put the electricity, recoil, and pain mods on a table with the situational mods for both melee and ranged, and the environmental mods, all on one page, explained them all together with a paragraph at most, maybe 2 for really weird stuff, and re-organized things. Again, the mechanics for ranged penalties and the table for ranged penalties are separated by 10 pages of nonsense for... no reason. It just hurts to see that layout.
And SR6 didn't solve this, by the way. Information is still weirdly spread, over-explained, and crowded out by so many example sidebars. A good example should be shorter than the rules explanation, not 5 times longer! Even ignoring the world-building of Wombat punching
out Ken and Ryu, you want the explination to be a snappy line or three that makes it super clear how things work, rather than re-explaining every rule in the explanation, because the point is to let the reader piece together the information compared to what they read before.
For example, a good explanation for making a combat pool:
Wombat wants to shoot Ken in his ugly smug face. His agility is 5, and his automatics are 4, and he is hurt with a -1 wound modifier. He rolls 8 dice to shoot at that dumb karate expert.
And, again, this isn't saying SR's core combat rules couldn't do with some simplifying. Its just that it doesn't matter how much you chop away if at the end of the day the reason your rules are so confusing to new players is that they are edited terribly.
-
I never got the THAC0 hate. I liked THAC0.
As always an informative read, thanks Dez!
-
I never got the THAC0 hate. I liked THAC0.
I get why people like THAC0 personally. It just also is really understandable why it isn't something they kept on: it isn't intuitive that this is the only place in the system where you want a low number on your sheet, and it is more intiutive to roll a number and add something to it on your sheet, and being told if it is higher or lower than a number someone else is looking at, than to roll a number, add something from another sheet, and then compare it to a static number on your sheet. What makes this especially annoying is that despite being about hitting AC0, AC0 was extremely rare, and AC varied a lot target to target, but your actual THAC0 remained static, meaning that the number you were modifying your roll with needed to change constantly. With BAB instead of having to exchange info in the middle of the math problem, you just exchange it at the end once you already tallied everything up.
It sincerely isn't that much more complex or less intuitive, but even small complexity changes have big effects on retention due to how perception and motivation affects learning. Even SWN, which tried really hard to bring a THAC0 like system back with low armor being good, just gave up with 2e. Tiny asks turn into big asks!
Also I didn't get into it in the big post, but I do think that edge being more dynamic and a resource for all PCs to have 'powers' to an extent is a good idea 6e had, as is the idea of things awarding edge (It increases the diversity of bonuses things can grant without increasing dice to 4e levels of gear bonuses). I just think replacing the core modifier rules with edge was a big mistake because you basically need to constantly compare two shifting values every attack in a way that is unlikely to affect the game but which is important. Edge would work way better if it wasn't a function of armor but instead a reward for doing things you might not normally do, or for using certain types of equipment.
For example, if I were to port 6e edge into 5e without porting new armor, a good way to make flechettes work the way they are intended to vs low armor targets is to give a bonus edge for shooting someone with armor 8 or lower with them, allowing them to be 'good' vs low armor targets without affecting how damage works and making them just blow away anyone with low armor with a conditional DV bonus or whatever.
-
As one of the most Dyslexic human beings you're likely to meet, I sincerely loved replacing... ?3? big ass eye chart/tables on the DM screen with a grade school math problem. I also was down with BAB, which, to me, was essentially THAC0 in a different order. Which you, as usual, explain something basic I already understood intuitively, in a Cerebral/Articulated way. 'tis a rare gift to be able to explain, in detail, why people can grok one thing intuitively, and not another.
Your insights are always appreciated. Thanks again for sharing.
-
I'm not saying a cap on dice is bad. Just saying that context does matter.
For example your 10 dice limit, that could work just fine in one ruleset, built around that max.... but you would have to build around that max from the ground up.
Having a 10 dice max for say melee combat, when the DP is STR+Skill is a really shitty thing to do to trolls if they can max out their DP without a skill....("I don't care if your STR is 16 and you have 6 ranks in melee combat.... 10 is all you get!)...
Or if you have so many modifiers as to push the skill to nothing. ("I buy this gun, add on a smartgun, laser site, led pimp lights, and gold plate for +12 dice! Now I don't need a skill or attribute at all!!"
One house rule I played under, the GM allowed only a flat +4 max to any dice pool. No matter the source... took a little getting used to, but worked well enough.
Yeah for sure it needs to be effectively fixed slots in the die pool. put simply attribute will be 1-3 (1 below average, 2 average, 3 above average). Augment max will be 5. Race or exceptional attribute can give 1, and Tech or magic can give 1 but Tech/magic are mutually exclusive. Nothing takes you above 5 ever. Skills will be become skills groups, rating 1 to 3 (1 amateur, 2 trained, 3 Professional), specialization will be what are skills are now and give 1. The 10th possible die is the gear die. Gear has a single die slot, and gear slots will come from magic or tech, my vision of it basically re-casts entering an archetype as acquiring a linked piece of gear, a Smart Weapons for Street Sam, a Casting Focus for spellslingers, a Weapon Focus for adept, a Controller for Rigger, a Deck for deckers, a Bio transmission Enhancer for TMs. etc. Now of course a character could buy and/or install as many of these as they can use. But pricing/priority/essence cost should limit those options fairly sharply, and tech and magic will be mutually exclusive.
System wise there are going to be two types of test Simple and Complex. All combat tests are Simple, your pool vs a static targets. ( 4+ on the die is a success ie 50% so the average on 10 dice is 5 hits, defense is stat target generated from (reaction+dodge+gear die)/2 if the character has gear that effect dodge (So max defense is 5) so that's the bound curve. Now obviously the system doesn't always expect a full ten dice, odds are more tests wont, an option on that will relate to edge. Complex tests will be of the threshold variety. X number of success before exhausting Y number of rolls, in Z linked time units. I don't know that math look like yet, but it will be similarly bound as simple tests.
So improvement your character will dual tracked, karma for skills and attributes, and for gear Augment slots for tech, also Called Rune for foci. Each piece of gear can take 3 augments/Runes. You can't start with them, they have to be acquired in play, and they will do things to enhance the linked piece of gear. For example An augment for smart gun would be ADPS ammo that would add penetrating feature to the weapon, or an elemental rune to you weapon focus, which would give you weapon a elemental damage effect. Now of course this works for all gear, armor, drones.
We will Keep wireless bonuses, Which will distinguish tech gear from magic gear. You can't enchant a piece of gear with a wireless bonus. So no more weapon focus mono-whips. Gear with 1 augment is Alpha Ware, 2 is Beta-ware, and 3 is delta ware. Runes will carry similar naming system.
To solve an old issue no more attribute option on the priority tables. We are long past the day and age where that was anything other then a trap. All characters have the same base number of attribute points (Probably sliding based upon your game type, street vs runner vs Prime runner), what will modify attributes will by the races priority. Each race will give +1 to two attributes, (Agi/Cha for elf, Str/Reac for Orc, Str/Body for Troll, Int/Body for Dwarves. Doubtless more meta exists and will have their own attribute pairings.) Humans get +2 to edge.
Soak will exist, as the Sum of (Body+Armor)/2 and like defense will just eat the average, Weapons with Penetration tag will ignore 1/2 of that. Hardened armor soak will give Body+Armor and penetration will ignore 1/4 of that.
Ok. So as attribute run 1 to 3. Essence now == 3. So ware essence cost will be re-balanced around that. Magic and Essence linked for the purposes of ware. But not in value. Further drain now effect Essence. Drain effect deal temporary essence damage. You can't get below .1 temporary essence damage. So 30 spells day, and that last .1 drops you out cold. Hand in hand with this will be magic threat will drain temporary essence. This should make magic threats dangerous.
Magic now also falls into Simple or Complex. Spellcasting is simple, and Ritual Magic is Complex. Summoning is now ritual magic. Spirits will be governed by the 1-3 limit as well. So no more super deadly spirits, Spirits will have rune slots, and will be more basically more fixed. IE when your hermetic summons up his fire elemental, he will always get the same fire elemental. So in effect you will have possible 1 spirit of each type you can summon. There will have to be governors to limit action economy on this, no more spirit armies. But regardless spirits will be more fixed and more personality based, they need to be decent in a fight but not the nightmares we have today, some strong utility elements to be added.
Hacking will now also fall be Simple or Complex, Simple hacking will be called Wireless hacking, and Full sim will be Complex hacking. Wireless hacking will large allow you to brick tech, run certain types of data search/observation, and will be enabled or limited by LOS. Complex Hacking will be run as a complex test, and will basically be our virtual dungeon crawl, while accumulating success on the complex test.
Rigging, TM all will have simple and complex mechanic options. Simple directly relating to combat, and Complex relating to archetype systems.
Healing and death. So Healing effects will you guessed it fall into the two categories, Simple (aka Stun damage) and Complex (aka lethal damage). Simple Healing or first aid, will remove stun damage, pretty easily. (Like stun patches easy). Complex or medicine will cause damage roll back. Which will shift lethal damage boxes to the stun track. Complex will of course have longer interval. Magic will have the fastest healing, and will roll back damage. But with most of the usual SR healing limitations. Over damage and death. So no more over damage boxes. When a characters fills their last lethal damage box. They start dying, this trigger the Fight for Life Test. This will be Body+Will vs (1/2 your lethal Damage boxes) on your initiative. Get 3 success before 3 failures and the character stabilizes. Medical gear/Healing magic will allow of course instant stabilization. Being hit while your down triggers another Fight for Life Test with a difficult increased by the damage done. Just meaning that getting hit while done kills. 3 failures before 3 success and of course your dead.
So after all that we hit edge. I'm 100% on this yet, but my current feeling is edge attribute == combat pool. meaning that human will combat pool of 3, you can get a 4, with merits but nothing takes edge to 5. Each turn characters get Combat pool dice. Combat pool dice can be used to augment Simple Test Targets difficulties. (IE that static defense test can be raise in reaction to be hit by a combat pool success.) Combat pool is drawn from edge. If you have combat roll that is below 10 dice, you can spend combat pool to raise it up to 10. But nothing can raise it above 10 dice.
Glitches and Opportunities. So if you thought edge was messy, welcome to the jungle. So to add some spice to the whole thing, we will of course be keeping Glitches, but to help even it out, I'm adding Opportunities. Glitches are complication due to some number of 1 and opportunities their opposite being are an advantageous condition due to some number of 6s. I'm look at that math very carefully. Running numbers in my head at work said 3 6s or 3 1s is a something like 5% on 10 dice. I need to run down that math specifically but that's my place holder for now. Getting glitch of course still assumes you have a success, or can you get critical glitches. i'm interest in putting in Critical Opportunities, but I'm not sure what that would like, so I'm open to discussion. It's likely there is enough going on in that you could get, a Glitch, and opportunity on the same roll and that maybe just to much and wandering to far from the simplicity that is the goal of this. I know that math gets weird below 10 dice but I'm gonna leave that alone for now.
Penalties and Advantages Ok so something just are impossible. You cannot hide in the all concealing shadows when there are no Shadows. That said, while the GM can just rule at various some skill uses are impossible under common sense circumstances. However much more likely things are just not in your favor. So when this circumstance arises, and would be at a "Penalty" your roll becomes more likely to Glitch or Critical Glitch. Should you have an advantages circumstance you would of course have an increase chance of an opportunity as well. So again I just did the math quickly in my heading the slide value goes to something like 30%. The idea is to have this not disrupt the bound curve, while still increasing the pressure on the PC. Exceptions: Wound Penalties these are a core concept of SR. I can't get myself to drop them. So yeah -1 increasing linked to X number of boxes filled.
Finally initiative and movement. So 50% turning back the clock and 50% modern. So half actions you start with three. Initiative increase give additional half actions. So Wired Reflexes gives a half action per level of it rating (Rating also of course go 1-3.) It's rating increases with Augment slots along with whatever the effect of augments are. So something like 6 half actions as a cap. Things like Bursts fire, Full Auto, weapon sweeping, two weapon fighting will allow you to attack more then one target. This will largely be governed by weapon modes, augments, and martial arts. Attacks will require two half actions to launch, Melee are intended to have better damage value then range b/c strength will be added to the melee weapon damage rating. (Excepting the mono-whip of course.) Moving is a half action, moving will be a set value depending on metatype, vehicle etc, and spending more half actions on movement will give you another agile in meters or something along those lines, a very small amount basicly.
So that's my initial thought concept. Sorry for the wall of text. It's basically just dream land but I like it.
-
@Marcus,
OK, one issue I am seeing with your revised rules (as limited as they are, I know its not a fleshed out idea yet), is advancement.
As you know, I still play my original character from 1e with the same group of people. (yes, 30 years with the same character, and mostly same group of players!). under your rules layout, I am not really seeing much room for advancement and thus growth. It seems with such a limited spread of options, characters would quickly advance out of the game and be left with a static character. Or be forced to spread out into things that are just not thematically interesting for that character.
I had the same issue with 4e back in the day. When I transferred my character from 3e to 4e, The skill cap of 6, even after the reduction edition change, meant I had wasted karma on Skills (after the change, many of my skills were a 7/8, and thus autodropped to 6.) And i was forced into 2 basic roads of advancement. Take skills that thematically contrasted with the character as played for 18 years, Or initiate... yet again... (you know the reason my character has initiated 23 times.... I know why... NOTHING ELSE TO SPEND KARMA ON!!!).
Simply put.. 4e had a level cap on the game. A very low limit cap. So low in fact, Characters I made for other tables hit that level cap pretty quickly too... (again, in a thematic sense... as you could always take more skills. But I am unsure how good Basketweaving is in Shadowrun.. I have never been asked to produce a basket...) And quickly, you went from a team of specialists to a team of very well rounded generalists. After all, if EVERYONE can hack, why have a dedicated hacker? If EVERYONE can shoot effectively why have a dedicated attacker?
SR5e increased the "level cap" with the opening of skills back to 12, at an very progressing cost. So at least now players like me (And I do realize i am an exception) can continue to advance a favored character past the first year or so of play.
Something to consider, and see if you can work it in...
-
A small advancement-sidenote: In SR5, going from 6 to 12 meant 114 Karma, 121 if you included adding a Specialization. In SR6, going from 5 (only 1 skill at max rank in SR6, so 5 is highest for most) to 9, with Expertise + Specialization, would be 165 karma. So the condensing of skill-groups vs the decreased cap still means you can spend a lot of Karma there.
On the other hand, Initiations are cheaper so it's 506 Karma to Initiate 23 times. ;D
-
Your point is very True Reaver, tightening down does mean narrowing karma advancement, in a real way even at an exponential xp cost 3 isn’t going to be a big price tag. So my choice instead was to advance via equipment primarily. So each run will give access augments/runes, and players will advance characters via those upgrades. Karma rewards will allow them to broaden their characters width more then depth. They will also get more combat pool, and that will largely separate new characters from experienced characters. This won’t help with games that are thousands of karma in the format just won’t support that well. My expectations is magic will involve more karma cost but nothing like the possible costs as outlined in ether 5 or 6 as they exist now.
-
I don't think I made my point about advancing through equipment very clearly. So we all know, the most popular books are always, filled with gun porn, new magic stuff, and sweet ware. But for all our love of equipment, PC's fairly rarely upgrade their major gear pieces, this is a problem I want to address. Gear will upgrade and it's rating with it. Now sure whatever that does won't effect the die pool max. But adding new options and powers will be fun and feel rewarding to players. Also it will make the effectiveness curve a much smooth slope. No more sudden major jumps. Character will get stronger with their gear and it will happen at a fairly steady predictable rate.
In hand with this is magic, I'm all for initiation and metamagic, I'm even fine the magic attribute eventually being raised to superhuman 5, something that should actually be even reachable in this version. Quickening isn't going to be a game imbalance monster when all it does is add 1 die. Sure they can add 1 die to nearly everything eventually, and while its good, it's not going throw the curve into a crazy spiral. The other things it will be able to add will be in line with what augments give.
When you think about how much gear you average character packs around, it's easy to see how having folks improve through gear is logical focus for advancement. Long running campaigns will get character that can cover multiple rolls effectively, and will have really cool gear and lots of 10 die pools.
You could do thing like slide around combat pool advancement to make it slower, for really long running games, but yeah no matter couple thousand karma is just going to waste in this game concept.
Magic and Tech will be in line with one another. New Books will include around new augments/runes, as standard thing, and have them relate to whatever they are written about. So we can have more cool cultural and setting focused releases that will still give characters cool advancement options.
Power games will start with a 10 in their primary and push their values as high as possible, non-power games will start with slightly lower pools, but will still be effective as curve is bound. Boths characters will improve, non-power game can put point into hit max, while power game broaden their skill set. They will both augments are same rate, and will presumably upgrade what they like to use. In many ways this is about diversifying advancement, away from just the cash/karma. What Faces and runners can get excited about is negotiating on getting access to the better upgrades, and not just another couple hundred new yen.
-
A 10 dice max would make the system extremely swingy, even if you lowered defense pools to cap out at say... 5.
If you didn't adjust how many dice your average op-for had for defense and resistance, the game would become unplayable. Its important to contextualize the pools: 10 dice is 'good' for an unauged human, but in practice 10 dice fails to hit a corpsec target more often than it hits. That means in this system the 'peak' person shooting fails far more often than they succeed and it causes the game's combat to become a terrible grind where everything misses all the time.
Even with a 5 defense dice average your looking at a 34% fail chance for the absolute best out of gen. Imagine being in combat as a street sam, just missing, and because both sides have such low pools your just dead. That isn't what the street sam sells at all, and it would be a frustrating and frankly bad game.
SR... was just not designed for these low dicepools, it was really clearly designed to operate at you being in the 16-18 range. This is because the absolute difference between pools is both smaller at low numbers, and your way less consistent at low numbers. So even if you normalize these numbers by cutting everything in half you get weird unfun results, your 16 dice street sam shooting at a 8 dice corspec (they aren't full defending) goes from an 82% hit rate to a 69% hit rate. Meanwhile the corpsec firing back at a PC with 12 defense dice (again not full defending) sits at a 20% hit rate at 4 dice.... but if you flatten it like that then their chance to hit a PC who had only 10 or 8 defense dice jumps really hard and we get back to 4e where if you weren't a mega-optimized fighter you just got creamed in a fight.
SR dicepools are basically coinflips till you get to 6 dice, the difference between 4 and 5 isn't very large in outcome in an opposed test vs 4, 3, or 2. This means that by crunching down the numbers to that small a range you actually can't differentiate different types of characters that well. You want PCs who are good at something to at *least* get a 4 dice lead on the opposed rolls they are going to make to get a remotely comfortable success rate, which is, again, why 'powergamers' are taking the 'ware the game tells them to take. This becomes really obvious if you ever simulate a fight of corpsec between themselves: They constantly miss and not much happens and the fight takes foooooooreeeeeeeeever.
A small advancement-sidenote: In SR5, going from 6 to 12 meant 114 Karma, 121 if you included adding a Specialization. In SR6, going from 5 (only 1 skill at max rank in SR6, so 5 is highest for most) to 9, with Expertise + Specialization, would be 165 karma. So the condensing of skill-groups vs the decreased cap still means you can spend a lot of Karma there.
On the other hand, Initiations are cheaper so it's 506 Karma to Initiate 23 times. ;D
This, and the greater point about 'ware advancement, is way more interesting a problem, because it doesn't just look at the behavior and say 'this is bad, lets stop the behavior' but asks why the behavior is happening. 10 dice cap feels super arbitrary once you run the numbers, of what that would end up looking like, while player behavior is not, as an aggregate, arbitrary, and results from them trying to make logical decisions that you can infer things from. "Why do so many players push to really high dicepools?" shouldn't be answered by a surface level assumption of powergaming, because even if that was true, it means power-gamers noticed something about the system that indicates certain numbers (known to optimizers as breakpoints) mean a disproportionate amount. After all, most optimizers would agree someone with say... 50 soak is probably less optimal than a PC with 40, and that a PC with 16 automatics is significantly stronger than one with 20 pistols, it isn't just that the numbers are high and they want big numbers, something is happening in the system to cause decisions to be seen as important.
Put another way, people who enjoy playing powerful PCs for their own sake exist, and a design can't ever remove every pick that can be 'solved' without becoming so sanded over its boring, but that doesn't mean one should throw up their hands about it and nuke the system from orbit and tell GMs to stop said players (which is low key what 6e did). Firstly because that behavior isn't always (or even generally) unhealthy if the system doesn't let it go too crazy, and for another even though that behavior is inevitable as a designer you want to follow why they are making the choices they are to understand them and cause your system to accomplish the things you want it to do, rather than tell the Gm to basically finish the design for you (Coined by RPG fans as the Oberoni fallacy) or doing something dramatic that hurts the system just to stop this behavior without understanding it (which I feel an arbitrary pool cap would cause).
It may be the root issue for PCs getting the upper end dicepools the system allows sans skill advancement: Karma is not equally good for role archetypes, which seems interesting (some advance by nuyen instead) but its not, for many reasons. For one, initiation is just stronger, and for another, the way karma advancement works means you can incrementally pay to get to an end spot, where with nuyen not buying all at once is hugely disadvantaging.
This might be the actual reason it feels like people cheese their pools with 'ware so high at gen to the expense of everything else. Its less that you shouldn't aug the things your good at, it is more that you almost never will get to upgrade 'big' pieces of 'ware over the game and the best time to make titanic purchases is at gen.
So it seems like A: Initiation should be nerfed (Though that creates a huge problem with metamagics, which are interesting ways to customize your mage but which are so limited in slow advance games you can't do anything 'fun' with them. It seems clear to me that the power advancement of IG and metamagics should be separated out, or even that all metamagics should become mastery qualities and IG should scale really aggressively and be purely for IG grade benefits), and B: The way 'archetype' gear is priced may need to be looked over. A bandaid fix is to, of course, let 'ware upgrades come with a discount equal to the full price of the previous level (So getting wired 2 if you have wired 1 for example doesn't punish you at all, you didn't 'waste' that cash, reducing the need to go 'deep' on 'ware at gen). The greater issue though is that while 'ware advancements are big and powerful, to the point that at gen the best thing an adept can do to increase their power level is to aug out (Which is fine and somewhat intended, but not exactly part of the adept fantasy, so it should still exist but not feel mandatory), they come at such a huge up front cost that it is unrealistic to try to upgrade 'ware.
It seems to me that 'ware's price should come way down across the board and the primary cost should be viewed in essence, so that advancement comes not from fiiiiiinally being able to drop 500k on 'ware, but instead you incrementally upgrading 'ware grades and earning a few fractional essence at a time to squeeze more in: You can get a decent package at gen without having to go resources A because now wired 2 costs say... 26k, and not 200+, because the real cost you are paying is essence.
This, however, has a problem because it pushes mundanes into a space where they generally have to go to .01 to be competitive, which a lot of players don't like. So maybe nuyen based PC advancement is just a bad idea on the face of it? Maybe a page should be taken from Anarchy's book and just equalize the price of everything that is an augmentation, save nuyen for gadgets and bribes and tools (Which has the side benefit of not forcing you to drop a million nuyen in the player's lap to get players to advance, which can be thematically weird), and then equalize adept powers a bit better to 'ware so that you aren't being charged like a full 2.6 effective essence to get the equivalent of muscle toner.
Still, I think it is telling that adepts tend to be way more comfortable not being 'feature complete' than their mundane cousins due to how getting 1 PP is way more trivial in terms of time to advance than 1 ess of good 'ware, even though 1 PP is way weaker (again, a factor contributing to burnout adepts being extremely optimal for adept players before things like the elemental purity mastery quality).
-
It would be interesting to me if Karma could advance ware. You only had to buy the 1st level, you could buy additional levels but you only had to buy the first level. Basically have a idea that with experience you get more bang for your buck out of the same piece of gear. Also I think the costs need to return to SR4 levels, maybe even cheaper.
-
Dezmont, a 10 die pool with success rate of 4,5 and 6 isn't going to be very swingy. It's going to average 5, sure yes you will see 4 and 6 lot but it's going to be way smoother then a d20 or 3d6 which are largely the industry standards. When defense value is maxed at 5, and for most NPCs it is going to be lower then that, success rate will be well above average. So I'm not sure if you missed what i said above but that's the math.
Next why folks have giant die pool isn't a mysterious question, it's very obvious. Opposed rolls exist. Yes that is self inflicted problem, but it's the system dynamic. We have to change that dynamic, and it's not simple to do and be "true" to SR.
So removing the primary cause (Opposed rolls) that drives die expansion and then re-doing the basic of the system so that players feel they are making character fit within idiom is the goal, and then helping those character be successful should i hope work out. Removing the Attribute pitfall from the generation table should help a lot as well.
-
Dezmont, a 10 die pool with success rate of 4,5 and 6 isn't going to be very swingy. It's going to average 5, sure yes you will see 4 and 6 lot but it's going to be way smoother then a d20 or 3d6 which are largely the industry standards. When defense value is maxed at 5, and for most NPCs it is going to be lower then that, success rate will be well above average. So I'm not sure if you missed what i said above but that's the math.
I did miss it. Is the defense value static or rolled? Both are still really not ideal, I highly recommend you actually look into coinflip probability because that system results in attacks essentially auto-hitting if your attack value is 3 higher than the defense value, and auto-missing in every other case, and if you really want to stick with it tuning things to not be a 1-5 vs 5-10 system.
If an NPC rolls 6 attack dice, they beat out anyone but the most artful dodger 50% of the time, and defense 3 people are almost always hit. But if you go lower to say 4as the starting value for your average NPC attacker, defense 3 people are missed 70% of the time. 1 point shifts create these massive swings if the defense number is static where you basically need an overwhelming advantage to have a shot. But if it isn't static, your defense pool is functionally worthless vs anyone with more coins than you.
It is neat to think of an edition of SR you could play with pocket change though. But, at the end of the day, there is a reason why almost every pool roll system (Genesys, WoD, SR) go for roughly a 1/3rd hit rate on dice: It makes it so that the difference between two numbers 1 off can be significant without overpowering, and flattens the curve of probability so even though roll and keep systems are far more consistent than percentile systems like d20 or 1d100, and even 3d6 systems like gurps, you still get a wider variance of outcomes than 50/50, which tends to spike super hard at the average result.
One thing to help avoid this very big swing factor would, ironically, be limits. Other potential options include bringing back TN modifications in a limited way, or auto-hits. How the edge system would be changed obviously would be big too. The big issue here though is this requires so many changes to support your basically designing a system from scratch.
Next why folks have giant die pool isn't a mysterious question, it's very obvious. Opposed rolls exist.
This is not actually the primary cause. Again, you should actually go down the rabbit hole rather than making a surface level assumption.
People optimize in roles where opposed rolls aren't common (For example, many magical skills) and even in the case of opposed rolls, they aren't actually that statistically different than regular threshold based rolls: Someone with 20 dice, for example, is merely an average threshold of 6.
In SR, the optimal move is to get enough dice to hit a consistent threshold, be it an actual threshold, or a threshold derived from opposed rolls. You don't assume your GM is going to endlessly pump grunts, you optimize to do certain things to a grunt.
Case in point? Automatics 16 is considered an important breakpoint because it lets you one hit kill a full defensing standard statline corpsec with a burst around 66% of the time without edge, and almost every time with post-edge, meaning you can force a critical kill regardless of what your opponent is trying to do and will one hit down them more often than not. Going to 18 dice doesn't increase your odds very much, it gets your kill rate to around 73%, which is an improvement of 7% in the most difficult shot you will generally expect to take, saving you an edge in maybe 2 out of 25 rolls vs your average target. 18 dice vs that corpsec killshots 85% of the time vs a 16 dice killshotting 81% of the time if they aren't full defensing, meaning it saves you 1 edge in maybe every 25 rolls if the killshot is critical and the corpsec doesn't want to give up a pass or can't. Even assuming they full defense 1/2 of all attack rolls you need to attack around 20 times to get a rebate of 1 edge.
Meanwhile, automatics 14 is a significant drop on automatics 16: Your kill rate is only around 55%, meaning on almost half your rolls vs that target you fail, and on 1/10 attacks in that scenario you lost an edge (and the edge is less likely to be a killshot, but not that much). On a non-full defense your killshot rate is still 70% as opposed to 81%, meaning, again, its around 1/10 attacks, meaning for 1 in every 10 attacks you will need to edge where you wouldn't before. So going from 16 to 18 means your gaining 1 edge every 25 attacks, while going from 16 to 14 means your losing 1 edge every 10. This means the jump from 14 to 16 is way stronger than the jump from 16 to 18, which is why 16 is such a big breakpoint, it is where you start getting really slammed by diminishing returns. This circumstance didn't come about because of the opposed roll, but because its clear that going below 16 starts to hurt you consistently if you make a lot of attacks on a run, while going above doesn't help you as much. If you assume a prime runner will roll a different defense set and wear certain armor, the value changes. As does your weapon (Pistols 20 isn't even sufficient to get the one hit down consistently on a non-full defensing corpsec, for example!). If you can get to 18 without paying a major cost, by all means do so, but going from 16 to 18 is where you start paying costs (Your cheap aug options of smartlink and a specialty aren't sufficient anymore) and it becomes something your building your PC around.
Coinflip balance doesn't at all change how you evaluate building pools (It is always a cost benefit analysis), it just changes the targets. In your example case, it basically means 'don't get shot at without being able to soak the entire attack or you die.' And depending on what your opponent's attack pools are it is either not worth investing in defending or ONLY worth defending based on your average opponent. This is kinda what happened with 6e: Soak got removed, and opponent's attack rolls got reduced to compensate, so suddenly full defense got radically overpowered because it was very easy to achieve a dodge rate of around 70% vs the PR 10-12 grunts.
Put another way: I can't think of an RPG where players don't gravitate towards good dicerolls and pools, saying it is a fundamental problem with the concept of opposed rolls is completely nonsense. Roll and keep mechanics have been around for some odd 30 years, and they work completely fine. Blaming a problem you percieve with a specific game line on something that is common in many games is... very strange to say the least. It isn't like D&D is looking at people pushing up their attack rolls to try to hit as often as they can and saying 'Oh this is a problem with you having to roll attacks vs different ACs depending on the enemy, lets remove AC' when the game got out of balance. They looked at why people were stacking BAB to the point they auto hit (Turns out that power attack being most of the damage you dealt combined with BAB being the cheapest combat stat to raise caused this) and made changes to the system to fix that (Mainly, 4e changed it so missed attacks weren't as punishing and made raising BAB a side benefit for strong magical weapons, while 5e just removed power attack all together).
This is common for a lot of optimization in SR: your trying to hit at least a specific number efficiently and then are free to either pump it for essentially vanity or to go out wider. This is why someone with 2 pools at 16 is considered significantly stronger than someone with one pool at 32, despite the 32 pool being stronger: Having two different skills that very consistently pass is way better than having one skill you can guarentee a pass on, because the 16 in most situations is already a guarantee. I highly recommend actually talking to some optimizers to understand their thought process, because it VERY much isn't "I want the highest pool I can get because my GM may throw a 20 dice opfor at me." Optimizers prefer shortcuts to climbing tall peaks, if that makes sense, there is a reason in SR's history you more have people analyzing the efficiency of different resources, priority table choices, and BP ratios, to get to a goal than playing oldschool pornomancers to max out their social dice in 4e. Both were famous forum posts, but one was frequently referenced as a useful tool and the other was more a goofy thought experiment along the lines of punpun.
Like your way more likely to see a face-sam able to hit an IP3 80% of the time with a 80% rate of success on weapon hiding vs corpsec with 14 dice in all social rolls and a one hit kill on average with APDS SMGs be gushed about than TOWER, the 60 soak troll who is at the system maximum for soak out of gen, just like how the real nerds cared way more about wand of cure light wound's GP/HP conversion ratio (For real its like .33 GP per Hp healed, its makin me blush just thinking about it. Wowza!) than Hulking Hurler cheese in 3.5.
-
Defense will be static, attacks will resolve in one roll (excepting the possible combat pool boost to DV, but it will be a small number of dice, and isn't like to happen all that often). Speeding up the whole combat process.
PC defense will probably be higher and the Combat pool defense option is there specifically to help deal with this. But I do expect PCs will be hit as well, however there will be layered defense with soak back, and the revised death system will eliminate the PC one shot to Dead issue of the system's past.
I helped in the char gen section on this site for a long time, assisting in optimizing ever sort of character. Yes people do go for specific targets results. But don't think that is some how a deep more meaningful reality then surface cause. Opposed Rolls, are what drives PCs to keep pushing higher and higher. Yes options vary widely, and yes some options are better bypassing defenses then others (See Mana spells, Poison etc.) But it's some coincidence everyone jumped to stick-n-shocks.
One of the reasons for this thread is at this is develop a Bound Hit curve SR variant. We all want fun good results, and we all like rolling a handful of dice. But any time your at con table and folks start rolling 20+ pools, the action slows down. It just takes time to count out and roll and resolve 20+die rolls, and when you have to have 3 of them to resolve one combat action, it just would be better if could be handled more simply.
You can read my post about it above. I'd be interest to hear what you have to say on my Glitch/Opportunity concept.
Hulking hurler was as silly as the bag of rats trick, and just as easy to beat as the 60 Soak troll. One my more ridiculous DnD stories involved defeating a titan of time who had epic Vow poverty with an AC 140+ ranged. I was playing a very emo Hafling Paladin, Bone knight, Champion of Hexiter, who added epic Cha to everything he rolled twice. (Our GM ruled that 20 didn't auto hit Unless you could actually theoretic reach the AC. Hit math is kinda my jam.) After the duel, we won over that titan of time by having him make friends with sentient magic carpet artifact our mage crafted as companion for him, and my character gave him a pair of really nice woolen socks, and an amazing feast prepared by our nameless monk.
-
You want a system where your hit probability is well above 50% for most combats. On the list of lessons 4th ed DnD taught us, and what 5th edition used to great effect is systems or enemies that have 50% or low hit chance feel painful. (See Soldier type back 4e.) What everyone one loves to fight is brutes. It's no surprised that's what become default monster type in 5e is. So what do we do? We change how we make opfor. Give'em more health boxes and decent soak and keep defenses low, and use the curve to ensure the floor to ceiling is low. Essentially we need to be sure very bad choices don't exist in creation. Getting rid of Attributes is good step in the direction, have 10 cap, will encourage some player to hit that cap, and it will encourage other players to avoid hitting it. The Anti-power gaming sentiment is tragically still strong in some parts of the community.
Then we focus on making character creation swift and painless. So a new player can sit down make a fairly limited number of choices and be able to play an SR character in 10-20 mins. Which means, pre-selected simplified priority choice lines. Pre-populated stat arrays, pre-made gear packages, and focused choices. For each Archetype. I know previous attempts were made at this concept this but this needs to actually result in solid playable characters, not just cleaver packages. We need to move away from example characters as have been done in the past. Their far to error prone, and all collected data often overwhelm new players. Character sheets need to list exactly what the player will roll right after the skill rating, weapon, vehicle, program etc. We also need keep the whole process cleaner, Fake ID sets should all be packaged, with clear statements of risk. No more built in screw the player options in core equipment guide. RFID Bullets and all the nonsense just needs to go.
Gear needs to be simple, and what they do mechanically clearly stated next to them, and where roll are involved exact pools listed. Story stuff is important, but should be written to support the mechanics changes. New Implants are complex systems designed to grow and upgrade with easy to install packages as the users becomes more experienced with them. Ware upgrade are done via nanites injected or something easy to explain that does not require extensive surgery and/or bed rest. Magic needs to be just as simply as adding a rune to an exist item, initiation should straight forward and accomplished with a quick to the magic day spa at the worst. Lodges need to be clarified more specifically. What is a lodge? Is it mobile? Can you set it up and break it down?
-
I am wondering if you might be barking down the wrong tree there.
What concerns me with this last bit is, its not feeling like a RPG from what you have said. And you seem to be following in the same general footsteps that CRPGs have... for what sounds like the same reasons... and possibly to the same effect (which was not good!)..
This is going to be hard to explain.. but you seem to be taking a fundamental choice out of the players hands... all in the name of helping the players. And that choice is Attribute selection. Character creation in ANY roleplaying game can get extremely complex! Or it can take 10 minutes with a beer. Shadowrun can be both right now.
An experienced player can throw a Street Sam together in about 10 minutes of effort (and I have. Several times!). Now, it's not a "fully optimized" character, nor as good a character as if i spent 2 hours making it.... and for some people, that IS the game! There are people who never, ever play an actual game, have no interest in playing the game, but they love to build characters. They spend hours writing the back story before they allocate a single build point! Its strange, its bizarre, but they do exist.
The same things has happened in CRPGs over the last 20 years. (and because I watched a 3 hour YT video on this very subject) Look at the Fallout franchise. From fallout to Fallout4... You see a progressive simplification of the game, and the game mechanics. (For those of you who did not play the original Fallout.. think GURPS in compter form and you are not far wrong. Fallout originally was going to use GURPS... before creating the SPECIAL system)
In the original Fallout, you had your 7 attributes, 38 skills, 4 derived attributes, and a perk every 3 levels And while the game had a fixed narrative, you were free to build your character any way you choose... including making a totally nonviable build that died to the rats at the front door to the vault...
Fallout 2, you had the 7 attributes, 30 skills, 3 derived attributes, and a perk every 3 levels. Basically they removed 8 skills.... and while some say that "tightened" the game, it also meant removing the player options tied to those 8 skills... In short, player option was removed.
Fallout 3, you had the 7 attributes, 20 skills, 3 derived attributes, and a perk every 3 levels. Admittedly some of the changes came from the total change of the game. (from isometric to FPS) BUT some of those changes really did affect player agency. The simple act of combat was the biggest change! In fallout 2 combat was determined by your character skills.. if your character had a pistol skill of 85, you had an 85% chance to hit.. in Fallout 3, a pistol skill of 85 gave you... an 85% increase in damage for the pistol, and a 8.5% reduction in the spread... the PLAYERS skill in at shooting in FPS games became the CHARACTERS skill...
Fallout NV: Basically the same as FO3.... they didn't change anythign mechanics wise. Its the same game under the hood.
Fallout4: you no longer make a character. you play as Nate OR Nora. Yes you can change the way they look. But that is it. Attributes have almost 0 effect on the game. (for example 1 end and a 10 end... means 300 health at level 100.) skills are entirely gone. Perks are given every level to replace skills, but are so limited in application as to not matter. For example: In fallout 1-2 if you wanted to play a minigun expert... you could have be King of sKill Mountain by level 13 in miniguns (and SUCK at everything else)...
But in Fallout 4, you have to wait until 41 to unlock all heavy weapons skills... Doesn't matter that heavy weapons is only 4 ranks... you HAVE to be lvl 41 to get full effect....
And really, it is worth it by that point?
In fallout 1 and 2... Enemies health was based on a END/location/lvl system. which kept enemies from being bullet sponges. a raider a lvl 1 would have about 21 health in the chest area... while a lvl 20 raider (same stats otherwiese) had about 35 in the chest... which gave your character a feeling of accomplishment when you started one shotting raiders with your maxed out pistol skill......
In fallout 4, enemy health progresses with your level (to a point, as all enemy types a lvl cap)... but suddenly you find yourself going from 3 to 4 hits at level 1 to kill a raider, to 3 or 4 MAGAZINES to kill a raider by level 60.
Now, with 12 million units sold in 24 hours... Betheseda would probably say "look! every one wanted the simplification! It sold really well!" And yet... middling review scores after you cut out the initial hype reviews.... and the MOST popular game mods of fallout 4 in the gameplay effects and changes? (aside from ones that remove the minigames) are ones that remove enemy bullet sponginess, and put skills BACK INTO the game! (Frost and Horizion).
Do i even need to mention fallout 76... or can we just take that one out behind the woodshed yet?
In short.. I think you are moving the in the wrong direction there.... Player agency is what makes roleplaying games... remove the agency and you remove the role playing...
Why not just make 6 defined "characters" and say "This is it. end of list. play away" ?
-
So what I'm say about making things simpler is for first time players. As you are well aware, new players can't turn out a street sam in 10 mins, Because they don't know what sam is let alone the options needed to build one. We want a new player to sit down at a table for the first time, spend 10-20 mins making X choices, and then do a run with their character. This gives them ownership and hopefully they have a great time. We want them to feel challenged and rewarded (Something gear based advancement will aid with), we want them to see advancement on their character and the fantasy of that character to be real to them. We want that initial experience to be engaging and stream lined, enough to ease them over complexity sticker shock. Once that have got over the initial buy in phase, sure let them can take advantage of the full generation system.
I'm saying structured choice. Yes I do favor eliminating those option that we have known are bad for a long time, The writers of 6e termed those options Sink holes in references to the 6e priority tables. (I think everyone in here is well aware of my extremely low opinion of 6e, so you can imagine my level of enthusiasm for quoting them). Lowest Priority attribute is dead man walking, it has been for many editions. Giving a new play a chance to make that is choice is just bad. Once folks are in then sure give'em full choice when they some experience with playing the game that is reasonable. Then they can spend the time and make an informed choice.
So as to why not just do premades? It's about ownership. In point of fact we basically are giving them a premade but we are giving them their premade, customized by X choices, that distinction is meaningful. SR core examples premades have reliably been bad for I don't even know many editions, and I don't just badly built, I mean they have regularly been in violation generation rules. I mean even the character from the intro box were wrong in 6e. Premades that are accurate can work and we have seen good example made in this forum, but getting buy in via generation from the player is better.
We know this works better b/c systems that use this method are increasing their player-base more rapidly then those that are not.
Sure a bunch of premades are cute and fuzzy, but save examples PCs for the Runners book(s).
-
I'd be interested in seeing a finished write up... even if it was unpolished. I'm not sure its a good idea, but its a worth while thought experiment, and who knows where it leads to in the "next draft" :P
There is no question there is a lot to clean up. Sadly over 6 editions, and 3 companies.. Shadowrun has a lot of broken and conflicting issues. Sadly I think a lot of them were caused by "simplifications" over the editions.
magic,
Armor,
Ammo/weapons,
initiative,
they have all been toyed with over the editions, and each time, I feel things have gotten further out of wack.... and its compiling.
magic and "Universal Magic Theory" crap of 4e really hurt the magic system.. they basically shoehorned 2 entirely different play styles of magic under 1 single branch of magic.. and ended breaking the entire thing.... And sadly I think they realized it 3 books in... Right when they went to write a magic book... and realized they shot a 75 page hole in their book! After all, if all magic is "fundamentally the same", It REALLY shoots Traditions in the foot. (which was the VERY POINT of UMT.. to place magic under a single system!!!) So we got a meally mouth "its all the same, but not really, but kinda is, but not... sorta" 3 page intro.
Spirits and Elementals were entirely different creations, summoned by different alignments of magic, and thus came with their own abilities and limitations. It was these abilites and limitations that kept Spirits from getting out of hand...
That Shaman Sicc'd a Hearth Spirit (AKA Spirit of man) on you??? Oh no!!! you're soooo screwed... until to step 1 inch out of the building... as Hearth Spirits are powerless outside of their building..
That Mage Attacking you with his Fire elemental? "attack of Will" (which they cut!), simple water (which they also removed), and don't forget the elemental's LITERAL following of the rules... with no Sapience behind its actions...
Remember when Armor had meaning? And a choice? Heck do you remember when AMMO had meaning??? Or actual MELEE combat beyond "MR. Troll smash goot!!" and an Adept?
They Simplified Armor, Removing the Impact armor from the equation... But it was this very division of Ballistic and impact that gave Ammo and melee weapons viability!!
Yes, you could armor you're self to the point that heavy machine gun fire was a light massage... but you got awfully nervous when they stopped shooting and pulled out knives... Or just loaded the Flilchette ammo...
But no... That was "too complex" Lets just dumb it down to a single stat... And who really cares about ammo and melee weapons anyway.. its just Trolls with combat axes and APDS all day, all the way anyway...
WELLLLLL... when the APDS ammo costs 150x the cost of regular ammo, and does LESS damage per shot... you only used it on the hardened armor targets it was meant for!! for the high armored targets, you used EX-EX.. or Flilchette VS their impact...
And yea.. That Roid Raging Troll with a combat Axe isn't that scary if you know in advance and stack the impact armor.. Heck it might just tickle! until he pulls that hold out pistol
But no... Single Armor stat... no need to change anything else... after all its just "Trolls with combat axes and ADPS all day all the way anyway"....
And initiative!!! OH GAWD!!!! INITIATIVE!!!!
I .. actually like the change there.. so.. I guess i can't complain.. too loudly. except they should have reduced the cost (cash and essence) of initiative enhancers for the fact that they are no longer front loaded to the initiative list... but being back loaded is still useful. (just LESS useful)
Yea.. lots has been changed, borked, and confuzzled over the editions, companies and years.
Much rage... much sadless... much beer.. time for sleep. (or eggs.. not sure yet)
-
I do think spitting armor back into Impact and Ballistic is wise, and not overly complex, and allows for more exact damage tuning.
Sorting out the magic equation is complex, with a lot of moving parts. I don't really love UMT, and I don't mind the idea of rolling back to Hermetic and Shamanic. That said I like the idea of making Summoning into a ritual magic application, and the leaning on the new decreased scaling to keep spirits form running out of hand. My current thought on the action economy governor is half casting attribute (ie Cha or Log, aka 2 max). We can spec out spirits back toward what they were previously with runes, making them stronger via more dice under specific circumstance. But no more anonymous spirits, I what to encourage spirit relationships, something that should also tie into mentor spirits.
The question is initiative, as you said that system has changed repeatedly. First we liked dynamic initiative and then we liked static initiative. Passes, Actions, attack limits etc, etc.
So Static is easier to follow. So it will be static, passes are very tempting, but I don't think it actually helps. I'm good with reac+int, as the primary determinate plus 1d6. which going to look something 6-8 with 10 being the outside of for PCs. NPC probably 3-5. We can make additional intuitive die a possible Augment/Rune. That will keep Initiative totals blow 20 which makes rounds easier to number.
Action economy i'm good with, under the augment system, No PCs will start with more then 3 half actions, and I'm good with leaving the cap at 6. So you won't see 2 attack per round until an initiative augment/rune. Multi-attack I'm ready to just make them as AoE effects and Subject to the limitation of AoE effects.
Damage is really the question. So my logic on damage goes like this, base weapons damage vs base armor damage will cancel, So damage that goes through will be generated from other sources. For melee it will primarily be the difference between the Targets body and Attacker Strength, after that from weapon Augments, and of course damage from success to hit over Defense target. Where Guns damage adds will come from sights, ammo augments, and success over defense. Which should keep gun damage reasonably below melee damage, particularly in the early game. To assist this, damage can be tuned more exactly using ballistic vs guns and impact vs melee. That will allow easy curve shifts if so combination proves to push out of hand. I'm certainly want to Physical and Stun damage categories, and encourage use of stun damage.
-
I do think spitting armor back into Impact and Ballistic is wise, and not overly complex, and allows for more exact damage tuning.
I think a lot of systems suffered from this. It wasn't necessarily a bad choice but they didn't account for how it would affect the value of certain things (ex: Clubs). Still, the seperate armor system contributed to the game being extremely lethal in 4e along with other things in a way that pushed to more optimization, not less. So it is a rough needle to thread. It definitely is clear is that AP alone doesn't do a good job to actually make a weapon 'armor piercing' because it is effectively reskinned generic DV.
Sorting out the magic equation is complex, with a lot of moving parts. I don't really love UMT, and I don't mind the idea of rolling back to Hermetic and Shamanic.
That had to change for meta reasons. I highly doubt we will ever see that come back as a hard coded aspect of traditions due to how it played into a consistent criticism of Shadowrun and its.... clumsy handling of tropes involving Native Americans. The fact that the 'tradition altering' qualities A: aren't mandatory, and B: can be taken by any tradition in general is the best fix to get the game mechanic/character customization element back.
It is one of those things that now its gone it is sorta clear how not helpful to the lore it was, and much like metahuman mental penalties I can't see it coming back now that it means people are aware of the real world implications of the mechanic (in this case, maybe not great to make Native American wizards fundamentally different and incompatible with the 'western worldview', more 'attuned to nature,' likely to act anticlimactically due to mentors, and all about talking to ghosts, all of which are very consistent criticisms a consistent way Native Americans are portrayed in media).
That said I like the idea of making Summoning into a ritual magic application, and the leaning on the new decreased scaling to keep spirits form running out of hand.
Decreasing the size of the scale and making each 1 jump bigger without changing the fact spirits scale off force would increase the problem, not decrease it. It isn't that spirits get 'big numbers' so much as that every spirit ability scales by 2 dice for every force they have, and the difference between a force 4 and a force 6 as a result is giant because they gain some odd 5 dice to resist damage if they full defense (effectively like some odd 6.5 due to hardened armor), 2 dice to hit you, 2 DV due to universally having a +force to melee DV power, and +2 to initiative. You can sorta evaluate your summoning tests as a buff your 'casting' on the spirit, with every hit you can get increasing those numbers by 1, which really helps show how out of line the rate of stat increases are (because most buffs only increase one of these values by 1 every hit). Ritualized summoning certainly isn't a bad idea though, as is the idea of spirits being more personable, as both help stop the 'I pull a street sam out of my butt' problem.
The question is initiative, as you said that system has changed repeatedly. First we liked dynamic initiative and then we liked static initiative. Passes, Actions, attack limits etc, etc.
So Static is easier to follow. So it will be static, passes are very tempting, but I don't think it actually helps. I'm good with reac+int, as the primary determinate plus 1d6. which going to look something 6-8 with 10 being the outside of for PCs. NPC probably 3-5. We can make additional intuitive die a possible Augment/Rune. That will keep Initiative totals blow 20 which makes rounds easier to number.
Action economy i'm good with, under the augment system, No PCs will start with more then 3 half actions, and I'm good with leaving the cap at 6. So you won't see 2 attack per round until an initiative augment/rune. Multi-attack I'm ready to just make them as AoE effects and Subject to the limitation of AoE effects.
Another potential thing you could do is just remove extra actions, reduce melee down to a simple, and make certain augmentations grand very specific bonus actions to help differentiate characters in scrunched systems. Overall though this seems pretty sensible as long as you recognize this robs dedicated combat PCs of a lot of power, which 6e kinda didn't, and I think is one of its biggest failings.
Damage is really the question. So my logic on damage goes like this, base weapons damage vs base armor damage will cancel, So damage that goes through will be generated from other sources. For melee it will primarily be the difference between the Targets body and Attacker Strength, after that from weapon Augments, and of course damage from success to hit over Defense target. Where Guns damage adds will come from sights, ammo augments, and success over defense. Which should keep gun damage reasonably below melee damage, particularly in the early game. To assist this, damage can be tuned more exactly using ballistic vs guns and impact vs melee. That will allow easy curve shifts if so combination proves to push out of hand. I'm certainly want to Physical and Stun damage categories, and encourage use of stun damage.
This is where ya lose me. I get your logic on brutes being fun to fight on the previous page, but that is in D&D 4e where fights are way more involved for everyone. SR fights aren't exactly the focus of the system, it isn't a game about two sides wailing on each other, and a long combat resolution system where both sides struggle to do serious damage to each other hurts the 'run and gun, this isn't our main goal so lets finish it quick' feel of combat a lot. It also makes the capability to deal damage to certain targets very static which we learned from spirits isn't fun at all, and it wasn't even really fun in D&D 4e: A huge complaint about the 4e core Monster Manual was fights took too long to resolve which is why the average HP for encounters was dropped like 5 times over for 5e D&D (and why they dropped it by a percentage in 4e's MM2, I forget the exact number but I think it was 33%? Don't quote me): It is way more fun for your attack to connect and down an enemy very consistently each turn rather than to wail on one security guard as a 4 man group and maybe not even down them. 5e D&D also focused on PCs consistently hitting, and very large damage swings with healing abilities being much stronger to compensate, and more damage being in dice than modifiers. D&D basically took the opposite lesson you took from thugs: people DON'T like their HITS to feel like nothing, a miss at least explains why nothing happened, but hitting a big whammy of an attack and not even bloodying your target sucked. Most modern RPGs go very far out of their way to avoid 'nothing' turns now. PBTA for example lets you ensure a big damage hit even on a 'miss' because its more interesting to allow your action to have a positive result for you with a lot of downsides than to say 'nothing happened.' Same with BITD, despite it being a way lower power concept than SR (Killer cyborgs and awesome wizards vs... scrappy pseudo-victorian thieves) it understands, especially in a heist game, you don't want to get bogged down.
One of the fun things about SR, at least for me, is that combat is easily tuneable around PCs having consistent 1 hit downs even as non-street samurai, and no-selling most attacks: Corpsec are trying to accomplish something, like locking shutters, sounding alarms, ect, and for most PCs the cost of a good enemy attack is your edge ticking down which increases tension without having to make damage irrelevant via strong healing resources. You can have a team of 4 fight 8 corpsec and not just win, but generally win within a single combat turn, maybe two if one or two of the PCs are good at multi-attack. SR doesn't have, and doesn't need, a CR system because of this reality and why it does so well with the LC model where PCs have vastly different power levels: the goal of your opfor isn't to create a room in a dungeon, its an element of a puzzle. It leans heavily into the idea that the fights don't need to be fair for the NPCs to still be interesting and is one of the main ways it feels different from most editions of D&D.
This is easily the main complaint I see about 6e SR in regards to combat: It tries to take a D&D style grinder fight system where both sides exchange blows dramatically until one side falls, but it really doesn't fit into what SR is trying to do and results in you needing an average of 4 shots at a corpsec to down them with a basic 12 dice combatant using a beefy heavy assault rifle, where before you needed 2, and that was just because misses are 0 DV.
It isn't like that system couldn't work. It just proooobably needs a grunt rule ala D&D 4e where a category of enemy exists that will always go down in 1-2 shots and which is allowed to be consistently able to influence the fight but not mega deadly.
I definitely see where you are going with it though, in terms of having more stability in damage. The idea of some mods being DV increases that you wouldn't expect is interesting for example.
-
I think a lot of systems suffered from this. It wasn't necessarily a bad choice but they didn't account for how it would affect the value of certain things (ex: Clubs). Still, the seperate armor system contributed to the game being extremely lethal in 4e along with other things in a way that pushed to more optimization, not less. So it is a rough needle to thread. It definitely is clear is that AP alone doesn't do a good job to actually make a weapon 'armor piercing' because it is effectively reskinned generic DV.
I think we basicly agree on this easy tune to variable are good. My current concept on the armor penetration tag will be that halves soak, and its counter by the hardened tag, which will making 1/4 soak. Tags will add effects which will vary based upon what they are and what effect will be my preferred solution. I'm not looking to put AP back in. Something similar with an elemental tag and elemental type defense tag. (Electrical vs Insulated, toxic vs sealed etc)
That had to change for meta reasons. I highly doubt we will ever see that come back as a hard coded aspect of traditions due to how it played into a consistent criticism of Shadowrun and its.... clumsy handling of tropes involving Native Americans. The fact that the 'tradition altering' qualities A: aren't mandatory, and B: can be taken by any tradition in general is the best fix to get the game mechanic/character customization element back.
It is one of those things that now its gone it is sorta clear how not helpful to the lore it was, and much like metahuman mental penalties I can't see it coming back now that it means people are aware of the real world implications of the mechanic (in this case, maybe not great to make Native American wizards fundamentally different and incompatible with the 'western worldview', more 'attuned to nature,' likely to act anticlimactically due to mentors, and all about talking to ghosts, all of which are very consistent criticisms a consistent way Native Americans are portrayed in media).
While I agree changes were needed. That doesn't UMT was the best solution. Leave magic as mysterious. Rejecting UMT doesn't mean we have to jump back full to the old way, I'm not interested in restoring shamanic mask, or the spirits vs elemental concept. Shamanic practice is conceptual pretty universal in human history, differentiation into Heremtic should really be more societal transition." The view that all native american cultures were "in-harmony with nature" is significantly out of step with the more mature and accurate views Native American History. At the time of Spanish arrival there, Tenochtitlan was several times bigger then Paris, and had meaningful pollution problems even then. (See 1491, and Author's later writings on the Homogenocene.) I'm not interest or trying to going back to playing with any Native American religious concepts I think we all agree it may step into cultural exploitation and nobody wants that. Hermetic would strictly signify Logic/Will and shamanic would signify Cha/Will, and magic societies would be hermetic or shamanic. This Primarily would be for contrast.
Decreasing the size of the scale and making each 1 jump bigger without changing the fact spirits scale off force would increase the problem, not decrease it. It isn't that spirits get 'big numbers' so much as that every spirit ability scales by 2 dice for every force they have, and the difference between a force 4 and a force 6 as a result is giant because they gain some odd 5 dice to resist damage if they full defense (effectively like some odd 6.5 due to hardened armor), 2 dice to hit you, 2 DV due to universally having a +force to melee DV power, and +2 to initiative. You can sorta evaluate your summoning tests as a buff your 'casting' on the spirit, with every hit you can get increasing those numbers by 1, which really helps show how out of line the rate of stat increases are (because most buffs only increase one of these values by 1 every hit). Ritualized summoning certainly isn't a bad idea though, as is the idea of spirits being more personable, as both help stop the 'I pull a street sam out of my butt' problem.
For this Spirit force would be 0-3. 0 being watchers, and force 3 being 6 dice, and that yes that's reasonably strong in 10 capped system and they get meaningfully stronger with runes. I did considered capping it at force 6 and just letting a force translate to 1 die. But really I just prefer the 1-3 idiom. Regardless its much, much less of a problem then a force 9 in the current system. In exchange for this limitation I'd drop the whole favors system and any costs (Other then a lodge). You would summon a spirit and it would stay around for something like a day per net success over the TN, or until dismissed, dispelled or killed. The idea being you could always have a spirit on hand. Making them personal I'm hoping would indeed make them less disposable. To back that up they get a long cool down period before they can be summoned again if killed. But regardless the limits on power level, and action economy would prevent anything like our current spirit problems.
Another potential thing you could do is just remove extra actions, reduce melee down to a simple, and make certain augmentations grand very specific bonus actions to help differentiate characters in scrunched systems. Overall though this seems pretty sensible as long as you recognize this robs dedicated combat PCs of a lot of power, which 6e kinda didn't, and I think is one of its biggest failings.
This concept is very interesting to me. Can you be more specific? I do want to find ways to differentiate archetype in clearly systematic options. Having something give Street sames an extra shot or adepts an extra swing could work.
This is where ya lose me. I get your logic on brutes being fun to fight on the previous page, but that is in D&D 4e where fights are way more involved for everyone. SR fights aren't exactly the focus of the system, it isn't a game about two sides wailing on each other, and a long combat resolution system where both sides struggle to do serious damage to each other hurts the 'run and gun, this isn't our main goal so lets finish it quick' feel of combat a lot. It also makes the capability to deal damage to certain targets very static which we learned from spirits isn't fun at all, and it wasn't even really fun in D&D 4e: A huge complaint about the 4e core Monster Manual was fights took too long to resolve which is why the average HP for encounters was dropped like 5 times over for 5e D&D (and why they dropped it by a percentage in 4e's MM2, I forget the exact number but I think it was 33%? Don't quote me): It is way more fun for your attack to connect and down an enemy very consistently each turn rather than to wail on one security guard as a 4 man group and maybe not even down them. 5e D&D also focused on PCs consistently hitting, and very large damage swings with healing abilities being much stronger to compensate, and more damage being in dice than modifiers. D&D basically took the opposite lesson you took from thugs: people DON'T like their HITS to feel like nothing, a miss at least explains why nothing happened, but hitting a big whammy of an attack and not even bloodying your target sucked. Most modern RPGs go very far out of their way to avoid 'nothing' turns now. PBTA for example lets you ensure a big damage hit even on a 'miss' because its more interesting to allow your action to have a positive result for you with a lot of downsides than to say 'nothing happened.' Same with BITD, despite it being a way lower power concept than SR (Killer cyborgs and awesome wizards vs... scrappy pseudo-victorian thieves) it understands, especially in a heist game, you don't want to get bogged down.
One of the fun things about SR, at least for me, is that combat is easily tuneable around PCs having consistent 1 hit downs even as non-street samurai, and no-selling most attacks: Corpsec are trying to accomplish something, like locking shutters, sounding alarms, ect, and for most PCs the cost of a good enemy attack is your edge ticking down which increases tension without having to make damage irrelevant via strong healing resources. You can have a team of 4 fight 8 corpsec and not just win, but generally win within a single combat turn, maybe two if one or two of the PCs are good at multi-attack. SR doesn't have, and doesn't need, a CR system because of this reality and why it does so well with the LC model where PCs have vastly different power levels: the goal of your opfor isn't to create a room in a dungeon, its an element of a puzzle. It leans heavily into the idea that the fights don't need to be fair for the NPCs to still be interesting and is one of the main ways it feels different from most editions of D&D.
This is easily the main complaint I see about 6e SR in regards to combat: It tries to take a D&D style grinder fight system where both sides exchange blows dramatically until one side falls, but it really doesn't fit into what SR is trying to do and results in you needing an average of 4 shots at a corpsec to down them with a basic 12 dice combatant using a beefy heavy assault rifle, where before you needed 2, and that was just because misses are 0 DV.
It isn't like that system couldn't work. It just proooobably needs a grunt rule ala D&D 4e where a category of enemy exists that will always go down in 1-2 shots and which is allowed to be consistently able to influence the fight but not mega deadly.
I definitely see where you are going with it though, in terms of having more stability in damage. The idea of some mods being DV increases that you wouldn't expect is interesting for example.
I'm not going to get into every step of that, but I'll try and address what I thought were the high points. I agree that SR isn't by definition about combat. (Just laying aside the Pink Mohawk to Black Trench coat scale for right now.) Yeah I 100% want to avoid do nothing or have nothing to do turns. I want Runners to be professional regardless of where they fall on the combat question. But if Runners get into a fight they better have a solution. I'm not saying they need to the perfect bad @sses, but somebody being handy with a stun button gets the job done just fine.
I'm 100% in favor of SR Minions. On hit and gone. We know it works well, I use Minions at my table in 5e, and i also use Action oriented monsters. I think there is room for both in SR, and I don't think adding them necessarily changes the game into being about combat. I also strongly favor creatures that will drop a character and get dropped in return. We don't need to repeat the 6e shark, but adding stuff in the does a pile stun damage and can't take much of a hit is good with me. Need to put some pressure on but don't TPK.
The concept of making the system into being Simply test and Complex tests. Is meant to help clear up how to resolve non-combat challenges as well as combat challenges. Complex should never be done during a run. Sure they be done during the Casing stage but not once the actual run begins.
-
Another potential thing you could do is just remove extra actions, reduce melee down to a simple, and make certain augmentations grand very specific bonus actions to help differentiate characters in scrunched systems. Overall though this seems pretty sensible as long as you recognize this robs dedicated combat PCs of a lot of power, which 6e kinda didn't, and I think is one of its biggest failings.
This concept is very interesting to me. Can you be more specific? I do want to find ways to differentiate archetype in clearly systematic options. Having something give Street sames an extra shot or adepts an extra swing could work.
Sure, but it will require some background.
So Eclipse Phase 1e was, obviously, a very similar game to SR with a lot of similar concepts: Different PC roles, a similar initiative system, and omnipresent wireless internet (the mesh, rather than the matrix). In this game, Infosec, the game's equivalent of the hacking skill, was critical on EVERY PC for a number of reasons (A lot of really simple infosec rolls were extremely useful, such as the ability to shut down your local sensors in a subtle way because unlike SR there really ARE sensors watching everything you do, and your playing members of a inter-country covert ops conspiracy so often you didn't want to be watched stealing something or have the gunshot sensors go off on the station, and turning them off for a short period was VERY easy. Infosec was also your DEFENSE against hacking. Basically being a secret agent in a scifi setting requires understanding computers, sota a Ghost in the Shell vibe where no soldier worth their salt wouldn't know how to shut down a wifi enable weapon that could shoot bullets around corners into their head, which one would think would make hacking specialist PCs not good. After all, if the only difference between a hacker and a regular PC is the more niche difficult hacking rolls that took a long time to do where skill really mattered, it wouldn't make sense to be them.
Its initiative system, however had mental action initiative enhancements, general initiative enhancements, and task action enhancements. This was critical because A: you could only get 4 passes, but could get an extra mental pass or two, and B: The task action enhancements were multiplied in effectiveness by your inititative passes. This meant really complex hacks were still just as hard as before, but now could be brought down to a single turn, or you could 'slow down' and still do them faster than most out of combat but get a big bonus. So the value add for hackers wasn't a really high infosec skill or being the only person who could hack at all, but being able to do certain hacks in a time scale that made them valuable in combat.
A big problem with SR augs is the really general ones are very strong, and more specific ones are undertuned an not interesting. It isn't so bad that cheap general enhancements exist, but when they make the bulk of your dicepool and abilities compared to specific enhancements you sorta just end up only being able to define yourself by what you 'go tall' in.
Compare to D&D. Yes, its a class system, but still we can learn some stuff on how it differentiates people in the same role. Barbarians and Fighters, in 5e, are very different and their value gains work differently based on archetype. Yeah, Barbarians are mega tanks as a general rule, but a tanky fighter can exist with Eldritch Knight being able to suddenly spike their AC up when needed, while Barbarians just reduce the damage of hits. SR has some of this with dodge tank vs soak tank, but most of the time things are just straight equivalents with different costs (ex: Adept vs 'ware, both effectively are you spending your essence on mechanical bonuses).
Furthermore, D&D does interesting things with rewarding actions you might not normally do. Stormrage barbarians get a little reward for raging in the middle of a fight, a small but not insignificant burst of damage around themselves that hurts friend or foe alike, when in most situations a Barbarian would rage before charging in. This is another angle to help bake in mechanical distinction between PCs. For example, in SR you almost never want to know multiple weapon categories, even if that is thematically interesting and in universe appropriate, imagine a *really big* reward for doing just that and switching weapon class? What if after making a melee attack (Something faces never would normally do) you could make a free rally action (Which faces are good at but often don't have the reason to do vs making an attack)? What if a hacker could use debuffing hack actions after being shot at to encourage non-physical hackers to feel safer that they won't get bullied and make tanky hackers feel like cool EWAR commandos?
SR leans out of custom builds hard by trying to put walls up between roles (which favors, again, going big in a single role and usually by going burnout adept because the wider chargen resources aren't helpful if there isn't much of a reason to go wide), but in reality you want people to synthesize unique identities in a PB system by creating a role that wasn't perscribed but is obvious in hindsight to be valid. D&D 4e got really gamey with this, so despite it being a fantastic concept it felt weird to a lot of people, which is why 5e grounded it a bit more.
A 'ware that grants an extra attack is fine, but EP learned that initiative was just too important, and got rid of anything that increased general action economy. If it is priced remotely reasonably, it tends to be way too good: It is hard to price something that literally doubles your offensive power to a point not everyone will just take it even as a non-combat PC. 5e SR tried to split the difference by making getting a full extra attack really hard but extra small actions easy, but that just pushed it to a full defense+gun meta. There is room to help make multi-attack 'ware more specialized (ex: make it come with a dice penalty. Make it only work on melee which is a bigger investment and danger, ect) but other things could be 'breaking up' ware so that instead of everyone having a smartlink one person had a Multi-Core-Targeting analyzer to reward their multi-attack actions, while another had a remade attention co-processor that gave them a free aim action against literally everyone in a fight after downing a target so their next follow up would be more deadly.
One problem with SR is that its bonuses tend to be dicepool bonuses, or dicepool bonuses by another name like TN adjustments or limit changes. Edge comes the closest to breaking out of this but the edge gain limit being so low and something you consistently hit hurts this badly, and its still merely adds one extra avenue for a bonus. Bonuses that are unexplored in SR include action economy bonuses for inefficient action combos or free reactions that are unusual, things that make you defensively stronger in limited situations, recovery bonuses, teamwork bonuses like buffs or aid effects, informational bonuses, free movement, and 'minigames' (Ex: Fighters in D&D 4e causing big debuffs to attack anyone but THEM!). So a cool option that might exist in your system is a bit of 'ware or a quality that grants you free movement to use immediately after you down someone, or something that lets an ally roll with a bonus and recover some stun after you take a bullet for them. Obviously those two are gamey examples, because I am not going to make the effort to write up polished stuff for free over this, but its easy to see how you could make things that reward unusual actions, especially if 'ware is made less generic (without giving it brand names and an established appearance, I already hate the high fashion armor systems for making everyone wear old London trench-coats!) or if karma and 'ware are equalized akin to Anarchy and Amps.
-
hmmm
I agree that one for 4e list of issue was that they pulled back the curtain to. PF2 use nearly the same architecture but has gotten away with it, but keeping it more strictly under wraps. Concept EP worked ok, but had some variety of issues, went to far down the rabbit hole.
Action economy is key to every game. SR characters have always benefits in this area by focus down on initiative ware, and I agree much of it overly strong. One of the purposes of making augments was to smooth the curve on action economy advantage.
But it think it's fair point that doesn't necessarily make any sense to pursue the same course we have for multiple editions and never really gotten balance out reasonably.
5e DnD uses mulitple attack from the same action
PF2s gives you the option to take a penalty to swing more then once.
The Old FF 40k System used talents Swift attack, lightening attack.
My feeling is making swift attack/lightning as initiative augments might be the best path forward.
Making an basic attack as half action and multi-attack as two half actions appeals to me. But the issue that concerns me is what stops the old two half actions attack? We called it the double tap in 4e. Imposing the you can only take the attack action once per round? Which is expanded by Swift attack and lightining attack.
Conceptually it doesn't bug me. We can tie the augments to the classic specific items. So Street sam Swift must be two attack with a Smart Weapon, Adept swift attack with a weapon focus. I'm not sold we need the lightning attack option frankly. So limit it two basic attacks, and add something in solve the movement limitation for the multi-attack path?
I guess we could make Wired Reflexes both the Reaction enhancer and the dodge gear bonus source, as well as the space for the multi-attack actions. though in augments that enhance movement options as well.
I think it could work.
I would like to see a tank mechanic for SR, 6 does off the taunt edge action. But I don't know intimidating presence? Something to think on.
-
Eclipse Phase feels so much like SR because a lot of the writers who made Shadowrun 4, made Eclipse Phase.
You can find all the drama if you dig deep into the archives of the internet. But the basic gist of it is there was a conflict on the team... one side wanted to change the core of SR from dystopian to Tans-humanism... and the other half didn't. This is part of why the tone of SR4 doesn't feel like SR3 and conflicts internally... and SR5 tried to correct course a bit (but, well... mixed results).
When FanPro collapsed, off some went and made EP.. while others stuck on SR...
Keep in mind too, comparing SR to DnD only gets you so far. Don't confuse combat in DnD and combat in SR, they are entirely separate beasts.
First off, in DnD combat is all around the "encounter" and the game mechanics support the "encounter challenge" system..... this is a built in core mechanic and is tied back into the game stucture's leveled system. the game system does eveything in its power to stop players from making poor choices that result in unwinnable situations.
There is literally no way for a party of first level characters to run into a great Wyrm Red Dragon... the game's structure and layout just don't allow that to happen...
On the same note, in Shadowrun characters 5 minutes out of creation can be getting smacked down by HTR forces in heavy armor, because the players thought it would be a good idea to attack a police station...
Combat in DnD is also built around the "fight and rest" model: you fight a few fights, expend a few spells, rest up, continue on... And there are a variety of instant healing options open to all players.. be that scrolls and potions, healing spells by multiple classes, or class ablities....
None of these are real options in Shadowrun. PLayers can't just stop a run for an entire day because someone took a boo-boo fighting the guards in the hallway... And healing up in that hallway is not as feasible as it is in SR. Both the use of medkits and healing spells take time, and have limited use.
This ties back into Shadowrun's combat system. IF you try to run a campaign with heavy combat, BUT only 1 action per character per pass, the Runners end up dead quick through a 1000 wounds..... try it now, run a party with 0 initiative boosters, and see how far into a run you can get before you collapse. Then do the same run with initiative enhancers...
Basically every character with an extra initiative increases the Survivability of the team by the factor of their boost. (basically for every extra pass the team has, it is in effect like having an additional team member!)...
Now, there is an issue with the fact that not all characters will have the same number of passes, and thus someone will have less to do... but I am not sure how else to overcome this issue without getting into the "Stim pack, auto heal" game mechanic... I think this is just a design mechanic that is going to have to stay around... you change this too much and it stops feeling like Shadowrun.... which is a complaint I am hearing a bit about SR6 right now.. that is doesn't feel like SR
-
EP is only relevant in the sense that it demonstrate very clearly going further down initiative doesn't solve the problem we want to address.
Yeah for sure SR is Not DnD. Nor do we want it to be.
What We want to draw from 5e is the simplicity part.
So yes want the players to eventually have more combat actions. They have too as Runners will always be outnumbered. But my point is can we do it in such a way that's simple, and we don't go down the more broken out comes we have seen across other editions. If so how do we do it?
So if we make attacks a half action are we ok with every runners making two half action attacks?
Do we like a multi-attack action that hits many target but takes a complex action to trigger?
To me options like Full Auto, two weapon fighting are very Shadowrun. Gun akimbo, adepts preforming complex spin attacks. So I personally prefer multi-attack actions. However with a 10 die cap, we can't do divided pools. It's just going a need to be an AoE attack.
But it does come down to what folks feel is the best solution.
My system concept does remove active defenses (excepting the combat pool option.)
Do you think SR gains something from having initiatives in the 30s? I don't, but I'm perfectly open to the conversation. Adding a d6 per augment is an easy solution. We can easily go that rout and just use the pass system.
We want to make combat to be meaningful, dangerous and fun. But we also want it to be something that players don't feel like they need to devout all their resources towards being good at it.
So hand in hand in with this we need to develop non-combat activities for some of the traditional high combat rolls, well. In short we need Complex Street Sam and Adept Actions.
-
well, if you want to go back and look at the roots.
Originally, a player could take 2 simple actions or one complex action every IP. And naturally, there was list of actions that were Simple or Complex.
In combat terms shooting a single shot, or Semi auto was a single action.
Burst fire was a complex action, as was spell casting.
Which gave pistols a little more viability as you could shoot twice per IP. Automatics could only fire once an IP, but you could "walk" your fire, allowing you to hit multiple close targets.
Melee combat was a complex action, but was handled much differently then now... As I recall, it was entirely possible to be on the defense in melee combat but still actually do damage to your attackers based on the difference in the opposed test..
Also keep in mind however, EVERYTHING was different then. the way IPs worked, the damage codes for weapons, player health pools...
-
I'm well aware but what I'm asking is what do you think works better? It's also worth noting that movement was independent in that action economy.
I think we want to steadily reduce complexity.
So I think we should simply make a simple attack action, and multi-attack complex action. Make movement a simple action.
Wired Reflexes and it's Adapt equivalent will be 1 die to reaction and 1 die gear bonus to dodge, and the 3 upgrade slots.
Then advance by make augments that add additional attacks based upon linking those effects in combination with the archetype specific gear.
Smart weapons for sams, foci for Adepts, CR's for riggers, etc
To me that's the simplest solution, it opens the gate for later tuning by adding more attacks if needed.
So any thoughts on what sort of Complex Actions we can add to Street Sams/Adepts that help in non-combat areas?
-
I think we want to steadily reduce complexity.
While reducing complexity is always good, doing so in a way other than streamlining and clarifying things and removing redundancies or mechanical culdisacs always reduces depth, which is bad. You can't have a deliciously crunchy game without some complexity, the question is what your priorities are? Hero System values depth above all, and is thus very complex to the point of diminishing returns, 'buying' very little depth for quite a bit of complexity at times. PBTA, which is a neat system that is not at all for me, is willing to 'sell' a lot of complexity for very little depth. Once you start pushing one way or another, without a full system re-tool, you start not gaining a lot for what you give up.
A good example of a place SR could lose complexity without depth is the drug flowchart, which is a ton of needless bookkeeping to make a roll and keep system even more ridiculously stable in outcome, or making all maglocks broken the same way but bypassed with unique tools. Obviously more fundemental trades have tradeoffs.
I think this is important to note not to say 'complexity reduction bad' but to note that SR, as a game, is sorta historical in being one of the only 'crunchy' games of its era. It was that, and Champions/HERO system, for in depth systems heavy games. And systems heavy games aren't bad. So this is a round about way of saying 'I don't think SR should make dramatic strides to reduce complexity, that is how we got NuEdge, which sacrificed a lot of depth and didn't reduce complexity that much." Part of SR's identity is fun fiddly bits.
Of course, that should be reduced to only the most fun of fiddly bits, and I think initiative is a great tree to bark up either for a hypothetical 7e or to just make your own spinoff hack. While initiative passes are sorta the main way Sr differentiated its combat PCs, and multiple turns are a great way to create action economy advantage on lots of people, the way its handled doesn't always work great, they are so important roles that are intended to be 'bad' at initiative like mages are forced to be given tools for it, and it just... sorta doesn't work great, and other ways exist to help action economy vs groups (like forced grouping minion actions, or attacks vs minions allowing you to spend more ammo to take down more depending on your DV!).
So any thoughts on what sort of Complex Actions we can add to Street Sams/Adepts that help in non-combat areas?
Part of the street sam identity includes:
Sneaking around places
Hyper-awareness
Stealing stuff
Getting into places that seem impossible, like climbing a perfectly smooth surface
Having extremely positive ties to the average person outside the corporate systems as a protector of sorts
Having ties to extremely garbage people because the name "Street Samurai" probably should be swapped to Solo for the role rather than the concept.
Knowledge of millitary tech, even if sadly logic is heavily devalued.
Moving things that are too large for others to move, or that they can't smuggle, or that need to go to places no one else can access.
Using violence as a tool outside of combat, such as shakedowns, stealing stuff, removing people, ect.
Absurd physical prowess.
Tactical information.
I would recommend changing the name of complex actions to something else to avoid 'legacy confusion.' Setup actions? Planned Actions?
Some examples of potential actions include:
An action to case that involves a stealth roll that can't fail but instead grants information, to streamline physical observation legwork and make players willing to do it before the run rather than panicking and refusing 'in case they are seen.'
An action to waylay a specific person or group of people outside the actual 'run' phase to remove them from the mix and get their stuff like keycards and notes, like taking out guards on a smoke break or breaking into a researcher's house to kidnap them.
Creating a NPC wholesale who the samurai protected or helped who will provide minor aid, such as cheap materials, a place to hide or crash, or to ask around their community.
NPCs in the Samurai's home turf passively do nice things for them and their friends, like introduce them to strangers who mistrust them, or give them freshly baked snicker-doodles to thank them for that time they lifted a burning car off little Timmy with one hand.
Obtain a disposable weapon that they can stash somewhere in the run site.
Secure an entrance to the run site for people other than themselves, like getting the decker to the roof. Climb on my back, Ex-Spider monkey.
Produce a weapon that was not established in a scene, or ammo, or an explosive.
Pre-place some sort of explosive in an area for a distraction or whatever.
Place oneself in an area retroactively.
Break an object.
Get the GM to honestly let you know of the potential dangers of an area, especially in the context of their opponent and a tool to help them negate the threat ("You know that this building's security is overseen by Lt. Dan, who unlike Commander Cody favors snipers and hit and run tactics over security devices. Those abandoned buildings have dusty windows that could be trouble, but they can't see behind this abandoned van.")
Dictate the outcome of a 'beatdown' fight that takes place in downtime vs minor enemies like gangers (getting a message to someone, making sure they never come back, embarrassing someone who is their patron, ect).
These could also be used as 'branching' abilities, to help encourage people to mix archetypes. A technical sam could be good setting up charges, while a more social one may be better at intimidation, for example, just by having access to actions gated by (minor) requirements.
-
I love good heroes game as much the next guy, and the current edition of Heroes is solid. But it's also stuck in rut, a friend of mine just put out a book for heroes, and it's good but it's not really solving their problem. All that's not relevant to conversation at hand though.
Depth is good, and I'm believe strongly in stepping back changes where we can to restore or introduce depth. The armor reversion is a good example. Edge could have been successful but it went to many places, and got to broken then they tried to bandaid it, and all just overloaded.
So rigging. To me the answer for rigging is Jumping in, back in their van. Eliminate drones swarm concepts completely, Hardware limit Rigger to one maybe two active drone at a time, but in return make them immune to hijacking while being jumped in. Give combat drones enough armor to make them take a couple hit, and then make drones easy to repair. Break drone design down into their role types and building them accordingly. Combat drones are weapons and armor, reconnaissance drones are small and sneaky. On the other side wheel man riggers are largely intact, make their sweet rides immune to hijacking while they are jumped in. Making the attack augments work only drone/vehicle weapons attacks, and we are off to a good start.
-
Rigging gets tricky, there are competing issues to solve that the Rigger falls into...
The first is the whole "Split the party" issue that always comes up... many players get annoyed and feel a little cheated that their characters are at risk, while the rigger "sits in the back of the van" This has been a complaint for a long while, and they have yet to really fix this.
Swarms... swarms have always been broken... either far to complicated to follow what you are supposed to do, or far to overpowered for the investment, or far too UNDER powered for their total investment....(3 editions of swarms, 3 editions of problems)
FWIW: this is what I think on this issue.
A jumped in drone should be unhackable (its no longer running off programs, its being controlled directly by the rigger!), however, there should be a range limit to keep the party together... say.... 50 meters per rank of of the RCC.... This is allow a Rigger to jump into a drone, and keep that drone safe from hacking, but also keeps the Rigger in a modicum of danger and with the party.
The number of drones slaved to an RCC and online at the same time is limited to the RCC rating. Any drone not directly jacked into can be used remotely and further range, but can be hacked by a technomancer/decker.
As for Repair costs... there is two avenues here to consider... the first is that repairing something is often more expensive then just buying new if the damage is extensive. (This is why Insurance companies write off cars in serious accidents. The repairs cost more the vehicle is worth...) BUT, this is also a game, and constantly replacing drones is not fun... So a happy medium must be found... Personally... I think the price of repair should be about 10% of the value of the drone PER box. While at the same time, the cost of drones should be a reduced. They are supposed to be "everywhere"... and you can even get drones now for less then what SR wants...
As for how sturdy (armor and structure) a drone is... that should be a function of size.... the larger the drone, the more armor and structure.... but on the same note, they should be weaker then your typical combat grunt....that's the trade off for "keeping safe"... or not risking an actual person..
-
To address that we would have to fundamentally alter how jumped in works. Which isn't something bugs me. I'm perfectly fine with making rigger the SR pet Archetype. We would basically be looking at something a lot like ranger/hunter. A combined action attack, jumped in becomes "Synchronized" basically AR the drones vision on top of the characters. Which would help justify the lower drone limit. They would do so much damage though.
I don't in anyway dispute your point concerning repair costs and method irl. But this system is fundamentally built around advancement via equipment, and that's going to include drones. So this is going to depart realism significantly. We can amp the tech level, makes drones in 2080+ AI driven, super sophisticated robo bodies, complete nanite factories that give self heal, and upgrade themselves when you teach them augment schematic. Then Jack the heck out of the price. Follow the Spirit idea, give drone an AI personalities. You gotta feed your drone raw materials and it heals itself which all can get folded into Life Style cost.
But then what do we do about wheelman riggers? I guess just rule that have to do both? I guess we eleminate them as cars now drive themselves? Everyone knows far to reckless to put human front of the wheel?
-
I do think spitting armor back into Impact and Ballistic is wise, and not overly complex, and allows for more exact damage tuning.
It also differentiates close-up and (most) ranged combat, so (assuming Impact is less than Ballistic, as per SR 1-3e) acts as a buff to melee weapons, unarmed, and bows. Which is nice, IMO.
To address that we would have to fundamentally alter how jumped in works.
Drifting off-topic for the thread now, but...
If we're talking big-picture stuff, I'd argue the biggest issue with getting riggers and deckers into the field is ragdoll VR. It makes them helpless and means they can't even keep up with the team while performing their key tasks. As long as that tension exists, I think you get players saying "well why wouldn't I hide my floppy helpless meatbod in the van?". SR has tried to patch over this with mechanics like disconnected-from-the-Matrix hosts and wifi-blocking paint and hey-this-noise-penalty-is-inexplicably-crippling-at-really-short-ranges [2], but never with complete success. (I'd include the EARRS cyberware as another attempt to address this from another angle - by letting deckers be more productive when using AR.)
So if we're ready to kill some sacred cows, why not get rid of ragdoll VR? Make deckers do everything in AR, and do something to the initiative system so they're not disadvantaged when doing so (maybe EARRS for free.) Make the Rig cyberware more like an implanted RCC [1] - something that allows the rigger, and only the rigger, to multiplex their sensory inputs so they can effectively monitor and control multiple drones. Debuff drones used by non-riggers eg. by limiting the independence of dogbrains and carefully following the action economy for issuing drone orders. Keep VR only for jumped-in rigging, and make that something for vehicle control. (I wouldn't want to lose the HardWired-wheelman type rigger.)
[1] Something never explained in the fluff, as far as I know: what does a VCR do? Anyone with a datajack or 'trodes already has full-sensorium simsense, with all of their nervous signals channeled into the computer. How does a VCR differ from that? Why can't you jump in without it?
[2] My favourite side effect; per RAW, you can't call London from Seattle. There's no mechanic for it. The best commlink in the world can't offset the inevitable noise penalty. My interpretation is that phone calls are magically routed through hosts, which magically never suffer noise penalties. But I do not believe that's stated anywhere. And it opens up "well why don't deckers route their hacks through black market hosts so they can work at a safe distance?" questions.
-
So if we're ready to kill some sacred cows, why not get rid of ragdoll VR? Make deckers do everything in AR, and do something to the initiative system so they're not disadvantaged when doing so (maybe EARRS for free.) Make the Rig cyberware more like an implanted RCC [1] - something that allows the rigger, and only the rigger, to multiplex their sensory inputs so they can effectively monitor and control multiple drones. Debuff drones used by non-riggers eg. by limiting the independence of dogbrains and carefully following the action economy for issuing drone orders. Keep VR only for jumped-in rigging, and make that something for vehicle control. (I wouldn't want to lose the HardWired-wheelman type rigger.)
Steak for dinner! I'm ready to kill every cow that needs to go. Yeah so Synchronized was the term I was going for, to replaced jumped in, and I'm 100% good with stopping this Ragdoll VR. I'm not ready to hand out lots of drones, but I'm very good with creating a more sophisticated pet class type mechanic, and combing drone and character actions. It will mean some fundamental changes to the VCR. But I think it's time we moved away from that model and into something more player friendly.
The wheelman thing I'm slightly stuck on. While I have no issue with Synchronizing with a vehicle, i'm slightly worried I maybe putting a foot into a pandor's box there. Having a drone come along on a run is fine, but I don't want a van with an auto cannon putting shells through the window or indirect mortar fire become a preferred tactic. Which may translate to some fairly specific but game driven limitations on what one can Synch too.
-
If you're BBQ'ing sacred cows, break "Wheelman" and "Drone Wrangler" into mechanically separate functions.
Vehicle Control Rig for Wheelman characters intending to jump into a single Vehicle (or single, powerful Drone). RCCs for Drone wranglers.
If your Wheelman is jumped in, limit the Matrix Actions (A.K.A. Commanding Drones) severely, and make Dump Shock from being Jumped to a destroyed vehicle quite harsh. Like 15 S harsh.
And treat multiple drones like groups of Mooks or Swarms. No individual action tracking, you're a disembodied swarm and on the PC's turns stuff happens. More Drones adds more dice or capabilities to the Swarm. Give the Swarm a condition monitor that degrades as individual drones are incapacitated (One Box per Drone). Once the condition monitor is filled, Drone Wrangler gets Dump Shock.
Honestly I'd make the RCC some kind of 'ware as well. Drone Control Module, DCM, or something. Just ditch the RCC completely.
-
If you're BBQ'ing sacred cows, break "Wheelman" and "Drone Wrangler" into mechanically separate functions.
I think that's fine but I'm not convinced there's room in the game for two separate archetypes. Riggers are already the most jettison-able of the core four, and this would only make that worse.
-
Wheelman side of things (from my play experience) is almost fine right now. (Rules are a mess, but the concept is fine).
Generally vehicle combat/chases seem to happen with a full party there... either fleeing the scene, or as part of a run...
-
If you're BBQ'ing sacred cows, break "Wheelman" and "Drone Wrangler" into mechanically separate functions.
I think that's fine but I'm not convinced there's room in the game for two separate archetypes. Riggers are already the most jettison-able of the core four, and this would only make that worse.
The two functions already are almost completely separate things in 5E. Wheelman can be done as a Samurai light with a fast car and a VCR. And any Decker can be a better Drone Rigger than most Riggers. 6E isn't a whole lot different. Drone users really want a Cyberdeck for Sleaze. Vehicle Drivers would just as soon ignore the Matrix if they could, so why not be a meat space driver?
I would lean into that. Make it clear "Fluff-wise" that the two things are separate. Honestly I'd let the "Wheelman" concept be a cheap enough investment that it's an easy dip for any Mundane. And if it's a character's main focus, they've got enough left for a very robust secondary set of abilities.
Might just be me though.
-
If you're BBQ'ing sacred cows, break "Wheelman" and "Drone Wrangler" into mechanically separate functions.
I think that's fine but I'm not convinced there's room in the game for two separate archetypes. Riggers are already the most jettison-able of the core four, and this would only make that worse.
And any Decker can be a better Drone Rigger than most Riggers. 6E isn't a whole lot different.
I think THAT right there speaks to the biggest issue for Riggers..... If anyone can do it, why have a dedicated archtype for them?
Maybe the solution to make Riggers have their full place again is to NOT let drones be controlled by anything other then a VCR... After all, its right there in the name: Vehicle Control Rig....
If a simple fucking commlink* can control a drone, why the hell do we need a VCR??? Maybe get back to VCR for vehicles (which a drone is!) and decks for matrix....
-
[2] My favourite side effect; per RAW, you can't call London from Seattle. There's no mechanic for it. The best commlink in the world can't offset the inevitable noise penalty. My interpretation is that phone calls are magically routed through hosts, which magically never suffer noise penalties. But I do not believe that's stated anywhere. And it opens up "well why don't deckers route their hacks through black market hosts so they can work at a safe distance?" questions.
You absolutely can call Seattle from London if you've got a satellite link, though you'll still need a good model to get through the -5 distance noise penalty and any ambient noise. Though ambient noise can be ridiculous too....
-
So i'm not interested in breaking Rigger up. But yes ditch RCC, and VCR are need to control drones, while jumped in your immune hijacking via hacking. Also if your drone is taken out while sink the dump shock will be really bad (without doing the health track but unconscious and a litt extra . In-exchange, you can Synch (become Synchronized, replacing VR ragged Doll.) with your drone/car/vehical. You're limited to one at a time, but you get complex action that is combined attack. Which will doubtlessly do a giant pile of damage. Combat drones will have atleast decent armor, will heal, and will have some limited AI.
I think to add some extra to it, unless you have VCR, your going to rely on the car to drive itself or face some meaningful penalty (Self driving cars are good at it, and networked together, without the VCR to interface with the traffic system, driving is hard. I'm not interested in seeing riggers get shown up at driving tests.
VCR will give +1 Reaction a gear bonus to piloting. Rigger will also want Smart weapon system.
Their augments will allow them to get more then one combined attack and other means of augmenting them, and of course drones and vehicles will have augments slots. drones will be expensive but will self repair, so long as you keep their nanites fed with correct level of life style, and can be fixed.
-
You absolutely can call Seattle from London if you've got a satellite link, though you'll still need a good model to get through the -5 distance noise penalty and any ambient noise.
OK but... that's still ridiculous. I don't need a personal satellite link to call Seattle today. Why do I need one in 2080?
-
You absolutely can call Seattle from London if you've got a satellite link, though you'll still need a good model to get through the -5 distance noise penalty and any ambient noise.
OK but... that's still ridiculous. I don't need a personal satellite link to call Seattle today. Why do I need one in 2080?
Well... technically, its you'r carrier.... :P
But yes... everything about the Matrix is just a giant pile of FUBAR. It has been since 4e... and while they have been stitching it together... I think maybe its time to just kiss the wireless matrix good-bye..
-
Well... technically, its you'r carrier....
Satellite links are actually pretty rarely used as they are relatively low bandwidth. Most intercontinental data traffic is carried by undersea fibre. Source: I work for a company that moves a lot of data around the world :)
-
You absolutely can call Seattle from London if you've got a satellite link, though you'll still need a good model to get through the -5 distance noise penalty and any ambient noise.
OK but... that's still ridiculous. I don't need a personal satellite link to call Seattle today. Why do I need one in 2080?
Well... technically, its you'r carrier.... :P
But yes... everything about the Matrix is just a giant pile of FUBAR. It has been since 4e... and while they have been stitching it together... I think maybe its time to just kiss the wireless matrix good-bye..
Don't forget the Matrix pretty much has to use satellites and such because you can just forget about pulling your telecom cables through the Sea Serpent's domain, plus with constant hostilities cables at land are also at significant risk. So it's not that weird that you no longer can call across a large distance through a cable.
-
This thread and the 6e Today thread are great reads for me as someone considering getting back into SR who also did some preliminary amateur work at "fixing" the system years ago. Just wanted to say thanks first.
This is because the absolute difference between pools is both smaller at low numbers, and your way less consistent at low numbers. So even if you normalize these numbers by cutting everything in half you get weird unfun results, your 16 dice street sam shooting at a 8 dice corspec (they aren't full defending) goes from an 82% hit rate to a 69% hit rate.
One of the things I tinkered with for a simplified system was halving the number of dice among other things (like adding an advantage system and only using skill groups). Some of the things both mentioned and unmentioned seem to have been incorporated into 6e but I'm really surprised that the cutting of the dice pool has such a large effect on the chance of success. I'd expect it to be more swingy as there is a smaller number being rolled but I didn't expect a big change on the overall success like that. Is there a spreadsheet or program that one can download to check that with different inputs? I'm not a programmer so am unable to code it myself.
-
After thinking about this for a while now... And I think for me, simplification has been at the root of every disliked change...
Be that the thematic and system changes of UMT, The current dice meta of Pool VS target VS limit...
Every step that been to simplifiy the game, and has borked a part of it, or created new issues...
As much as people rail against overly complex rules, it seems its these complex rules that adds the depth that many people seem to crave. Just reading a few threads here about 6e and 5e and the issues people seem to have, most of the issues seem to come to a too simplified, or a "dumbed down" rule.
While I don't have any great thought out ideas, nor a fully developed system, I will touch on a few things I think "got broken along the way" and what might be a possible solution.. (or, just a really bad idea. Who knows. ).
SETTING.
Right now, The setting of shadowrun is in a bit of a an identity crisis. While its definitely Sci-fi, and futuristic ... Is it Dystopian? Is it Transhumanist? Is it something else?
Originally, the game was very much Dystopian. It was all about the little guy against "the man". Corporations ruled the city, and despoiled the planet in search of every great profits, all the while stepping on the everyday citizen...
Now, it would be easy to point the finger at 4e (Fanpro) and say this was it; the moment that the confusion got added! But, that would be ignoring some of the things (admittedly again, as mostly plot points) that got added in with the Otaku. And, it was 4e that saw the first full scale intrusion of Transhumanim into Shadowrun.... And that would be the Technomancer. (and NO. The technomancer has not been around since 1e. Back then the term was used as an adjective for Decker. Not rehashing that argument again - its on the forums.)
Now, in principle, I don't have a problem in with technomancers as a whole. they are an interesting concept - for an other game. For Shadowrun, they add in a thematic and setting Break. Let me explain:
Originally, as I said above, the setting of Shadowrun was a Dystopian setting, with an oppressive society designed to keep people down and in their place. And, in order to
rise above "The System", and to survive one had to either be born with an advantage, or sacrifice for that advantage.
Magic was one way to power, as magic was a wild card that could not be easily countered for. It couldn't be sensed (except for by other awakened), it couldn't be controlled.
(its a natural phenomenon), but it was extremely rare. And, it really didn't interact well with technology. (like at all!!) And people feared it, thus over reactions to magical
displays were common (AKA "Geek the Mage First").
The other avenue to gain an edge, was to to change the body, through drugs, genes, and cybernetics. But this came with a cost, the more you used or indulged, the more of
your Soul you lost... Until one day, your Spirit decides it wants to be somewhere better, and you die...
The game system was set up in such a way that if you went awakened, you paid an huge opportunity cost (starting resources), faced dice-pool modifiers for Social
interactions (As most people hated and feared you), were target #1 for combat action, faced more dicepool interactions for technology (anyone remember the
DATAJACK?!?! Anyone? yea... more on that later...) or, just couldn't do anything technology wise.
If you went with Drugs, Genes or Cyberware for your advantage, you faced different problems. If you dipped to far into the drugs, genes or cyber, people didn't like you.
(you got a TN modifier after [2] or less essence) If you tried to push your body too far, you died. You also didn't interact well with magic. But there was no general social
problems for having a bit of Cyber. To the police, you where just another nobody.
Technomancers, however, break this game concept. And with them, we have seen some really big issues introduced and a proliferation of magic and tech actually working in harmony (looking at you ANALyze Device [Can you tell how i feel about this spell :P]).... From magic and tech not working at all, to wizards that only work with tech...
NO.
Just NO. Not even going into how, in a setting with Corporations with a graveyard of skeletons in their closets, or Secret Orders that want to remain secret... Technomancers not only break the fundimental "laws" of the setting, they just wouldn't survive in the setting with the acceptance the have.... OR the system would adapt to the point to render their abilites moot....
And I think the original FanPro writers realized this very problem after they included them into the game... which is why everyone after Fanpro has pretty much been left scratching their heads going "What the fuck do we do with this mess???" Because, really, think about it... Somehow these idiots are receiving, interpreting, and transmitting machine code! And if they are receiving, interpreting and transmitting machine code then NO countermeasure program, firewall, or even method to detect them could ever be used. Why? Because they are interacting with the data before its been turned into a program and executed... They are Neo/the soul the Matrix... Which means they can NOT be kept out of anything!!! And, if they are NOT receiving, interpreting, and transmitting machine code, then a simple change of the algorithm and codex structure would render them useless. (like speaking Esperonto in Japan...)
They just do not fit within the world that has been created, and have been shoe horned in. At the determent of both the Hacking and rigging rules. (Because Technos have to be fit into both of those rule sets too) And at the determent of the setting.
MAGIC
Speaking a someone who has played a Mage since 1e.. I can tell you now, 4e and 5e where the best time to be a mage! (No comment on 6e, as I have yet to read it) Seriously! The kiddie gloves came off in 4e and 5e and it was now time to lay the magic smackdown on EVERYTHING!!!
Which is the problem.
So much got "simplified" from magic that you could rename the game Magic run, and you would probably not get any complaints. Magic in 1 to 3e was powerful, true, but it also took a fair bit of juggling and forethought to get it right, or you could end up screwing yourself over.
Originally, when a mage went to learn a spell, he not only choose the spell, he also learned the FORCE of the spell... And to change the force changed the target number... this left mages in a quandary... Do you learn a buff spell at max level and suffer all that drain, or do you learn it at low force and lose out on some effect.
Now, you just learn a spell.. cast it at whatever force you like... and spend a pocket of reagents to buff it....
Mana Spells and tech were a strict "no go".. If the spell was mana based, it did not work on technology. Period. If the spell was physical based, then its effects were reduced depending on the target. Casting a fireball or ball lightning on a drone or vehicle saw the spells effectiveness drop a whole power level. (So a spell that was going to cause a Serious wound, caused a moderate wound... Or.. 6 boxes of damage reduced to 4 Boxes of damage out of 10 total) If you wanted to harm technology, you had to learn a specific spell to do so.. (Wreck), and there was a separate version of the spell for each class of vehicle and object! (so.. Wreck Gun, Wreck Drone, Wreck Vehicle, etc)...
Now... Ball lightning. all day every day. Its the only way.
Spirits and Elements were two separate things, summoned by two separate people and behaved entirely differently. SPIRITS where summoned on the fly by Shamans and were tired to an area not bigger then a few blocks. Meaning you could run away from one if you choose to. ELEMENTALS were summoned by mages in a ritual, cost reagents, but could go anywhere...
Spirits/Elementals and Tech: It was the disconnect between magic and tech that gave a spirit his immunity to normal weapons. Both could be hurt by a bare had and a force full personality..... (Again.. Technos shoot this concept out of the water...)
As part of the trade off for a shamans ability to summon on the fly, they couldn't discreetly cast spells thanks to the Spirit Mask that formed when they cast..
BUT NO... too complex... ditch the subtly the complex rules gave us... Mages, Shamans.. same coin.. don't matter much ::)
TECHNOLOGY
Something really silly and simple trick they did back in the early editions was make one piece of cyberware the catch all for all ware... The Datajack.
This simple piece of inexpensive ware ($500. 0.25 essence) was the gateway for just about every other piece of ware out there.. and served as a limit on awakened.
The Datajack, was the commlink of its day... without the datajack, your smartlink sucked, you couldn't 'jack into the matrix or your drone, And good luck making a phone call or surfing the matrix!!! Some simple implant was the interface to Cyber tech and acted as a limit to awakened, because while it was cheap, it cost you a full point of magic for no gain! it only allowed you to access the other cyber, which cost more essence and ware.... and thus Burn out was a real option... and not just a thematic one like it is now...
Who gets a datajack now??? what exactly do they do?? (nothing. nothing at all)
So, in the rush to simplify, they broke datajacks, and the built in limitation to awakened and tech...
CHANGES
Things I would do differently? I would bring back the combat, defense and spell pools.... and utilize them in to the dice pools...
For example a combat pool might be (STR + REA + INI)/2. This pool of dice could be added to as you wished to a attack rolls over the course of a Combat Turn (so multiple initiative passes) until the pool was exhausted.
Defense pool would be similar and used to augment their defense rolls in the same way was the combat pool... But would be smaller to start.. say (Body + Ini + Rea)/3. This would place of emphasis on armor soak and body soak, as opposed to simply dodging... (bullets travel 1000s of feet a sec.. most combat breaks out in under 100ft... yea... Antons of time...)
Spell pool for spell casting as well, same type of mechanic.
All rolls would be a mix of Pool dice (Pools are made from attributes) and Skills... this keeps skills important, while still allowing attributes to have an effect, while limiting "broken Munchkin" builds out of effectiveness (So.. No trolls with max STR and BDY, and 1s everywhere else being effective combat monsters... leave them on the couch with the rest of the human potatoes)
I dunno... Maybe its the beers talking..
-
I don't want to go back to when I had to memorise my players their characters and run the math for half of them. Customisation should be where the complexity lies, not mountains of math.
-
I don't want to go back to when I had to memorise my players their characters and run the math for half of them. Customisation should be where the complexity lies, not mountains of math.
On the surface, I would agree....
But.... well, every time a game system (and I am not talking just SR here) has tried to 'simplify' the game system, they also cut out the soul of it. Or at least part of it.
While I agree Character customization is at the heart of all games (or it should). If there is no mechanic behind the customization, then its just "different colored hair"...
Lets look at the biggest failure in recent memory, DnD4e.
Yes, it has its fans, but it was a total failure. Why do I say that? DnD4e spawned a competator into the market that used a revised system of what they abandoned And that competator went on to gain considerable market share! THAT is a failure.
Part of that failure (I think) was due to the overly simplified characters....there was almost no real difference between the classes: They all did 'X' dam/level. Had very little difference in how they behaved. And removed a lot of freedom of choice.
Wanted a longbow Archer Warrior? 2 Weapon specialist? Hell, even a distance fighter? Sorry. No. Two handed wespon. Or weapon and shield only.....
And thats only one class for an example!
Dumbing down is not new.... been happening in games computer games for a long while.
They have been getting prettier and prettier... but with less and less choices/options each time..
Loaded up a classic from Bethseda the old Original Arena..... 10 megs in size.... really crappy graphics. Flight, wall climbing custom weapon crafting custom spell crafting, custom potion crafting, 33 skills, 8 attritubes, 85 spells, 13 birthsigns....
Load up skyrim... 10GIGS.... none of it. 35 spells total. No attributes, 14 'skill trees'...... characters look like dirty potatoes.
100GIGs of mods later, I get every thing Bethseda used to have out of the box.... All because someone spent hundreds of hours to put it back in... (and bikini chainmail.... modders always add bikini chainmail...)
I would rather have that depht and complexity there, and tone it down as needed then have to invent it and shoehorn it in. Especially when it was there to begin with...
Look at the iriginsl Fallout game. Did you know you could complete the entire game without killing a single thing???
Can't do that in Fallout 4*
(*you can actually, but requires jigging the system through massive crafting to level up to a rediculous level, hiding behind friendly NPCs while THEY kill everything, often requiring save scumming, etc).
-
D&D 5e is still a simplification compared to 3.5, and it kicks ass. So I disagree that simplifcations cut out the soul. SR6 reduced Knowledge Skills to binary rather than ranked, and I find it excellent and better. Heavy crunch should be an option, not mandatory.
-
D&D 5e is still a simplification compared to 3.5, and it kicks ass. So I disagree that simplifcations cut out the soul. SR6 reduced Knowledge Skills to binary rather than ranked, and I find it excellent and better. Heavy crunch should be an option, not mandatory.
No experience with DnD 5e. They lost me with DnD4e, as my table transitioned to Pathfinder. And since we enjoy Pathfinder and have the books, we felt no need to buy and learn DnD 5e.
And like I said, it could just be me that wants the crunch back...
-
It is not just you, I too and many people I know like the crunch.
The trick is finding that right balance, there is definitely a thing as too much. I love all of the options and detail but I don't want to have so much that it bogs down play.
-
That's why I want a lot of crunch to be in the customizing parts. During play it won't matter if a gun has slots left, that only matters when you're further modifying it in your downtime. The exact stats you can establish then, during play you just grab the statblock. And at the same time the options need to be doable. Two dozen magic traditions that each have significant different rulesets is impossible to handle. If I could add a small Customisation layer on top of a base framework, then suddenly the choices are manageable. Six lifestyles which have some restrictions to how you can mod them, is doable. I can dive into details or stick to basics.
I want a basic Crunch of 6 with options that make it a 7.5. Not a basic 4 that becomes a 6, or an 8 that becomes a 9. So far SR6 is going the right way for me.
-
That's why I want a lot of crunch to be in the customizing parts. During play it won't matter if a gun has slots left, that only matters when you're further modifying it in your downtime. The exact stats you can establish then, during play you just grab the statblock. And at the same time the options need to be doable. Two dozen magic traditions that each have significant different rulesets is impossible to handle. If I could add a small Customisation layer on top of a base framework, then suddenly the choices are manageable. Six lifestyles which have some restrictions to how you can mod them, is doable. I can dive into details or stick to basics.
I want a basic Crunch of 6 with options that make it a 7.5. Not a basic 4 that becomes a 6, or an 8 that becomes a 9. So far SR6 is going the right way for me.
I mostly agree ...
I absolutely think that the heavy crunch can be on the front end and not during play. Build as possible into things that can be precalculated and just put on a character sheet.
But I think 6E fell short in some of that by putting too much into the AR vs DR relationship.
-
I agree with Reaver, complexity creates depth and depth is good for nuance.
The challenge is to balance complexity / depth against ease-of-play / quick to learn.
6e's core failing was that it tried to eradicate all nuance and force it into AR/DR, which ended up being meaningless.
Which of course, because everything is now related to AR/DR, results in almost everything in the ENTIRE GAME becoming meaningless.
Now your tactical and nuanced decisions all boil down to "how do I best harvest edge" and even those decisions are mostly meaningless because of the 2 edge cap. The hard tactical decisions that drive suspense and tension no longer exist in 6e 'cause you're always gonna hit that 2 edge cap.
6e tossed out the nuanced, deep and meaningful decisions of 5e (along with the at time needless complexity that drove it) and replaced it with a shambolic, board-game mechanic that is divorced from reality and meaning and only sightly reduced complexity while at it.
Nu-edge is, at it's core, idiotic for an RPG.
It would be perfect for a board-game version of Shadowrun however.
I think Catalyst would have been better off using nu-edge for Sprawl Ops or other Shadowrun related board game content and spent their efforts polishing 5e into something less complex and better edited.
TL:DR 6e's reduction of meaningful choices is akin to forcing everyone to wear training wheels. Now it's just becomes a bunch of toddlers riding around on tricycles they can't fall off of.
-
TL:DR 6e's reduction of meaningful choices is akin to forcing everyone to wear training wheels. Now it's just becomes a bunch of toddlers riding around on tricycles they can't fall off of.
Yeeep, that's becoming a signature. I want you to know that I have never been pretentious enough to give myself a forum signature before now, so that is the measure of how much I laughed upon reading this.
-
i'm honored lormyr ;-)
-
6e's core failing was that it tried to eradicate all nuance and force it into AR/DR, which ended up being meaningless.
The thing I think is ironic about AR/DR is that at the end of the day, it's just as complex as dicepool modifiers in terms of how much tracking the players and DM have to do - it just feels simpler because doing the math wrong has no meaningful impact and so it's easy to ignore.
-
6e's core failing was that it tried to eradicate all nuance and force it into AR/DR, which ended up being meaningless.
The thing I think is ironic about AR/DR is that at the end of the day, it's just as complex as dicepool modifiers in terms of how much tracking the players and DM have to do - it just feels simpler because doing the math wrong has no meaningful impact and so it's easy to ignore.
Complex is always a weird word for me on these things as none of it is really complex. Annoying to track and remember, time consuming those are the kind of things i think people mean when they say complex. And yeah its no better than 5e in that regard, maybe worse as you still have dice pool penalties, so you are tracking two different sets of modifiers . They had a speed gain in reducing the turns to one action. But I think the edge moves slows it down almost as much if not more than was gained.
-
6e's core failing was that it tried to eradicate all nuance and force it into AR/DR, which ended up being meaningless.
The thing I think is ironic about AR/DR is that at the end of the day, it's just as complex as dicepool modifiers in terms of how much tracking the players and DM have to do - it just feels simpler because doing the math wrong has no meaningful impact and so it's easy to ignore.
It also is far less dynamic. Your goon doesn't have different DR against different players, because the equivalent of AP is part of the AR, not the DR. It takes players and GM 1~2 combat rounds per fight to memorise if they get Edge or not. I can write down AR-ranges that provide Edge for goons, and quickly compare those to the AR of the player.
-
Removing Edge entirely from SR6 would've helped speed the game and reduce complexity. Earning rates vary by archetype, spending options vary by archetype, edge actions are unbalanced, and it's all just a bit of a mess.
Dice are cruel sometimes, so what do you do to mitigate outlier rolls? Karma. If you want to reroll failures, you spend one of your hard-earned karma and limit your ability to advance. Maybe limit it to defensive pools only (dodge, soak, etc.). Players who have to burn more karma advance more slowly and the shadows pass them by. Don't burn the karma and you may not advance at all, so it's a choice. In any case, you're going to see a lot less usage (and time spent dealing with it), because the cost becomes real.
Modifier tables rear their ugly head again. If you're comfortable with a soft approach, you can give the advantaged player additional dice appropriate to the degree of net advantage. If not, go get your tables and have fun calculating how much everything impacts the attacker and defender - you're not going to really enjoy the game without them.
-
There are lots of factors to discuss when consider the concept of Crunch. I look at it like I look at software, so I discuss it in terms of complexity and sophistication. Pathfinder was/is complex, and eventually by shear weight of pages it become fairly sophisticated, enough rules interactions, enough classes, enough systems piled on top of one another until you get a pretty sophisticated out come. 5e DnD is not complex, but it is sophisticated. Learning 5e is easy, particularly if you have experience with any other variant of D&D. Like every version of D&D it does have the problem nature of the game shift fairly rapidly as the level tier. But that something that not hard to adjust to with time at the table. 5e is easy to run, it doesn't have all the tools, built in that 4e developed by it easy to add them back in.
6e SR is complex, not by intention, but b/c edge bleed into every where like the purple plague. But it lacks sophistication, it's gear values have no real meaning, the combat system should have been simple and edge use was clearly intended to add sophistication to it. But that failed, to many trap options, to many useless options, to much spending edge to gain edge, and ridiculously capped cycle. Output isn't overly changed but the through put is just capped unnecessarily and frankly bazaarly,whatever number cruncher that picked 2 edge was clearly looking at some strange, fringe use case.
Heroes system in it's current state is still quite complex though somewhat reduced, and still sophisticated. There just so many options and way to build and shape a power set, the system carries lots of depth. Still most people would consider it too complex.
But the fact is Complexity is not what's leading in the industry. Sure PF2 is a hold out, it's complex and fairly sophisticated. But it's also not going to push boundaries of the gaming community. Those who like it generally are Players whom are used to Complex games.
Clearly the spectrum of crunch is personal. I'm very happy with have both 5e DnD and PF2. I think there is a lot to be said for it. I love that we are seeing the rise of community based gaming platforms (as problematic, judgement, and often cranky as the gaming community is.) We all want more content creators, we also want content in more/different forms, we want a return to expanding the lists of settings. We should acknowledge the failures of our community. Embrace the fact that diverse gaming community is a stronger better gaming community and press forward. We can have all those things, and keep the community growing. As the dev said SR6 stands on its own, I personally consider SR6 more to be passed out in the corner drunk on edge then standing, but hey that just my opinion. More books will be come down, and it will ether get better or worse.
I'm happy with what I outlined in this thread to date, and I plan to finish writing it up, sometime after I finish writing up my 5e stuff. I doubt it will ever go beyond my table but that's fine with me. I don't see 6e changing direction, tragically they really don't believe that AR/DR thing is a problem. So I gonna have wait for and put my hope on 7e , the upside I doubt it will be all that long. lol
-
Unrelated but since Marcus brought up Hero system. Man I wish hero would come out with a 7e which was a unholy blend of 4e and 6e. 4es fantasy hero was the best of it, it used I think rule masters setting for its base assumptions on how magic worked but used hero to stat it out. They needed some martial powers magic sets and then it would have been perfect. If I can dig up my books i may home brew some martial magic sets and run a 4e fantasy hero game. WTF turn it into a cyberpunk setting. Their fantast hero stuff and well most their stuff went downhill after 4e, some good stuff in the core of 6e, but the supplements were too generic I think. We get it you can build whatever you want. I buy the supplement books to reduce my workload, not have you make it so generic I still have to put in loads of work to use it.
-
"AR/DR is useless" is how I felt about a lot of the subsystems in 5e. Recoil is a good example cuz on the one hand it will affect your dice pool so you have to build around it. But if you buld your character right you don't have to worry about it 99% of the time. Like, you've got to check your Rc but if you built the character right it's never important. So why not just play without it? This is where people think depth comes in but this kind of complexity just adds tedium not depth.
AR takes all of those subsystems liek recoil and AP + DV vs Armor and limits and fire mode and rolls them into one; which so called "simulationists" may gripe about but that particular issue is just taste, one subsystem or 8 doesn't determine if you've got a good game.
Tying AR to edge creates interesting opportunities because it is a non-diagetic trait (I know there is a real term for this but I can't remember what it is). This has the upshot of making the game more abstact further upsetting "simulationists."
Which is also why "2 edge per turn" fits, whether you think it works or not. Edge is too powerful to be allowed too accumulate rapidly. You could make it less powerful but then you lose the opportunity to create a dynamic series of action options and boosts to interplay with various archetypes and gear (opportunities which I feel the designers have thus far made little use of). In any event having an arbitrary limit is much like D&D5e where advantage cannot be multiplied. Whatever it is you think you ought to have gotten another bonus for, you already have it, move on. Were the game to hand out bonuses for every single advantage, in a form not edge related, then bonus/minus dice would make the most sense (that is what recoil compensation and fire modes were).
Anyway, it's not perfect. The execution leaves much to be desired but it is new and interesting and tied to a setting I really love. Most importantly for me, it is more appealing than 5e, and I know many people who feel the same. Maybe we'll end up hating it after a while like 5e, but we're gonna try playing it to find out.
-
It’s true the number of components of system doesn’t determine if the system is functional or not. But AR/DR does nothing most of the time, which I argue makes it not functional. 5e weapons were clearly more complicated then you liked, but that doesn’t change the fact that it worked most of the time. You just can’t say the same about AR/DR, as it’s currently written. All the guns might as well simply be damage codes, and armor is simply a fashion statement.
-
But AR/DR does nothing most of the time, which I argue makes it not functional.
If the first clause were factually correct, your argument would be sound.
AR/DR does nothing sometimes. SOMEtimes != ALL the time. It doesn't even equal MOST of the time. "Most of the time" means something very specific: more than half of the time. Neither of us have data on every table out there playing 6e, but I'm still comfortable in saying you're overestimating the frequency of scenarios where AR and/or DR is moot.
-
I wouldn't mind doing some spreadsheet magic to evaluate how much AR/DR gain or loss is required in armor vs gun matchups, but that sorta work is usually done by theorycrafter optimizer types, and I am sure no one wants someone like THAT around.
But for real, as part of trying to do some charop for 6e I DID look into how often it matters DR differences matter. Its... really not often. You gotta remember that for an AR or DR gain or loss to matter, it needs to swing the calculation by more than 4 in the direction it is going, or get you to within 4 if you aren't already. Defense rating from armor caps out at +7 if your in full body armor, but will be +4 on most NPCs ready for a fight. Body generally ranges from 1-6, but can go as high as 9 on a troll optimizing it.
This means DR ranges, without augs, from 5 to 16, realistically concentrating at around 7. Most NPC statlines back this up, but it can get as high as 18 in niche situations.
Most rifles are 'inside' this already in their optimal range, and are so far outside of those scores in their sub-optimal range that even a +5 bonus wouldn't get you inside the top end vs the best NPC statline DRs. For a more average DR, the 'mid tier' ranges still are inside and are solidly inside (its 8 AR vs 7 DR, so you need to either swing defensively by 5, or offensively by 4, which is not super realistic). The same is true of shotguns, SMGs, and pistols. Basically once you get to 11 or 12 AR (Which is extremely easy, just slap a smartgun system on) your AR borderline doesn't matter in optimal range. It matters a bit in suboptimal range, but only vs the best opponents in the game. Firing a FN-HAR vs someone at point blank still doesn't swing edge either way as long as they have less than 9 DR, which is extremely likely, but if they had good DR like a SWAT officer you wouldn't really care if you somehow got +5 AR, you would still be giving up the edge.
It becomes intuitive why this is happening. Guns have a set AR for the most part by range, which is their base value +2 for a smartgun. Your armor value can be off by that by 3 and not matter, meaning there is a range of 7 numbers where you absolutely don't care if your AR changes for the better/worse relative to them. The direction may matter a bit, but because DR caps out at like... 18 on a non-troll if you absolutely optimize for it (Which NPCs tend not to do and PCs have better things to optimize for) you are extremely safe just evaluating weapons by range category, not AR and DR.
SR6 may have been better suited noting guns give away an edge at certain range categories, and gain ones at others, than AR and DR calculations. It seems the INTENT was the benefit of fighting in melee vs a long rifle is edge, but your actually probably not getting it unless your an out and out 'soak tank' build, as to beat out a rifle shot in hand to hand combat requires you to have, assuming your wearing an armored jacket, a combination of base DR and bonus DR of 6. So we are talking body 6, or body 4 with some serious investment into defensive augs, to make that happen.
So it does seem safe to say the conventional wisdom of 'you generally are better off not bothering' is true, at least with PCs on the offense. Defensively, because AR is a bit more 'set' than DR, you can plan around eating certain shots, but outside of melee range or longer ranges its so hard to get your DR to where you need it to start earning edge (you basically need 15-16, so 12-13 outside of armor to make it consistently happen) you probably are better off optimizing for things like full defense or offensive dice or... just starting with lots of edge in a fight.
Put another way: Does your table routinely fight NPCs with DRs of exactly 7, 9, 13, and 15?
If the answer is yes, then congrats, getting +1 AR on your Ares Predator that already has a smartgun would be a significantly consistent change in outcome for your attack rolls. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, or anything 16 and up? Doesn't matter. No effect on the game what so ever. So ignoring the infinity after 16 (lets just count to 18, which is the highest 'grunt statline. It can go higher but realistically you can't push a pistol up that high to chase it anyway) that is 4 intergers where it matters, and 14 where it absolutely doesn't. Assuming DR ratings are randomly sorted (They aren't, they concentrate towards the range where you don't care, but lets not think about that for now), vs 20% of enemies that 1 point AR/DR shift matters.
Now I would probably spend a couple thousand nuyen and maybe .1 ess on a 20% change in outcome (assuming I am not over-generating edge already), hell that is often a better outcome than a reflex recorder on attack in SR5! So power level wise, maybe worth it. But it isn't a big deal from a tactics/system sense where it is worth a lot of focus, it ultimately is a lookup chart system to figure out how many modifiers you need to affect the outcome at all, with most of the time it being too many bonuses to obtain to be realistic, and certainly isn't worth a lot of systems biasing towards that.
It gets a little worse with the imageing scope though, which allows us to effectively ignore any situation where we don't have enough AR in many combat situations (it costs a take aim, but that is a useful combat action anyway we want to take!). This means the only numbers that matter are the 7 and the 9. The 9 only comes into play if we fire at medium range, and while medium is the larger category, lets be realistic and account for the fact you aren't going to need to fire past 50 meters that often, that is half a football field away and will vastly more often not matter. This means 1 integer out of 18 is relevant, so 5% of the time it affects the outcome, which is quite a bit worse than a reflex recorder on a 14 dice shooter in SR5.
Defensively its a bit weirder, because you can do more to affect your 'base' value, but you basically just need to be within 3 of the number 12 to always ensure you never give up edge. 3 armor and 4 body gets you to 7 (already in safety for most guns that aren't firing at optimal range or lack smartguns, but the odd short range SMG or rifle shot gets ya), and then you can get +2 and forget about it for the most part. Big breakpoints defensively are 7 (most guns hit at 10 in their optimal range if they aren't focused on mid range shooting but you can get unlucky, but its the cheapest get by far), 8 (and a lot of the best guns are both high DV AND have 11 AR, but that only protects you without smartguns), and 10 (For pretty much definitive safety from edge gains). You basically can't go BELOW 4 as a PC, due to armored jackets existing, and you probably have at least 6, which puts you out of range of most trash guns anyway. Its a little more complicated than figuring out where you try to park your AR, because unlike yourself NPCs aren't always using good guns and may go for some trash, and because there isn't as clear a way to get to 'total safety DR' unlike AR, but its not not very much, and I believe Firing Line's new armors already push you to the point where you can more easily get inside the safety range without lots of ess or atts points.
Basically? A huge problem of AR and DR which would be spotted by any optimizer/minmaxer in a heartbeat is that it has a very few number of breakpoints, or values where going past them doesn't generate a lot of value. Most breakpoints are fuzzy (For example, in D&D feature gains may slow down a bit making it a good time to hop off, but it isn't objectively worthless to go past the last monk breakpoint of 11. In SR6, it sorta... doesn't make any real sense to worry about AR gains unless new options come out that swing AR and DR a lot even on the same target so its harder to just go 'I am fine giving up an edge vs Red Sams and Swat teams because I can't realistically get +5 AR anyway... but that would make the system way worse than modifiers in terms of simplicity, it would be possibly one of the more complex combat resolutions in RPGs (Because now your both calculating modifiers AND applying them to two numbers to see if their relationship falls outside of a 7 integer range).
Once you sit down an start hammering it out, it sorta is.... clear it does nothing most of the time, and its the worst kind where it DOES sorta matter in very rare cases but you have almost no control over if it will or won't matter defensively and in a way that makes you spend resources for something that SHOULD be tactical or a consistent character aspect but most of the time it won't matter. It doesn't just not matter a ton (A LOT of things don't matter a ton) but actively creates feel bad moments all over the place, because in most fights your orthoskin does nothing and you paid your most precious resource to get it.
Edit: Actually its worse because an edge swing each attack isn't actually a change in outcome. It is a potential change in outcome. More math to come!
-
In a realistic scenario where your not constantly jumping range brackets, you will generate 1 edge in 10% of combats every time you attack a specific target. 1 edge is roughly the equivalent to 1 extra dice.
1 extra dice has the most impact vs a target your at least equal with when your dicepools are equal, and reduces in impact the further apart your pools are. If your 10 dice to attack vs 10 defense, your hit rate is some odd 40% (You tie about 10% of the time!). If you jump to 11, your hit rate goes up to 47%, or by 7%! But if you increase by another 1 to 12, your hit rate goes up to 53%, or only by about 6%.
So the most impact this 10% chance of edge to attack can have, assuming your not having some trash fight where your target and you both roll 2 dice, which makes that edge a whopping 14% increase as you go from a 70% miss rate to a mere 56% miss rate (You get no net hits a lot...), your impact is something in the realm of about a 5% change in outcome vs an opponent your slightly better than (As your probably rolling more than 2 dice over your target). If your significantly better, this totally putters off, but SR fans are all about rolling tons more dice than they need anyway, in case they ever run into a super ninja, so lets not account for that. Your odds also jump more if your significantly worse than your opponent, but that is sorta a 'planning for failure' moment and jumping by 13% when your still missing 80% of the time isn't a real silver lining.
This means that .5% of your dicerolls (assuming all fights last an equal number of attacks, and DR is random, we will get to that) through the entire game have a change in outcome for a gain in AR or a loss of DR over your career. That is... a horrific level of not useful. For perspective, that is about the difference from dropping from 50 attack dice to 49 attack dice vs people who roll 10 defense dice. It will only matter in 1 out of 200 rolls. Same with defense.
Attack ratings are somewhat stable per gun, meaning PCs can always plan their own attack rating and know what it is every fight. But NPCs use arbitrary guns, meaning that their attack rating is in flux. If you know exactly what gun type you will face, you can kiiinda force it to matter, but the thing is every +1 bonus will only matter in a limited class of cases. Like if you jump from DR 6 to DR 7, you are fine vs any gun with a 10 AR. This matters for 2/6 assault rifles in their clos range, 2 in a suboptimal range, 1/3 sniper rifles at every range, 2/3 sporting rifles at long ranges, 2/3 machine guns, one dart gun, 2/6 launchers, 1/4 shotguns, 1/5 heavy pistols outside of close combat, 2/5 heavy pistols in close combat, 1/3 machine pistols in close combat, 1/7 light pistols in close, 1/7 in close combat, and the SMGs spread is all over the fucking place where for some it matters both close and close combat, some it matters one, some it matters another, its a mess but at least its generally consistent vs SMGs in SOME context in close vs close combat, with it only having no value vs the Uzi.
So can you see the value for getting your DR to 10? No? Yeah, no. Its a hot freaking mess and unless I make an excel spreadsheet I would have no idea what I am planning around, and the bonus points for annoyance is... even if you optimize towards a certain breakpoint, the existence of the smartgun means that you also now have to plan around gun+smartgun and that means there will always be, in addition to the majority of guns where your investment meant nothing, 52 weapon cases where it meant nothing by virtue of you planning for a smartgun but not having it or vice versa. With 52 guns, and 2 range categories that generally matter (Close combat and close), and the division between smart and dumb guns, there are 208 permutations of base AR to worry about, and that is BEFORE we get into burstfire, which add another 48 gun permutations (because the BURSTFIRE may have smartlink or not) for a total of 256 cases to consider when optimizing guns, again, with no ability to plan even by weapon weight class because of subtle differences between each gun. If we toss in medium range if you like to fight outside sometimes down an entire street or something it jumps to 384 different permutations of attacks.
That is way too much to parse without delicately mathing everything out in a spreadsheet. If I made an excel spreadsheet I could prove the breakpoints of every potential gun attack at those 2 ranges. And even if you did, because knowing 'I want to be optimal vs grunts that are using pistols and SMG's because I mostly fight gangers' means your incoming AR could be anywhere between 3 and 14. Again, your chosen DR will only matter vs 2 specific numbers. So its basically fraggin random if your going to get that +1 dice or not. How much does a DR cost? 1 att point, or about .3 essence, to get 1 dice maaaaybe 10% of the time if you reaaaaally narrow your incoming weapon categories down. Super trash deal IF you can even make that prediction.
But hey, you can plan your offensive AR perfectly and changing that doesn't cost a ton right? Just a smartlink and done. Except that from optimizing for offense, your opponent's DR is frustratingly even more random, while also your ability to optimize for a certain target is less consistent. You generally can expect to either focus on armored jackets or on corpsec, but corpsec MIGHT have DR 'ware. Even vs an armored jacket and unauged targets, their DR could range from 4 (Body 1 target in a jacket) to 11 (max body troll in a jacket). At least in this case it will trend towards the middle, so you can kiiinda force it to matter more, but that human having 3 body instead of 4 still totally devalues any serious investment into AR.
So NuEdge is what I like to call 'a fiddly mechanical bullshit nexus.' It both doesn't matter very much (so its impact on the game is minor) but its MASSIVELY COMPLEX to predict, so it is random, and if you try to plan around it in most cases your investments will do literally nothing for you despite being expensive, and the system focuses on it a lot, but despite focusing on it the actual outcome is so arcane and opaque because there is so much nonsense you can't realistically anaylze every option, and even if they did they don't correlate into actionable information like say... knowing you want to shoot good vs corpsec in SR5 and one hit kill them might, both because 'overshooting' is fine and creates more consistentcy there, while overshooting with NuEdge is worthless, and because the numbers your trying to hit are all over the god damn place even by just adjusting a few things about a character.
The key underlying issue is that AR and DR aren't random per-say, they are completely static and will always be the same for any given character barring weirdness, but there is no way to actually predict it. So you get the super consistent outcome of your choice not mattering and being a waste of resources. The fix would be to introduce variance in AR and DR when attacking, but that removes the key appeal of AR and DR over soak which is fewer rolls and calculations (And honestly it only reduces your rolls, it is pretty calculation dense, especially pre-game).
It technically 'serves a function' by preventing optimization, which was a stated goal of the edition, but that was a bad goal, because the only way to prevent optimization is to make mechanical choices nonsensical, confusing, and generally not meaningful, which AR and DR.... succeeded in by a longshot. Like yeah, I can't crack the code really on the 'best' breakpoints besides telling you that GENERALLY 9 is enough to avoid MOST guns with a smartgun but not ALL guns getting edge on you. Great. But the cost of preventing me from... you know... having fun engaging with your system mechanically in 'the wrong way' was.... now AR and DR are an incoherent puzzle box where the correct answer is to not give a shit because your choice won't matter 99.5% of the time anyway, creating a real bad feels moment for any player who liked combat focused PCs who want to feel like a super tough badass.
-
So NuEdge is what I like to call 'a fiddly mechanical bullshit nexus.' It both doesn't matter very much (so its impact on the game is minor) but its MASSIVELY COMPLEX to predict, so it is random, and if you try to plan around it in most cases your investments will do literally nothing for you despite being expensive, and the system focuses on it a lot, but despite focusing on it the actual outcome is so arcane and opaque because there is so much nonsense you can't realistically anaylze every option, and even if they did they don't correlate into actionable information like say... knowing you want to shoot good vs corpsec in SR5 and one hit kill them might, both because 'overshooting' is fine and creates more consistentcy there, while overshooting with NuEdge is worthless, and because the numbers your trying to hit are all over the god damn place even by just adjusting a few things about a character.
This nails it for me.
Now, I'm a GM, not a player. And I skew towards a lighter touch rules GMing style; I improvise a lot of mechanics, I put the fiction first, I rarely stop to look everything up and I'm not smart enough to hold even a fraction of SR in my head. And SR's immense amounts of chargen crunch don't do a great deal for me, personally.
But some of my players enjoy it, so I do have a passing familiarity with the thought process. And I agree with you that AR/DR is this weird, frustrating puzzlebox of optimisation. It clearly has breakpoints, but they're hard to reason about, and therefore choosing between different pieces of equipment based on a careful consideration of their AR or DR effects is impossible.
Personally I think breakpoints are a generally bad idea in RPGs. They're unavoidable sometimes, I suppose, but any time you get a broad sliding scale input (AR and DR varying across maybe 10 points each) and collapse it to a small number of output cases (1/0/-1 points of Edge), it just feels wonky and broken to me. Inevitably there are times when +1 input makes a big difference (as it pushes you over a breakpoint) and times when +1 input makes no difference (when it doesn't). And that's fundamentally unintuitive.
-
@Dezmont
You're underestimating the value of edge. It's actually very situational, depending on how much and what you use it for. Even if we use it 1 point at a time on an attack roll that's more like a 2 die boost since you can re-roll your opponents hits.
Also, though it doesn't negate your point, ties hit in 6e.
Also also, you are forgetting grunt groups. NPCs can augment their AR by firing on the same targets. That doesn't remove the randomness (for the record not something I care about) but for the defensive PC the number of foes you face is now a factor in how high you need DR.
-
So NuEdge is what I like to call 'a fiddly mechanical bullshit nexus.' It both doesn't matter very much (so its impact on the game is minor) but its MASSIVELY COMPLEX to predict, so it is random, and if you try to plan around it in most cases your investments will do literally nothing for you despite being expensive, and the system focuses on it a lot, but despite focusing on it the actual outcome is so arcane and opaque because there is so much nonsense you can't realistically anaylze every option, and even if they did they don't correlate into actionable information like say... knowing you want to shoot good vs corpsec in SR5 and one hit kill them might, both because 'overshooting' is fine and creates more consistentcy there, while overshooting with NuEdge is worthless, and because the numbers your trying to hit are all over the god damn place even by just adjusting a few things about a character.
Nailed it.
-
@Dezmont
You're underestimating the value of edge. It's actually very situational, depending on how much and what you use it for. Even if we use it 1 point at a time on an attack roll that's more like a 2 die boost since you can re-roll your opponents hits.
Also, though it doesn't negate your point, ties hit in 6e.
Also also, you are forgetting grunt groups. NPCs can augment their AR by firing on the same targets. That doesn't remove the randomness (for the record not something I care about) but for the defensive PC the number of foes you face is now a factor in how high you need DR.
He may undervalue it but I suspect most the edge defenders overvalue it to a larger degree. As an aside while that mechanic is a relatively solid 1 point edge investment it slows the game down far more than the rule is worth. Edge is a deck building mini game that is hard to place into the stories narrative, slows the game down and outside a couple edge moves is entirely unsatisfying for how fiddly it is.
-
But AR/DR does nothing most of the time, which I argue makes it not functional.
If the first clause were factually correct, your argument would be sound.
AR/DR does nothing sometimes. SOMEtimes != ALL the time. It doesn't even equal MOST of the time. "Most of the time" means something very specific: more than half of the time. Neither of us have data on every table out there playing 6e, but I'm still comfortable in saying you're overestimating the frequency of scenarios where AR and/or DR is moot.
The fact is SSDR, i could make a starting character with an imaging scope, a belt of grenades and have them do ever run in underware, and that would be as or more effective as someone in full armor. That's just a fact of RAW. So ALL the time for sure isn't true. Thus my point holds. You don't need to be a "simulationist" to find that concept preposterous. Clearly it should just not be true. So the fact is there is an AR/DR problem, and it's not going to go away by itself.
-
Honestly SSDR we have already had this argument back shortly after the core dropped. Nothing has changed, I put forward a rules fix to stop this issue, you guys said make it house rule, I laughed a lot and locked the thread. Do you see a point in going through this conversation again? I don't. 6e is too flawed, too self contradictory to be functionally. Sure you can write a fairly long list of house rules and make it work at a table. But that's the only way it's playable. That's where this conversation is going to end up just like last time.
Just to be clear I'm not trying to go after Leith, newbies are always welcome and it's great when they post. I hope 6e works great for you Leith, and I wish you have great success with it.
-
The issue with mathing out 6e edge is, that the math is very messy. The biggest part of that problem in mechanical negation.
1 edge being 1 re-roll, isn't a sound mathematically basis b/c forcing your opponent to re-roll is so MUCH better then re-rolling yourself. 1 in 3 of adding a success vs 2 in 3 on negating a success. This is made worse by messing with edge costs for additional points. That basic issue screws the math terribly. A re-roll of a failure is not the same thing as adding a die mathematically speaking. Making 1 edge == 1 additional die would be much more sound basis for edge, and simply removing the negation component of the system, would make the values much more consistent. But that's not raw and when it was pointed out, the automatic defensive reaction that 6e is great and we were just hateful/insane/bitter/Stans for question the validity of 6e edge, simply ended any meaningful progress on that conversation.
-
But that's not raw and when it was pointed out, the automatic defensive reaction that 6e is great and we were just hateful/insane/bitter/Stans for question the validity of 6e edge, simply ended any meaningful progress on that conversation.
I only recall a scant few people being that belligerent about the defense of SR6 issues, but I feel you. Look on the bright side: resting your defense on calling people with differing opinions "Stans" or the like is the action of someone whom has surrendered their arguments because they are unable to craft a logical rebuttal!
Your last few posts, along with others, did a great job of highlighting numerous legitimate mechanical criticisms with the new edition though, well said.
-
Do you see a point in going through this conversation again? I don't.
Neither do I.
I replied (https://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=31450.msg539991#msg539991) to that one statement you made because while I agree that the Edge system is clunky and has ample room for improvement, it's STILL demonstrably false to say that AR and DR do NOTHING. And since we do have new people who still potentially are (blessedly?) unfamiliar with the early 6e reaction threads it's for their benefit I pointed out the exaggeration.
Do AR/DR modifications have minimal impact? Ok, sure. Bit of opinion there, but I can grant it's a fair one. Can those modifications be situationally negligible? Indeed.
It's an unfair stretch to say they do NOTHING. When you expand legitimate gripes with the mechanic to absurd conclusions like "you may as well fight in speedos", yeah that's actually NOT true and I think it's fair to point that exaggeration out, lest someone new actually believe it.
TL;DR for Marcus: Not trying to change your opinion. Just talking to the newbies, as you have been ;)
-
You're underestimating the value of edge. It's actually very situational, depending on how much and what you use it for. Even if we use it 1 point at a time on an attack roll that's more like a 2 die boost since you can re-roll your opponents hits.
Also, though it doesn't negate your point, ties hit in 6e.
Noted, this means you can reverse all evaluations of attack and defense probabilities (So, for example, in the 10 dice vs 10 dice scenario, instead of having about a 40% chance to hit, you have about a 40% chance to miss, or a little tiny bit under that because 0 hits still misses I would HOPE), and that the impact of edge is a little under doubled (So generally 11% of the time it affects your odds of passing the roll by about like...11%-9%, depending on how good you already are, as long as the role isn't already pushing a 90% success rate)
Also also, you are forgetting grunt groups. NPCs can augment their AR by firing on the same targets. That doesn't remove the randomness (for the record not something I care about) but for the defensive PC the number of foes you face is now a factor in how high you need DR.
Yeah this makes the problem so much worse.
It's an unfair stretch to say they do NOTHING.
I disagree. Sometimes an impact can be so non-impactful it basically, indeed, does nothing.
A good example is weapon specialization in 3.5, a feat that gave you +2 to damage rolls in D&D after a lot of requirements and level 8.
Said weapon is a great example of a do nothing feat, because its impact is so small you realistically can assume that over the course of a game that it will never change the outcome of a fight.
Re-rolling hit results of your opponent indeed was a technique I forgot you could use. This increases the value of an edge from 1 effective dice, to -2 effective dice for your opponent. This is, in fact, better than +2 dice for yourself, especially if your opponent doesn't roll a ton of dice in the first place. It isn't massive however, and the sheer improbability any +1/-1 AR/DR affects your edge gain in the first place combed with edge usage isn't very consistent for affecting outcomes still means a most of the time, you just... can't count on DR or AR to ever matter. It is a mechanic you may as well not plan around because the combination of low impact and your inability to control it is akin to worrying about if you are going to lose a fight in D&D 3.5 by failing to deal an amount of damage equal to N*2-1, where N is the number of attacks you made. Like if you hit a dragon 10 times, are you really going to fall short by EXACTLY 9 damage or less to kill it? Because that has to be the case for weapon specialization to matter.
I wouldn't say fighting in a bikini is equal to fighting in an armored jacket. A body 3 armored jacket player does, in fact, stop losing edge to quite a few methods of attacks. However, it is fair to say by and large thinking about AR and DR beyond the bare minimum choices does not matter, which is as good as it not mattering, because it should never in any realistic way affect any choice you make outside of zero cost choices.
I would say taking such issue with the wording of 'does nothing' is a form of pedantry, unless you are specifically ONLY talking about the 'lets run naked argument' which I would agree is hyperbolic because there is a very clear advantage to wearing an armored jacket. It misses the core intention of the phrasing 'does nothing' to focus on the literal statement of if it could ever affect the game, rather than if it actually matters. It does clearly have an affect, but the mechanic as a whole doesn't matter, because you can't engage with it in any meaningful way that will help you, you may as well just slap on an armored jacket and ignore it.
The mechanic is structured means that you could remove 90% of those rules, and just say 'if you shoot at an target in your weapon's 'good' ranges you get an edge unless they have body 6 or orthoskin, unless you have a smartlink in which case you get both, and unarmored targets give you an edge as long as your not shooting at a 'bad' range, and the game would function better because at least now you absolutely know the value of your investment.
Right now, again, the investment is basically random, and random in a way where the average outcome is 'your investment didn't matter.' It would be BETTER if running in a speedo was as good as running in armor with armor 'ware in most situations (at least we might get gender equal cheesecake art then!), because you can vaguely gauge the outcome of your choices even if the impact is low. Edge right now is a combination of comically low impact, high randomness, and low corelation with in universe concepts like 'how armed is this group?' It isn't just a mechanic that does nothing (it isn't a Truenamer, a class in 3.5 which got WORSE at what it did as it leveled because the ratio for its difficulty checks was based on its own level and skill rating didn't keep up, which now is the iconic example of a 'do nothing mechanic.'), it is WORSE, because actively trying to engage with the mechanic punishes you and makes you spend less than you get very consistently in a way where you can't even try to manipulate things to work to its advantage, so you may as well ignore it.
-
My go-to worked example of one of my two most disliked things about AR/DR remains computing the return on investment of armour. You're a Body 5 streetsam about to do an infiltration that could go loud with one misstep. Your GM explains that armoured clothing would make the first part easy, whereas wearing biker leather jacket would arouse mild suspicion and could get you patted down because the goons on the door are paying you more attention.
Consider a novice player weighing this up. It's pretty intuitively obvious what the risk is, without any quantification. So they can understand the cost. But how about the benefit? What's the benefit of DR 9 vs DR 7? When will it matter? When won't it? How easily can a player with a few sessions under their belt judge that?
Should they bring their biker helmet? Is DR10 vs DR9 worth any extra scrutiny and/or the time to put it on? Across all the guns, and all the mods, and all the ranges, which combinations might have exactly AR13 that would make that extra +1 count for something? Because that's what you get in a breakpoint system: it only matters if you hit the breakpoint. So these are the evaluations the system expects players to make.
In 5e, in comparison, it is completely obvious what +1 armour does for you.
Do AR/DR modifications have minimal impact? ... It's an unfair stretch to say they do NOTHING.
They do nothing once you've earned two Edge that turn, which is my other biggest dislike.
My and a player sat down and gamed out a tiny 2-v-1 fight in 6e not long after it dropped. Nigel Nutbiter the dwarf streetsam against two gangers. Nigel shot ganger1, Nigel earned Edge from AR/DR. Ganger1 shot Nigel, Nigel earned Edge from AR/DR. Ganger2 shot Nigel... Nigel earned no Edge.
(Someone's going to say "but the grunt rules" like that's a defence. It's not. For a start, the grunt rules are explicitly presented in the book as an optional way to speed up large fights, and 2-v-1 is not a large fight that should require grunt rules. Secondly, if a fight has a radically different outcome if you do or do not use the grunt rules, they are bad grunt rules.)
Second scenario: turn the lights out, Nigel's cybereyes have low-light, sam strips naked. Nigel shot ganger1, earned two points of Edge (one from AR/DR, one from the light). Ganger1 & ganger2 shoot Nigel, Nigel can't earn any edge, and the dice rolls are identical to the first scenario. Makes no difference at all that he's naked. That's fucking weird. (Note you can use the grunt rules here and nothing changes, if you insist.)
"Does nothing all the time" is hyperbole, yeah. So how about "frequently goes nothing in scenarios where it intuitively should and, in fact, just a second ago, did"?
edit: fuck it, I'm tired.
-
The cap of 2 Edge per round does indeed seem to be a silly/pointless restriction. Certainly an unfun rule. Lots of reasons why it shouldn't exist, and I can't think of any good reason either why it DOES.
So, it's not like I completely disagree with your view.
-
I'm guessing it exists to not make the big Edge moves happen every single turn. Which is what I designed this for: https://shadowland.blog/2020/05/06/houserules-edge-cinematic-play/
-
I'm guessing it exists to not make the big Edge moves happen every single turn. Which is what I designed this for: https://shadowland.blog/2020/05/06/houserules-edge-cinematic-play/
I suppose so too, but what gets me is I really don't see any harm in allowing edge boosts every turn (assuming you can sustain that kind of edge generation). In fact, the absence of easy access to edge moves ended up facilitating much of the grief on display in this and so many other threads: they come from a dislike of the idea of exchanging 5e's dice pool modifications for 6e's edge rewards. When you're throwing "power up moves" much more freely, combat is about those power up moves and edge generation (and denial) makes so much more sense. When those expenditures are rare, you're spending most of the time scrounging for Edge for little (or no) benefit.
-
With my system, you can still do small Edge Boosts constantly. But your gain from turn to turn is limited.
-
As I've pointed out before in my group it was playtested as a limit of 2 per action NOT 2 per round and it makes a big difference... n9t sure why it ended up per round and highly suggest anyone not quite happy about Edge economy try the per action limit and see how it works for you
-
The cap of 2 Edge per round does indeed seem to be a silly/pointless restriction. Certainly an unfun rule. Lots of reasons why it shouldn't exist, and I can't think of any good reason either why it DOES.
My guess would be faux-simplicity. If you can gain edge 5-7 times in a turn with potentially multiple edge each time, then you have to do multiple edge calculations for each and every one of those times in a turn. I'm not saying I agree with it but that's just my guess as to the reason.
-
At worst you get attacked 3x by 15 enemies total, and your DR won't change, so that's quite doable.
-
While there is no doubt that 6e without the 2 edge limit would be better, it still wouldn't resolve the AR/DR problem, it would simply remove the second most likely failure condition of AR/DR edge gain. But it's worth stressing even with a Large chunk of the 6e supporters behind it, I seriously doubt it will ever make its way into RAW, just illustrating that the devs are seriously out of touch with the community. As far as I am concerned without AR/DR being more directly mechanically connected to the outcome of the triggering combat roll, the no armor example will continue to hold true, and thus AR/DR has no meaningful combat value.
-
While there is no doubt that 6e without the 2 edge limit would be better, it still wouldn't resolve the AR/DR problem, it would simply remove the second most likely failure condition of AR/DR edge gain. But it's worth stressing even with a Large chunk of the 6e supporters behind it, I seriously doubt it will ever make its way into RAW, just illustrating that the devs are seriously out of touch with the community. As far as I am concerned without AR/DR being more directly mechanically connected to the outcome of the triggering combat roll, the no armor example will continue to hold true, and thus AR/DR has no meaningful combat value.
Even if they fixed the AR/DR on top of that would it fix it? I don't think so, I think the core edge building/edge move mechanic is a bad design idea. It doesn't matter how well you execute a bad idea. And sadly it is so intertwined into the core system I can't see them ever fixing the system.
-
Love how ya´ll just collectively shifting from bargaining to depression over just a couple of posts ::)
"Fixing Edge Limits wouldn´t help because AR-DR is bad"
"Fixing AR-DR wouldn´t help because Edge is bad."
"You can´t remove Edge from Core. Everything is just so bad" :-[
"They wouldn´t change anything anyways."
Are there even any of these fabled "6th Ed Apologists" left here? :P
-
While there is no doubt that 6e without the 2 edge limit would be better, it still wouldn't resolve the AR/DR problem, it would simply remove the second most likely failure condition of AR/DR edge gain. But it's worth stressing even with a Large chunk of the 6e supporters behind it, I seriously doubt it will ever make its way into RAW, just illustrating that the devs are seriously out of touch with the community. As far as I am concerned without AR/DR being more directly mechanically connected to the outcome of the triggering combat roll, the no armor example will continue to hold true, and thus AR/DR has no meaningful combat value.
Even if they fixed the AR/DR on top of that would it fix it? I don't think so, I think the core edge building/edge move mechanic is a bad design idea. It doesn't matter how well you execute a bad idea. And sadly it is so intertwined into the core system I can't see them ever fixing the system.
Other truly excellent systems have alternative goals for attacks than pure damage that resemble mid-combat resource generation. I don't think the core idea is rotten, but I can't see the current implementation ever being good without a rework so serious that it is borderline a system change rather than errata.
Star Wars Saga Edition's condition track was a great example of this, it was generally slower at killing than pure damage, but dramatically reduces enemy combat abilities after a solid hit, meaning characters who focus less on damage and more on dastardly strikes like Scoundrels, Commando or martial artist spec soldiers, or Counsular or Sentinel style Jedi (or jedi who take some of the more esoteric abilities), still contibute to fights quite significantly. It creates a great axis of balance where gimmicks that CANT have the same damage as more specialized ones (like martial arts, or misfortune scoundrels making sneak attacks with pistols at a very low investment, which really shouldn't compare to big weapons wielded by specialized characters) still have a clear upside (The martial artist deals respectable damage but also will give your opponent down a track 1-3 steps that applies the following penalties to all rolls and defenses, -1, -3, -5, -10, -20, and knocked out, and scoundrels deal low damage but almost always move you down 1 on that track for a mere 1 talent) that make them attractive: damage PCs also knock people around on the track, but its a LOT easier for your Mando or Jedi to thrash that Sith Lord after the scoundrel fired a stun bolt straight at their back, and despite the two 'types' of damage not actually contributing to the same goal directly (As if someone is at -20 on the track and at 1 HP, they are still up, so going down one path doesn't help you necessarily knock your enemy out sooner), it was generally optimal to have some people able to really consistently apply condition track damage even though regular damage damage was superior because really strong enemies were very hard to kill without them eating those penalties. After all, it reduced armor class in that system as well, so as soon as the condition track was lowered your Jedi Blender started to hit WAY more.
One noble-scoundrel hybrid prestige class, the chariltan, was literally created to allow more 'pacifistic' characters to knock people down on that track just by talking in combat (though usually they attacked as well), and it made it a lot easier to create bonus effects that were not just 'pure damage.'
A big problem with SR6 is that gaining an edge is mostly a means to the same end (damage) rather than an alternative goal or method of quantifying more supportive efforts in combat. Which is weird, because something like the condition track and a greater focus on 'control' rather than damage would be a good way to make weapons that traditionaly underperform in SR (like pistols) viable, and would help move mages out of 'big damage' so Samurai could shine more. It would even be a great way to balance soak samurais rather than just remove them (because now, yes, the samurai is soaking tons of damage, but SOME hypothetical control thing is racking up on them due to the AR coming in that makes things harder and harder for them).
If your already in an ok position in a fight, more edge is unlikely to make a huge difference, the way SR fights work mean fights tend to not be close. If your not doing well in a fight, its both unlikely you would even generate edge in the first place, and its unlikely the edge would make a big difference. And, again, its so hard to plan around edge. The way it tracks to old armor options means that AR should really be linked to big guns (so that you don't mysteriously fail to generate edge vs a pistol when you would a rifle) but it WANTS to be higher on lower DV guns to create a give-take system (Again, it would be interesting if pistols were really good at generating edge). If soak was back and edge wasn't about armor but like... how dynamic the gun was (so giant honking weapons tended to give away edge, while slick lower DV ones in their category tended to get them more), and heavy armor tended to not have good DR but instead good soak (with light armor having lower soak but good DR, you could do this with 'ware too, it would be a neat way to make Orthoskin and Dermal Plating different for example), and there were ways to use edge to 'crack' soak tanks (and spirits), I think the system would work better.
As is, it doesn't serve a real purpose in the game. It is such a 'first draft' style mechanic rather than a cohesive system to build combat around, which is a shame because... they built combat around it.
-
As is, it doesn't serve a real purpose in the game. It is such a 'first draft' style mechanic rather than a cohesive system to build combat around, which is a shame because... they built combat around it.
Ah, that reminds me that I still want to finish my Kill Code review on reddit. Next Up: The MA section with loads and loads of new Edge Actions that nobody will every use because they are
just.
so.
bad.
-
Ah, that reminds me that I still want to finish my Kill Code review on reddit. Next Up: The MA section with loads and loads of new Edge Actions that nobody will every use because they are
just.
so.
bad.
They are in a weird catch-22 spot with edge actions.
This system 'wants' edge actions to be a big reward to encourage you to really care about AR and DR. But tools to manipulate AR and DR rapidly get more expensive. This is normal in all RPGs, you WANT continual specialization to have diminishing returns (It is easier, for example, in 5e to get a smartlink than implanted smartlink, implanted smartlink than a reflex recorder, a reflex recorder than optimized cyberlimbs, optimized cyberlimbs than splicing full adept into your build to go burnout, ect), but that only works in a system where you can both be reasonably sure of what each investment gives you, and when going past what you 'need' is useful. In SR5, even though you don't know their EXACT defense values, you generally know by grunt type how good they are likely to get. Like you may have unusually agile Renraku Ninjas for PR3 that ditch the armored jackets for clothing or catsuits or whatever but make up for it a bit with dodge, but you have a general understanding of how tough and hard to hit a PR3 is, so you can pretty safely evaluate guns and your attack pool in relation to those targets. This, contrary to what people sometimes think, encourages people optimizing PCs to NOT go all in on something. But the second aspect of 'safe' investment, that going past what you need still has value, protects you if you decide to make the sub-optimal choice to push to 22 automatics: You know it helps you in those weird edge cases, it gives you a bit more consistency to your 1 hit kill rate, and it lets you make split attacks vs chumps. Its still way better to hit the breakpoint where you 1 hit kill most of the time and then stop, but your not getting nothing. Even being under by 'less' still helps you, even though, again, its way better to in SR5 secure a 90% kill rate on attacks
But because AR and DR violate both these concepts: You can't tell a target's AR and DR at ALL based on their PR type past a certain point, and you get NOTHING from blowing past or going under by less unless you blow past by a full 4 or go under by less than 4 when you would have, that you no longer can predict anything or consistently get edge from attacks.
This means, despite the game putting so much focus on edge generation, nothing important can be gated behind it. SR6 would probably be better if the basic attack roll was really weak but edge actions did really powerful stuff at 1-2 edge, so that generating edge to do your special attacks was really important to winning fights, but they actually went the opposite direction and made edge less important. Again, there are ways to fix it so that edge actually works as a central combat resolution mechanic and isn't just... kinda there... but its way more substantial than errata.
I think that is way more relevant than 'armor does nothing' (again, based on my evaluations it is kinda really important to listen to your grandma and put on your armored jacket to avoid catching cold). The deeper problem is the system is so integral to fights yet it isn't actually accomplishing anything interesting to alter behavior in a substantial way, or to serve as a thing to think about, or enabling some other interesting system. Yes, wearing your armored jacket is important, but beyond that you legitimately shouldn't care, and because you shouldn't care suddenly the main thing trying to prevent SR combat from becoming a slugfest where you just huck pools at each other over and over again doesn't work and its just a knock down brawl. And because the design space offered by dicepool penalties is gone (not because they were too complicated, but because people got confused by the really bad choice to let them span some odd 20 pages jumping around in theme) you lose a lot of things that made combat a bit more nuanced, like old multi-attack (New multi-attack is kinda... way too good as many have pointed out), shooting through sensors, through barriers, around cover, using a sub-optimal fire mode for your RC, with a called shot... don't mean as much anymore. Likewise, setting up things like smoke, covering fire, obstacles, knockdowns, debuff magic, ect all used to be really useful because the effect of popping thermal smoke as your action while you had an ultrasound sensor mask was both A: Cool as hell as you ran around killing people with your Ghost in a Shell Mask, and B: Super strong in allowing you to avoid too much retaliatory fire as a non-soak tank because it created a zone you probably were going to be suppressed in but which didn't result in as many direct attacks.
If the concern was simplifying and better codifying things for newbies, they should have cut a ton of the worthless fluff about modifiers and centralized them. They also shoulda done stuff like codify smoke grenades and the like better, because most of the issue was wishy washy writing. If they wanted to move in a new direction where you never could feel safe from damage, and instead being 'tough' or 'deadly' meant generating a new resource, that generation should have been way less arbitrary and more meaningful so that building around it made sense.
I think the failure to do either of these things, to have a real goal at all, is a way more fundamental problem than 'does the system accomplish what it is trying to do?' Because you can fix AR and DR pretty easily if its just undertuned or overtuned or whatever. But if a system isn't trying to do anything meaningful in the first place then you have a deeper, harder to solve problem that almost scuttles the edition before it starts because the fixes require you to change so much about the core rules to find any sort of meaning or value in something that never attempted to have meaning or value in the first place.
-
While there is no doubt that 6e without the 2 edge limit would be better, it still wouldn't resolve the AR/DR problem, it would simply remove the second most likely failure condition of AR/DR edge gain. But it's worth stressing even with a Large chunk of the 6e supporters behind it, I seriously doubt it will ever make its way into RAW, just illustrating that the devs are seriously out of touch with the community. As far as I am concerned without AR/DR being more directly mechanically connected to the outcome of the triggering combat roll, the no armor example will continue to hold true, and thus AR/DR has no meaningful combat value.
Even if they fixed the AR/DR on top of that would it fix it? I don't think so, I think the core edge building/edge move mechanic is a bad design idea. It doesn't matter how well you execute a bad idea. And sadly it is so intertwined into the core system I can't see them ever fixing the system.
Other truly excellent systems have alternative goals for attacks than pure damage that resemble mid-combat resource generation. I don't think the core idea is rotten, but I can't see the current implementation ever being good without a rework so serious that it is borderline a system change rather than errata.
I've seen deck building systems in other RPGs which I actually liked quite a bit. The difference with those systems is either the deck building was the system, or it was attached to a fast and simple resolution system, usually far more narrative than SR as well. Which is why I say it was bad design here. The core SR mechanic is too robust and complex to add a deck building mini game onto as part of its resolution system. It doesn't matter how well it is executed it will always be jamming the gears instead of oiling them.
-
No one has ever called me a 6e apologist. :o
That said 6e could be fixed. I don't think it will ever happen, but it's certainly possible. You would end up re-writing a decent chunk of the core. The whole edge system isn't a horrible idea, it's execution is just bad. But as Dez points out dramatic resource generation is a good idea and can work very well, FFG, Scion 2, all include very good examples, I wouldn't have picked Saga edition, but whatever. It just happens that 6e failed to build and integrate it, and most of the new stuff is really just making the problem worse.
-
No one has ever called me a 6e apologist. :o
That said 6e could be fixed. I don't think it will ever happen, but it's certainly possible. You would end up re-writing a decent chunk of the core. The whole edge system isn't a horrible idea, it's execution is just bad. But as Dez points out dramatic resource generation is a good idea and can work very well, FFG, Scion 2, all include very good examples, I wouldn't have picked Saga edition, but whatever. It just happens that 6e failed to build and integrate it, and most of the new stuff is really just making the problem worse.
Yeah, I guess that makes you (among others, including myself ;)) the closest to an "apologist" on that matter. Because I too think that the whole premise of the Edge System can theoretically be fixed or at least could have worked out if executed right:
What could have worked: A small, but meaningfull set of easy-to-remember Edge Boosts, maybe along with some non-essential(!) Special Moves.
What we got: Almost every tactical combat choice, from Called Shots to Supressing Fire gets turned into an overprized Edge Action, most of of which are obvious mechanical traps.
What could have worked: Clear guidelines on what kind of bonuses/penalties certain perks or circumstances may grant, leading to a lean and clean system that doesn´t get more and more warped and bloated with every new supplement.
What we got: To this day, there are: Effects that grant Edge to either side, Effects that grant Edge to either side but for this test only, Effects that deny Edge gain to either side, Effects that deny Edge use to either side, Effects that deny Edge use and Edge gain to either side, Effects that make Edge-boosts cheaper, Effects that limit the amount of Edge you can earn or use in a certain timeframe, Effects that add to or subtract from AR or DR, the good old dice pool bonus/penalty and lots of miscellaneous stuff like Wild Dice, Glitch shenanigans or adding/subtracting Minor Actions. Often, it´s bundles of multiple effects, all of which are applied without any rhyme or reason, leading to some almost surreally bad interactions. Like imaging scopes and the cover mechanic :P
What could have worked: Literally anything else than straight up limiting the amount of Edge that can be earned per combat turn. Including no limitations at all.
What we got: 2 Edge per round and a haphazard attempt to fix this drek with Tacnets instead of just admitting that it´s a bad idea and updating the CRB.
What could have worked: Armor that just helps against damage? :o TBvfH, I don´t even think that the AR/DR system would have been such a big problem if it weren´t for all the other stupid shit regarding Edge....
What we got: A way too underdeveloped AR/DR system that grants a max. of 1 Edge to either side IF none of the other braindead Edge Limitations apply. For further reference, see my current signature...
-
What could have worked: A small, but meaningfull set of easy-to-remember Edge Boosts, maybe along with some non-essential(!) Special Moves.
What we got: Almost every tactical combat choice, from Called Shots to Supressing Fire gets turned into an overprized Edge Action, most of of which are obvious mechanical traps.
I find you mainly remember the boosts that play with the dicepools, ya know rerolls and stuff. The rest you can look up if you want, but they are circumstantial. It creates a nice web of complexity. As for traps, I assume people mean stuff like Blinding Strike, which again I see as circumstantial. The circumstances being rather narrow for having a 4-edge action, which is my personal problem with it.
What could have worked: Clear guidelines on what kind of bonuses/penalties certain perks or circumstances may grant, leading to a lean and clean system that doesn´t get more and more warped and bloated with every new supplement.
What we got: To this day, there are: Effects that grant Edge to either side, Effects that grant Edge to either side but for this test only, Effects that deny Edge gain to either side, Effects that deny Edge use to either side, Effects that deny Edge use and Edge gain to either side, Effects that make Edge-boosts cheaper, Effects that limit the amount of Edge you can earn or use in a certain timeframe, Effects that add to or subtract from AR or DR, the good old dice pool bonus/penalty and lots of miscellaneous stuff like Wild Dice, Glitch shenanigans or adding/subtracting Minor Actions. Often, it´s bundles of multiple effects, all of which are applied without any rhyme or reason, leading to some almost surreally bad interactions. Like imaging scopes and the cover mechanic :P
Guidlines is what we got, lean and clean is what we lack. But that's been true for several editions as far as I'm concerned.
What could have worked: Literally anything else than straight up limiting the amount of Edge that can be earned per combat turn. Including no limitations at all.
What we got: 2 Edge per round and a haphazard attempt to fix this drek with Tacnets instead of just admitting that it´s a bad idea and updating the CRB.
So on one hand this is frustrating because if I do 6 attacks in round (anticipate) and each qualufies for 1 edge gained (or even 2 or 3) I only get 2 for the round. And what if I'm then attacked multiple times? Earlier I compared this to D&D advantage and how cannot stack advantage. It's not a perfect 1-1 comparison though, you would get advantage on all 6 attacks for example. But you can't bank advantage. Despite people's insistence on valuing edge based on what you can do with 1 point (or is it the 3 point for 1 hit?) edge is more valuable in large numbers regardless of what boost you use it on (rerolling 4 of your enemies hits on a single roll for example is better than doing 1 four times). Edge really just reprisents things going your way. Is that a good mechanic? Taste is pretty important here, I will say it would not be my first choice but I don't hate it.
The other concern is of more interest I think because the 2 edge limit incentivizes players to build to that limit and no further. There is no point in wearing cool armor if you get 2 edge from somewhere else. Just slap on enough that your foes don't get any and call it a day. I don't have any dissenting perspective here except to say, yeh, do that. The game is telling you you don't need DR beyond a certain point, so don't bother. But what is that point...?
What could have worked: Armor that just helps against damage? :o TBvfH, I don´t even think that the AR/DR system would have been such a big problem if it weren´t for all the other stupid shit regarding Edge....
What we got: A way too underdeveloped AR/DR system that grants a max. of 1 Edge to either side IF none of the other braindead Edge Limitations apply. For further reference, see my current signature...
AC doesn't reduce damage. Used by the most recognizable RPG in the world. Just sayin.
Anyway, even if everything above were to your liking, no AR/DR would be just as unpredictable and just as often a non-effect as it is now.
Dezmont is right that optimizing these stats is nigh impossible. The game tells you not to use too much armor but not how much is too much.
It has been said that dicepools are different because you know what the stats of a PR3 grunt are. Which grunt is that? An Ancients Racer (FS 145), or a Gunner (FS 145), or maybe a Lone Star Veteran (FS 136) or the humble Patrolman (CRB 206)? These guys have very different dicepools for attack and defense. They also have very different gear. There is little to no consistency, and those numbers can change based on metatype and grunt group rules. SR doesn't have a CR system. Optimizing means you have to make some assumptions, hopefully not arbitrary ones. Dicepools have a more limited range than AR/DR but that doesn't mean your not making assumptions about opposition. Because the only hard data you have is pretty eclectic (or in the case of AR/DR vast).
-
Yeah, I guess that makes you (among others, including myself ;)) the closest to an "apologist" on that matter. Because I too think that the whole premise of the Edge System can theoretically be fixed or at least could have worked out if executed right:p
Oh, I'm in this camp too. I don't mind the idea of metacurrencies in RPGs and was quite excited by the early previews of 6e as I felt the idea held promise. I acknowledge that it can feel a little strange juxtaposed to the quite closely modelled simulationist approach of Shadowrun - it risks feeling like you have two intermeshed systems running at different levels of abstraction. But I don't think that's unsolvable, although I don't think 6e comes close to solving it either.
I don't mind the concept of moving some modifier calculations into a pre-compute-at-chargen kind of deal either (ie AR and DR), as opposed to a per-action calculation. Again, though, as implemented in 6e I find it sits uneasily alongside the more detailed level of most of the rest of the system, but perhaps there was a design that could make it work.
Although I think the AR/DR design is tougher to navigate than Edge. 1e-5e gave players a list of situational modifiers, and then ways to cancel those modifiers out if they were smart enough to foresee the situation and pick the matching gear or abilities - whether it was bringing low-light goggles to a nighttime gun-fight or APDS ammo for the armoured goons. The core list of modifiers isn't too bad, but once you start ladling on the anti-modifiers it gets pretty complicated, partly because there's a lot of them but also because they're scattered around multiple places in multiple books.
In collapsing that to AR/DR and the GM fiat call of "you earn 1 Edge for blah", 6e reduces players' ability to demonstrate skilful foresight; +2 AR is +2 AR, regardless of where it came from. The game is simpler, but it has lost a dimension that a lot of people valued. I don't know how you can square that circle.
-
...So on one hand this is frustrating because if I do 6 attacks in round (anticipate) and each qualufies for 1 edge gained (or even 2 or 3) I only get 2 for the round. And what if I'm then attacked multiple times? Earlier I compared this to D&D advantage and how cannot stack advantage...
This is an arcane distinction, and may raise a point to dislike that you hadn't even realized you disliked, but:
You're not doing 6 attacks in one round unless you somehow have 6 major actions. If you use Anticipate, you're necessarily using the Multiple Attacks minor action and THAT is allowing you to spread ONE attack across multiple targets. So if you Anticipate on 6 targets, it's still one attack and you need only compare AR to DR on one target (you use the highest DR) and you can only gain edge from AR once, despite having 6 targets.
So, yes, this means the DR of the other 5 targets WAS actually meaningless. (One of the niche times where DR can be meaningless)
OTOH: Being able to "hide behind" someone else's DR actually provides a bit of a MMORPG tanking mechanic without trying to implement a "taunt" that forces an opponent to attack you.
-
That means if I do Anticipate against some goons and maybe also their boss, the goons get tougher depending on whether or not I attack the boss too? You don’t think that’s a little bit weird?
-
That means if I do Anticipate against some goons and maybe also their boss, the goons get tougher depending on whether or not I attack the boss too? You don’t think that’s a little bit weird?
Well, they're not getting any tougher so the question is a non sequitur. Even if you would have gained Edge vs a mook's DR, it's not like you could have gained 6 Edge under any circumstances anyway.
So, no. Actually I don't think it's weird. If you're shooting at the boss (presumably the guy with a higher DR) and his mooks, "clearly" your primary focus is on the boss anyway. Hitting any mooks collaterally is just frosting on the cake. Since you're being hard capped at 2 edge anyway, it actually makes perfect sense this way.
-
So, no. Actually I don't think it's weird. If you're shooting at the boss (presumably the guy with a higher DR) and his mooks, "clearly" your primary focus is on the boss anyway. Hitting any mooks collaterally is just frosting on the cake. Since you're being hard capped at 2 edge anyway, it actually makes perfect sense this way.
Maybe your focus is downing the mooks so you can concentrate on the boss next turn, and any damage you can to the boss on the way is the icing. Who can tell?
Anyway, suppose this flips you from earning Edge (vs the goons) to conceding Edge (vs the boss.) You've previously argued that's a big deal, right? That it's worth optimising AR&DR because conceding Edge is bad. But now you think it doesn't matter?
-
So, no. Actually I don't think it's weird. If you're shooting at the boss (presumably the guy with a higher DR) and his mooks, "clearly" your primary focus is on the boss anyway. Hitting any mooks collaterally is just frosting on the cake. Since you're being hard capped at 2 edge anyway, it actually makes perfect sense this way.
Maybe your focus is downing the mooks so you can concentrate on the boss next turn, and any damage you can to the boss on the way is the icing. Who can tell?
Anyway, suppose this flips you from earning Edge (vs the goons) to conceding Edge (vs the boss.) You've previously argued that's a big deal, right? That it's worth optimising AR&DR because conceding Edge is bad. But now you think it doesn't matter?
I can't think of a plausible scenario where someone optimizing for AR is losing edge to DR.
But, in such a hypothetical situation, then you're doing something decidedly non-optimal in trying to shoot the so-much-easier-to-kill mooks while "focusing" on that insane DR tank. Just shoot the mooks first, THEN go for the boss. Since you're optimizing and all. In such a case it sounds like you want to bank up some Edge anyway, so may as well milk the mooks for the Edge before turning on their boss.
As for "it doesn't matter that you only compare AR to DR once per attack"? Yes. So long as there's an edge gain cap in place, it truly literally doesn't matter that you're not gaining edge on mopping up a horde of low DR mooks. Even if you did compare AR to DR each time, you're still not getting that edge. So why waste that time.
-
I can't think of a plausible scenario where someone optimizing for AR is losing edge to DR.
Only because of the busted ass scope plus aim. DR stacks significantly higher otherwise.
-
I can't think of a plausible scenario where someone optimizing for AR is losing edge to DR.
Only because of the busted ass scope plus aim. DR stacks significantly higher otherwise.
Even without a scope. In fact, I'd go so far as to say a scope is probably pointless when you're already AR twinking.
DRs are going to cap out around 19 or so. Yeah it's possible for a DR optimized PC to push beyond that, but NPCs basically won't be. All you need to prevent 19 DR from gaining edge on you is AR16. You can hit that lots of ways.
-
So, yes, this means the DR of the other 5 targets WAS actually meaningless. (One of the niche times where DR can be meaningless)
So long as there's an edge gain cap in place, it truly literally doesn't matter that you're not gaining edge on mopping up a horde of low DR mooks. Even if you did compare AR to DR each time, you're still not getting that edge. So why waste that time.
Seems to me like mopping up a horde of mooks isn't a "niche time", but actually a pretty common scenario where DR is meaningless.
-
Ok, specifically in the realm of PC vs. standard NPC, I agree. If memory serves not even the PR 10 guys had a DR over 11, which is silly, but most of those templates are ludicrous to begin with in terms of lazy (just slapping a ton of karma on them) and poorly (bad mechanic selections) designed.
-
So, yes, this means the DR of the other 5 targets WAS actually meaningless. (One of the niche times where DR can be meaningless)
OTOH: Being able to "hide behind" someone else's DR actually provides a bit of a MMORPG tanking mechanic without trying to implement a "taunt" that forces an opponent to attack you.
I think your should need to check the definition of Niche SSDR. A more accurate assessment goes yet another example of the over whelming common circumstance where AR/DR do nothing.
The phrase DR tank is frankly ludicrously amusing concept.
DR has Nothing in Common with AC. Zero. Zilch. Nada. DR will never prevent any damage, ever. In the extremely unlikely even that your GM is kind enough to let you gain a point of edge and then not cancel your spending of it that edge might, possibly, prevent damage, but it still won't be the DR doing it. If DR did prevent damage then it would actually be useful and there would be no AR/DR problem.
-
The phrase DR tank is frankly ludicrously amusing concept.
Yeah doing more math on it, it really is kinda a hoot. The more I look into it the more bad of an idea it is to do anything but the bare minimum (I can't stress enough I do not endorse the 'swimsuit runner' plan, armored jackets do make a meaningful difference!) is a bad idea. Just get as good a initiative upgrade you can and cheese out full defense, which as a bonus works surprisingly well even on extremely high PR goons, while DR maximization basically stops working at all really early. It is comical how bad an investment DR is for not taking damage compared to just boosting athletics or giving yourself extra minor actions so you can always full defense.
DR has Nothing in Common with AC. Zero. Zilch. Nada. DR will never prevent any damage, ever. In the extremely unlikely even that your GM is kind enough to let you gain a point of edge and then not cancel your spending of it that edge might, possibly, prevent damage, but it still won't be the DR doing it. If DR did prevent damage then it would actually be useful and there would be no AR/DR problem.
That is a similarity to AC, in that it helps reduce incoming hit rate.
It just is AC is a meaningful 5% reduction in hit rate, and thus incoming damage on you, for each point of it, while AR and DR takes the non-intuitive sliding scale aspect of opposed pool rolls (Which have many advantages, but a super clear exact understandings of your probabilities for each point of investment without knowing the context of the roll isn't one of them) but turns it up to 11 by making it not even resemble a steady drop in expected gains but instead fly about all over the place in value.
AC I know is a 5% reduction in hit rate. Period. Boom. Done. 5% reduced expected average incoming damage, we are all square h- well actually the fact that 5% of damage is going to be crits changes that and variable crit thresholds and damage multipliers changes that but its easily 'good enough.'
I know a defense dice is anywhere from like 2% to 12% lower a hit rate, with the number trending lower the more soak dice I have. I know that (At least in 5e) that due to how the skill dice scale, I can expect the average professional fighter to roll around 8 dice with more elite enemies using more and less elite enemies using less, and with enemies getting more unpredictable in behavior and capabilities as they go up. That is still a lot of uncertainty, but it is 'predictable' uncertainty. I don't know how I stack up to a given random prime runner but, knowing about what prime runners I might expect to face lets me have a good aproximation, and even if I am 'wrong' my dice investments still have value.
AR and DR is the worst kind of unpredictability because its maximum uncertainty: You don't have real relationships between AR and DR and pools on NPCs, AR and damage, a concrete way to evaluate DR or AR on NPCs based on grunt rating (it does generally go up but it gets really unpredictable REALLY fast), and the outcome of investments requires you to make the 'perfect' chocie to matter, so guessing wrong either means ALL your investments were worthless, or whatever 'extra' investments were worthless.
The payoff for 'correctly' managing defense and soak is you don't take damage, which is critical in SR as fights tend to be about objectives rather than survival or grinder combat in 5e, so taking a chunk of damage significantly hurts your odds (As it has serious consequences and tends to either floor you or put you close due to how soak worked). With edge, you can guarentee 0 DV attacks which is critical when getting proned by a big hit (Even if you aren't KO'd) means you can't do something critical like stop a runner or prevent someone from hitting the shutter close button on the building your in or whatever.
In SR6, correctly managing AR and DR gives you or denies the enemy one edge, which is significantly weaker than in SR5. Your really pushing the results by about 2 dice, which can matter but it doesn't matter a lot, it will almost never make or break a fight when SR6 fights are also longer which makes even slight combat advantages more valuable and you don't need to push your advantage as high as you do in SR5, or worse, SR4, where fights are over almost instantly.
So the system is less understandable and coherent, says less about the world because it doesn't track to anything, and is lower stakes in terms of the payoff but higher stakes in the sense that even slight mistakes significantly reduce the meager reward of it at LEAST. I know you can't linearlly compare systems like this directly but I think its fair to say that AR/DR is 'worse' than soak in almost every way save for exactly one thing: Attacks that hit almost always deal damage but don't one hit down, allowing SR to emulate a dungeon crawl where you grind resources down which... I don't think is what SR should be trying to be, its a heist game at its heart, but eh, different strokes, I wouldn't kick a spinoff edition focused more on capturing the crowd brought in by SRR looking for more grid based cyberpunk D&D if it came up with cool systems and encouraged awesome fight designs like SRR (sometimes) did and took it as an excuse to re-balance all the roles along a combat axis. Call it Shadowrun: Tacitcal Ops or something. Heck, I basically tried to do a mega-paired down more grid focused SR system for a 'Urban Brawl' pseudo-boardgame hack. SR in part biases towards heisting because it works so well as theater of the mind, so a more fighty resource management mercenary focused variant wouldn't be unwelcome.
The issue is that plenty of games arrive at this equilibrium without almost completely gutting the combat mechanics of the system and looping almost everything into either being a AR/DR modification, or a new way to spend edge that isn't worth it because now you actually DO need to race to do damage and don't have time for interesting thematic combat choices.
-
There is no parallel Dez, as long as 6e edge has negation you can't set a base value to edge. B/C You just can't predict what 1 edge point will translate too; the value of 1 edge is just too variable (1/3 of another success given a failure, 2/3 of -1 for an opponent, increased the cost of their edge use). Further with AR/DR there are 2-3 possible points of failure before even reaching the 4 swing mechanic. Of those points of failure the 2 edge limit is extremely likely to occur, Ironically it making building AR/DR actually self defeating, as if you actually get a point you greatly reduce (50%) further chance of getting another point from it. AC is nothing like that. DnD hit curve works well, the math is solid. 6e SR math is a mess and its all over the place.
-
There is no parallel Dez, as long as 6e edge has negation you can't set a base value to edge. B/C You just can't predict what 1 edge point will translate too; the value of 1 edge is just too variable (1/3 of another success given a failure, 2/3 of -1 for an opponent, increased the cost of their edge use). Further with AR/DR there are 2-3 possible points of failure before even reaching the 4 swing mechanic.
I've said this before, I know, but I think the key mistake wasn't adding an advantage/disadvantage style mechanic to 6e. It was merging it with the 5e the-chips-are-down version of Edge, and then facing the insurmountable numerical difficulty of putting those two very different power levels on an even footing. That in turn necessities squashing AR/DR's wide input range down to a small output range, which in turn robs it of impact because it means you're frequently going to be in situations where you didn't hit a breakpoint so it feels like your gear did nothing.
Were I still trying to houserule 6e into a state I wanted to play, I'd try and unpick them: first put oldEdge back to 5e's spec. A small pool, used on demand, with a short menu of associated actions that are comparatively powerful. Maybe restrict this to become PC-only. Then nuEdge remains calculated from AR/DR. Get rid of the "only does something on +/- 4" option; instead, take AR minus DR directly. This feeds solely into the roll it was calculated from, maybe as simply as being +/- dice on that roll.
With DR factored in this way, I'd also try and pursue one my personal Shadowrun houserule white whales, which is getting combat down to two rolls instead of three. I haven't got this worked out but I feel like there's probably a mechanic there. If DR affects the attacker's role to an extent that the table feels like body/armour has been taken into account, you can drop the soak roll and just roll to defence. Or go the other way: calculate DR from Reaction/Intuition, use AR/DR to replace the defence roll [1], and only roll to soak. The latter approach breaks all the ways gun mods work though, so is probably less preferable.
[1] Which has never made a great deal of sense to me anyway. It's not like anyone in SR is moving fast enough to dodge bullets. 1e-3e didn't really have defence roll, just the possibility of a clean miss if the defender's combat pool dice alone got more hits than the attacker. Which is an overly convoluted mechanic, but there's an elegance to the idea, I think, especially as combat pool was a finite resource across the whole turn that the player had to manage.
-
There is no parallel Dez, as long as 6e edge has negation you can't set a base value to edge. B/C You just can't predict what 1 edge point will translate too; the value of 1 edge is just too variable (1/3 of another success given a failure, 2/3 of -1 for an opponent, increased the cost of their edge use). Further with AR/DR there are 2-3 possible points of failure before even reaching the 4 swing mechanic.
I've said this before, I know, but I think the key mistake wasn't adding an advantage/disadvantage style mechanic to 6e. It was merging it with the 5e the-chips-are-down version of Edge, and then facing the insurmountable numerical difficulty of putting those two very different power levels on an even footing. That in turn necessities squashing AR/DR's wide input range down to a small output range, which in turn robs it of impact because it means you're frequently going to be in situations where you didn't hit a breakpoint so it feels like your gear did nothing.
Were I still trying to houserule 6e into a state I wanted to play, I'd try and unpick them: first put oldEdge back to 5e's spec. A small pool, used on demand, with a short menu of associated actions that are comparatively powerful. Maybe restrict this to become PC-only. Then nuEdge remains calculated from AR/DR. Get rid of the "only does something on +/- 4" option; instead, take AR minus DR directly. This feeds solely into the roll it was calculated from, maybe as simply as being +/- dice on that roll.
With DR factored in this way, I'd also try and pursue one my personal Shadowrun houserule white whales, which is getting combat down to two rolls instead of three. I haven't got this worked out but I feel like there's probably a mechanic there. If DR affects the attacker's role to an extent that the table feels like body/armour has been taken into account, you can drop the soak roll and just roll to defence. Or go the other way: calculate DR from Reaction/Intuition, use AR/DR to replace the defence roll [1], and only roll to soak. The latter approach breaks all the ways gun mods work though, so is probably less preferable.
[1] Which has never made a great deal of sense to me anyway. It's not like anyone in SR is moving fast enough to dodge bullets. 1e-3e didn't really have defence roll, just the possibility of a clean miss if the defender's combat pool dice alone got more hits than the attacker. Which is an overly convoluted mechanic, but there's an elegance to the idea, I think, especially as combat pool was a finite resource across the whole turn that the player had to manage.
Again it's interesting that you say that, because the first version of the Advantage system was very much like that when I pitched it. Wasn't until after the first round of playtest that it got modified and merged with Edge.
-
Again it's interesting that you say that, because the first version of the Advantage system was very much like that when I pitched it. Wasn't until after the first round of playtest that it got modified and merged with Edge.
Ah, interesting! I thought I recalled one of the pre-release podcasts mentioning that the merger happened during development, maybe even quite late, but I wasn’t totally sure I was remembering correctly.
I suspect you might not be able to say, but in case you can - what sort of ideas did you have for how to apply advantage/disadvantage in SR? I’ve pondered a few, from a +/- dice pool (simple, maybe a little dull) to changing the target number to 4 or 6 (perhaps controversial, although as someone who played a lot of 2e it has a retro appeal to me.) From a pure game design perspective I’d be fascinated to hear more.
-
Again it's interesting that you say that, because the first version of the Advantage system was very much like that when I pitched it. Wasn't until after the first round of playtest that it got modified and merged with Edge.
Ah, interesting! I thought I recalled one of the pre-release podcasts mentioning that the merger happened during development, maybe even quite late, but I wasn’t totally sure I was remembering correctly.
I suspect you might not be able to say, but in case you can - what sort of ideas did you have for how to apply advantage/disadvantage in SR? I’ve pondered a few, from a +/- dice pool (simple, maybe a little dull) to changing the target number to 4 or 6 (perhaps controversial, although as someone who played a lot of 2e it has a retro appeal to me.) From a pure game design perspective I’d be fascinated to hear more.
Honestly that was far enough back that I would have to dig up some old documents to say for sure, but the general concept was that if had the advantage (based on a variable scale not a set threshold ... i think it was every 2 or 3 point of advantage was a chip) it opened up options of extra manuevers (like spend 4 chips to use anticipation), giving bonuses to allies (spend 2 chips ro give an ally +1), and added effects (spend 5 chips to alter the scene, like adding a makeshift zip line at the window fire escape to enable a hasty extraction)
The overall thought was that if you were in a situation where you had that kind of advantage then just gaining bonus dice to your own stuff was inconsequential but would make sense if you could improve the tactical advantage of your team or end the fight even quicker through special effects and maneuvers.
-
I’d agree an advantage/disadvantage system equivalent would have been better.