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.
