Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Rules and such => Topic started by: topcat on <10-07-19/1517:34>
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Wondering if I'm just being crazy here or if it's a real issue. I started off very much against it and looking for options to bring it back in line with prior SR editions. Now I'm waffling.
SR6 embraced D&D's armor class mechanics with the move to defense rating. I really like systems that separate the difficulty to hit someone and that someone's ability to soak damage. SR6 adds in a weak soak roll to take the edge off damage (pun intended), but it's still fundamentally closer to D&D than not.
D&D's hit points adjust significantly over time, while SR6's damage boxes do not. That feels like a meaningful difference and something that hurts the operation of the ARvsDR mechanics compared to D&D. Or maybe it's just that SR is deadlier.
Anyone else have thoughts on this?
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There's a lot of cognitive dissonance about armor not providing soak. It can be a daunting leap to make, given how big a change it was from 5e.
In my experience in actually playing 6we, I don't get the feeling that armor is doing nothing to help. Yeah, it's not making you bulletproof like it did before, but neither does it feel like you'd be just as well off in a speedo/bikini.
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I never felt like characters were bulletproof in SR5, though. People keep mentioning 40+ armor ratings, but that's needed to have a 50/50 shot at soaking 13DV v-1, which was pretty easy to rack up in SR5. The tank in my game was surprised at just how untanky he was the first time a CMDT unloaded on him with flechettes. It was a far cry from earlier editions, especially when the attacker throws Edge in the mix.
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it's a difference in design perspective. in previous editions, you could look at building a character with a body of 2 or 3 and compensate with armor to soak damage. this edition I'd go with body of at least 4 possibly 5 depending on how much edge I have on defensive rolls.
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13P/-1 vs 40 armor indeed still hurts. Vs 20 soak, which is already a decent pool for many, it would obliterate. I really like that that part of the system is now out, less worry about '1 bad roll or 1 not-super-optimized player and bam down you go'. So to be honest, I very much like the new system. I understand there's people who find AR-vs-DR annoying, and know someone who's been working out a very detailed alternative, but I like the new system and its consequences myself.
Then again, I'm a 6w apologist. ::)
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There are at least 5 scenarios in 6e where armor does literally nothing, only one of which is "the big attack number". In 5e there are 3 scenarios where armor does literally nothing, and they're all just variants of "the big attack number". Take that how you will.
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https://www.dictionary.com/browse/literally?s=t
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Yes, I believe I am using the correct definition of "literally", as there are a number of scenarios where armor will neither generate you edge nor deny your attacker edge.
And armor? Doesn't do anything you say? Of course it does! A simple armored vest somehow gives its armor benefit (soak in 5e, DR in 6we) no matter if you're being shot in the face, in the crotch, anywhere at all! Doesn't matter that a vest only covers your torso!
Unless you're going up against damage so high no armor available to you could've made a difference. Or if your shooter uses an imaging scope, then you can't get edge from your armor period.Or on the more positive side, maybe your Body is so high you would've gotten the edge anyways. Or maybe you've already gotten 2 edge earlier that round so you can't gain any edge from anything. In that latter case you might "but surely you denied the shooter some edge by wearing armor". Maybe. Maybe your high Body alone was enough to deny him that edge, or he's already gotten 2 edge earlier in the round and can't get edge from anything. Look at that, 5 scenarios where armor does literally nothing.
Meanwhile in 5e there are 3 scenarios in which armor does literally nothing and they're all "you were fucked to begin with":
- the DV is so high that the additional soak dice from the armor, even before AP, cannot possibly prevent you from getting instagibbed (example: while setting up a 150P explosion in the basement of a building to destroy it, you cross the wrong wires and blow yourself up)
- the DV is so high that the additional soak dice from the armor, after AP, cannot possibly prevent you from getting instagibbed (example: APDS Bulls-eye Burst from a Barret Model 122 on a heavily armored streetsam)
- the AP is so high that your armor provides no additional soak dice (example: APDS Bulls-eye Burst from a Barret Model 122 on anyone else)
How is it that no matter how long these conversations go on, we always come back to "armor does nothing in 6e"?
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Ghost Rigger you appear to be giving me rent-free living space in your head. Too bad I can't physically live there and save a whole bunch of money.
Anyway, on your Five Scenarios where armor "literally" does nothing:
1) DV so high no armor in existence could have helped: Ok, not sure if DV was a typo for AR or a synonym for damage.. but either way: No Drek, Sherlock. If you're on the receiving end of an attack that enters "irresistible force" territory, then obviously armor doesn't help. Nor should it; can we agree on that?
2) Imaging Scope: The Scope may be preventing you from gaining edge, but A) you're forcing him to spend an aim action for no other benefit in order to get that effect and B) your armor is still able to DENY your attacker edge. That's still 2 more things than "literally nothing".
3) Attack was so wimpy your raw Body stat generated Edge on its own: sounds like the kind of situation where, if you have armor on in addition to the attack being pitifully weak to begin with, counts as a factor in your favor for the circumstantial Edge point?
4) Edge gain cap already hit: True, that sucks, but there's no cap on Edge gain denial.
5) Attacker's edge gain cap already hit: The inverse of 4) applies here. Just because your attacker can't gain edge doesn't mean that you can't. Unless of course...
6) The implicit argument of maybe 4) and 5) are both in effect: Ok, sure, this is a corner case where armor is potentially mechanically ineffective. To that I have three things to say A) It's a corner case; it won't happen very often. Yes, really. You really shouldn't be making all THAT many attacks per round (usually) nor should you usually be faced with all that many attacks per round (grunt group rules are intended to be used). B) You can always house rule the edge gain to "other than per round". Yeah yeah I'll see your "But but Oberoni Fallacy!" comment and raise you with "Frag Oberoni. I don't care." Furthermore, there's C) Who knows what Errata will come to address the edge gain cap problems. Maybe you, rightly enough, don't care yourself about B) and/or C). And that's fair. Even so, A) should still be enough.
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I like '2 edge max per action' + '2 edge max per turn (edge immediately spent or lost on action that gained it doesn't count)', or something similar, but not sure if I think it's needed by errata. Just 'these restrictions can be modified by GMs to fit a more flashy or gritty gamestyle' would already suffice for me. But we'll see.
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Yes, I believe I am using the correct definition of "literally", as there are a number of scenarios where armor will neither generate you edge nor deny your attacker edge.
This.
At this point I have 10 hours of GMing and 4 hours of playing SR6. Not a huge sum, but I also consider myself to be great at game mechanics. In that sense I find the correlation between looking at the rules and knowing what is going to happen with them to be akin to saying "One does not have to be standing in the rain to know that if they were to do so they would become wet.".
From my personal experience running and playing, primarily with min/maxers:
- On the characters with Body 5 (no one built less) with little to no other DR modifiers, body armor stayed very relevant in general.
- On the characters with Body 8+ and/or Body 5 with DR modifiers, body armor was sometimes relevant and sometimes not.
- On the trolls with Body 9 and DR modifiers, body armor almost never mattered.
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Ghost Rigger you appear to be giving me rent-free living space in your head. Too bad I can't physically live there and save a whole bunch of money.
Who are you?
- On the characters with Body 5 (no one built less) with little to no other DR modifiers, body armor stayed very relevant in general.
My, my, I wonder why no one built with less than Body 5.....
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2) Imaging Scope: The Scope may be preventing you from gaining edge, but A) you're forcing him to spend an aim action for no other benefit in order to get that effect and B) your armor is still able to DENY your attacker edge. That's still 2 more things than "literally nothing".
If the use of the scope negating armor was the deciding factor on if the defender got edge, then I agree with you. Trade a minor action so defender doesn't get edge. While I don't know if I would call that "even", I agree it is at least not nothing.
But the image scope could also be used in a situation where Body alone or Body + non-armor mods could have granted edge, never mind the presence or absence of armor. That makes the scope particularly silly, and negates the above argument. Using a minor action to negate half the effect of an attribute is unbalanced by pretty much any standard.
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"there are a number of scenarios where armor will neither generate you edge nor deny your attacker edge."
Still not the same as literally doing nothing. Hyperbole doesn't suit y'all.
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"there are a number of scenarios where armor will neither generate you edge nor deny your attacker edge."
Still not the same as literally doing nothing. Hyperbole doesn't suit y'all.
Perhaps I am just not understanding your perspective. In that particular instance, armor does nothing. What do you believe makes that statement untrue in said instance?
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"there are a number of scenarios where armor will neither generate you edge nor deny your attacker edge."
Still not the same as literally doing nothing. Hyperbole doesn't suit y'all.
Does armor do anything other than generate edge in 6e? Maybe it can turn lethal damage into stun damage like in previous editions, but it doesn't even do that in all the scenarios I've listed.
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A big one is serving as a platform upon which armor mods can be placed. The OPTION to have, say, Electricity Resistance still counts for something even if you decline to have that mod.
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Okay, but how much does that do? Of the armor mods that cannot be replicated by other gear, how many of them just alter DR against certain attack types and thus might be as situationally useless as armor is in general?
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A fun[1] consequence of the all-or-nothing AR-vs-DR thing is how both AR and DR spaces are not evenly populated with all possible values, so the usefulness of an extra AR or DR point is variable.
Consider a Body 6 character with an armoured jacket, for a combined DR of 10. If you look through the book, you'll find (I think, from memory) no weapons that can have AR of exactly 15, even if you put combinations of mods like AR-boosting ammo or bipods and the like. So this character will get no utility out of adding a bike helmet. "I only got Edge because I wore my lucky helmet!" cannot mathematically happen. But a weaker character, with less Body, they might get situations where the helmet is what tips them over the edge. You can play similar games when trading off one armour type against another.
This works in reverse, too. At Close range, the Ares Alpha has an AR of 4, whereas the Colt M23 has 5. The Colt has an advantage, at first glance. But when will it count for anything? Only when the attacker's DV is exactly 9. How often will that happen? Rarely. This pattern is repeated through the tables, both across guns and also when looking at how a gun's AR value changes with range. Small AR changes in the middle of the range might count sometimes. But small changes at the high end or low end? Ignore them. It'll never make any mechanical difference. The Ares Predator's AR is 10/10/8. How often does losing two points of AR at medium range make a difference to you as a shooter? Only when the target's DV is 4/5 (in which case they're not very interesting targets) or 12/13 (which is so high it'll rarely come up; it's troll-in-FBA territory.) In practice, you could make the Predator's stats 10/10/10 and play an entire campaign and it would never make any difference at all.
This has knock-on effects everywhere. For example, APDS ammo will be a lot more useful at a very narrow range of base weapon AR, where the +2 AR it contributes drives you past the breakpoint and means you're getting a lot more Edge than you were without it. In those guns, at those ranges, the -1 DV it also gives you might seem like a reasonable tradeoff. But at other ranges, or with other guns, all its effect will be lost. You should never put APDS in a sniper rifle, for example -- you're already earning Edge because of its high base AR.
In Shadowrun, the cost of wearing heavier armour or switching to fancier ammo is always well understood - in nuyen and in terms of concealability. In 5e, the benefits are also well understood: players quickly grasp that heavier armour = more dice rolled, and more dice rolled almost always has utility. But in 6e, the benefit of trading up to a heavier armour type is variable, depending on your Body and your current armour type, and I think that's very unintuitive.
[1] not fun
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Armor Mods seem a lot more powerful in 6e vs 5e.
Example: Fire resistance in 6e cancels the Burning status. In 5e it just added to the rating of fire resistance to the armor value for resisting fire.
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A big one is serving as a platform upon which armor mods can be placed. The OPTION to have, say, Electricity Resistance still counts for something even if you decline to have that mod.
That's fair, but it does still leave one in the reality of the use of the your armor and/or mods being only of situational value.
Armor is only of use if at least one of the following is true:
- The bonus received from it denies your attacker edge gain.
- The bonus received from it allows you to gain defensive edge.
- One of the mods you added is triggered by you being struck by the appropriate attack type.
In just my stress test both of my trolls ran into numerous situations where none of the above was applying. I am not saying armor is always useless. I am saying that it is possible, and even common on some builds, where it is useless.
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"They call me Trollkini..." 8)
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A fun[1] consequence of the all-or-nothing AR-vs-DR thing is how both AR and DR spaces are not evenly populated with all possible values, so the usefulness of an extra AR or DR point is variable.
Consider a Body 6 character with an armoured jacket, for a combined DR of 10. If you look through the book, you'll find (I think, from memory) no weapons that can have AR of exactly 15, even if you put combinations of mods like AR-boosting ammo or bipods and the like. So this character will get no utility out of adding a bike helmet. "I only got Edge because I wore my lucky helmet!" cannot mathematically happen. But a weaker character, with less Body, they might get situations where the helmet is what tips them over the edge. You can play similar games when trading off one armour type against another.
This works in reverse, too. At Close range, the Ares Alpha has an AR of 4, whereas the Colt M23 has 5. The Colt has an advantage, at first glance. But when will it count for anything? Only when the attacker's DV is exactly 9. How often will that happen? Rarely. This pattern is repeated through the tables, both across guns and also when looking at how a gun's AR value changes with range. Small AR changes in the middle of the range might count sometimes. But small changes at the high end or low end? Ignore them. It'll never make any mechanical difference. The Ares Predator's AR is 10/10/8. How often does losing two points of AR at medium range make a difference to you as a shooter? Only when the target's DV is 4/5 (in which case they're not very interesting targets) or 12/13 (which is so high it'll rarely come up; it's troll-in-FBA territory.) In practice, you could make the Predator's stats 10/10/10 and play an entire campaign and it would never make any difference at all.
This has knock-on effects everywhere. For example, APDS ammo will be a lot more useful at a very narrow range of base weapon AR, where the +2 AR it contributes drives you past the breakpoint and means you're getting a lot more Edge than you were without it. In those guns, at those ranges, the -1 DV it also gives you might seem like a reasonable tradeoff. But at other ranges, or with other guns, all its effect will be lost. You should never put APDS in a sniper rifle, for example -- you're already earning Edge because of its high base AR.
In Shadowrun, the cost of wearing heavier armour or switching to fancier ammo is always well understood - in nuyen and in terms of concealability. In 5e, the benefits are also well understood: players quickly grasp that heavier armour = more dice rolled, and more dice rolled almost always has utility. But in 6e, the benefit of trading up to a heavier armour type is variable, depending on your Body and your current armour type, and I think that's very unintuitive.
[1] not fun
Interesting analysis, thank you for this.
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If you're wearing a bullet-proof vest, it "should" count for nothing if you're shot in the head or leg, right? Neither 5e nor 6we really worried about locations, but still It's an inherently unrealistic abstraction made in the name of a playable game. Presumably this particular unrealistic abstraction was ok in 5e?
Armor being so less effective in 6we makes sense to me, partly for this reason. If the play of AR to DR resulted in the armor having had no effect on edge gain/denial, then just maybe you were shot in an unprotected area where armor "shouldn't" have mattered anyway.
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If you're wearing a bullet-proof vest, it "should" count for nothing if you're shot in the head or leg, right? Neither 5e nor 6we really worried about locations, but still It's an inherently unrealistic abstraction made in the name of a playable game. Presumably this particular unrealistic abstraction was ok in 5e?
Armor being so less effective in 6we makes sense to me, partly for this reason. If the play of AR to DR resulted in the armor having had no effect on edge gain/denial, then just maybe you were shot in an unprotected area where armor "shouldn't" have mattered anyway.
Or in the case of high AR vs low DR, it's a Sniper Rifle vs. a Leather Jacket. Leather Jacket or t-shirt, really doesn't matter.
Or Low AR vs High DR, it's a .22 vs a Kevlar vest. Doesn't really matter if the Kevlar covers arms and Legs, or if the target had a helmet on.
Once you've crossed the threshold of No Edge, more Armor doesn't matter. Once you've crossed the threshold of Gained Edge, less Armor or more AR doesn't matter.
All just abstractions.
Much like in 5e with 40+ dice of Soak vs small damage values. You get a bunch of extra hits that didn't matter. Or when you've blasted a Mook into overflow, really doesn't matter if you've done 15 boxes or 18.
Weather or not you like 6e's particular abstractions is clearly subjective.
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Armor Mods seem a lot more powerful in 6e vs 5e.
Example: Fire resistance in 6e cancels the Burning status. In 5e it just added to the rating of fire resistance to the armor value for resisting fire.
More annoying as well. Another fiddly bit to keep track of.
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If you're wearing a bullet-proof vest, it "should" count for nothing if you're shot in the head or leg, right? Neither 5e nor 6we really worried about locations, but still It's an inherently unrealistic abstraction made in the name of a playable game. Presumably this particular unrealistic abstraction was ok in 5e?
Armor being so less effective in 6we makes sense to me, partly for this reason. If the play of AR to DR resulted in the armor having had no effect on edge gain/denial, then just maybe you were shot in an unprotected area where armor "shouldn't" have mattered anyway.
Well technically there were socks that gave extra armor against attacks to the feet and ankles.
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Most notable was the Secure-tech Protective gear, which didn't stack with armor in its given locations. Only, since 5e didn't bother with locations you had to guess/infer what armor protected what. Sure, a vest only protects the torso, but does a Synergist Suit protect arms and/or legs? That's one of the 5e errata we still gotta straighten out...
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If you're wearing a bullet-proof vest, it "should" count for nothing if you're shot in the head or leg, right? Neither 5e nor 6we really worried about locations, but still It's an inherently unrealistic abstraction made in the name of a playable game. Presumably this particular unrealistic abstraction was ok in 5e?
Armor being so less effective in 6we makes sense to me, partly for this reason. If the play of AR to DR resulted in the armor having had no effect on edge gain/denial, then just maybe you were shot in an unprotected area where armor "shouldn't" have mattered anyway.
Logically your position makes great sense. In terms of game mechanic consistency, I believe it is less so.
When a character is attacked, xyz happens. Xyz will always happen in the same order, unless a new element is added to alter it.
Standard xyz is compare AR to DR, then attack test vs. defense test, then if hit, soak. With the game consistent standard, armor worn is static boost and never altered, and the precise location struck is irrelevant to the result of the attack beyond what your attack form says happens (damage, status effect, ect.).
We have several edge actions and minor/major actions, such as called shot, that reflect trying to get around armor or targeting a specific location. They have specific game mechanics. All good there.
Liking or disliking the system is also all good. I just want to hear people acknowledge that there is in fact situations where worn armor will do nothing whatsoever for you when it both logically and within the confines of game consistency should do something, rather than tell me that my acknowledgement of that reality is just hyperbole or something else dismissively similar.
Is that good or bad? I leave that for each person to judge themselves, but saying it is not a thing that happens is both ignorant and dismissive. That is directed at Chandra, not you SSD.
Edit: Reinstating the mechanic that an attack with less AR than the targets DR results in stun damage instead of physical would be a decent way of making armor feel like it always helped, even if not with actually reducing damage like I personally would prefer.
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If you're wearing a bullet-proof vest, it "should" count for nothing if you're shot in the head or leg, right? Neither 5e nor 6we really worried about locations, but still It's an inherently unrealistic abstraction made in the name of a playable game. Presumably this particular unrealistic abstraction was ok in 5e?
Standard attacks in 5e are assumed to target the center of mass, and Run&Gun introduced both called shots to specific body parts and gear that provided armor on specific body parts. If you shoot someone in the leg or the head, you're fully in the right to argue that their ballistic vest doesn't provide any protection. And before you ask how helmets and other gear provides bonus armor when standard attacks target your center of mass: sometimes people don't hit where they were aiming but still hit another part of the target. The more of your body that is covered, the less likely it is that your opponent will have a lucky miss.
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Armor Mods seem a lot more powerful in 6e vs 5e.
Example: Fire resistance in 6e cancels the Burning status. In 5e it just added to the rating of fire resistance to the armor value for resisting fire.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the "X uses and it stops working" part of the armor mods is 6th. A resistance means you have an increased chance not to suffer from a given type of effect. An immunity means you wouldn't take the effect.
In 5th, taking the resistance mods gave you a consistent resistance by way of extra soak dice. So every time I get hit with fire, I should take less damage, but I'll still have to put myself out.
In 6th, what you have is X number of immunities to a given damage type. If I take "fire resistance 4" on my armor, then the 5th hit I take with fire damage lights me up like a candle...
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It's not unlike real world "fireproof" suits... they protect you only for X amount of time while exposed to fire after which the protection no longer works.
Not to say you're wrong to prefer the old way of adding dice to the soak. I'm pointing out a silver cloud here, what since +soak is a concept 6we deliberately abandoned after all.
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Actually, 5e fire resistance also decreases the chances of your armor setting on fire in the first place, so you might not even have to put yourself out.
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Personally, I'm not a fan of the "X uses and it stops working" part of the armor mods is 6th.
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In 6th, what you have is X number of immunities to a given damage type.
I hadn’t noticed it worked that way. Isn’t that an awful lot of bookkeeping for a “streamlined” game?
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Personally, I'm not a fan of the "X uses and it stops working" part of the armor mods is 6th.
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In 6th, what you have is X number of immunities to a given damage type.
I hadn’t noticed it worked that way. Isn’t that an awful lot of bookkeeping for a “streamlined” game?
That’s my issue with it. Just seems like a pain in the ass. I’d of preferred a flat 1/2 duration of effect style benefit with no degradation.
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It's not unlike real world "fireproof" suits... they protect you only for X amount of time while exposed to fire after which the protection no longer works.
Not to say you're wrong to prefer the old way of adding dice to the soak. I'm pointing out a silver cloud here, what since +soak is a concept 6we deliberately abandoned after all.
I get what you are saying, but the real world suits kind of fall in between these two mechanics. You set someone on fire wearing a firesuit, and the insulation slows the heat transfer rate to the wearer so that they can operate for a while longer before being damaged by the effects of the flames. Likewise, fire retardant suits don't give the fire anything to burn, so you are much harder to set on fire.
Fifth ed skips the heat transfer and assumes a flat decrease in effect based on fire retardant level, while 6th goes from perfect insulator/fireproof to nothing.
I can understand why you might like it better, but it means that if you're in a situation that may expose you to the given effect more times than armor could be rated for (fighting mages, escaping a burning building, etc.) your gear is going to give out on you when you need it most. And as pointed out, its one more consumable to keep track of.
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It's not unlike real world "fireproof" suits... they protect you only for X amount of time while exposed to fire after which the protection no longer works.
Not to say you're wrong to prefer the old way of adding dice to the soak. I'm pointing out a silver cloud here, what since +soak is a concept 6we deliberately abandoned after all.
That doesn't align with anything I've heard about fireproof or fire-resistant suits, nor does it fit my understanding of material sciences and engineering. And even if this ablative armor is the norm for personal fire protection, how do you explain this for the other damage types? In the case of electrical damage, rubber doesn't stop resisting electricity after you shock it a few times.
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On a related, kind of, tangent; in the Matrix, Attack Ratings and Defense Ratings seem weirdly lopsided when a dedicated decker goes after devices that are not protected by a cyberdeck/RCC.
It's not particularly difficult to create a starting character with a 15+ AR (Attack + Sleaze), and even the most powerful commlink is only A/F 3/1 for a total DR of 4. Armor running on the commlink can be defeated with Exploit, and though Data Processing can be boosted by 1 with Toolbox you're still looking at a DR of 5, a full 10 lower than even a basic starting decker can hit.
Unless the assumption is that every single device is protected by some kind of host or decker type persona, it would seem almost trivially easy for deckers to gain Edge whenever they take any hacking actions, even more so if they take Analytical Mind (and why wouldn't they).
However, this is flipped upside down when hosts are added to the mix; a Rating 1 host will have A/S/D/F attributes of 1/2/3/4 (for example; AR 3 DR 7) while a Rating 6 host could be 6/7/8/9 (AR 13, DR17), and a Rating 12 host can be a staggering 12/13/14/15 (AR 25, DR29). No decker in the world can even get close to that, and so the higher rating hosts will always gain Edge.
Speaking of; if Spirits do not gain edge, should hosts and/or IC do so?
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Speaking of; if Spirits do not gain edge, should hosts and/or IC do so?
And drones, too (which was covered at length here in a thread a couple of weeks back.) Nobody knows. The CRB has a worked example where two drones fire at each other, and AR/DR values are compared, but it is silent on where the Edge would go were any earned. Given the conceptual similarities between drones and spirits as semi-PC-controlled pets, it seems unlikely they should get fundamentally different rules about Edge, but that is the implication.
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Unless the assumption is that every single device is protected by some kind of host or decker type persona, it would seem almost trivially easy for deckers to gain Edge whenever they take any hacking actions, even more so if they take Analytical Mind (and why wouldn't they).
Yes. I built a decker character (https://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=30005.msg524414#msg524414) who exploited this ruthlessly to quickly accumulate Edge and use that for repeated attacks using Anticipate (4x attacks at 12 dice each & DV 5P, approximately every other combat phase.)
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Unless the assumption is that every single device is protected by some kind of host or decker type persona, it would seem almost trivially easy for deckers to gain Edge whenever they take any hacking actions, even more so if they take Analytical Mind (and why wouldn't they).
Yes. I built a decker character (https://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=30005.msg524414#msg524414) who exploited this ruthlessly to quickly accumulate Edge and use that for repeated attacks using Anticipate (4x attacks at 12 dice each & DV 5P, approximately every other combat phase.)
Tangent on a tangent; can you even use Anticipate on a Matrix attack? Anticipate is in the Combat section, and we've already discussed elsewhere that the Multiple Attack action is not compatible with Matrix Attacks.
I would think that this is why Fork exists, no?
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We've had a debate on Edge for non-Spirits, and while general consensus is 'seems fair for them to gain Edge due to game balance purposes', the bigger question is 'how do they use it'. I advocate 'spend at once'.
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Tangent on a tangent; can you even use Anticipate on a Matrix attack? Anticipate is in the Combat section, and we've already discussed elsewhere that the Multiple Attack action is not compatible with Matrix Attacks.
Oh, sorry, no, not like that. I mean: she would throw out Data Spikes against commlinks or other low-DR targets to earn cheap Edge, then use that Edge for a physical Anticipate attack with dual-wield SMGs. Mixing Edge gain and use across "worlds" (ie. meat / matrix / magic) makes very little narrative sense that I can see, but it's legal, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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We've had a debate on Edge for non-Spirits, and while general consensus is 'seems fair for them to gain Edge due to game balance purposes', the bigger question is 'how do they use it'. I advocate 'spend at once'.
That's not RAW, though. While it might be fine to houserule that, RAW specifically states Spirits do not gain Edge. So I'll stick to that in this context.
Anyway, this is getting a little off-track; my original intent was to discuss the topic at hand, which is attack rating and defense ratings. Again, I think this is extremely lopsided on the Matrix side, as evidenced above.
Oh, sorry, no, not like that. I mean: she would throw out Data Spikes against commlinks or other low-DR targets to earn cheap Edge, then use that Edge for a physical Anticipate attack with dual-wield SMGs. Mixing Edge gain and use across "worlds" (ie. meat / matrix / magic) makes very little narrative sense that I can see, but it's legal, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Aha, I see. Yeah, interesting. I could see that being problematic; I ran through a couple of sample hacks with my sample decker character, and yeah, building up edge seems to be pretty easy when you're going up against straight up devices.
I feel like this is one failing of the Matrix rules and flavour text; while the mechanics are available for personas and hosts to protect devices, there aren't really any guidelines or examples of how most devices will be running. Assuming most people walk around without dedicated persona or host protection, they will be positively trivial to hack for a dedicated decker/technomancer.
Since the defense ratings of unprotected devices are so low, it becomes similarly trivial for deckers to build up large Edge pools. Not a bad idea, since a bad roll can quickly make a hack go sideways and having plenty of edge to spend is more in line with the design goal of SR6, it seems that the different aspects of the game (social encounters, magic, matrix, rigging, combat) are balanced very differently where edge gain is concerned.
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That's not RAW, though. While it might be fine to houserule that, RAW specifically states Spirits do not gain Edge. So I'll stick to that in this context.
We've had a debate on Edge for non-Spirits, and while general consensus is 'seems fair for them to gain Edge due to game balance purposes', the bigger question is 'how do they use it'. I advocate 'spend at once'.
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That's not RAW, though. While it might be fine to houserule that, RAW specifically states Spirits do not gain Edge. So I'll stick to that in this context.
We've had a debate on Edge for non-Spirits, and while general consensus is 'seems fair for them to gain Edge due to game balance purposes', the bigger question is 'how do they use it'. I advocate 'spend at once'.
Speaking of; if Spirits do not gain edge, should hosts and/or IC do so?
And drones, too (which was covered at length here in a thread a couple of weeks back.) Nobody knows. The CRB has a worked example where two drones fire at each other, and AR/DR values are compared, but it is silent on where the Edge would go were any earned. Given the conceptual similarities between drones and spirits as semi-PC-controlled pets, it seems unlikely they should get fundamentally different rules about Edge, but that is the implication.
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My bad, missed that part.
So RAW, no defined rule for non-spirit NPCs, up to GM until such a time as Errata/FAQ clarifies. That about sum it up?
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By RAW drones/hosts/IC/sprites have no exceptions to the rules about Edge spending/Edge gaining. Spirits, on the other hand, do.
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That's perfect, thank you.
So, back to AR vs DR for Matrix?
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Oh, sorry, no, not like that. I mean: she would throw out Data Spikes against commlinks or other low-DR targets to earn cheap Edge, then use that Edge for a physical Anticipate attack with dual-wield SMGs. Mixing Edge gain and use across "worlds" (ie. meat / matrix / magic) makes very little narrative sense that I can see, but it's legal, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
A game master could well rule that this is an attempt to game the system and not grant edge, heck it's not much different than the "pointing a gun at a passerby" to gain edge in the example on page 46.
It could also be argued that the bonus edge from matrix actions doesn't leave the matrix since it states it goes away when you leave a host or leave the matrix. Still it could replenish the characters edge to their full stat again.
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Well it can be easier to generate edge via matrix actions than by combat actions, and since edge is fungible edge gained via hacking can be spent on non-matrix actions... but there's 2 important caveats on that.
1) general rule about preventing edge abuse is still in play. I.E. if you're only/mainly doing it to gain edge, the GM is empowered and encouraged to withhold the Edge point(s).
2) remember your edge flushes when you end a matrix session. You can freely spend Edge gained via matrix actions on physical actions... IF you're in AR. And you can't hoard it for the future.
Edit: TL;DR.. slipped by caislean :D
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Oh, sorry, no, not like that. I mean: she would throw out Data Spikes against commlinks or other low-DR targets to earn cheap Edge, then use that Edge for a physical Anticipate attack with dual-wield SMGs. Mixing Edge gain and use across "worlds" (ie. meat / matrix / magic) makes very little narrative sense that I can see, but it's legal, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
A game master could well rule that this is an attempt to game the system and not grant edge, heck it's not much different than the "pointing a gun at a passerby" to gain edge in the example on page 46.
Why is it Edge abuse to attempt to hack your opponent's gear during combat? That's exactly what deckers are supposed to do.
It could also be argued that the bonus edge from matrix actions doesn't leave the matrix since it states it goes away when you leave a host or leave the matrix. Still it could replenish the characters edge to their full stat again.
The decker would work entirely in AR, and so never be leaving/entering the Matrix.
Alternatively, if you want to replenish Edge when leaving or entering VR, you've just opened the door to a much worse exploit. Generate a character with high natural Edge and switch in and out of VR to regenerate it all.
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Why is it Edge abuse to attempt to hack your opponent's gear during combat? That's exactly what deckers are supposed to do.
Like the line between Art and Porn: it's inherently subjective. Context matters. However in the case of "doing what deckers are supposed to do" and "doing it primarily for the Edge", there's only one opinion that matters on the subjective difference between the two: That table's GM's opinion.
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Why is it Edge abuse to attempt to hack your opponent's gear during combat? That's exactly what deckers are supposed to do.
Like the line between Art and Porn: it's inherently subjective. Context matters. However in the case of "doing what deckers are supposed to do" and "doing it just to gain Edge", there's only one opinion that matters on the subjective difference between the two: That table's GM's opinion.
luv 2 play a collaborative game mediated by rules and not GMs' whims!
What you're saying is I could sit down at a convention table and say "I dataspike the goon's commlink" and the GM looks at me and says "yeah you're not getting Edge for that coz I don't trust your motivations for taking that action." And that's good, is it?
Edit to add -- I don't see any non-hostile / de-escalating way for GMs to communicate a decision that boils down to "you're not getting Edge because I think you're lying." It's a really uncomfortable dynamic.
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Why is it Edge abuse to attempt to hack your opponent's gear during combat? That's exactly what deckers are supposed to do.
Like the line between Art and Porn: it's inherently subjective. Context matters. However in the case of "doing what deckers are supposed to do" and "doing it just to gain Edge", there's only one opinion that matters on the subjective difference between the two: That table's GM's opinion.
luv 2 play a collaborative game mediated by rules and not GMs' whims!
What you're saying is I could sit down at a convention table and say "I dataspike the goon's commlink" and the GM looks at me and says "yeah you're not getting Edge for that coz I don't trust your motivations for taking that action." And that's good, is it?
Well, like I said context matters. Are you data spiking a living goon's commlink before or right at the onset of an ambush? So that he can't call for help or sound an alarm? I'd like to think that a convention GM would not deny you the edge. OTOH, are you data spiking a dead goon's commlink? Hard to argue that you're NOT just doing it for the edge. Yeah, I'd probably deny you the edge if I were that GM. Unless of course there were additional extenuating circumstances.
Context matters. Rather than giving rules for what does and does not invalidate Edge gains, the rule is just "GM discretion." Can you propose a better rule?
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As I understand it, you only replenish Edge up to your rank as per the following:
Characters start a gaming session with Edge points equal to their Edge rank.
The book states that the only way to gain edge you have to earn it, and that:
In the session,
Edge can be carried over and accumulated up to a limit of 7, including the Edge provided by the character’s Edge attribute. Any Edge garnered over your base attribute goes away when you complete any ongoing confrontation; this includes combat, hacking, social persuasion, and any situation where bonus Edge might be accumulated. If, at the end of the confrontation, your current Edge points are less than your Edge attribute, you stay at the lower level.
So if I'm hacking a bunch of devices as legwork, at the end of the hacking "confrontation" excess Edge beyond my rank is lost, but Edge up to my base attribute remains". There is no rule against using said edge in Combat, so penllawen's example is perfectly valid.
Even going into VR for a turn or two during combat to interrupt your foes (Spoof Command with Fork works wonders here) will likely boost your edge (see above on AR vs DR and Analytical Mind), to the point where when you leave VR but are still in combat you would retain all edge gained up to a max of 7, and would be free to use it for Anticipation as normal, for example.
This isn't exploiting the Edge mechanic; this is using the Hacker's abilities to directly influence combat through the Matrix, and the side effect is a pretty aggressive rate of Edge gain that is RAW. No interpretation needed.
The core of this issue, to my mind, is how exceedingly easy it is for deckers to earn Edge when fighting devices that are not protected by a dedicated, specialized decker or host. The GMs only real option is to throw in an NPC decker to protect the NPC gear, which again, we don't really know if should be common or not because the Matrix chapter doesn't really tell us. We have good examples of magical and physical security by security zone, but not a lot to go on as far as Matrix security.
Definitely one for a Matrix supplement to elaborate on; it once again comes down to individual interpretation of how the Matrix functions at a core, system/world level.
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Yeah, I'd probably deny you the edge if I were that GM. Unless of course there were additional extenuating circumstances.
Well, I'm happy I don't play at your table, then.
Context matters. Rather than giving rules for what does and does not invalidate Edge gains, the rule is just "GM discretion." Can you propose a better rule?
No. Because 6e's Edge system is broken all the way down.
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Yeah, I'd probably deny you the edge if I were that GM. Unless of course there were additional extenuating circumstances.
Well, I'm happy I don't play at your table, then.
Really? You think you should gain edge from, for example, shooting at random pedestrians? Dataspiking scene-irrelevant devices sounds very much like the same thing to me.
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If you're hacking the environment to give the team tactical advantages or to brick guns or cybereyes or something that matters, Edge away. You bricked the Coffee machine in the middle of a firefight? Uh... k.
All for Hackers blending Matrix Actions and Meatspace actions via AR. Quite literally a stated mechanical objective for 5E and presumably 6E. But at least Dataspike or Control Device something that matters. Or just use a Drone and trigger Analytical Mind by shooting stuff with Logic plus Engineering. So many ways to trigger Analytical Mind in a meaningful way.
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Context matters. Rather than giving rules for what does and does not invalidate Edge gains, the rule is just "GM discretion." Can you propose a better rule?
Replace all instances of "gain edge" with "gain extra dice on the task that you are doing right now", "ignore these select penalties on the task that you are doing right now" or "lower the TN of the task that you are doing right now".
Really? You think you should gain edge from, for example, shooting at random pedestrians? Dataspiking scene-irrelevant devices sounds very much like the same thing to me.
Streetsams being out-of-control psychopaths who kill random bystanders for no discernible reason is "iconic", and as we all know 6e is all about being "iconic".
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Oh, sorry, no, not like that. I mean: she would throw out Data Spikes against commlinks or other low-DR targets to earn cheap Edge, then use that Edge for a physical Anticipate attack with dual-wield SMGs. Mixing Edge gain and use across "worlds" (ie. meat / matrix / magic) makes very little narrative sense that I can see, but it's legal, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
A game master could well rule that this is an attempt to game the system and not grant edge, heck it's not much different than the "pointing a gun at a passerby" to gain edge in the example on page 46.
Why is it Edge abuse to attempt to hack your opponent's gear during combat? That's exactly what deckers are supposed to do.
Your very description implies edge abuse "throwing attacks at low DR targets to earn cheap edge" - this is the very definition of edge abuse.
As for hacking opponents gear, it's kinda subjective. Is it an attempt to brick their comms before they send for backup or at least alert others - or is it to gain easy edge? Is it to deny opponents their bonuses from wireless smartlinked guns or is it to gain easy edge?
I do think that while I applaud the streamlining efforts of replacing so many lists of tables to add and remove dice from dice pools with an increased use of edge points (and expanded uses for those points) the subjective nature of gaining edge and what is done to move the story forward and what is done purely to satisfy a game mechanic to gain edge is going to leave a lot of GM's having to make judgement calls on this.
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Honestly, I feel that a lot of you are overthinking these kind of Edge abuse problems, especially when it comes to the Matrix.
Two things to considers on the mechanical side:
- Hackers reset their Edge score pretty often, so the effect of "abusive" Edge-gain tactics are already limited to the session in question.
- Hacking random, badly protected stuff to earn Edge for the bigger shots is not without risks or costs: You accumulate OS and you are prone to raising alarms, which might alert security spiders etc. It´s not like you are picking up bonus Edge for free.
And on the fluff side, I think it´s not to far-fetched to assume that a hacker does profit from some smaller "warmup hacks" in advance of the bigger targets. Maybe those smaller hacks also yield some information about the local matrix security structure, or they provide the hacker with some kind of unspecified additional matrix ressources, or they just help the hacker to get into the flow (which would even work for more esoteric stuff like accumulating Hacking Edge for RL Attacks). So as a GM, I wouldn´t be too hellbent on identifying and punishing "Edge abusers" when it comes to Matrix/Hacking stuff. If you are really suspicous that your Hacker just wants to cheese out some Edge from small hack, simply ask them what´s the purpose of the Action in the bigger picture. As long as there is some kind of connection, I´d let it slide.
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It's all subjective, but I think this rule of thumb should suffice for my purposes:
If successful would the action generate any advantage OTHER than the Edge point? If no, it can reasonably be called abuse. OTOH if there IS a relevant advantage gained by the action, other than the Edge point, then it's probably not abuse.
Hacking a commlink before the fight? Sure, the guy can't call for help. Surely it's not abuse.
Hacking a commlink DURING the fight? Well, less clear cut, but maybe you think he might have a smart link. Or maybe he didn't YET call for help and still might. Probably for the best to err on the side of player's benefit here.
Data Spiking that commlink after fight is over? Yeah, not seeing much of a benefit OTHER than the edge point. I'd be open to hearing the player's rationale however. Maybe he's trying to stop the mic from picking up and transmitting ambient sounds as the team does something in the vicinity? I'm skeptical, but still willing to potentially be flexible.
Hacking that commlink after the goon is dead, but the goons' buddies are still in the fight: Yeah, I'm not even going to ask for your rationale. No edge for you, unless you decide to hack something that IS actually tactically relevant. Sorry, but not sorry.
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Dataspiking scene-irrelevant devices sounds very much like the same thing to me.
if there IS a relevant advantage gained by the action, other than the Edge point, then it's probably not abuse.
I didn't say anything about Data Spiking irrelevant devices. As long as there are opponents still breathing, there's gonna be stuff to data spike around. Their weapons. Their commlinks. Their cyberware. The lights in the room. Alarm systems. Plenty of choices that produce a "relevant advantage."
Really? You think you should gain edge from, for example, shooting at random pedestrians?
People keep tossing this GM fiat rule around like it wraps everything up in a neat little package. All I see is something that's a pain in the arse to run at the table.
Suppose you're facing down two ganger goons and a ganger boss. There's also a civilian passer-by. Consider these scenarios:
a) you shoot the goons, accumulating Edge to shoot the boss
b) you shoot the passer-by so you can accumulating Edge to shoot the goons
c) you shoot the passer-by as they're the only ones around who will call Lone Star, but you also accumulate Edge that you use to shoot the goons
Which scenarios are abusive? How do you tell the difference between (b) and (c)? What if the player is secretly doing (b) but says they're doing (c)?
Or how about: you're doing a run. You've penetrated a secure facility. There's some security guards and some research scientists. Your mission is to leave no witnesses. Is it Edge abuse to shoot at the scientists before the guards?
The GM is the arbiter of what happens inside the game, but the Edge abuse rule isn't inside the game because it works entirely based on the player's motivations, not the character's. And there's no polite way to say to a player "sorry, I think you're lying about why you're doing that so I'm taking a bonus away from you." Especially when you might be wrong about it.
Your very description implies edge abuse "throwing attacks at low DR targets to earn cheap edge" - this is the very definition of edge abuse.
Obviously that's not what our hypothetical abusive player says they're doing. What they say they're doing is "I hack that goon's commlink." Now what?
I do think that while I applaud the streamlining efforts of replacing so many lists of tables to add and remove dice from dice pools with an increased use of edge points (and expanded uses for those points) the subjective nature of gaining edge and what is done to move the story forward and what is done purely to satisfy a game mechanic to gain edge is going to leave a lot of GM's having to make judgement calls on this.
Right. And those calls won't be comfortable, and sometimes they'll be contentious, and sometimes they'll create an atmosphere of GMs-versus-players.
Replace all instances of "gain edge" with "gain extra dice on the task that you are doing right now", "ignore these select penalties on the task that you are doing right now" or "lower the TN of the task that you are doing right now".
Hey that idea sounds familiar from somewhere!!!
You're absolutely correct, though, that it is the idea of Edge as a currency that is carried from one roll to another that is the root of all this nonsense. I've picked it over since the earliest 6e livestreams, I've taken it apart and put it back together a hundred ways, I've wargamed scenarios out by myself and with some players from my group. I don't see a way to fix it.
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I didn't say anything about Data Spiking irrelevant devices.
You DID however argue with my saying "context matters" with regards to the hypothetical scenario of gaining edge by hacking a low DR commlink, which led to the IMO reasonable impression you WERE advocating that there should be no such thing as edge gain denial for hacking irrelevant devices.
Which scenarios are abusive? How do you tell the difference between (b) and (c)? What if the player is secretly doing (b) but says they're doing (c)?
I literally just said, in the post you're replying to: If the action has a relevant benefit OTHER THAN the edge gain, then it's probably not abuse.
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You're absolutely correct, though, that it is the idea of Edge as a currency that is carried from one roll to another that is the root of all this nonsense. I've picked it over since the earliest 6e livestreams, I've taken it apart and put it back together a hundred ways, I've wargamed scenarios out by myself and with some players from my group. I don't see a way to fix it.
There is no way to fix it, it's at the core of 6e and it's inherently flawed.
It was a bad idea to start with as it is not well suited to it's core task of modeling the encounter environment.
It relies heavily on GM fiat and interpretation, which is a bad decision for game design as it inherently requires an experienced and knowledgeable GM to make it even borderline viable.
The best thing it has going for it is that noobs will not realize how crap it is until they have bought the book and played it for a while.
Which is a feature for Catalyst but a bug for their customers.
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Some thoughts relevant to the current discussion:
1). Game mechanics that occasionally need a judgement call in certain situations is one thing. Game mechanics that rely on judgement calls to keep them operational within the desired boundaries is something else entirely, and that is what the current edge system is.
In the hands of reasonable players and GMs, this is no big deal, but still not ideal compared to having a self-contained mechanic. In the hands of unreasonable, punitive, controlling, or vindictive players and GMs (and let's be real here, our community has quite a few of these people) it's a nightmare.
2). Speaking strictly in terms of game mechanics, all uses of edge are basically gaming the system in some sense. Spend edge to break an otherwise standard rule, add a new option, re-roll some dice, so on. Because of that, it *feels* like gaming the system to get the edge to use to game the game is natural.
I chalk this up to design flaws, but others are free to disagree.
3). Deckers have it hard enough.
- When doing your bit, you feel rushed because literally the entire rest of the table is waiting on you.
- It takes a substantial devotion of resources to do well, limiting the effectiveness of your secondary role.
- You're often at a dice pool disadvantage, especially if you are trying to sleaze around in a host. And let's be honest, when dealing with a decent corp host, sleaze is the only realistic option because brute force will get you pounded down quick.
I'd just let the poor bastard have his edge. Here's your edge, thank you for playing a vital but undervalued and underplayed archetype.
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I literally just said, in the post you're replying to: If the action has a relevant benefit OTHER THAN the edge gain, then it's probably not abuse.
Every case of blatant edge abuse could be justified with "it gets me into the zone" and you'd have no counterargument except "nah, you're full of it". And you'd be completely right......but that kind of talk isn't going to cultivate a friendly environment at the table, is it?
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I literally just said, in the post you're replying to: If the action has a relevant benefit OTHER THAN the edge gain, then it's probably not abuse.
Every case of blatant edge abuse could be justified with "it gets me into the zone" and you'd have no counterargument except "nah, you're full of it". And you'd be completely right......but that kind of talk isn't going to cultivate a friendly environment at the table, is it?
It would depend on the player. Presumably, the players who insist on a tactical, wargamey, simulationist RPG won't be playing 6we. Because that's not what it is. There's nothing wrong with that playing style, but if that's what you want why wouldn't you go play something that caters to that? Isn't that a point you and others repeatedly make?
We're still early-ish in the Darwinist/self-selecting stage of the 6we playerbase. Presumably, a year or so down the line, I'd expect that the people playing 6we are the people comfortable with 6we's mechanics and wouldn't be attempting "it gets me into the zone!" as a rationale in the first place, and if they did they wouldn't have a problem with a GM telling them "naah, come on man, that's Edge abuse".
In the meanwhile, in a situation like we have now where there still are people who want a simulationist game engine but are still giving 6we a shot to see if they like it anyway/haven't realized it's not simualtionist, if presented with "but it gets me in the zone!" the better response than "bulldrek" would be "that may be the case, but you're not getting a tactical advantage out of the action and so I'm invoking the edge denial rule. Sorry."
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My boat is more along the lines of while I don't hate SR6, I think it is poorly designed and could have been a lot better.
My primary iron in the fire is Missions, since that is the majority of the actual SR gaming I get to do. If that were not the case it would be easy to just stick with SR5 and call it a day.
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We're still early-ish in the Darwinist/self-selecting stage of the 6we playerbase. Presumably, a year or so down the line, I'd expect that the people playing 6we are the people comfortable with 6we's mechanics and wouldn't be attempting "it gets me into the zone!" as a rationale in the first place, and if they did they wouldn't have a problem with a GM telling them "naah, come on man, that's Edge abuse".
Maybe. Or maybe they'll get so good at coming up with excuses for their blatant edge abuse that you can no longer distinguish it from a player thinking outside the box.
"I shoot the random bystander so that they don't call the cops."
"I shoot the scientists first, because they will run away while the guards stay put and we were ordered to leave no witnesses."
"I dataspike the coffee machine in the middle of combat so that the goons are distracted by the smoke and sparks."
The possibilities are endless.
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It would depend on the player. Presumably, the players who insist on a tactical, wargamey, simulationist RPG won't be playing 6we. Because that's not what it is. There's nothing wrong with that playing style, but if that's what you want why wouldn't you go play something that caters to that? Isn't that a point you and others repeatedly make?
Then what is it? It has 11 different rifles, each of which is defined by 10 distinct stats, each of which can fire one of 6 types of ammo, and be fitted with 18 different weapons mods across 3 different mount points. That's a simulationist game. It's definitely not a narrative-first rules-light game.
2). Speaking strictly in terms of game mechanics, all uses of edge are basically gaming the system in some sense. Spend edge to break an otherwise standard rule, add a new option, re-roll some dice, so on. Because of that, it *feels* like gaming the system to get the edge to use to game the game is natural.
That's a very good point, and one I hadn't considered. Thank you.
which led to the IMO reasonable impression you WERE advocating that there should be no such thing as edge gain denial for hacking irrelevant devices.
Well, you know what they say about assumptions, chummer.
Which scenarios are abusive? How do you tell the difference between (b) and (c)? What if the player is secretly doing (b) but says they're doing (c)?
I literally just said, in the post you're replying to: If the action has a relevant benefit OTHER THAN the edge gain, then it's probably not abuse.
That's your general principle, yes. But "relevant" and "probably" are fuzzy words and you didn't answer my question. How would you apply the principle to answer my specific example (https://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=30350.msg528438#msg528438)?
edit - quote formatting
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Which is a feature for Catalyst but a bug for their customers.
Only if you consider the CRB in isolation. If you think about it as something that is the foundational product in a lineup that's supposed to sell 30-50 splatbooks and sourcebooks over the next 5+ years, it looks a bit different.
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1). Game mechanics that occasionally need a judgement call in certain situations is one thing. Game mechanics that rely on judgement calls to keep them operational within the desired boundaries is something else entirely, and that is what the current edge system is.
In the hands of reasonable players and GMs, this is no big deal, but still not ideal to having a self-contained mechanic. In the hands of unreasonable, punitive, controlling, or vindictive players and GMs (and let's be real here, our community has quite a few of these people) it's a nightmare.
I feel like this warrants some comment from a person who has played and ran a LOT Of RPGs since 1982, but hasn't had anything to do with Shadowrun since the early '90s and is coming back to it with Shadowrun 6E.
There are many great games in the world that I have enjoyed tremendously that seem to get by quite well with assuming that players and GMs will be reasonable and can make judgement calls to keep things fun. Fate Core, Savage Worlds, the One Ring, Dungeon World, Masks: the New Generation, heck, even D&D 5E for the most part, among many others. These games are written with two core assumptions in mind (either overtly or at least subconsciously):
a) the players/GM are seeking to have fun WITH other people, not at their expense and
b) the GM/players are capable of responding the other players/GM outside the rules of the game with an interpersonal "hey, wait, that thing you are doing, it seems weird or unfun, can you not do that?"
I feel that in terms of mechanics and definitely in terms of editing, Shadowrun 6E could have been much better. But I also strongly believe that no game designer should be expected to account for "unreasonable" people in their rules. By unreasonable here I mean people who will just do all kinds of weird stuff in the game because they can, and not because it involves interacting with the fiction of the game in interesting and fun ways.
To take the example raised earlier in the thread...
Suppose you're facing down two ganger goons and a ganger boss. There's also a civilian passer-by. Consider these scenarios:
a) you shoot the goons, accumulating Edge to shoot the boss
b) you shoot the passer-by so you can accumulating Edge to shoot the goons
c) you shoot the passer-by as they're the only ones around who will call Lone Star, but you also accumulate Edge that you use to shoot the goons
Which scenarios are abusive? How do you tell the difference between (b) and (c)? What if the player is secretly doing (b) but says they're doing (c)?
I have no idea which of these scenarios is abusive or not. What I do know is that I don't want to play with people who would choose b) just for the sake of the Edge. Just because you CAN do something in a game doesn't mean you should. And I don't think that a game designer needs to account for this in the design, like, at all. Its a fact in the rules that shooting a target with lower DV will be more likely to give you an Edge point. That's a fine rule. Its a choice to shoot innocent passers-by (assuming your character is not literally a psychopath) to gain Edge.
Maybe if I had played/ran Rifts or TORG or whatever I would be less surprised, I can't say. Maybe this is demonstrating a gap in my experience. Maybe (particularly in organized Shadowrun play) the players really are literally and/or figuratively selfish 14 year old teenage boys who cannot be relied upon to control their urges and actually engage with the fictional situations that are presented in fun and interesting ways. In which case, fair enough. Take this comment for what you will.
EDIT: to be clear, this is not a direct comment on whether the current Edge system is good or not, or whether it has problems and what those problems are. I have many thoughts on that. This is a comment about the standard that system (or any other system) should be held to, and also the standard the players themselves should be expected to follow.
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In response to Skalchemist, your views are fair. I do not have nearly your breadth of gaming time (closer to 14ish years myself), or the depth of your varied systems, so I can only speak from my own experiences.
The vampire the masquerade larps I've played in off and on over the last 14 years have had the highest shitbag ratio. It's close to 1/3 people, from the general midwest to great lakes regions. These guys were also usually the worse of the douches.
Gaming conventions have been the next highest for me, again mostly in the same regions, with a 1/5ish shitbag ratio. It was rare that I got to sit down at a table without some player or GM being a douche.
Private games I've rarely had more than a very temporary problem with. You try new person, they don't work out, you boot their ass. I don't know anyone who would bother to play in a hostile intimate environment on a consistent basis. That's not fun.
I'm glad your experiences have been better!
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While far from nonexistent, I think this problem is pretty overrated.
Even without the GM stepping in and even when playing with a group of level 8 Cheese Spirits, many of the examples here are just suboptimal ways to use your precious actions in a Combat situation. Why should I dataspike random electronics or shoot at unarmored civilians to earn "Free Edge" (because surely, none of these Actions will have any negative consequences at all in the long run...) for a better shot at the real target in the next Action if I can just shoot the real target twice in the same time frame and probably even get Edge for it as well?
(Oh boi, I can already see the spreasheets rolling up... ::))
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In response to Skalchemist, your views are fair. I do not have nearly your breadth of gaming time (closer to 14ish years myself), or the depth of your varied systems, so I can only speak from my own experiences.
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I'm glad your experiences have been better!
Lormyr, my intent was not to claim some kind of superior position due to experience, but simply to claim that I do have wide experience. I don't think anyone's gaming experience is somehow lesser than mine; I just happen to have played a lot of games, is all.
Also, I'm not saying I haven't played with annoying and awful people. Oh boy have I! My estimates of "douche ratio" would not be nearly as bad as yours with respect to convention play, but it would also be clearly nonzero. I admit, I would have stopped going to conventions if I could expect at least one idiot per session as it seems you do, but I certainly have seen my fair share of idiots.
I've not done Vampire LARPs, but 2nd hand knowledge leads me to believe that your description might be quite accurate. But even Vampire LARP designers (that is, the people writing the actual game rules) shouldn't have to write rules to account for unreasonable people Vampire LARP organizers, absolutely yes, oh god yes. But not the game designers.
But this is really my only point in my post. I think there are all kinds of good grounds to criticize a set of rules:
* they literally make no sense when read, the meaning cannot be found
* they contradict themselves
* they are unclear or ambiguous
* they don't seem to achieve the intent that the rules themselves indicate was the intent
* they don't create a play style that the rules indicate they should create
But I don't think the fact that rules don't account for unreasonable people being unreasonable is one of those good grounds.
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Lormyr, my intent was not to claim some kind of superior position due to experience, but simply to claim that I do have wide experience. I don't think anyone's gaming experience is somehow lesser than mine; I just happen to have played a lot of games, is all.
No worries bud, I didn't take offense to anything you said.
I admit, I would have stopped going to conventions if I could expect at least one idiot per session as it seems you do, but I certainly have seen my fair share of idiots.
Heh, well I have mostly quit going for the last 3 years. Partially for the douches, and partially because I can game for free whenever I want, so why pay to add douches to my rotation?
But I don't think the fact that rules don't account for unreasonable people being unreasonable is one of those good grounds.
You're not wrong, and I don't disagree. That doesn't excuse not just making a rule logical and well self-contained, though. When a game mechanic is too open to interpretation/veto it is probably better served as an optional rule or left to be decided as a house rule.
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But I don't think the fact that rules don't account for unreasonable people being unreasonable is one of those good grounds.
You're not wrong, and I don't disagree. That doesn't excuse not just making a rule logical and well self-contained, though. When a game mechanic is too open to interpretation/veto it is probably better served as an optional rule or left to be decided as a house rule.
I agree.
I think a rule needs work if reasonable people can't figure out how to make it work or use it or make sense of it or know when it applies or how it fits in with other rules. I believe many things in Shadowrun 6E (including a lot of the issues raised about Edge in this very thread) meet that test, if only on the basis that I think most people here are reasonable, and seem to have problems figuring it out.
I don't think a rule needs work if unreasonable people can use it to do unreasonable stuff just because they can without reference to anyone else's fun.
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But I don't think the fact that rules don't account for unreasonable people being unreasonable is one of those good grounds.
But 6e does account for that, or at least it attempts to -- the section is literally entitled "Preventing Edge Abuse." If good RPG rules don't account for unreasonable behaviour, why does that section have to exist? This is what computer programmers sometimes call a "smell." It's when you're reading something new and you find some weird, clunky section that isn't immediately obviously wrong but it makes you think "Huh. Why is that there? What underlying problem is it attempting to paper over?"
Every subsystem in every RPG comes with an implicit footnote of "players: don't abuse this. GMs: stop players who are abusing this." So why did 6e's Edge system need that to be said explicitly? The answer, I believe, is because the line between "abuse" and "enthusiastically engaging with it" is wafer-thin and very hard to define. All players should care about Edge, should optimise their characters and their actions to gain Edge, but not too much: too much caring and too much optimising is bad. How much is too much? Nobody knows for sure.
Also: don't get hung up on the idea of knowingly abusive players. I've talked about those because it's easier to write clear examples of broken behaviours I want to highlight. But I think the bigger issue is unknowingly "abusive" ones.
Shadowrun is a crunchy system. It has many sections where players have a wide range of choices, and by making smart choices that line up, they can get an advantage. This can range from blindingly obvious (if you want to buy a deck, choose to have good decking skills to match it) to much more subtle (eg. some pieces of cyberware are much more cost-effective to buy Used than others, and the Used discount can make a massive difference if applied to just one big-ticket piece of 'ware.) Players are constantly rewarded for systems mastery, and culture is the behaviour you reward (https://jocelyngoldfein.com/culture-is-the-behavior-you-reward-and-punish-7e8e75c6543e?gi=7bac868e39a).
For every example of an abusive player consciously breaking the Edge system, there's another hundred where some player will do something in the grey area, not out of malice, but out of cleverness and a desire to demonstrate systems mastery. The game explicitly sets Edge up as a big fat glowing target. Of course players are going to optimise for it; they'd be fools not to. And some of them are going to push the envelope in pursuit of that, and as Lormyr succinctly put it above, they don't think they're cheating; they think they're playing the rules-as-written and doing a good job of it. Which they are, from one perspective. So as a GM you're set up to have an endless cycle of awkward decisions and awkward conversations about it. Which doesn't sound fun, to me.
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For every example of an abusive player consciously breaking the Edge system, there's another hundred where some player will do something in the grey area, not out of malice, but out of cleverness and a desire to demonstrate systems mastery. The game explicitly sets Edge up as a big fat glowing target. Of course players are going to optimise for it; they'd be fools not to. And some of them are going to push the envelope in pursuit of that, and as Lormyr succinctly put it above, they don't think they're cheating; they think they're playing the rules-as-written and doing a good job of it. Which they are, from one perspective. So as a GM you're set up to have an endless cycle of awkward decisions and awkward conversations about it. Which doesn't sound fun, to me.
Penllawen, first, I had forgotten about the "Edge Abuse" section in the 6E rules. My reply to that is I really don't think that section was or should be necessary. But my other reply is that obviously the designers recognize that the attitude you and others point to is a real thing among Shadowrun players and feel they have to manage it. Which...fair enough? It still boggles my mind that it is such a big issue, but I'll accept its a real one.
I have two thoughts on the quoted passage above...
* Insofar as a player is engaging with the ongoing story of the game in interesting and fun ways, how does them "optimising" something in the game become a problem? Like, I make some choices for my character to make my character super-cool, and then I play my character in ways that all the other folks at the table are enjoying, but I happen to be using Edge super-efficiently. I'm not seeing any problem there. Up to a point, which leads me to...
* Insofar as a player is inadvertently "optimising" their character or their play in ways that are actively unfun for others, why does that conversation have to be awkward? Its just a conversation between well-meaning people.
Maybe I'm not seeing the problem here. I'll tie this back to Ghost Rigger's earlier post... Maybe. Or maybe they'll get so good at coming up with excuses for their blatant edge abuse that you can no longer distinguish it from a player thinking outside the box.
"I shoot the random bystander so that they don't call the cops."
"I shoot the scientists first, because they will run away while the guards stay put and we were ordered to leave no witnesses."
"I dataspike the coffee machine in the middle of combat so that the goons are distracted by the smoke and sparks."
I'm honestly not seeing the problem with any of those, here is why. Either...
* the player is just playing to the scene and the situation, doing cool stuff that all of us think is fun, in which case, enjoy the Edge, player! or
* the player is being a jerk, in which case I throw popcorn at them and say "ugh..boo"
I don't see that as very difficult to handle or discriminate between. And more importantly, I don't see the fact that its possible to do what Ghost Rigger describes as necessarily a problem with the rules.
I think there are problems with the Edge rules, don't get me wrong. But my problems have to do with their clunky construction, the fact that they don't seem to actually streamline much of anything, the fact that who can earn Edge and who can't and in what circumstances doesn't seem to have a whole lot of logic behind it in every case, etc. The kind of worry Ghost Rigger is expressing above is just not on my radar.
I feel like I have dragged this thread a long way off the original topic, which was specifically about armor and defense ratings. So I"m going to leave it here and give others the last word if they want to have it on the issue I have raised.
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I think there are problems with the Edge rules, don't get me wrong. But my problems have to do with their clunky construction, the fact that they don't seem to actually streamline much of anything, the fact that who can earn Edge and who can't and in what circumstances doesn't seem to have a whole lot of logic behind it in every case, etc. The kind of worry Ghost Rigger is expressing above is just not on my radar.
More than anything, this is my issue.
I've built four characters so far for SR6 to get familiar with the system.
The Decker and Street Sam has obvious, concise ways to earn Edge; if your AR is higher than the DR of the thing you are interacting with, barring obvious abuse, you get Edge.
The Aspected Magician/Face? With no combat spells or summoning there aren't many ways for this character to earn Edge; this is why I gave him First Impression, because each time you interact with someone new you gain 2 Edge. Part of the problem solved; the other half of this equation is social Edge, which is entirely up to the GM to decide.
The Rigger? Yikes, this one is far trickier. Barring the obvious drone combat and Analytical Mind quality, I don't really know if Edge will be easy to earn given the relatively samey AR and DR of NPC, drone, and vehicle pilots.
What is lacking, for me, is a more coherent way for the Edge system to distribute Edge; I just think there are too many factors involved for the system to be called even remotely streamlined, and I would have liked to see a less complex approach to this.
Perhaps something like "you beat a threshold, or won an opposed test, you gain edge". Something that applies equally to all archetypes, but still allows GMs to go "Hey, now you're just chatting/shooting/hacking/magicking random passers-by for edge, can we talk about this?" if players start abusing the system. Just my 2 cents.
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I don't think a rule needs work if unreasonable people can use it to do unreasonable stuff just because they can without reference to anyone else's fun.
What is "unreasonable" though? Presumably a player's desire to gain edge is not unreasonable, nor is following the letter of the rules of the game. Yet, when the decker says "I will hack this coffee machine in the middle of combat because the rules say I get edge for doing so" or the streetsam says "I'm going to shoot this random bystander because the rules say I get edge for doing so", suddenly they're unreasonable. Why? It's not about realism, there's too much magic and technomancy being slung about to make that argument. Perhaps it breaks verisimilitude because it doesn't make tactical or in-character sense. Fine, I'll just come up with some reason why it does make tactical or in-character sense. The decker has a personal vendetta against coffee machines and intends to distract the goons with the smoke and sparks that the bricked coffee machine will emit. The streetsam is genuine, certified cyberpsycho prone to flipping out and killing people at the drop of a hat, and besides that this whole run would go sideways if that random bystander calls the cops. The real difference between what is reasonable and what is unreasonable seems to be a matter of creativity. You could avoid all this by ruling that all edge must be immediately spent on the action that generated it, but at that point you may as well go back to previous editions.
I'm honestly not seeing the problem with any of those, here is why. Either...
* the player is just playing to the scene and the situation, doing cool stuff that all of us think is fun, in which case, enjoy the Edge, player! or
* the player is being a jerk, in which case I throw popcorn at them and say "ugh..boo"
I don't see that as very difficult to handle or discriminate between. And more importantly, I don't see the fact that its possible to do what Ghost Rigger describes as necessarily a problem with the rules.
The issue here is that the difference between "engaging with the ongoing story of the game in interesting and fun ways" and "blatantly exploiting the system" is how the players dresses it up. It's not really a problem so much as it is a very interesting observation that makes you think about the system as whole.
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and after all this what exactly does the edge mechanic achieve that is better than the prior system of modifiers?
nothing.
why?
because the edge mechanic was meant to stop you having to flip through books searching for all the relevant modifiers (gosh that's so *hard*) but modifiers are still used in conjunction with edge because even with a 50lb sledgehammer they still couldn't force them all to fit into edge.
now they are spread even more thinly throughout the book without any single place to find them nor any indicator when something will be represented by a modifier or an edge point.
so why did they do this at all?
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now they are spread even more thinly throughout the book without any single place to find them nor any indicator when something will be represented by a modifier or an edge point.
It'll get worse.
Because of everything being wrapped up into Edge and with the design decision to forego (most) die pool modifiers, CGL have pretty much painted themselves into a corner of their design space (https://www.designsforlearning.nu/articles/68/).
Either they will end up introducing more die pool modifiers, or increase the amount of options that gain Edge (promoting the Go-Go-Edge-Bag (GGEB) filled with obscure gear that ensure +2 Edge per turn regardless of situation).
"Gear porn" may be dead for Sixth World - for better or worse.
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I disagree. Gear porn will live on in 6e through items that grant more edge and possibly raise the cap on edge gain. After all, 2 edge is not hard to get, and it's not enough to use the better edge moves.
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I disagree. Gear porn will live on in 6e through items that grant more edge and possibly raise the cap on edge gain. After all, 2 edge is not hard to get, and it's not enough to use the better edge moves.
The 6th edition system has some of variety in edge gain, but is already chafing against its own limits for the Edge system. The only way to expand is to either break the 2 edge limit, or make gear that grants more Edge/AR/DR than the CRB. My fear there is that new gear will either obsolete older choices completely, or make the method of gains so obscure as to be useless.
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Hate to admit it. But that was actually a pretty good segue into porn spam. I’d never touch the link but it actually looks like they were reading the thread.
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The real question is whether or not it was east Indian or aboriginal.
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Spambots on most roleplaying message boards are a terrible annoyance. But I find them oddly charming on a Shadowrun board... Adds a sort of immersive cyberpunk experience to the boards, you scan me chummer?
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Okay, who let the fault sprite out?
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Spambots on most roleplaying message boards are a terrible annoyance. But I find them oddly charming on a Shadowrun board... Adds a sort of immersive cyberpunk experience to the boards, you scan me chummer?
What's really on point is that some of them loosely fit with shadowrunning, particular the ones about drugs and passports. These ones that are just long strings of weird letters and characters, not so much.
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These ones that are just long strings of weird letters and characters, not so much.
I think it’s a charset issue, and the spam is in some incompatible alphabet that this forum software doesn’t know how to display.
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These ones that are just long strings of weird letters and characters, not so much.
I think it’s a charset issue, and the spam is in some incompatible alphabet that this forum software doesn’t know how to display.
You just don't have a high enough Resonance score to see the fnords....