Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Rules and such => Previous Editions => Topic started by: theKernel on <09-06-11/2200:26>
-
I mean I understand tech is different and the year as well as art and style I was wondering what rule kinks there are. I've only played sr4.
-
lots of differences.. let's see, where to start........
one of the main differences is that the "points based" character creation was introduced in SR4. Prior to that, the game used the Priority system.
the very way in which 'hits' are calculated when rolling dice is different. In SR3, a task would be given a difficulty number that would range anywhere from, say, 3 to 20. You'd roll your dice, and if you got ANY dice that were equal to or greater than the difficulty threshold you were successful. If the threshold was over 6, you would re-roll all the dice that had come up as a 6 and add the new roll to the previous. Therefore, meeting a threshold would get progressively harder as the number went higher, to being nearly impossible at the upper end. In SR4, difficulties scale more linearly with the number of hits needed for a success versus the number of dice in your pool.
The way in which skills interact with attributes is different in SR3 as well. Attributes don't directly affect skill ratings as they do in SR4, but instead go into a 'dice pool' that can be added to skill rolls. This means that if you're in melee combat, you can attribute more dice to offense and less to defense, or vice versa. Made combat a bit more strategic, IMO.
Mages used to be in two distinct camps, Shamanistic and Hedonistic. Now they're lumped into the same set of rules, and it's up to the player to role-play the difference.
The real difference in terms of playability is that I found SR3 to be 'grittier' than SR4. You can die a million ways in either system, but it seemed to be a LOT easier to get dead in SR3.
Personally, I actually liked the feel of SR3 better than SR4, but they streamlined a LOT of stuff that was really clunky in SR3 and therefore most people have accepted it as the norm. Hacking was sooooo tedious in SR3, and the rules for rigger vehicles were largely unintelligible and often contradictory.
-
It's Hermetic, not Hedonistic, but I applaud your sense of poetic license.
Mages used to be in two distinct camps, Shamanistic and Hedonistic.
-
one of the main differences is that the "points based" character creation was introduced in SR4. Prior to that, the game used the Priority system.
thats not quite right
There was also a point Buy system in SR3 ( in the Compandium IIRC)
Mages used to be in two distinct camps, Shamanistic and Hedonistic. Now they're lumped into the same set of rules, and it's up to the player to role-play the difference.
not only those two (Hehe ;D Hedonistic, I like that ) but every Tradition had its own unique Rules or Spirits with unique Rules
HokaHey
Medicineman
-
Heh.. hedonistic is somehow fitting, eh?
-
The NERPS were a lot better in SR3. Sure, they were even better in SR2, and the best NERPS had to be in SR1. Much better NERPS than in SR4, that's for sure! 8)
-
In SR3, were allergies for metahumans default and mandatory, or did you get points for them and voluntarily choose to have one? I can't remember at what point they took out the fact you had to take an allergy for a meta-human.
Some additional concepts in magic changed. For instance a spell cast at an astral projection used to "ground" on the targets physical body. The biggest change impacting the flavour of magic for me was the removal of what made hermetics and shamans have a different feel. Shamanic spirits and heremetic spirits also used to work significantly differently, with hermetics using elementals that are more like the bound spirit concept and not being able to call them up on the fly. Shamanic spirits were more readily available, but couldn't cross thresholds into a domain different then their nature. For instance a forest spirit couldn't enter someones home (were a hearth spirit would have held dominion). I really miss the differences actually, now everything seems a little more generic and it is sad to loose the distinction in my opinion. (please don't negative me for my opinion, everyone's entitled)
Oh, in terms of the matrix, the system used to be laid out very rigidly in terms of Local, regional telecomunication grids, different sourts of access points and objects, it was more like drawing a state machine diagram (if you program or engineer for a living). It sort of felt a little less apple interface happy and more sort of dystopically grunge. However the new system is much more what you'd expect computing to evolve to. It just lost a bit of the dark flavouring. hard to reconcile ease of use interfaces and pop up cartoon bubbles and adds with dark gritty neuromancy I guess.
To be fair I still haven't exactly figured out what the hell the matrix rules in SR4 are supposed to play like exactly, so I'm reserving final judgement.
But I did like the fact that you had gray vs. black ice, which seems to have disappeared from the world now in this version... unless I missed it. I also recall that you could have your hardware damaged before if I recall, now that seems to be removed, unless you take physical stun/physical damage. I'd like to see rules for having your comlink damaged, I mean a little stun damage can be slept off and really isn't a deterrent... but hit a runner in his pocket book and the potential with having to rebuy that wiz extra processor and memory and he'll be decidedly attentive. Can't recall on the hardware damage rules though with out my book beside me, might have that confused with another system I play.
-
@shion - I think most of those things died out before SR3.
Allergies were big in SR1, and became an optional rule in SR2.
Matrix and Magic rules changed between SR2 and SR3.
-
really??? I'm going to have to dust off my old books. The allergies I suspected as per original posting... but I was positive that shamanic and hermetic spirits were actually significantly different in SR3. As well SR3, had all the SAN, RTG and LTG stuff I could have sworn. There are even references in SR4 to RTG, LTG, etc, but it seems sort of oddly pieced in because you don't really interact with them, it's sort of just FYI this stuff is still there but now you don't hack it anymore.
Dice pools, as mentioned, were the other big change. It added a more flexibility, albeit with a harder time for beginners, to being able to choose exactly what part of an action a character was focusing on. You could sacrafice your dice to resist drain for outrageous juice, or make sure that you didn't take that last box by reserving all your pool dice for the drain test. It's a lot more of a flat roll now. Before you'd have to choose between reserving dice to do an all out mele attack vs. feinting and keeping most to defend, now you don't have that complexity.
From a magicians perspective you also used to buy spells at a particular force. You could cast that force or less, now the formula of your spell doesn't restrict your force.
-
I'm not saying there weren't changes between SR3 and SR4, but there were some big leaps between SR2 and SR3 (and even changes in these editions when the matrix and magic books came out), which I'm pretty sure are the ones that you're referring to.
-
and as of now, SR4.75 will have hedonistic mages (the closest being to a shaman you can be without actually being one)
-
The NERPS were a lot better in SR3. Sure, they were even better in SR2, and the best NERPS had to be in SR1. Much better NERPS than in SR4, that's for sure! 8)
NERPS! Buy NERPS now! NERPS! NERPS FOR BLISTERS. NERPS FOR HEADACHES. NERPS FOR WARTS. NERPS FOR SLUGS. NERPS FOR PAINKILLING. NERPS FOR FIREPOWER. NERPS FOR LESIONS. NERPS FOR BEER. NERPS FOR PRESIDENT. NERPS FOR THE SOUL. NERPS FOR SKEET SHOOTING. NERPS FOR HYPNOTIZING. NERPS FOR SEX. NERPS FOR FOOD. 1 OUT OF EVERY 16.000.000.000 DOCTORS RECOMMEND IT!!!!!!
*drools*