Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Opti on <04-26-19/1701:28>
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Not sure I’ll be able to tune in live...assuming this will hit your YouTube channel as well?
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It is at midnight?
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Tuesday night at 11:59, est, yes
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(https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/019/239/128875590863673614.jpg)
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Well, I know what I'll be checking come Wednesday morning. Interesting that they are doing a big announcement thing, I hope it is appropriately hype worthy.
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Yes, you want to tune into this. It's worth the hype.
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For those of us not on Twitch, and/or not interested in being up at that time (midnight for me, 5am for much of Europe, etc), is there any indication if this will be posted elsewhere after? (I'm sure I'll find a summary here tomorrow morning, by somebody or other, but in case I want to watch the announcement video).
PS: also, somebody DO PLEASE post a summary here! I'll be trying to quickly catch the news while having breakfast in the morning. If the video is available for watching later on, I won't get to it until much later.
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Yes, you want to tune into this. It's worth the hype.
That's a lie. Nothing to see here, folks. Off you go.
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For those of us not on Twitch, and/or not interested in being up at that time (midnight for me, 5am for much of Europe, etc), is there any indication if this will be posted elsewhere after? (I'm sure I'll find a summary here tomorrow morning, by somebody or other, but in case I want to watch the announcement video).
PS: also, somebody DO PLEASE post a summary here! I'll be trying to quickly catch the news while having breakfast in the morning. If the video is available for watching later on, I won't get to it until much later.
'twill be available, verily.
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:o :o :o :o :o
(Actually I'm pretending to be shocked, I already knew. But I definitely will watch for more details later.)
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So what was it?
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A few teasers they've shared for 6th Edition:
QSR @ Origins
CRB @ GenCon
No more Limits
No more Marks
No more (spell) Force
No more Edge sorta; it's being replaced with an entirely new Edge mechanic (it's not an attribute anymore)
It's advertised as crunchy system, so not Anarchy 2E. It's supposed to be much more streamlined than 5E.
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Official announcement will go up in... was it 10 hours? There's several books in the launch schedule, but NDA prevents me from spoiling that. However, just 1 Core book, the rest is the expected kind of books around a new launch.
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Eh. I guess we will see. I can't say thrilled by the concept. If we are just gonna get more of the same we have had for the last year.
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Bobby / Complex Action has a good (and humorous) preview of some of the changes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtcHfpf5SQU
The summary is, "The overall theme is to streamline and simplify." That said, they still quantified the level of crunch (on a scale of 1-10) as a 7.0 or 7.5
Highlights in addition to what Stainless Steel Devil Rat outlined:
Combat
- Initiative is rolled once at the beginning of combat
- Free Actions are gone
- Simple/Complex Actions are now Minor/Major actions
- You earn additional Minor actions per turn based on your Initiative dice, which can be converted into Major actions at a 4:1 ratio
- No more situational modifiers, as these have been rolled into the Edge system (which sounds similar to combat/astral/etc. pools from 1E-3E)
- Recoil and Accuracy are gone
- Firing modes (SS, SA, BF, etc.) are more of a trade-off between doing extra damage while making it harder to hit (rather than easier to hit with more rounds fired)
- Weapon ranges are now more like Anarchy (e.g. five broad ranges/buckets) rather than specific ranges in meters for each weapon type
- Driving & Vehicle Chasing is much easier, vehicle attributes redone, crash damage is completely overhauled
- Healing is easier now, and order no longer matters
Hacking
- MARKs are gone
- Hacking is now a direct action, rather than needing special access first
- There are separate Matrix skills for legal and illegal actions
- Commlinks are for legal actions, cyberdecks are for illegal actions,
- Cyberdecks are much cheaper now
Magic
- For combat spells, you can choose your damage and AoE before you cast, which impacts your drain
- There's no more separate soak roll for drain; it's now a result of the spellcasting test (example given: Drain 6 - Spellcasting Hits 4 = 2 boxes of drain)
- No more sustained spells, there's a duration instead
- No longer need to declare Counterspelling, which is no longer a skill of its own (now based off Spellcasting)
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To be honest, I'm going to miss Limits because they were a nice balancing measure, especially Accuracy which added a nice extra difference between weapons and Physical, which punished me for munchkining by making my Stealth harder. But Social was bluh, Mental not a problem with gear, and with simplifying things it makes sense to ditch it.
I kinda dislike the sound of the weapon range thing, but we'll see how it turns out exactly. As long as my intended mini(ature)-games will still work, I'm good.
Driving and Vehicle chase, thank god. Matrix, thank god. Situational, I'm guessing that's going to be 'hey this is a risky situation' instead of a detailed calculation. More Minors sounds nice. Duration spells sweet. Firing modes makes me wonder if it's a SQR-thing or will be like that in the final rules (I know QSR rules tend to simplify some rules.)
I should listen to the interview but no time, got today reserved for my wife.
And last, my brother looked into the future and wrote down some criticism of SR6 (read: he made shit up without even seeing the announcement):
- spellcasters are OP
- Edge is useless
- hacking is too powerful
- there's too many gear choices
- summoners are OP
- Edge is too powerful and too hard to get for non-Humans
- hacking takes too long
- all the good gear is prohibited at chargen
- magic is useless unless you can do all of it
- Magical Girl still isn't a Tradition
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Listening to the podcast with JM Hardy, currently 37 minutes in, let me recap what I've heard so far (I might be slightly off):
- Rulebook 300 pages excluding index/etc (in contrast to 465 of SR5)
- No more chargen gear-limits
- Skillgroups are now skills (e.g. Agility+Firearms)
- Instead of tons of modifiers, you now get Edge instead
- Edge can be spent on moves that cost 1~5 points
- You start a session with your Edge rating in edge
- Can gain max 2 Edge per turn
- Can never exceed 7
- After encounter (e.g. combat) is done, you are decreased to your Edge rating if over it
- Combat: Attack Rating of weapon (depends on the range category) vs Defense Rating (Bod+Armor), difference of 4+ means extra Edge point
(So example: Ares Predator at 10 Attack-Rating for the first two range categories will score Edge against Body 3 plus Armor Vest which is 3)
- Things like gear/qualities/visual circumstances (dark and only 1 side has Low-Light Vision) will also provide Edge
- 1 Edge-use option named: Make enemies count 2s for glitches
- Another edge-use called (not 100% sure if it's an example or an actual use) is use # points to reroll # dice
- 1 Edge-use per action still (but some Edge-uses allow using extra points for higher benefit)
- Lower damage ratings, but armor doesn't feature in the soak roll (so Armor is only in Defense Rating, not in the soak roll)
- Example: Ares Predator = 3P + Net-Hits, roll Body against it
- Soak-autohits augmentations/qualities exist
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- Expensive Edge-use named: Healing 1 point of damage
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I see a lot here that I don't like.
>Free Actions are gone
I shouldn't have to explain why I don't like this.
>Recoil and Accuracy are gone
All my favorite gun mods are now useless, and I'll bet they were everyone else's favorite gun mods too.
>Firing modes (SS, SA, BF, etc.) are more of a trade-off between doing extra damage while making it harder to hit (rather than easier to hit with more rounds fired)
So now going FA is a dicepool penalty that I have no way of reducing? Great. Fantastic. Guess I'll just stick to single-shot weapons from now on.
>Weapon ranges are now more like Anarchy (e.g. five broad ranges/buckets) rather than specific ranges in meters for each weapon type
So I may as well snipe with a pistol instead of a sniper rifle? Boooooo.
>Lower damage ratings, but armor doesn't feature in the soak roll (so Armor is only in Defense Rating, not in the soak roll)
This makes armor almost pointless.
>Edge edge edge edge edge edge
Real streamlined. I'm sure looking forward to keeping track of my edge minute to minute and memorizing all those new actions I'm going to have to spend edge on.
Is this an out of season April Fools joke? Catalyst will be lucky if anyone even bothers to pirate books for 6th edition, let alone buy them.
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To be honest, I'm going to miss Limits because they were a nice balancing measure, especially Accuracy which added a nice extra difference between weapons and Physical, which punished me for munchkining by making my Stealth harder. But Social was bluh, Mental not a problem with gear, and with simplifying things it makes sense to ditch it.
I kinda dislike the sound of the weapon range thing, but we'll see how it turns out exactly. As long as my intended mini(ature)-games will still work, I'm good.
Driving and Vehicle chase, thank god. Matrix, thank god. Situational, I'm guessing that's going to be 'hey this is a risky situation' instead of a detailed calculation. More Minors sounds nice. Duration spells sweet. Firing modes makes me wonder if it's a SQR-thing or will be like that in the final rules (I know QSR rules tend to simplify some rules.)
I should listen to the interview but no time, got today reserved for my wife.
And last, my brother looked into the future and wrote down some criticism of SR6 (read: he made shit up without even seeing the announcement):
- spellcasters are OP
- Edge is useless
- hacking is too powerful
- there's too many gear choices
- summoners are OP
- Edge is too powerful and too hard to get for non-Humans
- hacking takes too long
- all the good gear is prohibited at chargen
- magic is useless unless you can do all of it
- Magical Girl still isn't a Tradition
Most of that sounds like no change. Except for 3 points. 1 hacking is OP? 2 Edge is useless? and most confusing 3 edge is OP? So is it useless or OP?
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this sounds horrific.
it's like catalyst through in the towel and said "lets make anarchy-lite"
the "constantly tracking a changing edge stat" seems particularly nutso to me.
no surprise though i guess...
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this sounds horrific.
it's like catalyst through in the towel and said "lets make anarchy-lite"
the "constantly tracking a changing edge stat" seems particularly nutso to me.
no surprise though i guess...
I admit i'm very concerned about the 1 and 2 glitch thing. The moment you make glitching as likely as success you have manage to remake the disaster that was storyteller. The better your character is at something the more likely they are to glitch. That is a totally terrible thing, and makes a game unplayable.
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this sounds horrific.
it's like catalyst through in the towel and said "lets make anarchy-lite"
the "constantly tracking a changing edge stat" seems particularly nutso to me.
no surprise though i guess...
I admit i'm very concerned about the 1 and 2 glitch thing. The moment you make glitching as likely as success you have manage to remake the disaster that was storyteller. The better your character is at something the more likely they are to glitch. That is a totally terrible thing, and makes a game unplayable.
Actually, I believe what was meant is that you can spend a certain amount of your Edge points to MAKE your enemy have to count 2's as glitches FOR THAT ONE ACTION. Maybe more, but I think that would be plenty powerful enough right there without going full-on nutso.
That said, I'm not sure constantly tracking Edge points and having to remember the whole list of things I can do with that is *much* better than having to track all those situational modifiers. I'll have to see it in practice.
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Actually, I believe what was meant is that you can spend a certain amount of your Edge points to MAKE your enemy have to count 2's as glitches FOR THAT ONE ACTION. Maybe more, but I think that would be plenty powerful enough right there without going full-on nutso.
That said, I'm not sure constantly tracking Edge points and having to remember the whole list of things I can do with that is *much* better than having to track all those situational modifiers. I'll have to see it in practice.
I said what I meant to say. GMs have no resource limit. So if this in the cards then every attack action or comparison test could easily be subject to this.
Unless you're trying to say GM don't get to use edge on NPCs?
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I’m not making any judgements until I’ve played with the new edition, and by nature I try to look on the bright side.
After listening to the Shadowcaster network podcast, where they talk with Mr. Hardy, I heard a few things that I like.
They set themselves some constraints early in this edition, apparently:
- Rule book no more than 300 pages
- Keep the d6 dice pool mechanism
- Still allow highly varied character creation
I do really like that. Sprawl of the rules, and the words-to-content ratio, of fifth edition were personal peeves of mine. And I think a focus on keeping things shorter and more concise generally forces you to look at the value of pretty much everything you are putting into the rules. That should create a bias toward broad systems and minimize fiddly little extra rules.
Edge (the ‘luck’ system) is gone. Oooookaaaay, . Edge is a super-power in 5th, and its use becomes a meta-game. One that we’ve all gotten used to and mastered and dumped karma into. It sounds like the ‘luck-lord’ build will be gone, which will make converting some characters or character concepts difficult. But any rule version changes creates some issues of this sort.
Edge, a new meta-game currency for situational advantage, is pervasive throughout the new rules. Down side, a new metagame currency. Upside, it seems to roll in everything from light levels to armor to social effects. Apparently all uses of edge are listed on one page, hopefully they are flexible enough to make them useful in a broad range of situations. Well, I did say that I wanted less fiddly little rules and more broad systems. I’ll have to play with it to see how I like it. I have particular concerns about how it works in non-confrontation situations, where the old edge (luck) system helped smooth out a lot of issues. You know, the decker with 3 agility and 2 sneaking was part of the group that had to get past an observer and, the player would either pre-edge the roll or re-roll fails if the roll wasn't great -- yes failure can be interesting, but sometimes you just want to get to the main thrust of the story.
Armor isn’t going to be as effective and getting hit is going to hurt more on average, by the sound of it. This will make Body more valuable, I think (will have to play to make sure), which could make the tougher metatypes a bit more interesting. Will have to see how this plays, but it sounds reasonable. One of those things that will take a bit to get used to, and I may come near to killing characters by accident early on until we get a better feel for threat levels, but overall I don’t see it as a good or bad thing, just a thing.
It sounds like the initiative system is changing quite a bit, probably downgrading the criticality of boosting initiative That may create a big change in character creation/upgrade priorities. Some people love being blazing fast and I think they may hate this – one of their favorite things may no longer be one of the absolutely most impactful options both in games and in terms of getting to do more things as a player. Personally I like the change, as I’d like boosted initiative to be impactful, but as one of several impactful options, not one that you are a fool not to follow.
Actions go from free, simple, complex to minor and major. They haven’t discussed much of what each can do, but I have heard that attacks are major actions, movement takes minor actions, four minor actions can be converted to a major action, and boosted initiative gives extra minor actions. Depending on how flexible and interesting minor actions are, it will help color how I feel about initiative I think.
There is a new rule to support grouping grunts into a single attack roll. That sounds nice!
There are modular spell components, so that when the Magic splat book comes out they will include a spell design section. All spells in the CRB will be built in accordance the spell building rules. That sounds like a win to me.
Combat spells start with a given damage and drain, and you can amp up the damage while casting, by increasing the drain appropriately. Likewise the area of effect can be increased. Elemental effects apparently have much clearer effects, and the modular system could let you add more than one elemental effect (a thunder and ice storm?). These effects cause a status condition, and these status conditions are defined more globally. Healing spells can have the ability to clear various status effects. But no real information about other types of spells, or spirits, or alchemy. So, this is wait and see for me, with still a lot of concern as illusion and manipulation spells tend to be my favorites.
Matrix info has been listed already, pretty much. I’m a bit concerned about the new ‘cyber-jacks’ as they will apparently provide a lot of your matrix defense, with decks being more the ‘offense’ side of things. I’m worried that this will make them de facto necessary for hacking. There had been an ability to make unaugmented hackers in fifth (wasn’t optimal, but was playable), that I rather liked. I’m worried that these new rules are going to kill that off.
Character creation apparently opens up meta-humans more. Still a priority system, but meta-humans can be played at any priority level. Hardy said meta-types may have less differences at character creation, but show their differences more as characters advance. Which may be less good for one shorts and short campaign arcs, but is very interesting for longer campaigns.
On the flip side, opening up gear availability right at character creation should help short arc games more. And the gear section is apparently fifty of the three hundred pages, so no, they haven’t abandoned the gear porn aspect of the game that we know and love.
Overall, some things that I like the sound of but won’t really know until I can play with them, plenty of changes that I really don’t have an opinion on until I touch them, and a few that have me concerned but that I’m willing to wait and see the details on. For sure it all adds to the game changing, but I’m still trying to be optimistic that the changes will be net for the better.
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I've lately been badmouthing Limits as being poorly realized as a game mechanic, and I suppose the 6E designers/playtesters came to the same conclusion.
In all honesty I'm excited to hear about the direction they're aiming for in 6E. I've played Shadowrun long enough that 5E wasn't "Shadowrun" in my view, but just the current iteration of it. And I've been playing RPGs of all stripes to understand that some edition churn is inevitable, since the publishers do need to turn a profit afterall. 5E had a good run, and longer than most of its predecessor editions at that.
I was of the opinion that something after 5E was always inevitable, but I'll be honest and admit that I bought into the misconception that Anarchy was "6E" and that a more "conventional" Shadowrun would continue to live on in 5E. I'll admit that my stomach was in knots when I first heard about 6E, but I didn't get the details until most of us did last night. And I'm saying as someone who was worried about the notion, I'm not just relieved but excited about what they're saying they want to do in 6E. Sure sure, we'll have to wait to see if it lives up to SUCCEEDING on those goals, but I like the stated goals. Because c'mon, let's not overlook that 5E had bloated into something rather unattractive. Anecdotally, I participated in a Gaming Convention this past weekend where SRM was all longtime Shadowrun veterans. I haven't had opportunity to teach Shadowrun to a newcomer for quite a long time, but this weekend I got to look at 5E from the eyes of a novice. And since the newbie played a pregen, we didn't even have to go down the rabbit hole of character generation.
Like most of us, I like the options and crunch. But I do feel like there comes a point where too much of a good thing is a bad thing. I like the notion of cutting out some (or even a lot) of deadwood. FFS streamline the game so it doesn't take an hour or more per combat round. I'm excited to see 6E.
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So, um...will the Neo-Tokyo Shadowrun Missions stay 5E until the campaign finishes, or will the campaign convert to 6E (a process likely to be painful and confusing for everyone involved)?
If we don't convert, Missions isn't promoting the new products (one of the big reasons for its existence). If we do convert, how many players does Missions lose in the process? This is why I wasn't expecting a new version until 2021...
Having just paid for all the relevant modules for HeroLab, I suspect I'll be rather annoyed if everything I bought is useless by the end of the year.
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Why do people keep saying edge is gone, but then in the next sentence say edge is everywhere?
Peeps it cannot be both gone and everywhere, that doesn't make any sense. As Edge is obviously not gone, so explain it's mechanics.
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My impression of some of the changes that have been made public this far (including listening to the active play of the 6th ed quick start rules):
Soak roll Body only: Concerned
Overall, I am in favor of smaller dice pools. Even with reduced damage though, soaking with only a single attribute + ware/qualities seems as though it will make combat significantly more lethal. If there are more miscellaneous options in said ware/qualities than I am anticipating, then perhaps this might turn out ok. That said, armor rating only mattering for if the attacker gains a bonus edge or not really seems to negate the value of armor. If hit, most everything will simple be one or two shot.
Spellcasting and drain roll the same roll: Dislike
The main thing I don't like about this is that a single bad roll will result in devastation. As it currently stands in 5th, you can potentially cast your spell very well but suffer big drain damage, or maybe your spell doesn't cast so well but also doesn't hurt you. With this new system, you can end up with a situation where not only did your spell not do anything, but you also roasted yourself because of a single bad roll. At least in 5th it takes two bad rolls for that to occur.
Spell duration instead of sustain: Like
It will depend on the specific calculation for those durations, but overall, I like this idea much better.
New edge system: Mixed
I think the idea is cool.
The implementation seems to slow combat down, though. On every single action, on every single character, you will have to compare attack value vs. defense rating to see if extra edge are applied. Then you have to look at the situation and see if either side has advantage. Then you have to decide if you want to spend any of that edge for maneuvers. Every single action.
Decker actions changes: Love
No more marks, no more multiple turns that will result in the combat being over before you are done. Just pick your action, make your roll, and implement the result? Yes please.
No more skill groups / skills folded together: Like
So many of those skills were already so close to the same thing that I am very pleased to see the list just folded in and narrowed.
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My impression of some of the changes that have been made public this far (including listening to the active play of the 6th ed quick start rules):
New edge system: Mixed
I think the idea is cool.
The implementation seems to slow combat down, though. On every single action, on every single character, you will have to compare attack value vs. defense rating to see if extra edge are applied. Then you have to look at the situation and see if either side has advantage. Then you have to decide if you want to spend any of that edge for maneuvers. Every single action.
The 1 and 2 Glitch thing is on maneuvers list I take it?
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So, um...will the Neo-Tokyo Shadowrun Missions stay 5E until the campaign finishes, or will the campaign convert to 6E (a process likely to be painful and confusing for everyone involved)?
If we don't convert, Missions isn't promoting the new products (one of the big reasons for its existence). If we do convert, how many players does Missions lose in the process? This is why I wasn't expecting a new version until 2021...
Having just paid for all the relevant modules for HeroLab, I suspect I'll be rather annoyed if everything I bought is useless by the end of the year.
I'm highly interested (and invested) in this answer as well, and I suspect that even if I knew the answer I couldn't share it yet by this point.
But we do have a precedent to look at: 4 to 5e. They STILL have the rules for converting season 1-4 characters to 5E in the FAQ. I'd imagine something similar is coming for 5E to 6E SRM.
Why do people keep saying edge is gone, but then in the next sentence say edge is everywhere?
Peeps it cannot be both gone and everywhere, that doesn't make any sense. As Edge is obviously not gone, so explain it's mechanics.
Well those who know didn't (or couldn't) say in detail during the early podcasts. Those of us bandying it in the forum are paraphrasing, and some (even me) may have gotten misconceptions about what was said in deliberately vague terms.
As best as *I* understand, Edge is primarily a rules system (although apparently, it may also be an attribute as well).
The take-home I got was Edge represents advantages you have in any opposed conflict: fighting, vehicle chases, social interactions, etc.
One example they gave is if you're fighting a ganger in a dark alleyway and you have low light vision and he doesn't, rather than that manifesting as a dice penalty instead you get a point of edge. Edge refreshes every scene rather than every mission, and so it kind of replaces both the reroll and situational bonuses/penalties mechanics from 5E. They said you can spend edge in 6E to do things like reroll dice, but also to do many more things even healing a box of damage.
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More recap:
1 pass per turn, 1 initiative roll per combat, edge can be used to alter initiative order.
1+dicecount Minor & 1 Major actions. Trade 4 minor for a second major. R+I+xd6 score.
Movement is a Minor action.
Grunts can be combined into 1 attack per up to 5 grunts.
Spells no Force: modular spell components to allow for eventual easier own spell design. Instead can amp up spell (e.g. not M/2 damage but amp with 2 but 4 more drain, boost the area, elemental effects, etc) which simply increases drain.
Different healing spells e.g. just heal or also fix specific elemental damage status effect.
Elemental effects apparently more interesting mechanic-wise (e.g. on-fire status).
Matrix 2 skills for legal vs non legal.
Matrix attributes are way different now since no more limits.
No more Marks.
Hacking approach in advance between attack and sleaze (penalty if your action doesn't fit approach)
Decks cheaper but Cyberjacks added to help with matrix defense, allow you to customise your attributes more.
Chargen: metahumans less expensive, including at lowest prio level available (with less SAPs). Metahumans have additional SAP-expenditure options.
Almost everything gearwise available at chargen. You want to launch rockets? Go ahead. Just keep in mind the law will come after you.
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The 1 and 2 Glitch thing is on maneuvers list I take it?
Yes, it was explicitly chosen from the list of edge options in the mini-combat play out they did. Chosen just because "I've never been able to do this before" Other options seemed to include using 2 edge to get an additional die on a roll.
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The 1 and 2 Glitch thing is on maneuvers list I take it?
Correct. 5 cost if I recall correctly.
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Why do people keep saying edge is gone, but then in the next sentence say edge is everywhere?
Peeps it cannot be both gone and everywhere, that doesn't make any sense. As Edge is obviously not gone, so explain it's mechanics.
All just based on the podcast:
They got rid of the 5th edition Edge system (where Edge ~ Luck).
They introduced a new system, also called edge (where Edge ~ situational advantage).
The new edge is something you use all the time, that re-sets for every situation, and which has much more incremental effects compared to using edge in 5th.
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The 1 and 2 Glitch thing is on maneuvers list I take it?
Yes, it was explicitly chosen from the list of edge options in the mini-combat play out they did. Chosen just because "I've never been able to do this before" Other options seemed to include using 2 edge to get an additional die on a roll.
I will wait to see what the rules say, but that makes me deeply concerned. The math on that is gonna be really bad if you like large pools.
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The way they made it sound (or maybe I'm already conflating other people's opinion for what was said) was that you don't reroll all failures like in 5E... rerolling 1 die = 1 edge expenditure
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>Weapon ranges are now more like Anarchy (e.g. five broad ranges/buckets) rather than specific ranges in meters for each weapon type
So I may as well snipe with a pistol instead of a sniper rifle? Boooooo.
No, there's 5 global ranges and each weapon has its own Attack Ratings for specific ranges. The example they gave was that an Ares Predator has 10 in the first 2 ranges, while a Sniper Rifle still has an attack rating in the Extreme range category.
Minor/Major instead of Free/2SimpleOr1Complex means different action economy, so I'm not discounting it yet. With AR-vs-DR being a way to score Edge, Armor will definitely be relevant.
I don't think having to track Edge will be that bad, since all we need is some kind of counters. Plenty of those around. But we'll see how annoying it becomes.
Decks + Cyberjacks combination is probably meant for you to have more combination options, so you can finetune your matrix abilities more. Makes more sense than being strictly locked down by only specific combinations being available.
JM Hardy says that Limits no longer are needed because the problem they were meant to solve (which I liked them for) no longer is a concern to them with the new system.
Oh, and No Future physical print will become dual-statted, while there will be some kind of pdf update for that as well.
I agree with the concern about a bad roll being both a failed cast and horrible drain.
Lormyr, with probably more damage (since no more massive soak pools) and less attacks per turn, it might not be that bad. But we'll see how annoying or good the new Edge system turns out.
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JM Hardy says that Limits no longer are needed because the problem they were meant to solve (which I liked them for) no longer is a concern to them with the new system.
But I loved having that problem.
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The fact is if 1-2 are glitches and 5-6 are still successes then your success chance == your glitch chance. Then Obviously Scaling that means you're increasing both equally. Which means your odds of one being more then other also scales. So the higher your pool, the higher your glitch chance and Critical glitch (if that is still a thing) also increases. It means the better you are at something then from the system perspective the more likely you are at screwing it up, while doing it. That is very not good from the player perspective.
Game theory default assumption is that players will be successful. So as soon as you roll dice you add the chance for failure, the more rolls the greater the chance of failure. Now we usually mitigate this fact by having characters be very "good" at what they roll, ie making it very unlikely to fail, but when that changes to the better you are the more likely you are to screwing it up, well see above.
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Lormyr, with probably more damage (since no more massive soak pools) and less attacks per turn, it might not be that bad. But we'll see how annoying or good the new Edge system turns out.
I agree, I can't have a final thought until I know the exact options for both sides. I know my game mechanics and math quite well though, and that math presently looks ugly.
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Well we can ask on the 29th, and see these joker have clue of what they are doing. I seriously hope they are ready to errata some stuff. I don't even want to be at the table when some serous players sit down and start rolling with something like a 50% glitch chance.
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Well we can ask on the 29th, and see these joker have clue of what they are doing. I seriously hope they are ready to errata some stuff. I don't even want to be at the table when some serous players sit down and start rolling with something like a 50% glitch chance.
We are talking about glitches being on 1s and 2s ONLY when someone spends edge offensively to make it so for an opponent, right? Because that's the way I understand this topic works.
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Well we can ask on the 29th, and see these joker have clue of what they are doing. I seriously hope they are ready to errata some stuff. I don't even want to be at the table when some serous players sit down and start rolling with something like a 50% glitch chance.
We are talking about glitches being on 1s and 2s ONLY when someone spends edge offensively to make it so for an opponent, right? Because that's the way I understand this topic works.
yes, it is only when someone spends a bunch of edge (I dont have my copy in front of me right now) but I think it is a 5 point edge boost so it is a doozy and rightfully so will have a major impact when used properly
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Well we can ask on the 29th, and see these joker have clue of what they are doing. I seriously hope they are ready to errata some stuff. I don't even want to be at the table when some serous players sit down and start rolling with something like a 50% glitch chance.
We are talking about glitches being on 1s and 2s ONLY when someone spends edge offensively to make it so for an opponent, right? Because that's the way I understand this topic works.
yes, it is only when someone spends a bunch of edge (I dont have my copy in front of me right now) but I think it is a 5 point edge boost so it is a doozy and rightfully so will have a major impact when used properly
Player: "Hey, our research said this one guy doesn't get along well with technology, right?"
GM: "Yes?"
Player: "And he's wielding a modern gun?"
GM: "Yes...."
Player: "Okay, he must have Gremlins. I'm making him glitch on 2s as well."
GM: "... Frag."
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Soak roll Body only: Concerned
Overall, I am in favor of smaller dice pools. Even with reduced damage though, soaking with only a single attribute + ware/qualities seems as though it will make combat significantly more lethal. If there are more miscellaneous options in said ware/qualities than I am anticipating, then perhaps this might turn out ok. That said, armor rating only mattering for if the attacker gains a bonus edge or not really seems to negate the value of armor. If hit, most everything will simple be one or two shot.
The Predator was stated as having a base damage of 3 wasn't it? Unless there is a significant difference between the Attack dice pool and the Defense dice pool, you'll be soaking 4 or 5 damage? So, Body 3 Mook/Mage/Squishy, is going to take 3 shots to drop if they can soak a point or two each time. (Presuming the typical character has 10 Boxes...)
A Samurai with 5 body and Augments and a high defense pool is still going to be really tough to drop unless there is some significant dice pool boosts to Attack rolls. I would think instead of dice pool boosts Augments, Powers, Spells, and Gear would be giving Edge? *shrug*
Smaller dice pools does make the math easier, if more swingy.
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Player: "Hey, our research said this one guy doesn't get along well with technology, right?"
GM: "Yes?"
Player: "And he's wielding a modern gun?"
GM: "Yes...."
Player: "Okay, he must have Gremlins. I'm making him glitch on 2s as well."
GM: "... Frag."
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the new meta.
The Predator was stated as having a base damage of 3 wasn't it? Unless there is a significant difference between the Attack dice pool and the Defense dice pool, you'll be soaking 4 or 5 damage?
Even if that is going to be the case in the average combat, it's still making surprise attacks a hell of a lot deadlier.
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The Predator was stated as having a base damage of 3 wasn't it? Unless there is a significant difference between the Attack dice pool and the Defense dice pool, you'll be soaking 4 or 5 damage? So, Body 3 Mook/Mage/Squishy, is going to take 3 shots to drop if they can soak a point or two each time. (Presuming the typical character has 10 Boxes...)
A Samurai with 5 body and Augments and a high defense pool is still going to be really tough to drop unless there is some significant dice pool boosts to Attack rolls. I would think instead of dice pool boosts Augments, Powers, Spells, and Gear would be giving Edge? *shrug*
Smaller dice pools does make the math easier, if more swingy.
Sure, that is not so bad for that particular example. Lets look at other common ones:
Assault rifle (yamaha raiden), base damage 5P. Burst fire takes it to 6P, full auto to 8P.
A 10 strength troll (or an augmented human) with an axe is 13P.
Without comprehensive knowledge of what damage mitigation will be available in the end, the damage I know of vs. soak potential I know of is a rough equation.
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...just watched the video and leaves me with more questions than answers. Not thrilled with having to "start over" again with only the core book and waiting years for supplements and expansions to be re-released to really flesh out a decent character again.
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...just watched the video and leaves me with more questions than answers. Not thrilled with having to "start over" again with only the core book and waiting years for supplements and expansions to be re-released to really flesh out a decent character again.
Eh, that's in all editions. SR5 released extended core books faster than SR4, let's hope they do the same for SR6.
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...just watched the video and leaves me with more questions than answers. Not thrilled with having to "start over" again with only the core book and waiting years for supplements and expansions to be re-released to really flesh out a decent character again.
Eh, that's in all editions. SR5 released extended core books faster than SR4, let's hope they do the same for SR6.
That's a two-edged sword. Fortunately, I have a two-income household and a decent amount of discretionary income for gaming, but it seems a bit early to buy new books. Sure, some material will be new, but a lot will be recycled - there's only so many ways to describe an Ares Predator, a GMC Bulldog, or how the corps run things. To have the equivalent amount of content (and presumably character options) that I have now, I'm going to need several supplements. Even just the books with the most options* will cost hundreds of dollars and would be a pretty ambitious publishing schedule for the first year. Maybe they could reduce the sting by finally embracing Bits and Mortar (https://www.bits-and-mortar.com/) (get the PDF free with the digital book)...
Even 4th edition D&D, which got a ton of hate, also lasted 6 years before a new edition. 5th edition Shadowrun isn't perfect, but seems to be liked a lot better than 4E D&D was. I feel like Catalyst is pulling the trigger too soon - and if they knew they were going to do this two years ago (given the typical development cycle, that's likely), they should have extended the Chicago Shadowrun Missions and arranged to launch Neo-Tokyo with 6th edition.
* This is subjective, but I think the most used book content I have comes from the following - core book, Run & Gun, Street Grimoire, Chrome Flesh, Data Trails, Hard Targets, Rigger 5, Kill Code, Street Lethal
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So, um...will the Neo-Tokyo Shadowrun Missions stay 5E until the campaign finishes, or will the campaign convert to 6E (a process likely to be painful and confusing for everyone involved)?
If we don't convert, Missions isn't promoting the new products (one of the big reasons for its existence). If we do convert, how many players does Missions lose in the process? This is why I wasn't expecting a new version until 2021...
...I will likely be one of who departs if that happens. Finally have some really decent characters for the NT Missions. Hate to have to effectively scrap them as they are built using a number of the later supplements and rules expansions, many of which will likely not be available yet.
Having just paid for all the relevant modules for HeroLab, I suspect I'll be rather annoyed if everything I bought is useless by the end of the year.
...I hear you there . For myself, it would mean development of an entirely new version of Chummer for those of us who cannot afford to dump upwards of 100$ into a character generation system after having to buy all the books (or PDFs) again. I prefer to use an automated character generator as I have serious arthritis which has made my handwriting almost illegible.
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Season 10 is 5E, approach after is still under discussion.
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My impression of some of the changes that have been made public this far (including listening to the active play of the 6th ed quick start rules):
Soak roll Body only: Concerned
Overall, I am in favor of smaller dice pools. Even with reduced damage though, soaking with only a single attribute + ware/qualities seems as though it will make combat significantly more lethal. If there are more miscellaneous options in said ware/qualities than I am anticipating, then perhaps this might turn out ok. That said, armor rating only mattering for if the attacker gains a bonus edge or not really seems to negate the value of armor. If hit, most everything will simple be one or two shot.
...aww but I love it when Leela (in her Medium Milspec with Titanium Bone Lacing and Orthoskin 4) can drop an HE grenade at her feet and soak it, at worst maybe taking a box of stun or two.
Seriously, I agree here and with other similar comments that it kind of makes armour useless.
Spellcasting and drain roll the same roll: Dislike
The main thing I don't like about this is that a single bad roll will result in devastation. As it currently stands in 5th, you can potentially cast your spell very well but suffer big drain damage, or maybe your spell doesn't cast so well but also doesn't hurt you. With this new system, you can end up with a situation where not only did your spell not do anything, but you also roasted yourself because of a single bad roll. At least in 5th it takes two bad rolls for that to occur.
...agreed, and will Reagents or Fetishes still mitigate drain? Also will this apply to summoning as well?
Spell duration instead of sustain: Like
It will depend on the specific calculation for those durations, but overall, I like this idea much better.
...not wild about this. I don't mind sustaining as there are ways to lower the penalty (such as Focused Concentration and using Psyche). So this would also mean spells like Increased Initiative or increased Attribute will go "poof" after a set length of time (unless quickened or on a sustaining focus). Sounds like D&D instead of Shadowrun.
New edge system: Mixed
I think the idea is cool.
The implementation seems to slow combat down, though. On every single action, on every single character, you will have to compare attack value vs. defense rating to see if extra edge are applied. Then you have to look at the situation and see if either side has advantage. Then you have to decide if you want to spend any of that edge for maneuvers. Every single action.
...I agree when it comes to combat, particularly being able to use it to force a glitch (isn't that what the Gremlins quality is for?).
Personally speaking, I wasn't thrilled about Edge when it was introduced in 4E as it made Shadowrun feel more like a video game than a P&P RPG. I thought the way Karma Pool worked in 3E was just fine (and you only got one "Hand of God").
Decker actions changes: Love
No more marks, no more multiple turns that will result in the combat being over before you are done. Just pick your action, make your roll, and implement the result? Yes please.
...this is about the only improvement, as yes sometimes the combat is over before you can even brick a single gun/drone or disable an installation's sentry weapons.
No more skill groups / skills folded together: Like
So many of those skills were already so close to the same thing that I am very pleased to see the list just folded in and narrowed.
...for myself, the jury is still out on this one unless skill points are increased. Flying a plane or handling a boat is not like driving a car. Same for tinkering with micro electronics compared to cutting the power grid to a facility.
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...just watched the video and leaves me with more questions than answers. Not thrilled with having to "start over" again with only the core book and waiting years for supplements and expansions to be re-released to really flesh out a decent character again.
Eh, that's in all editions. SR5 released extended core books faster than SR4, let's hope they do the same for SR6.
That's a two-edged sword. Fortunately, I have a two-income household and a decent amount of discretionary income for gaming, but it seems a bit early to buy new books. Sure, some material will be new, but a lot will be recycled - there's only so many ways to describe an Ares Predator, a GMC Bulldog, or how the corps run things. To have the equivalent amount of content (and presumably character options) that I have now, I'm going to need several supplements. Even just the books with the most options* will cost hundreds of dollars and would be a pretty ambitious publishing schedule for the first year. Maybe they could reduce the sting by finally embracing Bits and Mortar (https://www.bits-and-mortar.com/) (get the PDF free with the digital book)...
Even 4th edition D&D, which got a ton of hate, also lasted 6 years before a new edition. 5th edition Shadowrun isn't perfect, but seems to be liked a lot better than 4E D&D was. I feel like Catalyst is pulling the trigger too soon - and if they knew they were going to do this two years ago (given the typical development cycle, that's likely), they should have extended the Chicago Shadowrun Missions and arranged to launch Neo-Tokyo with 6th edition.
* This is subjective, but I think the most used book content I have comes from the following - core book, Run & Gun, Street Grimoire, Chrome Flesh, Data Trails, Hard Targets, Rigger 5, Kill Code, Street Lethal
...+1
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Season 10 is 5E, approach after is still under discussion.
...so that would mean having to convert or create all new characters would before the final two NT seasons.
I agree with Fediensor, they should have just extended Chicago two more seasons and then introduced NT under the new rules instead of having it occur midstream.
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I agree with Fediensor, they should have just extended Chicago two more seasons and then introduced NT under the new rules instead of having it occur midstream.
There is another option, though I think it would give the campaign staff a heart attack. Keep Neo-Tokyo missions in 5th edition for the full 4 years that were promised. Launch a separate campaign in 2020 in a different location, and run it in 6E.
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I agree with Fediensor, they should have just extended Chicago two more seasons and then introduced NT under the new rules instead of having it occur midstream.
There is another option, though I think it would give the campaign staff a heart attack. Keep Neo-Tokyo missions in 5th edition for the full 4 years that were promised. Launch a separate campaign in 2020 in a different location, and run it in 6E.
Season 10 Missions are probably mostly written. Those should drop at Origins/Gen Con as 5th edition as in the past few years. I would imagine Catalyst would want the Missions team to move to 6th Edition for Season 11.
New City/New Characters is totally up in the air I'd think at this point. I mean, a conversion guide could be written for 5th Edition characters that have played Season 9, 10, and whatever CMPs. I seem to recall one for the 4th to 5th conversion.
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...any conversion guide would have to cover all the supplements that have been released. That would be one huge file. For example I have Face character who is built with the following expansions beyond the Core rulebook:
Run Faster
Run & Gun
Cutting Aces
Street Lethal
Kill Code
Better Than Bad
Even if these supplements were covered, it would also require a major rework of the character such as Skills (which have been reduced in number), Qualities (some which may not have the same effect or none at all), Gear, and Augmentations (because of the changes and new mechanics) which would effectively mean building a new character.
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Conversion as in "If you've played mission X, you get Y and Z stuffs".
The characters would be re-built using 6th edition. The Missions team isn't going to go through every source book and write out the 6th edition crunch for everything not in the 6th edition CRB.
But who knows, the Missions team may just keep on chugging with 5th Edition. Or write Missions with Dual stats and let local GMs sort it out. *shrug* Lots of options if you think about it.
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I agree with Fediensor, they should have just extended Chicago two more seasons and then introduced NT under the new rules instead of having it occur midstream.
There is another option, though I think it would give the campaign staff a heart attack. Keep Neo-Tokyo missions in 5th edition for the full 4 years that were promised. Launch a separate campaign in 2020 in a different location, and run it in 6E.
...that would be more reasonable.
Would have hated to have to rewrite Leela or my namesake midstream considering they both were about a 200 karma characters when Season 7 began.
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In any case you've got about a dozen missions for 5th Edition Neo-Tokyo missions dropping at Gen Con/Origins this year. Enjoy them! 6th Edition is such a 2020 problem. : )
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If there's a PM among them, it'd give Chicago runners with 150+ TKE one more 5e hurrah as well.
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Any conversion would almost certainly have to be a "simple" take your earned karma and nuyen, and rebuild that character as a 6th ed PC with said karma/nuyen.
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Decker actions changes: Love
No more marks, no more multiple turns that will result in the combat being over before you are done. Just pick your action, make your roll, and implement the result? Yes please.
...this is about the only improvement, as yes sometimes the combat is over before you can even brick a single gun/drone or disable an installation's sentry weapons.
I don't see the problem here. While I can't (and won't) expect a decker or technomancer to keep up with a streetsam or physad, it takes a trivial amount of karma and nuyen to be able to effectively contribute to combat. Buy a gun, buy bullets and know which end of the gun the bullets come out of. And don't tell me this is unfair, because it's no less unfair than everyone else having to take basic matrix security measures. Besides, what are you going to do when the enemy has nothing worth hacking?
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I don't see the problem here. While I can't (and won't) expect a decker or technomancer to keep up with a streetsam or physad, it takes a trivial amount of karma and nuyen to be able to effectively contribute to combat. Buy a gun, buy bullets and know which end of the gun the bullets come out of. And don't tell me this is unfair, because it's no less unfair than everyone else having to take basic matrix security measures. Besides, what are you going to do when the enemy has nothing worth hacking?
I agree with you. I personally wouldn't bother using hacking skills during combat under normal circumstances. My comment was directed towards the amount of time (and rolls) it currently takes to accomplish a matrix action.
That said, some people do want their deckers to be able to effectively contribute to combats using the matrix. Nothing wrong with that either.
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Keeping 5th for Missions would be good as said above there are so many niche builds now that are supported and moving to a core or nearly-core only 6th edition would be disappointing.
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...indeed, it would mean effectively "downgrading" the character one has worked so hard to build and improve though play. Yes you would still have have all the Karma earned, but a many of extras such as new qualities, gear, powers, skills, spells, etc which were introduced in the later expansions would be gone as we'd be back to just the core book and maybe whatever the 6E version of "Run Faster" would be.
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Decker actions changes: Love
No more marks, no more multiple turns that will result in the combat being over before you are done. Just pick your action, make your roll, and implement the result? Yes please.
...this is about the only improvement, as yes sometimes the combat is over before you can even brick a single gun/drone or disable an installation's sentry weapons.
I don't see the problem here. While I can't (and won't) expect a decker or technomancer to keep up with a streetsam or physad, it takes a trivial amount of karma and nuyen to be able to effectively contribute to combat. Buy a gun, buy bullets and know which end of the gun the bullets come out of. And don't tell me this is unfair, because it's no less unfair than everyone else having to take basic matrix security measures. Besides, what are you going to do when the enemy has nothing worth hacking?
..the difference is the where the priority of attributes linked to the character's primary skill area are. For decking you generally need a high Logic, decent Intuition, as well as a good Willpower (the latter for defending against matrix attacks). That often does not leave much left over for physical attributes which cover combat, particularly depending on the priority attribute points are taken at.
The decker I have been playing in Missions was built with the following: Resources: A, Skills: B, and Attributes: C. Metatype: D, and Magic/Resonance: E. her primary combat weapon is a Savalette Guardian which is capable of firing a 6 round burst (she has just enough RC on it to do so) which she usually loads with S&S rounds, but also carries a couple clips of hand load APDS (AP -5).
To get a marginally "OK" skill with it (pool of 10, +2 with Semi Automatics and another +2 with Smartlink [total 14]), I gave her a tricked out cyberarm for her "shooting hand" (with a 6 Agility, 3 Strength, and 2 Armour) along with some initiative boosting and a little more built in armour (Orthoskin) so when the lead starts flying, it isn't a case of "duck and cover". Yes, this meant her physical attributes are low (she cannot even wear an armoured business suit with a "fitted" [stacking] overcoat without incurring a penalty to Agility and Reaction) to give her high pools in her Cracking/Electronics skills.
Meanwhile, it is against Matrix threats, wireless gear/systems, and even opposing deckers, where she "rocks" (as it should be). The Sammys (and often Spell Slingers) are where a team's real "front-line" firepower has traditionally always been. She can hold her own and contribute to combat when she needs to (actually has done so on several occasions) or get her hoop out of trouble, but she's not going to play "Han Solo" and blindly chase a bunch of sec guards down a corridor while wildly firing at them.
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But you don't even need 14 dice. You need 5 dice (3 from Agility, 1 from skill and 1 from smartgun) and a gun with full auto so that you can lay down suppressive fire. Maybe if you've got a little extra nuyen, you slap some recoil reduction mods so that you can get a decent burst on a single target. Heck, my group's decker has been able to contribute to combat just fine with 4 dice and an Ares Predator V, and she doesn't even have any ranks in Pistol...maybe I should bug her to pick up a few ranks. But my point is she's not throwing around the 12-13+ dice the throwing and unarmed adept is, and she certainly isn't throwing around the 20 dice in gunnery I've going to be using with a heavily modded Auto-Assault 16 next session. And she doesn't need to if to get things done in combat....though, 11 dice in clubs with a stave specialization has also come in handy.
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I mean, if I was going to do it, I would just spring for the Str 9, Agi 9 cyberarm, put 6 and a spec in longarms, do a whole mess of drugs, and wreck arse with a shotgun. Just my style though, and requires no attribute investment.
My only season 9 character is a decker/rigger atm, and is very. . .abnormal. I took Infirm x5 as negative qualities to represent how completely blasted what is left of his body is, so all of his physical attributes are 1. He's very much a stay in the van or die sort.
Restricted gear got him a pilot rating 6, monofilament whip wielding anthro drone for combat contribution though. That thing is pretty nasty.
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But you don't even need 14 dice. You need 5 dice (3 from Agility, 1 from skill and 1 from smartgun) and a gun with full auto so that you can lay down suppressive fire. Maybe if you've got a little extra nuyen, you slap some recoil reduction mods so that you can get a decent burst on a single target. Heck, my group's decker has been able to contribute to combat just fine with 4 dice and an Ares Predator V, and she doesn't even have any ranks in Pistol...maybe I should bug her to pick up a few ranks. But my point is she's not throwing around the 12-13+ dice the throwing and unarmed adept is, and she certainly isn't throwing around the 20 dice in gunnery I've going to be using with a heavily modded Auto-Assault 16 next session. And she doesn't need to if to get things done in combat....though, 11 dice in clubs with a stave specialization has also come in handy.
...in suppression fire, net hits are what set the negative modifiers. With 5 dice that may net you one. Also you use only the weapon's base damage, unmodified by net hits. So a machine pistol with a base of DV of 6 may be effective against very lightly or unarmoured opponents but an opposing team of runners with even moderate armour (Jacket, Ballistic mask and Forearm guards) would be different story.
With the pool she has (compared to an earlier version of the character) she has been more effective as a "second rank" combatant and actually participates in combat rather than looking for someplace to run and hide. In the missions group I am in there are a number of overpowered min-maxed characters which often requires the GM to "push the envelope" (sending in tougher opponents) so a pool of 12 - 14 dice becomes necessary to deal with the higher armour values and dodge pools. A 4 or 5 dice shot could be easily dodged.
Oh and as I mentioned she did put recoil comp on her Guardian so she is able to fire a single 6 round burst (or two 3 round bursts) with no penalty.
As to a physical attack, hits are capped by one's physical limit which in the case of this character is rather low as again, Priority C was applied to Attributes so there wasn't a lot to work with after applying points to her mental attributes so she could actually crack a host.
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...in suppression fire, net hits are what set the negative modifiers. With 5 dice that may net you one. Also you use only the weapon's base damage, unmodified by net hits. So a machine pistol with a base of DV of 6 may be effective against very lightly or unarmoured opponents but an opposing team of runners with even moderate armour (Jacket, Ballistic mask and Forearm guards) would be different story.
Except you don't need a lot of hits or high base damage for suppressive fire to be effective. Just 1 hit will get you a -1 penalty on (potentially) a lot of enemies who will probably decide to either drop prone or move into cover. That's why it's called suppressive fire.
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I mean, if I was going to do it, I would just spring for the Str 9, Agi 9 cyberarm, put 6 and a spec in longarms, do a whole mess of drugs, and wreck arse with a shotgun. Just my style though, and requires no attribute investment.
My only season 9 character is a decker/rigger atm, and is very. . .abnormal. I took Infirm x5 as negative qualities to represent how completely blasted what is left of his body is, so all of his physical attributes are 1. He's very much a stay in the van or die sort.
Restricted gear got him a pilot rating 6, monofilament whip wielding anthro drone for combat contribution though. That thing is pretty nasty.
...we have a rigger like that. He has three antrho drones all with realistic features and armour that are armed with both flamethrowers and Ares Alphas.
The issue with Longarms is the pool is it takes two arms to steady and fire a rifle or shotgun. Now here is here it gets hazy and I've asked this elsewhere, does the character use her overall average Agility of 3 or the average between just the two arms (which would be 5 [2 natural 8 cyberarm])?
The only drugs Violet uses are are Psyche (naturally), and Cram for a bit more combat speed (both Designer grade) as they both use her Logic (8) and Willpower (5) for the addiction test. Something like Kamikaze also requires a physical as well as mental addiction test which given her Body of 3 and teh drug's addiction rating/threshold, would very likely result in a short career.
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...in suppression fire, net hits are what set the negative modifiers. With 5 dice that may net you one. Also you use only the weapon's base damage, unmodified by net hits. So a machine pistol with a base of DV of 6 may be effective against very lightly or unarmoured opponents but an opposing team of runners with even moderate armour (Jacket, Ballistic mask and Forearm guards) would be different story.
Except you don't need a lot of hits or high base damage for suppressive fire to be effective. Just 1 hit will get you a -1 penalty on (potentially) a lot of enemies who will probably decide to either drop prone or move into cover. That's why it's called suppressive fire.
...true however more net hits means a higher negative modifier and a higher base damage code may keep the one or more of oppos from thinking of standing up or moving from behind cover to take a pot shot.
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Mixed feelings on what has been announced.
1. New edition, well good 5e had a bad core and got worse with bloat. And a lot of there ideas are things I've wanted though the implementation is always the issue.
2. the new edge seems to be a mix of worthless uses for small amounts of edge to game changing uses of big uses. Not sure the maths will work out for it, i kind of doubt it given catalysts history. Until we see the actual list, and how often you gain edge in play its hard to say. I'm kind of against the lack of penalty dice, shooting someone when firing blind I don't think will be adequately reflected in a point or 2 of edge. But, if it speeds up play enough it may be worth the drop in realism.
3. 1 action pass, I like the idea not sure of the the 4 minor actions to one major thing. Assuming wired reflexes is the same 1-3 each giving 1-3 dice that means wired 1 has 3 minor actions and so can't have 2 attacks, wired 2 can have 2 attacks but gives up all minor actions including core things like moving(especially rough for a melee type), wired 3 same as 2 but one minor action for key things like moving. Unless wired is so cheap it costs about the same as a pack of cigarettes it seems pretty damn lame. Oh look i'm wired to the gills and marginally better than the face, woo.
4. No force, I've felt they should go this way but i assumed it was to big of a sacred cow. Hopefully it made its way to spirits and spirits are balanced better. I'll wait to see if they got the math right. I'm curious to see if they made any attempt to balance the traditions, there is no drain stat I guess anymore but in 5e terms logic got the short straw in the admittedly super long straw pool of mages. Astral combat charisma, how many spirits, watchers, charisma, easiest side skill track charisma, logic basically did nothing, I guess you could be the first aid dude.
4. Drain being factored into your skill success roll. I guess one less roll is good, but I think it seems iffy math wise putting too much into one roll, i guess a good place to use edge.
5. spells having a duration, maybe its easier? but damn it doesn't feel like shadowrun.
6. 3 times a day for healing, WTF am i playing D&D with magical uses per day.
7. Priority system, outside of nostalgia I'm not a fan. Though I guess it does fit their theme of more creativity through limits.
8. Metahumans with low priority, not a fan as described. Matahumans needed bigger differences not less, they already just felt like human with more body/str in recent editions. I'd of reduced priorities by bringing back penalty stats.
9. Armor seems kind of weak, don't get me wrong you minds as well wear armor so you don't hand the opposition edge but at 4 to 1 rates Ares predator AV 10, body 3, i hand them 1 edge and 1 edge is like reroll one die, whopedy fucking do. After a few passe i guess it might add up into something that matters but if the game is deadlier you are already dead so who cares. Also makes body a even stronger stat, and it was already pretty good.
10. less skills, conceptually a good idea, but how do you balance sorcery which was 3 skills with astral combat that was already just one. Did astral combat get rolled into something like assensing? I'm sure there are other examples but generally less skills is a good move but I hope you balanced the skill choices decently.
Overall I'm looking forward to it, because I really hated 5e, and there is a value add to playing the current edition with things like missions being printed. I'm a lazy DM and don't want to have to write something every week. Though they need to start selling missions as is from the convention side of things at $2 a pop, no art, no whatever just so people have shit to play. This only for the special people stuff is just lame.
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The Predator was stated as having a base damage of 3 wasn't it? Unless there is a significant difference between the Attack dice pool and the Defense dice pool, you'll be soaking 4 or 5 damage? So, Body 3 Mook/Mage/Squishy, is going to take 3 shots to drop if they can soak a point or two each time. (Presuming the typical character has 10 Boxes...)
A Samurai with 5 body and Augments and a high defense pool is still going to be really tough to drop unless there is some significant dice pool boosts to Attack rolls. I would think instead of dice pool boosts Augments, Powers, Spells, and Gear would be giving Edge? *shrug*
Smaller dice pools does make the math easier, if more swingy.
Sure, that is not so bad for that particular example. Lets look at other common ones:
Assault rifle (yamaha raiden), base damage 5P. Burst fire takes it to 6P, full auto to 8P.
A 10 strength troll (or an augmented human) with an axe is 13P.
Without comprehensive knowledge of what damage mitigation will be available in the end, the damage I know of vs. soak potential I know of is a rough equation.
Wait heavy pistol is dmg 3, but they stuck with strength dmg for melee, I assume dit would be 1/2 str? That's just lame if so.
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...well just finished watching a livew test of 6E over on Shadowcasters Network.
Granted it seemed they were kind of feeling their way though the rules for the first time so things did bog down here and there and there were some question as to how some of the mechanics worked.
One thing I did notice was grouping all the grunts together (in this case a bunch of Ancients) tends to feel somewhat like swarming and drones and thus seemed a little overpowering. as it significantly raised their effective pool and attack to where they darn near destroyed the vehicle that the team was in with handguns.
When I mentioned that suppression fire might be a good thing to use on the pursuing gang I learned that action no longer exists. You can go full auto on multiple targets, but you have to split your pool multiple ways and have to be aware of recoil (so much for someone like my Decker Violet giving her team a little cover fire).
The Edge thing still seemed confusing and extra crunchy. There was also some kind of special die one could use (forget what it was called) which further altered the outcome of an action.
Didn't get a good impression of how spellcasting worked as the mage instead had a summoned spirit and commanded it it use its accident power on a couple of the bikers. When she first tried to summon, she took drain and no spirit appeared.
It also seemed that once you rolled initiative you kept that result for each successive combat turn, so if you rolled poorly you were stuck with it.
There was some confusion on the decker's part about the types of actions he had available based on his matrix initiative (not sure if there is still an AR mode anymore either as that was never brought up).
The one part I really didn't like though was being able to use edge to force a failure during an opposed test (or in the case of the negotiation with the Johnson during the session, negate the Edge dice the Face used during the negotiation phase). That has to go as it is not a situational modifier but seems more like a power.
They are going to run another session in two weeks after going though the rules more in depth so hopefully it will run smoother and we can get a better illustration of how things work.
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It also seemed that once you rolled initiative you kept that result for each successive combat turn, so if you rolled poorly you were stuck with it.
Since you no longer have initiative passes, and iirc your Minors depend on your dice, not your roll, that score only matters for turn order no? No different from D&D then, and at least here there's ways to modify your score during a fight. JM Hardy indicated it was so you can be more tactical, iirc.
Going 'nope, we're both not getting any edge dice' doesn't sound that different from 'we're both using edge' so I guess it depends on the exact mechanic. When Edge is luck, both getting extra makes sense, but when Edge is literally having an edge, it makes sense that you can cancel them out.
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The Edge thing still seemed confusing and extra crunchy. There was also some kind of special die one could use (forget what it was called) which further altered the outcome of an action.
It was called a wild die. Basically, some pieces of Equipment or qualities will allow you to roll a wild die with your normal roll. If the Wild Die comes up a 5 or 6 it counts as 3 hits. If it comes up a 1 you only count 6's for hits in your normal pool.
Honestly, it seemed like a needless mechanic that is probably ingrained into the core cost of everything that has it so just not using the die means that some things will be overcosted.
I am not a fan of Wild Dice in systems. They are meant to show luck and random swings but that is what normal dice are for os they add a flat 16% chance of just f'ing up your die roll. Seems against what dice pools are due to the mathematical outcomes of rolls. Maybe I am wrong but it seems to me that if you have a high dice pool introducing the wild die is just not worth it because it has a greater impact on your pool than what it would affect a lower dice pool. Lower dice pools probably would like it because, YOLO.
It seems to be the glitch die from Anarchy which probably fits that system but seems out of place in this one.
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the armor mechanic looked particularly nutso.
if you get, at most, one edge for having armor *much* better than the weapon attacking you then armor is almost completely irrelevant, the GM even admitted at the end of the livestream that he liked the idea of being able to go into combat in a mankini...
if that proves out (and it seems like it does based on play example and mechanics as described) then we've left the land of realistic consequences / outcomes from being shot at.
also the crazy idea of melee weapon damage being unaffected by strength (a club wielded by a pixie does the same damage as a club wielded by a troll) is another game breaker.
if this all turns out being accurate shadowrun is dead to me...
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You are right. It does seem pretty crazy. No one will be wearing armor besides suits. I wonder if it’s another move to put a nail in the coffin of pink mohawk.
I’ll probably read it, then decide whether I’ll skip this edition as I skipped 4th
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It was called a wild die. Basically, some pieces of Equipment or qualities will allow you to roll a wild die with your normal roll. If the Wild Die comes up a 5 or 6 it counts as 3 hits. If it comes up a 1 you only count 6's for hits in your normal pool.
So basically "Are you ready to risk everything?". Damn! =D "Stand up, join them, and dare to risk it all!"
As for armor, I don't have ANY intent of giving away any Edge dice to my enemies. I'd rather out-armor their guns so heavily that they give ME Edge instead.
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What’s the point of having edge if they kill you because a tear soaked tissue offers more soak value than your mil-grade armor
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What’s the point of having edge if they kill you because a tear soaked tissue offers more soak value than your mil-grade armor
That's assuming Mil-grade armor will not have special abilities.
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but walking around armor is now almost pointless.
also melee weapons no longer require strength?
please advise that i'm wrong, or that this somehow makes sense / works?
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I guess we have to wait until June when the quick start rules appear. Everybody is still under NDAs I bet.
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I know armor doesn't contribute to soak pools.. so what IS the soak pool in 6e? Or isn't there one?
From what I've gathered so far armor is integral to defense rating, and in turn defense rating factors into edge generation. And edge in turn is a major thing in 6e.
Besides that "downhill" benefit to armor, defense rating may also have relevance to factors beyond edge generation/denial.
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It was called a wild die. Basically, some pieces of Equipment or qualities will allow you to roll a wild die with your normal roll. If the Wild Die comes up a 5 or 6 it counts as 3 hits. If it comes up a 1 you only count 6's for hits in your normal pool.
So basically "Are you ready to risk everything?". Damn! =D "Stand up, join them, and dare to risk it all!"
As for armor, I don't have ANY intent of giving away any Edge dice to my enemies. I'd rather out-armor their guns so heavily that they give ME Edge instead.
I think this is going underappreciated by some. As MC says, if armor is giving me a point of edge that otherwise would have gone to you, that's huge when edge is the metagame currency.
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Well, soak is pure Body now it seems. Maybe the possibility to add edge
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...true however more net hits means a higher negative modifier and a higher base damage code may keep the one or more of oppos from thinking of standing up or moving from behind cover to take a pot shot.
Yes, yes, more hits is always better than fewer hits and higher base damage is always better than lower base damage (not that it's hard to get your hands on APDS and an Ares Alpha). But you're missing my point that because of how suppressive fire works the bar for being able to contribute to combat is very low, so there's really no reason to make combat hacking viable.
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Besides that "downhill" benefit to armor, defense rating may also have relevance to factors beyond edge generation/denial.
Maybe the good ol' conversion of Lethal to Stun? Or do they simplifiy that as well? :P
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judging from the 'cast last night armor adds, at most, one edge die to your edge pool.
with edge being about 1/4 as effective as before that's not much of a difference between being naked and wearing full armor...
soak is still there, it's just bod only.
If this works as it seems from the demo last night a pixie will be almost as combat effective as a troll (strength no longer contributes to melee damage, armor is mostly irrelevant as it may, at best, let you reroll one die).
I know armor doesn't contribute to soak pools.. so what IS the soak pool in 6e? Or isn't there one?
From what I've gathered so far armor is integral to defense rating, and in turn defense rating factors into edge generation. And edge in turn is a major thing in 6e.
Besides that "downhill" benefit to armor, defense rating may also have relevance to factors beyond edge generation/denial.
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If this works as it seems from the demo last night a pixie will be almost as combat effective as a troll (strength no longer contributes to melee damage, armor is mostly irrelevant as it may, at best, let you reroll one die).
Strength has no effect on melee combat damage, and armor does next to nothing. Therefore, the huge strength bonus of orks and trolls isn't worth charging a lot in Priority or Karma for. Therefore, metatypes will be more accessible in 6th edition. A finger curls on the monkey's paw....
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I only saw part of the demo stream... the constant verbalized stream of consciousness rendered it unwatchable to me.
Still, I did stay long enough for character introductions, and none of them emphasized close combat. Without having seen the rules in action, I suppose it's possible that strength was meaningless in combat because no close combat specialists took abilities that MADE strength relevant?
And even if there's no way to leverage high strength in 6e melee combat... well maybe 5e Adept power (Strength) Boost was preparing us for strength to have nothing to do with weapon DV :D
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In going off the chat at the end where they summarize the rules.
Armor and melee are semi-confirmed to work the way I note above...
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I'm foreseeing a robust selection of house rules. Granted that this is the case for almost every RPG, ever, but it looks like there are some things in 6th that will rub a good number of people the wrong way, so I could see these particularly popular this time around. (although that doesn't help people playing only Missions)
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That new edge mechanic looks pretty cool as an overall concept, but making armor about generating edge instead of - dunno, maybe preventing damage ?! - seems a bit too wacky right now.
You could say, that one really takes it
8)
over the Edge.
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I'm not worrying about the new rules until 2020. My only Shadowrun gaming right now is Missions, and the campaign is not converting yet. When I have to start looking at a conversion, I'll take a look at Shadowrun 6E and make a decision. That should give them time to errata anything that's just completely horrible.
I do hope they changed SINs - I really hate how they work in the current edition.
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ok, a mixture of 'hey thats really good" " not sure" and "WTF "
Simplification good,
but this edge thing looks too annoying. I'm on the fence about melee weaposn just having a fixed value and sTr being useless..because I just cant believe the rule could be that bad,
My WTF list is the wild dice (hate it already, game is random enough), trivializing armor, and most of all dropping modifiers. Simplification is good, but thats throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
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So, the guys in the stream confused a lot of terms (understandably so due to what they are called). To clarify (to the best of my knowledge):
Attack Pool: Attribute + Skill + Miscellaneous. Used to determine a successful hit or miss vs. Defense Pool.
Attack Rating: The formula for the specific weapon you are using, compared against Defense Rating, to determine if you gain bonus Edge to spend for your attack.
Defense Pool: Reaction + Intuition + Miscellaneous. Used to avoid being hit by an attack, compared against attackers Attack Pool.
Defense Rating: Body + Armor Rating + Miscellaneous. Compared against attackers Attack Rating to avoid giving attacker additional Edge to spend against you.
Soak: Body + Miscellaneous. Hits reduce incoming damage one for one. Yes, armor is pretty much completely useless at present. That one bonus Edge doesn't matter much by itself unless being added to expenditure of Attribute Edge.
Strength does still play a factor in melee damage. If you check out the stream at 2:30:00 you will hear Mr. Johnson say, I quote, "replace the normal formula for strength for doing attack damage" in regards to lacing ware allowing a static number for unarmed damage rather than the standard formula.
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2 things I should note:
1: Iirc from the interview, if your Defense Rating heavily exceeds the Attack Rating, YOU get Edge instead?
2: They said there will be augmentations/qualities that impact your soak roll. It wouldn't surprise me if in the future MilSpec armor will come in and go 'X autohits on your soak roll' or something like that. I haven't heard about what Hardened Armor does yet, so who knows what MilSpec will do eventually, probably something similar.
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2 things I should note:
1: Iirc from the interview, if your Defense Rating heavily exceeds the Attack Rating, YOU get Edge instead?
2: They said there will be augmentations/qualities that impact your soak roll. It wouldn't surprise me if in the future MilSpec armor will come in and go 'X autohits on your soak roll' or something like that. I haven't heard about what Hardened Armor does yet, so who knows what MilSpec will do eventually, probably something similar.
I am uncertain of either of those.
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If this works as it seems from the demo last night a pixie will be almost as combat effective as a troll (strength no longer contributes to melee damage, armor is mostly irrelevant as it may, at best, let you reroll one die).
Strength has no effect on melee combat damage, and armor does next to nothing. Therefore, the huge strength bonus of orks and trolls isn't worth charging a lot in Priority or Karma for. Therefore, metatypes will be more accessible in 6th edition. A finger curls on the monkey's paw....
I suspect str will still play a role in damage, it would be incomprehensibly bad for it not to. That being said, apparently metas as how I understand it from their comments are more accessible as they don't have bonuses to stats but bonuses to the stat maxes. And your races bonus points can be spent in places where the max is increased. Sounds terrible to me as races should feel distinct and not just tall human, human with pointed ears, short human.
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One thing I'm curious about as I felt it was one of the most broken parts of 5e is summoning. They implied multiple spirits without binding. now the test is vs x2 force(not sure why they got rid of force for spells and not spirits, though old school force for spells meant less but was significant for spirits) and spirits hit is the drain(I'd of kept it spirits hits x2).
End of the day though without a super focus on it you probably wont be summoning force 9 spirits, but with weapon damage down force 6 is pretty damn durable. Still force 6 will have smaller pools for dodging, attacking, will do less damage, assuming spirits have the same number a initiative dice as 5e they only get one attack. But its pretty tanky for an average of 4 drain, and you could risk a force 9 and its highly unlikely it would kill you or knock you out depending on how they determine if drain is physical or stun.
And a force 9 spirit in this game with attacks doing so much less damage would be unstoppable. If they had done x2 force in dice and x2 hits in drain, you wouldn't risk a force 9 spirit as you easily could be facing 16 drain or something, which to me is how it should be. Even force 6 might hit you for something crazy on a lucky roll, making it a risk. As is even a crazy lucky roll force 6 is mostly fine.
Still my random ass guess given how little we know is overall I think it is probably a nerf, just not as big of one as I think was needed.
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Yeah, I don’t really understand why they are changing metas so drastically. For five editions it’s been a static bonus to attributes.
What are trying to achieve?
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I agree about Spirits being one of the most broken things about 5E... I don't recall hearing much of anything being said about them for 6E. I guess I'll have to cross my fingers that they didn't drop the ball 2 editions in a row on them.
Yeah, I don’t really understand why they are changing metas so drastically. For five editions it’s been a static bonus to attributes.
What are trying to achieve?
Well the gist I'm getting is they're meant to be more easy to incorporate into character ideas. Something Jason said in an interview is without penalties to mental stats, they're all equally viable as deckers, for example. The overall idea seems to be to make it less of an expensive choice in character generation to choose to play a meta.
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So basically all metas are the same except for appearances?
Of course there may still be deviations in racial maximum but if all start 1/6 the difference seems almost none existent.
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Humans still have extra edge, and in 6E that's a bigger deal than in 5E.
The metas tho have higher racial maximums (and apparently no lower racial maximums). Plus you can put the "special attribute points" into not just edge/magic/resonance, but any attribute that gets a boosted maximum in.
So trolls and orks can be made stronger, and it's *slightly* easier to do it, too.
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I agree about Spirits being one of the most broken things about 5E... I don't recall hearing much of anything being said about them for 6E. I guess I'll have to cross my fingers that they didn't drop the ball 2 editions in a row on them.
Yeah, I don’t really understand why they are changing metas so drastically. For five editions it’s been a static bonus to attributes.
What are trying to achieve?
Well the gist I'm getting is they're meant to be more easy to incorporate into character ideas. Something Jason said in an interview is without penalties to mental stats, they're all equally viable as deckers, for example. The overall idea seems to be to make it less of an expensive choice in character generation to choose to play a meta.
Sounds like a bad idea to me. Having limitations makes your character more interesting. 1 or 2 dice wont break your decker. Also its illogical as with trolls having a higher max in str/body you re effectively telling my human he's less viable in melee or as a tank.
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Humans still have extra edge, and in 6E that's a bigger deal than in 5E.
The metas tho have higher racial maximums (and apparently no lower racial maximums). Plus you can put the "special attribute points" into not just edge/magic/resonance, but any attribute that gets a boosted maximum in.
So trolls and orks can be made stronger, and it's *slightly* easier to do it, too.
Edge seems far less of a deal in this edition, used much more frequently but way way weaker in its use.
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So basically all metas are the same except for appearances?
Of course there may still be deviations in racial maximum but if all start 1/6 the difference seems almost none existent.
God I wish they had gone back to previous editions where it metas actually had penalties in stats and not just a lower max. Now no lower max except for humans I guess who are capped at 6 for everything but edge which getting to 7 is kind of pointless as you can work the system to get 1-2 points a action and the most you can have for anyone at one time is 7. So Troll with 6 just hits 7 because his punch has a higher attack value than the defenders defense value, you start at 7 and go nowhere when your gun does the same.
If this is how it is, I'm disappointed.
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My take on the Armor and Metahuman changes is that they are meant to break the "cookie cutter" molds.
No longer will "all*" Shadowrunners wear:
Big Game Hunter OR Globetrotter Jacket OR Armored Jacket
plus
Ballistic Mask AND / OR Helmet
plus
Forearm Guards
With maybe an little Second Skin to mix things up.
*Alright, not all... But enough.
No longer will Deckers only* be Humans or Elves.
Etc.
Your Millage May (Indeed) Vary on this one. I'm hoping for more diversity in the new edition.
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My take on the Armor and Metahuman changes is that they are meant to break the "cookie cutter" molds.
No longer will "all*" Shadowrunners wear:
Big Game Hunter OR Globetrotter Jacket OR Armored Jacket
plus
Ballistic Mask AND / OR Helmet
plus
Forearm Guards
With maybe an little Second Skin to mix things up.
*Alright, not all... But enough.
No longer will Deckers only* be Humans or Elves.
Etc.
Your Millage May (Indeed) Vary on this one. I'm hoping for more diversity in the new edition.
Seems like less diversity to me. Flaws are part of what make things diverse.
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Seems like less diversity to me. Flaws are part of what make things diverse.
Flaws, or perhaps the prevention thereof, are what encourage people to min-max.
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Seems like less diversity to me. Flaws are part of what make things diverse.
Flaws, or perhaps the prevention thereof, are what encourage people to min-max.
People who want to min max min max. Flaws don’t change that. But hey tall human decker sounds so different from short human decker.
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It might have the exact opposite effect, making metas even less attractive.
1e - Metas were A
2e - Metas were A, optional rule was C
3e - the spread started
4e - *didnt play this system*
5e - trolls B, Orcs C, Elves and Dwarves D
It appears some things are going backwards
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So far, I am hopefully optimistic about 6th edition, mainly because it sounds like it's got a chance to, let's say, refocus with greater clarity in its rules. While I do like the plans for streamlining the Matrix, I also worry about the magic success & drain soak test being the same roll. Yes, it removes a roll, but it also makes failures potentially more dangerous.
As for changes to metatypes, I hope there's more to it than what's currently been revealed. I'm happy to hear that it'll make more niches more easily workable regardless of metatype, but I didn't think that was much of a problem with how it worked in 5th. I guess there's more to it that'll hopefully all make sense?
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4e - *didnt play this system*
5e - trolls B, Orcs C, Elves and Dwarves D
4E was the metahumans edition, at least from an optimization standpoint. The problem was that the Build Point cost of certain metas was less than what they netted you in attributes. Mathematically, you should only do one of two things:
1) choose an elf if you needed Charisma (e.g. for a face or a shaman); otherwise,
2) play an ork, because you got 50 BP of attributes for 20 BP of chargen points, plus low-light vision for free on top of that.
So from that standpoint 5E was an improvement.
Small quibble, but in 5E dwarves require Priority C.
The 5E developers were fairly open about how hard it was to balance the metatypes with the priority system, especially for trolls. If I recall, one of their primary goals was to avoid the "skinny dwarf/ork/troll" problem (common in 4E) where, for a small priority price, you could have a metatype with all the Body and Strength you would ever need, so there was no incentive to add any extra Attribute points into them. If dwarves and orks essentially get 5 free attribute points, and trolls get 8, then that needs to be balanced against the fact that +1 Priority point in Attributes only gets you 2-4 extra Attribute points. That's why dwarves and orks start at C and trolls start at B.
While that works mathematically, it ignores the reality that not all Attributes are created equal. Body and Strength are linked to few skills in 5E. Body is worse that Reaction/Intuition at avoiding damage, and is largely overwhelmed by basic armor anyway. Strength is important for melee combatants and little else.
There are ways around the above problems, like making specific attributes easier to advance for some metas than others, but that adds another layer of rules on top of an already crunchy system that's famously intimidating for new players. There's a lot to be said for Anarchy's chargen system in terms of approachability, where anyone - regardless of their familiarity with RPGs - can sit down and have a character up and running within 15 minutes. From what I gather, 6E will be a step in that direction, to try bypass the worst of the analysis paralysis that many people suffer in 5E's chargen.
I'll avoid passing judgement until I see the system myself, but of all the things I've heard so far it's not particularly high on my list of concerns.
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I'll avoid passing judgement until I see the system myself, but of all the things I've heard so far it's not particularly high on my list of concerns.
How dare you not outrage! You are harming the Torch&Pitchfork industry! Turn in your fake SIN!
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The armor thing seems like a dealbreaker to me. Makes infiltrating places too easy when you can put everyone in overalls and be 100% combat effective.
The 3/day healing smells too much like D&D to me. Shadowrun should imo be about getting in and out quick instead of crawling through enemy waves with constant healing in between. Although maybe that is offset by the lack of armor soak. Still a different limit than x/day would have been better.
Maybe turn it around and make soak armor only and body is how often you can get healed?
Overall I fear they have gone too much towards "streamlining", sacrificing too much Shadowrun in places. Metas not being different than humans, strength no counting for damage, armor being semi-useless.
Unless they manage to pull some amazing thing out of a hat I don't see how 6E would be an improvement over 5E or 4E.
About the edge system, I would be more happy if the edge you gain with an action could only be used for said action but then without limit (or at least a higher one) while edge from your attribute is universal.
But I have to play it myself to decide if edge works out in SR6 or not.
Why would I ever want to throw a wild die? 1/6 chance to screw up the roll is a tad high to really risk it.
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People who want to min max min max. Flaws don’t change that. But hey tall human decker sounds so different from short human decker.
Of course. Because min-maxing is the exclusive right of min-maxers only, and only min-maxers would be on the other side of this conversation (https://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=29114.0), right?
But if you need different numbers written in a book to ensure you make diverse characters, that is entirely on you.
It might have the exact opposite effect, making metas even less attractive.
Oh, it very well might. This is CGL we are talking about here.
However, I happen to like the reasoning I assume is behind the metahuman change.
The part I'm worried about is the third of the world that CGL has already proven they are terrible at. The Matrix. They are chill-inducing quiet about that side of the game world. Sure, they removed MARKs from the game, and they are rumored to have removed PANs/WANs. That doesn't mean that side of the system works though...
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Why would I ever want to throw a wild die? 1/6 chance to screw up the roll is a tad high to really risk it.
For low skill users. If I understand correctly the Wild Die is added by specific things, not every dice roll. The Face or Decker with 8 to 10 Dice in Firearms would probably go ahead and grab something with a Wild Die. 10 or less Dice is going to miss frequently enough that the Wild Die gamble of 3 Extra hits could seem like a good idea.
Really, anything with a low to moderate dice pool trying something hard may find the Wild Die appealing. Especially if its something the player can control by turning on/turning off or using a different weapon or tool (or whatever). We'll know in three months.
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Why would I ever want to throw a wild die? 1/6 chance to screw up the roll is a tad high to really risk it.
For low skill users. If I understand correctly the Wild Die is added by specific things, not every dice roll. The Face or Decker with 8 to 10 Dice in Firearms would probably go ahead and grab something with a Wild Die. 10 or less Dice is going to miss frequently enough that the Wild Die gamble of 3 Extra hits could seem like a good idea.
Really, anything with a low to moderate dice pool trying something hard may find the Wild Die appealing. Especially if its something the player can control by turning on/turning off or using a different weapon or tool (or whatever). We'll know in three months.
One source of wild die are Positive Qualities like Overclocker (+2 die to Matrix actions, one of them a wild die).
And I can't really imagine someone with a low matrix pool grabbing this quality.
By the way, according to the log I follow Hardened Armor works like in SR5, meaning autosoak (except equal to the rating and not rating/2) and spirits have it. Although the source is unconfirmed.
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People who want to min max min max. Flaws don’t change that. But hey tall human decker sounds so different from short human decker.
Of course. Because min-maxing is the exclusive right of min-maxers only, and only min-maxers would be on the other side of this conversation (https://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=29114.0), right?
But if you need different numbers written in a book to ensure you make diverse characters, that is entirely on you.
If you can't make a diverse set of characters who all happen to have armor jackets and custom ballistics masks/helmets, then you're in the same boat as the OP of that thread and that is not a seaworthy vessel. Just saying.
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[...], then you're in the same boat as the OP of that thread and that is not a seaworthy vessel. Just saying.
No need to insult Chalkarts when they're not even involved in this debate.
I hope Human still has something going for them other than rp stuff but we'll see. Given how many groups I get skills from, chargen will become a challenge for my minmaxing self anyway.
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If you can't make a diverse set of characters who all happen to have armor jackets and custom ballistics masks/helmets, then you're in the same boat as the OP of that thread and that is not a seaworthy vessel. Just saying.
While you are so quick to "just say," you failed to realize that I didn't say anything about the characters not being diverse.
Only the assembly line choice of gear, or chosen metaspecies.
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I hope Human still has something going for them other than rp stuff but we'll see. Given how many groups I get skills from, chargen will become a challenge for my minmaxing self anyway.
Humans probably still have Edge as special attribute they get to raise when using a higher priority for metatype while all others only get to raise normal attributes. Not sure how much of an effect that would have with metatype E.
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People who want to min max min max. Flaws don’t change that. But hey tall human decker sounds so different from short human decker.
Of course. Because min-maxing is the exclusive right of min-maxers only, and only min-maxers would be on the other side of this conversation (https://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=29114.0), right?
But if you need different numbers written in a book to ensure you make diverse characters, that is entirely on you.
At my computer now instead of my phone so hopefully i can get the quote thing right.
Its 2 less dice form stats as a troll. The mechanical effect is minimal, it has no effect on diversity by having 2 less dice. Having a hard coded limitation built into your character is a thematic effect though and fighting that and going against type does effect diversity. The issues arise form the crappy priority system where picking B Troll makes it hard to get decent skills and enough nuyen because they over inflated the monetary costs of being a decker in 5e. It was still doable to make a perfectly viable Troll in 5e under priority, just not a obvious design choice. But use the point buy or life path system and troll has virtually no mechanical hurdle. Whitewashing Trolls into tall human seems like a poor answer to the priority system.
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I hope Human still has something going for them other than rp stuff but we'll see. Given how many groups I get skills from, chargen will become a challenge for my minmaxing self anyway.
Humans probably still have Edge as special attribute they get to raise when using a higher priority for metatype while all others only get to raise normal attributes. Not sure how much of an effect that would have with metatype E.
From what they have said anyone can get to 7 edge through bonus points, no one can surpass it(maybe a quality lets you go past) and they seem to flow somewhat freely, so having a possible starting edge of 7 seems kind of a waste.
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The armor thing seems like a dealbreaker to me. Makes infiltrating places too easy when you can put everyone in overalls and be 100% combat effective.
The 3/day healing smells too much like D&D to me. Shadowrun should imo be about getting in and out quick instead of crawling through enemy waves with constant healing in between. Although maybe that is offset by the lack of armor soak. Still a different limit than x/day would have been better.
Maybe turn it around and make soak armor only and body is how often you can get healed?
It might totally work mechanically, but i'm not sure I like the thematic effects with armor being so weak.
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While you are so quick to "just say," you failed to realize that I didn't say anything about the characters not being diverse.
Only the assembly line choice of gear, or chosen metaspecies.
Having very standard armor choices is good though. It leaves more time and mental energy for gun, sword and vehicle porn. That's where you get your real gear diversity anyways.
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I'll avoid passing judgement until I see the system myself, but of all the things I've heard so far it's not particularly high on my list of concerns.
How dare you not outrage! You are harming the Torch&Pitchfork industry! Turn in your fake SIN!
I think judging the thing as a whole is not a good idea. I'm actually hopeful of 6e overall. I've argued for some of the changes though maybe not with the exact same implementation for a while. So there are some things that look really good to me here. Some rules changes I'm flat out against as I think they damage the setting, which is SRs strongest suit. A bad thing here and there though doesn't kill a game.
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Having very standard armor choices is good though. It leaves more time and mental energy for gun, sword and vehicle porn. That's where you get your real gear diversity anyways.
So you are championing 6e then?
They (appear to) have removed all the need to spend time and mental energy on armor and metespecies, yes?
And by the way, there isn't all that much diversity in gun, sword, or vehicles either. I won't go into the cookie cutter choices here, but there are certainly there.
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You don't spend time or mental energy on armor choice in 5e though. Just pick up an armor jacket and a helmet and go, unless you care about your social modifiers, in which case you look through the armor chapter of Run&Gun and pick something from a short list of options.
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You don't spend time or mental energy on armor choice in 5e though. Just pick up an armor jacket and a helmet and go, unless you care about your social modifiers, in which case you look through the armor chapter of Run&Gun and pick something from a short list of options.
Eh, talking base book I put some thought into it. am I shooting for high armor, an ability to conceal items, some level of blending in ability etc. All of which kind of depend on the character concept. Yeah we are talking like a few seconds only of thought.
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You don't spend time or mental energy on armor choice in 5e though. Just pick up an armor jacket and a helmet and go, unless you care about your social modifiers, in which case you look through the armor chapter of Run&Gun and pick something from a short list of options.
Actually all you do is pick Sleeping Tiger. Protection as good as heavy armor? Check. Beneficial social modifiers? Check. Bonuses to stealth? Check. Availability of 12 or under? Check.
There's really no reason to ever wear anything OTHER than Sleeping Tiger in 5e. Unless you're in a gimmick mission requiring a space suit or something.
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There's really no reason to ever wear anything OTHER than Sleeping Tiger in 5e. Unless you're in a gimmick mission requiring a space suit or something.
Have you forgotten the almighty nuyen, of which the Sleeping Tiger costs many, and the arguments had about whether or not the Sleeping Tiger literally looks like trash? Best case scenario, it looks like a pimp suit.
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There's really no reason to ever wear anything OTHER than Sleeping Tiger in 5e. Unless you're in a gimmick mission requiring a space suit or something.
Have you forgotten the almighty nuyen, of which the Sleeping Tiger costs many, and the arguments had about whether or not the Sleeping Tiger literally looks like trash? Best case scenario, it looks like a pimp suit.
Yeah ill lose 1 armor not to look like ass.
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There's really no reason to ever wear anything OTHER than Sleeping Tiger in 5e. Unless you're in a gimmick mission requiring a space suit or something.
Have you forgotten the almighty nuyen, of which the Sleeping Tiger costs many, and the arguments had about whether or not the Sleeping Tiger literally looks like trash? Best case scenario, it looks like a pimp suit.
Well I do love that thread and indeed in my headcanon Sleeping Tiger is now a spinoff of Mugatu's Derelicte fashion line... but looking like literal trash still gives a social bonus so it's not ALL bad.
And while yes it costs nuyen, not so much nuyen that you have to think long about the CBA. "Hands down the best armor across the chart of protection, sneaking bonuses, and social benefit (so long as I don't mind looking stupid by real world standards) but it costs over 10k nuyen? Oh, and since it's got a brand name it's compatible with other armor accessories of that same brand name? Ok yeah I thought about it for about a second: No Brainer.
Hell, even the only downside in price is either near zero or maybe even a negative number once you factor in the levels of built-in ruthenium polymer that you'd have to purchase to apply to another set of armor for comparable performance.
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Sounds like they are still doing the split pool thing for additional targets. Without the large dice pool penalty for wide burst to a targets dodge test, do you foresee using it in 6e?
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Sounds like they are still doing the split pool thing for additional targets. Without the large dice pool penalty for wide burst to a targets dodge test, do you foresee using it in 6e?
I think that until we get a good and thorough look at the Edge mechanics in 6th World Edition it'll be hard to anticipate any opposed actions, really.
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Sounds like they are still doing the split pool thing for additional targets. Without the large dice pool penalty for wide burst to a targets dodge test, do you foresee using it in 6e?
I think that until we get a good and thorough look at the Edge mechanics in 6th World Edition it'll be hard to anticipate any opposed actions, really.
True, but from the real play so far edge seems to be fairly minor effects unless you spend like 4 edge or something and I'd expect that to be kind of rare.
Also from the real play. I kind of like the increased drain on health spells as they got more hits. I really wish they had not given mages access to a spell with more initiative dice, lets street sams and adepts have one fucking niche. Also it seems you still sustain spells, not sure if they also have duration's though or if that was just a quick start thing. So i'm happy about that, though focused concentration of up to 3 spells seems crazy to me. I wish they just rolled back to focused concentration changed the penalty to 1 die, seems more balanced, just don't let it stack with psyche or whatever that drug was.
I like the mob action, more dice, more damage. It turns 5 dudes unloading onto you a threat. And 5 dudes(who got 8 hits on i think 12 dice) seriously damaging a pickup truck with heavy pistols seems reasonable to me. But I've never shot a truck so maybe its not.
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True, but from the real play so far edge seems to be fairly minor effects unless you spend like 4 edge or something and I'd expect that to be kind of rare.
Edge refreshes every scene. You can gain 2 per turn in combat. I'd expect pretty much every pc to do something major with edge every combat. Some of them twice.
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True, but from the real play so far edge seems to be fairly minor effects unless you spend like 4 edge or something and I'd expect that to be kind of rare.
Edge refreshes every scene. You can gain 2 per turn in combat. I'd expect pretty much every pc to do something major with edge every combat. Some of them twice.
Maybe? From what they said during the live play thing if its over your normal stat it resets to normal but if you used it all, the next scene you start with 0. If it reset either way I'd expect more use, but even with that up to 2 can frequently be 0. The weapon specialist didn't seem to be getting any.
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Other things that stood out given the new action system. Major action to ready a weapon without quick draw stuff, i guess without free actions it kind of makes sense but it is another knock to street sams as whether they make it a minor or its a major its delving into their actions where as a mage just fries your mind. Driving took a major action, I'm hoping they mean stunts and not just keeping the car on the road as that's a huge knock into a riggers actions.
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RE the new metatype stuff being bad:
While there are definitely things that, if too early to call 'bad' are definitely troubling things to hear, the fact that all metatypes start lower on priority and don't have lower mental stat maximums isn't one of them.
Now this is going to make some people uncomfortable, but there is a titanic elephant in the room that needs to be addressed to point out why it is morally unacceptable that orks and trolls have lower mental maximums and are not suitable towards being anything besides physically oriented characters.
They are coded as African Americans. Like... really really overtly.
If you aren't familiar with coding in the context of media criticism, it is the idea that a character is given traits we associate with a particular group or type of person so that we see them as that type of person, even if the text of the movie doesn't come out and say it. Think, for example, a flamboyant character with a lisp and a ton of ascots. It can be a tool for good or ill: it allows you to create a layer of distance from a real world subject or it can be used to deny legitimate representation, but it exists, and Orks and Trolls are coded as black Americans.
They tend to be relegated to lower income jobs, sports, the armed services, or music, they have their own distinct neighborhoods where they had their own Harlem renaissance, often fall into gang violence, are targeted by a racial supremacist group that wears white pointy robes, they fraggin wear grills and pimp their cars. And this group of people who are a really unsubtle way to comment on our real world society's continuing struggle with racism after nominal legal equality in a world where our real world concepts of race are less important...
They have a penalty to their mental stats...
Like... cmon, are you kidding me? The coding of Orks as African Americans is mostly well done but this is insane. The coding shouldn't be used to reinforce heinous stereotypes, it should be used to get people to empathize with a real world situation they might otherwise struggle to empathize with. This should have been changed a long time ago and it is really good that this sacred cow is getting slaughtered. By introducing extreme costs that force goblin metatypes to only play archetypes they are 'suited' towards and applying a penalty to maximum mental attributes you create the oft overused phrase of Ludonarrative Dissonance, a disconnect between mechanics and story, where despite it being very clearly framed that the in universe prejudice of orks and trolls is morally wrong, we, out of character, are forced to be prejudiced in the same way the badguys are.
Someone said they didn't like that metatypes were going to essentially just be slightly different humans with different flavor and no really intense mechanical differences. However, that is exactly what they should be, at the end of the day an elf is just a human with pointy ears and slightly better limb flexibility that cause small minded people to freak the hell out, orks are just unusually burly people who get murdered by police officers and 'scared citizens' because of an in universe narrative they are dumb violent brutes. For SR's narrative to be coherent, to send the message that racism is arbitrary, dumb, and bad, it needs to not be objectively correct to judge an ork or elf based on their metatype.
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True, but from the real play so far edge seems to be fairly minor effects unless you spend like 4 edge or something and I'd expect that to be kind of rare.
Edge refreshes every scene. You can gain 2 per turn in combat. I'd expect pretty much every pc to do something major with edge every combat. Some of them twice.
Iirc it's capped after each scene but not refreshed. But even then 2 per turn is enough if you don't consume it like water.
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And while yes it costs nuyen, not so much nuyen that you have to think long about the CBA. "Hands down the best armor across the chart of protection, sneaking bonuses, and social benefit (so long as I don't mind looking stupid by real world standards) but it costs over 10k nuyen? Oh, and since it's got a brand name it's compatible with other armor accessories of that same brand name? Ok yeah I thought about it for about a second: No Brainer.
For a certain set of priorities, yes. But you can grab an armor jacket, a custom ballistics mask, an Executive Suite and a FBA with helmet for far less than the cost of a Sleeping Tiger. Some people only want armor out of their armor, and have better things to spend their money on than RPC. After all, those guns, drones and vehicles don't come cheap, nor do their modifications.
They are coded as African Americans. Like... really really overtly.
They're also "coded" as Hispanics and white trash, and that's just in UCAS and CAS. The "coding" changes with local stereotypes and prejudices, so really, they're only "coded" as "prone to poverty and violent crime".
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Orks and trolls have always had lower mental stats throughout the five editions. It’s a balancing mechanism to their higher physical stats and possibly even Urge and the environment they grow up and live in.
There’s a long thread about that elsewhere on the forum.
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They're also "coded" as Hispanics and white trash, and that's just in UCAS and CAS. The "coding" changes with local stereotypes and prejudices, so really, they're only "coded" as "prone to poverty and violent crime".
The term "Orksploitation" is a plot relevant in universe concept. A Jackpointer mentions the "X while black" meme but replaces black with ork. They are frequently banned from sporting events and experience literal Jim Crow era segregation. It is very much a racial coding, and while I could see some Hispanic coding as well. And yes, they are not used the same internationally in the setting, but it is disingenuous to pretend that they are, for the most part, used as a stand in for racial groups that are treated by mainstream society as violent, scary, and less intelligent outsiders. They definitely are not a metaphor for the lower class, their coding is extremely race based. Again, we have an in universe KKK preforming lynches, this isn't really a discussion I am interested in having. If you are trying to say goblins are not a very race based allegory, fine, but I super don't want to talk to you about that if that is the case.
Having a player 'race' choice in a game who bling out cars, wear grills, are relegated to jobs as laborers, combat, or criminals, have a massive incarceration rate which results in lots of single mothers, and who are assaulted and murdered by, lets face it, the KKK, with a penalty to how smart and well spoken they can be is pretty mortifying for a game line in 2019. I am very not surprised they are not retaining this element of nostalgia from older games, especially because I don't think many players have a big emotional attachment to it (at least when it comes to orks, I have literally never seen an Ork PC who was not logic 3 or 4 and I suspect the lower logic leaves a bad taste in people's mouths, which is why people avoid it and why none of the Jackpointer NPCs exhibit it. I have seen the 'cute dumb troll' archtype a few times).
Orks and trolls have always had lower mental stats throughout the five editions. It’s a balancing mechanism to their higher physical stats and possibly even Urge and the environment they grow up and live in.
There’s a long thread about that elsewhere on the forum.
It doesn't matter if it was true across previous editions, that is a classic example of Status Quo Stonewalling, you don't make a new edition with the goal of keeping things the same because that is how they were, you do it to fix problems and make good changes. And and saying "You know what? This is a bad idea with some seriously terrible implications that hurts the intended message and justifies an in universe viewpoint that is intended to be incorrect, and it should be different" is a good change.
Yes, it was a balancing mechanic in previous editions, but balance is not an in universe concept. It is made by OOC designs and it is trivial to rework orks and trolls to not require their mental stats to be lower. And, more importantly, it actually fails as a balancing change, because orks and trolls are good (and in 4e orks were broken) at anything not requiring the character to have good logic. It doesn't balance the highpoint because no character who cares about the downside will be affected by it, only people who don't. You can't really balance via opportunity cost, and in fact they didn't in 5e, they balanced by costing, which had its own problems but was entirely unrelated to the logic penalty.
If it is intended to represent the traditional ork or troll upbringing, 1: It doesn't model what logic actually is in universe, we have qualities such as uneducated and low skill characters to represent people who didn't get a good education, and 2: It shouldn't be a mandatory penalty then, because the idea that all orks are slum dwellers who don't go to school and never read a book is incorrect, and PCs are intentionally curve wreckers. It doesn't actually make anymore sense as a mandatory limit than saying all elves need to assign resources to C because 'elves are traditionally rich' or giving humans a max logic increase because humans tend to get into good schools.
I am not saying you have to like the change, but I am saying it isn't a case of 6e trying to 'simplify the game.' It is fixing a pretty major and likely somewhat embarrassing thematic problem that inadvertently has Cata arguing in favor of unjust social structures and prejudice because it is saying that, objectively, orks and trolls (who are, again, coded as racial minorities extremely heavily) deserve discrimination because they aren't good at things that require thinking, so they shouldn't even try, and should just let the humans and elves do the thinking for them. That is a horrific disconnect from SR's intended statement about race that lines up with what real life biggots who call themselves 'race realists' say about race. The argument that a media depiction is really old isn't a good argument either, a big reason a lot of changes in depiction of race are being demanded now wasn't because people's preferences or feelings changed, but because people didn't have platforms to point out problems. Orks having intellegence penalties was a problem in 1989 when shadowrun was written, and is a problem now, but now there is an awareness of how people view this and are affected by this, which is prompting, again, a GOOD change by Cata.
There are plenty of things to say 'this is a weird pointless change that seems to be done to oversimplify things or because its being changed for change's sake' but this definitely has a lot of really compelling reasons to change.
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This again...
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Having a player 'race' choice in a game who bling out cars, wear grills, are relegated to jobs as laborers, combat, or criminals, have a massive incarceration rate which results in lots of single mothers, and who are assaulted and murdered by, lets face it, the KKK, with a penalty to how smart and well spoken they can be is pretty mortifying for a game line in 2019.
You're welcome to stop playing any time you want. Though, I find myself doubting you ever played in the first place.
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You're welcome to stop playing any time you want. Though, I find myself doubting you ever played in the first place.
Great discourse!
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Let’s keep the discourse civil and respectable.
SR Mod
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Should there be true balance then all the races should be the same, no highs, no lows.
Society for those on the lowest rung of the ladder is the same for all races. The trogs are being kept down because they look monstrous and therefore rarely raise above high lower class into the middle or upper ranges.
Orks have their lifespan against them. That’s fact in the SR universe. It’s their metabolism. They reach maturity faster and “burn out” around 40, so they live harder. There’s nothing in our world that’s similar.
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I agree that the metatypes really need a rebalance to matter less, but that is my personal preferences, I like it as an aethestetic and narrative choice rather than serious crunch, even though I am a crunchhead, because I like to line up my crunch with a specific story. I get why 'mechanically heavy' species/races/metatypes in games are fun too, shifters are great and I have seen a lot of interesting stories with Naga. I think 6e hit a good compromise where you can easily make any type of PC any metatype but there will also be things to make your PC more 'orky' or 'trolly.'
It sorta fits how we see SR in transmedia, like in SRR most of the major ork NPCs are 'humans with pointy teeth or horns' rather than these big thug things, but also there WERE very orky-orks. It also crops up in the art: Some trolls are just big humans with horns and a few patches, some look like literal monsters. 6e gives a scale. Assuming the 'advancement' options you can take for your meta are something you can take at gen by putting your metatype priority higher, that results in a lot of modularity where people trying to make someone like Eiger who is essentially just a tall human with horns and big tusks who is only influenced by her metatype in the form of in universe prejudice can get what they want, but if you want to make someone who fits the lore of the troll as someone who has legitimately bullet proof skin and the ability to flip a car this actually gives the designers more room to put more powerful options into metatypes by effectively allowing every metatype into a 'monster' metatype like vampires or drakes where you can continually invest in abilities.
I think the thing that was objectively distasteful was the reduced mental maximums, simply because they didn't service any story or any fantasy for making a PC (save for big teddybear Troll ala that one troll in DangerSensei's reality show) and had really unfortunate implications. I will, again, point out that the similarities between our real world and what is going on with orks and trolls is intentional and overt. It is nakedly evoked, and a minor fantasy trapping does not change that it is a commentary on the real world. Yes, in the real world minorities don't die when they are 40, but that isn't the actual thing orks are commenting on. They are commenting on extreme prejudice from society against a type of person because of perceived issues of their temperament, and judgement of their culture. For example, the 'metahuman reduction' surgery is, intentionally or not, a pretty spot on allegory for things like hair straightening (which if you don't know is a really major and complex issue in real life), there is a pretty naked commentary on the funnel of goblin youth to the millitary, labor jobs, or prison, ect. It is coding, it intentionally draws you to notice the similarities while maintaining distance that allows you to more safely interact with this really emotionally charged and difficult topic.
Again, I am not super interested in the debate of IF goblins are coded as real life racial allegories, because it not only obviously is true but has been admitted to multiple times. I don't feel like I need to prove it to be true at this point. I mean Ghost Rigger themselves made a pretty long post on the subject that treated this as extremely obviously true, so I could just link to that. So with the knowledge that this is in fact a racial alegory (and a surprisingly heavy handed one for something like SR), what does applying an objectively true negative thing to orks and trolls that, while certainly unintentional, justifies the in universe bigotry, and thus makes a similarly troubling statement about our real world?
Its something Cata is no doubt certainly aware of, and such messaging neither is on brand for Shadowrun and isn't something you want to be associated with in the RPG market which leans extremely progressive. So even ignoring the real world morality of such a statement I think it is a given that Catalyst wants to avoid a White Wolf scenario. This is probably an inevitable lore change due to growing sensitivities to real life issues, and real life realities of operating in the RPG market, and because it kinda makes the intended message stronger by making Humanis wrong about the limited capabilities of the metahuman mind, and makes the mechanics of orks and trolls more match how they are portrayed by jackpointers and major ork and troll NPCs.
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Sorry for poking, but what about the longer agility for dwarves and trolls? Shouldn’t those be raised as well? Just because you are “really” short or tall doesn’t make you less agile ...
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Sorry for poking, but what about the longer agility for dwarves and trolls? Shouldn’t those be raised as well? Just because you are “really” short or tall doesn’t make you less agile ...
Probably from a mechanical standpoint stat penalties in a game like SR aren't a good idea because these stats are so important, and because lowered maximums aren't really tradeoffs so much as hard limitations on the types of characters you can make. They seem like the mechanical equivalent of a -2 from D&D, but they aren't because they are a cost you don't pay if you don't make a PC who cares about getting those stats to racial maximum, while a D&D say... dwarf... always has the -2. And even in the context of D&D, they moved away from penalties for a reason, because they limit the diversity of character types that can exist.
These penalties are slightly less problematic in a real world context because we don't as a society assume as much about your personhood based on your agility compared to your intellegence, but I would say that mental BONUSES are also pretty non-ideal and play into the metatype metaphor poorly. Yes, historically elves have had a charisma bonus but in a hypothetical reality where the 6e 'pay to get metatype benefits' exists you could just cap all mental stats at 6 (which I believe I heard was going to be the case) and give elves the ability to get a pseudo-first impression as a racial ability if you REALLY wanted to play up the 'beautiful elf' thing. As is, there are so many rude, crass, and unpleasant elves in the canon that it is clear that the mechanical bonus to charisma doesn't make anymore sense than the mechanical limit on intelligence preventing all these smart orks and trolls we keep seeing as NPCs from being PCs.
The biggest difference though is that lowering ork and troll intelligence is sort of making a pretty terrible real life statement by accident while lowering agility does not. The context is very different because people are using this assumed lower intelligence to justify real world bigotry, while lower agility doesn't really have a real world analogue and is more one of the fantasy trappings. The reason Orks and Trolls having lower mental stat maximums is so... eugh... is because they are very overtly based on real life racial groups that bigots and even like just not actively biggoted but still awful prejudiced people believe to be less 'naturally intelligent.'
And there is also the real world context of the White Wolf Nazi dog-whistling that is kinda waking everyone up to this sorta thing in the RPG industry. A lot of very established tropes may not be the kinda worlds we wanna create in our fantasy, so the idea of 'metatype is mostly assumptions people make about you and your metatype identity is at most a source of strength for you' fits better with the anti-racism messaging of SR than 'your metatype is a mixed bag, we all come out mechanically equal, but you are objectively just worse in stats our society values highly and better in ones we don't!'
EDIT: Also never be afraid to poke. Also, this is sorta drifting from topic. I just wanted to express that I didn't think this is an example of 6e oversimplifying and didn't want this good idea to be lumped in with any negative feelings towards 6e people may or may not have. Always a risk of good ideas being thrown out due to association. 6e may or may not turn out great, but there are clearly good ideas, like moving decker power out of destroy-able gear that isn't an intrinsic part of them and into personal investments like implants, or removing BGC as not a great balancing mechanic and ultimately not fun. If they will be executed well remains to be seen, but if it fails that doesn't mean these ideas were themselves bad.
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Orks having intellegence penalties was a problem in 1989 when shadowrun was written, and is a problem now, but now there is an awareness of how people view this and are affected by this, which is prompting, again, a GOOD change by Cata.
It never was a problem, it will never be a problem, except for certain people that need to pour politics into everything and have the strange need to make themselves an unasked spokesperson for every other (perceived) minority.
Funnily enough while usually being white and from a midlde-class background.
But i give you props for actively stating your point here and taking the flak for it, as opposed to just silently inserting your political views into the system, like others do.
It also is quite good because it allows the readers to know what to expect in which direction this is going.
Well, on top of the horrid 6e rules (judging by the information out so far, and prone to being reevaluated should new data warrant it), this looks like another good reason to not throw any money at CGL in regards to 6e.
turbo-SJW infestation in Comics was quite the financial disaster for the big brands, i doubt it will be much different for RPGs
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It always amazes me when people complain about politics being inserted into SR, a game in the cyberpunk genre (which is explicitly a politically motivated genre) with the thesis statement that can be summarized as "Violent destruction of authoritarian and capitalistic institutions is not only ok, but morally makes you a hero."
The genre and game are heavily influenced by the Punk movement, a generally progressive anti-authoritarian social movement that emphasizes direct action and resistance to all forms of violence and oppression despite them being socially sanctioned or 'soft.' It is literally where the game's aesthetics comes from. Like the game takes the actual Nazi punchers and says' they are heroes, and society saying that they don't condone this violence doesn't make it amoral, because society has no right to declare that its own oppression of you is just."
Like you do realize this is the setting which has our heroes shooting up KKK rallies and blowing up banks that own the slave labor that produce your Nikes, right? And it was putting out this message in 1989. If anything, SR became tamer because the message that political violence against unjust oppression was unpalatable after 9/11.
If you think 'people are forcing political messages into shadowrun' you just aren't paying attention, it has always been an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-racism game line that takes a pretty extreme view of the justifiably of violence against oppression even when your own society condones that oppression.
When it comes to the RPG industry the only real major political blowout so far we have seen in regards to this post-gamergate discourse was that White Wolf was putting Nazi dog-whistles in its game and just generally taking a game line that his historically been pro-LGBT+ and anti-authoritarian and making it homophobic and ridicule progressive ideals, which caused such a backlash among fans of the line White Wolf as a company no longer exists and has been disbanded by Paradox studios.
P&P RPGs have historically been pretty intensely progressive spaces, considering the amount of LGBT+ members, the fact that it requires you to be emotionally vulnerable, its affinity for other pro-LGBT+ spaces like theater, and the fact that the games sorta force you to learn empathy for other people. I mean WOTC posted articles about how to tastefully portray LGBT+ characters and people of different races than your own back in 2005, so this not at all a new sudden thing people are forcing in your games.
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Yes, Cyperpunk IS a very political genre in itself.
That doesn't mean that it is a place to insert your personal worldviews just because you think something is problematic.
Punk is about talking and tackling problems and differences, not making wish-belief they don't exist like this sad attempt at political correctness does.
Its also about tackling the vast grey areas, instead of this ridiculous "the good" vs "the evil" stuff that sounds like it was ripped right from a golden age cape comic.
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Punk is about talking and tackling problems and differences, not making wish-belief they don't exist like this sad attempt at political correctness does.
So are you claiming that the idea of having a coded ethnic race be less intelligent is more honest than not having mental differences between metatypes? In essence, you think that CGL is 'lying' and pushing an untrue agenda by removing mental differences from different kinds of people?
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Orcs aren't "less intelligent" though, and neither are trolls.
It takes them the same amount of work to get to average levels of intelligence (3, which would/should correspond to an IQ of 100) and also the same amount of work to get to above and way above average levels of intelligence (4 and 5, speaking in 5e terms). The only thing that they do have is a lower cap on the highest intelligence levels. That is quite the important difference.
And yeah, having actual differences in the genetic makeup (however they might make themselves explicit) between different races is an honest thing. Because they are a thing in real life, no matter what the latest class on gender studies might say.
Sure, you don't need it in every game. But it is good to have it in a game whose whole background tackles issues of social and ethnical conflicts of various sorts.
Among other things because its a way more honest and true to say "yes, there are differences between us people, but we still can and should overcome these to work together to strife for a better future" instead of this easy "no, we are all the same, its just the evil nazis that tell us different, just hit them boys and everything will be better!". The former makes people THINK, the latter is just creating a thought-bubble for people who already share the same opinion and gives them an outlet for their IRL fantasies.
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Enough.
For those who want to continue to debate about postulate about race, take it to elsewhere.
SR Mod
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So. New initiative system. More solidity on knowing the turn order, and everyone gets a go (though some people may opt to do 2 Majors if they have at least 3 initiative dice.) Thoughts? Yay/nay?
Me, I like it bringing a bit more stability, though I do hope there's still ways to buff/penalize Initiative Scores, even if they can't cost someone a full pass anymore.
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Not knowing what characters can do with their actions I cannot honestly tell.
I liked the system of third/fifth because it rewarded street samurais for their investment but also gave all a chance to act before the turn ended at least once.
Right now it feels like they are being nerfed
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They mentioned taking cover and movement, so that's 2 Minor Actions I guess. If you have 5 dice, you'd have 6 Minors so that's 1 extra Major, plus being able to move and take cover?
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The math of minors doesn't seem to add up in a way that is very rewarding, as before you didn't need 5 dice to get an extra pass. It definitely is a nerf to samurai, but allegedly the power level overall is coming down. It is just we are hearing a LOT of samurai nerfs.
I actually really like the idea of 'more actions rather than more passes' because it forces the samurai to make all their choices at once and take up less overall table time than making decisions every few seconds, but the implementation is very rough. It is likely that initiative boosters are coming down in essence cost and price, but maybe they aren't, and either way it removes a huge fantasy of being a samurai. I think this could have been done better by just giving the samurai an extra major per-dice equivalent, and capping the extra dice equivalent at 2 and making the second rank cost as much as synaptic/wired 3, which would maintain the benefit of 'all at once, please' while keeping the raw offensive advantage of initiative from the PC's perspective intact and perhaps even helping to create more differentiation between off combat PCs like faces going for 1 extra pass and samurai who are investing in 2, to help make up for the loss of soak tanking from the samurai's identity.
The big thing I think about when hearing about 6e is that samurai just... lost their identity. They don't even seem like they are going to be a role anymore because so many iconic aspects of them were stripped down to the bone. This may or may not be true, but unlike many mechanical anaylsises of a product that isn't out yet the fact I am feeling this is way more a red flag than other gut feelings I have about 6e. In games classes/archetypes exist basically as fantasies, mechanical and lore promises the games make to us to entice us to play them because of how cool they are, and 6e feels like samurai aren't promising anything, which means we can already evaluate at least the aspect of the fantasy of being a street samurai as a failure even if they mechanically turn out fine, unless at some point that fantasy of being a super fast and deadly cyborg ala Molly Millions or the GitS crew is replaced by a different one.
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Mrm, I think that for my table this actually is a boost to Street Sams, Mages, Adepts and HotSim Deckers/Riggers. In 5e, most of our fights lasted maybe 2 Passes. Only the heaviest fights lasted more than 1 Combat Turn (such as the fight against a Blood Mage that kept dodging their AoE attacks), so it was extremely rare for them to actually get to use that extra pass. Now they actually get more to do in their turn, rather than theoretically receiving an extra pass. Being able to perform 2 Major actions will be a big buff to them instead.
Giving a massive amount of extra Majors sounds like it'd do more harm than good, myself. It'd be overkill and once again FORCE people to massively invest in Initiative or be worthless and die quickly.
Also, I like the sound of getting extra actions based on your dice rather than your actual roll, because it means that even if you roll poorly, you still get your extra actions. A Street Samurai will be able to perform 2 Majors, while a normal ganger won't. So that still sounds like they're badass, and they still go first in Initiative. Look at it this way: In 5e, you'd score 3 passes instead of 1~2 for the guy with 8+1d6, but even then that extra pass was only useful after a few passes take place first. Now you can actually do more stuff during your turn, which can give you a significant tactical advantage.
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Most fights I have end in 2 passes unless the mage decides that mandatory naptime is worth gordian knotting the whole thing. It may be because the meta I play in values full defense extremely highly and so players are reducing their own offensive power, but I find it strange that PCs are consistently able to clear a fight in a single pass even though SR is pretty darn good about ensuring PCs can't down more than one enemy a pass. Even vs grunt corpsec it generally will take a team of 5 players in an environment as optimized as the reddit LCs to take down a group of enemies slightly larger than them unless literally everyone is a samurai. "Initiative is king" has been seen as a pretty uncontroversial truism for every edition, so I hope you aren't offended when I say it seems like something is creating an extreme outlier scenario if your group is able to clear fights with one action per-player. Do you not use NPC edge?
Another big advantage to edge in SR5 was stalling: if you had the initiative advantage it meant defensive action played extremely in your favor: Your opponent had to either expose themselves or allow you to get a series of turns without them being able to react. This was especially potent because you also immediately get to act again even after you run out of initiative if you are the highest, meaning the turn rotating gave you two actions in a row, allowing you to do very dangerous things like flank with total impunity or play around with AOEs when no one could Run Like Hell. It is very very VERY good to go fast in SR5. A single pass advantage creates by a 1d6 therefore could translate into a two pass advantage with a back to back bonus, while in SR6 you aren't even able to get one effective extra pass with a single d6. There is a danger if you allow multiple movement actions per pass via minor actions of similarly stacked double turns exploiting the inability to react, but hopefully they aren't allowing that because those would be silly even without bonus majors.
That said, this isn't a PVP game, and one player getting two attacks at once has different effects in a cooperative game either way. That means that we don't actually have to worry about if it is fair to be exposed to high initiative attacks at all, as long as it is rare in the hands of NPCs.
Specifically, because majors are a player's ability to impact a combat offensively, they don't factor in to your 'time to kill' and thus wouldn't affect NPCs attacking you at all. You are dictating how many NPCs you can attack. You won't die any faster or slower at low initiative dice, so as long as the essence buy in is non-trivial, you don't need it. That said, currently in 5e most every non-magical PC makes a point of using Jazz or buying an initiative booster, so even if it were mandatory, that is still the status quo. While obviously I didn't put a ton of thought into it, paying 3/4ths of your essence to attack 3 times in combat isn't actually that attractive unless 'ware overall gets dramatically less useful. There is a reason why even in two turn fight metas you aren't seeing a lot of move by wire PCs, making your turns more impactful is equally as important as more initiative.
I fear the current system will actually make investing in initiative totally worthless, as minor actions as we saw from the lets play are not actually that useful and are not attractive enough to incentive you towards making extreme sacrifices towards getting them, which is why people are wondering if wired reflexes is going to be dropping to a sub-1 essence cost per rating item.
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I'm quite interested to see how the action economy plays out. It's seems to be a pretty major shift from "passes" to "actions" which means we'll (at least me) likely need to readjust current perceptions. Of course, not having all the rules in front of us makes things a tad challenging ;)
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So someone's been summarising their readings of all sources into 1 document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZPN1-6xfGD9SV6xD85eaJIWoNq0NcsBdE3CQI8s5rJU/edit#heading=h.h701ncsxs7zi
Interestingly enough, Drain still exists, but Binding is gone. O_O Summoning now lasts 1 Dusk & 1 Dawn, it's resisted by Fx2 but Drain is 1/hit, and you can have a total of M*3 in Force summoned total at any time.
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Mrm, I think that for my table this actually is a boost to Street Sams, Mages, Adepts and HotSim Deckers/Riggers. In 5e, most of our fights lasted maybe 2 Passes. Only the heaviest fights lasted more than 1 Combat Turn (such as the fight against a Blood Mage that kept dodging their AoE attacks), so it was extremely rare for them to actually get to use that extra pass. Now they actually get more to do in their turn, rather than theoretically receiving an extra pass. Being able to perform 2 Major actions will be a big buff to them instead.
Giving a massive amount of extra Majors sounds like it'd do more harm than good, myself. It'd be overkill and once again FORCE people to massively invest in Initiative or be worthless and die quickly.
Also, I like the sound of getting extra actions based on your dice rather than your actual roll, because it means that even if you roll poorly, you still get your extra actions. A Street Samurai will be able to perform 2 Majors, while a normal ganger won't. So that still sounds like they're badass, and they still go first in Initiative. Look at it this way: In 5e, you'd score 3 passes instead of 1~2 for the guy with 8+1d6, but even then that extra pass was only useful after a few passes take place first. Now you can actually do more stuff during your turn, which can give you a significant tactical advantage.
While I like the idea of one pass multiple actions, I'm with dezmont that it seems like a samurai nerf. Especially since they are continuing the 5e tradition of making a spell the most powerful initiative booster. Unless there is like a wired 10 now at best street sams get 2 majors and one minor, which is pretty terrible for a big investment when compared to 1 major and 2 minors. If you need to move and get cover the street sam is basically in the sam spot as a unmodified person as a bunch of extraneous minors don't really help. At wired 2 historically the more common option a street sam better hope he doesn't need to draw a weapon, move, get cover or well anything else otherwise he just has 1 major like everyone else. Great use of 3 essence there. If wired reflexes essence isn't massively dropped and costs more than a ham sandwich its not seeming worth picking up the iconic ability of sams which is enhanced reflexes(actions).
Sure once we get the full rule maybe we will find out street sams have access to ware that makes this work for them, but it is not looking good to me. It can still overall be a fun game, I'm just not sure how shadowrun it will feel without core elements like super enhanced reflexes dude.
Also as a side note in most campaigns i've played in people never felt the need to compete with the Sam in speed, they were fine with their 1 pass in a fight while the street sam went 3+ times.
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So someone's been summarising their readings of all sources into 1 document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZPN1-6xfGD9SV6xD85eaJIWoNq0NcsBdE3CQI8s5rJU/edit#heading=h.h701ncsxs7zi
Interestingly enough, Drain still exists, but Binding is gone. O_O Summoning now lasts 1 Dusk & 1 Dawn, it's resisted by Fx2 but Drain is 1/hit, and you can have a total of M*3 in Force summoned total at any time.
I like the change of Fx2 for the spirits resistance(I hope hits in drain is enough), I don't like the idea of multiple spirits without binding. I'd have kept it at 1 spirit summoned, I do like the M3 total force angle for a better way to get total spirits though. Make binding harder than summoning like vs forcex3, let people bind up to that, which may remove the ability to summon if they have all of that bound. Make the reagent cost for binding balanced. Seems like a crazy powerful buff to mages to allow x3 magic in force in spirits without a ritual and reagent cost.
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So in SR6 we will see mage 'riggers' who use F3 or F4 spirit swarms in case the that the new combat system makes lower force spirits still a danger.
And if not 12 F1 spirits can cause a heck of a distraction while you still have a F6 spirit for combat.
Or maybe even two. Time it right and you easily have 15 hours to heal any drain with a big window for the run.
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Speaking of Riggers, it seems the game is moving in the direction of making them pure mental based, since Intuition is used instead of reaction when jumped in. I like this a lot.
Now the question remains: does that mean logic is used instead of agility for jumped in gunnery tests? I surely hope so!
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So someone's been summarising their readings of all sources into 1 document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZPN1-6xfGD9SV6xD85eaJIWoNq0NcsBdE3CQI8s5rJU/edit#heading=h.h701ncsxs7zi
Interestingly enough, Drain still exists, but Binding is gone. O_O Summoning now lasts 1 Dusk & 1 Dawn, it's resisted by Fx2 but Drain is 1/hit, and you can have a total of M*3 in Force summoned total at any time.
Excellent link, thanks for posting!
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Speaking of Riggers, it seems the game is moving in the direction of making them pure mental based, since Intuition is used instead of reaction when jumped in. I like this a lot.
Now the question remains: does that mean logic is used instead of agility for jumped in gunnery tests? I surely hope so!
I liked that in 4e, was not happy they removed it as a option in 5e. Made no damn sense your physical agility effected your ability to mentally control your guns. So, yes hopefully logic being mental agility means something in 6e. Same for mages on the astral.
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So in SR6 we will see mage 'riggers' who use F3 or F4 spirit swarms in case the that the new combat system makes lower force spirits still a danger.
And if not 12 F1 spirits can cause a heck of a distraction while you still have a F6 spirit for combat.
Or maybe even two. Time it right and you easily have 15 hours to heal any drain with a big window for the run.
Sounds plausible.
With the difference between the fastest and the slowest end of the spectrum only being a single additional Major Action (aka attack) per Combat turn, overwhelming mass seems to be the way to go.
Which, incidentally shifts it all even more towards magerun, since having multiple (low level even) ghosts seems to be the way to go to get the biggest amount of Actions per player.
Not happy about this.
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So in SR6 we will see mage 'riggers' who use F3 or F4 spirit swarms in case the that the new combat system makes lower force spirits still a danger.
And if not 12 F1 spirits can cause a heck of a distraction while you still have a F6 spirit for combat.
Or maybe even two. Time it right and you easily have 15 hours to heal any drain with a big window for the run.
Sounds plausible.
With the difference between the fastest and the slowest end of the spectrum only being a single additional Major Action (aka attack) per Combat turn, overwhelming mass seems to be the way to go.
Which, incidentally shifts it all even more towards magerun, since having multiple (low level even) ghosts seems to be the way to go to get the biggest amount of Actions per player.
Not happy about this.
Yeah commanding drones and spirits makes sense as a minor action but when the imitative system is about giving piles of minor actions that convert at 4 to 1 for major it really helps people if have good minor actions. Riggers and Mages and i'll mainly say mages because spirits are more disposable. But 3 aim actions or whatever just wont have the same oomph as commanding 3 spirits.
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Riggers did use intuition in 5e to shoot drone guns. It was just not well known because that rule was tucked away in the combat section with the grenade rules rather than in the rigger section for some reason. This meant that riggers used intuition for seeing and sneaking in drones, logic for shooting, and reaction to drive them, made extra confusing by the fact that the rules for using EWAR to see out of a drone instead of perception were in the gear section, while the rules for sneaking were in the rigging section, and the rules for shooting were in the combat section, while the explicit statement you use reaction did not exist and had to be inferred by nothing saying you didn't use reaction. It would be extremely hard for 6e riggers to be less understandable than 5e.
Multi-summoning and losing binding is one of those clever little changes I actually like. It SEEMS like a buff, but it is actually a pretty big nerf, because while you no longer have to spend a very token amount of nuyen on reagents and no longer have to invest skills, you now can't summon extremely high force spirits in downtime and nap off the drain. Binding meant that after your team's first run if any amount of time passed the mage now had up to their binding limit in powerful spirits ready to go. Now to have 3 force 6 spirits running around at once requires the mage to actually pay drain. It probably won't be THAT big a hit, the main benefit was less "I have a comically big spirit army" and more "I can pay the drain cost when it wouldn't actually be relevant" and spirits still seem plenty strong, but it definitely is a clever bit of design.
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Riggers did use intuition in 5e to shoot drone guns. It was just not well known because that rule was tucked away in the combat section with the grenade rules rather than in the rigger section for some reason.
Oh you sweet summer child. The wars you've missed... Plenty of people who said 'nope, it says for remote Gunnery + Agility on page X, so jumped-in also uses Agility'.
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Riggers did use intuition in 5e to shoot drone guns. It was just not well known because that rule was tucked away in the combat section with the grenade rules rather than in the rigger section for some reason.
Oh you sweet summer child. The wars you've missed... Plenty of people who said 'nope, it says for remote Gunnery + Agility on page X, so jumped-in also uses Agility'.
I haven't missed those wars as far as I know, I just happen to know that the section you are referencing actually says remote uses logic+gunnery unless you found one I didn't, in which case... whoops! I have seen this debate enough to commit that section to memory.
The only references to gunnery using agility are that it is an agility linked skill (Which obviously doesn't prove anything because skills fail to use their linked attribute quite often, like EWAR) and the fact that if you are physically holding the gun while shooting it uses agility, otherwise remote gunnery systems use logic.
Of course the only reason I am so sure is that after my 5e book literally caught fire (long story) I got an RPG drivethru copy and gained the awesome power of control F, which lets you zoom through looking for stuff this scattered. And I am still like not 100% now that you said something, because it was indeed a hot mess.
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I just happen to know that the section you are referencing actually says remote uses logic+gunnery unless you found one I didn't, in which case... whoops! I have seen this debate enough to commit that section to memory.
What an interesting way of phrasing that. Well, if you already actually know the section I'm referencing and the arguments people kept making, there's no need for me to quote the Control Device description from p238, or to start linking you to posts of people telling me I was wrong for claiming Gunnery + Logic, using p238 as their argument.
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I am just going to go cry in a corner because of course they found a way to reference agility to gunnery without using the term gunnery and the fallibility of knowledge is hitting me right in the essence.
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Speaking of Riggers, it seems the game is moving in the direction of making them pure mental based, since Intuition is used instead of reaction when jumped in. I like this a lot.
Now the question remains: does that mean logic is used instead of agility for jumped in gunnery tests? I surely hope so!
I don't quite like that. Reaction is in a weird space where you can make arguments for it being either physical or mental or even both, and if they take Reaction out of the equation for riggers then that makes it too easy to just dump all your points into the relevant stats.
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Multi-summoning and losing binding is one of those clever little changes I actually like. It SEEMS like a buff, but it is actually a pretty big nerf, because while you no longer have to spend a very token amount of nuyen on reagents and no longer have to invest skills, you now can't summon extremely high force spirits in downtime and nap off the drain. Binding meant that after your team's first run if any amount of time passed the mage now had up to their binding limit in powerful spirits ready to go. Now to have 3 force 6 spirits running around at once requires the mage to actually pay drain. It probably won't be THAT big a hit, the main benefit was less "I have a comically big spirit army" and more "I can pay the drain cost when it wouldn't actually be relevant" and spirits still seem plenty strong, but it definitely is a clever bit of design.
It is a buff because the drain is less now. So they easily whistle up a spirit force for basically free at breakfast now. The fix for biding would to make the test much harder. If it was force x3 or force x4 and the reagents were expensive you wouldn’t see a spirit army outside end game. If it was force x1000 nuyen in cost and you were facing 24 dice how many force 6 spirits would you bind.
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Multi-Summoning without Binding is the worst of the bad ideas I have heard so far. It shits right down the throat of everyone who rightfully complained about the ridicolous power level of summoning in 5E. Yes, even with the higher Drain Values.
Seriously, who wanted this?
"Gosh darnit, I wish it wouldn´t be so hard to summon an army of almost invicible combat assets that can walk through walls!"
And what the hell is even up with that Limit? Magic * 3? Are you kidding me? How do you even reach that number? That would be 18 Spirits on a Summoner with Magic 6! Or are we talking about Magic / 3 here and this is just a telephone game error? Because that would be at least somewhat reasonable.
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Speaking of Riggers, it seems the game is moving in the direction of making them pure mental based, since Intuition is used instead of reaction when jumped in. I like this a lot.
Now the question remains: does that mean logic is used instead of agility for jumped in gunnery tests? I surely hope so!
I don't quite like that. Reaction is in a weird space where you can make arguments for it being either physical or mental or even both, and if they take Reaction out of the equation for riggers then that makes it too easy to just dump all your points into the relevant stats.
The problem with Riggers is that they need too many stats to begin with. They are the only archetype which require above average if not high levels of attributes in both mental and physical attributes on top of a massive load of nuyen.
In SR5 they need Reaction, agility, willpower, logic, and intuition because they are matrix based. The only other archetype that attribute needy is the Technomancer. Everyone else only needs two or three.
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Multi-Summoning without Binding is the worst of the bad ideas I have heard so far. It shits right down the throat of everyone who rightfully complained about the ridicolous power level of summoning in 5E. Yes, even with the higher Drain Values.
Seriously, who wanted this?
"Gosh darnit, I wish it wouldn´t be so hard to summon an army of almost invicible combat assets that can walk through walls!"
And what the hell is even up with that Limit? Magic * 3? Are you kidding me? How do you even reach that number? That would be 18 Spirits on a Summoner with Magic 6! Or are we talking about Magic / 3 here and this is just a telephone game error? Because that would be at least somewhat reasonable.
18 force 1 spirits. That’s not much of a threat. Annoying more than anything. As a gm I’d be aoeing the team a lot of that was done.
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Maybe they would qualify for the grunt bonus? Or would that be npc only?
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Multi-Summoning without Binding is the worst of the bad ideas I have heard so far. It shits right down the throat of everyone who rightfully complained about the ridicolous power level of summoning in 5E. Yes, even with the higher Drain Values.
Seriously, who wanted this?
"Gosh darnit, I wish it wouldn´t be so hard to summon an army of almost invicible combat assets that can walk through walls!"
And what the hell is even up with that Limit? Magic * 3? Are you kidding me? How do you even reach that number? That would be 18 Spirits on a Summoner with Magic 6! Or are we talking about Magic / 3 here and this is just a telephone game error? Because that would be at least somewhat reasonable.
18 force 1 spirits. That’s not much of a threat. Annoying more than anything. As a gm I’d be aoeing the team a lot of that was done.
Yeah, not seeing 18 f1 being a smart move. I would go for 3 f6 and call it a day :-p or maybe 3 f5 and 1 f3, or if you want to make your brain explode, 1 f8 2 f5. With the new healing rules, may actually be more beneficial to do f > magic rating if still allowed and take physical drain, have squad heal you up with medkits + magic
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Yeah, not seeing 18 f1 being a smart move. I would go for 3 f6 and call it a day :-p or maybe 3 f5 and 1 f3, or if you want to make your brain explode, 1 f8 2 f5. With the new healing rules, may actually be more beneficial to do f > magic rating if still allowed and take physical drain, have squad heal you up with medkits + magic
Given how you can't spend 1 Edge to reroll all failures anymore, I suspect summoners will become more careful. But only time will tell in the end. Especially if your dicepool cannot reliably handle a F8. At 1/7 chance of taking 5+ drain and 52% chance to score 1+ services at 18 vs 16 dice, a F8 sounds rather risky and a waste of healing.
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Well, it takes 4 to reroll all failures now so every second or third round you can do it.
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Well, it takes 4 to reroll all failures now so every second or third round you can do it.
In a fight maybe. Out of a fight/encounter where are you earning edge and when does the scene end. If you try to abuse it I doubt a gm lets it fly.
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Well, it takes 4 to reroll all failures now so every second or third round you can do it.
Yeah, but then you can only summon a dangerous spirit inside combat, while getting shot at so you can score Edge. Because after combat is over, bam you're back to your Edge rating max and any excess is lost. So it takes a 4-Edge mage to be able to reliably handle a dangerous drain roll, and if you only have a 50% chance of making the summon... So no, with rerolls being more expensive, I suspect Mages will quickly learn to deploy several weaker Spirits instead of going the 'classic' Force 8+ Spirit in combat.
Note to self: Write a program that rolls 1 billion times and calculates odds for scenarios that way, or handles rolls with smart logic to calculate exact odds of services and drains... -,- The same roll impacting 2 things, services and drain, always was a pain to do with AnyDice.
Yeah, not seeing 18 f1 being a smart move. I would go for 3 f6 and call it a day :-p or maybe 3 f5 and 1 f3, or if you want to make your brain explode, 1 f8 2 f5. With the new healing rules, may actually be more beneficial to do f > magic rating if still allowed and take physical drain, have squad heal you up with medkits + magic
Question: I can't find anything indicating drain has become healable, though of course the recap-document is still incomplete. Could you tell me where you got that from?
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Drain damage has never been able to be healed in previous editions, so why should that change now?
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Drain damage has never been able to be healed in previous editions, so why should that change now?
Healing rules are completely different with 6e, which is why I said may, not will.
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Drain can be healed in 5e in a few ways, like slap patches and naps. 6e healing may also make drain easier to heal if they assumed the new system would cause mages to take more drain.
As to "binding was more drain so its a buff" the main point of binding was to pay drain during downtime when it was irrelevant. I have been playing 5e from launch and literally can only think of one time outside a living community scenario where downtime binding is banned when binding stun was relevant, in a survival scenario where the mage wanted to get a spirit to guard folks against arctic wind all night.
Like if you give a mage a week of downtime they can just spend 3 in game days getting up to their binding limit and be good to go for next job maxed out on spirits that will cost 0 stun to summon. Even with just a day's downtime you could get a solid 2 or 3 spirits in 5e, and eventually the GM will be forced to give some long term downtime. Of course a single pre run summon leaves more than 3 hours of naptime to shake off even a full stun track, but now you can't do that trick and have 8 spirits extra in the back pocket. Or maybe you can, depending on how easy it will be to get summoning dice to eat drain. From what I understand to take no drain from a summon requires 3 times as many hits as the spirit has, but I gotta admit the new drain rules by removing drain resist made it less intuitive for me so I may have misread it.
Of course overall spirits seem stronger. It just is interesting how losing it weakens the mage toolset (even if its offset in other ways) because of how binding makes you feel when you use it because its so clunky.
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Drain can be healed in 5e in a few ways, like slap patches and naps. 6e healing may also make drain easier to heal if they assumed the new system would cause mages to take more drain.
As to "binding was more drain so its a buff" the main point of binding was to pay drain during downtime when it was irrelevant. I have been playing 5e from launch and literally can only think of one time outside a living community scenario where downtime binding is banned when binding stun was relevant, in a survival scenario where the mage wanted to get a spirit to guard folks against arctic wind all night.
Like if you give a mage a week of downtime they can just spend 3 in game days getting up to their binding limit and be good to go for next job maxed out on spirits that will cost 0 stun to summon. Even with just a day's downtime you could get a solid 2 or 3 spirits in 5e, and eventually the GM will be forced to give some long term downtime. Of course a single pre run summon leaves more than 3 hours of naptime to shake off even a full stun track, but now you can't do that trick and have 8 spirits extra in the back pocket. Or maybe you can, depending on how easy it will be to get summoning dice to eat drain. From what I understand to take no drain from a summon requires 3 times as many hits as the spirit has, but I gotta admit the new drain rules by removing drain resist made it less intuitive for me so I may have misread it.
Of course overall spirits seem stronger. It just is interesting how losing it weakens the mage toolset (even if its offset in other ways) because of how binding makes you feel when you use it because its so clunky.
Been keeping up with the google doc that tallies all known 6e info: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZPN1-6xfGD9SV6xD85eaJIWoNq0NcsBdE3CQI8s5rJU/edit#heading=h.h701ncsxs7zi
Way I read the summon from the doc and from interviews I've watched, it's # of hits from spirit = Drain to resist. So, if you do a force 4, spirit rolls 8 dice (fx2 dice). For all the hits the spirit makes, you then have to roll your will + tradition attribute to resist. Let's say you're an elf with 5 will + 8 charisma (no special qualities that contribute to drain), 13 vs 8 is pretty solid safety net for relatively powerful summon that lasts 1 sun rise + 1 sun down.
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I am concerned about Strength as a stat. Only applies to Unarmed combat for damage, no longer provides to melee weapon damage? Did strength just become a dump stat?
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Drain damage has never been able to be healed in previous editions, so why should that change now?
Healing rules are completely different with 6e, which is why I said may, not will.
Ah, yeah that's not how that 'may' came across, it came across as 'with X changed, the following tactic may become interesting', not as 'maybe X changed and will make the following tactic interesting'.
From what I understand to take no drain from a summon requires 3 times as many hits as the spirit has
That sounds overly dramatic. They'll be the same drain, you just can't edge it as easily due to the remake of the Edge system. And the drain will in fact be a more narrow bellcurve, due to smaller standard deviation with rolling Fx2d6 instead of (Fd6)x2. The main complications will be that it's harder to get services and that the drain will be harder to Edge against when it rolls exceptionally well. But that just serves to encourage people not to throw in massive-Force summons, so no harm done.
At 13 drain dice, a Force 4 will average 0.26 drain and a Force 6 will average 0.77 drain, with odds of 4+ drain being 5%. So a single hour nap would suffice even if a Force 6 is a pain, and several Force 4 you won't really care about.
I am concerned about Strength as a stat. Only applies to Unarmed combat for damage, no longer provides to melee weapon damage? Did strength just become a dump stat?
To me, Strength always was a dump stat. Shock weapons sufficed, even if I had to grab Indomitable to up my Physical Limit.
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Multi-Summoning without Binding is the worst of the bad ideas I have heard so far. It shits right down the throat of everyone who rightfully complained about the ridicolous power level of summoning in 5E. Yes, even with the higher Drain Values.
Seriously, who wanted this?
"Gosh darnit, I wish it wouldn´t be so hard to summon an army of almost invicible combat assets that can walk through walls!"
And what the hell is even up with that Limit? Magic * 3? Are you kidding me? How do you even reach that number? That would be 18 Spirits on a Summoner with Magic 6! Or are we talking about Magic / 3 here and this is just a telephone game error? Because that would be at least somewhat reasonable.
Oh, just realized that it´s the Total Force of the Spirits. That´s still pretty strong, but at least not a totally arbitrary limit that´s impossible to reach (unless the Summoner wants to troll the table and actually goes with an army of 18 Level 1 Spirits). I still think there should also be a reasonable maximum number of Spirits. Just in case...
(And tbh, Magic*2 in total Force would have been enough. They could have added Qualities and Techniques for dedicated summoners to bring that number up...)
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Multi-Summoning without Binding is the worst of the bad ideas I have heard so far. It shits right down the throat of everyone who rightfully complained about the ridicolous power level of summoning in 5E. Yes, even with the higher Drain Values.
Seriously, who wanted this?
"Gosh darnit, I wish it wouldn´t be so hard to summon an army of almost invicible combat assets that can walk through walls!"
And what the hell is even up with that Limit? Magic * 3? Are you kidding me? How do you even reach that number? That would be 18 Spirits on a Summoner with Magic 6! Or are we talking about Magic / 3 here and this is just a telephone game error? Because that would be at least somewhat reasonable.
Oh, just realized that it´s the Total Force of the Spirits. That´s still pretty strong, but at least not a totally arbitrary limit that´s impossible to reach (unless the Summoner wants to troll the table and actually goes with an army of 18 Level 1 Spirits). I still think there should also be a reasonable maximum number of Spirits. Just in case...
(And tbh, Magic*2 in total Force would have been enough. They could have added Qualities for dedicated summoners to bring that number up...)
I kind of want to look at spirit abilities when book comes out. I wonder what kind of shenanigans you can come up with as far as distractions with 18 F1 spirits that you have a lot of services with. Spirits of Man that mimic a certain wanted individual maybe, showing up in 18 different locations?
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I also worry about the magic success & drain soak test being the same roll. Yes, it removes a roll, but it also makes failures potentially more dangerous.
it is not, drain is still a separate roll but has higher values in general so packs more punch
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Drain can be healed in 5e in a few ways, like slap patches and naps. 6e healing may also make drain easier to heal if they assumed the new system would cause mages to take more drain.
As to "binding was more drain so its a buff" the main point of binding was to pay drain during downtime when it was irrelevant. I have been playing 5e from launch and literally can only think of one time outside a living community scenario where downtime binding is banned when binding stun was relevant, in a survival scenario where the mage wanted to get a spirit to guard folks against arctic wind all night.
Like if you give a mage a week of downtime they can just spend 3 in game days getting up to their binding limit and be good to go for next job maxed out on spirits that will cost 0 stun to summon. Even with just a day's downtime you could get a solid 2 or 3 spirits in 5e, and eventually the GM will be forced to give some long term downtime. Of course a single pre run summon leaves more than 3 hours of naptime to shake off even a full stun track, but now you can't do that trick and have 8 spirits extra in the back pocket. Or maybe you can, depending on how easy it will be to get summoning dice to eat drain. From what I understand to take no drain from a summon requires 3 times as many hits as the spirit has, but I gotta admit the new drain rules by removing drain resist made it less intuitive for me so I may have misread it.
Of course overall spirits seem stronger. It just is interesting how losing it weakens the mage toolset (even if its offset in other ways) because of how binding makes you feel when you use it because its so clunky.
The issue with binding was since the die pool you went against was higher it reduced the force of the spirit you’d attempt it vs.
Spirits I normally could summon with little risk might be in the knock me out from drain level. As a dm I’d much rather have a player with 1 force 9 and 5 force 5 spirits than 3 force 9 spirits in sr5. If they had kept that trend so in 6e maybe 1 force 6 summoned and 5 force 3s bound I feel it would be more balanced.
Without seeing spirits in this edition it’s hard to know how this will play out entirely.
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One thing they mentioned about char gen. 1 skill at 6. The rest max at 5. Are they going back to 6 max for skills. I really hated how attribute focused 4e was. 10 from your stat max 6 from a skill. Skills felt almost meaningless in comparison.
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One thing they mentioned about char gen. 1 skill at 6. The rest max at 5. Are they going back to 6 max for skills. I really hated how attribute focused 4e was. 10 from your stat max 6 from a skill. Skills felt almost meaningless in comparison.
that is just at char gen ... skill ranks go to 9 then with the specialization and expertise you can get to a total of 12 dice from skill
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The misinformation to the public is pretty strong. Like you have these folks with the quick start rules or box set or whatever playing live streams that say one thing, then you have these (authors I presume? i.e Banshee) saying something else. The drain example.
I think we all appreciate intel on the changes in the new edition but can we at least get it right before we call it out?
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Why would I ever want to throw a wild die? 1/6 chance to screw up the roll is a tad high to really risk it.
For low skill users. If I understand correctly the Wild Die is added by specific things, not every dice roll. The Face or Decker with 8 to 10 Dice in Firearms would probably go ahead and grab something with a Wild Die. 10 or less Dice is going to miss frequently enough that the Wild Die gamble of 3 Extra hits could seem like a good idea.
Really, anything with a low to moderate dice pool trying something hard may find the Wild Die appealing. Especially if its something the player can control by turning on/turning off or using a different weapon or tool (or whatever). We'll know in three months.
One source of wild die are Positive Qualities like Overclocker (+2 die to Matrix actions, one of them a wild die).
And I can't really imagine someone with a low matrix pool grabbing this quality.
I actually like the flavour on this. I can already imagine a couple of offshoot Qualities that also include wild dice, f.i. a version for social skills ("Smiling Devil" or something like that) where you are so aggressively charismatic that people sometimes see right through your facade and realise that you really are a manipulative psychopath. Or a version for Magic users where your magic powers are bit to powerfull for you to reliably handle them.
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The misinformation to the public is pretty strong. Like you have these folks with the quick start rules or box set or whatever playing live streams that say one thing, then you have these (authors I presume? i.e Banshee) saying something else. The drain example.
I think we all appreciate intel on the changes in the new edition but can we at least get it right before we call it out?
yes I wrote parts of the book and was on the rules development team from the beginning as well and obviously have a copy of the "final" print copy in my possession. However I have not seen the QSR and would agree there seems to be some sizable differences between it and the CRB on a few things. Spellcasting seems to be the biggest one since we did not change drain or sustained spells either one but it sounds like the QSR says otherwise.
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That's why we got people compiling documents with all the sources, for those too impatient to wait that all want to speculate like crazy. O_O Like you and me!
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One thing they mentioned about char gen. 1 skill at 6. The rest max at 5. Are they going back to 6 max for skills. I really hated how attribute focused 4e was. 10 from your stat max 6 from a skill. Skills felt almost meaningless in comparison.
that is just at char gen ... skill ranks go to 9 then with the specialization and expertise you can get to a total of 12 dice from skill
I’d of preferred just removing the skill cap entirely but that’s better than nothing. Honestly attributes should only contribute 1/2. They cover multiple skills and should not be 1 for 1 like skills.
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As a add to the binding debate. Part of the problem in 4-5e was how you summoned then bound and services were additive. If you straight went to bind against a harder test you’d have a small number of services. In 1-3 e hermetics might have 1-3 services on a decent force spirit and it costs thousands to summon. Now it’s 500 per force and you might have 5-10 services. At force 6 3000 Nuyen isn’t trivial I’d you don’t have a massive pile of services. Though if your spirit gets smoked it’s a lot down the drain.
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It also seemed that once you rolled initiative you kept that result for each successive combat turn, so if you rolled poorly you were stuck with it.
Since you no longer have initiative passes, and iirc your Minors depend on your dice, not your roll, that score only matters for turn order no? No different from D&D then, and at least here there's ways to modify your score during a fight. JM Hardy indicated it was so you can be more tactical, iirc.
Going 'nope, we're both not getting any edge dice' doesn't sound that different from 'we're both using edge' so I guess it depends on the exact mechanic. When Edge is luck, both getting extra makes sense, but when Edge is literally having an edge, it makes sense that you can cancel them out.
...but it sounds as if you roll a really crappy initiative, you are stuck with it for the entire combat whereas previously, re-rolling at the top of every combat turn you had a chance to get a better one.
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It also seemed that once you rolled initiative you kept that result for each successive combat turn, so if you rolled poorly you were stuck with it.
Since you no longer have initiative passes, and iirc your Minors depend on your dice, not your roll, that score only matters for turn order no? No different from D&D then, and at least here there's ways to modify your score during a fight. JM Hardy indicated it was so you can be more tactical, iirc.
Going 'nope, we're both not getting any edge dice' doesn't sound that different from 'we're both using edge' so I guess it depends on the exact mechanic. When Edge is luck, both getting extra makes sense, but when Edge is literally having an edge, it makes sense that you can cancel them out.
...but it sounds as if you roll a really crappy initiative, you are stuck with it for the entire combat whereas previously, re-rolling at the top of every combat turn you had a chance to get a better one.
Yes, but now that bad roll is solely your turn-order, not your action-economy. And iirc there was something on Edge for Initiative? Plus now turn order is more predictable
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Why would I ever want to throw a wild die? 1/6 chance to screw up the roll is a tad high to really risk it.
...ah, that's what it is called. I remember one of the players used some sort of special die roll that did altered the final result.
Sounds sort of video game-ish to me.
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You don't spend time or mental energy on armor choice in 5e though. Just pick up an armor jacket and a helmet and go, unless you care about your social modifiers, in which case you look through the armor chapter of Run&Gun and pick something from a short list of options.
Actually all you do is pick Sleeping Tiger. Protection as good as heavy armor? Check. Beneficial social modifiers? Check. Bonuses to stealth? Check. Availability of 12 or under? Check.
There's really no reason to ever wear anything OTHER than Sleeping Tiger in 5e. Unless you're in a gimmick mission requiring a space suit or something.
...or tromping around the CZ. There are a lot of places where having sealed armour with an air supply is very handy.
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Interestingly enough, Drain still exists, but Binding is gone. O_O Summoning now lasts 1 Dusk & 1 Dawn, it's resisted by Fx2 but Drain is 1/hit, and you can have a total of M*3 in Force summoned total at any time.
...this sort of goes back to older editions where hermetics could have multiple elementals summoned at the same time. That was a pain for a GM say if you had two hermetics each with a several elementals (in 2E you ended up dealing with runner teams turning into "strike forces"). I was actually glad they limited all mages to just one called spirit in 5E. Yes there is binding, but it took time, resources, and could have dire consequences for the character if the player rolled poorly (spirits also don't take kindly to it either).
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Speaking of Riggers, it seems the game is moving in the direction of making them pure mental based, since Intuition is used instead of reaction when jumped in. I like this a lot.
Now the question remains: does that mean logic is used instead of agility for jumped in gunnery tests? I surely hope so!
I don't quite like that. Reaction is in a weird space where you can make arguments for it being either physical or mental or even both, and if they take Reaction out of the equation for riggers then that makes it too easy to just dump all your points into the relevant stats.
The problem with Riggers is that they need too many stats to begin with. They are the only archetype which require above average if not high levels of attributes in both mental and physical attributes on top of a massive load of nuyen.
In SR5 they need Reaction, agility, willpower, logic, and intuition because they are matrix based. The only other archetype that attribute needy is the Technomancer. Everyone else only needs two or three.
...deckers in 5E need more than 2, like Logic (hacking actions), Intuition (some matrix actions as well as Matrix Perception), and Willpower (matrix defence). A decent Agility is helpful for saving your hoop in the meat world as well as being able to contribute to combat when outside the matrix, while Reaction does affect the character's initiative when working in AR.
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It also seemed that once you rolled initiative you kept that result for each successive combat turn, so if you rolled poorly you were stuck with it.
Since you no longer have initiative passes, and iirc your Minors depend on your dice, not your roll, that score only matters for turn order no? No different from D&D then, and at least here there's ways to modify your score during a fight. JM Hardy indicated it was so you can be more tactical, iirc.
Going 'nope, we're both not getting any edge dice' doesn't sound that different from 'we're both using edge' so I guess it depends on the exact mechanic. When Edge is luck, both getting extra makes sense, but when Edge is literally having an edge, it makes sense that you can cancel them out.
...but it sounds as if you roll a really crappy initiative, you are stuck with it for the entire combat whereas previously, re-rolling at the top of every combat turn you had a chance to get a better one.
Yes, but now that bad roll is solely your turn-order, not your action-economy. And iirc there was something on Edge for Initiative? Plus now turn order is more predictable
...turn order is still important. It is in any game. Again if you can make it through that turn and redeem a bad initiative by getting a better roll result in the top of the next turn that's fine. If you have to keep the result you initially rolled throughout the combat, you will be at disadvantage until it is over.
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It's not wrong, but OTOH the alternative to rolling once is rolling every turn... and under that paradigm you can go last in one round then go first in the next round, doubling actions in a row.
Maybe that's ok... the designers this time around in 6th decided it wasn't ok. Or at least less preferable to rolling once and having a static "who goes" order for the whole fight. It's essentially the same thing d20 does... and for good or ill d20's turn sequence is MUCH simpler to manage than 5E's.
I'm looking forward to 6e initiative tracking not requiring anything more than organizing a list of PC and NPC names in turn order.
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...one thing to my disappointment that I learned during the live play was one of my favourite actions is no more.
When the team was being chased by the Ancients and the Rigger decided to use the AK-97 on his drone in the back I suggested laying down suppression fire. The answer I got back was that it wasn't an option anymore as the only modes are single shot, wide burst, and full auto, the latter two which involve splitting your pool. So much for the Decker or Face with a mediocre firearms skill and low physical attributes helping out in combat.
Another bit of info I gleaned from the Podcast the other night was that the "burlier" metatypes (particularly Trolls) are heavily favoured when it comes to combat. So making a jacked up human Sammy sounds sort of like an exercise in futility, particularly since armour (which was something of an "equaliser" in older editions) has been effectively nerfed.
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It's not wrong, but OTOH the alternative to rolling once is rolling every turn... and under that paradigm you can go last in one round then go first in the next round, doubling actions in a row.
Maybe that's ok... the designers this time around in 6th decided it wasn't ok. Or at least less preferable to rolling once and having a static "who goes" order for the whole fight. It's essentially the same thing d20 does... and for good or ill d20's turn sequence is MUCH simpler to manage than 5E's.
I'm looking forward to 6e initiative tracking not requiring anything more than organizing a list of PC and NPC names in turn order.
...yes it may be easier to keep track of but as there are no more multiple passes per turn, so that crazy headache for the GM (and players) is gone. I have never played a game where you got stuck with the same initiative for the whole encounter (OK, there is Champions/Hero System, but that used a fixed action phase system based on your character's speed and there was no random test involved).
I really don't see it being any more difficult to handle.
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Yeah once passes are gone one roll or one per turn the difficulty for me as a gm is about the same. Passes are a pain.
As for potentially bottom turn people then going first. Not a huge issue for me and depending on how delaying your action works it may still be possible, just as a tactical choice instead of random.
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Also: yes, I'm glad I accidentally got the quick-start rule mixed up with the actual rule. I mean, not that it happened, but that it got corrected. I'm still hopefully optimistic about this, and want to read about Neo-Toronto (it isn't officially called that, but I want to call it that).
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Neo-Toronto
What now?
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Uh, 30 Nights will feature stuff about Shadowrunning in Toronto. That's what I called it in my brief stint as GM when I put stuff there.
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Yes there is binding, but it took time, resources, and could have dire consequences for the character if the player rolled poorly (spirits also don't take kindly to it either).
Tell that to the Elf that literally could force a 9-Spirit Army down enemies' throats... -_-
It's not wrong, but OTOH the alternative to rolling once is rolling every turn... and under that paradigm you can go last in one round then go first in the next round, doubling actions in a row.
Maybe that's ok... the designers this time around in 6th decided it wasn't ok. Or at least less preferable to rolling once and having a static "who goes" order for the whole fight. It's essentially the same thing d20 does... and for good or ill d20's turn sequence is MUCH simpler to manage than 5E's.
I'm looking forward to 6e initiative tracking not requiring anything more than organizing a list of PC and NPC names in turn order.
Yeah, it will be easier if the amount of Initiative-changes is smaller, and I don't have to constantly track changes every time someone does something. Now I can just grab my Starfinder Initiative Board and use that.
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Yeah. I’m not sure how summoning a spirit and binding is weaker than a hermetic just binding. Also dice pools were generally different back then so outside min max extremes a hermetic tossed like 6 dice to bind a elemental. I can’t remember if your sorcery pool could be used or not. The TN was the spirits force so you generally didn’t go crazy on force. And it cost $1,000 per force to summon. Nothing like a hermetic whistling up a pack of elementals for a fight then wiping them all out with a single attack. There goes 30k down the drain.
Now, just being able to summon multiple spirits even if a bit more limited in number sounds a lot more powerful. Though, it does sound due to dice pool differences their force will be lower. How they compare with all the other changes is yet to be seen.
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So, I'm late to this party, and still absorbing. I'm half torn between rules i love, and rules i hate. on the surface. I'm not liking, at all, how edge is used in this. Is it still a characteristic? If so, does this mean that that the first rule of effective character generation will be to always max out edge> Because that sounds boring and cookie cutter as heck to me.
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So, I'm late to this party, and still absorbing. I'm half torn between rules i love, and rules i hate. on the surface. I'm not liking, at all, how edge is used in this. Is it still a characteristic? If so, does this mean that that the first rule of effective character generation will be to always max out edge> Because that sounds boring and cookie cutter as heck to me.
Since you'll probably gain Edge faster, the main reason to raise the stat is to be able to keep more inbetween encounters. If you're always spending it asap, there's not that much value in starting high.
Also, don't forget that 1 Edge point will do less than in SR5.
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I suspect until we see and absorb how edge works in these rules we won’t know how important it is.
Maxing human edge on the surface seems pointless. If you gain up to 2 a turn, why have 7 as your start when 7 is the absolute max. Maybe human have a higher absolute max. But unless there is some whopper of a 8 edge move or some great gain by using 2 4 point edge moves I don’t see the value.
From what we’ve seen it’s probably nice to have some edge but not essential as you gain it in the encounter. Edge was powerful in 5e I never felt a urge to use it often. It’s alright to miss occasionally. As 4 points is the reroll all failures point that might be a good target as your get out of jail free card for boning that dodge roll against the assault cannon.
But it’s all just conjecture at this point.
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Yes there is binding, but it took time, resources, and could have dire consequences for the character if the player rolled poorly (spirits also don't take kindly to it either).
Tell that to the Elf that literally could force a 9-Spirit Army down enemies' throats... -_-
...dealt with that in my 2E TT campaign, actually had two of them, both hermetics as back then shamans could only summon one spirit at a time unless they called in a Greatform (had a shaman geek himself trying that once). Yeah made me feel I was GMing a Warhammer miniatures campaign instead of Shadowrun.
To have that many bound spirits in 5E you need to be a pretty uber level mage who probably glows like the Vegas Strip in astral space.
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I really don’t get this line. It’s literally easier to have a spirit army in 5e than 1-3e. It’s cheaper and easier to pull off. Every mage can do it.
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...crikey my Black Magic spell slinger Wednesday feels she's doing good if she can summon a single Force 6 spirit of Man with at least 3 services (so she can give it one of her spells to cast) and not take any drain.
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...crikey my Black Magic spell slinger Wednesday feels she's doing good if she can summon a single Force 6 spirit of Man with at least 3 services (so she can give it one of her spells to cast) and not take any drain.
While binding a force 9 in 5e is a pain summoning one is easy peasey. And if you want to be summoning focussed in 5e binding force 6 is pretty easy.
Summoning 6+magic6=12 dice vs 6 on the summon.
Bind you just need one hit and it adds to the summoning hits. 12v12 for a mage who just took the skills. Specialization, mentor spirit, a focus it should be 16-23 dice for a focussed out of the gate pc summoner vs 12. Which also could semi reliably bind a higher force. The drain would suck but it wasn’t a peach in earlier editions. And binding is done when you have enough time on your hands to recover, you expect some drain.
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Bind you just need one hit and it adds to the summoning hits.
Two hits. The first one doesn't count.
I think this was done instead of taking a service to allow the binder to Bind the spirit.
Mathematically, it almost works the same, except you can no longer spend the spirits last service and fail to Bind.
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Bind you just need one hit and it adds to the summoning hits.
Two hits. The first one doesn't count.
I think this was done instead of taking a service to allow the binder to Bind the spirit.
Mathematically, it almost works the same, except you can no longer spend the spirits last service and fail to Bind.
Ah I forgot. Still it’s pretty easy to get piles of services for bound spirits.