[Typhus]

I'd love to hear how people's 5e GM experiences are going, moreso as far as the system than stories though.  How are you and your players contending with limits and things that can potentially slow down a game session like the Init count juggling, and calcing recoil mods, etc?  Did you find the new rules easy to get your head around or did you have to stop and research stuff mid game?  Do you feel like you most likely used everything as written or did you wing things and what made you feel that way?

Thanks in advance. 

[StarManta]

I find the SR5 initiative system runs faster than SR4's, given that there are half as many numbers to keep track of. Limits, too, sometimes actually speed up the game by making them (while counting hits) "One, two, three, four...that's it" instead of continuing to count out hits. Little things.

Recoil modifiers are taking some getting used to, but the truth is, I completely ignored recoil in 4th edition so I don't know if it's actually more or less involved. Only one of my characters so far has even used an automatic (so far about 5 game sessions between my running games.)

[Typhus]

Have you found players dislike losing hits due to limits?  Seems like that would be a risk, you roll seven but can only use 4.  I know some players that would find that disappointing after a bit.  My players always loved improbable rolls that generated more hits than expected in previous editions, was always a cause for celebration at my tables.  Just curious how that part is playing out for GMs.

Interesting about init.  Did you have many people modding their totals to boost defense? 

Thanks.

[StarManta]

There's been a little bit of that, but there's been more of "well ok, how do I get higher limits?" Which drives them to bump up their attributes (or buy a better cyberdeck), which is part of the point of them.

I haven't had anyone use the interrupt actions yet, actually.

[Ricochet]

I'm not the GM for our missions, but I am our resident "rules lawyer" so work with the GM a lot on how to address system issues.  (I also am the GM a lot and am our most experienced shadowrun player, just not running this round of play.)

1) This I find the initiative plays pretty fast.  (We actually use a magnet board that shows where people are for order, and when someone uses a defensive action, it's easy to move them down 5 initiative.

2) Limits haven't been much of a problem.  As a player I hit limits more than anyone, but I expected that going in.  I kind of like the mechanic actually.  I like it much better than the target number modification used as a second mechanic together with dice pools in SR3.  It's clean and easy to understand.

3) We've had no ware hacking for or against the players.  (Our main decker is also the rigger, and spends time with drones over hacking enemies.  Our secondary decker doesn't have a deck.)

4) Recoil is one mechanic we've had to look up and watch more than any other.  I think that was mostly learning curve though.  We didn't have any issues with it slowing things down in our 3rd session.

[Shade]

Here are mine, we're 2 and a half runs in so far:

1. Defensive combat is vastly improved. Full defense is frequently used, both sides trying not to die...had one fight last 6 combat rounds.
2. Combat flow is much faster(initiative is way better, obviously). That 6 round combat probably took as much real time as a 3 round fight in 4th.
3. Limits give players good incentive to spend edge wisely. This has kept people more conservative with their edge, less 'blow it all on alpha strike'.
4. Magic is WAY more balanced now. The indirect combat spells are quite powerful but the twitchy types aren't at a disadvantage against those. Spirit drain makes it far more risky to try and bring a fight-changing force 8-10 spirit out when things get nasty. Direct combat spells are still quite powerful, but not one-shottable. Just a good way to get an edge early instead of an instant win.
5. Matrix feels a LOT more like illegal, dangerous hacking against The Man. OS is a constant concern, wiping out a Hosts defenses and then having the team control the building is no longer an option except in the very short term. No more storming the building's nodes, killing/incapacitating all Matrix security personnel and the like.
6. Training times, guidelines for cash awards have made the game quite a bit more consistent and coherent as far as pacing and downtime are concerned.

[jamesfirecat]

Things I miss/ wish had not changed from forth edition.


1) No more narrow bursts, they were a good way to seperate those who where good with automatics from those who were great with them.  I wish they were still in fifth.


2) The amount of armor you can wear is now unrelated to what your body score is.  This means that everyone is wearing the exact same thing (armored jacket and a helmet or military gear and a helmet) was more interesting and felt more fair when a body 8 troll street samuria could wear more armor than a body three elf Mage.

3). Only one attack action per round.  I miss being able to fire off two long bursts, especially given that there's not much you can really do with that extra simple action other than possibly aiming for one round.

4) Recoil build up.  You now need hilarious amounts of recoil compensation to do your job as a street samurai, like 15+ probably more in the low twenties to be honest when in the old game you just needed 11 and could call it a day.  I expect to see a lot more tripods, gyro mounts and whatever else you can get among other runners now and it is still not enough to fire off consecutive full bursts, and given the lack of being able to shoot two people with a pair of long bursts on either simple action you will be wanting ot use full burst to deliver as much pain on the one guy you can shoot as possible.

5) Grenades are hilariously (in the sense of I laugh so I do not break down crying) effective and just became unquestionably the best weapon in any fight that does not feature you being right next to your enemy, I miss when magic was the thing you most had to be afraid of in combat now you need to geek the guy with the grenade launcher instead of the Mage, and every mook is going to have an Ares Alpha so good luck figuring out who is going to lay down a ton of AOE damage on the entire team because he managed to roll three hits on twelve dice.

Those five things are what irritate/annoy/depress me most about 5th.

[RHat]

1) Damage staging isn't needed for that, especially not in SR5 (given the higher defense pools).

2) The amount of extra armour you can wear (+armour items) is proportional to Strength now.  This both allows variance for stats and makes it so that Body isn't the only thing that matters in soak rolls.  Also, now you wear different armour for the varying advantages of the armour, and not just whatever hits your cap

3) ...  Sorry, but are you really suggesting there's nothing else to be done with a simple action". More generally, this change reallly matters from a balance standpoint, espcially given the changes to damage codes.

4) Or you can do somethiing other than shooting long enough to reset recoil.  How is encouraging better use of available options a bad thing?  A Sam's job isn't just to shoot every pass.

The grenade rules are problematic, thought.

[jamesfirecat]

1) Damage staging isn't needed for that, especially not in SR5 (given the higher defense pools).

2) The amount of extra armour you can wear (+armour items) is proportional to Strength now.  This both allows variance for stats and makes it so that Body isn't the only thing that matters in soak rolls.  Also, now you wear different armour for the varying advantages of the armour, and not just whatever hits your cap

3) ...  Sorry, but are you really suggesting there's nothing else to be done with a simple action". More generally, this change reallly matters from a balance standpoint, espcially given the changes to damage codes.

4) Or you can do somethiing other than shooting long enough to reset recoil.  How is encouraging better use of available options a bad thing?  A Sam's job isn't just to shoot every pass.

The grenade rules are problematic, thought.

1) I do not understand what you and mean by "damage staging is not needed for that" could you clarify?

2) I may need to read the book more fully (my experiences are based on playing at Origins) but it seems like everyone wore the same armor,  Can you clarify what a strength seven troll can wear for armor that a strength 3 elf can not?


3) The changes to damage codes don't matter as much because as I mentioned in point one, narrow bursts vanished from the system which has caused all automatic users damage to more or less blend together.  Give me some examples of stuff you think they should be doing with a simple action.

4) You're right, I think, I'll use one simple action to enable wireless on a grenade, one simple action to throw it, then DNI implant lets me use my free action explode it to deal 18 P -2AP to somebody's face when I roll three hits on the fifteen dice I have in heavy weapons to one guy, also known as as much damage as I would be doing if I got 5 net hits after he gets an attempted to dodge if I was attacking him with bullets from an Ares Alpha using explosive ammo.

(I will continue to harp on grenades because they are vastly overpowered and break the system in my opinion, any argument about 5th needing to nerf this or boost that falls flat on its face when it made grenades the king of combat)


Also what exactly should a street samuria be doing in combat other than shooting people?  I would love to hear examples since in my book if the street samuria has one job, and that is to clean people's clocks as combat, as many of them and as quickly as possible.

[Ryo]

Getting a defense bonus from cover is now a Simple Action. You need to spend a Simple Action to ready your weapon before you can fire it. Take Aim is necessary to negate Range modifiers with vision magnification, and is also a Simple Action. You will occasionally need to reload, which is multiple actions. If you turned off wireless to prevent your gun from getting bricked, switching from Semi auto to Full auto, or anything else that requires changing the device mode, is also a Simple Action. Using any item, such as a drug for initiative boosting, is a Simple Action.

You are complaining about a bunch of things that I find to be significant improvements over 4th across the board. I'm glad narrow bursts are gone, I'm glad you can only attack once per pass, I'm glad recoil actually does something now, and I'm glad grenades and rockets can actually hit the broadside of a barn.

And I can only assume you Pink Mohawk it up to the max if everyone is running around in full military armor plus helmets, carrying ares alphas, and is throwing/shooting grenades at everything.

[jamesfirecat]

Getting a defense bonus from cover is now a Simple Action. You need to spend a Simple Action to ready your weapon before you can fire it. Take Aim is necessary to negate Range modifiers with vision magnification, and is also a Simple Action. You will occasionally need to reload, which is multiple actions. If you turned off wireless to prevent your gun from getting bricked, switching from Semi auto to Full auto, or anything else that requires changing the device mode, is also a Simple Action. Using any item, such as a drug for initiative boosting, is a Simple Action.

You are complaining about a bunch of things that I find to be significant improvements over 4th across the board. I'm glad narrow bursts are gone, I'm glad you can only attack once per pass, I'm glad recoil actually does something now, and I'm glad grenades and rockets can actually hit the broadside of a barn.

And I can only assume you Pink Mohawk it up to the max if everyone is running around in full military armor plus helmets, carrying ares alphas, and is throwing/shooting grenades at everything.

I am simply stating the things about 5th edition that I find troubling and if you enjoy them good for you.

That said, Shadowrun is very Alpha Strikey and more to the point combat in it is very "logistics based" in my opinion, in the sense that setting up a fight correctly is half or even three quarters of the fight.

Unless you get taken by surprise you should not need time to ready your weapon, if you have a competent decker you should be able to fearlessly slave your gun to his equipment then leave wireless on and more to the point, you should have your gun already set on whatever mode you use most (can you only do full bursts in full auto mode can't remember right now)..  You should have already taken your drugs before the fight started, you should be able to sneak close enough that range modifiers are not an issue most of the time.




Also I have NEVER seen a fight last long that someone with an assault rifle needed to reload unless they were using it for suppressive fire only. 


By general rule of thumb my team would actually wear the armored jacket and helmet most of the time with the military armor only comming out for the times we do not care about the police (like if we were going into the terminal/badlands  /some place else with no cops) though my team has not done any 5th edition runs yet. 


Honestly I do not think it is any more pinkmowhawky to be ready to win fight as quickly as possible rather than dragging it out and giving more time for other people to show up /hear what is going on.  Grenades are the quickest way to end fights in 5th edition and give hilariously powerful attacks even when you only have a relatively meager dice pool (you only need 3 hits so 15 dice should be more than enough to guarantee a hit every time,)

I can not change what other people like or do not like about Shadowrun, but it feels like everything in 5th got hit with the nerf bat from direct combat spells to automatics to gunnery (since vehicles/drones no longer give unlimited recoil compensation) with the exception of grenades.

I would be willing to forgive most of 5th editions changes, if they didn't tend to highlight just how overpowered grenades are compared to every other comparable combat option from guns to magic.

At least in 4th edition when everything was broken it was fractally broken, where everything from stunbolts dropping whoever they were aimed at to stunballs clearing an entire room to S&S loaded submachine guns using an extended HV burst to take out an entire other shadowrunning team in one action (four people equlas each one of them getting to ear a narrow short burst).  Now however, at the risk of repeating myself grenades have become so much stronger than everything else that it seems to suck all the fun out of combat, because either you win with them, which requires no skill, or you loose to them, and that's even worse because you're getting your ass blown off by some random mook with only 12 dice to attack you with,

[Ryo]

How common do you seriously think it is for grenades to start flying in a shadowrun? Do you think punk gangers carry grenades everywhere? Does Lone Star or Knight Errant hand out high explosives along with the taser and side arm? Do you really think Corp Sec likes the idea of a bunch of explosions going off in their own buildings?

Not a single sample grunt is armed with grenades, unless you count the smoke grenades the Professional Rating 5 and 6 guys are equipped with. And if the player decides to run everywhere with a bandoleer of high explosives strapped to his chest, he should expect his Notoriety and Public Awareness to skyrocket, because blowing shit up is not exactly subtle.

And just wait until Run and Gun comes out and we get the Sympathetic Detonation rules redone for 5th edition. Doubt anybody is going to be too willing to carry explosives when there's a significant risk of it going off while it's still strapped to you.

[jamesfirecat]

How common do you seriously think it is for grenades to start flying in a shadowrun? Do you think punk gangers carry grenades everywhere? Does Lone Star or Knight Errant hand out high explosives along with the taser and side arm? Do you really think Corp Sec likes the idea of a bunch of explosions going off in their own buildings?

Not a single sample grunt is armed with grenades, unless you count the smoke grenades the Professional Rating 5 and 6 guys are equipped with. And if the player decides to run everywhere with a bandoleer of high explosives strapped to his chest, he should expect his Notoriety and Public Awareness to skyrocket, because blowing shit up is not exactly subtle.

And just wait until Run and Gun comes out and we get the Sympathetic Detonation rules redone for 5th edition. Doubt anybody is going to be too willing to carry explosives when there's a significant risk of it going off while it's still strapped to you.

The Ares Alpha is a perfectly respectable assault rifle, possibly even the best if you take it's higher recoil compensation over the Raiden's better accuracy.  It has an underslung grenade launcher built right into it, simply use it to store and fire your grenades as needed (once again given the Alpha Strikey nature of Shadowrun you probably only need one grenade at the start of the fight to take out a guy and wound some of his friends), especially if you have another street samuria in the party who also took a "minor" in heavy weapons and has one grenade of his own to contribute.

Also telling me that the system will get better once we get a new splat book is cold comfort while that splat book is still just so much ink in a pen right now.

[Ryo]

The Ares Alpha is also completely illegal, so it's not like you can walk down the street with it slung over your shoulder.

But apparently, you think 100% of shadowrunner teams will carry grenades 100% of the time, and use them at the first opportunity, and that there will be no legal or reputation fallout for this?

Grenades are supposed to be an 'in case the drek hits the fan' weapon, not a Modus Operandi.

[RHat]

I'll post ion more detail when I get home, but there's a flaw in the premise that Sahdowrun is Alpha Strikey.  Specifically, that this is not the case (by design) is SR5.  Fights last a good deal longer in terms of in-game metrics (while taking less time out of game, interestingly enough).

As for damage staging not being needed: you don't need to increase base damage to let higher skilled characters pull ahead (though, if that's your goal, it's the called shot rules you want, not the burst rules).  Defense pools are a good deal higher, but hitting just once with an assault rifle carries a real chance of killing most targets, and if your dice pool and modifiers are high enough, there remains the possibility of dropping multiple targets.