Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => Gear => Topic started by: Bonx on <08-19-13/1758:03>
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The category of Sport Rifle disappeared with the 5th edition but there was nothing wrong with this category. I quit don't agree that they are similar to sniper rifles and should be treated as such. I found them good to equip civilians from the country side and critters hunters. Nice long distance tools without the over-serious looks of sniper rifles (with even a tasty Old Wild West touch when you wear a long coat).
I would have like an additional category instead - anti-material rifles - to break the sky limit of 1'500 meters range.
- a sad customer
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They still exist. The Remington 950 and the Ruger 101 are sport/hunting rifles.
They are weaker than actual sniper rifles, but aren't forbidden.
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Basically they merged the two categories but they're still treated as significantly different both legally and in stats. As upside you now can take Specialization Sniper Rifles and cover both Sport and Sniper Rifles, and it's only 1 range category now, not two.
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Sporting rifles got a boost in stats, i.e. longer ranges. If it feels better, rename the "sniper rifle" category something else and that would probably solve the dilemma. The difference the book makes is between Availability F and R.
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It probably would have been better to simply call the group Rifles rather than Sniper Rifles.
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It probably would have been better to simply call the group Rifles rather than Sniper Rifles.
This!
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Other than the existence of Assault Rifles.
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Other than the existence of Assault Rifles.
I'd rather see the firearm skills go to the following list:
Pistols
Machine Pistols
Rifles
Shotguns
Assault Rifles
Submachine Guns
Launch Weapons
Heavy Weapons
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Honestly I'd just like to see Machine Pistols moved to pistols. At that point I think the division would be just about perfect.
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Honestly I'd just like to see Machine Pistols moved to pistols. At that point I think the division would be just about perfect.
Nah, either their own skill or put with submachine guns. (going by the list I put in the last post)
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Hang on... are we talking 7 seperate skills here?
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Hang on... are we talking 7 seperate skills here?
And? That is remarkably similar to the firearm skill list from SR3, and it actually worked very well. The only problem SR3 really had that I noticed was that the Matrix made SR4 look like tiddlywinks and attributes were nigh-worthless apart from a few derived things.
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Hang on... are we talking 7 seperate skills here?
And?
For starters, "Pistols" still consists of Tasers, Hold-Outs, Light Pistols and Heavy Pistols, while Automatics has been split into its 3 non-implant specialization, making each skill too narrow and leaving no specializations to be had unless you artificially create new ones. EDIT: The same goes for Shotguns. As for Shotguns, they would either be part of Rifles (in which case why not keep the Longarms name?) or Heavy Weapons (which makes Rifles less fun to have since Longarms currently allows you to bring a less-likely-to-raise-eyebrows-than-sport-rifles Shotgun with you on the street). Splitting Heavy Weapons also weakens the skill by reducing it to Assault Cannons and Machine Guns, leaving you a whopping 5 different weapons in the core book. In fact, let's have a look at how many different weapons each skill would allow you to use:
- Pistols: 17
- Machine Pistols: 3
- Rifles: 5
- Shotguns: 3
- Assault Rifles: 5
- Submachine Guns: 6
- Launch Weapons: 4
- Heavy Weapons: 5
And then compare this to the regular distribution:
- Pistols: 17
- Automatics: 14
- Longarms: 8
- Heavy Weapons: 9
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List edited (forgot that I believe Shotguns were their own skill as well).
As to the number per skill, oh well. It worked fine, and combining the skills just led to silliness.
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Didn't 3rd Edition have this thing where you could default to a related skill instead of just using Attribute - 1? That seems like it might have been important to making something like that work.
All in all, splitting everything except Pistols into a way-less-useful skill for some reason you haven't explained yet (since it's not "so we can call 'Sniper Rifles' 'Rifles' instead") seems like a bad idea.
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Didn't 3rd Edition have this thing where you could default to a related skill instead of just using Attribute - 1? That seems like it might have been important to making something like that work.
If I remember right, related skill was the -1 and the further you got away from the proper skill the higher the penalty was. It wouldn't be necessary to go that far though. Getting rid of the Skill Web was a good thing, but combining the skills was just silly.
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Can I go old school and say I'm nostalgic for Firearms as a skill?
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Can I go old school and say I'm nostalgic for Firearms as a skill?
*shudders*
The skills need to be as specific as possible, not as general as possible.
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Didn't 3rd Edition have this thing where you could default to a related skill instead of just using Attribute - 1? That seems like it might have been important to making something like that work.
If I remember right, related skill was the -1 and the further you got away from the proper skill the higher the penalty was. It wouldn't be necessary to go that far though. Getting rid of the Skill Web was a good thing, but combining the skills was just silly.
The point is that defaulting to related skills made that more specific system functional - without it, such a system cannot work. The balance point between specificity and generality is very much sensitive to the system the skills have to exist in. Frankly, balance wise, the skills are at a very good point now - Pistols covers the most concealable weapons, Longarms covers the best main combat weapons, and Automatics provides both, but inferior versions thereof.
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One of the things that always bothered me was that you could just take a mess of point in say, automatics, and not have a clue about a basic pistol - I've fired an awful lot of guns, from as small as a 22 caliber pistol to a spencer rifle, to an AR... I can't imagine knowing hot to use an automatic weapon but not a clue about a pistol or rifle... at least a little bit.
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One of the things that always bothered me was that you could just take a mess of point in say, automatics, and not have a clue about a basic pistol - I've fired an awful lot of guns, from as small as a 22 caliber pistol to a spencer rifle, to an AR... I can't imagine knowing hot to use an automatic weapon but not a clue about a pistol or rifle... at least a little bit.
I can kinda understand where you're coming from. In my experience, the progression goes shotgun -> hunting rifle -> pistol and then if you go military you learn the other stuff.
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One of the things that always bothered me was that you could just take a mess of point in say, automatics, and not have a clue about a basic pistol - I've fired an awful lot of guns, from as small as a 22 caliber pistol to a spencer rifle, to an AR... I can't imagine knowing hot to use an automatic weapon but not a clue about a pistol or rifle... at least a little bit.
You could house rule in some sort of defaulting to related skill... Maybe a -3 penalty with a limit reduction?
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One of the things that always bothered me was that you could just take a mess of point in say, automatics, and not have a clue about a basic pistol - I've fired an awful lot of guns, from as small as a 22 caliber pistol to a spencer rifle, to an AR... I can't imagine knowing hot to use an automatic weapon but not a clue about a pistol or rifle... at least a little bit.
You could house rule in some sort of defaulting to related skill... Maybe a -3 penalty with a limit reduction?
I'd imagine he's thinking more of somethink like "skill prerequisites", which is why I said 'kinda'. That wouldn't be such a great idea, but I can see why someone would want to do it.
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Well, it is a game, and while I won't make my players go that road when they're playing for me, I tend to pick up points in longarms and pistols before I pick up automatics when I'm a player.
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You could house rule in some sort of defaulting to related skill... Maybe a -3 penalty with a limit reduction?
You mean Substituting skill, at e.g. a -3 dice pool penalty? Would be a GM call, not a houserule, page 130, red block.
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One other reason not to split things like that is that out of those 8 skills, 6 currently fall in the Firearms skill group, which means that such a split would be highly unfair to those with Priority C or lower in Skills.
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You could house rule in some sort of defaulting to related skill... Maybe a -3 penalty with a limit reduction?
You mean Substituting skill, at e.g. a -3 dice pool penalty? Would be a GM call, not a houserule, page 130, red block.
Huh. I completely missed that that box existed. Kinda funny that I arrived at the same number, but given that I used the skill rank descriptions to get there maybe not so surprising.
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The Firearms GS I would like to see would be:
- Handguns skill (pistols, revolvers, machine-pistols, SMGs)
- Longarms skill (shotguns, sport rifles, assault rifles, sniper rifles)
- Machine Guns skill (light, medium, heavy)
The Heavy Weapon skills would then encompass grenade-launchers, rocket-launcher, assault canon, all miniguns.
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What about Assault Rifles?_?
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Omission corrected.
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So... Pistols should be pretty much pointless? Longarms would be the one true skill for combatants, at that point.
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So... Pistols should be pretty much pointless? Longarms would be the one true skill for combatants, at that point.
Under what Bonx suggests, Handguns would be the concealable firearms, Longarms the more powerful but not really conceivable to conceal and Machine Guns and Heavy Weapons would be the "Big Bada Boom".
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Ah, misread. Still, far too generalized, and the existence of Automatics as a sort of jack-of-all-trades option is definitely a good thing.
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Ah, misread. Still, far too generalized, and the existence of Automatics as a sort of jack-of-all-trades option is definitely a good thing.
Specific is better.
I still think each weapon type should be its own skill with some exceptions.
Basically:
Pistols (hold-out, light and heavy) [include a narco-ject firing pistol here]
Submachine Guns (SMGs and machine pistols)
Rifles (sport and sniper rifles) [include a narco-ject firing rifle here]
Machine Guns (assault rifles, LMG, MMG, HMG)
Heavy Weapons (assault cannons, grenade launchers, rocket launchers, mini-guns)
Laser Weapons
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Specific can be better, but it isn't in all cases - and without something like skill webs, that is too specific.
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Specific can be better, but it isn't in all cases - and without something like skill webs, that is too specific.
Not really. That would allow the firearms skill group to exclude most of the guns that one really wouldn't learn unless joining the military (assault rifle and up).
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There are so many things wrong with that reasoning. Half the reason to take the group is to represent just that sort of training.
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There are so many things wrong with that reasoning. Half the reason to take the group is to represent just that sort of training.
It'd make more sense to me for the group to represent the firearms one can learn without military training and for all the military-grade guns being separate. This would help put the military types a cut above the rest (which I think they should be).
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So... Pistols should be pretty much pointless? Longarms would be the one true skill for combatants, at that point.
Under what Bonx suggests, Handguns would be the concealable firearms, Longarms the more powerful but not really conceivable to conceal and Machine Guns and Heavy Weapons would be the "Big Bada Boom".
My vision is that handguns are all manipulated the same way (same stance) whereas longarms would cover all the shouldered firearms. We could debate that SMGs use stocks most of the time and that a sawn-off shotgun can be wielded like a pistol but you get the point. Heavy weapons have an insane recoil and definitely require a different technic. And yes in my Shadowrun people don't go clubbing at the Penumbra with rifle (a pistol and a knife are enough ;D )
Too many different skills to cover the use firearms might look interesting for the game but I feel it not very consistent. We can look at the detail but guns are somehow all used the same. See in comparison Medicine is a simple skill although it would take years to learn the theory and more years to be a good practicioner.
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I like the SR5 grouping.
And you can still specialize in sub groups such as Pistol (Heavy Pistols) or Longarms (Shotguns).
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Fun part: It's 14 karma for +2 on all of Longarms. You could even buy 1 with a skillpoint and keep 7 karma to get the second in downtime directly after your first run,
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The funniest thing about this thread is it started off wondering what happened to the hunting or "sport" rifles. The went to a talk on the skills.
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The funniest thing about this thread is it started off wondering what happened to the hunting or "sport" rifles. The went to a talk on the skills.
Because the rifles are still there. The only differences are that the range is slightly better and they're now included in the sniper rifle specialization of Longarms. Thus the detour onto skills.
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Because the rifles are still there. The only differences are that the range is slightly better and they're now included in the sniper rifle specialization of Longarms. Thus the detour onto skills.
A valid point. Honestly, I like the way the skills are set up. I learned basic shooting on an M-16, but have little to no practice with a pistol. Since the skills are centered around the shooting methods for each (Yes, firing a standard pistol of any kind is vastly different from firing a machine pistol.) I can see the way they set them up, and frankly, in the interest of space, there's a good reason they didn't break up Heavy Weapons. Which, is something you are trained to be familiar with in just about any basic training.