Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Neal Allen on <08-27-19/1821:46>
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I've been hoping and praying that Catalyst wouldn't Disney up 6th edition and swing to the opposite extreme of 5th, and I was mostly pleased. However weapon damage? What the frag, chummers?
- light pistol went from 6P to 2P
- heavy pistol went from 8P to 3P
- assault rifles went from 11P to 5P
- assault cannon went from 17P to 7P
Let's assume a practical, simple scenario.
Your professional killer (muscle) has:
- Att (4-6) + Skill (4-6) + Mod (0-4 with edge) = 8-16 (avg. 4 hits)
Vs. a ganger, a civilian, or a mall cop:
- Rea (3) + Int (3) + Bod (3 for the purposes of reducing damage (assuming a hit)) = 3 hits
2 NH + 5 DV (Assault Rifle) = 7 DV
Are you telling me now that the shot from an assault rifle from a professional to a barely-more-than-average human won't even kill them?
Ok, but now we must explore why and that becomes a bit more ideological.
Catalyst games cannot release a new edition if it barely changes anything from the previous and if we look at many of the systems, the variations are fairly minimal compared to D&D. I accept that a swing in the extreme is somewhat necessary as a business.
But 5e had you FEARED that ganger with a machine pistol because that Fully Auto -9-to-dodge could put a dwarf with a armoured jacket in some serious hurt.
There ain't none of this 10th level 100 HP, 8 attacks later from 4 different characters later and you might FINALLY bite the bullet that we see from like... every other TRPG.
That's what makes Shadowrun special. You fear that bullets could be deadly. You fear that corps (and the DM) could one-shot you. You fear so you have to compensate with tactics, seriousness, emotional investment, and identity.
Fear is part of Shadowrun's identity, and Catalyst games has destroyed a defining aspect of Shadowrun so they could release a new edition.
I'm not saying they shouldn't have, and I'm not saying this edition isn't subjectively better or worse.
But hell if I'm gonna not miss 5th Ed. for the fear it brought upon me.
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Eh, my professional killer has 7-9 Attribute + 6-9 Skill with spec/expertise = up to 18 dice, so average 4 net hits for 9 DV vs 1 soak so 8 damage on average. >25% chance at 10+ damage to instagib them. And that's assuming the GM doesn't use the "Here comes the Reaper" optional rules, which would put me at 93.85% chance to instagib them instead.
Furthermore, you say that in SR5 we feared gangers with machine pistols. I came out of chargen with approx 24 soak dice and an easy 23 Full Defense defense dice. I didn't fear those gangers at all. I could go head to head with PR6 Grunts. The only thing I really feared was Auslander.
Heck, I rolled out a single NPC fighting 10 Grunts while he started unarmed himself. He survived that. They didn't. I've seen a mage go 'I'll just Full Defense and have about 40 defense dice', with enough Initiative and movement to not even fear grenades. A player cut a Roadmaster in two in a single attack. Neither faced a ganger with a machine pistol.
As for 8 attacks later: Grunt Groups mean you don't have the whole 'keep rolling attack after attack at an extra -1 each', you just group them and throw that group attack around. So that makes it much quicker, and larger groups still dangerous. Full Defense is far more expensive, so I need to be far more tactical with my evasive and offensive actions. So I think I fear SR6 more than SR5.
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I'd recommend reading the rest of the rulebook, and taking the DV suppression in context rather than in a vacuum.
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@Michael Chandra
If your squishy archetype was tankier than my extreme tank, you're minmaxing to a degree that the average player wasn't experiencing. Your perspective is valid but not conforming to the norms.
Not even mentioning the fact that that you're ignoring the intended philosophical message to push your mechanical prowess. Congrats, you can beat a system not meant to be a competition. Happy now? Can we get back to the point?
@SSDR
Which context would you recommend? I'm trying out the new system for simplicity we might see in the above context I outlined instead of something ridiculous like @Chandra so ambitiously gloated.
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@SSDR
Which context would you recommend? I'm trying out the new system for simplicity we might see in the above context I outlined instead of something ridiculous like @Chandra so ambitiously gloated.
Well, just to be clear I'd say my experience with 5e jives with MC's. Among the SRM players in my area: being able to score more hits on a defense test than the attack even has in accuracy is common. 30 soak dice is considered the low end of acceptable. So, yeah I wouldn't say he's coming from a purely hypothetical left field.
So what did I mean about context?
It won't be hard to find people complaining about how "armor does nothing" in this edition. Sure, perhaps taken in a vacuum it seems like a perplexing change that armor doesn't add to the soak pool like it did in 5e. But if you take that in context with, for example, your concern about low DVs, the two of them suddenly synergize and they BOTH make sense because the other exists.
But also: note that dice pools are slightly smaller in 6we than in 5e. A player who's "optimizing" the rules can still get comparable dice pool as in 5e, but the NPCs are at least going to tend to have smaller dice pools. Keep in mind that average attribute value is 2 now. That means not-special mooks should have dodge pools all of 4 dice. You don't even need to optimize to be reliably scoring lots of net hits against cannon fodder style opposition. All those net hits will be pushing DVs up.
Weapons able to employ burst fire push DVs up.
Certain ammo pushes DV up.
Most of all, you'll want to get a good measure of the edge system. Especially Edge Boosts and Edge Actions. For example, take a look at the Knockout Blow Edge Action and see if you still want to say anyone is seriously going to have trouble one-shotting all but the toughest of opposition.
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DVs: Alright, practical optimization could make this more reasonable. I havencr explored thoroughly enough to say with confidence like I have experienced other, so I'll put my current opinion aside for the time being.
But 5e Optimization?
The worlds largest sentient creature with mythological constitution wearing some of the worlds most advanced modern armour and having given up significant amount of his permenrnaly-lost life force to get a damage resistance of 35ish?
Or a street-mercenary mage dedicated years of his (SINless, day-to-day) life to study ancient, rare techniques allowing him to permenantly and unalterably make himself untouchable.
You may call that "your average shadowruner" but I call that kind of maximization unrealistically mechanic-focused and fluff-blind with years of experiencing very, -very- few players that dedicated. And when they are? They tend to unbalance the game for everyone else who plays it for the unique story.
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DVs: Alright, practical optimization could make this more reasonable. I havencr explored thoroughly enough to say with confidence like I have experienced other, so I'll put my current opinion aside for the time being.
My list above was by no means exhaustive. Also check out "Here comes the reaper" (the 6we version of the "mowing them down" rule) and Professional Ratings are still a thing (that is, you don't even need to max out a CM to "beat" most NPCs)
But 5e Optimization?
The worlds largest sentient creature with mythological constitution wearing some of the worlds most advanced modern armour and having given up significant amount of his permenrnaly-lost life force to get a damage resistance of 35ish?
Or a street-mercenary mage dedicated years of his (SINless, day-to-day) life to study ancient, rare techniques allowing him to permenantly and unalterably make himself untouchable.
You may call that "your average shadowruner" but I call that kind of maximization unrealistically mechanic-focused and fluff-blind with years of experiencing very, -very- few players that dedicated. And when they are? They tend to unbalance the game for everyone else who plays it for the unique story.
Oh I absolutely agree with everything you're saying.
I was also agreeing with MC about that being, in my experience, a common player mindset in the 5e context.
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I haven’t found it common but people travel
In different circles. In my experience we had one full borg conversion for super tank action one sam with 28 dice to soak and everyone else in the 12-18 range.
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I haven’t found it common but people travel
In different circles. In my experience we had one full borg conversion for super tank action one sam with 28 dice to soak and everyone else in the 12-18 range.
Yeah, same. And as a DM I try hard to shun players away from mechanic/fluff imbalance.
And when the whole party balances both together, the fear can be real, and terrifying, and memorable, and amazing.
And a 3DV heavy pistol? Doesn't make me fear. That makes me chuckle.
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That's part of the design goal. Shadowrunners aren't supposed to be one shotted out.
But you still have options to do it yourself, if necessary.
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That's part of the design goal. Shadowrunners aren't supposed to be one shotted out.
But you still have options to do it yourself, if necessary.
But I don't want to have to be mechanically/fluff unbalanced like @MC over here is.
I simply fear Shadowrun becoming too much like X2HP per level D&D. It may be an unrealistic fear, or it may not. But the light pistols could be 3 DV instead of 2. Armour could be halved instead of thirded. Extremes could be less extreme.
But less extreme doesn't sell books, I just don't like it.
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My experience from a little playtime is the 6e is a bit more lethal for anyone but a Troll. Do people not wear armor in your 5e game?
Sure your looking at 5DV vs 10DV for the attack but your also looking at 3 soak dice vs 12 soak dice (leaving 4DV vs 6DV) before you start factoring in edge, which in 6e your getting hopefully 2 with every attack for tactical advantage making using it much more like the old combat pool. Which probably makes it even out around 5DV vs 6DV.
You can always raise the DV value across board if you would like.
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I haven’t found it common but people travel
In different circles. In my experience we had one full borg conversion for super tank action one sam with 28 dice to soak and everyone else in the 12-18 range.
Yeah, same. And as a DM I try hard to shun players away from mechanic/fluff imbalance.
And when the whole party balances both together, the fear can be real, and terrifying, and memorable, and amazing.
And a 3DV heavy pistol? Doesn't make me fear. That makes me chuckle.
Okay. I’m stealing this from Hobbes I think. Explosive ammo. That’s 4dv. Burst that’s 6DV. Called shot that’s 8dv. And people will frequently have virtually nothing to soak it with.
Now, I think this is bad as it’s not a my runner is super skilled so is deadly thing but a I as the player know the system so I can kill things easy thing. But I’d you just want scary guns as long as you use the rules to the fullest it can be and without 30 die characters.
I’m cool with 3dv but would prefer if those system mastery things did not exist but instead net hits increased dv by 2. So 4 net hits would be a kill shot with a 3dv gun. My thing is 5e was kind of on the other end. A basic gun frequently with little to now system mastery and like 1 hit was doing enough damage to kill people. It’s like there was no flesh wounds unless you had a big enough soak pool. I’d prefer net hits being the bigger determiner in end damage rather than big gun base damage or system mastery.
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@Shinobi
@Morton
Sure, 15 optimization choices later and your burst shot, explosive bullet, headshot, heavy pistol at point blank is FINALLY lethal, but dude. That's a burst shor, explosive bullet, headshot, heavy pistol at point blank.
The identity of Shadowrun that we're losing is the realism. The realism that if you took a realistic IRL heavy pistol (Smith n Wesson. 5 cal, for example) and had non eof the above, that thing would blow your arm off and you'd die from shock in 30 seconds.
Now imagine adding everything else. Explosive ammition. Three bullets. Point blank. Major organ damage. That would kill a troll.
Sure you CAN make this system lethal, but my point that you guys are missing with optimized stats is that Catalyst has gone to the opposite extreme and put a marshmallow on the end of weapons.
@morton
You're right, that might be one of my first houserules. And not a big jump, just one or two tacked on.
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Sure you CAN make this system lethal, but my point that you guys are missing with optimized stats is that Catalyst has gone to the opposite extreme and put a marshmallow on the end of weapons.
Game designers made a game where a weapon won't kill player characters with a single attack? The audacity!
Sorry for the snark, but the realism debate has been going on for a while now regarding Sixth edition, and it usually only comes up in Combat rules. Once you start talking about the suggested training times, everyone wants there strength attribute to go up two points without any training time. Designers have to meet a balance between realism and fun. And most of the time, good designers will err on the sign of fun.
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@neal my point was it’s not a optimized character that can one shot left and right people. It’s a optimized player. Run of the mill street sam let’s say 8 agility 6 firearms with pistols as his specializing. -4 dice for a called shot he is still rolling 11-12 dice to shoot a enemy and will most likely hit anybody but high end targets. The character sheet doesn’t display a optimized burn kit physical adept tossing 24 dice but the player just learned the rules. The dm dan learn the rules too so I expect players to drop left and right unless the GM pulls punches on tactics while the players abuse it.
@fastjack problem is the training suggestions were neither realistic nor fun. Most training improvements are incredibly fast. It’s once you start reaching your peak that things slow to a crawl. Using the current 6e lift rules I went from a 2 strength to a 5 strength in about 3 months going to the gym 3-4 times a week for one hour. After that though my gains basically stopped no matter how much I put in. Something like that would be a pain to model and I doubt it would be fun.
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Sure you CAN make this system lethal, but my point that you guys are missing with optimized stats is that Catalyst has gone to the opposite extreme and put a marshmallow on the end of weapons.
Game designers made a game where a weapon won't kill player characters with a single attack? The audacity!
I actually have fond memories of Bunnies and Burrows!
There's another active thread going on where the core complaint is it's too hard to eliminate threats with a single attack. A) IMO it's still quite within the reach of a PC to one shot a NPC and B) outside of a game of Bunnies and Burrows, isn't it a GOOD thing that your PC isn't likely to be one-shotted?
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SR has historically managed asymetric lethality. A big part of how shadowrun works is that corpsec plays by different rules and has different goals and resources than runners, because while the corps are wealthy they can't afford to invest in people like runners can invest in themselves. In older editions of SR some PCs could be damage immune, some could take half their track on average, and corpsec could all die in one shot and it worked fine because the way soak and defense generally worked (Sr4 was the big exception) meant damage scaled differently for everyone in the fight. A core part of the street samurai identity was that they outscaled everyone but had no remote assistance abilities so they could win any fight happening near them but SR PCs often HAVE to split up so samurai were all about coverage and threat management.
Sr6 severely harms that asymmetry in a way that makes it feel like its meant to be a resource based grinder rather than a heisty game of aces pulling one over on their target through cleverness and talent. Because gun stats are now crazy flat the difference between corpsec guns fit for polite society and your runner's specialist kit doesn't exist. Fancy runner armor isn't going to be better than generic mass produced armored jackets. And removing armor as soak and reducing corp hit rates MASSIVELY devalues soak 'ware because soak needed very high pools to be worth depending on. Like sure you always wanted good armor to reduce damage but until you got to the 25-30s range counting on soak vs mid sized guns was actively a terrible idea. Now it always is, and so it never is worth putting extremely valuable resources like essence into it.
Like 5e had a lot of wonderful sublimely subtle good math whoch encouraged people to take risks while making high skill pcs with big slow firing guns and heavy overt armor feel empowered and rewarded for the sacrifices they made compared to a face with a machine pistol and the best social armor they can get.
Now an AR and machine pistol basically have the same TTK (turns to kill) regardless of your dice pool and the only defensice strategy that statistically is worth depending on is full defense, which comes in at a mere 2 ess or so to do without significantly sacrificing turn economy. And while 2 ess is a lot in SR it is cheaper than samurai tier damage resistance has ever been and it is already what most faces were willing to invest into combat anyway.
Like one of the interesting things about removing armor soak is that it makes every other soak option worse, not better. Like would you take a bit of 'ware that had a 1 in 50 chance of instantly killing your attacker when attacked if they were corpsec for 1.5 essence? Probably not. Bone lacing on a PC intending to use wired to full defense has a significantly weaker effect: Reducing DV by 1 about .02 every attack by corpsec.
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Now an AR and machine pistol basically have the same TTK (turns to kill) regardless of your dice pool and the only defensice strategy that statistically is worth depending on is full defense, which comes in at a mere 2 ess or so to do without significantly sacrificing turn economy. And while 2 ess is a lot in SR it is cheaper than samurai tier damage resistance has ever been and it is already what most faces were willing to invest into combat anyway.
You're completely overlooking Edge, and that's a fatally flawed analysis as that's such a core element to this edition.
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Sure you CAN make this system lethal, but my point that you guys are missing with optimized stats is that Catalyst has gone to the opposite extreme and put a marshmallow on the end of weapons.
Game designers made a game where a weapon won't kill player characters with a single attack? The audacity!
Lethality cuts both ways. If a vory thug can't oneshot the chubby decker with a heavy pistol with explosive ammo, then the streetsam can't oneshot a scrawny meth addict with a heavy pistol with explosive ammo. Lethality wasn't a problem for PCs in previous editions. In fact, it's an advantage in their favor so long as they use basic tactics like:
- getting the jump
- shooting first
- shooting last
- shooting often
- having large dicepools (in shooting, dodging and soaking)
- using the best gun and ammo
- having a lot of armor (because that used to actually mean something)
- using cover
- geeking the mage
You're completely overlooking Edge
No one cares about edge.
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Many other people have already pointed out how the edge interaction with attacks is broken at its core and does not meaningfully matter for weapon choice.
Like sorry but no. Edge is not really relevant in weapon choice for the same reason defense rating ware is worthless.
No one cares about edge.
Oof.
I would say in theory that could be a method of making weapons feel different but A: Basic mods make you ignore this mechanic entirely, and B: Basic corpsec has a DR of 6. AR rating varies from 10-11, and you can slap a smartgun system on it for a +2, capping out at 13. BF reduces this by 4. So your ranging from 9 (which is not enough to gain edge) to 6 (not enough to lose edge) when burst firing. You could single shot but your trading 2 DV for an edge and that is... a bad deal in most cases especially with the edge gain limit. Like getting the chance to AOE the entire fight is amazing but not worth losing 8 DV over a combat to get the 4 edge. Also, I doubt anticipation will cost 4 edge (or any edge you can start a fight with) for much longer due to how insanely overtuned and broken it is. Like in terms of 'edge breakpoints' the only one that matters is starting with 4 to get Anticipation off at the start of every combat for some A team firing.
Meanwhile, the MP caps out at 9 for the same range category ARs fire best in, and fires BETTER at close range than ARs. So, weirdly, when it comes to not giving your opponents edge, ARs are... worse than machine pistols? Like yeah you can't fire at all on the megahuge range brackets but at the 3rd one they aren't much worse than ARs, at the 2nd hardly at all, and at the first they are so comically better.
But either way, lets assume your firing at the 3rd, the one where MPs are the worst. Black scorpions fire with 8 at those ranges, bumped to 10 for a smartgun. You therefore go down to 6, and, again, don't give or take edge from corpsec. You also are only 3 below ARs, so anyone wearing armor with 'ware, like the elite corpsec statlines, are going to take an imaging scope from you to not give edge to anyway, and both MPs and ARs can take those.
So like... no. Edge does not matter here. You never are gaining or losing edge when attacking vs most targets in the game because the math on edge is very VERY silly. But it makes sense because if you made the math closer (Like if edge varied by 2 points) you create really weird unfun 'breakpoint math' that make the system fiendishly complex for your players because figuring out optimal body+armor ratios would be A Thing, which is the opposite of this system's goal. Ironically, Edge is either always going to essentially be irrelevant for choosing weapons, or its going to be so complex that it is significantly worse than modifiers were, because the math for those was completely internal and very simple and didn't involve a secondary stat that had nothing to do with your attack and defense rolls.
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You're completely overlooking Edge.
No one cares about edge.
Anyone who understands how 6we works does. Edge Actions are how drek gets done.
Edit:
Many other people have already pointed out how the edge interaction with attacks is broken at its core and does not meaningfully matter for weapon choice.
Like sorry but no. Edge is not really relevant in weapon choice for the same reason defense rating ware is worthless.
It occurs to me you may be thinking I'm referring to Edge Boosts. No, I'm referring to Edge Actions.
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It occurs to me you may be thinking I'm referring to Edge Boosts. No, I'm referring to Edge Actions.
No edge action references weapons currently.
In fact considering the stronger edge attacks do no DV this disfavors making size sacrifices for an AR.
In the case of Anticipation like yes your kinda doubling your TTK because the base DV does matter there but I would eat my hat if anticipation doesn't get nerfed because as is the optimal combat meta is give everyone machine pistols and use anticipation start of fight to kill the entire enemy force anyway due to how COMICALLY overtuned it is. Like 5 people hitting literally everyone for 10 DV plus personal hits is about as much of an instant kill on an entire combat as 20 DV plus net hits. After all, that is 15 damage minimum to every target assuming everyone hits, which they probably will because NPCs are comically bad at defense tests.
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Anyone who understands how 6we works does. Edge Actions are how drek gets done.
Still don't care. If you bring up "but the core element!" in a discussion and the point is dismissed out of sheer apathy, maybe you need to reevaluate that core mechanic.
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But also: note that dice pools are slightly smaller in 6we than in 5e. A player who's "optimizing" the rules can still get comparable dice pool as in 5e.
I think that is only arguably accurate. For example, yes, soak is much lower, but chargen drain pools will be much higher. It is true that the maximum pool potential changed very little between the editions for pretty much everything but soak, though.
But I don't want to have to be mechanically/fluff unbalanced like @MC over here is.
Hey man, you don't have to do it. You also don't have to like it. You shouldn't shame him, or me, or anyone else for enjoying building characters or playing that way though. There is no wrongbadfun in gaming, just different tastes.
Now an AR and machine pistol basically have the same TTK (turns to kill) regardless of your dice pool and the only defensice strategy that statistically is worth depending on is full defense, which comes in at a mere 2 ess or so to do without significantly sacrificing turn economy. And while 2 ess is a lot in SR it is cheaper than samurai tier damage resistance has ever been and it is already what most faces were willing to invest into combat anyway.
You're completely overlooking Edge, and that's a fatally flawed analysis as that's such a core element to this edition.
I would say even more than edge, minor actions. If you are facing less than 4 attacks against you in a round then block and dodge will likely be sufficient and more economic. Unless those attacks are explosives, of course. Then kiss your ass goodbye, because here in 'merica, we like our grenades ta win, boy!
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I would say even more than edge, minor actions. If you are facing less than 4 attacks against you in a round then block and dodge will likely be sufficient and more economic. Unless those attacks are explosives, of course. Then kiss your ass goodbye, because here in 'merica, we like our grenades ta win, boy!
I'd quibble about which is MORE important... but yes I agree minor actions are ALSO crucial. Especially so with grenades being lobbed in your direction- yes there Edge is probably not the single most important thing but whether or not you have a spare minor on hand is :D