[Insaniac99]

So you would want

• a troll for the high body and natural defense, or an orc
• mystic adept for both dispelling and ability to buy Combat Sense/mystic armor/improved reflexes
  • as a side note, would it be better to go with Mystic Armor? it is the same cost so it is a question of which is useful in more situations.
  • Perhaps 6 mystic armor, 6 combat sense?
• Some Cyber if it gets more than 2 dice per essence lost
• gas mask (with back up rating 6 respirator) and elemental and chemical resistance gear
• what else?

Starting a list of good cyber-buys:

• Aluminium Bone Lace grants 2 body, 2 armor, total of 4 dice for 1 essence and 18k Nuyen

bad buys:

• Dermal Plating grants 2 dice armor per essence, the same as Mystic Armor and Combat Sense
• Bone Density grants 3 dice per essence (with .1 remaining), but is barely any cheaper than Aluminium Bone Lacing at 15k

EDIT: whoops, silly me quoted instead of edited    I fixed this post as the edited one.

[Insaniac99]

Another note is that Trolls only come into the conversation if Soak is a question. There max Intuition is 5 which lowers the max defense pool by a die. Orks probably provide the best balance of the metatypes between soak and defense.

I'm not sure about that.  While trolls lose out on one reaction, they gain 1 reach (good for melee defense), 1 armor, and 1 body so for the lose of 1 condition dodge die they gain 2 general purpose resistance dice

Orks would definitely be the best second choice if you need to switch around priorities however.

[Crunch]

Another note is that Trolls only come into the conversation if Soak is a question. There max Intuition is 5 which lowers the max defense pool by a die. Orks probably provide the best balance of the metatypes between soak and defense.

It's hard to equate defense dice directly to soak dice since a miss is so much easier to generate than a soak of all damage the conversion is less than one to one.

Oh and the cyber/adept balance is a little more complex as well. Since every point of cyber both lowers PP by one AND lowers max Combat sense it's not a simple two to one equation.

[Insaniac99]

Another note is that Trolls only come into the conversation if Soak is a question. There max Intuition is 5 which lowers the max defense pool by a die. Orks probably provide the best balance of the metatypes between soak and defense.

It's hard to equate defense dice directly to soak dice since a miss is so much easier to generate than a soak of all damage the conversion is less than one to one.

You mean because the weapons limits are likely to be lower than the damage, it is best to focus on a defense roll as the priority, and then soak afterwards, if I understand correctly?

It's a good point.. I think there is a point of diminishing returns, but I'm guessing that point isn't hit until you are at ~21 dice for the average 7 accuracy limit.

Oh and the cyber/adept balance is a little more complex as well. Since every point of cyber both lowers PP by one AND lowers max Combat sense it's not a simple two to one equation.

If we are doing Combat sense + Mystic armor then it is.  if you have 6 essence then you can have up to 6 ranks of combat sense, 6 of mystic armor, for a total of 12 dice from essence.  If you then remove one essence for the bone lacing you are reduced to 5 ranks of combat sense and 5 ranks of mystic armor -- by losing two dice, you gain 4.  so for a 1/3 chance to roll 1 hit to dodge you gain a 3 * 1/3 chances to roll a hit in soak.

I"ll freely admit there are probably more complex issues that I don't understand here...

Edit: perhaps we could agree on a formula that could plug into anydice to deal with real percentage changes?

[Crunch]

It's not necessarily even limit related, although that is a point, It's that if you tie the attackers roll it's no damage. On the other hand if the attacker hits you add DV to the net hits.

So Bob the ganger with his 6 die pistols pool shoots Steve the ganger with his 4P Zip gun. Steve has a 6 defense pool.

If Bob rolls 2 hits and Steve rolls 2 Hits it's a grazing hit and no damage is done. If Bob rolls 3 hits and Steve rolls 2 then Steve has to soak 5 Dice in damage. So how many soak dice would one extra hit on the defense die be worth?

Essentially in addition to Accuracy, a hit of any kind gets to ignore the DV and AP of the weapon completely. So a defense die is more valuable the more powerful the weapon shooting at you gets.

On the flip side it's easier to negate defense dice (through autofire, multiple attackers or attacking unaware) than it is to get rid of soak dice. And defense die will fade in effectiveness as skills rise in the campaign and you start encountering opposition in the 9-10 skill range.

There's a balance there, but I don't think it's expressible as a simple equation.

As a side note, Mystic Armor is horrible in terms of PP efficiency. Almost anything you could take would do more for your character. It's the one place where I'd go with augmentation if you're even considering it (It under performs Bone Lacing even if you ONLY look at Bone Lacings armor and ignore everything else).

As another side note for melee defense it's hard to beat a good initiative and improved ability (melee skill). The ability to put down 9 (or 11 if you choose nat ap)extra defense dice for 5 init is a huge plus for adepts in melee combat at chargen.

[Slippery_Chicken]

I bet we can accomplish this with anydice. So far I've got the following, which gives you a distribution of net hits, plus the chance to hit (chance to have X>0).

In this example, I set all the variables to 3

\ Attacker Diepool \ A: 3 
\ Defender Diepool \ D: 3
\Soak Diepool\       S: 3
\Weapon Damage Value\V: 3

\Attacker Net Hits\X:[count {5..6} in Ad6] -[count {5..6} in Dd6]


output X named "Attacker's net hits"

output X>0 named "Attacker's chance to hit (1= hit, 0=miss)"

Now all I/we need to do is figure out anydice's conditionals so I can tell it how to compute damage taken...

I also don't know how to put limits into this thing, so if any of you guys can figure it out, that would be a huge help.

[Insaniac99]

Nice! It also need to get limits implemented  so we can start doing things where they are only limited by 3 hits (DMSO is no longer godly ) but that should be easy.  I will try to do that in a bit (once I get my actual work done 

EDIT: HA! did it!  I shouldn't have, but this will be super useful to my players anyway.
http://anydice.com/program/2baf

[spoiler]

Code: [Select]

\
Shadowrun Fifth Edition
To Hit Chance and
Damage Probability Calculator
By Insaniac99, modified from code by Slippery_Chicken
\

\ Attacker Diepool \   A: 3
\Weapon Damage Value\  V: 3
\Weapon Limit\        AL: 3

\ Defender Diepool \   D: 3
\ Defender Limit \    DL: 3
\ Defender's Body \   DB: 3
\ Defender's Armor\   DA: 3

function: shadowrunfive DICE:s{
   COUNT: 0
 loop P over {1..6} {
  COUNT: COUNT + (P@{5,6} = DICE)
 }
 result: COUNT
}

function: limit DICE:s by LIMIT:n{
   COUNT: 0
 loop P over {1..6} {
  COUNT: COUNT + (P@{5,6} = DICE)
 }
 if COUNT > LIMIT {result: LIMIT}
 result: COUNT
}

function: calculatedamage DAMAGE:n plus NETHITS:s {
 if NETHITS < 1 { result: 0 }
 result: DAMAGE + NETHITS
}

function: resistdamage DAMAGE:s minus SOAK:s {
 if DAMAGE < 1 { result: 0 }
 if (DAMAGE - SOAK) < 1 {result: 0}
 result: DAMAGE - SOAK
}

\Attacker's Roll Result\ AR: [limit Ad6 by AL]
\Defender's Roll Result\ DR: [limit Dd6 by DL]
\Attacker Net Hits\       X: AR - DR
\Damage to Soak \        SD: [calculatedamage V plus X]
\Soak Roll Result \      SR: [shadowrunfive DBd6]+ [shadowrunfive DAd6]
\unsoaked damage \       US: [resistdamage SD minus SR]

output AR  named "Attacker's Hits Rolled"
output DR  named "Defender's Hits Rolled"
output X>0 named "Attacker's chance to hit"
output X   named "Attacker's net hits"
output SD  named "Damage before Soak Roll"
output SR  named "Hits on soak test"
output US  named "Damage after Soak Roll"
[/spoiler]

Now we just need to decide on numbers to plug in!