[Ryo]

The issue is that multiple IPs are a Must-Have. Everyone automatically takes them.

In my experience, combat plays a major role in the vast majority of Shadowrun games, the only exception being those few games that are specifically a high roleplay game where combat is pretty much being intentionally averted. Everywhere else, though, you expect to encounter a fight at least once per session, if not multiple times. And in any game where you expect to regularly encounter combat, multiple IPs become a given. Everyone takes them, and if they don't, they're probably either going to die horribly or spend a lot of their time twiddling their thumbs while everyone else is playing the game.

Beyond that, though, the multiple ways to get IPs are not well balanced against one another. Mages unquestionably get multiple IPs with the smallest cost expenditure, and on the other side of the scale, the power available to Adepts is so prohibitively expensive, I've yet to see a player bother to take it. They usually opt to lose Magic and get Synoptic Boosters instead.

[Shadowjack]

Sounds like that could be an interesting idea OP

[Charybdis]

Beyond that, though, the multiple ways to get IPs are not well balanced against one another. Mages unquestionably get multiple IPs with the smallest cost expenditure, and on the other side of the scale, the power available to Adepts is so prohibitively expensive, I've yet to see a player bother to take it. They usually opt to lose Magic and get Synoptic Boosters instead.

Wow, are you kidding?

A) Mages spend money, and karma, and effort to get Extra IP's. At the lowest end of the scale, they spend more Nuyen than Wired 1, and at the highest end they require Initiation, Quickening and Mucho Karma to make the spell permanent. If your GM is just letting a Sustaining Focus remain active indefinitely, then that is a very generous GM, not a flaw with the mechanics.
- Foci get deactivated walking through a ward
- Spirits can deactivate foci via astral combat
- Hell, mages can deactivate your foci with sniping Manabolts via LOS distances from the astral plane

B) If an Adept could reasonably get access to Synaptic boosters, sure, that's the rolls-royce option. But I don't know about you, in our games it's tricky to come up with a few hundred thousand for the Ware plus surgery, hospitalisation lifestyle, and recover from lost income missing missions in the meantime. Again, if your GM is letting all that just get done, or hand out Synaptic ware cheaper, that's again a generous GM, not a flaw with the mechanics

C) Just like Street Sam's will weight up getting Wired Reflexes (3), Physads will weight up getting Improved Reflexes (3) as the essence costs are high. But 1.5 magic for a permanent, non-refundable, non-disruptable, additional IP? SOLD! And yes, the adept in our group has spent the Magic to get +3 IP through Improved reflexes. He gets an additional action over the Street Sam, and loves it.

D) Everyone who intends to do well in combat automatically takes them. Well, err yes. They're available to everyone, they give shadowrunners a superhuman advantage over the average joe (and even the average cop/security guard) and increase your survivability. What's the actual problem here?

[Ryo]

A: Across the board, 3 IP is the highest you can get at creation without using Restricted Gear. The mage and adept are the only exceptions. Now, while I've yet to see an adept willing to devote 4 power points to IP out of the gate, a mage is able to go up to 4 IPs with a single spell that costs him 3 BP. But since the rest of his mates are restricted to 3, the mage can spend 6 BP on a rating 3 sustaining focus and break out 3 IP whenever he expects combat without penalty, and if he thinks he can stomach the -2 dice pool, he could go up to 4 if he really wants to outpace his competition.

Wired Reflexes 2, on the other hand, costs 7 BP, and 2 essence. And don't even get me started on Synaptic Booster or Move-by-Wire.

B) Synaptic Booster 2 is 32 BP at creation, and 1 essence/1 magic. Now whether you're willing to spend that over 2.5 Magic on Improved Reflexes is really up to the player, but I've never met a player that leaned towards the latter. However, I don't know how your games have worked, but in all the ones I've played, nuyen is a lot easier to come by than the massive amounts of Karma necessary to initiate and increase magic enough times to hit that ridiculous 4 power point requirement for Improved Reflexes 3. If the cybered out sammie has the time necessary to get the surgery for his 4 IPs, the adept does, too. The adept's option just costs more.

C) Permanent and non-disruptable IP? HA! You have a generous GM. Background counts fuck with Adepts worse than a troll named bubba in prison. Considering how much of their power points would be devoted to IP, chances are good any power points lost to background count is coming out of their Improved Reflexes. Now, Synoptic Boosters, on the otherhand? That is permanent and non-disruptable, unlike what the adept, mage and sammie are using.

D) Everyone who is in combat has them, yes. So what's the actual difference between everybody having 4 IP and everybody having 1 IP? Nothing. IPs only matter if you have more or less than the guy you're fighting, and I can guarantee you that the guy who has less is feeling cheated as his opponent is filling him with bullets.

[Charybdis]

A: Across the board, 3 IP is the highest you can get at creation without using Restricted Gear. The mage and adept are the only exceptions. Now, while I've yet to see an adept willing to devote 4 power points to IP out of the gate, a mage is able to go up to 4 IPs with a single spell that costs him 3 BP. But since the rest of his mates are restricted to 3, the mage can spend 6 BP on a rating 3 sustaining focus and break out 3 IP whenever he expects combat without penalty, and if he thinks he can stomach the -2 dice pool, he could go up to 4 if he really wants to outpace his competition.

Wired Reflexes 2, on the other hand, costs 7 BP, and 2 essence. And don't even get me started on Synaptic Booster or Move-by-Wire.

B) Synaptic Booster 2 is 32 BP at creation, and 1 essence/1 magic. Now whether you're willing to spend that over 2.5 Magic on Improved Reflexes is really up to the player, but I've never met a player that leaned towards the latter. However, I don't know how your games have worked, but in all the ones I've played, nuyen is a lot easier to come by than the massive amounts of Karma necessary to initiate and increase magic enough times to hit that ridiculous 4 power point requirement for Improved Reflexes 3. If the cybered out sammie has the time necessary to get the surgery for his 4 IPs, the adept does, too. The adept's option just costs more.

C) Permanent and non-disruptable IP? HA! You have a generous GM. Background counts fuck with Adepts worse than a troll named bubba in prison. Considering how much of their power points would be devoted to IP, chances are good any power points lost to background count is coming out of their Improved Reflexes. Now, Synoptic Boosters, on the otherhand? That is permanent and non-disruptable, unlike what the adept, mage and sammie are using.

D) Everyone who is in combat has them, yes. So what's the actual difference between everybody having 4 IP and everybody having 1 IP? Nothing. IPs only matter if you have more or less than the guy you're fighting, and I can guarantee you that the guy who has less is feeling cheated as his opponent is filling him with bullets.

A) How is this a problem? Just use restricted gear to get to the top of the food chain. Simple.
Mage requires 3BP for the spell, 4BP for bonding the R4 Focus (threshold of 4 to get +3IP), oh and an R4 focus is Availability 16, so requires Restricted gear (5BP) in order to get it, plus is another 8BP in cash resources = 3 +4 + 5 +8 = 20BP. Hardly a cheap option....
and if he wants to just get out of the gate with the R3 focus (and +2IP), that's still 3 +3 + 6 = 12BP. Fair price to pay considering Wired 2 (for the same effect) is 32K (7BP and change)

B) In game, nuyen is easier to get than Karma. Agreed. However 240k is still a massive score well beyond the reach of early Shadowrunners (unless playing Monty-Haul style... where all such balance is invalid). and even 32BP for the R2 version at CharGen is a big ask (and 18BP short of Max spend. It's all about balance.... do you want the rolls-royce option alone, or will you be content with the lexus and a few other toys as well...

C) Background counts aside, Cyberware can be scanned for and negated. Magic spells can be disrupted by wards, spirits, counterspelling (as well as background count). So BC is the ONLY way to stop a Physad getting their multiple IP's. Granted, Synaptic is even better, but it's the Rolls Royce, and you get what you pay for....

D) So don't focus on combat, what's the issue here? At the moment, if a PC doesn't want to focus on combat, they can ignore all these BOP requirements and pump up other attributes, skills, lifestyles, contacts etc. That's their perfectly valid choice, and even then a cheap single level of IP enhancement will likely sneak in via Combat drugs and the like.
But if they do want to be better at combat, then extra IP's are awesome, and some priority should be given to them.

Yes, the guy who has less IP's is feeling cheated. Most likely feeling overmatched. Isn't that the point?

1 IP is standard,
2 IP's are for people who hesitantly expect to get in a fight (and is cheaply/easily accomplished for anybody)
3 IP's are serious business and
4 IP's are OMG scary.

It's a very simple ratings scale, and it's always worked for our group *shrugs* Obviously, YMMV....

[Ryo]

A: I forgot about the bonding cost, but even so, the mage still comes out ahead in my book. It's unlikely he's going to use that focus purely for IPs, as he can devote it to any Health spell, and he could forgo it entirely if he wanted. -2 dice is not a hard restriction to overcome, especially when you're dancing around your enemies with significantly higher IPs. Heck, if he felt like it, he could take a Fetish for his spells and negate the sustain restriction entirely. Of course, any sane GM would make him regret that decision...

B: 13 Karma for Grade 1. 35 for Magic 7. 16 for Grade 2. 40 for Magic 8. That assumes you've already put in 2.5 points at creation, too. If you haven't, then you need to spend an additional 19 for grade 3, 45 for Magic 9, 22 for grade 4, and 50 for Magic 10. If you haven't gotten 240k by the time you've gotten 96 karma, and especially by 240, without spending any of it, either your GM is handing out karma like candy, or he's barely giving you any nuyen.

C: Background count may be the only way to effect Adepts, but both ebbs and domains negatively impact magic. And even ignoring things like Geomancy and the Mana Static spell, which allow the GM to inflict a background count against players at will, domains are incredibly common when you think about it. According to the examples in Street Magic, just about anything can cause a rating 1 domain, which would drop Magic an entire point for all adepts, since they don't have traditions. rating 2 isn't that hard to come by, either, considering a Magic shop and Sold Out concert are examples.

D: Whether focused on combat or not, if the PC ever expects to be around combat, IPs become a necessity. It's only worse for those who focus on combat, since that's their first investment, which forces the GM to give most of the npcs IPs to keep that combat player from wiping the floor with them, which in turn means any non-combat oriented players either need to leave the table when combat starts, or expect to spend the entire thing hiding in a hole.

D is really my biggest issue with IPs. I love the flavor behind the chromed out sammie who is twice as fast as your average joe, but considering how powerful IPs are, everyone has to have them to survive combat with said chromed out sammie, including the average joes. GMs have to balance encounters according to the most powerful combat character, which means even the lowliest of gangers has to be sporting at least 2 IPs to make it even worth the hassle of breaking out the dice.

[Charybdis]

A: I forgot about the bonding cost, but even so, the mage still comes out ahead in my book. It's unlikely he's going to use that focus purely for IPs, as he can devote it to any Health spell, and he could forgo it entirely if he wanted. -2 dice is not a hard restriction to overcome, especially when you're dancing around your enemies with significantly higher IPs. Heck, if he felt like it, he could take a Fetish for his spells and negate the sustain restriction entirely. Of course, any sane GM would make him regret that decision...

B: 13 Karma for Grade 1. 35 for Magic 7. 16 for Grade 2. 40 for Magic 8. That assumes you've already put in 2.5 points at creation, too. If you haven't, then you need to spend an additional 19 for grade 3, 45 for Magic 9, 22 for grade 4, and 50 for Magic 10. If you haven't gotten 240k by the time you've gotten 96 karma, and especially by 240, without spending any of it, either your GM is handing out karma like candy, or he's barely giving you any nuyen.

C: Background count may be the only way to effect Adepts, but both ebbs and domains negatively impact magic. And even ignoring things like Geomancy and the Mana Static spell, which allow the GM to inflict a background count against players at will, domains are incredibly common when you think about it. According to the examples in Street Magic, just about anything can cause a rating 1 domain, which would drop Magic an entire point for all adepts, since they don't have traditions. rating 2 isn't that hard to come by, either, considering a Magic shop and Sold Out concert are examples.

D: Whether focused on combat or not, if the PC ever expects to be around combat, IPs become a necessity. It's only worse for those who focus on combat, since that's their first investment, which forces the GM to give most of the npcs IPs to keep that combat player from wiping the floor with them, which in turn means any non-combat oriented players either need to leave the table when combat starts, or expect to spend the entire thing hiding in a hole.

D is really my biggest issue with IPs. I love the flavor behind the chromed out sammie who is twice as fast as your average joe, but considering how powerful IPs are, everyone has to have them to survive combat with said chromed out sammie, including the average joes. GMs have to balance encounters according to the most powerful combat character, which means even the lowliest of gangers has to be sporting at least 2 IPs to make it even worth the hassle of breaking out the dice.

A) If IP requirements are as mandatory as you suggest, that Focus is indeed going to be dedicated to the Improved Reflexes spell...
and -2 in combat is a bad thing, as Mages aren't well known for their reaction attributes and Athletics./Dodge Skills
I'm not au fait with Fetishes (Hmm, that sounded dirty ) which sourcebook are they in?

B) Or, 20 Karma for Warrior's Way (or 30 karma Totem's Way (which comes with new and improved Mentor spirit), 20 Karma Artisan's way) plus Level 1 initiation (13 karma) and Magic 7 (35 Karma) = 68 Karma in total (not 96).
Optionally (Street Magic p.31), you can Geas the power to get a further -25% discount at CharGen, with a Way option for 10/15BP at Chargen giving another -25% = 2 points of Magic for +3IP. 
(2 points of magic = 20BP, Way option = 10/15BP) = 30/35BP for 4 IP's at Chargen....not a bad option if you think it's too expensive...

C) Street Sams and Cyber-monkeys have limitations on where they can/can't go without getting Mad-scanned and politely turned away (or worse, installed with Cyber-inhibitors)... and these are far more common than background counts. Riggers may find themselves without a car, and hackers may find themselves without their commlink or a Wi-Fe signal. Every PC option can be toned-down with common countermeasures... PhysAds are no different.

D) Guns are a just as much a necessity in SR4 combat as IP's. People without them are at a significant disadvantage, but are you going to limit the campaign to heavy pistols because you're concerned that some people have unbalancing assault rifles? And don't underestimate a gang of goons... Unlike earlier versions of SR, even the 4IP Sammie only gets 1 IP before the goons have their turn...and as such he may take out two or three guys in the first pass but the rest of the gang then gets revenge with machine pistols or shotgun slugs (focus fire, take down the defense pool) and suddenly 250k-nuyen street sam cyberware is now bleeding in a gutter defeated by 5k worth of guns and bullets...

Oh, and gangers LOVE combat drugs, so giving them 2IP is dead easy.... it's how they maintain THEIR edge over the 1 IP average joes.... it's all about levels and pecking order. Please see previous chart

[Ryo]

A: Fetishes are in the corebook. They cost chump change and give you +2 to cast a given spell, but you can't cast the spell at all without the fetish if you take one. So they can easily ignore sustaining a spell with that +2 on their go-to spells, but it'd be very easy for the GM to smack them for that decision.

B: I am...completely unfamiliar with just about everything you just said. I presume this is a new thing just released to actually make Improved Reflexes a worthwhile investment? If so, its about time they rebalanced that.

C: Right, everybody can be restricted with just as much ease. Thus, Improved Reflexes is hardly a permanent, undisruptable option.

D: Guns are hardly a necessity, as both spells and melee are easily as effective as shooting things. In fact, its often more effective. I've built adepts and mages who didn't even carry guns, and for those that did, they were 'in case of background counts' back-ups. And even if guns were a necessity, there are a wide variety of unique and interesting guns that make that a pretty lousy argument. Now, if one gun in particular outshined the rest by and far to the point everybody with any sense took it, that'd be an issue. There are some examples of that, like Ares Alphas apparently being the AK-47s of 2072 for how common they are, but by and large, guns are fairly balanced.

And yes, the counter to one player with 4 IP is to massively outnumber him, but its not always sensible to have the party jumped by an entire go-gang just to give the sammie a workout. It's a lot easier to just throw in a few foes with enough IPs to compete then to wade through combat against a small army every time a fight breaks out.

[Charybdis]

A: Fetishes are in the corebook. They cost chump change and give you +2 to cast a given spell, but you can't cast the spell at all without the fetish if you take one. So they can easily ignore sustaining a spell with that +2 on their go-to spells, but it'd be very easy for the GM to smack them for that decision.

B: I am...completely unfamiliar with just about everything you just said. I presume this is a new thing just released to actually make Improved Reflexes a worthwhile investment? If so, its about time they rebalanced that.

C: Right, everybody can be restricted with just as much ease. Thus, Improved Reflexes is hardly a permanent, undisruptable option.

D: Guns are hardly a necessity, as both spells and melee are easily as effective as shooting things. In fact, its often more effective. I've built adepts and mages who didn't even carry guns, and for those that did, they were 'in case of background counts' back-ups. And even if guns were a necessity, there are a wide variety of unique and interesting guns that make that a pretty lousy argument. Now, if one gun in particular outshined the rest by and far to the point everybody with any sense took it, that'd be an issue. There are some examples of that, like Ares Alphas apparently being the AK-47s of 2072 for how common they are, but by and large, guns are fairly balanced.

And yes, the counter to one player with 4 IP is to massively outnumber him, but its not always sensible to have the party jumped by an entire go-gang just to give the sammie a workout. It's a lot easier to just throw in a few foes with enough IPs to compete then to wade through combat against a small army every time a fight breaks out.

A) Re-read for Fetishes. Got it now
however they only give a +2 for Drain tests (not spellcasting) and limit the mage even further with magical equipment. Hardly a fair comparison.

B) Way of the Adept has rules for discounts on Adept Powers. Sourcebook is a few months old now.
Street magic has additional (optional) rules to get discounts on Adept powers

C) I concur, Improved reflexes suffers from Background Counts (Mana Ebbs, voids etc). However apart from Synaptic Acc, every other IP enhancement can be disrupted in far more common ways. Ergo, Improved Reflexes is still a solid choice...

D) If you want to make exception characters with other offensive talents (pretty much limited to Adepts and Mages) then that's cool. Point firmly taken. However that's not a standard option for your gang of goons due to the statistics of magic in the population. The vast, VAST majority of the SR4 world does combat with guns.

Every PC archtype has a specialty.
- In matrix manipulation, your TM or Hacker rules the roost
- In transport, your rigger outshines everyone
- In Social engagements, it's Face-time
- In combat, the Multiple-IP people are the go-to-guys, street sam, physad or whomever has spent the resources to compete in this category
- When spells or spirits are involved, you need your mage

So, if you want to mess with a street sam, make him deal with stuff outside his specialty. If that's your big issue with Multiple IP's, it points to a combat-heavy Campaign, not a flaw with the mechanics....

[KarmaInferno]

AD&D with high level fighters and dual wielding... comlex?  I think not.  There's a reason the A was dropped when WotC created the "role-playing" abomination that was 3.x, it's not AD&D.  They knew it, at least internally, and they accepted it.

I dunno, I recall playing an unarmed specialist in the TSR-official 2nd edition Living City campaign, that had some ridiculous attack rate like 7 a turn, with so many damage bonuses that I often didn't bother to roll the piddly D4 damage die. Killed nearly a dozen dragons with just his fists.

Heck, I remember seeing mass amounts of dual-katana-wielding fighter/mages in the campaign back when it was still a first edition/second edition hybrid.

So I would say that roll-playing and min-maxing existed WELL before third edition. Remember the archetypical rules-lawyer min-max grognard is a 1st Edition D&D player.

That said, the Living City campaign switched to 3rd edition and after the re-build that unarmed specialist was actually MORE badass. So yes 3rd edition did get worse in that regard. I would say that really, before 3rd edition, min-max powergaming was the realm of a fraction of the gaming population. 3rd edition brought powergaming to the masses.



-k

[Charybdis]

I dunno, I recall playing an unarmed specialist in the TSR-official 2nd edition Living City campaign, that had some ridiculous attack rate like 7 a turn, with so many damage bonuses that I often didn't bother to roll the piddly D4 damage die. Killed nearly a dozen dragons with just his fists.

Heck, I remember seeing mass amounts of dual-katana-wielding fighter/mages in the campaign back when it was still a first edition/second edition hybrid. So I would say that roll-playing and min-maxing existed WELL before third edition.

That said, the campaign switched to 3rd edition and after the re-build he was actually MORE badass. So yes 3rd edition did get worse in that regard.

-k

ADnD 2nd Edition.
Dark Sun.
Thri-Kreen Gladiator (claw attacks)
Haste Spell
multiple chop-sui....

3rd ed actually toned down most of my PC's.... and 4th Ed has some great encounter powers for multiple attacks, but nothing to compete with the 5-10 attacks per turn, every turn that previous editions could aspire to.

[Onion Man]

^ ^  Alphabet fight.  ^ ^

[KarmaInferno]

Eh. Just pointing out that roll-playing has been with us since the dawn of roleplaying games.

They did evolved from tabletop wargaming, after all.



-k

[Charybdis]

^ ^  Alphabet fight.  ^ ^

I'll see your Z, and raise you an Ω

[Shinobi Killfist]

The issue is that multiple IPs are a Must-Have. Everyone automatically takes them.

In my experience, combat plays a major role in the vast majority of Shadowrun games, the only exception being those few games that are specifically a high roleplay game where combat is pretty much being intentionally averted. Everywhere else, though, you expect to encounter a fight at least once per session, if not multiple times. And in any game where you expect to regularly encounter combat, multiple IPs become a given. Everyone takes them, and if they don't, they're probably either going to die horribly or spend a lot of their time twiddling their thumbs while everyone else is playing the game.

Beyond that, though, the multiple ways to get IPs are not well balanced against one another. Mages unquestionably get multiple IPs with the smallest cost expenditure, and on the other side of the scale, the power available to Adepts is so prohibitively expensive, I've yet to see a player bother to take it. They usually opt to lose Magic and get Synoptic Boosters instead.

I disagree with everything you said except how the ways to gain IPs are balanced.  Yeah the balance is off a bit.  But extra IPs are not a must have, combat doesn't play a massive role in every game and we are not heavy role players.  We are fine with the idea that the decker might suck in a fight, but he has useful decking skills, or the face while he sucks at the killing is awesome at making sure we avoid the killing in the first place.  We may have a fight every session that has a chance for fighting, but 1 IP does not mean you die a horrible death and doe snot mean you are just twiddling your thumbs or at least no more than how much the street sam twiddled his thumbs during the legwork section of the game. 

I just don't get this idea that balance only matters in a fight.  Whatever happened to looking at your overall contributions towards a successful adventure/run.  Not everyone needs to stomp face in a fight to add to the teams success.