Well, it doesn't do any of the things the designers said it is supposedly for. It is objectively a failure of their supposed design goals. More importantly, it's just shitty. Not just that the implementations they've leaked are comical and depressing (you have to be a big beefy troll to sneak past alert security guards, and you need a finely scoped sniper rifle for close quarters fighting because hit caps matter most in opposed tests you stupid fucktards!), but the entire concept of the idea is doomed to be fucked up no matter how it's implemented.Blade wrote:I understand your problems with CGL and with SR5. I agree that changing a core system which works is a dangerous move. But I don't think it's necessarily a bad one and I don't think you can blame someone just for doing it.
You can blame him for the way he does it. So far, the Limit system doesn't seem, in my opinion, to be the best idea ever, but it doesn't look like it will be game-breaking either.
Putting an extra hit limit in based on your attributes or your attributes puts in an extra step where things can go wrong. And they will really obviously go wrong all over the place. Just the fact that the limit is based on either stats or equipment means that there are definitely going to be places where characters are better off using no equipment than mediocre equipment. Most PCs are going to be better at picking locks with their fingernails than with hair pins.
But beyond that, there really isn't a place where such a change could possibly go right. A hit cap does not matter in an unopposed test unless it makes the task outright impossible. A character will see no change at all in their success rate on any task that isn't being directly opposed by another character by using top of the line or bottom shelf equipment. None. Zero. Nothing.
So think of all the unopposed tasks that seem like having better equipment might be helpful. Risky driving? Picking locks? Climbing walls? Deactivating bombs? Under the new "hit cap" system of equipment, having superior equipment does not affect your success rate for any of that shit!
It's garbage. It's severely corrosive to the game's core mechanic, which I remind you is SR4's one and only claim to be anything better or different than RIFTS. And every single effect, every single one is extremely stupid. They are replacing a rule that was fast, easy to adjudicate, simple to explain, and worked well (get +1-3 dice for having awesome equipment), with something that is confusing, counterintuitive, slows the game down, and has literally only bad effects. It is beyond understanding that anyone who actually played this fucking game could think this was a good idea after thinking about it for more than thirty seconds.
Simply apply the proposed rule to any circumstance where it would do anything. The results are without exception utterly retarded.
Wat.But actually I don't really care about game mechanics. I houserule a lot. My current campaign uses Mahjong tiles instead of dice, so that's not really what I'm interested in. I just hope, without really believing it, that they come up with good mechanics for the parts that were really faulty.
So you don't even play Shadowrun and don't give a shit whether the rules or setting is good or bad. And therefore... you have hope? That doesn't compute.
Well, Jason Hardy and Bull have always had a direction they are taking the game. It's a muddled and poorly thought through direction, but it hasn't changed since about 2005. Jason "Amazonia will never forgive your Tree Planting" Hardy and Bull "you're banned for telling me how the mechanics work" Drek have not changed direction at any point. They've just gradually gotten more and more power as the people who had competing visions left in disgust or got pushed out.What I found interesting in what we have been able to see so far, is that it looks like that CGL has finally decided on a direction for the game instead of having it drift from one style to another depending on the writer. It might just be an impression, it might just be an intent that won't be followed, but if that turns out to be true, that would solve the main issue I had with Shadowrun since the new team got in place, and maybe even before that.
If you liked War!, you'll love the edition where Jason Hardy gets to rewrite the mechanics in addition to just rewriting the fluff.
-Username17
