5th edition, Chapter by Chapter

[souran]

Ever seen Collateral? The scene where Tom Cruise blows away two gang-bangers in maybe 2 seconds, drawing and shooting them both multiple times? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmKR6evZRQQ Anyone who isn't physically impaired and not terrified of guns can learn to do that in a month or two even if they never fired a gun before.

I'm gong to call bullshit on that. Not because it isn't true, but because it has absolutely nothing whatever to do with real combats. We have real police statistics and now even live war footage to draw upon, and while individual deadly bullets really are fired and strike their targets in literal split seconds - the reality is that the combats last a fuck of a lot longer than that. Real gun battles take minutes, not seconds. And even at close range, even trained police officers miss with a substantial majority of their bullets.

The speed at which you can draw and fire a gun is fascinating, but real combat situations are nothing like a firing range and aren't even very much like a high noon shootout. Real combats have a tendency to look like This, not some romantic stab fest where everyone gets their licks in less than 3 seconds from the start gun.

The 3 second combat round is way too short to generate realistic results. A better combat round would be 12 or even 20 seconds.

-Username17

The idea that you are really going to model hyper realistic gunplay in a futuristic rpg is a little insane.

However, the thing is: Both KZT and Franktrollman are correct.

Lots of gunfights are over basically the moment they begin. The battle at the ok coral lasted less than 30 seconds. It happened in a space 15 feet by 20-25 feet (not uncommon for a room or space for a shadowrun combat to take place in) and with no participant using even a true semiautomatic weapon (most of the hand guns were single action and have a much slower rate of fire than say a modern 9mm, or even a .38 special)

The north hollywood shootout, by comparison, lasted somewhere between 44 MINUTES (note that this includes the time of the bank robbery before the shooting really starts the "fight time is closer to 30 minutes), the perpetratiors ALONE fired 1300 rounds of ammuntion.

2 Police offers in new york responsinding a call shot a man 9 times and fired 36 rounds between them (effectively both empting the magazines on their 9mm pistols) in under 20 seconds


During the first battle of mogadishu the time of the intial combat operation to "snatch and grab" Habar Gadir lasted 17 minutes. That should include flight times. This is a really good example because it sort of encompasses how long an entire run might take with good planning.

What can we see here: The actually shooting part of a fight can assuredly be counted in seconds. Fights that take minutes will see the expendature of LOTS of ammo. So, people who say "fighting with guns is over before it starts" are basically correct. People who say "you shouldn't really have any idea how much ammo you are spending / know the results of your attacks before resolving them all" are also correct. People who say "the combat round needs to be longer to be meaning/real" are ALSO correct.

[Murtak]

Lots of gunfights are over basically the moment they begin. The battle at the ok coral lasted less than 30 seconds. It happened in a space 15 feet by 20-25 feet (not uncommon for a room or space for a shadowrun combat to take place in) and with no participant using even a true semiautomatic weapon (most of the hand guns were single action and have a much slower rate of fire than say a modern 9mm, or even a .38 special)

The north hollywood shootout, by comparison, lasted somewhere between 44 MINUTES (note that this includes the time of the bank robbery before the shooting really starts the "fight time is closer to 30 minutes), the perpetratiors ALONE fired 1300 rounds of ammuntion.

2 Police offers in new york responsinding a call shot a man 9 times and fired 36 rounds between them (effectively both empting the magazines on their 9mm pistols) in under 20 seconds

During the first battle of mogadishu the time of the intial combat operation to "snatch and grab" Habar Gadir lasted 17 minutes. That should include flight times. This is a really good example because it sort of encompasses how long an entire run might take with good planning.

What can we see here: The actually shooting part of a fight can assuredly be counted in seconds. Fights that take minutes will see the expendature of LOTS of ammo. So, people who say "fighting with guns is over before it starts" are basically correct. People who say "you shouldn't really have any idea how much ammo you are spending / know the results of your attacks before resolving them all" are also correct. People who say "the combat round needs to be longer to be meaning/real" are ALSO correct.

Conclusion: miss rates need to be, actual hits need to have the potential to be deadly. Using wound categories like Frank proposes takes care of potential deadliness (Grandma with agility 1, using edge scores 4 hits, taking her holdout pistol all the way to incapacitating). Potential for misses is a function of skill levels and hit thresholds. So you can totally model both viewpoints. Any gunfight at close ranges in high visibility with skilled shooters will be over almost instantly. Fights fought at longer ranges, with penalties for bad vision, movement or for having bullets fired at you will takes much longer, simply because scoring a couple of solid hits takes a long time on average.

Does not sound bad to me.

[Username17]

I like this idea of simplifying combat. Tell me more. I'm thinking of running a game myself and am looking for pitfalls/house rules to make things go smoothly.

There are two basic things you want to keep track of during an attack:

• Did your attack hit?
• If it hit, how damaging was it?

And for this, many people, Gygax included have determined that it is necessary to have two separate die rolls. And for people who have played a lot with percentile systems, this assumption is in fact false. You could jolly well have the degree of success on the to-hit roll determine how much damage is inflicted relative to the attack and the target. But that requires a random number generator that has a lot of different numbers in it. You'd do it with percentile dice, but you'd never do it with a simple d10 - because the range of damage values is always going to be a subset of the whole role (the number of numbers minus the numbers it can generate that don't even hit), meaning that the degree of success format comes with distinct coarseness. And for that reason, you'd never drop to a single die roll in, for example, a dice pool system. The Dice Pool has many advantages involving extensibility and the ability to create harshly different chances of success with small and easily comprehended numbers - but the actual numeric results its spits out are numbers in the 0-4 range, and that just isn't going to fly for a combined attack and damage roll.

Which of course, is why nWoD combat (that has only a single attack + damage dicepool roll) is such incredible unmitigated bullshit. We'll try to avoid delving into that particular horror.

But it nonetheless fails to explain the need for three distinct die rolling steps. We could do it in two steps. Fewer steps, less die rolling, and still essentially the same result. Now there are still four possible die rolls that could be used:

• Attack Roll
• Dodge Roll
• Damage Roll
• Soak Roll

It is better to use one from the first two and one from the second two, for obvious reasons. nWoD skips the attack roll completely, and it's terrible. Dammit, I mentioned that fucking system again! Anyway, there are other reasons to consider using one roll over another. For example, some targets aren't actually doing anything, and may be harder or easier to hit anyway. So getting rid of the Dodge roll is a pretty easy choice (it means we don't have to worry ourselves about giving barns "dodge bonuses" and "dodge penalties" for things). Secondly, it's actually desirable to give both the attacker and the defender dice to roll. Because that way no one is in the position of having damage accumulate on them while they are in the bathroom. That implies having Soak be a die roll and Damage be a static number rather than the other way around (since the attacking character would already be rolling dice with the Attack Roll).

So yeah, reducing it from "Attack, Defense, Soak" to "Attack, Soak" is a noticeable time savings. And it does not cause the game to collapse into boring determinism. So it's a good idea.

There are other ways we can speed things along. In general, any time you can convert some situational modifier into a threshold modifier rather than a dicepool modifier, that's good. It's good because you can remember to apply it during or after the dice are being rolled, which allows multitasking. The Game Master can figure out cover and visibility and shit while the dice are being rolled and counted. So that speeds things along noticeably. That's a good idea too.

Just like decker and rigger are two side of the same coin.

Well... to the extent that Street Samurai and Riggers are two sides of the same coin, sure. Classically speaking, and by classically I of course mean SR1, the Rigger was similar in their need for skills to the Decker.

• Decker Skills
• Computer
• Computer B/R
• Computer Theory
• Electronics
• Electronics B/R

• Rigger Skills
• Car
• Car B/R
• Electronics
• Electronics B/R
• Firearms

Now, you can make any two archetypes as similar or different as you want just by writing the skill list differently. In the SR4 skill set, Riggers need Electronic Warfare (well, there's an autosoft to Agent Smith that shit, but you know what I mean), and they don't need Hacking or Cybercombat. Hackers need Electronic Warfare but they don't need Pilot: Whatever or Gunnery. You could make Riggers and Deckers more similar by making Riggers shoot drone guns with Cybercombat. You could make them more different by splitting the skill that handles retaining control of drones during jamming be a different skill from the one that provides signal defense.

It's a skill based system. If you want to have Hackers be the Mallory boys from Oceans 11, who loop cameras and drive vans around by remote control, that's fine. If you want the Hackers to be Lyle from The Italian Job while the Rigger is Handsome Rob from the same movie - that's fine too! You can make any archetypical splits you want, and it gets enforced in a soft manner simply by what skills and attributes people have to take to be good at an action set. But people have a bunch of points to spend, so they actually can and will get skills out of their archetypical demands. Just because there's no direct effect on hacking doesn't mean people won't make Orkish Hackers with a huge Strength and a bunch of Intimidate.

The degree to which the guy with the gun drone is the same person as the guy looping the cameras in the default assumptions of play is entirely at the whim of the people writing the game. That could seriously go either way. Getting maximum bang out of gun drones used to require more than five Essence worth of specalized cyberware that no one else could even benefit from. That by itself made for a deeply segregated Rigger Archetype from Street Samurai and Deckers. In SR4, the VCR is a cheap add-on to the Datajack that many Hackers get because "why the fuck not?" And it is these design decisions, and not logic that determine how similar or different flavors of people who plug machine controls into specialized ports in their skull actually are.

-Username17

[Murtak]

The degree to which the guy with the gun drone is the same person as the guy looping the cameras in the default assumptions of play is entirely at the whim of the people writing the game. That could seriously go either way. Getting maximum bang out of gun drones used to require more than five Essence worth of specalized cyberware that no one else could even benefit from. That by itself made for a deeply segregated Rigger Archetype from Street Samurai and Deckers. In SR4, the VCR is a cheap add-on to the Datajack that many Hackers get because "why the fuck not?" And it is these design decisions, and not logic that determine how similar or different flavors of people who plug machine controls into specialized ports in their skull actually are.

But it is the designers (for the purposes of this thread: us) who choose the direction to push the players into. And I propose that 4E did indeed get the reduced essence cost for rigs right. Not because deckers can now get a rig. (They could easily get it in earlier editions.) But because a low essence cost and partial overlap with skills they already possess makes it an option for street samurai, who frankly could use an extra shtick at least as much as deckers.

[kzt]

I'm gong to call bullshit on that. Not because it isn't true, but because it has absolutely nothing whatever to do with real combats. We have real police statistics and now even live war footage to draw upon, and while individual deadly bullets really are fired and strike their targets in literal split seconds - the reality is that the combats last a fuck of a lot longer than that. Real gun battles take minutes, not seconds. And even at close range, even trained police officers miss with a substantial majority of their bullets.

Close range gunfights are extremely deadly. Most police really don't shoot or train with their weapons much, they qualify once a year. It's not the same thing. They are still a lot better then the average criminals, who has never been trained and never practices. The average close range police gunfight takes seconds and has less 6 rounds fired.

People who understand how to shoot actively avoid close range gunfights, because, unlike Sr4, it's a LOT harder to shoot someone with a pistol at 15 or 25 yards than it is at 2 yards. (It's just not that hard to hit someone when the muzzle is three feet from their chest.) The person who understands how to shoot has a huge advantage at range. They also use cover, and supported firing positions, both of which reduce your chance to hit in SR4 much more than they do in reality (supported firing positions increase your chance to hit reality). The closer the range the less advantage the trained guy has over Joe random thug. With crazy shit like a shootout inside a car it's largely luck mixed with who shoots first.

But the idea of making bullet damage more random makes sense. 90 year old grandmothers with .380s can kill you just as dead as cop with a 9mm or a .45.

During a 13-year span, the Baltimore County PD, which Aveni regards as one of the best trained in the country, achieved an average hit ratio of 64 percent in daylight shootings - not ideal, but clearly much better than commonly believed. In shootings that occurred in low-light surroundings, however, average hits dropped to 45 percent, a 30 percent decline. The data from Los Angeles County (LAC) reveals a somewhat comparable 24 percent decline.

"Until this research," Aveni says, "performance has never been accurately matched to lighting conditions," even though as many as 77 percent of police shootings are believed to occur under some degree of diminished lighting. Some departments tally "outdoor" versus "indoor" shootings, but most appear not to precisely differentiate between low-light and ample-light events, despite the preponderance of shootings during nighttime duty tours.

A multiple-officer shooting, in which more than one officer fires during a deadly force engagement, has an even greater influence on hit probability, Aveni discovered.

According to the LAC data, when only one officer fired during an encounter, the average hit ratio was 51 percent. When an additional officer got involved in shooting, hits dropped dramatically, to 23 percent. With more than 2 officers shooting, the average hit ratio was only 9 percent - "a whopping 82 percent declination," Aveni points out.

Multiple-officer shootings, Aveni told Force Science News, are three times more likely to involve suspects with shoulder weapons than single-officer shootings. This tends to "increase the typical stand-off distance," he says. Many of these confrontations also embody fast-changing, chaotic and complex circumstances. These factors, Aveni believes, help explain the negative impact on accuracy.

Aveni also discovered a correlation between multiple-officer shootings and number of rounds fired.

With LAC shootings involving only one officer, an average of 3.59 police rounds were fired. When 2 officers got involved, the average jumped to 4.98 rounds and with 3 officers or more to 6.48. "The number of rounds fired per officer increases in multiple-officer shootings by as much as 45 percent over single-officer shootings," Aveni says.

Again, he judges distance to be a likely factor. "A higher volume of fire may be used to compensate for the lower hit ratio as distance increases," he speculates. He believes the highly violent nature these events often present may be influential, too. Anecdotally bunch shootings appear to encompass "many of the barricaded gunman scenarios, drawn-out foot and vehicular pursuits, subjects experiencing violent psychotic episodes, gang attacks and encounters involving heavily armed suspects," such as the infamous FBI Miami shootout and the North Hollywood bank robbery street battle.

[mean_liar]

I'll echo souran and kzt for emphasis.

Modern combat exchanges at range take a long time and a lot of ammo because of the difficulty of hitting at range as well as into cover/concealment.

A question worth asking is how realistic do you want SR exchanges to be?

It's not hard to imagine that a future scifi battle involving cover is going to involve drones and other methods of enfilading a target under cover, which is basically how things go these days anyway. The presumption is that in the future they're just cheaper and easier to employ.

Expanding the hacker role into rigging would cover that off and give him something to do, creating these roles:

killing fools
drone ops
physical b&e
hacking
face
magic

I think boxing the hacker into a role necessarily separate from the rigger - roles which typically are miscellaneous and typically NPCd - is a mistake. In some more fleshed out terms, the roles should have weights that correspond to BP outlays required to own that role, and hacking and rigging should be treated accordingly:

killing fools - 1
drone ops - 2
physical b&e - 1
hacking - 2
face - 1
magic - 3

Such a basic framework where a character has access to 4 "slots" worth of BPs gives you space for a Street Sam. Those weights can be monkeyed with, but the idea is that drones and hacking have such wide applications that they're more expensive than "shooting people", but not so expensive that you'd need to lock one away from the other.

I don't understand why hacking should be separate from rigging. It's the future - making the game structure such that rolling the archetypes into a single "tech guy" should be do-able and explainable.

[Username17]

The simple reality is that attributes, skills, and equipment all cost points, meaning that the game is inherently going to be incentivizing the combinations of certain schticks to a greater or lesser degree. Medicine is Logic based, so it's inherently cheaper to combine being a medic with being a Hacker or Hermetic Mage than it is to combine it with being a Street Sam or a Face.

Exactly which skills are associated with which attributes, and which skills are required to do which tasks will have an enormous impact on what the relative cost of combining specific tasks into a single character will end up being.

It's the future - making the game structure such that rolling the archetypes into a single "tech guy" should be do-able and explainable.

The problem is: it is the future. Meaning that to a greater or lesser extent, everyone is a "tech guy." It's just not OK to throw down a role (especially a protected role) of "interact with the future" because everything is the future. There is no past or present to meaningfully interact with. So "tech" skills really are going to be split up somewhat.

Basically, Street Samurai get to be augmented, and therefore have higher physical attributes than you do. Also, they are highly encouraged to invest in Intuition. So tech skills that revolve around Strength, Agility, Reaction, or Intuition can be expected to be better on Street Samurai than on Hackers. There are, at the minimum, two tech specialists in the iconic 3-man team. Dodger has electronics in his head and specializes in interacting with the future - but so does Ghost.

-Username17

[spasheridan]

I don't believe that modern combat statisctics should inform the shadowrun game mechanics too much. In SR you have:

wired reflexes
Cybereyes with lowlight and vision magnifiction
Smartgun links
magic spells and adepts that increase your shooting skill
brain surgery that makes you shoot better
enhanced agility and dexterity due to genetic engineering and bioware

in THAT world it is reasonable to say that you really can shoot people in the face from 30 feet away and HIT EVERY TIME. A good shot today (cop?) is rolling what - 8 dice? In the future a good shot (street sam) is rolling 15? 20? And ignoring most of the penalties that a modern gunman deals with?

Back to the simplified combat rules -

My objection to the Shoot / Soak rolls vs the current Shoot / Dodge / Soak rolls is that there are some nice benefits to having a clear hit / miss point.

I'm thinking super squirts and tasers, but also pepper spray, flamethrowers, glue bombs, bolas, tracking devices, and rotten eggs for the drekky rockstars. I like that there are ways to have combat with non damaging weapons, and a pure shoot / soak system might not support them

[Murtak]

I don't believe that modern combat statisctics should inform the shadowrun game mechanics too much. A good shot today (cop?) is rolling what - 8 dice? In the future a good shot (street sam) is rolling 15? 20? And ignoring most of the penalties that a modern gunman deals with?

6. 7 if he has a laser pointer. And we can totally model combat on those 7 dice (if we want to).

My objection to the Shoot / Soak rolls vs the current Shoot / Dodge / Soak rolls is that there are some nice benefits to having a clear hit / miss point.

I'm thinking super squirts and tasers, but also pepper spray, flamethrowers, glue bombs, bolas, tracking devices, and rotten eggs for the drekky rockstars. I like that there are ways to have combat with non damaging weapons, and a pure shoot / soak system might not support them

If I understand Frank correctly he is not proposing doing away with a certain number of hits to hit a target. He is proposing a fixed threshold, such as "1 per 3 points of the target's reaction score, +1 if in partial cover, +2 for an active dodge".

[kzt]

A question worth asking is how realistic do you want SR exchanges to be?

Realism doesn't seem like a desirable goal, a "realistic" feel (verisimilitude) seems like a desirable goal.

Another question worth asking is the objective of the combat system, in terms of what kind of fights do you want to produce and what do you not want to have happen or only rarely happen? Once you have that you can try to write rules to accomplish that while maintaining the "realistic" feel.

[baduin]

I think a Combat Round shoud last about 30 seconds. In a firefight, there are three possibillities: the combat takes place at close range (5 meters?), at least one side is in the open, or both sides are at range and in cover.

1) If the combat takes place at a close range or at least one side is in the open, after one round at least one side should be dead, wounded or in cover. It is difficult to divide that time into individual rounds, as it is possible to shoot a few men in a couple of seconds.

2) If both sides are in cover and at range, the exchange of fire can last many minutes unless one sides does something.


1986 FBI Miami shootout

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout
http://www.firearmstactical.com/briefs7.htm


http://www.miamibeach411.com/news/index ... -shootout/
"Despite having both been shot in the head, chest and extremities, the wounds that finally stopped Platt and Matix were rounds that lodged in their spines during this final attack. ... ending the bloodiest shootout in FBI history a mere nine minutes after the suspects had been spotted on US-1. ...
Paramedics arrived on the scene and saw no signs of life in either Dove or Grogan. They turned their attention to the two unconscious suspects, Matix who was already dead and Platt who they attempted to resuscitate with no success. Five other officers were injured, McNeill and Mireles among the more serious, but there were no other fatalities. During the four minute gunfight FBI agents got off somewhere between 75-80 shots and Platt unleashed in the neighborhood of 25-30. "

[Murtak]

Realism doesn't seem like a desirable goal, a "realistic" feel (verisimilitude) seems like a desirable goal.

This is an important point. I am much happier with a system that plays like Heat or Johnny Mnemonic or Blade than one that plays like a statistic.

[RandomCasualty2]

But it is the designers (for the purposes of this thread: us) who choose the direction to push the players into. And I propose that 4E did indeed get the reduced essence cost for rigs right. Not because deckers can now get a rig. (They could easily get it in earlier editions.) But because a low essence cost and partial overlap with skills they already possess makes it an option for street samurai, who frankly could use an extra shtick at least as much as deckers.

Rigging is not so much a street samurai thing only because it's inefficient. Pretty much the Street sam is a better killer if he shows up personally, meaning that actually rigging a drone is generally a waste of time.

Generally rigging is for people who don't have great combat skills in the first place, and tend to be sitting in a van as opposed to in the field. You may have a guy who just sends software commands to drone AIs in AR while doing his own thing, but that really doesn't require much in the way of skills. But actual rigging, where you jump into the drone, isn't something you'll probably be doing during a run unless you're in the safety of a van.

Wifi blocking also pretty much fucks up the rigger too.

[Username17]

My objection to the Shoot / Soak rolls vs the current Shoot / Dodge / Soak rolls is that there are some nice benefits to having a clear hit / miss point.

I'm thinking super squirts and tasers, but also pepper spray, flamethrowers, glue bombs, bolas, tracking devices, and rotten eggs for the drekky rockstars. I like that there are ways to have combat with non damaging weapons, and a pure shoot / soak system might not support them

The Shoot roll actually generates a distinct "hit" and "miss" state. Rather than setting it to a floating threshold based on a modified Dodge roll, you set it to a fixed to-hit threshold that is modified by things like range, visibility, and cover. The addition of the Dodge roll makes to-hit questions more random, but it doesn't make them any more real.

Anyway, Skills. First, let's consider the skills and the attributes they were associated with in SR4A. It's important to consider those associations, because it has a very large deal to do with the relative value of different attributes and even more to do with natural character synergies.

Attribute	Universally Useful Skills	Archetype Skills	Obscure Skills	Worthless Skills
Body				Diving Parachuting
Agility	Gymnastics Infltration	Palming Locksmith Ranged Attack Skills* Melee Attack Skills*	Forgery	Escape Artist
Reaction		Pilot Aircraft Pilot Anthroform Pilot Groundcraft	Pilot Watercraft	Dodge Pilot Aerospace
Strength		Climbing Running	Swimming
Willpower			Survival	Astral Combat
Logic		Automotive Mechanic Armorer Computer Cybercombat Data Search Electronic Warfare Hacking Hardware Software	Aeronautic Mechanic Chemistry Demolitions First Aid Industrial Mechanic Medicine Nautical Mechanic	Arcana Cybertechnology
Intuition	Perception	Assensing Shadowing	Artisan Disguise Tracking	Navigation
Charisma	Etiquette	Con Negotiation	Intimidate	Leadership Instruction
Magic		Binding Summoning Spellcasting Counterspelling	Enchanting	Banishment Ritual Spellcasting
Resonance		Compiling Registering		Decompiling

*: These skills are mysteriously written up like a dozen times each.

Now obviously, when you were rewriting the skill list, you would only have three columns. No one intends to write a skill that is fucking worthless (except the guy who made Exotic Weapon: Cyberhorns. I was in that conversation, and I still don't understand it). Skills that are worthless should be either improved (like Banishment or Ritual Spellcasting), combined into existing skills (like Navigation or Diving), or eliminated (like Instruction or Arcana). And in getting rid of Body and Charisma, you can shorten things quite a bit. But you're still going to want to move some things around, because some attributes are a lot better than others.

The new chart would look something like this:

Attribute	Universally Useful Skills	Archetype Skills	Obscure Skills
Strength		Climbing Running	Intimidate Swimming
Agility	Infiltration	Breaking Close Combat Firearms Gunnery Palming	Forgery
Reaction	Gymnastics	Pilot
Willpower	Etiquette	Con Negotiation	Leadership Astral Combat
Logic		Armorer Mechanic Computer Data Search Electronics Programming Cybercombat Hacking Electronic Warfare	Operations Chemistry Cybertechnology Demolitions First Aid Medicine
Intuition	Perception	Assensing Shadowing Survival	Artisan Disguise
Magic		Banishing Binding Summoning Spellcasting Ritual Spellcasting Counterspelling	Enchanting
Resonance		Compiling Decompiling Registering

Now... what does that leave? It leaves Reaction being a pretty dubious attribute, frankly. Without making passive Defense tests, there isn't a lot for that attribute to do. It also leaves a really huge pile of skills in Logic. But since that stat doesn't really do anything but power skills, that's probably OK. Strength can probably skate on its relatively short skill list, because changes in Soak rules bring the pendulum back to it being pretty awesome inherently.

And finally, with the phasing in of the Exotic Use rule (where if something is an exotic use of a skill you suffer a -2 dicepool penalty on it unless you have an appropriate Specialization, rather than making a new skill), and the grinding down of several filler skills - I think the entire Skill Groups rule could just be dropped. It really doesn't seem necessary.

-Username17

[Crissa]

Wouldn't it be better to turn some skills into binary flags instead?

Either you know how to dive, or you don't. Same for parachuting, aircraft, watercraft, mechanic or truck driver. You have your main skill, and then you can pick up cards either the kind that get written into your head or the kind that sit in your wallet, and just get to use them skilled instead of unskilled.

That gives people a chance to pick up profession to 'customize' their skill set without requiring them to sink a bunch of creation points into it. Eventually (and with cash) you can learn all these things you want.

-Crissa

[Lokathor]

Like just a Quality you take for 2 or 4 or 5 BP and it says "if you have this quality, you can X"? That's probably a good idea.

The problem with the exotic rule as frank words it is that you can (currently at least) only have 1 specialization, so you couldn't have a guy with several exotic skill uses. The "one specialization only" thing could also be changed though.

[spasheridan]

Outside of skills:

Reaction = who goes first. That is an awesome abillity

Willpower = magic defense. Again, an awesome ability

Str = melee damage, soak rolls. Melee whatever, but soaking is key so again an awesome ability.

Agility - a skill ability

logic - a skill ability

Intuition - adding it to reaction for initiative is this abilities only redeeming quality. You can get enough gear related perception bonuses to make the differance between a 2 and a 5 intuition meaningless.

[Lokathor]

Perhaps could the "dodge roll" part be changed down so that it wasn't ever rolled, it was always just the "buy hits" total? It would speed up the game, but higher reaction would still make you harder to hit, and then you can get defensive cyberware or adept powers or whatever to add some more dice to it. Less then 4 dice at a time wouldn't help directly, but they would keep your defense up even once you've taken on some wound penalties.

[spasheridan]

This is a sacred cow kind of thing in shadowrun. I loved the combat pool system in the original rules - something to tweak on your PC and an incentive to spread out your attributes. It also made it so you could choose between offense and defense.

The fact that you could burn karma to reroll failed dodge rolls (and now edge) made the defense part of the game reasonable. It allowed for deadly weapons and allowed the PC's to survive.

I see the advantage in speeding up combat and making things simpler, but simpler does not always mean better. So things that I think should be kept are ways for PC's, out of sequence, to increase the difficulty to be shot. Maybe this just means that edge subtracts hits or something like that, or that you can go full defense and your opponent needs 2 more hits... but loosing the dodge roll makes the defense augmentations a lot less granular.

[Archmage]

Eliminating the dodge roll in favor of a static threshold does create one issue, at least with the way the current rules work--if you assume a threshold of 1 per ~3 dodge dice, you get a bunch of weird breakpoints. If Reaction costs the same as other attributes, you have a score of 1, 3, or 6 and augmentation beyond that is pointless unless you hit another breakpoint. Adding dice to your drive pool or whatever probably isn't worth it if you aren't going to go all the way and get the dodge threshold bonus.

Is there a better way to determine the threshold that doesn't create weird breakpoint incentives?

[Blicero]

Frank, what's you reasoning behind assigning the Social skills to Willpower? Personally, I'd think that Intuition would be a lot more appropriate.

Without the Social skills, Willpower is kind of sparse, but it still has magic defense going for it. I could also see some sort of positive quality that lets you deal with physical wound modifiers with Willpower as well.

[Orca]

Unless this is changed, Willpower helps reduce the effects of manabolts, but there's a fair few magic effects which target other abilities. Intuition vs. illusions especially. Reaction may help you shoot the mage in the face before she fries you with said manabolt.

Willpower 5 instead of 2 means you take on average one less box of damage in SR4 (it probably won't be enough to stop a manabolt), I'm not sure how much LMSD damage changes this.

In other words, magic defence in SR4 is insufficient to make Willpower awesome. The magic defence function of Willpower would need to be amped up a lot if it was the main function of this ability.

[CatharzGodfoot]

If the three primary archetypes are so damn' important, shouldn't the skills each one needs be nailed down first, and then those skills (and others) be distributed to the attributes accordingly?

Street Samurai
Attribute	Universally Useful Skills	Archetype Skills	Obscure Skills
Strength		Climbing Running	Intimidate
Agility	Infiltration	Close Combat Firearms
Reaction	Gymnastics
Willpower	Etiquette
Logic			First Aid
Intuition	Perception
Total	10 skills in 6 attributes

Decker
Attribute	Universally Useful Skills	Archetype Skills	Obscure Skills
Strength
Agility	Infiltration
Reaction
Willpower	Etiquette
Logic		Computer Data Search Electronics Programming Cybercombat Hacking Electronic Warfare
Intuition
Total	9 skills in 3 attributes

Mage
Attribute	Universally Useful Skills	Archetype Skills	Obscure Skills
Strength
Agility
Reaction
Willpower	Etiquette		Astral Combat * ???
Logic			First Aid
Intuition		Assensing *
Magic		Spellcasting * Counterspelling * Summoning * Banishing * Binding *	Ritual Spellcasting *
Total	10 skills in 4 attributes

Perhaps you've already done this, but it would be nice to see the direct reasoning.

[duo31]

Here's what i'm thinking.

If Str is the new Bod.

atk roll, count hits vs threshold that incorporates difficulty mods.
net hits up wound levels

soak roll = armor+agility/str (allows for quick dodgy or tough as nails)
hits reduce damage boxes, if negates, then something cinematic protected the individual (pocket bible stopped bullet, blade deflects off of old shrapnel, w/e)

Firearms have min str ratings, using w/o proper str creates 'recoil' penalties.

This would allow for the troll w/ mini gun to be just as effective as dodgy elf sam w/ machine pistols.

simple / complex actions need to go all just one action/IP

SS/SA = bonus to hit (aiming)
Short Burst = Bonus to damage
Long Burst/ FA = Bonus to Atk Dice and Penalty to Threshold (not sure about this, by using more bullets less accurately trying to get lucky and score a hit) if you add 3 dice for LB and 6 for FA and also increase TN By 1/2 respectively you don't change the odds of hitting but you increase your chances of getting lucky.

Melee Weapons should also have a min Str. This way slow but strong chars can do equivalent damage to quick but weaker chars. ie shanking someone with a shiv 5 times should be equivalent to dismembering someone with a combat axe (1-2 hits).

Melee vs Ranged should be a decision based on encounter distance not damage #s, and whether the team needs to remain silent or not.

I agree with Crissa regarding the 'cards' idea.

RE Deckers/Hackers and the Matrix.
Please stop trying to justify world setting decisions based around fitting a square peg into a round hole. (blocking wifi or not, allowing hackers to control/ tamper w/ anything that transmits electrons)

Brain Hacking is cool ie Ghost in the Shell, Brain Hacking should however be proximity dependent. The Maj can't just look at non-cyborg and hack their brain, she can only do that if they have an open connection to the outside. ie if they are linking their brain to another computer / network, she can use that computer as a gateway into their brain. Or she can plug a frickn cable from her brain directly into theirs and fuck up their shit. But she cant do it to a closed brain.
I think that trodes are stupid, but they exist to allow mages and people who value the integrity of their brains to do work, ie interface with computers. I believe that they and brain access tech should work under the principle of inverse squares. The farther the originating signal is from the physical brain the signal quality drops by double, so that in order to affect the brain at a distance, on would need a higher output signal, problem is that that would fry their brain/explode their eyes or some such. (beaming microwaves into someones brain is bad m'kay).

There is no reason for a building to project a wireless signal or allow wireless access from outside the building. Cell service can be routed through repeaters (femtocells) that all go through big fat bandwidth pipes that can be scrutinized and kept relatively secure. Just because I can break a window and set up a transmitter that bypasses a buildings 'wifi cage' doesn't mean that corps won't do it. I have windows on my house, and people can break them and gain entry, but most don't do that. Corps won't want non-tech (pre 1950's) work environments, they would be too inefficient, and the security would not justify the time delays and loss of revenue. Security is a balancing act with profit projections, unless maintaining absolute secrecy and security will generate obscene profits, it is not cost effective to do so. Also workers will not produce useful work if you starve them for resources.

Wireless cameras are dumb for an established site. the cameras need some sort of power, so they are tied into the power grid of the building, and since that can be used to transmit and create a wireless network, there is no reason for a site to use wireless cameras, unless their power sources are compartmentalized or Tesla pops out of his time travel wormhole and shows the world the power of wireless power transmission.

RE Riggers, Wash and Kaylee are essentially NPCs, The real PC's are Mal, Jayne, and Zoe and this is ok.
The current vehicle rules make riggers stupid as PCs. They are better as hired help. What useful things is a drone going to do on a run that you need the rigger to come into the building w/ the party? I got nothing? if you can answer that, then maybe they can work as a playable archetype.

-Duo

[IGTN]

During the first battle of mogadishu the time of the intial combat operation to "snatch and grab" Habar Gadir lasted 17 minutes. That should include flight times. This is a really good example because it sort of encompasses how long an entire run might take with good planning.

Going with your later stuff about longer combat rounds, would this imply that it might be good to do the entire run in combat time?

So you do legwork, then you go to combat time, then once you get clear you go back out of combat time to tie up loose ends. Would that make the game work better?

A twenty-second combat round can get a 17-minute run done in 51 combat rounds. That's long for a D&D combat, but since this is an entire adventure, would that be acceptable?

You can, of course, skip travel time when nothing interesting happens, making the run actually shorter in terms of combat rounds.

Of course, at that point you're making a board game.