5th edition, Chapter by Chapter

[Wesley Street]

I'm still not sure though. My brain might just be stuck in fantasy RPG mode where players are expected to become tougher than the swarms and win that way.

I think you just hit on something that's been perpetually overlooked by developers and misunderstood by newer players. SR isn't a hack-n-slash crawler or tactical combat game and as such it doesn't have a codified mechanic for mass combat. The only attempt at such was with the 1st ed. DMZ board game. Which I gather was a colossal failure as I never hear anything good about it, even from the rose-colored glasses/nostalgia crowd.

In the games I run, if an encounter results in mass gunfire and area-of-effect spelling of more than, say, a dozen goons, the result is that I'm usually rolling teamwork opposed tests for the goons to avoid bogging the game down. And doing that results in the PCs pulling off way more damage in half the time than they would if they were facing a more manageable number of opponents (I dunno... five). It's not cheating the players if they're enjoying themselves... but it's not a real victory either. And it makes a mockery of statistics and encourages Rambo-style problem solving rather than thinking or sneaking through a solution. Which is fine for Twilight: 2013 but defies the SR style.

SR5 needs the equivalent of a Dungeon Master's Guide. Mister Johnson's Blackbook 2 or whatever. Stuff that doesn't need to bog down a core book and doesn't fit into a Toys book. This could cover all the fluff of alternative campaign options such as mercenary and open warfare, DocWagon team, Lone Star cop, syndicate thug, etc. as well as usable rules for situations most often encountered in these types of games (mass or heavy artillery combat for the merc games, field medicine for the DocWagon games, etc.). It would also be helpful to include some sort of reasonable formula for determining player compensation for an adventure rather than expecting a GM to guesstimate, resulting in overpaid or starved PCs.

[Murtak]

Hmm, I'm rapidly becoming more convinced... I'm still not sure though. My brain might just be stuck in fantasy RPG mode where players are expected to become tougher than the swarms and win that way.

I guess having a higher edge would also be a bigger deal? More chances to reroll those freak 14 out of 15 failed dice and so forth.

The PCs are tougher than your average guard, but they are so by virtue of having more points to spend. And they can totally opt out of certain areas. Any PC with the Strength of a pedestrian and the armor of a pedestrian is as fragile as a pedestrian. On average though, the PCs will be tougher.

But no matter how tough they get, they will never be taking on swarms of enemies. Doing so is a dumb idea in a modern setting and will eventually get you killed. Pretty much anyone will be able to kill you with a really lucky shot, so you pretty much avoid combat anyway. But even if it is unavoidable, fighting many opponents just gets you bogged down. Getting bogged down gets reinforcements. Reinforcements in a modern setting are nasty. Suddenly you are fighting SWAT teams (including snipers, drone support and perhaps a combat mage) instead of rent-a-cops.

The rent-a-cops though, expect them to go down. A samurai will hear them before they do, step around the corner, win the surprise test and kill 4 of them on his first pass, perhaps spending an edge to do so. But swarms do not happen. And neither do long combats. If they do, something has gone wrong for the runners already.

[mean_liar]

It would also be helpful to include some sort of reasonable formula for determining player compensation for an adventure rather than expecting a GM to guesstimate, resulting in overpaid or starved PCs.

I don't think I've ever seen that tossed out. Considering Lifestyle costs it must be quite a lot, but based on what (little) I know about organized crime that would still put the SR payouts much higher than known values.

[Wesley Street]

I don't think I've ever seen that tossed out. Considering Lifestyle costs it must be quite a lot, but based on what (little) I know about organized crime that would still put the SR payouts much higher than known values.

It wouldn't need to be a realistic value, just playable within the terms of the game. Lifestyle costs run from zero (Streets) to 100,000+ (Luxury) per month. I don't know what Dowd & Co.'s original intentions were but I use Lifestyle as a means to keep the PCs hungry and wanting to run (unless they select the Trust Fund quality...). The problem I run into is when I have PCs at opposite ends of the economic spectrum. What's going to be a high-paying run for a squatter and could kick him up to a different Lifestyle is going to be pocket change for a high society type.

The easiest answer would be to a) figure out how many runs a group of PCs does a month and b) the average cost of living for all the PCs and devise compensation based on that number. However, different jobs are going to have different risk factors which would modify this cost and it's those modifiers that I don't know... What's the monetary risk of burgling a low-grade corporate lab vs. killing a politician? Obviously one is greater than the other but I don't know how to cost-justify it.

Something that was touched on in 3rd ed. but glossed over in Runner's Companion are the actual in-game incentives to moving up in Lifestyle. In the Sprawl Survival Guide there was an attempt at rules that deter lower Lifestyles; such as successful burglary attempts on the PCs residences based on their Lifestyles (low end = often, resulting in stolen gear; high end = rare) but they weren't well fleshed out.

[kzt]

But in Shadowrun you don't get to be more death resistant because you have a player character sheet - you get to be more death resistant because you invested in some fucking Orthoskin.

Yes! My preference is to make typical pistol wounds unlikely to kill you DRT - even if shot twice, make longarms a lot more deadly than pistols and heavy weapons a lot more deadly than longarms. So there is a huge difference in threat between the mall cop with a pistol and the street cop who has pulled the rifle out of the rack in his car. And HMGs pretty much just kill everyone they hit, no matter how tough your hide is or how much armor you are wearing. And then use the setting to encourage only the use/carry of pistols.

Now you could run give your idea a little bit of legs by bringing back the old Professional Ratings. That is to say, characters with low professional ratings would not fight to incapacitation. Maybe, if you take more than twice your professional rating in wound boxes, you retreat, surrender, or faint. PCs would all have Professional Ratings of 5, meaning that they would fight on to unconsciousness if their players so willed it. But the professional rating 0 thugs with sticks would withdraw if they got tagged with even a Light Wound.

This too, or something along that line. Most people are not going to fight to the death for $8/hour or someone making that jerk Vito look stupid in public.

[Lokathor]

It would also be helpful to include some sort of reasonable formula for determining player compensation for an adventure rather than expecting a GM to guesstimate, resulting in overpaid or starved PCs.

This this oh goddess this. I keep handing out 5 to 7 thousand per run to my starting level players, but I still have no idea how fast to scale that up.

Now you could run give your idea a little bit of legs by bringing back the old Professional Ratings. That is to say, characters with low professional ratings would not fight to incapacitation. Maybe, if you take more than twice your professional rating in wound boxes, you retreat, surrender, or faint. PCs would all have Professional Ratings of 5, meaning that they would fight on to unconsciousness if their players so willed it. But the professional rating 0 thugs with sticks would withdraw if they got tagged with even a Light Wound.

I'm gonna do this. "morale" rules are always a nice way to put a number on what NPCs are expected to do. I need to write me up some NPC stat cards tomorrow.

How tricked out is the "average" ganger or corp cop? just spend 300 BP? Then the "high quality" stuff is 350 or 400 like a runner is? Maybe even 450-500 if they're guarding Area 51 or something like that?

[Crissa]

I would rather the 'longarms vs shortarms' be more in the skill or time spent per round be related to the damage they do.

That way accuracy wins, at least until you start spraying lots of ammo.

-Crissa

[kzt]

Rifles (other then rimfire .22s) do a lot more damage than pistols, as they are moving a lot faster. HMG bullets are both a lot bigger and heavier and moving a lot faster than rifle bullets. Verisimilitude requires that things that are obviously true be portrayed as true unless you have a compelling reason and and explanations as to why it isn't (and you only get a limited number of these). If the average guy with a battle axe or sword does the same damage as the average guy with a steak knife it's pretty obvious to the casual observer that something is wrong with your melee rules. Not that you can't kill people with .22 LR pistols or a steak knife, but there is a reason why armies carried swords or axes and not steak knives, and why they carry center fire rifles instead of .22LR pistols.

[Lokathor]

SR5 could beef up ritual casting by allowing for something like a spell matrix; with thread weaving time before the cast instead of backlash damage.

[kzt]

Frank had a house rule I don't remember seeing written down that allowed ritual to do some teamwork tests for various magical tasks. I forget the details, we didn't have ritual magic skill, but it seemed interesting.

[Lokathor]

Oh right, and while I'm remembering it, in Earthdawn anything living ("including the earth") was solid on the astral plane as well. Any particular reason that SR doesn't have as much stuff stretching into the astral plane?

[Murtak]

Oh right, and while I'm remembering it, in Earthdawn anything living ("including the earth") was solid on the astral plane as well. Any particular reason that SR doesn't have as much stuff stretching into the astral plane?

In Shadowrun the same applies. The earth is sort of mushy though, you can push through it for a limited distance.

[Username17]

Oh right, and while I'm remembering it, in Earthdawn anything living ("including the earth") was solid on the astral plane as well. Any particular reason that SR doesn't have as much stuff stretching into the astral plane?

In Shadowrun, there are indeed materials in Alchera which are dual natured inert materials. It's special stuff, but if you want a dual-natured sword, you can just go make one. It has bee straining credibility for some time that there aren't prices for such things in books.

Frank had a house rule I don't remember seeing written down that allowed ritual to do some teamwork tests for various magical tasks. I forget the details, we didn't have ritual magic skill, but it seemed interesting.

Ritual Sorcery has justified its existence various ways in various previous editions - mostly by coming free with the Sorcery Skill. Even so, when doing so did not penalize counterspelling, people took a Concentration/Specialization in spellcasting at the expense of Ritual Magic as often as they could. People make a lot more Spellcasting and Counterspelling tests than Ritual Spellcasting tests even at the best of times. SR4 kicked up the worthlessness of Ritual Spellcasting to 11:

• They eliminated the ability to cast on people you couldn't find by requiring a spotter.
• With the introduction of 30 kajillion traditions, the "must be same tradition" limitation meant that you couldn't team up with anyone.
• The "lowest skill rating" cap on the number of participants means that even if you found someone of the same tradition, they still couldn't help you unless they were also a Ritual Spellcasting enthusiast. No acolytes allowed.
• As the spell list continues to get longer, the chances of knowing a magician with the same spell as you diminishes.

But the big problem is that 1 hour/force is simply too long to wait for a spell for anything except a middle of the night, across the planet assassination attempt. Any utility magic would be better served by simply driving (or even flying) to the intended target, casting the spell, and going home. So if it requires sending a bound spirit to go stand around and call it in - it's basically all-the-way useless. If you can send a spirit to spot, you could have the same spirit materialize (or possess the lamppost) and go on a rampage. Hell, if you're either of the two core traditions, you could have sent a Spirt of Man with the spell in question as their Innate Spell and they could simply cast it.

So fixing Ritual Spellcasting would take some doing. Ritual Spellcasting would need to be set up to actually do something you wanted it to do. Here are some suggestions:

• Ritual Spellcasting allows members of any tradition who know the same spell to work together on casting.
• Characters don't even need to know the same spell to help out with linking or spotting.
• Casting through material links is allowed. Potentiating a link takes 1 minute per allowed force to set up, casting itself takes 1 round per Force.
• Ritual Magic can overcome background counts and even burnout. For every 10 minutes of ritual mana accumulation, an effective -1 to Magic attribute can be overcome for one casting.
• The maximum number of ritualists is the highest Ritual Spellcasting of the participants.

Do all of that and... people will still use Spellcasting more. Because it takes a single Complex Action to complete (and they probably have a better Skill rating in it besides). But you'd get people to ritually cast Invisibility on a compatriot because they had a few rounds to kill, weren't going to suffer any drain anyway, and would just assume get an extra 2-3 dice from teamwork. Also, you'd fulfill my dream of having DocWagon shaman ritually casting healing spells on people injured in the field. In this case by potentiating a link, having the paramedics physically carry it to the injured patient, and then having the magic come through a few rounds later. Also, the mighty ritual of vast power would have a reason to exist, and perhaps most importantly of all: the fluff about how magic takes less time in the Sixth World than it does in stories because the mana is more available would have a basis in the rules.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

But the big problem is that 1 hour/force is simply too long to wait for a spell for anything except a middle of the night, across the planet assassination attempt. Any utility magic would be better served by simply driving (or even flying) to the intended target, casting the spell, and going home. So if it requires sending a bound spirit to go stand around and call it in - it's basically all-the-way useless. If you can send a spirit to spot, you could have the same spirit materialize (or possess the lamppost) and go on a rampage. Hell, if you're either of the two core traditions, you could have sent a Spirt of Man with the spell in question as their Innate Spell and they could simply cast it.

Yeah, though honestly, that may well be a problem with spirits being too good. Spirit summoning is so awesome that basically I can't imagine why the world isn't governed by people summoning mass spirits and sending them on attack missions. The risk is pretty much minimal, and unlike sending real people, you can't interrogate spirits, as they can basically astrally just get the fuck out of there if they're in trouble, and you have no way to KO them to ask them questions later.

They're vulnerable to banishing, but banishing is equally as draining as summoning, so I'm not sure why anyone would care. But otherwise you have the equivalent of invisible heavily armored, highly skilled engines of death that can appear pretty much anywhere. The high force spirits have a good shot of bypassing wards and barriers too. Not to mention spirits leave way less in the sense of forensics and you can summon them from literally across the planet.

Really I can't understand why the world hasn't collapsed under spirit terrorism in the first place.

[Username17]

Yeah, though honestly, that may well be a problem with spirits being too good. Spirit summoning is so awesome that basically I can't imagine why the world isn't governed by people summoning mass spirits and sending them on attack missions. The risk is pretty much minimal, and unlike sending real people, you can't interrogate spirits, as they can basically astrally just get the fuck out of there if they're in trouble, and you have no way to KO them to ask them questions later.

They're vulnerable to banishing, but banishing is equally as draining as summoning, so I'm not sure why anyone would care. But otherwise you have the equivalent of invisible heavily armored, highly skilled engines of death that can appear pretty much anywhere. The high force spirits have a good shot of bypassing wards and barriers too. Not to mention spirits leave way less in the sense of forensics and you can summon them from literally across the planet.

Really I can't understand why the world hasn't collapsed under spirit terrorism in the first place.

You should have seen the first printing of SR4. You could summon a new unbound spirit the moment you sent your first one on a remote service. And you could send them on a remote service of "wait until the clock strikes noon and then attack that compound" while you summoned up a hundred more. It was called "Spirit Storm" and I got that shit errataed out of existence.

But you're right that the opposition and drawbacks to Spirits is frankly insufficient. Here are the following that need to be done:

• Whether you can astrally track someone through their spirits needs to be clarified, and the answer needs to be "yes." Sending an unbound spirit on a remote service should leave a followable astral trail for 1 hour/Force.
• Banishing needs to be way better than it is. I added as much as I was allowed to in Street Magic, letting it free people from possession and directly damage spirits, but it's not enough. The key ability it should have is acting like Counterspelling for critter powers.
• If a spirit is disrupted during a remote service, the conjurer should not only know, but even take some backlash damage.

But even without those clarifications/changes spirit attacks are no crazier for society than remote bombs.

-Username17

[Lokathor]

Saw Iron Man 2 last night: Why doesn't SR have more kinds of cool super powered armor? "Military Armor" in Arsenal has some stuff, but the upgrade selection is limited. It's the future! Why isn't there more technology like in comic books?

Also, I'm now completely convinced of the fun times to be had with a pyramid damage system. The last thing I'd do is say that a character can spend an edge point to in some way directly modify the damage they take as a last resort (eg: spend an edge and roll edge+body to reduce the final damage by 1 per hit).

[Username17]

Also, I'm now completely convinced of the fun times to be had with a pyramid damage system. The last thing I'd do is say that a character can spend an edge point to in some way directly modify the damage they take as a last resort (eg: spend an edge and roll edge+body to reduce the final damage by 1 per hit).

Why would anyone do that? People can already just spend Edge on their Body tests if they really want to.

Saw Iron Man 2 last night: Why doesn't SR have more kinds of cool super powered armor? "Military Armor" in Arsenal has some stuff, but the upgrade selection is limited. It's the future! Why isn't there more technology like in comic books?

I genuinely don't know why there isn't more power armor and jetpacks. That kind of stuff is thoroughly within Shadowrun's technology level and present in much of its source material. Power armor has no place in the core book, but it should totally happen in the guns n ammo book.

-Username17

[mean_liar]

We did it as a Rigger thing - super-armor was easy, but Humanoid vehicles with badass sensor arrays and mounted weaponry was a Rigged thing.

[spasheridan]

I think a superhero themed campaign would work great in SR. Sure, it breaks the mercenary criminal premise, but would you say that Batman is REALLY that different from a SR character with the RICH edge? Can't you see the Joker as a great BBEG?

[Lokathor]

Why would anyone do that? People can already just spend Edge on their Body tests if they really want to.

"last ditch", as in, "you already spent an edge but didn't manage to soak it down enough"; Or could you at that point spend an extra edge to re-roll the failed dice even without a special mention?

And yeah, the oversized flying humanoid drones thing being remotely directed around is perfect rigging.

[Lokathor]

Question: Would drain damage and fading damage still be individual points of damage plus or minus one per hit either way and so on?

[Ganbare Gincun]

But the big deal is damage. We are straight up going to static damage boxes (everyone has 10), and LMSI damage. Every net hit for the attacker or the soak shifts damage up or down one category, which means that you'll be able to actually die from an 8 meter fall.

Would you also recommend using a staging system for spells that inflict damage? If so, how would altering the Force of a spell modify the level of damage that it inflicts on a target? How would it determine the drain that a spellcaster has to resist after casting the spell? Would you recommend dumping Force altogether and just assign each spell a default damage code that spellcasters can stage upwards with additional successes on their roll to cast the spell? Would there be a flat amount of Drain that spellcasters would have to resist for each spell that they cast? Or would their Drain stage upwards based on either the number of net hits that they rolled or the number of times that they managed to "stage up" the spell to do damage?

[Username17]

But the big deal is damage. We are straight up going to static damage boxes (everyone has 10), and LMSI damage. Every net hit for the attacker or the soak shifts damage up or down one category, which means that you'll be able to actually die from an 8 meter fall.

Would you also recommend using a staging system for spells that inflict damage? If so, how would altering the Force of a spell modify the level of damage that it inflicts on a target? How would it determine the drain that a spellcaster has to resist after casting the spell? Would you recommend dumping Force altogether and just assign each spell a default damage code that spellcasters can stage upwards with additional successes on their roll to cast the spell? Would there be a flat amount of Drain that spellcasters would have to resist for each spell that they cast? Or would their Drain stage upwards based on either the number of net hits that they rolled or the number of times that they managed to "stage up" the spell to do damage?

Damage spells should be rethought. They have been rethought in every previous edition, and they will be rethought in the next one too.

The SR4 damage spells do work, but they don't really work the way people want them to. Functionally, the Magician rolls Magic + Spellcasting (~9 dice or more), and the target gets Willpower + Counterspelling (generally ~6 dice). The Caster gets a net hit, they inflict Force Damage boxes + 1, and they drop the target because they cast their Stunbolt spell at Force 9. People don't like that very much. First of all, they don't like it, because every spell that works also drops the target. Secondly, they don't like the idea of every single attack spell being overcast out the ass. But it does work. People overcast and risk some physical damage (though not very much), and they spend a whole complex action and they one-shot an opponent instead of using two simple actions to drop an opponet with two shots of any other weapon. Magicians do feel useful.

But I think it should be design goal that:

• The Mana Bolts of weak magicians still matter.
• People take damage that isn't incapacitating when hit by mana bolts sometimes.

There are a couple ways to do that, but I suspect the easiest is to simply choose a base damage rating (say, 2) and have it staged up by hits and down by resistance hits. And then straight up say that if you get any hits at all, your spell takes effect, and resistance hits just stage damage down. So you could totally take moderate or light damage. And yeah, that's no bigger than a pistol shot as a Complex Action, but it ignores armor so it still has its uses. You need 2 net hits essentially to drop a fool with a mana bolt. And then people can just accept the normal "Hits Capped by Force" deal when deciding what Force to cast the bolt at.

And yeah, Drain is also a pain. Drain Codes of 7+ just aren't OK when that would cause someone to totally explode.

-Username17

[Ganbare Gincun]

Absolutely not. Player characters aren't different from commoners in SR. Some players are gong to be Morgo the Invulno Troll, and they are supposed to be highly resistant to damage (and switching out of 1:1 damage, they will be), but a lot of player characters are just pedestrians wearing flak vests. They aren't supposed to be more survivable than normal humans. They are normal humans.

Frank, what kind of health/damage system would you recommend using if you wanted to run a game where some humans were tougher and different from normal humans? More like Feng Shui or D&D. Maybe a system with the current damage structure of SR4 where your Strength determined how many "wound points" you had (something along the lines of Strength x 10?), you had an attack roll and a defense roll, and your armor served as "damage reduction" against a certain amount of damage?

[souran]

Saw Iron Man 2 last night: Why doesn't SR have more kinds of cool super powered armor? "Military Armor" in Arsenal has some stuff, but the upgrade selection is limited. It's the future! Why isn't there more technology like in comic books?

You don't want "military" powered armor in SR. The game already has street samuari. They already do a thing, its already near superhuman. They ARE the combat suit. They don't need a combat suit.

However, more than that, combat suits/mecha very rapidly become "the game" and people without them will get left behind. Look at rifts, the whole game was supposed to be JUST glitterboys and in a strange way it still is.

Anyway, from a rules perspective there are two options. Either the battle suits are better than a street sams cyberwear/bioware in which case it makes the street sam obsolete. Or its mostly inferior to cyberware/bioware in which case it has the added disadvantage that you have to put it on to use it and therefore it could be stolen from you. That makes it signifcanlty inferior.

The thing is iron man and the 6 million dollar man fit the SAME playspace. Hell BATMAN and Ironman share about 75% of their character concepts and not just because both are superheros but in the WAY they go about being super heroes. They are both super smart and effectively rely on their homemade gadgets. Hell batmans utility belt is actually OLDER than the entire iron man character and he pulls out shit thats is easily as powerful as the whole god damn suit on a regular basis.

So, while power battle suits and mecha are way super cool, adding them to shadowrun is a TERRIBLE idea.