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Vavrek posted:There's a rule introduced in SR4A, which was posted in this thread some weeks or months ago. Emphasis mine: Oh snap I missed that! OK cool that seems to balance things out. I'll stick to that. Thanks for pointing it out.
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Apr 9, 2013 16:55
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Martello posted:Also, what do you guys think about keeping availability at 10? This is supposed to be a street scum campaign so I think it fits, and there are still plenty of cool weapons and gear available at 10. No high-grade cutting-edge military stuff, no Initiative boosters above Rating 1, no EX-Explosive rounds, etc. Like I said before, Restricted Gear is fine but only if the piece of gear bought along with it makes sense. If you're making a razorboy, Restricted Gear would absolutely make sense for a Spur, for example. And in that case you might as well take the Razorboy quality from Way of the Samurai, because both Way books will be allowed. Lay out the exact rules you want to run and we'll follow. We need to know the tone and setting of the campaign and caps or extensions you want to enforce.
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Apr 9, 2013 17:05
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Martello posted:I was already leaning towards that based on our earlier discussions about melee combat. In my current SR4 PBP game, I just vomited out a 14P attack with a dice pool of 16, followed by a 10P attack with a dice pool of 20. As burst fire, not even long bursts. Granted I'm an adept which means I'm super specialized in automatics, so if I wasn't an adept, it would only be, let's see, 14 and 18 as my dice pools. ( Adepts aren't very good ) My vague point is that melee combat has literally not one single advantage over ranged. I mean yeah, a dude with strength 9 and martial arts quality can swing 12P. Also, a dude with no strength and no quality and fire a gun for 13P, more if you have the right ammo. And then he shoots again. From a distance.
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Apr 9, 2013 17:18
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ProfessorCirno posted:In my current SR4 PBP game, I just vomited out a 14P attack with a dice pool of 16, followed by a 10P attack with a dice pool of 20. As burst fire, not even long bursts. Granted I'm an adept which means I'm super specialized in automatics, so if I wasn't an adept, it would only be, let's see, 14 and 18 as my dice pools. I agree, melee needs to be 2 attacks per phase just like ranged. Think of all the tropes and fluff even from Shadowrun itself where an ELITE BLADE NINJA ADEPT slices and dices through a room of mooks, which is only vaguely possible in the actual rules. There are a billion optional rules that make melee really great, except for the fact that the guy with the gun will always get more actions. What do you mean adepts suck? That is blasphemy.
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Apr 9, 2013 17:25
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Re: melee: What exactly are the circumstances in which it is possible to do more than one melee attack in the same complex action/initiative pass? I know there's the "multiple targets" rule on p. 158 of SR4A, which applies when multiple opponents are within a meter of each other and which splits one's dice pool between them. Does that only apply to combat with a melee weapon and not unarmed combat? How does dual weapon (or fist?) combat affect the rule? This isn't a pressing issue because melee combat, especially melee situations that would invoke the above rule, wasn't really a huge thing in my campaign. I ask because one of my players had a question about rolling up a boxer character after which I realized that aside from knowing for certain that you cannot split dice to attack the same person multiple times in a pass, I know very little about how melee is supposed to work in reality. 
the2ndgenesis fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Apr 9, 2013 |
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Apr 9, 2013 17:35
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Okay, melee = simple action is in. Cybercombat is out, magic is in. I know where I'm going with this now, I'll post the recruitment thread soonish.
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Apr 9, 2013 17:46
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Would "No dodging bullets" rebalance the game away from Mages? I got the impression that bullet doing was supposed to represent diving for cover, anyway. More lethal combat would seem to make the element of surprise, and planning, overwhelmingly vital. I'm cool with lowered availability. My understanding about melee is that it's all about positioning, and, like everything else, surprise. There's a reason guns are popular these days, and it seems the melee weapon adept should be mostly about not getting shot. I need to look up Gunslinger Girl, I vaguely recall Pinocchio was kinda the king of killing gunmen with knives. Not so much little cyborg assassin girls. Guess that means... Adepts suck, Street Samurai rule?
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Apr 9, 2013 17:51
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Melee dudes still need to close the distance. Defending against a melee attack - the Reaction roll - is diving for cover. Dodging is something you can do when you see what's coming at you, like a hand, foot, forehead, sword, knife, missile, whatever the gently caress.
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Apr 9, 2013 17:53
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the2ndgenesis posted:Re: melee: What exactly are the circumstances in which it is possible to do more than one melee attack in the same complex action/initiative pass? Other than splitting your dice pool, the only way to get multiple attacks in one IP is to get the Finishing Move Maneuver in Arsenal. Of course, doing that means you give up your next IP. You can split your dice pool with a single weapon or with unarmed combat.
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Apr 9, 2013 17:55
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So I guess the IRC channel for this thread is dead? There's only like 4 or 5 people in there. 
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Apr 9, 2013 18:19
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Vavrek posted:It's probably a good idea to remember this rule. Guns are already comically more effective at damage than spells are--they're simple actions to a spell's complex, for one. There's no need to nerf stunbolt and boost shotguns both. Anyway, if you want to play a mage and tear poo poo up, it's honestly just like 3e D&D... damage is the sucker's option. Spellcasting 6 + manipulation focus + firebringer totem + Magic 5 + power focus 2 + spellcasting focus 2 = 20 dice to cast Control Mob. Complex action, Control Mob. Next turn, simple action everyone shoot yourselves. Or hell, just summon force 10 spirits. As long as you don't try to bind them you'll be fine.
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Apr 9, 2013 18:29
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ProfessorCirno posted:( Adepts aren't very good ) Adepts are great....at a wide variety of non-combat roles. Adepts can make amazing Faces and Deckers and Riggers and all sorts of things. About the only thing you can say about a melee focused Adept is he can...I don't know, make his fists elemental to help halve really powerful armor? Punch people in the back of their head from 30 feet away and then look shocked and shake his head when they turn around? Rockopolis posted:Would "No dodging bullets" rebalance the game away from Mages? It's possible to balance away from Mages, but you can't ever really balance them. They can do things other people can't, or can't without a bunch of equipment. You have some sweet rear end enhancement that gives you 3 IP passes? A Mage can take one look at you and just remove it. He can make his entire team invisible, he can alter your memory, fix objects with a touch, fly around at will, and all sorts of other crazy poo poo without getting into the ability to summon spirits. And you have absolutely no way of knowing what he can do. With good enough Masking, you won't even know he's a Mage until the poo poo starts going down. A dude with a gun? He may in fact try to shoot you. Someone that's just there and now the entire room is on fire and spiders are crawling out of your penis and you think he just bounced a truck off the head of your troll? There's a reason you kill that guy first. He's *unlikely* to be strong enough or have a varied enough power set to do all that stuff, but you have no way of knowing what he can do. And maybe he is, in fact, just that strong.
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Apr 9, 2013 18:51
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So, is our problem that we are way too focused on combat? It does seem that every Shadowrun discussion does end up as   But yeah, even without combat they are very versatile. Makes me wonder about an all (or at least mostly) Mage game, which would seem balance the characters against each other and... Well I guess they'll eventually be running against people with a strong defense against magic. Minorities posted:So I guess the IRC channel for this thread is dead? There's only like 4 or 5 people in there.
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Apr 9, 2013 19:12
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Rockopolis posted:So, is our problem that we are way too focused on combat? It's #shadowrun on SynIRC, but mostly nobody talks in there. We should fix that, so everybody join #shadowrun and chat!
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Apr 9, 2013 19:14
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Rockopolis posted:So, is our problem that we are way too focused on combat? You can do a lot of different things in Shadowrun, but if you can't be competent in combat you won't last long.
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Apr 9, 2013 19:25
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Bigass Moth posted:You can do a lot of different things in Shadowrun, but if you can't be competent in combat you won't last long. Eh, depends on the game, I suppose. Someone always pops out of the woodwork when posts like this come up to say, "In my games, if combat occurs, you already screwed up and lost". Me, I prefer not to make half the game and a lot of archetypes obsolete, so bullets fly all the drat time.
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Apr 9, 2013 23:19
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Boogaleeboo posted:Adepts are great....at a wide variety of non-combat roles. Adepts can make amazing Faces and Deckers and Riggers and all sorts of things. About the only thing you can say about a melee focused Adept is he can...I don't know, make his fists elemental to help halve really powerful armor? Punch people in the back of their head from 30 feet away and then look shocked and shake his head when they turn around? I don't see where you're coming from. From my recollection there is literally not one adept power that helps decking or rigging outside the generic "increased ability." I'll grant Faces, but with everything else, Adept... Well, here's the thing. The general rule in Shadowrun is that bonus skill points are typically hard and expensive. Adept powers, qualities, racial abilities, etc. Unless you're using gear. Gear - including 'ware - is ludicrously cheap in how it offers bonus skill points or outright replaces them like the lockpicker. A +10 quality could get you +2 to a skill. An adept power that costs half a drat point could give you +1 to a skill. Synthacardium gives you +1 to four point, and each rank costs you four karma in nuyen - that's insane. And it costs less essence then Great Leap costs adept points! Same with Tailored Pheromones - incredible, incredibly cheap for what it does. Muscle toner is put on just about every character that ever means to fire a gun because of how cheap it is to raise your most important skill. Neocortical Nanoware and PuSHeD covers your logic skills AND stacks with Cerebral Boosters which just flat out increases logic. This isn't even going into non-'ware gear like medkits that render First Aid skill pointless, or auto lockpicks which do the same for lockpicking. Adept shines in the few small places where it's either more difficult to super specialize (an adept built JUST for combat can do stuff sammies can't, at the cost of only being good at combat, ever ) or where they're oh so rare few special powers work (Speaker adepts have a drat good number of useful powers that can't be easily replicated). Other then that, even in the realm of what Adepts are explicitly meant to do - jump around and break physics and be superhuman athletic - they fall to the curse of easy, cheap 'ware. Personally speaking, I'd like adepts to have powers that make them work not "better" then augged up sammies, but different. Give combat adepts powers that remove penalties to attacking while running and moving - and, when that power is increased, it outright gives bonuses, so gunslinger adepts are mechanically encouraged to dive between pillars and leap down from overhangings with guns blazing as doves fly behind them. Melee adepts don't need bullets because they move like one - or they're ninja adepts and they may as well be a literal ghost. Basically the big thing with adepts used to be that they were leaping a million feet in the air and moving faster then sound; that should be mechanically encouraged! Right now, Speaker adepts are already there; they have unique powers that DO cover the whole "The Face, but different" aspect. Bigass Moth posted:I agree, melee needs to be 2 attacks per phase just like ranged. Think of all the tropes and fluff even from Shadowrun itself where an ELITE BLADE NINJA ADEPT slices and dices through a room of mooks, which is only vaguely possible in the actual rules. There are a billion optional rules that make melee really great, except for the fact that the guy with the gun will always get more actions. It's downright bizarre how there's almost no ways to boost speed. You can have freaky satyr legs, freaky loopy legs, and either wear roller blades or replace your feet with hovercrafts. I'm not even sure it was intentional; it just feels like none of the developers ever even thought that people would want to increase speed. This is a game where you can increase your reactions to the point of carefully aiming and headshotting four people in like three seconds, but you can't run five feet faster.
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Apr 10, 2013 00:45
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Recruitment thread is up. NYC Metro area, focused on everything outside Manhattan for now. Low-level street scum. Drugs. Combat. Magic. Crime. Shadowrun.
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Apr 10, 2013 01:33
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ProfessorCirno posted:Give combat adepts powers that remove penalties to attacking while running and moving ....adept centering is exactly that?
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Apr 10, 2013 01:52
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For the Saints Run game thats going on, my unarmed troll adept took Celerity and Satyr Legs, so he can move 30/70, which is about 50 mph. Also his adept centering will be running, when he gets there.
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Apr 10, 2013 01:58
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Quornes posted:For the Saints Run game thats going on, my unarmed troll adept took Celerity and Satyr Legs, so he can move 30/70, which is about 50 mph. Also his adept centering will be running, when he gets there. Get some skimmer discs on that bitch and have a spirit use the Movemement power for him and he might blast right into orbit.
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Apr 10, 2013 03:21
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Boogaleeboo posted:....adept centering is exactly that? It covers the first part in that it can remove any penalty to Foightin' and Action stuff, but it doesn't really give you any reason to actually use it for that, especially when you're probably using it to cover recoil in the even where you don't use two Sakura light pistols. There's still no real reason not to just hide behind cover like everyone else, whereas I feel the fluff of adepts is one geared more for dramatically leaping in bullet time with guns blazing or dashing past the bullets and doing some kind of somersault leap to slice at them from behind.
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Apr 10, 2013 03:23
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Heightened Concentration as designed is kind of a piece of poo poo that doesn't explain itself well, but the intention was for it to basically be like that. You turn it on, pick a single negative modifier, and then can ignore up to Magic penalties it causes until the cows come home. It's function was pretty unclear by text, but they've said that's what they meant after the fact. It at least had the good sense to say it worked with adept centering. So the two of them basically wipe away an arbitrary number of penalties, especially as you get more studly. Beyond that the simple fact is that Adepts got kind of screwed by the melee rules and not having a speed boost this time around, to the point where a Mage picking themselves up with Telekinesis can move faster. Hell, the Mage can probably move his entire team faster with a large enough dice pool.
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Apr 10, 2013 04:32
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Boogaleeboo posted:Heightened Concentration as designed is kind of a piece of poo poo that doesn't explain itself well, but the intention was for it to basically be like that. You turn it on, pick a single negative modifier, and then can ignore up to Magic penalties it causes until the cows come home. It's function was pretty unclear by text, but they've said that's what they meant after the fact. It at least had the good sense to say it worked with adept centering. So the two of them basically wipe away an arbitrary number of penalties, especially as you get more studly. Hey, you know what's a single negative modifier? Sustaining spells. Doesn't that make Mystic Adepts with 1 point in Adept for Heightened Concentration pretty terrifying? You could be doing the work of three sustaining foci of an arbitrary rating right out the gate. I guess the vagueness of the wording gives a GM some wiggle room to deal with it.
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Apr 10, 2013 05:48
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Digital Osmosis posted:Hey, you know what's a single negative modifier? Sustaining spells. Doesn't that make Mystic Adepts with 1 point in Adept for Heightened Concentration pretty terrifying? You could be doing the work of three sustaining foci of an arbitrary rating right out the gate. I guess the vagueness of the wording gives a GM some wiggle room to deal with it. Each sustaining spell is it's own modifier. Which is actually the point of Heightened Concentration - it essentially gives you one free sustained spell, which makes sense since mystic adept works best as an adept who buffs himself.
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Apr 10, 2013 06:19
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Boogaleeboo posted:About the only thing you can say about a melee focused Adept is he can...I don't know, make his fists elemental to help halve really powerful armor? If you pick electricity as your elemental power (why would you pick anything else?) you'll have a pair of tazers built into your body. Of course just buying one at any store is superior in every way except that you need reload or recharge it. You could even build one into your body using cyberware too. Possibly there is even some weird bioware that grafts electric eel thingies to your skin. ProfessorCirno posted:Each sustaining spell is it's own modifier. Which is actually the point of Heightened Concentration - it essentially gives you one free sustained spell, which makes sense since mystic adept works best as an adept who buffs himself.
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Apr 10, 2013 10:01
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Poil posted:If you pick electricity as your elemental power (why would you pick anything else?) you'll have a pair of tazers built into your body. Of course just buying one at any store is superior in every way except that you need reload or recharge it. You could even build one into your body using cyberware too. Possibly there is even some weird bioware that grafts electric eel thingies to your skin. It doesn't! It simply ignores a single one negative ice pool modifier of a value up to their Magic attribute. Keep in mind you still need to CAST that force 4 spell, which would mean splitting your Magic somewhat fiercely. Heightened Concentration is really one of the only things that makes mystic adept somewhat do-able because they're splitting themselves decidedly thin.
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Apr 10, 2013 13:32
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ProfessorCirno posted:It's downright bizarre how there's almost no ways to boost speed. You can have freaky satyr legs, freaky loopy legs, and either wear roller blades or replace your feet with hovercrafts. I'm not even sure it was intentional; it just feels like none of the developers ever even thought that people would want to increase speed. This is a game where you can increase your reactions to the point of carefully aiming and headshotting four people in like three seconds, but you can't run five feet faster.
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Apr 10, 2013 21:59
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Some tidbits about SR5 mechanics from Dumpshock (a poster there got to playtest at PAX East):quote:Hi guys, I just got back from PAX East today. I unexpectedly got a chance to use a friend's extra ticket and went mainly to check out the Catalyst booth and get in on some sweet SR5 action! To a lesser extent I was also interested in Crossfire, however there was a bit of a line and I never actually got a chance to play it. I did see that it seemed to be popular and always had at least 5 people playing it- good sign. Initiative is back to a SR3-like system, which is probably for the better.
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Apr 12, 2013 17:38
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Bigass Moth posted:Initiative is back to a SR3-like system, which is probably for the better.
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Apr 12, 2013 22:42
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Nyaa posted:How does init boosting stuffs like wired 2 works in SR3? Just give like 5-10 initiative score? The old initiative system worked like this: You got an initiative of Reaction + initiative dice. Base reaction was (Quickness + Intelligence)/2, and base initiative die was 1D6. Init boosting worked by either increasing reaction and/or by givng more dice — the better stuff did both — or, more passively, by boosting int and quick. Wired reflexes, for instance, gave +2 Rea +1D6 per level (so +6 Rea +3D6 at Wired III). Boosted reflexes only gave reaction for the first level, and at III, it gave something like +3 Rea +2D6. Initiative was calculated by rolling your final tally of dice and adding your reaction, and then, each 10th gave you one complex action. Whomever had the most went first, did their turn, then subtracted 10 from their initiative — repeat until everyone has done everything and no longer sits on positive reaction. Eg. 4/4 Int/Quick and Wired II gave you 4+4 reaction, 3D6 dice, and you'd habitually score somewhere in the upper teens, giving you two or occasionally three actions: eg. one on initiative 19, one on initiatve 9. A slightly luckier roll of 21 would give you three actions: on 21, 11, and 1.
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Apr 13, 2013 00:31
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Thanks. Hurt my head to absorb that, but quiet enlightening.  I wonder if it would be more interesting if types of action cost initiative score instead. Like how AP works in Shadowrun Return game. With 10 score as one IP, and math it using the following rule. quote:1 free + 2 simple Nyaa fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Apr 13, 2013 |
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Apr 13, 2013 01:14
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Poil posted:If you pick electricity as your elemental power (why would you pick anything else?) Did they fix it so that sonic doesn't ignore all armor anymore?
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Apr 13, 2013 02:41
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If in 5e iniative boosters only add dice and not a base number, doesn't that mean you'd need wired 3 to get another pass, on average? Okay, reading it again you get one die to roll to start with, so wired 2 gives you the 10 average you'd need, and the extra die from wired 3 either helps you get your second action if you roll poorly or gives you a third if you roll well... That's a pretty clever way of setting it up, then. It also seems to remove the ability to get four initiative passes, which always seemed really unnecessary in the first place.
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Apr 13, 2013 05:54
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Most of that doesn't really sound bad, so color me as a bit more optimistic. Edit: It DOES make Reaction and Intuition sorta "god stats" mind you.
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Apr 13, 2013 06:11
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We don't know what the other stats will really influence at this point, so it's hard to say what the dump stats will be. Initiative has always been king, so this doesn't really change that. http://www.feartheboot.com/ftb/index.php/archives/3153 http://www.feartheboot.com/ftb/index.php/archives/3164 Some of the comments make it sounds like they are going to buff cyber and/or gimp bioware since we've gone so far away from the cyberpunk ideals. Someone on dumpshock took the time to listen and give highlights: quote:Part 1 (Ignoring the stuff about how Mark started his job at Catalyst etc.) Bigass Moth fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Apr 13, 2013 |
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Apr 13, 2013 13:39
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Get rid of everything related to the Horrors as well and things will be gravy for me.
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Apr 13, 2013 19:25
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PunkBoy posted:Get rid of everything related to the Horrors as well and things will be gravy for me. Horrors?
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Apr 13, 2013 19:27
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Bigass Moth posted:Some of the comments make it sounds like they are going to buff cyber and/or gimp bioware since we've gone so far away from the cyberpunk ideals. You know what I was just thinking...where is the heavy cyberware in the "cyberpunk ideal?" Is that ideal from Shadowrun 1E or is it from Neuromancer or what? Because if you go back to Gibson's seminal work, there really isn't much in the way of significant cyberware. You have datajacks, eye implants, the monowire thumb from Johnny Mnemonic, and maybe a few arm prosthetics here and there. But for the most part everything else is bioware. That ninja with the monowire thumb was "vat-grown in Chiba" just like the Tessier-Ashpool family ninja in Neuromancer. Molly has the blades (razorgirl/gillette) and the eyes but I seem to remember the rest of her enhancements being bio-stuff. The muscleboys from Johnny Mnemonic all have vat-grown muscles - Muscle Augmentation, not Muscle Replacement. Hardwired has more cyber stuff, but there's also plenty of organic enhancements and performance enhancing drugs. I guess what I'm trying to say is that for cyberpunk, I think the cyberware and bioware has always gone hand-in-hand, neither being "more cyberpunk" than the other.
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Apr 13, 2013 19:32
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Was Peter Riviera's hologram stuff cyber? I can't imagine how it could possibly be bioware. EDIT: Also, the Dixie Flatline is basically a cyber-person.
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Apr 13, 2013 19:55
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