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Kai Tave posted:I don't dislike crunchy games as a rule, I actually like a game that's got a decent amount of meat on the system, but my problem with Shadowrun is that a lot of the crunch it has is aimless and pointless, crunch for the sake of having crunch/because it's always been there and the system is basically 25+ years of successively iterating the same system over and over again rather than crunch with a purpose. It would possibly help if the designers for whatever edition of Shadowrun narrowed down exactly what they wanted Shadowrun to be...steely-eyed professional mercenaries, gutterpunks and explosions, grim and gritty or action movie mentality, etc. Unfortunately the answer to that is usually "oh, all of that and more," which means the system tends to suffer from a lack of focus. I'm not sure that it's that particular mix of themes that is really causing the problems. I still see the fundamental issue with SR as being the fact that it doesn't have a game system — it has three… or four… or five… all of which have been accumulated and iterated haphazardly, randomly, and in isolation from each other over the many editions so that none of it fits properly with everything else. We have basic skill usage, which intersects with magic usage (although the latter adds completely new mechanics), and it intersects with matrix usage (which also has additional mechanics), and it intersects with vehicle usage (that adds new mechanics), and it throws in the cyberpunk biomod stuff with cyberware, bioware, nanoware (each of which tends to add new mechanics), and then of course all of that interacts with everything else (since magic has its own kind-of-biomods in the form of sustaining and anchoring and foci and spirits and omg-lets-not-even-begin-to-look-at-adepts and… and… and…). By “interact” I mean “mix, often contradict, sometime complement, and never in equal and thoughtful measure”. As it is, the only real intersection between (most) of those systems right now is Attribute + Skill + [haphazard bonus] = dice pool, roll and count successes. Oh, and maybe there are resisted rolls at times. How much is needed to actually succeed? Who knows! That will vary with the (sub)system you're in. Almost every other detail will vary with the system being used at the moment and in the end you just end up with a ton of rules-layering and munchking:esque combinations over those different system boundaries to squeeze one more +1 out of the totality of the systems involved. I feel that, if all of that could be mashed in the same monolithic rule space — where functionally, magic = matrix = cyberware = [fancy addition of the week] — some of those problems would go away. Maybe it would become dry and tasteless, but at least it would be less messy and far more consistent if the question wasn't “what hidden modifiers to initiative are there in these different systems and how do I best combine them?” but more along the lines of “here is initiative, here is how you improve it using magic/cyber/sprits/drugs/matrix trickery — which one do you want (they all do the same numbers-wise, but each will be available in different ways and has its own way of being disrupted)?” The system would talk about some kind of “function blocks” that you put together, and rather than inventing new rules every chapter, it would just be a matter of describing those blocks. Instead of an open bar with free mixing (and the predictable horrible results), it would be a very strict bartender asking you to pick your poison. So in the Magic chapter, it would describe “Improve initiative” as “Gives an initiative boost (see page xx) equal to rating. Cost: drain; Die roll: [attribute + skill]”. In the cyberware chapter, it would describe “Wired reflexes” as “Gives an initiative boost (see page xx) equal to rating. Cost: essence; Die roll: automatic”. On page xx, it would describe the mechanics of the “Initiative Boost” function and how (as with everything else) you can only get one of them at a time. Since the effect is always the same and is limited to one, it suddenly becomes possible to balanced the costs and availabilities of the options in a sensible and consistent manner. …and then you could start catering to different play styles and themes by fiddling with those fundamental building blocks. Maybe, in a mirrorshades setting, the Dodge (Ranged) function is simply not available. Maybe in the mohawk setting, the concept of cost is… ehm… malleable, which seems nice at first but it also means that the street gang you're harassing will pull out machine guns and grenade launchers, Predator 2-style, and start blasting away. You wanted more explosions, right?
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Oct 28, 2014 13:55
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They also did a cyberpunk version of Rolemaster (Cyberspace) which has one of my favorite supplements. Death Valley Free Prison. http://smile.amazon.com/Death-Valley-Free-Prison-Cyberspace/dp/1558061290/ref=smi_www_rcolv2_go_smi?_encoding=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0
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Oct 28, 2014 18:12
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Tolan posted:How easy would it be to graft magic systems from other parts of SW into it? It wouldn't be hard. It already has a system for psychic powers that are basically magic anyway, so you might be able to get away with little more than reskinning.
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Oct 28, 2014 19:17
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Tippis posted:<same old long-winded rant> I think we're approaching the same point from different angles. The reason that Shadowrun has all these various systems and sub-systems and various moving parts layered haphazardly together is because it's not a very coherent game. A game doesn't have to be coherent, but if you have specific goals in mind it helps you pare down all the cruft and moving pieces that don't mesh well together. You can also go the other direction and be more like a toolkit but toolkit games have a tendency to accumulate rules and systems as well (see Spycraft 2.0 which does several of the things you mention, including a whole section of switches that alter fundamental aspects of the game to deliver different experiences from making crits work differently to granting bonus feats to changing how explosions work, but SC2.0 makes Shadowrun look like Over the Edge and doesn't even have rules for cyberware or magic).
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Oct 28, 2014 19:43
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Kai Tave posted:I think we're approaching the same point from different angles. The reason that Shadowrun has all these various systems and sub-systems and various moving parts layered haphazardly together is because it's not a very coherent game. A game doesn't have to be coherent, but if you have specific goals in mind it helps you pare down all the cruft and moving pieces that don't mesh well together. Actually there are supplements for SC2.0 that do have rules for magic and magical races( and Transformers and GI J.O.E....)
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Oct 28, 2014 20:18
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Kai Tave posted:I think we're approaching the same point from different angles. The reason that Shadowrun has all these various systems and sub-systems and various moving parts layered haphazardly together is because it's not a very coherent game. A game doesn't have to be coherent, but if you have specific goals in mind it helps you pare down all the cruft and moving pieces that don't mesh well together. I suppose. The core point seems to be that, outside of (maybe) 1st Ed, no-one has really sat down and said “what is it I want this system to be able to do?” and then created something that does that. Granted, 1E was a mess in its own right — the whole TN# above six + rule of six, and the different levels of staging successes immediately come to mind — but at least it seemed to have approximately the same rules work across the entire game. It would actually be interesting to try to see the whole thing with completely new eyes and for every item ask the rather basic question “Do I actually need rules for this?” (or, conversely, “why aren't there rules for this?”). I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of it could just be thrown out with absolutely no repercussions because it is just historical cruft at this point.
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Oct 28, 2014 21:03
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Tippis posted:no-one has really sat down and said “what is it I want this system to be able to do?” This entire hobby dot txt, to be honest.
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Oct 28, 2014 23:09
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And then there are those of us who enjoy rule minutia.
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Oct 29, 2014 19:31
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Well, to a point, sure. But I feel like I don't quite agree with all your viewpoints because this edition of Shadowrun is the first book I actually tried to sit down and learn, while most of you have sat through all the bullshit of previous editions. As far as I'm concerned the biggest mess is the modifiers, and if I was running a game I'd be fully prepared to handwave a bunch of that. Along with the rules for improving attributes and skills, taking weeks or months, that's about it. Oh, and non-standard ammo, that'd be subtracted from the final payout. But that's just me. It may be because this is the first system I tried to learn, but I vastly prefer a pool of d6s over having to keep track of various weird shapes of dice and having to have at least three sets handy because you never know what you'll need.
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Oct 30, 2014 09:25
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Doc Dee posted:It may be because this is the first system I tried to learn, but I vastly prefer a pool of d6s over having to keep track of various weird shapes of dice and having to have at least three sets handy because you never know what you'll need. Top tip: stay away from the FASA editions of Earthdawn, where they take “what shape dice do I need” to heights never dreamed of by man. There, the rating of your skill/talent/action/whatever is the sum of the averages of as small a number of dice as possible. Very clear, you see. In other words, if you have a rating of 6, then you roll a D4 and a D6 because the average result on a D4 is 2.5 and the average of a D6 is 3.5; 2.5+3.5=6. If your rating is 12, one might think that you'd double that and roll 2D4 + 2D6, but no — fewest dice is D12 (6.5) + D10 (5.5). For some reason, every char sheet, GM screen, or other player aid had a conversion table for the above somewhere on it… 
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Oct 30, 2014 13:47
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 Why would anyone use that kind of dice system? Poil fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Oct 30, 2014 |
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Oct 30, 2014 22:48
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Poil posted:
My guess is that they were going for something like a simple normal distribution curve without wanting to involve buckets of dice. Basically, the rating (I don't remember the exact terminology right now) was what you would be statistically most likely to roll on your dice, and would thus be a good indication of what kind of difficulty level you'd be statistically likely to succeed at. It wasn't quite as nasty in practice, since you just looked at the table and grabbed the right dice, but there was absolutely no intuitive sense for what dice were actually connected to any given level and they could vary widely if your rating changed by just one point. After a while you might learn a few by rote repetition, but that's about it. Good thing the actual setting and theme was spectacularly fun. Kind of reminds me of another FASA game… hmmm.
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Oct 31, 2014 00:47
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Tippis posted:Top tip: stay away from the FASA editions of Earthdawn, where they take “what shape dice do I need” to heights never dreamed of by man.
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Oct 31, 2014 01:17
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Zereth posted:Wait THAT'S what the Step system is based on? I never understood how they came up with that poo poo back in the day. Steps! That's what they were called.  And yes. It wasn't exactly obvious, but there were some hints if you had ever used or studied dice averages for anything (another popular game around these parts listed averages to give “normal” monster stats for GMs who didn't want to roll attribute dice for everything he threw at the players). From that perspective, the give-aways were stuff like 7 = 2D6, 11 = 2D10, and 21 = 2D20.
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Oct 31, 2014 01:40
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Doc Dee posted:It may be because this is the first system I tried to learn, but I vastly prefer a pool of d6s over having to keep track of various weird shapes of dice and having to have at least three sets handy because you never know what you'll need. My problem with the Shadowrun 5th edition dice system is the number of dice you're required to roll. An average human doing something in their job rolls six dice. An average player character rolls something like fifteen when doing the thing they were hired to do - it's a bit too much for my taste. When you find yourself including a rule like "you can buy a hit for four dice" in your game, it's a sign that your dice system's getting a bit out of hand.
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Oct 31, 2014 11:08
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Gort posted:My problem with the Shadowrun 5th edition dice system is the number of dice you're required to roll. An average human doing something in their job rolls six dice. An average player character rolls something like fifteen when doing the thing they were hired to do - it's a bit too much for my taste. This is something I like about the Legend of the Five Rings RPG. It's a d10 system, and you may only ever roll 10d10 -- ratings either don't get that high or become automatic hits at some ratio above it, so you're not managing crazy dice pools.
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Oct 31, 2014 14:20
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The One Roll Engine has a similar limit on how many dice you can ever roll, capping itself at 10 because at 11+ you would literally automatically be rolling a set every time (there are still ways to automatically do this but they don't involve bumping your dice pool higher and higher). I'm curious if there's any real benefit, statistics-wise, to using a buckets-o'-d6's system in the first place.
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Oct 31, 2014 17:49
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Gort posted:My problem with the Shadowrun 5th edition dice system is the number of dice you're required to roll. An average human doing something in their job rolls six dice. An average player character rolls something like fifteen when doing the thing they were hired to do - it's a bit too much for my taste. Honestly, there's only one roll in which rolling dice has ever been a problem for my group: damage resistance. It's sort of silly that while standard pools for almost everything else hovers between 6 and 16, damage resist/armor pools can flop up into the high 20s or 30s. Since buying hits is a 4/1 and it's all or nothing, most of the time the player is unlikely to bother - my one Troll usually does better than that and can spend Edge besides. Still though, it hasn't been a huge factor. Speaking of which - is there any kind of 'ping' damage rule in SR that I'm unaware of? Like, I know that Physical gets downgraded to Stun if the final damage total is lower than the adjusted armor rating of the character in question, but are there any weapons or rules that introduce minimum damage? I feel like when he's on a hot streak my troll can just walk into gunfire for most of the night with minimal harm and I'm beginning to think I can't reasonably threaten him without rockets.
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Oct 31, 2014 17:52
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Mendrian posted:Speaking of which - is there any kind of 'ping' damage rule in SR that I'm unaware of? Like, I know that Physical gets downgraded to Stun if the final damage total is lower than the adjusted armor rating of the character in question, but are there any weapons or rules that introduce minimum damage? I feel like when he's on a hot streak my troll can just walk into gunfire for most of the night with minimal harm and I'm beginning to think I can't reasonably threaten him without rockets. My advice is 'don't.' Let him feel borderline indestructible. Characters should feel powerful when within their specialty, not challenged. A character who takes no damage most of the time should feel line a walking tank and, if you want to make combat challenging for them, should be challenged in other ways. For example, they're not fighting to avoid getting killed, they're fighting to keep their vehicle intact enough to exfiltrate. They're fighting to keep fire off the fragile team members whole they do something delicate. Let them be as good at being indestructible as they built their character to be, and make things interesting by having fights be more complex than "not-die until the other guys die." Him being able to wade through small arms fire is no more or less wrong than a sniper being able to hit staggeringly long-range targets or the stealth mage being able to obviate obstacles with various invisibility spells. Unless you're having problems other than him being too good at his specialty of not-dying?
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Oct 31, 2014 18:09
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JerikTelorian posted:This is something I like about the Legend of the Five Rings RPG. It's a d10 system, and you may only ever roll 10d10 -- ratings either don't get that high or become automatic hits at some ratio above it, so you're not managing crazy dice pools. Ironically, the Roll/Keep system you're describing is horribly broken with larger dice pools. The problem in the roll-keep system is that it's typically computed as [Skill+Stat]K[Stat], where you roll the first number and keep the [Stat] highest dice. Then to avoid rolling more then 10 you 'roll them over', so 11k5 would become 10k6 and 14k3 would become 10k7. That's fine and all, except that additional kept dice aren't really great: you end up spending a ton of points to get an increase of like ~+3. Then when you get to 10k10 and you add another dice, you get +10 to the result instead of rolling an 11th dice, and that has a massive increase on your expected result (it increases it from 55 to 65), and every other dice thereafter just gets excessive. The system starts out fine, but it falls apart horribly at the top levels, first by offering almost no reward to increasing abilities, and then magically increasing them a whole lot. So a small amount of min/maxing is worthless, and a lot makes the system unravel. I found this out on accident when I made a character with some huge stats and then, too late, realized that the roll/keep system can't handle that pressure. I think continuing to roll dice instead of dramatically increasing the result is a better fit, and that's why I don't mind Shadowrun's excessive dice pools. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Oct 31, 2014 |
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Oct 31, 2014 18:24
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On the topic of die rolling systems (so not entirely off-topic for the thread), I've recently grown very fond of the system used in Mutant: Year Zero (or at least its Swedish release — not sure when the English one is due). However, it's perhaps not as universally applicable as one might like since it explicitly includes some very Storytelling-like features. On the surface, it looks somewhat familiar: you have 1-5 dice from your attribute, 1-5 dice from your skill, and certain equipment may give additional dice. They're all D6:s and are coloured by type (this will matter a little later). If you roll a 6 on any one die, your action succeeds, period. If you roll more than one, you can use the additional ones to buy various bonus effects depending on what you're rolling for (a knockdown, a disarm, an extra quiet or extra quick action, a more insightful discovery etc.). Now the fun part starts: you can choose to “push your luck”. You take all attribute and equipment dice that didn't come up as a 6 or a 1 and any skill dice that didn't come up as a 6 (this is why the colour coding matters — so you know which dice are which type), and then you re-roll them and keep the result. The upside is that you get a second chance to roll sixes, the downside is that every 1 rolled, including on the first round, counts as a “setback”. A setback on an equipment die means your equipment suffers damage; a setback on an attribute die means the attribute suffers damage and is temporarily reduced, but you also gain the game's rough equivalent of Karma or Edge, which is used to power the eponymous mutations. So on the one hand, pushing your luck drastically increase the chance that you'll get that single success you need, but it also significantly increases the chances that you'll be rolling fewer dice for a while until you can rest, recuperate and repair, and you get paid for that risk by getting more “power points” for even more spectacular actions in the future. You are also pushed towards pushing your luck because if you don't get that one success, you fail. Also period. You can't try the same thing again unless the player figures out a new and different way of attacking the problem (this is where the storytelling bits come in), so if you get no successes from your initial roll, pushing your luck might be your only chance of succeeding ever. This neatly abstracts away a lot of the back-and-forth stuff that often happens: two characters can't hide behind cover and shoot at each other until someone gets a lucky shot. If both fail, they have both failed, and at least one of them has to flank or out-manouevre the other, or do something drastic to create a completely new situation that warrants a new skill test — or they can both just keep wasting ammo on an action that has already failed. Tippis fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Oct 31, 2014 |
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Oct 31, 2014 19:01
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I like rolling piles of dice.  I also like, in theory, super crunchy systems and more simulation style playing. But, I defiantly came to realize that any post in a pbp game that required any complex actions was annoying to do and took forever. What I really want is a crunchy, detailed system and an intern to do the mechanical parts of my posts.
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Oct 31, 2014 19:16
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Mendrian posted:Honestly, there's only one roll in which rolling dice has ever been a problem for my group: damage resistance. It's sort of silly that while standard pools for almost everything else hovers between 6 and 16, damage resist/armor pools can flop up into the high 20s or 30s. Since buying hits is a 4/1 and it's all or nothing, most of the time the player is unlikely to bother - my one Troll usually does better than that and can spend Edge besides. If your troll feels invincible, your GM hasn't properly introduced you to mages yet. All the armor in the world can't touch a stunbolt or manabolt. However, it's just as jagadaishio said. Your troll being indestructible just means the challenges for him are more often going to be keeping everyone around him alive as well.
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Oct 31, 2014 19:49
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QuantumNinja posted:Ironically, the Roll/Keep system you're describing is horribly broken with larger dice pools. The problem in the roll-keep system is that it's typically computed as [Skill+Stat]K[Stat], where you roll the first number and keep the [Stat] highest dice. Then to avoid rolling more then 10 you 'roll them over', so 11k5 would become 10k6 and 14k3 would become 10k7. That's fine and all, except that additional kept dice aren't really great: you end up spending a ton of points to get an increase of like ~+3. Then when you get to 10k10 and you add another dice, you get +10 to the result instead of rolling an 11th dice, and that has a massive increase on your expected result (it increases it from 55 to 65), and every other dice thereafter just gets excessive. The system starts out fine, but it falls apart horribly at the top levels, first by offering almost no reward to increasing abilities, and then magically increasing them a whole lot. So a small amount of min/maxing is worthless, and a lot makes the system unravel. I found this out on accident when I made a character with some huge stats and then, too late, realized that the roll/keep system can't handle that pressure. It's actually +5, not +10, so each dice after 10k10 is actually of lesser value since the big thing is that you reroll and add to any 10's. L5R in general encourages less super specialization and more well roundedness though, so you shouldn't actually hit that unless you're in a very big superpowered game.
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Oct 31, 2014 20:08
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ProfessorCirno posted:It's actually +5, not +10, so each dice after 10k10 is actually of lesser value since the big thing is that you reroll and add to any 10's. It was +10 in Seventh Sea, so I assumed it was the same. +5 is a lot more reasonable. Even so, I suspect that the extra +5 is still better than the opportunities for explosion, but AnyDice chokes on that computation so I'll do it in an actual language this evening. It's certainly not better than the +10 of Seventh Sea, but in general L5R is a much saner game. I do appreciate the flavor of "be a normal person, not someone who is bad at crosswords but amazing at using a gun" that L5R/7S seems to encourage, and I wish that more systems supported it as the natural course of play. That said, there's another problem which is that skill specialization is dwarfed by stat investments: if you have like 5 strength, you roll 5k5, which is better than your buddy with three strength and two Running who rolls 5k3 for his running check. Shadowrun is nice because you can reasonably make a character with mediocre stats but a few really great skills. I think that for all of its worldbuilding faults, the underlying mechanical system of the Game of Thrones system does Roll/Keep much better, with skills tied directly to attributes and requiring you to increase them "together". It forces characters to feel more role-tied, which I think makes for a more dynamic party than accidentally being better at picking locks than the thief because you maxed agility to fight better with a sword. Liquid Communism posted:If your troll feels invincible, your GM hasn't properly introduced you to mages yet. All the armor in the world can't touch a stunbolt or manabolt. However, it's just as jagadaishio said. Your troll being indestructible just means the challenges for him are more often going to be keeping everyone around him alive as well. Trolls getting rocked by mages is a really bread-and-butter thing in Shadowrun, and I hope that this happens! I hope the troll then becomes deathly afraid of mages after that and takes Geek The Mage to a whole new extreme.
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Oct 31, 2014 20:56
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Liquid Communism posted:If your troll feels invincible, your GM hasn't properly introduced you to mages yet. All the armor in the world can't touch a stunbolt or manabolt. However, it's just as jagadaishio said. Your troll being indestructible just means the challenges for him are more often going to be keeping everyone around him alive as well. They can't, but Manabolt and Stunbolt are significantly less scary in SR5 than they were in previous editions because they only do damage based on net hits and you can apply Full Defense. Manabolt and Stunbolt have gone from being instant death for unsupported mundane characters to something that's probably only doing a few points of damage a round if you have a decent Willpower score. This is a good thing for the game because those spells were utter horseshit in previous editions, but it does make this particular bit of advice less applicable than it was previously.
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Oct 31, 2014 22:58
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The main balancing in L5R is that a) costs, b) insight, c) bonuses, and d) game expectations. A new skill costs that new skill in xp. Raising kenjutsu, your sword technique, from 4 to 5, costs 5 xp. New stats cost the new stat number times 4 - quite a bit more! For the cost of going from strength 4 to strength 5, you could go from Swords 1 to Swords 6! In L5R you have a insight and insight rank. Insight is more or less the sum of most of your abilities together in a number, and insight rank is broadly speaking your "level." Higher IR gives you faster initiative (and in L5R, initiative wins fights) and more abilities in your school (or class). The thing is, insight is the sum of all your skills and your rings - which means boosting SWORD from 9 to 10 gives you 1 insight for 10 xp, while boosting Artisan: Poetry from 0 to 1 costs one xp for that same 1 insight. Likewise with stats - each ring is a physical and mental stat together (Fire is Agility and Intelligence for example) and your ring is the lower of the two stats, so even your super powerful awesome samurai is going to need to boost intelligence. School abilities are typically very potent, and again, initiative IS a fight winner, so it's important to keep your IR high. Each skill gains bonuses on increasing it. At kenjutsu 3, you gain +1k0 to all sword damage rolls - the equivalent of an additional point of strength. At kenjutsu 5, you can draw as a free action, which means you can draw and attack on the same turn (and that's a big deal). At kenjutsu 7, your damage explodes on 9's, which, again, can be a HUGE damage boost. And of course, you're expected to be samurai. That means you're likely going to find yourself in court at some point, and your courtier can't handle everything. In Rokugan the pen very well CAN be mightier then the sword, and being a rude brutish thug could mean anything from having to accept duels from potentially much better duelists, to outright dishonoring your family and having to literally kill yourself to make up for it. So there's sort of a balance at play. If you have really high stats, you probably don't have very high insight, so you don't have all your cool school techniques, If you super focus on one thing, again, your insight suffers, and you kinda need to have at least some modicum of social skill as a bushi or shugenja (and if you're a courtier, you generally require more skills and some advantages over either). That isn't to say the game itself is balanced; some bushi or courtier classes ARE better then others, and Crane are vaguely the best great clan in terms of what they can do. But you can't really make a super specialized character and not be punished for it in some way. You WANT to be well rounded. Don't forget, dice being capped at ten also makes a difference. I have Strength 4 and Swords 6 and a +1k0 bonus. You have Strength 5 and Swords 1 with the same bonus. You're rolling 6k5. I'm rolling 10k5. Once you hit ten, every bonus is severely magnified. So you kinda need to hit a middle ground with stats and skills; too much in skills early on and your average is low from too few kept dice. Too few in stats later on and your average is low because you haven't hit the cap. To bounce this back to Shadowrun, the main missing balancing thing is insight; L5R rewards you for taking points on poetry and bonsai and chess, while Shadowrun doesn't, leading to super specialization and a general lack of well roundedness all around. Someone in L5R who devotes everything to SWORD is going to be lacking when they ARE expected to talk, and will have lower insight then someone who's more well rounded (which means the second person might actually be better at swording depending on school abilities). In Shadowrun, someone who devotes everything to SWORD is going to be awesome at SWORD and never needs to worry about anything else, the end. It's why SR5 made a dumb move in lowering free knowledge skills at chargen, because nobody buys those after chargen because there's no reason to. The stick doesn't work if there's never any carrot.
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Oct 31, 2014 23:20
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I mean, to be fair there's nothing stopping you from dropping Shadowrun characters in situations which require skills and affinities they're deficient in, just like in any game you're free to make the weedy mage roll strength stuff and the anti-social street sam roll to not insult Mr. Johnson or whatever. But it's also fair to say that Shadowrun doesn't really reward you for putting some of your character resources into being a middling-average social person when your pal the face is rocking 18 dice in Talks Good.
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Nov 1, 2014 00:42
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The sammy must sneak into the japanese t party On the way to the party, the face falls through a trap door into a room of deaf/blind knife fighters that still have blade/awareness rolls in the high teens trained to kill when they smell tailored pheremones.
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Nov 1, 2014 02:33
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LGD posted:They can't, but Manabolt and Stunbolt are significantly less scary in SR5 than they were in previous editions because they only do damage based on net hits and you can apply Full Defense. Manabolt and Stunbolt have gone from being instant death for unsupported mundane characters to something that's probably only doing a few points of damage a round if you have a decent Willpower score. This is a good thing for the game because those spells were utter horseshit in previous editions, but it does make this particular bit of advice less applicable than it was previously. Given the 5e game I played in, that's kind of a good thing, because it was pretty trivial for the mages to get very good casting pools, and it's still difficult for a Troll to get a really good willpower score.
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Nov 1, 2014 02:44
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LGD posted:They can't, but Manabolt and Stunbolt are significantly less scary in SR5 than they were in previous editions because they only do damage based on net hits and you can apply Full Defense. Manabolt and Stunbolt have gone from being instant death for unsupported mundane characters to something that's probably only doing a few points of damage a round if you have a decent Willpower score. This is a good thing for the game because those spells were utter horseshit in previous editions, but it does make this particular bit of advice less applicable than it was previously. I'm not so sure you can apply Full Defense, those aren't regular defense tests. On Direct Combat spells you do the Spellcasting test against either the target's Body or Willpower, which in most cases is going to be less dice than the Spellcasting pool to begin with.
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Nov 1, 2014 17:01
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Doc Dee posted:I'm not so sure you can apply Full Defense, those aren't regular defense tests. On Direct Combat spells you do the Spellcasting test against either the target's Body or Willpower, which in most cases is going to be less dice than the Spellcasting pool to begin with. Yes, but Full Defense doesn't say anything about applying exclusively to "regular" defense tests, it explicitly says that it applies to all defense tests ypu make in a turn. And it seems really hard to view the opposed roll against an indirect spells as anything but a defense test- it's an attack you're defending against, and the text specifically notes you can't resist the damage of a successful indirect spell (meaning the opposed roll is not a damage resistance roll). Additionally the wording for Counterspelling specifically refers to these opposed rolls as defense tests, so unless you also believe that Counterspelling was not intended to work on indirect spells at all it seems untenable to take the position that these are merely opposed rolls that we can't characterize as defense tests. And of course the resistance rolls are going to be lower than the spellcasting pool- that's why I said you'd be taking a couple damage a turn. But there is a huge difference in the amount of damage you can expect to take if you have a good Willpower score. Consider what happens if a Shadowrunner PC with 5 Willpower gets pasted with a Force 6 Manabolt from a reasonably skilled combat mage. Under the old system the combat mage is probably rolling like 14-16 dice against 5 defense dice, and when he succeeds is going to do something like 9 damage to the PC on average (base damage of 6 + ~3 successes). Under the new system the PC can go on full defense and roll 10 dice against that same mage's 14-16 dice pool. He isn't likely to win outright, but he's also only going to take about 2 damage on average (and no more than 6 even if he totally botches the roll). That's obviously a huge change, because the first scenario is totally unresistible "gently caress you"-level damage that spells doom if you don't splatter the magician's brains against a wall before he has a chance to get a spell off, and the second scenario is something that is likely to be very secondary to the goons shooting at you with rifles. LGD fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 10:49
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Looking into getting the 5e rules book but I'm struggling to find a place that has the hard cover in stock. Is there anywhere reliable that will deliver to Oz?
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Nov 3, 2014 11:27
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I wish that Data Trails was out so I can read up regarding the Matrix and NeoNet residing in Boston, which it happens that I am running a Street Level game in Boston. Anyway, plug aside, regarding Stolen Souls, I couldn't keep my eyes awake regarding the nanomachine disaster, virus, yet another world-threatening disease part. It is just me thinking that oh boy, another disaster, ho hum, I wonder what we are going to do to get through or Catalyst is taking advantage of NANOMACHINES to throw down some pulp to sell to the masses?
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Nov 3, 2014 13:21
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LGD posted:Yes, but Full Defense doesn't say anything about applying exclusively to "regular" defense tests, it explicitly says that it applies to all defense tests ypu make in a turn. And it seems really hard to view the opposed roll against an indirect spells as anything but a defense test- it's an attack you're defending against, and the text specifically notes you can't resist the damage of a successful indirect spell (meaning the opposed roll is not a damage resistance roll). Additionally the wording for Counterspelling specifically refers to these opposed rolls as defense tests, so unless you also believe that Counterspelling was not intended to work on indirect spells at all it seems untenable to take the position that these are merely opposed rolls that we can't characterize as defense tests. The "defense" test against a Brute Force hacking attempt is Willpower+Firewall. It doesn't necessarily say you can't apply Full Defense to that, but anyone with two neurons to rub together knows that you can't. Pretty much if there's a specific opposed roll mentioned, it's not a Defense test, and you can't apply Full Defense to it. Also, you're making the mistake of counting Manabolt and Stunbolt as indirect Combat spells, like Flamethrower or Lightning Bolt, in which you absolutely CAN use Full Defense because it's something you could potentially see coming. That's resolved just like shooting a gun or throwing a grenade. Direct Combat spells, which Manabolt and Stunbolt are, immediately affect the target. There's nothing to avoid getting hit by, they automatically hit, so you can't apply Full Defense. Doc Dee fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 14:51
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IntelligibleChoir posted:Looking into getting the 5e rules book but I'm struggling to find a place that has the hard cover in stock. Is there anywhere reliable that will deliver to Oz? Get the PDF. The hardcover has major printing errors that were not corrected for the second run.
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Nov 3, 2014 16:12
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Doc Dee posted:The "defense" test against a Brute Force hacking attempt is Willpower+Firewall. It doesn't necessarily say you can't apply Full Defense to that, but anyone with two neurons to rub together knows that you can't. No, go read what I wrote more carefully and then go read what is actually in the book rather than what you "know." Literally all of these objections are anticipated and you've failed to address any of them. The opposed test is explicitly referenced as a defense test in the counterspelling section, and if in fact it is not a defense test then Counterspelling does not work by RAW against any direct spells because it adds dice to defense tests not opposed rolls. Or indeed work against any spell, because indirect combat spells are also handled as an opposed roll that is specified the in magic section and that does not explicitly note itself as being a defense test at the time. Defense test isn't a defined term, it's just any roll you make to defend yourself against an attack (which is different from a roll you make to resist the effects of a successful attack). And the roll to resist indirect spells is clearly that sort of roll. This is also trivial to explain fluff-wise- anyone on full defense is clearly expecting trouble and while they may not see an indirect spell coming (any more than most PCs see and dodge individual bullets) they can still focus their will to resist someone manipulating their life force as it happens. Especially given that even direct magic effects are usually accompanied by light shows and mundane characters are noted as being able to feel the effects of mana anomalies. If attacks of will against spirits are a thing, it's really hard to see why focusing your will to ward off a blast of magic that you know is coming is suddenly outside the bounds of plausibility. Also, I'd be highly inclined to say Full Defense does apply to resisting a Brute Force hacking attempt against an item you're actively using. The only thing that makes me hesitate is that there is already a separate Matrix Full Defense action, and by RAW you'd be able to get up to WPx2 to resist hacking attempts (because regular Full Defense explicitly stacks with everything else). LGD fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 20:08
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LGD posted:Also, I'd be highly inclined to say Full Defense does apply to resisting a Brute Force hacking attempt against an item you're actively using. The only thing that makes me hesitate is that there is already a separate Matrix Full Defense action, and by RAW you'd be able to get up to WPx2 to resist hacking attempts (because regular Full Defense explicitly stacks with everything else). I think that either Full Defense applies to both Magical and Matrix attacks, or neither. It seems unreasonable to allow it to apply to one but not the other. Regardless of which way the argument goes, I think it must encompass both of them. That established, I think there's a strong argument for suggesting that Full Defense can only be applied to physical attacks: there are four separate positive qualities in Run and Gun (Acrobatic / Agile / Perceptive Defender and Too Pretty to Hit) that allow you to substitute your defense tests for other skill or attributes (including Gymnastics or Charisma). Using Charisma to resist Matrix damage is nonsensical, as is using Perception or Gymnastics to dodge Powerbolt, which innately pits itself against your body's very integrity. To resolve this, we must either (a) conclude that Full Defense is specifically applied to physical, indirect attacks that would normally be dodged by the standard REA + INT roll, (b) explicitly state which of the RnG qualities apply to which mediums of attack, or (c) admit that you may very well use your Gymnastics skill rating to dodge a Brute Force attempt in the Matrix.
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Nov 3, 2014 23:04
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Dude, you're still missing the point. Flamethrower and Lightning Bolt CAN benefit from Full Defense, 'cause they're opposed by REA+INT and even stated to be opposed like a firearm or grenade. Direct Combat spells CANNOT because they automatically hit, the target just rolls either Body or Willpower to see how much they soak. They are Shadowrun's equivalent to Magic Missile. Counterspelling is a special case in that it adds dice to the opposed roll, there are special cases sprinkled throughout the book.
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Nov 4, 2014 03:18
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 19:24 |
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I finally got around to playing through Dead Man's Hand in Shadowrun Retuns. Even though it was rough around the edges, I still realy enjoyed it and it got me curious about trying to do the TTRPG. A buddy had a copy of the 5e rulebook he picked up for like  , so we decided to actually try figuring out the rules.It is, no joke, arguably the worst laid-out and badly explained rulebook I've ever seen and more or less killed any desire we had to try running it.
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Nov 4, 2014 06:58
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