More Shadowrun 4 crud

Cafe Society
1

I went back and tok a look at Shadowrun 4 again in the hopes that I had emrely been harsh on it at first glance. After all, I liked the earlier ones and felt that maybe, just maybe, I had ben too harsh on the revised edition.

Nope.

If anything, I had been far too kind. SR 4 is a pitiful mishmash of useless rubbish. I am amazed by the absolute incompetence of the writers. I am positively embarrassed for the entire game line.

Here’s a sampling of new things:

Why Johnny can’t count: Although it’s not a huge thing, I’m appalled by a blatant error in basic math. There re now 13 attributes in the game: 4 Mental, 4 Physical, and 5 Special. Since you can’t have both Magic and Resonance, you can, at most, get 12. Right? Not according to the writers. It seems they claim there are 12 attributes total and you can only get 11.

Boot to the Head

Yes, I can empathize for the poor writer. Maybe when he wrote it the editors accepted that Resonance and Magic are functionally identical (which they are). But someone ought to have changed that, eh? It’s not like it’s terribly hard.

Strike 1. I’m fine with spelling errors and odd grammer problems - the Good Lord knows I’ve made more than my share - but a basic math error is sad.

Edge: While I liked the old Karma Pool, Edge is an equally-good way of doing things. I do, however, have a big problem with one of the things they did with it. You can save your own life with it - from anything. A miracle happens.

This is not a problem for me. However.

Player characters are not the only ones with Edge. Technicaly, only PC’s are supposed to get it. Except that all humans get a +1 bonus to it. Which means that all humans come with an extra life. When an airplane crashes, do all the humans survive? And let’s say that humans don’t this bonus, so no problem right?

Wrong.

See, animals do get it. Many of them get 4 whole points, free! Every dog in the city has 3 extra lives. :rolleyes: And spirits, including ones summoned, get a lot of free Edge they can use up at will.

Color me unimpressed. When even the editors can’t decide what they want to do, I’ll pas.

Costs for goodies: They completely screwed up the price tables. Formerly exotic or expensive pieces of gear and cyber are now so cheap that any Joe off the street can buy them. Frankly, any middle-class guy can afford to equip him or her-self like a top-notch Shadowrunner, completely ith a fleet of cars (even limos!), rigger gear, cyber, and magic goods.

Seconary problem: DINAB. DINAB (Decker in a Box) used to refer to a fire-and-forget program. Now you can get one literally, just by getting a deck with a good Pilot rating. Wouldn’t want anyone to be so stupid as to play a Decker, would we? Why bother when you can just buy or steal multiple DINAB’s? And that doesn’t address the ridiculously cheap costs for top-of-the line programs now.

No-one buys anything: The ironic corrollary to the aforementioned. Gear is so cheap (and both money and personal abilities come from the point pool) that you’d be a fool to buy more than a few points’ worth (cause each character point is 5000 nuyen).

Everyone’s a …: There’s really no reason not to be a magician and/or adept unless you very specifically want to do something else. You get access to all the goodies, free. In fact, you actually come out ahead on the deal. Since there’s no point in buying lots of gear (hence no reason to have low essence) every character should have at least one point of Magic.

Wireless Matrix: They created a wrireless Matrix. Apparently, they decide that previous Matrixes were too vulnerable to viruses. Because those viruses can so easily blow up all that vulnerable fiber-optic cable. Or something. Anyway, they created a wireless version, because somehow not using fiber optic cables makes it much less vulnerable. :dubious:

Aside from the dubious idea, its presentation is obscene. Apparently, They’ve gone and replaced many control panels, door locks, and things with virtual systems. You can’t interact unless you carry round your own sinsense unit, which you have to be hooked up to at all times. Aside from the ridiculous expense involved, and the pointless stupidity of the proposal, society has adapted so much that it’s now illegal not to wear your simense unit in some places.

They’ve also decided that memory is now infinite, which completely contradicts all previous editions. And bandwidth is inifinite. On a wireless system. :rolleyes: Note that for no known reason, they’ve taken all of these supposedly secure wireless systems off of the net, and they are no longer connected. Fine. Some places do that. Except it cuts the whole reaosn for developing this massivel expensive system in the first place! Now, on top of the previous issues, a wireless system is infinitely more vulnerable to EMP and other disruption, so the entire security and resiliance idea is shot.

And of course, since decker stuff is so cheap now, any wageslave can quite easily crack the system wide open and steal everything of value.

Nanotech Trodes: The actual worst issue, but one the writers are probably too ignorant to comprehend. There are nanotech systems in Shadowrun. Nothing new there.

However, the geniuses (morons) behind SR4 decided that wasn’t good enough. SO they brought in a spray-on nanotech sinsense unit. You spray it on your head, and it connects you to the Matrix and everything. Now, let’s consider this.

  1. It’s a small enough layer to be invisible.

  2. It requires no external power supply.

  3. It’s self-organizing.

  4. It can, within seconds, analyze and coordinate with a human brain, becoming intimately connected with its deepest actions.

  5. It can then organize a radio transmitter/receiver, which is itself impossible because the nanites aren’t big enough to create the waveform required.

And they use this technology to make a cheap simsense unit for clubgoers? idiots. I could use it to conquer the world. Heck, I could use it make myself into a living God.

2

In short, Ladies and Gentlemen, Fanpro (the creators of SR4) is an embarrassment upon the world. Not only do I not reccomend this for roleplayers, but I reccomend the book be banned as an crime against humanity. The “editors” of this awful pile of crap should be beaten about the head and neck with heavy, blunt objects until they promise to become Buddhist monks and live in total poverty in an isolated quarter of the Himalayas.

The ewriters and editors are, in short, the Uwe Boll of games.

3

Well, the book is poorly organized. Really, really poorly organized. And I don’t like some of the changes. But we’ve been having a really good time playing it, and isn’t that what counts?

Plus, the wireless thing - obviously that’s just a revision in future prediction. I mean, the original game could never have predicted how easy and cheap wireless stuff was going to get. I don’t see that as being ridiculous at all. Haven’t you already noticed that there’s hardly any payphones anymore? The technology poor are obviously going to get increasingly disenfranchised, I don’t see what’s so unrealistic about that.

4

I haven’t played SR in ~18 years. At the time, I remember there was no reason not to become a Street Samurai. Everyone would watch the SS act 16 times before anyone else moved. Of course, power gamers were drawn to SS like flies to honey.

I also remember deckers were a royal pain in the ass where group sessions were concerned. Either you’re working with the decker, or you’re working with everyone else. Very hard to integrate and keep everyone engaged.

Despite that, SR was still one of my favorite games, right behind Champions and Traveller.

5

Honestly, I think the fourth edition is superior to the third in every possible way. It’s just a better system. Edge makes mundane uncybered humans a playable charcter concept. The Hacking system is interesting and fast, as oppose dto before where it was… virtually unplayable. Even the spells work better.

Okay, the layout and copy editting sucks. Makes sure you have the second edition, it’s already been errata’d.

“The Killer’s/Monster’s Not really Dead!” Seems useful to me. Our Gm mostly uses NPC edge to keep them from dying too fast.

And thus within the reach of starting PCs. Works for me. Cheap cyber is just the setting progressing, electronics always decrease in price. Cyberware’s for the peasants now anyway, bioware’s where it’s at. With a few notable exceptions, you can do anything you’d want to do with cyber with bio for far less essence.

I also think you’re overestimating how much money people actually make. Cyberpunk dystopia. There is no middle class.

Someone who uses Agents without a Hacker supervising is just asking for trouble. A really decker (or worse, a Technomancer) could spoofe them and set them against you, and there’s not a damn thing you could do about it.

Like get cyberware? Or use those points to purchase skills? The magician quality ain’t cheap, and even a single implant wastes any points you spent on it or magic. But I guess you’re right, if you don’t want to play any concept other than a mage, there’s no point in not buying magic.

I agree that the in setting reason is… dubious, but it does feel more like what the future is shaping up to be, and it really lets Hackers shine, which is cool.

Infinite meory is also an extrapolation from current trends: memory storage is getting cheaper and cheaper.

As for nanotrodes, they aren’t that powerful. They aren’t a simsense unit, you still need a commlink and simlink to do full VR, they’re just a trendy expensive replacement for an electrode link. Harder to knock off, but more expensive.

6

Actually, let me back down from that. I prefered SR3’s handling of initiative passes, SR4 lets you be relative slow (low Reaction and Intuition) but still act several times a turn (Wired Reflexes). I have a hard time getting my head around that. I know why they did it, it makes sense for the Hacking system, but it doesn’t carry over where to the real world.

I also don’t see where Attribute + Skill is an improvement. I don’t mind it, really, but I kind of miss how Skills were much more important in SR3. High Attributes help, but weren’t the most important thing. I certainly don’t miss the various skill pools (Combat, Sorcery, Etc.). It makes running the NPCs in paticular much easier.

Everything else, SR4 all the way.

7

Because it’s not Shadowrun. Heck, it’s not even physics. They’ve turned magic into a science and science into magic. They amount of bandwidth needed is absolutely too much for what they claim. And any Joe Schmoe could shut down whole cities on a whim with static.

Why would you think I would waste my money on more of this trash? Any game which requires a second edition within a year sucks, plain and simple.

So they all get three or more miraculous interventions? :dubious: No offense, but remind not to join your games.

You don’t understand my objection. First off, costs are not going to drop to less than 10% of their previous price fiveyears ago, especially since there has been no major improvements in the technology of that field! There has been no major alteration in the techjnology which would make it that cheap.

Secondly, it make the player characters perfectly ordinary. Given the givens, they are barely above average. Every random Schmoe on the street can be just as good as any Shadowrunner, unless said runner is so specialized as to be useless at everything else.

Amusing, given that it’s straight out of the book. Middle-class makes 60,000 nuyen a year. Even the poor make enough to buy serious tech. They kept the old lifestyles, almost word for word. Also, for no reason other than their own idiocy, they decided you couldn’t have more than one lifestyle. A completely pointless limitation which… affects nothing. Morons.

Which is why you steal twelve of them. Or completely ignore it. You don’t need the Matrix anymore, and anyway it’s even easier to dabble and still kick Matrix butt.

:dubious:

Check it again. It’s ridiculously cheap to become a mystic adept. Point for point, you may as well get it, since it pays for itself. Only a fool would become a Samurai now.

Are you kidding? Wireless networks are not going to take over landlines. It’s a flat bandwidth issue, and there’s no way around it without wiring every two feet with nodes, which themselves would be hooked up to a landline network. There’s a gigantic difference between a cellphone and a broadcasting decker.

And that’s not even getting into the crap like people hacking your cyberlimbs. :rolleyes: Yeah, like I’m going to hook my cyberlimbs up with a hackable wireless connection.

No, it’s not. It mneans that in five years there was a jump from “hard limit” to near- infinite. With no major developments in the field. Shadowrun didn’t just jump ahead in every tech field.

Regardless, they’re capable of immediately self-organizing and interfacing. They’re still breaking several laws of physics. Wish I had that. This is not some toy. It’s clear to me that the designers didn’t put the slightest thought into this single passage, much less the book. They screwed up every section they changed.

8

I misspoke. I meant second printing. Any game which requires a second printing within a year is selling pretty well. Not necessarily an indicator of quality, but not an indictment either.

Ah. You mean burning Edge. No, no NPC has done that. That I know of. Of course, since it doesn’t let them escaped unscathed (the example has the character going into a coma but surviving), I wouldn’t really know. It’s all just GM fiat anyway.

I think you’re expecting too much continuity between editions. If the rules of magic have changed without explanation, why not the costs of cyberware?

Coincidentally, that’s exactly what they’d spend to maintain a middle-class lifestyle for one year. I think rent and food would come before ruling the Shadows.

Yeah. Good luck with that. The NPCs are allowed to have Security Hackers too, and as much IC as the GM feels like writing down. Throw 12 agents, he’ll come back with 24. You can dabble (and where the Matrix is so important, why wouldn’t you?), but you need a Hacker or Technomancer to do any real work. (And how would you even steal an Agent without a Hacker?)

But weren’t you just bitching that cyber is too cheap? It seems to me that the samurai would hit a high plateau faster, but would get overtaken by the adept eventually. This is especially true if your GM is stingy with karma.

As for hacking and technology issues, I still like it better. It feels more like what’s actually coming down the pike, rather than the 1980’s but flashier. People are experimenting with something very much like SR4’s AR right now.

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I misspoke. I meant second printing. Any game which requires a second printing within a year is selling pretty well. Not necessarily an indicator of quality, but not an indictment either.

Ah. You mean burning Edge. No, no NPC has done that. That I know of. Of course, since it doesn’t let them escaped unscathed (the example has the character going into a coma but surviving), I wouldn’t really know. It’s all just GM fiat anyway.

I think you’re expecting too much continuity between editions. If the rules of magic have changed without explanation, why not the costs of cyberware?

Coincidentally, that’s exactly what they’d spend to maintain a middle-class lifestyle for one year. I think rent and food would come before ruling the Shadows.

Yeah. Good luck with that. The NPCs are allowed to have Security Hackers too, and as much IC as the GM feels like writing down. Throw 12 agents, he’ll come back with 24. You can dabble (and where the Matrix is so important, why wouldn’t you?), but you need a Hacker or Technomancer to do any real work. (And how would you even steal an Agent without a Hacker?)

But weren’t you just bitching that cyber is too cheap? It seems to me that the samurai would hit a high plateau faster, but would get overtaken by the adept eventually. This is especially true if your GM is stingy with karma.

And it’s not that cheap, depending on what you want to do. Wired II costs seven BP (which actually leaves you with 3,000 nuyen to do whatever), Increased Reflexes I (not II) costs 10, plus the 5 for the Adept Quality. At the begininng of the game, the samurai will always beat the adept.

And adepts would have a harder time sneaking past astral security.

As for hacking and technology issues, I still like it better. It feels more like what’s actually coming down the pike, rather than the 1980’s but flashier. People are experimenting with something very much like SR4’s AR right now. I don’t care so much that it doesn’t match up exactly with previous editions, if it makes for a more believable future. I like the fact that hackers can influence everything technological (and everything’s technological). It makes them a mirror image of mages, who have command over the natural world.

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Oops. Sorry for the double post. They’re different. Can you spot all the changes?

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so do any of the editions acount for things like an SS with 5 retractable spurs in hand to hand combat? when I first played the game that was my toon, he was supposed to get in close and fight groups with razer sharp goodness poking out of various limbs (on wolverine style, same arm one coming out from the tricept area out at the elbow, other arm one along forearm coming out at elbow backwards, one leg with one blade down the femur and out at knee, the other leg up the shin and out the knee)

we never came up with a satisfactory way to do combat with him sadly.

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[QUOTE=Menocchio]
I misspoke. I meant second printing. Any game which requires a second printing within a year is selling pretty well. Not necessarily an indicator of quality, but not an indictment either.

[quote]

It may well be selling well. The book is actually quite atractive, and I like the cover design, although I miss the old skull (which the did away with in 3rd edition. Are people really going to play it is another question.

It does actually let them escape unscathed - it just takes them out of action for a while, which is not a problem for the NPC anyway.

I actually don’t like the new magic rules. It’s not specifically that they’re inherently worse, but that they’ve become generic.

Shadowrun magic is not generic. Shamans and Mages and Druids and Wu Jen were never exactly the same. They all had a little variation in their rules, which were god. The old problem was that each added magic style had a slight advantage, because they wanted to give it something useful. Hence the Tir Na Nog Paths were obscenely powerful for free. (Bad idea). But the new system is unfortunately worse.

Now, if they just wanted to simplify the spellcasting, fine. I have no problem with that, although I didn’t think it was neccessary. I do object to what they did with the spirits, however. I despise rewrites of fundamental game points. So what, all that stuff my Shaman did once, he can’t do anymore? Year of the Comet didn’t change this; it happened later and with no explanation. I really hate ret-cons.

In any event, in practical effect all full magicians are identical.

Actually, most of them will be making a bit more or less than that. But in fact, getting augmentations is now a good plan, because they can make you smarter, faster, more alert, and better at your job in a dozen different ways. Think about it this way: wouldn’t it be good to skimp a little bit for a year or two, if by doing so you could earn several promotions or raises with your new job skills? Everyone with half a brain (or in Shadowrun, half a cyber-brain) would do this.

Moreover, obviously the lifestyles are just shortcuts for players. Some people spend it all on certain things, some spend it on other stuff. Some make more or less. Even if they don’t want tech, these people can handily afford limosines or even better vehicles. (!!!) This implies that manufacturing has become so cheap that everything except living space is almost worthless now. Even a poor person can quite possibly afford a luxury car!

That’s actually another problem which I’ll get to in a moment.

And the answer to the last is simple: steal its hardware. Theft is what Shadowruners do. Just go off and steal a few dozen. Or buy them. Either way.

I don’t like either one. The Samurai actually won’t hit a plateau early (they used to, but not now) because most won’t spend their starting stuff on cyber. This itself would be fine if they just wanted to change it up, but the cheaper cyberware is a problem for other reasons.

Given the average training per person done by even a poor military force (and much more for the high-end security of some megacorps in SR), you should reasonably expect that every security goon probably has a lot of cyberware. A smartgun-link used to be cheap. Now Wired Reflexes I is almost as cheap. It’s simply a smart buy. And even if the corp itself isn’t paying, the goons now can pay themselves.

[quote]
And it’s not that cheap, depending on what you want to do. Wired II costs seven BP (which actually leaves you with 3,000 nuyen to do whatever), Increased Reflexes I (not II) costs 10, plus the 5 for the Adept Quality. At the begininng of the game, the samurai will always beat the adept.

[quote]

Actually, I’m thinking of another Adept power which would handily beat that, hands down. Attribute Boost. For only 1 point, you can get a 2-4 point boost to all physical attributes, which lasts 4-8 rounds. On average, you’ll never take any damage from this.

Combined with the “new and improved” :rolleyes: damage system, you’ll never get hurt unless someone is packing assault cannons or heavy machine guns. And of course, as an Adept you can easily kick your magic score up to 5, and you’d be wise to do it. You get a positive gain on the points spent, since they can easily pay for themselves. As an adept, you’re basically getting free points.

And remember, that’s the best case scenario for the Samurai. He has no other advantages other than a temporary boost in money, which comes at a long-term cost in his skills and abilities. It’s better to skimp a bit at the start, given how easy it is to pick up tech later on. Heck, I could see a group of player characters who all start the game with no tech, get boring middle-class jobs, then tell the GM they work for a year MIddle-Class and live a much simpler life-style! Bam, no mess, no fuss, all the money they need.

[quote]
And adepts would have a harder time sneaking past astral security.

[quote]

I’ll doubel check this, but IIRC the Samurai would have an equally hard time. Namely, because from astral space people with cyber stand out just as much as people with magic. Astral security will look at both.

With all due respect, I don’t think you understand what they’re doing here. Shadowrun is most definitely NOT mimicking reality. Wireless networks must be connected to land-lines, for a very simple bandwidth/degrading issue. There’s no way around it. Using total wireless lines simply makes the system much more vulnerable.

Here’s the problem: it requires us to beleive that everyone is a complete 'effin moron. WHY would anyone build a hackable cyberarm? Heck, why would they build anything hackable with a wireless connection. Cyberarms don’t need it. As for wireless, you simply don’t build in an open connection. It’s not just that people sometimes leve their wireless unsecured: it means that people are going to a great deal of trouble to build in wireles receivers in things which do not need them. In short, it requires us to believe that they’re so stupid that in search of a better security they leave the door wide open for any idiot off the street.

And please, don’t even try to tell me that deckers in Shadowrun can affect things without a receiver.

My basic point in all this is that the designers didn’t think about anything. When I go to design any aspect of a game, I sit down and think about how that aspect is used, be it a spell, a weapon, or a computer. I work from principles: what tech, magic, or whatnot is available - and then consider its impact on the game world. It’s quite obvious to me that Fanpro did not give that the slightest thought.

Menochio, didn’t you work on the game? Or was that another poster? I like Shadowrun, Menochio. I really wanted to see what they’d done with SR4. But I was really disappointed. That’s the word for it.

Disappointed.

Oh well. I have a much better version of SR4, with hundreds of awesome aspects they’ll never see, since they refused to buy the rights to it. Plus, it;s only been playtested fifty bazillion times.

13

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]

Obviously, I disagree. IMHO, the rules simply work better. The changes to tech level reinenforce these rules, as they help integrate Hackers into the group (previously, our group gutted Deckers by simply making all activity a simply computer roll, the rules were so unworkable). As for apparrent security flaws, how many people are running around today with unsecured wifi connections? Hell, how many people are running Windows? Since only a minority well ever actually run afoul of computer criminals, they can afford to be stupid.

Most of the other rule changes actually matched house rules we had already made. We’re happy enough with the rest (although some fancy footwork had to be made to convert some characters dependent on rules that were either eliminated or haven’t yet been converted).

No, that wasn’t me. I’m just a fan and regular player.

14

That was me. I wasn’t involved with the design except at the final stages, though–I wrote some of the fluff (some of the fiction including the story at the beginning and the “here’s what it’s like to live in 2070” chapter). (I’m currently one of two assistant line developers, but that happened post-SR4). I will tell you, though, that the folks who did the design put a lot of thought and effort into it. Yes, the first printing had errors. Every first printing has errors. That’s not an excuse, but it is a reality.

I’m sorry that you’re disappointed in SR4. Some people are, while others think it’s a huge improvement over previous editions. Everybody has their own opinion, and that’s fine. I see your point with some of your comments, and disagree strongly with others, but I’m afraid I don’t have time to get drawn into a long debate right now since I’m supposed to be at work. :slight_smile:

Ever seen Chris Pramas’s ‘10 Fundamental Contradictions of RPG Publishing’? Even though he’s at Green Ronin, he might as well have been talking about Shadowrun and its fans. I think we’ve gotten every one of these at one point or another.

You know, this does make me scratch my head a bit. “SR4 sucks, it’s terrible, it’s the worst thing that happened to the game–but hey, if they’d only bought my version, they’d have been much better off!”

That might not be what you intended to say, but you can’t deny that the implication is there. Could we be dealing with a bit of sour grapes, perhaps?

15

The SR4 rulebook is not the sole production turned out by FanPro nor do all the folks working for FanPro work on SR, :wally

Have you played the new version? It runs much smoother and easier than the previous versions. It makes hackers/deckers more involved with the group and it make magic less of an all or nothing thing.

And if you think an adept can causally ignore a sammy, you’re wrong. I’ve got a beginning character with 17 dice with his pistol or 12 dice with an assault rifle and a gyromount arm, and that’s not even all min/maxed out.

I’m not sure why you think that shamans and mages are identical now. Have you checked out the totems?

16

Underpaid FanPro employees unite!

17

Alright, now that I have the rules in front of me, I don’t think you’re reading the rules correctly, smiling bandit.

Mages vs. Shamans:

Shamans have totems with advantages and disadvantages, Mages don’t/
Mages summon spirits of Man, Fire, Air, Earth and Water. Shamans summon Man, Beast, Air, Earth and Water.

Attribute boost:

Mystic Adept costs 10 points (a waste if you’re only buying one point of magic, you should go for the regular Adept at 5 points). You can get a level 4 attribute boost to one attribute, 2 to 2 attributes, whatever. With a Magic+Boost level you’ll get on average a 2 point burst to one attribute for 4 combat turns or a 1 point boost to two attributes for 2 turns. You’ll also need to resist a drain of 4 or two drains of 2. For the first you’ll need a Willpower+Body rating of 12 to have no drain on average, 6 for two attributes. All of this an no cyberware.

Or for 9 build points I can jack up my Agility and Strenth each 3 with Muscle Augment and Toner, a mere 1.2 essence.

Or if I don’t really care much about other cyber gear I can Agility and Stength both up by 4 for a mere 4 points and 4 essence and pount the snot out of your puny Adept with my thug.

Money:

Poor folks make around 2000¥ a month. They could buy a limo if they scraped by on 4000¥ for the year, not even enough to live like a squatter all year. Yipee. They can then start a limo buisiness, just like poor people in 2005. A middle class person could live at a poor lifestyle and acumulate 36000¥ in a year. A whole 7 build points plus 1000¥. Or maybe a pair of runs. They sure as hell couldn’t afford a Eruocar Westwind, which would take them almost 3 years of living in a crappy place with crappy food. Of course, with a middle income myself, I could move to the southside and subsist on raman and water and buy a BMW in a few years. Hoo-rah, so unrealistic. Of course, living on the southside, I stand a much better chance of getting mugged and losing my accumlated cash in medical bills and stuff.

Perhaps the rules aren’t the clearest, but I’m not sure you’re really getting what they are.

18

Math. I think I’ve said it before on this forum, but SR 4 is bad at math.

Ammunition is broken in ten thousand ways. Flechettes are more likely to deal damage to targets in armor than normal ammunition is. APDS is just miserable; you expect as much damage dealt with gel rounds as with APDS (and since that damage is stun, enemy trolls have more to worry about).

If you run down a pedestrian in a motorcycle and a truck, the truck is more likely to be totalled than the motorcycle is.

Characters with high skills are strongly resistant to penalties. kidchameleon’s character doesn’t need vision mods; s/he’s perfectly capable of hitting things at extreme range in total darkness better than half the time.

Dodging. You can abort to a dodge, but it’s a Complex action. The gunshot you’re dodging only cost the shooter a Simple.

Called shots. The shooter is almost always rolling many more dice than the target is (see “Dodging”), so calling your shot lets you trade one die for three at virtually no risk.

Spirits. Even a force six spirit is incredibly dangerous, and with a little twinking and preparation force 12 spirits are not out of reach, at character creation.

Glitches. Sometimes adding a die to your pool makes your glitch chance go down…and sometimes it makes it go up.

Wide versus narrow bursts.

I’m sure there’re lots more, but that’s as much as I was willing to absorb before I gave my loaned book back. I understand that not everyone feels these things are important, just as I know that some people found SR3 cumbersome to play. I don’t, so the one unambiguous gain in SR4 over SR3 is worthless to me.

Smiling Bandit: Since you no longer have any chance of making money on Alt!SR4, any chance you’ll release it to the Teeming Millions. I can name twenty SR players off the top of my head who’d be deeply interested in such a thing.

19

Wait a minute. That’s not as bad as you’re saying it is. The extra dice you get from Full Defense last until your next Action Phase. While your attacker gets another simple action, your dodge lasts for as long as your dice hold out.

Also, you get Reaction to dodge even without dropping your actions. It’s pretty easy to have more dice than the attacker, especially if you add Edge.

20

Well, I agree with that, except trolls still don’t worry, they have plenty of body to resist the stun from gel rounds. Thats why I use explosive rounds, like gel rounds that do lethal damage. :slight_smile: I think flechettes and gel rounds would be more balanced if they used the old rule of doubling impact armor (after modifing it).

I can’t say I’ve gotten to the vehicle rules yet. That needs to be addressed.

I think that calls for some GM interpretation, but I think the defender would avoid the shot pretty well. However, I lose out against the guy with vision mods.

Yeah, only at the low end does this really become a risk.

Yeah, it would be interesting to see this system.