D20 Shadowrun Gets a whole lot easier

[Pennance]

I had never thought of it that way.

That's a great idea though, as most systems are sculpted, providing a surreal environment.

I think some of the characters skills should carry over to their Matrix, however. Mostly mental attributes.

Digital Burn sounds really neat. I'll have to check it out.

 

[Mistwell]

It's positively got to be classless and use no HP.

I believe you have failed your imagination check.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

I believe you have failed your imagination check.

Well, now that's a nice ad hominem. Not too agressive, a zest of humor and no argumentation that could leave the author opened to a come back. Well done.

That being said, I've used Mutants & Masterminds for two weeks now and it does indeed bring a lot of food for thoughts. It is after all the forst classless and HPless D20 roleplaying game on teh market (AFAIK). But it was designed with superheroes in mind, not Shadowrun.

Here are a few gamesystem key aspect that makes Shadowrun what it is:

Very brutal combat:. The system is built so that being taken down in just one bullet is a real possibility altough it is also designed so that instant kill are somewhat rare unless you use optional rules for deadlier damage that affect the overflow.

Uneven Development:

On the one hand, your shadowrunner will develop into a top-notch operative over the years. As his training and gears improve, the runner can take his game to a whole new level and run against Aztechnology and Renraku. From a crappy deck to a Fairlight Excaliber, from wired one to wired three, from no focus to a power focus that stacks as a weapon focus... Better gun, better ammo, better armor and higher skills to use them. Better contacts and better contracts.

But then again, the TN to hit you never changes and when caught unprepared your PC can still be taken down very quickly by the same punks (using the same low stats) that used to give him a hard time back in the days when he was a beginner. For most runner, they never outgrow the street level threats.

Full control over character creation:

Hey, it's fun creating a Shadowrunner from scrap! I especially like making up a character after having answered the 20 questions.

Also consider that ressources are an integral part of character creation. And so is Magic capabilities and Race. It would be akward reflecting it all in classes and by using races in the traditional D20 sense. Being an elf is not balanced with being human in Shadowrun. That's why you pay more during character creation to play an elf.

Success threshold: If you succeed by a large margin in shadowrun, you gain benefits. It's especially important in combat. D20 does that occasionnaly (think about bullrushing for example) and it would have to be extended to most aspect of gameplay in SR.

No BAB as such: An expert marksman can be pretty lousy in hand to hand combat in SR. Weapon skills make more sense in SR than an all encompassing BAB.


I have some ideas as to how adapt various aspects to SR and maybe I'll type them down if I have the time.

 

[EarthsShadow]

I think you should type them down because I feel the same way about shadowrun that you do.

Would it be possible to just take the damage mechanic from M&M and somehow apply it to a non-superheroic game? I know in Shadowrun all attacks have two values, a number and a letter. I know the number is the strength of the attack, and the letter dictates what kind of damage is done to the person. It might be possible to apply the numeric value a bonus to damage vs. the Damage Resistance DC when a person gets hit, and just ignore the letter rating.

Probably the same for casting magic spells. I know that each spell in SRun has a Force rating, which is not only how powerful the spell is, but also how hard it is to resist Drain. Using the single damage die mechanic of M&M, couldn't the Force rating be applied to a similar Damage Resist mechanic, in this case called Drain Resistance, and whenever a mage casts a spell they have to make this Drain Resistance vs. a DC of # + Force Rating, or suffer some kind of consequences.

As for cyberware, that could also be adopted easily I think using M&M as the basis. Instead of using superpowers, each cyberware could be adapted to work 'like' a superpower, but isn't a superpower. Example: Using Wired Reflexes could enhance Dexterity or Initiative, or both (I can't remember exactly how it work in SRun at the moment, the book is at home), but by purchasing the cyberware it functions in a similar fashion as a power. Then just transpose the Essence over and use the same ratings of Essence from the original game. I think that since this wouldn't be done for profit and we did it, there wouldn't be too much of a problem using this.

What do you think?

 

[Pennance]

From what I see, the damage rules from MnM could easily be used for non-superpowers.

It's a great idea really, SR combat is fast and downright brutal. That's what I like about it.

Great point.

On the classless idea...making it point buy would also work great, making it customizable similar to MnM. I like classes because it's quick and easy for a new player to make a character. On the other hand, it can lead to dry, boring characters.

In my opinion, the "hero" classes I'm seeing in d20 Modern would be great for d20 SR. Thus the basic tendencies of a character are the same, but the details can be fleshed out better.

Cyberware could easily be done similar to the powers in MnM, adept powers could be done this way as well. The point costs would need to be tweaked (for essence and magic rating's sake...), but it can work rather well.

Mal brings up a great point. In d20, at some point, you reach a level where the low level threats (like street punks) become a non-factor. That a higher level character could blast them all, while eating a toaster pastery, while doing back flips, while talking on a cell phone to his mother in New York, and still wipe the blueberry off his mouth and not get a scratch.

Ok, maybe not quite that uber, but you see my point. Mal's point was that even the lowliest street thug can keep a runner on his toes. So you don't run into the constant "What next hugely uber powerful thing can I throw at my players?" bit.

Some more ideas from the Penn.

 

[Voneth]

Skills and power suites

Well for some of the BAB problems (as a side note it already seems that a LOT of M&M superheroes have lower BAB's compared to DND characters of the same level), there is M&M's Combat Skills side bar on page 28.

BAB is split into Melee, Ranged and Unarmed Attacks, while Defense becomes Dodge and Evade. These skills are also caped at character level instead of level+3 like most skills.

In a lower level power game like most Shadowrun games, it would be a decent call to make skills more expensive. Between spreading out the combat abillities and making them more expensive should curb "constant 'What next hugely uber powerful thing can I throw at my players?'"

As for spells and powers, I am of two minds.

I love the ease of flaws in M&M and I found one fellow player who came up with a great flaw: Wild Power.

Wild Power: Before a character can use this power he must make a power check of 10 + the number of levels being used with this power. If the check fails, the power backfires in a way that is described by GM. ... Use your power with care.

With the way extras and flaws, one can tailor a set of powers for spells, travel and "summoning" things.

On the other hand, I do remember Fantasy Hero. Even with the disadvantages, it seemed more like a low powered Hero game than fantasy.

Luckly, another side bar in M&M brings back hit points.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

Here are some thoughts;

1 - Weapon skills replacing BAB altogether. How many combat skill there are is a matter of taste. 2nd edition shadowrun only had one firearm and one heavy weapon skills but 3rd edition had shotgun, rifles, pistols, smg, assault rifle, heavy weapons, launchweapon etc.

Either way, a good default rule is order because there is no way a PC will have all combat skills.

2 - Damage : There are no reasons the combat meter couldn't be maintained. You'd still get a damage code and a DC except they'd have to be adapted with the knowledge that a single D20 roll will replace several D6. Maybe the Damage meter could be maintained integrally or would have to be adapted a little, we'll see.

N.B. : It is understood that a Troll samurai who maxed his body (constitution) and has a level 4 dermal Sheath will have a higer damage save than the average joe (who used to have Bod 3 and now would have a damage save of +0)

When fired upon by a light caliber, it is common for our Troll to suffer no damage at all whilst average Joe still gets badly hurt. But against a very high caliber weapon such as a sniper rifle, our troll despite his 18D6 would frequently get very few success and resist the wound only a notch or two above the average joe.

How to reflect that? I am thinking that the rate at which you reduce the damage doesn't have to be linear. After all, the odds of getting 2 or 4 successes when rolling 6 dice were not linear either!

So for example, you could reduce the damage one notch by making the DC, two notch by beating it by 2, three notch by beating it by 5, four notches by beating it by 10...

Similarly, augmenting the damage would work along similar line.

Example: Neon Samurai shoots Wedge with an Ares Predator. The base damge is M (assuming we keep the same damage meter) . Neon Samurai hits with a success margin of 8. That would increase the damage to D. Wedge rolls his damage save and beats the DC by 10 (he's in his CyberZombie phase ). We're back to L.

Of course, that 2,5 10 scale is just something I pulled out of my hat and I'm not even talking about what the DC for the Predator should be, but I hope you get the gist of the idea.

3 - Skills will have a non linear cost that increase as the skill increases, just like in SR. I'm not sure the attributes should help determine when the cost of a skill increase upward as it does in SR 3e. In SR, your quickness doesn't increase your accuracy but it does determine how easily you can learn quickness related skills. In D20 your dexterity directly contributes to your accuracy. If it also helped learning the skills faster, the attributes would be too important.

Anyway, as long as the skill have an increasing cost, it will keep the game from spiralling upward into ludicrous bonuses.

Okay, it's late now and I'm tired. More later if I've got the time.

 

[tensen]

How about instead of skills replacing bab entirely, take it into the use of synergy bonus.

Such as 5 ranks for pistol give a +1 or +2 synergy bonus.

Although the problem with this is you'd probably need to increase all the skill points classes get across the board.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

How about instead of skills replacing bab entirely, take it into the use of synergy bonus.

Such as 5 ranks for pistol give a +1 or +2 synergy bonus.

Although the problem with this is you'd probably need to increase all the skill points classes get across the board.

Two things:

If 5 ranks in pistols only grants a partial synergy bonus, there are a lots of ranks that are useless filler in between getting the bonus.

And I don't intend to use classes.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Why don`t you just use the origal system, then?

If you want to keep everything like it is, just use a D20, I wonder if this is really useful.

Some "compromises" have to be done, I think, and Base Attack Bonus and similar things are very well integrated in D20.

I do not think you can keep the whole "rule-generated" flavor if you change systems - and I think this is not absolutely neccessary...

Mustrum Ridcully