Shadowrun v4 - Your Experience

[Vocenoctum]

Blackjack's "rule of 4" is IMO (no offense) crap - it's fine once in a while when you just don't want to bog down a game looking up the TN for something obscure that doesn't matter a great deal, but the way he described using it meant he'd substitute it for anything and everything he didn't want to bother to remember. Not my kind of GM...

Reducing the number of modifiers to the die roll is one thing, ignoring them all is another. We may not have used every modifier, but then we rarely fought in foggy forests during an earthquake or anything either.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Well, we house-ruled Shotguns, too, naturally.
But I remember one great problem that all our SR gamemasters encountered - really applying all the modifiers that apply to a combat was just a headache.

Player: "I start running towards the next cover and fire my HK 227 at the Knight Errant Soldier on the left side of the door. Short Burst - I have a GasVent III and Strength 6, so I don't care about the first 3 points of recoil. What do I need?"
D: "Ok, submachine gun, that put's it at medium range, so target number 5. -2 for smartgun, that's 3, +2 for bad lightning, that's 5, +2 for running, that's TN 7 *target number begins exploding* +2 for the targets cover and then you're injured, that's *DM's head explodes in anticipation of the other 24 target numbers he will need to calculate before the first rounds - 3 seconds of combat - have ended)

I remember there was a shadowrun fan site where one described the "rule of 4". "If you don't know what the TN should be, just have it at 4 and use the number of successes to describe the result." That's essentially what they did in SR 4. And it works a lot better this way...

That this is actually cited as a reason why SR<4 had a too complicated system of TN adjustment on a D&D 3.xE site is the biggest irony I've encountered this week.

 

[Thanee]

Well, we actually play with all those modifiers and it works for everyone involved. Like anything else, all it takes is familiarity.

And you still need to apply them now, just to the dice pool.

I always disliked the TN modifiers, though, because of the probability issues (super high drop when you go up to 6 and then the curve flattens drastically all of a sudden - no good).

Even back in SR2 we played with (almost) fixed TN (4 or 5 depending on situation) and all modifiers applied to the dice pool. Much better concept, which is also much truer to the idea behind the Shadowrun dice mechanics (counting successes/hits not how high you can roll with an open-ended d6).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Vocenoctum]

Even back in SR2 we played with (almost) fixed TN (4 or 5 depending on situation) and all modifiers applied to the dice pool. Much better concept, which is also much truer to the idea behind the Shadowrun dice mechanics (counting successes/hits not how high you can roll with an open-ended d6).

I disagree, SR was always nice for allowing a manner to modify the difficulty and also measure degree of success. Under the WW system, it becomes a more simple direct method of penalty. Original SR had more options for tailoring rolls.

Besides, there was always the fun of requiring a really high T# for something that was near impossible.

 

[Andor]

While I think that "first world" militaries will be keen to equip troops with external gear, I doubt they'll go whole hog for implants. Implants are a "sunk" cost into a particular troop while equipment can be reassigned. It also will entail a "retraction" cost to remove any military-only gear. Lots of personnel only serve a tour or two. Conversely, career troops have an unpleasant upgrade cycle as they repeatedly go under the knife. Plus in combat zones cyber is an item of value that increases the likelihood of kidnapping or bodysnatching.

I'd say that only special forces (intentionally using small letters to denote all of the special combat teams) would be equipped with augmentation and even then it would be as subtle and passive as possible. Digestive expansion, sleep regulator and enhanced articulation are the big ones, IMO. Digestive expansion is handy on long ops where the troops could carry unconventional rations (e.g. high calorie "sawdust"). Sleep regulators mean more quality operational hours and enhanced articulation makes them better runners/sneaks/climbers/jumpers/swimmers/etc, the specific stuff that sf tends to do on the way to/from the "meat" of the mission.

Some particular MOSs might wind up with implants, but they should generally be the smallest percentages of the force. Pilots, for instance, would get VCRs and jacks but active duty pilots only comprise about 3% of the U.S. Air Force. Ground forces, like armored divisions, tend to have a similarly low ratio of front line combat vehicles vs. support. At one point in time, the US 1st Armored Division had ~13,500 troops and only 200 tanks and 200 bradleys. They had another ~6200 other vehicles but the bulk of those would be supply vehicles (M1s get about 2mpg and suck down a lot of fuel on idle) and repair. Giving every tank/IFV two VCR equipped troops still only nets us about 5% active duty (MOS) riggers.

Gotta disagree with you man. A smartgun link is an enormous safety/accuracy boost and cheap. Eye mods are both too handy and too cheap not to be common. Hearing protection is important but over priced essencewise, but will probably be offered. The cost vs effectiveness of these mods is very high and the absolute cost of them per soldier is peanuts compared to the cost of training. Basically if a mod is so good that every single character who isn't a mage or flat broke takes them, then a soldier should have it too. Equipment is cheap, people are expensive.

 

[Pseudonym]

Thanks for the breakdown, Kigmatzomat.

Question, though: How easy is it to convert characters from prior editions with legacy cyberwear to 4th edition? Since everything seems to be a sensory overlay rather than replacing parts, what is the essence load for the wireless equipment? Comparable to prior editions? Has the Essence mechanic changed?

What about mages? Could a 3rd edition hermetic mage with a few initiate grades be converted over to 4th without any undue problems?

 

[kigmatzomat]

Gotta disagree with you man. A smartgun link is an enormous safety/accuracy boost and cheap. Eye mods are both too handy and too cheap not to be common. Hearing protection is important but over priced essencewise, but will probably be offered. ....Equipment is cheap, people are expensive.

Note that I stated they would have plenty of issued external gear, but that implants would be rare. in SR4 the external tech is identical in function to the cyber. No more "smartgoggles get +1 while cyber smartlink gets +2" stuff. Matter of fact, external vision mods are now as good as natural (racial metahuman) vision mods.

Should rank and file soldiers have smartlink, vision mag, low light, flare comp, imagelink? Definitely, built into the helmet/goggles and the gun. Is it a good idea for them to have sound dampers, audiolink, audio boost? Absolutely, in the helmet or earbuds. Any reason to put them under the knife? Not that I can see.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Thanks for the breakdown, Kigmatzomat.

Question, though: How easy is it to convert characters from prior editions with legacy cyberwear to 4th edition? Since everything seems to be a sensory overlay rather than replacing parts, what is the essence load for the wireless equipment? Comparable to prior editions? Has the Essence mechanic changed?

Gear conversion isn't too bad but there are a few bumps. Most Sr4 cyber is actually lower essence than SR1-3. Which is good because they got rid of Bioindex. Bio & cyber both draw from the Essence stat using a formula. The larger of the two (bio or cyber) plus half the smaller. So if you have a sam that started with 5.8 points of bio and 5.5 points of cyber, after you do the essence re-costing they might have say 4.1 pts of bio and 3.5 cyber. That would become 4.1 + 3.5/2 = 5.85 Essence.

Some sams will need to cut down on gear to avoid dying. It's nothing new, I've had sams that were maxed out have to eliminate tech at version changes before.

What about mages? Could a 3rd edition hermetic mage with a few initiate grades be converted over to 4th without any undue problems?

SR4 includes initiation in the main book and there is the Street Magic supplement out which covers about 90% of the optional SR3 mechanics. It should be painless on the whole.

Skill conversion is the hard one. I think there is a supplement on the FanPro site (shadowrunprg.com) that addresses the process. It isn't impossible but it's not perfect. Probably on par with the SR2->SR3 conversion.

In all honesty, we tended to rebuild characters during edition changes. Start from scratch and add X Karma and Y nuyen. It gives us a better view of the system. Plus it cuts down the bickering when one character gets screwed by the conversion process while someone else gets a boost.

 

[Ashrum the Black]

On the offical Shadowrun Webisite they've just recently released a preview of their new mega adventure/sourcebook Emergance.

Emergance

It is supposed detail the rise of the technomancer, as well as detail a few new technological surprises in the year 2070 mix. They also state that they are on rack for a gen con release of Augmentation. So after a long dry spell from the SR team it looks to be a gang buster end of the year.

I personally am looking forward to both Emergance and the Unwired books as a DM. But as a player Augmentation and Arsonal have got me salivating.

-Ashrum

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, we actually play with all those modifiers and it works for everyone involved. Like anything else, all it takes is familiarity.

Though I do have to admit that I frankly don't get people who can't (or can't be bothered to) keep a few numbers straight, like in that simple example you posted.

Blackjack's "rule of 4" is IMO (no offense) crap - it's fine once in a while when you just don't want to bog down a game looking up the TN for something obscure that doesn't matter a great deal, but the way he described using it meant he'd substitute it for anything and everything he didn't want to bother to remember. Not my kind of GM...

Trust me, we used those modifiers, just as we do use the D&D modifiers.
But the problem is that the modifiers change a lot more often, are applied more often, and that you have not only to determine basic success, but also the degree.
The D&D probability curve might be a bit flat, but not as strange as the SR ones...


But another change to the system I believe no one has mentioned yet:
Aside from the new Essence attribute, other attributes were also added, or better old attributes where split up.
Agility & Reaction for Quickness (? Might be the wrong name, I only remember the German one. SR was one of the games I still played using German rulebooks - unlike with D&D, they were readily available at the time I played it)
Logic and Intution for Intelligence.

I definitely liked this change, even though I was sceptical at first.