Drunken Review: Shadowrun 5

[silva]

Wait, what are the positives?

Priority chargen, fixed TNs, limits, cyberdecks, better unified mechanic (atrib+skill for almost everything), one attack per phase, streamlined matrix, higher combat lethality.

While the negatives are the lack of further streamlining, and the way wireless is handled and explained (Im of the opinion that all wireless devices should be online all the time, the way it is it feels more like a cheap attempt at making players use it, than a plausible extrapolation on the implementation of such a technology). Also, the bazillion unnecessarily complex sub-systems with all those unnecessarily numerous rolls (but this is true for all editions since 1st).

Dont get me wrong, its Shadowrun ( = a piece of convoluted and badly designed crap in first place) but at least this edition streamlined a lot of things, including making the matrix playable for the first time. Perhaps 4th edition already had implemented 80% of these changes, dont know, but then I dont care since I hated 4e and dont even consider it part of the line (you know that story arc where your favorite super-hero is portrayed in a manner so ridiculous that you simply ignore this arc even existed ? Thats 4th edition to me). What I know is that Im excited as I was 20 years ago opening my first copy of Shadowrun 2e. Not because this is the best system in the world, but because finally, for me, Shadowrun is back.

[Orca]

Some friends and I tried SR5. Priority chargen is crazy complicated for no great gain, limits sound good but add nothing useful, we ended up dumping the matrix system, and the troll physical adept took a couple of HE grenades to the head and kept on coming in one fight.

One attack per phase did simplify things a little, true. I'm not sure your other positives stack up.

[silva]

Some friends and I tried SR5. Priority chargen is crazy complicated for no great gain

Well, compared to the only other alternative available which is point-buy ("here take 400pts and distribute between these 230 items, each calculated differently"), then Priority is clearly faster. Now, comparing to other games chargen in general, I agree with you.

limits sound good but add nothing useful

Oh they add... Limits make it possible to have a unified mechanic (or something pretty close to that) first time in Shadowrun history: Atrib + Skill [Limit].

we ended up dumping the matrix system

Again, if you say this from the perspective of another games, I agree Matrix rules are still complex. Compared to the previous editions though, its considerably simpler and faster.

And if the Troll resisted a HE grenade to the head here, just know that in previous editions he could stop half a dozen of these together. Again, its Shadowrun - one of the worstly designed system I know no matter the edition - but at least this one is faster and simpler than anything that came before. Aaaand the art direction is the best I've seen since the Nelson and Bradstreet days, oozing the high-tech low-life stick it to the man cyberpunk attitude (damn, the Decker is literally giving the finger in the official GM screen! ) that 4th edition with its shitty transhumanist vibe utterly missed.

[Orion]

Honestly, if trolls can't block grenades with their faces I don't think they should even be playable.

[Stahlseele]

Trolls blocking Grenades only works when playing without chunky salsa.
Is chunky salsa only an optional rule or not? If not, Trolls can't stop grenades like that. If it is and you don't use it, don't complain about Trolls stopping grenades like that.

[NineInchNall]

Wait, what are the positives?

Priority chargen, fixed TNs, limits, cyberdecks, better unified mechanic (atrib+skill for almost everything), one attack per phase, streamlined matrix, higher combat lethality.

You literally just listed things that were discussed as being horrible in the review.


EDIT: WTF doesn't this board ignore extraneous tags? Fuck.

[Seerow]

Wait, what are the positives?

Priority chargen, fixed TNs, limits, cyberdecks, better unified mechanic (atrib+skill for almost everything), one attack per phase, streamlined matrix, higher combat lethality.

You literally just listed things that were discussed as being horrible in the review.

You're literally responding to Silva.

[silva]

What is the "chunky salsa rule" ?

I'm reading the Alphaware Runners Toolkit box and while its usefulness is questionable, damn they did a great job with those sample runners. I never got interested in playing example NPCs but that Gentry elf-wannabe Decker is awesome. Also, the north-America map is gorgeous and the better I've seen for the game.

[NineInchNall]

Priority chargen, fixed TNs, limits, cyberdecks, better unified mechanic (atrib+skill for almost everything), one attack per phase, streamlined matrix, higher combat lethality.

You literally just listed things that were discussed as being horrible in the review.

You're literally responding to Silva.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooo!

[Stahlseele]

@Silva
If you do not know what chunky salsa is, no wonder... technically it shoukd be called red mist instead of chunky salsa...
Chunky salsa is what happens when a grenade hits a target close to a sturdy enough surface to reflect a blast. Look down for a second. Yes, the ground applies.
So a grenade with damage 10 in 3 m distance from the ground(troll head) loses 3 dmg from its blast traveling down to the ground. But at the ground on which the troll is standing this 7 dmg blast gets reflected, meaning it adds its own power to itself again and suddenly the grenade does not apply 10 dmg to the head only but 14 dmg to the complete troll.
now fire the same grenade not at his head(because grenade heatshots are dumb and if you use them you should feel dumb) but at his feet and the same 10dmg grenade now deals 20dmg because the blast does not spread out and lose dmg from distance but is reflected at point blank range so is simply doubled.
Now add sturdy walls and a ceiling to this equation and tell me again that trolls are too strong. You are just bad at using the rules.

[Silent Wayfarer]

Also, frag grenades in SR5 are 18P, so shooting at their feet should reflect 36P back at them, assuming there's no flashback from other nearby surfaces. That should oneshot anything less than a BOD 10+1 troll with bone lacing, dermal plating, suprathyroid gland, and heavy milspec armor.

BOD 11 (effective) gives 14 wound boxes.

For soak he has 14 Body + 6 Dermal Plating +3 Bone Lacing + 23 Hardened Heavy Milspec combat armor +5 AP mod = 51 dice, or roughly 17 soak.

Milspec Combat Armor is Hardened and gives an automatic 11 soak successes.

Frag grenade weighs in at 18x2 = 36P, which is reduced to 25 via hardened armor and by another 17 from rolled soak, or 8 boxes after everything else. This is the most heavily armored character possible, and it's not even realistic because Dermal Plating 6 and Bone Lacing 3 are 4.5 Essence, so a chap like this is literally a punching bag.

Literally everyone else will just die instantly when hit by a frag grenade.

[Stahlseele]

yeah, i wasn't quite sure about the numbers in SR5.
but where do you get the 6 from dermal plating?
Troll natural dermal plating is just level 1 and of SR4 gives +1/1 armor, not body dice if i remember correctly?
And you can go higher in terms of armored character, but you are right about it not being feasible because of the cost and too many ways around tankiness in characters in shadowrun . .

[Silent Wayfarer]

Dermal plating goes up to R6 in SR5. The suprathyroid gland increases all physical attributes by +1. I forgot to factor that in too, so the minimum Essence cost for that spread is 5.2. I also forgot about troll innate +1 armor, but honestly speaking, that's hardly worth remembering. The milspec armor is the biggest part of his defense because of Hardened Armor. Give him Security Armor which is 1-2 points less and doesn't have HA, and he goes down faster than a drunken sorority slut at a frat party.

On a tangent, Intuition is the god stat for SR5 because all defense pools are REA + INT, INT goes into initiative and perception and it's very hard to raise INT. It counts for Mental and Social Limits too, or was that WIL? Not sure if you can blindfire with INT too.

[Stahlseele]

Other Tangent:
Does Chunky Salsa also apply to . . no idea what they are called now, non mana spells, the fireball stuff etc? Or the blast elemental aura for adept fists?

[silva]

Looks overly lethal to me. Is there some rule in the combat sourcebook (Run & Gun ?) that alleviates it somehow ?

And thanks for explaining the chunky salsa, Stahl. I agree red mist would be a better name.

[Stahlseele]

Shadowrun is a game of Glass-Cannons.
It is MUCH EASIER to stack on the DMG thant it is to soak.
And before you were complaining that grenades seemed too weak against trolls and now you complain that grenades are too strong overall? Nope.
Either it's an 18p DMG Ball of Death or it's a math nightmare waiting to happen.

The only thing that can save you from a grenade is getting some solid cover between you and it. At least to a degree. Because of course, the rebound will only happen if the barrier is not blown to smithereens from the blast. So the barrier-rating has to be higher than the DMG from the shock actually reaching it. and at 18p, there is precious little that has a chance of doing that actually.

Otherwise, you simply do not want to be anywhere near a grenade going off. Because grenades lose DMG over distance. Usually one point per meter from where they detonated. Which will not help one single bit if it's a grenade primed to go up on impact, not from fuse.

Let's say that thing goes off in a hallway that's 4m wide and has a ceiling of 4m. if the grenade lands suare in the middle, it will go down to 16P on both sides and 14p on the ceiling. and then they get reflected as 2x32 and one 28 DMG coming back down to ground zero. where all of that DMG will add up to 64+28=72DMG. which will usually blow out the floor underneath the person, if it's not some really tough stuff or they are in an underground tunnel that has a mountain around it on all sides. if there is a mountain around it, per RAW it will rebound again and again and again untill the DMG actually is high enough to blow up the mountain. Somebody did not think that rule through. Surprise, surprise . .

And you think this is bad?
Boyo, you ain't seen nuthing yet!

You can burst fire grenades or simply throw two of them. They add up and THEN the bouncing madness of chunky salsa/red mist happens, if i remember that stupid rule correctly.


Gentlemans Agreement Time!
Nobody carries pocket-nukes around please, neither the runners, nor the NPCs.
Or you do not use chunky salsa, and then the Troll still can, if propperly optimized and with good luck on a soak roll, take a grenade or two to the face and shrug it off as a mere flesh wound.

Or you don't use the BOOM grenades. Gas/Slip-Spray or other fun Splash-Grenade combinations are much more environmentally friendly. Yes, even White Phosphorous. No, you don't generally want these to be thrown around either, if you look at the rules for that . .


Wanna know why you will actually usually see more non leathal damage/stun being used?
Because it's even easier to stack that DMG and even harder to soak it. And there is no practical difference between unconscious and dead.
On the other hand, if you are cought only with non lethal stuff, whoever catches you might go a bit easier on you because you tried to be nice about it . .

And as an aside: I don't think i remember ever seeing or hearing Stun Grenades being exempt from the chunky salsa rule either . . so technically speaking, if i am not completely mistakten, you could with an awesomely well/badly placed concussion/stun grenade take down a skyscraper . .

BECAUSE REASONS!

The hard counter for purely stun/non lethal weaponry?
Hardened Armor, DRONES (who don't have a stun track) and maybe Spirits.

[kzt]

It's like the people writing these rules never playtest them. Or even think critically about them. But that's OK, because it seems like most of the people who claim to be playing SR5, like Silva here, are not actually using the SR5 rules. They are using some weird hybrid of the rules in the SR5 book and what would actually make sense for the rules to say.

[Stahlseele]

like the people claiming matrix has gotten playable . .
when it can and has been proven that you need to do several dozend rolls for achieving menial tasks.

But then, that's been a problem with the shadowrun rules for YEARS by now.
Since before SR3 at least.

[silva]

It's like the people writing these rules never playtest them. Or even think critically about them. But that's OK, because it seems like most of the people who claim to be playing SR5, like Silva here, are not actually using the SR5 rules. They are using some weird hybrid of the rules in the SR5 book and what would actually make sense for the rules to say.

But then, that's been a problem with the shadowrun rules for YEARS by now.

This. I still believe one day we will see a finely designed game of Shadowrun, but the way things are going, it wont be soon. And until that day arrives, the only thing left for the fans is to mesh what little they can scavenge from the mess of rules with their own modifications and house-rules.

That said..

like the people claiming matrix has gotten playable

Frankly, by reading the book it seems a player can hack with just two rolls - one for getting access to a device (slaping a couple "marks" on it), and other for issuing a command. No previous edition of the game allowed such a simplicity. But I didn't playtested it yet, so I can totally be mistaken here. Any input from actual play is welcome, of course.

[Stahlseele]

i hazily remember there having been a thread either here or on dumpshock where somebody actually went and posted a completely RAW step by step hacking attempt . . not sure if it was still SR4 or SR5 rules, but i think it was the latter . . and it was a long posting with many steps.

probably here, probably frank.

[silva]

It would be useful having some actual play examples of hacking/matrix actions.

One interesting thing I noticed is that this edition allows for auto solving rolls by assuming averages, on a ratio of 1 hit for each 3 dice in a given pool. This seems to speed things up significantly. (this seems a product of the fixed target numbers 4th ed introduced)

[shau]

i hazily remember there having been a thread either here or on dumpshock where somebody actually went and posted a completely RAW step by step hacking attempt . . not sure if it was still SR4 or SR5 rules, but i think it was the latter . . and it was a long posting with many steps.

probably here, probably frank.

I remember a thread on Dumpshock that was just like that, but it actually ended in a argument without resolving things halfway through. This would have been in the third edition days though, so you might be talking about something else.

[name_here]

Frank did a breakdown of one of the example hacks in Unwired on here.

[kzt]

i hazily remember there having been a thread either here or on dumpshock where somebody actually went and posted a completely RAW step by step hacking attempt . . not sure if it was still SR4 or SR5 rules, but i think it was the latter . . and it was a long posting with many steps.

The developer posted a SR4a example IIRC, with two people fighting over a drone. They left out a bunch of steps and the damn thing went on for pages.

[silva]

Huh.. I was referring to a 5th edition hacking example, guys, not from older editions.