The Shadowrun Situation

Fucks · Post by **Fucks** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 12:49 pm

Re-introduce the Firearms skill and go for it, then?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 1:21 pm

Fucks wrote:Re-introduce the Firearms skill and go for it, then?

Oh absolutely. The ironic thing is that it was the gun enthusiasts - the very people who love Street Samurai and want to wax poetic about how badass they are - who demanded and got the Firearms skill chopped up. They wanted to have lots of different gun skill options, but the result is that it now takes four times as many skill points to get "good at shooting people" and the actual functionality is less.

It's pretty counterintuitive to a lot of people. But if you collapsed all the different gun skills into "firearms" or even all the weapon skills into "weapons" it would substantially improve gunbunnies. The extra "attention" they get from the skills chapter doesn't give them more functionality, it gives them less. And they pay more build points for the privilege.

Same reason people keep ranting about how overpowered Trolls are, yet somehow Troll characters never really amount to much. Having more physical stats on your character sheet doesn't make there be any more you can do with being big and strong, it just makes being big and strong cost more build points. Splitting clubs and blades into separate skills makes ninja characters have less points left over for B&E skills. Splitting Strength and Body into separate stats makes bruisers have less points left over for social prowess. And so on. The more stats and skills are associated with a field, the more points it costs to be good in that field and the less points people have left over to do other things if they are.

-Username17

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 5:20 pm

Trolls were on the height of their Power in SR3.
It went really downhill from then on.
Under SR3 Rules, they could tank and dish out obscene ammounts of damage. Without the use of magic too.
Of course, that could not stand, and so it changed.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 7:05 pm

Troll physads were great in SR4. Unarmed build for 10P damage ignoring armor at chargen is great (which swiftly goes to 20P with a few Initiations)

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 8:13 pm

Adepts are the other side of the problem; the "everything you can do I can do better" routine spills onto all the other character concepts. Really, they need to nix any adept ability that adds to a dice pool, and just stick with "magical augmentations."

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 8:15 pm

Under SR3, due to the prohibitive Points Costs, Trolls simply did not mix well with Magic of any kind . .
Cyber/Bio-Trolls could tote 10 points of armor and enough Body to take a Shotgun Blast to the Face and smile it off and deal enough Damage to slice Vehicles in Part with a glaive though.
If you WERE going for a Troll Adept, you could do seriously unholy things with your natural high STR and killing hands as well. 10D Damage right there. On One Net Hit. Couple it with distance Strike and you are a walking 6m sphere of instant death on an attack because people don't even get to defend against distance strike.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 11:19 pm

Heisenberg wrote:For the love of gob, and all that is holby, don't play SR5.

Oh yes, do I know it, I've known its bad before I read the book, before it even came out (just from its previews of "Accuracy/Limits" alone). It's basically like starting over as a lesser 4th edition experience, where all the options of the prior edition gone. Making the game have less fun stuff ye can mess with, and you'll know when those options come out, they'll be worse than their past counterparts.

I don't think my group knows "why" they continue to play 5th edition in the end. I'm guessing otherwise they feel they want "Mission of the week, or whatever we feel like that session", but want it to feel somewhat different (which is what playing a different character is for?), and/or just initial curiosity to "try it", and haven't seen a reason to back out since. That said, they're not exactly a knowledgeable group when it comes to rulesets (like most RPG groups), so I could be hardpressed to convince them to go back otherwise.

Frank Trollman wrote:Same reason people keep ranting about how overpowered Trolls are, yet somehow Troll characters never really amount to much.

By the Divines yes, when I came in with my Troll PC 1st session, they thought it was a big deal I had a double digit stats in parts, and could actually stealth (10 str & 15DP respectively).(Un)Fortunately, they understand the notion of "dump stats" and don't see a reason to roleplay those (not they do "in-character" Role Plays anyway).

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 11:31 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Also, they come in incremental chunks so it seems like Samurai are getting powerups when they objectively aren't.

So what could be done to to help reduce the increments, I'm guessing major rewrites of items getting prepackaged and rewritten to be more awesome? Other than that, the combing of Str-Bod, and Gun/Melee Skills into "Firearms" "Melee" or even just "Combat", wouldn't that not be far enough, albeit a decent start?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 11:50 pm

Longes wrote:Troll physads were great in SR4. Unarmed build for 10P damage ignoring armor at chargen is great (which swiftly goes to 20P with a few Initiations)

That's an enormous investment, and what do you get? Something that is about as damaging as a long burst from an assault rifle and takes a complex action at close range to use and is easier to counter. There are various trick builds that can make a Samurai or an Adept roll a lot of dice or do a lot of damage in some narrow fashion, but who gives a crap? There are damn few enemies such a trick build can put down that a moderately competent character with a sub machine gun couldn't put down in the same time. And the moderately competent character with a sub machine gun could be a Hacker or a Mage.

-Username17

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat Jan 18, 2014 5:18 am

Granted, it was in BPgen, so the costs are kinda off, but that troll was a Hacker

What you get, is a scaling forever with initiations magical damage that ignores the armor. You punch out the spirits with their Immunity, you punch out tanks that would shrug off burst from an assault rifle.

But really, my best build was a technomancer with an exoskeleton. He was awfuly minmaxed, but could stealth around and shoot stuff like noone's business, thanks to Gunnery and retardedly high Command.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Sat Jan 18, 2014 6:34 am

I would just to point out that the thread about the future of Shadow Run starts with a hilarious break down of corporate corruption and theft on the part of the, more or less, owner of IMR. So the question is, Does Loren believe he lives inside Shadow Run?

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Jan 18, 2014 6:40 am

One of the Lorenites spent some time here trying to accuse us of being worse than Loren Coleman because judging before all the facts was known was, to him, 'worse than any co-mingling of funds'.

He sorta took this way too seriously, such as when I proposed a Shadownrun to the Pacific North-west to break into a corrupt CEO's house and steal his gold. He accused us of plotting criminal conspiracy.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Jan 18, 2014 9:29 am

Longes wrote:You punch out the spirits with their Immunity.

People always say this, but the other fundamentals just aren't there to support that particular advantage. Melee goons have limited range and Spirits often rock the house at kiting. With extra powers factored in, they are virtually guaranteed to have a few picks from a pile which includes Flight, Fear, Elemental Attack, Movement, Innate Spell, Paralyzing Howl and in many cases Materialization. Those abilities can easily be a problem, especially when you factor in that melee gets boned on the action economy and is also relatively inaccurate versus skilled opposition possessed of extra initiative passes, which describes spirits by default. You know, because Spirits have skills and attributes equal to Force plus a bonus, so each point of Force adds 2 dice to their passive melee Dodge pool and 3 to their Full Defense Dodge. So even lowly spirits are throwing around 8 dice and Force 6s can bust out a friggin' 20 at need. Sure, it's possible to have melee pools of 20 or higher, but it's painfully expensive and at such pool sizes things are swingy enough that missing remains a factor. To add insult to injury, a fair number of Spirits rock Energy Aura, so it's not even a particularly good deal to go punch one in the face just to save the Mage some drain. Well, okay, it is, but only because PhysAds are objectively way less useful than a decent mage.

TLDR version: Work hard and burn all your karma and some day you too can be a Dan Hibiki in a world where wage mages summon Akuma.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Wed Jan 29, 2014 5:21 pm

I would just like to point out that the Wikipedia article about InMediasRes has been deleted because there wasn't enough evidence it actually existed. So that whole stink from before, that never happened at all. Just imagined it.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Jan 29, 2014 6:33 pm

Query: what?
this one?
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/InMediaRes_Productions,_LLC

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Wed Jan 29, 2014 6:47 pm

No, wikipedia, the site all wikis are based on. So, This one.

Heisenberg · Post by **Heisenberg** » Thu Jan 30, 2014 8:35 pm

darkmaster wrote:I would just like to point out that the Wikipedia article about InMediasRes has been deleted because there wasn't enough evidence it actually existed. So that whole stink from before, that never happened at all. Just imagined it.

Wow, really? That's disheartening as fuck.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu Jan 30, 2014 8:39 pm

Heisenberg wrote:
darkmaster wrote:I would just like to point out that the Wikipedia article about InMediasRes has been deleted because there wasn't enough evidence it actually existed. So that whole stink from before, that never happened at all. Just imagined it.
Wow, really? That's disheartening as fuck.

I especially like how the game wiki concludes that since Coleman wasn't convicted or penalized for embezzlement, the charges against him were false or at least exaggerated.

Heisenberg · Post by **Heisenberg** » Thu Jan 30, 2014 9:03 pm

Yes, because as we all know, the court system always works 100% of the time.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Fri Jan 31, 2014 1:02 am

Can you have the best of both worlds by making firearms work like 3.0 perform?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Jan 31, 2014 1:11 am

You mean, you want the SR3 Damage-Codes back?
So no AP, staging of LMSD?
Ballistic and Impact Armor?
Armor actually lowers the number you need to roll to stage down damage?
Back to the old variable Target Number System that's so hated around here?

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Fri Jan 31, 2014 1:15 am

Well, you can do proportional damage/lmsd staging without having to go with variable target numbers.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Jan 31, 2014 1:17 am

go on, i am listening . .

edit:
actually, that's a lie, i'll be heading for bed now.
but i will read this tomorrow.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Fri Jan 31, 2014 1:11 pm

Sorry, poor coms on my end.

DnD 3.0 had a skill, "perform", which you buy ranks in. Your ranks are the bonus to your perform rolls. But for each rank, you also got to select an additional instrument that you could perform on.

If you break out all the gun styles, presumably that makes it harder for non-gun characters to just pick up and use guns as an afterthought, which gives some role protection. But by tying all the proficiencies back to the same skill makes it much less of a penalty to gunners.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Jan 31, 2014 1:28 pm

So . .
Guns 1: Light Pistols.
Guns 2: Heavy-Pistols.
Guns 3: Autopistols.
Guns 4: Hunting Rifles.
Guns 5: Shotguns.
Guns 6: Assault-Rifles.
Guns 7: Sniper-Rifles.
Guns 8: LMG.
Guns 9: MMG.
Guns 10: HMG.
Guns 11: Grenade-Launcher.
Guns 12: Rocket/Missle-Launcher.

Or somehing like that?