Drunken Review: Shadowrun 5

[Judging__Eagle]

a "borg legs" speed

Funny you should mention that. In SR5 cyberlegs don't affect your movement speed. It is determined purely by your base agility stat. It doesn't matter if you have cyberlegs with Agility 10 or cyberlegs with Agility 3.

That's intellectually offensive. Especially when the totally primitive exo-harnesses today are valued for allowing the operator to have increased carrying capacity, without decreased speed or agility.

[Whipstitch]

But then, I'm super biased in favour of melee builds that operate like a Whirlwind Barbarian from Diablo 2. Fast attack & high movement speed over slow super-heavy hits; and try to build such into melee characters in any game I've played.

It depends a lot on the execution to me, particularly since in ttrpgs you can typically count on the "fastest" guys taking the longest turns irl. Ideally I think attack sequences should hit a level of abstraction where your attack actions simply represents a brief struggle and how many blows it takes to get to the mechanical result is largely a matter of fluff. I don't actually give a fuck if you knock people out in one go with a perfectly timed dragon punch or whether you were spamming hundred hand slaps the whole time. As far as I'm concerned the most useful property of multiple attacks is that it implies the possibility of multiple takedowns and most everything else about it is just a simple math problem/fucking around.

[Judging__Eagle]

I've also found that higher attack speeds with lower damage are generally more efficient use of overall time than slower attacks with higher damage.

Weaker targets have multiple attacks distributed among them in less time without wasted overkill damage; and tougher targets are able to be burned down with more efficiency as there are plenty of attacks that can be piled onto them.

Now, this mostly applies to vidya; the [Tome] "whirlwinding barbarian" is going to operate differently than the Diablo 2 barbarian using an attack with the same name. While in After Sundown characters with 3 Initiative passes are absolutely "act more" than other people.

While AS's "three turns per turn" issue with Celerity has been mentioned a few times; and I've seen it in action during a campaign I was running. I'm not entirely convinced that a "fast" character's (typically) mundane actions are really going to slow down gameplay. Now, if we're talking about people using Celerity stacking to cast something like 3-6 spells per round; things will definitely start to come to a grind when it's the Triple-Sorcerer's turn(s). A caveat on extra initiative passes from Celerity not being able to grant more than 1 initiative pass for dispellable Disciplines & Sorceries; might be a move towards addressing that.

[Lokathor]

I'm not entirely convinced that a "fast" character's (typically) mundane actions are really going to slow down gameplay.

I am. I absolutely am. Not that it slows down gameplay overall necessarily. Things are happening at an average speed regardless of who's talking. The problem is that who gets to talk doesn't get divided evenly.

Aside, I dispute that spells take longer to resolve in After Sundown than attacks do, since an attack is a Simple Action, and a large number of spells are Complex Actions.

Either way, you've still got some guy going 3 passes to another player's 1 pass. That just makes people "go play Smash Bros" (in the case of my group it's more like "get on Tinder"). And of course you're technically supposed to be rolling for initiative order each new round and then tracking what pass you're on and who has that many passes and stuff, which slows down people getting to take their turns as well. Like it literally gets complex enough to have dice rollers for it all. In DnD you just have everyone roll once at the start of a fight and then you loop until you're done. It's easy to remember who's next after a person and jump straight to them. It's nice. Earthdawn splits the difference with no passes but still new initiative rolls each round, and honestly all the extra turn order shuffling feels pretty pointless most of the time (even with a different roller for that too).

[Username17]

I've also found that higher attack speeds with lower damage are generally more efficient use of overall time than slower attacks with higher damage.

This is so bizarre of a statement that it's hard to seriously continue the conversation. Like, it genuinely seems like you are in some way concerned about in game time more than tabletop resolution time. And that is fucking mirror universe Spock has a beard shit.

In game time is an unlimited resource. If you want five minutes to pass you say "five minutes later..." and you want a hundred years to pass you say "one hundred years later...". That's it. You have magic words you can say at any time to have the clock move forward or backward as much as you fucking want.

Table time is precious. I worked more than seventy hours this week. If you laid all the time I was literally at work this week end to end it would have been more than three actual midnight to midnight days. I didn't get to go gaming this Sunday at all because I had to fucking sleep.

If your character attacks twice as often in game time and this requires twice as many declarations and die rolls, then you will sometimes save like half a combat round in game time, but you will nearly always take up nearly double the amount of table time. And since the time you are saving comes from the unlimited pile and the time you are spending comes from the strictly limited allowance you get in your whole fucking life pile, that is an absolutely insane trade.

And the fact that you would describe that trade as "efficient" is mind boggling.

-Username17

[echoVanguard]

I've also found that higher attack speeds with lower damage are generally more efficient use of overall time than slower attacks with higher damage.

This is so bizarre of a statement that it's hard to seriously continue the conversation. Like, it genuinely seems like you are in some way concerned about in game time more than tabletop resolution time. And that is fucking mirror universe Spock has a beard shit.

I think he means that you eliminate more enemies per turn, meaning enemies get fewer turns against you.

echo

[Voss]

I've also found that higher attack speeds with lower damage are generally more efficient use of overall time than slower attacks with higher damage.

This is so bizarre of a statement that it's hard to seriously continue the conversation. Like, it genuinely seems like you are in some way concerned about in game time more than tabletop resolution time. And that is fucking mirror universe Spock has a beard shit.

I think he means that you eliminate more enemies per turn, meaning enemies get fewer turns against you.

echo

Isn't that what grenades or manaballs are for?
[Or power or stun or the spells that create actual flame or whatever, whichever is best depending on edition)

[Stahlseele]

fights only get done faster, if you can deal out big damage numbers in each of your more actions.
otherwise, you are probably going to clog up the game more than advance the fight.
I like to point to the indiana jones scene in the market place where that one thugee assassine tries to impress indi by doing the swirly things with his swords for a solid minute and indi just outright shoots him. Now imagine if indi had a swordfighter on his side and they actually started to fight.
Yes, maybe awesome, but also clogging up the game. And the swordfighter on indis side would be so salty about indi simply stealing the kill on what was clearly supposed to be his time to shine with his chosen skill . . but god damn it, indi oneshotting the enemy swordy with his gun takes it to seconds instead of potential hours of dice rolls . .


Also, physical attributes have been fucked for basically ever in shadowrun with what they can and can not do. Especially in combination to the weight rules for both the characters and their gear . .

[OgreBattle]

Getting extra actions resolved in the normal way feels more like stopping time.
Getting more out of your normal actions like moving faster or punching more accurately, acting before others feels more like super speed. I'd also say interrupting actions but some game systems don't handle that well.

[Blade]

Shadowrun isn't a game about punching/knifing/swording people, so its melee combat system should not get into details such as "do you punch very fast or very hard?".
It should, and it does, abstract all this into a single melee attack roll.

Having an advanced ruleset for detailed melee can be nice for those cases where you want an epic fight between two melee fighters, but for most battles, all you need is a single melee roll.

As for extra actions (additional IP) I found the best solution to let people with multiple IP affect multiple targets with one combat action, not that different from a mage affecting multiple targets with an AOE spell.

[Aryxbez]

It would be nice to have Street Sams be more like Diablo 2 Barbarians, that is, moving in fast and hitting a bunch of foes with their attacks. Which, to save on table time, you really could just put that into one attack roll, likely with an associated penalty to represent the difficulty of hitting all these targets (something like -2 past 1st target, after pre-measured your movement paths to make this possible). So basically it's like [Tome] 6th level Whirlwind feat, or Dervish Dancing.

The main abuse I could see with this, is where they dervish dance to kill a bunch of guys, and then get behind a wall, or they go into a hallway corner to no longer be in Line of Sight of gunfire, which seems strange.

Finally, since I saw bit about "Dokote" existing in SR3, I'm surprised they haven't done this in SR5 yet (unless they have). Where it would be like +2 or +4 to your Melee Edged/Pointed Weapon's Limit. Where I guess the latter bonus could be for the blunt weapons, if somehow they think there's some balance/incentive there to use one over the other?

[Longes]

Dikote was a weapon upgrade in SR3 that was so good that everyone put it on their melee weapons. So SR4 and SR5 cut out the middleman and just said that every melee weapon is already dikoted.

[kzt]

My opinion is that melee with weapons is SR should be horribly deadly. Because swords, axes and maces are really good at breaking and killing people, particularly people not wearing heavy melee armor. But it should also typically be suicide to try to close on someone with a gun unless you are able to absorb being shot multiple times.

The devs have never felt the same.

[Stahlseele]

Yeah, that was basically the Trol Niche of existence in SR3.
And then came the cries of:ZOMG! NERF PLOX!"

[Username17]

Trolls have been shit in every edition. While some variations of the rules (that is to say: very late in the book cycle in SR2 and SR3) have allowed you to pile enough stuff together to reliably chop people in half with a diamond halberd, that is in fact a stupid thing to specialize in. Even when it works it's no more subtle than carrying a gyromounted machine gun, and it's less effective at killing people because it has lower range and firing rates.

Fundamentally in every edition Strength is a quite bad attribute, and the fact that Trolls pay a lot for the priviledge of having a slightly higher Strength than Orks has always been a shit deal. Orks have varied between being a shit race and the master race, because they keep changing how much being an Ork costs and sometimes (specifically SR2 and SR3) having a high Body is useful.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

Reliably taking a shotgun burst to the face and rolling it down to no damage taken is always impressive.

[Username17]

Reliably taking a shotgun burst to the face and rolling it down to no damage taken is always impressive.

Yet still substantially less useful than going before the guy with a shotgun and reliably taking him out in one shot. And definitionally equally useful with not getting hit by the shotgun in the first place - and in pretty much every edition of the rules a Quickness/Intelligence (or Reaction/Intuition as befits the edition) build gets to do both of those things.

And even at the height of the Invulno-Troll time - which was of course after Shadowtech but before the changeover to the much deadlier SR2 rules, you were pretty likely to walk away with a light wound when people shot you with shotguns. There's never been a ruleset where a Troll based soak build could reliably take no injury from ordnance larger than a pistol. There have been rulesets where said Troll could absolutely reliably take a missle to the chest and not take any wound penalties - but they still marked off boxes and couldn't do it twice.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

11D Damage, 9 Ballistic Armor. Worn and Bones and Dermal-Tech. Because duh, obviously.
TN to resist DMG 2.
18+ Body Dice. If you don't (like i did one time) roll 16! 1's on such a throw, you are VERY unlikely to take any damage from that.
With that you can take such a Burst, that needs 8 hits at TN2.
So you have 10 dice PLUS COMBAT POOL left. So even if your enemy has a shooty skill of 10 and manages to actually get 10 hits on his attacking to hit roll, you STILL TAKE NO DAMAGE. Because with your Body Attribute ALONE you are more than likely to simply negate his hits. GUNS do NOT get more Damage with more Hits. That's Melee only if i remember correctly. Full-Auto weapons that push the DMG to 14+D Damage get more problematic. 18D from a Panther is still something you do not want to face. Unless you can roll like a god. 18 Body and 10 Combat Pool means 28 dice versus TN 9. So no dice there *snickers*.
Of course, once you can get your Hands on Heavy Milspec Armor with 7 points Hardened Armor you need to recalculate everything again anyway.

As for the diamantine Halberd . . Yeah, no, that is not very subtly.
That is making a Statement with some style.

But you can still do ridiculous ammounts of Damage with built in cyber-weapons and dikote <.<
16STR. A Spur will do 17S Damage already. TWO will do STR+(STR/2)+2 from the Dikote so 26S Damage, if it does stack like that. Which, of course with this being the shadowrun rules, especially 3rd edition, never has been made anywhere near clear as far as i know.

[Username17]

11D Damage, 9 Ballistic Armor. Worn and Bones and Dermal-Tech. Because duh, obviously.
TN to resist DMG 2.
18+ Body Dice. If you don't (like i did one time) roll 16! 1's on such a throw, you are VERY unlikely to take any damage from that.
With that you can take such a Burst, that needs 8 hits at TN2.

What, your opponent rolled zero hits on their attack roll? Remember that your opponent is rolling their Shotguns + Combat Pool check with a likely target number of 2 as well, and their hits cancel yours 1 for 1. You don't need 8 hits, you need 8 plus their hits hits. You average 15 hits, so on average any attack with more than 8 dice will cause injury.

Even if they throw in no combat pool at all and just blast away for their average 5 hits, you still have a better than 6.5% chance of filling in boxes. Your resilience is impressive, but it's in no way "reliable."

And not to put too fine a point on it, but we're talking an extremely all-in character who has min/maxed soak as far as it will go in SR3. And you can still just get blown away by a starting character with a basic shotgun. And if your opponent invested in anything exciting like armor piercing rounds or something, they can ice you with a heavy pistol. Invulno-Trolls have never been all that invulnerable, even in the editions where they were a defensible life choice.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

Hell, due to dice rolls, noting is invulnerable.
See my 16 1's in a single resistance roll <.<

[Nath]

My opinion is that melee with weapons is SR should be horribly deadly. Because swords, axes and maces are really good at breaking and killing people, particularly people not wearing heavy melee armor. But it should also typically be suicide to try to close on someone with a gun unless you are able to absorb being shot multiple times.

The devs have never felt the same.

The problem with Shadowrun (and a number of other RPG) is that it try to have all actions pertaining to unarmed combat and the use melee weapons and firearms used at different range take either 1/2 or 1 action. In real life, stabbing someone is faster than readying and firing a pistol at close range, which is faster than charging and trying to stab, which is faster than aiming a pistol at long range, which is faster than a duel with melee weapons, which is faster than aiming a sniper rifle...

Shadowrun distinction between Automatic, Simple and Complex Actions is already a pain, but it does not solve this issue and it's never going to do it. Yet people are against removing it because it would make the problem worse - which is objectively true as long as no alternative (that is, a widely different combat system) is offered.

[Judging__Eagle]

I've also found that higher attack speeds with lower damage are generally more efficient use of overall time than slower attacks with higher damage.

This is so bizarre of a statement that it's hard to seriously continue the conversation. Like, it genuinely seems like you are in some way concerned about in game time more than tabletop resolution time. And that is fucking mirror universe Spock has a beard shit.

-Username17

I'm talking about both in game; and out of game time. If the parties "combat monsters" ends the combat in their round; then the entirety of time that the combat encounter would have chewed up is now freed up, and the party can move to the next plot point.

Obviously, the character who "wastes" more play time by taking more actions needs to have their normal actions be more efficient than any other PC, for such table-time savings to be realized.

The D&D fighter who lands 3 Con damage 8-20 times per round (in addition to 10-20 dmg per attack); or the After Sundown Werewolf with an Athletics Skill of 6 & a Strength of 20 (whose charging bite is more a frappe-missile than melee attack). Both of these characters aren't going to be doing (very) much outside of combat; and allowing them to end combats frees up every other player to get back to doing their own thing.

I don't see this as much different from the group of players giving the "Faces" more play time to end a diplomatic encounter; the "Sages" more play time to end a research encounter; or the "Smiths" to cobble together a new resource for the parties future use.

Of course, if the entire premise of the game is merely monster mashing, then yeah, of course the player with more play time is taking away from others; but really, it's a demonstrated over fondness by Mister Caverns for combat time that makes RPG sessions drag on so long in the first place. Personally, if a D&D session involves no dice rolling, I'm happiest. Failing that, one person rolling twice the amount of dice; and saving three other players from rolling dice is still a net gain.

Almost every case that I've seen that's not true; it's due to Mister Caverns wanting all encounters to be solved via combat, not diplomacy/ stealth/ creativity. Mostly b/c those same MCs will simply force all NPCs & 'monsters' to take no option other than combat (even if clearly suicidal).

[Longes]

So ancient and not very ancient magical books in Shadowrun actually contain real spells? How long has that been a thing?

[Username17]

So ancient and not very ancient magical books in Shadowrun actually contain real spells? How long has that been a thing?

First Edition rules had Hermetics required to go lick hermetic texts to learn spells or conjure spirits. They had "hermetic libraries" that had ratings. This was the future, so you could store them on compact disc!

A few times people have made attempts to talk about what texts are actually in Hermetic Libraries, and it has never gone well. Such things are pretty much invariably disappointing.

-Username17

[Longes]

So ancient and not very ancient magical books in Shadowrun actually contain real spells? How long has that been a thing?

First Edition rules had Hermetics required to go lick hermetic texts to learn spells or conjure spirits. They had "hermetic libraries" that had ratings. This was the future, so you could store them on compact disc!

A few times people have made attempts to talk about what texts are actually in Hermetic Libraries, and it has never gone well. Such things are pretty much invariably disappointing.

-Username17

Yeah, I get that. I just always assumed that spell formulas and hermetic libraries were a recent development, not that Egyptian Book of the Dead and Gardner's writings literally have functional spells in it.