[Shadowrun 5] On the playability of Matrix

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Thu Apr 09, 2015 8:48 am

SR4 is a game of glass cannons, from what I've seen of SR5 it's more or less the same.

In SR3, armors could get to insanely high levels, and with a high enough Body (and some help from the combat and karma pool if necessary) characters could soon get immune to anything that didn't shoot either APDS or burst fire.

In SR4, there are ways to get a whole lot of soaking dice, but even then there's still a risk of getting a lot of damage in one shot.

But ignoring that, it makes some sense that runners should be able to steamroll the opposition more often than not. They're highly trained/augmented professionals whose work is to shoot people in the face for money, so it makes sense that they're good at it, especially when they're the attackers against unprepared enemies.

But if your runners can steamroll even an opposition of their "level", you definitely have a problem.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Thu Apr 09, 2015 6:44 pm

I have no problem with steamrolling the opposition if you have a good plan well executed.

silva · Post by **silva** » Thu Apr 09, 2015 7:28 pm

kzt wrote:I have no problem with steamrolling the opposition if you have a good plan well executed.

Yep, agreed. The problem is when you combat mage takes a 3 runners opposing team alone face to face while standing from a roof in clear sight slinging lightning balls and bolts everywhere.

Because he has lots of Edge.

silva · Post by **silva** » Thu Apr 09, 2015 8:19 pm

Blade wrote:But ignoring that, it makes some sense that runners should be able to steamroll the opposition more often than not. They're highly trained/augmented professionals whose work is to shoot people in the face for money, so it makes sense that they're good at it, especially when they're the attackers against unprepared enemies.

But if your runners can steamroll even an opposition of their "level", you definitely have a problem.

Yep, agreed.

My group uses a particular "threat rating" to track opposition competence, based on their average skill rating:

Street: skill from 1-4
Professional: skill from 5-8
Prime: skill from 9-12

This means on a Street level game most of the opposition will show around 1-4 skill ratings. Thats an average though, so its valid for a single opponent to have a little more than that. Or, if the run ends up spilling out of the original "problem space". Ie: runners do some big shit and now the main Mitsuhama Response Team is coming for them. In this case its pretty much expected that their skill ratings surpass the normal boundaries for a "Street game".

(of course, run payments are proportionally higher with each step. Our base pay is the average lifetyle of the team [minimum 2k] for each runner, plus: 0% if Street level, +100% if Professional level, +200% if Prime level).

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 8:59 am

Skill rating doesn't do everything, tactics have a lot more impact.

A friend has recently made a proposal that I find quite interesting: to give the NPC some tactics pool. This tactics pool can be used to counter the fact that the GM is not an expert tactician. The GM can spend points of this pool to counter a bad move from the opposition.

For example: a PC shoots at one of the member of the corporate elite strike team who, because the GM didn't realize it, is outside of cover. The GM can spend a tactics point to explain that it's actually a heavily armored member of the team who's there to draw fire (or an illusion if that's technically possible).

If the GM realizes too late that the opposition is standing too close to each other and can all be taken out by the grenade a PC has just thrown, he can spend one tactics point to explain that the team expected something like this and that one of the team member was ready to throw the grenade back.

The problem is that it might lead to combats being about depleting the opposition's tactics pool and it might feel dickish if not used correctly. But I still find the idea interesting, and there might be ways to improve it.

Zaranthan · Post by **Zaranthan** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 4:35 pm

That is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard. The GM doesn't need a points pool to pull shit out of his ass on the spot to cover his own ineptitude, that's called "GMing". Likely also "shitty GMing". If the GM goofs and his mooks get slaughtered, who fucking cares? They're NPC mooks. Put two more in the next encounter and try not to fuck up this time.

"But they were supposed to be a real challenge to the players!" If they had names, they had Edge scores. You don't need two Edge pools just because you can't remember to tell your vatforms to duck.

silva · Post by **silva** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 6:09 pm

Blade, conceptually your idea seems neat, but the implementation needs work. I wouldnt like the GM pulling things out of air because "tactical", if you know what I mean.

(not even in Apocalypse World we play like that.

)

vagrant · Post by **vagrant** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 7:53 pm

Honestly, fuck you Silva. Also fuck you Blade. If you are terrible at tactics (and we all have our days), then your dudes are terrible at tactics. If they're supposed to matter, give them Edge scores. Or use the fucking rules for group Edge like you're supposed to. And god forbid you put some effort into having your corporate milspec opposition act like highly trained corporate milspec opposition.

(For real though, if you're having trouble with tactics, play some XCOM. Seriously. It will help.)

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 8:15 pm

It can't be said enough. Do not fucking talk to silva.

-Username17

silva · Post by **silva** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 9:43 pm

vagrant wrote:Honestly, fuck you Silva. Also fuck you Blade. If you are terrible at tactics (and we all have our days), then your dudes are terrible at tactics. If they're supposed to matter, give them Edge scores. Or use the fucking rules for group Edge like you're supposed to. And god forbid you put some effort into having your corporate milspec opposition act like highly trained corporate milspec opposition.

(For real though, if you're having trouble with tactics, play some XCOM. Seriously. It will help.)

Dont know if I agree with the overall sentiment here. By this argument, a player could only create a small units tactics expert if he already knew the skill in real life. This dont make much sense to me.

But then, Blade "tactics pool" rules look bad for me anyway.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 9:48 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:It can't be said enough. Do not fucking talk to silva.

-Username17

Off topic but I finally looked up the apocalypse world that Silva loves to suck off.

It looks like a failed WoD supplement. I think it actually uses the same font from Hunter: The Reckoning. It reads like bad fanfic too, or maybe what someone would think is "edgy" in RPGs, circa 1997.

silva · Post by **silva** » Sat Apr 11, 2015 2:07 pm

Yeah, Ive found SR4 bland as shit, but it looks the preferred edition around here.

Different opinions and all that.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sat Apr 11, 2015 5:03 pm

Let us say that SR4 is the least bad edition technically.
I like the SR3 one better myself, but technically, SR4 is better.
For SR3 to be properly run, you need a computer to do the rules stuff for you <.<

silva · Post by **silva** » Sat Apr 11, 2015 5:38 pm

The question then is: do you prefer a 1) bland "least bad technically edition", or 2) tasteful "full of holes edition" ? Im with the latter. No matter how mathematically sound a ruleset is. If its rules dont appeal to me, they are not worth it (See Gurps).

IMHO of course.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sat Apr 11, 2015 7:14 pm

SR3 is not full of holes.
If you want to go for the old comparision with the net, it's more string than holes.
It has rules for bloody everything!

silva · Post by **silva** » Sat Apr 11, 2015 7:24 pm

Sorry Stahl, bad wording. I wanted to mean that the older editions were more inconsistent from a pure math point of view. Ie: the floating target numbers that give the game a weird progression on the difficulty of tasks.

But as I said, the actual importance of that will vary from table to table. Id rather play SR2/3 anyday - even with those inconsistences - than to play SR4.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 5:31 pm

Problems of decking summed up in a single chart. Note the place where Matrix Perception is glossed over detailed.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 9:16 pm

Longes wrote:Problems of decking summed up in a single chart. Note the place where Matrix Perception is glossed over detailed.

That flowchart makes my head hurt.

silva · Post by **silva** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 9:31 pm

Mine too. And it don't actually highlights the "problem" with matrix perceptions.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 9:32 pm

TheFlatline wrote:
Longes wrote:Problems of decking summed up in a single chart. Note the place where Matrix Perception is glossed over detailed.
That flowchart makes my head hurt.

Note that the chart isn't even full. Matrix Perception, Cybercombat and everything you do once you've entered the node are actually pointers to corebook. So the real chart is like twice the size of this one, with a recursive loop in Matrix Perception.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 9:42 pm

Longes wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:
Longes wrote:Problems of decking summed up in a single chart. Note the place where Matrix Perception is glossed over detailed.
That flowchart makes my head hurt.
Note that the chart isn't even full. Matrix Perception, Cybercombat and everything you do once you've entered the node are actually pointers to corebook. So the real chart is like twice the size of this one, with a recursive loop in Matrix Perception.

The fun part is that all of that is supposed to fold into normal gameplay.

In a firefight combat's going to be over and the two hackers will be stuck trying to discover all the relevant nodes in a perception test.

"Hey guys, we know the fight is over, just give us like... 7 more minutes okay? Then we can start attacking each other."

silva · Post by **silva** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 9:46 pm

Yeah, the same goes for vehicle combat and pursuits.

I wonder if these guys actually playtest the rules they create.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 10:01 pm

TheFlatline wrote:
Longes wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:
That flowchart makes my head hurt.
Note that the chart isn't even full. Matrix Perception, Cybercombat and everything you do once you've entered the node are actually pointers to corebook. So the real chart is like twice the size of this one, with a recursive loop in Matrix Perception.
The fun part is that all of that is supposed to fold into normal gameplay.

In a firefight combat's going to be over and the two hackers will be stuck trying to discover all the relevant nodes in a perception test.

"Hey guys, we know the fight is over, just give us like... 7 more minutes okay? Then we can start attacking each other."

Oh, hackers fighting is a problem of its own. The problem looks kinda like this:

You see, hackers can't actually do anything to each other, unless they are idiots sitting in hot-sim and swinging Black Hammers. When Hacker Alice attacks Bob comlink deck, and Hacker Bob gets taken down to 1-2 Matrix damage boxes, Bob... just reboots his deck. The end. Bob is back to full health, and Alice has achieved nothing. Hacker fight in SR5 is literally the game of two rolly-pollies pushing each other.

silva · Post by **silva** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 10:34 pm

Longes wrote:You see, hackers can't actually do anything to each other, unless they are idiots sitting in hot-sim and swinging Black Hammers. When Hacker Alice attacks Bob comlink deck, and Hacker Bob gets taken down to 1-2 Matrix damage boxes, Bob... just reboots his deck. The end.

Except that now Hacker Bob lost all his MARKS on the host, and will have to hack its way all over again into it.

So, your example dont holds.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 11:43 pm

in a straight up you or me 1v1 it does.
in a fight about something else, true.
but then you just make it a fight you or me 1v1 and do whatever afterwards . . so probably not any time soon.