From:	Mach <mach@****.CALTECH.EDU>
Subject:	Re: SR3 and it's affects
Date:	Wed, 5 Aug 1998 13:45:28 -0700

On Wed, 5 Aug 1998, Brion Wauters wrote:

> Erik Jameson wrote:
> >
> >
> > Skills will be altered. Key example is Firearms. It will now be broken up
> > into what could be called concetrations. As of SR3, you don't take simple
> > Firearms, you'd have to learn Pistol or SMG or Assault Rifle, or whatever.
>
>
> Great, so I have to divide Irish's firearms skill 3 ways, and _still_
> find a way to get them back up to an appropriate level?

Well, as they said earlier, they wanted to get skills down to an level
such that Joe-average Street Sam isn't going to be walking around with a
Firearms of 9, which game-mechanics wise is pretty perposterous. In other
words, you probably only have to worry that, realistically, character's
will miss once in a while. Which, frankly, they should do anyway
IMNSHO.... So, I wouldn't worry to much about fudging a character's stats
so that they will be as "powerful" as they used to be, especially because
in a fiction environment, stats are mostly meaningless. Everything
happens by writer fiat, so you just have to worry about whether what you
write sounds plausible or not, and if it makes for good fiction. Here,
character sheets are really only for a rough benchmark as to what the
character could be capable of, anyway.

Not that I am accusing you of munchkinism, but grumbling about wanting to
"get [stats] back up to an _appropriate_ level" (my emphasis) at least
sounds a tad like min-maxing to me, and vaguely pointless at that in this
environment.

--My two yen

Jeff