| From: | james@****.uow.edu.au (James Niall Zealey) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Rules tweaks (was Re: Why I Don't Play Shadowrun Anymore) |
| Date: | Fri, 01 Oct 2004 09:16:37 +1000 |
>>The only real problem that opposed tests have is when the modifiers get
>>too high, noone succeeds
>
>
> I tend to see the reverse problem: if you have a character with Negotiation
> 8 haggling with someone who has Negotiation 2, the first one needs to roll
> 2s on eight dice while the other one needs 8s on two dice. No points for
> guessing who'll come out on top. Not that this is wholly unexpected, of
> course, but it does take away much of the risk in using things like forged
> IDs or maglock passkeys, where if you get a rating 6 or so you'll hardly
> ever have any problems with scanners, because most you'll encounter will
> be rating 3 or 4 or so. I've been meaning to try out Graht's house rule of
> having both sides roll against a 4 regardless of the other's rating, but I
> haven't got round to it yet.
>
Well, the problem I was alluding to is that if you've got a pair of
guys, and the modifiers on each of them push their TN's above about 12.
Even if one of them is after 20s and the other is after 13s, the chance
of neither of them rolling a single success is very high indeed, yet one
of them has almost twice the TN of the other.
If you're talking about a rating 6 passkey or ID vs a scanner at 4, you
expect it to work almost all the time. You're talking about a good ID vs
an average scanner. Personally I don't think that making the player's
time harder on that one is a good idea - it just makes the "blow open
the door and do it quick" option way, way, way more attractive than the
stealth version.
However if you're talking about a rating 18 ID vs a rating 12 scanner, I
want those 6 points of rating to make a genuine difference.
