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Message no. 1
From: zebulingod@*******.net (Zebulin)
Subject: SR4 comments (Was: SR4 will time-traveling
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 18:03:15 -0700
Graht wrote:
>
>
> This?
>
> http://tss.dumpshock.com/html/tss-13/art13-c.htm
>
> It solved one issue, and helped alleviate another, but it
> wasn't a complete solution :/
>

I was just going to refer to that. Not sure why you'd think it isn't a
complete solution. Aside from having to buy dice (when most of my players
have already purchased a bunch ... their only contribution to the game,
btw), it seems a good solution. I wonder if D6 (where sides are 0-5 instead
of 1-6) would work?

Zebulin

>From The Top 100 Things I'd Do
If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

15. I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that
such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the
counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.
Message no. 2
From: tjlanza@************.com (Timothy J. Lanza)
Subject: SR4 comments (Was: SR4 will time-traveling
Date: Tue, 05 Apr 2005 21:56:52 -0400
At 09:03 PM 4/5/2005, Zebulin wrote:
>Graht wrote:
> >
> >
> > This?
> >
> > http://tss.dumpshock.com/html/tss-13/art13-c.htm
> >
> > It solved one issue, and helped alleviate another, but it
> > wasn't a complete solution :/
> >
>
>I was just going to refer to that. Not sure why you'd think it isn't a
>complete solution. Aside from having to buy dice (when most of my players
>have already purchased a bunch ... their only contribution to the game,
>btw), it seems a good solution. I wonder if D6 (where sides are 0-5 instead
>of 1-6) would work?

Not terribly well. By adding a number to each end, 0-7 maintains the
relative difficulty between different TNs, allowing all the existing
modifiers to have the same weight. Switching to 0-5 compresses the
relationships and throws all the modifiers out of whack.

--
Timothy J. Lanza
"When we can't dream any longer, we die." - Emma Goldman
Message no. 3
From: graht1@*****.com (Graht)
Subject: SR4 comments (Was: SR4 will time-traveling
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 20:25:28 -0600
On Apr 5, 2005 7:03 PM, Zebulin <zebulingod@*******.net> wrote:
> Graht wrote:
> >
> >
> > This?
> >
> > http://tss.dumpshock.com/html/tss-13/art13-c.htm
> >
> > It solved one issue, and helped alleviate another, but it
> > wasn't a complete solution :/
>
> I was just going to refer to that. Not sure why you'd think it isn't a
> complete solution.

It doesn't solve the big guns and heavy armor problem.

For TNs and skills/attributes of 12 or less it works pretty well. But
it breaks when you start firing big guns at heavy armor, just like
using d6 does.

Fire a really big gun against a heavily armored target. Let's say the
target gets to roll 20d6 vs a TN of 18. The target is going to die.
Even if the target had 40d6, it would still die. The Rule of Six just
doesn't cut it vs a TN of 18. In order to make it work you have to
give the armored target automatic successes. But that won't
necessarily work because the weapon is augmented by the shooters
successes, who is rolling vs a TN of 2-8. If the shooter is really
good the tank doesn't stand a chance, unless you give it a lot of
automatic successes, in which case only the best shooters have a
chance of damaging it.

Now lets try it with what everyone thinks is the SR4 system.

With this system the power the attack is more like a 12. The tank
rolls 20d6 vs a 5 and gets about 6 successes (it's a nice 3:1
probability ratio). It's heavily damaged, but it's still running.
Now shoot that same BFG at a dragon that gets to roll 40d6. The
dragon will probably get at least 13 successes. Congratulations,
you've just gotten the dragon's attention. <egmg>

--
-Graht
Message no. 4
From: l-hansen@*****.tele.dk (Lars Wagner Hansen)
Subject: SR4 comments (Was: SR4 will time-traveling
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 18:24:11 +0200
From: "Gurth" <gurth@******.nl>
> According to Arclight, on 05-04-2005 22:15 the word on the street was...
>
>> In SR3, there was a quite nice table showing that a rating 8+ skill was
>> world class. I really liked that table, because you had some sort of
>> standard for how to create characters and NSCs.
>
> The problem here being, really, that the rules then allow starting
> characters to put 6 points into a skill and add a specialization, so
> they start with 7 dice -- making them almost world-class already.

Well in SR1 you could start as world class:

Firearms 6
Concentrate: Firearms 5 (Pistols 7)
Specialize: Firearms 4 (Pistols 6 (Ares Predator 8))

Those were the days :-)

Lars
Message no. 5
From: gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject: SR4 comments (Was: SR4 will time-traveling
Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 19:14:21 +0200
According to Lars Wagner Hansen, on 06-04-2005 18:24 the word on the
street was...

> Well in SR1 you could start as world class:
>
> Firearms 6
> Concentrate: Firearms 5 (Pistols 7)
> Specialize: Firearms 4 (Pistols 6 (Ares Predator 8))
>
> Those were the days :-)

Those were the days when there were not definitions of where each skill
level stood, relatively speaking. And going by the number of NPCs with
skills in that kind of area in SR1 products, it looks to me like FASA at
the time felt that 6 was not "very good", but rather "typical for a
shadowrunner". I mean, the KE security guards in Dragon Hunt had Armed
Combat 8, Firearms 8, and Unarmed Combat 6, and the PCs got to face a
couple dozen of these guys...

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Kemen (keemde, h gekeemd): het spelen van computerspelletjes
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 6
From: korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject: SR4 comments (Was: SR4 will time-traveling
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 11:29:29 -0700 (PDT)
> It doesn't solve the big guns and heavy armor problem.
>
> For TNs and skills/attributes of 12 or less it works pretty well.
> But
> it breaks when you start firing big guns at heavy armor, just like
> using d6 does.
>
> Fire a really big gun against a heavily armored target. Let's say
> the
> target gets to roll 20d6 vs a TN of 18. The target is going to
> die.
> Even if the target had 40d6, it would still die. The Rule of Six
> just
> doesn't cut it vs a TN of 18. In order to make it work you have to
> give the armored target automatic successes. But that won't
> necessarily work because the weapon is augmented by the shooters
> successes, who is rolling vs a TN of 2-8. If the shooter is really
> good the tank doesn't stand a chance, unless you give it a lot of
> automatic successes, in which case only the best shooters have a
> chance of damaging it.

Ummm... aren't you forgetting the other side of the match-up? The
armor. Find me a weapon that can force a tank to roll against an 18!
An MBT has what, 14 points of armor or more? Even a Great Dragon
ATM only jacks the tank's damage resistance TN up to 6.

And a LAW versus a dragon... forget it. The LAW is something like
14D. The dragon has at least 8 points of armor, possibly even
hardened. That's before the high probability of spells to protect
against something like a rocket (I am guessing that, as a rule,
dragons think bullets tickle at best). So the shooter tosses their
pile of dice at TN of (let's be nice and say 5) to hit. Then the
dragon throws like 30 from Body and maybe another 15 from CP. The
critter needs 6's... I bet he gets a few on 45 dice.

======Korishinzo
--personally, I find that once the rockets and tanks come out, smart
PCs care more about sprinting tests than attack/damage :)



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Message no. 7
From: arclight@*********.de (Arclight)
Subject: SR4 comments (Was: SR4 will time-traveling
Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 20:45:33 +0200
At 19:14 06.04.2005, Gurth wrote:

<snip>

>And going by the number of NPCs with skills in that kind of area in SR1
>products, it looks to me like FASA at the time felt that 6 was not "very
>good", but rather "typical for a shadowrunner".

Sounds like that hen-egg problem to me ;)


--
Arclight

Quitters never win, winners never quit,
but those who never quit and never win are idiots
Message no. 8
From: maxnoel_fr@*****.fr (Max Noel)
Subject: SR4 comments (Was: SR4 will time-traveling
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 22:15:55 +0200
On Apr 6, 2005, at 20:29, Ice Heart wrote:

> Ummm... aren't you forgetting the other side of the match-up? The
> armor. Find me a weapon that can force a tank to roll against an 18!
> An MBT has what, 14 points of armor or more?

More like 40, actually (SOTA '63, Leopard-III MBT). The only way to
damage a tank is to use a naval-scale weapon against it (which is
exactly what they do -- the Leopard-III is armed with a light railgun
IIRC).

-- Wild_Cat
maxnoel_fr at yahoo dot fr -- ICQ #85274019
"Look at you hacker... A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting
and sweating as you run through my corridors... How can you challenge a
perfect, immortal machine?"
Message no. 9
From: ShadowRN@********.demon.co.uk (Paul J. Adam)
Subject: SR4 comments (Was: SR4 will time-traveling
Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 16:55:17 +0100
In article <5ae3518829450ea7f3df51a8ba3cc856@*****.fr>, Max Noel
<maxnoel_fr@*****.fr> writes
>On Apr 6, 2005, at 20:29, Ice Heart wrote:
>> Ummm... aren't you forgetting the other side of the match-up? The
>> armor. Find me a weapon that can force a tank to roll against an 18!
>> An MBT has what, 14 points of armor or more?
>
> More like 40, actually (SOTA '63, Leopard-III MBT). The only way
>to damage a tank is to use a naval-scale weapon against it (which is
>exactly what they do -- the Leopard-III is armed with a light railgun
>IIRC).

Which is wrong, because that only applies across the front arc. If you
want to kill a tank, you hit the roof or the rear: you ignite external
equipment or dunnage (several M1A2s lost to that cause: external fires
spread to the auxiliary power unit, causing fuel fires and vehicle BER):
or you use the Old Faithful culvert bomb.

Tanks are tough, and properly handled *very* tough, but there's a reason
they don't operate without infantry support.

--
Paul J. Adam
Message no. 10
From: weberm@*******.net (Michael Weber)
Subject: SR4 comments (Was: SR4 will time-traveling
Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 12:24:00 -0400
"Paul J. Adam" <ShadowRN@********.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>We had one magician who bought a Light Fire automatic (no ammunition,
>never loaded it, so she wouldn't have any accidents: no skill, either)
>because pointing your fingers at someone and saying "Freeze!" didn't
>have the desired effect...

It would if a mana missile or a stun missile came followed the gesture.
Message no. 11
From: gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject: SR4 comments (Was: SR4 will time-traveling
Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2005 19:17:14 +0200
According to Michael Weber, on 07-04-2005 18:24 the word on the street
was...

> It would if a mana missile or a stun missile came followed the gesture.

The trouble is that you can't tell whether or not that's going to be the
case. If someone points a gun at you, you know you're in danger of being
killed -- but if someone only shouts "Freeze!" and, if desired, makes
gestures at you, for all you know they may not be able to cast a spell
at you at all. Plus, magic is hard to spot even under good
circumstances, so even if your buddy gets zapped by the magician who
shouted "Freeze!" and pointed a finger at him, you may not realize he
was magiced to death instead of tripping over his own feet or something...

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Kemen (keemde, h gekeemd): het spelen van computerspelletjes
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

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