From:	"Bruce H. Nagel" <NAGELBH@******.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject:	Re: [SR3] Drain
Date:	Sun, 6 Jul 1997 02:55:36 -0500

You wrote:
> Well, as far as I know, you don't get dice pools when a) you're
> defaulting or b) you're chipping the skill.
Actually I was unaware of this, but it makes sense in both cases.

So a character without
> Unarmed Combat still can't defend himself decently, he just has a lot
> more dice to throw into damage resistance.
And that's part of my problem. Before, people ran out of dice in their Defense
Pool, now it's a lot harder, based off of attributes. Mages can throw spells
to wear a target down for the party, safe and secure that their Combat Pool is
there to help pull their butt out of the fire (Quickness and Willpower usually
being fairly high for mages anyway). I don't like folks who don't participate
in much combat (meaning firearms or melee skills) being able to dodge and
defend against those pretty well. It was a good reason for a lot of characters
to take at least some Unarmed Combat, and diversify their skills a bit, imo.

And of the archetypes, I
> didn't see too many of them who had more than 1 die to spare if they
> threw as much combat pool into a given attack to double it. And the ones
> that did usually didn't have combat skills that were *that* high anyway.
Street Samurai: Firearms 5, Unarmed Combat 6 (and hand razors)
Mercenary: Firearms 6, Armed Combat 6 CP: 8
Former Company Man: Firearms 6, Unarmed Combat 6 CP: 5
Bodyguard: Firearms 6, Unarmed Combat 6 CP: 8

No, they don't have a great many dice left following that, but have likely
waxed the target with 4 added dice to the attack (10 dice), at least that's
been my experience. I liked that the old pools (dodge/defense) represented
your ability to defend against incoming attacks, representing your dividing
your attention between incoming threats, and that one or two attacks usually
depleted your reserve of defending dice, you had to rely on Body after that.

I'd almost like to see something like what I proposed for Sorcery Pools (under
the drain discussion): Base a dice pool off of firearms (or whichever combat
skill you use on your action) to attack _and_ defend with. If you don't use all
your Firearms dice in the attack test, you can save them to dodge (this meaning
you're snapping off quick shots and keeping in cover a lot and watching for
possible attacks). And you could only use the *appropriate* skill to defend
against an incoming attack (though melee weapons and unarmed combat would be
interchangeable, as might firearms and projectile/thrown weapons).

> <shrug> To each his own, I suppose. Dice pools wind up being a lot of
> extra paperwork, though.
I found Threat Ratings too abstract for me, and GMing the most I found the dice
pools comfy. They were simpler when they only came into defense (1st ed) and I
still prefer them that way.

> I just don't hear too many others advocating the removal of dice pools:)
Maybe it's my pet peeve. I see it as the simplest way to remove excess dice,
as they're the single biggest source of extra dice.

losthalo