| From: | sfeley@*****.com (Stephen Eley) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Average? |
| Date: | Thu, 25 Aug 2005 11:11:13 -0400 |
>
> The question I have is this: Who's average? Is the the average of the
> Shadowrunner, or the aver Joe or Judy ont he street? If this is a
> RACIAL average, then shouldn't shadowrunner be expected to have
> consistently above average ratings?
I don't have SR4, but from what I've been able to tell from discussion
about it, the major implication of this is that the SR4 designers have
worked hard to keep characters from "sixing out" on everything. Maxed
attributes and skills cost too much, and you're explicitly prevented
from having more than one 6 in skills at chargen. This is a radical
departure from previous editions, where if you didn't have 6s in all
your core skills it meant you weren't taking your character seriously.
In practice every player is going to look at any 3 in a stat as
sucking, and will bend over backwards to prevent a lower score than
that in any attribute. That's just the way players think. If they
can't get more than a 4 or a 5 on a secondary stat, they'll strain for
4s and 5s. So 3 surely won't be the "average" for PCs, regardless of
how it's promoted in the text.
--
Have Fun,
Steve Eley (sfeley@*****.com)
ESCAPE POD - the SF podcast magazine
http://escape.extraneous.org
