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blimixWe have just started a Shadowrun (5th edition) game. I've never played Shadowrun before. While I love the setting, I feel the need to rant about the atrocious rule book and a few of the most awful rules.
Counting in both categories, we have the issue of stun damage. Characters can take physical damage and stun damage. When they exceed the limit of physical damage they can take ("fill their physical damage track"), they collapse, bleeding, unconscious, and probably dying without medical care. The book says nothing whatsoever about the effects of filling one's stun damage track, except that further stun damage carries over to the physical damage track, at a reduced rate.qhudspeth, who had played previous editions, knew the rule: Characters simply go unconscious after they fill their stun damage track. It just wasn't in the book anywhere.
That possibility had already occurred to me, and I had dismissed it as a bad idea.
Why is it a bad idea? Well, consider a character with eleven boxes in each of their damage tracks. Surely, they'd rather be pummeled for twelve points of stun damage than be pummeled for six stun, and shot for six physical. But in the case of getting pummeled and shot, they're still up and fighting, rather than lying on the floor at the mercy of their enemy. "A minor quibble," you might say. But consider what this does to the utility of armor. Armor has a chance of converting physical damage into stun damage. The better the armor, the better the chance. Imagine Alice and Carol, identical characters with eleven boxes in each damage track, as above. Alice wears armor that is so awesome and expensive that it converts physical damage to stun every time. Carol has mediocre armor, that works half the time. Alice and Carol each get shot and stabbed repeatedly, until they have taken twelve points of damage. Alice's armor converts all of that damage to stun, and she drops to the floor, unconscious from having taken more than eleven points of stun damage. Carol's armor causes her to take six physical damage and six stun damage. She's still up and fighting, albeit with some penalties from the damage. She can keep fighting and taking damage for almost twice as long as Alice can, thanks to wearing cheaper armor. Does this make sense?
Character creation: Though the game has no literal restrictions on the type of character you play (you don't have to pick a "character class," for example), numerical imbalance enforces some practical and pointless restrictions. The most glaring is the discrepancy between the use of skill points (used early in character creation) and karma points (used ever after) for buying skill ratings. Spending one skill point increases your rating in a skill by one, regardless of its current value. You must spend X karma points to increase a skill rating by one, where X is the new rating. So bringing a skill from zero to four would cost four skill points, or ten karma points. One or the other of these systems is fine in a role-playing game, but the combination of them makes well-balanced characters inefficient, and encourages weird munchkins who can hack military security but can't drive a car (for example). If this isn't clear to you, consider a character who wants to eventually be quite good (rating six) at six different skills, but they only have half the number of skill points required to do so. So they spend their eighteen skill points buying each of these skills at rating three. Later, to get where they want, they will have to spend (6*(4+5+6)) ninety karma points in order to get to their desired level of competence. That's going to take a long time. But what if, instead, they spent their eighteen skill points buying only three of those skills, at rating six, and leaving the other three at zero? To get to their desired level of competence, they only have to spend (3*(1+2+3+4+5+6)) sixty-three karma points. The reasonably balanced character has to pay 43% more karma points than the unbalanced munchkin did, just to reach the same goal! This strongly discourages character concepts that involve broad competence rather than narrow specialization.
Speaking of numerically discouraging character concepts, the "essence" cost of cybergear provides a strong incentive for every "face" (socially skilled negotiator) character to also be a magic user. Magic and social skills correlate due to being limited by Essence, and if you're not getting your edge in battle from cybergear (which reduces Essence), you're getting it from magic. I don't mind that my face character is an Adept, but it's really not part of my concept for him; it just keeps him useful after negotiations break down.
Why are "limits" even a thing? The number of hits (successes on die rolls) you can get is already limited by your dice pool, and the number that you're likely to get is even more so. The introduction of limits further reduces your effective options for character creation, because now you have to massage your attribute ratings to make sure that your character isn't actually bad at the things that they're good at (that is, high skill and/or attribute ratings paired with low limits). If you've done this correctly, then the limits should rarely come into play, which makes them fairly superfluous, except when you roll exceptionally well: They then turn what should be a fun and exciting event ("Eight hits! I totally nailed it!") into a frustrating one ("I rolled eight hits, but only get to use five of them. Damn.").
I mean, imagine if you were playing D&D, and your DM announced new house rules: "There are no critical hits, critical successes, or even automatic successes, anymore. In fact, every time you roll seventeen through twenty, you have to count it as a sixteen." Way to suck the joy out of a good roll.
"Oh, and we're introducing critical failure on a roll of one through four." Yeah. Critical glitches: Much worse than regular glitches, but almost as common. (That's a lot of dice (ones) that can't possibly be hits.) "But Joe," I hear you cry, "horrible mishaps in the middle of a job increase the dramatic tension, and create interesting obstacles for the character to overcome." Sure, but these are mishaps at a "Damn, you're screwed" level, which means that spending a point of Edge to avert it is almost always a great idea. So now, instead of increasing dramatic tension, we've turned Edge into just another pool of points that a character must take care not to run out of. Screw critical glitches.
I'm not even going to list all of the minor problems I've found with the rules. (For example, why does damage from a crash have nothing to do with speed? (Bumping a lamp post is exactly as bad as a 90 mph collision with a tunnel wall, in this game.) Specialization in a weapon is just a constant +2 bonus to the skill, since there's no reason not to use your favorite example of a particular class of weapon. Why is there a suggestion, but no rule, for specializing in a martial arts style? (We've house-ruled the hell out of that one.))
And then there's the rule book itself. Forget the obscenely high ratio of flavor text to actual rules: You can skim past that. The book is a jumble of badly written and hard-to-find rules. An example: I tried to find out how Image Magnification affects Range modifiers. "Imaging Scope" on page 432 and "Image Magnification" on page 453 both referred me to "Vision Enhancements" on page 444. There, I found "Vision Magnification" in both a table and a heading, but no rule. "For rules on using vision magnification in ranged combat, see p. 177." Similarly, "Vision Magnification" on page 446 referred to page 178. Page 177 had nothing of the sort, but page 178 had a heading, "Attacker Using Image Magnification". It mentions, "Image Magnification reduces Range modifiers when used properly. In order to use an image magnification system the attacker needs to use the Take Aim action to gain the benefit of the system." The latter point was also made on page 166, but neither one speaks a word about *how* the Range modifiers are reduced. The index and table of contents refer to four of the above pages, but nothing with a rule. I finally found it hidden in a table on page 175: If you have Image Modification, reduce Range conditions by one category. All together, the book wasted a great deal of space, ink, and my time, telling me repeatedly that there was a rule (but not what the rule was), and lying to me about where it could be found.
Take my word for it: This was not an isolated example.
Playing the game was fun, except when we got bogged down trying to find a rule (which should, I hope, happen less over time). But the process of character creation needs fixing, and the book as a whole needs serious editing.
Counting in both categories, we have the issue of stun damage. Characters can take physical damage and stun damage. When they exceed the limit of physical damage they can take ("fill their physical damage track"), they collapse, bleeding, unconscious, and probably dying without medical care. The book says nothing whatsoever about the effects of filling one's stun damage track, except that further stun damage carries over to the physical damage track, at a reduced rate.
qhudspeth, who had played previous editions, knew the rule: Characters simply go unconscious after they fill their stun damage track. It just wasn't in the book anywhere.That possibility had already occurred to me, and I had dismissed it as a bad idea.
Why is it a bad idea? Well, consider a character with eleven boxes in each of their damage tracks. Surely, they'd rather be pummeled for twelve points of stun damage than be pummeled for six stun, and shot for six physical. But in the case of getting pummeled and shot, they're still up and fighting, rather than lying on the floor at the mercy of their enemy. "A minor quibble," you might say. But consider what this does to the utility of armor. Armor has a chance of converting physical damage into stun damage. The better the armor, the better the chance. Imagine Alice and Carol, identical characters with eleven boxes in each damage track, as above. Alice wears armor that is so awesome and expensive that it converts physical damage to stun every time. Carol has mediocre armor, that works half the time. Alice and Carol each get shot and stabbed repeatedly, until they have taken twelve points of damage. Alice's armor converts all of that damage to stun, and she drops to the floor, unconscious from having taken more than eleven points of stun damage. Carol's armor causes her to take six physical damage and six stun damage. She's still up and fighting, albeit with some penalties from the damage. She can keep fighting and taking damage for almost twice as long as Alice can, thanks to wearing cheaper armor. Does this make sense?
Character creation: Though the game has no literal restrictions on the type of character you play (you don't have to pick a "character class," for example), numerical imbalance enforces some practical and pointless restrictions. The most glaring is the discrepancy between the use of skill points (used early in character creation) and karma points (used ever after) for buying skill ratings. Spending one skill point increases your rating in a skill by one, regardless of its current value. You must spend X karma points to increase a skill rating by one, where X is the new rating. So bringing a skill from zero to four would cost four skill points, or ten karma points. One or the other of these systems is fine in a role-playing game, but the combination of them makes well-balanced characters inefficient, and encourages weird munchkins who can hack military security but can't drive a car (for example). If this isn't clear to you, consider a character who wants to eventually be quite good (rating six) at six different skills, but they only have half the number of skill points required to do so. So they spend their eighteen skill points buying each of these skills at rating three. Later, to get where they want, they will have to spend (6*(4+5+6)) ninety karma points in order to get to their desired level of competence. That's going to take a long time. But what if, instead, they spent their eighteen skill points buying only three of those skills, at rating six, and leaving the other three at zero? To get to their desired level of competence, they only have to spend (3*(1+2+3+4+5+6)) sixty-three karma points. The reasonably balanced character has to pay 43% more karma points than the unbalanced munchkin did, just to reach the same goal! This strongly discourages character concepts that involve broad competence rather than narrow specialization.
Speaking of numerically discouraging character concepts, the "essence" cost of cybergear provides a strong incentive for every "face" (socially skilled negotiator) character to also be a magic user. Magic and social skills correlate due to being limited by Essence, and if you're not getting your edge in battle from cybergear (which reduces Essence), you're getting it from magic. I don't mind that my face character is an Adept, but it's really not part of my concept for him; it just keeps him useful after negotiations break down.
Why are "limits" even a thing? The number of hits (successes on die rolls) you can get is already limited by your dice pool, and the number that you're likely to get is even more so. The introduction of limits further reduces your effective options for character creation, because now you have to massage your attribute ratings to make sure that your character isn't actually bad at the things that they're good at (that is, high skill and/or attribute ratings paired with low limits). If you've done this correctly, then the limits should rarely come into play, which makes them fairly superfluous, except when you roll exceptionally well: They then turn what should be a fun and exciting event ("Eight hits! I totally nailed it!") into a frustrating one ("I rolled eight hits, but only get to use five of them. Damn.").
I mean, imagine if you were playing D&D, and your DM announced new house rules: "There are no critical hits, critical successes, or even automatic successes, anymore. In fact, every time you roll seventeen through twenty, you have to count it as a sixteen." Way to suck the joy out of a good roll.
"Oh, and we're introducing critical failure on a roll of one through four." Yeah. Critical glitches: Much worse than regular glitches, but almost as common. (That's a lot of dice (ones) that can't possibly be hits.) "But Joe," I hear you cry, "horrible mishaps in the middle of a job increase the dramatic tension, and create interesting obstacles for the character to overcome." Sure, but these are mishaps at a "Damn, you're screwed" level, which means that spending a point of Edge to avert it is almost always a great idea. So now, instead of increasing dramatic tension, we've turned Edge into just another pool of points that a character must take care not to run out of. Screw critical glitches.
I'm not even going to list all of the minor problems I've found with the rules. (For example, why does damage from a crash have nothing to do with speed? (Bumping a lamp post is exactly as bad as a 90 mph collision with a tunnel wall, in this game.) Specialization in a weapon is just a constant +2 bonus to the skill, since there's no reason not to use your favorite example of a particular class of weapon. Why is there a suggestion, but no rule, for specializing in a martial arts style? (We've house-ruled the hell out of that one.))
And then there's the rule book itself. Forget the obscenely high ratio of flavor text to actual rules: You can skim past that. The book is a jumble of badly written and hard-to-find rules. An example: I tried to find out how Image Magnification affects Range modifiers. "Imaging Scope" on page 432 and "Image Magnification" on page 453 both referred me to "Vision Enhancements" on page 444. There, I found "Vision Magnification" in both a table and a heading, but no rule. "For rules on using vision magnification in ranged combat, see p. 177." Similarly, "Vision Magnification" on page 446 referred to page 178. Page 177 had nothing of the sort, but page 178 had a heading, "Attacker Using Image Magnification". It mentions, "Image Magnification reduces Range modifiers when used properly. In order to use an image magnification system the attacker needs to use the Take Aim action to gain the benefit of the system." The latter point was also made on page 166, but neither one speaks a word about *how* the Range modifiers are reduced. The index and table of contents refer to four of the above pages, but nothing with a rule. I finally found it hidden in a table on page 175: If you have Image Modification, reduce Range conditions by one category. All together, the book wasted a great deal of space, ink, and my time, telling me repeatedly that there was a rule (but not what the rule was), and lying to me about where it could be found.
Take my word for it: This was not an isolated example.
Playing the game was fun, except when we got bogged down trying to find a rule (which should, I hope, happen less over time). But the process of character creation needs fixing, and the book as a whole needs serious editing.
