[GLD]

4e broke plenty of rules, vansen spellcasting probably being the biggest. But it's the only serious attempt to making a remotely balanced version of D&D and character portal-able version of D&D, concept that D&D struggled with from day 1, and have been utterly ignored in 5th. I went back and watched Matthew Colville's making a fighter in every edition of D&D. To me looking at the progression D&D from tactical war game to modern RPG, 4th hit closest to home in terms of logic progression. It pulled concepts developed the in the MMO industry into the table top parlins, it codified a lot of concepts. Skill challenges, Power Sources, Monster Types (Lurkers, Brutes, Soldiers, Artillery), Defined named party Roles (Strikers, Tanks, Leaders, Controllers), it redefined the save vs Death Mechanic into an acceptable modern form, it redefined adventure construction encounters, skill challenges, combo-challenges, shorts rests, long rests, downtime activities. The creation of healing surges lead to develop expending hit dice for recovery, defined DPR, it reversed so much of what defined negatively in the past editions into positives (-2 or -3 if you didn't proficiency become a bonus if you did). The concepts or ritual magic, magic item creation, codified magic item progression and usage were all well defined and level linked to enforce some level balance. Play tiers, and scaling economies based upon those tiers (See gold coin, Platinum coins and astral diamonds). It was aggressively updated, with codified with living errata documents and a system for purposing changes.  It created a structure for increased drama in an encounter with introduction of the bloody mechanic, and creating triggers that were activated by that mechanic. Finally it gave D&D the easiest encounter adventure construction method to date. Making 4th adventure was as hard falling off a log, there a literally a button you could press on the online tool that would do for you, complete with everything.

It failed in a couple key places. One the online table top. Right from the beginning 4th was always intended to be paired with an online way of Running 4th a means to help players be able to solve the distance and time issues. That failure and that fact that it was never correct b/c some poor sod killed his wife and ate .45 is a truly tragic, both for them and game itself. Next 4th was never very good at helping the player imagine the other half the ability. How does the power look? Does look for each character? Do you recognize this power when your character sees it? those meta concepts general well defined in Pathfinder didn't carry well into 4th. Finally mechanically the stun and daze mechanics were too common, and trivialized combat.
 
5th is simple and there is beauty in simplicity, we are getting to there point where there enough diversity to begin to make interesting. I agree it can feel kind dumbed down at times. But it's well written. It's not being aggressively expanded, which is keeping power creep pretty locked down. They did learn many good lessons from 4th, and they did a better job of selling to the player base. It's feels a lot like AD&D 2nd Rev which was certainly the intent. I don't like it as much 4th. A third level 5th character is as complete a character as a 1st level 4th character, and the DMG does recommend beginning at 3rd level in 5th. But there you go, that's also working as intended.

Let's not forget 4e's other big failing. Presentation. The lore was bad. The art was worse. And of course, they staggered out the release of core classes. You couldn't play as Barbarians, sorcerers, monks or druids with the core rulebook. You needed to wait for and then buy two more books to use stuff that had central to the game for an entire generation of players and was required to realize some of the most basic fantasy fiction character concepts.

[drjmoriarity@gmail.com]

when you gotta shoot a guy 10 times to kill him and you have to do opposed die rolls every time and it just made the combat not flow very well.

You guys are doing something wrong. Are you rolling for damage or something? Shadowrun combat compared to heroes is 9 time out of 10 more lethal and much faster. If you shot someone ten times in SR you have missed about the system. Heroes combat includes a lot of inherent and system dictated recovery. SR is fast and final, if that's not what your experiencing then you have made mistake in how you are executing it.

I feel like you are focusing on the wrong parts of what i said, That was sort of a hyperbole, My brother created a troll so beefy that 1 bullet felt like a ball of paper.
Hero systems combat flows much faster and much smoother cause you do not have to do anything like opposed die rolls which slows a game down to a snails crawl when you are rolling for armor every round, And recalculating initiative and just a bunch of little rules designed to slow down the pace of the game and keep from doing anything fun or exciting.
And if you disagree than I direct you to the grenade rules for both. In hero, i throw a grenade, if you are in its area, you take 6D6 Damage. Now compare that tot he nightmare that is the chunky salsa rules for shadowrun ware i need to calculate every surface the shock-wave is bouncing off of.

[Michael Chandra]

Attached an image of the odds of a gangbanger with 4 Body and an Armor Vest vs an Ares Predator V with 1 net hit and regular ammo. Seems like you hit a rather extreme case, so not sure why that is being held as representative of the system. Ahwell, your call if you want a system that doesn't allow 1% chances for suckage.

Also attached, just for fun, the damage odds of a Remington 950 with APDS and 1 net hit vs a Force 6 Spirit with F-1 Body. Not attached: The odds that my edged Crockett burst would tear straight through the Air Spirit engulfing Kane in the cockpit of our ride. Aaaaah, good times, good times.

[Reaver]

when you gotta shoot a guy 10 times to kill him and you have to do opposed die rolls every time and it just made the combat not flow very well.

You guys are doing something wrong. Are you rolling for damage or something? Shadowrun combat compared to heroes is 9 time out of 10 more lethal and much faster. If you shot someone ten times in SR you have missed about the system. Heroes combat includes a lot of inherent and system dictated recovery. SR is fast and final, if that's not what your experiencing then you have made mistake in how you are executing it.

I feel like you are focusing on the wrong parts of what i said, That was sort of a hyperbole, My brother created a troll so beefy that 1 bullet felt like a ball of paper.
Hero systems combat flows much faster and much smoother cause you do not have to do anything like opposed die rolls which slows a game down to a snails crawl when you are rolling for armor every round, And recalculating initiative and just a bunch of little rules designed to slow down the pace of the game and keep from doing anything fun or exciting.
And if you disagree than I direct you to the grenade rules for both. In hero, i throw a grenade, if you are in its area, you take 6D6 Damage. Now compare that tot he nightmare that is the chunky salsa rules for shadowrun ware i need to calculate every surface the shock-wave is bouncing off of.

My knowledge of HERO is very basic... and from what I understand of it, combat is also very basic. SR takes a much more damaging and realistic approach to combat. - and yes that does slow things down. But to each their own in that regard.



And to your grenade example. The first quest is "what are the walls made out of?" If that isn't a structural wall (concrete+) then there is NO chunky salsa as the walls will blow out enough to absorb the shock.


And trust me, "Chunky Salsa" is a real life effect of pressure waves. I have had to clean up after their effects.

[Michael Chandra]

I once ran a 30-individuals-with-15-initiative-scores fight that took place in both Matrix and the meat world at the same time. Good times. It was doable, but that involved me having written down the A/D/S rolls for each entity and having stacks of 12/13/14/15/16/17 dice at hand to not have to bother count the dice. Takes practice to do a fight fast.

There's plenty of rules in Shadowrun that not everyone might understand at first glance. Easy for people to help you with though. Those include partially-setting-based things such as what Reaver mentioned (not all walls are structural so bye chunky salsa), and for example 'looting on a run is a bad thing', or 'collateral damage causes people to go collateral on you', or 'mind-control puts your team at risk', or 'if it ain't a PC, the GM decides what it does, including your summons'. Not to mention the classic 'help, I allowed a Tank player' with the response of 'okay, here's a list of your options'.

Hm, I should make a list of these things. Reaver, care for a joint effort to help put these things together for fledgling GMs? You got way more experience in doing things right, I got mostly experience in doing things wrong and trying to fix them after. =P

[GLD]

when you gotta shoot a guy 10 times to kill him and you have to do opposed die rolls every time and it just made the combat not flow very well.

You guys are doing something wrong. Are you rolling for damage or something? Shadowrun combat compared to heroes is 9 time out of 10 more lethal and much faster. If you shot someone ten times in SR you have missed about the system. Heroes combat includes a lot of inherent and system dictated recovery. SR is fast and final, if that's not what your experiencing then you have made mistake in how you are executing it.

I feel like you are focusing on the wrong parts of what i said, That was sort of a hyperbole, My brother created a troll so beefy that 1 bullet felt like a ball of paper.
Hero systems combat flows much faster and much smoother cause you do not have to do anything like opposed die rolls which slows a game down to a snails crawl when you are rolling for armor every round, And recalculating initiative and just a bunch of little rules designed to slow down the pace of the game and keep from doing anything fun or exciting.
And if you disagree than I direct you to the grenade rules for both. In hero, i throw a grenade, if you are in its area, you take 6D6 Damage. Now compare that tot he nightmare that is the chunky salsa rules for shadowrun ware i need to calculate every surface the shock-wave is bouncing off of.

My knowledge of HERO is very basic... and from what I understand of it, combat is also very basic. SR takes a much more damaging and realistic approach to combat. - and yes that does slow things down. But to each their own in that regard.



And to your grenade example. The first quest is "what are the walls made out of?" If that isn't a structural wall (concrete+) then there is NO chunky salsa as the walls will blow out enough to absorb the shock.


And trust me, "Chunky Salsa" is a real life effect of pressure waves. I have had to clean up after their effects.

No, combat in Hero is anything but basic. It's pretty involved. But it uses more familiar mechanics. Attack rolls are made against a target number  damage is rolled and armour is a static number that is subtracted from that. But as I have said, Hero is a toolkit and so the tier of play (heroic vs superheroic changes A LOT) and which optional rules you implement change the realism and time involved in adjudicating combat.

I am in two hero games right now. In one, I survived an attack that eradicated an entire city wherein I was at ground zero. In another, I was dropped with one errant bullet cause it hit me in neck and I started bleeding out.

As a Shadowrun noob, I have to wonder why bother with dodge and armour rolls? It seems like an unnecessary set of rolls. And I feel like the attacking character should never roll less than their target. It leaves the Gamemaster doing more on a player's turn than the player. Hence why damage rolls are the standard in almost every system. So an average roll in Shadowrun should yield a number of hits equal to 1/3 of the dice pool. So why not just use 1/3 of the target's dodge and armour dice pools as a static target number? Genuinely curious as to what is gained from this.

Nobody is arguing it's realism of the rule. Just the fact that it's definitely not something that EVER needed to be included in a game.

[Michael Chandra]

So an average roll in Shadowrun should yield a number of hits equal to 1/3 of the dice pool. So why not just use 1/3 of the target's dodge and armour dice pools as a static target number? Genuinely curious as to what is gained from this.

Nobody is arguing it's realism of the rule. Just the fact that it's definitely not something that EVER needed to be included in a game.

Two things.

1: Because 'average fully soaked' is not the same as 'average no damage taken'. It's why even buying hits at 4 to 1 isn't always allowed. Bad things AND good things happen this way. A Summoned Spirit might end you with 8 Drain after Edge, or with 0 without. That randomness is what puts the stress on. And I prefer the d6-way of it over 'oh, if I roll a 1 on a saving throw twice, I die'.

2: This isn't going away any time soon. So if you think a system shouldn't have Attack-vs-Dodge and Damage-vs-Soak, then waiting for SR6 isn't going to help you. And if this is a dealbreaker for you, then there is no point mentioning anything about the mechanics of Shadowrun you dislike, because you simply already decided never to play Shadowrun as system. So what's the point of going into a lengthy debate?

Anyway, since it's clear this whole conversation has no possible shared agreement, what with the whole 'your game system sucks' and 'my preference is divine fact' arguments being tossed about by both sides, I think I'll step out of it. =) Enjoy all.

[drjmoriarity@gmail.com]

when you gotta shoot a guy 10 times to kill him and you have to do opposed die rolls every time and it just made the combat not flow very well.

You guys are doing something wrong. Are you rolling for damage or something? Shadowrun combat compared to heroes is 9 time out of 10 more lethal and much faster. If you shot someone ten times in SR you have missed about the system. Heroes combat includes a lot of inherent and system dictated recovery. SR is fast and final, if that's not what your experiencing then you have made mistake in how you are executing it.

I feel like you are focusing on the wrong parts of what i said, That was sort of a hyperbole, My brother created a troll so beefy that 1 bullet felt like a ball of paper.
Hero systems combat flows much faster and much smoother cause you do not have to do anything like opposed die rolls which slows a game down to a snails crawl when you are rolling for armor every round, And recalculating initiative and just a bunch of little rules designed to slow down the pace of the game and keep from doing anything fun or exciting.
And if you disagree than I direct you to the grenade rules for both. In hero, i throw a grenade, if you are in its area, you take 6D6 Damage. Now compare that tot he nightmare that is the chunky salsa rules for shadowrun ware i need to calculate every surface the shock-wave is bouncing off of.

My knowledge of HERO is very basic... and from what I understand of it, combat is also very basic. SR takes a much more damaging and realistic approach to combat. - and yes that does slow things down. But to each their own in that regard.



And to your grenade example. The first quest is "what are the walls made out of?" If that isn't a structural wall (concrete+) then there is NO chunky salsa as the walls will blow out enough to absorb the shock.


And trust me, "Chunky Salsa" is a real life effect of pressure waves. I have had to clean up after their effects.

No, combat in Hero is anything but basic. It's pretty involved. But it uses more familiar mechanics. Attack rolls are made against a target number  damage is rolled and armour is a static number that is subtracted from that. But as I have said, Hero is a toolkit and so the tier of play (heroic vs superheroic changes A LOT) and which optional rules you implement change the realism and time involved in adjudicating combat.

I am in two hero games right now. In one, I survived an attack that eradicated an entire city wherein I was at ground zero. In another, I was dropped with one errant bullet cause it hit me in neck and I started bleeding out.

As a Shadowrun noob, I have to wonder why bother with dodge and armour rolls? It seems like an unnecessary set of rolls. And I feel like the attacking character should never roll less than their target. It leaves the Gamemaster doing more on a player's turn than the player. Hence why damage rolls are the standard in almost every system. So an average roll in Shadowrun should yield a number of hits equal to 1/3 of the dice pool. So why not just use 1/3 of the target's dodge and armour dice pools as a static target number? Genuinely curious as to what is gained from this.

Nobody is arguing it's realism of the rule. Just the fact that it's definitely not something that EVER needed to be included in a game.

Yeah thats pretty much all that needs to be said.

I actually find when it comes to skill checks and things outside of combat i prefer SWs systems ( admittedly i barely understand the calculations involved but i liked how it flowed )
But when it comes to combat hero shines in ever category, there is no comparing the two at that point, and thats sort of to be expected, Hero is built all around the combat, almost laser focused on perfecting that one area. Everything else around the combat is sort of basic.

[GLD]

So an average roll in Shadowrun should yield a number of hits equal to 1/3 of the dice pool. So why not just use 1/3 of the target's dodge and armour dice pools as a static target number? Genuinely curious as to what is gained from this.

Nobody is arguing it's realism of the rule. Just the fact that it's definitely not something that EVER needed to be included in a game.

Two things.

1: Because 'average fully soaked' is not the same as 'average no damage taken'. It's why even buying hits at 4 to 1 isn't always allowed. Bad things AND good things happen this way. A Summoned Spirit might end you with 8 Drain after Edge, or with 0 without. That randomness is what puts the stress on. And I prefer the d6-way of it over 'oh, if I roll a 1 on a saving throw twice, I die'.

2: This isn't going away any time soon. So if you think a system shouldn't have Attack-vs-Dodge and Damage-vs-Soak, then waiting for SR6 isn't going to help you. And if this is a dealbreaker for you, then there is no point mentioning anything about the mechanics of Shadowrun you dislike, because you simply already decided never to play Shadowrun as system. So what's the point of going into a lengthy debate?

Anyway, since it's clear this whole conversation has no possible shared agreement, what with the whole 'your game system sucks' arguments being tossed about by both sides, I think I'll step out of it. =) Enjoy all.

I never said Shadowrun sucked, I never said I was done with the system (why would I be on the forum?). I actually just scheduled a game with some more experienced players for next week. After trying to run my own with my friends, wherein none of us had any practical experience, it was a total mess. Nobody enjoyed it, so I assumed we were all doing it wrong. So yeah, I'm looking to see how an experienced player runs a game so I can see where I went wrong.

[Reaver]

Hm, I should make a list of these things. Reaver, care for a joint effort to help put these things together for fledgling GMs? You got way more experience in doing things right, I got mostly experience in doing things wrong and trying to fix them after. =P

LOL, the only experience I have is experience at what NOT to do... But I have learned those lessons well.
It was a long and painful road of almost 38 years of tabletops and GMing/playing. And I have/had the advantage of having a great GM for most of my time in Shadowrun that I could learn from for my own games.

But yes, I could help write out a small list of things to keep in mind for Shadowrun.

If fact, here is the first, "On" and "Off" tip for new GMs and Shadowrun.


The world is a realistic one

Yes, its a game, and yes it is a fantasy setting. Yes there is magic and super tech all around. This is not what I mean. Many players and GMs that come from other systems have a hard time grasping the differences that the rules of Shadowrun, and just how much "power" characters can and can not have.
Many other tabletop systems have a "leveling" system of some sort. After you gain a certain amount of points your character goes "ding!" and your character gains a bunch of nifty new bonuses. And it also gives you an at a glance view of how powerful a character is. After all, a LvL 5 character in going to be "less" then a character at lvl 15 in a given system.

This is not what Shadowrun is, or is about. Unlike in other game systems, In Shadowrun it is entirely possible to have a freshly minted character to run with a bunch of old pro karma whores and still have fun!* It is this very lack of levels that makes Shadowrun realistic.

In other games. The group goes running off to a dungeon, kills shit around their level. Go "Ding!" and leave. They go to the very next dungeon, and  magically find shit to kill that is around their level, go "ding" and leave. Rinse and repeat. (yes, yes, "very simplified!!" you scream, but the point stands). But in Shadowrun, the group goes down the barren kills a bunch of gangers. and... gain nothing, except what they salvage as the very act of "killing" in SR doesn't give you anything to your advancement - completing team objectives does! And if that team went off and completed a bunch of team objectives gained karma and then came back to that street corner?? They would find the gangers... and they would be even easier to kill!

Unlike many other settings, in shadowrun, what you see is often what you get when it comes to enemies. A Ganger, is a ganger, is a ganger. And she will always be a ganger. Why? Because she's a Ganger. Now what do i mean by that? lets look at the CRB to highlight this point:

CRB 382 lists the base stats for Gangers. And what you see  should be what you get when you encounter them in the world (Attributes adjusted for metatype, of course)
 
The base skills of:

Blades 4, Clubs 3, Etiquette (Street) 3 (+2),
Intimidation 4, Pistols 4, Unarmed Combat 3

Should never change. Why? Because they are a Ganger!

To highlight this lets look at look at an elite special forces of page 384

Athletics skill group 7 (10), Stealth skill group
6, Close Combat skill group 8, Demolitions 7,
Firearms skill group 9, Perception 7

Seeing the difference?

One is ganger, with ZERO professional training, ZERO resources to spend on equipment and education. the other has had the very best that their agency could afford.

Now why do I bring this up? Because the very first concepts that many new GMs struggle with is the concept of "challenge" in Shadowrun, and figure that they have to play with the numbers to keep things interesting for their players; often because they are looking for that magical Level number that tells them how powerful a group is.
So they think they have to start adjusting skills to compensate... And soon you have gangers that are starving in the street, that any military force in the world would pay a 5 digit salary to have in their ranks as gangers start sporting combat skills in the low teens!

No. As has happened every single time that police force/military pushes back against gangers, you end up with a lot of dead gangers! As is the same in Shadowrun... you throw gangers up against a combat party of runners... expect a high body count!

On the reverse side. What the in the name of FUCKING FUCKITTY HELL are those gangers doing picking a fight with a Runner team?!?! Gangers may be the pond scum of the streets, but they are not usually suicidal! (Ok.. Yes the halloweeners come very close.... but still!) They should beating feet about .25 seconds after the troll Runner turns the first ganger into paste with a smile!

People in SR do things for the very reason that they do things in our world, because they want to live, be comfortable, and happy. And just like our world, not everything is going to stop you from achieving those desires. But, unlike our world, there are not as much helping to achieve those desires. There is no social safety net to catch those that are unemployable. There is no real government programs to help with the many things you (the reader) have come to expect. No welfare, no healthcare, no social pensions, underfunded public education, spotty utilities, and more taxes. - But this is all covered in the history of the game... which should be required reading!


*I say this because I have seen this happen several times. I play in a living campaign with 5 steady players and the same GM for the last 25+ years... Occasionally over the years people have joined and dropped out as time goes on. Those who join always start with "fresh characters" or their old character where they left  off. Which has lead to games where there are characters with 12,000 karma teaming up with people with 0 karma! And at the end of the day everyone who played enjoyed themselves!

I admit this is something that takes a huge amount of expertise and skill on the behalf of the GM, and is not something that I have been able to replicate with the same proficiency.... I just don't have my GM's skills weaving that complex of a narrative together and make it work as well as he does.

[Marcus]

Let's not forget 4e's other big failing. Presentation. The lore was bad. The art was worse. And of course, they staggered out the release of core classes. You couldn't play as Barbarians, sorcerers, monks or druids with the core rulebook. You needed to wait for and then buy two more books to use stuff that had central to the game for an entire generation of players and was required to realize some of the most basic fantasy fiction character concepts.

The art wasn't bad, it was fairly generic, I liked it and we certainly got a lot of it, it usually did a good job of being relevant. As to the classes You couldn't play a bard ether,  from the 1st players handbook but that hardly seems like epic failure to me. 4th Classes were much more complete then their 3rd edition counter parts, which required a lot more content including paragon paths, and of course epic destinies. You also didn't actually have buy two more book, the online subscription gave you full access as content was released.

[Mirikon]

Let's not forget 4e's other big failing. Presentation. The lore was bad. The art was worse. And of course, they staggered out the release of core classes. You couldn't play as Barbarians, sorcerers, monks or druids with the core rulebook. You needed to wait for and then buy two more books to use stuff that had central to the game for an entire generation of players and was required to realize some of the most basic fantasy fiction character concepts.

The art wasn't bad, it was fairly generic, I liked it and we certainly got a lot of it, it usually did a good job of being relevant. As to the classes You couldn't play a bard ether,  from the 1st players handbook but that hardly seems like epic failure to me. 4th Classes were much more complete then their 3rd edition counter parts, which required a lot more content including paragon paths, and of course epic destinies. You also didn't actually have buy two more book, the online subscription gave you full access as content was released.

4E was a well-balanced combat system, but it had less roleplaying support than WoW does. Great for a pick-up game at a store or convention where you can get 3-5 people who may or may not know the system, hand them pre-gens, and have them go to town. Crap for people who wanted to customize or grow their characters in different directions. As with WoW, you wound up with every Sorcerer being one of three basic builds, with a little difference in the spells which were all basically the same with pallet swapped descriptors and secondary effects.

5E did a lot to try and fix the damage that 4E did, don't get me wrong, but it has always felt like drinking flat soda to me. There's potential there, but it just doesn't have that something that makes me want to create a character. The whole game feels like 'The Complete Noob's Introduction to Fantasy RPGs', or making the whole edition for the people who really, really love the first five levels, and want everything to be like that. For players (like me) who feel that when Wizards start slinging Fireballs is when the game actually STARTS being interesting, it is a major let down.

In 3.X, however, there were not only plentiful options for races, base classes, prestige classes, magic items, feats, and more, but guidelines for building your own. Creating custom magic items for my characters was always fun, as was having several low-level magic items that, combined, could be used in unexpected ways. You could look at six Fighter 20 builds, with no PrCs, and find six radically different builds, for six different playstyles. Compare that to 5E, where you have three options for most classes, pick one, that's what you'll be forever, no, you can't learn new languages or get new skills unless you drop something you get every 4 levels to find a feat that lets you do it, and no, why would a Barbarian with 8 Int and a Wizard with 18 Int not know exactly the same number of languages?


And this plays into my complaints about SR 5th as a whole. The game feels like the 'Noob's Guide to Shadowrunning'. It feels constrained, in ways SR4 wasn't, with a lot of options forcibly locked into either-or binary choices. You can be a Hacker OR a Rigger. A Rigger who can hack access to the vehicles and drones he wants to steal? Preposterous! A Hacker who can jump into drones? MADNESS! A Technomancer who can secure their own gear? WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO?

[Marcus]

My Knowledge is Heroes is not basic. I have played Heroes many forms across multiple editions, including the variants that most closely resemble SR, and I can tell you right now, you're disregarding the SR core and using custom NPCs instead profession rating enemies then that's what you're doing wrong.  SR isn't Heroes, making custom NPCs is fine, but it something you do after you have mastered the system. (Remember when I suggested you open the core rules to the run construction section and run until you're comfortable in the system, that is exactly what you need to do.)  If you don't understand why SR uses layered defense then you really don't understand the system. SR combat is deadly, and is deadlier then Heroes, to help reduce that player usually have layered defense, (saves on burning edge). No one recover anything in an SR combat.  There is no static values because the intention is for it be dynamic. Initiative changes in combat as wound penalties are applied and various weapon type take effect. Weapons drop people very quickly. Limit is there flatten down the curve and keep things from getting to over the top. But well built characters are not generally going to adversely effected by it. Pools should be built taking limit into account.

If you find the dice rolling is slowing you down to much, then switch roller program, or modify your dice so you pick out 5 and 6 at glance. But no kidding if you had combat where someone took 5+ attacks, and their weren't a super dodge build, a dragon, great form spirit or a bug queen, odds are something is wrong, and your ether running the system wrong or building characters incorrectly.

[GLD]

Let's not forget 4e's other big failing. Presentation. The lore was bad. The art was worse. And of course, they staggered out the release of core classes. You couldn't play as Barbarians, sorcerers, monks or druids with the core rulebook. You needed to wait for and then buy two more books to use stuff that had central to the game for an entire generation of players and was required to realize some of the most basic fantasy fiction character concepts.

The art wasn't bad, it was fairly generic, I liked it and we certainly got a lot of it, it usually did a good job of being relevant. As to the classes You couldn't play a bard ether,  from the 1st players handbook but that hardly seems like epic failure to me. 4th Classes were much more complete then their 3rd edition counter parts, which required a lot more content including paragon paths, and of course epic destinies. You also didn't actually have buy two more book, the online subscription gave you full access as content was released.

Well okay, let's remove Adepts from Shadowrun 6 until 10 months after release and see if that doesn't bother people. Bard didn't exist when AD&D, launched, so nobody was going to care if it wasn't there. Snd the online subscription presumably wasn't free (I was 15 at the time, so I don't know) so you still had to pay for the new books in some means. I just remember being a kid that had grown up playing 3rd Editon and being confused and frustrated that I could no longer play as some of my favourite classes.

[GLD]

My Knowledge is Heroes is not basic. I have played Heroes many forms across multiple editions, including the variants that most closely resemble SR, and I can tell you right now, you're disregarding the SR core and using custom NPCs instead profession rating enemies then that's what you're doing wrong.  SR isn't Heroes, making custom NPCs is fine, but it something you do after you have mastered the system. (Remember when I suggested you open the core rules to the run construction section and run until you're comfortable in the system, that is exactly what you need to do.)  If you don't understand why SR uses layered defense then you really don't understand the system. SR combat is deadly, and is deadlier then Heroes, to help reduce that player usually have layered defense, (saves on burning edge). No one recover anything in an SR combat.  There is no static values because the intention is for it be dynamic. Initiative changes in combat as wound penalties are applied and various weapon type take effect. Weapons drop people very quickly. Limit is there flatten down the curve and keep things from getting to over the top. But well built characters are not generally going to adversely effected by it. Pools should be built taking limit into account.

If you find the dice rolling is slowing you down to much, then switch roller program, or modify your dice so you pick out 5 and 6 at glance. But no kidding if you had combat where someone took 5+ attacks, and their weren't a super dodge build, a dragon, great form spirit or a bug queen, odds are something is wrong, and your ether running the system wrong or building characters incorrectly.

No, we used the core sample NPCs. We ran Fast Food Fight in SR. Afterwards we found a fan made Hero conversion which we're gonna try until we can find more experienced Shadowrun players to show us the ropes.