[Ghost Rigger]

...true however more net hits means a higher negative modifier and a higher base damage code may keep the one or more of oppos from thinking of standing up or moving from behind cover to take a pot shot.

Yes, yes, more hits is always better than fewer hits and higher base damage is always better than lower base damage (not that it's hard to get your hands on APDS and an Ares Alpha). But you're missing my point that because of how suppressive fire works the bar for being able to contribute to combat is very low, so there's really no reason to make combat hacking viable.

[Finstersang]

Besides that "downhill" benefit to armor, defense rating may also have relevance to factors beyond edge generation/denial.

Maybe the good ol' conversion of Lethal to Stun? Or do they simplifiy that as well?

[adzling]

judging from the 'cast last night armor adds, at most, one edge die to your edge pool.
with edge being about 1/4 as effective as before that's not much of a difference between being naked and wearing full armor...

soak is still there, it's just bod only.

If this works as it seems from the demo last night a pixie will be almost as combat effective as a troll (strength no longer contributes to melee damage, armor is mostly irrelevant as it may, at best, let you reroll one die).

I know armor doesn't contribute to soak pools.. so what IS the soak pool in 6e? Or isn't there one?

From what I've gathered so far armor is integral to defense rating, and in turn defense rating factors into edge generation. And edge in turn is a major thing in 6e.

Besides that "downhill" benefit to armor, defense rating may also have relevance to factors beyond edge generation/denial.

[Ghost Rigger]

If this works as it seems from the demo last night a pixie will be almost as combat effective as a troll (strength no longer contributes to melee damage, armor is mostly irrelevant as it may, at best, let you reroll one die).

Strength has no effect on melee combat damage, and armor does next to nothing. Therefore, the huge strength bonus of orks and trolls isn't worth charging a lot in Priority or Karma for. Therefore, metatypes will be more accessible in 6th edition. A finger curls on the monkey's paw....

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

I only saw part of the demo stream... the constant verbalized stream of consciousness rendered it unwatchable to me.

Still, I did stay long enough for character introductions, and none of them emphasized close combat. Without having seen the rules in action, I suppose it's possible that strength was meaningless in combat because no close combat specialists took abilities that MADE strength relevant?

And even if there's no way to leverage high strength in 6e melee combat... well maybe 5e Adept power (Strength) Boost was preparing us for strength to have nothing to do with weapon DV

[adzling]

In going off the chat at the end where they summarize the rules.

Armor and melee are semi-confirmed to work the way I note above...

[Beta]

I'm foreseeing a robust selection of house rules.  Granted that this is the case for almost every RPG, ever, but it looks like there are some things in 6th that will rub a good number of people the wrong way, so I could see these particularly popular this time around.  (although that doesn't help people playing only Missions)

[Finstersang]

That new edge mechanic looks pretty cool as an overall concept, but making armor about generating edge instead of - dunno, maybe preventing damage ?! - seems a bit too wacky right now.

You could say, that one really takes it
 
over the Edge.

[Fedifensor]

I'm not worrying about the new rules until 2020.  My only Shadowrun gaming right now is Missions, and the campaign is not converting yet.  When I have to start looking at a conversion, I'll take a look at Shadowrun 6E and make a decision.  That should give them time to errata anything that's just completely horrible.


I do hope they changed SINs - I really hate how they work in the current edition.

[incrdbil]

ok, a mixture of 'hey thats really  good"  " not sure" and "WTF "

Simplification good,

but this edge thing looks too annoying. I'm on the fence about melee weaposn just having a fixed value and sTr being useless..because I just cant believe the rule could be that bad,

My WTF list  is the wild dice (hate it already, game is random enough),  trivializing armor,  and most of all dropping modifiers. Simplification is good, but thats throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[Lormyr]

So, the guys in the stream confused a lot of terms (understandably so due to what they are called). To clarify (to the best of my knowledge):

Attack Pool: Attribute + Skill + Miscellaneous. Used to determine a successful hit or miss vs. Defense Pool.

Attack Rating: The formula for the specific weapon you are using, compared against Defense Rating, to determine if you gain bonus Edge to spend for your attack.

Defense Pool: Reaction + Intuition + Miscellaneous. Used to avoid being hit by an attack, compared against attackers Attack Pool.

Defense Rating: Body + Armor Rating + Miscellaneous. Compared against attackers Attack Rating to avoid giving attacker additional Edge to spend against you.

Soak: Body + Miscellaneous. Hits reduce incoming damage one for one. Yes, armor is pretty much completely useless at present. That one bonus Edge doesn't matter much by itself unless being added to expenditure of Attribute Edge.

Strength does still play a factor in melee damage. If you check out the stream at 2:30:00 you will hear Mr. Johnson say, I quote, "replace the normal formula for strength for doing attack damage" in regards to lacing ware allowing a static number for unarmed damage rather than the standard formula.

[Michael Chandra]

2 things I should note:

1: Iirc from the interview, if your Defense Rating heavily exceeds the Attack Rating, YOU get Edge instead?
2: They said there will be augmentations/qualities that impact your soak roll. It wouldn't surprise me if in the future MilSpec armor will come in and go 'X autohits on your soak roll' or something like that. I haven't heard about what Hardened Armor does yet, so who knows what MilSpec will do eventually, probably something similar.

[Lormyr]

2 things I should note:

1: Iirc from the interview, if your Defense Rating heavily exceeds the Attack Rating, YOU get Edge instead?
2: They said there will be augmentations/qualities that impact your soak roll. It wouldn't surprise me if in the future MilSpec armor will come in and go 'X autohits on your soak roll' or something like that. I haven't heard about what Hardened Armor does yet, so who knows what MilSpec will do eventually, probably something similar.

I am uncertain of either of those.

[Shinobi Killfist]

If this works as it seems from the demo last night a pixie will be almost as combat effective as a troll (strength no longer contributes to melee damage, armor is mostly irrelevant as it may, at best, let you reroll one die).

Strength has no effect on melee combat damage, and armor does next to nothing. Therefore, the huge strength bonus of orks and trolls isn't worth charging a lot in Priority or Karma for. Therefore, metatypes will be more accessible in 6th edition. A finger curls on the monkey's paw....

I suspect str will still play a role in damage, it would be incomprehensibly bad for it not to.  That being said, apparently metas as how I understand it from their comments are more accessible as they don't have bonuses to stats but bonuses to the stat maxes.  And your races bonus points can be spent in places where the max is increased. Sounds terrible to me as races should feel distinct and not just tall human, human with pointed ears, short human.   

[Shinobi Killfist]

One thing I'm curious about as I felt it was one of the most broken parts of 5e is summoning. They implied multiple spirits without binding.  now the test is vs x2 force(not sure why they got rid of force for spells and not spirits, though old school force for spells meant less but was significant for spirits) and spirits hit is the drain(I'd of kept it spirits hits x2).

 End of the day though without a super focus on it you probably wont be summoning force 9 spirits, but with weapon damage down force 6 is pretty damn durable.  Still force 6 will have smaller pools for dodging, attacking, will do less damage, assuming spirits have the same number a initiative dice as 5e they only get one attack.  But its pretty tanky for an average of 4 drain, and you could risk a force 9 and its highly unlikely it would kill you or knock you out depending on how they determine if drain is physical or stun.

 And a force 9 spirit in this game with attacks doing so much less damage would be unstoppable. If they had done x2 force in dice and x2 hits in drain, you wouldn't risk a force 9 spirit as you easily could be facing 16 drain or something, which to me is how it should be.  Even force 6 might hit you for something crazy on a lucky roll, making it a risk. As is even a crazy lucky roll force 6 is mostly fine.

Still my random ass guess given how little we know is overall I think it is probably a nerf, just not as big of one as I think was needed.