[Finstersang]

Why would I ever want to throw a wild die? 1/6 chance to screw up the roll is a tad high to really risk it.

For low skill users.  If I understand correctly the Wild Die is added by specific things, not every dice roll.  The Face or Decker with 8 to 10 Dice in Firearms would probably go ahead and grab something with a Wild Die.  10 or less Dice is going to miss frequently enough that the Wild Die gamble of 3 Extra hits could seem like a good idea.

Really, anything with a low to moderate dice pool trying something hard may find the Wild Die appealing.  Especially if its something the player can control by turning on/turning off or using a different weapon or tool (or whatever).  We'll know in three months.

One source of wild die are Positive Qualities like Overclocker (+2 die to Matrix actions, one of them a wild die).
And I can't really imagine someone with a low matrix pool grabbing this quality.

I actually like the flavour on this. I can already imagine a couple of offshoot Qualities that also include wild dice, f.i. a version for social skills ("Smiling Devil" or something like that) where you are so aggressively charismatic that people sometimes see right through your facade and realise that you really are a manipulative psychopath. Or a version for Magic users where your magic powers are bit to powerfull for you to reliably handle them.

[Banshee]

The misinformation to the public is pretty strong. Like you have these folks with the quick start rules or box set or whatever playing live streams that say one thing, then you have these (authors I presume? i.e Banshee) saying something else. The drain example.

I think we all appreciate intel on the changes in the new edition but can we at least get it right before we call it out?

yes I wrote parts of the book and was on the rules development team from the beginning as well and obviously have a copy of the "final" print copy in my possession. However I have not seen the QSR and would agree there seems to be some sizable differences between it and the CRB on a few things. Spellcasting seems to be the biggest one since we did not change drain or sustained spells either one but it sounds like the QSR says otherwise.

[Michael Chandra]

That's why we got people compiling documents with all the sources, for those too impatient to wait that all want to speculate like crazy. O_O Like you and me!

[Shinobi Killfist]

One thing they mentioned about char gen. 1 skill at 6. The rest max at 5. Are they going back to 6 max for skills. I really hated how attribute focused 4e was. 10 from your stat max 6 from a skill. Skills felt almost meaningless in comparison.

that is just at char gen ... skill ranks go to 9 then with the specialization and expertise you can get to a total of 12 dice from skill

I’d of preferred just removing the skill cap entirely but that’s better than nothing. Honestly attributes should only contribute 1/2. They cover multiple skills and should not be 1 for 1 like skills.

[Shinobi Killfist]

As a add to the binding debate. Part of the problem in 4-5e was how you summoned then bound and services were additive. If you straight went to bind against a harder test you’d have a small number of services. In 1-3 e hermetics might have 1-3 services on a decent force spirit and it costs thousands to summon. Now it’s 500 per force and you might have 5-10 services.  At force 6 3000 Nuyen isn’t trivial I’d you don’t have a massive pile of services. Though if your spirit gets smoked it’s a lot down the drain.

[kyoto kid]

It also seemed that once you rolled initiative you kept that result for each successive combat turn, so if you rolled poorly you were stuck with it.

Since you no longer have initiative passes, and iirc your Minors depend on your dice, not your roll, that score only matters for turn order no? No different from D&D then, and at least here there's ways to modify your score during a fight. JM Hardy indicated it was so you can be more tactical, iirc.

Going 'nope, we're both not getting any edge dice' doesn't sound that different from 'we're both using edge' so I guess it depends on the exact mechanic. When Edge is luck, both getting extra makes sense, but when Edge is literally having an edge, it makes sense that you can cancel them out.

...but it sounds as if you roll a really crappy initiative, you are stuck with it for the entire combat whereas previously, re-rolling at the top of every combat turn you had a chance to get a better one.

[Michael Chandra]

It also seemed that once you rolled initiative you kept that result for each successive combat turn, so if you rolled poorly you were stuck with it.

Since you no longer have initiative passes, and iirc your Minors depend on your dice, not your roll, that score only matters for turn order no? No different from D&D then, and at least here there's ways to modify your score during a fight. JM Hardy indicated it was so you can be more tactical, iirc.

Going 'nope, we're both not getting any edge dice' doesn't sound that different from 'we're both using edge' so I guess it depends on the exact mechanic. When Edge is luck, both getting extra makes sense, but when Edge is literally having an edge, it makes sense that you can cancel them out.

...but it sounds as if you roll a really crappy initiative, you are stuck with it for the entire combat whereas previously, re-rolling at the top of every combat turn you had a chance to get a better one.

Yes, but now that bad roll is solely your turn-order, not your action-economy. And iirc there was something on Edge for Initiative? Plus now turn order is more predictable

[kyoto kid]

Why would I ever want to throw a wild die? 1/6 chance to screw up the roll is a tad high to really risk it.

...ah, that's what it is called.  I remember one of the players used some sort of special die roll that did altered the final result.

Sounds sort of video game-ish to me.

[kyoto kid]

You don't spend time or mental energy on armor choice in 5e though. Just pick up an armor jacket and a helmet and go, unless you care about your social modifiers, in which case you look through the armor chapter of Run&Gun and pick something from a short list of options.

Actually all you do is pick Sleeping Tiger.  Protection as good as heavy armor? Check. Beneficial social modifiers? Check. Bonuses to stealth? Check. Availability of 12 or under? Check.

There's really no reason to ever wear anything OTHER than Sleeping Tiger in 5e.  Unless you're in a gimmick mission requiring a space suit or something.

...or tromping around the CZ. There are a lot of places where having sealed armour with an air supply is very handy.

[kyoto kid]

Interestingly enough, Drain still exists, but Binding is gone. O_O Summoning now lasts 1 Dusk & 1 Dawn, it's resisted by Fx2 but Drain is 1/hit, and you can have a total of M*3 in Force summoned total at any time.

...this sort of goes back to older editions where hermetics could have multiple elementals summoned at the same time.  That was a pain for a GM say if you had two hermetics each with a several elementals (in 2E you ended up dealing with runner teams turning into "strike forces").  I was actually glad they limited all mages to just one called spirit in 5E.  Yes there is binding, but it took time, resources, and could have dire consequences for the character if the player rolled poorly (spirits also don't take kindly to it either).

[kyoto kid]

Speaking of Riggers, it seems the game is moving in the direction of making them pure mental based, since Intuition is used instead of reaction when jumped in. I like this a lot.
Now the question remains: does that mean logic is used instead of agility for jumped in gunnery tests? I surely hope so!

I don't quite like that. Reaction is in a weird space where you can make arguments for it being either physical or mental or even both, and if they take Reaction out of the equation for riggers then that makes it too easy to just dump all your points into the relevant stats.

The problem with Riggers is that they need too many stats to begin with. They are the only archetype which require above average if not high levels of attributes in both mental and physical attributes on top of a massive load of nuyen.
In SR5 they need Reaction, agility, willpower, logic, and intuition because they are matrix based. The only other archetype that attribute needy is the Technomancer. Everyone else only needs two or three.

...deckers in 5E need more than 2, like Logic (hacking actions), Intuition (some matrix actions as well as Matrix Perception), and Willpower (matrix defence). A decent Agility is helpful for saving your hoop in the meat world as well as being able to contribute to combat when outside the matrix, while Reaction does affect the character's initiative when working in AR.

[kyoto kid]

It also seemed that once you rolled initiative you kept that result for each successive combat turn, so if you rolled poorly you were stuck with it.

Since you no longer have initiative passes, and iirc your Minors depend on your dice, not your roll, that score only matters for turn order no? No different from D&D then, and at least here there's ways to modify your score during a fight. JM Hardy indicated it was so you can be more tactical, iirc.

Going 'nope, we're both not getting any edge dice' doesn't sound that different from 'we're both using edge' so I guess it depends on the exact mechanic. When Edge is luck, both getting extra makes sense, but when Edge is literally having an edge, it makes sense that you can cancel them out.

...but it sounds as if you roll a really crappy initiative, you are stuck with it for the entire combat whereas previously, re-rolling at the top of every combat turn you had a chance to get a better one.

Yes, but now that bad roll is solely your turn-order, not your action-economy. And iirc there was something on Edge for Initiative? Plus now turn order is more predictable

...turn order is still important.  It is in any game.  Again if you can make it through that turn and redeem a bad initiative by getting a better roll result in the top of the next turn that's fine. If you have to keep the result you initially rolled throughout the combat, you will be at disadvantage until it is over.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

It's not wrong, but OTOH the alternative to rolling once is rolling every turn... and under that paradigm you can go last in one round then go first in the next round, doubling actions in a row.

Maybe that's ok... the designers this time around in 6th decided it wasn't ok.  Or at least less preferable to rolling once and having a static "who goes" order for the whole fight.  It's essentially the same thing d20 does... and for good or ill d20's turn sequence is MUCH simpler to manage than 5E's.

I'm looking forward to 6e initiative tracking not requiring anything more than organizing a list of PC and NPC names in turn order.

[kyoto kid]

...one thing to my disappointment that I learned during the live play was one of my favourite actions is no more. 

When the team was being chased by the Ancients and the Rigger decided to use the AK-97 on his drone in the back I suggested laying down suppression fire.  The answer I got back was that it wasn't an option anymore as the only modes are single shot, wide burst, and full auto, the latter two which involve splitting your pool.  So much for the Decker or Face with a mediocre firearms skill and low physical attributes helping out in combat.

Another bit of info I gleaned from the Podcast the other night was that the "burlier" metatypes (particularly Trolls) are heavily favoured when it comes to combat. So making a jacked up human Sammy sounds sort of like an exercise in futility, particularly since armour (which was something of an "equaliser" in older editions) has been effectively nerfed.

[kyoto kid]

It's not wrong, but OTOH the alternative to rolling once is rolling every turn... and under that paradigm you can go last in one round then go first in the next round, doubling actions in a row.

Maybe that's ok... the designers this time around in 6th decided it wasn't ok.  Or at least less preferable to rolling once and having a static "who goes" order for the whole fight.  It's essentially the same thing d20 does... and for good or ill d20's turn sequence is MUCH simpler to manage than 5E's.

I'm looking forward to 6e initiative tracking not requiring anything more than organizing a list of PC and NPC names in turn order.

...yes it may be easier to keep track of but as there are no more multiple passes per turn, so that crazy headache for the GM (and players) is gone.  I have never played a game where you got stuck with the same initiative for the whole encounter (OK, there is Champions/Hero System, but that used a fixed action phase system based on your character's speed and there was no random test involved).

I really don't see it being any more difficult to handle.