[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

But that harks back to the reason stuff is wireless in the first place: so that they can be hacked.  Take away the decker's job, and you don't have anything for the decker to do.  Except go back to 1-3e norms and the decker hacks the host while everyone else does nothing, then while everyone else plays the decker does nothing.

Curiously, you omitted 4e which did not have wireless bonuses. Can I then infer that 4e solved the problem of the decker in the van without resorting wireless bonuses that either never get used or get houseruled into not needing wireless functionality?

Actually, all you can infer from my lack of mentioning 4e is that I didn't play that edition and so am not intimately familiar with its idiosyncrasies

[RickDeckard]

My major concern is that it all turns into an Edge mini game, which seems really dumb. Like, armor is apparently irrelevant now as it only applies for the purpose of calculating who wins the advantage. That’s a terrible idea. I just hope it works better than it sounds. Probably staying with 5e

[Finstersang]

Mixing Edge with Armor is a terrible idea, at least from the bits of information we have so far. The only positive thing I can see about this right now is that I really disliked how overly important armor was in SR5, with inflated soak pools and the broken calculation for hardened armor. But this is totally overdoing it, and it´s also quite unintuitive: Armor protects against damage. Plain and simple. You can make it about being harder to score a hit like in D&D, it could be a flat damage reduction, it could be additional soak dice like in the previous SR editions - but all of this has an effect that´s understandable by everyone. Gaining magical breakdance points for getting shot at while having armor, not so much.

Well, at least it´s probably not too hard to houserule the armor/edge interaction into something more reasonable. That´s one benefit of steamlined systems: It´s easier to make adjustments without the whole system/balance crumbling down. Try the same with that godforsaken Limit mechanic in SR5 Maybe there will even be some official backpedaling optional combat rules later on in the combat supplement, like the ones in Run&Gun.

[Cabral]

But that harks back to the reason stuff is wireless in the first place: so that they can be hacked.  Take away the decker's job, and you don't have anything for the decker to do.  Except go back to 1-3e norms and the decker hacks the host while everyone else does nothing, then while everyone else plays the decker does nothing.

Curiously, you omitted 4e which did not have wireless bonuses. Can I then infer that 4e solved the problem of the decker in the van without resorting wireless bonuses that either never get used or get houseruled into not needing wireless functionality?

Actually, all you can infer from my lack of mentioning 4e is that I didn't play that edition and so am not intimately familiar with its idiosyncrasies

What fun is that? This. Is. The. Internet.

[Finstersang]

My major concern is that it all turns into an Edge mini game, which seems really dumb. Like, armor is apparently irrelevant now as it only applies for the purpose of calculating who wins the advantage. That’s a terrible idea. I just hope it works better than it sounds. Probably staying with 5e

Now with the development Q&A out, it seems like the Armor/Edge-interaction actually came first and then the Edge mechanic was expanded to a more general use.

I suspected it was the other way around: Someone came up with the (honestly, not too bad) idea to make combat modifiers into edge and then someone stood up and said "Hey, wait! Why not make Armor also about Edge, instead of, you know, protecting against damage? Wouldn´t that be absoutely nuts?!?  "

[Psimon_Says]

So, after viewing the live play videos and listening to a few podcasts; it appears that armor does add to your defense rating if you are 4 or more higher than the opposing attack rating you get the edge. The armor does help defend against damage as it improves your defense rating. The removal of armor soak increases the chances that your average 'runner will seek cover to boost his Defense Rating and get that edge point. Having seen it in action it appears to speed play up and reduce modifier confusion.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Yes, it effects your defense value and your ability to either gain or give a point of edge. Whether one edge is worth anything or if it does close to enough to represent armor is the question. Faster isn’t always better.  I’m not sure how much modifier confusion there was with armor. Though I guess non conductive etc added a layer of complexity. I like fast gameplay but how much immersive feel of shadowrun am I willing to give up to gain it. A simple system of clothing armor has values of 1-3, security 2-4, military 3-5.(levels representing in each category coverage form vest to full suit)Each level gives one auto success on damage resistance would be just as quick and allow armor to feel like armor.

Nostalgia maybe but I think the game had some pluses from staging damage. 4 net hits brought a pistol up to deadly damage. 1 net hit kept it at moderate. Now it takes 7 net hits to get there. That’s a lot of hits to kill someone with a gun. This overly pushes people to big gun options imo so their base damage is capable of killing with a non ludicrous number of hits. Problem is without staging backed by a combat pool or armor high base damages are almost impossible to reduce from crazy levels. As if once you use a assault rifle on autofire there are no grazing hits or flesh wounds.

[topcat]

Not seeing why people think armor was so good in SR5?  SR5 is all about not being hit in the first place, which is a 1:1 against attack, rather than DV vs. Armor, because you need 3 armor to cover 1 DV.  Attacks have much higher DV in SR5 than in SR4, too.  Unless you're walking around in heavy armor (which should have its own complications), you're likely to take damage from nearly anything that hits.

SR6 looks to make avoiding damage even more important than it is in SR5.

[Michael Chandra]

Let's see... Barrett 122: 14P/-10 with apds. Vs 10 + FBA 18. 18 dice for 10 soak with edge, so 5+ taken even with Edge. Without Edge it is 9+ taken. In SR6 you would have 3.33 hits so even if all the buffs bring you to 11P base damage it would be same average damage. So I think lethality might not even be that bad against the heavy stuff. It's mass attacks that are more dangerous against heavy armor.

[Lormyr]

Not seeing why people think armor was so good in SR5?

Primary on characters designed for extreme armor. One of my Missions players has a Minotaur with just short of 70 dice in his milspec, low 60's in legal less conspicuous sleeping tiger.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Not seeing why people think armor was so good in SR5?  SR5 is all about not being hit in the first place, which is a 1:1 against attack, rather than DV vs. Armor, because you need 3 armor to cover 1 DV.  Attacks have much higher DV in SR5 than in SR4, too.  Unless you're walking around in heavy armor (which should have its own complications), you're likely to take damage from nearly anything that hits.

SR6 looks to make avoiding damage even more important than it is in SR5.

I’ve argued that the math made it too deadly there as well and that it seems to get worse in 6e. But while you wanted to avoid getting shot in the first place armor for non extreme examples brought damage down by 4ish dv which is almost 1/2 your health which is pretty significant. Either way base damages being too high skew away the option of a flesh wound unless you have a stupid high soak pool. I think the system should be designed under the assumption basic hits with limited successes should be soaked down to flesh wounds for most small arms. Large obvious weapons, troll powered melee it’s different.

[Finstersang]

In SR5, Armor was too important, especially worn armor. The difference between running unarmored and running with the standard optimized combination of Sleeping Tiger, Ballistic Masks, Nutsack Protectors and whatnot was extreme. Considering a standard human with 3 Body and an armored Jacket (12): That´s 80% of the Soak roll determined by Armor. Worn Armor, to be precise. If that Human had, let´s say, Dermal Plating with a Rating of 1, that would still only add one die, which is more or less neglegible in comparison. And this is the ratio for a pretty standard, underoptimized build, without the really broken stuff like Cyberlimb Armor or Hardened Armor.

Making (worn) Armor less impactfull could be a step in the right direction. 

However: Making Armor do absolutely nothing to protect against damage and instead make it about Edge just doesn´t seem like the right way to do it. Like, at all. How about just - wild idea, I know! - changing the balance by adjusting the damage values and the values of worn armor? Or just make armor act as a straight damage reduction? 

[Shinobi Killfist]

yeah armor/soak was broken in 5e. This is a massive over correction. Where it feels like armor now does effectively nothing.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

When you can build a figurative tank with a better soak pool than a literal tank, you know 5e was wack.


As far as 6th world goes, do remember to view "armor not helping on a soak roll" in context.  Some other 6e changes that tie directly into this change:

1) weapons have a lower DV, so there's less TO soak.
2) healing is more readily available than in 5e, so any damage you do take isn't as impactful as it is in 5e.
3) armor contributing to DR isn't the same thing as doing nothing. Edge is now an all-important meta-currency.  Armor giving you Edge (or denying it to your attacker) IS a big deal.

[Ghost Rigger]

When you can build a figurative tank with a better soak pool than a literal tank, you know 5e was wack.

Tanks have never been statted for 5e. The worst that you can say is that you can build a figurative tank with a better soak pool than a literal APC.