[Hephaestus]

Armor Mods seem a lot more powerful in 6e vs 5e. 
Example: Fire resistance in 6e cancels the Burning status.  In 5e it just added to the rating of fire resistance to the armor value for resisting fire.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the "X uses and it stops working" part of the armor mods is 6th. A resistance means you have an increased chance not to suffer from a given type of effect. An immunity means you wouldn't take the effect.

In 5th, taking the resistance mods gave you a consistent resistance by way of extra soak dice. So every time I get hit with fire, I should take less damage, but I'll still have to put myself out.

In 6th, what you have is X number of immunities to a given damage type. If I take "fire resistance 4" on my armor, then the 5th hit I take with fire damage lights me up like a candle...

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

It's not unlike real world "fireproof" suits... they protect you only for X amount of time while exposed to fire after which the protection no longer works. 

Not to say you're wrong to prefer the old way of adding dice to the soak.  I'm pointing out a silver cloud here, what since +soak is a concept 6we deliberately abandoned after all.

[Ghost Rigger]

Actually, 5e fire resistance also decreases the chances of your armor setting on fire in the first place, so you might not even have to put yourself out.

[penllawen]

Personally, I'm not a fan of the "X uses and it stops working" part of the armor mods is 6th.
...
In 6th, what you have is X number of immunities to a given damage type.

I hadn’t noticed it worked that way. Isn’t that an awful lot of bookkeeping for a “streamlined” game?

[Shinobi Killfist]

Personally, I'm not a fan of the "X uses and it stops working" part of the armor mods is 6th.
...
In 6th, what you have is X number of immunities to a given damage type.

I hadn’t noticed it worked that way. Isn’t that an awful lot of bookkeeping for a “streamlined” game?

That’s my issue with it. Just seems like a pain in the ass. I’d of preferred a flat 1/2 duration of effect style benefit with no degradation.

[Hephaestus]

It's not unlike real world "fireproof" suits... they protect you only for X amount of time while exposed to fire after which the protection no longer works. 

Not to say you're wrong to prefer the old way of adding dice to the soak.  I'm pointing out a silver cloud here, what since +soak is a concept 6we deliberately abandoned after all.

I get what you are saying, but the real world suits kind of fall in between these two mechanics. You set someone on fire wearing a firesuit, and the insulation slows the heat transfer rate to the wearer so that they can operate for a while longer before being damaged by the effects of the flames. Likewise, fire retardant suits don't give the fire anything to burn, so you are much harder to set on fire.

Fifth ed skips the heat transfer and assumes a flat decrease in effect based on fire retardant level, while 6th goes from perfect insulator/fireproof to nothing.

I can understand why you might like it better, but it means that if you're in a situation that may expose you to the given effect more times than armor could be rated for (fighting mages, escaping a burning building, etc.) your gear is going to give out on you when you need it most. And as pointed out, its one more consumable to keep track of.

[Ghost Rigger]

It's not unlike real world "fireproof" suits... they protect you only for X amount of time while exposed to fire after which the protection no longer works. 

Not to say you're wrong to prefer the old way of adding dice to the soak.  I'm pointing out a silver cloud here, what since +soak is a concept 6we deliberately abandoned after all.

That doesn't align with anything I've heard about fireproof or fire-resistant suits, nor does it fit my understanding of material sciences and engineering. And even if this ablative armor is the norm for personal fire protection, how do you explain this for the other damage types? In the case of electrical damage, rubber doesn't stop resisting electricity after you shock it a few times.

[ZeroSum]

On a related, kind of, tangent; in the Matrix, Attack Ratings and Defense Ratings seem weirdly lopsided when a dedicated decker goes after devices that are not protected by a cyberdeck/RCC.

It's not particularly difficult to create a starting character with a 15+ AR (Attack + Sleaze), and even the most powerful commlink is only A/F 3/1 for a total DR of 4. Armor running on the commlink can be defeated with Exploit, and though Data Processing can be boosted by 1 with Toolbox you're still looking at a DR of 5, a full 10 lower than even a basic starting decker can hit.

Unless the assumption is that every single device is protected by some kind of host or decker type persona, it would seem almost trivially easy for deckers to gain Edge whenever they take any hacking actions, even more so if they take Analytical Mind (and why wouldn't they).

However, this is flipped upside down when hosts are added to the mix; a Rating 1 host will have A/S/D/F attributes of 1/2/3/4 (for example; AR 3 DR 7) while a Rating 6 host could be 6/7/8/9 (AR 13, DR17), and a Rating 12 host can be a staggering 12/13/14/15 (AR 25, DR29). No decker in the world can even get close to that, and so the higher rating hosts will always gain Edge.

Speaking of; if Spirits do not gain edge, should hosts and/or IC do so?

[penllawen]

Speaking of; if Spirits do not gain edge, should hosts and/or IC do so?

And drones, too (which was covered at length here in a thread a couple of weeks back.) Nobody knows. The CRB has a worked example where two drones fire at each other, and AR/DR values are compared, but it is silent on where the Edge would go were any earned. Given the conceptual similarities between drones and spirits as semi-PC-controlled pets, it seems unlikely they should get fundamentally different rules about Edge, but that is the implication.

[penllawen]

Unless the assumption is that every single device is protected by some kind of host or decker type persona, it would seem almost trivially easy for deckers to gain Edge whenever they take any hacking actions, even more so if they take Analytical Mind (and why wouldn't they).

Yes. I built a decker character who exploited this ruthlessly to quickly accumulate Edge and use that for repeated attacks using Anticipate (4x attacks at 12 dice each & DV 5P, approximately every other combat phase.)

[ZeroSum]

Unless the assumption is that every single device is protected by some kind of host or decker type persona, it would seem almost trivially easy for deckers to gain Edge whenever they take any hacking actions, even more so if they take Analytical Mind (and why wouldn't they).

Yes. I built a decker character who exploited this ruthlessly to quickly accumulate Edge and use that for repeated attacks using Anticipate (4x attacks at 12 dice each & DV 5P, approximately every other combat phase.)

Tangent on a tangent; can you even use Anticipate on a Matrix attack? Anticipate is in the Combat section, and we've already discussed elsewhere that the Multiple Attack action is not compatible with Matrix Attacks.

I would think that this is why Fork exists, no?

[Michael Chandra]

We've had a debate on Edge for non-Spirits, and while general consensus is 'seems fair for them to gain Edge due to game balance purposes', the bigger question is 'how do they use it'. I advocate 'spend at once'.

[penllawen]

Tangent on a tangent; can you even use Anticipate on a Matrix attack? Anticipate is in the Combat section, and we've already discussed elsewhere that the Multiple Attack action is not compatible with Matrix Attacks.

Oh, sorry, no, not like that. I mean: she would throw out Data Spikes against commlinks or other low-DR targets to earn cheap Edge, then use that Edge for a physical Anticipate attack with dual-wield SMGs. Mixing Edge gain and use across "worlds" (ie. meat / matrix / magic) makes very little narrative sense that I can see, but it's legal, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ZeroSum]

We've had a debate on Edge for non-Spirits, and while general consensus is 'seems fair for them to gain Edge due to game balance purposes', the bigger question is 'how do they use it'. I advocate 'spend at once'.

That's not RAW, though. While it might be fine to houserule that, RAW specifically states Spirits do not gain Edge. So I'll stick to that in this context.

Anyway, this is getting a little off-track; my original intent was to discuss the topic at hand, which is attack rating and defense ratings. Again, I think this is extremely lopsided on the Matrix side, as evidenced above.

Oh, sorry, no, not like that. I mean: she would throw out Data Spikes against commlinks or other low-DR targets to earn cheap Edge, then use that Edge for a physical Anticipate attack with dual-wield SMGs. Mixing Edge gain and use across "worlds" (ie. meat / matrix / magic) makes very little narrative sense that I can see, but it's legal, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Aha, I see. Yeah, interesting. I could see that being problematic; I ran through a couple of sample hacks with my sample decker character, and yeah, building up edge seems to be pretty easy when you're going up against straight up devices.

I feel like this is one failing of the Matrix rules and flavour text; while the mechanics are available for personas and hosts to protect devices, there aren't really any guidelines or examples of how most devices will be running. Assuming most people walk around without dedicated persona or host protection, they will be positively trivial to hack for a dedicated decker/technomancer.

Since the defense ratings of unprotected devices are so low, it becomes similarly trivial for deckers to build up large Edge pools. Not a bad idea, since a bad roll can quickly make a hack go sideways and having plenty of edge to spend is more in line with the design goal of SR6, it seems that the different aspects of the game (social encounters, magic, matrix, rigging, combat) are balanced very differently where edge gain is concerned.

[Michael Chandra]

That's not RAW, though. While it might be fine to houserule that, RAW specifically states Spirits do not gain Edge. So I'll stick to that in this context.

We've had a debate on Edge for non-Spirits, and while general consensus is 'seems fair for them to gain Edge due to game balance purposes', the bigger question is 'how do they use it'. I advocate 'spend at once'.