[Xenon]

<<DVs are reduced & armor soak is removed>>

Well, that’s news to me. Where in the 6e CRB are the rules for “if your players have been taken prisoner and stripped of all weapons and armour, here’s the damage code adjustment you should apply” then?

It's not, but does it ....

Banshee, thanks for reminding me why I put penllawen on ignore to begin with.....

No matter how specific and correct I try to be in my posts penllawen will always find something to be 'sarcastic' about.

His posts hold very little value to me.

penllawen,

If it makes you feel better you can always just house rule that attacks against a naked target no longer have to factor in this default armor 'tax'. That attacks against naked targets instead will use unadjusted SR5 base damage values.

Emphasis mine (apparently you need it)

6e's assumes lot of stuff that often is not the case and the end result is a mechanical system then departs from reality often and without benefit.

Actually, 6e assumes lot of stuff that is often the case.

Armor work perfectly fine when you wear any 'normal' armor.
Melee weapons work perfectly fine when you have a 'normal' strength rating.

When 6e break apart (from a 'real-world' point of view) is mostly only if you deliberately start exploring corner cases (like bikini armor or unarmed DV > combat axe if 11+ strength etc).

[adzling]

6e's assumes lot of stuff that often is not the case and the end result is a mechanical system then departs from reality often and without benefit.

Actually, 6e assumes lot of stuff that is often the case.

Armor work perfectly fine when you wear any 'normal' armor.
Melee weapons work perfectly fine when you have a 'normal' strength rating.

When 6e break apart (from a 'real-world' point of view) is mostly only if you deliberately start exploring corner cases (like bikini armor or unarmed DV > combat axe if 11+ strength etc).

To state this more clearly, 6e assumes a lot about combatants, when combatants fall outside that average or assumption range 6e falls apart dramatically.

Shadowrunners and the things they encounters often fall outside those expected ranges.

ergo 6e doesn't work for a great large part of shadowrun.

hope that helps xenon!

[Xenon]

6e assumes a lot about combatants, when combatants fall outside that average...

I agree that 6e will probably fall apart a lot more often than previous editions at tables with veteran GMs and players that are used to min/max and really push the boundaries of what is sometimes even technically allowed.


Edit: 6e is not what we are used to. It is... different.

At over 300+ pages where most of the fluff have been cut out I would not go so far as claiming that 6e is 'rules light' or 'Anarchy 2.0', but compared to previous editions this edition seem to have less emphasis on detailed realism (which often seem to come at the cost of time consuming bookkeeping and complicated ways to resolve even minor game mechanics). Rather, this edition seem to have more emphasis on rule of cool, style and resolving rules more quickly to help the story flowing (which often seem to come at the cost of a higher level of abstraction and with that a bigger disconnect from reality).

[Shadowjack]

@Penllawen: 13 body, 7 edge, 12 armor jacket, 5 from assorted armor pieces, armor spell, mystic armor, and some others I can't recall. With exploding dice it gets extra crazy. That's a lot of dice to fit in your hands and a lot of people have tiny hands. My hands are huge and I find it really cumbersome, especially carefully counting hits and hunting for 6's.

[Banshee]

At over 300+ pages where most of the fluff have been cut out I would not go so far as claiming that 6e is 'rules light' or 'Anarchy 2.0', but compared to previous editions this edition seem to have less emphasis on detailed realism (which often seem to come at the cost of time consuming bookkeeping and complicated ways to resolve even minor game mechanics). Rather, this edition seem to have more emphasis on rule of cool, style and resolving rules more quickly to help the story flowing (which often seem to come at the cost of a higher level of abstraction and with that a bigger disconnect from reality).

Exactly, everyone on the development team had that in mind as went through it and knew it would have casualties. In the end it should be about having fun while playing ... not needing a bunch of book keeping and number crunching.

[Michael Chandra]

@Penllawen: 13 body, 7 edge, 12 armor jacket, 5 from assorted armor pieces, armor spell, mystic armor, and some others I can't recall. With exploding dice it gets extra crazy. That's a lot of dice to fit in your hands and a lot of people have tiny hands. My hands are huge and I find it really cumbersome, especially carefully counting hits and hunting for 6's.

Mathematically, the reroll is superior there. At 7 Edge, 19+ dice already is better reroll-wise. But if you have ~45 soak dice, that's still 25 average soak with a reroll.

[Noble Drake]

I thought the layered armor rules worked pretty well.  You could only stack jacket type armor over armored clothing, it raised your target number for all quickness linked skills considerably, and it reduced your movement to almost nothing.  Where it fell down was allowing the armor spell to stack on top, but that's easily fixed with a quick house rule.

Since the amount of negatives from layering on armor were quickness-based, it was very easy for a character to be put together to have an armor rating of like 8/6 B/I without any ware or magic affecting it and not having any penalties (specifically, that's a 9 quickness, secure jacket, armor vest with plates, and security helmet) and then be at TN 2 for damage resistance tests against every weapon on the core rule-book's firearms table except the sniper rifle.

[GuardDuty]

I thought the layered armor rules worked pretty well.  You could only stack jacket type armor over armored clothing, it raised your target number for all quickness linked skills considerably, and it reduced your movement to almost nothing.  Where it fell down was allowing the armor spell to stack on top, but that's easily fixed with a quick house rule.

Since the amount of negatives from layering on armor were quickness-based, it was very easy for a character to be put together to have an armor rating of like 8/6 B/I without any ware or magic affecting it and not having any penalties (specifically, that's a 9 quickness, secure jacket, armor vest with plates, and security helmet) and then be at TN 2 for damage resistance tests against every weapon on the core rule-book's firearms table except the sniper rifle.

When calculating the penalty you use the full ballistic rating for each piece, not the half you use for the total armor calculation.  So they would actually be +1TN for all Quickness tests (possibly including dodge?) and Quickness linked skills, and would calculate movement as if at Quickness-1...they'd also probably be the first target of anyone with autofire capability...

Can you tank yourself out in 3E?  Yes.  But the cost is that you have to build to be a quickness monster.  Even Quickness 6 is pretty hosed in that getup unless they just don't use quickness skills or intend to move faster than a slow crawl.

I would also point out that even that geared up, tasers and stun batons (which are very common among security staff) are still plenty useful because the tank only gets half impact armor against them.  They're also not impervious to the random ork or troll ganger with a decent melee weapon.  So there were still (a couple) reasonable options to challenge such a player without breaking the game world by giving everyone APDS or rocket launchers or something silly like that.

[Lormyr]

Before the release of 6e, did anyone on this forum ever post about 1/2/3/4/5e to say something to the effect of "I think armour is way too good!"? "I just wish it did less!"? Who was asking for this change?

Not about armor directly, but I do recall a number of posts/posters commenting on how absurd the extreme end of tanking was in 5e. In fairness, they were not wrong.

Agreed.  If someone's going take the "bikinis are just as good as armor" argument seriously and run around without armor, then as far as I'm concerned they'll be forfeiting every circumstantial edge to their opponent they might have otherwise earned.

Out of personal curiosity, in this statement does armor = worn armor, or armor = things that add to DR? For example, a naked troll mage with Body 9 and his natural dermal plating with a sustained combat sense spell has a DR high enough to get edge from the substantial majority of printed weapons in literal underpants.

To state this more clearly, 6e assumes a lot about combatants, when combatants fall outside that average or assumption range 6e falls apart dramatically.

Very much this.

@Penllawen: 13 body, 7 edge, 12 armor jacket, 5 from assorted armor pieces, armor spell, mystic armor, and some others I can't recall. With exploding dice it gets extra crazy. That's a lot of dice to fit in your hands and a lot of people have tiny hands. My hands are huge and I find it really cumbersome, especially carefully counting hits and hunting for 6's.

That calculation is low ball too. Just out of chargen a missions legal troll with the restricted gear quality and 4 cyberlimbs can pack 55ish dice and 11 auto hits on soak.

[Shinobi Killfist]

I think people that play on roll20 lose track of how shitty it is for a troll tank to roll FIFTY DICE every time they get shot. That was terrible and I'm thrilled it's gone as someone who still plays with real dice. Armor in 6E is still very effective, it's just different. In 6E you could get shot 10+ times and survive, thanks to armor. I'm talking about a basic arrmor jacket, not milspec. 6E armor is way better imo. I can see why others disagree though.

Sure. And while some argue for keeping that level of tank I think most are fine with that becoming manageable. But from armor+body to just your body is far too large of a swing imo. Something basic like rating in armor is auto successes on damage soak but have armor be fairly limited to like 1-4 and that’s with a helmet. Bump current damage values up by 3. Keep melee as is but add 1/2 strength to the dv.

Still fast.  No giant die pools that are unmanageable, but armor feels like it does something.

[Typhus]

Armor as automatic hits is pretty much what I'm building.  I tried just a +1 DV but it feels too weak.  I think +2 will be the sweet spot, maybe +3 if the Armor values require it, which the higher end ones might.

I've found it leaves me with an occasional quandry on what to do with some items that used to provide armor, but I think they can safely act as bonus dice for DR tests. 

I tried removing Body tests too (+1 DR/4 dice) but it caused to much hell elsewhere, so it stays in. 

[Noble Drake]

When calculating the penalty you use the full ballistic rating for each piece, not the half you use for the total armor calculation.  So they would actually be +1TN for all Quickness tests (possibly including dodge?) and Quickness linked skills, and would calculate movement as if at Quickness-1...they'd also probably be the first target of anyone with autofire capability...

Can you tank yourself out in 3E?  Yes.  But the cost is that you have to build to be a quickness monster.  Even Quickness 6 is pretty hosed in that getup unless they just don't use quickness skills or intend to move faster than a slow crawl.

I would also point out that even that geared up, tasers and stun batons (which are very common among security staff) are still plenty useful because the tank only gets half impact armor against them.  They're also not impervious to the random ork or troll ganger with a decent melee weapon.  So there were still (a couple) reasonable options to challenge such a player without breaking the game world by giving everyone APDS or rocket launchers or something silly like that.

Uh... 9 quickness, one piece of armor 5/3, the other piece 4/3, and helmet doesn't count so I think I got the details right on this example. And "the cost is that you have to build a quickness monster" is kind of a weird phrase because of how heavily rewarding it is for combat-oriented builds of literally any type to put a heavy emphasis on Quickness in SR3. In effect, the opportunity cost is "nothing" because there isn't any drawback for the combat-orient character to be built with maxed-out upfront Quickness.

And my issue wasn't that there was literally no recourse to get around this - it was that there was something that actually needed to change if "normal runs" as presented by published material were going to present anything resembling a challenge. I should have been able to have stock goons with stock weapon load outs and regular ammunition be enough of a threat even if players "built tough."

[Shinobi Killfist]

If They really wanted to streamline things Theyd of created a threshold system for pretty much everything. The attacker rolls, compare vs threshold to hit. Net hits get added To base damage that is compared vs soak threshold. Net hits on that is the damage done. Body might factor into soak threshold but maybe it’s just armor and body just determines how big your health pool is. The Who roles could be changed to the player always rolls. On defense they roll against GM set thresholds that are coded into the npc stats. But I think the stagnates the opposition too much unless some Variable is put in for The thresholds.

6e streamlined only really for the edge case where people min maxed it out to the nines. I’ve seen it in missions but never at any of the home tables I’ve gamed at. I guess I’m lucky. I just don’t see the value add here. But again I never dealt with 50 die soak man as a GM. The “tank” at our table had 24 dice. Most players soaked with 15ish. So the soak rolls were pretty much in the ball Park of every other roll. 6e it’s 3-12 so I guess that’s technically less but I haven’t really noticed a streamlining effect from it. Maybe over a campaign I would. We’ve only really done test plays.

[Shadowjack]

@Michael Chandra: That is true and I have checked out the math in the past but I almost always went with exploding dice just because I found it more fun. Also, from a game design standpoint, you have to assume that many players will not know the probabilities and use the explode option pretty frequently, so even leaving that door open can lead to a lot of frustration when dice rolls become exceedingly tedious.

[GuardDuty]

Uh... 9 quickness, one piece of armor 5/3, the other piece 4/3, and helmet doesn't count so I think I got the details right on this example. And "the cost is that you have to build a quickness monster" is kind of a weird phrase because of how heavily rewarding it is for combat-oriented builds of literally any type to put a heavy emphasis on Quickness in SR3. In effect, the opportunity cost is "nothing" because there isn't any drawback for the combat-orient character to be built with maxed-out upfront Quickness.

And my issue wasn't that there was literally no recourse to get around this - it was that there was something that actually needed to change if "normal runs" as presented by published material were going to present anything resembling a challenge. I should have been able to have stock goons with stock weapon load outs and regular ammunition be enough of a threat even if players "built tough."

Helmet doesn't count "as layering", meaning it adds it's full armor value.  It still counts for the Quickness penalty (p. 285 SR3, paragraph 3 of Layering Armor).

Every group is different, and each group (and each player in that group) may need to be challenged differently than another.  Published material acknowledges this.  Taken from Double Exposure:

The gamemaster must adjust the game statistics and capabilities of the opposition to provide an appropriate level of difficulty for his group...If the characters (with bioware and cybernetic enhancements bulging from every available body part) seem able to stomp their way through the carefully planned encounters, make the encounters tougher.

So maybe to challenge that character in combat you make sure a ganger has an SMG and some recoil comp.  Or just a big pipe.  Or the corp goon with the smartgun takes placed shots.  Or the mage is just...a mage.  These are all common elements of published adventures, or they were in the day at least.  You might even have to write your own stock goons just for your group.  If all else fails, a social interaction with the friendly neighborhood LoneStar squad that's been alerted to someone walking around clearly expecting to be involved in some drek could be a different, but well deserved, challenge.