Shadowrun 5th Edition is out

[Hotfoot]

I don't have time to go into details on this matter as I do not yet have the book in any format, and I am about to head out for the weekend to go shoot zombies in the woods. That said, initial reviews for the book are promising.

Some highlights:

1. Essence and Magic no longer start at 6, but can be bought up there, creating some better balance between Street Samurai and Mages of various types.

2. Hacking and Rigging are further refined to be even easier from 4th Ed (which was already pretty good in my estimation), and a breeze to do in live combat or social situations.

3. The book's layout is (supposedly) very noob friendly and well designed. I'll believe that when I see it, but I guess we'll have to see.

4. The priority system is back, apparently (meh, I thought PB was better but that's me), but supposedly it now pays to put points into race even if you're playing human, as it can give you some bonus points for Edge, Magic, or Resonance (Essence).

5. At 500 pages, you could probably kill at least a Corporate Suit with your copy alone.


Print Copy is $60

Digitial Copy is $20

Combinations range from $70 to $320 depending on how many extras you want:

Check the details here

$70 for book + PDF is probably one of the better combo deals I've seen. The other aspects of the deals give you higher quality books to play with.

Next week I'll see about getting my hands on the PDF for a more in-depth review of my own. After all, it is cyberpunk.

[Hotfoot]

Brief Addendum to the above post: Apparently the review I read made a mistake, and Resonance is not the same as Essence, but rather Magic for Technomages.

Essence still starts at six, HOWEVER, there are now multiple ways to get your starting Magic or Resonance at 6 to start now. One way is to pick Priority A from Race, which will give everyone but Trolls enough points to get 6 magic and some points left over for additional Edge, (Humans and Elves can max out Magic at Priority B), or you can just buy up magic at Priority A, which gives you Magic 6, two Rating 5 magical skills, and 10 spells (or 5 complex forms if you're a technomage).

Want to be a human mage with amazing stats? You can do it with this edition. Priority C for Magic gives you Magic 3 and 5 spells, Priority D as a Human gives you 3 more points to spend, and then Priority A for Attributes gives you 24 points for all your other stats. This also can work reasonably well if you want to be an Adept, they top out at Magic 6 at Priority B.

Cash tops out this time at 450,000 NuYen, and the bottom level is 6,000, with Wired Reflexes costing 39,000/149,000/217,000 respectively. Perks and flaws are still in, but you get 25 Karma to play with there, and are capped at 25 Karma in Perks, with up to 25 Karma in flaws (if you take the max in both, you get 25 Karma to play with for later, it's not lost).

Multiple actions are different from previous editions. Instead of wired reflexes and other such boosts giving you automatic additional actions, now it's based on your initiative score, which is of course boosted by wired reflexes and the like. Instead of it giving you an automatic second action, it gives you +1d6+1 to the initiative roll. If, after your initiative is rolled, you can subtract 10 and still have 1 or more, congrats, you can go again. Otherwise, you're limited to a single free action and defending yourself.

Example:

Physical initiative is Reaction + Intuition, so let's call it 11 for our Chummer. He's got some wired reflexes, (1 rank), but that's about it. He rolls:

2d6 (1d6 normal and 1d6 from the wired reflexes)
Plus
11 (10 from 5 Reaction + 5 Intuition, + 1 from the wired reflexes)

Say he gets the average roll of 7, that gives him 18 initiative, with two actions in the passes. Had he rolled 3 higher, he would have had 3 actions, but with his base initiative bonus being 11, he was always going to get at least two.

This makes combat much less painful for the non-cybermonkeys, because even with average attributes, you're rolling 6+1d6, which means you're still going to get two passes roughly 30% of the time. Still, if you're a chromed up supersoldier, you're still going to be murdering people with style and aplomb, since you could be rocking something like 18+4d6 initiative (that's 22/32/42 for low/avg/high). Note that's a theoretical maximum from a very quick perusal of the PDF.

An interesting aspect is that of Limits. Basically, you're limited by your attributes and your gear. You could be rolling a million dice, but if you don't have the natural talent or high quality gear to back it up, you're limited. Short version is this, you roll a test. Your attribute or gear determines how many successes actually count. Trying to smooth talk someone? If your Charisma is 2, even if you roll 4 successes, only 2 count, and so on. This applies to basically every test, though gear supersedes attributes in this matter, up or down. To get around this, you can spend Edge (Destiny/Fate/Force/Moxie Points) to ignore limits entirely, or use the teamwork mechanic, wherein each person that helps you adds +1 die to your pool and adds +1 to your limit.

Limits are as follows:
Mental [(Logic x 2) + Intuition + Willpower] / 3 (round up)
Physical [(Strength x 2) + Body + Reaction] / 3 (round up)
Social [(Charisma x 2) + Willpower + Essence] / 3 (round up)

So...essence still limits your ability to be a face, which means you'll want to be somewhat squishy, but it's not as hard a limit as it might be. If one has an Essence of 3 (and you round up for this calculation, so you could be at 2.1 and still count as 3 here), a willpower of 5, and a charisma of 6, your social limit is 7 (again, rounded up). Increasing all of them to 6 gives you a limit of 8, while having an Essence of 1 with the other two being 6 still gives you a 7. Charisma, Strength, and Logic seem to be the big keys here, but to compete, you'll still want decent levels in the last two, at least a 6 combined.

Oh, and there's still perception in the mix.

More when I get back.

[rhoenix]

Man, it seems like I just bought the 20th edition a short time ago. Ah well - so far, this looks interesting.

[Cynical Cat]

Multiple actions are different from previous editions. Instead of wired reflexes and other such boosts giving you automatic additional actions, now it's based on your initiative score, which is of course boosted by wired reflexes and the like. Instead of it giving you an automatic second action, it gives you +1d6+1 to the initiative roll. If, after your initiative is rolled, you can subtract 10 and still have 1 or more, congrats, you can go again. Otherwise, you're limited to a single free action and defending yourself.

Example:

Physical initiative is Reaction + Intuition, so let's call it 11 for our Chummer. He's got some wired reflexes, (1 rank), but that's about it. He rolls:

2d6 (1d6 normal and 1d6 from the wired reflexes)
Plus
11 (10 from 5 Reaction + 5 Intuition, + 1 from the wired reflexes)

Say he gets the average roll of 7, that gives him 18 initiative, with two actions in the passes. Had he rolled 3 higher, he would have had 3 actions, but with his base initiative bonus being 11, he was always going to get at least two.

This makes combat much less painful for the non-cybermonkeys, because even with average attributes, you're rolling 6+1d6, which means you're still going to get two passes roughly 30% of the time. Still, if you're a chromed up supersoldier, you're still going to be murdering people with style and aplomb, since you could be rocking something like 18+4d6 initiative (that's 22/32/42 for low/avg/high). Note that's a theoretical maximum from a very quick perusal of the PDF.

Ah Hotfoot. Tragically, you are very, very wrong

1) This is not new, in fact this is how Shadowrun did it in editions 1-3, when multiple actions were so powerful they made Celerity look weak. 4th Edition was notable for nerfing the hell out of multiple actions and allowing people to buy extra actions with Edge points.

2) The math looks close to 3rd edition math which means to us old school Shadowrunners its old hat. What you have failed to consider, but becomes obvious after the first combat with a jacked up cybermonkey is that it is possible likely for speed demons to take multiple actions before the unjacked even get one. And it will happen, because its so powerful they will build for it. Now in 4th edition you had the option of spending Edge to get extra actions, which meant you could get actions when you really needed them.

3) Now the devil is going to be in the details and there could be additional wording/rules/tinkering to make it less heinous, but it looks like all the speed bunnies got jacked back up to previous power levels.

[Hotfoot]

Ah Hotfoot. Tragically, you are very, very wrong

Slightly, but not entirely, as I will demonstrate.

1) This is not new, in fact this is how Shadowrun did it in editions 1-3, when multiple actions were so powerful they made Celerity look weak. 4th Edition was notable for nerfing the hell out of multiple actions and allowing people to buy extra actions with Edge points.

2) The math looks close to 3rd edition math which means to us old school Shadowrunners its old hat. What you have failed to consider, but becomes obvious after the first combat with a jacked up cybermonkey is that it is possible likely for speed demons to take multiple actions before the unjacked even get one. And it will happen, because its so powerful they will build for it. Now in 4th edition you had the option of spending Edge to get extra actions, which meant you could get actions when you really needed them.

3) Now the devil is going to be in the details and there could be additional wording/rules/tinkering to make it less heinous, but it looks like all the speed bunnies got jacked back up to previous power levels.

Nope, 3rd Edition had wired reflexes at +2 reaction and +1d6, with reaction being the only thing that was added to the die roll. This meant that un-augmented squishies were looking at, at best, 6+1d6 for initiative, and that's with a maxed out (for humans) reaction attribute. If you were sitting at 4 or less, you had zero chance of getting multiple actions, and at 5, you at best could hope for a second action only about 1/6th of the time. Under the current system, an average stat in each of the two attributes will result in the same thing as maxing out one stat in the old systems, vastly improving the odds of the unaugmented. The addition of the free action on turns you can't normally act also helps keep things moving for people who aren't juiced up to hell and back.

3rd Ed: Unaugmented with maxed out Initiative had 1/3rd chances for a second action.

5th Ed: Unaugmented human with maxed out Initiative has a 100% change for a second action. In fact, with just 5 in each attribute, you have a 100% chance for an extra action, because you only need to roll a 1. At 4's for each, it's a 50/50 split. These odds are considerably more favorable than previous editions. Average scores put them at the absolute top end for 3rd Edition.

Edge still exists, but I've yet to give it a proper reading, but if it keeps the properties from 4th edition, that further levels the playing field for someone who wants to have a shot at surviving against a fully chromed up super-soldier.

[frigidmagi]

Interesting...

[Cynical Cat]

Way to totally miss my point. That it's slightly easier for an unaugmented human to get a second action is irrelevant, because getting two actions at the bottom of the initiative order is only slightly stronger than getting a single action at the bottom of the initiative order. Nor is a slight reduction in the wired reflex bonus important or that the math has changed slightly. The relevant part is that speed monkeys will be once again getting multiple actions before everyone else gets to go, which is a massive change and extraordinarily powerful. The ordinary, unaugmented human has massively lost ground with this change.

[Hotfoot]

Way to totally miss my point. That it's slightly easier for an unaugmented human to get a second action is irrelevant, because getting two actions at the bottom of the initiative order is only slightly stronger than getting a single action at the bottom of the initiative order. Nor is a slight reduction in the wired reflex bonus important or that the math has changed slightly. The relevant part is that speed monkeys will be once again getting multiple actions before everyone else gets to go, which is a massive change and extraordinarily powerful. The ordinary, unaugmented human has massively lost ground with this change.

It's a combat pass system. Unless there's something I'm missing in the rules where it explicitly says in 3rd edition that everyone goes, then you subtract 10 and take the next pass, I don't see how the cybermonkey gets a second action before anyone else gets their first.

So please, do tell, where is this rule that says if your initiative is high enough, you get to take all of your actions first, because I'm not seeing it anywhere. Every edition seems to be clear on this.

Edit:

Moreover, I'm pretty certain you're dramatically underplaying the statistical change here from 3rd to 5th. This isn't "slightly" easier, this actually allows starting characters to have two actions right off the bat without augmentation of any kind. Going from 33% absolute top end to 100% would be a dramatic increase even if it still required you to top out your stats, which it doesn't. Going from 1 to 2 actions in combats where other people have 3 or 4 is significant and actually matters. Yes, more actions is better, and no, I'm not fond of it to begin with because it annoys the piss out of me in ANY system it's in, but when it's normalized more it's not nearly as bad.

[Cynical Cat]

It's a combat pass system. Unless there's something I'm missing in the rules where it explicitly says in 3rd edition that everyone goes, then you subtract 10 and take the next pass, I don't see how the cybermonkey gets a second action before anyone else gets their first.

So please, do tell, where is this rule that says if your initiative is high enough, you get to take all of your actions first, because I'm not seeing it anywhere. Every edition seems to be clear on this.

READ WHAT I WROTE. THIS IS HOW IT WORKED IN EVERY PREVIOUS EDITION AND IT'S RETURN IS WHAT I'M CONCERNED ABOUT.

As I said, I don't have a copy yet. But moving the initiative system back to something like the previous editions raises a gigantic red flag. It being easier to get multiple actions unaugmented is irrelevant compared to the overwhelming power of multiple actions in the old system and moving back towards that kind of system because too many people complained that their cybermonkies could not lay waste as they could is a very real possibility. Its immensely powerful and its been the way Shadowrun has been played for three out of four editions.

So what I'm saying is "easier for unaugmented people to get multiple action=nice but secondary concern. Critical importance: is old initiative/action system coming back?"


[/quote][/quote]

[Hotfoot]

Cat, I'm reading what you wrote, and I'm reading what's in my books. They're not matching. You are saying that with a high enough initiative, somehow characters get back-to-back actions before anyone else gets to act, when the wording in every version of the book I own DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS that statement.

From the 3rd Edition book, pg. 102:

Once the character with the highest Initiative goes first, each character follows in order from highest Initiative Score to lowest. This is called the Initiative Pass. Each character will go once before any character goes again.

Black and white, clear as day. No back to back actions until everyone's gone at least once.

That's 3rd edition, not 4th, not 5th. I don't have any editions prior to that, so I can't say what's in second or even first, but that's a pretty unambiguous line here.

[Cynical Cat]

I ended up playing exactly one game of third (my group switched games just before and I switched groups after.) but that's definitely the way it was in 1st and 2nd and still my overwhelming concern. The first Shadowrun game I ran was 1st edition and a player who (against my advice) only went for Wired Reflexes 1 for a Street Samurai literally rerolled after his third combat because he was being constantly being blown away. So yes, any sign of return to that system is of paramount importance.

[Hotfoot]

Understandable, but yes, it's a combat pass system as described above.

[LadyTevar]

Perhaps the GM was running the game wrong, because a few games I played in the Inits were ran down by the numbers, so if I had an Init of 10, and the Samuri had a Init of 22, he ran all his actions (22,19,16,etc) before I got to mine.

[Cynical Cat]

Perhaps the GM was running the game wrong, because a few games I played in the Inits were ran down by the numbers, so if I had an Init of 10, and the Samuri had a Init of 22, he ran all his actions (22,19,16,etc) before I got to mine.

That's exactly how it used to work and what I was concerned about.

[Karrick]

Okay ladies and gents, time for my favorite pastime of generating RPG characters I’ll probably never use. Well, this group seems to like Shadowrun, so maybe. Obligatory disclaimer: my first exposure to Shadowrun is the lovely video game that recently came out. My second was picking up the 5th ed rulebook off DrivethruRPG (20 bucks). Keep that in mind, as when it comes to the setting I don’t really know what I’m talking about.

My concept is a Dwarf mechanic/rigger, with emphasis on the mechanic. A former go-ganger, he now runs a (mostly) respectable garage somewhere in the sprawl and occasionally runs decidedly less respectable activities when the price is right. Never far from a bottle of whiskey or his beloved cigars, he’s normally quite affable but no stranger to blowing big holes in things when the drek hits the fan. For cliché’s sake, I’ve decided he’s going to be of Scandinavian stock and will go by Mattias Jansson, alias Reginn.

Character creation in Shadowrun 5 runs on a priority system. Your priorities are letters A-E and are assigned to Metatype, Attributes, Magic/Resonance, Skills, and Resources. This is pretty straightforward, but a higher priority for metatype gives you bonus special attributes (edge, magic, resonance), which confused me when I first looked at the table. Maybe I’m just dense. I could also further optimize this build by going through and picking out the gear and lifestyle I want to spend my nuyen on beforehand and thus assign in a lower priority to get more skills or something, but this is my first build and I don’t want to go twinking yet.

Anyway, I’m going with a Dwarf and I don’t much care about Resonance or Magic for this build, so I’m assigning priority C to Metatype. This gets me a dwarf with 1 special attribute, which I will dump into Edge. Dwarfs also come with +2 dice to resist pathogens and toxins and a 20% increase to Lifestyle costs. I’ll assign priority B to attributes, because I like attributes. That gives me 20 points to distribute as follows.

Supposedly we can insert tables, but I'm an idjit and can't figure it out. So you get butt ugly formatting.
Attribute[tab=30]Base Value[tab=30]Points Spent[tab=30]Pre-karma Final Value
BODY[tab=30]3/8[tab=30]3[tab=30]6/8
AGI[tab=30]1/6[tab=30]3[tab=30]4/6
REA[tab=30]1/5[tab=30]3[tab=30]4/5
STR[tab=30]3/8[tab=30]3[tab=30]6/8
WIL[tab=30]2/7[tab=30]3[tab=30]5/7
LOG[tab=30]1/6[tab=30]3[tab=30]4/6
INT[tab=30]1/6[tab=30]1[tab=30]2/6
CHA[tab=30]1/6[tab=30]1[tab=30]2/6
EDG[tab=30]1/6[tab=30]1[tab=30]2/6
ESS[tab=30]6[tab=30]0[tab=30]6



The first number in each column is my level and the second is the natural limit for that attribute for that metatype. At this point you can’t spend on EDG, ESS, magic or Resonance, but I included my previous EDG point from Metatype. I’m not using Magic or Resonance, so they get priority E (nothing, in this case).

At this point the book makes a choice I think is a mistake. Instead of continuing with the priority system, it interrupts that to talk about Qualities, which you spent karma on and appear to be like merits/flaws in WOD. I’m making an executive decision to do that after I spend skill points but before I buy gear so I can spend my starting karma all at once. Moving right along, priorities for skills and resources.

I have priorities A and D left. Naturally, priority A gets you a relative shit-ton of skill points or nuyen, depending on where you put it. I’m going out on a limb and saying I need that shit-ton of nuyen to have my own garage and a small stable of vehicles, complete with ludicrous firepower. So D and A for skills and resources respectively gets me 22/0 skill points and a whopping 450,000 nuyen. Skills are split up into individual skills and skill groups. Groups are bundles of related skills that you buy all at once for each point of the second number I listed. Looks like I don’t get any skill groups. Hmm.

Skills are further divided into Active (shooting, driving, smashing), Knowledge, and language. At character creation, your skills can have a maximum of 6 (barring a particular quality). New points and specializations cost 1 point from my pool. You also get free points to spend on Knowledges and Languages equal to (Int+Log)x2, which in my case is 12. You can spend the skill points from your priority on these, but not vice versa. I’ll take care of these first in case I want to beef them up that way.

Languages:
[tab=30]English (Native, free),
[tab=30]Japanese 2,
[tab=30]Swedish 2.
I’ll buy a specialization for English in Street Lingo and for Japanese in Cityspeak (a Seattle Japanese/English pidgin). Total of 6 points.

Knowledges (total of 6):
[tab=30]Street: Go-Gangs 2, Sprawl Life 2
[tab=30]Professional: Engineering 2, specialization in Mechanical (1).
[tab=30]Interest: Motorcycles 1

And now for active skills (total of 22):
[tab=30]Gunnery 3
[tab=30]Pilot Groundcraft (bike specialization) 3(4)
[tab=30]Automotive Mechanic 6
[tab=30]Clubs 4
[tab=30]Pistols 3
[tab=30]Perception 1
[tab=30]Locksmithing 1

Now we get to spending Karma. Characters typically start with 25, which can be spent on any of the previous things as well as on qualities. Perusing the qualities for anything that jumps out at me as a must have, I spot Addiction in the negative qualities. I’ll go with a moderate alcohol addiction for 9 karma and a mild nicotine addiction for 4. That bumps me up to 38 karma at the cost of needing 1 dose of alcohol every two weeks and one of nicotine every month (that seems really light, but who am I to argue?). For positive Qualities I like Ambidextrous (4), Home Ground (You Know a Guy, 10), and Juryrigger (10). That leaves me with 14 karma. New attribute points cost new rating x 5; new skills are new rating x 2. I want to bump Perception and Locksmithing to 2, which will cost me 8 karma. I also want Armorer, which will cost me 6 karma to get to rank 2.

But wait, there’s more! You also get bonus karma equal to your charisma x 3 to spend on contacts. Each contact has a contact and a loyalty rating, each point of which costs 1 karma (the bare minimum contact you can have is thus 2 karma). I will go with a Street Doc, Arms Dealer, and Fixer at 1:1 each.

That leaves lifestyle, gear, and final calculations, which will be a separate post because gear is complicated and I can afford a lot of it.