Well, there were some interesting changes to the rules in the SR4A edition, that they will be releasing an erratta to SR4 for..

Among these are the change of Adept Improved Reflexes to
Rating 1: 1.5
Rating 2: 2.5
Rating 3: 4.0

Some other subtle changes went in, as well..has anyone else gotten the new BBB in pdf yet?

I'm waiting for the print version.

-Hades

(I'm placing a post here in response to Tear's question on the 'bows' topic, but it belongs here.)

There are multiple topics on SR4A on Dumpshock.  The one you should check out first is:  http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=25704

That's the discussion on the changes.

The biggest changes that everyone notices so far are:

1.  The cost to raise an attribute with karma is now (New Rating x 5).  It was changed to encourage people to invest in skills.  The complaint about this change is that it hurts physical adepts and technomancers the most, because they have a harder time raising magic and resonance.  And since most folks consider them weaker than street sams and deckers, respectively, it's viewed as a change that will make those character types unplayable. You have to spend 30 karma to get magic 6, 35 for magic 7, and 40 karma for magic 8. 

Plus, metatypes like the troll are hurt because they'll have an even harder time raising their attributes out of chargen.

2.  You now add net hits on combat spells.  So, a stunbolt spell would work like this:

You cast a stunbolt spell at force 6 and get 4 successes on the roll.  The target resists and gets 1 hit.  That's 3 net successes.  You can now keep all 3 successes to get 9 stun damage against your target.  Your drain becomes (Force 6/2=3 - 1 = 2 +3 net successes=5) 5 drain. 

Now, lets say you cast that spell at force 10, and you and your target rolled the same (3 net successes).  According to Peter Taylor, you can choose to only do 10 stun damage.  In which case your drain is:  (force 10/2=5 - 1 = 4)  4 Drain. 

You heard me right.  By casting a spell at a higher force, you now get less drain than if you cast the same spell at a lower force.

I like that change to magic, actually.  It balances magic a bit by increasing the drain when you add net successes.  Under 4.0 rules, if you cast a force 6 you can get up to 6 hits, and if unresisted that does 12 damage, but with the drain of a force 6 spell.  The new system means that if you pump the damage above normal, you pay for it in drain.  That makes instant head explody a little bit harder for mages, making them a little less uber.  It doesn't matter that a F10 spell has less drain than a pumped up F6 spell, because F10 is an overcast for almost everyone, its signature lasts longer and it causes physical drain.  It's not such a big deal with a low drain spell like manabolt, but consider an elemental manipulation spell -- the drain is already harsh at force 6, and now that Force isn't going to instant-geek anyone unless you up the drain with net hits.  Now you have to choose between hurting someone with a lightning bolt, and frying them all at once but also probably frying yourself at the same time.

As for the attribute cost change, I'm not sure if I care.  As long as BP costs don't change, it doesn't affect chargen (unless you do karmagen, which everyone on DS seems to have a boner for these days).  And I guess that no matter how many times you say it, nobody learns it: SR is a classless system.  If my "pure physical adept" is nerfed, this should not be grounds for complaint -- the only reason why the "pure physical adept" even exists in anyone's head is that it's an archetype printed on one of those glossy pages in the middle of the book.  There is nothing keeping a mage or adept from using cyber.  Sure, they have to spend more on magic to do it, but overall it ends up being a fair trade because bio-enhanced attributes cost so much less than karma-enhanced attributes.

As to making magic 6 a harder goal to attain... good!  Mages are uber in SR4.  Because nobody but another mage has a prayer of resisting a spell, it's a Good Thing if the standard mage has Magic less than 6.  Mages with even a 6 should be pretty rare, because of how powerful they are -- mages with magic above 6 should be almost unheard of!

Except that you're looking at that position from SR4 rules, and not SR4A rules.  SR4A rules also add dice to resisting spells.  So, now 'not having a prayer' to resist a spell is gone.  Now, you *HAVE* to overcast spells if you want them to hit.

Anyone with any offensive spells is going to be an overcast mage.  Which means that they've loaded down with 17-19 dice for drain resistance from chargen.  Not to mention having a trauma dampener to turn 1 point of physical damage into stun.  And, of course, they can use first aid to reduce any damage they don't soak with sheer numbers of dice.

Forcing everyone to become overcast mage twinks does not help balance out mages. 

As for the atribute changes:

1.  In SR4A, mages aren't uber by the time you apply the changes.

2.  At a certain point, you are no longer playing an adept, and are playing a street sam.  Saying that adepts can get cyber is a joke.  Basically, it's admitting that physads are a joke, and you should only take physad to get those twinkish powers you can then mix with your cyber to abuse. 

3.  'Pure physical adept' is *NOT* a class.  There are so many different ways to build a physad that it's rediculous to say that 'physad' is a class.

Basically, this change hurts many classes that *weren't* unbalanced (Many that were underpowered), and it makes tabletop gamers take even longer to advance their characters.  Specifically those who only get to game once a month.

Advancement is only a problem if you slavishly adhere to the book's karma award system.  If your GM thinks advancement should be faster, he can always give you more karma.

What I'm saying about physical adepts is that no, there isn't a point where you stop playing a physad and start playing a streetsam.  Both of those are arbitrary labels.  There is no set picture of what either one is.  If you have the "Adept" quality, you're an Adept, and no amount of cyber changes that (unless maybe you burn out).  The rigid idea that adepts don't have much cyberware is artificial, and to the extent that it's incorporated into people's preferences about the game, it's silly.  If you want a themed character, (i.e. all magic no cyber) then do that.  If you want a character that's powerful though, you'd better be prepared to do whatever the rules put forward as the most powerful thing.  You can't have your cake and eat it too.  Either you cyber up your adepts, or they start out with significantly worse attributes than streetsams.  If you don't cyber up an adept, you can't complain about the game making that a less viable choice -- it's your choice, you weren't forced to make it, and you can change it at any time.  The fact is, theme and twinkage will almost always conflict, and you have to pick which one you care about more.

As for whether the changes hurt archetypes that weren't unbalanced -- I gotta say that I think mages started out unbalanced.  The fact that nobody could resist a spell without a mage friend was just bad.  Also, I dislike how drain was basically a joke.  If the disadvantage to casting big spells was supposed to be drain, and drain could be resisted with near 100% certainty, there was no disadvantage to casting big spells...  In terms of forcing mages to overcast, doesn't that seem right?  If they want to instantly fry brains, shouldn't it be sort of difficult?  It's not like overcasting is instant death by any means, anyway -- if as you say, people have the power to resist spells without counterspelling, just because you overcast doesn't mean you kill the target, since resistance is based on hits, not the force of the spell, and they can gimp your dice pool with cover, and vision mods and such.  And just because the spell lands doesn't mean they die, since they have dice to resist the damage, too.  And let's not even talk about background counts and arcane arresters...  And soaking overcast drain is no walk in the park, the 5+ hit system means that sometimes you fail tests that you have the dice to pass.  And for higher drain spells, you won't even have the dice to pass a drain test on a significant overcast coming out of chargen.

As for the game balance of physads -- they probably were a bit underpowered when played without any cyber at all.  But as you may have seen, people like me can twink out an Adept to make it just about as good as a streetsam coming out of chargen, but with infinitely more advancement potential.  As always in SR4, streetsams start out near the max, and Adepts start far from it.  By combining those two, you have someone who starts out much better than the meat adept but is not hampered by any kind of ceiling on ultimate power.  Again, you can't think of characters in rigid archetypes.  Nerfs are not based on people playing the weakest possible version of a character, they're based on people ferreting out exploits and finely tuning their build points to where they have the utmost efficiency in terms of a points:power ratio.  If you don't do that, maybe nerfs unfairly punish you for not doing it.  But they also ensure that people who do will be a little less broken and a little less able to pk you with their little finger.

Oh, I won't argue that direct spells were too powerful for their drain cost.  The problem is that there is no drain increase for a direct spell.  They took the spell type that was the most likely to hit, did the most damage in a single hit, and they gave it no increases in drain.  So, if you were to make an indirect version of the powerbolt spell, the spell would be less likely to hit, and do the same amount of drain. A simple +2 drain for direct spells, or a -2 drain for indirect spells would have encouraged magi to toss around indirect spells. 

Their change punishes players who aren't abusing the system. 

As for the attribute changes, you're assuming that they were meant to 'nerf' someone.  They changed the cost for attributes because everyone saw the cost and thought:  Why pay 2 x Rating for a skill or 5 x rating for a skill group, when I can pay 3 x rating for an attribute, and get dice for *all* these different skills?

They weren't thinking "Gee, lets nerf magi today" when they made these changes.  They made skills too expensive, and instead of lowering the cost of skills to compensate, they decided to increase the cost of attributes.

Besides which, I find your argument full of hypocrisy.  On one hand you complain about magi being too powerful, but when it comes to adepts you're like "If you don't cyber up an adept, you can't complain about the game making that a less viable choice -- it's your choice, you weren't forced to make it, and you can change it at any time.".

One could make that argument about magi.  Well, if you don't choose to be a mage, you can't complain about the game making street sams a less viable choice -- it's your choice, you weren't forced to make it, and you can change it at any time.

Hypocritical? I think on the one hand that mages needed a nerf.  I think on the other hand that while physads didn't need a nerf, deal with it.  How is that hypocritical?  The arguments aren't even related.  My argument about adepts, however, would apply equally to mages.  I still think that people who choose a rigid build type should accept its disadvantages without pitching a fit.  If they nerf direct combat spells, and then you create a direct combat spellcaster, even though you could have done manipulation, illusion, health, or detection as your primary focus, you have no right to complain.  If the game gets tweaked so that a formerly powerful build becomes less good, deal with it.  You don't have to play that build, and if the devs have truly made it unplayable, then you can simply not play it.  I really don't appreciate personal attacks, especially when they're this baseless.  My arguments are consistent, but you had to call be a hypocrite anyway?

Anyway, I would submit that in both cases, there's nothing unplayable about any of the nerfed archetypes, or even anything very crappy about them.  They are simply less good than they were.  Less goodness is not badness, I imagine if you were new to the game you wouldn't be able to tell that they'd been nerfed.  A build's power is relative, and any time something gets toned down, there will be screaming and "petitions" and other bullshit.

The last line of your post is a straw man.  I wasn't complaining about how viable a choice streetsams are.  Even if mages were more powerful in the new edition, streetsams would still be good because they have more skills, and higher attributes, and thus are much more versatile than nearly any magical character.  One build being overpowered doesn't render other builds unplayable, since even an overpowered build has weaknesses in SR4.  Instead of being a hypocrite as you claim, I plan to follow my own advice.  I'll play the character I want, and accept the disadvantages that go with it, unless those disadvantages are too much for me to stomach.  In that case, I'll switch to a character whose build I like more.  I will do this instead of navel-gazing about what exactly the devs should have done to fine-tune the game to perfectly suit my own personal taste.

Yes, hypocritical. 

Let's follow your logic:

If magi are overpowered then nerfing magi is a good thing.
if adept are not overpowered then nerfing adepts is ok.

In this instance, you are being hypocritical.  Basic logic would tell us that:

If archetype A is overpowered then fixing it so it is less powerful is a good thing.
AND
If archetype B is NOT overpowered then fixing it so it is less powerful is a bad thing.

I mean it's like:  Mages are overpowered!  They should be fixed! 

And then you go: Adepts are underpowered!  Deal with it!

Sounds hypocritical to me.

Besides which, I said that your argument was hypocritical.  That's not a personal attack.  I was trying to point out how your two stances on different issues conflict with one another.

As for the last line of my post, it is *not* a straw man.  I'm not misrepresenting your position.  You do think that magi need a nerf.  You just said so.  I was attempting to point out how insulting your attitude was.  There are plenty of people who like playing those archetypes, and you told all those people to 'deal with it' and 'go play something else'.  That's just downright mean.

I was saying that, in the first instance, mages are overpowered and thus the nerf was good.  But also, as a general matter, it's no crime to nerf a build even if they didn't need it, because nobody forces anybody to play it.  These arguments are not inconsistent, they're arguments in the alternative.  I'm saying "either it was necessary, or even if it wasn't you need to deal with it regardless, you decide."  I'm presenting multiple positions so that if one of them is refuted, I fall back on the next one.  Arguing in the alternative isn't hypocrisy, it's rhetoric.  You seem to be equating hypocrisy with taking two different positions on the same issue, but I should point out that hypocrisy is when your two positions conflict.  Mine do not conflict.  They are different, but they are complimentary, not contradictory.

And honestly, I'm not sure Adepts have even suffered a serious nerf.  The game has been kicking you in the nuts over and over saying "cyber your adepts, it saves a lot of points!"  Now, it's just kicking you even harder.  The so-called pure Adept was already pretty much the suckiest suck ever, to complain about an ultra non-optimal build being nerfed is not a very forceful argument.  The change to attributes wasn't targetted at a single build, it was designed to make attributes less of a sweetheart deal, and to make people focus on skills more.  It's a global change that stops magical characters from increasing magic as quickly, but it wasn't just about magic, it was about all attributes.  All it means is that your characters should start with more cyberware and/or more points sunk into attributes and/or more metatypes that give you higher starting attributes.

What it all comes down to is this:  changes to the game happen, and there are no right or wrong changes.  There is no correct or incorrect advancement speed for an Adept, nor is there a correct or incorrect way for direct combat spells to function.  There is just a way that you like, and a way that you dislike.  The devs don't know which is which, they do their best, and you agree or disagree with their choices.  But overall, nothing changes.  Your job is a player is just like a lawyer's job:  take the rules as they stand, good or bad, and use them to your advantage.  You can advocate for their change on the side, but in the meantime your job is to make it work.  I can already tell you that I've made a mage character that works great under the new rules, and I plan to make more.  They'll never be as good as they were, but they're still amazing.

1.  You have a twisted sense of complimentary. 

2.  Yes, I get it.  You should only take the adept quality when twink powergaming.  Gotcha.

3.  No, spirits are amazing.  Magi are glorified spirit summoners.  Because anything you can do with a spell in SR4A, you can do 10 times better using a spirit. 

The moral of the story?  I'm going to play a rigger, and build him into a god as the SR4A designers clearly intended.  :p

I don't remember launching any personal attacks against you, but this is like your fifth against me.  Uncalled for, much?


There are two ways to play: however you feel like, and however makes you the most powerful.  If you use the former, and it doesn't make you the most powerful, that's not grounds to complain.  The complaint would be that your archetype isn't viable even if you use the system correctly and make the most powerful one you can.  If you use the system to make the least powerful version of the archetype, I don't see what the complaint is about that being less viable.


To the extent that's true, it hasn't really changed, spirits have always been amazing.  But there are many many many things that spirits can't do, because they don't know spells.  The only way for spirits to get around this is using Innate Spell, but only Spirits of Man have that, so making effective use of it requires summoning a lot of spirits and using up a lot of services.

Ok, lemme start out by saying that Tear needs to quit calling personal attack where there isn't one. If you don't agree with someone's assessment of your attitude on a particular subject, then deal with it. I've seen two instances of this on this thread and both times no insult was actually issued, just disagreement, albeit very lawyer-like disagreement. That being said, don't let him get in your head.



As for the sr4a changes, I'm thinking that technomancers get the biggest bone in the rear when it comes to attribute cost. Think about that for a second, how much karma does an average 'mancer need to raise his personas ratings, then on top of that, there is all the cost of a Mage. That tells me that if you don't wanna suck, you better have monster attributes right outta chargen. Let's also not forget the upgrade cap for the hackers.

I'm reserving my opinion until I see them, but what I hear about these new rules scares me.

Perhaps that first statement was a bit rougher than I intended, but it was, for the most part, accurate.  Look at it from my point of view.  It looks like you're alternating your viewpoints on the two topics just so you can argue with me.  Wouldn't you be a bit confrontational if you thought someone was doing that to you?

You claim that these are 'arguments in alternative'.  There's only one problem with that.  An argument in alternative is used to display different flaws in one single argument.  In this instance we have two separate arguments.

This is an example of an argument in alternative:

If A is false then C is false.  However, even if A were true, then the fact that B is false also says that C is false.

Your positions are not arguments in alternative.  Magi being overpowered has nothing to do with adepts being underpowered.  If I were to prove that there was a guy from Catalyst game labs holding a gun to my head, and forcing me to play an adept, how do you fall back on the position that magi are overpowered?

Me:  I have a guy from Catalyst holding a gun to my head, so I am being forced to play an adept.
You:  Bummer.  Well, they should have nerfed adepts because magi are overpowered.

See? 

Ok, so it's a bit of a stretch to say that someone's holding a gun to my head.  But it draws me to my real argument.  It's not an argument in alternative when the two choices conflict with one another.  Either game balance matters, or it doesn't.  You can't have it both ways.  And you're arguing that you can eat your cake and still have it, too. 

"Game balance matters, so nerfing the overpowered mage is fine."
vs
"Game balance doesn't matter, so nerfing the underpowered adept is fine." 

On another note, the two ways to play are:  How you feel like playing and how you are forced to play. 

If you felt like playing the most powerful, then you'd be both playing what you feel like, and playing what makes you the most powerful. 

It also sounds like you're misunderstanding the complaint.  I'm not arguing that adepts should be the most powerful.  Clearly, I could make an adept samurai combo character that would be more powerful than both the pure adept and the pure samurai.  The complaint is that Shadowrun has a long history.  It's full of all sorts of colorful characters.  However, in all of these stories, the theme is that Samurai and adepts are basically equal, but they have different advantages, flaws, and means to achieving their goals. 

This is the exact same complaint that I had back in first edition when adepts were clearly superior.  The only difference is what archetype is dominating the other when it shouldn't.

Either the game isn't living up to the fluff, or the fluff is horribly inaccurate.  I happen to know that the fluff should be right.  If the fluff were to describe Samurai being superior and how adepts were forced to combine tech and magic, THEN I'd say I would have no rights to complain.  This is more like false advertisement.

FINALLY, the SR4A mage and spirits.  What I'm trying to say is that in SR4A you are better off specializing in spirits than in spells.  Spells might be more flexible, but you are so limited in what spell types are valid for you that their flexibility is pointless.  Illusion spells might be more flexible than a spirit's conceal power, but getting 7 successes to fool a camera requires more dice than is practical. 

Plus, by specializing in illusion, you've lost your ability to be effective in other areas.  You are far better off specializing in spirits rather than spells.  In fact, your points bring up an interesting notion.  I'm certain that you could create a dedicated conjurer who could summon a spirit of man that was more capable of casting improved invisibility against cameras than a dedicated illusionist.  Perhaps that was also true in 4e, but before the spirit's casting would be overkill.  Now, having a spirit do it is just practical.  Which is sad.  I don't want shadowrun magi to be spellcasting pokemon trainers.

If you were in law school, you'd know what I'm talking about.  Making two arguments, both of which cannot be true, is arguing in the alternative as lawyers use the term.  I'm offering up two different arguments -- if you don't like one, then I have the other to fall back on.  Consistency isn't an issue because I'm not claiming them to be consistent.  Hypocrisy is when I say two conflicting things, and claim they don't conflict.  What I'm doing is saying "I've got two different arguments, I'm not sure which one I like best, take em or leave em."  I fully recognize that my first argument might not be true, that's why I have another one.


Those are alternative arguments, but they're not "argument in the alternative" as lawyers use the term.  This is just a misunderstanding of terminology, not an actual disagreement.


Now I'm confused.  I was in no way implying that magi being overpowered has anything to do with nerfing adepts.  My only argument about mages relates to the nerfing of direct combat spells.  That's 100% unrelated to adepts, because they can't cast direct combat spells.

My argument about adepts isn't that they deserve or need a nerf, either.  It is simply this: nerfs happen, but you have alternatives.  Arbitrarily labeling those options as "cheesy" or "twinkage" is not a valid reason not to use the alternatives.

The problem with your entire critique is that you're linking all my arguments together in illogical ways.  You're creating straw-man arguments which are completely invalid, claiming that I made them, and using that to refute my actual arguments.  If you can't target my actual arguments as made, then we don't need to continue this.  I'm not interested in defending arguments I haven't made and wouldn't make, and there are only so many times I can say "I'm not arguing that" before I give up trying to make you understand that fact.


I'm not arguing that game balance doesn't matter, I'm arguing in part that adepts still have options to be good, so game balance isn't really affected.  People say "I won't use a cybered adept because it's cheesy."  That doesn't prove anything except prejudice against a certain build.  Furthermore, I'm not even willing to accept that adepts are less powerful than samurai.  They can do many things that sammies couldn't do.  They have less raw power, but they have more room for advancement and lots of unique abilities.  Making them advance more slowly doesn't make them less powerful, it just means they don't build power as quickly as they did.

Of course, there's always the fact that nerfs happen, and complaining won't fix them.  That isn't saying that game balance doesn't matter, or that the nerfs were good, it's just saying that you should figure out how to deal with them instead of smashing your head against the wall.  This does not logically imply, in any way, that game balance doesn't matter.  It's a separate issue entirely.


I disagree here.  The one thing that's well and truly boned is illusion spells against sensors.  Except that sensors could already penetrate visual illusions using radar and ultrasound, so at what point were they even good in the first place?  Every spell except direct combat works exactly as well as it did before against people, and affecting people is the #1 thing mages are good at.  Spirits might be superior to spells, but for combat only.  For a great many other things, spirits are too limited to be worth a fart.


I could make a mage that can cast the spell, as well as a mage who could summon a spirit that could cast the spell.  Both are difficult, neither are impossible.  And everyone can build the character -- just many people refuse to because they apply the label "cheese," disabling their own characters for no reason.  That, to me, is the sad thing.