I agree with Tear.  Realism did seem to be the problem.  The other big one for the nerfers was the fact that they couldn't envision S&S in anything but a shotgun shell.  I'm surprised no ones tried to bring in homing ammo, as in the 5Th element.  (that would be cool. Dodge this Mutha fux). Technology is advancing in leaps and bounds. Look how far computers have come in 40 years.  I barley have to suspend my disbelief that a electrical punch can delivered in a package as small as a .22 shell. 
 

GOD DAMN that pisses me off!  Even worse than the people who try and talk about the phsyical laws governing magical spirits are the people who try to apply modern technological standards to 2070 tech.  They're using the fact that we have no idea how to do it now to extrapolate that, 70 years in the future, we still won't be able to.  Or even worse, there are the mouthbreathers who don't seem to realize that we're dealing with the future, they just declare that something is impossible.  Which is, I believe, what people used to say about flying machines.  The fact that we have no idea how it would work has nothing to do with whether it exists in SR4...

I know what you guys mean. I hear the same crap about social adepts all the time and about how much of what they do is impossible. Magic people, magic. I mean, seriously now, people get others to do absolutely batshit insane things for them all the time in real life. Talking a security guard into just going in and fetching that datafile for you is should be eminently possible for someone who genuinely wields subtle magical power.

Well Its happened. Stick&shock is here.  Caught the tail end of a Show(Future Weapons or such). They were displaying a mini taser that's delivered via shotgun.  Any bets on whats next?

New show on Sci-Fi Channel called "Mind Control." If the guy is being honest about there not being any plants on the show...um...just what I saw about the first episode, the guy influenced what some ad execs put together for a presentation, got an entire mall to raise their left hand over their head, and was paying for things with blank sheets of paper. If that is not a 'Social Adept', then they should be SCARIER!

Let's see... one house rule...

I'd say no essence holes.  It's just another headache when it comes time to improve a character.

I also like to change grenades so they explode the next combat turn on the same initiative score and on the same pass, and not the next initiative pass.  This means that if you have an init score of 8, and throw the grenade on the first pass, the grenade explodes on the first pass of the second combat turn at an init score of 8.  Of course, there's nothing stopping the players from cooking their grenades...
 
(Edited to fix a mistake, and to make sure it's clearer.)

I like the idea for the nades.  Airburst is too obligatory now, it would be nice if it provided just a small but valuable boost instead of making grenades from an "everybody run!" weapon into an "everybody die!" weapon.  On the other hand, that prolly wouldn't be very realistic, since airbursts really *are* substantially more deadly than the hand-held variety.

Oh my Tear, considering a house rule.  Check your family and neighbours people.  The Aliens have started their take over

I didn't say we should adopt it.  It's a good idea.  But there are thousands of good ideas.  There are so many good ideas about how to improve Shadowrun that we could change every aspect of the game until it's not Shadowrun anymore.  The devs opted for realism when they made airburst nades impossible to escape from compared to thrown nades, and that's how we're going to play it.  Still, I don't like no-brainer choices, and the airburst link is a no-brainer, which is why I think changing the way greandes work might be a good thing.  But just because I think it might be good does not mean I want it to happen, especially before we test the system and find out if it's really an issue.

Ok, I did some fixing to clear it up.  And my rule doesn't touch microgrenades or grenade launchers.  They would still go off in the same round.  I just changed grenades because in Shadowrun they blow up in less than a second after they are released.  Real grenades go off 3-5 seconds after the fuse is lit.  I know that they could make grenades that go off in under a second by 2070.  They can do that now.  The reason they don't, however, is to allow the grenade time to get where the thrower wants it to be before it blows up. 

I can just imagine grenade training in the shadowrun universe.  ("Ok, recruit!  You have throw that grenade so it is at least 13 meters... or you'll be eating shrapnel...")

I like making players cook grenades, and this also allows for some creative throws that don't come down in one grenade throw...

Ok, nevermind.  I misunderstood your idea (the difference between passes and phases and turns is BOGUS, they really should have made a better nomenclature for 4th ed).  I thought you wanted to make grenades better than they are, but you wanted to make them worse.  They already suck mule by giving the enemy a chance to run away, unlike airbursts.  You have to be silly not to use airbursts when possible, making them a no-brainer over grenades as they are.  Worsen thrown grenades and airbursts are even more no-brainer.  It doesn't make sense to force your characters to cook their grenades, since they'd have to be stupid not to.  Your rule has no effect but to require an extra roll, more gametime, and the chance of someone's hand getting blown off for no reason at all related to advancing the plot.

I agree that the nomenclature is bad for fourth edition.  It really makes things more confusing.

Basically, you're right.  My way does make grenades easier to get away from.  However, I'm just adjusting the rules to fit the description in the book on page 313.  "[Grenades] may come with a built-in timer to detoate after a pre-set amount of time (usually 5 seconds)..."  Using my way they blow up after exactly 3 seconds, but Murphy's law of grenades states that all 5 second grenade fuses detonate in 3 seconds. 

Now, I would like to point out to you the rest of that sentence:  "...a motion-sensor set to detonate on impact, or a wireless link set to detonate upon remote command."  I don't know about you, but that leads me to believe that out there somewhere there are grenades that blow up with a comlink command or when they strike the ground.  So, maybe the timed grenades suck, but boy the smart grenades don't.  (Well, maybe the do if you drop them at your feet...)

Dammit, I hate thread necromancy, but this shit is killin' me.

Okay, I know we're not going to be houseruling, or at least not right away. It's just kind of hard not to resist the urge since, you know, it's 2007 now. I've been playing SR4 for a couple years, and I'm pretty comfortable sayin' there's some known issues and overall wonkiness.

For example, let's talk about what was being discussed last: Grenades. They're stupidly good. If you've got multiple passes and go first, feel free to hold your action until everyone else has decided to declare movment or not, then grease anyone who decided to stand still by firing your trusty ArmTech MGL-12 at the "location" of some poor stationary slob. Unless they happen to be a big troll or a Citymaster, that's pretty much an insta-gib because aiming at a location doesn't allow for any opposed test, you merely roll for successes to reduce scatter and you're threatening a 10(P) -2AP damage code. In all honesty, you don't even necessarily need an airburst link and a grenade launcher for this, it only helps reduce the scatter in some cases; grenades detonate on their owner's initiative, so they'll happily go off next combat turn before anyone can even declare movement provided that their owner goes first.

Another one of my favorite whipping boys is character creation and advancement. The whole transition from bp->karma is rife with motivation to metagame for no apparent reason whatsoever. It costs a Technomancer 6 build points to take a Rating 6 complex form at chargen and -22- Karma to purchase and raise one that high once you've hit play. Hell, thanks to a group and some ordeals I initiated twice and learned a new spell for that much Karma on a mage once. The Learning Stimulus nanite system seems to be a tacit admission that Knowledge Skills cost too much; injecting a rating 3 system into your bloodstream means all of your current knowledge skills can be boosted up from rating 1 to rating 3 for no cost. Of course, I have no idea what else they could have done with the Learning Stimulators; they certainly couldn't speed up your learning, since learning rules don't currently exist despite the existence of an Instruction Skill and Virtual Instructor programs. Personally, I would have preferred a simple plus 2 dice pool bonus to knowledge tests; it'd still be decent, but it wouldn't have the silly side effect of rewarding people for never investing in a Knowledge skill beyond a single point either. The devs also seemed to decide whether karma or bp was worth more by hurling things at a dart board; raising an attribute from a 1 to 2 costs 6 karma or 10 bps only for the trend to eventually reverse itself once you raise the attributes higher. Why? I have no clue; go ask Rob Boyle.

There's other stuff, but I feel like I've ranted long enough for one evening.

Talking about house rules implies that there will actually ever be a house.

The real question is how you go about fixing any of those things without making an even bigger mess out of them.  The game already spans multiple sourcebooks - if you start 'fixing' you're adding more rules to an already towering pile, and the only way to know if they work is trial and error.

And hey - don't grenades actually fuck people over in real life?  In real life I'm not like, "hey, no nades, they're broken!"  I'm like "Oh shit! Run away!"  But how often to people use grenades in an urban area?  Never, because they're illegal and really noisy.