kigmatzomat
Hero
I'm one of the lucky ones to latch onto it from GenCon so ask away! I'm planning on writing a review of it in the next 2-3 days once I catch up on work. FYI, I read the hacking section while exhausted so not a whole lot of that stuck. I'll answer hacking questions when I'm home with the book handy.
Here are the highlights:
It is still Shadowrun. It has the visceral joy of rolling a fistful of d6s and watching things explode. There are mages, deckers, riggers, street sams, etc. I've been playing since SR1 so I'm pretty well versed in the feel and meme of Shadowrun. I can envision my past characters in this system without any significant revisions.
Chargen: point based, like the one from the players' guides that virtually everyone has been using for the last couple of years. I'm sure a purist can recreate the priority table if they absolutely must.
attributes: They've changed some. Quickness is renamed Agility, Reaction is a base stat instead of derived, and Intelligence is split into Intuition and Logic. Essence still starts at 6 but Magic starts at 0 and has to be bought up. (No, that doesn't screw mages and I'll get to that.) Initative is derived from Agility + Intuition. the Karma Pool has been morphed into the Edge stat, which begins at 1 and maxes out at 6 except for humans (2-7). A 6 (or whatever racial limit is) costs 2.5x more at chargen than a 5 to "encourage" people to be less 2-dimensional and have a wider range of stats.
Magic: Cannot exceed Essence without Initiation and you still lose Magic when you lose Essence but I see nothing that says you lose Magic with lethal damage. Woot! Since magical aptitude is a merit you can buy after character creation you can have a samurai with only 1 essence that has a Magic rating and casts spells.
Essence Loss: Cyber & Bioware both cost essence but are tracked separately. Essence loss = (Max of Cyber or Bioware) + (Min of Cyber or Bioware)/2. So if you have 4E of Cyber and 3.99E of Bio your Essence loss is 4+(3.99/2)= 5.995. No spellcasting for you.
Damage: Wound tracks are based on stats: Physical is 8 + Body/2, Stun is 8 + Willpower/2. Every 3 boxes of damage is a -1 penalty. Trolls stay on their feet longer than elves but the troll will have a higher penalty before he finally collapses.
Skills: now top out at 6 unless you buy a merit, or "positive quality" as they've started calling them since they used "Edge" to replace "karma pool." They have a select number of Skill Groups; these are bundles of 3-4 skills that you can buy as a package at a discount, saving either 2 or 6 karma/build points depending on the number of skills in the Group. More useful Groups, like Firearms, only have 3 skills while those not so common , e.g. Mechanic, have 4.
No skill web, just take a -2 penalty when defaulting unless the skill is flagged "no default." I agree that there are some skills you can't default on without real knowledge.
Dice resolution:
Everything is Skill+Stat or Stat+Stat vs. TN5. Actual difficulty is now set in number of successes not quality of successes. 90% of things are Skill+Stat but sometimes you might want Stat+Stat when there's no really applicable skill, such as when holding a door shut (Body+Strength).
Bonuses add dice, penalties subtract them.
No re-rolling 6s EXCEPT WHEN SPENDING EDGE. The use of Edge invokes a new Rule of 6 that states "any 6 is a success. Roll each 6 again; every 5 or 6 is another success. Continue to roll 6s." This means you could get a lot of extra successes when spending Edge.
Magical Traditions
Hermetic & Shamanic has been simplified a smidgen. Both now summon the same way and use Lodges. They summon different spirits and use different stats to resist summoning Drain (Logic for Mages, Cha for Shamans) but are fundamentally similar. Summoners can chill out; binding rituals can tie a spirit down to force delayed services that are pretty similar to the old way mages summoned elementals while the conjuring skill will pull in a spirit right then and there.
Other traditions exist or can be created. Just specify the stat and spirits associated. Enjoy.
Adepts get Power points equal to their Magic rating. Unfortunately I see no way for them to get more without Initiating.
Initiation is in the core rules and the fundamental Metamagics are present. Initiation increases your max Magic by +1 and gives you 1 metamagic. You still need to spend karma to increase your Magic stat, though.
Foci are all present and generally add bonus dice.
Spells
You no longer learn a spell with a Force rating. You learn Manaball and when you cast it you set the Force. If you want to cast it at Force 200 go ahead but if the Force is greater than your Magic you will take Physical drain.
Force limits the number of success you can get on a spell and it controls the Drain. Drain is typically (Force/2) plus or minus 1-4. That rating is in number of boxes of damage.
Spells vs. people are resisted by Will+CounterSpelling, the skill used for Spell Defense.
Spells vs. Inanimate objects are generally unresisted but the Object Resistance Table makes a come back with a number of successes required for the spell to work (1-4+).
.....
My brain is tired and I'm hungry. I'll try to respond to questions later as work allows.
Here are the highlights:
It is still Shadowrun. It has the visceral joy of rolling a fistful of d6s and watching things explode. There are mages, deckers, riggers, street sams, etc. I've been playing since SR1 so I'm pretty well versed in the feel and meme of Shadowrun. I can envision my past characters in this system without any significant revisions.
Chargen: point based, like the one from the players' guides that virtually everyone has been using for the last couple of years. I'm sure a purist can recreate the priority table if they absolutely must.
attributes: They've changed some. Quickness is renamed Agility, Reaction is a base stat instead of derived, and Intelligence is split into Intuition and Logic. Essence still starts at 6 but Magic starts at 0 and has to be bought up. (No, that doesn't screw mages and I'll get to that.) Initative is derived from Agility + Intuition. the Karma Pool has been morphed into the Edge stat, which begins at 1 and maxes out at 6 except for humans (2-7). A 6 (or whatever racial limit is) costs 2.5x more at chargen than a 5 to "encourage" people to be less 2-dimensional and have a wider range of stats.
Magic: Cannot exceed Essence without Initiation and you still lose Magic when you lose Essence but I see nothing that says you lose Magic with lethal damage. Woot! Since magical aptitude is a merit you can buy after character creation you can have a samurai with only 1 essence that has a Magic rating and casts spells.
Essence Loss: Cyber & Bioware both cost essence but are tracked separately. Essence loss = (Max of Cyber or Bioware) + (Min of Cyber or Bioware)/2. So if you have 4E of Cyber and 3.99E of Bio your Essence loss is 4+(3.99/2)= 5.995. No spellcasting for you.
Damage: Wound tracks are based on stats: Physical is 8 + Body/2, Stun is 8 + Willpower/2. Every 3 boxes of damage is a -1 penalty. Trolls stay on their feet longer than elves but the troll will have a higher penalty before he finally collapses.
Skills: now top out at 6 unless you buy a merit, or "positive quality" as they've started calling them since they used "Edge" to replace "karma pool." They have a select number of Skill Groups; these are bundles of 3-4 skills that you can buy as a package at a discount, saving either 2 or 6 karma/build points depending on the number of skills in the Group. More useful Groups, like Firearms, only have 3 skills while those not so common , e.g. Mechanic, have 4.
No skill web, just take a -2 penalty when defaulting unless the skill is flagged "no default." I agree that there are some skills you can't default on without real knowledge.
Dice resolution:
Everything is Skill+Stat or Stat+Stat vs. TN5. Actual difficulty is now set in number of successes not quality of successes. 90% of things are Skill+Stat but sometimes you might want Stat+Stat when there's no really applicable skill, such as when holding a door shut (Body+Strength).
Bonuses add dice, penalties subtract them.
No re-rolling 6s EXCEPT WHEN SPENDING EDGE. The use of Edge invokes a new Rule of 6 that states "any 6 is a success. Roll each 6 again; every 5 or 6 is another success. Continue to roll 6s." This means you could get a lot of extra successes when spending Edge.
Magical Traditions
Hermetic & Shamanic has been simplified a smidgen. Both now summon the same way and use Lodges. They summon different spirits and use different stats to resist summoning Drain (Logic for Mages, Cha for Shamans) but are fundamentally similar. Summoners can chill out; binding rituals can tie a spirit down to force delayed services that are pretty similar to the old way mages summoned elementals while the conjuring skill will pull in a spirit right then and there.
Other traditions exist or can be created. Just specify the stat and spirits associated. Enjoy.
Adepts get Power points equal to their Magic rating. Unfortunately I see no way for them to get more without Initiating.
Initiation is in the core rules and the fundamental Metamagics are present. Initiation increases your max Magic by +1 and gives you 1 metamagic. You still need to spend karma to increase your Magic stat, though.
Foci are all present and generally add bonus dice.
Spells
You no longer learn a spell with a Force rating. You learn Manaball and when you cast it you set the Force. If you want to cast it at Force 200 go ahead but if the Force is greater than your Magic you will take Physical drain.
Force limits the number of success you can get on a spell and it controls the Drain. Drain is typically (Force/2) plus or minus 1-4. That rating is in number of boxes of damage.
Spells vs. people are resisted by Will+CounterSpelling, the skill used for Spell Defense.
Spells vs. Inanimate objects are generally unresisted but the Object Resistance Table makes a come back with a number of successes required for the spell to work (1-4+).
.....
My brain is tired and I'm hungry. I'll try to respond to questions later as work allows.
