No, it isn't that real time hacking of a security system to open the
door in front of you is ridiculous (why does that security door have a
wireless link with such poor security that it can be hacked in 3
seconds, anyway?).
No, it isn't the fact that half of California is completely inexplicably
underwater for some reason.
I'm bringing this up now because of something in the most recent
discussion of TopCat's manifesto: Namely, the whole cyberware vs. magic
debate. I don't want to take sides here, but I do want to say that I
*like* that old debate. It's part of Shadowrun culture. And the very
fact that people can argue about it for so long is testimate to the fact
that the designers did a pretty decent job.
Well, in SR4 there really is no debate. Magic is just better. Absurdly
so. The most tricked out street sam in the world will have his ass
whooped by any half-decent starting mage if he doesn't have magic
support. I hate that. It's not that I want the street sam to win, it's
just that I want some balance.
The problem is two fold: First, now that dice pools are gone there
really is no penalty for using spell defense. As a result of that, the
designers 'balanced' most things with the *assumption* that the defender
has spell defense. So if the defender doesn't have spell defense, he's
just fucked. Second, most effects scale with force while drain scales
with force/2. This isn't really new, except that the way force is used
it much more direct in many intances. For example, the base damage
combat spells do is based directly off of force. So if you really want
to take somebody out, just overcast a bit. Sure you'll take a couple
boxes of physical drain (really, no more than a couple on average), but
what you get for that is a practically guaranteed one shot kill. Or one
shot many-kill if you use an area effect spell.
Oh yeah, there's also Control Thoughts. Ugh. What were thinking
getting rid of the threshold there?! All you need is a simple majority
and it's game over for the target. And if the target doesn't have spell
defense you'll probably be rolling more than twice as many dice.
So I'm curious if anyone has house rules that deal with what I can only
call some very fundamental flaws in the system mechanics. I gave a
couple examples here, but the problem extends much deeper so just house
ruling Control Thoughts doesn't really fix it.
I noticed that the latest errata, released December 1, just make the gap
bigger. Yeesh.
--
Dave Kettler
davek@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
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