You can spend Edge once per action for some sort of advantage, and different advantages cost more edge. The start of each action, you may have a chance to gain more Edge depending on circumstances, like a tactical advantage in a fight or a piece of gear. At the start of a session, your Edge Pool is equal to your Edge Attribute. During each encounter (whether it’s a combat encounter or just trying to con your way past a guard), you have access to your Edge Pool. This is the biggest change in Sixth Edition. Dice pools can be modified with more or fewer dice depending on circumstances, but it’s far less frequent than other editions thanks to the Edge System. Also, if at least half of the dice on any roll are a 1, you have rolled a Glitch which is a setback of some sort (this can happen whether or not you succeed on the test). You roll a number of six-sided dice equal to a Skill and its linked Attribute (Agility + Firearms to attack, Magic + Sorcery to cast spells, etc.) Every 5 or 6 is considered a Hit, and to succeed you need to get more hits than the Threshold for the task or, if it’s opposed, more hits than the other character. Task resolution is handled by a D6 Dice Pool system. The same goes for Qualities (positive and negative options for characters similar to feats or advantages/disadvantages), which are only mentioned in the Quick Start for their background value with no mechanics attached (though it appears they’re calculated into skill and attribute values). There are also 2-3 knowledge skills for each character, but that’s not really pointed out anywhere in the Quick Start rules so it’s mostly just for background in this. The pregens start with between five and nine different skills and none of them start with a rating higher than 6. It also seems as though some other skills have been combined, as Con seems to have replaced a lot of the social-related skills. For example, rather than having separate skills for each different type of gun (pistol, SMG, assault rifle, sniper rifle, etc.) or different type of melee weapon (edged, bludgeoning, unarmed), there are just two skills: Firearms and Close Quarters. Skills range from 1-9 and the skill list has been greatly reduced in number from previous editions. Attribute ratings typically range from 1-6, though the pregens include one character with a 7 and another with an 8. Every character has the special attributes Essence and Edge, while magically-active characters will also have Magic (for Shadowrun fans, the Quick Start doesn’t make any mention of technomancers at all). The main attributes are Body, Agility, Reaction, Strength, Willpower, Logic, Intuition, and Charisma. But first, I want to talk about what hasn’t changed.Ĭharacters have eight main attributes and two to three special attributes. A good deal of the crunchy mechanical nature of Shadowrun has been shifted to the new Edge System, which I’ll go into later. In fact, the Quick Start rules are only 24 pages long and well-organized by section so you’re not flipping around too much the first time you’re reading through trying to figure out stuff. The rules themselves are, in fact, streamlined from previous editions. There’s also a giant poster map, one side featuring the two locations from the adventure and the other side a map of Seattle, the game’s default setting. There are also 12 dice included which is enough for the Beginner Box characters if the group passes them around, but you’re going to want more dice (particularly for the Face pregen who has a dice pool of 14 for some skills). The purple-on-black design makes these about a 7/10 on the readability scale. They fall into that category of dice that look awesome but aren’t quite as readable as standard dice for playing. The dice are the same style as Catalyst has sold for years. The deck of reference cards are a bit smaller than standard poker size, but are incredibly thick stock with a strong coating, meaning they’re unlikely to bend and may be resistant to modest liquid spills (but don’t hold me to that). The character dossiers won’t really work as character sheets on their own because they’re also on the thick, glossy paper which means they can’t be written on by anything other than a felt-tip pen or a marker, but they are good for references for each of the characters. The pages are thick and glossy, the cardstock covers are sturdy, and the binding tight so it won’t fall apart if you look at it funny. The two rulebooks – the Quick Start Rulebook and the included adventure “Battle Royale” – are very nice quality.
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