Introduction

Design goals, summary of changes from RAW

Design goals

First and foremost, to reduce book-keeping and confusion:

  1. Remove the need to track anything between phases:
    1. Whether a character has used their Free action
    2. Progressive recoil
    3. How much of a character’s per-turn movement allowance has been used
    4. How many actions a character has used outside their phase1
  2. Remove all changes to the initiative value during the turn:
    1. No more multiple passes
    2. No more interrupt actions

Second, to make some mechanical/balance changes:

  • Make streetsams/physads more distinctive by giving them combat powers other archetypes cannot access.
    • Also return to them the ability to frontload a number of their attacks, so they get a natural spotlight moment as they mow down mooks before anyone else can blink.
  • Give AR deckers and riggers an easier time of it – so they can get out the car/van and come along on the run without worrying that their floppy meatbods will get hurt while they are in VR because that’s the only way to get a good action economy.

Third, to explore an idea. With the exception of 4e, Shadowrun has always tightly coupled together two concepts: how soon in a turn a character acts (their initiative roll) and how much they can get done in a turn (how many passes they get.) These houserules decouples these and allows them to vary independently under some combinations of character abilities.

Reddit threads about these rules

  1. Unlike 6e-style “anytime” actions, which mean a character can use Major or Minor actions outside their normal phase, which means you need to keep track of how many they saved from their last phase. ↩︎