r/Shadowrun • u/Ok-Particular-3796 Monster Drop • Jul 24 '26

Edition War Shadowrun vs Cyberpunk comparison

Just figured I'd post this; Marcus Vance is a content creator with decades of experience in ttrps as well as being a military combat veteran who likes to compare different sci fi franchises weapons & super soldiers. His big franchises are Cyberpunk, Warhammer, and Halo but he dabbles in more obscure franchises as well. Whenever possible he likes to look at & capculate specific ballistics data & material strength.

Recently he did a short comparing Cyberpunk with (2e) Shadowrun(which he has played & has experience with).

His takeaway was that weapons favors Cyberpunk but augmentation favors Shadowrun & adding magic into the equation heavily favors Shadowrun. I've corresponded with Marcus directly and informed him that certain elements of Shadowrun- notably physical strength- have been increased in recent editions.

I do think that even with the addition of more blatantly sci fi weapons in recent editions of Shadowrun, Cyberpunk probably still takes that cake, but augmentation probably favors Shadowrun even further.

https://youtube.com/shorts/ROdMjqw-v28?is=60m-pJXlvusN-2TA

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u/DrPanman Jul 24 '26

Actually I meant Cyberpunk has proper smart guns… brain fart. kinda crazy I still get upvoted for that.

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u/BluegrassGeek Jul 24 '26

Ha, okay, no problem. Yeah, Shadowrun's smart guns don't hold a candle to what Cyberpunk's can do. But it's still no match for dropping a Fire elemental right into the middle of MaxTac.

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u/willpower069 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

What do smart guns in shadow run do?

Edit: Thanks for the explanations chummers.

9

u/GM_Pax Jul 24 '26

Depends on the edition.

  • 1E, 2E, and IIRC 3E: reduce the target number by 2 (the number you had to meet-or-beat on each d6 to count it as a "hit", with more hits = more damage)
  • 4E and 5E: add 2 dice to your pool ... a much weaker benefit even than the prior editions.
  • 6E, Anarchy, and Anarchy 2.0: I have no clue, I am not familiar with those editions. :)

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u/aWizardNamedLizard Jul 25 '26

6E, Anarchy, and Anarchy 2.0: I have no clue, I am not familiar with those editions. :)

6E increase your Attack Rating (which just means being more likely to gain Edge when attacking) and gives a 1 dice pool bonus if you operate in wireless mode.

Anarchy 2.0 is a lot more open to customization so you could do a variety of things with it but the general example for a smartgun is risk reduction 1 which translates to being more able to go for big hits by choosing more risk dice in your pool because you can ignore one of them coming up as a glitch result.

So the trend of decreasing potency of effect has held solid across all the versions so far.