Radar... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif)

How does this help against Concealment?

Well, I have a character with 20 Dice for Perception (which is hardly maxed)... How is Concealment going to help against that? I still have at least 5 DICE in your Pixie with Magic 15 Scenario... And the character had that from the beginning, which your Pixie did not.

Magical Invisibility does not work against Radar. It is arguable that Concealment works against it.

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
So you get 5 dices for my pixie wearing a Chameleon Suit.
And we can agree to a pixie beeing small. So have fun getting those three hits with 5 dices. (Sorry, my fault with one dice)


Well, I do not see why. Concealment works against any form of perception, so...


About "at least" I do not know. Depends on how you are reading the rules I guess. (And about how the character is build)

My point here was, that with enough Karma Magic is adding up to rediculus dice pools.

The point of a sniper is, you don't know he's there (Even the extended 'detect enemy' spell won't work on a sniper about half a mile away below Magic 7 and massive overcasting.) and unless you're extremely paranoid you won't be cloaked all the time. Heck, if the sniper teams up with an apt hacker, he's shooting the poor mage right through the wall by aiming at the AR marker the hacker created based on the location of the mage's comlink.


€dit: I love combat drones with olfactory sensors. The machine doesn't care if it sees or smells the target. Back it up with a wi-fi scanner and have fun at GM'ing. And don't forget the smoke projector filled with Neurostun. Works great with a 'dead drone' trigger.

Again... The character started with 20 Dice, out of Character generation. Give the character the same amount of Karma your Ludicrous Pixie Received to get to Magic 15, and I am absolutely positive that the character will see that pixie with plenty of dice to spare. Keep on believeing otherwise, though. You really are hilarious sometimes, you know that? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
If he has no magic I would highly question that. (At least if you do not add the bonus dices from visual, acustical etc.l together.)

Lets see:
You get Perceptive 2, Attention Coprocessor (Rating 1–3), Reception Enhancer (Rating 1–3) , Synch (1), Limbic Nanites (Rating 1–3),Qualia(+1),Oracle reality amplifier +2
3+3+1+3+1+2=17 dices
Now you get bonus dices depending on what kind of perception it is (visual, acustical etc) this gets up to 6 for taste and smell, audio and visual is about +3 I suppose.
Since you got to see your target we stay with +3.
So now we have 13 dices.
Lets use a standart human for starters with Intuition 6(9). Add to that metagenetic improvement, improved attribute and genetic optimization and you end up with
9(13). The skill gets as high as 7+2=9
So we end up with 17+3+9+9(since I do not know of any ware increasing intuition)= 38
Then there are some drugs increasing intuition or perception:
Betel +1(Per), Buzz+1 (int). Trance +1(int), Nitro +2(per), Novacoke +1 (Per), Psyche +1 (int),Sideways +1 (per), Inspiration +1 (intuition)
This adds up to an other +9. (I am not aware of any intuition increasing ware)

So you get a max dicepool around 47. (And the drug coctail will probably kill you)

Yeah, you may double your dice pool. But I did not even get started on the stuff you may do to hide.
(And you have to consider this character would be highly specialized (while haing limited essence). While Magic 15 is useable for a lot of other stuff.
Camouflage alone would reduce your pool big time (easy up to 15 minus your hits on counterspelling not to mention your attack pool gets dropped by the same amount)
And if we start to realy go "by the rules" there is nothin stopping me from increasing the number of hits with edge.
Not to mention you would need line of sight first.


The karma was 2000 as said in the post I replied to.

And I am not sure about the threshold for searching one special pixie in a city. Thats much worse than a needle in haystack

So yes you might be able to build a mudane char who is able to spot said pixie mage(or any mage with concealment this high) under ideal circumstances.
But you have to consider, that the mage will probably be aware of you much sooner.
(I mean what do you expect if you are talking about amounts of Karma beyond ridiculous?)

I mean the pixie is still not over the top. Lets think about a free spirit for a moment.
He would probably go up to Force 13, Edge 12 having 8 increase attributes spells (Force 13) quickend (since he is not allowed to use foci)
leaving him with:
13 Points of Concealment(and most of the other "good deals") and about 15+ in every attribute.
At some point, the rules do just break. There is no game with a "buying" system where you can give unlimited XP without breaking it at some point.
@Doc Byte

Well, you said 2000 Karma.
So even a quickend Force 15 spell won't be a problem. Even masking would apply
This would give me a range of:
Force x Magic x 10 meters = 2250 meters. (Nice)
(Magic 1 to 15= 595 Karma. 15 Initiations: rough about 311.
Lets round it up and say half the Karma.
I guess 300 Karma would do enough for the attributes (close to any attribute to 6). An other 330 Karma for the skills. (Thats 3 skill groups from 0 to 6)
Well lets say I would stay at about 400 Karma left now.
Lets buy a little Force 10 Powerfocus for 80 Karma.
A ally spirit Force 12 for 96 Karma. (lets give him some skills 5 for 25 Karma and some spells 10 for 30 Karma well and some other forms 6 Karma for 3)
Sustaining foci for a total of Force 50 for 100 Karma.
Still around 70 Karma left, so lets take 14 additional spells. (Assuming we started with at least 6)
This is no optimized build it is just an approximation of what a mage with 2000 Karma could look like.


Yeah. And hope you are shooting the right one. (And it would still be blind fire, the mage woud still get cover.)

Yeah, but the modifier do.

Did this topic change from "when is a player unplayable" to "can i shoot mighty mages"? In this case you could drop a plane on him, tell a dragon that he tells stories of kicking dragon-butts all the time etc....everybody is killable, it is just more difficult the mightier he gets. I think we all know that already...^^

Pretty Much... I mean really. I am not sure how we went from "When is a character Unplayable?" to "Look how ludicrous of a character I can make to break the system." We are WAY offf topic here.

Back on Topic. I have to agree with whomever it was who said that it ends when it is no longer interesting, for the player or the GM. For me, I tend to cycle through characters a lot, because I have SO MANY ideas I want to play with. Currently have about 40 character ideas in the wings that I have yet to play with. I do have my character preferences, though.

Radamanthas/Jenks: Mystic Adept of Black Magic Tradition. Manipulation Specialist. 190 Karma (4th Edition) - Currently Playing
Nexus: Human Cyberlogician. 318 Karma. (4th Edition) - In the Wings, Semi-Retired.
Cain: Human Physical Adept Freelance Intelligence Operative, Works for the highest bidder. 387 Karma. (Started in 2nd Edition)
Spikes: Troll Ex-Ganger Physical Adept. 187 Karma (Started in 3rd Edition)
El Leon de Acero: Human Full Borg Conversion, Enforcer for the Cartels in Bogota. 122 Karma (4th Edition)
Kawai Aki no Kami: Oni Ninja Adept, Last survivor of the Iga Clan. 118 Karma. (4th Edition)

Have many others, some from 2nd, some from 3rd. Most are from 4th.
My only 1st Edition Character I played I retired fairly early.
Never enough games to play in.

As a matter of fact we are trying to establish if it can be said that with X Karma a Character starts to break.
It seem like awakend characters can go a long way.
This guy:

Would, I guess, have around 1000 Karma. So I guess this seems to be still ok.

So lets get a look at a mundane char.
Every attribute from 1 to 6 costs: 100 Karma.
Lets take the karma generation, because it makes things easier to calculate.

You could sink 930 Karma at max in the attributes of a human. If you consider that around 300 Karma were spent while generation you end up with 630 Karma.
A skill to 6 cost 44 Karma.
There are around 60 mundane skills in the book, thats another 2640 possible Karma. (35 skills are in 10 Skill groups so if you use them you end up with 2200 Karma)
Then you got some negative qualities to buy of and martial arts and other stuff.
But I guess that would not come above 1000 Karma.

Then there are languages and knowledgeskills worth thousands of Karma (or much less if you are using the right ware)
So lets just leave them up front, because most of them are not in the book.
So the "hard" skills end up to about 4200 Karma.


So I am just guessing but at around 5000 Karma you will run out of things to but Karma into.
And I guess with 6000 Karma you run out of space to write your non active skills down. So the character is unplayable.
Of course you could argue how much charachter a sheet with 6s and 5s in most of the skills is.

I guess this is the question you should really be asking: What makes a sheet of paper a character to play with and what destroys this immersion.
I guess this depends on who you ask. There are some people thinking, that a character should always have clear strenghts and clear weaknesses.
So the grim Sam who is good at shooting stuff would never dare to get the social skillgroup higher than 1.
It would also be vital, that everybody can see, that he is better with rifles than pistols, but a real genius with heavy weapons.
He is also good in hand to hand but prefers to shoot things. He can handle knifes but prefers to fight bare handed.

The clearer the picture of the character is getting, the harded it is to spend unlimited amount of Karma.
So heavy weapons would be 6. Rifles 5 and Pistols and Automatics 4.
Hand to Hand combat around 4, melee 3.

You can never run out of Knowledge SKills, which you indicated... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)
Languages are nigh Endless...
Nor will you ever likely run out of Artisan Skills (an Active Skill, so good Karma Sink for the Artistically inclined)...

Some Qualities are Open Ended... So the Hundreds, if not thousands of variations on Marital Arts could net you a whole lot of expenditures. Assuming you had a GM anal enough to generate the statistics for each of them. Again, already mentioned.

Lots of stuff to spend Karma on, for sure. The question is not a Karma Based one I do not think. At least, not at its core. Karma Could definitely be a determining factor in the decision, to be sure.

For me, it is generally not about Karma, it is about the Story. Do I have any more story to tell with this character? That is where I look at it. That is not to say that I do not ever revisit a character I have put aside. Sometimes, Stories come and go for a character. When I get a new idea for a new story, I revisit the character involved. I really do wish I was a better writer than I am, becuase I have a thousand stories about a hundred characters, percolating in my brain. It would really be nice to get them out. Alas, My journalism skills are a tad bit lacking for that. Likely because I do not practice them like I should.

Anyways...

Per the 15th edition of Ethnologue: Languages of the World there are 6,912 languages currently spoken.* 497 of which are expected to be extinct in the next 60 years.

*At least, that have been cataloged in any meaningful fashion. There's an estimate for up to 3000 more that exist that are just "unknown" (by which we mean unknown outside the pool of speakers and their local area).

And lets not forget about the dead languages...

At 22 karma to get a language to 6, that would be.... Lets see... 152,064 Karma for Languages Alone. Throw in the other 3000 languages that are listed as unknown... you get an additional 66,000 Karma... Are Dead languages Counted in the Unknown?

Hmmm... I need to go on more Runs...

I am not too sure about that. I recall doing the math some time last year on a related question (Mr Perceptive vs Ms Pixie-Stealth), the more karma both sides get, the larger the gap between the Perceptive character has to overcome.

There are about the same number of dice adders as there are dice subtractors but considering that the pixie simply increases Magic without actual need to use the magic actively (Mr Perceptive actually has to spend power points to buy Perception, pixie just has better Concealment by virtue of Magic), Perception dice is slightly behind.

Sure, if the pixie is not actively using a Stealth skill and you are rolling against straight Thresholds, you could detect the pixie. But if the pixie is going active Stealth Group skill, I'd bet on the pixie, more so the more karma you pump into both characters.

Lets not forget that you can negate penalties as well. No all bonuses add Dice. I believe that Irion got to a total of about 47 DICE to throw. Which does not count anything that will negate penalties outright, I do not believe. With just the -15 Concealment that was hypothesized, that still leaves more than enough Dice (32 to be exact) to account for most thresholds. As well, technology completely ignores some aspects of magic. Radar completely Ignores Invisibility. WHY? Because you will still cause a Radar Return. I would argue that Concealment works the same way. You still get a Radar Return, because you are STILL THERE. Also, Concealment does not hide your Signal Rating. SO you can EASILY be detected through that. If it is on, of course.

Anyways. It is an interesting Thought experiment, but has no relevance in a game. At least, not in any game that I have played. When is the last time you played a 2000 Karma Character Draco18s?

Dead languages are above and beyond that. And I'd (personally) say that the more obscure a language is, the more karma needs to be spent to learn it.

I mean, really, if a language is spoken by three individuals on a remote island of Indonesia,* you can't just walk downtown or hit up Google for a language course.

*There were four, until the recent flooding.

I believe you are arguing with the wrong person, there. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Sorry guys, my hacker just dropped 370 Thor shots on the city both the mage and the sniper were doing their "now you see me, now you don't" dance in. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
Yeah, if you just stuck all the DV boni together you end up punshing harder than an assault cannon. (+ 8 alone from the martial arts)

So yeah you could generate additional martial arts. But would it make things better?
(Run for your life he put away the katana!)

Btw: Thanks to Learning Stimulus (Rating up to 3) knowledge and and language skills cost only 5 Karma for 0 to 6. (And just two up to 3)

But thanks for showing me an other way to make a very stupid character.

@James McMurray
Yeah there is nothing better than beeing searched for several millions counts of murder.
(And how much damage does a thor shot actually do?)

No argument intended... Was looking for another perspective. Am I one of the only ones not playing in such an epic game? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Ahh, I see.
No, I've never played a game with that much Karma.

DV Bonuses cap at +3 from Martial Arts; Stated directly in the rules. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Yeah, Learning Stimulus is Awesome. But each level will still cost a minimum of 1. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ANd your first level costs full Price, since it only applies to skills you already have.

No problems... There is no lack of things to spend Karma on, dependant upon how "Skilled" you want a character to be. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif)

Learning Stimulas + Linguist

You get the first rank of any language for free (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

There you go... Actually have that for a character... it is a great combination.

Can't find it.


Can't find it.

I know. Thats why the first level cost 2 Karma. (I just said 3, because everyone pays 2 Karma for the first level, and so it would not have been awesome.


Well, I guess thats true.
But it gets difficult if you want him to have good and not so good skills.
If he is best with Rifles (and rifle is 6) than everything else has to be 5 or lower.