Ah, I see. I think that indeed ignores the whole point, as Irion mentioned.

I have. I actually read that becore I read the book. But everyone here seems to be rocking RAW for this discussion. Even then, and no offense ment to your good work sir, they are still a somewhat sad patch on some of the adept/sam divide. I realize that it's a balance issue for long term play. It just makes me sad. And I can'make a Walmer with chummer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Raise a 1/6(9) stat with that, and it becomes a 2/7(10) stat. Pile Exceptional Attribute on top of it, and now it's 2/8(12). Add Metagenetic Optimisation, and now it's 2/9(13).

Any one of them is entirely worth it. (And all three is just obscene.)

Yes, but BY ITSELF it is not a mathematically positive option since it costs more for the quality than the BP/Karma of the same level, unless that level starts out at 3 or higher.

I don't see why some of you guys are having trouble understanding.

We don't see what YOU are having trouble understanding.

On the one hand, you have a 20BP option (which can be cheapened to 10BP, if you accept a few largely-cosmetic flaws) that gives you +1 to the attribute AND raises both the minimums and maximums. TOTAL COST: 20 BP.

Or, you can buy Exceptional Attribute, and raise only the maximum, for 20BP. Then spend 10BP to also raise the attribute itself (or 25BP, if you were already soft-maxed). TOTAL COST: 30 BP.

...

Which of those two looks like the more advantageous choice, for essentially the exact same benefit ...??




Let me put it another way. For 20 BP, you can either:

>> Change your 1/6(9) attribute to a 2/7(10) attribute and gain +1 to that attribute's current rating (because of how minimums work);
--or--
>> Change your 1/6(9) attribute to a 1/7(10) attribute.

...

Even if you're just looking at going from a 2 to a 3 ... you can either raise the attribute for 10BP, and leave it at that .... or you can raise the attribute and it's maximums, for 20BP. And if you're planning to eventually augment the bejesus out of yourself, those maximums are important.

That's not even the point I was getting at. Metagenetic is clearly better, but ONLY if the attribute you are raising starts at 3 or higher. I never once brought up Exceptional Attribute.

But our point is, you are wrong.

Look at it this way. For the same cost of getting an attribute of 4, you can get an attribute of 3 with a 1 point increase to your natural maximums.

...

Troll Hacker? 30BP can either buy you a Logic of 4 and vanilla-standard 1/5(7) (thre +1's directly to the attribute), or, it can buy you a Logic of 3, and 2/6(9) (one +1, and Metagenic Improvement). Same BP. Higher ceiling for augmentations, only 1 lower on the attribute.

Human Technomancer? 30BP can buy you an attribute of 4, and vanilla 1/6(9), for one of your mental attributes. Or, the same BP can buy you a 3, and 1/7(10). Not the best stat to start with, but in the long run, an advantage to grow into.

Sure, but how many games have you played where actually maxing an attribute happens during gameplay?

Depends on the attribute, but it's trivial for Reaction and pretty damn easy for Strength and Agility. The game I'm gearing up to play has 2 augmented maxed agility scores and 1 augmented maxed reaction score.

Agreed: no one is using Metagenic X to go from 3 to 4. They're using it, as I said, to get a 6 without paying 25BP, and to allow their augments (which they will certainly have) to go higher.

this is why I felt it sort of retarded. Is there any reason for a house rule NOT to just rule Metagenetic improvement a mated pair to Exceptional Attribute, and make you still raise the stat normally? THAT would be damn near fair, 20BP exceptional made into 10BP because you took -10BP flaws. The math places them about equal, doing that. It's largely the "raises minimum" part I think was a little over the top.

You think that's hard. I had a week long argument over whether "2% more hp" or "takes 2% less damage" was mathematically equivalent or not.

In the end their argument came down to "A and B are the same, but B is overpowered."

"A is A."

You thought I was joking.

That depends on which value is higher! If HP is higher then +2% hp is larger but if damage is higher then +2% damage reduction is more potent. Of course the real answer is to get both!

Reduction to damage > more health. Because reduction to damage effects everything while more health may not neccesarily help. Depends on the number system really.

100 + 2% = 102 health, a troll punches you for 10 points of damage 10.2 (round up to 11) times before you fall over.

100 health + damage resistence, a troll punches you for 10 points of damage 10.204 (a higher percentale of hits taken however small, but round up to 11) times.

For such a small percentage it doesn't matter, where it matters is flat reductions and larger percentages when stacked with other mitigations. What also matters is whether you round up or down. Imagine if you will... an additional cyber-ware for dermal armor or coating that allows you to reduce all damage by 25% percent for a single round. Vs an item that gives you 25% extra body for a single round... I'd go with the resistence every time.

I want to make an additional comment on Genetic Heritage while we're talking about Positive qualities (not whether hp or DR is better....stay on topic boys). So we all know about the possibility of taking synaptic boosters using this depending on what your gm allows. What i see as a more interesting use of this references a line in Runners Companion.

Runners Companion Pg 110, under metagenetic qualities


So you could get Metagenetic Improvement (which would cost 500k as geneware or 20BP as a quality) for free using genetic heritage, a 10 BP quality.

Of course a smart GM would look at the above quote and see that it says its rare and new so would be impossible to have with genetic heritage. But I know all the die hard RAW followers of this forum would look at that and scoff because "its just fluff" and doesn't explicitly state that they can't.

Anyway, just something i thought was interesting.

That doesn't seem very efficient, though. The whole point of Metagenic X is that it's cheap already.

Only in a perfect world. The problem is that it's rarely ever a perfect world.

The damage reduction may not be universal (rather common).
You may need to increase hp just to survive.
Some beneficial effects to you may be based off your hp.
The relative costs between hp increases and damage reduction increase may be such that it is more cost effective to go with hp.

--



You don't need to surge and take negative metagenetic qualities to get them....

Dbl post.

1. your not surging...your completely mundane

2. Your not surging, so you don't have to take any negative metagenetic qualities to counter the point cost of metagenatic improvement (20 BP > 10BP)

3. its half the price of Exceptional attribute for a greater benefit...you get the free attribute point to go with it.

4. You can still get exceptional attribute

5. You still get the other benefit of Genetic heritage - 20% reduction in geneware costs.

if anything, it seems more efficient than surge...

Why would you not want to SURGE, though? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) 'Negative' metagenic qualities is a joke… the real price is 10BP. Besides, and I mentioned this before, metavariants can take it by default, right? And everyone wants a metavariant anyway.

You could just get both, and get a much better 'free' genetech. I guess this depends on the GM being too strict to allow good 'free' genetech… but not too strict to allow the very optional Genetic Heritage version of Metagenic Improvement? Anything's possible.

The 2% damage reduction was universal in this case.
More HP is not required (300 minimum hp on the smallest class of ship, highest damage is 100 for early-game weapons)
As for cost, the idea was to equate A with B, so costs would be considered identical.

But yes, in most cases the 2% was identical, it was at larger values (10%) that it started being noticeable in terms of number of hits needed. But the person I was arguing with wouldn't see that. Instead they claimed that any mechanical system that would have the same gameplay function (i.e. "ships survive more hits") should have mathematically equivalent results then continuing on with "but the system we have doesn't go far enough."

and get a free version of "distinctive style" which is a real detriment ^^

And for some players (like myself), surge is still playing non-human. Sometimes you want to play the straight human mundane. And yeah, you will also be noticed as not being a normal human in many cases with surge, even if it many of them have few crunch downsides

But I don't know why i'm arguing this because I would never allow it for a player (because of the fluff).