Is it in any way shape or form by the rules mandated you must build a character from the top down?

I.E.
You must first choose your metatype
Then you must choose your attributes
Then you must choose your skills
Then you must chooseyour knowledge/language skills
Then you must choose your qualities
And then and only then can you choose your resources?

I have been told this is true to the point that even the people in charge have been quoted as saying this is true.

Honestly, it still doesn't take me more than about 20 mins to make a character, maybe an hour if I really want to get stupidly picky about it. Since I got used to SR4 chargen, I stopped understanding about all the "hassle" it is to make a character. Cain's mentioned it takes him days, which still blows my mind.

It can take me weeks to finalize a character, but that is because I am a hardcore perfectionist, & am always examining the "final" product for possible needed adjustments.

I can easily create a quick-n-dirty character in 20-30 minutes, but in general, it takes people an hour or two, mostly due to equipment (by far the most time-consuming aspect for most characters).

Equipment (even in basic D&D) can always be a stickler, depending on character needs and capabilities. In modern setting RPG's, it's worse, simply because of the increased volume of choices. So yeah, I can see that taking awhile. But I generally also see that as being not quite as important in the character generation. If I can get a name, basic idea of the character, and basic stats and must-have gear down, I can figure out the remaining amount while the GM starts setting up the game. *shrug* That's just me though.

One character, took three days to complete. Admittedly, he is hyper-optimized in a number of ways, and can break certain situations just by looking at them (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) , but it still takes time to make a character who can be truly effective and good at their job in SR4. The fastest I've ever seen a character made was just over two hours, and that was with the aid of a spreadsheet.


The problem here is that gear plays a bigger role in Shadowrun than D&D. Namely, commlinks/cyberdecks and cyberware are part of the defining characteristics of some characters. In fact, I've often seen samurai builds centered around a particular piece of cyber. Less common are the characters built around a specific piece of gear, such as a monowhip. Gear has always been an important thing in Shadowrun; in fact, it's often more about what gear you have rather than what you can do.

Time to make characters can vary for me. I mean, of course if I know I'll be playing in an hour or two, I can whip up a concept, stat it out, pick out some gear, write a couple lines of background and be done. But if I get a really good idea for a concept, I tend to take my time.

Now that SR4 has a fully-functioning Karmagen system in RC(using Becks a lot before), this can stretch out the time a bit, I admit. Even with a calculator, it's a little more picky. Now, even then, the numbers don't take me forever, a couple hours and numbers, with basic gear are usually done. However, I'm one of those people that fall into ''those last few points'' syndrome. I always end up with a selection of points that I want to use to some random skills or whatnot; usually these are simple, fleshing out-skills. And I always end up wondering what the hell I want to spend them on. Gear usually goes fast for me, again, until I run into those last few bits. Similar thing with ''damn, what do I spend this last half power point on? What is this last maneuver I should get?''

naturally, background takes awhile. The concept/basic idea isn't much, but I do love the damn 20 questions. Sometimes, I find that halfway through, I get an idea for doing a bit of switching around with the paper, though...so I end up doing that. So yeah, a nice, in-depth character can sometimes take me awhile, depending.

For me it depends on the character and the char gen method. Karma based gen takes longer, because I end up with a ton of low level skills and a much more well rounded character. Magic users and rigger-types also take longer because you spend a lot of time customizing the spell list or rig. The story tends to come to me as I make choices, so it takes longer if I get a good hook and the background gets huge.

The way I see it working, Casazil, is that yes, technically if say, when your character was 14 he got cerebral boosters, cybereyes, reflex enhancers, and and wired 3 and then when he was 16 he Awakened and worked his magic up to his maximum of 4, then he would never have lost magical ability due to essence loss, he would have a lower capacity than someone with no cyber/bio, but he wouldn't have lost any. However, when you are making the character to keep him balanced with other character of his level you don't get to pay 30 BP to get a magic of 4 and lower his max magic by two. A character with 2 point worth of cyber that still has a magic 4 is substantially more powerful than his counterparts. Which is why, regardless of how you want to write his story, if you want magic 4 and 2 points worth of cyber/bio then you pay 65 BP to get your magic to 6 and then it drops by two when you buy your cyber for game balance purposes. You can write the story anyway you want, but in character generation any loss of essence you have is rounded up to the nearest whole number and applied as a penalty to both your current magic rating and your maximum magic rating whenever you happen to decide to allot BP to it. It is simply a game balance consideration and nothing else.

Chris

*shrug* I think you put too much thought and time into it, Cain, to be honest. Even my newer players can come up with workable, fleshed out concepts in less than an hour.

It's possible; but I've seen a lot of characters made. I've run a few Missions games, and seen players make characters make them for other Mission GMs. Experience level with the game didn't seem to matter; I still didn't see a viable character appear in anything less than two hours. I did see a few come out faster than that; but those tended to have serious mistakes in them, like the otaku who forgot to buy up her Resonance past 1 as the *biggest* mistake.

I think there is a big difference between a playable character and a believable professional character. You can easily play a template character out of the book with no fake sins and few contacts. This might not be considered believable, however this is a game with dragons flying around so I can see both sides of that coin. For me it takes me 30 min to spend 300BP and 4 days to spend the last 100BP... too many options.

Both being "believably professional" and "playable" are valid concerns. However, while you can fudge a bit on believability, you can't on playability concerns. I've seen a couple characters come into game that had no fake SIN, or the SINner edge. You can work around that, but it does stretch credulity, and enjoyment of the game for everyone else. I mean, every other PC gets their fake SIN interrogated each and every time they buy a bag of chips, it's just not fair to let somebody else slide because they made a mistake in character creation.

This actually happened in a game I was playing in. We had to make a border crossing, and I took extra precautions to thicken up my fake ID. Most everyone was sweating bullets as our ID's were double-checked, hoping we'd make it through without a firefight. We then discovered that one new player had forgotten to buy a fake SIN. She got handwaved through, since the game would have died if we'd fought, and the plot depended on us getting through.

As for playability, the big problem is that the non-optimized character is going to get bored. With everyone else shining at their roles, you're simply not going to get a lot of spotlight time without serious work from the GM. For example, if you've got a character who's not good at combat, he's not going to be of much help in a firefight, and maybe even a hindrance. So, combat will be boring for that PC. That's OK if he makes up for it in other areas; but if he keeps getting outshone in those areas as well, you're going to have a player that feel useless.

That's only true if the team stays together all the time, sometiemes you just need to do multiple thinks at the same time and that when the non-specialist gets to shine.
Unless of course she really isn't good at anythink and that is a real accomplismend to who ever made the character, becouse i don't think i could make character like that even if i tried (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif)

Well, it's not hard to make a good specialist who has the essentials covered in other areas, or even a character who is good at several things. But in an open build system, you can overgeneralize to the point of near-uselessness.

What you're saying can be true if there's 2+ specialists on a team, such as having two deckers. The primary decker is going to shine, but the GM can split them up so that the not-so-good one will have some spotlight time.

However, the reason I bring up this specific example is because I saw it happen. One player became very upset because his character wasn't as good at decking as the rigger. He didn't build his character right, and felt useless as a result. Even when split up, he saw the rigger sail through tasks that were challenging him. Eventually, he ended up retiring the character and building something different. The character wasn't bad; he just wasn't as good as the rigger; who could do other things, to boot.

If one character is clearly superior to another, the players *will* notice. And that can cause stress on a game. In addition to the overgeneralizing problem, a lot of bad feelings can come when you're noticing other players rolling 15-20 dice on a regular basis, routinely scoring critical successes, leaving you to feel inadequate with your 8-10 dice.

Edit: forgot to mention that I have seen some completely useless characters come out. I already mentioned the SR4 otaku who had a Resonance of 1 as her biggest mistake. She forgot to buy it up. Even though she had decent computer skills and complex forms, she simply didn't have enough Resonance to do much in the Matrix. She had so many other problems, we ended up practically rewriting the character from scratch in order to fix them.

This post has been edited by Cain: Aug 21 2008, 07:37 AM

That's what the GM is for, to help insure that the player makes a playable character. Not all players will understand the rules, especially the first time in. Any GM who approves a character with a debilitating flaw like a Resonance of 1 needs to doublecheck their GMing and approving skills, as they're obviously lacking. No character should *ever* get playtime without GM approval. It's your only chance to make sure that the person followed the rules, isn't being stupidly twinky, and didn't miss anything critical in the creation process.

Ive seen characters go both ways before, many times.

At our table, we do play a bit more of a ''higher level'' game if you will, aka ''semipro''. You're no prime runner, but you're a cut above a 400 BP(750 BP method). We like wide characters(as in, lots of 2-4's in skills, with a couple higher, and a couple lower.) Our games might seem pretty generous compared to the average 400 BP chargen, especially since we don't use Availability limits at chargen. Our low end DPs usually run 5-7, middleground 8-12, and the high stuff, 16-20(for those folks who like to have a 5/+2 or 6/+2 skill and specialize.

THAT being said, that's not permission to go out and make Bloodzilla the Pornomancer. If anything, because we are so generous, if I'm GMing, I tend to look at folks who try to break it as really asking for it in a sense. As generous as we are, you don't *need* to munch stuff up. So even though we might be pretty gentle in terms of rules at chargen, we still look over the characters. We believe in letting people make the character they really see in their heads; as long as they aren't trying to ''omg win the game!'' at the table. Basically, no matter how high-powered or low-powered your game is, always make sure that the characters are at least somewhat on the same page.

Also, it's just as easy to go the other way. When the party, as said, is running skill lists of 5-18 DPs depending on low/middle/high/speciality skills, and you whip out a character who rolls 7 dice for a laundry list of skills...well, I don't *stop* you from playing that character, but I will let you know you're going to probably feel left behind and end up as a helper for a lot of skill tests, and you might want to rethink it before I work the character into the story and you get bored with it.

The starting place for your character obviously makes a difference. Starting with a high BP or Karma character will require more work and backstory. Playing a low power, ganger game doesn't need as much build time or backstory. If your character is 16, there is only so much backstory you can have.

When I used to GM I would suggest to my players that they consentrate on doing one thing well, and lay the groundwork for where they want to take the character with the rest of char gen. You'd be surpised how often seemingly little "flavor" skills changed the way the player role played and developed the character.

That's exactly what I did. The problem was, we ended up making so many sacrifices from other areas, she lost a lot of other abilities. And the time factor, having to go back and redo so many things, pushed character creation time up by another two-three hours. Meanwhile, the players who had their characters completed just sat around and ate pizza. Not fun. As I recall, we ended up with almost no play time that session.