*SMACK!* See, I smack back...

I actually haven't had one twink character in any of the games I have run, SR3 to today. My comment was tongue in cheek.

Honestly, BeCKS (which SR4 char-gen got a lot of ideas from) was the same way. You could still squeeze out "traditional" min-maxed hose-beasts, but other types of characters really got a boost (such as one of my favorite SR3 types, the sorcerer skill-monkey).

Generalists are still a bad idea, even under karmagen.

Karmagen does encourage more multidimensional characters, because players don't have to sacrifice RP elements in order to max out their core abilities. But the trick is, you could accomplish the same thing by handing out more BP's. The difference between a generalist and a specialist in karmagen is that the generalist has a lot of low-DP skills, while the specialist has one or two super-high DP tricks, and a good number of low-DP skills. The specialist still has the advantage, in that he can accomplish almost an equal amount, but keeps his huge specialized dice pool.

Each system for the distribution of limited ressources favours selected strategies. The incentives of the karmagen system are compatible with a "many medium to low ratings" strategy, as the dicepools are useable and the skills cheap. The incentives of the BP system are compatible with "as many things at max rating as possible", as the cost is linear for chargen only.

It can be seen easily that even a significant increase in BP (say, to 500) will not make a player of specialists go "multi-dimensional", unless it is made clear that the additional BPs come with a certain expectation. Which would be working against the incentives of the system.

Actually if we are discussing RAW karma vs RAW BP chargen, then I'd say that by virtue of free Knowledge skills, BP actually favors RP considerations more than karma. BP gen is favors min-maxing of skills due to linear progression but in comparison to karma, BP actually produces more RP-viable PCs than karma.

Perhaps if you speak of totally RAW BP. vs. Karma.

But in experience, I find a lot of the karma characters have plenty of knowledge skills. I myself end up putting more points into the skills than I would have under BP. Imagine if BP had no free Knowledge points...oh, you'd NEVER see them. I've never met someone who purposefully left out knowledges(and the ones who left them out did it accidentally, and went back to change it.)

The free knowledges are nice. But But skills like Artisan, those couple points in Industrial Mechanic, Survival(Outdoors) 1(+2) or something, you only find under BP rarely.

The BP-system does have a minimum amount of knowledge skill spending (shaving wasteful strategies). But what are the consequences?
- Free knowledge skills are often spend as an afterthought. You have a budget of rating points for those, one that is firmly set aside. "No allocation of BP necessary".
- Free lunch is never as tasty as stuff you paid for. You have those knowledges because they were free, not because you thought they fit the character.
- If you want to buy more knowledges, you have to stomach the fact that your most important ones were free, and the additional stuff costs half as much as increasing any active skill would.

Compare to karma-gen:
- No free budget forces the player to consider knowledge skills from the get-go, at the cost of not enforcing a minimum spending. The implicit "free" amount of the BP system is compensated for by the higher cap on overall spending.
- Any knowledge skill is there for a RP reason.
- Lowering an active skill from 6 to 5 gains you 12 karma, enough for an additional rating 4 knowledge skill + specialisation.

In my experience, I have seen exactly 0 Knowledge skills on my players' PCs made with karma. Absolutely zero, while PCs made with BPs have Knowledge skills.

In fact, I have seen the opposite. Because Knowledge Skills are free with Logic and Intuition, I do not see characters that use either as dump stats. The free Knowledge skill points garnered are used to round out the character(some even buy more languages) as opposed to karma where my players say that they have no budget for them(or simply go Bilingual if he wants more than 1 language or use softs) or that they can tap Contacts for Knowledge skills(using karma to buy Contacts and leverage their skills).

Experiences are different, I guess. Mine is indeed the complete opposite of that. No one I know gimps Karma knowledges, but I've seen plenty of BP characters with gimped mental attributes. For some reason, I still feel Karma allows for more custom options, in a way.

Funny thing you mention Contacts...now, again in my experience, folks I know usually only take 1 well-connected and a couple lower-end, rather than putting large amounts of points into them. All tables are different. In my group, I tend to find folks who LOVE big skill lists, both knowledge and active wise, and thus end up dropping lots of karma into them. Contacts, though, not so much-usually enough to get by.

Interesting. I would have assumed that knowledge skills have a higher value in your game than in others. How do they manage?

Yes, Runner's Companion is worth it, but if you believe that you can wait for the rules-variants presented there, then put RC aside for now. At the time I was going to pick up either, I picked up Augmentation because I wanted to see the hardware first (being something of a tech-head) and I felt that the stuff in RC I could wait until I could pick it up later. I was right; even though I did enjoy reading through RC & loved the new meta-variants, I got a slightly bigger charge out of reading Augmentation.

In order I would buy them

1. Arsenal
2. Seattle 2072 (ok its not out yet but heres to hoping its that good)
3. Street Magic or Unwired depending on your players.
4. The one you did not buy for #3
5. Augmentation
6. Runners Companion


I think you can start a really good game with the Main Book, Arsenal and Seattle 2072 but as your players progress they will want Street Magic or Unwired. Eventually you may want Runners Companion or Augmentation. But I would flip through Runners Companion at the FLGS there are some parts that may boost it higher for you if for example you want to use the priority build system or something else. Its unfortunately either very useful for your starting group or not useful till you have been playing for awhile. Depending on if you want to use some of the options from the beginning.

Knowsofts and Contacts.