Can someone point me to a thread or discussion, detailing the reasons as to why the the attribute costs were raised and the real life effects on the game? It seems to be a serious nerf on the non-mundane. One that at least Technomancers hardly seem to deserve. I did use the Search Engine, but it doesn't seem to like me.

I always admired the thoughtfulness of the devs for not letting themselves be fooled into applying the BP math on attributes and skills, as the average raise cost of an attribute is automatically higher, since the attributes tend to be higher then skills. I mean 5 is a really high skill value already, often your best skill, while you probably have more than one 5er attribute (even more so after the change). Attributes, on the other hand, can easily go as high as 8 or 9 on metahumans, something completely unachievable for skills. So, attribute raising is already more costly than the multiplier would suggest.

Also, this change up-values all attribute-raising cyberware, downvalues skillwires (that have been seriously nerfed anyway), makes Hacker-progression even less Karma-dependant (like they needed that) and non-mundane progression even more karma-costly. It rewards attribute min-maxxing at character creation. Etc.

But maybe I am missing an important point of two, as I haven't factored in the increase in Karma reward and resulting change of the expected Karma/Nuyen ratio. Which I found hard to balance anyway.

I currently setting up a new group with new characters encorporating the newer rules (I don't like to change rules in the middle of a game) and some house rules, so I am kind of careful about this. We did have some problems with varying progression pace in our last group, to the point where the Adept was pressured to "borrow" her money to the Sam to even out. I didn't like that at all, not that she needed the money, it just doesn't seem fair and pretty meta-gamy. Also, I didn't want to simply dish out the money myself, especially as their lack of money was mostly due to a string of botched runs. (Yes, I do believe that failure is a possible outcome for a run, even for "heroes". ) So, any changes in progression pace of different character "classes" is of special interest to me.

Maybe I should use one of the alternative advancement schemes from the Arsenal(?). Has anyone any hands-on experience with the BP-system?

Thanks for your comments.

You have 50% more karma gain, and a 66% increase in attribute cost.

It would be harder to handle, but they could instead have increased the attribute cost by 11% and decreased all other cost (including initiation, submersion, foci, complex forms) by 33% . So if you used to spend more than 3/4th of your karma on attributes, you pay more now. All who didn´t do that get a boost.

It does follow that technomancers and mages benefit from the change, much. TMs were widely considered too expensive before, and mages have to deal with a threshold modification and (optionally) changed direct combat spell drain rules.

As a possibility, you could leave Magic/Resonance increase-cost at the old x3 value.

80%+ Karma gain, actually. Suggested values went from 4 - 5 to 8 - 9. That is a 100% - 80% increase.

Sorry Ryu, I didn't quite get how mages and Technomancers benefit? Complex forms become comparitively cheaper, ok. But everything else?

Did Nuyen also get 80% inflation or is the Karma/Nuyen ratio further shifted towards Karma? More Karma on less Nuyen, however, would be a big boost to everyone non-mundane even with the increase in attribute costs.

I think, I will switch to the BP system. I find beginning characters quite balanced and since we have new players, they will probably not build min-maxed characters, for kick-started progress. That should be easier fixable with BP than with Karma.

Very true.

Did the text actually change to state as such? Last I had a chance to look at it, the chart had changed, but the descriptive text still suggested 4-5 as an average.

It's the solution I choose to.

Yes. The chart in the pre-release PDF was wrong.

Hmm. You gain more karma, and everything but attributes costs the same as before. Mages and TM´s spend little karma on attributes (Initiation/Submersion, CFs/spells, ally spirits, foci, skills...), while quite a few mundanes used to spend most (if not all) karma on attributes.

As for the karma/nuyen change, look at the table. You can add 1 karma for survival, and 1-3 for the challenge level. Effectivly +1-4 for dangerous missions. More complex missions tend to have more objectives - more karma. Dangerous and complex missions should also pay more money. Nuyen/karma rules of thumb should work better now.

I am definitely looking forward to the Karma Gains....

I dunno about that. Initiations and attributes tend to be the focus of an otaku and/or a mage. Everything they do is tied to their key attribute, so it got raised frequently. In fact, I can't think of a game that went long enough where the mage *didn't* raise his/her Magic as soon as possible.

Very True...
In some cses, I ONLY Initiated/Raised the Magic Rating... Gonna be a little harder now, but that is okay by me...

1. Even if you went low on the initiations and high on the magic, you will not have managed to spend less than 25% of your karma on initiations.

2. If you forego spells and foci you are missing out on style AND power. I can "get" an initiate degree of 3-5, but raising magic beyond 5 never seemed worth it for me.

Really? An extra die is an extra die. Plus being able to cast more damaging spells without physical drain is pretty nifty. But I must mention the Mystic Adept. While previously there was always the problem of power points vs. magic points (useful powers vs. casting & summoning), which is just a part of the flexibility they have, this new change hits them even harder than it does the Adept. Raising magic for the Adept & Mystic Adept (not to mention Technomancer) is very important. If you don't, what is the point of playing such a character? (The whole stik of playing them is those powers.)

I have not made an argument regarding adepts. The optional "power point instead of metamagic" rule makes sure that our adepts will have more power points than before.

If you wanted to know what options I consider superior to having magic 6 (old-new) as a magician: magical group/Initiation 1-2 with ordeal/ 1-2 spell(s), 3-6 spells, power focus 2-4, spellcasting focus 4-7, ally spirit force (0-)3...

My experience is also, that Mages and TMs focus their Karma spending on their Magic/Resonance.

Say, roughly 20 % go for flavour (eg. flavour skills that are independant from being a Mage or TM),
30 % synergy stuff (foci, complex forms, useful skills, specialization),
50 % for initiation and Magic (or the equivalent).

I would have to check the logs for my old group, but I can distinctly remember one mage and one adept writing up half their Karma separately for that exact reason.

Mundanes however, seem to go
40 % flavour
60 % synergy

and our Hacker started complaining about not being able to spend any more meaningful Karma on his craft at about 100 Karma. At that point he had all the relevant skills on 6 or 7 and a couple of advantages.

So my question remains:
What did the devs try to fix with the change?

Hey, that's better than SR3 when the Decker had ONE skill to improve in their specialty area.

"I think I'll improve..... Computer?"

In my last campaign, SR4, I disassociated karma from objectives. This is more "real-world" coming into effect. Our group met twice a month and we figured that the campaign would last about 2 years before we'd want to retire the characters, they'd all be dead or we wanted to just break from SR4. So karma was awarded based on that, and came out to about 10-13 karma per session.

The only problem we ran into was training times. Most didn't want a heck of a lot of downtime between missions, so everyone had a ton of karma unspent and was just waiting for time to pass so they could train up.

In SR3 I would often award a 2 Karma "being a Mage" bonus since the Awakened characters were so obviously Karma sink-holes.

And computer B/R...and after the matrix splatbook hit, about 20 knowledge skills that hadn't previously existed, but were now included in TN calculations.

Enter one of the reasons why I'd like to see skill caps after char gen raised to 12.

Got a Grade 8 Initiate Adept with a Magic Rating of 11... That is a LOT of Karma my Friend...

Honestly, i think that if I ever run an SR campaign again, I would probably tweak the caps a bit myself. I dunno about 12's for skill, but I'd at least do 9. I'd also probably change the post-chargen Attribute caps to 1.5 base max/2.0 Boosted Max. So humans could hit 9's naturally, and 12's with Cyber/Bio/Magic.

With the increased attribute costs, I don't see that really being a huge issue, and once a games gone long enough for characters to raise their attributes and skills to those levels, theyt're likely running with the big dogs of the SR world anyways, so power levels become much less of a factor.

But that's another topic... Back to the one at hand!

Err... I don;t really have anything to add, other than the only net effect I see is that players will likely focus on skills moreso than attributes, and Mages/TMs are still a Karma sinkhole.

Has anyone considered a house rule for initiation costs that combine Initiate Level with a Magic rating boost, ala SR1-3? Maybe base the whole thing on your magic rating, and make it 6x instead of the standard 5x? Hrmm... Not sure how well that would work, espeically when you got into the higher magic ratings...

I have to agree with some of the others, Ryu. Foci are expensive, and only give you a limited boost. Ally spirits are a major investment in terms of time and karma. Raising magic was a cheap and fast boost to your power. And that's ignoring otaku, for whom raising Resonance is pretty much the only way they have to boost their powers.

Bottom line: most of the time, players focus on raising their magic/resonance pretty heavily. These new rules gimp that soemwhat.