Character Generation Preferences Options

[Sheffield]

I thought I'd start a thread to see what people think is a good "baseline" for creation. The group I play with has gotten away from priority and points, because they don't allow enough variation and encourage the min and the max. We tend to use BECKs v.2 with the following restraints.

400 points.

Resources capped at 1,000,000.

Metavariants are allowed, but not shapeshifters or drakes.

SURGE is allowed.

Edges and flaws are limited so that you can only end up with +/- 5 points out of karma. (You can get more expensive SURGE effects or edges, but you have to balance them out with flaws, not buy them with your starting karma.)

Starting gear capped at avail. 8. Starting foci capped at force 4.

Custom vehicles allowed. Either guns or vehicle armor makes the vehicle count as avail. 8. However, both guns and vehicle armor (not personal armor from R3) count as avail. 12 and put it out of bounds.

Alphaware and bioware are legit, but not cultured bio. Genetech is allowed with good backstory.

This puts full magician with 30 spell points = 1,000,000 nuyen = 4 level 6 skills (assuming high enough attributes).

Strangely enough, skills and high attributes wind up being the crunch points under these restraints. One level 6 skill winds up being close to 8% of your total character budget, so people tend to have more level 4 skills. I personally like this because it prevents people from building characters with all their main skills at 6 right out of the box. They might have a lot of cyber or magic, but they're just not good at stuff. It gives them targets for improving. It also puts the no-magic and low-cyber chars back into the game because they're the ones who can afford a broad skill base.

Anyway, what do folks on the forum consider to be their "standard" for generation? I know no system is un-twinkable, but I'm curious what other people have found to work well or poorly.