Rehashing Contacts, aka Saving Face Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Outline Switch to: Standard Switch to: Linear+

[Eyeless Blond]

The SR4 contact system at chargen is decent enough, but it has a massive flaw in it. Namely, it's far cheaper and more effective to throw all your contact points into a single contact who's both loyal and has far-reaching influence than getting lots of lower-level contacts spread over many different backgrounds. Even the Face archtype in the book bows to this pressure; it used to be that a good face had dozens of people he could get in contact with for a job, now he's far better off getting only one very loyal fixer contact and letting them FOF for you.

I think we can do better. So here's my first, very rough attempt at a patch:

1) Buy Contact Points rather like resources. You get 5 Contact Points for every Build Point you spend on contacts.
2) for formula for contact cost is changed to Connections^2 + Loyalty^2. Thus a Connections 3 Loyalty 2 contact would cost 3^2 + 2^2 = 9+4=13 points.

Does that sound like it would be interesting? In this way low-level contacts would be much cheaper (you can get nearly 2.5 times as many now for your BP) but high-level ones will cost even more (Loyalty 6-Connections 6 would cost 14BP).