Missing karma pool. Options

[MITJA3000+]

Okay, I'm a 4th. convert now. But man I miss karma pools. I guess the closest thing to it is Edge, which, also has a hard-cap. But for me karma pool always seemed like the perfect way to represent experience: even if you didn't use karma to upgrade your skills or attributes, you'd still be better off as a 200 karma point veteran than a zero karma greenie. And I'm damn sad to see such a grewat thing go away. So, the question is, has anyone incorporated karma pools to 4th edition, and how has that worked out? Or, do you see any complications in this? I guess that if you'd give karma pools the same uses as with edge it would be over-powered, but I was thinking of using it just the way it was in 3rd edition, just extra dice.

[GrinderTheTroll]

In my groups Karma Pool became a crutch, players would rely on a large pool instead of good planning or tactics. I don't miss it.

SR4 is a different game. Edge has some great benefits more than a Karma Pool ever had IMO.

[emo samurai]

What's better about Edge that wasn't in karma pool?

[GrinderTheTroll]

[James McMurray]

Also with edge you can survive death more than once and don't have to totally burn out your pool to do it.

If you're really in love with karma pool, just removing edgea nd replacing it witht he SR3 karma pool rules should work fine.

[mfb]

i don't think i'm going to miss karma pool, either, once it's gone. i like the concept of having a save-your-ass mechanic, but i don't like the speed at which it accrues. it's also completely dependent on the GM to keep the karma pool's size in check.

[Shrike30]

Edge is basically (IMO) karma pool with a hard cap and some pretty cool extra abilities (one of my players has a fairly high Edge and uses about half of it to keep up to speed in combat, since he's unwired). While you can push it to do some bizarre things, you can't do it as reliably as you could with a high-end character in SR3. The upshot, of course, is that you can *start* with it high.

[MITJA3000+]

Most of you are pointing out that edge is better than karma pool, and I agree with you. Karma pool has a relatively low effect on the game (at least with lower end characters) compared to edge, which you can use to get the aforementioned extra IP's. But my point in the beginning was that I think that karma pool was a great way to represent experience. 4th ed. doesn't have such a direct way to make a difference between starting characters and prime runners. Yes, you can use karma to raise edge, but to a certain point only, though the only hard cap I'm happy with is precisely with edge, as it would get very overpowered, say with an edge 15. Karma pool on the other hand, didn't have such drastic effects on the game, at least when using it to buy dice, not burning it. Sure, a veteran runner in 3rd with 20 karma pool could survive death many times via hand of god, but he would burn all his karma pool doing that, but at least in my games karma pool was used in most cases to buy extra dice.

So yeah, I'm with you on that edge is waaaayyyy better than karma pool, for characters that is, but karma pool was just a neat way of displaying experience.

[James McMurray]

My problems with karma pool came from rerolling failures, not buying dice. They weren't problematic enough for my group to change the larma pool rules any, but it could definitely get crazy once pool hit 10+.

[Shrike30]

Same here. Rerolling failures was one of the most annoying ways in which karma could do sick, sick things to a game. I rarely had players buy extra dice with Karma... mathematically, a single karma point could "buy" a number of extra dice equal to all of your failed dice when you rerolled.

[mfb]

[Thanee]

Edge is cool. :)

The experience thing you mention with Karma Pool was nice, but it's not so much of a loss IMHO. There are enough ways to show experience.

What I'm missing a bit are the combat-oriented dice pools, which allowed to have more offensive or more defensive stance, or a balance between both (especially with Counterspelling, I think this would be a good idea, Counterspelling is so darn simplistic, no amount of thinking or trade-off involved anymore).

Bye
Thanee

[mdynna]

[James McMurray]

Edge can only reroll failures once, and is limited to 6 (7 as a human, 8 with an edge). It has built in balances that karma pool rerolls didn't.

[Cain]

I think Edge is a pretty cool concept at the core, but it needs quite a bit of work. First of all, the front-loading issue is pretty serious; starting with an Edge of 5 is a lot more overpowering than the starting karma pool.

The problem isn't Edge, though-- the problem is the Longshot test. No matter how many modifiers gets piled on, the character gets his full Edge to make the test with. Further dice reductions don't help, since that'll remove the "incredible stroke of luck" aspect that Edge is supposed to represent. And just allowing exploding dice on the test only makes the initial problem worse. You need to rework the entire modifiers as +/- dice concept in order to fix this issue.

[Kanada Ten]

I think the Longshot problem can be solved by increasing the Threshold by 1 for every 2 dice below a normal test pool of 0. Then, it's always possible to get enough hits due to the Rule of 6, but it becomes extremely unlikely very quickly.

[James McMurray]

An edge of 5 can help you at most 5 times before it's refreshed unless you screw yourself over with a critical glitch. Starting with an edge of 5 also means starting with weaker skills, attributes, and/or resources. I personally like the ability to start play as a lucky character instead of having to somehow "earn" my luck by going out and taking runs.

By the way, didn't we already cover the longshot problem in at least three other threads? Would it be simpler just to link to those instead of driving this thread off course witht he same old same old? :)

[Shrike30]

[mdynna]

[Kanada Ten]

In SR3 you could re-roll more, but each time cost one more karma: the first costs 1, the second costs 2 (total of 3)...

I also think re-roll works better for NPCs, since the players never know when it will refresh or when that Longshot test will show up...

[James McMurray]

By limited to 6 I meant that your edge stat cannot go higher than 6. Humans and those with a specific and expensive edge (20BP lucky) can reach 7. Humans with the edge can reach 8.

House ruling the rerolls to once per roll helps.

It also doesn't make sense to me that the longer you run the shadows the luckier you get.

[Jaid]

[James McMurray]

I was talking about karma actually, but since you said it...

[Jaid]

i didn't say edge excludes luck.

i said it isn't *just* luck. it's luck, plus a hundred other little things. precisely what makes up your edge will vary from character to character.

[James McMurray]

Ah, since I never said it was only luck, and your post seemed to be refuting mine, I assumed you meant the opposite of what I said, which would be that edge is not luck at all. Nevermind then. :)