Oni cost? Options

[Draco18s]

What would you rather have, a quality or nothing? A 2/3 contact or nothing? 25,000 nuyen or nothing?

It's not as bad as Alpha Omega. The different races don't cost BP, but some are clearly better than others. One of them is so inferior to it's genetic parent (half-demon and a half-angel had sex to create the annunaki) that it's equivalent to a rule that says, "During character creation you may chose to throw away 100BP for no gain. You may not gain these BP back at any point in the future."

(AO has a 500 BP chargen system and your expected character growth is about 100 to 150 BP per session--I'm not shitting you, it has power levels that greedily suck that BP up)

AO also has no skill for repairing items, despite a Repair Kit giving +3 to the check and a TN of [damage sustained]*[repair multiplier]. For Heavy Armor this means that 30 damage (of 100) has a TN of 90!

It should be noted that at chargen a character who is specialized gets about a 20-25 on their best skill on average.

[Larme]

What would you rather have, a quality or nothing? A 2/3 contact or nothing? 25,000 nuyen or nothing?

You're rehashing what has already been said. Can you just accept that some people care less about 5 points than looking cool? Can you just accept that it's not retarded for some people to approve of how rareness is factored into BP costs for metavariants? Do you really have to beat the dead horse like your life depended on it? (If your answer is no, no, yes, then I feel sorry for you.)

[tsuyoshikentsu]

You're rehashing what has already been said. Can you just accept that some people care less about 5 points than looking cool? Can you just accept that it's not retarded for some people to approve of how rareness is factored into BP costs for metavariants? Do you really have to beat the dead horse like your life depended on it? (If your answer is no, no, yes, then I feel sorry for you.)

Yes, no, I do until you admit that it's a game balance issue.

[Larsine]

Yes, no, I do until you admit that it's a game balance issue.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
- George Orwell

[Mäx]

Compared to others, yes, the Oni vs. Ork vs. Ogre is fairly minor. However, it is the most blatantly obvious of the balance issues in the game, which is why I use it as an example whenever discussing the absurd pricing of various RAW racial options.

Well their not nearly as absurd as the ones you provided, especially for Elfs/Trolls and their metavariants.

[DireRadiant]

Can someone just shut this guy up?

No Comment needed.

[Larme]

Yes, no, I do until you admit that it's a game balance issue.

You should not beat a dead horse just because you think one person still doesn't agree with you. Regardless, I can admit it's a game balance issue, but it's also so small as to be utterly inconsequential to my enjoyment of the game and therefore not worth house ruling. The points cost is based on fluff, and since I care about fluff, it's just fine with me.

[tsuyoshikentsu]

You should not beat a dead horse just because you think one person still doesn't agree with you. Regardless, I can admit it's a game balance issue, but it's also so small as to be utterly inconsequential to my enjoyment of the game and therefore not worth house ruling. The points cost is based on fluff, and since I care about fluff, it's just fine with me.

You have admitted that you do not ask for balance in a system. This is all I ask.

[Larme]

You have admitted that you do not ask for balance in a system. This is all I ask.

No, I admitted that I don't care about very small imbalances, especially when justified by fluff. You know that I didn't admit that game balance doesn't matter at all to me, you know that you blew my words out of proportion to make that statement. And pretending to believe what you know to be false? That's hypocrisy. Anyway, why do you "ask" me to admit things? You care that much about what I think? Or do you simply need to feel like you "won?"

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I am pretty sure that this topic has been hijacked, beat, tortured, and left for dead...

Oh Well, it was fun while it lasted...

[tsuyoshikentsu]

No, I admitted that I don't care about very small imbalances, especially when justified by fluff.

Balance is balance. You have admitted that, to a point, you don't care about it.

Besides, this isn't a minor point; this is glaring.

Anyway, why do you "ask" me to admit things? You care that much about what I think? Or do you simply need to feel like you "won?"

Because I need to know that you're rational.

[Larsine]

Because I need to know that you're rational.

Why? You obviously discuss just for the sake of discussing. Is that rational?

Lars

[Ustio]

Not sure if this has been picked up but oni do actually have 1 advantage under KarmaGen:

Slightly more points to put into stats at no cost other than weird skin

[Medicineman]

Thats why I made Mine with Karmagen (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Hough!
Medicineman

[suppenhuhn]

Why? You obviously discuss just for the sake of discussing. Is that rational?

Lars

Er, we have a problem with something and have to discuss this with people who don't care about it and now you say we discuss this issue just for the sake of discussing? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotate.gif)

[Zurai]

The points cost is based on fluff, and since I care about fluff, it's just fine with me.

Why don't you care that it's incorrectly based on fluff, then?

The fluff states that most ethnic Japanese Orcs are Oni, and yet, Oni are priced higher than Orcs (despite having a penalty and no benefits in comparison to Orcs) purely based on them being "rare".

Oni aren't rare. They're actually, doing a bit of napkin math, probably the most common Orc metavariant.

Why, then, do we pay a point premium for their nonexistent rarity?

[paws2sky]

Why, then, do we pay a point premium for their nonexistent rarity?

Um... magic?

-paws

[Medicineman]

And,if the additional 5 Points are for rarity of the Oni,
If I want to play a Japanese Ork (no Oni) which is much rarer than an Oni,why don't they charge 5 Poinzts for that ?

I don't like the "rarity-control by Point-cost" No Sir,not at all.Thats why I'm building every Variant with the Karma-system

HouHouka
Medicineman

[Larme]

Why don't you care that it's incorrectly based on fluff, then?

The fluff states that most ethnic Japanese Orcs are Oni, and yet, Oni are priced higher than Orcs (despite having a penalty and no benefits in comparison to Orcs) purely based on them being "rare".

Oni aren't rare. They're actually, doing a bit of napkin math, probably the most common Orc metavariant.

Why, then, do we pay a point premium for their nonexistent rarity?

Orks are a minority of the Japanese population, and Japan, being a fairly small place, has a small minority of the world's population. Right now, Japan has 127 million, compared to the world's 6 billion. That's 2% of the world population. Assuming that populations stay roughly proportional, Oni are a minority of a 2% minority population. To say that they're not rare is, frankly, kind of crazy. They're not rare like pixies or anything, but they're not an everyday sight outside of Japan.

And like I said for the last jillion pages, there's no objective standard to say what the right points cost for rarity is. What do you want, an aglorithm that returns a point cost based on actual population statistics? If we had a mathematical function that proved that Oni cost 3.129384 points for how rare they are, would that be the point cost you want to use? Give me a break. Oni cost 5 points more because all metavariants cost at least 5 points extra, regardless of their abilities. That's the rule, and it represents how every metavariant is rarer than their parent race. If you don't like it, you can complain, but it doesn't make you right. Please see previous pages for an explanation of how you're not god, and you don't have any better of an objective standard to judge BP costs than the devs, since the correct values are always subjective. I've said my piece on the matter, and you can argue with me, but I won't be responding to such arguments because I have said enough on the subject, pages and pages worth. So you can argue with yourself in public if you feel like you can add something that hasn't already been said.

[The Mack]

Give me a break. Oni cost 5 points more because all metavariants cost at least 5 points extra, regardless of their abilities. That's the rule, and it represents how every metavariant is rarer than their parent race.

That's incorrect.


Ogres cost the same as Orks, and get a free 5 BP advantage.

They are rarer than Orks, and yet they cost the same price.

Menehune, same cost as Dwarves - free Underwater vision.

Hobgoblins & Giants, same costs as their parent metatypes.


Which brings us back to the original question, why do Oni cost 5 BP more than standard Orks, 5 BP more than Hobgoblins or Ogres (both ork subtypes that cost the same as their parent type) and have a disadvantage with no compensation?

[Dragnar]

I disagree with the notion of controlling rarity through cost, I'd rather control rarity through making them more rare (a fluff effect for a fluff cause). Still, it's a design decision and I understand the reason it was implemented that way, even if I would have done it differently.
If it would have been implemented consistently, though (as in, every metavariant costs 5 BP more than its advantages would suggest), there'd be at least a lot less discussion about it.
Still, this thread feels like the rerun of a rerun of a flik that wasn't all that interesting in the first place...

[eidolon]

The baiting and sniping in this thread needs to stop. Thanks.

[DireRadiant]

Which brings us back to the original question, why do Oni cost 5 BP more than standard Orks, 5 BP more than Hobgoblins or Ogres (both ork subtypes that cost the same as their parent type) and have a disadvantage with no compensation?

Need to add the "Coolness" value into the cost calculation. Based on the results, Oni are empirically about 10 BP worth of "Cool" better then orks.

Every individuals measure of "Cool" is different, but the overall effect is expected that less people will pay that extra cost to be an Oni, and thus you have less Oni in the player population.

[Meatbag]

I've tried to stay out've this, but no, I can't resist.

1: Yes, the cost of Oni is a shaft.

2: Somebody that cares should FIX IT.

3: BP costs aren't the best form of enforcing in-game rarity - they only enforce rarity within PC groups, and PCs are exceptional by definition.

If the Sixth World's demographics are based on what players are likely to play, there are a lot more trolls than the fluff suggests.

[The Mack]

Need to add the "Coolness" value into the cost calculation. Based on the results, Oni are empirically about 10 BP worth of "Cool" better then orks.

Every individuals measure of "Cool" is different, but the overall effect is expected that less people will pay that extra cost to be an Oni, and thus you have less Oni in the player population.

Are Oni somehow intrinsically cooler than Ogres, Menehune, Giants, Hobgoblins and Gnomes?

What was done points wise to have less of them in the player population?