Advice Options

[toturi]

Except for the fact that K.I.S.S. also makes the fairly reasonablr assumption that the devs want newbies to have a good time playing and thus wouldn't purposely saddle them with a broken character that isn't going to be effective.

Except that KISS does not make any assumptions, else it would not be KISS.

[Ravor]

Cheops, that is a very interesting point and one that I will have to give some thought to although my gut reaction tends towards disbelieving that the devs would be as much as a jackass as Monte Cook must be to pull that kind of shit.

Glyph don't get me wrong, I am hardly defending the sample characters, as for the most part they suck and in some cases actively break the rules, but given that they tend to fall roughly within a set power level they can be useful in order to draw some conclusions.

toturi surely you aren't being sersious, under K.I.S.S. you go with the simplest solution possible, and some conveluted theory that the devs want newbies to use flawed characters so they can learn to be better players is hardly simple and doesn't ring true regardless.

[toturi]

toturi surely you aren't being sersious, under K.I.S.S. you go with the simplest solution possible, and some conveluted theory that the devs want newbies to use flawed characters so they can learn to be better players is hardly simple and doesn't ring true regardless.

Thus the simplest solution would be not to assume anything. Assuming the sample characters represent the level at which the game should be played or assuming that the writers want the new players to play flawed characters are additional complications and add to the complexity and thusly not simple any longer.

I take it that the sample characters are simply there to be used by a player who wants to play a character immediately as it is stated. I make no judgements as to their viability in game.

Does the character fulfill its stated purpose of allowing a player to begin the game immediately and allow the player to gain insights to the character? I would think that it is probably so. What insights does the player gain? I do not make any presumptions on that issue, it may be that the player thinks that it is the "level" at which SR is supposed to be played or it may be such that he thinks he discovers flaws that he needs address when he creates his own character.

[Omenowl]

8-12 base dice should be a fairly competent character for a particular task. This is ignoring additions from cyberware, etc. What I am not a big fan is having dice adders count more than skills or attributes. This is where the GM should look into objects and determine what is acceptable and what is not. That said is I use the grittier gameplay rules and range is a threshold rather than negative to firing. Also if modifiers bug you then put a cap equal to half your modified skill. This cuts down a lot of abuse or where items are worth more than the skill.

The trick is having the GM focus the runs on the players and not just some default adventure. The difficulty of the adventure should be tailored to the individuals in the group, their associated skills and their dice pools. I found lower dice pools tended to favor players who thought more because they couldn't rely on their dice pools.

Getting the highest dice pool is a form of mental masturbation. It is fun to do, but shouldn't be done in public.

[Ravor]

Ah, but you see the problem is that we don't have enough data to answer the question at hand if we stop midway through the process as you have choosen to do so.