quick draw pencils, how fast can you make a character? Options

[Red-ROM]

ok, I just spent a week making a hacker/weapon specialist, And I wondered if I was just slow. I mean buying the gear, rechecking the math, cross refrencing all the modifications and rules. I have a group that just switched to shadowrun last week, and I sat around watching men in black one and two while they worked on characters. and at the end of the night? they had nothing done(I admit they're new to sr4, but they played sr3). I think I'm going to be spending sunday helping them finish their characters.

So, whats your best time? Is there a big difference from one character type to the next, say human phys Ad vs. infected Rigger?How many sessions does it take to meet the first johnson?

[Critias]

How fast can I, or how fast do I?

I can whip up a rules-abiding character that will serve a valuable role in a group in almost no time at all. Throw together a basic character-creation guy, to use as a throwaway NPC, that makes logical sense in keeping with his own very brief background and the game world as I envision it? Quick. Thirty minutes or an hour, probably, but way less with SR3 (which I'm more familiar with).

Now, how long does it take me when I'm making my own character for a game? Someone I plan to have a half-assed emotional investment in? Someone whose background I'll agonize over, research with in-game texts, plot out in order to make all his skills and abilities make sense? Someone who I'll throw together short fiction entirely in my head over, going over pivotal scenes from his growth as a human in order to get into his make-believe head and figure out how he'll react, and why, and how efficienently?

That sort of character, I'll make myself bat-shit crazy and be tweaking points around for pretty much as long as I can, before the game starts. Then I'll run into something in the first few sessions that makes me want to crack my head against a wall, shouting "G'ah, he should have _______ ability, too, I'm so retarded, it makes perfect sense with his backstory!" and continue to wish I had more points to spread out for...well...pretty much forever. Because I'm just detail-oriented that way.

[Kagetenshi]

I play SR3, but I've noticed that there's a big difference between Adepts and everything else. There's variation in everything else as well, but Adepts can be a distinctly 10-15 minute build because their central schtick is their powers, and six points doesn't take nearly the allocation that, say, a million nuyen worth of Resources does.

Is that build-time imbalance still there?

~J

[Corgak]

I spent about a month making my first character, but I also had plenty of time (like two or three). Honestly, if you are making a character that you plan on running long term, don't rush it. Spending a week double and triple checking yourself is good. If its for a one shot game (or maybe a multi session, like 3-5) a week is what I would spend tops, presuming you already have a concept for the character.

[Jhaiisiin]

In a pinch, I can toss together a full SR4 character, regardless of type within 20 minutes. Like Critas though, I can spend hours designing one. I have however put together varied excel sheets to speed the process along at points, and I randomly make characters in my spare time. I'm funny like that.

[Red-ROM]

How fast can I, or how fast do I?

I can whip up a rules-abiding character that will serve a valuable role in a group in almost no time at all. Throw together a basic character-creation guy, to use as a throwaway NPC, that makes logical sense in keeping with his own very brief background and the game world as I envision it? Quick. Thirty minutes or an hour, probably, but way less with SR3 (which I'm more familiar with).

Now, how long does it take me when I'm making my own character for a game? Someone I plan to have a half-assed emotional investment in? Someone whose background I'll agonize over, research with in-game texts, plot out in order to make all his skills and abilities make sense? Someone who I'll throw together short fiction entirely in my head over, going over pivotal scenes from his growth as a human in order to get into his make-believe head and figure out how he'll react, and why, and how efficienently?

That sort of character, I'll make myself bat-shit crazy and be tweaking points around for pretty much as long as I can, before the game starts. Then I'll run into something in the first few sessions that makes me want to crack my head against a wall, shouting "G'ah, he should have _______ ability, too, I'm so retarded, it makes perfect sense with his backstory!" and continue to wish I had more points to spread out for...well...pretty much forever. Because I'm just detail-oriented that way.

this is exactly what happens to me! Also, I love the expression "Bat-shit crazy"

[Phatom]

I play with Kagetenshi so I use SR 3 as well but the most resent cher I play now I spend two days on the back story then anther two days working out the stats and skills and powers off the back story. I can how ever make one in under an hour if I need to. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif)

[Generic_PC]

I have found that a character, badly made, can take about 20 minutes. It can take slightly longer if I want a good character, or if the role is badly defined. IF I want to play a character, I generally make a numbers sheet, make a backstory to fit, polish the numbers so they fit better, and more depth to the backstory, go back to the numbers...

This continues until I die or the game starts.

Occasionally, if I have a concept, I'll start in reverse, with the background, make the numbers fit, change the background slightly to account for that extra point of locksmithing, then go back and see what it changed....

Often, I get slammed with the same situation as above.

[Glyph]

I'm like Jhaiisiin, in that I like making characters just for the fun of tweaking the numbers. And I have certain favorite types I like to play. So coming up with a rough concept, then statting it out, doesn't take long. A rough background and description, suitable for a pick-up game, is also easy.

Doing a full background, either prose or, more often, the 20 questions or Bull's 50+ questions, takes a good bit longer, and usually if I do that, the stats and background will affect each other (although not that significantly, since my initial rough concept usually has my main focus/concepts for the character in it). But it only takes more time because I have limited free time, and don't have the energy or the desire to spend an entire evening messing around with a character's background.

[Cthulhudreams]

Using computer assistance I can make a fully optimised character in a couple of hours. It is much harder to do it by hand. That includes: Basic concept, fully optimised mechanical stats and a background sketch.

I don't use a pen and paper because it takes too long to optimise.

[Red-ROM]

Using computer assistance I can make a fully optimised character in a couple of hours. It is much harder to do it by hand. That includes: Basic concept, fully optimised mechanical stats and a background sketch.

I don't use a pen and paper because it takes too long to optimise.

what do you use for computer assistance?

[Cthulhudreams]

Excel spreadsheet sourced from here with a couple of modifications I made myself. (The Blakkie one with the augmentation + arsenal stuff, and franktrollman's house rules)

The thing that takes longest for the most reward is usually equipment so I've got sample inventories that I can paste in with all the basics in place (e.g. program loadouts for hackers/non hackers, weapons for sammies/non sammies, armour and generic misc equipment). Need to tweak a bit for specific characters but it saves faffing about.

The main thing for optimising is shuffling points around quickly.

[Stahlseele]

Utilizing the aweinspiring Power of the NSRCG made by McMackie?
I CAN build one in under 5 Minutes, if i want a more or less generic type.
If i want something i would LIKE to play? And to keep playing?
I can take up to 5 Months. Without any Descriptions in how the Character looks, who his contacts are and without any background story.

[Jericho Alar]

I play SR3, but I've noticed that there's a big difference between Adepts and everything else. There's variation in everything else as well, but Adepts can be a distinctly 10-15 minute build because their central schtick is their powers, and six points doesn't take nearly the allocation that, say, a million nuyen worth of Resources does.

Is that build-time imbalance still there?

~J

Yes, although it's more noticeable for hacker/rigger type characters and less so for street sams than it used to be. - now that there is so much 'ware available right at creation the realistic limit on high cyber characters tends to be their essence and not their pocketbook in my experience.

Magic types in general tend to be pretty fast builds. - it rarely takes me more than ~30 minutes to knock up a spell list (or allocate powers. etc).

I took probably 8 hours of real work allocating the cash for my last character (a hacker), ended up taking born rich *and* debt, for a fantastic 330,000¥, then ended up spending all of it without getting everything I was hoping for..

[Paul]

As long as a I have a calculator I can hand generate a 4th Edition character in about 10 minutes. More time as it get's more complicated-Mages, Shamans, etc...I can't use Excel, it drives me crazy-but that's because I am completely technologically illiterate. I pretty much hate machines, and the dislike is mutual. I have the real life version of Gremlins.

[ShadowPavement]

Call me old fashioned, but this is one of the reasons why I've always prefered the Priority Build system to points.

[Paul]

I've always loved BeCKs personally. But that definitely requires a calculator!

[Generic_PC]

I've always loved BeCKs personally. But that definitely requires a calculator!

BeCKs isn't bad, but wrapping your head around it is impossible. The problem with SR, and RPGs in general, is that the more realistic or balanced you try to make the build system, the more complex it is.

I guess thats why I've got NSCRG....

[Kagetenshi]

Just a reality check here, we are still talking about simple addition and subtraction, with some trivial multiplication.

Systems like BeCKS are more painful to forget your current total in the middle of, but that's a very different thing from "complex".

~J

[Cthulhudreams]

Becks is complex because unless you are super sayan, it's difficult to tell at a glance how much body and str dropping a point of intuition will get you. This difficulty remains even when using computer assists (actually it gets worse because you're not constantly doing that piece of maths).

It's still not pain free even with a BP system.

[Kagetenshi]

Easy: zero points, unless there's an SR4 BeCKS I'm unaware of.

It's easy in general; just subtract whatever you would have had to pay to raise it to that level post-chargen. Multiplying a number by two doesn't strike me as a very superhuman task.

For example, say you're a human with Int 6, Bod 3, Str 3. Dropping a point of Int gets you 12 karma, while adding a point to either Bod or Str costs 8 karma. Int 5, Bod 2, Str 4 means dropping Int can get you one point of Str or a point of Bod with 4 karma left over. I only glanced at the BeCKS sheet to make sure they didn't massively fuck up the rules, and they didn't; I can keep doing this all night.

I should note, I've never made a character with BeCKS in my life, computer-assisted or not.

~J

[kanislatrans]

I like to take my time putting a character togeather...I tend to write the background first and then build the character then go back and adjust the backstory and then tweek the stats ...then .....

usually Im looking at 3 days average till i am happy (or disapointed and start over) with what I have done,

Longest so far is the 300bp Technomancer I put together for a skype game zendead is starting. Very tuff build...he isn't a prime runner but he should be playable I think. i have been working the words and numbers for a week and probably will be tweaking the build right up untill we start next tuesday..

[Generic_PC]

BeCKs, ultimately, just takes memorization. I know now that raising an attribute below maximum costs 10BP. When I started with SR4, i didn't. Similarly, I've only recently backpedaled into SR3, and have not yet memorized the BeCKs system. It's easy once you know the values, but BeCKs, to further balance characters, adds scaling values. This isn't inherently bad, but it makes it so that I need to check and re-check to make sure that raising a skill to 1 costs 1, to 2 costs 4, to 3 costs 8. When my brain is so similar to a sieve anyway, this isn't helpful. I had similar problems getting to know the build point system, but since it contains no scaling, it makes it easier. (Thankfully, I haven't had to make characters from scratch without the book or file to help, but if I did, I'd probably be screwed either way, or even with the priority system.

[Kagetenshi]

It's easy once you know the values, but BeCKs, to further balance characters, adds scaling values. This isn't inherently bad, but it makes it so that I need to check and re-check to make sure that raising a skill to 1 costs 1, to 2 costs 4, to 3 costs 8. When my brain is so similar to a sieve anyway, this isn't helpful.

That's because BeCKS makes the same mistake GURPS does and tries to add things for you, obscuring their meaning.

Improving a skill from 0 to 1 costs 1. Improving a skill from n>0 to n+1 costs ⌊(n+1)*1.5⌋ if n+1 is less than or equal to the linked attribute, ⌊(n+1)*2⌋ if n+1 is greater than the linked attribute but less than or equal to twice the linked attribute, and I think ⌊(n+1)*2.5⌋ if it's greater than twice the linked attribute but I've never actually seen that come up.

Therefore raising a skill to 3 just costs 1+⌊(2*1.5)⌋+⌊(3*1.5)⌋=1+3+4=8. All you need to memorize is the formula, and you don't even really need to special-case improving to 1, as ⌊1*1.5⌋ is 1. If my use of the floor function scares you, pretend I just said "round down" everywhere.

Don't let bad presentation obscure how incredibly simple it actually is.

~J

[Glyph]

I like BeCKS, especially compared to what a hash they made of the Karmagen system in SR4. Like Karmagen, it falters for certain concepts such as otaku or shapeshifters, but overall it is a good system. It is comparatively well balanced, in that you can still make a min-maxed character, and have them only be slightly less powerful than they would be under one of the "official" char-gen methods. But if you buy more average skills and Attributes, you get rewarded for it.

I think I might be more partial to it because it favors the street sorcerer types that I liked in SR3. Sorcerers have the best of both worlds in BeCKS, because you only need to max out two mental stats and one skill - then you have plenty of points left to get 3's to 5's in your remaining Attributes, and lots of skills and spells.

The math isn't hard, and they even have tables where most of the calculations are done for you. The only thing to remember is that raising a skill over the linked Attribute changes how much it costs to raise that skill.