How many karma do you need, before your Char. becomes unplayable? Options

[Machiavelli]

What the topic says. What do you think from which point on you only start to fill up holes instead of balancing disadvantages out you had through the limitations at chargen? All opinions are welcome.

[James McMurray]

It depends on the character. Unawakened characters will run out of things to spend karma on much sooner than awakened ones (who never run out since they can initiatei infinitely).

It also depends on the campaign and the GM. If the GM wants to run a street level campaign and is uncomfortable or unwilling to run a high powered game then you might become unplayable after 100 karma.

It also depends on how balanced your character was at the start. If you started with ~20 gun dice at the expense of 35 points of negative qualities and ones in several stats then it will take you a lot longer to pull yourself up to average in those areas than it would the guy who only went with 15 gun dice but has a lot of secondary skills and no stats at 1.

[Cheops]

When you only have 8-14 hit points and each successful attack is dealing 4+ you never reach a point where you have too much Karma. At the very least Street Sams can always burn Edge to survive that bazooka shot to the face and then buy the attribute point back. Essentially karma becomes a damage soak at high enough levels.

Plus don't overlook knowledge skills. The difference between a prime runner and a gutter punk is the Knowledge Skills.

[Blade]

It depends on a lot of things, but from experience, I've got the impression that the imbalance between characters start to show around 100 karma points, especially with awakened characters.

Though with some players, you'll have characters that are far more powerful at chargen than other character with 100 karma points.

[Draco18s]

Though with some players, you'll have characters that are far more powerful at chargen than other character with 100 karma points.

This.

Money is also a factor, however.

My last character would have needed about 50-75 karma to reach the level of ability the other players started with (I essentially had 60 BP that wasn't doing anything useful).

[Nath]

In my opinion, characters really are "unplayable" in two cases :
- when the Gamemaster is no longer willing, background-wise, to increase police/security/military stats and gear to keep your character in line when he needs to
- when your abilities, whatever they are, makes one of your teammate useless.
Note those has nothing to do with karma, and can actually happen at chargen.

[Cheops]

/signed

Also, when you as a player decides in character that your character is comfortable enough to retire. I've had that happen in some campaigns.

[Scyldemort]

Unplayable? Never, really. Oh, sure, you can have a character more and more able to murder people, but once you're able to kill someone without much in the way of effort, there's really not much that changes by getting even MORE able to kill people. Attributes have a cap. Social skills have a cap. Matrix skills have a cap. Magic has no cap, but functionally, there's no reason to go above Magic 8 unless you're a Mystic Adept.

No longer fun to play? Depends on the GM. Storytelling and roleplaying counts for a lot with longevity of characters. If all you're doing is taking mercenary jobs and hitting various facilities, and it's one mission after another, with the primary goal to get more powerful? That gets old right quick regardless of what level of karma you're at. If you've got a good story with compelling characters and roleplayed well who have concrete goals and motivations and pasts and who happen to be a frighteningly lethal? That's got some longevity to it.

[Bira]

- when the Gamemaster is no longer willing, background-wise, to increase police/security/military stats and gear to keep your character in line when he needs to

That doesn't sound very fun - neither the "arms race" part, nor the one where the GM feels the need to keep the characters "in line". What's the problem with switching the type of story that happens in the campaign when characters grow too big for the gutter?

[Scyldemort]

That doesn't sound very fun - neither the "arms race" part, nor the one where the GM feels the need to keep the characters "in line". What's the problem with switching the type of story that happens in the campaign when characters grow too big for the gutter?

This.

If you want a street level game with low power levels, start at 300 BP and don't ever give out more than 4 karma per session.

[Lugburz]

No longer fun to play? Depends on the GM. Storytelling and roleplaying counts for a lot with longevity of characters. If all you're doing is taking mercenary jobs and hitting various facilities, and it's one mission after another, with the primary goal to get more powerful? That gets old right quick regardless of what level of karma you're at. If you've got a good story with compelling characters and roleplayed well who have concrete goals and motivations and pasts and who happen to be a frighteningly lethal? That's got some longevity to it.

Couldn't agree more. We've had a campaign going for a while which really hit critical mass a while back with compelling characters and their interaction with each other. Playing a physical adept in that one and have collected just over 300 karma- probably helps that we're awarded no more than 4 per session, not counting the completion-of-objective awards at the ends of our very long campaigns. Could easily spend the next 100+ karma on magic, but that sounds like the easy way out, even if I am only tossing a base 12 dice to kick ghosts in their spooky faces. (Not counting attribute boost, edge, and the like.) The character's already nicely diversified, but there's never a wrong reason to diversify more. Someone mentioned something about knowledge skills a while back. Once again, I heartily agree. Knowledge skills are great. And if your GM is smart, you'll be using them frequently in-game.

Now if only I would stop being such a newbie GM and remember to call on my players' knowledge skills more often.

[Irion]

Well, it depends on. I guess with around 2000 Karma you wild end up asking yourselve what you are doing, since increasing anything does not really change your character.
What is the point getting magic from 14 to 15?
Getting the 100. spell?

Mundane chars will run out of options earlyer.

[Doc Byte]

What the topic says.

A character becomes unplayable when you're losing interest in him. In most cases this won't happen because of to much karma. My one and only SR character for the last 8 years has no dice pool above 14. I've spend easily 100+ of his 480 karma points on knowledge skills. - Okay, he's a cyber-mage with essence 2 and magic 5, but technically speaking he's spend 168 karma points to much, if I'd have to raise the attributes with x5. I don't think this character will become unplayable anytime soon.

[Glyph]

It also depends on how balanced your character was at the start. If you started with ~20 gun dice at the expense of 35 points of negative qualities and ones in several stats then it will take you a lot longer to pull yourself up to average in those areas than it would the guy who only went with 15 gun dice but has a lot of secondary skills and no stats at 1.

Really? Because actually, the hyper-specialist should improve faster. He's raising stuff from 1 to 2, while the other guy is trying to raise them from 4 to 6.


I don't think characters becoming unplayable is the amount of karma, per se, but how adaptable the players, and the campaign, are to the changes. You have too much karma when instead of looking for new challenges, you are just rolling more dice to kill the same things.

[Thanee]

At 537 Karma, precisely. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

No, really, it depends on so many factors, Karma is one of the least important of those.

Bye
Thanee

[Machiavelli]

I was just asking, because i now reached 130 karma and after a little forecast i think i will reach maximum attributes (only the needed ones) and skills in another 200 karma. I am not going to raise attributes the normal way, so i save a lot of karma by anchoring "increased attributes" spells. With my decent little rating 6 spell-locks (sustaining focus) i gain access to a lot of "mundane" skills that might be needed at some time (analyze device spell) and i am not planning to initiate higher than level 5. Now i am at level 2 and with level 5 i have access to most of the metatechniques i want. My main-skills (conjuring, spellcasting, spelldefense) are already on softmax and powerfoci etc. are no option for my character. This means i will need karma for initation, raise of the magic attribute (8-9) and some more spells plus the costs for anchoring. After this stage, i will run around with body 9, charisma 12, reaction 9, magic 9, something around 20 dices for dodging and so on….the GM would need really bad guys to scare me off while the other characters wouldn´t be half as far as i am in direct comparison. Like i was going to say as we played Earthdawn and Das schwarze Auge ages ago „you can´t kill a dragon every day“….

[James McMurray]

Really? Because actually, the hyper-specialist should improve faster. He's raising stuff from 1 to 2, while the other guy is trying to raise them from 4 to 6.

I said "to become average" not "to improve." To have an average (3) Charisma the guy who dumped it to 1 has to pay 25 karma. The guy who started with a 2 only pays 15. The true generalist who started at 3 is already there.

[James McMurray]

I was just asking, because i now reached 130 karma and after a little forecast i think i will reach maximum attributes (only the needed ones) and skills in another 200 karma. I am not going to raise attributes the normal way, so i save a lot of karma by anchoring "increased attributes" spells. With my decent little rating 6 spell-locks (sustaining focus) i gain access to a lot of "mundane" skills that might be needed at some time (analyze device spell) and i am not planning to initiate higher than level 5. Now i am at level 2 and with level 5 i have access to most of the metatechniques i want. My main-skills (conjuring, spellcasting, spelldefense) are already on softmax and powerfoci etc. are no option for my character. This means i will need karma for initation, raise of the magic attribute (8-9) and some more spells plus the costs for anchoring. After this stage, i will run around with body 9, charisma 12, reaction 9, magic 9, something around 20 dices for dodging and so on….the GM would need really bad guys to scare me off while the other characters wouldn´t be half as far as i am in direct comparison. Like i was going to say as we played Earthdawn and Das schwarze Auge ages ago „you can´t kill a dragon every day“….

If there's such a thing as "only the needed attributes" in a campaign, the GM is doing it wrong IMO.

[Cheops]

If there's such a thing as "only the needed attributes" in a campaign, the GM is doing it wrong IMO.

Or the players are just doing it very very right and are always able to plan such that the best asset for any particular task is always the one on the scene. You can't always blame the GM -- especially in well played groups, as most tend to be by session 13 (~137 karma). This is especially true in "basic" Shadowrun where you are mostly taking mercenary contracts to infiltrate facilities and commit theft/kidnapping/sabotage. Plus it sounds like he is using magic spells to increase the other attributes and cover his bases (needed = ones that are vital if his anchored spell is dispelled).

Again, as a player you should, unless playing a raving psycho/socio-path, hit a point where your character says "I'm too old for this shit!" Then it is up to you to decide if he'll keep doing that shit or finally turn in his badge.

[Prime Mover]

I like the option of swapping out karma for cash and vice versa. This lets awakened and non awakened to scale up together.

As for the question. I don't think you can set a karma "ceiling". As mentioned here already, once the GM and/or the players can no longer feel/be challenged it's time to consider retirement.

That having been said I have several players from first edition an adept and a mage respectively that still make an appearance from time to time. They actually complain the conversion to 4th edition toned them down some. While still extremely competent I've been able to them challenged. Just have to be able to run smart and scale encounters on the fly.

[Machiavelli]

There are definitely attributes that are vital for your character class and some that aren´t. So there is neither something wrong with the GM nor with the players. For a charisma-tradition mage, needed attributes are the mentioned ones (i think you have enough background knowledge to know why) while things like strenght, logic etc. are neglectable. After you reached level 5 in initiation (incl. masking) your spells a likely to be dispelled anymore, especially not all of them. Also you don´t deal with BC anymore, because the metatechniques that are prerequisite for an initiate at this powerlevel are cleansing/filtering. After this point, there is nothing left that would be absolutely needed. Of course, like i said, you can go powergaming-extreme and max. everything, no matter if needed or not, but it makes no sense anymore. I thought this point of "it makes no sense to play/run anymore" would be far, far away, but 200 karma is not that much i have to say. So the end is near.^^

[Doc Byte]

... the GM would need really bad guys to scare me off while the other characters wouldn´t be half as far as i am in direct comparison. Like i was going to say as we played Earthdawn and Das schwarze Auge ages ago „you can´t kill a dragon every day“….

If your GM plays SR like a Django movie he might run out of challenges. If the NPCs start thinking and use some tactics, even a street gang will be dangerous on their home ground. - And never forget, one sole sniper can kill a 2.000 karma character just as well as any 20 karma one!

Btw, if your totally maxing out your character, you shouldn't be surprised when the system starts falling apart.

[Warlordtheft]

If all you're doing is taking mercenary jobs and hitting various facilities, and it's one mission after another, with the primary goal to get more powerful? That gets old right quick regardless of what level of karma you're at. If you've got a good story with compelling characters and roleplayed well who have concrete goals and motivations and pasts and who happen to be a frighteningly lethal? That's got some longevity to it.

+1

Being lethal is not the problem in shadowrun. Gangers can be just as lethal as a corp cyborg....All I need is just a compelling story, and a compelling reason to continue running. Sometimes the story requires the PC's to retire prematurely though.

[Irion]

@Doc Byte

And never forget, one sole sniper can kill a 2.000 karma character just as well as any 20 karma one!

Sorry, but this is wrong. At least for any "mages" and "adepts". (I mean how to even see a freaking Magic 15 pixie?)

[Draco18s]

Sorry, but this is wrong. At least for any "mages" and "adepts". (I mean how to even see a freaking Magic 15 pixie?)

Ultrasound. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)