[X] My Assistant

[Cain]

I'm not allowed to comment directly on Mr. Lucky. However, it is trivial to get a human with base 4's and 5's in body and reaction; and if you're going the cyber route, you can get them much higher easily. A base reaction of 8 means you'll be avoiding the worst of the shots, so you don't need as much body and armor to soak. You can also do that and get 3's and 4's in all your mental stats, so you're no worse off than a comparable street sam. The trick is that you don't actually make any major sacrifices to be good at what you do.

A troll with a body of 9 has to spend 80 points to get it: 40 to be a troll, and 40 to raise the stat. Orks are a little cheaper, only costing 20 for the race, and 40 points to raise it to an 8. That's a decent difference, but the human will only be three Body points behind them if they're equipped with similar 'ware and armor. That translates into one box of damage difference. So, you're not as worried about taking a hit as you might think. You don't actually need the Edge to soak any more than a comparable ork or troll. Similarly, if your primary dice pools are high enough, you don't need to rely on Edge to do your job.

Over the years, I've seen many variations on the original concept. My build is off-limits, but I've seen builds that incorporated a lot of low-level skills. They were enough to get by, but in a pinch, the dice pool suddenly increased by 8. The mage-killer variant had a decent willpower, but also could add 8 dice to spell resistance tests (and hand a bundle of anti-magic edges as well). You can't directly use Edge with skillwires, but you can get a Skillwire Expert System, which allows you to reroll failures in a pinch. Assuming you've got a decent set of skillwires and reasonable stats, that should be all you need for secondary skills.

The truly nasty part about Edge is when you combine it with spellcasters. I've never made a functional mage with an Edge of 8, but I've done some very successful Edge 6 builds. The trick here is that Edge removes the success cap on spells, so when you really need it, your spells are just that much more potent. I can comment on that build: weak physical stats and high mental stats are par for the course for spellcasters, so you're no worse off there. You might shave a point off of strength, since that won't affect you much. You can still afford to start with a 5 Magic easily, and be just as good at spellcasting. You might not be able to be as good at summoning, but that's okay. Take Incompetences in Ritual Sorcery and Banishing, since Banishing is useless and Ritual Sorcery depends on rather or not the GM is going to give you a team of NPC mages to work with. Mages don't need much gear, and I find that starting with foci is often a losing proposition. Except for a Rating 1 sustaining focus, we'll save foci for the long run. Now, we will scrimp a bit on spells: instead of taking 10 or so spells, we'll cut it down to the 5 most useful ones. That's a 25 BP savings right there.

The net result is this: we've got comparable physical and mental stats to a low Edge mage, only down one or two points in Strength. Mental stats are right alongside them: Elves might get a bonus to Charisma, but we'll select a tradition that uses Intuition as a Drain stat, so we're still close in the Drain dice pool and have a better Initiative. Spellcasting is equal. They're maybe one or two dice better at counterspelling, summoning, and binding; but that's not really a big deal.

How does this all work out? The low Edge mage might use a bound spirit to help his dice pool, but he's bound by the Edge cap. He has to overcast to get the most use out of his spells. The high Edge mage can have an equally-powerful bound spirit (same Magic), but with probably fewer services. It doesn't really matter in this case: the mage can add both the spirit's dice and his Edge dice to his spellcasting dice. Since there's no cap, he can cast it at a lower force and get a greater effect.

Basically, you don't need to sacrifice a whole lot to get a high Edge, especially if you're a human. If you do the build right, an Edge of 8 is nearly unstoppable.

[CanRay]

Humans have the power of being the lowest common denominator!

...

Well, it seemed to help out people when I was in school and at some jobs...

[Miri]

Wrong thread.. ignore this.

[Mäx]

A troll with a body of 9 has to spend 80 points to get it: 40 to be a troll, and 40 to raise the stat. Orks are a little cheaper, only costing 20 for the race, and 40 points to raise it to an 8. That's a decent difference, but the human will only be three Body points behind them if they're equipped with similar 'ware and armor. That translates into one box of damage difference. So, you're not as worried about taking a hit as you might think. You don't actually need the Edge to soak any more than a comparable ork or troll.

More realistic scenario is that the human takes 3 point of damage more on avarage as the ork and the troll have 6 points more armor(as there's not much sense in them only wearing as much armor as the human can wear)[actually with WAR they can use their higher strength to widen that cap even more], so actually you do need that edge for soaking, adding the edge of 8 to soak pool still leaves the human with 1(or more) dice less then the ork/troll.

[Glyph]

But the human will have the cover and barrier modifiers for hiding behind the troll.

[Irion]

I agree that the troll should not be used as example here.
The possibility for the human to take cover where the troll can't may change situations.

Anyway: Yes, the human mage with edge 6 is quite a soild build. High edge is quite good for beginners too, since it helps you to get out of stupid situations.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

Ok, this is being posted about three days late: I forgot to post it on Friday. Well....

Thoroughly unconvinced and I think you contradict yourself – you say they have nothing to do with one another, yet admit that roleplaying determines the conflicts for which you are to roll (and that presumably includes the balance of the roll). And have you never been awarded bonus dice for, say, a negotiations test based on the spiel you give the GM? And what about being awarded bonus Edge for good roleplaying?

Those are mostly bad rules, because there is no such thing as "good" roleplaying, at least there are no criteria to measure this by. (Yes, most roleplaying rules in SR4 are very poor, because they are entirely tacked on to the mechanical construct, with simple requirements, but no definitions or explanations.) Basically, with rules like that you are relying on your GM to like your way of roleplaying your character, when you in fact can just view him differently. For instance, your GM thinks all Orcs are more feral, primal variants of humans, you don't think so. He thinks that your depiction of a happy-go-lucky orc is bad roleplaying, whereas that actually IS your character.

Good rules that might reward roleplaying will generally remove any quality criteria, or introduce a table vote on who gets what reward. Impressing people is an objective criterion, "good" ist not. This doesn't protect you from gaming with idiots, but even among friends you often want clear rules as to what works and what doesn't.

And so, no, I have not been given bonus dice, threshold benefits or other bonuses by being a good actor, nor do I award these as the GM - at least not intentionally. I am not immune to being impressed of course. In the past, I have played in groups that have used systems of rewarding "good" roleplaying, and the results were usually terrible: blatant favouritism, personal taste obscuring judgements, etc.

Also, a modification of a mechanic based on rollplaying necessitates having a mechanic in the first place. With roleplaying you determine that it would be appropriate for your character to begin a conflict, and you decide upon your methods, goals, and try to determine the risks and dangers involved. Now you can of course act out every stage, too. But factually, the entire conflict is resolved using game mechanics, and that's how it should be. The acting shouldn't influence the mechanics. (But of course strategies and tactics do.)

Yes, without mechanics you are in GM-fiat land, but isn't that still the case with the mechanics? Who do you think decides on the strength of opposition and challenges?

Fiat is understood as resolving conflicts based on a whim, without rules that are understood by all sides involved.

Good games will have guidelines on how to properly challenge a player. These may or may not be bunk,obviously, but even if he mucks up the challenge, at least with rules you will understand where the outcome came from. Also, clear rules make it easier to gauge the difficulty of a challenge.

With regards to diceless freeform RPGs, suppose your character opens a box and a booby trap kills him. The GM laid out plenty of clues along the quest indicating that this box must not be opened and you either ignored them, didn't see them or failed to interpret them correctly. Right there you have a losing situation that was not caused by any mechanics and not completely dictated by the GM. The outcome was uncertain and went against the player because he roleplayed his character a certain way, such as being offensive to the guard who could have warned him or choosing to respect the wizard by not ransacking his study for intel on the rest of the dungeon.

Most diceless games I played had one basic rule: NOONE can affect your character without your permission. Not even the GM. I would never play a game where the GM can affect my character as he likes. He has to convince me that what he has envisioned is what should be happening. Unlike what you may think, this rarely resulted in total anarchy. However, as I said before, especially PC vs PC were a big problem.

[Korwin]

For example if mages are supposed to be so rare in the setting why si it so cheap to become a mage build point wise.

Its cheap? Do you play mages much? When I build an mage, I dont have enough points for all the things I need to be a mage... (400BP)

[Ascalaphus]

The thing is I've always felt game balance should mirror the setting conventions. For example if mages are supposed to be so rare in the setting why is it so cheap to become a mage build point wise. There are enough advantages to the metatypes that i'm seeing all ork and troll tables and that makes me a bit concerned.

I disagree with that. Game balance should have only one goal: to make sure everyone has fun. Making a player's character weaker than the rest for "setting purity" makes the game less fun for that player, and that's bad.

[Traul]

The trick here is that Edge removes the success cap on spells

Where does that come from?

[Faraday]

Where does that come from?

Right out of the core book. Edge dice used as part of the casting test ignore the max hits=force rule.

[Cain]

Most diceless games I played had one basic rule: NOONE can affect your character without your permission. Not even the GM. I would never play a game where the GM can affect my character as he likes. He has to convince me that what he has envisioned is what should be happening. Unlike what you may think, this rarely resulted in total anarchy. However, as I said before, especially PC vs PC were a big problem.

I'm familiar with a couple of diceless games, most notably Amber and Everway. In both cases, the GM could affect you in many ways. If you're referring to freeform, that's somewhat different; but the GM still has a lot of ways to affect your character if he so chooses.

Where does that come from?

Main book. SR4.5, page 182:

A spell’s Force limits the number of hits (not net hits) that can be
achieved on the Spellcasting Test. So if you cast a Force 3 spell and get
5 hits, only 3 of those hits count. In other words, Force has a limiting
effect on spells—the more oomph you put into the spell, the better
you can succeed with it. This limitation does not apply to Edge dice
that are used to boost a spell.

Most starting magicians have a Magic of 5. That means they'll typically be casting at force 5. So, a normal mage stands very little chance of killing a Will 3 victim with a Manabolt: he can only score 5 successes. If the victim gets even one success, he'll survive. The magician has to overcast in order to take people down reliably. An Edge 6 mage, however, can easily bypass this limit. One-shots are much more likely when you spend Edge on a spell. Heck, I've even seen players lower the force on their spells, because they were spending Edge. With a high enough dicepool, you can throw a Force 3 spell and get ten successes, which is more than enough to take down anyone without really any risk of Drain.

More realistic scenario is that the human takes 3 point of damage more on avarage as the ork and the troll have 6 points more armor(as there's not much sense in them only wearing as much armor as the human can wear)[actually with WAR they can use their higher strength to widen that cap even more], so actually you do need that edge for soaking, adding the edge of 8 to soak pool still leaves the human with 1(or more) dice less then the ork/troll.

I don't allow War! at my table, and I do come down on characters wearing heavy armor in a street situation. Most characters are going to be restricted to normal-looking armor, and not full-body suits. If the ork or troll take advantage of their ability to wear more armor, they're also going to stand out more, and be a bigger target. So, no, you don't need to soak any more often as a human; in fact you may be soaking less since everyone is going to shoot the biggest-looking threat. That's usually always the troll.

The trick is, you give yourself a good Reaction, and you don't have to worry as much about soaking. You can also get away with decent body and decent armor, certainly no worse than a dwarf or elf in this regard. Even if you're a frontline combatant, you shouldn't need to soak damage any more than the ork or troll, and probably less. You're assuming that the Edge 8 character is getting shot at just as often as the trolls and orks are, which might not be the case. Heck, what happens if he's a rigger? He could be back in the van, controlling drones, with no chance of getting shot at.

[Mäx]

With a high enough dicepool, you can throw a Force 3 spell and get ten successes, which is more than enough to take down anyone without really any risk of Drain.

You pretty much need to be mister Lucky IRL to pull of 7 successes from you edge dice.

[Traul]

Main book. SR4.5, page 182:

Thanks. I was searching the Edge chapter, didn't think of the magic chapter (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

I'm familiar with a couple of diceless games, most notably Amber and Everway. In both cases, the GM could affect you in many ways. If you're referring to freeform, that's somewhat different; but the GM still has a lot of ways to affect your character if he so chooses.

I've (almost) excusively played freeform games from "www.mysteryandmagic.com". They have a basic rule 0, which says that a character is sacrosanct. I used to argue against this, too, but that's how it was, and basically it makes sense: You just have to persuade a player that affecting their characters in the manner you wish makes sense.

Main book. SR4.5, page 182:


Most starting magicians have a Magic of 5. That means they'll typically be casting at force 5. So, a normal mage stands very little chance of killing a Will 3 victim with a Manabolt: he can only score 5 successes. If the victim gets even one success, he'll survive. The magician has to overcast in order to take people down reliably. An Edge 6 mage, however, can easily bypass this limit. One-shots are much more likely when you spend Edge on a spell. Heck, I've even seen players lower the force on their spells, because they were spending Edge. With a high enough dicepool, you can throw a Force 3 spell and get ten successes, which is more than enough to take down anyone without really any risk of Drain.

The free hits rule is one of the reasons why magicrun is so effective: Get a Force 3 sustaining focus, and basically sustain anything you like at many hits. (Improved Reflexes, I'm looking at you!)

The other thing is that basically manabolt is a useless spell, so any magic 5 mage can knock out anyone who doesn't have a crapton of spell defence dice. (12 dice on the budget, 2-skill mage, easily, and a force 9+ stunbolt.)

So you don't even need edge on that one.

[Yerameyahu]

I thought Rule 0 was 'the player is stupid and a baby'. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Mechanics are what let you convince players to 'let' things happen to them.

Personally, the Edge-breaks-Magic-limits rule is a bad one. Edge is great enough without breaking the magic rules. Anyway, are we really talking about humans any more? They're only 1 Edge luckier than anyone else… anyone can be Lucky.

[Cain]

The other thing is that basically manabolt is a useless spell, so any magic 5 mage can knock out anyone who doesn't have a crapton of spell defence dice. (12 dice on the budget, 2-skill mage, easily, and a force 9+ stunbolt.)

So you don't even need edge on that one.

I don't know about useless. I've certainly seen the spell be very useful. But I picked the spell because it's common, and the drain is easy.

The problem with the trick you describe is the Drain. You're looking at 4P drain, which isn't too serious, but can be a bit hard to handle. If the same mage with Edge 6 wanted to, he could cast it at Force 5, and get more than enough successes to incapacitate anyone without a ton of magical defense. And afterwards, he's only looking at 2S Drain.

Personally, the Edge-breaks-Magic-limits rule is a bad one. Edge is great enough without breaking the magic rules. Anyway, are we really talking about humans any more? They're only 1 Edge luckier than anyone else… anyone can be Lucky.

It's the Edge 8 characters that can be game-breakers. You can create an Edge 8 character that is hyper-specialized in one area, decent in the others, and then has an Edge of 8 to use when it counts. The trick is to be decent at everything you need, just not spectacular. You end up a point or two behind an equivalent build, but it won't matter much in actual play. I mean, every character needs social skills, but if you've got a Face, you can let them do the talking and your skills are just for backup. If every non-face on the team has seven dice in social skills, and you only have five, you're really not hurting that much. You're still far from helpless in the social arena, you won't need Edge on a regular basis.

Dodging is another one. With a higher or equal Reaction to orks and trolls, you'll avoid the worst of a shot right there. Your soak roll is smaller, but with body 5 and decent armor, you can handle normal hits without spending Edge. If someone breaks out the rocket launcher, yeah you're in trouble-- spend Edge. But the troll would be in just as much trouble, and he doesn't have as much Edge to help out.

[Jhaiisiin]

Our group's Roleplay karma/xp awards always come as a group bonus. If the group roleplayed well, stayed in character, and interacted well (meaning believably, not necessarily playing nice or anything), then the good roleplaying credit gets awarded to everyone.

@Brain: If your GM thinks you're playing your character wrong, it's because you two never talked about what the character was like, which should have been the FIRST thing that was done after the character stats were written down. In every game I've ever run or played in, it's a requirement before proceeding with play. As a GM, I always ask: "So what's your character like? What's his/her story?" and give the player a few minutes to tell me about them and give me an idea of how they act. Future roleplaying rewards will be based off of how true to that synopsis the character is played.

And I'm so glad I don't play in diceless games. I've met too many players that if the rule existed that nothing could happen to a character without that player's agreement, then the character would never get hurt, would always be perfect, etc etc etc. It's just another way of being a munchkin or powergamer.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

Our group's Roleplay karma/xp awards always come as a group bonus. If the group roleplayed well, stayed in character, and interacted well (meaning believably, not necessarily playing nice or anything), then the good roleplaying credit gets awarded to everyone.

That's not a bad idea.

@Brain: If your GM thinks you're playing your character wrong, it's because you two never talked about what the character was like, which should have been the FIRST thing that was done after the character stats were written down. In every game I've ever run or played in, it's a requirement before proceeding with play. As a GM, I always ask: "So what's your character like? What's his/her story?" and give the player a few minutes to tell me about them and give me an idea of how they act. Future roleplaying rewards will be based off of how true to that synopsis the character is played.

Ok, but that still boxes me into the characterization I came up with in 5-30 minutes while writing up the character synopsis. So what about growth? Also, I haven't had a single character yet that hasn't significantly changed in personality in play - simply because he wasn't quite hashed out, and he reacted to the stimuli present.

Look, in Germany there is a game called "Das Schwarze Auge". It's got a horrible tradition of huge metaplot that you are railroaded through on the "epic" adventures. It also has weird character ethos ideas, even weirder than code of conduct in D&D or stuff like that. And I've have several (horrible) GMs tell me that "no, your character is a noble whatever, he would NEVER do that". Whereas he totally disregarded what we had experienced.

And I'm so glad I don't play in diceless games. I've met too many players that if the rule existed that nothing could happen to a character without that player's agreement, then the character would never get hurt, would always be perfect, etc etc etc. It's just another way of being a munchkin or powergamer.

Yeh, except they have no fun, and quit after five minutes. It's really not a problem, unless they are the GMs special friends, and it's a PvP game, as I said earlier.

[suoq]

Notes on Orcs attributes vs human edge.

For 260 points, Orcs can get every attribute to 4, one attribute to 5, and Edge to 5 (soft cap).
For 240 points, Humans can get half their attributes to 3, half to 4, and edge to 6 (soft cap)
Spread evenly, the orcs get 1 less die every time they edge, offset by 1 more die on 5 out of 6 of their stats.
The humans get 1 more edge, and 20 build points. The orcs get 1 more die on every non-edged roll on 5 different stats.

The edge on humans is nice, but it's not the all-out advantage some people seem to think it is because of the affect attributes have on rolls and the disparity between human and orc attributes.

[Glyph]

There is a difference between orks and humans, power and aptitude-wise, but in an open build system, it is, like suoq just said, negligible. The thing is, with an open build system, you can get much, much more severe differences in power between two characters who are the same metatype and profession.

Cain hinted at it - sometimes points matter a lot, and sometimes they don't. Take two players, one playing Mr. Lucky, and one playing a human who "only" has an Edge of 6. So the second player has 55 more points to spend. So maybe he gets a Charisma of 5 instead of 2, and gets the influence skill group at 4 instead of 2, and adds the first impression quality. Wow, what a difference - that second character has basically added a secondary specialty of face to his character! But maybe instead of that, he decides to raise Charisma and Logic from 2 to 3, raise Intuition from 3 to 4, get an extra 3 connection/2 loyalty contact, raise three skills from 2 to 3, and pick up the medicine: 2 skill to go with his first aid. Now yeah, he did still spend 55 points, and get 6 more points of free knowledge skills to boot, and he'll be rolling an extra dice or two for some things. But overall, if you compare his performance to Mr. Lucky, you won't see that much difference... until the Edge dice come out.

[Cain]

Notes on Orcs attributes vs human edge.

For 260 points, Orcs can get every attribute to 4, one attribute to 5, and Edge to 5 (soft cap).
For 240 points, Humans can get half their attributes to 3, half to 4, and edge to 6 (soft cap)
Spread evenly, the orcs get 1 less die every time they edge, offset by 1 more die on 5 out of 6 of their stats.
The humans get 1 more edge, and 20 build points. The orcs get 1 more die on every non-edged roll on 5 different stats.

The edge on humans is nice, but it's not the all-out advantage some people seem to think it is because of the affect attributes have on rolls and the disparity between human and orc attributes.

The difference here is in how Edge works. Going from Edge 5 to 6 not only means you get an extra die, but you get to use it more often. Also, in your example, what is that human going to spend his extra 20 points on? If you're smart, you spend it on skills or 'ware to boost your dice pools. You're also forgetting the most important advantage of Edge dice: they explode. That means you can get a really incredible number of successes if you roll well. I've personally had a Ares Predator do 30P damage with normal ammo.

Like Glyph said, sometimes points matter and sometimes they don't. SR4.5 really rewards system mastery: you can create many hyperspecalized builds without sacrificing much. The last pornomancer build I saw had something like 52 dice in a social test, and was functional everywhere else. Now, true: an Edge of 8 alone isn't going to cut it. You do need good base dice pools for your characters specialty. But you can have that, and a high Edge to boot. Having a high Edge won't gimp a character, if you know what you're doing.

Now, certain races are going to be better than humans at certain roles. Orks and Trolls are always going to be better at tanking than a human. So, the moral of the story is, don't build humans to be tanks. You'll get shot at less, so you won't have to worry so much about needing a high Body and armor. Instead, build humans to take advantage of their advantages: Edge 6 human mages are killer, and Edge 8 anything can be unstoppable if done right.

[Irion]

Well, Edge 5 to 6 is not a big jump, I do agree.

If you are in the high end area of dice pools (which can come quite fast if you consider all the different boni dices.)

Shooting someone:
Agility+Skill+Smartlink+Tacnet+skill increase by magic or ware...

But the best example is binding a spirit:
Having Magic 5 and Binding 5 you may end up with:
5+5+2(mentor spirit)+2(Homeground)+2(positiv BC)+2(spec)+4(Powerfocus)=22 dices.

The point about humans is, they are the only one (exept pixies and free spirits) who may aim at high edge characters (7+).
An edge of 6 or even 7 for an ork is not worth trying. The building points you waste to not come back to you. (You might in game raise your edge from 5 to 6, but thats about it)
With the human and Edge 8 the investment pays off since you not just get one more dice each roll, you also get an other roll. Translating in 15 additional edge dices (starting from 49).

(On lower edge scores it is not that big of a deal, because rerolling is much better than adding edge!)

To conclude it:
Are humans the better characters:
No, nobody is saying so. There is this special build for humans allowing them to fuck the rules a bit, if the GM is handing out edge like candys he does not like.
Because such a build will probably not run with the edge 5 ork, but more likely with the edge 3 ork. (Since he thought increasing body from 6 to 8 is a much better deal)

The point a lot of people are trying to make is, that making humans better is not an easy task, because they are almost in line.
Giving them an other point of edge and increasing their costs to 10BP would probably break the balance.
The most you might give is an additional advantage for around 10 BP. (But if you allow surge, this won't be worth much)

The only character better with edge are free spirits in karmageneration + starting karma.
(Since they get 4 times the reward:
1. additional powers.
2. Additional dices for using those powers.
3. Additional dices, when using edge.
4. More uses of edge)

[LurkerOutThere]

Thanks. I was searching the Edge chapter, didn't think of the magic chapter (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Yep it's kind of a BS magicrun rule so they wouldn't put it under the edge chapter.

[Cain]

To conclude it:
Are humans the better characters:
No, nobody is saying so. There is this special build for humans allowing them to fuck the rules a bit, if the GM is handing out edge like candys he does not like.
Because such a build will probably not run with the edge 5 ork, but more likely with the edge 3 ork. (Since he thought increasing body from 6 to 8 is a much better deal)

The point a lot of people are trying to make is, that making humans better is not an easy task, because they are almost in line.
Giving them an other point of edge and increasing their costs to 10BP would probably break the balance.
The most you might give is an additional advantage for around 10 BP. (But if you allow surge, this won't be worth much)

Humans aren't better characters, but they're also not underpowered. You just have to play to their strengths. You shouldn't try to make a tank sam with a human, leave that to the orks and trolls. But speed sams? Humans and elves do very well there. Why soak when you can dodge? Riggers, deckers, and mages? You definitely should consider going human for those builds. There are advantages to going human, and they can be quite powerful if done right.