Character Generation - Best Bang for the Buck, 5th ed. Options

[Rubic]

Optimization isn't the problem. It's gaming the system that's the issue.

Basically, players who game the system can easily start an arms race between the player and the GM. In order to challenge the superior character, the GM has to game the system as well, to build superior opposition. In response, the player tries to squeeze even more advantage out of the system to counter the GM. The GM is forced to escalate back, and a dangerous spiral begins. If the GM is playing fair, the one who wins is the one who can game the system the best. Unfortunately, that's not always the GM.

By itself, this is bad enough. However, there's another serious issue: the other players. If they haven't min/maxed to the same level, they're going to get stomped by opposition designed to challenge the overpowered PC. That means they likely aren't having fun, and that is the death knell for any game.

When you put in place a set of diminishing returns, you're opening the gates to potentially gaming the system. It can end up with a battle over who can manipulate the numbers the best. That's one of the reasons I dislike a complex system, because I can get out-mathed. Hard limits are much easier to see and enforce, they work very well in theory and practice, and there's fewer opportunities to game the system.

I'd say the biggest loopholes that allow such exploitation of the rules stem from IMPLICIT prohibitions, rather than EXPLICIT, not to mention misreading of the rules. In BP gen, Initiation is IMPLIED to not be allowed, as Initiation requires Karma, which you don't get at character creation. It's not EXPLICITLY stated as such. Even in the Runner's Companion, Karmagen doesn't say that Initiation is FORBIDDEN by BP gen or itself, it just sort of alludes to this in a side-box on a page and says a GM MIGHT want to disallow it.

Power creep, as has been mentioned, is another issue, but it's easy to restrict players to the Core book and require approval for anything else. Implicit Prohibition still exacerbates the trouble with power creep as well: ([quadratically powerful Spirits] * [powercreeping possession Magi] * ([karmagen]+[not-explicitly-forbidden Initiation])) = one type of broken. Tech has a character creation restriction of availability and, for cyber-/bioware, essence. Magic doesn't generally have that availability issue.

If you look through the SR5 book for a way to break it, those Implicit Prohibitions are going to be the faults in the armor as splat books come out. LINK

[ElFenrir]

As someone who mostly plays 3e these days, I can absolutely say the Priority system can result in some powerful freaking characters. While it's not as 'game-able' as some other systems, if you know how to squeeze the points and nuyen you can really get a lot of bang for the buck, particularly for an Ork or Dwarf character. I'd actually say Ork/Dwarf could be nastier under Priority than BP, especially for Mages. A Magic(30 BP), B Resources(20 BP), C Attributes(48 BP), D Race(5 BP), E Skills(27 BP), comes out to 130...even if the player took 6 points of flaws with no edges they'd be short under the BP system. Hell, metas and mages in general I'd say 'won' under Priority compared to BP-a Troll, for example, would be Race c(10 BP), Attributes D(42 BP), for a total of 129. Human magician would be Magic-Resources-Attributes-Skills, for a total of 128 BP. (FWIW, 120 BP was the general number. You could take up to 6 points of flaws for up to 6 more Build Points.)


So certain 'combinations', per se, ended up more beneficial under Priority than Build Points even in those days. THAT being said, they were at least *close*, and I will say that 3e's general creation systems(the two book systems and Becks), remain my general favorites to this day. Optimizing Priority(since we're talking about optimizing the systems) generally involved finding the best combinations for a particular build-some of which ended up better than others.


We probably use Becks most often in 3e, FWIW, which I actually found to be a bit better balanced than 4e's Karmagen, though we used Karmagen in 4e about exclusively since we didn't like BP or the Priority system in 4e. Also, we'd work together making characters and experienced people would help inexperienced ones, and we'd be on the same page for what sort of game we'd be going for so it basically cinched up every problem. Personally, while I'm on board with trying to tweak up a nice balanced system the best you can, at the end of the day I'd make sure to add the ''Look, the most important thing is the group needs to be on the same page. Then pick your chargen system.''

[Glyph]

I think a lot of the potentially unbalancing stuff in the game falls under the category of creative interpretation of ambiguous rules, coupled with a lenient GM. Karmagen has a sidebar where allowing karma to be used for things like initiation or quickened spells is discussed, and it warns about the possible ramifications, power-wise.

Priority in SR3 was good, although the main weakness was that mundane orks and dwarves got their metatypes for free, since a D or an E for Magic were the same thing. Other than that (okay, including that, whenever I played a mundane ork or dwarf (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) ), it worked well.

Priority in SR5 is not as good. Attributes were limited in build points, so people wouldn't spend too much just on Attributes. The trouble was, most builds, even generalist ones, tended to be at, or near, this limit. The problem this creates for Priority is that they are trying to shoehorn Attributes into different priorities, when the maximum and the minimum are almost the same.

The other problem was their whole design philosophy of "everything has a price". That is an atrocious way to design a game. Essentially, it is saying, "We will give you an annoying drawback to every option you pick for your character. We will deliberately make the game less fun for you, no matter what you play." As fluff, it is nice and gritty, if a bit trite. As a concept to build a game around, it is a very poor choice.

[Cain]

Problem with GURPS and HERO (as an example) is that they have the same problem you are describing. System Mastery is KING in Hero System, for example. The More flexible the system, the more System Mastery will reward those who take the time to gain it.

True. The point was more aimed at Glyph, who felt that SR4.5 had a highly flexible system, and system mastery was a fair price to pay. If that's what you want, that's fine, but there are still better alternatives out there.

I don't know what you mean by topic ban. I was talking about SR5 priority which is our only choice and you seem to favor over any other brand of generation for unknown reasons.

Then it's a miscommunication. When I refer to Priority, I mean SR3, which I did prefer for that system. It was much less broken than BP, and much easier to use than BECKs, which was the original karmagen system. More on that later. In SR4.5, there were several systems published, including Priority. I felt all of those were crap. In SR5, I haven't experimented with the Priority system enough to feel like I know all its advantages and limitations. I'll weigh in on that when I have a better handle on it.

Karma gen uses the same system as in-game advancement, so by logic there are no wrong choices. I suppose you could say buying nuyen is a bad choice since that isn't directly transferrable in-game, but other than that any other decision is a direct 1:1. You may not like certain aspects (costs of metas, quality costs, getting high attributes) but if that's the case BP is a functional system alternative.

Are we discussing 4.5 karmagen, or a theoretical unwritten one for SR5? I can't comment on the theoretical one. However, in 4.5, there were still lots of exploitable loopholes in karmagen. Karmagen might not break in the same way that BP did, but it still broke, and just as badly in some ways.

This makes no sense. The sorcerer was created by the rules with no initiation, so how did they throw "huge spells with absolute impunity"? Any magician in SR4 could do that no matter what system they were created under.

There are many ways a mage can throw spells with impunity. This particular build used a couple of them, which I was previously unable to do in BP.

You're entitled to your opinion but just because you saw a couple people submit broken builds (by your own words, something you were TRYING to do) doesn't mean the system itself is broken.

Yes, we tried to break both BP and karmagen. Karmagen ended up breaking harder than BP did, showing that the system was more broken.

The GM never has to game the system to challenge the players. Even if your PCs are mega-star prime runners they can still be easily challenged by security drones, larger groups of mobs, spirits, etc. etc.

That's still escalation, which means the players will respond by escalating even further. It's a vicious cycle. What's more, the players who can't keep up will get stepped on, as things rapidly spiral above their abilities. It's a nasty road to go down.

I'd say the biggest loopholes that allow such exploitation of the rules stem from IMPLICIT prohibitions, rather than EXPLICIT, not to mention misreading of the rules. In BP gen, Initiation is IMPLIED to not be allowed, as Initiation requires Karma, which you don't get at character creation. It's not EXPLICITLY stated as such. Even in the Runner's Companion, Karmagen doesn't say that Initiation is FORBIDDEN by BP gen or itself, it just sort of alludes to this in a side-box on a page and says a GM MIGHT want to disallow it.

I quoted this as a reply to TJ. No, it doesn't actually forbid players from starting with initiations. It suggests that you might want to prohibit it, but it's not a by-default thing.

As someone who mostly plays 3e these days, I can absolutely say the Priority system can result in some powerful freaking characters. While it's not as 'game-able' as some other systems, if you know how to squeeze the points and nuyen you can really get a lot of bang for the buck, particularly for an Ork or Dwarf character. I'd actually say Ork/Dwarf could be nastier under Priority than BP, especially for Mages. A Magic(30 BP), B Resources(20 BP), C Attributes(48 BP), D Race(5 BP), E Skills(27 BP), comes out to 130...even if the player took 6 points of flaws with no edges they'd be short under the BP system. Hell, metas and mages in general I'd say 'won' under Priority compared to BP-a Troll, for example, would be Race c(10 BP), Attributes D(42 BP), for a total of 129. Human magician would be Magic-Resources-Attributes-Skills, for a total of 128 BP. (FWIW, 120 BP was the general number. You could take up to 6 points of flaws for up to 6 more Build Points.)


So certain 'combinations', per se, ended up more beneficial under Priority than Build Points even in those days. THAT being said, they were at least *close*, and I will say that 3e's general creation systems(the two book systems and Becks), remain my general favorites to this day. Optimizing Priority(since we're talking about optimizing the systems) generally involved finding the best combinations for a particular build-some of which ended up better than others.

Absolutely. In no version of Shadowrun could the system not be gamed. The early Priority charts, however, were somewhat more resistant to breakage, especially in comparison to SR4.5. Within SR3, of the three systems (Priority, BP, and BECKS), I found Priority to be the best. It was much less prone to abuse than BP, and was much easier to use than BECKS. All three systems could be optimized, and even broken, but for SR3 Priority always seemed to be the best.

[Irion]

When you put in place a set of diminishing returns, you're opening the gates to potentially gaming the system. It can end up with a battle over who can manipulate the numbers the best. That's one of the reasons I dislike a complex system, because I can get out-mathed. Hard limits are much easier to see and enforce, they work very well in theory and practice, and there's fewer opportunities to game the system.

No, exaclty not. Thats the point. If you really enforce deminishing returns, the guy gaming the system will be X points better in something. But he won't get much for it ingame.
You can do it with increasing costs, deminishing returns or both.

As long as you do it that way, the result would always be the same. Even if you manage to "game" the system, your returns would not be breaking the game, because they would be quite low.
For example the guy not gaming the system would only have a 5% less chance to hit, than the guy gaming the system.

And at a side note:
Karmagen created better characters in general. With a few, special exceptions (Technomancers were one of them). But that does not mean, that the system is broken. You just get more powerful characters. Don't like it? Reduce the amount of Karma given.

On a side note:
One major problem in Shadowrun 4 was, how attributes were handled. Together with the question of how spells worked (hello increase attribute) and some special characters (for example a free spirit) you could simply build a character depending on augmentations only for attributes. (The other way was the full cyber guy)
This was bullshit at any rate. The spirit was even worse, because he had a way to increase his max.
The first option is for example gone in SR 4 by making the rules for augmentations more reasonable. Still, cyberlimbs suffer still the same general issue. A strong guy loses from getting a cyberlimb (and the weak guy gets more), that sucks. (Thats probably one of the cases, where it has to do less with deminishing returns and more with beeing a simple loophole to get around Karma costs.

[Cain]

No, exaclty not. Thats the point. If you really enforce deminishing returns, the guy gaming the system will be X points better in something. But he won't get much for it ingame.
You can do it with increasing costs, deminishing returns or both.

As long as you do it that way, the result would always be the same. Even if you manage to "game" the system, your returns would not be breaking the game, because they would be quite low.
For example the guy not gaming the system would only have a 5% less chance to hit, than the guy gaming the system.

That's fine in theory. In practice, however, clever players will find the loopholes, weak points, and manipulate the system to their advantage. That happens pretty much regardless of system, so it's not just karmagen. However, a diminishing return system is much more exploitable than a hard cap system.

Karmagen created better characters in general. With a few, special exceptions (Technomancers were one of them). But that does not mean, that the system is broken. You just get more powerful characters. Don't like it? Reduce the amount of Karma given.

I disagree. Technomancers, Adepts, and Mages were, in my experience, more breakable under karmagen. Significantly more powerful in some cases. And while it was theoretically possible for me to experiment further, massage the karma amount until I found a level that reliably game me what I wanted.... why should I bother?

One major problem in Shadowrun 3 was, how attributes were handled. Together with the question of how spells worked (hello increase attribute) and some special characters (for example a free spirit) you could simply build a character depending on augmentations only for attributes. (The other way was the full cyber guy)
This was bullshit at any rate. The spirit was even worse, because he had a way to increase his max.
The first option is for example gone in SR 4 by making the rules for augmentations more reasonable. Still, cyberlimbs suffer still the same general issue. A strong guy loses from getting a cyberlimb (and the weak guy gets more), that sucks. (Thats probably one of the cases, where it has to do less with deminishing returns and more with beeing a simple loophole to get around Karma costs.

SR3 did have its problems, that's for sure. I despised the Vehicle Combat section, for one. Cyberlimbs have been an issue in every version of Shadowrun, I had to house rule them every time.

However, because SR3 is a completely different beast than SR4.5, high attributes simply didn't mean as much. Your skill was the primary source of dice, and attributes only indirectly affected that. Your allocatable pools were based on attributes, but they were kinda averaged, so one high attribute didn't change it too much.

But because SR4.5 ran with a different dice system entirely, high attributes became even more unbalancing. Attributes now directly influences your abilities, and was one of the primary sources of dice. So, even though attribute boosting was a little harder from SR4 onwards, it was more than offset by how it increased your abilities.

[ElFenrir]

Oh lordy, 3e's vehicle combat. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) Yeah, we kinda revamped that to be a lot more simple, I'll say that much. Cyberlimbs I will say that the later editions finally did much better than the early editions-the biggest early edition flaw was 'wait, this sorta...stereotypical 'gritty' piece of gear that is supposed to be quintessential...WHY do I need to take Resources Priority A for two cyberarms with just a few tweaks again?' Lowering their Nuyen cost did wonders. (Really, in 3e they came with the average stats +1 so if you wanted even like, a couple of points each it was a ginormous money sink. To this day I never understood why they were so expensive compared to even state of the art top line Shadowtech bioware.)

And yes-in 2e-3e, while Attributes were fairly important in their ways, they weren't as much the end-all be all. They had their effects-Reaction was affected, and Combat Pool(the latter being very nice to have), and in 3e they affected the cost of your skills...but really when you came down to it, the skill rolls were mostly the skill rolls, plus or minus some outside modifiers. Your grumpy detective with a 2 charisma could still have a 4(6)Etiquette(Street)-or a 5 Street Etiquette in 2e-and while in 3e it would have cost more skill points for that, he'd be rolling 5 dice for his thing. The very handsome and likeable elven street sam could have a 5 charisma, but his 2 street etiquette would make him a lot worse at it than the grump, where in the later editions, they'd be rolling the exact same amount of dice, only the elf could get away with throwing some 1's in other stuff and throwing 6 dice for most of the etiquette skills, where the grumpy detective would need a 4 in it.

Attribute + Skill systems were admittedly a lot easier to teach folks, but the issues they run into I feel are iffier than the issues that the other systems run into. The types of minmaxing done were different-again, there was totally minmaxing in the 3e days, but it was a different style-a big one I remember were 'even number breakoffs' in terms of attributes. Like you'd have a 5 in Quickness, Intelligence, and Willpower, and that's 15, for a 7 combat pool-do you suck up and use another Quickness point to get the 8 combat pool but get no reaction increase, or do you take the 4 willpower, keep the pool and reaction the same and maybe put the point into Body, and so on-and of course minmaxing when it comes to skills with specialization, the race bit with Orks and Dwarves in particular, etc.

But yeah, 3e priority was very solid. It gave you enough points that you didn't feel the need to wrack your brain or points-squeeze, but it at the same time didn't give you EVERYTHING you wanted at the start. 2e's was a little stingier(that priority E was a bit TOO harsh and had the whole 'Rich Street Shaman' syndrome), but it was good enough-3e's took it and ran with it. I think the only issue that I'd run into with 3e's priority was nuyen 'Damnit, this character I have comes out to 500k/150k..'

The other problem was their whole design philosophy of "everything has a price". That is an atrocious way to design a game. Essentially, it is saying, "We will give you an annoying drawback to every option you pick for your character. We will deliberately make the game less fun for you, no matter what you play." As fluff, it is nice and gritty, if a bit trite. As a concept to build a game around, it is a very poor choice.

After some time with 5e-while I stand by the fact I think it's good overall, I agree here. 'Everything has a price' is good for fluff and I think even good for some crunch stuff, but when you make it the exact cornerstone it gets fatiguing and eventually gets kinda unfun. The funny thing is, everything's *always* had a price(hence me thinking it works fine for some crunch), but for some reason the price got raised. At the end of the day I sorta preferred the 'price' in the 2050-2065 timeline than later.

[Irion]

I disagree. Technomancers, Adepts, and Mages were, in my experience, more breakable under karmagen. Significantly more powerful in some cases. And while it was theoretically possible for me to experiment further, massage the karma amount until I found a level that reliably game me what I wanted.... why should I bother?

Which again has nothing to do with Karmagen per say. The point is, that you got from Karma to BP nearly 2 to 1. For money this factor was correctly implemented. But for the rest, the real factor was lower. (Spells went from 3 BP to 5 Karma thats not +100%, skills stayed lower unless you got up to 6. O

And your assumption of technomancers is just flat wrong. In BP increasing a complex form from 0 to 5 costs 5 BP. In Karmagen it was 1+2+3+4+5= 15 Karma. Thats one of the rare cases where the exchange of Karma to BP was higher than 2 to 1. So no, technomancers and some metatypes builds (TankTroll) where about the only once who could come out weaker than under BP.
In Short: If you needed Money, you were "equal".
If you needed Skills, Spells, and several attributes in human range, you where better off.

However, because SR3 is a completely different beast than SR4.5, high attributes simply didn't mean as much. Your skill was the primary source of dice, and attributes only indirectly affected that. Your allocatable pools were based on attributes, but they were kinda averaged, so one high attribute didn't change it too much.

But because SR4.5 ran with a different dice system entirely, high attributes became even more unbalancing. Attributes now directly influences your abilities, and was one of the primary sources of dice. So, even though attribute boosting was a little harder from SR4 onwards, it was more than offset by how it increased your abilities.

My fault, it should have said SR 4! The 3 was a typo...

[Samoth]

True. The point was more aimed at Glyph, who felt that SR4.5 had a highly flexible system, and system mastery was a fair price to pay. If that's what you want, that's fine, but there are still better alternatives out there.

Then it's a miscommunication. When I refer to Priority, I mean SR3, which I did prefer for that system. It was much less broken than BP, and much easier to use than BECKs, which was the original karmagen system. More on that later. In SR4.5, there were several systems published, including Priority. I felt all of those were crap. In SR5, I haven't experimented with the Priority system enough to feel like I know all its advantages and limitations. I'll weigh in on that when I have a better handle on it.


Are we discussing 4.5 karmagen, or a theoretical unwritten one for SR5? I can't comment on the theoretical one. However, in 4.5, there were still lots of exploitable loopholes in karmagen. Karmagen might not break in the same way that BP did, but it still broke, and just as badly in some ways.

There are many ways a mage can throw spells with impunity. This particular build used a couple of them, which I was previously unable to do in BP.


Yes, we tried to break both BP and karmagen. Karmagen ended up breaking harder than BP did, showing that the system was more broken.

That's still escalation, which means the players will respond by escalating even further. It's a vicious cycle. What's more, the players who can't keep up will get stepped on, as things rapidly spiral above their abilities. It's a nasty road to go down.

Instead of just telling me I'm wrong, maybe you can give us some examples of how karmagen (4.5ed with eratta, or even 3rd ed Becks) was so incredibly broken compared to the other options? Unless you allowed Initiation/Submersion/Adept Power Point buys which were ALL GM DISCRETION, I just don't see it. All the moster builds I saw in 4th Ed were done with BP.

As for escalation, are the PCs just supposed to get away with everything scott free, or only engage in honorable one on one showdowns? "GM throwing more mooks at them" is not escalation, it's a secuirty force responding to a break in.

[Falconer]

Actually... I'm also firmly behind the BECKs stuff... (IIRC that one did the racial attribute mods after buying base attributes with karma... as if they were augments... which kept all the attribute costs in line, made an 'average' strength troll cost the same in karma as an average human excepting the metatype cost).

But overall, the single biggest problem with gaming chargen comes down to one major factor. Using any system which values things differently than character advancement costs. People will game it to minimize karma expenditures later by exacting maximum 'value' up front.


The biggest problem with karmagen (as published)... is that karma costs are way out of whack. Attributes in particular are extremely undercosted for as much as they do. I think the system as a whole would do well to simply double karma awards outright... double attribute costs. Leave skills alone. IE: attributes would advance as slowly/quickly as they do now... but skills & skill groups would be much cheaper in comparison.

[Cain]

Instead of just telling me I'm wrong, maybe you can give us some examples of how karmagen (4.5ed with eratta, or even 3rd ed Becks) was so incredibly broken compared to the other options? Unless you allowed Initiation/Submersion/Adept Power Point buys which were ALL GM DISCRETION, I just don't see it. All the moster builds I saw in 4th Ed were done with BP.

As for escalation, are the PCs just supposed to get away with everything scott free, or only engage in honorable one on one showdowns? "GM throwing more mooks at them" is not escalation, it's a secuirty force responding to a break in.

I tried earlier, but for one, I'm not going to dig through huge piles of junk to see if I even kept character sheets i rejected many years ago. For two, I'm not going to waste the effort trying to rebuild them. So you're going to have to accept a general description of a way-overpowered spellcaster and a significantly overpowered shooter.

I don't recall BECKS enough to remember how it worked, but I do remember that in SR3, adepts could buy PP for 20 karma. Initiations weren't necessary, so even if BECKS forbade pre-game initiation, this exploit was still possible.

Next, there is a very clear difference between realistic consequences and escalation. If the PC's manage to keep the realistic consequences to a minimal level, with little threat, that's fine. But when the only way to challenge one character is mooks-from-the-woodwork, Red Samurai cyberzombies, or heavily armed drone fleets, something has gone wrong. What's more, the other characters, who aren't as optimized, will get mowed under while the powerful one will just be sweating a little.

Which again has nothing to do with Karmagen per say. The point is, that you got from Karma to BP nearly 2 to 1. For money this factor was correctly implemented. But for the rest, the real factor was lower. (Spells went from 3 BP to 5 Karma thats not +100%, skills stayed lower unless you got up to 6. O

Again, nice theory. But the practice is, people will find the loopholes and breaking points. Karmagen had breaking points. They were different breaking points than BP, but they were still there.

[Mikado]

Man... I keep seeing the same complaints with karmagen. To easy to break...

What is the definition of broken that you are using?

To easy to get skills or stats to high levels? Initiation or Submersion? I do not understand...

Apples to apples if all the systems (karmagen, build points, sum to ten, priority) use the SAME RULES (hard limits for skills or attributes, no initiation, etc.) for character creation only one of them removes completely the disparity between getting one attribute at 6 vs. getting two at 4 or getting a skill 8 vs. 3 at 5... (Again - just throwing numbers out, someone else can do the math)
They all allow for one or two high skills or attributes so they all break in that way. However, the after creation "virtual karma" disparity completely disappears with karmagen. Every character made with 500 karma is worth 500 karma, no more no less. That leaves the choice to get a skill at 8 or three skills at 5 up to the player and not due to a completely measurable difference in the virtual costs (after creation advancement) with any of the other systems.

Now, I will say that yes, there is a difference with how much karma to give vs. the BP or priority system but I ask that you ignore that for a minute and just look at the game if it only had one system (BP, karmagen, sum to 10 or priority) and compare it to the after character advancement system, which is the best for making characters? Again... if all of them had the SAME RULES or LIMITS for creation.

Now, I doubt that I will change any minds with this line of questioning but hopefully you will understand why I think karmagen has the least flaws for character creation.

EDIT: Also, any arguments to the point costs between the different systems are pointless. The point differences are due to a conversion error with not having a true representation of the costs when applied to different systems, like race costs. If a true costs analysis was done then you would not have build points or karmagen giving inflated points to work with.

[thorya]

Instead of just telling me I'm wrong, maybe you can give us some examples of how karmagen (4.5ed with eratta, or even 3rd ed Becks) was so incredibly broken compared to the other options? Unless you allowed Initiation/Submersion/Adept Power Point buys which were ALL GM DISCRETION, I just don't see it. All the moster builds I saw in 4th Ed were done with BP.

As for escalation, are the PCs just supposed to get away with everything scott free, or only engage in honorable one on one showdowns? "GM throwing more mooks at them" is not escalation, it's a secuirty force responding to a break in.

I don't really have a horse in this race, but here's some comparisons from SR4:

If you are trying to break things for the highest shooting dice pool for a mundane you get 24 either way. (Elf Maxed Agi + Metagenic improvement + muscle toner 4 (total 12) + skill 7 + reflex recorder + smart link + specialization) It costs 178 BP or 312 karma, so to get that level of broken, it's slightly "cheaper" to go with karma if you consider karma exchange as 2:1. There's probably a few more tweaks you could make to go higher, but those will largely be other 'ware and equipment that's pretty much the same cost for either.

You can push it further by taking adept and improved ability for +2. That increases it to 193 BP or 332 karma. So in terms of the ultra focused gun bunny, the ability to break the system is pretty much the same. It gets closer if you apply the karma cost for the metatype.

How about the dodge ninja:

You can get the defense roll up to 16 (max reaction 6 + metagenic improvement + improved physical attribute Rea + combat sense 6 + improved reflexes 2) + 6 ((IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) from dodge. That costs 321 karma and 155 BP. So again the two are roughly the same in that direction. It seems like neither one creates a major difference in terms of broken mundane characters or really offers much either way in keeping people from building these characters if they want.

[Glyph]

Karmagen comes out more powerful than build points - Irion's analysis was dead-on. It does away with the "most value up front" min-maxing of build points, but that is a mixed blessing, because it frees players to focus on "powerful right out of the gate". Both methods of character creation have the same hard limits (one Attribute at maximum, one skill of 6 or two skills of 5 and the rest 4 or lower, Availability of 12, etc.). If you set out to maximize one thing, such as pistols skill or dodging, you will get the same numbers with either system. The difference is that karmagen is likelier to leave you enough points left over to make a more fleshed-out character. Or if you are not interested in that, you might have enough points left to get abilities to complement your main one (adding an Edge of 6 to a marksman, etc.).

I prefer karmagen for mature players who are not out to break the game. I find that players who can get what they want will often min-max less than they would under a more stringent character creation system. For more min-maxing types of players, you could always use something like Tyro's low-powered karmagen:

600 Karma with German errata, max avail. 8, no restricted gear, max natural attributes 5 + racial modifiers, max skill 3 with two 4's or one 5, max base starting cash 150k (no born rich, in debt allowed but gives no points), max magic 4, max edge 4/5 for humans, max Connection rating for contacts of 3.

[ElFenrir]

I prefer karmagen for mature players who are not out to break the game. I find that players who can get what they want will often min-max less than they would under a more stringent character creation system.

This right here. The table I play at are all types who aren't out to fight each other or be the best of everything. We just want to do our thing.

And I'll totally admit myself, though-even though I typically just want to make whatever character as they are, I do find myself feeling more chafed under certain systems, and more likely to want to just sorta strike out a bit. Under a more lax system, I'm not like that at all. I think it's a little mental block sorta thing-when I feel like someone's trying to force a lot of limits on me, I want to try to break them just for a challenge-chargen starts to kinda become a 'game' for me. When you hand me a system with only some light, reasonable limitations(I mean, you couldn't purchase a skill over 6 in the old days either at chargen without Aptitude), I don't even get the urge to 'test stuff out.' It's not even that I like making OP/Win It All types, I just end up trying to bend a system more the more limits it puts on me. Like that low-power Karmagen? I'd be trying to bend that back and forth and probably end up with something more minmaxed than I would under the more powerful Karmagen(UNLESS we were specifically playing a low-power street level game, in which case I'd be fine with it.)

3e's Becks I think was a bit better balanced than 4e's Karmagen, but even then-we just were out to be able to have more freedom with the points, and preferred how the stuff cost the same in game.

[Glyph]

I liked Becks a lot. It was ahead of its time, in that it let you buy spell points and contacts separately (rather than out of your starting money), and starting money itself was broken into increments, rather than the lurching jumps of Priority (20,000 to 90,000, or 90,000 to 400,000). I was indifferent to the philosophy behind it (making character creation more in synch with character advancement). It was the extra degree of customization it allowed that drew me in.

[Cain]

Man... I keep seeing the same complaints with karmagen. To easy to break...

What is the definition of broken that you are using?

Broken is a relative term. Basically, I define a character as broken when it's power is significantly out of step with the others. There's no one objective point where a character becomes broken, it depends on the group as a whole.

That said, my experiments were with a group of characters that were already min/maxed heavily. Most of the karmagen characters we came up with seemed broken in relation to that.

Now, I will say that yes, there is a difference with how much karma to give vs. the BP or priority system but I ask that you ignore that for a minute and just look at the game if it only had one system (BP, karmagen, sum to 10 or priority) and compare it to the after character advancement system, which is the best for making characters? Again... if all of them had the SAME RULES or LIMITS for creation.

The best?

Best for what?

Best at creating balanced characters? None of the 4.5 systems fit that bill in my book.

Easiest to use and understand? In general, I'd say priority, but the SR4.5 version was crap. Of the ones for SR4.5, BP was unfortunately the easiest to use, and I thought it was extremely dense and unforgiving.

Most in line with ongoing character advancement? Karmagen.

I didn't find any of the systems to be particularly good at anything, although some were better in some areas than others.

I prefer karmagen for mature players who are not out to break the game. I find that players who can get what they want will often min-max less than they would under a more stringent character creation system.

My experience is somewhat different. It's easier to control min/maxers under a simpler system, and more mature players are often more satisfied with simpler systems as well. Heck, mature players don't even need a system; you can simply assign stats as you see fit, and they'll be okay with that.

[Mikado]

Karmagen comes out more powerful than build points - Irion's analysis was dead-on. It does away with the "most value up front" min-maxing of build points, but that is a mixed blessing, because it frees players to focus on "powerful right out of the gate". Both methods of character creation have the same hard limits (one Attribute at maximum, one skill of 6 or two skills of 5 and the rest 4 or lower, Availability of 12, etc.). If you set out to maximize one thing, such as pistols skill or dodging, you will get the same numbers with either system. The difference is that karmagen is likelier to leave you enough points left over to make a more fleshed-out character. Or if you are not interested in that, you might have enough points left to get abilities to complement your main one (adding an Edge of 6 to a marksman, etc.).

You should get the same numbers regardless of what creation system you are using.

In this instance karmagen is giving you to many points and therefore is unbalanced. If you reduce the karma given by 75 (100... 125...) will it be better balanced overall across multiple builds? If so then the answer is simple; the game designers gave you to many points to begin with so therefore the book value should be reduced.

If the only argument why karmagen is overpowered is because the designers gave it to many points then I do not know what to tell you except that the designers should accept that the player base may know what they are talking about and should reduce it. So far, from what I have seen, that is the main (only?) complaint of karmagen.

I will take this problem (and correct it myself at my table by reducing points) instead of the disparity between the priority/BP/Sto10 creation points and advancement costs if it gives players an equal footing in virtual costs. If a player builds a "subpar" character for 500 karma and does not have any dice pools greater than 10 and another builds a character with only 2 or 3 skills at a dice pool of 20 each for that same 500 karma the builds are still equal at 500 karma. Therefore, the one with the "subpar" build will spend in-game karma to max out 2 or 3 skills while the other will spend his karma "rounding out" his build... they even out in the end. This DOES NOT happen with the other systems.

[Mikado]

The best?

Best for what?

Best at creating balanced characters? None of the 4.5 systems fit that bill in my book.

Easiest to use and understand? In general, I'd say priority, but the SR4.5 version was crap. Of the ones for SR4.5, BP was unfortunately the easiest to use, and I thought it was extremely dense and unforgiving.

Most in line with ongoing character advancement? Karmagen.

I didn't find any of the systems to be particularly good at anything, although some were better in some areas than others.

I am not talking about any particular version of SR, only the design philosophy of the creation systems.

If you are using the same rules in regards to limits and such and assuming a true cost template regarding race, qualities, money, etc. which one gives you the best result regarding virtual cost diferences from creation to advancement, does not punish players for choosing a "subpar" choice vs. buying the best right out of the gate.

All of the systems other than karmagen do punish players for choosing a subpar choice and can vary in virtual costs by up to 200 karma in advancement costs.

[Glyph]

You should get the same numbers regardless of what creation system you are using.

In this instance karmagen is giving you to many points and therefore is unbalanced. If you reduce the karma given by 75 (100... 125...) will it be better balanced overall across multiple builds? If so then the answer is simple; the game designers gave you to many points to begin with so therefore the book value should be reduced.

There really isn't any way, at least that I can see, that you can make two build systems come out equally all of the time, when one of them uses flat costs and one of them uses incrementally increasing costs. My personal recommendation would be to use one or the other, since they are roughly equivalent but not equal. The downside of karmagen is that it is not suited for making AIs or free spirits, is unfriendly to tank builds and technomancers, and tends to create slightly more powerful characters. The upside of karmagen is that it discourages "front-loading", results in slightly more "organic"-looking characters, keeps character creation and character advancement more closely aligned, and makes much, much more viable generalist builds.

Both are very customizable, though, so it is not too difficult to tweak either one of them for an individual campaign (such as Tyro's rules I quoted earlier).

If the only argument why karmagen is overpowered is because the designers gave it to many points then I do not know what to tell you except that the designers should accept that the player base may know what they are talking about and should reduce it. So far, from what I have seen, that is the main (only?) complaint of karmagen.

Ha! The last (unofficial) word was to raise the amount of karma to 1,000! Which, while a nice amount, is really something more suited for building high-powered prime runners than default starting characters.

[Irion]

The biggest problem with karmagen (as published)... is that karma costs are way out of whack. Attributes in particular are extremely undercosted for as much as they do. I think the system as a whole would do well to simply double karma awards outright... double attribute costs. Leave skills alone. IE: attributes would advance as slowly/quickly as they do now... but skills & skill groups would be much cheaper in comparison.

Well, thats one idea. The problem here is always, what is about the rest of those possibilities. You double karma reward and you double attribute costs will lead to more karma beeing available for skills, spells, foci etc.pp. This will again have kind of an extrem effect on the balance between mundane and magical characters....
(True, at least the "I get an magic attribute as high as I want would be off the table)
But then again you would need to think about how to manage the thing with the essence loss and magic.
Because having such high attribut costs, will make it really worth to lose your essence early on. Between 3 to 4 and 5 to 6 would be a total of 20 points of Karma or 4 spells.....
And espacially metas would be in quite a hard place with such high costs, compared to other forms of investments. So I guess you should start introducing modifiers instead of just starting values. (For example for every point of essence lost, you get -1 Magic or -1 drain resistance alternating, or something like that. Metas should ignore their bonus to the attribut, when calculating the new costs etc. (which of course would make them a bit more expensive or you give humans another kind of bonus).

@glyph

600 Karma with German errata, max avail. 8, no restricted gear, max natural attributes 5 + racial modifiers, max skill 3 with two 4's or one 5, max base starting cash 150k (no born rich, in debt allowed but gives no points), max magic 4, max edge 4/5 for humans, max Connection rating for contacts of 3.

Yes, hard limits are the easiest way to balance starting characters. But one should be aware of the fact, that this will lead to quite similar starting characters.

My personal recommendation would be to use one or the other, since they are roughly equivalent but not equal. The downside of karmagen is that it is not suited for making AIs or free spirits, is unfriendly to tank builds and technomancers, and tends to create slightly more powerful characters.

Some notes to that:
1. AIs and Free spirits do not actually have a problem with the Karma system. It just seams that there was nobody willing to sit the fuck down and write a reasonable table for the Karmacosts for all metatypes. (So it just went to BP=Karma or no costs. And all of those options are kind of silly, depending on the metatype) (Not to mention that those types can quite easy break the game. Just thing of the "I have a pact with half of the world spirit)
2. Troll Tanks: Here lies the problem in the way attribute boni are handled. If they would be handled like augmentations, just adding their value without increasing the costs, the issue would not exist. (This problem also exists ingame)
3. Technomancers have only the issue with complex forms. Which are way to expensive for what they do, espacially compared to spells. (And this problem also exists ingame)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

You should get the same numbers regardless of what creation system you are using.

In this instance karmagen is giving you to many points and therefore is unbalanced. If you reduce the karma given by 75 (100... 125...) will it be better balanced overall across multiple builds? If so then the answer is simple; the game designers gave you to many points to begin with so therefore the book value should be reduced.

If the only argument why karmagen is overpowered is because the designers gave it to many points then I do not know what to tell you except that the designers should accept that the player base may know what they are talking about and should reduce it. So far, from what I have seen, that is the main (only?) complaint of karmagen.

I will take this problem (and correct it myself at my table by reducing points) instead of the disparity between the priority/BP/Sto10 creation points and advancement costs if it gives players an equal footing in virtual costs. If a player builds a "subpar" character for 500 karma and does not have any dice pools greater than 10 and another builds a character with only 2 or 3 skills at a dice pool of 20 each for that same 500 karma the builds are still equal at 500 karma. Therefore, the one with the "subpar" build will spend in-game karma to max out 2 or 3 skills while the other will spend his karma "rounding out" his build... they even out in the end. This DOES NOT happen with the other systems.

You do realize that the designers think they screwed up the Karma Allocation for SR4A, Right? Jason has gone on record as saying it should be 1000 Karma (ludicrous, I know, but there you go). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

Edit: Looks like Glyph covered that one. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Cain]

I am not talking about any particular version of SR, only the design philosophy of the creation systems.

If you are using the same rules in regards to limits and such and assuming a true cost template regarding race, qualities, money, etc. which one gives you the best result regarding virtual cost diferences from creation to advancement, does not punish players for choosing a "subpar" choice vs. buying the best right out of the gate.

All of the systems other than karmagen do punish players for choosing a subpar choice and can vary in virtual costs by up to 200 karma in advancement costs.

I'm not sure I get what you're asking.

While I dislike how all the SR4.5 systems work in practice, I don't think for a moment that the designer's philosophy was "How can we screw the players?" Every system is going to have optimal and suboptimal choices, and is going to encourage certain options and discourage ("punish") others. Karmagen does it too, it just does it in different ways. I don't think the theory behind any one system is superior to the others.

Besides which, karma totals aren't an accurate measure of character ability. What matters is how that karma is spent. More specifically, in SR4.5, power is measured in direct relation to the size of your dice pool.

[Samoth]

Regardless of which build systems you prefer, the biggest problem with Shadowrun in my opinion is that it is incredibly difficult for new players to get into. There are so many trap options and straight up bad deals in character generation that you are rewarded for having complete system mastery. This is the only game I play so I have no problem being really into the rules, knowing what obscure forum post to reference to get something working, knowing what printing of books have the correct rules fixes, etc. to understand how the game should be run, but I can't expect anyone else to care as much as I do and that's a big problem.

Catalyst expects everyone to come into this game with years of experience, and then offer no help when their own rules are incomplete or contradictory.

[Sendaz]

Catalyst expects everyone to come into this game with years of experience, and then offer no help when their own rules are incomplete or contradictory.

It does certainly feel that way a lot of the time when going through parts of the book.