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

[Sengir]

So in general in SR 4 you get less than 2 skills to half the maximum raiting for the cost of one skill to the maximum raiting.

Which is relevant because? Whether the limit is 6, 12, or 50, the gain from having a skill at 6 remains the same, the cost for achieving this gain remains the same, therefore no change at all.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Well, in the 4. Edition you could start with a maxed out skill, so...
(And due to some things in the BP system (Powerfocus anyone) you could get a lot of bang for the buck.)

Even Karma has a similar Problem:
Getting one skill to max costs:
SR4: 44 Karma (R6)
SR5: 158 Karma(R12)

Getting a skill to at least one half max:
SR4: 28 Karma (R3)
SR5: 44 Karma (R6)

So in general in SR 4 you get less than 2 skills to half the maximum raiting for the cost of one skill to the maximum raiting. In SR5 we are talking about more than 3 almost 4 skills. So it is better. Other games go up to 5.

It gets even more explicit if you look how many skills you may raise for the last points or evenjust for the point from 9 to 10 compared to 5 to 6.

In SR4 you always should have maxed your main skills, before it was reasonable to raise secondary once. An argument could be made for the first point, but nothing above that. In SR5 it ain't that bad anymore. So a gun bunny who did not max his pistols skill is still viable and not "meh are you stuuupid". In SR4 a gun bunny with a pistol skill of 4 would have been seen as "not optimized" to put it mildly.

And yet in SR4A I have almost no characters (Maybe 2 out of 50 or so) with a Pistol Skill above 3, and they work just fine (DP's of about 12 with Specialties). But then, My assumptions are to go for something that makes sense, rather than stacking the skill to the stratosphere just because I can. The attitude that you are stupid if you don't maximize your skills does nothing more than piss me off. *shrug*

[Irion]

@Sengir
Well, relevant to the questions of how many maxed skill will be there in SR5 in comparism to Shadowrun 4. I say much less.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

@Sengir
Well, relevant to the questions of how many maxed skill will be there in SR5 in comparism to Shadowrun 4. I say much less.

Probably about the same, from what I am seeing.

[Samoth]

And yet in SR4A I have almost no characters (Maybe 2 out of 50 or so) with a Pistol Skill above 3, and they work just fine (DP's of about 12 with Specialties). But then, My assumptions are to go for something that makes sense, rather than stacking the skill to the stratosphere just because I can. The attitude that you are stupid if you don't maximize your skills does nothing more than piss me off. *shrug*

You have a real problem with understanding what this conversation is about. Again, nobody cares about your sweet characters with bad skills and how cool and awesome they are, this is a conversation about maximizing the build units in a restrictive generation system that is entirely different from the in-game progression system for no reason.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

You have a real problem with understanding what this conversation is about. Again, nobody cares about your sweet characters with bad skills and how cool and awesome they are, this is a conversation about maximizing the build units in a restrictive generation system that is entirely different from the in-game progression system for no reason.

Not really, No.
It is not about... You know what, never mind. Not really worth it... *shrug*

[yesferatu]

Wow, this thread certainly took off.
1. Falconer, I think I decided to go with tjn's suggestion (tier C magic) because the cost of buying a spell will never go up. It's always going to be 5, not some multiple of 5, so it's arguably as cheap to buy these later as it is to buy them at creation when karma is limited. I'd still need to eventually buy up either Magic or Edge, but that's just 1 or 2 stats vs. the cost of increasing a bunch of normal stats or skills later.

2. There are obviously concerns beyond maxing everything when building a character. I started this thread specifically because I wanted to discuss the merits of each of the priority options (specifically for a shaman) and how which got the most karmic value in the long run.

3. I think the discussion has been *mostly* helpful.

[Glyph]

Even Karma has a similar Problem:
Getting one skill to max costs:
SR4: 44 Karma (R6)
SR5: 158 Karma(R12)

Getting a skill to at least one half max:
SR4: 28 Karma (R3)
SR5: 44 Karma (R6)

Just a minor correction - getting a skill of 3 costs 14 karma, not 28.


The math end of min-maxing is fairly simple. In any character creation system with flat costs at the beginning and exponential costs for advancement, getting things at the highest rating you can is the "optimal" choice. For specific characters, it gets more complicated, because you have to balance specialization versus versatility, effectiveness starting out versus how cheaply the character can improve after the game starts, and the opportunity cost of everything you are getting. And metagame considerations can skew the math. For example, if you know the GM gives big paydays but is stingy on karma, then starting out light in 'ware might make sense, even though normally it gives comparatively cheap boosts.

[Irion]

Right. Damn, and I was already wondering why my argumentation worked that good... Well, so it is only the point how many points you get for the higher once. Well, still OK, I guess.

[Falconer]

Wow, this thread certainly took off.
1. Falconer, I think I decided to go with tjn's suggestion (tier C magic) because the cost of buying a spell will never go up. It's always going to be 5, not some multiple of 5, so it's arguably as cheap to buy these later as it is to buy them at creation when karma is limited. I'd still need to eventually buy up either Magic or Edge, but that's just 1 or 2 stats vs. the cost of increasing a bunch of normal stats or skills later.

The question isn't if it ever goes up.. it is what is the marginal karma totals for each. Pri C magic... is actually pretty bad on that score. You get no skills. A weak magic attribute... you spend all three special attribues from Pri D human on raising them... edge gets no love and gets dumpstated.

Marginal costs...
Priority B->A attributes... == +70 karma, 4 more points used to softmax another attribute. Assuming you spent the prior points for max karma... that would leave dumpstats at 1 waiting for karma expenditure for cheap raises to 2 or 3.

Priority B->A Magic == 55karma magic increase (4->6). 3 extra spells 15 karma. There's 70 karma right there equaling the extra attribute points. 2 skills at rank 4->5 are pure bonus karma over that... 10 karma each. Plus you can spend remainder skill points from the normal distro to raise those to 6 each for even better value. Hence why I said you're poo pooing the value of those extra spells. Yes they cost doesn't scale but they are karma in the bank.

So by your own criteria... you've cheated yourself out of lot of karma... And priority A attributes is not a better value for a mage/shaman.


The real question though is skills...
Priority B -> A skills most efficient spend... +10 more skill points (36/6== 6 maxed out skills). and +5 skill group (5 ranks in one group... and more in another). One new skill R6 (42karma), R4 (20karma), Skill group R5->6(30karma), Group R4 (50karma) == 142 karma total bonus.

Though viewed this way...
Pri A magic, C skills... you end up with 38 total skill points, 2 skill groups, 10 spells, and a rating 6 mag attr... all special attribute points go into edge... raising that for more karma value.
Pri A skills, Pri C Mag... you end up with 46 total skill points, 10 skill groups, 5 spells, and rating 3 mag attr.... any special attribute points go into magic... dumping edge.
So as you can see it's nowhere near as clearcut...


Here's part of the rub though... it's easier to raise skills in play than it is attributes... (you spend the karma 10 or so at a time... instead of needing to hoard 30 or 40 points worth). Also the opportunity cost of Pri A skills... is you need Pri B & C magic and attributes...

In terms of maxing karma... Pri E is resources of course... (you can go with the cash for karma/vice versa but it's a poor measure IMO).

[Cain]

And why would that be? Because with the right priority combination you will run out of skills to max and have to spread points elsewhere?

In SR3, there was no skill cap past chargen. Given enough time and karma, you could have a skill of 20 or higher. Granted, I don't even want to calculate how much karma that would take you, but it's how it worked. Fastjack's Computer skill was probably that high. The starting max was 6, so there was no way a starting character could compete with legends. Also, skills were more important, since they were the primary source of dice. That higher skill really meant something.

In SR4.5, the highest possible skill rating was 7. Period. What's more, you could easily start with that right out of the gate. So, you could have a starting character that would give Fastjack a run for his money. In fact, thanks to the dice pool inflation problem, you could often create characters that could make statted legendary characters whimper and beg for their mommy. Skills became a very small component of your dice pool, and thus, much less important.

SR5 moved back to the older method. Since skills are capped at 12, and the starting max is still 6, So, again, a starting character couldn't compete with a legend. Which, IMO, is as it should be. It gives player characters something to strive for. There's still problems with dice pool inflation and skills not mattering as much as attributes and gear, but it is better.

[tjn]

Though viewed this way...
Pri A magic, C skills... you end up with 38 total skill points, 2 skill groups, 10 spells, and a rating 6 mag attr... all special attribute points go into edge... raising that for more karma value.
Pri A skills, Pri C Mag... you end up with 46 total skill points, 10 skill groups, 5 spells, and rating 3 mag attr.... any special attribute points go into magic... dumping edge.
So as you can see it's nowhere near as clearcut...

Did you actually do the math? Skills A and Magic C comes out to 507 karma for me (using specializations). Magic A and Skills C comes out at 436. A difference of 71 karma is pretty clear cut to me.

Let's put Race at D for both set ups, dump edge in the Skills A scenario and get the full five with the Magic A scenario. To make up that difference from Edge 2 to 5 would take 60 karma. So now they have the same Edge, but the Skills A scenario still comes out 11 karma ahead. It's not much but 11 is always greater than 0.

The problem comes when you start throwing in other meta considerations, like when you referenced the need to hoard large stashes of karma for improving attributes vs the constant need to spend a little karma to acquire or upgrade something useful for an upcoming run, or the value of getting an exceptionally high dice pool in a specific thing might take resources from multiple priorities and getting the right mix lowers the overall karma equivalency, or as Glyph said previously up thread, if you know the GM is stingy on either Karma or Nuyen but has large payouts of the other, you should probably load up with the other in character creation, and if you're playing with TJ, you need to optimize for "realism" as the table requires it.

These things absolutely need to be taken into consideration during the optimization process for character creation to tailor the character for play at a specific table, but they don't actually effect the raw karma equivalency. My table looks down on leaving any attribute at 1 unless the player specifically wants to make, say, a "clumsy" character with Agi of 1, and that fact is integral to the identity of that character. But it's a meta consideration.

The problem I have with meta considerations, overall, is that each table is different and what is considered verboten at one, is common place at the other, and further, when a poster comes along with anecdotal optimization, it's almost always tinged towards their own personal table. As an example, some people don't follow the times needed for improving stats, while others do... and that one single fact is going to have huge considerations on how to approach optimal character creation. Which is why I feel that the math, and going back to what the book actually says, is important: it is the only baseline we have that is independent of table dynamics.

[Falconer]

tjn:
very quick reply... no I didn't include specializations... forgot about those. Only did the maxed skills 1->6.

That would be a way to get more value for the 'remainder' points in skills...

As far as the rest... edg 5 vs. 11 extra skills karma (including specializations)... I would get rid of the extra karma... why? In play... that 11 karma skills is the differnce between one rank 4 -> 5 skill. Edge though... it's huge... 5 edge is 5 extra dice to any skill on demand as well as a few other uses.

Essentially you're talking the difference between a character with one extra R6 skill... vs one with 5 edge... who can 5 times add 5 dice to any skill check when needing a boost.



Also I disagree with the flat out pay 60 karma to raise edge to 5... where are you doing that in chargen? That's going to have to happen later in play... and such a char is probably going to languish with no more than 3 edge for most of his career and take his skills advantage to the bank.

This simply touches into one of the other aspects of the game which wasn't addressed well in SR5. Attributes are undercosted and over important compared to skills. Having a ton of ranks in a skill doesn't matter if the limit is so low as to not matter. Sorry but the 2:5 ratio on karma for skills:attributes is just way too high given that all attributes add to compared to skills.

Though you are technically correct... the very best kind of correct... heh. I had forgotten specialization karma value on skills which does push the values up slightly higher.

[yesferatu]

Unless my math is wrong, keeping Magic at C (assuming skills A) only costs you 10 skill points and 5 spells (or 25 karma) which can be made back in other ways.
Bumping Attributes down to B or C costs between 4 and 8 points, which are the most expensive to increase later. Skills are even worse as prioritizing them costs 10 to 18 skill points and 8/10 group points (which are basically the same cost as attributes). You can't make those group points back at character creation, but you can easily make up the 10 magic-related skill points in other ways.

I would argue that Magic A is the least cost effective, as it only gets basically 6 Attribute points, 10 skills and 50 karma worth of spells.
As a human, you can buy yourself up to 3 edge with karma, which isn't terrible.

[tjn]

Essentially you're talking the difference between a character with one extra R6 skill... vs one with 5 edge... who can 5 times add 5 dice to any skill check when needing a boost.

Argh, I'm sorry, I think I screwed up and forgot to include some of the skill groups or something, which would add a lot more versatility and reliability to the types of roles the character could sub in for, at the cost of being really awesome more often when you really need it and a larger magical repertoire. And yes, that's essentially what the trade off comes down to. But also, because of that trade off, both characters will play differently, and that difference should inform both the characterization of that character for story purposes, and the game choices the player makes, as a player who believes the dice are out to get him should probably invest in a high edge.

If someone can double check my math so I can stop talking out my ass:

[ Spoiler ]

CODE

              Skills A, Magic C, Race D (Human) vs Magic A, Skills C, Race D (Human)
Magic:                                  6 (105) vs 6 (105)
Edge:                                     2 (0) vs 5 (60)
Skill group 1:                          6 (105) vs 2 (15)
Skill group 2:                           4 (50) vs 0 (0)
Number of skills at 6 (42 karma each):  7 (294) vs 6 (252)
Specializations (7 karma each):          4 (28) vs 2 (14)
Spells (5 karma each):                   5 (25) vs 10 (50)
Totals:                                     607 vs 496

It comes out a bit bigger than I first thought (unless I'm missing something else, again), at 101 karma. Is having an awesome Edge worth that? Depends on the table. However once we start the meta considerations based upon your own table, there are other considerations. Magic A has more spells, and spells usually take longer to learn than skills, so that might start the player to lean towards Magic A, especially if the character's only role is to be a mage and so they wouldn't need quite so many skill points. But then if your group is on the small side and the mage generally has to pull double time as the group's face, as well as it's magic support, those extra skills start looking really nice.

And that's the problem for any kind of character building once you get past the math, because the answer of whether to go with choice A or choice B will always be, "it depends."

Also I disagree with the flat out pay 60 karma to raise edge to 5... where are you doing that in chargen?

It was in a magical, handwavey, let's-try-and-make-the-stats-equal land. Personally I have no problem giving karma like it's candy, because as a GM as I can drop all the thor shots I want, if I really care to. If my players all agreed that they wanted to start with extra karma, I'd have no problem and I would change the campaign to suit the new paradigm. However under more normal circumstances, yes you're right, the character is going to probably stick to an edge of 3, which is, imo, workable, but again that depends on how edge refreshes at your individual table.

This simply touches into one of the other aspects of the game which wasn't addressed well in SR5. Attributes are undercosted and over important compared to skills. Having a ton of ranks in a skill doesn't matter if the limit is so low as to not matter. Sorry but the 2:5 ratio on karma for skills:attributes is just way too high given that all attributes add to compared to skills.

I make no argument that the design balance between attributes and skills isn't screwy when comparing value to cost. This is yet another meta consideration: yes, there will be one priority arrangement that will get you the most karma, but is that karma spent in a way that gives you the most value? At what point does the sheer weight of extra karma give way to the value of under-costed stats? And the question of whether a stat is adequately valued in karma is inherently a subjective one, and it is going to differ from player to player.

At my table, I took BP generation in SR4.5 out behind the woodshed because of what I viewed as inconsistencies in value. I might make a similar house rule for SR5 after I get a campaign with the normal rules under my belt, but I'm also of the opinion that the ratio of 2k nuyen per karma is a little out of whack too, but either way, it's what the book says. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/indifferent.gif) Once you start tinkering with the ratios of how much each stat costs in karma to increase, the whole comparative system goes out the window because the assumptions change, and if we're going that far, we might as well retool character creation altogether from the ground up.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I am all for re-tooling Character Gen. Karma Gen all the Way. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[tjn]

I am all for re-tooling Character Gen. Karma Gen all the Way. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

See the problem with that, at least for my table, is that I actually like the paradigm of a team of specialists in their own role, coming together to not only cover the shortcomings of other teammates, but to have well defined areas of gameplay in which that player shines, and over the course of play each character begins to learn from the others and shores up their own weaknesses through their shared experiences.

Think Leverage. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

But this really only works under a system that rewards initial specialization and branching out over the course of play like the current linear/exponential system, and a pure karma system tends encourage building generalist runners who have very little in the way of differences from a systems play perspective. This can lead to spotlight problems where the player have no defined roles and are stepping on each other's toes. But for me, the major thought is that if all the characters have very similar stats... why am I using that system in the first place? If there's little functional difference no matter what action I attempt because the "smart" move is to generalize, why am I using that system, especially one as complicated as SR's is, if I can sit down with my friends and use the system: pick up 8 dice, roll them and tell a story from their outcome. Saves a ton of time and effort, but that really undermines the "game" aspect of an rpg for me.

So for my table, I'd need something different. /shrug. But a karma system definitely works for a significant part of the fan base of SR! And it's got the advantage of being consistent and therefore simpler than any linear/exponent system.

What I'd probably do is set all attributes at 2, make up a new flaw where a player can put a single attribute down to 1 rather than dealing with the min/max problems, and give Athletics 1, Stealth 1, Etiquette 2, and a combat skill at 2 free to all runners. Then I'd adjust the total points from skills priority and attribute priority, and make all priority steps roughly equivalent in karma efficiency such that there's a higher floor on attributes and skills so less of a huge drop like in the current case of Skills A to B. Probably 3k nuyen to karma, maybe more. Skills are 1.5 x new rating (round up). Skill groups are 3 x new rating. Shift down all aspected magicians one priority. Mystic Adepts limited to A or B priority only, and have one less magic than normal mages. Races would take serious revision. Alchemy gets taken out behind the woodshed. Wireless bonuses get to come along too, but everything is hackable. Make hacking less powerful, but require only one roll per thing accomplished.

Okay, now see... I gotta pull my way out of the rabbit hole I'm digging here. Once there's one change in the assumption from the base of SR5... why stop there?

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

The thing I like about Karma Gen is that you can Still Specialize, it just comes with the cost of diminishing returns.
Or you can generate a functional Generalist that also works.

Of course, it only works when you don't care about/don't pursue the Edge Cases that BP can generate (SR4A) or that Priority (SR5) potentially generates. If you want to pursue those Edge Cases due to a focus on that specialization, Karma Gen is a bit more difficult to employ, exactly because of those diminishing returns.

[Sengir]

At my table, I took BP generation in SR4.5 out behind the woodshed because of what I viewed as inconsistencies in value. I might make a similar house rule for SR5 after I get a campaign with the normal rules under my belt, but I'm also of the opinion that the ratio of 2k nuyen per karma is a little out of whack too, but either way, it's what the book says. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/indifferent.gif)

I did some math trying to convert prioritygen to karma, turns out that 2k ¥/Karma fit quite well. The real problem (IIRC) was the balance between Skills A and Magic/Res A, it just doesn't compare unless you charge double for each point of Magic/Edge.

[tjn]

I did some math trying to convert prioritygen to karma, turns out that 2k ¥/Karma fit quite well. The real problem (IIRC) was the balance between Skills A and Magic/Res A, it just doesn't compare unless you charge double for each point of Magic/Edge.

Yeah, I did a brief check against some augments against raising attributes, and 2k/karma seemed to be in the right ballpark for character creation or without any other considerations, but for my table (again, personal experience, ymmv and all that) in play we have a lot of, what I suppose one might call operating costs. Pay for a combat cab to make a run into the barrens, pay for information about the local gangs, pay to replace a drone or the 50th motorcycle that said gang blew up, pay to have ten ganger bodies disappear without starting a gang war, you know, the usual. We tend to give more nuyen than RAW suggests (20k-30k per runner is average(though we don't do per runner, the Johnson offers a flat rate for hiring the team, and the team decides how to split it)), but probably a lot more money sinks than other tables. On the other hand, I can count on one hand the amount characters that received of additional cyber after character creation because saving up 200k is almost impossible. Karma doesn't have this sort of inherent sink within it's economy, but we tend to be more stingy with it as well and as a result, raising attributes through karma is just as rare.

So my own desire to change to 3k/karma goes back to the fact that anecdotal meta considerations that are drawn specifically from personal experience shouldn't apply in a generic way to every character creation.

And you know, it would make a lot of sense if charging more for Special Attributes in karma might have been some rule in beta testing or in the original drafting of SR5, and when special attributes was changed back to normal karma, the math backing up the priority system was never changed to reflect the new equivalency.

[Glyph]

The thing with karmagen is that it was generous enough that you weren't stuck with a generalist. I prefer more specialized and optimized characters, and they usually turn out better in karmagen. Karmagen is more balanced. On the one hand, generalization at character creation is not as penalized - but on the other hand, there is still an incentive to have some high skills and Attributes; dice pools are one of the major metrics for determining success in the game.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Unless my math is wrong, keeping Magic at C (assuming skills A) only costs you 10 skill points and 5 spells (or 25 karma) which can be made back in other ways.
Bumping Attributes down to B or C costs between 4 and 8 points, which are the most expensive to increase later. Skills are even worse as prioritizing them costs 10 to 18 skill points and 8/10 group points (which are basically the same cost as attributes). You can't make those group points back at character creation, but you can easily make up the 10 magic-related skill points in other ways.

I would argue that Magic A is the least cost effective, as it only gets basically 6 Attribute points, 10 skills and 50 karma worth of spells.
As a human, you can buy yourself up to 3 edge with karma, which isn't terrible.

It kind of also depends on how many skills you really plan to use. The mage I made for my game went
A skills
B magic
C attributes
D human
E reosurces

I think karma efficiency is pretty high but a lot of my skills really don't get used much. I have ritual magic and I can make wards and watchers, but 4-5 runs in and I have not used it once. Banishing, not once etc. There is another mage in out group that got himself a 7 magic and a 6 edge but only has like 22 skill points, Might be less karma efficient, but it is a lot more game efficient. Attributes are pretty much always going to be used, so they are almost never a loss. Skills can much more easily end up as wasted points.

[Cain]

I am all for re-tooling Character Gen. Karma Gen all the Way. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Gah, no!

First of all, karma gen is way too fiddly and crunchy. SR4.5 characters took way too long to build, and they used linear math. Scaling costs take much longer to calculate. This might be acceptable if the results were better, but in my experience, they're not. Min/maxers will still find a way to min/max; but the harder you try to squeeze them, the harder they'll fight back. I saw this many times in SR3 and SR4.5 karmagen: the end result is even more heavily min/maxed monstrosities.

[Shortstraw]

In SR4.5, the highest possible skill rating was 7. Period.

"Improved ability
This power increases the rating of a specific Active skill by 1 per level. A skill’s maximum modified rating equals its base rating x 1.5."
So 10.

[Samoth]

He means the most you could raise a skill using karma was to 7. The rating can be modified further with augmentations and magic, but not karma.