What is a better use of Karma..., Magic or Skills? Options

[mmu1]

Ok, so in the "No Adept Love" thread a view was put forth that if a street sam gets a skill up to 6 by spending 30 karma (SMGs, specifically), that is just as useful as if a mage character spent roughly the same number of karma on initiating twice, or picking up several new spells. Opinions?

(and yes, I am biased, I'm the one arguing that the idea of a single skill being more useful is nonsense)

[Ellery]

It kind of depends on your background. If you have a magical background, you can probably do more with two initiate grades than any one skill. If you have a combat background and you're fast and tough, adding another good combat skill can really help you out.

[Dawnshadow]

...Bad selection. There's also "boosting a skill by a couple levels" and "Boosting stats".. I'd take another 2 levels of my pistols specialization (which is already at 10, on a massively customized pistol that does 11S...)

Or there's taking 2 spells at skill 4 -- which is still fairly useful.

Shoot, for 30 Karma my magician's way adept can get his pentak-silat up to 4 and buy the extra manouvers to apply whirling and multistrike to his sword specialization. With a little left over.

[toturi]

Assuming that you are going from non-initiate to initiate, I would say initiate. Once initiated for about 2 grades, you might want to think about boosting some skills.

[mfb]

i'm not sure this belongs in the SR4 section.

[Critias]

I'm pretty sure it doesn't. I'm fairly certain the thread that spawned it has gone off-track enough it doesn't, either (what started as a "boohoo, not enough Adepts are mentioned in SR4 yet" thread turned into a "there's too much magic in SR3" thread inside, like, eight posts).

[Fortune]

It really does depend on the character in question. Two new Active Skills to 4 and a Knowledge or Language Skill to 3 isn't a bad option either.

[Grinder]

You can`'t say that in such a strict manner. It depends on your char and sometimes even a mage learns a new skill ;)

[NightHaunter]

Spells, spells, spells my life would be so dull without them.

Nighthaunter - Shadowrunner. 8)

[Fortune]

Personally, with a spellcasting character, and assuming a Willpower and Sorcery of 6, I would consider using 15 Karma to pump the charater's spellcasting specialization to 8, or even 24 to push it up to 9 before looking into other options.

[NeoJudas]

I think I am seeing something else here with this poll/question.

One of my players recently retired a character of his and opted to use the optional rule for half-karma to create the new character (we lost a decker, picked up a new adept... more on my rant on that perhaps later).

Anyway, when he was creating his character he basically got to "design from scratch" a character with an exceptionally high amount of karma from the ground up. During that time, he got to look at things from the POV of someone with a specific direction in mind and not from the POV of a character who will develop his/her identity over time. Basically they got to ask "what can I get for *x* karma". They wound up with a character that while karmically far less experienced than our eldest adept character already (and still) in the games, but capable of dealing out far more damage than the elder character. The trick was however, the elder character had a wider array of skills and experiences to draw upon.

So then we ask the question of this poll? Personally I'm going to suggest that whomever put this poll up here really was trying to get a specific answer or believed they were going to try to get one anyway. The question is loaded and filled with too many unanswerable variables.

In Shadowrun, I've at least found that versatility is the survival choice. And that means 33 points of karma becomes one grade of initiation, one/two spells and maybe another skill point or two someplace else. All depending upon the options available of course.

[mmu1]

[Dawnshadow]

Yeah.. but you didn't specify mage, which invalidates your entire basis for initiating twice, because no one's argued that adept initiations aren't far more valuable.

[mmu1]