Character Generation Preferences Options

[Sheffield]

I thought I'd start a thread to see what people think is a good "baseline" for creation. The group I play with has gotten away from priority and points, because they don't allow enough variation and encourage the min and the max. We tend to use BECKs v.2 with the following restraints.

400 points.

Resources capped at 1,000,000.

Metavariants are allowed, but not shapeshifters or drakes.

SURGE is allowed.

Edges and flaws are limited so that you can only end up with +/- 5 points out of karma. (You can get more expensive SURGE effects or edges, but you have to balance them out with flaws, not buy them with your starting karma.)

Starting gear capped at avail. 8. Starting foci capped at force 4.

Custom vehicles allowed. Either guns or vehicle armor makes the vehicle count as avail. 8. However, both guns and vehicle armor (not personal armor from R3) count as avail. 12 and put it out of bounds.

Alphaware and bioware are legit, but not cultured bio. Genetech is allowed with good backstory.

This puts full magician with 30 spell points = 1,000,000 nuyen = 4 level 6 skills (assuming high enough attributes).

Strangely enough, skills and high attributes wind up being the crunch points under these restraints. One level 6 skill winds up being close to 8% of your total character budget, so people tend to have more level 4 skills. I personally like this because it prevents people from building characters with all their main skills at 6 right out of the box. They might have a lot of cyber or magic, but they're just not good at stuff. It gives them targets for improving. It also puts the no-magic and low-cyber chars back into the game because they're the ones who can afford a broad skill base.

Anyway, what do folks on the forum consider to be their "standard" for generation? I know no system is un-twinkable, but I'm curious what other people have found to work well or poorly.

[Kagetenshi]

Point system with 128 build points. I allow edges and/or flaws in excess of 5 total/6 points either way on a by-approval basis.

~J

[hahnsoo]

Priority and Point System (125 points). Edges and Flaws up to 5 each, but they must be approved by the entire group.

[Bigity]

Sum To 10.

Or Build with 125 points. Some Edges/Flaws, but I dislike most of them. No SURGE. No metavarients (I allow them, but they work game-wise the same as the base race, but can RPed as different).

No shifters, dragons, or vampires, etc etc. That is for other games. Standard availability, sometimes allow spell points to be bought, and spent on foci.

[Lindt]

Points exclusivly at 123. With GM approval of course.

[Nikoli]

BeCKS *shudder*

I'm a BP man personally, but when I'm of a mind to munchkin, I go Sum to 10

[hahnsoo]

[Kagetenshi]

But you're still able to recreate the 130+ point-equivalent Mage builds.

~J

[Nikoli]

Considering I almost only play Humans, and often some form of sammie or other skill and money intensive archtype, sum to ten works out nicely for me. Works good for Human anything really.

[hahnsoo]

[Kagetenshi]

[hahnsoo]

[Smiley]

We have the option to use any, but I prefer BPs.

[Edward]

We use standard sum to 10. cultured bio is allowed nobody yet requested gentech (to early in the time line really)

I am curious as to your banning any vehicle with both armour and guns. That makes riggers very week. A stock standard steal lynx with an appropriate weapon on it (or something similar) is the mainstay of any starting drone rigger (I used to use the Aries guardian but its availability was rightly changed)

Maybe it is rulings like that that mean so many say a rigger is not a good character to play.

Edward

[Kaosaur]

Covert Ops, Weapons or Demolition Specialists, and Face types generallly tend to build stongest under BP for me.
Anything else I prefer BeCKs

[The Question]

BeCKs 350-375, I prefer low level games, not neccessarily "street", but no superpowered killing machines either. If someone wants to to pour all those points into nuyen and have a super-cyber-ninja-zord character, I'll let them. I'll then have them hassled by every Corp-Sec, Lone Star, Maitre-D, Doorman etc in the North American area...

[BGMFH]

I listen to what kind of characters the players want to play, then use the creation method that will allow me to create NPCs with the same rules that are optimized for best sending players to their funerals.

Generally from a coronary when they realize what their characters are up against...

[ElFenrir]

We went to BP after Priority for awhile. 123 BP, +6/-6 edges and flaws, can take up to 6 extra build points if you want(but with 123, I never had to take that many, neither has anyone else. Most I saw anyone take was about 3 or 4 extra).

I found the characters are pretty balanced, nothing bad about them, munching can indeed happen with any system.

Alpha and bioware available out of the gate. We allow cultured bio as well. It doesn't break the game that much, we've allowed it forever.

Actually, we tend not to worry about availability within reason. I mean, if you take a million nuyen and insist on spending 975,000 of it for a small submarine...well, you'll have some explaining to do. If you want APDS out of the gate, go for it. But rememeber whatever you get the enemies will have also. This alone tends to keep everyone in check. Most players would rather start with the normal availability stuff and have their enemies moderate than start with AV ammo and rocket launchers, and have the enemy have them as well.

123 seems to be a solid build point total. Anywhere from 120 to 125 tends to work well.

[Catsnightmare]

Priority and Build Points. Nobody I've gamed with wants to use BECKS because of the math involved, and being dysnumeric myself I avoid it like the plague.
I've never been able to lay hands on the Sum-to-10 charts/system though I have wanted to look at/try it for some time now.

[Kagetenshi]

You take the Priority system, make A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, and E=0, then take any combination what adds up to 10.

~J

[hahnsoo]

[Kagetenshi]

Bow before my post-fu :cyber:

~J

[hahnsoo]

[Kagetenshi]

<narrate>With the time-travelling squad of heroes defeated by a last-second server upgrade, there was nothing stopping the Immortal Elf plot to rule the world…</narrate>

Sum-to-10, as pointed out, is most helpful to mundane humans, but it also gives some versatility (like the ability to make a full mage with A resources) that the Point system also gives.

~J

[Edward]

It was always confusing to me that characters with powerful magic where always relatively cash poor.

This makes little logical sense considering the high demand and low availability of magic, remember the services of an unskilled magician are worth 100nuyen an hour (for setting wards) and the low cost of maintaining equipment for those that are not hermetics.

Edward