Max in a skill? Options

[Cyberon]

Just how often are you guys playing? 62 Karma gaining 3-6 pr. game session, takes 10-20 game sessions depending on how much you f.. up your run. And this takes into account that you actually finish a run in one game session.

Could your problem not just be rooted in one big problem... You are giving your players way to much karma pr. session.

[Space Ghost]

Short game session can be difficult too. It may take a couple session to finish off a single run, especially if the team spends lots of time doing legwork and planning before the run itself.

Still, that doesn't seem like a whole lot of karma...

[evil1i]

[blakkie]

The Arc isn't your typical 5-6 karma 'run' though. Did you stage the karma awards there?

[Cyberon]

My point is that to reach the ability to purchase your way from 0 to 6 you need those 62 karma. And that should take at least 15 Runs, giving the players 3-6 Karma pr. run (The Arch Run is atypical, i think we spent 6 - 6 hours sessions in there, those who survived got around 10-15 Karma, i suspect the GM cut a few corners)

[blakkie]

If any single PC survived, mind intact, throuh the whole way he cut corners. ;) Lucky you say? Just that good you say? Skill only gets you so far, and luck always runs out. EDIT: Unless you had Prime Runner level characters of course, such as playing Dodger's long lost identical twin. :P

Even 15 karma is a skimpy reward if your team actually faced the full force of what could be brought to bare. I've not read the whole of the actual text, but the parts i have seen suggest to me much, much higher. To say nothing of the rumours. A regular Tomb of Horrors.

[Kremlin KOA]

My players in my SR3 campaign earn 3-7 per session using the personal karma awards in the back of the book. the team karma award for the run usually goes to about 6 per run (a run can take up to three sessions)

sessions are biweekly and although i allow cash for karma I limit it to 2 karma per month

is that so high that I am being a munchkin GM?

[blakkie]

I'm not going to hang a red flag name like "munchkin" on it, but that is definately higher than our group generally dishes out/receives. I'm not even prepared to say it's bad, because i think it has it's merits. I'd rather our group move closer to that sort of rate.

That team karma amount you mention isn't a total to be divided among the 'runners by some method, right? It is per team member, meaning each [surviving] team member gets about 6 karma for run completion? Because if it is to each member then you are looking at something close to 10 karma/session average if the PCs/players are typically being scoring high on the 3-7 session scale. That certainly would lead to PCs peaking in a focused area a lot faster and mages getting out ahead on the power curve if they are landing nearly the equivalent of a skill going 0 to 6 in a month and a half of once/week gaming.

[jeltzz]

one of the things that balances out gameplay with high/low levels of karma is the spread of skills your characters need to develop. For example, in our games, you just can't get away with pouring your karma into a character's specialised areas - you need to be developing a range of secondaryActive skills, and usually picking up a range of Knowledge skills relevant to the campaign.

I agree that basically the short range of numbers describing the range of skills in the world is a problem. quite frankly though, given the description on skills of 7 those kind of people are legends just to have that skill level. i mean, Aptitude is not a quality to be handed out lightly.

and, another example, now that hacking (nee decking) is not just the single skill of computing, you need quite a few aptitudes if you want to be mr. skill-7 across the Matrix world.

dice wise there isn't that much difference between the awesome level of 6 and the legendary level of 7, and maybe that's a system fault, but gameplay wise, it should make a world of difference. if a character wants to be 7, he better spend years honing his skill to that level of perfection, and be prepared to defend himself from wannabes.

[blakkie]

The more i come back to it, the more i'm convinced that whole Skills rank example list is much worse than just a waste of pages. It encourages players to think in SR3 terms about what the Skill value represents instead of what defines a character's ability level in SR4. :(

[morlock76]

Page 77 of my rulebook states:

[snowRaven]

[snowRaven]

[blakkie]

[Dashifen]

Not sure I understood that one, blakkie. Huh?

[blakkie]

[Dashifen]

I see what you mean. Sort of how someone with no skill can still roll their attribute. Attribtues in Shadowrun have always been more like your potential to learn skills linked to that attribute, anyway. Gotcha.

[FrankTrollman]

Skills, even Skill Groups are smaller than attributes by a substantial margin. If you were wedded to allowing people to raise Attribute for Next Rating x3, then a Skill Group by comparison should cost Next Rating, or possibly Next Rating x 2.

If Skills are to be a competitive investment vs. Attributes, they have to cost less. Because they do less. Honestly, I don't think that there is enough room under the cost of Atributes to properly distinguish Skills from Skill Groups, so Attributes simply have to cost more.

I have been pretty happy with:

Attribute: 10 points for +1
Skill Groups: 5 points for +1
Skills: 2 points for +1

This has caused people to be a lot more circumspect about whether to raise Attributes or Skills, and that tells me that I'm on the right track.

-Frank

[blakkie]

[FrankTrollman]

No. The system is not functioning, because it pretends that you are supposed to be able to spend points however you want. Let's consider two character concepts: Old Man (lots of skills, low attributes), and the Promising Youngster (few skills, high attributes). Those are both valid character concepts, and a balanced game would have them be good at different things - but both be viable choices.

Now, the game is set up to be a little bit counterintuitive. That is, the guy who specializes in skills is actually the generalist, while the attribute hog is the specialist. This is because the Promising Youngster has higher attributes and maximizes just a couple of skills (meaning that he has high numbers in those few skills), while the Old Man has maximized a bunch of skills and has lower attributes (meaning that he has medium numbers in a lot of skills). That's a little bit weird, and it isn't what people expect based on the fact that Attributes are general bonuses and skills are specific bonuses, but that's alright. I'm OK with things being counter-intuitive as long as they are funcitonal and fair.

But this isn't fair. The actual result is that the Promising Youngster is better at everything, and the Old Man is better at nothing. The Old Man doesn't pay any less for his skill bonuses, he just adds them to less things. By having more skills and less attributes, he's just reduced his overall effectiveness in every measurable way.

If Attributes are going to be so much better than Skills, they shouldn't even come out of the same points. If the value of attributes and skills is going to be that blatantly unbalanced, we shouldn't even pretend to have build points - we should just cut the crap and go back to the priority system.

Either the value of a build point should be roughly equal, or it should go away entirely. Either works, but neither doesn't.

-Frank

[mfb]

a better fix, i think, would be to treat Attribute as bonus dice to the skill--in other words, if you have Attribute 6 but skill 1, you roll 2 dice (1 skill, +1 bonus for attribute). high attributes therefore become useful only at high levels of skill.

[blakkie]

[blakkie]

[FrankTrollman]

No. I'm actually fine with the "Skilled" character being good at lots of stuff and the "Gifted" character being really good at a few things. That's OK. But having the "Gifted" character be at least as good as the Skilled character at everything and better at anything is straight up bullshit.

The first and only priority of a point system is to have different expenditures be balanced against each other on some axis. SR4 fails at that task miserably.

But not unsalvageably. If you drop the costs of skills by 50% or more, different expenditures can be balanced against each other. I honestly don't see why this is even controversial. If you can mathematically prove that your point system is unabalanced (and doing so in SR4 is trivial), then you have an imperative to change that point system.

Point systems are for designing different characters who invest in different things and having them be roughly balanced against each other. That's the entire point!

-Frank

[mfb]