Improving Attributes with karma Options

[Lord Ben]

To go from 9 to 10 for a troll do you count the full new number? Or the modified new #?

[Lord Ben]

Err, I mean to go from 9 to 10 is that 10*X or is it 6*X? Do you have to pay for the racial mods too?

[Taki]

[Shinobi Killfist]

yeah SR3 was cool in how its BP were the same as Karma.. :D

It would be nice if costs before and after were more in touch. People tend to get in the habit then of ditching certain things because there cheap to improve. As is other than the troll with str and body you minds well start really low in stats, put your points into skills and improve stats in game since its cheap.

And to answer the question I believe you pay for the 10x3 for the rasing to 10 for the troll. Once your in game that 9 is the trolls body it isn't a modified 9(unless you got cyber or something getting you to that 9)

[sapphire_wyvern]

Yeah. I agitated very strongly in favour of that idea when SR4 was "still in flux", during the whole development blog period.

But even then the playtesters told me I wasn't going to get my wish. Apparently, because SR3 BeCKs is complicated, there was some concept that Karma-based character gen would have been too complex to SR4. I think the game has suffered a little for it, but it could be worse. In any case, SR4's character generation system is at least less broken than SR3's Point Buy.

White Wolf's games suffer from the same problem. They do slightly ameliorate it by not offering players as much flexibility in how the points are allocated (much of your character build resources in WW games must be spent in certain categories) but it still suffers from a huge disjoint between how characters are built and how they are advanced which makes particular build decisions very sub-optimal.

[Lord Ben]

Yeah, we've been playing Exalted for 2 years and I wish they could do a system that built a new PC with the same rules as a PC advances.

The original Deadlands is the same way. If you start with 1 in one skill and 4 in another it costs 5 bounty points to improve to 1/5. But if you start with 0/5 it only costs one to get to 1/5. That's a HUGE difference since you could have 5 skills at 1 and one at 5 or one skill at one and one at 5 depending on how you build the PC and then level up after one session.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

At least, a Karma based Generation System in SR4 is fairly easy to create...

[Taki]

[Shemhazai]

Making characters of non-human metatype pay vastly greater karma to raise their attributes is horribly unfair. It also grossly defies logic. Naturally strong metatypes should not need to work out more to get to the upper portion of their bell curve.

Who says a unified character building/improving system is too complicated? Complicated to the stupid? In fact, having one system is both less complicated and more concise. Use those extra pages for more melee weapons and critters, I say!

[Jaid]

considering the troll payed only 40 points for +4 to 2 stats (that's 80 points right there) and a maximum 6 points higher than normally possible in two different stats (that would be 240 BP to pull off there, if you broke the rules for it and allowed them to buy the quality four times for each stat), i feel very little sympathy for the troll who wants to complain about paying lots of karma for high strength scores.

of course, the troll also suffers a couple of penalties, but i don't think it's anywhere near 280 BP worth (the difference between 240 + 80 - 40), and when you add in their reach bonus, and their armor bonus... yeah, once again, i'm just having a hard time feelin' sorry.

[Veggiesama]

Until someone writes up a BeCKS karma-based character generation system for SR4, I'm goin with BP for character advancement. So whether you're raising your paltry Charisma from 2 to 3 or your superhuman strength from 8 to 9, you're still paying 10 BPs each time.

But if I had to go with straight Karma, I'd agree with Shemhazai. Don't include racial modifiers when you're improving attributes. Whether you feel sorry or not for trolls, still elves, dwarves, orks, and even humans would benefit from this.

[Jaid]

it takes like 5 seconds.

you use the chart that tells you how much karma you pay for stuff. for race, resources, and contacts, you use 1 karma = 1 BP. and you get about 425 karma.

that should enable you to come fairly close to any of the archetypes, as far as i can tell, with the exception of the sprawl ganger, which would take about 520 to build.

of course, i hadn't checked the archetypes to see if they were correctly built according to the BP system at the time, so i'm not sure how accurate that will be... but it should at least be pretty dang close. give it a whirl, see how you like it.

[Veggiesama]

Not exactly.

Under BP character generation, raising a skill from 0 to 6 costs 24 BP.

Under karma, raising a skill from 0 to 6 costs:
0 to 1: 4
1 to 2: 4
2 to 3: 6
3 to 4: 8
4 to 5: 10
5 to 6: 12
Total: 44 karma

So basically if someone wanted to make a karma character generation system, they'd need to take into account a lot of factors like this. Also it'd involve averaging how much it'd take to build the Sample Characters under this system and seeing how close your system comes to the original generation rules.

I wouldn't doubt if we saw 600-800 karma at character generation to make a 400 BP character, but I really have no idea.

[Shemhazai]

[Jaid]

no, i've done the averaging of the archetypes. in the end, that was how i decided on 425.

give it a shot. make some characters (without trying to showcase where the system is a little off... ie, don't come to me with a character that's made using BP and has 300 BP into skills, 50 into attributes, and the other 50 elsewhere =P )

now, i did miss one thing; the amount of bonus karma you get for knowledge/language skills for logic and intuition is approximately 7.5

for comparison, barring errors in my math, the archetypes are fairly close to 425 (with the exception of the enforcer, not the sprawl ganger, my mistake) :

[ Spoiler ]

sorry about the formatting, didn't survive too well...average total points of karma: 419.31 (use 425 points)

variance from mean(approx):      total
Bounty Hunter: (438)                  103%
Combat Mage: (386)                   91%
Covert Ops Specialist: (414)        97%
Drone Rigger: (401)                    94%
Enforcer: (520)                           122%
Face: (422)                                 99%
Gunslinger Adept: (400)               94%
Hacker: (430)                              101%
Occult Investigator: (382)             90%
Radical Eco-Shaman: (411)           97%
Smuggler: (401)                          94%
Sprawl Ganger: (443)                   104%
Street Samurai (410)                    96%
Street Shaman: (379)                   89%
Technomancer: (458)                    108%
Weapons Specialist: (414)             97%

now, while this is hardly a perfect fit, it's pretty danged close with the exception of the enforcer, and i have to say i think the ones that are well under are, IMO, somewhat in need of a boost anyways...

[edit] Shemhazai, you seem to have misunderstood how the racial penalties work. you still start at 1 and work your way up. for a troll to have a 2 charisma costs 6 points, exactly as it would if you improved it during play. [/edit]

oh, and for the record... the percentages are % as compared to the assumed 425 karma. 419.31 happens to be the average of all the archetype's karma.

This post has been edited by Jaid: Oct 14 2005, 06:15 AM

[Akilina]

Your calculations dont include stats when they do coming up with a ratio is more difficlut:

0 - 1 = 4
1 - 2 = 4
2 - 3 = 6
3 - 4 = 8
4 - 5 = 10
5 - 6 = 12

Total 44 Kama
In build points it costs 24 making 1BP = 1.83 Kama

Stats however

1 - 2 = 6
2 - 3 = 9
3 - 4 = 12
4 - 5 = 15
5 - 6 = 18

Toal 60 Kama
In build points (assuming a human) it costs 65 making 1BP = 0.92 Kama

Hence the munchkin's taking skills with low stats because it is more points effective

[Jaid]

if you can explain to me why that last point of whatever it is should cost more than the previous 4 points purchased, i'd be happy to listen.

in any event, i can't see who/what you're correcting with that. i never did any calculations based on skills, only calculations based on the archetypes in the book. and Veggiesamma's math is exactly the same as yours.

[edit] and as far as munchkins loading up on attributes instead of skills... well, the munchkins with the BP system will just do the opposite, and then boost their attributes cheap. i fail to see how this is a problem. in any event, IMO the attributes do in fact offer too much to skills, but that's another subject entirely, for another time. [/edit]

This post has been edited by Jaid: Oct 14 2005, 06:14 AM

[Fortune]

If you are going to let Trolls (and other metas) improve their Attributes without taking their racial bonuses into account, then they also should actually pay for their penalties (instead of just having an upper limit) at chargen.

[Nkari]

allso, karma to money on a 1 karma 5000 basis ?

[Gothic Rose]

[Fortune]

Note that I wasn't arguing for all costs to be the same. I definitely agree with the principle of diminished returns. In fact, I don't really mind the system pretty much the way it is in SR4.

[Serbitar]

Houserules

Karma Creation System

[Gothic Rose]

[jerrico49]

I know that I'm getting into this discussion a little late but I would like to add something here.

I think that the way they have seperated the BP and Karma costs is actually a good thing. I don't know if any of you have ever played Champions or not but that game suffers from the build costs being the same as the experience cost. I have seen too many good games go down the drain because the campaign gets out of control too quicky because the characters develope too quickly. The only way for the GM to control that was to severly limit experience given which had the effect of annoying the players. They began to feel that their efforts in rollplay wern't being rewarded and then the game began to stagnate because players couldn't advance their characters the way that they wanted too.

WizKids, I think, made a tough call but I think it's the right one. I know that characters will advance more slowly but at least here there are awards that can be garnered besides Karma (ie money, equipment and contacts).

So before you hack the system you might give the system as it stands a try for a little bit and see how it goes.

Thats just my opinion for what it's worth.

Grumpy & Company

[Jaid]