We're starting up a game with a group that consists of half experienced SR3 players and half not. Since the player roster numbers no less than 9 people (eep), two of us are sharing GM duties. That is to say, I'll run one adventure then tag out and be a PC for the next adventure. It keeps things dynamic and prevents a lone GM's brain from exploding.

Part of our arrangement with the players is that we'll be creating their characters ourselves (with gamerole and personality input from the players). The functions that serves are: making sure that at least one GM is very familiar with any given PC, insuring party balance & diversity, and helping the SR newbies from making design mistakes.

~~~~~

So, anyway, it falls upon me to make up 4 runners over the next fortnight. I've done initial passes on the first two guys, and I've started to notice some things:

1 ) 200 BPs for Attributes means you can have four sets of 3 & 4, or you can swap out those for a set of 2 & 5 (before applying racial mods). Or you can have all 3's except for one 6 and one 2. This makes your starting-level PC's attributes firmly in the range of "very slightly above average" for your race.... and that's only IF you decide to spend the full 200 BPs.

2 ) Since people generally imagine their heroes to be exceptional people, I find myself allocating the full 200 BPs to Attributes every time.

3 ) Skills are a pretty major part of any character, and I've found that I should budget a minimum of 100 BPs to go towards skills. This lets a person have a primary skillset (probably a skill group) at around 4, a secondary skillset around 3, and then a smattering of peripheral skills to flesh them out. Everyone "needs" some degree of Infiltration, too, what with this being Shadowrun and all.

4 ) Since 300 out of the 400 BPs are already allocated from that, this leaves 100 left over to go towards whatever is supposed to make that PC special. Those final 100 go towards five broad categories (usually focused on one or two): Contacts, Implants, Magic/Resonance, Gear/Lifestyle, and Edge.

5 ) Contacts can get friggin' expensive in SR4. The book recommends you start with at least 2, which means that's a minimum of 4 BPs for a pair of unreliable and non-useful acquaintances. If you were to step them up to adequate levels with all 3's, you're looking at 12 BPs spent. If you're playing a "face," then you're probably going to be investing pretty heavily in a solid stable of contacts and that can blow through BPs extremely quickly.

6 ) Money for implants is capped at 50 BPs (technically less than that if you feel like owning non-surgical items or living with a roof over your head). It'd seem like that means you'd have at least 50 BPs left over, using my budgeting guidelines; however if you're big into implants that probably means you're big into skill and gear use. You'll probably divert the remainder over to supplement your skills or to secure a few more contacts. Maybe you'll buy up your Edge some.

7 ) Magic or Resonance be a massive drain on BPs because it's a whole other attribute to feed that normal people don't have. Spellcasters can burn through a big chunk of BPs just buying up their spells, and technomancers trying to load up on complex forms can potentially expend even more. Pure adepts, fortunately, don't need to spend too much but will likely be wanting allocate some on a focus or two; the rest can be dumped back into the skill bucket. Mystic adepts have the familiar multiclassing woes and the associated expenses. Heaven help you if you try to go the cyber-mage, cyber-adept, or cyber-technomancer routes.

8 ) Gear and Lifestyle also include the usually-necessary multiple commlinks, fake SINs, fake licenses, vehicles (what, you were going to take the bus everywhere?), armor, weapons, DocWagon contract.... the list goes on, which means that unless you're Mr. Self-Contained Zen Monk you simply must cough up some dough on financial assets. I'm trying to compile a list of "runner staples" that pretty much everyone should think about having, and I'll teach myself to put aside that many BPs as already pre-spent for most characters.

9 ) Edge. I always forget about Edge. It's one of those luxury attributes that you can theoretically ignore until you suddenly need it in desperate quantities. I like its inclusion in SR4 and I like how it gives non-magic non-implant skillmonkeys something of a unique equalizer. I just keep sacrificing it down to bare minimums in order to support all of the other functions of the characters.

10) I'm cool with 400 BPs for starting characters, but it's seeming more and more like the 500 BPs used for "experienced" runners would be a lot easier to build with. It could just be that I haven't gotten used to the SR4 scale as opposed to the SR3 cyberdeathmachines that came straight out of chargen.

And no, if you're in my group and reading this, you can't have 500 BPs.

That out of the way, anyone else got any design theories that diverge from my above spam? Like prepackaged BP deals that you just plug in to a character for ease of creation?

Use 500 BP.

Heh. No.

Besides, I always tell my players that they can be as powerful as they want; but that rule will start applying to my NPCs too.

I'm sad that I never got to deploy my SR3 albino gnome cyberzombies and their laser hovertanks with draconic physical adept air support. Stupid SR4, forcing game balance down our throats!

Well, the decision what kind of 'level' a setting has is either carried by consensus... or not at all.
Usually, introducing a system lower than necessary tends to turn people off.

As those characters are generated by GM, there is hardly any balancing issue, too.

Generally include Edge and Magic in your 200BP Attribute budget. If you don't you'll find yourself woefully short elsewhere.

EDIT: Taking an Attribute at the top notch really puts the pinch on a character. Generally speaking the extra cost of that one else point is better spent elsewhere.

I'm finding that upward to 150ish BP gives a nice set of Skills.

Build a Magician with a specialist mindset or they'll be blah. The number of spells you used to take at full Force 6? That's about how many they can take, if that. Make up your mind whether you want to concentrate on conjuring or casting. For examlpe consider conjuring only, with Counterspelling bought by itself because it's so damn important....unless you plan to spend a lot of your time around others that can Counterspell. Then not such a big deal. Spirits really rock (too much in some ways IMO), so a non-casting mage is a viable team member.

Technomancers are an enormous BP drain. DO NOT try to have them act as a backup anything else. Just be thankful that they can now actually leave their mom's basement without dropping over dead from taking the bus.

Screw 2 contacts, take one. Yes meaningful contacts cost big-time unlike in SR3 where you a dumpster diving nobody cost as much as a fixer as much as a CEO. Remember that for material procurements contacts aren't as needed anymore because you can use a Nego+Cha test to track it down yourself. They are really best for things like getting info and very specialized goods & people that you rent through them. With a nine member team if everyone takes only one for a given area you can cover a lot of ground.

Just like college it's cheaper to bunk up with a buddy. Shared lifestyles get you off the curb on a budget. Same for vehicles. Fake SIN i suspect you'll need to blow at least a bit of cash on. Fake licenses for Restricted items? *shrug* At a few hundred consider it an addon to your handgun. Everthing else just keep out of sight. You don't want a lot of fake license checks being made anyway because one failure brings down the fake SIN and associated fake licenses.

i got two words for you azralon that would cure all the PC's problems, Air Support, but then again i guess they dont have a capable rigger do they

It's somewhat annoying though that even with 200BP spread among all his attributed a mage character barely makes it to average in his stats. I think they could have done a better job balancing attributes with everything else; half your build points is a lot to spend to be average in his stats, which in SR3 costs the bare minimum (Priority E) 18 attribute points.

Erm, the 200 BP limit only applies to physical and mental stats, not Edge/Magic/Resonance. Most mages will end up shelling out a pretty penny for their magic attribute and thus have an attribute total of about 240 or more (depending on the amount spent for Edge).

Blakkie was suggesting that my 200 BP attribute budget should include Edge and Magic/Resonance, but I don't believe it was actually suggested that those stats counted toward the canonical cap.

I hear you on the attribute cost stuff, Eyeless. However, since attributes are so important and add to multiple skills, I can see why they cost so much.

Oh there's little denying it's balanced; it's just insane.

Agreed!

You theroies sound fine. As it stands you can produce a pretty good genaralist or a very good specialist. You do seem to start off a bit lower level that in 3 but thats cool for me. I've got sick of the number of perfect agility geniuses I get in the group. Yey split attributes! I just wish they said human average was 2-3 and allowed 0 scores for really crap people.

One 'problem' with SR4 attributes (and blakkie will love me for this...) is that the scale they describe them by is off.

They just copy-pasted the scale from SR3, while lowering the cap from 9 to 6 for a human and increasing the karma cost. (Not totally ture, since there is now a different, augmented cap, but it serves the purpose).

Since karma awards are given at the same rate in SR3 and SR4, a good indicator of comparison is the karma costof something:

Attribute 3 was 'worth' 10 Karma in SR3 (raising from 1 to 2, then from 2 to 3)
In SR4, an attribute at 3 is 'worth' 15 Karma...this indicates that he average is actually between 2 and 3, and not 3 across the board. Some of the NPC stats in SR4 seem to support this way of thinking too.

Looking at it that way, we get the following:
SR3=SR4
1 == 1
2 == 1
3 == 2
4 == 3
5 == 4
6 == 5 (almost)
7 == 6
8 == 6
9 == 7

Now, that's just based on the karma it costs to raise the attribute, and that is an imperfect system - especially since SR4 has two more attributes...but it seems to balance out for general purposes.

Now, if only the description of the attributes had matched this...


On another note, pretty much everything blakkie says regarding char gen is spot on. Though my suggestion is to spend around 220-230 on attributes, including magic and edge. Maxing out an attribute is a bad idea in most cases, and between 120 and 150 BPs for skills is a good number.

If possible, make sure your Qualities either give you extra points or come out to 0.

Keep the number of contacts low.

[edit] @ Ophis: then make some house rules =P [/edit]

anyways, don't forget that a 3 in an attribute and a 3 in the skill gets you 6 dice now.

in SR3, your attribute was not as generally all-important as in SR4, so they could allow it to go higher.

oh yeah, and in SR3, the caps on attributes were much higher. in SR4, once you get to 6 you've had it, in terms of boosting with karma (for a human, that is... obviously varies by race), which means that a body of 4 in SR4, while lower than a body 5 in SR3, generally represents a higher percentage of the maximum allowed with respect to naturally increasing attributes.

just a few thoughts =P

[edit] guess snowRaven beat me to it =P [/edit]

The only thing I can add to this theory is using negative qualities to round out the more BP hungry character templates - mages, adepts and metas (esp elves). A good allergy can cut back most of the "extra" cost (which really isn't extra, given the free stat points).

As long as you never inted to buy off a negative quality, they are an acceptable investment.

Eh, Karma's near-worthless now anyway, other than buying stats. May as well buy off a flaw or two while you're at it.

As far as contacts go, it might be better to buy one high level and one low level. For example pairs of contacts with Connections 3 and Loyalty 3 would cost the same as a Connections 4 Loyalty 4 contact and a Connections 2 Loyalty 2 contact.

Likewise, you might want to take contacts with high connections but low loyalty. That seems to be the way they worked in SR2 & 3 - you had a business relationship with your basic contact and that was it. You could budget fewer points to contacts that way.

Finally, consider balancing a contact with an Enemy or Hunted or whatever the flaw is. You have a Mafia contact - and a Yakuza enemy frex.

No such things as Enemys in SR4 until now.

On the other hand, they just could be Contacs with negative Loyalty.

How about "Animosity"??

And suddenly Animosity 6, Connections 1 enemy bums will be appearing everywhere

I dunno...an Influence 1/Animosity 6 enemy is a suicide bomber in the making.

-Siege

Ok, you've convinced me :)

I like it.

By the way, did I miss a canon rule that caps the number of starting Contacts? Or shall I prepare for Infirm Combat-Paralysis humans with no appreciable skills of their own leading a platoon of fanatical highly-placed politicians and underworld leaders?

EDIT: And by "prepare," I mean "bring out my official GM Baseball Bat of Sanity."

Such things sound very efficient, until you realize that you can't really control any decision of them.

"Sneaky M.B." would be a little boring to play IMHO...
... as a mastermind villain, in the other hand...

That's the one. He was a neat mastermind. I especially liked his "get out of the vat" scheme.

sorry but he is pure munchkin cheese
think about it
Roxborogh is what every decker Munchkin dreams of

He's allowed to be "munchkin" because he lives in a novel. He'll never exist as a tabletop PC, so there's no problem.

Yeah, but Connections 6 people are typically too busy to bother.

But that's worse, because they'll subcontract.

Mastermind: "You there! I'll give you 50 nuyen to give that shadowrunner a dirty look!"

I think it's a matter of scale.

Influence 6 means they can do almost anything they want to - up to and including fragging with you for no other reason than, well, you annoy them.

Evil Mastermind: "Hey, you - I'll pay you 50 nuyen to put these nails under their tires. And another 150 afterwards."

Do you really want to find out how badly even the Oyabun's minor displeasure can cost you?

Or people not wanting to offend the Oyabun by dealing with you?

Or curry favor with the Oyabun by dealing harshly with you?

-Siege

In my opinion, the BP system is far too generous. It allows starting characters to be elite in their field of expertise. It is also flawed because the BP system is (generally) linear while Karma costs increase along with statistics, which encourages players to take advantage of "discounts" given during character generation.

In my opinion, player characters should start as relatively weak, gaining proficiency and talent as a shadowrunner as they perform runs. I understand that having a rich and interesting history is both fun and rewarding. It goes too far when that history can include being a former James Bond or world-class bodybuilder. If Damien Knight is my friend for life, why am I running the shadows? If I had a quarter of a million dollars I wouldn't crawl through a sewer to assasinate someone.

This problem could be fixed -- and the core rules shortened and simplified -- by making the character creation process the same as the character improvement process.

I would highly recommend placing a lower-limit on the amount of BP spent on Physical and Mental Attributes. It should be 1/4 total BP.

If anybody wants, I can give some examples of how magicians are ridiculously overpowered and how the current system can be subverted.

Not in their field, just in a single skill...but not quite because to be the best they need other things to be "best of" including maximum values in Edge and the linked Attribute.