Okay- I was a big fan of the ghoul as a character choice in 3rd edition. Wanting to reporoduce him in 4th edition, I played around with it a little bit. Here's what I came up with.

1) To be a ghoul in 3rd edition, you paid 10 BP above your racial choice. Elves and Trolls both cost 10 BP in the old system, which would make the new ghoul between 30 and 40 points, based on the new racial BP costs. We'll assume 35 for now.

2) This is what you got for being a ghoul:

• +2 Bonus to Body
• +1 Bonus to Strength
• Increased running speed
• Enhanced smell and hearing
• Need to eat metahuman flesh regularly
• Dual-Natured (both an advantage and a disadvantage)
• Allergy to Sunlight
• Immunity to VITAS
• Physical blindness
• Sensitive system flaw

However, you also suffered a possible penalty of up to -3 to Intelligence and Charisma, and a -1 to essense and Magic. This is based on a Willpower test. Most likely, you would lose 2 points of Int and Cha.

3) In converting this to 4 edition, I estimated the BP worth of these features if bought individually.

The stat penalties are generally greater than the bonuses, netting a negative value. Particularly the hit to essence. I estimate -40 points total

The running speed increase is probably only worth about 5-10 points. It would, IMO change the default running multiplier of SR4 from 2.5 to 3.

The allergy to sunlight is worth -10 points.

Immunity to VITAS would be about 5 points.

Blindness isn't available in SR 4, but is probably worth at least -20 points normally. If you're dual-natured like a ghoul, it's probably only about -5, since it isn't so limiting.

The sensitive system flaw is worth about -15 points.

Finally, I totaled the cost of buying the stat bonuses, a couple extra running dice, enhanced perception, and astral perception as an adept. It would cost 45 points (including buying up your Magic and taking the adept quality). The hidden bonus of this, of course, is that if you were to make a ghoul adept, you could buy additional adept powers beyond these.

In the end, a ghoul seems to be more of a negative than a positive, or with the aforementioned hidden bonus, hovers around 0. In SR3, the PC version of Ghouls didn't even get a claw attack. Even during character creation, your ghoul could go insane and become an NPC!

So, with all of that, I propose a new Quality:

Ghoul
Cost: 10 BP
This character has been infected with the Krieger strain of the Human-Metahuman Vampiric Virus (HMHVV). See the Ghoul critter description p.292, SR4. You now have the following features:

• +2 Body, +1 Strength, -2 Charisma, -1 Logic, -1 Intuition, -1 Essence
• Increase your running speed to 3x your walking rate
• Mild Allergy to Sunlight
• +2 dice to Perception with hearing and smell
• Physically blind (cannot perceive color or 2-dimensional imagery)
• Sensitive system flaw
• Dietary requirement (must eat necrotized flesh of metahumans)
• Dual-Natured (see critter power)
• Immunity to Vitas plague
• Natural Weapon (Claws: DV (Str/2)P, AP 0)

How does this sound?

Dread Polack

In Shadowrun 4, attributes are a much bigger deal than the essentially skill-based setup of SR3. As such, layering virtually any attribute bonuses over metatype bonuses is asking for trouble. Lots of trouble. As such, it only makes sense in SR4 to price "Human Ghoul" separately from "Elf Ghoul". In fact, I would suggest simply insinuating that like Troll, Dwarf, Ork and Elf Vampires lack the "Sapience" power, that non-human ghouls simply aren't playable.

The Human Ghoul has the following attributes:

B: 5/10
A: 1/6
R: 3/8
S: 4/9
C: 1/4
I: 2/7
L: 1/5
W: 3/8
Edg: 1/6
Ess: 5
M: 1/5

They get the following bonuses:
Enhanced Senses (Hearing, Smell), Natural Weapon (Claws: S/2 + 1)

They get the following penalties:
Allergy (Sunlight, Mild), Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh), Reduced Senses (Blind).

And they are dual natured, which is technically a power, but used to be a 5 point flaw that people mostly avoided.

So those bonuses to stats are quite impressive. Like an Ork, but moreso. Also with bonuses to Reaction, Intuition, and Willpower. That sounds like a killer mage, but the natural maximum of 5 in Magic makes that a lot less attractive. A point of Essence is worth about 4 other stats according to cyberware, so the attributes are only slightly positive when looked at in that fashion. The powers and disadvantages are a big net penalty. The Allergy is 10 points, the Blind is 10 points (because the character is magically active), the dietary requirement is worth another 10-15 points. The dual natured is a penalty as well. The bonus senses and claws are Adept Powers costing 1.25 Power Points - so altogether are worth about 20 BP.

Verdict? The drawbacks vs. being an Ork balance on paper with the bonuses, and so should be avaiable for the price of being an Ork. Of course, Orks are under priced, so the package should be balanced against a Troll or Elf, and therefore cost about 30-40 BP.

Ghoul-Orks and Ghoul-Trolls would have to cost way more than that, because the Strength and Body modifiers would start going to crazy town. But again, I see no reason in fluff why a Ghoul Troll would be a playable character. HMHVV really screws over the minds of Trolls.

-Frank

The attribute stacking you mentioned is not a problem I anticipated. However, I think instead of allowing ghoul characters to be human only, I think allowing a ghoul quality while simply advising GMs to keep a close eye on the character is reasonable. Maybe in some campaigns this is unplayable, but it doesn't have to be. Just like in SR3, it is an optional rule.

You've statted your ghoul based on the version printed in the SR4 as if they were a human with attributes of 3 across the board, which is not the way the ghoul was handled in SR3. Looks like a good way to handle it, but my goal is to create a ghoul "template" for any metatype, and so doesn't work for me.

Perhaps in your campaign, non-human ghouls are not sapient, but according to the actual rules, they are, no matter what metatype they are. It's not a bad house rule to disallow non-human ghouls, but I'm trying to be more general here. Any decision like that would be left to individual GMs.

Eyeballing it- I think that stat bonuses and powers are in line with that of an elf, but the penalties are greater than any of the other races, so I still feel it is a quality worth around 10-20 points at most.

Dread Polack

I'm sure I'm not the only one that has noticed that Frank likes to make up rules based on his opinion, and then argue them by saying the book dosen't specifically address them.

Wow. That is sick.
Wouldn't be as bad if you had to have the attributes to cover the lost points.
That would be a lot of points you would have to spend just to get to 1.

Thanks for the other replies, guys. I thought for a while it was only going to be me and Frank, and I was at a loss of what to say next

I don't want Frank to get the impression that I think his arguments are completely invalid. I was just a little confused until I realized what he was up to. The point about stacking attribute bonuses is particularly valid.

If I had a player try to make a troll ghoul with maxed-out Body and Strength, I might have to put the smack down as well, but I think the solution is a warning, not a ban. I'm coming at it from a general rules point of view, leaving any sort of disallowances to the individual GMs.

Also, capping att bonuses at their base racial bonuses seems a reasonable solution. Here's another idea: Giving ghouls a "Toughness" of +2 instead of a straight Body bonus. This will make them more resistant to damage, but not necessarily more resistant to other effects based on Body. Does this sound reasonable?

Playing a ghoul was never meant to be as clean and simple as playing a base character race, but I think with the right group and right player, it is doable.

Dread Polack

Someone around here actually reverse engineered how the designers built the metatypes, and using his formula, I reverse engineered the Ghoul statistic block.

As a note, he did not say that was canon. He said if you do this it works.

Frank tried to say, this is how it works, this is what it says. Whether he is right or not, I am not sure. I don't have the book.

However, it is more a thing of the wooden box calling the kettle black.

Frank, you own. To be frank.

I rather like Eyeless' technique in another thread to preface certain passages with tags like "Rules:" and "Supposition:". Kinda like...

RAW: "Elves get +2 to Charisma."

Guesswork: "Because elves are more socially appealing, they must naturally smell pretty. Maybe it's all of the dandelions they eat."

Suggestion: "Charisma should be used more as force of personality than comeliness. Darth Vader had a charismatic presence but he was freaky lookin', and some joytoys might be nothing but uninteresting lumps of high-maintenence flesh. Hey, maybe we can split Charisma into Psyche and Appeal."

So, my sympathies to Frank for offering guesswork and suggestions and having people view them as misreported RAW.

Yeah, but I'm only doing that because some very vocal people seem to have a hard time differentiating between restating canon rules and making suggestions. I really don't think it should be necessary. Is it really that hard to tell the difference between providing canon references for a rule, suppositions about that rule, and suggestions for improvements beyond the scope of the rules? I don't generally consider myself to be particularly bright for being able to tell the difference, but maybe I'm smarter than I give myself credit for.

I posted my tidbit mostly because of the statement made by Frank: "Oh no you didn't" Which to me meant: "How dare you question the mighty rules-lawyer Frank!"

I am not incapable of understanding when people turn to suggestion and houserule. Frank does this sometimes, but most of the time he bursts in with just over the top rules, telling you that you are in fact interpreting the rules incorrectly. I felt a need to comment on this.

In (probably) everyone's defense, the holes in SR basically force us to make inductive and deductive interpretations. That is to say, there's a lot of necessary guesswork going on mixed in with canonical facts (which themselves can be contradictory). That's why I liked the idea of trying to label which was which when possible.

But yeah, my head shakes and eyes roll when someone defends (or attacks) guesswork and suggestions with religious fervor. No argument from me there.

OK... since apparently people are going to continue to be mad at me unless and until I write up some playable metahuman ghoul conversions, I guess I'll do just that. While the human ghoul conversion is pretty spot-on, the Metahuman ghoul conversion involves a lot of guesswork.

Human Ghoul (30 BP):

B: 5/10
A: 1/6
R: 3/8
S: 4/9
C: 1/4
I: 2/7
L: 1/5
W: 3/8
Edg: 1/6
Ess: 5
M: 1/5
Movement: 10/25

Powers:
Resistance (Disease), Enhanced Senses (Hearing, Smell), Natural Weapon (Claws: S/2 + 1)

Ghouls get the following Negative Qualities and gain no BPs for them:
Allergy (Sunlight, Mild), Dark Secret (Ghoul), Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh), Reduced Senses (Blind).

Dwarf Ghoul (75 BP):

B: 6/11
A: 1/6
R: 2/7
S: 6/11
C: 1/4
I: 2/7
L: 1/5
W: 4/9
Edg: 1/5
Ess: 5
M: 1/5
Movement: 8/20

Powers:
Resistance (Disease +3 Dice, Poisons +2 Dice), Enhanced Senses (Hearing, Smell), Natural Weapon (Claws: S/2 + 1)

Ghouls get the following Negative Qualities and gain no BPs for them:
Allergy (Sunlight, Mild), Dark Secret (Ghoul), Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh), Reduced Senses (Blind).

Elf Ghoul (70 BP):

B: 5/10
A: 2/7
R: 3/8
S: 4/9
C: 1/6
I: 2/7
L: 1/5
W: 3/8
Edg: 1/5
Ess: 5
M: 1/5
Movement: 10/25

Powers:
Resistance (Disease), Enhanced Senses (Hearing, Smell), Natural Weapon (Claws: S/2 + 1)

Ghouls get the following Negative Qualities and gain no BPs for them:
Allergy (Sunlight, Mild), Dark Secret (Ghoul), Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh), Reduced Senses (Blind).

Ork Ghoul (70 BP):

B: 8/11
A: 1/6
R: 2/7
S: 6/11
C: 1/3
I: 2/7
L: 1/4
W: 3/8
Edg: 1/5
Ess: 5
M: 1/5
Movement: 10/25

Powers:
Resistance (Disease +3 Dice, Poisons +2 Dice), Enhanced Senses (Hearing, Smell), Natural Weapon (Claws: S/2 + 1)

Ghouls get the following Negative Qualities and gain no BPs for them:
Allergy (Sunlight, Mild), Dark Secret (Ghoul), Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh), Reduced Senses (Blind).


Troll Ghoul (90 BP):

B: 9/14
A: 1/5
R: 2/7
S: 8/13
C: 1/2
I: 1/6
L: 1/4
W: 3/8
Edg: 1/5
Ess: 5
M: 1/5
Movement: 15/35

Powers:
Resistance (Disease +3 Dice, Poisons +2 Dice), Enhanced Senses (Hearing, Smell), Natural Weapon (Claws: S/2 + 1), +1 Reach, 1/1 Armor, 1 Mystic Armor

Ghouls get the following Negative Qualities and gain no BPs for them:
Allergy (Sunlight, Mild), Dark Secret (Ghoul), Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh), Reduced Senses (Blind).

---

Additional Suggested Rule: Characters should not be allowed to spend more than 15% of their BPs on Race. This means that while Ork Ghouls and Dwarf Ghouls are not particularly appropriate for 400 BP "street level" games, for a higher powered 500 BP game they can fit right in. Troll Ghouls even more so, and are not suggested for games with less than 600 starting BPs.

---

Suppositions: This conversion assumes that attribute modifiers add up like they did in SR3 (even though we know they don't) and then applies the modifiers like normal SR4 modifiers to the stats. That's a huge leap of faith, honestly. Further, since Human Ghouls don't have the human's Edge modifier, and Metahumans already don't have an Edge bonus, I am converting that as Metahuman Ghouls having an Edge penalty. Of course, it would be just as valid a hypothesis from that fact to wipe out all Metahuman racial modifiers before applying the Ghoul modifiers like in SR1, but this is more in line with what people wanted.

The rubric I am using is horribly simple: Elf Ghouls have a bonus to every physical characteristic, so I am arbitrarily charging them an extra 10 points for synergy with their metatype and Ghoulishness. Dwarfs, Orks, and Trolls all have Strength and Body bonuses that combine to form Voltron, so I am charging them 20 extra points for synergy between their metatype and Ghoulishness. Scientific? Heck no, but it seems to get numbers that work out OK.

Metahumans all have special vision. Ghouls have no vision. I am assuming for the time being that Blind trumps the ability to see Thermographic. Second generation ghouls can see, but this is a conversion of a first generation ghoul.

-Frank

Nifty. I like that.

Why does the ghoul Troll have mystic armor?

At this point I will have to disagree with Blakkie and go with Frank.

There needs to be different costs between the different metatypes becoming Ghouls. It helps some more than it helps others and it hurts some less than it hurts others.

This means there should be different costs associated.

Cost:
Ummmm, not sure because I haven't tried it out with some characters yet. Likely about 30BP, maybe only 25BP. What do you think?

Natural Attribute Modifiers
+1 Body
-1 Charisma

Attribute Augmentation Modifiers:
The melding of the physical with at astral has brought into being permanent ongoing magical effects, similar to the Adept Improved Physical Attribute power, upon the ghoul's body. However, unlike [the bizzaro RAW of] Improved Physical Attribute, this augmentation does NOT affect the purchase price of new points in the Attributes

+1 Body
+1 Strength
+1 Reaction
+1 Willpower
+1 Intuition
-1 Logic
-1 Charisma
-1 Essense (this in turn applies a -1 penalty to Magic or Resonance)

Qualities:
- Dual Natured (Constant, allows Assensing)
- Enhanced Senses (Hearing, Smell)
- Natural Weapon (Claws: DV ((Str/2)+1)P, AP 0)

- Allergy (Sunlight, Mild)
- Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh)
- Reduced Senses (Blind)
- Sensitive System

The transformation causes the DNI to fail on any cyberware already installed, although the failure can be corrected with cybersurgery. This cybersurgery is a retuning of the DNI, and costs no extra Essense beyond the normal double Essense cost that was already imposed during the transformation by gaining the Sensitive System Quality. Bioware implanted prior to "ghoulification" is transformed and/or absorbed into the body becoming either non-functional or returning to the 'normal' functioning of the organ it repalced. Though there are rumours of experimental Krieger strain infected, vat grown Bioware, these are largely viewed as fanciful urban myths.

NOTE: I'm not entirely happy with how this handles bioware, given the difference between SR3 rules and SR4 rules regarding bioware. But this is a rough first pass. I also left out details about what happens if Cha or Log hit 0 in the transformation. In SRComp there was the option to either have the character lose it's mind (no longer playable) or subtract 2 points from another attribute for each point needed to avoid hittting 0. But i'm not entirely sold on leaving in the latter. I also left out the innane random "stage 3" crap. Random Character Generation is so bell-bottoms and ruffle shirt.

I would probably up to 35 or 40, just because it does increase a bit, and while the flaws are severe, they are less severe to shadowrunners. Well, unless you are supposed to be the face of the group.

As a note, there is a synergy here. With SR4 going in to increase the capability of nonaugmented characters, the -1 Essence and sensitive system would help towards focusing ghouls on that route.

On the other hand, the stats from the book do imply a -1 Edge modifier, which I think is perfectly reasonable.

Time for some Thread Necromancy!

I've been toying with the option of inserting a character into a new game: a Rastafarian Ghoul Bat Shaman who hunts down and feeds on rich, ahem, "Babylonians" in Seattle.

I've got the Bat totem easily converted.

Has anyone tooled out an effective conversion for using Ghouls as Player Characters? As in, BP costs and stat adjustments?

It's probably been done, but for the hell of it, I'll take a stab. I'm basing this stuff on the Ghoul entry on page 292 of the BBB, and reverse-engineering the Metatype Attribute Table on page 73.

BP: 115 (!)
Metatype: Ghoul
BOD: 5/10(15)
AGI: 1/6(9)
REA: 3/8(12)
STR: 4/9(13)
CHA: 1/4(6)
INT: 2/7(10)
LOG: 1/5(7)
WIL: 3/8(12)
INI: 5/15(23)
Abilities: Dual Natured, Magic Rating 1 (no implicit Magician, Adept, or Mystic Adept), Improved Hearing, Olifactory Boost, Claws (DV: STR/2+1, AP: 0), Allergy (Sunlight, Mild), Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh), Blind

I would lower WIL by one and raise INT by one. And no longer Infection Ability (or however it was called)? How will new Ghouls be created then?

Incidentally.
I've statted: Metavarients, Ghouls, and Shapeshifters.
If someone wants to Host them Just Mail me or PM me and I'll send you the word file.