Lord Ben
Dec 6 2005, 03:06 PM
How much karma do you give people who have to start over in your games? The Karma in our party ranges from 30-55 and one of the guys at about 50 just got captured by Aztechnology and may have to restart. Since we swap DM's everyone has an opinion and nobody has the authority to just rule 0 it. It ranges from start them at 0 to give them 80% of the highest players karma.
Azralon
Dec 6 2005, 03:07 PM
My standing offer is a bonus to BPs equal to half of the deceased/retired character's career karma.
The new character is still restricted by the character generation caps (no more than half of total BPs can go into Attributes, for instance), but they're better off than a total newbie.
Fuchs
Dec 6 2005, 04:23 PM
I don't give them karma, I tell them to make a character, then we adjust it to the level of the rest of the group, taking the specific campaign/team into account, not just raw numbers.
Basically, the goal is to have all characters on equal footing no matter the playtime.
TheHappyAnarchist
Dec 6 2005, 04:29 PM
I generally give an arbitrary amount that is not more than 75% of the rest of the group, usually closer to 50-60%.
On the other hand, one game I got into, the rest of the group had been playing for years and had Karma pools in the 5&6 range (he gave karma per story arc, not per session, which I like. Makes it so a total newb doesn't become an ace superhero level shadowrunner in a year gametime)
I filled a niche that was not yet filled, as did the other new guy joining. We did not have any problems with the power level and were still challenged very thoroughly. Of course, he was the best GM I have ever had, which may have contributed.
Azralon
Dec 6 2005, 04:46 PM
| QUOTE (Fuchs) |
| Basically, the goal is to have all characters on equal footing no matter the playtime. |
While that's an ideal (and important!) goal, it's very hard to attain. Two reasons:
1) The point-buy system. It allows for both extremely potent newbie characters as well as wholly ineffectual ones.
2) The game setting. In Shadowrun, it's not so much a question of amassing power as it is using what power you have effectively.
My point is that you can drop a 400-point newbie into a group of veterans and he can still pull his weight if he's built right and plays smart. This isn't D&D, where introducing a level 1 greenhorn into a group of level 10's is a bad move.
Still, losing a character represents hours and hours of lost playtime. Since karma represents that, that's why I'm inclined to roll that over to replacement characters. Not a 100% return, of course, otherwise death/retirement would cease to be an undesirable thing.
Anyway, that's my reasoning. I'm not trying to persuade anyone to abandon their own preferred methods, I'm just explaining where I got my method from.
Shrike30
Dec 6 2005, 06:32 PM
i'm inclined to give a new character 50% of the karma of the old one, the general idea being that if the team is picking up a new member, they're going to try and find competent people... and hopefully, the team has earned enough of a rep that more experienced runners (read, a guy with 50% of the karma of the old character, rather than 0) would be interested.
Half of the things that a character gets karma for are things that the character didn't do. Good roleplaying isn't a character action, exactly. The 1 Karma/player I've always got sitting around for "the player does something that busts up the entire group" is almost always given for an OOC comment. Karma's a reward not just for the character, but for the player, and since it's not always a player's fault that his character gets killed, taking all of that away from him feels harsh to me.
Demon_Bob
Dec 6 2005, 06:38 PM
I prefer 50% of the average Karma the group has.
Yes I know that for some players who were away for a while or could not make it on several occations that this would mean that they actually have a more experienced player than before.
This does prevent Strings of bad luck or GM's "I guess that wan't a good place to bring in your character SNAFU's from taking you from a Character with 100 Karma to one with 12.
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