I didn't realize that you were that lost. I thought you just misremembered the BP costs. Not that you forgot that basic limitation. Although it certainly helps explain your lack of understanding of the strengths of SR4 characters.

So why again couldn't you use one of the spreadsheets or programs at work? Or work on the character on your home computer?

No, I was going by actual characters built not the sample characters. The most extreme example is one I posted here, with 21 or 22 starting skills and another one picked up about two sessions into play. He wasn't really built optimal though. He is more of a concept character to see how playable a mundane with no implants was in SR4. He's been a lot of fun, I'm in the middle of editing the story of his latest adventure.

An early on character I built while I was still in an SR3 frame of mind only had 10 skills, but after that the lowest skill count is in the mid-teens. Compared to very, very few characters with more than 7 Skills in SR3. I find I'm going in the opposite direction too. In SR3 I started out with more Skills and then found just how brutal it was on the character, although still somewhat playable, and slowly reduced Skill count as my play evolved. On the flipside I find I'm increasing the skill count in SR4 as my play and understanding of the system evolves.

It isn't just the character generation though that is driving this. Skill rating 1 is something that is useful in SR4, in SR3 Skill 1 was playing Russian Roulette.

Well, not until immediately after chargen, when you can get one for dirt cheap. Unless you're playing an otaku technomancer-rigger looking for that 4th initiative pass, you're always better off spending on specializations straight out of chargen. Yet another of those strange disconnects between chargen and advancement.

To be honest when it comes to specializations SR3's system was actually better; under that system you could actually justify getting specializations at chargen, but only if you never planned on raising the "base" skill. Now there's no reason at all to justify getting one at chargen.

Brahm: as I read it, your rebuttal to my post is essentially trying to argue "security through obscurity." Your argument seems to be that fewer people people will work at optimizing their characters just because the process is not as easy as it was in SR3. For rebuttal, I offer this:

Yes, the context of that article is about cryptography and computer network security, but the argument is still valid.

You discover the limitations by building characters. It takes me many hours to build a character, hours which I don't have. You discover the strengths through playtesting, and that's where hyperspecialization really shows its true colors.

The strengths of a detailed build-point system is generally customizability. GURPS, for example, offers a lot of choices allowing for a wild array of characters. SR4 can't even compete with GURPS basic on that level! That means one of the purported strengths isn't really there.

The biggest flaw with a detailed build point system is generally calculation time. It'd be unfair to compare a GURPS program to SR4 pen-and-paper, so I can't do the reverse. In general, it takes me less time to create a 400+ point GURPS character, using multiple books, than it does for me to create a SR4 character. Sometimes the differences are small (two hours versus about two-and-a-half) and sometimes they're astronomical (two hours versus four days).

I'm going in reverse, and so are the character's I've been seeing. There's been a greater trend to push the one skill/stat combo further and further, while leaving the rest at middle levels. What's more, when we were in the SR3 mindset, we tended to avoid specializations, since they were a double-edged sword, forcing a reduction in your overall skill. Now, specializations carry no penalty at all, meaning you can load up on them without worry.

With all due respect, Cain, it sounds like SR4 isn't the game for you. You seem to be much more satisfied with the other systems you've mentioned along the way, and would probably be happier playing those.

Then you read it wrong.

It isn't that there isn't an optimum or that everything is ok because it is obscured, it is that the band of the near optimum is wider and the peak isn't as high. Partially because the difference between least and most optimum BP versus karma costs of Skills is really at most a factor of 2, and in practice ends up being a lot less than that. That is down from SR3 which are like the Technomancers complex forms.

Ironically that that page seems to have listed the numbers for this. Though I haven't gone through and verified all their assertions and I think they might have missed a point or two, but they generally are on the mark. So I'm not sure why you haven't grasped this? Notice also that they don't actually address every choice that goes into a character, and they are only giving general advice and are usually tempering the numbers with counter reasons why to look past the highest/lowest number on a table.

The broader band of near optimum allows for a wider variety of Skills, and thus more options for near optimum characters. It also means that the optimum is more sensitive to situational specifics. This brings even more variety to the group of optimum and near optimum characters.


Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Expectations of Utopia

Yes there are optimums for a given game world style, character type, and playing style. You think you can avoid that in a system? Sorry, short of having no options that just isn't going to happen. Even if you switched to a karma character creation it would exist, they would just come out at a different point.

It is also where it shows how it weakens the character that tries to push to hard to the maximums during creation.

So how many skills are your characters taking? Post a couple for examples.

During play Specialization are likely too cheap, they would have been better at 3 karma. Also Specialization of anything in a Skill Group has that inherent cost that you can nolonger use the cheaper advancement rates.

In SR3 I forget now how advancement worked with Specialization. I remember it striking me as rather wonky, and somewhat more costly. Although the fact it didn't actually cost anything extra at character generation time did lead to it being actually used, as opposed to SR4 where the post creation cost is the same karma as BP. You just had to make sure it wasn't something you intended to advance as a whole Skill and would eventually be OK defaulting from the Specialization back to the general Skill

But outside of that as soon as you try to push the envelop to the maximum during SR4 character creation you really hurt the character.

Cain if it really takes you between 2 hours and 4 days to make a SR4 character with full access to the SR4 book then there is a disconnect between the SR4 writers and your brain. Considering that most characters ignore about 30% of the book (mages tend to ignore riggers & cyber, technomancers ignore magic and usually cyber, gunbunnies ignore magic and hacking, etc, etc.) and at least 20% of the book is background and combat mechanics then the page count for any character is way, way smaller than GURPS.

Either a) you have Gurps memorized and feel you need the same level of familiarity with SR4 so you look every little detail up every time, b) your brain begins to short circuit when you read SR4, or c) you are totally and absolutely over-optimizing the SR4 characters.

if a) then you're just going to have to spend more time with SR4 'til you are comfortable.

b) sorry, have a buddy come up with an SR4 crib sheet and maybe that'll help.

c) Relax, breathe, and force yourself to write down the general specs of the new character and what the priorities are. Make the most important sections first (i.e. skillbunny, cyber-tank, ubermensch athlete) and accept the fact that the character is not going to be perfect because it has room to grow.

So here are my impressions as one who played a bit of 2nd edition and a metric crap ton of 3rd.

Overall I really like it. I feel that this new edition has made the game a lot smoother and basically allows us to fit more fun into a session of gaming since things can be resolved faster, thus allowing us to get to the next bit of the story. By way of example let me tell you about our most recent session.

We were supposed to break into an old listening post in the Aleutian Islands that was being used by smugglers. We were supposed to get in, steal some samples of the drugs and BTLs they were smuggling and destroy the rest. We screwed the pooch going in and ended up getting into a room-to-room gun battle against the smugglers. What followed was an incredibly long, drawn out fight wherein we had to clear the defenders room by room, all while preventing them from flanking around us and while our hacker kept them trying to wrest control of their own security from them. Battered and bleeding (not to mention shot) we finally took enough of them out that we convinced the rest that surrender was a viable alternative. Over the course of the battle we used melee and ranged combat, the hacking rules concurrently with the combat, grenades, explosives vs. barriers, and more.

The amazing thing was that the battle never felt slow, the rounds went by quickly, and we didn't have to consult the book too often (although we did need the scatter charts and such.) The fight was quick, effecient, and most of all, fun.

Now this was after we have been playing awhile, so we all know the rules pretty well at this point, but I feel that it ran faster then SR3 ever did, and I approve whole-heartedly. Mind you, the system has it's flaws. Quite a few really. I agree that the layout is counter-intuitive, and some of the systems are confusing and/or lacking important bits (ahem... rigging) but most of these problems will likely be resolved in upcoming supplements (provided, of course, that these are ever made.)

Its purported strength -IS- there. Not to the level of GURPS...but then again there really isn't a system out there that competes with GURPS in sheer customizability. And as Cain goes on to say later you can't compare the two fairly.

The thing is while it doesn't appear to be stupendously customizable, you have to realize, even as little as 16 bp's of change in chargen can drasticaly change the way your character interacts with the world and works in the system in general.


Oh and as for not believeing chargen stories of time lengths...10-15 mins for a WoD character...gah...I can pull that off but its the most generic characters I can come up with, has really no life to him or quirks. Even fast creation takes me a half hour. And thats kinda stretching it...usualy takes me about 1-2 hours to flesh something out there because i'm always trying to phenagle something here or there to get the concept to work right (and quite possibly much longer if its Exalted as i can agonize over charm choices forever...)

I've been playing Shadowrun since it first came out. My Big Blue Book is autographed. Up 'til now, Shadowrun has always been the game that satisfied me the most.

Just because SR4 doesn't compare favorably against other games is no reason to dump seventeen years of role playing.

The characters *aren't* weakened, though. They keep about the same level of overall functionality, and add a super-specialized area. In other words, one-trick ponies aren't as weak anymore.

A) No human being could possibly have all of GURPS memorized.
B) Not my brain; but my fingers get tired from all the back-and-forth.
C) I thought the whole point of all the limits was to prevent that sort of thing from happening? Even though it doesn't work. Additionally, a hyper-optimized character in any of several systems I play doesn't take nearly as long.

Yeah, which adds to the problem. If you change one little thing, your entire character concept can unravel on you, forcing you to go back and rework almost everything. I could live with that if there was more customizability, but I don't think we're even getting that.

I haven't noticed any improvement. I won't say that it's *worse*, since it isn't; but I don't think it's noticeably faster or smoother. To be fair, though, I've been playing a lot of Savage Worlds recently, which makes everything else look like a slug with arthritis. I might just be having a different perspective.

So being able to really tweak how your character works fundementaly in the game is not a good level of customizability? Interesting.

I've never had to go most of the way back and rework my character in SR4. I've had to several times in SR3 when i realize i need a few more nuyen or that extra stat point to do what i need to do. In SR4 i look at where i've spent my points, remember i write everything out and make nice little tallies for each section and skill and such makes life so much easier in this regard, decide where i might be able to skimp on something, or change it slightly to work just a tad differently.

In all honesty I find it easier to rework a concept and such in this system than it ever was in sr3. With just 16 buildpoints i can really change how my character works. I don't see that as a problem, atleast when you're somewhat intelligent on how you go about building a character...ie writing everything out so its easy to see and look back at when you realize you're a few points short. I haven't had any problems with the chargen system other than the book being a little wonky in layout.

As far as gameplay goes, so far its been a little bit quicker, but it promises to pick up using that wonderful 9 page char sheet from the comunity forums. God damn that thing's beautiful. Saves us math durring the game and gives you alot more information at your fingertips that you don't have to go flipping through.

IME it plays much faster for people who are new to SR or who have only a passing familiarity with the system. Yeah, I kinda miss the variable pools but I don't miss watching people agonize over when and where to spend their dice. The game runs smoother just from that regard.

Combat mechanics are pretty much the same concept as before so they aren't really different. I will say that hacking is much better and more useful in a firefight without being overpowered or disfunctional (yay). Riggers are a step sideways, moving away from the Tank Girl imagery and more towards the James Bond remote control spider; still very useful but not so much raw muscle (but a lot easier to integrate into the GMs plans, IMO). Magic is still magic; I think the book keeping has been simplified a bit for the mage since you no longer buy spells at Force.

Vehicle driving has been simplified (not that you can get harder than the obfuscation of the Maneuver Score) but there are still some hazy spots when it comes to speed.

I'd say that including the problems with the organization of the book, the game tends to run noticeably faster than any other edition of SR. I'm sure a SR4.1 BBB with an updated layout would definitely make picking up the nuances of the game easier but this is probably one of the easiest significant game system revisions I've ever gone through. Definitely up there with AD&D->d20.

The Vehicle rules while definately improved suffer heavily from the problem of rules scattered in different section and also lack a final polish to close up a few loose ends. Examples are what vehicles require you to add a rigger adaptation, whether the Control Rig is required or not, and what that Pilot column is suppose to represent in the Vehicle table or if it was included by mistake.

There always comes a time to move on, with or without regrets.

You've just been coming through as a "SR4 hater" in precisely the wrong forum to vent such sentiments. Critiques are healthy (and necessary) until they become repeated overzealous flame wars; then they're a waste of time and effort no matter how well thought out they are.

So yeah, breaking up is hard to do. Especially when the breakup negotiations become self-fulfilling. That's all I'm sayin'.

The problem is, the flexibility just isn't there. You can have your character concept change dramatically, but you still can't manage to pull off a lot of things. There's just too many arbitrary limitations and caps in place. For example, you can't have a character with above-average stats across the board-- there just aren't enough points availiable to give you all stats at 4 or better.

In many cases, my SR4 character experiments have come unraveled midway through, forcing me to go back and rework everything. I do exactly what you suggest, but then one area gets to big, the other gets too small, and up and down goes the seesaw.

I agree here. I can't imagine anything worse than the Maneuver Score, so the new vehicle rules are an astounding improvement. However, I can't figure out if the second section on vehicle combat is meant to apply in vehicle-vs-vehicle or vehicle-vs-pedestrian combat. And you *still* can't easily combine multiple vehicles and people at once. If you've got a drone rigger on each side during a firefight, you can't use the closing rules, since they operate on a totally different timescale.

Hear, hear.

That isn't a matter of flexibility; that's a matter of expectations. The assumption is that you are a fairly inexperienced individual, low on the concrete jungle totem pole but with enough cash and history to be competent, if not particularly expert. Think "college graduate with less than a year's experience."

If you don't like that the solution is simple: change the BP. If you want a more experienced game, give out 500BP. Someone on another thread is running a gang-related game and is planning to give out ~300BP.

I like the expectations of SR4 because it means the characters don't fall over their own feet but still have growth potential. So many SR2 & SR3 characters felt..... done. I like the idea that even the most twinked out SR4 character still has playable life. But I can understand how constricted that may feel to some people. I think it's the reason so many people dont' like playing 1st level D&D characters.

That's an excellent point. The same thing happened when White Wolf switched over to the new World of Darkness system. Alot of people didn't like the fact that the character creation system, as written, produced characters with a lot fewer and/or less potent abilities.

I think what everyone needs to remember is that there is nothing at all wrong with giving more or less BP then the book suggests. Also, there is nothing wrong with ditching any of the caps that are disliked. If a group feels that the characters that they create are too limited, just give more points and/or ditch the caps. As long as your group and GM are cool with it, more power to you. The nice thing about the character creation system being different is that groups can house rule it to hell and back and won't really cause any weird hiccups in the rest of the rules.

And to weigh in on the "how long does it take to make a character" thing. For me it's a little quicker in SR4. I get through stats, skills, and qualities pretty quick, and equipment takes me forever. The only reason it goes a little faster than SR3 is that I don't have any other sourcebooks to dig through for cool toys.

Well, it is and it isn't. There's still a lot of things you can do within that thought, but you still can't play any of a variety of balanced concepts that go against the grain. For example, it's very difficult to make a grizzled old veteran, who still has sharp skills, but whos natural physical abilities are sliding (high skills and low attributes). And it's impossible to play someone who relies on natural talent almost exclusively-- high stats and low skills. Both these concepts fit the power level and basic assumption you describe, but are difficult if not outright impossible to bring to fruition in SR4.

I have to disagree here. It's entirely possible to max out a stat/skill combination right out of chargen, making it so you can never advance in that area ever again. The skill caps sharply limit how mugh growth potential a character can ever have. While I see what you mean about SR2&3, since they had an open-ended system, you could never max out-- you just hit a point of diminishing returns.

So, you have your "new to the concrete jungle" shadowrunner, who's already the world's best shot with a pistol. And despite a wonderful character history that drives him to forever hone his skills to new heights, he is barred from doing so.

Since someone asked, let me pull out the four-day character I made. I did what has been suggested-- developed a strong concept, made quick tallies by each section, and then balanced it out from there. However, things that happened later on made me go back and redo earlier parts. For example, I initially tried allocating a fixed amount of resource points for gear, but I kept going over, so I'd have to pull points from elsewhere; I'd remove a few items, but then I was way under. Eventually, I just made a wish list of everything, totalled up the cost, and then divided it by 5000 to get the point allocation. Also, originally he was an adept, but then I discovered the errata which limited his Improved Skill power. Since you couldn't beat the cap that way, I ended up reworking the character almost from scratch as a street sam.

Anyway, here we go:

Mr. Lucky
Race: Human

B: 4
Q:5(7)
R:4(6)
S:3(5)
C:3
I:4
L:2
W:3

Essence: 0.75
Edge: 8
Init: 8(10), 3 passes.

Edges:
Lucky
Aptitude: Pistols
High Pain Tolerance 1

Flaws:
SINner
Incompetence: Pilot Anthroform
Incompetence: Pilot Aerospace
Incompetence: Aeronautic Mechanic
Incompetence: Industrial mechanic
Incompetence: Nautical mechanic
Incompetence: Software

Skills:
Pistols 7 (Semi auto), total 18 dice.
Gymnastics 3 (dodging) total 6 dice.
Infiltration 2 (Urban) total 5 dice.
Con 2 (Fast talk) total 4 dice
Unarmed Combat 2 (Martial arts) total 5 dice.

Knowledge: 18 free.

Contacts:
Fixer 2/2
Street Doc: 1/3

Gear: 38 pts.
Cyber/Bio:
Wired 2
Muscle Replacement 2
Enhanced articulation
Reflex recorder (firearms group)

Gear highlights:
2 commlinks, one for public use, one skinlinked to operate gear.
Contact lenses with vision mods & smartlink.
Glasses with Vision Enhancement 3 & ultrasound.
Armor jacket with chemical protection and Insulation 6.
Lots of Ares Predators with lots of EX-EX ammo.
Smartlinked AVS's.
Smartlinked Roomsweepers.

High lifestyle, 2 mo prepaid.
Starting nuyen: 4d6+12 x 500.

As you can see, he's not a one-trick pony-- he's got two very noticeable tricks, and a few extra besides. His skills cover all the bases, with reasonable steath and social abilities; he still needs to partner himself with a good infiltrator, decker, and face, but that's why shadowrunners work in teams. His contacts cover the bases for a street sam: a fixer is necessary, and a street doc is always helpful. Since you need a street doc for his skills more than his connections, you can afford to push that rating down quite a bit.

His Incompetence flaws are the really disgusting part, though. Not only is it highly unlikely that he'll ever find himself in a situation where he'd need to use any of those skills, none of them allow you to default anyways.

But the really fun part is this: take a look at the BBB street samurai archetype. You'll notice that these two concepts are almost identical in function. So, despite all the purported flexibility in the system, the build ended up being almost the same in general.

Disgusting? If a player handed me this character sheet I'd be inclined to use the Large Dildo Solution. No way a GM should accept that crap. SR4 removed most of the old Flaw exploints, but Incompetance is probably the single worst open ended one left.


Post Script Another thing I noticed just glancing over it, even a street-level fixer is Connection 3. So you want to keep and not spend any extra you should probably change him from 2/2 to a 1/3.

Nah... they don't like those because they die if you sneeze on them, or if they trip over a small root in the forest. Running D&D, I'd almost inevitably start people at 3rd level, just to get them over the nastiness of trying to survive with all of 5 hit points in a game where some of the more basic weapons can do more than that in one hit.

Cain, the character you've got is an absolute god with handguns, and can muddle his way through pretty much anything else for a while. My main fear would be getting into any real mental-type situations that he'd be defaulting on, as any penalties would rapidly have him be making Long Shots. Perception is the one that would worry me the most in an "imminent death" kind of way. Ettiquette might be another. Most smart GMs would nix the Incompetencies you've chosen, although they are legal by RAW, as being inappropriate for the campaign (unless, of course, you're playing Air Force Specops or something).

As for constantly pushing himself to become even better at his task... he's reached the pinnacle of human capability. He's reached the point where the diminishing returns on constant training have gotten so small, that training is only going to keep him performing at the level he's at.

Or if you wanted to "code in" that drive, you could always figure out a few places to lose some dice, and round the character out a bit more.

There's a point at which progressing any further in a particular skill takes the game out of balance. I don't have a firm number to hand out as to where that point is, but 18 dice being thrown (or 26, rerolling 6's, with Edge) is certainly pushing it real hard. I don't have a problem with where the caps are on performance, because of how far beyond most everyone else's ability to compete or resist those caps usually are.

That's where Trick #2 comes into play. With an Edge of 8, he will do amazingly well on any longshot test, and can afford to do it more often than anyone else. What's more, since your dice pool can't be pushed below zero, he can load up on the modifiers and still have 8 dice to pull it off with. For extended ettiquette and mental-type situations, he would need to rely on a teammate, but that makes him no different than any other similar character (look at the street sam in the BBB to see what I mean).

As far as perception goes, that's why he bought the glasses with Vision Enhancement 3. That gives him 6 dice, even with the defaulting penalty. Like a proper min/maxer, I've minimized his weaknesses-- not totally removed them, since that's seldom entirely possible, but I've reduced the immediate risks reasonably well.

And as for the incompetences, under ordinary circumstances, a good GM could make sure that I'd be heavily penalized for them-- putting the team in situations where those skills are needed. However, since you can't default on any of them, the actual game effect is minimal. I could choose different ones, more appropriate to the campaign, but even then they wouldn't mean much. For example, what happens if I had chosen Electronic Warfare, Pilot Aircraft, Medicine, Cybertechnology, and Automotive Mechanic instead? Not much, even though those skills are very pertinent to a normal shadowrunning game.

So, what happens is this: the system still allows for a lot of disgusting abuses, and doesn't penalize you nearly as heavily for it, since it was relatively easy to cover his weak spots. The caps aren't preventing abuses, or penalizing hyperspecialization, but they *are* preventing many different character concepts.

Actually, I'd save it for someone who handed me a bunch of Incompetences in Magical and Resonance skills. Those are legal to take Incompetences in, by the RAW, but I thought that was too abusive for words.

what? prove it.

Mmm-hmm. You ever heard of the "Four Minute Mile"?

Not all that long ago, it was thought that it was impossible for a human to run a mile in less than four minutes. However, Roger Bannister proved them all wrong. What's more, since then thousands of people have run a mile in under four minutes, showing that the human maximums *can* indeed be pushed further and further.

I'll bet that if you graph the world records over the timeframe you mention, you'll see that there was probably a lot of improvement at first, gradually slowing down over time. That indicates a "diminishing returns" curve, instead of a hard limit.

Which is why anyone that brought me a character sheet with 5 Incompetence Flaws is risking the wrath of a LDS. If was handed a non-Awakened character with Incompetence in magical skills I'd hand out the large dildos to everyone else at the table so they could join in the fun.

Mind you if you took just Incompetency:FirstAid you likely would end up wishing I would have turned it down.


On Perception, you definately are going to need Ear Buds as well. But still you are far, far better off to cut a point from your Edge, drop 4 points into Perception, and still have 9 BP left over for somewhere else. Those extra 5 dice are going to save you at least a point of Edge, and make you very difficult to surprise. Shame on the GM that forgets about the other senses, like scent.

Same goes the majority of those Specializations. Waste of BP. Survival, Navigation are quite useful Skills unless you'll damn sure you won't find yourself alone and doing something like crawling through the sewers in a wireless dead zone, or in anything less urban than a C Zone for an extended period of time. Even if you are with others having those Skills allows you to contribute to a Team Test which is really important for Survival tests.

This might actually be an encumberance issue, depending on GM interpretation. I assume the Insulation 6 is trying to keep your heat signature down? You'll propbably also want a second coat for warm sunny days, that'll get kind of hot runnning around in it.

If you are refering to this character, then you are sadly mistaken. If you are going to rely on Edge keep in mind two things. Edge tends to run out, and that if you don't have a Skill you are not nessasarily allowed a roll at all, and that is for all Skills.

This character is mostly wallpaper. He does a couple of things, and you do exploit a couple of silly things like Specializing in hand-to-hand. Until there are rules to provide meaning to that Specialization that just an extra 2 dice. Also Ex-Ex along with the rest of the ammunition modifiers are poorly thought out.

If this PC was in a game that was very heavy on shooting as the solution to lifes problems and didn't really go anywhere, or if he was the 7th man in a team that would do pretty much as well without him then he'd do fine. I certainly wouldn't find him particularly unbalancing, and rather putting effort into challenging him I would more likely end up pulling punches to protect him. If it was a smaller team what I would be unhappy is how he would contribute to narrowing the range of things I'd throw at the team.

Maybe you are expecting the system to wack you over the head and tell you that this is a lame character? His shortcomings aren't that hard to see.

Let me suggest the following in an attempt to clarify something that keeps coming up with regards to this issue: the change in the SR4 Att and Skill system (including the new caps) requires a significant mental shift - one from an open-ended frame of reference (SR3) to a relative and closed frame of reference. Whereas in SR3 you were told that a Skill of 6 meant you were world-class it was still possible to get a skill rating up to a 10 or 12 given enough focus. SR4 changes the frame of reference to one with an absolute, it assume all unaugmented human results are all relative and all fall at somepoint within its range of 1 to 7 (with 7 being the pinnacle of unaugmented human achievement) or 1 to 9 with specialization.

Since the scale is closed the real world equivalent would be to divide up an individual's ability within one of those 1-7.

Since the frame of reference is closed it doesn't really matter whether a runner beats the four minute mile and shaves another two seconds off the world record, because he's still one of the 14,29% of athletes (or 11,11% four-minute mile specialists) that can do it (ie. the frame of reference is closed) - in practical terms it just means that developers decided that diminishing returns for having achieved the top percentile of athletes capable of that peak performance doesn't justify an extra die (maybe because the very next day he might not be able to achieve the same result). Additionally if an accomplishment is so outstanding that it "breaks the scale" (say someone running the "3 minute mile") then the scale is simply adjusted (after all it is both closed and relative).

Whether this scale/frame of reference (and the dice pool it equates to) translates to "realistic" results or not is another issue, but once you accept the closed scale then caps make a lot more sense.

Once upon a time, I read an article about some scientists that calculated the absolute maximums for human athletes. Among other things, they put the 100 mts. record at somewhere between 8 and 9 seconds. Anything faster than that they deemed impossible for a human.