The two that stand out:
- Getting an extra IP.
- Going first in an IP.

the problem with that is, there's no set standard for how 'experienced' a starting SR character is. you can play an aging merc with 20 years of combat experience, right out of chargen, or you could play a young undercover reporter whose only experience in the shadows comes from buying a BTL every other week to relax with. both of those, under the karma system, start out with the same level of experience. i like the fact that with Edge, you can decide how experienced--or lucky, or whatever--your character is.

there are problems with viewing karma as an experience meter, too. what happens when you burn 5kp to keep yourself alive? are you somehow less experienced, afterwards? it just doesn't work well enough to justify keeping it, to me.

Do you have a problem with Edge's ability to re-roll failures? SR4 dice pools regularily hit 10+ dice and the SR4 "target number" of 5 is usually lower than most "difficult" tasks in SR3.

I certainly do. I haven't worked out a decent solution to the issue yet, but what I may do is simply disallow it (but allow for the use of an edge point to buy a single success after the fact).

Ok, I had always played SR3 Karma Pool as only being able to re-roll failures once. Plus, I don't know what you're saying about "limited to 6..." Do you mean you can only re-roll 6 failures? Not true.

The Rule of Six doesn't apply to these dice, however.

Now, if you meant that Edge itself has a hard cap, then fine. I had my PC's karma pools only refresh between adventures (not even sessions) so my PC's used it very sparingly. Bottom line: I never found Karma Pool to be overly powerful and I still don't see Edge as being overly powerful.

well lucky for us it's not the luck stat then, i guess.

it's called edge. not luck. edge.

now certainly, your personal edge stat (for a character) may represent luck. it may also represent skill, or a stubborn refusal to accept failure. it may represent that you've been backed into a corner, and so you're putting 110% into whatever you're doing because if it fails, you're screwed. it might represent an adrenaline rush, a tendency to enter a berserker rage, a state of mental focus, intuition, instinctive use of adept-like powers, or any number of other things, depending on the character. it most certainly is not just luck, though.

I suppose you could house rule that edge is not luck if you wanted to. I don't have an SR3 book handy, but IIRC it also attributes karma partially to luck.

Except that thresholds never apply in combat, and the rule of 6 doesn't apply on longshot tests anyway. The second can be easily fixed, but the first leads to some very wonky results, very quickly.

Five times is more than enough, if you're good at resource management. As for being "weaker", let me see if I can dig up Mr. Lucky...

Mr. Lucky
Race: Human

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

Essence: 0.15
Edge: 8
Init: 8(10), 3 passes.

Edges:
Lucky
Aptitude: Pistols
High Pain Tolerance 1

Flaws:
SINner
Incompetence x 6 (all in skills that allow no default, mostly technical skills)

Skills:
Pistols 7 (Semi auto) [total 19 dice!]
Gymnastics 3 (dodging)
Infiltration 2 (Urban)
Con 2 (Fast talk)
Unarmed Combat 2 (Martial arts)

Knowledge: 18 free.

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

Gear: 38 pts.
Cyber/Bio:
Wired 2
Muscle Replacement 2
Skillwires 3
Enhanced articulation
Reflex recorder (firearms group)

Gear highlights:
Guns. Lots of guns.
Lots of EX-EX ammo, except for the AVS.
Contacts w/ smartlink and vision enhancements
Glasses w/ lots of vision mods
Earbuds w/ Audio Enhancement
Several skillchips, including Perception and Ettiquette.

As you can see, he has both an insane Edge and an insane specialization. He's also well-covered in most other areas-- hardly the equivalent of a dedicated ninja or face, but he can function if he has to. He's got the full basic 200pts in attributes, and has some cyber backing those up; his resources are pretty good as well. A bit light on contacts, and weak in the technical areas, but that's what contacts, teammates, and deckers are for. He's certainly got no major glaring flaws.

You can take this same basic concept and apply it to just about every archetype-- one hyperspecialization plus super-high Edge-- and not really lose that much functionality if you're careful about your build. If you swapped some skills around, then you could end up with a super-infiltrator, or face, or so on. I haven't tried magic yet, but you could do it if you were willing to sac a bunch of resources and maybe lower your base attributes by a bit. I'm just presenting the street sam build as an example-- there are many other possibilities within this framework.

Uh, how do you figure? A "threshold" in combat can be created very easily by either adding successes to the person getting shot at, or subtracting them from the shooter, depending on whichever creates the least screwy result at the time.

Don't talk about Edge breaking the game until you stop using horrid rules-munching like this. That character wouldn't exist if you applied a Sanity/Sensibility filter to him first.

(Edit for ranting): Why is it that I see over and over people saying "SR4 characters are too powerful", "I can make someone who breaks the game" then tucked in there almost so no one will notice is a little line that says "Took the Incompetence flaw 50 times..." or some such nonsense. The incompetence flaw, from what I have seen, is by far the most abused and mega-munched of anything. I hereby campaign to have it ripped out of the BBB until everyone can learn to use it responsibly.

He gets too much for too little. Edge isn't forcing the major sacrifices everyone seems to think it does.

In either case, you end up with "impossible" tasks, which Edge is supposed to prevent. Edge and Karma pool are both supposed to represent that amazing bit of cinematics that make things more exciting. By simply adding or subtracting succcesses, we rapidly hit the point where you just won't have enough dice to pull it off, with or without edge. For example, Joe Average with Quickness 3 and no Pistols skill can't even pull the trigger if the gun is in burst-fire; if he has lighting modifiers as well, then even if he spends his 1 Edge, it's still impossible for him to pull the trigger, since he's now got a "threshold" of 2.

Yes, and each and every time, I've demonstrated the flaws of each and every fix. Switching to a floating TN is the best one-- not the *only* one, but certainly the one that leads to the best results overall. Floating TN's have their flaws as well, but mathematically they work out better, with fewer impossibilities.

115 BP for 8 tests. That's just about perfect to me.

Still not workable; that effectively changes the TN to 6 anyway, since you can only hope to hit it if you roll a 6. Sorry, but I've refuted it many times.

And automatically winning any inititative ties. Besides which, he hasn't lost anything at all. He's gained something for nothing. There's really nothing better for this character concept to spend his points on-- and he's more than a match for any other gun bunny.

28 skill ranks equals 7 skills at rating 4-- not really *that* much, when you think about it. Useful for a generalist character, sure, but Edge is a more powerful build choice, especially when you take defaulting into account *and* the Longshot loophole. Congratulations, instead of an effective character, you've got a character who's mediocre in more areas.

Going nonhuman would also reduce the Edge maximum, which kinda defeats the point of the example-- an Extreme Edge character with no significant flaws, and a gun hyperspecialist to boot. We could potentially rewrite the core concept to fit metahumans as well, but I haven't had six weeks to spend per character.

[Edit: Missed this one:]

That's because Incompetence is the best example of extremely poor design and testing in the Edge/Flaws sections. It practically *begs* to be abused, because it's just that bad. It's also badly off-balanced in relationship to the "group incompetence" flaws: Infirm, Uncouth, and Uneducated. For example, if you took Incompetence x 4 in technical skills, you'd have the exact same gain as if you took Uneducated... except you could still buy all the necessary Decking skill groups, and any others you wanted; heck, if you were careful, you needent lose access to any Technical group at all. You'd only lose 4 out of 19 active skills, and keep access to all the Academic and Professional knowledge skill defaults. Heck, if you pushed to Incompetence x 7, you'd *still* keep more functionality than buying Uneducated, and get even more points for doing it. This isn't just a powerplay, it's just flat-out poor game balance.

Actually, he's a match for only 8 gun bunnies. I think it's a pretty good character and hope to see a few edge runners in my games.

It still lets you hit, right? You also have the option of making your house rule allow rerolls of all successes on that final chance die, not just sixes. I wouldn't do it, but it would make the longshot tests easier.

But then again, so what if they have to roll a 6? We're talking a house rule designed to make the nearly impossiblt tasks be nearly impossible. Saying that it makes things harder by changing the TN to 6 is pretty much what it's designed to do. That's your refutation? "It works as intended"?

You call 28 skill points or 25 skill points and 60,000 nothing? Hmmm... Interesting.

Nothing better? What about the ability to have an actual peception skill instead of a chipped one? Or the ability to drive? Or actually hurt someone in melee combat? Or con somebody? Or conceal his weapons? Your idea of what the word "nothing" means seems to be severely flawed.

A skill rating of 4 is far from "mediocre." HEck, most every PC skill in the game will be maxed at 4 unles it's your one or two skills you put at 6 or 5. You are now as good at driving anything but a ground vehicle as the rigger who specialized in ground vehicles, and you're almost as good at driving ground vehicles. Or you're as good at all forms of hacking except cybercombat as the decker who focused on cybercombat and almost a good at cybercombat. Mediocre my ass.

Ummm... Actually it highlights the point of the counterexample. You lose a point of edge and gain a lot of boosts to other stats.

But it's poor game balance that has no place in a discussion about the edge stat, as it isn't even related to the edge stat. You could of course have a bunch of other flaws, or just have no flaws at all without changing the character's stats much, so your need to toss another jab in there is kinda pointless.

Unless they have any decent amount of stealth and sneak up on him, since you've only got 7 perception dice at the most and he can have 12 stealth dice fairly easily. Not to mention he can spend his edge on stealth but you can't spend yours on perception.

The goal is to not make the nearly impossible become possible-- the goal is to make the nearly impossible become *cinematically* possible. I don't know how you like to play, but I think things like excitement, tension, and drama are kinda nice to include. The rule doesn't just have to make things possible, it needs to make things cinematically possible-- which your variant does not do.

He can already do all of that. Not as good as a dedicated character, true, but that's why we create shadworunning teams.

According to the Skill Ratings table, that makes you a "minor leaguer". It's not my fault that the default PC skill level is mediocre; it's just how it happens to work out mathematically.

Like I said, Mr. Lucky isn't a ninja. We could shift his base numbers around a bit, and have him tossing somewhere around 22 or more stealth dice, to make him into a ninja; we could also shift some stats to make him an uber-face. This example isn't any more vulnerable to ninjas than most other gun bunnies, and is significantly less vulnerable than the BBB Street Sam.

I kinda agree here, except that at low Edge levels, we get into the Video Game mentality, where you just burn Edge for extra lives. You can't have a free-success purchase system for high-end tasks without seriously breaking a game. For example, in SR1, you could get one free success by spending a point of Good Karma (Karma pool didn't exist). So, we got situations that went something like this:

Player: "I want to summon a force 200 spirit."
GM: "This I gotta see. Roll."
Player: <rolls dice> "Nope, no successes. But wait! I spend a point of Karma!"
GM:

Edge is quite a bit better than that; but what I don't like is the fact that you can burn Edge for a *critical* success. I can see burning Edge to push you over the top, but I'm picturing that force 200 spirit every time I see that "critical success" rule.

Let's take an example of this option vs. SR3's variable TN. A run of the mill average Joe in SR3 has no skill in firearms and a quickness of 3. He gets three dice at a base TN of 6 after defaulting. The average Joe in SR4 gets 2 dice TN 5 after defaulting. Now let's play with those so we can get a dice pool of 1 and a threshold higher than 1.

If we add an uncompensated 6 round burst to the mix we add +5 TN or get rid of 5 dice. SR4 guy doesn't have 5 dice, so he drops to 0 dice after losing two, spends his one edge to get an edge pool of 1, which gets turned into a single longshot die TN 6 after losing one die and having one left to lose. His odds of success are 16.67%.

SR3 guy still has 3 dice, but his TN is now 11. His odds are 15.76%.

The numbers can be fiddled with some, and if we go for the type of thing you're trying to avoid, let's look at that same guy with various random factors that end up either being -15 dice or +15 TN. SR4 guy now has one die at TN 11 (5.56% chance of success). SR3 guy has 3 dice TN 21 (0.92%). If SR3 guys spends his 1 karma pool to reroll he ups his odds to 1.84%. SR4 has has a higher chance of cinematically succeeding in extreme cases if we use the "lost dice up the target number" approach.

Using the "up the threshold by one for every three lost dice" method:

SR4 guy at -10 dice finds himself with a single die needing 3 successes. Odds of success: 0.93%. SR4 guy at +10 TN has a final TN of 16 with 3 dice: 4.11% chance of success. SR3 guy has a higher chance, but not really a chance compared to what he could have if he didn't go insane with the modiofiers.

Don't like the low odds for SR4 guy? Let's change that from rerolling sixes to rerolling any successes. Now you have a 3.7% chance of success, which is very close to SR4 guy.

I'm too lazy to do a lot of other numbers, but it looks to me from just a cursory inspection that using the increasing TN or increasing threshold versions both still allow for cinematic success.

By defaulting he can drive. He'll find himself in trouble if he has to evade pursuit. He sucks in melee combat and won't be able to con anyone with half a brain. Yeah, he can do them, but not well. By dropping the 115 points dumped into edge he gets to do all that and more very well.

It makes you a minor leaguer in athletics, which is actually pretty damn good. With firearms you're a combat veteran. Technical skills put you as a professional with 4 years of experience. Social skills a 4 is a diplomat. Driving? NASCAR or Formula 1 racer (military combat driver also). None of that is mediocre.

Exactly my point! You can shift stuff around to make him really good at one thing. The guy that put his 115 points into skills is really good at a lot of things. You are a lot more susceptible to stealthy people because you can't spend edge on perception tests and your skill is only a 3 instead of a 4. That means someone with mediocre stealth skills will sneak up on you. No need for ninjas. If you left a 4 in edge and got a four perception you'd have 12 dice against that mediocre stealth guy instead of your character's 6. With your 6 a professional level stealth guy (skill 3 attribute 3) can sneak up on you half the time. The guy with 12 dice can keep from being snuck up on by an elite "ninja" guy (stealth 6 attribute 6) half the time, and will almost always see the normal guy sneaking up.

If your idea of comparison is to twink a character out and then compare it to a BBB stock character then there's really no point in continuing because you're so far divorced from reality you're about to have some playing cards chasing you screaming "off with her head!"

You will never buy enough successes to summon a force 200 spirit and actually control him. Given how many successes you'd have to get for a single net success, you also won't be burning any edge to get a critical success on that otherwise impossible action.

Not really. If you change the longshot test rules so that al successes explode, and not just 6's, then you've changed the core rules just as seriously as switching to a floating TN.

Not "very well". Adequately, perhaps, but not "very well". You might be good enough to make a living at it, but you're not "very good". He's adequate in melee combat, can drive as well as most commuters on the road, and can fast talk most people. He'll have trouble against dedicated riggers, melee monsters, and faces; but I defy you to create a character who can beat all of them at once, all of the time.

No: two things. He's a gun-bunny from hell, and he's got all kinds of luck to back him out of tight spots. His skill spread is designed to minimize the number of tight spots he gets into. He's not great at any of them, but he's not going to be tripping all over himself in routine situations, either. For the advanced situations, it's always better to rely on the team specialist instead of being a one-man shadowrunning team. Besides which, I find that having one character completely dominate a game isn't a whole lot of fun for everyone else. It's okay for him to be mediocre in several areas, because then other characters get to shine.

The guy with 12 perception dice is pretty much a perception hyperspecialist, so that's not proving much of anything. However, since Mr Lucky *does* have the "professional level" of perception (3 skill + 4 attribute) he'd be beating out the average Joe more often than not. You're suggesting that he sacrifice 8 points of Edge to *lose* one perception die-- he's got 7 right now, so dropping to 6 makes no sense at all.

I'm going to first explain why you're completely wrong, then I will show you how SR4 does have the antitwink rules built into it to guard against this specific trick. I prefer it when the rules prevent excessive twinking in the first place, instead of piecemeal mashing them into place, but SR4 does protect against this one example.

On page 59, it defines a critical success as any time a character scores four or more /net/ successes on a test. It then goes on to specifically say that this means four successes "more than needed to reach the threshold or beat the opponent." As a result, by burning Edge on this roll, it doesn't matter how many successes the force 200 spirit rolls; you automatically score four more than he did. What's more, since a critical success allows you to add whatever flourish you want, you didn't just get four services out of the force 200 demigod-- you beat it like a red-headed stepchild, stuck it into an AVS, started calling yourself the pimp and passing it out as the 'Ho.

Luckily, there is a hard rule against this in SR$. Namely, you cannot summon a spirit with a force greater than twice your magic attribute. If you've got a PC with a Magic of 100, then this trick isn't going to be a major worry of yours in the first place. We can safely declare this trick to be impossible, and have a hard-and-fast page reference to back it up.

No one can. Edge is used up too quickly.