I am surprised that this hasn't been discussed before, but perhaps my forum-search-fu is below par.

I am just now starting up an SR4 campaign, and confronted with the fact that being a metahumans is really, really, /really/ cheap. Below is a simple table of what the various races get you:

Human: +1 attribute, +1 max
Attribute savings of 10, 1 cap at 7.

Ork: +5 attribute, +5 max -2 max.
Attribute savings of 30, 1 cap at 9, 1 at 8, cha/logic at 5. Low Light.

Dwarf: +4 attribute, +4 max, -1 max.
Attribute savings of 15, 1 cap at 7, 1 at 8, reaction at 5. theremo, toxin.

Elf: 3 attribute, +3 max.
Attribute savings of 0, 1 cap at 7, 1 at 8. Low light.

Troll: 8 attributes, +8 max, -5 max
Attribute savings of 40, bod/str of 10, agi/int/log of 5, cha of 4.

Alright. lets look at orks now:
For a human to have a body cap of 7, it costs him 20 points.
For those 20 points, an ork gets:
Postive:
Fifty points of attributes
Body cap of 9
Strength cap of 8
Low light vision.
Negatives:
Charisma and logic capped at 5.... whatever. Insigificant.
-1 edge: Only 10 points. Easy.
-1 max edge: Mmmm. Perhaps this is a limit, but I doubt there are THAT many humans with 6 or 7 edge around.

Racism: this is a big one. Orks are obvious, they are discriminated against, they are going to get negatives in a LOT of social situations. Orks and trolls get significantly higher stats than elves and dwarves, and I can see this being balanced against racism.

None the less: Racism for 40 points of attributes and caps /4/ level higher. Sure, I might call racism even for 40 points of attributes, but the caps 4 levels higher is just absolutely insane. How can this be considered balanced? My lord! Being a metahuman used to be COSTLY, it used to HURT to make a metahuman character. You /paid/ for being spiffy. Now it's cheaper than being human, but a large number of points. (Note that I am not trying to say here anything against SR4 as a whole, JUST the cost of being a metahuman).

Metahumans are only cheap if you are interested in Body or Strength. If you design a Face, Hacker or anything non-Gunbunny or non-Sammie, you get that lower Attribute max, and your Augmented max gets tiny. With a human you can start at Logic 7 or even 8 pretty easy, same with all the other attributes, and you get a free point of edge. Everyone in my group (besides my character) are more or less totally combat-oriented, and I found no bonus if my character was a metahuman. Extra body is cool, but not worth the Logic or Charisma cap.
Only Trolls and Orks give you more attributes than you'd get with an equivalent amount of BP, and they've got those aforementioned low maximums.
The Edge is important, really seemed to balance out humans because it's the only attribute that every character type can use the same.

its true, the costs dont balance by pure mechanics. but then their not supposed to.

in 2nd ed, metahuman was priority A. so you didnt see many of them.

in 3rd, it was prioirity C or D. so you saw more of them. there was no penalty to choosing an ork or dwarf over a human, provided you didnt have magic.

in 4th, everything is BP. only the elf lacks a disadvantage, so its more expensive for what it does. your 'savings' are in exchange for a penalty of some kind. trolls and dwarves have to pay more for gear, and have penalties to use normal gear.

orks... are a favorite of mine. in cannon, they breed quickly. humans sometimes goblinize into orks. so here we have a mechanic (point cost) representing the game world (more orks after a couple generations). Its the point savings which give us racial demographics of non-humans.

the orks are tough brutes, and growing in numbers. the perfect 'dumb fighter' stereotype. only instead of magic swords, we get cyberware. and we dont have to be dumb. you can run an ork face just as easily as a human face.... and both will never match the elf.

I'd have to disagree about Dwarfs and Orcs. They make good Faces as well--not just if you're interested in Str/Body. They can put those two attributes at 1 and be sickly, weakling members of their type but still be comparable to humans. They can then take the savings and put that towards Charisma. Sure they'll never be as good as an Elf, but role-playing considerations aside (pure stats), Dwarfs and Orcs are better faces than humans.

It is impossible to make a human character that's better number-wise than an equivalent orc.

Orks may have the advantage in starting number of Attribute points, but the human has a higher maximum starting Charisma, and will usually have a higher Edge. As a pure face, the human would have the advantage. He might have less overall point value, but where you can put the points is important, too. That's why elves are 10 points more expensive than orks.

I will agree that for an average character, where Charisma is not of primary importance, the ork is more likely to have the Attribute points to spare for a decent Charisma. That happened to me a lot in SR3, too. If I did a human sammie, he would generally have a Charisma of 2. An ork, though, would be more likely to have a Charisma of 3 or 4.

Troll's make good face's too.

Look at it this way: Are you gonna argue with him?!

Yes? Well ok Ox go negotiate.

*Snap*

Does anyone else wish to negotiate?

Hey nobody's perfect!

This is a dumb question, but could someone give me a page number where the table of "what bonuses your ork gets" is listed? I went looking for it the other day and suddenly realized I could only find the "max racial attributes" table. Not too hard to reverse engineer the bonuses from that, but it was still annoying...

I can just imagine Jon Stewart's Head doing the Emmy awards in 2065, with Orxploitation in full swing... "Ork is the new Jew."

He'd probably say the new black, given the ties between orxploitation and blaxploitation.

His remark at the Emmy's this year was that Gay was the new Jew, after Capote and Brokeback Mountain did so well.

I think the key point was brought up on why metahumans are "cheaper" then expected, racism. It is ramped in the SR world. I always have each character with some level of racism in them. This keeps the PCs on their toes. It is funny to see a Dwarf character try to go into a bar but the bouncer wont let him in because "no children are allowed". It is the job of the GM to play out these situations as much as possible. The same goes for Mages and adepts. Remember:

"GEEK THE MAGE FIRST!!!"

I find, that in practice, all types of metahumans get played, and humans and elves are still very common choices it seems.

Looks like it works out well.

Bye
Thanee

I find it depends on the archtype someone is going for. Goons usually are trolls or orks, techies are usually dwarves, and faces tend to be elves. Humans fill and overlap all the roles.

I'd say the balancing point, especially in the case of orks and trolls, is xenophobia. Ok, you're a walking tank. But nobody wants to deal with you, good luck getting any jobs. You'll also stick out like a sore thumb. "Yeah, it was some ugly as sin Ork that torched the place!" "Oh, must be Mikey at it again..."

Y'all have fun with your orks and trolls, I'll take a human any day. (And on occassion Elf for some flava)

I'd tend to agree with X-K here. It doesn't happen every time, but many security guards, cops, bus drivers, etc will assume that you're up to no good. Security shadows you whenever you walk into the store, cabs won't stop for you, police poking you with their night-stick and telling you to 'move along'. It's offensive when you're innocently trying to shop at the arcology, but can be a down-right style-cramper when you're actually there for nefarious purposes.

GM: How do you get there?
Troll Player [TP]: I flag a taxi.
GM: After 30 minutes, none have been willing to stop for you.
TP: I take the bus.
GM: The bus driver refuses to let you on, claiming you put him over the weight limit. If you make a scene(even just raising your voice) he hits his alarm switch and hides behind the armored glass of the driver's compartement, telling police that you threatened him when they arrive.
TP: I climb into my car and drive there.
GM: Halfway there, the police pull you over in a blatent case of profiling ("driving while troll").
...and the list goes on...

Your search-fu is definitely off today, I put up a series of polls regarding this type of question since so many peopole were posting complaints about how XXXX unbalanced the game. Usually it was trolls or elves. Got some interesting results.
I like to use Racism on a case by case basis. One Gm in our group thought it would be applied actross the board, but There are definitely people out there who aren't racists

theres a lot more to it that just race... if theres 3 guys, all orks, ones in a suit and tie that look expensive, ones blue-collar lookin like a plumber or electrician, and ones wearing gang colors and some obvious crome, whats your first instinct? nevermind that the ganger could be a rich brat slummin, or the guy in a suit a hitman- you naturaly feel the well-dressed guy is safer to be around by comparison.

then theres how you carry yourself. body language and posture. a guy with a more submissive, withdrawn posture will be seen as less of a threat that a guy with an agressive and alert posture.

by 2070, ork isnt a major issue of racism like it used to be. but its still there. Troll on the other hand.... is basicly screwed in terms of scale. everythings too small, and nobody wants to help you. your likely to break things as you try to get em to work.