@Sendaz
Well, one has to be fair. Streamlining the rules gets you also a lot of heat from everywhere.... So how well a shadowrun with better more consistant ruleset would be taken is hard to tell, but I think badly, simply because everybody thinks that his character loses.

A few examples:
First: I would use a Point system, Karma to be precise.
Second: The "cash" problem. Chars who do not need cash won't simple use it and for that matter have more Karma. It also leads to the kind of characer who starts off with the cloth on his back and maybe a focus. (Because why buy more?) So maybe let everybody start with 50k (street 10k prime 75k) and you may buy additional cash with Karma up to five times your starting cash.
Third: Attributes. Like said in this thread they should be at least new value*10
Magic/essence and racial boni: These are applyed as modifiers to the attribute and they are not taken into account if raising the attribute but count as natural.
(One might argue, that essenceloss for a mage might be a bit to hard now, but I guess it won't be that bad unless you have about 8+ Magic. And at this point magic is kind of breaking the game anyway)
Augmentations: I do not see a real fix here but I think the +4 do not make it too bad anyway.
Introducing a limit for magic outside of force and the lower determins your max. hits.
Fixiing adepts: Do not know jet....

An other idea would be that magical and cybernetic/bioware augmentations do not stack with each other. Like bioware and cyberware sometimes do not stack...

TJ:
Actually... the line dev is clueless then and now. The writer who wrote karmagen.. wrote it using the 5x attribute costs that were being actively playtested at the same time prior to SR4a's release.

Jason just wandered out and with his normal clueless dear in the headlights said... well it is 750 with 3x attributes... so make it 1000 with 5x without even bothering to ask or realize that it was already setup for for the 5x costs that were coming out in SR4a. (none of that... ever made it into errata IIRC though).

Then for a real laugh riot... look for some of All4Bigguns example characters of why he 'needs' 1000 karma to make a balanced character! 750 karma at 5x costs still produces slightly better and more powerful characters than 400BP does. There were some silly 'math' exerciess in which ways were found to 'maximize' BP to karma value... but none of them reflected real playable characters... technos generally have the worst of it because complex forms are really cheap under BP but get very expensive with karma.

Yes, I will shed no tears when Mr. Hardy steps down eventually. He's like a magic 8 ball when hit with Q&A.


Mikado:
Here's the problem with the karmagen system as published in SR4(A).

Initially it was published in Runner's Companion just ahead of the publication of SR4a's release. So there was an attribute cost change in the works... SR4a increased karma awards by 50% with more generous guidelines... then increased attribute costs by roughly the same amount. The lowest 'cost' in karma is set by knowledge skills and languages at 1x rating in karma. Active skills at 2x new rating... so all costs above that need to be relative to those minimums which can't go any lower. (short of resorting to fractions... and wierd 2 karma for 3... or 1 karma for 2 ranks in a knowledge/language).

Here's the rub though... karmagen eliminates the single biggest problem with BP & priority... linear vs scaling cost discrepancy. The single biggest problem... BP & priority are great for making specialists because they reward you for dumping all your points into your specialty and ignoring everything else... maxing out as muchas possible to avoid 'getting taxed' later for poor chargen min/maxing.

Is it right that a character is docked 10karma for putting 1 rank in 'pilot ground' for his motorcycle... instead of the 6th rank in his specialty? I say no. That's why I laugh at any assertion that karmagen in theory is a poor system for keeping 'balance'.

The problem with it as published though... is they took all the most objectionable fluffy things... and implemented them.


First: Karma costs are out of line... and not balanced properly. As prima facie evidence of this I submit that karmagen specifically limits you to spending half your karma on attributes. Why? Because if you could you'd spend almost all of it on attributes and avoid the bum deal that are skills!

Second: Penalized attributes aren't really penalized... only capped! Who cares... I got a troll tank with 3 logic for only 25karma... he's same as average human... and under karmagen it cost me exactly as much as a normal basic human to buy logic 3! The argument presented that humans 'saved' karma... was a joke... because everyone else did as well... just humans started with lower stats in everything except edge.

Third: Metatype for free... there should be no cost to play anything special... even if it's quite objectively better than a baseline human. (which they all are).

Fourth: on top of meta for free.... metas get free attribute points... AND they're given a higher cap to spend on attributes to boot! The reason is because... attributes are bought on top of the racial bonuses... so a troll ends up breaking the system yet again because a troll must be able to buy strength 10 without just like he could in BP.... This is why so many of us put forth that base attributes should all be 1-6... with a racial modifier slapped on top as a bonus or penalty to the stat.

Fifth: it's not explicitly spelled out, but you're not supposed to be able to initiate/submerge in chargen even with karma.

How does 4 play out... how do you 'abuse' the system as published... Lets make an intuition mage... what's the single best racial pick... hint it's not human or even elf... dwarf possibly... but orc! Why... you get 4 bod for free.. and 3 strength... and you don't care about the minor 1 point cap reduction in cha & log. 4bod is almost perfect it's better than 90% of the other characters except your orc and troll tank types... 3 strength same deal... unless you're utterly focused on melee it's ideal. That's two attributes down. Now we have 375 karma to spend on attributes... but wait... I'm an orc I get 40 bonus karma to spend on attributes ... so 415 karma! (which is easily an extra 2-3 points in attributes).

So you save tons of karma by simply 'playing against type'... instead of using the massive karma allowance to buy expensive junk they raised the cap to allow you to do. You simply become 'more human than human'. and go hog wild on all the cheap/bargain stuff which you need anyhow (really... as that orc... buy the 'human looking' quality... now you have slightly better than human avg stats... and most people won't know the difference... and you end up with tons of 'free karma' from your race). (for an intuition mage... intution, willpower... the other mental stats for astral attributes... and then the other physical stats are just gravy... high reaction... now I can default on drive tests... high agility boosts a huge number of skills).


Hope that helps Midori...

Look... Everyone's main problem with karmagen is it being overpowered in SR4A. I never said otherwise. I said to ignore the book and come up with a number that was balanced. Would that number be a house rule, yes. However, if you do lower the karma for karmagen down 100 or so karma (and pay for race) you should wind up with characters at around the same level as the BP system.

I agree that the book does not make sense and that the dev's do not know how to balance a checkbook let alone a character creation system.


Yes... I agree. But much the same way that you can only use a percentage of points per troop choice in Warhammer Fantasy and 40k I do not see why limiting spending on attributes is an issue. You where given a similar limit in the BP system and by its very nature you have the same limit in the priority system as well.


The group I played in for years then left because the GM decided to jump to 5th without talking it out with the group have been playing with the house rule that racial bonus attributes "modify" the base bought attribute since 2nd edition. We modified the costs of the races to compensate for having to buy low attributes up to one (for a troll that would be an attribute of 3 in logic) which made trolls the cheapest metatype and elves the most expensive.


Where did I say that you should not pay for race? Stop going on 4th edition rules! Everyone knows they are shit! I am talking about character creation systems... independent of editions... 1st through 5th... Karmagen is the only one that is balanced within creation and advancement for all characters. It is the only one that does not punish players for subpar choices. Getting a skill to 8 instead of getting a secondary skill up to 3 because it is the better metagame choice is exactly the same as using metagame knowledge ("Don't worry guys, I read the book and as written these Tir Ghosts are pushovers.") and that is reduced in a karmagen system.


I am not sure if you are talking to me with this one or just pointing out a flaw that needs to be addressed.


I am an advocate of not allowing initiation at character creation without direct GM permission and a good reason why your character should have it. By the book the GM has to approve of all characters so broken characters should be stopped before they ever see a run... Unless the entire group wants to play that way and the GM gives his ok for a high powered game. The only time it is allowed in the group I was in was when you had "roll over karma" when you retired a character and made a new one so the new one was not completely green in the team and only the roll over karma had no restrictions on it's use.


You will never eliminate power gaming, min/maxing or anything else when designing a system. Someone will always find a way. That is why the GM overlooks all characters. As long as the base system is balanced so a player is not punished for making a subpar choice by accident or by character background I accept the min/maxing, power gaming "problem" in karmagen since the GM has final say in character creation. Also, that min/maxing, powergaming problem is not actually a problem since all character creation methods have that same flaw, karmagen is the only one that does not punish players with it.

@Mikado

You were aware of the fact, that you would have made metatyps more expensive in general, espacially trolls, because of your ruling (raising strength and body became dirt cheap for them!).

Two problems here. First is, what number would that be? Short of building characters under every possible total and destruction-testing them, you're never going to know what the optimal amount really is.

Second, the optimal number is going to very from table to table. You're never going to find agreement as to exactly how much karma to give; and given the work required to find the right one for your table, it simple isn't worth it.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I honestly have no idea what you're referring to. We're talking about 4.5, because it's published and written, so we can critique it. You're discussing a theoretical variant that only exists in your head, so we can't examine it for flaws and exploits. If you want to write up a full karmagen system for SR5. and submit it for critique, then we'll have something solid to discuss. Until then, we're shooting in the dark.

Furthermore, karmagen does punish players for making subpar choices. It does it differently than BP does, but if you don't optimize, you're still screwing yourself over. Buying a bunch of skills at rating 3 isn't effective, no matter how much karma you spent getting them.


First of all, if you're relying solely on the GM to balance characters, karmagen is actually worse at preventing cheating than BP. BP is easier to audit, so you can easily see if someone overspent or used creative mathematics. Karmagen, not so much. Second, karmagen most definitely does punish bad choices, and still leaves open the issue of gimping your character by accident. Finally, even if you catch an accident in karmagen, it's harder to fix than BP, because it's not just as simple as shoving a point from one skill to another. You have to figure the differences, and add and subtract that.

Depends on the skills and depends very much on the game.

If you let people use skills in your game, they become important. For example, if you can rescue a guy, because you got medicine and that grants you additional Karma and additonal Money, yeah thats important.

Sure, if you just play: Shoot some guys in the face, than most skills won't be important. But this depends on the group.

The other extreme is GMs who have no problem to let your character die, because you do miss a skill you would have needed (and you can't roll attribute for it).

You might want to argue that this is not happening very often. And Again I tell you, think again, it only depends on the GM.

The designers gave it an appropriate amount. Enter the guy who passes for line dev and is keen to reintroduce the effects of the faulty "Attributex3" printing. Being well-versed in the art of de-errataing, he does not simply restore the faulty original wording, but instead tackles the opposite end and increases the available karma.

Actually, I mean that trying to be a generalist only leads to being mediocre in more areas.

First of all, modern Shadowrun is a heist game. It's about teams of specialists, working together. If you're not good enough to bring something to the table, you don't deserve to be on a shadowrunning team.

Second, SR4.5 and Sr5 are about big dice pools. If you don't have a lot of dice to roll for a task, you're not going to be good at it. Even if you have a few dice in lots and lots of skills, you're still not much better than someone without any skill at all.

I don't have the time to calculate this, but let's say someone using karmagen gets 4 in all the attributes, and 3 in every skill. The rest of the karma goes into whatever: knowledge skills (none above 3) random gear, and so on. Despite the fact that he's skilled in everything, he's still useless to a shadowrunning team. None of his skills are good enough to overcome serious opposition, which means he might even be a liability in the right circumstances. Karmagen won't save you from this-- in fact, it encourages it, because of the scaling costs involved.

Basically, even though he knows lots and lots of skills, that doesn't mean he's good at them. So, no matter how often a random skill from the list gets used, that character will still be useless.

I disagree with this. FOR YOU Shadowrun is modern Heist Game with Highly Trained Specialists. That does not apply for everyone.

Many, Many skills are viable with 9-12 dice. Especially since most published antagonists (SR4A, anyways - the scale slides up in SR5) have DP's in that range. Only when you start seeing opposition in the 15+ DP range will that start to change, and then, there are only a FEW antagonists that have DP's in THAT range. Creating a character with 18+ DPs in skills only forces your GM to compensate to provide a sense of challenge, which then leads to the players building even more optimized characters. You get the picture. If you LIEK that race... then you are free ti run it, but not everyone LIKES that particular style of play.

Your Experiences DO NOT line up with Mine, at least. Your Opinions are merely a snapshot of your own experiences. Not everyone has the same experiences.

MOST of the characters I play are in the 10-14 for Primary DP's, with Secondary DPS in the 9-11 range. And they work just fine. Even in Campaigns that are considered to be High End (Artifact series for example). So, I think that your reasoning is a bit off on that. Not once have I seen a character with a Primary DP of 12 as a Liability.

@Cain

Again, it depends on the GM. Surely having every skill at low levels is most of the time not really usefull. But it is the same with having only one skill at a very high level.
(What is exactly the best, well it depends. If the difficulty is low but there are a lot of side objectives for which you need certain skills and you can't leave it to a team mate... And all of a sudden this influence group 1 is not a waste of points, but gets you 60.000 additional cash reward and additional Karma.

But all your claims are more or less pro KarmaGen if you think about it. Thats the part about your argument I totally do not get.
Every single thing is a reason for deminishing returns while generation and in game.

This. I think that applies for GM's and players. Whenever I GM I tell the players to make whatever kind of character that they want and I'll build the game around them; designed to challenge and complement their skill set. Not everyone wants to be a Face; so sometimes there is less social interaction. Sometimes there's no desire to play a Hacker-type; so the matrix gets downplayed a bit. A character's "usefulness' is playing the game period. Showing up and rolling some dice. Maybe some people can find players easier than I can but its hard for me to keep a game going if I'm alienating players. I can't tell people not to power game and I can't tell people that you need to stop maxing out Archery and Unarmed combat if your troll doesn't have any arms. I CAN give advice, but ultimately, I believe choice rests with the player and that the GM will just have to accept that (unless the group has agreed to run a specific type of game).

Usually how it ends up is there are a one or two power gamers; one out to exploit any advantage and the other who wants to destroy everything she sees. We have a player that knows the rules well but gets absent-minded and role plays his character a little too well, followed by a wild card player who will alternate between all three playing styles. Mostly; the conflict comes from the characters clashing on how to proceed.

Just my experiences

Karmagen supposedly encourages a balanced spread of stats. So, it'd favor a character with 4's in all the attributes and 3 in all the skills; your points would go further. Of course, since said character would have a DP of 7 in most areas, he'd be pretty useless against any trained opposition. So, despite Mikado's claim, there are trap options in karmagen.


Games always rely on the GM. The setting fluff, from the very beginning of the game, has always been about specialists working together.

Who was the first shadowrunning team we ever encountered? Dodger, a decker; Sally Tsung, a mage; and Ghost, a street sam. No single one of them could have completed the run, they needed each other. They were professional (street punk look, maybe, but a professional attitude), they each knew their job and how to do it. So, from the start. shadowrunning has been about people covering for each other, not one-man-shadowrunning teams.

It doesn't matter that the size of my dice pool is bigger than yours, or that I know how to use it. The point is, Shadowrun has always been about teams of specialists. What that means might vary a bit from game to game, but if you don't bring something special, you don't belong on a shadowrunning team. This has been my experience ever since the game first came out, and has held true for about twenty-five years with the game. You specialize, or your're dead weight.

I think the disconnect is where you draw the line at Specialty. I consider 12-14 Dice to be perfectly fine for a Specialist Function (and that will rise as the character obtains greater competence in his areas of expertise, of course - but for start that is MORE than adequate in my experience). I have never had any issues with that standard (SR4A Obviously, as previous editions had different targets). And I think that is where we disagree. To each his own, I guess.

In adverse conditions the extra dice are really nice as those penalties can stack up fast, and I personally would hesitate to call a Professional Shadowrunner a specialist without 15 dice in their specialty after gear and specialization (at least with physical skills. Mental stuff is harder to get high and has more tolerance) with some secondary skills related skills in the 12-14 range.
That said, on street level games 12 dice is badass, while in an ultra-high-end game 18 dice might be considered amateurish.
It all depends on context.

While I agree that the definition of a specialist will vary, the sample character I provided (7's in every skill) isn't a specialist by any stretch of the word. Generalists (characters with a lot of range but no specialty) are a trap option in Shadowrun, and karmagen encourages them.

While I agree with the concept, it's a game of specialists, Cain's angle has a big issue for me, it's all but saying "divide your points by X to gain the most amount of skills/atts for your class at max with specialities".

I've seen plenty of chars with middling dice pools in a variety of skills that have helped them do things they need to do. Defaulting often hurts, especially for the uber specialist because they're typically running stats of 2 or 3 outside their favoured spheres. Granted play styles differ greatly and sometimes defaulting is the only option or hoping you've got someone on hand who can handle a situation better than you. I try to encourage my players to create charaters to be good at the thing their character does, but also be able to buy a hit from DPs for skills they probably will use in their day to day shadow existences. If I look at a character and I cannot work out how they survive in the shadows of the sixth world then there is definitely a problem with that character and they certainly will struggle in my games because they will have to interact with the shadows and the world.

I think the problem is that the system is so wide open that people lose their focus. They build an interesting character, but forget to make it an interesting character for a game. I kind of like the balance of karmagen. On the one hand, it encourages generalization a bit because with exponential costs, higher skills and Attributes have more of an opportunity cost when measured against how many average skills and Attributes you could get for the same cost. But on the other hand, you have enough points to get those higher skills and Attributes anyways, and high dice pools are one of the main measures of character effectiveness in the game.

Someone with 7's in every dice pool may not be a great shadowrunner at first glance, but it is only a trap option if you don't get any 'ware, adept powers, spells or gear for him. Give him muscle toner: 4, a specialization in pistols, and a smartlink, and suddenly this character is rolling 15 dice for shooting and 11 dice for infiltration. And a dice pool of 7 is not bad at all for social skills or most technical skills, or vehicle skills. In most cases it is a significant advantage over a character missing any of those skills. I think generalists get a bum rap because in a lot of cases, they are built by people making Joe Average (security guard who got fired, etc.), so they are mundane and minimally augmented - of course they will be low-powered.

The problem is, whatever Mr. Generalist can do, Mr. Specialist can do as well. Even under karmagen, the opportunity cost to get attribute at 6 and one skill at 6 isn't that steep. So, he goes from 15 dice for shooting to 20, which is a huge benefit; and all he loses is some skills he's not very good at anyway. And while 7 dice isn't too terrible when you're unopposed, in any opposed test (like most social tests, and many vehicle tests) it's just not enough to reliably succeed against semi-trained opposition.

My issue with generalists is that they really don't have anything special to offer. A well-rounded specialist is one thing, but a true generalist-- average dice pools in many areas-- is simply not very effective and has nothing to offer the team. Yes, a good shadowrunner should have all their bases covered; but unless they have something special on top of that, they don't belong on a shadowrunning team. My experience is that a well-built, well, rounded specialist has dice pools that are only a little behind a pure generalist in key areas, so there's really no disadvantage to specializing.

I find that your experiences very much differs from mine. Granted, I have had good GMs. It is difficult to build a character with 18+ DP in many skills, 18+ DP in closely related skills that have much overlap in usage, sure.

Most of the characters I play are in the 18+ DP for primary with secondaries in the 8-9 range. There is a guy in my group with characters in dice range, and every time we play, we are worried about the hacker. Not the scout (mine, 18+), not the mage (14+), not the face (18+), not the sniper (18+). We try to minimise the areas that we need the hacker, we have certainty with most of the characters in their primary functions, but not as much with the hacker. The hacker isn't a liability, he is an asset, but he could have been a much better asset.

Mr Well-rounded Specialist can do almost as well as the Generalist. That said, a really good Generalist (8-9 DP) covers not only the usual bases, but the more obscure ones as well. Fly a plane? He can do it. Navigate a submarine? He can do it too. Fix a bus? Sure. Shoot someone? OK. Climb a wall? But of course. Need to know who is the VP of the EVO Russian business unit when it was Yamatetsu? He does.

Generally, for that sort of thing, defaulting works as well. There might be a more significant difference, but since the obscure skills come up so much less often, it's less of a big deal. In fact, depending on the attribute, sometimes the defaulter might have more dice. For example, if the generalist has a pool of 6, and the defaulter has an attribute of 9, the defaulter will actually be better off.

Our gm doesn't let us default for all skills. For example: flying a helicopter needs training.

Technically, you can't default to all skills. Many are trained only. That said, if you take one level in a couple of the more common ones, you can be functional in a lot of areas without needing to go generalist.

I'll admit, that's pretty much what I do in karmagen; soft max some key Attributes, and get that one skill at 6, even for otherwise skill-intensive builds such as covert ops specialists. I was just pointing out that a generalist isn't useless, merely suboptimal (in most cases).

Again, it depends on the GM. Take the computergame Demonicon for example. I play on hard(highest difficulty I could choose) and I have spend nearly nothing in combat to now but I have pushed every other skill to medicore level, because the game allows you to farm AP and rewards this way!

Again: If both survive the run, but the guy having more "skills" gets three times the karma and twice the money, well things look differently.

But still, this would make BP worse than karma. At any rate (even with your perception) karma would be the more balanced system by far.

I'm not familiar with that game, but karma in Shadowrun doesn't work that way. Characters tend to earn the same amount of karma across the board, so there's no advantage to having a lot of small skills.

Still, I have to disagree with your supposition. BP does encourage more specialization, probably too much in fact. That's not an inherently bad thing, as specialists are required for Shadowrun. Karmagen encourages generalists, which is a bad thing in Shadowrun-- the game is about specialists working together.

But really, neither is balanced. Balanced is a relative term, but for this discussion, I use it to mean consistent: characters created should come out at about the same power level. There's always a little variation, but under a balanced system, it's not problematical. Neither BP nor karmagen guarantee balanced characters: it's still way too easy to get a hyperspecialist right alongside a gimped concept.

Just spotted something... The generalist is likely to be able to refresh his Edge more often with Right Skill, Right Time. This means the Generalist can often afford to add Edge and get Rule of Six on several rolls!

That's really a subjective one. Also, it could be abused: the sam might argue that it applies to all combat rolls, since he has the right skill at the right time, and refresh even more often than Mr. Generalist. Not that I think any GM will allow that; it's just that Right Skill, Right Time isn't supposed to be a consistent thing.

On the other hand, Mr. Generalist will be failing a lot with his low dice pools, so he might be able to refresh more often because he's more prone to Critical Fumbles. That would work.

I would say that if you do that (take 1 level in the common ones), then in a way, you are going generalist already.

Typically as long as the skill isn't one where you are likely to be rolling an Opposed Test, then you don't really need specialist primary skill (18+) levels of dice pool. In SR4, in most published adventures, you are not expected to roll more than 6+ hits. You'd need around 18+ dice for that. At a generalist level, I can live with getting 3-4 hits and you already got most of the info/data/passable amount of success.

I agree that karmagen encourages people to diversify their skill (and attribute) sets, but I noticed at least in the game I have played in, that after a certain level, karma goes towards the primary function. Once I have built my character to what I think is a competent shadowrunner, I put karma into the primary function in the most karma efficient manner, be it buying Attributes, skill specialisation, or Positive Quality, gear, etc. So I buy all the Attributes to 3, then one skill to 6, a lot of necessary skills at 1 first, go back put some more karma into the key Attributes, raise some core skills to 4, and so on. First I make sure the foundation of the character is rock solid, then I start building the character up.

The biggest obstacle to a "balanced" system in Shadowrun is not only that it lets you create characters of widely different power, but also that people want characters of widely different power levels. That is why you don't usually run into balance problems in cohesive groups that have played together for awhile. Either they are on the same page, power-wise, or they have learned to let themselves go their own ways without messing up each other's fun.

The only way to really "balance" Shadowrun would be to give character creation a lot less variables and moving parts. Like making Attributes the same flat amount of points for everybody, more PACKs-like sets for skills and gear, and removing the problematic qualities and options (Uncouth, In Debt, SURGE, infected characters, etc). Personally, I prefer the more wide-open system they have now, where you can optimize in multiple ways or be a quirky, slightly less optimized character in even more ways. The glut of options is a big part of what I enjoy about Shadowrun.

That's exactly why I prefer Priority, at least in theory. I'm still deciding on how well SR5's works in practice, so I'll use SR3 as an example.

Under SR3 Priority, you had a lot of options. I never saw two people come up with identical character: there were lots of ways to optimize, but fewer ways to powergame. Trap options were minimized, and more powerful options tended to be balanced out. Edges and Flaws existed if you wanted them, but they weren't a necessity, and you couldn't simply load up on them for bonus points. Best of all, characters tended to come out at consistent power levels: they might be powerful, but they tended to not be overpowered in relation to one another.

Depends on the GM. The karma table hints in the other direction! You get Karma for accomplished goals.

And again: If a specialist is at the advantage anyhow, why encourage it further. Thats just plain stupid design!

It is like you are playing a game where attack boni are superior to defance boni. Now you make the attack boni also cheaper. Yeah, fail.

Not three times as much. Really good roleplay and being really useful might net you one additional karma. However, the high-powered characters might get a bonus for heroic action, so even then it might not work out.


Well, the specialist is part of the genre conventions. You should be rewarding concepts that fit into the setting, and discouraging the ones that don't fit in.

Besides which, karmagen doesn't prevent specialization. It encourages generalists, which is a trap option; but really ridiculous hyperspecialists are still possible.

@Cain

Again: It depends on the GM and how things are run. Sure, not for one skill test. But you can easy run a "free" game, where you are not railroaded through. And yeah, taking different roads will get you different rewards. And beeing unable to use some roads will prevent you from getting those rewards.

Railroading has nothing to do with it. Shadowrun's advancement system is based on getting 4-6 Kama a run. While roleplay awards and cleverness might earn you a bit more, there's no way anyone can consistently earn 10-12 more karma than anyone else.

Well, I guess you are wrong in that. So if you run a free game, you normally have a lot of optional mission objectives and a lot of times where you may have the right skill at the right time. Using that, you can easy get several the "base" Karma for the run. (Well, on Top of that you get all your good roleplaying stuff for additional 1-2 Karma...)
Again, we are comparing different groups here. We are not talking about one player getting twice the karma of another one. Still, I am not saying, that this would be impossible to pull off, given the rules in 4th edition)


So please, do not assume your playstyle is everything, thank you.

(Yeah, I know the new table gets you around 4 Karma a run and works differently. Well, I say we wait untill that has been revisited. Or I try to play one round of chess with lowyfer in every game. Yeah, I lost but I went up against a dicepool about 60 giving me 10 Karma (which would be more than +7 to regular dicepools in the opposition you will probably face). Talking about using non essential skills to grind karma...)

I am not sure about this.

The character having the right skills at the right place and time implies to me you only get this once per mission (otherwise it would "per time" like the mission objective one) and he has to have the right skills, plural and not singular. He cannot simply have 1 skill that saved the day, he has got to have to at least done so twice. Not easy, even for a skill monkey.

I am not so sure about the group having multiple optional mission objectives either. Sure, as a group you can have your own objectives in addition to the ones the J has, but the crux here is the group, it is not one guy's optional mission, it is the group's optional objective.

@toturi
And again: My point was, that it is up to the group or the GM. That the rules are at best ambiguous.
So to say, for example that Tymeaus Jalynsfein charachters are not viable is an simplification which can not be made for groups in general.
Sure, you can play like that, but you do not have to.

And additional rewards are only one option. Another option are shortcuts...

Hey !!!

I think my characters are VERY Viable.
I have only lost one or two over the years (though some do tend to get really messed up from time to time).

Sorry, for the double negative. I am the guy agreeing with you.

And again: The table can do anything everyone agrees to, so the only valid discussion with a shared basis of understanding is what the game actually says. When I GM, I know I don't follow the book for run rewards, but I'm also not going to use my altered rewards as any sort of basis for discussion with people who will never sit at my table.

Look, you can bring up Demonicon, That Other Game, or even Hop Scotch, but it doesn't matter because we're talking about Shadowrun, and not those other games. And in Shadowrun, there is no farming or grinding of karma unless the table decides to institute a new houserule. Again, go wild with whatever houserules that will make you happy, but making an argument that the rules depend on the GM is just using a variation of the Rule Zero Fallacy.

But to actually use the rulebook, which establishes the shared basis for our understanding of SR:

In SR4, yes there were individual rewards, but the 'Right Skills, Right Time' award requires that the use of the skill to get the team out of a jam be unplanned. Which means, by it's very nature, you cannot count on this award every play session. Yes a generalist will usually have a good chance of having the required skill when a chance to earn this award would pop up, but going from that to an argument that a generalist will then use this award enough to provide three times as much karma as someone else, and to use that as a defense against the idea that the generalist in karmagen is a trap, is absurd.

Coincidentally, SR5 does not have individual awards, and for most standard runs, everyone will get 5-7 karma. So there isn't even an argument to be made. It just doesn't exist.

However, if as a generalist, the character grabs all the skills that don't have opposed tests, they will probably do fine in a support role to the group. Just the group can really only handle one of these characters as there isn't that many skills that aren't opposed, so I'm not entirely sold on the idea that a generalist is a complete trap, only that it violates one of my personal tenets of Shadowrun (a group of specialists coming together to accomplish something no single one of them could accomplish alone).

That said, you want to break the system with a generalist? Combine with Mr. Lucky, and walk over the toes of every other player. All those ideas from SR4's individual karma rewards got ported over to SR5's refreshing of Edge, and a literal interpretation would allow a generalist Mr. Lucky to get into a jam, use an Edge on the right skill, at the right time, and then get the point of Edge back in a feedback loop. Yeah, I'd houserule that no one can refresh Edge on a roll that they used Edge on... but there's nothing in the book that says otherwise.

@tjn
And again, I tell you that I quoted the table out of SR4 and this table is open to give additional points for secondary goals. If you go through it, there is a lot of things you can get additional points for and for a lot of those it can be assumed that it is easier to get if you have some low level skills, which fit the situation. Rollplaying is a big one at that.
If a player with no points in the influence group gives a speech I would not avard anything, because he left character. If he got one or two points in the appropriate skills, I would give rewards.


Yeah, and the karma rewards were fucked up in the first printing of SR 4, too. Like I said, play chess with lowyfer for a big bonus to karma gain for the whole group.


Edge is another can of worms at that, I agree.

My whole point is, the idea to have skills outside of your main field is neither good nor bad a priori. The question is how your group goes about it. What do you put focus on?
Generally, if you put a lot of focus on rollplaying and non-linear gameplay, than it is a very good idea to have the influence group at least at 1. If you play Shadowrun like you play the might and magic series, than it is pointless to even invest a single point in social skills, given you are not the face.

The problem is that potential future karma earnings and other gameplay events are not exactly quantifiable. The karma equivalent of Resources A is a clear-cut affair, how much leeway the GM gives a magician with Resources A and a ton of reagents is a clear depends

Overgeneralization is one of the biggest pitfalls in character creation, especially for mundanes with little or no augmentations. I like karmagen because it makes it a slightly less disastrous choice. Character imbalance is not as big of a problem when a player deliberately makes a weak character to chew the scenery and be good at a few niches. The problem is when people are trying to make an effective character and don't realize that their concept goes against the grain of the system.

The Shadowrun archetypes themselves have some trap options. The bounty hunter has the Uncouth quality and no social skills, a lot of points wasted on low-rated but redundant combat skills, and dice pools mostly in the single digits. The covert ops specialist is an archetype rolling 5-9 dice for athletic, stealth, social, and hardware related skills. Also armor that encumbers her, and an Ingram Smartgun X that she isn't even proficient in. The weapons specialist wastes even more points on redundant combat skills than the bounty hunter, has similar low dice pools, and has low durability in combat with no ameliorating skills at stealth or extra initiative passes. I don't have SR5, but I imagine it has similar near-useless archetypes.

First of all, if you're offering 10 mission objectives per run, you're running some awfully complex runs. Second, even if you're spamming "good roleplay" karma, there's no guarantee the generalist's player will be getting it. Character build has no relation to roleplay ability.

If you're playing chess with Lowfyr every game, you're probably already running a high-powered game, which means everyone will be earning a lot of karma. Grinding for karma still isn't a viable tactic.

Unless you're deliberately tailoring the run for Mr. Generalist, there's no guarantee that any of his minor skills will come up, and certainly not often enough to earn three times the karma. And again, assuming you're being a fair GM, that means you're handing out karma like candy to everyone, so Mr. Generalist still won't be earning karma faster than everyone else.

By the book, that's only good for one karma (if that, because while difficulty is a factor in earning karma, so is risk). Besides which, if your players know Lowfyr well enough to have weekly chess games with him, you're well outside the normal bounds of Shadowrun.

Rollplay vs Roleplay has nothing to do with it. Even if you're into heavy min/maxing, investing a little in social skills is a good idea. The goal of min/maxing is to minimize your weaknesses, not leave huge gaping ones; hence why, in SR4.5, you never saw a well-optimized character with Uncouth. And while having skills outside your specialty is never a bad idea, having a lot of them at the expense of your specialty is a really bad move. In fact, having a lot of low dice pools is sometimes worse than not having any skill ranks at all; if you don't have any skill in something, you're less likely to try it, and thus become more likely to critically fumble. It's certainly not going to net you a ton of karma by grinding, although you might get it for repeated critical fumbles.

@Cain

Sure, as there is no garantee that any of the high skills of the rest will come up.

But honestly, I do not get you. Everything you say, goes against your statement that BP is better or equally bad as Karmagen. Everything you say leads to one conclusion: Karmagen is MUCH better!



Again, it depends on the GM. One general approach for non railroaded games is to have multible lines.
So for example one character gets in a room. (Now I am generally speaking not specificly SR)
There are three objects (because the GM did not know which character would be in this position), one is a locked chest, one is encoded transcription on a wall and one is an injured person.
Now, every one of those would be enough to get further along with the game. (Just to get things straight the room is meant as metaphor for the state of the run you are in->see every kind of adventure can be moddled as a dungeon)
Now, every single one would net you a reward, sooner or later and one point of karma (for the group or the single player, it does not matter actually). Now, if the difficulty for each test is low, a character with a lot of low skills, will probably get every single reward. Again, if you run Might and Magic style and never split the party, well you get all of those rewards. But, and that the major issue, you won't get the rewards the other players a getting at the same time.

It is beyond me how one can argue that the significance of skills and the need for higher dicepools is not dependend on the gamestyle.
Well, there is one exception: Magic! Because magic is able to replace a lot of skills and like that enable you to use one dicepool for a lot of different stuff. (Which is again one of the reasons SR4 turned into magic run)

Better how?

Easier math? Nope.

Faster generation? Nope?

Prevents min/maxed monstrosities? Nope.

Consistent characters? Nope.

The problem is that you can easily end up with a gimped character, running right alongside a powergamer dream. Karmagen doesn't do anything to prevent that. BP doesn't either, so don't think I'm suggesting such.


That's still railroading, and favoritism to boot. You're specifically tailoring the mission so the generalist can earn extra karma. I'm sorry, I prefer a fair game.

SR4.5 is a linear game. (So's SR5, although it's not quite as straightforward.) Regardless how you play it, the more dice you roll, the better you'll do. That's just how the system works. Generalists don't work, thematically or mechanically-- they always lose out to properly built specialists. There is absolutely no version of SR4.5, no gameplay, that can overcome that simple fact.

@Cain

You are aware of the differance between an argument and an opinion.
Argument: Specialists are superior to generalists because they can depend on their team for things they can't do and Shadowrun is a group game. Therefor BP is worse than Karma, since it further prefers specialists to generalists and therefor punishs players desicions twice.


No, it is not. It is the question of the difficulty level. If you scale the difficulty of the game down, you will be successful with lower dicepools. It is as simple as that. So the specialist will be nearly 100% certain that he will get the one objective, but the generalist will be 80% certain for every objectiv. It is as easy as that. And lowering the difficulty is NOT railroading, sorry!


Only if hits matter. It is as simple as that. If it is a success/fail question, than the differance between 10 die and 20 die for an unopposed roll, does not matter much.
On the other hand their are instances where double the dicepool is much better than a simple duplication of power. For example for summoning spirits. And as I told you (and as everybody knows) thats where the game breaks. Thats why you should always aim to get less than linear results to achiev a stable system. You can't by definition not break such a system. (But due to keeping thins simple while still offering diversity you can't stay true to it all the time. So you have to take care that in those exceptions can't break the system, for example by using hard limits.

Yes, which is why I presented facts to you.

No, what's railroading is deliberately setting the challenges to favor the generalist. By offering a lot of challenges designed to leave the specialist in the cold, you're showing favoritism.

Successes always matter. Shadowrun is a degree of success system, and you can tell the difference between barely succeeding and succeeding with flair by how many successes you rolled. It's always been that way.

Ultimately play however you want.

Arguing Generalists fail vs Specialists is purely a case by case situation. I believe in the Shadowrunner character being a specialist who gains versatility over the course of a campaign while also improving in their area of focus. However, depending entirely on how a game runs, the roleplaying element may well ake characters not meetings with contacts, friends of their contacts and even total strangers, without their team being ever present.

IMO a Good starting character should be able to show How they survive day to day in the Sprawl. Not just how they perform on mission. Because its something that will likely come up in game. Other games vary of course. Karma gen and BPs offer greater flexibility in chargen but nothing else, the greater cost numbers, diminished returns and everything else cited is just a physchological illusion of restriction. 10xp in WoD is likely worth a lot more to that char than 10Karma is in SR and 10XP in L5R is worth alot more again, but in D&D it's basically nothing until its amassed for a level in the the warhammer RPGs it's 1/10th of the cheapest advancement. If getting an attribute to 5 costs 4stat points from your priority option, 30build Points or 70Karma in chargen... Well you get 5priority options, a couple of hundred BPs or several hundred Karma. Inflation of costs = Inflation of starting points.