Which is relevant because? Whether the limit is 6, 12, or 50, the gain from having a skill at 6 remains the same, the cost for achieving this gain remains the same, therefore no change at all.

And yet in SR4A I have almost no characters (Maybe 2 out of 50 or so) with a Pistol Skill above 3, and they work just fine (DP's of about 12 with Specialties). But then, My assumptions are to go for something that makes sense, rather than stacking the skill to the stratosphere just because I can. The attitude that you are stupid if you don't maximize your skills does nothing more than piss me off. *shrug*

@Sengir
Well, relevant to the questions of how many maxed skill will be there in SR5 in comparism to Shadowrun 4. I say much less.

Probably about the same, from what I am seeing.

You have a real problem with understanding what this conversation is about. Again, nobody cares about your sweet characters with bad skills and how cool and awesome they are, this is a conversation about maximizing the build units in a restrictive generation system that is entirely different from the in-game progression system for no reason.

Not really, No.
It is not about... You know what, never mind. Not really worth it... *shrug*

Wow, this thread certainly took off.
1. Falconer, I think I decided to go with tjn's suggestion (tier C magic) because the cost of buying a spell will never go up. It's always going to be 5, not some multiple of 5, so it's arguably as cheap to buy these later as it is to buy them at creation when karma is limited. I'd still need to eventually buy up either Magic or Edge, but that's just 1 or 2 stats vs. the cost of increasing a bunch of normal stats or skills later.

2. There are obviously concerns beyond maxing everything when building a character. I started this thread specifically because I wanted to discuss the merits of each of the priority options (specifically for a shaman) and how which got the most karmic value in the long run.

3. I think the discussion has been *mostly* helpful.

Just a minor correction - getting a skill of 3 costs 14 karma, not 28.


The math end of min-maxing is fairly simple. In any character creation system with flat costs at the beginning and exponential costs for advancement, getting things at the highest rating you can is the "optimal" choice. For specific characters, it gets more complicated, because you have to balance specialization versus versatility, effectiveness starting out versus how cheaply the character can improve after the game starts, and the opportunity cost of everything you are getting. And metagame considerations can skew the math. For example, if you know the GM gives big paydays but is stingy on karma, then starting out light in 'ware might make sense, even though normally it gives comparatively cheap boosts.

Right. Damn, and I was already wondering why my argumentation worked that good... Well, so it is only the point how many points you get for the higher once. Well, still OK, I guess.

The question isn't if it ever goes up.. it is what is the marginal karma totals for each. Pri C magic... is actually pretty bad on that score. You get no skills. A weak magic attribute... you spend all three special attribues from Pri D human on raising them... edge gets no love and gets dumpstated.

Marginal costs...
Priority B->A attributes... == +70 karma, 4 more points used to softmax another attribute. Assuming you spent the prior points for max karma... that would leave dumpstats at 1 waiting for karma expenditure for cheap raises to 2 or 3.

Priority B->A Magic == 55karma magic increase (4->6). 3 extra spells 15 karma. There's 70 karma right there equaling the extra attribute points. 2 skills at rank 4->5 are pure bonus karma over that... 10 karma each. Plus you can spend remainder skill points from the normal distro to raise those to 6 each for even better value. Hence why I said you're poo pooing the value of those extra spells. Yes they cost doesn't scale but they are karma in the bank.

So by your own criteria... you've cheated yourself out of lot of karma... And priority A attributes is not a better value for a mage/shaman.


The real question though is skills...
Priority B -> A skills most efficient spend... +10 more skill points (36/6== 6 maxed out skills). and +5 skill group (5 ranks in one group... and more in another). One new skill R6 (42karma), R4 (20karma), Skill group R5->6(30karma), Group R4 (50karma) == 142 karma total bonus.

Though viewed this way...
Pri A magic, C skills... you end up with 38 total skill points, 2 skill groups, 10 spells, and a rating 6 mag attr... all special attribute points go into edge... raising that for more karma value.
Pri A skills, Pri C Mag... you end up with 46 total skill points, 10 skill groups, 5 spells, and rating 3 mag attr.... any special attribute points go into magic... dumping edge.
So as you can see it's nowhere near as clearcut...


Here's part of the rub though... it's easier to raise skills in play than it is attributes... (you spend the karma 10 or so at a time... instead of needing to hoard 30 or 40 points worth). Also the opportunity cost of Pri A skills... is you need Pri B & C magic and attributes...

In terms of maxing karma... Pri E is resources of course... (you can go with the cash for karma/vice versa but it's a poor measure IMO).

In SR3, there was no skill cap past chargen. Given enough time and karma, you could have a skill of 20 or higher. Granted, I don't even want to calculate how much karma that would take you, but it's how it worked. Fastjack's Computer skill was probably that high. The starting max was 6, so there was no way a starting character could compete with legends. Also, skills were more important, since they were the primary source of dice. That higher skill really meant something.

In SR4.5, the highest possible skill rating was 7. Period. What's more, you could easily start with that right out of the gate. So, you could have a starting character that would give Fastjack a run for his money. In fact, thanks to the dice pool inflation problem, you could often create characters that could make statted legendary characters whimper and beg for their mommy. Skills became a very small component of your dice pool, and thus, much less important.

SR5 moved back to the older method. Since skills are capped at 12, and the starting max is still 6, So, again, a starting character couldn't compete with a legend. Which, IMO, is as it should be. It gives player characters something to strive for. There's still problems with dice pool inflation and skills not mattering as much as attributes and gear, but it is better.

Did you actually do the math? Skills A and Magic C comes out to 507 karma for me (using specializations). Magic A and Skills C comes out at 436. A difference of 71 karma is pretty clear cut to me.

Let's put Race at D for both set ups, dump edge in the Skills A scenario and get the full five with the Magic A scenario. To make up that difference from Edge 2 to 5 would take 60 karma. So now they have the same Edge, but the Skills A scenario still comes out 11 karma ahead. It's not much but 11 is always greater than 0.

The problem comes when you start throwing in other meta considerations, like when you referenced the need to hoard large stashes of karma for improving attributes vs the constant need to spend a little karma to acquire or upgrade something useful for an upcoming run, or the value of getting an exceptionally high dice pool in a specific thing might take resources from multiple priorities and getting the right mix lowers the overall karma equivalency, or as Glyph said previously up thread, if you know the GM is stingy on either Karma or Nuyen but has large payouts of the other, you should probably load up with the other in character creation, and if you're playing with TJ, you need to optimize for "realism" as the table requires it.

These things absolutely need to be taken into consideration during the optimization process for character creation to tailor the character for play at a specific table, but they don't actually effect the raw karma equivalency. My table looks down on leaving any attribute at 1 unless the player specifically wants to make, say, a "clumsy" character with Agi of 1, and that fact is integral to the identity of that character. But it's a meta consideration.

The problem I have with meta considerations, overall, is that each table is different and what is considered verboten at one, is common place at the other, and further, when a poster comes along with anecdotal optimization, it's almost always tinged towards their own personal table. As an example, some people don't follow the times needed for improving stats, while others do... and that one single fact is going to have huge considerations on how to approach optimal character creation. Which is why I feel that the math, and going back to what the book actually says, is important: it is the only baseline we have that is independent of table dynamics.

tjn:
very quick reply... no I didn't include specializations... forgot about those. Only did the maxed skills 1->6.

That would be a way to get more value for the 'remainder' points in skills...

As far as the rest... edg 5 vs. 11 extra skills karma (including specializations)... I would get rid of the extra karma... why? In play... that 11 karma skills is the differnce between one rank 4 -> 5 skill. Edge though... it's huge... 5 edge is 5 extra dice to any skill on demand as well as a few other uses.

Essentially you're talking the difference between a character with one extra R6 skill... vs one with 5 edge... who can 5 times add 5 dice to any skill check when needing a boost.



Also I disagree with the flat out pay 60 karma to raise edge to 5... where are you doing that in chargen? That's going to have to happen later in play... and such a char is probably going to languish with no more than 3 edge for most of his career and take his skills advantage to the bank.

This simply touches into one of the other aspects of the game which wasn't addressed well in SR5. Attributes are undercosted and over important compared to skills. Having a ton of ranks in a skill doesn't matter if the limit is so low as to not matter. Sorry but the 2:5 ratio on karma for skills:attributes is just way too high given that all attributes add to compared to skills.

Though you are technically correct... the very best kind of correct... heh. I had forgotten specialization karma value on skills which does push the values up slightly higher.

Unless my math is wrong, keeping Magic at C (assuming skills A) only costs you 10 skill points and 5 spells (or 25 karma) which can be made back in other ways.
Bumping Attributes down to B or C costs between 4 and 8 points, which are the most expensive to increase later. Skills are even worse as prioritizing them costs 10 to 18 skill points and 8/10 group points (which are basically the same cost as attributes). You can't make those group points back at character creation, but you can easily make up the 10 magic-related skill points in other ways.

I would argue that Magic A is the least cost effective, as it only gets basically 6 Attribute points, 10 skills and 50 karma worth of spells.
As a human, you can buy yourself up to 3 edge with karma, which isn't terrible.

Argh, I'm sorry, I think I screwed up and forgot to include some of the skill groups or something, which would add a lot more versatility and reliability to the types of roles the character could sub in for, at the cost of being really awesome more often when you really need it and a larger magical repertoire. And yes, that's essentially what the trade off comes down to. But also, because of that trade off, both characters will play differently, and that difference should inform both the characterization of that character for story purposes, and the game choices the player makes, as a player who believes the dice are out to get him should probably invest in a high edge.

If someone can double check my math so I can stop talking out my ass:

It comes out a bit bigger than I first thought (unless I'm missing something else, again), at 101 karma. Is having an awesome Edge worth that? Depends on the table. However once we start the meta considerations based upon your own table, there are other considerations. Magic A has more spells, and spells usually take longer to learn than skills, so that might start the player to lean towards Magic A, especially if the character's only role is to be a mage and so they wouldn't need quite so many skill points. But then if your group is on the small side and the mage generally has to pull double time as the group's face, as well as it's magic support, those extra skills start looking really nice.

And that's the problem for any kind of character building once you get past the math, because the answer of whether to go with choice A or choice B will always be, "it depends."
It was in a magical, handwavey, let's-try-and-make-the-stats-equal land. Personally I have no problem giving karma like it's candy, because as a GM as I can drop all the thor shots I want, if I really care to. If my players all agreed that they wanted to start with extra karma, I'd have no problem and I would change the campaign to suit the new paradigm. However under more normal circumstances, yes you're right, the character is going to probably stick to an edge of 3, which is, imo, workable, but again that depends on how edge refreshes at your individual table.
I make no argument that the design balance between attributes and skills isn't screwy when comparing value to cost. This is yet another meta consideration: yes, there will be one priority arrangement that will get you the most karma, but is that karma spent in a way that gives you the most value? At what point does the sheer weight of extra karma give way to the value of under-costed stats? And the question of whether a stat is adequately valued in karma is inherently a subjective one, and it is going to differ from player to player.

At my table, I took BP generation in SR4.5 out behind the woodshed because of what I viewed as inconsistencies in value. I might make a similar house rule for SR5 after I get a campaign with the normal rules under my belt, but I'm also of the opinion that the ratio of 2k nuyen per karma is a little out of whack too, but either way, it's what the book says. Once you start tinkering with the ratios of how much each stat costs in karma to increase, the whole comparative system goes out the window because the assumptions change, and if we're going that far, we might as well retool character creation altogether from the ground up.

I am all for re-tooling Character Gen. Karma Gen all the Way.

See the problem with that, at least for my table, is that I actually like the paradigm of a team of specialists in their own role, coming together to not only cover the shortcomings of other teammates, but to have well defined areas of gameplay in which that player shines, and over the course of play each character begins to learn from the others and shores up their own weaknesses through their shared experiences.

Think Leverage.

But this really only works under a system that rewards initial specialization and branching out over the course of play like the current linear/exponential system, and a pure karma system tends encourage building generalist runners who have very little in the way of differences from a systems play perspective. This can lead to spotlight problems where the player have no defined roles and are stepping on each other's toes. But for me, the major thought is that if all the characters have very similar stats... why am I using that system in the first place? If there's little functional difference no matter what action I attempt because the "smart" move is to generalize, why am I using that system, especially one as complicated as SR's is, if I can sit down with my friends and use the system: pick up 8 dice, roll them and tell a story from their outcome. Saves a ton of time and effort, but that really undermines the "game" aspect of an rpg for me.

So for my table, I'd need something different. /shrug. But a karma system definitely works for a significant part of the fan base of SR! And it's got the advantage of being consistent and therefore simpler than any linear/exponent system.

What I'd probably do is set all attributes at 2, make up a new flaw where a player can put a single attribute down to 1 rather than dealing with the min/max problems, and give Athletics 1, Stealth 1, Etiquette 2, and a combat skill at 2 free to all runners. Then I'd adjust the total points from skills priority and attribute priority, and make all priority steps roughly equivalent in karma efficiency such that there's a higher floor on attributes and skills so less of a huge drop like in the current case of Skills A to B. Probably 3k nuyen to karma, maybe more. Skills are 1.5 x new rating (round up). Skill groups are 3 x new rating. Shift down all aspected magicians one priority. Mystic Adepts limited to A or B priority only, and have one less magic than normal mages. Races would take serious revision. Alchemy gets taken out behind the woodshed. Wireless bonuses get to come along too, but everything is hackable. Make hacking less powerful, but require only one roll per thing accomplished.

Okay, now see... I gotta pull my way out of the rabbit hole I'm digging here. Once there's one change in the assumption from the base of SR5... why stop there?

The thing I like about Karma Gen is that you can Still Specialize, it just comes with the cost of diminishing returns.
Or you can generate a functional Generalist that also works.

Of course, it only works when you don't care about/don't pursue the Edge Cases that BP can generate (SR4A) or that Priority (SR5) potentially generates. If you want to pursue those Edge Cases due to a focus on that specialization, Karma Gen is a bit more difficult to employ, exactly because of those diminishing returns.

I did some math trying to convert prioritygen to karma, turns out that 2k ¥/Karma fit quite well. The real problem (IIRC) was the balance between Skills A and Magic/Res A, it just doesn't compare unless you charge double for each point of Magic/Edge.

Yeah, I did a brief check against some augments against raising attributes, and 2k/karma seemed to be in the right ballpark for character creation or without any other considerations, but for my table (again, personal experience, ymmv and all that) in play we have a lot of, what I suppose one might call operating costs. Pay for a combat cab to make a run into the barrens, pay for information about the local gangs, pay to replace a drone or the 50th motorcycle that said gang blew up, pay to have ten ganger bodies disappear without starting a gang war, you know, the usual. We tend to give more nuyen than RAW suggests (20k-30k per runner is average(though we don't do per runner, the Johnson offers a flat rate for hiring the team, and the team decides how to split it)), but probably a lot more money sinks than other tables. On the other hand, I can count on one hand the amount characters that received of additional cyber after character creation because saving up 200k is almost impossible. Karma doesn't have this sort of inherent sink within it's economy, but we tend to be more stingy with it as well and as a result, raising attributes through karma is just as rare.

So my own desire to change to 3k/karma goes back to the fact that anecdotal meta considerations that are drawn specifically from personal experience shouldn't apply in a generic way to every character creation.

And you know, it would make a lot of sense if charging more for Special Attributes in karma might have been some rule in beta testing or in the original drafting of SR5, and when special attributes was changed back to normal karma, the math backing up the priority system was never changed to reflect the new equivalency.

The thing with karmagen is that it was generous enough that you weren't stuck with a generalist. I prefer more specialized and optimized characters, and they usually turn out better in karmagen. Karmagen is more balanced. On the one hand, generalization at character creation is not as penalized - but on the other hand, there is still an incentive to have some high skills and Attributes; dice pools are one of the major metrics for determining success in the game.

It kind of also depends on how many skills you really plan to use. The mage I made for my game went
A skills
B magic
C attributes
D human
E reosurces

I think karma efficiency is pretty high but a lot of my skills really don't get used much. I have ritual magic and I can make wards and watchers, but 4-5 runs in and I have not used it once. Banishing, not once etc. There is another mage in out group that got himself a 7 magic and a 6 edge but only has like 22 skill points, Might be less karma efficient, but it is a lot more game efficient. Attributes are pretty much always going to be used, so they are almost never a loss. Skills can much more easily end up as wasted points.

Gah, no!

First of all, karma gen is way too fiddly and crunchy. SR4.5 characters took way too long to build, and they used linear math. Scaling costs take much longer to calculate. This might be acceptable if the results were better, but in my experience, they're not. Min/maxers will still find a way to min/max; but the harder you try to squeeze them, the harder they'll fight back. I saw this many times in SR3 and SR4.5 karmagen: the end result is even more heavily min/maxed monstrosities.

"Improved ability
This power increases the rating of a specific Active skill by 1 per level. A skill’s maximum modified rating equals its base rating x 1.5."
So 10.

He means the most you could raise a skill using karma was to 7. The rating can be modified further with augmentations and magic, but not karma.

I know what he meant but he said "Period".

Not really. Specialisation is still rewarded. Just not unfairly. Sorry, but give everybody a bunch of Karma and they will start broading the character. The System espacially BP in Shadowrun 4 produced characters who would tend to die on their own, because it is increadible efficient.

And thats not true either. Actually the opposite is true. If specialisation does cost, the specialist is worth something. Opposed to everybody is the specialist. And exactly the second thing happend in Shadowrun. Yeah, you are the sammurai but guess what, everone has one of their weapon skills at 4-6, so....


The point is, if a system produces reasonable characters, you actually do not need to worry about balance that much. Thats mostly taking care of itself.
If this ain't the case, you will always have big issues, and try to close one hole after another. Mostly any kind of magic then breaks the whole thing, because of the "I can substitude magic for everything, if I am only good enough". Only "class" systems tend to be kind of resistant against that. Thats why this ability to specialize so much in SR (Karma or BP or Priority) was and is bad.
You tend to get "sepcialists" in different areas. As the hacker, who is also a great shot unless you give him anything else than his "pistol, smg, longarm", then he won't hit shit.

This is very true - you had a choice, but that choice had actual costs associated with it.

Why are you calculating them constantly.
I have a cheat sheet that tells you exactly how much each level costs, all the way to 10 Attribute and 6 Skill/Group.
Done with a glance. It is basic math, after all.

Even my most complicated builds took less than an hour (and most were done in 20-30 minutes), and again, that is mostly gear, since that is the most fiddly part of CHargen, and you do not get away from that in any edition of the game.

My experience is the direct opposite of yours. With Karma Gen, there is less need to Min-Max, and it is the rare character that is abused to hell and back, rather than the norm of BP (or likely Priority in SR5). I know in SR2/3 (and in SR5, too), Priority encourages Min-Max, as many of the threads here will attest to (including this very one).

You're really going to tell me that my experiences at my table that tell me what works, and what doesn't work, for me and my table, is somehow wrong?

Look, I'm not saying Karma character creation is "bad" or anything, but it doesn't tend to produce the types of character stat blocks that works best for me and my table. This is my opinion. If you don't like it, that's not my problem.
Value judgment is valueless. What you opine as "unfairly" is different from everyone else, and stating it as a fact rather than an opinion does not magically convert it into a fact.
And this is explicitly not what is wanted at my table during character creation. This, again, at my table, happens in play as an outcome of the lessons learned in play. Which is why we use karma... in play, and not during character creation.
While I obviously don't encourage team members who are too stupid to live, being in situations where characters "who would tend to die on their own" is a feature for us, not a bug! It forces team members to rely on each other.
You seriously fail at reading comprehension. The point wasn't about specialization. It's that karma gen tends to create stat blocks for characters that are so generic to the point of, in my opinion, being divorced from who the character is or what his/her role is. This just my opinion. You are entitled to a different opinion, but you are not entitled to tell me my opinion is wrong.
This is a cognitive bias: there is a human tendency to perceive the value of something being more, based solely upon how much effort or cost it took to achieve whatever it is. Just because forcing specialists to pay more for specializing, does not change the inherit worth of specializing. You perceive specialists being worth more, specifically because it costs more in karma to specialize. The worth of a specialist is the exact same, no matter what it cost to get there.
Knock it off with the value judgments. You are implying that reasonable must mean the characters are "realistic" in some manner. As I explained earlier in the thread, I don't give a shit about realism, especially in a game about magic, virtual realities, and living in a grim future where people shoot other people directly in the face for the money to pay the rent. I have a cinematic aesthetic, and karma gen doesn't produce "reasonable" characters for what I want out of my game. You want something else, obviously, so what's reasonable to one, is obviously going to be different to the other... but again, stating your opinion as fact doesn't magically make my opinion wrong.
I never worry about player characters ever being out of balance, because as a GM, I have a free hand to introduce whatever challenges to the PCs I can dream up. The system of how PCs are created, similar to their worth as above, has nothing to do with balance other than setting an initial expected power level. And when that expected power level is challenged, the response isn't to yell "bad power gamer, bad!," it's to up the scope, scale, and consequences of the story to fit with the goals of the player. If the player wants to play a Teachdaire or Sapphire clone, filled with multiple exploding Seattles and epic stories at a world shaking power level, the response should be either how can we compromise visions to make everyone happy, or if that style of gameplay is a deal breaker for you, you tell them that, and you try to find a different corner of the Shadowrun universe that everyone at the table can explore.
The close to every loophole or system breaker ever: have a conversation. If you're too busy trying to make rules to listen to your players, it's not the player's fault for not being able to read your mind on how you have interpreted that rule.

The benefit of karma generation is that it allows for characters to be made with the same system used for in-game progression. There are no inefficient choices since each karma spent is 1:1 to the karma you could earn in play. In my opinion this creates a lot of diversity in characters, who have non minmaxed stats and abilities. Whether you consider that a good or bad thing is entirely opinion, but I prefer it. It does make it nearly impossible to play a melee monster troll or Ork, so it's not a perfect system either.

BP and Priority encourage minmaxing since there are only so many static points available and raising stats to maximum costs the same per point as raising them to middling ratings. That's not to say you can't make your character however you want and disregard the metanumbers of the system, but in terms of best bang for your buck it is in your best interest to minmax as much as possible as has been discussed since the priority points are not equal to in game karma XP.

<Edit>
Sorry, posted to the wrong topic

Hey there everyone, I'm hijacking this thread to ask a question: What is the best character-generation legal soak pool it's possible to get in 5th edition? No other factors are in play, but if you're a mage using the armour spell then you're getting average hits (1/3 dice pool) for this.

Currently I'm thinking that 42 dice is getting pretty close on the upper limit [10 body (troll) + 1 toughness (quality) + 1 thick skin (troll) + 12 armour (armour jacket) + 2 helmet (helmet) + 6 shield (riot shield) + 4 dermal plating (dermal plating) + 6 bone lacing (2nd hand titanium bone lacing)], and that'll set you back 4.875 essence already (tried with 5 points of 2nd hand dermal and it brought it up to 6.25 essence).

Can anyone do better?

Well for racial mods the karma cost always should be pre-racial mods. You are already paying for the race there shouldn't be a double tax. In the case of karma gen, don't do what 4e did in one of the versions and remove a base cost of being a troll. If I buy muscle aug 4 for my 1 strength human it does not cost me 30 karma to improve his strength, it only costs 10. Racial mods should work the same way.

Well the cheese method would be to add cyber feet or whatever with armo mods, most GMs would require the full limb though so I don't think its valid. Full limb replacemnt might beat it. 4 limbs x 2 armor=8, I think you can still take used titanium skeleton depsite missing 4 limbs for 6, troll bod 10, toughness, thick skin troll another 2, armor jacket, riot shiel 18. 8+6+10+2+18=44 Soon after char gen you can boost that by another 4 when you increase the cyber armor to 3 per limb. If you can ever save up for beta cyber skull you can get another 3 for a total of 51. If you are willing to totally forget the other enhancements for the limbs and maybe just have 1 good arm you can probably make them alpha and get the skull aat char gen.

true, I did overlook cyberlimbs as an option. If you were actually going to play the character then throwing priorities A and B into metatype and resources as opposed to resources D for the other build might make it less attractive, but that wasn't a requirement for the challenge.

So, we have 44 dice right out of the box. can anyone do better?

What if you went Mystic Adept?

Bear Mentor Spirit +2, Troll +10, tough skin +1, Mystic Armor +6, Armor Spell +6, Ares Victory Big Game Hunter +14, + 2 helmet (helmet) + 6 shield (riot shield), Toughness Quality +1, Attribute Boost Body (max bonus +4) - that's 52 dice.

I think you'd be pushing it to afford 18 dice in spellcasting (6 hits on the armour spell) plus a body 10 troll. Might be possible, but you'd be really pushing it. Also not sure that anything from the run and gun previews is really fair as technically the book isn't out yet and the previews are subject to last minute changes.

awesome. You can still take titanium bone lacing, you'd lose 2 in mystic armor but gain 3 body/3armor netting 4. And you can do it with petty low resources. That would be 56, and 48 without the add on armors like riot shields that are hard to have with you at all times. Hell if you can scrounge the 14 karma at char gen you can have a 11 body.If yo went improved atribute body 2 and attribute boost you have a much more solid chance of maxing at +4 aug value.

True though its doable. The problem with this build will be the massive dump statting when you max body and still have okay drain stats. Still 6 spell casting + 6 magic +2 specialization manipulation spells and a spell focus manipulation spells gets you close.

I'd consider taking alchemy on the character though, with a 10+body and 4+willower he'd heal stun drain up really quick so he can probably get more preparations ready than most other casters.

Well there's nothing short of an anti-tank missile that's going to deal physical damage to you so overcasting is a fairly viable strategy. After all, anything that does hurt you is going to be stun so taking some physical from your spells isn't going to drop you any quicker in a fight. your only weakness will be the direct spells that everyone says are so nerfed...

Hmmm...
metatype A
Attributes B
Magic C
Resources D
Skills E

Focus skills on Spellcasting and Counterspelling.
Focus attributes on Body 10, Willpower 5, logic 4.
Get a spellcasting focus for manipulation and a sustaining focus of the same type.
At this point you're nigh unkillable. Throw on quick healer and high pain tolerance for giggles.

Geek this mage first, bitches!

Well, for one thing, someone's got to calculate the cheat sheets. Which is even more time spent. It might be worth it if I hadn't kicked karmagen out of use after trying it a few times, but that's how it goes.

No one, and I mean NO ONE I know, has ever completed a SR4.5 character in under an hour. I've known many people who claim to have done so, but have failed when actually timed under scientific conditions. This includes a line developer. Most of the characters I've seen have taken several hours, and some of mine have taken days.

Your experience is at your table, which we have ascertained is either a statistical anomaly or partly fictional. My experience is based on many different environments, including con play, home games, and official Missions events. I also deliberately handed both systems to munchkins to see what they could do. Based on that, I can safely say that the harder you try to force someone to not min/max, the harder they will resist. As a result, the fiddlier system will be abused more, especially if it's designed to stop min/maxing. Some of the worst abuses I've seen in 4.5 were done via karmagen.

Really this shouldn't come as a surprise. Karmagen really only tried to balance skills and attributes. In 4.5, those are only a small part of your dice pool. You can still pile on the modifiers from other sources. Only difference is now, you have a wider base to draw off of, making it easier to shore up low dump stats.

Single Task that takes less than 20 minutes all told, and then everyone benefits.


Love how you call me a liar. But since I have absolutely no need to min-max, and tend to play mostly base line humans, with mostly average stats to start out (1/2 3's and 1/2 4's), all the heavy lifting is already completed. From there, it is a simple matter of adjustment of stats and allocation of skills. AS I said, easy peasy.

Yes, Sometimes Gear takes a long time, but not normally for me, since I already have an idea of what I want going in. It is a bit fiddly, but 30 Minutes is probably average for me. I have done some in as little as 15-20 minutes (gangers, with almost no money to spend, duh!).

Yes, SOME builds take me longer, but not because of the Karma Allocation. This is generally due to me wanting to figure out complete backstories to complement the character. I have done that maybe 6 times out of 50, on characters that I intend to be long-term characters. We obviously have very different approaches to character building... Me personally? I generally have a dozen characters floating around in my head at any given time, for various gaming systems. When I get the urge to actually create one, it is already done in my head (for the most part) and all that is left is the allocations. But for me, this is mostly background noise and requires no concentration or effort on my part, and so when it comes time to character gen, all I need to actually do is to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) and make him "real," which takes no time at all. *shrug*


Again with the insinuations. Please stop. Not everyone likes min-max monstrosity games, why is that so hard to believe. Most of us passed through that phase of our gaming years and years ago. we tend to prefer other styles these days (though we do occasionally go back to the Mohawk from time to time). But what you are essentially saying is that you play with unreasonable people who prefer to pursue their own enjoyment over that of any one else. Got it. Some tables are indeed like that. Not a fan, myself, but they do exist. *shrug*

Yes, you can abuse the system. I can munchkin with the best of them, in multiple systems, if I choose to do so. My question is why you would want to do so. I see no inherent benefit to it, and a lot of drawbacks. *shrug*



And I will say it again... Just because you CAN pile on bonuses until you are blue in the face, it does not mean that you SHOULD do so. My most balanced characters are from Karma Gen and SR4A. It is in the Priority and BP gen systems that I find the most unrealistic and unbalanced characters in play. Mainly because they encourage (or force, if some prefer) the player to hyper specialize in order to compete (which then forces the GM to do so, which starts the cycle all over again). That is a trap to which I just say no too. *shrug*

Same reason we do everything - because we can.

Just because you can does not mean you should.

My experience is, all builds take longer. With our without karma calculations, although that does increase the time.

Just because you "choose" to not abuse the system, doesn't mean it's not prone to abuse. The point is, karmagen is more abuseable than the base 4.5 system, which is already munchkin-heaven. I honestly think your point is agreeing with me.

Did you just seriously group-attack the hundreds of players I've gamed with over the years?

Don't take this as an insult, but... how would you know? You admit that you don't try to break the system, so how do you know which is more breakable?

Honestly, my experience across many systems is, the harder you try to restrict min/maxers, the more they feel the need to compete. They'll find a way. Usually, the best way to deal is to be fairly liberal with them, so they don't feel like they need to squeeze the most value out of every last point.

That's a rather unhelpful statement.

Look, karmagen is much more abuseable than BP, especially if you're playing an Awakened character. The ability to mass-Initiate can create an insane build. That's just a concrete fact. Do you have any concrete evidence as to how Karmagen is less abuseable? Don't say "because it encourages X", because what it encourages and what it produces are two separate things. And don't say "Because you shouldn't", because that's a red herring.

I agree with a lot of your points here, but please don't associate mohawk with min/max monstrosities. Min-maxing has nothing to do with the style of game you play. If anything I'd expect more in trench coat games as the more serious take makes the games more challenging and might require more to get by. So you might bet players who don't normally min/max to do so.

Interesting...
Would you still think a karmagen system would be more abusable if it had the same starting restrictions as any other build system? If you have a fair assessment of racial and qualities costs in karma as well as a fair assessment of karma for cash then restrict the ability to initiate/submerge (can you even use the starting karma in 5th to initiate?) a karmagen system is more balanced that any other system.

It all comes down to paying for what you want. You can still min/max in a karmagen system by having a dump stat or two so you can raise another one up but you know that every 500 karma character is 500 karma not 400 for selecting skills or attributes D or the disconnect with build points. Every concept is the same overall "value" even if the build is "subpar." That is something you cannot get in a priority or build point system.

I have been playing shadowrun since 2nd Ed and our group only uses karmagen to the point that I do not even know the build point or priority costs anymore. The most difficult and time consuming part of character creation for me has always been the character concept. The numbers take 30 minutes... the gear takes an hour... I had one concept that took me a year to get right and most of the others took weeks. But I know that when I sit down at the table the person next to me is built on and is using the same costs that I am so 500 karma is 500 karma. (I am pulling 500 karma out of my ass just for a number...)

...because SR has thousands of fiddly options, especially when it comes to gear. If you want to speed up chargen, changing attribute/skill costs is clearly barking up the wrong tree


Oh come on, did you drop out of homeschooling after a year? There's even a table in the BBB for the karma cost of each rank.


And for me, the major argument for karmagen is what Samoth already mentioned: One system for generation and progression.

Technically, karmagen is more abuseable, mainly because the base amount you get for karmagen is more generous than the base amount you get for build points. However...


That has been my experience of karmagen in play. I tend to min-max less with karmagen, not because it is harder to do so (I have fiddled around with builds and numbers, and did one min-maxed character for a PVP game, so I know you can min-max with karmagen), but because, as you said, I don't feel like I need to squeeze the most value out of every point.