I'm starting a low-level campaign, 350 points as opposed to 400. One of my players wants to be a combat medic, and he was going to be human to save the points. After some research, we figured that it was actually cheaper and more effective to be a meta human, because you get racial-Attribute increases that don't count towards the maximum limit(half of your total buy points) that can be put into buying attributes alone.

So an Elf not only gets attribute bonuses into Charisma and Agility, put he can still spend 170 on Attributes. Whereas a human gets no bonuses(Except Edge), and can only spend 170.

However, this problem doesn't seem as prominent in a 400 point campaign for some reason. How can I balance this out in a 350 point game?

Thanks in advance.

Start role-playing the racism inherent in the game more often.

So you think I should just let it be?

What if I dictate that the Buy points used to become a Meta human count towards the max. attribute buy points?

The elf isn't really getting any advantages. I mean, the human actually gets more bang for his buck with the extra point of edge. Those extra points they are spending could be better spent generally on skills, contacts, gear, you get the idea. Orks get the biggest bang for their buck and if they are in Seattle (and I'm assuming they are) while most people on the street wouldn't openly sneer at them, the general populace will be distrustful, Lone Star might decide to "randomly inspect" them more often, etc. You must just downplay the discrimination inherinent in the system

It takes place in Los Angeles.

And they really do get a lot of advantage in a 350 campaign. If it wasn't any big deal I wouldn't bother making a thread, but it really unbalances the system.

For example Orks like you said get a lot of 'bang.' They get 50 points worth of attribute increases for twenty points. So they come out 30 points on top, and they can still spend 170 points on attributes for a total of 200. Thats 30 points more than a human.
A Troll gets 40 points more than a human.
An Elf comes out even, but still has thirty points worth of attributes before spending their attribute points.
And a Dwarf comes out 15 points extra.

It is important to note that all humans get +1 edge absolutely free, so it's not like they get nothing. Edge is actually quite a powerful attribute (much better than strength, which orcs get heaps of) and a human character with edge in the 6-7 range can truely kick some ass. It's true that edge doesn't count towards the BP limit that can be spent on mental and physical attributes, but humans do effectively get 10 free build points.

I have the same issue with the races, even in a 400 point game.

Sure humans cost 0BP and get +10BP (in edge that they don't have to spend) but all the other races get more.

Elf cost 30BP get those as direct extra points in abilities, for shawmans/face the charisma is great, for everyone Agility is the key fighting ability score. Even if they don't use the increase really and put 10 BP in charisma so they have human average of 3 that still means they have more points to buy other ability scores.

And as you point out BP on race does not reduce the points that can be spent of stats. It winds up reducing skills, contacts ect... everyone still puts half of their BP in stats.

One way I thought of to fix it was to make all races cost 20BP to play but make them take the reduced max in a stat as a penalty. So a troll would cost 20BP but he would have to spend at least 10BP in Agility and then would get a 1, and atleast 20BP in charisma to get a 1.

This only works with elves if you give them a penalty stat I would suggest Body [1/5].

I gotta back up Unarmed here. Those points for Ork and Troll are very specific. I do see a lot of sickly orcs getting made even at 400 points (B1 S1 then racial mods) because it is superior. However, unless you were planning on having like 5 or 6 strength and body as a human the Troll doesn't actually save you any points. At 350 points I can see most mages being Elf or Dwarf as those two directly boost your magical ability.

But a human can spend 170 on attributes and still have 180 for everythings else. All those skills, contacts, and gear can make a HUGE difference with a bit of creativity.

Unarmed, I think you may have just figured out my dilemma for me. I was under the impression that Edge counts as apart of the BP limit for attributes. But it doesn't! I think that'll work out now that I think about it.

i like the elves being able to get 7 max before the exceptional attribute part on charisma, giving me a 8 cha for drain on my mage.

In lower BP games, the reduced caps on unfavored attributes is essentially meaningless because you wouldn't be able to afford a 5 in those tertiary stats anyhow. But on the flip side, Strength doesn't really do anything. I'm not even sure why it's a stat.

Strength is good for Running, Hitting people with Sticks, and Lifting. Running and Striking are secondary concerns as one can go orders of magnitude faster and do astoundingly more damage with a machine than one can with real musculature, and Shadowrun doesn't even have a workable lifting system so it always gets hand waved.

There's no real difference between a Strength of 5 and a strength of 6. At a Strength of 5 you'll be able to outrun anyone who doesn't have a bicycle (or something worse like a helicopter or hovercraft), if for some reason you want to hit someone with a stcik you'll do as much damage as a pistol does in a simple action with a complex, and you get hand waved into the lifting category of "people who are really strng" - that 6th point of Strength won't cause you to do more damage, it won't let you run fast enough to beat any kind of machine or magic assisted movement, and it doesn't put you into a new Strength category since you're still just "a really strong person" as far as the gamemaster is concerned.

Getting Strength bonuses sucks, because it doesn't really do anything good.

-Frank

Stength can be useful if the GM has the creativity to make it useful. Bashing through doors, hanging onto helicopters, etc.

if people whine about str not doing enough make all weapons based on str just str damage and not str/2.

linking armour to body makes sense. i'm much stronger than my friend chris was a few years back. if we hit the gym i would be lifting 20-30kg more than whatever he could but he was about three times my size, (i'm not too tall fyi) and he could carry a whole lot more than i ever could just from his bulk.

humans are still uber with that +1 edge. the other thing i would suggest is making edge more important. when determining who an npc attacks or hassles first, i go with whoever has the lowest edge. kinda like a luck thing. anything bad that's going to happen hits the guy with the lowest edge.

Strength in previous editions was encouraged somewhat by encumberance.

If the group feels that Metas are two powerfull they could houserule that a reduction in the natural maximum means that the player must spend more to raise it. As though it was at a higher level according to the reduction of the maximum. A Ork with a Charisma of 2 would take (3+1)*3 Karma to raise his Charisma to 3.

The idea of having starting Attributes reduced by the amount of the Natural Maximum was also suggested somewhere on these boards. Tha, however would increase the base BP cost of metas to: Ork = 40, Dwarf = 35, Elf = 30, Troll = 80.
It would discourage the playing of orcs more, and Trolls would be right out.

I don't think that there is any need to discourage orks and trolls in favor of elves and humans. The point is to encourage playing humans. If you're going to do so by crippling orks and trolls then you might as well just make humans the only playable race. While you're doing that, you could also condense all the varied stats into a single stat called Baddassitude and have it automatically set at 5 for all characters.

Diversity is important.

I have a bizarre recommendation, but it just might work. First of all, set all racial BP costs to 0. Players can choose any race without spending a single BP. However, you subtract 40 BP from the players' available total (a 400 BP game becomes a 360 BP game) and you give a BP bonus to every race except trolls. Humans get a +40 BP bonus, Elves get +10 BP, Dwarves get +15 BP, and Orks get +20BP.
The result is exactly the same, but it looks like Humans are getting a very big BP bonus this way.

However, if you want to give humans an actual statistical advantage, I'm going to make a different bizarre suggestion. Give them a karma multiplier somewhere between 1 and 2.

A karma multiplier of 1.25 seems nice. It gives a definite advantage without making them a no-brainer in long-term campaigns. For every 1 point of karma a metahuman would gain, a normal human gains 1.25 karma. This means that for every 4 karma the metahuman PCs earn, the human PCs will be earning 5 karma. It doesn't seem like much, bit it adds up quickly.

You might also consider giving them a .75 multiplier (which quickly becomes huge) or a -1 modifier (which still adds up) for raising skills and attributes instead of a karma multiplier. A -1 modifier to raising skills and attributes does add up over the long term. It becomes even more powerful if you apply it towards all magical karma costs.

I agree.
The GM can scale encounters to match the players. If they are all playing Trolls it is not really problem.

If only one or two people are playing Trolls it is still not a problem. If someone builds a Troll Razerboy Munchin, he still needs to rely on team mates for other things.
We have such a Troll in our game, and the player was silly enough to not bother getting any contacts either. The weak non-combat face makes good cash supplying him with goods. Every now and then the players will take a finders fee for the job that he never gets not having any contacts. His Charisma and etiquette are so low that he hardly ever gets any new and useful contacts. The GM houseruled that to getting a new contact from the adventure requires a etiquette + Charisma test (Contact Connection Level).

GMs don't need to discourage Metas just ramped Munkin Min/Maxing.

Humans are more likely to benefit from cyberlimbs and have the resources to buy cyber and bioware that'll offset metahuman advantages. Humans also have the BP left over to make decent mages/adepts.

If you've got some arbitrary limits on gear and magic as well, then yeah, humans are going to suck.

honestly, humans are a great deal if you ask me. the "most efficient" min/maxing race is orks, right? they get 5 points of attributes (50 BP) for the cost of 20. ok, but hold on a second... 2 of those points are at best substandard (strength). furthermore, they take penalties to log and cha... now granted, they probably weren't going to go for 6 anyways... but they may very well have been planning on 5. effectively, they have capped themselves at 4 in some very nice attributes (charisma is nice for everyone, and logic is tied to a lot of skills) but that's beside the point:

let's consider that humans get +10 BP worth in an area that everyone needs, at a cost of 0. orks get +30 BP worth in an area that everyone needs, and 20 BP that is basically irrelevant 99% of the time, and they cost 20. so, effectively, that's 30 BPs value for 20 BPs cost, or 10 free BPs... exactly what humans get.

now, moving on... dwarves get +2 str (not worth anything significant) +1 bod, +1 wil, -1 rea. that's basically 20 BPs value, but they're paying 25 BPs for it. furthermore, they again are basically accepting a maximum of 4 in reaction to start, which is kinda important. but the simple fact is, they're looking at an effective net loss of 5 BPs, because no one cares about the strength bonus in the end.

next up, elves. 30 BP for 30 BP worth of stats. that's 0 free BP, still not as good as a regular human. at least they don't take stat penalties though, and the attributes are reasonably likely to be attributes you'll take advantage of the increased max as well.

lastly, trolls. +4 bod, +4 str, -1 agi, -1 log, -1 int, -2 cha. that's an effective cap of 3 on your charisma, 4 on your logic, intuition, and agility. (remember, we're talking about bang for your buck). basically, you've got 40 BPs of attributes, and it cost you 40 BPs. also, you took some fairly painful hits to your maximums in certain attributes. either way, that's 0 free BPs, and you are still behind the human.

conclusion: shadowrun has done a fairly good job of making humans desireable, if you ask me. much as i like orks, even they sometimes make me frustrated with their maximum stats, and trolls... well, trolls just make me cringe. starting off with charisma 3 or lower is not a desireable situation, if you ask me. this isn't D&D where you can ignore social skills.

I <3 Clyde's post.

A couple of my humans have taken both strength and logic at 1 and then just taken Muscle Augmentation 2 & Cerebral Booster 2. From there you only need a dozen karma or six karma and a supathyroid gland as your first big purchase and you've buff both stats up to an effective 4, which is just fine for anyone who merely wants to be well-rounded. Toss in 6 edge and a quality SkillWire system and suddenly you have one heck of a jack-of-all trades. Really, it's a good thing you can't use Edge to boost skills you only have via Activesofts, otherwise I'd be tempted to play humans almost exclusively.

I have to disagree that Strength is useless on a few points.
The 6th world changes everything, especially if your character isn't a mage or melee adept of some fashion. If your group runs into a Strength 4 zombie insect spirit, like mine did last week, all those pimp cannon pistols and assault machineguns are completely useless except as knockdowns for flavor descriptions. Once I wised up, that 8 base damage with Bulldog's combat axe 'Sweet Lovin' really put that sumbitch in the hurtlocker. "Jus' 'member kids, when all else fails, try givin' them some o' dat Sweet Lovin'."
Also, not everyone wants to play a Death Commando. Sure, you can load up on assault machineguns and grenade launchers and such to tear up the countryside but what if you want to keep it low key because you have a GM that tells you, "What you bring to the table, I bring to the table." Sometimes it's better to cut down on the mil-spec hardware and keep the heavy hitters at arms length.
Want to intimidate someone? Pick up some ridiculous item or bend that chunk of normally-tough material and then smile as you reach for the personage of your ire. It's ridiculous to base Intimidation only on charisma because I can tell you from experience that it's the size of the fight in the dog, not the size of the dog in the fight (and that also means that orc/troll gangers will rarely intimidate grannies). Feel free to use Willpower (You steppin', bitch?), Body (after soaking an insane hit with no apparent effect. Bulldog's 10 soak dice...naked...is good for this) or Strength in appropriate moments. Of course, being a big-ass dog never really hurts anything.

Mark(psycho)Phipps( HAHAHA! )

i don't care how tough you are, if you can't put together a complete sentence without stammering and stuttering, avoiding the other person's gaze, and speaking clearly instead of mumbling, you're not going to intimidate someone. i don't care how strong you are, that doesn't affect your skill. it might affect their perception of whether or not they are dealing with overwhelming force, which would apply a situational modifier, but the simple fact of the matter is, the size of the fight in the dog is not based on your strength.

you can deal lots of damage without huge strength scores, and without your combat axe. the fact of the matter is, your combat axe wouldn't have even dealt that much more than a strength 3 human, and someone with a strength of 1 and a monofilament whip can dish out the same amount of damage as you with better AP.

and some guy with a heavy crossbow, sport rifle, or shotgun could have dealt better damage simply by virtue of getting two attacks to your one, and at a range, to boot. this isn't the milspec gear, this is plain, ordinary stuff. this is, if anything, more civilian gear than the combat axe.

How exactly is a combat axe low key?

Actually, the game mechanics of spirits pretty heavily favor using big guns with Armor piercing rounds. The AP value of your weapon is by far the most important thing when determining whether you can kill enemies with immunity to normal weapons.

So for example: you're facing a Force 4 Zombie. It has a Body of 7 or so and 8 points of Hardened Armor. You bust out an assault rifle with AP rounds and fire a long burst right at its chest.

If you hit, you'll do a base 6P + 1 for net hits = 7, with an AP of -5. That gets compared to their 8 points of Hardened Armor (reduced to 3). Your 7P is more than their modified Armor of 3, so your attack goes through and they have to soak.

But you also hit them with a long burst. So you add an additional 5P to the DV (total of 12) before they soak. They roll 7 body + 3 armor and get about 3 or 4 hits and take 8 or 9 boxes of physical damage.

Hell, with a short burst they are looking at taking 5 or 6 boxes, and it's only a simple action to fire. A man with an AP assault rifle can truly expect to go through a Force 4 zombie in an initiative pass - assuming that he can hit at all (no small trick when the Force 4 Zombie has a Reaction of 7).

-Frank

Ive also been trying to figure out a way to make Str more useful in my games. (to brush on this topic for a moment again)

If it were done for character purposes, its one thing. But since it really ISNT the most useful stat from a numerical standpoint, people trash it to either A. Purchase it up for much, much less BPs(if augmented), or B. Playing a mage and just take a monowhip. Its interesting how so many of the characters are sickly these days. Now, i totally understand if its done for character purposes. I understand that you only have 200 BPs on Attributes, and you want to pick ones that help your occupation, thats cool. But when one attributes is CONSTANTLY being ditched for minmax purposes, then its time to rework the attribute, IMO. Combat characters should learn that sacrificing a couple of Pistol points is ok to make a more realistic character. However, im all for making it more useful.

As for the OP, im in the boat that metas do not throw off the game. The extra Edge does rule, as mentioned. (And Edge, Magic, and Resonance do not count toward the 200 BP limit in the RAW, though it goes by the same maxing rules. 200 BP goes toward Physical and Mental attributes only.)

As mentioned, Trolls. 40 BP for +80 BP of stats....and some hella big disadvantages across the board for the other stats. Remember youare only allowed to max one stat, so that 4 Charisma, or 5 Int or Logic, is it. Perhaps everyones game is different, but its never hurt our games in the end.

Im still trying to mesh out a priority system again, which might put to rest the meta problem that some folks do have. I loved Priority, which is the one reason why id like to bring it back.

Honestly, what bothers me in this game isn't that min-maxing attributes is so common, it's that people make such a big deal about it to begin with. The primary mechanic in this game is based on rolling hits for virtually any task, not pigeonholing someone's behavior based on their attribute score. There's nothing stopping someone from making a 1 charisma character who happens to be -physically- attractive due to cosmods, working out or whatever. That same character could also talk like they're hot stuff and always act with confidence... and end up rubbing everyone else the wrong way anyhow. For example, how hard is it really to imagine a hot but obnoxious stripper or an oily street pusher that gets by only on his gang connections? Really, I feel like fanpro did us a grave disservice when they bothered putting in those tables that give an idea of what level of competence various skill and attribute scores represent. It would have been much, much more accurate to attach such values to total dice pools, with a combined pool of 6 being entry-level profesional, especially since they make a point of talking about how low attributes could be presented in all sorts of ways. Then maybe we wouldn't have people getting their panties in a twist because they're imagining that having a logic if 1 means a character is retarded when it's otherwise fairly apparent that the system isn't intended to portray someone as truly retarded or otherwise handicapped (without the use of negative qualities, anyway). Never forget that the vast majority of day to day life activities in SR4 essentially have an effective TN of 0. Even a charisma of 1 isn't likely to hurt you too bad socially if you keep your head down. It really just means that you have no control over how people are going to perceive you and your actions.

That said, strength IS in a bit of a sorry predicament, and could certainly afford to have been an intrumental attribute in more tests.

Humans get an extra feat! =Þ

I think the "skill table" was them imitating White Wolf.

Other than that I tend to think that previous editions of the game penalized characters heavily for being Metahuman. SR3 balanced it outsomewhat. I think SR4 is giving Metahumans a day in the sun. It seems to be very "Goblincentric" especially in the novels, probably because while Orks were a big part of the world they were overlooked. People tended to either go Troll (for fighers) or Elf (for anything else), it would have been nice to give Dwarves a bit more love, but I sort of see why they didn't.

Racism is a touchy subject when it comes to Shadowrunners as the PCs are mostly going to be dealing socially with "undesirables". Sure a metahuman might invoke Ire from the Humanis Policlubs/Gangers, but by the same token modern political correctness has made such an outlook so evil that in most SR games these guys are generally the bad guys anyway. It's not like most GMs are going to reward players for being racists and dealing with the SR equivilent of The Aryan Brotherhood (or at least not in the overwhemling majority of games). On the other hand PCs are likely to be dealing with Orkish criminals and gangers quite frequently and an Ork PC is going to have a decent advantage there.

As far as being hassled by the cops go, well... unless the PCs are deeply undercover I am not sure if that is a big problem. In general if the cops hassle
the PCs you just wind up with a lot of dead cops as they aren't going to just let themselves be arrested/taken in given that they are SINLESS and involved in criminal/terrorist activities. For the most part Shadowrunners and such operate in places like The Barrens or whereever specifically because the police don't go there.

If a PC is for example walking from his Middle-class pad (hidden inside an outwardly ruined building) in the Barrens, to "Dante's Inferno" to get loaded, and some cop pulls over and says "hey Gobbie, let's see some ID" the cop is probably going to wind up dead to the massive cheers if the people around the neigborhood. If the PC doesn't loot him, the corpse (and the car) is likely to be stripped down to a frame inside of 10 minutes. The police just don't go to places like that for normal patrols.

*IF* the police are going to the Barrens they usually do it as an Army, complete with "Citymaster" armored vehicles and other stuff. They are probably there for a specific purpose and aren't going to harass an Ork walking by minding his own business (though they might wind up say "clensing" the entire block of Sinless squatters, which would include him on merits of being there). This kind of thing is likely to happen because Lone Star (or whoever holds the city contract) is under pressure to do something about the Go-Gangs and such raiding out of such areas or whatever. It's not "personal" or really "racist" even if some of the cops themselves might be racists. "It's an Election year! Time to raze a few blocks and kill some Gangers to prove we're doing something!"

At least that's my perspective. I know not everyone will agree, and I suppose my view of things is debatable within the weight of material.

At any rate, if you want to balance humans and metahumans you might want to do something like give Humans +1 or +2 to a SINGLE attribute of the player's choice. This means that while the character doesn't have as many attribute points as a "base" to build from he gets to assign it based on what he wants to do.

-

As far as Strength goes, I have never had any real issues with melee based fighters in Shadowrun. There are all kinds of ways to build a good one, and being able to thump heads well is just as effective as gunplay in many situations. Especially if you have a very mobile character that can close distance/jump a really long way.

A Wire-Fu flipping/twisting leap into the middle of a bunch of guys with guns followed by tearing them apart with a sword/fists/axe/whatever fully fits within the genere (especially for Adepts, but it can be done with Cyborgs and Bioborgs too).

What's more if you can pull it off it saves you money (and time) replacing ammo and such.

Also a lot of "status" related fights, for places in gangs, to earn respects, and such are handled with melee (at least when I GM). If your trying to take over a gang or whatever by defeating the guy who runs it in melee (or intimidate them by duelling a lieutentant after wagging your lip), such a duel is usually not going to be conducted with SMGs or Assault Cannons.

Plus you can also make money with melee fighting in bloodsport arenas if you want to risk it. Need a little extra nuyen for that oh-so-special item after your last run that didn't quite give you enough? Step into the pit. Being "realistic" if you've got melee as a tertiary skill your life is in danger (2-4 dice) on the other hand if your using it as your main combat skill and have augementations (say 5-8 dice and all kinds of cyberware) the risks are going to be relatively minimal because people who can challenge someone like a Shadowrunner that is *that* good at his thing aren't just going to show up randomly at "Bozo's Blood Bowl" (hidden secretly under the kiddie arcade at the mall, and open after hours!).


>>>----Therumancer--->

Combat Axes are low key for one simple reason: Collateral damage. You open up with your belt-fed AP hoody-ha and start tearing up the countryside and you draw about 10 times the heat 10 times as fast as some Orc ganger pulling a nutter in the barrens by putting the axe to some random. I don't care if it's in the deepest, darkest barrens with more ghouls and other nasties per square mile than the pits of Hades. You open up with that mil-spec shit and suddenly you're under a very large microscope with a very big eye glaring down at you.
First off, mil-spec isn't very common. I don't care what the book says about availability, there are a limited number of suppliers and they will sell you out if it comes right down to it. It's amazing what a million nuyen and the cold, hard promise of your whole family getting whacked by corp ninjas if you don't cooperate will get you these days.
Second, you start opening up on corp-sec or the fuzz with AP and they become...upset. You see, only the big boys are supposed to have the big toys so they'll do everything they can to squish you like the bug your character really is. Can't have some half-cocked punks upsetting the status quo, no?
And finally, if AP ammo is all it ever takes to wipe out spirits and the like, why is the 6th world so damn powerful? Hell, U.S. troops today use AP ammo standard so what's the biggie? It's up to the GM to decide how that works and ours decided that the AP buy-out wasn't going to fly in his game. And you know what? I like the idea that every issue can't be handled by a machinegun on full auto.

Besides, a Combat Axe is cool while machineguns are just another CP game cliche...
Mark(psycho)Phipps( HAHAHA! )

No, by the Availability rules, mil-spec is fairly common. I don't care if you don't care about what the book says. The book is RAW, it is canon.

The status quo uses some half cocked punks to upset the status quo, that's what shadowrunners are for - to upset the status quo. A million nuyen and corp ninjas have better things to do than to buy cooperation for some runner who uses full auto AP when it is precisely the corps themselves that are paying the runners for their services to use said full auto AP.

The AP ammo todays is simply normal for 2070. AP in 2070 is real AP. The 6th world is so damn powerful because the 6th world is smart. The dumb parts of the Awakened world aren't powerful.

Out of 3 current games I run, I have the following make-up of players:

3 Dwarfs
3 Elves
1 Ork
6 Humans

I'm personally surprised that I don't see more Orks, they are crazy good.

-Frank

I have to agree with hyzmarca here. As runners, you're probably in a better position to deal with the shadier cops. You're shady, they're shady, and a lot of em don't mind too much if you line their pockets a bit to let you off. They're getting paid by you, paid by the company, they don't lose.

If youre playing more straight SINner types, then you might well want the cleaner ones. As under the radar runners, though, the clean goody-goody cops are definately the ones you want to watch out for. One ones that might get 'forgotten' by the others lest they be whistle-blowers.

Fortunately, they seem to be a rarer bunch. I don't think that the majority are FULLY corrupt(ie, ones that actually full on work with the runners), but im willing to bet(and we also have used) several ones that will at the very least accept a little pocket lining to look the other way, runner goes their way, cops go theirs. After all, several runners in our games in the past have had beat cop contacts that lend some info.

As for human-non human, lets see in some of the games weve had...

First campaign(2e, many moons ago) was a HUGE group, of which we had...2 elves, 1 ork, and the rest human. (The ork came later as a replacement character for a human.)
A few others...had humans. I had run a troll in that, and he was the odd man out in that group. No one cared, though. Another had all humans.

I GM'd a few that consisted of...2 humans, elf and troll
3 humans, dwarf
1 human, 2 orks

Last one i played in had me(human), an ork, and elf. Little bit of a mixed bunch there. This was 4e.

I was set to GM a game with 2 humans and a dwarf, but we never got the chance to start, so it was put on hold.

So even with all of these big 'bonuses', humans are still vastly popular characters. From a pure roleplaying standpoint, we're familiar with them. Granted, in the Shadowrun world, the metas don't have the big difference like fantasy worlds(there are elves that work at bars, and dwarves at offices and stores, and trolls and orks at shops, just like us), but humans are the familiar ground. Im definately not against metas at all; i like em alot and play them, but many times if i get a character concept, 'human' is simply the first thing that pops into my mind. Other times, 'elf' or 'troll' enters. All depends on mood.

...@ronin3338: this is how I develop my characters before I even consider crunching BP numbers.

As most of my fellow players and GMs know, I almost exclusively play humans, Yeah part of it is the BP cost that I feel can be better spent elsewhere. The only Meta I have actively played so far in SR4 is my Dwarf Doctor Markova (originally a character from the earlier editions that I rebuilt).

In a similar low power campaign I had two Human characters (both adepts with only a MA of 4), Hurricane Hannah and a street Kid con named Da Brat.

Hannah, while not quite as nasty as the version I rebuilt (after that campaign came to an abrupt and unfortunate end), could still knock the lights out of nearly everyone she met, and take a pounding herself. She was a former boxer from Cajun Country, so yeah her social skills were not the best (fitting with the concept) and the only tech she knew was fixing up vehicles. She also had a hell on an arm & could throw things pretty dang well (this was before Street magic came out so she didn't have Power throw or Missile Mastery) Her "weapons de jour" Pepper Punch and Flash Bang grenades.

Da Brat was the slick little street kid who had a lot of street smarts and a devilishly charming personality. She was a surprisingly good fighter for her size ad knew how to use a gun. However, her best asset, was her silver tongue with which she managed to pull off some pretty amazing feats of negotiating and fast talking (her specialty).

Both these characters were very effective and managed to survive some harrowing exploits during the all too short time this campaign ran.

So yes, if thought is put into a character, a Human can work just as well as a meta in a low power campaign. Of course, the threats faced were on par with if just slightly above the character power level, primarily dealt with gangers, "rent a cop" sec guards and low rung OC soldiers.

@Psychophipps: Love the named weapon. Brings to mind the pic of the orc in M & M throwing a punch with his cyberhand named "Sweet Pickles".

I would question ronin3338's seeming assertion that creating a character from a story or background saves time. I have seen so many posts on this board asking for help, because a player came up with a cool concept that didn't translate well, or had a background that couldn't quite fit within SR4 char-gen.

Me, I come up with a general concept, and a broad personality to go with it, then rough out some stats. That's when I find out whether the character idea works or not. Then I fill in the details of the background, making minor alterations to the character as the backstory gets more detailed.

Starting from a background is still workable, if you have an idea of how the system works and pick an idea that fits within it. But min-maxing is hardly incompatible with that - in fact, most concepts, unless they are Joe Average, need some min-maxing to be effective in their roles. You can write your guy's background like he's Jet Li, but unless his stats match that description, you will run into that brick wall problem that toturi mentions.

Yes I agree attempting to convert SR3 Ed characters is a very painful process, and at least for the end results no where near the SR 3 ed character.

The best I have been able to do is some of the concept of the SR 3 ed.

Best all in all is start fresh.