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hyzmarca
Recently, I posted an absurdly powerful female Iranian police officer archetype and the issue of BP cost for NPCs was raised. The idea of measuring "Prime runner" NPCs by BP cost is a huge pet peeve for me because BP cost cannot be used to measure the effectiveness of NPCs as opposition to the PCs.


As everyone should know, it is possible to spend an absurd number of BPs on totally worthless characters. A person can potentially create a character that is so statistically contradictory as to be good at nothing, either by design or due to a horrific lapse in judgment. This shouldn't be a controversial statement.

To understand how to create appropriate opposition for PCs, you should understand what types of PCs there are, of course. There are a great many dichotomies that people will set up. Mage vs. mundane and generalist vs. specialist are both popular, but the most important dichotomy is soloist vs. teamist.

"What do I mean by soloist and teamist?", you may ask. I mean just what it sounds like. Fundamentally, there are two types of characters. Those that are optimized function on their own and those that are optimized to function within a team. This difference is very important . A soloist is not necessarily a generalist and a teamist is not unnecessarily a specialist.

A soloist can be highly specialized or relatively generalized. Except in low-level games, he will not be a perfect generalist. If he is highly specialized, he will be specialized in a way that does not leave any glaring easily-exploitable and undependable weaknesses. Weakneses that he does have will be covered by equipment, contacts, or tactics. It is the lack of a glaring obvious weakness that is key to soloist builds.

A teamist may be highly specialized or highly generalized, but usually will have an obvious weakness. The key to the teamist build is that the teamist character assumes that he will be a member of a team and that the team will compensate for the character's weaknesses.

There are three important things to remember.

A soloist cannot defeat a team of his power level

A teamist alone cannot defeat a soloist of his power level

Teamists fighting teamists is like Mega Man 2. There are rock/paper/scisors style weaknesses, but they match up in unpredictable ways.

It two competent characters try to kill one competent character of the same power level, the two will win. If one character with a glaring weakness fights a character with no weaknesses, that glaring weakness will be effectively exploited.



Onto the opposition.

Hyzmarca's Zeroth Law of Opposition Design
BPs do not determine power level. Dice Pools determine power level.

Hyzmarca's First Law of Opposition Design
The distinction between mooks, "prime runners", critters, and spirit is artificial and ultimately meaningless.

If they have stats, then they're NPCs just like any other. It doesn't matter what those stats are. It doesn't matter if they were each stated separately or if they have one-size fits all stats. It doesn't even matter if they share an Edge pool. They're all practically the same.

Hyzmarca's Second Law of Opposition Design
Opposition NPCs are either soloists or teamists.

Mooks are nearly always teamists, as we know. They're made in mass and have group edge. This is important to remember because, in spite of their lower stats, they are damned powerful if played as a team.

When "prime runners" are teamists, they're absurdly powerful.


Hyzmarca's Third Law of Opposition Design
Teams get screwed by Teams of Teams
It is a trueism that a GM can increase the effectiveness of any team simply by adding more members, making individual NPC power levels irreverent. This is especially true of mooks, which can be duplicated with ease.

This can be a way to add challenge to a fight. It can also be a way to screw the PCs up their butts. They're comes a point when a single team becomes practically equivalent to a single character and a huge group of opposition becomes a team of teams.


Hyzmarca's Negative First Law of Opposition Design
A lone antagonist must be uniformly powerful

This is the entire point of the rant.

A single lone antagonist is worthless against a team unless that antagonists is uniformly powerful. If the antagonist has weaknesses, then it will fall quickly before the team members that it can't fight.

A single soloist antagonist will be fighting the team as a whole, not a single character at a time, and must be able to stand against the team as a whole and provide a challenge to the team as a whole. Thus, the lone antagonist must be a team unto herself and must have the stats to reflect this fact.

For this reason, spirits make the best solo antagonists. They have a force and their stats are nearly uniform based on this force. There is little practical difference between a solo Force 12 spirit antagonist and a solo Prime Runner antagonist with 12 in everything.
Buster
I surprised anyone still thinks that NPCs need to be built according to BP or karma. I'm curious, who was insisting on this?

This reminds me of the old D&D adventures where the king was always a 20th level Fighter even if he was 70 years old and never fought in a battle in his life. That was the only way the writers could justify why someone could have an entire kingdom of followers and retainers because the rules say so.

Character design rules only apply to players. NPCs never have BP or karma.
bibliophile20
QUOTE (Buster)
Character design rules only apply to players. NPCs never have BP or karma.

Unless the NPCs are PCs that you *wish* you could play, except that you're the GM because you're the only one that knows the setting well enough and you want them to grow along with the PCs.
DireRadiant
Why restrict this to NPCs?
toturi
Read what the Prime Runner creation rules are meant to do.

A Superior prime runner can outmatch any PC on a one to one basis, while the PCs working together as a team should be able to overcome him. Superhuman prime runners are so powerful that they can take on the entire PC group single-handedly and win. Use those BPs to create a NPC that matches the power level as stated in the book. How difficult is it to follow the rules? They are already there. BPs determine dice pools which determine power level.

The rules are already in there. Just follow them. RAW states that special characters called prime runners have BP and karma.
Buster
QUOTE (bibliophile20)
QUOTE (Buster @ Oct 13 2007, 11:52 PM)
Character design rules only apply to players.  NPCs never have BP or karma.

Unless the NPCs are PCs that you *wish* you could play, except that you're the GM because you're the only one that knows the setting well enough and you want them to grow along with the PCs.

But what GM has time to do the accounting for all those NPCs? I barely have enough time to build one PC, let alone dozens of NPCs. But if your players are more impressed with your bookkeeping skills than your plot design skills, then kudos.
Fortune
QUOTE (toturi)
Use those BPs to create a NPC that matches the power level as stated in the book.

I think the point is that you don't need to use any BP. They are superfluous in this case, as you can just stat out the NPC(s) as you need without reference to Karma or BPs.
hyzmarca
Superhuman Prime Runner 900 BP
Elf 30BP

Attributes 190 BP

Agility 2
Strength 1
Reaction 1
Body 2
Logic 6 (9)
Intuition 7
Charisma 3
Willpower 3

Special Attributes 10 BP
Magic 1
Essence 5.6
Edge 1

Active Skills 130 BP
Jumping 1
Climbing 1
Forgery 5
Pilot Watercraft 6 (Submarine +2)
Industrial Mechanic 6
Nautical Mechanic 6
Pilot Exotic Vehicle: Hot Air Balloon 7


Qualities 50 BP
Magician
Human Looking
Exceptional Attribute:Intuition
Aptitude: Pilot Exotic Vehicle: Hot air Balloon

'Ware 6BP
Cerebral Booster 2


Equipment 484 BP
1 GMC Banshee
Knowsoft 5 (German Opera)
13 Month mid Lifestyle

According to the book, this guy is supposed to be able to fight the entire team all at once and win.

Yes, that is certainly a horrific threat to the team there.
Tarantula
You can't have more than one aptitude, or more than one exceptional attribute.
hyzmarca
QUOTE (Tarantula @ Oct 14 2007, 12:39 AM)
You can't have more than one aptitude, or more than one exceptional attribute.

Superhuman Prime Runners are not limited by chargen restrictions.

Edit: My mistake. That is an absolute limit.
Glyph
Hmm. I agree with most of your rant - Build Points, by themselves, are a poor way to judge NPC power levels. Plus, it seems silly to go through the entire character creation process for an NPC. Simply assign logical numbers to whatever role the NPC plays, and be done with it.

I disagree with one part of your Negative First Law of Opposition Design, though. A single soloist antagonist might not be fighting the team as a whole. The solo antagonist might prefer a divide and conquer approach, or might be after only one member of the team. Your first law would apply to "end-of-level boss" type NPCs, but not other types such as assassins. The team doesn't typically hang out together 24-7 between runs, and outside of shadowrunning, they don't always have that priceless advantage of being the ones initiating the action.
FriendoftheDork
QUOTE (Glyph)
Hmm. I agree with most of your rant - Build Points, by themselves, are a poor way to judge NPC power levels. Plus, it seems silly to go through the entire character creation process for an NPC. Simply assign logical numbers to whatever role the NPC plays, and be done with it.

I disagree with one part of your Negative First Law of Opposition Design, though. A single soloist antagonist might not be fighting the team as a whole. The solo antagonist might prefer a divide and conquer approach, or might be after only one member of the team. Your first law would apply to "end-of-level boss" type NPCs, but not other types such as assassins. The team doesn't typically hang out together 24-7 between runs, and outside of shadowrunning, they don't always have that priceless advantage of being the ones initiating the action.

I agree with you Glyph. An NPC doesen't really have to be that powerful to be a challenge (or even "win") if targeting a lone runner outside of a run.

For instance, the mage in my group can manabolt most people to death, summon powerful spirits etc., but when he was ambushed by a bartender with 8 dice in automatics firing an Uzi 3 with SS, he went down in a spiffy!

I think end of level type NPCs should be avoided, unless they are nonhuman (spirits, cyberzombies, etc.) as they don't really make sense.

When fighting erpupts between two very powerful character, the one who wins initative is usually the one who wins the fight, and I've yet to have a fight lasting longer than 2 rounds.
Aaron
I've been toying around with the concept of a Battle Value or some such, a la BattleTech, a game that also has two systems of purchase in which both systems are not precisely reflective of combat effectiveness.
Rotbart van Dainig
QUOTE (hyzmarca)
effectivness cannot be measured by BP cost

Newsflash.

BP limit effectiveness, though.
Cweord
As a I think a quip I made is what caused this Rant I feel I aught to chime in.

For Powerful NPCs (and the original Iranian Police Officer was Powerful) I tend to used BPs as much as anything to keep a check on what I'm doing, I don't limit the BPs and tend not to include gear and lifestyle.

What it does is give me a point of reference, not for the effectiveness of the NPC against the PCs but as a marker for me.

Your 900pt with the GMC banshee would be nasty in a submarine (pity he brought a banshee) - Nothing will counter bad decisions and make things comparable but if you take 2 sensibly created Prime Runners in a similar field and compare if give you something to work off.

My quip about the police officer was meant to be a joke saying 'how powerful', but I guess that didn't get through.
Tarantula
Even just going off the GMC banshee's dogbrain, a banshee is a credible threat to most runner teams. Up to 6 weapon mounts, and they have to do over 18P modified to even dent it.
hyzmarca
QUOTE (Cweord @ Oct 14 2007, 10:30 AM)
As a I think a quip I made is what caused this Rant I feel I aught to chime in.

For Powerful NPCs (and the original Iranian Police Officer was Powerful) I tend to used BPs as much as anything to keep a check on what I'm doing, I don't limit the BPs and tend not to include gear and lifestyle.

What it does is give me a point of reference, not for the effectiveness of the NPC against the PCs but as a marker for me.

Your 900pt with the GMC banshee would be nasty in a submarine (pity he brought a banshee) - Nothing will counter bad decisions and make things comparable but if you take 2 sensibly created Prime Runners in a similar field and compare if give you something to work off.

My quip about the police officer was meant to be a joke saying 'how powerful', but I guess that didn't get through.

The thread was actually inspired by toturi's response to my response to the quip. It made me look at the Prime Runner section and go "That's just stupid". Because it is. Building NPCs as if they were PCs is stupid and wasteful.

There is nothing wrong with keeping track of BP. It just doesn't provide a meaningful measure of power level. A character who is a dedicated ubber-mechanic is useless in combat, but can cost a very large number of BPs.


QUOTE (Tarantula)
Even just going off the GMC banshee's dogbrain, a banshee is a credible threat to most runner teams. Up to 6 weapon mounts, and they have to do over 18P modified to even dent it.


Except that this Banshee doesn't have any weapons, he just uses it to get around. The only way for it to hurt the runners is for it to crash into them.

The entire point of the build was to spend an absurd amount of BP while being completely worthless in combat. He could use the Banshee to run, but that's it.

Edit: About the Negative First Law. The point is that a lone antagonist should be able to provide a challenge to each of the PCs, and therefore should be equal against all archetypes. This is what I mean when I say that they should be uniformly powerful.

A character who intends to divide and conquer should be weaker than a true "end boss" (simply so that the character cannot overwhelm the divided characters effortlessly) but it should be able to provide the same level of challenge to all members of the team.

Hyzmarca's Fourth Law of Opposition Design
Conjurers and Drone Riggers are teams and so are Agent-Commanders

Really, a conjurer is a team unto himself. So is a drone rigger. Guys who have large numbers of agents are also technically teams.
When planning opposition, remember this. There is no such thing as a lone conjurer or a lone rigger.
Tarantula
Actually, he still can take on the entire team. He just has to sit in his banshee and laugh at them. Its HIGHLY unlikely anyone could do damage to his T-Bird, much less get him out of it.
hyzmarca
Called shot to bypass armor. Spend Edge to make a longshot.
hobgoblin
a banshee doing a full speed ram (or anything at 201 or more) is doing 60 damage to anything it his!

the silly thing is that the banshee will have to resist 30 damage, even if all it hit was a person on the street...

that is unless im reading the ramming rules backwards...
Tarantula
QUOTE (hyzmarca @ Oct 14 2007, 10:27 AM)
Called shot to bypass armor. Spend Edge to make a longshot.

And the banshee automatically can buy off 5 boxes of damage. (20 body/ 4 = 5) Not a whole lot of good you can do like that.
hyzmarca
QUOTE (Tarantula)
QUOTE (hyzmarca @ Oct 14 2007, 10:27 AM)
Called shot to bypass armor. Spend Edge to make a longshot.

And the banshee automatically can buy off 5 boxes of damage. (20 body/ 4 = 5) Not a whole lot of good you can do like that.

Burst fire Mossberg Shotgun, minimum 9P+2P+1P (for the net hit). With -5P from resistance, that's 7P Per shot. 3 Shots take it down. That's three points of Edge, but it can be done by a team of two people easily.
hobgoblin
QUOTE (hyzmarca)
QUOTE (Tarantula @ Oct 14 2007, 11:33 AM)
QUOTE (hyzmarca @ Oct 14 2007, 10:27 AM)
Called shot to bypass armor. Spend Edge to make a longshot.

And the banshee automatically can buy off 5 boxes of damage. (20 body/ 4 = 5) Not a whole lot of good you can do like that.

Burst fire Mossberg Shotgun, minimum 9P+2P+1P (for the net hit). With -5P from resistance, that's 7P Per shot. 3 Shots take it down. That's three points of Edge, but it can be done by a team of two people easily.

better pray it stays still for that long...
Tarantula
Not to mention the ranges you're talking about, its a T-bird, I really doubt its inside 150m range shotguns can shoot.
Cain
QUOTE (hobgoblin @ Oct 14 2007, 09:50 AM)
QUOTE (hyzmarca @ Oct 14 2007, 05:48 PM)
QUOTE (Tarantula @ Oct 14 2007, 11:33 AM)
QUOTE (hyzmarca @ Oct 14 2007, 10:27 AM)
Called shot to bypass armor. Spend Edge to make a longshot.

And the banshee automatically can buy off 5 boxes of damage. (20 body/ 4 = 5) Not a whole lot of good you can do like that.

Burst fire Mossberg Shotgun, minimum 9P+2P+1P (for the net hit). With -5P from resistance, that's 7P Per shot. 3 Shots take it down. That's three points of Edge, but it can be done by a team of two people easily.

better pray it stays still for that long...

You don't even need to do all that. Just target the driver, which *isn't* a called shot, then call a shot to bypass armor. The driver is toast, the vehicle crashes, and everyone inside is paste. And the Banshees' movement doesn't matter, since you're already at a longshot test.

QUOTE
a banshee doing a full speed ram (or anything at 201 or more) is doing 60 damage to anything it his!

the silly thing is that the banshee will have to resist 30 damage, even if all it hit was a person on the street...

that is unless im reading the ramming rules backwards...

Nope, you've got it right. And as mentioned above, everyone inside is a smear, driver included.
Tarantula
Except Cain, you can't call a shot to bypass the vehicle armor if you're shooting at the driver, as shots against passengers cannot affect the vehicle. Thusly, you can bypass the drivers armor of 0, and the vehicular armor still applies.
hobgoblin
QUOTE (Cain)
QUOTE (hobgoblin @ Oct 14 2007, 09:50 AM)

a banshee doing a full speed ram (or anything at 201 or more) is doing 60 damage to anything it his!

the silly thing is that the banshee will have to resist 30 damage, even if all it hit was a person on the street...

that is unless im reading the ramming rules backwards...

Nope, you've got it right. And as mentioned above, everyone inside is a smear, driver included.

and thats silly in more ways then one. first of the "target" should be a fine red mist around the vehicle. and for the passengers to be damaged at all, the vehicle must come to a near/total stop. and then only if the passengers are not fully strapped in.

now, if one where to simply declare that on a ram, the body of the other side is whats used in the calculations, things change quite fast.

then the target is still misty, but the vehicle and its passengers should not notice much (even when running into a full borg or bulked up troll).
mfb
QUOTE (Tarantula)
Actually, he still can take on the entire team. He just has to sit in his banshee and laugh at them. Its HIGHLY unlikely anyone could do damage to his T-Bird, much less get him out of it.

i don't see how sitting in a t-bird is going to accomplish anything. if the banshee guy has to stop the runners from doing something, he can be easily defeated by the runners simply walking into a building. if the runners have to stop the banshee guy from doing something, all they have to do is wait until he gets out of the banshee to do it. unless the task is something that the banshee guy can accomplish without ever leaving his banshee--and i can't think of many, given his skillset--he's never going to be able to take on a team of runners and win. called shots and vehicle armor and whatnot don't even enter into the equation.
James McMurray
QUOTE (hyzmarca)
<snip 900BP gimp>

According to the book, this guy is supposed to be able to fight the entire team all at once and win.

The rules assume that the GM is not a dumbass.

Are you honestly surprised that when you set aside common sense in an attempt to break rules that require common sense, you manage to break them?
mfb
common sense does not dictate that someone with 900bp is necessarily a badass. he could be an idiot savant with 800bp worth of knowledge skills.
bibliophile20
QUOTE (mfb)
he could be an idiot savant with 800bp worth of knowledge skills.

That would actually be an awesome character concept, someone with the learning stimulus nanoware that just acts as a human encyclopedia--it would take them a grand total of 3 karma to raise a single knowledge skill up to 4 with rating 3 LS nanoware.

Hell, add in a few other tricks and you've got a budding Sherlock Holmes.
Mercer
I think if making npcs with BPs made "better" npcs (not in the power sense, but how they fill their role in the game), then it'd justify spending the time. But if the difference between four 400 BP npcs and four eyeballed npcs is that the first four takes 2 hours to make and the second four took 15 minutes, then the eyeballed group wins-- mainly because GMs don't have unlimited prep time.
mfb
QUOTE (bibliofile20)
That would actually be an awesome character concept, someone with the learning stimulus nanoware that just acts as a human encyclopedia--it would take them a grand total of 3 karma to raise a single knowledge skill up to 4 with rating 3 LS nanoware.

Hell, add in a few other tricks and you've got a budding Sherlock Holmes.

sure, but it's hardly a challenge to most runner teams. unless they're going on Jeopardy.
toturi
QUOTE (hyzmarca)
The thread was actually inspired by toturi's response to my response to the quip. It made me look at the Prime Runner section and go "That's just stupid". Because it is. Building NPCs as if they were PCs is stupid and wasteful.

There is nothing wrong with keeping track of BP. It just doesn't provide a meaningful measure of power level. A character who is a dedicated ubber-mechanic is useless in combat, but can cost a very large number of BPs.

A dedicated uber-mechanic with more BPs should be better than a dedicated uber-mechanic with less BPs, right?

If you wanted 5-min NPCs, go to the front of the chapter and use them Grunts. Prime Runners are the NPCs that you'd want to stick around, the guys with a story and some RP motivation.
Mercer
Not to be obtuse (any more than I can help it), but why would story and RP motivation be helped or hindered by BP's?
toturi
QUOTE (Mercer)
Not to be obtuse (any more than I can help it), but why would story and RP motivation be helped or hindered by BP's?

You want to build a NPC that is measured relative to a PC. Then that NPC has to have those same skills that would make a PC "real". The NPC has to "exist" in ways that are more than just the cutboard cutouts that the Grunts are. If you are creating paper targets, forget about using the Prime Runner rules and just go Grunt.
mfb
QUOTE (toturi)
A dedicated uber-mechanic with more BPs should be better than a dedicated uber-mechanic with less BPs, right?

certainly, but an uber-mechanic is not really much of a threat to most PCs. the problem with judging lesser/equal/superior threats (or whatever the terminology is, can't recall offhand) based solely on BPs is that you can spend lots and lots of BPs on stuff that is non-threatening.
Mercer
QUOTE (toturi)
QUOTE (Mercer @ Oct 15 2007, 09:57 AM)
Not to be obtuse (any more than I can help it), but why would story and RP motivation be helped or hindered by BP's?

You want to build a NPC that is measured relative to a PC. Then that NPC has to have those same skills that would make a PC "real". The NPC has to "exist" in ways that are more than just the cutboard cutouts that the Grunts are. If you are creating paper targets, forget about using the Prime Runner rules and just go Grunt.

Skipping for a moment that none of that has to do with story or RP motivation, and sticking solely to game balance (which seems to be at the core of the issue), it seems like at best, BP's are a guideline of character power, rather than an absolute. I mean, out of a general sense of fairness, all the pc's should start off on equal footing, so everybody gets 400 (or 200, or 1000, or 10) BP's. And it's understandable that the characters the pc's will be encountering and opposing are built similarly, although its probably a little unrealistic to assume a GM is going to have as much time to devote to an NPC as a player will have to devote to his PC. (Granted, no one here is claiming that, but I'm putting it out there as a general rule.)

If BP's were a more accurate measure of character power (say, analogous to D&D's levels, and forgetting for a moment that even with D&D's rigid system level is not always the best measure to compare characters, if 22 years of fighter and wizard power debates are any indication), then I'd be more convinced of the need to stick to it, even if that means more work for the GM. Work isn't a bad thing. But if the work you're doing for the game isn't adding anything to it, then its just work for the sake of work. Its fine to enjoy the process, but thats not the same thing as being productive.

Personally, I'd rather 15 minutes be spent banging out the mechanics of the npc and the rest of the time on the story and RP motivation since ultimately, that's what's going to make the game more enjoyable for the players and the GM.

toturi
QUOTE (Mercer)
Skipping for a moment that none of that has to do with story or RP motivation, and sticking solely to game balance (which seems to be at the core of the issue), it seems like at best, BP's are a guideline of character power, rather than an absolute. I mean, out of a general sense of fairness, all the pc's should start off on equal footing, so everybody gets 400 (or 200, or 1000, or 10) BP's. And it's understandable that the characters the pc's will be encountering and opposing are built similarly, although its probably a little unrealistic to assume a GM is going to have as much time to devote to an NPC as a player will have to devote to his PC. (Granted, no one here is claiming that, but I'm putting it out there as a general rule.)

If BP's were a more accurate measure of character power (say, analogous to D&D's levels, and forgetting for a moment that even with D&D's rigid system level is not always the best measure to compare characters, if 22 years of fighter and wizard power debates are any indication), then I'd be more convinced of the need to stick to it, even if that means more work for the GM. Work isn't a bad thing. But if the work you're doing for the game isn't adding anything to it, then its just work for the sake of work. Its fine to enjoy the process, but thats not the same thing as being productive.

Personally, I'd rather 15 minutes be spent banging out the mechanics of the npc and the rest of the time on the story and RP motivation since ultimately, that's what's going to make the game more enjoyable for the players and the GM.

Perhaps we have a different approach to RP and story. The build determines the story and the RP motivation to me. If he has a very high skill, he must have invested time and effort developing that skill. Hence he should have some motivation with respect to that skill. So BPs and its usage determines the RP and story for me. The story and RP writes itself once I finished the build.
Wounded Ronin
QUOTE (mfb)
QUOTE (bibliofile20)
That would actually be an awesome character concept, someone with the learning stimulus nanoware that just acts as a human encyclopedia--it would take them a grand total of 3 karma to raise a single knowledge skill up to 4 with rating 3 LS nanoware.

Hell, add in a few other tricks and you've got a budding Sherlock Holmes.

sure, but it's hardly a challenge to most runner teams. unless they're going on Jeopardy.

BEST RUN IDEA EVER.
Cain
QUOTE (Tarantula)
Except Cain, you can't call a shot to bypass the vehicle armor if you're shooting at the driver, as shots against passengers cannot affect the vehicle. Thusly, you can bypass the drivers armor of 0, and the vehicular armor still applies.

Actually, after looking at it, there's no such rule. Second, you're still not affecting the vehicle when you bypass its armor.

QUOTE
I think if making npcs with BPs made "better" npcs (not in the power sense, but how they fill their role in the game), then it'd justify spending the time. But if the difference between four 400 BP npcs and four eyeballed npcs is that the first four takes 2 hours to make and the second four took 15 minutes, then the eyeballed group wins-- mainly because GMs don't have unlimited prep time

As a corollary to that, the eyeballed NPC's may actually come out a few BP's shy of the hard-built prime runners. However, they also might come out ahead in dice pool size, and therefore effectiveness.
Mercer
QUOTE (toturi)
Perhaps we have a different approach to RP and story. The build determines the story and the RP motivation to me. If he has a very high skill, he must have invested time and effort developing that skill. Hence he should have some motivation with respect to that skill. So BPs and its usage determines the RP and story for me. The story and RP writes itself once I finished the build.

To me, the needs and logic of the story determine the mechanics. I'll come up with a character's role in the story before I start looking at stats.

For BP's to be really useful in this regard, they'd need either to determine the challenge the NPC represents or at least be a leading indicator of it, and that's not always the case. There are other factors (the rule-fu of the person making the character, situational modifiers in the game, the tactical acumen of the player or GM) that are much better indicators of a character's effectiveness than the number of BP's. And all of that is ignoring that the size of the Dice Pools are an exact measure of a character's mechanical effectiveness.

Also, PC's and NPC's spend their BP's differently, because they do different things in the game. I think its a little disingenuous to say that PC and NPC are equal at 400 BP, because their in play function is very different. (For one thing, the players are all controlling one PC each, where the GM has to split his attention between all his NPC's, the actions of the PC's, and adjucating the rules.)

And really, how important is the amount of BP's used for a character? Its not like D&D, where XP is directly related to the CR of the monster you face. You get extra Karma for challenge (at GM discretion), but the SR combat system being a fast, fluid and brutal as it is, a mook can get the drop on you and its a tougher fight than the Prime Runner you got the drop on.

Granted, I'm lazy, but when it comes to prepping a game I'm not going to do any more work than I have to (or that I have time for), and the prep that I do I hope will be the stuff that has the most impact in play. Mechanics have a big influence on play. The methods uses to generate those mechanics, in my opinion, not so much. As long as the NPC's fit into the story in a way that fits with the internal logic of the game world (no Prime Runner Mall Security Guards), the methods used to generate the NPC's aren't going to come up.
Tarantula
QUOTE (Cain)
QUOTE (Tarantula @ Oct 14 2007, 12:29 PM)
Except Cain, you can't call a shot to bypass the vehicle armor if you're shooting at the driver, as shots against passengers cannot affect the vehicle.  Thusly, you can bypass the drivers armor of 0, and the vehicular armor still applies.

Actually, after looking at it, there's no such rule. Second, you're still not affecting the vehicle when you bypass its armor.

Yeah, there is. You declare an attack on the passenger. You call a shot to bypass his armor (0). You take your shot. He rolls damage resistance. He gets body + armor. Oh, but he is in a vehicle, that means he gets the vehicles armor too. It gets added in. End result, he gets body + vehicle armor only.
James McMurray
Even if you kill the pilot you're not going to crash the Banshee. It has a bare minimum of Pilot 2 to fly itself, and that's assuming that the peson who dumped 2.35 million into it didn't also splurge 15,000 more for pilot 6.

Gotta love how Cain can derail even a thread about NPCs and BPs with his Longshot Called Shot agenda. smile.gif

--

On topic: A character with more BPs spent on his specialty is more of a threat in his area of expertise. True, the rules don't specify, and an anal retentive reading can make you think that the authors feel the aforementioned 900BP gimp is a threat in combat, but it requires a GM to go out of his way to be stupid to make that happen.

Me, I don't play with people that dumb. YMMV.
mfb
again, it's not stupid to make a 900bp gimp unless you're intending to use him to challenge a group of runners. which is the whole point of the thread--should a character count as a superhuman prime runner simply because he's got the requisite amount of BPs, even if they're all spent on learning dead languages? or should there be some other qualifying criteria?

as far as bypassing armor with a called shot goes, all the rules say is that you can make a called shot to avoid the target's armor. it doesn't specify that the armor must be worn by the target. you could argue that the vehicle's armor isn't the target's armor, since the vehicle isn't the target--but that armor is applying to the target, so it's perfectly logical to me to say that it counts as part of the target's armor.
Tarantula
By that logic, then characters take reaction penalties for being in a vehicle, since the vehicle armor counts as part of the targets armor. And almost all vehicle armor would encumber a character.
Fortune
QUOTE (Tarantula)
By that logic, then characters take reaction penalties for being in a vehicle, since the vehicle armor counts as part of the targets armor. And almost all vehicle armor would encumber a character.

Technically, they do.

QUOTE (SR4 pg. 162)
If an attack is made against passengers, make a normal Attack Test, but the passengers are always considered to be under cover (partial cover at the least, though full cover/blind fire may apply as the situation dictates). Passengers attempting to defend an attack inside a vehicle suffer a –2 dodge dice pool modifier,
since they are somewhat limited in movement.
Additionally, the passengers gain protection from the vehicle’s chassis, adding the Armor of the vehicle to any personal armor the characters are wearing.


It says so right before it states that the vehicle's Armor is added to any personal Armor the character is wearing.
Tarantula
I meant via the encumbrance rules. That penalty is because they are in a small cramped space. Not because they are bogged down by a lot of armor. By MFBs take, the mechanic couldn't even move around inside his t-bird since his armor would be 18, well above his low body score. Effectively making his agi and rea 0. Making it impossible for him to move.
darthmord
Heh, I always thought that you made NPCs for whatever purpose was calling for 1+ NPCs. If you need grunts / mooks, then you made a bunch of throwaway mobs. If you needed a Prime Runner, then you made a Prime Runner of the desired power level regardless of BP considerations.

If the encounter requires a guy who can take on any two of the group's runners at the same time with a 50/50 chance of beating them, then you make him accordingly. BPs aren't even a consideration.

Then again, I learned that lesson from AD&D 2nd edition (gasp, I named the game that shall not be named). You made encounters for what you need, not tailored to the same rules PCs follow. Your goal should be to tell an engaging story and that includes "breaking the rules" where appropriate for great storytelling.

So I fail to see why BPs are even a topic for discussion for an NPC of any flavor. You determine what level of power you need and make it. It's not that hard or complicated.
Cain
QUOTE
Yeah, there is. You declare an attack on the passenger. You call a shot to bypass his armor (0). You take your shot. He rolls damage resistance. He gets body + armor. Oh, but he is in a vehicle, that means he gets the vehicles armor too. It gets added in. End result, he gets body + vehicle armor only.

No, you call a shot to bypass *all* armor. Nowhere in the rules does it state that it's personal armor only. Also, there is absolutely no rule that says that you cannot affect the vehcicle while targeting a passenger, nor that the vehicle armor cannot be reduced to zero via called shot.

QUOTE
Even if you kill the pilot you're not going to crash the Banshee. It has a bare minimum of Pilot 2 to fly itself, and that's assuming that the peson who dumped 2.35 million into it didn't also splurge 15,000 more for pilot 6.

Gotta love how Cain can derail even a thread about NPCs and BPs with his Longshot Called Shot agenda.
Except even with a Pilot 6, it has to make a Crast test with a threshold of 3. Given 6 dice, that's 2 successes. The banshee crashes into your ego, scattering it into little pieces.

PS: I didn't bring it up this time. Everyone else on Dumpshock has discovered how broken called shots are; someday, you'll realize how obvious it is.

[Edited for excessive insults about James's lack of IQ, his sexual preferences, and pregnant goldfish]
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