I am finally getting my players to start thinking about SR4 character creation. I have reiterated to them that the standard SR3 skill ratings, magic rating and stats are not applicable and 4's are perfectly viable as starting characters.

Now, since this is going to be our first SR4 endevour I do not want to place any limits aside from RAW on the characters. I also am not going to houserule anything until we play several sessions to get a baseline.

Based on preliminary character creation I have already seen one of my players start as I indicated. 4's or so on their combat skills running 11 or so dice pool. One of my other players, is showing 7 agil and likely a 6 firearm skill rating. + magic and smartlink. so this character will likely be pushing around 18-20 dice.

On average that means player 1 will have 3-4 hits and player 2 will have 6-7 hits.

I know very well how to balance starting characters in SR3 and so on, however SR4 being new is an enigma to me.

So the question for those experienced SR4 GMs: If both characters are Sams and relatively equal in all other areas will player 2 be noticably more dominant than player 1?

Depends on a lot of things.

If 18-dice took edge 1, he's 1 good hit away from cowering behind cover all evening. While if the other guy took edge 3 or 4, then he can get bursts of hits when it really matters.

Then there's tactics, personality, foresight in contacts, all sorts of things. In one game I saw a mage save the day by 'called shot - tire' with about 1/8 the dp the sammy would have had.

Yes. It still pays to specialize in Shadowrun. If you're going to be a primary shooter, then invest heavily in shooting. The same applies for Decking, Magic, and Social stuff.

The twenty dice character is going to have a much easier time killing people.

As far as if this is an issue there is more to consider and I'd have to look at both character sheets to tell.

The game's not all about body count and min/maxing to that degree tends to leave you with few social skills, low body, or low willpower. All of which can screw you over. Granted a high edge can cover your ass in these areas but rolling 20 dice isn't cheap and generally doesn't leave you with many points to dump into edge unless you ignore other areas of your character.

I absolutely agree with you on the first point. The game is about a lot more than combat.

However, the second isn't true. You can have a character with a hyperspecialization (18+ dice) and still remain viable in those other areas, enough so you won't be screwed over. You won't be outfacing the Face anytime soon, but you won't be helpless in a social situation, either.

The 20 die roller is remaking an old SR3 character as best he can. Based on that old character I would not be surprised if he gets some socially imcompetant deal going.

Nearly mute, German only speaking elven pistoleer, seriously sneaky.

I figure the low die roller will actually diversify quite a bit, at least thats what I kinda expect to see.

Overall, I suppose letting them make whatever they want with-in RAW will highlight any issues.
(I also expect another player to build a 'bullet soaking' troll tank. But if what I have read is correct, there isnt much tankage in SR4, sounds like a world-o-hurt ™ for that player)

I did say tends.


You can min/max a character to such a degree that you have good social dice, decent body, and decent willpower, and a good edge pool. The easiest way to do this is one hyper-specialization and then skillwires for most if not all of the rest of your skills. It's a character that would probably see the nerf bat before it rolled a single die in the campaign I play in but yes it is possible.

However, min/maxed agility characters tend to either have a low body, low willpower, or low social skills. If they don't have the above holes they tend to not have enough edge to save their ass when it really counts.

Yeah, I don't think those 20 dice to shoot is going to be too much of a problem. I mean, he is spending quite a few BP to get there, and will be lacking in other areas that are important. I personally never go bellow a 2 in any att, and I try to have all the necessary skills at 3 at least. Also, high shooting DP is much less powerful than high IP counts, of which SR is much better balanced from start than SR3.

You need to know what the 20 dice guy has paid for. if its Agil 7 hes an elf (maybe has muscle tonr, but really they should both have muscle toner 2 so thats not an argument, and if one doesn't tell him to get muscle toner 2), + 6 firearms, he's paid 50 + 30 + 24 = 104 BP. The second guy has paid 40 + 16 = 56 BP for his rating, and has left the 6 skill, and his race to be selected. So those extra 50 BP had to go somewhere.

Every starting character in SR4 has a kryptonite. If someone hyperspecializes, they will probably have more kryptonites. When as the GM you create a problem that may easily be solved with stealth and a gun, the guy who does nothing but sneak and shoot will be the star. But that's as it should be, right? That's like if I need golf to save my ass, Tiger Woods is my man. Just make sure that all of your characters can do something well, and that they don't overlap too terribly much. If you had two straight out fighters, except one sucked, that's a recipe for non-fun for the sucky person. But if the worse combat person is also your team's face, or their tech guy, or the driver, or whatever, he should still have a good time.

If player 2 and 1 are equal in other areas, I think you better check again the math of player 2, because a adept with maxed out agility and pistols, for example, shouldn't have many BP to spare in other areas.

As far as the comment about them being equal in all other areas, that was just a blanket statment to take the rest out of the equation. Leaving it to just a 11 die vs 18-20 die scenario. In SR3 that would have been no contest, just didn't know how bad it is in SR4.

They havent finished building yet, so I know they will be vastly different all said and done.

The 7 agility: yeah he is an elf, but purchased the exceptional attribute agility quality, so he didnt have to pay 25 points to top out and still has 1 point of growth room.

I suppose it all comes out in combat when I slap modifiers on them and the 11 die guy ends up hitting longshots or 1 die tests and the 20 die guy is still rolling 10 dice.

Its hard to tell what is more or less powerful sometimes than something else.

When mentioned with hard-maxing, it's expensive.

Character A takes a 7 agility(elf lets say or human with Exceptional Attribute), 6 pistols specialized in semi-automatics. They also have Muscle Toner 2 and a smartlink. DP: 9+8=17+2= 20. Cost? (say for human), 20(exec. attribute), 75(Agility 7), 4(20k nuyen for Muscle Toner 2 and some for the smartlink), and 26 for the skill plus specialization. Total cost is 125 BP. That's a LOT. Now, they still have 275 BPs left..to spend in seven attributed, Edge, their resources, contacts, and the rest of their skills. They CAN get a few other things, sure, but they will be spread a little thinner than:

Character B takes Agility 5(7), Pistols(Semi-Automatics) 5(+2), Muscle Toner 2 and Smartlink also. They spend 40 BP on Agility, 4 on the ware, and 22 on the skill, for a total of 66 BP. Thats almost half, and they are rolling 16 dice. Still plenty! 3 less dice for almost half the BP. Character B, in a way, is going to be more powerful. They are going to be MUCH more well rounded, can probably have good attributes wrapped around and have plenty of skills too. Im not saying Character B is overpowered; they just sacrificed a couple of dice to be more well rounded. Sure, A can shoot better but the 59 BPs saved is a lot! It's 5 attribute points, or tons of skills, or Edge, or Resources, or a little bit of everything. Not to mention with the half BP limit on Attributes, Character A only has 125(well, 120 since you can't take attributes in increments of 5) to spend on 7 of their attributes while character B has 160.

So yeah, as said...hard-maxing costs, well, hard. Unless you REALLY have it in your head to have your character the best at something, think about it. Occationaly ive ran into(and once did) max out Magic or Resonance but that's really all i see now with maxing. I don't even see that many skills at 6 due to the ''1 at 6, rest at 4 or less vs. 2 at 5, rest at 4 or less.''

Of course, then sometimes you run into a problem, where if a player maxes, they are accused of powergaming. If they soft-max, they are accused of minmaxing. That's up the the GM. I don't criticize either way; i just tell people do what they see is right for the character, but hard maxing IS expensive.

if they are equal in all other areas then something has badly gone wrong and you need to step in and address it immediately. Having a character who is extremely superior in a specalist area (gunnery) and has a broader range of skills (from having agility 7 - agility has many linked skills and thus having a 7 vs 4 is very powerful), is clearly going to overshadow the second character.

but I really doubt they are equal in all other areas. if the other guy is an ork for example, he'll be ~70-100BP up on the elf (due to not having to buy any levels in strength or body), which is enough to take exotic melee weapon 6, buy a monowhip, and buy 250k worth of bioware and still have BP left over.

This gives him an awesome shtick Mr Gunnery cannot possibily match - he has a completely undetectable and extremely dangerous weapon system he can put in his pocket and walk through security scanners (both MAD and Cyberware) and then bust out ultra violence on the otherside. Then you have clear differentitation - whats important. Mr elf is way more badass with pistols in open fights, but in covert action the guy with the monowhip is crazy!

in my experince maximum party fun is when everyone has a schtick they can bring to given situation, so while Mr guns is l33+ at guns, you just need to make sure that Mr Other Sammie has a schtick too, and give it some screen time

Thinking about it, when CD above mentioned the ork...yeah. Orks are scary. And it's true that people who play NON combat orks are really scary(or the ork with the monowhip, as said). If you play a non-combat or fully agility based Ork, you basically are getting 30 free BP at the start; 20 BP for an ork and you don't need to buy Body and Strength(which start at a 4 and 3.) And if the player really wants to, 5 BP basically gets them Human Looking and helps a lot of their racism trouble if they have any; of course this can be found out, but still.

And yeah, it's not uncommon. Ork mages these days(especially with Intuition based casting!) are running rampant. Ork faces aren't even that difficult(hey, 4 charisma and a couple levels of Pheremones takes care of any trouble for a mundane face. Adept faces can be deformed one eyed troll-devil rats and still roll buckets.)

But yeah, i agree, that maximum fun comes from everyone having their schtick. I mean, let swordy guy sword away. Gun guy shoul be good with guns. Nothing wrong with Face guy being able to face effectively. And each one can have a smattering of skills that help out the other too. Swordy guy might be a decent shot, gun guy might be pretty ok with his fists and Hacker guy might actually be fairly social as well while the Face knows a bit about computers. Really, it's only a problem when one person makes the rest of the group useless, IMO.

The trouble with a point build system is that sometimes points can make a big difference, and sometimes they don't. Let's say that the guy with pistols: 4 and a dice pool of 11 saved, say, 40 points. So where does the 40 points go?

If the guy rolling 20 pistols dice has an Edge of 2, and the other guy has an Edge of 6, that's a significant difference. If the guy rolling 20 pistols dice has Charisma: 2 and the Influence Group at 1, while the other guy has Charisma: 4 and the Influence Group at 3, that's a significant difference.

On the other hand, if the guy with 40 BP spends it to get Charisma and Logic of 3 instead of 2, and get five secondary skills at rating: 3 instead of rating: 2, then the difference between the two characters won't be that apparent in those areas, but will be apparent when they are both firing a pistol.

But if it's the latter case, it's not too insurmountable of a problem. If the one guy is measuring his manhood against the other guy's 20 dice mark and coming up short, he can spend his Karma to improve his pistols skill - with hard caps, it shouldn't take him that long to catch up, or at least get to a level where the difference isn't as glaring.

it'll take him ages to imrpove his pistol skills because skills are expensive to advance.

But actually, yeah,I agree with Glyph, you need to be careful about those build points. i'd ask their characters what their schticks are, then assess that each player has enough schticks that are distinct from other players schticks. if two players have the same schtick, and one is significantly better in that schtick than the other, you need to discount that schtick in your assessment, or be aware that you'll need to craft special situations to ensure the team doesn;t just front the best specalist.

From your OP, I assume he has +3 dice form Adept power Improved Ability (3). So:

Agility 7 + (Gun Skill) 6 + Specialization? 2 + Improved Ability (Gun Skill) 3 + Smartlink 2 = 18DP, 20 with specialization

Now first, I want to point out that there is a much cheaper way of getting 17 dice.

Ork or Human cyber sam with base agility 5 + 2 from Muscle Toner +8 From Gun skill and specialization + 2 Smartlink = 17DP

Now the Elf race does not give you any free BP, it just makes allows you to spend 30BP more on Attributes. Now assuming this elf already wanted Charisma of at least 3, The agility 7 will cost him 80BP (including Exceptional Attribute). Now he will need Adept Quality and at least 2 levels of magic to get the Improved Ability, so another 25BP in the mix (this is not even counting the one more point of Magic he will take to pay for the essence lost from Synaptic Accelerator, since it would cost 2 more points of magic to get Increased Reflexes 1). I'm going to exlude the skill costs and the rest since it is the same between characters.

Elf Adept total = 105BP

Now the Sammy (Human for simplicity's sake) has to pay 40BP for Agility 5, and 4BP (closer to 3) for the 16,000nuyen it costs for Muscle Toner 2. Since all that is left for this character is the skill and smartlink, we end the balance here.

Human Samurai total = 44BP

Now, he could close that gap to 1 with 13 more BP (Enhanced Articulation and Firearms group reflex recorder) Making the total 57, leaving 48 free BP in comparison. And that's not even taking into account the free point of Edge. Orks also deserve mention as that free 30BP is wonderfull and goes quite a ways in rounding out your skills. Of course, their lifespans are second only to fruitflies, but hey, what shadowrunner lives even that long?

Here's my perspective on the "Rating 4 skill means you're pretty good and that's quite acceptable!" thinking: Take that idea, write it on a piece of paper, crumple it into a ball and then flush it down the toilet.

It's cute from a fluff perspective, but the fact of the matter is skill ratings are often only a small portion of total dicepools and that by Shadowrun 4th Edition rules Joe Average Professional with an attribute of 3 and an average skill of 3 with no extra modifiers will fail your run-of-the-mill threshold 2 test roughly 35% of the time. Shadowrun's a pretty freakin' deadly game and, frankly, you have better odds at playing one round of Russian Roulette with a six shooter than you do of getting by for long with a dicepool that tops out at 6 or 8 in your areas of specialty. Granted, there's still attributes, situational modifiers and extra gear to take into consideration, but that just emphasizes my point: looking at skill ratings alone and trying to draw conclusions from that alone is going to leave you almost hilariously uninformed. You're much better off looking at the sum total dicepools of the PCs and then go from there when deciding what kind of thresholds/opposed pools you intend for them to face. Shadowrun tends to work via an all or nothing system, after all-- There's no special compensation you recieve for being "highly skilled" once your opponent manages to score even a single net hit against you, so in effect skill is a truly relative value. If a player intends to be truly good in an area and wishes for that character to succeed there even when odds are stacked against him, than he's really being quite sensible when attempting to hit double digit dicepools. Unlikely feats require unlikely dicepools, no matter what the darn chart implies. This is particularly important since unlike your "Professional" level taxi driver shadowrunners are often requird to do things like successfully navigating a high speed chases across the rain-slicked streets of Seattle after having been shot with a light pistol while coming down from a Cram high. So, yeah, 4 is quite acceptable, but it had better be backed up both high attributes or positive modifiers if you intend for that skill to be very reliable. As Larme said, SR4 is a game that emphasizes team play and specialization. If a player comes in expecting to be really good even under duress with just a run of the mill skill level and little specialized equipment, you should probably give them fair warning lest they walk away from the table sorely disappointed, because there's going to be other beings in the gameworld that can likely eat them alive in those areas.



Enhanced Articulation only gives any a dicepool bonus to "any test involving Physical skills that are linked to Physical attributes," and since Physical skills is often defined as a seperate category than Combat skills you could mount the argument that Enhanced Articulation helps people perform Gymnastics feats better but does not allow someone to do any better when taking aim with a sniper rifle. Could be wrong, but just thought I'd throw that out there.

Whip certainly has a point.

Players are going to want to be rolling at least 10 dice in their area of expertise to get by as competent.

Now if you get the ten dice by stacking a large amount of stat with a smaller amount of skill or a small amount of stat with a large amount of skill is up to the player and can help flesh out the character concept. Either way though if our face or gun bunny was rolling less then 10 dice I'd probably start asking my fixer if he knew anyone more competent we could replace him with.

*edit* This is of course for a more typical 400 BP campaign. DPs of 8 or less would probably fit for a low power or street level campaign just fine.

While I agree that just looking at the skill descriptions from the BBB alone is worthless, they get at least more reasonable when you start differentiating between unaugmented dice pool and pimped-out-chromed-up dicepool.
If you talk about average Joe having a "professional" rating at some skill you have to figure, he's probably doing that for a living and will use appropriate tools for that which in the game mechanics augment his dicepool.
I'd consider though that in most skills, average Joe will have a 0 in SR4 as that means "just as good as the average Joe" and that doesn't necessarily mean nothing (take Pilot: Groundcraft for example).