So, the absolute maximum you can get an attribute, with Exceptional Attribute, Genetic Optimization, and the correct metatype, is:
Body - 18 (Troll)
Strength - 18 (Troll)
Agility - 13 (Elf)
Reaction - 12 (Several)
Intuition - 12 (Several)
Logic - 12 (Several)
Willpower - 13 (Dwarf)
Charisma - 15 (Elf)
Edge - 8 (Human)

What would you want to max out?

For what type of character? Oh..wait..Munchkins..simple, uncomplicated, and gives the most plusses to the most areas...Well, for most things, I would say Agility, though for alot of other things(namelys taying alive) I woudl go Reaction..

Meh to reaction, You don't need to dodge if they didn't see you (stealth) 'till you shot them dead (firearms). Agility all the way.

That depends on what you want to do.

But, being abit of an optimizer my self I sort of sepnt the time to calculate the BP to Karma ratio on skills and attributes.

Basically, if you are a Human, you want to put as few BP's into your attributes as you can get away with. The only exception being Logic and Intuition, where you want just below the cap in each.

Then look at the skill groups with 4 skills in them, Athletics and Stealth being good ones, Electronics too. These are real bargains and should be taken up to 4. If you cannot afford level 4, do not get the group.

Skills, any skill set at less than 3 is not outperforming Karma. 2 single skills at 5 saves you more Karma than one at 6.

If you play a Meta race it is most cost-effective to pump the stats you have bonuses in, than any other thing, skill or otherwise. You get up to a 50% rebate using BP's than later buying them up there with Karma. - And that includes taking Exceptional Attribute and filling the point, but only do this if you really feel you need it...

If you do get exceptional attribute, always fill it at creation. Doing it later with Karma is too expensive.

Contacts are über. Each BP spent here equals 2 Karma. No other place has such a good conversion rate. Do not be afraid to define your perfect contacts here, it'll cost you twice as much in Karma to buy ingame. (If you do not pay Karma for a contact in your games, you can skimp here, the GM will provide tools for the game )

When it comes to Magic, Powers and 'Ware, focus on stuff that cannot be replicated by skills first... Get those extra Passes or make sure you have planned a path to get them soon. More than anything an extra Pass increases survivability and striking power.

Of course, make sure the character is viable... adhering too strictly to these rules of thumb can leave you a gimp. It only the method to get the most out of your BP's, but that does not always equal the most powerful character out of the gate...

First, we should get this out of the way, since we're bound to hear it: there is no such thing as munchkin, it all depends on your game, blah blah blah...

Second, Agility. Hands down.

Munchkins thinking long term always make their statistics 1 or <softmax> before the application of racial modifiers because that's the most bp/karma efficient play.

Edge. It doesn't matter what you want to do, you can never have too much of an Edge. There are even Edge rolls now and those rolls... you'd never want to roll low.

Everything else you can use some cyber/bio/nano/magic to augment. There hasn't been an Edge enhancement implant yet.

I have to second Edge. With Edge, you can literally do the impossible, up to eight times a day.

Ah yes. Edge is also a good candidate... Coarse the more dice you have in Agility the more you can reroll with Edge...

Honestly, if you want the most munchkin bang for the buck(well, for fun)...

Agility, Logic, and Charisma. These three stats link to more skills than all the rest of them put together and doubled. Pump these three to powerful heights(but go human, even though elves get the bonus. You want the extra Edge point. Remember the Elf bonus equals out their BP cost; and if you are looking at pure munchkining power, that's not as good as an Ork, which gets alot more for less.)

So yeah, human, pump and purchase up those three stats, and dump the rest to Edge. Then, naturally, gimp a few stats, but buy them up. Yes, this means Str1(3) and the like, the famous old munch tactic since Strength isn't as important(especially with the invention of Martial Arts and the crazy DV bonuses it gives. A 100 year old geriatric man can punch like a troll.) At least a 3 body natch, to wear decent armor; if you can scrape it up to 4 all the better. Reaction can be cheesed up with several enhancers and some IP enhancers.

Skillwires seem to be able to help this character, too. And yeah, Edge as high as you can make it while still keeping large die pools for large numbers of skills.

Im surprisingly not a munchy player; i really was never into purposefully gimping stats just to munch out stats which give more skill bonuses, but i have made a bunch of 'playaround' characters to see what kind of crap you can do.

I voted Intuition just to be different. Loads of linked knowledge skills, gives BP for buying said skills, part of initiative, Perception...

The point can be made for most attributes, even strength.

I go with Edge. Not only can it apply to any die roll, it also makes it possible for a human to have a stat higher than a Great Dragon can! Sheer kewlness gives it an edge (Teehee ) over the other attributes.

For the true twink? Edge.

Oh Agility is nice. But you can get it high enough using this that and the other.

But maxed edge can just be broken. You can do things with edge 8 and the longshot rule that will have a houserule by the next session.

So make it good.

Can we delet double posts here?

Edge is where its at. I have a player with 8 edge and 8 times per game he gets to do pretty much whatever he wants.

will to resist the most nasty magic. and it's used to resist drain, and I like to play mages

For SR3 Magicians it was definately willpower. My god, because drain was force /2 (give or take +1 +2 etc.), you might have to resist 3, 4 Deadly damage, but with Albino Dwarves with Bonus Attribute Willpower... (that's 9, people), and likely some drain resisting cyberware... Eugh.

In SR4, what you munch depends on what you do. Combat? I'd say Reaction hard maxxed and a soft maxxed Agility. Moving A bunch of times before anyone else is pretty valuable, but only Move-By-Wire gave you the most bang for your buck there.

I'm building a Mad Scientist runner right now, and I'm doing fun things with Logic.

i, too, vote for intuition. why? because in addition to boosting your perception skill (one of the most universaly important skills in the game), it also directly affects initiative. more to the point, once you hit the cap on intuition, thats pretty much it. there isn't much that you can do to boost it (that i know of). max it out at character creation, and spend your hard earned money and karma on other attributes.

That's a good point: what 'ware affects mental stats?

I know Tailored Pheremones is a dice modifier, not a stat bonus (although really, maybe it should be a stat bonus); I believe an Encephalon is also a dice modifier. Is there anything that directly augments any mental attribute, other than Quickened spells?

Cerebral boosters directly boost the stat in question.

Cerebreal booster. p. 339 BBB boosts logic.

I would say "none of the above". Hard-maxing Magic can occasionally be worth it for adepts with a very narrow combat focus, or for certain mage builds, but for everything else, soft-maxing is so much more cost-effective.

If you are a true munchkin (as opposed to merely a min-maxer or powergamer), then you will only start out with a character that doesn't have glaring weaknesses and rules problems if you post the build on Dumpshock to get analyzed. After that, don't worry about getting any stat to its max level - you simply won't live that long. Munchkins have a low life expectancy in most campaigns.

By the way, some of those values aren't possible. Mental stats may have a high augmented max, but there aren't enough actual augmentations for those Attributes. Plenty of dice pool modifiers, though.

You mean outside of the Improved Attribute Powers and Spells, right?

Improved Attribute only works on Physical Attributes, I thought?

Aha, so it does! So Logic can hard-max to 11 (since you can't get more than +3 from the Cerebral Booster), but that still leaves Intuition, Charisma, and Willpower without any non-spell augmentations, correct?

Yeah, my bad. I meant the Cognition Metamagic and the Improved Attribute Spells.

To the best of my knowledge, yes.

So, easiest paths to maximizations. All listed assume Exceptional Attribute and Genetic Optimization for that Attribute, of course. Please check my math, O wonderful denizens of Dumpshock!

Body or Strength (Troll) - The only way you're really getting a consistent +6 Augmented Body (or Strength) is via full replacement - four full cyberlimbs, a cybertorso and a cyberskull. The bonus of this, of course, is that you get to max out both together (one will be at 18 and the other at 16, depending on where you put the Exceptional Attribute), and get Agility up to 5 as a 'freebie'. The downside - 5.00 Essence cost as Alphaware (plus 0.1 for the Genetic Optimization), and about 600,000 nuyen. While you're in there, a platelet factory, a suprathyroid gland, and a trauma damper should make you nigh-unkillable, and since your base Strength and Agility are irrelevant (5 and 1, anyone?), you can max out your natural Body and Willpower to stave off any other unforseen trauma - toxins, mana bolts, etc. If you go ahead and get those, you lose another 0.55 Essence (0.35 left, for those keeping track) and 110,000 nuyen. Obviously, all this ain't gonna happen at chargen. EVER.

Agility (Elf) - Your best bet here, of course, is Muscle Toner. At 32,000 (plus the 45,000 for Genetic Optimization), and a total Essence loss of 1.0, this isn't that hard to do, and is easily within the reach of a starting character. Of course, as a starting character, you'll want to save the 25 BP on the 8th point of natural Agility; you can instead spend 9 points on the 45,000 nuyen for a Suprathyroid gland, dropping you another 0.7 Essence and giving you +1 to Body, Strength and Reaction to boot. Altogether, you'll be spending 20 BP for Exceptional Agility, 60 BP to go from Agility 2 to Agility 7, plus 14 BP for the 'ware - totalling 94 BP to max out Agility at 12, but also netting you +1 to all your other physicals.

Reaction (Elf, Human, or Ork) - Move-by-Wire is your friend. The most awesome thing here is, with Move-by-Wire 3 and 3 levels of Reaction Enhancers, you're completely out of Essence (better buy one of the RE's as second-hand Alphaware), but you get a +9 boost to a stat that caps at 12 - which means you only have to get the base Attribute to 3 to max out your augmented attribute. On top of it all, you get +3 to Dodge tests and 4 Initiative Passes, all for the low low cost of 250,000 nuyen. Of course, the 24R Availability is a real kicker, too. Obviously, like the Troll, all this ain't gonna happen at chargen. If you COULD convince your GM to let you buy Restricted 'ware at chargen, though, you'd be spending 20 BP for Exceptional Attribute, 20 BP to get Reaction to 3, then 50 BP for the gear - totalling 90 BP. (If it were my game, I'd let anyone take the old "State of the Art" Quality from the Companion at 15 BP to ignore Availability on one piece of gear, making the grand total 105 BP) Your Reaction is now 12, and you have four IPs.

Logic (Human, Elf, or Dwarf) - a Cerebral Booster will give you +3; on top of the Genetic Optimization, that puts you at 8 (11), and costs you a total of 0.8 Essence and 75,000 nuyen. Doing this at character generation will cost you 20 BP for Exceptional Logic, 60 BP to go from Logic 1 to Logic 7, 25 BP to go to Logic 8, and then 15 BP for the 'ware - totalling 120 BP spent on one Attribute. Your Logic is now 11.

Charisma (Elf) - Well, you can get your base up to 9, and then get 3 levels of Tailored Pheremones, which aren't technically an attribute bonus but may as well be. Tailored Pheremones and Genetic Optimization together will cost you 60,000 nuyen and 0.8 Essence. Your effective Charisma will be 12 vs. everything but Spirits; I have no idea how to get the actual attribute up to 13, though (but if you could, you'd effectively be at 16 with the Pheremones). Upping from 3 to 8 at chargen will cost you 80 BP, then another 25 to get to 9, then another 15 for the 'ware, and 20 for Exceptional Attribute - for a total of 140 BP spent on social-fu. Of course, this isn't really the way to go - you'll note the Adept Power of Kinesics is way, way cooler than Tailored Pheremones will ever be in the same situations. In which case, you're actually better off not getting the Genetic Optimization, just hard-maxing to 8 (for 95 BP), then getting the Adept Quality (5BP) and Exceptional Attribute (20 BP), buying Magic to 5 (for 40 BP) and 5 levels of the Kinesics power - totalling 160 BP. This is preferrable to Tailored Pheremones because: 1. You're already at 13 dice instead of 12, and 2. Your Kinesics has no endcap, if you Initiate enough. Of course, you're stuck spending Karma while everyone else can just blow Nuyen, but hey! You could theoretically blow FOURTY DICE on a Con test! {EDIT: According to Augmentation, pg. 23, in Tweaking the Rules, a character could gain up to +3 to Charisma from cosmetic surgery. As a GM, I'd call that 'Moderate Modification' with a nuyen cost of (Rating x 5,000) and an Essence cost of (Rating x 0.05). If you go with this, that would bring the total BP cost to 143 for the non-adept, with an actual Charisma of 9(12) (+3) and an Essence cost of 0.95. Intriguingly, at that point it almost becomes worth it to have the Adept go ahead and blow 0.95 Essence, making his total BP cost 188, for a Charisma of 9(12) (+8) - think of it... 20 Charisma dice for all the mundane rolls that matter.}

Intuition (Human, Elf, Dwarf or Ork) - I got nothin'. What ups Intuition?

Willpower (Dwarf) - I got nothin'. What ups Willpower?

True... but none of those are exactly 'permanent', unfortunately.

You don't really need permanent. You just need it to be there when it matters.

True. But I'm leery of sustained/quickened spells - perhaps a holdover from the SR1 days of "grounding from the astral", but still. I'd hate to have my +6 extra dice Counter-spelled. And I hate the idea of having to risk Drain every time I want to do something nifty, either through casting a spell or through shuffling around Attributes using a funky Adept power. So, I likes me some 'ware.

Fine then! The Adrenaline Pump boosts Willpower.

Still not what I want, for the same reasons as the Cognition metamagic.

there never really was anything upping willpower, but with that bioware that lets you ignore stun-damage all together, it's really not needed in most cases . . ok, you will have to look out for the point where the damage crosses over into physical but meh *g*

True. The Pain Editor is quite handy; I just don't like it because it interferes with the Trauma Damper.

if anything, it's the other way around, the pain editor will jump into action only when trauma damepner has hit its limit. .
genetic optimization, exceptional attribute, dwarf, makes a natural 9 of willpower . .
SR3
Dwarf maxed 7
albino +1=8
ghoul +1=9
exceptional +1=10
otaku +2=12
that one dwarven meta race +1=13
SR4
Dwarf maxed 7
exceptional +1=8
genetic optimization +1=9
nothing more as of yet as far as i know/remember

Aha! This little gem was tucked away on pg. 87 of Augmentation: "All bonuses from geneware treatments are subject to a character's relevant maximum augmented ratings."

Now, I'm betting that Augmentation has the same problem as the older versions of the BBB, in that a lot of things are called "Dice pool modifiers" that should be straight Attribute modifiers (and vice-versa, but there don't seem to be very many of those). Besides which, it makes sense that genetech is Attribute-modifying, since it gets down to the core of your being, as it were.

Thus, I'm betting that PuSHeD is supposed to be an actual +1 to Logic; Dynomitan and Qualia are actual +1 to Intuition (which also modifiy Initiative - note that Qualia is 0.4 Essence and Dynomitan has some hefty drawbacks, so I think this is justified), and Daradrenaline is an actual +1 Willpower modifier. Is there anyone official that would care to comment on this?

Can you give me an example or three of this supposed 'problem'?

Well, the biggest thing that comes to mind is the Adept Power 'Improved Ability', although that was for Skills rather than Attributes.

That's my point. You referenced to this problem specifically in regards to Attributes, and to my recollection there is no such problem with any mix up of Attribute additions/Dice Pool modifiers.

Skills are another matter, but there are very few things that actually add to Skill itself, as opposed to being a pool modifier. I believe there are only two cases in the core book (Improved Ability and Reflex Recorders), and only one of those were written with enough ambiguity to require errata. I know that Augmentation added at least one more thing that falls into the Skill addition category, but can't recall off-hand just what that is (I recall it is clearly labeled as such though).

I would hardly call that 'a lot of things', as you did in the post I quoted.

Move by Wire?

You got it, thanks. Adds directly to the Dodge Skill.

In chargen, max nothing. It's too expensive. Maxing an attribute can cost almost 1/4 your total BP. But after the game starts, it's fine to start working on maxing out an attribute, especially if you're a sammie, because you don't have a better place to spend karma.

Damn I missed that. I guess move-by wire is even more Imba than I thought it was.

Sorry 'bout that; teach me to make sweeping generalizations

Edge boosts all. I have to go with Edge.

*nod* a Human with Edge 8 *is* pretty sick - especially with 3's and 4's in all attributes and 1's in all skills (4's in the group you intend to primarily focus on).

I saw someone play a Mr. Lucky character. When he unleashed the Edge, he was just insane.

Personally, I have found Mr. Lucky to be highly over-rated.

Well, being able to access the "Rule of 6" 8 times per game session is kinda nice, even if it does make the rest of the character rather 'average'.