Sorry, don't own that book yet; just SR4.

Wow, from this description, it seems like RC is going to include pretty much all I want from it: moment of happiness: I only have some minor requests: I second the call for formal rules on designing advanced characters (like initiates), and I would very much like rules for multiple lifestyles, and to play a Nosferatu as well as vanilla vampires.

...and ChocoTarts™

I doubt my group would use such a rule, for various reasons. I myself, although I would love to have such a rule, as it would help out all of my characters immensely, I am actually opposed to it simply because I do not like the concept of "buying" Karma.

Regardless, I would not at all mind an "official" optional rule for it.
I think I have an effective system for creating advanced new characters, but I do not GM, and it has not yet come up in my game, so I am unsure if the GM would go for it. Regardless, I would appreciate having an official system for this.

On the multiple lifestyles, I am of the opinion that you can have additional lifestyles up to a level one below your "primary", and they each cost half the standard fee's because you already have food, transportation, etc. covered. My current character maintains two safe houses using this ruling. Yet, once again, official rules for it would be very nice to have.

I would personally like to see account rules, and gameplay differences between using an account based on a fake SIN, to illicit offshore accounts or organized crime banks, and how traceable and secure each type of service is. Sort of like advanced lifestyle rules but for cred accounts.

Well, personally I do not mind it, either, and as a matter of fact I would highly appreciate official optional rules for a cash/karma exchange rate. I see no problem with buying karma to expend on magical activities, as there is a strongly developed and very old tradition of sacrificing wealth to build spiritual clout in magical and religious tradition. Animal and precious objects sacrifices in pagan religions, indulgencies in catholic faith, paper money in chinese religion, offerings in buddhism and hinduism, just to name a few. In the sense of Shadowrun magic, they all boil down to "buying karma", and as pretty much all pre-Awakening widespread mystical practices are revealed to have significant relevance for SR magic, I say there is good justification for a cash -> karma rule. Similar arguments can be made for the opposite, with precedents like the wealth power of free spirits.

But its partly those precedents that make it a really bad idea to introduce. With the wealth power, free spirits are on infinite karma, since they can use wealth to generate Karma for themselves at effectively 0 cost to themselves as I understand it under RAW.

What's the problem in stating that whatever system exists to convert wealth into karma, free spirits can't use it ? It is an established fact that free spirits can't generate karma for themsevles through deeds like metahumans do, so it makes sense to bar them from genrating karma from wealth, too. Conversely, humans developing mystical clout from sacrifices of wealth is an immemorial and universal tradition in religion and occultism since prehistory, and such long-standing traditions always find relevance and validity in Awakened magic.

i personally would also like to see a karma chargen system, as a few others have proposed here.

It still doesn't stop the rot. The spirit can still stick the wealth on a meta patsy, get them to convert most of the wealth and then karma drain. Meta earns an easy 10k, spirit gets overly easy karma. Why wouldn't they do it. They could set up shops on street corners to do it. Why get a lone from a bank when 2 hours down the Karma Deli will earn you a fat stack of cash. The modification actually makes the ruling worse by forcing that cash to interact with other sections of the economy. Well adapted spirits like Buttercup could employ hundreds of people whose sole purpose in life was to take wealth generated money, change it into real money at the bank, changed the real money for karma and then get that karma drained. The only way to do it is to make each and every instance of transition require Explicit GM permission. Which implies that there should be no core RAW Karma-Cash exchange rate, and preferably no exchange possible.

While I accept the points on sacrifice being part of a number of traditions, it is noticably not part of all traditions and where it is it already serves it purposes within the SR4 rules. Most offerings will come under the requirements for reagents to bind spirits, fetishes for reduced drain, geasa and/or training costs as opposed to buying karma. If you do them for religious reasons in addition that's fine, but no additional mechanical benefits, because:

A. If you only allow it to the awakened on a tradition basis, it provides a pure advantage for traditions that allow it. SR4 only allows trade-offs. What is worth the ability to switch cash and karma around, what does the tradition lose for it? Additionally, SR has always taken the view that belief structures do not apply benefits not linked to mentor spirits. I also leads to the question as to why the mundane believer performing the same action doesn't recieve the same benefit, since the effect your describing is not linked to the characters magic

B. Karma is earned during actions that gain transferable experience to a runner's core stats and skills. If an exchange rate from money to karma exists, then under your examples given, a smuggler character should spend his money on pay per view bike racing to earn additional karma, which sounds pretty silly. As does the idea of the chinese mage heading down to the cemetary after every run, with a pile of money and expecting to get XP for it, because thats fulfilling a Geas, his spirit binding costs for spirits of man, guidance spirits or any other relevant type or appeasing his mentor or ally spirit. Alternatively, its his religion and he spends some of his cash on it because he believes in it and recieves utility in the economic sense from doing so. Like how mundane and awakened character have hobbies that they spend money on and expect no bonus karma from doing so for, but they've bought the knowledge skill and can thus nail any questions related to it, can use the people they meet whilst performing their rituals as contacts if relevant. There are plenty of mechanical and gameplay advantages that can be linked to these traditions already in such cases already. They boil down to anything but buying karma.

C. Realisticly game viable rates of exchange operate on far higher scales of Nuyen costs than those that offer. A standard buddhist offering is not in the region of ks of Nuyen.

If you feel that these actions must have futher effects for awakened characters in the setting, use a cleaned up variant of the sacrificing metamagic, allowing them drain reduction off appropriate spellcasting and summoning in exchange for the sacrifice of goods, rather than living beings.

That seems rather inelegant to me. I, for one, hate to see the word "except" when I'm reading rules.

What makes you think they don't do it? Also, the wealth turned to karma does not vanish into thin air, leaving a trace of experience points (karma) to pick up. And wealth generated by a spirit has his signature. Now, if you are remotly paranoid, you might see that as something you don't want.

Isn't Buttercup the spriti that owns a sizable part of a megacorp? I doubt that spirit will care much about the - rather limited - amount of wealth it could get by generating gems (which could be tracked to it too, iirc) when it has much larger ressources.

Just because you have a huge stack of megacorp stock doesn't mean you have control over any money. And again, all the money she get's out of working there she will turn somehow into Karma. That's what pacts are there for.

Some people seem to be thinking that a big pile of nuyen evaporates and the PC/spirit whatever feels a nice rush of karma. I don't think that's what the suggestion that offerings to the spirit world generate karma means. It seems more likely that the money is used to arrange some form of ritual, or to make some kind of totem, which is then sacrificed or burnt. Possibly a good way to represent such a mechanic in game is by saying the money is used to buy special oils or foods with ritual purposes.

It's also certainly not unreasonable to consider that free spirits cannot grow as individuals by communing with the mana of the spirit world, since that's where they're from. It's nothing special for them, while it si for metahumans.

Although since we know free spirits can get karma from runners (and other characters), and know that many people won't mind sacrificing some karma for nuyen, the question how powerful Buttercup or other free spirits with large ressources are and can become is interesting.

The signature issue is pretty easy to counter with the various powers and metamagic that mucks around with signatures.

That's how I see the wealth-karma conversion work in the setting, yes.



And this effectively differs from a free spirit using all that wealth to pay an horde of metahuman lackeys generating karma the usual way and feeding it through pacts, how ? A resourceful and clever free spirit that wants to cheat cosmic law and rack unholy amounts of karma through influence in mortal society will find plenty of ways, even without a cash-karma exchange rule.



Vast majority of traditions, you mean. On the spur of the moment, I cannot think of any religious/mystical tradition where sacrifice of wealth in some form, be it offerings to the gods/spirits or alms, cannot be used to earn spiritual merit.



Irrelevant since it ought to be a feature of all traditions, for the reason above.



For a vehicle adept, it wouldn't be silly at all.



Chinese have been expending plenty of wealth to buy paper "spirit money" to burn as an offering to gods, spirits, and ancestors for centuries. Again, where's the silliness when the Awakening reveals that the practice has real value and can provide real spiritual benefit to the one making the offering ?



According to other precedents in Awakened magic, it may well be that the pre-Awakened belief/practice' s general concept holds meaning for magic, but the exact detail do not.

Uh... no?

Synner's Runner's companion writeup sounds great!! Hope to be able to get my hands on it this year

Keep up the good work, any chance for an official update on the official shadowrun site about upcoming books soon?

I can think of a huge number of SR magical traditions that do not feature the concept of physical sacrifices for spiritual gain, for instance ALL the hermetic based ones which make up the majority of magicians in many areas of the world. To add it implies a bias towards the shamanistic tradiitions in game balance terms which SR4 has moved to remove. Even among those magical traditions that do feature higher powers there is no value associated with the absolute scale of giving, meaning is non-viable.

Religious observance already offers some many benefits, including the reduction of karma costs for initiation, that to argue for more to be codified seems ridiculous.

The comment with regards to the smuggler was an example of a non-magical character performing what is in game terms the same action as the one that you label. Some people call these roleplaying actions and expect no benefit from them. You could even argue that if the character is definatly getting a karma reward for doing so that the task loses all religious meaning.

Karma is a whore value, sleeping around with all game concepts, but most importantly it is not earned on a scale or deed basis, that is getting through an appropriatly difficult storyline generates the same karma whether you're fresh out of character generation or 200 runs in. Allowing exchange causes run karma to cease having that quality, since there is the assumption of increased monetary payoffs. These do not cause an imbalance with mundanes as magical characters have som much that they can spend their cash on as well.

Finally, it came to me in my sleep last night that there is already a mechanism in place that works far better than any direct karma exchange rate, that is the 1-2 karma per session that the GM can hand out for appropriate roleplay, where the GM can throw you a point so long as what you do is appropriate to the game and character and not just taking the piss.

Well, let's see. There's Flexible Signature, which can conceal the signature. There's the "astral concealment" metaplanar quest. If you can convince your GM, Cleansing might be useful, too.

Again: Uh... no?

Flexible Signature is just a chance someone will be fooled, astral concealment is not even the same game here and Cleansing sounds plain wrong.

As a free spirit, who actually values his freedom, I'd try not to overuse my Wealth power.

First off, nearly every religion on the planet whether or not SR4 included it has some concept of sacrifice to improve your standing in the universe. Second, most people when talking about cash-karma transfers aren't speaking specifically about something only awakened creatures can do. Third, if it is introduced as an optional rule in the SR companion and you don't like it, then don't use it. The rest of us who do feel something like that would be a nice addition to the game however will enjoy its addition, and undoubtly modify it to better fit the games we run and/or play in.

Cash ----> Karma, in our games didn't always represent a religious observation. It could have been any 'good' deed which would have imporved some decent person's quality of life for a bit. Ie paying someone's debt anomously, giveing money to a charity, or any manner of other good acts.
Karma -----> Cash, was used to represent winning on a scratch ticket, a alley game of craps, or some other even when you got 'lucky' and recieved money/gear as a result.
Religion need not enter into it...... ever..... for anyone.

it is simply a question of banking luck, or 'cashing it in'
And yes, every exchange must be permitted by the game master, as you may be in a situation where lossing some luck isn't going to make that Ak you want appear, but it is generally easy to adjucate.

The real flaw of any Karma<->Cash system is that it must be calibrated to your own game. Any numbers provided by those rules would likely be based on the amounts of cash and karma provided in the Missions. Which is useful if running Missions, but not much otherwise. Really, every GM gives different amounts of Karma and Nuyen. The value of each is very variable, and it would require the GM to do all the math to work it out for his game.

Actually, Flexible Signature adds to the threshold for assensing; get that high enough, and there's no worries.

On what basis are you dismissing astral concealment?


Possibly, but I'd point out that a) you're not a free spirit, and b) you have a sense of fair play.

Here's a question: what happens to the astral signature on an object when it stops being that object? For example, when it is melted down and mixed with other things?

Because I said so. Or maybe it was what I read on page 132 in Street Magic.



Well, signatures don't have such a link, so... I don't think it works. Also, a spirit can IIRC only go back to his homeplane, which would be pretty stoopid to hide the link in. Because, they might not find you, but they know where you live, and stuff.

You seem to be assuming that list is exhaustive. Let's suppose it is. If that's the case, then spirits have no concern about tossing their Wealth power around, because the signature left on the wealth doesn't lead back to them, so no worries in using it.



Even if that were true (I'm not certain, either), spirits can initiate (p. 106, Street Magic), and initiates can access other metaplanes.

Back on topic:

What I'd like to see in Runner's Companion is working character creation rules.

Discuss.

I'm already regretting this, but I take it that you unsubtly (if erronously) imply that the given rules in SR4 do not work?

Well, that may be a bit strong. The rules in SR4 are clunky, slow, obnoxious, frustrating, sometimes mutually-contradictory, poorly laid out, and generally confusing as all get out; but once you get past all that, you can make them sort-of work. I've had an easier time with GURPS and HERO, and so have all the people I know who've compared systems. I've met some people who've claimed to be able to pull off a working character in less than two hours, but I haven't actually seen it.

Something simpler, like the MCCT, would be a huge benefit to the system, and should belong in Runner's Companion.

What do you define as a working character? I can have a character with all 400 BPs spent, gear bought, in 45 minutes. From there, I spend another hour to a few days depending on my free time, tinkering with exact levels and expenditures. But I can do the same thing in HERO and GURPS, so I'm not sure that it's a system dependent variable.

I don't agree, but there will be alternate character generation rules in RC, at least one of which should definitely be faster and more structured than the normal rules.

Fully-tinkered and ready to run. No glaring weaknesses that aren't there by design. A reasonable degree on min-maxing is needed; it doesn't have to be optimized to within an inch of its life, but there does need to be effort made to show how the character covers for his weak areas. And it should have at least a passing resemblance to the backstory.

Oh, good. Are you responsible for it?

Lets see I have owned and played all four editions. SR1 Interesting, clunky, did not run it or play it much. SR2 more of the same. SR3 ditto. SR4 Finally something that works for me, and probably a lot of people who walked away from previous editions. In fact SR4 prompted me to obtain a whole lot of the fluff oriented supplements from previous editions. Its great if you want to keep playing SR3, just don't expect SR4 to go away or be mutated or rather mutilated into something more similar to the older editions mechanically.

I personally really like SR4, one of the few things I miss from SR3 was how their damage system worked, where you could change the power, ap, or damage of a weapon all independent of one another.

One of 'em. I'll be available for kvetching after you've had time to read and digest the book, as usual.

We're not allowed to make SR3-4 comparisons on Dumpshock.

However, I will say that well-designed Template systems are always faster, smoother, and easier than point-buy. They help streamline choices, make balancing characters easier, and more intuitive and easier to grasp. They also provide just about as many options as point-buy does. That's not a comparison, that's just a statement about game design principles.


I'm glad that you're here to catch the kudos as well as the inevitable bitching that will occur. You deserve a lot of credit.

I think that's hyperbole. No one is against comparisons, as long as they educated and constructive. I think the flame wars and baseless ranting is what was barred.

For RH--I'm looking forward to more positive and negative qualities. And the obsidimen-dragon hybrids, those will be fun.

I already have my Dragon character pretty much all set to go.

Honestly I really like the new chargen system. It helped to do away with alot of what I was seeing in my games which was the dwarf full shaman who also had the skill equivalent to a medical doctor. I am especially pleased with the fact that if you want to be good at magic you have to buy it now.

Best of all is I have finally seen people take drain now that its rolled the whay It is now. I have my players scared sometimes when I comes to me having to for spirits and sprites.

My only gripe now is how the only way one can defend against magic is with magic still. Basicly if you run up against a mage and your group doesn't have one your totally hosed or vise versa. It just seems lame to have a mage on hand everywhere the group runs around.

It doesn't take long for things to go from "constrcutive criticism" to "flame wars" on any internet forum.


I still see that sometimes. Granted, making magic into a purchasable stat isn't a bad idea, but it could have been done under a template system. Point buy didn't change that at all.

Personally I didn't find the old SR character creation systems any faster than SR4. I wouldn't say that SR4 is significantly faster either, but then the thing that always takes me longest is sorting out gear. Actually that's one of the reasons I tend to make magicians, as I don't tend to faff with 'ware and essence values as much as when making a street sam.

I apologize for breaking a rule I did not know about, however to suggest that this comparison was not already being made is less than truthful.

I think there is no such rule, but there may be a special case for Cain. But best ask a moderator.

I think it is safe to say that SR4's character gen system makes a decided 90 degree turn from the previous three systems, which all had a fair degree of similarity among all three editions.

This could account for some of the confusion with veteran players.

-Siege

I don't think you can infer the quality of character creation rules solely on the time it takes to create a fully functional character. In a game like Wushu you choose three traits and one weakness to define your character. In Nephilim you first have to choose (or roll) in which eras the character lived and what he did back then and then have to stat the character he's currently inhabiting. Needless to say that it's much faster to create a character in Wushu than in Nephilim. But does it mean that Wushu's character creation rules are better than Nephilim? I think it just means that Wushu's character will be more simple and archetypal than Nephilim's.

SR4's basic Build Point system is simply a new iteration of the the Point System that has been around for two editions (with some minor tweaks to accomodate the changes to core mechanics). If, as a veteran player, you were familiar and experienced with the Point System in the SR Companions, the SR4 Build Point system should be no real leap. If, however, you were only familiar with the Priority system which was the default build system in all three previous editions, then the Build Point system does indeed take more getting used to (though like it's predecessors in the SR Companions it allows much more flexibility).

That said we do have plans for new "plug in" content that will speed up chargen significantly using the Build Point system. This will not be in "Runners Companion" but in another product further down the line.

Fastest way to build a character I saw was to take a character (from the web, or the book) and modify it.