like that it seems as if trolls are the new master race, at least when building with karma *g*

Or dealing with the Spikes.

But my group had something to say about that.

They were the master race in the BP system already, I am not surprised this did not change with the Karma generation system.

and here i thought orks had been the master race with the build point system O.o

Trolls are only the master race if you think strength is actually worth the same as a point of agility or body.

Except its patently not, because the game has guns, while everyone takes damage and wears armour.

I'll have to wait until the end of the month. Cash is a little tight right now.

someone just threw in the idea of creating a free spirit using the karma system in another thread, beause spirit is effectively your metatype you won't be paying any karma for that . . so your complete karma can go into other things O.o

You can blame any missing lifestyle qualities on Synner. He's got all these issues with wordcount and whips us freelancers when we try to sneak in fun extra things like "Horrible View" and its cousin, "Terrific View." His red pen is probably smoking from overuse.

Oh, well. We still stuck in quite a few lifestyle qualities. You can always play build-a-quality:
Terrific View: 1 pt.
Disgusting Neighborhood -1 pt. Maybe -2 pt depending on just how disgusting.

Convienient Bar: 1-Point Positive Lifestyle Quality

Your local watering hole is within easy stumbling distance to home, with few places for a mugger to lie in wait.

For two points does it have comfortable gutters?

no no it should be, Convienient Bar: +1 point Positive Lifestyle Quality but it should incure negitive modfiers to your addiction tests

Indeed. So comfortable that a whole family of Devil Rats has taken up residence.

To come back to Karma CharGen:

as noted in the other thread, if you make a free spirit with Karma rules, you don't pay 250BP and still get massive Boni of being a spirit. I think some Karma cost for the race are really needed, maybe only BP in Karma instead of BP*2 in Karma.

cya
Tycho

Humans are at the greatest disadvantage over all the other races in the Karma creation system. For example, an Elf (for free) gains 15 Karma worth of Attributes & Low Light Vision, and looses 6 points of Special Attributes (Edge). For no cost.

Lets now compare a Troll to a Human. The Troll has the same cost for raising his low attributes (up to their maximum, which was always a limitation), but has significantly reduced cost for raising their high attributes. Example: A Human will pay 60 Karma for Body 6. The Troll will pay 18 (with no other costs), and will still be able to raise it higher if he so chooses, while the human is maxed out.

How much you increase an attribute by is irrelevant. What you increase it to is what matters, and with no racial cost for the metatypes, they have a significant advantage - especially Trolls & Pixies, as they receive the greatest benefit with the least cost (reduced maximum means little in the Karma system). I'm not even going to start on Free Spirits in the Karma system as written (they go from worst possible option to best possible option).


To all those reading this who can see reason, I strongly suggest implementing a cost of [Racial BP Cost x 2] to play metatypes.

You could also make the other races buy up their attributes from 1 to whatever they want, so that 6 Str troll and human would be equal. It would necessitate a minimum expenditure of karma to reach the racial minimums, and that in of itself could be a balancing factor, though may be too harsh.

Even so, that still makes Free Spirit karma generation a fantastic thing.

That system, although good at first glance, would completely screw up the values of various races with special abilities - as those are not taken into account.

I would actually suggest the above [Racial BP Cost x 2], but with an alteration to how advancement works. You buy your attributes on the 1-6 scale, then apply racial modifiers. So a Troll going from 5 to 6 Body will cost the same as a Human going from 1 to 2, but their cost to increase Charisma from 1 to 2 would be the same as a Human increasing it from 3 to 4 (minimum attribute of 1, so Trolls would start with 3-2 = 1, not 1-2 = -1).

Regarding Free Spirits, their cost is fucked up. Simple as that. Once I get around to doing the math & play testing it (if I ever do), I will post what I believe a reasonable cost would be. As an initial estimate, after looking at their abilities & losses, I would say around 150 BP.

That will boost metatypes with high attr. boni...

I think a race cost is necessary, but the Attr should be paid for the actual rating.

the best solution would be:

every Race costs the attr. karma cost for their attr. minimum plus a fixed karma cost for their race bonus. But this would result in new karma cost for every race, but it takes much effort. A fixed cost Race BP*2 in Karma should work well.

Free Spirits aren't concerning me much, because they a just a very rare char option. In the most groups they won't ever be played.

cya
Tycho

So, how many characters have you already made using KarmaGen?
It really strikes me as odd that you don't pay for being a Meta, but on the other hand... they had playtesting, so they maybe put some tought into it. I'm not houseruling anything before I'm absolutly sure the rules do not work or are to annyoing to use as written.

But it's really amusing how everyone knows a first glance that a houserule is needed. Kind of an insult to the people who made those rules.

I have been playing around with Karma-based character generation long before Runners Companion. Further, I have made several concept-characters with the rules as presented in Runners Companion. What I can say with absolute certainty is that a character built with 750 Karma is significantly more powerful than a 400 BP character. 600 Karma produces characters approximately comparable to 400 Build Points, while virtually eliminating min/maxing, & usually resulting in more rounded characters.

Further, with no direct cost for playing a metatype (not even looking into the more powerful ones from Runners Companion), said metatypes produced with the RAW Karma generation system are more powerful than a human equivalent. Further, they are not balanced with each other. How much more powerful depends on the metatype - Trolls receive much greater benefit from RAW Karma creation than Elves.

Once again, I have gone over the numbers & made test characters. I cannot yet say for certain if my proposed alterations fix the issue, but I can say that the system is broken as is.

I wish I knew they why they included karmagen, but not BP advancement, when BP is clearly the superior system as it has linear costs and thus is much less annoying to deal with.

Linear costs is precisely the reason why I dislike the Build Point system. It is much easier to go from 'Unaware' to 'Novice' in a skill than it is to go from 'Expert' to 'Master'. Linear advancement costs have no logical sense behind them, & there is no game play advantage to them. "Much less annoying" is never an issue that I have run into, and should never be an issue for anyone after the first 5 minutes. If you have a problem with the calculations, simply create a cheat-sheet - Rating 3 costs X (total), Rating 7 costs Y (total). While I created such a sheet once, I have never had any need to use it.

Simple answer: Knowing how Karma Chargen works, you can easily apply Standard Answer #1 to the BP advancement, allowing players to trade in 2 Karma for 1 BP, now that you know that, officially, 2 Karma approximates 1 BP. Interestingly, this results in an interesting situation where, using BP Advancement, it always costs 50 Karma to get the max in an attribute, while, with Karma Advancement, for, say, humans, it costs only 18 Karma or, even if the maximum is 11, it would only cost 33 Karma.

On the flip side, it's alot easier to deal with such linear systems. Theres no over-complication by math that changes at every level like the karma system does.

It's a sad day when basic algebra is considered over-complication.

See what our educational system has lead us to!

All the kids want to do now is slot a chip or get a Math Co-Processor now and have the tech do all the work!

I thought everyone did excel? The maths is actually quite complex. A typical character will have 20+ variables, which results in a very complex formula to determine total costs.

In a BP system, I can always take one point of a stat and put it into a different stat. I actually prefer the 5 points for a skill group and 2 for a skill because it makes the maths even simpler.

Karmagen has none of that elegant simplity. If I take one point of will on the character I am working on now, that is radically different from taking one point out of body.

I shouldnt have to do even basic algebra. I'm really good at math actually, but that doesnt mean i have the patience for it.

Bah! Kids today, no staying power for mental exercises! *Waves walker in random threatening directions*

For those who want to use the Karma build system (or something similar) but don't feel they have the ability or patience to do the calculations repeatedly, might I suggest creating a look-up table? I'd suggest columns of Skill Ratings, Attribute Ratings, and ... er ... I guess that's it. Rows would be 1 through 6 or 7.

It's what software engineers do when CPU time is at a premium.

This is a joke, right? Please, someone tell this is a joke.


I really have to doubt that after reading

Ignoring the fact that a BP system still is basic algebra, I don't think anyone can be good at anything basic if he needs patience to perform it.

I agree that multiplying numbers is more complicated then simply adding values, but crying over-complication is plain silly.
And I prefer KarmaGen over anything else on every day, no surpriese here, I guess.

I swear, calculators will be the ruin of mathematical ability!

Hell, they already have been!

Heh. Okay, here's the issue - BP chargen uses straight costs for buying everything, whereas karma improvement increases geometrically, and we wanted players to be able to use standard karma improvement right off the bat with KarmaCharGen. To take attributes as an example:



Now, it's fairly easy to notice that at 2 Karma per BP (i.e. 10 BP = 20 Karma), each improvement below 6 is actually cheaper than the BP advancement, while each improvement above 6 is actually more expensive than the BP advancement. The math gets a little hairier when you add in the 15 BP cap for maxing out an attribute in BP advancement, but leave that aside for the nonce.

You can see the immediate issue concerns the two outliers - trolls and humans (despite the other character options presented in RC, the major concern was with the five principal metahuman options). Humans essentially get all their attributes cheaper than in the BP, while trolls simply wouldn't have enough points to max out a single attribute without major sacrifices, or at least increasing the fraction of their Karma they could devote to attributes. Dwarfs, elves, and orks suffer the same problems to a lesser degree.

One option was to simply have metahuman attribute modifiers - everyone could buy their attributes up from 1 to 5 (and one 6) and then apply the modifiers. This was eventually decided against primarily because in early playtest it seemed against the spirit of the rest of the "let's just use karma improvement from chargen" angle, metahumans were overpowered, and many players were stuck buying up an attribute only to have to subtract a point from the metahuman attribute modifiers (remember, it's the minimums and the maximums that count!)

The other option was to increase how much Karma metahumans could spend on their attributes so that the players could (if they chose), max out a single attribute at chargen as in the BP system. The solution deemed most elegant was adding the converted racial cost to the amount you could spend on attributes. There were other factors in the decision, natch, but that was a primary one.

There is potential for abuse by working the system - 750 Karma was finally settled on as "default" because of the attribute calculations; 400 Karma (the standard limitation for points spent on attributes in BPCharGen is half of the initial pool of BP, which for a 400 BP game is 200 BP, which when converted is 400 Karma) was too much for humans, not enough for trolls (creating a character approximately equivalent to its BPCharGen counterpart), but with the "metahuman rider" for attributes it worked out so I dropped the default down to 750. I could have gone further, but playtest seemed happy with 750 for the most part (aside from the one guy that insisted his 400 Karma character was better than anything he could make with 400 BP).

So, there's some of the reasoning behind it for ya at least.

??? That some kind of poorly veiled personal attack? Seems at the very least non sequitur since not liking something /= a lack of ability

My thoughts on RC: I really like it. There is a ton of stuff I plan to use. There are a few things I probably won't ever use, but I'm okay with that, at least I know where to start if I decide I do want to use them. There are more than a few things that I can't wait to use. All in all I think its a great book. My thanks to everyone who worked on it.

Sorry, but I really haven't found anything to complain about. Granted, I haven't read every word yet, and I haven't triple checked the math, but overall I like what I see.
Oh, and I love the cover.

=WENN(namecell="";"";WENN(ISTFEHLER(FINDEN("(Group)";$namecell));(ratingcell*(ratingcell+1)/2+1)*2;(rating cell*(ratingcell+1)/2+1)*5))

Took a lesson from the excel sheet in the community section. Put Group in the skillname and it calculates accordingly.

wasn't that 25?

However, as see it every system can be exploited. Actually having to make a system tight enough that it will not be exploited an thereby limiting it more than it would be fun to, is the most complex exploit I guess. However, I think the karma system is simply different, and thus an option, like everything else. Mostly the ST will decide which system the characters will be setup by, how many points are to spend and that's it. I have to admit though, I do not have to set up new characters all that often, so maybe I do not care enough.

I think everyone of the three systems is viable. Personaly I like the mix of simplicity and complexity of the BP system the most. The priority-system will take the third spot, as I think its a bit to stiff.

Dude! We are going to have the sweetest and most comfortable character generator EVER! Remember your rumours.

<threadjack>
now theres something I can get into. need a C# programmer?
</threadjack>

Nope, it's 15. The 10 is already there for the stat increase, plus an extra 15 for it being the cap. The total is 25, but you'd only add 15 to get it there.

There are strong indications that we might get such (link) a toy. Which would so totally be a must-buy!

Okay, Ancient, I am not arguing that the various metatypes should have an increased allocation for what they can spend on attributes. If you go with the default post-modified attribute, instead of my proposed pre-modified for determining advancement costs, it makes sense and is appropriate. The problem lies with not charging for metatypes in the Karma system. Allow me to demonstrate.

For this we will use Human vs. Elf. It is a simple comparison because the elf has no penalties to their attributes. We will use the lowest stat line necessary for the comparison - Agility 2, Charisma 3, Edge 2.

Elf:
Agility 2 - 0 Karma
Charisma 3 - 0 Karma
Edge 2 - 6 Karma
Total: 6 Karma

Human:
Agility 2 - 6 Karma
Charisma 3 - 15 Karma
Edge 2 - 0 Karma
Total: 21 Karma

Elf has a maximum of 7 Agility, Human has a maximum of 7 Edge = balanced
Elf has a maximum of 8 Charisma, Human has no comparable advantage = unbalanced
Elf has Low-Light Vision, Human has no comparable advantage = unbalanced

Elf costs 6 Karma, Human costs 21.

So, playing a Human, you pay 15 Karma more than an Elf to simply equal them Attribute-wise, with lesser advantages.

Conclusion: The only reason I would ever play a Human in the Karma generation system is if I desired an Edge attribute of 8, as in every other way possible, an Elf is both superior and cheaper.

Let us just glimpse the Troll & Ork. Their lower attribute maximums only ever become an issue if you have a concept that those attributes are important for. They do not increase the cost for advancement at all. So, compared to a Human, they are significantly cheaper to achieve a strong base Attribute line for a position they are suited for. Further, they have significantly greater potential advancement.


Now, once again I ask - how did you ever reach the conclusion this is balanced?

There were a number of factors to the decision. The attributes and point costs were one thing - if you charge and raise the cap on attributes, it's like a double-whammy on the metahumans. By contrast, by not charging for metatype two things immediately become apparent: metatypes become much more attractive an option, and the outliers change because the metahumans suddenly have "free points." The former is very attractive from both a game designer and a player's point of view, the latter less so - because, as you pointed out, you can build a "minimum" metahuman character cheaper. Part of the appeal of "free races" is that there is no direct cost attached to the decision, which encourages people to play what they really feel like playing, as opposed to playing what they can afford.

However, to be fair you have to look at the whole picture. For the cost of your elf raising Charisma from 6 to 8 (at chargen, after chargen is another ballgame), a human character could raise three attributes from 4 to 5. Metahumans that don't go for reaching their higher attributes spend less than humans, but those that do exceed 6 pay a lot more. This effectively moves the bulk of the characters to strive for the 5-6 range in attributes, with a couple people taking lower attributes to free up points for expensive qualities or skills, and a couple people splurging to start out the game with Strength 10.

Your example looks at the low end of the scale, which is why it gives a worst-case scenario. Most players honestly won't try to start a game with those kind of attributes, and the biggest appeal there is for foward-thinking munchkins. I know that's more of a psychological answer than a mathematical one, so consider that the costs after chargen are the same as those during chargen, which means that the disparity evens out. For the elf that starts with Charisma 3 to get up to Charisma 8 after chargen would cost 90 Karma - a human that maxes out their own Charisma (with Exceptional Attribute) would still have 24 Karma in-game to spare on other things, and that is balanced.

No, it's not veiled at all. I pretty much said in plain sight that I doubt you are good at math, if basic algebra needs you to have patience.

There is also no point continuing this, since a) I already said what needed to be said and b) I have no interest in bringing Mod-Heat down on myself.

Bleh. It is more complex. Yes I have done two years of tertiary maths and while not a HD average, I certainly passed.

And yes, when simulating circuits I use pspice rather than calculating it by hand, because I'm not an idiot. Nor do I do financial modeling with changeable assumptions with a pen and paper. Instead, I prefer excel.

And indeed, rather than manually doing finite element analysis I use solidworks, rather than by hand.

Why the hell would anyone do anything manually when you have access to a perfectly good tool?

Anyway, now we are talking about ninja maths skills - I can actually do the entire calculation for an optimized BP character in my head with reference to a book except for equipment. I cannot do it with karmagen or karma advancement (where i've mostly had to do it) because of the changeable scales making it to difficult to remember all the possible variables.

You are using a perfectly good tool, yet you call it complex. I do it manualy, juggle numbers in my brains and make notes with a pen. Weird. I use simple tools and simple it is what I do. And yet I have to encounter the problems you seem to have.

I'm really starting to feel good about myself and for that I want to sincerely thank you.

Yeesh. Whats a single advantage of the karma gen system, aside from having very poor rules for the managing of metatypes which is I suppose an advantage if you want to break the game? BP unquestionably has simpler numbers and is therefore superior in every way as it already includes solutions by default for the the problems AH outlines previously.

Oh, and it breaks all the starting adventures because as pointed out previously, it results in significantly more powerful characters.

Why is it so mcuh better again? Worse rules + more complex maths = failure.

Multiplication is just an addition problem, that's not complex math.

For the advantages, there are three:
1) A single system for character creation and advancement.
2) For the real detail-minded player, there are subtle advantages in building characters, such as the cost of specializations and the like.
3) Nearly all the character options are equally encouraged.

I'm not sure how BP advancement does not provide all three advantages, while having linear mathematics and not breaking the game with regards to metatypes?

Maybe you'd care to elobrate?

Edit: And yeah... I agree with muspellsheimr Unless you want edge 8, or are planning a character with agility and charisma 1, there is no possible reason to play a human over an elf ever under karmagen.

I suppose making humans utterly useless does enhance people's desire to play metatypes?

Ancient, you seem not to grasp the point - it does not matter by how much you raise an Attribute, what matters is the final value. In literally any character build that has 2+ Agility & 3+ Charisma, playing an Elf will always be cheaper, with more additional advantages, than a human of the equivalent Attribute level.

Further, your example of the cost of an Elf raising their Charisma from 6 to 8 - guess what. A Human can raise three attributes from 4 to 5. The elf can raise three attributes from 4 to 5, or Charisma from 6 to 8. The Elf has more options than the Human, without loosing any of those available to the Human.

Using the Karma system, make any Human character you want with 2+ Agility, 3+ Charisma, and under 7 Edge. I will equal the exact same build with an Elf, with an additional skill at rating 3. Even more, if you choose not to have eye replacement, said elf will have yet another advantage over the human.

Make any Human character with a maximum Reaction of 5, Edge 6, and I will once again create an identical Dwarf character for cheaper.

Low end scale or high, it does not matter. Sure it costs an Elf to go from 7 to 8 Charisma than a Human to go from 5 to 6. If the Human, through various means, is capable of reaching a natural Charisma of 8, it will cost them the same amount to raise it that last point, plus the cost to raise it from 1 to 3 (Elf does not pay this).


False. Every metatype in the book is encouraged over a Human in the Karma generation RAW. Sure if you are playing a Face, you may prefer a Human over a Troll, but an Elf is by far the better option.


EDIT: Ancient, I extend my challenge. Using the 750 Karma character generation, RAW, make any Human character you want, excepting Edge of 7 or 8. I will, using the exact same system, create an Dwarf, Elf, Ork, or Troll that, mechanically, equals or exceeds your Human in every way. Further, my metatype will exceed your character in a minimum of one way. I will not use any of the Variants from Runners Companion, nor will I use any of the new Sapient Races. I will only use 'Racial' Qualities that you use (SURGE, for example). Your one restriction is to not use any Human-only qualities, such as Vampire, & the previously mentioned Edge of 7+.

So, in other words, aside from metatype, the karma system rocks.

Just assign an arbitrary number to the metatype of your choice in your game and get on with it.