Help - Search - Members - Calendar
Full Version: Karma-based Chargen and Technomancers
Dumpshock Forums > Discussion > Shadowrun
Abschalten
Aug 10 2008, 02:50 PM
Okay, in one of the other threads concerning Runner's Companion, a poster made mention that karma-based character generation was a boon for technomancers. Personally, I was a little skeptical of it, so I decided to use the rules for karma-based character generation in Runner's Companion and make a mock technomancer.

All I have to say, simply, is holy shit. I think karma-based character generation is the boon that technomancer players have been waiting for.

I mean, the technomancer I've made isn't totally broken at all, but he's a hell of alot better than ones I was able to create with 400 BPs and even its linear costs and flat BP prices for complex forms.

I should note here that this was based on a human character. With the discussions I've read about concerning the metatypes/variants and the perks they get in karmagen for their attribute bonuses, I'm sure you could go a little bit further.

[ Spoiler ]


I'm not done. I still have 34 karma left to toss around on things like contacts and Resources.

I soft-capped Resonance at 5, and I even took Edge at 5. I still did not hit the 375 karma limit for attributes that go along with 750 karma for chargen.

My qualities I maxed out both ways, 70 karma in positives and 70 karma in negatives, so for that reason I didn't list them here. If I'd given up stuff like Perceptive and Paragon I could've gotten even more to spend.

I was doing a little bit of min-maxing with the attributes and complex forms to see how far I could go before running out of karma. If I were to build a real PC techno to use in a game he wouldn't have such even numbers, and he'd be a little more diversified across the board. This was just for me to see what kind of results I could get out of the karma-based chargen for the archetype.

Has anybody tried making a magician with the new karma rules? I'd be interested in seeing how that turned out. I somewhat wonder if karma generation wasn't made with awakened and technos in mind, so that they'd have a bit of a kick in the ass going out of the character generation door.

Thoughts?
MJBurrage
Aug 10 2008, 03:34 PM
No Perception skill? Otherwise looks playable to me.
Abschalten
Aug 10 2008, 03:39 PM
QUOTE (MJBurrage @ Aug 10 2008, 11:34 AM) *
No Perception skill? Otherwise looks playable to me.


Yeah, I was rushing quite a bit. I'm sure there's some things I missed. I could quite easily drop something down, say, Edge to 4 and have plenty of karma to raise Perception. Or hell, I could just use 8 of my remaining 34 points to raise it to 2, and along with my Intuition of 5 I'd still have 7 dice, +3 if I'm actively searching for something.
De Badd Ass
Aug 10 2008, 06:36 PM
QUOTE (Abschalten @ Aug 10 2008, 11:39 AM) *
Yeah, I was rushing quite a bit. I'm sure there's some things I missed. I could quite easily drop something down, say, Edge to 4 and have plenty of karma to raise Perception. Or hell, I could just use 8 of my remaining 34 points to raise it to 2, and along with my Intuition of 5 I'd still have 7 dice, +3 if I'm actively searching for something.


You forgot Perception, and you forgot the Technomancer Quality. PLUS....

You missed one big thing: The only free Knowledge skill in the Karma system is the N for Native Language. You did not specify any knowledge skills for this character (I guess it's possible that you didn't "forget", and just chose not to give your Technomancer any knowledge skills. I notice that many players never actually use their knowledge skills during game play. In that case - this is the cheese in the Karma system).

KS 1 costs 1; KS 2 costs 3; KS 3 costs 6; KS 4 costs 10; KS 5 costs 15; KS 6 costs 21.

I tried converting my 400 BP Technomancer to Karma Build. He also has Intuition 5, Logic 5. His knowledge skills are 3, 4, 4, 4, 3, 4, 2, 3, 3 for 30 BP. This converts to 69 Karma Points.

My Technomancer also has Perception 3. That converts to 14 Karma.

My Technomancer has +10 BP and -35 BP in qualities. This converts to -50 Karma. His Resources equals 4 and his Contacts equals 10. This converts to 28 Karma.

If I accept your Attributes and Skills; and add Perception, Qualities, Knowledges, Contacts, and Resources from my build, I would have to add 14 -50 + 69 +28 = 61 Karma (or -8 if you drop the knowledge. You could use those 8 to buy a language).

I don't know about the rest of you. I think a PC without any knowledge skills is "broken".

Oops: I just read that your build has equal positive and negative qualities. In that case, add 111 (or 42) Karma.
Abschalten
Aug 10 2008, 06:54 PM
I've already mentioned that's not a full character sheet. I was rushing it to see how far I could take the karma points. And I already commented above that the costs of my positive and negative qualities was even, at 70 karma both ways, so I didn't include it. I didn't "forget" anything.
ElFenrir
Aug 10 2008, 07:37 PM
QUOTE
Has anybody tried making a magician with the new karma rules? I'd be interested in seeing how that turned out. I somewhat wonder if karma generation wasn't made with awakened and technos in mind, so that they'd have a bit of a kick in the ass going out of the character generation door.


I did indeed remake my combat mage with the karma rules. It turned out nice. biggrin.gif I'll post it later, if you would like to see how it came out.
Rasumichin
Aug 10 2008, 08:36 PM
A guest poster on another board rebuilt the BBB archetypes with karmagen and got the following results :

Bounty Hunter - 488
Combat Mage - 434
Covert Ops Specialist - 491
Drone Rigger - 520
Enforcer - 517
Face - 494
Gunslinger Adept - 461
Hacker - 523
Occult Investigator - 464
Radical Eco-Shaman - 454
Smuggler - 485
Sprawl Ganger - 495
Street Samurai - 512
Street Shaman - 417
Technomancer - 543
Weapons Specialist - 466

Haven't checked wether these results are correct, but you'll notice that each and every one of these would still have at least 207 karma points to spend if made with 750 points.

When looking at these numbers, it shouldn't surprise anyone that karma-generated PCs are that much more powerful.

I'm quite certain that this will also hold true for any other type of character, not only technomancers (note that the TM is the most expensive of the archetypes).
Of course, the fact that you don't have to sqeeze every single point out of your build will be most striking when looking at character types like TMs and mages, for whom it is more difficult to come up with a viable build under standard chargen.
Lothyrawir
Aug 10 2008, 09:16 PM
I am sure that the 750 karma will come down before things actually go to printing. Based on this if you take a standard 400 bp character and do the exact same thing with the karma based chargen. the average is somewhere in the 450 range.
ElFenrir
Aug 10 2008, 09:24 PM
I like the fact the karma-gen is around 750. They even said the GM can lower it. Besides, I kinda like having several different chargen methods for different types of campaigns. Karma based is pretty healthy, but it's more a more semi-pro type of campaign, and also for a nice wide spread of skills and attributes. They mentioned 500 karma for a more lower-end campaign, if I recall.

Still typing up the mage to compare. (I had mentioned in the other thread, the mage ended up more or less spread out more than die-pool inflated. It's really working well so far.)
It trolls!
Aug 11 2008, 11:24 AM
I haven't toyed around with it much yet, but in the Karma system, technomancers should be more behind other characters because of the increasing cost of CFs. BUT the recommended creation Karma of 750 generally makes for stronger characters and therefore there's much less strain on your pool than with 400 BP when building a TM character. Therefor the result will naturally be more well-rounded.

One could complain that the karma system isn't compatible with BP creation but I'd rather enforce the same creation for all characters in one campaign anyhow. As for myself, I'm starting a new game in September and I'm planning to test the Karma system to it's limits there smile.gif
ElFenrir
Aug 11 2008, 11:31 AM
QUOTE
One could complain that the karma system isn't compatible with BP creation but I'd rather enforce the same creation for all characters in one campaign anyhow. As for myself, I'm starting a new game in September and I'm planning to test the Karma system to it's limits there smile.gif


Totally. I would never do a mix of chargen systems(unless a player REALLY REALLY wanted to.) If i told everyone to use Karma, and one player INSISTED on BP...well, I won't take that from them, but I'll warn them they may be a bit behind(I would probably dump some more BPs on them.)

But yeah, I think folks are looking at it too much like mixing and matching. Honestly, for the book opposition, for a 750 Karma based game, I'd probably just give the opposing teams in the BBB an extra 1 across the board in stats and skills, and it would even out. The caps are still in place(1 attribute at 6 in chargen, skill caps, nuyen cap) again, the characters grow out much more than up, in the characters I converted. (eventually, it woiuld be nice to see a set of opposition that were made with Karma. Break down the karma cost of the BBB opposition, tack 50-100 onto that, and I think it would be very balanced.)
KCKitsune
Aug 11 2008, 12:26 PM
QUOTE (Rasumichin @ Aug 10 2008, 04:36 PM) *
A guest poster on another board rebuilt the BBB archetypes with karmagen and got the following results :


Do you know where I can find this Karmagen character generator?
Jaid
Aug 11 2008, 05:49 PM
QUOTE (KCKitsune @ Aug 11 2008, 07:26 AM) *
Do you know where I can find this Karmagen character generator?

Runner's Companion
Odsh
Aug 11 2008, 06:08 PM
With 750 karma, it is possible to create a human with 5 in all his attributes (without magic).
Question to the devs: was that really intended ?
ElFenrir
Aug 11 2008, 07:42 PM
Alrighty, here's Lexiss, done with 750 karma. (Keep in mind we use some SR3 negative and positive qualities, and we don't play with an Availability limit at chargen, so all of his gear is indeed legal in our games. He has a couple of pieces that go beyond the normal 12 limit.) I have the math scribbled down on another sheet of paper, I'll rebreak it down, but I did add it a couple of times, and it came out to 750.

He's a balanced martial artist/spellcaster. No firearms skills, but his Manabolt can handle most ranged instances for now.

[ Spoiler ]


Well, there he is. Honestly, none of his die pools are massively excessive. He's quite well-rounded, though. Is he more well rounded than a typical 400 BP combat mage? Certainly so...but in the times where we played ''twink-a-thon'' for the hell of it with 400 BPs, just to see what we could make...I have made, and seen, a LOT worse.

I really don't see this guy being the king of the roost and throwing off the game totally if he were in a 400 BP party. He's not a great summoner(goes with his personality), his casting pools aren't twinked to all hell, he's good, but not fantabulous in astral combat or assensing, and the same with arcana and enchanting. Now, his martial arts skill is scary(with his Hardliner gloves and boots-yes, we made the boots too in our game, he's 6P unarmed damage, and throws 12 dice(13 with his Kick reach), making him quite a tangle...but I still don't think he's a monster compared to, say, a specialized Sword Adept who is probably throwing 20 dice and counterattacking every time.

His spell list is impressive, though, at a full 10.

IMO, he's good, very good, but really, this doesn't look terribly unbalanced to me, and hell, we even have our no Availability limit to houserules(if for some reason we didn't, I could just as easily ditch one of the + qualities for Restricted Gear to make him totally legal in any campaign.)

But again, Karma characters, IMO, are meant to be played with other Karma characters, and not with BP characters.
KCKitsune
Aug 11 2008, 10:51 PM
QUOTE (Jaid @ Aug 11 2008, 12:49 PM) *
Runner's Companion


I thought it was a computer program.
Cthulhudreams
Aug 11 2008, 11:50 PM
I made a 750 karma character who was a reasonable hacker, had strong automatics and melee weapons capability, serious spellcaster (full mage), specalised summoner, 3 IPs thanks to spell casting.

Pretty strong all round. He could throw down in pretty much every role in the game - only weak point was a lack of 'face' capability.
Ancient History
Aug 12 2008, 03:00 AM
It is suggested that all players in a campaign build their characters with the same system simply because of the disparity that can develop.
Cthulhudreams
Aug 12 2008, 07:23 AM
it would have been nice to preserve compatibility with published adventures though. While a 750 karma character is unlikely to have a bigger primary dicepool than a 400 BP character, he will have a much larger range of skills, including significant secondary capability.

750 karma characters will blow straight through missions games designed for 400 BP characters.
It trolls!
Aug 12 2008, 07:27 AM
My theory about the recommended amount of karma for the karmagen inolves Rotbart van Dainig and ritual casted Mind control wink.gif
ElFenrir
Aug 12 2008, 08:55 AM
Well, I sorta look at the 750 karmagen method as best also for customized campaigns, homebrew campaigns where you are setting the challenge level.


I dunno. I guess as a GM AND as a player, I like to see book methods that allow you a wide range of characters and character levels. For example, i recall the 120-123 BP method in the SR3 book to be fairly powerful, and characters made under that level, on average, had some stuff at a slightly elevated level than the book version/priority system. BeCKS, also, tended to make much broader characters than priority. (It seemed that BEcks=much more spread out, Priority: Basic, BP system, slightly above the average but not insane.)

That's how I see this, only a bit different. This Priority system actually seems to favor folks who LIKE to hard max, and I would say that's the system that might have some inflated die pools. IMO, I'd rather see a character keep their 14-18 couple high level die pools..and rather add to them, spread out and get even 3-4 moderate level skills each with a bit better attribute spread.

I dunno. Maybe i'm just too nice of a GM, maybe I'm a strong believer in 'make the character you exactly see in your head...but leave em some room to grow, too'', or maybe I just prefer a more semi-pro campaign than new, wet-behind-the-ears runners.

IMO, the best way to test it is try. See how badly a more broad character will supposedly hose one of those published campaigns. I might be looking at it the wrong way, but it seems that the most it will do is allow the party to split up more often, or allow the technomancer to not die from a light pistol round. If it does unbalance it too much, and you want to keep the level down? drop the point number yourself. It doesn't matter that the book says 750, you can do 600, or 800, or 500, or 1500 if you want at your table.

Me, I like how they give the option for a more semipro game, more like the SR3 level. There is still 400 BP for more new runners, and there is still the priority system for...well, if someone figures out which road that is best for(again, I notice either more lower level spreads or more max-oriented people.)
tsuyoshikentsu
Aug 12 2008, 08:58 AM
Hey, I like it if for no other reason than that it takes out of the system a quantity we never see again: BP.
AngelisStorm
Aug 12 2008, 09:18 AM
...from what I've read here, isn't the point that 750pts would throw off game balance?

Yes, you could lower the 750 point level down. But you can do the same thing with BP, but just add some (our games, for example, are generally 450).

Why would they make a character creation system for the main rulebook, set it at a given level, then add a suplement book, make another character creation system, and set it significantly more powerful? Just seems hokey to me.

I just would like the two to be reasonably balanced against one another, so that the GM doesn't have to worry about power scaling. And then the GM can adjust it up or down, to suit taste.
ElFenrir
Aug 12 2008, 09:30 AM
I just can't get it out of my head that this was indeed playtested and approved at 750 karma.

Now, is playtesting 100% accurate all the time? Of course not. No matter how long or how well you playtest something, things will fall through the cracks.

Perhaps I'm a bit trusting, but I can't help but think that the devs tried this, playtested it, and approved this in the book for a reason.

I guess I might be looking for something different, too. When I hear ''Significant Power Increase'', I imagine characters running around with 6-10 skills with 6-8 more DP EACH, tons of gear with more uber properties, and the like. To me, 3-4 more active skills around level 2-3(possibly with specializations) and maybe an extra 1 attribute across the board with a few extra goodies of gear/couple more spells is not ''significiant''...but this might be a case of YMMV.
Odsh
Aug 12 2008, 11:16 AM
QUOTE (ElFenrir @ Aug 12 2008, 05:30 AM) *
I guess I might be looking for something different, too. When I hear ''Significant Power Increase'', I imagine characters running around with 6-10 skills with 6-8 more DP EACH, tons of gear with more uber properties, and the like. To me, 3-4 more active skills around level 2-3(possibly with specializations) and maybe an extra 1 attribute across the board with a few extra goodies of gear/couple more spells is not ''significiant''...but this might be a case of YMMV.


With 750 karma you can make a starting human character with 5 in all attributes, including edge, for 372 karma. That leaves you with 378 karma for the rest, which is more than enough.
With BP, you would need 350 BP for attributes only, which is not even allowed, leaving you with 50BP for anything else.

I call that a significant power increase.
Cthulhudreams
Aug 12 2008, 11:56 AM
My point was partly just that technomancers might look better... but everyone looks HUGELY better, so thats to be expected

YMMV
ElFenrir
Aug 12 2008, 01:05 PM
Ok, I threw together someone...we'll call him Joe the Guy. I got 5's in all Attributes and Edge, and you *really* have to choose what you want after this. One thing I notice is that is also makes very viable total mundanes-I mean, non cyber, non magic fellows. This is what I came up with(it's fast):

Joe the Guy

Positive Qualities: 30 K worth

Attributes: B: 5 A: 5 R: 5 S: 5 C: 5 I: 5 L: 5 W: 5 E: 5 I: 10/1 Ess: 6
Cost: 378

Active Skills(Choice)
5(+2), 5, 4(+2), 4, 4, 4, 3(+2), 3, 3. 1 group at 2. Highest DP currently: 12. Lowest: 8.

Cost: 214

Knowledge Skills(Choice):
5, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, + Native language and 2 at 3.
Cost: 70

Resources: 28k(70,000)

Contacts: 2, and 3/3 each(12 karma each, 24 total. Can mix and match as long as they are 12 karma each).

There we go. Joe the Guy, with his 5's across the board, doesn't look like he's going to be overpowering a campaign anytime soon.

It sadly seems to be a trade. Technomancers suffered under the 400 BP, and I know that a large portion tends to agree. Mages had *some* trouble being properly balanced...you could spread them too thin very fast. (Yes, they exploded in power after a good 100+ karma...but for folks who don't play often, or that long...they might be left behind unless they minmax. For someone who *wanted* to play a well-balanced mage(or god forbid, technomancer...) yeah. Also, the non-cyber, non magic mundane that ISN'T Mr. Lucky tended to be left behind, as well. 750 Karma makes them viable, but not overpowered(Joe the Guy here ain't outshooting or out fighting his friend, Bob the Samurai, anytime soon).

Then again, I didn't terribly minmax Joe the Guy either, which brings me back again to twinked characters breaking games regardless of system used. Again, I've made and seen worse under 400 BP. I suppose you could ditch a bunch of skills and load on more nuyen to ware up Joe the Guy...but a +2 to Agility will give him a what, DP of 14(16 with a smartlink?) Yeah, people can do that now.

I guess I can understand the concern in some things, but at the same time, I'm looking at this assuming reasonable players who aren't going to take this chance to pump every DP they have up through the roof and the like, and maybe devote, you know, a nice 70 Karma or so into knowledge skills?

EDIT: I'm not accusing anyone of being wrong, either, about thinking 750 is too much. I mean, YMMV, as always. I'm simply showing that not every build can end up broken. Hell, with enough time, anyone can break a 350 point character. I certainly could build a sam-type that would leave someone like Joe the Guy in the dust. I can understand where some concern lies...by making people like the mundane Joe, the Technomancer, or a well-balanced mage who doesn't suffer too much in other areas fully viable, that the power levels of some other characters are jacked up.

It's strange, under the BP system...while I'm not a rampant twink, I do minmax somewhat, and I know I'm not the only one who does. Under this system, I feel like I have no want or need to minmax(same went for BeCKs.)
Abschalten
Aug 13 2008, 12:32 AM
I finally finished the technomancer I was working on. I wanted to finish him and actually give him a working concept/persona so that I could see how well the 750 really worked for the technomancer. End result: A functioning, decent, totally playable, diversified but unbroken technomancer.

Concept: During the chaos of the Second Crash, Harmon Goodman's wife went missing. He wasn't able to get to her in time because he put off their date night (on their anniversary, no less) to get some extra research done for a college term paper he was working on. Then the Grid went down and it was total havoc. There were riots, their apartment complex got destroyed, etc. He got there the next day, and she was gone. Ever since, he's been wracked with grief and has vowed to find her and discover what happened.

Then he started showing his technomantic powers. He was afraid of them at first, but the more he pushed himself, the more he started to develop them. He found that his abilities enabled him to dip into the informational gestalt of the Matrix and sift for clues as to her whereabouts. And after one particularly nasty binge where he didn't eat or sleep for days, that's when Archivist came to him and said that by following her way he might be able to find clues leading to her, but to not lose himself in the process, as that would be a waste of his talents. He agreed, and allied himself with Archivist. The Matrix is nothing but an infinite sea of data, and he knows that somewhere in there are clues as to his wife's whereabouts.

He dropped out of school and turned to the shadows, feeling that only by doing what it takes and turning towards the seedier side of society would he be able to find clues. He uses his considerable Data Searching prowess to sift through the Matrix, and he uses that information to compile dossiers on his research subjects. He can hack into hidden nodes illegally and then mine them for information that way. Failing that, he's got just enough social skills to interact with people in the flesh. He also does data brokerage jobs. He finds data, paydata, he puts things together and comes up with answers. He's methodical, careful, analytical. He's very perceptive, and he sees trends in data that nobody else does. But because he's comfortable being careful, he doesn't do so well hacking on the fly... he has a Codeblock (-2 dice) on that.

He used to be withdrawn, introverted, rather harmless and kind. But his anguish over her loss has driven him and caused him to become harder, more aggressive, assertive. He's no longer the bookish introvert that he once was. He's had to shoot people... The first few times it was hard, but he's developed a tolerance to it. He's becoming jaded.

[ Spoiler ]


The charsheet is a bit on the long side, so I spoilered it.

I was talking with a friend about the character, and we did the math on what he would be in BPs. We figured that under the BP system, he would actually be 547 BPs. I don't know if this makes me uncomfortable or not. I was building a character in karmagen on the assumption that 750 Karma was supposed to be balanced and roughly equivalent to 400 BPs. However, as I've kept up with this thread and made this technomancer character, I'm no longer thinking that this is the case.

However, as I look over this character sheet and how I've built him, I can't help but think that he's not totally broken at all. He's a good techno, but he's also diversified enough so that he's not a total liability as a runner. For his specialties his pools are quite large, but for other things they are reasonable.

So I'm feeling ambivalent about karmagen. I think in my next campaign, I'll give my players their choice of chargen system, and if they go with BPs I may give them an additional 50 BPs or so to try and close the gap a bit.
Cthulhudreams
Aug 13 2008, 12:58 AM
Anyone who took 450 BP vs 750 karma is some sort of moron.
Glyph
Aug 13 2008, 02:31 AM
Yeah, sounds like 750 Karma is the equivalent of much more than 400 or even 450 BP. People saying "I don't feel the urge to min-max as much" would probably feel the same way if they had 500 BP. It's not that karma-gen itself encourages it, but that characters have enough points to get everything they want without having to compromise in other areas. And you can still have powergamer builds, but they won't look as min-maxed because they will have a bunch of secondary skills, and have their weak areas shored up.

Question from looking at the "mundane" build - does karma-gen do away with the normal limits on how much you can spend on Attributes? I mean, under the BP system, that much in Attributes would run 320 BP.
Intro
Aug 13 2008, 03:15 AM
QUOTE (Glyph @ Aug 12 2008, 10:31 PM) *
Question from looking at the "mundane" build - does karma-gen do away with the normal limits on how much you can spend on Attributes? I mean, under the BP system, that much in Attributes would run 320 BP.

It's the same as BP - no more than half, plus allowances for metatypes to boost their attributes higher. So for 750 you get 375 karma for attributes. But from the example in the book, it looked like edge and karma might be included in that. But yeah, you can definitely have much higher stats this way.
AngelisStorm
Aug 13 2008, 05:29 AM
That's just to wierd. We're talking about over a hundred extra BP. The game designers must have a rationale for choosing 750pts. It would be rude to assume that they just pulled the number 750 out of their bums.

And why bother having a rule like "you can't spend over half your karma total on stats," if you get get 5's across the board anyway? Can you imagine the power builds with that many extra points? If we're building combat monsters now, think about what will be built when people don't have to worry about really running out of points.
Ancient History
Aug 13 2008, 05:46 AM
This was discussed over in the Runner's Companion thread, but it basically boils down to metahumans maximizing an attribute - the cost for a troll to max out Body or Strength at chargen is murderous with Karma because of the geometric increase, unlike in BP chargen. For players and GMs that want to use KarmaGen for characters closer to BPgen, I'd suggest 600 Karma - but be aware there might be some issues with metahumans with attributes over 6.
Cthulhudreams
Aug 13 2008, 06:27 AM
The problem is the entire karma system punishes people who want to have very high attributes (or high anything really), over a lower more diverse set of stats and skills.

Its most noticeable with trolls - because they have the highest states. Trolls are utterly smashed by it smashed by it. (Assuming of course they decide to go for high stats in str and bod. If they just settle for middling stats here and put the extra points into.. whatever.. they suddenly become fricking awesome.)

Dropping the karma costs to 500-600, charging 2xBP for metahuman races and adding their racial modifiers after stat selection is probably the best solution.
KCKitsune
Aug 13 2008, 08:25 AM
OK everybody, I've been playing around with Daegaan's character generator, and while it does humans well, it doesn't work at all with Metahumans/sapient creatures.

Also while it does skills, attributes, and spells well, it totally fails with Complex Forms and Foci/Bound Spirits. You'll have to do that by hand.

nuyen.gif is also messed up, but it's set on a ratio of each Karma point will give you 1667 nuyen.gif instead of 2500.
ElFenrir
Aug 13 2008, 08:44 AM
Well, given some time I'm sure a oiled-up karma generator will be out. It will be nice, as otherwise, while I can do math no problem and it's just a lot of adding and subtracting, having a calculator on hand with you have a large number of points is always nice, because it is easy to miss a few things. I usually take the calculator and re-add everything at the end of it all.

I suppose with any system, as always, YMMV. I find 750 karma to be just perfect, since the extra 100-150 ends up going to things like positive qualities, roundout skills and knowledge/language skills, anyway...and again, we like playing at a more semi-pro type of level on average, which I do admit it fits really nicely for.

I will be testing the troll hosing theory as well here, though. My hunter troll did have a very high Body(Strength was around a natural 7, so nothing too bad there), but we'll see how much he ends up blowing on his stats when i convert him over.
tsuyoshikentsu
Aug 13 2008, 10:51 AM
Well, if the baseline is that things shouldcost about (BP cost x 150-200%), any non-maxed ability loses out over 5. Which means this system is GREAT for humans and terrible for trolls, orcs, Infected, etc.
Rasumichin
Aug 13 2008, 06:57 PM
QUOTE (Cthulhudreams @ Aug 13 2008, 07:27 AM) *
The problem is the entire karma system punishes people who want to have very high attributes (or high anything really), over a lower more diverse set of stats and skills.


Exactly.
Basically, it is the antithetic opposite of BP gen, where hyperspecialized builds are rewarded because they can easily round out their weaknesses after the game starts, while they have covered the expensive softmaxing stuff beforehand.

I wonder wether the priority system would fall somewhere in the middle, but on top of my head, i'd assume it to be just an easier, but therefore less flexible version of BP generation, with the same side effects.



QUOTE
Its most noticeable with trolls - because they have the highest states. Trolls are utterly smashed by it smashed by it. (Assuming of course they decide to go for high stats in str and bod. If they just settle for middling stats here and put the extra points into.. whatever.. they suddenly become fricking awesome.)


So instead of previous editions' elephant troll sams, we now have an invasion of anorexic whimp trolls.
Now i understand why their height and weight were retconned downwards. grinbig.gif
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.
Dumpshock Forums © 2001-2012