I choose to build my character in this order:

--Purchase attributes
--Choose metatype

By my reading, this would allow me to buy up attributes at the same cost as a human, then have the metatype increase various minimum attributes (and therefore the attributes themselves) later at no cost besides that of the metatype. This certainly appears to work if I buy qualities after abilities and create an Infected; does Dumpshock concur with my reading that it also works with metatype?

Also, what is Dumpshock's opinion on the game impact if it does?

Its 10BP per attribute whether its 1->2 as a human, or 5->6 as a troll (strength for example). Whats your point?

Edit: Dur, teach me to read the thread title.



No, as Max below me said, metatypes change your attribute costs, so, obviously you can't change your metatype after purchasing attributes without recalculating the costs.

Besides, how would you list that?

Body 1 -> 2 = 6 karma.
Troll for X karma. Now, did you just waste 6 karma because troll minimum is 5? Thats how I'd call it if you tried to cheese the system like that.

No it definedly doesn't work that way.
That part you quoted is more about the fact that there is no set order in witch you do a character, you can go back and forth with buying skills,atributes,qualities and recources.
But ofcource you have to choose your metatype before buying your atributes, becouse it affects the cost of those atributes or you can of cource recalculate the cost of your atributes when you decide to make the character an elf or what ever.

Not in karmagen.

I would have to disagree.

Since there is no cost for metatype under the karma-based gen system, you still have to buy the stats.

Since you have to buy stats after picking metatype anyway, there is no advantage to buy human stats, become orc, then buy orc stats.

The supposed advantage is this:
Human buys strength 2 for 6 karma (1->2).

Then chooses to be troll, troll has minimum 5 strength. He claims he now would get 6 strength. (18 karma usually).

I say he bought strength 1 -> 2, and so it wouldn't count for 5->6.

I agree that any karma spent on attributes below the racial minimum is karma lost, so there's no benefit to doing it that way.

Why? Where's the rule justification?

And why does this not work the same way as the Infected?

Because the cost from raising from 1 to 2 isn't enough to raise it from 5 to 6. So unless you pay the rest of the cost you don't get the point.

The whole thing about doing character creation in any order assumes you're going to make the appropriate changes elsewhere so the math still adds up. I can't say if Infected are different, because I don't know the rules for them. But I'd assume if they're an exception it'll be because you make a normal Metahuman and then apply a disease to them, which grants certain boosts and certian penalties.

For example you can't pick the In Debt Quality, then decide to spend your gear money, go back and change your Negative Quality to something else and keep the extra Nuyen.

Rule justification is in the costs listed for karmagen.

Improving an attribute by one costs 3x new rating.

New rating is 2, when you're human, so costs 6 karma.

You then choose to be a troll, it says you begin with minimum attribute ratings for the race, so you get your 5 strength. You haven't spent 6x3=18karma to raise it to 6, so it isn't 6, and by going around trying to cheat the system, you've actually lost 6 karma instead.

Oenone basically has it right. You pick your mtahuman race before attributes because that's how you're born. The infected and drake characters are different because that's a template applied to your existing metahuman.

Basically, you're trying to get something for almost nothing with your system, and that's neither balanced, nor what the rules allow for.

It works excatly the same way, first you choose your race(including being infedted or not) and then you buy your atributes, there is no munching work-around for this.
If you do it the other way around then you recalculate the cost of your atributes based on your new minimums.

But there's no rule that says that, whereas there IS one that lets you reorder.

Except, by the way the costs are worded. THe cost is 3x NEW RATING.

That means, you have to keep track of what you improved, and to what rating. IT isn't just +1 strength 6 karma. Its raise strength from 1 to 2, 6 karma.

When your strength becomes 5 due to a different race, you honestly think strength 1->2 for 6 karma means your strength becomes 6 now?


Or, even though your jumping around, you still have to follow the instructions for each step, and under attribute it happens to say, "Characters begin with the minimum attribute ratings defined by their race/metatype."

The fact is that metahuman attributes are *not* modifiers to the base human stats (i.e. Trolls are not +4 strength, -2 cha, etc, as it was in SR1-3, they're a minimum of 5, max 10 at chargen)

The infected Qualities (not true races) modify your racial stats. A troll ghoul will get plusses and ms applied *after* you've decided their stats to begin with.

Order doesn't matter, race raises atribute minimums and maximums not the current values so if you make the character as a human and then decide to make her an elf you recalculate the cost of your abilities based on the new minimums.

This is supposed to be funny, yes? If you later choose to be a metahuman, you will have to recalculate your attributes (and recheck validity).

Balance? Troll>Ork>Elf>Dwarf.

Oh and personally I suspect the game impact is pretty much that balance gets hurled out of the nearest window, shortly followed by a large piano and maybe some anvils too. Depending on which metatype you're trying to tack on that way.

Regarding the Infected qualities - can anyone provide a rules quote as to if the Infected attribute modifiers apply before or after determining advancement costs? If there is no quote available, can one of the developers give an answer? I can easily argue it both ways, & it is important for me at the moment.

Id say before becose they affect the attribute minimums and maximums not the current rating. so first you select the characters race and then whether or not she's infected, after that you start raising your attributes.

Edit.Tarantula got the quote i based my post.

RC, 76-77, "Players can create Infected characters using the standard character generation method presented in Shadowrun, Fourth Edition. After a metatype or metavariant is chosen, the player picks the appropriate Infected quality (see p. 79), pays the appropriate BP cost, and adjusts her Attribute maximums and minimums according to the Infected Attribute Modifiers Table (p. 79) to reflect her new post-human limits. She may then continue on with buying her attributes, skills, equipment, and other qualities."

In which case Infected work just like a slightly longer version of the normal pick your metatype step. Which means you still have to pay more for boosting the stats at character creation. Which only seems fair as you're getting a whole bunch of abilities added in.

Except the whole thing gets muddied up by changing the order you do it in.

At least it's clear for BP... *sigh*

Which is why you have to re-do the costs. Which is one of the two downsides of Karma gen, the other being it makes stronger characters.

It really doesn't. You're trying to make it get muddied, when it really isn't at all.

Would it make you feel better if I said "it gets more muddied to me?"

If your trying to get something for nothing your probably doing it wrong. Or trying to justify doing something you 'd like to do. Don't bother trying to to look for rules justifications. If you want to get cheap attribute raises, go for it. You can play the game however you want.

Usually, in BP and karma build systems, if there is a choice between the expensive way and the cheap complicated way, the expensive way is probably what's intended.

The simplist way for me to help you make sense of it, is to keep track of your karma spending like I said.

For example.
Human 0 karma
Strength 1->2 6 karma.
Troll 0 karma.

Now, your strength doesn't go up to 6, why? because you bought strength 1->2. Obviously this doesn't help you, so you just delete the wasted bit, and start off with.

Troll 0karma

Well, I'm looking at it like, apparently, it was in past editions. (Which I wasn't around for.)

Yeah, in past editions, you bought your attributes, and then the metatype added on to that.

This time, you start with the minimums, and karma hurts you here (but you get the race for free).

Or, you can go BP, and start with minimums, and pay the same 10bp per attrib point across the board.

Yeah, but the frustrating thing is that it makes no sense. In karmagen, there's really no reason why humans shouldn't have a six and the rest straight fives, but trolls have to pay lots to up the stats they're supposed to be good at.`

The metahuman we are talking here will be at least close to an average attribute of 5, too - trolls get a rebate of about 80 karma, enough to shuffle a few points into body and strength.

they don't actually get 80 karma. they're just allowed to spend an extra 80 karma from what they already have on attributes at chargen.

To get an Attribute to 5 costs 42 Karma. To raise it from there to 7 costs 39 more Karma. Trolls start out with the base of 5 (I am assuming - I don't have the book), so a troll with 7 Body and 7 Strength is still 6 points of Karma ahead of the human with 5 Body and 5 Strength. That's really not that bad at all.

Glyph:
Unless of course the character is making a mage or similar and is just after the freebie body and str points. More a problem w/ intuition tradition orcs than trolls. But troll casters abusing the freebie stats aren't that uncommon. Especially since there's no penalty for raising a stat with a lower cap penalty.

In which case, said troll makes out like a bandit. There's a serious problem with getting attribute points and higher caps for free in a game where attribute+skill is the fundamental dicecap. In the past, you could argue humans could make it up with better equipment bonuses, but now the BBB is big on all equipment is available for everybody w/ thriving troll and dwarf markets.

From a numbers perspective, there's zero reason to play a human. Unless you like having smaller potential dicepools in everything just because you weren't smart enough to take the freebie racial raised/unpenalized lower caps to match your 'class selection'.

Or take human because you want the consistently highish dicepools with no negatives. Or for RP reasons. Or cause you want to.

Yeah, remember that a Troll Ghoul nets me 9 Bod at 70 karma... but a max CHA of 2.

Body 4 and Strength 3 are 42 Karma, while Edge 2 is 6 Karma. So an ork has a net gain of 36 Karma, while suffering lower maximums for Charisma, Logic, and Edge. And an intuition-based mage will be unlikely to ever raise Body or Strength up past what the normal range for a human is, so the higher maximums there aren't really doing them much good. Yeah, they come out ahead a bit, but not to the point where I would dismiss the idea of a human intuition-based mage out of hand, or to where I would consider them unbalanced.

No that's a fair point of view. I just consider giving an orc an ~5% bonus in karma not insignificant. Especially if you add in their natural low light vision advantage (how many BP/karma is that worth in qualities) which reduces the 'need' for cybereyes and the like. If it was closer to 1 or 2% it wouldn't be as problematic.

What is a 'mere' 36 karma...
Enough to push both wil and magic from 5->6 over the human (you're telling me that's not significant)
enough to buy magic up to 4 and bring edge up to the humans 2.
Approximately enough to buy human looking (10) and magic 3.
90,000Y of gear
An extra rank3 skillgroup
A rank5 skill
2 rank1 skillgroups + 4 skills (more cheap skills), this is important because of the next point and avoiding defaulting in a well-rounded character.

Also, the orc can spend more on attributes because the +40karma cap doesn't specify that it can only be spent on body or str. And the game encourages having top attributes and low ranks in a skill (just so it's not being defaulted) over having average/good skills and average attributes. Also because it's cheaper to advance/specialize skills in game than attributes typically when you're only netting 4-8 karma a session.

I think you could argue that they're the 'The light which burns twice as bright, burns half as long' meta of the game. (gotta love bladerunner). But their 'accelerated decrepitude' problems pretty much never come into play. When was the last time you saw mission sets with a year between runs or the like.

I just wish there was more in the system to discourage this kind of minmaxing.

There is an easy fix for karmagen. Increase orks to 25 BP (and drop elves to 25 BP) and then add racial minimums after buying stats - while charging twice BP cost in karma for playing a meta type.

Then while your at it drop the pool of karma you get from 750 to about 600.

Its a seriously easy fix - and bumping orks to 25 BP is a good idea in the general case.