This is exactly the problem Glyph and I were discussing. Since the characters are more powerful, there's less of a need to min/max. Under BP, you simply didn't have the points to have high attributes, since you were restricted to 200 BP for attributes. Under Karmagen, you have 375 + Double racial cost to work on those attributes with. So, not only do you not have to pay for a higher potential stat, you get more points to put towards it.

That's because the freelancer also dabbles a bit on Dumpshock.

I've seen this phenomena happen plenty of times in my own sheets. In fact, here on DS I nearly took part in a PBP game that fell through, and that game called for prime runner level PCs built with 400 bp, 300 karma and a big fat wad of nuyen. I ended up building an Elf Druidic Magician that had points thrown all over the place. I mean, really, I had already made him a Grade 6 Initiate with Force 4 Centering and Shielding Foci and 9 Reaction, so what harm would it do to build up his strength and Piloting skills up to talented amateur level?

Anyway, the 200 bp attribute limit and racial bonuses are something that I wish many gms would look at more carefully, particularly when creating lower powered games. I've seen many people decide that the only way to limit the presence of combat monsters is to cut the bp and nuyen-per-bp totals when in reality that just nerfs everyone and encourages people to play metas. After all, the metatype cost is essentially just buying pre-determined attribute packages at a discount, so being a meta is a huge advantage in a game in which attributes are suddenly by far the most cost effective chargen option. It's even worse when they cut the attribute limit down as well-- all of a sudden, humans are struggling to have a 4 or 5 in their defining talents without utterly gimping everything else they do. You end up with a Sixth World in which the humans tend to have glaring weaknesses and the trolls can all cheerfully afford 4 logic while still walking around in armored jackets. It's a huge part of why I always advocate limiting dicepool totals rather than progression methods when creating a lower power game. If people end up with points to spare, afterwards, great; blow 'em on Knowledge skills.

But from a mechanical stand point they are not stupider, it costs the same amount of BP/Karma to raise a trolls logic/charisma as it does a human, they just how a lower cap which for the majority of characters is not that big of a deal. Unless you are a face or a magician, troll doesn't really penalize you in any way.

So why should one character, a human street samurai, be mechanically worse then a troll street samurai(by a fairly large margin) even though they both had the same starting resources. The extra edge is good, but not near enough to come close to the huge body and strength bonuses, and the reach, and the dermal armor.

Roleplaying is fine and good, but one of the goals of shadowrun is to survive, and you owe it to your team to create a competent character, it shouldn't feel like you are shooting yourself in the foot because you want to play a human.

and real life people have a habit of finding jobs they are suited for, given time and different attempts...

so maybe one find a higher percentage of trolls being samurai in SR?

is there any numbers in the books about how common a metatype is for a specific job?

No, i really don't think that is what he means

Taking a troll and just going by the BASE attributes and raising the low points creates a freak. A troll with a body of 6 (racial base attribute+1) is a very very SICKLY troll as the average troll have a body of 8 or perhaps 9. maxed out trolls might have around 12 and that IS extreme and more rare.

If a metahuman with a higher base attribute that a regular human have a +3 to their attribute they would, SHOULD have at least ONE point higher in that attribute compared to a normal human that have a +0 - and your average human should have an average attribute of 3.

Unless they have an explanation of being extreme couch potatoes or sickly in some way.

Being the OP, I really should have posted before now... problems in my personal life. This thread sure grew quickly! I REALLY appreciate everyone's input, and look forward to reading further insights as the thread grows. I've learned a lot already

The problem is that the troll isn't sickly at all. He still enjoys better health than most humans will ever see.

This issue really shows its head when you are playing an otaku or mage. By picking a metahuman, you're able to have several dump stats, and still have good all-around attributes. This frees up points for magic/resonance and spells/complex forms. If you really want to get into it, you could even buy the Impaired Attribute flaw a few times, and save even more points that way. You're not a tank, but you've got magic to make up for it. Basically, you're a large human with superior stats.

I tend to agree with Cain and the others in his camp. Metatypes should cost in Karmagen. Whether they should cost full BP x 2, reduced BP x 1, or whatever remains to be seen.

What would be a good way to tweak Karmagen so the character it made was equivalent to a 400 BP character? Could you just reduce the Karma given, or is that too simplistic?

600 Karma is closer to a 400 BP character. That's approximate, there are still builds in either system that are better relative to each other at that level.

Thank you.

De nada.

I recently made a character with BP and then with karmagen, and I was surprised how cheap skills and attributes were if you were aiming for average values (mostly 3s in both, some 4s and one 5 in attributes). I stopped at 595 karma, for concept reasons.

Yea sure, by the numbers, but not compared to other trolls, which is a more accurate way of looking at it. i mean, seriously. a troll with minimum strength and body is equivalent as a human with STR 1 / BOD 1. How often to you meet people with such low attributes? Sure, they can be frail, old or have a serious disease but people with such low stats are extremely rare and are either children, old people or very sick people.

Sure, points wise it might be a good thing to do but the character will be a circus freak or mentioned in medical journals or an recent escapee from some gulag.

I just have a hard time seeing people with such mediocre attributes survive in the shadows - one should at least raise it one point above minimum and call them frail.

Nor can I agree that they enjoy "better health" since they burn more food to fuel their bodyframe, larger mass to lug around, so no, the only thing is that if they sustain an equal kind of damage (gunshot, stabbed) from an enemy then the troll have a slightly higher chance of dropping the damage a few steps.

A bullet's DV doesn't care if the troll is, compared to other trolls, more frail - all it cares is what the damage resistance looks like. If a human with body 6 can survive in the shadows, then so can a troll with body 6. It's not a mediocre attribute at all.

makes me ponder if not the attributes should be a "above or below average" kind of value.

as in, the average is 0, that is it neither adds to or subtracts from the test.

but a attribute above normal, +1 and higher, adds to the test.

and one below average, -1 and so on, subtracts.

but that still only works within a single kind. just like how a damage scale built for people breaks down when applied to large vehicles...

Do you really think a pixie character with above average body (say 3) should receive a bonus to damage resistant checks while a troll with below average body (say 6) should get a penalty?

What's so wrong or difficult at simply looking at the actual value of an attribute? Those who have a higher body, no matter how they got it, be it cyberware, metatype, or spells and powers, are better at withstanding damage.

Which wasn't my point. My point was the roleplaying aspect of using dumpstats - there should be an explanation for why a person with minimum stats manage to sruvive in teh shadows and WHY they run the shadows with such things.

A human with minimum body attribute is 1 A troll equivalent is 5. To other of their metatype they would most likely appear as sickly individuals since average attribute for their metatype is 3 and 8.

Lets assume that You and I have average stats of 3, regular average healthy individuals, now imagine a BOD 1 person...That's when we are talking extreme cases of anorexia or death camp survivors - And they are out in the Shadows...

The same would go for trolls if they face someone with BOD 5 vs their own BOD 8.

I dont have a problem with such characters but there should be a damn good explanation to their minimized attribute other than "I wanted a minmaxed troll mage".

Let's say I am an individual with very low strength - for a healthy adult male. Now, I have, for whatever reason ever, to compete with 6 years old in weight lifting. Now, why shouldn't I succeed there, even if every other adult male could clean my clock? The 6 year olds are still weaker, no matter how trained. A task they can handle, I can handle with ease still.

Even a sickly troll is more robust than a trained human. Just as a weak elephant is still much stronger than a human.

Actually no, I would not think so. An average Caucasian man is usually larger than an average East Asian man (same when you compare a troll to a human). Does that mean that a normal sized Caucasian man would look askance at an East Asian sized Caucasian man?

The rules don't really back that point of view up, though. The hacker and street shaman archetypes are both characters with the equivalent of Body: 1/Strength: 1 for humans. Even the gunslinger adept, a more physically active archetype, has the equivalent of Body: 2/Strength: 2. If you look back to SR3, you will find that the badass, uzi and sword-wielding troll combat mage has the equivalent of Body: 1/Strength: 2.

I have always seen 1 as the lowest functional Attribute, representing someone underdeveloped in that area. But considering that 6 Karma will improve it to 2, and 9 more Karma will improve it to 3, I don't see it as being an invalid/developmentally disabled person, etc. because I can't see someone going from invalid to average in just two or three runs.

Not to mention that going by the "3 is average" standard (which many people, myself included disagree with), the Troll with Body 8 would be notably above average.


And to reinforce my point, your argument, along with nearly every other for the metatype not having a cost in Karma generation is based on roleplay aspects, which has jack shit to do with mechanics. Roleplaying varies between tables, while mechanics are the hard, consistent rules that make the game work. Game balance should never be based off the perceived roleplaying standard, as there is no such standard.

Not for a Troll!

The problem here is, that troll still has a huge Body in relation to the human.

Look at it this way: The human you describe would have 9 hit points. The troll would have 11. Even though a "normal" troll would have 12, the difference isn't as great as the difference between the human and the troll with a dumpstat.

Out in the shadows, no one cares where your stats are in relation to the rest of your metatype. I'm personally running a Body 2/Strength 1 mage. If she were a troll, those stats would jump considerably, enough so that they'd stop being weak points.

Don't forget, not only do metahumans get these stats for free, they get more points to spend on them. A troll can spend 455 karma on attributes, while a human can only spend 375. And certain metatypes can spend even more! Given the power of attributes in this system, that amounts to a huge advantage.

Yes, actually. A Body 8 Troll is equivalent to a Body 4 Human, in terms of metatype average.

Ok I had to throw my hat into this slog fest only to make one point.

@ Ancient - I understand that what you are talking about is more about a RP aspect with the karma gen system. However if everyone doesn't sit down at a table and take 5-10 hours before game time to create all of their characters together and make sure they are all balanced then there will be abuse. If your logic is based on the maturity and RP of players I think you might have forgotten about public SR games and how infantile some people can be when roll playing in general. Most tables will not sit down and create character balance because Character gen just takes way to damn long in SR4. Generally it comes down to people submitting their character builds to the GM and the GM saying yes or no to the character. However a GM cannot always see how broken a character can be and once they are able to skirt their character past the GM and then it becomes hard for a GM to gimp the character (as he will generally catch flack from the player.)

Yes in theory if you all sat down and created a perfect balance then the whole free meta type based on background and RP aspects would not be an issue. However this is not the case for the majority of the players, and when people are doing the straight hardcore math why not be an orc, troll, or elf and just take all of those free attributes? People's arguments are the fact that the system can easily be abused, and not that you can sit down with your players and squeeze the imbalance out of what is obviously a huge potential imbalance in the system (mathmatically speaking.)

Plus, Body does things other than determine how well you can take a punch. A "frail" troll with Weak Immune System, for example, will have as many dice to fight off the infection as the average human plus the advantage of an extra box on their physical track. From a roleplaying perspective, such things don't bother me too much, but in terms of min-maxing, trolls are indeed at a definite advantage in many ways.

You know, reading this thread again, but it almost seems the problem isn't as much karmagen and free stats, but trolls. While I see elf/dwarf/ork mentioned, it's the Trolls that get the biggest part of this.

No doubt due to the Body. Strength? Meh. Really, not a fantastic stat. Ive used it as a ''character stat'' many times and pumped it, but it wasn't the most optimal thing I could have done. A troll with a 9(11) strength and a human with 5(7) strength are 2 DV apart. That's not gamebreaking in any way. The high Body seems to be the biggest factor here. (Hell, with their less Agility, they don't get as big combat die pools, anyway, as a human, elf, dwarf, or orc). Ok, you can say ''but they can take qualities and gene treatments to up their max Agility'', but the same can be said for the other races with any stat, as well.

But yeah, it seems that the troll is what comes up the most. I'm surprised it's not Orks mentioned as much, since they far and away have proven to be the catch-all awesome dude for about any occupation, with their big bonuses(one less bonus body than a troll, 2 less strength), but nowhere near as bad as penalties.

Again, since our table has that ''we play what we want because we want to play it'', it's not a problem for us.

Orks are awesome when built using BPs because of their cost-gain ratio, but since all metatypes are free under karmagen, they really ain't anything special under that system.

Seriously, all the arguments defending free metatypes are pretty lol. I mean, you could introduce a new Quality in the next sourcebook that allows the character to throw 1 million dice on every single test. Such a quality would not be a problem because any sane GM would automatically ban it from his table. That doesn't change the fact that the quality is still a dumbass idea.

Actually Orks do receive a huge benefit under Karma generation RAW, just not quite as much as the Trolls. Same goes for Dwarves. Under Karma generation, Elves receive the least benefit over Humans, but it is still a 15-Karma advantage, not including their Low-Light, without any of the negatives the other races suffer.

Eh, I think elves and dwarves are about the same. With karmagen, having a lot of bonus points in one attribute is much more useful than spreading them out across multiple attributes. Trolls are the obvious poster children of this.

Yeah the character generation system in Mutants and Masterminds kind of worked under Ancient's rationale. Granted the two kinds of systems in both design and intent are different but their philosophies are similar. Why prevent characters from being able to do what they? If you establish certain maximums on players, than give them what they need to play what they want. You'll find that characters don't automatically go all out to maximize everythign as much. At least that's what I found, sure I had battlesuits that were maxed damage and armor but the variability of the system was such that he had to compromise quite a bit to jump those stats, it didn't save him from a mental blast, getting frozen in place, and so on. I just didn't see as much min-maxing as I do in Shadowrun (at least on the boards).
I can understand why that's the case, Shadworun is a much more lethal game, there's a tremendously higher amount of detail, and its gritty and the developers in M&M come out and say, "This could be broken. GMs prolly shouldn't allow it on the grounds that this can be broken." On the other hand my players for the most part will optimize out something and just hope that their weaknesses can be covered by other members of the group. They played to their concepts, we have more than half the group as humans and no trolls. The one sasquatch we have is the bane of the subtle infiltration characters or those who don't want to leave a trail, "I'm sorry mam did you say a ten foot white sasquatch blew open the side of that Renraku facility?". I think if you have the world operate as it seems to by the RAW, vampires, ghouls, AIs, Sasquatches, Nagas, etc will be more of a nuisance than other Shadowrunners in the group want to deal with,
I've heard conversations during group chargen like this.
"Dude I want to play a sasquatch, I'll be like a wookie but with Commlink translators. Well if you're playing that I'll l play a pixie. Wait wait wait, you want to be the running team with the sasquatch and the pixie? How many of those are there? We'll get pinned down and tracked way way way to easily, why are you wanting to be a pixie? Well cause they're cute. Oh well play a dwarf or gnome or something, they're adorable and common."

Not a word about stats, not a word about min/maxing but arguments from practicality. Maybe I have great players but I'm betting most players operate like this if their GM maintains world consistency.

Not really. Then the other players will step up and say,"Gee, how does the sasquatch and pixie get pinned down and tracked so easily? Distinctive Style? OK, what the hell "advance character options" mean? Not defined?" I am betting most players operate like this when their GM maintains world consistency through RAW.

One of the untold joys of freelancing is the quiet race for developers to create a fool-proof system, and the gamers to make bigger fools of themselves by subtracting more and more common sense from their lives. I think somehow gaming has evolved gamers to the point where they look for any possible ambiguity or unreasonable explanation or carefully-constructed blindness.

Bah, if gamers had the kind of common sense you're advocating, you'd be out of a job, because we'll all be playing diceless freeform games.

Its been the case so far. How does the sasquatch get pinned down and tracked so easily? Well in a world where there's 5000 Sasquatches, imagelink everything, camera drones everywhere and eye witnesses with instant communication devices word of mouth happens near instantaneously. When the Azzie hackers are wanting to track the perpetrators of the paydata theft down, and they see a sasquatch in one of the billion manners of ways in which observational information can be processed, it won't be hard to figure out who it is. Distinctive Style is all well and good but it still doesn't change rarity of a given metatype. It'd work the same way if you're a changelings with octopus arms or some very obvious and unusual observable trait. No one in my group has complained about it, no one has even debated the logic of it, and I don't think my players are so outside of the norms for gaming groups that they can't at least offer an anecdotal account. I agree with AH, it seems with players logic has gone right out the window when looking for ways to scrutinize and beat the system. I think alot of the reason 4th edition D&D has ended up how it has (that is completely insane about some things) is because the maths in the game have become the core precept by which one determines the validity for the system.
Again trolls, maybe free in Karmagen and the optimal choice straight out of the BBB but I've got no trolls in my group right now, and that's out of 8 players.

There is no "rarity" modifier to RAW searches. Or other methods of tracking other people down. The same can be done if the character was a human. When the Azzie hackers are wanting to track the perpetrators of the paydata theft down, and they see a sasquatch in one of the billion manners of ways in which observational information can be processed, it will be just as hard to figure out who it is. At most, you are looking for at a lower Threshold. You are looking at logic from a RL view, not per RAW. Maths determines the validity of the game because the game mechanics are based on maths.

If you are running Karmagen, then while the optimal choice for BBB may be troll, using RC, the optimal choices are any shapeshifter. And there are 2 such characters in my group, not counting the other meta characters like Dryad, Harumen and Fomori. There is only 1 single human and he is Infected and not created with Karmagen.

Right the rules don't take that into account. You're correct, and missing the point, the RAW is more than just stats and maths it has to do with world consistency, story elements, etc etc. Those are as much part of a game as the rules. When you've got collated data from a given selection of runners and there are strange and obvious outliers, than while it would matter IRL, It'd matter in the Shadowrun world too. If you don' take that in account in modifying the pools or lowering the thresholds than your missing the point, the world is supposed to have internal consistency and logic like our world and the game exists to approximate that world and feel only in so far as those types of things can be modeled in a relatively easily understood fashion. Once you start taking the rules out of the context of the world, you've functionally ruined their intent. You're right those races are optimal, that's true. And its been brought up in my group that they're optimal, but people still don't care because they don't want to roleplay a Shapeshifter when they've got this nifty idea for an Ancient, or they don't want to be a Harumen in Seattle cause its just weird and uncommon and will get you noticed. Rules like public awareness for example are meant to simulate this but at the end of the day it just flat makes sense in the game world around which the rules are modeled.

No, you are confusing Canon with RAW. World consistency depends on RAW. Canon is only one manifestion of RAW. It is when you deviate from RAW (often by invoking the GM discretion rule) that you have trouble. While strange and obvious outliers would matter IRL, it would not matter in the Shadowrun world if the RAW does not say so. The internal consistency of the game world rests on RAW. It is when you try to impose RL world logic on the SR world that things break down. You are forcing SR to approximate RL which it does not necessarily have to. Once you start adding intent to the rules, you have taken the rules out of context. Rules like public awareness simulate the ease of which the public know of the characters but at the end of the day it only makes sense in the game world around which the rules are the foundation.

No, the rules are there to inform on the fiction. There's no confusion, its an issue of intention. if you intend to bring about a certain of fiction or feel in a game than the rules ought to reflect that. With that understanding however, is that rules are modeling fiction, they aren't meant to be realistic, if you really wanted a realistic simulation game, than you ought to be running every bullet with ballistics physics and call it a day. There are games like that by the way, I can't remember the name of the game Freedom Phoenix or something like that, which was a space sim that used real mathmatics for everything you'd need to use math for. It was the most realistic and complicated RPG I've ever seen. The designer's intent was to design an RPG that math and physics majors could enjoy and utilize their skills in, and he succeeded at his attempt.

Shadowrun isn't designed to be that game, I believe Shadowrun is meant to be a gritty near-future cyberpunkish game with infusion of fantasy elements. Now I don't want to bog this down in the debate about what shadowrun is, but I want to say the intent of the designers cannot be fully reflected in the mechanics of the rules. The Cannon as you're stating is part and parcel in the rules and vice versa. They're equally necesarry for the presentation of the game and they inform on one another, there was a BP cost for metatype prolly to balance what they justifiably had by Cannon but the decision-making aparatus in humans aren't perfectly in sync with math and as such the actual value of the metatype isn't reflected in the cost. I'm not forcing the rules to conform to real life at all, I'm forcing the rules to conform to Shadowrun life. If this were some other world, or I wanted a different feel to the world I'd ignore certain rules, emphasize certain other rules or add and mod things until the feel I want is achieved. I don't want a reality simulator, I want a Shadowrun simulator.

Actually there is. It's called Distinctive Style. Why do you get a bonus to find someone with a scar, pink mohawk and humanis tattoos? Because it's distinctive. Why is it distinctive? Because it's rare.

It doesn't have to be rare, it has to be distinctive. Find one Sasquatch in the middle of their communities? Rare, but not distinctive. Find one in the middle of downtown Seattle? Yeah, he's going to stand out a bit.

No, the rules are there to form the basis for the fiction. There is no issue of intention. The rules give rise to the fiction or feel in a game. With that understanding, however, is that fiction only reflects a certain possible outcome arising from the rules.

The mechanics form the bedrock and skeleton of the game. The canon of which is but one of the possible outcomes of the rules reflect the intent of the writers. The fiction fleshes out the game world but it is still hung upon the skeleton of the game system. Canon Shadowrun life conforms to the rules, but the rules do not always produce a result that reflect the canon of Shadowrun life, because canon is simply one manifestation of the RAW. RAW is the Shadowrun simulator, just that it does not always produce an effect that is canon Shadowrun, although it can and does on occasion.

Not to mention that you make a large leap in an assumptions Thadeus Bearpaw. In Shadowrun in the cannon there is a lot of talk about information through obscurity. Lets say you are a mage that uses stun bolt, lightening bolt, and mana static does that mean that you stand out? Awakened characters are very rare and mages even less so, so a mage that uses stun bolt, lightening bolt, and mana static must be simple to track (especially if the stun bolt is able to knock people out in a single blast.) I mean why not give them the quality if they are a troll mage, because a troll is not common and a mage is also not common so that would narrow it down to only a handful of troll mages who could use those spells. Is your argument that any awakened or awakened/metahuman character should take a negative quality that awards you karma or BP because they are rare as well?

If someone made the same damn sasquatch and paid it with BP by your logic you would also have to penalize them for paying through the nose for that character? You can't have it both ways and there will be people who will protest the fact that just because they want to play an infected metahuman/metavarient you are going to penalize them especially when they are using the BP system.

Again, my players haven't protested. Having in world consequences for something very unusual that doesn't require specialized knowledge to understand is unusual (like with your mage example) is both legitimate in world and makes sense given the way people work. Given the ubiquity of visual recording devices in the world, the uncommonality of Sasquatches and other points of particularity to the group makes sense. It's not punishment. Moreover; if you have a group composed of a smattering of weird metatypes, HMHVV carriers, races, etc and you don't make them stand out a little more, it just seems silly. Other than the RAW, what possible reason in world would you have for not making the group with one of the 5000 Sasquatches in it stand out more than the group with the usual metatypes. And yeah, as per the spells using a particular spell in a particular fashion or flair on it can be considered a Signature under that quality.

Because actually that statement is not even Shadowrun canon?

What my argument is that you are applying what your view of the SR world should be. However RAW does not back you up, and cannon does not say anything about it. You are imposing RL situations on a fantasy situation that does not back you up. If your point is "I feel it is better this way so I do it" thats fine, but what some people have beef with is the fact that you bring it up like there is something that supports you other then you drawing that conclusion yourself. A flair or signature something has nothing to do with what types of spells you cast, if your a mage, if your a metahuman, or if your infected. It has everything to do that every time you are spotted on camera there is something about you that is extremely noticeable and can be recognized. For instance every time you pull a run you always leave the same calling card, you scalp the people that you have killed, or you have a bald head with a tattoo of a really fat lady that dances a jig. The Joker in "The Dark Knight" always leaves a calling card, and wares the same makeup, batman always wears a very obvious suit that easily makes him stand out. Those are what you take the negative trait for, not for just being a shadowrun character.

Ok, stupid question, why isn't there a karma cost to be non-human, that would be equal to its equivalent cost if were an advantage? I thought the goal of the BP and Karma character builds is to make characters equivalent in power level.

Because the Karma system unfairly punishes you for taking high stats. High strength in particular is a high cost / low reward points sink.

There are a variety of measures to deal with that, but the one that the author elected to go with was making the race 'free' on the assumption that you'd be taking high stats.

The rationale is that metatypes, with their bonuses, have to spend more Karma to raise those Attributes. In the build point system, raising Strength from 1 to 2 for a human costs the same number of points as a troll raising his Strength from 5 to 6. In the Karma system, though, the human would pay 6 karma to raise his Strength, while the troll would pay 18 karma to raise his Strength.

The problem with that approach is that, while it's nice to not want to penalize someone playing a high-Strength troll, an Attribute of 5 is still an Attribute of 5, whether a troll or a human has it. So a troll can either keep the effectively free Body: 5 and Strength: 5 that he starts out with, raise them a bit (raising them both to 7, he would still be paying a bit less than the human would spend raising them to 5), or raise them to the roof - an option that the human doesn't even have. To counteract this, the troll does have lower caps on three mental Attributes, and requires specially-made gear for his size.

On the other hand, trolls had a BP advantage over humans in the build point system, too. You spent 40 build points, lost the human Edge bonus, and got 80 points' worth of Attribute bonuses - a net gain of 30 build points. In karma generation, they have a net gain of 78 karma (42 twice for two Attributes of 5, and -6 for not having the Edge bonus). So they come out ahead more from the starting gate, but have to pay more if they want to take full advantage of their Attribute bonus (a troll soft-maxing his Body and Strength will pay more than twice the karma that the human will).

It isn't quite fair or balanced, but I think charging them metatype cost x 2 in karma points is too far the other way. Even trolls will be behind if you do that, and an elf will not be worth playing at all (the Agility bonus and Edge loss cancel each other out, so they will essentially be paying 60 Karma for one single +2 bonus). Cthulhudreams' house rule also stipulated that metatypes would buy Attributes with karma, then apply the bonuses, which gives a bit back to them, but that winds up making those high Body/high Strength trolls cheaper than under normal karma generation.

Personally, I would not be adverse to a house ruling on this (just haven't seen one I liked yet), but it's not really as unbalanced as it looks at first glance. I guess it's hard for me to get worked up about it because karmagen is such a lavish character generation system - who cares if that ork gets a few more points here and there, my human guy still rocks!

I'd note that the Edge penalty and agility bonus only cancel each other out if they are the same value - but if you go to Agility 6 thats worth lots more than going edge 3 -> 4

So the elf going from Charisma 6 to charisma 8 is getting 45 karma points there, and if he goes from agility 5 to 6, thats another potential 18.

But the problem there is of course that elves are overpriced. Lets look at orks:

Orks pay 40 karma under that house rule, and if they go from body 4 to body 7 get 53 karma points right there, plus whatever they get for that strength attribute.

Trolls getting a startling bonus, but strength is pretty low value unless you want a troll bow.

It is of course only worth for people to make really big trolls and orks, which was my desired goal.