I have a general idea, but I'm only a beginning Dumpshocker. What are the pros and cons of each? I've noticed that I tend to be able to do more with Karmagen, give my characters more capabilities; is it like that across the board, or is it just better for the types of characters I build?

I'm especially interested in good, solid arguments designed to get a GM to allow Karmagen-made characters.

Thanks in advance!

there are no real pro's to the build point system, other than it being more or less easy to calculate the points needed for anything.
all other pros are solely with the karma system, especially as things like free spirit or something like that does not cost you points like it does with the BP system.
furthermore due to the usage of karma, you're using the same system in char gen and later in game to grow, so there's no big difference suddenly

KarmaGen is good for the high BP cost metatypes in Runner's Companion.
KarmaGen is good for characters with a wide skill choice
KarmaGen makes it kinda difficult to make characters with maxed out stats or skills

I.E I am making a AI character and it was a HUGE pain with the BP system in BBB. With KarmaGen I was able to do just about everything I wanted to with it with little compromise.

Technically, BP is supposed to encourage specialization whereas karmagen is more friendly towards generalists. But honestly, I think karmagen is even more prone to min-maxing due to the rather silly way it handles metatypes. The most effective character in karmagen is a troll with 1s in Body and Strength, though that's not counting the crazy stuff like drakes and AIs and vampires.

Build Point Generation
Pros
Linear cost makes calculations easy.
Cons
Due to scaling cost of character advancement, the linear costs of generation strongly encourage min/maxing.

Karma Generation
Pros
Identical system to character advancement eliminates min/maxing.
Encourages characters with broad range of skills.
Cons
Lack of free Knowledge skills creates characters who know very little.
No cost for playing higher-powered metatypes creates blatant & obvious imbalances.

Notes:
The developers claim that the cost of playing a metatype comes in the higher costs for increasing attributes. This is false, as I have mathematically shown multiple times. Trolls are more powerful than Humans - no debating it. Under Build Point generation, they pay for this advantage. Under Karma, they gain it for free.

750 Karma creates characters roughly the equivalent of 500 Build Points.


Overall, I strongly advise using the Build Point character generation over the Runners Companion Karma Generation. That being said, I do greatly prefer Karma Generation; the published version simply has far to many flaws to be of any use. I have my own Karma Generation system that I would suggest using. I will post it later, once I have located the file.

Notes about my personal Karma Generation:
It uses a revision of character attribute advancement. The cost is increased to New Rating x 5, so that skill groups can compete. Further, it is intended to be calculated before racial adjustments. This means it costs more for a Troll to increase it's Logic, & advances its Body on the Human's 1-6 scale, with +4 applied after. Because the entire point of Karma Generation is for a unified creation/advancement system, these changes should be made to post-generation advancement as well.

The system creates characters roughly the equivalent of 400 Build Points, sometimes slightly less due to increased Attribute costs. The characters will also usually possess more Knowledge skills than the Build Point generation.

I'm probably just going to stick with priority in my games. At least it's fast.

Karmagen does *not* discourage min/maxing. In fact, it makes it worse. See Glyph's new version of the Pornomancer for an example-- he went up to 51 dice in Seduction.

Cain, that is powergaming, not min/maxing. Min/maxing is where you optimize character generation/advancement costs. It is where you max out your Trolls Body & softmax Strength because it is cheaper with Build Points, leaving your Charisma & Logic at 1 because they are cheaper to increase with Karma.

We could go around for weeks on definitions, here. In my book, min/maxing is minimizing your weaknesses while maximizing your strengths. Even using both definitions, the Pornomancer is min/maxed, because you have to do a hell of a lot of optimizing to get to that level. Everyone's going to define these terms slightly differently.

In the meanwhile, can we agree that karmagen does *not* discourage overpowered characters, and in some cases makes them worse?

The karma gen system just takes the min out of min/maxing

Anyways, I personally prefer the karma gen system, but I do it under the explicit house rule that metatype and racial BP costs convert over to karma costs. I don't think it's fair to double metatype costs like everything else(a troll should be able to get a high body and strength for less investment then a human), but there needs to be some cost associated with the metatype to make up for the fact that there is some advantages.

Basically, if you fix the metatype costs, the big difference between the two systems is that the BP system encourages you to either min or max everything(either a 1 or a 5 in attributes, 0 or 4 in skills,ect), while the karma system doesn't penalize you for spreading out your skills a little and having lots of attributes/skills in the middle ranges.

I love that the weakness with the BP system is actually a weakness with the karma system, or heck, just the attempt to feebly mash two systems together badly.

Karmagen is crap, BP can be easily rescued and many of the problems avoided by a few simple changes

1) Give people BP instead of karma for progress, and let them advance with BP

2) Halve the price of skills across the board

3) ??? (Okay actually just translate things that can be brought with 'karma only' i.e. initiation straight across to a BP cost. The huge discount they are getting on points of magic past 6 makes up for the cost increases on initiation)

4) Profit from a well balanced advancement system!

Its really not very hard. I have no idea why BP advancement wasn't in Runners Companion. It makes the BP system much more robust and improves other facets - like removing the 1 or 5 tendency in stats that is created by the knowledge you are going to karmagen. In BP only, a 3 suddenly becomes a very valid choice.

So yeah, karma advancement is dumb and karmageneration is worse as it makes hugely overpowered characters consistently, because its presented as being on par with 400 BP, when it patently isn't.

Cain, the Karma generation does not encourage overpowered characters any more than ~500 Build Points. Characters built with 750 Karma will always be more powerful by far than the equivalent built with 400 Build Points.

Care to explain how I listed a weakness in Build Points as the same weakness in Karma?

I hate Trollmans advancement system for multiple reasons, & would not suggest it. I may elaborate later when I have time.

I thought it was obvious



Let me re-write your point here, substituting 'scaling costs of character advancement' for 'the karma system' and 'linear costs of generation' for the BP system, as that is what you are referring to.

So we have



Which is about as clear a statement as you can get to the root of the problem - its the karma system, not the BP system.

Comparing BP to Karmagen

1) BP has a (mostly) linear cost progression. Karmagen cost has an geometric progression. But geometric costs do not exceed the 1 BP : 2 karma ratio until 7. And this drawback is mostly moot because of the saving accrued from karmagen's free racial costs.

2) Karmagen has no free Knowledge skills, hence very few Karmagen characters even have Knowledge skills. This places greater emphasis on Contacts. Which may or may not be a good thing.

Not exactly true. Drakes and Vampires in karmagen cost a lot (dracomorphs and infection are not racial costs). In fact, I have an Infected build that costs more in karmagen than in BP.

Clarification: a freelancer (me, who happened to write the damn'd thing) claims that the cost of playing a metatype comes in to the higher costs for attributes over 6, because of a general understanding of play psychology.

Muspellsheimr has made the observation that metahuman characters who choose to have exceptionally low attributes can be construed to have a comparative advantage over human characters in most cases because of the metahuman attribute modifiers. Which is totally true as long as you consider humans as your default or baseline (and, since this is purely mathematical, ignoring all the real reasons players might want to play a given metatype) and don't mind playing the weakest metahumans in the universe to prove the point.

Which in itself is a problem. 400 BP is enough to break the system, so 750 karma makes it even worse. Even at a lower karma total, you can create absurdly overpowered characters in karmagen. If anything, it forces them to become more one-dimensional than before.

Personally, I'm all for Karmagen, and we started using it exclusively. We like the fact that it leads toward more rounded, believable characters. Is it because it gives you a little more to work with? Perhaps, but we aren't as worried about the ''whys'' as we are with the result. The result is more balanced, believable characters with realistic ratings in their attributes and skills(for us), and it's enough.

BPs tend to be faster, though, IMO(though still a bit time consuming), and I might use them for someone very new to the game. I don't hate BP or anything, but I just have a preference for Karmagen.

Here are little things I notice BP leaning toward the min-maxing:

-Heavy use of soft-max. Because it costs a lot to max an attribute under BP(easily enough houseruled away, to be fair-we lowered the cost ourselves), folks might not want to max one-even if it makes sense for their character. Their ''Super-Ultra-Genius Dwarf Inventor whose a Super Genius'' might end up with a 5 logic(while genius, a bit below the above description-or, if they got a +1 Logic Max through qualities or whatnot, a 6-either way, 1 right below the max), just because ''they don't want to pay the 25 BP to max it, and it's only going to cost 18 in the game, and that 25 BP is worth a lot more here.'' Under Karmagen? Sure, the limit of 1 attribute at the max to start is still there, but he might well start with his max logic, because it's going to cost the same anyway in game to do it. Basically, it encourages picking the stats that fit, and you also see far fewer anemic people who can't tie their shoes due to Strength ''not being used very often and it's a waste of 10 BP atm and I can buy it for 6 karma in the game.''

On the other hand, skills are cheap to buy in game at a low level; for example, it costs 8 Karma to buy a rating 2 skill. Now, it costs 8 BP, as well. But...it costs 12 Karma to buy the 5 they have to a 6. Soo...they don't have any other 5's...why not save karma and just get the 6 now? They can get the 2 soon enough.

This is what I see often with BPs.

[Soft-maxing, btw, is when you take something to one under the max.]

Now, I'm not saying Karmagen is perfect; it does run into the ''metahumans leaning toward the better choice'' bit-but this is only something you have to worry about when you're dealing with people who only pick things ''because the numbers are the best.'' If you deal with folks who play races because they like them and they fit, this is no worry. But it's something to keep in mind, and it is one of the flaws of the system; but since our table doesn't really have to deal with this, it doesn't really bother us.

It's other drawback is that it's rather math intensive.

As for people having less knowledges? I found the opposite happening. I find that folks tend to go somewhat heavier on the knowledge skills-they might be at a lower level(2-3) but I notice a lot more. In characters that we converted over, each and every one of them ended up with more knowledge skills. Again, this might be down with specific players, though. Folks who want to squeeze every last point out of being the best shooter/jumper/talker/present wrapper/cab driver will try to do it regardless of the system you use. If the city's best super cab driver forgets to take knowledge skills of the city because they were twinking out another point of Pilot Ground Craft, that's on them.



Very true. After finding out that info here, my Vampire ended up pretty strapped at the end for Karma. 200 Karma(remember it's BP cost x 2 in karma) is a LOT to drop in. [Oddly enough, Shapeshifters are considered a race-and thus get their things free. I honestly don't think this is an outright flaw with the WHOLE karma system, but it's...just...odd why you have to pay for some things and not others.] Slapping an ordinary cost onto metahumans with the karmagen had it's own flaw, I recall, however-I just can't remember it(though I suppose you could say just pay BP costx2 in Karma and call it a day if it really bothers you that metas cost something.) I considered, actually, trying the thing used for Shapeshifters who can change into another meta form-they pay the BP cost -10. In karmagen, this would be BP cost of race -10x2. So Orks would be 20, Elves 40, Dwarves 30, and Trolls 60. It's a bit more reasonable, but the cost is still there.

So yeah, didn't want to confuse the OP. But I personally say Karmagen creates the characters we like to see a bit more at our table.

What reasons may be considered to be real enough for players to play a given metatype, if not mathematical?

From 2-6, you pay more in BPs per point increase than in karma (given an exchange of 1BP for 2 karma). Even at 7-8 you still come out ahead, given that there is still a net saving to use karma instead of BP. Say you have a +3 to Attribute (which is, frankly, at least equal or more than many of the racial bonus excepting trolls), you start at 4. So 5,6, you get savings of 5,2. At 7,8, you have a loss of 1,4. You still have a net saving of 2 karma over and beyond the savings from free metatype.

In order to have metatype cost come into play, you need to start with at least Attribute 5 or 6 which means trolls. And frankly an attribute of 5-6 is only an exceptionally low attribute when compared to trolls. Compared with elves and humans, or even orcs and dwarves, 5-6 is not a low attribute.

I think Cain hit the nail on the head with something he said in another thread:


I think that summarizes karmagen pretty well right there. It unquestionably makes more powerful characters, but those characters tend to be less min-maxed, because they don't have to be. I mean, face it, a lot of players have the natural urge to start out with a character who is as good as he can be at his specialty.

When you have to scrimp to get your main stats to where you want them, you might take dump stats and extra flaws. When you have your main stats where you want them, and have points left over, that's when you start thinking "Maybe I could make him good at sneaking, and good at riding a bike. Or maybe I can give him the artisan skill, and say that he likes hand-carving the wood handles of his knives. Or maybe he can get the Influence group, and be a semi-face"

Personally, though, I also think you get similar "advantages" with things like a 500 BP game. But characters built this way look more like shadowrunners - really good at what they do, with a wide spread of secondary skills. Karmagen is suited for games like that - moderately powerful ones. It is only good for lower-powered games with extremely cooperative players. The problem with lowering the allotment of Karma points is that doing so makes the free metatype even more of an advantage.

Character concept.

ugh, this reads like people discussing characters on a mmorpg forum, and i forgot my lingo dictionary...

I am not going to get into this with you again Ancient, so I will briefly sum it up for Tyro.

Ancient assumes every metatype character will increase their attribute above what a Human is capable of, because he believes that is what they should do.

I believe that has jack shit to do with game mechanics or balance - a 6 Body is the same as a 6 Body, regardless of how you obtain it. It costs a Human a lot more to obtain that than a Troll, & the Human does not have the option of increasing it even further as the Troll does. As such, a Troll should pay for this advantage, & under the Build Point system, does. In Karma generation, there is no cost, & thus they get +4 Strength and +4 Body for free.

That is absurd beyond belief. All you did was support my position. The flaw is using a linear character generation system & scaling advancement. As Karma character advancement is the advancement system in the game, this is a flaw with Build Point character generation.

Stop being doofish, Musp. I'm not saying every player should max out an attribute, but they should have the option to do it without completely screwing over their character.

And yeah, it should be easier for a troll to get Body 6 than a human. It's a friggin' troll! Half the point of eliminating metatype costs is so that you can play what you want.

Which creates blatant balance issues. There is a reason why it costs to play a Troll in the Build Point system - it is still easier for them to obtain high Body & Strength than a Human, but they do not receive it for free.

Indeed and mathematical considerations will factor into each and every character concept that exist within the game system.

Nah. If I want to play an Ork Private Investigator, the need to min-max attribtutes doesn't even enter into the thought process.

If you want to make The World's Strongest/Smartest/Fastest/Sexiest metahuman, than you look at min-max attributes. If you want to make Most Economical Use of Karma Ha-Eat-It-Ancient-I'm-A-Roll-player, than you look at min-maxing economy.

Look, I'm not saying the system is perfect, but overall the system is reasonably balanced and workable. Issues like the weakest-metahumans are fairly minor because a) most players really don't make characters like that and b) the ones that do usually end up shooting themselves in the foot by doing so.

If it isn't your shining grail of pristine function...sorry, had to edit the rest of this for overindulging in snarkiness.

What the hell? That statement works both ways too



See?

The problem here is not the BP system or the Karma system - the problem is trying to use both.

In addition to that both systems have individual problems - BP has skills costing twice as much as they should, and Karma overcharges for skills something shocking, and several aspects of the generation system don't work.

Neither system overcharges for skills - which is one of several problems I have with Trollman's rules. Karma does, however, undercharge for attributes, which gives the impression of overcharging skills.

If you want to use Build Point character advancement, go ahead. It will solve one of the problems with Build Point character generation (which is not a problem with Karma generation). I, however, do not like it. I do not use it. I do not suggest it to anyone, and occasionally suggest against it.

Neither system overcharges for skills - which is one of several problems I have with Trollman's rules. Karma does, however, undercharge for attributes, which gives the impression of overcharging skills.

If you want to use Build Point character advancement, go ahead. It will solve one of the problems with Build Point character generation (which is not a problem with Karma generation, but a problem fixed by Karma generation). I, however, do not like it. I do not use it. I do not suggest it to anyone, and occasionally suggest against it.

Not quite. To make The World's Strongest/Smartest/Fastest/Sexiest metahuman, you'd need to max, but not necessarily min. If you want to play Ork Private Eye, you might need to min-max when you realise you don't have the resources to create a functional character.

But this is beside the point. The point is that for most purposes, karmagen is the most effective chargen method and within this method, going metahuman remains the most mathematically efficient.

Why would anyone pay for anything beyond the first point of a skill when they haven't maxed the relevant attribute?

Because the answer to that is 'for no real reason' you can clearly see attributes are better than skills.

If

A > S

Having A = U

and S = U

Makes no sense

Assuming that U is a measure of utility, and A is for attribute.

@Ancient history

You may be the only person who doesn't think that charging 2 x karma for meta types, then adding the 'racial bonuses' at the end of the advancement situation while leaving racial minimums in place wouldn't have been a better system.

So you'd make your orc with limits of 5 in chr and log, then at the end add +2 str and +3 bod.

That would be close to optimal.

By this, do you mean that the orc has to buy at least 2 points of chr and log (which then get reduced down to 1s after racial adjustment? Like they did in SR2 (do I remember that right?). Or that he doesn't get negative modifiers applied but they're instead just used as an upper bound?

the minimum having to be bought was in SR3 at least, dunno about SR2.
so as a troll you had to spend 11 points of attributes to start out with
Body 6(7)
Quickness 1
Strength 6
Charisma 1
Intelligence 1
Willpower 1
as your bare minimums.
a human would have to spend 6 points to get to his bare minimums of 1 in each attribute.
but he would have to spend 2 build points on one positive quality and 17 attribute points to get to
the minimum of a troll

Nah, but my opponents are very vocal.

And t'be honest, this was expected. It's a radical idea that you just pick the race you want to play without getting your panties in a twist about spending precious points on your choice. Now, of course, the panty-twisters are getting wound up about the "free points."

the problem i guess is that a rpg is more then maths and combat, and those other factors can be darn hard to quantify.

like say the social stigma of being 3 meters tall, 1 meter across shoulders, and having to walk like you have a back problem every time your indoors.

You know, if there's a giant hole in the system, saying "But real roleplayers would never worry about that!" doesn't eliminate the fact that there's a giant hole in the system. After all, what's the point of making a karma-based character creation system, if not to eliminate the mechanical imbalances inherent in a point-buy system? If it doesn't do that, then it has failed its purpose. After all, it's more complicated and requires more math to roll up a character with karmagen than with 400 build points. People who only care about roleplay wouldn't even bother with it.

I don't mind the "free points" bit so much as I do the huge disparity with BP and the fact that y ou essentially get more points to spend on attributes. For example, a Dryad is prohibitively expensive under BP's; but under Karmagen, they can really max out Charisma and create the ultimate pornomancer. They can spend more karma on attributes than a human can, *and* have a racial bonus, resulting in even higher attributes.

Which is fine - if you want to play a dryad! The "everyone rolls shaman" meme is the problem; everyone's comparing apples and oranges. Why do trolls have higher Body and Strength? Because they're friggin' trolls!

i think there is a reason why the book recomends one do not mix different build systems in the same group...

As Ancient History mentioned above, he's not. If you want to try to use the weight of the community in your argument, you should first bother to see where it sits.

the opposite actually. The beginning of the section encourages players to explore the three and adopt whichever they feel more comfortable with and encourages the GM to police exploitations of the nuances.

ah, i read that bit as the players (that is the group, GM and all) should sit down and figure out what single build system they wanted to use.

as we can see from this thread, allowing different characters to be built with different rules just makes for a mess...

(IMO that is)

Its interesting to me how the dev's now anticipate DS's complaints about new rules, include words of warning in the canon text and still end up having these arguments. Just an observation. No offense meant to anyone...

According to your logic, I shouldn't have to pay any points to play an extremely smart human, because hey, I decided I want to be a human with a logic of 6, thats my character concept, why should I have to pay for it?

If you want to have a distinct mechanical advantage by having higher stats, you should have to pay for it, sure it should be easier for a troll to get a high body, but you cannot honestly admit that having a trolls stat bonuses for free does not make your character better.

Honestly, I don't have a problem with the metas not being charged for, in the long run. I simply tossed out an idea for those who actually do. I suppose, if you're dealing with a table of super-duper-ultra-mega minmaxers, THEN it might be a problem. I marked it down as a possible ''flaw'', simply because if a person DOES have a table of super-duper-ultra-mega minmaxers, they might well end up seeing the result of that. But to the typical player(that I know anyway), this simply doesn't come into play.

Hell, I'm still toying with the idea of running a game where people just pick what skills and attributes they want. I never ran one like that, but I saw the results of one. There was no minmaxing, no max-maxing, characters had flaws because they wanted them, people were a race because they wanted it, and I don't recall any attributes/skills being out of this world.

If anything, I see more of the ''Minimum Body and Strength Ork/Troll Mage'' faar more in BP than I do Karma, oddly enough. Even though in BP it's ''optimal'' to juice the physical stats up because it's cheaper in the long run-most folks that do this want a balanced combat mage type; so their physical stats are already solid. They just need to juice the mental ones so they can cause max carnage across the board at that point. Remember, yeah, a 5 strength is a 5 strength, and people know that; that 5 strength troll combat mage can cause some decent damage with that combat axe, as well as frizzlefrying brains over an area with a Manaball.

In Karma? These same characters(IME) at least hover a point or two above the minimum. Again, is it because they get more? Probably. Does it make a more rounded and believable character? Yes. I had a buddy who played an ork combat mage, who, under the BP system, indeed had the 4 Body/3 Strength. Under Karma, his Body became higher, and he even upped the strength to a 5. But....he used a monowhip. He didn't even need the Strength. He just did it to round him out. I really don't mind the fact you can start with decent attributes across the board. What if I have a concept for someone who has great raw potential(high stats), but little training(few skills at lower ranks)? Sure, a GM could rule I could do that under BP, but then they'd have to explain to the group why they did that for just me. Under Karma, I can make that character, and no rules have to be stretched to do it.

I also try to figure why there's a thought that attributes are too...cheap. I don't think so. To increase, in game, two attributes from 4 to 6, it's a grand cost of 66 Karma. Averaging 12 karma per month, 3 per week, it's about six months-yeah, half a year of game time-to raise two stats, unless you are karma-heavier in your games. [Also, this is all they get. This assumes no new skills are bought, no other things are raise, no initations, no nothing with Karma.] Now, raising two 2's to 3's costs 18 Karma. Cheaper. But...well, the stats are lower, and it shouldn't be too terribly expensive to do that. Even looking at this, it would be six weeks of gametime to see those 2's become 3's. Again, I can't see how attributes are undercost in Karma, unless an average weekly reward is between 6-8 Karma. MAYBE then.

I dunno, I have this thing for ''the more options, the better.'' I also have a thing for ''getting to play the character you have in your head without having to milk a stone to wring points out''. Which was why BeCKs back in the day, and Karmagen now, are my choices by far.



Honestly? Let's face it-it's impossible to get The Perfect System That's Perfectly Balanced That Everyone Will Like. It's just impossible. Someone, somewhere, will disagree with it, for some, or several, reasons. IMO, the best bet is to make a few systems that are at least generally workable and fairly solid(which, IMO, all three systems are-they all create characters, and they all create characters somewhat similar to each other in the same systems), and run with it, letting folks pick what they like best, or even pick and tweak to what works best for them. The issues will be there, but...that's how it goes.

Other methods were considered and eventually discarded. Adding the attribute modifiers after you buy regular attributes 1-6, while intuitive, sucks because some metahumans end up buying an extra point or two that they then have to go back. Starting all metahumans at 1 and letting them buy up to max has merit and was seriously considered, but then you have no guarantees that they'll hit their metatype minimums (unless you want to squeeze that restriction in there, which is just an overcomplicated way of assigning a metatype cost). The twice-your-BP-cost-added-to-amount-you-can-spend-on-attributes-cap was put there specifically to address the cost of very high attributes in metahumans.

For all the kvetching about perceived imbalance, very few people actually complain that they create poor characters with karmagen - it's not like the "extra" Karma a minimum-Bod and Str troll has means that they'll be able to buy Active Skill at 7 while a human with the same stats can't; at worst it means the troll has a little more nuyen to spend on a metahuman-sized vehicle or a couple more skills to blow on their whims and whimsies. A human could get the same if they decide to devote their attributes to minimum too.

They're Trolls. They're supposed to be better, stupider but better. Don't you get it!!?? Humanis is right sort of.

I concur with that. I like karmagen, but 750 Karma is far more powerful than 400 BP. Now, if players had a choice between karmagen and 520 BP, it might not be as unbalancing.


By the way, while I don't agree with Cthulhudreams' proposed house rule (60 Karma is way too much to pay to be an elf), I think it is being misinterpreted. I think what he was proposing was the ork spending 40 Karma to be an ork, buying his Attributes up with Karma, and then adding the racial bonuses. I don't think he was proposing going back to SR3-style penalties on metahuman Attributes. He was just pointing out that the ork would have a lower maximum for two mental Attributes.

Yeah Glyph, that was my point which was poorly articulated. Penalties are a dumb ass idea, I'm a purely proposing adding the value minimums after stats were purchased.

So you buy your Ork race, Buy Logic 4 and Body 4 with karma, and that becomes Logic 4 and Body 7 post racial bonuses

Interestingly, this has the effect of driving the behaviors Ancient History wants to have:

Trolls will be big and strong, Elves to be friendly and agile, because its a poor investment to make a weak troll, or a dour elf. This is better than it being a poor investment to make a strong troll)