What about thrown weapons?
And in reading my post before I can understand some confusion with what I said. I was giving a bonus to melee damage. I was thinking more a bonus to damage for weapons where strength was a factor. unarmed, melee weapon, thrown, bow... Not sure how to word that... +2 DV to strength based damage perhaps.
Although, adding yet more damage to bows seems a bit... broken...

(regarding bows... even using modern materials, the size of the bow should, in general, be proportional to its draw... I don't see a troll walking down the block with a ballista.)

I agree with your post, but as to the section I quoted, I would have said "block and evade". Deflecting someone into a more advantageous position (for you) is nice when you can manage it, but simply not getting hit works too

I'm thinking about changing the maximum amount of armor you can wear without encumbrance penalties to Body + Strength instead of Body x 2. That should make Strength useful again without making trolls ridiculous, since the rule doesn't really affect them that much.

Like I said, that is a valid option. However, it will reduce the amount of armor that most characters can wear without encumbrance, & you will need to also adjust how the Body x 3 armor customization works.

If increasing the Recoil Compensation is not enough, then I might consider that. Otherwise, certainly not.

That's fine with me. Guns aren't dangerous enough in SR4 for my tastes.

Making it body + Strength rather than body x 2 just makes orks even better than they already are.

I recommend following that change up with raising orks to 25 BP, and cutting elves to 25 BP.

Yeah, I'm converting everything to a karma system, and the racial price of orks is definitely gonna be tweaked.

Oh, don't worry-racial costs have been something that sort of confused me for awhile.

I understand they help reflect populations...but when Orks and Dwarves...two choices that are basically, point for point, all benefit(they each have two small hinderances), the cheapest races, and the one race with a couple of benefits is the second most expensive, something is off about that. I would probably, under BP, price them as Elves-20 Dwarves-25 or 30(unsure here. They honestly don't even get played enough as it is.) Orks-30 Trolls-40. The Troll Body Bonus, IMO, is really that good. I know Elves *looks* cheap, but when the race with the +3 Body, +2 Strength, low-light vision and only one less on Logic and Charisma costs 20, and the race with 1 Agility, 2 Charisma and low-light is 30...nah, I think they can be switched.

Costs listed are in Build Points. Karma costs are twice the Build Point value.

Note: These are not Rules as Written values (of which I am of the opinion suck). Nor is charging in Karma Generation RAW. Further, these costs do not include any suggested changes of mine to quality Build Point values (all Quality costs are RAW).


0 Human

- - 10 Nartaki



35 Ork

- - 30 Hobgoblin

- - 40 Ogre

- - 30 Oni

- - 40 Satyr



35 Dwarf

- - 40 Gnome

- - 45 Harumen

- - 35 Koborokuru

- - 40 Menehune



25 Elf

- - 30 Dryad

- - 5 Night Ones

- - 35 Wakyambi

- - 10 Xapiri Thepe



50 Troll

- - 45 Cyclops

- - 80 Fomori

- - 60 Giant

- - 65 Minotaur

I think dwarves should cost the same as humans, aka free. They look good on paper, but like Glyph said, that hit to Reaction is much more debilitating than it looks. You don't get a skill to add on to your attribute when you roll for dodge unless you invoke full defense, so Reaction is all you got, and any decent runner will have it maximized. The Reaction penalty easily cancels out the Willpower and Body bonuses, and I would much rather have the +1 Edge of a human than a measly +2 strength.

First, remember that it decreases the Reaction maximum only.

Second, Body & Willpower are each as good as Reaction - what is "better" varies between character concepts/builds, but they are roughly equal.

Third, you fail to take into account their Thermographic Vision & +2 Pathogen/Toxin resistance - both quite nice.

Finally, one of the major points on this thread is that you cannot accurately price attributes differently from each other based on how "good" they are, meaning Strength is at full cost. The solution is to increase the usefulness of Strength, not decrease its cost (which can be done, but as I have said is a half-assed & temporary fix).

Right, but the thing about Reaction is that decreasing the maximum usually ends up decreasing the end attribute, since Reaction is usually raised to the maximum, due to a combination of how useful it is and how easy it is to get extra Reaction.


Yar, that means they cancel each other out, leaving only Strength. Like I said, for most characters, I would rather have +1 Edge than +2 Strength, assuming you make no other changes to the rules.


Not really. Thermo is cheap, and if you get your eyes replaced, the bonus goes away and you'll have to get the cybernetic version anyway. As for pathogen/toxin resistance...meh.


That's exactly the same thing. You can't objectively price an attribute based on it's usefulness, but you also can't objectively increase an attribute's usefulness to match its price. They're both subjective measures, they just approach the problem from a different angle.