I can see these kinds of characters being acceptable, so long as you had a decent Charisma and Willpower. Stats like, Cha 3, Int 4, Log 1, Will 3 are pretty good and lend towards an interesting personality for the character. Like I said before though, our group considered the minimum of 5 and I was on board with that, but the majority wanted 6 to be the minimum. So that's what we ran with. Since we'll have a new group though, I'll give 'em a call and maybe they'll think 5 is acceptable. If that's the case, I see no problem with dropping it to 5.

My only issue with "watch the dice pools" is that people can have very different opinions about what an acceptable dice pool is. After talking to the Troll's wife, who he taught to play, she was under the impression that any pool under 12 was going to get her killed, and that she couldn't survive a game without at least 3 IP's and that without at least 3 IP's she'd be bored out of her mind, while sitting around and waiting for her turn.



I think that a well-written set of house rules, or a style sheet as we call it, you can describe to new players how your group likes to play and what kinds of characters they like to use without just shooting down their concepts straight out of the gate. It allows them decide whether or not they want to play without making a character and sitting down, just to find out that their play style really doesn't match your group's. And I agree that problem players should be handled individually, but some things can be prevented if you give them a hard set of rules to go by. It shows them that it's nothing personal, that's just how you guys roll.



Are you saying that even the most spectacular individuals or concepts aren't average at at least one or two things? When it comes down to it, we're all only metahuman. That's why Technological or Magical Augmentation is so advantageous to have. If you're not one of the lucky ones that are born with that mystical spark, then you've got options. Then again, if you're not Awakened and you're not too keen on 'wares, or it's not available because you just can't afford it(though you can always take out a loan with someone, careful who you pick), there's always the old fashioned way of working hard at it and developing the skills to compensate. Swordsmen that weren't strong could always fall back on their swordsmanship, which they worked at for years. Then there's the non-augmention gear out there. So you don't have the best hand-eye coordination, but you have a smart-linked Ares Alpha calculating the effectiveness of suppressive fire for you, in real-time.


We're actually considering a sort of good cookie system for some of the contentious points of the house rules. Something along the lines of, "Yes, 8 BP is the minimum, but if you put in 12 BP you earn the title 'Connected' and get a bonus to your Street Cred." Or something of that kind. Same goes with availability. "Yes, 12F in the max, but if you keep it to 8F you get the title 'MacGyver' and are able to spend an Edge to gain the Jury-Rigger quality for a scene." You know, enough to have fun and encourage people, but not overpower the game.

These kinds of bonuses would only be granted for CharGen, not the milestones of character improvement. I give each PC one story-based good cookie for campaign; a unique enchantment for an Awakened character, a rare piece of cyberware the a street sam, or some such reward for good RP.

The power curve for street sams vs. Awakened characters is pretty set. Street sams start off really high, with a limited growth potential due to gear availability, nuyen cost, and Essence loss. While Awakened characters start off very mildly in comparison, but have a larger growth potential so long as they keep Initiating. So their growth is limited only by their earned Karma. Other than that, yeah you're pretty much on the ball with the Drake quality not being a really cost-effective way of getting the same abilities. It's not all about the power, and you would know that since the Drake concept grabbed onto you when you read through Runner's Companion. The Drake's rarity and mystical wuju is what makes it worth playing.

Troll is the best suited I think to the concept I had (Arsenel's Martial Arts section piqued my interest and there's two styles in there that are gun-fun one of which IS gun-fu (aka Firefight)). 25 extra BP and higher stats (always on). A troll's natural armor + armor jacket (or better) + 2 to 4 points of Mystic Armor is insane. Not to mention the strength bonus to damage (oh noez, it's stun and not physical, you know what? I don't really care, throw a PP at the problem; or not).

Now, a drake adept wasn't my first idea (I want to play a drake because I <3 dragons (perhaps a little more than is sane) and enjoy the wonky races of RPGs, so "drake" came first), but due to their innate magic point and the restrictions on cyberware it was one of two (and a half) options: adept or mage. Adept + Martial arts led to the gun-fu-ness (which I haven't utilized yet, getting into melee is damn dangerous). Once I get my nifty shapeshifting armor (cost wise, a force 2 power foci), then changing form becomes significantly less dangerous and might actually happen.

Sorry to stop you here, but you and I both got a bit off topic. Let's get back to the main topic of the thread.

For the record, Leon(my character) had Charisma 5, Intuition 4, Logic 1, Willpower 5. His friend(the other logic 1 guy) was 3/4/1/5. Leon got by with sheer charm on the mental level. He was basically the team's prettyboy blunt object(he hit things very, very, very hard and was damn good at it-he's a human with a ridiculous Strength score. Since Strength is so gimped in SR4 anyway, it's more of a flavor thing than anything-if I wanted to overtwink him I would have overtwinked Agility by far), but had a very good selection of street social-skills. lil' 'Spike', his friend, had a lot of street knowledge and survival, tons of stealth, and was also very very good at hitting things with a bat or his brass knuckles if it came down to it. But neither are one-trick ponies.

Of course, what it comes down to, is that these rules might look odd to me due to our general power level. Calling it high would be a stretch, but as I've called it before here, I refer to it as ''gritty manga.'' We run with 750 karma(hence the characters above having good Attributes) so our high-end die pools usually run 15-18(after mods like smartlinks), the middle-ground 8-12, and the lower anything under that. I mean, it works for us, and we seem to have the most fun playing under this system. BUT, I've played in and made lower-level characters as well(we played one game where I don't think any of us had a pool over 12 for anything and had plenty of fun.) It all depends on mood. But our 'usual' campaign is a bit more, professional I guess you can say(even with the 400 BP method our die pools run similar.) We draw the line at the crazy(pornomancers, gunslingers with 30 dice, etc), but somehow this playstyle fits with us(if we want to play average people, we take out That Other Game and toss some stats down the line. )

THAT being said, the troll player saying you CAN'T survive with less than 12 is very wrong. I mean, we might play with higher die pools, but we all know that pools under 12 are totally viable as well. (For the record, if im playing in someone else's game, and they say be reasonable with the die pools, as a rule of thumb I try to keep the highest ones 12-14, and only one or two of them, the 'middle' around 8-10 and a couple at 4-6, which I basically lifted from the SR book itself, when I checked out the tutorial dwarf weapons specialist at the beginning, who threw 12 dice with pistols, 14 after the smartlink.)

Anyhow, with houserules, since we were discussing them, I do think there's a spot-in fact, we used some to bring adepts up to a slightly more even starting level with sams(without totally letting them go crazy-over them due to the fact they can grow a lot more later.) It wasn't even much; a tweak here and there but it did wonders to the people who didn't want to go the cybered adept route, but felt like they were behind the sam for a few months of gameplay. We actually have quite a few houserules-well, a few anyway, but most of them make things much more leniant with chargen, rather than stricter.

One final thing: i've played with the same people in tabletop for basically close to 15 years, so we all know each other and what we like to play, as well as trust each other, which also probably is a big account in things.

These are the kinds of pools that are style sheet creates. So, we seem to be within a couple pages of each other.

All of my characters aim for 12 to 16 dice at their main skill (16 is pushing it, but sometimes being able to stack easy modifiers just works, i.e. 8 agl cyberarm, 6 skill, spec, smartlink) with several lesser skills (6 to 10 dice).

The easy way, and the No House Rules way, is to simply force the one trick ponies into situations they can't deal with. Do this often enough and players will learn. It's one of the reasons I don't like technomancers, by RAW they are one trick ponies (and either that trick is breaking into systems; ie. useful, or anything but; i.e. not useful).

My character recently had to lie. If you notice my sheet I have 3 charisma and no con. How'd I manage it? Aid another. I had Honest Bob (our habitual liar) give me some tips on what to say before entering the situation. I got a total of 6 dice to throw at the problem and got successes. Lying isn't what my character does, but walking into a large corp and saying, "Yeah, I want to be hired by you so I can help my friends break in and steal your research" isn't exactly the best idea.

The downside of your plan is that it takes time, and more time for some than others and you have to restart every time you get a new player with that tendency.

Simple:

Make it very clear that you won't let power gamers and twinks play. They show up, ruin one session, you throw them out.

Worked very well when our group had cheaters for the End of Term D&D Arena Combats. Two guys were caught breaking a few rules and we banned them.

Once you make it clear that twinking isn't allowed people will become less likely to do it; they'll tone down in fear of being banned. Obviously "this game is high powered" has its exceptions, along with karma gain.

As far as the powergaming twinks playing, it makes it hard when more than half the group of people interested in playing fall into this category, and a game with two runners isn't much fun

I tend not to use my dracoform, because of all of the fluff stuff, I was going off of the idea while making my character that being a drake in character isn't really a choice, and for me, it really wasn't. Wombat went, "Hey when you make your character only use 335 BP" Then he told me after I made the character that I was a drake.

And as far as getting shot on sight by everyone, we're playing in 2070 now, it only states that there is a general mistrust and unofficial policies to keep them from advancement. Which ended up giving me a reason why my character decided to go to the shadows.

Ah ha.

That's not what happened. I said that you should play a drake, and told you to make the character as if you weren't and then apply the quality. She hasn't been a Drake for very long and it explains why she's new to the Shadows.

I think for creating balanced characters, these house rules are needlessly complicated. You are better off telling players "X are what I consider essential skills for any shadowrunner, and Y is the most dice I would like people throwing before conditional bonuses". You get the same result with a lot less bookkeeping, and it's a lot more straightforward.

Also, you should take a less confrontational attitude when you see something that you think is "powergaming". Let people know what is considered acceptable at your table. Because you can get powerful characters simply by making logical choices at character creation, and not all of them are "one-trick ponies" or illogically lopsided, either.

This is a very good point. When I mentioned above, playing in someone else's game and they mention to ''keep the pools reasonable?'' Well, I have to sometimes *try* to keep them to 14 or less, and not even again, from doing some awful twinkstuff. The famous example:

Gunslinger
Agility 5(7)

Not twinked or powergamed. A logical choice.

Pistols(Semi-Automatics): 5(+2)

Again, a logical choice for this character.

Smartlink +2

Boom, 16 dice, and this was not someone trying to ''uberpwn'' someone.

Btw, I tried, for the hell of it, doing the 150 on Attributes character...and even I had trouble. I mean, yeah, I'm used to playing in a 750 Karma game, but even under 400 BP it's no problem for me. But when you mentioned this system gives die pools of 12-14...that's if you dump a stat. For example, said above gunslinger would likey have, under these houserules:

B: 3
A: 4
R: 3
S: 3
C: 1
I: 4
L: 2
W:3

Because of the forced attributes in mental(though I'd be likely to give him those anyway.) But...the 1 charisma? I didn't want that. But I saw them with better than average physical stats(4's, for example, which is NOT excessive). Okay, so I scrape up a level of Muscle Toner for 4(5), and get the 5(+2) pistols, and there I can get the 12(14) DP. But in melee, this would be less(no smartlink, so it would be 12.) If I didn't dump Charisma and had him with 3's for all the Physical attributes, I'd have needed to buy the Restricted Gear quality to get his Agility to 5, or else have 11(13 with link.) Melee would be around 11.

Now, this is good for a low power game, and it is workable, but I guess...I just don't see what the big overpowering thing is is of having a character with a stat spread of 4/5/4/3/3/4/2/3. I really don't see how this is overpowered in any way. Even with an availability limit of 12(yeah, we actually DROPPED this limit in our games, as in we do not make people worry about availability at chargen. We played like this since the first time we played SR2 and find it a lot more freeing), they'd have, say, 4(+1 damage)/5(7)/4(6)/3(5)/3/4/2/3. They could have a set of cybereyes with some goodies, wired reflexes 1, Muscle Aug/Toner 2, and plastic bone lacing, and that's it. I can see nothing overpowering about this. They also have enough stats to be well-balanced in other areas, tossing 5-7dice for some social skills/technical skills too(if they had a few at 3 or 2+2, for example.) My above guy would have his 1 charisma and be hoping, though I'd probably just let the face handle it at that point and try to give him some tech skills that he could use with his 2 Logic instead.

I know I might seem critical, but something just seems...it seems like the entire table is having to deal with these lesser numbers because of a few problem people. I mean, if you wanted a low-power game, why not just toss 320 BP for chargen, limit half to Attributes, and Availability to 8, without all the fancy houserules? This would:

-Make Attributes a bit lower, if that's what you want.
-Take care of availability of gear(though there is Restricted Gear to help, but they have to take it if they want anything over 8.)
-Lower points across the board, making them think about what they take.
-Keep die pools to a low-powered game.

And this is all without pages of houserules. If there is one thing about a points-based system that's nice, is that you can increase/decrease the amount of points usable if you want a campaign higher or lower. Hell, Karmagen is the same-you can adjust it up and up for a super-pro ''you're a Paladin defending the Prince'' down to 400 Karma punks.

I think I have that mentality of ''catching more flies with honey''. We have enough lenient rules in our chargen/game, and with 750 BP, you'd expect allll manner of beasts to come rolling off the presses. But...guess what...we don't make them. We don't see the point. We CAN, but we DON'T. I personally find a lot of people who try to make more powerful characters the more restrictions are put on them. If you can believe it, some of the most balanced characters I've seen...came from a test where the GM said ''Give people any stats and skills you see them with. You have no limits.'' It was pretty awesome, actually.

Honestly, what would be wrong with dropping your Body or Strength from 3 to 2, and bumping your Charisma to 2. Your key pools are still the same, and you're just moving 1 to/from your dice pools. You seemed to have no issue putting your strong pool(ranged combat) up to the 12-14 range with these rules. So, what's wrong with a 12 for melee?


---


Originally, we did a 300 BP game with 8F availability and we really liked it. It created a more realistic(IMO) metatype curve in the group as people had to consider whether they really wanted to soak up that much of their into a metatype. The downside was that there really weren't enough points for contacts or, more importantly, skills. Our experiences with the 300 BP games are what stirred us into making our style sheet.

Given the response on the forums to the chance factor for metatype, we might just increase the BP cost of metatypes and leave it at that. We also decided that 5 was an acceptable minimum for Log+Int, so long as we added a "no more than 40 BP per attribute" clause.

Oh, i didn't say it was wrong, btw, with the die pools. I more or less said what I had to sacrifice to *get* those pools. A Body of 3 for a samurai-type character is very rough, I have to say. While a 12-14 die pool IS perfectly ok, the 3 body would leave them a bit vulnerable. (BTW, in the above thing, Body and Strength were already 3. Whenever i play a sam-type, I have trouble thinking they would be at the low-end of average, or 2, for any physical stats, as they tend to take good care of their bodies. In my view of them, anyway. They don't need to be like, Olympiads, but at least in the 3 range. Body for most combat-heavier characters was found, even all among the forums, to be safest in the 4 range.) Also, the example was more to show how gunners had it a bit easier with the die pools(the smartlink.) I wasn't saying it wasn't viable.

Increasing Meta costs actually seems like a better compromise in your situation, than leaving it up to the whims of dice. People CAN do it, but it will cost them. (We have an old saying in our group-don't tell me I can't-unless it would implode the game where it stands. tell me I can, but make it difficult if you have to.)

And the 5 minimum at least gives folks a bit more to spread around, though, which is good.

The "no more than 40 BP for a single stat" clause can easily be rectified. Buying that 5th point costs 25 BP (that's 15 more BP than raising a stat normally). This already shies people away from hard-capping. If you don't want to see fully maxed stats just increase that number. "Fine, you can have a 6 agility, but you have to pay 35 BP for it" (puts it at nearly double the cost for raising it from 1 to 5--and it's already cheaper to buy a 6 with karma: only 18!)

The other thing you've done is made Exceptional Attribute not a good quality (which can only be taken once). If I get Exceptional Agility that raises my hardcap and my softcap by one. I can now by a 6 for 30 BP (and can later raise it to 7). By limiting starting stats to 5, someone who buys that quality won't see the advantage until 39 Karma later.

I'd suggest that anyone who gets that can have your 40 point cap also increased by one. So instead of Max 5, then get Max 6 at a high cost, and it fills 20 points of 35 positive qualities BP.

This is the reason for the 40 BP for a single stat.
B: 6 - 65 BP
A: 2 - 75 BP
R: 2 - 85 BP
S: 2 - 95 BP
C: 2 - 105 BP
I: 3 - 125 BP
L: 2 - 135 BP
W: 2 - 145 BP

There are players that will try this. Or worse yet...
B: 6(7) - 75 BP - 35 for Final point or Exceptional Attribute
A: 2 - 85 BP
R: 2 - 95 BP
S: 2 - 105 BP
C: 2 - 115 BP
I: 3 - 135 BP
L: 1 - 135 BP
W: 2 - 145 BP

These aren't necessarily my players, but since I usually hold a game in public places such as my local game store, there are invariably a number of players that ask if they can get in on a game. Yet another reason we like style sheets.


You're right, we wanted people to earn their last one, or two as the case may be, Attribute points.

Ok, point. With only 150 BP it doesn't work

Let me add my voice to the chorus advocating higher BP costs for metatypes, rather than arbitrary limits to them. The biggest reason for this? With limited points to spend on Attributes and resources, but 400 points, the cost of a metatype is fairly easy to soak. But with only 150 points to Attributes, a metatype's Attribute bonuses are a much bigger deal than before. An ork with 150 points in Attributes is head and shoulders better than a human with 150 points in Attributes - heck, it's the functional equivalent of a human with 200 in Attributes. Magic is limited in your campaign, too, but at least you also gimp it. Metatype, though, lets the lucky high-rollers play characters who are flat out better than the regular humans.

You're right about the equivalency of an Ork w/150 BP to attributes to a Human w/200 BP to attributes. In fact, I was working on this very point just last night. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to post about it then. What I've tried to do with the below list is to break down the metatypes using the SURGE quality rules.

Human

Positives
• Lucky/Metagenetic Improvement (Edge) - 20 BP
  Negatives
• None
  Total: 20 BP

Ork

Positives
• Metagenetic Improvement (Body) x3 - 60 BP
• Metagenetic Improvement (Strength) x2 - 40 BP
• Low-Light Vision - 5 BP
  Negatives
• Impaired (Charisma) - 5 BP
• Impaired (Logic) - 5 BP
  Minus Human BP Advantage of 20 BP
  Total: 75 BP

Dwarf

Positives
• Metagenetic Improvement (Body) - 20 BP
• Metagenetic Improvement (Strength) x2 - 40 BP
• Metagenetic Improvement (Willpower) - 20 BP
• Thermographic Vision - 5 BP
• Resistance to Pathogens/Toxins x2 - 20 BP
  Negatives
• Impaired (Reaction) - 5 BP
• Slow Movement - 5 BP (Estimated Equivalent)
  Minus Human BP Advantage of 20 BP
  Total: 75 BP

Elf

Positives
• Metagenetic Improvement (Agility) - 20 BP
• Metagenetic Improvement (Charisma) x2 - 40 BP
• Low-Light Vision - 5 BP
  Negatives
• None
  Total: 45 BP

Troll

Positives
• Metagenetic Improvement (Body) x4 - 80 BP
• Metagenetic Improvement (Strength) x4 - 80 BP
• Thermographic Vision - 5 BP
• Elongated Limbs - 5 BP
• Dermal Deposits - 10 BP
  Negatives
• Impaired (Reaction) - 5 BP
• Impaired (Charisma) x2 - 10 BP
• Impaired (Intuition) - 5 BP
• Impaired (Logic) - 5 BP
  Total: 135 BP

So, given all the details, here is a preliminary "Increased Metatype Cost" chart.

• Ork - 35
• Dwarf - 50
• Elf - 40
• Troll - 65

Personally, I still don't think the costs are too difficult to soak. I'd like to increase it a bit more, but I wanted to get some initial thoughts before continuing on.

So the elf at the least bonus still costs more than the ork?

Apparently I had deleted that part of my post when I was editing it. We still wanted the costs to reflect our desired demographic. So while the Elf costs more than the Ork, it's only 5 BP more. My greater concern is that overall impact that the BP cost to play a metatype has on players during character creation in a 400BP game, with the House rules in mind.

Ok. I did some tinkering here. I still am in the boat of thinking if you want to tone down the power, the 320 BP is still better. Here's why:

The 50 BP saved on Attributes go to Skills anyway. The die pools aren't going down, they're getting diffused. Thinking in the mindset of someone wanting to make a pretty kickass character.

This is what I came up with, in the Houseruled system.



Christ. That's a lot of skills. Average Agility linked die pool for the 3(+2) skills are 9/11 dice, +2 for a Smarlink for the firearms, or + Reach for the melee. Social skills, even with a 2 Charisma, run 5-7 dice. Athletics pools are 8-9 dice. And the amount of skills they have is a laundry list.

Now, look at the variant built with 200 Attribute points and without the other houserules:





I dunno, but the latter one, IMO, looks a bit more believable and balanced in their role. The top character could well be not only a good sam, but also a, say, hacker on the side on TOP of it, and be nearly just as effective. I say the second example is more balanced because

I guess the point I was trying to make was that opening up *that* many points for skills won't always lower die pools. In fact, the second guy has *less* dice in a few of the pools(Longarms, Blades, Athletics.) He gains a die on Street Etiquette and Negotations, a die for Pilot Groundcraft, and a die for defense. The other pools stay the same.

This is basically the reason I suggested, rather than rebuilding everything, just lower the amount of starting BP. I really hope I'm not coming across as picking on you, but actually sitting down and trying some things(and I didn't even try to do what a munchkin would do), there is just some flaws in doing this method for a lower-powered game, IMO-or just leave it as 400 BP raw and say ''no more than 14 dice in a pool, thank you. I don't care how you get those dice, but they cap at 14.''

I see your point, after looking at the examples, but it makes me wonder why I don't see more characters that look like that.

The truth is, no matter what you try to do, unless you make the characters yourself for everyone, OR force people to take only the Sample Character(For the record, we have some, what are, IMO, excellent Sample Characters we did to make up for the mistakes in the book ones, they are on this site), you will find people who will try to powergame, especially when you run for people who are not your normal players(again, my usual group are people whom I've gamed with for years.)

Take the 150 BP only on Attributes/limits on Skills system with the houserules you said. Someone, somewhere, can take:

Restricted Gear(Muscle Toner)
Restricted Gear(Suprathyroid)

and end up with a 9 agility, at chargen. Now, you can just say ''nah, sorry, don't do that.'' Thing is, you can do this *in any system.* Hell, even in our 750 Karmagen more pro games, there are things that we can frown upon, and don't do them because of it. 750 Karma is quite a bit, and you can make some powerful characters under it. But there is still going to be a difference between 750 karmagen character A, who chooses good attributes, and a couple of good skills but the majority more middleground, and a twinked-to-the-eyeballs, stretches out every rule to the maximum, uber-monster.

But I find as the rules become stricter, the chance for powergaming goes up, in my experience. One reason for this is that under stricter rules, a powergamed character will look even *more* powergamed next to the rest of them. No matter what, you can always just say no to a character, regardless if it's done with 300, 400, or even 600 BP.

I'm glad you're here on the forums and this thread in particular. I think the original House rules that I posted have now been polished and the current set of House rules are a step above what we started with. We've explored the issues quite thoroughly, and I think your last post sums up the issue. I'd personally like to thank you for engaging me in this thread with strong arguments, examples, and, most of all, courtesy. I believe this brings the House Rules thread to a close. Again, thank you to all for posting.