OK, I think we've established that some of us don't like the changes, some of us do and some of us just like a fight.

I don't think we've managed to create much in the way of useful data so I propose separating each change into a poll of its own and using multiple choice to drown some of the 'I'm winning. No I'm winning' bickering that's been going on.

So I don't want to know if you think I'm a big poopy-pants or that you don't think polls like this are scientific. I just want to know what you think you are actually going to do with these new rules at your own table when the dust has finally settled.

edit

Duh.

In breaking news Synner has finally replied in the main SR4A thread to say the Karma Awards table is indeed wrong and will not go to print in it's current form.

So we will all indeed be getting more karma to compensate for increased attribute costs.....

First post yay!

No, seriously, now that I've had time to think about it I agree that Physical and Mental Stat's need to cost more. So I voted for x5.

However I also think there is no point having Agility cost the same as the Cracking Skill group so I voted to reduce groups.

I think it should take the same amount of effort to fulfil your potential regardless of your race. I voted for a racial mod discount.

I don't think it's fair to gimp Mages/Adepts/TM's either so I'll probably go with increased karma awards.

Substantialy the same, but I would just rework the way the skillgroups instead of just reducing their cost.

As I see it there are two seperate issues, and most of the complaints are from conflating them.

1. What should the relative costs of advancement be?
2. How fast should advancement in general happen?

Relative Improvment costs:

1. Improving Knowledge and Language skills
2. Improving Active skills
3. Imp. SR4 Attributes (generally agreed as too cheap)
4. Learn a new Active skill (new groups cost 10)
5. Imp. Active skill groups & SR4A Attributes

Those that do not like Active skill groups and Attributes costing the same to improve also seem to agree that Attributes should cost more than Active skill groups.

In my opinion an Active skill group costing 2½ times a single Active skill is just right in that the payoff is when you want more than two skills in the group. So if I were to agree that Active skill groups should cost less than Attributes, then I would further argue for Attribute improvement costing ×6.

Improvement speed:
Now given that most campaigns today are shorter lived than those of my youth (I have been playing RPGs since 1980), and most players like noticeable character advancement advancement I would agree that more karma per run would probably be the way to go for most in SR4A.

Side notes:
In my SR4 games we do Karma creation with 600 points (we like lower-power starting characters) with 1–3 karma per session, and a bonus when key objectives (either run or personal) were completed.

My group also uses the Language list (SR1 p.61 or SR2 p.74). Single languages cost just what SR4 says, while language families cost double. (2.5 points being too complicated, and 3 points seeming too expensive)
We also did not treat your free native language as statless, rather it is equal to your highest mental attribute and can be raised above that if desired like any language skill.

Five times attribute costs, and I generally give more Karma than the BBB suggests anyway.


For what it's worth: I do. Mages have been reined in on a couple of other areas, and TMs now need to use the tricks they have access to to stay on par with hackers. That's only fair and doesn't make them Neo the Ubermancer right out of the box again, even with Karmagen.

Karmagen Karma remains the same, and Metahumans pay more in Karmagen. They pay no race Karma, so they pay more for their higher attributes. that's only fair. I'm interested how Karmagen shall be reworked now, though.

Right, as the question is throwing the numbers out and the question is moot now I'm going to see if I can edit out the Increased Karma Awards option.

edit

OK, that actually worked as I had hoped. The numbers should be more representative of the actual facts now.

I suspect that the SR4 karma costs for Initiation and Submersion were set in part based on the ease of raising Magic and Resonance.

So for those that feel mages and technos are hurt by the SR4A Attribute costs, would not the simpler fix be lowering the cost of Initiation and Submersion? Say just new grade ×3 (no +10)

If I did the math right you get the following karma costs (init/sub. + Attiubute) for raising Magic/Resonance above a presumed starting value of 5 (also presumes init/sub. begins after buying Mag/Res 6):


I am not saying this is a great idea, but it is a thought.

Well, here is my thing. I will most likely be using 3x the new Attribute Advancement. However:

If I use the 5x, there will be other changes made, including:

-More Karma at karmagen(1,000 most likely.) This way, not too much more karma need be given out in-game.
-Lower Skill Group costs. I will likely leave regular skills as is, but at least give an option for slightly cheaper groups. However, using more karma, again, will alleviate the 5x cost of Attributes, so skills won't have to be much cheaper.


Our table in general is not happy with the too-slow advancement and the effect it has on metas.

Now, should I decide to use 750 Karma, with 5x advancement? Skills AND groups will be lowered, Meta advancement costs will be tweaked(pre-mod advancement will be used), and I will offer a discount to magic/resonance people.

In other words, I will tweak the system until we get characters of relative power equal to the 750 Karmagen, 3x Advancement now, since that is the power level we enjoy. Simply keeping it like SR4 in our games will be the easiest, since we will not have to tweak up the rules any and can keep the enjoyment that we like.

I voted for x5, reduction in skill groups, reduction in skills (minor point for me, but it was something I would like to see*), with discounts for Magic and Metas.

I would have voted for "increased karma" (my group does not use Karma gen) but we already shell out at least as much Karma as the new revised karma awards section.

*Raising three skills cost more than an attribute? Bwut?

So I know it's not really en vouge right now, but the poll said to explain a choice of "other". If I was to start another game of SR I'd being using franks rules for chargen and the matrix.

Now back to your relevantly scheduled posts

I'm thinking about heading over to my local gaming store and seeing about starting up a group there if the group I play with now doesn't want to relocate there. The management at the gaming store upon finding out I was getting supplies to play SR asked me to pass on the word that no SR groups played at there and that they'd be happy to have us grace his store. Give me more SR per month than I already get. I need my fix. (I have Mild Addiction: SR Gameplay, heh)

If I do end up starting a group there, I'll probably use the higher cost attributes but make skill groups 1/2 the attribute costs. I'll likely go with Karma-gen as well. Not sure about starting amounts though but likely a bit more than the default 750 (more likely if I end up with SR newbies). The rest of the costs for skills and whatnot would be adjusted to match up accordingly.

For the Direct Combat spells, I'm not keen on the way they've been treated in SR4A so I'll work out something else, perhaps a Damage Resistance test (resistable by 2x Willpower) or something. I don't like that overcasting is safer than really good regular casting. That just rubs me the wrong way having come from SR1 through the editions.

I was assuming that we would get some left field opinions. Certain members don't use karma at all at their table.

I hope that explains the discrepancy between the total of votes for options 1 + 2 and the total number of votes....

Well there you go. Sparked such a flamewar that it fell of the front page after 40 votes.

Seems pretty conclusive. Almost everyone wants the Attribute cost to go up but almost everyone doesn't think the change is good enough and want some sort of tweak to it, predominantly a reduction in the cost of raising Skill Groups.

Of the people who took the poll the increase in Attribute karma cost was preferred 7 to 1.

As for skill costs, there was no choice for keeping the skill costs as is which biases the results. Even so, only one quarter voted for the cost of Active skills being reduced. In other words the poll votes for keeping all of the SR4A changes involved.

It really depends on how you read the poll. For instance, I could say that every one of the people who voted for the increased attribute cost chose at least one of the reduction choices, thereby nullifying your observation.* Remember, it was a checkmark poll, not a radio button.

The problem isn't with how the polls on forums are put together it's an issue with displaying the data:
For instance, if we could see what each voter chose (though not who they were) we could make the distinction between "exactly how SR4A did it" (your observation) and "increase attribute, decrease skill" (my observation): we'd be able to cross-reference the data.

All of the data is there, in the MySQL database, but the forum lacks a good way of displaying it (for example, when the Gallop Poll says that "36% of white males voted Republican" they can look at the distribution of what "white male" respondents responded with and then cross reference some more, "only 24% of white males under the age of 40 voted republican" or "12% of Americans like chicken over pizza" or "Of the people who liked pizza, 40% were allergic to peanuts.")

*It doesn't work out to that, there are 25 votes for some reduction, and 29 for the attribute increase, but I know there is some overlap, as I voted for the attribute increase and most of the reductions.

I was actually kind of surprised that everyone doesn't do the discount on attribute increases for metas by default. I never saw it stated as such in RAW, but figured that everyone would just charge for the increase over the racial base rather than the full attribute.

Y'all be meany heads!

I think this would be pretty problematic because metamagic alone can be quite powerful especially if you have many grades. 2 submersion steps (9 karma under your system) allow a TM to drag everyone he touches into hotsim and do what he wants with em in there. 4 steps (30 karma) can give him 4 IP.
IMO with lowering initiation cost you just open a huge can of worms and tbh i don't even see mages getting shafted by higher attribute costs.
Sure they most likely will spend more karma on attributes compared to other party members but then they are the only ones that can rely for everything they do on this one attribute, whether it is sneaking somewhere, killing someone, inspecting something, charming someone doesn't matter they only need this one attribute and 3 or 4 skills.

Actually increasing the karma reward favors awakened chars even more then they were before thanks to a laughingly low skill maximum which leads to mundanes being 'finished' with their main jobs after 40 or so karma.
Simply upping karma costs is probably the most half-assed approach possible towards overused attributes and frankly i believe most people complaining aren't that annoyed about a mechanic they don't like but feel that they get a new set of rules that someone thought of in under a minute and wrote down without even considering their impact on the game as a whole.
Just read through the qualities and tell me if their point cost is in any way related to the advantage/disadvantages you get from them.
Prime examples are things like In Debt (30 BP) which i wouldn't give a single point for unless you play lowest level street campaign where coming up with 4.5k a month actually can be a problem or Knack (5 BP) which doesn't allow you to even get minimal cyber or it's gone, I spilled my coffee when reading the optional rules concerning this in SM btw.
The point i'm trying to make is that rpgs are some 30 years old and most players have played such games for over a decade, so most players do have a rather high expectation on the quality of the crunch, eg consistent and well thought through mechanics.

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Sorry, but in my view, that is just about the worst thing to do. Seriously, lets take the characters who already have crazy high stats and make it even cheaper for their stats to get more insane! Yea!

If I'm a meany head, its because I don't want to make humans have such a draw back that the race cost negative points (which using your optional rule you would have to do to make up for further nerfing humans).

I play by RAW, mostly so I can keep Missions straight in my head, but also because it doesn't make the game any more or less fun for my group. We move forward with the RAW and decide not to RetCon characters out of existence in puffs of fuzzy logic.