You know why this disappoints me so heavily. Karmagen was the single best chance to create a first rate unified chargen/advancement system which would have pretty much eliminated almost entirely the primary cost reasons to twink things in chargen. And it was botched so badly :(.


I'm not surprised at that.... when you botch the initial rules write because you don't apply math, accounting, and make larger dicepools cost less than smaller ones. Then give fluff reason for it....

It's hard to fix that later.


You also don't seem to realize that the change from 3x attribute to 5x attribute cumulative is a HUGE change for karmagen. (it also indirectly 'reduces' the cost of skills by increasing that of attributes... while making 750 karma now look more like about 600 karma build then).

Going from 1->5 for a human used to cost 60karma. Now it costs 100karma. W/ a 375 cap. You've gotten a long way away from being able to hardmax1, softmax 5, raise 2 others once. (also ignores that as written, mag and edge also fall under that cap unlike BP). That's not a bad thing IMO (when 3-4 is supposed to be average). But it goes a long way also towards offsetting 'exceptional' attribute costs. Especially compared to BP (as you have less 'cheap' low raises to finance exceptional raises (relative to human baseline, size of pools matters)).


The "But it costs more to raise trolls to sky high", outright ignored that it cost less (just like a human) to raise his other 7-8 stats (base + edge + mag which under BP aren't under the attribute spending cap)... and savings there easily 'financed' his massive, 'must be maxed' stats compared to BP. (at the tune of at 3x attribute at time of writing, and 2karma == 1BP.. all other attributes were roughly half cost to raise to 4. Literally the 5->6 transition was cheaper than BP, 6->7 was cost offset by a single stat raise from 1->2, 7->8 offset by 2 stat raised from 1->2, 8->9 by 3 from 1->2... pattern continues w/ 2->3 raises...).


Glyph:
If you want more powerful characters, then increase the amount of BP/Karma/priority tweak (2 class A's and no class E priority) you do in chargen. The point of the rules as published should be to give a well balanced method for EVERYONE to make their chars.

You know, I was right in lock step with you right up 'till the last sentence. Our group plays exclusively with KarmaGen and I fail to see how it was "botched so badly"... but that's subjective, so you're entitled to your opionion (especially if you give some solid examples of what gets you so bent out of shape).

*winces*
I'm really sorry to have to agree with him here, Ancient History, but he's got a point... It's just a single integer that got bumped, but that's like the person who failed to multiply by 2.54 to convert inches to centimeters at JPL and wound up turning the Beagle space probe into a lawn-dart on the surface of Mars.


Actually, I would contend that "as written" they are still exempt under KarmaGen.

Let's have a look at the relevant sections:

SR4A, P.82: Purchase Attributes
Physical /Mental Attributes
Improving a character’s Physical or Mental attributes costs 10 Build Points to increase an attribute by +1. The final increase spent to raise an attribute to its natural maximum (known as “maxing out�) costs 25 BP instead of the normal 10.
Players may not spend more than half their total BP on Physical and Mental attributes (for a standard 400 BP character, this means a cap of 200 BP). Also, characters cannot have more than one attribute at their natural maximum. This measure prevents overspending in attributes and ensures that characters are well rounded.

Edge
Improving a character’s Edge costs 10 BP per +1 increase (25 BP for raising it to its natural maximum). The metatype maximum for Edge is 6 (7 for humans).

*snip Essense since you don't purchase it*

Magic / Resonance
In order to possess either Magic or Resonance , a character has to first purchase either the Adept, Magician, Mystic Adept, or Technomancer qualities (see Quality Descriptions, p. 90). Purchasing Adept, Magician, or Mystic Adept gives the character a Magic attribute of 1. Purchasing the Technomancer quality gives the character a Resonance attribute of 1. A character can possess either Magic or Resonance—never both.
Once a character possesses a Magic or Resonance attribute, it may be raised normally at a rate of 10 BP per +1 increase, with the sixth point costing 25 BP. Magic and Resonance can both be raised to a natural maximum of 6 (+initiation/submersion grade) regardless of metatype.

Runner's Companion, P.42: Purchasing Attributes
Next, purchase the character’s attributes (including special attributes) using the costs given in the Karma Character Generation Table. Characters begin with the minimum attribute ratings defined by their race/metatype. The maximum Karma a character can spend on their attributes at character generation is half their starting Karma (rounding up) plus twice the listed BP cost for their metatype or alternate racial concept. Characters cannot begin the game with more than one attribute at their natural maximum. Characters begin with an Essence of 6. The metatype maximum rating for Edge is 6 (7 for humans); other character races may have different Edge maximums (refer to their descriptions).

The KarmaGen creation rules in Runner's Companion are not the fully fleshed out format from the BBB; they are presented in a sort of (really poorly formated) "errata" format, whereby you go back into the original and cut-and-paste the new wording into the old passages. If you were to put the relevant sections back in where they belong in the original BBB section, you'd see that they are STILL outside the cap... Yes, I can see where you could say that the passage from Runner's Companion doesn't specifically exempt them on its own. But there is nowhere near enough information in that same section (the whole thing in the book) to completely build a character WITHOUT going back to the BBB over and over (assuming we haven't memorized the relevant passages, at any rate). If you do what they essentially tell you to do with KarmaGen and perform an "edit" on the original text from the BBB, "as written" they are exempt. We actually went so far in our group to drop the whole section into Word^® and then print the whole beast back out with the substitutions made to help eliminate any confusion. The players had no trouble at that point.

A number of people have stated they feel "KarmaGen" is more powerful, and in some cases, it CAN be. In my own character's case, I would have been better off under BP, but I may be unique. We chose KarmaGen for two and a half reasons: first, it's a unified system, the thing I mentioned being in lock-step with you about; Second, it's a MUCH more flexible system, and if our GM hadn't changed their mind at the last minute, in theory it even allows interesting things like Initiation/Immersion at start - at huge expense to other parts of the character; The "half" benefit from our perspective is that, as the Devs tell us in plain text in Runner's Companion, P.41: The Karma System "Given the exponential cost of increasing ratings, the Karma system will tend to produce more diversified and less specialized characters", and that's the kind of characters we all tend to prefer in the first place, especially given our relatively low "table size".

It's a critical constant, yes, because it describes a rate of change. Change the conditions of any system, and things can look a little wacky. This is why I suggested 600 Karma for SR4 characters and 750 Karma for SR4A characters - there's that much potential difference.

Karenshara...
You put it right there! How can you not read that.
"Next, purchase the character’s attributes (including special attributes) using the costs given in the Karma Character Generation Table."

It DOES NOT exempt special attributes from the cap... these rules replace the other rules. Not supplement. If you're going to argue this point... tell me exactly where UNDER KARMAGEN or under section REFERENCED BY KARMAGEN you pull this. Quite frankly, I'd prefer it if your reading was correct, but it's not what it says. It's written there in quite plain text. (so yes I'd like to see this in errata).


And the reason it's botched so badly is because metas play such a big role in picking chars. And it completely turned karmagen into a complete and utter joke on this point. And take the time to exercise some search-fu and read the original threads on this. Ancient History's utterly laughable arguments for why he did it this way, and how he was singularly demolished on every single point by others.

He doesn't seem to realize, that there's a lot of us who love the concept exactly for that reason... that if I were to sit down and have everyone make up a human char... karmagen is almost perfect, but most gripes then are just nitpicking and it's pretty damn good. The problem is that as soon as you include metatypes and give them freebies just because they're metas... you've destroyed the balance of that foundation.

One of the worst case examples given was the orc intuition tradition mage... he had so much karma plus higher cap on karma spent on special attributes that he could have reasonable bod and phys attributes... still have bonus points to take human looking. And get his special attributes like magic and edge under the cap w/ less hassle than a human. Most of this because he had his body score 'prebought' for him.

A better example, with much better parity is the elvish mage (any traidition but especially charisma traditions). He goes out and buys his attributes to the same level as the human. At the old 3x rate... Lets say we get all the humans points spent on base 8 + edge... then realizes he forgot mag. At this point the elf STILL has 60 more karma he can spend on raising mag despite having the same stats. (not including extra karma from not having to buy cha from 1->3.. and cancelling agi2 w/ edg2 on the human). Plus low-light vision (big advantage when dealing w/ mages and vis mods).


That said... from everything I've seen Ancient writes great fluff and knows the history and setting inside out. I only have issues w/ his ability to write well implemented rules in this case. I really do salute him for coming on here regularly and interacting. Just I'll call someone when I disagree, and give kudos when they have the better of me. And in this case, I strongly disagree.

Ah! I see exactly now. So you would also probably provide a counter force by adjusting the total "build" karma to take that into account as a separate change... ok, that's sufficient for me. I'm satisfied.

Oh, can I ask a question, now that I think about it? Do you (or don't you) get any free Knowledge Skill/Language points under KarmaGen, or not? If so, how many, because it's not even mentioned one way or another in the section.

Thanks!

No freebie knowledge skills under karmagen.


Discussed this back when we were discussing how to 'game' BP to get absolute highest karma/BP ratio out of chargen. Maxing Int/Log helped a lot because of the freebie knowledge skills (all run to 6 naturally).

What he said.

I'm gonna admit, there were some design principles (free metahumans! play what you want!) that looked great and turned out to be a big issue for some. That's getting addressed. The change in attributes (and one other cost) is important and will be addressed to. Couple little tweaks make a big difference.

Well, Thank You

Then make it that way from the start. Don't make a char-gen system, let me get used to using it, and then drastically change the rules on me. The difference is like one game, the GM tells you to make 400 BP characters. The other game, the GM tells you to make 500 BP characters, then says "I changed my mind. Change them to 400 BP characters." Two examples of 400 BP characters, but in the second example, I would be pissed.


While I disagree with you on most points, the one thing I do agree with you on is that it is a drastic change.

I find this a damned shame. Really.

On more than one account.

On one side, there are those people that will only play what mechanically benefits them. This is where, IMO, most of the problems arose.

Me? I've played humans under Karmagen because I pictured Character X or whatever as human.

Hmm. I have to say this, though. What is puzzling to me is...one of the big BP problems that gets talked about *a lot* on the forums is the whole ''Play Ork.'' Just about any concept ends up better as an Ork. Yet Ork costs were not increased-but the fact that races were free was changed. Both have been an issue, according to a vocal base.

It's small, but still puzzling. If people just randomly picking orks because they are obviously better than humans under BP happens, then why was their costs not adjusted? I'm not asking this to be a smartass or anything-I genuinely would like to know.

Personally, I commend the old system and always have. The folks I play with play what they want to play, regardless of costs. It didn't bother us one bit. The fact that you made a system that actually suggested to ''play what you want'' was a cool thing-but naturally, people try to take advantage of it. I mean, I suppose that looking at it from other angles I can see the issue-but IMO it's something that was houseruled by those who wanted to do it.

That being said:

I had decided to try to remake my current 750 Karmagen fellow(minus his earned Karma), under 750 with the new rules. I tossed 30 Karma into his Race since he's an elf(didn't know what you guys were planning, but I just gave that as a number.)

He's not *that* far off. Most of his raw attributes aren't totally bad-his Reaction, Charisma, Intuition, Logic and Willpower are all one lower, but since I had a lot of Resources, I was able to make up the point of Logic via a Cerebral Booster. Socially-well, he just wasn't as good. His physical attributes were generally exactly the same, save for 1 less Reaction, which I could still probably make up.

His skills are taking a hit, however, so far(I'm not finished yet). He definitely isn't as well-rounded as before(because I did want to keep his speciality the same amount.)

All in all, he's still the same guy so far-his primary and secondary skills are still sound, but he does lack the cool little tertiary skills, as well as some of the knowledges, that gave him a bit of an extra spark. But again, it's not totally terrible and I could still make it work.

(I could remake him under BP, but he's just end up as some close-combat specialist with an Armorer skill and some rudimentary firearms knowledge.)

So once again you guys gave in to the bitching whiners crowd.

Well, in part it's my own damn fault. If I'd made everybody buy their attributes up from 1, it would have been balanced for metahumans (not AIs or free spirits, but that's another kettle of noodlefish), but I got sticky on not wanting a bunch of orks and trolls with Strength 1 and Body 1. Silly thing in hindsight.

Huh, what's that? Why, it's Pandora's Box. Oh, and it's open..
Reminds me to not bring up specific things or they get discussed to death. Again. On the still decaying corpse of the horse that had to die the last time.

Thanks for the cool tidbit about the errata, Ancient History, and I'll step back from the thread now.

Odd... I always managed to overlook the rules on metahumans starting with improved attributes... The characters that I made were all bought up from base stats of 1... and you are right, they were very balanced that way...

IMO, that would have been the best bet had you wanted them free. Hell, I've been wanting to play lower Body and Strength Orks and Trolls.

I have a feeling while there still might have been some problems, there may have been less. Now that I think about it I like this idea. Their cost would have come from wanting to play with the incredibly high Attributes, which, IMO, would have balanced them out(there will be people that say they 'get hosed' under this, but I don't think so.)

And Elfenrir, ironically, that is exactly what I found when I did this test... buying up your stats from 1 made metahuman races a little more (I hate this word) "organic"... you could still have the inhmanly strong troll, but you had to pay for it... if you do this, the totals come out more even in the end...as I said, I never noticed that the metahumans received their normal trait bonuses at Karmagen creation until it was mentioned on the forums when I joined...

The simplest and easiet fix in my book...

Viva la differance.

Ancient... actually even there, I'm not a huge critic of you. Buying everything up from 1... probably isn't the right way. (I think you're aiming that as a small barb in our direction).

I have nothing against trolls being huge and beefy... it's just that when they got all those points for free it gets silly and pay nothing for their drawbacks that it gets a little overbearing.

I just believe that a better method is one which accepts that trolls are big and bulky bruisers... and makes those stats cheaper to buy up than say their charisma which is heavily penalized, or other penalties. As it is the system doesn't reflect that. At the end of the day, trolls pay just as much as humans for 'average' stats even in their penalized attributes, which makes the humans cost 'discount' under karma rather moot.

You like to harp on how a Bod5 troll is 'subpar' and a weakling... well if that's the case, he should cost as much as a str1 human. Same goes for the upper end... I believe a str10 troll should cost as much as a str6 human. I believe a an average 3-4 str human should cost as much as an average 7-8str troll. To me the easiest way to do that is just buy all the stats up from 1->6, then apply the racial mods (both positive AND NEGATIVE in the same way that you apply enhancement bonuses to stats. That's just an object case...


From that standpoint, I believe the meta cost, should merely reflect the enhanced attribute caps and higher potential dicepool capacity they have (and other special abilities). And quite frankly, it would be nice to see humans get some kind of a bone as well... (such as an automatic 7 dice cap in their skills, which work well w/ their higher edge... if you cap hits by skill, now a human edging has a small edge at pulling that magic rabbit out of his hat though others do better w/ their slightly superior base pools on a sustained basis).

I believe all of us accept, that any system has some iniquities and such. Just as written they were too blatant and one sided.

In any case, I'm looking forward to eventually seeing how the errata is handled.

The only problem I would have with that is that it would tend to shift the "average" stats downwards for metatypes that are supposed to be stronger/tougher, etc. And who the hell would ever play a troll with a Strength of 9 any more? Increasing it from 5 to 9 is already more than twice as expensive as the human getting it from 1 to 5. Having to buy it up to 5 on top of that would make it even worse.

That's the thing - metatypes weren't really any more "free" under karmagen than they were under BP. Someone who wanted a troll with high Body and Strength would have to pay more for it, and have comparatively less skills, etc. than the human. Someone who just took the 5's and raised other areas instead is the same as someone doing that in BP and getting a net +30 BP. But they still have some stats capped lower, and other stats that will be more expensive to improve, and their "extra" points come at the expense of being good at what a troll is best at. Hell, I would rather play a decently put together specialist made with 400 BP than a muddled generalist put together with 500 BP.

The addition of costs for metatypes is the aspect I am most dubious about. There were a kajillion house rules to address this "problem", and none of them seemed very balanced to me.

Before you knock it try it. Who knows what will be different when it comes out but a cost to the metatype and x5 attributes. Now, build the starting 400BP characters in your campaign, if you have any BP characters. How many points does it come out to? We did this and all but the troll came out to under 750 points even with x5 to stats and the troll had a 10 body and 9 strength.

I like karmagen conceptually, but it was not remotely balanced with the other systems in place.

Nope, that's straight from playtesting actually.


This highlights a small perception problem some players have: the purpose of any alternate character generation system is for the convenience of the player or to open up new options by making character creation more detailed (which has the downside of being more time-consuming and nitpicky). The last thing you want to do is change the fundamental way mechanics work in the game - especially since, with Karmagen, the whole point was to sync up character generation and character advancement.

I didn't write SR4 (or, really, SR4A), so I have to work within the limitations of the system, and there are a lot of ways to accomplish the same thing if you like to juggle numbers. Metahumans already have a built in set of "preferential attributes" due to their higher attribute cap and their free attribute points at chargen. That's not the only way to do it, but that's how it was decided it would be done, and I was working with that. I could have, for example, started all characters off at 1's in an attribute, charge them by metatype and then give them "free" Karma with restricted use ("May only be spent increasing Strength and Body," etc.). As it was, we went with trying to motivate spending by raising spending caps on attributes.

Actually glyph... your second case, where someone took the 'base' stats under karmagen then spent the points elsewhere. Made out a LOT better under karmagen than under BP. That was one of our stated arguments against karmagen as published at the time. It succeeded in making the problem even worse.

One of the things that karmagen fixed was it was no longer a waste to buy a low attrib from 1-2. If all you're doing is buying low stats... you're saving a TON of karma (relative to BP which it replaced). Also it got rid of the hard max penalty cost (no more 25BP for the final point)... so making an ork with say 6 wilpower was really cheap. As instead of spending 65BP... you'd only spend 60 karma (3x) at the time it was written. Since in either case, you can only spend half your resources... as a proportion of resources available for this purpose... karma is an even worse offender on this score. (65/400 == 16.25% of starting resource vs. 60/750==8% of starting resources under karma; now expand that comparative advantage out across other stats)

The system 'assumes' 1BP == 1.75 (400BP == 750 karma, we know it doesn't... but run w/ me). So 10BP to go from attrib 4->5, vs. 15 karma to go from 4->5... I'm still saving compared to BP generation... even at that well above average attribute levels. (even 5->6 for non maxed skills is 18karma vs. 10BP... just a fraction of a hair over the ratio).

Their costs were the same as the humans yes... but the human STILL had to buy up those 'dump stats' the meta got for free.




I guess I don't understand this point. Priority generation as published is radically different and produces far different results than BP even. Yet few people look at using it seriously. (really only out of nostalgia)

In my case, I looked at karma as a way to sync up both. But in practice it didn't. (how often do you see a troll buy up bod from 9->10 w/ karma in play... you don't it's just too damned much). Those stats are almost always bought at their permanent level in chargen. As karma is hard to come by later in game. And in some ways it made some of the ways to game the BP system worse.

On the last, freebie points is freebie points. I don't like giving freebie karma because karma is miscible. Even if you can only spend this on that... it just means I don't spend this karma I would have spent there anywhere and move the 'earmarked free karma' there. Then spend the freed karma elsewhere.

Reason I like applying racial after is it's an elegant way to give the character bonus karma only after he's spending his own more limited karma on those attributes. (EG: +4 post-adjustment to stat can be viewed as getting 20 bonus karma every time you buy that stat up an extra rank. But importantly, he only gets it IF he raises his str or bod up. If not he has to be treated substantially similar to a human, and that bonus needs to be offset w/ a penalty cost elsewhere. Similarly, a -1 stat adjust means you're effectively paying an extra 5 karma per rank).

It's not ment to be and ther's no reason that it should be.
Thats way the book tell you to not mix different chargen system.

IMO, I'm glad I didn't see something like ''trolls have it cheaper to increase these stats, etc.'' I don't like to see races pigeonholed into stereotypes any more than they already are. I like the fact my guy is the table's utter physical powerhouse with enormous strength, and he's an elf. I also liked my buddy's more brainy, not so tough(for him) troll.

Sure, races already have a built-in preference, but IMO, it's much better to avoid stereotyping even worse when possible.

It's interesting - your complaint that having people pay for racial stat modifers, then pay karma to advance those means that the default BP/Karma system is broken, because it punishes metahumans for not buying up their stats to BPs to the limit at character gen.

Uh...no? That's a real 2 + 2 = Slood thing you got going there, mate. Granted, yes, it is relatively more cost-effective to increase attributes at chargen, regardless of metatype, because it's a flat number of BP (plus the kicker) and an exponential under Karma, but that was neither my complaint, the point of what I was saying, or more than tangentially related to what I was saying.

The RC Priority system is a joke. It offers fewer options (including very basic ones, such as specializations to skills), is far more inflexible, and has crippling limitations built in (who the hell spends less than 170 on Attributes? You could get away with 150 for an ork, but 130? 120? And who takes 5,000, the equivalent of 1 BP, for resources?). But for all of this, it is more frustrating and time-consuming to use than simply messing around with build points is - even though the point of all of this inflexibility and limitation is to make it easier for new players.

I had a troll ganger who only spen 1bp for resources... fit the character rather nicely I thought...

The problem is that its too expensive for trolls to buy their statistics up with Karma right, which justifies giving them the race for free under karma gen - so they have some 'free' karma that they can use to buy strength up. This is the stated rationale, so I think we are all agreed.

That implies that there is a bug, because if there isn't a bug, you wouldn't need to have fixed it.

The bug is that its too expensive to buy high attributes up under karma which is fixed by the free races t

Under BP it is fixed by players buying up strength to whatever it is they want at char gen and never ever increasing it ever again if they are a troll - which to me means that karma advancement is broken if the troll strongman is heavily discouraged from even becoming more strongerer! (sic)

I would not say it is discouraged, it is just difficult... and honestly, buy your strength to the 9 or 10 at chargen, then add on 4 Levels of Muscle Augmentation and a Superthyroid... it is generally cheaper to raise stats through money expenditure than it is in Karma... It is a Cyberpunk genre after all...

CthulthuDreams...

You may have the right of it... it's an angle I've never looked at it from. When I think about it when I say treat metatype racial adjustments as ability enhancements for karmagen... that would be really easy to expand to character advancement as well.
EG: basic troll is 1(5) no cyber, no nothing... just 4 points racial + cyber/mag(if any).

I regularly see spellcasters spend for karma to go from 5->6 or 6->7... same goes for physical stats. But once you try to go over 7... it never happens. I think one could say that 35 karma is at the outer edge of what people are willing to spend.

To bust out the model a little more... what if meta adjustments were ALWAYS considered an ability enhancement. EG: you could raise a trolls str from 9->10 by spending 30 karma, just like a human would to go from 5->6.

My opinion is that everyone would play trolls at that point... there is no incentive not to at that point... paying 50 Karma to go from 9 to 10 is definitely steep, if you bring it down to the equivalent of a human going from 5-6 then why would you NOT play a troll?

Of course, not that that means anything in the long run... currently you play a troll if your concept matches a troll, but when you pay the same price in Karma to raise a high stat, regardless of race, i.e. maximizing an Elf's Charisam stat costing the same as maxing a Human's Charisma, or a Troll's/Orks's Body/Strength Stats, etc., then Humans will be played less often, as there is no longer an incentive to play a human (cheaper "Primary" stat increases comparitive to other metahumans, thoguh a human has no "Primary" stat like the other metavariants)...

But of course, that is only an opinion...

Tymeus: swings and roundabouts... but the same also applies in reverse.

The troll has an up front cost (I don't believe in meta's for free in any manner). And his mental stats do get penalized (it also costs just as much for a human to go to 5->6 as it takes a troll to go to 3->4), and remember they also take an agility hit on the physical side.

One of the reasons I don't think it's overly problemantic... is strength is regularly derided as the least of the primary attributes. And body is really only used for two things... how much armor, and damage soak. It's not really used for any skill tests. Str is... but generally the tests it's used for aren't as problematic.

Fair enough... I could agree with this... Though there are 2 fairly useful skills linked to Body if you are a Spec Ops type... Diving and Parachuting... Strength has 3... Running, Swimming and Climbing... also strength is used for damage in Melee combat, though not really a must if you refrain from Melee Combat...

No. They gave in to those who where capable of proving the system was unbalanced.


Balanced? No. Much closer than the current version though.


This 'hidden cost' that is consistently used to justify the current Karma Generation system is illusionary, as I and others have proven on multiple occasions.


Which is precisely what I use for my games, and have suggested multiple times on these forums.


Try thinking of it this way. First, you pay a cost to play as an Elf. Then, you pay an additional inflated cost to increase your Charisma.

That is how the current (Build Point) system works. You effectively are paying twice for increasing your Charisma from 6 to 7.
The current Karma system uses the secondary cost to justify not paying to play the metatype to begin with. This does not solve the problem; this has been shown multiple times.

The reason it does not solve the problem, is because the attempted 'solution' is the problem.


As to the original point, the reason everyone would not play a Troll all the time is because of the various costs associated with playing a Troll - the negatives to attributes &, primarily, the BP/Karma cost of playing one (which incorporates the benefits, such as attribute bonuses).

Well, strength is a total dump attribute and shadowrun is greatly improved if Body and Strength are consolidated into one attribute - unless you are seriously telling me that 1 point of agility is as good as one point of strength.

It's why everyone has muscle toner, but no-one has the strength boost one.



This is pure comedy. Seriously, the costs are equivalent at character generation. How many people play trolls? Oh yeah like none because trolls are not very good.

I agree, Strength is generally a dump stat unless the character's concept requires a High Strength... then it isn't...



Not sure if you are just being funny here but, I have played Trolls, Cost notwithstanding... there are just certain character concepts that you gotta play, and the Troll Ganger was one of them... I have played about 3 trolls in my time... I much prefer the Human myself, but then again, I have played every metatype and a few metavariants from time to time...

Depends upon the Character concept for me...

Falconer, the only issue I see with your proposed change is that, like previous editions, Orks and Trolls would be *forced* to pay points into their lower stats just to keep them above zero. That was always my one annoyance in previous editions. If I wanted a big, strong guy, I had to waste 2-3 valuable points on charisma, another couple on intelligence or quickness or what have you, just to get myself a "legal" character. I *hated* that. SR4 fixed that, IMO. Was it the best way to do it? Probably not, but hey, that's what they chose to do. Hell, a simpler fix would have been "apply the racial modifications afterward. If an attribute should be reduced to zero or less by the racial modifier, then that attribute is instead 1." Walla, no wasted points.


I too object here. I've played trolls a number of times. 2 of my more memorable characters were trolls. One was a Troll heavy weapons platform that was part of a Lone Star HRT. He had 2 cyberarms, cyberholsters in each -- one for his Ruger Thunderbolt, the other modified to hold 5 spare clips so that he could more easily reload by simply reaching to his shoulder and snagging the next clip. By having this primary weapon stored this way, there was *never* a worry of it being snagged by a perp. After all, you're not going to try and wrestle a gun like that from a Troll once it's in his hand.

The other character was a Troll Combat Mage. Scrag the stereotypes, he was fun and interesting.

So don't make the sweeping generalization that no one plays trolls. Maybe no one at your table. Maybe you would never do so because you're a mechanics monkey. But there are other people besides you and your table, and it wouldn't hurt to take that into account before spouting off.

I'm being tongue in cheek... a bit.

Doing something because its conceptually cool is great and all, but ideally conceptually cool should be the same as mechanically efficiency. Trolls really do not have high mechanical efficiency.

I really don't like people being able to play suboptimal concepts. All reasonable character archetypes should be equally playable. This is not to say that troll combat mages shouldn't be playable - they should - but they should be at least as good as anything else which at the moment they are not.

It's rule of cool in action

Concept does not always, nor should it always equal efficiency. Both in this game and others I've played non-optimal characters because I preferred the concept and challenge of making the character work. The mechanics should allow and even supplement the concept. They shouldn't be required to make that concept the bestest EVAR! That's just my opinion though.

The problem is that most people arn't making the decision to suck consciously. It's fine if you want to do that you know. I'm not going to hold it against you. The problem is not players who know the game inside out and upside down. They know what they are getting into.

The problem is New players picking up the book for the first time and thinking "I can play an Elf hermetic Mage! AWESOME" and then doing that, despite the overcosting of elves and the lack of synergies here. How is he supposed to know? Also: Casual players in the same team as players with a greater awareness of the mechanics are stuck in the unwinnable situation of

A) Getting a lecture on why their character sucks and abandoning the concept

B) Getting the same lecture, ignoring it and being completely overshadowed in game

C) Not getting the lecture and just cutting straight to being overshadowed.

And as a elf mage that studies hard and is smart is a pretty stock fantasy concept, that character being not so great isn't so great in of itself.

I agree with this whole heartedly... Concept should take precedence over mechanical efficiency...

In which case, it's no different whatsoever than paying a one time cost to buy the metatype up front. And is easily worked into the cost template.

And a lot of people have zero issues w/ paying up front for a meta w/ it's bundled package of benefits and drawbacks.



And quite frankly... while a troll street shaman sounds cool for limited definitions of cool.
There's no reason whatsoever it should be nearly as good as an elven street shaman.
More correctly, it's good is going to be different than an elf's strong points. An elf would excel naturally at the spellslinging with his edge in drain pool and bound spirits, but would suffer in certain street contexts. (and raw mundane combat ability)

Nobody expects the big burly troll to be the spellslinger initially. If they do... high bod/armorr makes geek the mage a much tougher idea to implement.

Trolls are going to be much more common in the low and street lifestyle areas... and more welcome in the gang turf areas... whereas an elf is just asking for it. (rp)...

Trolls can make up the drain pool drawback by making use of metamagic like centering.

That's what I mean when I say, I like difference. There's a lot of options out there, and chars don't need to be min/maxed to the gills. I don't like how BP really encourages doing it by penalizing you severely for NOT doing it (why I actually care enough and waste my time so that karmagen has a good implementation)

I have a lot more respect for a player who finds unique strengths and solutions. Than one who simply says.. it's my concept I should be equally well regardless of the meta. Most games are built around a conflict of some type. Conflict drives story. Conflict tends to create adversity. True character is finding ways to overcome those odds, despite your limitations.

Try looking at my suggested character generation - linked to in an earlier post.


If your concept is specifically to be sub-optimal, then yes, you are correct.

However, a player should never be punished because of what they want to play - a Troll should be an equally effective choice as a Human, Ork, Elf, or Dwarf (or any of their variants).

Oh for christ's-- There's a difference between making a choice to "suck" and choosing not to nitpick and tweak things to build the next friggin' pornomancer level character. You mechanic monkeys are so stuck in this mindset of "If it's not optimized to the max, you're doing yourself a grave injustice and having badwrongfun" that it's ridiculous. not everyone plays like you. Not everyone wants to. And Frankly, I'm glad I can have fun without needing ubermaxed characters.


The concept isn't I want to be sub-optimal. The concept might be: I want to be a troll mage. The "penalty" is that some key mage stats are going to be lower than say, a dwarf or elf or human. That's the price of choosing to play a troll. If you don't want any "penalties" or "punishments" for choosing such a concept, then just strip out ALL metahumans to finish balancing everything.


You and I have specifically bantered back and forth about character generation options and balance issues related to this. Plugging it again is pointless. I realize you're likely proud of the work you did, and feel it's a great solution (it might or might not be, but that's not the point), but plugging it every chance you get is getting a little old. Put a link in your sig and call it good, man. People will use your work or don't. For a while, I was guilty of this same issue, but I stopped because I realized it likely would get on people's nerves asap. Not to mention I got some dudar to start calling me a selfish jackhole over my work.

Short version: Sig Link > constant plug posts

lol, my exact quote was that all character concepts should be equally playable. Apparently that means that I am a monkey and am incapable of normal human emotion.

Man, I never through that have a degree of balance such that all concepts were playable was such a crime. Why even have rules if you don't care about balance? The point of a mechanical resolution system is to provide a framework for the GM and the players to tell a story in. Ideally that story should treat all players equally and give them an equal chance to contribute to the challenges of the story.

Imagine for a moment playing a game where people picked the pre-gen characters out of the SR4 book. Some of those guys are actually unplayable as written, some of them are pretty decent characters. Do you think everyone would have equal fun when it came to the challenges part of the game and some players just cannot contribute?

I don't. Maybe you do, but having 'equally playable characters' doesn't seem like that unreasonable an objective.

I have never said anything about 'no penalties'. Only that any penalties should be offset by the advantages.


I have not in any way 'plugged it every chance I get'. An issue was brought up that I have previously addressed, & so referenced it. Simple as that.

One thing I think I liked about the old system, and was probably why I was a bit angry to see half the players pitch a fit over it's ''brokenness'', was that I thought back to one of my favorite tabletop experiences.

It was older AD&D. The GM told us not to roll. Nope-he told us to pick our stats. Anything we wanted. We could go as high as we wanted, or as low as we wanted. We also got as many proficincies as we wanted, as well.

Now, did we have 1 18 in there? Oh yeah. Did any of us really have dumpstats(under 9-10?) Nah. But not one of us abused that. We thought it was so cool to do-we didn't want to take advantage of it. Our characters were built as we saw them. We were given utter 100% freedom, and we didn't abuse it.

The whole ''play the race you like'' reminds me of that. I have played a lot of games where the non-humans don't really cost anything; they have other small drawbacks here and there(stat +'s and -'s which the SR metas have, or little oddball things. I kinda recall Rolemaster's High Elves having some very short Afterlife time or whatever it was-time you had to rez them if they died before they were Dead Forever.) I still see tons of humans in these games. Keep in mind humans rarely get big benefits in these games. (Hell, in D&D 3e I saw more humans than I did elf, dwarf, or anything. They had no permanent stat bonuses, but got a few extra skill points per level and one free feat. The latter was nice, I admit, but fighters also got tons of free feats and not everyone played a Fighter either.)

Why, in SR, a game with humans who have a couple nice little bonuses-one mechanical, one social(Bonus to Edge, a very powerful stat, and the fact they are probably the easiest-to-fit in bunch-though I freely admit with the advent of biosculpting this doesn't really count anymore), do they just fall that much behind? Is it simply due to the size of the bonuses on the other races(that aren't enough to offset their penalties?) If all the races were no more than a +2 or +3 to their stats, could this game get away with free races like other games?

I am kinda asking this in a fairly curious way. (I do admit, in The Other Game that I mentioned, once you started getting to the uber-powerful characters, they DID have a cost attached, in a way-it wasn't points, but it was a level penalty. Also, in the old game, their attempt to balance them was the whole level-cap thing, but when you could multiclass and humans couldn't, it wasn't so bad in the end. Later games even got rid of this, and I still don't see tons of them.)

Thinking about it, while I don't like comparing systems, etc-if elves, dwarves, and the like in D&D ever cost anything I don't think we'd EVER see any more of them. I don't see enough as it is and they're free. Same with my Rolemaster days-human-types were far more common than the non-human type.

I disagree, and disagree.

They were not meant to be perfectly balanced, but they were meant to be roughly balanced. Theoretically karmagen would be better at building more rounded but less high end stat/skill characters. It actually was better for that and getting max skill and attribute and a ton of other things. They were supposed to be different and had different design goals, but you can be balanced and still be different. I wish 4e D&D could have figured this out.

Humans were actually pretty powerful in 3rd ed D&D. They were probably the most powerful race in the basic book, tie with dwarves.

In SR4 they are actually pretty good. Orks are better, but humans facilite a few character concepts that orks don't (i.e. anyone with logic 5), and come with style baggage that people don't like.