You know, I was thinking about something. Previously, it was beneficial if you were going to be burning edge alot to have only 1 or 2 points of Edge. Now, however, with the Karma Cost increase...

Mr Lucky(human) with his Metagentic Improvement: Edge, Exceptional Attribute: Edge, and a 9 Edge...is NEVER going to want to burn that edge! He is going to only want to spend it.

Metagentic Improvement: Edge... WTF? Please tell me that's a joke and Augmentation didn't fail to exclude that from list of attributes you can improved...

-paws

I believe Cardul's referring to Metagenetic Improvement from the list of Runner's Companion Metagenetic Qualities, rather than Genetic Optimization from Augmentation. Regardless, both of those are explicitly for changing the maximum natural attribute rating for a Physical or Mental attribute. Edge is neither a Physical nor a Mental Attribute, so it would not qualify for either of these improvements.

His point still stands. Mr Lucky is never goign to burn his edge again. Yet, he's still quite awesome at everything so long as he has edge to spend on tasks.

Ah ha! Okay, that makes much more sense.

Either way, Mr. Lucky will need to get really picky about burning Edge.

-paws
The caffeine is finally kicking in...

In this, I am in total agreement... but then again, a character with 8 Edge is indeed Mr. LUCKY... (we got one in our campaign, and he is definitely Lucky)

while 40 karma is worse, 24 karma was nothing to sneeze at. I don't think I'd be burning edge as mr. lucky except as a last resort in either case.

What Shinobi Killfist Said...

Mr. Lucky should never get to the point where he has to burn edge. Add seven dice to your ten, and use rule of 6? Likely a critical success. Hand of God? Your new edge is 6. Sucks to be you.

I've seen characters built around burning Edge, and they tend to go for a low Edge in any case, sometimes backed up by the Bad Luck Flaw (since it doesn't affect burnt Edge). The Mr. Lucky's don't tend to burn Edge in any case.

Mr. Lucky really doesn't need to burn edge most of the time. There is little that getting +8 dice (rerolls 6s) does not solve where burning edge does.

Exactly, under the original costs Mr. Lucky really tended to only burn Edge when facing certain death or when played by Mr. Stupid.

It was always a sufficient deterrent. The wall just got a little higher now and the aversion to burning Edge is pushed even further down the spectrum so that Mr. Lucky's cousin, Ms. Moderately Fortunate (Edge 4) is also quite unlikely to burn Edge.

A good thing as far as I'm concerned.

The wall hasn't got higher, with the higher Karma rewards it has been lowered if anything.

You may be right. At 9 karma a session, it'll take 5 sessions to restore your Edge point. At 5 karma a session, it'd take 5 sessions to reach 24 karma, the previous point.

That's still 5 sessions, though, which is over a month's worth of gaming.

How many players expect to be burning a point of edge every 5 sessions?

Omg, forget Mr. Lucky! I want to see the Mr. Stupid build!

About as many as build a character reliant on a high edge attributes...

When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail...

To an extent that is true, but it will still chew deeper into your Skill advancement, right? I haven't gone through the SR4A changes with a fine tooth comb but I think that is how it play out? In terms of the number of sessions, as Cain laid out, it's the same. But those 5 sessions of advancement will cost you more Skill dice.

It is more a state of mind than an actual build. Although I could be wrong on that? I invite anyone and everyone to prove my error!

No.
5 sessions @ 5 Karma will earn you 25 Karma, -24 to increase Edge to 8; you have 1 net gain Karma.
5 sessions @ 9 Karma will earn you 45 Karma, -40 to increase Edge to 8; you have 5 net gain Karma.

Do not try to argue 8 Karma a session, because that should happen under SR4A approximately the same amount as 4 Karma a session under SR4, & SR4 will come out even further behind.

You don't go backwards any faster, maybe even a hair slower (largely depends on how Karma awards really break down), but relative to not burning Edge you slow your advancement down more.

The math you are missing is that it is still 16 extra Karma gone. Skills still cost the same Karma, right? So in effect you have lost more dice. With SR4A the character that avoids burning Edge will advance their Skills (along with the other Karma purchase benefits like Positive/Negative Qualities and binding foci), and therefore their dice pools, at an increased rate compared with under the SR4 rules.

The Mr. Stupid Gambit just got less optimal.

Yes, skills cost the same. That is not important. What is important is that they cost less relative to Karma earned or spent on attributes, & thus advance faster, regardless of if you are replacing burned Edge or not.

And the entire point of this is that burning Edge on Mr. Lucky is now less costly in other areas than it was in SR4.

Only in an illusionary way. In truth it costs more. The extra cost is just hiding behind the smoke screen of advancement in general speeding up.

No it doesn't.
You have diminishing return, so while you may be more behind in peripheral skill under the new system you will be closer to your team mates in regard to your main skills.

Because depth in Skill base isn't an asset? That's crazy talk, especially Mr. Lucky. His strength lies in flexibility. A broader Skill base plays to that strength.

Even specialists tend to take a fair amount of karma to fill out their primary field in a meaningful way.

I'm not even counting Positive Qualities, because gaining those are more game table specific.

Just use the aforementioned numbers.
Old rules:
Mr Lucky can afford a new skill every 20 sessions.

New rules:
Mr Lucky can afford a new skill every 4 sessions.

So he obviously gains 5 times as many skills as before whereas the rest of his team merely doubles.

Under the assumption that he is Burning Edge once every 5 sessions - which is what this is about.

If he does not need to replace Edge, then he still advances his skills twice as fast as the SR4 equivalent.

Thank you for demonstrating my point, you are letting the smoke screen of overall increased advancement get in your eyes.

Your point is entirely ignoring comparison, & thus irrelevant to this discussion.

We are not talking about rate of advancement, but rate of advancement in comparison between SR4 & SR4A. As such, the relative cost of increasing Edge from 7 to 8 has gone down.

If you want to look at it from the standpoint of not playing Karma to get to Edge 8, the cost looks even worse (in both SR4 and SR4A), depending on the character build method used. The Standard BP price to have that very high Edge is, to say the least, very pricy. So you already have thrown optimal choice under the bus ... and after burning the point you don't even get the spending die benefit of it.

Let's call that the Mr. Stupid Gambit:Chargen Variation.

Yet again, you are trying to turn the topic to something unrelated to this discussion. Character generation has no relevance whatsoever to the cost of replacing lost Edge.

On the contrary I'm actually comparing the real costs. When Mr. Stupid plays with a [more optimally run] Mr. Lucky he will fairly shortly find himself overshadowed and moreso in SR4A. Fifteen sessions in Mr. Lucky has roughly an extra 120 Karma spent on advancing other Skills and such whereas Mr. Stupid has [maybe] an extra 3 successful tests. Prior it was only 72 Karma (though that's still a hell of a lot).

Now the 120 SR4A Karma will buy the same dice as the 72 SR4 Karma if it was spent on Stats only. However when you consider that it is extremely unlikely for the character's Karma to be spent entirely on Stats through the life of the character, instead a mixture of these (unless this player is going to make a concerted ongoing effort to keep his PC back), the cost ratio of burning SR4A Edge and SR4 Edge is going to sit somewhere between 1:1 and 1.67:1. Where exactly depends on a few factors, although for Mr. Lucky it's more likely it'll be higher than with the 'average' character because of the aforementioned advantages with the broad Skill base.

It wasn't relevant .... until you tried to ignore the cost of burning Edge (which is what this topic is about BTW) by shifting the cost into character generation. Stop trying to do that and the character generation side-trip goes away.

At no point in this entire thread did I mention, even indirectly, character generation, until you attempted to shift the debate.


And yet again, we are not in any way comparing the cost of playing a 'Mr. Lucky' vs. 'Mr. Stupid'. We are only comparing the cost of advancement between SR4 & SR4A, given the same set of circumstances.

So how did the character get their Edge up to 8? Transubstantiation? You failed at the basic realization that asset expended = cost.



... in a way that ignores the real costs of burning Edge, AKA the topic of the OP.

We know that burning Edge with an attribute of 8 is going to cost a shitlode more than not burning it to begin with. That is not the fucking topic of debate - the question was if it cost more in SR4A than it did in SR4, and after taking into account the increase in Karma awards, the answer is no, it actually costs less.

This has never, at any point, been between 'Burn or not to Burn', nor has it in any way been about how the Edge 8 was obtained, only what comes after that.


Everything you have said is either irrelevant or false, so just shut up.

... when calculated in a fundamentally flawed manner.

I'll try spell this out for you in another way since you are having trouble following:

Cost in SR4: 24 Karma [or equivalent]
Cost in SR4A: 40 Karma [or equivalent]

Karma in SR4 buys slightly more on average because Stats cost less. The ratio of SR4A Karma purchase power to SR4 Karma purchase power falls somewhere in the range between 60% (if you only bought Stats during the life of the character) and 100% (if you only bought non-Stats during the life of the character). Since purchasing only Stats during the life of the character is an extremely hypothetical and unlikely situation the working assuming is something >60%. Since >60% of 40 (SR4A cost) is > 24 (SR4 cost), therefore true SR4A cost > SR4 cost.

Sorry, them's the real numbers. You've lost track of what the real costs are.



You really need to read the first post [of this thread], again.

Actually, Dwight's point is valid. He's talking about opportunity cost. Not only is there a net change in the amount of karma left over after purchasing back your edge, you also lose whatever you could have purchased with that karma had you not burnt your edge.

Let's translate that karma loss into loss of skill points:

SR4 - 5 sessions, 25 karma.
SR4A - 5 sessions, 45 karma.
SR4 - 1/4th of a skill raise to 2, but loses 6 skill raises to 2. Net loss: 5 & 3/4th skill raises to 2.
SR4A - 1&1/4 skill raises to 2, but loses 10 kill raises to 2. Net loss: 8 & 3/4th skill raises to 2.

The end result is that while the SR4A edge burner has 5 more karma, he loses the equivalent of 3 skill raises to 2 more than the SR4 edge burner.

This also effects everything else you buy with karma. Let's look at attribute raises, and skill groups:

SR4 - Gain's 1/6th attribute/1/10 skill group raise to 2, loses 4 attribute/2 & 2/5 skill group raises to 2. Net loss: 3 & 5/6th attribute/ 2 & 3/10 skill group raises to 2.
SR4A - Gain's 1/2 attribute/skill group raise to 2, loses 4 attribute/skill group raises to 2. Net loss: 3 & 1/2 attribute/skill group raises to 2.

The SR4A edge burner loses 1/3rd less attribute raises to 2 than the SR4 edge burner, but loses 1 & 1/10th more in skill group raises.

The SR4A edge burner would have to stick to raising attributes in order to gain an advantage over the SR4 edge burner. So, I'm begining to think that his karma gain isn't worth it.

<Edited because I combined the two without account for the fact that skill group costs don't change between the two editions. SR4 group costs were not 6 for a skill group of 2>

@Dwight - I was referring to the discussion regarding advancement. Even if I was not, go and read again - the original post was an observational statement, not a discussion, & the initial replies where similar, simply saying the Mr. Lucky build was not intended to burn Edge to begin with.

@Tunnel Rat - No, it does not have relevance to what was going on. If you had bothered to read my replies, you would see I had already covered this. It was not about burning Edge or not - it was about which system (SR4 or SR4A) was more costly if you did burn Edge. As you have a greater amount of remaining Karma in SR4A (& thus could actually raise a skill), SR4 was more costly.

I DID read your posts. I'm saying that you're wrong, It is more costly in SR4A to burn edge because what you lose far exceeds what you gain. In order to determine which is more 'costly', you have to do a cost analysis. You can't properly analyze costs when you ignore losses. Your net loss is less in SR4, therefore, it costs less to burn edge in SR4.

The ones playing Ghost Cartels...

No it isn't.
You don't get something like 2 dice per 5 karma spent, return is diminishing, that's why you're better off now.

Skill raises to 1; Karma per dice gained 2
Skill raises to 2; Karma per dice gained 4
Skill raises to 3; Karma per dice gained 6
Skill raises to 4; Karma per dice gained 8
Skill raises to 5; Karma per dice gained 10
Skill raises to 6; Karma per dice gained 12

As long as Mr Lucky can afford those early stages he'll be closer to the other chars then old Mr Lucky that couldn't afford them even though the rest of the team are now spending more. The point is they are spending more at a way higher cost.

The extra 16 Karma lost is always enough to buy from 5 to 6, unless you are buying a Skill Group and that extra 16 Karma simply makes it more likely/quicker to buy the Group up. For example 24 Karma in SR4 by itself is not enough to go from Group 5 to Group 6, the 40 Karma in SR4A is plus enough to a single Skill 4-5, open a Skill Group, etc. Not all Skills are at the top end of the scale at the same time. So the escalating cost for a single skill doesn't even have bearing on a single Edge burn and has even less over the long term. This is particularly relevant for Mr. Lucky because he can leverage the broad Skill base that includes lower level Skills even more than the average character.

It comes down to 40 Karma in SR4A buys more overall character improvement than 24 Karma in SR4. I guess you can't work your way through the logic and math of my last post? I tried to keep it simple. Maybe you have to actually play Mr. Stupid vs Mr. Lucky through a few burns to have it come home to you? *shrug*

What logic and what math?
All you say is that 40 is more then 24 which is right and then you rest your case which is wrong.

That extra 16 karma is covered by the doubled rate of Karma gain.

Thats appears to be where you are falling down, not understanding the basic construction of the comparison in question. When you are comparing the impact of burning Edge in SR4 vs SR4A you've got two ratios:

Mr. Stupid (SR4)
-------------------
Mr. Lucky (SR4)

and

Mr. Stupid (SR4A)
---------------------
Mr. Lucky (SR4A)

Then you compare the ratios to see which version of the rules create the wider gap between burning and not burning Edge. What happens is that the extra Karma/session appears in the second ratio on both the top AND bottom, numerator and denominator. If you stroll your memory back to late Grade school, that factor then cancels out. It becomes effectively irrelevant in this comparison.



You are challenging that the purchasing power of the Karma spent on the Edge burn (whether spent literally or in effect) lies somewhere over 60% and under 100%? That you then use that to give convert the SR4A Karma into the SR4 equivalent. That's pretty damn basic. If you can't grasp that then yeah, I guess you are going to have to play Mr. Stupid and have the math kick him in the crotch to get your attention.


See Larme, it's not a build. It's a state of mind.

No. The cost of something going down does not make another thing more expensive. The only thing that increases the cost is if the cost in relation to available resources increases. The resources is Karma, which has increased by 80%, and the cost in question is attribute advancement, which has increased by 66%. Thus, the cost of attribute advancement has actually gone down, not up.

Except it is not over 60% and under 100%

Well... if you are willing to work at this instead of telling me to "just shut up", let's look at that to see where you are getting off track. So what do you think it is and how do you calculate that value?

Nuh uh, I was thinking about it last night, and you could make such a build! Make a character with Uneducated and the mental disability flaw... You could also use some custom flaws like Lack of Common Sense (the GM can force your character to do the exact wrong thing at key moments), and maybe a few different varieties of Poor Self Control. You'd need to exceed the 35 point flaw limit, which would be cool cuz you'd end up with a more powerful build, but he'd be too stupid to do anything right and would probably get killed or get the team killed. That would be sweet