You'll get no argument from me there, the racial costs are one of the places I feel the ball got dropped in terms of consistency.

I think fluff reasons crept into pricing mechanics, without any mechanical effect. Which I generally disagree with.




I'd actually be cool if that was the reason across the board, but I don't think they are 5 points more - at least Ogres definitely aren't. Though I admit I haven't gone through and weighed all their qualities against their base costs.




Actually, I'd just prefer to see them get something positive to balance them out - and leave their points cost as is.




Well I agree with you there. Rather than label them as right or wrong, I tend to consider them as mistakes. Which as a player and consumer of the product, I feel free to do. I dislike the prices for the simple fact that they make no sense.




Perhaps you're confusing me with someone else? I don't remember being obnoxious at all in this discussion, nor do I feel I've argued like my position is the ultimate truth.

Unless this isn't directed at me?

I never said that. I never talked about all shadowrunning orks - just PCs. I did say that it would be perfectly acceptable (I didn't say logical) for all PC orks in the group to be oni just as it's acceptable that all PCs to be Awakened if that's what the players like. It's way out of proportion to the world's distribution, but since the PC group makes up such a tiny sampling, it's really irrelevant and doesn't alter the setting at all.

Circular logic.

I wouldn't object to that house rule either, it would be cool if Oni were better. Alls I'm saying is that it's no big deal to me if they aren't. And my comments weren't directed all to you, it was really more a general commentary on the SR4 h8ers, who seem to have a collective sense of I-know-what's-right-and-you-don't-cuz-you're-retarded. I don't think I have all the answers, I'd just like it if people in general could stop pretending that their opinions were Divine Truth and could concede that most of the time, the other side has a valid argument too.

Larme, I just content myself with the knowledge that regardless of what somebody online thinks, the only rules interpretations that matter are the ones that I make at my games.

A lot of DS discussions fall into a small group of people trying to change each other's minds on stuff that it just doesn't and never will matter that they agree on. Best to just duck out and ignore them when they hit that point in my experience.

Most recent of multiple such postings

Read what you quoted again. Your 'logic' here has no basis whatsoever.

So, your entire argument is based on 'the developers assigned the costs, so they must be right' & 'it's all objective'; mine is based on mathmatical analysis & support; and you label me a zealot?

I am not going any further - you are nearly as bad as Cain.

Have you done anythink to make strength mor useful, becouse doing cost mathematically like that really punishes trolls and their variants, when they have to pay 40BP for those strenght improvments that often aren't needed.

I don't like your system, and here's why. It considers flaws that are part of a race to be the same value as flaws that are not. The practical effect of this is that you can greatly exceed the 35 BP limit on flaws. Choosing a flawed race gives you bonus attributes, the cost of which are offset by the flaws, giving you a character that effectively has 45, 50, or more points of flaws. I think that has a negative impact on balance. I'd rather have metavariants suck than have them be cheesemonkeys who can take more flaws than anyone else. Your system might be more consistent that the RAW, but that doesn't mean it's good IMHO.



You don't even understand my argument. I don't think they're right, I don't think it's possible to be right. The goodness or badness of race costs is subjective, and not possible to be determined objectively.

You think that races shouldn't be punished for rareness. You think you're being objective, but you miss the central fact that you can't objectively prove that rareness is not worth points. That's an opinion, not a fact. It's a sensible opinion, and you're entitled to it, but that doesn't make it objective.

Considering you reduced the costs of elves I'd say your costs are just as full as fail as the developers costs. Elves get bonuses in the two most important stats in the game with no penalty stats that is worth easily 30 points maybe more. Trolls cost more in your set and while they get the largest stat pool bonuses 4 of those are in strength which is virtually useless compared to almost every other stat. One of the biggest balance failures in both the BP and Karma systems is that they treat every stat and every skill as equal and they are far from it. But I'm not playing the Hero system so I don't look for the perfect balance in point costs.

Considering that metavariants are already races which get negative qualities for free, I fail to see your problem.


When one race is equal or better in all aspects to a more expensive race, it is objectively better. Have fun proving that statement wrong.


He has. Did you miss the part where being bland is worth paying BP for, and being distinctive is a negative quality?

An oni is slightly less distinctive than a changeling, because they are a distinctive metatype. And it might help them blend in, in a way - witnesses will describe a guy with bright red skin, horns, and buggy eyes, and be more muddled on the more mundane details.

I personally wish the fluff made its way into the crunch and gave them an actual, tangible bonus to their intimidation score, instead of merely saying that they are intimidating.

I kind of agree with the min-maxers, in that I doubt I would ever play an oni. It's weird, though, because I have no problem playing humans, and they are worse off than oni, both in BP and karmagen. So maybe it's that I don't find them that appealing to begin with, and the higher BP cost finishes off any vestigial interest I might have had in playing one.



By the way, for people who think this is solely an SR4 problem - metatypes have always been unbalanced, and SR4 is actually the most balanced of the editions. I don't have SR2 any longer, but in SR1, they had to take Priority A and roll for a random allergy. In SR3, metavariants cost an extra 5 BP across the board (for an oni, that meant double the cost to be an ork), and quite a few of them were not even as good as the baseline metatype.

Again, you're misunderstanding me. I'm talking about whether the price is right or wrong. You're right than one race can be objectively better than another under the system, but I'm talking about the price for the race, not the race itself. What I mean is that there's no objective way to determine that Oni are costed incorrectly. That requires an unstated premises to be proved, such as "points must be consistent" and "rarity should not cost points." You have proved no such premise, so you've proved none of your argument. I'm not saying that you're wrong, I'm just saying that your point costs are based on what you personally prefer, not on the One Right Answer.



Ok, let me refine my statement: you haven't proved that the rareness of being a metavariant is not worth points. That's a matter which is not subject to true/false determination. It only comes down to whether you subjectively like or dislike the fact that you're being charged for rareness. It's true that elsewhere in the system you pay points to be bland, not rare. But again, you haven't proved that everything has to be consistent, that's your own personal preference once again. Are you so arrogant that you can't admit, ever, that your opinions are not absolute truth? Really? This is starting to verge on a level of ridiculousness which makes me want to take Eidolon's advice and just walk away. If you don't even believe that reasonable people could disagree with you, if you're married to the notion that your opinions are 100% objective and can't be disputed, then I don't think there's much point to this argument.

One of the goals of SR4 was to streamline the rules.
Under that premise, do you think consistent rules are good or bad?

If you still think that it's neither please give 1 example where inconsistency actually streamlined a set of rules.

"Rarity should not cost points" -- proved by the fact that rare things (the options in the RC) all get Distinctive Style.

"Points must be consistent" -- if this isn't true, then there's no point to having a system at all. If points don't need to be consistent, I might as well pay 1 BP for all the attributes I want and to heck with everyone else in my party.

Both of these points have already been made, multiple times.

I fully admit that my opinions may be flawed. In this case, my contentions have been repeatedly proved by myself and others; you continue to ignore these proofs. They CAN be disputed, but you're not offering up any substantial argument that they're wron.

I think this is a red herring. Streamlining in the rules has nothing to do with what metavariants cost. The BP cost of an option is not subject to streamlining because no matter what, you'll need to memorize it or look it up. It could be 50 or 35, it would have the same level of streamlining regardless.



You don't seem to understand the difference between asserted and proved. I don't see any point in trying to educate you on the basics of formal logic. Peace out, bro.

Streamlining the rules also has nothing to do with the topic of conversation.


I accept your ad hominem attack and intention of leaving the thread as a concession, as I can back up my "assertions" with logical points and you have yet to offer a single one.

That would be why I called it a red herring. That's the logical fallacy where someone uses an irrelevant argument to try and prove something completely beside the point.



Ok, I'll teach you just a little bit of logic. You need more than just logical points as "back up." You need to state your premises, and show them to be true, and your conclusions must follow from those premises. I think you're relying on false premises. No matter how many back up arguments you make, you can't prove anything until your premises are true and your conclusions follow from them. I've done my best to show you why your premises haven't been proven, and I guess you missed all of it. My arguments are not intended to be ad hominem -- your arguments are fallacious not because you don't understand logic, but because your arguments are not logically valid. Though obviously if you don't understand logic, that would lead directly to making invalid arguments.

Then prove them wrong.
All you've said so far is that you don't believe that there's a right or a wrong way, which you didn't care to prove yourself.

That's now how it works. Premises aren't true until proven false. If that was true, the existence of god would be a proven fact because we can't prove he doesn't exist. I don't believe the arguments as given prove the premises stated. I have tried to point this out. I have tried to show that "consistency is required" is a false premise, and the arguments in return have amounted to "it's true because it's such a good thing." It's circular reasoning, it's asserting that consistency must exist because lacking consistency is bad. That's not a valid method of proof. As long as those are the only arguments supporting the premises with which I disagree, I don't have to disprove them because they haven't been proved in the first place.

In big letters this time, there is no proof for these premises because they are matters of subjective opinion, incapable of true/false determination. Any so-called proof you offer is just more opinion. It's irrelevant because matters which are incapable of a true/false determination can never be logically proved. And the reason why these are matters of opinion is that the truth or falsity depends on someone's prefernces, not on an indisputable fact.

For instance, Mus-i'mtriedoftryingtospellit has told us that because Distinctive Style is a flaw, being distinctive cannot cost points. But this is an invalid argument based on a false premise. The false premise is that the cost of metavariants must be consistent with the cost of flaws purchased at chargen. It's a false premise because there is no way to prove that it's the right way to do things. It's a rational way to do things, it might even be a good way of doing things. But being rational and good is not logical proof. Why? Because there are equally rational and equally good ways to do it, from another person's perspective. They have been introduced on this thread, and they haven't been conclusively refuted, because for someone who likes to pay for rareness, it's the correct answer. If there are multiple answers that are equally valid, you can't prove that one answer is True. That's how it is for this entire argument. Whether the BP cost is right or wrong is pure opinion. Should attributes cost 10 or 11? 10 or 7.333? How would you prove the correct value? You never can. That's why you will fail no matter how long you pretend to be right.

See, look what you've done. You've made me try and teach you logic. I really hope I wasn't wasting my time. If you don't accept formal logic as a method of proving your argument, but insist that stating your opinion over and over creates logical proof, then this argument is going to have to be over.

You are incapable of holding this conversation with us because you refuse to admit (or merely fail to understand) why, in a mechanical system, these are simple, hard facts.

No I don't. My problem is that you take matters of opinion and call them hard facts. Attributes cost 10 points, that's a hard fact. Attributes should cost 10 points. That's opinion. Get it?

"The oni's BP cost does not accurately reflect the build point costs of its constituent qualities in a manner mechanically balanced with the rest of the BP system."

Fact.

Yes & no. The point values are off, putting them behind other metatypes, true. But there is still some mechanical appeal to playing them, because the only other race without negatives is Elves, & they are even worse off than Humans.

Of course, I only ever play Human, with rare exceptions of Elves, regardless of the system.

Sure, that's a fact. The thing that isn't a fact is the conclusion you draw from it.

Premise: "The oni's BP cost does not accurately reflect the build point costs of its constituent qualities in a manner mechanically balanced with the rest of the BP system."

Conclusion: "The cost of Oni is wrong."

Missing, unproven premise: The cost must always mechanically reflect the build points cost of the constituent qualities.

Missing premise cannot be proven because it is a question of opinion. The right and wrong way to design an RPG is based on personal preference. It has not, and cannot be proven that a certain level of mechanic consistency is required in any given RPG.

Result of conclusion relying on unproven premise: Logical Fallacy (Non Sequitur)

Aight, i've got a better idea..
Larme, stop trolling for god sake, and add something of use and substance to the thread instead of arguing about whether other peoples stated opinions are valid or not. It does nothing to help with the subject matter at hand and im hard pressed to see *any* useful information you have provided that has to do with the topic at hand.

the rest of you - dont' feed the trolls. ignore them.

Now, to add my 2nuyen worth to the thread, yes, from a pure crunchy point oni are getting ripped off. yes, you can make an orc *look* like an oni superficially for less point cost. Yes, it means that the only people who will play an oni are the ones who really really really want to work that concept. I find it perplexing that for an additional cost of 5bp you get some funky mutations and fluff prejudice which, according to most of the pre-exsting BP sys chargen crunch has negative values which techncially should be *refunding* part of the cost back to you as opposed to increasing it. The distinctive style edge, SUGRE'ing and other various and sundry can give similar effect, but it won't make you an oni, and that's what that 5BP is for, basically. Belonging to a misfit ragtag bunch of despised and targets of prejudice. I think the problem is that all of the extra "freebies" you get with choosing oni over the usual orc is that those "extra's", under the BP system that the oni metavariant is pulled from, are all listed as negative (-) qualities, while being presented under oni as positive (+) qualities, which they clearly are not.

TBH, i personally would houserule it if someone wanted to play one and remove the additional cost for oni metavariant as i don't see any value gained (other than rp flavour) for the offset cost, though they would still wear all the "negative" qualities. this way, they get their RP flavor w/o being additionally penalized for wanting to play a cool concept... notice how i didn't chage for the cool bit though? As a GM, i understand that cool factor is a very large part of RP'ing, especially with my players, but im not going to penalize them for using their imaginations and thinking about what they wanted to do.

Someone brought up the point of weighted stats for racial mods if your going to compare them, and i think this would be the best way to do it. Imagine, if you will, a mage with phys stats of 12 and mental stats of 3. Sure, technically he has some awesome stats.. but for his character build they're not entirely the best suited to it. now the same stats on a sam? ok, now we're talking. However, the value of Int or Log or WP to *anyone* is extremely high.. but more so to the mage than the sam. And that's refelected in the stat costs, in a nice, simple, streamlined and *consistent* system. The races, however... less so unfortuantely.

I'm not even arguing about that. I'm arguing that they should accept other peoples' opinions and not pretend like they're the only ones who understand the system and know the right way it should have been designed. If you can accept that reasonable minds can differ, then I have no problem with you. I'd be perfectly happy with a house rule that changes the cost of Oni, I'm just trying to disprove the fallacious argument that such a rule is required for every gamer who isn't retarded.

EDIT: Please see previous page for my important, substantive post. If anything will put this thread to bed, it's my last post, not this one. Speaking of bed, good night.

If it doesn't, the system, in this instance, is unbalanced. The build point system is predicated on the idea that putting points into one thing over another is an even trade. If I can make an "oni" for cheaper with no cost to me, the system has failed.

Fluff has no place in the BP system.

Or more precisely, non-mechanical effects have no place dictating the mechanical cost of various options.

To do otherwise (as has Shadowrun, primarily in Runners Companion) is to create an unbalancing system, which in a game (PvP or cooperative) is, at best, undesirable.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

Has the game ever had that, though? The game has always had options that were woefully suboptimal mixed in with options giving you a huge amount of bang for the buck. You have crap like the SR3 psionic "tradition", or SR4's spell knacks, mixed in with stuff giving huge in-game advantages, such as the SR3 pre-errata mnemonic enhancer, or SR4's empathy software. In SR3's Shadowrun Companion, which introduced the metavariants, they certainly didn't fare any better, and ghouls, especially, were a joke.

Just because it doesn't, doesn't mean it shouldn't.

But you can't, you can make a SURGE freak ork with strange colored skin, but thats not Oni.

Why not?

Because someone wanted to save a few build points hiding in "can't we just call it semantics instead of a difference?" land.

Rephrase?

Marshall: Principles of Economics

In other words, making needlessly complex characters to circumvent poor rules is aesthetically undesirable.

In other words, "optimizing" (or "finding loopholes" to get the most by giving up the least) one's way through char-gen is annoying behavior.

In other words, are we done with this argument yet?

...in your opinion. And look, we're done! Now you know, you're just arguing for the system you prefer, and not the only possible system that a sensible person would like. That wasn't so hard, was it?

So I want to play a campaign that happens to take place in Japan, where Onis are the most common kind of Orc by far, how do you explain the premium you pay for being one then?
Do species have different costs in different ethnicities?

If you go by the fluff, an ogre has a heavily pronounced jaw, shorter stockier build and generally less body hair. An ogre is physically dissimilar to an oni enough that anyone who uses surge to make an ogre with the same mods will suffer the hefty social penalties in-game.

So maybe you're paying that 5 points not to be a freak outcast. At least Oni are relatively accepted (except in Japan obviously)

And if you still don't like it, then use the costs suggested by myself or Muspellsheimr and call it good.

Bearing in mind that if you adjust the oni cost, you may as well adjust the rest as well.

After Chargen, unless your doing Shadowrun Dueling Miniatures in an Arena, the entire game is fluff.

The act of rolling dice dice to resolve an action is entirely based on a fluff decision in game between GM and players.

Look at your typical game session. Is it an endless stream of dice roll, counter dice roll ala chess match, or a bunch of people sitting around having fun IC and OOC with occasional dice rolls for drama?

If you want a game system with BP = Effects, play GURPS or Champions, those systems are explicitly designed where Build Points = Effects across the board. SR4 isn't, and hasn't been for several editions.

Never eaten a Pickle
"It's not that I don't like pickles or anything, I just challenge myself"
BP Bonus: 5

I Beat Stuff
"I guess I like punching people"
BP Cost: 5

African
"I'm black. What of it?"
BP Bonus: 15

Private Education
"I'm $40,000 more in debt, but GAWD, the cheerleaders were so much hotter."
BP Cost: 15

Up to the GM. I might consider altering them if I was going to base my campaign somewhere that they were prevalent and the character was from that area.

And I'd also consider altering them (or anything for that matter) if the players brought up a solid argument. Often times its about respect and trust. If a player comes to me with a considerate plea, I usually work something out and we move on.

My assumption is that balance is what a sensible person looks for looks for in a system. I have yet to see this disproven.

I'd like to submit myself and all my fellow Palladium Fans as a counter to your assumption.

Define sensible.

Is using a logical argument based on personal values preference to convince others of changing personal valuations going to work?

There are games already in print that use the same balance credo for mechanical effects. Yet even they suffer from some preference decisions in the core attributes. Why is Dex and Int a different build cost in GURPS then STR? Why is STR so much cheaper then DEX in Champions?

I have different value assumptions then you, and no matter how elegant and precise your argument, as long as your fundamental assumption differs from mine, we'll arrive at different logical conclusions.

My assumption isn't wrong, right, better, or worse, it's just mine.

The developers design decisions were made with known or unknown assumptions and values that you disagree with. I have figured that out. But the decisions are not inherently wrong.

Otherwise there wouldn't be a game, or books, or a company in business selling them, or people having fun.

Yeah, I agree that Oni costs could be changed. A lot of things could be changed, especially when it comes to metatypes. But it takes a lot of work, and there's no guarantee that what you come out with is any better than what you started with. For instance, Mus worked all the races up based on mathematical consistency, but ran into problems -- what about the fact that strength technically costs 10 points at chargen, but is generally a worthless dump stat? What about the fact that Agility costs 10 points at chargen, but is technically the best skill in the game? If you just do it mechanically, you come up with a result that's more consistent, but still not perfect.

In the end, I'm not willing to open the can of worms that is house rules. The costs are a little unbalanced, but they haven't so far managed to ruin the game for me. If they did threaten to ruin the game, that's what the GM is for. I think pixies happen to be very undercosted at 35 points, for instance -- they lose out on two of the crappiest stats, strength and body, and they gain big bonuses to every single other stat, including the best stats in the game like agility, reaction, and intuition. And this might cause me to sit down to a table where 3/4 of my players want to be pixies. So what do I do? Do I spend hours meticulously reworking the system until it is a lean, mean machine of pure game balance? No, I just say "NO PIXIES ALLOWED FROM NOW ON YOU CHEESEMONGERS!" Problem solved!

Except for at least one of my friends, Palladium is his single favorite RPG setting, & he claims it is unplayable without nearly as many house-rules as there are rules as written - something I fully agree with from my experience with the game.

Because of that, Rifts & other Palladium systems are very rarely played with my group, & such campaigns never last long. I have also never seen a public Palladium game.

Rifts? Oh god. You can play a dragon right out of the book. Claw damage: 1d2 megadamage (that's 100 normal damage).

Yes.

Very.

Balanced.