Oooh this could be fun... I wonder how I've done.


Lvl 6 Deva Avenger (Wis is highest stat)

If you could scale me up to lvl 11 as well and pick my paragon path (since I have basically the same character in a home game and I'm curious).

Actually I hated the first edition of shadowrun. Never cared for magic, the damage and combat system, some of the skill system, or character creation for non humans. The history was pretty silly and the breakup of boundaries seemed pretty arbitrary 2nd edition was a bit better and it has some pluses, but a lot of negatives still remained. I held no interest in 3rd edition. It was still better than I thought Cyberpunk, but only because it was more balanced than random.

Ok so 4th edition comes out and I look over it. A lot of rules are streamlined. They got rid of TNs. They made deckers party playable instead of solo adventurers. I even liked the adepts and magic. Rule were more condensed in a few books and the core book actually presents a more complete closed system. I even liked the little boxes giving recommendations for optional rules. I still ignore the metaplot and the world works very differently in my campaigns, but so be it.

Character creation still takes forever for the same reasons it always did and that was how to spend money. I can make a character in about 20-30 minutes if I ignore the money aspect. Yeah, I can do a priority system like previous versions, but how to spend resources still takes the most time (ignoring fluff).

I do miss karma pools especially for groups. I do understand players (myself included) were shocked about the stat and skill reduction. Magic has some issues and hacking is still a bit harder to get my head around. Possession and spirits tend to make things a bit too powerful for my tastes (nothing that full auto with an automatic won't fix). I still think a good cybered samurai still outclasses a combat adept in most situations. Not a perfect system, but what is?

However, despite these faults I do feel players can find a niche and overlap skills. A "bad character" can still have uses in a group and while he might not lead the charge he can still provide support. There are no levels to give a great disparity in survivability. A character's in choice game decisions and tactics mean more than what level you are. The biggest badass can still get his head blown clean off by a bunch of gangers, and a weak character can still fire a missle to sink a ship.

In sum the game is gritty enough for my tastes, while still being cinematic.

That's a good summary of what I like and dislike about 4E, Omenowl. The ability to easily include deckers in the game is a big plus, and the multitude-o-systems has been drastically cut down to a few different groups of rules. My gaming group has run into a few issues in recent games, but the problems weren't so much with the 4E rules as either basic issues with the setting (one gamer is a real life combat veteran and took exception to certain weapon and armor rules in any edition) or a player who was stuck in 3E thinking.

I'm not familiar with the class. PHB2?

That long huh?
I usually put together a character in a bout 30 minutes or so... with maybe 20-30 minutes of discussion/tweaks with my gm... Rarely more time than that... (Though they are never in the league of a Pornomancer type character, generally 10-14 dice Primary)

Writing a good back story does take me a little time though, I will give you that, but base character creation, not long at all...

Two hours is the maximum amount of time (including equipment) it takes me to generate a non-specific character.


To create a specific character (aka one I know exactly what I want) generally takes me upwards of 1-2 weeks. This, however, is not specific to Shadowrun - it applies to every RPG with point-based generation, & every level-based character above ~5.

Yuppers... Divine Striker Class.

I'm with you on the specific characters. Certain ones can take days for me to finish polishing and tweaking into shape. I've heard of 30-min characters, but I've never seen an effective one. Then again, I'm not good with spreadsheets, so that may be a factor.

I once challenged Synner to create, live, an effective character in less than two hours. He wanted to use his crib notes, and got upset when I pointed out it'd give him an unfair advantage. The challenge never happened.

Character generation is one of those things that (generally, for most people) speeds up as you become more familiar with the system. It helps, of course, if you have a strong concept of the character from both a roleplaying and a pure mechanics standpoint (form follows function, natch).

(As I recall, I also declined a "Cain challenge," mainly because the specific restrictions stipulated were bull. But we digress.)

Some of my players tell me that to make a character in the Nephilim system took a full weekend to complete properly. These guys have played more systems than even me, so hearing that from them made me freak...

- J.

I recall that, & agree with Ancient on this. Every 'restriction' you placed was unneccesary to say the least, & I am sure I am not the only one that felt they were designed for the sole purpose of attempting to make this 'challenge' never happen.

Further, I seem to recall him still agreeing to it, but you had something about a live video feed (or something) being unable to adequately 'prove' he was building the character from scratch.

What restrictions did I place? I don't recall any, could you dig up the thread? All I said was that he couldn't use his crib notes. Synner and I are actually in agreement as to what constitutes a viable character, so it wasn't that.

4th ed D&D has really defined characters - and the other character options are just those except worse.

The only game I could possibly hold a candle to that would be World Tree. Character sheets, when printed in Times New Roman 12 point single spaced font are 6 pages long, not including the (seemingly mandatory) half-page of backstory.

The only game I participated in the GM had premade characters because, "if we had to do char gen it'd take us all weekend and we'd never get to play."

Look, even using the NSRCG3 in SR3 i took a wek for most of my characters to build . . each!

Honestly, I think the biggest slow down in SR chargen is the same through ALL editions: Gear.
I can make a pure mage, with all gear, in probably about 30-45 minutes. To make a Street Sam or Rigger? Expect it to take hours...If I am making any character that is gear heavy, or is trying a concept that stretches the system(Troll Face Social Adept...), it takes a bit of time. But, I think in ALL systems, the biggest slowing point in chargen is gear/equipment.(Except MW:3E/ CBTRPG, where it was assigning the points from your life paths, and calculating what your actual skill ratings were,where it could literally take hours...heck, I do not think I ever even assigned gear n MW3E character...)

I easily agree with Gear taking the bulk of time toward completing a character.

My last character was a mage, focused more on summoning. I wanted to be human and I ripped through the attributes, only tweaking a couple. Skills were a piece of cake...I think it was all of maybe 8 skills. All but two were magic related. I wanted a good perception and I wanted him to have a revolver and be solid with that, so he took pistols. I hummed through my knowledge skills as I already had a background in mind, so that took all of what, 20 minutes or so.

Tradition and spells (limited to only 6) were quick and I tweaked my resources a bit to get my sustaining focus, but then I got bogged down making mods to the revolver. And got bogged down again putting together a good commlink, programs and an agent so I could do a little bit of matrix stuff.

So, even being gear-lite, I put in a good 90-120 minutes on this, and probably spent a little more time reviewing and double-checking that I wasn't missing anything before starting play.

Now, with anyone that has cyberware, drones or vehicles, you're probably spending at least an hour looking through all that. Even more if you are not familiar with the game.

Likes:

• Magic System - loved it since SR1. Flexible spell design. Drain mechanic. No Resurrection, Teleportation, Time Travel, etc. Totems Mentor Spirits.
• Condition Monitor - Its an artifact from the "old days", but you know what? It was damn well revolutionary at the time. And it still remains superior to almost every versions of Hit Points.
• Combat - Deadly, fast... yet not absolutely essential to most games. (In our last game session, my players chose to BS a security guard into allowing them to enter a private residence rather than just taser the crap out of him. Then they decided to run rather than cause a scene when confronted with a a trio of guards they could have easily butchered. Yay!)
• An active gamer community - even if DS is full of opinionated loud mouths (and I mean that in an affectionate way), its an active forum, full of knowledgeable people, and better still, people are willing to debate things rather than mindlessly accept that there can be no other way! (*cough* Palladium forums *cough*)
• No "uber damage" - I like that even the really, really big guns are on the same damage scale as the little ones.
• Versatility - Its not a "universal" system, but the core rules are easily adapted to a wide variety of settings, from sci-fi to fantasy to modern to steampunk to whatever. I've seen decent adaptions of Firefly, a home brewed Fantasy world, a steampunk setting, etc. And I'm eagerly awaiting the Spelljammer conversion one of my players is working on. I had some ideas for a Superheroic setting based on the SR4 rules the other night - that's still in the very rough, not on paper stage though.
• A diverse selection of Optional Rules. Like it or not, I really, really enjoy the fact that they've chosen to include a variety of optional rules to tweak the game to your group's tastes. Its like House Rules, but with an official stamp on them.

Re: Character Gen
Depending on the system, I can usually crank out a solid character in about 1-3 hours (BP) or 30 minutes to 1 hour (Priority). The biggest time factor is, of course, gear. Most everything else I can easily commit to memory, including the must-haves for various character roles (but most of that is pretty much "duh, no shit" kind of stuff).

Note: There are certain characters that I could tinker with until the Armageddon and never be 100% satisfied with, but that's more a personality quirk than an issue with the rules.

-paws

Kerenshara is quickly starting to gain fans. I'm a new one, as she nailed the issue on apost about two pages ago.
I would like to add something about Shadowrun, that to me makes it awesome: Its easy to handwaive and imrpovise a ruling, avoiding long hours of rules-searching through the book.

The system is pretty consistent and intuitive. You roll X amount of dice, that are the sum of Y and Z, add in modifiers and that's it. Even if its far from what the rule book says you /have/ to roll, its easy to do this.
A maglock and you don't remember how you should open it and tamper with it? Roll electronics + intelligence + equipment modifiers and you're done, get on with it and keep playing. This system flexibility can be very easily attained with Shadowrun, not so much with other systems (AD&D2nd, for example).

There is also the autosuccess rule, where you trade 4 dice for 1 success. I use extensively this rule and it makes play go faster and smoother.

Last, the optional rule that limits successes by skill rating x2. I love this rule because it limits builds like the pornomancer, and adds not realism, but verosimilitude to the game. The proficiency with which a professional can accomplish things tends to beat an amateur's. Having a varied skill set becomes important, but also trying to get more points in those skills, not just adding dice.

Well I'm mostly contrasting to Gurps and Ars Magica - in any of these 3 systems I can rifle off a "good character" (not optimised but quite useable) in a little under 30 minutes. I'm not counting a number of character examples in thie 30 min build time (building a Rigger with all custom gear, drones and pilot programs, 500 point Gurps characters with shapechanging powers and solar powered heat vision etc.)

New players I have dealt with have trouble with Gurps and the huge cross sections of options, skills and the "Skill to stat" defalting math and the various skill difficulties. I tend to set aside the whole first session and part of the second for Character generation and rules shake down for new players. Once this is done it tends runs smooth as silk but this is enough to turn many against the idea before they even start.

In Shadowrun I can usually run a quick "rules example situation with your character in it" before the end of the first night even with novices to roleplaying. People who know the system reasonably well I often allow to give me a quick description of their character and they make it while I'm doing intro scenes / Stuffer Shack for people who showed up with a character.

I've never tried to run Ars Magica with novice roleplayers (and am unlikely to do so) but even those who have played the game a few times in the past need a good running start and a few (2-4) hours to stat out their Magus unless, like myself, they have gone out of there way to get very familiar with character generation rules. And thats just one character of at least 4 each player makes. Granted the other 3 characters are a cake walk by comparison but still once this is done they need to design the covenant they will be playing from. This combined with the fact that the full magic rules, while being quite elegant and intuitive once you have a full understanding, are a pain in the butt to explain "in short" and look broken as all hell untill you get a full handle on them. Persons new to Ars Magica who are veteran role players: I set aside 2 full sessions for full Char. gen. and rules shake down. Usually it only takes one and change. I tend to try to get this out of the way one on one or loaning out my books for as many as possible before the game start due to the time it eats.

The other possiblity is we may have a differing definition of "effective" - games I run tend to have the PC's soft maxed at best - dice pools of 10 - 14 in thier focused areas with some room to grow and rare is the player in one of my games who sweats the essence vs. cash math to squeeze in a little bit more hell machine. I'm fairly sure the current leader in dice pools at my table is the hacker with 13 dice on decription actions if he is runing hot VR. The Sammi is more a Tough then a Kill Machine (oh ya I lie... hes got somewhere around 24 dice to soak). Most of them make due with 10 dice or so and some Edge if they care about the roll.

Well I'm not currently playing or running shadowrun but for me 80% of the metaplot rocked. Why use the SR system? because I love dice pools, I also like games where when you get shot it hurts, magic has a cost, and I love all the cyberpunk gear. Honestly I would have been just as happy with shadowrun if there was no magic. I also give kudos to shadowrun for inspiring the designers of vampire the masquerade which would later become darkages vampire(my favorite game). So thats why I love and play shadowrun

Our definitions aren't that different. I believe in 15+ in the primary dice pool, 10+ in secondary specialties, and 6-8 in everything else. I also have a suggested cap of 20 dice, to prevent extreme builds. That doesn't include situational modifiers and Edge, so people can still roll fistfuls of dice if that's their thing.

I suppose I could have also contrasted Shadowrun to Rifts for Character gen... but this would be like contrasting a eating a chocolate bar to drinking draino. Sure Shadowrun isn't all that good for you but at least its not liquifying your insides while causing horrific pain. Rifts goes too far the way Shadowrun steps: slightly choppy rules with a kick ass setting. The Rifts setting is IMO *Brilliant*, the rules are like being violated with hot irons. I'd port Rifts to Gurps rules in a heartbeat if I felt the need.

I wish I could say its an experiance gap Cain but you've got a few thousand posts so I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you've been playing and/ or running the game for a bit. It might just be that you prefer to take your time at it where I build less polished characters.

I tend to build full "equal to the PC's or better" NPC's for runs while we break for pizza, mostly in my head. They are ususally a bit "flat" stat wise (I don't bother with much in the way of background skills unless I have a vision) and are usually eyeballed for point value. Prime runner foe I do allow my full attention, a good chunk of time and some review time but the last time I made a PC for myself quickly I'm fairly sure it was done in the 20 - 30 minute range. He wasn't going to win award for "best PC evar" but I was fine with it - he was rather light on the gear though, a bit of cyber and bioware, a couple guns with standard mods, armor and some utility "stuff".

I know it might seem the same, but its not. Building PCs in your head and NPCs can be done quite rapidly...but if you were to take that "idea" PC or NPC and actually have to sit down and spend your 400BP...well, its going to take a while, even if he's not optimized. Just spending all 400BP can be time consuming.

I GM like 99% of the time. With my NPCs, I basically just choose a "die pool" that I will give them for combat and another for non-combat and just run with it. I don't pick skills, I just use those die pools for everything. So, if my PCs are throwing 14 dice in combat, I adjust the NPCs/mooks accordingly. Half that for an easy challenge, equal for a good challenge or 150% for a tough encounter.

With an easy to use chargen (I like Daegann's), it's possible to conjure a character to SR in... 10-15mins, but to really build a PC takes me about a week in just about all games. I like to make characters that don't suck so I spend a lot of time to make sure the character is good at what he does. In that, I need the character concept to be thought up which can take another week On effectiveness, I'm with Cain on this matter. 15+ for main and rest on 8-12. Some skills I might take as low as 4, but DPs below that before modifier are just way too risky in my books.
For NPCs, it takes matter of seconds to make their stats: on the fly, naturally. Some major NPCs might get more attention, but stat-wise I don't bother to check them too closely. I just use the same math as for spirits: F*2 +modifiers is their DPs on their main area. Good thing about NPCs is that one doesn't have to bother calculating those 400 (or whatever number one uses) points but for PCs, it is quite a math-puzzle to get them well enough spread.

The two times I've played GURPS, made me like SR's dicepool system even more. In GURPS, even if you got skill way over the "pro" level (16+), you still are going to fail with same percentage as if you had only high skill. On SR, if you are good, you are good. The odds of failing raises higher and higher the better you are. On ARS what I remember is that it had the ridiculous multiplier with the dice: skill 3, stat 1, dice 112 counted together is... wait WHAT?

Hence, SR is in my books most excellent system as you can make a character that doesn't suck or fail with same % than Joe Average. (And throwing 20+ dice at once is just so much fun occasionally ) SR makes a clear difference between normal folks and professionals.

I tend to follow Deek's suggestion when it comes to NPC's: I just assign dice pool sizes. It's much easier and faster than sitting down with 400 BP.

But when it comes to actual PC's, it takes me that long simply because there's so much to cover. One example: I always forget about Contacts. I save them for last, end up running out of BP, and having to go back and erase stuff in order to get them. Or, it might be a necessary piece of equipment, such as a Fake SIN. Or maybe I'll look at the finished product, and decide he needs one more point in an attribute. The list goes on and on.

Pretty much exactly what I do too.

-paws

Id really like to see a less nuyen heavy character creation, like buying package of gear that would say pick a gun a rifle and some body armor from this list. The nuyen shuffle as always been a problem from day 1.

Kerenshara took me literally over a month to work all the way up. That included back story, family, contacts, personas for the multiple Fake SiNs, and all that, PLUS the Crunchy Bits^TM.

Essentially, here is how I approach character creation for a primary character, in ten steps:

Step 1: Initial Inspiration
I usually have all my favorite character ideas appear fairly whole from some inspiration, like a picture, or something somebody says to me, or reading about a new spell or piece of gear, or a new race.

Step 2: Concept Development
I then work the idea over and over in my head, trying to flesh out the initial flash of inspiration into something generally playable.

Step 3: Initial Writeup
I commit the completed idea to paper, and ignore costs for now. Inevitably I choke when the total cost comes up at the end.

Step 4: Concept Re-evaluation
I go back and try to trim the full concept back to closer to normal starting points.

Step 5: Subsequent Writeup
I re-do the numbers with the modified concept. I may have to repeat steps 4 and 5 a couple times until I am in the right ballpark.

Step 6: Detailed Background Creation
With an initial lock on the hard stats, I get to work on fleshing out the background, especially covering how I got those skills, 'ware and so on.

Step 7: Writeup Adjustment
I tweak the numbers so they reflect the development that occured doing the detailed background, because I always find something I didn't consider.

Step 8: Final Background Design
With the base numbers completely done, I fill in the final details.

Step 9: Min-Maxing
Here I go back and forth, trying to get the most from the last half dozen points, moving points around until I am satisfied. This is the part that gets me a negative reputation, but it's only the little bits being shuffled (like extra resources, or upping that contact's reliability, or buying that specialization after all - or deleting it)

Step 10: Final Personality Adjustment
Get comfortable with the final numbers and background and work out various asspects of the personality, quirks, preferences, likes and dislikes, and other idiosyncracies. Often I go through my list of "questions" to make sure I have it all covered. When I am done here, I'm ready to play.

Sure, it's a lot of work, but in the end the character "feels" completely organic and "real" to me, and I know I can jump in with ease. It also means that the personality and statistics and history mesh such that I am always playing apropriately to her abilities, and that means consistency for the others at my table.

(Edited - I hate when it loads at random when I am still changing it)

Someone recently asked me the same question. "What is good about SR, anyway?"

For some reason, this popped into my head; "Hot lesbian biker elves with guns and magic."

But in all seriousness, what's good about SR is that Magic costs, Trolls don't necessarilly need the skill to Intimidate, and the in-game toys just keep getting better and better.

I do it quite alike, though I don't usually start writing stuff on paper before it's "ready" in my head. As I use chargen to flesh out the crunch, it's much faster to juggle the last points. I also get *hit from people for taking my time to tweak the character in full readiness but I think it's more on their laziness to not bother to check the numbers. On SR, the difference between optimized and non-optimized isn't usually that much in numbers, but that 2-4 extra dice in pool make in the long run a big difference. Going back and forth the options is a good sign, I think

I see tweaking and min-maxing as two separate things. Tweaking is what one does to make the character better at whatever one wants and typically more enjoyable to play. Min-maxing I see as just that: max to few, min to rest. No brains required and the character might suck on all but the really narrow line what one maxed out.

"Lesbian? That's kind of limited, don't you think?" ::Kerenshara - Hot Bisexual Rocker Biker Elf Chick w/ Guns & Magic

Put 'er 'ere Gal!
I could basically say the same about my favourite Troll Character Vanice(Van) Ursus.
but it was SR3, i used the NSRCG3 and i had to adhere to more rules than usually.

Sorry but I can't help myself, I just finished building a 400 point Adept Sammi without the books. 23 minutes build time. (I had a business meeting to go to and yes I timed it.)
I am lacking: full itemised gear (I don't have the gear lists memorised but I have selected "what I want" and earmarked the Points needed for the dollars ++), the exact cost of a few adept powers (wall running? great leap? How much mystic armor/ reflexes can I afford after buying these?)
Stealth, acrobatics a weapon focus and pretty good dodge and soak pools. Goal: a wirefu wanna be martial artist with the Triads. He's something of a glass cannon, but not totally. I find myself tempted to find a way to make his speach not sync up with his lips.
11 dice with his focus ( I can get that up to 15 with minimal effort/ shuffling/ taking a Flaw - say 2 more minutes)
9 for remaning blade weapons
8 Pistols
7 Unarmed
7 on most Stealth group tests (this needs improving I'll admit, preferably to 9's, so for now he just THINKS hes stealthy)
And I'm not sure where his leaping/ tumbling etc land for dice cause I don't got all the costs at hand, probably in the 10 dice range.
and hes got 3-6 dice for... practically everything else. Including enchanting, arcane and electronics.
Edge 3
He's not much to look at but I like him and going to use him, against my players of course.

This of course is not the point. The point is that you don't need to do all that much math while making a character: costs are mostly linear and simple. It is easy to get rolling and teach the game. Fully fleshing out this character could take days. I've always been good with the numbers.

So my problem with this is infact all the gear. If you look at Savage Worlds, nWOD, or a number of more modern system. Once you have a concept, even without really knowing the rules you can finish up a character including gear in 5-15 min. The gear is the single biggest slow down in character creation. Its always been a problem in shadowrun and probably always will be.

That's very different from how I do it. Here are my steps:

Step 1: Mechanical Abstract
It's very rare that I start with a fluff idea, because mechanics are going to impact how you play your character more than fluff is. (In the sense of what's your party role, how you fight, etc.) So I try to get a one or two sentence abstract out there to set mechanical goals.

Step 2: Check With The GM
It saves a lot of time to get any mechanical ideas that the GM doesn't like nixed right away. Keep doing 1 and 2 until your GM gives you the okay.

Step 3: List The Major Stuff
Find the stuff that's gonna be key to what your character does, and list it. These are qualities, skills, spells, and gear, mostly.

Step 4: Check With The GM
Are any of these key points not acceptable in this game? Maybe your build NEEDS Restricted Gear, and your GM hates it. Another time-saver.

Step 5: The Little Stuff
Now fill out all the final details that makes this a 400 BP (or whatever) character. This is obviously the longest step, unless your build requires a LOT of key stuff. It's also when you should be optimizing your character to the best of your ability.

Step 6: Check With The GM
Noticing a pattern? I like to work closely with my GMs, to make sure everything's a good fit for the campaign.

Step 7: Decide On Fluff
This is one of the most important steps. Step back, take a look at your build, and say, "What kind of person gets to this point in life?" For example, if you've got the Day Job and Allergy (severe, seawater) qualities, you might be working in Seattle, but odds are you're not a sailor or a marine biologist. Your build is a very good outline to what this thing we call a character actually is, so you might as well use it!

Step 8: Flesh Everything Out
Okay, so now you know your character's basic history and his abilities. So go a step farther! How does he know his contacts? Where are his parents? Got any siblings? What does he like to wear? This can be the longest or shortest section, and defines most of your character's personality.

Step 9: Check With Your DM
Does your character qua character fit into the game world, and into the party? This is almost as important as the mechanical side.

Step 10: Double-Check EVERYTHING
Run your character through a spreadsheet to make sure you didn't mess up the math. Read your personality for typos. Make sure everything's perfect, then get ready to play.

Just a reminder, Runner's Toolkit is going to include the Pre-generated Auxiliary Character and Kit System (PACKS) which will allow players and gamemaster’s alike to quickly assemble player and non-player characters using plug-and-play character profiles and equipment kits.

AND... That works out great... My Kind of girl...