ok, I just spent a week making a hacker/weapon specialist, And I wondered if I was just slow. I mean buying the gear, rechecking the math, cross refrencing all the modifications and rules. I have a group that just switched to shadowrun last week, and I sat around watching men in black one and two while they worked on characters. and at the end of the night? they had nothing done(I admit they're new to sr4, but they played sr3). I think I'm going to be spending sunday helping them finish their characters.

So, whats your best time? Is there a big difference from one character type to the next, say human phys Ad vs. infected Rigger?How many sessions does it take to meet the first johnson?

How fast can I, or how fast do I?

I can whip up a rules-abiding character that will serve a valuable role in a group in almost no time at all. Throw together a basic character-creation guy, to use as a throwaway NPC, that makes logical sense in keeping with his own very brief background and the game world as I envision it? Quick. Thirty minutes or an hour, probably, but way less with SR3 (which I'm more familiar with).

Now, how long does it take me when I'm making my own character for a game? Someone I plan to have a half-assed emotional investment in? Someone whose background I'll agonize over, research with in-game texts, plot out in order to make all his skills and abilities make sense? Someone who I'll throw together short fiction entirely in my head over, going over pivotal scenes from his growth as a human in order to get into his make-believe head and figure out how he'll react, and why, and how efficienently?

That sort of character, I'll make myself bat-shit crazy and be tweaking points around for pretty much as long as I can, before the game starts. Then I'll run into something in the first few sessions that makes me want to crack my head against a wall, shouting "G'ah, he should have _______ ability, too, I'm so retarded, it makes perfect sense with his backstory!" and continue to wish I had more points to spread out for...well...pretty much forever. Because I'm just detail-oriented that way.

I play SR3, but I've noticed that there's a big difference between Adepts and everything else. There's variation in everything else as well, but Adepts can be a distinctly 10-15 minute build because their central schtick is their powers, and six points doesn't take nearly the allocation that, say, a million nuyen worth of Resources does.

Is that build-time imbalance still there?

~J

I spent about a month making my first character, but I also had plenty of time (like two or three). Honestly, if you are making a character that you plan on running long term, don't rush it. Spending a week double and triple checking yourself is good. If its for a one shot game (or maybe a multi session, like 3-5) a week is what I would spend tops, presuming you already have a concept for the character.

In a pinch, I can toss together a full SR4 character, regardless of type within 20 minutes. Like Critas though, I can spend hours designing one. I have however put together varied excel sheets to speed the process along at points, and I randomly make characters in my spare time. I'm funny like that.

this is exactly what happens to me! Also, I love the expression "Bat-shit crazy"

I play with Kagetenshi so I use SR 3 as well but the most resent cher I play now I spend two days on the back story then anther two days working out the stats and skills and powers off the back story. I can how ever make one in under an hour if I need to.

I have found that a character, badly made, can take about 20 minutes. It can take slightly longer if I want a good character, or if the role is badly defined. IF I want to play a character, I generally make a numbers sheet, make a backstory to fit, polish the numbers so they fit better, and more depth to the backstory, go back to the numbers...

This continues until I die or the game starts.

Occasionally, if I have a concept, I'll start in reverse, with the background, make the numbers fit, change the background slightly to account for that extra point of locksmithing, then go back and see what it changed....

Often, I get slammed with the same situation as above.

I'm like Jhaiisiin, in that I like making characters just for the fun of tweaking the numbers. And I have certain favorite types I like to play. So coming up with a rough concept, then statting it out, doesn't take long. A rough background and description, suitable for a pick-up game, is also easy.

Doing a full background, either prose or, more often, the 20 questions or Bull's 50+ questions, takes a good bit longer, and usually if I do that, the stats and background will affect each other (although not that significantly, since my initial rough concept usually has my main focus/concepts for the character in it). But it only takes more time because I have limited free time, and don't have the energy or the desire to spend an entire evening messing around with a character's background.

Using computer assistance I can make a fully optimised character in a couple of hours. It is much harder to do it by hand. That includes: Basic concept, fully optimised mechanical stats and a background sketch.

I don't use a pen and paper because it takes too long to optimise.

what do you use for computer assistance?

Excel spreadsheet sourced from here with a couple of modifications I made myself. (The Blakkie one with the augmentation + arsenal stuff, and franktrollman's house rules)

The thing that takes longest for the most reward is usually equipment so I've got sample inventories that I can paste in with all the basics in place (e.g. program loadouts for hackers/non hackers, weapons for sammies/non sammies, armour and generic misc equipment). Need to tweak a bit for specific characters but it saves faffing about.

The main thing for optimising is shuffling points around quickly.

Utilizing the aweinspiring Power of the NSRCG made by McMackie?
I CAN build one in under 5 Minutes, if i want a more or less generic type.
If i want something i would LIKE to play? And to keep playing?
I can take up to 5 Months. Without any Descriptions in how the Character looks, who his contacts are and without any background story.

Yes, although it's more noticeable for hacker/rigger type characters and less so for street sams than it used to be. - now that there is so much 'ware available right at creation the realistic limit on high cyber characters tends to be their essence and not their pocketbook in my experience.

Magic types in general tend to be pretty fast builds. - it rarely takes me more than ~30 minutes to knock up a spell list (or allocate powers. etc).

I took probably 8 hours of real work allocating the cash for my last character (a hacker), ended up taking born rich *and* debt, for a fantastic 330,000¥, then ended up spending all of it without getting everything I was hoping for..

As long as a I have a calculator I can hand generate a 4th Edition character in about 10 minutes. More time as it get's more complicated-Mages, Shamans, etc...I can't use Excel, it drives me crazy-but that's because I am completely technologically illiterate. I pretty much hate machines, and the dislike is mutual. I have the real life version of Gremlins.

Call me old fashioned, but this is one of the reasons why I've always prefered the Priority Build system to points.

I've always loved BeCKs personally. But that definitely requires a calculator!

BeCKs isn't bad, but wrapping your head around it is impossible. The problem with SR, and RPGs in general, is that the more realistic or balanced you try to make the build system, the more complex it is.

I guess thats why I've got NSCRG....

Just a reality check here, we are still talking about simple addition and subtraction, with some trivial multiplication.

Systems like BeCKS are more painful to forget your current total in the middle of, but that's a very different thing from "complex".

~J

Becks is complex because unless you are super sayan, it's difficult to tell at a glance how much body and str dropping a point of intuition will get you. This difficulty remains even when using computer assists (actually it gets worse because you're not constantly doing that piece of maths).

It's still not pain free even with a BP system.

Easy: zero points, unless there's an SR4 BeCKS I'm unaware of.

It's easy in general; just subtract whatever you would have had to pay to raise it to that level post-chargen. Multiplying a number by two doesn't strike me as a very superhuman task.

For example, say you're a human with Int 6, Bod 3, Str 3. Dropping a point of Int gets you 12 karma, while adding a point to either Bod or Str costs 8 karma. Int 5, Bod 2, Str 4 means dropping Int can get you one point of Str or a point of Bod with 4 karma left over. I only glanced at the BeCKS sheet to make sure they didn't massively fuck up the rules, and they didn't; I can keep doing this all night.

I should note, I've never made a character with BeCKS in my life, computer-assisted or not.

~J

I like to take my time putting a character togeather...I tend to write the background first and then build the character then go back and adjust the backstory and then tweek the stats ...then .....

usually Im looking at 3 days average till i am happy (or disapointed and start over) with what I have done,

Longest so far is the 300bp Technomancer I put together for a skype game zendead is starting. Very tuff build...he isn't a prime runner but he should be playable I think. i have been working the words and numbers for a week and probably will be tweaking the build right up untill we start next tuesday..

BeCKs, ultimately, just takes memorization. I know now that raising an attribute below maximum costs 10BP. When I started with SR4, i didn't. Similarly, I've only recently backpedaled into SR3, and have not yet memorized the BeCKs system. It's easy once you know the values, but BeCKs, to further balance characters, adds scaling values. This isn't inherently bad, but it makes it so that I need to check and re-check to make sure that raising a skill to 1 costs 1, to 2 costs 4, to 3 costs 8. When my brain is so similar to a sieve anyway, this isn't helpful. I had similar problems getting to know the build point system, but since it contains no scaling, it makes it easier. (Thankfully, I haven't had to make characters from scratch without the book or file to help, but if I did, I'd probably be screwed either way, or even with the priority system.

That's because BeCKS makes the same mistake GURPS does and tries to add things for you, obscuring their meaning.

Improving a skill from 0 to 1 costs 1. Improving a skill from n>0 to n+1 costs ⌊(n+1)*1.5⌋ if n+1 is less than or equal to the linked attribute, ⌊(n+1)*2⌋ if n+1 is greater than the linked attribute but less than or equal to twice the linked attribute, and I think ⌊(n+1)*2.5⌋ if it's greater than twice the linked attribute but I've never actually seen that come up.

Therefore raising a skill to 3 just costs 1+⌊(2*1.5)⌋+⌊(3*1.5)⌋=1+3+4=8. All you need to memorize is the formula, and you don't even really need to special-case improving to 1, as ⌊1*1.5⌋ is 1. If my use of the floor function scares you, pretend I just said "round down" everywhere.

Don't let bad presentation obscure how incredibly simple it actually is.

~J

I like BeCKS, especially compared to what a hash they made of the Karmagen system in SR4. Like Karmagen, it falters for certain concepts such as otaku or shapeshifters, but overall it is a good system. It is comparatively well balanced, in that you can still make a min-maxed character, and have them only be slightly less powerful than they would be under one of the "official" char-gen methods. But if you buy more average skills and Attributes, you get rewarded for it.

I think I might be more partial to it because it favors the street sorcerer types that I liked in SR3. Sorcerers have the best of both worlds in BeCKS, because you only need to max out two mental stats and one skill - then you have plenty of points left to get 3's to 5's in your remaining Attributes, and lots of skills and spells.

The math isn't hard, and they even have tables where most of the calculations are done for you. The only thing to remember is that raising a skill over the linked Attribute changes how much it costs to raise that skill.

Nah, I'm pretty good with the math. That does really simplify it, at least to BP levels. The problem is still actually memorizing it, but that just takes time. (More time for me, but, I deal with it.) Ultimately, even without the simplified form, it should still be pretty easy, for those of us who aren't lazy.

How many people have built with KarmaGen in SR4? How does it compare to BP (or even BeCKs...)

Anywhere from 5 minutes to a whole week or more.

Sometimes I tweak even some of the stand-by "archetype" characters that I keep around. I can rustle up a good to go character on the fly but if I want the character for the long term, I spent days moving back and forth between backstory and character stats. The way I go about creating the character is fairly simple, the story has to fit the stats and vice versa. The backstory is like a cover legend, it has to be plausible and good enough to pass the most intense of backstory-stats scrutiny.

For me the problem with the formula caculations for variable costs is not applying the formula (that's easy), it's doing it upwards of 6 times at once so I can see what I can do to some skills and secondary stats when, say, taking a point out of my highest stat and advancing and picking up some low level stats and skills.

If you can keep track of 6+ variables in your head under a variable costs system and then be able to see at a glance how shuffling points around your character sheet can and will work (Common case: dropping a point out of a stat at 6-> 5 to free up BP for 2 skills and a stat and money, requiring you to know instantly how much the next rank of 2 skills, 2 stats and a focus is, including the karma cost of binding) I tip my hat to you. I'm objectively very good at maths, and I cannot do that without computer assistance.



It's harder than BP for the reason I outlined above - it's not much harder to do a basic character, but fully optimising a sheet requires computer assistance or being much better at juggling multiple variables in your head than I am.

I always take a long time to create. There is never a skill or set of skills, piece of equipment, weapon, or lifestyle item that doesnt mesh with my concept. I'd almost say its painful, but no character I make is just thrown together.

The numbers involved simply aren't large enough for it to get that complex. You free up all of 12 karma with this drop; your skills, stat, and binding cost all have to be very low (and thus trivial to calculate) in order to get that many variables out of it. Since the costs of the other things are independent, you can just do it as a running difference, meaning that you only need to keep about two to three numbers in your head at once.

~J

It is a complicated problem instead of a complex one. You have to keep a running total in your head/on your notepad. The solution to the individual calculation tasks can be tabled and is therefore easy.

1) Budget karma for attributes/skill/ressources/contacts.
2) Spend karma as you see fit.
3) Repeat until calculated cost is 750.

Eh, I wouldn't put it in those terms either. If anything, it's a touch obnoxious, but running totals don't make complexity or complications—especially to the point of requiring computer assistance, a not-very-large scratchpad serves the purpose as well.

If anything, I think the problem is imagined complexity—that certain things are complex, intractable, or otherwise scary seems to become an article of faith, like with SR3's Matrix or Rigging rules, when they're actually quite simple outside of corner cases (which are nasty, but corner cases nonetheless). I had this thought a long time ago, but I was recently reminded of it by a Freshman in the CS lab who tried to tell me, with a straight face, that THAC0 was impossible to understand. This probably explains why all attempts at fixing the Matrix rules fail, as it doesn't address the fact that "everyone knows" that the Matrix rules are too complex to work with.

~J

my favorite part of THAC0 versus AC (d20 system) is that they're the same calculation just one is subtractive and the other additive; I tend to use it as one of several demonstrations that public schooling in the United States (and perhaps elsewhere) teach math wrongly.

Complexity is in the eye of the beholder, so maybe Kagetenshi is a super genius and everything is simple for him, however maybe other people aren't the same. I see no productive reason to argue that point.

As for the difference between BeCK's and KarmaGen, I'm not aware there is one.

Don't I wish.

~J

I'd guess Kage is just from that "dying" breed that actually got taught math without calculators at some point in their life... (since I agree with him almost completely and didn't have the luxury of a calculator until college.. ..and am numerically dyslexic to boot.)

Oh, there are significant differences.

One big difference - in Karmagen, you don't have to pay for metatype (although because Karma advancement is not a flat cost like build points, you still need to pay more if you raise Attributes past the normal human range - it costs a troll a lot more to raise Body from 8 to 9 than it costs a human to raise Body from 4 to 5). I can see the logic behind that choice, but it grated on a lot of people, and proved to be one of the more controversial aspects of it.


The other problem is that Karmagen only lets you spend up to half of your starting Karma (more depending on metatype) on Attributes - including Special Attributes. This means that it is a lot less scalable than build point generation - drop the amount of Karma, and any awakened character or technomancer becomes exponentially more difficult to create. This was not a problem with the original Karmagen, which gave characters a lavish amount of Karma.

But along came SR4A, which raised the cost of Attributes, throwing the whole system into limbo. The proposed fix (according to Ancient History) of keeping it at 750 Karma (rationalizing that it was overpowered to begin with, so this is only bringing it back to "normal") runs into the problem of the aforementioned Special Attributes being too expensive. This is easily fixed by house ruling that the cap on Karma spent for Attributes only applies to the base ones, not the special ones - but you shouldn't need a house rule to make a char-gen system functional. But it's all a moot point right now, because there is no errata for Runner's Companion yet.

So KarmaGen rips off BeCKS by adding a few limits? I'm not impressed. Frankly I'm ashamed that it was allowed to see print without at least a shout out to Bethyaga.

Even build points have a few features that were in BeCKS first - namely, Attributes all starting at a base of 1 (in SR3, you had to pay extra for certain Attributes to offset penalties), and spells and contacts being bought separately from resources, and resources being purchased in increments rather than jumping from 5,000 to 20,000 to 90,000, etc.

Is there an excel function that sums the numbers between two numbers or a combination of functions that would do that? (IE: if given 3 and 6, it returns 3+4+5+6)

Uh, why exactly?

He ripped off Shadowrun's Karma advancement system when creating his unauthorized rules in the first place. It's their copyright and their ntellectual properties, not his. In fact throwing a "shout out" to him is probably a legal liability even if they did want to. Not only does it give people the illusion that they have permission to rip off their properties, but more importantly it also implies that Bethyaga deserves royalties/payment for having done so. Which he most certainly doesn't. It was neither solicited nor requested, and I'd be surprised if he requested permission to do it let alone publish it on the Internet.

Rules aren't covered by copyright anyway, so using "rip off" in anything but a vague moral sense here is just wrong either way you aim it.

(Not a lawyer, not legal advice)

~J

I know, I was just using it to emphasize the point mostly because I couldn't think of any better words to use. Bethyaga did the "ripping off" first and isn't really entitled to much of anything either way.

A dick move is still a dick move. We'll have to agree to disagree.

Edit

Okay I'm going to say this even though it won't win me any fans. You're correct Doc, that Bethyaga drew inspiration from previous materials-a fact which he openly acknowledged when he wrote BeCK's. At no time has ever denied it pulled inspiration from previous materials. Bobby on the other hand-a guy who attempts to market himself as the most complete archivist of Shadowrun materials out there, a reputation he cultivates and enjoys-claims to have no knowledge of BeCK's when he wrote Karma Gen. I find that ludicrous to say the least. Now you may be correct that acknowledging Bethyaga's role in this inspiration may have some legal ramifications-what I don't know since I don't write or publish RPG's, and my knowledge of the law is limited to more blue collar stuff. As far as I'm concerned it was a dick move to not acknowledge BeCK's. Illegal? Obviously not. A dick move? In my book, yes. In yours? Maybe not. And that's cool.

I know there's no fear what so ever in acknowledging stuff Steve Kenson wrote. His name get's a shout out in several books. Why not Bethyaga?

However this has left a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to some freelancers for Catalyst. When I see stuff written by them (A certain few freelancers) I wonder where it was ripped off or recycled from. And that's sad, because frankly I think the world of the vast majority of the people writing for Shadowrun. ANd obviously it hasn't stopped me from loving, liking and playing the game. ( I get the perspective on this dude, it's not earth shattering, just distasteful in my book.)

But then you've been around for a long time Doc, seen a lot of stuff in various user incarnations-so tell me if I'm just being a little too smug here. Maybe I am missing the forrest for the trees, but I think it was a dick move.

I had written alot more than this, with lots of examples but it's not really necessary to go deeper than one or two, so here's the redacted version:

this is right sort of: the ideas behind rules are not copyrightable or patentable (unless they include significant process: the only 'game' patent I am aware of is one concerning card games that utilize tapping rules, held by Wizards of the Coast. US5662332 (A)) but specific expressions of the ideas are copyrightable.

e.g. the rule in D&D3.5 concerning how to resolve an attack roll is copyrighted, in any form. the restatement: "roll 1d20+modifiers and compare to target's Armor, if you equal or exceed that number, roll the damage die of your weapon + modifiers and subtract that many hit points from your target" is not.

the totality of any fixed media is also copyrighted, so it is copyright infringement to reproduce say, the layout, text and artwork (or any part thereof) of the actual 3.5edition players handbook.

so, kage is right. at least as concerns "rip off" in any actionable sense, nothing happened here that would rise to that, in either direction.

edit:

it actually wouldn't have bearing either way, legally. (since BeCKs isn't copyrightable, a derivative work of BeCKs is not subject to any attribution requirements, etc.), so it would have been polite to acknowledge him somewhere in association with the system, if it was indeed derived from his. But it isn't exactly a dick move, just like it wasn't really a dick move of Bethyaga to only acknowledge that Shadowrun's trademarks were held by Wizkid's/Fanpro/FASA (etc as appropriate) and not go as far as to acknowledge any of the specific authors of the sections that BeCKs drew on.

the former was required by law because BeCKs includes use of trademarks of SR. because karmagen did not include any trademarks of BeCKs it is not.

having looked at both systems I think most of the similarities are incidental due to the similarities of the underlying rules systems personally and would have no trouble believing that they weren't independently designed; although given the... close-knit nature of the SR contributory community it may be as you said as well.
(law student, still not legal advice.)

The longest part of making a character has and always will be the gear. The less money I put into gear the quicker my character is made. Also in some cases all I do is tweak an archetype by changing the skills, attributes and qualities. I then leave the gear as is. I can work with a character concept and flesh him out as we go along, but a playable character can be made in less than 30 minutes assuming he isn't gear heavy.

As for Karma Generation the problem I have had with it is the starting characters tend to be much more skilled with higher attributes than either the BP or priority. When I recalculated the basic BP cost of archetypes they tended to be around the 650 range and even if I min/maxed (lots of attributes at 1) only a couple of character creations get near or surpass the karma system (Shapechanger bear, infected, AIs and a couple of others).