So were my examples. The character decided to play the lotto or go out for a stroll after doing their wondrous deed for the day.

And tell me, how exactly are you "spending" karma by going to the gym or taking a class? And why does it take the accumulation of karma to do that? Why don't you guys just come out and rename it "experience points" since that's the only way you seem to be able to view it and adamantly refuse to think outside that stifling little box.

I think what he means is that you can also choose to take a class or hit the gym or whatever when you don't have karma, and you thus get nothing out of it.

Edit: heh, ninjaed Kinda... stupid going to new page without me noticing.

Wasn't there some way to spend Karma to get a bonus on die rolls?

There was some kind of karma pool in previous editions I think.

@draco18s Yes but ultimately you're justifying allowing one set of archetypes (karma-limited characters: mages, adepts, technos, etc.) to exchange their less useful advancement resource for their more useful advancement resource, while restricting another set of archetypes (cash-limited characters: Street Samurai, Riggers, cybered hackers etc.) from doing so. unless you're literally giving everyone so much money that the primary limit on your cash limited characters isn't affording it but finding it (availability, finding a doc, etc.) this isn't a tenable position for a mechanic.

regardless of ingame roleplaying justifications for doing this, it's ultimately a metagame mechanic to exchange one resource for another - and if you're only going to allow one, metagame pressures suggest it should be Karma->Cash.



the Karma Pool in 3rd Edition was functionally replaced by the Edge Attribute in 4th; they did the same basic things, allowing rerolls, preventing botches, adding dice, burning for success etc.

the difference was in how they were filled: Karma Pool starts at 1 for all characters, every 10th (human) or 20th (everyone else) point of good karma* instead went to your Karma Pool. so a human character who had earned 15 good karma would have 2 Karma Pool and 14 good karma.


*good karma is karma in 4th, it's used for character advancement.

I buy Karma as a metaphysical force (as well as a metagame force), I just don't think metaphysical forces and money should overlap. I don't see Shadowrun as a game where the universe rewards you for anything, or if it does, it doesn't come in the form of cash awards. They're not chocolate and peanut butter, in other words. '

Speaking as a player, it still seems to me that Cash for Karma is more advantagous to the magical types, particularly those who aren't gear and 'ware dependent and have to pay off huge karmic debts to initiate. On the other side, Karma for Cash doesn't seem that helpful, because until all my relevant stats and skills are maxed with my sammie I'm still paying out my Karma for those and my money for 'ware.

I haven't looked at CfK/KfC in years though (the exchange rate I have in my head was like 1=5k), so it's possible there are caps and limitations that prevent it from being a balance issue. I'm still philosophically opposed to it, but it's not something that is keeping me up at night.

Karma for Cash would be more advantageous if the value was increased. Previous editions of the game had grossly overpriced equipment compared to SR4, where 5,000 nuyen wasn't much at all. In SR4, you can do quite a bit with that. If you assume a typical run rewards, say, 5-10,000 nuyen and about 5 Karma per person (pulled those numbers out of my ass; your values may differ), it's not so bad an exchange rate. Burning all the Karma on nuyen would net a cool 25,000 nuyen which, with the cash reward, means that after another run or two you can afford a really nice betagrade implant, whereas after the same number of runs a magician can afford to initiate and maybe buy some formulae or a minor focus. Seems pretty fair to me.

You just have to be careful with Cash for Karma. Most GMs are good about keeping Karma rewards in check, but many dish out quite a bit of cash sometimes. And considering players can be creative about acquiring it, there's really no reason to go on a run at all when you can just set up shop stealing cars or whatever instead. Steal about ten, sell 'em to a chop shop, swap the cahs for Karma, and you have enough Karma to do quite a few things. All for minimal work.

5-10k and 5 karma seemed like not very much nuyen when I first read it, but now that I think about it, that doesn't sound so bad. That does bring up the question of just how much a karma should be worth in nuyen. Karmagen sets it at 2500 for chargen, and since 1 BP is usually worth 2 Karma, and a BP gets you 5000, that number seems to hold true.

If that's the case, then in general a run should provide 2500 times the expected karma award in nuyen, with good RP and other bonuses providing bonus karma (And perhaps bonus nuyen 'Good job figuring out how to do it without tipping anyone off, here is an extra bonus, just for you'). Part of the problem is that while the book is fairly detailed about how much karma you should get for a run, it is exceedingly vague (I don't think it makes any mention at all really) as to what sort of nuyen should be awarded.

As long as that number is held to, there in theory shouldn't be any discrepancy between mages and sammies, but then you have to factor in lifestyles, because if you only go on one of those runs a month, even low lifestyle will cut into money alot. If you do that sort of run weekly, then 2000 a month isn't so big a deal. Once again, the SR books don't really provide much about how often a run might occur.

So yeah, kinda random little sidetrack I got myself on. My view is that if you do the conversion one way, you should allow it to happen the other way, otherwise you are favoring one side or the other. Overall though I don't think you should be able to do such a conversion, and you really shouldn't need to so long as the GM is doing a good job of balancing the nuyen and karma income of a group.

In terms of what it actually buys in SR4, I approximated 1 point of karma to have roughly the buying power of 7500¥ given some 'reasonable' assumptions and fairly limited but prevalent test cases. (it's almost exactly right when comparing the costs to improve functional essence and magic scores of a 6 magic adept and 5.9 spent essence samurai; it's a little optimistic in favor of hackers comparing hackers and technos on programs/CFs etc.; and a little pessimistic comparing say, a drone rigger and a conjuring mage.); my SR4 gm (I'm a player in that game) uses this approximation as a guideline for how much cash and karma to award on a mission - trying to make sure to give out equal amounts of each. (e.g. a run that pays 30k cash each hands out about 4 karma each.)

but allowing an exchange rate at 7500¥:1K would probably cause all sorts of issues in practice, since there should be some amount of penalty for the exchange or there's nothing making the players think twice about taking their entire award in both and damn the consequences, except their own sense of restraint.

Personally, if I were to implement an exchange I'd do it with a small premium worked in; probably around 20% in either direction.

If I had to allow one, I'd probably let in Karma for Cash before Cash for Karma.

And now my lunatic attempt to get this post back on topic: Why don't we just make Lifestyles cost Karma?

It might be worth talking about in its own thread (the KfC/CfK thing) personally I'd allow Cash for Karma before Karma for Cash, but that has to do with freeing myself up to award them independently without disadvantaging one side or the other.*

I have allowed players to buy lifestyles with karma before - consider it a way to emulate what happened in the first Episode of White Collar for instance. (I only allowed it for high lifestyles at 4karma/mo -> as a way for characters who have run out of obvious purchases to spend down. I would guess you could come up with a payscale from there though.)

I find one aspect of this confusing.
Until your characters are developed a LONG way past starting, what character doesn't need money?
THere are two I can think of: The totally uncybered Adept, and the uncybered technomancer.

Mages need:
Sustaining Foci (10K * rating)
Better Power Foci (25K * rating)
Centering and shielding Foci, if they have the karma for it...
And, Binding materials for spirits (high level Magi want force 6 spirits. That's 3K per attempt.)
When I run up the numbers, I typically find I have a use for well over 200K nuye for a mage, even if I intend not to get cyberwear.

An Adept who is willing to get cyberwear has a cash demand almost as deep as a straight cybered sammie, and he needs karma like crazy to get the magic to offset the cyberwear.

Yours,
Joel

In the last game I played, just about every character was happy with the rewards as they were (if anything people wanted more of both, but that's what another job is for ) except one of hte mages who was (more or less) a toxic shaman who had no need for possessions (we actually had to buy him a comlink, and even then he mucked it up first).

After a while a few other people took advantage of Karma for Cash, though more of a "I have 5k, and the next thing I want to buy is more than that, but if I turned it into Karma I would have enough for the next advancement I want..."

well, while it is true that mages have use for cash and sammies have a use for karma, both classes are generally only going to be waiting on their primary resource, and not their secondary.

high level conjurers are paying 3k per force 6 spirit, yes. contrast that with the cost of a drone for a rigger. - while the rigger isn't *also* spending tons of karma to gain access to better drones, the mage is not paying drastic amounts of cash to access the better spirits and even high level spirits themselves are generally more disposable than a comparable combat drone as a result.

the balance in a vacuum is fine; the issue is when people start giving one set of archetypes a way to exchange resources they don't want into resources they do want, without allowing their reverse set to do so in the other direction. (as, for instance, the initial proposal in this thread suggested and how we're still on this tangent!)
[edit]
or in an attempt to create a 'grittier / lower-power' campaign a gm misfires and restricts one resource (typically cash in a street game) without restricting the other.

also, most of the inherent balance issues don't really start to crop up unless the game both runs longer than about 2.2m/300karma and a GM doesn't notice before that point. prior to this, variance in the starting points of characters due to how bp was allocated matters more than the differing advancement rates;

I have the same point from the other side, about sammies not needing Karma. All my sammies need karma, they need lots and lots of karma. If a GM were to say at the beginning of a game, "You guys can either get awarded a lot of Karma and no money, or a lot of money and little karma," I'd pick karma (almost) every time.

I guess, technically, no character needs anything. I mean, I played sams that never spent a dime upgrading their 'ware and remained viable characters throughout their career, it's just not optimal. (And this was easier in previous editions because 'ware was more expensive and upgrading was a slower process.) So when I say a mage doesn't need money that's not strictly true. Obviously the money is better spent than it is just being thrown away. But the mage generally needs it less, or perhaps more accurately, is expected to need money less.

I wouldn't suggest adding Cash <-> Karma into the game because it removes the GMs ability to correct when he makes a mistake by short changing or overproviding in one area or another.

Except of course for the fact that the high cost of a lifestyle you force on them will make the sammie actually be weaker in comparison due to the money sink you're pushing down his throat.

While it's true that Mages/Adepts/Technos are karma sinks, and Sammies and Riggers are money sinks, I've always felt close to the above.

My mage needs 160,000+ for Synaptic Boosers (preferably better grades), Power Foci, Shield Foci, Sustaining Foci, etc etc. And while it's not terribly efficient, the Sammie can up his skill to 6, then buy Aptitude for 20 karma, then up his skill to 7... you want to be the "Best," don't you? Attributes always cost (even more now), and so on.

True, it becomes the player's burden to adjust it.

note of course that it's much easier to remove excess cash than excess karma though; (in either case you just reduce the amount given) in the case of a game with C<->K you'd have to provide less of both for awhile.