I'm still getting use to the 4th ed rules, having not played shadowrun in a long time

if I'm remembering correctly, last time we played skills were soft capped by their linked attributes, and to raise them above that attribute was double cost, but there wasn't a "max" as far as I was aware.

you were able to get pistols at 8, especially if you had agility at 8, and even go above your attribute in the long run if you had the karma

but I just read that all skills are maxed at 6, 7 with aptitude.... and it didn't take but a second for me to see that as a red flag... starting characters usually have their main skills at 5 or 6 already

which means that in a fairly short amount of time they are maxed, with very little to spend karma on except new skills, which is ok, but any mage or technomancer can continue to spend karma on their initiation grades, continuing to raise their magic attribute, and buying bigger, badder spells...


so I guess I see 2 problems with this system... using this, why hasn't the world been completely dominated by mages... it seems, given say 300+ karma, that a mage would have significantly surpassed any physical character in terms of power, and by that point would be able to throw near unstoppable spells with little concern for drain if built right or working the right cyber / bio

now I dont mean to complain about mages power levels, I like the magic system in general, and I like the initiation and grades and being able to raise magic, I think it's cool. I also think that it is pretty well balanced at character creation so that the mage is a valuable player but doesn't outshine the party... but as stated, given 300+ karma I can't see that being the case

my 2nd problem is that why would they make a game where it's completely possible to make a character at creation that is already maxed in everything he wants to be his main function? it just doesn't make sense from a design point to me, I realize there's lots to do in the game, and I'm all for branching out some and working on shoring up the weaker points of the character... but at some point, I would atleast like the option of going "I'd like to save up a chunk of karma to raise my pistol skill again" but ohh wait... I can't, because I had a 6 at creation

again, I'm just coming back to look at the 4th rules after not playing for some time, but has anyone that's played a significant lengthy game found this to be a problem, if not how? and if so did you house rule to get around it or did it end up being the crux for ending the game?

Most characters start competent in one or two areas, but the players will want to expand the character. If you roll up a 400BP character and can't see room for improvement, you're not greedy enough. I want a Rigger who can build/repair drones, cars, and helicopters; I want to be able to do insertions and extractions from any type of vehicle; I want unarmed combat and clubs (with a specialization in Wrenches); I want to be a threat with my sidearm; I want to be able to hack and steal enemy drones; I want to be able to use the Matrix to give my team an edge. I want a few points in Perception and Dodge; I want some points in the Outdoors group. I could always use more karma, and most of what a rigger is supposed to need to do his job is nuyen. Gordon Gecko was right - Greed is good.

This is a challenge for the GM, really. If every problem can be solved with one of the skills that the PCs have focused in, then you're right - they don't need to level up. If you can show them a door they can't open, or a sweet piece of gear they can't use, or a job they could have done easily with some points elsewhere...then there is room for improvement.

in a smaller group that may be, but we usually play with 5-6 players +gm

with that many players we've pretty well spaced all skillsets / areas of expertise and since we're all pretty close to maxed at creation, again I say how at 300+ karma would the mages and techno's pull so far ahead in power levels as to rule the party... I'm not saying the rest of us would be useless... but mundane man who started as a street sam, pretty quickly maxed out his skills and attributes, went on to get 20+ knowledge skills that are indeed useful, however, he built his character wanting to be combat man, and now at 300+ karma, I would imagine combat would be something like:

turn 1: sam shoot a man, maybe 2, hard
then mage nukes a group of 8, harder

turn 2: sam shoots the giant cybertroll, despite being awesome he does almost no damage
then mage rapes the trolls mental attributes with a high rating spell

turn 3: sam gets raped by the spirit he was unable to see
mage then gets in a good fight with a high rating spirit


obviously not a real scenario or anything but I'm just saying it seems like on any given initiative pass, the mundane combat character would be completely outdone by an equally high karma mage, simply because the mundane char can't continue to improve on his combatiness past his max skill + attr, while the mage can, and gets significant improvements out of it

again, for me it's not such a big deal because I love being the knowledge support char, it doesn't bug me one bit to have 30+ skills and just be the random knowledge character, and I'm good at using them to our advantage... but I can see how if I really wanted to play a combat character, or really wanted to play a rigger / decker style character, I could imagine getting very aggrivated at the fact that as the game progressed everyone else seemed to be able to continue to advance their characters main archtype or skillsets or whatever you want to call it, while the mundane character is forced to work on something else.

Magicians already have taken over the world.
Only those magicians are elder dragons.
Elder dragons are what keep mere mortal magicians in check.
Elder dragons (and orbital cannons) keep elder dragons in check.

I guess my main questions is

has anyone house ruled away from the absolute max skill, and how has it worked out

I'm not saying it should be easy, I would just like the option to say, pay double to raise a skill past 6 or something similar

I don't think that in the long term, magic really scales up that well. A 7th point of magic is what, 5*7(*2) = 35 (70) karma. (Depending on whether Magic also costs double above the normal maximum; Skills 7+ do.)

So what does it add? +1 Force without overcasting, +1 die on magical actions. Not all that great. It's not like you WANT to risk the drain of overcasting at Force 14. That's very likely to put you out of the fight.

High Magic ratings are extremely expensive, but they add only marginally more power. For that amount of karma, you can buy entire new skills. The extra flexibility from metamagic is also nice, but not insane.

Foci are huuuuge karma sinks.

Also, mages are kept in check by (other mages) that invest in non-magical skills, such as social skills. They can then pornomance the higher-powered mages to their own ends.

all of that is somewhat proving my point I think

the point is, they have things to spend karma on, even if it's expensive, to continue to improve their intended character focus

where any mundane character is forced to branch off, he'll never be any better than max attr + skill, and there's nothing karma-wise, even as an offshoot to continue improving this... where mages can also use karma for foci and metamagic, all mundane man can do is buy better gear and begin to branch into another archtype

i disagree. pretty much every single archetype will find a use for social skills (if nothing else, con is pretty danged useful, and etiquette can make social infiltrations a lot easier), infiltration, perception, at least a couple of combat skills (ranged weapon and dodge, or ranged weapon and melee combat). potentially disguise (again, i can't think of a single character type that would not benefit from the ability to not totally suck at social infiltration), rounding out attributes, and probably a few of other skills that it's useful for everyone to have.

also, if you think street samurai can only kill 1 or 2 enemies per round, you clearly don't have a big enough explosives fetish.

this isn't to say i think you'll run into problems with removing the cap, or that i don't approve of removing the cap if you see it as a problem. but really, i find it suspect that your group is so maxed out that you can't find something useful to buy that quickly.

IIRC-Also by RAW at character gen, you are limited to one max level attribute and none at 1 less than maxiomum, and 1 max level skill and none at 1 less than max. Alrnatively, you may take 2 skills at 1 less than max, and 2 attributes at 1 less than max. Other than that you can only raise the skills and attributes to 2 less than the maximum (4's for skill).

Part of that is true and part is not. The skills part is correct. The attributes is not.

So I can have 1 attribute at max and all the others a 1 point away from max, as long as I have not spent more than half my BP in increasing attributes (and good luck in that happening).

First of all, though there is no hard cap on magic/technomancy, there is a sanity cap (i.e. it becomes so expensive to keep increasing your magic that you'd have to be insane to do it). At a certain point, buying magic/resonance becomes too expensive for what you gain, creating an effective cap. Initiation costs 10 + Grade x 3. So to become a 10th grade initiate would cost 13 + 16 + 19 + 22 + 25 + 28 + 31 + 34 + 37 + 40 = 265. And that's just the initiation, which scales by a moderate factor. Then add the cost of increasing Magic 10 times, assuming it started at 6: 35 + 40 + 45 + 50 + 55 + 60 + 65 + 70 + 75 + 80 = 575. Total cost of 10 initiations and magic increased to 16 = 840. So your theoretical 300+ karma guy is not all that great. He's look at what, magic 11? That's nice, but it's not game breaking when you consider that a streetsam can start with 24 shooting dice right out of the box. It takes a mage hundreds of karma to equal those 24 dice, and certainly they are uber powerful once they do, but they've earned it by then don't you think?

And while mages do not have a hard cap on spellcasting, but they DO have a hard cap on drain resistance. Nobody can have more than their racial max in drain attributes. So maybe there's a mage who can overcast to force 30, but even if he had Increase Attribute sustained, and lots of Centering dice, he'd still die. The reason being simple: DV scales 3x faster than soaking. Every DV requires on average 3 dice to soak. So every time you up the drain by 1, you need 3 dice to absorb the extra drain. A F/2+2 spell at force 30 would require 51 dice to soak on average, which would require you to have a Willpower and drain stat of about 25 each (maybe a little less with Centering or a bound spirit), and that's just simply impossible.

The reason mages don't rule the world is that while they take drain for casting uber spells, technology does not have any drain at all. It is true that a mage can fling a stunbolt and knock out everyone in the room. But it's also true that a streetsam can pull out a full auto grenade launcher and do the same, only with a much bigger noise and a lot of mess. And while the mage is stymied by background counts, and might actually hurt himself when attacking the enemy, the streetsam can fire his grenades all day until he runs out of ammo. Magic is not much use against high level hardware, get a big enough cannon or a big enough bomb, and you'll kill anything, including an uber mage. Gunship > sorcerer most any day of the week, and there are waaay more gunships than sorcerers.

Though, to be fair, mages HAVE taken over in certain places. In areas with lots of natural magic, mages have been able to seize power, like in (IIRC) Amazonia. Some Great Dragons have also used their magic to take over various domains (though big gigantic lizards also helped with that). And mages definitely have a lot of power in the Elven nations, I think. And in the world's democracies, mages haven't taken over because you don't get to be President by having super powers that can beat up everyone in the room. In most political systems, the only way to advance is by being a good politician, and that's a full time job, which is why most politicians are fat old people and not super strong badasses.



At 300+ karma, a street samurai will have a ridiculous amount of hardware. Military armor makes him almost immune to bullets, heavy weapons can blow up small towns with sustained fire... And streetsams can get enough dice, believe me. I can make a starting character with over 20 dice in his favorite combat skill, and that pretty much never stops being enough.



Well, that's been a feature of Shadowrun for a long time. I think part of it was the desire to make a game that's definitely NOT D&D. There are no classes and no levels, and there's no rule requiring you to start as a level 1 character. Shadowrun at 400 BP is played (or playable) at essentially heroic/cinematic level. If you want level 1 characters, all you have to do is tweak the rules. You can start with lower BP, or you can set a maximum for skills and availability. If you really want to start with some balanced, but noobish characters, I would keep the 400BP start, but impose a limit of one skill at 5 or two skills at 4. I would also impose an availability limit of 8. That would come closer to giving you crappy level 1 characters, though they could still be pretty versatile and non-boring.

Or play an elf drake.

I guarantee that'll make things fun (I have about 8 active skills...ranks 1 and 2).