I'm confused about some of the statistics I'm seeing in canon print.

Here's an example:

Chikao Inoue (from Ghost Cartels, p.86)
Body 4 (5)
Agility 5 (11)
Reaction 5 (7)
Strength 3 (9)
Charisma 4
Intuition 4
Logic 3
Willpower 3
Edge 8
Essence 2.57
Initiative 11 (13)
Initiative Passes 1 (3)

He's a human with an augmented Agility of 11. How? The rules state that as a human he can only have a maximum augmented attribute of 9.

BBB P. 79, (emphasis mine)
"Attributes are listed with the starting value first and the maximum value following after a slash (/). Additionally, the maximum augmented attribute is listed in parentheses following the maximum attribute value."

Am I incorrect? If so, why/how? I've been limiting my players to only their augmented maximums.

To put it bluntly, the person putting them together made a silly mistake and it slipped past proofing. You'll notice that the character has two cybernetic arms and muscle augmentation/toner. The person doing this character mistakenly added the bonuses together; of course the bioware mods would not affect the cyberware. Correct modified ratings would be Agi 5 (9) for anything involving cyberarms and 5 (7) for anything else.

Is that the Yakuza uber-sammy our team had to blast out of a parking garage with an autocannon? Our GM said something about having to redo the ware because he didn't actually have any essence left...

Although that NPC was apparently merely a mistake, humans can get higher Agility than 9 by canon. There is the excpetional Attribute quality, the metagenetic improvement (Attribute) SURGE quality, and the genetic optimization phenotype adjustment. Each of them raises the maximum for an Attribute by one, and all three of them are compatible with each other. So a human could, conceivably, have an Agility of 12.

This is the type of situation where some of us feel "Is there supposed to be a cap or not? and if your going to remove the cap, just do it"
Note: I am not attached to the cap but when you can go this high the cap is silly.*

BlueMax
*there are so many examples of people stacking dice that one wonders what the point of the cap was sometimes.

As those make the Natural max 9, wouldn't the augmented max be 13 or 14 (i don't my books with me and can't remember if you round aug maxis up or down)

We already removed the cap in houserules, and it works fine. I mean, we don't allow, say, Toner and Replacement to stack, to actually making full use of this still requires some point-expendatures. It was a thing we played under with SR3-we weren't limited to 9's with ware, so we kept it in 4, and it hasn't broken anything. Thing is, the number of times this actually comes up I think can be counted on half a hand. In other words, not very often, since most stats are rough to pull past(a human with a 6(11) agility needs a suprathyroid, 4 levels of muscle toner and to either naturally max the Agility or take the Surge quality to get it one under max, or whatnot.)

One thing I DO like more about it is for Attribute Boosts. I like the fact that this mystical, magical ability can somehow, in the right circumstance(ie, lots of luck), take you well past the ''norm'' for a brief moment.

If you extend your cap by those methods (and I would only permit the combination if the players hearth would break without), you are really special. Very few people are even able to reach those values. If there was no cap, it would just be another 3 dice.

now combine this with an elf for example.
natural maximum is 7 in agility.
exceptional attribute takes this to 8,
metagenetic improvement makes it 9,
genetic optimization says it is now 10.
so with muscle toner 4 and suprathoid gland you can reach the 15 agility correct?
that's more than you can boost actual body of a troll by the way . .

Can you Augment actual Body? I only remember stuff tht boosts Body for specific tests..

Suprathyroid Gland, Cyberlimbs, an inefficient adept power (2 magic / attribute point? no thanks), and the Increase Body spell. Anything missing?

Drugs ? (probably only temporary)
Possesion Spirits ?

with a short dance
Medicineman

Body is pretty farking hard to pump up.

Oh, and on crazy Agility in humans... I got a villain in my game. Test tube ninja, sorta the boogy man. He has an Agility of 13 by RAW.

One more reason for me to say that Elf is the best race in the game. I see "Orks" are great for the points all the time her on DS but something around 70+% of my teams skill rolls are based on Agility.
While I am sure it was a purposeful design decision, the benefits of playing the big guys are smaller in this edition. Even past Agility, Reaction is far more important than body.

We need a sticky that says: ignore the example characters, they are full of typos, and are usually not representative of the rules as written.

As for playing trog races, they're still great no matter how you look at it -- they get something for nothing, the BP cost of their bonus attributes is less than the BP cost of being that race. Not to mention the increase in maximums that comes with it. Obviously, strength and body aren't the money attributes anymore, but they're nice to have, especially at a deep discount.

For elves, their bonus attributes cost exactly the same as it costs to play the race (+3 points for 30 BP). But 2 of those points are in charisma -- unless you're a character who's really going to make use of it, that charisma is basically a waste. If you're a hardcore combat character, in reality you're paying 30 points for +1 agi, with a side-benefit of +2 cha. That's not such a great bargain.

It's important to keep in mind that in SR4, +1 dice is pretty lame. You need +3 to increase your average hits by 1, so no single small modifier is worth overspending BP to get. The way to twink out is not to max things, but to use all the cheapest, most efficient bonuses that stack, to get to a high dice pool without boning yourself by maxing out. For instance, you can take a human with gene optimization agility, and then grab a cyberarm with AGI 10. Or you can take an elf with gene optimization, exceptional attribute, a cybertorso, and a cyberarm for AGI 13, at double the cost (or maybe more). That's a difference of one hit, at the cost of having other valuable abilities on your sheet...

So I submit that human is the best race in SR4, because it's free. Elf is only good if you're really going to use that charisma, if you're buying it for the agility only you're overspending for an incremental bonus. Get gene optimization instead...

Of course, all the races are free if your using Karma Built characters... and the non-human races can spend more on stats. On a 750 karma character, a human can only spend 375 on stats, while an elf can spend 435. The Karma System also normally gets more rounded characters since skills are % wise cheaper then the BP system. Skill groups, capped at a Rating of 4, are stupid cheap for the % of your build they take.

Example: First, 1BP is not equal to 2 Karma. It is equal to 1.875 karma % wise. Stats are pretty close to this, though can go higher and eventually pass the BP % cost.
Skill Group @ 1 (10BP or 10 Karma) Karma cost 53% of building total that BP does
Skill Group @ 2 (20BP or 20 Karma) Karma cost 53% of building total that BP does
Skill Group @ 3 (30BP or 35 Karma) Karma cost 62% of building total that BP does
Skill Group @ 4 (40BP or 55 Karma) Karma cost 73% of building total that BP does

However, the Karma system makes money and merits are more expensive % wise (6.66~% more expensive). Taking max money for example cost 50BP (12.5% of your total) compared to 100 Karma (13.3~% of your total). This does mean that merits that give you points give you more % wise as well, but cost more % wise to buy off in play.

Not really, as being an elf with social skillgroup 1 cost the same as being a human with social skillgroup 3 and i think that is an absolut minimum for any character, most should have more.

I think you meant to add "at character generation" to the statement. If not, I can't see any validity.

Extend the idea with Max's statement, about getting two easy peasy dice on all social skills and the points differential for being an elf only becomes important when your not talking social skills. If your taking social skills and agility based skills, ohh fine let's just call it Combat Skills, I see no reason not to take elf.

Take the 20 points I am paying for the extra stats out of my Influence skill group and I am ahead.

We haven't even talked about a character who may also want to conjure (hehe too many conventions on my mind, wrote that conjour), or use Charisma as a drain stat. Poor Dwarves, they used to have an advantage of worth.

Yeah, I am talking about at chargen, and I don't know anything about your crazy karmagen

You're assuming that the character is going to buy influence anyway, and that's a faulty assumption. One might need to save points, and go with a single skill like etiquette, instead of buying the whole group. Or, if one is using RAW emotitoy rules, one can get a little pikachu and save a ton of points, getting 3x the bonus of Influence 2. It's true, if you were going to buy Influence anyway, then Elf doesn't really cost anything extra. But if you weren't, then my point holds true. That was my whole point -- if you're not going to use the charisma, then it's a waste of 20 BP. You're not really refuting that argument, you're just stating an obvious corrolary -- if you ARE going to use the charisma, then go nuts and elfify yourself, because it doesn't cost anything extra to pay 20 BP for 2 charisma that you would have wanted anyway.

So basically a human can have a stat higher than 9. The NPC above does not have any of those things that permit an Agility of 11.

So the answer is "Yes, you're correct, this NPC should not have an Agility of 11. There are, however, currently rules in place that override the BBB, look in XXX resource, and XXX resource."

I love it though. Ask a question and instead of 'yes' or 'no' or an informed answer we get: "If you calculate here, divide by this, add this, account for wind velocity, pet the dog, divide zero, and don't forget elves, the percentage of karma vs. BP ratio equals turkey on whole wheat."

I shake my head when I hear people talking about this Attribute being more important than that Attribute. For two reasons.

First,a team that works well has a well-rounded skill set/ Attribute spread. Not everybody has to have a strong CHA, but somebody should. Ditto for all the stats. The cost at chargen becomes worth it, no matter how high, if once during the character's life his ass (or the team) is saved by being 'good enough'. The corollary: using any Attribute as a dump-stat is counter-productive if even once during the character's life she or the team are nuked for it.

Second, where is the GM if the considerations above never come into play? As a GM, I'm OK with the team all using STR as a dump-stat, arguing something like,"Pistols don't need it." But sooner or later they will have to climb/lift/carry/push something. With even one PC with a high STR, I may not even bother testing for that climb/lift/carry/push. But with everyone at STR 1....

Peter

Well...with the attribute differences, look at it like this.

In a combat situation, let's say there a person with an 11 Agility, and a 3 Strength. The other one has a 3 Agility, and a 11 Strength. Let's say they both have Ceramic Bone Lacing and +1DV to unarmed. They both have rating 5 unarmed.

The first guy has a DV of 5P. He throws 16 dice to attack.
The second guy has a DV of 9P. He throws 8 dice to attack.

Now, 9P is very awesome. But with 8 dice to attack, he's averaging around 2.5 hits(I think that was the math?) Round down or up-sometimes he hits 2, sometimes 3. Sometimes more or less.

5P isn't crap. But he averages 5 hits per shot.

Now, in a regular slugfest, say, the other guy just stands there and eats the hit-the top guy can hit for 11ish. The bottom guy 10. Both of them can essentially lay someone out in one hit. But in a combat...defender gets a reaction roll. Let's say someone gets 6 dice to defend(2 hit average, figuring 1 hit per 3 dice around). Remember-tie goes to defender. The ''big bruiser'' probably is only going to even hit half the time. The top guy, on the other hand, will, typically, not only hit, but have a 3 die lead on his hits...smacking around 8P all the time. Compared to impact? He'll be smashing people around.

Even removing any bonus DV-bottom guy hits for 6S, top guy 2S, bottom guy is only still averaging a hit maybe every other time. The other guy is doing a pretty constant 5S damage. [Hey, dice are fickle. This can go back and forth.] Of course, we also know that 11 Agility guy also can throw huge amounts of dice with any and all combat skills, infiltration, gymnastics, and a handful of other skills. Bottom guy can...run, swim, lift and climb well.

Body, Willpower, and Reaction all keep you alive and kicking(and Reaction is linked to vehicles if that's your fancy.] Intuition is linked to a few skills, Initiative, and also helps keep you alive in a way(perception), and it could also be a drain stat. Agility is linked to the above craziness. Logic can be a drain stat and is linked to every tech skill in the book(almost), tho it's a canidate for ''dropping'' with certain concepts. The first five stats, however(Bod/Will/Rea/Agl/Int), I rarely see dropped in people.

Charisma likewise can be drain, and is linked to social skills for that type-but is another canidate for a dump. Poor Strength is dropped the most due to it doesn't keep you alive, you need huge amounts of it for any recoil anyway so why bother, the damage boost is insignificant compared to outside forces(martial arts, bone lacing/density, hardliners, Critical Strike), and yeah. [Though some nice houserules help the stat get some love, like getting recoil at more reasonable levels-not at like, 2 or anything but at least in the realm where you want some of it-making it help count for Armor, etc.]

As much as I wish all of the stats were equal...I just can't feel they are, at this point, under RAW.

[BTW-I'm a fan of the Strength stat, and only dump it if it actually makes sense for the character, like my magical scientist. But there is no doubt that it tends to have a lot less...pull than the other stats.]

Pbangarth, I actually tend to agree with you and don't like to see any stat used as the toilet stat all the time, and I WOULD bring things up if the whole party had a 1 strength(unless they told me they want to play a team of scientists who never leave the lab...then i'm cool). But if it's an obvious twinkdump, yeah, I might have to throw a few curveballs.

13.

quote for epic

Yeah, as you can see from my post, I'm guilty too. But SO very true, such is life at Dumpshock.

Or any conversation, or so has been my experience.

Hey, we might not come up with an answer right away... but we'll have a hell of a good time time getting there.

I remember back in the glory days of SR1 when the only limit on strength was the nuyen on your credstick for your cyberlimbs.

We had troll street samurai's running around with strength augmentation in the (very high) double digit range, routinely flipping cars over to provide cover for the team.

Of course, I was like 15 when I was GMing this....

Oh the shame... the shame....

- J.

No shame to me. I was 15 and our troll had something like 18 body to resist damage. Now, thats after armor. And let me tell those who don't know, armor in 1st ed could be tough.

You do know that this means 'The absolute minimum for every character should be college courses in discourse, negotiation, philosophy, psychology, and hyperbole', right? And most should be.. doctorate level social workers and social scientists?

Check out P108 in the BBB. Most everyone you know has Rating 0 in just about every skill there is. If the car in front of you suddenly exploded, odds are you would drive into the fiery deathtrap in a state of shock. If someone stepped out of the dark and swung a bat at your head, odds are you would get beaned and be unconcious. I was a /world competitor/ martial artist... I have an unarmed combat of... like... two. Doctors have First Aid and Medicine of 3. Mr. J's get a Negotiation of 4 because they're paid 300k Nuyen a year to deal with semi-psychotic illegal criminals in dangerous situations discussing hundreds of thousands of nuyen worth of cash prizes several times a month. The book lists Nicolai Tesla as the R7 Technical example. Did you know Tesla invented /wireless abundant electricity capable of powering devices for several kilometers around/ when people were still using gas to light their homes at night?

People with a 3 are professionals who make their living on that skill. Shadowrunners tend to be thugs, intellectuals, or introverted matrix jockies, who rely on Face-type characters or hired agents to handle their negotiations.

This has been a common problem in all of the 'dot system' games I've played, and is a perpetual pet peeve of mine.

What is a "dot system"? I honestly do not know.

I believe it refers to systems that have a range of values or 'pips' that can be filled in on the character sheet. Changeling, and I assume other White Wolf games, are like that. With the maximum number of empty little boxes or circles just sitting there, waiting to be filled in, the urge exists to spend the build points necessary fill them in, even if that doesn't make sense for the character.

This not only answers the question I asked but the design chosen for the 4th edition Quickstart character sheets.

They looked like pips and I had no idea why.

Thank you Peter.

Not to mention that even today noone knows how Tesla did half of his shit.

Tesla is easily one of the most intellegent men that has lived to date, & quite likely the most intellegent. I would rate him above Einstein, da Vinci, etc.

Um, I think half of Tesla's shit was made up, to make him look big. Like his so-called earthquake machine? Busted! The central tenet of science is that if an experiment cannot be replicated, that does not make the original experimenter a genius, it makes him a purveyor of bullshit. There are plenty of great minds who dwarfed Tesla, notably because many of them made monumental advances in more than just one field, while Telsa confined his advances to electrical engineering (with many of them never really seeing the light of day, assuming they ever worked in the first place).

About those advances in electrical engineering, or some would say physics, you should get the tomes of his patents. These were granted back when they would test an application before handing out the patent.

During both my undergraduate and graduate work in physics it became clear that some of the best scientific thought is hidden, abused and even destroyed, simply because its not popular. The brightest Geophysicist alive today is hated simply because he believes in catastrophic change and not the Uniformitarianism which is the defacto religion amongst the "modern scientific culture". Learning that and having a wife who is a giant Tesla believer brought me further into his camp.


Still, I think skill levels are bogus to chart. The scale should be total dice thrown. If 8 dice is pretty damn slick, what is 30 from the more munchkin characters?

Yeah, but resisting damage up or down for some weapons was almost impossible. 12M8 for the MP laser system!!!

...Jesus?

Oh wait, that was rhetorical

Anyway, I'm not saying Tesla wasn't a genius of electrical engineering. He just wasn't the smartest man who ever lived. Nor was he 100% honest.

Or have more than 1 point of Charisma, at least if they expect to stay alive in the shadows.

ok, some of this is taking the shape of a mmorpg forum thread debating how to squeeze out a 0.1 increase in DPS (damage pr second).

btw, who cares about body increases? with the way the SR4 damage system is shaped, getting high armor and as high a willpower as possible is key. why? because armor converts damage to stun, and the stun track is based off willpower...

that is, unless one walk around in military armor 24/7. and what was the statement from NPC's in fallout when you showed up in power armor again?

It's easy. Telsa lived in London in the late 1800's, injected himself with vampire blood, and became - effectively - immortal and the only living vampire left. Not to mention he can sleep in an electric chair.

A dozen cookies to whoever gets the reference.

Sanctuary

A baker's dozen of his favorite internet cookie to Magus.

More accurately, the Mythbusters went out of their way to disprove that, sacrificing the integrity of the experiment in the process. In both the scale building and the suspension bridge, they used structures that could move freely to dissipate the vibrations. The original event supposedly happened in a steel-reinforced building, where the metal beams were anchored in brick and concrete. Considering they felt a noticeable vibration in the suspension bridge that far along it's length, and that such a bridge is designed to dissipate vibrations, (caused by the wind, vehicles moving across it, ect) I'd say they damn near proved that one.

As for recreating the original experiment, if they'd poured a foundation for their scale building and covered the beams to limit their sway, I suspect the results would have been very different.

http://forum.mythbustersfanclub.com/index....pic,7130.0.html

have fun...

Yeah, I thought about posting it there...

...thing is, it seemed like they went out of their way to pooch the experiment--meaning they knew it could work but didn't want to tell that to a national TV audience. After all, they're not stupid. Maybe it's just the runner in me, but I'm not too keen on breezing over to their forums and yelling "conspiracy!"

I'm content to post such things on a forum like this--where somebody might be crazy enough to actually try it.

arguably, such a person is no longer human, or at least a different metatype. So IMO 10 is the max for an exceptional human.

No, they could have an agility of 13. Or 14. Depends how you divide the 9.

Edit: wrong quote. What my quoted is quoting.

And to my original quoted:
Well, parts of Shaodwrun are sort of like Bladerunner - at what point are you really, really human and when are you something.. else? I know the Sammy in the rulebook as .85, but to me, at ess 3, you're right at the turning point of not being human. You might feel a bit funky, but youcan deal with it. Eventually you'll get used to it. Below that, you either need to come to terms with being something that is not human or go insane. Your implants have an effect, of course. Cyber is easier to deal with than bio. Sort of. At least you can tell what's human, what's not. At the extremes, that is far harder to do. Bio? Welllll.. you can't really pick out as easy what is and isn't you. You're still flesh, so at the extremes it's easier than cyber. But still - you're tougher, faster and stronger than any ordinary human and you don't even have plates of metal to show for it. Maybe you can come to terms with it, tell yourself you're still human, just a bit different. Maybe you can come to terms with being something that isn't. You can still relate. Maybe you can't - they're not like you, after all. They aren't quicksilver. Everything moves in slow motion. Or bullets bounce off your skin. Things don't hurt as much - why don't they? Why can't a regular human take a baseball bat to the skull and laugh? Maybe you'll just go bonkers.

That's just me, of course.

Um, because they don't have dermal plating?

This existentialism is very romantic and all, but guys who carve other guys up for a living aren't likely to dwell on it too much. The study of combat often leads to a very practical mindset, and is dehumanizing in it's own way.

"It is best for sammies to be philosophical, but not too philosophical, for the philosophical sammies develop cyberpsychosis."

A cookie to whoever get's the reference.

Less existentialism and more a direct cut from some transhumanist crap my roommate has, actually, with shadowrun bits spliced in. And it's fairly splashed around in fluff that they do dwell on it.