But that's what they did in D&D 4th. You've got halfings beating minotaurs at wrestling and with the level bonus to skills, even your white-bearded old archmage can out run, swim or climb any 1st level fighter or country farm hand. I've often thought that what Shadowrun needs is to give up some of its realism so it can be more fair. After all, balance is the most important thing of all.

Man, I can see the tongue in your cheek across an ocean and a continent!

This hurts and stings

Shadowrun doesn't need to be equal, just equitable. In other words, if a troll is better at being a bullet sponge, a dwarf is better at being a hacker, and an elf is better at being a face, they can still function together reasonably well. On the other hand, if you have a basic elf with certain bonuses, then you have a variant elf which is more expensive and has more disadvantages, then you have a potential problem.

I never really liked the idea of total game balance.

Yes I get that some twinks and mini maxers will go out of their way to number crunch for the 'highest possible advantage' but in my games that's always been easily curbed by a nice firm GM. vs the rules saying everything must be equal.

Kinda like playing Star Wars and expecting anything to be equal to a Jedi. They just aren't, but there's stuff built in to make a Jedi have in game responcibilitys and limitations and stuff.

But I know that's just one style. Not for everyone.

I agree with that. But the original comment was suggesting that, using your examples, a troll should be just as good a face as the elf. Which is impossible unless you get rid of racial benefits altogether.

And you clearly did not understand what I am speaking of. At no point did I ever indicate that everyone must be equal.


More or less this.

As long as no specific ability is overwhelming in comparison to others, and the cost of various abilities is balanced against the cost of all other abilities (same applies to penalties), then you have a flexible and balanced game. Strengths & weaknesses of various characters, archetypes, & species will vary. This is a good thing, as it allows much greater versatility & variety in the game. As long as each possible combination is at the same power level of others, the game is balanced. This is most effectively & easily achieved with point-based character generation & advancement. Unfortuantly, the point costs of numerous abilities in Shadowrun 4 are not correct, being either to cheap or to expensive for the benefits or penalties they grant.


If you are designing a game for the group you play with, then this attitude is perfectly acceptable. If you are designing a game for a widespread audience, it is not. If a game is to be published, mechanical balance should absolutely not, at any point, ever be determined by "GM's Judgment". The effects of any rule should never be "at the GM's discretion". To do so will, at best, create a huge variance of overpowering, balanced, & underpowering of any single such option.

Any rule a GM or group does not like, they may house rule. A house rule should never be the default.

Do i have to answer that? Seriously?

If you have a reason for playing the weakest [insert race] as your character concept sure. Just because youre stronger, doesnt stop you from being a runt, when amongst your own.

If you are a Formori Ghoul with natural 10 Bod and 8 Str you would be the baseline weakest amongst your kind, that's true. However, per RAW there are plenty of Elves with 3 baseline charisma, or Humans with 1 base strength, and so on. I don't know how many Fomori ghouls there are, but evne if you're the weakest of the group you're still superhumanly strong compared to literally every other metahuman on the entire planet.

True dat, i just went with the bell curve applied to the stats. Most of em at 3, a few at 2 and 4-5 and very, very little at 1 and 6-7. So it might be a few percent of all of the race at 1 for an attribute value.

What stings is just the fact, that one picks all the good stuff from the Karma system. Agreed you only showed us the race/attribute part of that character so i should withhold my opinion, its just that those 2 steps reek of min/maxing taken to the extreme. ^^.

Yes seems strange i know, but 3 is kinda given as the average, and then i kinda stretched the upper part.

Well, on the other hand, if you're already superhuman, why should you exert yourself to become better? It's not like Fomori Ghoul society is anything to brag about.

You mean like the intelligent researches stop trying to get better? Or superrich people still try to get even more money?

Well, the comparsion to the superrich is a broken one in my mind.
Once you cross a certain treshhold, you simply get more money from your interest rate than you can spend even with living a luxurious life.

Well it just came to my mind. Ofc Money can multiply itself, but the point itself stands, humanity doesnt stop, simply because it has enough of something.

At a certain point, improving something you're already superior in isn't necessarily as interesting as patching your weak spots. How much stronger do you really need to be?

sure we do. especially when not stopping involves a lot of effort.

i have stopped developing my physical strength and toughness/endurance/stamina/whatever. i don't go to a gym to work out, i don't do any specific training to improve it. why? because as far as i'm concerned, i have enough. i don't routinely run into situations where i think "if only i was a little bit stronger, this would be much easier", so i've stopped developing my strength, basically.


if i was a superhumanly strong troll, i don't see any particular reason i would worry about further developing myself unless i felt there was some need to do so. there are plenty of other areas where i can develop where i feel it is more needful, and so to a large extent, development of my strength and stamina simply doesn't come up.

i expect the same holds true for a significant part of the human race.

True dat, but you sound like someone at Strength 3, right at the middle.

If You were the runt of your species, would you be happy to stay there?

I agree that one doesnt have to pump up every stat to softmax.

Its only specifically about chars like Harbin's example, of someone buying a set race/quality, so he can get by without putting any points into Body/Strength at all. The whole dumpstat to perfection is bugging me. Dont take my specific gripe, and turn it into me having a problem with the Karma system or such ^^.

Yes. I'm certainly weaker than average. As long as I'm strong enough to do what I need to do, I don't see any real benefit from getting any stronger than that. It's just wasted time and calories for what's basically ego-stroking.

Well, most girls don't seem to care if they are strong either . . Or tough . . Or fast . .

No, they don´t have to. They take their karma to purchase higher charisma an skills like "makeup" and "hairs".^^

See?
Dumpstats&Min/Maxing in RL!

Perhaps not, but note it's the runt of your society, not species that matters most. There can't be many Formori ghouls around and all the ones that are will be in a midst of people who rarely even come close to FG in physical power. So the peer pressure element can only go so far when you're the only Formori Ghoul in town (or close to)

K.

I know a lot people that are just big and massive by nature, not by training. Since i am not going to fight with them, their body and strenght ratings are high but absolutely unimportant in everydays life. I focus on logic an charisma in my little world, so basically even the troll-fomori-ghoul couldn´t beat me as long as he is forced to play my game. So let them be strong...who cares. This is what they can do, other people are better at other things. I don´t understand the discussion at all.

When talking about metavariants, don't forget that they get the effects of the Distinctive Style negative quality in any area wherein they are scarce, which is most everywhere. That does temper their benefits a little.

BTW, I made a Dwarf character once with the Day-job quality.



He was a short-order cook.

No but the Fomori infected will rarely wake up one day and realize.

Im so strong i better never lift a single piece of whatever and go fat, since so strong already. Every single one. I already admitted that it would be perfectly ok with the right character concept. Apparently you all have Strength 1 chars since its such a dumpstat.

@Machiavelli

You actually proving my point thank you. You are better at what you do, and try to improve further.

Fomori are one of the infected, yes? In my mind, it doesn't matter how many bonus build points they get "for free". They're a Vampiric race, and get hunted for bounty. That's a pretty big unadvertised flaw in my book.

<shrug> But then again, I rarely make characters based on their stats. I make characters based on the concept and how I envision it in my head. I made Bull an Ork Decker specifically because, with his racial penalties, it seemed like it would be an unusual race/class combination (So to speak). Of course, by SR3 Bull managed to become an Archetype, but that's beside the point

In the end, the numbers don't really matter that much. At least, they shouldn't.

Bull

That would depend on how likely this was to come up.

Fomori and ghouls are both relatively uncommon in most areas. Therefor, if I am a fomori ghoul in Seattle, it's not impossible - or even that unlikely - that I am the only fomori ghoul in Seattle. And while I may, in fact, be one of the weakest fomori ghouls in Seatle, I'm still just as strong as a hard-maxed Dwarf or Ork and nearly as strong as the best augmented human or elf, or a soft-maxed Troll. I'm as tough as a hard-maxed troll, tougher than the most heavily augmented human or elf (dwarves can just match if they can find the +3 body somewhere). I am, in short, among the strongest and toughest people in Seattle despite having put no effort into developing either. What's more, I'm an extremely strong and tough person in a society that has been designed to not inconvenience humans and elves who have more important things to worry about than maintaining even average strength and stamina - in other words, far stronger and tougher than I'm likely to need to be often/ever.

Now, if this were a binary choice in isolation (be stronger/don't be stronger), then yes, I'd likely be going with "be stronger" right up until I hit a point where my strength starts becoming detrimental. However, it doesn't exist entirely in isolation. Time spent making the effort to get even stronger is time that I'm not spending doing other things. With this, as any other trait, there is almost certainly going to reach a point where I deem that it is no longer worth the effort that it would take to improve further, and the level of strength/skill/knowledge that I have already is enough. If I'm a fomori ghoul mage or computer expert, strength and toughness probably aren't all that important to me and that base level is likely going to be good enough, especially considering how much of a pain it's got to be to find a gym that has weights heavy enough to actually require an effort. If I'm a fomori ghoul leg-breaker for the Yak, then I probably will want to work on those a bit more because that presents at least a greater chance that I will still want/need to be stronger or tougher than I am.

Or to go back to the superrich people trying to get richer that you cited in an earlier point about this: How many of them (outside of the ones who've gotten superrich for these specific things) would do well in a bodybuilding competition, or playing a sport (doesn't matter which one) professionally, or anything else that's significantly removed from their area of expertise/interest? I think it's safe to say that the answer is "not very many." While many of them would probably agree that they'd like to have a better physique, or be more athletic, it's not important enough to them for them to make that kind of effort.

Fomoraig are the troll infected; Fomori are a troll metavariant who buck the metavariant trend by being less conspicuous and freakish than their baseline metatype (how could you get two words that are so dissimilar confused? ).

The example being bandied about is of a fomori ghoul, though, so your point about being hunted for a bounty is still relevant.

Fomori are supposed to be less conspicuous and freakish. But due to Distinctive Style, they are more conspicuous.

I suppose there's a difference between less conspicuous and less beastly..

They stand out because they're not as butt ugly as most people associate with trolls. Instead of 'Oh god look at that fugly fugly troll." it's "Oh wow.. that's a GOOD lookin' troll!"

I'd have thought that the Giant Meta Variant would be the best looking Troll-Version.
Basically, it's just a 4m tall Human after all. No big teeth, no warts, no dermal plating, not overly muscled, no strange skin/eye/hair(colour).

Using the "lifting and carrrying" rules in SR4a:

The Fomoroi Ghoul with 8 base strength can lift Str x 15 KG off the ground without making a test. Essentially, this guy can deadlift 264 pounds like it's nothing. He can make a Str+Bod test and add the hits at an extra 15 KG per hit. So, the unmofied Fomori Busaw Ghoul could concievably lift 594 pounds with a simple test. Obviously Shadowrun mechanics don't match the real world, where we have powerlifters deadlifting 1000+ pounds, but if this Formori ghoul can lift nearly 600 pounds without any modification (before adding any appropriate Athletics (weight lifting +2) die per GM discretion), what motivation does he have to increase his strength or body to lift more? The same Fomori ghoul can carry around 176 pounds of gear without penalty at any time, which I can't imagine being an all-too-common situation unless he's hauling his assault cannon collection everywhere he goes. This guy will literally never have problems with any strength-based test.

If this dude hard maxes his Body and Strength at 21 and 19 respectively (and about a million Karma) he can effortlessly lift 1320 pounds from the ground with a Str+Bod test. How many times in your life do you think you'll ever need to lift more than a thousand pounds, by yourself?

In comparison, the baseline human with 1 starting strength can heft 15 kilograms (33 pounds) from the ground. My 75 year old grandma can lift more than that. Even if you pump his strength to the "average" 3, we're looking at a wuss who has trouble picking up his wife.

I made my first ork hacker are the same premise of a unique idea. I've also played an ork face which, believe it or not, worked out quite well. Us ork archetypes, we have to stick together chummer. What with the elves attempting to dominate every tabletop.