Okay, yup. I probably made a booboo in allowing either BPgen OR Karmagen to be used in chargenning characters for a campaign. While trying to keep power levels balanced.

I get that 750 karma is supposed to be equivalent to about 400 BP, but what about higher?

What's 420 BP work out to in Karma? 800 karma in BP?

1 BP = 2 Karma.

That's the general guideline for the Karma Generation System. Also, 750 Karma tends to be a bit more than 400 BP except in extreme cases. They're not balanced systems. You should use one or the other, not both, if you're concerned about similar power levels.

well 750/400 give you 1.875 karma per BP thus gives 787.5karma to 450bp. However with the fact karma in spent much more fluid than BP and the costs are based on the rating of what you are increasing. It depends on why you are increasing the max amount of BP. If its for a slightly higher power lvl that you shoudl likely give more that 787/8 karma if its to allow a bit of wiggle room/get more rounded PCs then 787/8 karma or less is likely a fine amount as low lvl skills and such are cheap.

I think Dumori has it right. It depends on what you are going for.

I've done experiments with this in the past, wish I could remember my results though. It worked to something like I could spend about 1500-2000 (don't remember the exact number) karma to make a 400 BP character, or 750BP to make a 750 Karma character, all depending on how I tricked out my stuff.

The breakdown worked out like this: BP character was all maxes and mins. A stat was either soft max or it was left alone. A skill was either at 4+ or not gotten. Awakened had powerful foci, elves and especially trolls were highly favored. Karma characters were very middle of the road. Their stats were generally around racial averages, with a few below or above. Skills were likewise much more varied. Lots of 1 and 2 point skills, and somewhat fewer maxed out skills. Awakened had fewer foci, or the weaker variety (spellcasting instead of power). The 'out there' races were favored because of the lack of the cost for picking a race, more orks, humans, and dwarves, elves still fairly common, trolls nearly non-existant.

All of which kind of fails to answer your question. If you want more balanced characters, go with 2:1 or very slightly below (so maybe 40ish karma for 20 BP), if you want a bunch of trolls with 5s and 1s, go lower. I'd suggest 35 karma myself, as it'll keep the two options more or less equal.

Please note, I don't mean that you'll get nothing but trolls if you go with BP, I'm just saying that BP favors trolls over karmagen.

Edit: A couliquory(sp?), Karmagen does like trolls with their str and bod at racial minimums, but not trolls that plan on raising that any.

It's hard to stack, but you could try 1 BP : 1.875 Karma, rounding up.

Last year, as an exercise, our group converted their characters to Karma. We found that with the exception of the Troll, everyone cam out way ahead. And by way ahead, I mean around 650 Karma. The Troll was 72X karma

I don't think you can achieve balance with a single numeric ratio. Hopefully, its not a large issue for your players.

BlueMax

Oh, are you giving out any free money/equipment/reasons to not spend much money/etc? If so consider lowering the amount of karma just slightly under the 1.875 ratio, because that will give less reason to spend karma/bp on cash, which is on the 2:1 ratio as opposed to other things which are below the 2:1 ratio.

Two for one is a good rule.

You get more rounded characters with Karmagen, just because you don't have to min max.

It is easier to have reasonable stats (three to five) and a fair number of skills at two to three with specializations, but really high stats and skills will cost you a lot. Also Focus bonding is way cheaper using BP.

As long as you are using SR4A's five times the desired stat, 750K comes real close to 400BP.



If you do go Karmagen, you might want to require a certain amount of knowledge skills/contacts.

You could offer them at half price for the first 20 karma's worth.


I'd also say you might want to give each PC a chunk of nuyen instead of Karma.

I find it real hard to spend on gear when it is costing you 1K per 2500 nuyen.

Also if you want a group of more experienced PCs, then have them start a larger chunk of Nuyen not more Karma.

I like how people are pimping their favored method in addition to answering the question.

BlueMax
/is too old to care
// just kills overpowered characters

I like how no one's actually saying what I said in the first reply: If you're worried about characters being roughly the same, you shouldn't really be using two different methods in the same game. Both can be manipulated to your benefit depending on the type of character you're creating, creating characters that far exceed what those in the other system can do.

I, personally, think that's a very important footnote.

I think I mentioned something to that effect in the actual KarmaGen section.

And meanwhile, I admitted in the OP that I likely screwed up allowing them both at once.

Not entirely. They are reasonably well balanced, they just produce different kinds of characters, which really isn't that big of a problem. People who want to all or nothing their stats and skills will go with BP, people who want more well rounded characters will go with Karma. The ones who go with BP will need 900 karma to build their build, and the ones who go with karma will need 500 BP to build their build, and it'll all work out.

That would be reasonably well balanced if the GM does not view having 1s as something highly undesirable. If the GM's view is that Strength 1 is atrophied muscles and Charisma 1 to be something actively wrong, he is painting a big red arrow with a sign saying, "Use Karmagen, fools!" Especially if he says he wants "equivalent well rounded characters".

Well, BP can still make really high karma cost characters with getting some 2s and such, and snagging a couple of 1 point skill groups to make the character more well rounded.

I am not disputing that. BP in some cases can still make really high karma cost characters.

But once you add in racial restrictions, banned some qualities, BP gets cut down faster than karmagen, particularly if/since those restrictions and qualities favor BP more than karma.

Trolls (and its metavariants), certain shapeshifters and some Infected favor BP over karma. When metavariants, shapeshifters and Infected are either banned or restricted, you are left with trolls. And when you factor in trolls (and dwarfs) themselves being in close scrutiny, then you have a big problem with BP.

Hmm, found my old super karma character. Looks like I only managed to pull 1307 karma out of a 400 BP character. Thought it was alot higher than that.

Use a spreadsheet to determine what the karma and BP cost of your characters is. Compensate as required the low performers - that is the only way to bridge the gap.

As a general rule, Karma gen characters are massively more powerful than BP characters, particularly if they min/max by taking a diverse range of skills and keep their stats within human norms. As a result, you will need to give big chunks of BP to the BP gen characters. I estimate in the order of 100 to 150 BP.

Mr. Dreams,
May I quote this sentence in my chargen handout
"As a general rule, Karma gen characters are massively more powerful than BP characters, particularly if they min/max by taking a diverse range of skills and keep their stats within human norms. "

Its too spot on from my experience to want to change in any way.

BlueMax

I seem to recall that BP-Karma is about 1.8, and that BP-gen characters eat 400-600 karma depending on build, but I may be wrong.

If you're using Karmagen, I -strongly- urge you to use 4A's attribute costs(rx5 instead of rx3) with the German Karmagen changes(metatype cost = bp cost in karma). This prevents powergaming dickery along the lines of 'what do you mean AI's and free spirits are free to play?', and makes sure that karmagenners aren't getting attributes at half off cost.
In order to even the playing field, I'd give your karmagenners the Free Knowledge Points rule (Log+Int)x3, cause karmagen doesn't get that by default, and clarify with your players that Magic/Resonance doesn't count against the attribute-limit(preventing anyone who would have played an awakened from going AUGH.)

If you really want a balanced chargen amongst all interested parties, make them Priority Gen - and then give them 100-125 karma to flesh out their characters, add qualities, take specializatons, and bring the whole thing up a notch.

Sure.