Hey Guys,

I'm working on a low powered campaign right now and I'm shooting for a 300 point build for the characters. I'm trying to decide what the other constraints should be to fit with that. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!

Give players guidelines on dice pools. If the table expectation is 12 dice for your specialty and a wide variety of skills, let people know that. If the expectation is specialized and everyone does their job solo, let people know that.

At 300 points, are contacts worth the BPs?

Contacts are really GM dependent, from my experience. It some groups, they're worth every point and in others.... not so much. Your Mileage Will Vary.

Very very true. A high connections/loyalty contact could be invaluable to a low BP character, or it might be crippling, all depends on how often the GM allows them to come into play, and how much they allow the contact to do.

As for constraints, don't reduce the stats from 200 BP, or else you end up with characters with worse stats than Joe Average.

Might want to consider making restrictions like no maxed stats, no magic above 4, only 10 BP spent on resources, maybe reduce the skill caps to one at 5 or two at 4, everything else at 3 or less.

Another thought is softening the 35 BP negative quality cap. Let them take some extra negative qualities to get those extra build points, it could make for some interesting characters. Could also make for a long list of every munchkin quality in the books, so watch out.

In my game I did 350, did a few skill/trait caps, and limited the Resources. I wanted them to play through buying that big peice of cyberware, or power focus, or flash car. The starting concept was some street kids who would be considered a gang, but only because they hung out and looked out for each other. I got to say I'm damn proud of where they have taken the game from there.

Limiting resources to 100,000¥ and availability 6 can go a long way towards keeping things street. In fact, you might want to keep the cash even lower than that..

I think 50k is a reasonable limit. The sam can still get a bit of cyber (used) and the hacker can get all the programs they need at 3 and a decent link.

I'd be really careful here. Some archetypes do need money and some don't. For example, a 50k limit gives the technomancer a pretty large advantage over the hacker.

I'd be inclined to drop all the "maximum spending" limits to 3/4. So max of 150 on characteristics and a max of 185,000 nuyen. One skill at 5 or two at four, everything else 3 or less. No maxing any characteristics at chargen. Availability cap 9. That should more or less evenly restrict everyone.

You don't want to drop the stat cap, or else you end up with sub Joe Average stats. Joe Average has 180 BP in normal stats. Edit: Kind of impressive actually, isn't it?

Not necessarily.

An attribute at 3 is the Human 'average'. The book does not, however, provide an actual list of stats for Joe Average, and it is kind of absurd for a number of reasons to assume that all of his attributes are 'average'.


What has by far worked best for my games, and I strongly suggest, is that Joe Average has one or two attributes at 3 (or metahuman equivalent), related to his profession. Other attributes are all at 2.

This has a number of effects - most notably, it generates more believable generic NPC's, and it allows characters to take an attribute or two at 1 without feeling retarded for doing so.




Edit: As to the original post, my suggested guidelines for a 300 Build Point game:

• Races: The five standard metatypes, their variants, and racial qualities (such as SURGE or Infected) are allowed. All other racial options are not.
• Attribute Build Point limit: Unchanged (maximum of one-half the starting BP total)
• Attribute Maximums: Characters may possess a single attribute at their metatype natural maximum. All other attributes must be 2 or more points below the metatype natural maximum (example: A human may have one attribute at up to 6. All others must be at 4 or lower.)
  Special attributes (Edge, Magic, and Resonance) cannot be greater than 4 (or Edge of 5 for Humans).
• Skill Maximums: Characters cannot possess any skill at a rating greater than 4.
• Resources: Characters may spend no more than 25 Build Points (125,000 Nuyen) on starting gear.
  Characters cannot possess any item with an Availability greater than 8, or a rating greater than 4. Restricted Gear increases the Availability and Rating limit of a single item to 12 and 6, respectively.

Be real careful about lowering the nuyen, skill and attribute caps lest you unintentionally screw over any human that isn't awakened. Being cheaper than the other metatypes doesn't amount to much if you're not allowed to spend those points on anything good, after all, so if you must slash one category I'd be careful about cutting too deeply into the others. Awakened/Emerged traits aside, qualities are typically very expensive for what they do, so games with low skills, availability and magic caps tend to strongly favor the guys who can sport good all-around attribute totals, and those guys are resoundingly orks and trolls.

I'm just curious. Do you propose to actually change the amount of Nuyen gained per Build Point to 2,500 ?
Or was that just a typo and you meant "25 Build Points (125,000 Nuyen)"?

-CJ

Mistake - I'm used to using Karma Generation.

Corrected it.

I would suggest having a look at AH's updated PACKS stuff for some ideas. There are some nice small bp cost packages which can really flesh out the street idea without getting to silly.

Lifestyle is obviously a gimme.

The other thought I had in line with resources is maybe you limit the amount that can be spent on a single item.

You can be quite crafty with even limited money, bit if you say limit single item spend to $10k, then you knock out things that "shouldn't" be found on common gangers - aluminium bone lacing, fancy cars.

No one who lives on the street is going to for go food and shelter to have nice shiny chrome arm after all...

Ever heard of bling? Plenty of gangers will put bling above essentials because of how important it is. It's basically an investment, just like chrome would be. Sure, you don't eat well for a while, but in exchange, people fear (respect) you more, and you're more likely to be able to do X, which means you're more likely to make it big.

Possibly limit the awakened option to Latent Awakened. That way you can RP someone getting their magic on.

I did this sort of thing with a Chicago campaign I'm running now.

I made them 300 BP characters with an availability cap of "8ish" whenever they got into that zone it was subject to GM approval. I still made the stat cap 200 BP and I still allowed them to spend up to 50 BP on gear, but with the availability limitations few people spent near that value.

In an attempt to even things out I used a modified "free contact points" ruleset where their charisma attribute times their willpower gave them that many free BP to spend on contacts only (made for some interesting networks of connections and less people used will as a dump stat).

The big concern for me then became making sure that awakened characters were not overpowered, but, since we were playing in Chicago, a vast majority of the runs take place in regions that are a 2 to 3 point mana void. That seems to have balanced out magic significantly. Once play started I began showering them with karma and cash opportunities to get them up to the assumed power levels from the books.

The only problem I have run into so far is a power-gaming techno who doesn't quite seem to grasp my "we are going for fun, not phenomenal cosmic power" tag line.

Edit: Oh forgot to mention, I also put a cap on skills, if it was something that your character could claim he had been doing as a career for most of his life, you could have the skill at 4 with a specialty, things he was skilled at doing 3, things he used to do/was supposed to be competent in 2, etc.. That also gave the characters room to grow even in their dominant fields.

Quick question regarding this. Got this game coming up, and I'd like to make it an Average Joe +1 sort of thing. Some of the players started in the street and some didn't, and they've just gotten their first big break at the game's start. They're part of an agency, chosen for their connections, reputation, and integrity as much as for their raw skills. What would those of you with experience recommend for base BP, attribute caps, and other rules? (I'd like to keep this well below the level of Ghost in the Shell badassery for now- we can get there later.)

Money is still kind of a wild card. I was going to give them lifestyle for free and a salary during the game. A lot of basic equipment would be provided, and there'd be an agency fund toward purchase of additional gear and larger items. Also wanted to have a requisitioning mechanic- One of the players presented the genius idea of an agency "influence pool" which could be rolled when attempting to get things that are in short supply or that they wouldn't be allowed to use under normal circumstances.