No, lol. Hacking is Skill + Program rating, lol. House rules, lol, will use Logic + Hacking and the Program Rating, lol, as a cap for successes, or the Logic, lol, will be the success cap.

Lol.

Optional Rules, that is. They're in the book.

Optional Rules it is, lol.

In the long run, low strength can get you killed. I've had two PCs die at my table because they couldn't handle a rope ladder after a few of dice of wound penalties. On another notable occasion the hacker got strangled to death by a lowly dwarf security guard. Subdual FTW.


I mean, I dunno, maybe my games require more Athletics tests than what would be considered average, but I game with the mindset that hand-to-hand combat on top of a speeding semi should at least be a possibility in a game of Shadowrun.

What I am seeing here is two differant arguments, one sde claiming the base increase to attributes allows metatypes to mre cheaply meet he base "requirements" for a variety of builds and another that is pointing out that the decreases all metatypes except humans and to a lesser extent elves suffer allows them to have better soft cap attributes. Both are valid, if you are building a specialist in melee orcs and trolls are betterbuilds, for everthing else though humans and elves have better soft caps and higher absolutes, humans even have an advantage in a special attribute bonus that can be applied to any roll. Clearly there are a limited number of specialist builds that orks, trolls and dwarves perform better in at their maximums, arguably you can build better generalists with Troll, Orc or Dwarf, but you are still going to suffer from the reduced maximums and you will suffer in many situations due to applied metahuman prejudice and the fact that as the baseline race humans are the most populous, allowing your human cohort to blend in easier, for orcs atleast this ca be mitigated to an extent wit the human looking quality but this costs you additional points. Ultimatey I think it comes down to play style, the closer to pink mohawk your game is the easier metatypes have it, the closer to trenchcoat wearing mirror shaded pros the better it is to be human or a elf.

Suffering from reduced maximums is kind of a non-problem for generalists in many campaigns. It may come up after enough advancement, but since humans are often playing catchup due to having what effectively amounts to a lower BP cap to begin with, the disadvantage orks face is vanishingly small relative to the advantages prior to the 50 karma mark. If I'm running a generalist I'd much rather spend all that karma on grabbing whatever skill groups I couldn't afford at chargen in order to avoid defaulting or grab a wide array of specializations, maneuvers and maybe a martial art style or two. Maxing out a couple of stats and backfilling your dump stats while in play is a decent option, but it makes it rather hard to be a generalist in the short term. That's really more like being a specialist who then concentrates on developing laterally rather than further developing the shtick they start play with.

Not to mention that at Strength 1 you can only carry 10kg. Since Shadowrun 4 is absurdly terrible about listing weights, most people don't realize this or even know how to use it. If you use the weights from SR3 as the baseline, a character with STR1 would probably only barely be able to carry a weapon, armor and a small amount of ammunition before they got close to their limit.

And to Sixgun, there's really only one argument in this thread:
"In almost all instances, there is at least one metahuman type that is better to take mechanically than human"

I agree that in most role playing circumstances, strictly as the setting is and has been written, human will typically be the best choice, and to a lesser extent elves. Obviously there are exceptions in you play in a heavily metahuman environment but for the standard scenario human will be the principal race.

Human looking though, does not actually cost cost an Ork points unless he wasn't saving points with his racial modifiers. The Ork has 50BP worth of stat increases for a cost of 20BP. Human looking costs him 5BP with a balance of 25 points. The Ork still comes out ahead.

A small weapon like a light pistol and light armor like an armored vest. SR3 is part of the reason I consider the free/discount couple of points of strength an ork or dwarf get as a bonus instead of wasted points, 2 or 3 str was kinda the minimum for SR3. Even with 2 strength, you were counting how many clips of ammo you could carry before you went over. I always I hope I don't see street sams in layered body armor with assault rifles, ammo, grenades, and chem gear with only one strength in 4E, but I've already seen at least one at a table (we convinced him 1 strength wasn't gonna cut it).

But there's a cap to how many points you can spend on positive qualities (and in many games, how many you can have, period). Either way, a human can have more positive qualities than a human looking ork.

Actually, that might not be a bad way to adress the issue, if it bugs you- just bump the cap on positive / negative qualities for humans. Figures with a larger population of them, there would be some really a-typical examples.

Because your math is wrong, and doesn't take into account the negatives, which pbangarth posted well before you did your math.



I included the negatives with an arbitrary -10 for each negative. I COULD have put a -15 per to show the extra cost it requires them to reach the human soft cap. And everyone's arguing that "humans will never be as good as a meta at a specific task" and "humans are niche characters." In fact, let's look at an exact quote of that.



Which is where you're very VERY wrong. Humans are the exact opposite. Everyone else is a niche role. Imagine if you will a new group with only the core book, be it SR4 or SR4A. No augmentation, no arsenal, no street magic, no unwired, no runner's companion, just the core book. You want to build a balanced group covering every role, and every metatype, and you want the characters in their ideal roles. What are those roles again? Close combat/tank (sam/adept), ranged combat/damage dealer (sam/adept), infiltration, hacker/TM, mage, face.

Which meta is the ideal role, built pretty much entirely for the close combat tank? The troll, whether wared up mundane or an adept. Ranged combat specialist for damage/backup tank? That's the ork, especially as a gun adept. Face/infiltration specialist whose job it is to hang back and cover the mage and hacker is obviously the elf. The hacker/TM and mage roles could be equally filled by the dwarf because both require that bonus willpower to deal with drain/fading and black IC, and they're roles where the loss of reaction isn't as bad. Which leaves the human filling the final role equally as well. The human fits ANY role equally well. They are the ultimate generalist, the jack of all trades. Every other meta is a niche character. It's not until you add back in all those supplements that add wares, traditions, streams, etc that you start seeing decent faces, mages, TM's, etc from orks and trolls, and allowing the other metas to compete in the "play whatever you want and do it well" field that the human excels at. The human's only weakness is that they have no particular strength points wise (since you're NOT counting edge, which as has been stated competes with magic as the best attribute).



Except the troll with 3 base charisma and tailored pheromones only hits a 6 charisma, and that's his cap unless he has the exceptional attribute quality. Give that human 5 charisma and tailored pheromones, and he's hitting 8, with the ability to go up to 9 (10 if he got the exceptional attribute quality). Yes, the troll or ork has more body, but again, you're assuming this is a character who plans on getting hit. Personally, unless I'm making a character intended to be in the fray (like a sam), I rarely go above 3 body. Let's look again at those roles, if you break the sam/adept role into a close combat and ranged combat specialist, then you have an equal amount of physical and mental builds, if you don't then there's more mental builds than physical. Orks and trolls can't compete with humans (or the other metas) in a mental role, and unless your build focuses on willpower or charisma, no meta is better than human either. Intuition and Logic TMs are just as good being human as they are dwarf or elf, not better but equal. The team driver/mechanic, whose primary attributes are logic and reaction, is just as good being human as any other metatype, if not better. The human's greatest strength is that they are NOT niche characters, and except in the specific niches that the metas fill, they do just as well if not better. Remember, the whole argument here is "humans are inferior at same starting attributes to other metatypes because the others get bonus points at creation" but that argument ignores completely the negatives (which pushes humans to the forefront, as pbangarth said back in post 8 or so) and partially ignores the cost of paying for metatype.

Yes, other metatypes get extra BP and still have the 200 BP limit, but because they pay for their metatype, and most (all but elves) have a reduced cap to something, meaning if their build relies on that attribute, they end up paying more to reach the same limit as a human or always be lower. Which balances out, in the end, the amount of BP available for gear, spells, CF's, skills, etc. A human doesn't need to pay the 20 BP an ork does to simply be what he is, so yes, he's paying more to catch up to the level of body (and if desired, strength), but he's paying less on logic and charisma (such as a sam who also wants to build and modify his weapons with armorer and be able to patch himself up with first aid and medicine, or who also wants to be the face) so in the end, they have about equal points for all their other stuff. An ork who spends all 200 BP on attributes only has 180 for everything else, a human who only spends 200 BP on attributes has 200 on everything else. If the ork only spends 180 on attributes and the human spends 200 to catch up (because he's a combat mage, face, technomancer, etc and doesn't need as much strength), how many points do they both have to spend on everything else? 200.

Hacking Skills use the Hacking Skill/Group + Program... Logic is not in the equation at all...
Of course, for Software or Hardware, Logic is still used, and even for Computer, but Data Search ignores Logic (is combined with the Program: Browse)

There are optional rules to utilize Logic, but by default, Logic is not necessary for pure hacking, only for the support skills of a Hacker, and only if he wants to be a bit more rounded...

LOL. My math is wrong is it?

There are no negatives to attributes in 4e, only caps. The numbers I posted for effective BP are absolutely correct. Unless you'd like to point out where I went wrong in those calculations. They are the only ones that are relevant to this thread's OP, because they point out specifically how the human character is effectively allowed less points for attributes at character generation.

Your die hard attempt to morph this discussion to your will doesn't change the point people have been making from the original post. Which is that the human is almost never the ideal choice. It's never a bad choice, but it's never an optimized choice either, according to the mechanics because every metahuman provides far more benefits than it does drawbacks for its point cost, and its point cost is external to its attribute cap. So there will almost always be at least one metahuman choice that gives you better value for the BP.

And the reason nobody is counting Edge is that, all together now, doesn't count against the 200 point attribute cap. But I'm pretty sure that the extra 30BP the Ork has left over can squeeze in a few 10BP Edge increases. Three, in fact, if he wants to have the same physical/mental attributes as your human samurai.

I'm not of the opinion that humans have the short end of the stick. There are lots of payoffs for characters other than effectively having more than 200 points in attributes at character start.

However, here's an interesting observation on Kruger's math. This extra edge point is interesting in your scenario, because if the orc wants to spend 170 on stats, 30 on edge, and 20 on being an ork, then he has just spent 220 total...


...for the same stats as a human who spent 200 on stats and 20 on edge for the same edge as well. 220 vs. 220. The rest of the comparison is trade offs of personal preference. The ork could spend more on stats, and at the same time the human would have more to spend on everything else.

Mesh

Yeah, but it's not about quality of spending, it's about equality of budget.

The Ork's budget still has the availability of up to 250 BP for physical and mental attributes where the human character is stuck at a hard cap of 200.

Tailored pheromones doesn't augment your charisma, it just gives a dicepool bonus for social skills.


If you want to talk about wrong math, then lets do this with book provided numbers.
Metagenetic Improvement(+1 to minimum and maximum of a stat) is 20BP(RC page.114)
Impaired Attribute(-1 to atribute maximum) is worth -5BP(RC p.118)

Humans(+/-0): +1 Edge (+20) = +20 BP
Orks(-20): +3 Body (+60), , +2 Strength (+40), -1 Charisma Cap (-5), -1 Logic Cap (-5)= +70 BP
Dwarves(-25): +1 Body (+20), +2 Strength (+40), +1 Willpower (+20), -1 Reaction Cap (-5) = +50 BP
Elves(-30): +1 Agility (+20), +2 Charisma(+20)= +30 BP
Trolls(-40): +4 Body (+80), +4 Strength (+80), -1 Agility Cap (-5), -2 Charisma Cap (-10), -1 Logic Cap (-5), -1 Intuition Cap (-5)= +95 BP
So Human is atleast 10BP:s behind and at max 75BP:s behind.

Max, I do agree with you, but I'd count +1 edge as +20 for Lucky and +10 for the point raise since there is no metagenic improvement equivalent for Edge.

Another point, this attribute cap problem becomes even more pronounced in street level games.
300bp total and 150 BP att cap.

Punishing.

(if playing cybered)Reaction racial penalties for Dwarf can easily countered
using 30 Bp (raising it to 4), Wired Reflexes 2 (raising it to 6) and adding
Reaction enchanter lvl 1.. Dwarf then have a max. Reaction 7

using 40 Bp to Intuition..

and Charc.have initiative 12 straight -out of charc. creation..

But everyone else has the option of spending an extra 10 BP on reaction giving Reaction of 8 (which is an extra die to ALL defense pools) and an extra initiative. Which gets back to the whole "does 1 or 2 dice matter or not" point. This whole thread started out with "we should give humans an extra point or two to their attributes to make it more fair and help them compete" but whenever I or someone else points out that every other meta (except elves) takes a hit to their caps in certain attributes, the same people saying that should get more BP for attributes to be fair then say that the 1 or 2 die penalty doesn't matter, and that the metas are STILL better. So basically, no matter what, humans are screwed is what they're saying. Humans will never be better than other metas, and are almost always worse. And as much as half the other people on this thread disagree with them and try to prove the value of humans, they don't want to listen, and it's become like the whole "arguing on the internet is like winning in the special olympics" saying, so yeah. I think I'm pretty much done here.

Don't play a dwarf if you want a fast-twitch guy. It's that easy.

But, if you're playing a Dwarf to save points elsewhere, and, for whatever reason still need a Samurai-competitive Reaction, use the saved points to buy Genetic Optimization (Rea) and you've gotten rid of the penalty at the cost of .2 essence and 7BP of resources. If you can't afford that, due to essence issues, then 10bp for Surge II is enough for Metagenic Improvement (Rea) at the cost of a -10bp negative Surge quality (and breaking the fuzzybutt cheese-barrier.)

I know that, it all depends how u play your charc... Up,close and personal or raining the lead to enemies
from your AR/LMG/MMG/SMG.. both are valid ways to deal combat...Street Samurai way..

I play Dwarves because they are awesome.

Though using 'fuzzy' as a modifier for cheese just gives me the visual of a trash can, every time.

I wasn't aware that you alone were half the thread, heh.

((Munching on popcorn)) This is better than C-SPAN!

I feel that the bonuses metavariants get are outweighed by the role playing negatives. Let's face it if your in Japanese controlled areas and not a human, you have a very hard time. Or... an ork in a AAA neighborhood. The social stigma is one of the major drawbacks to playing a metahuman.

But people have said this. just my two cents.

This is a very entertaining discussion.

That ain't saying a lot, unless Pelosi jumps the podium to take down the honorable Representative from West Virginia.

The social advantages that humans have isn't one that's readily quantifiable by game mechanics unless the GM's statting out everyone the PC's will potentially meet. How often do your Ork runners get accosted by the cops for no reason? How often does the storeowner chase them out?

How often do your elves get a package of cookies, or a hat with jingly bells on them fromthe glaring restaraunteur?

She isn't.
Not often enough in most games, which is part of the reason many feel they can argue that it is always worse to be human. If you focus on only the characteristics that prove your point, you are always right.

Which is why it's troubling that this isn't easily quantifiable in game mechanics.

If humans got, say, First Impression for free, perhaps that would quantify it a bit better.

Humans have access to an 8 Edge
noone else in the game has that.

An 8 Edge is expensive, but pretty crazy useful.
Much better than some of the other stats.

And Humans can literally be any 'archetype' Is a h2h human going to have issues against a Troll, perhaps.. then again.. shouldn't he

In games I've played the gm's have played up the social bits quite well. Our human was kinds forced to be the face. We were in SF during Japan's takeover. Sometimes he was the only one that could pull out collective metahuman asses out of the fire without blowing crap up.

Not because he was more skilled, but because he had Humanis-Policlub like advantages.

He is not the only one who disagrees with your points, though...

Well, Pixies do too.

But who plays Pixies?





-k

Munchkins. Ironic!

But I made no points, and you can't disagree with my math. It's just math, it is correct, and easily verified. If it supports a certain argument in this thread, then that's just the reality.

I, personally, haven't played a metahuman in Shadowrun in a long, long time. I don't really munchkin games so I'm rarely worried about absolute min/max.

I can't help notice how none of the other metahuman advantages are being factored in either. You know, stuff like lowlight, thermo, a troll's reach bonus, most of which are available as positive qualities, and should be factored into the "modified" BP costs.

When you look at all that, humans get boned even more.

Well, vision mods are basically worthless, except possibly to mages. Reach is a (small) factor, and +1 armor. Dwarven anti-toxin is nice, it's true.

The really bad imbalances are some of the metavariants, of course. Arcane Arrester alone…

Yeah vision mods are worthless now in 4e. Back in previous editions natural visions were better than modded or gear based ones. Now anyone else except yeah maybe a mage can just get contacts for really cheap and it covers all the issues.

Oh and as cool as +1 reach can be, it is mildly cool. It doesn't even fully counter the cap to agility so trolls still throw a punch worse than everyone else who is specialized in that area.

It is true, of course, that you can basically find those things in the RC Qualities list and factor them into the stock metatypes, if you really wanted to. I think we've ignored them here because you wouldn't necessarily buy them in the first play, so they don't really constitute 'BP saved/gained'. This is the same argument that we've already seen against the Troll Strength bonus, for example: not everyone would buy that Strength.

Yeah for troll I see it. Orc and dwarf levels of strength just get you to average. Sure you might not buy it, but chances are you are not buying it because you ran out of points and not because you saw your character as so weak they could only lift 10KG.

Right.

Turns out, I *did* factor in what Al Kusanagi mentions once:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Aq...amp;output=html

It says 'Infected Types' because I actually did it for all the Infected first. Please note the Baseless Assumptions. I just ballparked it, and obviously they *really* alter the totals if you start changing their values. For attribute bonuses, I just gave 10 BP/point, and things like Thermo or Reach have listed BP values in the RC book. You could also give every meta a BP bonus for having a pseudo-Exceptional-Attribute, just like the pseudo-Lucky for Humans. That's fair, and doing so brings Humans down on the comparison. It really only applies if you were going to max that stat anyway (Body is likely, Strength might not be). The problem (obviously) is the clash between what something costs (BP) and what it's *worth* to a given player/character.

Personally, I have no stake in whether or not Human is better. I like Ork, myself, but whatever.

I like to Play Dwarves.. even when I'm playing a reaction or agility monkey.
One of my favorite characters is a gymnastics, infiltration dwarf.

Natural Strength.

You can still easily have Strength 5 with Muscle Augmentation.

Bye
Thanee

I wouldn't count this as a fair comparison, since the numbers surely reflect, that adding to a max attribute will be used where it counts, while reducing the attribute max will be used on an attribute, which won't be raised as far, anyways.

Bye
Thanee

Well, if by easily you mean .8 essence, 5 BP restricted gear, and 28K nuyen

Not talking starting out that way... starting with S3 is still completely sufficient.

And yep, that's definitely easy. Besides, the actual Essence Loss is most likely only half as much.

Bye
Thanee

When I was setting up my game a 15 months ago I was new to 4e and was just able to get my hands on 20th anniversary edition in time to use it for chargen. I noticed some of the problems with 400 BP characters that have been gone over on DS in excruciating detail. I wanted to have a slightly more professional starting team than normal. (Two of the characters were being re-made from a 3e 2058 game from nine years ago.) I wanted Strength to be slightly less of a dump stat. I wanted to lessen the pressure to hyper-specialize. I wanted to people to be less hung up on the BP cost of attributes in chargen versus the later cost in Karma.

So, the list of house/optional rules:

-500 BP to start, making the Attribute cap 250 BP.
-Armor Encumbrance changed to (Body+Strength)x2 > Ballistic *plus* Impact ratings.
-Free Contact BPs equal to natural Charisma x2
-Compromised on Karma cost to raise attributes by splitting the difference between 4e/4a and making it New Rating x 4.

I was a little worried about players trying to make troll uber-physads or something, but every single player made an elf, except for the human with Elf Poser and really good cosmetic surgery. Ssshhhh, it's still a secret. And yes, the face had some serious penalties when walking into the Crimson Crush bar in Redmond to ask a favor. On the other hand they never get bothered in A-AAA settings.

Now I'm sure that you could tear apart my house rules with ways they could be min/maxed and abused. I guess my only response is that however much we like to argue on Dumpshock about "balance" it really all comes down to the social contract at the gaming table and, to a lesser extent, a GM very involved in chargen. Shadowrun rules through all the editions has been notorious, imo, for their vulnerability to min/maxing and poor balance between character types. The only truly effective way to handle this is at the level of the table, less so at the level of Dumpshock or the level of developers writing errata. So if you think that raising the attribute cap for humans to 220 BP solves your problems, then that's fabulous. I love house rules and that one sounds just fine.

I have also thought about making Strength more useful by pretty much the same thing, but even more drastic (changing Body to Strength completely for all armor encumbrance issues).

Of course, when you do so, you definitely need to increase the BP cost of orcs and trolls.

As for the rest, I think SR4 is pretty well-balanced, actually. Sure, there are some issues still (like summoning being a bit too easy at high Force ratings), but overall it's fine. And as you say, there is always a GM to keep an eye out on rules abuse.

Bye
Thanee

If, during the chargen process, it became obvious that my players were favoring orks and trolls then I likely would have had to devise a solution to make it fair for the players who chose humans or elves. Since it didn't turn out that way I never had to devise that rule. As you say, increasing the BP costs a bit for orks and trolls would likely do the trick.



I agree that SR4 seems the most relatively balanced of the editions. I have to emphasize the word "relatively" in the preceding sentence. At the current distance in time in space from my 1e and 2e games from 1989-1993 I honestly can't say whether my problems then were due more to the inherent imbalance of the rules or the atrociousness of my 18-22 year-old self new to GM'ing.

Why would you have to change the BP value of orks and trolls?

Orks get a LOWER Str modifier than Body (so with that rule, orks can actually wear slightly less armor)
Trolls get the /same/ modifier

So I'm confused, with that change in rules, Trolls can wear the same armor as before
Orks can wear slightly less than before.

And this somehow makes them /more/ in need of upping their BP cost?

I thin it' balanced in some areas and horribly unbalanced in others. Which really makes it no better or worse than the older versions. It definitely seems to have suffered from the "power creep" effect that most games that last this long end up with.

Point taken. I didn't think that one through. Which means my encumbrance house rule is relatively balanced across metatypes. Yay me.*

*Not actually me, since I remember cribbing part or all of that house rule from someone else on DS last year.

Honestly, I think that if you're gonna House Rule that, you might as well just ignore the math of the rule entirely and make judgment calls. Otherwise, your Trolls will just become walking tanks with their 30+ armor ratings.