QUOTE (horvagab @ Mar 18 2011, 07:50 AM)
I really like PACKs, but I have 1 question: why does the Troll metatype GIVE BP, instead of costing BP? Yes, you get some reductions, and have to pay more for clothes and stuff, but you get a ton of advantages, not only stats-wise. That is truly amazing... and strange.
This is a bit complicated--I had to stare at the first draft for a while to figure it out. As Raven the Trickster mentioned, this came up in the official forums, so I'm going to combine two posts I made that hopefully explain that all PACKS does is make some calculations that are inherent in the rules.
Here's how it works--when you choose a metatype in PACKS, you make some additions and subtractions to certain attributes based on racial maximums and minimums. We do not have to figure any costs for additions--those are based on racial minimums, and so they just raise the attribute to what it would have been for that metatype with the same expenditure (that is, increasing a human's Body rating to 3 costs 20 BP, and increasing a Troll's body rating to 7 also costs 20 BP).
But the subtractions are different--when you subtract attributes, you are taking away points that have already been paid for in the attribute kit. So by taking a metatype that reduces certain attributes, you need to get build points back for that subtraction. In PACKS, trolls, lose 1 point of Agility, 2 of Charisma, 1 of Intelligence, and 1 of Logic. That's a total of 50 points that they should be refunded. As the rules state, though, selecting a troll costs 40 BP. So they are being refunded 50 BP, but costing 40 BP, for a net refund of 10 BP, as listed in PACKS. So there's no change in the rules.
Let's compare PACKS to normal character generation, using the Brawler attribute kit, which goes like this:
Body 5, Agility 4, Reaction 3, Strength 5, Charisma 3, Intuition 3, Logic 2, Willpower 3. The kit costs 200 BP.
Then we decide to make this character a troll, and we get the following scores:
Body 9, Agility 3, Reaction 3, Strength 9, Charisma 1, Intuition 2, Logic 1, Willpower 3. We get back 10 BP, so the total cost is 190 BP.
Now let's do character creation the conventional way. We choose the troll metatype, which costs us 40 BP. As a result, we have the following base attributes:
Body 5, Agility 1, Reaction 1, Strength 5, Charisma 1, Intuition 1, Logic 1, Willpower 1
To get to the same level as the character we made with PACKS, we have to make the following adjustments:
Body +4, Agility +2, Reaction +2, Strength +4, Charisma --, Intuition +1, Logic --, Willpower +2.
Combining all those pluses gives us +15. Since attribute costs are 10 BP per point, that means the total costs of making those changes is 150 BP. We add that to the 40 BP cost of choosing to be a troll and get 190 BP, which is the exact same cost that we got through doing it with PACKS.
The elegant thing about PACKS is, nothing in the rules changes. It just does a lot of the math for you so that you can do things quickly and easily. But whether you use PACKS or whether you generate the normal way, the BP cost remains the same. PACKS, then, is not doing anything with BP costs that the SR4A rules didn't already do.
Jason H.
a lot of the gear packs just don't make sense. some of the skill packs don't make a hell of a lot of sense (my Norse tradition mage uses blades, specifically a combat axe, but he doesn't have any fracking implanted cyber blades!) but they're easier to jack around with than the gear packs.
