This is an idea which popped into my head in another thread but mathematically it seems to work out quite neatly.


One of the problems in game for humans is metas always have larger dice pools (attribute + skill). This is largely because the 'bundled' attribute costs of metas is lower and that's without even considering their higher attribute caps which come with them. Generally I don't feel +1 edge makes up for it.


The idea is rather simple... Reduce skill costs by 25% for humans. This means more and more varied skills at chargen. And lower advancement costs to the caps.

If you then proceed to remove the rank6 skill cap. It has the added benefit of giving mundanes unlimited advancement in the same way that magical/technos do and giving humans a slight edge there. (the positive quality which allows a rank7 skill could easily be reworked as pig a 'tag' skill then that one gets an equivalent cost reduction). Generally the problem w/ street sams and hackers is they run out of things to spend karma on and eventually run out of essence... this addresses that problem.


Thoughts? Problems?

Seems a bit extreme to apply it to all skills. I don't have the time atm to work out the exact math but my gut instinct is that the bonus that would give would vastly outweigh any dicepool advantage from metatype for a high skill character. Maybe better to apply it to a smaller subset like a particular skill group or something.

The first idea is feasible. 3 bp for a skill, 8 bp for a group. If using karma, the savings could get egregious, so maybe limit it to char-gen.

But I disagree with ditching skill caps. For one, it removes a bit of realism within Shadowrun that I find to be attractive of the system. There is a limit to what is possible. I don't really think that non magic characters realistically run out of things to buy with karma or upgrades. Really, at what point can a character afford delta grade move by wire system rating 3?

I could see something like a small skill discount at chargen. If you wanted to be crazy about it, you could have the player pick a single skill to get a discounted/free aptitude in (personally I think that just reeks of D&D's human favoritism, but YMMV).

Remember in prior editions skills weren't capped. There were differing costs... it was less expensive to raise a skill up to the level of an attribute and more expensive after that. It was also far less common to raise attributes over paying karma for skills.

I really like the SR4 system more than the earlier ones. But one thing I don't like is that normally the skill portion of the dice pool is the smallest. Things I've considered but not played with are a finer grade skill system... (say 12 ranks... but at the same cost as knowledge skills are now).


As far as the suggestion for chargen only. I disagree... An elf can easily get 12 dice in agility (muscle toner 4, genetic optimization agility... 8 (12). The elf always retains an agility advantage... and the attribute is half the dicepool. There is nothing a human can ever do to overcome this advantage.

I disagree on not affecting karma later. The net effect of not lifting caps is just that it costs humans less to max out. (I also don't like the chart w/ newbie... professional... exceptional... as the bigger question is the dicepool at the end and the threshholds that pool needs to meet). Once maxed out on skill... there's little to spend karma on except other skills and attributes becoming more of a jack of all trades.


Removing the caps is mostly a musing addressing a concern that mundanes have limited advancement while magical/techno's have unlimited while harkening back to prior editions where the skill level tended to be more important.


Favoritism isn't my goal at all. Karmagen and it's egregious implementation only gave metas an even bigger mechanical advantage. BP greatly favours metas as well. If metas have an advantage in attributes... why not try giving humans an edge in skill advancement. In terms of setting, but not necessarily mechanics, metas are more likely to be awakened than humans are as well... so one has natural ability, the other has an edge in learning skills is the idea.

If you want to make skills more important, then use the optional rule to limit a player's dicepool by twice the skill+ attribute.

I don't think that actually fixes anything as the major problem lies with attribute differences

EDIT: Wait is that 2xSkill + Attr or 2x (Skill +Attr)

2(skill)+Att. Which still doesn't fix much.

One way of looking at it is, humans may be weaker but we all start the game with a character who has progressed to a certain level of excellence (400bp or so) regardless of how much that power in a character is from natural aptitude, skills, or equipment.

It does seem like non surge humans do have a disadvantage. Rather than making every other meta-type rebalanced, you could add a few other small advantages to humans.

-You could say humans can spend up to 60 points on equipment.

-Or maybe 40 points in qualities at the start.

-Or exceptional attribute is 15 for humans instead of 20. Being less extraordinary at the start, exceptional attribute is not as difficult to get.

-Or maybe humans can put more points into attributes at the start. Being that a few less attributes get spent on meta-type it would not imbalance the character if they could spend a few more points in areas where you are limited, while giving humans a small advantage at the start to balance things out.

I like the small perk humans have, edge. You could slightly enhance that. Say human edge refreshes slightly faster. But that is hard to quantify, as it is up to the GM.

The other advantage humans have is that metahumans get discriminated against in a mostly human world, but that is up to the GM to make an issue and I think a lot of GMs don't bring that up to much because it is not that fun. Being hassled all the time because you are and ork or troll.

In reference to Half-life's comment:





Alternatively, you could humans a negative bp cost.

I don't like the way this feels like AD&D: max levels based on race, XP multipliers by class/race…

You could just give the humans a second free Edge (problematic), or increase everyone's metatype costs by 5, etc. I like the 'human race costs -BP' idea, too. These are all, of course, *if* you think they need changes.

Humans start off with more points to spend on everything since they don't have to drop significant BP to choose a race. They are the dominant race socially, and are the societal norm. The troll can't even fit into older buildings much less find a chair to sit down on comfortably, the elf has stalkers and slavers after him, orcs get turned away from the finest establishments, and well dwarves have to deal with being little people in a big world. Humans don't have to deal with any of that, it is a human dominated world.

I don't understand the desire to balance out the races via skills. Humans have no weak spots, the only other metahuman race which can claim that are elves and well you spend BP through the nose to be one, BP you don't get to spend on not having a weak spot. Humans are generalists they do everything well, don't expect them to be better at what individual metahuman races do better. Lastly mundanes are not supposed to equal adepts after a point otherwise Johnny Rocket puts a bullet in Lofwyr's eye. From a setting perspective it is pretty clear that eventually mundanes are going to be left in the dust unless they figure out how to blend tech and magic, and then it will still come down to karma sink versus nuyen sink.

The elven BP cost is the same as if you bought the natural stat increases and you gain the advantage of higher caps as an added bonus, plus you get Low-Light.

And it really doesn't make a fun game to say "well if you aren't magical you are just going to get left behind sorry."

Honestly, that isn't as much of an issue if the GM/Players just retire their characters at meaningful power levels but I understand that doesn't always happen.

I'll try to convice my group to cap dice at Skill x4 (defaulting counts as skill 1). Think about that. Fixes a lot, because Humans will have more BP for skills, while Metahumans' high attributes don't come into effect.

Fighters are linear; Wizards are exponential.

And every RPG worth its salt should try to avoid that

SR4 does that to an extent. Even mundanes can get more enhancement via upgrades.

Sure except when it is integral to the setting, which in the case of Shadowrun it is. In fact in general when you put magic in a system it is generally there to make the impossible possible. In Shadowrun we have two things which allow that, Cyber/Bio, and Magic. Cyber/Bio costs money, Magic costs karma, one is a technological solution, the other is integral to metahuman life. If you want to explore providing a higher ceiling for mundanes the place to look at is Cyber and Bio.

I understand that mundanes advance through ware primarily, but mages do too. The best way to build a mage is milk that little bit of essence that you can burn for the largest bio/cyber advantage possible. That still doesn't address the fact that mages can scale forever but mundanes inevitably cap an attribute and a skill. Magic doesn't cap, initiation goes on forever...


Personally, I think that shadowrun does a fairly good job of balancing mundane with magic for levels of karma that are fairly low and with players who are not intentionally trying to break the system YMMV as always.

Wait, there's players like that?! Holy crap I think I have a group of power-gamers!

I like to think there are more people than just me who draw a line between a character that is "good" and a character that has taken optimization to a level where "good" has curled up in a corner with a bottle of jack because it just can't compete.

We're a special kind of awful, aren't we?

Personally I wish that the caps were at 12, rather than at 6. It does a few things:
1) Spreads out the skill curve some (people with rating 10 in a skill aare good at what they do)
2) Fixes the "natural talent" (high attribute/low skill) vs. "highly skilled" (low attribute) problem. Natural talent can still succeed, but the trained professional will always do better
3) Fixes the "but I bought a 6 at chargen" advancement issue.

Yes, but DP inflation, which affects glitches, modifiers, everything else. It's not impossible, but it's an overhaul. :/

Glitches are already non-existent if you have 6 dice. Crit-glitches are gone by about 4.

The glitch system needs an overhaul as-is.

That's easy. Instead of setting the glitch "threshold" at half the dice pool, set it at the skill rating.

This is why I so often get pissed at people for disregarding my advise on house rules. I work on game design, and any seemingly simple change can have huge impact on the rest of the system. Increasing skill &/or attribute levels will affect just about everything, up to and including base damage values potentially needing to be reworked.


Oh, great idea. Defaulting is always a Glitch, and my Agility 3, Pistols 6 character will never glitch with a +4 modifier to damage.

Doesn't work either for a number of reasons.

I agree that glitches are only for tiny DPs, but that doesn't mean this proposed rule wouldn't affect them along with everything else. If your DP is bigger, then penalties have a harder time *reducing* you to glitch territory. Glitches are caused at least as much by big penalties as they are by small 'natural' DPs. That's why (I assume) they changed the Cover rules.

Yes, the trick with house rules is to change the methodology but still return the same general value ranges, so you don't break all the systems reliant on those outputs. It's either that or rewrite an entire system start to finish based on the new methodology and values.



And if you always want to use a dice pool of 5 or less, more power to you. As for defaulting, make it a minimum glitch-threshold of 1.

This is, of course, directed at the problem Draco mentioned, of exceedingly high Attribute potentials inevitably drowning out Skill contributions (especially when you start throwing on extra 'ware modifiers), as well as the fact that glitch percentage goes way down as dice pool increases, regardless of where the dice come from. Above, the Attribute 7 + Skill 2 character would do worse than the Attribute 2 + Skill 7 character, because the former would glitch far more frequently than the latter.

The problem with glitches as written is that by the time you get to 12-14 dice glitches are exceedingly rare, and by the time you get to 20 they're an insignificant factor.

So it's not necessarily a fantastic idea (though there are very few numbers to pull from the hat that can be applied to make glitches more common), but it's not really worth a "hurr durr sucks" response.

That's probably part of it. Also, even if you modify a shooter's dice pool down to 1 die, they still have at least a 1-in-3 chance of hitting the target, which puts an awfully large burden on the target to make dodge rolls. Giving cover dice to the defender at least gives them the chance to dodge after a few shots fly their way.

The biggest advantage of the SR4 system is also its biggest weakness -- the lack of variable target numbers to make things incrementally more difficult without the exponential difficulty adjustments involved in increasing thresholds. Cover worked great as a positive target number modifier, but works kind of crappy as a negative dice pool modifier.

I know a street sam who would like to differ.

She's glitched and crit glitched on initiative.

I mean, there's always a chance. It's just insignificantly small… unless your Init DP is lowered from wound penalties, like I said!

again. think about it.

Seems a bit overpowered outside of chargen. Why not let them select a single skill and a single attribute as favoured abilities? They increase the skill at the same cost as knowledge skills and the attribute at the pre SR4A cost of (New Ratingx3) karma? And wasn't part of the reason of capping skills low this edition around to reduce the crazy SR3 dicepools where characters often had skills rated 12?

Got my Cyberlogican's Cyber Suite in Delta at about 300 Karma... Unfortunately, it only included a MBW 2.

Our GM is currently experimenting with Bonus Dice capped at Skill Level. This does not include Dice gained from Specialization, nor Circumstantial Dice gained from Situation. It generally only applies to Bonus dice, gained from Equipment, that provide a bonus to the Skill rating; Bonuses to Attributes are not included in this calculation, as they are bonuses to the Attribute directly. Not sure how well it functions, though, because I usually do not stack bonus dice above skill level anyways. He seems to like it.

Yeah, Shadowrun rule system performs poorly on the higher end of the power scale. However, most rule systems tend to do that; and really, why would someone that capable be shadowrunning, instead of running the show from the shadows?

That is the point where they retire, unless they just really liking shadowrunning.

And if they really like shadowrunning, I'd be hard-pressed to find adequate opposition for them, whether with high-level initiation (which costs a bunch, btw) or without it.

That high end of the Scale, though, floats around a great deal, depending upon the table. At 300 Karma, my current team's Prime Runners are still easily challenged.

Yep. People who just keep on improving in their schtick, to the exclusion of pretty much all else, leave the same gaping holes they had from chargen, which can be used. People who branch out will only grow to the point of outclassing everything else slowly, with the advantage of not being severely hamstrung if one person in a team goes down.

This is oh so true...

At our table, most of the characters have broadened their concepts with the received Karma. One of the Mages has just Increased his magic and Initiation, and is saving up for a Force 5 Ally Spirit (with Benefits... Heh )... He still has very large glaring holes in the concept. And his Karma expenditure for Spells is barely even a percentage. Bought 3 New Spells since Character Creation... He really needs more spells.

I somewhat disagree. It's almost always more efficient to raise an attribute than individual skills.

Raising the attribute increases the pools for it and all the linked skills. Even with the new cost changes... the two banners for this are generally agility and logic (both with a large # of linked skills). It's generally better to raise agility, than it is to raise the firearms group (if it already hasn't been broken w/ a specialization), even though they both cost the same... the firearms group won't enhance your ability with sneaking/thrown/melee/heavy weapons in addition to small arms. And the cost for individual skills is even more expensive than the groups.


That said... that's not a bad idea to mark a few skills as tag skills. I don't agree w/ tag attribute... but say pick 4 tag skills for a human character doesn't seem a bad way to go. Now that I recall... the old Fallout games had something like that and it worked really well.