Visual only this kind of thing is pretty much why my sig is what it is.

You're right. I should've known anyway, based on other things that are possible (Magesight goggles).

if you're going full power-player, and your GM doesn't do much with racism and such, then yeah going human is almost never worth it. The +1 edge is nice, but unless you're going to bring it up to 6, it's not really important. If you intend to use all of the stat bonuses that the metas get, then it's definitely worth it from a stats-per-point perspective.

I play humans almost exclusively, for a variety of reasons: my GMs usually enjoy playing up racism, I have a tendency to make mages and other mental-based characters, I like to try and respect the fluff (which says that humans are still the dominant meta by far) and most of my teammates commonly make non-humans.

I try to play up racism, but I also tend to create a lot of NPC`s that are metatypes. I do that partly because I like the metas, but also because it`s more likely to be down and out as a Troll or Ork. A lot of my influential NPCs are human or Elf, and Dwarves tend to get stuck in between somewhere.

That said, many of my players play either elves or humans, so most of my applied racism could be seen as poor-on-rich(er) violence. "Go away, Pinkies"

I've tried a couple of character types, and I always come back to humans. Why? Because they're solid performers all-around. Sure, Orks and Trolls get bonuses to strength and body, but they're equal to a human in Quickness. And Quickness is required for just about any combat skill. You can get away with a low strength quite easily in Shadowrun, and a higher Reaction cuts down the need for a higher Body.

While I can get some very extreme combat monsters out of orks and trolls, they can be taken down easily by well-designed humans. Humans also make decent mages as well, especially if you have an Intuition-linked tradition.

And then, there's Edge. A human with 6 Edge is nasty, 8 Edge is nearly unstoppable if the build is done right.

Agility.

But the point about Orks is that you basically *do* need that much Str and Bod for everyday running, so it's not really a problem. For some builds, sure.

Depends very much on how players regain edge...

Depends very much on how players regain edge...

The Strength is highly subjective. Sure, it's useful for melee-oriented characters, but otherwise it's minor. But the Body rating is important for Armor.

I'm a grognard, it's Quickness, dammit!


Actually, it depends on how much the players spend. If you have 8 Edge, and are reasonably competent without it, you won't be using it any faster than other characters. That means when they run out, you've still got some left. Even if you dramatically slow down the Edge refresh rate, characters with lower Edge scores will run out first.

In my games, I refresh Edge at the start of every session (usually) and at the start of every story arc. I only award bonus Edge if the players do something extraordinary. That's right, the *players*, and not their characters. I run a high powered game, so tremendous critical successes aren't impressive enough. Gonzo stunts can get an Edge refresh, if they're amazing enough. Even with that, typically they'll go through 3-4 Edge per character in a story arc. The Edge 6 character almost always has Edge left over. When I played an Edge 8 character, there was only once when he didn't end the Missions module with at least two Edge points left.

Higher Edge is not only useful because it gives you more dice, it means you can use it more often. Slowing down the refresh rate actually hurts low-Edge characters more.

Well, but the orc will have a body of 6-8 while you only have a body of about 3 (since you spend around 100BP on edge).
First: You will be using the edge faster, since your overall dicepools are lower. (You are more often in need to spend a point of edge to soak or something)
Second: If you are out of edge you are likely to die.


It really depends. If you only regain one point of edge each session the low edge(1-3) won't be hurt that much, while the high edge character take quite a hit.

If you regain all your edge after 3 sessions but nothing in between, the low edge characters will be fucked.
If you regain your edge every in game day, all characters will have it easy to survive but the high edge ones will be, lets say, superior.

Irion is right, I think, that if you use a high Edge to make up for other low stats, then it is not much help in the long run. I don't think that is how Edge should be used. If you use it to make a splash at just the right moment, it can be an amazing force multiplier, and be a game changer.

For example, in our home game a while back a critical moment came that boded ill for some of our team. My PC, who did not have Stunball at the time but has a high Edge, multicast three Stunbolts, each bolstered with the use of a point of Edge. All of us, GM included, were impressed with the results. We all agreed that it was silly(impossible really) to behave that way all the time, but it came at just the right moment to save the team some serious grief.

In my current group we decided to have edge refresh just BEFORE the next run, but not any time in between. The result is mostly that high edge characters (we have two humans with 7 edge) have maybe 1-2 points left to use during downtime, which they can spend because they know they'll start again fresh. I find this to be a very nice arrangement.

Personally, if we refreshed every session, almost every character could put edge in every second roll, because we don't even roll that often. Also, I would have to have NPCs use edge a lot more, too, which is just more rolling.

The problem remains that humans could use a minor boost. Perhaps a +1 to an attribute of choice? After all, humans should be the most diverse metatype out there, since there are so many.

This is how we do it too, so the left-over Edge can be very helpful for acquiring difficult to find stuff or performing a difficult extended task in time.

I agree. Edge should be helpful, but it shouldn`t be a replacement for other stats.

My sense is that the 'edge' for being human has been greatly reduced in SR4 from earlier editions. The Karma Pool of earlier editions grew twice as fast for humans, so in the long run a human PC could do many more extraordinary stunts than the other PC sub-species.

If a human has low stats, that's a problem with the chosen build, not with the metatype.

It's pretty darn trivial to get very impressive stats AND high Edge.




-k

Except that MOST Mr. Lucky BuildsI have come across have Piffle for Skills, and they use their Edge to make up for THAT.
It is a fine line. Cain's Original Mr. Lucky had 5 Skills. A Mr. Lucky at our table has 8 Skills. Mine had 15 Skills. I prefer Mine over Cain's because there were less things that I NEEDED to spend Edge on than Cain's Character had. Yes, Judicious Edge expenditure can get you a long way. But when either your Attributes or your Skills suffer, that Edge tends to evaporate quicker than a more Broad Character's Edge.

In the End, well, you play what you find fun.

Of course a MR. Lucky build has lower stats.
Darn it, that fucking obvious. You pay around 100 BP alone for Edge 8. There is not much left to go around.
(Yes, if you keep Edge 6 you might have some more points to throw around. But anyway: A human won't touch the soak pool of an orc.

Well, Cyber/Bio makes up a lot of room for Attributes... My Human Mr. Lucky has Physicals of 5/3/7/2. Exceptional in Body and Reaction, where they are needed for his concept. Slightly lower in Agility and Strength (Ran out of funds, but will be fixed upon first significant infusion of cash, and they were not as important) End result after about 50k in Funds will be 5/6/7/5, which is not insignificant, and costs absolutely 0 Karma.

But you're right. A human will likely not compete against a similar Ork Build. But that is the same regardless of the concept. The Ork's higher base physicals in Body and Strength see to that.

@Tymeaus
And how are the mental attributes?
You said it yourself: If you want edge 8 you have to take cuts. (Be it skills, gear or attributes.)

With the human having a max edge of 8 it is quite balanced.
I have seen several house rules giving humans two points of bonus edge.
Thats asking for MR Lucky light (7) or MR Lucky Luke (9).

All I am saying is that the MR Lucky build is nice but not overpowered, unless edge regenerates very, very fast. Like I said, once per day and every point of edge is worth a freaking lot.

Yeah, Edge refresh has a lot to do with the effective power of Mr Lucky.

Over in Missions, Edge refreshes basically every day, as most Missions are self-contained and are designed to be played in a four-hour session. So it's VERY effective.




-k

Average Stats mental. I always start at average and work from there. Since the character is still young (16), his Charisma Suffered a bit (he has a 2). Otherwise, average.



Agreed, Edge regeneration at Daily is crazy powerful, if you have High Edge.

The whole point of an effective Mr. Lucky is to not need that high Edge most of the time. Generally, it is a character with one thing they have an 18-20 dice pool for, and enough skills to get by in other areas. The Edge only comes out when they suddenly need a good roll in something they are only passable in, or they need an overwhelming success in their specialty. Personally, I prefer humans with an Edge of 6, since those last two points of Edge cost 35 (the points) and 20 (the quality), or 55 points that could go to other areas. But you can certainly make a viable Mr. Lucky build - he will survive a campaign with a low Edge refresh rate, and be very powerful in a campaign with a high Edge refresh rate.

I agree, that edge 6 is quite ideal for a human.
Edge is (taken at high levels) one of the best attributes since it can be applyed to everything.

I'm not allowed to comment directly on Mr. Lucky. However, it is trivial to get a human with base 4's and 5's in body and reaction; and if you're going the cyber route, you can get them much higher easily. A base reaction of 8 means you'll be avoiding the worst of the shots, so you don't need as much body and armor to soak. You can also do that and get 3's and 4's in all your mental stats, so you're no worse off than a comparable street sam. The trick is that you don't actually make any major sacrifices to be good at what you do.

A troll with a body of 9 has to spend 80 points to get it: 40 to be a troll, and 40 to raise the stat. Orks are a little cheaper, only costing 20 for the race, and 40 points to raise it to an 8. That's a decent difference, but the human will only be three Body points behind them if they're equipped with similar 'ware and armor. That translates into one box of damage difference. So, you're not as worried about taking a hit as you might think. You don't actually need the Edge to soak any more than a comparable ork or troll. Similarly, if your primary dice pools are high enough, you don't need to rely on Edge to do your job.

Over the years, I've seen many variations on the original concept. My build is off-limits, but I've seen builds that incorporated a lot of low-level skills. They were enough to get by, but in a pinch, the dice pool suddenly increased by 8. The mage-killer variant had a decent willpower, but also could add 8 dice to spell resistance tests (and hand a bundle of anti-magic edges as well). You can't directly use Edge with skillwires, but you can get a Skillwire Expert System, which allows you to reroll failures in a pinch. Assuming you've got a decent set of skillwires and reasonable stats, that should be all you need for secondary skills.

The truly nasty part about Edge is when you combine it with spellcasters. I've never made a functional mage with an Edge of 8, but I've done some very successful Edge 6 builds. The trick here is that Edge removes the success cap on spells, so when you really need it, your spells are just that much more potent. I can comment on that build: weak physical stats and high mental stats are par for the course for spellcasters, so you're no worse off there. You might shave a point off of strength, since that won't affect you much. You can still afford to start with a 5 Magic easily, and be just as good at spellcasting. You might not be able to be as good at summoning, but that's okay. Take Incompetences in Ritual Sorcery and Banishing, since Banishing is useless and Ritual Sorcery depends on rather or not the GM is going to give you a team of NPC mages to work with. Mages don't need much gear, and I find that starting with foci is often a losing proposition. Except for a Rating 1 sustaining focus, we'll save foci for the long run. Now, we will scrimp a bit on spells: instead of taking 10 or so spells, we'll cut it down to the 5 most useful ones. That's a 25 BP savings right there.

The net result is this: we've got comparable physical and mental stats to a low Edge mage, only down one or two points in Strength. Mental stats are right alongside them: Elves might get a bonus to Charisma, but we'll select a tradition that uses Intuition as a Drain stat, so we're still close in the Drain dice pool and have a better Initiative. Spellcasting is equal. They're maybe one or two dice better at counterspelling, summoning, and binding; but that's not really a big deal.

How does this all work out? The low Edge mage might use a bound spirit to help his dice pool, but he's bound by the Edge cap. He has to overcast to get the most use out of his spells. The high Edge mage can have an equally-powerful bound spirit (same Magic), but with probably fewer services. It doesn't really matter in this case: the mage can add both the spirit's dice and his Edge dice to his spellcasting dice. Since there's no cap, he can cast it at a lower force and get a greater effect.

Basically, you don't need to sacrifice a whole lot to get a high Edge, especially if you're a human. If you do the build right, an Edge of 8 is nearly unstoppable.

Humans have the power of being the lowest common denominator!

...

Well, it seemed to help out people when I was in school and at some jobs...

Wrong thread.. ignore this.

More realistic scenario is that the human takes 3 point of damage more on avarage as the ork and the troll have 6 points more armor(as there's not much sense in them only wearing as much armor as the human can wear)[actually with WAR they can use their higher strength to widen that cap even more], so actually you do need that edge for soaking, adding the edge of 8 to soak pool still leaves the human with 1(or more) dice less then the ork/troll.

But the human will have the cover and barrier modifiers for hiding behind the troll.

I agree that the troll should not be used as example here.
The possibility for the human to take cover where the troll can't may change situations.

Anyway: Yes, the human mage with edge 6 is quite a soild build. High edge is quite good for beginners too, since it helps you to get out of stupid situations.

Ok, this is being posted about three days late: I forgot to post it on Friday. Well....



Those are mostly bad rules, because there is no such thing as "good" roleplaying, at least there are no criteria to measure this by. (Yes, most roleplaying rules in SR4 are very poor, because they are entirely tacked on to the mechanical construct, with simple requirements, but no definitions or explanations.) Basically, with rules like that you are relying on your GM to like your way of roleplaying your character, when you in fact can just view him differently. For instance, your GM thinks all Orcs are more feral, primal variants of humans, you don't think so. He thinks that your depiction of a happy-go-lucky orc is bad roleplaying, whereas that actually IS your character.

Good rules that might reward roleplaying will generally remove any quality criteria, or introduce a table vote on who gets what reward. Impressing people is an objective criterion, "good" ist not. This doesn't protect you from gaming with idiots, but even among friends you often want clear rules as to what works and what doesn't.

And so, no, I have not been given bonus dice, threshold benefits or other bonuses by being a good actor, nor do I award these as the GM - at least not intentionally. I am not immune to being impressed of course. In the past, I have played in groups that have used systems of rewarding "good" roleplaying, and the results were usually terrible: blatant favouritism, personal taste obscuring judgements, etc.

Also, a modification of a mechanic based on rollplaying necessitates having a mechanic in the first place. With roleplaying you determine that it would be appropriate for your character to begin a conflict, and you decide upon your methods, goals, and try to determine the risks and dangers involved. Now you can of course act out every stage, too. But factually, the entire conflict is resolved using game mechanics, and that's how it should be. The acting shouldn't influence the mechanics. (But of course strategies and tactics do.)


Fiat is understood as resolving conflicts based on a whim, without rules that are understood by all sides involved.

Good games will have guidelines on how to properly challenge a player. These may or may not be bunk,obviously, but even if he mucks up the challenge, at least with rules you will understand where the outcome came from. Also, clear rules make it easier to gauge the difficulty of a challenge.



Most diceless games I played had one basic rule: NOONE can affect your character without your permission. Not even the GM. I would never play a game where the GM can affect my character as he likes. He has to convince me that what he has envisioned is what should be happening. Unlike what you may think, this rarely resulted in total anarchy. However, as I said before, especially PC vs PC were a big problem.

Its cheap? Do you play mages much? When I build an mage, I dont have enough points for all the things I need to be a mage... (400BP)

I disagree with that. Game balance should have only one goal: to make sure everyone has fun. Making a player's character weaker than the rest for "setting purity" makes the game less fun for that player, and that's bad.

Where does that come from?

Right out of the core book. Edge dice used as part of the casting test ignore the max hits=force rule.

I'm familiar with a couple of diceless games, most notably Amber and Everway. In both cases, the GM could affect you in many ways. If you're referring to freeform, that's somewhat different; but the GM still has a lot of ways to affect your character if he so chooses.



Main book. SR4.5, page 182:


Most starting magicians have a Magic of 5. That means they'll typically be casting at force 5. So, a normal mage stands very little chance of killing a Will 3 victim with a Manabolt: he can only score 5 successes. If the victim gets even one success, he'll survive. The magician has to overcast in order to take people down reliably. An Edge 6 mage, however, can easily bypass this limit. One-shots are much more likely when you spend Edge on a spell. Heck, I've even seen players lower the force on their spells, because they were spending Edge. With a high enough dicepool, you can throw a Force 3 spell and get ten successes, which is more than enough to take down anyone without really any risk of Drain.


I don't allow War! at my table, and I do come down on characters wearing heavy armor in a street situation. Most characters are going to be restricted to normal-looking armor, and not full-body suits. If the ork or troll take advantage of their ability to wear more armor, they're also going to stand out more, and be a bigger target. So, no, you don't need to soak any more often as a human; in fact you may be soaking less since everyone is going to shoot the biggest-looking threat. That's usually always the troll.

The trick is, you give yourself a good Reaction, and you don't have to worry as much about soaking. You can also get away with decent body and decent armor, certainly no worse than a dwarf or elf in this regard. Even if you're a frontline combatant, you shouldn't need to soak damage any more than the ork or troll, and probably less. You're assuming that the Edge 8 character is getting shot at just as often as the trolls and orks are, which might not be the case. Heck, what happens if he's a rigger? He could be back in the van, controlling drones, with no chance of getting shot at.

You pretty much need to be mister Lucky IRL to pull of 7 successes from you edge dice.

Thanks. I was searching the Edge chapter, didn't think of the magic chapter

I've (almost) excusively played freeform games from "www.mysteryandmagic.com". They have a basic rule 0, which says that a character is sacrosanct. I used to argue against this, too, but that's how it was, and basically it makes sense: You just have to persuade a player that affecting their characters in the manner you wish makes sense.




The free hits rule is one of the reasons why magicrun is so effective: Get a Force 3 sustaining focus, and basically sustain anything you like at many hits. (Improved Reflexes, I'm looking at you!)

The other thing is that basically manabolt is a useless spell, so any magic 5 mage can knock out anyone who doesn't have a crapton of spell defence dice. (12 dice on the budget, 2-skill mage, easily, and a force 9+ stunbolt.)

So you don't even need edge on that one.

I thought Rule 0 was 'the player is stupid and a baby'. Mechanics are what let you convince players to 'let' things happen to them.

Personally, the Edge-breaks-Magic-limits rule is a bad one. Edge is great enough without breaking the magic rules. Anyway, are we really talking about humans any more? They're only 1 Edge luckier than anyone else… anyone can be Lucky.

I don't know about useless. I've certainly seen the spell be very useful. But I picked the spell because it's common, and the drain is easy.

The problem with the trick you describe is the Drain. You're looking at 4P drain, which isn't too serious, but can be a bit hard to handle. If the same mage with Edge 6 wanted to, he could cast it at Force 5, and get more than enough successes to incapacitate anyone without a ton of magical defense. And afterwards, he's only looking at 2S Drain.


It's the Edge 8 characters that can be game-breakers. You can create an Edge 8 character that is hyper-specialized in one area, decent in the others, and then has an Edge of 8 to use when it counts. The trick is to be decent at everything you need, just not spectacular. You end up a point or two behind an equivalent build, but it won't matter much in actual play. I mean, every character needs social skills, but if you've got a Face, you can let them do the talking and your skills are just for backup. If every non-face on the team has seven dice in social skills, and you only have five, you're really not hurting that much. You're still far from helpless in the social arena, you won't need Edge on a regular basis.

Dodging is another one. With a higher or equal Reaction to orks and trolls, you'll avoid the worst of a shot right there. Your soak roll is smaller, but with body 5 and decent armor, you can handle normal hits without spending Edge. If someone breaks out the rocket launcher, yeah you're in trouble-- spend Edge. But the troll would be in just as much trouble, and he doesn't have as much Edge to help out.

Our group's Roleplay karma/xp awards always come as a group bonus. If the group roleplayed well, stayed in character, and interacted well (meaning believably, not necessarily playing nice or anything), then the good roleplaying credit gets awarded to everyone.

@Brain: If your GM thinks you're playing your character wrong, it's because you two never talked about what the character was like, which should have been the FIRST thing that was done after the character stats were written down. In every game I've ever run or played in, it's a requirement before proceeding with play. As a GM, I always ask: "So what's your character like? What's his/her story?" and give the player a few minutes to tell me about them and give me an idea of how they act. Future roleplaying rewards will be based off of how true to that synopsis the character is played.

And I'm so glad I don't play in diceless games. I've met too many players that if the rule existed that nothing could happen to a character without that player's agreement, then the character would never get hurt, would always be perfect, etc etc etc. It's just another way of being a munchkin or powergamer.

That's not a bad idea.


Ok, but that still boxes me into the characterization I came up with in 5-30 minutes while writing up the character synopsis. So what about growth? Also, I haven't had a single character yet that hasn't significantly changed in personality in play - simply because he wasn't quite hashed out, and he reacted to the stimuli present.

Look, in Germany there is a game called "Das Schwarze Auge". It's got a horrible tradition of huge metaplot that you are railroaded through on the "epic" adventures. It also has weird character ethos ideas, even weirder than code of conduct in D&D or stuff like that. And I've have several (horrible) GMs tell me that "no, your character is a noble whatever, he would NEVER do that". Whereas he totally disregarded what we had experienced.


Yeh, except they have no fun, and quit after five minutes. It's really not a problem, unless they are the GMs special friends, and it's a PvP game, as I said earlier.

Notes on Orcs attributes vs human edge.

For 260 points, Orcs can get every attribute to 4, one attribute to 5, and Edge to 5 (soft cap).
For 240 points, Humans can get half their attributes to 3, half to 4, and edge to 6 (soft cap)
Spread evenly, the orcs get 1 less die every time they edge, offset by 1 more die on 5 out of 6 of their stats.
The humans get 1 more edge, and 20 build points. The orcs get 1 more die on every non-edged roll on 5 different stats.

The edge on humans is nice, but it's not the all-out advantage some people seem to think it is because of the affect attributes have on rolls and the disparity between human and orc attributes.

There is a difference between orks and humans, power and aptitude-wise, but in an open build system, it is, like suoq just said, negligible. The thing is, with an open build system, you can get much, much more severe differences in power between two characters who are the same metatype and profession.

Cain hinted at it - sometimes points matter a lot, and sometimes they don't. Take two players, one playing Mr. Lucky, and one playing a human who "only" has an Edge of 6. So the second player has 55 more points to spend. So maybe he gets a Charisma of 5 instead of 2, and gets the influence skill group at 4 instead of 2, and adds the first impression quality. Wow, what a difference - that second character has basically added a secondary specialty of face to his character! But maybe instead of that, he decides to raise Charisma and Logic from 2 to 3, raise Intuition from 3 to 4, get an extra 3 connection/2 loyalty contact, raise three skills from 2 to 3, and pick up the medicine: 2 skill to go with his first aid. Now yeah, he did still spend 55 points, and get 6 more points of free knowledge skills to boot, and he'll be rolling an extra dice or two for some things. But overall, if you compare his performance to Mr. Lucky, you won't see that much difference... until the Edge dice come out.

The difference here is in how Edge works. Going from Edge 5 to 6 not only means you get an extra die, but you get to use it more often. Also, in your example, what is that human going to spend his extra 20 points on? If you're smart, you spend it on skills or 'ware to boost your dice pools. You're also forgetting the most important advantage of Edge dice: they explode. That means you can get a really incredible number of successes if you roll well. I've personally had a Ares Predator do 30P damage with normal ammo.

Like Glyph said, sometimes points matter and sometimes they don't. SR4.5 really rewards system mastery: you can create many hyperspecalized builds without sacrificing much. The last pornomancer build I saw had something like 52 dice in a social test, and was functional everywhere else. Now, true: an Edge of 8 alone isn't going to cut it. You do need good base dice pools for your characters specialty. But you can have that, and a high Edge to boot. Having a high Edge won't gimp a character, if you know what you're doing.

Now, certain races are going to be better than humans at certain roles. Orks and Trolls are always going to be better at tanking than a human. So, the moral of the story is, don't build humans to be tanks. You'll get shot at less, so you won't have to worry so much about needing a high Body and armor. Instead, build humans to take advantage of their advantages: Edge 6 human mages are killer, and Edge 8 anything can be unstoppable if done right.

Well, Edge 5 to 6 is not a big jump, I do agree.

If you are in the high end area of dice pools (which can come quite fast if you consider all the different boni dices.)

Shooting someone:
Agility+Skill+Smartlink+Tacnet+skill increase by magic or ware...

But the best example is binding a spirit:
Having Magic 5 and Binding 5 you may end up with:
5+5+2(mentor spirit)+2(Homeground)+2(positiv BC)+2(spec)+4(Powerfocus)=22 dices.

The point about humans is, they are the only one (exept pixies and free spirits) who may aim at high edge characters (7+).
An edge of 6 or even 7 for an ork is not worth trying. The building points you waste to not come back to you. (You might in game raise your edge from 5 to 6, but thats about it)
With the human and Edge 8 the investment pays off since you not just get one more dice each roll, you also get an other roll. Translating in 15 additional edge dices (starting from 49).

(On lower edge scores it is not that big of a deal, because rerolling is much better than adding edge!)

To conclude it:
Are humans the better characters:
No, nobody is saying so. There is this special build for humans allowing them to fuck the rules a bit, if the GM is handing out edge like candys he does not like.
Because such a build will probably not run with the edge 5 ork, but more likely with the edge 3 ork. (Since he thought increasing body from 6 to 8 is a much better deal)

The point a lot of people are trying to make is, that making humans better is not an easy task, because they are almost in line.
Giving them an other point of edge and increasing their costs to 10BP would probably break the balance.
The most you might give is an additional advantage for around 10 BP. (But if you allow surge, this won't be worth much)

The only character better with edge are free spirits in karmageneration + starting karma.
(Since they get 4 times the reward:
1. additional powers.
2. Additional dices for using those powers.
3. Additional dices, when using edge.
4. More uses of edge)

Yep it's kind of a BS magicrun rule so they wouldn't put it under the edge chapter.

Humans aren't better characters, but they're also not underpowered. You just have to play to their strengths. You shouldn't try to make a tank sam with a human, leave that to the orks and trolls. But speed sams? Humans and elves do very well there. Why soak when you can dodge? Riggers, deckers, and mages? You definitely should consider going human for those builds. There are advantages to going human, and they can be quite powerful if done right.