@Mäx

I do not know whos sig it was:
You do not have to worry about the bullet with your name on, the problem is the bullet addressed "to who it might concerne".

Not so true for bullets in SR but very true for granades...

An other point for body are sicknesses. So I guess, a body of 3 is reasonable.

When did "Geek the Mage first!" go out of style?

The mage is the guy with all the armor...
Anyway: Armor gets you unwanted attention.
And yes, it is true the line from best to worse goes:
Not get shot at-dodge the bullet-soak the damage-surive the shot...

Unless your GM does not pay any attention to the world, wearing heavy armor is not a good idea.
(Yes, I am just the plumber. Why are you wearing a full body armor? Rats?)

Always reminds me of Fallout 1 and 2 where you run around in Brotherhood or Enclave armor at the end.
It tends to be quite funny if you go the speak or sneaky way in "older" quests. Or some guys trying to shoot you with a shotgun...

Unless you've got a mage on your side, how do you know which one's the mage until he casts a spell? And even when you have a mage on your side, what happens when the other guy's got Masking?

When I play mages, I rely heavily on disguises, so you can't tell if I'm just a suit caught up in the fight, or maybe a janitor or delivery boy. Heavy armor would hurt that tactic. If I have to go in openly, I go in behind the heavy hitters; and even then, I've been known to festoon my character with tech-gizmos and phony cyber so people won't think I'm a mage until I cast a spell. And then, it's too late.

Sometimes I don't even need to go in at all, or at least not close. I can send in bound spirits to do some of the heavy work. What's more, it works wonders when combined with a disguise: Confusion is such a nifty power. There's no reason to expose myself; that's the street sam's job.

Easy: the mage is the wimp struggling with the weight of his armor. And if he's not a mage, he's a hacker or some other nasty stuff. When in doubt, shoot the wimp. Focusing on the tank is bad tactics. Bad tactics are good for gangers but trained response teams should know better.

When the Troll is not only armored like a tank but armed like one as-well, you ignore him on your own peril

Exactly. Aiming for the wimp is stupid; you want to take out the biggest threat first. That's usually the ork or troll, especially if they have anything shotgun-sized or bigger. A smart mage won't even look like a threat: they'll wear "normal clothing" armor, so they don't look as badass. Heck, mages might just take cover under a desk or a car, and command spirits.

But still body one is quite a tough choice. I mean tear gas could probably kill you.

PS: And if the mage looks on to you, he will probably fry your ass with an overcasted indirect combat spell, which would be burning through your armor anyway.

One does not mess with the Department of Water and Wastewater Management...

The problem with the discussion is that so many people are under the belief that their style of play DEFINES how useful attributes are for everyone else. This should be an obvious fallacy, but nevertheless, people are charging the machinegun nest.

If staying in the van is a viable tactic:

Your GM is not using the Detect Hidden Node or Trace User actions.
The players are not taking on challenges that require matrix users to be at the target location.

If attacking a central strong point ("the machine gun nest") is a standard tactic:

your GM is not using flanking or reinforcements to their fullest.
the players are not taking on challenges that require all players be combat capable.

If strength is a dump stat:

the players are not taking on challenges that require athletics skills.

If everyone is shooting at the heavily armored troll:

your GM is making all the NPCs act alike.
your GM does not have NPCs go for the low hanging fruit (aka, the easy kills).
the players are not taking on challenges that require stealth and disguise on the trolls part that includes combat but excludes ideal gear.

Under such conditions, there is no underpowered race because the missions are built around character capabilities. The weaknesses of the characters simply isn't an issue because that table is playing to the characters strength.

This is a fine way to play, and common, but as far as a comparison between character races goes it is, ultimately, meaningless. It's like saying the sample characters in the book are fine because they work at one particular table. From the perspective of that table, yes, they are fine, and yet the vast majority of us (everyone not at that table) realizes just how flawed they are.

I see a lot of straw men being applied to what I said. Here's what I didn't say:
1) Wear a conspicuous amount of obvious armor.
2) Don't try to dodge/avoid damage.
3) Rely on soaking all damage.

What I did say is that Body 3-4 is *always* useful, and a little Strength is *always* useful (except, again, for phone-it-in non-characters). I'm not aware that *every* group has a troll tank, btw, nor that you never use Athletics. Now, maybe your build works better with Body 3 and Strength 2 (instead of 4/3), but that's not a big difference. Orks are excellent for almost all characters in almost all cases, that's all. It's hardly a controversial statement.

There's a lot of straw men being applied just about everything that's been said, sadly.





Body 1 is indeed flimsier than I like to play with but I still don't feel that people are thinking very critically and truly asking themselves at what point a Body 4 character would be appreciably less screwed than one of Cain's scrawnier guys. Ultimately these conversations boil down to opportunity costs and beating whatever thresholds are necessary to get by in a given table environment. And in general, the disease and toxin rules are structured such that willpower and reaction* scores matter as much as whether you have a Body of 1 vs. a Body of 3 or 4 and gear matters most of all. Ultimately if you really want to survive a crab's ridiculous 12P paralyzing sting or to shrug off another wave of VITAS you want Universal Nantidotes and O-Cells, not tusks. Common security responses like Tear Gas and Pepper Punch can often be planned for by taking antidote patches before the job. In the case of ghouls, you want to blast off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

So, yeah, Body is great by virtue of the sheer number of nitty-gritty survival situations it affects and the ability to pile on the cheapest armor sources. But with that said, your character won't necessarily just disintegrate if they stop at 2 instead of 3.

*Obviously fully resisting the toxins that bestow Nausea or Paralysis in the first place is the ideal outcome, but requiring a 6+ power before you are truly incapacitated by the secondary effects is a nice consolation prize and is often more reliable to boot.

Man, sorry about all the edits. I'm kinda loopy from painkillers due to breaking my collarbone.

I was going to say something about playing a low STR/BOD character, but I realized I don't, not really. The character in question never leaves her vehicle, so her STR and BOD are whatever her vehicle's stats are.

My other main SR character has STR 2, but BOD 5. He's a tough old man. Human, because it fit the concept.




-k

Haven't you seen the movies? There is always one who manages to sneak in the ship

Those wired reflexes: 3 aren't the real reason they call him "Flash".

@Whipstitch

Oh, they will. The glitch rule will see to that.
Honestly a small even number on the ONE attribute for resistance is a bad idea.

You eat some bad food, critically glitch and you are in for a bucket of pain...
(Same reason you should not have reaction 2, because you will critically glitch in any firefight there is)

The point is: Increasing the dicepool from 2 to 3 just makes your chance to glitch go down the hill.
(2: 30%; 3: 7%)

I'm not sure why, at this point of the discussion, it's assumed characters can't spend edge before rolling, especially when we seem to be talking about low human attributes and the forte of humans being having a higher edge than other races.

I'm not sure why, at this point in the discussion, everyone is assuming why the OP was asking if humans were unDERpowered. According to the title, they want to know if they're UNpowered. Being biological creatures, they are not unpowered thread over

I'm familiar with glitches, but it still doesn't mean much to me given that there's not many situations in which you should be rolling a Body of 1 or 2 unaided. The other precautions you can take are still generally cheaper than having a strong constitution. Magic is a pain in the ass, but then, that goes for just about every mundo. This reminds me somewhat of emotitoys, actually, something I have long disallowed from my games because if they are uncommon the players have a big advantage and if dang near every club goer has them it just means people glitch less, which I don't think is very fun.

Body 1 is a bit of a straw man; I don't like to go below body 2. Body 3 *is* better, if only because it gives you an extra hit point.

But you don't have to worry about botches so much, since the roll is Body + Armor, not straight body. And since we're talking about humans, any roll where we're discussing low-body humans with an unaugmented roll is one where you want to spend Edge anyway. When I gear up a low-body human, I'm always careful to add as many armor extras as I can: chemical resistance, nonconductivity, and so on.

A powerbolt will ruin your day, true; but that's true for any mundane. Besides which, I only advocate body 2 for non-front-line combatants, such as deckers, riggers, and *mages*. Mages have Counterspelling to help them out, so they stand a better chance than the Body 5 ork.

Right, so we're talking a difference of maybe Body 2 to Body 4. I'm just saying that 2 is basically the bare minimum, and pretty much everyone wants 4 (maybe, maybe 3). It's not a problem to be forced into Body 4, and it's not really out of your way, either. It's not like the Troll strength bonus.

Hell, I pumped my Pixie's Body up to 2 as soon as was feasible.

A 1 is scary. Especially because you basically can't wear more than armor clothing, without penalties.




-k

Yeah, it's why I said earlier that orks, despite technically giving you 10 less net build points than trolls,are actually better - the stats they get bonuses to are right at the "sweet spot" and the penalties are less likely to really affect you.

I mean, there's no question that orks come out 20 points ahead, and that there is no mechanical reason not to take them, unless you are playing a human with high mental stats, high Edge, or both. Just like there is no mechanical reason not to take, say, human over elf unless you are playing a character with high Agility, high Charisma, or both.

The real question is, are they so crippled by the difference that they are only viable within this narrow niche? Personally, my answer would be no. You can make humans, and even elves, that are not geared towards their strengths, which are still perfectly functional builds. Are they optimized as much as they can possibly be? No. But you can still make a decent character. I'm the last one to favor the Stormwind fallacy, but between the extremes of deliberately gimping a character, and playing one who is not completely optimized, there is a lot of room. And even speaking as someone who likes to min-max the hell out of my characters, I will still play certain metatypes with roles that they are not the absolutely best suited for, on occasion.

The only other reason, perhaps, is improperly left unstatted: ubiquity. Humans are still, supposedly, the metatype with the largest population and greatest breeding potential. Though the chances are low, you could have a dwarf, elf, human, ork, and troll all from the same human mother & father. She'd be a very tired woman, but nonetheless. The fact that humans are so common could easily justify adding a bonus similar to "Blandness,' or some other quality that lets them blend into the crowd better. Looking for an ork? 2 000 000 records to sift through. Looking for a human? 2 000 000 000, and they all look alike to me .

Mechanically, though, the difference is negligible. In Shadowrun, it's easier to break it than to fix or protect it, and that goes for character lives as well. The troll is a bit obvious, and makes for a bigger target. Any given security response may have enough firepower to kill even an Ork in one sitting, and seeing a troll could ramp that up to RRT levels. Then again, common sense isn't commonly held, it's commonly applicable. Sometimes you need a reminder about these things. That's one place that crunch trumps any amount of fluff; it's already on the sheet, it's there at a glance.

I forget which edition, but I remember reading that human ubiquity could be a double-edged sword. Because humans are more common, people are more able to pick out specific humans, while a metatype is likelier to be described as "He was a big troll."

The answer to that is sure, you can ignore it and it's not that big of a problem, but why not fix it? What does it add to the game?

Personally, because I would rather have metatypes that are different, that are optimal for certain roles, and suboptimal but still usable for other roles, than to have all of the metatypes be functionally the same. I like for choices made in character creation to be meaningful, for there to be multiple ways to be effective, and for there to be some flavorful suboptimal options there if you want to go against the grain a bit.

It's all a matter of preference. The good thing about metatypes being represented by point costs, is that it is easy to "fix". You can give humans 20 extra points, make elves cost less, or make orks cost more, if you feel the existing values aren't fair enough.

Very true.

Yeah, the difference isn't that great, and so you can get away with the lower body in certain builds. Orks sometimes cost you more than they're worth, especially if you're going to be needing high mental stats. A body 2 character is perfectly viable, if somewhat fragile.

Exactly. You cannot have truly have meaningful choice without meaningful drawbacks even if those drawbacks manifest themselves as opportunity costs rather than explicit penalties. The fact of the matter is that RPG devs are often in a bit of a bind because a lot of gamers have contradictory criteria that is frankly impossible to meet. Shadowrun is not Lake Wobegon and so you can't make everyone above average without making everyone the same.

I'm on agreement with that, but the role optimality is not equally distributed. Humans and dwarves have quite narrow niches, elves and trolls somewhat less so, whereas orks are optimal at a whooooole lot of roles and at least debatable in a lot more. Honestly, I'd be perfectly fine if the optimality were redistributed so humans were good at a lot of stuff and the metahumans were all relatively niche-y; I feel like the setting would work better if the question you asked when deciding on a metatype were "why shouldn't I be human" instead of "why shouldn't I be an ork?"

And I would disagree, in part because in the larger context of the Sixth World being physically tough is a borderline irrelevant niche or bonus for most SINners just like it's all but irrelevant for office workers of today. That orks are well-suited for the shadows is no skin off my nose and if anything a bit apt.

Actually, that's not quite the case. Basically, the benefit to being an ork is the extra Body; strength is basically useless unless you intend to melee a lot. That means they're most useful in roles that will be taking a lot of hits. Shadowrun is about more than soaking damage, though; I've seen countless runs go off without firing a shot. If that's the type of run you want, you need a mage or face with lots of Con dice. And for those, you're better off going human.

I don't know about you guys, but I've never been able to make a mage that wasn't scraping the barrel for points when I was done. Sometimes the metahuman cost can make a difference.

Also, for the record, it feels really weird being on this side of the discussion because I've described orks as being the true master race more than a few times.

Interesting, since my question is almost invariably, "Why should I be anything else BUT a Human?" A non-human metatype build is the niche build for me, not the Human one. Though, I will admit that when I DO build a Non-Human 'Runner, it is usually an Ork, followed by Elf, Troll and then Dwarf.

See, I've built mostly humans. One troll, and the rest elf. I've never needed the ork bonuses, because I either needed the BP elsewhere or I found other ways of making up for the Body.

If I'm going for an extreme tank build, troll is the way to go, hands down. Nobody can take a shot like a troll. Orks get a modest bonus to Body in relation, which is useful, but not spectacular. The elf bonus to Quickness makes them the best choice for a speed-combat character, because they hit more often and do more damage across the board. I've only done a dwarf once, and that was in SR3; he was a pest exterminator, and so he needed the pathogen bonus to handle some of the chemicals he dealt with. Come to think of it, I've only done one ork, and that was in SR3 as well: he was an improvised weapons specialist, who used pool cues as his main weapons. He also had missile mastery and threw cue balls as a ranged attack. He didn't last long, though; I eventually replaced him with a troll version.

See, but when you're scraping for points that's when usually switching to ork gets cheaper - unless you really skimped on body. I find that taking Orc to start with gives me the freedom to distribute the rest of the points where I like them, and not sacrifice longevity/durability too much. When going human I basically have to put a lot of points into those aspects.

Simple facts remain:

Orks are often all-out cheaper on MANY builds.
Humans only really make use of their lack of other bonuses by taking 7 edge.

Now look at it this way, and I in no way believe this should be representative, it's just an example:
In our current group we have two humans (7 edge), an ork (6 edge) and an elf (6 edge), made with old attribute cost karmagen. Only one of the humans has below 5 body. Even the hacker has 5 body. And the one time that Body 3 human got out of hiding to retrieve a mission critical item, he got sprayed with wide bursting LMG fire and took something like 7-8 boxes of damage, admittedly on a good attack roll, in spite of putting edge into both dodge and soak. (we don't use WAR!, so no softweave for him.)

The difference in durability is just not only the 2 dice of body that are missing, but the 4 dice of armour, too, and it gets worse if you don't cheese your armour to the max. And while that's statistically just two hits more, it might have made a bigger difference with edge. He was rolling something like 10 dice for soak, while ALL the other characters roll 18+. That isn't to say he wasn't effective, in fact he got to make THE critical action that tipped the scales of the battle. But with that sort of damage you are really out of the game for a while. With the crappy way the Heal spell is now, there is no quick fix anymore to taking lots of damage.

Now the other humans has character reasons for being human, and the elf is a Cha mage, so... but even the hacker (GMPC) is an ork because I don't like flimsy characters, and due to the crappy vehicle rules you actually do need some soak dice even while in a vehicle. (His car took an 18P tamped explosion, and basically all the other occupants (NPCs) got fried, but he survived with just a bit of damage.)

When you are not optimising to the max, then taking human is fine, but on point-strapped builds (mysads, pure un-cybered adepts, even mages), then saving those few points by taking orc can make the difference between a working concept and a crippled concept.

I don't see that in practice.

When I'm going for non-front-line combatants, I can get away with a Body of 2 or 3. The decker and rigger can sit back in the van, in a rigger cocoon if need be, and never worry about taking a single shot. A mage can hold back a ways, and toss in spells and spirits with little danger of return fire. A decker with Body 5 is a waste of points; he really needs to be raising his other skills. When building front line combatants, elves are the best choice for dishing out damage and trolls are the best choice for taking it. Humans do decent here as well; they make good speed samurai, who rely on a high Reaction instead of a high Body and armor. Orks make good all-rounders, but they're not as niche as elves or trolls.

So, you *can* optimize to the max, and still choose human over ork. Why should a mage open himself to fire? If he needs to grab something, use Levitate or a spirit service to do it. Play to your strengths.

With BP, I would say "Humans only really make use of their lack of other bonuses by at least soft-capping edge.

For your table, you are completely right. As we established earlier, at a table where the GM isn't using Track, Sniff, flanking, reinforcements, and every NPC shoots at the troll, body can be a dump stat. Likewise, at a table where players can ignore Athletics skills and melee combat, Strength can be a dump stat.

If, at a table, combat can be avoided, humans become just as cost effective as orcs because body can be dumped.
If, at a table, dice are rolled less frequently, edge becomes more valuable. If, at a table, dice are rolled more frequently, attributes become more valuable.
If, at a table, combat can be avoided completely (which means the character isn't rolling dice in combat) humans become MUCH more cost effective. If combat can't be avoided by a player, and he's rolling dice in combat and out of combat for his role, Orcs become more cost effective.

Your table, by your description, is one in which humans are the cost effective choice. However, I don't think your table is the norm. I may be wrong on that.

For mages, a lot of spells are LOS, and not every mage can afford to edge-cast improved invis into his sustaining focus before every fight to get those 5-6 hits he needs to be invisible even to sensors/drones/etc. Yes, you can basically sit back, and drop spirits on people, too, but in most cases, effective use of cheesebolts will end fights quicker, hence endangering the rest of group less. In areas with BC cheesebolts may be your only option left, because a resulting F4 or smaller spirit might not last long, but the mage will still be able to cast, albeit at higher personal risk. And even if the mage stays in a vehicle to cast, I can still hit him with explosives, grenades or full-auto fire.

What I'm saying is, hanging back CAN be situational depending on playstyle. And as a GM, if one of the PCs always hangs back, I would try to find a way to target him, too - using the rules for locating hidden people, or by applying more effective tactics by the enemies.

Riggers can have their node tracked, their vehicle located and effectively engaged with long-ranged weaponry, or even swarmed by a diversionary team. If the vehicle is sprayed with full-auto fire, the passengers have to make soak tests, too.
Hackers can likewise be tracked in the matrix, and then have their apartments raided.

I am very inclined to use these tactics, simply to make sure the players don't feel too safe.

And then there is still the other thing: Sometimes you just have to go places in the meat. For instance, the Johnson might demand that every runner be present at the meeting. Or the mission target is in a place that is cut off from astral projection/wireless matrix, etc., by whatever means.

I entirely feel that a survivable alround build with 400BP is quite hard to make in that respect, which is another reason a 400BP runner "should" be an ork, unless he has a good reason not to be.

Old attribute karmagen was basically a silly mistake though. You effectively had so many points to play around with that I would have been tempted to just keep cranking out elves.

@Brainpiercing7.62mm

Please 4 to 6 since sensors are 4 and it is debatable if you only have to beat the sensor. (Which I would say, since if I want to burn a piece of wood attached to a drone I would only need to overcome the OR of the wood, not the drone)

But, yes it burns down to playstyle. If your GM plays to your strenghs, you do not need to care about weak points.

Sensors are OR 3 Irion... You really should invest in the updated PDF, or purchase the Anniversary Edition Hardbound.

It certainly leads to strange results, since attributes are almost universally cheaper than skills, but still, I don't think it's silly - it simply weights things differently, and you can certainly run out of points to spend (easily, I might add). With that system you can make characters that numerically look a lot like SR3 characters - no attributes below 4, etc.

We have some more house-rules, like lifted caps on how many sixes or max skills you can get at chargen, etc. Basically you arrive at a very high baseline, but you can make good generalists with that system, and we hardly needed to overspecialise at all.

Old Karmagen was an issue; but even with 400 BP, you have alternatives to standing in the middle of combat and taking it. It's not a table style thing, it's a player tactics thing. I don't like railroading my players into certain doom, so I let them find the tactics that work best for them and adjust accordingly.

As someone else put it, if you're a "phone in" character, you don't even need to be in the line of fire at all. If you're a mage, you only need LoS or spirits to wreak havok. The Confusion and Chaotic World spells and powers are wonderful defensive abilities.

Yes.. Confusion is quite devastating. We finished up a module last Sunday and our Adept Face's ally spirit hit the street sam with confusion.. pretty much nullified his dice pool for everything after that point and got taken down rather quickly after that.

@Cain

Of course it is about table style.

As an example:

Trolls get one more point of body, for 15 BPs. Thats not what I call "the way" to go. It is a good deal as long as size does not matter much....Which really depends on your table.

So yes, it is a "table" thing.
The hole "Body/Armor" Vs "Reaction/Dodge" is a table thing, depending how the GM introduces fights.
If the players can choose the fight or the fight chooses the players.
It depends on how the GM is on ammunition, weapons and visibility modifiers.
If you run with a GM where every granger has tac-net, Smartlink, muscle toner and at least a firearm skill of 4 but is only using a Ceska Black Scorpion (wide burst because he is a granger) with normal ammunition, dodging is not the way to go, I guess.

The bold clearly says, yes, it is a table style thing.

Yes and no: if the greatest challenge a player is ever up against is losing a dice check, then that won't satisfy them on the long run, at least I would feel the GM is holding back.

So, generally as a GM I will try to adapt my tactics to those the players are capable of - if their tactics work very well, then there will be enemies who employ similar tactics, or devise counter-measures. If they adapt and improve, they will continue to be successful, but simple things like staying home and avoiding LOS won't work forever. And, for instance, for a phone in character to not be found at all usually requires him to win every check against a trace or detection. It's just the dice that will decide this, eventually, and we all know the terror of the GM dice .

So, if someone were to come to my game with a body 1-2 character, I would tell them that this might mean they won't survive that one time when their tactics don't work. I would even tell the same to the body 3 guy in the game now, but I took the table over from another GM, and he approved that character.