On a side note: Might I ask where you live? Portland? I'm asking since I'm in a similar situation, yet I've rarely faced what you describe. Then again, chances are we live at different ends of the world.

If you live in Portland, we don't. But that's a better topic for PM.

Fair Enough...
Strength and Intimidation, Interesting...

(I just got back from holidays, so excuse me responding to things discussed a few days ago)

Should races be optimal choices for certain roles (elf faces, ork sams)? Not too much - preferably not conclusively at all. I like it better when any given role can be done a bit differently depending on which race you pick. An elf gunbunny would emphasize accuracy and speed a bit more, an ork would put more stress on staying standing even when shot at. You're not mad or stupid or deliberately nerfing yourself by picking a different race for a role.

The current system verges on that (to my mind ideal) situation, although trolls tend to be Good For One Thing Only, unfortunately. You just pay too much BP for Strength if you're not going to make serious use of it. And making a social troll is just too hard, with the low charisma caps. (Seattle 2072 mentions a flaming gay troll fixer...)

Are humans underpowered? Not all that much, compared to most races. Maybe compared to orks, but if orks are also overpowered compared to trolls and dwarves, I don't think the problem is with humans...



On the other hand, there's some stuff orks don't do all that well. Consider: I only want Body 4. That's enough to wear FFBA and an Actioneer Business Suit; total armor of 11/6 I think. (Best stay out of close combat.) Any heavier armor basically looks like armor, and that's not the impression I want to make.

So, while creeping through an office building, you bump into some people. If you're a human in a nice suit, you've got a shot at talking your way out of it. And if not, of getting near enough to surprise them with something.

As an ork in heavy armor ("because Body's cheap and you can wear lots of armor that way"), you look Suspicious. You might take them down quietly, but that's risky. Talking your way out is difficult too: you're an ork and you're wearing armor. The only orks employed are a bunch of guys they took on to comply with some equal opportunities directive; fat chance they recognize you're not those orks. (Those would be the human-poser orks with nerdy glasses, in order to look less threatening. Probably in a wheelchair.)

Admittedly, this is just one scenario, but it's a sketch of how being more "civic" can be useful.

I don't understand why the Orc isn't wearing an armored vest (plus the same ffba, ppp, etc) under janitor/maintenance coveralls (which is actually just a hair bit better armor for the same body and gives him more places to hide B&E tools). Is there a reason he's not attempting to look like an employee but the human is?

A body of 3 is usefull. True, a body of 5 tends to be not that usefull anyway, because you hit the "can't get additional armor" problem.
(This is one of the reasons I do not see the troll as such a great melee/tank. His larger size and all the problems comming along with that makes more than up for this +1 armor +1 body (which is gone as soon as you use cyberlimps or even orthoskin), if compared to an ork. I would even go that far, that this is true for close to any build. Even the once focused on strengh, since these 2 points do not get that far. (Thats one point of damage in most cases, and a little bit of range if you go with the throwing adept.)
Not that helpful if you (to close the cirle) do not have a GM mostly hitting on the strong points and ignoring the weak once.
Because now, this one point of damage is all thats left.

Orks are seen to be better than humans, because mostly the GM won't let you roll with the Body 1, Strengh 1 Human generated in BP Gen, to just add some Points after a few runs.
(Granted, this was a quite better idea, when the attributes were just *3.)
Even if this human, for example as a gun bunny adept with high edge, would not have a lot of problems. (Or the technomancer in the van, the projecting mage etc.)

If you look at build posted here or used, you normally do not see body 1, strength 1, charisma 5, edge 6.
Well, I guess it depends on which system you use too.
Getting an attribute from 1 to 2 in Karma Gen is dirt cheap. In BP-gen it is the same as getting an attribute from 4 to 5 so...
But I guess most of the thought that orks are superior is not from a general build done once ork once human, it is from the more extrem builds.
Like the throwing adept or the tank.
And here it is only true for BP-gen, since in Karma-Gen the ork would need to pay a lot to get those fancy body 8 and strength 7.

Nonsense. You can wear way heavier armor than that and not look armored. FFBA plus PPP (minus the helmet) plus Vashon Island Steampunk Suit (worn over the FFBA/PPP) just looks like the latest fashion and you need Body 6 to wear it.

PPP isn't subtle. II would argue you can't wear it under even a steampunk suit, without people getting decent odds of figuring it out.

No.

"The SecureTech PPP (Personal Protection Piecemeal) System consists of padded densiplast sections that the wearer can combine to give additional protection to several body parts. Each piece of armor is available in at least three styles: as discreet protection designed to be worn beneath other clothing, as an obvious strapped addition to other visible armor, and as sports equipment."

Just wanted to focus on this because one thing Trolls they would seem to be good for they really aren't.(melee combat) Since every combat skill is tied to agility -1 to agility caps wrecks trolls in combat even hand to hand combat. They may match on one side of the equation unmodified agility opponents with reach but modified enemies can get up to a 9 agility vs the trolls 7. It might not sound like much but given the double defense melee combat gets you need every die you can get. The extra 2dv in damage when you hit is nice, but you actually have to hit to do damage. I am not saying you can't build an effective melee troll just that it isn't really a big strength to them. It is a bit of a pity but since the game designers are the ones defining what an attribute means they could have defined attributes in such a way that there weren't a couple super attributes.

Yeah PPP is just form fitting for impact damage. I wish they had just made FF work against both instead of every character having a full paragraph detailing all their armor, or better yet make the initial armor protect at the level they want instead of padding supplements with it.

That -1 agility isn't as big a negative as you think. Trolls also get a +1 reach bonus, which makes up for it, without going to augmented maximums. The reach only works in melee, so the Troll still isn't as effective in ranged combat.

Trolls see more play than they otherwise might because Fomori are so amazingly good, but otherwise, yeah, you really need to want that strength very badly for troll to be worth it. Subduing is the big draw of the high STR; if you want high melee damage (which is honestly a questionable goal in the first place) there are better options than being a troll.

I would argue that there is a difference between being designed to be worn under clothing discreetly and being utterly undetectable. Wearing all that stuff under an industrial coverall or other bulky outfit is one thing but I tend to think that strapping on all that gear under something more fashionable or form-fitting would be akin to "discreetly" packing a heavy pistol in a shoulder holster-- a lot of people won't notice but ultimately the biggest advantage is that you're not really brandishing or making a big show of being armed even when people do notice.

@Shinobi Killfist

Well, and a Troll is quite hard to miss.
So there is a lot more time to shoot him in the face... (Yeah, I know. The melee builds are about running speed and how crazy a troll with the right modification gets, so you close in from sniper distance in 3 seconds.)

Anyway: Melee weapons and hand to hand should be governed be strength, monofilament wip excluded.

For the attack test? Maybe from a balance perspective, but not if they want any semblance of realism for stat function. I've fought in combats with mock weapons and, honestly, it takes some hand-eye coordination to effectively use most weapons or tactics, and that falls within the scope of agility. There are exceptions, but those are mostly covered with subduing combat (which does use strength).

I don't think anyone's claiming "undetectable". In the above example, I don't see a big difference between the human wearing PPP forearm & shin under Actioneer (which he should be doing with Body 4 and half FFBA) and an orc wearing an armored vest, and the same PPP & FFBA under coveralls (again, with a Body 4). Both have a chance to be noticed and what looks odder, bulkier coveralls or Actioneer clothing, in this office is really GM discretion at best.

---------

Numbers note. I was playing with Chummer, looking at a human hacker I built for missions but haven't run yet. The only numbers difference after going from soft capped edge for human to hard capped edge for orc was that I had to spend 5 points to get my strength from 2 to 3. As such, depending on table and what you consider acceptable minimum stats for Body and Strength for the character you're building, I'm not even sure humans are even at an edge advantage, unless they're going to hard cap their edge.

From a numbers perspective, I'm not seeing the advantage to being human unless you're hardcapping edge or you really want to use strength and/or body as a dump stat.

@HunterHerne
Strength is still a factor. And quite an important one. (If you are not fighting with very light weapons, which bend if but under stress)
Higher strength makes it possible to use moves you could not (or you would need to slow them down) with lower strength.
(Also you tend not to drop your weapon this easy.)

It always depends on what you consider to be in the attribute strength.
I do not only but how strong you are but also how well you may access your strength. Focus it.

So maybe thats why I consider them to be quite equal in melee. Maybe agility is a bit more important... (2to1 or something)

QFT. Someone wielding a sword in combat without proper training and the agility to use that will be more of a danger to himself and his friends than to his enemy.

Alright, you are on to something there. I know a little about the science of athletics (though very little), and you are right, strength is important. A gymnast needs to be able to lift his weight to do some of his routines, too. Agility shouldn't be the end-all-be-all of stats, but it's not easy to write easily implemented rules that take those things into account. If you, or anyone else, wants to bring strength into importance, that is up to them. I for one, don't know how to do it effectively.

This I know, both from observation and experience (though like I said, mock weapons, so the "danger" wasn't lethal)

My take on making strength worthwhile below:

Apathy, I don't like those house rules for one big reason. First off you take into account things like cyberlimbs. If I punch you in the face with my flesh and bone hand, I'll hurt you and hurt myself. If I punch you in the face with a cyberhand, I'll hurt you and NOT hurt my hand. My hand is made of metal. Also you're not taking into account things like shock hands (which uses the unarmed combat skill) or hardliner gloves, or Adept Killing hands.

Next, your take on a troll with low agility against an elf with high agility is wrong. If the troll hits the elf, it's all over for that poor bastard... but he HAS. TO. HIT! The elf is dancing around the troll and stinging him with "weak" hits. Hardliner, or shock gloves will give the elf a good chance to hurt the troll.

What I hear you saying is that one side always hits (100%) but does little damage (10%). Your flip side is someone who does 100% damage, but instead of hitting 10% of time (a balanced equation), never hits.

Yes, when you stack the deck that way, the guy doing 0 at either hitting or damaging isn't hurting. If you said the elf had the same chance of hurting the troll as the troll does of hitting the elf (both 0%) then the fight would go on forever.

If you want to write a new version of SR where instead of adding attributes to skills you cap skills with attributes and cap add-ons with skills and only roll dice for skills + add-ons, I'll be happy to sit down and play a game. But that's another thread entirely.

And you call that SR3?

That's what I call it...

Sorry, I had children so I ended up skipping from SR1 to SR4.5

Understandable, I have Child Now...

The thing is it really depends on how you define a stat. Sure if you define strength only as the lift crap stat it wont cover things. But strength can also be defined by muscle control to some degree. What you consider agility to control the blade I consider to be strength. (BROAD GENERALIZATION INCOMING)It doesn't matter how agile you are but if you don't know how to put your mass into a punch it wont do anything and that could be defined by strength. Some games broaden individual stats down so you only need a couple stats, some define each stat narrowly. It really is up to the designer to decide what strength, agility etc actually mean and cover for the game. Ideally given 4es system each stat would do something on its own separate from skills and cover roughly the same number of skills if you intend for each stat to cost the same.

No. Ideally, you want each attribute to influence a total package of things worth about the same.
Or would you say Body is the worst attribute? It covers just two skills, most likely the two most worthless ones you'll find next to Pilot Aerospace!

Nope, would not say that at all...
And I have actually used those skills, more than many of the skills based upon other attributes. Parachuting and Diving are damn useful.

It isn't the worst attribute but it is far from the best and I think overall it is below average even if it is necessary to take to some degree. If you even out what stats do by giving each stat valuable roles in themselves and a similar number value of skills it is much easier to balance. Body is just the don't make it a dump stat, stat. It does nothing but soaks damage to some degree, if it weren't for the armor mechanic I might put it at the dump stat category since the difference between a 2 or a 5 is fairly minor in itself. While everything is always table dependent by putting all their eggs in the soak damage basket the valuation of body will vary more wildly than other attributes that effect a broader range of things.

Body need never worry about being the worst attribute as long as we still have Strength to kick around. The 10kg per point of Strength or face penalties can be troublesome if you truly dump it completely, but Muscle Augmentations are among the cheapest 'ware in the game and what few skills Strength is linked to can also be easily be compensated with 'ware.

----

Honestly, Body is just one of those 'not for skills' stats, and I can't see how you could reasonably change that. It's useful elsewhere, and nothing really makes sense to use it. Let people have a 'dump stat', if they want it, and stop worrying.

In general when I design characters I tend to play to the metatype strengths (AGI and/or CHA for elves, orks and trolls for tanks, edge for humans), but am not above making an ork hacker so I can dumpstat BOD and/or STR. But at the end of the day, that +1 AGI for elves doesn't make them the default gunbunny (+1 to your DP, avg 1/3 hit, woo hoo!).

Saying that, a BOD 4 STR 3 ork is still looked down on (certainly by orks) as much as the BOD 1 STR 1 human would be ("Sheesh, that's the puniest wimpiest ork I ever saw!"), so playing the ork card for those free stat bonuses comes with a fluff disadvantage.

As an aside, perhaps as a hangover from my SR1 days, I still see stats of 1 as seriously weak. On my table I have a house rule to only allow characters one 1 and one 2 or three 2's as dumpstats with the rest being 3+, although I might allow two 1's if they made sense to the character in question (STR 1 BOD 1 plus paraplegic/infirm perhaps, although I will warn the player that such a character might be letting themselves in for a world of hurt).

I also limit increases to stats to 1.5x original (round up) with 2x original possible at 1.5x karma to try and encourage people not to min-max. Hence stat of 1 can only ever get to 2, 2 to 3 or 4 (at 1.5x karma for the 4th point), 3 to 5 or 6 (1.5x karma), 4+ to 6. This applies to the base stat before racial bonuses so not to give metas an (additional?) advantage over human.

For the record, most characters on my table have BOD at 3 or more, although BOD 2 with a high dodge pool does sometimes crop up. And, on the topic in question, I find human characters more than viable even if they are not edge monkeys (although most of them are).

Nine times out of ten I play a human, simply because it gives me MORE options.

1. Inconspicious
2. Blends in
3. More things to spend on other things

And lets not forget how we can tweak the human form with a little help of becoming

A: Adept
B: Mage
C: Changeling
D: Ghoul
E: A+C+D

I'd hardly call becoming a ghoul a "tweak", more like "gross degeneration"

Frankly, the only real beef I have with humans is that they can de facto spend less BP on Attributes than other races. If you remedied that, then the other races would basically have a BP discount on some Attributes, at the price of being shoehorned a little bit in that direction; humans would be free-er, but slightly more expensive.

Since dumpstatting is a viable tactic in SR4.5, humans can have a bonus there. Dumpstatting strength is a common move, so if that's your plan, going ork isn't going o net you anything. Dumpstatting Body isn't wise; but you really don't need more than a Body of 3-4, and you can get away with a 2 if you're careful.

Weeelll now, that's a matter of taste.

Seriosly, you can quite easily create "clean" Ghouls as long as the teamplayer have no qualms about your eating habits - something they might not be even aware of if you keep it quiet.

1. Get the quality so that you are no longer contagious
2. hunt feral ghouls. Get a bounty AND keep your fridge filled (yes, they are metahumans so they are a legal foodsource)

situational.

You just need to roll stuff or be creative to be just as good as a human at blending in.
Humans are actually more expensive at any non-fragile build, as has been stated here to the point of frustration. Of course if you are min-maxing in BP builds then this might not save you anything, factually, because you want to put your first 20-30 karma into bod and/or Str. So you just have to survive two runs with Bod 1, and then the other 3 or so runs with Bod 2, and even then you still only have 10 boxes and can wear the most basic armour.

Meh. Orcs make cheaper mages and adepts just like they make cheaper sams. The only things they are worse at is being the face or hacker, but a combat hacker (yes, that lost old archetype) might again benefit.

Look at it this way: A bod 10 character is a tank. No doubt. The bod 5 character is just one who doesn't want to die so easily. Bod 5 is by no means especially resilient. It's what I consider the minimum for anyone who wants to get into a firefight.

Body 5 makes for fluffwise some of the toughest humans naturally possible.
If it's just extra damage boxes you're after, get some cyberlimbs. You get one each. A body 2 character with two cyberhands and two cyberfeet has the same ammount of damage boxes as a body 10 character. Plus likely have more dice to roll for shooting stuff as well, for far cheaper, given a lenient GM.

If we are here talking about dump stats.
Looking at meditation, it might be a really good idea to dump stat:
Strength (way to go I guess)
Charisma (not such a smart move and it does not help, if you already dumped strength to 1)
Reaction (Well, depends. With an Edge 6 human it is possible)
Intuition (Well, I would go with reaction, playing a mage)


So yes, thats one thing only a human can do.
An elve is kind of fucked with a charisma bonus, he quite can't use. (Needing 7 hits is not a nice thing)
The Orc is fucked with his starting strength, unable to dump charisma (Bound spirits)
The troll, ah well.
The dwarf could do it too.
I an other point is, if you have a very skill focused character (background). (Simply no points for Race or attributes)
Low physical attributes may be explained by someone of the nasty stuff in arsenal.
But well I guess such characters stoped beeing worth a thought after the new costs to raise attributes.

So with too dump attributes at 1 instead of 3 buys you one skill group at 4.
Comparing 40BP/50Karma (old 40BP/30Karma) to 40BP/55Karma.

It could be that I didn't express it well. I am not saying that an assailant hurts his hand by punchning someone. I'm saying that in a realistic melee without rules and referees, both people are landing punches on one another simultaneously. In a three second both guys (or girls) will probably throw a half-dozen blows, with many of them landing on their opponent. The actual damage done is a factor of both the strength of the blows and their precision, but both combatants and taking and dealing damage every round. If you throw a roundhouse kick at me I can mitigate the effects by moving out of the optimal target zone and interposing a less vulnerable body part like in a leg check, and even occasionally can move out of the way completely. But most of the blows end up hitting something. In real life the whole 'do the matrix' thing where you duck and dodge a dozen blows that touch nothing but air is a myth, unless you're talking about VAST differences in skill levels.

I would argue that there are plenty of combat styles that rely just as much on raw power as they do on speed and finess. Having ridiculously powerful blows makes it easier to land a significant punch. If we're fighting and you block my punch with your arm, you've avoided my punch. But if your fighting a guy with Strength 8 and you block his punch with your arm, you've got a broken arm...

So you, sort of, bring back the counterstrike abilities of Previous Editions?



Only if you do it wrong...

No. Just No.

Lets list what it does:

• Skills: a couple and I have never used them...
• Resists Physical Damage by soak
• Controls how many hps you have
• Allows you to wear more armour
• Resisting Physical Mage Spells
• Resists diseases
• Resists poisons
• Used by adepts in their soaking of drain
• Controls how fast you get get hitpoints back
• When you are down from loss of hitpoints, it controls how long you stay alive

I'm sure I have forgotten a few things...

Boxes are a neat side-effect, but what I'm really after is armour (in games that don't play with WAR! and softcheese armour).

If you are using WAR, then you can really get away with Bod 3/Str 2 or so, I guess.

Point is, however, that when you're facing someone capable of powerful blows a wider variety of techniques become "wrong," and in the chaos of a fight that can really limit your options. So, yeah, the notion of a fighter who is clumsy or whatever hits me as deeply weird. But, Shadowrun is quite abstract and already divides the old Quickness attribute stat ways that favors game mechanics rather than verisimilitude, so the notion that someone skilled can use their Strength as their primary attribute when swinging a claymore or punching their opponent doesn't bother me very much as far as houserules go, particularly if they have a high skill.

Perhaps, but that uses much more granularity than Shadowrun truly cares about... It is not something that really needs to be worried about in the long run.

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
Which leads us pack to: And thats the reason strength is the dump attribute it is...