One of my players asked me why would you pick to play as a human, and only reasons I could think of was

1)You fit in better, fewer people hate you
2)Save you a few BP (though not that true as with other Matetypes you seem to gain more attributes then their BP cost)

But honestly the 1st point doesnt really seem that great and the 2nd point also seems bit dumb as your likely to spend points on your attributes, so playing any of the other metatypes seems to make more sense.

I'm sure this has been raised before, but what could humans get to make them worth playing (some kind of bonus?)? Or least why do you guys think their worth playing?

My reason for usually playing humans is not crunch but fluff: I prefer playing humans. I come from a rather old-school cyberpunk background and tend to downplay the magic aspect of the SR world in games I run. Hence, my own characters are usually mundane humans.

1. More edge. A lot of people underestimate edge, mostly because they haven't invested in it. Unlike most attributes, edge's bonus is not linear. It provides not only more uses, but more powerful ones.
2. Most other metas don't have a significant amount of mental stats increased, or even have lowered ones. Humans excel in builds where you need good mental attributes but don't have a great need for physical ones. Mages, hackers, riggers, faces, technomancers, and even adepts/street sams focused on reaction and dodge are quite powerful.
3. Humans are much more powerful by comparison when built in (german rules) karmagen. The karma saved by not paying for race allows for a lot of skills/resources.

Exactly
+1
Mr Lucky (Edge 8 ) really Rocks

with a Dance on the Edge
Medicineman

What Faraday said, and IIRC humans are the most common metatype of the five and suffer the least prejudices in most cases (the latter being a more important case for one of my players).

Now if you really wanna surprise your players, throw in a human who's an elf/ork poser and a respectable Con skill rating. Heck, you could even use a changeling with neoteny who's a bit husky and claiming to be a dwarf (beards are typical, not the norm). See what their reactions are when they find out that the poser's really a [normal?] human.

Try thinking about all the non-mechanical aspects about your character first. I consider that the numbers add a game to roleplaying, as opposed to the concept adding roleplaying to a game. YMMV.

-Is there a translated version of the german rules out there? I'd sort of like to see them. Without learning German.

Errataed(German )Rules say that You pay Attribute x5 and You pay Karmapoints = Buildingpoints for Metarace

with errataed Dance
Medicineman

Funny that those two things make such a huge difference, but they do. I remember Metatype=BP*2, but that's probably just me.

Yeah. After the errata the orcs are the master race when building with karmagen
20 karma for body 4 and str 3? nice

How about the ability to blend in? Still more humans than other metatypes. And if you're in a city that is policed by Lone Star, well, they still have a (Earned) reputation for being racist bastards.

Also, Japan. Just, Japan. Even Gaijin Norms are treated better than even native Metatypes.

Don't forget the penalties to logic and charisma. And trolls get 5 bod/str for 40 karma, an even better deal.
I actually recall that ork costs were dropped in back when 4th ed came out while elves were made more pricey, apparently the game designers didn't want everyone going elf.
Typically, I have elves and orks cost the same as dwarves, with trolls staying at their current cost.

Human looking: 5 BP
I might note that lonestar has a LOT of prison contracts as well. If you're a human on the inside, it's a bad day. If you're an apparent meta, it's a worse day.

Which doesn't matter jack squat in Karmagen

For hackers/riggers, mages not on a Charisma Tradition, the other metatypes don't really give any bonuses to write home about.

Then there's the racism thing; humans have an easier time of it.

Edge is nice.



But maybe the big one is simply: some people don't want to play a non-human. They like being the human, perhaps even enjoying the feeling of being the "underdog".

I agree basically humans mostly have edge going for them. Not that much else.

I see it as an evolution in the game: Last edition it was dwarves, but at least there was a reason not to play one (you were slow as fuck). Orcs just don't live long and get social stigma. Duh, fluff. I also don't see a lot of fluff difference between humans, orcs and elves - they are basically very similar, and I don't need to change my character mentality for playing either. Now trolls are different, due to their size, mainly.

Mostly when I build characters I assign all the stats and then switch races around to find which one is cheapest, and orcs usually win. It's just the body that does it - if body wasn't required to wear armour and generally not die...

For me there is a huge fluff difference between an Orc and a Human fluff wise. A Orc unless they goblinized late is almost certainly a member of a large family due to the litter factor. Less likely they might have grown up in poverty although that might be the norm for a lot of metahumans.

Elves your fighting a lot of cultural stigma/expectations as well as the fact that a lot of people resent you for damn good reason based on what your elf centric nation states have done.

I think the game developers actually did a very good job of balancing the races. Not every person will want to play every race, but for every race, there's enough people who like them and want to play them.

If you consider bioelectrics, it could be said, that humans are, in fact, powered.

Bye
Thanee

Gaaaah!

I suddenly have this incredible desire to play an undercover reporter for humanis showing how destructive metahuman shadowrunners are.....

He'd insert himself on a shadowrunner team, record everything, and then leave them cursing his sudden, but inevitable, betrayal.

There are way too many people who want to play trolls, though (considering how rare they are supposed to be).

Same with awakened characters, of course.

And then there are all those weird races from Runner's Companion...

Bye
Thanee

I don't think a statistically representative distribution of PC types to setting is really to be expected in any RPG - and not even a good thing!

We want to play exceptional people, we don't want to play representative people



As for trolls: I actually don't really like them. They're an expensive race, and unless you really have a use for Strength 5+, you're paying for something you don't need. Add to that the lower caps on mental Attributes, and they become a very poor choice for non-Sam characters. I think it's a shame that they're so geared to be one-trick ponies.

The other four races all have some bonuses to Attributes that just pull them up to average ratings, for no great cost. If you play an Ork or Dwarf, and have no special interest in Body or Strength, you just leave it at the racial minimum and spend those BPs on something else. If your Elf doesn't need more than 3 Charisma, well, you just leave it at 3 and you're a reasonably personable member of society without additional BP. But as a Troll, you're committed to going physical, because you're capped low at everything else.

I guess trolls are just specialized for a role that doesn't interest me all that much (physical combatant)

Doesn't matter for BP builds either...

Didn't we do this already? If they're underpowered, it's not by enough to matter anyway.

I don't see why it matters. Playing a game and a character isn't about having the highest possible numbers, it's about having fun. Some of the funnest characters I've played have been the most screwed-up, mixed-up, and randomly-built things I threw together (or ended up developing thanks to the mind-warping powers in Call of Cthulhu).

Heh... This is often very true indeed...

How can you not see how it matters? Having the highest possible number can be fun, some people are just blind to this and find no fun in it and the saddest thing is they question how it can be so for others.
Most of the funnest characters I've played have been the most min-maxed, optimised things I threw together.

Yeah... Unfortunately, I do not find it fun to always Win/Succeed, which is what obtaining a Maximum Dice Pools generally ensures. There is no challenge if you can always just win/succeed. Might as well just write a book at that point.

Ok, but seriously a non-min-maxed character needs MORE BPs/Karma to succeed, because he needs to make up for not being a hyper-specialist. Hence, humans suck at this even more, unless you really rely on Edge only. (And some refresh mechanics don't suit those builds.)

I'd disagree. If this is how your games are turning out ("your" in the general group sense, not you personally), I'd say you need to find a new GM. The game should be fun and challenging for the players in the group as they want to play/build them, and not force them to hyper-specialise or min-max to some extreme because the GM lacks the ability to adapt.

Oh, I am the GM, and for the reasons I've stated we are using Karmagen with the old attribute costs (and race cost = BP cost), which makes for quite powerful generalists. But in a 400BP setting the characters would really suck hard.

I agree you could make humans more attractive with higher race costs.

I dunno. I have plenty of situation where I "won" in RPGs without any stats or dicepools at all.

It's called roleplaying.

Note that this is coming from probably one of the biggest min-maxers in this forum.

There are also situations where just having the biggest numbers is just inefficient. If you're hitting regularly with a 12 dice pool, how is a 20 dicepool going to really be better, and how many resources do you have to sacrifice to get that 20 DP?




-k

I'd say it probably has something to do with previous editions, and Karma Pool. Humans accumulated it twice as fast as metas.

My Elven Wheelman, Nas, punches people in the face when they speak Sperethiel at him. "I'm TEXAN, damnit! Speak American!"

It's funny. My current Missions NPC speaks fluent Sperethiel. But about the only time it's come up in games is to deliberately speak it badly to folks in the Tir, like a tourist who may have read a few English-to-Sperethiel phrasebooks. If you seem like some foolish tourist, people sometimes don't look at you too closely.






-k

You can roleplay just fine with good stats. You don't need bad stats to pull that off. And when you need to roll, it is nice to have some stats to back it up.

Humans are probably the weakest race, but I don't think the difference is that large if you are not in a min/max group. And as long as everyone is on the same page it should be fine. The problems come when half the team min maxed their characters and half didn't. Then it is a pain in the butt for a GM to build an appropriate challenge.

Bad stats can be roleplayed too. And "good stats" is relative. PCs are generally "better than average" in most RPGs. As I said, that 20 DP sometimes is just extreme overkill.

Disclaimer: I do play characters with 20+ DPs. But it's not to "win", whatever that means. It's way more than is actually needed most of the time. I just like showing off.






-k

My personal take on the whole powergaming issue:

Optimized characters can be fun or boring.
Non-optimized characters can be fun or boring.

Either can be fun for the player and boring for the group.
I've never seen one that was fun for the group but boring for the player.

I've never seen a fun (according to the group) character of any power level considered useless by the group.
I have seen over-specialized characters regardless of power level considered useless by the group.
Not all characters are appropriate for every game.

Character Power levels are not particularly important unless it negatively impacts the group's fun. High or low.
The GM is part of the group.

I don't mind characters who are good at what they do.
I find that most people who like optimizing characters underestimate the power of versatility because it's harder to crunch the mathematical effect of it.
I like optimizing characters too.
I have little patience for the idea that unless you are fully optimized you are useless.

Optimising builds can be fun, but it's not communal and defies the nature of RPGs, by which I mean it's crunching numbers regardless of what they might represent. Given that the GM will in all likelihood tailor the opposition to your power level, you theoretically don't gain anything by being more efficient anyway.

Personally I'm in the camp that likes flawed characters and care more about my guy's story than my progress as a player. More than once I've deliberately had my character put himself (usually unintentionally) in mortal danger and said to myself 'Yeah, this will be a fitting way for this guy's story to end' only for the GM to go out of his way to keep him alive. Hell, it's not like there are a shortage of character concepts to try and making them interesting and credible is much more challenging than optimising the build.

But then YMMV, as always.

Exactly. This means I get to engage in epic combat with multiple HTR ops teams, rather than pew-pewing back and forth with a 2-bit security guard. Yay for high power!

I think the biggest problem is not low powered chars or high powered chars, its having a group that has a mix of both. As a GM you have to ramp up the danger level in order to challenge the high powered charcters, but the less pimp of the group are going to be in very deadly situations.

A couple of the players in my group get their Joy from number crunching out power heavy characters. Rather than deny them this, I just assist the other players to make sure they are combat effective with their build so they can keep up.

I tried a low powered game once. Within a few sessions the powerplayers had found ways of eeking up their combat effectiveness, while the rest of the players floated around their starting ineptitude. Forcing weak builds at the start just meant that within a few sessions, the gap between high and low powered characers became even greater than in games where everyone started out fairly high powered.

One useful thing about low powered starting characters is that if someone comes in with a new character, I can alter the starting restrictions in order to allow the new character to be more up to par with the more aged characters. No extra BP, just less Nuyen/Skill/attribute limits.

"My hovercraft is full of awakened eels."

"I will not buy this BTL, it is scratched."

Well, there was a huge miss with gene ware. I really wished they would have flashed it out a bit more.
Making it easyer to get for vanilla humans but more complicated for the rest. (Espacially you know whom)
(Because this are the little tweaks making the game world feel right and alive. But this has actually not much to do with the topic I guess)

@Ascalaphus
Yeah, and as soon as you got yourself a GM considering wight limits and doors, you get fucked.

@stu_pie
The main problem is, that it is hard to make humans better without making them overpowered.

Giving them one free to select bonus point?
Hello, only race with logic +1, reaction +1 or Intuition +1.
Giving them an other point of edge?
Who the hell would not take the guy with easy 7 edge to go?
Giving them a reduction in Cyber or Bioware essence costs?
Hell, good for every build.
So I guess the only way would really to give humans a bit of a bonus to Geneware, since it is the most uncommon type.

Humans should probably be -10 BP. Although I'm sure that would ruin a lot of people's roleplaying fun.

Then he should check this link... In America!


Mind if I use this in my upcoming game?

Irion (and everyone else who had this point) I agree humans are not massively under powered, but unless you are going for fluff or have a concept of what your character looks like, going human seems a bit dumb. I was thinking of something little in game tweak, maybe like reduced cost of life style (people more likely to want a human to move in then trolls) or maybe extra 5BP on qualities limit. I know it's not all about numbers and the best characters are sometimes ones who are lacking (I had a character who manged to loss everything and for several run was a homeless bum with an old beat up shotgun that often misfired). But for new players higher dice is nice, and when asked by my players why play a human I could not think of any real reason why they would want to.

The extra build points are nice, to be honest. That's extra gear, skills, spells/adept powers, etc. 30 BP on an elf? that's 150,000 nuyen that might have been available (if you hadn't already capped out), or 7 skills and a slight improvement of a contact. 20 BP for Ork str/bod is nice, but that could have been 2-3 very important and useful contacts. Humans aren't underpowered, their power is where it's classically been: versatility.

Rubic: It's only 20 points for an Ork if you planned on having Body + Str of at most 3. I suppose you could want to do that, but unless you plan to bomb pretty much every single attribute or you have 6+ Edge, it will save you points (or, at most, cost you nothing for some of the less-efficient ones like Elf) to be a metatype.

My current missions character speaks sperethiel pretty solidly because he grew up int he tir. The few times i'ts come up it's got him some funny looks as he's an ork.

For the record i find human balance to be just about right for what their supposed to be. I could stand to see them have something a little more intangible like an extrapoint of essence or a higher edge cap (since they gave one of the metavarients a human like edge bonus) but other then that caveat I think their fine.

The thing is I've always felt game balance should mirror the setting conventions. For example if mages are supposed to be so rare in the setting why si it so cheap to become a mage build point wise. There are enough advantages to the metatypes that i'm seeing all ork and troll tables and that makes me a bit concerned.

This.

Maintaining party balance is a problem in -any- rpg system. When you have some party members outshining everyone else, it becomes difficult to balance encounters so everyone is having fun.


Onto the subject of humans being weak, I've often considered writing up some house rules to balance starting races a bit more - basically, removing the Rarity Tax from the equation, and making sure each races comes out a bit ahead, so there's less reason to play any given race for the idea/character you want.
During the course of this, I realized humans were less attractive, and had to think of ways to make them more attractive without flat out making them more powerful, while still maintaining the 'humans are resouceful, common, and often exceptional people'.

I can post the idea, if people like.

Please do, or PM me. I would be interested...