One of our players is trying to build a shapeshifter-character but is running into some confusion.

What is the karma cost for a race in the newest rules?
BP?
BP * 2?

The spreadsheet available here calculates the price for a Tigershapeshifter at 150.. Is that right?

Reference Runner's Companion, page 41: Metatype 0 karma. You get half your starting karma plus the metatype's BP cost times 2 in what you can spend for your attributes.

Now I've not messed with DK's spreadsheet (assuming that's the one you're using) in a long time, but you might want to look into the Settings tab to make sure the costs are set right. Alternatively, if possible, you can try Nebular's Chummer program (link to download is in my signature).

With the Errata, Metatytpe costs BP in Karma...

Would love to have a link to such an errata PDF, as a quick google search turns up errata for other SR4 books and not Runner's Companion (among other things).

If it is a FAQ you meant to refer to instead, I have been advised by others here in the past to disregard them and have read remarks from some about their contradictory nature.

Its here

You can find it on the website whenever Catalyst Game Labs ever gets off their ass and actually PUTS the errata they have online for people to use.(augmentation! five years and counting...) As it is, the guy who helped write the book had to come on here and tell how it was.
Furthering the stupidity is that the second printing of the RC has the corrected values, but no online errata file.

Take from this what you will, but as-written karmagen is pretty much blatantly OP.

Yeah, I'll take what I want from that, along with the age of that post that a PDF will never see the light of electron flow.

Never liked the idea of metatypes paying karma for their type when they're paying more on attributes as well. GM's prerogative, and up to cybertier's group whether or not to charge BP=karma or zero, then. Besides, it's not like there's already a slew of house rules and confusion already.

Holy shit that's backwards. Free metatype = free points on attributes. They pay LESS for higher level attributes because they skip out on paying for all the freebie levels the metatype comes with.

Its also there as a sort of balancing factor. Otherwise, karmagen is basically 'attributes half off, skills half off, maxing out an attribute isn't two and a half times more expensive, oh yeah, and metatypes are FREE. Everyone play trolls! We can pretend its homestuck!'

While metatypes start out with a net gain as far as base Attributes are concerned, they do pay more for higher Attributes. Take a troll. You pay 40 karma, and get Body and Strength of 5, while losing a point of Edge compared to a human. So a net gain of 90 (70 + 70 -40 -10) compared to a human. But, if you want to increase Body and Strength both to 9, you will have to pay 300 karma in order to do so!

So I see where Spellbinder is coming from. I still think the errata/new version is more balanced, though. Trolls do pretty well except for the corner cases like that. If you keep Body/Strength at the 6-7 mark, they are still very cost-effective. Under the old karmagen, metatypes got just a bit too much - the free metatype, and the lower cost multiplier for Attributes, made things too slanted towards certain metatypes, especially ones such as shapeshifters or dryads where the metatype cost was part of how they were balanced.

Hi, I´m the player that got confused^^
I have the german rulebook here, what got me confused is in the spreadsheet is a tooltip that states:



In version 1t shapeshifters are build with karma equal building points, in the newest version 1v the cost for "others" are doubled and I wonder where that factor 2 comes from...
Our GM agreed on karma cost = bp cost, but still I´m curious if we overlooked an errata or statement or something like that (did something happened in the past few months between 1t and 1v?)

@Udoshi

Well, thats a psychological effect. People hate loosing stuff. This makes it incredible hard to errata games without everybody crying about it.

This reaches its climax, when people state "X-is too strong" and somebody replys "you do not have to interpret rule Y like that, you can look at it like this" " Oh no, this can't be. X would loose..."

Here everybody is used to be able to powergame his troll to strength 9 body 9 (or his elf to charisma 7) in BP. Now you are taking away this option/making it harder. This is disliked a LOT.

Something like this is spoken out against, as soon as you finde a race, which would even get a higher boni, but which is not played. (Or which would get an unlimited bonus like that) As soon as this happens people start telling you that the rule should not apply for this instance, because!

To balance SR is not the big problem. The problem is, that a balanced SR nobody wants. Simply because all those imbalanced characters would not be that strong anymore.
(If you need to put as much efford in "beeing the best shot in on the planet" as it is due.... Well, it won't pay off anymore.)

DK's sheet includes a several houserules per default, that is probably why.

It's basically impossible to miss errata, because CGL doesn't do errata. Ever. Except for that single fix in the core book.